How do YOU measure up?

 As an ongoing investigation into both the Culture’s definition of beauty and my personal definition of self, I have been looking into historic fashion choices and not-so-subtle childhood messages handed down through toys.

 

Barbie was the first adult toy marketed for children. It was modeled after a sex toy, called the Lilli, made for German men. Here is one Link to learn more.  My mother strongly opposed acquiring the doll, but my sister and I managed to inherit our babysitter’s collection. Soon after, I had a nightmare of my Barbie aiming to kill me.

My fears of being less than the proportions idealized by media and plastic Barbie, may have led me to suffer anorexia nervosa as a teenager. After all, she came with a wardrobe and a teeny book called How to Lose Weight. Inside it just said, “don’t eat”.

 In less than 100 years, her tiny, pointed feet and wide-set eyes, that only looked demurely sideways, her impossibly narrow waist, and large breasts, and her pearly-pink hairless skin have become an ideal for today’s beauty standards. There is speculation that she could have led to the growingcosmetic surgery business today, the fear of body hair, and an embracing of plasticity as a filter.

 

Distorted body proportions and exaggerated poses are everywhere through time. In the 1800s the Hottentot Venus, (a stolen 20-year-old Khoikhoi woman from South Africa: Saartji Baartman), was paraded against her will and almost naked for the titillating the male European gaze. Here is one link to learn more about this. Women in France and England adopted bustles and Basques into their fashion to mimic the enlarged rear of the South African.

 As we look to history, I am amazed at the embrace of glamour through whitening of skin with the lead paint and arsenic wafers (that slowly poisoned the wearer). I am horrified by the bound miniature feet of the Asian nobility. I panic at the elongated necks of the Myanmar and imagine the dread of the daily use of a whale bone corsets. I willingly ignore the affect of the porn industry on beauty.

 

 

As recently as 2014 Kim Kardashian a woman who uses her sexual appeal as currency to sell a fashion line, posed as the Khoikhoi woman, balancing a champagne glass on her derriere for a shot which enraged many feminists and blacks. Beyonce is rumored to be thinking of making a film about Baartman, but that has led to it's own furor.

 

Fashion minimizes and exagerates the average body type. It always has and always will. How do you live with that constant feeling of falling short or being in the wrong time? How does your body measure up? I am interested in your thoughts.

Visibly Shaken

Perhaps it is the triple threat of a new year, finding myself 60 years old and in a novel government job, that gets me peering hard into the calendar, the mirror and the myths. 

 

Self portrait, made of maps

The new year is a natural time to switch calendars and start new planners. January seems the month to revisit goals and make resolutions, and to reflect on how I have shown up, as well as who is new and who is missing. There are no kids in the house anymore. The covid years, and resulting lack of visitors, have me less defined by housework.

 

Self Portrait with Broom and Carmella's shoes

Being 60 adds a new cloak of invisibility to my wardrobe. Sometimes I am startled by my reflection, and I see how much I look like my mother. There is also a newfound sense of abandon. I care less about the social restraints of the patriarchy. I ache for a revitalized sisterhood, and I find myself greeting the moon, in all her cycles, as an old friend. My nurturing impulses, faced with an empty nest, have shifted my focus more deeply toward the community and wider environmental politics.

 

Self portrait with (map) wings

As Town Clerk of North East NY, I find myself in a totally novel position. I’m not a teacher, or an artist, or an explorer. Instead, I am a historian, a record keeper, a resource, and member of a tight group of secretaries. The childhood spent playing with office supplies has come full circle. I can be in my glory with file cabinets, complex self-inking stamps, binders, clips, and pens. People come to my office with questions I research. Every day is as varied as the season, and the faces are the people who make up this beautiful area. It’s an incredible honor to be trusted and of service. As one of the many rolls I play, I am also, quite unexpectedly, Receiver of the Taxes. It is a challenge. I think of the Beatles song. I think of sheriff Nottingham and Robin Hood. Nobody likes the tax collector. Anger, frustration, and fear is vented towards a cartoon figurehead, who happens, right now to be me!

 

Disney's Sheriff Nottingham

In the vein of owning my own visage, I have returned to my Art History as Seen through the Family Tree passion project. The grand narrative of history is a backdrop to multiple family members who participated in major movements. Each generation had its blind spot and from their personal stories and my perspective, I reflect in painting on a history that is far from perfect and continually revealing. My goal this winter and spring is to find an agent or publisher. I will be posting the process on my Instagram (tilly strauss) account and sharing insights as I go along.

 

Thank you for reading.

Exploring my Settler Legacy

My family is full of creatives, risktakers and influencers, so it is inevitable fodder for a project to go looking for them. In search of the story behind my great grandmother Florence Call Cowles, I am off on a week-long adventure of research and memory-lane type of wanderings.

Florence and Gardner on their Around the World Trip in 1924

 

The first stop is Des Moines Iowa- the birthplace of my mother- and here I should share that I will be dragging her in tow. It has been since 1994 that we were last in the city. Our plans are to visit the art museum, the newspaper, the health clinic, performing arts center, the Cowles Commons, Drake University, the old neighborhood, and then travel to Tama and the Meskwakie Indian Reservation before ending in Algona- the county seat created by Florence's father, Ambrose Call. 

My suitcase of maps

Originally, I thought my mom and I could rent a car and set out across NY state and meander though the upper midwest to reach DesMoines, after visions of fruitful conversations and daydreams over rural landscapes, but my mother was less than enthused. She has tried to convonce me not to do this trip, practically begging my boyfriend to take her side. I know we will have fun and, like a reversal of the parent child relationship, I believe this will be good medicine for us. We will enjoy it, God dammit! 

Mom at lunch wondering what the hell we are up to

And I have compromised with plane tickets to Des Moines and a rental car just for the state driving needs. And a really nice hotel for the first few nights.

Day to day postings will be on my Instagram: tilly Strauss

More will follow here as I summarize my findings. Wish me luck. Wish US luck.

Took a teaching job in Europe and high-tailed it out of here!

Lufthanza flight from JFK (ny) to Frankfurt Germany

One of 4 trains across Switzerland

First view of the Alps ahead, my new home for the next 3 months.

 I've been offline for the last few months. Had an amazing opportunity to work with some superb teenagers in a foreign country. I hiked, and skied and taught art history and watercolor painting. #swisssemester 

FABULOUS TIME

Moon calendars

Like the first photos of our blue planet from taken by the astronauts in space, a lunar calendar can make me feel small and also part of a bigger thing. There is the visual data to showing Time in it's best wonderful logic. You can't look at a lunar calendar without seeing the waves and undulations of nights. I highly recommend everyone consult one. For years I have bought and given these lunar calendars to others. This year I got two!!!

#lunarcalendar #time #visualdata

Picasso's O moment

My interpretation of Picasso's interpretation

Version O, was the last of the series of Women of Algiers after Delacroix painted by Picasso in homage to his great friend and rival, Henri Matisse. From June to October of 1955, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris displayed the entire series together as part of a retrospective exhibition of the last 55 years of Picasso's career. Unfortunately these paintings have not been on view together since the original sale at Kahnwaller’s gallery in Paris in 1956. They were for sale as a complete set and bought by New York collectors Victor and Sally Ganz for $212,000. They later sold off eleven of the paintings to museums and private collectors. Since then, pieces have scattered to private collections and various museums. 

Version O was depicted in LifeMagazine Dec 27, 1968.

The painting has wonderful hatch lines and pattern, recalling the first interpretation, Version A. It’s got a bit of Matisse in it and Jacqueline Roque’s face is clearly on the left side. The black, as only Picasso can use black, sings!  New York Magazine's Jerry Saltz calls Version O "an epic master class on the ways of painting, art history, color, structure, and form.” 

Picasso always said he was a non-political painter. That is how he survived world war II holed up in his studio in Paris and avoided the stench of collaborator. Yet his great masterpiece Guernica and his on again off again relationship with the communist party in France, defies that stance.

In looking at his 15 renditions (or interpretations) of The Women of Algiers, one may suggest he might not have been political but he was radical. 

My interpretation of Delacroix's painting of a fantasy harem

His sympathies were for the Algerians in 1954 as they rebelled yet again under French colonial rule. Incredibly, given Picasso's history of splaying naked women on the canvas for the male gaze, this painting was picked up by the rebellious Algerian women as an emblem of their strength. They felt that he had taken Eugene Delacroix's scene of submissive sirens and articulated a new idea of Women in their private apartment.These were women of strength and solidarity, not to be messed with!

In 1997, upon the death of art collector widow Sally Ganz, the Version O was sold for 31.9 million dollars and then auctioned through Christie's in 2015. It broke records selling for $179 million to an Arab Sheik, Former Prime minister of Qatar, Hamid bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.  

Unknown until the Panama Papers were leaked, is that the Ganz heirs appeared to have sold the collection months before the auction. "The key player in the transaction was a corporation based on Niue, a speck of an island in the South Pacific. The company was named Simsbury International Corp. Simsbury International appears to have been created solely for the Ganz transaction. It was incorporated in April 1997. A month later it purchased the collection.Simsbury’s registered agent was Mossack Fonseca. Employees of the Panamanian law firm served as Simsbury International’s “nominee” directors, stand-ins who controlled the company on paper but who exercised no real authority over its activities. These paper directors signed agreements on the company’s behalf with a bank, an auction house and an art shipping company. Ownership of the company was held through “bearer shares.”

These are simply certificates that allow whoever holds the paper to anonymously transfer or claim their value. Today, they are banned in many countries because of their usefulness to those who want to engage in tax evasion and money laundering. The man who had power of attorney for Simsbury, and thus exercised control over the company and its bank account, was British billionaire Joseph Lewis. Then the richest man in England, Lewis made his fortune betting on currency movements. He was also Christie’s largest shareholder.

The game "Auctioneer"

The Ganz catalogue stated “Christie’s has a direct financial interest in all property in this sale,” but the terms of that interest were never explained. The Ganz auction would help turn 1997 into one of Christie’s biggest years for sales up until then. The auctioneer raked in more than $2 billion that year."

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Poetry Book Cover!

I am delighted to have one of my paintings grace the cover of a collection of poems by Su Love (formerly Su Smallen). The book, called Weight of Light, is due fresh to the stores by Green Writers Press next month!

According to Green writers Press: Su Smallen is the author of six collections of poetry. Her first collection, Weight of Light, was nominated for the Pushcart Press Editor’s Book Award, and Buddha, Proof was a Minnesota Book Award Finalist. Su was awarded the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, several fellowships and grants including from the Jerome Foundation, and residencies including with the St. Croix Watershed Research Station. With Laurel Poetry Collective, she published books and broadsides for ten years. Su was a professional choreographer and dancer, and her poetry has served as scores for dance and film, including Miracle of the Spring.

Sue will be reading from her newest Green Writers Press poetry collection entitled Kinds of Snow on April 15th at Green Writers Press. More info can be found on her website: www.susmallen.com

The painting was a large one I did when going through the thickest part of a divorce. A woman almost obscured by a swirl of maps stands in a dark, book shelf lined, space with a dripping red object in her hands. If you want to know more, I can tell you.

Meanwhile please go out and buy the book! Thanks- Tilly

What is the purpose of art?

linoleum print, Edition sold out

I drag my art tools everywhere, and run to my studio as often as possible in order to hold onto things I love because I know everything, everyone, and every moment is fleeting. Above all else, I fear that I have a bad memory! I can't even remember, without notes, what I was doing this day last week, last month or last year. By tracking and documenting the details of a day, I feel more whole. I am marked in a spot and it is proof I exist. It must be different for the collector.

Taking notice of details and highlighting something artistically brings out beauty and preserves an experience.

For the viewer, art can be where you feel welcomed and where you can pause on your own journey.

When my mother was moving out of her home and we had crated, packed, loaded into storage almost everything, she spontaneously gave several of my works (from her collection) to the moving men. The pieces, made in my youth, felt singular and rare to me... connecting me to a timeline. They were posts for me to check in with whenever I visited her. They were also nicely framed and she thought, in her usual generous manner, that the young men could use some good art. 

New Year's Chair with Mother's Hourglass, drawing on paper, 2018

Initially I had a hard time (I cried), because I was struck with a fear that those years, those memories, were now lost. That isn’t true. I still have the memories, but now the gentlemen collectors have the signposts.
 

Femenine aesthetic from the paleolithic to the Plasticine

a world away...and yet

It is less than 2 hours from Miami to Haiti. So close and yet so far!

Peripatic musings on Mana Wynwood art exhibition

Hoping to find manageable crowds and great art, I took a professional day to explore mid-week, mid-day, in the shadows of the great Basel Art Fair. Our first stop was the Mana Wynwood convention center, a giant 140,000 square foot building with several curated collections to see.

Jorge Magyaroff

Our first impression of PINTA Miami (in Mana) was that it was still under construction, and possibly not open. But it was Thursday and even though some booths seemed under plastic, and men on ladders had drills working on the doors and scrapers finishing the floors, we were assured we could roam about. Focusing on Ibero-American art identities and issues, the show was full of strong abstract statements. Right away we were greeted by a giant in the art world, Brazillian Ernesto Neto with a scented nylon sculpture suspended to the ceiling and anchored by seductively curved sacks of sand and of cloves. In the Atrium Art gallery we enjoyed looking at award winning photography- my favorite was a documentary photographer from Chile, Tomas Munita. The clarity and detail in his prints was astounding, the mood was surreal, the topic was the landscape with man. I loved his Guano series. There were a few photo pieces by Vic Muniz from his garbage series and the movie documentary, Wasteland.

Vic Muniz

The Sleep of Reason by Barcellos

I enjoyed Bel Barcellos' whose embroidery I had seen on Saatchi art sites.  It was simple and a complex story. A gallery from Bogota had the drawings of Cuban artist Glexis Novoa. This time the graphite drawings were on drywall fragments cut and re-embedded into the walls. I think we first saw his work a couple weeks ago on the River walk downtown- drawings on marble encassed in thick glass and metal cases into the retaining walls of Brickell! I like the way he plays with material, setting a classically and sweetly rendered image into a raw format.

Glexis Novoa, pencil on drywall

I was humored by a large digital mural created b Cassio Vasconellos. The overhead perspective of a busy airport reminded me of my night dreams, as well as the Richard Scary illustrations full of busy workplaces that I enjoyed as a child.

In that vein, I was swept by the resin and suitcase sculptures by a Columbian artist L.F. Palaez in the Sextante Bogota gallery. They were little mini dioramas of a wasteland of sorts...

In the traveling mood, outside the galleries on the way to the next collection of work, we passed an incredible sculpture of excess- an F1 Eagle race car and collection of helmets all covered in class bead patterns!

The next major collection of work we visited was from Tiroche DeLeon, curated by Londoner Catherine Petitgas, "one of the worlds most respected collectors of Latin American art". I was delighted to find an art car by the twins "Os Gemos"...

The mixed media vehicle was controlled by musical instruments and filled with plush red heart shaped pillows and the giant mirror lined head held a collection of clocks. Such poetry to our ramblings through life! There was also a few subversive references to the Banana republic mentality of colonialism. Paolo Nazereth's sculpture from 2011 was on display... a minibus filled with bananas, conceived as he walked from Brazil to the USA.
As we started to feel our own feet...

The "Made in California:selections from the Frederick R. Weismann Art Foundation" was our next stop. The show of over 100 works of art highlighted the California sensitivity to light and their love of new 20th century materials such as epoxy, neon colors, duct tape, polaroids, etc... There were great optical treats by Larry bell, Robert Irwin, David Hockney and Ed Ruscha, among others. As a final stop before heading back to our car we stood in what I would call the sky room, with each of the 4 walls holding a long horizontal sky-scape by Ed Ruscha. His labels, somewhat functioning as a map marker, made us giggle. 

We went on to little Haiti, traveling past scorched earth to get there! More on that part of the day, later!

who is the artist here?