TSENGWICH

I picked up this book because its author, Gary Shteynhgart, had spoken at my graduation from high school. We both went to Stuyvesant. I must admit I trudged my way through some of the sexual tidbits of the prose. I usually don’t touch this stuff, but the crux of the story kept me reading.

Thirty-nine year old Lenny Abramov, an unkempt, old, and unattractive Jew falls in love with the beautiful, still childlike, twenty-four year old Eunice Park, from a totally different world. He courts her, and they fall in love in a third world New York where China has taken over. American culture has become focused on a thing called the apparati, which satirizes the cell phones we all carry now. Ratings flying every second as the people from across the room gather information about each other and shoot “fuckability” ratings, good or bad, at the girls who walk into the room. The girls buy clothes from “Juicypussy” and “Assluxury” stores and they wear “Onionskin” jeans that are transparent and show everything. The shallow, moral thread of America seems just about to burst. And Lenny and Eunice are supposed to be this beautiful paradigm of a couple, whose love is supposed to shine through the muck of the apocalypse.

But as the title of the novel suggests, this is a sad, love story. In their little microcosm, Lenny and Eunice have sex and read actual books (which this post-literature NY does not do), and are beautiful. They need each other. And in the scene when they consummate their relationships she cries out: “Dont please ever leave me.” And their need for each other is beautiful. It is steeped in history: “the instinct for sex came from somewhere else inside her; it spoke of the need for warmth instead of debasement.” They are creations from a different world, where sex was pure, and such a love as theirs could transcend looks and social statuses and the world’s expectations. But when they walk back onto the cement of New York, the stark reality breaks their magnetization and they see that they are destined to be drawn apart.

But they are not afraid to love. They threw away their fears and loved with a disregard for career and money. And though their hearts would break, they loved. And as an uptight Christian, I cringe at this display of recklessness, but somewhere inside me, I felt a deep longing to love like that. I think we all do. We all want this wild love, even if it can’t shine through. I don’t know.

I’m just glad that I threw away my caution as a Christian to delve into this powerful novel. Schteyngart was a wonderful graduation speaker, and his story speaks with a similar air: a beckoning to live life fully, conquering fears, unafraid to poke fun at our history, and daring to love, even when it hurts and the future is dim. I recommend this book. The prose is wonderful and true.

Leap of Faith was the first Broadway production I ever went to. When the singers took the stage, and I saw the bible-belt garb and the gospel music, I smiled, because I was Christian too. And this would be peaceful to me. I held that thought until I realized that the whole gospel choir and pastor were a group of con-artists set out to exploit this drought-stricken town named Sweetwater and tithe them to death.

The actor Raul Esperza played Jonas Nightingale, the con-pastor, and he welcomed New York, and called us a lot of atheists and Jews. And the whole crowd cheered, well, except me. Later, a little boy on a wheelchair, who would finally test Esparza’s faith, came up to the audience. And he asked us who truly believed in a God. And people laughed. I was scared to raise my hand. And I felt like I should have taken that leap of faith.

But I took this whole poking-fun at Christianity too austerely. I was used to Christianity being super serious, and that this fun was not to be permitted. It was defamation to the name of God. But as the story played out, my heart grew warm for all the characters, even the con-pastor who was stealing people’s money. He was a fatherless man who with his sister drove from town to town with a ragamuffin lot who knew no father except Jonas. And I saw that they had their own struggles too.

In the midst of swindling Sweetwater, Jonas meets a small-town girl named Marla, the county sheriff. They take a romantic liking to each other, but it’s when Jonas meets her son that the main problem in the play develops. The gang had been “prophesying” based on field-notes and “healing” by normal people who could walk onto wheelchairs. And here was a boy who really couldn’t walk. And he believed hard in God and Jonas that he would be healed during the “revivals.” And then I realized that sometimes God even goes through the defamation of his own name to change the ones he loves. Jonas Nightingale had always swaggered into whatever he wanted, but here were two things he could not get: the love of Marla and the healing of her son. He had to take a Leap of Faith that’d eventually lead him to God. And I had to take a Leap of Faith to believe that such a swashbuckler could turn his life around.

For care for the audience, I’ll refrain from saying any more spoilers. As I left the theater, I was flabbergasted at the ability for an artwork to instill such contradictory feelings in me: anger and appreciation. The musical scores, the storyline, the live band and orchestra all worked together meticulously and right on cue to give such a wondrous feeling: excitement, sadness, joy, faith, and perhaps even the Love of God. Art transcends such things. The atheist Freud was afraid to encounter art because it brought in him experiences too real and too divine for him to handle. If he had seen Leap of Faith, perhaps he would have walked out of the theater. It was brilliant: transformative even.

U-Ram Choe created this moving sculpture of aluminum shaped like an alligator, but actually a “Custos Cavum.” Now this piece unnerved me when I first saw it. It has little motors that created many hissing sounds as it moved the spores on the beast’s back, and when I walked into the display room, I heard these hissing noises. I seriously thought I was being gassed (the air was hot too, like poisonous, but probably from the engine-heat). So, I ran out. Of course, once I realized I wasn’t dead, I went back in.

No one was in the room with me, except the security guard, who stood awkwardly looking into some corner. I looked at the “Custos Cavum,” then at the security guard (who didn’t notice me), then at the door. I had no idea what this piece was about. It was as big metal carcass with fern-like things twirling in the air, and I didn’t like it. On my way out (again), I caught a glimpse at the sign posted on the wall. It told this story:

“Once upon a time, there were two worlds. They were connected to each other through a number of small holes, as if the worlds were breathing through these holes. However, the holes had a tendency to close up, so there were guardians next to each one to keep them open. The guardians were called “Custos Cavum.” They took the form of seals and had large front teeth, which they used to gnaw the holes to prevent them from closing up. Whenever a Custos Cavum felt the generation of a new hole somewhere, it fell into a deep sleep. From the body of the quietly sleeping Custos Cavum grew winged spores called “Unicuses.” These spores took flight and each flew to a new hole, where it gave rise to a new Custos Cavum.”

This is one of the strangest works of art I’ve seen this semester, aesthetically and in terms of genre. It’s a sculpture, but it’s incomplete without the story. I think it’s a sculptural narrative.

It was isolated in its own room in the Asian Society – kind of like how the Earth Room was separated from everything. I experienced the same quaint Earth-Room-feel with the Custos Cavum. I was alone with it. I was actually a little down from being alone all day, and I believed in the world it described for a little while. I knew the story, and right before my eyes was a tangible example of the thing that existed. I didn’t need to imagine it. The artist showed it to me. And then suddenly, I felt like I was in that hole the fable spoke about. I remembered how the Custos Cavum fell asleep only when a new hole opened somewhere else. And I wondered if it was awake before I had stepped in the room. And whether I was the new hole that opened up, whether or not it just fell asleep.

It broke the fourth wall for me. And it made me search myself a little bit. Because if it did just fall asleep when I walked in. Then I would be the hole to another world.

I talked to the security guard as I walked out the display room. I asked him if he could bear standing in there all day, because it got creepy in there after a little while. He said he left when there were no visitors.

Artist: U-Ram Choe
Title: Custos Cavum
Materials/Medium: Aluminum, steel, resin, CPUs, and motors
Duration: 9/9/2011 – 12/31/2011
Genre: Installation
Venue: The Asia Society Museum

I encountered this painting on the second floor of the Whitney Museum of Art. It was created by Pavel Tchelitchew in 1946, right after World War II. I wondered if the war had any significance on the drawing. It shows the skeletal backside of a man. He looks damaged internally, with all the yellows and reds in large splotches, and the blues splaying out of him. Maybe he’s dead and not at rest. I found it interesting how he’s not looking at us. Instead, he’s looking into a world behind the canvas, at the afterlife, or some other thing we haven’t seen before. He looks like a hurt Dr. Manhattan staring sadly into space. There’s a vast universe before him, but he still misses what he left behind.

I’m drawn to this painting because my dad can’t walk. When I was 2 years old, he grew a tumor inside one of his vertebrae, and the doctors had to mess with the nerves to extract it. I was never really too bugged with his disability. He never frowned when I talked to him. Maybe that’s why I can’t not smile when I talk, because he talked to same way. When I was a kid, I told him I was glad he was disabled, because we would be able to spend more time with each other at home. He wouldn’t have to go to work. But I never saw the inside of his body and soul.

I asked him more recently whether or not he ever dreams of walking again, and tells me that he does nearly every day. I didn’t know. I asked him how it felt like to wake up and not be able to feel his legs. He told me that it was pain. In one moment, he was walking in a garden, and in the next, he laid paralyzed on his bed. It was a stark contrast.

He’s usually cheerful nowadays. But sometimes, I see him staring into space. I walk in front of him and his pupils do not move, and I wonder what he’s actually looking at. I feel like at those times, he’s in the exact position of the man in Anatomical Painting, staring straight into the canvas trying to search for hints of a creator. Maybe he’s bitter, asking how God could have done such a thing to him. Maybe he’s grateful, that he hasn’t died and can still move his upper body. I don’t know. But I do have a feeling that what he’s staring it is more beautiful than what I’m usually staring at. Pain has a way of making things more beautiful.

Artist: Pavel Tchelitchew
Title: Anatomical Painting
Date of Work: 1946
Materials/Medium: Oil on Canvas
Duration: Indefinite
Genre: Visual Art – Painting
Venue: The Whitney Museum of Art
Friends? I was alone.

“Crunch, crunch, crunch, his feat sank into the snow.” Ezra Jack Keats illustrated this in 1962 and named in The Snowy Day. He then said that “In The Snowy Day the figure you see walking through the snow is a little abstract shape. I wanted to keep it simple.” He wanted the book to be “a chunk of life, the sensory experience in word and picture of what it feels like to hear your own body making sounds in the snow.”

In its essence, Keats writes and illustrates children’s stories. And something about the piece makes it experiential. I do feel my feet sinking in the snow. The simplicity of the piece draws out my memories and I become the abstract red figure in the drawing. I feel the snow. I created the drawing. It wouldn’t be complete without my memories.

The rest of the museum also depends on the viewers. As I walked through the Jewish Museum and saw more drawings, I noticed that the curators had put out little notebooks where visitors could write their comments. There were walls where Hanukkah memories could be posted. There were books where little children drew the word Great or Awesome. There were life sized replications of some furniture that Keats drew, and I didn’t try sitting down on it. But the whole place felt like home to me. Because I could say something about it. The place needed us to complete it.

This kind of art is my favorite, the kind made by artists who are not control freaks. I mean, I like seeing the complete vision of an artist, but the whole interaction with the art seems cold then. When the artist leaves something intentionally simple, then he/she calls on the viewer to finish. The two imaginations meld and there’s a moment of companionship there. I love the feeling of intimacy between the artist and the viewer. It’s what makes art enjoyable for me, knowing that it’s the brainchild of another human being, who I am communicating with through the artwork. The act of being is not ask beautiful as the act of exchanging.

I want to be part novelist and part children’s story writer, because my dad used to tell me stories when I was a kid, because I feel like the speaking and listening of stories connects two human beings in a special way that nothing else can. It ties two humans together with each other, but also with something greater, a bigger story and narrative in the cosmos.

Artist: Ezra Jack Keats
Title: The Snowy Day
Date of Work: 1962
Materials/Medium: Visual Art
Duration: 9/09/2011 – 1/29/2012
Genre: Panels of a Children’s Book
Venue: The Jewish Museum
Friends? I was alone.

When I went to the MoMA, I didn’t like (by personal preference) many of the artworks that were being exhibited. In one piece, a classical artwork had a penis graffitied all over it. The murals on the walls made no coherent image and gave me no coherent feeling. The MoMA made me yearn for a classical, rule-abiding piece of artwork. There’s a form of rigidity and structure that I had wanted to see perfected.

Then, I saw this picture. Henri Cartier Bresson made this silver print in 1952. And I feel like this picture was a breath of fresh air in the middle of some of the more chaotic photographs and artworks. I have learned a lot about photography. I took two classes in high school. I learned about the rule of thirds and about focusing on the eyes with portraits, and of the creative us of foreground and background. And this picture creates, what I feel, is a sound fulfillment of all those aesthetic rules. The man is obviously the subject. And he stands on the lower right of the photograph, so our eyes are drawn directly to him. He is fully in focus, he is the foreground. What made this photo spectacular though is how the background complements the photo, unlike the backgrounds of the other photos I saw. The ships had something to say about the man. They said that he was a wind-hardened sailor, or fisherman, and we see a more total portrait of the subject.

The picture reminds me of how important the background can be to our everyday lives. I know that I’m usually focused on the thing I’m doing at the moment, and not too aware of the background. But if I took a step back to see myself in the context of my surroundings, I’m pretty sure I would have understood the situations more. If I take a step back now, I’d see that I’m at home writing in front of a computer my eportfolio posts, probably because I feel weary of the city from gallery hopping all weekend. And here are some other examples. If I took a step back when I was reading that book, I’d discover that I’d be in Barnes and Noble, to escape the noises of Manhattan. If I took a step back from when I was listening to that sermon, I’d find that I’d be in church on a Sunday when everyone else is busy working.

Sometimes, our backgrounds are saying things to our foregrounds even when don’t realize it, as the man might not even be aware that Cartier Bresson had juxtaposed ships into the portrait.

Artist: Henri Cartier Bresson
Title: Port of Hamburg, Germany
Date of Work: 1952
Materials/Medium: Silver Print
Duration: Indefinite
Genre: Photography
Venue: MoMA
Friends? Christopher Robles, Rodelyn Orange

Both of these installations/statues were on the same floor of the Museum of Art and Design, because they are in many ways very similar, the obvious being that they’re both made by Korean artists. However, the similarities also show for the materials and the aesthetic of the two pieces.

Both pieces are made from materials that were once part of the world before. The Bullman is made from recycled tires, while the Uptown Girl is made of fiberglass and inked photographs. The Bullman is made from relics that came off the street, tires that had its artist, Yong Ho Ji (and probably other people too) had used to tread diverse ground before being made into a sculpture; while Uptown girl is made from photographs, diverse scenes and memories from the mind of its artist Seung Hyo Jang. Both sculptures are Frankensteins recreated from the flesh of the world, and they both exhume a feeling that they were relics, that their stories were long.

I sympathized with the two pieces of art, because I often think that I’m made from the world too. I sometimes imagine that my soul is a magnetic ball that rolls and holds onto everything that it comes past. Sometimes, I don’t believe that I’m something designed unique and special. Sometimes I feel like I’m made from the things I do, eat, read, create. One of the reasons I hold childhood friends dearly is because they have all shaped me. I even hold video games dearly because now that I look back, I realize that half of my imagination was constructed from video game worlds back during my childhood. I love forests and dungeons and fighting big monsters. I respect the old people in my neighborhood because I once loved staring at them, and I think that fed my love for history.

I don’t believe that we can be separate entities from everything else in the world. Henry David Thoreau is one of America’s greatest philosopher fascinated in rebellion (civil disobedience), in being the man to stop the machine, in isolating himself from society and hiding in the woods. He lived around the same time as Walt Whitman, and they were friends. But their philosophies clashed. Thoreau lived by self-reliance. Whitman existed only in community.

I want to be a mix of those philosophies. I know that I can’t survive being entirely self-reliant. I’m made by people and places. And I know that I can’t exist only in a community, because I believe that from the amalgam of the different things that make me, a unique whole emerges.

Artist: Yong Ho Ji
Title: Bullman
Date of Work: 2010
Materials/Medium: Used Tires
Duration: 11/1/2011 – 2/19/2012
Genre: Sculpture
Venue: MAD
Friends? I was alone.

Artist: Seung Hyo Jang
Title: The Uptown Girl
Date of Work: 2010
Materials/Medium: Ink, resin, fiberglass
Duration: 11/1/2011 – 2/19/2012
Genre: Sculpture
Venue: MAD
Friends? I was alone.

Nora McKeon Ezell created this quilt out of cotton in Alabama in 1977. He used the eight pointed Bethlehem star and changed the shapes of the points in order to create this piece. It is apparently endowed by the Great American Quilt festival (I guess quilts are a genre of art!), so I’m assuming it’s one of the more famous quilts out there. I saw this alone at the American Folk Art Museum, which has quickly turned into one of my top two favorite museums.

But back to the piece. It struck me because I was raised with Christmas stories of Jesus being born under the Star of David. The piece of art I helped create was a Nativity play in which I played a magi, following the star to Jesus. With Christmas time so near, looking at the colorful variations of this star from my childhood awakened many memories. Another reason why I liked it so much to put it on my blog is because I grew up underneath a blanket (old and torn but totally mine), and yet more memories were evoked.

This piece of art made me feel as if I was home. Its intricate design absorbed my eye, and its shape and genre led me into my memories, and I felt as if I was a kid lost in another world. I feel that successful art uses memories and familiar shapes to usher us into the grander world within the piece of art. And I feel like all art has a duty to bring us into new worlds, be them worlds that are more exciting or safer or just plain more beautiful than what we are experiencing now. Quilts and stories and paintings should all provide some sort of solace or stimulation.

When I saw that quilt, the world I was ushered into was one in which I was sleeping underneath the blanket of the starry sky. I felt safe with the constellations warm around me. I felt comforted in the world of art. Being an aspiring novelist, I need that sort of homelike feel in my art. So many of my favorite writers have committed suicide from depression, perhaps because the worlds they created were grim, and they became stuck in there. I want the exegetic space that I create to be cheerful and joyful, because I know that there’s a chance that I won’t come out of it. I want to create a world that I wouldn’t mind being trapped in.

Artist: Nora McKeon Ezell
Title: Star Quilt
Date of Work: 1977
Materials/Medium: Cotton and Synthetic
Duration: December 2011
Genre: Quilt
Venue: American Folk Art Museum
Friends? I was alone.