At Wit's End

chke s u e L h a i Ben ber b o G t t o c S & Archie

Beniah Leuschke & Archie Scott Gobber November 18, 2012 – January 6, 2013 At Wit’s End, when there is no longer any laughter, is a day we should not wish to see, for it means that they—those joyless, negative voices—have been victorious. The thing that’s funny, though, is that “they” are “we.” Inside each of us lurks the choice between optimist and pessimist, or so say the therapists.

One in Philadelphia, a woman named Judith Sills, says that in 30 years of practice, she’s not had to coach anybody to think more negatively.1 Indeed, it seems to be inbred, this outlook so dismal and cynical.

Biologists have determined that neurotransmitter genes influence how likely we become optimists or pessimists.2 But the news is not all bad, for it’s not just nature that programs our perspectives, but also knowledge and experience. In important experiments, psychologists have shown the role of “illusory correlation,” when subjects associated bad outcomes (electrical shocks) with pictures of frightening items like snakes and spiders, even when the shocks occur just as frequently with pictures of neutral or positive items such as flowers and mushrooms.3 Thank goodness the converse is also true: if we can learn negative correlations, we can also re-train ourselves to be more positive by practicing new, more optimistic thoughts— which in turn lead to new nerve-system pathways, actually reshaping our brains.4 This all suggests that in art, just as in life, we can choose to focus on the positive when evaluating and interpreting what surrounds us.

In the At Wit’s End exhibition, a few works by Scott Gobber and Beniah Leuschke present challenges to this assertion. In Lush Pushy, Gobber represented these two words with the clean precision of a sign painter. Although the words can be viewed as peeling away, they can also be seen as being in the process of application. What should we make of the meaning of these two words, and the work as a whole? “Lush” means “growing vigorously, especially with luxuriant foliage; savory, delicious; opulent, sumptuous.”5 Originally, the word had the meanings of “lax, flaccid, soft, tender or loose” when used as an adjective, and “drunkard” in the noun form.6 “Pushy” means “aggressive often to an objectionable degree: forward.”7 To view the painting’s positive connotations, one might choose to focus on the meaning of lush as “growing vigorously,” and those situations in which “pushy” can be desirable, such as on the athletic field. Taken together, the words might suggest “aggressively sumptuous”—a reading that seems especially appropriate given the artist’s impressive painting skills and the large sizes and bold hues of his works.

In Leuschke’s compellingly conceptual body of work, the artist achieves his goal to “make the minimum amount of object [so that] it gets out of the way of the idea.” He also states that his art can be viewed relative to a quote attributed to Freeman Teague, Jr.: “Nothing is so simple that it can’t be misunderstood.”8 In At Wit’s End, we are confronted by the words “DRONE STRIKE,” which occur as a two-word phrase alongside a group of three other couplings. The phrase immediately brings to mind the U.S.

Image left: Beniah Leuschke, Work Strike, 2012, cut paper, 17 x 28 inches, (Courtesy the artist)

Image right: Archie Scott Gobber, Lush Pushy, 2012, enamel on canvas, 32 X 67 inches (Artwork courtesy the artist & Dolphin Gallery; photography courtesy E. G. Schempf.

military’s use of remote-controlled aerial surveillance vehicles and bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. However, its appearance surrounded by less weighty phrases (WORK FORCE; BAR TENDER; JOY RIDE) has a neutralizing effect on its meaning.

Leuschke seems to suggest that these words and phrases are created equal, which is augmented by his use of uppercase letters all the same height. The denotative qualities of “drone” and “strike” are emphasized (“drone” signifies a stingless male bee; one that lives on the labor of others; an unmanned aircraft or ship guided by remote control,9 while “strike” has over 40 senses, only 2 of which are specifically military).10 The graver connotations of DRONE STRIKE come into play when we attach the U.S. cultural context to this phrase.

How then are we to view this work in a positive light? To American military families spared potential casualties through the use of drones instead of troops, the phrase surely rings positive.

On a more fundamental level, one can focus on the sense of playfulness that comes with Leuschke’s process of re-examining the meanings of common sayings. If humanity can adopt a similar sense of bemused open-mindedness and constructively criticize assumptions about what words signify, then perhaps we can train ourselves to creatively analyze more momentous assumptions and beliefs, such as those that lead to horrors such as war.

focused and that place is the reader, not…the author….A text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.11 In other words, meaning is conferred on words by the reader and the experiences that he or she brings to bear on perceiving an expression.

Despite this power held by the reader (or viewer, in the case of art), one of the great challenges of contemporary art is that observers seem lost quite regularly, given the frequent knee-jerk rejections that one hears. Fortunately, there is a solution to this conundrum, and not surprisingly, it hinges on the viewer. If we maintain the open-minded willingness to approach contemporary art as a language with numerous dialects to study and learn, then we can enter into an enjoyable dialogue with artists, as if we were traveling abroad. Of course, this is most successful when the work is expertly crafted and presented, as in the case of the contributions of Gobber and Leuschke to At Wit’s End. – James Martin

Judith Sills, “Take this Job and Love It,” Psychology Today, retrieved 10/28/2012 at http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200811/take-job-and-love-it.

2 Elaine Fox, Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain (New York: Basic Books, 2012): p.99.

3 Fox, p. 148.

4 Fox, pp. 127-162.

5 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lush, retrieved 10/28/12.

6 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lush, retrieved 10/28/12.

7 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pushy?show=0&t=1351456253, retrieved 10/28/12.

8 Interview with the artist, 10/25/12.

9 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drone, retrieved 10/28/12.

10 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strike, retrieved 10/28/12.

11 Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” Image, Music, Text, 1977. Translated by Richard Howard. http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm, retrieved 10/29/12.

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Though this perspective of focusing on the positive may seem rather simple, or to some, somewhat unconventional, it has a basis in theory that bears closer scrutiny. Roland Barthes, French theorist, philosopher, critic and key figure in the field of semiotics, wrote specifically about the malleability of meaning.

According to Barthes, We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the AuthorGod), but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash….A text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is

Beniah Leuschke & Archie Scott Gobber November 18, 2012 – January 6, 2013 5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209 Ph: 913.266.8413 | Fx: 913.345.2611 | www.kcjmca.org Established in 1991, the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) provides innovative art exhibitions and related programming that engage seniors and diverse audiences from all segments of our community to enrich lives and celebrate our common humanity through art.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Guest curator James Martin wishes to thank the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art and Scott Gobber and Beniah Leuschke for the opportunity to contribute his text to this exhibition. He is also grateful to his wife Peggy and son Asa for supporting the space and time this project required.

James Martin is an independent curator, educator and writer based in Merriam, Kansas. Currently, he is Curator of the Center for the Healing Arts at Truman Medical Centers and a consultant to Mid-America Arts Alliance. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art. His past professional associations include teaching positions at Johnson County Community College and University of Missouri-Kansas City, and curatorial positions for the Sprint Art Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Front images, from top: Beniah Leuschke, The Words of Every Song, 2012, (Courtesy the Artist); Archie Scott Gobber, Image, 2011 (Artwork courtesy the Artist & Dolphin Gallery; photography courtesy E.G. Schempf)

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