For Marcel Duchamp

Last week I packed up my pieces for the "Seduction of Duchamp" exhibition and sent them north to the Slaughterhouse Space in Healdsburg, CA. I thought I would share the pieces here, so that if you can't make it to the show, you could still experience the work.

The first piece is a mixed media collage called Invocation and is a new addition to my Milagros series. In it, reproductions of Duchamp’s art surround the photograph of my arm, literally inspiring my hand in the creation of new work. This piece contains a handwritten wish for myself and the other artists in this show – that the spirit of Duchamp generate “new works that delight, humor, and provoke.”

The second piece is called Rose-Sea-La-V. Inspired by Duchamp’s use of glass in works like the Large Glass and Ampoule, I have used old bottles to hold symbolic elements that when pieced together reference Duchamp’s pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy.

The show will open this weekend - I will be at the reception on Saturday, October 3, 5-8pm. For directions, click here. It would be great to see you there.

Invoking Duchamp

"With Duchamp, there's no choice but to penetrate about two inches behind the eyeballs into the brain." -Francis Nauman quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article on Duchamp

This week I have been working on art inspired by Marcel Duchamp for a show this October at the Slaughterhouse Space in Healdsburg, CA. The curator, Hanna Regev, drew her exhibition concept from the location of the Slaughterhouse Space which is surrounded by the vineyards of the Duchamp Winery. Owned by artist Pat Lenz and her husband, the winery includes several of Pat's outdoor fiberglass sculptures - including this one pictured here of Marcel Duchamp with a trellis of roses growing from his enormous head - alluding to his pseudonym Rrose Selavy.

It is fitting that Pat chose to depict his head so large - over nine feet tall. Marcel Duchamp has always struck me as being very dry, witty, and conceptual. Like the quote above describes, his best art makes you think. And so I have been thinking a lot about how to fuse his sensibility with my own and create something new. Below is a photo of some things in process - I will share more as the work evolves.

Lee Miller

I took a family excursion to SFMOMA on Friday evening with my father, daughter, and husband to attend a Foto Forum walk-through of the new Lee Miller show. It was such a treat to see so many vintage prints by her. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Lee Miller and relied heavily on books for my view of her photographic oeuvre. Now at SFMOMA I could view the wonderful subtleties in her prints. I drank them in, filling my creative well.

The walk-through was led by curator Marc Haworth Booth and Lee Miller’s son, Antony Penrose. They each animated the images on the wall with background stories and information. For example, the photograph below is a wonderful surrealist image of the magic electricity found in the everyday occurrence of opening a door. Marc Haworth Booth explained that this was a door to an exclusive shop and that the explosive illusion came from light hitting the marks left by the diamond rings of wealthy women scratching against the glass as they turned the handle. I have always viewed this image as articulating the power of the hand to ignite the creative spark that generates new art.

It is hard to consider Lee Miller’s work without connecting it to stories from her multi-faceted life. Born in Poughkeepsie in 1907, she modeled for Vogue magazine, was Man Ray’s mate/muse/assistant, ran a portrait studio in New York City, married an Egyptian and lived in Egypt for several years, then became one of the first female war correspondents during WWII, and after the war married Roland Penrose and settled down in the countryside raising her son and entertaining artistic friends like Picasso and Max Ernst. The rich variety of her life caused her son, when writing Lee’s first biography, to call it the Lives of Lee Miller. I have recently been enjoying Lee Miller: A Life and the catalogue for the exhibition.

It was a treat to see this show with my father, Charles Hobson. When he created his book, Parisian Encounters, about eight famous couples who met in Paris, he included Lee Miller and Man Ray, recounting the story of their first meeting. Lee Miller was traveling in Europe and decided to stay in Paris and study with “the best photographer in the city,” which at the time was Man Ray. So she went to his studio and rang the buzzer, but the concierge informed her he had already left for his summer holiday. Crestfallen, she went around the corner to a café, and finding him seated there, she marched right up to him and introduced herself, saying “Hi, I am Lee Miller, your new assistant.” He countered, “I don’t take assistants, and anyway I am leaving now for my vacation.” She said, “Fine, I am coming with you.” And she did and so began a rich collaboration.

It was stories like these that inspired me, as a student at Vassar, writing my thesis on Lee Miller in Poughkeepsie (the city where she was born), to really go after what I wanted in life. If, at a time when women most often defined themselves as mothers and wives, Lee could burst through limitations and live such a full, animated life, then so perhaps, could I. She helped me dream bigger and commit myself to the path of photography. When I began my series Mapping the Body, it was her and Man Ray’s vision of the cropped female figure that informed the way I photographed my own body – mining inspiration from their vision to create my own. In the end, I think there are people who touch you through time, despite death and never having met. Lee Miller is one of those intangible mentors for me. It’s why seeing her show on Friday filled me with that magic electricity of exploding hands.

A Glimpse of Cornell

The other day, I caught a riveting glimpse of Joseph Cornell. I was running errands South of Market in San Francisco and found myself with a pocket of time thirty minutes long. As I drove down Third Street, I said to myself, “If I can find a spot on the street, I am going to SFMOMA to see the Joseph Cornell exhibit.” And sure enough, as luck would have it, there was one empty spot on the same block as the museum. I pulled in, and dug for quarters in my purse, only to get to the meter and realize in less than 15 minutes this parking spot would become a tow-away zone (3-7pm everyday). So I had to act fast and decided to glean what I could from an even shorter visit than I had planned. Once inside, the elevator deposited me on the 3rd floor. The shadowy galleries (lit low to protect the work) revealed a space of dreams. There is such whimsy and reverie in Cornell’s boxes and assemblages. It was painful to rush past them – like skimming a really well-written book. I will have to come back soon to re-read this exhibition before it closes on January 6. But at least those 15 minutes introduced a bit poetry into the midst of prosaic day.

The image above is the cover of the exhibition catalogue, which I have added to my Christmas wish list. Click here to learn more about it, or click here to see a google image search yielding an array of Cornell artworks.

Cadence: A Collector Print for PhotoAlliance

Earlier this week, I spent an afternoon at the home/studio of Michael Creedon. Tucked within the redwood trees of Marin County, his studio boasts an Epson 9800 printer and an affectionate cat named Checkers. Together he and I proofed an edition of archival pigment prints based on a unique collage from my series Mapping the Body. The resulting print (pictured here) is part of the PhotoAlliance collector print program – an endeavor in which artists donate images, which are printed in special editions and sold to raise money for the organization.

I am fond of PhotoAlliance, and so this act of generosity came naturally. A former board member, I value all they do to build community around contemporary photography. Their workshops and lectures feature top-notch artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, William Christenberry, and, coming soon, Terri Weifenbach in April and Bruce Davidson in May. I value these talks as a means to gain a new perspective on the photographic medium, and for the chance to gather with others devoted to image making.

I was delighted that PhotoAlliance selected Cadence to be one of their collector prints. With this work, I pay homage to Man Ray, whose Surrealist photographs of the closely cropped female figure inform so many of my photographs in Mapping the Body. Cadence is a direct reference to his famous photograph, Le Violin d’Ingres, which itself references another artist, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. And so Cadence speaks to the ongoing cycle of one artist impacting another. I like to think that in making Cadence into a PhotoAlliance collector print that I am supporting this kind of transmission of influence. The money earned from the sale of this print will fund public events where artists speak to other artists. May the cycle of inspiration continue…