Is it crowded in here...?

Lately, whether due to inclement weather or perpetual lack of funds, the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) has been crowded. This isn’t news to anyone who regularly commutes during rush hour(s). But the other day 5 trains passed me by before I squeezed myself between two large coats and was carried onto the train by sheer force of the tide.

Both on the platform (which was so crowded, people began to sort themselves into layers) and on the train I began to think about crowds. In the 19^th century, Charles Baudelaire mused that his vision of the painter of modern life would be a “Man of Crowds:

“[The artist] loves mixing with the crowds loves being incognito, and carries his originality to the point of modesty…

Sitting in a cafe, and looking through the shop window, a convalescent is enjoying the sight of the passing crowd, and identifying himself in thought with all the thoughts that are moving around him.

The crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird's, and water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd. For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite.”

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1865

As I watched the trains arrive, one after the other they were packed like sausages, too full to accept additional passengers. When the doors opened it reminded me of the dangers of unbuckling one’s belt after a full meal—there is a chance one might not be able to rebuckle! To be perfectly honest, the rush and hurry towards the open doors seemed a little like this:

Luca Giordano, The Abduction of the Sabine Women, 1675/80 (Gallery 211, AIC)

It may not have been as violent as Giordano’s retelling of the ancient Roman story. Certainly, half of the figures are in struggle with another half but certain details of hands on heads, elbows jutting into knees and shoulders to the ground evoke that body-on-body frantic pushing and shoving that ignites in peoples’ minds once they hear the clicking and scraping of the subway car doors opening.

For 19^th century Parisians, the city was a place of new anxieties. New forms of transportation invited more and more people into the city. New roads allowed more and more people to traverse the streets. There was more and more opportunity for people to mix, purposefully and accidentally. The constant threat of coming into physical contact with strangers was a particularly wrought worry among upperclass women, the fear of which might have dissolved into the state of chaos in Giordano’s paintings. Though there was worry that the crowd would never dissipate, there was an excitement as well. There was an energy to be drawn from the hustle, bustle, constant bumping and  “’scuse me’s.” 

Camille Pissarro, The Place du Havre, Paris, 1893 (Gallery 201, AIC)

With quivering brushwork, Pissarro squiggles in a crowd. If we didn’t read them as people, we might read them as pleasant greenery, nicely trimmed topiaries at the base of the newly built Haussman-style architecture. Even the streets have a powerful directional flow. One that reminds me of the dance floor at a honky tonk where the traffic of two-steppers goes in a constant circle—break it and be crushed. If we get too caught up in the whirl of traffic below, the shouts of carriage drivers, the murmur of calls, laughter and pointing by the sidewalk traffic we need only to step away from our balcony. Pissarro has given us respite from the crowd by placing us above it where we can survey its entirety or immerse ourselves in conversations and interactions using the zoom lens of our imagination. We become Baudelaire’s observer of modern life and its crowds with that ability to absorb oneself in it’s intricacies while still remaining distant.

Contemporary artist, featured on PBS’s Art:21 series, Kimsooja might be Baudelaire’s Man of Crowds for our own age.   

This is a short clip that featured excerpts from her video pieces. The full episode is here. Kimsooja’s works are discussed in the first 20 minutes.

She stands, as she says, “like a needle” stabbed into the earth so that its motions, traffic and constant flow of people and words flow around her. Something about it is beautifully stubborn. Her stillness, however, is quickly absorbed by the crowd. She is among the crowd but not a part of its movement and flow. We, too, become observers of the mass of moving people and she becomes a surrogate for us to participate much like the viewpoint from Pissarro’s balcony.

I wouldn’t recommend taking a sudden halt the next time you are in a crowd as this may lead not only to a domino-effect but some scolding words as well.  If you stop in a crowd, take note of that slight mental shift from when one is a part of the traffic and flow to when one is distant from it while still being a part of it. Perhaps, as Baudelaire suggests, it will feel a bit “incognito!”

Reflexive Images

 Anyone who has ever taken French 1 has had the pleasure of vous vous asseyez ("y'all sit yerselves down" is the best example of an English/Texan equivalent). The verb is reflexive and the action, in this case, is performed upon the same subject that is enacting (woah nelly!). Reflexive verbs refer back unto the subject and, in the same way, one can also have reflexive images or objects. Works of art that refer back unto themselves, either by their subject, material or function. Many moons ago I wrote about a tureen shaped like a cauliflower. It is likely that such a tureen might be used to serve a cauliflower soup or it might be reserved to serve other winter vegetables like turnips or parsnip dishes. Consider these other examples:

Dominique-Vivant Denon

Baron Denon and Mauzaisse, 1819

Lithograph on off-white wove paper

This print has been recently put on view (our works on paper are regularly rotated to minimize exposure to light and maximize exposure of he collection). It is a lithograph by Dominique-Vivant Denon illustrating a well-dressed lady demonstrating the process of lithography to a group of gentlemen (with the odd child and distracted and/or pensive lady in the background). In this doubly-pedagogical work, the subject is reflected in the process. Lithography is a print-making method where by one draws or transfers an image onto a lithography stone (usually the porous limestone) using an oily or waxy crayon or ink. Prints are pulled directly from the stone. One of the observable benefits of lithography is that the method retains the sketchy, immediately quality of a drawing but could be reproduced. In the 19^th century it became a quite popular medium for fashionable ladies. It was Denon himself who popularized lithography as an after-dinner amusement. Ladies would exhibit their skills for a crowd and friends and admirers could take home a souvenir of the evenings delights. So what would be more appropriate than to illustrate the merriment of lithography than with a lithograph! 

Charles Ray

Hinoki, 2007

Japanese Cypress (hinoki)

A favorite of many staff members and visitors at the Art Institute is a contemporary sculpture by the Chicago artist, Charles Ray. It gets it’s own gallery and guard. Measuring over ten feet long it is an inch-by-inch representation of a fallen tree that Ray came across during a hike in coastal California. Riddled with bugs, mildew and the decaying effects of time, the log was not long for this world. Struck by the deep hollow cavity and the  pocked texture the artist decided to preserve the object in a unique way. After sawing it into sections, Ray created molds of each section and traveled with them to Japan where he commissioned a small workshop of woodcarvers who specialized in large-scale Buddhas to recreate the tree using the same method used to create the religious sculptures. The wood chosen was a Japanese cypress, called hinoki, known for its hardness and, from what a Japanese visitor once told me, its lasting fresh aroma. The original log would have withered away by now but froze in its present state of decay it will remain that way for 400 years before it begins its own process of decay.

Perhaps one of the most delightful forms of reflexive art is when the function is reflected in the medium or form of the work. Think of 17^th century Dutch tulip vases that were shaped like tulips with little tulips decorating the surface. Woah! For what it’s worth, I’ve got a creamer that’s shaped like a cow. 

This form of reflexivity finds its most intense manifestation in medieval reliquaries, objects which contained holy relics, which could be bodily remnants, clothing, hair, or a particular object associated with the person (i.e. a fragment of the cross that Jesus was crucified on). Consider this reliquary casket from Leon, Spain dating from the 12^th century in the AIC’s collections. Around the sides it illustrates the martyrdom of Saint Adrian, a Roman soldier in Emperor Galerius’s army in Nicomedia (in present-day Turkey). After observing the demonstrated faith of a group of Christians he was moved to confess his own faith and was subsequently imprisioned where his wife, Natalia, secretly visited him ask for his prayers. He was martyred by dismemberment which is brutally depicted on the sides of the casket. Arms, feet, hands and head float in an empty space above the bodies. On a shorter side, one can see Saint Natalia carrying the hand of Saint Adrian back to Agryropolis. 

When the reliquary came into the Art Institute’s collection in the 1940s there were no relics contained within, or record thereof. However, I suspect that the original relic was some bodily fragment of Saint Adrian. Several medieval reliquaries survive today with relics intact and when the reliquary imagery refers to the life or martyrdom of a specific saint (or is even shaped like the saint) you can bet your bottom dollar on that what was inside was probably who was on the outside. Check out this reliquary bust of Saint Yrieix from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is in the shape of the saint’s head and once contained a fragment of his skull. 

Louis Sullivan’s maxim of “form follows function” could be flip-flopped around when considering works of art where form is function!