THREE THINGS: Francis Bacon, Hand2Mouth Theatre, & Forces of Nature

My first thought after making it through the exhibition, was that Francis Bacon could have used some anti-depressants. Is that terrible of me to admit? I am slightly ashamed of my knee-jerk-arm-chair diagnosis after one quick afternoon through a dead-man’s retrospective. (And I never even saw the movie…) But I did wonder of how the work might have changed with a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibotor prescription. I’d like to imagine myself in possession of some amount of negative capability. I tend to think I have the capacity to appreciate an artist’s engagement with dark, heavy, even grotesque themes that can easily knock the bliss off the face someone gathered from visiting an impressionists’ sun filled boat party, replete with little dogs and cognac. And getting the “ahhh” - knocked out of us ought to happen from time to time, because if someone doesn’t represent that pontiff shuttered and screaming in the middle of last century, how will we ever know how to console one another, or at least bear witness, when life reminds us that it’s not merely a box of chocolates (thank-you-very-much-Mr.-Gump) but can sometimes be, instead, the rotting entrails of your best friend or personal savior?

Honestly, I have no business judging any person whose life was lived in those temporal and physical coordinates, when it was certainly not easy to be who he was. Aside from anti-depressants he probably could have also benefited from less war, a loving family, and the genuine celebration of diversity.

The foundation center sends out quotes with each of its e-blasts, and I was annoyed at this one by Horace– "Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant...." But it speaks to the fact that we might not have gotten the benefit of Bacon’s perspective and ugly, stark, imagery had he been sufficiently sated designing carpets and textiles.

While I was not necessarily up for a journey through his images that sunny day I visited the Met, I appreciated the glimpse into his interior world. I believe all art is an expression that makes the invisible of an interior mind visible. Everyone’s mind is a distillation of all they’ve ever witnessed and since no two people have trod exclusively in the same physical and temporal places,–each portal into their interior worlds is a stimulating revelation. I want to say it’s magical because I like the idea of magic – but I don’t know if that is the right word. The dictionary states that magic “is the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature.”

There’s a part of me that’s gullible enough to believe that art-making “assures human control and agency over the forces of nature.” Design at least, does. Someone on the radio said today that a concert can change lives – and if that is true, so of course, can an exhibition.

Dreary though it was, I experienced one of the most gorgeous moments of my life in the Bacon exhibition. I was standing in the corner near his final tryptich and a portrait of John Edwards. http://www.metmuseum.org/special/francis_bacon/view_1.asp?item=15

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/francis_bacon/view_1.asp?item=18


There was an elderly woman with dark short brown hair, crisply put together, wearing a flesh-toned pink blouse with matching skirt, and a cream colored sweater vest. She stood just between both images and the color of her clothing perfectly matched his rendition of the figures’ skin and the tryptich’s nude trio. She and the John Edwards image had their backs to one another. The woman and painting almost resembled some bizarre corporeal 3-D yin yang; or a surrealist version of a royal faced playing card. Her died hair matched the dark background, and her size and heft perfectly balanced the four painted bodies. If this unintended moment wasn’t some kind of magic homage to the symmetry of visual expression for the purpose of delighting random strangers –I don’t know why I should keep looking. This moment, crystallized for me, the reality that no matter what our point of view, we can’t help but insert ourselves into an artist’s work – it’s inevitable that the viewer becomes a part of the viewed. I was amazed to watch first-hand as the viewer and the subjects became their own tableau. There was something about that intersection that was more thrilling to me than the exhibition itself, and something I think is worth celebrating.

Which takes me to a little theatre troupe hailing from Portland Oregon, known as hand2mouth, who know all about this kind of celebration. Their recent SF debuts, Endine, Repeat After Me, and Project X were part of a theatre festival curated in tandem with the Network of Ensemble Theatre’s conference this summer. What a hoot! Repeat After Me, knocked my socks off. http://www.hand2mouththeatre.org/archive_ram.html

Imagine the Mickey-Mouse Club on acid hosting a burlesque strip tease and slumber party on a starry July 4th. The work was laugh out loud funny, politically striking, and emotionally broad. The piece was brutally cognizant of the relationship of performer to audience structurally and thematically. But unlike my moment with the Bacon exhibition, H2M was purposefully inclusive of its audience as it worked to explore the nature of identity and patriotism through country-western kareoki, variety show. It was also cool how their on stage costume changes—flea market finds, random wigs, flag-motiffed bikinis and briefs - were carefully mixed with intentional constructions—these functioned more like sculptural identity props than the clothing of a particular character.

This gaggle of white kids from the pacific northwest poked fun at our stereotypes without losing the compassion and humanity implicit in the white-working class American experience. They could do this because of the performers’ vulnerabilities, by calling each other out by name – by calling to the audience for their perspectives—and by calling our nation out, for it’s disgraces. Not getting to see performance as much as I’d like, I didn’t know there was a such a satisfying point on the continuum of musical theatre and straight performance art. H2M operates just in that sweet spot for this viewer. Well done. I LOVE YOU ALL.

My own rural American roots is not something I lose touch with very often. In the City – I miss the wide open spaces, the quiet, and after time away from SF – I long for the excitement and stimulation of the urban world. On a recent trip to NYC I had another magical moment. I did not want to go to the art galleries with my friend. I was much more interested in hanging at the bar overlooking the water to sit still for a change. But then I thought, ‘something magical might happen.’ As it turned out, the gallery she wanted to visit was closed, so we found ourselves instead in at the Danese Gallery’s Forces of Nature exhibition. Magic much?

http://www.danesegallery.com/Main/Introduction.html

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, beautiful work, whatever. I’d just been overwhelmed not a few days earlier at the Met – and then some time at MAD, and more again at Cooper-Hewitt. I had gallery fatigue, tired-eyes, and my feet hurt. Very clever , Yuken Teruya,– trees cut out of paper bags EXQUISITE– yes, yes MORE of this. Transform culture – you artists GO, GO! RAH RAW! (Can I get a drink now?)

And then I saw it: a 40x50 inch photographic print of the landscape I grew up in. There was dried up Lake Kaweah, with the water was so low if looked like a valley; the end of the sunset catching the tops of the mountains; and the grass as it turns from spring green to summer gold in the foreground of the shot. And off in the distance, the dam that I also wondered – why and how it was made... There in a gallery in Chelsea was one of my earliest visual references, from a small place, few have heard of, (population 3,000 maybe?) over 3,000 miles away. I learned to swim in the river that fed that lake. I water-skied there. And if you looked up the valley from the place where Jesse Chehak must have stood to take the photograph – you could probably see the low mountains that overlooked the hill where our house was. This was the first piece of property my dad bought – fresh out of the navy with no job and no clue what was next for his young family.

It was a vista like this that I imagined when taught to sing “purple mountains, majesty”…and as grown woman, I understand somewhat – the politics of the valley – the history of it’s settlement. Chehak’s image is a romantic and epic portrait – but in context I understand there is a gross and greed-full element implicit in that landscape. One that Bacon might have understood immediately – but that as a child – I could only sense intuitively. Still, seeing that image so far removed from that temporal, psychic, and physical space- sent chills through me, and hurt a little bit – because in a fit of childhood nostalgia – I longed to be physically in that landscape. But as I’ve hoped to express in this essay – when we look at art - we always are.