Art Writing Is a Genre

Most readers of this web site are probably familiar with the term "ekphrastic," as used to describe a piece of writing that's directly connected to a piece of visual art. To understand the poem or story you need to see the picture. Whole novels have been written that way, like Joan Aiken's Girl from Paris. There are contests for ekphrastic poetry on the Internet every few months. But, with the shrinking of newspapers, is there still a market for prose writing about art? Do schools still require students to write in that genre? Do paying publishers ever print things adults write about art shows in museums?

The answer is yes. At least this British magazine does:

https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/writing_prize

Giving me an excuse to post something I wrote in 1991...as a sample of the sort of thing college students used to write, and a few magazines and newspapers still print. If you're going to live in a city that has art galleries, where your friends are going to compete for invitations to display paintings, sculptures, woven wall art, etc., it's worth cultivating the art of writing about art displays. 

I didn't really intend to live in such a city; although I did, later, my husband and I went to more book parties than we did visual art displays. I saved this essay because it was the winner in a competitive game; a whole class went to the museum on a bus, leaving paper and pencils behind, and competed to see who could remember most artefacts afterward. Proof that I have more visual memory than I usually claim? No—proof that I was able to use my verbal, auditory memory to “write” the article in my head at the museum, then literally run to the computer center and type it. 

On rereading, what comes to mind is that I took Darryl Halbrooks’ technical skill for granted. Although most of his surreal artwork consisted of hostile sarcastic visual jokes, the jokes were offensive because the artwork “read” so clearly—the realistic details were well molded and painted. Good surreal art embeds realistic images within dreamscapes. I couldn’t say that Halbrooks’ three-dimensional cartoon figures resemble the almost photographic images that made Dalí famous, so instead I’ll say that my mental measurement for successful surreal art is the extent to which it reminds me of Dalí—and the Halbrooks collection did. At least the emphasis was on snarky jokes rather than scattered body parts.

Darryl Halbrooks, btw, is still alive, painting and sculpting. Digital images of his more recent work are at https://www.darrylhalbrooks.com/artwork.html .The snark content is still high; there's still a landscape formed from a collage of office clutter, still a medieval saint trying to cuddle a large snarling dog as if it were a baby. There's an impressive collection of paintings of scenes from vintage movies, and other themes and techniques that weren't really precedented in his 1991 exhibition. It's an interesting site to click around.

This post seemed to need a visual image. For Halbrooks images, you can visit his web site, so here's a picture from Google of a piece of elaborately woven fabric from India:

Photo from Artsy.com.

"Faces of India" & Recent Work by Darryl Halbrooks

I. Faces of India

1. Weaving. Several large pieces of woven fabric were displayed. One Indian word for fabric is sutra, which can refer to cloth or to the fabric of the universe. This brings to American minds the Kama Sutra, Kama being a Hindu deity associated with love, but the connection was not traced by the museum guide.

A sari was displayed with instructions on how the sari itself is wound around the body, tucked into the skirt, and draped over the blouse. According to an Indian legend, an elaborate sari once saved the life of a righteous lady. Enemies chased her and caught the end of her sari, but the lady prayed aloud as she danced out of their reach, unwinding her sari. Some say the sari miraculously stretched and unwound, stretched and unwound, for half a mile or more, until the lady reached a house where the enemies dared not follow her...still wrapped in the silken sheath-dress Indian women wear to show patriotic pride.

2. Photographs. Around one wall were several photographs of individuals and a landscape. Some people’s attention was caught by a photograph of an old man smoking a pipe and looking unusually contemplative. Others noticed a sequence of pictures of a young man demonstrating Yoga positions (asana), which are thought to promote transcendental-type meditation while they build strength and flexibility, or pictures of an extremely thin boy and a gaunt old man. I was most intrigued by the portrait of an old woman. Photographs rarely give me a sense of the subject’s personality except through the use of poses and props. This one did.

3. Dolls. Two fashion dolls were displayed on a stand. These dolls differ from European and American dolls by their costumes and by the exaggeration of their painted eyes. “Long eyes” are a feature of beautiful people as painted by Indian artists. I have heard Indian men, not necessarily Hindus, use “long eyes” or “lotus eyes” as Americans might use “blonde,” as a shorthand summary of conventional beauty. In the Hindu paintings on the wall behind the dolls, the characters’ eyes were even more exaggerated. It appears more grotesque than beautiful to the American observer, but then there are cultures in which blondness is considered unattractive too. Ear and nose ornaments were conspicuous in the dolls’ costumes, and also in the paintings. One doll wore a classic sari of loosely woven yellow fabric with lace borders. The other wore a rose-colored velvet gown whose close-fitting waist, sheer set-in sleeves gathered at wrists and shoulders, and plain long skirt could equally well have been accessorized as a European or Early American dress.

4. Paintings. One wall displayed a sequence of paintings illustrating episodes of the life of Krishna, a Hindu figure often described as Christlike. Hindu deities are said to have “blue blood” and Krishna could be identified in each picture by his blue-gray face. In the most bizarre painting Krishna is being nursed by a female giant with a monstrous tongue that coils through and around the baby’s fist. More conventional scenes show Krishna among ordinary people, in conversation ina courtyard, in rowboats, etc. 

5. Inadequacy. India is a very large country comprised of many different ethnic groups who follow different customs, practice different religions, and speak different languages. Despite government efforts to reduce the number of languages in use, still natives of India are not always able to talk naturally with one another. It would be impossible to get an adequate survey of Indian art into a room of this size, or make even a casual study of it in a one-hour visit. Many groups are completely ignored, even the substantial Muslim and Christian minorities.

The guide appeared nervous and not fully prepared to discuss the display. Instead his lecture was mostly about the reasons why American observers should not be prejudiced against Indian art. Since this American observer grew up with family friends who came from India and Pakistan, this lecture failed to make a favorable impression. More information on the artwork displayed would have been more useful.

II. Darryl Halbrooks

The guide appeared to take it for granted that the audience would prefer the exhibition of Styrofoam painting by Darryl Halbrooks. The observer heard at least two other visitors from Berea express a preference for “Faces of India.” I don’t feel that the two exhibitions can be compared. They represent different types of art (or craft) produced and displayed for different purposes. Although some of the Indian pieces expressed joy and merriment, none of them was a cartoon. The purpose of displaying them was to introduce Americans to Indian art. Most of the Halbrooks pieces were political cartoons. The purpose of displaying them was to prod Americans to reconsider various aspects of our own culture. These purposes may not be entirely incompatible but it would be hard to trace any connection between these collections.

1. Portrait: “Mi Madre.” Among the Halbrooks pieces, one titled “Mi Madre” did not suggest a sarcastic commentary on U.S. culture. This seemed to be a simple portrait in painted Styrofoam.

2. Animals. Two more paintings used dog images, one with an apparently wild dog pack and one with dogs’heads. No specific message was clear to this observer.

3. American Idolatries. The tone of the other Holbrooks pieces was compared by several observers to Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons. Bombs and soda cans appeared in triptychs recalling the phrase, “Your ‘god’ is what you serve.” Americans “serve” bombs and warfare through taxes; individually, we “serve” favorite foods, drinks, and drugs. Another piece showed a bomb cradled in the arms of a madonnalike figure, presumably Lise Meitner, a physicist whose discoveries led to modern atomic science, so that she was nicknamed the “Mother of the Bomb.” The North and Northwest were portrayed by two creatures that might be wild dogs or wolverines, fighting below what I saw as the familiar faces on Mount Rushmore, badly copied. To Southerners this probably seems like a valid way to characterize this part of the country, nor are similar opinions unfamiliar to Canadians of my acquaintance. How this piece would impress a native of the northern border States, I don’t care to imagine.

4. “Open Demonstration of Affection.” My favorite of the Halbrooks pieces was this simple cartoon image, in which a human body is “opened” down the front to reveal the heart and other internal organs. I was once troubled by a plague of excessively evangelical Christians who used the undefined term “open” to describe some quality of human beings. This image came to my mind, too. An alternative had to do with the phrase “open slut”; I think Halbrooks chose the image that is more likely to suggest to those who describe people as “open” that this usage conveys no useful information. If they mean “interested” or “tolerant” or “sympathetic,” their purpose would be better served by one of those words. This cartoon has social value. It graphically illustrates something that needed to be said and has not been said many times before.

[Christians who describe people as "open," as if that were a good thing, might have been influenced by this 1948 essay recently reprinted in Plough Quarterly: 

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/discipleship/get-ready-to-be-changed

In this specifically religious context the word usage makes sense, but talking about it as if the speaker could have any idea whether anyone else is "open to spiritual transformation" still seems out of bounds to me.]

5. Satirical References to the Bible and Christian Beliefs. Most of the Halbrooks pieces were satires on religious themes. Although they did not offend this observer, who took them as an example of the working of an immature mind in rebellion against the religious teachings of his childhood, their crude sarcasm offended many visitors. This offense was probably intended, but it is unimpressive, the way primary school children swearing is unimpressive. To Christians the story of the sacrifice of Isaac does not mean that God plays elaborate, painful practical jokes on people, but (primarily, among other things) that people should be prepared to give up whatever is dearest to them in order to serve God. For me as a Christian, “Just Kidding,” which suggests that this Bible story is about God’s mean sense of humor, does not arouse moral indignation but only a condescending variety of pity. Therefore, I say all the Styrofoam painting/sculptures that ridicule Christian beliefs fail. And, knowing evangelical types, I expect that they’ll also fail to keep the evangelists from Halbrooks’ door.