The Boomerang Effect

   

Aboriginal Knotwork from an exhibit in Australian National Museum in 2008-Lucey Bowen. Perhaps the artistic seed that grew into the ghost net creatures.

     Tuesdays are our new day for exploring together. Yesterday we went to Geneva, and took in an exhibit at the Ethnography Museum of Geneva: L'effet boomerang.

     My training as an art historian and an anthropologist has made me very critical of museums of any sort. I find they tell me more about the obsessions of collectors than they do about the collection.
     L'effet boomerang is different, possibly the best exhibition I've ever seen.
Constructed jointly by the museum and contemporary Aboriginal artists and thinkers, the story gets told from multiple perspectives.
     For starters, signage sets the context of the display, Les arts Aborigenes d'Australie, with the statement "the endeavors to suppress aboriginal culture from the 18th century have ended up having the opposite effect."
     Instead, "Attempts at acculturation and generalized denigration have led to strengthened identity, demands and displays of unprecedented creativity." The result is that aboriginal artists today have found their own ways of using their art for political ends.

     I suppose that my reaction to the exhibit says a lot about my obsession. I suppose I am obsessed by the idea that those in power hoard the production of the powerless. Montreux loves jazz, but doesn't treat Africans very well; Americans love rap, and send African American youth to death or jail.

     The exhibition presents the history of European interventions in Australia, and the parallel acquisition of Aboriginal art and artifacts by museums throughout the world.
     In the next space, fabulous examples cover the geographic and sequential variations in the tradition. The use of modern materials is explored, most extraordinarily in the re-creation of giant models of sharks and other fish, using ghost nets, those scraps of discarded industrial fishnet which have caused the death of many sea creatures.
     The final section is a multi-media installation by a young artist, who touches on the complicated questions of ownership and ethics in the art market of Aboriginal work.

     The Boomerang Effect. Unintended consequences. Be careful what you wish for.

All the Way to Basel for Art?

Ellsworth Kelly at Kunstmuseum, Basel

     True confession: I didn't make the two hour train trip to Basel for art, or the one hour trip to Bern for rhubarb tart. Incessant hammering on the roof of our building has meant that I can have peace and quiet to write on the train, which are quite empty most of the day.

     Basel is the city for art, and I only scratched the surface. I sat with the Kelly, because he was the artist who most inspired me 50 years ago. Back then, I did a series of large canvases based on his principles of color and illusion. I learned the techniques for building the shaped canvasses and the hard edges, work I'm still proud of.

     Geneva is less that an hour away. I spent most of my time there in the house where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born. His mis-fortunes forged his philosophy, which is one of the foundations for liberté-egalité-fraternité  and the rights of man. 

     What a contrast to what I'm reading: the French author, Jean Guéhenno's Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944. He survived the Nazi occupation of Paris with integrity. His quotation of the racial and anti-international words of the Nazis echoes ominously. 

     If four years was insufferable, I ask myself how long people of color in the United States will survive. I do know that in resisting, the writers and thinkers of Black Lives Matter, and those that came before, stand for integrity. I know that in the context of longer time and the larger world, they are heroic.

     

Boat Love

Croswell Bowen cruising the Mississippi in the late 1930s.

     Traveling is in my blood, and so is water. It's true I chose horses over sailing with my mother, but I do like messing about in boats. 

     Since the 1960s, excursion boating on the Hudson has made a comeback, as is evidenced by the many restorations and creations photographed around the time of the 500th Anniversary of the River's discovery by Europeans.

Docked at Newburgh

New York Waterways has taken over the Hudson ferry crossings.

Ersatz paddle wheeler also docked at Newburgh.

Lac Leman's Belle Epoque fleet of 8 restored boats puts the U.S. to shame.

A bit more graceful....