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For art world junkies, access to the secret corners of museums can be an addictive substance. On the few behind the scenes tours I’ve been on, the restoration areas have always been a highlight. Part art gallery, part ER—these rooms are where greatness goes to get a second, and sometimes third or fourth, life. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has turned the restoration of Vincent Van Gogh’s The Bedroom (pictured) into a teachable and entertaining moment through a new blog that will trace the process of the restoration as part of an exhibition to be called Bedroom Secrets: Restoration of a Masterpiece. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Bedroom Eyes."
Our family welcomed with much love Jamie (above) into the world early Tuesday morning of this week. Mother, Big Brother Alex (meeting Jamie below), and Dad all doing fine. Dad will recommence blogging as soon as possible. Double the boys, double the fun. And half the sleep.
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When I recently saw a picture of Bob Trotman’s installation sculpture titled Business as Usual (Coverup, Chorus, and Committee) (above), it struck me as the perfect symbol of my life in corporate America. For fifteen years, I belonged to a company that was bought and sold like chattel. We used to laugh at how quickly company letterhead had to be discarded to keep up with the latest name change. In 2001, however, we were finally sold down the river. A foreign company that couldn’t get past Clinton’s Department of Justice’s interpretation of a monopoly found the Bush Administration quite accommodating. The day of corporate judgment when the retained and the redundant were to be separated was scheduled for September 12th, 2001—yes, one day after 9/11. Two corporate suits unfortunately had seats on one of the hijacked planes and died. Out of respect, the company waited two whole weeks before axing 75% of my department. I was retained, but vowed never to forget the looks on the faces of my friends as they were labeled redundancies. In Trotman’s installation, I’m one of the Chorus in the middle, flailing my arms in frustration as such inhumanity is covered over and a committee of corporate types weighs the lives of people against the bottom line with all the compassion of a stone wall.
Two years after that, with an eye on starting a family with Annie, I made the jump from the for-profit world of publishing to the non-profit world, which was strangely making a better profit than the for-profit sector. Better benefits, especially for healthcare, lured me away despite a cut in pay. We were coming out ahead, at least at the beginning. Sadly, the corporate world seemed to follow me, with new corporate suits bringing their inhumane perspective to what was truly a great situation. The better benefits disappeared. Quality of life became a real issue. I started this blog in search of a way of finding a new creative outlet for all the things that I felt were trapped inside me. The job itself had become such a monotonous bore and the workplace a land of the living dead, ala George Tooker’s Landscape With Figures (above, from 1965-1966), that I needed a new escape plan. After much thought, Annie and I realized that teaching was not just an escape from, but also an escape to. I was escaping to the person that I wanted to be.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like my occupation will have real purpose. I’ve never found any real sense of identity in the publishing world. Actually, I’ve felt sorry for some of the people who’ve submerged themselves in their jobs to the exclusion of finding fulfillment in their personal lives. That’s a price I’ve never wanted to pay. The idea of teaching has me bursting with optimism, ala William Blake’s Glad Day (above, from 1796), except, of course, with my clothes on. I’ve always lived the life of the mind as a sideline, a hobby, but as a teacher I will finally be able to bring that part of my life to the front and center. I’m sure this sounds naïve, but I go into teaching clear-eyed. I know there’s drudgery and hierarchies to answer to in the educational world, too, but the final result is something I’m willing to work towards, which is something I just can’t say about publishing. The ethical and moral injustice I’ve witnessed in the field threatens to corrode my soul. Just the promise of teaching even one kid how to think better cleanses my spirit like a warm, summer rain.
I invite everyone to visit my “other” blog, a work in progress about my life as a teacher in progress—Disco Doceo, which roughly translates in Latin to “to learn to teach.” It has nothing to do with The Hustle or the Bee Gees, but will trace my progress learning the steps to the pedagogical dance. Art Blog By Bob will continue as before, but this new venture will surely color and, I hope, improve my writing and thinking about art and life.
[Infinite thanks to Annie and Alex for inspiring me to take this giant leap. I love you.]
The number 42 has equal significance to me thanks to Douglas Adams’ hilarious science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (above). Adams has a computer named Deep Thought ponder “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” After 7.5 million years of computerized pondering, Deep Thought spits out the answer “42.” When I first read Adams’ geek ur-text, I didn’t know what Dada was, but that was a perfect Dada answer. As my age and cholesterol levels rise and footspeed and hairline recede, I find myself waxing philosophical more and more about the “Ultimate” questions. Many of those philosophical mini-quests play themselves out in the posts that appear here at Art Blog By Bob. Works of art, in any media, have always been touchstones for me. I come back to great paintings and poems at different times of my life looking for different answers to address the questions most present in my mind. At 42, the questions usually center on the idea that I’ve reached the halfway point of life. At the top of the metaphorical hill I turn around and survey where I’ve been, hoping it will give me some clue as to where I’ll be going. I guess Adams’ answer was that looking for answers is less important than the journey itself, the “hitchhiking” we all do through our slice of the universe. I recently read a great quote by a Sufi master named Abu Yazid al-Bistami: “This thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.” Just because the answers may never come, doesn’t mean that you should stop looking for them. The answer is the looking.
Most of the answers to my life come from the two most important people in it—Annie and Alex (above, sitting in a giant flower at the Philadelphia Zoo). They are my life, my universe, my everything. I look at Annie and wonder what I did to be so lucky to have her love in my life. I look at Alex and marvel at what he is now and what amazing things await him in the future. Without their support and occasional kick in the pants, I wouldn’t be half the person I am today. They’ve made me a better “seeker” than I ever was before. I’m looking at a great leap into the relative unknown looming on the near horizon that will change my life (and theirs) not with dread but with a sense of excitement and purpose that I haven’t felt for years in my professional life. (More details to follow shortly. Sorry.) If all goes well, the same enthusiasm and joy I hope comes through in this blog will spill over into new compartments of my existence. In some ways this blog was the beginning of a quest that will end in a very different place than it started. Thanks to everyone who’s come along for the ride with me. I hope you stay and watch what’s to come over the course of the next 42 years, or more.
Random Musings:
—As much as the preview of Cezanne and Beyond was a celebration, it was hard not to think about the funeral of slain Philadelphia police officer John Pawlowski taking place at the same time at the other end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Philadelphia has seen too many of their police killed recently. The PMA lowered their flag to half mast (above) in Officer Pawlowski’s memory.
—Before entering the exhibition area, I saw a man in the restroom who could have passed for Cezanne’s twin. He turned out to be another member of the press, but if he’d handed me an apple and mumbled something in French, I would have believed that old Paul had returned from the beyond.
—The Cezanne and Beyond gift shop is offering large lenticular versions of several paintings, including one version of The Card Players and a still life. Cezanne played enough games with depth and perspective that the paintings themselves are disorienting, but looking at these lenticular versions almost gave me vertigo.
—The gift shop also already had t-shirts for the Arshile Gorky exhibition coming this October. PMA PR Director Norman Keyes introduced Michael Taylor’s Gorky contributions to Cezanne and Beyond as an amuse bouche for the Gorky retrospective. (I freely admit that I had no idea what an amuse bouche was before I started watching Top Chef.)
—I looked long and hard at Picasso's The Dream, but couldn't see any evidence of where its owner, casino mogul Steve Wynn, accidentally poked a hole through it. Kudos to the restorers! Here's hoping you got a better tip than just free breakfast at the Bellagio.
[Many thanks to the PMA for allowing me to attend the Cezanne and Beyond press preview. I will be reviewing the catalogue once I’ve conquered the 600-page behemoth. You can see more pictures from the Cezanne and Beyond preview at my Facebook page.]
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