C14 | Saturday/Sunday, May 22 - 23, 2021 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. REVIEW BY PETER SAENGER gatha Wojciechowsky was riding a New York City bus when, she claimed, she heard a voice. It was the early A1950s, and the former seamstress was learning to be a medium and spiritual healer. She had done many modest drawings, and when the bus stopped in front of an art-supply store, the voice told her, “Go in and buy some watercolors.” For three days she sat at home waiting for instructions on what to paint. She then worked in what she called a trance, beginning at the lower left-hand corner of the canvas and working in bands from the bottom up. By the mid-1960s, Wojciechowsky was showing her paintings—many of them vivid abstractions dotted with human faces—alongside famous artists like Man Ray and Jean Dubuffet. Next month, her work will be fea- tured in “Supernatural America,” a new exhibition opening June 12 at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio that covers more than two centuries of art related to the paranormal. The roughly 160 works in the show are al- most all by Americans who claimed to have experience with the spirit world. They range from well-known artists like Andrew Wyeth, Grant Wood and the contemporary video Inspired by Ghosts and Magic artist Bill Viola to photographers of UFOs and 19th-century mediums who claimed spirits guided their drawings. In the 20th century, artists inter- The new exhibition ‘Supernatural America’ Gertrude Abercrombie, In the 1860s, the husband-and- ested in the paranormal began to put features artworks full of occult symbols and ‘Strange Shadows’ (1950). wife team of Wella P. and Lizzie “Pet” themselves front-and-center onto the Anderson gained wide popularity. canvas. Gertrude Abercrombie paranormal experiences. Wealthy clients would ask them to (1909-77), a formally trained artist, who earned the title “Master of the make contact with and sketch de- painted “idealized versions of herself Macabre” for his many paintings ceased family members or historical as an ethereal enchantress in long, bly elongated Abercrombie casts the water into colorlessness. haunted by death and decay. After figures like Benjamin Franklin. The slinky gowns and playing on magical shadow of a bare tree with an owl sit- The contemporary artist Renée Albright’s exposure to the horrors of show includes a 1869 pencil sketch charms, spells and occult enigmas,” ting on one of the branches. Stout laces her work with humor. She World War I, he turned to reading by the Andersons depicting Hiram writes art historian Sarah Burns in the Similarly, Andrew Wyeth por- describes her 2011 piece “The Root- mystics and philosophers, developing Abiff, a figure from Masonic legend, exhibition’s catalog. In the surrealist trayed a ghostly version of himself in worker’s Worktable” as being “built” his own spiritual philosophy. with symbols and writing covering “Strange Shadows” (1950), an impossi- “The Revenant” (1949), in which he for Fatima Mayfield, a fictitious, The Toledo show includes Al- his hat and robes. seems to be glowing—par- spell-casting healer. A rootworker, bright’s portrait “The Vermonter,” Another medium, Eliza- ticularly his right, painting Ms. Stout writes, “can perform an which took him 11 years to finish. By beth “Lizzie” Connor, said hand. Mr. Cozzolino notes important role in many underserved then the sitter, a farmer and politi- that the Baroque master Wyeth’s interest in spiritual African-American ar- cian who lived near Peter Paul Rubens collabo- subjects, possibly as a re- eas,” offering mental the artist, was dead. rated on her ink drawing sult of the tragic death of and physical health- Women The painting evokes a “Spirit Daughter” (ca. his father and one of his care as well as spiri- man nearing his end, 1891), though his style is nephews in a locomotive tual protection. The enjoyed an with detailed wrinkles hard to see in the elflike, collision. work features a desk artistic on his face and hands smiling creature in flowery In the oil painting bursting with bottles and a jumbled, de- garb. The exhibition’s cu- “Shrouded Figure in Moon- and steampunk dials, authority in cayed background in- rator, Robert Cozzolino of light” (1905), Edward Stei- beneath a blackboard the cluding an apple core the Minneapolis Institute chen, better known as a bearing lists of herbs and chain. Yet Mr. of Art—which organized photographer, depicts a and Afro-Caribbean spiritualist Cozzolino points out the show and will exhibit it glowing figure whose deities. There are also world that that Albright imbues in 2022—points out that shroud echoes the color of instructions for mak- the painting with female mediums enjoyed abillowingbankofclouds. ing a love potion, they were signs of cosmic wis- an artistic authority in the Amotherandtwodaugh- with the note “things usually dom, as well—in “the spiritualist world that ters look even more ghostly I’ll need for the se- denied color rings that sur- women were usually de- in Bill Viola’s short black- duction of Sterling round the figure as nied elsewhere, though the and-white video “Three Rochambeau.” elsewhere. chromatic halos,” in spirits said to have guided Women” (2008). When they “Supernatural the red skull cap that the mediums’ work were walk through a wall of wa- America” has been in recalls Diego Ve- mostly male. ter, they burst into full the works for five years, said Mr. lázquez’s famous portrait of Pope In- color, but the respite is Cozzolino. But its roots stretch back nocent X and—most of all—in the brief: In a moving state- decades, to his work on a show at the enigmatic subtitle of “The Ver- Ivan Albright, ‘The ment of the fleetingness of Art Institute of Chicago devoted to monter”: “If Life Were Life There Vermonter’ (1966-77). life, they return through the the artist Ivan Albright (1897-1983), Would Be No Death.” FROM TOP: PRIVATE COLLECTION, COURTESY RICHARD NORTON GALLERY PHOTO: JAMES PRINZ PHOTOGRAPHY|, CHICAGO; HOOD MUSEUM OF ART, DARTMOUTH|, HANOVER NH | ‘TOKYO STORY’ (1953), BY YASUJIRO OZU lingering after they depart lends the Elevating viewer a ghostly permanence that outlasts theirs. We feel omnipresent in their cosmos, privy to all its secrets, The Ordinary like the angels in “Wings of Desire,” by Ozu disciple Wim Wenders. Another fulcrum for “Tokyo Story” BY MICHAEL SIMS content and their failure to stay con- beside the Hirayamas is their former nected before hitting them and us daughter-in-law, Noriko, played by the IN THE OPENING SCENE of Yasujiro with the death of their most beloved radiant Setsuko Hara. Their son, her Ozu’s “Tokyo Story,” Shukichi and member. Without histrionics, he aims husband, died eight years earlier, a ca- Tomi Hirayama are packing for a train his unblinking attention at the ordi- sualty of the war. Ozu revisited favor- ride to Japan’s capital from their nary. In its elegance and balance, this ite themes, scriptwriters, crews and home in provincial Onomichi. movie rises above even the notable actors. He featured Hara in five other “This is our chance to see all our accomplishments of Ozu’s other films, films. “Tokyo Story” is the third in children,” Shukichi, the husband and such as “Late Spring.” which she plays a character named father, remarks to a neighbor. Nowadays the roster of best-film Noriko—but not quite the same “They must be looking forward to finalists usually includes giants such Noriko in each. Through this unofficial your arrival,” she replies. as “Vertigo,” “Citizen Kane,” “The “Noriko trilogy,” Ozu and co-writer Although he was not yet 50 years Godfather” and “Tokyo Monogatari” Kogo Noda explore how a young old, the acclaimed actor Chishu Ryu (“Tokyo Story”). In the West, even woman’s life might play out under dif- played Shukichi as elderly and rather now, Ozu’s 1953 triumph is the Chishu Ryu and “realism” is as rectors quickly adapted to this con- ferent circumstances: in a prearranged frail. “Well,” he replies cautiously, “I least known, but in a 2012 “Sight Chieko mannered as Ver- vention. Japan in general and Ozu in marriage, with an ailing father, as a hope so.” and Sound” poll directors from Higashiyama in meer’s. He simply particular resisted. Thus he did not war widow. Shukichi and his wife, beautifully around the world accorded it first the film. rejected those nar- bother to maintain the “eye line” be- Ozu’s characters perform their or- played by Chieko Higashiyama, soon place. As the 136-minute story lei- rative conventions tween characters. Often, to portray ganic ballet amid the Mondrian geom- find that their grown children are not surely unfolds, viewers new to Ozu that stood between him and his hu- the then-common Japanese distaste etry of Japanese interiors—doors and eager to see, lodge and feed them dur- may be puzzled at first about his in- mane vision. for gazing confrontationally into the windows, shoji screens, tansu cabi- ing this visit. Nor are the parents clusion alongside dramatic filmmakers AframeofanOzufilmisasdis- eyes of an interlocutor, he arranged a nets. Characters come and go, even thrilled with their children’s behavior such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson tinctive as a page of Virginia Woolf. By tableau in which characters speak inti- die, while the setting remains. The and life choices. They even find their Welles and Francis Ford Coppola. placing his camera at waist- or even mately while seated side-by-side. And Japanese call a melancholy awareness feral grandchildren tiresome. “Tokyo There are no chases up bell towers, no knee-level, in what are now called “ta- now and then actors speak directly of the ephemeral nature of life mono Story” seems made for adults because sly breakfast montages, no beheaded tami shots,” Ozu seats the viewer into the camera—not breaking the no aware,andOzu’shumanitygrows it is about mixed feelings among ordi- horses.