Tom Duffy: Man in Nature at ARC Gallery, Chicago

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In Tom Duffy’s current show at ARC Gallery, he examines two extremes involving “man in nature” in America’s heartland, or, more precisely, he looks at extremes involved in the ability of humanity to extract sustenance and wealth from the land through labor. One extreme presents a rare remnant of the working class in the USA, still existing due to the physical inability to outsource their type of job, while the other extreme is a direct result of outsourcing and a creative attempt to adjust to the new circumstances established through the near-destruction of the working class in America.

One of the more iconic images of the American industrial worker is Lewis Hine’s ‘Steam Fitter’ (1920). Hine has his worker bent over, conforming to the shape and demands of a machine from which he derives his livelihood; yet, the subject also shows an immense amount of masculine will, strength and mastery. The worker thus forms a perfect symbiosis or mutualism with the machine. Whereas Hine had become famous for leading a crusade against child labor through his photos of children working in factories, his photos of adult workers became more ambiguous in their judgment of human labor and exploitation in the industrial process.

{{{Steam Fitter - Lewis Hine}}}

Indeed, Hine’s various photos of working men seemed to impute dignity to the process of industrial toil, as opposed, for instance, to Marx’s belief that the industrial worker was alienated from his very ‘species-being’ through this type of work and thus became a sad object of financial exploitation.   In Hine’s work the men are clearly not objects of pity since the jobs seem suitable to their strength and backgrounds and, consequently, these photos ignite little more than a quiet sympathy for those doing exhausting and tedious work instead of moral outrage. Since industrialization had been legitimated as a necessity, the use of workers in this manner could be tolerated as long as they were perceived as grown men giving outlet to their masculinity and thus securing dignity (and most probably supporting their families).

Hine’s photos reflected the American attitude toward industrial labor at that time and it is useful to begin with this iconic work as a type of normative model or ideal type from which to view Tom Duffy’s photos of the men who work in Indiana’s limestone quarries. Has our conception of the worker changed since Hine? Has it changed since the outsourcing phenomenon of recent years? Which emotions might be elicited now in viewing men at hard work: work requiring, perhaps, little more than physical skill and endurance?

In one of Duffy’s photos we see a man with bulging and rippling muscles, gripping a system of drills, knees bent, body twisted, cigarette stiffly protruding from his mouth. In fact, cigarettes are ubiquitous in these photos of the quarry workers, betraying extra attempts by the quarry workers, perhaps, to handle the physical and emotional stresses of the job. The cigarettes could also serve as sardonic phallic reminders of the fact that this is a place of purely masculine labor, where men can still prove themselves to be men like Hine’s male workers, the cigarettes looking like the penises from stick figures in prehistoric cave paintings.  

Like the worker in Hine’s iconic photo these men are clearly demonstrating and affirming their masculinity through their jobs, as the drilling into the rock contains its own priapic symbolism, but the symbiosis that Hine modeled, and which possibly eased our consciences a bit toward the working class, now seems lost and perhaps no longer necessary with the passage of time and acceptance of so much more than was accepted back in the day. 

To me, for instance, there is no clear masculine and muscular domination of machinery or tools – some tools are so loud they require protective headsets and many of the tools depicted obviously entail physical wear and tear on the body. It is not symbiotic mastery we now see, but benign struggle with the machine. We can be made to realize, perhaps, that these men are not demonstrating the free and creative productivity which Marx believed to be our essence, but toil in the destructive process of cracking and removing tons of limestone blocks from the earth to provide beautiful veneers for various buildings – these are high-end luxury items used for decorative purposes. The Empire State Building and the Pentagon, for instance, are covered with Indiana limestone from this quarry.

In another photo we see a giant limestone slab that has been separated and is falling while nearby workers pensively stare at the result of their work, shoulders slumped in sudden, short-lived relief (kind of the way a boxer will let his shoulders slump immediately after a knock out). Duffy seems to be asking how visible or invisible this labor is to us. It is as if he is saying that the working class still exists, even if we do not read the stories of workers jumping from factory roofs in developing countries. Indeed, we have not completely ended the problem of one segment of a society laboring for the pleasure and luxury of another segment – try as we might there are some working class situations still among us and we have never adequately responded to this situation.  

Duffy might also be asking: What psychological mechanisms are at play in each of us when we assess who these guys are and what the work might be doing to them?  We assume they are well-paid and happy, and, indeed, I even felt compelled to ask Duffy at the opening, “Are these guys happy?” with Duffy indicating that they were not only happy but proud to be involved in working at the quarry. Duffy spent 5 months with them and told me that one big source of pride comes from the fact that this quarry work has been ‘generational’ with some men following in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers.

Along with these images of limestone quarries and their workers, Duffy provides images of various ghost towns he has visited, as well as some American towns in decline, along with scenes from a 3-person family organic farm. The photos of the dying or dead towns serve the function, within the context of this show, of expressing the social pressures which are pushing individuals to reflect on the possibilities for employment now that the industrial sector is shrinking in the USA. 

{{{Photo of a little kid who has, apparently, just slit the throats of several chickens - they are upside down to allow the blood to drain from them...this is a way to ensure the meat is 'kosher'.}}}

This pressure, ironically, has pushed this one family away from the apparent trajectory of history, back to the countryside, exploiting the trend among affluent and educated city-dwellers to prefer the meat of animals which are raised in a more humane and ethical fashion. Duffy’s photos attempt to capture the integrity and joy he found in this family, which goes to extremes to ensure that their livestock are treated as well as possible, even though they are barely eking out a living in the process.

ARC is one of Chicago’s more amazing galleries and has been contributing meaningful art exhibits since its inception in 1973. It is one of the oldest co-op galleries of its kind in the USA and functions as a non-profit, woman artist-run cooperative which provides exhibition opportunities to exceptional artists without discrimination in regard to “…race, age, class, physical/mental ability, sexual, spiritual or political orientation.” Tom Duffy’s show runs there until November 19^th.

ARC Gallery:

http://www.arcgallery.org/

Tom Duffy: 

http://www.tomduffyphotography.com/index

Reconfigured - Margaret Thatcher Projects

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Meg Hitchcock

My maternal grandmother (a truly saintly person) had immigrated to the USA from the old country and was a quietly devout Catholic. When I was a kid and used to stay overnight, I always slept in a room that had a portrait of the face of Jesus, with his crown of thorns, as he was dying on the cross (so at her place I was never afraid of a vampire climbing through my window).  I could see, however, that the entire portrait was comprised of very small words, some darker and some lighter.  So it turned out that there was a guy from the old country in the neighborhood who took the entire text of the Gospel According to John and reconfigured the form of the text and lightened and darkened the words to create different scenes from the “Passion” (death process) of Jesus – all incredibly mawkish and gruesome. That the guy would do something so labor intensive as this gave, to the elderly ethnic Catholic ladies around me, the sense that this was especially holy stuff to hang in their spare bedrooms. It wasn’t just a drawing of a dying Jesus, it was a drawing of words meticulously and perfectly arranged.

Meg Hitchcock (along with the entire staff of Margaret Thatcher Projects) is probably going to hunt me down and beat me up for even remotely mentioning her work in the same breath as a kitschy dying Jesus made of words, but I think we have a rarified and distilled and more thought-provoking version of this concept of reformatting words in the current show at Thatcher.  While I was packed in the gallery during the opening, looking at a vertically arranged, almond or boat shaped figure (a vesica piscis?) on the wall, it hit me that the figure was comprised of teeny tiny little letters. As I focused on the letters, slowly but surely I began to make out the fact that the letters comprised the beautiful Christian spiritual “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”.   

So Hitchcock takes pieces of sacred or religious texts from one holy book/source and cuts out individual letters to recreate pieces of text from another holy book/source, but in more meaningful shapes. So I’m guessing there are two parts involved in grasping why she does this. First, perhaps, from her perspective, she realizes that when we read a sacred text we are often only moved or changed by specific quotes, lines, anecdotes or metaphors. The whole text is given meaning by these little meaningful snippets within larger fluffier material.

But what gives power to these little meaningful snippets? Each word in conjunction with others which suddenly evokes something in us as we engage in the linear reading process.  And what gives power to each word? Each letter…so she seems to treat each letter of the English alphabet the way the ancient Nordic folks treated their sacred Runic alphabet – each letter possessed power and meaning and when combined with other Runes presented something more than words: a capacity for engagement that could lead to spiritual transformation (Odin sacrificed an eye and hanged for 9 days from a tree to get the Runes). Hitchcock makes you focus on what exactly gives language the capacity to engage – where is this power ultimately stored: in the letters? words? combinations of words? How is such meaningful communication possible? What separates the text of the Bhagavad Gita from the New York Post? The same letters and sentence structures are used in both. So then part two is when the viewer him/herself pieces together and is impacted by the meaning of these ‘runes’. For instance, I especially liked going through the effort to read, in one piece, the little phrase “…Him who possesses the power in ecstasy…” For Hitchcock these sacred snippets require new forms that require extra effort from the viewer.

Belcher

Belcher

Jaq Belcher starts with just a simple sheet of white paper and from the medium of the paper itself thinks of the possibilities of conveying something meaningful. Instead of adding to the paper, she finds ways to take something from the paper to express various concepts or evoke a certain awareness or sense of something normally ineffable. If I am not wrong, she seems to often slice out what is called the vesica piscis (also mentioned above). You get this shape from two circles with the same radius intersecting so that the center of each circle touches the perimeter of each circle. 

This is a very ancient symbol that goes as far back as Egypt, and maybe farther. Some folks say this is a stylized vagina – the vagina representing the fulfilment of spiritual desire symbolically represented by the penis. She carves out these vesica piscis shapes through a repetitive process which demonstrates a sense of supreme equanimity. She is capable of performing the same action producing the same effect over and over again, like continually shooting an arrow into a target’s bulls-eye.  If she is cutting vesica piscis shapes, we get designs based on these scared symbols of fulfillment where the shapes alternate with empty space, the empty space, paradoxically, perhaps, more directly representing the concept of calm and peace than the symbols.

Fowler

Fowler

Adam Fowler creates layers of swirling lines, in two steps, using materials he knows the viewer will be familiar with – a graphite pencil and sheets of paper. First Fowler creates his drawings and then using an exacto knife, he slices and layers what he has drawn. The swirling lines, for me, represent cognition or inner processes that are occurring or have occurred but which cannot, perhaps, be stored into memory and later expressed. 

The swirls or curly cues are a type of nervous energy, perhaps, that comes from inner engagement and the attempt to understand ourselves. We are thinking, struggling, aspiring, searching for ways to overcome obstacles and this work really seems to me to show the inexpressible internal effort we put forth in our attempt to become more humane. The swirls reminded me of P-300 waves. P-300 waves are waves that the brain produces when we have meaningful insights, or solve difficult problems - these swirls don’t look like P-300 waves but they are like P-300 waves to me.  I think Fowler’s work, to me at least, is what inner development looks like from the outside. If you have to represent the deep dive inward and what happens next, you get these layers of swirling, curving lines.

Swid

From what I have been able to tell, Nan Swid takes antique books and old ledger books, covers them with encaustic or paint, and places these materials within a square or rectangular pattern. By covering the books with encaustic she is, of course, rendering them useless.  The implication for me is that the encaustic covering represents a realization or insight that the type of engagement to be derived from text may be insufficient compared to another self-generated and more organic and creative inner process. She seems to be pointing at the limitation of textual engagement and pointing toward something more necessary.  It’s as if the books have been read, the accounts have been tabulated and now they are permanently sealed.  The person cannot and does not want to go back to the text, which has pushed the person away from text into a deeper form of engagement.

   

Horses by Deborah Butterfield at Danese / Corey Gallery

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One of the highlights of the Chelsea opening night last week was Deborah Butterfield’s striking sculptures of horses, apparently made out of drift wood or ‘found’ wood. This was the type of show where people entered the gallery and immediately said, “Wow, this is amazing. How did she do that?”  That’s important, of course.  The artist has to arrest the viewer visually, first, before the person will stop and begin to engage a piece.  If your pieces look boring, people won’t stop and look. Butterfield’s work is so ‘wowing’ on just a purely visual level, that virtually everyone who saw the show stopped and thought about what she was doing and discussed the work with the folks they were with.

The fact that the horses seemed to be made out of drift wood or wood that had fallen from trees was fascinating to most viewers.  Actually Butterfield does use this wood initially to create the sculpture, but since wood decays so easily, she casts the sculpture from the wood and then burns the wood away with molten bronze, creating a permanent sculpture. But it looks like the real thing. I didn’t realize the sculptures were bronze until I went back a second time.

Now, I have to confess, even though I’m a city guy, I’m a sucker for horses and love all things horses. To me, the horse is a symbol of transition.  By transition, I mean transition within our inner reality as well as transition in our external reality.  Traditionally, symbolically, the horse represents what gets you from one (rotten) place to another (better) place.  It takes you from a place of turmoil and conflict to your own hearth.  It leads you into and out of battle; it helps you escape, engage in some adventure or go home.

The horse has, in fact, been one of the most important symbols or images in the history of Western art.  St. George kills that dragon while riding horseback and who doesn’t love Rembrandt’s emaciated horse at the Frick, selflessly carrying that Polish soldier toward his quest? We see a look of dogged resolve on the head of the horse, despite the emaciated state of its body.  It's as if the inner strength or inner qualities of the horse, and not just its outer strength, is what makes the horse such a potent symbol.  The resolve or determination of the horse is contrasted with the calm sense of command and confidence of the rider. More than anything, Butterfield is able to capture and convey this same inner strength of the horse, through her work, using dead wood.

So the big question is, why did this artist make horses out of found pieces of wood?  We can say that the horse is a symbol of transition in Western art. We can also say that these horses are a type of symbol of ‘freedom’ or inner strength, especially since they seem to be wild horses.  What I liked was the fact that Butterfield uses discarded, dead wood to convey the strength and life of these animals.  Wood, although ‘dead’, possesses potential combustible energy.  So the horse represents movement and freedom while wood can represent latent, potential energy – so the artist is combining the two most salient elements of horses and wood to convey movement, transition, freedom, and the captured potential for energy possessed in each piece. We get a sense of a composite creation that incorporates the concept of transition and the potential explosion of energy at the same time.

When you look at these pieces, it’s uncanny that the artist was able to take random pieces of branches and fit them so perfectly into the form of a horse. It’s almost as if this was meant to be and that these discarded and fallen branches should be shaped into horses.

So I’d encourage you to drop by Danese/Corey and just experience these horses.  These sculptures have a presence that affects you immediately and that will stimulate and engage you on many different levels.

The "Alter Egos" of Mark Beard at ClampArt in Chelsea

{{{Bruce Sergeant - click on images to enlarge}}}

Several months ago I wandered into ClampArt on a Saturday afternoon and saw that the gallery was primarily filled with large homo-erotic oil paintings attributed to Bruce Sargeant (1898 – 1938). There was also a nicely sized collection of his apparent mentor, Hippolyte Alexander Michallon (1849 – 1930). Sargeant’s work seemed more interesting to me, however, as it was a strange cross between hyper-realism and expressionism.  The young male bodies were lustily detailed (as only a true lover of male flesh could accomplish) but the skin tone was often a rough blending of flesh tone and grayish green.

There was such an over-the-top, seething love for the male body, merged at the same time with an apparent pessimism toward the flesh, and overall sense of dread, that I was amazed I hadn't seen this person's work in various museums.  How could the work of this obscure genius have been overlooked? But, when I wandered over to the desk at ClampArt and asked the owner of the gallery why Bruce Sargeant was not to be found in museums, he let me in on the "secret."  Neither Sargeant nor Michallon had ever existed. Mark Beard (a contemporary artist) has created his own series of fictitious artists. He paints in several different styles, purporting to be fictional artists from the past. In the show I saw, there were 'new' paintings by the 'dead' artists Michallon and his disciple Bruce Sargeant.

{{{Sergeant}}}

I was a little disappointed to find that at Beard’s latest show, at ClampArt, the gallery has given away the secret. The current show is titled “Alter Egos” and includes 7 of Beard’s artists, including Buggereau (whose work might represent Beard’s own stuff) and his latest incarnation: Princess Ormalu (B. 1979). A very kind gallery assistant informed me that, basically, ClampArt had little choice – the jig was up. By now most folks in the art world have discovered the secret, so now it’s on to transparency.

{{{Michallon}}

So why is he doing this? On one level he could be parodying trends in art, or the process of how artists become famous – how they get 'selected' to be great artists. All of Beard's fictional artists stick to one style of painting and this style becomes their 'brand.'  You can recognize a Michallon from a Sargeant from a Steeruwitz easily.  Branding your art becomes essential to success.  

People need to look at a piece and immediately say, "That's a Koons!" or "That's a Pollock!"   Beard seems to be pointing out (from what I've read) that, in the past, artists often went through various developmental stages and experimented with various styles. Now, to feed the needs of the art buyers, you develop until you hit something new and then that's that - that's YOUR style.  

There's no further need to develop - you are at the place you need to be. Now produce, produce and produce some more of the same stuff and start smoozing it up to promote yourself.  But, if Beard is mocking artist branding, his mocking has now become his own brand.  Yet, by including the work of Buggereau, he also seems to be showing that he can stand on his own and create a unique and engaging style to convey something personally meaningful.

{{{Steeruwitz}}}

A very funny aspect of the show, however, is that we see that if an artist cannot create a style for himself, it’s always possible to freeride and just hop on the stylistic bus and imitate.  Brechtholdt Streeruwitz is painting in the Abstract Expressionist style while Peter Coulter has totally stolen a type of Jenny Holzer/Barbara Kruger type of word art.

{{{Coulter}}}

Of course, there are deeper levels of parody in this art work as well.  For instance, focusing on Sergeant, it could be that Beard is poking fun at how an artist's inner obsessions or anxieties can be so readily transferred to the canvas.  Why have there been so many female nude paintings in the history of art, for instance?  OK, a naked woman might represent something symbolically and one could even argue that the artists were experimenting by drawing the human figure.  Or it could be that there have been lots of horny guys among the “great masters”.

{{{Ormalou}}}

Walking into ClampArt for this show, I immediately realized I was looking at art by a gay man.  Indeed, there was no denying that Sergeant was flaming.  Beard goes way overboard in conveying this.  Indeed, the pessimism reflected in the greenish tones or in the paintings of young men attempting violent suicide might be interpreted as a response to the outright hostility toward gay folks during that time.   Beard, like a type of novelist, creates a gay artist working during a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and when you could probably get lynched for being gay.  We see the work of a conflicted person - he cannot help but express his true nature, but it is expressed dolefully and fearfully.  

{{{Buggereau}}}

So here's where I think I get Beard's real joke.  When we go to an art museum, we don't think, 'Oh I'm going to go see the sensual obsessions of the socially-repressed and anxious homosexual Michaelangelo.'  Nor do we think, "Ah, I wanna go see the unresolved sexual conflict that artist x lived with his whole life."  You expect to see 'art' but sometimes the artist presents something a little more (or less) than art on the canvas and he (she?), apparently can't help it. The ‘dirty’ stuff just pours out.

{{{Buggereau}}}

So you've got sexual conflicts, concerns, obsessions and anxieties on canvases all throughout the history of art (Guido Reni's St. Sebastian?  Any St. Sebastian!? Looked at anything by Caravaggio lately? Munch's women as 'vampires?' Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon? etc.) and people often don't even recognize this.  Indeed, if Sargeant had been a 'real' 1930s artist, unknowing, non-gay-friendly critics of the time might have missed the obviously gay orientation completely.  The focus on virile, rippling young men would have been interpreted as the artist's emphasis on American strength of character or the virile, male brawn that will pull us out of the Depression.  Or, maybe Beard is pointing out that you are only going to get this type of art during periods of oppression for gay people. If folks could openly experience their sexuality and represent it freely, you wouldn't get it in such a sublimated form on canvas.  

{{{Sergeant}}}

We don't think of some of the German expressionists or the surrealists as working out their heterosexual and/or sado-masochistic demons on canvas, we consider this great art. I think that's the big joke Mark Beard is telling (at least with Sergeant).  Art has always been a canvas for the exploration of the artist's own sexual inclinations, anxieties and development.  Sure a lot of art is meaningful in a non-sexual manner.  But there's an awful lot of sex stuff that people are (deliberately) not catching.

{{{Sergeant}}}

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"A Dialogue with Nature" - Morgan Museum show concerning landscapes from the Romantic Era

Samuel Palmer, Oak and Beech Trees

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The artists of the Romantic Movement could see science coming, and it wasn’t pretty.  Science seemed to bring an ideology along with it (sort of a technocratic justification and amplification of the worst forms of capitalism) and, schematically, it divided the world into two.  There was the outer world (stuff to be perceived, measured and used) and the inner world (perception, thought and emotional responses).  Science meant our minds were separate from nature and were to be used to control nature, as if we were secular wizards.  

Casper David Friedrich, Moonlit Landscape

The Romantics, however, believed the mind to be a part of nature and connected to nature.  Everything was, in fact, ‘spirit’.  Friedrich Schelling went so far as to say that nature was visible spirit and spirit was invisible nature.

So how did this outlook affect the arts and how was it revealed in the visual arts? Well, you can get an idea from the current show at the Morgan Museum. 

Here’s a piece by Turner called The Pass at Faido, St. Gothard (1843). 

In this watercolor we cannot see a differentiation between perceiver and perceived – the viewer is caught up in the dynamic aspect of nature which is being depicted; there is a fusion of observer and natural process in an overarching spiritual awareness.  This painting, in fact, shows a mountain pass in the Alps during the thawing season.  We see nature in a type of transition, forceful and uncontrollable but benign or even benevolent.  The artist does not paint this realistically, but infuses the painting with his sense of engagement. This painting is all about engagement and union between the mind and nature.

I love John Robert Cozens’ work A Ruined Fort near Salerno(1782).

The Romantics liked contrasting human works, which are easily destroyed and fall into ruin, with seemingly eternal natural processes or structures.  Here we see an ancient fort in the foreground. At one time it served some strategic importance which has been utterly forgotten to history.  It is dwarfed by the magnificence of a mountain – a type of natural structure which has always held spiritual meaning as the place where one can ascend closer to the ‘spirit realm’.

We also see a similar sentiment here in Karl Friedrich Lessing’s Landscape with a cemetery and a church (1837).

The tree represents something eternal contrasted with the crumbling tombstones.  A tree, symbolically, can also be considered a type of bridge between the earth and the sky or the ‘lower’ and the ‘higher’.  Its roots dig deep into the earth and its canopy stretches up into the sky. The tree has been a traditional spiritual/religious symbol which the Romantics relished.

All in all it’s a small show but I’m glad that I saw it since it forced me to think about our world vis a vis the world before the scientific and technological revolution took place. It also compelled me to think about my own attitude toward the relationship between mind and nature.  I’m leaning more toward the Romantic conception now. It’s actually kind of shocking how we just go along with the belief that the mind is separate from nature or the world.

I think a visit to the Morgan to see the show would be worthwhile within the context of the whole museum.  I was knocked back, for example, by the amazing collection of ancient cylinder seals at the Morgan Museum.  Please remember that this museum does have a free Friday viewing time from 7 to 9pm.

Info about the Morgan Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
New York, NY 10016

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"Speak to me about...healthcare!" Paul Kolker at the Paul Kolker Gallery

Paul Kolker has one of the coolest gallery spaces in all of Chelsea.  It’s literally an underground space that one gets to by descending  a zigzag staircase.  In a review of his work I did last year, I described the space as a type of “art bunker,” but the space has benefits and detriments – the average gallery hopper might overlook it because of its unique location, and, during Superstorm Sandy, this gallery was literally inundated and much art work was ruined.

If you’ve been to Kolker’s place, you’ve probably seen what I call his ‘infinity boxes’.  Starting in the 1980s Kolker began making light sculptures using one way mirrors and LED message screens.  These are thin boxes that you look into and through which you see infinitely regressive patterns.  Kolker is a kind of electric Malevich.  He uses simple geometric patterns with his mirrors to create concrete images of infinity.  You might have been in the big Kusama infinity rooms – I think Kolker’s smaller boxes are even better. The endless repetition of the basic image creates a three dimensional structure that perpetuates itself endlessly until the repetition is lost to our vision. Infinity then becomes something lacking light and structure. Sometimes the boxes are lying flat so you have to look down and his work then gives you a sense of beauty and a type of vertigo at the same time.

Currently Kolker is drawing upon his medical background to draw attention to the recent developments in President Obama’s controversial Affordable Care Act.  As well as being a visual artist, Kolker is also a cardiac surgeon, lawyer and ex-president of an insurance company.

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The centerpiece of the show could be called a type of allegory of the history of the affordable care concept in the USA.  Kolker begins with a painting which he saw often at the Boston Medical Library while doing work at Harvard Medical School: “First Operation Under Ether” by Robert Hinkley, painted from 1882 - 1894 (no, I’m not sure why it took him so long).   It’s an obscure work in the history of American painting, but thousands of aspiring doctors have seen it and it’s a fitting painting to use as a template for what Kolker does.  Basically Hinkley was attacked by critics who pointed out that the painting was done in a realistic style but that many characters in the painting were not in attendance at the actual first operation using ether as an anathesia.  Hinkley, however, parried that he did not want to capture a precise moment, but, instead, he wanted to document the various people who had contributed to this ground-breaking moment in medical science.  He had literally cut faces out of newspapers and books to paint them onto bodies in this work.

So inspired by the methodology of Hinkley, Kolker replaces the faces of the original characters in the “Ether” painting with the various historical and political characters who were participants in the struggle to finally get some type of system up and running that would help to cover as many Americans as possible with affordable health insurance.  You see figures ranging from Teddy Roosevelt to Obama, himself, in the painting.  In fact, I think Obama should buy this piece and use it to explain to others just how difficult it was to finally get something like this off the drawing board and into practice. Obama had to, as it were, stand on the shoulders of giants to finally get this thing going.

You might ask, for instance, “Why is TR in the painting?” Well, that’s how long politicians have been mulling over this idea.  From what Paul Kolker explained to me, Canada established what was called ‘socialized’ medicine around the time that TR was president (in the early part of the last century).  Roosevelt loved the idea, but had to find a way to reframe the concept outside of the concept of ‘socialism’ which was a no-no back then (even more so than now).  He was never able to do this, and the idea languished through the generations.  The next big step forward, however, was in the Lyndon Johnson administration, when Medicare was established in 1965.  Indeed, LBJ looms large in a couple of the works at this show.  Despite his horrific mistakes (the escalation of the Vietnam War) Kolker memorializes him as a politician who could bring both sides of the aisle together and get meaningful social programs up and running. 

I liked how Kolker took this obscure painting and transformed it into a serious reflection on the factors involved in making a significant social change.  I also like the various facts and stories he presents about the ACA.  For instance, he points out that the “Individual Mandate” (the law that each person must obtain coverage) was initially a Republican idea.  Yet, for some reason, suddenly the Republicans used the concept of the “Individual Mandate” to try to stop the ACA in the Supreme Court.   Indeed, doing a bit of research I discovered that the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think-tank) first proposed the individual mandate idea in 1989.

Kolker is a strong proponent of the ACA and believes that with time all the kinks will be worked out and society, as a whole, will benefit.  If everyone is covered with something, even Medicaid, hospitals will, for instance, no longer feel compelled to pad bills for previous non-payments.  Yet, Kolker also points out that about 3 million people in NY City, out of about 8 million people, possess Medicaid.  This seems to point to the issue of the widening income gap in the USA and the inability of the business sector and government to collaborate on effective anti-poverty programs. The huge number of people using Medicaid seems to indicate that the ACA alone, will not be effective. Coming away from this show which was meant to challenge us to think about health care issues, it seemed to me that the ACA needs to be a part of a coherent program meant to ensure that more Americans can gain the financial means to live more meaningful lives.

So let’s say that Kolker’s homage to the history of affordable and universal healthcare is an unfinished masterpiece.   Indeed, there seems to be space left in the primary painting for emerging figures.  Hopefully he’ll be able to paint them into the picture sooner rather than later.