City of Dreams

by Gregg Chadwick

In response to Spring for Music's query:

New York has long been considered the cultural capital of America. 

Is it still? If not, where?

Yeah, I'm out that Brooklyn
Now I'm down in Tribeca
Right next to De Niro
But I’ll be hood forever
I’m the new Sinatra
And since I made it here
I can make it anywhere
Yeah, they love me everywhere

- from Empire State of Mind - recorded by Jay Z and Alicia Keys

 Lyrics by Angela Hunte and Jane't "Jnay" Sewell-Ulepic

Vermeer in New York
Metropolitan Museum, New York
photo by Gregg Chadwick

 Like Florence in the 15th century, Amsterdam in the 17th century and Paris in the 19th century - post World War II  New York City seemed to embody the dreams and cultural aspirations of the age. Does New York still claim that distinction? And does it matter?

J.F. Kennedy Jr. would often say that New York City was a verb - not a noun. In that sense the city remains a global source of action and inspiration rather than a place to physically aspire to. In our floating 21st century world, communication via Skype, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr connects us almost instantaneously.  Translations via Google allow us to speak across borders. And in an age of Wikileaks, international secrets are revealed to an audience of millions with the flick of a key. Family, pilgrimage and career sends many on journeys crisscrossing the globe. 

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel
photo courtesy Opera Chic, Milano 

For me, the conductor Gustavo Dudamel perfectly embodies our new reality. By serving as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Dudamel's passionate music and teaching impacts three continents simultaneously. 


Dudamel's artistic path seems to make the question, "Is New York the cultural capital of America?" superfluous while at the same time pointing out the inherent flaw in the question itself. Of course America refers not just to the United States but to the connected countries of North, Central and and South America. 

Gregg Chadwick
Brecht's Song
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

There is no one cultural center in the Americas. But there is the city of dreams that drew Federico Garcia Lorca to study and write Poet in New York at Columbia, Diego Rivera to paint Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center, Patti Smith to write and sing and fall in love and life with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel. This city of dreams is not the clean and tidy Giuliani/Bloomberg New York that suggests a Big Apple theme park but instead the New York City of cultural myth and memory.

Students and Pollock
Metropolitan Museum, New York
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Like Smith and Mapplethorpe, I jumpstarted my life with the inspiration of New York City. For many years, like a talisman, planted flag, or a beacon, a massive painting from my graduate exhibition at NYU hung in the front window of a brownstone on Washington Square. Over the years, each time I visited the Village, I would return to see if my painting still hung on the square. If it did, I knew a physical part of me remained in New York and that my dream still lived. 

Metropolitan Museum, New York
photo by Gregg Chadwick

In the past few years like Gustavo Dudamel, I've carried my cultural capital with me as I traveled, studied, created and exhibited in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and the Netherlands.

In this transient, changing, yet ever connected world, I came face to face with humanity's fragility and celebrated its tensile strength.

The pulse, blur and vibrancy of our human experience reveals vital traces of who we are in a time that is simultaneously past and present, here and there, personal and global. Through our shared cultural exploits we learn that perhaps the relevant question is not where is the capital, but instead how do I create my own?

Clouds Over Manhattan
photo by Gregg Chadwick

The New Yorker Releases Excerpt From Haruki Murakami's New Novel 1Q84

Gregg Chadwick
Stilled Life (Akihabara)
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

TOWN OF CATS
(Excerpt from 1Q84)
by Haruki Murakami

At Koenji Station, Tengo boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him. It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down. The train passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and Tengo followed suit. Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he should go. “I can go anywhere I decide to,” he told himself. “It looks as if it’s going to be a hot day. I could go to the seashore.” He raised his head and studied the platform guide...
Continue reading in The New Yorker at: Excerpt from Haruki Murakami's Upcoming Novel 1Q84

Above: The Cover for Haruki Murakami's New Novel 1Q84:
1. Jacket 2. Binding 3.Complete
(Cover design by Chip Kidd. More at: Chip Kidd Discusses the Book Jacket for Haruki Murakami’s Forthcoming Novel 1Q84)

Also: New Jersey School Board Bans Reading of Haruki Murakami's Novel Norwegian Wood.

Knopf, Murakami's US publisher responds:

“We are disheartened to learn about the action by a New Jersey school district to remove a book from its required reading list due to objections from a group of concerned parents. The novel, NORWEGIAN WOOD by Haruki Murakami, was originally selected for the list based on suggestions by teachers, librarians, and administrators within the district, and the list was approved by the board of education. It is unfortunate the parents felt the need to dismiss such an important work of fiction and regrettable the school district would succumb to such pressure and disregard the recommendation of its own professional educators.”

More Details at: Knopf Responds to NJ School District’s Withdrawal of Murakami Novel from Reading List

Murmurs

Gregg Chadwick
Murmurs
36"x48" oil on linen 2010

Soseki's Light

Buddha of the Setting Sun (Amida)
Gregg Chadwick
40"x32" oil on linen 2010
Private Collection Marina del Rey

One in an ongoing series of artworks inspired by the life and poetry of
the Japanese Zen monk, poet, scholar and garden designer Muso Soseki. I am indebted to the American poet W.S. Merwin for his masterful versions from the Japanese translations and for his kind words of inspiration to me at the Hammer Museum.

Temple of Eternal Light
by Muso Soseki
(1275 - 1351)

English version by
W. S. Merwin
Original Language
Japanese

Buddhist : Zen / Chan
14th Century

The mountain range
the stones in the water
all are strange and rare
The beautiful landscape
as we know
belongs to those who are like it
The upper worlds
the lower worlds
originally are one thing
There is not a bit of dust
there is only this still and full
perfect enlightenment


Portrait of Zen priest, poet and garden designer Musō Soseki

Springsteen Endorses Gay Marriage: Gay Rights are Civil Rights

photo by Richard Perry / New York Times

Pictured in the New York Times is my courageous family member Hannah Johnson tearing up as she applauds a New Jersey Senate committee vote on a bill to legalize gay marriage. The bill cleared the committee, 7-6, and will be voted on by the full New Jersey Senate on Thursday. Last night on his website Bruce Springsteen lent his voice in support of marriage equality:

A BRIEF STATEMENT FROM BRUCE
Like many of you who live in New Jersey, I've been following the progress of the marriage-equality legislation currently being considered in Trenton. I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples and fully agree with Governor Corzine when he writes that, "The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law." I couldn't agree more with that statement and urge those who support equal treatment for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to let their voices be heard now.

The New York Times reports that "Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, cast the issue as the next front in the battle for racial equality and women’s rights:
'Gay rights are civil rights,' Mr. Bond said, invoking during his testimony the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the women’s suffrage movement and the abolition of slavery."

This morning, The Philadelphia Inquirer declares in an editorial that "The New Jersey Senate should approve a bill to authorize gay marriage, and advance the cause of equality for so many of the state's citizens."

Over a hundred years ago a painter from Philadelphia, Thomas Eakins, ventured over to the Jersey side to paint a portrait of a supporter of civil rights for all - Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman would be proud to know how far his state has come.


Thomas Eakins
Portrait of Walt Whitman
oil on canvas 1887
"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity... nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art."
-Walt Whitman form the introduction to Leaves of Grass

More at:
Springsteen's Statement
Bruce Springsteen Speaks Out for Gay Marriage: The Boss lets New Jersey's new governor know who's really in charge....
Springsteen Endorses Gay Marriage

What Does Loss Look Like? (World AIDS Day 2009)

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
-Maya Angelou

Twenty years ago on December 1, 1989 the first Day Without Art was held to spark dialogue and create a day of action concerning the AIDS crisis. At least 800 museums and galleries across the United States closed their doors, shrouded artworks or removed them from view as symbols of mourning and loss. The goal was to show that AIDS can touch everyone. And it worked.



Today on December 1, 2009 museums are again engaged in remembrance for those lost to AIDS and are actively marking the gains that have been made so far. In 1997 the day became known as A Day With(out) Art to reflect the force art can bring to the cause.



Today, A Day With(out) Art has grown into a international collaborative project in which nearly 8,000 museums, galleries, art centers, libraries, high schools and colleges mark the day.



The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has removed from view sixteen artworks to mark World AIDS Day. The artists range from Duccio to Dali. And the subjects range from the young man Eutyches to Andrew Jackson. I have posted a few fragments of the hidden Metropolitan Museum of Art artworks as well as the Getty Museum's draped Maillol sculpture and, in memory of my friend Thom who died of AIDS, an evocative corner from a Buddha monotype I created.







More at:
World AIDS Day
MTV Staying Alive


Courtesy the Getty Museum

Thanks to Bill Roedy for reminding me of Maya Angelou's powerful poem:
Bill Roedy:Despite Huge Successes In HIV Prevention And Treatment, We Must Not Rest On Our Laurels

*Images courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the LOOK Gallery, Los Angeles

President Barack Obama's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation

President Barack Obama's Thanksgiving Day proclamation, as released by the White House:

What began as a harvest celebration between European settlers and indigenous communities nearly four centuries ago has become our cherished tradition of Thanksgiving. This day's roots are intertwined with those of our nation, and its history traces the American narrative.

Today, we recall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed "by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God," and President Abraham Lincoln, who established our annual Thanksgiving Day to help mend a fractured nation in the midst of civil war. We also recognize the contributions of Native Americans, who helped the early colonists survive their first harsh winter and continue to strengthen our nation. From our earliest days of independence, and in times of tragedy and triumph, Americans have come together to celebrate Thanksgiving.



As Americans, we hail from every part of the world. While we observe traditions from every culture, Thanksgiving Day is a unique national tradition we all share. Its spirit binds us together as one people, each of us thankful for our common blessings.

As we gather once again among loved ones, let us also reach out to our neighbors and fellow citizens in need of a helping hand. This is a time for us to renew our bonds with one another, and we can fulfill that commitment by serving our communities and our nation throughout the year. In doing so, we pay tribute to our country's men and women in uniform who set an example of service that inspires us all. Let us be guided by the legacy of those who have fought for the freedoms for which we give thanks, and be worthy heirs to the noble tradition of goodwill shown on this day.

Now, therefore, I, Barack Obama, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all the people of the United States to come together, whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place where family, friends and neighbors may gather, with gratitude for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own and to share our bounty with others.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 20th day of November, in the year of our Lord 2009, and of the independence of the United States of America the 234th (year).

_ Barack Obama

Helden: Remembering November 9, 1989

Helden: November 9, 1989
TwitPaint

20 years ago today as images of the fall of the Berlin Wall streamed across televisions around the world, I played Little Steven's poignant song Checkpoint Charlie. Little Steven's 1984 song openly dreamed of a free and united Berlin. On November 9, 1989 that dream began to come true. Today as we celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, I also dream of Freedom in Iran and the fall of the Iran Curtain.


The Berliner Zeitung has a nice series of images and articles about the history and fall of the Berlin Wall:
20. Jahre Mauerfall



John F Kennedy in Berlin: "Ich bin ein Berliner."


"This film shows video footage taken in April 1990 plus still image photographs taken in December 1989 and July 2005. There is footage on both sides of the wall, although for reasons of personal security the footage of the Eastern side of the crossing point is somewhat minimal. Nevertheless it is possible to see the arrangement of frosted glass screens which made it virtually impossible to see the crossing point from the East."


Photographer Anthony Suau talks about his iconic image of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

photo by current events.

Artist Kent Twitchell paints an image of JFK on a portion of the Berlin Wall on exhibit in Los Angeles

More at:
Wende Museum: Wall Across Wilshire

Watching the Beijing Olympics, Thinking of Tibet

As the Beijing Olympics nears its finale, I can't help but think about the conflict between the Olympic ideal and the Chinese state sponsored attempts to make China appear good and powerful at all costs. It seems that at least one of the star Chinese gymnasts has not yet reached the needed Olympic competition age of sixteen and has submitted a state-forged passport with an inaccurate date of birth to the International Olympic Committee. And most of all, the question of Tibet hangs over Beijing like the smog that chokes the athletes lungs. It appears that the Chinese government has blocked the Apple i-tunes site for the past week to keep the Chinese people from hearing and purchasing the benefit album Songs for Tibet. It seems that many of the athletes from around the world had downloaded the album in the Olympic village and were listening to what has become a top rated i-tunes download around the world. The album is a benefit for the Art of Peace Foundation.


Gregg Chadwick
Through Tibetan Eyes
72"x96" oil on linen 2008

Before the current Olympics began there were signs of hope that the question of Tibet would be approached peacefully and intelligently by the senior Chinese leadership. Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in his New York Times opinion piece,
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama:

"The senior Chinese leadership should respond by expressing serious interest in talks at the presidential or prime ministerial level. In ancient days, the Olympics were a time to suspend conflict. In that spirit, the two sides should get to work to prepare for a visit by the Dalai Lama in November, followed by top-level negotiations aimed at a historic resolution of the Tibet question. The ball is in the Chinese court."


Tibet The Story Of A Tragedy




More at:
Art of Peace Foundation.
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama
Team Darfur