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I am delighted in this October issue of TAS to be presenting the work of two artists with whom you may or may not
be familiar. Klimchak is an Atlanta-based musician and composer who is finally getting the recognition he deserves (he received
one of the four 2009 Loridans Awards). Here, we present some of his music and his ideas about improvisation. Amy Worthen
is a remarkable artist who is also an extremely interesting museum curator of drawing and printmaking who manages to divide
her time between two cities an ocean apart. On a different note, Floriana Piqué, one of our correspondents in London, gives us her reflections on Anish Kapoor whose
exhibition is currently on view at the Royal Academy in London, continuing through December 11, 2009. Update: I wrote an appreciation of Anne Truitt’s work for the October 2008 issue of TAS (you can find it
under Archives). An exhibition of her work opened at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, DC last week. Anne Truitt:
Perception and Reflection is on view from October 8, 2009 to January 3, 2010. I wish you all a delightful Autumn. All my best, Deanna
I first saw Anish Kapoor’s sculptures in 1983 in Turin, Italy, my hometown.
I was immediately enchanted by the pulsation of colour, the joy of the surface, the velvety sensuousness of the skin of the
works. At that time, I wrote that one doesn’t have to enumerate all of his work’s meanings, but mostly try to
feel and discover through one’s own perception. I’m still in the same mind today when I start my journey, at first
an emotional journey, through the galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts. This exhibition is not a retrospective, nor is it
ordered following a particular discourse of the evolution of themes. Each room is a staccato that stands on its own, and we
are invited to proceed from one room to the next by a multitude of sensations, both physical and psychological. Born in Mumbai in 1954, Anish Kapoor moved to London in 1973. He came to prominence with numerous solo exhibitions across the world, including shows at: Patrice Alexandre, Paris, 1980; Lisson, London, 1982; Barbara Gladstone, New York, 1984. His career, marked by his selection to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and the award of the Turner Prize in 1991, has seen great achievements. Among his works in museums and public spaces, I’d like to mention the Marsyas at Tate Modern in 2002, the Cloud Gate at the Millennium Park, Chicago, 2004 and the Sky Mirror at Rockefeller Center, New York, 2006. In the central hall of the Royal Academy more reflections come to life in the Non-Objects of 2008-2009, highly polished, twisted and curved mirrors. In this room, the mirrors command the Space with their body of Void and master the Time with their elusive fabric. Passing by these mirrors, we feel as if we are being followed by our own reflection, or a whisper, something substantial enough to play the role of a shadow. We are left with the sense of “dreading [our] own disappearance” (Rilke). Here, in this perfect space of stuccoed, gilded ceilings, the power of reflection, the feelings of disorientation, of destabilization are overwhelming. And yet it is also here that the exhibition really unveils itself, in this moment of suspension, when the works of art start revealing their sacred nature. As Norman Rosenthal writes in the exhibition catalogue: “In an age of massive global migrations and their inevitable cultural cross-fertilisation, he has carved out for himself in a thirty-year career a position in which his Indian, his Middle Eastern – Iraqi and Jewish – and finally his European and British memories all come into legitimate play in the thought processes that lead to the making of his art.” We can read Kapoor’s early works from this perspective: 1000 Names(1979-1980), White Sand, Red Millet, Many Flowers (1982) forms reminiscent of architecture and symbols, triumphs – in a baroque sense – of brightly coloured pigments. We are also invited to perceive, to investigate, the new works from this perspective: Greyman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked (2008-2009) the beautiful poetry of the titles opposing and hiding the technicality of the process in which a computer-controlled three-dimensional printer, following a design drawn by the artist, extrudes forms in cement. The agglomeration of these forms creates a new materiality, somehow free from the heaviness of the cement. A hint, a suggestion of decadence. Two installations that depend on machine-generated action (a cannon shooting tons of deep red wax on a wall and a train – a huge block of the same deep red wax – inexorably moving up and down five rooms) amazingly attract a mesmerized crowd. In Shooting into the Corner (2008-2009), the audience fills in the twenty-minute wait between cannon shots with memories, experiences, emotions. Kapoor accentuates this process, deliberately stretching the time like in a ritual ceremony as a black-clad attendant oversees the process slowly and with composure. In Svayambh (2007), from the Sanskrit for “self-generated,”, the barely perceptible movement of the train freezes the spectator in a moment in time and at a specific point of perspective: when the arch is completely blinded by the red mass or at the opposite end of the tracks, in the instant of stillness when the movement reverses. Going back to see the exhibition again, I noticed the effect of accumulation of the red/crimson wax shot into the corner of the next room or deposited along the tracks and on the archways. It is not just a stratification of matter, but essentially of Meaning and of Time.
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or why I'll stop improvising only when they pry it from my cold dead sticks by Klimchak My career is based on an inability to be repetitive. This may seem paradoxical for a person trained as a percussionist but it's true. Virtually every performance I've ever given, be it a theater work, a dance composition or a concert, has some element of improvisation at its core. It doesn't matter if the music is performed live or recorded, there will always be at least some element of improvisation in there somewhere. In this article, I'll discuss some of the reasons why that's so. First I should offer my definition of improvisation. Improvisation is the act of making music that is not pre-planned or pre-composed. There are varying degrees of improvisation ranging from, at one end, free improv, where your goal is to play ONLY things on your instrument that no one has ever played before to blues based jamming, where you have a sort of playbook of options and select one from column A, one from column B, etc., and fit them together within a pre-existing structure. There's a place for every kind of improv on the continuum from free to structured. Each takes a lot of skill and practice that aren't part of the non-improvising musician's life. So here are two videos of recent performances that illustrate my definition of improvisation from free to structured. The first, Waaayyy Too Much Cowbell, was made for this article. I set up a table, put some sticks on it (OK I put them in a cute little vase I remembered because I had just washed it). Then I took a suitcase full of cowbells and let improv be improv. The second is a more structured sort of improv. It's a live recording of a performance of one of my solo pieces for Marimba Lumina (an electronic radio controlled marimba) titled The Indeterminate Pitch Tango from earlier this year. These pieces have a set group of sounds and manipulations programed into the Lumina along with a couple of musical ideas about how to use the sounds (some musical phrases, a general set of notes to start within, etc). A live performance of one of the pieces consists of my beginning to play with the preset idea and then developing it as the mood and the audience’s reaction inspires me. In this performance, I decided spontaneously to add an improvised theremin solo, along with some foot pedals playing some vibraphone accompaniment. At one level, every good performer learns to improvise. We've all seen it. Equipment breaks. Cues are dropped. Mistakes are made. Improvisation is the duct tape and spit that patches this all together and makes a seamless show for the audience. So I say I may as well capitalize on that and make improvisation a vital part of the show. Improv is like looking at things in your peripheral vision. You only see a blurry bit of the facts at the time. But the more improv one does, the better one gets at focusing on the edges. Also, the pursuit of perfection is overrated. I've done non-improvised shows that are virtually perfect. So been there, done that. And the next night ... ohhh maybe I can do it again! At a certain level the pursuit of the perfect performance becomes a law of diminishing returns. A much more interesting approach to me has been to allow more improvisation into my sets. The more improvisation I incorporate into my live performances the better I seem to appeal to audiences. There is something magical that happens between an audience and a live performer. There is a real interconnection where each one’s reaction spurs the other on to greater heights. The musician plays, the audience reacts, the musician incorporates the audience's reaction and plays more, the audience reacts to the new playing and so on.... It resembles a really good conversation where each person is constantly reacting to the thoughts of the other.The more comfortable the performer is with improvisation, the more integration there can be with the audience. After all, it's the player’s skill at improvisation that's the essence of adapting the performance to the needs of the audience. Improv is a conversation. Composed music is a speech. Conversation often occurs beneath the words. It's an exchange of emotions and feelings. This is what engenders trust between audience and performer. The trust force that binds me, as a performer, and my audience also allows me to perform at a higher level than would be possible without an audience. At one level I'm working without a net, taking chances without really knowing if they'll work or not. Every improvisor will fail at some point. As a matter of fact, most fail regularly. Personally, I always consider around a 50% success rate for the improvisation to be a really good performance. The other 50% isn't a total loss necessarily. It just doesn't result in a new discovery. There's no magic. That's the downside of improvising, a high failure rate, especially if I'm REALLY taking chances. But it's that successful 50%, that really makes the evening come alive. The successful improvisation is much better than the player could ever be with written music. But, the trust of the audience provides another sort of net. When the performer can sense that the audience is going along, enjoying the risks that the performer is taking, the improvisor is ready to take greater risks. That comfort level allows the performer and audience to laugh off the failures and appreciate the successes. For me this creates an incredible rush and release that's positively addicting. I can't imagine ever giving up the improv. But now, enough of this, I gotta go down to my studio and make stuff up!
Klimchak is an Atlanta-based composer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist.
I draw almost every day in drawing books made by a Venetian bookbinder, Renato Polliero, using an old pump fountain pen
that I can fill with my own waterproof India ink. I love the flexibility of the point of a good old writing pen. For most
of my life, I made drawings for completely private purposes and rarely showed or published them. They served only to generate
ideas for my engravings. Since I started my drawing blog in 2006, I now draw also in order to share my images anonymously
with the world on the Internet.
In Venice, I work on my engravings on a big old oak kitchen table I bought for this purpose. The table has a very large
drawer, a pullout board for rolling out pasta, and still has its pull out, meter-long rolling pin. For plate prep and proofing,
I use the facilities at the Scuola di Grafica. My laptop computer is on a desk between my engraving table and the
terrace door. There is a seven-hour time difference between Venice and Des Moines. Around 4 PM, as my colleagues are arriving
at the Des Moines Art Center where it is 9 AM, I log in remotely to the museum's server. From Venice, I can literally work
on the computer and printer on my desk in my office in Des Moines. Email is the same whether sent from the office next door
or 6000 miles away. Work keeps going in Des Moines until around 5 PM, or midnight in Venice. In Des Moines, we live
on a quiet street in a beautiful old wooded neighborhood. Our house is surrounded by a large yard with three century-old oak
trees, bushes, and perennials. I have my own study with all my print history books. My printmaking studio is in the basement
of our house. I have a 36 x 60" American French Tool etching press. From 1970, when we moved to Des Moines after graduate
school, until 1997 I worked primarily as an artist and a teacher of printmaking, design, and art history. In 1974, I began
to curate exhibitions on the history of prints for the DMAC, then was invited to do projects for other museums. In 1997, after
I had been doing guest curatorial projects for 20 years, the DMAC finally created my part-time position as curator of prints
(now prints and drawings). My responsibilities at the museum include organizing three or four exhibitions a year on prints
and drawings, writing gallery guides and labels, gallery talks, doing research on works in the permanent collection, recommending
acquisitions, advising on conservation, working as part of the curatorial team, cultivating collectors and donors, etc. We
don't have a public print room, so there is no public access to the collection. I am staff liaison for the Des Moines Art
Center Print Club, a very active group of print collectors, artists, and people interested in prints. They organize monthly
programs, commission prints, and purchase works for the collection. My arrangement with the museum is that my schedule
is mine to figure out. There are times when I have to be present in Des Moines, such as a month or so before the installation
of a new exhibition. When I am in Des Moines I work very intensely, plan, and do much in advance to enable myself to be away
for my regular two-month absences. How does the travel influence your life both as an artist and a curator? I draw more frequently when I travel (and especially, when I am in Venice), than when I am in Des Moines. Besides an infinite
number of drawings made in Italy, I have major bodies of work from time I have spent in Japan, France, Russia, Turkey (Istanbul),
India and England. I have some drawings from my travels around the US too. I also make drawings while killing time in trains,
planes, and airports. Since I am usually doing research on some aspect of the history of prints, I try to make appointments to visit the print
rooms of museums in cities that I happen to visit. When we lived in London on a sabbatical in 1986-87, I enrolled in a year-long
class to study lettering engraving at Sir John Cass College, City of London Polytechnic, a college that trained young engravers
to pass the Guild exams and become certified engravers. I did this because I knew how to engrave pictorially, but had no sense
of how to engrave words or inscriptions so I could print them. As an art historian, I had become curious about the extraordinary
calligraphic inscription on an engraving of a Vanitas personification by the Dutch Mannerist engraver, Jan Saenredam. A curator
friend at the British Museum suggested that I look at the British Library's collection of engraved calligraphy writing manuals
from the 16th and 17th century. After years of research on what became an utterly absorbing topic for me, I ended up writing
a long article about this subject (“Calligraphic Inscriptions in Dutch Mannerist Prints,” in Goltzius Studies:
Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1993). In addition to my art historical discoveries on this topic, I was able to
incorporate the technical experience I had gained by studying lettering engraving. Here is a recent example of how
curatorial travel influences my work as an artist: On January 21, the day after Barack Obama's inauguration, I flew to Washington
DC on a courier trip. Walking up the hill past the US Capitol, I saw that it was still completely set up for the inauguration,
but the two million people had all gone home. It was amazing to stand in that place on the day after the inauguration. After
I did my research at the Library of Congress, I walked back down the hill, stood in front of the Capitol, and drew the scene.
(To see the drawing, please click here.) The next day at 7 AM, I boarded an art shipper's truck at the National Gallery of
Art and accompanied several paintings on a 19-hour ride back across the US to Des Moines. You seem to be interested in certain cultural events that cross the lines and mix things
up, like the Afro-Cuban jazz group from S. Marta and The Oxford Project. Could you tell us why they strike a chord
with you? The delight I take in crossing barriers and mixing things up may date from my experiences
as a child. I grew up in The Bronx where I attended elementary and junior high school with many kids whose parents were WWII
refugees. Many of my friends did not speak English at home. During the summers of 1959 and 1960, when I was 12 and 13, my
father, a NYC school principal and science educator, taught National Science Foundation summer institutes for black science
teachers at Virginia State College in Petersburg, VA. This was still the era of segregation, and we spent those two summers
as the only white family living on the black college campus. As a teenager attending the High School of Music and Art, I absorbed
the cultural richness, variety, and excitement of the city. The Afro-Cuban group from the Santa Marta neighborhood
(at the far, far end of Dorsoduro) is great fun. The idea of this nutty group of Rasta-haired Venetian guys singing topical
songs in Venetian really appeals to me. I understand Venetian dialect and I follow the local issues that Venetians are concerned
about. Santa Marta is probably the Bronx of Venice. Not the most elegant part of Venice but a great place to grow up. The Oxford Project was a great thing to become involved in. It was created by two University of Iowa professors,
Peter Feldstein and Steven G. Bloom. Peter started photographing everyone in Oxford, Iowa in 1984 in part as Conceptual Art
and for sociological reasons, but also it was Peter's attempt to be accepted by the residents of this tiny Iowa town that
he had moved to. He started rephotographing the same people 21 years later, in 2005, and Steve Bloom interviewed the portrait
subjects. Feldstein and Bloom proposed The Oxford Project as an exhibition to the Des Moines Art Center. I was basically
assigned the job of evaluating whether it was worth doing at our museum. I was intrigued and organized a selection of the
works for an exhibition in 2007. The public response was incredible. The exhibition was also shown in Padova, Italy, where
it was very well received. Italian viewers understood that these amazing stories were not just American, they were universal. You are constantly drawing Venice--how does drawing the place change its meaning for you? For over 600 years, artists have been drawing Venice. It is the most-drawn and painted city in the world.
How can anyone find something new and fresh to say? All I could do was to draw the reality of my own existence there. I drew
what I wanted to understand, or where I wanted to explore or spend time. By just remaining in a place and drawing, you see
so much more. You experience the life of the place, you become part of it. Because of my constantly drawing in Venice and
keeping notebooks, I feel that I understand what Canaletto was doing and experiencing with his drawings. Last March,
I stood on the loggia of San Marco, by the reproduction horses, and made a drawing I'd been thinking about doing for a while--the
entire sweep of Piazza San Marco from above. It was cold, but I stood still for two hours and became completely immersed in
the making of the drawing. It is a wonderful thing to experience ... a total absorption ... and a strange sense of power that
I can do this. Does working as a curator change your relationship to your own art? Very much so. Being a curator and an artist is bad in one way. In deciding to work as a curator, I sacrificed my public
persona as an artist. There are many conflict of interest issues that can arise. Although my museum has many of my prints
in its permanent collection (these were acquired before I became a curatorial staff member), I certainly can't ever include
my own work in an exhibition. Also, I feel extremely reluctant to try to promote my work to curatorial colleagues in other
museums. That is really up to the gallery that represents my work. (I do have prints in numerous museum collections, but probably
could have had a lot more). A museum would like to organize a retrospective of my work, but here again, I barely have time
to prepare for it. Being a curator means no longer having all day to work in the studio. Sometimes, I come home and work from
after dinner until midnight in the studio. On the other hand, being a print curator gives me amazing access to museum
collections and original art objects. I learn so much. I do not feel unconnected from history, but rather part of a continuum.
I don't try to emulate artists who have gone before or who are working now, but I certainly do measure myself against them. Sometimes work I have done as an artist gives me an idea for an exhibition, even though I can't incorporate that fact
into what I write about it. For example, right now I am preparing the exhibition, Art in Ruins, for the Des Moines
Art Center. But it is really my own experience of drawing in the wreckage of a relative's house destroyed by fire and making
engravings of this, and witnessing a small plane crash and later engraving it, that made me interested in this subject. Do you see yourself working in both capacities for the foreseeable future? The
Des Moines Art Center is an extraordinary institution with a terrific collection, a great work environment, and wonderful
colleagues. I have an enviable work arrangement. I feel I still have something to contribute in the way of teaching about
prints. So I will undoubtedly continue to commute from Venice to Des Moines for the foreseeable future. Deanna
Sirlin is the Editor-in-Chief of The Art Section and a full time artist.
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