In Between: Time and Transition by henrykerns

In Between: Time and Transition University of Louisville

Forward Chris Reitz

Each year students in the Critical and Curatorial Studies seminar develop an exhibition from the Hite Art Institute’s substantial print collection. The exercise is a didactic one, to be sure, aimed principally at teaching the next generation of curators how to work from a collection. But the exhibition that results is also rather instructive—for me as an educator and for the exhibition’s audience, the show offers an update on our collection based on the particular orientation of this new generation of curators and on the social and political moment in which they emerge. This year that “moment” loomed large. Donald Trump’s inauguration marked the institutional acceptance of 21st Century American populism. Antiintellectual and anti-globalist sentiment was at a fever pitch, and for many arts workers it felt like our cultural terrain was eroding underfoot. A general dis-ease permeated the exhibition’s development—a term we used to describe both the sense of looming change and the underlying decay motivating that change: divisiveness, social media echo-chambers, heightened rhetoric, distrust of facts and established institutions, disdain for common ground on all sides. Students in the class were reluctant to organize a “political” show. Indeed, politics seemed the germ of this dis-ease, not the cure. Instead, they took aim at the feeling itself, the sense of not-quite-rightness that seemed to have taken hold of every facet of daily experience. What might account for such a feeling? And might there be way to productively embrace its effects?

Our wandering through the collection helped to hone this sensation, and to map it to other types of collective and solitary experience: adolescence, social transformation, rites of passage and comings of age. In a word, our moment felt â&#x20AC;&#x153;liminal,â&#x20AC;? a term anthropologists (particularly Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner) used to describe the disorientation that accompanies threshold experiencesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;social and cultural processes through which previously held beliefs (about the self, the society, even the world) are suspended to make room for new forms of organization. This became the structure according to which In Between: Time and Transition was organized. The show did not articulate a politics or even a position; rather, it reformulated politics and positions. Prints, many of which belonged to series, were dislodged from their original context and redeployed, creating both a sense of ambiguity and the possibility of new orientations. In Between: Time and Transition was curated by Whitney Cox, Joel Darland, Stephanie Gerding, Liz Jordan, Hannah Melvin, Scott Rollins, Hillary Roser, and Paige Schat.

National Anxieties Represented as the Grotesque in the Female Body Scott Rollins University of Louisville

“If it is not about transition, it is not about liminality.”1

social and religious practices. However, the concept has little traction in application to large and fragmented post-industrial nations. Because we live in a permanently unstable environment without any reliable forms of social structure, another concept has emerged that seems to embody more accurately the sign of the times. Rather than transformative, contemporary “liminal” social rituals appear to be more “grotesque” states of permanent disruption, perpetually unfamiliar and constantly transforming in ways that are simultaneously frightening and fascinating. The grotesque became a more prevalent theme during the romantic period, reflecting the fears and anxieties of a patriarchal society struggling with a burgeoning women’s movement. “To apprehend the grotesque, it is essential to understand it as being “in play.”5 The origins of the term grotesque come from the word grotto and it is often associated with caves or openings into chthonian worlds. Historically the Italian grottesco, which became the French grotesque, first referred to the decorative paintings of fantastical figures that were found on the walls of an abandoned underground palace.

The results of the recent presidential election have left many wondering if these divisive times are the beginning of a prolonged period of civil unrest or a temporary liminal state preceding a return to a more stable social structure.2 The concept of liminality was first developed in the early 20th century by ethnographer Arnold van Gennep and later taken up by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his 1966 book, The Ritual Process. In this study, Turner makes the connection between liminality and rites of passage as they apply to pre-industrial societies. He lays out the three stages in a rite of passage: separation, transition, and incorporation. The first stage occurs when the group member is separated from the hegemonic structure of society and enters into an unstructured setting that is physically foreign and unfettered by previously recognized customs and traditions. The second stage, described by van Gennep as ‘the limen” (‘threshold in Latin’) takes place when the participant enters into a disoriented ambiguous state, a sort of dangerous psychic limbo where everything is tenuous and uncertain. This stage was described by Turner as the “realm of pure possibility” because of its lack of structure.3 The final stage, or “reaggregation,” involves the individual’s reintegration back into society, usually with an elevated social status.4 Turner’s concept of liminal ritual practices offers a compelling model for certain pre-industrial

Thomassen, Bjørn. 2016. Liminality and the Modern : Living through the In-Be tween. London: Routledge. p.15. 2 Noys, Benjamin. 2014. Malign Velocities : Accelerationism & Capitalism. Win chester, UK: Zero Books. 3 Turner, Victor 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. p.97. 4 Turner, Victor 1982. From Ritual to Theatre : The Human Seriousness of Play. Performance studies series, 1st v; Performance studies series, 1st v. New York City: Performing Arts Journal Publications. p.24. 5 Connelly, Frances S. 2012. The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture : The Image at Play. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.5. 1

This was in the late 1400s and the site was later identified as the palatial ruins of the Roman Emperor Nero. As the story goes, a Roman teenager, at the end of the fifteenth century, fell through a crack in the hillside and into a strange underground chamber or grotte (Latin for “crypt”) that was later determined to be the Domus Aurea. That these ruins were underground and accessed through a crevice in the earth is significant. The earth has typically been personified as female and this crack in the earth has allusions to an orifice into the interior. Before long, as word spread of this weird subterranean space, artists throughout the region, including Michelangelo and Raphael, were having themselves lowered with ropes into this “estranged world”.6 Recounting how the grotesque got its name doesn’t adequately explain its nature. It is not a particular style but it does have certain characteristics that could also be applied to liminality, such as states of transition, metamorphosis and transgression of boundaries. The French Revolution was a disorienting and transformative period in Europe that lasted from 1789 until 1799. The social upheavals and violence originating in Paris spread out and affected all of Europe. In 1792, the Spanish artist and court painter to Charles IV, Francisco Goya (1746-1828), was recovering from a devastating illness that left him disillusioned, withdrawn and with permanent hearing loss. His physical and mental breakdown seems to have taken place a few weeks after France declared war on Spain.

Immediately after this illness he temporarily stopped doing portraitures for commission and started making art solely for his own purposes. This new strategy culminated in Los Caprichos, a series of 80 prints published in 1799. Unlike the majority of his previous pieces, this series was completed without any of the constraints involved in contractual work.7 Goya himself confirmed this freedom of expression in the phrase “capricho e invención”8 or “inventive powers and inspiration of the imagination.” Fresh from a purportedly disastrous affair with the Duchess of Alba.9 Goya’s attitude toward aristocratic society and the women that populated it had obviously soured. This print series, which he started working on in 1797, depict a society filled with grossly flawed human figures caught up in circumstances that hint at the carnivalesque as described by the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1965 book Rabelais and his World. Kayser, Wolfgang Johannes. 1963. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Blooming ton: Indiana University Press. p.184. 7 Schulz, Andrew, and Francisco Goya. 2005. Goya’s Caprichos : Aesthetics, Percep tion, and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 8 Glendinning, Nigel. 1977. Goya and His Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp.42-43. 9 Waldmann, Susann. 1998. Goya and the Duchess of Alba. Pegasus Library. Munich: Prestel 6

The carnivalesque for Bakhtin was a social event where all members of society intermingled in a communal and festive setting. In Goya’s print, however, the upper-class individual is tragically alone and none more so than the figures in the Los Caprichos plate 6, Nadie Se Conoce (Nobody Knows Anyone). In place of the joyful carnival community of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Goya presents a masquerade ball where the participants hide their intentions and identities behind deceptive masks. In place of carnivalesque entertainment, the scene presented is awkward and alienating. Goya added text to reinforce the artifice of the event: “The world is a masquerade. Face, dress and voice, are all false. All wish to appear what they are not, all deceive and do not even know themselves.” Nadie Se Conoce, along with four other plates in this series, present the ways in which men and women, particularly the ruling class, engage disingenuously with each other. In this scene an effeminate masked man attempts to seduce a similarly masked woman. In the shadows, large male figures in grotesque masks lurk ominously around the couple. Despite the ostensibly festive environment, all the participants, as the title suggests, are engaged in deception. Goya’s misanthropic vision was taken up by the Symbolist movement one hundred years later in Paris at the end of the nineteenth-century. There these dark tendencies were more associated with the demonic and supernatural rather than with social satire.10 10

Connelly, (2012.). p. 106.

Francisco Jose de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Nadie se conoce, 1797-99 Etching and aquatint Gift of the Carnegie Corporation, 1937

One French artist, Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was producing imaginative prints, similar to Goya’s, depicting women in ways that were stereotypical of his time period. Redon’s world was 1890s fin de siecle France, where there was an ominous sense of despair associated with the country’s widely perceived decline following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. There were also high rates of alcoholism, syphilis outbreaks, mental illness and suicide. The social critic Max Nordau (1849-1923) described the general mood of the time as “curiously confused, a compound of feverish restlessness and blunted discouragement.”11 France was stuck languishing in-between the spiritual emptiness of the Industrial Revolution and the anxieties often associated with end-of-the-century culture. Another source of apprehension was the increased roles of women and the emergence of organized women’s movements, which resulted in increased legislation favorable to women.12 Of course this resulted in fear and anxiety within patriarchal French society and as the result the femme fatale began appearing more often in period artwork. Redon was not exempt from representing the modern French women as this unfortunate archetype. And in this respect he was indistinguishable from many of his contemporaries of the Symbolist movement with whom he shared an enthusiasm for the rendering of women as dangerous supernatural beings. Redon aligned himself with the literary faction of this movement, evidenced by his friendship with Stéphane Mallarmé, and his print illustrations of texts of writers such as Baudelaire, Huysmans, 12

Poe, and in this case Gustave Flaubert.13 Redon was so influenced by Flaubert’s 1874 prose poem The Temptation of Saint Anthony that he developed three separate series based on it. This 1896 print La Mort: C’est moi qui te rends sérieuse: Enlaçons-nous is one of twenty-four prints based on the legend of a third-century monk who retreated to the Egyptian desert to contemplate God. This print examines one terrible night in which Saint Anthony is tempted by the Devil. Redon was fascinated by Flaubert’s grotesque characters and described the play as “a literary marvel and a mine.”14 Here he illustrates a scene in the poem where Death and Lust (Thanatos and Eros), disguised respectively as an old woman and a young girl, reveal their true identities to a bewildered Saint Anthony. Death, portrayed as a skeleton, tries to seduce the saint into stepping off the cliff into the abyss and ending his painful existence. “It is I who make you serious, let us embrace each other,” she says. Her robe is enveloped by light that illuminates the voluptuous nude figure of Lust, illustrated as a femme fatale that showcases Hauptman, Jodi, Odilon Redon, and Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). 2005. Beyond the Visible : The Art of Odilon Redon. New York: Museum of Modern Art. p.23. 12 David and Alfred Smart Gallery, Reinhold Heller, and University of Chicago. Dept. of Art. 1981. The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale : Fear of Woman in Nine teenth-Century Art : The David and Alfred Smart Gallery, the University of Chicago, May 20 - June 21, 1981. pp.8-9. In 1885 there were eighteen laws devoted to wom en’s rights in France. BY 1905 there were fifty-one. Also French women’s demand for equality resulted in the publicly funded International Congress on the Conditions and Rights of Women at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. 13 Redon, Odilon, and Candice. Black. 2010. Odilon Redon : I Am the First Conscious ness of Chaos : The Black Album. Solar nocturnal; Solar nocturnal. Washington, D.C.: Solar Books. p.9. 14 Finke, Ulrich. 1972. French 19th century painting and literature: with special reference to the relevance of literary subject-matter to French painting. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 281 11

the artists skilled use of chiaroscuro as well as the misogynistic attitudes prevalent in this series. Although the appearance of these two figures differ greatly, the overlap and proximity of their bodies suggests they are manifestations of the same demonic being. Their grotesqueness is not necessarily related to either figure, the robed skeleton, or the naked woman. It is that Redon has caught the Devil at the precise moment that he reveals his true nature and bifurcates into an animated skeleton and a mute naked woman that makes it grotesque. Similarly capturing that instant just before the female figure reveals her naked self is the subject of Gaiety Burlesk (1930) by the American artist Reginald Marsh (18981954). The scene that he captures in the popular entertainment of burlesque is capitalism’s version of Goya’s masquerade where all that is required to witness a spectacle is a small entrance fee. Marsh produced his best work during the liminal 1930s when burlesque was at the height of its popularity while inversely the American economy had just suffered its first major crisis. 1929 was a substantial year for the United States and for Marsh. That year he received a large inheritance from his grandfather, which he invested in the New York Stock Exchange. Unfortunately the stock market crashed a short time later marking the beginning of the Great Depression. Fortunately Marsh was able to recoup his losses and was financially secure enough to produce art for the rest of his life. 1929 was also notable for Marsh in that he became an established intaglio printmaker, producing twenty-seven etchings and 13

marking the beginning of the most productive and successful years in his art career. In Gaiety Burlesk Marsh created a Baroque inspired, densely packed image that depicts a New York City burlesque performance. At that time, the U.S. was in the initial stages of the Great Depression and with Prohibition still being enforced, middle and upper class men sought entertainment at the Burlesque theaters where a small admission fee allowed them to watch lower-class women perform in various states of undress. A 1935 Fortune Magazine article described the typical male audience as the “backwash of a depressed industrial civilization.”15 This composition is endemic of Marsh’s prints during this period: a lone female dancer is rendered at the far left of the composition while an audience of seated men occupy the rest of the space. Almost all of the men focus their gaze on the dancer, exhibiting reactions ranging from apathy to lust to annoyance. The way that Marsh has illustrated the theatre is similar to typical grotesque ornamentation, which is arabesque with curving foliage elements. His use of this iconography establishes the female performer as a grotesque marginalized body inhabiting a theatre of male gazes. The twin balconies, elaborately detailed and overflowing with spectators resemble two ornate breasts that ironically the dancer appears to be hiding as she clutches her dress to her chest. 15

Friedman, Andrea. 2000. Prurient Interests : Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909-1945. Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University Press. p.74.

She is in the process of disrobing, unsteadily crossing the catwalk that projects into the audience at the Gaiety Burlesque which was at that time a popular venue in Times Square. The dancer’s marginal status, otherness, theatricality, and overt sexuality are all on display in this print as a source of desire and disgust for Marsh and his viewers.16 In a sense, the burlesque theater came to epitomize American social life where participation is unnecessary. In high contrast to Redon’s Saint Anthony who resists the temptations of the naked female figure, Marsh’s America not only seeks it out but pays admission to observe it. The bourgeois crowd attending these spectacles is composed of voyeuristic consumers while the working-class women performing are objectified in ways that critical theorist Mary Russo described as the “female grotesque”: clumsy, exaggerated, and vulgar.17 Marsh himself had this to say about his subject matter:

Curiously he expressed more concern for his audience of middle-aged men than for the seminaked young woman who they have all paid to see. Because of Marsh’s misguided prejudices as a privileged male, Gaiety Burlesk conveys the complexities and anxieties regarding female sexuality in early twentieth-century America.19 Furthermore his use of the overwrought ornamentation of the theater as well as the multitude of male bodies gathered to watch the dancer conveys a strong sense of the grotesque both as a formal element as well as the manifestation of the anxieties of an entire society being in a perpetual state of grotesque.

“The burlesque show is a very sad commentary on the state of the poor man. … It is the only entertainment, the only presentation of sex that he can afford.”18 Spies, Kathleen. Burlesque Queens and Circus Divas: Images of the Female Grotesque in the art of Reginald Marsh and Walt Kuhn 1915-1945.Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1999. p.3. 17 Russo, Mary J. 1995. The Female Grotesque : Risk, Excess, and Modernity. New York: Routledge. 18 Fryd, Vivien Green. 2003. Art and the Crisis of Marriage : Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pg.107. 19 Marsh, Reginald, Barbara Haskell, Morris Dickstein, and New-York Historical Soci ety. 2012. Swing Time : Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York. New York: New-York Historical Society in association with D. Giles Ltd., London. p.122. 16

Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954) Gaiety Burlesque, 1930 Etching Gift of Steven Block, 2007

Embracing the Blur: Living In Between Identities Hillary Roser University of Louisville

In Between: Time and Transition is a collection of prints that seek to broadly explore liminal spaces, events, and time. However, looking closely at the way these works investigate liminal human experience, we see many issues of identity arise. Hybridized, shifting, and overlapping identities and affinities come into focus within the liminal spaces and events that this show attempts to examine. While this theme of identity might answer some questions regarding the relevance of the liminal in everyday life, these works also raise questions concerning the ways identity and society are understood. Using the prints in this exhibition to explore our own identities, and the nature of identity itself, we can see what embracing the “in between” has to offer—in terms of personal growth, social practices, and identity politics. Liminality was originally used in anthropological study to refer to the transitionary stages of certain cultural rituals, in an attempt to categorize and schematize various cultures and societies. In the early 20th century, anthropologist Arnold van Gennup first referred to this “liminal phase” within specific cultures’ rites of passages, when a member of the community would transition from one title, identity, or role to another1. This “threshold”2 is the time and place in which a participant would stand at a precipice, facing a choice to leave behind who they were and

prepare to embrace a new state of being within their culture. This concept has been built upon and applied to more modern discourses of identity as well as gender and queer theories, and has since come into broader cultural and social use, referring to blurred labels of identity, psychological or physical transitions, periods of extended fluidity and time spent outside the norm. Donna Haraway and Michael Foucault are two examples of scholars expanding on the idea of the liminal within theories of identity. Haraway states in her influential essay A Cyborg Manifesto, Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (1984) that “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids.”3 A feminist, post-modern analysis, her writing asks us to examine the ways in which we are human-hybrids, inextricable from the tools we use, the food we eat, and the objects and organisms that allow us to perform our affinities fluidly—rather than define our identities rigidly. Defining identity through rigid labels leaves little room for growth or exploration, and using labels often defines yourself by what you are not—meaning that certain traits, abilities, and identities become off limits: de-valued in self and others. By recognizing the overlaps and “in betweens” of affinities, identity becomes much less rigid, and labels of identity are less likely to be used to confine rather than define. These ideas are influenced by Michael Foucault, and Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995), 94. 2 Turner, Ritual, 94. Liminality comes from the latin limen, meaning threshold. 1

his theories of sexuality that helped lead to queer theory and the work of many feminist, gay, and lesbian scholars.

Rather than being a female, for example, one can choose to express femininity through clothes, actions, or speech. This idea can be translated across all aspects of identity —in other words, rather than feeling pressured to conform to accepted standards within any category (gender identity or sexual orientation, cultural identifiers, and other social labels), one can choose when, where, or how to express those categorized traits. This allows for exploration and growth within one’s affinities, rather than a reassertion of and continued performance of accepted traits within given labels of identity. Haraway’s essay brings complexity to this idea by asking us to go beyond just letting go of rigid identity through labels, to examine the ways we form our identity: through language, culture, and performance. She emphasizes that our identities are not intrinsic or inherent, but are formed within our particular historical, cultural, technological context. We are hybrids of ourselves and our environments. By examining the formations and iterations of identity in these prints, it becomes possible to examine our own concepts of self, community, and identity.

Foucault’s ideas on discourse, in which he asserts that “all concepts are historically formed and contingent, and so are never universally true,”4 and that “any knowledge is inextricable from power,”5 had significant effects on the formation of modern feminism. When many feminists began questioning essentialism, which had previously been considered a liberating idea focusing on unifying traits across femininity, his theories were used to help form a more inclusive methodology of feminism. Essentialism works within a system of opposition—defining others through difference, and belonging through similarities. Rather than allowing for differences of expression, it instead works against those who sought to use it as liberation by reasserting confining roles and traits, and excluding those with too many differences from the group. Foucault points out that such categorization only helps those in power—“what looks like liberation is in fact just another form of regulation.”6 When feminists and queer theorists began to reject labels that benefitted a society that sought to identify and contain difference, the possibility for true freedom of expression in identity formed.

The prints in this exhibition explore what happens to identity at the sites of liminality, where infinite possibilities exist in the tension before a choice

There is still much heated debate about who can identify as male or female, gay or straight; but queer theory suggests we let go of these binary labels and allow individuals to explore the overlaps and complexities in their identities.

Donna Jeanne Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto, Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, (New York: Routledge, 1991), 150. Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk, Art History: A Critical Introduction to its 5 Methods, (New York: Manchester University Press 2006), 158. Hatt and Klonk, Art History, 158. Hatt and Klonk, Art History, 158

is made, before a journey is completed, before a subject can realize a full transformation, and where ambiguity is embraced, and identity questioned or blurred. The works in this exhibition ask us to pay close attention to the boundaries and defining lines around identity that we may have previously ignored or simply accepted. We are asked not just to explore when, where, and how identities develop, but to consider that a changing, merging, fluid state of identity is a more accurate representation of who we are. While some tend to believe that our identities are ultimately definable, fixed in place and labeled, and only occasionally going through temporary states of change or growth, scholars like Haraway disagree. She is one of many feminist and queer scholars who suggests that our identities are constantly in flux and inseparable from our constantly changing environment, and that attempts to define or label only stand in the way of understanding and exploring ourselves and others. Many prints in this exhibition explore this rejection of simplified, labeled, rigid selfhood for sets of affinities and blurred, in between states of being.

and smiling face on the right. However, the two share an eye, which acts as an illusion; the shared center eye is downcast and somber when paired with the eye on its left, but it is upturned and positive when paired with the eye on its right. The edges of the two faces cannot seem to be separated either, as they help form the nose or cheekbones of the other face. The two colors also blur together, creating a muddled brown that contains a set of emotions and meaning separate from the colors on its sides.

In Eclipse (1950), a work by Constance Clark Willis, two stylized mask-like faces overlap, recalling imagery of the theatrical masks for drama and comedy. However, these are not separate faces overlapping, but a single identity, merged from two ideas, feelings, or states of being. The traits of both are mixed in a strange Venn diagram of identity, the round red somber face on the left merging with the squarer, blueish,

Constance Clark Willis (American, 1914-2004) Eclipse, 1950 Woodcut, 1/15 Gift of John and Kay Begley, 2005

Examining this work as an exploration of identity leads to the previously discussed ideas of hybridization and states of in-between: the work asks us to stop seeing two separate faces and instead accept a single identity that exists outside our ability to label, categorize,

or essentialize. The emotions, colors, and features of the two “different” masks merge together to form a hybrid figure, strengthened by complimentary traits that play off each other in a complex negotiation of traits that defy identification. This work asks us to see the complexities, contradictions, and overlaps in ourselves, and to embrace them as our identity, rather than attempt to resolve the tensions they create.

They sit in an ambiguous building, one wall open to the world, and a shadowy Statue of Liberty seen in the distance through the window. Owing in part to her progressive and politically-engaged upbringing, Bryson’s body of work was mostly comprised of depression era American people, workers, and immigrants. In this print, Bryson captures the uncertainty and anxieties of a group of people whose distinct backgrounds, joys and hardships, and identities are about to be united by taking the same step forward into a new set of possibilities.

In 30,000,000 Immigrants7 (1937) by Bernarda Bryson, a group of men, women, and children sit waiting, hands clasped, grouped together yet each lost in a personal moment or emotion.

Bernarda Bryson (Shahn) (American, 1903-2004) 30,000,000 Immigrants, 1937 Lithograph Gift of Roy Stryker, 1965

The label “immigrant” is certainly politically charged today, and has been throughout our country’s history. Many have used this label not to define, but to confine and separate: us from them. The figures in Bryson’s work have unifying, simplified facial features and oddly oversized hands which together read as not quite caricature but something slightly more subtle, a sense of sameness among the diversity of the group, while also conveying an anxiety or sense of alienation. However, Bryson also depicts an array of unique emotions and personalities within these homogenized faces: fear, anger, worry, and hope. Identity here is not only in a state of literal transition, between countries and physical states of citizenship and acceptance, but between existential states of belonging. 7

The title refers to the 30,000,000 (European) immigrants who came to the United States between 1836 and 1914.

Bryson’s work brings forward issues that immigrants have faced throughout our country’s history—the question of merging identities, replacing language and culture, finding new communities and ways to define themselves and their families. What is of particular interest today, 80 years after this work was made, is how many seek to label immigrants as apart from ourselves rather than a part of our societal and individual histories: we are the descendants of these 30,000,000 and more. Instead, many use this label to “other” outsiders, defining us by what we are, and defining “them” by what we are not, ignoring obvious overlaps and commonalities. The meanings we attach to words such as “American,” or “immigrant” do not neutrally define a group, but attach a set of values. Language is a form of labeling, and although we may intend words to have one specific meaning, they are inextricable from historical or contextual connotations. While these terms may communicate community to some, they might communicate distrust or difference to others. Haraway is one of many feminist scholars who emphasize the importance of a close examination of language and semiotics in order to question the status quo behind rigidly defined meaning in language. She claims that “cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism”8. Understanding how language and labels can be used as tools 21

and weapons by those in power helps us avoid practices in speech and behavior that further alienate groups from each other. Bryson’s work can serve as an important reminder that the way we label ourselves and others has an effect on how we understand and treat those outside of our own labeled identities. Closely examining the labels we use, even those intended to be neutral, reveal biases that serve only to stratify and divide. We are ourselves only due to the history of the people who built our culture and country, not separate from it. This work is a picture of our beginning, and in today’s context, reminds us that our own identities are not as straightforward as we may like, and that embracing the complexities and overlaps we share with others allows us to understand both sides on a deeper level. In the late 1940s and early 1950s--concurrent with the popular rise of Abstract Expressionism9. Sylvia Wald’s figurative work because increasingly abstract10. Wald’s Chrysalis (1950), for example, despite lacking human figures, nonetheless communicates bodily forms; one can see hints of a face, outlines of body parts, or even an eye. Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto, 176. David Anfam. “Abstract Expressionism.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed May 19, 2017, http://www.oxfordartonline.com. echo.louisville.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art T000252. 10 Jules Heller and Nancy Heller. North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Vol. 1219. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), 2684. 9

The chrysalis itself is a uniquely liminal space of transition and change: the space in which the larval stage of the caterpillar is housed while it is transformed into a butterfly. By aligning bodily forms with this natural transformative space, Wald presents our own internal methods of transformation and change as our natural state. In Wald’s work, we can see hints of human transformation and promise, suggesting various iterations of growth where identity exists in between recognized forms. This space in which identity becomes a question mark—a set of possibilities without definition—is the only space in which change can occur and identity be expressed. Wald captures this time in- between states of being, allowing identity to be permanently suspended in a state of possibility. This work might allow us to examine our own states of change, suggesting that the fear and tensions we feel when we don’t understand who we are—when we are between labels or categories—are in fact the catalysts for that change. Embracing the in-between and lack of familiar identity might be the ideal state of existence. Haraway advocates for this way of understanding self, encouraging a state of being that rejects a pre or post transformation, choosing instead to stay within the realm of possible affinities and identities found during transformation. Feminist scholar Ruth Miller, in her essay Posthuman (which breaks down and analyzes parts of Haraway’s argument), states that the cyborg figure can be “best described with reference to process rather than identity […] The cyborg helped scholars to theorize gender as an

Sylvia Wald (American, 1915 - 2011) Chrysalis, 1950 Serigraph Gift of the Artist, 1993

ongoing, material, and mutable activity rather than variation on existence.â&#x20AC;? It is within the process of change, possibility, and growth that various identities (including but not confined to gender) can be found; identity as an active activity, not a passive definition. When we embrace our identities not as rigid boundaries that separate, but as intertwined and engaged with our world, we open ourselves up to change and growth, and a better understanding of ourselves and others. This exhibition, exploring the spaces in between identity and transition, questions the ways we understand identity, asks us to question what we take for granted as truth, and at times makes us just uncomfortable enough to re-examine our own spaces of familiarity and states of stagnation. The next step requires us to ask how and why we form our own identities, how and why we categorize others into groups of assumed identities, and what is uncomfortable about seeing these rigid groups combine, overlap, or blur at the edges. When we do so, we can begin to accept the idea that our own identity is better off as a question, as a possibility, as a blur existing in-between.

Dreams: The Liminal Conscious Whitney Cox University of Louisville

“And there was a great earthquake. And the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair. And the moon became like blood... And the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up. And every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich and the chiliarchs and the strong and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker, 1979) Stalker, the 1979 Soviet Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, chronicles the journey of three men into the “Zone,” a foreign and evasive territory, defying reality. Though access is forbidden, the existence of a room that is rumored to fulfill one’s greatest desires attracts the curiosity of many. The “Stalker,” the protagonist, serves as a guide through the apparent dangers residing within the abandoned ruins of the “Zone.” In the film, the stalker accompanies two clients through the distorted landscape, both seeking the fulfillment facilitated by the “Room.” A dream sequence comprises a particularly prominent scene within the film. The camera proceeds deliberately across the flooded vestiges of a past civilization. Precious objects and lost treasures are scattered on the floor of a 27

shallow pool while a Bible verse is delivered by an unknown source proclaiming the apocalypse. Liminality is the state of ambiguity and disorientation experienced when traversing a boundary. This phenomenon emerges particularly when standing at a threshold, hesitating between two mediums, or in the midst of a ritualistic event. Ultimately, this transitional period determines a metaphysical shift or psychological transformation in the participant. Dreams exist as the threshold between consciousness and unconsciousness, reality and absurdity. Selections displayed within the exhibition, In Between: Time and Transition, such as prints by Odilon Redon, Federico Castellon, and Paul Wunderlich, demonstrate the abstract concept of liminality through the distortion of conscious reality in the unconscious; i.e. dreams.

of ourselves—and even if it spells (or we spell it out as) a dangerous and/or a benign dividedness of self.”2 The human experience is divided between the conscious, waking hours and unconscious slumber, yet dreams unify these realms. In his studies of dreams in literature, it is obvious that Phillips references the dream theories established originally by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. A neurosurgeon by career, Freud established a field of psychology that he referred to as psychoanalysis. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Freud conducted studies seeking a greater understanding of the complex human psyche, developing theories from the results of these experiments. Freud often interpreted the content of dreams to further comprehend the conscious and unconscious states.

The term “Dream” is defined by The Merriam Webster Dictionary as “a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep,” but also as “a visionary creation of the imagination” and “a state of mind marked by abstraction and release from reality.”1 The qualities of dreams have been pursued as a common subject within film, art, and literature throughout history and among many cultures. In his article, “The Dream Horizon,” Adam Phillips discusses the importance of dreaming. “Dreaming is integral to who we are… Dreaming is one of the ingredients with which we understand ourselves, even if it is the very thing…that undoes our understanding

Through interviews with his patients, Freud determined “The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs”3. “Dream,” Merriam-Webster, accessed February 14, 2017 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dream. 2 Adam Phillips, “The Dream Horizon,” Raritan: A Quarterly Review 26, no. 1 (2006): 94. 3 “ The Interpretation of Dreams,” The Freud Museum London, accessed April 29, 2017, https://www.freud.org.uk/education/topic/10576/interpre tation-of-dreams/. 1

Freud argues that understanding of objects in dreams is derived from conscious experience. Freud defines condensation as the association of familiar objects to become unfamiliar. When one experiences these objects in unusual contexts within dreams the objects become threatening. In displacement, an idea developed in the consciousness is detached from an object4. This terminology refers to repressed material appearing in acceptable formats. Freud would find inspiration in the Symbolist movement that proceeded him. Symbolism emerged during the late-nineteenth century, refusing the naturalistic conventions that had previously defined art. “...[W]hether psychological or idealist, semi-scientific or semi-philosophical, the purpose [of Symbolism is] to establish the importance of the representation the artist has undertaken, and to establish it precisely by making it...go beyond realism”5. While the Impressionist artists operating simultaneously addressed subjects of modernity, the Symbolists valued imagery derived from the mind, imagination, and fantasy. In the novel published in 1979, Symbolism, Robert Goldwater continues, “Symbolists and thought-painters alike wanted to give pictorial form to the ‘invisible world of the psyche’.”6 Symbolists, therefore, valued imagery that was familiar to the conscious mind, yet perceived within new contexts distinguishing from reality.

Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) La Mort: C’est moi qui te rends sérieuse; Enlaçons-nous Plate 20 from Tentation de St. Antoine, 1895 Lithograph Gift of Vincent Price Collection, Sears, Roebuck & Co., 1964

John Phillips, “The Dream Work,” National University of Singapore, accessed May 21, 2017, https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/dreamwork.htm. 6 Robert Goldwater, Symbolism (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers Inc., 1979), 4-5. Goldwater, Symbolism, 9. 5

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) is among the most prominent members of the Symbolist movement. A draftsman, pastellist, painter, and printmaker, his illustrative works are often mythical and fantastical in content. Redon’s series of etchings, titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony (La Tentation de Saint-Antoine), were inspired by the play sharing the same name by his contemporary, Gustave Flaubert. Flaubert’s production recounts the legend of Saint Anthony and the temptations he encountered while stranded in the desert. In the particular selection produced in 1896, La Mort: C’est moi qui te rends sérieuse: Enlaçons-nous (Death: It is I who Makes You Serious; Let Us Embrace), Redon interprets Saint Anthony’s confrontation with Death and Lust. As Flaubert writes in his novel, “The winding-sheet flies open, and reveals the skeleton of Death. The robe bursts open, and presents to view the entire body of Lust, which has a slender figure, with an enormous development behind, and great, undulating masses of hair, disappearing towards the end.”7 In Redon’s print, the viewer is confronted by a conjoined pair, a skeletal figure cloaked in a sheer veil and beautiful female, exposed in nudity. Redon pictorially reimagines Flaubert’s narrative, adhering to an aesthetic reminiscent of dreams, vivid, luminous, ephemeral, and haunting. Within this dream one witnesses a liminal event in the simultaneous existence of life and death.

Surrealism succeeded Symbolism during the early-twentieth century, pursuing thought established by Freud. Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (The Surrealist Manifesto) written by André Breton in 1924 formalized the term that artists would adopt. “Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to the substitution form them in the solution of the principal problems of life.”8 Surrealists pursued dreams as a source of their imagery, seeking to resolve the relationship between consciousness and the unconsciousness. Artists approached this movement rendering illogical and irrational scenes in often photographic precision, wedding reality and absurdity. Federico Castellon (1914-1971), a skilled draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, and painter, was a member of the Surrealist movement during the early-to-mid twentieth century. He had matured during the height of Surrealism, inspired by his contemporaries, and maintained an intimate relationship with the movement’s prominent members. Castellon is compared to Redon in a 1939 article discussing his most recent work of the same year, Rendezvous in a Landscape. Gustave Flaubert, “Temptation of St. Anthony, Chapter 7: The Chimera and the Sphinx,” The Literature Network, accessed April 29, 2017, http://www.online-liter ature.com/gustave-flaubert/st-antony/7/. 8 Patrick Walberg, Surrealism (New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 1997), 11. 7

This was a particularly widely distributed piece, as it was published in the May 1939 edition of Art Digest, in the article titled “Young Castellon, Who Recalls Poe and Redon.”9

the figures’ uncanny precision render a dreamlike quality.

One of the most astonishing technical developments in the medium of lithography is included in a New York exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints by Federico Castellon, young Spanish-American surrealist, whose work is finding increasing recognition in the art world....in Castellon’s drawings and later prints surrealist fancies – all of them deeply and intensely poetic – furnish the subject matter, and the visions at times barely emerge from the elusive gray values of the drawing. In them the spectator senses overtones of Poe and Redon.

Castellon, Federico (Spanish, 1914-1971) Rendezvous in a Landscape, N.D. Lithograph; Gift of Miss Leona E. Prasse in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Justus Bier, 1963

Rendezvous in a Landscape is compared to the work of Redon due to his ability to capture reality, yet achieve artificiality in profound detail. The print depicts two figures within a seemingly remote location, among a vast, barren landscape. The viewer is ushered into a piece through the frame of a structure onto which a male character leans and behind which a female character is mounted on a donkey. Jagged, yet manicured rock formations pierce the extremities of the landscape, receding forward into a polished and seemingly artificial terrain. Abandoned ruins rise from the landscape, and a pathway is carved into the smooth land. While a desert landscape is recognizable, the inconsistency of the perspective, as well as the landscape and

Paul Wunderlich (1927-2010) was a German painter, sculptor, and printmaker active primarily in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Wunderlich pursues concepts established by his Surrealist predecessors, such as Castellon. His lithograph Twilight III (1971) maintains imagery that is common to Wunderlich’s work described by Paris Noel in Paul Wunderlich: Lithographies et Peintures, Les mythes mondains de Paul Wunderlich. “These sculptures of a perfect technique, of a dark black or sparkling aggressive chrome, these cushions with metallic hardness, 9

August L. Freundlich. Federico Castellon: His Graphic Works 1936-1971 (New York: College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University, 1978), 22.

these condoms not flexible but rigid like stalactites must be considered as petrifications of the human conduct, as denunciations of social functions...Here again we are referred to this concept of myth, surrealist materialization of the image, which we encounter in many classical texts of Surrealism.”10

Overall, dreams exist as the threshold between the conscious and unconscious states, often ambiguous and disorientating. Prints by Odilon Redon, Federico Castellon, and Paul Wunderlich, demonstrate the abstract concept of liminality through the distortion of conscious reality within the unconscious world of dreams.

This particular piece depicts a reclining female nude posing in a lawn chair situated within a dark, obscure landscape. Though indicative of the human form, her body is perverted, her recumbent figure deformed, reduced to unfamiliar shapes and contorted limbs. Her figure imitates the frame of the chair, almost mutating into an object. The landscape consumes her lower forms in shadows, her body receding into the murky landscape below. Above a brilliant, yet artificial rainbow extends across the sky, the background gradually dissolves into darkness. The original image was derived from a nude photograph of his wife, made unrecognizable through abstraction. Wunderlich appropriates habitual scenes captured through photography and manipulates these images to render surreal manifestations. 10

“‘Ces sculptures d’une technique parfaite, d’un noir ténébreux ou étincelan tes de chromes agressifs, ces coussins à la dureté métallique, ces préserva tifs non pas souples mais rigids comme des stalactites doivent etre con sideres comme autant de pétrifications des conduites humaines, comme des dénonciations de fonctions sociales...Ici encore nous sommes renvoyés à ce concept de mythe, matérialisation surréaliste de l’image, que nous ren controns dans maints textes classiques du surréalisme’”. Denoël Paris and Paul Wunderlich, Paul Wunderlich: Lithographies et Peintures, Les mythes mondains de Paul Wunderlich, (Paris: L’Imprimerie Moderne du Lion, 1972).

Paul Wunderlich (German, 1927 – 2010) Twilight III, 1975 Lithograph, 121/125 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1982

The Cycle of Capitalizing on Violence Hannah Melvin University of Louisville

The exhibition In Between: Time and Transition is in the most general sense, an exploration of spatial and event-based transitionality- a theme provoked in large measure by the recent political events in the United States, not least of which the 2016 presidential election. Such transitionality was read through the anthropological concept, liminality, a term coined by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner1 (1967) to describe physical and psychological processes in various rite of passage.2 But artists also often use their work as an asocial space out of time and are thus also able to critically reflect on the social political and cultural histories in which they live. Very often, their work reveals the historical violence used to sustain and maintain power and dominant social order.

Anthony (1874).”4 The print depicts the saint hallucinating in the desert confronted by an image of death and lust, a skeletal figure and the essence of a woman. This scene was a very different depiction than medieval scenes of eccentric creatures surrounding Saint Anthony.5 Earlier artwork on this theme generally included more Christian symbols of sin and salvation while, according to Starr Figura, Redon

Many of the prints in the exhibition illustrate an encounter with death whether physically or mentally. Almost just as often, these moments open doors for growth. In her book, The Mushroom at The End of The World (2015) Ana Tsing explains the history of the matsutake mushroom and its relationship with human destruction and regrowth under capitalism.3 For example, the mushroom appeared after the bombing of Hiroshima and the plant nursed the forests and the economy back to health. In alternative social context destruction can cause a temporary breakdown of identity leading to reflection and growth.

Redon’s ambiguity is particularly intriguing given his medium. Printmaking is, in general, intended for a broader and thus a more democratic audience. Redon’s work in the medium, is no doubt attributable to the fact that he followed Francisco Goya’s work, a romantic artist who focused on the issues of the people. Redon almost claims a theme of universal mortality

“…would often deny ‘literary’ intention in his art, wanting to prevent public understanding of his work from being limited to its connections to literary sources. He wanted his work to be suggestive in much broader ways, wanted it to be ambiguous, mysterious and broadly allusive rather than literal, illustrative or direct.”6

Turner, Victor W. The Forest of Symbols : Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967. 2 Turner,, Victor W. 3 Anna Tsing The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life n Capitalist Ruins Princeton: Princeton University Press 2015 Revolves around the capitalist journey of the matsutake mushroom. Considers when the matsutake mushroom fertilized and helped the trees of Japanese forests grow after the bombing of Hiroshima. In a completely desolated landscape, seemingly de stroyed, the matsutake grew from the rubble. The mushroom gave hope for life and economy. Tsing explores the capitalist footprint on the world and critics it 4 Starr Figura, “Redon and the Lithographed Portfolio”. Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon p. 89 5 Starr Figura, p. 91 6 Starr Figura, p 93 1

For the print La Mort: C’est moi qui te rends sérieuse; Enlacones-nous (1895), Odilon Redon was “inspired by [Gustave] Flaubert’s phantasmagoric novel The Temptation of Saint 35

of men with the apparitions that appear for Saint Anthony. Susceptibility to death is a very simple but also communal weakness. Redon’s representation of lust, meanwhile, hints at another universality- this one driven by a particularly masculinist, heterosexual gaze. Redon’s version of lust is a female nude, without a face-an identity-less vision of pure sexuality.

the art of screen printing from Harry Gottlieb. The majority of her art created in the 1950s was focused on urban and rural living.8 (1997) Through her prints, she demonstrated violence in these urban and rural areas relating to World War II, a true time of instability and violence. In Casualties of Peace (1946), she uses silkscreen printing to depict a rural brawl enclosed with barbwire. Her choice of environment could be interpreted as a critique of continuous violence – a violence not restricted to strangers, but often involves our neighbors. The work reads as a reminder of death. Although not a physical symbol like a memento mori, her confrontation of violence is a confrontation of possible mortality which no doubt reflects the end of WWII a year prior.

Sylvia Wald (American, 1915 - 2011) Casualties of Peace, 1946 Serigraph University Purchase, 1956

However, the other prints in the exhibition are less exploitative in their depiction of universal human weakness. Sylvia Wald depicts violent scenes of war as an element of the social cycle. Wald is largely known from her abstract expressionist printmaking of the 1950s.7 (1987) But in fact, during her lifetime from 1915-2011 she created diverse body of art. She was a member of the “action panting” movement with Jackson Pollock and in the 1930s she moved to Louisville with her husband. While in Louisville, Wald learned 36

Offering a different perspective of violence, Kara Walker’s etching, Lil’ Patch of Woods (1997), intertwines the grotesque transition of death and decay in this exhibition. Walker is an American artist who is well-known for her silhouettes of the violence of the American south. Her work contains stories from the bible, literature and Western history. While her art utilizes elements of the past, it also serves as a critique on white supremacy today by illustrating the depth to which the oppression is imbedded in social norms. Reba Williams. “The Later History of the Screenprint.” Print Quarterly 4, no. 4 (1987): pg. 382 8 Jules Heller, North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century 1997’ 2283-2285 7

The critique includes the western fantasy of the black African body9 (2010) and the violence of looking, since Walker’s work is often in the gallery setting with detached neutrality, and thus a type of complicity.10 For example, in one of her silhouettes, a seemingly white male inserts medical instruments into the vagina of a black woman, alluding to the use of African bodies within the Western gaze of consuming, assessing, or in desire or fear.11 The gaze of consumption and assessment means western practices evaluating the African body as property physically and culturally, including through the appropriation of African customs. The gaze of desire expresses possession so it is a method of objectification. But in addition to the desiring gaze, Walker also employs a gaze of fear David Wall describes as

Specifically in this print, Walker used a traditional print medium of etching associated with Rembrandt13 which provides layers of meaning given the subject matter of violence related to sexuality in slavery and the exposure of sexual relations between white slave owners and African slaves a tactic, -Wall refers to as hybridity- Walker critiqued Civil War accounts and confronts the reality of consistent dishonesty with sanitized race relations, here a woman of color giving birth during the Civil war with white soldiers watching.14 This work shows the product of the economy of sex in the South.15 The relation to death is quite different than in Wald’s and Redon’s work. While Redon included exploitation in his piece, it was not an inclusion to seek adequate representation. Redon himself exploited the female body to represent lust. On the other hand, Walker intends to reveal the atrocities of race relations and violence against black identity throughout history. Walker portrays the death of identity and “cultural norms” in the U.S. Our current polarized politics in these cycles have been increasingly uncovered. The grotesque in her work abuses norms and visions of an acceptable society to reveal truths.

“The ubiquitous visual tropes of Kara Walker’s work- race, sex, the gothic, the grotesque, violence, violation, abjection, obscenity , desire, death, excrement, and slavery- collide and crash violently and constantly with the racial and sexual registers of American history and culture.”12 This violent collision demonstrates the cycles of violence in history that are inflicted by the oligarchy of the elite such as slavery, which in part was, an economy of sex. This means the slaveholders would rape their slaves to produce more property, thus increasing their wealth. Walker’s work highlights cycles of exploitation and death, even in her earlier print from her series on depictions a war that resembles the Civil War, Lil’Patch of Wood’s. 37

David Wall “Transgression, Excess, and the Violence of Looking in the Art of Kara Walker.” Oxford Art Journal 33, no. 3 (2010): p.284 10 David Wall p. 280 11 David Wall p. 284 12 David Wall p.281 13 Brooklyn Museum Collection “Lil’Patch of Woods” Accession No. 1997.80.2https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/2393 14 Brooklyn Museum 15 Brooklyn Museum 9

Additionally, Walker’s grotesque narratives of the systematic oppression inflicted on people of color relates to W.E.B. Du Bois’s Theory of the veil, which entails deconstructing social identity in regards to race, and exposing the roots of dominance. The veil can be defined to “[represent] a ubiquitous fracturing of society along racial lines. It is present in the structure and culture of society and the development and content of a person’s identity”16 (2013) for example Du Bois notes that “The institutions on the black side of the veil are often dominated and exploited by white institutions.”17 Within that definition, these pieces attempt to transgress the veil of oligarchic or elitist privilege that is systemic. It is no secret that a memento mori is, in a literal sense, a very common theme throughout the history of art. However in this exhibition, these scenes of violence in the prints Casualties of Peace, La Mort, and Lil’ Patch of Woods comment on the effect of death and death from exploitation over time. In fact, in this exhibition, a wide range of dates are included which can actually demonstrate how powerful institutions of the time have created the cycle of violence. It makes us consider if the current state of violence is truly unique or a continuation of dominance. Lynn England, W. Keith Warner; “Theorizing the Veil” W. E. B. Du Bois: Reform, Will, and the Veil. Social Forces 2013; 91 (3) 17 Lynn England, W. Keith Warner 16

Kara Walker (American, b. 1969) Li’l Patch of Woods, 1997 Etching and aquatint 5/35 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2006

Wanderlust Stephanie Gerding University of Louisville

What does it take to go on a journey? Does it take skill or perseverance? Does there have to be a certain level of knowledge for the change? Or can it be on a pure whim? Traveling can happen with one encouraging thought. It happens when one feels the need to change, whether it’s a change in environment, change in mood, or change in spiritual need. People are always put out of their comfort zone to make room for their travels. They are placed on a path to head into a direction they picked for themselves or even a direction others have picked for them. Going on a journey can be stressful. One might know where it leads but only have heard about this place from friends or read about it in books. Sometimes people travel back to where they have been before because they want to be back in that spot or even they were forced back into that spot. The trip can lead to opportunities or nightmares one never thought they would encounter. Traveling brings people to places where they can lead to another journey or travel back. Traveling is a never-ending cycle that began when life was created and will cease to exist when everything stops. One needs movement, thought, effort, and belief to change. So, what does travel mean? It means a metamorphosis of an environment or body, a transformation of confidence, even a modification of prospects. Anyone and everyone can and does partake in the journeys whether they notice it or are oblivious to it. It is a way of life that will always be growing and changing. Through the exhibition of In Between: Time and Transition, audiences are able to look at liminal experiences of travel through history. Limen, Latin for liminal, translates to “threshold”, which 41

Arnold van Gennep used in application to rites of passage in traditional societies. During the rites of passage, an inductee is not quite on either side of the transition but rather is suspended somewhere in between. In that event, a person can experience a form of social and personal disorientation; things that were familiar become unfamiliar. Traveling, or journeying, is a liminal experience. The prints by Sylvia Wald, Rudy Pozzatti, and Bernarda Bryson Shahn express the desires and hardships of travel through the material, subject matter, and even the lives of the artists. Printmaking differs from other forms of art because it originally emerged in the world as a means of mass production that could reach mass populations. “Prints were often utilitarian, education tools in the dorm of religious images, book illustrations, playing cards, maps, and commemoratives of important historic events.”1 The final prints were thus designed to travel to those that needed it or willing to pay for it. The materials of printmaking were typically made from local sources. Later as the international trade emerged, the desire to have use unique tools grew. 1

Saff 1978

do not know the lives and stories of these people, but we do know they were headed for new beginnings.

“Paper had already been shipped long distances from the start of its European production but now also plates, acids, tools, pigments and occasionally roller presses were imported. The trade in these materials fulfilled the need for prints of a technically increasing quality, a development stimulated by the interlaced ambitions of engravers, printers and publishers with their audience.”2 Materials and products of printmaking were traveling further distances seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than ever before. “As other types of printing and communication developed, the hand printmaking processes become more exclusive, attracting artists by the richness and variety inherent in the various techniques.”3 The subject matter of these specific prints tells stories of the travel in the early 1900s. 30,000,000 Immigrants (1937) by Bernarda Bryson Shahn in 1937 represents the 30 million immigrants to come to New York from 1890 to 1920. Travel by boat became more accessible during the nineteenth century, which then allowed for relocating peoples more accessible. Her husband, Ben Shahn, was a child when he traveled to the United States from Russia in 1906. He was apart of the 30 million immigrants Bernarda Bryson depicts, indicating the movement was close to her heart. 30,000,000 Immigrants depicts men, women, and children aboard a standard vessel. There is a shadowed Statue of Liberty in the background as a reflection on a window. With this perspective, we can interpret that the boat has traveled past Lady Liberty and headed toward New York. The United States is considered the freedom land and the Land of Opportunities. We 42

Sylvia Wald’s Casualties of Peace (1946) was completed in 1946. She created the serigraphy referring to Aliyah Bet, a movement of Jews to Palestine during WWII. The escape was mainly seen as illegal immigration by Britain because of the White Paper Act of 1939. The print portrays a barbed wire fence and Jewish refugees on the other side. Those refugees represent the Jewish immigrants that were drowned once reaching the coast of Palestine. It was a transitional event for the Jewish people because it was a transition for finding a new place to call home. In contrast to 30,000,000 Immigrants, the refugees represented in the print did not have a choice. As the immigrants to New York’s Staten Island mostly made the conscience choice to move. For the Jewish refugees it was stay in East Europe and die, or travel with hope toward Palestine. However, this specific depiction is Sylvia Wald’s memorial to the fallen people that were not granted a hopeful beginning. Another print in the University of Louisville’s collection, but not displayed in the exhibition, is The Middle Passage by Bernarda Bryson Shahn. The print is showcasing African Diaspora versus Sylvia Wald’s depiction of the Jewish Diaspora. The Middle Passage (1937) portrays a group a famished African people crouched together on a ship. The print is purposed to display the travel conditions people experienced during the Atlantic slave trade. 2 3

Stijnman 2012 Saff 1978

The conditions are neither ideal nor desired. The three prints just mentioned shows the different experiences people have with travel. Those prints can also be linked to what is happening in our political climate—Trump’s attempts to relocated immigrants, banning Muslim travel, and refusing the Syrian Refugees.

the center of the print with the phases of the moon. With imagery influenced by the Apollo missions’ photography, the idea of boarders between nations became unimportant. People were able to see the world as a collective whole.

“The globe shrinks for those who own it; for the displaced to the dispossessed, the migrant or the refugee, no distance is more awesome than the few feet across borders or frontiers.” ~ Homi Bhabha Rudy Pozzatti’s lithograph showcases a new type of travel. Before travel had been limited to walking, riding, boating, and even automobiles, but Pozzatti commemorated this new kind—flight. He created Apollo just after the Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. The print glorifies the advancement in air and space travel with reference the Wright brother’s plane and Icarus from Greek mythology. “Pozzatti says that “the seeds for [his lithograph] Apollo were sown nearly 10 years before actually doing the work,” when he and fellow artist Jimmy Ernst were visiting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on a cultural exchange program sponsored by the U.S. State Department.”4 In the print we can also see astronauts Grissom, Chaffee, and White, who lost their lives in the Apollo 1 fire, and the figures of John Glenn and Alan Shepard. Interestingly, the Apollo missions produced the first seen photographs of Earth, like 22727 (1972) and Earthrise (1968). Pozzatti uses Earthrise in 43

Rudy Pozzatti (American, b. 1925) Apollo, 1979 Etching, 1/5 Gift of Dorothy Pozzatti, 2010

Rudy Pozzatti n.d.

“The globe was newly—and subtly—interpreted as a sign of spatial and social incorporation rather than of direct imperial domination... Imperial expansion, henceforth, was to be directed peacefully beyond the Earth for the benefit of “all mankind” rather than into the territories of other human cultures.”5

Indiana University, Bloomington; the Yale Summer Art School, Norfolk, Connecticut” just to name a few, for the list goes on to three more pages.6 A very fortunate collection of his works has grown significantly at the University of Louisville, as well. Sylvia Wald and Bernarda Bryson Shahn stayed in the US but travelled within. Wald was born in Philadelphia, PA. “Dissatisfied with her life in Philadelphia, Wald moved to New York City in 1937.”7 Later due to her husband’s involvement in the war, she traveled to Missouri and Louisville, Kentucky, which is where she explored her screen-printing. Shahn was born in Ohio where she developed her artistry and began teaching. After interviewing Riviera Diego, Shahn met her husband. She travelled to New York with him and they became a duo in production. They collaborated to create pieces for the WPA where they travelled to New Jersey, New York, and Washington D.C. to produce murals for post offices. All the artists show that the travel is a desirable and customary feature of life. Not only through their own desire to travel for work or find a new place to call home, they also show wanderlust in their prints. The subject matters were very heavily filled with means and necessity of transportation. Printmaking itself is a medium that travels, weather it is the tools to make it or the print itself. The medium comes from many corners of the world and is then purposefully created to travel back to those corners.

Rudy Pozzatti (American, b. 1925) Flagellation, 1975 Lithograph with stone transfer, 1/45 Gift of Dorothy Pozzatti, 2010

But not only do we see the desire to travel in the prints, but also in the artist’s lives. Rudy Pozzatti was born in Telluride, Colorado. At the age of 18, he served 18 months abroad in the military. After returning, he perused printmaking, which then led to his vast travels. He began teaching at universities like “University of Colorado, Boulder;

Rudy Pozzatti n.d. Cosgrove 1994 7 Pozzatti 2011 8 Wald 1993 5 6

In Between: Identity Liz Jordan University of Louisville

In the Western world we have assigned great value to the concepts of individuality and of truly knowing oneself, which has resulted in the belief that selfhood can be stabilized, and that with work we can exist as a unified, whole being. A plethora of self-help books, which claim to equip the reader with tools to help them achieve their best self, has given way to a World Wide Web littered with amateur psychology and personality quizzes— all of which promise to reveal the reader’s true (fixed) identity. However, psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud have proposed that selfhood is not whole or unified, but is actually built from many fragmented pieces. Carl Jung’s theory of the Self supports this claim that selfhood, rather than being a single, unified entity, is made up of many different parts. In an essay about gender and representation, historian Tamar Garb suggests that as a person develops and unconsciously acquires identity, they occupy various “subject positions.”1 These subject positions are constantly shifting on a matrix of identity. Rather than occupying a single position upon the matrix at any given time, the subject occupies multiple positions—such as gender, race, social and economic status, etc.—and it is in the spaces between the positions and at the places where they intersect that selfhood is allowed to develop and have meaning. Jung’s theory of the self suggests that there are certain aspects of the unconscious mind that the Self desires to keep in balance in order to achieve a fully integrated, whole, individualized identity. These are the Persona, the Anima/Animus, and the Shadow. The Persona is the identity a subject presents to the outer word.2 Though it is

referred to as a singular concept, it can present in multiples. Rather than a single person projecting a single Persona, an individual can project multiple Personae depending on the environment they occupy at any given moment. We often talk about Personae in our daily lives in terms of “the hats we put on,” or “masks we wear.”3 Jung’s concept of the Persona can be applied to Constance Clark Willis’s Eclipse (1950). In her color block print, the artist has shown two masks half-layered over one another. In the areas of overlap, characteristics of the masks compliment and complete one another. The left edge of the right mask defines the right edge of the nose on the left mask. Similarly, a portion of the curved edge of the left mask creates the right edge of the nose on the right mask. The eyes of each of the masks are shaped in such a way that the overlap that occurs is nearly perfect. The way each of Willis’s masks supplement the forms of the other and the sharing of the middle eye speaks to the ways in which each mask or Persona that a person may present to the outside world is grounded in a single unconscious that affects the appearance of the Personae. Tamar Garb, “Gender and Representation,” Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 221. 2 Bradley Bailey, “Fragmentation, Transformation, and Self-Realization: Duchamp and the Formation of the Creative Imago,” Notes in the History of Art 27, no. 2/3 (Winter/Spring 2008): 49. 3 Bailey, 49. As Bailey notes in his article, the Latin word for “mask” is persona. 1

The unconscious from which the masks are created is multifaceted, yet connected. Rather than a single person presenting many Personae that are radically different, they are all connected by the person’s unconscious mind. Additionally, the overlap of Willis’s masks suggests a sort of transitional period: the multiple Personae that a person projects shift and morph into one another rather than completely replacing one after the other.

artistic identity is one that persisted beyond the nineteenth century. Like Cassatt, Morisot, O’Keeffe and others, Willis had to negotiate her gender with her art practice. She had to simultaneously occupy both subject positions, and create and present Personae for each. Marcel Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bond (reprint 1938) can also be discussed in terms of the multiplicity of identity, but rather than depict different, interconnected Personae, the lithograph functions as an example of Jung’s notion of the Anima/Animus. Rrose Sélavy, Duchamp’s female alter ego, is his Anima, “the feminine side of [his] male psyche.”6 Though she is not pictured directly in the print, the inclusion of Sélavy’s signature draws attention to her existence within Duchamp’s selfhood.7 She came into being after Duchamp returned to Paris following his venture in Buenos Aires.8 Bailey argues that while in Buenos Aires, Duchamp experienced a “liminal phase” that ultimately led him to a “transformative period in which he engaged in a process of stabilizing his masculine personality with his anima,” Sélavy.9

In Willis’s life in particular, two of these Personae may be understood as the subject positions she occupied as both a woman and an artist. There is a long tradition of female artists being forced to constantly negotiate their identities as artists with their identities as women. In her discussion of gender and representation in nineteenth century Paris, Garb notes that: “[t]he term ‘artist’ is an apparently genderless one, applying equally to men and women. But the very existence of the phrase ‘woman artist’ as the feminine equivalent of the word ‘artist’ belies its sexual neutrality.”4 Though she is writing specifically about the relationships artists like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot had between their identities as “woman” and “artist,” Garb’s statement holds true in other time periods as well. In talking about her work and its reception within the male-dominated artistic circle she shared, Georgia O’Keeffe has said “[t]he men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.”5 Clearly, the complex relationship between gendered identity and

Garb, 230 Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012), 303. 6 Bailey, 49. The name Duchamp chose for his female alter ego has been mined for meaning since her presentation in the early 1920s. A commonly accepted belief is that the name “Rrose Sélavy” is an oronym for the phrase “Eros, c’est la vie,” meaning “Sex is life.” 7 Bailey, 52. 8 Bailey, 52. 9 Bailey, 52. 4 5

reference to the goddess Aphrodite, who emerged from sea foam.12 If understood as horns, Duchamp’s hair does not contribute much to the reading of the portrait from a multiple identity perspective. However, if his hair is interpreted as wings, as Mauricio Cruz has posited, the portrait makes much more sense in this context. Cruz suggests that Duchamp’s foam-sculpted hair resembles the wings on Hermes’s hat. According to this reading, Duchamp’s portrait references Hermaphroditus, the offspring of Aphrodite and Hermes, who is known for his androgyny. Bailey also notes that Jung used the diamond as a symbol for the Self, and Duchamp has included two in his print, one above each signature.15 To Bailey, this denotes both Sélavy and Duchamp as equal contributors to the creation of the print.16 In his development of and performances as Sélavy, Duchamp was negotiating his perceived self with his Anima and integrating the feminine other into his understanding of his selfhood.17 Further, the references to Aphrodite and Hermes that Duchamp used as guises in his portrait exemplify Jung’s notion of the Anima. Bailey, 52. Bailey, 52. 12 Bailey, 54. Bailey also notes that the Greek word for “foam” is aphros. 13 Mauricio Cruz, “Voisins du Zéro: Hermaphroditism and Velocity,” Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 2, no. 5 (April 2003): 1. http://www.toutfait.com/ issues/volume2/issue_5/articles/mauricio/mauricio1.html. 14 Bailey, 54. The term “hermaphrodite” is derived from the Hermaphroditus myth. Bailey uses this term in his article, but I feel it is important to note that the term “intersex” has replaced “hermaphrodite” in current discourse about non-normative biological se 15 Bailey, 54. 16 Bailey, 54. 17 Duchamp also seems to have been working with the theme of androgyny, and poten tially the multiplicity of selfhood, prior to introducing the world to Sélavy when he drew a mustache on a postcard of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q., 1919). 10 11

Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968) Obligation Monte Carlo from XXe Siecle #4, 1938 Lithograph

Duchamp continues to play with multiplicity of identity, with the concept of the Anima in the portrait (taken by Man Ray), which he included in the print.10 Duchamp wears a beard of bubbles, and his hair has been shaped into what can be read as horns or wings.11 His bubble beard is a 49

Like Willis’s and Duchamp’s prints, Walter Askin’s Devilish Delusions (1998) can be understood as a representation of fractured identity that Jung describes in his theory of the Self. The Shadow is the aspect of unconscious mind that is “responsible for the drive to more imaginative and transgressive behaviors.”18 In an essay about his understanding of good and evil, Jung notes that when subjects are faced with decisions that could be deemed good or evil, they are forced to confront their own shadow.19 Jung states: “Confronting a man with his shadow means showing him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.”20 According to Jung, a key part of the development of selfhood is the subject’s confrontation with both the good and evil that always exist as potential routes for the subject to take. In this particular passage from his article, he uses the terms “light” and “shadow” to refer to good and evil. He makes a point to state that good and evil are constructions of society, and not definitive judgments.21 He also notes that both are relative, not to each other, but rather to the situations in which the subject is faced with them.22 50

In this regard, Devilish Delusions can be read as a representation of the moment when the subject is faced with both their shadow and their light. In the lithograph, Askin has depicted a subject, printed in white, caught between representations of Good and Evil. Good is represented by the yellow figure on the left side of the print. The figure’s color and halo make it identifiable as Good. In contrast to Good, the partial figure to the right of the print represents Evil. Evil is characterized with black horns and a red face. Again, the characteristics of the figure make it identifiable as Evil.23 The subject exists in the middle ground between the other figures, which is where Jung argues that selfhood can be negotiated with Good and Evil. He states that it is in this middle ground where the subject can acknowledge both Good and Evil, the shadow and the light, that the subject is “no longer at the mercy of the opposites.”24 Freedom of selfhood develops when the subject recognizes the opposites, not as absolutes, but as relative choices or paths. In this in between space, the subject can acknowledge the Shadow and the potential for transgressions of moral and ethical codes, and chose (depending on the situation) to either give into the Shadow, or to choose the light. Bailey, 49. Carl Jung, “Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 5, no. 2 (July 1960): 96. 20 Jung, 96. 21 Jung, 91. 22 Jung, 93. 23 The yellow/halo association with good and red/horns association with evil assumes a Western system of signifiers. These signs could have entirely different meanings outside of a Western logic. 24 Jung, 97. 18

The factor that ties these works together is that they all represent moments of transition, of “in between-ness,” during the development of selfhood. Willis’s Eclipse exemplifies the multiplicity of public identities, or Personae, as well as the ways in which each of a subject’s Personae are connected to each other through their foundations in the subject’s unconscious mind. The masks in Eclipse can also be understood as transitional; the print captures the idea of one Persona shifting into the next. The many public identities a subject expresses throughout the course of their life are formed in moments of transition, in moments when the subject’s unconscious is attempting to reorder its “fragmented sense of identity.”25

Walter Askins (American, b. 1929) Devlish Delusions from Colorprint USA, 1998 Lithograph

constant negotiation with the many facets of the subject’s identity. Because selfhood is formed on a matrix, and because a single subject occupies many positions on that matrix simultaneously, selfhood can never be concretely defined. It is constantly shifting, built of many shifting parts. Jung theorizes that the goal of the Self is to “seek” unification and integration of all of the parts that make up the subject’s selfhood.28 The act of seeking, searching for, attempting to find unity is a process that is infinitely on-going. It is in the Self’s quest for unity that the “in betweenness” is addressed and used to produce the subject’s selfhood, even if only for a moment.

Just as in Eclipse and Monte Carlo Bond, fragmentation is a theme of Devilish Delusions. Here the fragmentation occurs between Good and Evil, between shadow and light. In this aspect of selfhood, the Self is forced to allow the Shadow to present itself to the subject. The subject has to then confront the shadow, to truly see it, without allowing it to overcome them.26 The Self can find temporary stability when the subject acknowledges both Good and Evil, and in Jung’s opinion, the Self will then be able to properly see its own light and use that light—that stability—to guide future decisions.27 While the Self may create order, or find stability, within these moments of transition—in between Personae, in between the Anima/Animus and the subject’s primary gendered identity, in between the Shadow and the subject’s own light—the order and stability are temporary. The Self is in 51

Bailey, 49. Jung, 99. 27 Jung, 99 25 26

Out of Time: Francisco Goya, Kara Walker, and Grotesque Spaces Joel Darland University of Louisville

In this exhibition, depictions of liminal time and space are sometimes accompanied by grotesque and monstrous imagery that establishes contemplative places outside of conventional understandings time and space. Drawing on texts by Victor Turner and Gilles Deleuze, my discussion centers on the prints of Francisco Goya and Kara Walker and the ways they utilize elements of the monstrous in their works. Both Goya and Walker attempt to shock viewers into recognizing the ideological underpinnings of their own history and culture in a way that is both reflexive and abstract. In essence, the works of both resist linear narrative in favor of a more interconnected structure independent of normally experienced time, or what Deleuze calls “time out of joint.”1 To address the specific conceptions of time and space in the prints of Goya and Walker is to consider the ways in which time might be conceived of as a static rather dynamic phenomenon. Time is experiential, and if it can be expressed or experienced in a form akin to the static image, then it is necessary to establish a certain theoretical framework for understanding both time outside of its normal configuration and the spaces in which this sort of time might occur. In Victor Turner’s The Forest of Symbols (1967), he discusses certain elements of the rites of passage in several African cultures. Of prime importance is a concept he calls the sacra, the “heart of the matter” or the vital substance that imparts meaning to both the rites and the social and religious structures within which they are situated.2 The sacra is integral to the psychic relationship between people and their cultures: 55

it represents the most “basic assumptions” that enable members of a society to “think with some degree of abstraction about their cultural milieu.”3 Essentially, the sacra represents the ultimate “abstraction” that enables abstract thought, what might also be called “ideology.” In Turner’s analysis, rites of passage occur in a separate temporal and psychic space in which social, religious, and cultural structures can be properly and meaningfully contemplated.4 In the space of the sacra, Turner identifies the appearance of monstrous caricatures intended to aid initiates in their “reflection.”5 Monsters, representative of the various pieces that make up the structures of society and cosmos, enable the work of the sacra. However, the monstrous does not simply exaggerate societal norms, but attempts to counterbalance what is typical, habitual, or common to the structure of normal time in normal space.6 In the sacra’s special time and space, the transformation of the normal into new, novel, and monstrous forms effectively casts culture’s constituent parts “into relief” and consequently reorganizes the typical operations of time and space into different configurations.7 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia Univer sity Press, 1994), 88. 2 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 102. 3 Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 108. 4 Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 105. 5 Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 105. 6 Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 105. 7 Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 106. 1

Caprichos (1797-99) functions through this relationship between the viewer and the print. Much like Turner’s initiates, the viewer must confront the means of his or her own experience in way that forestalls the habitual reading of cultural and historical images in favor of abstract contemplation: the what, where, and why outside the linear or narrative operations of time.10 Goya’s series attempts to empty time of its linear connectivity, a relationship in which the past affects the present and the present the future. Instead, Los Caprichos offers the abstract experience of change as form through Goya’s exchange of a sequential structure for one that is serial, empty of cardinal or directional time.11

The monstrous is shocking because it dislodges elements of reality from their surface-level understandings and exposes the underlying abstract forces that are at work. Therefore, the “heart of the matter” is neither the monster nor its reality, but a cut or fracture in normal time and space. Gilles Deleuze, in his book Difference and Repetition (1968), calls this fracture the “caesura,” a term borrowed from poetics that indicates the silent space that separates lines of poetry from one another.8 The fracture represents “time out of joint,” a unique configuration that interrupts the progressive “cardinal” flow of time, the markers or moments that are sequentially assembled to form past and present, and replaces it with static “form.”9 The shock of the sacral can be thought of in much the same way: a space in which time itself is abstracted to freely float apart from the normal flows of before and after that structure either side of liminal space-time.

When Goya first published Los Caprichos, he was attempting to critique certain Enlightenment modes of thinking that he perceived to be overly reductive and “quixotic.”12 He drew on both satirical and figurative traditions to call attention to more deep-seated cultural assumptions that drove the “error and folly” of contemporaneous society.13 This was the drive: to challenge not just the errors of culture but the underlying structures that contributed to these modes of thinking and perceiving.

By this circuitous route I return to the print, especially as part of a series, that exchanges the experience of time as a direction for the experience of time as the formal expression of its nature as repetition. In effect, the print is a repetition created by but temporally independent of other repetitions (the actions of the process itself, for example). Through this abstract understanding of the printing process, the print can offer an experience of sacral space as a surface through which the viewer no longer experiences time as progressive but as a form divorced from the sequential designations of before and after. Francisco Goya’s series Los

Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 88. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 88. 10 These are the general terms through which the sacra is communicated. While the sacra it self remains hidden, it can be understood as an abstract rather than specific idea. Deleuze, in his formulation of time as order rather than direction, calls it “empty,” devoid of content. I am attempting to draw a parallel between these two abstractions and they ways they function in the space of the print. See: Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 102; Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 88. 11 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 89. 12 John J. Ciofalo, “Goya’s Enlightenment Protagonist: a Quixotic Dreamer of Reason,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (1997): 422. 13 Andrew Shulz, Goya’s Caprichos: Aesthetics, Perception, and the Body (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 2005), 179. 8 9

Enter the monsters. Goya’s most terrifying imagery, masked forms looming in the murky darkness and hybrid human/animal monsters terrorizing aghast figures, was as shocking to the viewer as to the characters in the scenes in which they appear. This conflation of external and internal spaces, achieved through the viewer’s identification with the horrified masses within the print, pulls the viewer out of his or her experience of reality and into that of the print. The sixth plate in the series, Nadie se conoce (Nobody knows himself), offers little in the way of narrative legibility. Figures, variously and grotesquely masked (or are those their true faces?), are engaged somehow, perhaps in a way alluded to by the mysterious and somewhat obtuse caption. But Goya is not upfront with the viewer: he provides no context, no external narrative structure, and no chronological connection between the prints that come before and after. The figures are essentially rootless, but rootless in a way that serves a very distinct purpose. Like Turner’s monsters, Goya’s chronologically illogical grotesques refer back to themselves in an abstract way. Rather than perceive the figures in Nadie se conoce as characters within a narrative, Goya’s subtle play with narrative structure offers what Andrew Schulz calls “a cue for the viewer to understand that the scene before him need not be reconciled with the logic of sense data.”14 The viewer is encouraged to perceive outside the normal orders of experience through the fracture provided by the print. To mingle both Turner and Deleuze’s terms, Goya’s series operates on both the monstrous’s ability to shock and the shock that it produces. Both

a form and a function, Los Caprichos is both the hinge and the unhinging of linear time: story structure gives way to an assemblage of thematic categories whose importance, outside of conventional narrative, lies in their ability to maintain abstraction. Goya abandons the specificity of Nadie se conoce’s masked figures in favor of the concepts of masks and masking: “the scene presented is one of artifice and estrangement” rather than some specific carnivalesque story.15 Likewise, Y aun no se van! (And still they don’t go!), with its deformed and contorted figures struggling against some unknown anonymous force in an equally unrecognizable landscape, offers no legible reconciliation. The “and” of the print’s title seems to allude to something preceding the action, but the overall structure of the series resists such a connection. The viewer is left with something more abstract, such as the concepts of fate or futility. The nature of this serial “isolation”16 draws the viewer into an active engagement with the work itself rather than its content. The monstrous is not necessarily unsettling by its own accord, but unsettling because it seeks to place the viewer in relationship with a psychic reality that exists independent of or contrary to the structures of perceptual chronologic reality. Kara Walker’s L’il Patch of Woods (1997) provides a similar psychic space that works through Shulz, Goya’s Caprichos, 190. Shulz, Goya’s Caprichos, 182. 16 Shulz, Goya’s Caprichos, 182. 14 15

a kind of irrational “hybrid place/time” logic hinged between contemporary experience and the experience of history.17 Vaguely historical characters, in this case Confederate soldiers, mingle with a historical racial/racist pastiche, Walker’s “negress” character, the embodiment of the white projection of “blackness” onto the black body.18 Walker’s fragmented admixture of both history and ahistorical nostalgia produces an experience severed from the linear flow of time. Similar in some ways to Goya’s strategy of “suspension,”19 Walker confronts the viewer with a scene that cannot be reconciled with habitual ways of reading the thematic content of history. The effect is a jarring and confusing mingling of “fact” with “fiction,” a monstrous configuration that casts the various elements of the scene into stark relief. The girl in the left hand corner of L’il Patch of Woods appears to be giving birth, but in an unsettlingly graphic way that pulls the figures out of the scene through the marked uncanniness of the figures.20 The repetition of imagery in Walker’s work acts to fracture the structure of history and pull it into a space independent of the constraints of past or present. Instead of treating her images as historical accounts or narratives, they serve a transformative function intended to divest the viewer of his or her subconsciously assumed roles of oppressor or victim, the very structural assumptions that constitute those histories.21 In an ironic way, Walker achieves what Turner described as the purpose of the liminal “stage of reflection” where initiates are “alternately forced and encouraged to think about their society, their cosmos, and the powers that generate and

sustain them.”22 Walker redeploys the vocabulary of racism as a means of shocking the viewer into a dialog with those elements that “generate and sustain” the dynamics of a culture so steeped in its refusal to acknowledge the realities of its own racist social and cultural structures. As part of a series of four prints, L’il Patch of Woods repeats this confrontation with the viewer as a thematic motif. However, it is a confrontation that is repeated rather than played out to a resolution; Walker does not create a “world of redemption.”23 The fracture is wholesale, and it promises no reconciliation on either side of caesura. If the narrative form of time is to be refused, then its structure, based on the progression of beginnings to endings, is refused as well. What Walker offers the viewer is a space where history, that is the blindness of a “neutral” past, does not interfere. The experience of “time out of joint” offers the viewer the ability to forge a subjective position through direct confrontation with sacral space. Both Walker and Goya conjure up monsters and spaces that are neither speculative nor imaginative, but the reality of our lived experience. Mark Reinhardt, “The Art of Racial Profiling,” in Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress, eds. Ian Berry et al. (Saratoga Springs, NY: The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, with The MIT Press, 2003), Exhibition catalog, 116. 18 Reinhardt, “The Art of Racial Profiling,” 116. 19 Shulz, Goya’s Caprichos, 184. 20 A Freudian concept that refers to childhood experiences that return in unfamiliar and estranging ways. In the case of Walker’s work, her imagery unseats certain racist assump tions, experiences of the “childhood” of national identity, and makes this presupposed and structural racism starkly unsettling to the contemporary viewer. See: Reinhardt, “The Art of Racial Profiling,” 117. 21 Reinhardt, “The Art of Racial Profiling,” 128. 22 Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 105. 23 Reinhardt, “The Art of Racial Profiling,” 129. 17

These prints offer us the realization that these monsters and therefore the way we perceive reality, are of our own making. As we move outside of that space, back into the time of past, present, future, the experience of the sacra invites us to consider just what it is that constitutes the ultimate experience of our own reality.

Exhibited Works University of Louisville Archives

Donald Furst (American, b.1953) Lead Thou Me to the Rock that is Higher than I from Colorprint USA, 1998 Etching

Constance Clark Willis (American, 1914-2004) Eclipse, 1950 Woodcut, 1/15 Gift of John and Kay Begley, 2005

Federico Castellon (Spanish, 1914-1971) Rendezvous in a Landscape, N.D. Lithograph; Gift of Miss Leona E. Prasse in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Justus Bier, 1963

Sylvia Wald (American, 1915 - 2011) Casualties of Peace, 1946 Serigraph University Purchase, 1956

Timothy High (American, b. 1931) Fence and Shed, n.d. Hand-reduction screen print

Aristide Maillol (French, 1861-1944) Syrinx Disappears in a Grove of Reeds, 1937 from Longusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Daphnis and Chloe Woodcut Gift of Miss Julia Henning, 1957

Bernarda Bryson (Shahn) (American, 1903-2004) 30,000,000 Immigrants, 1937 Lithograph Gift of Roy Stryker, 1965

Rudy Pozzatti (American, b. 1925) Flagellation, 1979 Etching, 1/5 Gift of Dorothy Pozzatti, 2010

Rockwell Kent (American, 1882-1971) Flame, 1928 Wood engraving Gift of Miss Leona E. Prasse in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Justus Bier, 1963

Robert Kipniss (American, b.1931) Fence and Shed, no date Lithograph

Barry Moser (American, b. 1940) Catacombs, c. 1975 Wood engraving, 51/200 Gift of the artist, 2001

Paul Wunderlich (German, 1927 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2010) Twilight III, 1975 Lithograph, 121/125 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1982

Sylvia Wald (American, 1915 - 2011) Chrysalis, 1950 Serigraph Gift of the Artist, 1993

Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968) Obligation Monte Carlo from XXe Siecle #4, 1938 Lithograph

Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954) Gaiety Burlesque, 1930 Etching Gift of Steven Block, 2007

Rudy Pozzatti (American, b. 1925) Apollo, 1979 Etching, 1/5 Gift of Dorothy Pozzatti, 2010

Walter Askins (American, b. 1929) Devlish Delusions from Colorprint USA, 1998 Lithograph

Carolyn Autry (American, 1940-2011) Untitled (interior with fireplace), N.D. Etching, 24/25 Gift of Albert R. Sperath, 2012

Ballweg, Janet C. (American, b. 1961) Boiling Point, 2002 Solarplate intaglio, 21/25 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2008

William Hogarth (English, 1697-1764) The Heir Plate 1 from Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress, 1735 Engraving Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1962

Kara Walker (American, b. 1969) Liâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;l Patch of Woods, 1997 Etching and aquatint 5/35 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2006

Jason Houton-Mudd Razorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Edge from Boundary Lines, 2016

Francisco Jose de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Nadie se conoce, 1797-99 Etching and aquatint Gift of the Carnegie Corporation, 1937

William Hogarth (English, 1697-1764) The Madhouse Plate 8 Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress, 1735 Engraving Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1962

Francisco Jose de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Y aun no se van!, 1797-99 Etching and aquatint Gift of the Carnegie Corporation, 1937

Janet C. Ballweg (American, b. 1961) The Weight of the World, 2006 Solarplate intaglio, 6/28 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2008

Exhibition Checklist

Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968) Obligation Monte Carlo from XXe Siecle #4, 1938 Lithograph 45, 49, 77

Walter Askins (American, b. 1929) Devlish Delusions from Colorprint USA, 1998 Lithograph 51, 80

Donald Furst (American, b.1953) Lead Thou Me to the Rock that is Higher than I from Colorprint USA, 1998 Etching 63

William Hogarth (English, 1697-1764) The Madhouse Plate 8 from Rake’s Progress, 1735 Engraving Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1962 87

Jason Houton-Mudd Razor’s Edge from Boundary Lines, 2016

Carolyn Autry (American, 1940-2011) Untitled (interior with fireplace), N.D. Etching, 24/25 Gift of Albert R. Sperath, 2012

Francisco Jose de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Nadie se conoce, 1797-99 Etching and aquatint Gift of the Carnegie Corporation, 1937

7, 11, 86

Janet C. Ballweg (American, b. 1961) Boiling Point, 2002 Solarplate intaglio, 21/25 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2008

Francisco Jose de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Y aun no se van!, 1797-99 Etching and aquatint Gift of the Carnegie Corporation, 1937

Robert Kipniss (American, b.1931) Fence and Shed, no date Lithograph

Janet C. Ballweg, (American, b. 1961) The Weight of the World, 2006 Solarplate intaglio, 6/28 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2008

Timothy High (American, b. 1931) Fence and Shed, n.d. Hand-reduction screen print

Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954) Gaiety Burlesque, 1930 Etching Gift of Steven Block, 2007 14, 78

Federico Castellon (Spanish, 1914-1971) Rendezvous in a Landscape, N.D. Lithograph; Gift of Miss Leona E. Prasse in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Justus Bier, 1963 31, 65

William Hogarth (English, 1697-1764) The Heir Plate 1 from Rake’s Progress, 1735 Engraving Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1962 83

Aristide Maillol (French, 1861-1944) Syrinx Disappears in a Grove of Reeds, 1937 from Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe Woodcut Gift of Miss Julia Henning, 1957 68

Rockwell Kent (American, 1882-1971) Flame, 1928 Wood engraving Gift of Miss Leona E. Prasse in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Justus Bier, 1963 Cover, 71

Barry Moser (American, b. 1940) Catacombs, c. 1975 Wood engraving, 51/200 Gift of the artist, 2001 3, 73

Sylvia Wald (American, 1915 - 2011) Chrysalis, 1950 Serigraph Gift of the Artist, 1993

Rudy Pozzatti (American, b. 1925) Apollo, 1979 Etching, 1/5 Gift of Dorothy Pozzatti, 2010 40, 44, 70

Kara Walker (American, b. 1969) Li’l Patch of Woods, 1997 Etching and aquatint 5/35 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 2006 38, 53, 84

Rudy Pozzatti (American, b. 1925) Apollo, 1979 Etching, 1/5 Gift of Dorothy Pozzatti, 2010 43, 79

Constance Clark Willis (American, 1914-2004) Eclipse, 1950 Woodcut, 1/15 Gift of John and Kay Begley, 2005 15, 19, 64

Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) La Mort: C’est moi qui te rends sérieuse; Enlaçons-nous Plate 20 from Tentation de St. Antoine, 1895 Lithograph; Gift of Vincent Price Collection, Sears, Roebuck & Co., 1964; 26, 29, 76

Paul Wunderlich (German, 1927 – 2010) Twilight III, 1975 Lithograph, 121/125 Morris B. Belknap, Jr. Bequest Fund, 1982; 32, 74

22, 75

Bernarda Bryson (Shahn) (American, 1903-2004) 30,000,000 Immigrants, 1937 Lithograph Gift of Roy Stryker, 1965 20, 69

Sylvia Wald (American, 1915 - 2011) Casualties of Peace, 1946 Serigraph University Purchase, 1956 33, 26, 66

Hite Art Institute The Department of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville was founded in 1937. In 1946, the Department was endowed as the Hite Art Institute in recognition of the bequest of Allen R. and Marcia S. Hite. The Institute currently has 24 full-time faculty members, a full-time staff of six, and 400 undergraduate and graduate majors in the combined studio, art history, and critical & curatorial studies areas. As the most comprehensive Fine Arts program in the state of Kentucky, we offer majors the opportunity to earn a BA, BFA, MA or MFA in a variety of disciplines. Areas of study include art history, ceramics, critical & curatorial studies, drawing, fiber, glass, graphic design, interior design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture. The University of Louisville, founded in 1798, is one of the oldest municipal universities in the United States. With a current enrollment of 22,000 students, the University of Louisville is Kentuckyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s major urban university and one of the most rapidly expanding universities in the United States.

Mission The mission of the Hite Art Institute is to educate our students to function in the forefront of the art world, to inspire critical thinking, promote a diversity of perspectives, and engage in the most current scholarship in art history, theory, studio art, and curatorial practices. The Hite Endowment has allowed the department to continue to excel by providing support for academic programs, library acquisitions, student scholarships, faculty and student research, visiting artists and scholars, and exhibitions.

Faculty Scott Massey, M.F.A. Director, Hite Art Institute Chair, Department of Fine Arts Associate Professor, Sculpture

Tiffany Calvert, M.F.A. Assistant Professor, Painting Mary Carothers, M.F.A. Professor, Photography

Christopher Fulton, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Art History

Ying Kit Chan, M.F.A. Professor, foundations, drawings, art and social change

Benjamin Hufbauer, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Art History

Mitch Eckert, M.F.A. Associate Professor, Photography

Susan Jarosi, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and Gender Studies and Art History

James Grubola, M.F.A. Professor, Drawing Director of Graduate Studies in Studio Art

Pearlie Johnson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Pan-African Studies and ArtHistory

Barbara Hanger, M.F.A. Associate Professor, Art Education

Jongwoo Jeremy Kim, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Art History Director of Graduate Studies in Art History

Meena Khalili, M.F.A. Assistant Professor, Graphic Design Mark Priest, M.F.A. Professor, Painting

Delin Lai, Ph.D. Professor, Art History

ChĂŠ Rhodes, M.F.A. Associate Professor, Glass

Chris Reitz, Ph.D. Assistant Professor and Program Head, Critical and Curatorial Studies Gallery Director, Hite Art Institute

Rachel Singel, M.F.A. Assistant Professor, Printmaking

Moon-he Baik, M.F.A. Associate Professor, Interior Design

Steven Skaggs, M.Sc. Professor, Graphic Design

Todd Burns, M.F.A. Associate Professor, Ceramics

Leslie Friesen, B.A. Power Agency Designer-in-Residence, Graphic Design

Kyoungmee Kate Byun, M.F.A. Assistant Professor, Interior Design

Philip Miller, M.F.A. Assistant Professor (term), Foundations 94

Staff Theresa Berbet, M.A. Academic Coordinator, Senior Graduate Program Assistant Studio Art, Critical & Curatorial Studies Janice Blair Program Assistant, Senior, Art History Graduate Program Assistant, Art History Jesse Gibbs, B.F.A. Sculpture Shop Technician Jessica Bennett Kincaid, M.A. Coordinator of Collections and Exhibitions RenĂŠe K. Murphy, B.F.A. Administrative Assistant, Studio Art Program Linda Rowley Unit Business Manager

Contributors Whitney Cox, Writer Michael Chao, Cover Typography Joel Darland, Writer Stephanie Gerding, Writer Liz Jordan, Writer Henry Kerns, Graphic Design Hannah Melvin, Writer Scott Rollins, Writer Hillary Roser, Writer