05-Tableau Spring 2002

Tableau SPRING 2002 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1 THE NEWSLETTER for the DIVISION of the HUMANITIES at THE UNIVERSITY of CHICAGO FROM THE DEAN ON CAMPUS 1 DEAR ALUMNI ON CAMPUS 1 Artists on Campus 20 AND FRIENDS Showcasing the art of our faculty artists. 20 In the Theater of the Classroom his issue of Tableau both, we must offer compensation that is Analyzing Performance, Performing Analysis examines the life both competitive with our peers and indica- of the arts in the tive of the high regard in which we hold such T Division, as they human excellence. ALUMNI AFFAIRS are practiced and Yet another priority for the Division as they are studied. Throughout these involves bringing together two entities: the 4 Artists on Education pages, you will note recurring words that humanities and the public. The Franke Institute Alumni artists on their University of designate efforts in combi- for the Humanities and, Chicago experiences. nation—words like “conjoin,” now entering its seventh 22 Proof “conjunction,” “yoke,” and, illustrious year, the Master Gerald Kowarsky reviews David Auburn’s of course, “and,” with its of Arts Program in the acclaimed play. cousin, the ampersand. Our Humanities have been at students, past and present, the forefront of bringing 24 Onward & Upward recognize that rigorous work the Division’s work to a Recent Job Placements in different disciplines with larger public in Chicago, distinct methodologies often the nation, and the world. requires crossing bound- As they increase and 4OFFICE HOURS aries and bringing seem- refine their efforts, they ingly disparate areas of will require resources for ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE knowledge together. programming and growth 12 Social Change and Contemporary Chinese Art More than this, how- that keep pace with the By Wu Hung ever, the insistent presence scope of their missions. of conjoining terms in this We are very grateful 13 Poetry,Politics, and War By Lauren Berlant issue points to our recent efforts to bring the for the loyal support of our alumni and arts more centrally into our intellectual friends, and look forward to a continued enterprise. One of the most exciting markers partnership as we enter this exciting moment FACULTY FOCUS of this effort is also a priority of the in the Division’s history. University’s recently announced fundraising initiative: a new performing arts center, With cordial greetings, 8 Painting and Literature located adjacent to Midway Studios. Besides Three faculty members explore the relationship renovation of the sadly dilapidated but between two art forms. historic and vibrant Midway Studios, the 11 What Matters to Me and Why ARTISTS ON CAMPUS ARTISTS performing arts center will make available JANEL MUELLER By Philip Gossett new music practice rooms and rehearsal spaces, a medium-sized (500-seat) theater 16 Another Chicago School Cinema and Media Studies for student productions, and dedicated Janel Mueller is Professor of English and of the facilities for film- and video-making. By Humanities and William Rainey Harper Professor 23 Richard Stern conjoining a number of arts facilities in one in the College. She has been teaching at Chicago Writer, Teacher, Chicagoan location, the center will also make possible since 1967. Her publications include The Native the kinds of exciting collaborations that char- Tongue and the Word: Developments in English acterize contemporary artistic endeavors. Prose Style (University of Chicago Press, 1984), S TUDENT SPOTLIGHT As a priority, the arts center joins other The Second Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, edited with Suzanne Gossett (Renaissance Divisional objectives that, while more ACROSS THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE, the five faculty-artists on the Committee on English Text Society, 1999), and Elizabeth I: 18 Underworlds familiar, are no less crucial to sustaining the Collected Works, edited with Leah Marcus and The Secret Lives of Photographs18 excellence of the Humanities Division at Mary Beth Rose (University of Chicago Press, the Visual Arts combine a deep commitment to their craft with an equally large commitment to Chicago: faculty endowments and graduate 2000). She was awarded the University of student fellowships. It is difficult to think Chicago Award for Excellence in Graduate a of these separately. Students come to the teaching. In the following pages, we focus on a single piece from each artist and reflect Teaching in June 1998. Division to work with the best minds in their fields; faculty want to work with the most BY WILLIAM ORCHARD Cover: Detail from Laura Letinsky, Untitled, Rome, 2001. Morning, and on some of the ideas and concerns that animate their work. >>>> promising students in the nation. To attract Melancholia #32. Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York. 2 ALUMNION CAMPUS AFFAIRS ALUMNION AFFIARSCAMPUS 3 Space is often dismissed as mere empti- bine with the architectural features as they ness, or it is mapped in the abstract coor- do in George’s “Spaceholds,” a series of unfelt presence, is metaphorically, if not liter- dinates of x and y axes. Yet, the effects of angular wooden structures with rounded ally, a protean figure. It can refer to the sinis- experienced space on the individual viewer metal planes that make salient the force ter underside of an individual consciousness can be transformative. Certainly such that these spatial formations exert on the or to an aspect of personality that refuses soli- effects were evident to Herbert George individual consciousness. tude (“me and my shadow”); it can signal a during a Fulbright Fellowship in England While Chamisso’s Bottle suggests slight- cultural heritage, or it can mark a negative, in 1967, as he studied gothic architecture ness of volume when approached from the divisive influence. at first hand. In his words,“The experience front, its substantiality becomes apparent For T. S. Eliot, in “The Hollow Men,” the of these enclosed volumes of space within when the plywood structure is viewed shadow falls between the idea and reality, Sthe cathedrals made the exquisite stone from the side or rear. From these vantage between conception and creation, between sculptures seem less present.” points, it extends into space, projecting emotion and response. Eliot images this In the succeeding years, George’s sculp- backward: the shadow of some phantom shadow as distancing things from each other ture has undertaken to establish a balance object. Many mistake the silhouette of an and as obstructing unity and creative move- between the object created and the space object for its shadow, whose lightless vol- ment. In George’s rendering, by contrast, evoked. Chamisso’s Bottle (1988) joins ume expands from the object.“Thought of shadows take on a creative life, evoking absent enclosed volume with sculpture, bringing this way,” George writes, “both the shadow forms and bringing new ones into existence. them into harmonious coexistence in a and a spatial volume are different aspects Perhaps because the shadow hovers on the work that visually invites the viewer to step of the same thing—both define volumes, threshold of so many different possibilities, inside. The curves of this sculpture com- one revealed by light and the other defined simultaneously all and none of them, the Standing at the edge of the 110 blue triangles Helen Mirra, NE 1/3%, detail from Sky-Wreck (2001). 40’ x 80’. by light.” medium of sculpture—which, as George made of cotton cloth woven in India, the Indigo cotton cloth. Herbert George, Chamisso’s Bottle (1988), Plywood, Chamisso’s Bottle alludes to the author notes, “exists in a form world that extends far assemblage that comprises Helen Mirra’s Sky- 79” x 60” x 30”. Permanent Collection, Detroit Institute of of Peter Schlemihl, whose eponymous beyond naming and knowing”—can emerge Wreck,a viewer ponders the etymology of an intersection of thought. Although Mirra is Fine Arts, Detroit, Michigan. character sells his shadow to the devil for a as the shadow’s most compelling mode of the word textile and its permutations. Woven, often termed as a conceptual artist, the label bottomless purse. The shadow, a normally representation. web, text, context, textuality (the list goes does not quite fit, if only because it suggests a on . .). What secrets have been caught in this single concept at play. Mirra’s work can be web of reiterated shapes that act on the senses likened to carbon, submitted to high pres- like a visual mantra? The cool blue against the sure, and then expertly cut and polished. The HERBERT GEORGE HERBERT hardwood floor—the blue the Russians have material under pressurization can lead to any a word for, the color of a pigeon’s egg or a number of forms: here a song or a poem, Scloudless sky—momentarily suggests a body there an installation or a film, or all around of water as one anticipates the triangles rising some dizzying mixture of them all. and falling in a continuous loop of rhythmic Certain themes recur: the sea, childhood, I show a friend Laura Letinsky’s Untitled, Rome, waves. But, as the seams creep into view, we landscape. Her recording Field Geometry 2001, the thirty-second piece in the Morning, remarks on how the photographs capture “the realize we are looking down on something (2000) features acoustic-guitar playing that and Melancholia series. In the center fore- familiar and estranged traces that desire leaves on normally obscured from view. The material is refers to and translates the educational exer- ground is a glass vase, filled with murky water, the landscape.” The Morning, and Melancholia being pulled this way and that, as if in some cises of Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of the with a wilted lily climbing out and then falling images similarly reveal these traces in objects that, pre-Socratic debate about the elemental com- kindergarten system that emphasized creative HELEN MIRRA alongside it.

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