Blog # 90…February 2019

Trumpty Dumpty wanted a wall
But Trumpty Dumpty's starting to fall
While Nancy and the Blues are standing up firm
Trumpty's starting to wiggle and squirm.

Good fences are meant to make good neighbours – keeping the livestock from wandering, encouraging people to mind their own business and respect others. 

What about walls though? There were walls made of men between Athens and Sparta and the walls of Jericho were tumbled by Joshua and his followers blowing their rams’ horns (or maybe it was an earthquake) before burning the city. A happier scene greeted the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

Talk of walls is loud these days; they’re somehow seen as a simple solution to the very complicated issue of people wanting to move from a place that’s dangerous or unsustainable for living to a place that isn’t. At the end of WWII there were 7 walls around the world, 15 in 1989.  At last count there were 77 – 65 countries hoping to protect their territory and increase security by barricading their borders with walls.

In Mexico, it’s stimulated a flurry of creative responses, sometimes to get through to the other side, holes through, tunnels under, ramps over. 

Artists are beginning  to claim and tame the walls, rendering them less powerful.  Mexican artists have had their way with various parts of their wall, making art great again, trumping Trump.

My favourite treatment is the Mexican section painted blue to blend with the sky, making it almost invisible and part of the landscape.

I know it's not February yet, but this seemed to want to be up there today.

Blog # 89…January 2019

Impression Sunrise
Claude Monet 1872

It’s good to find something comforting at this time of year and in this sort of world.  I love the Impressionists; it always seems to comfort me to look at people enjoying picnics by the river, harbours bathed in light at different times of day, even lovers sitting glumly at a café table. 

But sometimes, I also like to mix it up a bit and look at art that upsets my equilibrium, makes me wonder or think or just be uncomfortable. 

It seemed to start with William Hogarth, the first artist I know about who used his lively perceptions of the world around him to paint the vitality and despair of ordinary people on the streets of London in the early 18^th century. Berthe Morisot, a century later observed the personal world of women, tending babies, hanging out laundry. And our own Mary Pratt took us into the ordinary, sometimes lonely world of women. Maybe it reflects the more egalitarian lives of the cave dwellers that their artists portrayed mostly animals and abstract designs…simpler times.

I met John Waters on the walls of the Baltimore Museum of Art last year. His work is a cheeky, in your face series of comments on our society as it’s unfolded over the past half century. And although it speaks to Baltimore, where he was born and lives, it applies widely…kind of like The Wire. I enjoyed the show and might have thought he was just an amusing iconoclast if I hadn’t seen Kiddie Flamingo, a table reading of his best known film Pink Flamingo by a group of young child actors  with Waters providing direction off stage. It combined two things kids love – dressing up and swearing and was handled with great sensitivity so, although the kids were obviously enjoying it, there was nothing that could frighten or harm them. 

Kent Monkman

Kent Monkman jiggles our sensibilities too with his paintings of Canadian historical events and people, poking gentle fun at the Daddies of Confederation and bringing tears to our eyes with the children being captured in the Sixties Scoop.

Curious to think that the Impressionists were considered wicked and disruptive in their day, wonder if today’s disrupters will turn into providers of comfort in the future???

A very happy and healthy New Year to you all.