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Mixed Reviews
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 31, 2003
Second of six articles.
Our critics are always looking for a challenge, so we sent them out to cover each other's beats. Along the way, they learned some new things about art -- and the art of criticism.
To read previously published stories in the series, please see www.sptimes.com/mixedreviews.
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
-- Elvis Costello
As a former music critic, I love Costello's impish assessment of anyone who would dare attempt to capture the passion of rock classics such as Alison or Pump It Up in nothing more than words.
But after several days spent sampling some of the finest paintings, sculptures and visual displays the area has to offer, I've decided Elvis should have added visual art to his bon mot.
How else to react when asked to describe a wall-sized canvas by surrealist Salvador Dali that features a toreador and a row of Venus De Milo busts? Or a blown-glass sculpture that includes a replica of Dali's famous melting clock and something that looks like a flag with a carrot on it?
For someone whose visual-art expertise previously extended to a few evenings spent with the Sundance Channel and some Frank Frazetta posters, this was a daunting task.
Good thing, then, that I met Greta Myers.
Myers is one of the many docents at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg.
Knowledgeable, personable and understanding, Myers was determined to take me through each of the museum's 21 galleries, ensuring I had a good time while learning more than a thing or two (her signature phrase, "'tis said," signaled a story that might be more tall tale than truism).
"The art you see here is to titillate you and get you interested," she said. "Without art, a city becomes less noble."
She introduced me to Impressionist Claude Monet's 1904 work Le Parliament, effet de brouliiard (Parliament, Effect of Fog), a masterful canvas capturing London's Parliament building in a haze of blues, purples and greens.
We noted how French painter Berthe Morisot used spiky white highlights to blend the figure of a woman reading with the house plants surrounding her in the 1888 canvas La Lecture, lending an intimate, almost claustrophobic feel.
Myers pointed out that the peacock feather sprouting from the hat of the dark-haired gypsy beauty in John Opies' The Fortune Teller signified ill luck or evil. I couldn't help wondering if the figure's sweet, rosy-cheeked appearance was a covert comment on the attraction of sin.
Best of all, most of the canvases -- including Georgia O'Keeffe's playfully suggestive Poppy, a breathtaking, close-up rendering of a flower with blood-red petals, a black center and a dash of green at the core -- were not covered with glass. This meant the brush strokes and pallet-knife flourishes were revealed in exquisite detail (of course, I had to fight the impulse to touch the works, a definite no-no).
A too-fast 90 minutes later, Myers had taken me through rooms filled with antique baby rattles, an impossibly detailed, 400-year-old wooden shrine to an ancient religion, and a wood-paneled room that once graced a British Stafforshire manor house, circa 1610.
Let's see Joe Millionaire come up with a tour that cool.
Prepared by my Yoda with a brief introduction to art appreciation, I was ready for a more bracing test: the Dali.
Skilled, daring and unapologetically self-assured, Dali became the symbol of surrealism -- an unconventional form of art in which the mind's subconscious is explored in fantastic imagery and incongruous images. Nestled along the water just south of downtown St. Petersburg, the Salvador Dali Museum holds 95 oil pantings the Spanish master created from 1917 to 1970; it's the world's most comprehensive collection of his bracing, inspiring work.
Once again, a docent would prove an invaluable guide for this greenhorn: Charles Carroll, a quietly wry presence whose expert commentary was leavened with enough humor to keep things moving.
We started with Dali's early work. Even at 13, his talent was evident in View of Cadaques With Shadow of Mount Pani, a rendering of his hometown in blotches of textured rust colors, browns and greens that grew less distinct the closer I got. Dreamy and specific at once, the canvas now seems to hint at a burgeoning talent just beginning a long road toward mastering its own expression.
Many of the early paintings -- Tieta, Portrait of My Aunt, Study of a Nude -- seemed best viewed from a distance, foreshadowing Dali's later "double-image" technique of painting so one image would be visible close in, while another would emerge at a distance.
With no grounding in art history or appreciation, I was tempted to shrug off the melting figure, draped over a tree branch and grasping a melting cello, in Daddy Longlegs of the Evening -- Hope!, a 1940 canvas noted as the first work Dali painted in America.
But Carroll outlined the messages: Eros shielding his face and a melting plane to symbolize the fall of Paris to the Nazis; a spider crawling across the figure's face as a symbol of hope. And his vivid use of light and shadow produced images thick enough to sink your teeth into.
These insights unlocked a door, allowing me to view each canvas with a better knowledge of the artist's vocabulary. It may have diluted my own subconscious reactions to his work, but my conscious mind felt a whole lot better about what was going on.
Indeed, as I perused Dali's classic visuals -- the dramatization of quantum mechanics in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, the wall-size rendition of the Holy Trinity in The Ecumenical Council, his wife Gala cast at the Virgin Mary in the packed imagery of The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus -- I felt myself playing "spot the message" much like an art world Where's Waldo.
On the surface, looking at these images might seem very different from dissecting the latest Survivor or Six Feet Under episode. But for a critic used to separating TV's obvious themes from its subtle, hidden messages, I felt right at home.
Stepping into the gallery, Rhododendron was the first thing I saw. And it made me burst out laughing.
Good thing the Beaker Gallery was nearly empty, sitting just across Ashley Drive from the Tampa Museum of Art like an impudent, geek-chic Gen X sibling.
I couldn't help a shy, furtive glance after the outburst: Was such irreverence allowed? After all, nobody cares when I snicker at Ryan Seacrest's ever-expanding haystack hair.
Rhododendron, an eye-catching display by Tampa artist Hasan Elahi, greets visitors as they step into the Beaker's showing of Digital Purr: Computer-Aided Kunst -- a sampling of digital art that challenged my concept of what constitutes a valid creative expression.
Elahi's work was a prime example: a towering display featuring a large wooden pole, with seven red fluorescent tubes branching off on either side, like angry ribs from some industrial animal.
On either side of the tubes sat a shelf holding a small, portable TV set -- each hooked to VCRs -- with the left screen showing what seemed to be slowed-down footage of a lounge singer, while the right screen showed someone eagerly explaining how to safeguard a recipe book from drips (I cheated by turning up the sound on the recipe guy; only the lounge singer's nightmarishly sluggish performance was audible).
I have no idea what it all meant. But absurdity of the display, along with the obvious care and hard work that went into creating it (let's not mention the $7,000 price tag), made me smile.
And perhaps that was enough. Days after my visit to the Dali, I was ready to note meaning in every artistic inflection; a world's worth of insinuation wrapped in a single symbol.
But sometimes, it's enough that a work startles, confuses or even tickles a little. Given that the Beaker's collection of kunst (German for "art") reflects each artist's relationship with Western science and commerce, such ambiguities seemed inevitable and intentional (especially given the caliber of contributors, which included Devo front man Mark Mothersbaugh and filmmaker John Waters).
Soon the ominous sound of Star Trek background music drew me to a dark room featuring First Season, by the married, Brooklyn artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. Inside, four chairs sat before a television playing an edited DVD, with all the scenes featuring the starship Enterprise's main viewscreen from Trek's debut season.
Snippets of unintentionally absurd Trek dialogue seemed even sillier divorced from their original context -- though I found myself wishing the McCoys' montage of Starsky and Hutch shoot-'em-up scenes were playing, instead. And, like many other Digital Purr works, the McCoys used TVs to interject an immediate shot of pop-culture irony mixed with hi-tech charm.
Sure, part of me had the classic unsophisticate's response: I could do that (for less than the piece's $2,000 asking price, too).
But I hadn't. These artists had mustered the guts and creativity to take that step, daring to shake up the viewer's notion of creative expression with the unorthodox application of technology.
Here, I found the thread that connected the worlds I knew -- music, TV and pop culture -- with the world I was beginning to discover in visual arts.
It's all about guts and creativity; a combination any critic can recognize, regardless of the medium. Elvis' words notwithstanding, it was a comforting feeling for someone who has dedicated a career to describing the indescribable.
No matter the vehicle -- whether it is the Persistence of Memory or the persistence of Tony Soprano -- it seems these creative souls are mostly striving to touch the same artistic nerve.