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Some American History SOCIALANDPOLITICALACTION 93 Some American History SOCIALANDPOLITICALACTION 93 The Menil Advocacy for Human Rights: A Personal Account FRANCESCOPELLIZZI Nos idées, nos goûts, nous cachent le monde. Or le monde est When I first visited John de Menil in June 1968,2 a time when riots had plus vaste, plus divers que nous. Que le passé ne nous cache sprung up in several cities in the wake of the struggle for civil rights pas le présent.1 on the part of African Americans, he insisted that I familiarize myself Marie-Alain Couturier, La vérité blessée, 1943 with aspects of Houston that are not often visited by tourists, such as its black neighborhoods. He also wanted me to see features that [I]t will be the day not of the white man, not of the black directly related to his and Dominique de Menil’s involvement in local man, it will be the day of man as man. cultural and political affairs, including the campus of the University Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of St. Thomas, designed by Philip Johnson, and the Harris County (Montgomery, Alabama, Sunday, March 1, 1963) Center for the Retarded, designed by Howard Barnstone.3 While I had been somewhat prepared for the Old World refinement and understated cosmopolitan atmosphere of the de Menils’ home, I was surprised in our first long conversations by John’s intense commit- ment to American society, to the idea of its openness and seemingly unlimited potential, to the principles embedded in its founding doc- uments, but especially to the distinctive—and at times irreverent— flavor of the Texan expressions of these New World qualities and values, even in their sometimes startling contradictions. It was immediately evident to me on that first encounter that the de Menils (particularly John) viewed, and had seized on, the contro- versial complexities of the Texan and American social fabric as fer- pages 90–91 Students on a school bus en route to tile ground for novelty and experimentation. But the “Menil ethos” “The De Luxe Show,”Houston, 1971 that informed their social action came with a distinctive aesthetic connotation—one grounded in an original synthesis between the Fig. 7.1 Dominique de Menil at the dedication of the iconoclastic, anti-establishment, and anti-bourgeois tradition of Dada Rothko Chapel, Houston, 1971 and Surrealist modernism that emerged around the First World War 94 FRANCESCOPELLIZZI | ADVOCACYFORHUMANRIGHTS 95 on the forms of social organization and power relations they are sub- ject to—i.e., their political setting, so that in this respect “human rights” becomes equivalent to “civil/civic rights”—John felt that he must try to transform what he could not agree with, ideally through persua- sion. This meant seeking and transmitting an ever-broader awareness of the specific limitations under which individuals and groups are allowed to act in shaping the conditions of their own social existence.5 Such an orientation is also what may have first inspired the ambi- tious and original research project launched by John and Dominique de Menil in the early 1960s called the Image of the Black in Western Art. While undoubtedly prompted by their acute awareness of the still unresolved racial rifts in American and European societies, this research project went deeper into the study of racism’s origins: the de Menils sought to compile a complete visual archive of the repre- sentation of sub-Saharan Africans in European, Middle Eastern, and American arts from antiquity to the beginning of the twentieth cen- Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 opposite tury, and in the process to produce a series of in-depth studies on John and Dominique de Menil with Archbishop “Traditional Modes of Contemplation and George Khodr, Metropolitan of Byblos and Action in World Religions,”colloquium at the implications of this iconography for race relations in Western Batroun (Mount Lebanon), and Nizar Raslan, the Rothko Chapel, Houston, 1973 cultural history. It was typical of the de Menils’ constructive and Beirut, 1971 thoughtful approach to social and historical issues that they did not limit themselves to pursuing what could easily have become a super- and the radically new forms of creative engagement developed in ficial (if harrowing) documentation of how black Africans had been America by native and immigrant artists right after the Second World consistently degraded in Western representation (even, and often of divergent aims; after all, Dominique converted to Catholicism in over and managed to calm him down.11 But the unprecedented feat War. Suddenly, while staying at the de Menils’ home, not only did especially, when “beautified” and idealized). They instead encour- part as a consequence of marrying John. However, in progressively of gathering together religious leaders from different faiths, which Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman seem much less remote from aged and supported distinguished scholars, who had never before distancing themselves from the University of St. Thomas (of which had all too often been bloodily at war throughout their history, to Max Ernst and René Magritte, but their profound kinship revealed thought the question relevant to their pursuits, to investigate it, they had been major supporters) as they developed their ideas for celebrate the chapel’s opening in February 1971 was largely Domi- a political undertone—in terms of both the social engagement period by period, in great historical and hermeneutic depth, thereby the Rothko Chapel, John and Dominique acted on principal motiva- nique’s doing (fig. 7.1).12 implied by their art practice and their shared pursuit of a vision free establishing a whole new field of legitimate study that had not pre- tions that were perhaps not identical. John appeared more concerned A similarly dual inspiration presided over the first colloquium of traditional European representational canons. For the de Menils viously existed in academic or any other settings, but whose human with the limitations on civic activism that such a close association held at the Rothko Chapel (fig. 7.3), the result of careful planning by the neo-utopian modernist dream of a brave new world was still and civil rights implications were (and are) of the greatest urgency.6 with this then somewhat conservative institution of the Catholic John, Dominique, and others, which included extensive interna- worth pursuing—especially in America. So it did not surprise me, For John and Dominique de Menil, there were no barriers—rather, Church might entail for the Rothko Chapel (especially in the pro- tional travel to meet with leaders of diverse faiths (fig. 7.2).13 Held on three years later, when John promoted a contemporary art exhibi- essential connections—between art and vital social concerns, nor motion of civil rights), while Dominique’s chief dissatisfaction at least July 22–30, 1973, only seven weeks after John’s death, it was an tion of the most exacting quality in an abandoned and readapted cin- between social concerns and the loftiest scholarly pursuits.7 initially seemed to be with the perceived reluctance on the part of St. attempt—quite novel in America at the time—to lift the discussion ema right in the middle of Houston’s African American Fifth Ward: John and Dominique de Menil made a remarkably harmonious Thomas’s governing Basilian Order to fully embrace the new ecu- about the role of religion in contemporary society above the limita- the famous “De Luxe Show.”4 team, acting in concert on most issues. Yet, if one were to make a dis- menical principles and Church reforms championed by Pope John tions and conflicts of established institutions, while equally avoid- Visiting this exhibition with him, I witnessed both the affection tinction between them, one could say that John was somewhat more XXIII and the Vatican Council II.10 ing the pitfalls of well-meaning platitudes, New Age vagaries, and with which he was received by local residents and his satisfaction at inclined to focus on the civil rights concerns, and Dominique, on John’s penchant for pragmatic action in the cause of civil rights abstruse neo-esotericisms. The challenge was to revisit the sources of having (not for the first time) defied local and national conventions. the human side of social issues.8 In general John’s involvement in was in evidence when the Houston City Council refused the de Menils’ many different spiritual traditions to see what they could still teach John was clearly unwilling to accept, as something one would sim- public affairs tended to be more pragmatic, and hence “political,” proposed gift of Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, which came with us about our spiritual survival and coexistence in today’s world. Some ply have to live with, the social conditions of the city and country he than Dominique’s, driven by an overriding interest in what could be the condition that it be placed in front of City Hall and dedicated participants in the colloquium had a personal bearing on the de Menils’ had otherwise wholeheartedly embraced (“love it or leave it,” trum- done about certain specific conditions and situations in the short and to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. John was the one who lives. Father Youakim Moubarac, a Lebanese Maronite theologian liv- peted the conservative slogan of the time). For him, to live in the longer term. Dominique’s civic as well as aesthetic concerns often decided to acquire the work and install it, with that same dedication, ing in Paris, had spiritually assisted John at the time of his last illness. United States as a new American (he even changed his name from had more of a religious undertone, guided by her paramount preoc- in front of the Rothko Chapel.
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