By Camille Okhio

The first piece by Ana Mendieta I’d ever seen was “Rape Scene.” In all of my art history courses, I had never gotten so solemn so fast at the change of a slide. This image was so deeply graphic and so obviously painful that it genuinely shocked me, and I like to say not much does. The strength it took to create this work is unfathomable to me. The strength it takes to consciously and purposefully retreat to an event, one that has not necessarily happened to you, and recreate it so that its importance may be acknowledged, and its negative power destroyed.

“Rape Scene” 1973..

“Isla” 1981.

This image shows a woman in the worst possible position she can be in. Yet it is a feminist message being translated into a language any informed viewer can read. Mendieta manages to speak of the suffering of women and or the continuous use of force against the fairer sex, yet her image rejects guilt and pity directly. Making her work constructive rather than redundant. Her work is more instructive than it is narrative.

Different pressure and neurosis exist for different orientations, postions, sexes and people. Mendieta exploits that. She takes a sip of it and spits it back in your face. But her action is less of an insult and more of a baptism. It washes away ignorance of the experience outside of yourself and brings in that knowledge of wisdom. Knowledge that weighs heavily on the viewer, but I think is meant to leave them empathetic.

Body tracks 1982.

The subjugation of the body occurs in many situations, times, positions and peoples, both through psychological and physical attacks. In fact, I do not know what anyone has lived without being on the receiving end and on the delivering end of this. The exchange of force and frustration seems to permeate any organized society. Mendieta displays this truth with a matter-of-factness I admire.

Incantation a Olokun-Yemayá , Oaxaca, Mexico, 1977.

My fascination with Mendieta escalated when I learned of her marriage to Carl Andre. And then my fascination sky rocketed when I learned of her mysterious murder/suicide falling from a window of their shared home. Her partnership with such a perfect example of the Alpha-Minimalist misogynist stereotype, made clear to me that Ana’s art was not a simple dick-stomping answer to sexism, but a well researched, fearless, heartfelt comment on the ever present power play between the Sexes and more broadly the vulnerability of the human body.

Mendieta’s body of work as I know it reaches beyond a “respectable” level of comfort for both men and women, making it truly provocative. She does not target a single offensive section of culture, but rather lays open the facts and lets us realize and judge for ourselves the injustice daily done upon any human body. Yet her work is not sad and its not angry its just clear.

Carl Andre’s “Rise” 2011.

Rather than showing Rape as its happening, she shows a stage of it that includes only the victim. This puts the viewer momentarily in the position of the Rapist. And that should make us hate her right? Viewing her work has something of a Nabokov effect in which the reader, in this case visual reader, is put in the position of Humbert Humbert forced to think about the position of the antagonist, perhaps against his or her own will.

Ana Mendieta, Untitled Cuilapán Niche, 1973.

Untitled (Blood Sign #1), 1974

This I believe is the nucleus of Mendieta’s genius. She is able to be herself, not step outside of her own skin, yet force her audience out of their own. She forces them to consider positions that are disturbing and uncomfortable, yet rarely does she leave her audience embittered with the experience of her work. Mendieta does not need to make a statement about the subjugation of the human body. The action has been done and the statement has been made. She leaves the task of digesting it and responding to it to us.

All pictures, courtesy of the Ana Mendieta Estate. Camille Okhio is a contributing art writer for by such and such.

Carl Andre’s Rise from the ACE GALLERY LOS ANGELES.

Featured image; Glass on Body Imprints, 1972

“Eyes”

“Reel”

“Solace”

“Dreamer”

“empreror’s new clothes”

All drawings by AR, a contributing artist for by such and such.

Straw Hat by American Apparel, earrings by ami

Sports Jersey top by Rossi, Shorts by RD.

Jacket by Athletic Recon

T-shirt by Marithe et Francois Girbaud, Shorts by Champion, earrings by ami

Baseball Jersey by 40 acres and a Mule, jean shorts by ACNE, biker shorts Issey Miyake

T-shirt, vintage, Silk Pants Pleats Please, Earrings by Ami.

Styled by Pam Shepard. Hair by Eve Whittington. Makeup by Geeta Khanna.

Shirley Clarke emerged as a filmmaker in a period she likened to Impressionism in painting. She and her fellow New York artists not only sought to test and expand the limits of film as a medium, but also to explore film’s interaction with the other arts. Like Maya Deren before her, Clarke began as a dancer. She first honed her craft through dance-films like Moment in Love. She retained a choreographer’s eye for both the movements of the people she filmed and the motion of the camera itself.

                                                      “The Connection” 1962.

Out of all the arts, it is jazz as a theme that launched and sustained her career. Her first feature, The Connection, adapted the “jazz play” of Jack Gelber. The film was kept in the public eye after being banned by the popularity of its soundtrack, which featured the group of musicians that acted in the film including hard bop saxophonist Jackie McLean. The Cool World boasts a fantastic score by Mal Waldron and Dizzy Gillespie. Her final feature film, Ornette: Made In America, drew on many years of footage of the master of free jazz.

“Ornette: Made In America” 1985.

But her engagement with jazz went beyond a fascination with the art form and its practitioners as a subject. Jazz as a tradition of improvisation and performance provided her an alternative site of inquiry into how art can approach the world. As her description of her approach to editing 3-minute reels for the Brussels World Fair suggests, from an early stage jazz served as a crucial model for her artistic process as a filmmaker.

                       “The Cool World” 1964.

‘‘They had told us that the one subject we couldn’t do was jazz. So I made them all jazzy. It became a game that Penny [D.A. Pennebaker] and I played both in the shooting and the editing.” —Shirley Clarke on her films for 1958 Brussels World Fair, from AfterImage

Jazz arose as a necessarily political tradition. As a manifestation of black self-expression and genius in a white supremacist society, it inherently challenged the role black people, Body & Soul, were supposed to play. Jazz musicians were barred at the onset from an escape into a realm of mere formal experimentation.

Jazz, from big bands to combos, developed from a complicated web of relationships: between melody and harmony, between individual musicians and the band, between the band and the audience, between the instruments and the acoustics of the space, especially in the early days, between the band and the dancers. Or to put it simply—jazz calls out its own context. Jazz plays with the tension between each song as it already exists and the song as it is created in the moment. The audience becomes part of the performance because, while a certain amount of the circumstances can be controlled beforehand, each element of the concert uniquely impacts the resulting music.

‘‘[Movies] are predominantly visual, rhythmic experiences.” —Shirley Clarke, from Points of Resistance

Clarke seeks a similar model in her work, telling film critic Noel Burch in the 1970 film Rome is Burning “I have gotten to the point that I believe that the filmmaker, the audience, and the film must all be part of something together and that I don’t want them separated behind the screen anymore.”

“Dance as it existed on the stage had to be destroyed in order to have a good film and not just rather a poor document.” —Shirley Clarke from Points of Resistance

From her very first film, Dance in the Sun, Clarke takes a stance toward performance that refuses the orthodoxies of fiction and documentary filmmaking alike. She pre-empts the debates over truth and authenticity that still surround media to this day. Dance in the Sun eschews reverence to the dance piece that serves as its source material. She translates the film into a dance with the perception of the viewer and a love song of a filmmaker to the possibilities of her new found medium.

                                                  “Dance in the Sun.” 1953

The film leaps back and forth between what appears to be a dance rehearsal in a bare studio with an accompanist to the dancer performing on a sunny beach, paralleling the leaps and falls of the dance itself. The technical marvel of juxtaposition appears dream-like during the dance. Yet she anchors the dream in a foregrounding of performance as performance with the dancer and piano player discussing the score and taking a smoke break. As the final credits roll, the piano player reworks part of the music under the review of the dancer.

The setting of the rehearsal lends greater strength to the magic of cutting to the beach, while the incorporation of the magic into the mundane reminds the viewer we are watching a film. Minus the beach, the film would read as a documentary, even with the shots switching between different angles. Clarke’s technical experimentation exposes realism as yet another conceit constructed in the editing room.

And while she has yet to introduce jazz formally into her work, she already demonstrates a jazz musician’s instinct that even an adaptation of another’s work requires infusing it with your own worldview. Just as every inserted note, or improvised flourish reminds the audience we are watching a musician’s interpretation of the material, Clarke’s technical innovations remind us that we are viewing the dance through her lens.

“In the studio, I was always free flowing. I wanted things to really happen. I wanted things to be spontaneous because I knew, from my past experience, what one could do with a raw tape.” —Teo Macero on recording Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, from Artists House Music

While Clarke’s work transposed aspects of an already well-established live jazz tradition, she was also an early adopter of a more nascent tradition. She embraced as a meaningful parallel the practice of the studio as an instrument for extending jazz improvisation into the recording and editing period. In A Moment in Love and Bridges-Go-Round, Clarke collaborated with one of the most important producers in jazz history: Teo Macero.

Teo Macero and Miles Davis, outside Columbia Records.

Teo Macero started as a saxophonist with Charles Mingus, but made his biggest impact as a pioneering record producer for some of the greatest masterpiece of jazz. He worked with Miles Davis for nearly all of his Columbia albums including Kind of Blue, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain. But it’s Macero’s collaboration with Davis in creating the sound of his controversial “electric” period on albums like Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way that provides the model of improvisation most translatable to film.

Well before Macero released an album length statement of the power of the studio as an instrument for jazz improvisation, his score for Bridges-Go-Round demonstrates the same French musique concrète and Jamaican dub tendencies on a smaller scale. As Clarke puts it “[h]is whole thing is taking one note and playing with it electronically. All those voices are just one sound that has been filtered electronically and mixed with jazz.”

Macero’s technique, as fully realized later in collaboration with Miles Davis, relies on an incredibly open and improvised use of the recording time to best create the circumstances for spontaneity. It encourages players to, as Clarke would later describe her shooting process for The Connection, “react emotionally…to what was happening.” Most visionary is that Miles & Macero extended the improvisatory process through to the end of the editing process.

Musical elements, sometime as small as an 8-bar phrase, are pulled from different sessions then transformed through processing and assemblage. The final product is built by Miles & Macero out of tape in the editing room (echoes here of French composer Varese, a known inspiration to the pair). As a result players often couldn’t recognize their own parts on the final albums. Miles & Macero continued as band leader/composers past the recording process, reminiscent of Professor Nancy Richardson’s, a former student of Clarke, description of Clarke’s process of “continu[ing] to ‘direct’ film well into post-production.” (UCLA Today)

Clarke persistently pushed the technical limits of production in her pursuit of the final product. She forced engineers to differently process the double exposure of Bridges-Go-Round. She shifted scenes in Portrait of Jason out of focus in the film lab. Once she began working with video she experimented with a wealth of post-production devices, which continued on all the way to Ornette. In Macero, she found a guiding spirit who understood perfectly the impulse that “[d]ance as it existed on the stage had to be destroyed in order to have a good film,” as he approached jazz production the same way.

                                          “Bridges-Go-Round.” 1958.

“We sat at the kitchen table in my little house on E. 87^th St., and we would write down screen directions like “pan slowly up to eyes then pull back.” I mean, endless camera directions, all of which were being paced out in a room all of 10 feet. But when we got on the set, it was not possible to make a single shot the way it was written. That was wonderful me because I had to improvise and react emotionally to the actors and what was happening.“ —Shirley Clarke on preparing for The Connection, from AfterImage

In the three films she is most known for—The Connection, The Cool World, and Portrait of Jason— improvisation occupies an increasingly large role until, in Portrait of Jason, improvisation becomes the entire process.

                               “Jackie McLean.” (Milestone Pictures.)

The Connection as a play staged by the Living Theatre already relied on actors improvising large parts of the performance. Actors panhandled in the audience during intermission. The pacing of sequences changed from night to night. At one performance, as the composer and actor Freddie Redd recently recounted to NPR, “there was a real uniformed policeman…[s]o we thought we were being busted…Jackie McLean had gotten the policeman on beat to come up and stand there.”

When Clarke turned to translating the experience of the play into a film, she transposed the actors engagement with the audience to the actors engaging two cameramen made characters in the film. She builds a narrative of the act of filming into the film itself. Not only do the characters in front of the camera engage the characters supposedly filming from behind, pulling them on screen, the shots themselves often pan quickly between subjects and call attention to the camera person’s roving eye. By casting the film crew as characters, the audience becomes aware of the improvisational choices made with each shot. This is further complicated by the fact that the film is a piece of fiction that purports to be documentary until the end credits.

                     Carl Lee as “Cowboy.” (Milestone Pictures.)

As Clarke describes in the quote above, all of the films shots were improvised to respond to the demands of the set. The set was created as the complete replica of a run down apartment. Jack Gelber, who she originally elaborately planned each shot with, could only observe from scaffolding above the stage. This gave Clarke an audience and required her to improvise as an organic response to the circumstances of production.

The Cool World necessitated improvisation to fit a very different set of circumstances. Clarke aimed for an American response to Italian neo-realism, capturing the lived experience of Harlem and its youth gangs. The exterior scenes were shot documentary style and comprised the first feature shot about Harlem filmed on location in Harlem.

A neorealist approach requires a great deal of improvisation, emphasizing shooting in public locations with predominantly untrained actors. A white Jewish female director with an integrated crew shooting in Harlem with a cast of black youth currently in gangs did not prove an exception. Several times the entire crew had to run from Harlem locals haranguing them for representing the community in a bad light.

                  A then very young,  Rony Clanton in “The Cool World.”

Clarke wrote the adapted script (The cool World) with Carl Lee, who played the black drug dealer Rabbit in “The Connection” and whom she was dating at the time. Lee found the cast, bringing them down to audition. Early on, Clarke realized that she would have trouble getting them to memorize the lines from the script, so she relied on setting the action of a scene and letting the actors improvise their dialogue in response to her choreography of their parts and the camera motion. Clarke later said she knew the script was good when much of what she and Lee had written showed up organically in the improvisations.

“Everything I’ve done is based on the duality of fantasy and reality.” —Shirley Clarke, from AfterImage

In the previous two films, Clarke created conditions for both the actors and the camerawork to emerge from improvisation, allowing for a naturalistic form of performance. The naturalism gave a greater sense of reality to the fictional narratives she adapted. She also shot and edited them in a way that called attention to the act of filming, reminding the audience they were watching an interpretation of reality.

With Portrait of Jason, Clarke elevated the tension between performer and camera to the center of the film. Her plan essentially consisted of only three things: that she would shoot the entire film over twelve straight hours, that she would communicate with her camera-person through only two hand signals (zoom in and switch into or out of focus), and that Lee would ask a harsher line of questions before the night ended.

Jason Holliday agreed to take the stage for the film to perform the role of himself and share the stories of his life as black queer man. While Jason counts as nonfiction in contrast to the fiction of the other two, it interrogates the fiction of the everyday to an even greater degree. Jason, as many of his tales illustrate, has mastered the performance of identity required to survive a society hostile to nearly every aspect of his existence.

“Portrait of Jason.”

The longer the film goes on, the more suspicious the truth of his experience becomes—exposing less Jason as a liar, more performance of identity as a form of fiction. The audience in the room and Clarke herself interject their comments and questions, echoing the dynamic of a crowd’s response to a jazz musician soloing on a theme. In this case Jason solos on Jason Holliday, a name and character he quite literally composed through the legal changing of his name.

And toward the end of the film, when Carl Lee challenges Jason as a liar and a fraud, Jason reminds everyone just who is control of the performance.

Jason bursts into tears at the accusation. He protests pathetically that he loves Carl more than anyone. And then, reaching the end of a long twelve hours in the spotlight and a great deal of weed and alcohol, Jason drops the tears. His face coolly composed, he looks right into the camera with deadly clarity and asks “Is this what you want?”

Clarke reaches an apex of improvisation in film-making with Jason. It represents an extreme whose lessons she carries forward, but never again replicates to the same scale. The improvisation embedded into the film mirrors the improvisation of identity on which the performance of every day life operates. The powers inherent in relationship between filmmaker, audience, and actors are laid bare and examined in harsh light. The performer and audience are subsumed into one performance, destroying the clear delineation between artists and viewer. In doing so, she has successfully transposed the participatory tradition of jazz into her film-making.

Sources:

http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/great-directors/shirley-clarke/

Cynthia Lee, Archive rekindles interest in once-marginalized filmmaker

Lauren Rabinowitz, ‘Choreography of Cinema: An Interview with Shirley Clarke’, in Afterimage December 1983, pp.8-11,

Lauren Rabinowitz, Points of Resistance: Women Power and Politics in the New York Avant-garde Cinema1943-71 (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

Noël Burch ‘Rome is Burning: A Portrait of Shirley Clarke’ (1970)

Teo Macero on Creating “Bitches Brew” With Miles Davis,

Milestone pictures

Films:

Dance in The Sun (1953)
In Paris Parks (1954)
Bullfight (1955)
A Moment in Love (1957)
Brussels Loops (1958)
Bridges Go Round (1959)
Skyscraper (1959)
A Scary Time (1960)
The Connection (1960)
The Cool World (1963)
Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World (1964)
Portrait of Jason (1967)
Four Journeys into Mystic Time (1980)
Savage Love (1981)
Tongues (1982)
Ornette: Made in America (1985).

Robin Margolis is a contributing writer for by such and such.

“…The person or persons involved
Parading slowly through the sunlit fields
Not only as though the danger did not exist
But as though the birds were in on the secret.”1

“Self Portrait” Eve Arnold, NYC 1950.

If there were a secret to Eve Arnold’s success she would have already told it. Arnold, the esteemed and historic photographer, succeeded at photography by simply (yet, arduously) dedicating her life to it (1912-2012). Photography wasn’t a dream profession she mulled over, from childhood. Rather, as she is famously quoted as saying: “I came to photography by accident.”2 Using her femininity, as a means by which to provide novel approaches to a man’s profession, Arnold eventually received credit from feminists as being a pioneer. However, early in her career it was the identification of being a “woman photographer” she wished to rebel from. She writes, “I didn’t want to be a ‘woman photographer”3 referring to the title given to her by the editor at Collier (attempting to identify her as something different based entirely on her gender).

Malcolm X

“I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera. What I wanted was to use my female insights and personality to interpret what I photographed.”4 Arnold’s work is described by Robert Capa as falling, “metaphorically of course, between Marlene Dietrich’s legs and the bitter lives of migratory workers.”5 This in-between took Arnold all across the world, photographing all kinds of people and places (Malcolm X, male strippers in New Jersey, Marilyn Monroe, some of the oldest living men in Russia, the Vatican, harems in Dubai etc.). Summing up Arnold’s life and career, Liz Jobey, a friend of Arnold’s says it best: “she has been unstoppable.”6

Marilyn Monroe

Rebellion came easy for Arnold. Growing up in a poor Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Philadelphia, her mother wanted her daughters married and supported. Arnold, on the other hand, always relished in her independence. Even at the end of her career she remained skeptical regarding technological advances in photography. New technology allowed for an alteration that had more to do with “glitz and packaging” rather than “substance.”7

Anthony Quinn and Anna Karina, 1967.

The instance—the moment of capturing a specific event in order to represent a time in history seemingly had been superseded by a marketable goal. Arnold realized the benefits some technological advances provided, yet she writes: “Paradoxically, I think the photographer should be an amateur at heart—someone who loves the craft.

Then she must have a healthy constitution, a strong stomach, a distinct will, quick reflexes and a sense of adventure, and be willing to take risks.”8

George Lincoln Rockwell (American Nazi Party,) at a Black Muslim Meeting, 1961.

Her time spent photographing Marlene Dietrich exemplifies all of these. Dietrich was not an easy subject, because she knew much about photography and even more so the way in which she wanted to be photographed. After one session photographing Dietrich, Arnold recevied word from their mutual friend Leo Lerman that Dietrich had complained that she had been there all night taking pictures. “He asked why she hadn’t stopped me. She said it had never occurred to her, I had done it with ‘such authority.”9

Dietrich and Ann Warner, 1939.

Arnold’s perspective on photography and the way she took pictures is characteristic of Gilles Deleuze’s perspective on the event. In his book, “The Fold” he writes: “It is a world of captures instead of closures.” Namely, the world has instances of openings that will be infinitely different from one another. Arnold’s photography embodied this philosophy.

South African Hospital, 1973.

She recognized the potentiality the fleeting moments of life contained: photography transformed them in-to something more than mere occurrence. For example, her photography work in South Africa for the Sunday Times, provides the viewer with a particular and distinct reality.

Emirates, 1971

She writes: ”photography and cinematography shared the same aims. To paraphrase existing definitions, they strive to capture and reproduce reality, to enhance the familiar and, by isolating it, transform it into dramatic impact.”1 Existentially, “All I need do is think of people I met and conditions I saw at the time, look at the photographs or think of the worm in the apple in that beautiful Paradise, and the pain is back again.”10

A Patient in a Hospital in Haiti, for the mentally ill, 1954.

This moment is not something that can be taught. Telling of the advice Arnold once received she writes: “I can teach you the steps, but you will have to feel the music.”11 Obtaining such feeling requires diligence and extreme concentration. “The popular notion that the photographer is someone who flits about the world clicking gaily away could not be more wrong.”12 Arnold was not only more than a woman photographer, but also more than merely a photographer in general. Arnold took to heart the advice Robert Capa from the Magnum office gave her colleague Henri Cartier-Bresson when he was having difficulty being accepted as a serious photographer. Capa told Cartier-Bresson: “Stop calling yourself a photojournalist and call yourself a surrealist.”13 Talking about photography Arnold writes: “sometimes the magic works; more often not—but the photographer must continue to try to understand the subject, to get the proportions right, to try to establish not only a personal style, but an empathy with and a sympathy for the subject.”14

Cicely Tyson, 1968. copyright Magnum Photos.

Gene Baro an art critic, wrote the following definition of a photojournalist when preparing a catalogue for Arnold’s China show at the Brooklyn Museum: “…the best photojournalism transcends its subject and gives us images that have a timeless quality, so acute visually that no other explanation is needed finally. The art is in what remains when the occasion has faded.”15 Looking at Arnold’s photographs from China bring Baro’s definition to life. The expressions on children’s faces at a cotton mill nursery, the intimate details shown from a child receiving a permanent wave and the juxtaposition of two extremely different aged women’s turmoil-ed eyes present the viewer with a faded occasion that will now last as long as the photograph. Arnold was a master at illuminating the intimate.

“Permenant Wave”

In the Eve Arnold Handbook, a book representing Arnold’s intimate photographs of hands she writes: “Usually when photographers say ‘just one more’ they mean they will take one more picture for insurance. I find myself saying ‘just one more’ and meaning a picture of the subject’s hands or, sometimes, feet.”16 These images provide the viewer with a “timeless quality,” so rich and expressive of the immanent quality of life itself, to try to describe them with words seems arbitrary.

Isabella Rossellini, 1984.

SOURCES:

1. John Ashbury, Rivers and Mountains. “If the Birds Knew.” (The Ecco Press: New York, 1962), 16.
2. Eve Arnold, Eve Arnold: In Retrospect (Knopf: New York, 1995) 3.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 28.
6. Liz Jobey, All About Eve: The Photography of Eve Arnold, Introduction (Te Neus Publishing Company, 1012), 13.
7. Eve Arnold: In Retrospect., 286.
8. Ibid., 288.
9. Ibid., 27
10. Ibid., 151.
11. Ibid., 165.
12. Ibid., 286.
13. Ibid., 113.
14. Ibid., 15.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. Ibid., 16.
Eve Arnold Handbook, (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004), introduction.
Magnum Photos coyright.

Daniel Pettus is a contributing writer for by such and such.

I have been so concerned with Authenticity recently. And sincerity. I feel that they go hand in hand, especially with an artists work. If I do not feel that there is a personal connection between the artist and his or her work, then I am uninterested. That is why minimalism is so difficult for me to grasp. It is too sterile for my taste. But something like a light room by James Turrell, that is different. There is a distinction between purity or simplicity and the abyss or lack of thought. There is a difference between aesthetically minimal works of art (which can still be theoretically complex) and simple works, which can only be simple. Not only does his work share a personal connection with its creator, but it seems to make a similar singular connection with everyone who experiences it.

James Turrell

But I am more concerned with the ethical implications of authenticity or lack thereof in an artists work. Who actually created this work? Who’s hands constructed it? Who thought it up? And who later theorized it and applied it to their own work? I remember the day we discussed Richard Prince’s Marlboro Man in my Postmodern to Contemporary Art class in college. I stared at the piece for something like 2 full minutes. I swung back and forth between being underwhelmed and thinking Prince was admirably cheeky, and then settled in a mood of mild appreciation and a desire to see whether this artist actually had technical skill (which he does).

“Untitled (Cowboy)”

When did “artist” outstrip “craftsman” in both meaning and relevance? When did skill fall from the list of requirements o a craftsman? And when did artist gain so many intellectual playing cards that they no longer needed to use their hands, only their mind? This is a fascinating progression and at times a troubling one.

A work of art re-appropriating an image that has already been used slightly scares me. In contemporary art, for something to be new is almost half the work of creating a relevant artwork. For something to have been done before is the death sentence to what may have been skillfully well-executed art. If only on the arguable basis that the creator’s thoughts are not true, because they are not new.

The “New” and the “Authentic” are not necessarily the same thing. A work can be new but not true to the artist, in which case it is inauthentic. And then, within authenticity, there are multiple ideologies to deconstruct. There is the authenticity which concerns honesty to other, the authenticity which concerns honesty to oneself, and the authenticity which plainly speaks to the avoidance of or partaking in bald plagiarism.

Albrecht Durer

A traditional art historical reference to authenticity would be Warhol’s Factory. “He did it first” they say… at least in the modern arena. With his assistants constructing the works which he would dream up, Warhol was left the time to promote it. Even blatantly referencing the engineering of his artistic practice by titling his studio “Factory.” Reproduction and in-authenticity often go hand in hand. And the nature of the print or silkscreen, Warhol’s most identifiable chosen mediums, are reproduction based. But then what d we say of Albrecht Durer, who used the woodblock print during the Northern Renaissance in the 15th and 16th century, almost certainly with the helping hand of a full workshop of assistants? There is no question Durer is a master, but his brilliance has stood firm for centuries. Warhol’s only has for 50 years.

Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami takes authenticity and reproduction to a whole new level. His paintings area eerie, erotic bastardizations of Disney and Manga, a Technicolor twilight zone constructed by a highly trained, seldom sleeping team. He takes the role and the constantly in flux idea of the rights of an artist into new territory. He reproduces his works in smaller scales and cheaper materials, selling them for literally a buck, to the masses. Now we must toil over what is a real Murakami? Does he decide or do we? A question that is further complicated by his massively successful collaborations with Louis Vuitton. Which leads one to ask: is this bag by Louis Vuitton or by Takashi? Am I carrying art? Or am I carrying money?

Jeff Koons is perhaps the most inflammatory example of this bending of the rules. He almost flouts the fact that he rarely ever actually paints his pieces. He constructs a work digitally and later has his assistants fill in the blanks, painting with a color-by-numbers technique. His work is extremely controversial, but he is without question a successful artist.

Jeff Koons.

My real question is, is authenticity really relevant in the world of contemporary art? And if so how relevant? Does authenticity exist in degrees? And what relationship must an artist have with his work in order for him to be the true and complete author of it? If we are going to share the work, shall we not as well share the spoils? Does the apparent sharing, overlapping and re-appropriating that is occurring in pockets of today’s art world make for a more discursive artistic community or a masturbatory stagnant one? I suppose it is all in the intent.

Camille Okhio is contributing art writer for by such and such.

Ivan Noda, Frank and Michal all appear courtesy of the newly formed mens Divison @ IMG Men.

Adam Custins is a contributing photographer for by such and such.

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3. Flying Lotus…

The Swiss artist Jean Clemmer who would become one of the world’s most renowned erotic fashion photographers, hailed from the town of Neuchâtel. The Swiss city burrowed in a dip between mountains, had been the birthplace of the prophet of modernism, le Corbusier  the Dada poet Blaise Cendrars and the automobile designer, Louis Chevrolet. Clemmer would attend the art school Ecole des Beaux Arts Chaux-de-Fonds which had spawned the Swiss Art Nouveau movement where he would graduate with a degree in jewelry making. As the war ended, prospects of becoming a theater designer arose for him in the neutral country Switzerland’s capitol Geneva. Clemmer flourished in the city that became the epicenter of the war’s economic recovery where he saved enough money to make another exodus this time to Paris, the nucleus of modernism and the excitement it possessed as its cultural population returned after the long sojourn from Nazi occupation.

Upon arrival, The post-war Parisian artistic ensemble of Jean Cocteau, Zadkine, Louise Vilmorin, Jacques Fath and Marcel Rochas, recruited the young artist into their exclusive circle. Clemmer was enthralled with the post-war climate of Surrealism and mounted exhibitions of drawings and paintings. Surrounded by unlimited sources of inspiration – as well as captivating persona – Clemmer was drawn to the medium of photography as a means of documenting his experience.

Clemmer was particularly fascinated with Salvador Dalí and the Surrealist luminary’s focus on mythology – as well as the theatrical expression of his ideas. In 1962, Clemmer decided to embark on a journey to Dalí’s oasis/home at Port Lligat, a tiny alcove on Catalonia’s Costa Brava.  The bacchanals hosted by Dalí rivaled those of Andy Warhol’s “Factory” on the other side of the Atlantic, by way of profligacy and excess.  The Dionysian revelry taking place behind the white washed walls of Port Lligat was magnified by the ominous risk of discovery by the strict religious regime of Franco – that ruled Spain with an iron fist. This dichotomy of opposing forces provided an intense backdrop for a new generation fascinated with all things mystic, alchemical, and anti conformist – finding an unprecedented father figure in Salvador Dali.

Clemmer and Salvador Dali.

Port Lligat had become one of Europe’s most desirable destinations for the emerging quake of youth culture, as its host, Dalí, encouraged the indulgence of desire as a path towards discovering the Surrealist threshold of the sublime.  Clemmer mustered the courage to present himself at Dali’s oasis – without invitation, emboldened and encouraged by the assurance of the local townspeople that the maestro accepted unannounced visitors and was rumored to intuitively recognize talent with a glance from his transfixed eyes.

Dali and Ginesta.

Responding to three nervous knocks, Dalí opened the door, examined the young photographer and told him to return that evening at 8:00.  Clemmer had also been advised to be punctual.  He therefore had to endure a torrential downpour during his travel, only to be instructed by Dalí to arrive at noon the following day – with a beautiful girl.

Clemmer scoured the neighboring seaside town of Cadaqués, eventually finding a pretty German tourist who agreed to be pried from the clutches of her boyfriend for a day – to become Dalí’s muse. Upon arrival, Dali named her Ginesta and she was immediately incarnated into a series of tableaux vivants. For their photo shoot that day Dalí, blended his love of mythology with the secret forces of magical ritual, creating a theme based upon the principles of levitation.

Dalí had Ginesta suspended upside-down, dangling from a balcony while pouring 80 kilos of chickpeas that would bounce around her, simulating atomic repulsion. During the photo shoot, the mayor of Cadaqués arrived unexpectedly and was casually handed the ropes – unaware a naked model dangled precariously at the other end.

Dalí, dressed as master alchemist Hermes Trismegestus, suspended a model in a special parachute material given to him by the US Air Force, distorting her natural form as he pulled her towards him. Dalí subsequently invited Clemmer back, to explore themes of gender confrontation and the hermaphroditic. Their continued collaboration strengthened a bond of friendship that would last two decades.

Clemmer introduced Dali to the independent Paris producer Claude Joudioux, who, through A.P.E.C. Studios, had produced Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Roman Polanski’s Le Gros et Le Maigre while working on projects with Alain Resnais. Joudioux commissioned Dalí to direct his first solo film in 1964, Le Divin Dalí.

Jean Clemmer was hired to serve as the still photographer on *Le Divin Dali.  For this project, he borrowed Chris Marker’s 24mm Pentax camera – the one that was used to capture the still photography that was used in the making of La Jetée. Clemmer’s photographs portrayed Dalí creating a scene set upon tiers of glass, with nude models appearing to be in states of levitation as though they were ascending into heaven.

Dalí proclaimed to the cinema magazines at the time, that the film would symbolize “cannibalism and angelicism” – themes that had been central to the artist’s career. The film was to unveil Dali’s familiar use of religious symbolism in its archetypal role, linking the tradition of classical Greece to the familiar Western tradition of the sacred. Le Divin Dalí  deciphered what had riddled many in the nexus of Dalí’s‘s symbolic mystery. Sadly, the only known print of Le Divin Dalí was destroyed in a studio fire that year (1964), soon after it was shot.

In 1968, Clemmer continued his collaborative work with Dalí, photographing the elusive Amanda Lear in a spread for the British Daily Telegraph, in a feature that included a select group of Spanish-born designers such as Paco Rabanne.

Dali had made it a tradition to ally himself with the most astute catalysts of fashion. In the 1930’s, he closely collaborated with Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, developing collections and costumes for the ballet. In the 1940’s, the designer Adrian had used Dalí’s textiles for gowns that personified the clean architectural lines of the era. In the 1950’s Dalí collaborated with Christian Dior, developing futuristic apparel with the “New Look’s” detonator as well as those intended as costumes for society balls.

 ”Nues”

With the arrival of the 1960’s, Dalí intuitively knew whom he would anoint as the next prophet of fashion. The defining moment of that decade was the moon landing and the world celebrated the massive leap for mankind that this event engendered. Rabanne focused upon materials and design iconography associated with space exploration. Mankind now had the freedom to surpass the confines of the planet, inspiring a new generation to break with all earthly conformity.  The arrival of the birth control pill served to further encourage this emerging life perspective, celebrating an unrestrained lifestyle that revived the pre-Christian era in all its Bacchanalian splendor – with irreverent Rock ‘n Roll music serving as the soundtrack.

Paco Rabanne, the son of a seamstress for Balanciaga, who had studied architecture at the École Des Beaux Arts in Paris infused the moon landing’s impact into the exploration of both crafts. Rabanne opened his fashion house in 1966, creating garments that extolled the visual components of what would soon become known as the 60’s esthetic. His confluence of backgrounds in tailoring and industrial construction led to Rabanne’s design of his first collection of disposable paper dresses. Paco Rabanne encapsulated the spirit of this era, utilizing the materials of space exploration that included rhoidoid, chain mail and phosphorescent plastic disks, aluminum, rubber, and plastic sheeting.  These materials were sculpted into seductive works that highlighted the provocative aspects of the body and its sinuous contours of exposed flesh.

Rabanne’s memes of space age futurism were embedded into history with his iconic costumes for Jane Fonda in Barbarella, as well as the gold-paneled dress he created for Francoise Hardy – which was constructed with the use of pliers. Rabanne brought sensuality into the future, replacing anxiety (associated with technology’s vast changes) with a seduction that compelled his audience to never look back.  Dalí – whose work focused on continuing the archetypal tradition of the gods and goddesses of classical Greece recognized Rabanne’s creations the ideal dress code of their futuristic avatars.

Both Dalí and Clemmer would develop close collaborative relationships with Paco Rabanne, culminating in their use of his sculpted pieces. Dalí intuitively recognized Rabanne as one of the most important catalysts in fashion, referring to him as “the second greatest Spanish genius.”  Rabanne designed a red zippered mandarin jacket that Dali often wore as a uniform of sorts – as attire for his various happenings, film projects, and television appearances.  For these events Dalí’s muses including Amanda Lear, Donyale Luna and  Elsa Peretti would often be seen in Rabanne-designed apparel.

While Dali was able to hoist Rabanne into the archetypal dialogue of the era, Clemmer became his expressive symbiotic equal. Clemmer’s works focused upon the erotic, prophetically seeking to use the medium of photography to serve as an essential role in the paradigm shift that would become known as the sexual revolution.  The Paris editor Pierre Belfond approached Clemmer in 1968, to produce a book of nudes. Clemmer immediately chose Rabanne as the clothing designer, meticulously styling each shoot.  This images would became a symbiosis of the nude female, with Rabanne’s futuristic adornment as sculpture. The book, Nues, would be banned in parts of France and would attract even more attention for Clemmer’s choice of models – which formed a rich repertoire of multi-racial ethnicity.

In 1970 Clemmer received the Canon award. Four years later, Dali – who had always been fascinated with the idea of death – asked Clemmer to “please photograph me as an apparition.” Clemmer began creating the Metamorphosis  series that pressed transparencies together,  rendering a collage like effect.  The metamorphosis series focused on female nudes as a blank canvas to incorporate imagery that ranged from Dalí’s persona – to the architecture of his newly consecrated Theater Museum in his hometown of Figueres – to their tableaux vivants at Port Lligat .

The most renowned Metamorphosis expression utilized Dali’s painting Tuna Fishing (Homage to Meissonier), painted between 1966 and 1967.  One of the highlights of this show portrays the work of Clemmer Dali and Rabanne as a cumulative trinity. This Metamophosis features one of Clemmers models from the Nues series wearing a Paco Rabanne creation, with a section of Dali’s painting superimposed. The work is signed by all three.

Clemmer, Dali and Rabanne formed a trinity of influence that would come to define some of he most revolutionary signals that transformed the cultural landscape of the 1960’s.  Dali passed away in 1989, followed by Clemmer in 2001 while Rabanne now concentrates on his drawings that Dalí had encouraged him to continue pursuing. Clemmer’s niece, the sculptor Hélène Clemmer Heidsieck, inherited the Jean Clemmer Estate estate and, passionately executes its archive with her husband, Yann Heidsieck.

Laura Whitcomb is a contributing writer for by such and such, and is also the author of the book, “Dali : The Paradox of Fashion.”