Seymour Tubis

SEYMOUR TUBIS....AGAIN (YET AGAIN!)

Reading over again after nearly half a century the published comments I wrote that appeared in The Santa Fe Reporter in connection with an exhibition Seymour Tubis put on at Discovery Gallery and his published rejoinder has provided me with a little more insight. But the insight that has been provided goes only so far as to help me formulate a question.

That question is: why is it that Tubis’s comments read somewhat like a criticism of my review, when my review lent itself more in the laudatory direction than it did in the condemning? I then had to read the two of them over again and in that process discovered two things. The first of these was that Tubis stated that criticisms of an artist’s work have difficult in being valid until the whole of an artist’s oevre is there for inspection. Taken in the extreme, this would mean that no comment critical or praising might appropriately take place until after the artist is dead.

But this understanding, for sure, is not what Tubis had in mind. Rather he wished to shift the responsibility from his regrettable failure to produce creatively to an alleged absence of critical awareness on my part. In this connection, however, there is a significant degree of truth in his suggestion that it is the totality of a man’s efforts that should play the major role in comments on his efforts and judgments on a single work if art are risky. Yet, this is precisely what happens when contests of all sorts are held...even by museums and art associations which should know better.

It is, it seems, part of the general populous’s need for drama which encourages this sort of weird circus behavior , but it is a performance behaviour, largely on the part of wannabe cultural experts needing public notoriety, that leads nowhere...nowhere good at any rate.

I reject that idea on the grounds that in the interest of survival a living being must evaluate in detail for its potential significance all the events in his environment. In the interests of time and energy short cuts in value judgments are inevitable and the party environment of white wine and cheese helps no one to recognize or understand the rare event when it does arrive.

Related to this question of appropriate aesthetic judgment is the human need for closure that being largely the state of rest from the urgency which events that disturb creates. I, therefore, have comfort with the notion that works of art such as Andrew Wyeth’s portrait

are superior to Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” for example

at least on the scale of portraying psychological insight. But there are other measures possible that may be appropriate for other

works but inappropriate for these two. Take, for example this Paul Klee entitled “Idee Haarlem”.

Granted, the art world comprises a highly specialized environment which hardly touches the lives and certainly doesn’t “grab the interest” of 99.9% of the homosapiens to which it is made available and then, of course, the interest that might be grabbed is further subdivided and placed into even more highly specialized areas of concern such as, for example, political views, technical ability, inventiveness, pornography, stupidity and so on. “Idee Haarlem”

In my particular case much of my aesthetic concern lies in the area of how an artist has manipulated the materials available to him in his effort to find a more complete and satisfying, often or largely

symbolic, solution to whatever the problem than had yet been discovered. Such (symbolic) solutions would clearly represent a creative solution. That solution is most often in the shape of a highly integrated and focused work. Very few artists accomplish this. I should add that it may be largely a matter of a refined intuition that might provide any observing commentator, an art critic, for example, about what the particular problem might be, if there is a problem, and how the artist involved might see or understand it.

This approach removes much of the activity of the so-called “art critic” out of the area of art history which emphasized the value of art as a handmaiden to the churches and political leadership to which it had for many centuries been assigned and into the arena of a more personal exploration...for both the artist and the exploring critic. It is on this level as well that I maintain the therapeutic qualities attributed to creative art involvement exist. Jean Piaget, for example was an early experimenter in these therapeutic aspects of play when he observed that children often theatricalise their concerns when they symbolize sand box activity.

This having been said, my having reread Tubis’s comments clarifies the answer to the question as to whether Tubis understood my published comments. I believe he did understand them for; otherwise, he might not have bothered to distinguish, for himself, not for me, the possibility that “versatility” might be a cover for an absence of a personal style. And this is ”the rub” as Hamlet might say.

I do not doubt that Tubis understands what I have written and has, in a cautious way, agreed that the absence of a personal style can be considered an example of diminished excellence. In his defence I will say this, that in my experience and, perhaps in his as well, the process of mentoring others depletes energies and diverts the creative product from being the painting, the sculpture, the building , or the opera, or whatever, to the person being mentored.

The economic reality, or, at least, an aspect of it, requires that some take on a paying position (such as teaching or some commercial art form) in order to survive, but that is a very serious trade off.

An example of this process, but a relatively insignificant one, has received some support from one Benjamin Harjo who gives Tubis credit for his inspiration to explore his potential. As a consequence Harjo achieved distinction, of a sort, when awarded a contract by Absolut Vodka and again in consequence when the then Governor of Colorado, David Walters (1991-1995) recognized the political value to him of this commercial event and the additional advantage of appearing to the

masses as being an educated man and an appreciator of “the finer things of life”. Step by step the sum of all these consequences represents a loss to everyone involved and I am turned off by this clearly fraudulent, commercially supported behaviour and disgusted by the popular image of its being presented as a social value. Some proof of this “diminished value” might be seen in light of Governor Walker later having been convicted of campaign misdemeanours. It is not at all “out of character” for a political figure to encourage belief in a mistaken image. In short it is a case of borrowed glory from a brassy image.

In this way the employment of an artist in the service of education is vampyric (my invented word).

Teaching, or encouraging others to be creative, is accomplished at a cost. Now, that cost is very real. It is not merely symbolic, for, it has been noted that the creative development of the individual is not unlike one’s sight of God...a significant spiritual experience which, if an individual through his expenditure of energy gives that energy away to another it makes of it a very generous act indeed. To clarify this point even further. I fully and acutely realise that there is a large percentage of people performing in the role of educator who neither understand nor could they care less about their charges and that, largely, all they are effective in doing, through their salaries, is keeping the economy moving.......albeit in the wrong path.

It has been my observation that were any true learning to take place in most school classrooms it is mainly through the persistent efforts of the individual student to make sense out of his environment. Success in achieving a working grasp of the curriculum is more a matter of obedience to authority than to intelligence, although, admittedly it is a mark of intelligence to know how to deceive. This approach to acceptable social behaviour has recently been encouraged by Mark Runco, now director of the Torrance Center at The University of Georgia, to state that creative activity should be moved out of the art room and creative students should be encouraged to behave discreetly. I thought Procrustes had died.

In writing of the vampyric nature of the educational (as opposed to the training) process is truly draining on the one in charge of creating an environment conducive to invention and I have not known a situation, despite all claims to the contrary, where the freedom to create, if not thwarted by an unsympathetic and uncomprehending administration, is certainly beset by the envious and the untalented colleague.

All in all, Tubis’s published comments on my review at least placed his name before the public for an extended period of time which might have been found gratifying in a very minor way.

There are times when I view the range of human interaction on the creativity scale correlated with measures of mischievous and destructive personality traits as being significantly negative. Some of my own work in these matters revealed that only the uncreative individual and the social liars achieved academically. That research took place at The University of Northern Iowa in the late sixties where my immediate superior, Harry Guillaume,(whom I rather liked as a person) despite his reputed standing within the profession, didn’t know what he should know in order to be my superior and, in addition, was highly manipulatable by mischievous others. The fact, regrettably, my research revealed that despite the claims of the institution it was one of the best institutions for teacher preparation in the country it systematically denied entrance into that program applicants who were the most creative and the most perceptive. What the research indicated and several thousands of instances later have proved, and most observing individuals have noted, the social system under

which all exist is very viral and talented in self-defence against those who might change it. For those who would change systems to achieve a better fit learning can be physically painful and psychologically distressing.

Were I to attempt to label causes as to why Seymore Tubis appears not to have achieved a product that was significant creatively it would be that he had not paid close enough attention to the lessons of the Talmud. Or, perhaps he has, for while my published comments were designed to indicate that I had some difficulty in identifying evidences of Tubis’s singular aesthetic contributions but that, otherwise, I sincerely suspected that they might be there...somewhere. In his answer to me his comments correctly identifies the focus of my message, but cleverly repositions the argument by substituting his concept of “versatility” for my more serious idea of aesthetic focus. “Versatility” is what is developed when a teacher becomes involved with the idea of encouraging a student to be open to experience. In order to legitimize the affront to convention which experimentation inevitably produces, the teacher often and tragically offers his own creative energies as a sacrifice. and, in this way, inhibits, perhaps even prevents, his own development. Not all artists, such as Picasso, are able to heretically play with an idea and make both fun and profit from the doing.

While I credit Picasso in demonstrating that the expressive arts are wide open I fault those, and there are many, who reject the opportunity to coalesce, or they have not yet discovered within themselves the route by which this coalescence is achieved. Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell are two who have done so.

Franz Kline Robert Motherwell

Some works by Tubis are below:

, P A in 19W i

ll 1 will9“Picasso said 'Art is a lie!' In his flamboyant way he spoke a great truth. He was saying that all art is an illusion – not the slavish copying

of reality – but the CREATION of illusions never seen before.”

Seymour Tubis, 1990

My take on this Picasso quote is not Tubis’s. A century ago it may have been necessary to point out that art was not reality yet, at the same time how can one avoid pointing out as did, I believe, Arp when he

called our attention to the undeniability of the reality of his constructs.

They do exist. They are there! or this:

How then might one assess creativity in art?

This image was created by an inmate (Vincent Younis) of a state prison in New Mexico who had as material resources, paper,

colored pencils and a mass produced plastic sheet of standard geometric shapes and portions of shapes. To my knowledge this person had had very little art training, if any at

all,and that this is completely a product of a fertile and creative mind capable of originating solutions to socio-psychological drives which, in his case had been inadequately satisfied in

his normally northern New Mexican Hispanic environment, but moderated, in his case, by the fact his father was Lebanese.

In other ways as well Younis revealed a high degree of social engineering in that he organized other prisoners in a publishing venture which described the lives they knew and their thoughts and expectations. The title of this publication was “The Revolving Door”. He

also arranged for the services and expertise of others in society to come to share their awareness with those incarcerated.

At the time I knew Younis he was awaiting a hearing before judge Petra Maes on the matter of his having taken unwarranted license in expanding a court granted family leave for a

celebration in Sana Fe by visiting his wife and child who were in Florida. He had voluntarily returned to New Mexico and turned himself in for reincarceration only to learn that Judge

Petra Maes had added an extra 13 years on his original sentence which had had, I believe, another five years on balance.

My view of this judicial decision is that it was not and probably could not legally have been based on court rules but was the result of the desire of the judge to punish the mother for

having found the father from outside the local Sephardic population.

Educationally, and compassionately and humanitarianly it has been my view that the most efficient educational method involves listening carefully to the child to determine the nature

and the character of the child’s hidden and undiscovered aspirations. From this point of view, then, most pre-determined curricula are irrelevant and if rigidly enforced will almost automatically result in an increase in mental illness and in the populations of our prisons.

The device of using a quotation, separated from its context, can be useful in setting the mental stage for the point to be made later on, BUT, when the quotation is a quotation from an earlier quote the point somehow gets lost. One might imagine that what Tubis was trying to do was to legitimize himself, and his work, in the minds of the mindless imperceptives. The concept that art, particularly the pictorial, is an illusion and from about the 12th century, for example, until the 19th Century the idea that art presentations should strive ever more ardently to achieve illusion. Even the impressionists were working on the idea of illusion...but was one based on scientific knowledge until one critic decried their efforts and called our attention to the fact that these new works were “merely impressions”. One might wonder how long it took him to realise that what he had previously thought to be “realistic” works were also “merely impressions”. I think what we might be dealing with here is the conceptual dominance of the word, spoken or written, over perceptions and when, finally (oh finally) it dawned on a few that the entire field of sense-based perception was another realm of reality.....and that as human beings we were obligated to arrange it so that new information might find its place in the gestalt.

It is certainly, and almost inescapable approach to test out the expressive potential of all the materials at hand and Tubis has done this to some limited extent. Actually, had he experimented even a little bit more he may have been totally confused so, in the interest, of acceptable and tolerable mental balance, he did not.

What Tubis did do was to take the materials, (some of them), available to him and to try to see what the combination of his motor abilities and his mental prowess might accomplish. It is the result from that combination of efforts which should concern us.

In Seymour Tubis’s biography there are four people mentioned as having, presumably, influenced him. One of them was one Vaclav Havil about whom I can say little because the only Havil I know about by that name was the one-time Chech President. The others are: Will Barnet, Harry Sternberg and Morris Kantor none of whom in so far as I know ever achieved any remarkably creative success beyond that of a talented undergraduate. On the other hand it may have been that sort of obedience to instruction that had been made the goal for Tubis. By way of a tragic example of what I mean there is a neighbour

of mine here who speaks, I am told,14 languages and spends four or five hours each day playing the piano. These are all very benign activities and for that alone he might be appreciated but after more than a decade I have not heard him utter a challenging or creative idea in any of the languages and while I do not doubt that while he plays the piano acceptably I doubt he reaches the pinnacle of expression of a Shura Cherkassky . http://youtu.be/q2faTb82FAw

Below are works by Morris Kantor

K Morris Kantor was a Russian-born American painter based in the New York City area. Born in Minsk in 1896, Kantor was brought to the United States as a child in 1906. He made his home in West Nyack, New York for much of his life, and died there in 1974. He produced a prolific and diverse body of work, much of it in the form of paintings, which is distinguished by its stylistic variety over his long career. (The above comment was taken from Wikipedia which is included here to indicate that in the opinion of someone who seems anonymous finds Kantor’s work to be characterized by stylistic variety, that is, many different approaches are used which is what Tubis felt I sensed about his work but he felt the term “versatile” more appropriate.

Whether or not this change in terms from “variety” to “versatile” is virtuous remains to be seen, but it does have about it the behaviour of a euphemism.

Works by Sternberg are below:

He i and Sternberg's parents had immigrated from Russia and Hungary. The family moved to Brooklyn in 1910 and Harry began orthodox Jewish religious training. At the age of nine he began to take art classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. From 1922 until 1926 he trained at

the Art Students League of New York.[1] He rented his first studio in Greenwich Village in 1926 and began his career in etching, printmaking and painting.

[edit] Early career

In 1931 his work was exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art for the first time. He was appointed in 1933 to the staff of the Art Students League of New York where he would remain an instructor for the next 35 years. After meeting Diego Rivera, the prominent Mexican muralist, and his wife Frida Kahlo in 1934 he became more politically active in union and socialist causes. In 1935 he was appointed a technical advisor to the Graphic Art Division, Federal Art Project (FAP). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936 and spent the year studying the conditions of workers in coal mines and steel mills. His drawings, etchings and paintings depicting life in industrial America influenced his post office mural designs especially in Lakeview, Chicago, IL.

[edit] New Deal

In 1937 he painted his first post office mural: Carrying the Mail for Sellersville, Pennsylvania. This artwork was commissioned by the former United States Department of the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, later known as the Section of Fine Arts. Later that year Sternberg traveled to Chicago. There he studied the city’s history, architecture, industry, and workers. He returned to his New York studio and painted Chicago: Epoch of a Great City, for the Lakeview post office in Chicago. The mural is a powerful depiction of the history of the city from its first settlement of Fort Dearborn to the Great Fire to the life in the stock yards and steel mills and onward into the future. Life for the workers in Chicago’s stockyards and steel mills was graphically described in 1906 by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle and the Lakeview mural captures much of this history.

He married Mary Gosney in 1939 and their family including their baby daughter are depicted in his mural for the Ambler, Pennsylvania post office: The Family - Industry and Agriculture. In fact, he was fond of self-portraits and he also painted his likeness into the scientist figure in his mural for the Lakeview post office.

[edit] Retirement

In 1966 he retired from the Art Students League and the Sternbergs moved to Escondido, California where he continued to work for 35 more years. In 1990 he published a collection of prints: Sternberg: A Life in Woodcuts, one of which depicts his painting of the Lakeview post office mural. In 2001 his life and work were celebrated by a major retrospective exhibition: No Sun Without Shadow: The Art of Harry Sternberg at the Museum–California Center for the Arts, Escondido, California. The catalogue of this exhibition was researched and written by Ellen Fleurov the Museum director. Harry Sternberg died on November 27, 2001 in Escondido. He had previously written and published two books: a book on composition called Composition: The Anatomy of Picture Making, and a book on woodblock cutting and printing called WOODCUT

And works by Will Barnet:

Will Barnet (born May 25, 1911)[1] is an American artist known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints depicting the human figure and animals, both in casual scenes of daily life and in transcendent dreamlike worlds.

Born in 1911 in Beverly, Massachusetts, Barnet knew by the age of ten that he wanted to be an artist. As a student he studied with Philip Leslie Hale at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and viewed first-hand John Singer Sargent at work on the murals of the Boston Public Library. In 1930 Barnet studied at the Art Students League of New York, with Stuart Davis, beginning his long association with the school. Here he concentrated on painting as well as printmaking, and in 1936 he became the official printer for the Art Students League. There, he later instructed students in the graphic arts at the school and taught alongside the likes of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Beverly Hale and Richard Pousette-Dart. Barnet continued his love of teaching with positions at the Cooper Union, at Yale University, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

From the forgoing analysis I would conclude that while without doubt Benjamin Harjo can talk a better talk and make more appropriate references to the works of other artists he may not be able to actually excell Vincent Younis in creative behaviour. What I believe this somewhat awkward analysis might reveal is that not only is creative behaviour difficult it may also be dangerous to your health yet in the search for that spark of the inner most personal meaning it may be the only way to go.

Benjamin Harjo

Benjamin Harjo, Jr. (b. 1945) is an award-winning Absentee Shawnee-Seminole painter and printmaker from Oklahoma.[1]

Contents[hide]

1 Background 2 Education and military service 3 Style 4 Public collections 5 Awards and honors 6 Personal 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Background

Harjo is half-Seminole and half-Shawnee and is enrolled in the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Harjo’s father was the late Benjamin Harjo, Sr., a full blood Seminole. Harjo’s

mother, Viola Harjo, lives in Byng, Oklahoma. Viola’s father was William F. Harjo, who graduated from Chilocco Indian School in 1939. Viola married Benjamin Harjo’s stepfather, Roman Harjo (1924-2006) in 1954 at Clovis, New Mexico.[2]

The name Harjo means "Crazy" in the Muscogee language and is part of a military title, Chitto Harjo or "Crazy snake."[3]

Harjo was born on September 19, 1945 in Clovis, New Mexico.[1] The family moved back to Oklahoma, and Harjo lived with his grandparents, Emmett and Ruth Wood, from age 10 to 18.[4]

[edit] Education and military service

Harjo’s first passion was cartooning, and he sold comics to his high school newspaper. Interested in pursuing a professional career in cartoon animation, Harjo went to the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1966, only to discover that their animation program no longer existed.[5] He stayed at IAIA anyway and earned his Associate of Arts degree. His classmates included such luminaries as T. C. Cannon and Linda Lomahaftewa. Seymour Tubis was his most influential teacher, who taught him low-tech but highly effective printmaking techniques.[6]

In 1969 was drafted into the Army and served in Vietnam[4] from 1969 to 1971.[1]

Upon his release from the military, Harjo continuing his art education and attended Oklahoma State University and graduated with a BFA degree in 1974.[7]

[edit] Style

Harjo typically paints geometric forms composed of blocks of highly saturated color that form both abstract and highly stylized representational figures. The mosaic nature of his painting is reminiscent of traditional Seminole patchwork clothing. He also works in pen and ink, allowing his comic influences to show through. Through printmaking, Harjo is able to experiment with texture and subtler palettes. His work is known for its humor, either in comical imagery or in witty titles.

His miniature paintings can be not much larger than postage stamp but still portray naturalistic portraits.[8] Harjo's chosen media include oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, conté crayons, pencil, pen and ink, pastel, printmaking,[1] and occasionally sculpture.[9]

When you’re traveling down the highway, you see an image whether it's dirt on the back of a truck or a splat on a windshield or two birds sitting by the side of the road picking at something. All those things have inspired me at some point in my creativity.[4]

It has always been my contention that one's art speaks from the soul of the artist and remains viable and open to the influences of the artist's environment. Forms, colors, and movement keep it from stagnating and allow it to grow as the artist matures and develops. I feel that my art covers a wide range of emotions, from serious to humorous, and that the colors I used radiate a sense of happiness and joy.[9]

[edit] Public collections

His artwork can be found in the many public collections, including the following:

Gilcrease Museum Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History US Embassy, Mogadishu, Somalia [1] [10] Sequoyah National Research Center

[edit] Awards and honors

Harjo was the 2005 poster artist for SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market,[7] where he has consistently won top awards, including Best of Show, since 1983. In 1987 he won the Red Earth Grand Award. He was the 1993 Heard Museum’s 34th Annual Featured Artist, the Featured Artist in 1992 and 1993 for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Annual Aspen Benefit, and the Gold Medal Award at the 1990 American Indian Cowboy Artists Wichita Show.[11]

Oklahoma Governor David Walters honored Harjo for his selection by Absolut Vodka to represent Oklahoma in its USA Today advertising campaign. In 1992, Harjo showed his work at the Franco-American Institute in Rennes, France.[11] In 1991, the Wichita Art Museum held a solo exhibition of his work,[10] and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian hosted a major retrospective of Harjo’s work, entitled "The Earth, the Moon, and the Stars Above." At a January 2010 solo exhibition at his alma mater, the Oklahoma State University, Harjo donated all proceeds of his art sales to OSU's Art Department.[12]

The German artist Paul Klee wrote that “art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.” Art history and studio art are complementary disciplines. Artists make ideas ‘visible’ and art historians examine form and content as a way of understanding meaning. It’s like being a detective who looks for

clues then pieces them together to make discoveries or solve a mystery. Dr. Judy BullingtonP lewas born on December 18, 1879, ,

Associate Professor, Art History. Hhhhmmmmmm, “German”

“this source tells us. Well, others indicate that was Swiss and born on 18 December 1879 Münchenbuchsee bei Bern. From the strictly academic point of view, however, where one is born is less important than when and most important of all where creative thinking is concerned it is what one does with what one has that is the penultimate factor. Neverthless it is professionally embarrassing to all of us when an authority, and an authority is what all professors are, makes an error and most especially when the institutions which dignifies the authority fails to correct the error. However, Dr.Bullington has a sweet smile.

Just a short political aside on this matter of nation assignment. I have, as yet, been unacquainted with the possible controversy over what nation Paul Klee “belonged” to although I was aware there seemed to be one I took no interest in the matter and possibly considered it irrelevant as to who Paul Klee was. However,

it seems the weight of evidence seems to be in favour of Switzerland as being the country to which he holds citizenship. I do not believe, however, that a creative individual thinks in terms of his nationality, or even, for that a matter even in terms of his gender which is a vastly more personal characteristic than one’s citizenship, but for some it does seem that both gender and political association are more commanding issues than ideas.

Paul Klee was born Switzerland, into a family of musicians.