#architectural historian mode: engaged | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs | Tumgik (2025)

fyi if you go to see the brutalist: people were not "expelled from the reich" for being part of the bauhaus! plenty of bauhaus alumni stayed in germany and did very well for themselves under the regime!

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Resource Masterlist: Indian Art

Cheap/Free resources:

Wkipedia:

Wikipedia of Indian Art: I'll recommend reading the subtopics from bottom up; it seems more relevant that way!

Wikipedia of Indian Painting: once you go through this article you should further look into whichever style you like, and learn it in depth. It also has links to vernacular art.

Rasa: the classical theory of Indian aesthetics

From Archive.Org (maybe scholarly and/or illustrative. In case illustrations are not there, simply Google them for reference):

Stone Age Painting in India by Romert Brooks

The arts of India from prehistoric to modern times by Ajit Mookerji (If you have no idea about Indian arts, START HERE; it's a short book full of illustrations)

Rajput painting : romantic, divine and courtly art from India byAhluwalia, Roda

Indian Painting by C Sivaramamurti

South Indian Paintings byC Sivaramamurti

Approach to nature in Indian art and thought byC Sivaramamurti

[There are many books on Indian art, architecture and sculpture by C Sivaramamurti on Archive.org. It's basically a goldmine.]

Kalighat : Indian popular painting, 1800-1930 byBalraj Khanna

Art of modern India by Balrak Khanna [Again, you can check out other titles by Khanna.]

Indian Textiles by John Gillow

Traditional Indian Textiles by John Gillow

South-Indian images of gods and goddesses by HK Sastri

Myths and symbols in Indian art and civilization by Heinrich Zimmer (no illustrations)

The art of Indian Asia, its mythology and transformations by Heinrich Zimmer (with illustrations)

History of Indian and Indonesian art by AnandaCoomaraswamy

A Concise History of Indian Art by Roy C Craven

Deccani Painting by Mark Zebrowski

Indian Folk Art byHeinz Mode; Subodh Chandra

Women of India by Otto Rothfeld (this isn't about art but has few informative illustrations on regional costumes of women)

Dress And Ornaments In Ancient India by Mohini Verma andKeya Bawa

Classical dances and costumes of India byAmbrose, Kay

Cultures and Costumes of India and Sri Lanka byKilgallon, Conor (o course i had to see other books on costumes)

Studies In Indian Painting by DB Taraporevala

Five Thousand Years of Indian Art byHermann Goetz

Indian Painiting by Philip Rawson

The Art of Tantra by Philip Rawson

MS Randhawa (different books on Punjabi paintings Basohli, Kangra, Guler and General Themes in Indian Painting)

The imperial image: paintings for the Mughal court byBeach, Milo Cleveland

Wonders of nature : Ustad Mansur at the Mughal court byDāśa, Aśoka Kumāra

Imperial mughal painting byWelch, Stuart Cary

Painted delight : Indian paintings from Philadelphia collections

India : life, myth and art byRam-Prasad, Chakravarthi

The heritage of Indian art byAgrawala, Vasudeva Sharana

The adventures of Rama : with illustrations from a sixteenth-century Mughal manuscript

Indian paintings from the Punjab Hills by WG Archer

Art in East and West by Rowland Benjamin

Stella Kramisch (An American art historian and curator who was a leading specialist on Indian art, including folk art, for most of the 20th century. Also a Padma Bhushan awardee.)

The transformation of nature in art byCoomaraswamy, Ananda K

Books available on Libgen:

Art Of Ancient India : Buddhist, Hindu, Jain by Huntington and Huntington

The New Cambridge History of India, Volume 1, Part 3: Mughal and Rajput Painting

Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization by Heinrich Zimmer

Four Centuries of Rajput Painting: Mewar, Marwar and Dhundhar Indian Miniatures from the Collection of Isabelle and Vicky Ducrot

Ajanta by Yazdani

The Aesthetic Experience Acording to Abhinavagupta

TheHeritageLab is a free website to connect you to cultural heritage through stories, public engagement programs, campaigns, and free-access content.

Also if you're in Delhi, do consider getting a membership of Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) library.

Folk art:

Folk art is an entirely different area that deserve a post of its own. But i love them so here is a long list by Memeraki.com. You can Google each and then look more into what you like. This website also offers very cheap courses in traditional Indian arts by the hidden and disenfranchised masters themselves! It's doing a great work in giving them a platorm. I myself have taken the Mughal Miniature course here. You can consider it.

Illustrated Books:

Note: These are coffee table books with beautiful illustrations that you'd love to looks at.

The Night Life of Trees: In the belief of the Gond tribe, the lives of humans and trees are closely entwined. A visual ode to trees rendered by tribal artists from India, this handcrafted edition showcases three of the finest living Gond masters. THIS YOUTUBE LINK shows the making of the book. The channel also features other works of Gond art.

An Unknown Treasure in Rajasthan: The Bundi Wall-Paintings: This book celebrates the surviving wall-paintings at Bundi by presenting a stunning photographic survey

Painting In the Kangra Valley: Painting in the Kangra Valley is an attempt to survey the painting styles of Guler and Kangra, which flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries. The painting activity began with Kashmiri painters (...)

Indian Painting: The Lesser Known Traditions: India has an astonishingly rich variety of painting traditions. While miniature painting schools became virtually extinct with the decline of aristocratic patronage, a number of local vernacular idioms still survive and continue to develop.

Madhubani Art: Indian Art Series: Madhubani art's origin is believed to go back to the ancient era of the Ramayana, when the town was decorated by inhabitants of the region for the wedding of Lord Rama and Sita with elaborate wall paintings and murals (...) Primarily a significant socio-cultural engagement for the womenfolk of Bihar, this art was a welcome break from their daily drudgery.

Reflections on Mughal Art and Culture: Enter the splendid world of Mughal India and explore its rich aesthetic and cultural legacy through fresh insights offered by 13 eminent scholars.

Monsoon Feelings: A History of Emotions in the Rain: Through a series of evocative essays exploring rain-drenched worlds of poetry, songs, paintings, architecture, films, gardens, festivals, music and medicine, this lavishly illustrated collection examines the history of monsoon feelings in South Asia from the twelfth century to the present

Sita's Ramayana shifts the point of view of the Ramayana - the saga of a heroic war - to bring a woman's perspective to this timeless epic. Illustrated with Patua painting.

Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean:a graphic novel that is a revisionist retelling of some of our oldest tales which have inspired and guided generations of people.

Ajit Mookerji, Sivaramamurti and Craven Roy's books are concise from where one can begin and then delve deeper into the subject of interest. Reading history and myths behind the work for context and listening to music from the given time/region alongside will make the exploration even more enjoyable!

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Week 2 - Caroline Carr Grant

“Overall exhibition design considers the simple dialogue between the objects to be exhibited and the space in which they are presented; where the objects are, and how they are arranged will determine the nature of the message they communicate” (Dernie 2)

For me this quote represents the essential tie between gallery and exhibition design and the built environment, or the realm of the architect. The manner in which we organize space, and objects that occupy space, communicate in simple terms what ideas and histories we value most, the people whose voices we choose to listen to, and communicate which people are welcomed, or not, in a space.

In starting that “at the heart of any exhibition is the notion of communication” Derine allows us to reimagine our roles in class like ours - we are not art historians or architects or planners - but we are all facilitators of communication. I believe that this will be a helpful framework for us to operate in the ways we interact as a class - but most importantly re-imagining ourselves as facilitators of communications allows us to broaden our mindset regarding how we are going to go about communicating the ideas of this exhibition, and broaden our understanding of the ways in which we may need to think about different modes of communication to serve different groups of patrons.

I found it incredibly helpful to think about the frameworks outlined in the Dernie and the What is Exhibition Design readings through the lense of the more historically focused readings such as the Evolution of the Skyscraper and The New Architecture. These historical narratives which trace the ideological beginnings and evolution of the skyscraper form work almost as a narrative visualization of communication. Since in various readings exhibition design has been equated as a means of visual communication it is interesting to think about the Skyscraper form as a physical manifestation of ideological communication between time periods. The manner in which the skyscraper form evolves over time periods and physical locations speaks to the way in which this form has communicated something of importance to various people groups throughout history. I think it would be so interesting to think about the manner in which we could have visitors to an exhibition physically interact with the ways the skyscraper form has evolved over time.

Also - as a note of reference - I made a list of some of my favorite passages/ quotes from the Dernie reading:

“The architecture of an exhibition can also open up new possibilities to the institution. Innovative spatial typographies, lighting, and transparencies can build relationships difficult to envision in traditional spatial arrangements” (Dernie 11)

“In effect this process of exhibit-making acknowledges the experience of the visitor” (Dernie 11)

“The problem of movement is most pronounced in the design of exhibitions for museums or fine-art galleries. As witnesses to the enlightened aesthetic opinions of the gallery or institutions, the visitor experience is still reduced to one of slowly paced observations in a near silent context, removed from any reference to the outside world. Conversation is hushed and movement is reduced to that required to transfer one’s gaze from one object to the next; the white gallery isolates the experience of art from the day to day movement and habitual behavior that accompany communication. Such an institution has not been designed to communicate, but rather to “appreciate”, as though it’s values and meaning where implicit” (Dernie 14-15)

“Exhibition design now tends to be explicitly audience focused. Its starting point is the relationship between the visitor and the brand/product/artefact: whether it is a collection of automobiles or the knowledge of a museum collection, the way in which an individual experiences and engages with that element is the paramount concern of the “experience designer”. Museums are learning experiences.” (13)

“As a development of narrative practice, experience design builds context out of the display object or product with the aim of engaging the visitor at an emotional level and in so doing attaching a personal memory to the experience of the visit. The so-called memory economy is increasingly recognized as a driving force behind successful brand-related design. And essential to the creation of a memory-rich experience is the character of the physical setting: somewhere between three dimensional graphics, lighting, material surface and audio environment. Information needs to be compressed into interactive, multi-sensory environments, transfering museums from depositories of cultural artefacts into vital cultural centers” (15)

Applebaum “Museums should be active forums that encourage people to talk about ideas. Our first job is to find a museum's voice, then to search for relevance. But most importantly, our job is to create wonder” (16)

“From a study of gesture comes a clear understanding of the close relationship between movement of the body and communication. The visitor is a body in movement and contemporary exhibition design can examine patterns of movement to explore communication and exhibition experience. A performance space is one where the movement of the body is considered integral to the structuring of the environment and the landscape of the artworks, objects or performances. It is a place where traditional boundaries between viewer and object or preformance are eroded. In this approach movement patterns and works are choreographed together to engage the visitor in the brand, museology or art production in new ways: they are incorporated in (rather than just passively viewing) the creative and intellectual life that is represented. Visitors become quasi-performers themselves, in a sense, spectators and part of the spectacle, moving through a topography of overlaying sounds and images in an architecture which is constructed by relationships between the moving bodies in space. It is an architecture of choreographed movements. What is the aim of this movement? To create a rich and vital memory of a dynamic experience of the exhibited material” (16)

“Exhibition design occupies an important role in contemporary visual culture. In an increasingly complex world of persuasive media imagery, the meditroy role of “presentation” becomes a vital tool of communication. Exhibition design is above all multidisciplinary in character and looks to graphics to create space as much as it does to architectural convention: it develops interactive software packages at the same time it acknowledges the value of simple traditional relationships between light, color and surface, scale of space and comfort of a human envionrment” (18)

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Free Universal Construction Kit: Interoperability in Children’s Toys

Can a children’s toy function as a subversive agent of anti-capitalism? Possibly.

The Free Universal Construction Kit is a set of design plans for nearly 80 two-way adapters capable of joining together individual parts from ten popular brands of construction toys, allowing for interoperability between otherwise incompatible construction toy parts.[1] Available for download at no cost to consumers, the kit is a “physible” product rather than a physical one—a digital file of specifications for objects fabricated via a 3D printer. The adapters can be fabricated on any small-scale 3D printer, similar to the physible chair designs from Joris Laarman Lab’s Bits and Parts (2014) project, on view in the Joris Laarman Lab: Design in the Digital Age exhibition through January 15, 2018. Anticipating a near future when the public has easy access to 3D printing, physible products are an example of how recent technology can increase public engagement with the process of making, rather than removing them from it.

After witnessing his son’s attempt to connect pieces from various construction toy systems, kit designer Golan Levin challenged himself to find an elegant solution to a seemingly impossible design problem. To develop the plans, Levin and co-designer Shawn Sims used a powerful optical comparator to measure the toy systems’ dimensions to within less than .0001 of an inch, ensuring the accurate fit of each connecting adapter. The adapters in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection were manufactured by 3D Systems and printed in thermoplastic using fused deposition modeling (FDM). The kit has been designed for printing by the individual user using small-scale, non-industrial 3D printers.

Intended to foster children’s nascent spatial reasoning and engineering skills, construction sets are meant to teach children as much as entertain them during playtime. The Free Universal Construction Kit seeks to subvert the uneasy pairing of education and commerce, or the commercialization of childhood. Often identified as instrumental in the development of design genius—especially in the field of architecture—Frank Lloyd Wright describes playing with Fröbelgeben (Fröbel gifts), the first widely-used proto-construction toy kit developed by German educator and inventor of Kindergarten Friedrich Fröbel as a formative experience. Not coincidentally, Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, John Lloyd Wright, would go on to introduce Lincoln Logs to the rapidly expanding construction toy market in 1917.

Levin describes his work as that which “makes visible our ways of interacting with each other, exploring the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity.” If toys are a vision of the future, projections of the societal aspirations of their adult creators, then The Free Universal Construction Kit acts as a leveling agent, helping return the basic challenge of playing with construction toys back to fitting one part with another without a provided plan. By expanding toys’ interoperability, the kit helps counteract what historians Brenda and Robert Vale see as a decrease in children’s creative thinking caused by overly-prescribed toy systems that supply structured blueprints and feature familiar characters from film and television.[2]

Until the use of 3D printers becomes a routine activity for the average consumer, the kit may not see especially high fabrication numbers from the public in the immediate future. However, Levin holds that the The Free Universal Construction Kit “is not a product, but a provocation,” stating: “As with other grassroots interoperability remedies, The Free Universal Construction Kit implements proprietary protocols in order to provide a public service unmet, or unmeetable, by corporate interests…[it] prompts consideration about intellectual property, open-source culture, and reverse engineering as a mode of cultural practice.”

Along with the various two-way connectors, Levin and Simms developed a “universal adapter,” a single piece with every single connector. It is not practical, but that’s hardly the point. It is the universality rather than the practicality Levin and Simms want to emphasize. The Free Universal Construction Kit speaks to a cultural moment of life-hacks and egalitarian access to technology, a manifesto for the future concisely stated via children’s toys.

[1] Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, K’Nex, Krinkles (Bristle Blocks), Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, and Zoob. [2] See Brenda Vale and Robert Vale, Architecture On The Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Building, (London: Thames Hudson), 2013.

Anne Carlisle is a Curatorial Intern at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, while earning her master’s degree at Bard Graduate Center. She recently curated the exhibition Wood, Revisited at The Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, and works in the Communications department at The Architectural League of New York.

from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum http://ift.tt/2EqwJr5 via IFTTT

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AA Visiting School Khartoum – Sudan

Architectural Association News: AA Visiting School Khartoum, Sudan, London Architecture Education, Design

Architectural Association Visiting School Khartoum – Sudan

Updates for the Architectural Association, Bedford Square, London, England, UK

21 Apr 2021

AA Visiting School Khartoum – Sudan

Application is now open – check this link for more info: AA School of Architecture – Academic Programmes

Full and partial scholarships are available.

The School’s agenda explores the intersection of climate change and heritage whilst reflecting on new modes of representation. The continuous reshaping of the flow of rivers is both a cause and effect of human patterns of behaviour that have reshaped settlements at its shoreline throughout history. Today the course of the Nile is being altered once more through new urban developments and climate change posing a threat to sites adjacent to its riverbed. The School studies the challenges posed by climate change through the chosen site at Meroe and the ongoing alterations of water passages. Participants will engage with invited anthropologists, architects, artists, bioarchaeologist, community initiatives, and historians through lectures, seminars, studios and workshops.

The School’s output shall be exhibited in various galleries along the Nile: Khartoum (House of Heritage), Addis Ababa, Asmara, Bujumbura (TwoFiveSeven Arts), Cairo, Dar es Salaam (Nafasi Art Space), Juba, Kampala (Afriart Gallery), Kigali, Kinshasa, and Nairobi The other spaces shall be announced soon

School directors: Suha Babikir Hasan and Nuha Eltinay Teaching assistant: Marwah Osama Invited guests: Alexandra Riedel, Cave Bureau, Grau, Jane Humphris, Lucia Allais, Michael Mallinson, Iwona Kozieradzka-Ogunmakin, Suzan Khalil Mohamed Sayed (Nafeer), Solange Ashby, William Carruthers Other speakers shall be announced soon

AA Visiting School Khartoum – Sudan images / information received 210421

Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES, UK

photo © Adrian Welch

AA School Events

AA Events : current events at Architectural Association – external link

Phone: +44 20 7887 4000

Location: 36 Bedford Square, Fitzrovia, London WC1B 3ES, UK

London Architecture

London Architecture Design – chronological list

London Architecture Tours

London Architecture

London Architect Studios

Bartlett School Exhibition: London School of Architecture

AA Visiting School nanotourism, Slovenia A project called Gastronomy at KSEVT, which was developed as part of the AA Visiting School nanotourism in Vitanje, 2016. AA Visiting School nanotourism

AA Milan Summer School, Italy ‘nature does not exist’ ecoLogicStudio @ Cornell University: image : student_Sonny Eric Xu AA Milan Summer School Visiting School – organized by Architectural Association with ecoLogicStudio in Milan, Italy

ARCHIZINES photograph : Sue Barr AA School Exhibition

Concrete Geometries Symposium ‘Concrete Geometries – Spatial Form in Social and Aesthetic Processes’ which will take place at the Architectural Association on 15th October 2010 for possible inclusion in your calendar. Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture – Concrete Geometries

AA Projects Review 2017

Website: Visit London

Charles Jencks photo from The Architectural Association School of Architecture

Comments / photos for the AA School Events – AA Visiting School Khartoum – Sudan page welcome

Website: Architectural Association School of Architecture

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The original legacy of Wendy and Richard Pini's ElfQuest

In this excerpt from Dark Horse Comics's 40th Anniversary Ashcan issue of ElfQuest, available today in comic stores, Hanna Means-Shannon explains how Wendy and Richard Pini showed indies the way in an age before crowdfunding.

For those of us who grew up reading print comics from the newsstand or the comic shop, but have since then witnessed the birth of digital comics, we may feel we have seen major changes in the landscape of comic publishing. We would not be wrong to think so, and the developments that we have gradually embraced in comics form a continuum that may yet lead to changes far beyond our current imaginative climate.

However, the shifts that occurred in both the method of creating comics and in publishing in the decades before many of us were part of the comics conversation were so wide-ranging and astonishing in their impact that it is hard for more youthful readers to fully grasp those seismic shifts now. And yet those very shifts created the continental drifts that led to the current changes we still witness. Conceptually, comics became community-driven in the hands of self-publishers like Wendy and Richard Pini, the creators of ElfQuest, long before the dawn of fan-driven webcomics or crowdfunding platforms.

No doubt books will be written on the ways in which ElfQuest, and self-published comics that followed ElfQuest’s example, blazed remarkable trails in fan engagement. This is particularly likely now that the Pinis have generously donated a wealth of original art and supporting documents as an ElfQuest archive to the library at Columbia University. The size of the donation itself, and Columbia’s delight in receiving it, suggest just how significant comics historians know ElfQuest to be, and what potential for research and discussion lies ahead.

The unlikelihood of ElfQuest ever coming into existence as we know it was, however, profound. All it would have taken would have been a momentary hesitation from the Pinis when their first ElfQuest story appeared in an indie comics magazine printed on sub-standard materials, only for that publisher to promptly go out of business. They could have taken that as a sign to move on and try some other endeavor less precarious, less potentially disappointing, than comics. But instead, they didn’t simply take the series to another publisher, but sat down and conceived of a superior way to present the material, geared toward aesthetic values and a rich reading experience for the audience. Taking matters one step further, they self-published that material, a decisive act that set them on a path which is still unfolding forty years later.

Trying to pin down the alchemy of appeal in the comic series itself will leave you certain of its raptor-like ability to seize the its raptor-like ability to seize the reader’s attention, but perhaps even less able to single out just one particular quality that makes it shine. But if you open a book like The Complete ElfQuest Volume 1, which takes you back in crisp clarity to the “Original Quest” and earliest ElfQuest stories, you will be immediately struck by Wendy Pini’s art style and the intense use of page space for layered narrative. You’ll also notice the manga-like visual focus on the emotional state of the comic’s characters, as well as the more general mood of each panel. It’s no exaggeration to say that a single panel is often capable of conveying a whole world in ElfQuest. And yet this is a book that transmits thousands of years of alternate history for its star-traveling and shipwrecked elves, the splintered clans that result from their crash-landing in pre-history, and in particular, the life and times of the Wolfriders. This is a story world that plays out on both the large scale and the small scale, and suggests that both have virtually equal emotional weight in the narrative.

Central characters Cutter and Skywise immediately enable the reader to grasp the intense personal lives of the elves, and the procession of long periods of time and vast distances in space enable the reader to grasp their cultural and historical context in ways that we may wish we could grasp our own. The Pinis built upon these original core elements to establish an astonishingly wide cast of characters, times, and places. It is hard to conceive of a more expansive story universe in the realms of science fiction or fantasy than the Pinis have created through attention to their original architecture. Their ability to build ElfQuest has been just as impressive as their ability has been to reach readers outside of mainstream distribution.

Of course, prior to the Pinis, there had been other comic creators who discovered that self-publication can reach readers, and their lessons learned no doubt empowered ElfQuest to come into being in the same way that ElfQuest has since then empowered many comics in the digital comics generation to reach out to their own fanbases. But innovation is often found, not only in the tools we use, but in how we use them. With ElfQuest, the Pinis essentially took a model previously associated with underground comix and applied the verve and self-determination of that movement to an entirely new mode of storytelling.

Their new mode was genre-blending fantasy that would parallel the interests of the mainstream comics industry and, even more closely, the interests of the mainstream prose fiction market. Somewhere at the intersection of the two, ElfQuest would not only become a monumental success story, but usher several generations of fantasy fans into the realm of comics readership, too.

In retrospect, what Wendy and Richard Pini did contained plenty of common sense, but it also reflected very specific personal aesthetics that the Pinis expanded into in the hopes of creating a superior reading experience. They took their story and blew it up into magazine format, created a full-color glossy cover for it, and provided extra character portraits on the back covers. They created their story on substantial paper stock that would do justice to the lavish inking and make reading the script elements sharper and clearer. That paved the way for readers to encounter the Pinis’ story as a more opulent experience of the fantastic.

As ElfQuest grew, and as readers, holding this superior quality of book in their hands, experienced the unique world and universe the Pinis had artfully created for them, people were, quite simply, hooked. The Pinis had created a new product in a new format that appealed to the senses, the emotions, and a desire for community among readers. Only as the comic became increasingly successful did other potential self-publishers take note of this emerging fandom as a developing marketplace.

ElfQuest soon garnered interest from publishers, but the Pinis decided to only work with publishers on the collected editions, and not on the creation of the stories themselves for many years. This effectively reduced the influence of outside sensibilities on the creation of characters and storylines and shored up the original feel of ElfQuest to an even greater degree. However, the Pinis were not without their own organizational structures for production. They have spoken in the past about Richard’s role as editor and co-scripter in the creation of ElfQuest, and little insights like these help unlock the mysteries of the comic’s success.When Richard and Wendy co-scripted each issue of their comic, they produced a back-and-forth typical of editorial process. When Richard quite literally took out a pen and trimmed and reconfigured dialog, he brought an internal awareness of process to the series that kept the reader in mind and focused on a specific goal: the greatest possible quality in the final product.

If the Pinis are beginning to sound both like business people and a two-person publishing house, that is because they pioneered both personas for comic creators seeking to publish and distribute their own work. If that sounds unromantic compared to the alluring, and often extravagantly beautiful stories that Wendy and Richard tell, ask yourself: What could be more romantic than producing an experience with readers so firmly in mind that stories arrive regularly for them in high-quality format? Nothing takes a reader as directly out of the world of a comics story than the conditions under which they are read. The Pinis fine-tuned those conditions as carefully as they crafted their stories.

Over the years, the Pinis would have to become even more firmly entrenched as business people in running their own publishing house. It is hard to conceive of any other independently created property that, in continuing to publish new work across four decades, was obliged to make deals with several major publishers for collected and remastered editions. From Marvel Comics, to DC Comics, and finally, to Dark Horse for new stories, collection and distribution, few creative teams have had such an intense experience of learning just how creator-owned properties can have mutually beneficial relationships with publishers.

But that task has not been thankless for the Pinis. The response from fans has always been what has buoyed the series and inspired the Pinis to continue their work. Developing into multi-media formats, from prose, to drama, to music, and more, the world of ElfQuest has proved highly versatile in inhabiting the imagination of its audience. The existence of ElfQuest continues to support the idea that creative people can craft new ways of thinking, as well as new ways of storytelling, and when released on the world, those innovations can find a community who will benefit from them.

ElfQuest found a tribe in the days before crowdfunding, before webcomics, and before the rise of all-access digital platforms. And it managed to adapt new methods in order to reach readers over a swath of publishing history very few properties can boast. As such, it represents the power of like-minded communities to find each other through the stories they tell.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/06/the-original-legacy-of-wendy-a.html

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California Mid-century Architect John Lautner: Part One

“Shelter is the most basic human need.” – John Lautner

John Lautner one of California’s best-known residential architects of the mid-Twentieth Century designed dramatic unique homes, sometimes referred to as Googie Architecture (1) that were indicative of the futuristic aspirations and car culture of the 1950s. The term “Googie” architecture came from Lautner’s design for Googie’s Coffee House in Los Angeles, California (1). Among the best known of Lautner’s work are the“Leonard Malin House (Chemosphere),Paul Sheats House, andRuss Garcia House” (2).

John Lautner with Leonard J. Malin House (Chemosphere) in the background (1970). Photo Credit: Julius Shulman photography archive. The Getty Research Institute, 2004.R.10. Image source.

John Lautner’s Early Years

John Lautner was born in Marquette, Michigan in 1911, the oldest of two children (3). His father, a German immigrant became the “head of French and German at the recently founded Marquette Northern State Normal School (nowNorthern Michigan University)” (2). Lautner’s mother was an artist and interior designer.

John’s parents were very interested in architecture; their home in Marquette was designed by architect and author of the book American Renaissance (1904) Joy Wheeler Dow (2). The Lautners designed and built their own summer cottage “"Midgaard", sited on a rock shelf on a remote headland on the shore onLake Superior”(2); John helped out in its construction (3). John loved spending time in nature and considered the northern Michigan woods to be “heaven on Earth”(3).

“In 1929, young Lautner enrolled in the Liberal Arts program at his father's college”(3) and graduated with a degree in English (3). During his time in college, Architectural History was the only course in his studies related to architecture. During his college years, Lautner spent summers hitchhiking around the United States. His first trip to Los Angeles was in 1932 to attend the Olympic Games (4).

Lautner Joins the Taliesin Fellowship

In 1933 Lautner’s mother Vida read architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s biography and contacted Wright to inquire about the possibility of her son’s joining Wright’s new apprentice program at Taliesin (4). Lautner, however, has recently become engaged to “Mary Faustina (‘MaryBud’) Roberts and could not afford the fees” (2). MaryBud’s mother stepped in and agreed to pay for both John and MaryBud to attend Taliesin. There Lautner preferred the hands-on work duties of farming, building and cooking to those in the drafting room. John and MaryBud married in 1934 (2).

Under Wright John was involved “with a two-year project supervising a Wright-designed house in Marquette for MaryBud's mother” (2). Lautner also oversaw the construction of “Wingspread” in Racine, Wisconsin and was in part responsible for the construction of the Drafting Room atTaliesin West (2). Lautner had “served from 1933 to 1939 as one of Wright’s original Taliesin Fellows” (5).

The Lautners Move to Southern California

In 1938 MaryBud became pregnant so John and MaryBud left the apprenticeship. When Lautner set up his own architecture practice in Los Angeles in March of 1938, he let Wright know that he wanted to continue to assist the fellowship. Lautner worked on “eleven Los Angeles projects over the next five years” (2) and continued his association with Wright, supervising Wright’s “Los Angeles domestic projects: the Sturges, Green, Lowe, Bell and Mauer Houses” (2). In May of 1938, MaryBud gave birth the Lautner’s first child, Karol. The Lautners would have 3 more children: Michael John in 1942, Mary in 1944 and Judith in 1946 (2). Judith Lautneris the current President and Treasurer of the John Lautner Foundation (3).

John Lautner, Lautner Residence (1940), Los Angeles, CA . Image source.

Lautner’s first solo project in 1940 was a $2500 residence for the Springer family (2), but it was the design for his own home built in 1939 in Silver Lake, California (4) that got Lautner noticed. California architectural historian, Esther McCoy called the house a “marriage between Walden Pond and Douglas Aircraft” (4). Lautner’s work on the Bell and Mauer houses were also gaining the architect additional recognition. The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s later residential work can be seen in both the Lautner House and the Bell House. These projects were “featured in numerous publications over the next few years including … a three-page spread in the June 1942 issue of Arts and Architecture” (2).

Read “California Mid-century Architect John Lautner: Part Two”.

John Lautner, Bell House (1941) interior, Los Angeles, CA. Image source.

References

Wikipedia, (2019). Googie Architecture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googie_architecture

Wikipedia, (2019). John Lautner. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lautner

Lautner, Judith,(2008). Biography of John Lautner. John Lautner Foundation. https://www.johnlautner.org/wp/?p=33

John Lautner, (1986). Responsibility, infinity, nature oral history transcript. Marlene L. Laskey, interviewer; University of California, Los Angeles. Oral History Program. https://archive.org/stream/responsibilityin00laut#page/n77/mode/2up

Los Angeles Conservancy (n.d.). John Lautner. https://www.laconservancy.org/architects/john-lautner

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Top 10 Historic Ships

Before the invention of airplanes, steamships were the only mode of transport over wide regions across the world. Due to this reason, steamships were the pinnacle of human ingenuity and engineering for a long time.

The creation of the first ship can be traced back to as early as 3000 BC where Egyptians affixed the top of a pole set upright in a boat. Ancient Egyptians were aware of the process of assembling wooden planks into a hull. Since then, ships have undergone some massive changes in terms of its purpose as well as designs and constructions to suit those purposes. From being the most efficient means of commercial transport to be an integral part of warfare, ships have undergone some major changes throughout history.

Following is the list of the top 10 historic ships that have rightfully inscribed their names on the annals of humankind.

1) British Luxury Liner RMS Titanic

British Luxury Liner RMS Titanic. Pic courtesy: https://ift.tt/1TON9Jo

It is probably no surprise that the Titanic tops our list as the most famous ship in history. This was built as an exhibition of man’s technological brilliance but ended up proving to be one of the greatest architectural mistakes in human history. It was the largest and the fastest passenger ship at that time. The Titanic left England on April 10, 1912, for New York. Unfortunately, on its fifth day, it hit an iceberg and sank taking with it around 1,500 passengers who had not probably in their remotest dreams imagined such mishap would befall them.

Two hours proved to be inadequate for the evacuation process and the fact that there were only half the lifeboats needed to be added to the commotion. This sent a strong but a staggeringly expensive message that the regulations regarding the mandating of lifeboats and other security measures needed to be updated and improved.

In 1985 the ship was rediscovered below the surface of the North Atlantic and has since then been a part of numerous documentaries. However, the ship and its accident were made famous largely by the highly acclaimed movie Titanic (1999) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

2) Battleship U.S.S. Arizona

Battleship U.S.S. Arizona

Arizona’s career ended even before it started properly. It was an active part of World War II, though World War I had been rather uneventful for it. American veterans happen to have a strong emotional attachment to this battleship. It did not last for more than fifteen minutes because a well-aimed Japanese bomb exploded her forward magazine that tore the ship into two parts at the time of the surprise attack on the Pearl Harbour by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. This attack killed 1,177 men out of her crew of 1,400. Even the captain and an admiral perished in the explosion and remnants were left ablaze for days.

The ship was so badly damaged that it could not be repaired. It is one of the few ships (three to be precise) in the history that suffered a similar fate. The ship is still kept there as a memorial and millions of people from across the world come to see it every year. Owing to wartime censorship Arizona’s fiery history remained buried in the shallow waters of Battleship Row only to be dug up years later. It took as long as the 1960s to get the respect that she enjoys today by being a powerful memorial.

3) German Battleship Bismarck

German Battleship Bismarck

If there was something that was said to create tremors in the naval supremacy of the British Navy in 1941 than it was probably the German Battleship Bismarck. At a majestic 823 feet and a record 30 knots speed, Bismarck became the largest and fastest warship of its time. It became a nightmare in the Royal Navy history and caused the British heavy financial damage.

In the early hours of May 24, Bismarck faced the British battlecruiser HMS Hood and the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales. The Hood could not stand up for long against this behemoth and soon took solace at the bottom of the sea taking with it all of its 1,148-man crew except three lucky ones. Prince of Wales suffered slightly better fate whereby it could hardly make its way home.

However, a day later British torpedoes forced Bismarck to take a hasty trip to the French coast for repairs. Unfortunately, Rodney and King George V, two battleships were hot on its trail and gave their best in the 2 hours long barrage to successfully sink Hitler’s battleship along with his pride. Only 200 of the 2,200-man crew survived.

In 1989, it was discovered by Robert Ballard, the same person who discovered the Titanic three years later, in an undisturbed condition. However, evidence strongly suggests that it was not the British who had succeeded in sinking it, but it was a German who scuttled it preferring it to the alternative fate that had so long been made part of world history. This does take away much of the credibility of the Royal Navy.

4) Battleship U.S.S. Maine

Battleship U.S.S. Maine

Not all ships in this list are war participants for that it not the only thing that brings fame. Sometimes it is what happened to the ship that makes it famous. It was February 15. 1898 when it was anchored to the Havana harbor when suddenly an explosion tore this tiny battleship into two. 89 people from the 355 men crew got killed in this unexplained explosion. It had apparently been a rallying point for a nation that was looking forward to war.

Historians and naval engineers are of the opinion the explosion had resulted from accidental detonation of her magazines by fire from the coal bin. However, many considered this to be an intentional act of sabotage, a part of a well-planned conspiracy that would ensure the United States getting thrown into a war with Spain where they returned victoriously.

5) HMS Victory

HMS Victory

The Royal Navy was a supreme force during the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, and the biggest representation of this naval supremacy was probably the HMS Victory. Being one of the largest wooden warships to be ever built it became a revered legend under Nelson especially during the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Nelson died in this war but not before grasping England from the pangs of defeat in the battle against the combined forces of the French and Spanish fields. Apart from this, the ship got engaged in a number of interesting adventures.

After the Napoleonic Wars ended the fate of this legendary ship almost got sealed had it not been for the First Sea Lord’s wife. On hearing that it was to be broken up she became emotional and pleaded that it be not submitted to the fate of the wrecker’s yard considering it had served gallantly for such a long time. The man submitted (quite wisely so) to his wife’s wishes hence we can still see a museum in Portsmouth that is made upon one of the oldest floating ships in the world. It had to go through a heavy restoration process prior to which it served as a pier-side training school for at least a century.

6) Battleship U.S.S. Missouri

Battleship U.S.S. Missouri

This ship is not famous for actively participating in any major war. Rather its fame lies in the fact that the surrender documents ending World War II were signed in this ship at the Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. But for the 45,000 tonnes “Mighty ‘Mo” World War II was not the last thing that it contributed towards for in 1984 she was assigned the task of combating in the Korean War. This reactivation made it a part of Ronald Reagan’s 600-ship fleet plan.

The U.S.S. Missouri was also engaged in the First Persian Gulf War in 1991 whereby it launched cruise missiles and 16-inch rounds at the Iraqi enemies in Kuwait. It is now retired from such demanding services and remains at Pearl Harbour it serves as a museum and war memorial. What is interesting is the fact that a person standing on its deck can see both where the war started as well as the place where it ended because it is docked just a few hundred yards from the Battleship Arizona (later in this list).

7) U.S.S. Constitution

U.S.S. Constitution

This is the oldest ship in America that is still intact. It is kept in a museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It was called “Old Ironsides” because of the build quality and even after 213 years, it is still afloat. Because of its sturdy construction, it has been able to continue providing service from 1797 to as recent as the Civil War. It continued its service thereafter as a training ship and continued sailing periodically till it got decommissioned in1881.

It can boast of having fought real pirates in the First Barbary War and also engaged in naval combat in the War of 1812, where it attained distinction by being victorious over the British frigates HMS Guerrier and HMS Java. All these gave it the reputation of being a ship that was capable of defeating the British in naval combat. This is actually extraordinary considering the fact that back then the Royal Navy was the largest and the most powerful in the world. She was recovered from the wrecking yard and has been in the museum since 1907.

The Old Ironside has undergone so many processes of restoration and refurbishments along with complete rebuilds that people say that only her keel belongs to the original ship and the rest has all been replaced. Let’s not forget the fact that the ship is still capable of hitting the waters and does so once every year when she is towed to the Boston Harbour for her “turnaround cruise” which ensure that it weathers evenly on both sides. Having a crew of sixty active-duty members of the United States Navy, it is still a commissioned warship.

8) U.S.S. Monitor and C.S.S. Virginia (aka Merrimack)

U.S.S. Monitor

These two behemoths fought neck to neck (or should I say hull to hull?) with each other leading to a rather uneventful draw on March 1862 at Virginia. However, it is considered to be one of the most important naval battles in history because for the first time two ships used iron as the primary building component engaged in a battle. Mockingly but also aptly called the “cheesebox on a raft”, the Union-built Monitor is famous for being the first ship to incorporate a rotating gun turret. This designed radically changed the way warships came to be constructed then onwards till the next century.

C.S.S. Virginia

What makes the confederate ironclad remarkable is the fact that it was built upon the hull of the Union Frigate Merrimack. Hence, there is a lot of confusion regarding the name. The Merrimack had been made to sink deliberately so that it could not be captured when Norfolk fell into the hands of the South in April 1861. It was thereafter reflated after giving it a makeover and upgrades of massive iron plates which not only made her invincible against cannon fire but also a dangerous weapon that the South used to sink some of the traditional wooden Union warships the previous day.

Neither ship got to take part in another naval battle. Virginia was blown up and scuttled so that the enemy would not be able to capture it. In May of 1862, the Union troops regained control over Norfolk which made the action necessary and thus the Monitor was lost to the waters off Cape Hatteras. It was New Year’s Eve and 16 of her crew never got to see the new year’s light.

Later in 1973, the wreck of the Monitor was located off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. This place was officially made a national landmark. Many artifacts that belonged to the ship have been recovered since then, like the turret, cannon propeller, anchor, engine and some belongings of the crew. These are now kept on display at the Mariner’s Museum of Newport News in Virginia.

9) C.S.S. Hunley

C.S.S. Hunley. Pic Courtesy: https://ift.tt/33zzYJL

This vessel might easily be named as the ‘suicide submarine’ due to the sheer number of lives it has taken with it. Built by the Confederates, originally it was designed to take down the Union Navy but instead ended up killing its own crew. Even while testing it sank twice and killed 13 of her crew. But it held a promise, a promise to change the conventional rules of naval engineering.

It was designed by H.L. Hunley, who also died during its testing, to sink the Union ships that were barricading the Southern ports and as at last ready for her first combat test on the evening of February 17, 1864. It is amazing how there was never a dearth of people willing to apparently kill themselves by volunteering to be part of the crew of this evidently suicidal ship.

However, they managed to sneak up on the Union sloop Housatonic and successfully buried a spar torpedo to her side. That is it. That is all there was to it because it sank for a third time and this time for good, taking with it all the eight men that formed the crew. The reasons for its sinking remained unknown but on the bright side, it achieved its purpose for the Housatonic did sink and became the first ship in history to be sunk by a submarine.

For 136 years it lay at the bottom of the Charleston Harbour until finally in August of 2000 it was finally located and raised to a great fanfaronade. The hull awaits its conservation in a specially designed tank and in an amazingly well-preserved condition.

10) Santa Maria

Santa Maria

This historic Spanish vessel was made famous by Christopher Columbus who brought it to the ‘new world’. This tiny 70 feet long (at max) was a hideous vessel. Its speed was nothing remarkable either. But its fame lay somewhere else.

Columbus was the governor of Hispaniola and there he earned himself a bad name due to his brutality and other small follies. But one area where he remained unquestionable was his ability as a seaman. He braved the crossing not once but four times throughout his lifetime. Unfortunately, the tiny Santa Maria could not carry his grandeur for a second time despite being extremely sturdy and was hence salvaged for wood on the Christmas of 1492. This wood was used for making another ship called La Navidad which incidentally translated to Christmas.

At least four replicas have been made of it, but none are accurate because there is no official record of the ship’s original construction. Thus, each of those replicas differs from each other in one way or the other. However, each of those replicas is capable of sailing the seas.

Lesser-known historic ships

We have discussed ten of the most historic ships in history. However, these are not the only ones. The following are some more such ships that are not that widely known but contribute a lot to the history of the marine world.

1) The Black Swan

The Black Swan

Also known as the Black Swan Project, this was one of the most successful recoveries of gold treasure in history. A huge gold treasure was found on a Spanish ship that had sunk off the coast of Portugal in 1805. In 2007, the treasure on the ship was recovered. The gold is estimated to be worth more than 500 million dollars. Although the gold was recovered by an American company, it was returned to the Spanish Authorities in 2012.

2) The Queen Anne’s Revenge

The Queen Anne’s Revenge. Pic courtesy: https://ift.tt/34HplEN

The Queen Anne’s Revenge was the 18th-century ship. It is most famous because of its captain Edward Teach, popularly known as Blackbeard. It was initially a British naval ship which was later captured by the French and then by pirates and remained in their hands 1717 onwards. The ship was abandoned by its pirate in 1718 to escape British capture. The remains of the ship were found near the Atlantic Beach, North Carolina in 1996. Thirty-one canons are more than 250,000 artifacts were discovered on the ship.

3) RMS Lusitania

Painting of RMS Lusitania by Norman Wilkinson

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner. It was launched in 1906. Throughout its life, it made 202 trans-Atlantic crossings. On 7 May 1915, it was torpedoed and sunk by a German boat. More than 1,198 people lost their lives. This ship is believed to have been one of the key factors in the involvement of the United States in the Second World War. Today, it lies about 11 miles south of Kinsale, Ireland. Many of the objects on the ship were recovered almost all of which are now privately owned.

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Making Sense of Food in Performance: The Table and the Stage1

To appear in Sally Banes and Andre Lepecki, eds., The Senses in Performance (New York: Routledge, 2006) ======================================================================

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett New York University

What would theater history look like were it written backwards from the Futurist banquets and Dali dinners and performance art? Canonical histories of theater take as their point of departure that which counts as theater in the modern period—namely, theater as an autonomous art form—and search for its "origins" in fused art forms. Central to the notion of theater as an independent art are plays, and as an indication of the maturing of this form, a dedicated architecture or theater (literally a place of seeing). Canonical theater histories are written with the aim of understanding how modern theater came to be. The search is, understandably, for corollaries in the past. Thus, Oscar G. Brockett’s History of Theatre is a history of drama and its performance: it does not view courtly banquets, tournaments, royal entries, and street pageants as performance genres in their own right but as occasions for plays and playlets. Such histories attend not to the fusion, but to the seeds of what would become an independent art form called theater.

It has taken considerable cultural work to isolate the senses, create genres of art specific to each, insist on their autonomy, and cultivate modes of attentiveness that give some senses priority over others. To produce the separate and independent arts that we know today, it was necessary to break fused forms like the banquet apart and to disarticulate the sensory modalities associated with them. Not until the various components of such events (music, dance, drama, food, sculpture, painting) were separated and specialized did they become sense-specific art forms in dedicated spaces (theater, auditorium, museum, gallery), with distinct protocols for structuring attention and perception. It was at this point that food disappeared from musical and theatrical performances. No food or drink is allowed in the theater, concert hall, museum, or library. In the process, new kinds of sociality supported sensory discernment specific to gustation, the literary practice of gastronomy, and increasing culinary refinement. Food became a sense-specific art form in its own right, as Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook so vividly demonstrates (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1989).

Opera Gastronomica

Though food was removed from the theater as the theater became an autonomous art, the table and the stage continued to have a shared history. Indeed, the musical banquet, or opera gastronomica, may well have preceded the theatrical opera in musicaby more than a century. According to Jenny Nevile, the musical banquet "had already reached a state of complete or 'operatic' composition by the late 15th century. The dining hall, it seems, was one of the first scenes of modern musical theatre" (Nevile 1990: page #).2

A legacy of such courtly banquets, the tish, literally "table" in Yiddish, is a distinctive Hasidic event during which the rebe (charismatic leader) holds court in the community's house of study. The tish is a musical banquet of sorts, during which the rebewill bless food, deliver a discourse, lead song, and dance with his followers. It is as part

Making Sense of Food in Performance 2

of the tish that musical plays are performed in fulfillment of the religious obligation to gladden the heart of the rebe on the holiday of Purim. In what is essentially a command performance before a regal figure, the actors play to the rebe, who is seated directly in front of them on a throne-like chair. For those in attendance, the rebe and his reactions are the center of attention, not the play, and the best seats in the house are those that afford an unobstructed view of him (and secondarily of the play). The stage is literally a physical extension of the table such that the performance could be said to take place on the table itself.

The food the rebe blesses, while it includes the basic components of a festive meal, is present not to satisfy physical hunger but rather in the interest of commensality. People eat beforehand. The hunger they bring to the event is spiritual. Once the rebe has blessed the food and eaten a little of it, his leavings (shirayim) are eagerly grabbed by his followers, who may well number in the thousands. The rebe's leavings have been transvalued by his touch.3 While the quantities presented to him are grand and the vessels are lavish, neither he nor his followers eat out of physical hunger. Nor is the food itself spectacular, though the large braided hallah, a festive braided bread made with white flour and eggs, is beautiful. Like the courtly banquets to which it is related, the tish is a multi-sensory event and food is an essential component of it, even in the absence of appetite.

The European banquet is one of four types of festa, the others being the entry, the tournament, and the popular carnival, according to Nevile. Historians of modern operatic traditions have "detected a long series of pre-operatic experiments in musical theater, going back mainly to the dining hall, but also the ballroom, the riding school, the courtyard, the city square, the garden and other spaces temporarily adapted as theatre before there were any such regular structures available" (Nevile 1990:117). These experiments, which were based on "the model of the sacred banquet, and its musical elaboration in the sung mass," resulted in "artistically planned and fully composed musical banquets, particularly those with music performed throughout the dining" (117).

As Nevile notes, "the official banquet had always functioned as an elaborate meal and social occasion. By combining "the skills of cooking, decoration, music, dancing, poetry, architecture (for scene construction), costume design and painting," the banquet made tangible and sensuous the power of the host and those being honored (128). It was not, however, until the latter part of the 15th century that all the different elements that had been part of the banquet for several centuries (that is, music and dance, as well as food), were united to produce a coherent performance with a single theme—in other words, a 'gastronomic opera'" (128). It had become "a unified theatrical event," as can be seen in Italian examples between 1450 and 1475 (130). Such events might last as long as seven hours—the Hasidic tish, it should be noted, can last all night and well into the morning.

The banquet was the most "total" of Renaissance festive events, particularly in the way that it engaged the senses and the various media associated with them: "The drama of the musical banquet was finally presented as a fusion of all the arts of music, dancing, poetry, food, painting, sculpture, costume, and set design, to present a feast for all the senses, as well as the intellect, in a range of moods encompassing the tragic, the comic, and the pastoral" (134). (It could be said that the orgy is even more complete in so far as included not only eating, singing, dancing, eating, and drinking, but also sexual activity.4) If the 15th-century French banquet was marked by abundance, the 16th century

Making Sense of Food in Performance 3

banquet was characterized by rarity and refinement (Wheaton 1983:52). Moreover, what had been a fused form became separate specialized entities, as can be seen from the transformation of the entremets, the between-courses divertissements. According to Barbara Santich, the entremets:

were visually and theatrically spectacular, incorporating elements of surprise and trickery to amaze and impress the guests. Almost invariable, music was an integral part of the entremets, which were the product of the kitchen [though they were designed by professional artists], elaborated under the charge of the head cook...For the banquets of the 16th century, however, the entremets had undergone a transformation. The culinary and the theatrical elements separated. The entremets as spectacle became almost purely theatrical (music, mime, dance, and acrobatics can all be subsumed under the heading of theatre), leaving the cooks free to devote all their skills to the culinary art, the visual display. (Santich 1990:110)

One reason for this development in France, she suggests, is the development of greater technical proficiency in the culinary arts and the movement north of Italian banquet traditions. In Santich's view, "[a]s a total art-form, the banquet probably reached its apogee in the 17th century, when Louis XIV entertained at Versailles" and with Inigo Jones's Banqueting House in Whitehall, which "was more important as a theatrical setting for court masques than for feasts" (111). Les plaisirs de l'isle enchantée, in the spring of 1664, was the first and perhaps best remembered of Louis the XIV's grand fêtes, thanks to the engravings by Isräel Silvestre.

According to Barbara Wheaton, the record is generally "silent on the details of banquet menus" in France, though these events were lavishly documented in engravings and accompanying text, which listed many of the foods on the table (Wheaton 1983:42). Perhaps food was so fused with spectacle that the images and accounts that remain of the edible allegorical tableaus are the playbill and menu in one. Consistent with evidence from the Middle Ages, these commemorative documents say more about what food looked like than how it tasted. Visual effects, rarity of ingredients, opulence, and the sequence of events, Wheaton suggests, were more important than the dishes, their ingredients, preparation, or flavors. Indeed, flavor might even be compromised for the sake of appearance (15,49). And, for good reason.

These were monumental events, viewed from a distance by crowds of people over many hours. Flavor cannot be witnessed. Appearance can. Flavor is momentary. Appearance endures. The operating principle, "for show," required that appearance dominate, as did the emphasis on a legible (edible) visual language of emblems and signs. This was, one might say, a cuisine of signs, a world made edible. It was discursive food addressed to the senses. It was food to be seen, touched, inhaled, ingested, absorbed, and embodied—not only as substance, but also as meaning.5 It was made to disappear, if not down the hatch, then pillaged at the end of the meal. Wanton destruction was the height of luxury, a dramatic gesture of conspicuous consumption. A surfeit of labor, skill, and material, expressed clearly in visual excess, surpassed the limits of appetite, which is otherwise relatively quick to be satiated. The fugitive nature of food is perfectly suited to such stagings.

Making Sense of Food in Performance 4

Repas en Ambigus

Banquets were important to court life and continued into the Baroque period, a feature of which is the transferability of devices from the stage to the dining room. Therepas en ambigu (an elaborate formal composition of dishes laid out in a room), which was fashionable in the late 17th century could, "in instances of particular luxury...transform the whole dining room into culinary theater"(el-Khoury 1997:58). As Rodolphe el-Khoury explains:

In the "ambigu", the temporal succession of multiple courses is thus eliminated in favor of the visual effect of a unified tableau. Such meals are composed as a spectacle for the eyes and do not necessarily involve an oral consumption of food: "the pleasure of seeing them is greater than that of touching them" states L.S.R.... The "surtout de table," the central element of the "ambigu", is often directly transposed from the stage set of the theater and is obviously not meant for oral consumption. (el-Khoury 1997:58)6

Indeed, the repas en ambigu is a one-act play: "it seeks the utmost impact in the first glance; it attempts to embrace the entire range of possibilities in a single scene" (quoted by el-Khoury 1997:60, from Stewart 1985). Not surprising, then, that the repas en ambigu was not only theatrical in its own right, but also lent "its name to a series of plays and in 1769, to a theater specializing in the genre," according to Philip Stewart (quoted by el-Khoury 1997:62, from Stewart 1985:89).

A startling contemporary example of the convergence of table and stage—with an uncanny affinity with the tables volantes or tables machinées in 17th century France— occurs in Arbeit macht frei vom Toitland Europa, which I saw the Acco Theatre Centre perform in Haifa in 1996.7 In this environmental performance, there is a point where the audience is ushered into a low-ceilinged room and seated on benches around its perimeter. Suddenly, an enormous table drops down from the ceiling, as if from nowhere, and we are pressed to eat delicious food, which we do, as the actors barrage us with violent language and painful "topics of conversation." Suddenly, the table is hoisted up and disappears. Compare this scene with a 17th-century proposal for a flying table, which could be:

lifted all at once by a machine in such a way that the surface of the table, the frame as well as its attachments, is composed by a section of the raised floor...When the guests enter the dining room, there is not the least sign of a table; all that can be seen is a uniform floor that is adorned by a rose at its center. At the slightest nod, the leaves are retracted under the floor, and a table laden with food makes its sudden ascent, flanked by four servants emerging through the four openings.(el-Khoury 1997:62, citing Bonnet in Grimod de La Reynière, Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent, and Bonnet 1978:64-65)

In another instance, the table disappeared into the basement and a new one descended with the next course (el-Khoury 1997:60). The spectacle was not however solely for the pleasure of the diners, for their delight was a spectacle in its own right and royal banquets might include places for spectators. By the 19th century, we can find the elaboration of an explicitly theatrical gastronomy: "The dining-room is a theatre wherein the kitchen serves as the wings and the table as the stage. This theater requires equipment, this stage needs a décor, this kitchen needs a plot" (Aron 1975:214, citing Chantillon-Plessis 1894).

Making Sense of Food in Performance 5

Culinary Theater

With the French Revolution, but already before it, such courtly practices as the banquet were supplanted by new forms of festivity, as Mona Ozouf (1988) has shown, and new forms of sociability, for which Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1971, first published in 1825) provides a manual. With the weakening of guilds, proliferation of free-lance cooks, the professionalizing of chefs, and the emergence of restaurants, food becomes part of a different mode of sociality, one that is more intimate and better suited to focused attention on the nuances of taste.8 The restaurant emerges as the dedicated space of food theater—"Traditionally, the menu has been a kind of playbill, varying with the theme of the drama" (Patton 1998). About his recent design for a Houston nightclub on the theme of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Jordan Mozer said, "What better metaphor for a restaurateur than the magician—or the playwright—who uses his art to transform other people's lives in the span of three hours?" (quoted in Henderson 1992:70) Mozer's circular radial plan "suggests the island upon which the play takes place" (Henderson 1992:70). The circular dance floor and skylight and the architectural twists and tilts evoke a windswept island, eye of a storm, and magic circle. Of his design for Kachina, in Los Angeles, David Kellen said, "I didn't want it to be just a specialty restaurant, but more like an abstract stage for a play set in the southwest"(quoted in Richards 1992:76). These restaurants are overtly theatrical in their staging of another time and place. They provide a setting, an ambience, and a script for social encounters that can involve food, drink, conversation, music, and dance.

Self-consciously theatrical restaurants heighten the already staged nature of public eating places. Some clearly demarcate the front and back regions, with serene dining rooms out front and industrial kitchens in back (see Goffman 1959 and MacCannell 1976). Others bring the back region of the performing kitchen forward and restage it as a back region. Artisanal techniques are specially suited to staging and are frequently visible from the street or dining room of even ordinary restaurants. The pizza maker rolls and twirls the dough in a window facing the street. The brick pizza oven may be visible from the dining room. The Indian chef slaps naan against the hot interior walls of a tandoori oven within a glass room looking out onto the dining room of an upscale restaurant. At Honmura An, an upscale Japanese restaurant in Manhattan, diners can watch a chef making their soba noodles in a glass cube within an elegant dining room lined with teak. Chinese cooks wield their choppers on glazed ducks and whole roasted pigs next to the cash register. Working at a long counter, the deli man slices hot pastrami and piles it high between slices of fresh rye bread, offering tidbits to customers in hope of a tip. Sushi chefs trim the glistening fish, pat the rice into neat ovals, and artfully arrange a platter before the diners seated at the bar before him. Diners walk past their dinner swimming in fish tanks lining the entrance to seafood restaurants, in which case it is the food itself that might be said to perform.

Maître d's understand their dining rooms and chefs their kitchens as performances. Roger Fessaguet, former chef-owner of La Caravelle Restaurant in Manhattan, which closed in 2004, after 43 years in business, describes himself as a conductor and his kitchen as an orchestra, with sections paralleling the strings, wind instruments, and drums.9 He is describing the experience of working in a particular type of kitchen, one that was developed by Georges Auguste Escoffier (1847-1935) to organize what were then the new large hotel restaurants. They had to produce many different meals quickly, while maintaining high quality. Escoffier was inspired, not by

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the orchestra, but by the rational techniques of mass production and the divisions of labor associated with the factory. Rather than have one person make one dish from start to finish, in the manner of a traditional craftsman, Escoffier segmented the various tasks and organized a division of labor in the kitchen and interdependence among workers grouped according to type of operation, rather than type of dish. Stephen Mennell compares the two approaches with respect to one dish, oeufs à la plat Meyerbeer: "Under the old system, it would have taken a single cook about fifteen minutes to prepare in its entirety; under the new, the eggs were cooked by the entremettier [department responsible for soups, vegetables, and desserts], kidney grilled by the rôtisseur, and truffle sauce prepared by the saucier, and the whole assembled in a only a few minutes" (Mennell 1985:159). While the arrangement is efficient, it makes for a particular kind of cooking experience.

Fessaguet's characterization is meant to capture the intensity, focus, split-second timing, and extraordinary coordination required to complete innumerable dishes, each of them made of up of many components, in ever changing combinations and sequences, so that each table in a room of many tables may be served what it has ordered for a particular course all at the same time, at the right temperature. Not only stringent quality standards but also grace under pressure must be maintained under these demanding conditions. Indeed, this consummate performance must appear effortless. Or rather, effort must be carefully staged and performed as a marker of the value of the meal and the experience. Fessaguet's orchestra metaphor —he literally "conducts" the kitchen—clearly envisions cooking process as a performance. When everything is working, the kitchen is an ensemble performance improvising on a scenario. The diners get a three or four act play, each table its own performance, complete with program notes or menu. For the staff, the whole evening has a rhythm and a dramatic structure.

Timing is critical to the sensory character of food and more specifically to the interaction of the thermal, haptic, and alchemic. More than a tuning of the instruments or warming up of the performers, the kitchen runs on multiple clocks. Those clocks are set to the conditions of light, heat, cold, air, and agitation that produce wine, vinegar, pickles, olives, cheese, bread, sauces, roasts, over years, months, days, minutes, and split seconds. Freshly picked corn must rich boiled water so quickly that should one trip on the way from the field to the pot, the corn will arrive too late, so it is said.

Timing becomes performative in a distinctive way the closer the food comes to the diner, the more precipitous the moment twixt the cup and the lip, the smaller the temporal window. It is reported that Escoffier was preparing individual dessert soufflés for 100 guests at a state dinner. The after dinner speeches went on longer than expected and there was no clear indication of when they would end. So that the soufflés would be ready at the exact time the speeches were finished, Escoffier began baking off 100 of them every three minutes until the speakers were done (Lang 1980:93-94).10 Only the last 100 were taken to the table. So important is timing, that "[a]s Madame de Sévigné recounted in a celebrated letter, Vatel [the officier de bouche of the Prince de Condé during the 18th century] killed himself because provisions on which he was counting did not arrive in time"(Revel 1982:191). He had been counting on fresh fish from Boulogne for a dinner planned for the king and "if he had not committed suicide, he would have been put to death by either the officier de cuisine or the master of the household" (191).

Restaurant kitchens are fascinating to watch and some restaurants put them on display. Display kitchens, according to Lee Simon, create the perception that the cuisine

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is of higher quality, the preparation more careful, and the food safer, but above all provide “an element of theater” (Simon 2004, part 1) However, not all kitchen functions are “appetizing” and washing and garbage areas are not likely to be included in the display. Simon explains that designing a display kitchen should take into account the visual impact of “layers of activity,” whether in the form of equipment that is always going (rotisseries, ovens, broilers) or strategically located stations, the kinds of view afforded from the dining room, and flow (smooth rather than chaotic interaction of kitchen staff and servers) (Simon 2004, part 2).

A "display kitchen" is the centerpiece of Brentwood Bar and Grill in Los Angeles. According to an industry magazine, "culinary theater at Brentwood is packing the house"(Foodservice Equipment and Supplies Specialist, 1990:57). What kind of theater it is it? It is a classic example of what happens when performance, in the sense of doing, is a show. The key to this form of culinary theater is the exhibition value of labor that has been staged in a transparent workspace. Brentwood Bar and Grill does not just have a kitchen. It has "[a] truly dazzling display kitchen with a Waldorf-style cooking line [that] showcases culinary talent as entertainment"(57). One kitchen consultant explicitly likens this kitchen to theater and ballet. While this kitchen offers a work environment that is at once functional, social, and comfortable, an industry magazine says of the Waldorf-type line: "Primary, of course, is its display value"(58). Indeed, true to the etymology of theater, from Greek terms for watching and viewing, this kind of culinary theater converts performance, in the sense of doing, into theater, that is, into an exhibition of itself. This restaurant, which caters to movie industry crowds, has become a place for the "beautiful people...to see and be seen, to watch and eat" (57). Thanks to the design, they can look through glass partitions from the bar and see into the dining room as well as into the open kitchen. That kitchen has been created in line with the principle of "full-exhibition design"(58). It has, in a word, been staged for viewing. As reviewers have noted, “Cooking-themed theater productions are all the rage, but nothing compares to the drama of a bustling open kitchen at a real restaurant. Plus, you get to eat the props” (Rausfeld and Patronite 2004). A prized table is the one within the restaurant kitchen itself, whether in the open or in its own glass room, with food preparation visible on all sides.

While table-side cooking has long been a feature of classic French restaurants— the waiter finishes the dish in the dining room—chefs are also moving out of the kitchen to cook in the dining room. What they call "exhibition cooking" expands the dining experience to include the sensory pleasures associated with cooking by exhibiting it. Emil Cerno Jr., the chef at Richardson-Vicks in Connecticut, prepared stir fry in the dining room in a wok on a gas flambé range. Patrons chose their ingredients, which he prepared with aromatic "walnut or sesame oil so it smells good, and you hear the sizzle when the meat hits the oil. It looks good, smells good, sounds good and tastes good" (Restaurants and Institutions, 1990:A-232).

This is however cooking in the dining room not eating in the kitchen: the meat that will go into the wok is presented in decorative cups of kale leaves, "so the presentation is nice" (A-232). Chefs become "exhibitionists," according to an industry magazine: "Customers are treated to a show in dining rooms as chefs cook a variety of food in front of them" (A-230). Note the terminology of showing, which suggests that doing has become demonstrating, and exhibitionism, which suggests a certain excess in displaying what would normally just get done. While "exhibition cooking" does produce food that patrons will eat, preparing food in the dining room before their very eyes also

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"gives chefs a chance to get out of the kitchen and meet their customers while giving customers opportunities to see their food freshly made" and to order (A-230). “Freshly made” is both an issue and an illusion: the omelets, for example, are made in advance and filled to order. In other words, even the idea of “freshly made” must be signified. It is not simply performed, in the sense of carrying out an action. It is show business, literally.

Exhibition cooking differs from the display kitchen. Not only does it occur outside the kitchen, but also it is staged differently—from the aesthetic mise-en-place on a steam table to such specialized equipment as the butane gas burner or the enormous griddle in Mongolian barbecue restaurants. Moreover, some dishes are considered showier than others or better suited for exhibition, including the sushi bar, raw oyster bar, crepes, large roasts, and, of course, stir fry. Anything that can be completed from start to finish in a relatively short period of time is a candidate, particularly if the process involves a visible transformation. The process itself provides the dramatic structure. As one chef observed: "Tossing salads and cooking to order are show times for us, and it's good customer contact" (Restaurants and Institutions 1990:A-234).11

Entire scenes form around a particular food (pizzeria, steakhouse, pancake house, creperie, bagelry, crab house, lobster palace, and clam bar) or beverage (coffee shop, tea house, soda fountain, juice bar, milk bar, gin palace, tap room, wine bar, cocktail lounge, and beer garden). These scenes are distinguished by their architecture, décor, ambience, social style, equipage, schedule, music, fashion, and cuisine, and by the close attention paid to the details of the provisioning, preparation, presentation, and consumption of the defining food or drink.

Describing his career as a bartender since the early 1970s, Dale DeGroff had to learn finesse and showmanship. "The bar is a stage," he said. "The curtain goes up, the spotlight is on you and you perform" [Grimes 1991:C1]. What does the patron see? "When shaking a cocktail, [DeGroff] counts a slow 10 times and works his silver shaker hard, alternating between a graceful over-the-shoulder flourish and a front-of-the-body maraca-style move" (Grimes 1991:C1). His sense of vocation is expressed in a strong sense of pride in the history and tradition of the cocktail. The bar may be a stage, but it is also a kind of museum: DeGroff characterizes the saloons of New York as "a natural resource, like the redwoods in California...I like to think of myself as a forest ranger" (Grimes 1991:C1). Wherever there are mixtures (cocktails, chili, bouillabaisse) or fermentation (wine, beer, cheese, olives) or varieties, whether by virtue of species or processing (coffee, tea), there is a wide berth for connoisseurship. Small variations form a kind of foodprint or signature by which a particular bartender or chili maker can be identified, and devotees will gather themselves around their favorite provisioner.

The cocktail, more than the other examples cited here, lends itself to fantastic elaborations. To be found at Asia de Cuba in the East Village of Manhattan, in 1998, is the Tiki Puka Puka, "a two-fisted, three-person $18 libation served in what Trader Vic's used to call a volcano bowl. Ringed with dancing hula girls, a miniature Krakatoa rising from the middle, this ceramic vessel could double as a South Seas tureen" (DeCaro 1998). The drink itself is made with rum, Cointreau, lime and tropical fruit juices, and "garnished with two umbrellas, three 16-inch straws, four cherries, six chunks of pineapple and a crushed-ice snowball doused in grenadine and 151-proof rum" (DeCaro 1998). The event—the performance, if you will—is the cocktail, fully staged in its own volcano bowl. It is a performing object and reminder, on a small scale, of the sotelties,surtouts, and conceits that surprised and amazed guests at the Renaissance banquets

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discussed above. Frank DeCaro relates the scene represented by this drink to the loungecore movement—"it is the latest craze among the post-neo-Rat-Pack hipsters"— and a resurgence of interest in Tiki culture. Just ten years earlier, Donald Trump closed the motherlode of Tiki culture, Trader Vic's, which had been at the Plaza in Manhattan for about twenty-five years. It had "gotten tacky" and Trump considered a health club and restaurant featuring Chinese and Japanese cuisine more in keeping with the image of the hotel (n.a. 1989).

Under the banner of the Cocktail Nation, the cocktail has also become a rallying point for a stylishly oppositional subculture of the swank and fabulous that is part retro, part Queer, and part mystique.12 According to Joseph Lanza, "The cult of the cocktail is a successful religious ceremony transformed into a secular rite. The bartender is the high priest, the drink is the sacramental cup, and the cocktail lounge is akin to a temple or cathedral that uses lights, music, and even ceiling fixtures to reinforce moods of comfort and inspiration" (Lanza 1995:74). While DeGroff offers showmanship in the execution of his duties as a barman, Lanza is characterizing the social performance of the lounge and its intense ritualization. The language of cult and sacrament suggests not so much the Mass as the Dionysian orgy, a theme expressed more explicitly in drinks that fall under the heading "Blush on the Rocks" (Hess 1998).13

Both are attuned to the role of these sites as third places, which Ray Oldenburg (1989) defines as places of sociability that are neither home nor work. The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, recognized that "The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlor. Many a man takes to beer not for the love of beer, but for the natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer" (Booth 1890: part 1, chapter 6). Until reformers could compete with the social attractions of the tap-room, he explained, they would not succeed in getting rid of the place and the drinking associated with it. So defining is the conviviality of the café that cybercafés have proliferated online and offline.

Even the word cybercafé has entered the dictionary, the 1997Microsoft®Bookshelf��Computer and Internet Dictionary© to be precise. This dictionary defines cybercafé first, as a coffee shop or restaurant that provides both Internet access and food and drink, and second, as "[a] virtual café on the Internet, generally used for social purposes," using a chat program, newsgroup, or Web site (see Schumacher 1998). While the Internet allows one to enlarge the social world to which one has access from the phenomenal café, the virtual café, which is entirely online, is strictly about conviviality. And, though it borrows many of the conventions of the café, the online cybercafé cannot supply coffee. What it can supply is the kind of conversation one might expect over coffee. Not surprisingly, cafés have Web sites and a cybercafé may will operate both on and offline. In a related development, the café is both the name and the model for web sites and listservs associated with scenes (Café Los Negroes, NYC, is "New York's black and latino virtual hangout”) and zines (Café Blue) and magazines (Atomic Café, now a webzine).14

Food in the Theater15

Commenting on the preponderance of food on the stage during the 1989 theater season in New York, Mel Gussow remarked:

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The obsession reflects the interests of a public that is captivated by the theatricality of the dining experience, by designer restaurants where presentation is as important as the food. People demand sizzle in their fajitas—show business for the money. In the theater, it may be an attempt to win back an audience that prefers to spend its entertainment dollar (of $100) eating rather than watching. Both "Tamara" and "Tony 'n Tina's Wedding" capture two segments of the population by serving dinner along with drama. In the other examples of theater of food, the theatergoer becomes a voyeur, Only the aroma passes his way [if that]. (1989:5)16

Gussow cites the grouper tortellini in Richard Greenberg's Eastern Standard and the swordfish without butter in Wendy Wasserstein's Heidi Chronicles. Scenes are set in trendy cafés, dingy coffee shops, Chinese restaurants, and bars. Characters are waiters, diners, maître d's and chefs. While cocktails are prevalent in plays about WASP society, "[a]lmost every play at the Pan Asian Repertory Theater has an obligatory eating scene, and on every opening night there is a Pan Asian banquet in the lobby"(9). Gussow even posits a "Hall of Fame for Food on Stage," to include cornflakes from Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party"(9). He might have added the carcass from André Antoine's 1888 production of Fernand Icre's The Butchers. In what was a radical practice at the time, Antoine's Théâtre Libre, in Paris, was famous for using real properties, when possible, for the most realistic effect (Brockett and Findlay 1973:91).

But what exactly are the actors on stage eating? And, under what conditions? For George Furth's "Precious Sons," Anthony Rapp had to down a mound of scrambled eggs that were really "a cold, gooey mixture of gelatin, pineapple juice and yogurt. What's more, he has to look as if he is enjoying a nice warm breakfast" (Bennetts 1986). In other words, this brand of verisimilitude demands that he really eat, but not that he really eat scrambled eggs, and that he fake the indicators of sensory response (only he knows whether the eggs are hot or cold). The act of eating—not the substance and not its sensory qualities (except for appearance)— must be convincing. The theatrical sign is indeed arbitrary. All that is required is that the food look like what it is supposed to be and that the actor be able to swallow it, a challenge in itself. Actors are asked to endure fake shrimp ("stale Wonder Bread cut to look like shrimp and painted with food coloring") and cold meat with cold, canned gravy (Bennetts 1986). They often consume what they are served under demanding conditions—under high speed, in large volume, or while doing something else. They must eat on cue whether or not they are hungry and no matter what the food is or tastes like. Is such food, which is surely more unpleasant than necessary, a test of their professional mettle?

In the case of expensive foods like shrimp and caviar, the need for substitutions are understandable, particularly when vast quantities are called for—150 gallons of caviar for Saturday Night Live—and very little if any of it may be eaten. Moreover, some skits call for foods that would challenge the most intrepid of actors—eyeballs on baked potatoes or a neon-blue fish—for these are first and foremost props. Tony Ciolini, a professional restaurant chef who created food props for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, made the "caviar" from 40 pounds of tapioca colored with burnt caramel (22 pounds of sugar) and the eyeballs (for a Halloween skit) from mozzarella and black olives (Collins 1990:6). Food may also fill in for other substances: in response to "the request for something to accessorize the show's Flab-o-Suction machine, a liposuction device for movie stars," Ciolini and the crew thought of "using 10 pounds of custard for the suctioned flab" (6). The qualities valued here are not only the look, but also the

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consistency of the food, for these props have to perform in their own right. Pork chops were blackened and frozen so they would respond like hockey pucks in a sketch featuring Wayne Gretzky, the hockey star: "he was playing a busboy who like to clear tables with a hockey stick" (6).

Whereas these props operate outside the body, the circus, sideshow, and magic show provide a rich repertoire of stunts that challenge the body to incorporate and eject such foreign things and substances as light bulbs, swords, live animals, and fire. In juggler Penn Jillette's apple routine "he eats 100 needles stuck into an apple; then he eats a length of thread; then he eats the apple, swallowing ostentatiously—and then pulls out of his mouth several yards of meticulously threaded needles" (Bennetts 1986). In contrast with the faux foods made as props for the stage, Jillette uses actual apples and stages the sleight of hand itself. Functions of the hand—threading a needle—are displaced to the body's interior. The body's portal, normally a barrier to "foreign" objects is violated, with impunity. There is easy, if magical, movement in and out of the mouth. Reversing the normal process of eating, what comes out of the mouth is not only intact, but in better condition (the needle is threaded) than when it went in. The body's interior has the quality of chamber, the limbs retracted, where needles can be threaded, swords enter and leave, fire disappear.

Inspired by vaudeville and performance art, Blue Man Group does a send-up of art making and the art world by making a mess that becomes a painting. Their performances have been described as "an opportunity to regress," an "all-out sensory assault," and as bringing "an element of untrammeled infantile sensuality" into the theater (Frank Rich quoted by Hubbard 1992; Leonard 1997; Goldberg 1991). Blue Man (actually three men, heads shaved and painted cobalt blue, act in concert) is a humanoid from "inner space" that his creators picture as "having been born off a painting, being this moist gooey thing" (Leonard 1997; Hubbard 1992). Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton, and Chris Wink, who invented and often perform Blue Man, yearn for the community and communication that they identify with the salon and try to blesh (a science fiction term for blend and mesh) with their audience. If you sit in the first few rows, it will be under a sheet of plastic to protect you from the mess that flies in all directions. Blue Man "wades into the audience more than once, and in the ecstatic finale dances on the armrests of the spectators’ seats," while the entire space of the theater is filled with pulsating sound, throbbing strobe lights, and paper streaming down on the audience (Goldberg 1991). Blue Man also invites audience members to come up onto the stage, share the "feast," become painting tools or musical instruments, and subject themselves to the food assault.

With backgrounds in business, catering, art, and theater, the creators of Blue Man group draw on everything they have learned, and then some. Tubes, which opened at Astor Theatre in Manhattan in 1991, is appropriately named, for they use tubes from industrial food processing, gardening hoses and their fittings, and insecticide spray cans to fling, splatter, splash, spritz, and extrude food and paint with the force and trajectory of projectile vomit. Using sixty pounds of bananas, enough jello for a seventy-pound mold, and many marshmallows and Twinkies in each performance (Goldberg 1991; Hubbard 1992), they "perform a symphony for teeth and Captain Crunch cereal, squirt snakes of banana from their chests and catch paint-filled gum balls in their mouths, among other stunts" (Hubbard 1992). This is extravenous performance. Substances are propelled through tubes that exit from the body to land where they will.

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Such acts confound the boundaries of the body and the limits on what can go into and come out of it. This body's mouth is directly connected to the anus, with neither stomach nor guts in between. Indeed, the two orifices are interchangeable, for the anus is displaced to the mouth, which both ingests and excretes, as well as to other parts of the body and clothing, which exude surprising substances. This is visceral performance without viscera. This is dirt as defined by Mary Douglas as "matter out of place," in her appropriately titled essay "Secular Defilement" (Douglas 1966:36).

In contrast with food as substance, as a plastic material equivalent to paint, food becomes a character in its own right in musical revues of the 1920s that featured anthropomorphized fruits, vegetables, chickens, pastries, and every drink from Coca Cola and sarsaparilla, to Chianti and a Manhattan cocktail (for a number entitled "I'm a Great Little Mixer")(Hirsch 1987: 298).17 Showgirls in food costumes were the dishes at lavish feasts and the ingredients for a "Follies Salad"—"Oil was slinky, draped in a very glossy one-shouldered satin gown, which fell in rivers onto the stage" (294). Erté designed the vegetable costumes for a ballet number in "Scandals" (1926)—"Potato had only small potatoes covering her breasts" (295). The "Music Box Revue" (1921) animated all the elements of the "Dining Out" scene, including the oysters, chicken, various vegetables, salt and pepper, pastry, demi-tasses, and "at the end of this costumed meal, a showgirl portrayed A Cigar and another The Check, and eight chorus girls were dressed as The Tip" (296). Chorus girls dressed as chocolates and peppermint sticks popped out of a big candy box in the number "Winter Garden Sweets" in "Doing Our Bit" (1917), while "Showgirls dressed as candles topped a cake formed by a single satin skirt in 'Just Sweet Sixteen' in the Greenwich Village Follies (1920)" (297). These edible women—the play on food and sex is fundamental to the enterprise—reverse the direction of food as a performing object. Here it is the showgirl (and the occasional male performer) that is made into an object for eating, but in the absence of actual food.18

Some theater ensembles have made food an integral part of all their performances. Bread and Puppet distribute bread at their performances, while Great Small Works hold a monthly spaghetti dinner, followed by performances (see Chang 1998). They neither script the meal or bread, as the case may be, into the play, nor do they offer a show to go with dinner. Rather, food is kept simple and elemental, abundant and cheap. The staples —homemade bread, pasta—are the basis for transforming an audience into a community, by breaking bread and eating together. As these groups establish a regular audience, a sense of community develops through shared experience over the course of many years. It is through commensality, more than cuisine, that these artists are redefining the nature and meaning of theater.

Bread, a 1984 Bread and Puppet manifesto in the form of a recipe, opens with a long dictionary definition of "bread" from Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1937, 1976). Bread is not only "an article of food," but also "food in general; also, the necessaries of life; as, he cannot earn bread for his family"(Schumann 1984: unpaginated). The meanings and usages ramify to include—"to break bread," as in taking a meal or enjoying hospitality, and "to partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.” Peter Schumann draws on his childhood memories in Silesia for images of coarse rye bread baked in a communal oven. "Why bread?" he asks rhetorically—"In 1963 in a loft on Delancey Street in New York, as a normal frustrated city-artist and esoteric puppet show-maker, I decided to connect the bread with the puppets" (Schumann 1984: unpaginated). This connection made the actual puppet shows more "purposeful" and less about "painterly and sculptural ambitions." It "seemed like a

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correct first step in the fight for the immediate elimination of all evil" (Schumann 1984: unpaginated). Both "feed the hungry." Bread concludes with a list of aphorisms about bread and a "tentative recipe" for sourdough rye bread (Schumann 1984: unpaginated).

Contemporary Opera Gastronomica

In Feeding Frenzy, cooking is an integral part of the musical score.19 In precisely 90 minutes, each of four cooks prepares ten portions of ten courses. The amplified sounds of chopping, sizzling, steaming, and grinding are part of "an instructional, time delineated score," performed by four musicians on strings, reeds, pipa, and keyboard. Mr. Fast Forward's "sculptural approach to creating sound" ties the sound of the objects, substances, and processes of cooking to "the physical gesture that creates the sound" (Forward 1999). We not only see the cooks. We also hear them.

The entire room is projected onto a large screen from two video cameras that roam the space, settling for a moment on the stir-frying, the plucking of pipa strings, guests eating, waiters rushing about. Washing over us are the slow, low resolution, and sometimes overlapping, video images, together with waves of music, noise, and chatter. I feel like a large ocean mammal, drifting in a vast dark sea of ambient sound, smells, and images. All of a sudden, a cook whacks a bell with a knife. A course is ready. Five waiters collect the servings and randomly serve them to us. We are seated at about twenty-five round tables for four. My senses are on the alert as a new course comes into view. Will the waiter choose our table for the margarita rolls (frozen cylinders of margarita wrapped in Vietnamese rice sheets)? Will the mushroom matzo balls or tea- smoked bean curd skin "duck" come our way? Who will get the crème brûlée in individual Chinese soup spoons (the sugary surface is torched on the spot) or the Berberseitan, rice ball geology lesson, or poached pear in kaffir broth? Time is running out. The cooks are frantic. A large digital display at the back of the room, sometimes projected on the screen, counts down the minutes. Zero. Everything stops.

Following Escoffier, Fessaguet's kitchen must complete innumerable dishes, each of them made of up of many components, in ever changing combinations and sequences, so that each table in a room of many tables may be served what it has ordered for a particular course all at the same time, at the right temperature. Forward departs from the principles of Escoffier's kitchen in two ways. First, Forward reverses the division of labor typical of the Escoffier kitchen. Each of Forward's cooks prepares each dish from start to finish and in an average of nine minutes. Second, Forward shifts the choice of what will be eaten from the diner to the waiter. What you are served is arbitrary.

Feeding Frenzy is a work that is conceived from the outset in such a way that food—its preparation, presentation, and consumption and its full range of sensory pleasures—is an integral part of the work. While very different in character, the same can be said of the edible installations of Alicia Rios, who is based in Madrid.20

While food in everyday life is very much about doing and behaving, the reciprocity of table and stage has a long history. One of the ways that food is made to perform is through the dissociation of food from eating and eating from nutrition, and the disarticulation of the various sensory experiences associated with food. Artists work not only with these possibilities, but also the processes associated with food as substance and food as event. And they do so all points along the alimentary canal, from the mouth to the anus, and at all points in the food system, from foraging and cultivating to cooking,

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eating, and disposal. Because of the way it engages the senses, food offers particular challenges and opportunities for artists, both those interested in spectacular theatrical effects, and those working on the line between art and life. 21

Making Sense of Food in Performance 15

References

Aron, Jean-Paul 1975 The Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in the Nineteenth

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Making Sense of Food in Performance 21

1 This essay is a companion piece to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999, which deals more fully with food in everyday life and in relation to performance art. The focus here is on the staging of food in restaurants and theaters. 2 According to Graham Pont (1990:123-124), the term opera gastronomica "was first used in the title of the musical banquet, Les goûts réunis or Apollo in the Antipodes: opera gastronomica in tre atti. This was the celebration which concluded the Fourth David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar in 18th- Century Studies and the First National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, held at University House, Canberra, 31st August, 1976."

3 See Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1990 for a more detailed discussion of this event. I have been attending the Purim festivities in the Bobover Hasidic community in Boro Park, Brooklyn, since 1973. See also Epstein 1979. 4 See Toepfer 1991. 5 See the chapter "Feasting, Fasting, and Timely Atonement," in Schama 1988, for a discussion of the role of food in festivity in Holland. Food iconography in Dutch art reveals a richly iconographic language of moral discourse and visual conventions for conveying the sensory experiences of eating. 6 A particularly famous example is the surtout that displayed scenes from the Opéra de Bardes, described in 1808 by Grimod de La Reynière in Almanach des gourmands (el-Khoury 1997:58). 7 For a discussion of this play see Rokem 2000:56-76. 8 On the history of the restaurant in France, see Spang 2000. On the professionalizing of French chefs, see Trubek 2000. 9 Roger Fessaguet, personal communication, 1989. See also the documentary film of La Caravelle Restaurant (Cox 1969). This fifteen-minute film focuses on the motion and tempo of the kitchen when it is in full swing. 10 Thanks to Mitchell Davis for alerting me to this anecdote and to Robin Leach for the citation. 11 This of course is in a long tradition of street food vendors and food stalls in markets, which predates the relatively recent advent of restaurants. For an excellent example of spectacular cooking performance in an open market, see Skip Blumberg’s 1985 documentary short Flying Morning Glory (on fire), which celebrates the “flaming ‘cuisine art’ performance of a virtuoso sidewalk chef in Phitsanulok, Thailand.” (Electronic Arts Intermix,http://www.eai.org/eai/tape.jsp?itemID=3079. Last accessed February 7, 2005). 12 This discussion is inspired by McKewan 1998.See also Hess 1998. 13 Judging by the names of some drinks, the cult of the cocktail includes a libertine (if not adolescent) element. Hess (1998), under the heading "Blush on the Rocks," lists Orgasm, Slippery Nipple, and Blow Job. Under "Shooters," which are appreciated "for the visual effect that they impart," he includes Brain Hemorrhage, Cement Mixer, Cum in a Hot Tub, and Embryo. 14 Café Los Negroes http://www.losnegroes.com/ began in 1994 and closed in 2000; Atomic Caféhttp://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/current/atomic/about.html (last accessed 7 February 2005). 15 While food in films has attracted considerable attention, much less has been written about food in theater. On food in film, see Bower 2004, Ferry 2003, and [Handman] 1996. Poole 1999, who is a scholar and actor, deals food in film and theater. 16 Since Gussow’s article, many more theatrical works have made food—cooking, eating, restaurants—their focus, to mention only Fully Committed, Cookin’, which was developed in Korea in 1997 and playing in New York City as of this writing (http://www.cookinnewyork.com/Last accessed 7 February 2005), and Esn: Songs from the Kitchen, a klezmer music performance that includes cooking, which features Frank London, Adrienne Cooper and Lorin Sklamberg (see Pfferman 2001). 17 This account is based on Hirsch 1987. 18 In contrast with food on the stage, dinner theatre captures two market segments, diners and theatre goers, by combining dinner and theatre in various ways. Eating can occur before, after, during, or as part of the performance. The two activities may be in separate spaces or both may

Making Sense of Food in Performance 22

occur in a theatre or in a restaurant. Obvious examples include dinner theatre, recreations of historic feasts, character dining, murder mystery dinners, and such theatrical restaurants as Lucky Cheng's and such environmental performances as Tim and Tina's Wedding. In addition, restaurants play an important role in the occupational culture of the entertainment district, not only as place to network and do business, but also to celebrate. Sardi's and Elaine's in New York are but two examples. These topics are beyond the scope of the present essay. 19 I saw this performance at The Kitchen, a Manhattan performance space and laboratory for artistic experimentation, in February 2000 and first wrote about it in Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2000.20 On Rios, see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1997. For other examples, see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999.21 Warm thanks to Anurima Banerji, Sally Banes, Mitchell Davis, and Chava Weissler.

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Art, Tradition, and Architecture

Abstract

Most historical causes emerge from mistakes that men make about the world, that is why those historians who were independently prepared to take subjectivity into account make so many mistakes about causes. Perceptions vary in predictable ways with time, and social status; that is why individual sets of minds lend themselves to sociological inquiry. But perceptions vary also with temperament, with unconscious conflicts, with disharmonies among the public sources of perception. An individual incorporates the shapes of his culture, his craft, and his family, but his character is a unique mixture of conformity. He is not a receptacle for external influences, not always an effect but often a cause.

Keywords: cause, thing-free, perception, functionalism,

Introduction

A tradition may be a fanciful mask for sordid motives, but it may also be a repository for precious craft, wisdom and an authentic defense of threatened standards. The historian needs a more and entirely different kind of light from psychology than this. He needs theories that will permit him to construct an explanation of all conduct and motives, rational and irrational, intelligent or realistic, and he needs those theories because he renders psychological verdicts much of the time, deriving them quite unsatisfactorily from common sense, and from bold, rationalistic interests. The historian uses psychoanalysis as a way of seeing. If history teaches anything, it is that the unexpected is to be expected. The nonrational component in human experience is quite simple and pervasive. Each historical world generates historical causes of its own, even though each of these worlds initially emerges to satisfy some elemental urge. The variety of causes for their life’s work is not of their own creating, it is an overwhelming fact of their existence. Most men do not make their world, they find it. Most of what they think, feel, perceive, and do is no more than unreflective reenactment of social habits, and cultural stereotypes. The innovator is indebted to materials that the past has provided for him. Man, without culture is not merely deficient, he is unthinkable. His very language, including the formulas with which he rejects the past, is anchored in the collective atmosphere into which he is born. Sigmund Freud said there are only two sciences: psychology, pure and applied, and natural science. Sociology, the study of human behavior of people in society was nothing more than applied psychology. The historian lives in the world of the middle range and the middle size. He is in the position of the architect who makes do with Newtonian gravity or Euclidean geometry, since the language of quantum physics and modern mathematics apply to worlds either much larger or much smaller in which he piles his trade.

Talent and Tradition

Modern artists found inspiration a highly problematic endowment. Many artists saw it as the source of their originality. And that originality defines their personal talent, their relation to the tradition. Some of the most self-assertive of modern architects have acknowledged their public’s share in the making of architectural art and sculpture. Paul Rudolph has said, “sculpture is never architecture and architecture is never sculpture.” There has to be a balance. Buildings have to be of three qualities: durability, convenience and beauty. These do not add up to an architect’s license for aesthetic willfulness, but if an architect has a distinctive forceful talent, it would offer a persuasive argument that his private vision has played a significant part in his public performance.

In architectural perception there exists a tension between surface and depth perception. Architects pay little attention to the coherent things shaped around them. They may dissect them into arbitrary fragments and region them into irrational forms to suit their unconscious urge for symbolization. In other words, architectural perception tends to be not only Gestalt-free, but also thing-free. We observe this thing-free model better in primitive or irrational types of architecture which also demonstrate the Gestalt-free modes of perception. We see how in some primitive architecture the unconscious symbolism hidden in the building’s form may distort the realistic appearance of the outlines. Real things impress us in buildings by their constancy. They appear to be the same in spite of their many varying aspects of geometrical shapes.

Mass Production and the International Style

Architecture responds to social pressures in the most conspicuous memorials to its engagement with the world. Nor do private dwellings every wholly escape the public dimension. Many seekers after shelter restrict their fantasies to domestic memories of their childhood and are satisfied with duplicating the tastes of their parents. If architects really wanted to develop a genuine historically valid form of expression, they would have to revolutionize the visual education of the young and at the same time make intensive studies of mass production in housing. Overloading and false romanticism in place of good proportions and practical simplicity have for all purposes became the tendency of our age. Mass production had proved beneficial in combining the highest quality of raw material, and labor with low prices, to treat houses as industrial products would have to employ technology in the service of cultural ends. The road to the future lay in the intelligent application of prefabrication and standardization. The noisy debate between Expressionists and Rationalists, between adversaries and advocates of the machine, between champions of the solitary genius and those of anonymous designers, between ancients and moderns was in fact anything but the clear combat that the spectacle of public discord makes it appear.

Architecture has been complicated by the proliferation of the glass cages and concrete prisons that have come to dominate the office districts in the name of the International style. The most celebrated designers of our time have given the public not what it wants but what they have been grimly confident it ought to want. Looking at the cities, the universities, the suburbs built in our century we can hardly dismiss this posture as mere pose. It is true that the architect with a new sense of space, a new grasp of material, a new perception of form needs more than the scale model to test his ideas. The innovator must offend reigning taste. The modernist slogan, functionalism, which is associated with Gropius has obscured its essential flexibility. Dogmatism in fact was its enemy. Construction of a livable space was its overriding consideration. Functionalism includes comfort, intimacy, and aesthetic satisfaction. The beautiful is always truthful. To be expressive and flexible with spaces, to deploy materials candidly, was only half of the architect’s assignment. The aesthetic, though inseparable from the useful, could not properly be reduced to it. The liberation of architecture from ornament, the emphasis on its structural functions, and the concentration on concise and economic solutions, represent the purely material side of that formalizing process on which the practical value of the new architecture depends. The aesthetic satisfaction of the human soul is just as important as the material. Both find their counterpart in that unity which is life itself.

Before modernism, symbols and signs were common cultural property. Everyone knew the meaning of art as constituting a moment of frozen history, insolently refusing to age while generations who know the way to decorative designs owe nothing to familiar shapes but discussing the possibilities of synesthesia, which playfully experimenting with color and taste of sounds, or the sound of colors and letters served to emancipate art from anecdotes, from resemblances as from natural appearances and declared that all art aspire towards the condition of music, as it were the character for abstract art rejecting the sentiment of romanticism. They were searching for the purity in art, and for universal principles of beauty not being mere sensations. They thought of Cubism for taking a step toward abstraction. Artists had them see the possibility of doing art without the natural aspect of form, using straight lines placed in rectangular positions. The adage became ‘modern art is for modern man.’

The Search for Order and Clarity

Those rhythmic and relentless rectangles of Cubism may speak for search of order and clarity amidst the chaos of modernity. Then the cultivated men gradually turned away from the natural and headed towards the abstract life. This made the public aware of the possibilities of pure plastic art and to demonstrate its relationship to, and its effect on, modern life in accord with the spirit of modern times. The task of plastic art was to bring clarity into the world, a matter that is of great importance to humanity. It is the task of art to express a clear vision of reality. This made the artist appear as a liberator by freeing mankind from subjectivity, from confusion and from the oppression of time. The world then is caught in a struggle between antagonistic forces, chaos, disequilibrium, confusion battling order, balance and clarity. Art and life illuminate each other, they reveal their laws according to which a real and living balance is created towards clarity and purity. Pure intuition contains a psychological component. The art of architecture exerts itself in a true space, one in which we walk and which the activity of our bodies occupies.

A building is not a collection of surfaces, but an assemblage of parts in which length, width and depth agree with one another in a certain fashion and constitute an entirely new solid that comprises an internal volume and an external mass. The architectural masses are determined by the relationship of the parts to each other, and the parts to the whole. A building moreover is rarely a single mass. It is rather a combination of secondary masses and principal masses. This treatment of space attains and extraordinary degree of power, variety, and virtuosity. The space that presses evenly on a continuous mass is as immobile as that of mass itself. But the space that penetrates the voids of the mass, and is invaded by the proliferation of its reliefs, is mobile. This architecture of movement assumes the qualities of wind, of flame, and of light; it moves within a fluid space. The architecture of stable masses defines a massive space. Mass offers the double and simultaneous aspect of internal mass and external mass, and that the relation of one to the other is a matter of peculiar interest to the study of form in space. Exterior volumes and their profiles interpose a new and entirely human element upon the horizon of natural forms, to which their conformity or harmony, when most carefully calculated, always adds something unexpected.

The unique privilege of architecture among all the arts is not that of surrounding as it were, guaranteeing a convenient void, but of constructing an interior world that measures space and light according to the laws of geometrical, mechanical, and optical theory which is necessary implicit in the natural order, but to which nature itself contributes nothing. Light not only illuminates the internal mass but collaborates with the architecture to give it its needed form. Light itself is a form, since the rays streaming forth at predetermined points are compressed, attenuated, or stretched in order to pick out variously unified and accented members of the building, for the purpose either of tranquilizing it or of giving it vivacity. Light is form.

Abstract Building Design and Misuse of Materials

Peasant architecture was swept away and replaced by a sophisticated one. Industrial revolution’s design for mass consumption improved dexterity. This explains the phenomenon of the collapse of aesthetic values, it also explains why it is that the most forward-pointing work so often came from outsiders. The reason why it came from engineers is that the century was one of materialism and of science and technology. The progress was made at the expense of aesthetic sensibility of the kind that would have granted acceptance to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The Crystal Palace met with success, but so also did the horrors of decorative art displayed in it. Nowadays, architects consider their buildings to be liberated from the local and specific demands that had shaped architecture in the past. They are directed to design buildings of simplified geometric form in the abstract, deriving its form from the symbolic sheathing of the building frame. The nature of the architectural product changed completely, and the result was a characteristic building type that used far more energy than the buildings it succeeded. This change of building design is widely accepted.

The materials of buildings changed from natural material to synthetic ones, with an increase in the amount of energy needed to produce them. The form developed from an effort to speed design and construction by making as many components as typical as possible. Architects depended on mechanical cooling to compensate for the heat gain on the outside from the sun, and on the inside from artificial lighting and body heat. Moreover, curtain walls have far weaker performance in resisting heat loss during the winter. Mies van der Rohe’s project for an all glass tall building became the holy grail for our generation of architects, even though the performance of glass as a material developed to double glazing with various coatings. The partially mirrored glass that reflects radiant heat and the sun’s heat away from the building while still allowing vision is more energy consumptive than clear glass. Misuse and overuse of materials to perform specific functions are unacceptable aesthetically as they are economically. The extensive use of plastics and synthetics in place of natural materials has also increased energy use. Today, vinyl and vinyl asbestos are the predominantly available replacement, but they tend to break down suddenly under extended ultraviolet light or sheer passage of time. Architects and engineers are now talking of total energy systems for buildings.

Conclusion

In the pursuit on the part of the historian to explain what made something happen, but is reluctant to theorize about it, he is not likely to take his instances from art, but to draw his classic examples from portentous catastrophes. Historians who have offered explanations of their causes have never commanded general assent. The arts follow civilization and spring from all its customs. Most artists are convinced that art expresses the worlds in which it was made; their argument employs openly or covertly the language of cause. It understands art to be an effect. To assign the dimensions of breadth and depth to art is only the beginning of wisdom. Each sort of human activity has its characteristic cluster and hierarchy of causes. Yet, while the distribution of causes varies in expected ways, each event contains types of causes in combinations that we can surmise but not wholly determine in advance. Art enjoys so special a status in historical analysis. And even in those rare instances in which causes prove to be principally of one sort, the kind of which the historian is likely to find by, rather than preceding, investigation. Cause is a conjurer, concealing tricks in its capacious bag that even the experienced cannot wholly anticipate. Private motives and responses can never provide the explanation of an event because an event never wholly corresponds to individual intentions, or even to the sum of their conflicts. The historic event is a compromised formation, psychological cause can provide only part of the impetus resulting in what we see. There is a cause for everything, but we do not know it. To know, to understand is happiness.

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Wolfgang Ernst and Archive Rumblings

Interview Here -->

archives are no longer forgotten, dusty places. The archive as a concept has gained universal attention and reached metaphorical glance - is this true? I think perhaps for a while there was a surge in interest but this interest for archives and collections fluctuates, current statistics however show that interest in accessing them is on the rise

media archaeology - new media traced back to earlier concepts

reading traces of digital technologies into history, not the other way round

where as previous media archeologists were interested in looking at social formations, current media archaeologists are more interested in the hidden programmes of storage media

“The archaeology of knowledge, as we have learned from Foucault, deals with discontinuities, gaps and absences, silence and ruptures, in opposition to historical discourse, which privileges the notion of continuity in order to re-affirm the possibility of subjectivity. „Archives are less concerned with memory than with the necessity to discard, erase, eliminate“ (Sven Spieker). Whereas historiography is founded on teleology and narrative closure, the archive is discontinuous, ruptured. Like all kinds of data banks, it forms relationships not on the basis of causes and effects, but through networks; the archive – according to Jacques Lacan – leads to an encounter with the real of script-directed culture”

in the era of storagemania everything is on record

repositories are no longer final destinations but turn into frequently accessed, vital sites

Ernst signals a shift from the political-military (secret) meaning of national archives towards a broader cultural understanding in which the archive stands for‘collective memory’

what can we expect of the 21st century archive theory, beyond digitization and database architectures?

ernst’s media archaeology is an archaeology of the technological conditions of the sayable and thinkable in culture, an excavation of evidence

“cyberspace is not about content, but rather a transverse performance of communication. Without the permanent re-cycling of information, there is no need for emphatic memory”

analogue versus digital analysis

intellectual property rights were in fact developed within the context of archive-libraries

trans-archival notion of‘organizational’ instant memory, dissimulating the existence of material memory agenecies - both hardware and institutions, which still govern the power of what can be stored legally and technically, and what will be forgotten - museums are one of these institutions, do they govern too much power? should it be more in the control of the people what is kept for history and what is not? or should the museums find a better way of understanding what it is people want in museums, what are the boundaries or guidelines for how we asses what is valued enough to be salvaged and preserved, given museum status ?

traditional paper archives etc, materiality and physicality - the quest for access to such archives make us feel immediately that they are still real, are we still concerned with these‘real’ archives, are we still transitioning where an older generation would be but in the future these will serve no purpose once digitised?

when the talk is about maximised computer memory capacities this discourse still continues an old occidental obsession that culture depends on storage - such as historic architectures, libraries, museums - Ernst believes the future will exist around a permanent transfer from this physical storage to a digital one but will not undo the old models of museums etc - basically the same as the world we are in where digital is the prominent, preferred choice but older modes still exist - as a museum surely you want to be doing more than just exist? how can museums archives and collections adapt to continue to be relevant and engaging not just existing?

Ernst wants to open formerly inaccessible archives

Collapse of Nazi Germany led to the immediate opening of state archives normally not accessible to the public for many years - allowing historians and the public to know the archive almost in real time without the usual delay - should all archives be this accessible? and is this something digitisation can enable - archives in real time?

transition of living memory to mediated memory

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CFP: 2 Sessions at AAH (London, 5-7 Apr 18)

Association for Art History, 2018 Annual Conference, Courtauld Institute of Art and King’s College London, April 5 – 07, 2018 Deadline: Nov 6, 2017 <http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/events/annual-conference-2018/>

[1] Framing Space through Architecture and Film [2] Soundscapes: New challenges, new horizons

Framing Space through Architecture and Film

Deadline for Proposals: 6 November 2017

We experience architecture and film as media of duration that unfold in time. The encounter of an embodied spectator or inhabitant with a film or a dwelling is informed principally by motion and the succession of one frame or screen (architectonic and cinematic) to the next. These two modes of construction investigate into the three dimensional occupancy and representation of space as it relates to both bodies and objects, framed within curated and mediated spaces. Instantiating an experience of space that is far more than visual, architecture and film activate both sound and touch, the latter being a mutual and relational ‘commitment’ of the body and the world (Jennifer Barker).

Adolf Loos famously writes: “it is my greatest pride that the interiors I have created are completely lacking in effect when photographed”. Does film function differently? How have architecture and film represented each other and in which ways do they, either similarly or distinctly, frame or design space? What happens to architecture when it is filmed and how might a building be described in terms of its cinematic qualities (Beatriz Colomina)?

Moreover, how can film and architecture challenge our perceptual habits? Can film convey atmosphere of space and the built environment (Gernot Böhme)? How might the representation of urban versus domestic narratives (i.e. exterior and interior space) through film result in distinct viewing experiences?

This panel explores the mutually informing link between architecture and film in an effort to not only open up the limits of these methods of representation but also to look beyond what typically gets included within the history of art. Proposals may address the relationship between architecture and film through ontological comparisons, the framing and representation of space, and/or the phenomenological experience of mediated spaces.

Please submit your proposal for a 25-minute paper to [emailprotected] and [emailprotected] by Monday 6th November. Proposals should include the title of the paper, a 250-word abstract, and a short bibliographical statement.

[2] Soundscapes: New challenges, new horizons London, April 5 – 07, 2018 Deadline: Nov 6, 2017

Soundscapes: New challenges, new horizons

Convenors: Margit Thøfner, University of East Anglia;Tim Shephard, Sheffield University

There is a long and fruitful scholarly tradition of exploring therelationships between art and music. Amongst other things, the study ofboth entails working with objects, spaces and practices that are profoundlyembodied, sensory and emotional. To work with and between art and musicmeans becoming acutely attuned to the visceral as much as to theanalytical. Yet there is still more to be gained.

Recently, when commentingon the relationship between art history and musicology, Jonathan Hicksspeculated that ‘it may be precisely in attending to the locations ofexpressive culture – whether noisy, spectacular, or a combination ofthese and more – that our disciplines might find most common ground’.

Our strand will explore this proposition. What may be learned from focusingon how music and sound – or even the silent evocation of sound – isframed by places, spaces, objects, rituals and other performative contextsand vice versa? More broadly, how does this common ground help us to mapout and explore the problems and challenges currently facing art historianswho work with music and musicologists working with art? For example, is itstill a problem that many of our current methods of enquiry have come from studies of European modernism? What happens when they are applied toearlier periods and/or different cultural contexts? We welcome papers thataddress these and cognate issues, whether by engaging with broadermethodological problems or by exploring specific soundscapes from anyperiod and anywhere.

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Seeing Red, Feeling Blue, Something Borrowed, Something New

"J. Steven Manolis: A Survey of Works," Coral Springs Museum of Art, Installation view. Photograph by Sargent Architectural Photography. By Bruce Helander The massive and brightly-hued survey exhibition of J. Steven Manolis' work currently on view at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, now in its second month of attracting record crowds of art lovers, has a show attendance and quality standard that's hard to equal. This unusual museum survey simply is spectacular in every important aspect, from presenting daring color combinations of deep red to inventive, transparent blue splashes to formidable black and white compositions. Splash, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 180 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Having followed this South Florida cultural landmark for over a decade, I don't recall another show there, other than the striking Hunt Slonem retrospective that was mounted there in 2010, which possessed the same kind of dazzling overall saturation of color and movement albeit in a narrative context. There are few exhibits at the Coral Springs Museum in recent memory that seem to take your breath away as you enter the main gallery, which now is flooded with light from the inside out to illuminate the more than sixty works solidly based in the principles of abstract expressionism, which often are adapted by Manolis from past pioneers of this genre. Don't get me wrong. These works are not appropriations of any particular artist's images, but are a respectful and engaging interpretation of a historic style made new. The word is out that this is an extraordinarily surprising gem of a show that is not to be missed. "J. Steven Manolis: A Survey of Works," Coral Springs Museum of Art, Installation view. Photograph by Sargent Architectural Photography. The unique exposition also has attracted the attention of notable writers such as the celebrated British critic, Anthony Haden-Guest, who penned a major review on Manolis for the well-regarded London publication Spear's. Also in the mix is a rare observation by senior critic and art historian Donald Kuspit, who is known widely as the foremost practitioner of psychoanalytic art criticism (and the author of Britannica's article on the history of art criticism), as well as being an expert on contemporary painting. His quote in the impressive catalog that accompanies the exhibition, which calls Manolis a "modern master," has sent out smoke signals for this red-hot show to South Florida residents, from West Palm Beach in the north, where he is concurrently displaying work at the Center for Creative Education, to Greater Miami in the south, where the artist operates an immense 5,000 sq. ft. studio off Brickell Avenue in the emerging artists' neighborhood nicknamed Lemon City. When I first met J. Steven Manolis, I immediately was struck by the serious, professional attitude he had about his career as an obviously multi-talented artist, and his personal commitment to creating adventuresome, action-packed paintings that retained a remarkable freshness even while attached at the hip of abstract expressionist theory and history and seemed to vibrate off the gallery walls. I later learned that Manolis had been interested in becoming an artist at an early age, but not surprisingly, like so many other artists and musicians (he is both), had not received the enthusiastic support of his parents, who naturally were concerned about him securing an education that eventually would guarantee regular employment. Manolis followed his parents' "guidance" and pursued a business degree, which led to a successful career as the youngest partner in the Salomon Brothers' investment firm. He did, however, promise himself that he would continue his interest in art, and participated in private art lessons over a thirty-year period with the renowned colorist painter Wolf Kahn, who in turn studied with Hans Hofmann, the eminent abstract expressionist artist and teacher. Since the early 1980s, Manolis has been enthusiastically painting privately and extensively, ultimately developing a recognizable iconic style where color synchronization and poetic movement in the first dimension become engagingly beautiful and harmonious. Redworld, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 120 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Manolis was with Salomon Brothers until 1992, leaving to found his own successful investment and real estate firm, Manolis & Company. When he decided to exit his business career entirely just over two years ago, he immediately switched gears and began painting full time with a personal goal of achieving a high level of polished professionalism, which should be obvious to viewers of the Coral Springs Museum of Art (CSMoA) survey exhibition, ranging from the artist's small and intimate Key West watercolor studies to his massive canvases that wholly embrace abstract expressionism. Key West--Splash--Sunset, 2016, Watercolor, gouache and acrylic on Arches paper, 12 x 16 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Great artists that I know personally also are influenced by the music of their time, but many of those working in an abstract expressionist mode clearly preferred listening to American jazz, a kind of abstracted improvisational arrangement of musical notes, while they painted. It should be pointed out that many successful artists are musicians also. Larry Rivers had a band, and some members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were painters before rockers. Manolis has been playing in a band most of his life and recently performed on stage. With a necessary rhythmic equation deeply embedded into a standard recipe for cooking up abstract expressionism, there is little doubt Manolis' rhythm guitar has subconsciously influenced the movement felt in his painting. Jazz and abstract expressionism still are considered the most important purely American cultural inventions in history, and it's not surprising that we are experiencing a new renaissance and growing curiosity about second generation abstract expressionist painters like J. Steven Manolis. This classic and uniquely American style of painting is celebrated in Manolis' exceptional and commanding survey exhibition, which itself may be a pivotal event in his fast-moving, distinguished career. No doubt about it, this is a milestone in the fresh approach to superb picture-making, whose historic foundation and risk-taking has made it possible to continue with a great and proud American painterly tradition. Black & White, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 144 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Particularly powerful in Manolis' repertoire in this show is his series of challenging and dramatic canvases that are limited specifically to black and white pigment, which are like Franz Kline's glorious experiments without a hint of color, which still are considered his best works and continue to supersede in value any other variety of Kline's work at auction, even today. For historical context, it needs to be pointed out that the exhibition at CSMoA is a pretty remarkable achievement for a painter who had kept his studio activities essentially private for most of his life. Another informative testament on Manolis' artwork, related to my own observations as an art critic, is from Michael Monas, President, Coral Springs Museum of Art, who observed, "This is by far the most exciting and powerful exhibition at CSMoA in the last twenty-three years [that] we have ever had." "J. Steven Manolis: A Survey of Works," Coral Springs Museum of Art, Installation view. Photograph by Sargent Architectural Photography. I once asked Robert Rauschenberg what was the secret of his success as an artist? He replied that there was no secret. An artist must have a deep inherent natural talent and work like crazy seven days a week. Manolis works eight. The proof is in the pudding, as evidenced in this delicious show. A beautiful 125-page hardcover book (printed by die Keure in Belgium) includes critical essays and eighty color plates. For additional information on the exhibition at the Coral Springs Museum (which continues through February 28): Coral Springs Museum of Art and on the artist (or to order the book): http://ift.tt/2lE718U

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2lyPRxv

0 notes

Seeing Red, Feeling Blue, Something Borrowed, Something New

"J. Steven Manolis: A Survey of Works," Coral Springs Museum of Art, Installation view. Photograph by Sargent Architectural Photography. By Bruce Helander The massive and brightly-hued survey exhibition of J. Steven Manolis' work currently on view at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, now in its second month of attracting record crowds of art lovers, has a show attendance and quality standard that's hard to equal. This unusual museum survey simply is spectacular in every important aspect, from presenting daring color combinations of deep red to inventive, transparent blue splashes to formidable black and white compositions. Splash, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 180 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Having followed this South Florida cultural landmark for over a decade, I don't recall another show there, other than the striking Hunt Slonem retrospective that was mounted there in 2010, which possessed the same kind of dazzling overall saturation of color and movement albeit in a narrative context. There are few exhibits at the Coral Springs Museum in recent memory that seem to take your breath away as you enter the main gallery, which now is flooded with light from the inside out to illuminate the more than sixty works solidly based in the principles of abstract expressionism, which often are adapted by Manolis from past pioneers of this genre. Don't get me wrong. These works are not appropriations of any particular artist's images, but are a respectful and engaging interpretation of a historic style made new. The word is out that this is an extraordinarily surprising gem of a show that is not to be missed. "J. Steven Manolis: A Survey of Works," Coral Springs Museum of Art, Installation view. Photograph by Sargent Architectural Photography. The unique exposition also has attracted the attention of notable writers such as the celebrated British critic, Anthony Haden-Guest, who penned a major review on Manolis for the well-regarded London publication Spear's. Also in the mix is a rare observation by senior critic and art historian Donald Kuspit, who is known widely as the foremost practitioner of psychoanalytic art criticism (and the author of Britannica's article on the history of art criticism), as well as being an expert on contemporary painting. His quote in the impressive catalog that accompanies the exhibition, which calls Manolis a "modern master," has sent out smoke signals for this red-hot show to South Florida residents, from West Palm Beach in the north, where he is concurrently displaying work at the Center for Creative Education, to Greater Miami in the south, where the artist operates an immense 5,000 sq. ft. studio off Brickell Avenue in the emerging artists' neighborhood nicknamed Lemon City. When I first met J. Steven Manolis, I immediately was struck by the serious, professional attitude he had about his career as an obviously multi-talented artist, and his personal commitment to creating adventuresome, action-packed paintings that retained a remarkable freshness even while attached at the hip of abstract expressionist theory and history and seemed to vibrate off the gallery walls. I later learned that Manolis had been interested in becoming an artist at an early age, but not surprisingly, like so many other artists and musicians (he is both), had not received the enthusiastic support of his parents, who naturally were concerned about him securing an education that eventually would guarantee regular employment. Manolis followed his parents' "guidance" and pursued a business degree, which led to a successful career as the youngest partner in the Salomon Brothers' investment firm. He did, however, promise himself that he would continue his interest in art, and participated in private art lessons over a thirty-year period with the renowned colorist painter Wolf Kahn, who in turn studied with Hans Hofmann, the eminent abstract expressionist artist and teacher. Since the early 1980s, Manolis has been enthusiastically painting privately and extensively, ultimately developing a recognizable iconic style where color synchronization and poetic movement in the first dimension become engagingly beautiful and harmonious. Redworld, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 120 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Manolis was with Salomon Brothers until 1992, leaving to found his own successful investment and real estate firm, Manolis & Company. When he decided to exit his business career entirely just over two years ago, he immediately switched gears and began painting full time with a personal goal of achieving a high level of polished professionalism, which should be obvious to viewers of the Coral Springs Museum of Art (CSMoA) survey exhibition, ranging from the artist's small and intimate Key West watercolor studies to his massive canvases that wholly embrace abstract expressionism. Key West--Splash--Sunset, 2016, Watercolor, gouache and acrylic on Arches paper, 12 x 16 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Great artists that I know personally also are influenced by the music of their time, but many of those working in an abstract expressionist mode clearly preferred listening to American jazz, a kind of abstracted improvisational arrangement of musical notes, while they painted. It should be pointed out that many successful artists are musicians also. Larry Rivers had a band, and some members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were painters before rockers. Manolis has been playing in a band most of his life and recently performed on stage. With a necessary rhythmic equation deeply embedded into a standard recipe for cooking up abstract expressionism, there is little doubt Manolis' rhythm guitar has subconsciously influenced the movement felt in his painting. Jazz and abstract expressionism still are considered the most important purely American cultural inventions in history, and it's not surprising that we are experiencing a new renaissance and growing curiosity about second generation abstract expressionist painters like J. Steven Manolis. This classic and uniquely American style of painting is celebrated in Manolis' exceptional and commanding survey exhibition, which itself may be a pivotal event in his fast-moving, distinguished career. No doubt about it, this is a milestone in the fresh approach to superb picture-making, whose historic foundation and risk-taking has made it possible to continue with a great and proud American painterly tradition. Black & White, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 144 in. Courtesy Coral Springs Museum of Art. Particularly powerful in Manolis' repertoire in this show is his series of challenging and dramatic canvases that are limited specifically to black and white pigment, which are like Franz Kline's glorious experiments without a hint of color, which still are considered his best works and continue to supersede in value any other variety of Kline's work at auction, even today. For historical context, it needs to be pointed out that the exhibition at CSMoA is a pretty remarkable achievement for a painter who had kept his studio activities essentially private for most of his life. Another informative testament on Manolis' artwork, related to my own observations as an art critic, is from Michael Monas, President, Coral Springs Museum of Art, who observed, "This is by far the most exciting and powerful exhibition at CSMoA in the last twenty-three years [that] we have ever had." "J. Steven Manolis: A Survey of Works," Coral Springs Museum of Art, Installation view. Photograph by Sargent Architectural Photography. I once asked Robert Rauschenberg what was the secret of his success as an artist? He replied that there was no secret. An artist must have a deep inherent natural talent and work like crazy seven days a week. Manolis works eight. The proof is in the pudding, as evidenced in this delicious show. A beautiful 125-page hardcover book (printed by die Keure in Belgium) includes critical essays and eighty color plates. For additional information on the exhibition at the Coral Springs Museum (which continues through February 28): Coral Springs Museum of Art and on the artist (or to order the book): http://ift.tt/2lE718U

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2lyPRxv

0 notes