Short Story by Daniel Gauss: Monsieur Pilleur and the Starving Buddha Head from Home Planet News

 

This is a Public Domain image taken from the Metropolitan Museum of a "starving Buddha" with its head removed by plunderers for sale to antiquities thieves.

“Monsieur Pilleur and the Starving Buddha Head” is a reflective and satirical (fictional) short story about a middle-school teacher who stumbles upon a rare, emaciated Gandharan Buddha head in a Manhattan gallery during Asia Week. 

His awe and moral concern clash with the suave, cynical attitudes of the art world, embodied by a mysterious figure named Pilleur who delights in owning looted antiquities. 

Through their encounter, the story explores themes of spiritual insight, cultural theft and the seductive power of possession in a world where art is both sacred and commodified.

Please read the story here: Monsieur Pilleur and the Starving Buddha Head

Short Story by Daniel Gauss: The Cambodian Ghost in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change

 

“The Cambodian Ghost” by Daniel Gauss is a thoughtful (fictional) short story about an American educator contemplating a teaching position at a Cambodian monastery. 

Disillusioned by the country's oppressive dictatorship and the callous and selfish attitudes of many expatriates, he forms a meaningful connection with a local student who reveals an obscure and largely overlooked monument to him commemorating victims of political violence. 

This encounter compels him to confront the complexities of complicity, resistance, and the moral responsibilities of bearing witness in a society grappling with its past and present injustices.

Please read the story here: The Cambodian Ghost

The "Again" Moment we sought, at the end of the pandemic (e.g. We can resume our lives, again.) Public art by: Seongmin Ahn

                                           {click on images to enlarge them}
                                         

In regard to the current pandemic, there was no specific date we experienced as a society when things suddenly and drastically changed and no specific date for when all of our lives suddenly got back to what we were doing before. 

So there was no bifurcation and there has been no collective and permanent “again” moment for us, a moment where we could all say that this thing is over and we have won and life will resume, as the pandemic insidiously drifted in and continues to linger almost two years after Covid-19 was detected. 

Yet, all of our lives were interrupted and each of us has had to either begin again or plan for this. Artist Seongmin Ahn focuses on beginning “again” as she presents her public art project around various neighborhoods in New York City.

Again is an ongoing multi-site, multi-media public art series involving murals, floor pieces, signage, paintings and prints. It first appeared as a vinyl cut installation at the Korean Cultural Center (NY) in 2020 and then at the Wang Cultural Center at Stony Brook University (Long Island, NY) and Dongduck Art Gallery in Seoul. 

It currently appears on multiple billboards partnered with Save Art Space and a community mural in Queens is coming soon.

What is the message you are trying to convey in your Again project?

The Again project began from a small “hybrid” letter painting, developed during the most trying period of the quarantine, in the spring of 2020 in New York City. It is my message to the public that we can begin Again, despite the devastation we went through and are still going through caused by the pandemic.

Are you conveying this message in a way that it is particularly relevant to the folks in New York City?

I painted the first Again painting in English and Korean, which are my two most comfortable languages. As I developed this as a public project, I wanted to reach out to diverse groups who speak different languages in their neighborhoods. Believe it or not, research shows that more than 600 languages are spoken in the New York metropolitan area. 

I used to live in Woodside Queens, neighboring with Latino immigrants, and then Forest Hills, Queens, with lots of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Currently, I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Italian, Polish and Hassidic Jewish folks make their homes. Diversity is the true character of New York and in order to reach out to these different neighbors, I wanted to visually speak to them in their languages.

In which neighborhoods are the murals being displayed? Which groups of New Yorkers are you reaching?

When I first developed this painting into a public project, I thought about neighborhoods which were hurt hard by Covid-19. So when I looked for mural sites, I was actively searching for walls in Corona in Queens, Longwood in the Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, etc. 

But there were problems in regard to contacting building owners and getting permission. And then, as the pandemic lasted longer than expected, I realized that all of us were impacted by the pandemic in every aspect of our lives… those who lost their loved ones, to those who lost their jobs, and from front line workers to little school children who couldn’t go to school for such a long time, losing their opportunities for proper learning and socializing with peers. 

So, from that point I have looked at every possible neighborhood and location from streets in Harlem to walls of corporations and museums. I would like to have a balance between different groups of people with `different ethnic backgrounds, social and economic status. We all are essential New Yorkers.

It must be difficult for you to get feedback since strangers are looking at your work and have limited means to contact you. Have you been ok with this element of the project – not getting the positive feedback you might otherwise have received?

Well, getting feedback is always nice and encouraging. And sometimes I get inspired by feedback especially when it suggests a new idea for a future project. But for a few decades my art practice has been almost like a monologue. I would prefer to focus on the creating process to effect my vision instead of how the final product might be received. Once I put my artworks out in the world, I let go of them and move on to the next project, rather than looking back. I am just too busy thinking about how to realize new ideas into physical presence and how to solve technical difficulties.

How does your message reflect your personal experiences during the pandemic in NYC?

One of my most ambitious exhibitions in my 25-year career as an artist had to be shut down as soon as it opened due to the lock down in New York City in 2020. As it was co-organized by an influential non-profit gallery and a prestigious commercial gallery with a long history, we expected quite an amount of exposure in the artworld. 

We scheduled multiple events and lots of art professionals from all over the country were supposed to visit us. Plenty of public attention was expected as well. But nothing happened due to the lock down. So, I was devastatingly disappointed and depressed, even becoming physically ill. Again was also a self assertation that I can begin Again no matter what happened to me. I wanted to transfer the crisis into an innovative opportunity.

Also, during the lock down we were directed as to who should go to work, who should stay home. This whole conversation made me think “Are artists not essential workers?” and “How can I become more essential through my art practice?” So, I began to develop more public projects with an assuring message to contribute to the community that I belong to.

Do you see this project developing further into more neighborhoods or even cities?

The idea of using international languages to speak to different ethnic groups is more functional and feasible in New York as the city has the most diverse immigrant communities. However, there is no limit of possible locations. I select specific pairs of languages that speak better for the community where it is installed. For example, Elmhurst has large Indian population, so the billboard in Elmhurst has Hindi and English. I can expand this project to any city in any country. I just need to keep adding more languages.

How were locations actually chosen?

Getting permission for a mural was really challenging and it is also an ongoing struggle to finalize a location for an Again mural. I considered different platforms and all the locations possible except very wealthy neighborhoods. For Again on billboard, I have three locations in Harlem in Manhattan, Elmhurst in Queens, and Bushwick in Brooklyn. Harlem stands for my Black neighbors, Elmhurst has lots of Middle Eastern, Central Asian community members. 

Bushwick is very mixed depending on the blocks. I am currently working to finalize a location in College Town in Flushing, Queens for an Again mural. The Wang Cultural Center at Stony Brook University also hosted Again in a vinyl installation for their lobby. I want to have balanced platforms and locations considering different ethnic groups and ages and have diverse ways to send out the visual message.

How is this project a continuation of themes in your work and how does it diverge from what you have been doing?

My previous works were personal, emotional and philosophical searches to answer questions concerning my own struggles and questions. On the other hand, Again is my effort to continue a dialogue with the public, which naturally sprang out from social and political agitation in recent years. My first word painting was “Black Lives Matter; I was strongly impacted by the social movement caused by the death of George Floyd.

I still show a continuation in terms of how I value aesthetic presentation along with a conceptual idea. I am fundamentally a visual artist, not a writer or social activist. My work must be visually pleasing to me. The visualization process mostly begins from traditional visual languages.

Do you hope to do more public work in the future?

I definitely want to do more public work. Public work created different opportunities for me. It expanded my vision and capability beyond a small canvas and small studio space. Now I am looking at big open spaces in the park, or huge and nice walls of buildings differently. Also, a public project is a collaborative effort involving different bodies of people. 

As an artist, I initiate a project, but I must coordinate collaborative contributions from a funder, hosting organization, fabricator, my personal assistants, etc. Even this relatively small public work was sponsored by Café Royal Cultural Foundation and the Queens Council on the Arts. Save Art Space played an essential role to expand this project on billboards. As I plan to expand Again into a grander public project, I will need more professionals to collaboratively work together. This is a whole new experience to me, which I enjoy and appreciate.

Black Power in Print: The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

                                                {click on images to enlarge them}

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has an excellent online exhibit and Internet resource zone which covers such issues as the visual iconography of the Black Panther Party as well as early attempts by African American artists to break the color barrier at some of America’s ‘finest’ museums and galleries. This is important in light of what it finally took for African American artists to be included in American art galleries and museums.

Had it not been for the outrage and protests following the murder of George Floyd, black artists would probably still be under-represented in the most prestigious galleries and museums. White gallery owners and curators did not make it easy for artists of color to gain access to an art viewing and buying public. The meaningful inclusion of artists of color was not a gradual progression but a continual hurdle. 

This collaboration between Boston’s MFA and New York’s MoMA helps show that the artists were out there, but they were ignored. The American art world was permeated with racism and it took violent riots stemming from decades of frustration and indignation to finally scare this segment of society into opening up. After the reaction to what happened to George Floyd, and the accompanying fury against all racial hypocrisy, the powers that be had little choice but to finally acquiesce. All power to the people.

                                                Dana Chandler

The show Black Power in Print is in conjunction with MoMA, which recently added numerous copies of the Black Panther newspaper to its permanent collection as part of a donation by Patrick McQuaid. They have featured the work of Emory Douglas, who was responsible for the eye-catching and morally gripping graphic illustrations and photomontages for the paper.

Black “class” consciousness

Friedrich Engels wondered whether the mistreated, underpaid and overburdened working class of early industrial Europe might even be aware of their oppression and exploitation, given what he perceived to be their “false consciousness”. Engels was following up on Marx’s idea that the lower classes will readily embrace the values, vision and ideology of the upper classes. 

Much later Pierre Bourdieu would offer the concept of symbolic violence - those who suffer social and economic injustice often accept their suffering as being perfectly justifiable and their own fault. But these were all middle-class guys examining workers from a distance and their pessimism about workers’ perceptions came from the outside. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers of Oakland, California proved (the myth of) false consciousness not to exist among the economically and racially oppressed in the USA.

                                                Bobby Seale

The Panthers emerged as a radicalized proletariat – they represented working class and poor black folks and were openly Marxist (although they welcomed alliances from progressives of any color). Marxism was an overwhelmingly important component of their makeup, and this is often downplayed when considering their agenda and their work in their communities. 

The fact that they were avowed socialists was, however, one reason why Fred Hampton was murdered in his sleep by the Chicago Police Department. It was bad enough, in the eyes of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, to be black and activistic, it was much worse to be black, activistic and socialist. What’s most significant about the Black Panthers is that they brought America’s racial issues and problems into socialist theory, and showed how race and class could intersect and be embraced by a socialist social science.

The founders of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, decided to be more than theoretical socialists waiting for history to develop and attempted to protect their community from police abuse while providing services to their community not expected from the government. The Panthers understood that racism, discrimination and segregation had led to the adverse status of black folks in America, but they did not become absorbed in the Black Power orientation toward racial pride and cohesion. 

They refused to ignore the economics of capitalism which was the ultimate enemy for them. Although class and race intersected, focusing on race, in itself, was a red herring to them. J. Edgar Hoover actually considered the Panthers to be the most severe security threat to the American way of life at that time and many members of the organization were framed and/or murdered by the police/FBI.

                                                            Huey Newton

             

Among the highlights of the visual iconography of the Panthers is a poster of their 10-point plan. The plan included demands for full employment; reparations payments for black folks - General Sherman’s idea of giving every freed black person 40 acres of land and 2 mules after the Civil War was referenced; decent housing; an educational system that provided a knowledge of self and one’s position in society; an end to the war in Vietnam pursued by a white-racist government and business class; an end to police brutality and the right of black folks to carry arms to protect themselves from the police; the release of black prisoners from America’s prison-industrial complex; trials of black defendants before juries that could understand the experience of the defendants and, mirroring the language of the Declaration of Independence, a call for separation from the dominant American culture.

The Panthers got tired of waiting. When Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter from Birmingham jail, he mentioned that the early Christian Church had been a thermostat for and not a thermometer of its times. He seemed to be urging the contemporary church in America to step forward more into social activism and to change society while helping black folks integrate into it. The Panthers attempted to be this type of thermostat through other means. Perhaps their methodology was ultimately vindicated by the actions of infuriated Americans who took to the streets demanding change.

The idea that folks in the poorer classes cannot even perceive their own abuse was a middle-class academic dogma that the Panthers put to shame. More than anything their legacy, as reflected in this show, is that reform must come from those folks who are being neglected and abused and that those in power will often not listen to reason. It took the nation-wide protests following the cruel killing of an innocent man to finally shake those in power. The Panthers showed that integration was essential but it had to be integration under the terms of those being integrated – because only those folks could be the true moral reformers of their society.

                                                            Fred Hampton's Door

Read the thoughtful and incisive essays of Daniel Gauss: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

The Blurry Monk and the Sleek Advertisement

 

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I was sitting in a coffeehouse in Phnom Penh when I saw this monk walking toward the large advertisement. In Phnom Penh monks wander around in the mornings "begging" for donations or food. 

I saw very poor shop owners provide monks with money because, from what I was told, they believe it is good luck to do this and bad luck not to do this. Buddhist monks must thank God for superstition every day of the week; without it they would probably get a lot less food and money.

So I saw the monk moving toward the advert and I thought that if I snapped a photo it would be a good contrast between the (alleged) values of the monk and the values of the advert.

The photo didn't come out that well because of the glare from the glass through which I took the shot and the fact that the monk was moving and he came out blurry.

Yet, I think the photo still works and I wanted to share it out here. 

The monk is moving, he is blurry, because he represents transience or impermanence. He is constantly aging. 

The jewelry ad represents a type of permanence, or it represents the permanence of the inequality that is readily seen in Cambodia and other 4th world countries.

Cambodia has suffered from 39 years of a dictatorship which is going to be followed by several years of a dictatorship from the original dictator's son. For 39 years the dictator, a former Khmer Rouge officer, did very little to lift his people out of poverty.

If you go to Cambodia it will break your heart. The level of poverty was worse than anything I had seen elsewhere and I have traveled to 11 Asian countries.

But back to the monk. Another thing I wanted to ask through this photo is: to what extent is the monk really divorced from the economic system he begs from, and to what extent is he participating in that economic system?

Read some amazingly thoughtful essays by Daniel Gauss here, for free: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

 

Stephen Wong Chun Hei and Chow Chun Fai at Tang Contemporary

                                                 click on images to enlarge them

In Stephen Wong Chun Hei’s paintings, the city of Hong Kong reflects artificial, supernatural, and even gaudy colors. Indeed, it is as if nature and the city are both plugged into the same electrical outlet, reflecting the same neon shimmer and shine. Meretricious Hong Kong is still, however, distinguished from a once insouciant nature that now exhibits its own razzle-dazzle because of its proximity to the city. 

The city represents both the transgression and transcendence of nature, along with its exultation of nature. The city was implanted within a natural environment and the perception of nature is transformed and heightened for the urban viewer by the relationship. This is apparent as well in his new paintings in A Mirage of a Shining City, at Tang Contemporary, which is based on the Fo Tan area of Hong Kong, once an industrial center now occupied primarily by artists and where he and his partner for this show, Chow Chun Fai, reside.

                                                                         Hei

In Wong’s work, super-enriched colors are enhanced with a type of luminescence, and the real presence of the city accentuates the élan vital we may not fully sense when we engage nature on its own terms. Although Wong enjoys hiking and sketching before coming back to his studio to paint, he was apparently inspired during the pandemic by satellite images from Google Earth, and by painting from above the reciprocal power relationship between the natural environment and human construction (according to a profit-driven motive) can be more keenly discerned. It is significant in his work that along with various human-made structures such as domiciles and institutions, hiking trails and means to escape the city for the mountains are often presented.

                                                                      Hei

More than anything, we are engaged by the colors and forms of these paintings. According to Edmund Burke, the beauty in art causes one to want to own it; the sublime astonishes and awes the viewer into a state of speechlessness. It is the artificial radiance of the paintings which arrests our attention and brings the experience of the city to us in a flash of recognition without the mediation of language. 

The artist holds a mirror up to reflect the most fulfilling experiences of the city to us, minus the poverty, suffering, struggle and conflict (which cannot be seen from a bird’s eye view). Perhaps the paintings are an attempt to suggest that even the more troubling aspects of the city add to its energy and excitement and are a challenge for us to pursue more meaningful and humane engagement in the city.

                                                                      Hei

By focusing on the interrelationship between Hong Kong and its surrounding countryside and imputing a type of video game animism to both, Wong helps save the relevance of the ancient art of landscape painting. He adds an extra dimension to the “Dream Journey” in traditional Chinese painting. Although inspired by David Hockney’s experiments with the landscape, he brings his understanding of the nature of Hong Kong and its challenges to infuse these paintings with a different meaning from Hockney’s countryside images. 

How does the transcendence of Hong Kong as an especially dynamic world city alter our perception of and need for nature? After all, biodiversity has been losing ground in Hong Kong since the early 1970s. Is Hong Kong moving toward a sustainable relationship between the city and surrounding environs?

                                                                      Fai

If Wong’s work presents a type of subjective mirage dealing with Hong Kong and Fo Tan, Chow Chun Fai follows with his own fantasy creations within the city drawing upon Hong Kong as a nostalgic stage for well-known and classic films. Chow dives into the popular genre of Hong Kong Cinema which has reflected the complex moral and social ambiguities of the city as well as helped shape or reinforce expectations for life in Hong Kong for many in and outside the city. As a tip of the hat to his friend, Chow borrows from Wong’s supercharged palette to reference various scenes or characters from films in contemporary Hong Kong.

In one painting we see the Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung characters from Wong Kar Wai’s film masterpiece In the Mood for Love. The film attempted to capture the ethos of a lost Hong Kong from the 1960s, as a setting for a story about the loss of companionship and compassionate love. Chow shows the fictional characters in contemporary Hong Kong (the first 7-Eleven came to Hong Kong in 1981, long after the setting of the film). 

                                                                  Fai

The city is portrayed as something relatively permanent while a deep but ephemeral moment of grief occurs within it. Or, is the grief meant to be portrayed as relatively permanent as well, as the characters have reappeared suddenly in contemporary Hong Kong, even though they separate and never reunite again in the actual film? Are all of these film characters interlopers in contemporary Hong Kong? We even see Travis Bickle from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver walking toward a traditional Hong Kong taxi to begin his day.

More than one canvas is given over to the 1990s comedy The God of Cookery. This is a romantic comedy in which Temple Street Market factors largely. It involves everything from beef balls to the Hong Kong triad to Shaolin monks in an epic journey for one character toward both greater humanity and greater cooking skills (there seems to be a correlation in the film between the goodness of one’s heart and one’s ability to provide culinary excellence). We see various scenes from the film depicted at one time in the vicinity of a 7-Eleven, which seems to represent to Chow an aspect of Hong Kong’s current state of being. They do seem to be everywhere in this city.

                                                                      Fai

So what might it mean to have these interlopers from past films appearing now? Obviously and literally these characters show the changes Hong Kong has been through and they point to changes yet to come. They also might represent the timeless values of Hong Kong and how the people of this unique city created their own culture as a blend of ethnicities, cultures and motives. 

So both mirages (the outside and inside mirages of the city) allude to something very real – Hong Kong has been and will continue to be a world-class city that radiates with its own unique and often otherworldly brightness.

Art Is Not English! (a brief play about the need for art interpretation classes, and the need for more compassion and humanity in education)

 

Please feel free to read the 5-minute play that I wrote, and which was published in 'The Hooghly Review', a fine literary magazine run by very good people.

Click the red link below: 

Art Is Not English by Daniel Gauss