Could There Be a "Unitarian Art," (And If So, What would It Look Like)?

Below is the text of a talk delivered at the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church in Harvard Massachusetts on May 24, 2009. The talk was given in conjunction with the installation in the church of a collaborative artwork titled "KOETSCH AND CHU: IN/BETWEEN" (see photos right and below).

From time to time I have asked myself "could there be such a thing as 'Unitarian Art?'" After all there is a Christian Art, a Buddhist Art, Islamic Art, and so on.  And if there were a Unitarian Art, what would it look like?" I looked to my own art for a clue. In the 1960's the New York artist Bruce Nauman made work that was so unconventional that many observers questioned whether it could be called art at all. To which Nauman famously replied: "I'm an artist, and I'm in my studio, so whatever I do must be art." Following this logic I mused: "If I'm an artist, and I'm a Unitarian, whatever I do must be Unitarian Art.

The work on view here today, titled KOETSCH AND CHU: IN/BETWEEN, was a collaborative project between myself and Jeremy chu, a Singaporean artist and photograper of Chinese descent. Jeremy and I engaged in what we called a "visual dialog" with the goal of deepening our interpersonal understanding and bridging our gap in age, race, and nationality. Jeremy Chu is Singaporean of Mandarin Chinese descent--I am an American of Anglo-Saxon descent. He was 30--I was 65. Yet on an artistic and intellectual level we were "connected." And we were friends.

Jeremy and I met about 20 times over the course of this project. To each meeting we brought a specific theme to explore together verbally, and then we would go to our studios to create a visual response to the discussion. We talked about such things as childhood memories, "universal" archetypes such as the maze and the labyrinth, and various other symbols and metaphors.

In 'IN/BETWEEN" the two seated figures are identical, symbolizing our common humanity. They sit in the lotus position, a symbol of mental concentration, and they hold objects representing childhood memories. 

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

One figure holds a net made of red rubber bands rolled on a spindle.  It was created by Jeremy and represents the web of his Chinese ancestry. Enmeshed in the net are photograps of his Chinese grandmother, the matriarch of the family. the net was made of a particular kind of red rubber band sent from Singaore that Jeremy had played with as a child. The smell and red color evoked fond memories. Our collaboration was, for Jeremy, part of a larger inquiry into personal identity. The net was originally created for Jeremy's performance titled "The Fisherman's Net: A Journey Towards Reconciliation" (Boston, 2003).  The second figure holds a ball of my favorite childhood toy: G.I. Joes. I  played "shoot 'em up" until I was 13, well past the gunplay age for most boys. But as an adult, since putting aside toy soldiers, I advocate for peace and international understanding.

THE MAZES

In one of our conversations, we focused on the maze, one of Jung's "universal" archetypes.  For us,the mazes represent the attempt of two people to "find their way to one another." "Koetsch's Maze" came from the collision of a decorative Chinese dragon motif and a 1920's era European modernist architectural design. It shows the strong affinity I have always had for Asian culture, Asian art, and Asian spiritual systems (I have at various times and with varying levels of intensity practiced Buddhism and Vedanta. I don't have any idea where this affinity came from, but the very first time I taveled to Japan I felt very much at home. "Chu's Maze" was developed from the lattice pattern of a traditional Chinese window frame. It reflects Jeremy's  search for patterns and structures connected to his Chinese ancestry.

So where is the "Unitarian" in all this? First, there is a Unitarian covenant to "seek the truth in love" and the key requirement for love is understanding.  Second, Unitarianism teaches tolerance for those who are different from us. And finally, Unitarian-Universalism is Humanistic, built on the desire of people to connect in meaningful ways. That is the underlying principle of this piece of  "Unitarian Art."

   

Talk delivered at the Harvard Unitarian-Universalist Church, May 25, 2009

"COULD THERE BE A "UNITARIAN ART"? (AND IF SO, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?

 

Geoffrey Koetsch, Art In America letter published June/July 2008

 Geoffrey Koetsch: Letter to Nancy Princenthal published in Art in America, June, 2008, in conjunction withe the MIND/matters exhibition, Laconia Gallery [May/June 2008, curated by Koetsch a Ellen Schon] and the publication in AiA  in April of 2008 of several articles on the impact of recent research in neuroscience on the visual arts.

 

To the Editors:

Thanks to Nancy Princenthal for her brilliant and thoroughly researched article  on art and the mind [A.i.A., Apr, '08].  In early 2007,  co-curator Ellen Schon and I surveyed the Boston area for artists who focus on mental processes as a subject ["MIND/matters," Laconia Gallery, Boston, 2008]. Ms. Princenthals' article and the "Brainwaves" exhibition at Exit Art in New York confirmed many of the trends we uncovered. We found that much recent artwork on the mind centers on brain mapping and healing. There is a cool detachment in the work even though many  of the artists had close experience with brain surgery, dementia or bipolar disorder. Some of these artists were puzzling out the phenomena consuming the mind of a loved one and looked to neuroscience for clarity. Others were working on other topics mentioned in Princenthal's article, such as the "boundary" and the "binding" problems and the "increasing porosity of the body." 

I am curious to know what "groves of academe" Ms. Princenthal frequents, since she says  the "big trees" there are Freud and Lacan. In Boston we found no evidence of interest in Freud, dreams, Eros or violence. This may be because Boston is also a center of scientific activity. From here, it seems that postmodern academia has reduced Freud to the role of a shaman with a quaint personal mythology.

Historically, one could argue that the Expressionists were concerned with the behavioral manifestations of consciousness, the Surrealists with making visible its contents, and the artists of the '70's and 80's with enhancing the power of mind (via psychotropic  visions, paranormal experience and spiritual disciplines). In our survey at the Laconia Gallery we found lingering traces of this latter category layered in with the symbols of the new mind science.

Ms. Princenthal chides the scientists at a Columbia symposium  for not appreciating that art may be driven by ideas. It may be that the scientists are simply not interested in the play of ideas as a kind of mental gymnastics. Perhaps scientific thinking is instrumental, entailing the belief that ideas may lead to cures. The scientists may have it right by insisting that artists stick to their ability to inspire and to reconnect us to our affective selves.

Geoffrey Koetsch, Boston

Nancy Princenthal replies:

Thank you for your very generous and insightful response, and for bringing attention to the exhibition you organized in Boston. With respect to the persistence of traditional psychoanalytic theory in academia, the New York Times summarized the evidence in an article of Nov. 25, 2007, titled "Freud is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the psychology Department." It reports the frequency with which readings in psychoanalysis are required of students in "literature, film, history, and just about every other subject in the humanities," while "psychology departments and textbooks treat it as 'desiccated and dead.'" The long shelf life of Freud and Lacan in art theorizing is particularly evident in texts pertaining to gender and its visual expression--and anything descended form Surrealism, including dream imagery. Of course what happens in the halls of higher learning, and in artists' studios, are two different things. In any case it seems we agree that the growing interest, among artists, in the ways that working scientists are exploring psychology is well worth consideration.   

IN/BETWEEN installation on display

IN/BETWEEN, a work created by Geoffrey Koetsch in collaboration with 

Singaporean photographer Jeremy Chu, will be installed at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Harvard MA on Sunday, May 24, 2009. The work was begun in 2004 and developed over the following five years. IN/BETWEEN is a visual dialog between Koetsch and Chu with the goal of deepening interpersonal understanding that bridges differences of race, nationality, and age. In a series dialogs, the two artists explored universal archetypes (the maze and labyrinth), substances, and childhood memories. For one work, Grass and Orchid, Koetsch and Chu selected plants to serve as personal metaphors. The Installation combines sculpture, photography and found objects. 

See photos posted below.