Bob McCabe, Morning Host for KWMU, reads during A Marathon Metamorphoses.

“…how does one communicate the experience of an ephemeral two day reading in our exhibition space?” our director, Matthias Waschek asked today in his very first blog post for the Pulitzer. He is, of course, reflecting on last year’s marathon reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which has so far been the only event of its kind in our building.

To capture the experience, a local videographer video taped the almost twenty hours of reading in the Lower Gallery. He then edited the footage down to eight minutes, which includes a shot of each of the seventy-four readers. You can now watch the video and read Matthias’ reflections on it on our A Marathon Metamorphoses blog.

Everybody eats (See Sesame Street clip, ca. 1970s), and, as we should know by now, the way we get and eat food fundamentally defines our way of life. Drive-thru windows. Pre-packaged food. Devotion to convenience in the United States leaves cooking as a hobby rather than a part of being human.

Next Thursday evening, the Pulitzer will present “Food, Art, and Community,” its final panel discussion in the series fired by Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. Panelists will talk about offsetting disengagement with what we gobble and how blending art with urban farming, farmers’ markets and food has the potential to strengthen whole communities. This topic was inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark’s use of cooking in his artwork and the artist-owned/run restaurant Food, which offered a “perpetual dinner party” to SoHo in the early 1970s.

This week, Rachel and I decided to highlight an example of art and food fostering fellowship in St. Louis by interviewing a founder of Sloup, a monthly soup dinner that donates its proceeds to artistic ventures. Below is my interview with Amelia Jones.
What is Sloup exactly? What is the rationale behind it?

Sloup is a monthly soup dinner that funds artists’ grants in greater St Louis. The idea is that it doesn’t take a super large amount of funding to bring art projects to fruition.

Can you relay the conversation that led to Sloup?

Sloup was sprung from visiting a soup dinner hosted by InCUBATE in Chicago. Very simply, we decided that this idea of a micro grant process could be applied to St. Louis.

What are the details that go into a dinner, like where does the soup come from?

We made the first soup ourselves. The second soup was donated by The Mud House, a local coffee shop. We are soliciting other restaurants and individuals to come make a soup and share something they are excited about, be it an ingredient in the soup or an element of their restaurant/organization/etc that is unique.

Who are the people who participate in Sloup?

Maggie Ginestra and I facilitate the dinner, but that is becoming an easier and simpler component since more people want to contribute to the actual dinner, by donating soup and bread and beverages. We’ve had local art organizations like The Urban Studio Café (who won out first grant) and individual artists like Jordan Hicks and Dave Johnson apply for the Sloup grant.

Can you describe what took place at the last Sloup meeting? What is the atmosphere like at a typical dinner?

We have had two dinners so far: one in February and one in March. We have had a little over twenty people attend each dinner. Sloup is a casual occasion. People start wandering in at 6pm or so and we try to hand out the proposals as the soup is being served. Since we have only had two Sloups, it is hard to say what is a typical dinner. At our last dinner we had Kimmy Sue talk about a project she is working on called Fresh Bread. Kimmy is donating bread, which she will screen print on with edible ink, to April’s Sloup as part of her Fresh Bread project. As more people begin to finish the projects the Sloup grant funded, more of the dinner will have a presentation element, where the artists and organizations will come back to Sloup and talk about the projects that they have completed.

Besides awarding money to artistic endeavors, what has Sloup accomplished so far, and what do you hope for the future?

We have started to connect different populations in St Louis and we want to continue to do that in, hopefully, bigger and bigger ways. When you hear the word “Sloup,” we want people to think about a great place to put ideas about food and culture in motion.

Update: Sloup, along with our friends at Urban Studio Cafe, were just featured on Marketplace! Check it out here.

Tomorrow will be an informal conversation between me and Sabine Eckmann, William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.  It will be at 3:00 at Kemper 103 on the Washington University campus.  It is open and free to the public.  We will be discussing the conceptual practices inherent in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark and Sharon Lockhart. The hour-long discussion will include light refreshments and be followed by a screening of Lockhart’s film Pine Flat (2006), which is a 16mm feature-length film in the small town of Pine Flat at the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. The project provides an intimate view of this small community’s youth.

During our discussion, Sabine and I might address how both artists  appear interested in the  “end” of social phenomena.  In 2008, Sharon photographed the workers at the Bath Iron Works in Maine at a time when so much manufacturing left our country.  Gordon Matta-Clark  in the 1970s became an urban archeologist of a city close to bankruptcy with many abandoned structures, and his projects captured the traces that everyday people left on the walls of these buildings.   We may also look at the way both artists intervene into and re-structure existing systems, like the city or the factory structure, and man’s assimilation/inhabitation of these structures.   In this context, we might touch upon the ideas of chaos and order found in both artists’ work or filmic structures: the unedited quality of Matta-Clark’s films versus the highly structured and systematic films of Lockhart.  Both offer the viewer the chance to look slowly and meditate on workers, actively cutting a building or walking down a hallway.  These are just a few points that we might address in our discussion, and we look forward to your comments too!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Paul Shattack, Assistant Professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, shares memories conjured by Gordon Matta-Clark’s Bronx Floors.

Another month has passed, and it’s time again for Frame of Reference, a regularly scheduled program at the Pulitzer. Since our last exhibition, Ideal (dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer, the Pulitzer has hosted monthly in-gallery discussions, led by individuals with a range of backgrounds, about the artwork on display.

Visitor Services Manager Courtney Henson geared this Saturday to combine the perspectives of those specializing in art and those in social work. Our Senior Curator, Francesca Herndon-Consagra, who is the curator for Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, will be among the speakers.

You’ll note that the schedule for these 15-minute forums has changed from previous sessions to be all within 1-2:30pm, rather than at the beginning of every hour. This way, we hope you can stay for all of them and give your special viewpoint.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ward Stare, Resident Conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, talks about Ingram Marshall’s Fog Tropes, in front of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Bingo. Stare will conduct Fog Tropes for the concert tomorrow, March 10, 2010. (Tickets for tomorrow’s concert are SOLD OUT.)

One of them, Naheem Houston, is diligently pursuing his dreams of helping youth avoid the path he once followed while finishing up coursework at Florissant Valley Community College. The following are words from Naheem.

Naheem Houston describes what he likes and what he doesn’t really like about Urban Alchemy.

Naheem Houston:

I was looking forward to last Tuesday night since the Pulitzer sent me the invitation. I love and appreciate everybody that had anything to do with the success of the Staging Old Masters ensemble. The experience was truly a blessing that I will forever cherish, and the food was always a plus. I enjoyed meeting up with old friends and conversating about how life has been since we went our separate ways. I wish all the actors and staff could have made it out, just so I could see the look on everyone’s face in unity. We were the first in the pilot program, so we made history.

 

During last Sunday’s Frame of Reference, interesting dialogues surrounded the works of Old Masters. Five Pulitzer volunteers stepped fearlessly into the gallery for a rare opportunity at public speaking. These docents discussed with viewers what it was that kept them looking at their chosen work. From ideas of love and chivalry to discussions of the emotive side-effects of diagonal lines chosen by Tintoretto, docents explained things from their unique perspectives. (We had in our midst a couple artists, historians, a social worker, an engineer and a police officer.) And so too did our visitors; some already had a keen interest in the subject, while others happened by and caught an earful. Sometimes the earful developed into a paused moment to look again at the paint inside the frame and allow the ideas to dance around outside of it–giving new meanings to the original artist depictions.

We thanked our docents for their time and research, and I was baffled that they kept thanking me. An interested audience, eager to see things from a new perspective, found the Pulitzer this past Sunday. On behalf of ourselves and our docents, we thank those visitors for sharing their ideas and thoughtful conversation.  

Special guests tonight include our very own Senior Curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra and Kress Interpretive Fellow Hannah Fullgraf as well as St. Louis Poetry Center Consultant Lorin Cuoco. They, along with Haubrich and Ellen Ibur, will read sections of the Classic and talk about next weekend’s A Marathon Metamorphoses. 

Ann Haubrich will be reading at the marathon, so you might think of the show as an auditory preview. If you haven’t checked out the A Marathon Metamorphoses blog lately, read today’s slant on Ovid from St. Louis Magazine’s Culture Editor Stefene Russell, who will also be reading next weekend and has helped host Literature for the Halibut in the past.

In the second to last clip, Director Matthias Waschek remarks how A Midsummer Night’s Dream fits in with the Pulitzer’s current exhibition as an Old Master work with its script, direction, and music. This made me think of other ways particularly the play compares to our current paintings, such as how its ageless themes of human experience (love, dreams, lust, confusion, violence, etc.) make it forever pertinent to society.

Yesterday, I asked people on Facebook and Myspace broadly, “What do you think makes Old Masters relevant to our society today?” and received some thoughtful responses, including that of Facebook fan Paula, who wrote, “…I think every one of those pieces of art speaks to something within the human condition…” Likewise, A Midsummer Night’s Dream deals with the frustrations of desire and how comical humans can be while hooked to their base emotions.

We’ll observe human nature more during A Marathon Metamorphoses, when we read a Classic that must have stirred Shakespeare’s imagination a little. For instance, in Ovid’s story of Cephalus and Procris, we see tragedy associated with one of those seven deadly sins, jealousy. The dysfunctional lovers’ tale is represented in a painting now on display at the Pulitzer, Joachim Wtewael’s Cephalus and Procris (The Death of Procris).

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). Directed by Max Reinhardt. Shown from left: Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland. Photographer; Mickey Marigold. Warner Bros./Photofest. © Warner Bros.

This Friday, June 26, we’ll be celebrating the summer solstice by projecting Max Reinhardt’s 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at 9pm in our courtyard. Doors open at 7pm.

Since it doesn’t get dark outside until 9pm, we’ll be entertaining our guests for the first two hours in a variety of ways. The most exciting of which, to me, is a reunion of the performers from the Pulitzer’s now finished series: Staging Old Masters: Former Prisoners Perform at the Pulitzer.

Select scenes, such as the St. Sebastian, Self-Portrait with an Easel, and As You Like It – Shepherd & Shepherdess, will be performed in our courtyard throughout the night. These performances were originally done in front of specific artworks in our galleries, but by moving them outdoors, we hope to accomodate a bigger audience than was allowed indoors. In addition to these skits, we’ll be serving free refreshments and as usual, our Old Masters exhibition will be on view for the duration of the evening.

Are you excited to come? Have you circled the date and time in red marker in your calendar? Are you waiting with baited breath? I am too, but never fear, Friday will be here soon enough!

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1. 1

This event is free and open to the public, so bring your friends!