Twixt, 2011, by Fred Hatt

How do you make change in the world?  Even I, who love finding beauty amid the world’s insanity and squalor, yearn for a kinder and juster culture.  Does art have any part in that, or is it just entertainment, an idle pastime of the privileged?  You surely see a lot of contemporary art that addresses injustice, stigma, corruption, exploitation, and violence.  But doesn’t much of that kind of art seem exploitive itself?  During a recent museum visit I saw mural-sized photos of homeless people in humiliating positions, and installations that made real footage of war and prison killings look like video games.  Do you suppose these works will change the minds of the powerful or offer any solace to the souls with whose real suffering they toy?  Do the artists who do this work or the curators who put it on display imagine that they are displaying a social conscience?  Ah, the abject of the world, the war-scarred, the enslaved – let them eat critical theory!

Perhaps it is pretentious for an artist even to pretend to care.  Social change is a complex phenomenon involving myriad conflicting and interacting forces.  The power that an artist has to influence the process of change in society would seem like the power of a mosquito to change the course of an ocean liner.  Even the mass-produced forms of entertainment such as movies and pop music no longer reach the vast audiences they once did.  The kind of art that shows in galleries or alternative performance venues, reaching a minuscule audience, must surely have no impact at all.

Ovum, 2011, by Fred Hatt

People think that the kind of power that produces change must be a direct push.  Huge advertising campaigns, political activism, legal crusades, large-scale economic offenses such as boycotts and buyouts, military or revolutionary attacks are all attempts to leverage monetary, demographic, or violent power to change things in a direct way.  History shows us that such efforts tend to produce unintended consequences such as political backlash movements or power vacuums that allow ruthless people to seize control.  There is a physical law that states that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction, and this often seems to apply to clashing cultural forces as well.

There is a different way of producing change, which may be described by the metaphor of planting seeds.  A seed is a tiny thing which contains the potential for the development of a tree or plant.  In nature, plants have various ways of scattering their seeds widely.  Most seeds will not find the conditions necessary to become a mature plant, but enough may grow to perpetuate and even increase the range of the plant that produced them.  Each seed begins to develop in darkness and obscurity and there is no way to see that it is growing until it is emerging into the world as a fresh new manifestation of life.  The very obscurity and indirectness of this process may make change that overcomes the reactionary recoil effect.

Radia, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The metaphor of the seed appears in a famous parable of Jesus, quoted here from the Gospel of Thomas, translated by Patterson and Robinson:

In the canonical gospels, the seed is interpreted as representing the word of Christ, which may or may not take root in the hearts of those who hear it, but I think it works well as a wider metaphor of how the world works.  It even describes the evolution of species, in which mutations are scattered haphazardly like seeds, most fail, but a few find the conditions to flourish.  A process that might seem random and wasteful is the process that produces our world with all its wondrous variety.

Umbilicus, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Culture, too, is a seeding process.  In the internet era, an idea or style that sprouts and spreads in the culture is called a meme, and its explosive growth is called “going viral” (reminding us that a virus is also a kind of seed, and that the effects of a seed are not necessarily positive).  But viral memes are not all lolcats – Steve Jobs’ vision of friendly technology and Gandhi’s vision of nonviolent resistance are also powerful viral memes.

In a human life, anything that one does or says, demonstrates or communicates to others, may become a seed.  An artist plays with perception, expression, ideas, experience, and desires, and shares the products of this play with others.  An image, an idea, or a feeling thus communicated may connect with the receiver on a deep level.  Whether it stays in the memory or in the unconscious, it may later affect the receiver’s actions or thinking in some way.  At this point the seed is sprouting.

Elaborating on the metaphor, we could say that we are always scattering seeds.  Anything we say or do could be a seed.  Most of our deeds will amount to nothing, but occasionally something will take root.  We can’t know which of our actions or words will sprout, but we should be aware that some will.  We can’t check to see what is growing – the process of development begins in obscurity, and digging up a seed to check on its development may halt that development.  We should act as though everything we do is a seed of goodness, and we should let go of everything we do, trusting that the unpredictable process of the world will nourish and grow some of them.

Vortex, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Real change takes root over long periods of time, cumulatively growing from innumerable such seemingly insignificant experiences and actions of vast numbers of people.  This way of producing change through seeds requires faith.  One doesn’t seem to be changing or moving anything, and often doesn’t even perceive the invisible reactions that may show that the seeds are sprouting.  The power of this way of producing change lies in its invisibility, because since it seems to be nothing it provokes no reactionary counterpunch.

While artists may often engage in direct efforts to change people’s minds, even art which has no outwardly apparent political or intellectual content may be planting seeds.  Some art which does not seem to be making any statement may be an exploration of pure perception.  Since the way people perceive the world alters the way they experience and interact with it, something which expands or alters someone’s way of perceiving something even in a subtle way may be a powerful seed for change.

The illustrations for this post are watercolor on paper,  11″ x 14″ or 28 x 35.6 cm.

Double Portrait, 1986, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud, who just died on July 20, 2011, devoted his long career to painting figures and portraits from life, perfectly ignoring all the art-world trends of his era.

Bella, 1987, by Lucian Freud

Many of his images are of people and/or animals sleeping.  He always painted directly from live models, often friends or family members rather than professionals, and he worked very slowly, so the sleeping poses may be an accommodation to the models.  I am struck, though, by the sense of struggle and intensity in these works.  Freud’s paint has the writhing quality of Goya’s horrors or El Greco’s spiritual transports, but in pictures of people simply relaxing on beds and sofas.  I think the sense of agitation arises from Freud’s own restless struggle to see more deeply and to capture in paint the intensity of his own visual experience.  For Freud, every canvas was a wrestling match against a powerful foe.

Pregnant Girl, 1961, by Lucian Freud

The fleshiness of his painting can be a distraction.  I got a better understanding of  the energy of Freud’s searching eye by looking at his etchings, where the quality of movement stands out.  Most portraitists view their sitters across a distance.  Freud’s perceptual focus hikes over his subjects like a surveyor mapping a territory.  He treats the figure as a landscape, to be explored by touch and movement.

Head and Shoulders, 1982, etching by Lucian Freud

Freud loved animals, and he often shows his own dogs posing with his models.  He told William Feaver, who wrote a book about Freud’s work, “I’m really interested in people as animals.  Part of my liking to work from them naked is for that reason.  Because I can see more, and it’s also very exciting to see the forms repeating through the body and often the head as well.  I like people to look as natural and as physically at ease as animals, as Pluto my whippet.”

Sunny Morning - Eight Legs, 1997, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the progenitor of psychoanalysis.  Sigmund Freud spent hundreds of hours with his subjects lying on a couch, trying to penetrate the hidden recesses of the mind through dreams and free association.  Lucian Freud also spent hundreds of hours with his subjects lying on a couch, but he kept an intense focus on the surface.  I think he felt that the physical body, truly seen, could reveal hidden depths.  Surely Lucian Freud’s work reveals depths, although, as with Sigmund’s work, it could be argued that those depths belong to Freud more than they do to his subjects.

David Hockney; Lucian Freud, 2003, photo by David Dawson

Freud said, “My work is purely autobiographical… It is about myself and my surroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I know.”  Given the necessity of spending a great deal of time with his sitters, he wouldn’t work with anyone unless he genuinely liked that person.  Still, he absolutely avoided any sentimentality or idealization.  Freud’s subjects had to accept that he would portray their every flaw, that he would reveal their mortality.

David Hockney, 2003, by Lucian Freud

While Freud, as far as I know, never worked from photographs, some of his models were photographed while posing for his paintings, which gives us an excellent way of seeing where he exaggerates and what he emphasizes.

Sue Tilley posing for Lucian Freud, 1995, photo by Bruce Bernard

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, by Lucian Freud

The painting above is one of Freud’s best-known works, having set a record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist when it was sold at Christie’s in 2008 for 33.6 million dollars.  Notice how much older the model appears in the painting than in the photograph.  He seems to have made her more obese and more splotchy.

Many figurative painters do the opposite, omitting bruises and calluses and visible veins, subtly idealizing the body.  And many people are repelled by Freud’s figures, with their sexuality and mortality so blatantly on display.  Speaking for myself, this is the very aspect of Freud’s work that gives it spiritual power.  It is the essence of the human condition that we are spiritual beings manifested in animal bodies that experience fear and desire, suffering and decay.  I see this as the quality of art that Federico Garcia Lorca calls duende, the life force intensified by the closeness of death.

Naked Man with Rat, 1977, by Lucian Freud

Freud’s earlier work, such as the portrait below of Lady Caroline Blackwood, lacks the blotchy impasto of his later work, but there is already a kind of magical realism, with enlarged eyes and expressive distortions.

Girl in Bed, 1952, by Lucian Freud

Freud said, “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”  You can see this principle not only in the individual works, but across the artist’s entire oeuvre.  The later work is unquestionably more abstract, the strokes wilder and freer, but they also have a living presence that is much stronger than in the earlier work.

Four Figures, 1991, etching by Lucian Freud

The Painter's Mother III, 1972, painting by Lucian Freud, and The Painter's Mother, 1982, etching by Lucian Freud

The face below is surely distorted, yet you can see the intensity of the artist’s perception in every thick stroke.  There is a kind of aura, a powerful presence that cannot be achieved by working from photographs and fretting over accuracy.

Esther, 1982, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud and model, 2004, photo by David Dawson

Freud said, “Perhaps when you have the sort of temperament that is always looking for flaws and trouble it might stop you from having what you always want, which is to be as audacious as possible. One has to find the courage to keep on trying not to paint in a stale or predictable way.”

Night Portrait, 1978, by Lucian Freud

I’ll conclude this post with two of my favorite Freud nudes.  Night Portrait, above, finds beauty in a pose that seems to be both resting and running, and in the textural contrast between the body and the quilt.  Naked Man, Back View, one of Freud’s many paintings of the model Leigh Bowery, also well known as a performance artist and costume designer, suggests an interior life through the turned-away display of a mountainous back.

Naked Man, Back View, 1992, by Lucian Freud

All the images in this post were found on the web.  Clicking on the pictures links to the pages where I found them.  The Lucian Freud quotes were also found on the web.  All the quote sites seem to have a similar collection of Freud quotes, unfortunately not sourced.

The Rocket Thrower, 1963, sculpture by Donald De Lue, Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY, photo 2004 by Fred Hatt

The wide variety of reactions I heard following my recent post on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates got me thinking about public art, which can be highly controversial, but which also becomes such a part of the everyday environment that people stop noticing it, like that bum that’s always on that certain corner every time you pass by.  The Gates was only up for a few weeks, but most public sculpture stands for decades or even centuries.  It is much more widely seen than any other kind of traditional visual artwork, but most of the artists are not well known. In preparing this post I researched the pictured sculptures so I could provide names and dates for them.  In many cases it was easy to find pictures of these sculptures, but surprisingly difficult to find information about the artists, dates, etc.  If you live in or have spent much time in New York, you’ll surely recognize many of these pieces, but I’ll bet you didn’t know the names of the artists, and if you look at the captions here you will see that most of them are not exactly famous names in art history.  Public sculpture is ubiquitous but anonymous.

In this post we’ll take a look at a wide variety of public sculptures in New York City.  I took most of these photos, but not all of them.  The ones I didn’t take link back to where I found them on the web.

The lead picture above, with its incredible leaping energy, is in the Flushing Meadows Park location of the 1939 and 1964 Worlds Fairs.  This sculpture has the Art Deco style of the 1930′s, but it was actually made for the ’64 fair, and its title, “The Rocket Thrower”, makes it a monument of the space age.

Here’s another allegorical naked man in Queens:

Triumph of Civic Virtue, 1922, sculpture by Frederick MacMonnies and the Piccirilli brothers, Queens Borough Hall, Queens, NY, photographer unknown

Queens congressman Anthony Weiner has recently created a lot of publicity for the old statue “Triumph of Civic Virtue“, calling it sexist and offensive, and suggesting it should be sold on Craigslist.  This piece was originally installed in City Hall Park in Manhattan, but it was always controversial, as it presents an allegorical male figure of virtue standing victorious over two female siren or mermaid figures representing vice and corruption.  New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia finally “exiled” the statue to Queens in 1941, and there it has continued to be ignored or objected to to this day.

I wonder why we haven’t heard such controversy about another old-fashioned monument, the equestrian portrait of Teddy Roosevelt that stands in front of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.  This statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, leading an Indian and a Negro who flank him on foot.  I’m not sure what this sculpture is trying to say, but it seems to embody a kind of paternalist colonialism that we’re no longer comfortable with, and this piece is in a much more prominent location than “Civic Virtue”.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1940, sculpture by James Earle Fraser, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, photographer unknown

“Tilted Arc“, one of Richard Serra’s curved and leaning steel walls, was installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan for eight years.  People who worked in the area hated having to navigate around this 12-foot high, 120-foot long barrier, and it was eventually cut into pieces and removed, against Serra’s objections.  I’ll side with the workers on this one.  Serra’s space-bending works are quite popular when people can experience them in an appropriate location, but there is something oppressive about imposing such a wall on people who have no choice in the matter.

Tilted Arc, 1981, sculpture by Richard Serra, Federal Plaza, NYC, photographer unknown

Of course, most public sculpture doesn’t arouse such animosity that it has to be chopped up and junked or put up for sale on Craigslist.  Most commissioned memorial sculpture looks dated and stodgy as soon as it goes up, but it does add an element of human liveliness to the built environment.  Plus, it’s very popular with the pigeons.

Figures from the Maine Memorial, 1913, sculpture by Attilio Piccirilli, Central Park, NYC, "Pigeon God", 2002 photo by Fred Hatt

There must be hundreds of traditional bronze figurative monuments in the city, 19th century depictions of the Great Men of the era.  The craftsmanship is classical but the style is stiff and generic.  Sometimes an unusual point of view can make one of these into a fascinating abstraction.

Abraham Lincoln, 1870, sculpture by Henry Kirke Brown, Union Square, NYC, "Bronze Cloak", 2003 photo by Fred Hatt

There are stores that sell cast sculptures for private gardens, reflecting the common taste rather than the institutional preferences of public monuments.  In the display below, I’m struck by the similarity between the busts of Elvis and David on the right, as well as the middle finger and “kiss my ass” sculptures in the front row.

Statuary Store Street Display, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Many public sculptures are war memorials.  Such monuments exhibit an interesting range of styles.  There’s the “realistic” depiction of the band of brothers-in-arms:

107th Infantry Memorial, 1927, sculpture by Karl Illava, Central Park, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

The gothic romance of the young soldier embraced by the angel of death:

Prospect Park War Memorial, 1921, sculpture by Augustus Lukeman, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2003 photo by Fred Hatt

And this depiction of the soldier as void.  This reminds me of the traditional symbol of the “released spirit” in Jainism.

The Universal Soldier, Battery Park Korean War Veterans Memorial, 1987, sculpture by Mac Adams, Battery Park, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

Gandhi is a different kind of warrior, a figure that is both a spiritual and a political icon.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1986, sculpture by Kantilal B. Patel, Union Square, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

Some sculptures salute the power of love, like these kissing cherubs, not a public monument but a type of decorative sculpture that adorns many homes in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Eroded Cherubs, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

A youthful and willowy Romeo and Juliet gaze into each other’s eyes outside the Central Park theater that hosts free Shakespeare in the Park every summer.

Romeo and Juliet, 1977, sculpture by Milton Hebald, Delacorte Theater, Central Park, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

And these full body casts by George Segal commemorate the gay civil rights movement just outside the Stonewall Inn, where a 1969 riot sparked a rebellion of the oppressed.

Gay Liberation, 1980, sculpture by George Segal, Christopher Square Park, NYC, photographer unknown

Many sculptures use figures to depict the spirits of Nature, and the human connection with Nature, like this boy dancing with goats.

Lehman Gates, 1961, sculpture by Paul Manship, Central Park Zoo, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

Or the irrepressible nature spirit Pan.

The Great God Pan, 1899, sculpture by George Grey Barnard, Columbia University Campus, NYC, 2007 photo by Fred Hatt

Or the trickster imp Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, best known as a character in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  This Puck shows us ourselves in a mirror.

Puck, 1885, sculpture by Henry Baerer, on the Puck Building, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

Of course the supreme god in Manhattan is The Almighty Dollar.  One of Manhattan’s Subway stations features many little bronze figures and scenes by Tom Otterness commenting upon both rich and poor in the money-driven society.  These figures embody a cartoon aesthetic in the traditional monumental medium of cast bronze.  Many people rub this moneybag head for luck as they pass by on their way to transfer trains.

Figure from "Life Underground", 2000, sculpture by Tom Otterness, 14th Street and Eighth Avenue Subway Station, NYC, 2004 photo by Fred Hatt

Mr. Moneybags isn’t the only sculpture people touch like a sacred relic.  The atrium of the very upscale shopping mall at the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is dominated by two gigantic rotund bronze nudes, “Adam” and “Eve”, by Botero.  So many tourists are compelled to touch Adam’s penis that it shines in a golden color, while the rest of the figure is dark bronze.

Eve, c. 2003, sculpture by Fernando Botero, Time Warner Center, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

This magnificent pagan goddess, Cybele, was a powerful presence in Manhattan’s Soho district for over a decade, but she’s gone now.  This depiction is a modern variation on the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus.

Cybele, 1993, sculpture by Mihail Chemiakin, Prince Street, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

These natural spirits can be embodied in a more abstract mode.  Alexander Calder applied his unique sense of organic form to the modern medium of riveted steel sculpture.  Look how beautifully the angles of the Calder “Saurien” are reflected in the angles of the buildings across the street from it, particularly the faceted glass LVMH building, second from the right in the top photo below. ( The LVMH building was constructed a quarter century after the sculpture was installed.)

Saurien, 1975, sculpture by Alexander Calder, Madison Avenue and 57th Street, NYC, 2004 photo by Fred Hatt

Saurien, 1975, sculpture by Alexander Calder, Madison Avenue and 57th Street, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

About a block away from the Calder, another abstract modernist work portraying an embodiment of life force is Joan Miró’s “Moonbird”.  (If you look closely on the left of this picture, it appears that Pam Grier is heading for a meeting with Walt Whitman.)

Moonbird, 1966, sculpture by Joan Miró, 58th Street, NYC, 2009 photo by Fred Hatt

“Alamo”, better known as the Astor Place Cube, has long been popular despite its dry formalism because it rotates on its base if you give it a good firm push.

Alamo, 1967, sculpture by Tony Rosenthal, Astor Place, NYC, 2009 photo by Fred Hatt

I’ll conclude with what I consider one of the ugliest public sculptures in New York, though this picture flatters it a bit.  This one has a chunk of boulder, a replica of the hand from the equestrian George Washington statue across the street from it, bricks with gold leaf ringing an aperture that puffs out steam, and, unseen in this picture, a deliberately unreadable enormous digital clock display that is supposed to express “the impossibility of knowing time”.  This piece is the ultimate example of the hazards of art that is concept-driven and committee-chosen.  The artists’ website on this piece describes the significance of the elements of the piece, but understanding it doesn’t really improve it.

Metronome, 1999, sculpture by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, Union Square, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the subject of public art here, even restricting myself to a single city and to work that can be considered sculpture.  In case of a future follow-up post, I’d include Greg Wyatt’s “Peace Fountain” near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Eric Fischl’s Arthur Ashe memorial, Alice in Wonderland in Central Park, Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park, the Statue of Liberty, the Wall Street Bull, and . . . well, please send me your suggestions!

Conversation, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8388 by Fred Hatt

For two weeks in February, 2005, the muted winter landscape of New York’s Central Park was altered by over seven thousand orange curtained gates straddling every meandering footpath of the great park.  Detractors consistently described the nylon fabric as “shower curtains”, but the environmental installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude was inspired by the traditional Shinto torii, gates signifying the entrance to sacred space.

Viewing the Gates in Central Park, 2005, map from the New York Times

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been altering the landscape and the cityscape, usually with fabrics, since the 1960′s.  I first became aware of their work in the 1970′s, when I saw the Maysles brothers documentary about the creation of their Running Fence, shimmering white fabric along 25 miles of rolling hills and into the sea on the California coast.  As the film showed, the great majority of the actual work they do is administrative and organizational, negotiating with bureaucracies and property owners, a task that took twenty-five years in the case of The Gates.  The engineering is minimalist and efficient, the materials industrial.  Their work is ephemeral, installed for a limited time, and unsellable.  It appears that they fund these huge projects mainly by selling photos, prints and preparatory sketches like this one:

The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City, 2003, collage by Christo

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s combination of aesthetic simplicity, huge scale, and very limited duration gives the work an interesting effect.  It exists for many years as a plan, a project, only very briefly as a reality, and then in a long, lingering afterlife of memories and images.  Its design seems aimed at altering a sense of space, but it succeeds also in altering the sense of time.

Vessels, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8398, by Fred Hatt

I took The Gates as an opportunity to practice my photography.  The saffron fabric seemed to capture the warmth of the sun in the gray wintry air.

Composition, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8400, by Fred Hatt

The colorful rectangles contrasted with the monochrome wriggliness of bare branches and 19th Century cast iron froufrou.

Cherubs, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8432, by Fred Hatt

Here the ephemeral curtains are glimpsed over the top of a boulder that has occupied its space for hundreds of millions of years.

Manhattan Schist, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8449, by Fred Hatt

The Gates created another skyline for the city of skylines.

Skyline, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8452, by Fred Hatt

South End, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8481, by Fred Hatt

Central Park is woven with extensive curlicues of footpaths, but usually they are invisible from a distance.

Breeze, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8492, by Fred Hatt

At dusk, the yellow-orange fabric took on a darker tone.

Dusk, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8512, by Fred Hatt

Construction Sign, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8530, by Fred Hatt

The orange color reminded many people of the orange construction equipment and safety markers seen everywhere in the city.  To some it seemed the entire park had become a construction zone.  The Gates had lots of detractors, grousing about all the hype, about how it didn’t fulfill traditional artistic values, about how it desecrated the classic landscape design of Olmsted and Vaux, about how they couldn’t enjoy the park with all the damn shower curtains and extra tourists.  I think some of these were the same folks that fire off an angry letter every time NPR mentions the existence of popular culture.  If you want to complain about the alteration of the landscape, how about the Second Avenue Subway project, which promises to keep a major commercial artery ripped up for the better part of a decade?

Bridge, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8617, by Fred Hatt

Overlook, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8624, by Fred Hatt

For me, The Gates provided interesting aesthetic effects, but only became truly beautiful when the snow fell.

Winter, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8746, by Fred Hatt

Snow Field, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8752, by Fred Hatt

Reflecttion, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8764, by Fred Hatt

The Gates were emblems of warmth standing amid the ice and snow.

Frozen Lake, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8899, by Fred Hatt

My friend Kayoko Nakajima, a dancer, was inspired to move among the billowing panels of color.

Kayoko's Dance, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo #8984, by Fred Hatt

The Gates inspired many other artists and parodists, including the charming Somerville Gates.

I walked just about every part of that wonderful park during those two weeks, whenever I had some free time.

Night and Snow, The Gates, Central Park, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2005, photo panorama #6,by Fred Hatt

And then it was gone, the materials recycled, the tourists gone, the pervasive orange accenting (or blight, if you prefer) vanished completely.  It was only an experience.

For my view of another giant temporary art installation in another great NYC park, click here.

The Winter, 1563, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

The year’s longest night falls around December 21st in the Northern hemisphere, and the return of the Sun symbolizes rebirth or renewal in cultures around the world.  Italian Renaissance painter Arcimboldo, who anthropomorphized the seasons and elements as grotesque heads composed of bits of flora and fauna, here reveals the face of Winter in gnarly roots and gray bark, with hair of ivy and lips of fungus, but includes a lemon, surely a sign of the sun.  This shows the promise of returning light and life, of which our understanding of the nature of cycles gives us faith.  In the famous “yin/yang”, the Asian emblem of cyclic nature, the yin contains a little seed of yang, and vice versa, telling us that all dualities are cyclic and each extreme contains the potential of its own reversal.The Winter Solstice is the scientific name for the moment of the Earth’s maximum axial tilt away from the Sun.  On Earth we experience it as the shortest daylight and longest night, and the Sun’s lowest path across the sky, the effect the more extreme the farther one is from the equator.  This photograph combines 43 exposures over the course of a day to show the low southern arc of the Winter Solstice sun looking over the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Mediterranean area between the Italian peninsula and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.  (Of course the Southern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice is the Northern Hemisphere’s Summer Solstice, and vice versa.) 

Tyrrhenian Sea and Solstice Sky, 2005, photo by Danilo Pivato

The cycles of the heavenly bodies were among the first natural phenomena to be understood with scientific precision.  Artifacts like the Mayan Calendar or the Antikythera Mechanism show that these celestial cycles engaged the most sophisticated minds of ancient times.  While theories of the function of Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments as astronomical observatories are disputed by scholars, new evidence shows that prehistoric peoples conducted ritual sacrifices at these sites around the time of the Winter Solstice. 

Stonehenge Winter Solstice, photographer unknown

Walking a Labyrinth is another ancient ritual that has seen revival in our time.  In walking meditation, the convolutions of the labyrinth provide a physical experience of cycles, of gradual penetration to the depths and re-emergence.  Below is a labyrinth made out of candles, which are themselves symbols of the survival of light through the darkness, set up for a contemporary Winter Solstice festival. 

Labyrinth of Light, Secret Lantern Society Winter Solstice Lantern Festival, Vancouver, photographer unknown

The most popular holiday of classical Rome was the Saturnalia, a seven-day period around the Winter Solstice when king of the gods Jupiter ceded his throne to Saturn, god of harvest.  It was a time for the reversal of social roles, when servants played at bossing the masters and feasting and revelry replaced work.  We still keep a bit of this spirit alive in Saturn’s day, Saturday, the day to play. 

Saturnus, 1592, by Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio

In a work of satirist Lucian of Samosata, Saturn says, “Mine is a limited monarchy, you see. To begin with, it only lasts a week; that over, I am a private person, just a man in the street. Secondly, during my week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water,–such are the functions over which I preside. But the great things, wealth and gold and such, Zeus [Jupiter] distributes as he will.”  (source of quote) 

In the fourth century, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, authorities knew it was hopeless to stop people celebrating Saturnalia, so they simply changed the name of the holiday – to Christmas. 

Saturnalia, 1909, by Ernesto Biondi, Jardín Botánico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, photo by Daniel Smiriglio

In the Christian era, the central image of the coming of light into the darkness became the Holy Nativity, or birth of Jesus, God made flesh, in a stable for livestock.  Thousands of paintings depict the scene. Giotto’s fresco of the event is stark and simple. 

Nativity, 1304-06, by Giotto di Bondone, Cappella Scrovegni, Padua

Botticelli’s visionary manger scene combines celestial beauty with apocalyptic elements, a version in which the light is on the surface and something darker emerges only on closer inspection. 

Mystic Nativity, 1500, by Sandro Botticelli

By the 17th century, an aesthetic of realism is emerging.  Georges de la Tour, the master of candlelight effects, gives us this intimate grouping around the peaceful sleeping infant. 

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1644, by Georges de la Tour

Proto-psychedelic painter Abdul Mati Klarwein painted this 1960′s “Nativity”, a post-nuclear, pop art, new age vision of a birth of new consciousness.  The yin-yang symbol is there, beneath the legs of the central figure.  (Note that the de la Tour painting is roughly right in the middle between the Giotto and the Klarwein on the art history timeline.) 

Nativity, 1961, by Mati Klarwein

In contemporary American culture, Christmas is a complex and contested amalgam of Christian, pagan, and commercial elements.  The central figure is no longer the baby Jesus but the jolly old Santa Claus.  Santa Claus is himself derived from multiple cultural traditions, some surprisingly devilish.  The very name “Santa”, of course, is an anagram for the name of the Prince of Darkness.  David Sedaris has written hilariously about European Christmas legends that may be surprising to Americans. 

Our contemporary image of the jolly old elf can be traced back to Clement Clarke Moore‘s “The Night Before Christmas”, and to the illustrations of the great political cartoonist Thomas Nast, originator of the Republican Elephant and Democratic Donkey. 

Santa Claus, 1881, by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly

Another icon of the Winter Solstice holiday season is the New Years Baby, popularized by the great illustrator J. C. Leyendecker in annual Saturday Evening Post covers.  For an image of rebirth, I’ll leave you with this awakening infant from an earlier era, troubled like our own.  May you and the 2011 baby face the coming year with innocence and the power of growth!  Blessed Solstice, Io Saturnalia, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! 

New Year's Baby, 1938, by J. C. Leyendecker for the New York Post

All illustrations in this post were found on the web.  Clicking on the images links to their source.