The Old, Weird America Folk Themes in Contemporary Art

FRYE ART MUSEUM Guide for Educators and Students

. . The Old, Weird America was organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and has been made possible by the patrons, benefactors, and donors to the Museum’s Major Exhibition Fund. This exhibition has also been made possible by generous support from Union Pacific Foundation and Michael Zilkha.

This self-guide was created by Deborah Sepulveda, the Frye’s manager of student and teacher programs; studio art instructor Coral Nafziger; and teaching artist Chelsea Green. CONTENTS

Educators

Getting Started 04

About the Frye 04

The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art 04

Background Information on Selected Artworks 05–08

Nineteen Lincolns 05

Dancing Squared 05

Your Lullaby Will Find a Home in My Head 06

Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and Teaching 07

Main Drag 08

Post-Tour Activities 09

Story Telling: Source + Share 09

Holidays: Celebrate All Sides 09

Online Resources for Selected Artists 10

Students 11–16

Welcome! 12

Experiencing Art at the Frye 12

The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes In Contemporary Art 12

What is contemporary art? 12

What are folk themes in contemporary art? 12

Selected Artworks and In-Gallery Discussion Questions 13–15

Nineteen Lincolns 13

Dancing Squared 13

Your Lullaby Will Find a Home in My Head 14

Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and Teaching 15

Main Drag 15

In-Gallery Art Activity 16

EDUCATORS

Getting Started 4 This guide includes a variety of materials designed to help educators and students prepare for their visit to the exhibition The Old, Weird America, on • view at the Frye Art Museum October 3, 2009–January 3, 2010. Materials include resources and activities for use before, during, and after visits.

The goal of this guide is to challenge students to think critically about what they see and to engage them in the process of experiencing and discussing art. It is intended to facilitate students’ personal discoveries about art and is aimed at strengthening the skills that allow students to view art independently.

Specifically, this guide introduces students to American contemporary artists who use realist styles and storytelling imagery to consider American social history. Reaching back into American folklore, these artists create new works that illuminate ingrained social forces and overlooked histories as well as contemporary concerns. The guide also gives students permission to challenge their own assumptions of American folklore and history.

About the Frye The Frye Art Museum is dedicated to artistic inquiry, a rich visitor experience, and civic responsibility. A primary catalyst for our engagement with contemporary art and artists is the Founding Collection of late- nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art by Munich-based artists. Admission to the Museum will always be free.

Located on Seattle’s First Hill, the Frye Art Museum first opened its doors in 1952 as the legacy of Charles and Emma Frye, prominent early-twentieth- century Seattle business leaders and art collectors. Since that time, works from the Frye Founding Collection of 232 paintings, primarily by Munich-based artists, have continuously been on view. The Museum also hosts notable exhibitions of works by recognized and emerging artists from around the world.

The Old, Weird America Folk Themes in Contemporary Art The Old, Weird America considers the widespread resurgence of folk imagery and mythic history in recent art from the United States. Illustrating the relevance and appeal of folklore to contemporary artists, as well as the genre’s power to illuminate ingrained cultural forces and overlooked histories, the exhibition borrows its inspiration and title from music and cultural critic Greil Marcus’s 1997 book of the same name examining the influence of folk music on Bob Dylan and the Band’s seminal album, The Basement Tapes.

Featuring a wide range of media—sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, and video—The Old, Weird America includes artwork by Jeremy Blake, Sam Durant, Barnaby Furnas, Matthew Day Jackson, Brad Kahlhamer, Margaret . Kilgallen, Dario Robleto, Allison Smith, Kara Walker, and Charlie White,

among others. The exhibition is accompanied by a 162-page fully illustrated

catalogue made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc. . BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON SELECTED ARTWORKS

Greta Pratt 5 Stop ➊ Photographer Greta Pratt documents the way Americans remember the past. For years she attended public events such as parades and pageants • and traveled to historic locales including Civil War battlefields and Mt. Rushmore, collecting images of ordinary American history.

On several of her photographic road trips, Pratt met an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, Gerald Bestrom, who travels the country in an R.V. painted to look like a log cabin. Through Bestrom, she was introduced to the Society of Lincoln Presenters, an organization of men and women channeling Mary Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s wife); their motto is “Would I might rouse Nineteen Lincolns the Lincoln in you all.” Nineteen Lincolns was inspired by meeting these 2005 Lincoln impersonators. Pratt discovered that the impersonators admire 18 archival inkjet prints Lincoln’s high moral character. They respect the fact that Lincoln rose from Courtesy the artist a humble family background through hard work, as well as the fact that he was not especially handsome or popular in his own time.

Revisionist historians have recently posited new theories about Lincoln, but the impersonators continue to celebrate his life as a model of American goodness above all. In working with these top-hatted and bewhiskered Presenters on their portraits, Pratt came to view them as “a metaphor for the country—a group held together by a particular understanding of history.”

Cynthia Norton Stop ➋ Artist Cynthia Norton lives and works in Louisville, KY, and has deep interests in “hillbilly, Appalachian, and bluegrass” themes. As Norton explains, “I like to find uncanny stories from the past and use them to describe something new.”

Norton works with found materials—usually common household objects that she combines with performance, sound, and movement to give viewers a folk-inspired experience.

Norton has to get into character before she can create. She transforms Dancing Squared herself into her art-making alter ego, “Ninnie,” who draws heavily on the 2004 domestic traditions of her Southern cultural heritage, creating work that Aluminum, hardware, electric goes beyond the traditional boundaries in art-making. motors, dresses, wire Collection Laura Lee Brown and For Dancing Squared, Norton was inspired by the spontaneous, ecstatic Steve Wilson, Louisville, KY dances of religious groups such as the Shakers and the Quakers, which many see as early influences on rock ‘n’ roll music. Four-square dancing dresses are hung from a metal frame and spin, imitating the technical and exacting quality of square dancing. “Dancing Squared is about how we organize ourselves spiritually,” Norton says. “Square dancing is very mathematical and patterned, and it’s about connecting and disconnecting with partners.” 6 Dario Robleto Stop ➌ Following the large number of deaths from the American Civil War (1861–65), • it became very popular for widows to create mourning jewelry and other objects to show their grief after a loved one’s death. Your Lullaby Will Find a Home in My Head is inspired by the many forms of mourning handiwork common among war widows.

The materials included in this complex and elaborately researched, constructed, and titled artwork by San Antonio, Texas, artist Dario Robleto features a hair braid made from a tape recording of the bleak poem “November Graveyard” by Sylvia Plath (1932–63), material from a mourning dress, objects made from actual wartime bullets, letters, and human bone, all set in a nineteenth-century mourning frame.

Inspired by the process of music sampling used by DJs, Robleto references history, memory, nostalgia, chance, and hope in order to understand the present. Sampling is a method of composing something new from existing sources in a nonlinear manner. To Robleto, this is a philosophy rooted in American history, rather than just a technique. With each new artwork, Robleto extensively researches an event or period of time, identifies and locates meaningful materials connected to that event or time, and then uses Your Lullaby Will Find those materials to create sculptures that stimulate memories of the past. a Home in My Head 2005 Hair braids made from a stretched and curled audio-tape recording of Sylvia Plath reciting “November Graveyard,” homemade paper (pulp made from soldiers’ letters to mothers and daughters from various wars, ink retrieved from letters, sepia), excavated and melted bullet lead, carved ribcage bone and ivory, mourning dress fabric and thread, silk, mourning frame from another’s loss, walnut, glass Collection Carlos Bacino, Houston Sam Durant 7 Stop ➍ Sam Durant is interested in the evolution of American culture. His drawings, photographs, sculptures, and installations draw on history, art, and popular • culture to excavate complex histories of race and politics, art and protest, and fact and fable. Particularly interested in clashes between ideals and reality, Durant often juxtaposes images and objects from charged historical events to expose rifts in the social fabric of the United States.

Here, Durant presents a life-size rotating diorama in two parts entitled Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and Teaching. The work is made from two out-of-use displays the artist purchased from the defunct Plymouth National Wax Museum in Massachusetts. One side illustrates the story U.S. citizens commonly accept as the first Thanksgiving: a Native American teaching a Pilgrim settler how to grow corn by fertilizing the seed with herring, ensuring a good harvest in the fall. The other side tells the lesser-known true story of the holiday: Captain Myles Standish, military commander of Plymouth Colony, killing the Pequot Indian Pecksuot. According to Edward Winslow’s 1624 report from the Plymouth Colony, Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Good News from New England, when the much taller Pecksuot questioned Reaping, Learning and Teaching Standish’s strength and courage, Standish flew into a fit of rage and stabbed 2006 him. Standish then organized a raiding party to wipe out the Pequots, Mixed media, motorized platform declaring a day of thanksgiving after their successful return. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles “I wanted to set up a comparison,” Durant says. “Each of these dioramas tells different sides of the Thanksgiving story. But the Native side of the story, like Pecksuot and the Pequots, has been suppressed.” Because it presents two radically different takes on the Thanksgiving story, the work is an unresolved—literally two-sided—memorial to both the image of Thanksgiving we are used to celebrating and the terrible legacy of violence and genocide associated with it as well. 8 Margaret Kilgallen Stop ➎ Artist Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001) made paintings, drawings, and mixed- • media installations (such as Main Drag), in which she imagines a timeless, folkloric America. Inspired by the warm colors and bold designs of Mexican and Indian storefront signs and the flat figures of Depression-era cartoons, Kilgallen creates a playful and original world of strong women, homeless travelers, and hand-lettered messages.

Kilgallen, along with her husband, artist Barry McGee, was part of the “Mission School” of artists who worked in San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. They were known for working in-between the established art world of galleries and museums and Main Drag street art, such as graffiti. 2001 Mixed media installation Kilgallen rejected the idea that works of art had to be precious, often Courtesy the Estate of painting on scraps of cardboard and wood. She was interested in the Margaret Kilgallen handmade, which she viewed as evidence of hard work, honest expression, and noncommercial inventiveness:

“I’m definitely interested in the past, and in a past that maybe I idealize as a time when things were well-made, and when maybe you couldn’t go to Home Depot to find what you needed but you had to make it on your own… On any day in the Mission in San Francisco, you can see a hand-painted sign that is kind of funky, and maybe that person, if they had money, would prefer to have had a neon sign. But I don’t prefer that. I think it’s beautiful, what they did and that they did it themselves. That’s what I find beautiful.”

Main Drag depicts a charming and empty Anytown, U.S. The work seems to shift between individual portraits of people and landscapes, as well as among images and text. The inhabitants of this imagined deadbeat streetscape—tough women, worn-out surfers, and all manner of lowdown characters—are at once funny and noble figures. The down-and-out, Kilgallen seems to say, may be a drag, but they are an important part of our American identity. POST-TOUR ACTIVITIES

Story Telling: Source + Share Objective: To use an important family object as a tool to explore family history. 9

Have students complete the following steps: •

1 Select an object that has significant family history. 6 Think about the artworks you saw at the Museum. For example, an object that has been passed down How did Dario Robleto’s Your Lullaby Will Find a through generations, a recipe that represents a Home in My Head tell a story of love and loss? How family tradition, or a photograph that documents an did Sam Durant’s Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and important time in family history. Reaping, Learning and Teaching examine the story of Thanksgiving? 2 Describe the object. 7 Think about how you want to present your 3 Interview at least two different family members to object’s story. uncover the object’s history. 8 Present your story to the class. 4 Outline any significant discoveries from the interviews.

5 After compiling this information, consider what parts of this object’s story might be fact and what might be fiction.

Holidays: Celebrate All Sides Objective: To investigate what shapes the American holidays and traditions we celebrate today.

Have students complete the following steps:

1 Select a holiday celebrated in the United States. For 4 Compile information and decide how to present the example: Columbus Day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day, findings to the class. Think about the artworks you or New Year’s Eve. saw at the museum. How did Sam Durant’s Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and 2 Assign one holiday to groups of two or more Teaching examine the story of Thanksgiving? When students to research on their own. Have students selecting a format for presenting, consider visual, examine the story behind the holiday. Why do we oral, and written presentations. For example, build a celebrate the holiday? Students should not diorama, design a book with illustrated drawings, or collaborate in doing their research. Encourage stage a mock debate. students to use multiple sources for their research.

3 Outline similarities and differences between the different sources. We suggest using a chart to help organize their findings. For Example:

Veteran’s Day Source 1: New York Times Source 2: Wikipedia .

Similarities

Differences . ONLINE RESOURCES FOR SELECTED ARTISTS

Cynthia Norton Greta Pratt 10 comfortstand.com/artists/ninnie.html gretapratt.com

• Dario Robleto Lecture by Greta Pratt at the High Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego teen interview February 8, 2007: of Dario Robleto: http://forum.wgbh.org/lecture/greta-pratt-nineteen-lincolns http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2pvb3GqLo8 Margaret Kilgallen Sylvia Plath reading “November Graveyard”: Clip of Margaret Kilgallen from Art:21 series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK2CnSDkMjw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04ejN8ZlX4U

Sam Durant An interview with artist Sam Durant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZdfh7NkDGc

Greta Pratt Nineteen Lincolns (detail) 2005

18 archival inkjet prints

Courtesy the artist . . The Old, Weird America Folk Themes in Contemporary Art

FRYE ART MUSEUM Guide for Students

. . STUDENTS

Welcome! What is contemporary art? 12 The Frye Art Museum is a fifty-six-year-old museum Contemporary art is the art of today. It is both a mirror located on First Hill in Seattle. It was founded by of current society and a window through which you • Charles and Emma Frye, who were Seattle business view and deepen your understanding of the world and leaders and art collectors. The Frye was founded with yourselves. Contemporary art draws upon your personal a collection of paintings by primarily Munich, Germany- connections to a work of art and it questions your ideas based artists. of art, often making you revise your initial judgments. Curiosity and open discussion are the most important Today the Museum exhibits a variety of works from tools you will need to appreciate contemporary art. Give all over the world–both historic and contemporary (or yourself “permission” to really look at the artwork and present day)–inspired by its Founding Collection. The derive your own meaning from it. coolest part about the Frye is that it is the only Seattle museum that’s totally FREE to visit! What are folk themes in contemporary art? Folk themes originate from folk traditions. Folk Experiencing Art at the Frye traditions are beliefs, legends, sayings, and customs Museums can be exciting and active community of a common group of people that are passed down spaces that encourage you to question, discuss, and through generations, often through stories, music, debate what you experience, and may even inspire you jokes, proverbs, and superstitions. to create your own artworks. Americans have rich folk traditions that have passed The key to visiting a museum is to enter with an open on the stories of how this nation was founded and mind. Be ready to see some things—both old and built. These stories are varied and can be historically new—that challenge the way you view the world. Take inaccurate. For example, the stories of American some time with artworks that draw your attention. Think holidays such as Thanksgiving or Columbus Day about what they may be saying to you. Feel free to take are part of American folk history, passed down from notes, sketch what you see, and ask questions. generation to generation, sometimes changing over time as new information becomes available. Though The Old, Weird America: our folk traditions are not always considered historically Folk Themes in Contemporary Art accurate, these stories are tremendously important to The Old, Weird America exhibition examines the recent how we understand ourselves as a nation. They weave revival of themes from America folk history in current or together a portrait of contemporary American identity. contemporary art in the United States. The exhibition includes 18 artists—working in painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation (three-dimensional artwork designed to transform the feeling of a space), and video—who explore ideas of America’s past from Thanksgiving in 1621 to the beginning of the exploration into space in 1957. The artists who created these artworks combine myth and fact to tell a story of American history. Enjoy!

. . SELECTED ARTWORKS AND IN-GALLERY DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Greta Pratt 13 Stop ➊ 1 What comes to your mind when you think about Abraham Lincoln? •

2 Examine each individual portrait. What story does each one tell? What story do they tell as a whole?

Nineteen Lincolns 2005 18 archival inkjet prints Courtesy the artist 3 Think about a historical or contemporary person you idealize. If you were to re-enact him or her, what would you emphasize?

Cynthia Norton Stop ➋ 1 Describe the materials. What does this artwork remind you of?

2 Describe the movement in this artwork:

Dancing Squared 2004 Aluminum, hardware, electric motors, dresses, wire Collection Laura Lee Brown and 3 What does the title Dancing Squared mean to you? Steve Wilson, Louisville, KY 14 Dario Robleto

Stop ➌ 1 Look closely at this artwork. What do you see? List all the materials you • think this artist used to make this artwork.

2 Read the label. Why do you think the artist selected these materials for this artwork?

3 Can you think of ways that people celebrate, mourn, and remember soldiers today?

Your Lullaby Will Find a Home in My Head 2005 Hair braids made from a stretched and curled audio-tape recording of Sylvia Plath reciting “November Graveyard,” homemade paper (pulp made from soldiers’ letters to mothers and daughters from various wars, ink retrieved from letters, sepia), excavated and melted bullet lead, carved ribcage bone and ivory, mourning dress fabric and thread, silk, mourning frame from another’s loss, walnut, glass Collection Carlos Bacino, Houston Sam Durant 15 Stop ➍ 1 Walk around this artwork. Look closely. Compare and contrast each side. •

2 Think about what Thanksgiving means to you, then read the label. What does this artwork tell us about Thanksgiving?

3 The artist, Sam Durant, is interested in the relationship between fact and fable in American history. When looking at this diorama, which side do you think represents fact and which side demonstrates fable?

Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and 4 Think about another event from American history. How do you know what Reaping, Learning and Teaching is fact and what is fiction? 2006

Mixed media, motorized platform Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

Margaret Kilgallen Stop ➎ 1 Kilgallen plays with scale in Main Drag. Why do you think scale is important to this work?

2 Think about the title of this artwork. Why not title the piece, Main Street or Main Avenue?

Main Drag 2001 Mixed media installation 3 Think about a thoroughfare in your city. How does that main drag Courtesy the Estate of Margaret compare to Margaret Kilgallen’s Main Drag? Kilgallen IN-GALLERY ART ACTIVITY

You should congratulate yourself as an active participant in the process of 16 creating meaning. Choose an artwork that we have not discussed yet. Find a comfortable place to sit or stand near the work. Spend a few minutes checking out the work. Without reading the wall text, think about what the artist might have been trying to communicate when making the piece. Can you sense a story or narrative within the piece? What are some of the visual clues that the artist gives you? What materials did the artist use? Are they important? From just looking at the piece, can you see any connections to a theme from American history? Write your responses here:

Now, taking what you have learned or imagined from just looking at the piece, begin to write an outline for a short story based on what you see. Don’t worry about getting it “right.” This story should be your interpretation of the artwork. Get some paper and compose your outline!

If you need help getting started, ask yourself the following questions: • What/who is the character(s) of this artwork? • What happens or is happening to this subject(s)? • When does this action take place? • Where does this action take place? • What do you think motivates the subject to action in this artwork?

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