Exterior, Civic Theater, New Orleans, circa 1950s

My apartment, housed in a building that was once Mintz & Mintz Furniture, overlooks the Civic Theater. Built in 1906 by local architect Sam Stone, it is the oldest surviving theater in New Orleans. First a playhouse known as the Shubert (intended by the Shubert Brothers of New York to be the New Orleans branch of their nationwide chain of theaters), later called the Lafayette, the Star, and the Poche, over the years it also functioned as a movie theater as well as a venue for live acts. For a short time in the 1970s it was a Studio 54-esque discotheque called simply, Civic Disco. From Vaudeville to John Coltrane, the Civic served an important role in the cultural landscape of New Orleans. Ask any taxi driver in the city and he’ll tell you a story about this theater. Since I arrived in January, I’ve spent countless hours staring at the roof of this empty building and finally, a few weeks ago, I got a peek inside. I was not disappointed. Remnants of its magnificence remain and though it now bears the mark of time, it stands as a repository of memories and moments that permeates the structure. It is, but one of numerous such buildings throughout a city that seems to have found a way to outwit time. The legacy of this building has remained on my mind over the last several months as I began visiting artists’ studios in an attempt to gauge the creative temperature of the city (even more so, when I discovered that it is in the midst of being renovated). In many ways it has become a metaphor for me, encompassing all that is lost and found in this mythical place. Unstable at best, New Orleans is relentlessly resilient—and its large population of musicians, writers, performers, and artists are the heart and soul of the city.

Interior, Civic Theater, New Orleans, October 2011

As we considered the placement of his work in the exhibition, composer Duane Pitre and I discussed “sympathetic vibrations,” the spontaneous response to sound energy that is most often experienced when sound waves reverberate on glass or even another instrument. The notion that creative practices are also a series of this same kind of vibration has directed me through the body of work that populates Swagger for a Lost Magnificence. Quite fittingly, the exhibition occupies a space that has in many ways been lost. Like so many buildings in New Orleans, the history of the building at 900 Camp Street where the Contemporary Arts Center is located is rich. I was told it once stored pelts, but it is most commonly remembered at the headquarters of the beloved drugstore chain K & B (more on this in future posts). Founded in 1976 by a group of artists, writers, and patrons who were active participants in the city’s art scene at that time (and many who still are), the third floor of the Contemporary Arts Center was never used for exhibitions. The creaks and groans of the old warehouse, and the third floor in particular, are a constant reminder of its past.

With so much ambient noise, it was important to think carefully about how a composition of ambient sound might resonate in this kind of space. Pitre composed Feel Free, 2011 when he moved to New Orleans in 2010 after spending nine years in New York City. Back in his hometown, Pitre embraced a return to silence that is virtually impossible to attain in a metropolis like New York. The subtle nuances of silence, which is never completely absent of sound, inspired this composition. Pitre describes it as “touching on the sporadic, yet orderly nature of self-organizing systems, such as wind chimes.” Using pre-recorded guitar string harmonics, the forty-five minute composition of Feel Free is “constantly changing and subtly evolving, creating melodic patterns that never repeat, though seem familiar.” Filling the gigantic warehouse floor that hosts Swagger for a Lost Magnificence, Pitre’s composition creates a hauntingly enchanting atmosphere. As the only sound work in the exhibition, Feel Free sets the tone for the visual works presented in the space and in the best possible scenario, it is the soundtrack visitors take with them long after they’ve left. The composition is audible from my office on the second floor of the building, and sometimes, I still hear it, even when the speakers are not on.

Listen to an excerpt from Feel Free here:
http://www.duanepitre.com/sound.php

Sometimes the best things in life are cultivated:  wine, relationships, a good story, an art collection. Cultivation has been on my mind quite a bit these days and even more so since I recently participated in a panel discussion about collecting art in New Orleans. I came home after the panel and re-watched the inspiring documentary about one of America’s most famous pair of collectors, Dorothy and Herb Vogel. The story of the Vogels is seemingly unreal. The couple began buying art in the 1960s in New York City on the modest salaries they made as a librarian and a postal worker. Decades later, after many years of research and investigation, they had accumulated one the most important collections of contemporary art ever amassed. Their only rules were that it had to fit into their small one bedroom Manhattan apartment and that it had to be affordable. It is doubtful that a collection such as the Vogels could be compiled in today’s inflated art market, making their story even more fascinating.

Luba Zygarewicz. Detail, Petrified Time: 12 years, 4 months, and 15 days of my life folded and neatly stacked, 2011. Courtesy the artist. Photo:  Tom Macom

I’m particularly interested in the ways in which artists collect. Not only art, but objects that serve as creative fodder or materials for art production. In New Orleans, the accumulation of “things” seems commonplace and yet, it is a complete mystery to me why so many people in one community would hold on to such an insane number of objects when the possibility of them being damaged or displaced is overwhelmingly likely. Several artists in Swagger for a Lost Magnificence have created works that have taken many months, if not years to create. Others are accumulations of many individual objects to make one whole. Luba Zygarewicz’s Petrified Time: 12 years, 4 months, and 15 days of my life folded and neatly stacked, 2011, as the title indicates, was a very consuming endeavor. Her use of dryer lint (as well as tea bag tags in a previous piece) brings to mind the work of Tom Friedman, well known for his transformation of commercially produced items such as sugar cubes and toothpicks into elaborate geometric sculptures. Zygarewicz’s use of personal detritus, however, points more to issues of domesticity and the passing of time, rather than a direct comment about consumerism. This sculpture would have been a fantastic companion to many of the works presented in the group exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York in 2006, Altered, Stitched and Gathered (including Friedman, El Anatsui, Shinique Smith, amongst others), which brought together artists “exploring or transforming familiar objects and social practices through a deliberate methodology.”

Robin Levy. Threshold, 2011. Courtesy the artist. Photo:  Tom Macom

Robin Levy. Detail, Threshold, 2011. Courtesy the artist. Photo:  Tom Macom

Robin Levy’s Threshold, 2011 confronts the viewer with the evidence of an action that has taken place over an extended period. Using her body to wear away her studio floor (with assistance from gravity and a bit of sandpaper), the artist has pushed herself and the wooden plank that demarks the center of the space to their limits. Like Carolee Schneemann’s infamous Up to and Including Her Limits, 1973-1976, Levy’s action in the most literal sense, transforms the body into a medium for mark making. It is impossible to engage in this conversation without recalling Ylves Klein’s use of the female body as a paintbrush, but Levy and Schneemann, reclaim their own bodies, in complete control of the evidence they are imparting. Made in solitude and ultimately a reflective, almost meditative endeavor, Threshold speaks to the fragility of a life lived and the possibility that it may crumble or fall apart at any given moment.

Carolee Schneemann. Up to and Including Her Limits, 1973-1976. Courtesy P.P.O.W., New York

Curling In On Itself, 2010, an installation of hand-carved relief prints mounted on Sari fabric was created by Teresa Cole for an exhibition in Kolkata, India. Patterns are repeated and reworked throughout the piece and together the unique individual parts become one powerful organic mass. With this piece and several other recent works, Cole’s two-dimensional prints assume a three-dimensional quality, making the viewer’s body an integral component of their presentation. Hanging so that one walks right into the installation, viewing Curling In On Itself, is a physical experience as much as an aesthetic one. Not only did this piece take a significant time to produce, it also requires a substantial amount of time to install. Cole’s system of hanging the prints with paperclips and colorful string was devised for its presentation in India. The piece has been modified slightly to accommodate the corner of the gallery at the Contemporary Arts Center, hovering just above the floor, creating an imposing presence upon entering the exhibition. Each piece has been curled and over time, the title also becomes its description. Like Levy’s Threshold, it emphasizes a state of being that could unravel with even the slightest gesture.

Teresa Cole. Curling In On Itself, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Bienvenu, New Orleans. Photo:  Tom Macom

Teresa Cole. Detail, Curling In On Itself, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Bienvenu, New Orleans. Photo:  Tom Macom

Michele Basta works in a range of mediums. Her stop-animation video, Arachne, 2009 merges sculpture, installation, and photography through a compilation of thousands of digital images. Drawing on the history of Surrealism and recalling the work of Avant-Garde filmmakers such as Maya Deren and Luis Buñuel, Basta’s video brings to life an otherworldly creature. According to Greco-Roman mythology, Athena turned a talented weaver named Arachne into a spider when she refused to pay tribute to the gods and acknowledge the source of her great skill. Arachne invites the viewer into the bizarre journey of this transformation using objects laden with meaning such as skulls, beetles, and flower petals, concluding with a violent act that is simultaneously unsettling and poetic. Louise Bourgeois, whose work often interrogated the depths of the psyche, was also quite fond of spiders, and used them as a symbolic reference for the nurturing, protective role of her mother. The duration of the video is quite short, but the layers of meaning and symbolic gestures are rich, encouraging the viewer to engage in repetitive viewings.

Michele Basta. Video still, Arachne, 2009. Courtesy the artist

Maya Deren. Film still, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943. Courtesy The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Watch Arachne here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96_KRbMrUgU

Photographer Stephen Hilger often captures interior spaces in abandoned buildings or the evidence of urban decay. The three carefully composed black and white photographs included in Swagger for a Lost Magnificence, point to the ephemeral nature of the world around us such as the growth of cat’s claw on the side of a building or the shadow created by a string of pendants. Though seemingly the opposite of Zygarewicz’s stacks of lint or the evidence of a repetitive action as in Levy’s installation, I would argue that what he has captured has perhaps been in the making for many years. It is the incisive eye of the photographer who choses the exact instance to eternally capture the moment.

Stephen Hilger. Highway Overpass, 2010. Courtesy the artist

“Only the best,” the slogan of K & B, a drugstore chain that originated in New Orleans, seems to be a standard of time’s past. Though the many stores that populated the Gulf Coast have come and gone, their legacy remains for those who experienced the stores filled with more inventory than any other of its kind and with a guarantee of satisfaction at every turn. Life in the twenty-first century, however, has become increasingly focused on swiftness and convenience, leaving little space for slowly cultivated objects or ideas. Will we look back one day and contemplate all that has been lost? Well-made objects, beautifully constructed or de-constructed buildings, relationships that have been nurtured over decades, lasting ideas. Or will be simply be moving too quickly to bother with what has past?