Performance & Intervention I

The Powers of Removal: Interventions in the Name of the City, by Lytle Shaw, starts with Henry James’ return to Manhattan, the place of his childhood.  It reminds me of the saying “you can never go home again.”  As James realized things had changed since his childhood years in Manhattan.  He discovers even scared symbols as churches or his childhood home have not escaped the development of the City.  If these symbols are still present, they are small, insignificant next to the tall buildings surrounding them.  Is it the actual buildings that James is mourning or the feeling that came from the structures?  Perhaps as Shaw suggests, it is the passing of a familiar idea replaced by moving on and letting go.  One thing we know for sure is that things are constantly changing whether we want them to or not. 

How does art play into these changes?  In James Nares’, Pendulum, he captures the constant changing swing of a wrecking ball.  The sequences vary so that the viewer is entranced in the motion allowing them to forget the true purpose wrecking ball.  The change of the wrecking ball’s swing reflects the change in the development of the City.  Pendulum is art imitating life. 

William Cullen Bryant’s “The Prairies”, makes us realize how long the struggle over change has taken place in our country.  Written in 1832, the poem, tells of the Native American’s struggle to overcome changes from American Settlers.  Matthew Buckingham also reflects on this in his film, Muhheakantuck-Everything Has a Name.   Buckingham shoots footage of the Hudson River from a helicopter.  The title of the film comes from the original name of the river, Muhheakntuck, which means river that flows in two directions.  Buckingham touches on how the past shapes the future.  Manhattan, a great present day city on the Hudson was initially explored in 1609 by Henry Hudson.  He states how “the significance of past events appears in the ordinary moments and people.” 

Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone --
All -- save the piles of earth that hold their bones --
The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods --
The barriers which they builded from the soil

From “The Prairies” by William Cullen Bryant

(Illustration for "The Prairies" from Poems, 1876 edition)

Jimbo Blachy’s About 86 Springs, documents the current conditions of the path of James Reuel Smith followed almost 100 years ago.  However the two paths are extremely different.  Blachy encounters fast food restaurants, fenced offed courtyards, office buildings and sewage drains where once was rich wooden areas with clear streams. 

Our physical landscape is constantly changing.  Our mental landscape keeps the history of our environment intact.  Modernization will continue for generations and generations.  Things we take for granted today will someday be obsolete and dispose of by future generations. 

In the reading, Shifting Ground: Street Art of the 1960’s and 70’s, Frazer Ward discusses the protest culture of the 1960s and 1970s.  This is an era marked by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, Women and Gay Rights Movement.  These protest often played out in the streets.  Art was a very important vehicle in the protest culture.  Artists such as Jacques de la Village and Claus Oldenburg used elements from the streets to create their art.  Fluxus performance art such as Street Cleaning Event and Touch Cinema literally used the street as a stage.  . Yoko Ono’s Rape and Vito Acconci’s Following used the street as a character in their respective films.  Instead of using a studio or a film stage, they created their art on the street and the street became part of the final result. 

Photograph of Hi Red Center performing their Street Cleaning Event,
taken June, 1966 at Grand Army Plaza (58th Street and 5th Avenue), New York City.

Photograph of Hi Red Center performing their Street Cleaning Event,
taken June, 1966 at Grand Army Plaza (58th Street and 5th Avenue), New York City.

The two readings tie together in the fact that our physical, mental and artistic world is always changing.  We can choose to be part of the change or not.  We can choose to create our art in spite of the changes or we can choose to have our art be a part of the changes.  Neither is a wrong decision, just a personal decision. 

Example of how change is constant in all cultures 

Some Native American groups are protesting the development of sacred

 land for solar energy projects.

Chicago In The 60’s & 70’s.

There are two main themes in this week’s readings and film viewing.  First is the political climate in Chicago during the 60s and 70s.  Second, is the development and destruction of the Chicago landscape during the same time. 

Dominic Pacyga’s biography of Chicago gives a history of Richard J. Daley Sr.’s rule over Chicago.  His desire for power and recognition resulted in both tragedy and triumph for Chicago.  Chicago had not seen much growth since the Great Depression.  One of Daley’s first accomplishments was building the Prudential Building in the 1955.  This mark a new reform in downtown Chicago.  Over 7,000 people held jobs in the building.  It was a major attraction for people visiting the loop.  Next on Daley’s agenda was public housing and expressways.  Daley along with the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), developed housing in three stages.  The stages included 3-4 story walk-ups and two-story row-house projects, townhouses for war veterans and finally high-rise public housing.  Access to the city was a high priority for Daley.  Automobiles had become the main source of transportation.  The Congress Expressway was construction to provide easy access from the north side of the City to the south side.  Congress Expressway was followed by the Dan Ryan and the Kennedy Expressways. 

Jacob Burck’s carton on June 23, 1960, in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Daley Sr. was a powerful figure in the Democratic Party.  He was considered highly influential in getting John F. Kennedy elected as the 35^th President of the United States in 1960.  However, back in Chicago, his influence was being questioned by African American leaders.  After his 1963 re-election, Daley experience clashes between his white and black supporters.  School integration was a major source of concern for both sides.  Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in 1966 in hopes of bringing attention of the Civil Rights Movement to the North.  Unfortunately, Daley needed support from both white and black supporters and did not want to side with one or the other.  Daley’s lack of commitment did not help the Civil Rights Movement or King.  King left Chicago without the success he needed to move forward in Chicago.  Daley only alienated both sides of his supporters by not taking a stand for either side.  As for King, he was tragically shot by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968 in Memphis.  Riots broke out across the country including Chicago’s West Side.  Daley’s mishandling of the riots marked one of the worse mistakes of his life.  While white supporters backed him, he completely lost credibility with his African American supporters. 

Recognizing the need for positive attention to Chicago (and himself), Daley convinced President Johnson and the Democratic Party to hold the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.  Unfortunately for Daley and Chicago, the attention that was given to the City was not the one desired.  The nation was in a crisis.  The assignations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. along with the Vietnam War created strong feelings of dissatisfaction with the US Government.  Protestors set out to use the 1968 Democratic Convention as a way to have their voices heard.  The first confrontation between protestors and the police came on August 25^th in Lincoln Park.  The next day the confrontation became more violent when the 2 groups meet again in Grant Park.  The unusual police force against the protestors was televised for the world to see by networks there to cover the convention.  Daley’s and Chicago’s reputation again was tarnished.  In 1972, Daley was not allowed into the Democratic Convention.  His status and power had taken a serious beating. 

“The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder.”
Richard J. Daley after the 1968 Democratic Convention. 

He often confused words when he spoke.

The 1968 Democratic Convention is the backdrop for the film Medium Cool.  The film is part fiction and documentary.  The main theme of the film is whether the media is there to become part of the news or just to document it.  I am taking an Ethnographic Film class this semester and this same topic comes up repeatedly.  In documentary films, the question that is always asked is “whether the art of the film or the facts recorded  are the most important aspects of the film’s final cut?”  While, Medium Cool, is a fictional movie, the main character, cameraman Joe Cassellis, struggles with simply reporting news or injecting himself in his stories.  Cassellis appears unaffected by his stories until he realizes the TV station he works for is using his footage to assist the FBI.  It is then he realizes his footage serves a role greater than reporting a story.  He does not like the fact that he has been used by the TV station.  It is at this point, that he meets a woman and her son who have moved from West Virginia to Chicago.  The three of them grow close especially the boy, Harold and Cassellis.  Harold  wonders off to Grant Park during the 1968 Democratic Convention.  While his mother frantically looks for him she is caught in the crowds and the police.  At the end of the film, she meets up with Cassellis and they start driving to find Harold.  In a scene reflective of the first scene of the movie, Joe and Eileen are in a car accident.  A cameraman is close by but only captures the scene on film and does not call for help or stop to assist them.  The unrest in the City causes pain and loss of life.  The protestors and police both take a stand for what they believe is right but does either side take it too far?  Is this not unlike the riots we are seeing today in Libya and Egypt?  We have to stand up for what we believe but how and why the government reacts can cause more problems than the initial issues. 

 When viewing this film, I had to think about the scenes in Grant Park in 1968 and then in 2008 when President Obama spoke after being elected President. 

1968 Photo of Grant Park

2008 Photo of Grant Park

On a side note:  I kept thinking about how far we have come in technology.  I kept thinking how much a cell phone could have been used to help respond to the accident or in the search for Harold. 

The final reading was To Collect Photographs is to Collect the World, Chapter 6, which centers on Richard Nickel.  Nickel was a photographer who preserve Chicago’s architecture at a time when many buildings were being demolished for parking lots or new housing.  He believe that photography was a way of saving the buildings for future generations.  His main concentration was on architect Louis Sullivan.  He try to capture what the average pedestrian would not see.  The details of the building such as the sweep of a staircase, the marquee of a theater or the detail in the walls were captured in his photographs.  Nickel strongly opposed the demolished of the buildings.  He protested the destruction of what he saw as important history of Chicago.  However, his photographs are not harsh.   They treat the buildings like a family taking a photograph in a studio.  You can almost feel that Nickel had a friendship with some of the buildings.  He cared deeply for them. 

On June 8, 1960, Nickel organized a sidewalk protest in front of the Garrick.  (right) 
Richard Nickel Photograph inside the Garrick.  (left)

A lot has changed in Chicago since the 1960s, some things are better and some are worse. 

Los Angeles In The 60’s & 70’s.

Ed Ruscha’s art took on two aspects in the 60’s and 70’s.  First was his work in the early 60’s of large scale work such as Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (5ft. 6 ¾ in X 11ft. 1 ¼ in.),  Actual Size (71 X 67 in.), and Flash, L.A. Times (72in X 67in.).  Another feature of Ruscha’s large scale work was the use of space on the canvas.  He addresses this as the   pictorial, the mental, and the actual space of works of art.  Ruscha moved to Los Angles in 1956 to study commercial art.  Influenced by Jasper John, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Frank, he began to paint his large scale paintings and focused on fine art instead of commercial art.  New Painting of Common Objects was his first show.  Ruscha referred to these large scale paintings as characters.  He kept the canvases at a size that he could easily move them, which he did often.  The canvases become companions to him in his studio.  These pieces would encourage viewing from two different points: one close up and the other at a distance.  It seems as if the viewer reference to the painting is as important to the actual art to Ruscha.  He did not want the viewer to look at his paintings and just walk away.  He wanted them to study it.  He wanted them to see the dimensions of it outside of being on a flat canvas.  On the painting, Flash, L.A. Times, the newspaper is upside down to the word flash on the top.  The newspaper itself is drawn with layers w itha written comic strip.  The viewer would need to turn their head upside down to view the bottom portion of the painting.  In Actual Size, the viewer must get up close to see the detail in the can of Spam.  His large scale work uses both small detail as well as large text. 

The second aspect of Ed Ruscha’s work was mass produced photography books.  From 1963 to 1978, he produced 16 artist's books.  He stated that the books are “the toughest part of my art.”  These books include Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1965), A Few Palm Trees (1971), and Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967).  Ruscha was not interested in creating fine art books but he wanted a mass-produced photography book.  He viewed this as a piece of art itself.  The books illustrated the urban landscape of Southern California.  Twentysix Gasoline Stations, published in 1962, was the model for most of his subsequent books. It contains black and white photographs of gasoline stations in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and  Texas.  Every Building on the Sunset Strip is Ruscha’s most famous book.  It is an accordion-fold book that is 25 feet in length.  It contains photographs of buildings from Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Cory Avenue.  The viewpoint is from a car driving along the street.  I did some research on the current day value of Ruscha’s books.  A signed first edition of Twentysix Gasoline Stations was recently auctioned for $35,000.  A first edition, unsigned copy of Every Building on the Sunset Strip is valued at $7,500.

http://www.manhattanrarebooks-art.com/ruscha.htm

The significance of the car culture in 60’s and 70’s influenced artists such as Ed Ruscha, Judy Chicago and Edward Kienholz.  Whether painting on a car, taking photographs of cars or taking them from inside cars looking out, the art of the time reflected a bond with the car.   This bond resulted in exploration of the urban landscape of Los Angeles. As the city rapidly changed, the opportunity to photograph a time or place in a moment became a real mission for artist of the time.  Ruscha’s books captured the city from the driver’s seat.  While capturing the perfections of the commercial landscape, Ruscha also captures the imperfections.  Both are then frozen in time.

Taking photographs from my car has always interested me.  I have never really thought of this technique being a part of the history of photography.