"I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity … The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings." Mahatma Gandhi
I have been struggling to understand why so many people voted for Trump. I read several articles this morning that helped a little. But it's not easy.
My mantras have become: Hate the sin and not the sinner. I will not hate. I will try very hard not to judge, but it's not easy. I will not hate. I have not walked in their shoes, I can't presume to know what experiences in their lives led them to their decision. I will not label them all as evil. I will remember that there are good people everywhere, that some, maybe many, voted for him even though they disapprove of his behavior and some of his ideology, but it's not easy. I will not generalize and call them all ignorant, but it's not easy. I will also remind myself that only a small percentage of his supporters are committing these violent and hateful acts, but it's not easy.
I do know that I will fight the racism, the homophobia, the misogyny, the xenophobia, and the hatred, but I will do so without violence. I will march, I will not keep silent. I will call it out when I see it. I believe that most of these voters do not think they fit any of the labels above. I will educate. I will not hate.
Of course, this is easy for me to say from my position of privilege. My fears for my daughters and for the environment are legitimate, but my fears for the communities who have hatred directed at them on a daily basis and in growing numbers are greater. I can't even begin to understand the depths of their fears. If Trump had lost, would his supporters have been even more violent? It's hard to imagine.
These were the thoughts occupying my mind all morning. I had to get out of the flat. There's no good segue to the rest of my day without sounding even more privileged. (Oh woe is me, boo hoo, now I'm going to go out and have a great afternoon, because I don't have the fear that encompasses my very being. I can put it aside until I'm ready to wear it again.)
Gord and I grabbed a quick meal at Tortilla, a restaurant in the Google building that we had seen the other night. Their burritos were surprisingly good. He left for a meeting and I went to the Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts that has been on my list since it opened in September.
In the courtyard in front of the museum, four David Smith sculptures were installed, and I later read in the exhibition guide that this display "seeks to recreate the spirit of Smith's installations in his fields at Bolton Landing in upstate New York. There, not only did each sculpture enter into a subtle dialogue with others, but they also responded to the space and sky around them." Somehow that didn't come across in this confined space crowded with people. (It worked somewhat better on my way out when the school groups had left. But the cars were still parked there.)
Inside, I bought my ticket and headed upstairs. I went to get the audio guide and was discussing the cost with one of the staff when the other woman handing out the guides came over and asked me if I was American. When I said yes, she handed me an audio guide and said, please take this as a gift from me to you. That's when the floodgates opened. I started crying and, when she noticed the tears, she made it worse by hugging me. She kept hugging me, saying she was from Italy and it's the end of the world. I kept crying. She finally kissed the back of my hand, hugged me again and I went into the exhibition. It took another ten minutes before the tears stopped and I was able to concentrate on what was being said on the audioguide. I realized that those emotions were so close to the surface, I had only cried watching Hillary's concession speech. But I certainly didn't expect to cry in public. I was embarrassed for myself and for my country.
But back to the abstract expressionists. The show was co-curated by David Anfam, art historian and leading authority on the subject, along with Edith Devaney, the RA's contemporary curator. The exhibition took up twelve rooms of the museum, but I guess this isn't surprising since one of the aspects of this American art movement is the large scale of the works. Many of the pieces took up one wall of a room. Another characteristic is that they challenged the conventional idea of having a focal point in a piece. These artists covered the whole canvas equally, surrounding the viewer. Mark Rothko, I discovered, always instructed that his paintings be hung lower on a wall to allow a better perspective for the viewer.
The first room provided an introduction and showed the early work of the pioneering artists of the abstract expressionist movement, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Clyfford Still. They were mostly self-portraits done in the 1930s, before the movement gained momentum in the mid 1940s.
Many of the rooms had one or two David Smith sculptures, probably at least twelve in all. Other artists included Arshile Gorky, Sam Francis, Mark Tobey, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Norman Lewis, and a number of women including Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Janet Sobel. (I probably shouldn't haven't separated out the women artists here, but they are usually so underrepresented that I wanted to highlight them.)
No photography was allowed, so these links will have to suffice.
Jackson Pollock's Male and Female was interesting. I liked these Willem de Kooning paintings, and Joan Mitchell's Salut Tom was pretty impressive. I can't imagine the logistics of shipping these huge pieces here from all over the world, New York and Australia, for example, and coordinating everything with the various museums and private collectors. I'm very grateful to have had the chance to see this exhibition.
Read: Mollie Panter-Downes' "Good Evening, Mrs. Craven" (1942) from London Stories
No comments:
Post a Comment