The Promised Land: V

The workers of many religions and nationalities clasping hands across the factory conveyer belt are the central message of the mural we have been examining for the last several days: There are no boundaries between workers. We are all workers, and we are all, therefore, equal because whatever we do, we contribute.

I recognize two symbols of ethnicity at the right of the assembly line of workers:

In the middle is symbol of the Celts and below it is, I think, a Native American symbol. But the top symbol, which seems to be two seahorses facing—what is that? It’s one of many unanswered questions about this superb mural. The muralist’s name appears below, and I plan to track her down and find answers.

If you visit the Washington, D.C., area and are interested to see this mural, you’ll find it on Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria, on the side wall of the building that supports the Tenants’ and Workers’ Support Committee. The creation of the mural was featured on Sept. 7 and Sept. 8 on Alexandria Daily Photo.

The Promised Land: IV

In these two details, we see celebrated the strength and solidarity of women. In the larger detail, the women are led by the iconic figure of Rosie the Riveter, who became a World War II propoganda figure used to encourage American women to work in factories in place of the men who had gone to war.

The original Rosie, seen immediately below, was painted by Norman Rockwell as a cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post of May 29, 1943.

© Curtis Publishing Company

More familiar is the Rosie of the “We Can Do It” propoganda posters.

I will wrap up this series of posts on the Chirilagua mural tomorrow.

The Promised Land: III

Today I am looking at some of the smaller details of the Chirilagua mural. A reminder that what follows is my interpretation of the symbolism in this mural. I don’t know whether it’s what the muralist had in mind.

Various folk art motifs appear in the mural, recognitions of the many cultures that exist in this country. Some are easily recognizable and others not (or not to me). Here I see a shamrock. Beneath it is the Yin Yang symbol (more usually seen turned 90 degrees counterclockwise). It stands for opposing but complementary forces in nature: feminine-masculine, night-day, dark and passive-bright and active—and in this context, perhaps the difference between dream and reality. Under it is what at first sight I saw as having elements of an Ionic capital, but now I think may be a Native American or a pre-columbian symbol. Any ideas anyone?

Here are representations of the types of work many immigrants perform: driving taxis, working in the fields or on construction sites, working as housekeepers and cleaners. Two hands reach for the dove of peace, or perhaps release the dove of peace—in either case the hope is for peace.

This is part of the bottom of the mural, On the left, shackled hands, the symbol of subservience; on the right, the black power salute, a symbol of the fight against subservience. I don’t have even a guess about the two blue diamond shapes over the shackled wrists.

The heart looks to me like a Pennsylvania Dutch motif.

The black cat, its back arched, and the loaf of bread with the roses both stand for activism and the rights of workers. The black cat or wild cat is used as a symbol of radical unions (think wildcat strike) and the loaf and roses represent the 1912 Bread and Roses strike. The work week had been reduced by law to 54 hours per week, and in answer, the mill owners cut wages. Thirty thousand textile workers struck. Some of the women carried signs saying “We want bread and roses too”—not just the basics of existence, but something more.

I see what appear to be roots growing down to the motifs. Perhaps because the country is rooted in these facts and values, among others? What do you think?

More tomorrow.

The Promised Land: II

A reminder that what follows is my interpretation of the symbolism in this mural. I don’t know whether it’s what the muralist had in mind.

Moving directly below the detail of yesterday’s post, we see a sheriff stopping a would-be immigrant at the border. She carries all that she is taking to start her new life, and it is so very little. The ship in the background is the Mayflower, and symbolizes the first settlers—the people responsible for the foundation of the the United States. The man standing directly behind the woman looks to me to be in colonial dress and I see him not as a real person but as the shade of one of the first settlers—another reminder that those first immigrants created this country. Stretching across the desert behind the woman are crosses, which, to me, stand for the people who lost their lives making the journey to the border into the United States.

At the upper right is a pointing hand. You will see in the detail below whom it belongs to.

The pointing finger belongs to an angry-looking judge. He is indicating to the would-be immigrants that they should go back to the countries they came from. The sign round his neck refers to House Resolution 4437 “To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to strengthen enforcement of the immigration laws, to enhance border security, and for other purposes,” introduced in December 2005.

Behind the sheriff, we see George Washington, the father of this country, as a baby. Slightly behind him is his African American nurse wearing chains to symbolize that she is a slave. This detail interests me very much. Depicting servants as smaller than those they serve makes very clear their status as inferiors. You will find the device in ancient Egyptian art. She is also slightly behind him—yet her chained hand is on him. The message is plain, I think: The support of the slaves whose names and faces are lost to us has every bit as much to do with the growth of the United States as do the actions of those whose names and faces are so well-known.

As an aside, it is apparently a shock to many visitors to Mount Vernon, the plantation home of George Washington, to see the slave quarters. I suspect that there’s a reluctance to accept that a revered figure kept slaves, a practice we deplore today. In fact, he inherited 10 slaves from his father, and by his death, there were more than 300 slaves at Mount Vernon. He was considered a “benevolent” slave-owner by his contemporaries. Some of his slaves were taught to read. In later life, he was publicly in favor of the abolition of slavery, and under the terms of his will, he freed his own slaves, but he could not legally free those who belonged to his wife, Martha.

More about this mural tomorrow.

The Promised Land: I

If you read my Washington, DC photo blog, please bear with what starts out as repetition. I’m indebted to Marie McC of Alexandria Daily Photo for taking me to see this mural She featured it in the making on Sept. 7 and Sept. 8, and I posted briefly about it on Picturing Washington on Sept. 15.

The mural is in the Chirilagua (a.k.a. Arlandria) neighborhood in Alexandria, Va., and it touched me deeply. The more I look at it, the more I am caught up in its symbolism. I talked about a couple of details on the Picturing Washington post, but I’d like to go into the mural in more depth here.

I am an immigrant too, and the mural brought home to me something I’d not ever stopped to reflect on: that I am a very privileged immigrant compared with those who came across the border with nothing and did the menial jobs no one else wanted. In contrast, I came to the United States from a secure and comfortable life in the United Kingdom to a place in graduate school, a teaching assistantship to help pay my way, and a secure future (as far as any future can be secure) based on my British and American education.

Every interpretation is just that—an interpretation. Art speaks to most of us on some level or other, whether or not we can articulate what we feel. What I get out of this piece of art may not be what you get out of it. That’s for you to look and determine.

Starting in the upper left corner, we have flying saucers. What do we make of them? Perhaps that those who can contribute come not just from many countries, but also from many universes? Our minds should not be closed to those worlds we don’t yet understand? I don’t know.

Dominant are two motifs. First is the pair of men, one bearing a “Welcome” sign, the other with a handful of dollars. Welcome to the land flowing with milk and honey. The riches beckon and the people come, one after another, surmounting difficulty (the drainpipe) to enter the promised land. See how small they are in comparison with the symbols of riches? And see how small they are compared to the huge hotel? Many of those little people will end up there—not as pampered guests, but as those serving them. Their future is to be the maids who change the beds and scrub the bathrooms, the doormen, the bellboys, the dishwashers in the hotel kitchens.

The second motif: Three planes fly towards the promised land. Are they simply bringing more immigrants? Perhaps. But I think the fact that there are three is significant. Are they the three planes that caused the destruction of 911, reminding us that we are not the inviolable promised land? We are threatened. All those who seek our shores do not have good intentions.

More tomorrow.

Palais des Beaux Arts

It was Napoleon who ordered art treasures to be stripped from the walls of palaces and private galleries throughout his European empire and brought to Lille, where they are now displayed in the Palais des Beaux Arts, which is considered France’s second art museum after the Louvre. The museum houses paintings by Goya, Rubens, Picasso, Lautrec, Monet, and other famous artists. I don’t know what Napoleon would have made of these helium balloons, but I loved them.

The art of the swimming pool

I have never seen anything like these wonderful petunia pillars before. They are in Roubaix, which is 20-minutes or so away from the center of Lille on the excellent automated métro. Roubaix was an important textile manufacturing town in the 15th to 19th centuries

But the main reason to go there today is to visit La Piscine.

Originally an Art Deco swimming pool, it is now the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie. The old pool is a gallery of 19th and 20th century sculpture. The tiled edge of the pool is still visible behind the statues. The stretch of water in the middle is about three inches deep.

The old shower stalls and changing rooms have been turned into display cases for—among other things—the splendid displays of textiles and related items, and the wings that made up the municipal bath house and once contained bath tubs now house the fine arts collection.

To remind you of this wonderful building’s past, every so often, you hear a couple of minutes of taped shrieking and splashing.

Alison

Most people, when they think of sculpture in Trafalgar Square, think of Lord Nelson on his column. But there are other statues, and now that feeding the pigeons is illegal so the square isn’t knee-deep in birds, feathers, poop, people selling birdseed at outrageous prices, and tourists covered with pigeons, you can actually see them. At the four corners are statues of King George IV, Gen. Charles Napier, Maj. Gen. Sir Henry Havelock (yeah, I hadn’t heard of the two military gents either), and until fairly recently, an empty plinth. Back in the 1840s, the fourth plinth was paid for, but there wasn’t enough money for the statue.

In the late 1990s, the empty fourth plinth became home to a rotating series of temporary sculptures, which gave rise to the Fourth Plinth Project. The latest statue is Alison Lapper Pregnant, a 3.5 meter, 13 tonne sculpture of a British artist born with no arms and malformed legs, pregnant with her son. Lapper specializes in art portraying disabilities. The sculpture in Trafalgar Square is the work of Marc Quinn.

I wish I liked it. We spend too much time glorifying the latest ephemeral perception of physical perfection, so saying that a disabled person is equally worthy of celebration is something I applaud. But I don’t like this sculpture. It certainly personifies something I believe in intellectually, but when faced with the reality, my emotional response is boredom.

On first sight, I didn’t take in anything except a huge, glaring white sculpture of a nude female that didn’t fit with the rest of Victorian Trafalgar Square. I didn’t notice, until my friend pointed it out, that the statue had no arms (maybe I’m conditioned by the Venus de Milo). I think this is a very dull piece of sculpture, competent but (to me) uninspired. If the model had arms and perfect limbs and had not been pregnant, thereby meeting all sorts of levels of political correctness, would the statue have merited a place, however temporary, in Trafalgar Square?

And—I need to be totally honest— how much does my discomfort with the subject also weigh into this? I know it does.

But nobody asked my opinion, and Alison will be in situ only until the end of March 2007. In April, she’ll be replaced by Thomas Schütte’s Hotel for the Birds. Apparently no one mentioned to Herr Schütte that the pigeons are no longer welcome in Trafalgar Square.