t-art magazine explores the intersections of art, technology, and culture, fostering dialogues to push the boundaries of art and design.
t-art began with a radical vision from our founders: to create a space and community of creatives at Penn to develop their creative passions, unlimited by the confines of academic disciplines and realms of artistic practice. Four years ago, I would have never imagined the extent to which t-art has blossomed into its talented community today, especially amidst the challenges that arose from the pandemic. From our first digital launch to our debut exhibition last year, t-art has expanded to horizons beyond anticipation. t-art magazine / volume 3 features a curated collection of written pieces by our multifaceted editorial team led by editorial director Sriya Choppara. The issue is separated into three sections: Forms In Flux, Exhibitions and Reviews, and Spaces and Histories. Each section offers insightful perspectives on the changing landscape of creative practices that continue to push the boundaries of art and design today, from our home in Philadelphia to the global art scene and beyond. I am so honored and proud of our talented team and the tremendous work they have put into this unique issue. I would like to thank Jessica Lowenthal and the staff at the Kelly Writer’s House who made this year’s issue possible with The Creative Ventures Fund, as well as my incredible board of directors for their unmatched leadership and for trusting my guidance along the way. I would also like to thank co-founder and my former co-editor Eleanor Shemtov for her dauntless mentorship which prepared me for this years success. These last four years with t-art have been an immense privilege and opportunity to see our incredible team of students stepping outside their comfort zones. As I hand over the torch to t-art’s future leaders, I leave one piece of advice: be not afraid of the unknown. None of this would exist without the willingness to take on unseen horizons and take the risk of failure. In Zen Buddhism the concept shoshin refers to a beginner’s mind, an attitude of openness and eagerness to learn. My advice is to embrace this. Do not let fear obscure the potentiality of the unknown. Amazing things can happen when you choose to act from a beginner’s mind and are open at any moment start anew.
Happy reading, and best wishes to the future generations of t-art.
Adrianna Brusie Editor In Chief
One of the irrefutable bestsellers of art history is Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art (1950). The book is a survey of the history of art from ancient times to modernity. It remains critically acclaimed after almost 70 years because it provides a singular explanation for the entire flow of art history. In other words, Gombrich appears to provide one common theory that constitutes the backbone of why artistic style transitions from one to another. The author essentially argues that art history has always been an alternation between “art that attempts to represent the truth beyond the reality” and “art that prioritizes references to the real world.” While the book provides a detailed analysis of many historically significant works and their artists, there is a metacommentary that seems to unite and explain the entire art historical discourse. The gift of the book is that it enables us to apply this theory to individual paintings and better understand which side of the duality each one lies in (the abstract representation or the figurative reality)
or if it is at the verge of a moment of transition. One philosophical theory that backs up Gombrich’s argument is dialectical materialism. Derived from Marx’s materialist approach, it is the theory that all things contain contradictory sides whose tension essentially becomes the driving force for change from figuration to abstraction, and vice versa. For instance, prehistoric art was created with the purpose of representing religious and communal beliefs, which did not necessarily require a realistic resemblance to our world. The depictions of humans, most notably, are flat and stylized in ancient Egyptian or Greek pottery. While this is also due to the lack of artistic technological development, Gombrich attributes this style of art to more or less “abstract” because the goal of these works were not realism. These artists were more like “artisans” who were commissioned to create objects of social purpose. However, entering the 4th century BC, Greco-Romans began to gear
Cecily Nishimura, Doll, (2022), oil on canvs, 28” x 28”.
towards a more realistic expression. The early Greek philosophical tradition known as Stoicism had its focus on humans rather than Gods, and this declined dependence on deity meant a stronger basis on reality and our surroundings. This, therefore, becomes reflected in the arts with a more realistic and observant figurative language.
In this sense, the return to figurative art is a cyclic move. After reaching the highest point of abstraction, the artistic will is confronted by the opposite will that drives us into the passage to figuration.
If one has been closely following the global art market in the past few years, it would be impossible to look over an interesting trend - figurative art is coming back. At the October 2022 London Frieze Masters, I am seeing artists like Philip Guston, Giacometti, and George Condo presented at the auction. These artists all work with human figures, forms we can recognize as resembling reality. This is a turnaround from a decade ago where the record-breaking sales were Rothko and Pollock. If the dialectical materialism theory is true, we must be in the midst of a period of transition. More specifically, the popular mode of figuration in the art market seems to be a more surrealist style. At the 2022 Sotheby’s New York sale, rising artist Christina Quarles’ painting Night Fell Upon Us Up On Us (2019) was sold at a surprising $4.5 million, despite its “laughable” estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. In her works, we see elongated, distorted human figures with colorful flesh and a range of textures. While the painting is all about the physical body, it appears to follow a stream of unconsciousness and spontaneous decisions, leading up to a surreal outcome of postures pressing against and lying over each other. These biomorphic forms only slightly resemble reality yet they are predominantly dictated by the artist’s intuitive mode of expression, giving in to the surrealist impetus. This trend seems to be proven by the recent wave of exhibitions as well. At the end of 2021, Tate Modern and The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders in New York. The show explored the locally distinct yet simultaneous waves of surrealism movements across the globe. Last month, Pace Gallery’s new space at 125 Newbury also showcased an overwhelmingly surrealist figuration style. All of the works in the show were fleshy and anthropomorphic, using the physicality of the body to explore philosophical concerns such as decay, death, and ephemerality. Following this, we see Jennifer Packer’s
solo exhibition open in October 2022 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with London’s Serpentine Gallery. Alice Neel’s exhibition opened at the Pompidou center in Paris. Even in Philadelphia, there is the new exhibition Matisse in the 1930s, which we could call a hint of the resurging popularity of figures. Back in the 20th century, the return to figuration occurred over the course of a few decades in different places, but globalization and increased communication now seem to have synchronized this new pattern across the globe. As this trend has become noticeable, many are suggesting possible reasons for the transition. Are we exhausted from radical abstraction? One plausible take is that after two years of isolation, people want to see people. Since art and psychological state are inherently interconnected, some argue that we turn to art in order to feel more connected at difficult times like COVID. A figurative art that makes clearer reference to the real world may feel more grounding to many. The transition may be taking a surrealist passage because altered representations of reality — for example, differently colored bodies, subversive use of texture and materiality — make it easier for us to digest figurations. That is, surrealism renders reality in a way that recalls another world or dimension, thereby offering a smoother stylistic transition to figuration.
To add my own thoughts on this debate, I argue that the new buyers with the purchasing power are those people who grew up with Pop art. To trace back the first popularization of pop art is in fact very interesting. American pop art saw its heyday in the 1960s; its buyers grew up reading comics in the 1930s and 40s, not to mention the launch of Marvel in 1939. The comic figuration style in pop art would have been familiar to the eyes of the people who grew up surrounded by comics and now had the wealth to purchase art. Now that we are in the 2020s, the pop art tradition has continued to be influential in the art market, and to the general public as an easier type of art to digest. Having new generations of wealthy buyers introduced to the art market, figurative art may present a less difficult way of entering the art world for these people. Looking back on the 20th century, we often mention Anselm Kiefer and George Baselitz as the pioneers of German neo expressionism. Philip Guston and Julian Schnabel are considered the American artists who led the American return to figuration in the 1970s and 80s. Which artists are at the forefront of our time? Or are they yet to come?
In the summer of 2018, I visited New York from London and had the chance to visit the Museum of Modern Art. Out of all the works from the museum’s collection, Geta Brătescu’s Medea’s Hypostases II, III and IV (1980) were most indelibly etched into my mind. I was intrigued by the medium listed on the adjacent placard: ‘Drawing with sewing machine on textile.’ My return home coincided with the first major retrospective of textile artist Anni Albers in the United Kingdom. Learning about Albers’ life as well as the criticism other women artists have faced while working with textiles, I became interested in the history of textile art with regard to women. I found that women have often been the primary textile artists as a consequence of division of labor. However, gendered opinions and prejudice led to devaluation of skills and
techniques employed by the “inferior sex,” not to mention the creative pieces themselves. Looking back in time from famous 16th century collections to contemporary artists like Judy Chicago, we can see how women artists have used textiles in skilful and innovative ways to change preconceived negative opinions about textile art in their respective Western societies. Whilst textile production first emerged with practical purpose alongside ceramics, woodworking, stonework and metalwork circa the 7th millennium BC, centuries of tradition, skill development, and refinement elevated its status Pre-Industrial Revolution. Although men who acted as representatives in the form of merchants and trade guild owners took the lion’s share of credit, works can still be noted as the collaborative efforts of men and women. Variety in sophisticated manufacture, design complexity, creativity and material opulence deemed textiles luxury goods and eventually secured them a tentative position amongst other fine arts.
Why was this fine arts label a tentative one? The main reason was the nature of textile products, lying on the border between narrative and decorative intentions and practical use. One of the best examples of this ambiguity is a series of tapestries titled The Lady and the Unicorn (c. 1500). The sextet of large wall-length tapestries features a flaxen-haired medieval lady juxtaposed with a unicorn and occasionally her handmaid. Its origin has been traced back to Flanders (Northern Belgium), known for weaving the wool of neighboring lands into cloth. While the artists behind the piece are unknown, it can be assumed that they were mostly women as they were trained in the craft from a young age and were sanctioned cheap labor.
Reasons for present-day appreciation of the pieces are clear considering the intricate techniques and elaborate symbolisms utilized. Made by a team consisting of a patron, designer, cartoonist, master weaver, workers who set up the loom and weavers who wove, The Lady and the Unicorn series is the intertwining and elaborate product of several minds, skills and talents. The ornate background of flowers and plants is called mille-fleurs (thousand flowers)
and swift production of woven fabrics. Inventions such as Spinning Jenny, invented in 1764, coincided with widespread use of bleaches and dyes to decorate fabric. The efficiency generated by textile mechanization demolished the exclusivity of elaborate textiles and eclipsed the acknowledgement of the laborious and slow art of weaving that was previously the primary source of practical and artistic fabrics. Additionally, textile work involving personalisation, individual stylisation and distinct creative technique waned upon their mass, consumer-targeted production. Unique textile work shifted exclusively to the domestic household where several elite women would embroider and sew as a coveted wifely asset. This increased the correlation of textile works with women and thus perpetuated the general undermining of the art form.
Ensuing efficiency due to the mechanization of textiles was certainly one of the causes of the devaluation of textile art. However, it is important to note the strengthened association of textiles with women and consequent labeling as a mundane, unskilled craft. In 1986, feminist theory pioneer Sandra Harding wrote: “In virtually all cultures, whatever is thought of as manly is more highly valued than what is thought of as womanly.” Her statement highlights the negative connotations associated with all women-related activities as well as the natural inclination of society to disparage women’s work. The employment of women in textile factories as cheap labor brought about a correlation of all textile products with words akin to “cheap.” Contrary to woodwork and metal sculpting, a typically male pursuit or profession, work with textiles was unanimously categorized as a mundane, domestic and unvalued hobby.
and was a specialty of Flanders’ weavers. Every plant was individually designed, improvised by the weavers as they worked. Composed of wool and silk dyed with rich, natural dyes, the dainty flora are captivating, drawing the beholder into the mystical setting within the tapestry while golden fibers compliment details with different forms such as the patterns on the tent.
The dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 1760s marked the beginning of a shift in the appreciation of textile arts. The invention of cotton gin and the use of waterwheels to power textile machinery transformed the textile manufacturing industry, resulting in inexpensive
The Tate Modern’s Anni Albers retrospective I visited showcased an extensive collection of works and written texts on techniques and the creation of textile art spanned eleven rooms, visually recounting how Albers came to redefine textile art first in the German Staatliches Bauhaus (1922-1932) and then in the USA where she went on to become the first textile designer to have a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1949). Albers reformed discriminatory opinions and prejudice against the traditionally female art practice in several ways. With no qualms about gender stereotyping, Albers took advantage of industrial mass production of textiles, infused her works with numerous other academic disciplines and in depth experimentation with texture, color, material and form to create versatile pieces.
One way Anni Albers transformed negative perceptions was through conceptualisation of woven pieces as works of engineering or architecture and by implementing highly regarded
Remember our heritage is our power; we can know ourselves and our capacities by seeing that other women have been strong.
Judy Chicago
Bauhaus art school qualities in her works. For example, in response to male Bauhauslers who attempted to make walls membranous, Albers created a membranous wall covering that behaved like a sound-absorbing and light-reflecting wall. Using carefully selected fabrics such as cotton, chenille and cellophane, her piece not only reflected light like architectural spaces but also absorbed sound. She described such pieces as works of textile engineering. Albers worked around Bauhaus exclusion of women through innovation of new techniques and the introduction of novel technologies to the Bauhaus’ weaving workshop. She also popularized the idea of weaving as a hands-on, intensive and researchheavy sculptural art form. Quoting Albers, “Sculpture uses a given material… [Weaving] is closest to architecture because it is a buildingup out of a single element, building a whole out of single elements.” The German term bauhaus translates in English to “building house.” Albers essentially brought the male-dominated art school of architecturally minded students to acknowledge her redefinition of building and architecture through textiles and fabrics.
The piece Black White Yellow is a manifestation of Albers’ expressive and extensive experimentation with texture, color, material and form. Several typical Bauhaus qualities are reflected within the piece, including inventive color use, intriguing geometric patterns and sleek and sharp lines typical of Modernist art. Her colors and design reveal mathematical elements, and her application of modernist ideas to the ancient craft of the loom directly opposed criticisms identifying weaving as an outdated art. Seeing no distinction between mass production of textiles and artworks, Albers embraced mechanization and industrialisation to distribute several of her original designs to the eyes of the public. Albers’ clever technique, in its commercial success, was also victorious in fulfilling the Bauhaus school’s aim to bridge the gap between art and industry via coalescence of crafts and fine art.
While Anni Albers can be credited for confronting several notions of prejudice against textile art, American artist Judy Chicago’s works are different in that they directly confront textile art’s history as a “women’s craft” by politicizing it. She works towards altering the
perception of traditionally female crafts by directly addressing sexist ideas and highlighting female efforts, literally through narrative textile pieces and metaphorically by demonstrating labor intensive yet delicate and engaging techniques. With Chicago’s founding of the first feminist art program in the United States (1970), Chicago and affiliated artists, such as Miriam Schapiro, sought to reclaim and re-contextualise fabrics and thread as media.
Judy Chicago’s sculptural installation The Dinner Party (1979) is considered by many fine art critics as the first epic feminist artwork. A tribute to women, it is composed of a large triangular table with thirty-nine place settings dedicated to illustrious goddesses, historical figures and important women throughout history. It incorporates ceramic cutlery and porcelain plates but the most fascinating features are the table runners that are embroidered with imagery drawn from each woman’s story, executed in techniques and needlework from the periods in which each woman lived. In addition to a variety of techniques, decorative styles and motifs typical to the different time periods are used, often interacting with the imagery upon the plates. The 20th century marked a change in the way textile arts were generally perceived. Anni Albers and Judy Chicago’s artwork rallied welldeserved respect for the previously undervalued art form. Contemporary textile artists have followed in their footsteps, advancing and evolving unique forms of textile arts and even breaching through the flat, two-dimensional plane.
Mimi Jung is a Los Angeles based textile artist who works with large-scale weaving. Her pieces tend to involve constructed forms woven with delicate panels of natural fibers. Her pieces tend to involve constructed forms woven with delicate panels of natural fibers. Similar to Albers, she seems to have architectural influences and create membranous “walls,” but Jung seems to permeate through space to a much greater extent. For instance, in her installation Four Teal Walls (2015), Jung’s twenty meter tall frames wind through the hollow gallery setting in all directions. They interact with space such that their forms are indicative of privacy and yet translucent weaving of graduated thickness allows light to weave through the threads. With unfinished edges juxtaposed with straight steel skeletons, Jung’s process is evident and just as mesmerizing as the quiet and meditative environment Four Teal Walls generates. The clear distinctions of every thread compel the observer to contemplate the hours of work such a monumental piece entailed, as well as the meditative practice involved in expansive weaving.
When I first delved into weaving, I was fascinated by the minute details in Brătescu’s
abstract thread portraits. Brătescu’s Medea’s Hypostases (“Hypostasis of Media”) was my insight into the extent to which a sewing needle could mimic a pen. The turbulent background in The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series is evidence of the fragile history of textile art despite the skilful techniques, such as mille-fleurs, and complex motifs utilized. The mechanization of textiles seemed to have negatively skewed the appreciation of textile art. However, Anni Albers used mechanization as a facet to popularize the art form and heighten appreciation through creation of new techniques based on ancient ones. Later on, the second-wave feminism movement inspired artists such as Judy Chicago to make textile art, traditionally derogated as ‘women’s work’, polemical. With large, imposing works such as The Dinner Party, Chicago exhibited women’s achievements and fascinating histories through embroidery and fabric. More recent artists have been experimenting with threads in new and innovative ways by engaging with both techniques, cultural significance and space. For instance, although Mimi Jung appeals to emotion much like Chicago, her sculptural work is entirely different in its abstraction and minimalist qualities. The diversity of textile art created by women artists illustrate how much new territory in the art is yet to be traversed. The varied techniques and motifs that Albers, Chicago and Jung have employed prove that textile art is in no way inferior to other fine arts in its variety, versatility and potential to connect with the spectator via intellectual, historical and cultural motifs. My piece is inspired by the women artists I have explored, with many elements drawn from the work of Albers, Chicago and Jung: geometrical patterns, yellow turmeric-dyed wool that links to my own Indian heritage, and slightly threedimensional, bulbous forms that protrude from the textile art’s primary plane.
Sriya Choppara, Sarpil Parvat (2019). Weaving on a 2 x 2m loom. Image courtesy of the artist.
View of Sarpil Parvat (2019). Photo by Sriya Choppara
Image by August Kamp, create by the assistance of OpenAI’s DALL·E. Includes Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer.
What if I told you that anyone could be an artist? Now, it doesn’t require years of art school or even the most primitive painting supplies, just some compiling computer code and the ability to describe what you want illustrated.
In April 2022, the artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI revealed DALL·E 2, the second-generation successor to DALL·E: an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a language description. OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman with a mission of creating artificial intelligence that
me and add the Eiffel Tower in the background.” Since the explosion of the generative AI market after the popularization of DALL·E, new models have been frequently introduced. Stable Diffusion, created by Stability.AI, is not only free but open-source, meaning it has fewer restrictions towards using data from the open web to train their models. Furthermore, apps like Midjourney and Wombo Dream lower the barrier even more when it comes to technical skill –trained on images pleasant to the eye, almost any prompt will generate something that looks
imparts a positive long-term impact on humanity, and the company has since released cutting-edge technologies such as the transformer language model GPT-3 and the music-generating AI MuseNet. DALL·E completely revolutionized the way people began thinking about computer generated art. Given a high-quality prompt, DALL·E 2 produces art at the level of a human artist in seconds and offers a series of pieces that vary in artistic style, composition, and color palette. DALL·E can even make edits to pre-existing images based on simple phrases, like “remove the person behind
visually “artistic.”
Generative AI models rely on massive amounts of image data from the open web to teach algorithms how to recognize patterns. For instance, DALL·E 2 uses a Generative PreTrained Transformer (GPT-3) model, along with 3.5 billion parameters to train the millions of text-image pairs it scrapes from the Internet. The ethics behind this method of explicitly using web images to train AI at such a large scale has been largely debated. Namely, these models purpose data without permission and use it to
“We should instead address discreditation and authorship of artists through restrictions in the law and focus on an audience-driven emphasis on human-made art.”
mass produce what artists would spend months making, often generating eerily similar copies at the expense of the original work. Claude Monet, Gustav Klimt, and Johannes Vermeer are just at the tip of the iceberg of renowned artists who are essentially allocating their work for an AI to examine and reproduce. Less-acclaimed modern day artists have it even worse – with less visibility and support from the public, generative art enthusiasts may never even know that these artists’ creations have been stolen in a way that lacks artistic integrity.
This appropriation perpetuates the idea that artists are a product and style rather than a human with skill and training. Many artists have formed a deep connection with themselves and their audience through artistic expression, and this is not so easily replicated with a machine. When South Korean illustrator Kim Jung Gi, beloved for his manhua comic book style and highly detailed line art illustrations, passed away in 2022, his work was re-generated by an AI developer, sparking furious backlash from the Japanese anime community. Many were upset that a day after the artist passed his once outstanding and unique art became a commodity for training robots, and claimed that there was no replacement for Kim and his authentic pieces. Since the art style of anime is viewed similar to a cultural export in Japan, and the degree of similarity DALL·E images are to original works is often unrecognizable to naked eye, this poses potential threats to the employment of Japanese anime artists. Critics have labeled generative AI like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion
as “anti-artist,” exploiting artists’ works and techniques in a plagiaristic manner without any safeguards to protect the original creator. But does this mean we should not be optimistic about these new technologies? Not necessarily. AI like DALL·E has exceeded limitations and has the potential to be used for good, such as creating references for human artists seeking inspiration. Like every other technology, the important part is how we control and regulate these models. Many generative-AI users (artists included) believe that AI will only advance from here, and that human artists and their AI counterparts should learn to mutually exist. Since this Pandora’s box has already been opened, we should instead address discreditation and authorship of artists through restrictions in the law and focus on an audience-driven emphasis on human-made art.
This isn’t the first time a major disruptive force like AI has been released into the art world. From Daguerreotypes in the mid-nineteenth century to the invention of the digital camera to editing softwares like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, what we once deemed as traditional art has seen a multitude of changes as we shift to the modern world. Art dons a different purpose in each era and movement, adapting novel meanings as we advance in our ways of thinking. Art is never constant. It is reflective of the human condition and our particular context, and this allows the nature of human creativity to persist.
WORDS CATHY LI
Beauty never looked simpler. If you look at any of the popular beauty brands of today, you will notice there is an indulgent use of minimalism in their product marketing. Gone are the days of seasonal-limitededition villain eyeshadow palettes (though they still exist, I doubt that they have been selling much). Now, Social Media platforms are pivoting our attention to the “clean girl aesthetic,” ditching full coverage foundation for its sheer coverage sister, tinted moisturizer. This may be in part due to customers reeling their heads from the oversaturated, ostentatious flashy makeup trends of 2016 and embracing minimalism. Minimalism isn’t new. What is relatively popular now is the resurgent artistic movement of minimalism, but the very idea of decluttering can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers.
Greek philosopher Diogenes, who after losing all his wealth, came to a revelation that individuals can exist without material possessions producing them happiness they desire. While Diogenes was one of the firsts to recognize minimalism as a benefit to improving the human condition, his definition hinges on the spiritual. Minimalism itself is also an art movement, an extreme form of abstract art that populated Post-World War II. The associated art forms are distinct for their purity in lines and in structure. Take Robert Morris’ Untitled for instance, a work that abstracts form and space. Viewers of this art piece interact with the work itself by walking around these geometric forms. They are subject to the art itself and the piece holds dominion over them. The bare bones of this art piece is what makes it such a riveting work, as it alters the viewer’s understanding of perception.
It is hard to escape minimalism. Its influence in spatial work, specifically in modern architecture and interior design, is undeniable. Clean, uncluttered lines realized with simplistic layouts dominate most modern spatial designs. Art critics and casual art fanatics alike will argue that minimalism is lazy and unimaginative, but an essential minimalism requires deliberate organized methodology.Psychologically speaking, minimalism entices because it’s linked with selfcontrol. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo makes an argument for her readers to adopt minimalism, emphasizing that people can achieve stillness, or control over their lives by ridding themselves of clutter, whether that be household junk like an old receipt or an unhealthy habit like smoking cigarettes. “Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself,” Kondo says. Fascinatingly, Kondo echoes back at us the important pillars of minimalism: deliberate control and manipulation of space, aesthetic restraint, and the idea of “the essential.”
But what are the implications of minimalist design in a capitalist and consumerist society?
Look at any flyer on a college campus. It was probably made on Canva, a graphic design website with a million templates that fall under the umbrella of corporate memphis. The style that was originally sequestered to the corporate tech sphere is now readily accessible to the average internet user. Corporate Memphis is ubiquitous,
a fun, hip, go-to-style to market anything and everything online. What used to be a sleek clean mode of communication now is saturated with cold, generic undertones that are anything but exciting. Instead, such designs warp the consumer’s mind into what a company sees them: dollar bills.
But I am not interested in the way that corporate memphis influences brand identity, but rather how the ethics of aesthetics and beauty manifests into the private consciousness of the consumer psyche – which leads me to the beauty brands of today. Tower 28 Beauty, known for its bare-bones design and packaging, is an excellent example of the shift towards minimalism in makeup. Evidently, what catches our eye (and our pockets) is the simplicity in packaging and color schemes. Though the color palette of Tower 28 leans towards the more bright and colorful, the clear-straight-from-the-lab packaging elevates the minimalism in its brand-identity. It’s real, it’s personal, because it’s just so simple.
While parsing through Tower28’s Behance for a more in depth study of their brand, I found countless ad images that laud the clean girl aesthetic and naturalist makeup style, cementing the arrival of minimalism in beauty spaces.
Juxtapose that with Jeffree Star Cosmetics, a brand whose peak relevancy seemingly does not persist beyond the 2016-2018 zeitgeist. Yes, the website still features the cult favorites that made the brand so successful in the past such as the “Blood Sugar” and flamboyant JeffreeSkin line, but despite its obtrusive roots and brand voice, even Jeffree Star Cosmetics can not escape the bite of the minimalist bug. Their newest product “Magic Mushroom Mist” has all the telltale signs of a gradual movement towards minimalist marketing: a clear bottle with a softspoken color palette to accompany wavy yet simplistic typography. Though this product is one of the decidedly minimalistic designs in Star’s brand, the product alone shows that even the most maximalist brands are falling victim to more conservative design patterns.
That is to say, minimalism in beauty is not something that will go away anytime soon, especially in the context of makeup and selfhelp. Rather, these trends hold a mirror up to a consumerist society and how design ebbs and wavers to fit an aesthetic ideal for profit.
As a part-time student at Penn with newfound .free time, I flew myself to Frieze Los Angeles on a Thursday night. I bought the pre-sale ticket months ago out of sheer excitement. I didn’t even have a friend with me – I was going to LA not for the sunshine, but for some aesthetic recharge. Friday morning, I got up to wear my best and most intellectual-looking outfit and headed to the Santa Monica airport where the fair occurred. And no, you did not misunderstand that – while it was apparently selected for its “additional space and flexibility,” the single lane to the fair site greeted me with tons of traffic. I followed the crowd to eventually arrive at the fair in the corner of the airfield.
When I tell my friends that I am going to an art fair, they tend to romanticize it – they conceive of it as a museum-going experience reserved for art fanatics. However, being a party of one and an undergraduate college student, I have to admit that art fairs are stressful. For those unfamiliar with the concept, an art fair is a booth-style convention show intended for collectors and institutions to purchase. Obviously, all the renowned galleries and curators attend every major art fair, such as Frieze, Art Basel, and the Armory Show. Since the big money is always supporting the art world in its major events, no art fair looks drastically different from any other. From a critical eye, we might have reached a point of stagnation in art fairs where nothing is so groundbreaking – there is a lack of inclusion, awareness and nuanced knowledge of people and places beyond established art circles and recognized art centers.
The art fairs remind me of French anthropologist Marc Augé’s concept of “non-places,” a “place” so transient that it does not hold significance. In other words, the excess of information and excess of space makes the space lose its locality. This theory implies the anonymity of humans and objects inside “non-places.” Examples of nonplaces are hotel rooms, airports, stations, and of course, art fairs. An art fair’s booth is designed to minimize distraction, hence a white-cube – it is the epitome of supermodernity. Whether it is an art fair in LA, London, or New York, once I step into these spaces they make me forget where I am. The ideal white cube subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is “art.” However, in reality, art fairs exhibit hundreds of works in a packed space – which ironically is no different than a bazaar, except the works being sold are often 5- or 6-figures –the pieces serve as distractions from each other. Though there are so many works of renowned artists, the chaotic and distracting atmosphere prevents me from spending fruitful time in front of a singular painting.
Before the opening of Frieze LA, the art-world’s meme maker Jerry Gogosian posted on instagram, “The Art World preparing to kick off the festivities in Los Angeles, regreeting all their best friends whose surnames they don’t actually know, flitting from event to even making sure to be seen (doing nothing in particular), and air-kissing hundreds of people – 10 of whom they’ll be in litigation with by the next auction cycle in 2 weeks.” Art fairs are the ugly side of the art world, where superficial networking interactions happen between galleries and dealers, and rather than leading with their best or most challenging works, galleries display what they know will sell. Peter Schjeldahl of New York times said, “The events are schmoozefests for the über-rich and assorted influencers, granted V.I.P. privileges.” And for that reason, as a college student with little knowledge and even less money, I am invisible at an art fair.
Despite stressful red flags of superficial people scanning each other and visually bombarding art, I would never want to miss out on art fairs. It is a living report of what sells, who is popular, and where the art market is heading.
The Barnes exhibition uses innovative conservation efforts to reveal Modigliani’s unique artistry and behind-the-canvas decisions.
The much-celebrated Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), with his famous “long-face” style of sculptures and paintings of subjects with elongated faces and necks has had his artistry discussed and examined through many exhibitions and publications. As many leading international museums and foundations attempted to bring together his work, a new group of scholars have been coming up with innovative methods to better understand and convey Modigliani’s evolving artistic processes and decisions.
The Modigliani retrospective at Tate Modern in London from 2017 one of the first exhibitions that hinted at this new scholarship. Building on those findings as well as the inputs of an international team of curators and conservators, the new exhibition Modigliani Up Close at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia brings together many of the modern art figure’s sculptures, paintings, and drawings. But more importantly, aims to contextualize the evolution of his style — his shift from popular movements and repurposed canvases to ethereal paintings with Mediterranean influence. This is done not only by hinting at the locations and circumstances of how and where he worked but also with exciting conservation efforts and analytical techniques that helped curators and researchers better understand the collection of works.
A couple of days before opening it to public, Barnes introduced Modigliani Up Close to a group of members of press, and the fruitful conservation efforts (also explained in their newly published catalog) were explained by the four curators: Barbara Buckley, Senior Director of Conservation and Chief Conservator of Paintings at the Barnes; Simonetta Fraquelli, independent curator and consulting curator for the Barnes; Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes; and Annette King, Paintings Conservator at Tate London.
Techniques like X-radiography, infrared reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) allowed the curators to understand and reveal previously unknown aspects of Modigliani’s work, and the walls were filled with side-to-side panels highlighting previous use of the canvases, underdrawings, and alterations–of course complimented with background information about how Modigliani’s location, financial circumstances, and level of experimentation.
After an academic exposure to art in Italy, Modigliani moved to Paris at twenty-one years old. Greeted by the work of different artists, classic and contemporary, he explored and experimented with new ways of working, inspired by Cézanne, Munch, and Picasso.
In his first years in Paris, Modigliani kept reusing older canvases for painting. Sometimes he would cover up his previous attempts; sometimes it would be over other artists’ work.
The Pretty Housewife is a good example. At first sight, it’s a simple portrait of a young blond woman before a usual background that’s somewhat constrained by the narrow vertical canvas. But the X-radiograph and the busy and confusing shapes revealed show that the portrait is obscuring at least two other paintings.
X-radiography, an imaging technique using X-rays and popular in the medical field, reveals the varying densities of materials in an artifact, for example the thickness of paint in a painting. Materials with heavy elements such as lead paint or metal tools will absorb more X-ray radiation, while materials with lighter elements such as ultramarine paint or ungrounded canvasses will be kept in the dark. This reveals valuable information about an artifact’s construction or, in this case, how a painting was made.
Throughout the works of Modigliani, the team of scholars made use of X-radiography to characterize types of ground and paint layers, canvases and other structural elements used, as well as to understand how paint was applied and to identify restoration efforts.
When it comes to The Pretty Housewife, indepth analysis of the open-weave support that’s been primed with an oil-based lead white ground suggested that this portrait was the second or third painting on the canvas and that Modigliani made use of the underlying coloring, resulting in the final painting’s chromatic and textural complexity. His decision of reusing the canvas in this case is unclear.
Research on his paintings suggest that Modigliani’s practice of reusing canvases was not only because of Modigliani’s financial constraints but also because he enjoyed using older canvases and made use of the underlying colors and texture to enhance the new work.
Around World War I, Modigliani had a dealer that provided him with canvases, which marked a shift in the artist’s focus on portraits. Particularly, these canvasses had a blue-gray priming, which gave his portraits and nudes a warm glow that complimented the flesh tones, which can be seen in Reclining Nude from the Back presented with its X-radiograph and infrared reflectograph.
Another valuable tool used by conservationists and art scholars, infrared reflectography (IRR) is another imaging technique used to reveal hidden underdrawings under the brush strokes. Light in the short-wave infrared region (1000–2500 nm) bypasses the layers of paint and is absorbed by carbon-containing materials like graphite or charcoal.
The graphite underdrawings for the Reclining Nude from the Back, highlighted in red, is revealed using white (basic lead carbonate) confirmed with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, applied on the ground layer. It looks like Modigliani applied some marks with charcoal to position the legs and arms as well as some facial features. The bending amount of the figure’s right arm was also initially decided but was later moved closer to the torso, as the underdrawing shows. And the X-radiograph helps us see that the ground paint was applied with a spatula or a similar tool, as indicated by the sweeping arched lines.
Around the time the war was ending, Modigliani returned from the South of France and was a more experienced and successful painter. Usually painting the people from his circle, he had better access to tools to perfect his craft. Among those he painted was his companion, Jeanne Hébuterne (see Figure 3). He used a lightweight, plain-weave canvas with a size wider than his previous canvases, which gave him more freedom to paint Hébuterne. This fluidity and freedom of expression is indicated by infrared reflectography (IRR) revealing the brushwork and the underdrawing as he captures the pose.
Modigliani Up Close is truly a spectacular glimpse into the behind-the-canvas processes of one of the most celebrated figures of modern art in the 20th century. Exciting applications of imaging technologies and conservation are used by the group of scholars to present his body of work chronologically and with scientific evidence.
One day, swiping through my Instagram stories, I saw something like a funky streetwear graphic. Weird, I thought. I don’t follow any streetwear-type accounts. When I turned my eyes to who posted it, it was the Perrotin gallery. An artist collective, MSCHF, was opening its first show—not with generic paintings or sculptures, but with some warped sneakers and foot pictures instead. I was successfully convinced by their viral marketing to make a trip down to New York.
When I visited on the second day of its opening, I entered excited but ready for possible disappointment. How long could I possibly spend looking at a show full of readymades? Yet I walked in with the attitude of a customer, knowing that all works on display were on sale.
The first thing I saw were eight iPhones, each locked up in an aWcrylic case and protected with a lock. Inside each were the phone numbers of 17 celebrities. The list included people like Lil Yachty, Ivanka Trump, and even Emmanuel
Perrotin. Passwords are not included in the sale, though. The locked iPhone can either be zero value or a few grand, but no one knows for sure if the phone numbers are actually in there. This raises a question on the ironic concept of celebrity culture—how valuable can one’s phone number be, and who would be willing to spend so much money on these potential assets?
Next up, AI generated feet pics that can be purchased by contacting the gallery. The series is titled “This Foot Does Not Exist,” suggesting that since all of the pictures are generated by the computer and do not belong to anyone, it disrupts nobody’s privacy. How tempting is that, a foot pic that won’t get you into any trouble? Using a technique called Generative adversarial network (GAN), MSCHF will send the clients newly generated foot pictures on demand. The group seems to know what people secretly want, and it brings these desires to public art spaces so that we end up laughing at ourselves.
What I was most excited to see was the piece Severed Spots. The group purchased a $30,000 print of Damien Hirst’s Spot series, cropped out each individual spot, signed them, and framed them for sale. They generated a total of 108 artworks from a single Hirst work. Each spot was resold for $480, and the empty grid of white paper was also for sale. What surprised me the most was that about a dozen of them were already sold on day 2.
What does this say about the art world? It seems like MSCHF makes a satire of how today’s investors buy a fraction of expensive artworks just for the feeling of owning them. Just by being the middleman and adding their own signature, MSCHF makes hundreds of dollars, and there are enough people to be foolish customers for them.
Before I stepped out of the gallery, I noticed that I hadn’t seen the work Chanel Diffuser. After combing through the entire gallery again, I saw a tiny bottle at the corner of the room. To see if it smelled like Chanel N5, I crouched down and brought my hand up to inhale the scent. What was I doing? Finding myself sniffing at the corner of a white gallery was quite hilarious indeed. Honestly, I did not have to smell it to know that it was the real Chanel N5, but I just wanted to. Placing an artwork at the most uncomfortable location forces engagement and deconstructs the norms of a gallery experience.
MSCHF started with two creative and rebellious guys who met in college, and is now a group of over 30 people working with an intent to satirize and critique. The entire show is based around making fun of aspects of American culture— ranging from conspicuous consumerism to digital identity, artistic ownership, paparazzi and more. It makes us laugh at our own selves and think, what kind of world are we living in?
ADRIANNA BRUSIE
I step into a tall elevator cramped between a dozen other visitors. The tall doors close in on us and we become engulfed in the space tainted by aquamarine. The elevator attendant guards an LED touch screen as the enclosure slowly ascends, coming to a halt at the fifth floor. The doors open into a white cube gallery space saturated with museum guests. no existe un mundo posthuracán. “A posthurricane world does not exist.” The words are scattered across the upper half of the gallery walls, leading towards the projection of a video which takes up the center of the gallery. In front of the screen are over a dozen visitors, young and old, listening attentively, urging me to drop into their meditation. I gaze at the moving screen and immediately am revealed a still that resembles my grandmother’s garage in San Juan: tropical plants lounging in every corner, surrounded by white painted walls that reflect the sunlight peeking through the spanish style metal gates. I’m sent back to January of 2021, which
felt like the first time meeting my grandmother upon moving in with her that year while taking college classes on Zoom. For six months, her home became ours, and it was sitting right there, surrounded by the pristine walls of the white cube.
The film is dawn_corus ii: el niágra en bicicleta (dawn_corus ii: crossing the niagara on a bicycle) by Puerto Rican multimedia artist Sofía Córdova. It includes dialogue by the artist’s family members layered with footage from the island, actors dancing and moving with the natural and residential environments. But what captured me wasn’t that. It wasn’t necessarily what was said or what was shown, but the familiarity of the moments peeking through: the forest sounds of El Yunque, the shape of the telephone poles, the way the blue sky met the earth toned buildings, the flamboyant Puerto Rican accents. Standing in the white cube, I felt the usual spacial suffocation I experience in these galleries, yet this time, simultaneously, I was the the closest to Puerto
Rico I had been since I left my grandmother’s two years ago.
I’m consumed by a restlessness that urges me to wander the galleries in a nonlinear manner, with all senses open and ready to be arised by more familiar stimuli. I approach a large wooden telephone pole towering over me – just like those on the island. Except this pole was diagonal, installed to be suspended in the air as if it had been tipped over, torn apart, covered with broken wires and bent hardware that penetrate the surrounding space along with a sign that reads: VALORA TU MENTIRE AMERICANA
(Value your american lie / Guaranteed / Vote for Statehood June 11). The irony! Gabriella TorresFerrer’s sculpture transports Maria’s destruction of the island into the gallery space, haunting its viewers, many of whom would have never seen the destruction first hand, never mind the reality of the island’s exploited state. If they had visited Puerto Rico, it was most likely on their allinclusive luxury vacation hosted by Caribe Hilton. I continue, soon approaching three oil
paintings by Rogelio Báez Vega. Again, I’m sent back, but this time to every abandoned building I’ve encountered on the island, and all the ways I’ve been taught to see it as free real estate to occupy and turn into more hospitality spaces for tourists. No. Framing these paintings are no ornate patterned woods, but piles of dirt sitting on the wooden floors of the gallery, holding tall blades of grass – dying, if not dead. Like the telephone pole, these sculptures bring visitors the very materiality of the island and its environment in its post-disaster state – in a way, as a communal mourning of the lives lost to the systemic betrayal and abandonment of the people of Puerto Rico.
Marcela Guerrero, now the DeMartini Family Curator and main organizer of the exhibition, writes: “No existe un mundo posthuracán proposes that imagining a new Puerto Rico is resolutely the purview of artists and that self-determination is a creative act. Art can be the medium of a posthurricane, postausterity, postearthquake, postpandemic world. This exhibition is a call to see the living and pay tribute to the dead.” The
title, inspired by Sofía Gallisá Muriente’s practice and in particular her billboard project in 2020 that consisted of the question, ¿Imaginamos la libertad? (Do we imagine freedom?). This idea alludes to the fact that in order to imagine a future for Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans and those in the diaspora must mourn its mass loss–including the mass violence and displacement caused by foreign governance and neocolonial agenda to occupy of the US territory and assimilate it to US economic and social hegemony. From what seemed to me initially a pessimistic framing of Puerto Rico and its contemporary spirit now emerged a deeper engagement and reenactment of the island’s ongoing violence and destruction by its own governance and its own imperial forces. Grief will always be a necessary step in tending to the ongoing collective trauma that is existing as a colonial subject in the imperial gaze of U.S. corporations and policymakers.
I continue on and soon encounter a wall of photographs of Javier Orfón’s Bientevéo (Iseeyouwell). It features a series of cupey leaves engraved with words and sketches, surrounded by images of fallen trees and crushed flowers after the storm. One of them features a quote by Papo Vives, an environmental scientist from Quebradillas. With the little Spanish I know left, I’m able to decode the phrase to something like, I would like to have a mind that takes me back ten, fifteen, twenty million years and see the formation of the islands. I too would like to see where this all began, the blessing that was the birth of the paradise, which would soon become its gift and yet its greatest curse, subject to its inevitable neocolonial seizure. I think back to a phrase from Sofia Córdova’s film: Puerto Rico is the blessed earth, the daughter of sea and sky. Rich, rich, blessed by my God. To see these leaves etched, photographed, printed, framed, and suspended on the light gray walls, alienated from their natural habitats and displaced into the sterile environment of spectacle and leisure was, to me, a perfect expression of the tragedy of
the death of the island’s environment and its utter exploitation: the ecological devastation, fetishized and rendered for display in one of the richest neighborhoods in the US and the global art market.
What does it mean to display art of the trauma and devastation of one’s land within the realms of galleries and art institutions? More specifically, what does it mean for those who have been directly impacted by such disasters? I think about my grandmother who spent the hurricane and its wake alone in her San Juan home just months after my grandfather’s death. I think about the trauma it left in her and how easily it came back less than four years later every time the power went out or her fridge stopped working. The panic and fear in her eyes when the lights went out and all she could hear was the wind singing outside. The way she grabbed my arm to keep herself from falling in the midst of a breakdown and how I had never before been held so tightly. I didn’t have to experience the hurricane first hand to see and feel its legacy. Wandering through this gallery, I was overwhelmed with what felt like the posttraumatic stress that I saw in my grandmother when living with her. I didn’t expect to be this triggered. My grandmother once told me that a mother has a sixth sense that tells her when her child is in danger. Perhaps the child has a sixth sense too –and maybe even the grandchild.
In the background I start to hear the rumbling of loudly blasted reggaeton. I hear Bad Bunny. I’m being summoned. I walk toward the enclosed room projecting a video of a street celebration: Festival de las Máscaras, held annually on December 28. In Elle Pérez video titled Wednesday, Friday, costumed young people, drinking and dancing in the streets of Hatillo, Puerto Rico. While the scene is dark, the spirits are bright; people dance and climb on fountains, splashing water and rain onto the camera screen, blurring and obscuring the footage as the recording continues. Every hand has a beer or a flashlight and every body is soaked in rainwater and shaving
What does it mean to display art of the trauma and devstation of one’s land within the realms of galleries and art institutions?
cream, coated with a layer of shine that sparkles in the barely lit streets. If there’s one thing Puerto Ricans will do, it’s party. Even after three months of a seven-month blackout. A siren in the video sets off and welds with the music, creating a weird mixture of discomfort and bliss that begs for me to stay.Boys in the film pose as if for a photo when they notice the camera in front of them. This is how they wanted to be remembered. The camera continues to blur in and out, but the celebration continues. The music soon fades gradually into the sound of the waves crashing into the shore, prompting the screen to turn black and reveal a series of cement stairs leading to the shoreline of a beach – not unlike the ones where my grandmother would take me to. I sit there meditating on the sound of the waves and notice myself breathing deeper than I had in a long time. I missed the ocean. And it broke my heart every time I saw another news headline about some hotel or investor trying to build some pool or luxury hotel on the public land of beaches. A young toddler dressed in a pink tutu runs up to the screen, completely unaware of the artwork but utterly excited to make finger puppets. I wish I had that innocence, the willingness to play and find joy in the face of tragedy. Maybe innocence is the wrong word, but it was something I’ve lost since growing up. The finger puppets were like a ray of hope amidst all this weight of memory and longing that consumed me while I sat there. A lady, probably her mother, storms in to pull the little girl out away from the screen.
What does it mean to display art of the trauma and devastation of one’s land within the realms of galleries and art institutions? I keep returning to this question, not because I hadn’t considered it before, but because this tension between memory and display while viewing this exhibition had never been so high. The breadth of the artwork so admiringly encapsulates the richness of love and wisdom that remains in Puerto Rico and its devastation with such pride. I felt my heart warm to see the name Puerto Rico repeatedly appear on the walls of a prestigious and such well respected museum like the Whitney, retelling and thus validating the tragic reality of the island and its diaspora. But why here? Why in an art museum? Why was it that the closest I’ve felt to home was on the fifth floor of a museum ruled by corrupt investors, whose economics were not unlike those that are destroying Puerto Rico?
In the last room of the exhibition, I’m confronted with what looks like the walls of a school bus divided into ten equal parts, erected
each by their own metal stands and displayed in a curved linear arrangement. Miguel Luciano’s Shields/Escudos displays priest shields made from abandoned school buses in Puerto Rico. I’m reminded of the number of schools that have closed in Puerto Rico since the pandemic, and the wall text corrects me: hundreds of public schools closed over the past five years as a result of budget cuts by the then Secretary of Education, the US-born Julia Keleher, who has since been convicted of corruption. That’s more like it. I begin to circulate the piece and when I reach the other side, I see ten Puerto Rican resistance flags facing away from the center of the gallery. My heart warms once again. Every time I have seen the Puerto Rican flag has been a moment of comfort; no one has as much pride for their country as Puerto Ricans. Every time I’ve received a smile from a stranger or a wave from a neighbor upon noticing the Puerto Rican flags or boxing gloves hanging in our cars comes back to me. Luciano’s piece is a tribute to the teachers and students in Puerto Rico, but also a sculpture of infinite anticolonial Puerto Rican pride. After my several rounds across the exhibition, the grief that consumed me remained. A weird duality of frustration and gratitude for the display of these works in the museum persisted. But oh, to see this room full of people. I hope they listen this time. (Though I don’t think they will.)
An excerpt from author Ana Teresa Toro’s essay “A Politics For Love” beautifully articulates my my thoughts as I left the exhibition:
In Puerto Rico right now, against the possibility of love, there are two negative forces operating in perfect harmony. On one hand, there are those who, by design, seek to fulfill the destiny of any colony but on an even grander scale–absolute exploitation. They aspire to create a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans, where those of us who remain are at the service of these new masters. And then there is another force, one that’s far more dangerous because it operaties inside the individual–indifference. There is a lack of connection and commitment to the country among those who rule it; they don’t truly know it and therefore don’t know how to love it. Or worse still, they do know the heart and soul of that particular way of existing in the world that it is to be Puerto Rican, and possessing that knowledge, they are eager to exploit it.
The experience of walking down Locust Walk is like that of a time-traveler wandering through eras of architecture – from gothic-style libraries to modern glass-paneled study spaces, each building is thoughtfully designed and unique to its own history.
The most easily-recognized and representative buildings on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania are also its most historical, including iconic structures such as College Hall, Houston Hall, and the Quadrangle. Informally known as the Quad, the first student dormitory of the university was built from the late 19th century to the early 20th century and continues to be called home by 1500 freshmen each year. This distinctive complex of residence houses, along with many other characteristic buildings of the university, was the brainchild of architects Walter Cope and John Stewardson. However, as the original architects passed away before most any construction began, the large architecture firm under their names Cope and Stewardson took on this project. Under inspiration from Cambridge University, the architects designed the Quadrangle to be erected from brick rather than stone. The external details of the dormitory speak to a transition from medieval to renaissance, with crockets and gothic towers rising into the sky intermixed with classical pediments and Palladian arches from the Italian Renaissance. These varying styles along with contemporary rectangular windows spaced evenly across the Quadrangle’s walls make it evident that Cope and Stewardson did not limit themselves to a singular style. This multifaceted form of expression can be further examined through elements of the other buildings the architectural firm took on across campus, namely the Towne Building, Fisher - Bennett Hall, and the Law School.
As one of the major libraries on campus, Fisher Fine Arts Library is often said to offer a Hogwarts studying experience. The ingenious building is as magical as it seems. Designed by architect Frank Furness and officially opening in 1890 as the first library on campus, the library continues to live up to its purposes of appreciating and storing books. One wing of the structure is dedicated to a reading room, and the other is essentially a mammoth multi-story steel bookcase where the library’s collection is safely kept. The library’s exterior is in sync with the interior’s innovative design; its visual effect is stunning and cannot be confined.
WORDS CINDY SU
Standing strikingly red, Fisher is constructed from sandstone, brick, and terracotta. Its large round arches are distinctively romanesque, yet gargoyles protruding from the building’s sides are
reminiscent of Gothic styles. Whether in form, function, or content, Fisher Fine Arts Library is a work of its own time. Like many of my peers, to me entering Fisher induces the feeling of cozying up and engaging in a good book more than anything else. Sitting inside this masterpiece of architecture that embodies an engine of thought, the nonconformity of its nature encourages scholars to think beyond our greatest dreams.
Buildings constructed later in time bring the university together through function-driven designs. Huntsman Hall, designed by A. Eugene Kohn, constructed in 2002, serves as the center of Wharton life. Donning the same red tone as Fisher Library, Huntsman prides itself on integrating into Penn’s historical architecture while renovating for the future. Its circular form conveys the message of stability , grandiosity and collaboration – values engarained in the corporate world. Hill College house, designed by
architect Eero Saarinen and built in 1960, has the unique appearance of a fortress, moat and all. This protective tower encourages Hill residents to form their own thriving community within the building, connecting with each other and fostering affectionate friendships unlike any other dorm. Finally, the Towne Building, also constructed by Cope and Stewardson and completed in 1906, is symbolic of its purpose as a center for engineering with lecture halls, classrooms, and labs lined across long hallways.
As Frank Gehry said, “architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” The imaginative buildings that constitute the University of Pennsylvania embody exactly this. Each structure’s characteristics are representative of its particular moment in history, yet together they transcend time and uphold the memory of one of the oldest educational institutions in America for generations to come.
Also known as the “city of brotherly love” and and the “city of eighborhoods”, the “Mural Capital of the World” is one of Philadelphia’s many faces. And well earned is this status; Philadelphia houses more than 3,000 murals - more than any other city in the world. Canvases deemed oldschool, Philadelphia’s artistically inspired have taken to the streets to express themselves. This street art ranges from depictions of Lil Nas X to Black LIves Matter protests to ature. Colorful and rich in composition, they illuminate the streets of the streets of Philly. Beyond the aesthetic value that murals have added, they serve as a source of unity and empowerment to the city’s residents. In a city where social division is rife, has the paint on Philly’s walls become its glue?
The production process for murals in Philadelphia is organized, run by the Mural Arts Program and led by a team of Philadelphia artists. The collaborative aspect of this art form allows members of different communities within Philly to meet, facilitating a dialogue between otherwise disparate groups. Perhaps, through the shared love of art and the city, connection can be formed between these communities. The end product: art that’s all the more interesting for its melange of cultural styles, and social integration.
An example of this is Colorful Legacy culminated by Wills “Nomo” Humphrey and Keir Johnston. The mural is intended to raise awareness about the struggles faced by men of color and to inspire resiliency. It brings together Asian, Black and Hispanic men in their collective struggles, as well as garnering understanding from the wider community.
As well as giving recognition to minorities, these murals also frequently serve as love
letters to standout members of the wider Philadelphia community. For example, artists have depicted Edmund Bacon, the city planner who was responsible for Love park, worked to protect the city’s structural heritage and was an instrumental member of Philadelphia’s political reform movement. Artists have also saluted Philadelphia’s very own pioneers of art, with murals also dedicated to Alain LeRoy Locke - the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance” art movement. Equally powerful is murals’ ability to level the playing field in the art world. Philadelphia is most definitely a capital for the arts, but is the perceived pretension around artists such as Matisse and Modigliani a deterrent for the majority to engage in Philly’s art scene? The use of murals helps to include those who have previously been left behind in the fine arts scene. The medium allows for all to interact, observe and comment on art. There’s no place for social hierarchy when the art is displayed on Philly’s streets. Furthermore, the accessibility of the production process helps to bring hidden talent among Philadelphia’s youth to the limelight.
As murals increasingly occupy Philly’s streets, they serve to obstruct the gentrification that is taking place in the city. Developers seek to remodel Philadelphia through upgrading housing stock and properties, and have generated a cultural displacement. The murals in Philadelphia allow locals to stand their ground by visually stamping their authority. It symbolizes how Philadelphia’s spirit can not be torn down by real estate. Gentrification serves to change and “refine” the character of a city. Philadelphia’s murals have rendered it so vibrant that it will not submit to this refinement. Gifting street corners with idiosyncrasies, artists have claimed the city as their own, sending the message that they will not hand over Philadelphia without a fight.
In some beautiful surviving footage from a 1990 live performance, Stevie Wonder swings his whole body beneath the aura of a sapphire blue light, perfectly in-step with the rhythm of his backing band. He captures the full attention of the crowd with his gem-studded suit and contagious smile, as he serenades them with “Isn’t She Lovely,” a song from his classic 1977 album Songs in the Key of Life. Around the half way through the performance, Wonder pulls out a 16-hole chromatic harmonica from his pocket and brings the instrument close to his lips, fingers softly folded over the outer plates. As he begins the ritual of directing air from his lungs into the chamber, it almost appears as though he is trying to start a small fire in his hands. He shuts his eyes tight and puts all his energy and breath into playing the soulful riff, and the crowd responds with a round of cheerful applause. Through this moment, I’m reminded that Stevie Wonder’s original claim-to-fame was in fact as
a child harmonica prodigy – but even long after his transformation into a superstar in the popular music arena, he never abandoned the harmonica as a defining element in his music.
It may not be the instrument of choice for many musicians today, but the harmonica is certainly one of the most iconic instruments in popular American music history, featuring prominently in rock, jazz, country, folk, and of course, blues. From blues legend Muddy Waters to Americana luminary Bob Dylan, countless musicians have used prominent harmonica riffs to bring a certain “down-home” authenticity to their music, capitalizing on the instrument as both foreign and familiar to American audiences. Often called the “blues harp,” the harmonica is truly a people’s instrument.
Many first encounter the instrument through popular television, which has concocted and expedited mythology around the harmonica, giving it new narratives and expanding or heightening pre-existing ones. One of these, the
“jailhouse blues” trope, as I like to call it, comes about when a character is behind bars, reflecting on their past mistakes, playing the harmonica to pass the time and survive the drudgery of the slow and bleak life in a cell. Borrowing heavily from the old stereotype of the bluesy black prisoner, the harmonica has often been used as a narrative shortcut to tell the viewer something essential about the person playing it: they are sad. This sadness is not fleeting or shallow, but deeply spiritual, usually arising from a series of unfortunate events that put the musician in a state of both desperation and nihilism. Through the harmonica, a person can cry out to the world with a passion that surpasses mere human language in richness and clarity. Lonely cowboys, vagabonds, outlaws – in my mind, the harmonica was an instrument that belonged to these people, who in some cases had no other form of expression available to them, and no one who cared to listen to the stories they could tell.
It is hard to pinpoint the exact origins of the harmonica that we have today. Its lineage is quite ancient. Most historians acknowledge the Sheng – a Chinese mouth-blown free-reed instrument originally made of bamboo tubes and a
gourd wind chamber – as an ancestor technology, dating to around 1100 BC. In 1780, Dutch physician Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein invented a freereed device that was meant to closely imitate human speech, in an attempt to study the human voice itself. In 19th-century Europe, several mouth-blown free-reed instruments similar in size and technique came into existence at around the same time, bearing greater resemblance to the harmonicas that we see today. The modern harmonica was first introduced to America in 1857, and was instantly popular among poor, classically-untrained musicians who wanted a simple way to play the ditties they knew and loved. Easily portable, affordable, and cheap to manufacture, the harmonica became an instant hit among Civil War soldiers, who entertained themselves during their free time by playing songs about war, homesickness, pain, and joy. In most cases, these early consumers of the harmonica couldn’t afford to buy any other instrument and didn’t have access to the training necessary to play them either. In fact, the mass purchase of the harmonica was a form of resistance; people were going to find a way to play music, even if they couldn’t afford to buy top-notch instruments
and perform in the fancy venues in the big cities. The harmonica soon became a symbol of folk identification in a social climate dominated by bourgeoisie expression.
The harmonica is a free-reed wind instrument, meaning that it uses exhalation and/ or inhalation from the player as the force which vibrates small thin strips of brass (called reeds) hundreds or thousands of times per second inside tiny slots on the reed plate, producing a musical frequency quite shrill in essence. To play the harmonica, you pucker your lips and cover certain holes with your tongue, forming an airtight seal as you begin to breathe in. To add some wailing vibrato, you cup your free fingers over the backside chamber and vibrate your hand to direct the sound waves. The most common type of harmonica, the 10-hole diatonic, is actually limited to playing notes of just one specific scale, and so some melodies simply can’t be played naturally. But by rapidly adjusting embouchure (the shape and position of the mouth), master harmonicists are able to “bend” their pitches and create glissando effects that utilize a wider range of notes that otherwise would not be available to them. The need for this ingenuity is built into the design of the instrument.
In his praise for the harmonica, blues virtuoso Charlie Musselwhite said “the harmonica is the most voice-like instrument. You can make it wail, feel happy, or cry. It’s like singing the blues without words.” The versatile sound of the harmonica is rivaled by no other. When it is featured in popular music, it usually needs very little accompaniment. A popular instrument for solo breaks, no one really seeks to harmonize or sing in unison with a harmonica. Rather, musicians let the instrument take on a life of its own, charmed by its ability to touch audiences with its melismatic allure. The harmonica speaks in its own secret language, an untranslatable lexicon of emotions that seem to expand the limits of what humans are capable of expressing. Interspersed with groans, shouts, and gut-wrenching lyrics centered on loss and grief, the harmonica was the perfect solo instrument for blues musicians because of the social dimension that it could easily unveil — the lonely musician playing a simple instrument that he acquired for a small price, perhaps the only form of self-expression that could get across his unspeakable sorrow to listening ears.
More than any other instrument that I have ever heard, the harmonica reveals the underlying impulse driving our manipulation of instruments: to create an extension of the self,
articulating and bending notes in ways that can’t be performed by human effort alone. This is a kind of longing that is common in the art that I love most. The harmonica is not the easiest instrument to master from a technical standpoint— tongue-blocking, lip pursing, and superb breath control are all necessary skills to truly excel. Nor is it the prettiest when you hear it for the first time—its unique, distorted-sounding timbre makes it hard to incorporate into the average pop song. But there is an intimate magic about the flashy gesticulation of blowing heavy wind into a tiny device while creating a miniature auditorium of sound with only your hands. In some ways, human expression is limited by the tragic fact that there is a finite amount of words available to translate an infinite amount of possible emotions and experiences. So we must improvise, using any sound-producing object that we can get our hands on, especially when we are down-and-out with little chance of being heard by the outside world. The harmonica reminds me of the intense labor that humans will undertake in order to push these limitations, or perhaps refine the ways in which we understand even our own capabilities. Though it may evermore be seen as a quaint relic of a long-past era of music, the harmonica holds a supreme reigning place at the heart of American culture, past and present.
Installation view of Resilience: Art & Design in Times of Uncertainty, organized by t-art on view at the University City Arts League, May 3 - 24, 2022.
Photo by Eleanor Shemtov
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