Please enjoy the following essays, introduced below:
1. Welcome, Tourist, to Eden.
2. The Riddle of the Sphinx and Fowl Play in the Graphic Art of Leonard Baskin
WELCOME, TOURIST, TO EDEN
This essay about artist William (Bill) Girard, of Royal Oak, Michigan, was originally published in the online arts journal, www.dogwoodjournal.com, in January 2006.
About Professor William (Bill) Girard
Former Professor of Art Girard is a lifelong Royal Oak, Michigan, resident. He studied for one semester at the Society for Arts and Crafts before fatherhood interfered. Some years later he returned as an instructor, and eventually became a professor of art at the same institution, known then as the Center for Creative Studies, known now as the College for Creative Studies.
The article begins thus:
"The burglar who broke into our house paid no attention at all to our collection of Girard paintings and sculpture. Naturally, this led to a bout of depression. My naturopath subsequently instructed me to treat this and all life issues with the balm of gratitude. She would undoubtedly be pleased to know that the burglary has taught me to be grateful for boors.
In the fine art game, the highest compliment - aside from an offer to buy - is theft. Private and public art collections around the country and the world are full of fabulous pieces of work that are, "on indefinite loan."
I recently read about a legal wrangle over the ownership of a group of Gustav Klimt paintings now in the collection of the Republic of Austria. After due consideration, our Supreme Court allowed that the surviving heir of the original owners, now a naturalized American citizen, has the right to sue for ownership in U.S. courts some 60 years after the paintings were "borrowed" by the Nazis.
These spoils of war passed, in turn, to the disinterred and newly democratic Austria we know and love today. (Note: In January 2006, five Klimt paintings were awarded to the plaintiff by an arbitration panel of the Austrian government. They are said to be worth nearly $150 million American dollars today. The plaintiff is the niece of the original owners and is now in her 80s. ) If Klimt weren't already famous, this would surely make his reputation..."
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THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX AND FOWL PLAY
IN THE GRAPHIC ART OF LEONARD BASKIN
The following essay is the result of certain discoveries I made, quite by accident, about the image shown at left: Tyrannus, by Leonard Baskin. As it turned out, what I found had yet to be noticed - or, at any rate, remarked upon in print, by anyone else. Ultimately, then, this is an essay about perception.
About Leonard Baskin
In 1969, Leonard Baskin was just the third artist, after Ben Shahn and George Grosz, to be awarded a Gold Medal by both the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a two-time recipient of the Tiffany Fellowship and also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. According to the New York Times, Baskin was also the first American artist given the
honor of an exhibition by the Albertina (collection)
in Vienna, Austria.
The article begins thus:
I recently pointed out the hidden images I had found in my TYRANNVS woodblock print on rice paper, created by artist, Leonard Baskin, to the little reprobate who lives upstairs. 4
“That ain't art,” said the kid, “it’s a raw shark.”
Raw shark? Sushi?
"No."
So maybe he meant that the image exuded the ruthless power and danger of a shark. TYRANNVS does appear “in the raw.”
"Nope."
That wasn’t it, either. The kid had said “Rorschach,” not “raw shark.”
His point: TYRANNVS – and perhaps, by extension, much of Baskin’s graphic output – is actually a sort of Rorschach blot, capable of exposing a viewer’s unconscious interests and concerns. 5 By my own admission, I was seeing things that, apparently, no one else had seen.
So is it possible that the images secreted in this print – and others – are simply products of an overactive imagination? Sure.
The question is, whose imagination? Leonard Baskin’s or my own? See and judge for yourself.
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Selected Poems by David Chorlton of Phoenix, Arizona
"David Chorlton is to vision as pigment is to paint. His appearance reminds me of a candlewick: scorched, desiccate, yet unconsumed. He speaks of his contemporaries with the thunderous affection of John the Baptist inveighing against Herodias. The surprise is that this discomfiting personality possesses the lyric vision of an Isaiah. His poems and paintings sizzle with color, compassion and understated humor as they expose our dark corners, our overlooked humanity, and our struggle to survive a manic contemporaneity. They are as manna for the hungry, but they will not feed the weak.
"One of my favorite poems by David, Marina Tsvetayeva, predates digital life and has yet to make the transition. Perhaps he will allow me to offer it as a wav file, as I have it on a cassette tape. Meanwhile, please visit these poems for a taste of the master's work."
