A God of Small Things....

I was listening to a woman talk about cancer today. I didn't know her. I just overheard what she was saying. She was telling a group of people about her "struggle" with cancer and how she was very accepting of having the disease because she knew that God was taking care of her and that is was his will that she be all right. She took a tremendous comfort in the fact that God had a plan for her. It was clear that she knew what God's plan was - and it did not involve her dying of cancer.

I felt very sick inside hearing this. My mother died of lung cancer in 2005. She was a very devout Catholic and practiced her faith every day. She was a minister of service at her church and she was a member of a Masonic organization dedicated to the Knights of Peter Claver. She did service to the poor and prayed for people. In short, my mom had a very concrete relationship with God, on that I did not completely understand, but it was very real to her. God was manifested in all areas of her life. She loved him. She also loved life and she didn't want to die of cancer. And she certainly did not want the pain, difficulty, and stress - for herself or her loved ones. I kept thinking "Why was God's plan to let this woman live and let my mother die in such a horrible fashion?" I am sure that this woman feels like her spiritual connection was so strong that God just took her cancer away. Did my mom pray the wrong way? Was her faith not strong enough? Was there a particular thing she needed to do? (Kill a fatted calf, for example?)

I don't know why people get sick and die. I really don't want to think that God is up there granting some people favors and letting the others who beg for his help rot. It is a pretty dim view of the almighty. I also feel like people who say that they know God has a plan might feel differently if God's plan did not coincide with their own projected outcome. Put it like this: What if God's plan was to save you from drowning just to beat you to death on the shore?

Istanbul, mon amour....

Things I loved here....

• The Grande Hotel de Londres - Amazing place, loaded with history and a great crowd in the lobby.  Wireless access, central location, strong tea, great decor and wonderful staff. (And they have great new carpeting in the lobby.)  Hemmingway stayed here, so should you.
  
• Beyoğlu - This is the neighborhood where it all happens.  Amazing food and the nightlife is endless. Everyone from beautiful people to bohemians is in the neighborhood and on the streets around Istiklal Caddesi (especially in the Asmalımescit area).  Everything to do with art, style, fashion, and food can be found here in the area between Tunel Station and Taksim Square.  Galatasaray has the championship football team.
  
• Kepabs at Beyoğlu Köftecisi - The language barrier cannot survive when there is food this good and so inexpensive.
• Hagia Sophia - In the morning light sublime, in the evening light, unforgettable.  Go early and go often.  Tourists are too shy to go up to the best parts.  Even with scaffolding in place the dome is a wonder to behold.
• Kariye Museum - This is a must see.  Preserved mosiacs, restored frescoes, and porphyry walls make this an unexpected feast for the eyes.  Go on a Thursday when it is less crowded.  I had the entire museum to myself.
• Rustempasha Mosque - For me, the most beautiful of Sinan's creations.  The tile ornament is dizzying in its complexity.  The domed space is vast and airy but the space is intimate.  It is a masterpiece of installation.
• The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art - This is also referred to as the Carpet Museum. Nothing can prepare you for it.  The scale and execution of the materials in this place are mind boggling.  You completely understand why people wrote stories about flying carpets.  These things are so magical they could be lighter than air.
• Fish sandwiches on the Bosphorus - You get off the train and there is a guy on a boat with a grill. He tells you that a sandwich is 3YTL.  You have one and it is so fresh and so sweet and so good that you walk over the bridge from Galata every day to have one.  You are never disappointed.
• Konak Restaurant in Tunel Square - There is another location closer to Taksim but the Tunel location makes much better pide sandwiches.  Plus the front is open for people watching and the ice cream is unreal.
• Turkish ice cream - Really, it's incredibly rich and good.

"You're black wherever you go."

I am getting ready to leave Istanbul.

In a lot of ways, I have left already.  I have sort of contracted into a ball here, walking around the city in the morning and coming back to the hotel in the afternoons to sleep for a few hours.  Then going out in the evening for dinner at a couple of kebap houses near Tunel Station.  It's really great food and it's very cheap.

I think I have exhausted my time here.  

So many things were greater than I expected.  To see the work of Sinan, tiles from Iznik, the multiple layering of cultures, has been beyond belief really.  I have so many ideas for painting that I cannot wait to get back to my studio.  I have started making drawings and some things are coming into place for the work.  I am developing some ideas based on the grid that were not really available to me before I came here.  I also am wondering about the Tablet paintings and if they need to be figurative at all.  I have been really rethinking how I make these paintings.  Is color and light enough for the pictures?  Even the Savannah paintings have started to change with the insertion of various portraits into the schema of the grid.  The tiling here has really brought out the idea of pattern as an end to itself.  I am not sure if I can make a picture like that.  The figure to me has never been a thing about a way to investigate shape, it was the content of the picture for me.  To start making pictures without the figure is a thing that is coming up very much in my thinking and I have to start to deal with it.

At the same time, the ideas that I was looking at in the Tongue paintings have REALLY come back to the fore.  Seeing people walk in front of a tiled wall has really impacted me.  It is such a simple thing really.  I just started seeing it in a new way.  That space between can be flat and ornamental at the same time.  It is something Gregory Gillespie has done and even someone like Christina Renfer is doing now.  It is really the difference between painting the atmosphere and painting an area.  I was always the kind of painter who if I didn't know what to do with something, I just made it flat.  Now that idea is not enough.  I think the tile is a way into this, a way to have a dialog with pattern, flatness, content and character in the work.  I have been thinking of a way to bring the Tablets and the Tongues together.  Istanbul is giving me that, I think.

The other thing, the hard thing, the thing I did not expect, is that I have not really been able to relax here.  Turkey does not have a very diverse population.  I really stick out here, and people stare - a lot.  At first it was interesting to me because it didn't seem weighted with the racism of home.  I was like "The Brother From Another Planet," or something.  I took photos with school children who were shocked that I said "Merhaba" when they said hello.  That was the nice part of it.  The not so nice part was the cops, the stares on the subway, people putting my change on the counter instead of my hand.  The accusatory way they ask "Where are you from?"

Apparently, I look like I come from the Arabian peninsula, and since the end of the Ottomans there is not a great deal of love between the Arabs and the Turks.  Also, I have been taken for a "gypsy" or one of the Roma people and let me tell you, there is not a great deal of love for the Roma anywhere.  In light of all of this, I walk down the street feeling very uncomfortable and very vulnerable here.  I know that I am safe, but the looks on people's faces are not exactly welcoming.  I don't think I could ever get used to being looked at that way.  You might think that all of that kind of prejudice is the same, but it really isn't  In America, you get looked at like a criminal or a danger. Here it is like you are a freak or something.  It is very unsettling, especially since the Turks are such nice people and cannot understand American-style racism at all. But when they think you might be "arap" or from Iran, or gypsy, it gets a little weird.

I had a moment at Topkapi's Hall of Relics where I got a little worried.  I was in line to see the mantle of the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) when I felt this man looking at me. I turned and he said "Where are you from?"  I usually start speaking French at this point (and I thank my mother for making me take 5 years of the language) but this time I answered in English that I was from the United States.  He glared at me said "I hate your President."  I said that I understood.  "Bush wants to kill all the Muslims," he said.  "Well, we won't let him," I said.  Then we both stood in front of the window that looked into the golden room, with the golden stand, holding the golden box in which was a piece of cloth worn by Mohammed.  We shook hands and departed each other.  My friend Michael made me promise that I would stop telling people I was from the United States after that.  I didn't, but I did speak french in public a lot more.

I think I was chasing the experience that James Baldwin had when he went to France and got treated like an American.  Not as a negro, or colored, just some knucklehead writer from the US.  I didn't get that in Istanbul.  I got a real reminder about being different, being outside. It is the position of the constant observer, really, the flaneur, the "Painter of Modern Life."

My father used to say, "You're black wherever you go."  It was a warning about the way the world saw my brother and I.  

 

Rauschenberg is dead at 82....

Michael Kimmelman memorializes him in the NYTimes (and actually mentions his partner, Darryl Pottorf).  

For me, he is so incredibly important because he could do whatever he wanted.  He exercised complete freedom in his work.  When I saw the Guggenheim Retrospective in 1997 (so large that it filled the museum's midtown and SOHO locations), I was completely blown away.  It was then that I realized all the stuff that people were crowing about in the 90's (collaboration, performance, expanded painting, technology, mediated imagery, working outside of the rectangle, graffiti, symbolism, painting as language, politics, multiculturalism) had been part of his practice from the beginning.  And the "Erased deKooning Drawing" is still one of my favorite works of art of all time. 

No way to treat orphans....

There is pending congressional legislation that will remove significant copyright protection from all works of art if it is enacted.  The Orphan Works Act of 2008 makes it possible to declare a copyrighted work "orphaned" if an infringer says that he is unable to locate the author based on the infringer's idea of a reasonable search.  If a company wants to use your images, all they have to prove is that they used what they determined as reasonable methods to find you.  When they don't find you, they can use your images for whatever they want, without your approval or compensation.

The Illustrators Partnership of America has been at the forefront of opposing this legislation that gives away an artist's right to their own work.  They have made it very easy to contact your elected officials to stop this legislation.  

Take action:  Don't let congress orphan your work.

Magic carpet ride....

OK.  I think a sufficient amount of time has passed since the purchase of my Turkish carpet to begin to talk about what happened.

I had just come out of the Basilica Cistern.  I had gone there at the suggestion of my friend Cecilia because she said it was one of the things in Istanbul that had a great impact on her.  I have to say I feel the same way.  The cistern is so incredible (despite the music they play down there) that it is really like descending to another time, not just a different space.  I was trying to get my bearings and let my eyes adjust to the light when a tour guide started to talk to me.

He was handsome and charming and, like the majority of Turks, very friendly.  We chatted for a bit and I told him I was on an extended visit in Istanbul to look at art and design.  He mentioned that he worked at a store nearby and that he would be happy to show me some carpets and kilims for my research. It was early in the day, around 10:00 a.m.  I told him I was on my way to Topkapi Palace, but I would love to come by another time.  I gave him my card.  He said that he had his cards at the store and that it was on the way to the Palace, so I went with him to get his card.  I was not interested in buying a rug.

When we got to the store, there was a lot of talk in Turkish and the guide gave me his card.  He offered me a seat and introduced me to another gentleman named Hakim.  Hakim got me a glass of apple tea and the three of us started chatting about nothing really.  Then I noticed that the guide was gone, and Hakim and I were alone in the showroom.  Hakim spoke to one of the men in the store and suddenly rugs were being rolled out in front of me.  The most beautiful designs and colors and textures.  Hakim was really great at explaining the differences, how they are named for the region, why Turkish rugs are better (the double knot) and details about color and dyeing and all sorts of things.  It was really an education.  I was looking, but still I had no plans to but a rug.

More tea and more tea.  Hakim asked me which one I liked best and I told him there were so many that it was impossible to choose.  He told me he would make it easier for me.  He asked me which ones I did not like.  It did make it easier to eliminate some.  Hakim kept saying "Which is your champion?"  I was really enjoying myself looking and deciding which I liked. It finally got down to a really beautiful rug.  I told Hakim I was not interested in buying a rug, certainly not one for so much money.  He was very friendly and said "Didn't you come to Istanbul to see beautiful things?"  I agreed and he told me that this rug, which was from Cappadocia, he would sell me for half of the price that was on the tag.  I gasped and thought, well, that is a really great deal.  So we shook hands and I gave him my credit card and I thought that was that.

Now Turkey is often blocked by credit card companies.  I called my bank before my trip to let them know I was going to be in Istanbul for an extended stay.  Still, there had been some trouble with my bank with daily limits and such.  Also, I had only been in Istanbul for 2 days at this time.  So when one of the men told Hakim my card was declined, I really thought nothing of it.  "Please try again," I said.  "This has happened a couple of times."  

More tea.  And more Turkish conversation.  Hakim tried to call the number on my card but said he could not get through.  I offered to try but he said not to worry.  "Banks are a pain," he said.  He asked me if I could go to a bank machine and I said sure.  He had one of the employees walk me to a machine, but, because of my daily limit, I was unable to take out the entire amount.  He walked me back to the shop.

"Let's go up to the office," Hakim said.  I followed him.

From the colorful airy light of the showroom we went upstairs and around a few corners to the office, which was dark and low ceilinged but well appointed with a sitting area and a large office desk.  The lights were localized around the desk area.  One man in an Italian suit sat smoking on a sofa.  Another man with white hair and a knit sweater sat behind the desk.  Another large man with a doughy face in a suit was standing behind him.  Hakim offered me a seat at the desk with the Sweater Man.  He handed the Sweater Man my credit card and said something in Turkish.  The Sweater Man looked at me and started bending the card.  He picked up the phone and dialed the number on the back.

"How are you?" He asked.

"All right," I said.  "You?"

"Banks." He said.

"I don't know what the problem is,"  I said.

"We'll figure it out."

He dialed a few times and then put the phone down.  He looked at me, bending the card in his hands.  He said, "This card is bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"This is bullshit.  This is a bullshit number on this card.  How do you call a number like this?"

"What do you mean?"

"This B-A-N-K.  How do you dial that?"

"Use the key pad to spell out the word."  I showed him how.  He dialed it and held the phone to his ear.

"Do you want some more tea?"

"No."

"We have a bathroom."

"Thank you," I said.  "But no."

The Sweater Man laughed and handed me the phone.  I heard the recording from my bank asking to call back during normal business hours.  I had forgotten about the time difference.  It was about 4 a.m. in Boston.

It's hard to remember, but I think now is when I started to feel frightened.  Hakim was gone. The door was behind me and I was pretty sure it was locked.  The man on the sofa was staring at me and the Doughy Man was somewhere behind me.  The Sweater Man was glaring at me now.

I looked past him to the monitors on his desk which I had not noticed before.  It was closed circuit television - camera in various parts of the store, and on the street.

"There's a time difference," I said.  "There's no 24 hour service at my bank."

From behind me, the Doughy Man said something in Turkish.  He went to a phone and got out an olde time charge plate slider.  He called Visa and got the purchase approved the old fashioned way.  I surmised this from watching him take my credit card and slide it through the machine, writing an approval code on the sheet and giving it to the Sweater Man.

"It's all set.  We had to do two transactions to get it in right," the Sweater Man said. "My cousin," he said, indicating the Doughy Man, "he does a lot of business in America.  He knows how to get around all this."  I thanked the Doughy Man in Turkish.  He nodded.  The sweater man put the receipts and a small card on how to care for the rug in an envelope.

"The monitors," I said.  "You can see everything."

"You need to," the Sweater Man said.  He glared again. "People try to rob you sometimes, gypsies pretend to be customers."

"Gypsies?  Roma?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.  "You have to be sure."

Hakim reappeared and patted me on the back.  I almost jumped out of my skin when he touched me.  "It's all right," he said.  "Everything is ok.  Come and get your carpet."

In a stupor, I went down stairs with Hakim.  He packed up the rug and put it in a satchel with handles. He put the receipts inside and told me to carry it home in my luggage.  He shook my hand and thanked me for being the first sale of the day.  I stepped out into the cold air of the street.

Everyone tells me what they would have done.  They would have gotten up and left.  They would have told the guys to fuck off.  They would have done all sorts of things.  Maybe they would have.  I don't know.  I do know that everyone handles situations better than you after you have had to live through them.  A pleasant moment turned very ugly very quickly and I cannot explain how.  I was probably swindled and probably paid way more for my rug than it was worth.  Because I was alone in a foreign country, I didn't think I had any recourse.  I felt (feel) very stupid about the whole thing.  They were probably looking for American suckers on their closed circuit TV and were waiting for me the minute I came out of the Cisterns.  I was shaking all the way back to my hotel.  I completely forgot about my plans for the day.  I put the carpet in the wardrobe of my room and went to bed.  I didn't even want it anymore.

I had to go back the next day.  For reasons too complex to explain, the Doughy Man charged me in YTL instead of dollars, so I needed to pay the $60 difference.  I could have blown it off and kept my money, but I wanted to be ethical even if I felt like they weren't.  Hakim was very sweet and very kind and showed me more rugs and gave me more tea.   He told me about his favorite piece (the guy is holding it in the photo).  This is the rug in his office.  I told him about my website and showed him my paintings.  He was impressed, or at least he pretended to be.  He wanted me to buy a silk rug that was created as a dowry piece.  He asked me to come back tomorrow to have lunch at the store with him and his family.  I said I would.

I went back to my hotel.  I haven't returned to that carpet showroom.  When guys on the street say hello to me now, I smile and keep walking.  I wear my sunglasses all the time to avoid meeting their gaze.  When I leave the country, I will post the name of the place.

The artist Pippa Bacca was found dead outside of Istanbul a few weeks before I arrived.  She was trying to prove that trusting people was key to human understanding.

The Six-hour dinner party...

When I told my friends back home I was going to Turkey, I asked them if they knew anyone there. I was prepared to spend my time alone, but I thought it would be nice to have a contact in country.  Elise, who works for Skowhegan, put me in touch with here dear friend Alina, an artist and teacher here in Istanbul.  After many attempts to connect (many of which were frustrated by my not having a phone) we finally had tea at the Londra hotel.  She invited me to her place to have dinner with her partner Faruk and some of their friends.  I liked Alina immediately and told her I would love to come.

Alina and Faruk live in Beyoğlu not far from the Londra Hotel where I am staying.  Alina met me and we had a short (and BEAUTIFUL) walk to her flat.  We got there and Tom and Chris, their American friends were there.  Oliver, an ex-pat from Louisiana came as well as Ahmed, a colleague of Faruk's.  Faruk was working on dinner and had a smile for all of us.  It was a really fun time.  We ate an amazing meal and then had ice cream with maple syrup (who knew?).

Faruk works as a carpet dealer in the Grand Bazaar.  I think he may be the only scrupulous carpet dealer I have ever met.  He is not interested in haggling over prices and will tell you exactly what something costs without any crap.  I told him about my experience buying a carpet and his responses went from laughter ("You are what we call a very good customer.") to rage over the way I was treated.  (Dear reader, I will elaborate on my frightening experience buying a carpet later.  Suffice it to say I wish to GOD I had met Faruk earlier.)

It was one of those evenings where the conversation is rich and lively and fun and serious and difficult and easy all at the same time.  We talked about everything from masculinity in Turkish culture, the upcoming elections (Faruk thinks that John McCain is going to be the next "President of the World" and I am inclined to agree with him).  I thought Faruk's head was going to explode when I tried to explain American style racism.  And he had me laughing out loud so much that my head began to hurt.  The man can tell a story that is so funny and he can do it in two languages at the same time.

Tom and Chris have both been lovely.  They live in Brooklyn and visit Istanbul very often. They are big fans of Faruk and Alina.  Chris and Alina are going to work together on some design and fashion projects in Istanbul and the US.  The market for this is wide open here.  There are so many buildings being "rehabbed" in Istanbul that the need for competent structural and interior design is great.  Also, given Turkey's westward focus, modernist ideology is very much at the forefront of what is going on here for better or worse.  Alina also makes these incredible silkscreen prints onto t-shirts that will no doubt be walking down the streets of NY and Istanbul.

So we all talked and talked and then when I saw Ahmed's watch I saw the time was about 3:45 am.  I was shocked that we had been there for so long but it really was an incredible evening.  I made amazing friends.  Tonight (Friday) we are going to a party at Tom and Chris's before they leave for America on Sunday.  It should be a lot more fun.

Turkey doesn't have a non-smoking section....

Everybody smokes in Turkey, whether they want to or not.

I am not one of those reformed smokers who thinks everyone would be better off if they quit.  I do not see it as my mission to stop others from smoking.  Once I quit, I figured I no longer had a dog in that fight.  "Smoke all you want," is how I see it.  As long as I don't have to smoke, who cares what you do?

Here it is different.  If someone offers you a cigarette, or a narghile (water pipe) or a cigar, they are extending themselves to you in a really intimate way.  Smoking isn't a dirty habit here.  It is a way of exchanging confidences, of indicating that this is no longer a casual conversation we are having, we are now friends, conspirators, even lovers.  So you have to kind of take it seriously when someone offers you a smoke.  You have been provided an opportunity to come inside as it were, to be one of us.  It isn't really shameful here the way it is in the US.  

Plus you add to the fact that the coffee here is universally terrible.  I know, you think that the silk road and coffee exports coming through Turkey and Turkish coffee and all that hoo ha.  Let me tell you something, it's OVER.  When you order coffee here, your server responds with "Nescafe?"  That's right, Nescafe. Instant coffee. One would have hoped that instant had passed but not here.  If you order kahve, which would be Turkish Coffee, you would also be disappointed. Contemporary Turkish coffee is make in about 45 seconds using grounds, an espresso roast, hot water and a butane torch.  The stuff is very hot and very sweet and very strong, but it is not flavorful.  It certainly gets the job done, but it is more for effect than taste.  Turks don't really drink coffee.  They drink tea, and lots of it.  

Still, I have not had a puff of anything at all.  I have learned that the offer of a cigarette is a kindness here.  I explain my deficiencies in not being able to smoke.  I usually get a laugh.  "Then you should smoke," my new friend says.  "It will improve your health."

Sketches....

I have a sketchbook that I take with me everywhere.  I really pride myself on having a daily practice, but I gotta say I have not made a single drawing since I have been here.  I have been so completely overwhelmed visually that I can't even conceive of how to make a image right now.  I think I am intimidated by the glory all around me.  My friend Linda tells me that I have to let the experience sink in - that I should not be too hard on myself.  For a workaholic painter like myself, that is easier said than done.

What I have been doing diligently is making notes in my sketchbook.  Writing things down as they occur to me or so I do not forget them.  It has been a useful practice for me.  

I stress that I do have to start trying to draw while I am here.  I have taken a lot of photos (so many that I had to buy a portable hard drive to keep from crashing my Mac), but they are no substitute for the drawn experience.  The ability to translate what I am seeing to a painterly realm is only available through my eyes, not through a lens.  The lens is democratic - it includes everything - the eye does not. 

• The "Splendid Door" at Hagia Sophia is a character in its own right. I want to make a painting called "Boys at the Splendid Door."
  
• I understand the effect the bleached marbles of Turkey (Ephesus, Afrodisias, Pergamon) had on LeCorbusier (Chromophobia, chapter 2), but the fact that he found an absence of color is truly astounding. 
• The grid can be divided endlessly.
• Pattern works because you see the pattern before you see the individual elements that make it up.  This leads to hidden meaning in patterns that become clear through longer term investigations.
• Simple tessellation results in complex patterns.
• Reconsider blue (Aegean, Iznik, sea, sky, ocean, salt, heavy, hard, electric, air, invisible, protein, mavi, denim, headscarf, endless).
• Intersecting patterns look more complicated than they are.
• Iznik tile is impossible to replicate but I have to try.
• If a pattern has an effect on the viewer, does the viewer change because of the pattern?
• The amount of ornament is secondary to its absence.  (Palace vs. Mosque)
• Is ornament a sign of overindulgence?  Amazing design show at Istanbul Modern about this very issue.  Adolf Loos Ornament and Crime is noted and I haven't read that in years.  I don't even think I can remember reading it.  Did I read it?  Well, now I have to read it.
• If the grid can hold anything, what does it hold?  
• Can the grid hold anything? Does it have to hold anything?
• I want to paint the light from the chamber of relics at Topkapi.
• "The Arm of the Baptist" is a great title for a painting.
• I want to remember that a photograph is just an index.  I have no responsibility to the photograph.  I am responsible to a painting.
• The grid is the situation.
• Small things in a big space can be as awesome as the space itself.
• I want to make paintings of tourists looking at nothing.
• I want to make paintings.

No picnic this Labor Day....

Let me reiterate: cops are the same all over the world.  My friend and colleague, Noel Ignatiev says "All over the world cops beat up poor people; that is their job, and it has nothing to do with color."

I spent the majority of the day in my hotel room yesterday.  In every country that is not the United States, May Day is International Workers Day.  Here in Istanbul, there was an attempt to hold a rally in Taksim Square in honor of the union activists who were killed there in 1977.  Every year they try to do this and every year it is squashed by the police.  This year was no exception.

I went for a brief walk and was confronted by the image of amassed firepower across the street from my hotel.  Suddenly I understood why the cop was being so aggressive yesterday; he probably thought that I was some sort of agitator for the rally.  The rally was set for Taksim Square about a mile from my hotel, but the cops were EVERYWHERE.  They were decked out in full riot gear with shields.  I thought better of taking a walk and went back into the hotel.

Now to prevent people from getting to the rally, the Mayor of Istanbul effectively cut all transportation to and from Taksim Square.  That meant there was no way to get here, but really also no way to leave unless it was on foot.  And since many of the roads were blocked by the above referenced police, you could get to a point where you were allowed no further.  And there is no point trying to explain something to a teenager with an M16.  

So I sat in the lobby of the hotel and looked at the news and saw all those images that everyone else saw.  I am not remotely interested in seeing people squirted with fire hoses, so I did not go down there to take photos.  Also a foreigner in a situation like that runs the risk of being misunderstood by gesture or presence.  I am not a photojournalist and I am not a hero.  I did feel my heart break for the people as they were hosed down.  I wished I could do something.

The police presence was reduced in the evening and I had to get some dinner.  I went to a place for a kebab sandwich and saw the school buses that they used to round up the protesters.  Some of the people detained had been on the bus since the beginning of the day.  There were armed guards protecting the buses and the same massive police presence.  I ate really fast.

Today, May 2, it is a different story.  It is really as if May 1 did not happen and the city was not occupied for the entire day.  The Turkish people seem to have taken all of this in stride - something akin to the running of the bulls in Pamplona.  It happens every year, some people get hurt and then we move on.  

We moved Labor day from May to September in the US.  Most people don't connect this change with the Haymarket Massacre, the Wobblies or Eugene Debs.  We don't really think about solidarity with foreign workers or unions.  We take the right to assemble for granted (even when it is denied like at the Republican National Convention in NYC).   It really made me think about how precious it is to be able to walk down the street in solidarity with others.  All over the world, even at home, this is becoming a harder experience to have.

Arms and the man....

Let me say that first of all, cops are the same all over the world.

There are a lot of different people in Istanbul.  You hear a million languages when you walk down the street. 

 I am in Beyoğlu, not in the tourist area of Sultanahmet where all of the historical sites 

are.  People here refer to Sultanahmet as Old Istanbul.  So much of it is overrun with tour groups, huge air conditioned buses and people with the audio guides that it can be a little overwhelming.  But we are all here to see the same things, so I guess that makes it easier.  Sure I could be a snob and say I am an artist and I have a better view of things but who wants to hear that, in 30 different languages no less.

So let me get back to the cops, or the polis as they are known here.  Like the police at home they carry guns but unlike the police at home they carry assault weapons.  Out open.  In the streets.  It is very intimidating.  You add to the fact that there is a very close relationship between the police and the army - essentially, they are the same thing.  So they walk around like they own the place because they kind of do.  The army has taken over the country to restore democracy a couple of times.  You really don't want to mess with these guys.  So when they ask you a question, you answer.

So I got up pretty early yesterday with a bad case of shin splints from walking the entire city over.  I was a little occupied wondering if I had sold some paintings to give me some additional scratch for my trip, which I may have to cut short because of finances.  I also was having some buyer's remorse about a rug I had bought.  I thought I would go for a walk and clear my head a bit.  I got a coffee (Starbucks IS everywhere) and a simit from the seller on the street and walked to Taksim Square.  The photos show Taksim, the Opera House and the Monument to Ataturk.  This is where I had a seat and started to eat my breakfast.

These two cops come up to me and say hello, in Turkish and I answer in Turkish.  Then one demands to see my passport.  I tell him I left it at the hotel, I had just come out to get some breakfast.  He tells me I don't have a hotel.  I ask him what he means and he looks at my outfit and grunts at me.  Granted I am not at the height of fashion, but it is 8 a.m. I have my mouth full and he is asking me questions and I am covering my mouth so I don't spit food on him (and I SO desperately want to spit food on him) and he begins mocking my gesture.  So I say to him, "Look, my name is Professor Steve Locke, I'm eating breakfast, I left my passport in my room at the Grand Hotel de Londres." and I smile that grin that every black man learns when a white guy with a gun is giving him shit.  It worked of course.  It always does.  Then I went back to my hotel, changed, and got my passport and my faculty ID.  Of course I didn't see the cop again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah he's just doing his job and I should have had my passport and all that jazz.  All that is true but riddle me this: If he's just doing his job, why is he making fun of the way I talk?  Public servant or prick, you decide.

After this I was very happy about the rug I bought.  At least I wasn't frightening people with guns.

Cause I'm a wanderer....

This is the view crossing the Galata Bridge looking back at Sultanahment.  That is Aya Sofya on the right on the hill.

Today I walked for about 10 hours and I did not get tired until I put the key in the door of my room at the Grand Hotel de Londres.  It was amazing today.  I have never seen such a place and I have never ever seen such things.  You see these things in books, or in the collections of a museum, but to see them in context.  It completely boggled my mind.  I found it very hard to take photos today because I did not want to distance my self from what I was seeing.  I heard someone say, "Wow, that's a great photo," while he was looking at something.  I thought, does he even see it?  It is right in front of him. (In this case, the "it" is the mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel in the secondary dome of Aya Sofya.)  At that point I really tried not to think about documenting or preserving.  I just wanted to look with my eyes.

I developed this plan.  I would take the time to go through a situation twice. Once without taking my camera out and the second time I would allow myself to take as many photographs as I wanted.  

So many different things today.  The mosaics at Aya Sofya and the Kariye Museum were astounding in their visual power, even in their ruined state.  The massiveness of the Aya Sofya on the outside compared to the empty soaring space on the inside.  The building is like a huge balloon.  I will go back and see it again (and again).  You cannot imagine the airy feeling of the place.  And it is made of ROCKS; lots of them in the Byzantine fashion.  The tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent and the mosque that bears his name.  The courtyard of the Blue Mosque filled with people answering the call to prayer.  Eating on the street just like I do in New York because the food is so good and so cheap.  Tea everywhere and every language spoken all over the place.

I got very lost and I did not care.  I crossed from my neighborhood in Beyoğlu into what I thought was Sultanahmet and got promptly lost in Fatih.  So many full sized billboards of women in headscarves and fashionable clothing that covered their entire bodies.  It was amazing to go from that to the stylish and beautiful women in other parts of the city.  

Tomorrow I have no idea what is to come.  I am thinking of having a tour, but it was so much fun and thrilling to get lost here I may do it again tomorrow.  I think I will stay on this side of the Golden Horn tomorrow and see what my neighborhood has to offer.  Although, I do want to go see the Basilica Cistern tomorrow, since the Blue Mosque is closed.

Leaving the Hippodrome today, a carpet seller chatted me up.  I told him I am from America and he laughed and said that he could tell.  He wanted to know if this was my first time in Turkey and I told him yes it was but it won't be the last.  He said I had a very kind and happy face.  I thanked him and told him that while I would love to see the carpets he had, I unfortunately had no money.  "No money, no honey," he said.  And we laughed and parted.

I think this might explain the staring.  At dinner at an AMAZING kofte house a number of people where staring at me through the window.  The waiter even commented, "Do you know them?"  I told him no, but maybe they want to know me.  He laughed.  Living in America, I am always on my guard against people looking at me the wrong way.  Maybe now, far away from home, I can walk around with a smile on my face and people respond to it.  Go figure.

Troy...the book is a LOT better

Anything would be a let down after Epheseus, but man, Troy is really hard to take.  First off, there is a huge wooden horse inside of the entry gate to Troy.  It is filled with laughing school children running around it and climbing inside it.  Parents surround the thing to get a photo of their moppet inside the Trojan Horse.  If you were expecting something regal and solemn (like Epheseus) here you would be sorely disappointed.  It is a theme park grafted onto a major archeological site.  It does not sit will with the visitor at all.  The entry is like Homericland at Turkey Disney.  It is a strange thing.

The archeology of Troia is amazing.  There are at least nine cities on top of each other and each one is built on the remnants of the one before.  It is not easy to believe what you are seeing is important since most of it is dun colored stone.  But they do a good job of explaining what you are looking at and there are a lot of artist renderings of what the site looked like through the centuries.

Our tour ends tomorrow.  We were supposed to go to Gallipoli, but our time here coincides with Anzac Day, which is becoming a larger and larger show of Australian nationalism each year.  The hotel we were supposed to stay at is overbooked so we have ended up in a hotel 50 kilometers from the town of  Çanakkale.  We are supposed to leave here at 6 am to go back to Istanbul.

I have grown quite fond of my companions.  The children actually behaved themselves quite well overall.  It is hard because they are the only kids on the trip and their mother (who is strikingly beautiful, I forgot to mention) has her hands full with wrangling them.  She does a good job with them.  I forget sometimes how an education can be a hard thing for the teacher and the student.  As much as it hurts to be asked some questions, I know that it is better that they ask me than someone else.  They have a fierce intelligence these two kids.  They are fortunate to have the parents they have and the brains they have.  I hope they look after each other.

As much as I will miss them, I am looking forward to Istanbul alone.  I want to know about the city as much as I can.  I just want to look and look and look.  I find myself getting caught up in figuring out tours and all that stuff.  Tomorrow I am just going to get lost and see what I see.

My city of ruins....

Nothing prepares you for Epheseus.  

It really is a place that seethes with life.  Not just the thousands of camera-toting, sunblock-applying, child-chasing, photo-opping, cell phone-chatting humans around you.  You are really catapulted into the past.  You walk the same marble sidewalks as people thousands of years ago.  You are under the same hard cerulean sky.  Your eyes hurt from looking at so many beautiful things.  Every time you turn a corner something more incredible awaits you.  You think, "Well nothing can be better than this!" and then you turn the corner and see Trajan's Gate, or the Celsus Library, or the Agora Gate.  It is hard to believe that one can see so much and still remain standing.

Turkey is essentially an open air museum of culture from major periods.  It's truly astounding to be here and to see these things.  The thing of it is that there is a strong presence of the Republic here.  You go into Epheseus and the two things that greet you are the Turkish flag and a picture of Ataturk.  You realize that you are in an Islamic country (secular, true, but you do hear that call to prayer, don't you?), that is the custodian of places sacred to the Christian, Pagan and Antique.  The Turks are clear on this: every sign says that this place is being maintained by the Republic.  It is a really interesting way to diminish the power of what you are seeing.  Even our tour guide sort of made fun of us for coming all this way to see stones.  I said to him, "Omer of course you must think it is beautiful."  He smiled and said that they are just stones but "these stones, unlike the ones we will leave, tell of the history, the personality and the mythology of a people."  I wonder what people will think of the ruins of the Trump Taj Mahal?

We saw the House of the Virgin Mary today.  Strange being there.  I went through quickly and was going to make my way back to the bus.  Then I started to think about my Mother and how she would have loved to see the house and how happy it would have made her.  So I went back and got in line to see it again.  I was going to light a candle for her, but I felt very awkward and stupid buying one, as if I was trying to look like a pilgrim.  There was a Christian Turkish woman and her children and she was explaining things.  I sat in a chair in back on one side of the door.  On the other side was a friar (a Franciscan I think from the robe).  He looked at me and nodded and I sat on the straw seat of the chair.

I miss my mother desperately.  I wish I could have brought her with me on this trip instead of bringing her memory and half of her DNA.  I tried to say a prayer, but it all felt rote and stupid, like I was trying to prove that I could.  So I just sat there and thought about my Mother in the house of Jesus's mother and started to cry a little.  It never really leaves you, you know.  It just gets smaller and more intense, like a mushroom cloud inside of that tiny silver ball.  She would have really loved being there so it was the least I could do to sit there and be a little uncomfortable and miss her with my whole heart. 

I thought Aphrodite was a goddess of love....

Well, things came to a head between the Indians and the Italians today. 

One of the things that happens on these tours is that you go to a site (in this case, today it was Pamukkale, Hieropolis and Aphrodisias) and then you get driven to a "special presentation" where you are offered high quality goods at a reduced price.  I am not certain if this is true or not, but the stuff they are selling sure looks good.  I am also sure that the tour company probably has some sort of financial relationship with the places we are stopping.  You can see busloads of tourists going in and out of these places, led from their busses like some sort or poorly dressed multilingual marching band.

Keep in mind that we are near the Aegean Sea.  It is hot and close here.

After the ruins of Roman cities and the AMAZING travertine landscape (click the slideshow to see the pictures of the landscape) we were on the bus to a leather shop.  Turkey is known for its leather goods from lambskin and they really were lovely. They had a fashion show (music:  Remixes of "What a Feeling" and a few heavy bass Turkish pop songs) and the models were very professional stunningly beautiful.  Tall and olive skinned and very chiseled.  They really were lovely to watch.  I did notice that we were locked in the room for the fashion show and the only way out was to go through the store.

Also, keep in mind that I am traveling with people who have an advanced sense of entitlement.

In the shop and plied with the apple tea that is ubiquitous here, we got down to shopping.  I tried on some jackets and became convinced that I really need to do something about my weight starting now.  Nothing worse than a chubby guy in lambskin, Mother used to warn.  The Indian contingent was not buying the prices convinced that they could do better in Dehli.  The Italians were shopping like mad and having a lovely time.  The minute the Italians began buying the music in the store changed to Andrea Boccelli.  They really know how to please an audience.

In addition, keep in mind that these are people who will complain about a $2 bottle of water but will drop hundreds of Euros on a leather jacket.

We ended up waiting over a half an hour for the Italians to finish and that is when the two Indian men went mad.  They really got in Omer's face (the tour guide, not the driver) about it and started yelling at the Italians to get in the bus.  The Italians did there best "no speakeh anglaise" but everyone knows that they do so it was not playing in Bangalore at all.  Once a few of the Italian women sat down for coffee it was ON.  The older Indian gentlemen started yelling and saying "Why do they get to sit when me and my family are rushed back to a hot bus?"  

The Canadian behind me on the bus took odds on the Italians.  I took the Indians because they looked scrappy.  I think they wanted it more.

I had a ball really.

One thing I was not ready for here was the staring.  It is not very common to see American Black people in parts of the country and people have no qualms about staring.  It is really discomforting.  I was sort of ready to disappear here, to fade into the scenery as it were but that is so not happening.  The Turks are kinds and lovely people, don't get me wrong.  The minute I tell them I  am from Boston their eyes light up and they get very excited.  The staring though, it really freaks me out.

Today at lunch I had to tell the little boy that there are a whole bunch of things that are happening in the world of the adults that do not involve or concern him and that when he was a little older, he would see that the world does not revolve around him.  I think this was news to him.  It was certainly a revelation to his family.

No one asked me why I am single today.

It's a small world...

The driver of our tour bus (Omer, not to be confused with Omer, our tour guide) is one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen.  I don't know what he is doing driving a bus of tourists around Turkey.  He should be a movie star. He smokes, like most Turks and I guess he doesn't want anyone to know. He is hiding his cigarette behind his back.

I want to go on record as saying I will never do another group tour like this again.  If one more person asks me why I haven't met the right girl I really may lose my mind.  It's not like home where I can just tell someone I'm a fag and be done with it.  These people exist on a very delicate surface called "travel," so nothing real is discussed.  The other day everyone was talking about the wonder of grandparents and the love of children.  I wanted to set myself on fire.  I kept praying that no one would ask me about my family.  I didn't think I wanted to be that guy who tells the truth at a cocktail party when everyone has agreed to lie to each other.  I hate being that guy.

Because children are the most important people in the world, my group has indulged the two children in our group.  They were playing a game on the bus (during our 7 hour drive from Ürgüp to Pamukkale) that spewed the song "It's a Small World" all over the bus.  There was no escaping it, so I put on my noise canceling Skullcandy headphones and listened to Branca Parlic and the Cowboy Junkies first album.  It matched the Turkish landscape perfectly and gave me a reprieve from the family hour on the bus.

Here are some questions that have come up:

Do you have grandchildren?

Are you married?  Why not?

Don't you agree with the church that Hillary Clinton would be a terrible President?

Why is your hair like that?

Were YOU a slave?

Did you hear the one about the Polish guy who wanted a burial at sea?

Really, you cannot make this shit up. I am traveling with 8 people from India (two older couples and a family of four) a couple from north of Toronto, a really delightful couple from Australia (she's a teacher, go figure) and two women who are traveling together; one from Santa Fe and the other Puerto Rico.  These are the people on the english speaking tour.  The rest of the bus is about 16 people from Italy.  We are in the back with our guide Omer, who has really been a love.  When the polish joke was told, he quickly stood up and talked about how men along the Black Sea area were thought to have little intelligence and were often mocked in jokes.  He said that the people along the Black Sea say that "We are so smart that we make up those jokes about ourselves."  He really did cool things down a bit.

The drive today was very long,   The country is beautiful.  The sights are truly breathtaking.  At a caravanserai, we stopped for a bite to eat.  The building was incredible and housed an open and covered market with a mosque on the inside.  Then we went to Konya to see the museum dedicated to the Mevlana, the founder of the Whirling Dervishes.  We know him in the west as the Sufic poet Rumi.  It was really an amazing place to visit.  No photos were allowed in the museum.  There is an enormous green cone over the center of the building under which is Rumi's tomb.  The calligraphic carvings are exquisite and the place was packed with people who were praying, not just sightseeing.  I was very captivated.  So much so in fact that the tour guide had to come and collect me when everyone was already on the bus.  Again, I hate being that guy.

Tomorrow is hiking in the travertines and looking at the natural rock basin carved by the springs at Pammukale, then Roman ruins at Afrodisias and then on to Ephesus.  

The little girl asked me if I knew Hilary Duff today.    

Balloon inflation, Cappadocia

Anatolian Balloons took a group of us on a tour of the valley via hot air balloon.  It was really an incredible experience to see the caves and mountains of Cappadocia from the air.  It was the most comfortable air trip I have ever experienced, including the landing.  Afterwards, we got flying certificates and the men from the company gave us a toast with champagne or juice.  The video is the crew inflating be balloons while we are waiting for a ride.  

P.S.  After admiring the shirts of the crew, one of them gave me the shirt he was wearing.

Dust in the Wind....

Here I am in the lobby of the Perissia Hotel in the Cappadocia Region of Turkey where the lounge entertainment is a young Turkish Man singing with an acoustic guitar.  He just finished a version of Kansas's classic and a significant number of the multinational crowd joined in with him - some in earnest and some in what I can only guess is high school reverie.  It's great to know that culture travels.  All of the culture, 70's anthem rock included.

I was in Ankara yesterday, on a group tour.  The first place we went was Anitkabir, the mausoleum to Ataturk, the man responsible for what Modern Turkey is.  (His image is in every place we go, humble or extravagant.)  It is an incredible place, over 200 acres dedicated to a single man.  (I just want you to know, that the guitarist is going into the Eagles HOTEL CALIFORNIA right now, completely without irony.)  It is a masterpiece of modernism, elegant, simple, severe and challenging.  It is said that a modern man should have a modern monument.  He got it all right.  The wall carvings of workers are clearly influenced by Soviet posters and the ornament is elaborate on the inside but is completely subordinate to the rectangle.  It is more a temple than a palace and like most temples you want to kneel the minute you come in.

I have noticed this a lot in Turkey and I am very glad that my friend Daniel Bozhkov recommended this country when I was writing the grant to the ART MATTERS Foundation.  The country is very focused on the future in a way I have not experienced.  The tropes of Modernism are all over the place here.  The gridded streets, the apartment buildings in the International Style, the obsession with technology all abound.  But these ideas are never really assimiliated.  For example, you will see a house that looks like something Le Corbusier himself built, but there will be the stuff of life all over the building completely destroying the Modernism form.  Satellite dishes, laundry rigging, abandoned furniture. barbecue grilles and rugs of every hue become the ornament of these buildings.  It is as if what is inside of the elegant box, the evidence of human activity, is forcing itself out of the architecture.  Even the signs for businesses add a garish vitality to the boxes on which they rest.  The failure of the modern ideal is all over the place.

That is not to say that it is not beautiful.  Quite the contrary.  Plus the people are lovely and very kind and thrilled to hear about Boston.  (To hear a Turk try to say "Parking the car in Harvard yard is really an amazing thing.)  They are very proud of their country and its achievements and really believe in the future, in things getting better, in the promise of Modern living.  This synthesis of modern austerity and Turkish ornamentalism has bred some amazing visual moments.

After Ankara we drove to Cappadocia, important for its connection to early Christian communities.  St. Paul began his missionary work here and legends of him abound.  Seeing all of the rock churches and catacombs where Christian his from their Ottoman and Roman oppressors was sublime.  You can see evidence of the very end of the Byzantine kingdom and the birth of the Turkish nation in Anatolia.  It is all over the travertine stone and the volcanic fields of wind and water shaped tufa that create a landscape out of Jules Verne.

Turkish turquoise, frescos from the Byzantine era, natural and man-made architecture side-by-side, oppression and salvation, catacombs and carpets and souvenirs everywhere.  It has been uncanny.  I feel at home and completely out of the world.  It's incredible.

Sometimes, there's God, so quickly....

Blanche DuBois certainly knew what she was talking about.

First of all let me say if you are staying at a hotel in the Notting Hill section of London, DO NOT LEAVE ON A SATURDAY MORNING!  The world and its wife comes to an open air market on that day.  Antiques dealers and pretend antiques dealers and people selling t-shirts that say "Don't Panic! I'm Islamic" are all over the place.  Walking down the street was tough. Walking down the street with luggage was a nightmare.  The next time I will stay over Saturday.  Then I can enjoy being a part of that press of humanity.

So I arrived in Istanbul a little bit ago.  It is a little after midnight.  I am exhausted and I think I got taken at the airport by a taxi company.  I was offered a ride and then told it was going to cost 100YTL for the service (this is about $80).  I let is slide because I was so tired.

I have to be up at 5 to fly to Ankara to begin my tour.  But even with the exhaustion nothing can compare to seeing Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque at night glittering in the hard cool air.

The Architect of Dreams

Peter Doig. Peter Doig.  OH MY GOD! Peter Doig. 

The show at Tate Britain was amazing.  I really have a hard time believing that one person has the abilities that Doig has with a brush.  He does things in painting that serve the image and frustrate it at the same time, allowing you the pure joy of looking at a painted surface.  The paintings are beautiful, tactile, haptic, and strange.  At the same time, they have the quality of dreams; that specificity that an image has when you are between being awake and being asleep.  Something concrete collides with something inchoate.  The connection between the two opens up a space of possibility and excitement.  This is beyond some of the silly notions that people have about abstraction and realism.  ALL PAINTING IS ABSTRACT.  What Doig does is work with illusion and substance and surface.  He is really making paintings on the edge of what painting can be.  All of this without compromising a sense of connection to a place, be it Canada or Trinidad.

The other thing I love is his complete irresponsibility in the use of photographs.  Sure he gets ideas from them, but he is perfectly free to invent and redeploy the images as he sees fit.  Too many artists get so caught up in what a photo is that they just end up reproducing a reproduction of reality, as if that is enough of a new conceptual trope to sustain the work (Ever hear of Warhol, Richter?).  Rudolf Stengel's paintings as awesome as they are fall into this trap.  "WOW!  It looks just like a photograph!"  In 2008 is that enough?  Is that even a compliment?

Doig uses photography as drawing material.  He translates the photograph through his hand.  This is part of what makes his work so amazing - his alteration of the source material and commitment to drawing through an idea. The photo is a schema or a plan, not a goal. 

I have to add to all of this that he is quite simply one of the most beautiful men I have ever laid eyes on.  The video they showed at the exhibition reminded me of his soft spoken confidence and seriousness about his practice.  It also showed the sparkle of a jester in his eyes.  It brought back the generosity and openness of his Skowhegan lecture last year.

I hope he keeps painting for a long long time.  As long as this guy is working no one needs to worry about the state of the art.

Why hats are popular in Trafalgar Square

You know, I like animals as much as anybody, probably more.  But I cannot stand pigeons.  It has a lot to do with living through the first part of the AIDS epidemic.  There is this parasite that causes an infection called toxoplasmosis that killed a lot of PWAs in the 80's and 90's.  There is a moment in the AIDS chronicle AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, where a young doctor finds a sheep farmer who has some experience with toxoplasmosis.  You see, this was an illness, carried by pigeons and cats in their excrement, so the young doctor was thrilled to find someone who dealt with it on a regular basis.  He asked the sheep farmer what one does with the sheep who are infected with the parasite.  "We shoot them," he said.  

That is why I don't like pigeons.

But, in Trafalgar Square, in almost every language spoken on the planet (I think they missed Latin and Esperantu), it asks you not to feed the pigeons.  It's pretty clear and posted everywhere. And yet all over the Square there are morons giving food to these carrion animals. I don't really understand it.  Are these people thinking it is all right for me to feed them and no one else?  Do they think they are invisible and no one sees them doing it?  Do they not see the CURTAINS OF PIGEON SHIT COATING THE SQUARE?  Honestly, I don't know what to say about this.  I am glad they found a treatment for toxoplasmosis.

I went to the National Gallery and saw so many things that I had only seen in books.  I came very close to  succumbing to Stendhal Syndrome from looking at too many incredible moments of art.  Carravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, Piero della Francesca's Nativity, Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding, Rembrandt's Final Self portrait and Balthazar's Feast, and Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks.  All of that in one day.  Plus the Vermeers, the Rokeby Venus, Titians, Raphaels, RUBENS!  It was an incredible day.  I started getting back spasms from looking.  There was nothing to prepare me for what it was like to be in the room with these paintings that I had seen only in reproduction.  The copies are NOTHING compared to the real things, man.  It was an exhausting day, but I saw some amazing things.  Seeing some of the Degas made me reconsider him.  To see Rembrandt's change in paint handling over THIRTY YEARS!  I can see why so many people come to London to study.  There are so many masterpieces in the National Gallery.  Painters I love like Parmigianino and Bronzino are in the collection.  I could live in that museum and still not see enough.

Michael took me to his place in Brixton (I know what you've heard and it is a very nice neighborhood) and I watched a bad BBC quiz show and fell asleep for a bit.  We went to Brick Lane for dinner and hanging out.  Part of the toxoplasmosis rant had to do with Michael telling about his partner who died.  So many people are gone and it is hard to get your brain around it at times.  

There's no place like LONDON....

Well, now I know why Sweeney Todd cut so many throats....

I'm kidding.  Really, I am loving London.  First off, I have never been here.  There are over 300 million people in England and I think I rode on the Underground with all of them today.  I was not prepared for the sheer press of people that you can get caught in here.  Everyone is on their way some where and I have heard so many different languages spoken it boggled my mind.  I had a great moment when a couple of people wanted to interview me about my feelings on the National Health Service.  I had to tell them I was not British, so my opinion didn't really count.  I guess I look British.

I know this blog is about Istanbul and believe me I am very nervous and excited to go.  But since it is a long trip and I have the time, I thought I would spend a few days in London coming and going.  First because some of the greatest art in the world is here and also because my greatest friend is here, Michael Mullen.

I want to say something about the way the English speak and what it does to you.  First off, they are convinced that they speak the right way (it is called "English") so when you are over here and you are speaking it, you are saying everything wrong.  Think of the way you say "Worcester," or "Holyoke."  Now the way you feel about people outside of Massachusetts pronouncing those words incorrectly is they way the English feel about you and the entire language.  You can't compete with it, so you have to start pronouncing things the way they do.  This accounts for what people think is Madonna being affected with a fake British accent.  If she doesn't talk that way, no one here will understand her.  They look at you like you are a freak if you don't talk like them.  It really forces you to assimilate.

(Note: The above does not allow ANYONE in the Americas to say things like "Happy Christmas."  Now THAT is an affectation.  It is positively sick making and should be stopped. )

We went to Tate Modern today and saw the permanent collection and an amazing Juan Muñoz retrospective.  I can only imagine the work he still had in him when he died.  It was a haunting and beautiful show.  We just missed the Doris Salcedo installation in the Turbine Hall.  Tate Modern really is an incredible building.  It was an old powerstation that got repurposed into the most incredible museum.  We also went to the National Portrait Gallery (Sir Thomas Lawrence... so GOOD!  Who knew?) and tomorrow we are going to Tate Britain to see the amazing Peter Doig's exhibition.  

Being away...

A lot of things come to light when you are away from home.  Don't get me wrong.  I am not saying "I am on vacation and things are GREAT!"  I am talking about discovering something about how I am based on being in a different place, a different location, a different light.  I am making different paintings because the light of Savannah is different than that of Boston or of Central Maine.  That sort of goes without saying.  What I am getting at is this trip to Savannah has put some things in plain view.  Things I try hard not to think about.

First of all, I am a very solitary person and it has never really bothered me until I came here.  For the first time in a very long time, I am aware of how very lonely I am and how unconnected I feel at times.  I have no family to share this experience with, there is no one to call at home, there is no one to check on me and no one for me to check one.  In some ways, it gives me a tremendous amount of freedom, but in other ways it leads to feeling very unmoored.  It becomes clear when I see something or experience something and I want to share it with someone I know and who knows me.

I have friends.  That is not the issue and I share my experiences and feelings and adventures with them.  It goes deeper than that.  My Mother remembered a time before I could remember.  She saw me through many different ways of being and to be able to share this experience (and the emergence of a career after a lot of hard work) would be something.  It would make her very proud and happy and I would have the satisfaction of watching her investment in me pay off.  If I was married, I am sure my husband would feel the same way.  If I had children, they would be proud of their dad.  My friends are happy for me and I know that they love me.  I don't like to think about this at all, but I miss having a family.  It took leaving Massachusetts to realize what I don't have and I don't really have that sort of group of relatives that are in your corner.  Other people have their own families.  Mine is damaged, fractured, explosive and wounded.  I cannot expect that kind of support from them.  

When I was in High School we had to read a book by Chaim Potok called My Name is Asher Lev.  It is a story about an Hasidic Jew who becomes a painter on the cutting edge of contemporary art.  In the book, Asher has to reconcile his faith, his family, and his responsibility to his art work.  On the one side is his father, and on the other is Jacob Kahn, his teacher.  Asher talks about the loneliness that is living the life of an artist.  I sort of understand this now.  

The loneliness of the artist is not an abstract thing.  It really is the condition of making art.  The solitude that I require to make work is not something I would (or could) give up.  What a tremendous gift it is to have this time and this place to make the work.  I am a very fortunate man.  In the heart of all this, though, I am faced with the way I have structured my life to make my work.  I would not change the decisions I've made (to be single, to be childless, to teach, to commit to artmaking as a central fact of my life)  for anything because I truly love this life. However, being here reinforces how much of my life I have done alone.  

Thursday's Lecture

Wall Drawing Number 1

Photobucket Album

Wall work

My studio here at SCAD has a wall that is about 22 feet long.  It is great inside the studio and I have plenty of room to work.  The wall on the outside of the studio is blank, painted with the ubiquitous gloss white paint that I guess art schools everywhere use.  I am confronted by this wall (what I guess Melville would call the "whiteness of the whale") each time I go into my studio.  I felt like it was confronting me to do something with it.  In his essay "Whitescapes" in his book, Chromophobia, the artist David Batchelor talks about a kind of whiteness that is accusatory.  This has been on my mind as I pass this wall.

I've decided to use this wall as a site for drawing.

I am going to make some drawing installations on this wall, short-term projects of a week or so. My goal here is to expand my practice to include works that are specific to a location and have a limited means of execution.  I also want them to have as their main focus the formal essentials of two dimensional art.  I am not interested in making sculpture, but rather I am interested in the consequence of a mark on a surface, the evidence of the tool being used, and the duration of a mark in relation to a body.

Miwon Kwon's lecture on Felix Gonzales-Torres has really stayed with me.  Specifically the way Felix's work comes into being based on the certificates of authenticity and how the transmission of the certificate allows for the manifestation of the work.  Since these wall drawings are specific to the wall outside of my studio, it might be necessary to document them in writing in addition to photographing them.  I am not certain if these drawings can be done anywhere, but if someone wants me to recreate one how do I do it? Can I make the flexibility of location a part of the work?  Do I have to be there to install it?  All of those questions that Dr. Kwon posed in her lecture interest me a great deal.  

New Work...

I have been thinking a lot and drawing a lot this past few days.  The thing that has occupied me for a while has been this idea of ecstasy.  Bernini addresses it in his sculpture of St. Theresa, but I have been wondering about it in my own work.

At this stage of my life, I am barely a Christian.  I do have a long personal history as a Catholic so I do have access to ideas and models of trasformation, the miraculous and so forth.  I can call to mind many stories of the lives of the saints, for example.  But in my practice these have not been helpful in determining aesthetic frameworks for this project. 

I remember seeing a movie when I was a kid about the Rapture.  Essentially, this kid and his mom had a fight and she sent him to the store.  While he is there, the Rapture happens, when the faithful are taken bodily from the earth.  There is a terrifying, slow motion bottle of milk falling and smashing on the floor.  The holder had been "raptured" and there was only a pile of clothes where she had stood.  The kid rushes home and finds a pile of clothes in the kitchen where his mom used to be. Needless to say, this scared the shit out of me.  

I have been thinking a lot about that while in Savannah.  The possibility of being taken away in religious ecstasy.  Can that happen now?  What does it look like?  And really, since I am gay and an abomination in a cosmology that contains the Rapture, I know I will be "left behind." Who gets to go?  Who has to stay?  And since the sinners create the opportunities for the saints, is there a way that I am helping the faithful get to Heaven?  What sort of service can I provide for the faithful?  Similar to the service gay men provided to people of faith like Ted Haggard. (FYI if you see the movie Jesus Camp, there is a scene of Pastor Ted exhorting the children to hate gays.  It's edifying.)

As I keep making these drawings it is becoming clearer to me. 

Texts

For those of you interested, here are the texts I am using for my Visiting Artist Seminar Classes.  Many of them can be found in the MassArt Library, and also the articles are available on the JSTOR database.

REQUIRED TEXTS
James Elkins WHAT PAINTING IS
Mira Schor WET: On Painting, Feminism and Art Culture
David Batchelor CHROMOPHOBIA

REQUIRED ESSAYS

W.E.B. DuBois "Of Our Spiritual Strivings"  from THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
Cornell West "The New Cultural Politics of Difference" from OUT THERE: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures
Walter Benjamin THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
Susan Buck-Morss AESTHETICS AND ANAESTHETICS: Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered
Sol LeWitt SENTENCES ON CONCEPTUAL ART & PARAGRAPHS ON CONCEPTUAL ART

RECOMMENDED
Gerhard Richter ATLAS
Charlotte Mullins PAINTING PEOPLE: Figure Painting Today
Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz THEORIES AND DOCUMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Agnes Martin WRITINGS
VITAMIN P: New Perspectives in Painting
VITAMIN D: New Perspectives in Drawing

Meeting people....

I've met a lot of people this week. I really think I may have met too many people. I am really exhausted.

The first week of classes is over and it was really great. I have 2 fine cohorts of students and they are really excited about getting to work. The rosters and working with the Registrar has been difficult, but I am hoping the sailing is a lot smoother here on out.

The high point of the week, besides the teaching, setting up my studio, and meeting Hung Liu, an amazing artist from China, was the Visiting Artist Lecture from Steven Yazzie. I met Steven at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture when he was a Participant in 2006. The work he created there became a large scale, multi-media project called Drawing and Driving. He showed this work and all it its various permutations and also showed work he is making with a collaborative of artists called Postcommodity. It was a really far reaching presentation and he talked very generously about his practice and how he allows his work to grow out of itself. He is a very exciting artist to keep an eye on.

After Steven's lecture, we went to dinner at a restaurant called local11ten, where all the the food on the menu was locally grown. It made me think of Sarah Beth, she would have loved to see a fine dining establishment that was committed to the local environment and area growers. Plus the food was amazing. Steven, and I got to talk and I also got to speak at length with the amazing Hung Liu. Her show is at SCAD right now and there was a very large speaking event for her the same night as Steven's. I wish that I could have heard her speak as well. Since she grew up in Communist China and I grew up in a leftist family, we had a great time singing old party songs and talking about Paul Robeson. Her exhibition at SCAD is called Memorial Grounds. You can see images of her work at her website.

We also had a sort of pep rally/faculty meeting this morning for the entire faculty. SCAD is essentially staffed by adjuncts at the Savannah campus, so this means that there are a huge number of people teaching here, just like MassArt. At this all faculty meeting, we had a speaker named Peggy Maki, an Education Consultant and Assessment Editor who talked to us about how to assess students and how to figure out how they are doing in class. I have to tell you, I was so glad that I knew about the Studio Habits of Mind because everything this woman was saying was an affront to what I know about making and teaching art. She was so focused on rhetoric and rubrics that she lost sight of what and how one learns in the making. It was so results oriented that she never saw what artists learn from error or mistakes. Lastly, it was so concerned with metric evaluation that it did not move the student from problem solving to problem creating. You can bet that as soon as the presentation was over, I gave her my card with the name of Lois's book on the back. I have to order another copy of the book from Amazon. I gave my copy away.