Eat the Sun, paintings by Kysa Johnson at Morgan Lehman Art Gallery in Manhattan

 

Subatomic particle decay patterns are so provocative as a symbolic language in the work of Kysa Johnson because nobody can understand or explain why this decay happens. Scientists can only say that certain particles are “likely” to change into other particles. Certain types of elements will lose protons and neutrons and become something else or some particles, like the tau particle, will just change into one of three other particles.

So “decay” is not really what is going on here. By using the term decay scientists show the limitations of language when it comes to even physical phenomena. In fact, what often happens in subatomic particle decay is that a greater level of permanence occurs. So the term decay is being used as a marker or signifier because there is no precise term for this process. If a person wanted to be a smart-aleck, he/she could say: subatomic decay is not really decay but the use of decay as a flawed metaphor for a process we really do not understand, but which we can trace.

Thus scientists use the expression “likely” in regard to particle decay. It is “likely” that some particles will change into other particles. For Johnson the patterns created through this type of decay become a symbolic language. Subatomic decay is something that happens spontaneously. We, however, like having a cause that produces an effect. We do not quite get spontaneous change. Our entire system of science is predicated on predictable relationships. This is not predictable, it is likely, for whatever reason. So the patterns we can observe become components of a type of curlicue script or diagram for Johnson. We can scrutinize the pathways of these elegant and swirling patterns, understand the script, while hoping for clues to the origin of the unpredictable change creating the elegant scrawl. Johnson uses a language that always asks questions.

But the patterns do not point back to the origin of the change just as the shape, content and movement of objects in the universe tell us nothing about its ultimate origin. So the patterns in Johnson’s work also become markers for the unknowable, while illustrating a path to permanence and stability. It is a language always pointing back to the fact that science does not explain everything we would like it to explain. At a subatomic level, science breaks down completely and resorts to probability. When the scientist Emil Dubois-Reymond was asked how something could come from nothing or how something could have always been, his answer was “Ignoramus et ignorabimus”. We do not know and we shall never know.

So Johnson begins with a symbolic language born of the inexplicable but promising permanence. A language that points at the limits of language itself and what we wish we could grasp beyond language but never will. This hearkens back to when mystics like Giordano Bruno sought to understand the inexplicable in nature but were pushed aside by folks like Galileo who realized that mathematics and description itself could yield enough to create a useable science. But there is still something we may not grasp about nature and may never grasp and these patterns point to this. Indeed, if we ever do learn what came before the Big Bang, it will come from a monk in a cave before in comes from someone with a telescope.  

Johnson’s colorful, fluent and spindly imagery derives from the patterns, like an emergent quality, and suggests the hope for nascent or burgeoning qualities within our minds due to our proclivity to creative mysticism. These patterns are highly suggestive of other things. In the past, for example, Johnson used these decay patterns to depict galaxies. Here she creates a number of floral designs. It is as if the patterns, like branches in the spring, have allowed for the emergence of this effusive flora. She uses the patterns of the incomprehensible but permanent as a base for the ephemeral. Yet, the ephemerality of flowers ultimately takes on the mantle of permanence through artistic expression.  

Johnson calls this show: Eat the Sun, referencing the process of photosynthesis. The existence of the sun allowed for a process to be developed on Earth whereby the energy of a star could be used creatively by organisms to manufacture sugars as basic nutrients for life. Decay patterns suggested, for Johnson, stems, leaves and flowers, the structures of the organisms which evolved to derive benefit from the sun.

The patterns are a language showing a permanence which becomes the basis for images of what we consider the ultimate in ephemera, but ephemera which have created a cycle of birth, growth, decay, death, rejuvenation and evolution. They represent a transitory existence of extreme brilliance and beauty due to the departure from the stable, permanent and predictable.  

Cycladic Figures from the Metropolitan Museum: Art from Magic

 

The Cyclades is a group of about 30 small islands in the Aegean Sea that seemed to form a circle around the island of Delos - the birthplace of Apollo. These marble figures date from a culture that existed from about 3000 to 1000 BCE on these islands.

Nobody really knows what function these figures used to serve for their Cyclades' creators. During this period of human history, in this part of the world, 'art' always seemed to serve some practical, magical or religious purpose. All archaeologists can tell us is that these figures were almost always female, they were painted and they were placed in graves. Yet, there is strong evidence that the figures were owned throughout the lifetime of the person into whose grave they were ultimately placed and not everyone was buried with such a figure.

Magic preceded art, art served magic and art was then liberated from magic. We who view these figures now can no longer share the beliefs that these figures served. But, we can see in these figures how objects created to serve some magical function also possessed the potential for what we now call artistic interpretation or meaning, beyond the intentions of their creators. Indeed, one could argue that it is impossible to recapture the ancient belief system behind the work and that all we can do is to derive a meaning which was not meant to be placed into the object originally. Modigliani, Brancusi and Henry Moore were, in fact, greatly influenced by these figures and were inspired to create their own meaningful forms of visual engagement based on them. So what makes these figures so appealing and compelling to us?

First, the posture of the figures, the way their heads tilt upward and backward - to me, I have always interpreted this as representing a type of ecstasy or joy of inner transformation: the point at which reflection and insight finally kick in to change one and help one rise to a higher and more humane level of being. When one moves from the mundane and predictable to a level of joy, liberation, tolerance, mercy, understanding and fraternity. When one overcomes all the patterns and habits that others have chosen for one, and begins to live for the eternal.

The folded arms represent repose, a posture of looking inward. I can no longer remember the poet from Chicago who wrote this, but one poet said that a corpse with folded arms makes it look like a person diving into him/herself. These figures give off the same impression with their folded arms. The head tilts upward, involuntarily, reflecting a change from inside that will reflect in the person's outward behavior from this point onward. The figures used to have eyes and mouths painted on to them, and now the lack of eyes and mouth helps to create the impression that the figures are looking inward. Indeed, one has to wonder what these figures might have looked like painted and speculate that, perhaps, the paint would have ruined for us the luster of the marble and the impact of a pure, tranquil style.

The elongated necks which contribute to the tranquil style probably represented some type of magical purpose or it might have reflected a beauty trend of that culture and time. Yet, we can also see a slight anxiety in some pieces: the anxiety involved in questioning the extent or possibility of our inner development, wondering whether meaningful change is possible or whether we are all condemned to live as we were wired and raised. Can we merely understand why we do what we do or is it possible to transcend everything…these figures can represent the type of inner change one suspects might exist.  

The Beast by Ruth Ewan at Collective in Edinburgh: Destroying the environment, playing the philanthropist card

 

It was not so much that Andrew Carnegie liked dinosaurs. He was friends with Herbert Spencer, and was deeply attracted to the now discredited theory which Spencer called Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism made Carnegie an alpha male par excellence and confirmed that only the smartest and strongest can or even should survive. Should survive? Yes, one of his foundations dabbled in “eugenics”, possible ways to eliminate the “unfit” from society. (The “unfit” seemed to be poor folks in the city who reproduced too often for some folk’s liking.) “Survival of the fittest” was something Carnegie deeply believed in, based on his own cold-blooded rise from working at a cotton factory to being emperor of steel production. Carnegie now had a pleasing narrative in which science seemed to show that barbarous competition was great, he was great, class divisions and poverty were inevitable and no pity needed to be shown to those who suffered (especially his own steel workers). Harm to the environment? What harm could there be? There was money to be made by the fittest of the fit.

So, of course, friend of science that he was, Carnegie funded dinosaur fossil-hunting expeditions and, of course, some anthropologist named a dino after his patron: Diplodocus carnegii (dubbed Dippy by a museum in Pittsburgh). Through a creative piece of animation, Ruth Ewan brings Dippy and Carnegie together for a tête-à-tête in a piece now showing at the Collective in Edinburgh. The purpose of the piece is to push the trajectory of the Carnegie narrative away from the beauty and benevolence of hand-out philanthropism and to look more deeply at how he affected the environment and masses of people in his rise to power and glory. His philanthropy can then be seen from another perspective. Ruth Ewan does this by having Dippy confront the animated Carnegie with the massive amount of harm the production of steel has done to the environment and Carnegie’s harsh treatment of his workers.

First, we can deal with the well-crafted story of Andrew Carnegie that kids find in their U.S. history books. Through hard work and diligence (he went from $1.09 a week to a fortune of $309 billion) Carnegie spearheaded the economic development of the US and then created his gospel of billionaires which is still followed today. Yes, he created the Gospel of Wealth and famously said, “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”  It is difficult to discover the amounts of carbon dioxide or other pollutants that Carnegie spewed into the atmosphere or waters of America during his rise since folks in authority back then just did not care. Various measurements and ice cores have shown that CO2 emissions increased dramatically after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Instead of the tons of pollution created or worker mortality rates at his facilities, historians seem to prefer to focus on the billions Carnegie gave for church organs, eugenics foundations, libraries (for poor workers to possibly enrich themselves) and universities and foundations (for the children of the rich to further cement their social and economic status). I am more interested in the tons of waste created by his rise to the Gospel of Wealth, but this is not easily accessible. So perhaps we can look at steel production these days to get an idea of the horrors committed by Carnegie (and later J. P. Morgan – who bought Carnegie out in 1901) during of a period of time when there was zero government regulation of the processes employed.

The exact pollution figures seem buried since the EPA was not created until 1970, but by 1897 Carnegie’s steel mills were producing more than 6,000 tons of steel a day. These days steel producers boast about how, within the past 50 years, they have reduced carbon emissions and waste in the steel production process by over 50%, but there has been a 10 fold increase in steel production in the last 50 years - so just imagine what the sky looked like in 1897 in Pittsburgh with ZERO regulation of this industry (Ewan does a good job of presenting a scenario in her animation). These days, steel production is one of the most energy using and carbon dioxide spewing industries in the world. After crude oil and coal, iron ore, for steel, is the 3^rd most extracted commodity (according to volume). In fact, according to the website www.theworldcounts.com 1.83 tons of CO2 is produced for every 1 ton of steel produced. 3.3 million tons of carbon dioxide are projected into the air annually. The mining of iron produces nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as well as heavy metals polluting water and acid from the mines also polluting water sources. ( https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/mining/environmental-impact-of-steel-production )

So Ewan would like to change the narrative a bit, and I would like to help her: Through hard work and diligence Andrew Carnegie spearheaded a model of industrial development that has nearly killed the planet. After he made zillions of dollars nearly killing us all, and overworking his laborers to insane proportions (often 12 hours a day, 7 days a week – or until they dropped and were replaced – 20% of the men who died in Pittsburgh in the 1880s died because of steel mills), he donated a lot of money to causes that reflected his own limited vision of the social and personal development of humanity. His billions in contributions did not change the social or economic order nor make it more fair or just, his billions did not eliminate racism or sexism. Money does not do this. Maybe the dinosaur was right. Oh yes, let’s get back to that dino.

In Ewan’s animated piece Beast, Carnegie suddenly appears through thick smoke on a cliff overlooking an industrial center dominated by smoke stacks, disgorging pollution into the gray sky. The woman chatting with him reveals herself to be a dinosaur, not too pleased with the name given to her, which describes two rows of bones down her tail coupled with the Latinized version of Carnegie’s name; she begins calling Carnegie “Double-femur”. She is the long extinct conscience for Carnegie, come back to attempt to haunt him, to get him to admit he may not have been the benefactor of humanity he surely died believing he was. She cannot quite haunt a man who lives in total denial, however.

When they speak of the Homestead Strike, Carnegie blames Frick. The dino points out that Carnegie cannot absolve himself of the conditions present in his factories which ultimately caused the strike, and the dino points out that even the trees in Pittsburgh became stunted due to the activities of his steel factories. When Carnegie is confronted with the fact that 3,500 undernourished men were working around the clock in an inferno, Carnegie replies: “I have done more for the world than any man who has lived.” He sees himself as the “first and greatest philanthropist”. Just as it is in the history books, Frick becomes the fall guy for the kind-hearted Carnegie at Homestead.

When the dino asserts that Carnegie was motivated by greed, Carnegie repeats: “No man has done more: libraries, concert halls, research institutions…” To which the dino replies, “Why couldn’t you provide your workers with a wage they could survive on and feed their families with?” She reproaches him as one who tried to change from wolf to lamb through philanthropic handouts and as a “creature who vandalized his world”. As the shade of Carnegie begins to dissolve, the dino implores, “Return to dust Andrew Carnegie!”

Carnegie has returned to ashes, but the narrative remains the problem. As long as Carnegie is held up as a hero of development, and we believe in development by any means necessary, development as a means for a few to gather wealth while others are forced into poverty, we continue to take further steps toward destroying our planet. A narrative that places Carnegie and other Robber Barons in a more critical light in our history books is clearly needed. The concept of development has to be revisited, and a real understanding of sustainability must be embraced.  If a by-product is produced and it can be seamlessly integrated within nature without adverse change, or it can be incorporated into a benevolent natural cycle, this is sustainability. If an industry just spews out 50% less of what it used to spew out, while increasing the number of places where the spewing occurs, and that waste remains as an adverse remnant and alters temperatures or cycles, that is not sustainability. We are working toward sustainability in the world, expecting businesses to develop and follow a new model – our narratives concerning this goal should be changing too and thus is the purpose of Ruth Ewan’s Beast at Collective in Edinburgh (until September 18, 2022).