Khadivi discusses identity and exile, and how the publishing industry will respond when faced with "narratives that take on the unending complexity of exile and identity that offer no clean and comfortable endings." In this response, she's also underscoring a theme of her recent interests: post-national identities in the 21st century.
Khadivi says:
As a writer who belongs more to Edward Said’s exilic consciousness than to any one particular country, I would like to think that literature is appealing because it rises above nationality and nationalism and draws people to places where they can suspend judgment, assumption, and belief.
In the past year, writing for Artseemagazine, I've passed through dozens upon dozens of art studios, and have become more intrigued by watching artwork unfold rather than seeing the finished pieces in their assembled and ordered manner at galleries and exhibitions. It has to do, I think, with interest in process, and having the opportunity to imagine what a painting is going to become. The more I watch the artists work, the more I wanted to give it a try too.
This piece, "Heron Bay," is my first real try, the first time I have picked up a paintbrush in almost a decade (other than to paint a bathroom or bedroom). I also admit that the few attempts I took in the past lacked any sense of focus or patience.
It looks like I also need a little work at photographing, because the color in the photo of the painting is not as precise as I would like it to be, plus I am missing a little slice of the painting at the bottom left. I think that what I liked most about working on this was sitting still for hours. Plus it is nice to focus on color and texture and the feeling of a place. Also, I admit that after seeing a fabulous exhibit of Gerhard Richter's work at the Tate Modern, I had some serious inspiration to try to peel back a few layers of paint to see what could happen.
In a recent "Sightseeing" column for Artsee magazine, Donn and I explored Greenville, South Carolina, a hip Southern town that has a growing arts scene. A few great finds:
Greenville County Museum of Art. The Southern Collection is comprised of "Southern" works of a broad definition (by those born in South, those who moved to the South, depictions of the South, and so on), with works ranging from the 1700s to today. The Andrew Wyeth Collection features 35 works from every major period of his career. And on exhibit now: Jasper Johns, through April 15, 2012.
Hampton 3 Gallery. (A fine art gallery that's actually about seven miles outside of Greenville ...)
Art Bomb. A nonprofit shared studio space for artists ranging from potters to sculptors to painters.
Paul Klee was born in Switzerland today in 1879. I've long admired the infusion of poetry and dreams into his works of art. So, today, a little about Klee, who I was first introduced to in high school by an old friend who was far more sophisticated and worldly than I was by that age.
Klee studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, and later became associated with the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group, an Expressionist movement from 1911-1914, which was based on a connection between spiritual truth in art. Its leader: Wassily Kandinsky.
To celebrate the Blue Riders and Klee, a brief bio, selected works by Klee, and a bit on the Blue Rider movement:
Tale a la Hoffman, 1921.
Watercolor, pencil,
transferred printing ink
on paper, bordered with
metallic foil
With only four copies of Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret(Scholastic, 2007)in the Orange County, N.C., library system, I had to wait a week to pick it up. No doubt, the book is enjoying another wave of success following the release of Martin Scorsese's new film, "Hugo," which has been adapted for the screen by John Logan.
The premise: an orphaned boy, in 1931, lives alone in a hidden apartment in the walls of a Paris train station. He continues to care for the 27 clocks throughout the station, each of them offering their own challenges and views: inside the station, the clocks allow Hugo to observe the lives and relationships of shopkeepers; outside the station, where expansive, sparkling views of Paris look like they are always inviting him to make a wish. Hugo has been caring for the clocks in the way his uncle taught him, and now that his uncle is missing, Hugo knows that the only way to avoid being found in the apartment where he lives alone is to keep the clocks ticking on time.
As in Cinema Paradiso, the dream-like magic of filmmaking rests in the heart of a young hero who is at once generous and brave, yet vulnerable.
In the walls and in his pockets there are gears and cogs and bits of metal: Hugo is also on a mission to collect more of these pieces so that he can fix an automaton that is one of the two last remaining vestiges of a physical connection to his late father, who had brought it home from the museum where he had worked. Hugo also has a notebook that belonged to his father, which contains drawings that will help Hugo fix the automaton. In his quest to fix it, Hugo occasionally steals toy parts from a toy shop in the station. The relationship between Hugo and the shopkeeper becomes an integral part of the story, and as Hugo learns more about the automaton, he learns more about the shopkeeper, uncovering mystery after mystery, and bringing him back to the early days of filmmaking.
The automaton will light up like a movie screen with the insertion of a heart-shaped skeleton key: a metaphor that underlies the film yet resists heavy-handedness. As in Cinema Paradiso, the dream-like magic of filmmaking rests in the heart of a young hero who is at once generous and brave, yet vulnerable.
The book's illustrations are often packed together, beginning with a one-page text introduction followed by a sequence of 21 images, creating a rhythm throughout the book in which a series of text pages are often followed by a sequence of graphite illustrations. The book's clever design (by David Saylor, Charles Kreloff, and Brian Selznick) works so well with the story: the sequences of illustrations feel like a black-and-white silent film, and the chapter openings and introduction feel like text panels of movies from the earliest eras of filmmaking.
Scorsese's film really is a must-see, Selznick's book a must-read. And I was also happy to see that the Orange County library has more copies on order.
Nikky Finney's acceptance speech for Head Off & Split at the National Book Awards, introduced by Elizabeth Alexander and John Lithgow. Finney rocks!
Lithgow closes with, "That was the best acceptance speech for anything that I ever heard in my life ... And it's also the loudest I've heard anyone cheer for an award for poetry. Isn't that wonderful?"
Street scene in San Juan, PR, by Jack Delano
December 1941
In the "Art Talk" column of the October 2011 issue of ARTnews, Rebecca Robertson writes about "Full Color Depression -- First Kodachromes from America's Heartland," an exhibit at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The exhibit revisits a number of color transparencies in the Library of Congress archives, generated through the Works Progress Administration (and Works Projects Administration) -- by photographers well-known for their black-and-white images of the Great Depression.
Robertson notes that the photographers -- who included Russell Lee, Louise Rosskam, and Marion Post Wolcott -- may not have ever seen the results of their work, since they had to send their film back to Kodak to be developed. This was common at the time; Dorothea Lange -- also included in the exhibit -- occasionally sent her black-and-white film to Ansel Adams to develop, since he had a lab on site with him, and so she could see what she had accomplished before submitting to the WPA.
Street in San Juan, PR, by Jack Delano
December 1941
Delano traveled to Puerto Rico in the early 1940s for his work with the Farm Security Administration, and subsequently moved there, making a living as a composer and photographer. He and his wife Irene often collaborated -- she as a filmmaker, he as a composer -- and they also collaborated on children's books, with Delano writing music in the margins.
Delano was born in the Ukraine and moved to the United States when he was about nine years old -- and my recent personal interest with traveling to Puerto Rico, where I've never been, has been further piqued by his work in Puerto Rico and the fact that his assignment turned into a new home.
The two street scene images I've included were taken by Delano in December 1941.
