25 minute read
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TASJA KEEETMAN
CAROL DIEHL
PAINTER / ART CRITIC / AUTHOR
Interview by Harryet Candee Photography of Artist by Tasja Keetman
Carol Diehl is an artist, poet, and art critic with a long history in the Berkshires. Formerly a longtime contributing editor to Art in America, she has written for ARTnews, Art + Auction, Art & Antiques, and Metropolis, among others, and was an early slam performance poet at New York’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her paintings have been exhibited at galleries and museums in both the US and abroad, including the Sidney Janis Gallery and Hirschl & Adler in New York, and the Berkshire Museum. She has taught both painting and writing at Bennington College and the School of Visual Arts Graduate Fine Arts Program. In addition, for over 20 years, she was a consultant on the covers for TIME Magazine. Carol has won awards from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, PEN America, and the Author’s League Fund. Her first book, Banksy Completed, was recently published by The MIT Press and is available in local bookstores.
I met with Carol in her lofty, third floor studio with views of the mountains, and left filled with energy and inspiration. For Carol, the acts of painting and writing (as well as performing poetry and teaching) are not separate but intertwined, simply different avenues through which to explore that enigma we call art. And sometimes— perhaps just to make the point—you’ll find words in her paintings. All of this has come together in her very enjoyable book, Banksy: Completed, about the anonymous British street artist, a true provocateur, whose anti-establishment capers capture world headlines. Through Banksy, Carol reveals art’s relationship with money, power, and politics. After seeing the studio, we talked over tea, and Carol shared the early experiences that led her to this singular perspective.
Harryet Candee: Opening this conversation, I wonder what you think makes an artist successful in today’s world? Also, the idea that anything can be considered art… I’d like to have a deeper understanding based on your thoughts about the endless boundaries that define what art is, what it should or shouldn’t be. For you, being an artist and art critic, it must be very challenging. What are the Implications of being of modern artist now? What do we have to rethink? CD: What makes an artist successful in a worldly way has more to do with luck than art. On the other hand, what makes art successful is a question that deserves to be constantly revisited. This subject has gotten more complicated as our culture moves away from identifying art solely with objects, such as painting and sculpture, toward an understanding that, as musician Brian Eno says, “art can be any experience that generates elevated ways of seeing, thinking, or feeling.” This is what I hope for through my painting and writing – endeavors that are not separate, but simply different ways of generating new art experiences.
When you were working to try and save the masterpieces at the Berkshire Museum that were, sadly, ultimately sold, you wrote in these pages about the effect that being exposed to a
Carol Diehl, Alaya, 2017-2021, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x24”
similar masterpiece had on your development. How did Gustav Caillebotte’s painting, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1887, play into that? CD: The painting features a couple under an umbrella, elegantly dressed in turn-of-the-century fashion, the man in his top hat. The cobblestones are wet and shiny on the streets behind them that lead tantalizingly to other parts of the city. I don’t know how old I was when I first saw the painting, but it maintained a permanent place in the Art Institute of Chicago, and I made a beeline for it every chance I got. As a young girl, it reflected my romantic notions and, expressing Paris in a way photographs never could, ignited a desire to travel, to see things beyond my culturally narrow suburban life. I resolved that someday I’d go there—and when I finally did, my first thought upon arriving was that it lived up to Caillebotte’s promise. On Facebook recently, critic Jerry Saltz invited his friends to share about the moment they became artists. The responses were childhood stories of seeing oil and gas rainbows on the surface of puddles, creating dolls out of Kleenex and pipe cleaners, or imagining what it would be like to walk on a mirror’s reflection of the ceiling. After some thought, I realized my “moment” had to do with an early resistance to the idea that art was about representation. When well-meaning teachers would ask what I was drawing, my staunch defense was always, “It’s a BESIGN!” A couple of days after Jerry’s post, my friend Erick, on a trip to Chicago, texted that he was planning to visit the Art Institute, and I wrote back, “Please pay homage to Caillebotte’s ‘Paris Street; Rainy Day,’ the painting that made me an artist.” I pecked that out without thinking, and then had to as ask myself why. I always felt the work was a touchstone, almost part of my DNA, but never understood how an antiquated pictorial painting could have such singular allure for an artist so wholeheartedly devoted to modernism and abstraction. The answer came with the Erick’s next text, a photo of the gold-framed artwork hanging on the museum’s cool gray wall, and oddly, seeing it on my phone with the scale so greatly reduced, elements jumped out I’d never noticed—and had everything to do with my painting. The recognition was startling, like seeing my face in that of a longlost relative. First was the geometry which, in postage stamp-size on my phone, was emphasized as never before, providing an underlying structure for the whole. I was startled to see that the entire image is bisected top-to-bottom by a vertical line indicated by the lamppost and its shadow—a device infinitely more Ellsworth Kelly than Monet. And when the vertical is intersected by the horizontal line formed by the street behind the couple, it becomes one of my favorite motifs, the cross. Triangles are everywhere and all is punctuated by a repeated umbrella motif (Pattern & Decoration anyone?) while grounded by the vast expanse of Continued on next page....
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day 1877, Art Institute of Chicago
Carol Diehl Photograph by Tasja Keetman
the cobblestone’s repeated squares that make up – yikes! – my best friend, the grid. Then, bringing it up-to-date, is a Surrealist touch, the Magrittelike half man with his back to us on the right, forcing us to imagine, as much abstraction does, the world beyond the picture plane. My purpose, when I spent that year trying to save those historic works at the Berkshire Museum (it still makes me want to cry to think that they’re gone), was to make sure that the young people of Pittsfield could have the experience of growing up with such treasures, as I did the Caillebotte. I hope that their families will make up for it by taking them to the many museums in the area, particularly the Clark Institute in Williamstown and my favorite, a bit farther afield but worth it, the Dia Foundation in Beacon, NY, where you can see the best of modernism in a building and grounds configured by Robert Irwin. I’m also a big fan of LABspace, where I have sometimes shown my work. In this tiny gallery with its sculpture-filled courtyard, hidden away behind a restaurant in the center of Hillsdale, Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher have built a community of artists.
You didn’t study art in college, in fact left before getting any degrees. What experiences did you have that were the seeds of your real education in art? CD: What made the difference was my exceptional public education at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL, which started with my English teacher, Dave McKendall, who was only eight years older than his sophomore students. His mission was to get us to discover and express our individuality, to understand that our interpretation of life was just as valuable as anyone else’s. At the end of the first class, he gave us the assignment to “write a paper” for next time, before walking out of the room. The next week he sat cross-legged on his desk, our papers in a pile on his lap, and one after another, crumpled each into a ball he threw in a perfect arc into a waste basket at the far corner of the classroom. “I think you need a subject,” he said, to our relief, and after writing the Shakespeare quote, “Life is but a walking shadow” on the board, again silently exited the room. After about four such assignments we finally got that it was up to us to come up with the content. My breakthrough came with the assigned subject, “Pink,” where I described coming home from camp and finding that my parents, without consulting me, had redecorated my room, painting the walls a dull gray, and the furniture a color I dubbed “inside-of-your-mouth pink.” That class was followed by “Great Books of the Western World,” taught by two teachers who often disagreed with each other. Each week we’d read a culturally significant book and write a paper on it over the weekend, before there was any discussion in class. On Monday, our individual interpretations, as they corresponded to important points in the book, were noted on the blackboards that surrounded the room, to be discussed by the group before the teachers revealed what the great scholars had written. This is how I teach students to write about art. Without naming the artist, so they can’t research it, I show them examples of an artist’s work and ask them to write about it. After their essays are read essays aloud and discussed by the class, I hand out examples of what the critics have written—and the students are often surprised to see that their analyses are as valid, if not more so, than those of the professionals. Before high school, however, school amounted to little more than an unwelcome interruption in my reading (trying to get my attention, a teacher once threw my book against the wall), like being forced to take a bus every day to watch an endless play with a boring plot and uninteresting characters. The possibility that I might actually do the assigned homework never crossed my mind. However, what was then considered a problem by all around me, I now see as an unlikely advantage. I had much less to undo! And, Harryet, since you asked about the piano you saw in my studio, I’ve been thinking that my lack of academic discipline was balanced by an enthusiastic study of classical piano, which I started at age six, which gave me a framework for accomplishment I wouldn’t otherwise have had. As an adult, I’ve also had a practice in the martial arts, where I’ve been able to apply the perseverance I learned from the piano. I think accomplish-
ment is all about the rewards of perseverance and concentration – i.e. discipline—which best succeeds if it’s self-imposed, driven by passion. Then it’s fun. I was always drawn to art, constantly drawing, painting, and making things, but couldn’t say that, in my early life, I showed much talent. I applied to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, wasn’t accepted, and instead married at 19 and worked to put my (now ex-) husband through his Ph.D program in literature at Yale. I took life drawing at the nearby adult education college, and while the teacher couldn’t have been more august (Rudolf Zallinger, who created the “The Epic of Man” for Life Magazine), to me it was anatomical and uninspiring. When we moved back to Chicago, I tried more classes in life drawing and landscape painting, and did okay, but was frustrated. Signing up for a class in Abstract Painting (whatever that was!) at the Evanston Art Center, I promised myself that if I didn’t do something I liked, I’d give up this art stuff forever. The teacher, Corey Postiglione who, like me, was in his late 20s, came to class with a long roll of raw canvas under his arm, rolled it out on the floor, and told us to put acrylic paint on it with anything but a brush. I chose a natural sponge, and was in heaven. He showed us work by Sam Francis, Morris Louis, Joan Snyder, and Jules Olitski, among others—a whole new world. I ended up making a painting that won first place in the student art show, and a gallery in Chicago offered to represent my work. After renting a studio with Corey and two of his friends, I was soon making art full-time. My writing life also began then, and equally serendipitously. I’d learned to write press releases through my political work in the anti-war movement, and volunteered to write them for the exhibitions at the Evanston Art Center. It was because of those releases that a fledgling Chicago art publication, The New Art Examiner (which ultimately published for 30 years), asked me to write reviews. Recently someone asked me how I was able to write reviews when I had no background in art history. I’d never thought about it before, but the answer came quickly: observation. For me, acute observation is the key to understanding all art. That means looking, looking, and looking, while paying careful attention to one’s reactions. Most people start with the whole—their first impression—and work backwards to try to make it work. I begin with the details and figure out the rest from there. This is also the basis for the way I teach writing about art. The first thing I do is ask everyone to put their water bottles in the middle of the table. We then spend the next hour discussing and comparing the bottles’ shapes and colors, as well as which are more appealing and why. Observation is easier when the heavy expectation of “Art” is removed. The goal is to learn to apply that same level of attention to artwork, without getting distracted by what it’s “supposed” to mean—or even what the maker says it means, because I’ve found that artists (and this includes me) are often the last to truly understand the effect of their work.
Carol Diehl, Aki, 2011, Powdered pigment and pencil on board, 9 1/2" x 12 1/2"
Carol Diehl, Alpha, 2019, Ink and pencil on paper, 18” x 24"
I noticed your paintings to be somewhat compulsive in nature as you work in numbers, letters, repeated patterns, shapes, all being encrypted symbolism. What does it mean for you to work in this way? CD: Hopefully all art is compulsive! We see repetition as compulsive, but minimalism can be just as compulsive. The dictionary defines compulsion as “an irresistible urge, especially one that is against one's conscious wishes.” Therefore, when applied to art, it’s the impulse to go beyond the familiar and comfortable, to explore places in our psyches we wouldn’t otherwise know existed. In my case, I like taking examples of the mundane— random numbers and letters as well as common shapes found in architectural stencils available in any art store—and combining them in ways that transcend their ordinariness to become something beyond meaning, evoking feelings that cannot be defined.
Both you and Banksy use stencils. What is your attraction to this technique? CD: Banksy uses stencils for functional reasons. His are hand-crafted and highly individual, so most of the work is completed before it hits the outdoors, where the image can be realized quickly with a spray of aerosol paint on a wall. My technique, brushing on powdered pastel or spraying ink on paper with a drugstore plastic bottle, is much more low-tech, and I love art store stencils for their generic nature. However, what we do seem to have in common is a love of the spray’s inherent randomness which, because it can never entirely be controlled, appears active and spontaneous. Continued on next page...
Carol Diehl Crispin, 2017-2021 Oil and acrylic on canvas 18” x 18"
What role, if any, does memory play in your art making process? CD: As a person who can’t go to sleep without writing the day’s events in their journal—feeling the day will be lost, unless I do—I’m always trying to capture memory in the calendrical lists of people and events that frequently appear in my paintings. In the 1995 and 1997 journal paintings I recently showed at the Re Institute, I was attempting to illustrate memory’s random nature so that, although the words and symbols in the paintings are linear, they’re nearly impossible to read from start to finish. If you try, you’re inevitably distracted by something else in the painting, and then something else and another something else–so that your eyes end up jumping around from this moment to that, just as memory does.
I see you dedicated your book about Banksy to Robert Irwin, the Southern California artist associated with the movement known as “Light and Space.” In what ways did Irwin’s work give new awareness and meaning to your work as an artist? And how does it relate to a street artist like Banksy? CD: I encountered Robert Irwin during that rich time in Chicago when I was first exploring painting and writing about art. In his 1975 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, was a work that consisted of a room-size triangle of semitransparent scrim fabric stretched floor to ceiling and lit from inside, which appeared like a giant elongated wedge of shimmering white light dominating the gallery. I can’t recall being so immediately affected by a work of art before or since. What struck me wasn’t his method--although I'm always impressed when art is wrested from such basic materials--but rather the realization that all the art I'd seen till then seemed based on the same artistic concepts, while here was an approach to problem-solving that began not with the known but the unknown. Irwin’s main premise has to do with what he calls “conditional art,” where every aspect of the art is wholly determined by the site—“the object existing not in a vacuum of its own meaning, but in the real world, affected by the real world.” Irwin sees everything that touches the visual, emotional, and intellectual experience as part of the art – light, temperature, sounds, smells, comfort and discomfort, etc. This can include even the expectations kindled by photographs and publicity describing the work before it’s encountered, or the interpretation presented by wall text in a museum—anything that has the possibility of becoming the frame through which the art is seen before viewers have a chance to assess their own reactions. Irwin’s philosophy is beautifully summed up in a very readable biographical book by Lawrence Wechsler titled, “Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees,” which refers to the emotional effect of the artwork overcoming any other considerations. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time with Irwin, including writing a cover story on his work for Art in America in 1999, and now see all art through his expanded lens. Therefore, when Banksy came along, I was prepared to look beyond the painting on the wall to the events that unfold around it, like a John Cage Happening, which Cage said “should be like a net to catch a fish the nature of which one does not know." And what I found is that in Banksy’s world nothing is random; there’s mischievous intent behind everything he does, and that’s what I chose to investigate. Hence, Banksy: Completed.
What did you enjoy most about making your book on Banksy? CD: What I enjoyed most was that it was a continual surprise! I never intended to write a book. I was aware of Banksy from my frequent travels to visit friends in England, so became frustrated when he did his New York “residency” (which consisted of a different piece every day for a month in one of the five boroughs) my art critic colleagues, who had barely heard of him, assumed he was so inconsequential they wrote about him for the clickbait without doing any research—not even bothering to see his 2010 Academy Awardnominated film (free on YouTube). My instincts told me there was more to Banksy than anyone imagined, so when a California residency gave me time to write, I decided to devote my art critical skills to all things Banksy and see what would materialize. The essay I wrote turned into a lecture I gave at USC/Fullerton, and over 100 people showed up. Then I happened to be in Folkestone, England, when Banksy did a piece that incidentally (and I
Carol Diehl Resolutions (Blue Quad), 2002 Acrylic and oil on canvas (4 panels), 96" x 82"
don’t think accidentally) reignited a 10-year legal battle between two local real estate moguls—and after that, the stories kept on coming, but were never covered fully by a press that only seemed to care about the extreme value of his works at auction (older pieces resold by others, from which Banksy realizes no profit). A major event the critics passed over (except for those who negatively critiqued it from across the pond) was Dismaland, a 2.5-acre dystopian theme park on the coast of England, to which Banksy invited 58 artists from around the world to create work addressing the failure of capitalism. Billed as a "festival of art, amusements and entrylevel anarchism” open for five weeks in 2015, Dismaland featured concerts, film, miniature golf (or rather miniature “Gulf” with an appropriate oil spill), a whacked-out Cinderella’s castle, games that were impossible to win, a terrifying carousel, disgruntled park guides, vegetarian food stands, and an art gallery. Then, in an effort to mitigate the declining economic conditions in the Palestinian West Bank, where tourism drastically fell off when the wall separating it from Israel was built in 2014, Banksy designed The Walled Off Hotel which, since it opened in 2017, has attracted nearly 140,000 visitors to its eight guestrooms, café, bookstore, Museum of the Wall, and gallery dedicated to the work of Palestinian artists. Given the sad conditions under which the Palestinians live, I wouldn’t call my visit to Bethlehem the most “enjoyable” part of making my book, but it was certainly the most meaningful. I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring attention to Banksy’s extraordinary humanitarian endeavor and amazing example of what art can do. Then, in the “most satisfying” category, writing about Banksy has given me the opportunity to coalesce the thoughts about art and the art world I’ve been developing for the last several decades, and present them to a general audience in a way that’s readable and fun.
When and how did you find yourself settling down in the Berkshires? How did you discover that this is where you wanted to wake up in the morning? CD: I’ve always needed to be in nature. I spent a lot of my suburban childhood in the woods, much of it playing by myself, and when I lived in New York, took my car to the country every weekend. Then, In the early nineties, I attended karate camp at Mount Brodie, and afterwards went down to Stockbridge to visit my then boyfriend, who had recently moved from Harlem. It was August, and everything was in full flower, the air heavy with scent. He drove me around to places that are now my neighborhood—Taft Farms, Hurlburt Road, the Green River—and I fell in love like I was falling in love with a person. Through friends, I began to meet local artists and polished up my houseguest skills so that soon I was visiting regularly, and realized the other component to my love for the Berkshires—this very special community, with its warmth, openness, intelligence, and generosity. My book wouldn’t have happened as it did without those who contributed their support in so many ways. Every time I needed something it was there, from proofreading to editing, help with my Kickstarter, research expertise from the Ramsdell librarian, and so on—to the point that I think of it as a collaborative effort. When I started my four-year gig teaching at Bennington College (which I was attracted to because of its proximity to the Berkshires), I rented an apartment in Great Barrington and 16 years ago, finally bought and renovated my home and studio. I was still teaching at SVA and consulting on the covers for TIME Magazine, and for a long time went back and forth so much I joked that I lived on Metro North. Four years ago, however, I cut the cord, and being here full-time, couldn’t be happier. A coincidence I love, is that the pads of drawing paper I bought for many years at Pearl Paint in SoHo, had a line-drawing of the Rising Paper Mill on the cover, and I now live down the road.
Thank you, Carol.
G
NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM
IMPRINTED: ILLUSTRATING RACE
Norman Rockwell Museum is pleased to announce Imprinted: Illustrating Race, a landmark exhibition on view through October 30, 2022. This special exhibition examines the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture. More than 150 works of art and artifacts of widely circulated illustrated imagery will be on view, produced from 1590 to today. The exhibition will explore harmful stereotypical racial representations that have been imprinted upon us through the mass publication of images and the resulting noxious impact on public perception about race. It culminates with the creative accomplishments of contemporary artists and publishers who have shifted the cultural narrative through the creation of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all. Imprinted: Illustrating Race is co-curated by guest Curator Robyn Phillips-Pendleton and the Museum’s Deputy Director/Chief Curator, Stephanie Haboush Plunkett. Phillips-Pendleton is the Interim Director of the MFA in Illustration Practice program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and University of Delaware Professor of Visual Communications; she has written and spoken widely on the theme of this exhibition. They are joined by a distinguished panel of national advisors including 10 academic scholars, curators, and artists with expertise related to the focus of the exhibition’s thesis.
Norman Rockwell Museum - 9 Glendale Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. NRM.org, 413- 298-4100.
ELIXIR
Hello friends of Elixir! It is the full moon in June as I write. The energies are peaked! The gardens are overflowing with color; deep purple iris, fiery red poppies, magenta foxgloves, yellow lupines (new this year), sweet, sweet scent of rose, pinks, petunia, phlox, calendula, with butterflies, bees, dragon flies and hummingbirds flying about …truly magical… and I feel so fortunate to have all this surrounding my cottage. Just outside my window at this moment, the sun is shining on a sweet mother Phoebe who has her nest of young ones in the eaves …she seems to be taking a moment from her busy morning to soak in some sun and reflect while taking a breath… We are heading into the busy summer and for me this means making tinctures, salves, medicines, and delicious foods from what I harvest from the gardens and from the wild. Roses, spruce tips, calendula, mugwort, linden, elderflower, Reishi, chicken of the woods…and so many more allies sharing their healing properties with us. This symbiotic relationship is miraculous, and I bow in reverence to it. We care for the plants and creatures, and they care for us. In the greater world of course, there is an imbalance from the lack of reverence from humanity toward nature. But each of us learning to live with reverence really does make a difference. We bring our measure and it is then multiplied. Keeping this in mind, we also restore balance with our care of the body and our contribution to the earth by growing & eating foods that have not been genetically modified or treated with chemicals - again one person at a time makes a difference. If you would like to learn more about growing foods, flowers & herbs and how to make healing foods from them, or if you are ready to clean up & strengthen your body, mind & spirit, or if you would like to have a small dinner party, picnic, or tea party catered by Elixir, reach out. Check out our blog and stay tuned for our upcoming vlog. May your summer be sweet, gentle, & restorative & fun of course! Elixir - www.elixirgb.com, organictearoom@gmail.com, instagram: elixirtearoom, 413644-8999.
Only Banksy knows, but he won’t tell.
the art of mary ann yarmosky
Boats in the Night, Acrylic on Canvas
Visit and enjoy— maryannyarmoskyeclecticart.com
BRUCE PANOCK
Water Barrel Fading Memories
A Walk
Time
Each image is part of a limited edition. There are several sizes available. Each piece is priced according to size. Images are unframed and printed on Hahnemuhle archival papers.
