Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Rice Minnowing

Kalinga woman
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019
The Kalinga rice minnowing song that appears on Music from the Mountain Provinces is illustrated on YouTube with a vintage photograph of a bare chested woman in a field. I may assume the field is a rice field and the (young) woman is from the Philippines. David Blair Stiffler recorded the song in the mid 1980s in the Kalinga province of the mountainous northern Philippines. The photograph, that I used for the painting above, in the video is certainly not his. The photograph is much older from a time that it was deemed alright to fetishize exotic women. The woman in the photo is quite young perhaps not older as fourteen. Stiffler recorded the Kalinga women inside a bamboo stilt house, whre they certainly had their chests (breasts) covered. I doubt it if women would be working bare-chested in the field at the time the recording was made, or long before that.


I have commented before on the colonialist's attitude towards the exotic, and earlier yet I vowed not to paint gratuitous nudity. This was almost exactly ten years ago and I believe I've been respectful to any individual performer (and all human beings) since. As a middle-aged white male I do not shy away from addressing important issues that come with posting content on the internet. I believe that any (questionable) private feelings one may have as it comes to race, sexuality, violence, or status is culturally induced and to alter one's mindset that will disallow biases will also alter one's inner feelings. We can learn to be a good person. The right education. Don't get me wrong, this is not a pamphlet for ignoring or overcoming one's passions or desires, what is intended is to learn respect. Restraint is commendable when it involves affecting other people without their consent. Relations are eskewed when one party does not have a voice.

The woman in the photograph could never consent to this painting. In the context of the photograph the relation between photographer and model is also one of a clear slant in which the photographer is dominant and the model without a voice. I am aware of the erotic appeal of the photograph and painting, and that this appeal is the true object of the work, and that the ethnographic interest is an excuse. The Philippine woman was selected not to represent agricultural practices in her culture but for her (sex) appeal. She was (no doubt) selected by the photographer for her looks and how they would reinforce the (western) audience's sense of the exotic. The photo was selected by me not because it illustrates the particular song in the top 100 but to indulge in exoticism and to use the opportunity to address it too. As a teacher that I am, I won't miss the opportunity to tell my audience all about it.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Shamanism

Shamans performing ritual in Pegtimel
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019
Becoming a Shaman

The impulse of becoming a shaman was, as it is with the artist of today, the manifestation of idiosyncratic traits. Psychosis, gender ambiguity, poetic sensibility led to an existence as an outsider in society. Unlike today, these differences yielded high respect from other members in society. Today we seek medicine to cure idiosyncrasies but back then these traits were not considered the disease but the cure. For the shaman was the doctor. It was a difficult journey, full of obstacles, crises necessary for the acquisition of knowledge, the ability to traverse various planes of consciousness. Art today assumes a similar function; the budding artist, because of her difference, goes through the ordeal of societal rejection, and through deepening crises she becomes a visionary. She shows her audience the reality beyond the mundane and thus provides her community an important service, that of spiritual equilibrium. Let’s not reject the rejects, rejoice in the manifestations of oddness, queerness, and deviance.

The inevitable crisis that comes with the abandonment of the self into the other marks the onset of the journey of the shaman.

“...a psychosis that is emerging for some reason or other is so strong that the only way out open to the individual attacked by it is to escape from it into shamanistic activity, that is to say essentially by means of artistic productivity, such as dancing or singing, which always involves a state of trance.”[1] “In other words, any person suffering from a psychosis, and who escapes from it through artistic productivity in a trance state is a shaman, or at least a ‘future shaman.’ One who is a specialist in ancient techniques of ecstasy, the shaman normally is a functionary for a non-literate community, serving as its healer, intermediary with the gods, guide of the souls of the dead to their rest, and custodian of traditional tribal lore. The typical shaman comes to this role through either heredity or having manifested idiosyncratic traits (epilepsy, sexual ambiguity, poetic sensitivity, dramatic dreams). Psychologically, shamans depend on an ability to function in two worlds, the ordinary reality of daily life and the extraordinary reality they encounter through their ecstatic journeys. As well, they serve their tribe as a defense of meaning, by incarnating a contact with the powers thought to hold the tribe's destiny.”[2]

“The stereotypical shaman Other, whose practices are perceived as the origins of religion, is singled out as the “artist” of that classic Other archaeological art perceived as the origins of ‘art’—Cave Art.”[3]            – Robert J. Wallis

[1] Lommel, Andreas. Shamanism: The Beginning of Art. Michael Bullock, trans. New York & Toronto: McGraw Hill Book Company. 1967. Reviewed by Dorothy Hammond. Brooklyn College. American Anthropoligist. 1967. Article. Accessed through: American Anthropologist. Vol. 71, issue 3. Article. 2009. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. [Lommel,1967:9-10]
[2] This definition of Shamanism is cited from crsmith, Shamanism (see footnote 1). Crsmith quotes from: Carmody, Denise L. and John Tully Carmody, Ways to the Center: An Introduction to World Religions. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1980.
[3] Mariko Namba Walter and Eva Jane Neumann Fridner, editors. Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2004.

L'art brut

Jean Dubuffet
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019
For a week I visited my old home town which is Columbus, Ohio. Besides visiting family and friends, the Columbus Museum of Art, a trip to Used Kids records was high on the to-do list. I went three times. It's not that you can't buy any record on line these days, there's something about a mortar and brick record store, especially one with a selection like Used Kids. Don't get me wrong, I like Joe's Record exchange, and I like Joe, but the difference between Columbus and Fort Myers is day and night. Which ones of the ten that I selected should I buy? I left behind records that I would've bought in a heartbeat had I seen them at Joe's: One of three Moondogs, one of three John Cages, and a double record of the Art Brut artist Jean Dubuffet who I admire. At $27 I left it behind, the track, that through Ubuweb.com was already in the top 100 (La Fleur de barbe) was not even on this record.

Friday, June 14, 2019

Thee Avant Garde

Ann Magnuson
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2018
From the 1991 album The Power of Pussy LP comes the song Nick Cave Dolls. How did it happen that I didn't hear of Bongwater in the 1990s? "Wow...They have Nick Cave dolls now...I want one"