Landscape is Sculpture

Most of us grow up, live, and work in boxes throughout our whole life.   Some of us are lucky enough to have space around or near our boxes, be it private, shared, or public.   We call people who design, arrange, and modify the appearance of the spaces landscaper.   As its focus is on the visual features of a space, landscaping naturally lends itself to visual art and it has incorporated sculptures traditionally. Yet, artists don’t usually work with landscaping for one reason or other and we don't usually think of a landscape as a whole an art.  Further, the mentioning of the word of sculpture usually brings one the traditional image of a three dimensional object such as a statue or a vessel etc.  

An hour north of New York City, there is a less known, small but fabulous museum called DIA: Beacon on the east bank of Hudson River.  The museum was open 10 years ago after private citizens, non-profit organizations, and state and local government came together to make the conversion happen of this 300,000 square foot 1929 former box printing factory of Nabisco's.  In addition to some spectacular collections as one expects with a major museum, what makes this museum special is its garden, its parking lot as well as the all natural lights in most galleries, respecting and preserving much of the original factory layout.  All this was made possible due to the effort of one of the most influence contemporary American artists Robert Irwin, a pioneer of the Light and Space movement of the 1960's. (For a more complete account of the design, see Chap 22 of Lawence Weschler's 2009 book Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing one Sees: expanded edition.)

As one drove down the road and entered the parking lot, one was not greeted by usual rows of boring metal boxes called vehicles in English speaking world.  Rather, one sees a painting.  A painting in a large canvas of crabapples groves interspersed with randomly colored boxes which are floating and waving above ornament grasses at the whispers of wind.   

As one being led by allée of trees towards to the museum entrance, one’s eyes get attracted to this large tall boxy green object at the right.  Looking closer, one would realize it is composed of four quadrants of 3 by 3 neatly trimmed Blue beeches (American hornbeams) that are slightly taller than the building right next to it.  One can enter and wonder around these hornbeams using the slightly elevated dark grey deck.  The trees are spaced dense enough to form a shadowy green box and yet sparse enough to let light leak through onto each other and at times, all the way reaching the ground.  If you stand back a little, with the supporting cor-ten of the deck and sharp edges of the trimmed trees, the whole structure appears to be extending out of the building that claims its permanency like the building itself.

Is it a landscape? a garden? Is it an sculpture however temporal it is?  How does it change its appearance through the hours of day, the season as it is organic? Walking on the deck and wondering around the trees, you touch light, air, and the earth.  You are experiencing a living sculpture and you feel the life.  What an amazing piece of art work. Thank you! Robert Irwin.  You have shown us what a landscape can be and how it can alter the space and our experience beyond its own existence.

Driving a little more than 10 miles south from DIA: Beacon, one arrives at the Storm King Art Center, a magnificent 500 acres sculpture park. At the southern end of the park, one comes to meet Maya Lin’s Wavefield.  It accentuates the hills and mountains in its backdrop, near and far, sprinkled with the fall colors.  It draws you in and takes you up and down the ridges. It seduces you to roll down hills and smell the grass and earth like children.  It has the similar effects as her Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C.: it does not intrude nor divide. It harmonizes us and nature, the living and the immobile.  It makes you introspect and reflect, not conquer.

Circling back north, one sees the eastern part of the dry stone wall by Andy Goldsworthy (entitled Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall).  It rises up from the bottom of a lake and snakes its way uphill through woods.   Size wise, it is dwarfed by the 2000+ years old Great Wall of China which nevertheless couldn’t protect the last emperor of Ming Dynasty from his own dismal performance and the betrayal of his own general.  As one walks across an opening of the wall, one wonders which is inside and which is outside the wall?  Is the wall keeping someone out or keeping someone in?

As one reaches the top of the hill at north of the park museum, Isamu Noguchi’s Momotarō invites you to sit down on its bench like granite to pause and to look around.  If you can’t resist the temptation, you can climb into the halved peach shape boulder to experience the legend of how Momotarō was born.  Noguchi had the following to say about creative process: “You can find out how to do something and then do it or do something and then find out what you did.”   The idea of Momotarō was more than likely born only after he split the granite.   In contrast, Irwin’s DIA: beacon garden and Lin’s wavefield were clearly created deliberately after much meditation and thoughts.   

Regardless the creative process, Noguchi had in fact thought of landscape as sculpture long time ago.  In his 1968 book A Sculptor’s World, Noguchi said " I like to think of gardens as sculpturing of space: a beginning, and a groping to another level of sculptural experience and use: a total sculpture space experience beyond individual sculptures. A man may enter such a space: it is in scale with him; it is real. An empty space has no visual dimension or significance. Scale and meaning enter when some thoughtful object or line is introduced.  This is why sculptures, or rather sculptural objects, create space.”  I saw three sculptures at two places in one day.  Would Noguchi be disappointed?

Talk to you soon!

On Perspective

In my last blog, I touched upon Picasso’s choice of not pursuing further and total abstraction back in 1911.  Instead, he took a different path and retained some figural representation in his works that shaped cubism and influenced development of modern arts.  Still, many of these paintings are not easy to comprehend.

One reason and an important technique found in cubism and modern arts is the use of multiple perspectives. That is, a painting can be composed of multiple views of one or more objects on the same canvas.  As a result, an object could be broken up with each fragment being represented in different perspectives and placed once or multiple times on the canvas.

Equipped with the ability to recognize figurative representation of familiar objects, be it ultra realistic, or partially abstract, we can still identify some of these scattered fragments without too much difficulty.  However, at first sight, the resulting paintings look odd since they defy our visual experience of the straightforward single perspective or snapshot view.  There are many such examples including Picasso’s 1918 Harlequin, his later Surrealism works including the 1937 Weeping Woman and the 1952 Girl in Chair (see photos below, from left o right). 

Note each part of the human figure subject appeared only once in these paintings, regardless how out-of-place it may be.  It is then not a huge leap to having multiple views of the same part of a figure that appear on the same canvas simultaneously as shown in his work 1938 Head (see photo to the right)

Similarly, Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 work Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (see photo to the right) is also not difficult to decode.  It brought even more directly the fourth-dimension, namely, time into painting using multiple perspectives (over time, in this case).  The canvas can obviously be thought of as an overlay of successive frames of a motion picture from a fixed vintage point in which the subject walks down a staircase.  

A little digression is in order.  One obvious motivation for drawing and painting in human history has been to record and to represent what one has seen through their eyes.  To that end, the first value judgment of such a record would naturally be the accuracy of it, or how “realistic” is the painting compared to our experience.  No wonder Leonardo Da Vinci had famously said “The most praiseworthy form of painting is the one that most resembles what it imitates.”  That is exactly what the artists in Renaissance were striving for 600 years ago – they wanted to make the painted scenes look as natural and real to the viewers as possible. 

Renaissance artists’ solution to this challenge was Linear Perspective.  It was developed in Florence, Italy in early 1400’s whereby artists paint the objects as they appear on an “imaginary window” in between the viewer and the field of objects.  More precisely, if one draws a straight line between a point of the actual object and his/her eyes, the intersection of this line and the imaginary window should be the location of the corresponding representative point of the object on the canvas.  Below is a popular example - the painting Ideal City by Piero della Francesca.

A consequence of this viewer-centric projection method is that objects further away from the viewer would appear smaller and parallel tracks appear to converge into a point at infinity, the so called vanishing point.  However as the viewing angle becomes wider and exceeds more than say 60 degrees such as in some landscape paintings, it becomes difficult to represent accurately what our eyes see in a two dimensional flat surface.  Camera fisheye lenses are photographer’s solution to this problem with a nonlinear projection that carries a significant distortion.

Technically and strictly speaking, there is no single or completely accurate representation that works universally.  For one, we are talking about placing faithfully the details and relationships of all objects in a three- or four-dimensional space (or space-time) onto a finite 2-dimensional canvas.  Further, viewer’s eyes are known to wonder around the picture, consciously or unconsciously, and their brains do produce varying responses depending on the order of and how the stimuli are presented.  Artists can express and communicate more effectively if they can influence how viewers view and respond to their works.  That is why perspective matters.

The implication of the viewer-centric perspectives such as the linear perspective is that the viewer naturally responds to and interacts with the painting from outside the painting.  An alternate choice of the representation is the parallel system by which projection rays are parallel to each other.  Such a system in fact has been used earlier in Western and in many cultures/civilizations.  In fact it was used extensively in Chinese paintings for thousands of years.  Below are two examples from a recent paper by Christopher W. Tyler and Chien-Chung Chen. The photo on the left is Gu Hong-zhong’s 顧閎中classic painting Han Xi-zai Gives a Banquet (韓熙載夜宴圖) during Five Dynasties 五代 (907~ 950 AD).  On the right is a wall painting of a Roman bakery from the 1^st century found in Pompei.  For more detailed discussions, one can refer to the paper Chinese perspective as a rational system: Relationship to Panofsky’s symbolic form which was published on Chinese Journal of Psychology, Volume 53, Issue 4, Pages 371-470, December 2011. 

The significance of what parallel system offers, in contrast to that of linear (or non-linear, for the matter) perspective, is the object-centricity and viewer-independence.  One no longer relates to the painting through an invisible viewing window external to it.  Instead, one can be inside the painting and does not have a fixed physical view.  The beauty is that once removed from the viewer-centricity constraint, artists can express freely their own feelings, experiences, and imaginations, be it real or unreal.  They don’t have to maintain consistent views of all objects simultaneously from a fixed external viewer’s point of view!  One result of it is the scene may appear odd and obscure, and may not conform to our daily experiences.  But who is to say one must be realistic and adhere to the linear perspective of the Renaissance’s?  On the right, you can see the photo of one of the most revered classical Chinese landscape paintings.  It is entitled Travellers among Mountains and Streams (谿山行旅) and was painted with ink and slight color on a 6¾ ft x 2½ ft silk scroll by Fan Kuan 范寬  It is not realistic by the measure of  linear perspective but nevertheless a beautiful painting! 

I would submit to you that for this reason, parallel and mixed representational system with multiple perspectives are often found in Cubism and other 20^th century modern arts.  The brilliant contemporary British artist David Hockney has made in-depth expositions on the topics of perspective.   In his 2012 interview with Martin Gayford first published on The Daily Telegraph, Hockney was quoted to have said:  “Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, ‘Things don’t look like that!’ Actually cubism was concerned to claim: yes they do in a way.”  He then went on and added that “In Picasso’s pictures you can see the front and back of a person simultaneously. That means you’ve walked round them. It’s a sort of memory picture; we make pictures like that in our heads.”  

David Hockey’s photo collages and composite Polaroid pictures as he first re-examined Cubism back in 1980s are excellent examples of the importance and endless possibilities of distinct perspective.  Below are two of these collages on http://www.hockneypictures.com are included here for your convenience.  The one on the left is his 1983 work Walking in the Zen Garden, Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.  The one on the right is his 1982 composite Polaroid photos Don & Christopher. 

With it, you would not be surprised then to hear that Hockey has been quite intrigued by the classical Chinese scroll paintings as they addressed some of the very issue of perspective in its own unique approach.   In scroll painting, in addition to using stationary single or multiple perspectives, the representation of four-dimension time-space relations on a two dimension space is accomplished by continuously shifting the perspective with changing vintage point from right to left.  As one views only a small and a few feet wide portion of a seemingly endless scroll at a time, the viewer is no longer bounded by a fixed and bounded window – one of the very constraints that Dave Hockney was trying to remove in conventional western painting and photography.

Below is a brief segment of the 47 minutes long 1988 documentary film entitled " A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China" by David Hockney and Philip Haas that discusses aspects of Perspective in Chinese Scroll Painting.  The subject is the late 17th century scroll painting The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour 康熙南巡图by Wang Hui王翚 and his team.   It is a series of twelve massive hand scrolls, each one measuring from forty to eighty feet in length!  The techniques of multiple simultaneous perspectives and parallel system combined with shifting perspective can clearly be seen throughout.  The first 10 minutes of the documentary is available on Youtube.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmMasnL5VZg).  Enjoy them by just wondering around in the scenes and don't worry about the realism and don't try to view it from your imaginary external window!

Hope you find the subject of perspective fascinating which is found in many fields beyond arts including computer graphics.  It definitely helped me understand better the history and techniques in both Western and Chinese Arts.  Talk to you soon!

Inventing Abstraction

When meeting an abstract painting, my first reaction is usually “What are you saying?!”   When I attempted an abstract painting for the first time, it dawned on me that I did not even know where to begin; it is so much easier to paint something real.  Why is it so hard to appreciate abstract art?

My Aha moment came when we went to the exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925 at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York on Feb 17^th on the 100^th anniversary of the legendary 1913 Armory Show in New York City when modern European art was first introduced to the public in United States.

As one walks into the gallery of this special exhibit on MoMA’s top floor, you are greeted by a 1910 painting of the master artist Pablo Picasso (see photo below on the left, sourced from Google Image).  If you try to search for a clue to figure out the subject of this painting, you may barely identify an object at the lower center of the painting that looks like a mandolin.  The rest of the painting however looks more like mumble jumbles no matter how pleasing and appealing to our visual senses.   If I tell you the title of this painting is “Woman with a Mandolin”, you may possibly convince yourself and others, after the fact, that the forms and lines above and behind the mandolin could be a woman figure (could it be a man?).   If I show you a pre-cursor entitled “Girl with a Mandolin” that Picasso had done earlier in that Spring of 1910 (see photo below on the right), does everything make more sense to you now? 

It became clear to me then that the main reason I could not decode completely this important work (and most other abstract paintings) because there is almost nothing in the painting looks familiar to me (based on MY knowledge and experience.)    That is, if the artist and I do not share similar experience and can’t communicate in some common languages, and if there is no supplemental information or “translation”, how could I possibly hope to understand what the artist is saying through his/her work?  Indeed how is this any different from other situations when we are confronted with something foreign and outside of our expertise or experience?  With such a realization, I no longer feel intimidated.  I realized that I can in fact do better.  I can learn a little more the context and the language of the artists to communicate with them through their work.

The painting “Woman with a Mandolin” was fittingly placed at the entrance of this exhibition because it was a bifurcation point in Western modern art.  It represents the furthest Picasso had gone in his works in terms of the level of abstraction. While many artists had continued to pursue abstraction in various ways at the time, Picasso chose instead to add back more (fragments) of figurative representations (or what he called “attributes”) to his subsequent works including those that defined Cubism, the most influential art movement of 20^th century.  One of his famous quotes was that “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something.”  Many art historians had noted that Picasso believed strongly in maintaining the connection between his work and the things in real world.  

Turning to the right after viewing Picasso’s “Woman with a Mandolin”, one sees another historical painting - Wassily Kandinsky’s 1911 “Impression III (Concert)” (see photo on the right, sourced from Google Image).  Again, if you did not know the title nor the context of the work, it would be extremely difficult to guess what the objects of the painting represent.  With the help of the title, most viewers would probably have guessed correctly the large black form in the painting is a piano and those smaller slim figures are orchestra and the audience. 

But what about the big yellow patch that takes up almost a third of the canvas?   It turns out this warm bright color depicts Arnold Schoenberg’s music.  Kandinsky, being the leading theorist advocating abstraction at the time, had actually been struggling to create abstract painting.  The breakthrough came when he attended the concert of Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet Op. 10  in Munich on Jan.2^nd, 1911.  What Schoenberg had achieved and demonstrated was a new type of music that is atonal.  In particular, the last movement of this string quartet has no key signature and is devoid of diatonic harmonies found in traditional music (thus again, unfamiliar to most).  Inspired by the new style, Kandinsky sketched out that evening the painting Impression III (Concert) that demonstrated abstract visual presentation of color, form and lines can be “ just as abstract, emotional, and spiritual as Schoenberg's music!”  How is this any different from the story that Steve Chu got the idea of his Nobel Prize work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light when he saw snow flakes coming down from his office window at the Bell Labs?

One might question what is left if one pushes the process of abstraction to the limit through reduction, simplification and indirection?  Some artists did exactly that.  Not only narratives can be absent, colors can be removed, forms can be reduced, lines can be dropped, and title can be “untitled”.  In this exhibit, Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 painting White on White serves a good illustration of abstract works that show “pure artistic feeling rather than on visual depiction of objects”.  How far is it from the ultimate “nothing represents nothing”?

Nelson Goodman discussed the term abstract on Grove Art Online: “Since an abstract work is one without representation, or more generally denotation, the question naturally arises what an abstract verbal or linguistic work may be, a text that says nothing, a story that does not tell a story, a poem that does not speak of anything. Like a picture that does not picture, these works are deprived of a normal denotative function and refer directly by showing rather than saying, as by exemplifying patterns or expressing feelings…”  As a student of art, I certainly feel more comfortable with Picasso’s ideas on abstraction.  If ALL familiar forms are removed and the links to figurative representation of objects are absent, what are we left with?   What and how could I communicate beyond the mere raw emotion with others through the work?

Of course, abstract art in a broader sense is not new and has been in existence since the early days of the human history.  It has been and continues to be reinvented all the time in many corners of the earth in varying contexts, media with different tools.  One example is a recent calligraphy work by Dong YangZi 董陽孜in Taiwan (see photo below).   Can you tell what the characters are?  How critical is it?  I was told that Art comes first!  Indeed, it is no different from in music where music comes first.  How critical is the lyrics when you first hear a song that touches your nerves and evoked your unknown emotions?  Did you enjoy some Italian operas any less because you did not understand Italian?

What I have also learned from the exhibit is that the development of abstract art did not happen as a result of few geniuses dreamed up an approach and style in isolation from their studios.  The opposite was true.  The creative process was not unlike today’s races in bleeding edge applied science and technology.  Artists discussed and debated each other in bars, café and by mail from concept, theory to experiment.  They stood on the shoulders of masters like Paul Cézanne and challenged the tradition and the status-quo.  They explored and experimented; they competed and pushed each other to the brink.  Their social networks were not limited to fellow artists as illustrated in the chart to the right from the exhibit. They included poets, writers, composers and tool inventors, a true inter-disciplinary venture as what we might call it today.  Whether you feel comfortable with abstract art, I think you would agree that it was an exciting period in history.  I think you will enjoy it more and more as you spend more time with it.

Talk to you soon!

The High Line – time out at New York City

The High Line at the west side of New York City is an unusual linear park.  At this time, it is a free public park at one mile long with narrow walkway south of 30^th street between 10^th and 11^th Ave.  Unlike typical linear parks, the High Line is elevated at 30 feet high, cutting through and standing in between two large avenues of the city. 

New York city did not actually spend big bucks to build an elevated city park from scratch.  The structure used to be a section of the West Side Freight Line  built in mid 19^th century by the Hudson River Railroad, connecting southern Manhattan through midtown all the way north to Albany, the capital of New York State 150 miles away.   In 1934, the section south of Penn Station at 34^th street was relocated west from street level along 10^th Ave to a 30 feet high structure, thus the name “High Line”, to avoid the frequent traffic accidents and to make loading and unloading of goods easier.  Who would have thought in only few decades, the hyper growth of the trucking and highway systems supplanted the rail transportations.  While the north section of the West Side Line beyond Penn Station is still used by Amtrak, the elevated High Line was abandoned in 1980 and left with weeds and rust till recent years.

Climbing up staircases at west of the intersection of 10^th Ave and 30^th street and turning right, you can see the last section of the High Line Park under construction that is scheduled to open in 2013.  From here, the High Line turns west towards to the Hudson River and will take visitors through the West Side Rail Yards to 34^th street. 

Turning left, one can start the journey south and stroll down the new section of the park which was opened a little over a year ago in summer of 2011.  As one walks south, ornamental grasses greet the visitors along with few surviving blooms of cone flowers.  Less than few hundred feet, a gigantic mural of a man, Brandon Many Ribs of a North Dakota Indian tribe, overlooks the High Line with eyes closed.  He appears to be screaming silently, possibly due to intrusions by the visitors.  This is a recent work by the award winning French street artist JR from his participatory Inside Out Project.

Near 27^th street, another mural “The High Line Zoo” by Jordan Betten and his team is at display on a roof top next to the High Line.  For some unknown reasons, the zoo animals are all gone from the roof when I compared my photo against that of the original display found on the net (see photos to the right).  

Two blocks further at the west 25^th street, you will not miss the colorful multistory mural by Brazilian muralist Eudardo Kobra. The American iconic B& W photo Victory over Japan Day in Times Square by Alfred Eisenstaedt and other scenes of New York circa WWII were turned into bright carnival celebrations. 

                                                                                                                                                                         

As you walk further south, here comes the most dramatic illustration of the impact of the High Line on redevelopment.  HL23, an upside down 14 story luxurious condominium with a slim bottom fits snugly right into the High Line with no space to waste and no more weight o carry (see photo at the left).  Ceiling to floor glasses on the north and south side of the building provide plenty of lights and views for the residents at the expense of privacy.  The building was designed by Neil Denari and was completed a year ago with an explicit goal and challenge of maximizing floor spaces with a tiny base of 40x99 ft and zoning restrictions.  There is no question that this building will become one of the new icons for New York city, just like the IAC building designed by Frank Gehry in his signature twisted curvy exterior which can be seen from the High Line near west 18^th street.

At the west 18^th street, you can also view the huge High Line Billboard, currently showing Thomas Bayrle’s American Dream – a classic Chrysler car made of company’s logo.  Near Gansevoort Street, the southern end of the High Line Park, a cute 9-foot tall figure sculpture Old Singer with Blossoms by Alessandro Pessoli is hidden in trees and bushes (see photo to the right). For more about the current art exhibitions, see the web page of the High Line Public Art.  By the way, you do need to slow down and pay attention as you may end up missing some of the works like I did.

When High Line was built as an elevated railroad 80 years ago, it was deliberately made to travel in between 10^th and 11^th Ave.  As a result, a few high rises had to make ways allowing freight train to tunnel through the buildings. Some of these tunnels are now places for street performances and some exhibits.  It was such an enjoyment to hear a cellist play when I was visiting.  Other than taking a sip of water and wiping off his sweats on his face, he was totally immersed in the music and oblivious to the occasional deposit of changes into his cello case by visitors.  

Walking back north, I stopped by the Blue Bottle Coffee near the Upper Chelsea Market Passage at the 15^th street.  I joined the line, waiting patiently for a cup of fresh “hand-made” drip coffee.   I was curious if the coffee would taste any better as I watched the barista painstakingly pouring rounds of hot water into each holder attentively.

The High Line of New York city is not the first elevated linear park.  The idea in fact came from The Promenade plantée of Paris which is a 2.9 miles long walkway completed in 1993.  The High Line has however inspired many other cities in U.S. and elsewhere such as Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Luis and Rotterdam  to pursue conversions of abandoned city railroads into green space with the hope that they will attract and spur further neighborhood redevelopment.

perhaps the most impressive part of the story of the High Line Park of New York is that the project started as a result of the activism of neighborhood residents and is a true grass-root movement.  There were competing ideas by businessmen and property owners in 80s and 90s to demolish the elevated structure in favor of traditional redevelopment.  In 1999, two neighborhood residents and activists Joshua David and Robert Hammond founded the Friends of the High Line and championed the efforts and mobilized the community as well as city administrators and politicians to save the High Line.  The result was nothing short of a miracle as (what some would consider) a pie in the sky was successfully turned into a “park in the sky”.  To this date, a major part of the park maintenance is supported by the Foundation and volunteers.  It has already attracted more than $2 billion dollars of new development to the area around it for residential units, office and commercial spaces.   While the notion of “build a cool park, they will come” may sound naïve, the success of High Line park has become as a shining example of how a nice green space can revitalize city neighborhoods.  For more details about the High Line including history, timeline, and photos, you can visit its official website at http://www.thehighline.org/.

Enjoy your walk and talk to you soon!