Day With(out) Art 2009 … join us in remembering

December 1, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Day With(out) Art (DWA). Over those twenty years, this annual day of mourning and action has metamorphosed from emphasizing loss (signaled by removing artworks or draping them, or dimming the lights in galleries) to encouraging the creative energy and insight that art can bring to a devastating and demoralizing situation. As the Visual AIDS website notes:

… Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative project in which an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part.

MOCRA has participated in DWA regularly since 1994. In addition to highlighting particular works of art, three times we have hosted and helped organize observances involving members of the wider arts community. For instance, in 2000 we hosted a DWA observance in conjunction with the exhibition Robert Farber: A Retrospective, 1985-1995. We were joined by members of the theater community, two local gospel singers, members of the Gateway Men’s Chorus, and local visual artists, in dramatically memorializing those we have lost to HIV/AIDS. In 2006, during an encore presentation of Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds, we subdued the Clouds and put the focus on photographer Carolyn Jones’ exquisite Living Proof, a series of portraits of people living — thriving — in the face of HIV/AIDS.

Adrian Kellard, "The Promise," 1989. Latex on wood. Courtesy of the Estate of Adrian Kellard.

This year, we observe DWA by exhibiting The Promise, by the late Adrian Kellard, a rising artist in 1980s New York. His large-scale carved wood block panels evoke both medieval shrines and the woodblock prints of 20th-century German Expressionists, but their bright colors and folk-art quality make them accessible to a wide range of audiences.

The Promise riffs on images of St. Christopher, the legendary giant who unwittingly carried the Christ child across a river. The image expresses endurance and perseverance in the midst of suffering. Its enigmatic text, “I will never leave you,” seems to assert love, hope, compassion, and loyalty. It is an especially poignant message when we consider that Kellard’s own life was cut short by AIDS. He died in the fall of 1991 at the age of 32.

The Promise was included in the 1992-93 international traveling exhibition From Media to Metaphor: Art about AIDS, and in the 1994 exhibition Art’s Lament: Creativity in the Face of Death (organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston).

MOCRA is pleased to be able to share The Promise with St. Louis audiences for this year’s Day With(out) Art.  MOCRA will have the work on display beginning Tuesday, December 1, through December 13. Find more information here.

I’d like to note also that the current exhibition at MOCRA, Michael Byron: Cosmic Tears, though not directly connected to HIV/AIDS, does speak to the ambiguity of suffering and the challenge it poses to us as a fact of our human existence. I suspect that Byron’s works speak to many of our visitors of the ways in which we can creatively elicit meaning out of all of life’s experiences, both the joys and the tears.

In whatever fashion makes sense to you, we hope you will join us in observing World AIDS Day and Day With(out) Art.

– David Brinker, Assistant Director

Wrestling with Veronica’s Veil

Today we have our first guest blog. Thanks to Courtney Henson, MFA, Visitor Services Manager at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts for this commentary on a work by Daniel Goldstein. (Be sure to check out the PFA’s great blog, along with the blog of the PFA’s next-door-neighbor, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, at 2 Buildings – 1 Blog.

*****

The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky cross-referenced with Icarian XI/Leg Extension by Daniel Goldstein:

After visiting Good Friday at MOCRA, I found attachments to several works — mostly those involving textile media or found objects and at this particular show, mostly dealing with the topic of HIV/AIDS.

A few days later, I found myself confronted with the story of Randy “the Ram” in The Wrestler and thinking back to Icarian XI/ Leg Extension. Between the workout scenes in The Wrestler, Randy’s overly tanned skin and the allusions of him toward Jesus, I kept thinking back to the leather seat because of its original life as an overworked piece of equipment. The seat now transcends that life and has this residue that shows its hard work — the stains of those who used it have become its stigmata.

When contemporary art finds an even more contemporary reference, I feel it proves the power of the work of art. When Randy shows off his scars to his friend, Cassidy (played by Marisa Tomei), Cassidy quotes a line from The Passion and draws parallels to Randy as a type of Christ figure. Certainly Randy, with his long blond hair and Jesus tattoo on his lower back, emulates a figure who aims to redeem himself.

from left: Luis González Palma, "El Santo Sudario" (1989); Daniel Goldstein, "Icarian XI/Leg Extension" (1993); Georges Rouault, "By His Stripes We Are Healed," from the series "Miserere et Guerre" (1922)

The artwork by Goldstein similarly shows the struggles played out by the human body for the sake of becoming more godlike, at least by contemporary society’s standards. The work is composed of a leather covering for a workout bench, the brand name Icarian. The covering was salvaged from a gym in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood at a pivotal time during the AIDS epidemic. The piece is housed in a shadow box and displayed like a shrine. In this memorial, the leather is deeply scarred from use; years of sweat are seeped into its surface. There are creases and crinkles from where it was wrapped around the bench. The object is powerful in its stains of sweat, alluding to the story of Veronica’s cloth.  Icarian XI/Leg Extension seems to have the faint image of a portrait; as I write this, I find my reflection placed in its outline — reminding me of the importance of placing myself in the shoes of others.

I would entreat you to view two things this week: The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky, and Icarian XI/Leg Extension by Daniel Goldstein at MOCRA.

Eight days and counting

It’s been a while since our last post, but it doesn’t mean we’ve been slacking off. We’re just over a week away from the opening of MOCRA’s next exhibition, Good Friday.

Coming Soon!

The exhibition opens on Sunday, February 15, with a free public reception from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. If you are in the St. Louis area, please stop by.

More information about the exhibition, include sample images, is available on MOCRA’s website.

It’s been busy behind the scenes as we undertake the various tasks related to a new exhibition: publicity, building out parts of the gallery, deciding on where each work will hang, writing the texts for the wall labels and didactics, and myriad other details.

Juan Gonzalez' "Don't Mourn, Consecrate" ... installation in progress

For instance, this exhibition involves recreating a couple of works that haven’t been installed for some years. One by the late artist Juan González, titled Don’t Mourn, Consecrate, originally hung in the street-level windows of New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. It was last shown in MOCRA’s 1994-95 exhibition Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS. The photo at right demonstrates one of the many uses for bubble-wrap, here serving to help us visualize the size and position of the stats of AIDS-related deaths that will hang to the right of the image.

Rejected clocks.

Sometimes exhibition installations can send us on unexpected shopping expeditions. One work by the late artist Adrian Kellard includes a small kitchen wall clock. However, when the work arrived at MOCRA several years ago the clock did not make the journey. All we have to go on is a picture of the work in the artist’s studio. How difficult, you might ask, is it to find a clock of suitable size, style, and (significantly for the work), sound?

It turns out to be surprisingly difficult, involving rummaging around local resale shops, calling stores in the Yellow Pages, and searching on E-bay and numerous other websites. In the end, though, after a few disappointments, we found one that fit the bill.

The clock in situ.

Over the next week (in theater it’s called “Hell Week,” and that is apt for museums as well) I’ll see if I can’t get a few of the other staff members to pause long enough to share their observations and anecdotes.

In the meantime, please check out the MOCRA website for more information on Good Friday, and come by on February 15.

–David Brinker, Assistant Director