SIGNS & WONDERS
11/3/09

During my many travels across China I often come across signage with English wording that is not quite right for one reason or another. I guess you could say that they are lost in translation or signs that make me wonder. They are oftentimes charming, sometimes rude, but always entertaining and can be more insightful or poetic than a perfectly translated version. Language is a strange thing and can too easily be taken for granted. Sometimes I think I can understand the written Chinese better than English because of the word play; I must think hard a moment to uncover the true meaning. Here is a dim sum taste of what it is like to live in a semi-abstract linguistic world.

On February 4 and 5, and again from February 15 to 20, 1941, Burchfield was in New York, serving on the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation jury for the fine arts awards. After the jury work was over he stayed three days to look at exhibitions.

Gardenville
February 20, 1941

(CEB bracketed the following in red pencil.)

“Greatest of these was the exhibit of Nineteen(th) Century French art at the Metropolitan–the largest collection I have ever seen. What a glorious period! What a sense of the joy of living, and the dignity and worthwhile-ness of humanity shine thru these pictures! And what fine craftsmanship, and design organization,–From the most imposing Salon picture, to the most apparently casual little sketch, there is an authority, and power that would be hard to equal. Is this perhaps the greatest period in art to date?

To mention the pictures that appealed to me as being great would almost amount to copying out the catalogue; but without referring to the catalogue (to refresh my memory), the following remain in my mind–

‘The Chess-players’ by Daumier (only 8 x 10, but one of the ‘biggest’ pictures in the show)–’Noonday rest’–’The Poor Woman of the Village’ by Courbet–almost all of the work of Delacroix–’Diana and Actaeon’ or ‘Summer’–a battle scene, ‘a crucifixion’–’The Medow’ by Renoir–small landscapes by Corot; a landscape by Millet–drawings by Millet too–’A Paris Street in Spring’ by Pissarro–and many others–

I spent most of one day and half of another at this exhibit.

After saturating myself with the pictures, I went to look at old favorites, such as the El Greco ‘View of Toledo’ and Bruegel’s ‘The Harvest’ (1)– They never looked so well; I think my mind had been so stimulated by the French show, that I saw these two pictures as tho for the first time. I saw details and textures, and various other relations that had before eluded me.

Other shows I went to were: The El Greco show at Knoedler’s (for Greek relief!) very fine–a tiny landscape in the same spirit as the famous ‘View of Toledo’–

The Max Weber show at the Associated American Artists (2)–Here I am faced with subject matter I do not like, done in a way that convinces me that Weber is a genuine artist–

The water-color show at the Whitney (3)–not especially outstanding–but I must admit my own looked good to me.”

Notes
1. Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “The Harvesters or Corn Harvest (August)” (1565).
2. “Max Weber,” February 11-March 1941.
3. “A History of American Watercolor Painting,” Whitney Museum of American Art, January 27-February 25, 1942.

“Charles Burchfield’s Journals: The Poetry of Place”
by Charles Burchfield
Edited by J. Benjamin Townsend
State University of New York Press, 737 pages

THOUGHTS FOR A RAINY DAY: AN EXCERPT FROM THE JOURNALS OF CHARLES BURCHFIELD

Cleveland, Ohio
October 26, 1914

“…Rain ceases at noon and afternoon is cold and windy with white-rifted cloud-rolls tearings out the Northern Lake. I could not concentrate my mind on my work. Once or twice I went outdoors and swelled with the cold buoyancy of the day. Leaves shooting streak-like thu the air! Leaf-cyclones capering in whirling course over the emerald grass! Half-nake trees wind riddled! Towards close of school while looking out of window I was delighted to note on how the shot like wind streaked over the flattened grass, the gloss spots of the rippling blades appearing like finely sifting snow! At 3:30 thru Park (1) to room. A sleet show wind whistled. Thence to Library (2) afoot. I walk head high & chest out exultant in the wind.”

Footnotes
1) A public park in the eastern part of Cleveland, bounded by Euclid Avenue, East Boulevard, and 105th Street, in which the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Natural Science Museum, and other cultural institutions are located.

2) Probably that of Cleveland Museum of Art in Wade Park, rather than the Cleveland Public Library, three and a half miles away.

British artist Grayson Perry was awarded the Turner Prize for his provocative ceramic vases in 2003. A monumental etching recently acquired by the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts demonstrates Perry’s skills as a printmaker. It combines a diagram of the artist’s body with a medieval map of the world. The composition is riddle with allegorical references to the artist’s own identities and witty allusions to current social, political, and economic themes. Churches for Microsoft and Starbucks, and an Elizabethan portrait of a woman titled St. Claire, Perry’s alter ego/patron saint, are a few of the images that adorn this iconographic tour-de-force.

—
The Hammer Museum is deeply grateful to the following individuals, foundations, and corporations for their gifts/promised gifts/pending gifts of art as well as acquisition funds since April 1, 2009, for the Hammer Contemporary Collection and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts:

Stanley and Ronda Breitbard / The Buddy Taub Foundation, Dennis Roach, Director / Johan Grimonprez / Larry Johnson / Susan and Larry Marx / Lari Pittman and Roy Dowell / Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg in honor of Murray Gribin / David Teiger

The museum also thanks the members of the Hammer Board of Overseers, who have supported the Hammer Contemporary Collection since its inception, and the Friends of the Graphic Arts and CARTA, whose dues support Grunwald Center acuisitions.

(No sound. Run Time: 2 min. 40 sec.)

CONVENTIONS FOR ABSTRACT THOUGHTS
In 1917, the year that the United States entered World War I, Burchfield made a series of symbolic drawings that catalogued emotions, expressing abstract thoughts in semiabstract forms, which he referred to as “conventions.” The conventions are part nature, part fantasy, and they tend to represent dark emotions, such as “dangerous brooding,” “muted sorrow,” and “fear, morbidness and melancholy.” (From Heat Waves in a Swamp or…”the healthy glamour of everyday life”, Texts by Robert Gober, assisted by Becky Kinder)

Reanalysis of Church Bells Ringing, Rainy Winter Night shows more fully how Burchfield used his newly developed symbolic pictographs to illustrate not only his childhood fears but also his adult distaste for religious zealotry, provoked by a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher, his evangelical grandfather, and the example of his late, unreligious father.

The painting depicts the First Baptist Church, located only a few blocks away from Burchfield’s home. The steeple is a monstrous bird with vacant eyes of “Imbecility” and raised eyebrows of “Aimless Abstraction (Hypnotic Intensity)”. The bell tower’s puffed-out white breast swirls with black and blue “Fear”-provoking peals, a shadow of “Morbidness (Evil)” inside its belfry. “Fear” floats at the pinnacle instead of a cross. Black rain bleeds thickly from the clouds, which are gigantic hooking swirls of “Fear” radiating terrifying sound waves. “Morbidness” and “Fear” dominate the roofline, windows, and door of a dark house meant “to represent human evil and misery.” The cowering house on the left shudders–is door marred by the mark of “Insanity.” Balancing forces of good and evil, the white house contains a single lit candle and a decorated Christmas tree, but the curtain’s diagonal hem forms the pattern of “Melancholy/Meditation/Memory of” the time, Burchfield found it difficult to be nonconformist in his small hometown. Through the symbolism in his painting, he was able to reject church dogma, think independently about personal ethics, and express emotions associated with criticism and doubt. (From Conventions for Abstract Thoughts, Nancy Weekly)

Sunflowers (design for M. H. Birge & Sons Company wallpaper), 1921. Watercolor and graphite on paper mounted on board, 27 1/2 x 20 in. Burchfield Penney Art Center. Gift of Charles E. Burchfield Foundation, 1975.

CLIMBING THE WALLS
From 1921 to 1929 Burchfield worked as a designer at the M. H. Birge & Sons wallpaper factory in Buffalo, New York. While he viewed the wallpapers he created there as independent from the art he produced during this time (he once referred to the wallpaper as “hack” work), their designs were, like his art, all based in nature, and they reflected the art-historical influences that had excited and informed him as a student at the Cleveland School of Art, which he attended from 1912 to 1916. Diverse influences such as the Japanese woodcut prints of Katsushika Hokusai and Ando Hiroshige, Chinese scroll paintings, and the decorative illustrations of Arthur Rackham are all visible in his design work from this time.

Burchfield left M. H. Birge & Sons in August 1929. He had been successively promoted within the design department but ultimately found the job of chief designer debilitating in its responsibilities. With the pressures of work and the demands of a growing family, he had created relatively few paintings during his eight years at the company. With the support of his wife, Bertha, and the opportunity to exhibit his paintings with the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York, Burchfield, on the eve of the Great Depression, made the gamble to leave his job and paint full time.

(From Heat Waves in a Swamp or … “the healthy glamour of everyday life” by Robert Gober, as assisted by Becky Kinder in the exhibition catalogue. Published in 2009 by the Hammer Museum and DelMonico Books, an imprint of Prestel Publishing.)

In the third room of the Burchfield exhibition a re-print of one of Burchfield’s wallpaper designs covers the walls. Paintings from this period of his life are hung here.

In a joint effort to present the arts and culture to the diverse and myriad communities in Southern California, the Museum Marketing Roundtable announces the fifth annual “Museums Free-For-All” Saturday-Sunday, October 3 and 4, 2009. The following museums - presenting art, cultural heritage, natural history, and science - will open their doors wide and invite visitors free of charge.*

Participating Museums:
* Armory Center for the Arts - Both Days
* The Autry National Center - Sunday, October 4th ONLY
* Bowers Museum - Sunday, October 4th Only
* California African American Museum - Both Days
* California Heritage Museum - Saturday, October 3rd Only
* California Science Center - Both Days
* Craft and Folk Art Museum - Both Days
* Fowler Museum at UCLA - Both Days
* The Getty Center - Both Days
* The Getty Villa**- Both Days
* The Grammy Museum at L.A. Live - Sunday, October 4th Only
* Hammer Museum at UCLA - Sunday, October 4th Only
* Japanese American National Museum - Saturday, October 3rd Only
* Los Angeles Fire Department Museum and Memorial - Saturday, October 3rd
* The Museum of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles (MOCA) - Sunday, October 4th Only
* Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) - Both Days
* Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County - Sunday October 4th Only
* Norton Simon Museum - Sunday, October 4th Only
* Orange County Center for Contemporary Art - Both Days
* Orange County Museum of Art - Both Days
* The Paley Center for Media - Both Days
* Santa Monica Museum of Art - Saturday, October 3rd Only
* Skirball Cultural Center - Sunday, October 4th Only
* The Studio for Southern California History - Both Days

*Regular parking fees apply. General museum admission only. May not apply to ticketed exhibitions.
**Timed tickets are required. Visit www.getty.edu.

CLIMATE CHANGE
It is common practice for art museums to borrow works of art from other institutions and private collections when mounting major exhibitions like Heat Waves in the Swamp. For example, museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Burchfield Penney Art Center, and the Chicago Art Institute have all loaned works for this exhibition. It is no small feat to move incredibly valuable artwork from one part of the country to another and climate control plays an important part.

As is the case with the work for the Hammer’s Burchfield show, artwork is transported by climate-controlled trucks from the lender to the exhibition site. Museum galleries have well-controlled and specified temperatures and humidity levels to create a stable environment which ultimately protects the longevity of paintings and sculpture. Prior to transport, artwork is often packed carefully in specially designed crates, which protect against temperature changes and handling, creating a safe environment in which the painting or sculpture can be moved from one location to another. Once at its final destination, the painting remains crated for a minimum of 24 hours to allow the work of art and its crate to climatize, or adjust, to the new surroundings. If a work is exposed too quickly to a new environment, it could cause the artwork to contract or expand which over time may result in cracking or other damage. The acclimatization period is a cautionary measure to prevent this and is common museum practice. Here you see a crate containing a painting by Charles Burchfield, which will be removed later this week once the acclimatization process is complete. Stay tuned …

On October 4th the Hammer Museum re-examines the work of American artist Charles Burchfield with Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, an exhibition curated by artist Robert Gober. Featuring over eighty major watercolors, drawings, and oil paintings drawn from important private and public collections, this exhibition also weaves together myriad ephemeral objects including doodles, journals, scrapbooks, and letters from the Burchfield archive at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. This combination of artwork and biographical material in Heat Waves in a Swamp provides new insights into Burchfield as a person as well as an artist.

Curator Robert Gober discusses Hammer exhibition Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield.
(Run Time: 9 min. 44 sec.)

The Hammer’s newest addition Douglas Fogle sings the praises of the LA arts community; Gail sits down for a chat with Jim Leach, Chairman of the NEH; Kenneth Turan gives a glowing review to “Bright Star;” A look at Barbara Eisenberg’s new book on architect Frank Gehry and Dean Rob Cutietta examines the reasons a student picks up a certain intstrument.