Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace, a flashback spectacular. Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell eig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. In honor of International Podcast Day, we have a special best of episode with clips from the past year. It's a great way to introduce new people to the show, so maybe share it with someone who's never given podcasts a try. Our first clip comes from episode 71, where Docent Helen Rensburg gave me a tour of kimono refashioning contemporary style. You're sort of our docent who's very passionate about Asian art in general, but you are especially passionate about Japanese art.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I am. I blame it all on the art museum. Really. Word

Speaker 1 (01:06):
To blame. Yes. Okay. Tell me that story.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Okay. Nine years old, I'm taking art lessons here at the art museum. Back when the students of the art academy, I guess it was a work study program, did Saturday art lessons and our art lessons were in Gallery 1 37, and it was at that time hung with a comparison of Japanese hanging scrolls and Chinese hanging scrolls. Now, I don't remember this personally, but my mother teased me for years about this. She said about the fifth week I came home from class and I said, mom, Chinese art's cool, Japanese art's much better. And she just was like, how in the world? So I started by collecting Japanese fairy tales and kids' pictures, books, and when I got to college in the late sixties, there were no Asian art history classes, but I made good friends with the librarian at D A A, now D A a P, and she bought me books on Japanese art, which I got to read first, and I actually, when I went back to teach at uc, 45 years later, the book was still there and I used it for class.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh, nice. So I'm very curious what made a nine year old you feel drawn to Japanese art, over Chinese art. What was it about Japanese art in particular that captured you at that age?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Looking back, I think it happened to be, we can use this kimono right here.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay. We're right at the beginning of the exhibition, so if you are here looking along with us, this is the very first piece in the exhibition and it's just called kimono, so that's easy enough.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Right. Probably what appealed to me a lot was nature.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
There's so much about nature in Japanese art, the seasons, my family went picnicking from about March to November every Sunday, so we were out in nature a lot. I really like their connection to the plant and animal kingdom. This particular one has a lot of flowers on it, including peonies, and then the frolicking lion dog there. In a lot of ways, this is not to put down Chinese art, but I found a sense of humor in Japanese art that connects to me more.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Okay. Our next clip is from episode 60 when Kevin Allison from the Risk Podcast looked at Tony Rosler's video. Sculpture, M M P I. With me,

Speaker 3 (03:50):
I get this odd sensation from it that I had from the very beginning, though it definitely feels like a woman. You know what I mean? It is a dress and it is a woman's face and voice, but this person feels a little bit

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Trapped

Speaker 3 (04:08):
To me. So the first thing I hear her saying was something like, I like to read mechanics magazines or something like that. And at the point we happened to happen in on her eyes, were doing a lot of darting back and forth the way when you're trying to read something or follow what's coming next that you're supposed to be looking at. So it had the feel of, oh, she's making extraordinarily personal and revealing I statements, and yet she's pretty clearly reading them so that it almost feels like she's got a gun to her head to admit to you that this terrorist organization has told me to tell you that I like mechanics magazines.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
There is a nervousness about her that I think that it's a weird performance. It's very flat, and I think that's by design that yeah, she's not saying a lot of these things with a lot of passion, but they feel very revealing. Some of them do, and then some of them feel very mundane, but she's kind of delivering them all with about the same passion.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yes. Then we happened to catch the very beginning of this lube, so this goes on for a long time.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
So I don't know if we've actually set up what this is we're talking about. So the piece, what I said, the title is M M P I, which stands for Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and this is still a test that is still used today to assess personality disorders. So what we caught when it looped was the very beginning where she says, please indicate whether the following statements are true or false.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
So she only says that once out of a hundred questions. So I was happy we kind of did catch that, but also that we didn't catch it at first because I was telling you while we were looking at it, I feel like the majority of people who see it never hear that.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Right. Once you hear her read the instructions for the test to indicate whether these are true or false, you realize immediately, oh, okay. This is kind of a standard psychological test she's taking. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
And then it kind of flips it because it becomes somebody who seems they're confessing something to you to where then suddenly now you are being asked to reveal something about yourself actually too,

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Which I think happens all the time in art. That part of the point of people revealing things about themselves in art is the extent to which you can either empathize or even start to identify. You know what I mean? That's why I think in stories that are told on risk, people will talk about having done horrible things like attempted murder or just strange things like kinky adventures or whatever. You'll hear a person talk about something where you're like, I would never do that.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
That

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Is so not my thing. But the emotions that they start to describe will start to resonate with you, and you'll think, oh, well, I've actually felt that way before. And so you start to be able to follow this person along on their journey going to a place you would never want to go. And I think that that's very powerful for us. I think we get a lot of vicarious experience that way and a lot of knowledge about the world in our lives by listening to other people that way.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Have you ever seen any of this artist's other work or that you know of? No. No.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Now, is the artist a woman?

Speaker 1 (08:13):
No. Oh, okay. His name is Tony Osler, and he is, I would say, most famous for pieces that are similar to this. I mean, he does a lot of different things, but he uses projection a lot and he's still working today. And some of his most famous pieces are these characters. They're always a little grotesque. I feel like there's something off. They're always a little unsettling.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes, yes. This kind of disembodied sort of dress person with a big head feels like something from a nightmare or a hallucination, you know what I mean? There's definitely a kind of surrealistic way of encountering the human form,

Speaker 1 (09:00):
And he plays with that a lot. And this actually piece is maybe one of the least disturbing things I've seen him do. I know that he's used the same actress in several pieces, and one of them she, it's like this body, and again, it's very loose. It's just a big head, and she's almost, her head is being squashed by under a mattress, I think, and she's sort of just insulting the viewer, don't look at me. She's being really aggressive to you. And so again, it's this weird thing of you want to be sympathetic with this character, but then they're insulting you. There's a lot of them that are insulting to the viewer. I was watching some videos online of some of his other piece, and he does these ones that he's made these sort of shapes that maybe almost look frog where he is got just two eyes that are two separate circles that are sewn into this big mouth shape, and then that's it.

(09:58):
It's like a video that's just two eyes that were clearly recorded separately because the eyes don't line up, the eyes blink at different times. They're just upsetting to look at, and then the mouth is just going like, Hey, fatty, things like that, just sort of saying these insulting things. But then he's got other ones where these heads are trapped in jars or that are moving or talking. There's one I think, in a fish tank that's underwater that looks like it's kind of struggling, and so you get sympathetic also for these things. They can elicit kind of amazing responses, and it's a really simple trick, and he's showing us the trick. He's not hiding the trick.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
But just by projecting onto a surface instead of a screen, we can kind of identify with it as a person in a way, I think more than we could if it had that frame.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah. You're absolutely right. The fact that the head thing is a three-dimensional pillow sort of thing that her face is being projected onto does make it feel much more almost like there's a person there rather than just we're watching a movie.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
I did notice that there was a father and two little girls that came up the stairs too, and the little girls looked a little disturbed. I

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Would say this is maybe the least popular piece in the museum, maybe true. I don't know. True. It's hard to, I mean, there's no way of judging that, but it is, I feel like I've watched so many people walk by this and they always say something about like, oh, that's creepy. I mean, I think it gets the response it's designed for, but it does get a lot of that from people who kind of walk by it quickly. I've heard a lot of people just like, oh, I hate that thing. Or a lot of guards really hate it just, but they hate anything that has

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yes, because

Speaker 1 (11:54):
They have to hear it all day.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yes. Having worked as a museum guard, if you got on the bad side of the woman who assigned everyone the galleries every day, then she would put you in the dadada room for a whole week just to drive you crazy.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
But

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah. Another thing that occurred to me watching it is, and this is totally random, but my thinking, oh, I love psychological tests. You know what I mean? It's so funny when you take a test like this, whether it's the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, or even if you have to actually go to a psychiatrist and they want to make sure you're not schizophrenic, you're supposed to usually answer these questions as quickly as possible so that they have that sort of Jungian word association effect with you. But I always get trapped up in, I like mechanics magazines. Now, of course, I wouldn't ordinarily say that, but what are they looking for from me here? You know what? I like mechanics. I can really, I want to spend time with every question and start unpacking it.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
What I was trying to, I was doing some research trying to figure out how this test even works. And so much of it is actually meant to assess how you're taking the test and how much you are trying to lie or be dishonest about your own response to it. It's meant to sort of reveal contradictions from one question to another. So you maybe would be honest about this way, but you're hiding it in another way. And I think it's really strange.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
I absolutely get that, because I have found that whenever taking a test like this, if I begin to, while taking the test, see a pattern, then I feel like my answers start to become slanted toward what I want it to. The Jesuits, when I went to St X, some of them were into the Enneagram at that time, which was a, it's, I think it's older than astrology, but it's a theory about nine personality types, and some jungians still play around with these nine personality types. But once you have, I always got the impression, oh, I'm a four. I'm the

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Artist. So

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Whenever I've taken Enneagram test every five years to see if I still score a certain way, but when I take the test nowadays, I'm like, I know the kinds of questions they ask. So if I sense anything that screams for, I'm going to be, oh, I'm the artist. I have to say yes to that. You know what I

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Mean? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
So I think you're right. I think that this test seems to be designed to keep people off their moorings of, wait, what the heck?

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Why would you

Speaker 4 (14:52):
Be asking? I would love to be

Speaker 3 (14:53):
A librarian. And then the next question is, I've never committed a crime or whatever.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
They jump

Speaker 1 (15:00):
All over the place. In that clip, Kevin mentioned attending St. Xavier High School. In episode 64, I spoke with Nathan Gabriel about his role in their theater department. You were talking about Xavier's St. Xavier, I should say, has had this great theater program for a long time, and I remember we went to a production of Sweeney Todd, in which afterwards we ran into the cast at ihop and I was literally starstruck.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yeah. You and our friend Beth were, you couldn't talk to them. I remember correctly, you wrote a note on a napkin about how great they were and threw it at their table as you

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Ran out the door and they ran away

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Because you were too star to

Speaker 1 (15:54):
A

Speaker 4 (15:54):
By. And they still go to that very ihop, they have a lot of traditions at St. X, and one of them, every single night of the production, there's a really specific restaurant in the city somewhere that they will go, okay, tonight's skyline night. But it's not just any skyline. It's really that skyline and it's been that way forever. That's what I'm discovering about St X, is that it's really old. So if I can give you,

Speaker 1 (16:18):
It's the oldest it, it's got some crazy, I can't remember, but it's like one of the oldest high schools in the city or something, isn't it?

Speaker 4 (16:26):
I'm tempted to say the country, but this is a pretty old country. So they were, but give me, put it into some kind of context. We can also just

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Look this up too.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
No, I know the exact, it's 1831 is

Speaker 1 (16:39):
What it was founded. Okay, cool.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
But if you're like me, numbers don't mean much. I need some sort of landmark to understand when something is, so St. Xavier High School is older than a Christmas story by Charles Dickens. Just it was out about 20 years before that got written. It's older than the New York Times. The other day for Memorial Day, they did a thing where all the students sat in silence and they read the names of every single student who died in a war from St. Xavier, and they had to start at the Civil

Speaker 1 (17:14):
War.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
And in my mind was just blown. I was like, how old is

Speaker 1 (17:18):
This school? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
When was the Civil War? I studied theater,

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Don't know these things.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
And so with something that is that old, what I am learning is that you get an enormous number of traditions, and the idea of tweaking them at all is almost sacrilege because we've been doing this since

Speaker 1 (17:41):
1831,

Speaker 4 (17:43):
And we're not

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Going

Speaker 4 (17:44):
To change,

Speaker 1 (17:45):
To put it in perspective for us that's 50 years older than this institution as well.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
Oh, than the art museum.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
We were founded in 1881. Wow. And the doors didn't open. The building wasn't finished until 1886. So yeah, you're older than music hall. You're older than most institutions in this city that we think of. So that's great. It's

Speaker 4 (18:07):
The first thing we did was when we

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Decided to set up Cincinnati was build same high school. Tell me a little bit more about your classes on creativity and what those are about.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
Yeah, so now you're getting, you're asking about the crux of my life, actually. This is one of the big ways that I sort define myself as a person and that I exist in the world, and the more I learn about creativity, the more I realize about myself

Speaker 1 (18:35):
And about

Speaker 4 (18:35):
How I have been working all these years, and I had never had words for it before,

Speaker 1 (18:40):
But when

Speaker 4 (18:41):
I start reading about descriptions of creative people and the way that they work and the things that they do, I'm like, ah,

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Now

Speaker 4 (18:46):
It makes so

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Much more

Speaker 4 (18:46):
Sense. It's almost like reading a psychology textbook when I read these things. So I teach multiple courses on creativity. I teach the creative thinking and I teach something called the Creative Spirit Spoiler. They're really the same course at two different places, but it's taken from a wide variety of texts about creativity. And the thrust of the class is that everyone has the ability to be creative. So the sort of creative building blocks that we're inside Pablo Picasso, they're inside all of us. It's about how you arrange them. And I'm also really fascinated with the brain just in general. And so learning about how you can harness the power of the brain to do something creative sort of on demand and to create a landscape where creativity can occur by design, that's really fascinating to me. And I'm finding that it is useful and helpful to people who feel stuck in their lives or feel stuck in their jobs or feel like they have insurmountable problems the way out is a creative solution.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, no, that's interesting. I actually was talking about this on the show not too long ago with one of my former professors and talking about my experience going to the art academy and how one of the best things I got out of that experience was basically being forced to be creative on demand

(20:12):
A lot. And especially in my early, the first year or so where it was rapid, alright, well you've got four projects to work on. And up to that point, I'd been able to spread out my creative output in that way where, well, I'm going to work on this thing and then something else will come up. And this was like, there's no time. You have to make something right now. And that really makes you start figuring out how you work and what your system is. And I don't think it's the same for everybody, certainly, but I did figure out within that year like, oh, these are the things I need. This is how I work

Speaker 4 (20:51):
And

Speaker 1 (20:51):
This is what I need to do that.

Speaker 4 (20:53):
And you are largely correct that it is not the same for everybody. That's one of the big lessons is that creative minds listening to something right now are reading a book right now called Wired to Create, and they're like, yeah, the creative Mind is a real mess. And everybody's really different

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Except what's

Speaker 4 (21:13):
Kind

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Of fascinating.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
There are these things that everyone can do to create a space where creativity is more likely to occur.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
So to, if you are trying to have a creative thought, what you need to do is do a gently busy activity that does not absolutely focus your mind and will allow your mind to wander. So showering at this point in our lives, we know how to shower. We don't think about it. Our brain turns on autopilot, but we're also warm and comfortable, and there's no stimulus for us to look at. We're just staring at probably a white tile wall or a curtain. And that they're discovering is the ideal space for the creative mind because the mind isn't focused on anything else. And it'll end, I mean, the process is called right brain roaming, but your right brain goes into your left brain and starts smashing facts together that don't necessarily belong together and creating original thoughts.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
In episode 73, I spoke with Christian Gill chef at BoomTown Biscuits and winner of guy's grocery games on Food Network, and he came up with impromptu meals to match the museum's artwork. This is Daughters of Revolution by Grant Wood, famous for American Gothic. So this one, I'm kind of curious where you're going to take, because it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't strike me as appetizing as the last painting. It doesn't,

Speaker 5 (22:56):
This

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Painting, the colors

Speaker 5 (22:58):
Are not, they don't pop as much. It's not quite the range or expansive colors either,

Speaker 4 (23:05):
But

Speaker 1 (23:06):
It feels, I mean, both subject matter wise too and kind of palette, it's much more kind of

Speaker 4 (23:13):
Conservative. It's very

Speaker 5 (23:14):
Conservative. These ladies look like they probably make the same roast every day of the week

Speaker 4 (23:23):
And for their very, very,

Speaker 5 (23:26):
Very lazy husbands. But they're holding the tea cup, which is definitely Oriental in design.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Yeah, it's like a pretty famous China pattern on that cup. It's like the blue willow design, which is a little bit of the irony of this painting. If some background about the painting. Grant Wood had been commissioned to do some project in a church. It was a stained glass window. He had been commissioned to design, there was a German manufacturer, and the local d a R objected to it and made a big stink about hiring Germans at the time to produce this window. So he's sort of making fun of their supposed patriotism. So the sort of Chinese design is kind of a little small detail that's also poking fun of these supposedly deeply patriotic women.

Speaker 5 (24:23):
So then you know what I'm going to do then, just from the background that you just gave me and these women being so smug, I'm going to further expand that. These very smug women then made a Kobe beef teriyaki burger. So the American cheeseburger, they used cobe beef, made a teriyaki sauce, and of course they topped it with goda. A Dutch cheese. A Dutch cheese. So then we're going to go with a Cobe beef burger cheeseburger teriyaki glaze. Ooh, it should be on a Kaiser

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Roll.

Speaker 5 (25:01):
Yes, we're doing this together. I

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Like this on a Kaiser roll. I was trying to think of something German

Speaker 5 (25:05):
For

Speaker 1 (25:05):
You there. No, that was great. And then

Speaker 5 (25:07):
We're of course going to use a stone ground German mustard as well. We're going to use it. You know what? We're not even a stone ground mustard. We're going to use a Dusseldorf mustard because that's one of my favorite mustards ever.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Nice. Nice. That's great.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (25:21):
That's perfect. Yeah. So the painting behind them, this painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, that they have a print that's framed behind their heads here is also painted by Emmanuel Lutz, who is a German artist who painted probably one of the most famous American iconic paintings ever, but he's actually German. So it was another little ironic twist to this painting. I say

Speaker 5 (25:45):
The irony is killing me inside.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
I love this painting. It's so snarky, isn't

Speaker 5 (25:49):
It? It is. And we just have a snarky burger for it too. That's

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Great. That's great. It's a good choice. In episode 66, I met with Cole and Perry, a Tologist who spoke with me about her work studying death. We also looked at some

Speaker 5 (26:08):
Morbid

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Artwork, including the museum's mum. We started in the ancient art gallery, and I want to say that's gallery 1 0 1, and we started looking at the mummy of an adult male. So this is, to me, always a really weird thing that is in an art museum almost, because it is literally a body. Yep. It's a human. It's a person. And that is so bananas. I still kind of can't get over how weird it is that we have this on display. And one of the things though I do like that we have, and I noticed you were kind of looking at it, is we have this picture of the x-ray of the mummy right next to it. And I feel like that sort of freaks people out more than the mummy itself.

Speaker 6 (27:07):
Yeah. Because it makes it confront that you're similar on the inside there and like, oh man, that makes it real.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Totally

Speaker 6 (27:16):
Think about kids. I remember when I was a kid and you learned about the mummies and you're like, this is the coolest thing ever. And then they come to the museum and you get to see your real mummy. But in the us, let's say that grandpa is dead, they're not excited to see dead grandpa, right?

Speaker 1 (27:32):
No.

Speaker 6 (27:32):
But man, let's go see a 2000 year old dead man in a museum. It's really not that different. But the idea of there's this magic behind, oh, it's a mummy. And that makes it not scary because I think there's the layers of how the mummy is treated and wrapped and the symbolism that's layered on top. So it makes us to feel more separate from death, and that's why it's cooler and more interesting. And nobody bats an eye. Nobody really is. I think a lot of people see mummies in museums and stuff, and they don't really realize that the remains are in there.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Think some people get don't. I was going to say, actually, I do actually think there is still a little bit of unease with it, but it is packaged in a way.

Speaker 6 (28:24):
You're like, but this is okay. This is an okay

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Instance. There is something about it. Maybe it is just sort of the tradition of a mummy is a thing you see in a museum. So I don't know if that's part of it, but I definitely would say there is when kids see it, there are some who are probably like, whoa, this is so cool. And then there are some who are like, wait a minute. There is definitely a little bit of fear that I see on people's faces sometimes, especially kids, and they are both attracted and repelled by it at the same time on that level. And it's kind of funny because I've noticed docents who give tours sort of play up that

Speaker 6 (29:08):
Creepy

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Factor as well with them, so they're aware of it and they will sort of lean into the spookiness of it with the kids sometimes and sort of wield that power over them for a second. And it's really fascinating to watch.

Speaker 6 (29:29):
Okay. So what's interesting about what you guys have here in the collection, and when you were actually staring at the mummy in the case, there's all these artifacts that are

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Laid

Speaker 6 (29:37):
Over top of the X-ray X, so you can see where the symbols were placed. So if we want to talk a little bit more about tarot, for example, that's another parallel to how important symbolism is to being a human. That's very much part of being a person,

(29:53):
And it's been that way forever. So some of the artifacts that were placed inside the body cavity, there's a two finger amulet that was over the left abdomen that was used to close the incision. It's two fingers. It's a representation of fingers. Hands have long been an important symbol. They're also, they show up in tarot cards. There's entire tarot cards that just have a hand that's holding a symbol. Hand symbols often kind of magnify the whatever else is being represented there. And it connects us to our humanity. There's also a frog. The frog amulet ensures rebirth. And there's a certain type of tarot deck that also has a frog that appears in it, and it's associated with that youthfulness, which is connected to rebirth. So why the symbolism thing? So I referenced this earlier, but one of the things that I'm really interested in is that the more meaning you have in life, the more of a sense of meaning.

(30:59):
And that's a very individual thing. For some people, their greatest sense of meaning comes through a religious tradition. For others not at all. That doesn't even enter the picture. And that's fine. But the more meaning we have, it kind of is like a security blanket. We feel better about the world, and we feel better about the afterlife, and we feel better about that. Things are not as chaotic symbols are often the vehicle that we have to understand and be associated with. Meaning to the point that if this person was mummified and they were like, oh my God, we forgot the frog. There's so much meaning in that they'd be like, oh my God, they're not going to be reborn, or it's going to be harder for them because we have put so much into the meaning of the symbol. And the other thing of note is the frog. That is a creature that is separate from a human that lives on the earth and we cohabitate with, but we have chosen it as this representation in our own worlds to serve us. Right?

(32:01):
There are no frogs that are like, we need to put the image of coal in with our ancestors. They don't do that with humans. It's totally like a human experience. So anyway, when I look at the mummy, the symbol aspect is what I notice because I understand the importance of meaning. That's what makes us feel okay about when someone dies because it's hard when you confront a loss and you feel like, what was the point? Why did this happen? We're left with these unanswerable why questions? But if we know that we put the frog in there so that that person can be reborn, that gives us a sense of resolution.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Christopher Miller, director of Education and Community Engagement at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center joined me in episode 63 to take a critical look at Charles t Weber's painting the Underground Railroad. What about traveling at this time of year? And you mentioned the difference of the two paintings that you used, that the other one is, was you say it was more like summer feeling or warmer,

Speaker 7 (33:16):
Or they were in a different region to where it was warmer climate. So as far as with the winter, one of the things as a researcher, as a fellow, I should say, with the Institute for Freedom Studies, I committed to and a half years to researching subscriptions from runaway slave ads. And one of the things that we were coding was the time of the year that people were escaping. And so you did have more escapes taking place during the late fall in the winter just because of daylight. The days were much shorter, so therefore you could use the night for cover as you were traveling, and then during the day, you would hide. So what's compelling about this is I start to wonder what time of the day is this taking place? It doesn't appear to be at nighttime. I'm seeing as far as light being cast upon the snow and whatnot. So I would have to say that this is early in the morning possibly.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah. I see the little, I feel like that's being conveyed through the pink light on the snow that we are either seeing a sunset or sunrise. So yeah, that's sort of where I'm reading it, the shadows. It's a little vague though.

Speaker 7 (34:40):
And so the best practice is by this time, this individuals of freedom seekers should already be tucked away in hiding.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah. It's too bright

Speaker 7 (34:52):
By this standpoint. And so being out. And so the element, even if they are out during this time period, this is a serious element of danger. And I'm not seeing danger being communicated in this picture. I think sometimes the painter look, sometimes we look at history and we're very nostalgic about it, and we sanitize things as well. And when we do that, it lives on. And so you have this like, oh, they're helping, but really this is dangerous. You have laws, Levi Coffin and Catherine, what they were doing and other conductors on the Underground Railroad, they were breaking the law. They could be jailed, they could have been fined. And so you have conductors like John Hatfield at Mount Zion Baptist Church right here in Cincinnati, Ohio. He wore a overcoat that had six, I'm sorry, seven compartments to where he could get to seven different pistols. Now he's a deacon of a church, but he understood the gravity of the seriousness if they are caught. The other thing is too, as being a person of color living in the state of Ohio, you also had a different set of laws. You had black codes. And one of those black codes were that those of African descent living in the state were not lawfully allowed to have guns, to own guns. Oh, really? Yeah. That was one of the black laws. So keep it in mind, just that element of danger, which I feel is void in this pain in is a critical part of the Underground Railroad

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Astronomer. Dean Rigas joined me in episode 58 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, and to also look at a NASA photograph from that event. And one of the other things I was noticing about it is just that seems so distinctly moon like or alien, is that it seems different than a photograph taken on Earth is the way that shadow at the top of the frame just blends into the nothing of black. There's no hint of a horizon or created by atmosphere that you would see on earth. If you were taking a picture at night, you wouldn't have that. I don't think you would have that kind of stark black contrast on the surface.

Speaker 8 (37:33):
Right, right, right. Yeah. That's one of the ways, when we see it through the telescope, it's the same thing. You look along the edge of the moon, that's the best where you see these long shadows, and there's even a couple little islands of light at the very top that those are mountain peaks that are getting sunlight while everything around it's dark, but with no atmosphere, things get dark pretty quickly. And the blackness of space is pretty startling. And that's for sure. Yeah. The other thing that I thought about with this was the time of how daylight and night work on the moon. Because we go to, we think of let's make a moon base, we'll live on the moon, and people that do that are going to have to live with a weird day, night cycle. It's a daylight for 14 or 15 days straight and then dark for 14 or 15 days straight. Wow. So in this picture, you see the darkness on the horizon. And when you get covered over by the darkness, it's going to be dark for a long time, two weeks or so.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
And very dark. Very dark. That's right.

Speaker 8 (38:37):
Exactly. No sunlight. And you'd be able to see, that's the other thing we don't have in this picture is where's the earth? By the angle of everything here, the earth would be out of the frame. But that would be one of the pluses. If you were there at night on the moon, you could still see the earth up in the sky,

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Which would, I guess, would presumably provide some light in the same way the moon does for us.

Speaker 8 (39:00):
It would be

Speaker 1 (39:01):
A similar reflection of light back down.

Speaker 8 (39:03):
Yeah. Because tried to picture that what it would be like, how big the earth is up in the sky. So since the earth is so much bigger than the moon, the Earth's size would be pretty considerable. I think it's something like on the order of 16 or 17 times bigger than the moon is from our side. So it would be a pretty big thing up there. And if you stayed on the moon long enough, just the earth would just stay pretty much in the same spot. It wouldn't rise and set like our moon does, because the moon doesn't spin very fast. And so the Earth would just sit there and you could just watch the earth spin very slowly. So if you're really patient and you just watch it, spin for 24 hours, spend one time around.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
That's crazy. That's something you never think about.

Speaker 8 (39:54):
Yeah. It's called synchronous rotation. So the earth, the moon spins one time for every one time it goes around the earth.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
So

Speaker 8 (40:03):
It always keeps that one face facing the earth the whole time. So we only see that half of the moon. We never see the other side. That's the far side. So if you're living on the near side of the moon, you would see the earth in the sky all the time.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Wow. Wow.

Speaker 8 (40:18):
That's See where home is. That's

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Really crazy. In episode 57, Abby Schwartz, director of the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati talked with me about Jewish art and Mark Chaga. And we are standing in front of the Red Rooster by Mark Chaga. This is probably one of our most famous paintings in the collection, and it's probably one of the most popular paintings in the collection. And I picked Al today to look at, just because he's also one of the most famous Jewish artists and somebody who, for whom that becomes a subject in the work too.

Speaker 9 (41:04):
A lot. Yes, that's true. Yes, indeed. Yes. Well, this is just such an iconic image. It really reflects so much of what Al is known for, these sort of strange juxtaposition of figures. We have this marvelous red rooster occupying the left foreground, and just at the very left of the image, a figure of a young man who has a harp. So it could only be David, and then a donkey figure playing a violin leaning against a tree in the right foreground. And another figure with a red hat sort of coming out from behind the tree, and then above and over it all, a figure of a man with a blue face and a green hat just floating across the sky. And this surreal kind of image approaching a sliver of moon and an upside down cow.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Oh, you see that as a cow,

Speaker 9 (42:16):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Oh, see, I see it as another

Speaker 9 (42:18):
Chicken. Oh, you're right. A chicken. It's some kind of a chicken.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yep.

Speaker 9 (42:20):
You're right. It's a chicken.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
I thought you'd blown it wide open there for me. A chicken. It's

Speaker 9 (42:24):
A chicken. It's often cow. So

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah, no, I was like, was that a cow?

Speaker 9 (42:29):
Well,

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah, and I think if you were standing on the, we're standing very close to this painting right now, but I think if you're standing on the other side of the painting, you would probably first, obviously the rooster

Speaker 9 (42:38):
Comes

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Out first. I mean, the rooster is most of the picture.

Speaker 9 (42:42):
It is red.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
The rooster probably occupies at least two thirds of this picture, and it is bright, bright

Speaker 9 (42:48):
Red.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yes. And then you would next probably see maybe the man floating because he's

Speaker 9 (42:53):
Pretty

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Big. And that blue face stands out. Then I think you'd probably pick out this tree.

Speaker 9 (42:58):
Well, it certainly balances the composition.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (43:01):
The little Balances,

Speaker 1 (43:02):
The Donkey Man kind of, he's still, he's pretty prominent,

Speaker 9 (43:07):
But you don't see him initially

Speaker 1 (43:09):
As maybe not right away. But then some of those other figures you mentioned are almost like little fun surprises that

Speaker 9 (43:14):
Pop up,

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Like the harp player

Speaker 9 (43:16):
Character.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
He's just in almost an outline, very kind of ghostly.

Speaker 9 (43:21):
Very, very much so. Almost as an afterthought.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah. I've looked at this with a lot of people, and a lot of people do almost describe this Red Hat person as a ghost or something because of the way, I think maybe the color, the way they're sort of blending into the tree in the background almost. But then that hat is what you notice them right away, because that bright red

Speaker 9 (43:44):
Hat, hat pops

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Them out. But it's all very not clear what's going on.

Speaker 9 (43:50):
Exactly. And Al was working at a time when surrealism was really prominent, and there's definitely that sense of a dream world that

(44:05):
When you wake up from a dream, sometimes there are all these strange juxtapositions, but they all come from some part of your consciousness and form something that never really could have happened. And for Al, there's always this incredible mix of his old world roots, his youth in sk, this little shtetl town in what is in today, Belarus. And he never really leaves it behind. And so a lot of these figures that the animals and the people that were part of that, and often the architecture, this doesn't appear in this work, but the buildings, the houses, I mean, it's right out of Fiddler on the Roof. That's very much the world that he grew up in. And then he comes to Paris and he changes his name from Siegel to Al, and he becomes this French dandy and spends, he's always sort of fighting between those two sides of who he is. And

Speaker 1 (45:14):
It's

Speaker 9 (45:14):
Really later in his life where he really embraces, again, his childhood roots. And a lot of his work has a lot of Jewish content, but it's just so free and so dreamlike and that figure over top with his polka dot pants and his Czech shirt, but the sleeve, it still feels like a prayers shawl. The stripes on the sleeve of his right hand, I still see a prayer shawl. I still see that connection to his Jewish past.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah. Well, even the way I always assume, he comes from a smaller place with a lot, the animals sort of harken back to livestock things that they probably would've grown up

Speaker 9 (46:05):
With.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
The donkey, the rooster, the chickens and all of this, the milk

Speaker 9 (46:08):
Cow, all of them. Yes,

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Absolutely. So it's like you've got that going on, but then you were describing these patterns on his pants, this, the polka dots, the checks, it's like modernism right there, right? Yes,

Speaker 9 (46:20):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
It's like old and new all at once

Speaker 9 (46:23):
Happening. Yes, very much.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
And actually, it's one of the first times I've looked this probably, I've looked at it the longest right now than I probably ever have. And just noticing the way those little patterns sort of become a part of the roosters tail here, these little polka dots and things that are kind of dancing around the rooster, which give a great sense of movement. But also, again, it's this sort of modern thing happening going

Speaker 9 (46:50):
On, and it's not defined. The edges are not crisp. He's just, it's almost like it feels so instantaneous. And yet there are these fine details in the tree. I just found this little bird.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (47:07):
Do you see this little bird just sort

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Of

Speaker 9 (47:10):
Nestled on a branch and hidden?

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, it's, there's lots of things

Speaker 9 (47:14):
Camouflaged.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah. When you're talking about that, the way the, it's almost like the rooster is sort of dissolving in from, again, something sort of dreamlike where things just sort of fade in and out,

Speaker 9 (47:27):
Or almost like a stamp that

Speaker 10 (47:29):
Applied,

Speaker 1 (47:30):
But you didn't

Speaker 10 (47:31):
Apply equal pressure

Speaker 1 (47:32):
All the way around.

Speaker 10 (47:34):
And that gives it a sense of immediacy that you wouldn't have if it felt more finished.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yes, definitely.

Speaker 10 (47:42):
But it is finished, of course,

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Right? Yeah. We've got the signature down there. We know he was done. He was done. Okay, we're done. I was joined by Mike Little and Jeffrey Miller in episode 67 to learn about what it's like to attend Burning Man. One of the reasons when I asked you guys to come in here was to talk about almost as a Burning Man survival guide. And so I kind of wanted to start with asking, what are the challenges that being at Burning Man presents to a visitor?

Speaker 11 (48:24):
God, where did we

Speaker 10 (48:25):
Start? Right.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
I'll

Speaker 10 (48:28):
Give you my top three.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, that's fine. Top three challenges.

Speaker 10 (48:32):
The elements in the desert are the elements of a desert. And that sounds so elementary, but I mean, it is hot. I mean, my first year on Playa, it average I think 117 degrees. And people say it's a dry heat. No, 117 degrees is 117 degrees. I feel like I prepared very well because I'm very big on the 10 principles and being very radical, but just preparing the amount of water just to go from one side of the pla to the other. And then lastly, just some elective physical. I think self-care out a burn is very important to myself, whether it be taking care of your feet or get enough sleep or knowing to remove yourself from certain stimulus. I think sometimes people often forget about personal self-care. They're just trying to enjoy every single moment of every hour. That's impossible. So learning how to care for yourself is once you kind of figured that out, I feel like the experience becomes a little bit easier.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
So FOMO is a challenge on the fly too.

Speaker 10 (49:37):
The city's alive 24 7,

Speaker 11 (49:42):
Mike, I think he captured pretty well

(49:46):
Until you have the experience. I mean, if you look on the back of a burning net ticket, it says you entered the risk of your own death. I mean, I don't know what the festival that you go to and the planet that has a disclaimer on the back that you could die, and it's your responsibility to make sure you don't. I think it's hard. I've seen the physical elements out there, the heat, the dust, the playa dust. I've seen it just absolutely make people crazy. I mean, just absolutely snap because you are constantly coated. I mean, the ply dust is getting kicked up from the wind. It's getting kicked up from art cars. It's getting kicked up from people walking around. I mean, if there's water trucks going around and it's tamping down some of the water on the roads, but there's just you, I mean, you come back from Byron Burning Man, and I still have ply dusted bags in some clothes and things like that. So like glitter and ply dust never go away.

Speaker 12 (50:44):
In a society

Speaker 11 (50:44):
In which everything is very clean and sterile, it just makes people crazy. You can never, always get it off your hands if you have context to put in. So you have to instantly succumb to the fact that you are dirty.

(50:58):
And that makes people, I'm telling you, it just makes a lot of people crazy. And I said in my camp, I saw a lot of people really just have, and some people have actually left my camp before the burn because they couldn't put up with the dirt, that constant seepage of dirt. So just that constant set of that change of physical care of yourself, moisturizing your feet, making sure you're drinking a lot of water, not knowing how those elements, and especially I think what you said about the sensory experience, it gets to you. And I think my credit to my camp leader, to Paul, who always put us at the outer ring, because he just wanted to be the point at which it wasn't so far that you couldn't get to things or find things, but he wanted to give people the chance to sleep and just have some kind of disconnection.

(51:45):
I mean, you can still hear the ply of thumping in the background, but it was a lot different than going 4, 5, 6 rings in, and it's just nonstop. But knowing where that sensory overload, because it's everywhere. I mean, the art cars, the neons, the clothing that people wear, I mean, I don't know how to, it's living in WA really wants chocolate factory nonstop. And if you're not, I mean, we're not used to that kind of experience. And it can be finding ways to kind of separate your mind from that and breathe and relax and have some just quiet time as much as you can. It's key. It can really overwhelm you. So the combination of those elements is pulverizing to your head, and you got to be mindful of it, and you have to have people around you who can recognize those.

Speaker 10 (52:31):
Absolutely.

Speaker 11 (52:32):
Those things.

Speaker 12 (52:33):
So you both mentioned foot

Speaker 10 (52:34):
Care,

Speaker 11 (52:35):
So I'm kind

Speaker 12 (52:36):
Of curious about your foot care. What does that entail? So

Speaker 10 (52:41):
I'm very specific about my foot care because with the play dust being so alkaline is going to crack your skin. And so I found, I went through a couple pairs of boots on your feet the entire time, whether you're on a bike, I do pick one night to where I just walk around my block, my circle, I like to walk, but you're on your feet the entire time, so your feet are going to hurt and the dust will crack your feet. It's almost like tap lips. So if you don't take care of your feet, it's going to tap your feet and then you can't move. So the way to do it is to, there is a little bit of science vinegar or lemon juice. So at the end of every day, a whole camp day, it's just something we naturally do. We get behind the scenes and we take off all our socks, our boots, and we clean up our feet and then douse it with vinegar, clean 'em off. Now, me personally, this is where I wear a brand new pair of socks every single day. Once I started doing that, I did that last year, and it's like, voila, the angels are on your feet because without your feet, you can't move

(53:52):
And you can't have a good experience.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
In our final clip, museum docent, ANU Mitra took me on a tour of the fabric of India and also told me about her own family's history with India's independence.

Speaker 13 (54:17):
I want to show you the protest, the Kadi, that Gandhiji war. So he carried a loom with him, and he spun cloth at least for an hour every day. So he had a portable loom,

(54:33):
And he encouraged other people who were attending his meetings in droves to spin, as well as a way of protesting the fact that starting from the 1780s or so, the British caught on that the textile industry was huge in India, they had 60% of the world's market share, and they wanted divs into that. And so what the British did was they sort of looked down upon all the handwoven, the handmade, the hand processed hand dyed phenomenon, and they went to Lancaster, Manchester and so on and so forth, and made these cotton mills and silk mills, which were bringing out yards and yards of cloth. And so starting from the 1840s to about 1947, which is when we got independence from the British women in good families such as my grandmother, they were organizing these huge neighborhood parties where all the women would go out and they would set a fire. All their British made SREs.

Speaker 10 (55:48):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 13 (55:49):
And so my poor grandmother, this beautiful, elegant woman who was not very experienced in anything except reading books and having a great life, she went to jail for several weeks along with her people, and she was willing to do that as a way of protesting British oppression and colonialism and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Wow. And of course,

Speaker 10 (56:15):
This is why the

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Spinning wheel is on the Indian flag.

Speaker 13 (56:19):
It is on the Indian flag. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Which I will admit I did not realize. It's one of those things where you just see flags and you go, oh, yeah, there's a little shape in the middle of it, and you don't stop and think about it. And it's really fascinating.

Speaker 13 (56:32):
I

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Think it's a great way of,

Speaker 13 (56:34):
They see gandhiji spinning and making cloth, and of course the spinning wheel is a symbol of self-determination that with your simple individual daily efforts, you can change the course of history. And that's what people came to an awareness of that all was not lost. Just because the British had been there for hundreds of years did not mean that they were going to continue. So this was a way of saying thank you. You've given us great infrastructure, you've given us a great education system as a model, and now it's time to say goodbye.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the Art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. Upcoming exhibitions include the Levy, a photographer in the American South opening October 5th, women Breaking Boundaries, opening October 11th and Treasures of the Spanish World opening October 25th. Join us on October 11th from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM for the Women Breaking Boundaries Community opening. Enjoy Food and explore the creativity of Greater Cincinnati's women owned businesses in the Great Hall. And at 2:00 PM attend a panel discussion on the role of women in the arts. For program reservations and more information, visit Cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is FRA Music by Balal. And as always, please rate and review us to help others find the show. I'm Russell eig, and this has been Art Palace, produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.