ROTHKO BEFORE ROTHKO; or, WAY TO GO OHIO, part 13

that first part isn't, however, really my title. i have to admit. the one who really came up with it was that art history phd candidate who showed us around the prado on that...memorable friday afternoon that the 2011/12 christmas saga spent in madrid. but regardless of his ability to give the show a memorable title, he wasn't going to be showing us around the rothko exhibition at the columbus museum of art when we finally got ourselves together to get together to see it on sunday -- which isn't to say that he didn't go (he came), it's just that twentieth century american art isn't his thing. and appearances aside (he was beside us in front of many of the paintings on display), i have to admit that it's not exactly my expertise either. i'd just been riding past the rothko banners on the front of the museum for a month, and that phd candidate had given the show an interesting epithet (even if it had been given to imply that the show wouldn't be that interesting). anyway, we went. it was something -- but not in the figurative sense. "rothko before rothko," which the museum is calling "mark rothko: the decisive decade 1940 -1950" went something like this:

The years 1940 – 1950 were crucial in the development of Mark Rothko’s universally recognizable mature color-field paintings. Fueled by the anxieties of the late 1930s and the years of WWII, in the 1940s, Rothko’s figurative imagery became increasingly symbolic and dream-like. By 1947, Rothko and his artist colleagues and friends such as Adolph Gottlieb were eliminating all elements of the human figure from their work. As a consequence, nonobjective compositions of indeterminate shape and colors emerged and filled the picture plane. Rothko finally landed upon a new way of painting — using blocks of color which for him contained a “breath of life” he found lacking in most figurative painting of the time.

and that, i suppose, is how we experienced it, although the universal significance of myth and the transformative power of color seemed to have overslept that day too. (i think that i spent more time reading placards than i did trying to read anything into the paintings.) still, it was nice to have gone. we talked about gorky (and i realized that we were talking about the other gorky), and then there was one of his paintings. there was a woman with a hat, but by a different fauve than the one you probably know. in the atrium, the museum was setting up for a wedding. i liked the screen printed and rhinestoned portraits of oprah and condoleezza near the staircase, and i liked the classically inspired, brooklyn sourced portrait of the local ignoble that's above the landing.

we went looking for the cafe and found a print of a photograph by diane arbus, the freakish surreality of which had been inoculated by its incorporation into a series of interactive exercises for children (which were in the hallway outside of the interactive area for children than might have displaced the old cafe since i'd last been to the museum). around the next corner, on the way back to the lobby, the adults have their chance to interact. the museum wants money, because it wants to get rid of the sculpture garden (and erstwhile outdoor cafe seating) to erect another wing. i didn't pay any attention to what the museum was going to put in the new wing post-erection because i was disappointed when the switch next to the scale model didn't turn anything on.

it doesn't matter, of course. if they make it, people will come. like the poster (sell those weddings!) of the bride and groom seated in front of a wall of too glaringly lit paintings says, "vibrant city vibrant collection." do you want to live in a vibrant city? then maybe you should make sure your museum has a vibrant collection. but even that doesn't matter. whatever part of its collection the museum decides to put in its new wing will be vibrant as a rule, because, of course, you live in a vibrant city. rothko! you probably ate dinner at a restaurant in a vibrant arts district on the saturday night before the sunday that brought you to the museum.

But while everyone agrees that “vibrancy” is the ultimate desideratum of urban life, no one seems to be exactly sure what cultural vibrancy is. In fact, the Municipal Art Society of New York recently held a panel discussion—excuse me, a “convening”—of foundation people to talk about “Measuring Vibrancy” (it seems “the impact of arts and cultural investments on neighborhoods ... is hard to quantify”). In retrospect, it would have been far better to convene such a gathering before all those foundation people persuaded the cities of the nation to blow millions setting up gallery districts and street fairs.

Even ArtPlace, the big vibrancy project of the NEA, the banks, and the foundations, is not entirely sure that vibrancy can be observed or quantified. That’s why the group is developing what it calls “Vibrancy Indicators”: “While we are not able to measure vibrancy directly,” the group’s website admits, “we believe that the measures we are assembling, taken together, will provide useful insights into the nature and location of especially vibrant places within cities.”

What are those measures? Unfortunately, at press time, they had not yet been announced. But a presentation of preliminary work on the “Vibrancy Indicators” did include this helpful directive: “Inform leaders of the connection between vibrancy and prosperity.” Got that? We aren’t sure what vibrancy is or whether or not it works, but part of the project is nevertheless “informing” people that it does. The meaninglessness of the phrase, like the absence of proof, does not deter the committed friend of the vibrant: if you know it’s the great good thing, you simply push ahead, moving all before you with your millions.

This is not the place to try to gauge the enormous, unaccountable power that foundations wield over American life—their agenda-setting clout in urban planning debates, for example, or the influence they hold over cashstrapped universities, or their symbiosis with public broadcasters NPR and PBS. Nor is this the forum to salute them for their many positive contributions to society.

My target here is not their power, but their vacuity. Our leadership class looks out over the trashed and looted landscape of the American city, and they solemnly declare that salvation lies in an almost meaningless buzzword—that if we chant that buzzword loud enough and often enough, our troubles are over.

of course, that's to say nothing of art itself (or the other stuff, like the owners of the bookstore that doesn't exist anymore in the arts district). but you can read the rest of thomas frank's article on cultural vibrancy (originally published at the baffler) alongside that article by adriana camarena on gentrification and food culture in the mission district of san francisco (originally published in n+1) in the current issue of utne. it just so happened that i had read it myself a couple of days before going to see "rothko before rothko," and that just so happened to make my sunday in columbus, ohio where, although the art museum wasn't charging admission, it was generally serving patrons who didn't need to spend their weekend days serving the likes of...ourselves (which, after a week of discussing the philosophy of humor as it pertained to the academy awards, did more than just do another nice trick).
  

It is time to acknowledge the truth: that our leaders have nothing to say, really, about any of this. They have nothing to suggest, really, to Cairo, Illinois, or St. Joseph, Missouri. They have no comment to make, really, about the depopulation of the countryside or the deindustrialization of the Midwest. They have nothing to offer, really, but the same suggestions as before, gussied up with a new set of clichés. They have no idea what to do for places or people that aren’t already successful or that have no prospects of ever becoming cool.

in the meantime, there's here and us, wherever and whoever that might be (and regardless of how awfully, self-deprecatingly salutary that may be or sound), and since, well, it's unfortunately all the same, maybe we should have something to say about it.