Crossing Borders: Appropriations and Collaborations Traversée Des Frontières - Appropriations Et Collaborations

Home , Black Square (painting), De Stijl, Enguerrand Quarton, Jeremy Belknap, Kinetic art, Louise Catherine Breslau

Interfaces Image Texte Language

38 | 2017 Crossing Borders: Appropriations and Collaborations Traversée des frontières - appropriations et collaborations

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/305 DOI: 10.4000/interfaces.305 ISSN: 2647-6754

Publisher: Université de Bourgogne, Université de Paris, College of the Holy Cross

Printed version Date of publication: 1 January 2017 ISSN: 1164-6225

Electronic reference Interfaces, 38 | 2017, “Crossing Borders: Appropriations and Collaborations” [Online], Online since 01 June 2018, connection on 06 January 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/305; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/interfaces.305

Les contenus de la revue Interfaces sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 38 AGE LANGU

UNIVERSITÉ PARIS DIDEROT DIDEROT UNIVERSITÉ PARIS COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS THE HOLY COLLEGE OF REVUE RECONNUE PAR LE CNRS REVUE RECONNUE PAR UNIVERSITÉ DE BOURGOGNE - Dijon CROSSING BORDERS: CROSSING TEXTE IMAGE APPROPRIATIONS AND COLLABORATIONS APPROPRIATIONS INTERFACES Award Parnassus

VOL 38 - INTERFACES - 2017 » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon » de Rita Duffy

AGE Cloth

LANGU

: A Multimodal Novel” Multimodal A : E TEXT

Using Life 978-0-9831752-5-4 IMAGE

: De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « : De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans

INTERFACES ABDELMESSIH PLESCH MARCANGELI SERÉE-CHAUSSINAND On Appropriations the Sacred Heart at the Newton Country Day School of of Glass) An Túr Gloine (Tower Art Avant-Garde and Images and 1960s Cybernetic Words Signals Crossing Borders: in “Strategies of Engagement Blake & Shakespeare Memorial Epitaph in a 9/11 Virgilian Allusion: Quoting a Allure without American Landscape Painting Antebellum Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians In Text, Shipbreak Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Textual Adrian Henri – Total Artist Total Adrian Henri – Lin et lignes retissés PHILLIPS TYSON RAGUIN CONTENTS foreword Editors’ PRIX: 40 € / $ 50.00 US - ISBN - Véronique Virginia John A. Marie Thérèse Christelle Aaron SEIDER Thomas L. DOUGHTON Brittain SMITH Michael Catherine Instances éditoriales / Editorial Board

Revue éditée par / Journal published by: the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Mass., USA), Université Paris-Diderot and Université de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, UBFC) Fondateur / Founding editor: Michel Baridon (Université de Bourgogne) Chief editors / rédacteurs en chef : Maurice A. Géracht (Holy Cross), Sophie Aymes (UBFC), Comité de rédaction / Editorial board: Marie-Odile Bernez (UBFC), Bénédicte Coste (UBFC), Clémence Follea (Université Paris-Diderot), (Véronique Liard (UBFC), Fiona McMahon (UBFC), Christelle Serée-Chaussinand (UBFC), Brittain Smith (Holy Cross), Shannon Wells-Lassagne (UBFC)

Maquette / Layout design : Sharon Matys (Holy Cross) La revue Interfaces a été fondée en 1991 par un groupe d’enseignants du département d’anglais de l’université de Cover Art and Art Piece : Claudio Cambon Bourgogne qui comprenait Michel Baridon (rédacteur en chef jusqu’en 2001), Yves Carlet (aujourd’hui à Montpellier), Couverture / Cover design : Sharon Matys (Holy Cross) Jean-Pierre Durix (Université de Bourgogne), François Pitavy (aujourd’hui Emérite), Jean-Michel Rabaté (aujourd’hui Responsable d’Édition / Copy editor: Pamela Reponen (Holy Cross), Abigail Kehoe ’17 à Philadelphie), Michel Ratié (Université de Bourgogne). Book Review Editors: Christopher Dustin (Holy Cross), Fiona McMahon (Université de Bourgogne- Franche-Comté) Treasurer & Circulation Officer: Christelle Serée-Chaussinand (Université de Bourgogne- Franche-Comté) Constatant le rôle de la culture visuelle dans notre civilisation, ces enseignants souhaitaient élargir le champ et les méthodes de leur enseignement en explorant la relation image/langage. Afin d’envisager cette relation sous l’angle Comité scientifique / Advisory board le plus large possible, ils souhaitaient ne pas la limiter aux échanges entre les arts et la littérature mais l’étendre à la Stephen Bann (University of Bristol), Catherine Bernard (Université Paris-Diderot), Pascale Borrel (Université Rennes 2), linguistique et à l’épistémologie. Johanna Drucker (UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, États-Unis), Julie Grossman (Le Moyne University, États- Unis), John Dixon Hunt (University of Pennsylvania, États-Unis), Philippe Kaenel (UNIL, Université de Lausanne, Suisse), La revue, qui est bilingue (français/anglais), a bénéficié, dès l’origine, du concours d’enseignants-chercheurs qui Liliane Louvel (Université de Poitiers), Frédéric Ogée (Université Paris-Diderot),Veronique Plesch (Colby College, États- approuvaient sa démarche et ses objectifs: Maurice Géracht, professeur au College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Unis), Jean-Michel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvania, États-Unis),Gabriele Rippl (UNIBE, University of Bern, Suisse), Massachusetts, États-Unis, et Frédéric Ogée (Université Paris Diderot, Institut Charles V) qui reprenait la tradition du Monique Tschofen (Ryerson University, Canada). séminaire de civilisation d’André Parreaux dans cette université.

Correspondance éditoriale et diffusion / Editorial correspondence and ordering information La 3° de couverture présentait la revue dans des termes qui la définissent toujours: Interfaces est une revue annuelle, illustrée et bilingue, qui prend pour champ l’interface, la surface de partage, entre deux moyens d’expression différents François Brunet Maurice A. Géracht Sophie Aymes mais connexes: l’image et le langage. Directeur du LARCA UMR 8225 College of the Holy Cross UFR Langues et Communication Univ. Paris Diderot, UFR Etudes Anglophones 01610 Worcester, Mass Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté Interfaces a obtenu la reconnaissance du CNRS en 1995. françois.brunet@univ_paris_diderot.fr USA 2 boulevard Gabriel Case 7046 [email protected] 21000 Dijon In 2010 Interfaces received the “Parnassus Award for Significant Editorial Achievement” from the Council of Editors 5 rue Thomas Mann [email protected] of Learned Journals. 75205 Paris Cedex 13 i

I n t e r fa c e s I m a g e T e x t e L a n g u a g e

N° 38

CROSSING BORDERS: APPROPRIATIONS AND COLLABORATIONS

Edited by Maurice Géracht & Brittain Smith

College of the Holy Cross, Mass. Université Paris Diderot Université de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté

Revue reconnue par le CNRS

Parnassus Award ii Interfaces 38 (2016-2017) iii

CROSSING BORDERS: APPROPRIATIONS AND COLLABORATIONS TABLE DES MATIÈRES / TABLE OF CONTENTS

Véronique PLESCH On Appropriations...... 7

Virginia RAGUIN An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart...... 39

John A. TYSON Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art...... 65

Marie Thérèse ABDELMESSIH “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel”...... 105

Christelle SERÉE-CHAUSSINAND Lin et lignes retissés : De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « Cloth » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon...... 127

Catherine MARCANGELI Adrian Henri – Total Artist...... 139

Michael PHILLIPS Blake & Shakespeare...... 157 iv Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Aaron SEIDER Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial...... 173

Thomas L. DOUGHTON Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians In Antebellum American Landscape Painting...... 195

Brittain SMITH Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak...... 223 1

EDITORS’ FOREWORD

INTERFACES: CROSSING BORDERS: APPROPRIATIONS AND COLLABORATIONS

Robert Rauschenberg, painter, sculptor, photographer, performance artist, is associated with one of the mid-20th century’s art world’s audacious crossing of borders, of total appropriation, of complete collaboration when he executed “Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953.” The piece was lettered as just quoted by Jasper Johns. As is well known, the project was understood and supported by de Kooning, who, if at first did not like the idea, finally gave Rauschenberg a favorite, multi-media drawing difficult to erase, as it was an important piece for both artists. Rauschenberg’s projects always crossed borders; here again to test fundamental assumptions, and even a technical problem: Could drawings be made by erasing their markings, and by extension, need drawing be the foundation of painting? Marcel Duchamp, in appropriating a postcard image of the “Mona Lisa” and placing a mustache on the iconic face, as well as in re-framing everyday found objects as readymade art, had already raised some questions about appropriations and the nature of art. Unlike Duchamp, Rauschenberg was not in “Erased de Kooning” manipulating commonplace samples of industrial products, but confronting a unique work of art by a living artist of great repute. The “Mona Lisa” sans moustache still hangs in the Louvre behind bulletproof glass. Only modern technology can at SFMoMA re-view de Kooning’s drawings–and also some of de Kooning’s erasures. When Rauschenberg was done, only vague traces of de Kooning’s work remained; the appropriation was understood by many viewers as a “patricidal gesture.” Rauschenberg avowed his respect and devotion for de Kooning’s work, and on the contrary declared his erasure gestures to be a celebration of the Abstract Expressionist. The episode also informs us about the nature of collaborations, as there are in fact three artists involved: Rauschenberg who conceived and executed the project; de Kooning who contributed his drawing, and who understood and consented to the sacrifice of a favored work for the sake of an experiment not his own—nor did in practice did they share much in common, but they commonly pursued solving problems in painting; and Jasper John whose words bear witness to the proceedings and raise the questions as to what those proceedings signify (still present, though unseen by the public, is a de Kooning drawing on the verso of the erased paper).

Volume 38 of INTERFACES: CROSSING BORDERS: APPROPRIATIONS AND COLLABORATIONS revisits and extends the focus of Volume 37: APPROPRIATIONS AND REAPPROPRIATION OF NARRATIVES. The term Appropriations has itself been variously “appropriated” to include such diverse constructs as cultural misappropration and seizure, influence and adaptation, recycling and subversion, to cultural diffusion and intertextuality. Each presents its own 2 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

issues. Referencing Derrida, Liliane Louvel begins her discussion of Stanley Spencer’s appropriation of sacred text with the following:

To appropriate something means to make it proper, to make it one’s own and thus to integrate it, to incorporate it, thereby giving it a new life. Because it becomes one’s property, one imparts it with one’s own being: what one knows, what one hates, what one likes, what one chooses, is. Then the appropriated is cut off from its former self and becomes other, transformed, re-created.1

Louvel’s focus is primarily on the positive results of appropriation, on what has been made “proper,” that is, made good, made correct, made suitable, made fitting, that which is “giving it a new life” and has been “cut off from its former self.” Necessarily also implied, but left unstated are collateral issues which remain to be interrogated. What is the relationship of the “appropriated and transformed” to its original matter? If the transformation has now made the source “proper,” in what sense is the original “inappropriate,” “alien,” (even “foul”); was it always so, or at what point did it so become? If given “new life,” was the original moribund, can it be erased? Can “the appropriated [be] cut off from its former self” and yet still assume the authority and retain the aggrandizement, the purpose and legitimacy, the original must endow? If “the appropriated [be] cut off from its former self,” on what terms is the original still present? For Rolland Barthes, texts are inherently made up of multiple appropriations, gleaned from many sources, and drawn into unwitting and/or conscious dialogue–the site of creative exchange.

The process of appropriation is one of incorporation, assimilation, absorption, engrossment, captivation and transformation of original matter for the benefit of new interests. Collaboration introduces further dynamics and additional questions; it is to be distinguished from a collaborative endeavor in which numerous craftsmen and artists discreetly contribute to a project–e,g., the building of Chartres Cathedral–in that it demands the immediacy of constant mutual transaction and arbitration of ideas which can only be settled by the intermediary of the common project. Is it possible to collaborate without forfeiting some autonomy, some control, relinquishing some personal artistic identity for the sake of the collaboration? Does collaboration confound our formal understanding of that identity–the notion of autonomy in creativity? Or do collaborations aspire to be larger than its constituent parts?

1 Liliane Louvel, “Stanley Spencer’s Eccentric Styles,” INTERFACES, Vol. 37, 2016 115-126. Cf. Derrida’s concept of re-appropriation and the impossibility for one to re-appropriate what is proper to another one, like a signature, only the other one can do so, in Penser à ne pas voir, Ecrits sur les arts du visible, « Trace et archive, image et art », ed. Ginette Michaud, Joana Maso et Javier Bassas, Paris, La Différence, 2013, p. 94. Editors’ Foreword 3

After all the various instances of appropriations and collaborations are traced, examined, explicated, contextualized theorized, these and similar interrogations are what the articles which follow leave us to ponder.

Véronique Plesch’s “On Appropriations” is a magisterial discussion in which she illustrates the plasticity of the term over time. The first section of her article reviews her own scholarship in the iconography of the 14th and 15th century and how certain paintings of that era appropriated and combined the imagery of earlier engravings to create altogether new iconography, an example of “the cultural processes of appropriation.” The following section centers on graffiti in the oratory of San Sebastiano in Arborio, Italy. The carved inscriptions on 15th century frescoes of saints are devotional gestures made by worshipers. That these ritual markings pointedly echo the wounds of the saint which bears the name of the oratory, not only record communal events and trauma, but also carry symbolic efficacy; it raises in practical terms the troubling question: What is the relationship of the “appropriated and transformed” to its original matter? The authorities, we understand have stopped the practice and thus have come to one conclusion. Finally, the discussion turns to the transformation and adaptation of tattooing in contemporary culture. Indelible marks, successively signs of belonging, of rites of passage, of possession, of ostracism, of dehumanization, have been appropriated as masques, as decorations, as verbal and visual deflections, as self affirmations, as sites “where culture is inscribed, [and] also where the individual is defined and inserted into the cultural landscape.”

“An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart” addresses the work the renowned Dublin cooperative workshop did at the American school. Inspired both by medieval aesthetic and the Irish Arts and Crafts movements, this turn of the 20th century collaborative proved to be ideal; their work signals knowledge of “Italian panel painting, metalwork, and medieval stained glass” evident in their appropriations. They also shared the values and aspirations of the Arts and Crafts revival. Virginia Raguin demonstrates how in their execution of the windows, commissioned artists kept their own approach, even as the collective favored modern “linear abstraction and an emphasis on planar composition,” even as by collective agreement each window contains “a standing figure” reminiscent of the Italian panel painting. Artists of individual windows retained their personal control and artistic identity throughout the creative process and avoided the “tiresome and dead uniformity devoid of all personality” which arises where a window is constructed by “a number of nameless” hands. Eight women saints are represented.

John A. Tyson’s “Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant- Garde Art,” recounts the collaboration of the Philippine poet and artist David Medalla and British 4 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

curator and critic Paul Keeler. It is the history of a short–lived (August 1964 – March 1966) albeit bright episode of the London based SIGNALS, the avant-garde art publication and gallery which in its mission–i.e. manifesto–declared itself a space and forum “for all those who believe passionately in the correlation of the arts and Art’s Imaginative integration with technology, science, architecture and our environment.” Their agenda was more than a call for multidisciplinary practice–and thought it was also that, it crossed language and national borders: Signals not only “juxtaposed text and image for rhetorical and aesthetic ends,” it contained texts in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek, as well as many translations, “and served to forment an imagined transatlantic community of artists and thinkers.” More, it provided an alternative space to New York and a platform Latin American artist did not otherwise have.

In “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel, ” Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih explores the experimental and collaborative graphic novel of Ahmed Naji who writes and Ayman el-Zorqany who draws. The Using Life [Istikhdam al-Hayat, 2014] defies logical and conventional expectations: the title is ironic; appropriations of texts include references to Lucretius, Egyptian and Arabic folklore, ballads, and western pop culture; graphic references seem to allude arbitrarily to classical painting, as well as to cartoons, illustrations, caricatures, a variety of comic book genres, advertisements and other modes of print culture. Texts and graphics seem not merely to digress but disrupt and dispense with any narrative drive, only–as Tristram Shandy might note–to bring them straight into the heart of the matter: cultural dislocation; social dysfunction; failed revolution; political and personal betrayals; intellectual and moral bankruptcy; environmental disaster, and apocalypse.

Christelle Serée-Chaussinand best describes the collaboration of poet Paul Muldoon and painter Rita Duffy in «Lin et lignes retissés : De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans CLOTH de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon» . We cite her abstract: “Muldoon’s poetic text and Duffy’s paintings were commissioned by the Millennium Court Arts Centre in Portadown in 2007 to feature in a collaborative exhibition and catalogue under the general banner “Interrogating Contested Spaces in Post-Conflict Society.” Duffy’s images and Muldoon’s prose poem–which subtly echo W.B. Yeats’s poem “Cuchulain Comforted”–are all about delineating and crossing borders between domestic and institutional spaces; personal and political spaces; garments, skin and psyche; violence and peace; etc. Duffy’s images of vestments, shirts or handkerchiefs deprived of the human bodies that gave form to them; Muldoon’s prose focusing on flax-growing, linen production and sectarian atrocities, combine and dialogue to address questions of violence, power and impotence, posture and imposture, suture and elision, etc. This paper examines how Rita Duffy and Paul Muldoon exhume the past, appropriate it for their own Editors’ Foreword 5

creative purposes and re-view it, thus redefining the contours of the political landscape of the North. It also shows how this collaborative creation is about the whole nature of looking.”

In “Adrian Henri —Total artist,” Catherine Marcangeli focuses on the eclectic interests and multi-faceted work of Adrian Henri (1932-2000) who throughout the 1960s and 1970s not only succeeded in several media–including “paintings, collages, prints, annotated scripts, artefacts and ephemera, silkscreened rock posters, stage wear and . . . audio recordings and film footage”–but as an impresario of collaborative happenings (he generously worked with fellow writers, artists, and rock bands) whose counter-culture was at once local and had international connections. These happenings were at once also installations, and interactive performance; they stimulated the senses of smell and touch of the participants as well as provoked intellectual assumptions, and incited laughter. Henri’s playful and irreverent wit is evident in all his work, such as the verbal assemblage of his Daffodil poems “The New, Fast Daffodil”; “The Daffodils”) which juxtapose Wordsworth and local auto advertisements; and in visual collages in which plastic daffodils, (the prize found in detergent boxes), are the focal point, as in in his “Spring” painting of the Four Seasons series.

Michael Phillips in “Blake & Shakespeare” demonstrates Blake’s youthful preoccupation and absorption of Shakespeare, evident both in his earliest lyric poetry such as “Mad Song” and in his six–scene dramatic fragment King Edward the Third (1776), which would supply a missing historical play. Another fragment, Tiriel (c. 1787) recalls King Lear. But it is in the Songs, where one would least look for it, that the Elizabethan poet and dramatist, is most present: “What Blake has learned from Shakespeare is the use of dramatic personae and point of view. . . . Blake’s Songs are dramatic vignettes.” The images function as stage for the drama; word and image together throb energy. The depth of Blake’s absorption of Shakespeare is revealed in Pity (1795), a large color monotype, illustrating lines from Macbeth’s speech in Act I, Scene vii. The image is not an illustration of the text, as Reynolds and Fuseli had done, but rather “probes beneath the surface of the play . . . [to reveal] the heart and substance of . . . Shakespeare darkest tragedy.”

Aaron Seider’s “Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial” addresses the vexing question of citing an epitaph out of context. Virgil’s Latin phrase “nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo” translates as “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” The letters forged by Tom Joyce from salvaged tower steel and anchored in concrete float in front of a paper tapestry, a collage by Spencer Finch of 2,983 blue water colors representing the sky as variously remembered. The Memorial Wall is thus a collaboration which provides the citation from Virgil’s Aeneid a place and context which in Louvel’s term makes it “proper.” Associated with its source, 6 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

in Book IX of the Roman epic, as Aaron Seider among other classicists argues, clearly would “bring considerable discomfort” instead of tribute and honor. The phrase is disassociated from the epic as the source is deliberately not cited– as Aaron Seider underscores in his title and throughout his discussion, decontextualizing and reframing the citation to be “made fit for a new life” even as it retains the mantle of ancient authority.

In “Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians In Antebellum American Landscape Painting,” Thomas L. Doughton addresses the discourses of words and images which made possible the appropriation of Native American Lands and the “departure” of Indians from the American Landscape. The implementation of Manifest Destiny rested on a narrative of disappearing Indians and empty lands, a verbal narrative rooted in the early decades of 17th century Massachusetts. Less noted is the mid 19th century Hudson River School American landscape painting’s role in that discourse. Most known for its depiction of sublime, idealized, pre-pastoral scenery, it invited discovery, exploration; and when it occasionally juxtaposed agriculture with still untamed wilderness, it summoned settlement. The presence of Native Americans are often, as it were, present in their absence in the paintings, that is present in the names and the legends associated with the locales depicted; and in the occasional appearance of one or two very small figures in the representation of a grandiose natural phenomena such a great waterfall, or palisade. The figures function as do the broken columns in some 17th and 18th century Italian landscapes: remnants of a necessary past now disappeared.

The volume closes with Brittain Smith’s review of Shipbreak, Claudio Cambon’s elegiac image and word documentary of a U.S. merchant marine vessel’s last 13,200 nautical mile voyage from a minor port in Louisiana to the salvage yards of Chitagon, Bangladesh. Cambon’s photographs are active narratives, and his prose vivid visual representations of that odyssey. Cambon reverses the expectation that the visual is primarily spatial and narrative temporal, and inverts that norm to spatialize the narrative and temporalizes the images, in a way that synergizes narrative (word) and image. Arrived at Chitagon, the SS Minole is taken apart, and its raw material, its parts, are transformed, recycled, appropriated for new purposes, given new life in varied industrial, domestic, as well as artistic reincarnations. Shipbreak is the history of an era as well as of the tale of the SS Minole, and, as are all great archetypal voyages, it is also a deeply personal story.

M.A.G.

ON APPROPRIATIONS1* Véronique Plesch

Once one starts considering the notion of appropriation—or, more specifically, what Kathleen Ashley and I called “the cultural processes of appropriation”—it is easy to see it at work everywhere; as a matter of fact, Kathy and I concluded the introductory essay we wrote for the special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (JMES) we curated on this issue by stating that such processes are culture.

As a critical concept, “appropriation” has a history and its appearance in the scholarly vocabulary reflects important shifts in the ways in which culture and cultural production are envisioned and theorized. As we noted in our introduction, the term deserved an entry in Critical Terms for Art History and Robert Nelson’s essay was meant to stand as “a deliberate repositioning and thus critique of the previous essay on influence” (Nelson and Shiff xix) that had appeared in Critical Terms for Literary Study, written by Louis Renza. In the art history volume, Nelson’s entry followed that on originality, penned by his co-editor, Richard Shiff. Kathy and I noted that the “dialectical diptych” thus formed, fostered a dialogue between the two terms, one in which the concept of “appropriation” forces a reconsideration of “originality” (Ashley and Plesch 1). There is no need to review here how the concept of “influence” has eroded in recent decades (we are approaching the half century mark since the publication of Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence). Thinking in terms of influence means establishing the primacy of an urtext, an influential ground-breaking masterpiece. As Louis Renza argued in his essay on “Influence,” it reifies the ideologies of “author” and “authority,” while ignoring extraliterary influences and “culture-specific ideological circumstances” that impact the work of literature (193, 197). But intertextuality came to the rescue, allowing us to think in much more dynamic ways, with for instance in Roland Barthes’ formulation that “a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, and contestation” (148).

Kathy and I discussed how the term of “appropriation” emphasizes the fundamentally active nature of what is not a one-time event but instead, a process, and how its etymology confirms this. From

1 *I wish to thank Maurice Géracht and his Interfaces colleagues for the invitation to deliver the plenary address at the 2016 conference and the opportunity to revisit the concept of appropriation. The students in my Visual Culture of Tattooing seminar greatly contributed to sharpening my thoughts on the question, in particular Lily Steig with her paper on Jews and Tattoos and Shauna Yuan with her research on Japanese tattooing. 8 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

the Latin verb appropriare, made from the conjoining of the prefix ad and the adjective proprius—it means “to make one’s own” (Nelson 117). Two very important issues are at stake and are apparent in the word’s etymology: power and identity. To appropriate is to gain power over something as it is made one’s own. And this is in part why the term carried negative associations when it was first used in cultural studies—and continues to do so, as the notion moved beyond the confines of academic discourse into that of political correctness. Nowadays, in common speech, seldom does the term “cultural appropriation” convey positive connotations. Used in this sense, it functions within a binary and one-directional scheme, one in which a dominant culture appropriates and a weaker culture has no control over its representations or products that are appropriated. Critics even saw a hegemonistic dimension in the theory itself, silencing, or better, as Benita Parry put it, “disarticulating the native” (34). Parry went as far as declaring that Gayatri Spivak, in her postcolonial view of cultural appropriation, “gives no speaking part to the colonized” (Parry 35). In this backlash in post-colonial theory, scholars strove to understand the ways in which “natives,” “subalterns,” “others” may in fact be agents rather than powerless victims, capable of resisting or subverting the imposed colonial agenda even though they may appear to be adopting the tools of the dominant culture. In our essay, we mentioned some important concepts that were generated at that point in the critical discourse, such as Homi Bhabha’s “colonial mimicry,” which is, in Bhabha’s terms, “at once resemblance and menace” (86) and Mary Louise Pratt’s “contact zone,” where colonial encounters take place and where the active and creative process that ethnographers call “transculturation” occurs.

Pratt’s “contact zone” introduced a spatial dimension to our understanding of these processes, a characteristic that appears, albeit in different formulations, in other writers. Bhabha, for instance, considering the contact zone’s liminal nature, described it as an “interstitial passage between fixed identifications” that “opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (4). For Gloria Anzaldúa, it is the “Borderlands” or frontera: not only the actual geographic space between the United States and Mexico where she grew up as a Chicana, but also, metaphorically, a site of multiple languages, cultures, and gender identities. Just as in the title of this conference and issue of Interfaces, the matter is one of “Crossing Borders,” or rather of considering a space in which “borders”—frontières and fronteras—become the site for cultural productions. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 9

Iconographic innovation as Appropriation in a Contact Zone

Perhaps because of heredity and biography—my ancestors and I have crossed many borders— the idea of movement across geographic boundaries and of a contact zone as the site for creative ideas has been a recurrent theme in my scholarship, long before Kathy and I edited the issue on appropriation. Very early on, I was fascinated by the possibility of envisioning the Alps as an area possessing a distinct artistic culture. I was taking a cue from the work of Enrico Castelnuovo, who back in the 1960s had called for considering the Alps as a “possible locus of autonomous cultural elaboration, and not just as a simple place of transit”2 (“Les Alpes, carrefour” 13). My attention had been drawn to the question serendipitously, as I was studying Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin (Fig. 1) and collected early instances of the iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin by the Trinity, from the moment it appears at the very end of the 14th century and up to Quarton’s altarpiece in the middle of the 15th century (Fig. 2).3 The results of my survey, a catalogue of 26 renditions of the theme, revealed the role played by the Alpine zone in the creation of a new iconography in which it is not Christ alone who crowns Mary but the entire Trinity: 73 percent of the works (a total of 19) were created in alpine or subalpine areas (Plesch, “Innovazione iconografica”). Interestingly, what is at stake in this instance of iconographic innovation, are processes involving appropriation as the new theme is the result of an ars combinatoria in which disparate elements were brought together. The earlier iconography of the Virgin crowned by Christ alone (Fig. 3) merges with a certain type of depiction of the Holy Trinity, in which God the Father and Christ share a throne (Fig. 4) and in so doing enhances Mary’s glorification. Perhaps not so surprising is the fact that this additive modus operandi was already at work in the creation of the two original iconographies. Because there is no single scriptural source for it, the Virgin crowned by Christ is the result of exegetical bricolage, in which several biblical texts play a role (the Song of Songs, Psalms 44 and 109, along with references to several Old Testament couples; Thérel, Verdier), while the Trinity is one of the most complicated theological themes to be given visual form, a true “iconographic conundrum” (Plesch, “Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation” 194) in which too many contradictory notions have to be given form at once: three hypostases, who are different and yet consubstantial and coeternal, with complex relationships woven among them—generation from Father

2 Otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 3 This research was first conducted for a mémoire de licence ès Lettres at the Université de Genève, Switzerland (“Le Couronnement de la Vierge d’Enguerrand Quarton: Théologie et histoire des mentalités d’une iconographie, XIVe–XVe–XVIe siècles,” under the direction of Florens Deuchler, defended in 1984); some of the results were published in Plesch, “Le Couronnement,” “Innovazione iconografica,” and “Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation.” 10 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 1. Enguerrand Quarton, Coronation of the Virgin, 1353-54. Tempera on panel. Musée de l’Hospice, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 11

Fig. 2. An early example of the iconography of the Virgin Crowned by the Trinity: anonymous Tyrolean artist, first quarter of the 15th century. Tempera and oil on panel, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 12 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 3. Coronation of the Virgin. Paris, 13th century. Polychrome ivory. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 13

Fig. 4. Example of the type of Trinity that played a role in the creation of the iconography of the Virgin Crowned by the Trinity: illumination from a French Psalter, 3rd quarter of the 13th century. MS. Douce 50, fol. 368r. Bodleian Library, Oxford. 14 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

to Son, filiation from Son to Father, and procession for the Holy Spirit (this last one being in itself a matter of open theological debate). And if that were not enough, artists are faced with yet another dilemma: whether to represent Christ according to his divine or human nature, or better still, how to allude to both?

This particular instance of iconographic innovation reveals the dynamic and creative role played by an area that is thus more than just a border separating the cultural worlds of Northern Europe and Italy. I should note that this geographic distinction carries profound implications in terms of periodization given the traditional discourse of the Renaissance as an Italian (Florentine) creation. Not just a peripheral zone,4 the Alps possess a distinct identity, one that has been recognized by geographers and historians, and that manifests itself on many levels: physically, economically, historically, and culturally (Castelnuovo, “Les Alpes, Carrefour” 14). To the many metaphors that scholars have used in order to grasp this specificity (hinge, suture, ellipsis, cushion, etc.; see Plesch, “L’Art du XVe siècle” 71), one could add the “interstitial passage” that Bhabha saw in contact zones. Bhabha’s phrase is particularly relevant in the case of the Alps in the early modern period, before modern borders were established on the spartiaqua, the mountains’ crest. At that time, the Duchy of Savoy controlled the Western Alps, and this is why the Dukes were nicknamed by the king of France Francis I, the “porters of the Alps.”5 Indeed, the Alps functioned as an area of communication rather than a barrier, the mountains uniting rather than separating, a phenomenon that continues to this day, suffice to think how during the summer, the high pastures gather people and cattle from both sides of the range.6 And the fact that these new formulations are the result of an ars combinatoria is surprisingly similar to Bhabha’s “cultural hybridity,” or to what in certain situations is referred to as métissage or creolization. The late Enrico Castelnuovo would have agreed with this remark: in an essay published in 2008, as he revisited his earlier reflections on the Alps as an artistic zone, he went as far as envisioning it as the place for “métissages culturels” (“Les Alpes au début du XVe siècle” 20).

4 For the discussion of the concept of periphery, see Castelnuovo and Ginzburg. 5 Qtd. in Guichonnet 290; see also Castelnuovo, “Les Alpes au début du XVe siècle” 22–23, for the concept of Paßstaat, coined by Friedrich Ratzel to refer to political entities controlling roads and mountain passes, which was popular for a while in early 20th-century historiography. 6 Jean-François Bergier in Guichonnet 221, called the 14th and 15th centuries “Les Alpes ouvertes.” Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 15

Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches to Appropriation

To go back to the JMEMS introductory essay, and to the many ways in which the colonized can resist through appropriation, what it boils down to, is that “appropriation” is a two-way process. Kathy and I remarked that all the essays in the special issue avoided “the reductive model whereby every act of appropriation must be one of imposed power” (Ashley and Plesch 6). Instead, the authors explored instances of creative responses and put the emphasis on the process, and not just on the content or the product. Focusing on the processes allows scholars to observe the fluidity of a chain of appropriations that extends over long periods of time. Kathy and I noted that “[by] taking a diachronic approach, we can perceive the processes by which a symbol accrues power or—in Bourdieu’s term, cultural capital—and is ripe for appropriation for a new purpose (Ashley and Plesch 8; Bourdieu).

Here too, I will provide an example drawn from my own scholarship. The focus on the process rather than the finished product is central to understanding the ways in which Giovanni Canavesio, an artist and priest from Pinerolo in Piedmont, who spent most of his career in Liguria and the Pays niçois, appropriated Northern engravings and adapted them to the format of a fresco cycle and to his cultural environment.7 As I studied the pictorial cycle on the Passion of Christ that Canavesio completed in 1492 for the pilgrimage sanctuary of Notre-Dame des Fontaines outside La Brigue (some 80 kilometers north-east of Nice), I considered his rather extensive use of engravings as a source for details, for figures, and even, in some cases, for entire compositions. Canavesio used at least two sets of prints: the Large Passion, engraved by the German Israhel van Meckenem around 1480, and, to a lesser degree, an anonymous series, considered to be Lower Rhenish or Netherlandish and dated circa 1485–1500 (because of its use at La Brigue the terminus ante quem for this latter should be brought before 1492). Close study revealed that Canavesio used these source materials with discrimination as is shown by the range of his borrowings as well as by the modifications he introduced, adapting them to the socio- cultural realities of his time and geographic area (for instance altering costumes and gestures), while also reworking positions according to his artistic temperament. In order to successfully enhance the narrative coherence of the ensemble, he also introduced recurring figures who appear elsewhere in the cycle. Finally, and along the same lines of medium specificity, he revised compositions according to the requirements of fresco painting.

7 For details on what follows, see Plesch, Painter and Priest, in particular chapter 4, “Imitatio: Pictorial Sources of the Passion Cycle at Notre-Dame des Fontaines” 91–151. 16 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

At first glance, Canavesio’s Christ’s Crowning with Thorns (Fig. 5) appears very close to Meckenem’s print (Fig. 6) and yet, it is not a slavish copy. Because wall painting does not allow the minute detailing one finds in engraving, Canavesio reduced the cast of characters (here, for instance, he eliminated the secondary scenes that the engraver had included in the background) and simplified the depiction. The comparative size of the figures to the overall size of the panel was also adapted: Canavesio’s figures are larger than in the prints, allowing for successful viewing from a distance. The format was also revised: the prints were vertically oriented, while the paintings are horizontally oriented, and as a result the viewpoint is different: Canavesio’s figures are seen from the same level as the beholder, and not from above, as in the print. Furthermore, and within each scene, Canavesio stressed the horizontal component, organizing the figures close to the foreground. As much as possible, the protagonists’ placement emphasizes a left-right thrust in the reading and contributes to propel the viewer’s eye from panel to panel. All these transformations and in particular the emphasis on the continuity between the panels can be explained by the medium, by the fact that while prints exist on individual sheets, monumental paintings are placed side by side like a comic strip, forming a succession of moments to be perceived as belonging to a larger ensemble. Furthermore, prints are experienced intimately and privately and wall painting is a “public” art, but by changing the format and the viewpoint, by bringing the protagonists closer to the picture plane and therefore to the viewer, Canavesio diminished the distance between the representation and the spectator, regaining in part the individual and immediate experience one has with prints.

Fig. 5. Giovanni Canavesio, Crowning with Thorns, 1492. Fresco. Notre Dame des Fontaines, La Brigue. Photo: author. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 17

A couple of other interesting changes are worth mentioning. In Israhel’s engraving, the moor who kneels in front of Christ on the right of the composition, hands Christ a reed, while in the fresco Christ already holds the ironic scepter, and so the moor, whose position closely repeats the print, extends his arm in an insulting gesture called in French “la figue” and in Italian “mano fica.” Such a change can be understood in terms of “cultural adaptation,” inserting an element of non- verbal communication that frequently appears in other contemporary representations from Canavesio’s artistic area. Throughout the cycle, other modifications can be considered attempts to integrate further the borrowings into Canavesio’s ambient culture. These can be seen in the costumes, which very seldom are literally copied from the prints. Here for instance, it is the case with the moor’s costume: only the headband and the sword were Fig. 6. Israhel van Meckenem, Israhel van Meckenem, Crowning with retained. thorns, from the Large Passion series, c. 1480. Engraving. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. 18 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Canavesio’s appropriation of motifs and compositions from graphic sources can be traced within his own oeuvre and in particular his Passion cycles. By conducting careful comparisons, I was able to ascertain that in his first Passion cycle, which he completed in 1482 (San Bernardo in the Ligurian town of Pigna), Canavesio did not know or choose to use the prints. He had access to Israhel’s Large Passion before 1490, when at work in San Dalmazzo in the Ligurian town of Pornassio (because of the cycle’s fragmentary state, it is not possible to ascertain whether or not he used the anonymous Passion series). Canavesio still had direct access to Israhel’s prints when working at Notre-Dame, as is proved by the presence of borrowed motifs distinct from what is to be found at San Dalmazzo. Finally, when he worked at the chapel of the White Penitents in the French town of Peillon, Canavesio did not introduce new motifs from prints but rather referred to his own cartoons, especially those from Notre-Dame (thus confirming that Peillon was painted after La Brigue). Here as well, the innovation never occurred ex nihilo and was instead the gradual reworking of compositional schemes inherited from the local tradition, combined with new borrowings from works of graphic art. It is remarkable that Meckenem himself was both aware of the use of prints by artists and took advantage of this potential but also is known as an artist who “pirated” other artists’ works8—a modus operandi that will remain challenging for scholars as long as originality is the most desirable quality and crucial factor in determining an artist’s importance.

Appropriation does not enfold solely in a diachronic manner as just observed in the case of Canavesio’s appropriation of prints (and reworking of his own compositions), but it also possesses a synchronic dimension: we should consider the fate of what is appropriated, how it changes as it is submitted to the processes of appropriation, and how much is retained of its original meaning and/ or function. In our introductory essay to the JMEMS issue, we proposed to envision the synchronic spectrum of appropriation, with at one end a situation in which what is appropriated fully retains its original meaning or function while at the other end it looses it completely—although in reality the extreme edges of the spectrum are abstractions, never fully reached. So, for instance, a liturgical object might change hands but will continue to be used in exactly the same manner while, at the other end of the spectrum, we might take the example with which Claire Sponsler started her paper: the Coca-Cola bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy (Ashley and Plesch 10, Sponsler 17). This spectrum is useful as a means to gage what happens to what is appropriated and we noted how Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of bricolage comes in handy in observing the processes at work.

8 Some four-fifths of his works are copies after other artists (Shestack text before no. 154); remarkable isthe fact that some of the prints from the anonymous Netherlandish series that Canavesio used are known in a later state bearing retouches by Meckenem, among others his monogram. For a review of two recent exhibitions on Meckenem’s prints, see Koreny. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 19

My own essay in the special issue focused on the material I have been studying for quite a few years now: the corpus of about 150 graffiti that appear on the 15th-century frescoes of the small oratory of San Sebastiano in the Northern Italian town of Arborio (Figs. 7 and 8; Plesch, “Memory”). There, the processes of appropriation operate in more than one way and at more than one level. We have a series of appropriations, each involving a focused spatial choice. A building—the chapel—was appropriated, and more specifically, its walls; the inscriptions appear on specific frescoes: it is clear that the effigies of saints were selected over the narrative scenes. The choice of the building was itself very meaningful: placed at the edge of town and thus preferred to the centrally located parish church, the chapel and its graffiti acted, I suggested, as a symbolic protective wall. (Remarkably, the buildings in which we find graffiti that like Arborio’s allude to communal events, are always located at the border of settlements). The placement of the inscriptions on the iconic depictions of saints, indeed the appropriation of the pictorial surface, expressed the community’s desire to establish a contact with the holy figures in a way that is informed by devotional practices—or, I could say, through the appropriation of such practices. Because of its syntactic, thematic, and topographic homogeneity, Arborio’s corpus of graffiti reveals significant parallels with behaviors of a ritual nature, in which features such as formality, fixity, and repetition have been identified by scholars as central to what Catherine Bell calls “ritualization.”9 By recording on the oratory’s walls communal events, most of which, I should note, are of a negative and traumatic nature, the oft-threatened community was indeed appropriating history, and affirming that these events, even if endangering the town’s survival, were constitutive of its identity, and that it had a long and documented history. This recording also introduced an active element in what could have been a rather passive experience-but this too is a function of ritual; Clyde Kluckhon, rather pithily declared that ritual gives “people something to do”10! Ultimately the fact that this practice lasted for at least four centuries speaks to its symbolic efficacy; as well as to the fact that the authorities at the very least tolerated it. And this, by the way, goes against our contemporary perception of graffiti—and especially of graffiti on paintings—as gratuitous and reprehensible acts of vandalism. As an instance of appropriation, Arborio’s graffiti can be located midway on the spectrum Kathy and I sketched in our introductory essay: by writing on the saints, the town appropriated frescoes as support for inscription but the devotional purpose of such depictions remained. The intermingling of the secular with the religious is not unusual: we should keep in mind the myriad examples of medieval and early modern devotional and ritual behaviors that were endowed with a social and communal dimension.

9 For ritualization as an interpretive tool, see Bell 267. 10 Kluckhohn 71. Emphasis his. Similarly, Catherine Bell sees ritualization as “fundamentally a way of doing things to trigger the perception that these practices are distinct and the associations that they engender are special.” See Bell 220. 20 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 7. Saint Fabian and Saint Sebastian. Fresco. Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio. Photo: author. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 21

Fig. 8. Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio, detail of graffiti on St. Sebastian: “1661 ali 17 genaro si e seminato dela avena a fato bono pro to G. Giletta” (“1661 on 17 January we sowed oats and made good pro t, G. Giletta”); “1654 [a otto] il mese di giuno la sesia a menato via il castello” (“1654 on 8 June the Sesia River took away the castle”); “1664 ali 30 marzo è venuto la neve alta un piede” (“1664 on 30 March a foot of snow fell”). Photo: author. 22 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Tattooing: the Skin as Border

This is a very brief sketch of some of the ideas I developed in order to grasp what is going on at Arborio. In fact, and over the course of eight published papers, with a ninth one on its way, and far too many lectures and conference papers to count, I have considered this case study from a whole range of perspectives, deploying what I call my “theoretical opportunism” (Plesch, “Beyond Art History” 56) for I use whatever allows me to “think outside of the box” and gain a fresh perspective on this puzzling practice, or, to use a rather felicitous metaphor given our conference subject, what Mieke Bal has referred to as “travelling concepts.” For instance, in my JMEMS article I explored parallels with tattooing. This was of course motivated by the simple fact that Arborio’s inscriptions appear on the bodies of the saints–or on the pictorial field, right next to their bodies. Having noted an element of violence–after all, the graffiti deface the images and if the practice were to be carried on for too long, it would lead to the pictures’ obliteration-I addressed the ambivalence in the relationship established with the holy figures, at once devotional reverence and coercive aggression. This ambivalence is exactly what characterizes the history of tattooing in the West; in that sense it is quite different from traditional societies, where the meaning and function of tattooing remains stable, while in the Western world, in addition to being discontinuous, we see a constant fluctuation among negative meanings—as in penal tattoos or the marking of slaves—to positive ones with, for instance 18th-century aristocrats acquiring ink.11 Today, we are certainly back at a high point, several decades into what Arnold Rubin has termed a tattoo Renaissance: according to a 2015 Harris Poll, “[a]bout three in ten Americans (29 percent) have at least one tattoo.” Among Millennials, the number grows to 47 percent and “among those with any tattoos, seven in ten (69 percent) have two or more” (The Harris Poll). Tattooing is so much part of our contemporary landscape, that already in 2003 a survey revealed that “88 percent of those interviewed said they know at least one person who has a tattoo” (Kang and Jones 42). In the past half century or so, tattooing has migrated from low to high, from being associated with criminals, circus performers, sailors, bikers, and gang members, to appearing in couture advertisement.12

As tattooing in the West fluctuated between low and high points, at times, the practice was appropriated and retained some of its original meaning, for instance when early Christians adopted

11 The articles gathered in Caplan offer an excellent survey of the history and practice of tattoo. 12 I am referring to several Valentino campaigns (starting in the spring of 2013), in which the heavily tattooed arms of photographer Terry Richardson appeared next to the featured luxury leather goods. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 23

the Roman custom of marking slaves as an expression of their voluntary servitude to Christ.13 This inversion of value is not surprising and fits within the framework of Christian beliefs, which is based on Christ’s redeeming death, a death that was carried through a humiliating type of execution reserved to the lowliest criminals and yet became a foundational event for a religion, a moment to be celebrated and venerated, establishing a pattern in which violence to the martyr’s body becomes a glorious event.14 This being said, even the etymological origin of our modern word, the Polynesian tatu or tatau, “to strike,” while referring to the actual process, nevertheless contains an element of violence.

Noting that both graffiti and tattoos are indelible, I remarked upon the fact that thepermanence of Arborio’s inscriptions contributes to affirming the longevity of the town’s history and existence. Another feature graffiti and tattoos share is that they both consist in the puncturing of a surface. Obviously, I am not talking here about modern graffiti made with aerosol cans or any other type of paint or writing material, but “real” graffiti, which are incised. The etymology of the word makes this clear: graffito is derived from the Italian sgraffiare, to scratch. It is interesting to note that in Japanese, one of the words for tattoo is horimono, literally, “engraved thing” (Poysden and Bratt 106). In so doing, both the frescoes’ intonaco and the skin become a site for exchanges—a contact zone. In the case of graffiti on religious frescoes (a phenomenon more widespread than what has been so far acknowledged; see Plesch “Beyond Art History” 54), the incision becomes a way to “get in touch” with the depicted holy figures, while it also offers a trenchant translation of Erwin Panofsky’s “kontemplative Versenkung,” or contemplative immersion, the state the beholder aims to achieve in front of devotional images (264).

The JMEMS essay was the first time I considered parallels between graffiti and tattooing, but the readings I did on the subject of tattooing proved to be so fascinating that I ended up developing a seminar on The Visual Culture of Tattooing, which I have taught now twice and which has given me ample occasions to deepen my thinking about this practice. As I now shift all my attention to tattooing, I will use it as a terrain to reflect further upon issues of borders, of crossing borders, and of appropriation. Indeed the history of tattooing involves travel: tattooed bodies—of pilgrims, sailors, soldiers, convicts15—moving and crossing borders, and the practice migrating across cultures and

13 See Gustafson 29–31 for examples of voluntary tattooing among early Christians. “And thus what had been a mark of crime and punishment, of degradation and subjection to earthly power was intentionally (or sometimes not so intentionally) transformed into a sign of glory and honour, of integrity, of holiness, of the victory of God’s power” (Gustafson 31). 14 “La gloire—c’est-à-dire le sacrifice et le martyre: une manière de défiguration” (Didi-Huberman 130). 15 And also of “savages” captured and taken to Europe to be displayed as exotic curiosities (Oettermann 193–96), such as the Polynesian Omai, brought back by Captain Cook after his second circumnavigation (Guest). 24 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

social classes, and in doing so, mutating in meaning.16 Although tattooing goes back to prehistory and was very likely practiced by many cultures in Antiquity (the problem is one of terminology: for instance, where the Ancient Picts painted or tattooed?17), here are just two examples illustrating the nomadic quality of tattooing. The exoticism of the tattooed “savage” bodies that were “discovered” during Pacific exploration had an enormous impact on the Europeanimaginaire and led to the Western appropriation of the practice in the 18th century (Guest 100). Olive Oatman traveled between cultures: when she was fourteen, in 1851, her family was killed in today’s Southern Arizona by Yavapai Indians, who captured her and a year later traded her to the Mohave. When four years later she returned to the white world, the blue tattoo on her chin caused a sensation.18 Margot Mifflin explains that this mark was “about crossing over culturally and becoming a Mohave” (qtd. in Stratford). As it turns out, the Mohave did not tattoo captives, but only their own people.

But, more importantly, tattooing is an affair of skin crossing: nobody expressed it better than Alfred Gell in his magisterial Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia, published in 1993: “what tattooing reveals […] is an inside which comes from the outside, which has been applied externally prior to being absorbed into the interior. The basic schema of tattooing is thus definable as the exteriorization of the interior which is simultaneously the interiorization of the exterior” (38–39). Gell was specifically referring to the Marquesan notion of being armored by tattoos but the ubiquity of his quote shows how it captures the essence of the practice: hardly any scholar writing on tattooing seems to be able to avoid citing it! An important source for the development of Gell’s formulation is Didier Anzieu’s psychoanalytical study of the skin, Le Moi-peau. Gell recognized that “the key to Anzieu’s approach is contained in the insight into the doublesidedness of the skin, which both protects the ‘primal cavity’ of the body from the external world, yet at the same time reveals and communicates the internal state of this primal cavity to the external world” (Gell 29). The skin is both impermeable as it contains and protects and yet permeable as it is porous and allows exchanges; it is also superficial—just think about the expression skin-deep—and yet has great depth (Anzieu 39). These are some of the many paradoxes that, according to Anzieu, characterize the skin. As the largest—and most external—of our organs, the skin reflects our health, while it is also, as Anzieu puts it, the “mirror of our soul” (39). Anzieu inventories the range of functions the skin fulfills: a containing “bag”; an interface that marks

16 See Caplan xv for the European “tattoo’s unfixity” and its “nomadic” yet “contested status.” 17 See, for instance, MacQuarrie. 18 Starting with a best-selling biography published shortly after her release, Oatman made public-speaking engagements for almost a decade, and countless works of literature and art. See Mifflin. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 25

a boundary acting as a barrier and yet also functions as a means of communication and a surface for inscriptions (61–62). Anzieu concludes that, whatever the function, the skin possesses a transitional status of intermediary, of in-between (39). It is remarkable that the skin both feels and touches— Anzieu talks of “bipolarité tactile” (107)—is aware of external conditions, heat and cold, and of course breathes, sweats, and absorbs. What Anzieu proposes is that the skin is constitutive of the ego—it is the ego. Freud had already anticipated that, when he declared “[t]he Ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface” (Freud 19; Anzieu 107). In this sense, the “envelope” Anzieu describes is like a border. The skin might appear to lack depth and similarly borders are mere lines on maps and yet, as our conference title makes it clear, they are not air-tight, they can be crossed—and the gerund in “Crossing” further emphasizes the dynamic nature of what takes place at borders. The exchanges that occur within the density of the skin have a double orientation—immigration and emigration, if you will!

In his work on the ego and on transitional states between wake and dream, Paul Federn, who for Anzieu is a “penseur des limites” (111), showed that limits act not as an obstacle or a barrier but rather as the condition that allows the psyche to establish distinctions—between, for instance, inside and outside, what is physical and what is not, or what comes from the Ego and from the others. Anzieu considers that Federn’s formulation anticipates the physico-mathematical concept of interface. What is important for my argument is that, as René Thom has shown for mathematics, the “effets d’interface” allow for transformations—for a morphogenesis—to occur. And indeed, in the case of tattooing, as the skin is appropriated to receive a text (visual or verbal), exchanges take place in it and through it; this is Gell’s “exteriorization of the interior which is simultaneously the interiorization of the exterior.” And these exchanges, regardless of the tattoo’s motivation and/or function, have an eminently transformational quality. Hence the role tattooing plays in many traditional societies as part of rites of passage. We owe to Arnold van Gennep the theorization of such rituals that occur at times of change and transition, and which are composed of three successive stages: a preliminary one, characterized by rites of separation; a transitional one in which the subject is suspended in a liminal state; and finally a postliminary stage in which rites of aggregation or incorporation take place. Van Gennep stressed the fact that limen is Latin for threshold and that separation rites often involve the actual passing of such an architectural feature and, more generally, of a physical movement (52).

When describing Polynesian tattooing, Gell perceived a scheme (what he called the “technical scheme of tattooing”), which, in its tripartite structure parallels that of rites of passage: first the piercing of the skin, then the insertion of pigment and at the same time bleeding, and finally the healing (9). 26 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

You might have noticed that the central moment, corresponding to the liminal phase in van Gennep’s rites of passage, is one in which exchanges take place, with the ink being inserted into the skin (to be precise, through the epidermis and into the dermis), while at the same time blood flows in the opposite direction. The tattoo, the trace left by the process, is as Gell stressed, an indelible mark (9) that operates a distinction, functioning, as Jane Caplan put it “as a marker of difference, an index of inclusion and exclusion” (xiv). In that sense, tattoos define boundaries. This is of course what happens in a tattoo acquired during a rite of passage, as it declares the wearer’s new status, or, to be more precise, bears witness to the successful execution of a transformational ritual. Similarly, in the case of penal tattoos, the marks stigmatize the wearer for life, changing his/her status and identity. And this is why Olive Oatman’s chin tattoo was so problematic as it continued affirming her Mohave identity long after she had been returned to the white world, leaving her with an “unresolved duality” in her hybrid identity (Mifflin 5). Tattoos also impact behavior and psychology: in Japan’s Edo period, tattoos were sometimes called isamihada, or “courage skin” (Poysden and Bratt 125). Studying tattooing in the Later Roman empire, Mark Gustafson considered its psychological implications when used as a penal measure, explaining that

[e]xternally the tattooed person is subjectified, marginalized, degraded and stripped of self- esteem, reputation and standing in the community. But the subjection and discipline of the body is accompanied by the subjectification of the soul. The forcible imposition of the external mark, this disfigurement, serves to make a lasting impression internally” (24–25).

The transformative nature of tattooing endures today. Susan Benson notes how getting a tattoo still functions as a “rite of passage,” and how that term is much used in what she calls “tattoo-talk” (245). The significant amount of tattoos acquired in response to trauma bears witness to the transformative potential of the practice. At a basic level, a tattoo can make up for the loss, for instance in the case of areolas and nipples tattooed in a trompe-l’oeil manner to complete reconstructive surgery after breast cancer. But when the missing part cannot be replaced by a pictorial ersatz, then the disfigured body can still be creatively appropriated. A Google search with the keywords “tattoo” and “amputation” reveals the extraordinary inventiveness that goes into those “body projects.”19 A stomp becomes a shark, its mouth opened to reveal a threatening set of sharp teeth (we might wonder if the loss of the arm was the result of a shark attack), or, more benignly, a dolphin, whose body extends from shoulder to shoulder. Tattoos covering mastectomy scars— and sometimes the absent breast—are growing in popularity and the benefits are such that some tattoo artists offer special rates to survivors (see, for instance, Kang and Jones 45–46) and the not-for-profit foundation P.ink (short for Personal Ink), whose motto affirms: “Breast Cancer Doesn’t Have To Leave The Last Mark,”

19 For the notion of “body project,” see Shilling. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 27

helps women in need pay for their tattoo and provides resources such as a gallery of tattoos, a directory of artists with experience in post-mastectomy tattoos, and even an iPhone app to try out designs (P.ink).

At times, the ways in which tattoos enter in a dialog with the missing or mutilated body part is not without a certain dose of humor. This is particularly true for textual tattoos acquired as a way of appropriating the results of amputation. For instance, a hand, which fingers have been lost, carry the words “No Room for Hate” while the healthy one bears “LOVE” tattooed on the knuckles; “shark attack” and “frost bite” are written with an arrow pointing to missing toes; “Out of order” is right over a mutilated ear; and “Some assembly required” is on a stomp, right where the prosthetic leg is to be affixed. In some cases, it is the healthy leg that bears the tattoo and as a result establishes a dialog with the prosthetic one, declaring: “one foot in the grave,” or, accompanied by a finger pointing to the other, missing leg: “I’m with stumpy.” One might wonder if the tattooed text doesn’t act as a surplus, one that compensates for the loss, just like names on memorials and tombstones stand for the departed. As the tattooed text engages in a dialog with the missing body part, by acknowledging it, it makes it present again. And what is exactly the function of humor? Certainly, as countless authors have affirmed it, one is better off laughing than crying about something.20 As we know, humor itself possesses transformative qualities and has been recognized as enhancing health, psychological well-being, and resiliency.

Tattoos can also interact with—indeed appropriate and transform—scars, and thus contribute to reclaiming a blemished body. Verbal tattoos, in particular, when placed over scars literally rewrite the trauma, acting as an affirmation of agency, of control over a body that has been threatened. In all its embodiments and regardless of cultural and historical context and of purpose, the practice of tattooing squarely fits within what Kathy and I suggested about the processes of cultural appropriation for it is always aimed at affirming power and consolidating identity. One of my students, reflecting upon acquiring her own tattoo, explained: “I felt an overwhelming sense of agency in choosing the time and the manner in which I received my body art—as many people do.” This is why tattooing is so frequently practiced in prisons as the body is the inmates’ only possession.21

20 For instance Beaumarchais: “Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d’être obligé d’en pleurer” (65; act I, scene 2) and Rabelais: “Mieux est de ris que de larmes escripre” (2). 21 Juliet Fleming writes: “Tattooing in prison is felt to be an affirmation that (at least) this body is yours” (63). 28 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

In the context of word and image studies, I find tattoos with inspirational sentences particularly fascinating.22 The wrist, as it is easily accessed for viewing, seems to be a favorite site for such statements meant to guide the wearer (Fig. 9). I am reminded of Claire Richter Sherman’s exhibition and book on Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe in which she considered the hand as “a meeting place for matter, mind, and spirit.”23 And indeed, because hands establish a direct relationship with the brain, they assist our cognitive functioning in many ways (Fig. 10). For tattoos, placement is, as tattoo artist Maxime Büchi declares, “crucial. Placement and size is everything. The same design at a different place and scale is a different tattoo” (“Maxime Büchi”). In other words, the location is part of a tattoo’s message. We could also say that tattoos are palimpsests, as they appropriate a pre-existing surface, which primary function is not to hold that particular text (visual

22 The frequency with which some of these verbal tattoos reproduce the handwriting of family members, particularly deceased ones, is remarkable. 23 Book’s summary.

Fig. 10. Writing on hands as a mnemonic device: a student’s hand with a book call number. Photo: author.

Fig. 9. “Iustitia, sapientia, fortitudo, temperantia” (justice, wisdom, fortitude, temperance; a variation on the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) tattooed on a wrist. Photo: author. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 29

or verbal). What the notion of palimpsest adds to our discussion is how in it the two axes of space and time converge: palimpsests are objects—a site—upon which a certain type of layering has occurred over a period of time.

Hic et Nunc—Place and Time

Invariably, when I talk about tattoos, people ask me if I have one—yes, I do: so far only one. Even though discoursing on a mark on my skin might seem a bit self-indulgent, this allows me to address the two axes of space and time, and circle back to the notion of appropriation. The phrase I chose for my tattoo, “hic et nunc,” is one I realized I was often using in my scholarship, especially when dealing with anachronistic details in late medieval Christian art. So yes, these are words that say something about my intellectual identity, but they also struck me as being a great motto to live by, quite Zen come to think about it, a wonderful reminder worth having written on one’s body. “Here and Now”: Space and Time. On my lower back, the three words form a horizontal line that corresponds to the axis of the pelvis and are placed at the very base of the vertical one of the spine (and therefore can be seen as symbolically giving it grounding), while the articulation between the two words, the “and” summarized by an ampersand, corresponds to the anatomical articulation of the spine. So by appropriating this Latin phrase, I said something about my scholarship, about how I understand the uses of anachronism in the works I study, but also by appropriating the surface of my body, I am saying something to me, and working on myself. This affirmation of the present moment in the lasting medium of tattooing operates as a temporal border, separating past from present and from future. Scholars point out the paradox of how a tattoo is a permanent mark (sure, it can be removed but it is not easy nor cheap!) and how, because it is “forever” on the body, it points to the finite nature of its support: it is there until you die.

A tattoo marks a moment in time: I remember very clearly the circumstances in which I got mine on 2 July 201_ and this, by the way, is true of scars. Very often, when describing their ink, people mention the exact moment they were made:

I got this tattoo July 17th 2010 at the Illustrated Man in Camp Hill, PA. This tattoo is the first one I had done and I continue to love this as my life motto. The phrase ‘I will make better mistakes tomorrow’ is not an excuse for my actions, it’s a truce to myself that no matter what, I will always make mistakes. However, I will always learn from them and therefore, make a better mistake tomorrow. It’s a reminder to never be too hard on myself.”24

24 The tattoo along with the accompanying was originally posted on 7 May 2012 on Tumblr on FYEAHTATTOOS. COM (http://fyeahtattoos.com/); it is now visible at: http://citycritik.tumblr.com/post/22586052958/ fuckyeahtattoos-i-got-this-tattoo-july-17th. 30 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Notice the future tense in the tattooed text and how the owner talks about her ink. I would argue that it is because tattoos mark a moment in time that they make a projection into the future possible. In her article “Tattoo Narratives: The Intersection of the Body, Self-Identity and Society,” Mary Kosut, who considers that tattoos are a form of “biographical documentation,” quotes a young woman who describes the power she feels getting a tattoo, adding that “each time I have gotten one done […] it’s been some kind of landmark for myself […] of starting another time in my life.” (94) Another interviewee explains that his tattoo is “an actual bookmark of one chapter closing and one chapter opening.” (94) You will notice that as they mark a moment a time, these tattoos articulate time, and establish a boundary between past and future—I will come back to this.

We might be reminded of Foucault’s famous statement that “the body is the inscribed surface of events” (148), but the difference from the scars and blemishes our body acquires as we live (and the more metaphorical ones that are imposed by society and power structures25), is that tattooing is chosen—well, not always. Here is what Primo Levi wrote about the tattoo he received as a concentration camp inmate:

My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.

The operation was slightly painful and extraordinarily rapid: they placed us all in a row, and one by one, according to the alphabetical order of our names, we filed past a skilful official, armed with a sort of pointed tool with a very short needle. It seems that this is the real, true initiation: only by ‘showing one’s number’ can one get bread and soup. […] And for many days, while the habits of freedom still led me to look for the time on my wristwatch, my new name ironically appeared instead, its numbers tattooed in bluish characters under the skin (27– 28).

It is when he would want to consult the time that Levi would see the tattoo and this sight would assert his presence at Auschwitz, a place where, as Rob Baum put it, “even time has been removed, replaced with endless torture” (124).

The abjection represented by tattooing at Auschwitz-Birkenau (which, by the way, were the only camps where this was done) is profoundly emblematic of the Shoah, of a process of dehumanization in which individuals became mere numbers, with the marking affirming property by the state, and, to

25 Of course, a perfect illustration is to be found in Kafka’s In The Penal Colony. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 31

add insult to injury, transgressing the Jewish belief that tattooing is forbidden (See Leviticus XIV, 28 and Deutoronomy XIX, 10). There is no scriptural basis for the view, prevalent in some quarters of the US, that you cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have a tattoo (Lucas). To complicate the issue further, it should be noted that concentration camp tattoos can acquire for some a positive meaning as they become proof of resiliency and survival—but this of course only later, after the fact.26 Which leads me to saying a few words of the recent—and quite unsettling—trend among young Jews to tattoo on their arm their grandparents’ concentration camp numbers. I believe we should frame this instance of appropriation in the context of what has been called “second-generation memoirs.” But since this involves not the children of survivors, but their grandchildren, these tattoos are instead acting as a “third- generation memoir.” The issue at stake is that the original generation is fast disappearing, so the question is: who will bear witness so we shall “never forget”? I am reminded of what Judith Holland Sarnecki wrote about tattooing as a “creative mourning [that] leads away from melancholia and toward survival by marking the absence and filling the void” (36–37). It is important that this memoir of sorts is written on the body as this is what disappears when someone dies. The dual function of memoirs—for the self and to educate others—parallels the double orientation of tattooing (and of the skin and of borders).

One aspect of tattoos that I have not yet mentioned and that is extremely important (and particularly relevant to our word and image context) is that they have a “distinctive narrative quality” (Kosut 85). Better still, they make the wearer tell a story that addresses all the usual questions: why, what, where (and of course, who). In an article published in The New York Times in 2012, a young man, photographed posing with his grandmother, explained the reason for his concentration camp tattoo: “all my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust […]. You talk with people and they think it’s like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandmother’s story and the Holocaust story” (qtd. in Rudoren). These grandchildren are bearing witness but they are also still working through trauma. Cathy Caruth defines trauma as “the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena” (91). What Freud called “traumatic neurosis” and what we now refer to as post-traumatic stress syndrome, should be understood as attempts at grasping the traumatic event. What is important for my argument, is that, as Caruth explains, trauma “is in fact a break in the mind’s experience of time” (61), and so the flashbacks keep one literally stuck in the past. The healing process entails facing the trauma as well as recognizing that it took place in the past, for only then can one start addressing the future.

26 Primo Levi mentions that already at Auschwitz, inmates bearing numbers 30,000 to 80,000 were treated “with respect” as they “represented the few survivals from the Polish Ghettos” (28). 32 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Inscribed in the border zone of the skin, tattoos articulate the boundaries among past, present, and future. The present moment in which the tattoo is made becomes a precise moment in the past—one that, as we have seen, is never forgotten (the pain involved probably plays a role here). The inscription —whether verbal or visual—will be there forever; a message to oneself and to the outside world to be read in the future, or rather, at a present moment in the future. The skin, our personal border that protects and reveals, that mediates between our inside and the outside, is a palimpsest displaying marks —voluntary or not—that represent moments in time. I am reminded of a scene in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, in which the character played by Viggo Mortensen faces, almost completely naked, a panel of men, who are in effect “reading” the visual resume that his Russian prison tattoos constitute, as they are indeed highly codified (Lambert and Christ).



Another movie, Peter Burger’s The Tattooist, will allow me to recapitulate some of the issues I have discussed in this essay. The main character, Jake Sawyer, is an American tattoo artist who sports a collection of tattoos that record all the different places he has visited in his globe-trotting career. His “shtick” is to pretend that his work has healing properties but it is made quite clear that he does not believe in them, and so in that sense, both in his body and in his business, Jake is a perfect illustration of cultural appropriation in the negative sense it often has today, one in which the original meaning is almost completely lost. The movie opens up on what turns out to be a flashback, a moment of intense trauma in Jake’s past, when his religious father forcibly removes a tattoo from his left forearm. By erasing a mark that the young Jake, in an affirmation of agency, had chosen, the father reclaims his son’s body and the scar he leaves affirms his ownership. After this stigmatizing inscription of the father’s power (later in the movie we learn that in Samoan culture tattoo designs are handed down from father to son), we switch to the present time, to the adult Jake and his now heavily tattooed body. In the next scene, we see two worlds colliding: Jake is naked, sporting his “primitive” tattoos, and is juxtaposed to the backdrop of a modern city, which, it turns out, is a foreign one (he is in Singapore). The film is filled with allusion to boundaries and to their transgression. Jake steals a Samoan tattooing tool and after he accidentally punctures his skin with it, he dreams of tattooing and sees ink penetrating the skin and blood coming out—visual translations of Gell’s famous statement that will recur throughout the movie. And then, as he carries on his trade, the tattoos he gives, although made with a modern tattoo gun, take on a life of their own and eventually kill the customers. The movie is also replete with binary oppositions, between modern and “primitive,” Europeans and non-Europeans, and more specifically between Westerners and Samoans, but also between the living and the dead, and even between rational Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 33

consciousness and irrational unconscious (revealingly so, the tattoo parlor in Auckland, New Zealand, where Jake takes up residence, is called Bedlam). Of course, these binaries are not separated by air-tight borders, as is shown by the puncturing of Jake’s skin with the stolen tool that opens up a portal to the spirit world. Boundaries and exclusion are also featured prominently: the Samoans call Jake “outsider” and the evil sprit that Jake accidentally unleashes is the result of shame. We learn that the worst thing Samoans can do is to bring shame to their family and we see the results with a family ostracized by its community, living in humiliating squalor.27 There is a love story and there is a happy ending. Sina, the Samoan woman Jake has fallen in love with but almost killed by tattooing her, is saved in extremis and the scars left by the evil spirit are incorporated into a beautiful tattoo, while the shamed family is welcomed back again into its community. There is no need to recapitulate the exact details of how the malevolent spirit is finally subdued, but suffice to say that here too, tattoos are involved—along with father-and-son-relations. In last analysis, it is on the skin that the tale told by this movie truly enfolds: as Enid Schildkrout put it, “the body, as a canvas, is not only the site where culture is inscribed, but also a place where the individual is defined and inserted into the cultural landscape” (338).

27 In a trenchant social commentary, we see young Samoans living in urban settings pretty much like American inner city minorities, and we realize that the original inhabitants have been pushed to the margins of society. 34 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Works Cited

ANZALDÚA, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. ANZIEU, Didier. Le Moi-peau. 1985. Revised edition Paris: Dunod, 2006. ASHLEY, Kathleen and Véronique PLESCH, eds. The Cultural Processes of “Appropriation.” Special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.1 (2002). BAL, Mieke. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2002. BARTHES, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1968. Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142–48. BAUM, Rob. “And Thou Shalt Bind Them as a Sign upon Thy Hand: Eve’s Tattoo and the Holocaust Consumer.” Shofar 28. 2 (2010): 116–38. BEAUMARCHAIS (Pierre Augustin Caron de). Le Barbier de Séville. Ed. Georges Bonneville. Paris: Bordas, 1963. BELL, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. BENSON, Susan. “Inscriptions on the Self: Reflections on Tattooing and Piercing in Contemporary Euro- America.” Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Ed. Jane Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 234–54. BHABHA, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. BLOOM, Harold. Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. BOURDIEU, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. BURGER, Peter. The Tattooist. Screenplay by Matthew Grainger and Jonathan King. Buena Vista International, Ghost House Underground, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2007. CAPLAN, Jane, ed. Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. CARUTH, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. CASTELNUOVO, Enrico. “Les Alpes, carrefour et lieu de rencontre des tendances artistiques au XVe siècle.” Études de Lettres 10.1 (1967): 13–26. ————————. “Les Alpes au début du XVe siècle: une Kunstlandschaft?” Historische Landschaft— Kunstlandschaft? Der Oberrhein im späten Mittelalter. Ed. Peter Kurmann and Thomas Zotz. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke. 2008. 19–30. CASTELNUOVO, Enrico and Carlo GINZBURG, “Centro e periferia.” Storia dell’arte italiana, Parte prima: Materiali e problemi, Volume primo: Questioni e metodo. Milan: Einaudi, 1979. 285–352. CRONENBERG, David, dir. Eastern Promises. Screenplay by Steven Knight. Focus Features, 2007. DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. “Un sang d’images,” Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse 32 (1985): 123–53. FLEMING, Juliet. “The Renaissance Tattoo.” Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Ed. Jane Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 61–82. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 35

FOUCAULT, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” 1971. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. 139–164. FREUD, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. Trans. Joan Riviere, ed. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1960. GELL, Alfred. Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. GUEST, Harriet. “Curiously Marked: Tattooing and Gender Difference in Eighteenth-century British Perceptions of the South Pacific. Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Ed. Jane Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 83–101. GUICHONNET, Paul, ed. Histoire et civilisations des Alpes. I, Destin historique. Toulouse: Privat; Lausanne: Payot, 1980. GUSTAFSON, Mark. “The Tattoo in the Later Roman Empire and Beyond.” Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Ed. Jane Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 17–31. KAFKA, Franz. “In the Penal Colony.” The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1971. 140–67. KANG, Miliann and Katherine JONES. “Why do People get Tattoos?” Contexts 6 (2007): 42–47. KLUCKHOHN, Clyde. “Myths and Rituals: A General Theory,” Harvard Theological Review 35 (1942): 45–70. KORENY, Fritz. “Israhel van Meckenem.” Print Quarterly 18.4 (2001): 469–72. KOSUT, Mary. “Tattoo Narratives: The Intersection of the Body, Self-Identity and Society.” Visual Sociology 15 (2000): 79–100. LAMBERT, Alix and Mary CHRIST. Russian Prison Tattoos: Codes of Authority, Domination, and Struggle. Atglen: Schiffer, 2003. LEVI, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. Trans. Stuart Woolf. New York: Touchstone, 1996. LUCAS, Rabbi Alan B. “Tattooing and Body Piercing.” 1997. https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/ files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/19912000/lucas_tattooing.pdf MACQUARRIE, Charles W. “Insular Celtic Tattooing: History, Myth and Metaphor.” Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Ed. Jane Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 32–45. “MAXIME BÜCHI.” Inked (8 February 2016). http://www.inkedmag.com/artists/maxime-buchi/ MIFFLIN, Margot. The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman. University of Nebraska Press, 2009. NELSON, Robert S., “Appropriation.” Critical Terms for Art History. Ed. Nelson Robert S. and Richard Shiff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 160–73. NELSON Robert S., and Richard SHIFF, eds. Critical Terms for Art History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. OETTERMANN, Stephan. “On Display: Tattooed Entertainers in America and Germany.” Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History. Ed. Jane Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 193–211. PANOFSKY, Erwin. “Imago Pietatis: ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des ‘Schmerzensmannes’ und der ‘Maria Mediatrix.’” Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburstag. Leipzig: E. A. Seeman, 1927. 261–308. PARRY, Benita. “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse” Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987): 27–58. 36 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

P.INK. http://p-ink.org/ PLESCH, Véronique. “Le Couronnement de la Vierge de Waltensburg. Un problème iconographique de l’art grison au XVe siècle.” Nos monuments d’art et d’histoire 3 (1985): 345–50. ————————. “Innovazione iconografica e unità alpina: la Vergine incoronata dalla Trinità.” Lo spazio alpino: area di civiltà, regione cerniera. Ed. G. Coppola and P. Schiera. Quaderni di Europa Mediterranea, 5. Naples: Gisem/Liguori Editore, 1991. 263–79. ————————. “Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin: This World and the Next, the Dogma and the Devotion, the Individual and the Community.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 26. 2, The Last Things (2000): 189–221. ————————. “Memory on the Wall: Graffiti on Religious Wall Paintings.” The Cultural Processes of Appropriation. Ed. Kathleen Ashley and Véronique Plesch, special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.1 (2002): 167–97. ————————. “L’Art du XVe siècle dans les Alpes: au nord ou au sud?” Frontières, contacts, échanges. Mélanges offerts à André Palluel-Guillard. Ed. Christian Sorrel. Chambéry: Société Savoisienne d’Histoire et d’Archéologie and Université de Savoie, 2002. 69–82. ————————. Painter and Priest: Giovanni Canavesio’s Visual Rhetoric and the Passion Cycle at La Brigue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. ————————. “Beyond Art History: Graffiti on Frescoes.” In Understanding Graffiti. Ed. Troy Lovata and Elizabeth Olton. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2015. 45–57. POYSDEN, Mark, and Marco BRATT. A History of Japanese Body Suit Tattooing. Amsterdam: KIT, 2006. PRATT, Marie-Louise. Under Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1992. RABELAIS, François. La Vie très horrificque du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Jacques Boulanger and Lucien Scheler. Paris: Gallimard, 1935. RENZA, Louis A. “Influence.”Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 186–202. RUBIN, Arnold. “The Tattoo Renaissance.” Marks of Civilization: Artistic Transformations of the Human Body. Ed. Arnold Rubin. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1988. 233–62. RUDOREN, Jodi. “Proudly Bearing Elders’ Scars, Their Skin Says ‘Never Forget.’” The New York Times. (30 September 2012). http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/world/middleeast/with-tattoos-young-israelis- bear-holocaust-scars-of-relatives.html?pagewanted=all SARNECKI, Judith Holland. “Trauma and Tattoo.” Anthropology of Consciousness 12.2 (2001): 35–42. SHERMAN, Claire Richter. Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Carlisle, Pa.: Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, 2000. Shestack, Alan. Fifteenth Century Engravings of Northern Europe from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1967. SHIFF, Richard. “Originality.” Critical Terms for Art History. Ed. Nelson Robert S. and Richard Shiff. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 145–59. SHILLING, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage, 1993. Véronique Plesch: On Appropriations 37

SPONSLER, Claire. “In Transit: Theorizing Cultural Appropriation in Medieval Europe.” The Cultural Processes of Appropriation. Ed. Kathleen Ashley and Véronique Plesch, special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.1 (2002): 17–39. STRATFORD, Michael. “An English Professor Explores the Meaning of a 19th-Century Chin Tattoo.” Interview with Margot Mifflin. Chronicle of Higher Education 58.20 (January 20, 2012). THE HARRIS POLL. “Tattoo Takeover: Three in Ten Americans Have Tattoos, and Most Don’t Stop at Just One.” (10 February 2016). http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/Tattoo_Takeover.html THÉREL, Marie-Louise. À l’origine du décor du portail occidental de Notre-Dame de Senlis: le triomphe de la Vierge-Eglise; sources historiques, littéraires et iconographiques. Paris: Éditions du C.N.R.S, 1984. VAN GENNEP, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. 1909. Trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960. VERDIER, Philippe. Le couronnement de la Vierge. Les origines et les premiers développements d’un thème iconographique. Montreal: Institut d’études médiévales Albert-le-Grand, and Paris: Vrin, 1980. 38 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Enguerrand Quarton, Coronation of the Virgin, 1353-54. Tempera on panel. Musée de l’Hospice, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. Fig. 2. An early example of the iconography of the Virgin Crowned by the Trinity: anonymous Tyrolean artist, first quarter of the 15th century. Tempera and oil on panel, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fig. 3. Coronation of the Virgin. Paris, 13th century. Polychrome ivory. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 4. Example of the type of Trinity that played a role in the creation of the iconography of the Virgin Crowned by the Trinity: illumination from a French Psalter, 3rd quarter of the 13th century. MS. Douce 50, fol. 368r. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Fig. 5 Giovanni Canavesio, Crowning with Thorns, 1492. Fresco. Notre Dame des Fontaines, La Brigue. Photo: author. Fig. 6. Israhel van Meckenem, Israhel van Meckenem, Crowning with thorns, from the Large Passion series, c. 1480. Engraving. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Fig. 7. Saint Fabian and Saint Sebastian. Fresco. Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio. Photo: author. Fig. 8. Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio, detail of graffiti on St. Sebastian: “1661 ali 17 genaro si e seminato dela avena a fato bono pro to G. Giletta” (“1661 on 17 January we sowed oats and made good pro t, G. Giletta”); “1654 [a otto] il mese di giuno la sesia a menato via il castello” (“1654 on 8 June the Sesia River took away the castle”); “1664 ali 30 marzo è venuto la neve alta un piede” (“1664 on 30 March a foot of snow fell”). Photo: author. Fig. 9. “Iustitia, sapientia, fortitudo, temperantia” (justice, wisdom, fortitude, temperance; a variation on the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) tattooed on a wrist. Photo: author. Fig. 10. Writing on hands as a mnemonic device: a student’s hand with a book call number. Photo: author. 39

AN TÚR GLOINE (TOWER OF GLASS) AT THE NEWTON COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL OF THE SACRED HEART

Virginia Raguin

In 1925, the Religious of the Sacred Heart transferred their Boston school for girls to the former Tudor-Revival style estate of Loren D. Towle in Newton, Massachusetts [Fig.1]. The Boston architectural firm of Maginnis & Walsh (founded in 1898 as Maginnis, Walsh, & Sullivan) built the chapel and a four-story school wing between 1926 and 1928. Irish artists associated with the An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) Dublin collective produced the eight window program installed in 1929. The chapel’s images present a compendium of models for young women, from the beginnings of Christianity with St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, Catherine of Alexandria, venerated as scholar and martyr, and St. Cecilia, patroness of music. The Middle Ages is represented by Catherine of Siena, theologian and activist who worked to bring the papacy back to Rome from its exile in France. Teresa of Avila was a sixteenth-century reformer of the Carmelite Order and named a Doctor of the Church. Directly associated with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart are the figures of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the seventeenth-century nun granted the vision of Christ’s Sacred Heart, and St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

The architect was Charles D. Maginnis (1867-1955), an immigrant from Londonderry, Ireland by way of Toronto. Maginnis’ leadership revolutionized the architecture of Roman Catholic institutions in America (Richardson). In 1909, the firm won the competition to design Boston College and in the 1920s would build the library, chapel, and dining hall for the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester. The firm had then become highly honored; Boston College’s Devlin Hall had received the J. Harleston Parker Gold Medal in 1925, and the Carmelite Convent in Carmel, California (1925) and Trinity College Chapel in Washington, D.C . (1927) both won the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal. Maginnis was an admirer of the American Eclectic movement (1880s-1930s) which made use of a variety of historic expressions. The Newton Country Day School Chapel is English fifteenth- century Gothic. Its style shows an admirably simple practicality, yet evokes warmth through the use of wood for side paneling and roof. In the center, for the students, the seats face the front and the altar. The outer seating, used by the Religious for community prayer, is set in a choir-stall structure, aligned with the sides of the chapel and equipped with seats that fold up when they are not being used. It is remarkable that the chapel windows received one-of-a-kind iconography accompanied by museum- quality artistic execution. 40 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 1. Chapel, Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, Newton Massachusetts, Maginnis & Walsh, architects, 1926-1928 Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 41

Ireland had witnessed a revival of glass painting that coincided with a resurgence of nationalism in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1901 Edwin Martyn, co-founder of the Irish Literary (later Abbey) Theater, asked Christopher Whall, a pioneer in the English Arts & Crafts movement, to establish a school in Dublin (Cormack; Bowe, 1988; Bowe 1998; O’Grady). Whall sent over his chief assistant Alfred Ernest Child (Bowe and Cumming, 98-99). In 1903, Child worked with the painter Sarah Purser to establish An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass). Almost all significant Irish artists in stained glass were at some time associated with the cooperative.

Christopher Whall had made a direct impression on America as well. Whall, as he explained in his book Stained Glass Work of 1905 believed that the studio system must emphasize integrity from design to finish. The artist should “keep his hand of mastery over the whole work personally at all stages” (Whall 268-69). Examples of Whall’s work that inspired An Túr Gloine and the Newton Country Day School windows can be found in Boston. The window of Christ in Glory (or the Risen Christ) flanked by Saints Peter and John the Evangelist was installed in 1905 in All Saints, Ashmont, Boston. The window shows Whall’s immense freedom in painting. Color, matt, and trace blend harmoniously. Acid- etched segments, varying intensities of silver stain yellows and warm and cool hues of vitreous paints create a shimmering field. The artist constantly shifts his paint application to allow light to penetrate in an ever-varying pattern. Christ’s mandorla, seemly of flames and clouds, flickers. His ermine collar is depicted in a smooth matt, loosely brushed, and highlighted by thin, irregular streaks lifted off with a stick. Whall’s five figures of theChurch Fathers were installed in the clerestory of the Church of the Advent, Boston in 1910. Similar to the Irish windows at Newton, they demonstrate a skillful balance of uncolored glass and deeply saturated color. The figure appears as a commanding presence, avoiding illusionistic attempts of spatial recession. (Raguin website)

Seminal Irish stained glass can be viewed in the Honan Chapel, University College, Cork, designed with Celtic inspiration as a core theme (Cormack). A series of Irish saints were executed between 1915 and 1917 by artists of An Túr Gloine, primarily Harry Clarke (1889-1931) and Ernest Child. Child’s Risen Christ, 1916, demonstrates the lasting inspiration of Whall’s approach to the material of glass, corresponded well with the simplicity of the chapel. Clarke’s work is characterized by meticulous craftsmanship and allusion to the continental artists such as the French symbolist Gustave Moreau, the Russian stage designer Leon Bakst, and the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (Bowe, 1988; Bowe and Cumming, 100-107). Attenuated, geometrically conceived elements structure the design, even in simple standing figures such as St. Albert, 1916. His often acrid color harmonies intensify the jewel-like appearance of his windows. Clarke also executed a large series of Apostles 42 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

with images of the Stations of the Cross for St. Parick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg, Co. Donegal, 1928- 9. His Geneva Window, now Wolfsonian Foundation, Miami, Florida, was commissioned by the Irish Free State in 1926 for the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Clarke’s decision to illustrate 15 contemporary Irish writers, many with explicit sexual imagery, caused the window to be withdrawn.

The Tower of Glass executed a number of commissions expressly for America. The Newton Country Day School is the largest and most sophisticated. The artists include Michael Healy, Alfred Earnest Child, Catherine (Kitty) A. O’Brien, Kathleen Quigley, and Ethel Rhind. Artists kept their own approaches, supported by the encouragement of the collective to favor linear abstraction and an emphasis on planar composition. In Newton Country Day School, each window contains a standing figure in the central light that incorporates deeply saturated colors. The framing lancets are lighter in value; most display several medallions pertaining to the life or the virtues embodied by the saint. The cool abstraction of essential shapes supports a remarkable clarity in the narrative as well as bringing considerable light into the interior. The application of the vitreous paint is visibly acute, never attempting to mimic an illusionistic fall of light on form. Invariably the design is constructed with intense black contours that parallel the size of the lead cames (the flexible links that connect the segments of glass). Thus, the visual graphic of black against intense color becomes a unifying motif. Techniques such as acid etching (the removal of a surface layer of glass of a different color with acid to create a design) also contribute to a jeweled effect.

The windows, in addition to their association with the context of Arts and Crafts contemporary expression, employ conventions from Italian panel painting, manuscript illumination, metalwork, and medieval stained glass. When considering how such works came to have such association with the long history of the production of narrative in religious art, it has been most fruitful to review the context surrounding the founding of An Túr Gloine. Aptly expressed by Jane Maxwell, Principal Curator Manuscripts & Archives, Research Library, Trinity College, Dublin: “the kinds of people who were involved in the movement which gave rise to such things as Tur Gloine . . . being wealthy, cultured and very often having spent time in training in Europe, will have had reasonably easy access to any publication they desired, by purchase, personal loans among their network of acquaintance, by foreign travel, and by access to the libraries in Dublin and London, including Trinity College Dublin. Trinity, being a copyright library, will have had a copy of all books and journals published in Great Britain and Ireland.”

Thus, we turn to “the kinds of people,” which for An Túr Gloine meant Sarah Purser, founder and financial supporter for the first twenty-five years of its operation. Indeed, the year beforethe installation of the Newton Country Day school windows, “An Túr Gloine celebrated its silver jubilee at Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 43

which time the owner has been repaid the last of her seed money” (Bowe and Cumming, 197-198). The enterprise then became legally what it had been in practice, a cooperative with the artists as shareholders. Purser’s life shows an extraordinary evolution from artist to patron. She was educated in Switzerland and in 1873, after the failure of her father’s business, returned to Ireland, settling in Dublin to study at the Metropolitan School of Art. Like many of her female contemporaries who wished to advance a career, she travelled to Paris to enter Académie Julian, one of the rare Fine Arts institutions to offer acceptance in a special women’s atelier. Although she stayed for only six months, she established many personal connections, especially a life long friendship with Louise Catherine Breslau (1856-1925), who became a highly successful painter, achieving the distinction of the Legion of Honor. In Dublin at the end of 1879, she set up her own studio. She became well recognized, exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, the Royal Dublin Society, and the Irish Fine Arts Society as well as Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery in London. Purser achieved considerable financial success in the next twenty years through her portraits for the Irish and British aristocracy. The fortune that she earned, however, she increased with shrewd investments, particularly with stock in Guinness when it became public company. Members of Purser’s extended family had been in the brewing business.

Purser enjoyed a long and active life, and for the next forty years she was a catalyst for the development of arts in Ireland through her interests in education, museums, and galleries. Chief among them was her support for the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery. Lane was inspired by an exhibition organized by Purser in 1901 of paintings by Nathaniel Hone and John Butler Yeats. Irish-born, Lane had become a highly successful London art dealer and in 1908 began what would become one of the first public galleries of modern art in the world. The process was drawn out, complicated by Lane’s early death in 1915. In 1923, the opening of the present museum was expedited by Purser’s advocacy that the collection be housed in the mid-eighteenth century neo-classical mansion known as Charlemont House. During the same year Purser became the first female member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and a year later, 1924, she founded the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland. Purser’s influence was facilitated by her weekly social gatherings for Dublin’s intelligentsia. They took place in the comfortable Georgian Mansion, Mespil House, where she lived from 1911. In 1934, at the age of eighty-six, she organized a campaign to endow an annual scholarship for the history of European painting through Trinity College and the University College of Dublin. The course was taught by the eminent art historian Françoise Henry, who had frequented Mespil House since 1927.

In the literature surrounding the Arts and Crafts revival, we find a notable reluctance to speak of inspiration for the past. The innovators saw themselves totally opposed to previous practices where 44 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

a window was constructed through a division “among a number of nameless employees . . . always resulting in . . . tiresome and dead uniformity devoid of all personality” (Purser, quoted in O’Grady, 101). Purser was keenly aware of stock images from the Renaissance, or more commonly German nineteenth-century religious painters supplying compositions. Replications, for example, the Boy Jesus Disputing with the Doctors (Heinrich Hofmann, German, 1824-1911), the Good Shepherd (Bernhard Plockhorst, German, 1825-1907), or The Light of the World of 1856 also known as Christ Knocking at the Door (William Holman-Hunt, English, 1827-1910), crowd religious edifices as well as illustrated literature of this time. Raphael’s painting St. Michael Conquering Satan, 1518, Paris, Louvre, is the basis for the chancel window of 1893 in St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina. Built 1752 - 6, the church has long been considered one of the most elegant buildings of the American Colonies. Tiffany exhibited the window in New York during the summer of 1893 (Raguin 27-31)

Thus Purser, following Whall, issued the clarion call that “each window should be in all its parts the work of one individual artist, the glass chosen and painted by the same mind and hand that made the design and drew the cartoon; in fact, a bit of stained glass should be a work of free art as much as any other painting or picture.” (Purser, Anniversary Booklet, p. 9, quoted in O’Grady, 101 and Raguin, 250). However, if Purser viewed the artists in the cooperative as her equals in creativity and dedication, she arguably treated them with the same generosity she displayed toward other artists and organizers of the arts that she knew; she must have shared. Purser was acquainted with European museums and sites through her many periods of travel on the Continent. Some of these trips were deliberate efforts to survey historic and modern stained glass, such as travels in Germany and France with her cousin Alice Barrow. At other times Alice made watercolor sketches of works she saw for her cousin’s benefit. Early in Purser’s career she spent summers in Paris and Versailles. In 1902, just before the opening of An Túr Gloine she spent three month in the Middle East, receiving mail in Smyrna, now known as Izmir, Turkey. In 1907 she travelled to Palermo, Sicily to view the mosaics. (O’Grady 98).

This was a time when sophisticated taste gravitated toward the sober, but colorful clarity of the early and High Renaissance in Italy. Prominent were clear outlines and sharp contrast between figure and ground, often using gold or monochrome backgrounds. In the trecento and quattrocento, realistic perspective was not yet developed, and even in the High Renaissance perspective simply enhanced the narrative. We can turn to one of the most popular surveys of the day written by the French archeologist Salomon Reinach. His lectures on art and architecture from cave painting through the nineteenth century were published as Apollo: histoire générale des arts plastiques professée en 1902-1903 à l’École du Louvre. The publication was almost immediately translated into most Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 45

European languages; in New York, Apollo: An Illustrated Manual of the History of Art throughout the Ages appeared in 1904. Reinach expressed distaste for overly emotional art of the Baroque, “It is certain that Italian art of the seventeenth century aims at effect, that it dwells unduly on ecstasy and rapture, sentimental effusions, the physical tortures of the martyrs” (Reinach 246). His bias for the early Renaissance, I would argue, resonated with the artists of the Arts and Crafts revival. Reinach illustrated what have now become the canonical works of Duccio (a narrative panel from the Maesta), Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca, and Giovanni Bellini. Artists were keenly aware of these examples. Melozzo da Forli’s fresco of an angel playing a lute was illustrated in Apollo. Part of the Vatican libraries, the painting was a widely distributed image in the nineteenth century. Around 1900 John La Farge used it as the basis of a window of opalescent glass for Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square, New York City. Previously, in 1894, the Tyrolese Art Glass Company, Innsbruck, Austria, used it for a musical angel in a series of windows for St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Manchester, New Hampshire.

It is possible that our artists were aware of controversies in the art world and major acquisitions, such as the purchase of the Stavelot Triptych by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1910. The thirteenth-century reliquary of the True Cross, with its narratives of the Legend of Helena and Constantine had survived the French Revolution ultimately to be on loan to the British museum. The triptych, now one of the major treasures in the Morgan Library and Museum, New York is in triptych form, like the window. The center contained the reliquary and each of the side wings three circular enamel medallions. Thus the composition is quite close to that of the Newton windows, especially the window of St. Helena. Archaeologia, the major publication of the Society of Antiquaries of London (now Antiquaries Journal) had carried an article by Sir Charles Hercules Read, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum, in an effort to bring attention to the impressive work and keep it in England (Read; Morgan Library). The iconography is highly erudite. We are not confronting stock imagery such as that found in standard cycles of the Life of the Virgin or Life of Christ. The selection of forms is equally creative, and deeply considered for its resonance with historical precedent. A brief overview allows the reader to discover the richness of sources for these innovative artists. 46 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

The Windows:

Cecilia by Alfred E. Child [Fig.2]

Cecilia, one of the most revered saints of Roman antiquity, is believed to have come from an aristocratic family. Although she became a Christian and had sworn herself to chastity, her parents arranged a marriage to Valerian, a Roman nobleman. After their marriage, her husband was moved by Cecilia’s religious passion and converted. Both Cecilia and Valerian were reputed to have been martyred in the third century. According to legend (Golden Legend, November 22), St Cecilia long considered the patron of ecclesiastic music, during her wedding to Valerian “when the organs rang out she sang in her heart to God alone.”

The saint is clothed in an ermine-trimmed damask cloak, pointing to her nobility of birth. Curved contours with depth and texture create an effect of natural drapery that is pleasing and elegant. Exuberant, life-like patterns of leaves and roses sprout from intertwined twigs in the border. Flanking Cecilia are four angels, each with a different instrument. To her right one plays the lute, another plays the trumpet; to her left angels play the cymbals and sing. These images are evoked in the Bible: “And David and all Israel played before God with all their might with songs, harps, tambourines, cymbals, and trumpets.”(1 Chronicles 13:8). “It is good to give thanks to the LORD […] To declare Your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness by night, with the ten-stringed lute and with the harp, with resounding music upon the lyre.” (Psalm 92:14) Child added texture to the window in the treatment of the background surrounding the angels. Pale color tones in the glass complement the rich reds, pinks, greens, and blues of the angels’ bright wings and clothing. On the tunic of the angel with the lyre, flashed and acid-etched blue glass brings the design of stars to life, evoking the star-strewn kingdom of God. Our modern sensibilities respond to the selection of lute, trumpet, cymbals, and voice; they stand for the familiar sections of strings, brass, percussion, and voice of an orchestra and choir. Thus, this artist connects the legacy of St. Cecilia with today to bring this composition to life. Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 47

Fig. 2. St. Cecilia, Alfred E. Child, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. 48 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Catherine of Alexandria: by Ethel Rhind [Fig. 3]

Catherine holds a book pointing to her being “well instructed in the liberal disciplines.” (Butler, Lives of the Saints). Tradition places her martyrdom in the early fourth century under the rule of Maximinus II, emperor of the Eastern Half of the Roman Empire. Although an Egyptian princess, St. Catherine devoted herself to piety and good works despite polytheistic opposition. She angered authorities by denouncing the persecution of Christians. In frustration, the Emperor summoned a group of philosophers to engage her in debate. St. Catherine’s eloquence, however, ultimately converted the learned men. He then jailed the saint, but during her imprisonment, the Empress visited and was converted. Catherine was then sentenced to execution on a spiked wheel, but angels intervened to destroy it. Finally she was beheaded. Legends recount that angels took her body to Mount Sinai, the future site of an influential monastery, an image at the top of the window.

Rhind portrays the saint in brilliant color (for additional work by Rhind see Bowe and Cumming 178-180). Acid etching brings forth intricate designs in oranges, reds, and gold on Catherine’s rich red fabric. Dramatic drapery pours down her figure in shades of blues and greens like flowing water, elegantly contouring the curves of her body. St. Catherine sits tall upon her throne with Egyptian motifs, with a book in one hand (alluding to her love of philosophy), and a martyr’s palm leaf in the other. She holds a wheel, evoking the story of her rescue by angels who broke her torture device. Above her head is an image of Mount Sinai, site of her tomb. The image below shows St. Catherine converting the pagan philosophers [Fig.4]. We feel a tangible polarization as the saint is engaged in lively debate with the men on either side of her. Clothed in soft yellow with a bright glowing halo around her head, she is portrayed as a ray of knowledge. Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 49

Fig. 3. St. Catherine of Alexandria, Ethel Rhind, An Túr Gloine, Fig. 4. St. Catherine of Alexandria, detail of Catherine amid the Dublin, 1928-1929. Philosophers. 50 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Helena by Michael Healy [Fig.5]

Helena was the mother of Constantine the Great whose enactment of the Edict of Milan in 313 formally established Christianity as a tolerated religion in the Roman Empire. She was deeply honored by her son, who named her Empress. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (d. 339 CE) records that in 326-28 Helena undertook a voyage to Palestine where she built a church at Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives where Christ ascended (Eusebius, Book III, 24-43). Tradition from the later fourth century credits her with the discovery of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. She and Constantine are credited with constructing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem honoring both the site of Christ’s entombment and this sacred relic. The Golden Legend, compiled in the thirteenth century, relates many legends but all agree that Helena discovered the True Cross (Golden Legend, May 3). A scene in the window shows Constantine seeing a cross and includes the inscription in Latin “In this sign, you will conquer.”

As Empress of the Roman Empire, Helena is pictured in royal magnificence. Acid etching on her cloak conveys the delicate intricacy of lace; crimson robes envelope her stately figure. Healey constructs the image as if it were cloisonné enamel, evoking the metalwork popular in the Middle Ages. The jeweled cross evokes precedents such as the Cross of Cong which had been made to enshrine a relic of the True Cross, acquired in 1122 CE by Turlough O’Conor, High King of Ireland (National Museum of Ireland NMI R2833). Replicas of the processional cross were made by the Edmund Johnson Company; one was acquired in 1916 by the Honan Chapel (Kreilkamp, Fig. 30). Starkly contrasted with the lavish robes of the central figure, the top image in the right lancet shows the Empress in muted amber tones feeding the poor [Fig. 6]. Here, it is the people receiving her mercy who are wearing the attractive colors. Abstract silhouetted forms that minimize facial expression focus the viewer’s eye on gesture. These compositional devices recall the liturgical textiles that were being produced by the Dun Emer Guild in the early twentieth century. Katherine McCormack produced an altar frontal for Honan Chapel in 1916 (Kreilkamp, Fig. 44) and Jack Butler Yeats a series of Sodality banners in 1904 for St. Brendan’s Cathedral, Clonfoert (Kreilkamp, Figs. 121-124). Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 51

Fig. 5. St. Helena by Michael Healy, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929.

Fig. 6. St. Helena by Michael Healy, detail of Helena distributing alms to the poor. 52 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Catherine of Siena by Catherine O’Brien [Fig. 7]

Catherine (1347-1380) defied her parents’ effort to arrange her marriage. Eventually she was allowed to join the Third Order of the Dominicans. Third Orders were ways that laypersons could engage in religious practices without formally committing to a religious life. In addition to good works among the poor, Catherine engaged in correspondence with civil and religious leaders to mediate Italian civil strife and return the papacy to Rome.

Catherine O’Brien depicts the saint holding a large red cross, evoking her veneration of Christ’s suffering. A warm glow of light encapsulates the saint; striated brush strokes pull the viewer’s eye into her figure. The deep, rich purple of her robes cascades down to shift to white and gold hues, as white lilies, a symbol of purity, spring from the earth. Below, St. Catherine receives the stigmata. Beams of light extend from Christ’s feet, hands, and side and we read her utterance vidi arcana dei (Latin: I have seen the secrets of God). “The Lord [ … ] stamped on her body the print of His wounds.” (Butler, April 30) The lancets on either side show both spiritual and political episodes of her life. On the left, center, Catherine experiences a vision of the founders of various religious orders calling her to them, including St. Francis and St. Dominic. To the center right, the saint is in Avignon, urging Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome and to reform the church [Fig. 8]. Although the pope and cardinals are the leaders of the church, they sit below the tall and authoritative St. Catherine, their colorful robes contrasting with her white garments. Catherine’s outspread arms inject motion horizontally; the eye is carried from the ornate garments of the pope to the deep crimson of the cardinals as her arms rhythmically sweep across the composition. The composition and use of local color in each of the figures are highly reminiscent of the trecento and quattrocento composition of artists such as Duccio or Giovanni de Paolo. Giovanni di Paolo actually painted an altarpiece containing ten predella panels on the life and miracles of the saint in 1447. The panels are now dispersed, some in the Cleveland Museum of Art and in the Metropolitan Museum; it is unknown if these models were available to O’Brien in 1928 (De Fernandez-Gimenez). Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 53

Fig. 7. St. Catherine of Siena by Catherine O’Brien, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929.

Fig. 8. St. Catherine of Siena, detail of Catherine at Avignon before cardinals and pope. 54 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Teresa of Avila by Michael Healy [Fig.9]

Teresa (1515-1582) joined the Carmelite Order in 1535. One year later she experienced significant illness, including partial paralysis. During her healing process, she meditated on Christ’s passion and claimed to have various visions of him that cured her. Her campaigns to reform her Order faced opposition but she was ultimately successful and founded the convent of Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Primitive Rule of Saint Joseph at Avila in 1562. Her influence extended to religious and secular leaders of her time through numerous writings, including The Interior Castle, The Way of Perfection, and her widely read autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus. One of her best known poems states: “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing make you afraid. All things are passing. God alone never changes.” In the window the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering over the saint depicts the saint’s writing that “I saw over my head a dove” (Life, Ch XXXVIII:13), an experience that occurred on the Eve of Pentecost, when the Church celebrates the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. The miracle of a rescued child is associated with the construction of a new convent in Avila in 1561. Teresa’s nephew was crushed by a collapsed wall; Teresa took him in her arms and the child was restored to health. (Canonization Acts 1625).

The saint’s drapery is layered in languid curves that gather on her left side; drawing the viewer to the church she holds. The muted blacks, browns, and tans of her clothing evoke the modest religious life of the Carmelite Order that she championed. In the left lancet, at the top, we see the Virgin Mary surrounded by orange and yellow beams of light that pulsate from her figure. Below her is the angel with the fiery dart named in the saint’s autobiography: “With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails . . . he left me completely afire with a great love for God.” (Life, Ch XXIX 16-19) [Fig. 10]. Intense impressionistic brush strokes depict the wild, blazing fire on the arrow’s tip. Mosaic-like patterns in the angel suggest that the artist was familiar with Early Christian art. Healy seamlessly integrates the windows’ structural lead lines into his painted design, visible in background pattern as well as figure. Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 55

Fig. 10. St. Teresa of Avila, detail of angel with the fiery dart.

Fig. 9. St. Teresa of Avila by Michael Healey, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. 56 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Margaret Mary Alacoque by Hubert McGoldrick [Fig. 11]

Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) was born in L’Hautecour, France; following her communion at age nine, she was stricken with illness and bedridden for four years. Moved by a religious vision she associated with her healing, she entered into the Visitation convent in Paray in 1671. Once immersed in religious life, Margaret Mary told her superior that she experienced frequent visions in which she conversed with a thorn-crowned Christ. In one specific vision, “He showed this [his love] clearly in a special vision showing His Divine Heart pierced with love for men. He will make their salvation sure, He will not allow anyone consecrated to Him to be lost. He has a great desire to be known, loved and honored by His creatures” (Letter to Fr. Croiset, September 1689). The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was officially recognized by Pope Clement XIII in 1765.

McGoldrick weaves the structural lead lines into a quilt-like background pattern that entrances the viewer with its texture and clarity. A symphony of color flows seamlessly, from the burning orange in the angels and angelic monks above to the somber blue of Christ’s passion below. Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary appears on the left and, in parallel, on the right is Jesus’ revelation of his sacred heart to Margaret Mary [Fig.12]. The simplicity of the silhouettes and solid color evoke Ottonian manuscript illumination. Celtic manuscripts had been a vital part of the discourse in Ireland at the beginning of the century, and Apollo illustrated them, as well as Early Christian mosaics and Byzantine century ivories that offer parallel compositional simplicity. Jesus appears in warm yellows and reds; Margaret Mary is surrounded by cool purples and blues indicative of her humility. The scene is intentionally off balance, with Jesus standing tall. Margaret Mary, however, kneels and looks up at him, her small body occupying less space. The space between these two visually communicates the infinite divide between earth and heaven. Below both scenes, Christ on the Cross appears in a horizontal composition. Jesus’ outstretched arms extend into a swath of color that draws the eye from the epicenter of the narrative (Jesus on the cross) to the devout on either side of him. The mourners represent Christianity throughout the ages, a king, a soldier, an African man, monks, and many women. Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 57

Fig. 12. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, detail of Vision of the Sacred Heart.

Fig. 11. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque by Hubert McGoldrick, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. 58 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Madeleine Sophie Barat by Kathleen Quigley [Fig.13]

Barat (1779-1865), founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was born in Joigny, France to a prosperous family. Her brother Louis, eleven years her senior, tutored her in Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian, history and natural science. Destined for priesthood, Louis also fostered Madeleine Sophie’s spiritual development. Religious vocations, however, were difficult after the French Revolution. Finally in 1800, Barat and three companions began a new Order dedicated to teaching inspired by Jesuit models; it experienced rapid growth. The Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus became formally established in Europe and North America by 1818, and was recognized by Pope Leo XII in 1826. In 1925 Madeleine Sophie Barat was canonized by Pope Pius XI.

Kathleen Quigley based her image on the portraits of the saint, using soft shading to evoke life-like three-dimensionality. Barat had refused to sit for a portrait during her lifetime and therefore there is no official image. Although the School’s archives lack correspondence from the School to the Studio (information from the Studio survived) it is highly likely that some imagery was furnished by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. We know through the studio records for Harry Clark that Missionary sisters of the Holy Rosary at Killeshandra sent a holy card image of The Child Jesus appearing to St. Teresa of Avila as a model. A folder relating to windows commissioned for Saint Mary’s Dominican Convent, Dun Laoghaire, County, Dublin contains a number of images of female Dominican saints: Catherine of Siena, Rose of Lima, and Agnes of Montepulciano (archives Marta BUSTILLO, Library of Trinity College, Dublin).Thus we can be reasonably certain that the image of Barat was modeled on a print. Barat’s face is one of the more “realistic” or conventional elements of the entire program. The child standing before her and the side panels of the window are more abstracted [Fig.14].

The viewer’s eye is engaged by pattern from the diamond-shapes in the child’s bonnet and gloves to the blush-pink flowers in her billowed dress. The effect is similar to that of The Eve of St Agnes, now Dublin City Gallery, produced by Harry Clarke with the assistance of Kathleen Quigley in 1923. Streaky colors produced by selection of glass and acid etching achieve a similar shimmer of hues. In the hand of the girl is a bright blue book, demonstrating the work of Barat in the education of young women. Above the saint are the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and of Mary, and below her is a picture of houses of her birthplace, Joigny. The side lancets contain four images from the Gospels labeled: Generosity, Courage, Joy, and Humility. On the upper right “Joy” is associated with the appearance of the resurrected Christ to Mary Magdalene [Fig. 15]. The thick vegetation that crawls diagonally across the composition draws the eye from left to right as the somatic tension between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Jesus’ sprawled hands communicate his rejection of her touch. It seems impossible not to remember the gesture of the Magdalene in Giotto’s fresco of 1304-06 in the Arena Chapel of Padua, a highly popular stop on European art tours. Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 59

Fig. 14. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, detail of child.

Fig. 15. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, detail of the Noli me tangere: Mary Magdalen confronts the Risen Christ. Fig. 13. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat by Kathleen Quigley, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. 60 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Sacred Heart of Jesus and Sacred Heart of Mary by Hubert McGoldrick [Fig.16]

The rose window above the altar displays the devotion that is at the core of the spiritual life of Religious of the Sacred Heart. Four peripheral medallions and one central medallion form a cross- like structure that radiates from two glowing hearts. The two hearts appear against a yellow radiance surrounded by a victor’s wreath of greenery. On the left, that of Jesus wears a crown of thorns. Mary’s heart is pierced by a sword, alluding to the prophecy made by Simeon when Mary and Joseph brought the infant to the Temple: “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed—and a sword will pierce even your own soul . . . ” (Luke 2: 34-36).

A glowing color harmony emerges from the background of this window with stimulating mixtures of azure blue, magenta, and scarlet red. McGoldrick, also the artist of the Margaret Mary Alacoque window, uses this interplay of effervescent hues to unify the composition and engage the eye. Quilt-like patterns throughout the design similar to those from Alacoque add texture. Such detail is transfixing in its intricacy. In each medallion, angels offer a service to God, including music, prayers, and gifts of incense [Fig.17]. The elongated figures of the angels fill the composition and are expressively active. Their drapery falls in abstracted linear patterns, similar to that of medieval manuscripts, injecting motion through repeated flat lines that contour the body. The large, curved wings of the angels sweep around the images to frame them, creating natural and cohesive intersections between medallions. Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 61

Fig. 16. Sacred Heart of Jesus and Sacred Heart of Mary by Hubert McGoldrick, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929.

Fig. 17. Sacred Heart of Jesus and Sacred Heart of Mary, detail of angel. 62 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Works Cited

Archives: The Library of Trinity College Dublin: information provided by Marta BUSTILLO, and Lydia FERGUSON, Librarians, and Jane MAXWELL, Curator of Manuscripts. Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, information provided by Mary Pat JOY.

In Print: An Túr Gloine: List of the Principal Stained Glass Windows to 1929, Dublin n. d. 1919? CORMACK, Peter. Arts and Crafts Stained Glass. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. BOWE, Nicola Gordon. The Life and Work of Harry Clarke. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1989. BOWE, Nicola Gordon, and Elizabeth CUMMING. The Arts and Crafts Movements in Dublin & Edinburgh: 1885-1925. Ballsbridge, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1998. BOWE, Nicola Gordon with David CARON and Michael WYNNE. Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1988. BUTLER, Alban. The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other Principal Saints, 12 vols. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1846. DE FERNANDEZ- GIMENEZ, Elizabeth Ourusoff. “Giovanni di Paolo: The Life of St. Catherine of Siena,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Apr., 1967), pp. 103-110. EUSEBIUS. Life of Constantine. intr. trans. by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press: Oxford, UK ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. GOLDEN LEGEND, of Jacobus of Voragine. trans. and ed. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger, New York: Arno Press, 1969. KREILKAMP, Vera. ed … The Arts and Crafts Movement, Making it Irish, exh. cat. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, 2016. MORGAN LIBRARY. The Stavelot Triptych: Mosan Art and the Legend of the True Cross, New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1980. O’GRADY, John. The Life and Work of Sarah Purser. Blackrock: Four Courts Press, 1996. RAGUIN, Virginia. Stained Glass from its Origins to the Present, New York: Harry Abrams, 2003, under title The History of Stained Glass, London: Thames and Hudson, 2003. READ, Charles Hercules. “On a triptych of the Twelfth Century from the Abbey of Stavelot in Belgium, containing portions of the True Cross,” Archaeologia 62, 1910: 21-30. REINACH, Salomon. “Apollo: An Illustrated Manual of the History of Art throughout the Ages.” In Orpheus: A General History of Religions. New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1909. RICHARDSON, Milda B. “Chancel Remodeling: Charles D. Maginnis (Maginnis & Walsh),” The Makers of Trinity Church in the City of Boston, Amherst & Boston: Massachusetts University Press, 174-194. WEISBERG, Gabriel P and Jane R. BECKER, eds. Overcoming All Obstacles. The Women of the Académie Julian. The Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, New York and Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1999. WHALL, Christopher W. Stained Glass Work: A Textbook for Students and Workers in Glass, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1905. (Repr. 1920, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons). Virginia Raguin: An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) at the Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart 63

A great deal of the printed and visual references cited are available online: RAGUIN, Virginia. Style, Status, and Religion: America’s Pictorial Windows 1840-1950 http://college.holycross.edu/RaguinStainedGlassInAmerica/Arts&Crafts/Arts&Crafts.html http://www.newtoncountryday.org/Chapel WHALL, Christopher W. Stained Glass Work: A Textbook for Students and Workers in Glass, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1905. https://archive.org/details/stainedglasswor00whalgoog REINACH, Salomon. Apollo; An Illustrated Manual of the History of Art throughout the Ages In New York: Charles C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904 https://archive.org/details/apolloillustrate00rein The works of art illustrated in Apollo are now accessible online through museum websites. 64 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Chapel, Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, Newton Massachusetts, Maginnis & Walsh, architects, 1926-1928 Fig. 2. St. Cecilia, Alfred E. Child, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 3. St. Catherine of Alexandria, Ethel Rhind, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 4. St. Catherine of Alexandria, detail of Catherine amid the Philosophers. Fig. 5. St. Helena by Michael Healy, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 6. St. Helena by Michael Healy, detail of Helena distributing alms to the poor. Fig. 7. St. Catherine of Siena by Catherine O’Brien, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 8. St. Catherine of Siena, detail of Catherine at Avignon before cardinals and pope. Fig. 9. St. Teresa of Avila by Michael Healey, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 10. St. Teresa of Avila, detail of angel with the fiery dart. Fig. 11. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque by Hubert McGoldrick, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 12. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, detail of Vision of the Sacred Heart. Fig. 13. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat by Kathleen Quigley, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 14. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, detail of child. Fig. 15. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, detail of the Noli me tangere: Mary Magdalen confronts the Risen Christ. Fig. 16. Sacred Heart of Jesus and Sacred Heart of Mary by Hubert McGoldrick, An Túr Gloine, Dublin, 1928-1929. Fig. 17. Sacred Heart of Jesus and Sacred Heart of Mary, detail of angel. 65

SIGNALS CROSSING BORDERS: CYBERNETIC WORDS AND IMAGES AND 1960S AVANT-GARDE ART

John A. Tyson

We hope to provide a forum for all those who believe passionately in the correlation of the arts and Art’s Imaginative integration with technology, science, architecture and our entire environment. We believe that such an integration can only be accomplished by most rigorous means: by the exercise of the highest academic standards, and when society gives to the artist its available materials, its support, and complete freedom in the pursuit of his (the artist’s) art.

—David Medalla and Paul Keeler

This frank, hopeful introduction appears on the front page of the first issue of the avant-garde publication Signalz: Newsbulletin of the Centre for Advanced Creative Study (the sole one that employs a deviant “z” spelling) (Fig. 1). Eleven numbers of Signals appeared between August of 1964 and March of 1966. The periodical was a textual supplement to the programming of a doubled enterprise: the Signals Gallery, which was coextensive—initially selfsame—with the Center for Advanced Creative Study mentioned in the full title. A pair of young impresarios directed Signals, the Philippine poet and artist David Medalla (b. 1942), the bulletin’s primary editor, and British curator and critic Paul Keeler (b. 1942) who oversaw gallery programming. Additionally, musician Christopher Walker, the artists Gustav Metzger and Marcelo Salvadori, and the curator and critic Guy Brett were co-founders of the Centre for Advanced Creative Study and regular collaborators (Brett, Exploding Galaxies, 46-47). The less technocratic name, Signals Gallery, was adopted when they shifted operations from an apartment at 92 Cornwall Gardens to a four-story building at the corner of Wigmore and Welbeck streets in Central London, a move which coincided with the Newsbulletin’s second issue (the name dropped from the masthead by the third issue).

By their names, there is a suggestion that both Signals undertakings (Gallery and Newsbulletin) were technologies for broadcasting information. The broadsheet was, moreover, the textual manifestation of a London-based multiplatform social network, consisting of an informal band of European and Latin American artists and critics, the Signals Group. Possibly to an even greater extent than the gallery, the 66 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 1. Front page of Signalz: Newsbulletin of the Centre for the Advanced Creative Study 1.1 (August 1964). © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 67

publication amplified group members’ artworks and ideas, which circulated internationally viathe pages Signals. The journal’s distribution of words and images served a deterritorializing function: the editors aimed to engender the kind of utopian, transnational “global village” that cybernetician and media theorist Marshall McLuhan imagined the modern media could yield (Understanding Media 46). Further licensing Keeler and Medalla’s endeavor, McLuhan also believed that it was artists who were best suited to grasp the implications of new technologies: “The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception” (The Medium is the Massage 7).

A dialectic between center and margin played out with Signals globalized operations: the gallery was a technology that brought art from Latin America to a hip European metropolis; conversely, the Newsbulletin liberated art and ideas from geographical centers and their conventions of presentation. Albeit to a lesser (but not insignificant) extent, Signals worked to bring East and West together too. The periodical resisted the Cold-War era’s binary world order by reporting on developments from both sides of the iron curtain. In number 3/4 (October-November, 1964), a photo of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin appears alongside kinetic sculpture. In the next issue, they ran John Newell’s discussion of U.S. and Russian achievements in “The New Space Race” (December-January, 1964/65). Moreover, the Russian Avant-Garde’s relevance for the present moment is alluded to in nearly every issue. This Soviet body of work was still extremely fresh in the 60s, as little had been seen in the West until the British art historian Camilla Gray’s The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 1863-1922 (1962). This tome introduced Suprematism and Contructivism to a new generation searching for forms that connoted rebellion, if not revolution. Indeed, Medalla and Keeler’s publication and gallery struck a specific political stance. Their focus on Latin American art and artists implied a refusal to view New York and the United States as the center. Rather, they militated to produce alternative artistic constellations.

As this essay’s epigraph implies, in addition to crossing geographic borders and considering art as part of its system, Signals: Newsbulletin transcended disciplinary bounds. Its creators imagined a resolution of forms of creativity, blurring C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” in order to poetically “misuse” science and technology for art.1 In order to achieve this primary directive, the magazine was highly citational, bringing together words and images that would not typically be imprinted on the same folio. This logic began with the journal’s name. Keeler and Medalla borrowed the title from a series of tensile sculptures made by the Greek kinetic artist Panagiotis Vassilakis (known as Takis). Combinations of

1 British chemist Charles P. Snow’s influential discussion of the arts/sciences divide inThe Two Cultures was widely discussed within advanced art circles during the 1960s. 68 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

text and images were tightly “curated,” juxtaposed for rhetorical and aesthetic ends. The Newsbulletin reprinted numerous quotes, articles, scientific reports, diagrams, and poems—deftly weaving them together with new content.

Drawing on the insights of art historian Gwen Allen in relation to U.S. magazines, I propose that Signals: Newsbulletin was “an alternative space for art” (Fig.1). The broadsheet went beyond mere art documentation or publicity (though it did fulfil both of these functions). The printed page is a platform for display, a place of virtual exhibition. It was arguably equally important, if not more so, than the Signals Gallery for the spread of vanguard art information. The move to the print was not just a translation, but also process of mutation: texts and images (both signals imprinted on the page) inflect and even infect one another; layout and graphic design decisions enabled new meanings and intersubjective author positions to emerge. Through whimsical combinations of content, reader- viewers ideally saw an expansion of their imaginations. Indeed, an advertisement in issue 3/4 impels readers to “join us in our quest for an imaginative life” by paying a modest 30 shillings (about 30 2016 dollars) to subscribe. Blazing new paths for art with techno-poetics, Signals: Newsbulletin significantly anticipates developments in art and art publishing that would emerge only a few years later in North America and Europe.



David Medalla led an itinerant existence. Born into a well-off family in Manila, he was a child prodigy. As an adolescent Medalla published poems, translated William Shakespeare’s Hamlet into Tagalog, and undertook anthropological fieldwork with the Igorot and Ifugao peoples in the Philippines. His continued interest in first-nations peoples is manifest in photos and texts that appear in many editions of Signals. He enrolled at Columbia University as a special student at age 12 (Mitichison). After his time in New York, he moved to Paris, where he became a student of philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard and immersed himself in Surrealism. His artistic breakthrough came with pioneering foaming kinetic sculptures entitled Cloud Canyon (1963-68). The British half of the partnership was the son of a wealthy optical instruments manufacturer. Keeler initially tried his hand at acting before shifting toward art; in the early 1960s, he started a small business as a canvas primer. Later, he would become an authority on Islamic art and develop a scholarly network for addressing art of the ancient world.

Medalla and Keeler’s relationship predated Signals. The men had been flat-mates in Little Venice, Paddington since 1962. In 1963, Keeler organized the first U.K. exhibition of Medalla’s paintings and drawings. Their curatorial collaboration began to take further shape following a John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 69

transformative trip Medalla took to Paris. In the French capital he encountered the kinetic works of Takis, the Belgian Pol Bury, and the Venezuelan Jesus Rafael Soto at Galerie Diderot; immediately struck by these artworks, he returned to the U.K. profoundly affected. By 1964, he had turned Keeler on to kineticism: Keeler organized two pioneering exhibitions of kinetic art—Structures Vivantes: Mobiles/Images at the Redferm Gallery and Soundings at Oxford’s Ashmoleum Museum. A sequel or encore show, Soundings Two, was held at Signals from July-September, 1965.

A Trasnational Mosaic

The first edition of the Newsbulletin commences with lines from a range of sources, bringing them together in order to produce a modern textual mosaic. This multi-faceteted figure was the structure that McLuhan used as a metaphor for the diverse, ever-shifting modern media. Following the Canadian cybernetician, this tiled structure made of “numerous data and quotations in evidence offers the only practical means of revealing causal operations in history” (Gutenberg Galaxy, lxii). In Signalz, the words of the classicist and historian of science Benjamin Farrington, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Bauhaus masters Mies van der Rohe and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, the de Stijl group’s Piet Mondrian, and constructivist Naum Gabo are mixed alongside contemporary voices: those of the recently deceased Yves Klein, op artist Victor Varasely, and, rather conspicuously, the journal’s principal editor too. Medalla’s quote reflects his interests in citation, his love of poetry, and his publishing approach to open up authorship: “I don’t subscribe to any theory. I have no theories, only a certain way of life. I like these lines by Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes” (“Signalz,” 1).

Looking back on his career, Medalla described his activities as “a spiritual adventure in understanding contemporary culture in the fields where art and science converged in harmony and energized each other” (qtd. in Nankervis, “A Stitch”). He used nearly the same language for Signals. The slogan that ran in a number of the earlier issues (numbers 2, 3/4, and 5) affirms it was “dedicated to the adventures of the modern spirit.” Despite bearing witness to the more dismal side of science with the creation of the atom bomb, there continued to be a great deal of faith placed in new scientific and technological developments in the 60s. According to art critic and Signals regular Guy Brett, an important voice on kinetic art, a kind of scientific utopianism unimaginable today characterized the era. For example, Medalla was very influenced by Werner Heisenberg, to whom he wrote a “fan” letter to and viewed as a “pure” scientist—despite Heisenberg’s work with the Nazis (Lee 127). Medalla 70 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

republished the physicist’s discussion of science and philosophy, “The Role of Modern Physics in the Present Development of Human Thinking” in Signals 9 (August-September-October, 1965).

Medalla was not shy about promotion. In the introductory remarks of Signals 2, he writes there has been “a big jump for a second number and one that surely heralds bright exciting things to come” (“Signals 2” 2). Data about the reach of the journal appears in a column on the second page of the second issue, which also transmits messages about the pool of collaborators. The magazine had quickly augmented in scale, equally in terms of contents and readership. For Signals 2 the editors expanded the number of pages to sixteen. The circulation expanded also, more than tripling to 10,000. In addition, the graphic design grew richer over the course of the publication’s two-year run: colored and metallic inks—usually of a distinct variety of hues for each issue—appeared in later issues, further enlivening the pages.

The second iteration was “prepared with the cooperation and assistance of the Embassies of Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela and other Latin American countries” (Medalla, “Signals 2” 2). As issue two’s introduction highlights, Signals had a global reach. It spanned aesthetics and international politics. Coopting the resources of the British Council as well as “many embassies and consulates in London,” the periodical apparently traveled to “outposts in all the corners of the word” via diplomatic cultural networks (Medalla, “Signals 2” 2). While it is difficult to determine whether these claims were not a little overblown, Signals is today found in libraries in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, as well as across Europe and North America.

In addition, Signals circulated via airmail systems and partook in an epistolary culture. Rather charming photos of the gallery’s associates seated on the carpet, working collectively to attach mailing labels provides concrete evidence of this operation. The Newsbulletin reached publics in both hemispheres and on both sides of the Atlantic. Various figures in the orbit of the Northeastern United States, as tech-art gurus Jack Burnham and György Kepes, the American critic Dore Ashton (best known for her writings on abstract expressionists at this time, but who later weighed in on tech art), or the German-American artist Hans Haacke received the transmissions. These readers subsequently were activated as collaborators: altering positions, the one-time readers at various times composed letters that Signals published (Haacke also contributed photos of Takis’s projects).

Signals provoked a shift in the art world, in the words of The Observer’s James Fox (reprinted in Signals 1.9), “From North to South.” Signals introduced many South American artists to the Anglo- American art world. For instance, the first U.K. exhibition of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark was held at John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 71

the gallery in 1965. The journal ran extensive features on, Jesus Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero, and Sergio de Camargo, artists not well known in the UK at the time. Keeler and Medalla met Camargo in Paris, and through his contacts, familiarized themselves with “the whole Latin American, but especially Brazilian art scene” (Brett qtd. in Lee 131). The Newsbulletin was a valuable source of texts by the artists themselves as well as critics of their works. Thus, Signals was very important for contextualizing their work for British audiences. But it did not solely provide the interpretations by critics or curators, the artists are given the opportunity to help determine the meaning of their works. On one hand this move seems to extend a kind of cult of the artist (which was partially undermined by the other voices and Medalla’s designs); on the other, it tacitly questioned the norms of authority that govern art and art discourse.

Furthermore, the journal anticipates ideas about alternative transnational constellations that developed in the later 1980s. Gerardo Mosquera, curator of the Second Havana Biennial (1986), famously advocated for a reimagining of contemporary art that would promote “south-south-south” connections and contest the English-language hegemony of art. Mosquera decried the way that Manhattan-based institutions had a monopoly on the conferral of “advanced art” status. The Signals Gallery and Newsbulletin provided a space to imagine and inscribe this set of relations and transcendence of Anglophone views on art. By showcasing works from artists hailing from the Southern hemisphere and reproducing texts in a range of languages, Signals anticipated and even helped commence the global turn in art.

A Little Historiography of Signals

Suggesting the magazine continued to be of great relevance for transnational art, The Institute of International Visual Arts (commonly known as InIVA) released an exacting boxed facsimile edition of the entire run, complete with a new index, in 1995.2 Nevertheless, Signals Newsbulletin has not previously received holistic art-historical assessment. In contrast, the later vanguard French publication Robho (edited by Jean Clay) was profiled in the journal Third Text by Isabel Plante and addressed by Allen in Artists’ Magazines. Given the common pool of contributors and artists—as well as the fact that

2 Based on a comparison with the original issues of Signals held in the library of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the two editions are nearly identical. Apparently, 1000 copies of the InIVA edition were printed. 72 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Signals artist Carlos Cruz-Diez designed the layout—Signals must be seen as foundational. Robho was certainly inspired by the earlier magazine and in some sense, assumed the mantle of promoting Latin American art in Europe (Cruz-Diez and Jiménez 72).

Guy Brett, a pioneering curator and critic of kinetic art, who wrote for both magazines, discusses Signals in Exploding Galaxies, his monographic study of the oeuvre of his friend David Medalla. Brett views Keeler and Medalla’s publication and gallery as epitomizing the experimental spirit of their time. Brett suggests that their embrace of material from assorted disciplines and tendencies may have contributed to art historians’ unease or inability to deal properly with Keeler and Medalla’s project: “‘Orders’ of art history tend to be linear and chronological. But movements can also be understood in the way they spread out sideways or in all directions” (40). He also emphasizes the parity between poems and criticism in Signals. Brett argues that Medalla had an amazing capacity to blend the playful and fantastic with pragmatic organizational skills, which carried over to the “lavish” Newsbulletin (49). He specifically points to the “MMMMMMM . . . Manifesto” that Medalla published in Signals 1.8—which oneirically outlines alternate functions for new technology—as an instance of the artist “weav[ing] together the roles of pragmatic ‘maker’ and unrestrained ‘dreamer’” (63).

Pamela Lee discusses the Signals Gallery and Newsbulletin in tandem in Chronophobia, an important treatment of shifting relations to a time in 1960s art. Lee identifies their lack of interest in North American art and hones in on what she calls Signals Gallery’s “‘imaginative’ character” (127). She insightfully suggests that “its interests were in articulating new perceptual modes for the spectator, anticipating the effects introduced by modern science through seeing works of art as vehicles of energy” (127). Perceptively, Lee argues that a parallel drive for expansion might conceptually link Medalla’s expanding “living” foam sculptures to the group (128; 130). Though she does not state it explicitly, Lee’s arguments about art as a “vehicle of energy” capable of “retraining” the imagination should be extended to the gallery’s publication as well (127).

The Backdrop of “Swinging London”

In 1966, Paul Hogarth and Malcolm Muggeridge created an insider’s view of London in word and image with caricatured line drawings, updating William Hogarth’s satirical and moralizing views of British life in ironical tone proper to the later twentieth century. They are frank in their view of the metropolis as the epitome of modern, urban life: John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 73

Our hopes and dreams are written up in coloured lights, presented on screens in movement and colour; enlarged in a close-up of a body, a face, a magnified morsel of delectable flesh […]. Our heaven is earth, and London is its capital. London growing ever larger, sprawling ever further […] going ever faster. London! (104; 108)

It was in this environment of kaleidoscopic sensory overload that Signals emerged. Located at the 39 Wigmore Street, in London’s fashionable West End, a mere two blocks north of the major commercial artery of Oxford Street, the gallery introduced many new artistic forms to the U.K. scene. By its cutting edge contents, the art space and its associated Newsbulletin progressed very much in lockstep with the hip, bubbling metropolis. While transnational, Signals surely capitalized on the cool reputation of its location, much like more traditional commercial ventures. For example, advertisements for a boutique in walking distance, I was Lord Kirchner’s Valet, similarly tout their situation in London.

International audiences increasingly viewed the British capital as a happening global city. Just a month after the final issue of Signals, a TIME cover story profiled the city’s changing climate. After describing the “great” metropolises of other decades of the twentieth century, the periodical affirms: “Today, it is London, a city steeped in tradition, seized by change, liberated byaffluence […]. In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. It swings; it is the scene./ This spring, as never before in modern times, London is switched on” (38). The TIME article in many ways echoes Hogarth and Muggeridge’s assessment. The “Swinging London” report is structured like a movie script, suggesting that the images reported perhaps also conform to Hollywood notions of 60s England.3 Despite the fact TIME presents some of the stereotypes the magazine’s primarily North American readership expected, the profile captures the city’s youthful energy and cultural trends: London was a “groovy” place where rock and rollers were the new royalty, disco, sexiness, verve, and vulgarity were in, sartorial sharpness and shaggy haircuts prevailed, and a vibrant art scene incubated op and pop—tendencies which extended beyond the galleries to color everyday design and fashion. The revolutionary spirit that characterized the 1960s certainly extended to the world of art: Kinetic art was often quite literally “switched on” (TIME 38.).

The Political Stakes of the “Kinetic Kraze”

Much as in broader Western society, the new generation positioned itself against the old status quo. Within art, the critical paradigm of “arch-modernist” Clement Greenberg and the associated

3 The writer mentions Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic depiction of the London scene, Blow-Up [1966], which was being shot on location at the time. 74 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

styles of Abstract Expressionism (termed “American-type painting” by Greenberg) and Post-painterly Abstraction became anathema to younger advanced artists. Artists rejected traditional competence, ideas of working in a single, traditional medium, such as painting or sculpture, and the autonomy of art (the idea that works should not react to the presence of viewers).

Modes of artmaking that today are often separated into distinct taxonomies in museums or undergraduate survey courses were all part of one unruly field of contemporary culture. Signals brought together neo-concrete art, kinetic art, tech art, and minimal art—works which at the time were all understood under the rubric of “constructivism.” Kinetic artist George Rickey’s Constructivism: Origins and Evolution (1967) as well as various exhibitions (perhaps most notably Plus by Minus, Today’s Half Century [1968], and The Machine at the end of the Mechanical Age [1968]) helped to concretize this field of production. The use of the term constructivism, which was also employed to describe earlier projects by Gabo, Mondrian, or Lissitsky, linked new art of the 1960s with works hailing from the first decades of the twentieth century. Rickey locates many Signals artists, including Cruz-Diez, Clark, Soto, Takis, Medalla, Le Parc, and Haacke within this category.

One of the clearest commonalities found in the new varieties of art that emerged in the 1960s was a concern for time and temporality. Critic Michael Fried celebrated “presentness” and took to task the “theatrical” aspects of minimalism in his famous censure “Art and Objecthood.” Comparatively, the projects of the American minimal artists whom Fried took objection with seem downright inert beside the kinetic works shown at Signals Gallery. Medalla strived for all of his projects to approach the condition of dynamic life. By existing coextensively in time with spectators and often reacting directly to them, the new art seemed capable of resisting the notion of art as precious and timeless: it was real.

The Frankfurt school theorist Herbert Marcuse, a major figure in the 1960s, supported this notion. Marcuse affirms: “And history perhaps now is catching up with art, or art is catching up with history. The historical locus and function of art are now changing. The real, reality, is becoming technique in a literal, ‘practical’ sense; making and remaking things rather than painting pictures […]” (121). As his words indicate—in what now may seem like a slightly naïve rhetorical sleight of hand— new art forms were understood to possess an automatic political charge. Undergirding this belief about art’s transformative powers was the reasonable assumption that art reflects the society that it was produced in. Artists aimed to reverse engineer this process: they held that radical types of art contained the promise of societal change. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 75

Greenberg’s term, “American-type painting,” contributed to a further sense that abstract expressionism constituted a national school approved by the U.S. Government that tacitly forwarded its agenda.4 Another 1966 TIME magazine article describing the tendency to make artworks that actually travelled through time and space dubbed kineticism “the movement movement”—implicating the tendency in a field of other counter-cultural—and not just artistic—movements. Further suggesting that resisting the status quo in art was tantamount to resistance of the hegemonic order of things in the socio-political realm, only a few years after Signals was published, MoMA curator Kynaston McShine affirmed that given the political climate: “If you are living in the United States, you may fear that you will be shot at, either in the universities, in your bed or more formally in Indochina. It may seem too inappropriate, if not absurd to get up […] and apply dabs of paint from a little tube to a square of canvas” (unpaginated).5

A Newspaper Aesthetic …

Signals Newsbulletin was in many ways different from contemporary art journalism. It diverged from most “little magazine” artists’ publications as well as the larger, codex format that continues to characterize trade journals like Artforum. Medalla and Keeler’s broadsheet adopted a periodical aesthetic. The bi— or tri—monthly journal took on the form of newspapers, though not their cheaper pulp paper. Its use of bold color, graphic design, varied typeface, and touch of red in issue one, all make the glossy broadsheet resemble tabloids of the day. Signals included sections with the heading “Stop Press,” a phrase commonly printed in British papers to indicate that even more up- to-date news had been added. As well as mimic the techniques of the media by vocabulary, Signals’s use of “stop press” sections—in courier type and sometimes with more than one per issue—suggested that the authors were packing in as much data as possible, continuously out on the beat for information or receiving wires—like the writers of standard dailies. Though it may have been as well the result of a lack of organization, the inclusion of “stop press” served to add a clear sense of temporality and contemporariness into the publication.

4 These concerns were not unfounded. As Eva Cockcroft and Max Kozloff have proven, the Rockefeller Brothers in tandem with the CIA instrumentalized Abstract Expressionism, turning it into a Cold War weapon. 5 A number of the artists whose work was featured in Signals were included in McShine’s important Information (1970) at MoMA, for which he composed the quote. 76 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Indeed, Signals emphasizes contingency and the possibility of re—use, over absolute timelessness for the art and texts it contains. Because the publication was folded rather than bound, the possibilities of pulling, spreading it apart over space or reconfiguring the text do certainly exist. Moreover, by paralleling the “low,” even throwaway form of the paper, it confounds hierarchical divisions of “high—” and “low—” brows of culture.



Newspapers are an ephemeral, mass medium that in the sixties— like today— typically transmitted factual information in a single language. With a geo-politically bounded readership, newspapers traditionally build perceived connections between citizens of one nation-state.6 A sense of belonging to a common polity can be born out of simultaneous reception of common content. Transcending monolingualism (and thus, nationalism), Signals variously contains texts in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek, as well as many translations. The Newsbulletin brought together many kinds voices, yielding a decidedly polyphonic and cosmopolitan montage of content that aligned with their globalized vision of the art world. Signals served to foment an imagined transatlantic community of artists and thinkers.

In the July-August 1965 issue Medalla published an excerpt of a 1964 letter sent from Germany by Hans Haacke alongside a French language telegram he wrote in reply to the German- American artist: given the layout and deployment of typographic elements—a vector of full stops and larger black dots that mark section breaks—there is an implication that Signals is the high-velocity delivery device for the electronic message. The journal’s temporality of exchange was of course not that of the rapid telegraph. Nevertheless, Keeler and Medalla were not the first to evoke modern communication technology as part of an endeavor in newspaper publishing: the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, established respectively in 1896 and 1855, also make a similar link between papers and other modes of communication.7

6 For more on newspapers and national identity see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 2006). 7 The Spanish translations of these terms, el telegrama and el correo are also periodical names in Spain and Latin America. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 77

Works on Paper

In some issues of Signals, depictions of works appear with limited text on a spare white ground, recalling the display of objects within the white cube gallery. For instance, works by Alejandro Otero occupy almost the entity of the space and are accompanied by limited captioning, characteristics that prompt them to read as presentation rather than representation. Flows of depictions of works by Carlos Cruz-Diez, selected and captioned by the artist, snake through Signals 1.9—emphasizing the spatial aspects of the paper (Fig. 2). The reader-viewer must “make an effort to discover” the images, navigating through the pages to view the entire photo-strip (Cruz-Diez 5).

Signals was at the crux and vanguard of a variety of period artistic tendencies: the print renaissance saw the creation of an increasing number of printed portfolios that collect the work of various artists. While in 2016 kinetic art might seem a world away from printmaking, they were both understood as instances of a mastery of technics and requiring skillful manipulation of complex tools.8 Signals can also be set into a voguish genealogy of co-productions, collections of multiples that include poet Walasse Ting’s 1-Cent Life (1963); the Wadsworth Athenaeum’s X + X (TEN WORKS BY TEN PAINTERS) (1964) (which was curated by Samuel Wagstaff Jr.); Jack Sonenberg’s Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Viet Nam (1967); and gallerist Leo Castelli’s Ten from Leo Castelli (1968).

In Europe, artists like Victor Vasarely advocated for the creation of reproducible abstract “prototypes.” Vasarely helped found the Parisian Galerie Denise René, which produced prints and multiples by kinetic and op artists. Cologne’s Galerie Der Spiegel operated similarly in Germany. Again revealing that Signals was ahead of the curve: a broader renewal of interest in Bauhaus notions (which had always percolated in the U.S. thanks to Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, and Gyorgy Kepes) of

8 This idea about printing relating to tech art is clearly expressed in the essay for the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition surveying the output of the pioneering Los Angeles print studio, Gemini G.E.L. See Riva Castleman, Technics and Creativity: Selections from Gemini G.E.L. exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, May 5— July 6, 1971), 7-31. Castelman touches upon constructivism and the Bauhaus in the process of tracing art history in relation to printmaking. The fact that Gemini was willing to undertake projects in all manner of media, including a kinetic ice bag sculpture, Ice Bag—Scale C, with Claes Oldenburg surely aided in making the association. The press release for the exhibition further highlights the hydraulic press and rag paper Gemini developed to the meet artist’s needs. 78 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 2. Carlos Cruz-Diez, “Photo-Strip Cruz-Diez,” Signals 1.9 (August-September-October, 1965), 9. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 79

collective artistic labor and the ideal of a mechanically made mass-produced art can in part account for the “multiplicity” trend.9

Additionally, by modeling vanguard strategies of reading and writing, Signals anticipates primarily American magazines being used as alternative exhibition spaces. Moreover, in the years following its production magazines like Artforum or Arts, Signals would host for printed artworks. Unlike these magazines, in which the art was disguised as articles or advertisements in an otherwise straight publication, Signals functioned as a total art network. It was a technology that blurred the bounds between art and science, article and work; as new content appears simultaneous to reproduction, typical designations between presentation in the gallery and representation in the publication break down and merge. Like the “wordworks” found in many other publications of the period, Signals disregarded traditional notions of aesthetics and veered toward an art that was liberated from gallery presentation and conventions of artistic media. Thus, the publication spanned what the critic of Lucy Lippard called “dematerialization” and a concern for materiality.

The 1960s did not just see a return of the Bauhaus. Marcel Duchamp’s influence was increasingly felt. For all the cases named above, Duchamp’s famous Boîte-en-valise must be viewed as an important precedent. The Boîte is a multiple issued various times between 1940 and 1973 (and again in 2015). The artwork consists of deluxe, hand-colored miniaturizations of the French Dadaist’s oeuvre. It is almost certain that Signal’s director and editor would have been familiar with the Boîte. Duchamp’s writings appeared in the broadsheet and Keeler exhibited his work in the gallery. In fact, the flow of influence between Duchamp and Medalla was multi-directional. Duchamp was an important precedent for the Cloud Canyons, as he was (likely) the first artist to use foam; he playfully converted himself into a demon or fawn for the self-portrait on Monte Carlo Bond (1924). According to Medalla’s collaborator Adam Nankervis, the Philippine kineticist showed his first bubble-machine sculpture to Duchamp’s friend Man Ray in Paris; apparently, Keeler also shared images of Medalla’s works with Duchamp, who was inspired to produce a multiple, Medallic Sculpture (1964/68) (“David Medalla”). This multiple is a multivalent pun on the younger artist’s name and the round form (medal) and material (metal) employed, which paid “tribute to David Medalla and his bubble-machines” (Nankervis, “A Stitch”).

9 Susan Tallman argues that for Albers it was important for him that Ken Tyler, the master printer at Gemini, apply the ink to the stone for his lithographs in 1966 and 1967. Interestingly, the Bauhaus artist also employed post systems for the works done with Gemini: he developed his nested squares compositions on a piece of cardboard and mailed half from New Haven to Tyler in Los Angeles (68-71). 80 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

While Signals Newsbulletin contrasts with Duchamp’s boxed set in terms of preciousness and detail, it possesses a similar logic of display. Duchamp described his project in the following manner: “Then I thought of the idea of the box in which all my works would be mounted like a small museum, a portable museum, so to speak” (qtd. in “Boîte-en-valise”). Keeler and Medalla’s publication is a mass- media update for the post-modern era.

The Art of Information Processing

With the Newsbulletin, Signals becomes a galaxy of interwoven data.10 The operations of the magazine seem to parallel the shifts Marshall McLuhan saw occurring in other facets of society. The cybernetic theorist argues that: “When IBM discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with clear vision” (Essential McLuhan 151). Similarly, while not exactly in business, it appears that Medalla and Keeler’s vision for their venture also involved the art of processing and repackaging information.

The Newsbulletin was an expansive project at the crux of various disciplines and genealogies. Demonstrating an impressive capacity for administration, Medalla secured permission to reprint articles from a diverse range of sources, such as the New Scientist, TIME, and a selection of dailies as well as more specialized texts laying out artistic ideas. Anthropological photographs of non-western people engaged in creative acts juxtaposed against vanguard art and science as well challenge received ideas about the difference between the “primitive” and modern (Fig. 3). Signals possessed the logic of a digest, archive, or anthology. Appropriating content from other sites and in a sense converting it into art discourse, Signals, in its published articles and images, served to enrich and illuminate the works reproduced—at times words illustrate images. Training constituents in a new kind of spectatorship, they further demonstrated that the divisions that exist between areas of thought and creative expression that are normally deemed unrelated could be more permeable. Especially for an informed, free-associating reader-viewer, the diverse elements seem to connect in myriad ways.

10 The McLuhanite idea of media galaxies surely influenced Medalla’s thinking. His subsequent venture was an art space called Exploding Galaxy, seemingly a riff on McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962). John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 81

Fig. 3. Detail of Signals 1.10 (August-September-October, 1965), 2-3 with text and image of Barnett Newman, Navrongo housewife, a review of Cruz-Diez, and Werner Heisenberg’s “The Role of Modern Physics in the Present Development of Human Thinking.” © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. 82 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Music, art, poetry, and science could potentially cross—pollinate one another. Many covers render their art contents more scientific (or scientistic) and vice-versa. For number 5, Camargo’s Wood Relief (1965) is juxtaposed against a small photo of cumulo—nimbus clouds. Each photo has an arrow signaling its respective caption, seeming to suggest that their resemblance was so uncanny that the scientific image could easily be confused with the art documentation. In the nextissue, Marcelo Salvadori’s circular shaped, plastic window installations appear with morphologically similar photographs of “the changing conditions of the sun” (Medalla, “Untitled,” Signals 1. 6, 1). In this case, the solar logic was possibly catalyzed by the artist himself; he made a work titled The First Eclipse (1964), which is illustrated later in the issue. In the same number’s interior, photos of Salvadori’s Trace Project for Doors and Windows (1965) and a close-up image of a botanical specimen flank an article on Salvadori’s work with polymers reprinted from the New Scientist.

Jesús Rafael Soto playing the guitar next to songs by Alasdair Clayre embodies interdisciplinarity of another stripe (Fig. 4). Indeed, it is difficult not to imagine him playing precisely the compositions that surround his photo. The image and text pairing extends the classical ut pictura poesis, a notion that is certainly important for Signals Gallery (which had a permanent collection of poetry books) and Newsbulletin too; here there is a suggestion that the artist can perform the role of the singer-songwriter and poet. With his guitar in hand, Soto becomes a folk singer—the most romantic figure in the landscape of the 60s counter—culture—in the context of the broadsheet.

Networked Multitudes: Virtual Curation and Collaboration

Looking back on Medalla’s career, the art historian Yve-Alain Bois affirms that the Signals editor produced artworks that operated with a certain kind of virtuality. Bois goes on to explain that he believes he saw very few of Medalla’s biokinetic projects in the flesh; but, as a result of regular exposure to distribution of documentation, he felt familiar with the artist’s oeuvre. Bois asserts, “his real performances were his narrations” (Bois 212). Hence, it was both the framing and the art action that constituted Medalla’s artwork for the art historian. The same tendency that Bois identifies for Medalla’s works equally extends to the diverse output that he selected for Signals: Newsbulletin.

Moreover, like with Duchamp’s Boîte, Keeler and Medalla’s embrace of multiplicity and moves to decentralize art did not entail an absolute rejection of materiality. Even while acting as “virtual” curator, Medalla certainly did not abandon an aesthetic and material sensibility. The paper’s pages John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 83

Fig. 4. Detail of Jesús Rafael Soto photo by Clay Perry in Signals 1.10 (November-December, 1965), 10-11. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. 84 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

are exercises in design as art as well as virtual display. Signals experimented with layout, graphics, different combinations of fonts, layouts, and boldly colored inks. Medalla’s deliberate pairings of texts and images produce a range of new meanings and influence aesthetics. Signals Newsbulletin should be viewed as an instance of publishing as a form of art: a move aligning with conceptual artists’ turn away from traditional artistic media toward the “aesthetics of administration” (Buchloh 105). Medalla’s work as editor, layout designer, and curator might constitute an early form of conceptualism—a mode of making that privileges ideas over traditional aesthetics and materials. Indeed, Alexander Alberro reads many of the multiply produced works of conceptual art that would come only a few years later as a deviant form of publicity. Alberro argues that by employing “the infrastructure of publicity as medium,” artists “problematized the traditional boundaries of artistic production” (152). He notes they both expand art and potentially bring it closer to commerce.

Form as well as content clearly mattered in the textual enterprise. Medalla had met a number of surrealist and beat poets in France and New York and was certainly aware of a longer trajectory of publishing developments related to concrete poetry. In the late 1950s and 60s, poet William F. Burroughs and the painter, poet, and performer Brion Gysin revived Tristan Tzara’s the poetic techniques of découpé (or cut-up) and developed their own method: “the fold in.” The former involved new configurations of rearranged found materials; the latter, which Burroughs defined in 1961, consisted of “placing a page of one text folded down the middle on a page of another text (my own or someone else’s). The composite text is read across half from one text and half from the other.” In the 1970s Medalla created collage books that employ these tactics and bear a striking resemblance to Gysin and Burrough’s The Third Mind (1978). Much like the poets’ text-image project, Signals adapted the poetic techniques in order to meld a multitude of minds and disciplines. Thus, it both embraced the aesthetic possibilities of modern publishing and, via its poetic combinations of text and image, pushed back against what McLuhan saw as the homogenizing “visual logic of Gutenberg technology,” which tended to render all it transmitted similar combinations of black signs on white ground.11

Working with many others—as both raw material and partners—Medalla artfully produced new creations. He danced a fine line between collaboration and appropriation. While Medalla was at the helm, Signals authorship was networked. Various voices speaking distinct verbal and visual languages supplement and supplant one another. Indeed, literary theorist Jacques Derrida’s concept of the supplement quite aptly captures the modus operandi of the experimental periodical’s contents.

11 McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, 136. In fact, McLuhan’s (and Quentin Fiore’s) layouts with text and found images in The Mechanical Bride and The Medium is the Massage reveal a similar logic to Medalla’s. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 85

Derrida describes the supplement as “a plenitude enriching another plenitude” (Derrida 144). By layering and suturing disparate and related words and images, Signals enriched their meanings.

While Medalla certainly engineered many of the pairings, he did not direct all of the utterances he published. For instance, Duchamp’s assessment of Takis (“gay laborer of magnetic fields and indicator of gentle railways”) appears in large font among other articles (Signals 1.3/4 4). In the same issue, the potential for art and poetry to drive one another forward is made clear by a variety of homage poems: Gysin’s “Magnetic Word-Music for Takis’s Sculptures” (Signals 1.3/4 22), B. Farman- Farmaian’s “Two Poems for Takis, Sculptor of Cosmic Light and Perpetual Forces” (Signals 1.3/4 15), and Alan Ansen, “A Poem for Takis” (Signals 1.3/4 12).

Color played an important role both in establishing the “Signals look” and enabling coproduction. A constant push and pull regarding authorship played out on the pages. Taking on the role of semi-authorized collaborator, Medalla boldly colored areas of photos of other artists’ works. By tinting them with the sharp hues of “Swinging London,” they arguably became more eye-catching. For instance, compared to the drab grey tones or garish rainbow inks of much “straight” art reporting of the time, Signals’s striking signature design—black and white plus two colors—was extremely elegant. Signals was equally cool and countercultural: on the one hand, the bold text-image compositions recalled graphic design of the historic avant-gardes (the Bauhaus or INKhUK [Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture]); on the other, their dynamic-yet-limited color palette is similar to hip posters advertising rock concerts too. For instance, Soto and Otero’s works in Signals 1, no 10 (November-December, 1965) and Signals 2, no 11 (January, February, March, 1966) respectively appear in stinging lemon and navy or acid pink and electric blue—color pairings found in contemporaneous ads for performances by British rock outfits as well as foreign musicians like Jimmie Hendrix or the Grateful Dead.

For example, in the Soto issue (1.10), the artist dominates the front page. There is a hand- written statement in French by the artist regarding the role of chance and movement in environmental art paired with the artist standing before his works with serial forms. Despite submitting some works to his designs, Medalla often respected the original hues in the artwork; he simply intensified them in his translations to Technicolor pulp. Yet, the blue and yellow inks are given further inflections by Medalla’s front page publication of the “Korosta Katzina Song” of the Hopi Indians of Arizona, which describes yellow and blue butterflies. In a couple of cases Medalla’s interventions verge on effacement. In the coloring of Grand Relation-Vibration, 24 black squares + 24 Blue Squares (1965) and Grand Vibration-Relation: Blue and Black (1965), Medalla seems to turn the Venezuelan into a monochromist of the stripe of Yves Klein, famous for his trademark blue canvases. 86 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

On the back cover of Signals’s Soto special there is a color artwork, The Little Yellow (1965) (Fig. 5) that is not simply a colored photograph. Instead, a square of electric yellow appears about a black square nested in a series of regular black lines imprinted on the glossy stock. Because there is not a photo suggesting another deferred location, the printed page becomes the direct site of interface. The Little Yellow is presented in the magazine, rather than illustrated in it. Right above the work and to its left are a blurb from Charles Spencer’s New York Times review of Keeler’s Soto show and an announcement of the exhibition with the Signals Gallery address— in a sense illustrating the work shown in the Newsbulletin. These articles serve a provocative function: they conjure up an image of the Soto show in a brick-and-mortar place, removed from the space of the page. Nonetheless, the mass distributed cellulose support actually expands the exhibition beyond the gallery. Because of The Little Yellow’s material qualities, there is a sense that a little bit of the show is now in the hands of the reader-beholder.

A grid of 20 Soto signatures appears above the crease on the same page as The Little Yellow. When folded down these repeated assertions of the presence and authority of the artist caress the nested squares. The Soto Fig. 5. Back cover of Signals 1.10 (November-December, 1965), 24 with signatures are more complex than simply stamps Jesús Rafael Soto, The Little Yellow, 1965. © David Medalla and Paul of authenticity or claims to territory. Anticipating Keeler; © Jesús Rafael Soto. Belgian conceptualist Marcel Broodthaers’s repeated initialing of “M.B.” in his screenprint John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 87

La Signature, Serie 1. Tirage illimité (1969) (Fig. 6), the multitude of Sotos are also printed on the page via a process of mechanical reproduction. Each is slightly different, but their individuality is only perceptible with close study. While the names could seem like an over-determined assertion of the authorial presence, singular authorship is a shaky proposition with the Newsbulletin. The process must have been collaborative; at the least, Medalla would have had to request the autographs—a simultaneous act of collection, homage, and certification. Repetition hollows out the sign, turning it from unique, hand-made, marker of authorial authority into a serial pattern—which is subsequently lithographically reproduced ever more times. The composition employs the mark of artistic authenticity to interrogate art. On the broadsheet, the Soto signature becomes a readymade design, just one more ordered configuration of information. In an inversion of Burroughs’s method, it is by folding out the entire recto that the beholder reveals the Newsbulletin’s poetry: it is clear the signatures rhyme with the layout elements on the front page. Hence, the back and front together both celebrate and undercut the cult of the artist genius (Fig. 7).

Fig. 6. Marcel Broodthaers, La Signature, Serie 1. Tirage illimité, 1969. Silkscreen on paper. © Marcel Broodthaers. 88 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 7. Detail of front and back covers folded out of Signals 1.10 (November-December, 1965). . © David Medalla and Paul Keeler; © Jesús Rafael Soto. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 89

However, the existence of the principle colors in each monographic edition operates as a kind of branding exercise as well. In the Otero issue (2.11 [Jan, Feb, March, 1966]), pink and blue does not just mark Medalla’s hand in the process. They also become shorthand for the entirety of Otero’s artistic identity. While Otero worked in a wide range of colors and materials, pink and blue do appear at various moments in his output. In Signals, the colors dominate 49 por ciento (1965), a painted newspaper on wood artwork that graces the journal’s cover (Fig. 8). As it runs without any text above the fold (a deviation from nearly all other issues of Signals), Otero’s artwork—itself made of titles, ads and articles—becomes the headline. The composition furthermore yields a kind of mise-en-abyme effect when printed on broadsheet paper. This effect might cause a short circuit for Anglophone readers, for whom the content of Otero’s work was a foreign pattern instead of legible signals. Here, due to scale, and Otero’s employment of the news media as medium, the printed version of the work possesses a directness normally experienced with art encounters in a gallery. Fig. 8. Front cover of Signals 2.11 (January, February, The same blue and pink of 49 por ciento March, 1966) with Alejandro Otero 49 por ciento, 1965. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler; © Alejandro Otero. also appear in the titles and author names running through the entire number. The pair of hues imply that Otero’s influence colors the surrounding elements of the news bulletin, which is equally true for each issue’s protagonist. Below Otero’s front-page artwork, Medalla reproduces an excerpt from William Shakespeare’s Troilus and 90 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Cressida (Act III, Scene 3) discussing time, motion, and impermanence. The title, “Ulysses’ Advice to Achilles,” and citation information appear in the electric azure ink and the bard’s name is pronounced in the bubblegum pink. Thus, not only is England’s foremost author marshalled to help the international readership understand Otero, but Shakespeare and his anglicized Greek characters too experience a slight expatriation. When made to relate to the artist’s work, they become a bit more Latin American. The seventeenth-century words literally—and figuratively—take on the same tint as the Venezuelan’s artwork. The choice to caption contemporary art with Shakespeare may seem peculiar or esoteric by today’s standards. However, quotes from his plays pepper McLuhan’s writing (something to be expected from a professor of English) on media and would not have seemed out of place to period viewers who had cut their teeth on popular cybernetics. In Understanding Media (1964), he argues: “Troilus and Cressida […] is almost completely devoted to both a psychic and social study of communication” (24).

Adventures in Networking

As well as gathering interdisciplinary content, Signals Newsbulletin propagated the activities around Signals Gallery as well as the exhibitions held inside it. Fulfilling a role a bit like “Scene and Herd” in today’s Artforum.com, the paper traced the social network that crystallized around the gallery and their stable. Because it could be seen to yield an imagined community of readers, the paper produced this network too. The publication was part newsletter and part society page. It made an inexpensive gift or souvenir with which to link in new contributors, sponsors, or (though not a major concern) buyers and catalyze memories of the gallery.

Nearly every issue includes “thanks yous” to donors, salutations, reports on attendance. Their list of private patrons was quite impressive. Aware of the potential to attract future sponsors and further augment their own prestige, donors—including a number with noble titles—appear on the front page. This presentation recalls the way many museums list trustees at the front entrance. By the eighth issue, Caresse Crosby, inventor of the modern bra and an important patron of progressive arts initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic was at the front of the list.12 Others recognized hailed from the art world, including Mrs. H. D. Molesworth (Eve Galloway), wife of the keeper of sculpture at the Victoria & Albert; Sir John Rothstein, director of the Tate; the British surrealist, Roland Penrose; the champion

12 Crosby helped run the G Place Gallery in Washington, D.C. This gallery was important venue for showing the work of African-American artists: for instance, Romare Bearden’s second solo show was held there in 1945. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 91

of kineticism, art historian and curator Frank Popper; and the painter Frank Avray Wilson. The names of Keeler’s parents, who paid for the building and shouldered many of the costs of the Newsbulletin, follow Sir Robert and Lady Mayer, philanthropists best known for supporting musical programs for children. Guy Brett’s parents—Vicount and Viscountess Esher—were also sponsors.

In an almost ingenuous fashion, Medalla dropped the names of visitors to Signals or notable people who had corresponded with them. For instance, sharing the page of issue 11 with Haacke’s letter, are acknowledgements and thanks offered to Nina Gabo, the daughter of the famed constructivist (Naum Gabo), “for providing contact with Mr. Lewis Mumford,” the important architectural critic.13 The text continues, detailing a chain of connections, “The Editor thanks Mr. Lewis Mumford for sending over from New York a transcript of his address to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Photostat of the letter from the poet Robert Lowell to President Lyndon B. Johnson.”14 The editors extend congratulations to Naum Gabo for his solo exhibition at the Tate alongside letters by Kepes and Dore Ashton. Demonstrating a certain degree of ironic self-awareness, in issue 3/4 the title “Name Dropping” appeared just below a list of Signals’s collaborators; it actually corresponded to a section discussing the decision to stop using the “mouthful” of a name, Centre for Advanced Creative Study, Name Dropping. In one case, they ran a photo shoot documenting a dinner held for Jesús Rafael Soto, complete with a guest list. This type of exclusive event is typically solely for insiders: the artists represented by the gallery, possible buyers, or critics. Not quite gossip, the lists of names and photos of artist-celebrities private moments, augment the glamour of Signals. Moreover, rather like the logic of citations in academic writing, the multitude of proper names invoked provides authority for the gallery and its contents.

With the exception of announcements for shows at other galleries and museums—often featuring artists to whom they were sympathetic, Signals was free of advertising. How closely “curated” the ads were however, is unclear. The magazine included an advisement for its own ad space in issue 3/4. Another notable, apparently paid announcement ran in the tenth issue: it heralded the opening of the countercultural bookshop and art gallery INDICA. Of course, in many ways the paper was an elaborate advertisement for the exhibitions and artists shown at the gallery. For example in the issues on Carlos Cruz-Diez and Sergio de Camargo, the dates of their shows are clearly stated. In Camargo’s case, his prior accolades and the copy “first-one man show in Europe”—perhaps recalling a film poster or performance— seem to slide his work toward the realm of the culture industry.

13 See Signals 2, no 11 (January-February-March, 1966): 15. 14 Ibid. 92 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

We can equally view Signals Newsbulletin as a venture not just in publicity but as widely disseminated and advancing developments new art. Certainly, the projects the publication promoted were not typical commodities. According to Medalla and Keeler’s statements in Signalz 1.1, “Signals London is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the adventures of the modern spirit.” The slogan was emblazoned on the front pages of issues three/four and five. They lived up to their goal and the gallery did not provide them with any commercial windfall. Surely it served as a form of what would today be called “networking,” augmenting the young men’s social capital (six years later Lawrence Alloway would analyze art and its institutions this way in “Network: The Art World Described as a System”). Medalla and Keeler’s enterprise employed strategies of capitalist promotion and distribution to “sell” a different kind of product, knowledge and art experience that was ideally free and open to anyone who visited 38 Wigmore Street or picked up the Newsbulletin.

Returns and Revolutions: From Cold War to Hot War and the End of Signals

The expression of various generations of the avant-garde were woven together in a collage of word and image in Signals; these juxtapositions served a historicizing function, setting the contemporary works of the signals artists into a common genealogy with modern “masters.” Perhaps most clearly demonstrated by a special Gabo issue (Signals 1.8), Signals connected the historic avant- garde with that of the present. For instance, re-contextualized in the journal (April-May, 1965), Lygia Clark’s Architecture Fantastique transforms into a monstrous, monumental construction, recalling the stabiles of Alexander Calder, a relationship that Signals also proposes in issue 8; in the same issue, Brancusi appears along with a collage by Medalla recalling a work by Lissitsky. In the Soto issue Medalla translates the Venezuelan artist’s output into a form of “simple arithmetic,” or as he also dubs it, “Signs”: - Malevich + Mondrian = Soto (Signals 1.10 21). Keeler’s exhibition Soundings Two multiplied these connections in the gallery space: artworks by Albers, Brancusi, Calder, Duchamp, Moholy, Lissitsky, and Malevich were exhibited alongside those of Clark, Soto, Helio Oiticica, Mira Schendel and Medalla. Achieving similar results by scaling, Signals 8, presents equally sized photos documenting sculptural works to establish a relationship between Medalla and Kurt Schwitters.

In issue 2 Medalla wedded his own work to fragments of poetry by Venezuelan poet Roberto Ganzó that were originally penned in French, but here translated into Ganzó’s native tongue. The poems had initially had a career accompanying works by the modern artist Ferdinand Leger. Hence, by amending the same text but in Spanish, Medalla suggests there is a parity of the images appended: his John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 93

work, though more Southern, belongs in a lineage with Leger. Also in the second number Medalla ran words of Vladimir Mayakovsky alongside his work: “If you like I shall grow/ irreproachably gentle/ not a man, but a cloud/ in trousers …” (Signals 1.2 8) (Fig. 9). The late Soviet poet had collaborated with Alexandr Rodchenko during the 1920s, composing slogans to accompany the Russian artist’s designs. Hence, by pairing his poetry with documentation of Medalla’s biokinetic foam sculptures, they again acquired a radical inflection.

Fig. 9. Medalla Cloud Canyon images in Signals 1.2 (September, 1964), 8. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. 94 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Importantly, this valence of radicalism continued in the design: Signals’ bold duo-chrome design plus dynamic text seems to owe something to early Soviet advertising and posters. A number of the projects that Mayakovsky and Rodchenko worked on together rely on the same formula—albeit almost always with the crimson of the USSR and not the psychedelic colors of 60s London. Hence, by citing revolutionary poets and emulating revolutionary design, Signals’s project both connected to historic constructivism and the revolutionary promise of the early U.S.S.R.—before purges, gulags, repression, and scarcity came to characterize the communist polity.

In the Gabo issue, Medalla rebrands an image of men laboring on a pylon with signs reading “Signals” and “London” (Fig. 10). Sending mixed and doubled signals, he amended the following caption: “david medalla: found-foto (SEÑALES LONDRES) 1965 ●” While Medalla effectively used the surrealist technique of the objet trouvé, the particular picture he encountered, when paired with text, recalls Lissitsky’s Lenin Tribute (1920) (Fig. 11), which shows the Soviet leader at the top of a similar structure (in terms of form and color) with text on a sign. However, rather than just suggest Signals is the amplifier of the constructivist inheritors of Russian avant-garde art, his label performs a more complex maneuver: it translates the revolution into Spanish, the language of Latin America.

According to Carlos Cruz-Diez, Latin American art in the 60s possessed a similar radical, revolutionary charge as Russian Constructivism. When asked by art critic Ariel Jimenez about Signals, the artist proposed a link between vanguard art and revolution:

Why Russian Constructivism? […] A revolution took place in Russia, and […] a great many artists saw that revolution as an exceptional constellation of historic events that demanded a radically new form of art […] the same thing happened with Latin America. It was an explosion, and Latin America was exceptionally validated with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. This marked a critical juncture in time which the planet took notice of the continent (Cruz-Diez qtd. in Cruz-Diez and Jimenez 71).

On the pages of the magazine Medalla helps to crystallize a “fourth international” of art. The resolution of art and science as creativity the publication engenders as well might be viewed as an update of Karl Marx’s affirmation: “We recognize only one science, the science of history.” Confounding (and conflating) North-South and East-West divisions,Signals flaunts the binaries of the Cold War era globe.

It was their stance on the hot war in Vietnam, however, that led to Gallery and Newsbulletin’s demise. Medalla reproduced Lewis Mumford and Robert Lowell’s respective critiques of Lyndon John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 95

Fig. 10. Back cover of Signals 1.8 (June-July, 1965). © David Medalla Fig. 11. El Lissitzky, Lenin Tribune Proposal, 1920, gouache, india ink, and Paul Keeler. and photomontage on cardboard, 63.8 x 48 cm. 96 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Johnson’s foreign policy in their entirety (1.8 [June-July, 1965]). Their primary financial backer, Charles Keeler, Sr., understood these reprinted missives not as harmless citations, but as incitement against the proper order of things. A conservative with a strong business acumen, the senior Keeler disapproved of the critiques of the Vietnam War republished in the art journal. Nevertheless, his officially cited reason for concluding his financial support of the textual enterprise and gallery was their lack of commercial viability. The final issue of theNewsbulletin came out in January of 1966 and the Gallery’s last exhibition was held in September of the same year. Both Keeler and Medalla, as well as many of the other artists Signals broadcast, would continue to enjoy successful careers.

Found Poems, Lasting Transmissions

In a number of issues of Signals Medalla composed poems dedicated to other artists. Two of the most provocative ran with the title “found poem.” As their name suggests, these consisted of fragments of other images and texts that the artist-publisher encountered. He intervened in them, adding a personal touch with his own hand-written notations and dedication. The act of composition as homage is a tendency that courses throughout Medalla’s printed output. This form of empathetic, intersubjective, artistic production particularly characterizes his poetry in Signals. In his poem-like “Stele to Takis” (1961), Medalla appears to have taken a similar approach: it is a composition with found language.

“Found-Poem for Otero” is a fragment that pairs a series of line-drawn tools and their names (Fig. 12). Rows with variations of trowels, cleaners, and smoothers become rhyming stanzas when reframed as poetry. The seemingly tautological diagram recalls Otero’s collage reliefs, projects which saw the artist affixing tools to wooden planes. Medalla’s text-image is a cipher for the Venezuelan’s works. Paralleling his shift of the everyday into poetry, Otero, in this artistic act, removes their use value and prompted them to become artistic signs; according to critic Jonathan Bell the artist discovered “the unknown in the obvious” (Bell 12).

Medalla’s image-poem seems to epitomize Americanist George Kubler’s notions about form laid out in The Shape of Time (1962). At the cutting edge of period thought, Kubler rejected authorship- based art history and emphasized the need to view expressions of culture as linguistic utterances. The Yale professor importantly begins his study by proposing an expansion of “art” to encompass “the whole range of man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 97

Fig. 12. Detail of David Medalla, “Found-Poem for Otero,” Signals 2.11 (January, February, March, 1966), 24. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. 98 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

beautiful, and poetic things of the world” (Kubler 1). Indeed, capturing ideas of transmission, Kubler discusses art in relation to “signals” in the book’s framing chapters. Moreover, a mere ten pages into the tome, we find him discussing art-science connections.

Especially given his early interests in ethnography and the material culture of indigenous peoples in the Philippines, it seems very likely Medalla would have been familiar with Kubler’s text. Kubler’s book was de rigueur in New York art circles. John Baldessari created Painting for Kubler (1968); Robert Smithson channeled the Americanist’s ideas as well in his November 1966 Arts Magazine project, “Quasi-Infinities and the Waning of Space,” an artwork-article that combines diagrams, text, and images in a mode reminiscent of Signals.

Medalla is responsible for the two elements on the back page of the April-May, 1965 issue. In the top half of the sheet there is a close up of Medalla’s Cloud Canyon (1964). Below it, is his “Found Poem for Takis” (Fig. 13). The “Found Poem” combines a diagram of celestial signs with a mosaic of nearly 120 alphabetized words—many related to the war in Vietnam, the Cold War, and information technology. The poem is transmitted by ink in the metallic copper hue that is the “theme color” of the issue as well as the standard midnight black. The text-based work blends conceptualism and performance. A box with text prompts the reader-viewers to penetrate the pages and sends them to From the Editor’s Desk. This other site in the publication outlines the rules of the game: in order to produce the poetry, the words should be alighted upon in the manner of a Ouija board game.

Medalla makes pedagogical points with his poem. It proves how fields of language and ideas thread through one another. Moving though the nearly 120 terms—including “advance,” “aircraft,” “ammunition,” “arc of observation,” “casualty/ casualties,” “guided weapon,” “own troops,”—this work very much speaks to the bellicose realities of the era; but, by appropriating them for poetic performance sends them in new ludic directions. Engaging in a tabletop finger scale choreography with the paper, reader/poets interpreted and composed Medalla’s text, becoming co-authors of sorts. The poem could be viewed as an extended caption for his adjoining sudsy project. Like the soapy tech art, the found poem fulfills Herbert Marcuse’s call for “a science and technology released from their service to destruction and exploitation, and thus free for liberating exigencies of the imagination” (Essay on Liberation 31). Moreover, there is a suggestion that the poem is of equivalent value to Medalla’s ever expanding, ephemeral, irregular kinetic foam sculpture reproduced above it.

Looking back at the history of what she called “dematerialization” of art, the critic Lucy Lippard argued that the important shift away from physical objects in galleries towards more conceptual John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 99

Fig. 13. David Medalla, “Found- Poem for Takis,” Signals 1.7 (April- May, 1965), 12. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. 100 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

projects in which art took the form of decentralized information began in c.1966: the year Signals dissolved. Art as signals—moving towards data rather than things—was to become the next vanguard. The publication confounded bounds between representation and reality, potentially expanding the production of art far beyond brick-and-mortar institutions.

According to Guy Brett, Medalla’s key contribution as artist was his works’s tendency to encourage audience participation. This quality extends to Signals, which enabled audience interaction as well; the “Found Poem for Takis” marks its zenith. Crossing borders between past and present, this playful poem can still conjure up memories of the era and be completed by readers today. The process of composing the poem prompts the reader-viewer to become biokinetic performer—fulfilling Medalla’s goals of producing a living art even more successfully than the Cloud Canyon above it. When pulled off the library shelf, Signals’s appropriations continue to hold the potential for turning on and tuning in contemporary collaborators. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 101

Works Cited

ALBERRO, Alexander. Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. ALLEN, Gwen. Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. ALLOWAY, Lawrence. “Network: The Art World Described as a System,” Artforum 11, no. 1 (September, 1972): 28-33. BELL, Jonathan. “The Unknown in the Obvious: The Art of Alejandro Otero.” Signals 2.11 (January-February- March, 1966): 12-13. BOIS, Yve-Alain Bois. “Virtual.” in Guy Brett. Exploding Galaxies. London: Kala Press, 1995, 212. “Boîte-en-valise,” NGA Australia http://nga.gov.au/international/catalogue/Detail.cfm?IRN=64922 BRETT, Guy. Exploding Galaxies: The Art of David Medalla. London: Kala Press, 1995. BUCHLOH, Benjamin. “Conceptual Art: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions.” October 55 (Winter 1990): 105—43. BURROUGHS, William. “The Cut Up Method.” In Leroi Jones, ed., The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America. New York: Corinth Books, 1963. COCKCROFT, Eva. “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War.” Artforum 15, no. 10 (June 1974): 39-41. CRUZ-DIEZ, Carlos. “Photo-Strip Cruz-Diez,” Signals 1.9 (August-September-October, 1965), 5,6, 9, 11. CRUZ-DIEZ, Carlos and Ariel Jimenez. Carlos Cruz-Diez in Conversation with Ariel Jimenez/ Carlos Cruz- Diez en conversación con Ariel Jimenez. New York: Fundación Cisneros/Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros; bilingual edition, 2010. DERRIDA, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1967. FOX, James. “From North to South.” The Observer 8.VIII (1965), reprinted in Signals 1. 9 (August-September- October, 1965): 16. FRIED, Michael. “Art and Objecthood.” Artforum 5, no. 3 (June 1967): 12-23. “Great Britain: You Can Walk Across It On the Grass.” TIME, Friday, Apr. 15, 1966, online. http://web.a.ebscohost. com.proxygw.wrlc.org/ehost/detail/detail?vid=11&sid=2b8f1c36-13a5-44bc-8119-4e8cc1d2a4b8%40s essionmgr4005&hid=4104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=54033701&db=a9h. GREENBERG, Clement. Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Beacon Press: Boston, 1961. HOGARTH, Paul and Malcolm Muggeridge. London à la Mode. London: Studio Vista Limited, 1966. KEELER, Paul and David Medalla. “Signalz, Signalz, Signalz, Signalz,” Signalz 1.1 (August, 1964): 1. KELLNER, David, ed.” In Art and Liberation: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Vol. 4. New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2007. KOZLOFF, Max. “American Painting during the Cold War.” Artforum 11 (May 1973): 43-54 KUBLER, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962. LEE, Pam. Chronophobia: On Time in the Arts of the 1960s. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. LIPPARD, Lucy. Six Years Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. MARX, Karl. “Excerpts from The German Ideology (1845).” Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm. 102 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

MARCUSE, Herbert. An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. MCLUHAN, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964. —————————. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto University of Toronto Press, 1962. —————————.Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, Eds, The Essential McLuhan. New York: Basic Books, 1995. MEDALLA, David. “Name Dropping.” Signals 1.3/4 (October-November, 1964), 24. ————————. “Found-Poem for Otero.” Signals 2.11 (January-February-March, 1966): 24. ————————. “Found Poem for Takis.” Signals 1.7 (April-May, 1965): 12. ————————. SIGNS: From David Medalla’s Notebook ‘On Simple Arithmetic’ (1965).” Signals Newsbulletin 1.10 (November-December, 1965): 21. ————————. “Untitled.” Signals 1.6 (February-March, 1965): 1. MITCHISON, Amanda. “The Bubble Reputation.” The Independent. February 3, 1995. http://www.independent. co.uk/life-style/the-bubble-reputation-1571468.html. MoMA. “TECHNICS AND CREATIVITY: SELECTIONS FROM GEMINI G.E.L.” May 5, 1971. https://www. moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/4623/releases/MOMA_1971_0060_43.pdf?2010. NANKERVIS, Adam. “A Stitch in Time.” Mousse. http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=707. NANKERVIS, Adam. “David Medalla - Cloud Canyons.” Another Vacant Space (November, 2011). http://www. anothervacantspace.com/David-Medalla-Cloud-Canyons. PLANTE, Isabel. “Les Sud-américains de Paris. Latin American Artists and Cultural Resistance in Robho Magazine,” Third Text 24, no. 4 (July 2010): 445-455. “Search results for ‘signals: Newsbulletin’.” Worldcat.org. http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=signals%3A+New sbulletin&qt=results_page. SNOW, Charles P. The Two Cultures. London: Cambridge University Press, 1959. TALLMAN, Susan. The Contemporary Print: From Pre-Pop to Postmodern. London: Thames & Hudson, 1996. John A. Tyson: Signals Crossing Borders: Cybernetic Words and Images and 1960s Avant-Garde Art 103

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Front page of Signalz: Newsbulletin of the Centre for the Advanced Creative Study 1.1 (August 1964). © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Fig. 2. Carlos Cruz-Diez, “Photo-Strip Cruz-Diez,” Signals 1.9 (August-September-October, 1965), 9. Fig. 3. Detail of Signals 1.10 (August-September-October, 1965), 2-3 with text and image of Barnett Newman, Navrongo housewife, a review of Cruz-Diez, and Werner Heisenberg’s “The Role of Modern Physics in the Present Development of Human Thinking.” © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Fig. 4. Detail of Jesús Rafael Soto photo by Clay Perry in Signals 1.10 (November-December, 1965), 10-11. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Fig. 5. Back cover of Signals 1.10 (November-December, 1965), 24 with Jesús Rafael Soto, The Little Yellow, 1965. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler; © Jesús Rafael Soto. Fig. 6. Marcel Broodthaers, La Signature, Serie 1. Tirage illimité, 1969. Silkscreen on paper. © Marcel Broodthaers. Fig. 7. Detail of front and back covers folded out of Signals 1.10 (November-December, 1965). . © David Medalla and Paul Keeler; © Jesús Rafael Soto. Fig. 8. Front cover of Signals 2.11 (January, February, March, 1966) with Alejandro Otero 49 por ciento, 1965. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler; © Alejandro Otero. Fig. 9. Medalla Cloud Canyon images in Signals 1.2 (September, 1964), 8. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Fig. 10. Back cover of Signals 1.8 (June-July, 1965). © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Fig. 11. El Lissitzky, Lenin Tribune Proposal, 1920, gouache, india ink, and photomontage on cardboard, 63.8 x 48 cm. Fig. 12. Detail of David Medalla, “Found-Poem for Otero,” Signals 2.11 (January, February, March, 1966), 24. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Fig. 13. David Medalla, “Found-Poem for Takis,” Signals 1.7 (April-May, 1965), 12. © David Medalla and Paul Keeler. 104 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017) 105

“STRATEGIES OF ENGAGEMENT IN USING LIFE: A MULTIMODAL NOVEL”

Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih

Multimodality is not new to Egyptian culture whose ancient sign system was the hieroglyph (Lambeens & Pint 240); correspondingly, ancient Egyptian two dimensional mural art was at times sequential, illustrated by hieroglyphic inscriptions. Moreover, a bas-relief dating to the Old Kingdom circa 2,000 BCE at Cairo Museum may be considered as the earliest pictorial cartoon, according to Afaf L. Margot. It bears political insinuations by depicting a conflicting relationship between the keeper and the sacred baboons in his charge (Margot 3). Later, Coptic and medieval Arabic manuscripts combined text and image (Coptic Museum). In modern times, Egyptian cartoons evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century with the founding of newspapers in 1870. Their political humor was strongly connected to the growing antagonism against rulers (Margot 2).

Children’s comics in Arabic flourished in Egypt as early as 1923 withAl-Awlad (Children), an eight–pages–long black and white newspaper, to be followed by Katkot (Chick) with serialized comic strips that have developed, ever since (Nadim Damluji 2016). The emergence of the first graphic novel by Magdy El Shafee met great obstacles for being considered by the authorities as “infringing upon public decency.” It was banned under article 178 of the Egyptian penal code criminalizing such publications. Author and publisher were put to trial and had to pay a EGP 5000 fine. It was translated into English by Chris Rossetti (2012), and later reappeared in new Arabic editions. Censorship was growing apace during the Mubarak era, and graphic novels employed text and image to flout conventions by exposing the authorities despite the censored environment.

Graphic novels have gained popularity with the 2011 uprising in Egypt. More graphic novels have appeared since, such as Ahmad Nādī, Ganzeer, and Donia Maher’s The Apartment at Bab El Louk (2014), winner of a Mahmoud Kahil Award. Bab El Louk is a Cairo district close to Tahrir Square where the Egyptian uprising took place. During the uprising, Tahrir Square turned into a “carnivalesque” performance stage intermediating aural, verbal, visual, and digital, blending media and performance, most of which had political insinuations. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms this would be considered as “carnival” upturning social hierarchies. Tahrir Square became more of a mūlid (folk fair) location, where performances became similar to the Bakhtinian marketplace, combining “loud cursing” 106 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

and “organized show… imbued with the same atmosphere of freedom, frankness, and familiarity” (Bakhtin 1984a 154), thus balancing social differences.

The carnivalesque blending of media and performance, the pairing of (temporal) language and (spatial) image brings us back to Bakhtin’s theory which examines the utterance within the genre; this has been related by some critics to the combination of media. Gunther Kress has argued for a semiotic dimension of genre systems as combining varied activities within a medium. He starts off by proposing language as a multimodal medium (Kress 185), and all texts as multimodal (Kress 187). This multimodal approach to all texts or forms of communication shows that different modes have various potentials and limitations, and are articulated in specific ways in different cultures.

In a similar argument, Lars Ellestrom propounds that all “‘texts’ and ‘systems’ overlap,” being parts of material, sensorial, spatiotemporal and semiotic aspects,” which he calls “the four ‘modalities’ of media.” Subsequently, “all forms of art, media, languages, communication and messages have some characteristics in common,” allowing them to merge without dissolving (Ellestrom 10). Mark Evan Nelson and Glynda Hull have noted that Bakhtin’s theory on the multimodal “chronotopes,” the time-space conjunctions (Bakhtin 1981), may be considered as precursors to the interpretation of multimodality merging multifarious potentials in media. They have concluded that synthesizing several theories in a study within this scope enables a better understanding of a multimodal novel ( Nelson and Hull 416-417). Multimodality has challenged the borders separating media and has opened new forms of cultural practices and analysis that cross borders. It has promoted new strategies for collective engagement in a mediated world, creating a space for cosmopolitan repercussions.

Departing from traditional trends, experimental fiction proliferates in a cultural context where several forms of sign systems and media overlap. The carnivalesque environment referred to earlier that evolved with the Egyptian uprising has brought together creators from different social and cultural communities. Ahmed Naji’s (1985) and Ayman Al Zorkany’s (later Zorkany, 1982) Istikhdām al-Hayãt (2014, Using Life) is a multimodal novel challenging borderlines dividing classical and contemporary verbal narratives, comic strips, popular music, and film-making. It moves freely between the classical and the popular, as well as between world and local cultures (later referred to as UL). The popular has acquired global dimensions with the spread of information technologies, science fiction, and cyberpunk sub-genres, even among subcultural groups living at the margins. Verbal and visual overlap, enticing the reader to meander visual, verbal and musical rapport, communicating thematic connections on multiple levels simultaneously. Indeed, as Ellstrom argues, “intermediality is a precondition for all mediality” (Ellestrom 4). Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 107

By transgressing boundaries, verbal narrative and visual text contest plot-line consistency, as well as sequential chronology in graphics, which problematizes a critical reading of the novel within a single theoretical methodology. Any critical approach has to be shaped with relevance to the experimental nature of the creative work within its cultural context. Subsequently, I will draw from several critics that range, among others, from Mikhail Bakhtin, to Thierry Groensteen, Gunther Kress and Pascal Lefévere.

Naji and Zorkany: Using Life

Naji writes and Zorkany draws. Both are experimenting with mainstream novels and comics conventions, subverting the role of the Western superhero as well as the popular Egyptian arch-villain to articulate a futuristically fantasized estranged world. The objective of this paper is to explore strategies of engagement in Using Life, a multimodal narrative, combining fiction, non-fiction, graphics and lyrics. It will trace modes of going beyond standardized formal conventions, breaking away with habitual reading protocols of classical Arabic and mainstream Egyptian fiction to create a culture of dissent. Besides the informal practice in the verbal text, of blurring boundaries among various language registers in Egyptian everyday spoken language, it merges professional and amateur writing. Correspondingly, Zorkany’s comic strips break with the artistic hierarchy set by the College of Fine Arts since its establishment in Cairo in 1908. Unlike the aestheticism of Fine Arts, comic strips hold an oppositional potential interrogating habitual modes of viewing. Furthermore, Zorkany drifted away from the drawing styles commonly used in Egyptian comic artists. His comics have a wider range of drawing/shading style, and panel composition.

Naji and Zorkany have closely collaborated to synthesize verbal and visual; they have welcomed readers’ critical interaction, as acknowledged at the end of their book. In fact, the visual and verbal narrative strategies used, subvert the expectations of readers habituated to mainstream fiction, and graphic novels pandering to traditional tastes. They had to face the challenge of appealing to a wider and more varied audience, a multiplicity of cultural sources, and a wider range of artistic styles, ranging from cartoons, illustrations, and graffiti to commercial ads. The far reaching economic and social changes in Egypt as a consequence of globalization policies have formed a pluricultural society. This has unsettled mainstream culture and valued principles of all cultural groups. Verbal language has been affected mostly, and the visual took precedence with the spread of communication technologies. Subsequently, this has introduced new potentials for engagement with the world. 108 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

A society that is constantly disoriented as a result of rapid changes effected by unknown sources is in constant need to relate. Moreover, the proliferation of the graphic novel as a multimodal form came in response to an urge to engage with the world through an immersive form. According to Kress, multimodality brings to our notice that perception is the result of the human body’s engagement with the world through the senses. The fact that the senses coordinate together “guarantees the multimodality of our semiotic world” (Kress 184). For Pascal Lefévre, the sensual is experienced through form: “The first and foremost dynamic process of form is engaging the feelings of the reader” (Lefévre 5). The fact that the body provides the means of engagement with the material world, would relate multimodality to “the issue of subjectivity” (Kress 187), and ways of its engagement with the world. Multimodality may be thought of as an epistemological tool invoking the reader’s interaction in order to rethink complex local global relations ensuing from the clash between global technological politics and parochialism in an uneven world. Today’s reader is a global and local citizen located at the crossroads of cultural encounters, and contemporary writers worldwide have become aware of limitations inflicted by traditional artistic forms, as well as the difficulty in relating to a single national culture. Subsequently, multimodal creative works worldwide are hardly confined to one literary or artistic tradition. Such is the case with Using Life (2014; later UL), the work under study.

The novel’s title, Using Life is an appropriation from the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus’s (c.99 CE-c.55 CE) poem, The Nature of Things: De Rerum Natura, which is based on Epicurean philosophy. An epigraph appropriated from Lucretius is quoted in the book’s front-matter pages. The epigraph quoted in Arabic translates as follows: “Birth-giving reccurs on and on; life is not given for possession but for use” (UL 5). Naji’s appropriation of an ancient western classic, his merging of the local with the global, his mix of establishment with popular cultural products, and placing events in a contemporary setting endow the novel with a cosmopolitan context. The narrative events take place in cosmopolitan Cairo, configured as an unreal/real City that may represent the monetizing hurly-burly of any metropolitan city. However, the narrative subverts the call for “using life,” advocated by the book’s title and the Lucretian epigraph by failing to affirm them. Unlike Lucretius’s poem resplendent with natural imagery and sensuality promoting intellectual pleasure, the preponderant imagery in the novel is that of a yellowish desert, sometimes orange at its best, and that of a ravaged Cairo razed to the ground. Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 109

Appropriation as subversion

As opposed to Lucretius’s birth-giving nature, the events in the novel are stirred into action by a geographical catastrophe—a devastating desert tsunami inundating Cairo under a sand avalanche, along with a deadly massive earthquake causing streets and bridges to break down, land and ground to fall down and eventually, the collapse of the pyramids; Cairo is immersed in an overwhelming agony, a bewildering pathos. The language used to describe the tsunami appropriates that of the sacred texts, with phrases like “the wrath of god” and “Heavenly damnation,” relating the overwhelming situation. Again, as in The Nature of Things, the element of chance—not divine intervention—is persistent, however, paradoxically, disabling the natural use of life.

Disruptions: graphic and verbal

The presence of death in life initiated in the verbal narrative, is visually configured by a graphic design in a two-page spread with a caption appropriated from the Natasha Atlas’s lyric: “You’re looking for paradise, while it surrounds you” (UL 12-13). Instead of an enchanting landscape illustrating the lyric’s words, the graphic drawing is of a devastated bathroom. The drawing is in shades of grey and a predominantly obscure background. Streaks of light emanating from an unknown source make visible a toilet, a tub overflowing with a bloody liquid, sharp-cutting metal tools, and female underwear negligently thrown.1*The prevalence of decay is heightened by the use of stark chiaroscuro. The contrast of light and deep shades adds a claustrophobic noir atmosphere. The image may be viewed from another perspective as, to use Thierry Groensteen’s terms, a “tabular surface,” for spatial relationships, (Groensteen 13). The contrast between the white typography placed at the top of the drawing and the black background heightens the contradictory relationship between the meaning of the lyric and the visual affect. The sharp contrasts in shades, along with the deformed non-representational objects, function as tools to immerse the viewer in apprehensive emotions (Fig. 1).

Subsequently, the graphic spread cannot be viewed as a comic strip; the textual code emerging from the obscure space is deliberately disrupted by the gloomy environment evoked by the grey shades and sharp contrasts. The visual function of the typography becomes more active than the textual code

1 ∗ Editor’s note: the graphic’s allusion seems to be to David’s “The Death of Marat.” A reference to the assassination of Marat, a Jacobite betrayed by a fellow revolutionary Charlotte Corday belonging to a different faction—the Girondins. It can also be to all too commonplace urban violence and suicides. 110 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 1. “You are looking for Paradise while it surrounds you.”

in the lyric. The graphic drawing plays a double function: its placement at the beginning of the novel anticipates traumatic forthcoming events. However, once retrieved by memory along the flow of events, it impacts retrospectively, especially towards the end. The opening graphic spread disrupts the code transmitted by Natasha Atlas’s lyric, subverting the embedded meaning. The comic strips that follow are not set in consecutive order to create an alternative narrative; nor are they used as illustrations to the verbal texts. Conversely, they are as disconnected as the narrative text, at times supplementing the inarticulate in verbal language. The sparing snatches of dialogue in the subsequent strips are by an Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 111

anonymous narrator, who even disappears from several sequences. Unlike classical comics that impose verbal on visual, the panels are generally self-sufficient, following what Groensteen propounds as a “poetics of reticence, ambiguity, and indeterminacy” (Groensteen 30).

The third verbal text following the graphic spread is an entry on Ibn ‘Arūs, a medieval Upper Egyptian folk singer who turned from his life as a bandit to become a popular lyricist upon being jilted at the age of sixty by the young girl he loved. Ibn ‘Arūs’s lyrics are sung to this day at local fairs, or festive occasions in Upper Egyptian villages, by Shawqī Qenawī, a contemporary popular ballad singer, also mentioned in the entry on Ibn ‘Arūs. The dates and national origins of Ibn ‘Arūs are not definitive, as the narrator claims that information descending from ancestors and exchanged among contemporaries is liable to constant modification along the ages. The insertion of this entry pseudo-documenting the lives of both popular singers ji lted by their lover[s] function as commentary on the previous episode recounting Bassam Bahgat’s—the protagonist narrator—disappointment as a result of his partner’s betrayal; parallel situations in the novel intensify elements of indeterminacy and chance. The multimodal use of text, graphic design and popular music to map related private agonies among members of different social communities, enhances the sensation of “tsunami” morbidity on the local horizon. The second chapter extends this morbidity to the international horizon with texts and graphics critical of private and public Western modes of living. Enhancing sensations by the use of three modalities of media–verbal, visual and aural–simultaneously immerses the reader-viewer in the narrative experience.

Instead of a chronological plot-line, a series of episodes are spread along ten chapters, alternating verbal narrative, graphics or comic strips, as well as popular musical extracts. As verbal narrative visual comics and musical excerpts do not proceed in sequential order, they are mutually interruptive. Shifting visual, verbal and musical effects requires a pause, which disrupts narrative time and space. The verbal and visual are not attributed meaning in isolation, but relative to their occurrence in the text, and depend on the connections made in the process of reading. Multimodality or the use of multifarious media as referred earlier, coincides with the time-space “chronotopes,” hence merging different historical temporalities and diverse locations. 112 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Cityscape: Cairo

The novel evolves through multiple temporality, and plurality of cultural narratives. Narratives from Cairo’s past and present are related, to provide a background for ongoing events in the protagonists’ private lives. In one of his interviews, Naji rightly opines that, “Cairo is a museum holding a plethora of historical buildings” (Ali 2014). Cairo residents daily commute along different phases of history marked by distinct architectural constructions and monuments, at times merging with shanty towns and popular districts. Past and present are active in the everyday life of ordinary Cairo inhabitants. Along with the presence of the historical past, the present has provided technological devices introducing parallel realities. Subsequently, events in the novel alternate inadvertently along the protagonists’ private lived time and simulated reality. Correspondingly, Cairo’s surviving monumental architectural constructions provide a cultural context of lived pasts, surrounding commuters, along with mediated pasts diffused through the media. Within the private domain, there are lived, recounted, dreamed and simulated times. By the same paradigm, Cairo is being lived as embodied space, and as virtual space. Inadvertent shifts in experiencing material and virtual realities in private and collective memory are one of the strategies used to destabilize progressivist ideologies. The shifts are prompted by environmental degeneration, social instability, abjection, and failed projects. Contingent cultural transformations make it difficult to mobilize a narrative of private or collective history on a single axis, which explains the plurality of cultural narratives on Cairo and of its inhabitants. These narratives are inserted in the action as comments on ongoing situations linking Cairo’s past history to present actualities, in the same way protagonists reflect on their past lives in present sociopolitical situations.

Cairo has taken on several faces; the cityscape has undergone several changes under successive rulers. This is also configured in the changing roles of Egyptian women acting as traditional veiled women (Fig. 2) or unveiled modernized funky women (Fig. 3). These seeming binaries come along a series of graphic drawings. In a chapter titled, “The Animals of Cairo,” a variety of male and female figures are featured combining grotesque human and animal features; they are named: “the Scoundrel,” “Stray Dogs,” “Dervishes,” “cockroaches,” among others. Verbal and visual text subverts these stereotypes by revealing their complexity, making it difficult to stigmatize them under one appellation. They configure an identity crisis incapable of coping with new demands from the altered social and economic changes. Both veiled (UL 90) and unveiled women (UL 92) fail to find a balance between developing their distinctiveness while still fitting in. Unlike former graphics combining visual and verbal in one panel, in this series, the verbal and visual are split into different panels to be read and viewed separately. Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 113

Identity in crisis is a consequence of the persistent tradition/modernity conflict predominating the history of Cairo’s architecture, cultural heritage, as well as social relations, and has been configured in different strips. This conflict has never been resolved either in Cairo’s urban planning, or in the lives of its residents. The tradition/modernity conflict is further developed towards the end ofthe novel; a sequential panel features a televised story of a worker at a printing press, who abandons his wife after becoming emotionally attached to the printing machine he works on, and fantasizes about having a sexual relationship with it (UL 156-161). It is a humorous strip with multiple cultural specific connotations. Most of the panels are in a grotesque style, merging reality with fantasy; they convey a visual metaphor, alluding to inability in managing technological advancement to meet habitual living, or difficulties in reconciling rationality and affect. It may read as a tragicomic sequence, which adds to the ambiguity of the situation instead of clarifying it.

Fig. 2. Veiled woman. Fig. 3. Unveiled woman. 114 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Catastrophe: appropriation and erasure

The disconnected segments configure a lurking catastrophe which the reader/viewer apprehends as early as the opening chapters, especially that the opening episodes, graphics and musical extracts manifest the end of Cairo, the sad finale, before starting the narrative leading to this end. The reader is gradually led to sense a double risk lurking in the urban, ecological and sociopolitical environments. While the sociopolitical and environmental conditions of Cairo predict an inevitable disaster, later configured as a sand tsunami, its geopolitics is being manipulated by an economic strategy planned by the International Architects Association. This multinational Association is planning to sweep off Cairo City to have it replaced by a New Cairo. Cairo has always been designed by successive rulers to become the center of power. Moving the center of power from historic Cairo to a “New Cairo” by an international association of architects is of significance. The Association is a “global player,” an “outsider” economic and a political actor and not the choice of local inhabitants. Its political activity beyond governmental control has increased the vulnerability of the system, which brings about Cairo’s devastated condition. The latest previewed transformation by the Architectural Association claiming to have worked with reference to stored archived material lacks solid credentials, and their work turns out to be drawing a virtual map of New Cairo, a map that, “precedes the territory–precession of simulacra–that engenders the territory […]” (Baudrillard, from “The Precession of Simulacra,” 1981). Environmental degeneration and globalizing capitalism work concurrently. Towards the closure, global capitalism overlaps with crime increasing the threat, which is marked by a series of mishaps. Inadvertent events occur, such as the mysterious disappearance of Maud, one of the protagonists, the discovery of traces of a crime in the Association underground offices, and the frozen human flesh discovered by Bassam in Moonie Moon’s refrigerator. The horrendous verbal images recuperate the prelude graphic spread featuring a tub floating with a bloody liquid in an abandoned bathroom. On one level, the closing events relate to the queries raised by the opening spread; on another level they raise additional questions as to the identity of the assassins and their intentions; together these reiterate the limitations of verbal and visual language to be fully articulate. The ambiguity of both verbal and visual languages, their inability to articulate a consistent plot-line configures Cairo’s devastated condition as well as the chaotic condition of its inhabitants.

The speculative architectural project of New Cairo undertaken by the International Architects Association, created in response to a capitalist transnational scheme, intertwines with the fictional narrative (Plesch 145) recounting the interment of Cairo as a consequence of a devastating sand tsunami. The environmental disorder configures degenerating social relations, chaotic governmental Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 115

policies and lack of governance. The verbal and architectural narratives critique centralized planning, cultural globalization, digitalization and monetization. This is rendered in the third sequential panel (Chapter 3), featuring Bahgat’s first encounter with two members of the International Architects Association, who commission him to make a film on Cairo’s architecture (UL 37-41). The different postures of standing outsider and seated insider, commissioner and commissioned, self-assuredness and incertitude are rendered by focusing on posture and facial expressions. While Bassam’s posture conveys helplessness, his eyes reveal anxiety and negative affect (Fig. 4). Conversely, the Association members’ blank eyes shaped in straight, circular and interwoven lines convey a tunnel vision (Fig. 5). This blank look creates a gap revealing the complexity of the relationship, whereby one party’s inner emotions remains ambiguous; in that sense the images become performative as they immerse readers in the action.

Fig. 4. Bassam Bahgat’s first meeting with the Architects Fig. 5. Mrs. Dawlat, member of the Architects Association. Association members. 116 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Delusions

The presence of Ihab Hassan (1925-2015), the U.S.-American-Egyptian postmodernist critic, as a member of the International Architects Association is an implicit subversion of the postmodernism Hassan advocates. The construction of a New Cairo according to a simulated map designed by an international association, is totally divorced from Cairo’s cultural history, and marks the failure of a postmodernist approach claiming its inclusiveness of cultural difference. Conversely, Bassam Bahgat, protagonist-narrator and his friends, contest the Association’s rationalized globalizing scheme by leading the life of the flaneur. This mode of living also challenges the popular—turned—elitist postmodernist approach which had initially subverted rationalized modernization, but has later turned into theorization. The turn from live experience in an old Cairo throbbing with life, to the theorization and simulation of a “New Cairo” that replaces the old impedes the natural process of living. Subsequently, this explains Cairo’s eventual devastation by an unprecedented sand tsunami.

However, the life of the flaneurdoes not promote the natural process of living either. Frustration with the flaneur’s mode of living is rendered in the fourth comic strip (UL 71-78), configuring the impact of hasheesh on Bassam, the protagonist-narrator in the spatial graphic mode. Bassam is rendered in a condition of temporary amnesia that dissociates him from material reality, carries him afloat a paper boat sailing on a sea of dreams. The journey proceeds along downfalls and lifts, sinking in the sea, and flying in an air balloon, until he finally lands on a desolate location. The strip is made of a series of single images most of which are without captions, or with onomatopoeic sounds like the “crack” of the collapsing paper boat (Fig. 6). One does not view the panels in terms of before and after; the reader draws the meaning by reconstructing a simultaneous relationship connecting different images. Bassam’s distraught condition materializes with the sudden appearance of an unknown person giving him back his lost purse. Instead of thanking him, Bassam resents the stranger’s help, and responds with abusive language. Bassam subverts the superhero image; his life as flaneur indulges him in half- accomplished pleasures. However, his indulgences cannot be classified as negative affect, as they are among the few choices offered in a censored environment.

The Bassam Bahgat-Ihab Hassan dis/alliance renders the paradoxical relationship dis/ connecting dissenting intellectuals from the masses. Hassan’s presence is reminiscent of similar politico-cultural circumstances that have, with variation, previously taken place in Cairo’s history. Ihab Hassan emigrated to the United States in 1946, when Cairo was metamorphosed by Khedive Ismail to become “part of Europe,” engendering a cosmopolitan cultural environment. These were times when Egyptian Surrealists were at the peak of their performance; while closely connected to Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 117

Fig. 6. Paper boat cracks. 118 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

the International Surrealist movement, Egyptian Surrealists failed to achieve some of their aspirations in a cultural climate torn between modernists and conservatives (Kane 10-12). Similarly, Hassan, the postmodernist critic, while fully integrated into the American culture was totally divorced from the local culture to which he was related by birth. Most contemporary subversive youth movements as of the 1970s have appropriated the Egyptian Surrealists’ modes of contesting the establishment. However, Naji and Zorkany push “degenerate” or “decadent” art a bit further. Naji’s use of explicit language that almost verges on porno, his challenging description of sexual and gender relationships contest the growing social bigotry. Consequently, he has been unjustly persecuted and had to spend two years in jail in retribution (Koerber 2016). Ironically, this has increased the sales of the novel to over two million copies, a sign of wide reception, and the success of his strategy to debunk political repression and social inhibitions. The political establishment’s unequal war against Naji’s “decadent” fiction has contributed to the revival of political awareness, and augmented public resentment. Jacques Rancière defines “policing” not as “disciplining” of bodies” rather as a rule governing their appearing.” Conversely, Rancière argues that, “politics […] is antagonistic to policing.” “Politics runs up against the police everywhere” (Rancière 29, 30).

Explications

The subversion of formal genre conventions of the realistic novel, such as the absence of chronological temporality, of superheroes, of a conclusive message, as well as the lack of explicit language frustrates the habitual expectations of mainstream Arabic novel readers. In the same vein, Zorkany’s subversion of formal comics conventions–the want of interpretive aids, the grotesque morbidity of his hybrid figures, unidentified mysterious location, heightened mood of existential estrangement in the fictional narrative–dramatically diverges his work from the commercial comics tradition. Furthermore, instead if using one style throughout, Zorkany experiments with a wide range of graphic styles. His comics production combines sequences of abstract drawings, as in the “You are looking for paradise,” panel and drawings with figurative elements, which do not form a coherent narrative. Thierry Groensteen calls this graphic mode: “infranarrative comics” (Groensteen 10). In addition to the absence of a sequence linking the panels, occasionally, the panels and plot-line are not logically related. These visual strategies disorient the reader and make it difficult to infer a single interpretation, opening multiple semiotic possibilities. Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 119

Although the final strip (Chapter 9) is sequential, it requires decoding the various layers of signification. It is a parody of horror comics, critical of Western assumed power based on technological advancement; simultaneously, the panels ironically convey the vulnerability of folk heroism. The strip configures an invasion by monstrous figures spurred on by Paprika and Madame Dawlat, both Architects Association members, along with the escape of the perpetrators who may belong to the Architects Association members. The monstrous unidentified figures in the strip are drawn in a “rhizomatic style” in contrast to Paprika (Fig. 7). Paprika is drawn in a dynamic line whereas the hooded figures appear as a sprouting rhizome. Bassam and Hassan are identified in the panels in the act of invoking forces of resistance; in a diagonal layout, Hassan uses a spray can to fend off the monster’s assault, and is seen in the act of escaping with a bag. Conversely, Bassam is the only one to stand his stead, while he scares the assaulters by the use of explicit language–Hassan arms himself with technology, while Bassam relies on his innate forces (Fig. 9). The friction between two styles of drawing gives it a vital agility (UL 215-224).

The protagonists’ figures are not represented in the same way all through; although they are recognizable they remain unrealistic. Fig. 7. Paprika Drawings figuring Ihab Hassan have undergone an erasure (Fig. 8); Zorkany has previously caricatured “Ihab Hassan,” the postmodernist icon, as an aristocratic snob (UL 116). In the final 120 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 8. Ihab Hassan caricatured portrait. Fig. 9. Bassam Bahgat defying the invading forces.

strip (UL 222), Hassan appears holding a spray can–lower left panel–to scare off the monstrous figures. The image comes with a caption that translates into English as, “God has deemed this to be fair” ( Fig. 10). The word “fair” in Arabic translates as “hassan,” the surname of the American critic, posturing as one of the protagonists in the novel. This caption, which is appropriated from a sacred text, may serve as a commentary on the whole situation, expressing satisfaction with the break in the Association’s bond, and considering it as a blessed supernatural intervention. Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 121

The final comics strip disrupts the reader’s expectations of knowing the victor in the fantastic/real battle featured, and the strip sequence ends with no resolution. An unidentified monstrous figure sits blowing arrows; his crane reveals a conspiratorial scheme aiming at the destruction of Cairo’s architectural constructions (Fig. 9). The sequence configures the verbal narrative line that has assumedly occurred before the events of the novel begins. It also relates to an earlier entry about Hanafī Ahmed Hassan, another well-known singer of popular lyrics. His most reputed ballad is Shafīqa and Metwalī an old popular ballad about the shame killing of Shafīqa, upon the denouncement of her secret love bond with Metwalī. This entry preludes the series of killings taking place among the Association’s members towards the close of the novel. It enhances the element of betrayal, denouncement, and distress. Distress is sensed on the local and international levels.

The prelude included the morbid graphic spread, ironically captioned “You’re looking for paradise while it surrounds you”; a chapter titled “Music’s Cemetery,” recounting betrayals and disappointments; the finale’s prelude–an episode also titled, “Music’s Cemetery,” alluding to the Fig. 10. Ihab Hassan scaring away the decline of harmonious living. In the finale is the invading forces with a spray can. announced death of music acts as a commentary on Paprika’s schemes, a leading member of the Architects Association, who along with her accomplices are proceeding with their atrocious plan–the mutilation of Cairo’s architectural and 122 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

cultural history. The chapter evokes a dolorous tempo of a musical piece, and sounds the dissonance of the chaotic events. This noise, the concoction of a medley of fraudulent plans and horrendous events is allied to the constant denouncement of listeners to old musical pieces as inhibited individuals devoid of the joy of life. This sad prelude commences a series of upcoming disasters, along with a grotesque sequential panel.

The episodes at the closure render mysterious events, marking the sudden disappearance of protagonists, either by departure, death, escape, or floating away in a hot air balloon. The mystery is intensified by the narrator-protagonist’s self-reflexive awareness that he may merely be an idea, an image, a simulacrum the way Cairo City has always been (UL 196, 198). In line with this indeterminacy, the recognizable figures in Zorkany’s drawings are never repeated in the same style; they acquire new attributes with the changing situations, never becoming attached to an archetype, or reduced to a referent. By analogy, the mysteries are not resolved by magical resolutions; unresolvedness is a strategy inducing the reader to become aware of the constructedness of all narratives related to the self, Cairo, or a single global cultural history. By subverting readers’ expectations the verbal visual narrative affirms its dissidence, its opposition to ideologically charged generic and formal conventions established by mainstream literature or art. The use of spatio-temporal strategies offers empowering alternatives that are more engaging to local and global readers alike by opening up spaces for different points of view, engaging them in identifying conflicting perspectives.

It is no wonder that novels that are graphic in part or whole are finding better chances to be translated despite their limited number. Jaqueline Brendt has postulated in her introduction to Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale (2010) that bande dessinée, manga and manhau, historietas, beeldverhalen and fanzines “share the inclination toward escaping the ‘national’” (Brendt 5). Using Life crosses borders by appropriating classical global and local multimodal sources across historical periods. It shifts inadvertently between Lucretius, classical and popular Arabic sources, global and local singers’ lyrics, high stylized classical Arabic language, everyday Egyptian dialects, and obscene language; all speech registers used are mutually unintelligible. Likewise, the graphic images toggle between various design layouts, inspired by various artistic styles unlimitedly.

Conclusion

Using Life transgresses boundaries among visual, verbal, and aural—mainstream and popular, and tends to be transcultural. Both Naji and Zorkany declined claims for national particularities, and this Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih: “Strategies of Engagement in Using Life: A Multimodal Novel” 123

is evident in their joint work. Naji has broken with the classical Arabic tradition and mainstream culture that claim objectivity through “the signifying units of a language […] that are impersonal” (Bakhtin 1986, 95). Their creative work is in Bakhtinian terms a heteroglossia of languages, acknowledging a multifarious community of addressees, along with a changing relationship between speaker and addressee(s) that can never come to a standstill. The use of different speech registers is a technique of engagement, immersing the readers from disparate communities by providing them with space to become “actively responsive” (Bakhtin 1986, 95), by allowing “various social ‘languages’ […] to interact with one another” (Bakhtin 1992, 282).

Correspondingly, Zorkany broke away with classical art training at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in Cairo, as well as with comics styles used by emerging Egyptian comics artists’ inspired by American and European comics. His drawings are aimed at trained and untrained viewers belonging to varied social communities. His visual language is in different styles since they are not reaching out for a fixed code, rather engaging viewers outside the framework of social conventions in order to establish a familiarity reaching their sensations. Familiar speech and unofficial art styles can “play a positive role in destroying the official medieval picture of the world,” Bakhtin postulates, giving examples from literary history (Bakhtin 1986, 97). Naji and Zorkany both aimed at a new strategy for engagement by opening fiction and graphics to “layers of language that had previously been under speech constraint” (Bakhtin 1986, 97). This is made clear in an interview Naji had with Mona Kareem, where he expressed his belief that the traditional novel is “nearing extinction […] and images continue to take over the human consciousness, leaving us with a new language” (Kareem 2014 npn).

Along the same lines, Groensteen postulates that towards the end of the twentieth century comics are “becoming literature,” or what we call the graphic novel. He quotes Alain Berland, that a comics author should engage “in multiple hybridization with other artistic disciplines” (Groensten 175). Groensteen does not see that this would lead to an “artist’s book.” Naji’s and Zorkany’s joint book shows that the need to hybridize is an urge to run counter to the mainstream. Their multimodal text belongs to a worldwide emerging youth subculture seeking uninhibited means of communication to engage addressees by touching on their sensations, while being indifferent to cultural legitimacy. Lambeens and Pint argue that an: “intelligent combination of code and sensation in fact reveals the distinctive possibilities of the comic genre in comparison to other more established genres like film, literature or painting” (Lambeens and Pint 255). Comics have opened new possibilities for Egyptian writers and artists, and the word “komix” has become a loanword appropriated in Egyptian dialect. Subsequently, komix calls for a cross-cultural method of research that resists compartmentalization within one critical scholarship. 124 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Works Cited

ALI, Iman. Interviewing Ahmed Naji, “Cairo as a Huge Museum.” Al Hayat newspaper. Beirut. 16 November 2015. http://www.alhayat.com/m/story/12182468 BAKHTIN, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981; 1992). ______. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984a. ______. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. Mcgee. Ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: Texas University Press, 1981; 1986; 10th edition 2006. BAUDRILLARD, Jean. Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Gallilée, 1981:9. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated from French by Sheila F. Glaser. University of Michigan Press, 1994. https://monoskop.org/images/4/4b/Baudrillard_Jean_Simulacres_et_simulation_1981.pdf BRENDT, Jaqueline, (ed.). “Introduction: attempts at cross-cultural comic studies.” Comic Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale. (Series, Global Manga Studies, vol. 1). International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University, 2010. The Coptic Museum, Cairo. http://www.coptic-cairo.com/museum/selection/manuscript/manuscript.html DAMLUJI, Nadim. “The comic Book Heroes of Egypt.” Qulture. Doha. Accessed 09/11/2016. http://www.qulture.com/arts/comic-book-heroes-egypt El SHAFEE, Magdy. Metro. Cairo: Mohammed El Sharqawy, 2008. Translated by Chip Rosetti. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012. ELLESTROM, Lars (ed.). Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Hampshire: Macmillan, 2010. Palgrave, 10.1057/9780230275201 FATHI, Ibrahīm. Kumīdya al-Hukum al-Shumūliyy . [The comedy of totalitarian regimes.] Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1991. GROENSTEEN, Thierry. Comics and Narration. Translated by Ann Miller. Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press, 2013. KANE, Patrick. “Art Education and the Emergence of Radical Art Movements in Egypt: The Surrealists and the Contemporary Arts Group, 1938-1951.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 44: 4 (Winter) 2010: 95-119. KAREEM, Mona. “Warning: this may injure your modesty.” Pandaemonium. 2014. Accessed May 19, 2016. https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/warning-this-may-injure-your-modesty/ KOERBER, Benjamin. “Using Life: Instructions for Play.” The New Inquiry. May 16, 2016. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/using-life-instructions-for-play/ KRESS, Gunther. “Multimodalities.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Eds. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge 2000, 182-200. http://www.users.miamioh.edu/simmonwm/kress_multimodalities.pdf LAMBEENS, Tom and Kris PINT. “The Interaction of Text and Image in Modern Comics.” Texts, Transmissions, Receptions: Modern Approaches to Narratives. Eds. André Lardinois, Sophie Levie, Hans Hoeken and Christoph Lüthy. Readout Studies in Humanities, Vol. 1. chapter 14. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014.. Accessed 09/12/2016. http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004270848 125

LEFÉVRE, Pascal. “Recovering Sensuality in Comic Theory.” International Journal of Comic Art. 1, (1999): 140-149. LUCRETIUS CARUS, Titus. The Nature of Things: De Rerum Natura. Trans. from Latin by William Ellery Leonard .July 31, 2008 [Gutenberg EBook # 785]. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785 MARGOT Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid. “The Cartoon in Egypt.”Comparative Studies in Society and History. 13: 1 (Jan. 1971): 2-15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178195. Accessed: 17-01-2016 17:14 UTC. NADI, Ahmad, Ganzeer, and Donia MAHER. The Apartment at Bab El Louk, Cairo: Dār Merit: 2000. Trans. from Arabic by Elisabeth Jacquette. Excerpts published in Words without Borders. VIII (February 2015): http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/graphic-lit/the-apartment-in-bab-el-louk NAJI Ahmed, and Ayman EL ZORKANY. Istikhdām al-hayāt. Cairo , Beirut & Tunis: Dar al-tanwīr, 2014. In English, Using Life. Trans. from Arabic by Benjamin Koerber. Austin: Texas University Press, forthcoming 2017. Awarded PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, New York, 2016. NELSON, Mark Evan, Glynda HULL and Jeeva ROCHE-SMITH. “Challenges of Multimedia Self-Presentation: Taking, and Mistaking, the Show on the Road.” Written Communication. 25: 4 (October 2008); 415- 440.. DOI: 10.1177/0741088308322552. http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/25/4/415 PINT, Kris. “The Avatar as a Methodological Tool for the Embodied Exploration of Virtual Environments.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14:3 (2012):

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. “You are looking for Paradise while it surrounds you.” Fig. 2. Veiled woman. Fig. 3. Unveiled woman. Fig. 4. Bassam Bahgat’s first meeting with the Architects Association members. Fig. 5. Mrs. Dawlat, member of the Architects Association. Fig. 6. Paper boat cracks. Fig. 7. Paprika Fig. 8. Ihab Hassan caricatured portrait. Fig. 9. Bassam Bahgat defying the invading forces. Fig. 10. Ihab Hassan scaring away the invading forces with a spray can. 127

LIN ET LIGNES RETISSÉS : DE LA RÉAPPROPRIATION DE L’HISTOIRE DANS « CLOTH » DE RITA DUFFY ET PAUL MULDOON

Christelle Serée-Chaussinand

Introduction

Dans un entretien à la veille de l’inauguration de leur œuvre collaborative « Cuchulain Comforted » au Millennium Art Centre de Portadown en 2007, Paul Muldoon et Rita Duffy réfléchissaient à la valeur du manque et de l’élision dans l’art.1 Rita Duffy soulignait, entre autre, son intérêt en tant que peintre pour des vêtements qui, à l’instar des vêtements présentés à l’exposition, n’étaient « plus habités » mais façonnés autour d’un vide ; quelque chose occupait ce vide, expliquait-elle, quelque chose qui pouvait entrer en « résonance » avec l’artiste et l’inspirer dans sa création.2 Le poète Paul Muldoon confirmait, quant à lui, l’importance à ses yeux du manque dans les tableaux de Duffy : « en tant que spectateurs, nous pouvons endosser ces vêtements » ; « nous pouvons littéralement les ré- investir. Ces tableaux offrent un espace au spectateur, un espace où se glisser, un espace à occuper ».3 Dans les tableaux de Duffy et le texte poétique de Muldoon qui les accompagne, il n’est ainsi question que d’appropriation ou plutôt d’« investissement » dans la pleine acception du terme : au sens archaïque

1 « Arts Extra », BBC Radio Ulster, 4 Avril 2007. 2 Rita Duffy est née à Belfast en 1959. Son œuvre, à forte dimension autobiographique, aborde une diversité de thématiques tant dans le domaine politique que dans le registre intime. Certaines œuvres, dans une veine féministe et libérale – comme « Mother Ireland » (1988) ou les œuvres de la série « Banquet » (1997) – rendent compte de son expérience de femme dans une société très nettement patriarcale. D’autres comme « Knee-Capping » (1989), « Veil » (2000) ou la série « Outposts » (2006) abordent l’histoire et la politique nord-irlandaise, notamment la violence physique et morale dans la vie quotidienne et en milieu carcéral. 3 Comme Rita Duffy, Paul Muldoon est un homme de Belfast. Né à Portadown, Co. Armagh, en 1951, il a étudié à Queen’s University où il s’est associé au groupe des poètes de Belfast aux côtés de Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley et Medbh McGuckian. Il est l’auteur de plus de 30 recueils de poésie parmi lesquels Mules (1977), Meeting the British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), Horses Latitudes (2006) et plus récemment One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (2015). Sa poésie est brillante et magistralement inventive ; elle se joue des mots et des formes poétiques, conjuguant volontiers culture savante et culture populaire, ciselant les images et multipliant à l’infini les faisceaux de signification. 128 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

de « vêtir, couvrir totalement » ; au sens militaire d’« assiéger et s’emparer d’un lieu », au sens plus commun d’« investir ou de s’établir dans un lieu, une situation ».

Dans l’œuvre collaborative de Muldoon et Duffy, il est aussi question de passage de frontière. Les tableaux de Duffy figurant toutes sortes de tissus (du linge de maison, des mouchoirs ou des habits) et la méditation poétique de Muldoon sur son histoire personnelle et familiale en lien avec la « pléiade des vêtements, des chiffons, des toiles et des fleurs de lin » franchissent en effet constamment la ligne de démarcation entre l’intérieur et l’extérieur, le singulier et le collectif, le sacré et le profane, le domestique et le judiciaire, le visuel et le verbal, et s’interrogent ainsi sur les violences du passé et les traumatismes présents ; ils tentent également d’exorciser leur peur en mesurant l’impuissance à l’aune du pouvoir, les postures à celle de l’imposture, les élisions aux points de suture.4

Je me propose donc d’étudier dans cet article ce qui se tisse entre les tableaux de Duffy et le texte de Muldoon, d’analyser la manière dont chacun exhume le passé, se l’approprie, le révise et redéfinit les contours du paysage politique de l’Irlande du Nord. Il s’agit également de montrer ce qui se joue dans ce dialogue entre texte et image, à savoir la question de la nature du regard.

Icones et histoire

Parmi les tableaux rassemblés pour l’exposition par Rita Duffy, on trouve une sélection de toiles provenant de la série « Justus » (un ensemble de tableaux représentant les attributs traditionnels d’un juge britannique : col blanc amidonné, perruque en crin de cheval, toge) ainsi que plusieurs œuvres inédites (par exemple, des tableaux figurant des éléments de mobilier, d’autres des mouchoirs blancs). Chaque tableau présente la même caractéristique : le tissu, le vêtement ou l’objet est représenté seul et occupe le centre de l’image, posé au sol ou flottant sur un fond uniforme et neutre à quelques exceptions près où l’arrière-plan est plus élaboré et ressemble à un tissu de camouflage. Ce dispositif pictural attire l’attention sur les détails et participe de l’iconisation de certains objets : ils acquièrent une signification qui excède largement leur sphère habituelle de signification non seulement parce qu’ils sont délibérément isolés mais parce qu’ils sont présentés comme doués d’une aura supplémentaire. Le linge de maison et les meubles du quotidien qui apparaissent dans les premières pages du catalogue

4 Duffy et Muldoon ont vécu directement les troubles en Irlande du Nord et tous deux évoquent ces événements dans leurs œuvres et en l’occurrence dans l’exposition « Cuchulain Comforted » et Cloth, le catalogue qui s’y rapporte. Christelle Serée-Chaussinand: Lin et lignes retissés : 129 De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « Cloth » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon

ont une valeur sacrée du fait de leur désignation comme « autel », « tombeau » ou « linceul ». A l’inverse, ce dispositif pictural permet de confirmer la valeur mémorielle et hautement symbolique d’autres objets que l’histoire de l’Ulster a transformés. Le mouchoir blanc que Duffy choisit comme motif de plusieurs tableaux n’est pas un simple carré de tissu mais le mouchoir utilisé par le prêtre Edward Daly pour évacuer l’une des victimes de Bloody Sunday sous le feu des balles de l’armée britannique. Le transfert du mouchoir d’un fond neutre à un fond au motif de camouflage confirme, à cet égard, son glissement de la sphère domestique à la sphère politique, du banal à l’iconique (Duffy/ Muldoon, 32-35, 31 et 41). De la même manière, la parka qui figure à la première page du catalogue n’est pas un manteau ordinaire : il appartient à la jeune militante de l’IRA, Mairéad Farrell, qui purgea dix années de prison pour terrorisme, lança un mouvement de protestation (« dirty protest ») pour obtenir le statut de prisonnier politique et fut exécutée par des agents des services britanniques à Gibraltar en 1988.5 Représenter ce vêtement revient ainsi à représenter une relique et permet à Duffy de souligner l’engagement des femmes dans le conflit nord-irlandais. Enfin, la toge et la perruque d’avocat représentés dans le tableau « Objection » (Duffy/Muldoon 29) sont imprégnés de l’histoire de celui à qui ils appartiennent : le conseiller (Queen’s Counsel) Philip Magee est connu en effet pour avoir refusé, en 1995, de prêter allégeance à la reine. En choisissant ce vêtement particulier, Duffy pointe ainsi les lignes de fracture et les conflits d’intérêts qui affectent le système judiciaire de territoires tels que l’Irlande du Nord et qui préemptent – voire paralysent – toute décision de justice. Incidemment, on notera que la parka de Mairéad Farrell ou la toge de Magee ne sont pas suspendus sur un cintre ou posés à plat sur la toile comme le reste des vêtements présentés dans l’exposition : ils semblent au contraire façonnés autour de corps fantomatiques, comme si leur propriétaire venait à l’instant de les quitter et pouvait s’y glisser à nouveau pour reprendre cette posture et un geste qui a valeur de geste fondateur.

Le poème de Paul Muldoon, intitulé « Glad Rags », a été quant à lui composé spécialement pour cette collaboration. Les images ont précédé le texte puisque Muldoon a pu découvrir les œuvres de Duffy avant de se lancer dans la rédaction. Constitué de dix paragraphes en prose et multipliant les variations de mise en page, de taille de caractères ou de couleur (Duffy/Muldoon 36), ce poème est marqué par sa très grande iconicité. Nettement autobiographique, le récit de Muldoon se fonde sur son histoire personnelle et familiale. Il forme d’ailleurs une boucle quasi parfaite sur lui-même,

5 Duffy a découvert cette parka au Musée de l’Histoire du Nationalisme Irlandais à Conway Mill (Belfast) où sont rassemblées toutes sortes d’objets liés à la lutte pour l’indépendance irlandaise. On y trouve notamment la reconstitution à l’identique d’une cellule de la prison pour femmes de Armagh, là-même où Mairéad Farrell a été détenue. Le titre du tableau – « Relic » – s’est imposé à Duffy lorsqu’elle a constaté la vénération quasi religieuse qu’inspirait ce vêtement. 130 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

puisqu’il débute sur l’espace blanc de la maternité où est né le poète et se referme sur l’espace blanc (lui aussi) de la salle d’exposition où son œuvre est présentée aux côtés de celle de Duffy – lien métonymique entre le passé et le présent ; franchissement métaphorique de la frontière entre la vie et l’art. A l’instar de Duffy, Muldoon interroge l’histoire de l’Irlande du Nord dans toute sa complexité, sélectionnant une poignée d’événements marquants qu’il isole chacun sur une page unique pour mieux s’en saisir et les faire ressortir textuellement. Il évoque ainsi la prospérité économique de Belfast liée à la culture et à la manufacture du lin dans les années 1920 et 1930 ; plusieurs épisodes sanglants (Bloody Sunday, l’assassinat de Denis Mullan par le gang de Glennane, le massacre de Kingsmill) mais aussi la signature de l’Accord du Vendredi Saint et la vie politique dans l’après-conflit. Chaque événement est systématiquement abordé sous un angle très personnel suggérant que le collectif a des répercussions sur l’individuel et l’affecte intimement : Muldoon ravive le souvenir visuel qu’il a gardé des « barons du lin » de Portadown, les Cowdys, dont la suffisance et la réussite sociale transparaissaient dans la taille impressionnante de leurs chevaux (« impossibly high horses ») ; il pense au choix de son père de cultiver la fleur de lin ; il insiste sur la proximité de chacun des attentats qu’il ressuscite en décrivant la sorte de chaîne humaine le long de laquelle la violence barbare s’est réverbérée jusqu’à lui : Denis Mullan était le neveu de Maura MacParland, une voisine et amie d’enfance ; il prenait un verre au pub avec Michael Longley le soir du massacre de Kingsmill et a échangé avec l’équipe de journalistes qui venait de couvrir l’événement ; il est ami avec une pointure (« a big wig ») de la justice issue des accords de paix, un Cowdys de la famille des Cowdys de son enfance. Dans son poème, Muldoon insiste aussi sur le sectarisme et les divisions communautaires au sein de la société irlandaise mais de manière détournée en s’intéressant aux figures ambivalentes ou transgressives. Ici, il fait astucieusement usage du terme « swaddler » qui désigne en première instance l’emmaillotage d’un enfant, c’est-à-dire son enveloppement dans un lange, pratique qui vise à le protéger mais contraint aussi grandement ses mouvements. Mais dans le contexte nord-irlandais, ce terme est aussi une insulte que les catholiques utilisent pour désigner un protestant. Là, il fait référence à sa mère dont les choix n’ont jamais été motivés par le respect de la tradition ou des impératifs communautaires : elle a délibérément opté pour un accouchement dans une maternité moderne plutôt qu’à la maison ; elle choisissait ses commerçants sans se préoccuper de leurs convictions religieuses :

My mother had no time for what would have been the natural thing to do—for a Catholic to have time only for Catholic doctors, chemists and car dealers. […] our doctor was a Quaker, our chemist a Quaker, even our car dealer a Quaker. […] My mother also disdained natural materials, preferring rayon to linen, formica to pine. (Duffy/Muldoon 20, 24, 26) Christelle Serée-Chaussinand: Lin et lignes retissés : 131 De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « Cloth » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon

Intermédialité

Un dialogue s’installe ainsi clairement entre les images de Duffy et les mots de Muldoon, placés invariablement sur la page de gauche. La liste des concordances est longue : la référence au juge Robert Cowdy chez Muldoon voisine avec la représentation d’une perruque de magistrat chez Duffy ; un mouchoir blanc est représenté en vis-à-vis d’une évocation de Bloody Sunday ; la réflexion poétique de Muldoon sur l’étymologie de « parka » (désignant une peau d’animal en langage esquimau), sur les « éraflures » (« excoriation »), les pelures (« unpeeling ») et sur l’origine commune de « flax » (le lin) et de « flay » (« écorcher ») fait doublement écho au mot « flak » qui sert de titre à la représentation d’un gilet pare-balles par Duffy. On trouve même un exemple de contamination entre le poétique et le pictural lorsque la phrase nominale « Arterial blood » est imprimée dans le même ton rouge-sang que la soutane de cardinal à droite dans l’œuvre de Duffy : l’effet de coulure accentué vers la base du tableau donne à penser que celui-ci a déteint sur le texte.6 Cependant, ni le texte ni les tableaux ne sont la stricte illustration du contenu dans l’autre médium. Ils existent autant séparément qu’à travers leur juxtaposition. On retrouve en l’occurrence ici un jeu texte/image analogue à celui qui se jouait déjà dans Plan B, un recueil que Muldoon a composé en collaboration avec le photographe écossais Norman McBeath. Dans la préface, le poète remarque que ses poèmes et les images de McBeath établissent « toutes sortes de connexions qui leur sont propres, aucune n’étant évidente […] elles sont néanmoins d’une certaine manière toutes significatives, toutes accompagnées de petits grognements, les sourires et grimaces de la reconnaissance ».7 Il en va de même dans Cloth.

Il n’en reste pas moins que le texte de Muldoon est d’une grande picturalité : certaines idées abstraites sont imagées (la supériorité des Cowdy figurée par la taille de leurs chevaux) ; la couleur est partout présente ; toutes sortes de textiles (la toile, la rayonne, la batiste, la mousseline, le lin, etc.) sont mentionnés par le poète qui pratique, selon ses propres termes, une « autopsie de la fibre » (« the forensics of the thread », Duffy/Muldoon 30), trahissant sa prédilection pour les textures et les mots qui les décrivent et proposant une façon d’ekphrasis de la pratique picturale de Duffy qui repose sur un travail minutieux au cœur de la fibre et de la trame des étoffes, et en particulier des étoffes de lin.

6 On en peut s’empêcher de voir dans cet effet de coulure un lointain rappel du travail de la couleur dans les portraits du pape Innocent X réalisés par Francis Bacon. 7 Paul Muldoon, Plan B, London, Enitharmon Press, 2009. 132 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Cette œuvre collaborative qui associe visuel et verbal autour de la question du conflit nord- irlandais conduit ainsi à une révision et à une ré-interprétation du passé en même temps qu’elle se ré-approprie le présent. Muldoon et Duffy s’emparent d’éléments dans leur environnement immédiat – passé ou présent – et invitent le lecteur-spectateur à re-considérer les violences d’hier, les traumatismes et les divisions d’aujourd’hui, et à envisager les voies possibles de la (ré)conciliation. La représentation par Duffy d’attributs symboliques du pouvoir—une veste de police, une tenue d’avocat ou de magistrat, un habit de cardinal ou le gilet pare-balles d’un paramilitaire—dénonce les nombreuses postures et impostures des hommes de pouvoir et pointe leur terrible responsabilité. Inversement, ses images de nappes si propres et si bien ajustées suggèrent une dérisoire maîtrise cantonnée à la sphère domestique et une impuissance réelle dans la sphère politique. A travers ces deux séries de tableaux, et en résonance avec une culture où les lieux ont un genre, ce sont aussi le masculin et le féminin qui sont mis en regard, à l’instar de ce que l’on observe dans la seule photographie de l’exposition, intitulée « Dessert », qui associe de manière résolument surréaliste un moulage de mitraillette en chocolat et un délicat napperon en damassé de lin rehaussé de dentelle fine (Duffy/Muldoon 47). De la même manière, lorsqu’il associe souvenirs personnels et souvenirs collectifs ; morts sanglantes et naissances dans des espaces immaculés ; « clichés » verbaux et « clichés » visuels ; lorsqu’il attire notre attention sur de singulières proximités étymologiques, Muldoon nous invite à ré-évaluer les destructions liées au conflit et les efforts de reconstruction, tant au niveau institutionnel que judiciaire, suggérant qu’il est difficile de s’abstraire du passé mais qu’il est nécessaire de vivre dans le présent. La vision artistique de Muldoon et Duffy intègre donc une révision politique et historique. Toutefois, au-delà de ces considérations non- esthétiques, leur travail conduit à une réflexion sur la nature du regard.

Elision, suture et regard

En effet, l’un des aspects particuliers du travail de Duffy dans « Cuchulain Comforted » est de peindre des textiles familiers d’une manière qui n’est pas familière. Elle isole et met en scène chaque mouchoir, chaque perruque, chaque col ; elle théâtralise la représentation de chaque vêtement, de chaque linge, soit qu’il flotte au milieu d’une sorte de néant, soit qu’il se trouve posé à même le sol. Ce faisant, elle attire délibérément l’attention du spectateur sur la matérialité et la singularité des différentes étoffes : le regard du spectateur est capté par les entrelacs et les plis, par les nombreuses nuances de gris, de blanc, de noir et de rouge, par la multitude des textures (étoffe douce au toucher ou rêche, délicate ou pare-balles, transparente ou opaque, claire ou de couleur foncée). Duffy joue enfin sur certains titres de manière à renforcer les effets de trompe-l’œil ou les détournements qu’elle Christelle Serée-Chaussinand: Lin et lignes retissés : 133 De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « Cloth » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon

concocte par l’entremise de son pinceau : les cols amidonnés sont appelés tour à tour « écharpe » or « fer à cheval » mais sont peints comme s’il s’agissait de coiffes féminines, et plus précisément des coiffes traditionnelles Quaker. La signification profonde d’une telle pratique picturale est, entre autre, de marquer la contingence et la relativité de tout regard et de toute interprétation : les objets changent en effet d’apparence suivant l’angle depuis lequel on les observe ou suivant la face qu’ils nous présentent. De même, la diversité des contextes, des tonalités, des textures renvoie métaphoriquement à l’importance des détails ; notre perception est susceptible d’être modifiée par le contexte, la distance par rapport à l’objet, l’intensité de la lumière ou la part d’ombre sur lui. On peut, bien entendu, en première lecture, percevoir la dimension politico-historique de ce travail sur la représentation et les conditions du voir : comme le regard, toute recherche de la vérité sur les exactions et les violences passées dans le contexte nord-irlandais est soumise à de nombreuses contingences : éloignement dans le temps des événements, témoignages discordants selon le degré d’implication des témoins et leur positionnement par rapport à cet événement, archives et preuves donnant lieu à de multiples interprétations, etc. De même, le processus de paix dépend du regard que les deux communautés portent sur le passé et de la manière dont elles construisent, sur cette base, le présent. Mais au-delà de ce premier degré de lecture, on notera que, de toile en toile, s’élabore une réflexion non seulement esthétique mais aussi philosophique sur le regard. La pratique artistique de Duffy semble en effet renvoyer à cette dimension particulière de l’art que Lacan désigne dans son essai consacré à la schize de l’œil et du regard, à savoir que tout tableau est un « piège à regard » (Lacan 102). A l’instar du tableau de Holbein que Lacan prend pour exemple (« Les Ambassadeurs »), tous les objets peints par Duffy nous regardent cependant que nous les voyons : il y a une part de leurre et de dépossession dans les images (Lacan 116-9) qui nous renvoient en tant que spectateur à notre condition de sujet et ce faisant, à notre condition de sujet « regardé » (Lacan 87) et de sujet fondamentalement divisé ou faillé (Lacan 96-7).

A cet égard, il est intéressant de remarquer que Duffy insiste aussi beaucoup sur les élisions et les éclipses de même que sur les sutures, les coutures et les objets qui servent à accrocher ou à nouer. L’absence des corps dans ses tableaux peut être vue comme la présence « en creux » de toutes les victimes du conflit, de tous ceux qui ont péri et ont disparu prématurément. « Elision » qui compte parmi les tableaux les plus expressifs de l’exposition et du catalogue est particulièrement frappant à cet égard (Duffy/Muldoon 11). Il représente une chemise blanche, figée autour d’un corps manquant et flottant sur un fond à double trame : esquisses à l’encre noire d’armes de poing et de fusils se détachant sur une imitation de tissu de camouflage. Inversement, Duffy montre une prédilection pour les systèmes d’accroche et nouage comme si elle voulait signifier l’importance et l’absolue nécessité de recréer du lien, de réparer et de reconstruire : cintres pour suspendre un vêtement prenant ici des airs de squelettes 134 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

symboliques à la tête recourbée et au cou étranglé de fer ; coutures, boutons et boutonnières ; rubans et cordelières pour fixer un col ; étoffes ou vêtements gansés de dentelle. Tous ces éléments participent aussi du rôle que Duffy assigne à ses œuvres : tenter d’articuler visuellement l’inarticulable…

La rétrospective poétique de Muldoon se fonde sur une même pratique de défamiliarisation que chez Duffy, recèle un même désir de couture et de suture et donne une même leçon sur le regard. Dans « Glad Rags », comme dans nombre d’autres œuvres du poète, les néologismes sont légion. Les combinaisons bizarres qu’il effectue ici—« chocolutherans » or « chocatholics » (Duffy/Muldoon 24) ou encore « chokalashnikov » (Duffy/Muldoon 2007, p. 44)—ne sont rien d’autre que des mots coupés et cousus ensemble. Dans son propre univers—celui du langage et des mots—le poète suggère ainsi que les distinctions et les ségrégations sont affaire de définition et d’appellation. Les divisions sectaires peuvent être littéralement créées ou éradiquées, littéralement décrétées ou niées. A un détail près toutefois : les mots-valises que Muldoon inventent ne sont pas seulement des néologismes, ce sont aussi des barbarismes et en cela ils rappellent la part inhérente de non-sens et de violence dans le langage et dans l’histoire. Muldoon insiste aussi sur l’importance des vêtements que nous revêtons. Ce sont plus que de simples attributs : ils nous protègent, ils nous cachent, ils modifient notre apparence et parfois notre statut. En d’autres termes, ils nous investissent tout autant qu’ils nous revêtissent. Ils sont chargés de symbole ; ils incarnent le pouvoir ou trahissent une impuissance. Le clergé, dont on dit que les membres « prennent ou portent l’habit », est un exemple flagrant de cette valeur particulière du vêtement : « l’habit fait ou ne fait pas le moine » dit l’adage. Il en va de même pour les magistrats que l’on désigne parfois par l’expression « hommes de robe ». Muldoon induit que dans d’autres contextes, tels que le contexte nord-irlandais à l’époque du conflit ou du processus de paix, les vêtements jouent aussi un rôle essentiel. Suivant que l’on porte la tenue paramilitaire, l’habit de juge ou la couverture souillée d’un prisonnier politique, une croix catholique ou un insigne orangiste, la donne est bien différente. Dès lors, pour avancer et dépasser les divisions passées, il convient de se défaire de tous ces oripeaux superficiels (drapeaux, emblèmes, etc.) ; il faut se débarrasser du linge sale (« dirty linen »), changer d’habits et se revêtir de ses plus beaux atours (« glad rags »). L’esprit de clan exacerbé doit céder le pas à la politique inter-communautaire. C’est en ce sens que le poète écrit :

No washing of dirty linen in public. No flags or emblems. […] All about excoriation. All about the unpeeling. […] All about the unpeeling. The shrugging off of the outer layers. The retting. The scutching. The bleaching on the bleach greens of Stormont. Our glad rags. Put our best foot forward. (Duffy/Muldoon 28 and 42-44) Christelle Serée-Chaussinand: Lin et lignes retissés : 135 De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « Cloth » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon

Tout en affirmant cela, Muldoon admet toutefois indirectement que ce processus de dépouillement est extrêmement difficile. Il s’attarde sur l’étymologie du mot « Parka » dont il rappelle qu’il s’agit d’un mot esquimau (aléoutien) signifiant « peau » pour souligner qu’on change de vêtements mais qu’on ne change pas de peau. Il signale aussi la violence inhérente à cette sorte de deuxième peau que sont les vêtements : « flax » est étymologiquement associé au verbe « to flay » qui signifie « dépecer ou écorcher ». Le lecteur est ainsi amené à réfléchir à ce qu’il en coûte de se défaire du passé.

La réflexion engagée sur la nature et la valeur du regard est enfin menée à travers la série de titres qui désignent le travail de Duffy et Muldoon et en dessinent les contours, à la fois multiples et protéens. Le titre du projet global mené par le Millennium Court Arts Centre—« Interrogating Contested Spaces in Post-Conflict Society »—met l’accent sur la dimension critique de cette œuvre collaborative. A travers leur dialogue, les images de Duffy et le texte de Muldoon deviennent « un espace où les postulats du processus de paix sont soumis à une réflexion critique, où la notion même de paix et ses conditions de possibilité sont examinées. […] [Ces tableaux et ce texte] explorent la temporalité complexe d’un présent qui s’écrit dans le but avoué de s’abstraire du passé ».8 (Bell 28-9) Ils abordent ainsi toutes sortes de questions : la justice dans la période de transition, l’abandon des armes, la division communautaire, la peur, l’espoir, etc. Le titre propre à l’exposition—« Cuchulain Comforted »—fait quant à lui référence au héros celtique qui, selon la légende, aurait caché une blessure mortelle en s’enveloppant dans son vêtement. Mais ce guerrier mythique est une figure hautement ambivalente, célébrée par les Catholiques Républicains comme par les Protestants Unionistes, ces derniers voyant en lui le « chien de l’Ulster » qui défendit valeureusement la province face aux armées de Medb, la reine du Connaught. Ce titre s’entend également en référence à Yeats dont le célèbre poème évoque le destin de Cuchulain outre-tombe : il est accueilli dans le royaume des ombres par une horde de couards qui l’invitent à tisser son propre linceul avec du fil de lin afin d’opérer sa transfiguration ou sa métamorphose, c’est-à-dire afin de s’affranchir de son passé guerrier et violent pour accéder à une forme de paix et de spiritualité :

8 Ma traduction de : « sites in which the assumptions of transition are opened up for critical reflection, probing the notion of what constitutes Peace and its conditions of possibility. […] [They] explore the complex temporalities of a present self-consciously attempting to narrate itself away from the past ». 136 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

A Shroud that seemed to have authority Among those bird-like things came, and let fall A bundle of linen. Shrouds by two and three

Came creeping up because the man was still. And thereupon that linen-carrier said: ‘Your life can grow much sweeter if you will

‘Obey our ancient rule and make a shroud; Mainly because of what we only know The rattle of those arms makes us afraid.

‘We thread the needles’ eyes, and all we do All must together do.’ That done, the man Took up the nearest and began to sew. (Yeats 2000 121)

« Cloth », le titre choisi pour le catalogue accompagnant l’exposition, met enfin l’accent sur la matérialité et la littéralité de cette œuvre collaborative : « tissu » vaut pour tous les textiles représentés par Duffy, pour les toiles qui servent de support à ses tableaux, pour le texte de Muldoon qui se tisse autour de l’histoire du lin et du vêtement. Mais c’est le mot « line » plutôt que « cloth » qui apparaît finalement comme le véritable « fil rouge » de l’œuvre. Mis en exergue par Muldoon page 40, « line » est en effet un terme polysémique qui selon le contexte désigne une ligne, un fil ou un cordon, un trait, un vers de poésie, une lignée, une conduite ou une ligne d’action et de pensée. Si chacune de ces significations éclaire le dialogue intermédial entre les images de Duffy et le texte de Muldoon, ce dialogue est magistralement confirmé et renforcé par l’étymologie : le poète souligne de manière opportune le lien entre « line », « linen » et « flax », matière dont est fait le lin : « Toe the line. Line, from the Latin linum, ‘flax’ ». Le matériau sémiotique et sémantique dont sont constitués les mots de Muldoon est de même essence que la matière première dont sont faits les vêtements peints par Duffy. Christelle Serée-Chaussinand: Lin et lignes retissés : 137 De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « Cloth » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon

Conclusion

En référence à une série de tableaux réalisés en 2006 et représentant des miradors, Rita Duffy remarquait : « Avec le temps, l’immédiateté de la violence, de la suspicion et de la paranoïa s’estompe. Le paysage politique dans le Nord se dessine progressivement selon des contours différents ; il devient un lieu de reconstruction, où la ville et la campagne sont reconfigurées en fonction d’une logique nouvelle fondée sur la nécessité économique ; l’histoire est une fois encore réécrite à l’aune des impératifs du présent. Du fait de ces petits arrangements avec le passé, les histoires d’hier peuvent être racontées de façon différente ; ce qui était enterré est exhumé ; d’anciennes certitudes sont remises en cause. Ces tableaux sont un acte de surveillance et en tant que tels, ils posent la question de la nature du regard ».9 Comme cette série de tableaux (« Outposts »), « Cloth » n’édicte aucune vérité absolue, tant sur le plan politique, que moral ou éthique ; aucun jugement définitif n’est prononcé. Liberté est laissée au lecteur-spectateur d’interpréter et de prendre position. Par l’entremise des images et des mots, Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon exhument le passé, questionnent leurs certitudes, retissent le fil de leur histoire avec la trame de l’Histoire de leur province. Dans cette entreprise, ils nous enseignent que plusieurs perspectives et plusieurs visions sont possibles, que tout est affaire de regard et que tout se joue dans l’écart entre ce que l’on regarde et ce que l’on veut voir.

9 Ma traduction de : « As time passes the immediacy of violence, suspicion and paranoia subsides. Different contours begin to dominate the political landscape of the North; a place of reconstruction, where city and country become reconfigured according to a logic of economic necessity, and history is once more remade in the image of current imperatives. These negotiations with the past permit its stories to be told in a different way; that which was buried becomes exhumed, previous certainties become open to question. These paintings are an act of surveillance, and as such, they are about the whole nature of looking ». Source : « Troubles Archive », http:// www.troublesarchive.com/artists/rita-duffy (accédé le 28 octobre 2016). 138 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Ouvrages Cités

BELL, Viki. December 2011. “Contemporary Art and Transitional Justice in Northern Ireland: The Consolation of Form”. Journal of Visual Culture. Vol. 10(3). 324-353. DUFFY, Rita, MULDOON, Paul. 2007. Cloth: A Visual and Verbal Collaboration by Rita Duffy and Paul Muldoon. Portadown, Millennium Court Arts Centre. LACAN, Jacques. 1973. Le Séminaire – Livre XI : Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris, Le Seuil. MULDOON, Paul. 2009. Plan B, London, Enitharmon Press. YEATS, William Butler. 2000. Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney. London, Faber. http://www.troublesarchive.com/artists/rita-duffy (accédé le 28 octobre 2016). 139

ADRIAN HENRI – TOTAL ARTIST

Catherine Marcangeli

A 1968 poster for an exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art insists on Adrian Henri’s dual work of art, as a painter and a poet (Fig.1). Henri (1932-2000) came to prominence as a writer in the 1967 groundbreaking Penguin anthology The Mersey Sound, alongside Roger McGough and Brian Patten. In his poems, he juxtaposed everyday or pop images with highbrow cultural references, creating a web of references that made his work both complex and accessible. Henri had trained as a painter at King’s College, Newcastle, under Richard Hamilton, and his early Pop Art sensibility translated into urban imagery, collages and hyperrealist paintings of meat against a clinical white background. Henri was also a pioneer of Happenings in Britain, setting up the first “events” as early as 1962, collaborating and corresponding with European and American artists involved in performance, including Jean- Jacques Lebel, Mark Boyle, Allan Kaprow and Fig. 1. Adrian Henri, poster for the exhibition Painter/Poet, Yoko Ono. He also published a landmark book Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1968. on Environments and Happenings (Total Art, Thames and Hudson: 1974). Performance was central to Henri’s practice, both as a visual artist and as a poet. He gave numerous live readings and, in the 1960s and 1970s, fronted the poetry-and-rock group Liverpool Scene, signed by RCA. In 1969, the band performed at the Isle of Wight Festival, supported Led Zeppelin and toured America. 140 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

The exhibition Total Art was part of the 2014 Liverpool Art Biennial1. It focused on “the long Sixties,” when Henri’s work was at its most radical, irreverent, innovative and collaborative. The show included paintings, collages, prints, annotated scripts, artefacts and ephemera, silkscreened rock posters, stage wear and other rare and recently discovered audio recordings and film footage. Through the presentation of both artistic and archive material, it aimed to show how Henri’s eclectic interests and multifaceted œuvre placed him at the centre of a distinctively local yet internationally connected counter-culture, while his embrace of total art acted as a template for later interdisciplinary art practices. The exhibition concentrated on Henri’s work in different media, but also attempted to capture some of the excitement and dynamics of the 1960s and 1970s art scene in Liverpool and internationally.

In 2015, the exhibition held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and titled First Happenings—Adrian Henri in the 1960s focused on Henri’s early happenings.2 Building on the techniques of collage and assemblage, and collaborating with other writers, artists and musicians, he used different media to create environments in which audiences were not passive viewers but active participants in an unfamiliar collective experience. The emerging art form was part of a strategy for drawing on the everyday as a means of narrowing “the gap between art and life.”3 This paper focuses on the first of those happenings, titledCity (1962), which attempted to translate contemporary urban reality into an ephemeral art event, thus breaking the barriers between artists, and between artists and audience.

Polythenescapes : collage and assemblage

One of the most formative influences on Henri’s work was Richard Hamilton and the Independent Group. In Man, Machine, Motion, the 1955 exhibition Hamilton curated at the ICA, means of transport—aquatic, terrestrial, aerial and interplanetary—were shown to have transformed our perception of the spaces we inhabit. Hamilton later defined Pop Art as “popular, transient,

1 Adrian Henri – Total Art, Exhibition Research Centre, School of Art and Design, Liverpool, John Moores University, Liverpool, UK. Exhibition curated by Catherine Marcangeli, July 5-November 25, 2014. 2 First Happenings – Adrian Henri in the 1960s, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK. Exhibition curated by Catherine Marcangeli, January 27-March 15, 2015. 3 The expression is attributed to Robert Rauschenberg, an artist much admired by Adrian Henri and quoted in his poem titled ‘Me’ in The Mersey Sound, Penguin Modern Poets 10 : London, 1967. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 141

expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business.”4 As a student in Newcastle, Henri was interested both in Hamilton’s notion of a continuum between high and low culture, and in the idea that artists must examine their surroundings, the new types of images and the means of communication produced by their contemporary society. In the 1950s and 1960s, urban landscapes were turning into what Henri termed “Polythenescapes.”5 Collage and assemblage were a fitting medium to respond to the disjointed experience of the modern city. Advertising leaflets, slogans, commercial designs and flashing neon signs thus found their way into his poems, paintings, collages and happenings; they were used to depict and to comment on the very world from which they were taken.

In the early Sixties, while teaching at Manchester Art College, Henri produced a series of drawings and paintings of nearby Piccadilly Gardens. At the time, the Gardens were slightly sunken, and looking up, one would see Piccadilly-Circus-style neon signs and flashing adverts: “Below eye level was grass. On eye level was the shops. Above eye level was the advertising. So that it had a layered feeling to it.” 6 Advertising was now structuring the way city dwellers perceived their space. Henri celebrated the energy of the contemporary city, all the while savouring the ironic tension between nature and artifice: “even the little bit of nature in Piccadilly was artificial. The flower bedswere maintained by the council. One day there would be a dense mass all of one colour, the next of another colour.”7 That almost arbitrary use of colours to create an image of nature rather than nature itself, the idea that colours are mere cyphers for nature, is exemplified inPiccadilly Painting (Fig. 2, 1964). The bottom half of the picture consists in flat patches of colour: green (for a notional grass), yellow and pink (for notional flowers). Consumer goods include eggs and chips in the top of the picture, a Mother’s Pride slogan, and adverts for Guinness and Bass. A bird—a recurring image in Henri’s work from the late 1950s onwards—is painted against a “kind of blue,” a phrase that refers both to the murkiness of the city sky and to the 1959 Miles Davis album which Henri owned and to which he paid homage the following year in a series of collages and poems.

4 Richard Hamilton, letter to Alison and Peter Smithson, January 26, 1957. 5 Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, introduction text to City, manuscript, Adrian Henri Archive, “Happenings” section. Estate of Adrian Henri, Liverpool. 6 Adrian Henri, Paintings 1953-1998, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2000, p.56. 7 Ibid 142 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 2. Adrian Henri, Piccadilly Painting, 1964, oil on canvas. Estate of Adrian Henri. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 143

The exclamation: “Daffodils are not real!” further highlights the artificiality of “urban nature.” Thanks to Wordsworth’s poem, the daffodil had long been emblematic of romantic poetry, and of its epiphanic relationship to nature. Therefore Henri found it pleasingly ironic that plastic daffodils should come as free gifts in packets of Omo washing powder. The plastic flowers featured in several of his paintings as well as in early happenings such as Paintings, Daffodils, Milkbottles, Hats and Daffodil Story (Fig. 3, both 1963). For the latter, Henri and Patten wrote a series of “daffodil poems”, recited and played back on tape. During the event, Henri painted a huge daffodil; live music was played by the local band The Undertakers; Wordsworth’s poem was read out loud; and a caped Death figure distributed flowers to the audience.

Fig. 3. Adrian Henri et al, Daffodil Event, Liverpool 1963. 144 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Daffodils reappeared in one of Henri’s most famous collaged poems: walking by chance past a motorcar showroom, he noticed an advertisement for a Dutch car, the DAF, marketed as “The New: Fast Daffodil”; he picked up the leaflet, cut it up, cut up Wordsworth’s poem and made a collage with the two texts. Unlike Tristan Tzara’s recipe for a Dada poem, which left the result mostly up to chance, in Henri’s poem, the quotes from Wordsworth appear in the same order as in the original, so that the reader often familiar with “The Daffodils” is tempted to complete the sentences, but is then wrong-footed by the DAF sales pitch.

I wandered lonely as THE NEW, FAST DAFFODIL FULLY AUTOMATIC that floats on high o’er vales and hills The Daffodil is generously dimensioned to accommodate four adult passengers 10,000 saw I at a glance Nodding their new anatomically shaped heads in sprightly dance Beside the lake beneath the trees in three bright modern colours red, blue and pigskin The Daffodil de luxe is equipped with a host of useful accessories including windscreen wiper and washer with joint control A Daffodil doubles the enjoyment of touring at home or abroad in vacant or in pensive mood.8 (…)

This variation on a canonical work is not a straight debunking parody—although the poem had been drilled into Henri as a schoolboy, he was an admirer of Wordsworth—but rather an ironic reflection on the contrasted registers that could now coexist in the modern environment, a rethinking of ideas about the disjunct syntax of high and low.

Henri’s Pop sensibility and his aspiration to include reality into his works, led him to incorporate 3-D items into some of his pictures. In Four Seasons (Fig. 4, 1964), Henri plays with tensions–between hand-painted marks (the graffiti inSpring ) and collage (the poster in Summer), between figuration (the depiction of a road in Spring) and abstraction (the same grey surface divided by a horizontal yellow

8 Adrian Henri, “The New Fast Daffodils,” in The Mersey Sound, Penguin Modern Poets: London, 1967. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 145

Fig. 4. Adrian Henri, Four Seasons, 1964, mixed media on board. Estate of Adrian Henri. 146 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

line, can be seen as an abstract composition), between fake nature (the plastic daffodil and grass in Spring) and sophisticated artifice (the female model under a luxurious silk sheet in Summer), between sentimental evocations (the teddy bear and broken pram-wheel in Winter) and hard-edge neutrality (the stripes of fairground colours in Summer).

Likewise, his Death of a Bird in the City series draw part of their effect from the presence of real objects. Henri started painting very gestural, almost calligraphic pictures of birds in the 1950s and he returned to the subject throughout his career, referring to it in his poetry too—“Without you white birds would wrench themselves free from my paintings and fly off dripping blood into the night.”9 The image was derived from several sources: Henri remembers looking at a photo of a work by Marcel Duchamp, “a work on glass photographed at night with lights below and odd shapes”;10 he mistakenly interpreted one of those shapes as a bird fluttering, about to die. Besides, he had just read Garcia Lorca’s Poet in New York, which included “a whole section on birds dying in cities”11 and it made a lasting impression on him. He associated those birds with people dying alone and isolated in big cities. The great number of birds killed by traffic also gave Henri the idea for his 1962Death of a Bird in the City happening. After the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), the image took on additional resonances and associations.

In Bird Dying for its Country (Fig. 5, 1963-64), Henri made a more specific political point: he explicitly connected this painting to the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War Iby inscribing a quote from Wilfried Owen under the British flag:“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“it is sweet and right to die for one’s country”). Owen rejected Horace’s patriotic sentiment:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.12

9 Adrian Henri, “Without You,” The Mersey Sound, London: Penguin, 1967, 17. 10 Adrian Henri, interviewed in Paintings 1953-1998, op. cit., 42. 11 Ibid, p.44. 12 Wilfried Owen, last eight lines from the poem “Dulce et decorum” (written in 1917-18), published posthumously in 1920. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 147

The bird is emblematic of innocence lost in vain, of “the old Lie,” and the treatment of the picture surface echoes the violence of that sacrifice— Henri used a hot poker to scorch it, marking it as soldiers were marked by mustard gas burns. The link between war, birds and urban violence recurs in “Death of a Bird in the City II,” a poem dedicated to the war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths:

Guns are bombarding Piccadilly Firing at ten million splattered white dying birds

Doors thrown open Girls mouths screaming The last unbearable white bird Spotlit, slowly struggling threshing against blackness Crucified on the easel13

In Henri’s work, certain images migrated across different media, and Collage was a constant Fig. 5. Adrian Henri, Bird Dying for its Country, 1963-4, formal principle in his poetry and in his art. As a mixed media on board. Estate of Adrian Henri. student, he had become fascinated by the evocative powers of Schwitters’s elegant collages and by the methodical and organic creation of the environment that was to become the Merzbau. Schwitters’s adoption of the prefix Merz—to subsume all his activities, be it poetry, music or art, seemed to Henri the most apposite way of dismissing traditional categories: not only could the artist work in different media, but he could offer the viewer a more complete, multi-sensory experience—a total art. When the Independent Group held the exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel in 1956, artists, architects,

13 Adrian Henri, “Death of a Bird in the City (for Philip Jones Griffiths and his photographs),” in Catherine Marcangeli ed., Selected and Unpublished Poems, Liverpool University Press, 2007,106. 148 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

critics, graphic designers and musicians collaborated on composite environments. Group 2, comprising Hamilton, John Voelcker and John McHale, juxtaposed images from high art (a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers) and popular culture (posters of Marilyn and of Robbie the Robot); a juke-box played music, while the sense of smell was stimulated by a carpet which released a strawberry scent when visitors walked on it. An Op Art corridor and some rotoreliefs disrupted the visitor’s spacial perceptions. This is Tomorrow was a collective endeavour that, more systematically than Schwitters’s Merzbau, addressed all the senses and invited the visitor to interact with the installation. Yet it was different in tone from the effect Henri aspired to—it was very curatorially designed and sociologically analytical of contemporary culture, whereas in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Henri was increasingly attached to commonplace activities and ordinary spaces. For example, his Summer Poems Without Words (1964) were originally distributed to the audience in leaftlet form. The list of instructions to be carried out “over a period of seven days” included:

2. Travel on the Woodside Ferry with your eyes closed. Travel back with them open. 4. Find a plastic flower. Hold it up to the light. 8. Look at every poster you pass next time you’re on a bus.14

The fact that these instructions should be addressed to a “you,” emphasizes the importance of the reader, viewer or audience—this is a direct consequence of Henri’s activities on the live poetry scene in Liverpool since 1961, with Roger McGough, Brian Patten and others. Setting up readings and performing weekly in front of an audience made them acutely aware of the need to be accessible, and entertaining, so poetry readings often had musical interludes or musical accompaniment—the Art College and a variety of pubs and music venues, as well as ad hoc performance spaces were only a short walk from each other, making such collaborations all the easier and spontaneous. This collaborative element was carried across into the Happenings which Henri staged from 1962.

From assemblage to happening: City (1962)

Henri’s collage-assemblage aesthetics soon extended into three dimensional interactive environments and happenings, considered as 3-D collages that unfolded in time as well as space. If that transition from collage and assemblage to happenings was able to occur over such a short period,

14 Adrian Henri, “Summer Poems Without Words,” in Tonight At Noon, Rapp and Whiting, London, 1968, 31. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 149

in 1962, it is undoubtedly due to the fact that collaborations among poets, musicians and artists were already commonplace in the city.

Henri’s happenings should not be seen as different in nature from the rest of his œuvre, but born out of his practice of collage, and of his public poetry readings. Now, instead of juxtaposing fragments of images onto canvas, Henri turned a whole room into an environment in which to juxtapose moments, situations, fragments of the everyday, images, words, music, movements, actions and interactions with an audience: “Happenings consisted of what you couldn’t stick to a canvas– people, obviously, smells, perishable objects, places.”15

That approach to happenings was also influenced by the writings of Allan Kaprow.16 Originally an abstract painter, the American artist became interested in the notion of environment after hearing John Cage’s 4’33’’ performed by David Tudor: during the “silence,” Kaprow realised that all the surrounding sounds—street noises, spectators’ voices, the air conditioning—were indeed part of the piece, a found soundscape that blurred the boundary between the artwork and so-called real life.17 For his 1957 “Action Collages” Kaprow produced movable panels, covered in electric lightbulbs, artificial fruit and mirrors, and whose configuration could be changed by the artist or viewer. At the Hansa Gallery in 1958, visitors negotiated their way through strips of material suspended from the ceiling: people were both surrounded by and part of the environment. The same year, in an essay titled “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Kaprow advocated in a somewhat prophetic tone the advent of a “concrete

15 Adrian Henri, “Notes on Painting and Poetry,”,op. cit., 72. 16 In Environments and Happenings, London, Thames and Hudson, 1974, p.117, Henri remembers reading an article by Kaprow in early 1962–however, he had known of the American artist’s work since at least 1961, as he mentioned him at a meeting of the Merseyside Arts Festival that year. The two artists started corresponding in 1966, and Kaprow went on to send Henri posters and scripts for his happenings into the 1970s (“Kaprow” folder, Adrian Henri Archive, the Estate of Adrian Henri, Liverpool). 17 On his experience of hearing Cage’s 4’33’’ at Carnegie Hall in 1952, and of seeing Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, see Allan Kaprow, quoted in Joan Marter, “The Forgotten Legacy: Happenings, Pop Art and Fluxus at Rutgers University,” in Joan Marter, ed., Off Limits, Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1963, Rutgers University and Newark Museum, Newark, N.J., 1999, p.5. Kaprow attended John Cage’s classes at the New School of Social Research in 1957-1958. 150 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

art” that would reveal the world anew to artists and audiences alike. That new art would involve all the senses and make use of everyday materials, such as:

paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things that will be discovered by the present generation of artists. Not only will these bold creators show us, as if for the first time, the world we have always had about us but ignored, but they will disclose entirely unheard-of happenings and events, found in garbage cans, police files, hotel lobbies; seen in store windows and on the streets; and sensed in dreams and horrible accidents. An odor of crushed strawberries, a letter from a friend, or a billboard selling Drano; three taps on the front door, a scratch, a sigh, or a voice lecturing endlessly, a blinding staccato flash, a bowler hat–all will become materials for this new concrete art.18

In his collages and assemblages, Henri too had been using everyday materials, often collected or found in the street. For his first happening, fittingly called City (plate 6), a whole room recreated an urban environment. The event was organised in 1962 as part of the Merseyside Arts Festival, which also included a parade through the streets of Liverpool, a debate on Apartheid between Bessie Braddock and Lord Lilford, chaired by George Melly, some art exhibitions, music and poetry.

The terms “event” and “happening” had both been used by Kaprow, but Henri settled on the former, largely because at the time Liverpool shops were “advertising sales as ‘Events’: ‘Furniture event!,’ ‘50% Off Event!,’ ‘Discount Event!’”19 The idea of a “Bargain Art Event” is typical of a self- deprecatory, and maybe British, streak in Henri. Well aware that the audience may be disconcerted by this new art form, and always concerned they should not feel as if they were being talked down to, Henri and McGough produced a leaflet which acted both as a manifesto and as an explanatory introduction. The document outlines a background to the event, and outlines a lineage that runs from Dada and the Surrealists to the New York Assemblage painters, via Abstract Expressionism and jazz. Henri’s preparatory notes for City display all the characteristics of his 1960s events. City took place in a non-traditional space, the basement of Hope Hall—built as the Hope Street Chapel in 1837, it had been one of a chain of “Continental Cinemas” owned by Leslie Blond, and would later become the

18 Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” in Art News 57, New York, Number 6, October 1958, pp.24-26, 55-57. Henri was also aware of Kaprow’s article “Happenings in the New York Art Scene,” in Art News 60, New York, Number 3, May 1961, pp.36-39, 58-62. 19 Interview with John Gorman, Liverpool, March 15th, 2014,. In an email to the author, April 2nd 2014, John Gorman pointed out that, he had seen a television advert that day advertising a Dorothy Perkins “Fashion Event.” Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 151

Fig. 6. Adrian Henri et al, City, happening, Liverpool, 1962 152 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Everyman Theatre. As the photographs of the event show, the space was intimate: John Gorman recalls it was “rectangular ... 15’x30’ ... low-ceiling ... low light ... low tech.”20 The room was segmented by screens”covered with hessian, brown paper, etc.” and a “free-standing ‘junk’ object.”21 The set created and recreated fragments of an urban environment, including adverts and posters, newsstands, collaged magazines, graffiti, but also tapes playing city sound effects, street noises, sirens and traffic. During the event, painting, collage and assemblage activities were performed “live.” Henri aimed to create an “atmosphere through impressionistic tactile imagery adapted from the King-size polythenescape of which we in the city are all a part.”22 The piece didn’t attempt to tell a story, but to convey a city experience especially through the senses of touch, sight and hearing.

Importantly, City was a collective work, a collaboration between different artists: the third column of Henri’s First Notes (Fig. 7) is titled Fig. 7. Adrian Henri, notes for City event, 1962. Adrian Henri “cast,” as if for a play, and it mentions poets archive, Liverpool (Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Pete Brown), a painter (Henri), a photographer (Mike McCartney), as well as musicians, actors and an electrician. Poetry and music played an important part in the Liverpool events. In his notes, Henri specified that Brown would read a section of the elegiac poem “Night” accompanied live by “any musicians available.” Live music by local bands was often supplemented with recorded music: City for example closes on “Folk Form N°1”, an appropriately fluid piece that unfolds around Charles Mingus’s bass rhythmic line.23

20 John Gorman, ibid. 21 Adrian Henri, “First Notes for ‘City’ Event, “City” folder, Adrian Henri Archive, Estate of Adrian Henri. Kaprow often used the term “junk” to insist on the ordinariness of the materials to be used. 22 Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, introduction to City, Adrian Henri Archive, Estate of Adrian Henri, Liverpool. 23 From the album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, Candid, New York, 1960. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 153

Staged in 1959 at the Reuben Gallery in New York, Kaprow’s landmark Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts were precisely choreographed; members of the audience were given a set instructions on index cards, telling them where to sit, when they should stand, sweep the floor, climb a ladder, squeeze an orange, move to the next room, clap. A bell marked the beginning and end of each part. Kaprow’s stage directions gave 18 Happenings the look of a type of abstract theatre, directed by a tight score. In Henri’s City, the audience was directed to a certain extent—the ‘First Notes’ stipulate that the way in and the seated area were “marked out in chalk on the floor,” yet the participants were mostly spectators of the performance. In later events Henri and his collaborators devised ways of increasing audience involvement:

The chairs for the audience were arranged in three groups, each facing different ways. The four corners of the room were four stages, each with a light and a microphone. The “trick” was that the poetry and dialogue would be read in the different corners, forcing at least a third [sometimes all] of the audience to turn to see the readers. Sometimes the sound would be switched so that a reader would be in one corner and the sound would come from another corner.

This was to make the audience aware of itself, and for the audience not to be taken for granted.

Other Event “tricks” were ...

... hanging varying lengths of string from the ceiling, causing the audience either to move them aside so that they could see, or to lean to see around the string.

... covering the seats in various materials, like polythene, to make people aware

... giving the audience things to hold ... screws, sandpaper, wire.24

Like events by Cage or Kaprow, City was scripted—there was some room for chance, but even variations were anticipated, on a page titled “Suggestions for Incidents.”25 This ensured that there were no awkward lulls in the performance. Nor was it allowed to carry on indefinitely, as the music predetermined the duration of each segment—this gave a certain structure to a disparate piece that would have seemed otherwise chaotic. It would also have been reassuring for the audience to recognize some of the jazz or pop tunes. Pete Brown remembers the audience being a little bemused, “but open-minded because

24 John Gorman, email to the author, April 2nd 2014. 25 “City” folder, Adrian Henri Archive, Estate of Adrian Henri. 154 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

they trusted the artists.”26 They were, after all, some of the same people who, drink in hand, were as likely to attend the Monday night poetry readings as concerts by local bands at the Cavern. Contrary to the relatively austere mood and self-conscious sophistication of Kaprow’s happenings, humour was an essential ingredient of the Liverpool events, for the organisers were very conscious that the audience must be entertained even while their assumptions about art were being challenged.

The set for City included a tarpaulin, stretched over the audience’s head, filled with advertising matter, soap flakes and other fragments of the everyday (Fig. 8). At the end of the performance the tarpaulin was to give way, and the contents to drop onto the audience’s heads—the “tactilism” Henri referred to in his introduction. A newspaper journalist reported on their reaction: “As the 60 invited guests came out, covered in soapflakes, chewing sweets and swapping bottle tops, they appeared to have enjoyed it.” Enjoyment, accessibility and inclusiveness were political imperatives for Henri, however experimental the art form.27 It may seem curious that Henri, who extolled the Surrealists and the premium they placed on the imagination, should at the same time be so attached to the ordinariness and grittiness of the street. Yet, what he found so exciting in Jim Dine’s Car Crash, Claes Oldenburg’s Street, Ed Kienholz’s Beanery or Rauschenberg’s Combines was not a new, contemporary, sort of realism; nor did he consider the power of the imagination as some kind of Surrealist escapism. What he saw in both was the possibility of a revolutionary re-enchantment of the real : in much of his painting, poetry and performances, Henri strived not only to imitate “the feel of reality,”28 but to change the way reality feels.

26 Pete Brown, interviewed by the author, London, May 19th, 2014. 27 See Adrian Henri, “The Poet, the Audience and Non-Communication,” Sphinx, autumn 1964, p.27. 28 Adrian Henri, interviewed by Frank Milner in Adrian Henri : Paintings 1953-1998, 66. Catherine Marcangeli: Adrian Henri – Total Artist 155

Fig. 8. Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Pete Brown (with Mike McCartney in the audience, left), during City event, Liverpool, 1962. 156 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Adrian Henri, poster for the exhibition Painter/Poet, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1968. Fig. 2. Adrian Henri, Piccadilly Painting, 1964, oil on canvas. Estate of Adrian Henri. Fig. 3. Adrian Henri et al, Daffodil Event, Liverpool 1963. Fig. 4. Adrian Henri, Four Seasons, 1964, mixed media on board. Estate of Adrian Henri. Fig. 5. Adrian Henri, Bird Dying for its Country, 1963-4, mixed media on board. Estate of Adrian Henri. Fig. 6. Adrian Henri et al, City, happening, Liverpool, 1962 Fig. 7. Adrian Henri, notes for City event, 1962. Adrian Henri archive, Liverpool Fig. 8. Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Pete Brown (with Mike McCartney in the audience, left), during City event, Liverpool, 1962. 157

BLAKE & SHAKESPEARE

Michael Phillips

On 12 September 1800 Blake wrote to his close friend, the sculptor John Flaxman, to thank him for his help in introducing him to a new patron at a time that he was in need of work:

I send you a few lines which I hope you will Excuse. And As the time is now arrived when Men shall again converse in Heaven & walk with Angels[,] I know you will be pleased with the Intention & hope you will forgive the Poetry. (Blake to John Flaxman, September 12, 1800)

What follows is a verse autobiography of Blake’s early life. For a poet whom few would normally associate with Shakespeare, it is revealing:

To My Dearest Friend John Flaxman

Now my lot in the Heavens is this; Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face. Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave me his hand Paracelsus & Behmen appeard to me. terrors appeard in the Heavens above And in Hell beneath & a mighty & awful change threatened the Earth The American War began All its dark horrors passed before my face Across the Atlantic to France. Then the French Revolution commencd in thick clouds (Blake to John Flaxman, September 12, 1800)

As Blake was born in 1757 and the “The American War began” in 1776, these lines of verse autobiography incorporated in his letter to Flaxman make clear that when “Shakespeare in riper years gave [Blake] his hand,” he was possibly still a boy or more likely in his teens; in 1776, he would have been age 18 and in the fourth year of his apprenticeship to James Basire. Following Milton, the Old Testament prophets Ezra and Isaiah, and the Renaissance mystics, Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme, 158 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Shakespeare marked not only a mature influence, but also a comparatively secular one. But in what ways did Blake respond to and appropriate Shakespeare?

Blake’s first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed privately in 1783. The volume, as the “Advertisement” informs us, was “the production of untutored youth, commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the author till his twentieth year.” It is divided roughly into two parts; the first composed mostly of lyric poems and the second of dramatic and prose fragments. Here we find what we might expect.

Eight songs at a stroke displace the still fashionable late eighteenth-century Augustan poetic diction and replace it with simplicity of expression characteristic of the lyric poetry of Ben Jonson and especially the music of Shakespearean song. The last of these songs, “Mad Song,” could have been taken down from Poor Tom on the heath in King Lear. Here indeed the hand of Shakespeare is palpable.

Like a fiend in a cloud With howling woe, After night I do croud, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increas’d; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain. (“Mad Song”)

King Edward the Third is the longest of three dramatic fragments. Composed of six scenes and altogether nearly 1,000 lines of dramatic blank verse, it is a substantial piece of juvenilia. The cast list should be noted as including both Edward III and his queen, Queen Philippa.

In the second year of his apprenticeship, Blake’s master, James Basire, accepted a commission from the antiquary Richard Gough to prepare drawings for what would later be published as the Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain. Basire duly instructed Blake to make drawings for engraving, in particular of the kings and queens buried in the central chapel of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. These included the tomb of Edward III and his queen, Queen Philippa. One can imagine the Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 159

hours Blake spent in the Abbey and how he would have thought about and tried to learn all that he could about his subject, clearly exploring the life of Edward for his play in an attempt to fill a gap in the canon of Shakespeare’s history cycle.

In 1776 Blake was at work in making the drawings, as he recalled to Flaxman, when the “awful change threatened the Earth” that was the onset of the American war of independence. The opening scene of King Edward the Third is “The Coast of France, King Edward and Nobles, The Army.” Edward addresses his armies:

When confusion rages, when the field is in flame, When the cries of blood tear horror from heav’n, And yelling death runs up and down the ranks, Let Liberty, the charter’d right of Englishmen, Won by our fathers in many a glorious field, Enerve my soldiers; let Liberty, Blaze in each countenance, and fire the battle. King( Edward the Third)

This began Edward’s ill-starred invasion of France. Bloody slaughter followed, then retreat, the Black Death, and the perpetual conflict that became the Hundred Years War. We remember the famous remark of Queen Elizabeth “I comparing herself to Richard II” in 1601 at the time of the Essex rebellion: ‘I am Richard II. know ye not that?” If Blake’s King Edward the Third (which is only six scenes) was written at the time of the revolt of the American colonies, which seems likely, he may be suggesting a similar historical analogy. In this case, of Edward at the outset of his invasion of France, standing for King George III at the outset of what will become the debacle of the American War of Independence.

The manuscript of An Island in the Moon (1784–87), as Martha England and David Worrall have suggested, may have been written in the form of a burletta for performance at the Haymarket Theatre– where just such a mixture of dialogue and song was required if the patents of Drury Lane and Covent Garden were not to be breached. If there is a Shakespearean influence, as I believe there is, one need look no further than the marvelous good fun enacted in Act V, scene i, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when the group of “mechanicals” enact the story of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”

Blake’s other early manuscript, Tiriel (c. 1787), as often noted, is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s King Lear; the blind Tiriel who confronts and curses his sons and daughters clearly conflating Shakespeare’s characters of Gloucester and Lear. Such lines as those when Tiriel “raisd up his right hand to the heavens” and curses his sons, are clearly suggestive of Shakespear’s protagonist: 160 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Serpents not sons [,] wreathing around the bones of Tiriel Ye worms of death feasting upon your aged parents flesh Tiriel( )

As a young man learning his craft these examples of Shakespeare’s influence or appropriation are what we might expect of Blake.

ii.

By 1788 Blake had worked out the revolutionary method of “Illuminated Printing” that would enable him to combine his poetry and designs together and to publish them himself. One of the first volumes that he published using his new method was the Songs of Innocence in 1789. By 1789 Blake had absorbed Shakespeare; indeed, I suggest that Shakespearean drama had become second nature to him. But it would no longer manifest itself in obvious dramatic terms, such as we have seen in King Edward the Third or in his early manuscripts.

What Blake has learned from Shakespeare is the use of dramatic personae and point of view. Like Shakespeare, Blake steps back from the first person singular traditionally associated with the English lyric. Instead, and again like Shakespeare, Blake becomes not only the creator, but director, even stage manager. Blake’s Songs are dramatic vignettes. The characters who appear in each of his Songs are his cast and the accompanying designs his sets.

“The Little Black Boy” of Songs of Innocence is typical. It begins as though the theatre lights have just been dimmed, and the character of the little black boy has stepped out onto the stage alone, to introduce himself.

My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree And sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me, And pointing to the east began to say. (“The Little Black Boy”) Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 161

Notice how quietly the drama begins to unfold, just like a Russian doll, a second character is introduced, then a third–for example, the voice of Christ the Shepherd recalled by the mother–and so on.

Like so many of the Songs, one could explore the poem much further. For example, where in the “southern wild” could the mother of the little black boy have heard the comforting words of Christ of the New Testament that she has imparted so successfully to her son, that he has never forgotten, and that psychologically have been his mainstay as a little black boy presumably in London? Were the words of Christ heard by the mother from a missionary? How was it that the mother and her son became separated? The questions mount, the drama continues to unfold.

When we turn to the Songs of Experience, first published separately in 1793 and combined with the Songs of Innocence the following year, there are appropriations from Shakespearean of far different pitch and tenor. Blake’s “London” must be a result of Blake reading, reciting, and ruminating upon one after another of Shakespeare’s soliloquys.

I wander thro’ each charter’d street Near where the charter’d Thames does flow And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appals, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. (“London”) 162 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Here is another example of a very different kind that I believe demonstrates how deeply and totally Blake absorbed Shakespeare, so deeply that in this example it may be said to well up from within and manifest itself in the prosody, in the very beat and cadence of the lyric.

Blake drafted the Songs of Experience from 1791 through the Spring of 1793, exactly the time that disillusionment with the French Revolution became widespread in Britain, particularly after reports reached London of what were called the Paris Massacres in August and September 1792. The overthrow of the monarchy inexorably led to the execution of Louis XVI in Paris on 21 January 1793, followed in February by France’s declaration of war against Britain and Holland. During this same period Blake drafted both “London” and “The Tyger.”

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies, Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 163

Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? (“The Tyger”)

Are we meant to hear resonating through the cadence of Blake’s lyric the following lines from Act IV, scene i, of Shakespeare’s Macbeth? The witches have hailed Macbeth at the beginning of the play predicting that he will become king. With his having committed the regicide, and having taken the throne of Scotland by force, they now prophecy his downfall:

Double, double, toile and trouble; Fire burne, and Cauldron bubble. Fillet of a Fenny Snake In the cauldron boyle and bake: Eye of the Newt, and Toe of Frogge, Wooll of Bat, and Tongue of Dogge: Adders Forke, and Blinde-wormes Sting, Lizards legge, and Howlets wing: Likke a Hell-broth, boyle and bubble. Double, double, toyle and trouble, Fire burne, and Cauldron bubble. (Macbeth, Act IV, scene i)

iii.

Finally, I would like to look at Blake as an illustrator of Shakespeare. Not examples of his commercial engraving work in illustration of Shakespeare’s text, but, by far more tellingly, at an example that he selected to illustrate for his own purposes. Illustration seems an inadequate expression for what in fact is the transformation of Shakespeare’s word into image. Again from Macbeth, I refer to the Large Colour Print of 1795 entitled Pity. [Fig. 1]

In 1794, Blake turned his attention from the production of his illuminated books to painting. He began by producing two drawings and then a colour-printed drawing in illustration of the lines from Macbeth’s speech in Act I, Scene vii, in which Macbeth contemplates the murder of Duncan: 164 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 1. William Blake, Pity, Large Colour Print c. 1795, Tate Britain. Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 165

And Pitty, like a naked New-borne-Babe, Striding the blast, or Heavens Cherubin, hors’d Upon the sightless Curriors of the Ayre, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That teares shall drowne the winde. (Macbeth, Act I, Scene vii)

The Large Colour Print of 1795, a monotype, is remarkable for its visual articulation of the passage, significantly, without compromising its import. The “sightless Curriers of the Ayre” are at full stretch as “Pity like a New-born-Babe” twists its body to reach up to the outstretched arms of “Heavens Cherubin.”

We can follow the evolution of the design, and thereby his exploration of the passage, in two preliminary pencil drawings and an experimental colour-printed drawing [Fig. 2]. In the first drawing, the face of the forlorn figure of humanity is hidden, but expressed by her outstretched hand with fingers wrenched in pain. The first drawing is in an upright or portrait format and significantly, in terms of the evolution of the design, spatially presented on two planes–the figure of the woman reclining on the ground in the foreground, with the figures above her set back.

In the second drawing [Fig. 3], the format has been changed to landscape, with both groups now brought forward into the foreground composed into a single, highly concentrated image. The head of the woman is now in profile, thrown back, expressionless, as though in a trance, her arm by her side and hand out of view. It is the second drawing that Blake chose to copy on to copper, confirming his decision, for the moment, to set aside the illuminated book and to explore this image as a painter. But the significance of his decision was to do so as a printmaker.

In preparing the trial colour print of Pity to etch in relief, Blake used a quill pen or fine brush, and the same stop-out varnish used in preparing his plates of the illuminated books for etching, drawing only the bare and simplest outline of the contours of the second drawing on to the copper plate, unconcerned that it would be reversed in printing. When the plate had been etched and cleaned, Blake prepared it for colour printing. Let us examine the experimental colour print of the design [Fig. 4]. Try to imagine it without the watercolour washes and the lines in pen and ink that have been used to define the figures. These were added later, as I will explain. Onto the copper plate fromwhich he printed this image, Blake applied only broad areas of glue and gum-based colour pigment, first along the top, leaving an even larger area below it for the horse, rider and child to be introduced and defined later. He left another sweeping area running from left to right free of colour, in which he would 166 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

later define the reclining figure. However, across this space Blake then drew a series of strokes– leaning, as in the first drawing, from right to left, to simulate reeds or rushes swept by the wind in the wake of the “sightless Curriers of the Ayre” who are “striding the blast.” In other words, he chose to apply colour to little more than one-third of the surface area, leaving the rest of the copper plate untouched. This is how it was printed. Only when the impression had dried, sealing the glue-based pigments, were pen and ink used to define the images, followed by thin watercolour glazes applied with great delicacy and subtlety to introduce flesh tone and atmosphere.

In the months that followed Blake realized that he could simplify his method even further. This was the breakthrough. On the scale of landscape paintings (c. 440 x 580 mm), Blake abandoned the etched or engraved matrix with which he could reproduce exactly the same image every time it was printed. Instead, following the simplest of un-etched outlines he applied his mix of gum- and animal-glue-based pigments onto broad areas of the copper plate or pasteboard, leaving other areas entirely untouched. Placing the plate on the bed of the copper-plate rolling press and laying his sheet over it, Blake then printed an impression, using only the slightest pressure as plate and paper passed between the Fig. 2. William Blake, preliminary drawing for Pity, portrait format, c. rollers. But enough pressure that when the sheet 1794. BMPD accession number 1874,1212.148. was pulled from the plate the vacuum that resulted as the sheet was lifted away from the plate created the highly reticulated and mottled surfaces that Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 167

Fig. 3. William Blake, preliminary drawing for Pity, landscape format, c. 1794, BMPD accession number 1894,0612.12. characterize the Large Colour Prints, that under magnification look like the surface of the moon. Simply but wonderfully, once set, the blotches and blurs of colour pigment that had been printed-and that Frederick Tatham who knew Blake in his last years would later describe as having an “accidental look” about them-Blake transformed, first by defining areas with pen and India ink to create facial and bodily expression and then with glazes of transparent water colour wash to modulate colour and tone.

This was the first attempt at creating a revolutionary graphic medium, the monotype. Before Blake in the seventeenth century only Benedetto Castiglione had made a handful of experiments that remained virtually unknown. After Blake the monotype would not be tried again until those of Edgar Degas’s in the 1870s, followed by Picasso and countless artist-printmakers in the twentieth century. 168 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 4. William Blake, experimental colour print for Pity, c. 1794, BMPD accession number 1874,1212.380. Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 169

For Blake, this was an even more radical and revolutionary development than the invention of his method of “Illuminated Printing,” and for the subject of his first attempt at creating the monotype Blake had turned to Shakespeare. In doing so, he had selected one of the most complex and searching of Shakespeare’s metaphors, one at the very heart of perhaps his darkest tragedy. As we have seen, step by step, Blake explored its depths, appropriated and then transformed Shakespeare’s word, bringing to light for all to see and ponder its significance in visual terms. But just how remarkable was Blake’s image? Set against the two most famous examples by his contemporaries we will be in a better position to judge.

The two paintings are by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Macbeth and the Witches, Act IV, Scene i, now in Petworth House, and Henry Fuseli’s, Macbeth, painted in 1793, now in the Folger Shakespeare Gallery. What is significant is that both paintings were simultaneously put on display and deliberately juxtaposed in 1793 in Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, just at the moment when Blake first experimented in colour printing and within possibly months of choosing the image from Macbeth that he would illustrate.

First, here is an engraving after Reynolds’s painting [Fig. 5]: As contemporary critics quickly noted and criticized, Reynolds has gathered together on the same canvas a huge number of images. Here is an engraving after Fuseli’s painting [Fig. 6]. As also noted by critics at the time, in contrast Fuseli has concentrated his image into a single moment. The response at the time makes clear that the two paintings represented two very different notions of artistic genius. Fuseli chooses to depict and isolate a single expressive moment, in contrast with Reynolds, who conflates a succession of dramatic events and figures—an armoured head, a bloody child, a crowned child carrying a tree, a witches dance, &c.—each with its own significance within the scene of the play. We might be tempted to say that in this regard Blake is clearly of the school of Fuseli and, like Fuseli, has concentrated his colour print upon a single expressive moment. I would disagree and say that in fact Blake goes much further. Indeed, if one can draw an analogy, what we are seeing in Blake’s choice of subject and his handling of Shakespeare’s imagery is an exploration of the “deep structure,” the underlying syntax at the heart of Shakespeare’s art [Fig. 1].

What distinguishes Blake’s Large Colour Print known as Pity from the paintings in illustration of Macbeth by both Reynolds and Fuseli is that both are still paintings in illustration of the text. Blake’s image probes deep beneath the surface of the play, beneath any single character, scene, or act. It may be said, either to transcend illustration altogether, or, to bring to the surface the very heart and substance of what Shakepeare’s darkest tragedy is in essence all about and consumed by. 170 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 5. Sir Joshua Reynolds, engraving published 1 December 1802 after his painting Macbeth and the Witches, in illustration of Macbeth Act IV, Scene i, for the Shakespeare Gallery of Alderman Boydell commissioned in November 1786, BMPD accession number 1977,U.773AN146919001. Michael Phillips: Blake & Shakespeare 171

Fig. 6. Henry Fuseli, engraving after his painting in illustration of The Witches Appear to Macbeth and Banquo, in illustration of Macbeth Act IV, Scene i, also for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, BMPD accession number 1863,0509.55. 172 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. William Blake, Pity, Large Colour Print c. 1795, Tate Britain. Fig. 2. William Blake, preliminary drawing for Pity, portrait format, c. 1794. BMPD accession number 1874,1212.148. Fig. 3. William Blake, preliminary drawing for Pity, landscape format, c. 1794, BMPD accession number 1894,0612.12. Fig. 4. William Blake, experimental colour print for Pity, c. 1794, BMPD accession number 1874,1212.380. Fig. 5. Sir Joshua Reynolds, engraving published 1 December 1802 after his painting Macbeth and the Witches, in illustration of Macbeth Act IV, Scene i, for the Shakespeare Gallery of Alderman Boydell commissioned in November 1786, BMPD accession number 1977,U.773AN146919001. Fig. 6. Henry Fuseli, engraving after his painting in illustration of The Witches Appear to Macbeth and Banquo, in illustration of Macbeth Act IV, Scene i, also for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, BMPD accession number 1863,0509.55. 173

ALLURE WITHOUT ALLUSION: QUOTING A VIRGILIAN EPITAPH IN A 9/11 MEMORIAL

Aaron Seider

When the National September 11 Memorial & Museum opened in 2014, a quotation from the Aeneid thrust its 2,000-year-old author into a contemporary debate about honor and remembrance. Emblazoned on the central wall of Memorial Hall, the sentence “No day shall erase you from the memory of time,” attributed simply to Virgil, stood high above the museum’s visitors. This elegant translation of the Latin phrase nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo,1 line 447 in the ninth book of Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid, sparked a series of conversations in newspapers and magazines about the appropriateness of transferring a Virgilian epitaph for two mythological soldiers to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. While these reactions focused on the challenges posed by the relationship between ancient and modern contexts, they left unexplored consequential issues of appropriation and commemoration that reorient the interpretive possibilities of the contexts of Virgil’s words and subtend the dynamics of nearly every act of quotation.

In this article I explore how this single act of appropriation compels the consideration and reconsideration of these words’ relationships with their ancient and modern contexts. While some aspects of the verse’s original setting complicate its memorializing function in the Memorial Museum, a fuller exploration of its ancient and modern contexts reveals the power of quotation as a form of appropriation that demands a new interpretation. More specifically, I argue that this quotation in the Memorial Museum exemplifies the tension between the allure of antiquity and the impossibility of controlling its meaning, as Virgil’s promise of eternal remembrance occasions larger concerns about time and memory that leave the signification of its words unstable and erase borders between texts and audiences. At the same time, though, as this interaction between different contexts destabilizes the words’ commemorative force, the friction produced by that interaction offers new insight into other commemorative appropriations in the Memorial Museum and in Virgil’s Aeneid. For the Memorial Museum, this engagement with the Aeneid illuminates a dialogue between the universal and the unique, while these words’ placement within the Memorial Museum highlights the futility of trying to control commemoration within the Aeneid.

1 All Latin quotations come from the Mynors edition 174 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Beginning with its use in the Memorial Museum, I consider the interaction between this quotation and its various contexts, with a particular focus on how appropriated words and objects generate a new and, ultimately uncontrollable, interpretive energy. The article’s first section explores how in the Memorial Museum this Roman verse seeks to enshrine the victims of 9/11 within a permanent commemoration dependent on its viewers. Yet, as I show in the article’s second section, an initial investigation of these words’ usage in Book 9 of the Aeneid reveals how their original context prompts questions about the focus, agency, and purpose of this modern appropriation. Such friction, though, is inevitable to any act of quotation and, in this case, any discomfort, given that it depends on a thorough knowledge of the verse’s original context, remains unnoticed by the museum’s great majority of visitors. Rather than focusing solely on how the quotation’s original context may undermine its current purpose, I move in the article’s third section to consider how the engagement between the Aeneid and the Memorial Museum offers insight into the memorializing efforts of both the modern museum and Virgil’s ancient epic. For the Memorial Museum this interaction between ancient and modern frames the museum’s own exploration of the commemorative tensions between the universal and the unique, while for the Aeneid this friction with a modern institution reveals its own ambivalence about the ability of any individual to control the outcome of a commemorative act.

Lastly, in a coda to the article, I further explore the tension between the allure of quotation and the impossibility of controlling it by considering a recent exhibition at the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Here, in a series of rooms that survey the history of the Capitoline Hill, the Capitoline Museum offers two quotations on opposing walls: one presents the National September 11 Memorial Museum’s quotation of Virgil along with an Italian translation, while the other offers three lines of the original Latin context and an Italian translation of these verses. Pointedly framing itself as an echo both of the Aeneid and the National September 11 Memorial Museum, these Capitoline Museum quotations showcase the destabilizing yet energetic force of appropriation, as they reclaim Virgil’s words for their proper Roman context and underscore the necessary symbiosis between destruction and commemoration.

The Immediate Context: A Stately Selection

Considered without any other information than can be gleaned from its immediate context, the Memorial Museum’s selection from a poet of antiquity offers a solemn and comforting promise of eternal commemoration to the victims of 9/11. Memorial Hall, an austere and sparsely furnished space within the Memorial Museum, showcases the poet’s words on one of its walls. As can be seen Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 175

from Image 1, the statement “NO DAY SHALL ERASE YOU FROM THE MEMORY OF TIME” is attributed to “Virgil” and set within a large array of blue sheets of paper. It promises nothing less than everlasting remembrance. The subject of the sentence, “no day,” is juxtaposed with the evocative phrase “the memory of time,” a vow of continuous and infinite commemoration. Set between these two temporal poles is the sentence’s object, “you,” an apostrophe of those who perished in the attacks. As Jonathan Culler notes about apostrophe in general (68, emphases original), “The narrator places [what is apostrophized] beyond the movement of temporality … Apostrophe resists narrative because its now is not a moment in a temporal sequence but a now of discourse, of writing ….” In Memorial Hall, the apostrophized victims of 9/11 are moved into a present that is renewed with each reader. The main verb of the sentence, “erase,” made negative by “no,” promises that the 9/11 victims have already been recorded in memory, and the futurity of this statement, expressed by the august “shall” rather than the mundane “will,” states their commemoration will never cease.

The attribution of these words to Virgil amplifies this effect. Positioned directly below “TIME,” “Virgil” evokes ancient Rome as a mark of authority for the quotation’s truth. Additionally, this attribution signals that Virgil and his words have been remembered across the centuries, a longevity that stands as a testament to memory’s power. In other words, the fact that Virgil and his words are not forgotten subtly underscores the permanence of this American cultural institution. These nebulous associations with Virgil and Rome, absent any specific link with the author’s writing or Rome’s history, grant the quotation a timeless significance unavailable to a contemporary author’s words.

The words’ aesthetic qualities and immediate surroundings add to the solemnity and permanence they promise. The 43 letters that comprise the quotation and its attribution are forged from steel and anchored in concrete. Both the words and this wall testify to the human ability to craft lasting physical constructions, with the combination of steel and concrete underlining the permanence of the memory promised by these words. The singular colors of the letters and concrete contrast with the shimmering array of watercolor drawings, each a slightly different shade of blue. Attached to a wire mesh protruding from the wall, these sheets of paper create an evocative contrast between the concrete and letters’ solid colors and lasting physical nature and the paper’s various colors and fragile physical presence. This juxtaposition enriches the meaning of Virgil’s verse in several different ways. The permanence of the quotation’s material testifies to the ability of memory to anchor different, yet related, recollections of a variety of individuals and events, while the variety of the papers and their ephemeral physical presence communicate how the details of any memory may evolve and decay. The words’ material and setting promise the permanence of memory. Even as the days unfold and memories themselves change, this central cultural institution moves beyond the transitory and variable nature of an individual memory to a more permanent memorial.

Discordant Notes: Modern and Ancient Contexts

Further exploration of the quotation’s contexts reveals how, while its immediate surroundings in the Memorial Museum amplify its promise of remembering the victims of 9/11, its Virgilian origins Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 177

destabilize the identity of those who are to be commemorated.2 Before considering Virgil’s epic in greater detail, it is useful to consider how the words’ letters and their surroundings evoke a commitment to remembering the moment of the attacks as well as the efforts to rebuild afterwards.

This commitment begins with the metal of the letters themselves. The artist Tom Joyce forged the letters out of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center. This material commemorates not just the 9/11 attack, but also the dedication to rebuilding after it. The commitment to rebuild becomes a commitment to remember, and the entire process promises that long-standing and meaningful memories can be born from tragedy.

The surrounding artwork further emphasizes the words’ promise of commemoration, as it emblematizes the different memories that members of a community may hold of a single moment. Titled “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning,” this creation by Spencer Finch consists of 2,983 squares of paper, all painted various shades of blue. The number of squares corresponds to the number of those killed in the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, while the various shades and blendings of blues reach back toward the particular appearance of the New York City sky on September 11, 2001. In an article in The New York Times, Finch spoke about the connection between his creation and memory: “It had to be about that human quality of remembering, how it’s so fuzzy in some ways, and in other ways it’s so perfectly clear.”3 While the verse this artwork encircles promises eternal remembrance, the artwork itself emphasizes how the same event may be remembered in unique ways. The variations between the 2,983 squares of paper testify to the variety of memory, even as they illustrate how that variety stays within a certain range. For a visitor to Memorial Hall, it is possible to extrapolate from these efforts to remember the sky to the attempts

2 Soon after it became known that the National September 11 Memorial Museum was going to include this quotation from Virgil, writers and scholars began to question this choice in various media outlets, and in this section of the article I write about many of the ideas that these authors have already raised. The earliest voice to raise some of these issues was Caroline Alexander in an April 2011 article, when the Memorial Museum was still just being planned, and they were mentioned by Mario Erasmo in his 2012 book (p. 138). Three years later, just a few weeks before the Memorial Museum’s May 2014 opening, David W. Dunlap (2014a) revisited many of these questions in a longer and more detailed article which included quotations from several scholars, and was itself accompanied by another piece (Dunlap 2014b) that presented the thoughts of classicists Helen Morales, Llewelyn Morgan, and Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer. Also, in the weeks just before the Memorial Museum opened, the classicist J. C. McKeown published a blog post considering the tension between this Virgilian verse and its original context in light of other uses of quotations from classical sources in similar memorials. 3 Kennedy 2014, C1. 178 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

to remember the victims. Just as people might remember the sky differently, so may they remember the victims in different ways. These details about the construction of the quotation’s letters and the artwork surrounding it grant more complexity to the meaning of the quotation itself, yet they do so in a way that does not threaten its central focus on commemorating the victims of 9/11. Rather, Finch’s watercolors and Joyce’s letters supplement the promise of Virgil’s words of everlasting remembrance for the victims of 9/11 by evoking ideas of resilience and recovery, individuality and community, and evanescence and timelessness.

While the quotation’s surroundings within the Memorial Museum bolster its impact, its Virgilian context is jarring. The English words on the wall of Memorial Hall are a translation of a verse from Book 9 of the Aeneid and recall one of antiquity’s most profound and unsettling works. Brought to a state of near-completion by Virgil before his death in 19 BCE, the Aeneid weaves together myth and history in its story of Aeneas’ quest to found a city that will eventually lead to Rome. In its 12 books, containing a total of some 10,000 lines of dactylic hexameter, Virgil tells how Aeneas, the legendary ancestor of the Romans, sets out to found a new city after his home, Troy, is captured by the Greeks. Books 1-6 narrate the Trojans’ voyages around the Mediterranean, as a variety of challenges plague Aeneas and his followers in their search for a home. Aeneas lands in Italy near the epic’s midpoint, and Books 7-12 depict the Trojans’ struggles to survive in this land, as they try to forge alliances, ward off enemies, and secure space for their city. Among its many themes, the Aeneid considers the tensions between empire and sacrifice, trauma and memory, and freedom and fate, without offering any straightforward resolutions. In the moments of determined struggle and tragic glory that make up its whole, the epic often distils Aeneas’ uniquely Roman story into moments that transcend their temporal and cultural boundaries. In other words, Virgil’s narration of Aeneas’ story is an understandable target for quotation.

The quotation chosen by the Memorial Museum comes from a lengthy episode in Book 9 that focuses on the exploits of two Trojan soldiers, and its details bring considerable discomfort to its modern setting. With Aeneas away trying to secure an alliance with a neighboring city, a band of Latins surround the Trojans’ camp. Two Trojan soldiers and lovers, Nisus and Euryalus, take this opportunity to prove their worth by volunteering to bring a message to Aeneas for help. Having slipped past the blockade in the middle of the night, the pair enters the camps of the Latins, where soldiers lie overcome by drunken sleep. Nisus and Euryalus’ slaughter of their foes is thorough, and they stop only when they realize that morning will soon be upon them. Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 179

Right before they leave, Euryalus, the younger of the pair, cannot restrain himself from plundering the armor of a dead foe, and he exits the camp with a new helmet on his head. As Nisus and Euryalus continue to Aeneas, the moonlight glints off of Euryalus’ plundered helmet and a returning enemy patrol surrounds him. Realizing that he alone has escaped, Nisus returns to see Euryalus encircled by the Latins. In an attempt to save his lover, Nisus kills two of the Latins with spears, but these enemies, unable to locate Nisus, prepare to kill Euryalus instead. Nisus rushes the group with his sword, but he is too late to save Euryalus and succeeds only in slaying his lover’s killer before being slaughtered himself. Virgil apostrophizes the pair directly after he finishes describing their death, and the words in Memorial Hall are a translation of one of this apostrophe’s four verses, printed in bold below:

fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt, nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.

-Virgil, Aeneid 9.446-449

Fortunate pair! If my songs have any power, no day shall erase you from the memory of time, not while Aeneas’ house stands on the Capitoline’s immovable rock and the Roman father holds sway.4

As the flurry of popular articles and scholarly reactions responding to the Memorial Museum’s selection points out,5 this verse’s context raises several disturbing questions. Perhaps the most blatant incongruity between the quotation’s modern and ancient settings lies in “you.” While in the Memorial Museum “you” must be the civilian victims of the 9/11 attacks, in the Aeneid “you” are two bloodthirsty soldiers who have just slaughtered a sizeable number of their sleeping foes. Furthermore, Nisus and Euryalus are an invading force whose actions are motivated by both a desire for glory and love for each other; for the 9/11 victims, neither motivation is relevant. Perhaps most disturbingly, Nisus engages in a suicide mission when he decides to attack the enemies who surround Euryalus, an element of his death that renders him all too similar to the 9/11 terrorists.

The specific claims of Virgil’s apostrophe are similarly jarring. Its opening words focus on Nisus and Euryalus’ shared good fortune. The exclamation “Fortunate pair!” (Fortunati ambo! Virgil, Aeneid

4 Except for the translation of the verse quoted by the Memorial Museum, all translations in this article are my own. 5 Alexander 2011; Dunlap 2014a; Dunlap 2014b; McKeown 2014. 180 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

9.446) may allude to the Greco-Roman notion of a beautiful death, where a young man who dies in battle at the height of his physical power gains eternal glory through commemoration.6 While the notion of facing a terrible situation together may apply to some of the victims of 9/11, the claim that the 9/11 victims are in any way fortunate is beyond the pale. The cultural specificity of Virgil’s commemoration likewise undermines the quotation’s meaning. His promise of eternal memory depends on three factors: the power of the narrator’s song, the presence of Aeneas’ house on the Capitoline, and the sovereignty of a Roman ruler. While Virgil’s song may still have a small audience today, these three conditions can no longer be considered fulfilled. This adds two more levels of discomfort to the Memorial Museum’s quotation. Firstly, if the Roman cultural institutions on which Virgil staked his song’s power have disappeared, their loss implies that the same evanescence could plague their American counterparts. Secondly, with the conditions specified as necessary for commemoration no longer met, the promise of everlasting memorialization for Nisus and Euryalus is undermined, a destabilization which raises the same possibility for the victims of 9/11.

These details from the quotation’s ancient context are troubling, but the Memorial Museum likely decided that the allure of antiquity, with its promise of a solemn and serious eternity, outweighed the chance that visitors would be familiar with, let alone upset by, the verse’s ancient context. As Llewelyn Morgan, a lecturer in Classical Languages and Literature at Oxford University, remarked in an interview in The New York Times, “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of people won’t read [Virgil’s words] in context, and there’s no reason why they should, but they might respond to the rhetorical move of citing an ancient author, the significance and timelessness of the sentiment that implies.”7 Indeed, in the same article Alice M. Greenwald, the director of the Memorial Museum, confirmed the museum’s intention to capitalize on the verse’s ancient aura without drawing attention to its specific context: “The quote speaks to the indelibility of our memories … In selecting this quote, our focus was not on the specific narrative of the classic story nor its characters. What resonated with us, and with everyone who reviewed its use in the context of the museum, was the reference to a single day not being able to erase the memory of those we love.”8 In fact, after hearing the questions raised about the selection of this quotation, the Memorial Museum moved to shift its selection further away from the Aeneid’s specific story and characters by changing its attribution from “Virgil, Aeneid” to “Virgil.”9 With the title of the epic absent, this quotation stands as the personal belief of an ancient Roman poet, unencumbered by any associations with Nisus and Euryalus’ deaths.

6 Vernant 1982. 7 Quoted in Dunlap 2014b. 8 Quoted in Dunlap 2014a. 9 Dunlap 2014a reports this detail. Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 181

Even as the Memorial Museum positions this quotation at a greater distance from its original context in an effort to minimize any dissonance, an example of another Virgilian quotation suggests that it may be impossible to avoid any such tension when engaging with a text as polysemous as the Aeneid. From this perspective, the dissonance created by the Memorial Museum’s selection, while it may be troublesome, is an integral aspect of invoking Virgil’s epic, and, as I will argue later, if we are to consider how an examination of the ancient context may reveal aspects of discord in a quotation’s modern use, we should also consider how this engagement with the Aeneid may enrich both the quotation’s ancient and modern contexts.

A similar selection from the Aeneid appears on the membership certificate of the American Antiquarian Society, where once again an appeal to antiquity is designed to enhance a modern institution’s prestige. Isaiah Thomas, who founded the American Antiquarian Society in 1812, commissioned a membership certificate for the society in 1819; and, as Image 2 shows, along with language testifying to the individual’s membership in the American Antiquarian Society, this certificate features a picture of Christopher Columbus’ storm-strewn ship with captions in both Latin and English. The English text describes what is happening in the picture it accompanies: “He (Columbus) wrote on parchment an account of his discoveries, wrapped it in a piece of oiled cloth & enclosed it in a cake of wax, which he put in a tight cask, and threw into the sea. (Belknap.)”10 The three Latin words “OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT” are taken from Book 1 of the Aeneid and mean “One day it will be pleasing to remember.” The lack of an English translation shows Thomas’ expectation that his members will have the necessary background both to understand the Latin on their own and to consider this depiction of Columbus in light of these words’ Virgilian context. A glance at that context explains why Thomas wished his members to make this connection: these words are part of Aeneas’ attempt to rally his men after their companions perish in a sea storm. As Aeneas stands on the beach with the remnants of his fleet, he tells the Trojans that they have survived worse things in the past and, with a better future promised, they may remember these troubles one day with pleasure. The connections are clear. Columbus, like Aeneas, embarks on a difficult, but fated, journey to a new world, and Columbus, like Aeneas, rallies his men with the idea that they will one day remember their exploits with pleasure. For the member who possesses the American Antiquarian Society certificate, much like Virgil’s original

10 As Tom Knoles, the Marcus A. McCorison Librarian at the American Antiquarian Society, writes in a brief, unpublished pamphlet on the history of the diploma, dated 2015, Abner Reed of Hartford, Connecticut engraved the plate, and the quotation is from American Biography, a 1794 book by Jeremy Belknap. An 1893 “Report of the Librarian” by Edmund M. Barton for the American Antiquarian Society also discusses on pp. 349-351 the details of the certificate in light of the society’s work for the World’s Columbian Exposition of that year. 182 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Roman readers, that day has arrived: just as Aeneas was successful in his quest and the Romans may now look back with pleasure at the Aeneid’s depiction of the tribulations their ancestors survived, so may the members in Thomas’ society look back and remember the challenging trials of their nation’s beginnings, which they and the American Antiquarian Society now strive to record.

Yet, even in this instance, where Isaiah Thomas designed a certificate to direct his educated audience back to Book 1 of the Aeneid, a deeper examination of these words’ ancient setting undercuts their rhetorical purpose on the membership certificate. To begin with, Thomas leaves out the three words which begin this sentiment in the Aeneid: forsan et haec. These words complete the Latin sentence forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit which, translated into English, reads “Perhaps one day

Fig. 2. Membership Certificate of American Antiquarian Society. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 183

it will be pleasing to remember even these things” (Virgil, Aeneid 1.203). While the excision of “these” (haec) has no impact on the phrase’s tenor, the same cannot be said for forsan and et. In the Virgilian verse “perhaps” (forsan) and “even” (et) undermine the certainty of Aeneas’ claim, a doubt Thomas banishes. Another aspect of the original context destabilizes the certificate’s claims further. As soon as Aeneas finishes speaking to his men, Virgil reveals that the Trojan does not actually believe what he just said: “Aeneas says such things in speech and yet troubled with great worries he makes a pretense of hope on his face and presses his pain deep into his heart” (talia voce refert curisque ingentibus aeger / spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem, Virgil, Aeneid 1.208–9). Furthermore, just as Aeneas doubts his own claim, the epic’s larger context raises questions about these potential memories. Aeneas tells his men that they will look back on these events with pleasure since they will have survived them as a community. Yet, will this same pleasure in remembering painful events be shared by the indigenous Italians about to be displaced by the Trojans or fall under their rule? Just as the qualifiers “perhaps” and “even” undercut the certainty of the certificate’s promise, these questions about the fate of those harmed by the Trojans could prompt thoughts about the Native Americans, as Columbus’ arrival signifies the start of a period of displacement and suffering.

Tensions That Enrich: Inevitable Complications

In the case of the American Antiquarian Society’s membership certificate, even as Thomas selects a quotation with the aim of directing his audience back to a specific section of theAeneid , that context has the potential to undermine its present use. Indeed, the same complexity and depth that makes the Aeneid an inviting target for quotation also ensures that any such appropriation raises the possibility of tension between the original context and new context. Given this dynamic, this penultimate section of the article explores the possible ways this friction may actually enrich the quotation’s ancient and modern contexts. Indeed, even as this tension between ancient and modern may prove disconcerting, it sheds light on the complexities of the promises of commemoration made by the Memorial Museum and Virgil’s Roman epic. For the Memorial Museum, this tension with Virgil’s poem reveals how its acts of appropriation present themselves as memorials that look simultaneously toward the universal and the unique. For the Aeneid, it illuminates how the attempt to control memory is a necessary human impulse, but one that is futile and fraught with danger.

For the Memorial Museum, this friction with the Aeneid raises questions about the interplay between the universal and the unique in the twin reflecting pools outside its entrance and in Foundation 184 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Hall, an interior room displaying a variety of commemorative artifacts. Both spaces reflect the conflict inherent in the Memorial Museum’s double name. As both a memorial and a museum, this institution has a dual mission: to record the events of September 11, 2001 and to honor the memory of that day’s victims. These aims lead to the spare, almost factual, presentation of verbal and material artifacts in an attempt to hallow these acts of commemoration themselves, and the interplay in Virgil’s apostrophe between the everlasting commemoration he promises and the unique individuals who will be honored by it illustrates the Memorial Museum’s work to situate specific individuals within an eternal structure.

The reflecting pools outside the Memorial Museum create aesthetic sensations linked with ideas of permanence and universality even as they set individual people within this larger context, in much the same way that Virgil’s quotation promises the infinite permanence of a memory of a unique individual. The twin pools, each with water cascading down its sides, dominate the approach to the Memorial Museum. Titled “Reflecting Absence” and designed by Michael Arad, they are set within the footprints of the North and South World Trade Towers and surrounded by bronze panels inscribed with the names of those killed in the 1993 and 2001 attacks (Image 3). The water within the pools constantly moves but changes in neither its appearance nor sound, a combination that situates this space beyond human temporality. This sense of the infinite contrasts with the individual names that surround the pools (Image 4). The 2,983 names of those killed in the two attacks on the World Trade Center encircle the reflecting pools, with the names loosely organized according to personal connections.11 As Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial notes, the inscription of a name offers “a way to bring back everything someone could remember about a person.” Each name, then, beckons a viewer to set that individual within an everlasting memory in his or her own way, much as Virgil’s words promise permanence to the specific “you” they address.

Virgil’s interplay between different temporal perspectives also helps to develop the temporal nuances of the commemorative acts in Foundation Hall. Foundation Hall both enshrines earlier moments of commemoration and prompts new contemplations of how the past will be remembered. As Image 5 illustrates, the centerpiece of Foundation Hall is the Last Column, the final steel beam to be removed from Ground Zero. Covered with posters of the missing and graffiti signifying police and fire units that lost members in 9/11, the column now stands in a location that reframes these prior memorials. Originally placed on the column to assist in the location of the missing or to mark the loss of the dead, the posters and graffiti now also function as a remembrance of the effort expended and loss suffered by those who survived the attacks. Just like Virgil’s quotation stands both as a call to remember the dead and a commemoration of the act of memory itself, so does the Last Column; and, just as the Memorial Museum’s use of the

11 Paumgarten 2011. Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 185

Fig. 3. Used under Creative Commons Attributions 2.0 Generic License. Picture taken by Nicolas Vollmer. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:M%C3%A9morial_du_World_Trade_Center_ (8856311127).jpg

Fig. 4. Used under Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Picture taken by Kai Brinker. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/7/73/North_Tower_Fountain_National_ September_11_Memorial_%26_Museum_%28Sept._17 %2C_2011%29_%282%29.jpg 186 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Virgil words prompts one to consider his or her own commemorative acts alongside the memorializing impact of this Roman author, so do the artifacts within Foundation Hall encourage the viewer to reflect on how these commemorative effects relate to the hopes of those who placed posters or graffiti on the Last Column. The impulse to commemorate is universal but the perception of each act of memory is unique.

In a like manner, the quotation’s use in the Memorial Museum offers insight into aspects of the scenes related to Nisus and Euryalus’ death. More specifically, the Memorial Museum’s mixture of verbal and material artifacts illuminates the range of commemorations that follow the soldiers’ deaths as well as the uncontrollable interpretive energy generated by Nisus’ appropriation of a foe’s helmet.

Fig. 5. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Picture taken by Fletcher. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:September_11_Museum_Foundation_Hall.jpg Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 187

The setting of Virgil’s words within Spencer Finch’s artwork evokes the range of possible memories that can relate to a single event. The sheets of paper in Finch’s installation showcase the variability of memory, as each sheet represents an attempt to remember the same sky. Their range illustrates the challenges involved in attempting to establish a standardized commemoration of the past, even as the verse they encircle promises a permanent memory from the cultural institution. Termed an “oikotype,” a standardized commemoration of the past is created by a community’s actions regarding which version of the past “is acceptable and which is not.”12 The variability within Finch’s painting emphasizes the different nature of the various reactions to Nisus and Euryalus’ deaths. While the narrator’s apostrophe focuses on their good fortune to die and be commemorated together, Euryalus’ mother reacts in a much different manner. Seeing her son’s head paraded on a spike outside the walls of the Trojans’ camp, she cries out in anguish and laments her inability to properly bury her son. The brief rhetorical question which opens her speech encapsulates the difficulties she faces: “Is this you I see, Euryalus?” (hunc ego te, Euryale, aspicio?, Virgil, Aeneid 9.481). Denied the opportunity to commemorate him in the way she wishes, her question shows her inability to recognize and therefore control her son’s identity, a commemorative abyss starkly opposed to the narrator’s certainty of his own commemoration’s everlasting nature. No oikotype is formed by the competing commemorations of Virgil and Euryalus’ mother; rather they stand in discord with one another. Just as Finch’s artwork illustrates how people can have different memories of the color of a sky on a single morning, it also emphasizes the irreconcilable memories of Nisus and Euryalus offered by the Aeneid. Indeed, while Virgil’s quotation in Memorial Hall promises a standardized memory, the Aeneid does not.

The Memorial Museum’s presentation of material commemorations also sheds light on the shifting meaning of material acts of appropriation in the Aeneid. As mentioned earlier, the enemy spots Euryalus when the moon glints off a helmet he stripped from a dead foe. Virgil’s narrative underlines how Euryalus is undone by his commemorative efforts: “The helmet betrayed forgetful Euryalus in the barely luminous shade of night and reflected the light back from the rays of the moon” galea( Euryalum sublustri noctis in umbra / prodidit immemorem radiisque aduersa refulsit, Virgil, Aeneid 9.373–4). Through its presentation of material artifacts in Foundation Hall, the Memorial Museum illustrates how a material commemoration can prompt several different reactions, even moving beyond the meaning presumably intended by the one who fashions the commemoration. A poster originally designed to find a lost loved one, for instance, now exists as a marker that reminds the viewer of the dedication of those who searched. The helmet of Euryalus’ enemy, seized by the Trojan to commemorate his martial

12 Fentress and Wickham 1992, 74. 188 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

prowess, later marks his status as an enemy to the Latins and, after that, when the Latins take it back as a spoil of their own, it reminds them of the effort they expended to retrieve it.

Coda: Roman Reappropriation

As we reach this article’s conclusion, I hope to have shown how the quotation in the Memorial Museum exemplifies the tension between the allure of antiquity and the impossibility of controlling its meaning, as Virgil’s promise of eternal remembrance occasions larger concerns about time and audience that leave the signification of its words unstable. An acknowledged quotation placed in the most significant American memorial of the twenty-first century, this vow attempts to leverage the somber gravity of Virgil’s canonical status, only to draw attention to the instability of its meaning in this new context. As questions arise about who is called to remember and who will be remembered, this verse destabilizes its authentication of the present. At the same time, though, this article has also explored how the engagement between this quotation in Memorial Hall and its context in the Aeneid adds complexity to the commemorative acts of both cultural institutions. A consideration of the modern museum in light of Book 9 of the Aeneid illuminates how its commemorations of 9/11 move between the unique and the universal, just as the words from Virgil’s apostrophe promise that the remembrance of a unique individual may extend forever. From a different perspective, the backdrop of the Memorial Museum reveals the range of commemorative efforts associated with Euryalus in the Aeneid, efforts which fail to cohere in a single narrative and instead show how a commemoration depends on time, audience, and location.

In this coda, I consider the remarkable appearance of this same Virgilian quotation in a 2016 exhibit at the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Titled “Campidoglio: Mito, Memoria, Archeologia” (“Capitoline: Myth, Memory, Archeology”), this exhibit explores the history of the Capitoline and its representations from antiquity to the present. A room about half way through the exhibition focuses on Mussolini’s transformation of the Capitoline from a place populated by residences and businesses to an archeological monument, and a series of photographs document the demolition of hundreds of the hill’s buildings. Two opposing walls display quotations above these photographs. On one, seen in Image 6, is the statement “No day shall erase you from the memory of time,” accompanied by an Italian translation and the attribution “New York, National September 11 Memorial and Museum.” On the opposite wall, as seen in Image 7, stand lines 447-449 of Book 9 of the Aeneid, in both Latin and Italian and accompanied by precise attributions. These opposing quotations open a dialogue with one Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 189

another and with their immediate context that in turn raises further questions about appropriation and commemoration in both the Memorial Museum and the Aeneid.

In their interaction, these quotations appropriate the commemorative power of the Memorial Museum’s use of Virgil while also reclaiming these words for their “proper” Roman context. Without even a mention of Virgil, the Capitoline Museum’s quotation from the Memorial Museum presents this other cultural institution as the words’ author. Looked at on its own, this wall associates the early- twentieth century destruction of buildings on the Capitoline Hill with the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, and this raises the possibility that the viewer should figure the early-twentieth demolition of the Capitoline’s buildings as an attack on Italian values, life, and culture, albeit one carried out by the country’s leaders. At the same time, it posits a link between Rome and New York City, two magnificent cities that have suffered destruction, yet survived. Moreover, while the “you” in the Memorial Museum must address the victims of 9/11, the “you” in the Capitoline Museum may invoke the buildings that were demolished, their inhabitants, the hill itself, or some combination thereof. In any case, it links their destruction with the victims of 9/11, and, in so doing, promises that they will be remembered with the same gravity and dedication as those who lost their lives in the 2001 attack.

The opposing wall resituates this selection from the Memorial Museum. Emblazoned in Italian and Latin, this quotation offers the original context for the opposite wall’s words from the Memorial Museum and, in doing so, asserts the Virgilian authorship of this verse and reclaims it for Rome. As compared with the quotation of Virgil in the Memorial Museum, this selection in the Capitoline Museum is distinguished by its specific attribution of its source and its inclusion of a greater amount of its original context. As can be seen in comparison with the four-verse apostrophe in the Aeneid, the quotation in the Capitoline Museum includes three of the apostrophe’s four verses, here printed in bold:

Fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt, nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.

-Virgil, Aeneid 9.446-449

Fortunate pair! If my songs have any power, no day shall erase you from the memory of time, not while Aeneas’ house stands on the Capitoline’s immovable rock and the Roman father holds sway. 190 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 6. Photo of room in “Capitoline: Myth, Memory, Archeology” exhibition in the Capitoline Museum. Picture taken by author.

Fig. 7. Photo of room in “Capitoline: Myth, Memory, Archeology” exhibition in Capitoline Museum. Picture taken by author. Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 191

While the Capitoline Museum includes more of the Virgilian context than the Memorial Museum, it still excises line 446, a decision which distances this quotation from the specific figures of Nisus and Euryalus and excludes any specific mention of Virgil’s song. The additional verses that are included, namely lines 448 and 499, meanwhile, focus on specific Roman locations. Thus, the quotation emphasizes place instead of people, a fitting shift given that this particular room focuses on the destruction of buildings on the Capitoline Hill. Lastly, the inclusion of the Latin original and the specific attribution of this quotation to Virgil recall ancient Rome and thereby testify to the longevity of the Capitoline Hill in history and memory. In doing so, they also bolster the claim, implied by the quotation, that this exhibit promises to preserve the memory of the hill’s earlier incarnations.

A specific passage in theAeneid comes to mind in the context of these attempts by the Memorial Museum and the Capitoline Museum to claim this quotation, particularly given that both modern institutions use Virgil’s words to commemorate urban destruction. In the epic’s eighth book, Aeneas travels to Pallanteum to seek an alliance with Evander. As Aeneas walks around the city, his host describes the ruins they see before them:

haec duo praeterea disiectis oppida muris, 355 reliquias veterumque vides monimenta virorum. hanc Ianus pater, hanc Saturnus condidit arcem; Ianiculum huic, illi fuerat Saturnia nomen.

-Virgil, Aeneid 8.335-358

Furthermore, you see these two cities with their walls thrown down, the remains and monuments of ancient men. This citadel founded by Janus, that by Saturn; this one is called the Janiculum, that one was called Saturnia.

To their original Roman reader, these lines would offer a dizzying confrontation of temporal perspectives. As Aeneas visits Pallanteum, the site where his descendants will one day found Rome, he sees the records of other civilizations which once occupied that very same location but have now fallen into destruction. Moreover, from their perspective, Virgil’s readers may overlay their present- day Rome on top of these ruins, a new city that both succeeds and memorializes all those which came before. In this Virgilian vision, each city that arises is destroyed and, in its destruction, becomes a monument of itself and its inhabitants. 192 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

It is a haunting portrait, one that displays how the remnants of the past become monuments for the future. The National September 11 Memorial Museum and the Capitoline Museum both use a line from Virgil’s apostrophe for Nisus and Euryalus to commemorate acts of destruction suffered by their own civilizations. From this perspective, the destruction of civilizations and their subsequent commemorations in their ruins at Pallanteum portends that cities gain eternal memory only through their destruction. If we look back to this article’s earlier discussion of Jonathan Culler’s claim of how apostrophe moves the addressee into a timeless present, it is worthwhile to explore what such a commemorative apostrophe communicates about its speakers. Émile Benveniste (224-225) argues that the address of another in language creates “consciousness of self … by contrast” and that “this polarity of persons is the fundamental condition in language” where neither “I” nor “you” “can be conceived of without the other.” This quotation of a Virgilian apostrophe, then, creates both its own speaker and its own addressee. Not only do those people who died and those cities which were destroyed gain their presence and their commemoration through their destruction, but the individuals who memorialize them earn their own status as a subject through their commemorative efforts. This Virgilian apostrophe, which originates as an address to Nisus and Euryalus but now memorializes the victims of twentieth– and twenty–first– century disasters, testifies to the existence of the individuals who commemorate, even as, in light of Virgil’s magnificent description of the ruins that pre-date Rome, it hints that all civilizations gain their identity by commemorating the past and, more forebodingly, that all civilizations will one day be the subject of such commemoration themselves. Aaron Seider: Allure without Allusion: Quoting a Virgilian Epitaph in a 9/11 Memorial 193

Works Cited

ALEXANDER, Caroline. “Out of Context.” The New York Times, 6 April 2011, p. A27. BARTON, Edmund M. “Report of the Librarian.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 8, no. 2, 1893, pp. 347-362. BENVENISTE, Émile. “Subjectivity in Language.” Problems in General Linguistics. Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek, Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971, pp. 223-230. CULLER, Jonathan. “Apostrophe.” Diacritics, vol. 7, no. 4, 1977, pp. 59–69. DUNLAP, David. “A Memorial Inscription’s Grim Origins.” The New York Times, 2 April 2014, p. A20. ––––––––––––––. “Scholarly Perspectives on the Inscription at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.” The New York Times, 2 April 2014, www.nyti.ms/2jEuOVE. ERASMO, Mario. Death: Antiquity and Its Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. FENTRESS, James and Chris Wickham. Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. KENNEDY, Randy. “The Searing Blues of the 9/11 Sky: Spencer Finch Turns to the Heavens to Honor the Dead.” The New York Times, 15 May 2014, p. C1. KNOLES, Tom. “Background on the AAS Diploma.” Unpublished, Worcester: The American Antiquarian Society, 2015, 3 pages. LIN, Maya. “Making the Memorial.” The New York Review of Books, 2 Aug. 2000, www.nybooks.com/ articles/2000/11/02/making-the-memorial/. Accessed 8 February 2017. MCKEOWN, J. C. “The 9/11 Memorial and the Aeneid: Misappropriation or Sincere Sentiment?” OUPblog, 2 May 2014, blog.oup.com/2014/05/911-memorial-and-aeneid/. Accessed August 22, 2016. MYNORS, Roger A. B. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. PAUMGARTEN, Nick. “The Names.” The New Yorker, 16 May 2011, pp. 38-40. VERNANT, Jean-Pierre. “La Belle Mort et le Cadavre Outragé.” La Mort, les Morts dans les Sociétés Anciennes, Gherardo Gnioli and Jean-Pierre Vernant eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1982, pp. 45-76. 194 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Memorial Hall, National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, Inc. Photograph by Jin Lee. http://www.911memorial.org/sites/all/files/blog/images/memhall.JPG Fig. 2. Membership Certificate ofAmerican Antiquarian Society. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. Fig. 3. Used under Creative Commons Attributions 2.0 Generic License. Picture taken by Nicolas Vollmer. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M%C3%A9morial_du_World_Trade_Center_(8856311127).jpg Fig. 4. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Picture taken by Kai Brinker. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/North_Tower_Fountain_National_ September_11_Memorial_%26_Museum_%28Sept._17%2C_2011%29_%282%29.jpg Fig. 5. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Picture taken by Fletcher. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:September_11_Museum_Foundation_Hall.jpg Fig. 6. Photo of room in “Capitoline: Myth, Memory, Archeology” exhibition in the Capitoline Museum. Picture taken by author. Fig. 7. Photo of room in “Capitoline: Myth, Memory, Archeology” exhibition in Capitoline Museum. Picture taken by author. 195

TEXT, IMAGE AND THE DISCOURSE OF DISAPPEARING INDIANS IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

Thomas L. Doughton

From 1801 through 1835, American Natives—mostly east of the Mississippi or from the Great Lakes and Ohio areas—signed 189 treaties with the Federal Government formally acknowledging appropriation of their lands. But as Georgia Governor Gilmer phrased it in 1830, “Treaties were expedients by which ignorant, intractable, and savage people were induced without bloodshed to yield up what civilized people had a right to possess by virtue of that the Command of the Creator delivered to man upon his formation—be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.”1

Correspondingly, the paintings of the Hudson River School appear at the time of Indian Removal or dispossession of Natives from areas east of the Mississippi and their “resettlement” in “Indian Territory” or Oklahoma. While painters of the School represented doomed Indians in the process of being removed from the landscape—even if part of a natural or organic succession of ages or races, these works are part of the national debate about the Indian. Their work is consistent with national policy demanding their physical removal from homelands east of the Mississippi. Therefore, some Hudson River canvases are documents of the discourse of disappearing Indians, or among visual and literary representations, given synthetic coherence in the 1840s through the notion of “Manifest Destiny.”2

As an ideology of expansionism, however, Manifest Destiny assumed the following: European immigrants had geographical predestination to “possess” the continent; that “according to the intentions of the Creator” the soil was to be “subdued”; that European Christianity was an advanced state of culture destined “to conquer” lower, decadent forms of human organization and that the vast reaches of the continent were under-utilized by transient, marauding, roaming, undeveloped Indians. The significance of Manifest Destiny for aboriginal people was, therefore, clear: Natives had to disappear. Their disappearance or extinction was ordained by the “Disposer of Human Events,” the “Author of Nature,”

1 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Georgia, 1830, 13. 2 Some scholarship maintains that the destiny of continental domination gains coherence as John L. O’Sullivan first employed the term Manifest Destiny in an editorial in the New York Morning News, December 27, 1845. 196 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

the “finger of God,” the “Father of the Universe,” the “Hand of Nature,” or the “Great Engineer of the Universe.” How Natives were dealt with politically related to the acceptance of their fated erasure and extinction. As President Andrew Jackson neatly summarized: “Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country,” and although Jackson claimed “Philanthropy” had been “long busy employed” in trying to assist the Native “one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth,” with “the extinction of one generation to make room for Fig.1. Tompkins Harrison Matteson,“The Last of the Race,” 1847, New-York Historical Society. another.” Although tragic, it was the destiny of the Indian to make room for the Europeans.3 [Fig.1]

To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections,” according to Jackson, but works of the Mound Builders were “the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West,” through which “we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes.” Likewise, “the tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites.” As for the “wandering savage“ who had not yet “melted away,” Jackson asserted governmental policy was “not only liberal but generous;” to save from mingling with the general population, or “perhaps utter annihilation,”

3 Andrew Jackson, State of the Union speech. December 6, 1830. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 197 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

government “kindly” offered “a new home” in barren Oklahoma and proposed “to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.4

Here, then, is an overview of justifications for Indian removal of the 1820s and 1830s. Jackson does not, however, relate that just as the Old Northwest filled with whites, similar population movements occurred in the South: Mississippi admitted to the Union in 1817, Alabama in 1819; and, their combined population of 40,000 in 1810 rising to 445,000 by 1830.

Nor does Jackson mention white desire for Cherokee lands: an area 200 miles by 215 miles or some 10,000,000 acres, occupied in 1835 by 16,542 Indian residents, 201 intermarried whites, and 1,592 African slaves. The Cherokees also cultivated 44,000 acres, raising over half a million bushels of corn, the “advanced” state confirmed in that of 2,637 households in their territory more than half of these had at least one reader of Cherokee while eighteen percent had an English reader. Nonetheless, Cherokees or others of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes” were removed from the South to Oklahoma.5 Despite opposition to Removal, their territories were seized;6 losses of Indian land in the Old South are represented in the accompanying graphic.

Any discussion of the work of the Hudson River painters and Native people also needs to be related to three accompanying contemporary areas of creative production in the antebellum period: (1) a proliferation of various types of printed materials ranging from poetry of authors like William Cullen

4 Ibid.

5 Choctaws between 1831-1834; Chicasaws 1837; Creeks in 1836 and, lastly, the Cherokees between 1838-1839, with some 3,500 of 15,000 Cherokee men, women, and children dying of disease and exposure on the Trail of Tears.

6 A local opponent of Removal was William Biglow. Writing at the time of public controversy concerning “Removal,” the first historian of Natick found that “many of the vices both of the savage and civilized state” had led to a virtual disappearance of “the tribe of Aborigines which was first civilized and Christianized in North America, by Protestant missionaries … similar the fate of most, if not all the tribes in New England.” He speculated, “Whether a better destiny awaits the Red Men of the south and west, is known only to Him, who created them. The prayer of every Christian, of every philanthropist must be, Lord, have mercy on them, and protect them from their adversaries—Lord, have mercy on their persecutors, and touch their hearts with feelings of humanity, of pity and of justice.” See Biglow, Natick History, 84, a text which appeared in 1830, one year before “The Cherokee Nation v The State of Georgia” came before the U.S. Supreme Court (1831), the Court rejecting Cherokee standing in its appeal to the Court, paving the way for “Removal” of the “Civilized” Tribes. 198 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Bryant, novels of James Fennimore Cooper and others, captivity narratives, dramas on King Philip and other eastern Indians, and a flood of town histories in the Northeast chronicling the demise and disappearance of Indians; [2] efforts of Catlin, King, Bodmer, Wimer and other artists to document and record visually a vanishing people; and, [3] historical paintings depicting conquered, vanishing and disappearing Indians. Together, they constitute what, for lack of a better term, I have written about as a discourse of disappearing Indians. [Fig.2]

Fig.2. From The Gentleman’s Magazine, published in London in 1751. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 199 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

However it is to be labelled, this imagining of Indians as doomed to extinction does not arise with Manifest Destiny in the nineteenth century. Rather, it is embedded at the heart of the historiography of the American experience. According to the scenario established at the beginning of the Euro-American “errand” into the wilderness, Massachusetts Native people were nearly “wiped out” in the virgin soil epidemic of 1618-19, called a “wonderful plague” destroying them and leaving their lands free for occupation. The epidemic on the eve of English immigration to New England was the means chosen by Jehovah to make room for building the new Jerusalem. “Disappearing” Indians are thus first encountered in the works of the seventeenth-century Massachusetts writers, remaining a persistent presence of an absence at the center of the American mythology of progress and manifest destiny. In outline, seventeenth-century writers inform: Massachusetts Natives did not enclose their land, therefore, their lands were not really their property; Indians had more land than they needed or knew how to use; they welcomed the coming of Europeans; and, epidemics and pandemics prior to 1620 and, again, in 1633-34, were proof Jehovah was clearing the “uncouth” and “heathen” wilderness to make way for his saints. Indians were, simply, doomed to disappear. Therefore, their disappearance is central to the vision of New England codified in the region’s earliest narratives.

What is advanced in these early works is the notion “And, then, there were none,” as Massachusetts Indians of the time of Contact disappeared. Additionally, Native casualties in the so- called King Philip War of 1675-1676 allowed whites to imagine surviving Native populations that were killed off or vanished. By the nineteenth century, however, disappearing or vanishing Indians became thoroughly enmeshed in prolongation of one of the “grand themes” of U.S. history: the struggle between savagery and civilization. 7

7 For example, Neal E. Salisbury, Conquest of the “Savage”: Puritans, Puritan Missionaries, and Indians, 1620-1680 (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1972 ); Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982); Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, So Dreadfull A Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676-1677 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1978); and, Michael J. Puglisi, The Legacies of King Philip’s War in Massachusetts Bay Colony, (Ph.D. diss., College of William & Mary, 1987), particularly, Chap. I: “Punishment and Repentance,” 7-37; Chap. II: “The Victors and the Vanquished,” 13, 18-19, 20-21, 29, 38-75; also conflict with Indians is identified among “anxieties” related to Massachusetts witchcraft scares, John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) 379-381. 200 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

According to historian Robert Berkhofer, New England had “far excelled” other regions in the production literary texts–journals, chronicles, promotional tracts, sermons and histories—articulating an opposition between “Friend Indian” and “Enemy Indian” or what he calls “the paradigm of polarity” through which occurs “the imaginative transformation of the Native American from the Indian of Contact into the Indian of symbol and myth.”8 What resulted was a topology of good Indians, bad Indians, and debased or degraded Indians. To these three groups described by Berkhofer, however, should be added a fourth stereotype: the already disappeared or vanished Indian. Does this typology of good, bad, degraded or disappeared Indians have relevance for the Hudson River School? I would maintain that popularly accepted images of Native people of the antebellum period are reflected in the work of this school. To the question whether Cole, Duncanson, Durand, Gifford and others intended their depictions of Indians as part of a cant of conquest and site of expansionist ideology, any response would have to be more tentative. [Fig. 3]

Still their work, nonetheless, mirrors and reinforces popularly accepted notions of Indian disappearance. Often a lone Native or a pair of lonely Indians, appropriately miniaturized in the foreground, survey panoramic landscapes. Examples include: “Catskill Mountain Scenery” by Kensett; “Falls of the Sawkill” by William J. Bennett, engraved by Asher Durand; and Sanford Gifford’s “Mount Mansfield Vermont.” Additionally, Cole

8 Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, 80-81; 28-30. Fig. 3. After Henry Fuesli, Vue de la Cascade du Niagara, en Amerique. dans le pais des Iroquois… engraving Pour le Voyage des quatre parties du Monde de M. Henri Vernon. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 201 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

painted lone or lonely Indians in “View of Lake Winnispiscogee,” “Distant View of Niagara Falls,” and the small canvas part of the Hudson River exhibition. 9

The close association of Hudson River School artists and contemporary poets is clearly represented in Asher Durand’s familiar painting Kindred Spirits, which shows Cole and William Bryant Cullen on a promontory overlooking a typical landscape. Relationships between the visual imagery of the School’s painters and the work of writers manifest themselves in several ways.

On the one hand, Hudson River School artists repeatedly turn to the printed word—of poems, novels, and historical texts in selecting sites to be painted, in many instances their carefully crafted landscapes thematically dependent upon local legends and historical associations. Mounts Chocurua in New Hampshire, Katahdin in Maine and Mansfield in Vermont are, for examples, frequently painted by Hudson River artists for both natural beauty and connection to Indians, as established by various written works. Correspondingly, some artists like Asher Durand, for example, are also actively involved in illustrating literary texts.

On the other hand, as early as 1819 Washington Irving, for example, informed his readers that his craft was akin to the painters when in one of pieces in The Sketch Book he calls himself “Geoffrey Crayon.” (vii) and Cole, wrote to Daniel Wadsworth: “I still look forward with hope to the time when I shall be able to produce pictures that shall affect the mind of the beholder like the works of a great poet—that shall elevate the imagination and produce a happy moral effect.”10 [Fig. 4]

The connection of Hudson River artists and writers is also confirmed in personal relationships between individual painters and poets, novelists and historians, such as the celebrated example of the

9 Kensett’s “Catskill Mountain Scenery,” engraved by H. Beckwith, was reproduced in A Landscape Book by American Artists and American Authors 30-31, to illustrate Bryant’s “Catterskill Falls”; Bennett’s “Falls of the Sawkill,” was reproduced in William Cullen Bryant, The American Landscape, No. 1 [shortened title] (New York: Elam Bliss, 1830) while Gifford’s “Mount Mansfield Vermont” is reproduced in McNulty, ed., The Correspondence Thomas Cole & Daniel Wadsworth. Thomas Cole’s “View of Winnipiscogee” is also reproduced in The Correspondence; his “Distant View of Niagara Falls” is in the collection of Chicago Art Institute.

10 James T. Callow, Kindred Spirits Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists 1807-1855, hereafter cited as Kindred Spirits (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967) vii; J. Bard McNulty, ed., The Correspondence of Thomas Cole and Daniel Wadsworth: Letters in the Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, and in the New York State Library, Albany, New York (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1983) xix 202 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 4. An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, c. 1768, an engraving of Thomas Davies, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 203 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

friendship of Cole and Cullen. The results, however, include uncertainty or instability in representation of Native peoples. The instability in the iconography of the Indian is mirrored in various, sometimes seemingly contradictory literary works—part of the discourse of disappearing Indians. On the one hand, some opinion makers of the Early Republic imagined Indians as if classical heroes, much as Benjamin West exclaimed in 1760 at Rome on first seeing the Belvedere Apollo: “My God, how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior.”11 In this modification of the Indian as noble savage, as critic David Lubin commented, in a “dialectical reversal of the wildman” or a libidinous sensualist the Native becomes a paragon of self-restraint, dignity and genuinely, inviting comparison to the world of classical civilization familiar to educated Americans. While as early as the seventeenth century representations of the Indian invited comparison with hellenistic statuary, the neoclassical and later Romantic construction of the Indian as nature’s true child allowed Indians to be imagined “the reincarnation of antique civilization, with its hypostatized beauty, nobility and simplicity.”12

Writing in the North-American Review in 1815, William Tudor maintained “Aborigines” or Indians first encountered by Europeans “possessed so many traits in common with some of the nations of antiquity, that they perhaps exhibit the counterpart of what the Greeks were in the heroick age, and particularly the Spartans during the vigour of their institutions.”13

Even the previously demonized King Philip begins to be covered by a classical “cloak,” his rehabilitation accomplished in later stage works including Metamora. For poet Sprague, Philip is heroic:

Even that he lived, is for his conqueror’s tongue By foes alone his death-song must be sung; No chronicles but theirs shall tell His mournful doom to future times; May these upon his virtues dwell, And in his fate forget his crimes

As final example, in his Book of Indians, Samuel G. Drake, offered the following version of

11 John Galt, The Life of Benjamin West ed. by Nathalia Wright, 105. 12 See David M. Lublin, Picturing A Nation, 31-32.

13 Tudor, “Phi Beta Kappa Address,” 19. 204 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Philip’s death through an anonymous verse:

He felt his life’s blood freezing fast He grasped his bow, his lance, and steel He was of Wampanoag’s last. To die were easy—not to yield. His eyes were fixed upon the sky He gasped as on the ground he fell None but his foes to see him die— None but his foes his death to tell

Examples of noble, heroic Indians in works of poetry, fiction and drama of the antebellum period abound. Yet at the same time other works recapitulated images of bad or debased Indians. [Fig.5]

Between 1824 and 1834 were published some forty novels with Indian characters or episodes describing natives. As historian Berkhofer explained the good Indian, as represented by Massasoit and Squanto, was constructed in imaginations as “friendly, courteous, and hospitable” so long as “obligations” are honored; he was characterized by “handsomeness of physique and physiognomy,” and endowed with “great stamina and endurance”; he was “modest in attitude,” exhibiting “great calm and dignity in bearing, conversation,” even when tortured; Fig. 5. Thomas Davies, Niagara Falls From Above, circa and, he was “brave in combat … tender in love 1762-68. for family and children” while priding himself on “independence … with a plain existence and wholesome enjoyment of nature’s gifts,” living a “life of liberty, simplicity, and innocence.” Another historian claimed that good Indians were essentially white. 14

14 “What tied the stories of these virtuous Indians together was that for such figures to be seen in this light, they generally had to act against the best interests of their own people … This elevation saw the actual histories of these figures replaced by mythic narratives depicting the crucial moments when aid was given to the whites, such as the first Thanksgiving dinner in New and the saving of John Smith,” see Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 174. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 205 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

Correspondingly, for Berkhofer, the bad Indian was imagined living in nakedness, lechery, passion, vanity, polygamy, promiscuity, constant warfare, and fiendish revenge in such a way that when his habits were not barbarous, he remained “loathsome” to Euro-Americans; “cannibalism and human sacrifice were the worst sins,” followed by a repulsive diet he enjoyed; his other traits included “indolence rather than industry, improvidence in the face of scarcity,” thievery, treachery, and superstition which substituted “license for liberty, a harsh lot for simplicity, and dissimulation and deceit for innocence.”

A third image, the degraded Indian, was constructed particularly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries from an assumption that Indianness and civilization were “inherently incompatible,” much as Berkhofer continued that “Indians who remained alive and resisted adoption of civilization appeared to accept White vices instead of virtues and so become those imperfect creatures, the degraded or reservation Indians.” Represented as “degraded, often drunken … neither noble nor wildly savage but always scorned,” Natives were “degenerate and poverty-stricken … unfortunates …presumed to be outcasts from their own race, who exhibited the worse qualities of Indian character with none of its redeeming features.” To these three images detailed by Berkhofer can be added a fourth representation: the vanished or already disappeared Indian. Almost all assuming the disappearance of Native people, creative literary works of the antebellum period, accordingly, draw upon socially acceptable constructions of the Indian. [Fig. 6] Fig. 6. The Horseshoe Fall from Below Table Rock, attributed to John Vanderlyn. While artists of the first generation of Hudson River School labored, primarily in the Northeast, their work was part of a more generalized depiction of Indians for the antebellum American public: documentary representation of a doomed race and the celebration of their disappearance through historical painting. According to Matthew Baignell, depictions of Natives in this period are related to “rhetoric of American individualism, self- reliance, providential protection, middle–class morality, and the establishment of a nation of continental dimensions,” revealing “racist and imperialist subtexts.” Artists producing these works were “coopted by 206 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

the prevailing ideology, public policies and popular beliefs,” their output recording “the racial theories and territorial imperatives” as well as the history of nation-building, individuals “enmeshed in the discourse of power”; for Baignell, providing “at least as much cause for embarrassment as for celebration.”15

In the text produced for America as the West, William Truettner wrote that historical scenes collapse time, redefining the past as orchestrated by patrons and the acceptance of expansionist ideology, with patrons informing artistic interpretation of westward movement, and encouraging subjects suitable for the ideology’s needs. Yet, in this work is an obvious contradiction between frequently large canvases claiming to chronicle an expanding democratic society while at the same time expressing the requirements of Manifest Destiny dispossessing Indians, who were not extended the rights of the United State citizenship until the 1920s. One remarkable aspect of these works is an effort to decontextualize actual history in order to use the Indian in an “official” discourse of his or her disappearance. A certain trajectory shapes and orders individual works into an assemblage of visual imagery glorifying expansionism. The components, sites of Indian undoing and disappearing, reflect the “official, standard” iconography of American democracy in the antebellum period: the “discovery” of the Americas; selected events in the exploration of North America, the most frequently represented scenes involving La Salle or De Sota; the arrival of “our” ancestors and founding of British colonies; “peopling” of America and overcoming the Indian in the eighteenth century; the struggle for “independence” and founding of the Republic; and, the movement of “civilization” across the Alleghenies to the Old Northwest, the Southwest and Missouri. Over and over again were painted scenes of the arrival of Europeans in the New World. Indeed, the U.S. Capitol would, by mid-century, become a repository for many of these images. Of the eight monumental canvases in the Rotunda, three represent historical encounters with Natives: Chapman’s baptism of Pocahontas; William H. Powell’s “Discovery of the Mississippi;” and the landing of Columbus at Guahanana or San Salvador by Vanderlyn. A large Bierstadt painting, “Discovery of the Hudson River,” is in the House of Representatives Wing and nine painted scenes of Indians by Seth Eastman were commissioned for the Capitol. Natives are also depicted in nine sculptures part of the frieze beneath the Rotunda’s dome. The Rogers Doors or bronze doors at the East Rotunda Entrance include three scenes with Natives: departure of Columbus from Palos, his landing in the New World and his first meeting with Indians. In the 1850s two busts of Chippewa Indians were placed in the building. Additionally, until its removal to the Smithsonian

15 Matthew Baignell, “Territory, Race, Religion Images of Manifest Destiny,” 20. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 207 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

in 1976, Greenough’s “The Rescue” adorned the eastern steps leading up to the Capital.16 There can be demonstrated an “upward movement” from discovery by Columbus through exploration of La Salle at the Mississippi River to the founding colonies and events leading up to the Revolution: and eventually, through a movement across the Mississippi to the Great Plains in a pictorial march across the continent. Little reflection seems to be given the contradiction between justifying liberty on behalf of an expanding democratic society while dispossessing the Indian in the name of Manifest Destiny utilizing themes that resonate in these visual works: collapsed time, Fig. 7. Alvan Fisher, A General View of the Falls of Niagara, 1820, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. redefinition of past as orchestrated by patrons and expansionist ideology, artistic interpretation of westward movement. They represent a contradiction: justifying liberty on behalf of an expanding democratic society while dispossessing the Indian in the name of Manifest Destiny. [Fig. 7]

Occasionally works by Cole, for example, are consistent in depicting scenes with Indians as in three representations of Niagara Falls: Horseshoe Falls from Canada Side, c. 1829-30, with a lone Indian on a promontory in front of the falls; View of Niagara Falls, from 1829; and, Niagara Falls, 1830, with Indians on promontory at the center foreground of the canvas. Additionally, an engraved view of Niagara Falls by Cole was one of the most widely disseminated images of the cataracts during the nineteenth century, both in England and in the United States. In selecting the Falls, Cole reflects

16 See Art in the U.S. Capitol, 134-135, 140-141, 185-193, 216, 304-311, 343-347. The three works with Natives in the Rotunda are displayed with representations of “great events” of American history: Robert Weir’s “Embarkation of the Pilgrims at Delft Haven Holland July 2nd, 1620;” and Trumbull’s “The Declaration of Independence,” along with “George Washington Resigning His Commission of Congress as Commander in Chief,” Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga and the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. The works by Eastman depicting various aspects of Native life were moved from the Capitol to the Longworth Office Building. Marble busts by Francis Vincenti of Chippewa chiefs Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay and Beeshekee were acquired in 1854 and 1858. As part of the Rotunda frieze begun later in the century by Constantino Brumidi and finished, after his death by Filippo Constaggini, were the following scenes incorporating Indians: the landing of Columbus; entry of Cortes into the Hall of Montezuma; Pizarro’s conquest of Peru; midnight burial of De Soto; Pocahontas saving Capt. John Smith; the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock; Penn’s 1682 treaty with Indians; making the peace treaty by Georgia Governor Oglethorpe with southeastern Indians; and, lastly, the death of Tecumseh in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames. The bronze Rogers Doors include among panel images the departure of Columbus and his first meeting of Indians while the tympanum represents the landing of Columbus in the New World. 208 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

the contemporary acceptance of watercourses–particularly, cataracts or waterfalls—as the “voice of the landscape,” and anchors these canvases in an earlier style of representing Niagara Falls—with one scholar finding that “more than just a realistic documentary touch,” the Indian “serves symbolic and aesthetic functions” in these paintings, emphasizing the exotic wonders of the American wilderness and also “serving as a symbol for the hugeness of wild America.” 17

Starting in the eighteenth century, the Falls were recognized as one of the wonders of North America and in frequent depiction served as a symbol for the immensity of the American wilderness, one study reproducing nine images painted of Niagara from 1768 through 1830. Natives are represented in each of these works,18 although some artists, like Trumbull, will sometimes include Natives in Niagara

17 Cole’s images include: Horseshoe Falls from Canada Side, oil on canvas, Collection Cranbrook Academy of Art; View of Niagara Falls, oil on wood, George F. McMurray Collection, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut; and Niagara Falls oil on canvas, Chicago Art Institute. All are reproduced in Elizabeth R. McKinsey, Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime, 204, 206, 207, 231; for quotation, Ibid., 21. For other texts discussing Niagara as symbol and object of representation in this period, also see: George A. Seibel, Three Hundred Years Since Father Hennepin: Niagara Falls in Art, 1678-1978, [Niagara Falls, Ont.: Niagara Falls Heritage Foundation, 1978]; Jeremy E. Elwell, Niagara: Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, hereafter cited as Niagara, Two Centuries, (Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1985).

18 An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, c. 1768, an engraving of Thomas Davies, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, represents two Indians in the foreground viewing the Falls. Niagara Falls from Below, c. 1766, watercolor by an unknown British artist, New York Historical Society, with two soldiers referencing the British garrison nearby shows two groups of Indians in the foreground: two Indian women, and two Indian men. The Falls of Niagara, c. 1783, an engraving by James Heath, Rare Book Room, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, depicts a group of whites and an Indian pointing towards the cataracts. View of Niagara Falls, c. 1776, an etching and watercolor by H. Fuessli, Royal Ontario Museum, shows the Falls with a lone Indian, copied from West’s Death of Wolfe, seated in the left foreground. View of the Horse Shoe Fall of Niagara, c. 1799, engraving by Isaac Weld, reproduced in Travels Through the States of North America in 1795, 1796, and 1797, depicts three Indians on a rock, at center foreground, before the Falls. The Falls of Niagara, c. 1800, an etching, Print Collection, New York Public Library: Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, shows a Native couple seated on a fallen log, in the foreground, with their backs to the Falls. Science Unveiling the Beauties of Nature to Genius at America 1814, gouache, by John James Barralet, Print Collection New York Public Library, includes a kneeling Indian woman with pappouse at the feet of Science. A Symbol of America, 1800, engraving by P. Stampa, was published in London in 1800 to commemorate the death of Washington in the previous year; in this work “Columbia” leans on Washington’s gravestone, the Falls in the background, wild pines beside it, two Indians fishing while an Indian boy with feathered headress, looking like a putto or cherub also leans, right foreground, on the gravestone. In 1801, Michel-Guillaume Saint-Jean de Crevecoeur produced two engravings of the Falls: Vue d’une partie de la Branche Orientale de la Cataracte de Niagara with a lone Indian perched on rock, and Vue d’une partie des deux Branches de la Cataracte de Niagara, with a Native group in the foreground towards whom advances another unclothed individual, see Lane, 36-37. And, in the last example, Alvan Fisher’s A General View of the Falls of Niagara, 1820, oil on canvas, National Museum of Art, Smithsonian, Indians in the right foreground are seated on a fallen pine near standing whites. For images other than works already cited in this note, see McKinsey, Niagara Falls, 19-20, 22, 24, 45, 71, 99, 103 Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 209 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

landscapes, at others times omit the same Indians.19

Interestingly, subsequent artists associated with the Hudson River School like Regis Gignoux, Crospey, Kensett, Church and Bierstadt painted the same Niagara Falls, but with Indians absent from their works.20 [Fig. 8]

Fig. 8. Sanford Robinson Gifford, Wilderness, view of Mount Chocurua, (1861), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio.

19 In 1807, Trumbull painted Niagara Falls from an Upper Bank on the British Side [Wadsworth Atheneum], Niagara Falls from Below the Great Cascade in 1808 [also Wadsworth Atheneum] and a second image from 1808, Niagara Falls from Two Miles Bellow Chippawa [New York Historical Society], all without Indians, however, his Niagara Falls under Table Rock [New York Historical Society], depicts a group of Indians near a Plains teepee in the left foreground toward whom what appears to be an unclothed Indian is advancing. Trumbull’s Niagara paintings are all reproduced in Adamson, Niagara, Two Centuries, 28-31.

20 Gignoux’s Niagara in Moonlight, reproduced in Harper’s Weekly, July 9, 1859; Cropsey’s Niagara Falls, 1868, oil, Amherst College, and Niagara Falls from the Foot of Goat Island, 1857, oil, Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Kensett’s Niagara Falls, 1851, oil, Amherst College, along with Niagara Falls, c. 1851, Denver Art Museum, and Whirlpool, Niagara, c. 1851-2, MFA Boston; Frederick Church, Falls of Niagara, 1867, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; and, Bierstadt, Niagara from the American Side, n.d., MFA Boston. 210 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

For Cole, however, much of North America “rested in the shadow of primeval forests, whose gloom was peopled by savage beasts, and scarcely less savage men.”21

The Crayon (1858) informed:

Soon the last red man will have faded from his native land, and those who come after us will trust to our scanty records for their knowledge of his habits and appearance … Setting aside all the Indian history of the West, how much there is that is romantic, peculiar, and picturesque in his struggles with civilization in our section of the country … As an accessory in the landscape the Indian may be used with great effect. He is at home in every scene of primitive country.

Before works of the Hudson River School painters and others, the “wildness” of the American landscape was considered an obstacle or deficiency in intellectual assimilation of European aesthetic canons. The continental doctrine of “association” was inimical to the American topography in that “association” defined the ideal landscape with ruins, relics, myths and legends that assumed a uniformed “past” of humanity; simply, America lacked materials required by “association.”22 In disagreement, Cole, for example, maintained in his “Essay on American Scenery” that “American scenes are not destitute of historical and legendary associations; the great struggle for freedom has sanctified many a spot, and many a mountain stream and rock has its legend, worthy of a poet’s pen or painter’s pencil.”23

Nonetheless, nineteenth-century New England, across works of history, fiction and reportage was created and solidified an obstinate discourse of disappearing Indians that claimed aboriginal people had already vanished or were doomed to disappear. At times contradictory, if not duplicitous, this discourse was, on the one hand, an attitude of the dominant culture toward New England’s past, imagining that Indians had become “extinct.” On the other hand, it is an ideology of vanishing Indians that refused to “see” the continued presence, persistence and survival of the region’s nineteenth-century

21 “A very few generations have passed away since this vast tract of the American continent, now the United States, rested in the shadow of primeval forests, whose gloom was peopled by savage beasts, and scarcely less savage men…,” Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” 4-5, 7-8.

22 See Richard Van Zandt, cited xiv-xv.

23 For this frequently cited passage, see Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” American Monthly Magazine, 1 (January 1836), 2. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 211 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

Natives. In countless town chronicles, newspaper articles, fictional treatments and poetic works–all reinforced through a visual iconography–New England Indians took on the presence of an absence. Natives became “people without history,” people without “a place,” absent from the social landscape, their collective identity as Native, in both past and present, “erased.” [Fig. 9]

Echoing comparable sentiments Judge Joseph Story, for example, inquired, “what can be more melancholy than their history?” At a commemoration of the town’s founding in 1835, Story explained

Fig. 9. Thomas Cole, Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, 1827, Private Collection. 212 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

to Salem residents that “By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Everywhere, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone for ever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return not.”24 In these opinions, it could be argued that Story, likewise, reflects the general attitude of thinking New Englanders of his period.

The year following his Salem oration, Story wrote to his son that he was reading Irving’s Life of Columbus, which “proves, and sadly proves (what I have ever believed) that the Europeans were always the aggressors of the natives in America, in all their contests, and that the sins of all the murders and desolations on these shores are attributable to their baseness and avarice and detestable passions,” claiming, “I never think on the subject without bitter regrets and undisguised indignation.” The same letter contained the following sentiments:

The poor Indians! They will soon be exterminated in Florida, where the war is now waging. On their part it is now a desperate struggle for existence; and I have no doubt but they will all perish in the contest. In the course of a few years, not a relic will be found in all America of this heroic race. Their history will be lost in uncertain traditions. The white man will tell the story of their disappearance in his own way. 25

Works of local historians reflect aspects of the “Indian Question” that haunts the early Republic. In local writings the Question animates several discussions advanced at differing periods of the last century, concerning:

24 Brian Dippie, The Vanishing American, 1. 25 Joseph Story, “Discourse, Pronounced at the Request of the Essex Historical Society, Sept. 18, 1828, in Commemoration of the First Settlement of Salem,” 80; Story to William W. Story, Feb. 21, 1836 in William W. Story, ed., 2: 229. For a summary of Story’s life and works, see entry by Paul Finkelman, in John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography hereafter cited as ANB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 20: 889-893. Judge Story (1779-1845) was a son of an early patriot, who was one of the Sons of Liberty participating at the Boston Tea Party and who served in the Continental Army. During his long career, the younger Story was a U.S. Supreme Court justice, legal scholar, congressman, and professor of law at Harvard. According to Paul Finkelman, for example, “growing up in the aftermath of the Revolution, Joseph absorbed from both of his parents republican values, Unitarian theology, a heritage of Puritan idealism, a fierce sense of nationalism, and an unbending dedication to public service.” Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 213 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

. the “origin” of Indians, whether they were “Asiastic” people who migrated to the New World, or a lost tribe of Israelities, and whether there were connections between aboriginal peoples of North and South America; . the “pre-history” of Natives or whether a supposedly racially distinct advanced and sophisticated people were conquered and displaced by less developed savages encountered by Europeans; . the “present” or “nature” of the savages and “children of the forest” or whether Indians could be civilized, Christianized and converted from “roving bands of barbaric nomads” to settled, sedentary farmers; and, . the “future” of the Natives whether they were “fading” through operation of impersonal biological laws, to be “exterminated” to make room for Euro-Americans or to be “removed” to specifically designated Indian residence areas.

Fig. 10. Thomas Cole, Autumn Twilight, View of Corway Peak [Mount Chocorua], New Hampshire, New York Historical Society. 214 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Where Story described a “rustling” like “withered leaves of autumn,” other comparable images proliferate, employed in a variety of period texts to illustrate the disappearance of Indians. “They’ve vanished, they have fled,” like “the shades when the dawn is red” or like “the evanescent flush of twilight on the lake” or “like snow-flakes in the stream” in the work of Isaac McLellan. For Charles Sprague, Indians “slowly and sadly … climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.” Natives were doomed “as the snow melts before the sunbeam” or “like a promontory of sand, exposed to the ceaseless encroachments of the ocean, they have been gradually wasting away before the current of the white population which set in upon them from every quarter.” According to William Tudor Jr., Natives had “dwindled into insignificance and lingered among us, as the tide of civilization has flowed, mere floating deformities on its surface, poor, squalid and enervated with intoxicating liquors,” so that they “diminish and waste before” civilization “like snow before the vernal influence.” Similarly, as early as 1819, Henry Clay employed what he called a “figure” drawn from the “sublime eloquence” of Indians that “the poor children of the forest,” had been “driven by a great wave … overwhelming in its terrible progress” from the Atlantic to the Rockies, leaving “remains of hundreds of tribes, now extinct.” Even individual images of “brittle leaves” repeat; Eliza B. Lee’s Naomi: or Boston Two Hundred Years Ago (1847), a novel of “forbidden” love between an Indian and a Euroamerican woman in Boston of the 1670s claimed, “One by one they perish, like the leaves of the forest that are swept away by the autumn winds; melancholy shrouds them; they die of sadness, and are effaced from the earth by an inexorable destiny.” 26

In some instances landscapes are selected for both scenic beauty and association with Natives, Indian connections known, Natives invoked as an absence in these depictions. Schroon Mountain, painted by Cole in 1830 (at Cleveland), subject of several period canvases, was named for an unfortunate “Indian maiden,” like many of her alleged counterparts in the Northeast killing herself in an “unfortunate” love affair with a Frenchman–the topography commemorating her suicide. Schroon

26 See Isaac McLellan, “The Lament of the Last of the Tribes,” Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 11 (September 1845), 538-539; Charles Sprague, “American Independence: An Oration Pronounced before the Inhabitants of Boston, July 4, 1825,” The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague (Boston, 1851), 150-53; for image “as the snow melts before the sunbeam” see “North American Indians,” Quarterly Review (London) XXXI (Apr. 1824) 108; Tudor, “An Address delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at their anniversary meeting at Cambridge,” North American Review, 2 (1815), 19; for Henry Clay’s remarks, see Annals of Congress, 15th Session, Jan. 20, 1819, 639; for “like a promontory,” see Georgia Senator John Elliot, Feb. 25, 1825, Register of Debates in Congress, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., 9: 640. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 215 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

Lake may derive from Sca-ni-a-dar-roon, “a large lake,” abbreviated to Scaroon and Schroon, a Mohawk word found in many older deeds of the lake region while at the same time Scarona was the name of “an Indian girl, who leaped over a precipice from her French lover, and was drowned.” 27 [Fig. 11]

Bash Bish Falls, tucked away in the southwest corner of Massachusetts near the state’s borders with Connecticut and New York, is “the state’s highest waterfall. . . .” John F. Kensett several times painted Bash-Bish Falls of South Egrement, Massachusetts, where an “Indian maiden” married to a “chief” but unable to bear a child and deceived by an Indian “witch,” threw herself into the Bash-Bill cascade, her horrified “lover” jumping into the falls to rescue her, both drowning. Fig. 11. Asher B. Durand, Mount Chocorua and Chocorua This legend revolves around a beautiful Lake from Tamworth, Private Collection. Mohican woman named Bash-Bish who was accused of this gravest of crimes, found guilty, and condemned to death as prescribed by tribal law, despite her persistent protestations of innocence. For the execution of her sentence, a canoe equipped with leather thongs was secured in the swift water upstream from a waterfall. Bash-Bish was to be bound to the vessel, which was then to be released and drawn by the current over the fateful cataract. At the appointed hour, the Indians, including the woman’s infant daughter, White Swan, solemnly gathered for the ceremony. Suddenly a curious thing happened. A fine mist began to slant in from the sun while, simultaneously, a ring of bright butterflies circled Bash-Bish’s head. As the Mohicans fell back in awe of the unexplained phenomenon, the condemned woman broke away, dashed to the edge of the falls and flung herself over the cruel shawl of water, the butterflies spiraling downward behind her. The pool below has never given up her body. To the Indians, this mysterious avoidance of punishment cast the woman in league with evil spirits and she was pronounced a witch, although her daughter was not likewise condemned but rather adopted by the tribe. White Swan grew to be as lovely as her mother

27 Alfred B. Street, The Indian Pass. (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1869), xvii. For other Native place name associations in the area, ibid., xii-xviii while Street details numerous other Indian legends in Woods and Waters or Summers in the Saranacs with Two Illustrations on Wood, (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1865). 216 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

and in time married a handsome clansman, son of the ruling chief. They were a devoted couple, yet when White Swan was unable to bear her husband children, he, in keeping with tradition, took a second wife to give him an heir. Immediately, sorrow overwhelmed White Swan and she began to languish. She took to brooding on a crag above the falls, and even though her husband would bring her gifts and adornments of nuts and shells from the far-away sea, her dark melancholy increased. One night she dreamed Bash-Bish was beckoning her from beyond the waterfall, pleading with her to leave earthly woes behind and join her. To Mohicans, dreams proclaimed prophetic truth, and for the next few days White Swan never left the crag. Gazing down the long watery precipice to the blue-green depths below, she awaited her mother’s next call. It came one evening just as her husband emerged from the forest bearing the most beautiful gift he could find, a pure white butterfly. Gently he spoke her name, but the enraptured girl did not hear. As he watched in horror, she suddenly plunged toward the falls, and as his hands flew open, the released butterfly followed White Swan’s falling figure. In a vain attempt to save her, he too leaped into the water. The following day his broken body was found but there was not a trace of White Swan, now reunited forever with her mother behind the glittering waterfall. The site is now set aside as Bash-Bish State Forest where to this day the cascading water sometimes assumes the unmistakable shape of a woman and on moonlit nights a smiling female face may be seen beneath the surface of the pool below. (from Haunted New England, A Devilish View of the Yankee Past, Mary Bolte, Random House: New York, 1972)

Mount Chocorua, also known as Mount Corway, Corroway, or Carroway, in the Sandwich range of the White Mountains in New Hampshire is depicted with Native association in Cole’s lost “Chocorua’s Curse,” known from an 1830 engraving. Chocorua was a seventeenth-century Indian whose dying curse either prevented crops from fully developing in the region or immigrants’ cattle from flourishing—with original source materials ambiguous and contradictory, since the “curse” appears to be what mattered. As Cole recorded in his sketchbook/ diary for Oct. 3, 1828, following his second visit to Chocorua, the mountain’s peak was associated with the Indian Chocorua, who had been chased to the summit by whites:

There they gave the poor despairing and defenseless wretch the cruel choice of whether he would leap from the dreadful precipice on the top of which he stood or die beneath their rifles. The ill-fated Chocorua refused to destroy himself by that terrible leap and suffered death beneath their hands. The country round the foot of Chocurua is inimical to raising cattle. Such as are taken there always die by an incurable disease. The superstition was alleged to a curse which Chocura is said to have uttered with dying lips that ‘all the cattle of the white men brought onto his hunting ground should die. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 217 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

In a somewhat different version of the Chocorua legend, published four years after Cole’s visit to the mountain, what was identified as “Chocorua’s Cliff” was “particularly interesting by a legend which tradition has scarcely saved from oblivion,” an anonymous author claiming, “Had it been in Scotland, perhaps the genius of Sir Walter would have hallowed it, and Americans would have crowded there to kindle fancy on the altar of memory,” but “being in the midst of our own romantic scenery,” Chocorua remained little known.28 [Fig. 12]

In this rendering, an actual Chocorua lived as whites began settling in southern New Hampshire, yet “from the Indians they received neither injury nor insult. No cause of quarrel had ever arisen; and, although their frequent visits were sometimes troublesome, they never had given indications of jealousy or malice.” A “prophet among them,” probably signifying a pow-wow or shaman, Chocorua was “an object of peculiar respect.” Supposedly, he “had a mind which Fig. 12. Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn at Mount Chocorua, education and motive would have nerved with Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. giant strength; but growing up in savage freedom, it wasted itself in dark, fierce, ungovernable passions.” About Chocorua, there was thus “something fearful in the quiet haughtiness of his lip—it seemed so like slumbering power, too proud to be lightly roused, & too implacable to sleep again.”

“In his small, black, fiery eyes, expression lay coiled up like a beautiful snake,” so the “white people knew that his hatred would be terrible,” so they “never provoked it, and even the children became too much accustomed to him to fear him.”

Chocorua had a son, 9 or 10 years old, who frequented the house of a white family and “occasionally,” received “gaudy presents as were likely to attract his savage fancy.” The child became a “familiar visitant” at the family’s house, until one day “being unrestrained by the courtesies of civilized life, he would inspect everything and taste of everything” including poison intended for a fox. Ill, the boy “went home to his father to sicken and die.”

28 All Chocurua quotations from pamphlet, Anonymous, “Chocorua’s Curse,” in The Indian Fighter!! and Ghost of Morgan!!! Together with a great Variety of Other Tales, “To Amuse the Odd, the Comical and Queer.” [S.l.: Rory Blare, 1832]. 218 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

According to this narrative, “jealousy and hatred” took “possession” of Chocorua’s soul, while he “brooded over them in secret, to nourish the deadly revenge” of killing the white woman he blamed for his son’s death as well as her children. Pursued by the dead woman’s husband to his cliffs, Chocorua was instructed to hurl himself from the precipice, to which he responded, “The Great Spirit gave life to Chocorua, and Chocorua will not throw it away at the command of a white man.” As the man pointed his gun at Chocorua, the Indian “though fierce and fearless as a panther, had never overcome his dread of fire-arms. He placed his hand upon his ears to shut out the stunning report,” still “the next moment blood bubbled from his neck, and he reeled fearfully on the edge of the precipice.” Recovering and raising himself on his hands, “in a loud voice, that grew more terrific as its huskiness increased,” Chocorua uttered:

A curse upon you ye, whiteman! May the Great Spirit curse ye when he speaks in the clouds, and his words are fire! Chocorua had a son and ye killed him while the sky looked bright! Lightning blast your crops! Wind and fire destroy your dwellings! The Evil Spirit breathe death upon your cattle! Your graces lie in the war path of the Indian! Panthers howl, and wolves fatten over your bones! Chocorua goes to the Great Spirit—

This version of the Chocorua story concludes, “the prophet sunk upon the ground, still uttering inaudible curses and they left his bones to whiten in the sun,” but “to this day,” Burton, New Hampshire is “remarkable for a pestilence which its cattle suffer”– the superstitious thinking “that Chocorua’s spirit still sits upon his precipice breathing a curse upon them.”

[Fig. 13]

Fig. 13. Benjamin Champney, Mount Chocorua, 1858, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Thomas L. Doughton: Text, Image and the Discourse of Disappearing Indians 219 In Antebellum American Landscape Painting

As other artists have painted the same location, however, the name “Chocorua” is apparently sufficient to evoke the “vanished” Indians of New Hampshire. Chocorua is like Mount-Saint-Victoire in Provence, painted and repainted by several French painters. Some of the more accessible versions include: “Chocorua’s Curse” by Thomas Cole, 1830; and Chocorua by Asher Durand (1855), Aaron Draper Shattuck (1855), David Johnson (1851), Samuel Gerry (1861), Daniel Huntington (1861), and, J. F. Kensett (1864-66).

In these last works not only are Natives a vanishing people, but in their very vanishing they take on the presence of an absence. Indians here are, as they are not. They mediate between glorious, spiritualized landscapes and viewers; through their isolation, a white antebellum audience gains access to the fullness of nature. In each of these works it is longer necessary to depict Native Americans; in them text and image, together, re-inforce the notion of a people disappeared. They become part of a discourse of disappearing Indians. 220 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Works Cited

ADAMSON, Jeremy Ehwell. Niagara, Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697-1901. (Washington D.C. Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1993). ANONYMOUS. A Landscape Book by American Artists and American Authors; Sixteen Engravings on Steel, from Paintings by Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand Gignoux, Kensett, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot, Weir (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1868) ANONYMOUS. “The Indian Fighter!! and Ghost of Morgan!!! Together with a great Variety of Other Tales “To Amuse the Odd, the Comical and Queer.” [S.l.: Rory Blare, 1832]. BAIGNELL, Matthew. “Territory, Race, Religion Images of Manifest Destiny,” in Smithsonian Studies in American Art, vol. 4, no. 3-4 (Summer-Fall 1990). BERKHOFER, Robert. Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. (New York: Vintage Books, 2011). BOLTE, Mary. Haunted New England, A Devilish View of the Yankee Past. ( New York: Random House, 1972). BRYANT, William Cullen. The American Landscape, No. 1 [shortened title] (New York: Elam Bliss, 1830). CALLOW, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists 1807-1855. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967). CLAY, Henry. Annals of Congress, 15th Session, Jan. 20, 1819. COLE, Thomas. “Essay on American Scenery,” American Monthly Magazine, 1 (January 1836). DIPPIE, Brian. The Vanishing American (University Press of Kansas: Revised Edition 1991). DRAKE, Samuel G. Book of Indians. (Boston: Benjamin B. Massey, 1845). ELLIOT, John. Register of Debates in Congress, 18th Cong., 2nd sess. GALT, John. The Life of Benjamin West. Ed. Nathalia Wright, (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1960). JACKSON, Andrew. “State of the Union speech.” December 6, 1830. LANE, Christopher W. Impressions of Niagra: The Charles Rand and Penn Collection of Prints of Niagra Falls and the Niagra River from the 16th to the Early 20th Century. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Print Shop, 1993). LUBLIN, David M. Picturing A Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). McKINSEY, Elizabeth R. Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). McLELLAN, Isaac. “The Lament of the Last of the Tribes,” Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 11 (September 1845). McNULTY, J. Bard, (ed.) The Correspondence of Thomas Cole and Daniel Wadsworth: Letters in the Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, and in the New York State Library, Albany, New York. (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1983). SPRAGUE, Charles. The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague (Boston, 1851 221

STORY, Joseph. The Miscellaneous Writings, Literary, Critical, Juridical of Joseph Story LL.D. (Boston, 1835). STORY, William W., (ed.) Life and Letters of Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and Dana Professor of Law at Harvard University, 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1851). STREET, Alfred B. The Indian Pass. (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1869). ––––––––––––––– Woods and Waters or Summers in the Saranacs with Two Illustrations on Wood, (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1865). TUDOR, William. “An Address delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at their anniversary meeting at Cambridge,” North American Review, 2 (1815). UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Art in the US Capitol Building. (United States, 1976). 222 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Tompkins Harrison Matteson,“The Last of the Race,” 1847, New-York Historical Society. Fig. 2. From The Gentleman’s Magazine, published in London in 1751. Fig. 3. After Henry Fuesli, Vue de la Cascade du Niagara, en Amerique. dans le pais des Iroquois… engraving Pour le Voyage des quatre parties du Monde de M. Henri Vernon. Fig. 4. An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, c. 1768, an engraving of Thomas Davies, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Fig. 5. Thomas Davies, Niagara Falls From Above, circa 1762-68. Fig. 6. The Horseshoe Fall from Below Table Rock, attributed to John Vanderlyn. Fig. 7. Alvan Fisher, A General View of the Falls of Niagara, 1820, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Fig. 8. Sanford Robinson Gifford, Wilderness, view of Mount Chocurua, (1861), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. Fig. 9. Thomas Cole, Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, 1827, Private Collection. Fig. 10. Thomas Cole, Autumn Twilight, View of Corway Peak [Mount Chocorua], New Hampshire, New York Historical Society. Fig. 11. Asher B. Durand, Mount Chocorua and Chocorua Lake from Tamworth, Private Collection. Fig. 12. Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn at Mount Chocorua , Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. Fig. 13. Benjamin Champney, Mount Chocorua, 1858, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 223

Fig. 1. Shipbreak, Jacket Cover TEXTUAL ILLUSTRATION OF IMAGES IN CLAUDIO CAMBON’S SHIPBREAK

Brittain Smith

In November of 1997, the documentary photographer and author, Claudio Cambon, boards the U.S. merchant marine vessel, the SS Minole, at an old, dilapidated dock in Violet, Louisiana just south of New Orleans. After thirty-seven years of service logging millions of nautical miles, the Minole is about to depart on its last voyage. Still in spectacular shape, the Minole has, in the wake of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill, been condemned to an early death by legislation that banned single hull oil tankers. Cambon would keep a photographic record of the Minole’s final voyage of 13,200 nautical miles to Chitagong, Bangladesh, carrying 43,300 metric tons of wheat for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s “food for peace” program (p.105). 224 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

In Chitagong, after its cargo had been unloaded, the enormous ship was run aground and demolished, more or less by hand, over a period of five months. TheMinole ’s raw materials were reused in countless ways, enacting “a kind of reincarnation” (Shipbreak, jacket notes). Cambon documented this journey in a series of stunning black and white photographs. He then, over a decade and half later, created a compelling narrative to accompany the images for the book under review, namely Shipbreak, but it is important to keep in mind that this is truly an instance of “prima l’immagine dopo la parola.” In Shipbreak, language acts as an appropriation and illustration of image. The book’s thoughtful design recreates this process by placing the images first, then the text, but the book also re-appropriates the text as image by turning portions of the text itself into quasi images on a single page in enlarged script. Fig. 2. For additional such “textual images” of varying font sizes, see pages 109, 117, 121, 129, 133, 137, 143, 147. For future reference, please note in Fig. 2 the waves that mark divisions in the text.

Fig. 2. Shipbreak, pages 144-145 I want to try to recreate here in breve the viewer’s / reader’s experience of Shipbreak by first presenting a selection of the images. Afterwards, I’ll let Cambon’s language illustrate the images and provide a few observations of my own. Cheating a little, I’ll say that the ensuing images fall under the headings of crew ( Figs. 3-6 ) voyage ( Figs. 7-9 ) , arrival ( Fig. 10 ), unloading ( Figs. 11- 15 ), shipbreak or death ( Figs. 16-19 ). I’ll withhold for later images for the “final” stage, namely reincarnation. Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 225

Fig. 3. Roger Organ, Chief Cook and Fig. 4. June Emerson, Chief Steward Assistant Cook

Fig. 5. ‘Papa’ John Wallace, Bosun Fig. 6. Out on the fantail after dinner 226 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 7. Heading down the Mississippi River Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 227

Fig. 9. Crew’s mess, Christmas Eve 1997

Fig. 8. South Atlantic 228 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig.10. Longshoremen board the SS Minole at anchorage off Kutubdia Island, Bangladesh, December 27, 1997 Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 229

Fig. 11. Untitled, pages 48-49

Fig. 12. Inj.d workers (1) 230 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 13. Offloading the ship’s contents (1)

Fig. 14. Offloading the ship’s contents (2) Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 231

Fig. 15. Kholil, age 11, carries a bedframe 232 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 16. ‘Wire carriers’ move cable to the ship to retrieve a felled chunk Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 233

Fig. 17. Loaders, monsoon 234 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 18. Loaders, frieze

Fig. 19. Inj.d workers (2) Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 235

Shipbreak, the book, operates with a number of conceits. The first is that ships have a life, a fact accentuated by Cambon’s constant reference to the Minole as “she.” More precisely, ships are, in Cambon’s words, “an emblem [emphasis added] of life itself” (p.9). The original title of the project was “The Biology of Steel”: Note the vertebra-esque chain in Fig. 20. Ships have a birth ( Fig. 21 )and a death ( Fig. 22 ), a beached whale if ever there was one. Cambon refers to the cutters and wire carriers you see in Fig. 23 as “precarious acrobats” (p.128), but it takes only a small leap of imagination to view them also as crows picking at carrion flesh. From the book we read:

On January 14, 1998 at 2:20 p.m., the steamship Minole beached in the breaking yards of Fahad Steel Industries […] She crossed the sand bar and plowed to a standstill in the shallow water of the beaching plain […] Like an animal shuddering in the throws of death, she slowly vibrated to a halt in that mud […] The engineers shut off her fuel line; she choked and gasped, belching one last, thick cloud of black smoke, and then she died (p.126).

Again birth: “Launch day, Sparrow’s Point Shipyard, Baltimore 1961” (p.6) and Fig. 21. And from the text, birth and death:

In November 1961[…] Jane McQuilkin, the ship’s sponsor, smashed a bottle of red wine across her hull to launch her; on January 15, 1998, the cutting foreman and an Imam smear the blood of a sacrificed goat in various places of the ship to bless her and the workers, to protect them from harm. She ended her travels here (p.127).

Not only is there life and death, the Minole has a particular life and is emblematic of a distinct historical epoch.

She had the same aesthetic as old fifties cars. She felt solid and luxurious with few hard edges or right angles […] One has the impression that no expense was spared to build her well and beautifully (p.107).

The demise of the Minole, then, marks the passing of an era and not just of industrial production:

The Minole was a relic of an era of greater certainty and ease. Forty years ago, sailors were sure of their ship and their jobs; both seemed capable of lasting indefinitely […] To see her decommissioned was to bid farewell to a whole period in shipping, a more confident time (p.107). 236 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Fig. 21. Launch day, Sparrow’s Point Shipyard, Baltimore, Maryland, November 1961

Fig. 20. Anchor chain paid out Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 237

Fig. 22. Untitled, pages 58-59.

Fig. 23. The beaching of the SS Minole, January 14, 2.20 PM, Lalbagh, Bangladesh 238 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

I think you can also see the effects of a dying industry on the crew: Figure 24 and Figures 3-6.

Fig. 24. Noah Tanihu, AB Seaman Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 239

Ships are not only an emblem of life, a particular life in a particular time, they are, Shipbreak argues, also emblems of transcendence:

Many peoples through the ages, from the Egyptians to the Vikings and beyond, have buried their dead in boats…they believed would transport them into the afterlife. The footprint of the Christian church is modeled symbolically on the proportions of Noah’s ark; hence the “nave” of the church which comes from navis, the Latin for “ship.” The Minole has ferried herself into an afterlife, but not one that I initially want to recognize. It seems like hell at first to see her so abandoned to be cannibalized; slowly, though, I begin to witness her own transcendence (p.127). Figs. 25-26

Transcendence, literally “ascending beyond,” takes the humble and, as we shall see, not so humble form of recycling: Cambon informs us that Bangladesh positively thrives on recycling. He also recounts:

One day I find a craftsman who makes small boat anchors from the rebar [derived from the ship’s hull]. Reluctantly amphibious, the ship returns to the water however [she] can” (p. 145).

Fig. 25. Leaving Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Fig. 26. Untitled, November 18, 1997 page 37 240 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Later, we learn that:

Workers then place the [red hot] rebar [from the ship’s hull] on a cooling pile for the rest of the night. […] In the approaching dawn, one can see here and there a worker sleeping on a pile of cooling rebar after completing his shift ( Fig. 27 ); does he dream of the soft grass in the fields of home ( Fig. 28 ) (pp.146-47)?

Fig. 27. Cooling rebar, end of the night shift Fig. 28. Shakdahoh, Bogra District, Bangladesh

But the most powerful form of transcendent reincarnation is the transformation of the ship’s raw materials—mostly steel, brass, and copper—into works of art. Fig. 29 depicts the burning off of rubber casings to expose the copper cables beneath. And now in Fig. 30 we view but one of the countless works of art made from brass recycled from ships. This is, however, a very particular and most germane work of art: it is the Hindu god Shiva Nataraj or Shiva King of Dance who performs the Tandavam or dance to destroy and recreate the universe, thereby incarnating—himself, the very emblem of death—the very theme of reincarnation and renewal. Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 241

Fig. 29. Burning rubber casting off copper wire Fig. 30. Shiva Nataraj, dancing to destroy and recreate the universe

I want to suggest that what Cambon both recognizes as transcendence and recreates in his book as transcendent is the “ascending beyond” or, in Hegel’s famous term, the Aufhebung or sublation, of opposites such as the opposites of life and death through reincarnation. Cambon quotes Joseph Conrad, “How slow had been the days of passage and how soon they were over” (p.118).

Given the topic of this volume of INTERFACES, the most important Aufhebungen that Cambon effects are between image and word, but also between space and time, which are, of course, related to image and word. As an aside, it’s important to note that space and time, as Kant reminds us in the first critique, are the very categories of being; in sublating space and time, Cambon transcends quotidian being. Cambon also wonderfully depicts the Aufhebung of past and present, memory and forgetting, but I need to confine my observations to image and word / space and time. Even here, a few examples will have to suffice. 242 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

The first is remarkably succinct. First the image—Figure 31.

Fig. 31. Untitled, pages 32-33 Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 243

Now the words:

[The sea] is splendid and also terrifying. […] Standing alone, leaning against the rail, [I find it] impossible not to look down at the rich, deep-blue water, and wonder how easy it would be to fall in, to be lost in this vast space. Even in the calmest of seas, the ocean remains a threat that forms a constant part of one’s thoughts (p.110).

I call your attention to just one word, the temporal marker, “constant.” It’s simply genial. With that single word, the static image of the sea we view before us enters time, and for all time—constantly. What I’ve titled a textual illustration of image is also, then, a kind of reverse ekphrasis—not the creation of image in words, but the temporalizing of image via narrative, a via narrativa.

Let’s take another example, the image from the cover of the book Fig. 1. On first glance, this is an electrifying, but also confusing image. Whence the clouds arising from the ship? Is there an explosion? Yes and no. If you look carefully, you’ll see a gaping, rectangular hole in the ship’s hull which has been cut by the shipbreaking welders. The severed, hundred-ton slab of steel has just fallen to the ground. Let’s listen to the illustration:

The deck shakes; the steel groans as it twists free, falling slowly and heavily through the air. It lands with a resounding, deep thud! which makes the ground bounce underfoot like a trampoline; the sound of the impact echoes off the neighboring hulls like a cannon shot. Mud sprays for many yards and a rising cloud of dust envelops the area. It settles with a brief pitter-patter of falling steel chips and slag that sounds like a momentary rainstorm (p.137).

Think, by contrast to this passage, of the locus classicus for ekphrasis—Homer’s depiction of Achilles’s shield in Book 18 of the Iliad. As is his wont to do from time to time in his epics, Homer wants to arrest his tempestuous narrative flow; the depiction of Achilles’s shield is dominated by the stasis of nouns; even the verbs are mostly static—“stands,” “pleads,” etc. This passage from Shipbreak, however, is dominated by verbs, verbs, moreover, that form a definite narrative sequence that catapults the captured image of the ship into time: “groans, twists, falling, lands, bounce, echoes, sprays, settles, sounds.”

What’s particularly striking about both these examples, the sea and the ship being broken, is that, powerful as, in both instances, image and words are separately, the sum of image and words is far greater than each magnificent part. There occurs what the German poet Goethe describes as a 244 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

“Wechselwirkung” or “exchange effect.” The fact that image and the illustrative text are separated, often by as many as a hundred large folio pages, forces the brain into a back and forth movement that transcends time (the time between viewing the image and reading the words or text) and space (the literal distance in the book between image and text). Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem “Windhover” comes to mind, where the rapid movement of wings creates a hovering stasis. Transcending Tertium Comparationis To employ a different metaphor, what is created (third thing compared to) is a mental isosceles triangle ( Fig. 32 ), whereby the base of the triangle is the distance between image and word, and each leg—image and word—of the triangle ascends to the converging apex that is the transcending tertium comparationis (or third thing compared to) formed by the exchange effect between image and word.

As part of the transcending cycle and recycle of death and regeneration, Cambon relates a trenchant personal story that took place on the bay near his childhood home in Maine: Space and Time between My brother and I pulled in the oars, Image and Word and as the canoe [note the ship motif] coasted to a standstill, there was only Fig. 32. Pages 148-149 quiet. My mother opened a small tin, and poured ashes which were once my father into the opaque gray-green water of the bay. They saturated in the water for a brief moment, and then vanished instantly and fully. It was if a primal source from the deep had claimed them. His life was surrendered to a larger process. Our tears, of grief and then also of consolation, followed him into that ocean (pp.148-49).

I find particularly powerful and human the move from grief to consolation.

Let me share with you a surprisingly related image Fig. 33. What you’re looking at are the last two pages of the main narrative (there is a brief epilogue called “Return”). On the left-hand side, see the three waves that, as we noted before, serve as a type of divider or chapter marker. They run Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 245

Fig. 33. Shipbreak, pages 148-149. throughout the main narrative, but at the end we have instead the three stars. We’re confronted once more with the interaction of movement or time represented by the waves and the relative stability or space depicted by the stars, but there is a hidden reference here as well.

As Cambon shared with me, the three stars allude to the three great canticles of Dante’s Divine Comedy, for all three sections, the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, end in the word stelle or stars, as does, parenthetically Cambon’s narrative. In particular, the stars point to Book X of the Inferno where Dante encounters the father of one of his best friends, the famous poet Guido Cavalcanti. The father demands to know why his son is not accompanying Dante through hell, and Dante gives a vague reply, but as Cambon’s father, a well-known Dante scholar, once explained: in his answer, Dante mimics the rhyme scheme of one of Cavalcanti’s most famous poems, as if to say, “I carry your son and my friend with me in my verse.” 246 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

I think Cambon suggests that, for those of us open to this type of secular transcendence, we carry our loved ones, living or dead, with us just as Cambon’s deceased father is reincarnated in the words and images of Shipbreak and statues of the god of destruction and recreation are fashioned out of the dead ship’s recycled brass. Allow me to leave you with this image ( Fig. 34 )of a “[c]row’s nest made entirely from wire stolen from the shipbreaking yards” (p.103), emblematic of material reincarnation and birth from death, which are Shipbreak’s driving leitmotifs.

Fig. 34. Crow’s nest made entirely from wire stolen from the shipbreaking yards Brittain Smith: Textual Illustration Of Images In Claudio Cambon’s Shipbreak 247

Work Cited

CAMBON, Claudio. Shipbreak. Zurich: Edition Patrick Frey, 2015. 248 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

List of Illustrations

Except for Fig. 21, which is courtesy of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, all photographs are by Claudio Cambon. Cambon holds the exclusive copyright and no photograph or part of a photograph may be reproduced without the express written consent of Claudio Cambon.

Fig. 1. Shipbreak, Jacket Cover Fig. 2. Shipbreak, pages 144-145 Fig. 3. Roger Organ, Chief Cook and Chief Steward Fig. 4. June Emerson, Assistant Cook Fig. 5. ‘Papa’ John Wallace, Bosun Fig. 6. Out on the fantail after dinner Fig. 7. Heading down the Mississippi River Fig. 8. South Atlantic Fig. 9. Crew’s mess, Christmas Eve 1997 Fig.10. Longshoremen board the SS Minole at anchorage off Kutubdia Island, Bangladesh, December 27, 1997 Fig. 11. Untitled, pages 48-49 Fig. 12. Inj.d workers (1) Fig. 13. Offloading the ship’s contents (1) Fig. 14. Offloading the ship’s contents (2) Fig. 15. Kholil, age 11, carries a bedframe Fig. 16. ‘Wire carriers’ move cable to the ship to retrieve a felled chunk Fig. 17. Loaders, monsoon Fig. 18. Loaders, frieze Fig. 19. Inj.d workers (2) Fig. 20. Anchor chain paid out Fig. 21. Launch day, Sparrow’s Point Shipyard, Baltimore, Maryland, November 1961 Fig. 22. Untitled, pages 58-59. Fig. 23. The beaching of the SS Minole, January 14, 2.20 PM, Lalbagh, Bangladesh Fig. 24. Noah Tanihu, AB Seaman Fig. 25. Leaving Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November 18, 1997 Fig. 26. Untitled, page 37 Fig. 27. Cooling rebar, end of the night shift Fig. 28. Shakdahoh, Bogra District, Bangladesh Fig. 29. Burning rubber casting off copper wire Fig. 30. Shiva Nataraj, dancing to destroy and recreate the universe Fig. 31. Untitled, pages 32-33 Fig. 32. Pages 148-149 Fig. 33. Crow’s nest made entirely from wire stolen from the shipbreaking yards 249

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Veronique Plesch is a Professor of Art History at Colby. Born in Argentina and raised in Switzerland, she holds advanced degrees from the University of Geneva in art history and medieval French literature and from Princeton University, where she received her Ph.D in art history. She is the author of several volumes, including, Le Christ Peint: Le Cyele de la Passion dans les Chapelles Peintes des États de Savoie au XVe Siecle, 200; Painter and Priest: Giovanni Canavesio’s Visual Rhetoric and the Passion Cycle at La Brigue., 2006; she has edited volumes 5, 6 and 7 of Word and Image Interactions and has published numerous articles on wide range of subjects. Veronique Plesch is–since 2008- President of the International Association of Word and Image Studies; member of the Editorial Board for Early Drama, Art and Music series (Medieval Institute Publications) and President of the New England Medieval Conference.

Virginia Chieffo Raguin is Professor of Art History at the College of the Holy Cross. Her exhibitions and publications include stained glass, architecture, and the social/religious context of art. Both in teaching and scholarship, she is interested in religious art of all kinds, patterns of collecting, and intersections of the visual image and written culture. Most recently she edited Art, Piety, and Destruction in the Christian West, 1500-1700, Ashgate, 2010. She is widely known for her many book publications and museum exhibitions focusing on stained glass, both historic and modern.

John A. Tyson is the Andrew W. Melon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in the Departments of Modern Prints and Drawings and American and British Paintings at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC). He is also a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University’s MFA program. John recently completed “Hans Haacke: Beyond Systems Aesthetics” (Emory University, advisor James Meyer). His dissertation explores the relation of Haacke’s oeuvre to performance, the mass media, and new developments in technology and thought in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. John’s analysis of Haacke’s use of magazines as a site of display appeared in the September 2015 issue of Word & Image (31.3). In the spring of 2015, he presented a paper at a transatlantic studies conference at Harvard University assessing the way kinetic projects by Lygia Clark and Hans Haacke implicated visitors’ bodies. He will present a paper assessing digital images (both moving and still), text, and hypertext in online publications at the College Art Association conference in 2016. 250 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017)

Marie-Thérèse Abdelmessih is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo Universityand Director of Graduate Program in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Kuwait University.She has published Transcultural Reading of Literature(1997; 2004);Visual and Verbal Cultural Representations (2001); National Culture: Global or International Options (2006; 2009). Her translations and edited volumes include Yusuf al-Qa’id’s News from the Meneisi Farm (1987) and Ann Sexton’s Love Poems (1998). She is elected member at the International Advisory Board of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the board for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction (IPAF), and member of the Advisory Board of the National Centre for Translation.

Christettle Serée–Chaussinand is a Professor of Language and Literature at the Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté at Dijon. Her interests encompass contemporary Irish Literature, autobiography, portraits and self–portraits, and word and image. Her many contributions to her field include such chapters in edited books as: “I Show Off, Therefore I am: The Politics of the Selfie,” in Alexander Frame, Gilles Brachotte, eds, Citizen Participation and Political Communication in a Digital World, (Oxford: Rutledge, 2015); “Irish Man, No Man, Everyman : Subversive Redemption. Sebastian Barry’s The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty,” in Christelle Seree-Chaussinand Ciaran Ross, Declan Kiberd. Sub-Versions: Trans-National Readings of Modern Irish Literature, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010); “‘It wasn’t in the picture and is not’: Blind Spots and Vanishing Points in Irish Poetical Self-Portraits” in Laurence Petit, Pascale Tollance. Point, Dot, Period… The Dynamics of Punctuation in Text and Image, (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2016).

Catherine Marcangeli is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Literature in the British and American Studies Department at Paris-Diderot University. She studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and at Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Her PhD dealt with the question of “Quotation in American Art since the 1950s”. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and worked as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A specialist of British and American art 1950s-1980s, she has lectured at museums in the US, Britain, Italy and France. As the executor of the Adrian Henri Estate, she has edited his Selected and Unpublished Poems, 1965-2000 (LUP, 2007), developed the website adrianhenri.com and catalogued his Total Art archive. She has also curated exhibitions of his work in the UK and abroad, including Adrian Henri—Total Art at LJMU’s Exhibition Research Centre, as part of the 2014 Liverpool Biennial, and First Happenings at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2015. She edited Adrian Henri—Total Artist (Occasional Papers, London, 2014), and is planning an exhibition of his work in Japan, in 2016. 251

Michael Phillips taught at Oxford, at University College London and at Edinburgh University before joining the Interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, where he is now Emeritus Fellow. He has published widely on William Blake: Interpreting Blake, (Camb. Univ. Press, 1978); William Blake, An Island in the Moon (Cambridge University Press, 1987); William Blake, Recherche Pour Une Biographie (College de France, 1995); William Blake, The Creation of the Songs (the British lib. & Princeton U Press, 2000); William Blake, the Marriage of Heaven Hell (Bodlean Univ. of Oxford, & University of Chicago Press, 2011). He was guest curator of the major exhibitions of Blake in London at Tate Britain 2000, in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 2001 and in Paris at the Petit Palais 2009. His latest exhibition–‘William Blake apprentice & master’– for the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, opened in spring 2014. He is currently at work writing a biography of Blake during the anti-Jacobin terror in Britain in the early 1790s.

Aaron Seider, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at the College of the Holy Cross. He earned his BA from Brown University and his PhD from the University of Chicago. His teaching and research interests include Latin literature; constructions of memory in Roman culture; and gender in the ancient world and its modern reception. Along with Memory in Vergil’s Aeneid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), he has published articles on Livy, Sallust, and Catullus.

Thomas L. Doughton is Senior Lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary & Special Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, where he teaches courses on the Holocaust and genocide as well as Native American, African-American and local history. His publications include Unseen Neighbors: Native Americans of Central Massachusetts, 1997 and, with B. Eugene McCarthy, From Bondage to Belonging: The Worcester Slave Narratives, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2008).

Brittain Smith is Director of Study Abroad at the College of the Holy Cross. He has taught German and Comparative Literature as well as Film Studies at Boston University and Loyola University/New Orleans. He is the translator and editor of two volumes of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche appearing with Stanford University Press. 252 Interfaces 38 (2016-2017) Instances éditoriales / Editorial Board

VOL 38 - INTERFACES - 2017 » de Rita Duffy et Paul Muldoon » de Rita Duffy

AGE Cloth

LANGU

: A Multimodal Novel” Multimodal A : E TEXT

Using Life 978-0-9831752-5-4 IMAGE

: De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans « : De la réappropriation de l’histoire dans