MountainMornings

The Rocker and Ms Cait visited the Broad (a new contemporary art museum in LA) last weekend with my niece Lucia and her sweet family. Since Cait, an exceptional artist herself, started working there, I’ve been dying for a special tour myself. Currently on exhibit is Jenny Holzer’s work from 1979-1982.

Just as the Millennial Generation was being born, Holzer was creating some of her best work. She fused political outrage with bright colorful posters of text from brilliant minds around the world, and hung these installations all over NYC anonymously. The Holzer Studio describes the artist’s intent as:

“…a collection of 100-word texts that were printed on colored paper and posted throughout New York City. Like any manifesto, the voice in each essay urges and espouses a strong and particular ideology. By masking the author of the essays, Holzer allows the viewer to assess ideologies divorced from the personalities that propel them. With this series, Holzer invites the reader to consider the urgent necessity of social change, the possibility for manipulation of the public, and the conditions that attend revolution.” http://socks-studio.com/2013/12/13/rejoice-our-times-are-intolerable-jenny-holzer-and-her-15-inflammatory-essays-1979-82/

Those were the days; I was on diaper duty and Jimmy Carter was President. He was jockeying the Iran Hostage Crisis and a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island. Then the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and we all know how that ended. China had experienced a cultural revolution the likes of which we may never see again, unless maybe Bernie wins?, and so a little Mao was sprinkled in with Lenin and Emma Goldman.

This is the kind of visual art I can wrap my mind around – 100 words – not 140 characters in a Tweet. In fact, journalism forced me to deliver around 350 words at a time in expository essays. Trying to explain currents events and town happenings, without too much opinion, without being too provocative. Catching a reader by the throat, but only to tickle not to strangle. Holzer wanted to stop people in their tracks, she wanted them to confront change, she wanted to seduce us with her art as all good artists do….

The Artistic vein runs deep in our family. Sprinkled around our homes are paintings by the Bride, Grandma Ada, my sister Kay and our cousin Sheila. Even the Flapper is represented in a gorgeous portrait of an unknown African American woman. Lucia’s husband Mark Acetelli, is an abstract expressionist who paints hauntingly large, dream-like canvasses that come alive in his hands. In fact, I promised the Bride an Acetelli as a house-warming gift! That, and a trampoline!  https://www.artsy.net/artist/mark-acetelli

Should great art simply reflect its time, or provoke us? To see our lives from another perspective, to stop and step away? Here is one of Holzer’s more compelling inflammatory essays, one that is too contemporary for comfort, maybe taken from a Trump manual: