AmericanVisionaries.com

Find Yourself a New Enemy

A friend just returned from a conference where Colin Powell spoke.

Powell recalled a Kremlin showdown in 1989 with Mikhail Gorbachev, who suddenly smiled and said: "General, you are going to have to find yourself a new enemy."

Another woman was visiting Moscow in 1989, Sarah Anschutz Hunt.  Her father's collection of art, The Anschutz Collection, was traveling worldwide as the West, West, West Exhibition.

Earnest Blumenschein's Indian in a White Robe

Sarah was able to see the Soviet Union's response to the collection and wrote, "the Soviets responded to several of the key themes that bind the collection together -- the notion of expansion into a rugged frontier, the idea of individual struggle against the elements, and a sense of overcoming adversity -- that is as much a part of their heritage as it is deeply ingrained in the American soul."

Sarah's honest reaction may show a hint of surprise.  But, during The Cold War decades, we had been taught time and again, the Soviets were different and were to be feared.

Philip's collection of western art represents many of his core values. And, a large part of the collection was found in a basement in Chicago ... the basement of the Santa Fe Railway headquarters.  At the time there wasn't much interest in western art, so, for the rights to purchase some of the pieces, he and his friend Wolf Pogzeba offered to go through the Railway's basement and catalog their findings.

Philip acquired 82 paintings and two large murals, the majority of which were excellent examples of the Taos Society and Santa Fe School.  Works from all 6 of the founding members of The Taos Society were represented in his purchase:  Bert Phillips, Ernest Blumenschein, Joseph Sharp, Oscar Berninghaus, E. Irving Couse and W. Herbert Dunton.

When the Santa Fe Railway's spur opened rail travel to Santa Fe in 1880 -- the Battle of Little Bighorn was less than a five-year memory. 

When the artists and writers began arriving in northern New Mexico, (about 1898), the "savages" were still terrorizing the nation.  When artists and writers began living among them, understanding their culture and sharing their art, music, ceremony and stories, something changed.

In the early decades of the 20th Century, as Gorbachev stated nearly a century later, we would have to find "a new enemy."  Or, even worse -- maybe during the period of Manifest Destiny -- we were the enemy.   

And the art that touched both centuries, was the art made possible, in great part, by the financial foundations provided by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and The Fred Harvey Company.

It may touch and restore many more generations.

PS.  For those of you who don't know, the Santa Fe Railway's Advertising Director purchased over 600 works of art, primarily from the Taos Society and Santa Fe Schools, from 1900-1933.  These works formed their advertising images that were used in depots, in window displays, in their advertising, on their menus and on their famous Santa Fe Calendars -- which would be one of their key promotional tools for nearly  86 years (1907-1993).

New Mexico and the Fred Harvey "Indian Detours" would be one of their cornerstone destinations ... over 12,000 Santa Fe employees became ambassadors for the state.  The Santa Fe New Mexican stated this about William Haskell Simpson, advertising director of the Santa Fe Railway from 1900-1933 -- "It would be quite impossible to estimate how much New Mexico owes him for its progress during that period."

And, I have designed a 20-minute presentation that defines the elements of their brilliant execution, how it maximizes all seven of the key benefits of "art as a tool of marketing" and shows the power of their Return on Investment over the 1900-1933 period.   E-mail me if you'd like to know more.

Of Trash Collectors and Art Collectors

I read an article in the March 2005 issue of Art News about a series of new art appreciation classes being formed for the trash collectors of Frankfurt, Germany.  The classes were formed because the sanitation crews had (disassembled and) "collected" sculptures created by Michael Beutler, who was working in conjunction with the Frankfurt Arts Society.

My favorite version of the story so far is from The Armchair Garbageman (Lift with your Legs!):

January 20, 2005
Garbagemen must attend an art appreciation course
From the BBC and the good people at RobotJohnny.com

" 'It was one of about 10 sculptures, placed all around Frankfurt,' the sculpture's creator, Michael Beutler told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.  'This one was in the east end of Frankfurt, on a traffic island, an area where you can see a lot of trash flying about.  But this sculpture didn't look like trash.' "

The Armchair Garbageman continues:

"Yeah it did ...

Beutler explained that the sculptures are all made from yellow plastic, used for construction, such as for pouring concrete into buildings.  So it was bunches of construction material left in various locations, like parks, around Frankfurt.  Kind of like the piles of illegally dumped material that waste collection crews and municipal workers encounter on a daily basis ...

God help us all if this guy does installations in Toronto.

Actually ... maybe this is the answer to our garbage and litter problems.  We can just label every errant piece of trash with a Magritte-esque "Ce n'est pas détritus" .... (this is not rubbish) ...."

 

 

 

One of Michael Beutler's Sculptures

From Art News, March 2005 article by Tania Ralli, about the missing sculptures, about 3 of 10 in all:

"The sculptures were explicitly not marked as art in order to preserve the material's character," says Katja Schroeder, the project's curator. 

One was beneath a highway bridge, and another was placed near a soup kitchen.

Peter Postleb, the director of the Clean Frankfurt task force said, "It's my job to keep the streets clean and not ask a lot of questions."

Peter -- you shouldn't have to ask questions.  Maybe you should consider offering the kind people at the arts society, with all due respect, classes in communication skills, etiquette, public/community relations and the power of narratives in art.  I'll even teach it for you.

By the way, how did you like the classes? 

And, you know, your efforts increased the name recognition and visibility of Michael Beutler's work, and the efforts of the Frankfurt arts society to a new, international level.

A New Concept of Art and Science

These are the very intelligent words of artist Joseph Beuys.   

"Creativity isn't the monoply of artists.  This is the crucial fact I've come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art.

When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. 

All around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped or created. 

But our idea of culture is severly restricted because we've always applied it to art.

The dilemma of museums and other cultural institutions stems from the fact that culture is such an isoloated field, and that art is even more isolated: an ivory tower in the field of culture surrounded first by the whole complex of culture and education, and then by the media which are also part of culture. 

We have a restricted idea of culture which debases everything; and it is the debased concept of art that has forced museums into their present weak and isolated position. 

Our concept of art must be universal and have the interdisciplinary nature of a university, and there must be a university department with a new concept of art and science."

- Joseph Beuys, (1921-1986)

Installation Artists and Art,  www.the-artists.org

Circles of History

Art must take reality by surprise.

                            - Fransoise Sagan, 1958

Pompeo Coppini, Italian Sculptor (1870-1957), probably would've hated that quote.  He believed in realism and authenticity.  He's the creator of "The Spirit of Sacrifice" Cenotaph (from the Greek word kenos for empty and taphos for tomb) at Alamo Plaza in San Antonio.

Photo Courtesy Lori Martin

The monument was erected to honor the heroes of the Alamo (March 6, 1836), and reads:  "They chose never to surrender nor retreat, these brave hearts with flag still proudly waving perished in the flames of immortality that their high sacrifice might lead to the founding on this Texas."

Although trained in Italy and spending time in New York and Chicago, he spent much time in Texas and built an art academy in San Antonio, which still exists ... the Coppini Academy of Fine Art ... dedicated to representational art.

His works are represented throughout the nation ... 36 Public Monuments, 16 portrait statues and about 75 portrait busts.  His Texas works extend from the Panhandle of the Plains Museum in Canyon, to the Hall of State at Fair Park in Dallas, to the the grounds of the Capitol in Austin and on the UT Campus, plus more. 

Two of Coppini's works in Austin caught my attention -- Terry's Texas Rangers Bronze and The Littlefield Fountain at UT Austin.

Photo courtesy of Brent Allen Thale

There's an interesting link between the two.

In 1861, Texan Benjamin Franklin Terry helped organize a troupe of about 1,000 Texans to fight in the Confederate army, they were known to the Southerns as the Texas Rangers, not quite accurate, but the Texans didn't mind.  They were valuable to the effort and one of the officers was George W. Littlefield (1842-1920).

Littlefield came back to lose everything and become prosperous again as a banker, cattleman and loyal servant of the University of Texas.  The Littlefield Fountain was made possible by Littlefield, and the creator Coppini had envisioned a fountain surrounded by bronzes of the men who made the North and South whole again and had died together in World War I.

The Littlefield Monument at UT/Austin.

 

"... after Littlefield's death in 1920, a power struggle at the university transferred control of the memorial to the university's master architect, Paul Cret.  Cret took it upon himself to dismember the thoughtful plans laid out by Coppini, rearranged the memorial and left it, as Coppini wrote in his memoirs, 'meaningless of any concrete conception.' "  

- http://utsouthmall.tripod.com/indexzaira.html

I'm looking forward to touring the Coppini Academy in a few weeks.

I've always visualized history as a flat time-line; maybe history is more like a circle ... continuing to spiral decade after decade, day after day, and life continues to "take reality by surprise."