According to University of Toronto art historian Philip Sohm, “Caravaggio’s popularity—if measured by the number of books, catalogues, and scholarly papers devoted to him—has overtaken that of the other Michelangelo Buonarroti in the last 50 years” (Kimmelman 2010). His popularity spans to the interests of all living generations of contemporary artists and the artistic styles and/or movements represented by his work have expanded from the Baroque of his day to many of the contemporary categories we use today—from Julian Schnabel’s neo-expressionist Exile painting completed in 1980 to Frank Stella’s current move towards “radical abstraction” (Ottmann 2011, 25), Cindy Sherman’s Post-Modern Masters Series, and what scholar Mieke Bal refers to as the “Contemporary Baroque” used by artists as diverse as Andres Serrano, David Reed, Jeannette Christenson, and Carrie Mae Weems as outlined in her book Quoting Caravaggio Contemporary Art, Preposterous History published in 1999. According to David Ekserdjian in an article written for The Art Newspaper last July (2010), “Caravaggio has become the ultimate old master superstar,” subject of his own biobpic, Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, from 1986.
But, why? Why do contemporary artists take such interest in Caravaggio?

Cindy Sherman emerged from the 1980’s as one of America’s preeminent artists, having had her own show (a retrospective) at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1987. A photographer and performance artist, Sherman does not consider herself an art historian or intellectual: “I’m not remotely intellectual I’ve never been a reader of books and my sensibility has been completely shaped by mass media” she told author Kristine McKenna in a 1989 Los Angeles Times interview. In 1990 Sherman released a series of untitled photographs drawn from historic paintings of the masters—Sherman purposefully doesn’t title her work in order to leave their meanings somewhat ambiguous (Cloutier-Blazzard, 2007). Her interest in the subject matter “casts doubt on her supposed lack of art historical knowledge,” according to writer Kimberlee Cloutier-Blazzard. The series makes the past relevant to the present by using past imagery as “a critique of contemporary events in the art world” and pays homage to the past—instead of acting as “Feminist manifestos” or “wry, cynical copies” (Cloutier-Blazzard 2007).

One of the “History Portrait” series of thirty-five photographs, Untitled 224, is a 48” X 38” photograph of Sherman appropriating Caravaggio’s Self-Portrait as Bacchus—better known as the Sick Bacchus (images attached). The work was made when the artist and her husband were living in Rome. It was based upon photographic reproductions of the masterwork because she “never went to the churches and museums there” (Woods-Marsden 2009, 29). The image is Caravaggio’s self-image of the youthful, androgynous Bacchus, the classical god who gifted wine, the means by which poetry was created and philosophies were exchanged, to humanity, and who stands as a metaphor for artistic inspiration and, via his laurel leaf, immortal fame (Woods-Marsden 2009, 34).

The work is unusual for Sherman. It is one of the few images that she has taken of herself representing a man (“it’s harder to do men because you find yourself doing only that boring, tough, macho pose. There’s nothing interesting about that” (Collins 1990)). And of all the History Portraits, it is the closest, most literal imitation (Woods-Marsden 2009, 36). But, why Caravaggio? And why a Caravaggio painting that depicts a self-portrait of the artist portraying himself as a sick Bacchus? Especially since most art historians like to discuss Cindy Sherman’s photos in terms of a Feminist critique of the “male gaze” (Cloutier-Blazzard 2007).

In an effort to find out for myself, I emailed Sherman via her agency in New York, Metro Pictures Gallery. I asked why Sherman chose Caravaggio (email and response attached). The agency was kind enough to forward me three articles that they had on file, which I would assume might closely represent the potential opinion of Sherman herself. Two of the articles were from The Los Angeles Times and another was from Art Issues. All were written in 1990, around the time of her exhibition of the collection at the Linda Cathart Gallery in Santa Monica. Los Angeles Times writer, Kristine McKenna’s, interview of Sherman revealed that Sherman took her work as humorous and poignant, which “tempered any underlying cynicism” although she confided that Sherman admitted to being “always wrong in my interpretations of my work” (McKenna 1989, 90-93). Art Issues author Susan Kandel, specifically addressing the Caravaggio appropriation, which she felt was the strongest work of the series, surmised that “the photograph, with its implicit claims to authenticity, forces the viewer into an acute awareness of the in authenticity of the painting, while presenting itself as an ersatz version of it” (Kandel 1990, 16). She goes on to compare it with Derek Jarman’s film Caravaggio, where the filmmaker stages the counter-Reformation’s “most powerful paintings as tableaux vivants, foregrounding not the flawless finished products but the untidy processes of production” (Kandel 1990, 16).

In an article written for Source Notes on Art History in 2009, Dr. Joanna Woods-Marsden, surmises that Sherman appropriates Caravaggio’s “self-image” (Woods-Marsden 2009, 36). Even if Sherman failed to see the Caravaggio show held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art held five years before her series (1985 and 1990, respectively), Dr. Woods-Marsden hypothesizes, the “buzz on TV and in the print media” about Caravaggio’s “violations of decorum and his inability to conform to early modern societal standards” might have made him “an appropriate role model for an American artist in the 1990s.” If she was merely satirizing the concept of allegory “so foreign to the modern mind” her satire could not in any way diminish the old masters work (Woods-Marsden 2009, 36-37).

The most compelling rationale for Sherman’s appropriation of Caravaggio, I believe, was developed by writer Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard for Bread and Circus in 2007 and indirectly supported by Sherman herself in an interview she held with Therese Lichtenstein for the Journal of Contemporary Art in 1992. Cloutier-Blazzard suggests that Caravaggio inclusion of a “protruding bare shoulder in concert with a sensual look, luscious curls, and all those tactile, juicy fruits” in a painting that “used an antique sculptural prototype similar to the Villa Albani Antinous” (the famous young same-sex partner of the ancient Roman Emperor Hadrian), “begs for interpretation” that the artist was gay. In 1989 and 1990 when Sherman created her work, Jesse Helms “waved around images” of Robert Mapplethorpe (who had died of complications arising from AIDS in March of 1989) in his war against the National Endowment for the Arts. Mapplethorpe, like Sherman and Serrano (who I also quotes Caravaggio) were all part of the New York scene of that time. Tellingly Sherman chose Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus (1593) instead of his later Florentine version of Bacchus (c. 1597) as her prototype. Cloutier-Blazzard is the only writer to point out that the peaches in the Caravaggio are missing in Sherman’s piece. Peaches are traditionally the iconographic symbol of veracity or truth—a telling omission.

In Sherman’s interview with Therese Lichtenstein 15 years before the Cloutier-Blazzard article and two years after Untitled 224 was produced, Sherman responded to questions about her 1992/1993 Sex Series stating: “I definitely acknowledged the fact that I was influenced … by the whole NEA censorship problem.” She later states: “AIDS was also an issue I wanted to address… the fear of aids and the terror that it engenders in the sexuality of our culture” (Lichtenstein 1992, 78-88). Although these replies were directed at her more recent series, I see no reason why, in concurrence with Ms. Cloutier-Blazzard, the concepts might not apply to the appropriation of the Caravaggio Sick Bacchus in 1989/90. The Lichtenstein interview also revealed that Sherman “felt that (her) previous show (before the Sex Series) was “so commercially successful that it made sense to go out on a limb in these difficult times.” “Since I really don’t expect people to buy my art anyway, and because I don’t have to worry about funding or being censored at this point, I thought I might as well really try to pull out all the stops and just make something that directly deals with sexuality and censorship without compromising my values” Sherman stated. Perhaps, Caravaggio, the “most successful” piece from the History Portraits series was the beginning of something new for Sherman. And perhaps Sherman, who also underemphasizes her role in feminism, is more of a gay rights activist than she lets on.

Whereas some contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman (Untitled 224, 1990), Julian Schnabel (Exile, 1980), and Robert Longo (Untitled After Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1601, 2008) directly appropriated images from Caravaggio, others such as Bill Viola (Quintet of Remembrance), David LaChapelle (photographer and film director), Vittorio Storaro (the celebrated cinematographer who shot Angelo Longoni’s Caravaggio) and filmmaker Martin Scorsese (The Last Temptation of Christ) have found inspiration in the hugely influential uses of light and dark and Caravaggio’s choice in composing images like contemporary photography that capture a moment that is not necessarily the beginning or end or a narrative action (images attached). Filmmaker Martin Scorsese indicates that his paintings were “like modern staging in film…powerful and direct” and that he admired Caravaggio’s use of street people enough to “do Jesus like Caravaggio” (Landi 2011, 103). Bill Viola, whose Quintet of Remembrance “recalls Caravaggio…in the visual quality of the images—their color, light, and chiaroscuro, and also their realism” (Frankel 2000, 145)—says; “the thing I really love is his darkness…it’s a kind of organic and ontological force, and that’s really strong for me because video is all about light and dark” (Landi 2011, 105). David LaChapelle is quoted as saying “Caravaggio used light like a photographer and his pictures are cropped like photographs…it’s a photograph before photography” (Carter, 2010). Vitorrio Storaro declared in a lecture that ‘Caravaggio was…a great filmmaker…he was searching for composition, exactly the way we do when we look through a finder or a monitor or viewing the subject on a screen” (Spear 2010).

Art writers support these notions. According to critic David Ekserdjian “it is the collision of unfiltered naturalism with an operatic sense of drama that makes Caravaggio so overwhelming, and it may not be by chance that his public breakthrough came in the age of film noir, when highly wrought chiaroscuro was the dominant cinematic—and therefore visual—mode.” He continues; “the immediacy and directness of Caravaggio, allied to the death-fixated violence of so many of his creations, seem ideally suited to the present (impatient) age” (Ekserdjian 2010, 28). Ann Landi agrees when she writes “the theatrical quality of the artist’s compositions and his extreme use of chiaroscuro, modeling from velvety darks to brilliant lights, also appeal to eyes conditioned by movies and photography” (Landi 2010, 107). Art in America writer, Richard Spear, goes farther by stating; “it is a profoundly visual art with distilled messages that are not reliant on familiarity with conventions…it is significantly in step with contemporary culture and fast-paced media” (Spear 2010).

No contemporary artist has made it more of a life mission to understand and utilize Caravaggio’s transformative techniques in the field of abstract painting and sculpture than Frank Stella, who had been credited in Robert Storrs 1985 New York Times article as the “great academic painter of his generation.” Stella also had his own retrospective in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1987, two years after the very important reintroduction of Caravaggio at the Metropolitan Museum, which Stella wrote an extensive review of (for the New York Times). During this time Stella also published a book, Working Space, which was based upon a series of lectures he gave at Harvard (the Norton Lecture Series). The book, the lecture, and his review of the Caravaggio retrospective all went to great detail to illuminate Stella’s views on the contemporary importance of Caravaggio’s work. In 1987, just before his retrospective, Stella told scholar Laurence Weschler that he came across Caravaggio’s St. John the Baptist in Rome where he had agreed to spend a season at the American Academy in an effort to prepare the lecture for the Harvard Series. “And that painting just suddenly seemed like the only painting there—as though it were not just better than everything else there but more real. I’d never felt before such a physical thing about a painting as I did with that one” (Weschler 1987, 96).
According to Stella, “Caravaggio’s explosiveness, his dramatic pictorial impact, seeks out the problems facing painting today.” He goes on to write that “the more we see of Caravaggio the more we see a complete artist” and that he admires Caravaggio’s “gift for creating a contained, posed, spherically shaped space, sculptural tangibility and spatial depth exceeded by none.” He credits Caravaggio for giving his successors the “pictorial roundness and completeness that we call great and which we instinctively use as a standard to judge painting today, whether we realize it or not.” Stella’s Harvard lecture series defined the “malaise” and “impasse” that he feels abstract painting has fallen into and resolved, as he did in his review, that the solution to the “entrapment in flatness” and “barren imagery of abstraction and the limp caricature of our new realism” lay in understanding Caravaggio whose’ “projective, physical, real pictorial space,” “projective gesture, psychological presence and pictorial import” can “speak to the present-day plight.” That painting needed to be more “lively and real—a sense of vitality that moves and catches the light” like Caravaggio’s work (Stella 1985, 39, 57-58, 71).

Stella acknowledged these qualities in rare early and some mid 20th century artists such as Malevich, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Pollock, Newman, and de Kooning, but felt that the combination of these qualities went missing in today’s work. Critics actually assailed Stella for using the great Master to point to his own work, and because they overlooked the “psychological and spiritual implications” of Caravaggio’s art (Storr 1985, 13). That he “seemed utterly uninterested in the religious, literary, psychological, or spiritual wellsprings of an artist’s work”—only space, composition, form and perspective seemed to matter (Weschler 1987, 95). Despite his earlier criticisms, Stella has spent the last quarter century applying what he felt Caravaggio knew to contemporary painting. In an interview for the International Sculpture Center’s 2011 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture (Stella as 1987 joked about how his “paintings” could also make good “sculptures” Weschler 1987, 98)), Stella continued to quote Caravaggio, ending the interview with his belief that “we still haven’t found any new modes of expression that build on 20th century abstraction” (Ottmann 2011, 25-29). (Images of Stella’s work attached.)

The potential reasons for the use of Caravaggio by contemporary artists are as long as the proposed reasons for Caravaggio to have made the art in the first place. John Varriano does the best job of any in categorizing Caravaggio’s strengths and passions in his book Caravaggio: The Art of Realism. Ranging from erotic appetites to wit, violence to a love of gesture and expression, the book concludes with what I believe are two of the most compelling reasons of all for contemporary artists to emulate: “his realism was part of his self-presentation as an outsider and a rebel, a persona doubtlessly as satisfying to himself as it was calculated to impress or unsettle others”; “in the end, Caravaggio seems to have painted as much for himself as for anyone else” (Varriano 2006, 135).

The “bad-boy,” James Dean-type artist persona is a relevant argument for Caravaggio’s exceptional work to be emulated particularly by young artists. Art in America writer, Richard Spear, concurs writing that “other artists who have attained celebrity status—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, van Gogh, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol—typically have an absorbing life story on which the public can fasten” and Caravaggio’s was full of “the stuff of romantic legend and a perfect fit for the image of the archetypal anguished bohemian artist” (Spear 2010). Andres Serrano, whose Piss Christ drew controversy two years after the New York Caravaggio show in 1987, is quoted as being “drawn to Caravaggio’s use of marginal characters in his art” and his “outlaw character.” “He’s a perfect example of a person who in another life might have been a madman.” (Landi, 2011, 105).

Canadian contemporary visual arts critic takes the rebel persona argument further: “it was this hard-drinking, tough-living painter, who cared, as few artists have ever cared, about the kind of ordinary working folk who just come to church out of hope for heaven or fear of hell, then die and are forgotten” (Mays 1992). We live in a day when many artists find inspiration in speaking of and too the common people. By using common folk, and even male and female prostitutes in his religious iconography, he speaks, I believe, of the highest level of Spirituality—that we are all equal. How can this not be interesting to many contemporary artists today that are seeking deeper meaning in their art and in this world and who, along with an increasing public awareness, have difficulty accepting the wide gap between rich and poor?

Who could speak better of the common people than Caravaggio, who despite occasionally living in palaces, closely identified with the outcast, poor, or dejected? In this regard, John Varriano is also correct, for Caravaggio did paint about himself. Other scholars concur. Catherine Puglisi who wrote a book entitled Caravaggio in 2000 believes that “Caravaggio’s life and work speak to the literary enthusiasms of our day, a time when memoirs are particularly popular” (Landi 2011, 106). John Spike, a Florence-based art historian and the author of the “catalogue raisonne of Caravaggio’s works also entitled Caravaggio (published in 2007) agrees, writing “this is the first painter in the Western tradition who convinces us that every picture he does is about himself” (Landi 2011, 106). Ann Landi concludes her contemporary article with the statement that Caravaggio took Leonardo’s idea that “painters tend to paint faces resembling their own” to “its logical extreme by making paintings that seem directly concerned with his own life.” This is the reason, she says, that he is often described as the first modern artist (Landi 2011, 107). Michael Brenson concurs, writing that Caravaggio may be one of the first artists who seem wholly modern, and who therefore provide a perspective on a particular kind of modern sensibility” (Brenson 1985).

Contemporary artists can interpret Caravaggio’s works in contemporary ways—in theme and technique. Yet the artist left behind no written documents to illuminate either his methods (did he use a Camera Obscura, artist David Hockney questions in his 2001 book, Secret Knowledge) or his intent (was he gay? Derek Jarman, the director of the film Caravaggio, says yes). He leaves the door open for interpretation just like Cindy Sherman does now. But why do an ever-expanding number of emerging contemporary artists—young artists from every major in the undergraduate program at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland in 2011, for example—flock to Caravaggio? Certainly, like Leonardo and the other “celebrity artists” he has entered the common artistic lexicon. His images are found the world over in products and gadgets (from pasta sauce to Etch-a-Sketches), multimedia formats (an iPhone App allows tourists to walk his steps in Rome), exhibitions, literature (in thousands of citations), and even on stamps (from Ireland to Russia to Umm al-Qiwain) and former currency (the 1983 100,000 Lira note). But beyond this distraction is more.

Unique to Caravaggio is painting who he did—the “Other”—how he did—in a spiritual light—when he did—at a time like our own when society ruled by popes and princes is crumbling—touches our contemporary sensibilities and tugs at our soul. With all due respect to Frank Stella’s fascination with Caravaggio’s technique, I find it impossible to separate our current fascination with the artist with his spirituality, which I feel is the main crux of his work. Art writer Brenson agrees when he writes: “No matter how direct and immediate Caravaggio’s work may be, it is still controlled by a penetrating awareness of the unknown” (Brenson 1985). Serrano was only partially correct: Caravaggio was a spiritual madman—a Shaman, if you will. What illuminates a secularly and religiously polarized world more than the extreme contrast of light and dark that Caravaggio so boldly employed—metaphysically exposing the lesson in our spiritual journey? We’ve crossed an impasse where are old traditions, institutions, governments and structures are no longer working. We seek answers. And what speaks more of solution than the unifying principle of raising the images of commoners onto a place at the spiritual table that Caravaggio, through the ages, speaks so loudly of?

What Caravaggio was able to accomplish was genius—a term with “no scientifically precise definition” that is “associated with unprecedented insight” according to Wikipedia (May 7, 2011). Caravaggio may not have known the full extent of the spiritual significance of his work, nor might we be fully aware of the spiritual reasons why his work is compelling to us. Many artists are drawn into tapping into a visual language that is universally appealing yet their own unique discovery, thereby giving them what Caravaggio touched upon. Some like Cindy Sherman reference Caravaggio’s ability to tap into sociopolitical concerns. Others, like Frank Stella, want to reproduce his genius by technical means. Some, like Martin Scorsese, deconstruct his images and compositions and reinvent his otherworldly use of light and dark in contemporary film. Whatever our motivation, we rebirth, redefine, and recreate Caravaggio in our collective consciousness by quoting him. David Ekserdjian writes “it may have taken an astonishingly long time for his hour to come, but from today’s perspective it is now virtually impossible to imagine that his sun will ever set” (Ekserdjian 2011, 28). John Bentley Mays writes, “it is Caravaggio, however, who sill be cherished until there are no more people left on earth to cherish art at all.” Most profound, is the following epitaph written by Caravaggio’s friend, poet Marina Giambattista:

Death and Nature
Made a cruel plot against you,
Michele;
Nature was afraid
Your hand would surpass it in every image
You created, not painted.
Death burned with indignation,
Because however many more
His scythe would cut down in life,
Your brush recreated even more.

Bibliography

1999 Biennial Exhibition Whitney Museum of American Art. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Adock, Craig. 1985. Why Marcel Duchamp’s old hat still addresses the situation to the nines. Art Magazine v. 59, March 1985: 77.

Anderson, Scott. 2010. The Dark Master. University of Toronto Magazine, June 21, 2010. http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/leading-edge/caravaggio-vs-michelangelo-philip-sohm/.

BP Portrait Award 2011. The National Portrait Gallery. http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/bp-portrait-award-2011/the-exhibition/shortlisted-artists.php.

Bal, Mieke. Quoting Caravaggio. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. This book primarily discusses how contemporary artists quote the baroque with some direct references to Caravaggio.

Brenson, Michael. 1985. From The Baroque Age, A Modern Spirit. The New York Times 27 Jan. 1985. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 3 May. 2011. http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-.

Carter, Imogen. 2010. Caravaggio: how he influenced my art: from Martin Scorsese to Peter Doig, filmmakers, photographers and artists explain how Caravaggio’s prophetically cinematic paintings inspired them. The Observer, Sunday 25 July 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/25/caravaggio-scorsese-lachapelle-peter-doig.

Cloutier-Blazzard, Kimberlee A. 2007. Cindy Sherman: Her “History Portrait” Series as Post-Modern Parody. Bread and Circus An online network of writers focusing on culture: July 29, 2007. http://breadandcircusnetwork.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/cindy-sherman-her-%E2%80%9Chistory-portrait%E2%80%9D-series-as-post-modern-parody/.

Collins, Glen. 1990. A Portraitist’s Romp Through Art History. The New York Times, February 01, 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/01/arts/a-portraitist-s-romp-through-art-history.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

Ekserdjian, David. 2010. Caravaggio: sex, violence and film noir: Why is the artist, who died 400 years ago, now so popular, when for so long he was quite beyond the pale? The Art Newspaper, No. 215, July/August 2010: 27-28.

Frankel, David. 2000. A review of an exhibition of the works by Bill Viola at the James Cohan Gallery, New York. Artforum International v. 39 no. 4 (December 2000): 145.

Hunt, Patrick. Caravaggio. London: Haus Publishing Limited, 2004.

Jones, Jonathan. 2011. Comment: The shock of the old: out of 2,372 entries in the BP Portrait Award, it is a retro-academic, soft-porn fantasy that stands out. The Guardian, April 15, 2011: 30.

Kandel, Susan. 1990. Cindy Sherman. Art Issues Sept/Oct 1990: 16. Sent to me by Cindy Sherman’s agent Metro Pictures in New York.

Kimmelman, Michael. 2010. An Italian Antihero’s Time to Shine. The New York Times, March 10, 2010, Arts and Design. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/arts/design/10abroa

Knight, Christopher. 1990. Sherman: New Self-Portraits of a Painted Lady. The Los Angeles Times, Friday, June 8, 1990 Calendar Section, F1 and F18.

Landi, Ann. 2011 A Case of Caravaggiomania: The bad boy of Baroque is back in style with scholars, museumgoers, filmmakers, and even video artists. ARTnews, January 2011.

Langdon, Helen. Caravaggio: A Life. London: Pimlico, 1999. Very comprehensive yet insightful biography of Caravaggio’s life complete with excellently reproduced images of his work.

Lichtenstein, Therese. (date not specified). Cindy Sherman. Journal of Contemporary Art online. http://www.jca-online.com/sherman.html

Mancini, Baglione, and Bellori. The Lives of Caravaggio. London: Palis Athene, 2005.

Mays, John Bentley. 1992. Ask not how contemporary art has failed us, but how we have failed art. Rich, energetic patrons are the engine behind any successful art scene. Unfortunately, Canada’s art world is being driven by poor artists, penny-pinching curators and academics with an axe to grind. Is it any wonder the scene has become stuffy? (The Arts: Art). Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada), September 26, 1992: C16.

McKenna, Kristine. 1989. In the Footsteps of Warhol. The Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1989: 90-93.

Ottman, Klaus. A Conversation with Frank Stella: Action and Spatial Engagement. Sculpture Vol. 30 No. 3, April 2011: 25-29.

Spear, Richard E. 2010. Caravaggiomania. Art in America International Review 12/1/10. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/caravaggiomania/.

Stella, Frank. On Caravaggio. 1985. New York Times (1923-Current file): Feb 3, 1985: ProQuest Historical newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007): SM38.

Stella, Frank. Working Space: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1983-84. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Storr, Robert. 1985. Frank Stella’s Norton Lectures: A Response. Issues & Commentary February 1985: 11-15.

Varriano, John. Caravaggio: The Art of Realism. University Park Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

Weschler, Lawrence. 1987. Stella’s Flying Ships. ARTnews/September 1987: 93-99. This article was exceptional.

Woods-Marsden. 2009. Cindy Sherman’s Reworking of Raphael’s Fornarina and Caravaggio’s Bacchus. Source Notes in the History of Art Vol. XXVIII No. 3 Spring 2009: 29-39.

Every time you buy a coffee and use a debit card, the coffee house has to pay the bank for that transaction. Every time you do something good for your body (take a yoga class, for instance), eat healthy (buy organic produce), pay for your bicycle to be repaired (because you’ve quit driving) and use your credit card or debit card to pay for these products or services, the bank gets a cut. Fix your bike, Citibank gets paid. Buy a coffee, Bank of America just got richer!!!

It’s so odd to me, living in Portland, where everyone is for “grass roots” something and home gardening, and organic foods and yoga, that everyone, and I mean everyone, still thinks that using their plastic is a good thing. No one seems aware of the fact that the person who is providing a service or a product has to pay the bank when their customers use a card.

Today, I stood in line at the new “New Seasons” market on Hawthorne. I stood in the “15 Items of Less” line. Every one of the five people in front of me paid using their card. That means that with their salad, Citibank got paid, with their tofu, Bank of America got a cut, with their vegan pizza, Wells Fargo got a little bit more money.

People…please…stop. Go to the convenient ATM machine (remember when we didn’t have these?) and take out cash. Then use the cash to buy things. If you go to the book store and then the coffee shop and the grocery store on the way to your massage and pay all of these things with plastic, Wells Fargo just got paid FOUR times. Please stop the insanity. We must get out of our addiction to paying financial institutions for our life. We need to move forward one step at a time to where financial institutions and financial services aren’t the only job producing entities in America.

The flowerless orchid was perched upright on the top of a heap of garbage in a West Hollywood trashcan. Its flowers had fallen, leaving a barren vine held to a stick by a plastic dragonfly. I took it home where my partner, Mike, gently cut off its flowerless stalk and began to nurture the abused plant. Despite his attentive care, the plant looked like it may die.

We knew it was time to move when the noise pollution from leaf blowing landscapers and pile-driving, jack-hammering construction workers from nearby buildings became so consistently annoying that I found myself wearing construction ear muffs in our cramped apartment. Then Mike totaled his car on his drive to work, which began his five-hour commute via public transit. We had long-ago tired of sky-high rent, beeping trucks, the sting of mosquitoes through unscreened windows, and broiling heat from an endless and increasingly harsh sun. Mike’s near-fatality was the last straw.

The economic crash of late 2008 frightened me into interviewing for a job in a friendly and creative city. Portland was mellow and green; its clean, vibrant air often misty. I packed even though the job never finalized (thank Gd!); I knew we’d find a way. A long-weekend trip gave us hope for a teaching job for Mike, and soon we found an affordable rental. We’d move me, Spunky, Pollo the fish, and most the furniture first. Mike would join in a month when he finished his old job. The plants would remain until we brought Mike up.

When Mike returned to West Hollywood after accompanying our cat and me up to Portland, he found that the orchid had begun to bloom. He text-messaged a photo of its magnificent flowers. A true gift, the orchid helped keep him sane in a barren apartment far away from those he loved. Soon his teaching job came through.

When it came time for us to drive Mike, the remaining household goods, and the plants, we realized we had far too much to fit in the SUV we rented to drive him up. Mike suggested that since the orchid’s full cascade of flowers were so unwieldy, perhaps we should give it to his mother; it could easily be crushed in the over-packed car. We agreed not to, and managed to safely pack it. Later I realized that the orchid that was once discarded because it didn’t have any flowers was nearly lost a second time because it had.

Happy in its new home, it bloomed an unprecedented four months—during Mike’s transition to his new job, my acceptance into art school, and, unfortunately, the construction noise of a new sewer line being installed just outside our house. It will be flowerless for at least a year—orchids do not bloom that often. Only a few fleshy leaves will be supported by spindly roots, some which coil above the bark. Always beautiful to us, it will remain in its spot on the center of the table.

The uncut portion was thick with its own dead branches, and bent over a wooden fence into our neighbor’s yard. This unruly full-grown portion (I’ve learned all parts of the bamboo plant can be monstrously out-of-control) was in the far right corner of our garden. Being one who loves symbolism and knows a bit about Feng Shui, I determined that this part of the bamboo was in my Feng Shui “Relationship Corner.” Another section of razor-sharp clumps rests in the middle of the back garden, which is my “Fame/Illumination/Self Expression” area—not a good place to have mangling, bamboo shards!

One recent sunny day, I decided it was time to start cleaning it up. Having nothing other than rose clippers, I went to the local, super-friendly, hardware store to obtain the proper tools. This store is staffed by a brigade of such over-the-top helpful people that Mike can’t stand going there. I like it, and enjoy the free popcorn on Tuesday (Mike isn’t too much into popcorn). This time I ended up in conversation with two employees and a chatty customer. Each told me of the horrors of bamboo: I would soon find out that many Portlanders had similar stories. One elderly employee told me that after first cutting, then digging, and finally using acid, his father (I can only imagine how old his father was) had to cover the bamboo with concrete. The customer, an attractive young woman, said that she broke three shovels trying to dig the menacing plant out, and needed to resort to a six foot metal pick. She brought one over. The thing weighed a ton and cost $49! Much more than I had anticipated spending.

I chose what I felt would be appropriate and extricated myself from the store. The next several hours and days were consumed with cutting, digging, and yanking roots (respectfully) with the full thrust of my 165 pound, pretty-well-built (if I do say so myself) body. The other hardware store customer had asked me if I knew why bamboo was so useful a product now a days. I didn’t know, but soon found out. She told me that like above, so too below: the roots are intertwined in such a fibrous knot that they are nearly impregnable. I soon also found that in addition to the tangle of branches above and rats nest of interconnected roots below, the bamboo had sent missionary shoots. Wayward roots—bamboo roots grow with daunting rapidity—had shot out to form the basis of colonies next to rose bushes and into the yard itself. One boulevard had manifested three twenty-foot-plus stalks in some bushes near my “Relationship Corner” and daringly close to my “Inner Child.” I worked furiously, and managed to get my “Relationship Corner” under control.

Then an odd thing happened. I awoke one morning to find that a hacker had stolen my Facebook identity and Gmail account, and was trying to get friends and family to believe I was stranded in London and needed money. I quickly deactivated the account and stopped the culprit. But who, I had to wonder, were the 200 “friends” I had made on Facebook? Some were quite clearly not who they said they were. One “friend” only posted pictures of herself as a mannequin, pretending to be a former model: Leslie Lemons, or the person behind Leslie, had actually become one of my best Facebook pals. A good majority of the others had been acquaintances from my prior life in West Hollywood, who, quite honestly didn’t have the time of day for me if they saw me in the street. It soon became clear that what I was expressing in my Facebook relationships was not friendship but insecurity. I wanted to appear (not even be) popular. I wanted to be acquainted with people I felt I could entertain; people who I could think cared about the photos and witty remarks I posted. I wanted to be liked. Far too much time had been spent. It had come time to cut the bamboo roots, so to speak, of my imaginary Facebook relationships. Indeed, this time had come and gone well before the identity thief forced me to deactivate.

This was not the only synergy that occurred. The identity theft of my Facebook account had occurred during the time I was working on the prologue and first chapter of my next book. I had been writing about an identity theft: the one that had occurred when I hit my alcoholic bottom. I’ve noticed in the past that when I write about an issue, I sometimes manifest it in a similar situation in my current life. Had I done this again? I’m not sure. What I am aware of is the difference between then and now. Then I had a real identity, which due to alcoholism, I had squandered. This time, what I lost was only a Facebook facsimile of myself. What I lost were relationships that were an illusion. I can see, by comparison, how far I’ve come in my spiritual growth and sobriety by what I lose or don’t.

I’ve recently begun removing the oldest, most unnecessary clumps of bamboo from my Fame/Illumination/Self Esteem corner. I can’t wait to see what will come of that. Hopefully nothing as crazy as my last experience. Perhaps the miracle can work here without the drama? Let’s see.

Roots

Yet it’s beautiful. It’s original builder put a lot of thought and effort into it, designing it in a handsome mid-century style. More recently the little wooden house had been carefully painted in blue and green; colors I ascribe to Portland and inspiration for my new oil painting palette. Surrounded by camellia trees and very old, tall hedges, it sits perfectly in the far left corner of the yard. This corner is the money corner in Feng Sui. The house represents our money. So what, I wondered does it represent?

It’s art in its purest sense; symbolic of just being. It stands serenely in the corner of the yard as the elements increasingly win against it’s rotting boards. In that respect it is in motion, yet it doesn’t protest. I’ve always loved the beauty of ruins, and now I have my own to witness. I see it as proud and elegant, nonetheless.

Inside the house appears to be mostly empty. A table built into the wall has become concave. Upon it were half empty bottles of lighter fluid and other debris that I removed to allow the wood to eventually give of it’s own dignity. On the side of the wall next to this warped table hangs a metal candleholder; precarious since a lit candle would be impractical near the rotting wood above where the lighter fluid stood. I don’t remove it for the time being. It belongs here.

Against another wall is old wallpaper and a wooden block print—oddly homey amidst the otherwise uncared for inners and dirty concrete floor. Beneath these are rotting old-fashioned wooden fan trellises that once must have had a useful life training the many rose bushes that still bloom in the garden. On the floor are two decaying trashcans filled with debris including a watering jug that also outlived its usefulness. In the center of the room hangs a light bulb on an old chord. Dangerously, it appears that the leaky outwardly picturesque house maintains an unprotected electrical outlet.

In the far left corner of the house is a room. It is the only room in the house; a square form jutting into the rectangular space. Oddly the door was bolted shut. I told Mike we had to find out what was in it. After all this was the farthest left corner of the property…the most powerful aspect of our money corner. Sally, the landlord and I joked about finding a pot of gold or a dead body there. She had no idea what may have occupied the room either. Although we both knew a little old lady had owned the house prior to her since 1924.

I convinced Mike to be the man and unscrew the hinge that held the bolt. Perhaps he was intrigued with my speculations or my insistence that this corner held answers to our, or my, money questions. Maybe he had just had enough of my talking about it. Either way, he decided on his own to work on releasing the door one day while I was gardening. Together we opened the door. Cobwebs framed the entire doorframe and what do you suppose we found?

Floor to ceiling black plastic garbage bags filled with mostly plastic and paper debris. My money corner was exposed to be full of trash.

Being one who gives a lot of credence to symbols, I was horrified. I’ve been taking one bag a week out with the trash, which is all that will fit. Last week, however, my progress was stifled.

I walked the little stone path to the garden house and opened the main door. The door is decaying away from its frame, but it’s still cute, painted blue with a green doorknob. I then entered the back room with the intent of removing a couple of trash bags. As I lifted one I discovered a huge, gray, sleeping opossum. I gasped, threw the bag back and ran out the door, bumping my forehead and eye on the old hanging bare light bulb. I became immediately concerned that I could have blinded myself. So I stood out in the yard in an empowering stance with one arm down to the earth and the other to the sky , radiated light from my core and smiled. I felt immediately better.

According to my animal spirit guide book, when an opossum shows up it means that you’re going to have to stretch yourself farther than you thought to achieve what you want to. It also suggests taking Tai Chi, which I’ve begun.

I love the little garden house. It is sublime beauty. Like the house, art is my focus. I produce my art without fear of money, connected to unseen Spirit, surrounded by life, choosing color and form and words, being alive, and experiencing serenity and even loss of time. It is subtle and wonderful. It is wealth and abundance and shelter from the cold. Although my money corner is filled with trash, it is a temporary home to an opossum. This, I think, is good. Even old refuse has a purpose for sacred, beautiful life.