Barack Obama will speak in Berlin tomorrow at the Tiergarten beneath the Siegessäule . For many of us, Berlin and the towering Siegessäule bring to mind Wim Wenders' films Wings of Desire and the haunting sequel, Faraway, So Close, which opens with the angel Cassiel (Otto Sander) standing on the statue of the Angel of Victory overlooking post-Cold War Berlin. As Wim Wender's site puts it, this angel grows "ever more despondent over his fate as a mere observer of human life, rather than a vital part of it, Cassiel dreams of crossing over to the human world." Many times as the centuries pass, art that was at first created to celebrate fleeting military victories over past or imagined enemies loses its local memory and becomes part of all humanity's memories. Wim Wenders was able to shake the Siegessäule loose from the spectres of Prussian militarism and into the post-Cold War world. Arguably, this Angel of Victory can now be seen as a harbinger of Walter Benjamin's Angel of History:
"This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward." - Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," IX
photo- DailyKos
Germany has been able to move on from a past led by a militaristic leader and his tight cabal. Now it is America's turn to move on from our current militaristic leader, his tight cabal and his purported successor. Barack Obama's speech on July 24, 2008 in Berlin will come to be seen as a turning point in the journey away from the memory and grip of war towards the promise of peace and reconciliation.
MBNYC at the DailyKos has a very well written piece on the history of the site and the Siegessäule:
"During the workers revolt of 17. June 1953, an uprising against the Soviet-imposed East German government which was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks, fleeing revolutionaries used the column as a point of orientation in escaping from East Berlin. Partly in consequence, the street the Siegessäule stands on is now named the Street of 17 June. Ironically, Berlin's principal monument to the war dead of the Soviet Union stands on that street, about halfway between the column and the Brandenburg Gate. That monument is built out of red marble salvaged from Hitler's nearby Reich Chancellery, and Obama will be looking in its direction when he speaks. He will also symbolically be answering Ronald Reagan; when the latter spoke at the Brandenburg Gate, he was looking West. Obama will be looking East, in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate, answering and rebutting Reagan, as we prepare to enter a new era in American politics and bury Reagan's malignant legacy."
Gregg Chadwick The Angel of History 28.5" x 73" sumi and oil on screen 2006
Regina Wilson,
Syaw (fish-net),
acrylic on linen 62.99" x 78.74"
"You've been looking too closely at pictures. Why don't you swap them for some long horizons?"
- Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
Recently Cassiel asked me what my richest visual memory was. It didn't take me long to answer-
"Night in the Australian outback - somewhere on the way to Alice Springs from Perth on a desolate dirt road. Above the Southern Cross gleams in a lapis sky as it goes black and up ahead a fire glows in the shell of a burned out Holden automobile. Silhouetted figures flicker and bob like tongues of shadow in front of the orange glow. "
"Wow", Cassiel said. "Who were they out in the middle of nowhere? But it wasn't really nowhere was it? Everywhere is somewhere."
Caught in my visual reverie, I missed the profound truth my daughter expressed.
Today as I wandered through the exhibition of Australian artist Regina Wilson's large, glowing acrylic paintings at the Arena 1 Gallery in Santa Monica, I remembered that recent conversation with my daughter and my rich experiences in Australia and with Australian culture. I have crisscrossed the Australian continent in a series of journeys. And I have grown to love the deeply historic and richly vital Aboriginal culture that I first glimpsed on a crisp desert night in the middle of somewhere.
Together with her husband, Harold Wilson, Regina Wilson founded the Peppimenarti Community as a permanent settlement for the Ngangikurrungurr people. The community is located in the Daly River Aboriginal Reserve in Northern Australia and is an important dreaming site for the Ngangikurrungurr.
Bruce Chatwin in The Songlines explains that "Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the Australian continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path - birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes - and so singing the world into existence."
Many of the current paintings by Australian Aboriginal artists use these songlines as inspiration for their paintings. Regina Wilson's work, though rooted in the dream sites of the Ngangikurrungurr people, instead makes use of the layering process inherit in traditional Aboriginal weavings. The Durrmu Arts site explains,"The women of Peppimenarti are traditionally weavers and have transposed their knowledge of fibre and textiles onto the canvas. The results are paintings of intricate, abstract mark-making; some clearly representing syaws (fish-nets) and wupun (basket-weavings) through their layered textures, whilst others resemble fine tapestries."
Regina Wilson at the Peppimenarti (large rock) Community.
photo- Peppimenarti Arts
Regina Wilson's paintings are lovingly brought into being over time. The fluid paint she lays on her canvases is knit, stroke by stroke, to create an all-over surface that reads as landscape, or map, or fishing net, or even a net of stars. These are paintings that take time to make and time to read. Another Australian, the writer and art critic Robert Hughes spoke to the Royal Academy in London in 2004 and bemoaned the impatience of contemporary industrialized societies:
"Drawing brings us into a different, a deeper and more fully experienced relation to the object. A good drawing says: “not so fast, buster”. We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn't merely sensational, that doesn't get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn't falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media. For no spiritually authentic art can beat mass media at their own game."
Peppimenarti Community Open Day 2007
( Peppimenarti Open Day is held every two years - the next one will be in the dry season of 2009)
photo- Peppimenarti Arts
My friend, the chef and sommelier Nicole Christensen, currently lives in Sydney near her Australian mother and over the years we have had numerous conversations about Australian Aboriginal culture, Robert Hughes, Bruce Chatwin and the place of myth in contemporary societies. Nicole inspired my painting A Dream of Water.
Gregg Chadwick
A Dream of Water
48" x 36" Oil on Linen 2002
Private Collection
Sydney, Australia
Nicole and I agree with Robert Hughes that what we need is art and food that "holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness" makes us think and feel. Regina Wilson's paintings hold time and make us think and feel. Robert Hughes also said that Australian Aboriginal art was the "world’s last great art movement of the 20th century." As we slide along into the 21st century, Robert Hughes' words still might ring true. But I am betting that the inspiration provided by the works of artists such as Regina Wilson will encourage all of us to live lives rich in insight and creativity that will inspire great art movements to come. For my sake at least, I have a new painting to start of a night in the Australian outback - somewhere on the way to Alice Springs from Perth on a desolate dirt road. Above the Southern Cross will gleam in a lapis sky as it goes black and up ahead a fire will glow in the shell of a burned out Holden automobile. Silhouetted figures will flicker and bob like tongues of shadow in front of the orange glow...
Regina Wison's exhibition, PULCHRITUDO VAGA, runs from July 17th through August 3rd, 2008. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 19, 2008 from 6:30 to 9 pm.
I will be at the show and my studio (#15) will be open down the hall in the Santa Monica Art Studios complex. Please stop by for conversation and remembrances.
Exhibition dates: July 19th – August 3rd, 2008
Gallery hours: Wed-Sat from 12 noon to 6 pm
ARENA 1 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA. 90405
Regina Wilson at work - STUDIO: Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity
Photography: R. Ian Lloyd
Bruce Conner Burning Bright 1996, Collection SFMOMA
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a new art blog: Open Space. The current posts on the recently deceased Bruce Conner are thought provoking. I am intrigued by the account of Conner's fervent disagreement over a proposed retrospective with then director Henry Hopkins:
"Conner’s relationship with SFMOMA was notoriously troubled. As Conner recounted in 1979 (in an interview published in Damage and reprinted in Stiles and Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art), Henry Hopkins, then the museum’s director, had proposed doing a retrospective of the artist’s work to date. But they couldn’t agree on certain things. Conner wanted to take part in curating his own history, and demanded a role in the conservation of assemblages that he’d originally intended to change over time. He also wanted his show to be free – the museum wanted to charge $2 admission fee – or at least to share in a percentage of the earnings from an increased admission."
Mat Gleason, publisher of Coagula, has curated a group show in Los Angeles which opens this week. The premise was simple. Each artist was given a $2 bill in US currency and encouraged to create an artistic interaction. My approach was historical. Thomas Jefferson graces the front of the two dollar bill. On the reverse is a depiction of Jefferson and the Continental Congress presenting the Declaration of Independence. I spent part of my childhood in Charlottesville, Virginia and as a kid loved to visit Jefferson's home at Monticello as well as the Jefferson designed campus at the University of Virginia. Before moving to Virginia my family had rendezvoused with my father in Paris as he returned from the Vietnam War. Jefferson's love of Paris and his influence on the French Revolution of 1789 was presented in detail on our tours. I was entranced with this complex figure. And also perplexed. How could a lover of liberty and the author of the Declaration of Independence justify owning slaves? I vaguely remember asking a docent this question on a tour of Monticello. In the 1960's, in the South especially, this question wasn't asked in public by adults much less a little kid. I am still trying to answer that question in my $2 artwork: How could a lover of liberty and the author of the Declaration of Independence justify owning slaves? And how could a lover of liberty and the author of the Declaration of Independence justify having sex and children with one of his slaves - Sally Hemings?
Recto: Notes: Seen through Sally’s eyes are the words from the $2 bill- “tender and private.” To the right of and underneath the pink skinned man the name Hemings and the words “shadow man” are written in script.
Verso: Gregg Chadwick Sally and the Shadow Man Sumi-e, egg tempera, charcoal, conté, oil and gum arabic on $2 US currency 2008
Notes: The name Sally is written in a script derived from Thomas Jefferson’s own handwritten book which lists all of his slaves. The ghost of Tom Jefferson remains from John Trumball’s Declaration of Independence.
Joseph Ellis, a Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and author of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, (winner of the 1997 National Book Award), explains Thomas Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemings in a recent interview in the program Frontline: Jefferson's Blood:
Frontline: For Jefferson, was race a double issue, in a sense? On one level, when he wanted to enjoy or be with Sally as a woman, he could see her as white, and fully human. But when he wanted to deny her human entitlements, he could see her as black. Was there a double convenience involved there?
Ellis: Yes, Jefferson's racial views do give him an ability to have his cake and eat it, too. On the one hand, he can control Sally Hemings, and doesn't have to worry about a relationship that's a truly equitable relationship, back and forth. And yet he can get his physical gratification and satisfactions at the same time.Jefferson is excellent at "having your cake and eating it, too." And he's excellent at then denying inside himself what he's doing. What's impossible to know is what Sally thinks and feels on her side of this relationship at this time.
Frontline: Madison (Sally and Thomas Jefferson’s son) does give some indication . . . about his experience serving in the house.
Ellis: Madison Hemings said that he felt that he was treated as one of the Hemings slaves, and that they were treated in more privileged ways than the other slaves. But he was treated as a slave. He was not treated as a member of Jefferson's family, or in the same way that Jefferson's own grandchildren were treated. And he resented that. He was the age of Jefferson's grandchildren. He's implicitly suggesting that, within the family, Jefferson never acknowledged his paternity.
From Thomas Jefferson's own account on the writing of the Declaration of Independence he explains how the passages banning slavery were deleted: "The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."
Crane & Company has continually supplied the United States Treasury with its currency paper since 1879. The paper used for US currency is discussed on the website for NOVA: Secrets of Making Money:
"There are no wood fibers or starch in currency paper. Instead, like high quality stationery, currency paper is composed of a special blend of cotton and linen fibers. The strength comes from raw materials continuously refined until the special feel of the currency is achieved. People who handle money on a regular basis, such as bank tellers, can easily determine if a bill is counterfeit by this distinctive feel. The characteristic yellowish-green tint of U.S. currency is another distinctive feature which is, in fact, hard for color photocopiers to accurately match."
The $2 Show at i-5 GALLERY at THE BREWERY ART COLONY 2100 N. Main St., #A-9 (in the Atrium at The Brewery), Los Angeles, CA 90031
July 11 - Aug 23, 2008 Reception: Saturday, July 12th 7-10pm Gallery hours: Fri.-Sat., 12-4pm; & by appointment. 100 artists were given a $2 Bill on which to make their masterpiece - each artwork is priced at $200 as a fundraiser for i-5 gallery. Featuring Ya Ya Chou, Anna Conti, Gregg Chadwick, Dale Dreiling, Carol Es, Mark Hix, Leora Lutz, Michael Salerno, Leigh Salgado, David Trulli, Paige Wery, An Xiao and others.
Santa Monica artists Gregg Chadwick and Gerard Bourgeois will be exhibiting their artwork at the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah in the exhibition Moving Pictures.
The Julie Nester Gallery, named by Salt Lake Magazine as "the best gallery in Utah", celebrates its new gallery location with a group exhibition. The inaugural show features new work from each of the gallery's 35 national artists.
"Since opening in 2004, the Julie Nester Gallery has specialized in contemporary art and represents mid-career and nationally recognized artists. 'We're focusing on bringing art that's never been seen in Utah. The size of the gallery gives art room to breathe', Nester said. The gallery departs from the mountain motif popular in many galleries in Park City. 'I would say it's a different level of sophistication. Some of the work here can be a little more difficult, a little more challenging.' "
Moving Pictures opens Saturday July 5, 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The exhibition runs from July 5th-July 29th, 2008.
(The gallery also will host a champagne and caviar event on Sunday, July 13, as part of the Park City Food and Wine Festival.)
Rachid Taha's version of the Clash's Rock el Casbah
Rachid Taha plays live in Los Angeles on July 12, 2008 as part of the free Grand Performances Series at California Plaza. The event starts at 8pm.
(Rachid Taha will also play the next afternoon at Stern Grove in San Francisco)
On 7/13/05 I wrote:
“Unity is a universal message.” Rachid Taha
Backstage at a Clash concert in the early '80's, the young French-Algerian singer Rachid Taha pressed a demo tape of his own mix of punk, rock and middle eastern music into Joe Strummer's hands. Rachid Taha didn't hear back from the Clash. But shortly after their backstage meeting, the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" made it onto vinyl. The song could have been written by Taha. “I like Joe Strummer. We have the same obsession - freedom,” says Rachid. When he heard of Strummer's recent death, Taha recorded his own version of the Clash song: "Rock el Casbah" as a tribute.
Watching video clips during the first Iraq War, Taha heard the Clash song blared by US troops during the short engagement with Iraqi forces. – “I wanted to show that this is not a war song, but much more a peaceful song.”
Rachid Taha’s "Rock El Casbah", sung in Arabic, is a sly cover of the Clash classic and provides a nice entree into the power, intelligence and humor of his own music. Rachid Taha's stance against racism, hypocrisy and nostalgic ghetto complacency, have earned him a fearsome reputation in France, North Africa and the Arabic world.
A cultural figure with powerful views on racism and injustices in French society, his music reflects these tensions and has, in Brian Eno’s words, an energy and confidence arising out of his belief that music can still change the world.
Says Rachid: “I’m a proletarian, I’m of the people… so I’m protesting. For me the music’s a protest. So all my songs are like this because I wanted to stop making metaphors. I said it’s time to speak out now.”
Gregg Chadwick "Medina Memories" 38"x38" oil on linen 1992-2005
Rachid Taha quoted by BBC's 'The World':
"When I hear George Bush, and when I hear Osama bin Laden, I hear two bedouin nomads. The only difference he says, is that one of them is from the desert of Texas and drives an SUV, and the other is from the desert of Saudi Arabia and rides a dromedary." Taha says Bush and bin Laden come from similar well-heeled backgrounds. And both, he says, use a similar fundamentalist rhetoric.
Taha's "Rock el Casbah" is on "Tekitoi" (Who Are You?), Rachid's first album after the September 11 attacks.The title track is sung as a dialogue between a young Frenchman and a young Algerian. They ask each other “Who are you?” This question, Taha says, “is part of the healing process. If you start to recognize that we are the same, then you don’t want to do something bad to someone else.”
"Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do..."
"Back in the day when I was a fixture on the Asbury Park boardwalk, I'd often stop and talk to Madam Marie as she sat on her folding chair outside the Temple of Knowledge. I'd sit across from her on the metal guard rail bordering the beach, and watched as she led the day trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future. She always told me mine looked pretty good - she was right. The world has lost enough mystery as it is - we need our fortunetellers. We send our condolences out to her family who've carried on her tradition. Over here on E Street, we will miss her." --Bruce Springsteen
We were at Kepler's Bookstore this weekend and had a good laugh while reading Erich Origen and Gan Golan's politically inspired parody of the children's classic Goodnight Bush.
In this month of graduation speeches and thoughts of the road ahead, one future date stands out: 1/20/09. On his recent tour Bruce Springsteen has been playing the haunting title track off his new album Magic. The song is like a nightmare - the nightmare of the last eight years. Good news is at hand though, " the coming end of the worst presidency ever."
I got a coin in my palm I can make it disappear I got a card up my sleeve Name it and I'll pull it out your ear I got a rabbit in my hat If you want to come and see This is what will be, this is what will be
I got shackles on my wrist Soon I'll slip 'em and be gone Chain me in a box in the river And I'll rise singin' this song Trust none of what you hear And less of what you see This is what will be, this is what will be
I got a shiny saw blade All I needs' a volunteer I'll cut you in half While you're smiling ear to ear And the freedom that you sought's Driftin' like a ghost amongst the trees This is what will be, this is what will be
Now there's a fire down below But it's comin' up here So leave everything you know And carry only what you fear On the road the sun is sinkin' low There's bodies hangin' in the trees This is what will be, this is what will be
Politics and art are in my blood. I went to High School in Northern Virginia where the human side of government is as much a part of daily existence as a morning coffee (espresso in my case). Meet the Press on Sunday mornings was a topic of discussion throughout the week. My dad did his best to stay out of the press while others embraced the glare. I stood on the sidelines watching and making images - much as I do now.
On television it seemed that Tim Russert was happiest when he was in the thick of it. And Tim was happiest when he honored his father and his fatherhood. On this father's day my son Cassiel is here with me as I write. And my father is in the thick of it in Africa. We send our best to Bob Chadwick, my brother Kent Chadwick, my father in law Ralph Heilemann, my brothers in law Paul Heilemann and Tom Bavlnka as well as my artistic comrades in arms Alan Caudillo, Sergio Arau, Gerard Bourgeois, Phil Cousineau, RB Morris, Sheldon Greenberg, Mikkel Aaland, Grady Harp, Rob Lee, Jay Zabriskie, Steve Joseph, Mitch Friedman, and especially on this day to Tim Russert's family. Godspeed!
“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” - Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, United States Supreme Court
Foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention by seeking appeal in United States courts, the Supreme Court ruled today.
Guantánamo Bay photo by Todd Heisler/The New York Times
The New York Times reports:
"Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said: “When Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006, Senator Kennedy called the act ‘fatally flawed’ and said ‘its evisceration of the writ of habeas corpus for all noncitizens is almost surely unconstitutional.’ Today, the Supreme Court agreed, and rejected the Bush administration’s blatant attempt to create a legal black hole beyond the reach of the rule of law.”
Complete text of the Supreme Court decision on Guantánamo at:
"Approximately 20,000 African American recruits received training at Montford Point Camp (less than 10% of the Marine Corps end strength) during World War II. The initial intent of the Marine Corps hierarchy was to discharge these African American Marines after the War, returning them to civilian life - leaving the Marine Corps an all-white organization. Attitudes changed and reality took hold as the war progressed. Once given the chance to prove themselves, it became impossible to deny the fact that this new breed of Marine was just as capable as all other Marines regardless of race, color, creed or National origin."
Roy Lichtenstein Masterpiece Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
In the New York Times, Roberta Smith has a nice piece on the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery in New York:
"This show makes especially clear how Lichtenstein’s work functions as a kind of primer in looking at and understanding the grand fiction of painting: the thought it requires, its mechanics, its final simplicity and strangeness. These great paintings convey all this in a flash of pleasure, compounded by the thrill of understanding."
Roy Lichtenstein Girl at Piano Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
Coming Up: Opening at Gagosian in Beverly Hills on June 14, 2008 is Denise de la Rue's photo exhibition - Matador.
Black Marines pose with one of the Army DUKW amphibious trucks used to bring cargo ashore and carry away the wounded for medical treatment to ships offshore. National Archives Photo 127-GW-334-114329
Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood got into a verbal dust-up at Cannes. Spike criticized Clint for not featuring any black troops in his recent World War II pictures: Flags Of Our Fathers, which weaves together the stories of the marines who raised the flag over Iwo Jima in Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph, and Letters From Iwo Jima, which focuses on the Japanese soldiers who fought to the death on the bitter island.
Though black Marines were not on Mount Suribachi when the flags were raised, they were caught in the thick of the battle as the official Marine Corps accounts of the assault on Iwo Jima make clear. Passages below are quoted from the USMC history of African-American marines during World War II written by Bernard C. Nalty:
"Black combat support units also took part in the assault on Iwo Jima, where, as at Peleliu, their presence confounded the policy of segregation. Because of the random intermingling of white and black units, an African-American Marine, carrying a box of supplies, dived into a shell hole occupied by white Marines, one of whom gave him a cigarette before he scrambled out with his load and ran forward. Here, too, black stewards and members of the depot and ammunition companies came to the aid of the wounded. A white Marine, Robert F. Graf, who lay in a tent awaiting evacuation for further medical treatment, remembered that: "Two black Marines . . . ever so gently . . . placed me on a stretcher and carried me outside to a waiting DUKW."
Alex Horton in the Los Angeles Times writes that "the Army’s 476th Amphibian Truck Company, an African American unit, powered through the water to land DUKWs on the volcanic sand beach of Iwo Jima in February 1945. They were tasked with bringing artillery pieces ashore. The beach was littered with bodies and destroyed vehicles as the 476th inched through enemy terrain to deliver their guns to Marine Corps artillerymen. The guns began firing by the evening, according to an Army history. More than half of the 48 vehicles were sunk or destroyed."
"PFCs Willie J. Kanady, Eugene F. Hill, and Joe Alexander of the 34th Depot Company relax during a lull in the action on Iwo Jima, where danger persisted even after the island was declared secure. Before they left Iwo, the company would become engaged when the Japanese mounted a banzai charge against Marines and soldiers." Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 113835
"At Iwo Jima, the 8th Marine Ammunition Company and the 33d, 34th, and 36th Marine Depot Companies served as part of the shore party of the V Amphibious Corps. Elements of the ammunition company and the 36th Depot Company landed on D-Day, 19 February 1945, and within three days all the units were ashore, braving Japanese fire as they struggled in the volcanic sand to unload and stockpile ammunition and other supplies, and move the cargo inland. Eleven black enlisted Marines and one of the white officers were wounded, two of the enlisted men fatally."
The first flagraising atop Mount Suribachi, February 23, 1945. photo by Staff Sergeant Louis R. Lowery
"On the early morning of 26 March, 10 days after Iwo Jima was declared secure, the Japanese made a final attack that penetrated to the rear area units near Iwo Jima's western beaches, including the 8th Ammunition and 36th Marine Depot Companies. The black Marines helped stop the enemy in a confused struggle during darkness and mop up the survivors at daybreak. Two members of the 36th Company — Privates James M. Whitlock and James Davis — earned the Bronze Star for "heroic achievement." One Marine from the depot company and another from the ammunition company were fatally wounded, but four others, two from each unit, survived their wounds. The African-American companies that fought at Iwo Jima shared in the Navy Unit Citation awarded the support units of V Amphibious Corps."
The second flagraising atop Mount Suribachi, February 23, 1945.
16 mm color film, by Marine Sgt. Bill Genaust.
Obviously, a film is the vision of the director. In the case of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood begins by focusing on the group of Marines who were immortalized in Rosenthal's photo of the second flagraising on Suribachi. But in the second film, Eastwood pulls the camera back for a wide shot to include the Japanese viewpoint. By broadening his range, but not including other elements of the USMC experience, Eastwood leaves himself open to fair criticism. Artists all make choices, but those choices are then open to discussion - Why this story and not that story? Why this character and not that one?
Spike Lee feels that Clint left out an important part of the story that continues to resonate in our current American existence. "Clint Eastwood is a great film maker and I respect his work, and he did two films about Iwo Jima back to back, and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said.
Spike is making a point here about emphasis when he fails to credit Clint for the inclusion of black characters on board ship before the invasion. Once the fighting starts the black faces disappear from the film.
Lee continues, "Add the running times of both films, that's about four hours. ... Many veterans, African-Americans who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood for not even having one, but Clint Eastwood is a great director and that was his vision. His vision of Iwo Jima: Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that you know. I have a different version."
"There were African-Americans on Iwo Jima", Eastwood admitted in an interview with the Guardian, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is 'Flags of Our Fathers,' the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate. ... I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90 percent black, like 'Bird,' I use 90 percent black people."
Spike Lee's response, "If Clint wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima, and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist," he said.
Eastwood's final comment was out of character:"A guy like him should shut his face," Eastwood told the Guardian. "Has he ever studied the history?"
Spike Lee in an interview with ABC News retorted, "I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II. Not everything was John Wayne, baby."
"Clint Eastwood is a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn't personally attack him. And a comment like, 'A guy like that should shut his face' -- come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there. Even though he's trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I'm going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love."
Upon the release of Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Father's, Dan Glaister, the Guardian's Los Angeles correspondent, wrote an article critiquing Clint's omission of black Marines in the film. Glaister writes:
"The people carrying the ammunition were 90% black, so that's an opportunity to show black soldiers. These are our films and very often they become our history, historical documents." Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back."
"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy," Yvonne Latty said. "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie."
Glaister ends his article with telling words, "The first chapter to James Bradley's book Flags of Our Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with a quotation from president Harry Truman. "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." It would provide a fitting endnote to Eastwood's film."
The history we don't yet know will create films and novels for the future. Let me start with an image: Black Marines struggling with ammo boxes under intense Japanese fire, diving into foxholes, sharing a brief cigarette with their white comrades in the Corps, and then moving up the line with bullets and grenades. Only to be ignored as Invisible Men by the war correspondents and the press corps as the battle is recounted.
Spike Lee in Los Angeles
photo by Gregg Chadwick
Spike Lee will tell a bit more about the African-American experience in World War II with his upcoming film, Miracle at St. Anna , which focuses on four black US soldiers who get trapped in an Italian village.
Clint Eastwood's next film will be The Human Factor, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in a tale about how Mandela used a campaign to have South Africa host the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a chance to unite his country.
The members of the UK band James laugh as lead singer Tim Booth answers a question.
The band was set up for an interview in my studio complex just outside my studio door in Santa Monica.
It was an interesting day of painting with Tim Booth's quiet, lilting voice filtering into my workspace. Tim Booth expressed that James has unfinished business in the US and are hoping to tour here in the near future.
James had just finished a session with Nic Harcourt at KCRW before they stopped by. The complete KCRW session below:
The New York Times has a powerful mix of words and images in Janet Maslin's article on Jim Sheeler's new book Final Salute. Jim Sheeler's book is based on a 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles that he wrote for The Rocky Mountain News. I have posted a brief selection of quotes and photos below:
"When 2nd Lt. James Cathey's body arrived at the Reno Airport, Marines climbed into the cargo hold of the plane and draped the flag over his casket as passengers watched the family gather on the tarmac. During the arrival of another Marine's casket at Denver International Airport, Major Steve Beck described the scene as one of the most powerful in the process: "See the people in the windows? They'll sit right there in the plane, watching those Marines. You gotta wonder what's going through their minds, knowing that they're on the plane that brought him home," he said. "They're going to remember being on that plane for the rest of their lives. They're going to remember bringing that Marine home. And they should." Photo: Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News
"Before the burial of James Cathey's body, his casket was covered with the white gloves of the Marines who carried him, along with sand they brought from the beaches of Iwo Jima, and a single red rose." Photo: Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News
"Major Steve Beck and another Marine approach the family home of 2nd Lt. James Cathey, preparing to escort the Catheys to the airport to receive their son's body. Five days earlier, the shadows of Casualty Assistance Call Officers followed the same path, carrying the news no military family ever wants to hear. The gold star flag in the window signifies the death of a loved one overseas." Photo: Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News
Phil Cousineau Reading from Stoking the Creative Fires at Bird & Beckett Books, San Francisco
Gregg Chadwick will be leading a weekend workshop at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California with author Phil Cousineau and poet/musician R.B. Morris on August 22-24, 2008
On the Bus: A Multimedia Performance Workshop—Mythmaking in the Movies, Music, Art, and Poetry
"Together as a group, we will become modern mythmakers by creating and performing a new multimedia work over the course of the weekend. Our spark will be musician R. B. Morris's song, ‘On the Bus,' which will serve as a template for a one-act play. Writer Phil Cousineau will help to stoke the creative fire of the group by bringing the mythic dimension into the story; painter Gregg Chadwick will take the lead in helping us visualize the story and the set; and Morris will help us write and arrange the score. On Sunday morning we will stage and perform the piece together."
An old marine at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC scanned the reflective black wall for his buddy's name. "His name should be right here", he said to his wife as he pointed to a small gap between names."Check the book again." His wife calmly took his hand and said, "You have the wrong war. Your buddy died in another country at another time."
Masami Teraoka and Samuel Freeman Speaking at the Opening of Cloisters' Confessions at the Samuel Freeman Gallery on April 19, 2008. The painting behind: Masami Teraoka The Cloister/Venus and Pope's Bullfight 101"x300.5" oil on canvas with gold-leaf frame 2006-7
Masami Teraoka's powerful exhibition Cloisters' Confessions closes today at the Samuel Freeman Gallery in Santa Monica, California. During the show's run, I have slipped into the gallery frequently to witness the incredible mix of hope and horror in Masami's masterful paintings.
"In Teraoka's new works, where the floating world of pleasure-seekers has been replaced by the Spanish Inquisition, sex is no longer about pleasure. Rather, it has become the theater in which political power plays are enacted before a voyeuristic populace seeking titillation from the sexual misdeeds of the mighty, and where religion and morality can become weapons against freedom. A recurring theme in these paintings is how the religious and political right in America has wrested control of the definition of morality in order to further its own purposes." - Eleanor Heartney, Pictures from an Inquisition, Art in America April 2001
Masami Teraoka Speaking at the Opening of Cloisters' Confessions at the Samuel Freeman Gallery on April 19, 2008 The painting behind: Masami Teraoka The Cloisters/Holy Sea Pregnancy Test 119"x112.5" oil on canvas with gold-leaf frame 2007
Samuel Freeman writes in the catalog:
"These paintings show the horrors of our time retreating before the sensory pleasure of corporeal experience. The negative is pushed aside by the glowing curves of pregnant bellies and the impending, potential, rediscovered kiss of bright red lips."
Masami Teraoka Virtual Inquisition/Reclining Eve(detail) 92.5"x168" watercolor on paper mounted as a four panel screen 1997
Masami Teraoka came to the United States from Japan in the early 1960s. Peter Clothier writes in the catalog:
"Long before most of us became aware of the problems inherent in what we have come to identify as "globalization," Teraoka was busy making those deservedly famous, delightfully irreverent images of McDonald's hamburgers and Baskin Robbins' 31 Flavors invading Japan.... Teraoka often included himself in these paintings as a wily co-conspirator, impishly complicit in the devil's bargain between two cultures."
Masami Teraoka McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan/Chochin-me color screenprint on Arches 88 paper, ed. 41/91 1982 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
In 1996 in a review of Masami's exhibiton at the Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, Joyce Jones explained that "Masami Teraoka frequently e-mails his sensei (or teacher) Utagawa Kunisada, the famous Japanese woodblock artist. That's a neat trick, considering Kunisada died in 1865.But after viewing Teraoka's Coke-swilling geisha or punk rock samurai -- his fusion of traditional Japanese art with icons of American influence -- e-mailing the 19th century doesn't seem unusual." The Sackler show paired Masami's AIDS series with Kunisada prints from his personal collection.
Masami Teraoka AIDS Series/Geisha and Fox 14 3/4" x 25" watercolor on canvas 1988
Masami Teraoka's current work is dark in theme but not in spirit. In a telling comment during his informative lecture at the opening of Cloisters' Confessions at the Samuel Freeman Gallery, Masami explained that many of the horrific scenes exist only in the mind of the painting's protagonist. In Semana Santa/Venus’ Security Check the Policewoman in the checkered-banded bowler cap only imagines that the blond venus disrobed before her eyes is strapped with explosives. The painting comments on the ludicrous culture of fear that we currently inhabit and was inspired by a humorous and frightening experience that Masami's San Francisco art dealer, Catharine Clark, went through with her family at Heathrow in London.
Masami Teraoka Semana Santa/Venus’ Security Check 119'' x 96.5'' x 2.75'' Oil on Panel in Gold Leaf Frame 2004
Across his fruitful career, Masami Teraoka has used depictions of the figure to grapple with the pain and poke fun at the foibles of our human existence. Masami looks back to the art of the past, at times ukiyo-e prints and other times as evidenced in the Cloisters paintings to Renaissance Italy, to find clues to help unravel the mysteries of art and life.
In the May 22nd issue, the New York Times reports that Virginia Commonwealth University has given a sweetheart deal to Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco company and a unit of Altria Group, which gives the tobacco company veto rights over publishing results of research sponsored by the company:
“When universities sign contracts with these covenants, they are basically giving up their ethos, compromising their values as a university,” said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University who is an expert on corporate influence on medical research. “There should be no debate about having a sponsor with control over the publishing of results.”
Stanton A. Glantz, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine who has lobbied for banning tobacco money on campuses, said, “University administrators who are desperate for money will basically do anything they have to for money.”
Francis Bacon Triptych 78"x58" oil and pastel on canvas 1976
"The picture surely treats of sexual love – that 'crime' as Baudelaire put it, in which one is fated to have an accomplice – and the suffering it frequently sets in motion...The themes of crime, guilt and punishment are all strongly represented in this magnificent work....From this stasis no outcome is possible, no purging of the turbulent passions, almost as if, in his deep seated masochism, the artist had chosen constant pain over catharsis" - Michael Peppiatt
Gary Ruddell is a great painter. His artwork continually surprises me and inspires new ideas in my own studio. If you are in Manhattan in the next few weeks make sure to stop by the Gallery Henoch to give some time to Gary's paintings. His paintings convey the mystery inherit in modern life - much like the poems and short stories of Raymond Carver. Ruddell's painted world slips in and out of focus in a silvery air.
photo- DailyKos
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