Scavengers- Ingrid Calame and Joseph Cornell

Jennifer Reeves

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Does the means
justify the ends in the making of art? Does a sound theory alone make the
object demonstrative? Is the artist a mute data provider and the viewer solely
responsible for the revelation? Holding that art is capable of far more than
satisfying the urge for decorum and coerced poetics, then perhaps the answer to
the questions above are no.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Among the varying
types of artists, one of these is the scavenging reconstructionist. Sweeping
through nature, they set out into the world and see what they can find. Their’s
is an eye for the lost, the disregarded, and the hidden strength of
misfits. Salvaging the bereft,
along with the metaphors they congeal, artists such as these make compositions
from our decomposition. Not only the tragic is brought to light but the
possibility within the tragedy as well. Enterprising seagulls wash away the
tears from material remains as surely as identifying the refuse washed up upon
the shore. Embracing the wasted, a way is paved for renewal.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Yet, within the realm
of these broad winged vultures the possibility for risk, failure, and victory
is equal to all the other creative endeavors. Artists do not succeed simply
because victory is proclaimed. Proclamation isn’t enough. Mere prettified
materiality isn’t either. Something more is required. There are two types of
cleaning. One is immersed in the life of renewal and refinement. The other is
in the business of disinfecting to the point of asphyxiation. Now, here,
everything depends upon what is agreed to be the definition of victory. It
might be safely said that “victory” depends upon the circumstance. Keeping to
the circumstance of art and encompassing a wide scope of interpretation, one
would hope that victory has to do with the emancipation of perception. That is,
art’s ability to hone our intuitive capabilities while revealing the reasoning
power of emotion, which is similar if not the same as furthering the growth of
spiritual sense. To nurture spiritual sense is beneficial if, as a result, we
can learn better how to differentiate between the subjective and objective and
synthesize their consequent polarities. If this definition of victory were
acceptable then it would follow that, in art, humanity fails to reach the
noblest range when the sense of the spiritual is smothered.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> How does one
determine when art is renewing as opposed to smothering?
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Through feeling, but not just any
feeling. Not, for example, by succumbing to a retardant emotionalism, but,
instead by awakening to the harmonics of wisdom. Art of authenticity reveals
the surprise of intuitive unfoldment. How to see becomes what we think. And
what wasn’t seen is found to be merely what wasn’t understood. Thus, the
feeling of surprise to discover what was there all along. And the further
blessing of ensuing depth that readies the recipient to receive more. This, of
course, must be practiced throughout time and experience like a good marriage.
But, in the beginning, we have only the first moments upon which to rely. So the
only recourse is to start where we are and let the future experiential
determine the effectiveness of our conclusions today.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> About eighty percent
of the writing on the work of Ingrid Calame is spent on her procedural
activities. The writers use words like scheme, strategy, and data to explain
what they see. Actually, Calame refers to her project as a partial
“documenting” of the greater field. She maps the “surface” of the world by
tracing the remnants of splashes found on sidewalks and streets. A big too-do
is made about the transposing of stains found in the streets of the financial
district upon the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. As if the documenting
itself is something to be admired.
The resulting “traces” are then gathered and arranged upon panels or
walls and since the tracings are “painstakingly” copied, there is much applause
given for such puritanical task-making. Such is the stuff of “art”. It’s a
social event of artist, assistants, and site-specific public interaction. So
much for Van Gogh making a tree look alive.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> And what a rosy
picture it all makes to see the authorless tracings of splashed coffee and
spit. How the shapes tell the story of the “surface” of things. What? You mean
to say you didn’t know these tracings were taken from urban settings and
transposed upon the floor of the Stock Exchange? Oh, well, you had to read the
press release. What? The paintings feel vapid? Well, that doesn’t matter
because it’s the concept that counts.
You think the concept is rather literal and dictatorial? No, no, you as
the viewer are free to bring in your own references. The idea doesn’t have to
be demonstrated in the work since everything is conceptual anyway. What’s
bothering you? You think the theoretical information is a distraction from the
poverty of the painting (albeit with an occasional flare for color)? You think
all the talk about the artist’s procedure is nothing but an easy way for
curators to condescend to what they think is a stupid public? That all the
conceptualizing is a means to justify a reason for abstraction that is seen to
be too ethereal to reach the “little people”? That the paintings are primarily
lame signifiers of community awareness for the walls of the wealthy to ease the
underlying suspicion that art is nothing but a farcical construct for their own
amusement like Imelda Marcos’ shoes? Wow, lighten up. You’re so intense.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> What? You say, if you’re so fucking
intense then that means that I’m so fucking shallow? Geez, what’s wrong with
being shallow if it sells a painting? Well, okay, a copy of a tracing of a
stain. But, still, it WAS a stain from the streets of the financial district
confined by the architecture of the floor of the Stock Exchange!
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Isn’t that ironic?

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It’s essential to
remain serious when it comes to art, even in whimsy and humor, because avoiding
profundity puts us to sleep, because we are better than that, because others
before us have not stooped to such levels, because we have the privilege to
follow their example.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> She briefly noticed
the dark spots on the pavement as she stepped up to the doorway. Waving goodbye
to her ride, she took out the key from her coat pocket before being aware of
the broken glass in the door’s window. She saw her dad inside walking toward
her from the kitchen into the living room. He had that dazed look. The look she
would understand years later as an indication of being high. He was holding a
white dishcloth around his fist. It dripped with the kind of red that comes
before turning brown. She couldn’t remember if he let her in or if she opened
the door. He kept pacing around and dripping. His tall frame seemed especially
protracted to her four eleven and a half. His muscles quivered with excitement
like a Thoroughbred before a race. She made an excuse about having to go to the
neighbor’s house next door.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Later, after
homework, she was assigned to scrub away the dark spots from the gold
carpeting. At first, the stains would smear which only made matters worse and
caused a welling of anxiety from her chest to her throat. However, after awhile
the stain would relent as long as cold water was used and not hot. Eventually
the task was done and only the occasional yellows of their poodle’s pee
remained. Poodle’s pee never goes away. It’s a strange thing to come home after
piano lessons when you’re twelve. In the dusk, it’s too dark to tell that the
spots on the pavement are blood. It’s too late to call back your ride because
they’ve already gone and now you have to be tall when you’re not. There are
many sorts of stains in this world – coffee stains, spatters of blood,
splotches of oil, seepages of pee, but the ones that have the greatest effect
are the ones that ooze and squeeze the heart. No tracings can be made of these.
No amount of theorizing can make them just data.

style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Joseph Cornell was a
scavenging sort. He could take a piece of nothing and make it something. This
is because he saw substance where others see things of naught. He took these
evidences of existence without leveling their individuality for the sake of
easy acceptance. Far from describing the notion of the surface of the world,
his was a social endeavor to “…look deep into realism instead of accepting only
the outward sense of things.”* Sure, he was a reader of philosophies and
religion but they were not theoretical diversions upon which to justify an
insipid engagement with art. They were sources of inspiration in the way he
lived his life and the way he made his sculpture. What he made was an offering, a generous gift of
self-reflective experience upon which others might build. His was not a stingy
tracing of a nameless splatter on the topmost crust of the exterior world. His
was an acknowledgement of the individual scar in the very basement of the
heart. In this way, his achievement points to all the stains that ever were,
from the infinitesimal to infinity, with the additional savor of hope.