Missing

Recently I saw "Man on Wire," the film about Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in the summer of 1974. I was slow to warm to the film's charms but the tale finally and completely won me over. Primarily, this is because Petit is an intriguing, exasperating, narcissistic, fairy tale figure. A little prince in many senses, he is both a singular personality and a caricature–as well as very very French. (Which is almost like being a caricature, anyway.)

What I didnt expect from the film was how emotional I would be over seeing so much footage of the World Trade Center: its construction, as backdrop against the city, sweeping aerial beauty shots.

For most of its existence I was indifferent, at best, to the WTC. I have no recollection of actually visiting the towers though I think there may have been a trip to the observation deck at some early juncture. They served a purpose as a visual anchor, a directional on which to get my bearings upon emerging from an unfamiliar subway stop. Other than that, I disliked their needlessly overscaled banality– their crudeness. I had been attuned to architectural grace notes and these buildings were power chords.

It was totally without context, then, that less than a year before they were destroyed I had an abrupt change of mind about the WTC. I was virtually struck in one epiphanic moment. The double towers in tandem, along with their uninviting windswept plaza were one conceptual gesture about scale, less about execution and finish than idea. A simple notion that, for some reason, I had not comprehended, and then I did.

Like lightning rods the WTC attracted Petit's fanatical curiousity. His nearly mystical draw to the towers began with an article he'd read in 1968 about their initial planning and was not extinguished even after completing his mission 6 years later. In the film, Petit recalls his high wire walk as spiritual, a "gift", "elation...I was actually venturing in another world.” The footage in the film shows Petit practically dancing on the wire, weightless, it seemed, and imparting an unexpected delicacy to the colossus he was so barely tethered to. He pulled off this caper, this coup, and managed to bring the building itself into the poetry of the moment.

When he stepped onto the roof after his 45 minute sojourn a quarter mile in thin air he was ambushed by police and reporters. Barraged by what Petit termed a "typically American question" he was repeatedly asked "why did you do it?" The disconnect between the question and the event itself was a sadly comical point in the movie.

Twenty-seven years later in the aftermath of a devastating surreal spectacle people were again asking, "why did they do it?"

Images from top: Tom Fletcher's New York City architecture; "before 9/11" by Baldwin Lee; from wikipedia; from Man on Wire.

pietra paesina

Pietra paesina, also called “landscape stone,” “ruin stone,” “ruiniform marble,” and “Florentine marble” among other names, has been collected for centuries. The “marble” is in fact a type of limestone which when cut into slabs and polished reveals natural veining of iron oxides that resemble –with minimal poetic license–mountainous landscapes, castles, and ruins.
Displayed as natural objects of contemplation in European Renaissance wunderkammer the marble was also incorporated into decorative panels in architecture or furnishings. The stone was sometimes further embellished with painted detail, which, to me, seems sacrilegious.

Ruiniform marble hovers between natural specimen and artifact, abstract configuration and narrative. Its markings are angular, geometric, almost Cubist, vividly etched, yet undefined at the same time. Many stones have the suffused colors of a foggy twilight but some, like the specimen third from bottom, give off the sonorous (yes, sonorous) golden warmth of classical ruins.

How wonderful (in the true sense of the word) it must have been that first time to cut into something solid and “see” the spiritous atmosphere, to peer into something small and see distant wide vistas.

Images: St. Francis exorcising demons from Assisi, Giotto, c.1297; View of Delft, Vermeer, 1659-60; my specimen, which I had framed, was purchased a few years ago from Claude Boullé Galerie 28, Rue Jacob, in Paris.; 3 sample pietra; at bottom is another variant of pictorial stone, Cotham marble, quarried near Bristol, whose striations usually evoke natural landscapes of trees and stormy clouds.

Songs of Himself or Whitman, Sampled

"No one in this age of [expensive] flour and high rents can afford to be a nobody. Be somebody–biographically, poetically, or historically."– satirical editorial in The Brooklyn Eagle, October 11, 1855



Lately I've come across disturbing gaps in my education. Something will stop me short as I think, Wait, how do I not know this? Walt Whitman... Titan of American literature, Leaves of Grass, "body electric," repressed homosexuality, beard, that was nearly the sum of what I knew. So I got the Penguin Classics Collected Whitman and started on the first in my series of Why Don’t I Know This research missions.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,
the scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer...
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it.

** ** **
Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch! Did it make you ache so, leaving me? Parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan, Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital, Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. ---Song of Myself, 1855

I do not like reading Whitman's poetry (prose, like Specimen Days, is much more agreeable). Considering the sweeping vistas and universalism he invokes I find the reading experience leaves me clammy and oddly claustrophobic. (I'm guessing that Whitman was a close talker. Pure conjecture...) He does however, conjure a mystical rawness, an uninhibited immediacy, blatancy even, that is astounding. Especially so when thought of as being published at a time when "Victorian" morality was in ascendance. (Emily Dickinson evidently wrote in a letter, "I have never read his book– but was told that he was disgraceful," which I find enormously funny.)

Professor Harold Bloom notes that it is paradoxical that Whitman "who proclaimed his love for all men, women, and children should be so solipsistic, narcissistic, and self delighting." I suppose it is partially just this that cemented my dislike of the poetry. The mono-maniacal quality fairly shouts out.

In Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity, David Haven Blake places the self-styled "good grey poet" against the backdrop of America's developing intellectual identity and popular culture. A very good read. The 1850s was a time of lecture societies, and an expanding awareness of a specifically American intellectual identity. The search for a "native American" literary style, independent of European models, was a cultural imperative. Whitman felt he was the answer to that call. It was also the time of Barnum and the rise of consumer culture. Whitman offered himself, seemingly, as an entity (or commodity) that would effect happiness and harmony with the world.

Far more interesting to me than the poetry was Whitman's sheer audacity. He craved attention. He self-published Leaves of Grass then published reviews of his own work anonymously ("An American bard at last!"). Later he compiled various laudatory comments and reviews and included these as an addendum to later editions of the book. Throughout his life, it seems, Whitman was compelled to ceaselessly promote himself. "The public is a thick skinned beast," he confided to a friend,"and you have to keep whacking away it its hide to let it know you're there."

David Haven Blake's point, which was a new angle to me at least, was that celebrity in the mid-19th century could be seen as a true democratic phenomenon. Fame (and possible subsequent wealth) created and bestowed by the people– rather than by birth, class or inheritance–was, in a sense, sanctioned by popular vote. The celebrity was the embodiment of a culture sanctioned by the people, and an affirmation of the great American experiment.
images: “a 2/3 length with hat outdoor rustic”--This 1877 photograph was Whitman's favorite and caused much to-do with acolytes and early scholars who argued about this butterfly. Whitman tried to foster the idea that the creature was real and had somehow alighted upon his finger... in the midst of a photo studio. In 1995, someone found the butterfly in a cache of Whitmaniana that had gone missing from the Library of Congress in 1942. If you look carefully at the mottled patterning of the paper wing, however, it does NOT match that of the wing in the portrait... Further mystery?

Addendum: The WW cultishness was bizarre. The New York Times ran nearly continuous bulletins of his health topped by absurd headlines:
"Walt Whitman Still Alive" January 4, 1892
"Whitman Helpless" January 6
"Walt Whitman Eats and Drinks" January 14

It Fooled the Cat

John Frederick Peto [1854-1907]
Reminiscences of '65

William Michael Harnett [1848-1892]
The Letter Rack
The Faithful Colt

John Haberle [1856-1933]
A Bachelor's Drawer (and 2 details)
The Slate

I just finished The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum by James W. Cook. He examines the curious strain in 19th century popular culture of illusionism (the self conscious aesthetic and cultural mode that "exists on the boundary between fact and fiction") and artful deception (which employs illusionism but purports to be real). Illusionism pervaded a range of 19th century entertainment, from Barnum's "humbugs," like the Feejee Mermaid, to Paul Phillipoteaux's Gettysburg Cyclorama, through all sorts of magic lantern displays, wax figures and sleights-of-hand. I imagine Cook could include the rage for seances, mediums and spirit images as well, though he doesn't go into these. In Cook's view, the public's passion for deceptive spectacle was influenced by the new "discourse" of advertising, social hierarchies and the expansion of the middle class, and the scientific inquiries of the time. Why was it though, that in a time of exacting definitions of propriety, when morality was strictly parsed and appearances were de facto comments on pedigree, society was thrilled by the questionable, and the ambiguous?

I was particularly interested in his chapter on trompe l'oeil painting--a genre which relied on spectacle. Numerous notices of the time described audiences that gathered to argue, gape at and dispute the nature of the paintings. Many of these paintings were run-away pop-cultural hits.
Art critics of any standing, though, customarily dismissed trompe l'oeil work, likening it to the "curiosities" that garnered crowds at dime museums– vulgar and without merit. The work was easily employed in aesthetic and social judgments: if you like this stuff you are a philistine or a rube.

Harnett, Haberle, and Peto --three of the most successful trompe l'oeil painters–often used commercial packaging and other ephemera in their work (like the Dadaists would literally do 20-40 years later). But they were consummate nostalgia-peddlars (a pretty new idea at the time, the sentimental as cottage industry) who incorporated emblems of the West and cowboy life, Civil war paraphernalia, souvenir images of Lincoln, even recalling the good old days beside Grandma's Hearthstone. They played to growing anxieties in contemporary society that modernity was erasing a way of life.

The heyday of trompe l'oeil was essentially contemporaneous with Impressionism, or maybe a bit after. Most people think of latter as the aesthetic break-- edgy and avant garde while the former was populist and easily digested. An idea that intrigued me in the book was that trompe l'oeil, while not leading to Modernism, was never-the-less part of a changing visual mode. These sorts of perceptual 'experiments' lead to visual education and redefined the viewer as subjective participant. Visual doubt, essentially, was part of the lead up to modernity.

Also worth noting is the fact that yesterday's avant garde (Impressionism) is today's greeting card art, while the overlooked populist work is the stuff of art historical criticism.

Victor Prevost

Originally from France, Prevost (1820-1881) established a photography studio at 627 Broadway in New York around 1854. He worked in the calotype method which produced a waxed paper negative and allowed multiple image copies to be made– as opposed to the popular daguerreotype which created a single unique image. His studio failed rather quickly but he continued to photograph around New York City for years.

These ethereal, ghostly views of New York are, of course, misleading: The city was bustling and experiencing tremendous manufacturing expansion. The camera was fixed on the stable, unmoving buildings as people, carriages, horses and carts moved through the image, the exposure being too long to capture their presence. And now, in most cases, the buildings have moved on as well, their presence proving, essentially, momentary.

The exhibition of these images and other of Prevost's work is at the New-York Historical Society until October 19th.

From top:

Engine room at the Crystal Palace, 1854

Gurney’s Daguerrean Gallery, undated, 349 Broadway corner of Leonard Street
There were more than 100 daguerreotype saloons in New York City in the mid-nineteenth century and Jeremiah Gurney, "photographist," operated one of the most succesful ones. The Illustrated News (12 November 1853) reported that, “Mr. Gurney’s establishment consists of nine spacious rooms, devoted exclusively to his art.”

Old Herring’s Safe Factory, undated, Hudson Street between 12th and 13th Streets
Portions of the building remain today. I love the type on this building.

Ringuet-Leprince, Marcotte & Co. showroom, 1854, 343-347 Fourth Avenue
A favorite of the elite in mid-nineteenth century New York City, eminent French furniture manufacturers Ringuet-Leprince, Marcotte & Co. (1849–60), produced Louis XVI and "Renaissance Revival" style piles of walnut, satin and marquetry. [Note the signs– where did all those beautiful hand-painted wooden signs and letters go...]

Marble Working Establishment of P. Gori, undated, Broadway and 20th Street.
Lord & Taylor would move to this building in 1872.

Clothing Store of Alfred Munroe & Co., 1854, at 441 Broadway between Grand Street and Howard Street, just north of Canal Street.

Homo repugnans*

A few weeks ago I visited the Natural History Museum. It struck me, as we sauntered past the dioramas, that most representations of "Early Man" I have ever seen (Geico cavemen aside) are of these fright-wigged, snaggle-toothed, worried-looking creatures. They've usually got brambles and straw matted into their wild, frazzle mop and often sport a dyspeptic expression. This seems a bit odd considering many animals are fastidious about cleaning themselves. Cats will lick and smooth their coats, chimps will sit and pick lice off one another and appear to have quite a nice, happy time of it. Doesn't it stand to reason that man would be like the rest of the animal kingdom and groom himself? Perhaps even devise a way to get that cr*p out of his hair?

* I made that up

image: I got this on Flickr and regret that I've forgotten whose it was...

groovy roots

For a project about nineteenth century letterpress I'm working on, I was looking into the pendulum swings of criticism about "Victorian" design. I put air quotes on the term because anyone with the slightest knowledge of nineteenth century styles– decorative arts, fashion, whatever– can see that Victorian is cruelly broad brush stroke. It's a term that has been tainted by 20th century prejudices. By the 1920s "Victorian" was the zinger, the punchline, the descriptor flung like a dead fish. It's amazing how critics of the 20th century –through the 1960s at very least–were coolly dismissive of all things with a 19th century aesthetic. And that was when they were being kind. I cant think of another period so freely reviled and ridiculed.

All this by way of saying that by the 1950s and 60s a few avant garde* souls like Push Pin Studios (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast et al.) were thumbing their noses at The Man or his stand-in, Swiss Modernism. Rediscovering the cast off visual detritus of the 19th century they made use of posters, engravings, old wood and metal type that were surely lying around in junk stores.

Designers in alternative genres, especially, created a cult look combining vintage display type, Art Nouveau patterning and kaleidoscopic drug- induced positive/negative visual vibrations. I had never stopped to think about how much of Psychedelia had its roots in nineteenth century visual reference, beyond the Victor Moscoso/Alphonse Mucha connection. With the Hippie epicenter in San Francisco, the old Victorian rooming houses and cheap apartments must have had something to do with it as well. And of course, the concept of a Decadent, Symbolist, absinthe-soaked, opium-toking nineteenth century must have seemed very appealing (and familiar) indeed.

Addendum: At bottom right is an 1840s watercolor of quasi-military protesters, which put me in mind of Yellow Submarine immediately....

*(The very avant garde, I suppose, had been Dadaists like Ernst, in the 20s-30s, who incorporated 19th century engravings and type into collage.)

Artwork from OldHandbills.com :
Rick Griffin 1967; William Henry 1968

William Henry, 1968
Bob Schnepf, 1968
Victor Moscoso,1967
Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, 1967