Shunya's Notes

Pangea Day

This afternoon I spent four hours glued to my computer screen watching the live stream of the Pangea Day broadcast, a global film festival hosted simultaneously in Mumbai, London, Cairo, Kigali, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, showcasing short films from new talent all over the world. Interspersed with the short films were video montages of people speaking about universal human experiences—love, anger, sorrow—and short commentaries on human nature and human experience by scientists, activists, and others. The thrust of the event was to promote human understanding by simply presenting a broad sweep of stories that humanize the Other, that break down the categories of "enemy." And as it meandered toward it's final minutes, the focus drew increasingly toward the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

It proved to be a most rewarding way to spend a Saturday. The films, especially, were frequently touching, thoughtful, and moving in surprising ways. I was drawn into the sense of a global experience of discovery that was unfolding at a million points simultaneously across the world, as millions watched and learned and cried together. And (it must be said) laughed together.

But the coup de gras was during the final moments when a Palestinian and an Israeli member from The Bereaved Families Forum stood up together and told their own stories of loss and forgiveness, and this was followed by excerpts from the documentary Combatants for Peace, by the young Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, previously known for her excellent documentary Control Room (2004).

Indeed, the entire Pangea Day event was organized in fulfillment of Ms. Noujaim's dream. When she won the TED prize in 2006, in which the winners are asked to make a wish that the TED community can bring to reality, she asked for a global day of film to break down the barriers and misunderstandings that divide us.

I believe that over the coming days the organizers will post the event highlights along with all of the films, speakers, musical performances, and more, incase you missed them or want to see them again. Or read their blog. Or check out the viewers' stream of consciousness (you may need to click "View the Latest Media").

Thanks, Ms. Noujaim, for your brave and beautiful dream.

My Daughter, the Terrorist

I stumbled upon this documentary film from 2007 (haven't seen it yet). It explores "what happens to a population that has experienced more than a generation of warfare," and "how people become suicide bombers, a choice that seems completely incomprehensible to most of us":

In Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, some rebel women end their lives as suicide bombers that have killed hundreds over the years. A Norwegian documentary film that follows two 24-year-olds training to do just this has enraged the Sri Lankan government, but raises important questions about the conduct of war and its consequences.

The women are from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), often called the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that has been fighting for an independent homeland for the Tamil ethnic minority since the 1970s. The demand has arisen, they say, in reaction to abuses and discrimination by the Sri Lankan government.

A third of the Tigers are women.

More here.  (Watch the trailer; the movie is not yet available in the US.) From the movie site, I also discovered the relatively new Society for Terrorism Research (STR), which invited a screening of this film at its first annual conference last year.

The Society for Terrorism Research (STR) is an international, multi-disciplinary organization of theoretical and empirical researchers in such behavioral sciences as anthropology, biology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and others. Its mission is to enhance knowledge and understanding of terrorism. Research on terrorism should include and integrate theoretical frameworks and findings from multiple disciplines. Thus informed, more effective policies worldwide will be able to reflect diverse models of complex causation.

Sounds promising, even though Scott Atran is conspicuous by his absence from its governing, advisory, and journal editorial boards.

Standard Operating Procedure

Spring is in the air but we know you well, discerning reader. You're not into vacuous rejoicing. We applaud your instinct to hold the scents and scattering blossoms of spring as oh! so flippant. You yearn for the falling leaves of autumn and pine for the voluptuous bouts of sorrow and depression that define true thinkers. Well, there's light at the end of your springtime tunnel! Standard Operating Procedure, a new film by Errol Morris on the horror of Abu Ghraib, has arrived to plunge you into the bluest of autumnal blues at a theater near you:

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America's image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few "bad apples"€? We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news. But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it. Many journalists have asked about "the smoking gun"€ of Abu Ghraib. It is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraib—€”and the subsequent coverup—could happen?

Inspired Imagery

The last two times I put up some of my original paintings (Family Pictures) and some faithful copies (Second Hand Art). Today I have picked two paintings which are somewhere in between. These paintings are based on photographs I found in magazines. But they were painted from memory - I did not have the originals before me when I executed the paintings. As the originals were photographs and mine are paint and brush versions of the same and because I added and subtracted from the original compositions, the end products are not really copies. However, since I borrowed the basic idea, I hesitate to call them true originals.

(As usual, please click on the pictures for a larger image.)

One bleak February in Nebraska, I was struggling with a painting that was going nowhere. Both the weather and the creative mind block were cause for some frustratration. I wanted to put the work aside and start something fresh but couldn't come up with a good idea. Then during a trip to the local library while browsing through an issue of National Geographic, I fell upon an article on Rajasthan, the colorful desert state in central India. Rajasthan is not far from Delhi and the photographs in the article made me painfully nostalgic for the hot, arid summers of northern India in the surrounding gloom of a midwestern winter. I could not check out the magazine. I made a quick sketch of the picture on a piece of paper and later transferred the image on canvas. What transpired was a very satisfying piece of art work that progressed with speed and enthusiasm. I finished the painting in high gloss varnish which lent it a luminous overtone. It is framed in antique gold frame and hangs in a room that gets the afternoon sun - resulting in an attractive glow. It always pleases me to look at this painting because I remember how happily I worked on it.

As evident from my previous paintings, I like to use bright, bold colors. From time to time I would toy with the idea of making something muted using shades of black, grey or brown - like a charcoal drawing or an ancient sepia tinted photo. But I never got around to it until I came across a photo (painting?) in a science journal (I don't remember which one). There was a picture of a man and a boy in identical, old fashioned top hats and long coats standing by what looked like a canal. The entire picture was in varying shades of brown. I found in it the perfect template for my two toned ambition. Again, I made a rough sketch of the figures and started the painting with much anticipation. But much to my surprise and dismay, even though I felt I was doing a pretty decent rendition of the original, nothing looked right. The hatted and coated man and boy, who looked quaint in the photo, looked comical on my canvas. While the original was "dark and moody," mine looked "dark and muddy".  Rather than abandon it, I decided to change a few things while giving up the hope of a strictly two toned painting. I modernized the man's clothing and gave him an umbrella, suggesting rain. The little boy was changed to a little girl in a bright yellow slicker to contrast with the dark clad man. I drew a lamp post on the side to introduce some more yellow and that allowed me to add it also to the sky. And lo and behold, the painting gained a focus and acquired a mood .. and still retained the look of an old photograph!

Richa Arora - A Delhi Artist

It is always interesting when practitioners and students of science cross over to the world of literature and the arts.  Is their artistic endeavor superior to more traditionally trained artists? I do not know. I can only speak for myself. The scientific perspective in art and literature invariably impresses me. The clear eyed precision scientist-artists bring to their craft confers a particularly satisfying uncluttered quality to their work.   

On my recent visit to New Delhi, I visited one of the city's well known art galleries. Among the gallery's many works, I came across an exhibition of paintings by young Richa Arora. Her work is bold, interesting, clean and impressively confident. I had the pleasure of meeting Richa who was present at her show. She graciously gave me the permission to post some of her pictures on my blog. I hope the readers will enjoy her paintings as much as I did. And perhaps leave some comments for her.

A few words about Richa Arora:  Richa graduated from Delhi University in 1999 with a major in physics. Changing trajectory, she decided to pursue a career in art and has trained with Rameshwar Broota at Triveni Kala Sangam since 2002. She has participated in several group exhibitions in major art galleries of Delhi. Her solo exhibition is currently on at Triveni Kala Sangam. After graduation, Richa vacillated between a career as a pilot or an artist. In the end she chose flight of fancy over flying and we are glad for that.

Richa has this to say of her own work:

"For me art is an unending journey into new possibilities. Sometimes celebrating life's spectacles, sometimes questioning its various frames of meanings. I as an artist am always in search of new frames of mind....  What I paint does represent the natural world, but does so by capturing something of its immutable, intrinsic qualities rather than by imitating its external appearance. My work depicts real forms in a simplified or rather reduced ways, keeping only an allusion of the original natural subject."

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Note: This post appeared on Accidental Blogger in March 2006 soon after I met Richa.  I thought it opportune to introduce the readers of this blog to her works while the after-glow of the recent lively debate here on what constitutes good art is still fresh in our minds. Richa's work is abstract but she is no "dripper." As is evident from my description, I find Richa's meticulously executed art quite compelling - so much so that I acquired one of the paintings shown below for my personal enjoyment.

An interesting aside on artistic intent and viewer perception. (Thankfully there was no meddling, officious art critic to explain things). What I saw as the subject of the painting I purchased is not quite what Richa had in mind, I found out later. Although we were not that far apart in our interpretations - my more playful and prosaic version was different from Richa's romantic one. But that didn't spoil the fun for me - I continue to see what I saw before and it still makes sense.

Also, let me note that Richa Arora is no relation of Namit Arora, the sage administrator and editor of Shunya's Notes. So please feel free to comment on Richa's work without the constraints of politeness.

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All the paintings are all oil and acrylic on canvas.  From left to right (please click on images for an enlarged version):

Integration, Ascent, Cross Beam I, Crystallization I, Cross Beam II, Contours of Blue, Substratum, Crystallization II & Towards the Beyond

 

Jack the Dripper

Does art lie entirely in the eye of the beholder, or should it have minimal standards? Who decides what is art and what is only a visually appealing painting, photograph, or sculpture? What makes a sketch end up on a museum wall and another behind a refrigerator magnet?

Many years ago, during a visit to the SF MOMA, it struck me powerfully that the idea of art in the US had gone seriously amok -- we have become, to quote Milosz, "indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself." The world, I felt sure, will one day wake up and realize that much of abstract modern art -- in particular the abstract expressionism of Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Kandinsky, etc. -- has been the greatest sham in the history of art. I stand with the British art critic Craig Brown who too is "astonished that decorative 'wallpaper', essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian, and Velazquez."

I am certainly not for a frozen aristocracy of art. The world evolves, so too must art. New forms, mediums, techniques are not only inevitable but desirable. Yet, art to me is not about medium or technique. Art lies in the stories it tells, in the insight it reveals into the heart of the human material. Great art reflects the very depth of our being and experience. At the least, art is a mirror held up to us, to evoke a thirst, disquiet, longing, etc. -- something we can try and articulate in words. What we each see in that mirror varies of course and this is to be welcomed. Subjective appreciation flows out of our diverse experiences of life.

But what is fundamentally different about abstract expressionism is its disjunction from the "mirror test". Pollock, using his "drip technique" -- poking a hole in a tin of paint to get a drip line -- danced around the canvas, dripping paint on it using what has been called "action painting", stopping only when he would consider it finished. How did he know the painting was finished? His response: the same way he knows he has finished making love.

According to one supportive art critic, Pollock represents a "progressive purification in form and elimination of historical content". Kudos to Pollock for liberating the canvas from the tyranny of social and moral content. Imagine that! How dare a painting make demands on us, push us into self-awareness or confusion! Isn't it enough to be an eye candy? Poof! The expectation of human interest -- as in a mirror held up -- is gone. It's fine to do that, but why is this still called great art and collected by our best museums? With such scant invocation of intelligence, what distinguishes the painting from pretty wallpaper?

This is partly a sign of the times. Like our political leaders, we get the art we deserve. Art got hitched to the market decades ago. Mass culture, with its fads, trends, and movements, engages and stupefies ever larger audiences. "New money" consumers seeking the gloss of sophistication have to be smartened up and guided to the right acquisitions. Enter the academy and its scholars, who identify, analyze, and document art trends, classify and judge art and artists. Innovation and radical breaks become ends in themselves and are justified in the academy's jargon. Staid and serious practitioners are rarely interesting; tortured, flamboyant, alcoholic artists make better copy, playing into the stereotype of creativity and genius. Better still if the results do not even challenge or offend, or do so sensationally -- the audience then is the largest, and they don't feel inferior about their own interpretations, because none is now privileged over any other! With sage gravity, the works are deemed "abstract", instead of what they at best are -- the most creative decorative smudges in the world.

As Marla Olmstead showed a few years ago, even a four-year-old can paint like Pollock and command huge sums. Other children don't paint like Marla. Perhaps what she shares with Pollock is a freakish instinct to combine color, shapes, and lines on canvas, all detached from attempts to "mirror" human experience. We can marvel at this instinct but why call the output great art, stuff it in our best museums, and insult the intelligence of their visitors? The malaise in the American art academy is reflected rather well by critic Mia Fineman who defends abstract expressionists in this Slate article:

In the 1950s, artists like de Kooning and Pollock proposed a radically new way of thinking about painting: as the direct trace of the artist's physical engagement with the materials. "... the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act -- rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or 'express' an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."

[The abstract expressionists] were great formal innovators, but even more important than Pollock's drips or de Kooning's arabesques was their revolutionary insight that a painting can represent nothing other than the process of its own creation.

... skeptics profoundly miss the point of the art they're trying to debunk. Yes, anyone can pick up a brush and slather paint on canvas in a drippy style that evokes Jackson Pollock. But it took an artist like Pollock to step back from his own work, which at the time looked unlike anything that had come before, and say, with bold conviction: "This is it. This is what modern painting looks like." In other words, Pollock taught us how to see art in a new way.

Is that all we expect from our best artists? The bold conviction to drip paint and call the result modern painting? To see art in a new way, without the new way being significant? How fatuous, to claim that "a painting can represent nothing more than the process of its creation"! I have no problem at all with painters who produce such works. But art critics -- both lay and professional -- ought to demand a lot more from art. Subjectivity of appreciation isn't an excuse to not strive for our very own aristocracy of art.

Second Hand Art

In my introductory virtual exhibition I posted some original compositions. This post contains paintings which are copies of other artists' works.  As a student and amateur artist, I have made many copies over the years, true and inspired -  of real objects, human beings, photographs and other artists' works as my model. The exercise is akin to penmanship - for practice and to improve drawing skills and techniques. Occasionally, a copy turns out to be so satisfactory, that happily it becomes a work of art worth preserving . I display them in my home for my own enjoyment and am doing so now on the blog, for yours. These pictures are a testimony to my skills as an illustrator, much like a billboard artist - not my artistic flair. I have spoken with those in the know about the wisdom of putting them out for public consumption.  They assure me that as long as I do not offer such art for sale or claim them as my own, I am not violating any ethical boundaries, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery .. etc.

When I started painting at Joan Furrow's studio in Omaha in late 1992, I was for the first time, working  seriously with oil paint. Joanie advised me to start off with a few copies of actual paintings to get a handle on the color, texture and proper brush strokes. All the paintings shown here are from assorted magazines that cluttered Joanie's library. Unfortunately, I did not make a note of the artists' names. So I cannot credit any one properly except to say that these are not my own compositions. I selected the pictures for different reasons but each appealed to me on the basis of subject matter, appropriate level of complexity and artistic quality. They are not reproductions in a technical sense because I did not measure out the originals in grids for exact proportions. I drew them from visual perception as closely as possible. But they are all good enough copies that if you saw the originals somewhere, you'd probably recognize them. The paintings are oil on canvas and they hang in my home. So enjoy some one else's art vicariously - channeled through me.

Please click on pictures for larger image: This was the first full painting I made at Joanie's.  I selected it for the depth of the perspective, colors and composition. The impressionistic style of drawing made it easier to avoid making glaring mistakes. I liked the criss-crossing of light and shadow on the dusty street.

I was struck by the two heads against a stark background, warm colors and the mysterious play of shadows on the faces of the women. The painted pots were  good practice in drawing perfect 3-D shapes and the intricate designs required control and careful use of brush.

Again, I chose the picture for its interesting subject (a horse & a rider are never boring), the cyan colors invoking deep twilight shadows and the rocky, stark look. The special challenge was to get the horse right from the front facing, foreshortened angle - always the hardest perspective for drawing four legged animals.

  The angry sky, a rocky landscape (yes, I prefer painting rocks to lush greenery), attractive colors and clear lines decided my choice here. I also love lighthouses.

For my next "exhibition," I will post a couple of inspired copies which are based on photographs in magazines like the National Geographic, Life and sometimes even scientific magazines. But in the process of painting, they evolved enough to become distinctly my own. I will end the art series with a few more of my originals. Please don't  hesitate to leave me a comment. 

Kissing Without Consent or A Picture May Not Tell The Whole Story

Last week at the other blog, I reported the story of Glenn McDuffie, the Houston man who was recently identified as the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square in the celebrated 1945 Life magazine photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt. The picture seen and recognized by millions, is an historical moment captured by a photographer's lens, marking the end of World War II.

Upon being identified, McDuffie, who had served in the US Navy during WWII, described what the day was like when he went into Times Square with a couple of his buddies and later bussed the nurse in celebration.

On Aug. 14, 1945, he was in Times Square when the word came.

"When I got off from the subway, a lady told me the war was over, and I went into the street yelling. I saw the nurse and she was smiling at me, so I just grabbed her," McDuffie said. "But we never spoke." .....

In addition, Gibson (the forensic artist who identified McDuffy) said she "always wondered" about one aspect of the Eisenstaedt image: Why was the sailor's arm crooked in such an odd way? Only McDuffie could provide the answer, she said.

"I was kissing her, and then I heard someone running up. So, I realized there was someone taking our picture. I moved my hand so that the nurse's face would show," McDuffie said.

Hmm. So, they never spoke (not even a "Thank you Ma'am!") and McDuffy positioned his arm so the nurse's face would show in the picture?  Certainly looks like he was showboating and there was a certain amount of calculation in the pose which is widely interpreted as a spontaneous celebration. Also it appears that the nurse in the photo was not McDuffy's first target of affectionate display - he was on a kissing spree that day.  He had gone around Times Square grabbing and kissing several women before the memorable photographic moment. Also, it is reported that the nurse SLAPPED HIM after they disengaged from the embrace. Does explain why they never talked. [Link: Namit Arora]

(The link at the end of the post opens to a page called the Images That (supposedly) Changed the World. The page is a bit iffy - the images are sometimes visible and sometimes not. Click to find out if you can see them. The picture of the Kiss in Times Square is called V-J Day, Times Square, [1945] . It is halfway down the page.)

On the same page I came across a portrait of Winston Churchill taken by photographer Yousuf Karsh. The portrait reminded me of an ancient pen and pencil sketch of Churchill I had made ages ago. I am posting both portraits below for your critical viewing.

(Karsh's photo)        (my sketch)

Peter Brook's Mahabharata

Earlier this year I saw Peter Brook's Mahabharata for the third time in fifteen years. Each time my admiration for it has grown. I consider it one of the greatest dramatic productions of all time. Its notable lack of appeal to Indians, except to a sliver, may be because it is in English and stars mostly non-Indian actors (including, heaven forbid, some black Africans in major roles!), not to mention that it treats the epic simply as a great work of literature, without the cloying religiosity that has informed most Indian dramatizations (with predictable "box-office" success).

The multinational, multi-racial cast from a dozen countries works brilliantly, driving home the universality of the Mahabharata. The script brings out some of its best philosophical nuances and existential dilemmas. Costumes are tasteful, music score hauntingly beautiful, dialog taut and poetic. Battle scenes are creatively shown, like the Chakravyuh that traps Abhimanyu.

One thing I noticed more this time -- which you won't find in popular Indian renditions -- is Krishna's ambivalent role in the story (he's not "cute" either). Nor is he above cheating and murderous advice (for e.g., to kill Karna, to hit Duryodhana's thigh, sacrificing Bhima's son). The conclusion is inescapable: even the Creator is flawed, much like His creation. In the end, with the catastrophic destruction of the war, we wonder if Arjuna's doubts were any less profound than Krishna's "divine truth". Was it all worth it? Should one aspire to act without attachment to the fruit of the action? A perfectly defensible interpretation is that Krishna brainwashes Arjuna into "understanding" his duty (or dharma), after which the great warrior exhibits no further doubts -- hardly a desirable state.

In this production, Bhishma is wonderfully quirky and stubborn, with some memorable lines to boot, all delivered in a charming Malian accent ("I abjure forever the love of woman". "I am troubled. The question is obscure."). Kunti imparts a fitting gravity to her role. Duryodhana is extraordinary, weaving in the right mix of lust for life and power. Mama Shakuni is consummately crafty. Bhima is well cast: loud, brawny, and impetuous. Karna is suitably intense and conflicted, though he appears to have done a few too many Shakespearean tragedies before this role. Yudhisthira is an introspective man of truth with a debilitating blind spot. The greatest wonder of all, he observes, is that each day death strikes, and we live as though we were immortal. Draupadi comes across as willful, submissive yet strong, driven by her public humiliation to hardness and gory revenge.

Brook's device of bringing in Vyasa and his scribe, Ganesha, into the story works well. Vyasa doubts, ponders, clarifies, which, by revealing the creative process in his mind, also serves to diffuse the authority of the narrative voice. Even at nearly six hours, this is one show I've watched in a single sitting all three times. I only wish it was twelve hours long!

Family Pictures

Having conducted an energetic defense of science (and scientists) in a debate over scientific vs artistic creativity at Accidental Blogger, I decided to take an artistic respite at Shunya's. Namit has given me permission to post virtual exhibitions of my paintings here [editorial note: Namit believes she has earned this right; it's her blog too]. I will do so from time to time and share my meager body of work with readers.

Although I have loved drawing and painting since childhood, I have pursued this amateur but serious hobby in spurts of a few years at a time only about three or four times since my early teens. The last inspiration lasted between 1992-98. I haven't picked up a brush in the past nine years. All the paintings are oil on canvas and painted in 1996-97. They are not fine art but done with much enthusiasm and loving care.

I have selected three paintings in this round which represent my impressions of some fond family memories. (Please click on thumbnails for a bigger image)

The first one is a composite drawn from several old photographs and depicts a true life scene with my daughter and husband on the shores of the Black Sea in Bulgaria many moons ago.  My daughter was young enough to be thrown up in the air and my husband still looked good in a Speedo.

The second painting was made for my son's high school varsity tennis coach as a gesture of appreciation for his efforts the year the Millard South (my son's school) tennis team won the state championship. The name of the painting is "Advantage Millard South."

The third  one was inspired by my son's love for music and our two beloved cats - Raja and Ali. Raja the grey one on the bench, is unfortunately not with us any more, having succumbed to cancer just over two years ago at age fourteen. He did not really care for music but loved his food, the most comfortable bed in the house and the outdoors.  His brother Ali is on top of the piano. Ali is now sixteen years old and he is a true music lover. My son swears that Ali is partial to Chopin.