Entry - 5.9.20

I realized recently that most young people today may have no idea that Pablo Picasso's Guernica resided in the United States for many years, hung, in fact, in New York's Museum of Modern Art for over 40 years from 1939 to 1981. I saw the painting many times during the early years of my art education. MoMA was much smaller and intimate back then, the exhibition space more traditional, and I loved visiting the museum. By the way, I hate their current lodgings, renovated multiple times until now it reminds me of an airport terminal or a corporate conference space. I hate the ever-present crowds, composed mostly of individuals who have no interest in art, and I hate the exorbitant entry fees the museum charges. The environment sort of disgusts me. The place reeks of money and power. And I only go there, at this point, if there is a show I absolutely have to see.

I may have been a bit delusional, but, back in the late 70's / early 80's, I felt there was still something vaguely subversive about modern art, that it wasn't quite sanctioned by society in general. Informing your old Aunt Tess at the family's Thanksgiving dinner table that you painted abstractly might garner the same response that you would receive today if you announced over the stuffing and corn casserole that you had gotten a nipple piercing. Of course, there was an ever-expanding educated elite that embraced the new art, but your average truck driver or cocktail waitress had no patience with the childish scribblings of a handful of talentless madmen. Modern Art was nonsense, and it pissed people off. So visiting MoMA always made me feel pretty good, like I was in on a secret that others didn't know about. I had some favorite paintings that I stopped by to study on every visit like old friends that I hadn't seen in a while, taking great pleasure in renewing our acquaintance. There were van Gogh's The Starry Night and Kirchner's Street, Dresden and Boccioni's The City Rises. If my memory serves me correctly, toward the end of your passage through the museum, there was a room which solely housed Picasso's Guernica and a number of preliminary studies for the painting. I always took a good number of minutes to examine the painting. Though it's not my favorite Picasso, I loved the painting for its startling invention and robust execution. It's truly an amazing work of art. But my fascination with the painting had little to do with its subject matter. My experience was almost exclusively aesthetic.

Pablo Picasso - Guernica - Oil on Canvas - 1937

First, permit me to provide a little history. In the late 1930's, Spain was in the midst of a civil war which pitted Republicans, defending representational government, against the Fascists led by dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Franco wished to crush the opposition by decimating the Basque city of Guernica, considered a bastion of Republican resistance, and Adolf Hitler was looking for an opportunity to test the effectiveness of aerial bombardment on urban centers. So on April 26, 1937, for a period of four hours, Germany's Condor Legion bombed Guernica, a city mostly devoid of combatants at that time, leaving it populated by women, children and the elderly. The city was leveled.

Picasso was approached by the Republicans who hoped that he would document the assault in a mural which would be displayed at the 1937 Paris World's Fair. Picasso accepted the commission and executed an 11.5” X 25.5” mural in house paints on canvas. The painting documents the suffering of humans and animals presented in a Synthetic Cubist idiom. The mural was intended to bring to the world's attention the atrocities and suffering endured by the Republicans at the hands of the ruthless Fascists, and, hopefully, sway the public's perception of the conflict to such an extent that governments would put pressure on the Fascists or even intercede in the dispute. After being displayed in the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair, Guernica toured Europe throughout early 1938 before being shipped to the United States where it was used to raise donations to aid Spanish refugees.

Let's stop for a moment to consider this. The Republicans, seeking to expose the atrocities committed by Franco's forces, did not turn to documentary photography and film to deliver their message to the world; they turned to art. And the artist they selected to deliver that message was not a Realist or a Propagandist or a Satirist; no, they chose Picasso, an avant-garde modernist known for painting fragmented and distorted images of old men smoking pipes, musicians, nymphs accosted by lascivious satyrs and toreadors in arenas. Often Picasso's Cubist translations of form were so extreme as to render his subject matter almost unrecognizable. Clearly, the Republicans believed in the power of art and were willing to employ its most contemporary idiom to communicate with the people. Whether true or not, they must have felt that the public was aware of and focused on developments in the art world, that Picasso's interpretation of Guernica's violation would create a sensation.

Guernica toured the United States throughout 1939 and 1940. By the end of 1940, France had fallen to Germany and Franco had defeated the Republicans, and Picasso entrusted the mural to the Museum of Modern Art in New York with instructions that the painting should not be returned to Spain until freedom and democracy were reestablished there.

Guernica continued to have an impact, touring in the US, South America and Europe after the end of World War II. Eventually, the painting resided primarily in New York. During the Vietnam War, protesters occupied the Guernica room at MoMA several times, and after the My Lai massacre the painting was vandalized in protest. (Fortunately, it was easily restored.) Starting in 1968, Franco repeatedly requested that the mural be returned to Spain, but MoMA refused, stating that the museum had to honor Picasso's instructions. I'm not sure what Franco would have done with Guernica had it been turned over to him. Display it? Hide it away? Destroy it? Who knows? After Franco's death, Spain once again requested the return of Guernica, and initially MoMA was inclined to refuse on the grounds that the monarchy subsequently established in Spain was not a “democratic” institution; but ultimately the museum was obliged to surrender the mural.

That's quite a history for a single work of art. Guernica has traveled the world, challenged dictators, impacted on international relations and galvanized a generation of antiwar protesters. For an artwork to assert such a powerful influence on society is pretty rare but not unique.

Between 1810 and 1820, Francisco Goya executed a series of 82 aquatint prints which documented the Peninsula War of 1808 to 1814, a conflict which resulted from a popular insurrection by the Spanish people against Napoleon's occupation of their nation. The series, now known as The Disasters of War, provides an unflinching glimpse at the results of that conflict, a conflict Goya witnessed firsthand during his travels in Spain. There are no heroics portrayed here, no glorious deeds to be celebrated. Goya only presents the barbarity and suffering that resulted from a protracted guerrilla war that offered no resolution.

Francisco Goya - Bury Them and Be Quiet - Etching - 1810 to 20

Francisco Goya - Great Deeds Against the Dead - Etching - 1810 to 20

Francisco Goya - Por Que? - Etching - 1810 to 20

Francisco Goya - With or Without Reason - Etching - 1810 to 20

Francisco Goya - This Is Bad - Etching - 1810 to 20

Francisco Goya - This is Worse - Etching - 1810 to 20

It's difficult to determine Goya's intention in executing this series of prints. Clearly, he was not commissioned to make The Disasters of War. It would seem to me that he was motivated by a very personal necessity to express his reaction to the war. Keep in mind that Goya retained his position as court artist throughout the French occupation, that he produced during that period portraits of members of Joseph Bonaparte's government. Goya must have been conflicted about his role as court painter. Perhaps the series represents an attempt to expiate the guilt he must have felt about conspiring with his nation's enemies, to earn his living from serving them. These prints were not produced on a whim; the size of the series is large and was executed over a period of ten years. It is thought that Goya only shared these works with a circle of trusted intimates but intended ultimately to publish them. Unfortunately, with the restoration of a Bourbon monarchy in Spain after the defeat of Napoleon, these prints, which were critical of the monarchy and clergy and documented an uprising of the general population, were too controversial to be published. It wasn't until 1863, 35 years after the artist's death, that The Disasters of War was finally published. The very fact that it took so long for these works to be made public is a manifest indication that Goya had created a potent and dangerous concoction here. His message was not welcomed; no, it was feared as being too radical, too progressive. But once the series was disseminated, it had a powerful influence on its audience, particularly later generations of artists confronted with the horrors of war.

Near the end of World War I, John Singer Sargent was invited by the British prime minister to create a painting on the theme of American and British cooperation in the war effort, which was to be shown along with the works of other commissioned artists in an exhibition sponsored by the British Memorial Committee. Sargent was probably selected to explore this specific theme because, although born to American parents, he lived most of his life in Europe, primarily England. On the other hand, he may not have been the ideal choice for this commission. Though Sargent was a famous and successful artist, he was predominantly recognized as a painter of flattering society portraits and impressionistic paintings documenting historic sites and tourist destinations.

Sargent struggled to arrive at an appropriate subject for his painting. Although he was 62 years old at the time, Sargent insisted on visiting the Western Front in France. In the field, he executed many studies which he felt were insufficient to convey the epic nature of his theme. But when he witnessed groups of blinded soldiers, mustard gassed in a barrage at Le Bac-du-Sud, being led to a dressing station, he knew he had found the subject for which he had been searching.

John Singer Sargent - Gassed - Oil on Canvas - 1919

I must confess that, upon seeing Sargent's response to his commission, I expected to read that the work was rejected by the committee (which was actually a division of the British Ministry of Information). Certainly, the committee must have anticipated a heroic image, perhaps British and American soldiers emerging, side by side, from a muddy trench in a valiant assault on enemy lines. Instead, Sargent presents the aftermath of a battle: helpless, wounded men being led like children away from the front. It's a testament to the utter brutality of the war that not only was this painting not rejected but it was displayed prominently in the exhibition and was ultimately voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919. The painting certainly made an impact. It's been recorded that visitors to the exhibition fainted before this work.

Gassed did excite some controversy, strangely enough from popular media and intellectuals. The Athenaeum, a British arts magazine, accused Sargent of presenting a uni-dimensional interpretation of the war, while The Observer, a weekly newspaper, opined that the painting wasn't gruesome enough, that Sargent had sanitized and prettified his image. EM Forster complained that the painting was too heroic and naively patriotic. Virginia Woolf felt that Gassed was specifically designed to elicit an emotional response from the viewer, that it utilized crude visual devices to manipulate the perceptions of the public. Evidently, after four years of a horrifically destructive and deadly war, many members of British society were unwilling to accept a work that disregarded, however slightly, the ghastly and shocking toll that the war had imposed on the participants and might be perceived as inflaming patriotic fervor.

Let me indulge in a momentary digression to state that I consider the painting to be very satisfactory. Sargent has presented an image derived from his personal observations, one consistent with documentation from the war. He exposes just one unique facet of the conflict, one that could easily be forgotten amid so many more sensational aspects of the war. The soldiers, rendered anonymous by their blindfolds, form a series of olive-drab horizontal bands across the picture plane. Only a small group of the wounded on the right assert a sense of three-dimensionality to the composition. It could be said that these blindfolded soldiers represent the perspective of most of the combatants who had submitted to the imperatives of the war unaware of its real objectives and without any say on how they would be sacrificed. I particularly appreciate that, while this moving drama unfolds, soldiers engaged in a soccer match can be glimpsed in the distance. This illustrates how inured the men had become to the horrors of the war and also exposes the harsh reality that, regardless of the travails and suffering that the individual endures, the mass of humanity will strive to focus on pleasures and distractions. In a nutshell, life goes on. It brings to mind that during the recent coronavirus outbreak, while our hospitals were inundated with patients struggling to breathe and we witnessed the death count rise exponentially each day, there were frustrated mobs insisting that they had a unalienable right to congregate at the beach or get a manicure at the local nail salon. Empathy only goes so far.

Otto Dix had a very different perception of World War I. He enthusiastically embraced the war, seeing it as a rare, powerful event in which he was eager to participate. Dix enlisted in the German armed forces at the start of the war and served as a machine gunner on the front lines until the end of the conflict. During his years of service, he experienced firsthand all of the horrors of trench warfare. The First World War introduced many new innovations including tanks, warplanes and poison gas. Artillery barrages left many soldiers crippled and bizarrely disfigured. Perhaps one of the most gruesome developments of the conflict resulted from trench warfare: the establishment of a No Man's Land between enemy lines. After attacks and counterattacks, the dead and wounded could not be retrieved from this No Man's Land which was under constant scrutiny by both sides, and combatants witnessed the prolonged and agonizing deaths of their wounded comrades and the grotesque decomposition of their corpses.

In 1924, years after the war's end, Dix completed Der Krieg, a portfolio of 50 etchings which documented his experiences at the Front. The resulting imagery was shocking and repulsive. Dix was very clear that he did not execute this series of prints to serve as an anti-war statement; instead he felt an imperative to exorcise these observations from his consciousness.

“I didn't draw war pictures in order to prevent the war. I would never be so insolent. The goal is to banish the war. All art is an effort of banishment.” - Otto Dix

Otto Dix - Corpse of a Horse - Etching - circa 1924

Otto Dix - Gas Victims - Etching - circa 1924

Otto Dix - Mealtime in the Trenches - Etching - circa 1924

Otto Dix - Skull - Etching - circa 1924

Otto Dix - Stormtroops Advancing Under a Gas Attack - Etching - circa 1924

Otto Dix - Transporting the Wounded in Houthulst Forest - Etching - circa 1924

Otto Dix - Crater Field near Dontrien Lit Up by Flares - Etching - circa 1924

Dix didn't believe that his prints could have any impact on future wars, but he felt compelled to confront the false and antiseptic perception of the war that was being promulgated in popular media. He believed that the government and military sought to soften and conceal from the public the awful destructive impact that modern industrialized warfare could effect on the human body.

I can only imagine how disturbing seeing these prints could have been for the parents, siblings and spouses of soldiers who did not return home from the Front. But Dix had no patience for lies and civility. These experiences were his own, and he had earned the right to expose his truth. The movement that Dix and other similarly-minded postwar artists initiated was called Neue Sachlichkeit or The New Objectivity.

Although Dix was no pacifist, he agreed to have Der Krieg distributed throughout Germany by a pacifist organization. The cycle of prints was criticized severely in the press and was considered an insult to all veterans. When the portfolio was presented in book form, booksellers were reluctant to display it in their shop windows lest their windows be shattered. When the cycle was shown at Berlin's International War Museum in 1924, it created such a storm that the police intervened, confiscating the prints at bayonet point. Upon the rise of the Nazis, Der Krieg was censored, and Otto Dix's work was featured in the Entartete Kunst or Degenerate Art Show (an exhibition of work considered morally sick and intellectually moribund by the Nazis) held in Munich in 1937. Dix lost his teaching position at the Dresden Academy, and his work was purged from all state-owned museums. During World War II, he was permitted to continue to paint as long as his work did not convey a political or anti-war stance. By the time of his death in 1969, Otto Dix must have been overwhelmingly convinced that art can have a powerful impact on the public and that as a weapon of protest and a beacon of truth art had a critical role to play within modern societies.

Certainly during and immediately after periods of conflict, when emotions are high and nerves frayed, the response to artwork that comments upon that conflict will be amplified and hypersensitive. When I started this blog entry, it was my intention to conclude it with the observation that I can't envision any artwork today eliciting the kind of response and asserting as powerful an influence as the works I've addressed above. Currently, there exists an enormous gulf between the “real” world and the art world that is impossible to bridge. If you were to walk up to someone on the street and ask them to name just one living artist, my guess is you would receive a blank stare as a response. There are a number of reasons for this disconnect. Some people might suggest that by violating the common man's concept of what art essentially is and how it should function, modern art alienated the public, but history doesn't support this contention. It was not uncommon in the early twentieth century for the authorities to shut down exhibits because the work was considered indecent or was inciting too violent a public reaction. The Dadaists considered a show a failure if it didn't get censored. Picasso and Matisse were luminaries in their day, asserting an influence in realms that far exceeded the confines of the art world. You would have thought that the rise of Abstract Expressionism would have irreparably alienated the public interest in the activities of the artistic elite, but it didn't happen. Images of Jackson Pollock at work on his drip paintings, a cigarette dangling precariously from his lips and a can of enamel house paint in hand, were featured in a 1949 LIFE magazine article which changed the way Americans defined the quintessential counterculture hero. I remember as a kid seeing Andy Warhol being interviewed on the evening news fairly regularly, and he was featured prominently in weekly gossipy rags. Though the average individual may not have approved of developments in the art world, he or she would have been aware of what was happening there. Art was still a component of popular culture. Art could still influence the public. It still had the power to incite and offend.

Something changed during the 80's. The modernist rebellion had run its course, and the thrust of artistic innovation fragmented. I welcomed this change at the time, thinking that it opened up the art world to wider possibilities and offered greater freedom to artists, but it came with some serious drawbacks too. Once artists felt free to dip into art history higgledy-piggledy and borrow and mix imagery and styles, their artwork necessarily began to comment primarily on aesthetics – on art itself. And like a Russian Matryoshka doll, a painting or sculpture offered layers that could be penetrated only to reveal infinitely more layers to be penetrated. For the initiated artistic elite, this offered great fun; to the general public it offered alienation. As a result of this change, art critics had to develop a new way of talking about art that was so sophisticated and so all-encompassing and so noncommittal that art criticism evolved into unintelligible gibberish that employed an arcane vocabulary only understood by a handful of aficionados. I subscribed to a number of art magazines at this time because I was interested in learning of new developments in the art world and wanted to keep track of reevaluations of older work. I swear, even as a working artist with a fairly broad knowledge of art history, I would give up on most articles in these magazines after reading only a page or two, feeling completely lost or bored – most often both. But, by far, the most critical change that occurred at this point was that art was transformed from a vehicle of communication into an article of investment. Of course, there was always money to be made from investing in art, but the return on one's investment took many years to realize. Collectors purchased work they appreciated, thought worthy of serious consideration and put on display – commonly in their own homes. They took pride in the quality of their collections, and tried to build a cohesive body of work that asserted a coherent statement. Often wealthy patrons, unwilling to see their carefully amassed selections scattered, donated their collections to institutions. That changed in the 80's. The work of an up-and-coming artist, which may have sold for a few thousand in the early years of the decade, could increase in value tenfold or more in just a couple of years and, within ten years, be selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Art became a commodity. It was traded like real estate or barrels of oil. The market determined what was good and bad. The educated and perceptive collector was replaced by the crass investor. I've actually read about buyers of contemporary art who don't bother to uncrate their purchases. What would be the point?

So, art no longer played a role in the life of the average individual. It was replaced with more easily digestible media: TV shows, movies, pop music and social media; which means that today, if the public is going to get stirred up into a frenzy over some piece of revelatory commentary, that message is more than likely going to be delivered by a pop artist. For instance, on March 10^th 2003, while the U.S. geared up to invade Iraq, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said the following to her audience at Shepherds Bush Empire Theatre in London:

“Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

When her comments were reported back in America, a firestorm erupted. Country music stations refused to play Dixie Chicks songs. Erstwhile fans pulverized their Dixie Chicks CDs. There were protests. Natalie Maines even received death threats. It's pretty clear that, in times of conflict when emotions are peaked, the public retains the capacity to respond intensely, even violently, to words and images that confront their attitudes concerning that conflict or expose facets of that conflict of which they would prefer to remain unaware. I was going to end this entry with the observation that it's pretty sad that art has abdicated its role as the people's informer, critic and agitator, but then I remembered something that occurred back in 2002.

I'm certain that no one needs to be reminded that on September 11, 2001 the United States suffered a series of terrorist attacks which included the destruction of both towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Like many people who worked in NYC at that time, I had visited the WTC on business. The buildings were a defining element of the city's skyline. Back when my wife and I lived in Brooklyn, I recall many a time pushing my son in a baby swing in a park on the Brooklyn Heights promenade and marveling at the enormity and austere beauty of those structures across the East River. I was at my midtown office working when the two airliners crashed into the towers – was actually watching the news live with a friend when the South Tower was struck. All activity in my office ceased. Some people wept; some just stared blankly in disbelief. No one knew what to do. Televisions were set up in some conference rooms, so those who desired to watch the news coverage could do so. At one point on that morning, I exited the building to look down Lexington Avenue to see black plumes of smoke trailing toward Brooklyn from the still standing towers. Events unfolded sequentially that day: one plane crashed into the Pentagon, another was brought down in a field in Pennsylvania and then each of the WTC towers collapsed. It seemed to me that the carnage wasn't going to stop, that this was just the beginning of some enormous conflict. Although my office closed, I was hesitant to leave; at that time I commuted on the MetroNorth Railroad to NYC daily from a northern suburb, and Grand Central Station struck me as an ideal terrorist target. I waited at my nearly empty workplace, too fraught to do much of anything. I left a message at home for my wife, letting her know that I was safe and expected to board a train later that afternoon. I occasionally meandered up to our office's conference rooms which offered a broad view of Lexington Avenue and saw, now and then, bizarre figures covered in ash stumbling north away from the disaster. As if I didn't have enough to be anxious about, my wife was pregnant with our fourth child, had reached her due date and was visiting her midwife that morning. Though she was usually late going into labor, I was prepared to be summoned home at any moment.

My memories from the following weeks are fragmentary. On several occasions, women boarded our morning train up in Dutchess County to walk from car to car, handing out photocopied pictures of their husbands and asking the commuters if anyone had seen them. Their spouses had left for work on September 11^th and vanished, in most instances leaving no trace of their existences behind. Later, when I eventually ventured downtown, I saw billboards and bus stops and walls plastered with hundreds of photographs of the missing. People were hoping for some word of a loved one who had simply disappeared that morning. Sadly, though the city had prepared for a massive medical response, there was no one to treat. The expected rush of injured survivors never materialized – in fact, Ground Zero workers recovered very few intact bodies from the site. Every morning when my train made its stop in Harlem (nearly ten miles north of the WTC), the second the doors opened, the smell of burning filled the car. If someone put a package or suitcase on the overhead racks above me, I would nervously watch his or her movements – might even change my seat if another was available. Soldiers armed with submachine guns were posted around the exterior of the Citicorp Center across the street from my office – something I had never seen before in America. At one point, the Chairman of the Board for our Agency gathered all of the employees in our conference rooms to provide us with an update on developments since the attacks. He did so wearing military fatigues – a pretty surreal experience.

I've related my firsthand experiences of that time in the hope that I can convey how emotionally charged the atmosphere truly was. And consider this: I was one of the lucky ones left relatively unscathed by the disaster. I worked in midtown, comparatively far from the wreckage. The event didn't have a negative impact on my workplace; in fact, my Agency became very active in the initiative to bring investment and development back to lower Manhattan. And, unlike a lot of the people I've talked to about 9/11, I didn't know a single person who lost his or her life in the attacks. But all the same, the experience had a huge effect on how I functioned each day and how I perceived the world. Many others had suffered far more than I. Some had lost family members. Some had seen their lives dismantled. Some lost their homes or businesses. Some had rushed to the site to assist survivors or to comb through the debris and had witnessed with their own eyes the enormity of the disaster. Trust me, nerves were raw and emotions ran high.

Eric Fischl, a painter and sculptor considered a participant in the Neo-Expressionism movement, was raised on Long Island and established his artistic reputation in the Manhattan art scene. The events of 9/11 inspired within him a desire to make a work of art that commemorated the tragedy, one that he believed would have a therapeutic effect on viewers. Though primarily a painter, Fischl had already created several public sculptures which were displayed prominently at active locations, and he determined to fashion a bronze sculpture that memorialized the “jumpers”, individuals who chose to leap to their deaths rather than succumb to the fire and smoke engulfing the towers. Of the 2606 victims who died in the WTC disaster, it is believed that at least 200 jumped to their deaths.

Fischl created a 14 foot long bronze statue of a nude female caught in an instant of her descent through space which he called Tumbling Woman. The statue was installed in Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan for display starting with the first anniversary of 9/11.

Eric Fischl - Tumbling Woman - Bronze - 2002

Many people were offended by Tumbling Woman and were immediately vocal about the work. The general public responded very negatively. Though there were a few supporters, most people interviewed were shocked by the work and felt that it was disturbing. Andrea Peyser, a columnist for the New York Post wrote an incendiary piece about the statue, inaccurately describing the piece and belittling the artist. She called the work “shameful”. I've read some criticism that suggested that Fischl was looking to reinvigorate his flagging career by creating a public scandal. I think the final straw for Rockefeller Center was when they began receiving bomb threats. The statue was promptly draped in a cloth and hidden behind a partition, and then, within a few days, removed and returned to the artist.

Fischl was surprised by the reaction to a work that he saw as bringing the focus of the disaster back onto the individual, the human experience, and away from the material and economic losses and the political and military ramifications - which he saw as overshadowing the suffering of the victims. Fischl terribly misread the American public. To start with, any attempt to transform the emotional response to the disaster into an aesthetic experience was a risky venture. At such a time, could the viewpoint of an artist matter? Did the events of 9/11 have anything to do with art? Though the images of individuals jumping from burning towers may have etched themselves indelibly on our memories and may in truth be, as Fischl judged, the defining facet of that day, such images were considered too gruesome and intrusive for public consumption and were ultimately suppressed by the media. And Fischl chose to portray his jumper nude. Anyone who grew up in this country must have understood that Americans are extremely uncomfortable with nudity, that putting a nude statue in a public place alone would be considered controversial. And, although male victims of the 9/11 attacks outnumbered females by about a 3 to 1 ratio, Fischl decided to make his jumper a fit, young woman, a decision which would leave his work open to accusations of being salacious. But, by far, the most critical element in the public's response to his sculpture had to do with timing. It was just too soon after the event for people to react rationally to any work that seriously commented on the disaster.

And, surprisingly, Fischl proved that art, even postmodern art, still had the power to incite a powerful reaction from the public in times of crisis. Though in interviews he still seems a bit dismayed at how Tumbling Woman was received, he should feel pretty satisfied that the public cared at all.

Personally, I find Tumbling Woman to be an elegant and moving ode to the victims of the disaster. After reading of the statue's installation, I intended to walk from my workplace to Rockefeller Center to see it, but it was removed before I got the chance. By the way, in the nearly two decades since Tumbling Woman was first displayed, Fischl created several versions of his statue. One is displayed on his Sag Harbor property. Collectors were willing to purchase the sculpture. Versions of the statue are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. And, remarkably, Tumbling Woman was displayed at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. I would have to say to Andrea Peyser that what is considered “shameful” is relative.

So, in conclusion, I think we can all agree that throughout history art imagery did have the potential to elicit a powerful response from the public – especially at times of conflict. But I must also concede that since the 80's art has relinquished its traditional role in influencing and inspiring the people. Art has moved to a realm that is no longer accessible to the general public – physically, financially, emotionally and intellectually. On the other hand, Tumbling Woman can serve as proof that on rare occasions art still retains the potential to incite a passionate reaction from the people, but, let's be real, that connection between art and the public remains a tenuous one. The vast majority of New Yorkers offended by Tumbling Woman had never heard of Eric Fischl and were completely unfamiliar with his oeuvre. If they had known more about his work, they probably would have been more outraged. I don't believe that this alienation from the public is necessarily a permanent thing. Children will still, unprovoked, translate their world into imagery. That need is hardwired into the human psyche. And, even as adults, we do react intensely to imagery – though today that imagery may be delivered in advertisements, news articles and pop movies. Imagery is too immediate, too universal, too powerful, to be ignored. The climate right now may be too bleak to nurture fine art, however history teaches us that societies change in ways we could never imagine. Art will become relevant again.

As always, I encourage my readers to comment here, but, if anyone prefers to respond privately, I can be contacted at gerardwickham@gmail.com.

Entry - 3.26.16

Memories are so elusive.  Once I’d thought my memories had foundations of stone only to find later that my childhood understanding of the past was filtered through a distorting prism, that phantom events had infiltrated my chronology or that significant happenings had escaped my notice entirely or were simply washed away by the passage of time.  After so many years, the line between fact and fabrication has blurred until I’m no longer sure of anything.  And so many of the people who defined my early life have died that there really are no authorities to turn to for a more reliable truth.  I’m left with my fragile memories, flawed as they are.  So perhaps this is not so much a history as it is a story.

 I was about three years old when my grandfather died, so I have only the vaguest memories of him.  He was a gentle, smiling man who loved children.  He tried to engage me and entertain me with silly games and tricks.  Photos of him from this period show a man depleted by a long battle with lung cancer, his small frame wasted away, his head skull-like.  His visage could easily have unnerved an adult, but, being such a young child, I kept my own perspective.

Domenico Ghirlandaio - An Old Man and his Grandson - 1480

 He was found by my grandmother in his favorite armchair where he had settled for an afternoon nap.  Though I remember little of that time, I was told that the loss struck my mother and grandmother hard.  My grandmother retreated into herself, her natural gregariousness giving way to silent introspection.  Over time, she mended, or so I assume since I can only remember her shy laughter and her smiling, welcoming face.  Even from the most horrendous storms and upheavals, nature cures herself, and we are no different.  There were trips to the cemetery where my mother and grandmother would place flowers on my grandfather’s grave and we children would be scolded for darting and careening amongst the headstones.  I was fascinated by the flags and the flowers and the endless rows of perfectly aligned, identical headstones.

Unbeknownst to me a seismic shift was occurring in my young life, one that would impact on most of my childhood years.  Devoted to her family, my mother determined that my grandmother would be visited on a weekly basis.  So every Saturday my parents, my siblings and I would make the hour drive to my grandmother’s home to keep her company.  We would arrive in the early afternoon and wouldn’t leave until quite late – commonly after midnight.  When I was very young, I didn’t mind this routine.  My grandmother lived with Pete the Parakeet and an ornery, gray-muzzled dog named Smokey in a sprawling house with gingerbread colored, asphalt siding that my grandfather had built himself.  Early on, it all seemed pretty magical, but, as I got older, I grew to resent losing one day of my precious weekend… after what I considered an endless week of schoolwork.  I wanted to be at home with my things, my own routines and, most importantly, my friends from the neighborhood.

Our visits to my grandmother attained a routine of their own.  Shortly after our arrival, the children were scooted out to the yard “to play” – as if once out the door we would spontaneously erupt into fun and games.  Watching television was the great Satan of my childhood, and my parents forcefully encouraged my siblings and me to find less passive, more enriching activities to occupy our time.  So we would usually go out to the large detached garage that was set at the end of a long cement driveway that flanked the house to rock in the green wicker rockers that crowded about the structure’s doorway.  When we got bored with that we might walk to the nearby schoolyard to play on the swings and jungle gym or climb a tree.  As reward for our efforts we were handed a few bucks and sent to Babbitt’s, a small neighborhood convenience store, to buy Italian ices.  Back at the garage, we scraped away at their impenetrable skins with small wooden paddles, carefully working the edges until we could flip the ice entirely and get to the dense stew of sugar and food coloring which settled on the cup’s bottom.  Having served our time, we were granted a reprieve and were permitted to watch television until dinner.  Usually we chose ABC’s Wide World of Sports or repeats of Secret Agent and Mission Impossible.

A red patterned formica-topped table sat in the center of my grandmother’s cozy kitchen.  An old fashioned, compact refrigerator with rounded corners hummed away in the corner, hiccupping whenever starting or stopping.  Amid much grunting and cursing, my father and uncle had cut a large rectangle out of the south wall of the kitchen and installed shelving on which my grandmother displayed her knickknacks: figurines and ceramic pieces she’d collected over the years.  I especially coveted two china dogs, one brown and one yellow, that were arranged on the bottom shelf where I could easily see them.  Through the shelves you could peer into the next room where my grandmother kept a jungle of plants that were healthy and thriving – in stark contrast to my family’s feeble attempts to sustain houseplants at our home.  Having matured in a farming community, my grandmother had a green thumb and carefully tended to all flora both indoors and out in her yard.

The table was set with china plates etched with a crinkly web of minute cracks and fissures.  My tenuous memory tells me that we always had pot roast and mashed potatoes, but that can’t be true, can it?  For dessert, we had oatmeal cookies, stale from sitting in the tin too long, or jello corrupted with the fruit that my grandmother added as a special treat for us kids.  At my age, I didn’t understand that my grandmother was a diabetic, that there wouldn’t be a lot of sweets in her home, the few that gained entry tending to linger there awhile.

After dinner, my siblings and I would retreat to the living room while the adults packed away leftovers and washed and dried the dishes.  As we watched Petticoat Junction, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Mannix, the adults sat at the kitchen table, my grandmother nursing a small tumbler of ginger ale while the others drank beer from the smoked drinking glasses that my parents had brought back from their Virginia Beach honeymoon.  The living room was sweltering, both summer and winter, and, drenched in sweat, we soon passed out draped across the sofa or sprawled across the carpet.  Eventually we were roused from our sleep and ushered grumpily to our car for the ride home.

Mannix

My grandmother would display the flag on all patriotic holidays.  During one of our visits, she asked me if I would replace the line on the flagpole that stood in her small front yard.  I readily agreed.  Since I was still pretty young, my mother had reluctantly consented to this, but my grandmother was delighted.  As we stood around the flagpole, I was given my instructions, handed the line, then lifted and placed on the pole.  The two women pushed me by my bottom as high up as they could, but after that I was on my own.  I was a very active, adventurous child who regularly climbed trees and got into all sorts of mischief, so this task didn’t unnerve me at all.  I immediately began shimmying up the pole and was soon on level with the roof of the house.  I looked down to see my anxious mother watching me skeptically, but my grandmother was smiling broadly and cheering me on.  I must admit that as I neared the top I was a bit surprised to discover how tall the flagpole really was.  Nevertheless, I continued to the top.  Once there, the process became a little more challenging because I had to thread the line through a pulley and to do that I had to release my grip on the pole, something I hadn’t considered while still on the ground.  I froze for some moments while the ladies waited perplexed below.  Then I got up my courage, embraced the pole tightly with my thighs and fed the line through the pulley.  That accomplished, I quickly slid down to join my relieved mother and ecstatic grandmother.  After patting me on the back, my grandmother turned to my mother and said, “Did you see, Marion?  He’s just like his grandfather!”  To be compared with my grandfather made my young heart swell.

The weekly visits continued throughout my childhood, but, as we, one by one, reached our teen years, my siblings and I were permitted to remain at home while my parents made their regularly scheduled excursion.  We would do our homework, hang with our friends, walk our dog and savor a TV dinner in the evening hours before going to bed.  My older siblings worked part-time jobs during this period and would often be gone for most of the day.  We did not see as much of my grandmother as before, but she made occasional visits and joined us for many holidays.  As she grew older, my grandmother inevitably became less agile and broke bones in a number of falls.  She stayed at our home for extended periods during each recuperation and, once healed, she would return to her independent life of shopping, visiting with friends, attending church and, most importantly, playing her beloved bingo.  But the years were taking a toll on her.  I remember on one occasion my parents rushing off unexpectedly to care for her when she had a dangerously high fever and was pretty delirious.  After being reprimanded by her stern German doctor for neglecting my grandmother’s health, my father, a fearless amateur physician, stayed up with her the entire night sponge bathing her and forcing her to drink liquids.  She pulled through, but it was becoming increasingly evident that her days of living on her own were numbered.

Andrew Wyeth - Barn Loft - 1956

So many of my memories of that time are connected with my grandmother’s garage where I had spent so many idle hours.  The structure was enormous and packed with the dross accumulated over many years past.  At the rear there was a glider seat that hung suspended on four straps.  Many a summer night, I would lie on that seat gently swaying in the dim yellow glow of a distant house light, half-listening to the crickets chirping and the unintelligible chatter of the adults gathered in the front of the garage, the aroma of beer and cigarette smoke infusing the humid air.  There was a square hatch in the garage’s ceiling that provided access to its attic.  Without a dropdown ladder, the attic remained terra incognita for many years, but bored children will eventually explore every square foot of a property given enough time.  By placing a folding ladder beneath the hatch and balancing on the top step, I could just reach the lip of the hatch and pull myself onto the floor of the attic.  The scariest part of the process was reaching up through the hatch and putting my hand onto the dusty, wooden floor.  Sleepy wasps would gather at the entrance, and more than once I got stung when I placed my hand directly upon one of them.  There was a lot of old things up there: boxes filled with papers and clothing, screens and storm doors and tall wardrobes (or chifferobes, as my mother called them).  I was most intrigued by the decorations I found there, remnants from celebrations long forgotten: welcome home parties, New Year’s celebrations and wedding and baby showers.  On one of my visits up there, I fanned open white paper wedding bells and hung them from the rafters.  I stretched banners from one end of the attic to the other.  Satisfied with the results of my efforts, I dangled from the hatch until my foot made contact with the ladder’s top step, then descended, leaving my indiscretions to be discovered by the next intruder to that space.  Perhaps my most poignant memory of time spent in that garage dates back more than thirty years.  My grandmother could no longer live on her own, so the house my grandfather had built, that old fashioned structure with crystal doorknobs, a freestanding bathtub and a terrifying, labyrinthine basement, was being sold.  We were at the house to pack up what could be saved and dispose of what couldn’t, and I had been working all day, moving furniture and boxes, sorting through years of possessions and cleaning room after room.  While out in the garage to take a break, I recognized that this would be my last visit to this place.  The new owner intended to level the garage, cut down the crab apple and pear trees that had occupied the backyard since before my birth and divide the property in two.  On the new lot, he planned to build a large, modern house that would tower over the neighbors’ homes.  It was getting late.  Sunlight was already creeping along the floor of the garage.  Someone had pulled a large wardrobe to the front of the structure, and, out of idle curiosity, I took a look inside and found two uniforms, one from each of the two world wars, carefully preserved and hanging side-by-side there.  I hoped that someone planned to save these heirlooms from the dumpster, but, being just a kid without influence or a place of my own to store them, I didn’t pursue the matter.  I thought it would be a shame to lose these tangible artifacts of our family history, a history that I had over the years learned piecemeal from my grandmother and mother.  The story, as I understand it, goes like this…

Having suffered some romantic betrayal from a longtime lover, my grandfather determined that he would remain a bachelor and devote his working life to the US Army.  He enlisted with the cavalry and quickly developed a lifelong love of horses.  I recall hearing that he joined Pershing on his fruitless pursuit of Pancho Villa in Mexico.

Leopoldo Mendez - Pancho Villa - c1944

When America became a combatant in World War I, he was sent to Europe.  I know little of his activities during the war, except that at some point he was mustard gassed and transported to a hospital to convalesce.

Otto Dix - Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor - 1924

At the war’s end, Allied troops occupied Germany’s Rhineland with the local population being required to billet the soldiers.  That is how my grandfather came to be living in my grandmother’s home on the outskirts of Koblenz.  As I have said earlier, my grandmother grew up in a predominantly agrarian community; it consisted of a core village of homes and outbuildings surrounded by fields, privately owned and independently farmed.  Most households kept livestock, a cow, a pig and some chickens at a minimum.  A church, shops and opportunities for employment were to be found in a larger town within walking distance of their small village – a journey demanding enough to be undertaken only once a week.  I would say that my grandmother’s family were solidly middle class.

(My grandmother is third from right.)

As these things happen, a romance blossomed between my grandmother and the American soldier staying in her home, and they determined that they would be married once the occupation was over.  My grandmother told me how her family tried to teach my grandfather the language by pointing at things and supplying their German names: der Tisch, das Stuhl, der Löffel, das Fenster.  I once asked her, “But, Grandma, how could you agree to marry someone who you couldn’t even talk with?”  With a wry smile and a twinkle in her eye, she replied, “Oh, there are other ways to communicate.”

When the Americans ended their occupation, my grandfather was required to return to the States to be decommissioned.  He promised that he would come back to Germany to marry my grandmother.  Her father warned her, “He will not come back”, but my grandmother was sure that he would keep his word.  And he did.  When he returned to Germany, he suggested that they make their life together there in my grandmother’s homeland, but she felt that there was too much resentment and bad feeling after the war for an American ex-soldier to be accepted by the local population.  Instead, they were married and traveled to Holland where they boarded a ship bound for New York.

Initially, they lived in the City, but my grandmother couldn’t adjust to the crowds and the noise and the filth.  So they moved over the county border into Nassau, which in those days was fairly undeveloped with clusters of private dwellings interspersed among stretches of open farmland.  There my grandfather built the home that I knew as a child, the home in which he and my grandmother were to raise their four children.  Customary practices were changing rapidly in those early years of the twentieth century, and some of their babies were delivered by a doctor at their home while others were born in the hospital.  My grandfather was versatile and could perform a multitude of jobs, but I believe he was primarily a roofer.  He joined the Volunteer Fire Department; my grandmother, the Ladies Auxiliary.  They watched their children grow and prosper, each of them attaining a high school diploma, which was the norm for middle class kids at the time.

During the Second World War, they saw their two sons sent to join the fighting, one in Europe and the other in the Pacific.

Miraculously, they both came home, alive and uninjured.  Upon his return, one of my uncles planted hundreds of flowers in my grandparents’ backyard, an undeniably sane response to the experience of war.  Years later, my mother still recalled the sight with awe.  In the postwar years, my grandparents’ children married and settled on Long Island, as the surge in development carried families further and further out on the Island toward the Forks.

And the years slowly drifted by, as is always the case, barely perceptibly, with events to celebrate and in which to take pleasure and others to mourn and regret, though, under deep circumspection, perhaps, we would be prone to observe that most days pass unremarked with little occurring to differentiate one day from that which preceded it or that which will follow.  And so my story inevitably comes full circle to the years after my grandmother’s house had been sold and she came to live permanently with my family.

During this period, my grandmother and I became great friends.  As this entry will attest, I was fascinated with her stories of the past and questioned her greedily on details from her childhood.  When I was in grad school, I would emerge from my morning painting sessions in the basement to join my mother and grandmother for lunch.  I can vividly recall sitting at our kitchen table, my head still full of my morning’s labor, tomatoes from my mother’s garden set on the windowsill to ripen in the sun and my mother and grandmother rehashing happenings from long past, almost madly obsessed with establishing an accurate chronology of those events.  Whenever I planted anything, my grandmother, leaning on the cane that the passage of years had forced upon her, would hobble after me into the yard and watch my efforts.  Once she declared wistfully, “Oh, if only I could get down there with you and put my hands in the soil!”  Though my grandmother rarely touched alcohol, on special occasions I sometimes goaded her into doing shots of Jägermeister with me, and, with cheeks aflame, she would laugh and argue with me while the candles burned down after our evening meal.  I never heard my grandmother say anything critical of anyone.  She honestly liked everyone she met, but, in particular, she was committed to her family.  Ignoring each of our faults and indiscretions, she would only recognize the kernel of decency and excellence that she was certain resided at our cores.  She took particular delight in informing folk (the dentist, barber, podiatrist or the checkout lady at the supermarket) of how many grandchildren and great grandchildren she had.


I drew or painted my grandmother’s portrait a number of times during the 1980’s.  Whenever I asked her to pose for me, she would blush demurely and object, “Nobody wants to see an old lady.”  To which, I invariably replied, “Well, I do.”  And she would reluctantly sit, I believe, quite pleased with the attention.

Gerard Wickham - Franziska Normann-Young - 1980

Of course, once established in her new quarters, my grandmother had to scope out a new location at which to play bingo, and luckily my parents’ church provided a convenient venue.  My father would take her there in the evening once a week.  When he wasn’t available, one of us kids would do the driving.  On one occasion when I was the designated chauffeur, I discussed logistics with her on the drive over.  “I’ll drop you off at the front of the church.  You’ll wait there while I park the car, then I’ll come get you and help you to your place.”  She looked at me defiantly.  “I don’t need any help.  I can do it on my own.”  I pleaded, “Please, Grandma!  If you get hurt, it will be me who gets in trouble.”  She grumbled unhappily.  She was already over 90 then, and there were two flights of stairs to be maneuvered to get down to the large room where the bingo games were held.  Once at the church, I pulled over to the curb and helped my grandmother out of the car.  I looked down at her stout frame supported on her cane.  “Now just wait here.  I’ll be back in a second.”  After tearing through the parking lot to quickly find a space, I raced back to the front of the church to collect my grandmother.  She was gone.  I rushed into the building, sprinted across the lobby and, upon approaching the stairs, found my grandmother, still on the first flight, frantically scurrying downward, two hands on the railing, her cane, hooked over her forearm, trailing behind.  I quickly caught up with her, grabbed the cane away from her and helped her down the stairs and to her seat.  She huffed a little and fought me a bit but had to succumb to this minor indignity.  I left the building feeling completely exasperated, but, at the same time, couldn’t help but admire her undiminished tenacity.

Understanding in her early 90’s that her stay with us was finite, my grandmother began to spend hours in her room sifting through papers and documents, old cards and letters and photographs, organizing them in bundles secured with rubber bands.  During those last years, my nephew lived at the house with her.  She would invite him into her room and show him photographs of members of her extended family overseas until, at the age of two, he could identify each individual on sight, pronouncing his or her name with a perfect German accent.  Apparently, my grandmother was taking stock, tidying up her legacy, in anticipation of a time when she would no longer be available to offer information or provide answers to our questions.  Being of a similar mind, I asked her one day to pose for a photograph in the morning light at my parents’ backdoor.  She disappeared for about a half hour, returning formally dressed, bedecked with a necklace and earrings, her hair carefully arranged.

She died rather suddenly from complications resulting from extremely minor surgery.  I was living in the city at that time and didn’t get a chance to see her in the hospital before she was gone.

Endnote:  I like to visit cemeteries, a habit I probably picked up in my teens during camping trips made annually with my parents and siblings along with my aunt, uncle and their children.  My uncle would suddenly pull over to the side of the road upon sighting a particularly old graveyard, and we would all tumble out of our cars to tramp amongst the graves, studying the headstones, reading the often unusual names and determining the age of the markers.  The practice has stuck with me to this day.  In my own town, I am particularly drawn to a timeworn cemetery located behind a church built in the early 1800’s, its confines girded in a low, flagstone wall.  Frequently, while my wife shops nearby, I’ll visit this cemetery and meander among the markers, each individually unique and commonly quite elaborate.  There are sections of the cemetery that are very old.  Some of the individuals buried there were born around the time of the American Revolution; others must have fought in the Civil War.  I construct stories about the dead.  The husband and wife, whose headstones are surrounded by those of their young children who predeceased them by many years, lost them in a horrible epidemic.  The widow who lived for forty years after her husband’s death remained faithful to his memory while watching the world change dramatically: cars replacing horses, electricity coming into use, a world war consuming a generation of our nation’s youth.  The two teens who died on the same day, their headstones positioned side-by-side, were the tragic victims of an ill-fated, drunken, midnight joyride.  It consoles me to delude myself that I can recreate the narratives of these individuals from a few lines of numbers and letters, that their stories, once as vivid as my own, did not die with them.  But that is purely an emotional response.  Intellectually, I recognize that, for the vast majority of us, the imprint we leave behind will be erased completely within a generation or two after our deaths.  Not a comforting thought, to say the least.  Perhaps that is why I made the effort to record here these impressions of my youth and resurrect my grandparents’ saga in this spare and flawed account.

As always, I encourage readers to comment here.  If you would prefer to comment privately, you can email me at: gerardwickham@gmail.com.