Act 3, Scene 10

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

In the small campo outside the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, where our narrative began last April, a frazzled  photographer tries to direct a rather unruly group into some semblance of order, posing them for a group photo.

http://www.travelsignposts.com/Italy/sightseeing/tintoretto-art-at-the-scuola-grande-di-san-rocco-venice

Photographer, loudly, in very apparent frustration:

OK everyone (claps his hands in an attempt to gain the attention of the 20 or so he has been asked to photograph), tall people in the back row please, about 8 in the middle and four or five in the chairs at the front.

Moving with glacial speed, and gradually breaking off their lively conversations, the artists make a show of complying. Only one or two give a damn about the group photo, or the photographer. Earnestly these few nudge shoulders and assist with the placement of tall and short participants. Someone is overheard saying, "For god's sake don't let Michelangelo anywhere near El Greco. He'll tear him apart."

Photographer

Listen, people! This is what your host calls a legacy shot. So, as much as possible, you should be beside or close to some artist who influenced you. But still, try to keep the taller people in the middle at the back, thank you. Signore Da Vinci to the very centre of the back row, thank you. And M. Picasso on the chair, centre front row, please. No, no, no. Wait a minute – you should be standing at one end, sir. The chairs can be for anyone. So if you are tired or hung over, take a chair. OK, here we go, people. Let's hold those thoughts for a few minutes – no conversation just now, thank you. (limited success)

This group includes one of many "family trees" that illustrate clear lines of influence from one artist to another. These are artists who are directly tied to one another through their work, often as teachers or students. Each of these painters has been influenced by someone in this group (as well as by others who are busy with other group photos elsewhere). In an effort to "join the dots" for the reader, what follows is a lineage, an evolution in painting, beginning in the quattrocento (the 15th century) and culminating in the present day. This is not an exhaustive sampling of artistic influences from one generation to the next; that would be far too complicated. However, the interdependent influences described below will offer at least one path of investigation, featuring connections acknowledged by the artists themselves. A chronological list of these artists follows the examples of their work, which also appear chronologically where possible. 

Annunciation, Barthélémy d'Eyck (fl. 1444-1469) 

Saint Francis of Assisi Gave the Canon to Franciscan Orders Niccolò Antonio Colantonio (ca. 1420-1460)

Virgin of the Annunciation, Antonello da Messina, (c. 1430 – February 1479)

Bellini, Giovanni St. Francis in Ecstasy, c. 1480, Tempera and oil on panel

Giorgione. The Tempest. c.1506-9

Titian, Bacchanal of the Andrians, 1523-5

Act 3, Scene 9

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

By this time, a small crowd of curious tourists has gathered to enjoy the commotion. Glancing around, Whiten instinctively throws a protective arm around the pathetic Dugh – after all, how different is this situation from the many that have involved artists of her acquaintance at home and elsewhere? – a few  of whom could be labelled eccentric only as a kindness – men and women artists of varying degrees of physical and mental health, and cleanliness too. To be an artist is to embrace differences.

Murmuring comforting words, she and Boyle shepherd Dugh to a bench in the shade of the pavilion. 

Whiten

Dugh, are you here alone? 

Dugh (wiping his eyes with the back of a hand)

Woman is here. She makes carved pictures in cave. I make pictures with burnt sticks and coloured earth. But woman, Maaah, is with other man. Man in big hat shows woman box that makes many pictures, says he will buy food and drink. She is with him drinking wine, getting loud, speaking in strange ways. I know of chewing sweet plants to feel good, but I do not know wine. This is too much for woman. (moaning loudly) AAaaaaah. Dugh and Maaah must go home. Too many people. All strange. Buildings, boats, noise, everything hurts! I want to show artists how to make beautiful pictures in caves, but there are no caves, no walls. Only caves are in big buildings you call church, and no one lets Dugh and Maaah into these caves.

Saharan rock carving depicting a lying antelope or gazelle, petroglyph in Southern Algeria

Altamira, Spain

Whiten

You can go home anytime you wish, Dugh. We are all here in a kind of dream, a "what if?" kind of story. You know about dreams. All you have to do is wish not to be here, but at home instead, and that will be your reality. That's where you'll wake up. Go home now, and you'll find things as they were, and Maaah will be there too.

Dugh's eyes widen; his tears dry; and as suddenly as he first appeared, he is gone.

Boyle
Well that was weird. Poor guy. Can you imagine the disorientation if the situation were reversed?

Whiten
Whew! Poor guy is right. I hope he's as happy to get back home as he thought he'd be. I'm sure it's not a time or place that I would choose. But you know, he made me think of the legacy that stretches back as far as Dugh's time at least ... all artists linked somehow by the passion to make things. There's one more question I want to ask you about this, Shary. It's about newness, invention. 20th century artists seem to have been obsessed with approaching their art in ways that they felt were entirely new. I suppose there's an argument to be made that this passion for inventiveness began as far back as Duccio and Giotto. And I think it's fair to say that most artists of my generation keep looking over their shoulders to see which artists from the past might complain that they are merely quoting earlier achievements, that we have nothing new to say; and they may be right about that. So, for example, although I think that my early work was entirely fresh and new, and certainly it's intent felt distinct from the work of other sculptors, there were those who thought they saw the American, George Segal's work in my plaster casts of body parts. Nonsense, I said to myself, and I was confident that my work was different from his and everyone else's. My point is that artists my age think about this, whereas many young artists I know seem not be concerned in the least with what's been done by others. Appropriating and quoting are quite comfortable aspects of a studio practice now, don't you think? How does that work? I mean how can one happily trundle along making art, not being concerned with the past? What do you think?

Boyle (smiling broadly)
Ah. Well, I don't think you can paint an entire generation with that brush, ha ha. Not every artist my age is totally detached from history, but it's probably fair to say that there has been an attitude shift. Here's how somebody explained the generational difference to me – maybe this is a piece of the puzzle anyway.

You guys grew up being taught to respect your elders, to appreciate what had been done by your parents and grandparents to give you the fabulous material things you were given, the opportunities, the education and so on, right? (Whiten nods)

So, if you didn't feel all that appreciative, or if in fact your elders were not the saints they were supposed to be, this heavy burden of guilt and responsibility kept you from complaining much, at least until the 60s. Your whole culture was about looking back, either in appreciation, or with envy or outright disdain – didn't matter, you measured yourselves against the past. Naturally, that was part of your experience of art too. Your teachers sat you down, showed you slides of paintings by Cezanne, and told you that this was something to bow down to.

Anyway, here's where this guy's idea distinguishes my generation from yours. We were told not to be intimidated by our elders or by authority figures, and all the news about the various kinds of abuse of children explains that attitude shift. We were supposed to stand up for ourselves if some nasty wanted us to do things that we knew weren't going to turn out well. The good news there is that it got harder for these assholes to target kids who'd just tell them to fuck off. But the flip side of that coin is that sometimes we got harder to control – I hate that word, but you know what I mean. Kids I went to school with would think nothing of telling perfectly nice teachers to fuck off. All authority was something to buck against. So, if you think that you are precisely as important as anyone who's older, anyone who has achieved something, then artists of previous generations have no power to intimidate.

And there are other factors that feed into this too. Look how pervasively the digital world has made everything about immediacy. That's new, for you at least. History? What's that, and who cares? Have you heard of this new book The Big Disconnect, by Giles Slade? Part of his argument is that although we may be connecting with more and more people, the actual connections are shallower in nature, and that we are becoming lonelier than ever – maybe another reason to care about yourself in the present (as you tweet 50 "friends" from your smartphone), rather than about others, or what they think.

So, my friend's take on this is that if you ask a young artist if he or she worries that their work has already been preempted by some older artist, they'd just laugh and say "Who cares? Why would you choose to worry about that? I just do what I do."

Whiten
Hmmm. Well, that's food for thought.

Act 3, Scene 8

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Boyle

Yeah, sure. I'm hungry too. There's a good place not far away where we can get panini or pizza, if that sounds OK.

Lost in conversation, Whiten and Boyle nearly stumble over a man just outside the pavilion. He is intent on juggling the various objects he tries awkwardly to hold onto while at the same time reaching for something he has dropped on the pavement. Surprisingly, his clothing consists only of what appears to be a deerskin loin cloth. 

Whiten reaches for Boyle's arm to avoid tripping, and feels something crunch underfoot. Looking down, she sees that she has crushed several charred twigs.

Man
STOOPID WOMAN! Move! Go away!

Whiten is truly remorseful; however, she has also noticed an unusual pungency that hangs in the air around the man. She sees that he is carrying charcoal, some sharp-looking stones, and a crude wooden or bone bowl containing powdery, rust-coloured dirt. 
Oh! I am so sorry. I didn't see you there; please let me help you with your things. You're an artist I see – here for the last weeks of the Biennale? I am Colette, and this is Shary; it's Shary's work in this pavilion behind us.
This is all spoken rapidly as the three try to reassemble the man and his belongings. The general scuffle is punctuated by a stream of muttered obscenities issuing from the man's snarling lips.

Man, now finally in possession of all his things, stands and glowers at the women. He is breathing heavily, his eyes  – the women step back out of range of the sour breeze he exudes.
Stoopid women! I am Dugh. I go in cave to make beautiful picture. Get out of my way.

Boyle, stepping protectively in front of the entrance to the pavilion, blocking the man's progress.
Wait a minute. What do you mean you're going into the cave to make art? This isn't a real cave! You can't just walk in and deface the walls; this is my art!

Dugh, stunned by the authority in Boyle's voice, and suddenly deflated. His face contorts from angry grimace to wide-eyed amazement, and finally to an expression best described as pathetically sorrowful. He looks like a kid whose kitten has just been run over by a passing car. The transformation is so rapid that Whiten and Boyle are taken aback, especially when they see tears emerge from the big, sad eyes, and hear a barely audible whimper rising in Dugh's throat.
No cave? Ahhnnn, mmmmm (moaning). No cave. I look everywhere for cave, for wall to paint anywhere. No caves. No walls. People stop Dugh from making art on walls here. I look everywhere. All artists, they say Dugh is important, Dugh is grandfather, Dugh is first artist. But there is nowhere for Dugh to make art.
At this point, he quietly collapses, dropping his belongings again, and slumping to sit, utterly dejected on the pavement at the feet of the two women.

Act 3, Scene 7

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Boyle

And here's another question that you and I have probably discussed before. There you are in 1972 building these huge, muscular structures, strapping men into them and casting their bodies in plaster. You made photographic records of the complicated process, and in some cases exhibited both the finished casts and the raw, empty structures. But you chose to move your work not towards installation or performance, but, it seems to me at least, back to focus on the art object itself. You know I love the art object, even though it's supposed to be a dead end ... at least since Danto's article in '64 and then  with After the End of Art in '97. No, that's not quite accurate either: Danto was talking more about the end of the relationship between art and aesthetics, wasn't he. Oh, there I go – I'm getting too far away from my question. We can talk about Danto another time.

So, early on, it looked like you might be headed for installations, or even performance. What took you back to the art object? (a hand covers her mouth as she laughs). And here I am, a maker of objects, sitting in this huge space in something I've made that looks more like an installation. Maybe I'm answering my own question.

Whiten, smiles

Oh Shary, we mustn't be limited by the labels people like to assign to art, telling us that certain practices are outdated, or irrelevant. As interesting and important as it is to discuss the nature of art, no discussion or article or essay or book can ever declare for all time a single definition of art. Art is a living, evolving thing. Well, look at you! What label could possibly pin you down? Or what about Janet and George?

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Murder of Crows, 2008

http://www.cardiffmiller.com/press/jcgbmpress.html

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, 2012

http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/index.html

That's the most wonderful thing about art. It's a house with no walls, and anyone who tries to change that is doomed to failure. Someone will always want to decide which art is good and which is bad or mediocre, and to be fair, not every effort is successful. All we can do is work with personal integrity to make the best, most genuine expressions of ourselves that we can. On one hand you have Nobbie Kubota – a sculptor! – doing internationally acclaimed sound performances, and on the other, at the same time I was making those big casts and sculptures, there was a revival of realist painting in Spain, in the States, and at home in Canada too. I noticed that Jack Chambers is here this week, but think of Mary Pratt, Chris Pratt, Alex Colville and John and Joice Hall, and their daughter Janine too, and lots of others. If you do it well, and you do what you love doing, you musn't be confined by trends or labels. You gotta do what you gotta do (laughs). Whether there was a moment for me, when I made a choice to concentrate on making objects ... hmmm. I'll have to think about that. Right now though, I'm starving! Can you take time for some lunch?

Act 3, Scene 6

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Boyle

Yeah. I think that really, it's just about age and maturity. Of course there'll always be young artists who know zero about anything that's not in their own heads. Isn't that part of being young and full of yourself? Do you remember your high school art classes? Some kids were soooo intense! All those hormones and that energy and the feeling that absolutely everything that happened to you was of such critical importance – it all got poured into whatever was going on in art class. I remember listening as kids explained to the teacher how this little swirl of blue meant death, and that splotch of green meant hope, and of course the big thing in the middle was LOVE! Sometimes I wonder just how those teachers could be so patient and respectful; it was nearly all total crap, but very important to the kid who made it.

It's not until you start to look around, and admit to yourself that you might actually learn something from someone else, even if they are older – that's when you begin to think that history might not be poison after all.

Whiten (laughing)

Bingo! That's exactly right. And yes, I do remember hearing those oh-so-deep discussions in art class. Wow. Weren't those feelings overwhelming? I think I'm much happier now than I was at that age. That was tough ... for almost everyone, I suppose. Then again, there weren't too many female-artist role models for me when I began to dig my heals in as a woman artist, and that was tough too. Or exciting. Yes, it was exciting to think that maybe you were breaking new ground. You know, this is a bit of a digression, but I feel very proud of my own generation. The 60s, hippies, feminism, racial equality, sexual diversity – a lot of the tolerance that we take for granted today started with people of my generation. Anything I felt strongly about became fair territory for an artist ... even a woman artist! Imagine doing what I did in some of today's repressive societies in other parts of the world – strapping men into these contraptions that looked like torture apparatuses! Unbelievable, when I think of it now. We are so lucky to live in such a free country, and too often we take it all for granted. Imagine doing what you do in those countries! No way at all.

Structure #8 (casting process - detail 2 of 3) 
© Colette Whiten

ccca.concordia.ca 

Structure #7 (casting process) 

© Colette Whiten

ccca.concordia.ca 

Of course by the early seventies when I began to have some success, other women had already elbowed their way into what was then pretty much a boys' club. Helen Frankenthaler comes to mind, and she did it ten or twenty years before anyone took notice of me. Too bad she's not here. She was one tough cookie I think.

Boyle

But a lot of people are still a bit undecided about her, don't you think? You can't argue with the fact that she challenged men on their own turf, but ... I don't know. Her work wasn't about women ... not the way that your work and mine is anyway. And when she came down against arts grants for individual artists in the States ... don't you think that was kinda reactionary? I mean, Mapplethorpe? C'mon. How could she be dismissive of Mapplethorpe? She wrote that position paper in '89 I think. AIDS would have been top of mind for everyone, I guess. I wonder ... well, who knows? Just makes you wonder about her tolerance, her openness to all those 60s changes you were talking about. Maybe I'm not being fair.

Anyway, to get back to women and art, your stuff must have opened doors for all kinds of women. You know, legitimizing the way you did the value of all women's art, including all of what people once considered domestic craft, and somehow therefore less valid. What a crock. I think your art is, what would I call it? ... permission giving! That's it. It gives us permission to look at what it is to be female ... all of what that entails, pretty and not so pretty.

Act 3, Scene 5

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Boyle (hugs Whiten. Aside from a few tourists, they are alone in the Canadian Pavilion, in the last month of the Venice Biennale.)

Wow! Great to see you Colette; I'm so glad you could come, and by the way I haven't had a chance to congratulate you in person. Amazing – the GG award. That is fantastic, and boy do you deserve it. I wish I'd brought Vag Halen with me; I'm sure they'd write something just for you and dance naked in celebration right here if we asked!

Whiten (laughing, hand to mouth)

No Shary. Thanks all the same, I've celebrated enough since the announcement. Oh ... how on earth can you still be here? You must be so exhausted. Or are you just back for a quick check on your babies before moving on to something else?

Boyle

Yeah, just here for a day or two. I fly out tomorrow, but I had to have a look to see how these pieces survived six months – well about five for now, but there's another month still to go. I am tired – maybe I have a bit too much on my plate right now, but I'm having fun with it all.

Whiten

I get it, really I do. It's hard to walk away from a big project like this that is still in a show. You wonder who has poked at it, and whether anything has been damaged.

Shary Boyle, The Cave Painter, photos by Raphael Goldchain

Boyle
Well, of course you would understand. Wish I had been there to see that show at Isaacs, the one with the cocoon-like plaster sculptures. I'd have loved to run my hands over those when no one was looking. They were so beautiful ... kinda spooky too. That was pretty early stuff for you, but people must have messed with the casts and the big wooden benches that were at the AGO around that time too.

Whiten
Maybe. I remember worrying about it. I guess when there was any small damage, the staff at the AGO  fixed it – no doubt with me anxiously watching every touch (laughs again). But listen, how are you enjoying Venice, especially now that you aren't working to deadline? And what do you think of this time-warp fiction we have been dropped into by this guy, Newkirk?

Boyle
Oh, Venice! What an amazing place. How could anyone not love Venice? It's actually been kinda fun bumping into people like Helen Fankenthaler and Agnes Martin and Artemisia Gentileschi, and you of course, even though you and I really do know each other. But this idea of meeting people from different eras ... well there's nothing really new about it. There was that Woody Allen movie a couple of years ago, Midnight in Paris, for example. Although the point of that film had more to do with longing for the past. I guess what Newkirk wants to do is simply connect the dots ... past to present.

Whiten
You're too young to remember this, but in the early eighties there was a TV series hosted by Patrick Watson – a CBC cronie – called Titans, and in it Watson "interviewed" great figures from the past. It was fairly cool at the time. Then there's that old saw: if you could invite anyone at all to dinner, from any period in history, who would you choose? It's fun to imagine what those great artists were really like. And I like this idea Newkirk has of putting the question: do young artists actually care about the past anymore? I just read an article by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and it touched on this very issue. She was reviewing a survey show of 60 Canadian painters, called The Painting Project, curated by Julie Belisle at the Galerie de l'UQAM in Montreal. What I found interesting was that, just at the end of the article, Julie was quoted as saying that "all these painters ... really know their art history."  

Act 3, Scene 4

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Fiorentino

Thank you for the compliment. This is one of my favourite works. 

Manet

And have you enjoyed the Biennale?

Fiorentino

Pah! Venice is a beautiful city full of great works of art; but this Biennale is disgraceful hucksterism. Perhaps nothing in this sideshow is for sale per se, but the promotion of so many ridiculous ... uh ... what are they? ... projects? ... carnival fun houses? Personally I cannot hazard a guess. And although even in my day Venice had earned it's reputation as a centre of bawdy entertainment and pleasures of the flesh, the things I have seen here are so extremely distasteful! Hmmmph, Biennale. More like Bacchanale! This is all beyond stupidity, it is insanity.

Manet (now stopped in his tracks, mouth agape)

I am shocked, Rosso. Based on what I know of your work, I thought of you as so forward thinking in the wake of such a titan as Michelangelo, well I suppose I simply assumed ...

Fiorentino

Ah, Michelangelo. Now there was a true artist. And yes, I like to think that I pushed the boundaries of my time; but I am a painter, and paintings should be both beautiful and moving, no? What is this thing, installation? It's ridiculous to think of walking inside a work of art – which these certainly are not.

Manet

But one walks inside great architecture, one enjoys the experience of being enveloped in an artist's vision.

Fiorentino

This is not architecture. These are playthings, party favours, circus acts. They have no place in the city of Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Pardon me, but I am angry about all of this. You are not?

Manet
No, of course not. In some ways, and with all humility, I see these young artists as my artistic progeny.

Fiorentino (incredulous now himself)
And you would admit to this travesty as having some connection to you?

Manet (animated, raising his own voice)
Well, yes! Some have referred to my work as having had a seminal influence on the evolution of great art in the modern era. I am considered to be a founding father of Modernism, something of which I am extremely proud – especially considering the resistance we faced in the early days, the Impressionist painters and I. The reactionaries and dunderheads held sway then too, for a while.

Fiorentino (with a hint of sarcasm)
Yes, I have seen images of the paintings you think of as great leaps forward. I stopped in a bookstore and leafed quickly through some of these glossy publications. Again, mostly full of rot. Your little landscapes are charming in a rather pedestrian way. The palette is appealing up to a point - those huge paintings of water lilies, for example. But I fail to see the point of water lilies as a subject for art. And that other fellow, Monet is it? What disgusting pornography that man produced, with the oddest flatness and incorrect perspective. Complete garbage.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1915-1926

Manet (now completely enraged, feet planted apart, fists clenched)
Sir! I see that we have both been mistaken. I considered you to be a visionary. I should have realized after seeing the restored Sistine ceiling that you had nothing new to say with colour. Michelangelo's colours put you to shame, as does your own ignorance. It is I who am the purveyor of pornography, as you so eloquently put it. Monet, Claude Monet is another great painter you insult. Could you not even have ascertained correctly who I was before we met this morning? This is outrageous. Were it not for the stifling rules and regulations of the present, I would punish you for this insult on a field of honour, with pistols! You, sir, are a Neanderthal. You should crawl back to your cave. (stomps off in fury)

Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

Fiorentino
What in god's name was all that about?