Today: Biden , Replacement, and the Future

I’d start this weekend with every major figure in the Democratic Party from the most veteran to the youngest and most radical ( Schumer to Crockett and all in between) locked in a room TOMORROW (SECRET TRAVEL PLANS MAYBE NO ZOOM) with every poll result they must have and hash out who has the best numbers, the cleanest background, is the best speaker, and the quickest wit and absolutely not leave a change of candidate to an open convention. Basically the modern day equivalent of the smoke filled room but more diverse people in it and no smoking.

Kamala Harris has always seemed not quite as strong as one would wish but many feel she deserves it and many would be furious if she were not chosen for some random white guy in a suit.

I’d write a speech for Biden that would emphasize why he ran in 2020, what his philosophy of governing has been–Democrats believe in government as established in the Constitution and founding documents–what his administration has accomplished, what good shape the economy is in relative to when he took office,and why, though he wants to continue, he recognizes he is feeling the effects of age. Then a strong endorsement of whoever is chosen and I think he should campaign in their support. These are all the things he has not had the ability to broadcast effectively, sad to say. He has not realized—and his team has not realized (they seem to have been asleep at the wheel)—that millions of Americans get their news from Fox News and other local networks often run by right wing Christian organizations. People accordingly may legitimately not know the economy is doing well, they may not know that it is a fact that Republicans always leave the economy in worse shape than before with Democrats picking up the pieces.

Then literally every Democrat of every age and stripe should get out there and hustle every day, economic statistics and ideals of the Democratic Party and the founders of this country well in hand . Everyone, from the fiery Rep. Jasmine Crockett and AOC to the entire Cabinet to every elderly Senator who can shuffle across a stage + every goddam movie star sitting on the sidelines. And Biden as well as said alternative new candidate should audibly criticize Netanyahu in particular because a chunk of the youth vote hangs on that issue seemingly more than on the future of the environment or the autonomy of women. Interestingly JD Vance is for Gaza against current Israeli policy — many so-called Dems & young voters are deeply concerned with Gaza and one can fear that they might be ready to allow a fascist regime by default rather than suck it up until after the election.

If it’s Harris she has to very subtly toughen her tone without being strident, women are always held to a higher category of behavior. She has to have a presence, a voice, or he has to have a presence, a voice. And no matter what I want to see every Democratic Party politician from state senator or mayor to governor to Representatives and Senators traveling to every state, two at a time, and no small meeting is too small to address, several stops a day, *NOW and every day* until Election Day.

And if Democratic donors who are manipulating the current situation don’t fork over tons of money they are de facto MAGA tools. Apparently one of the things trump is considering with the Supreme Court’s new Imperial powers is to privatize the Federal Reserve. I don’t understand much about economics but I think I know a disaster when I hear of one. Also nothing happens in a fascist regime, there is a brain drain OUT of the country. Creativity is discouraged by political loyalty tests. It will just be Project 2025 for decades because by the way the litmus test for a VP candidate like Vance was and is to promise to never allow for another fair election.

And God have mercy on American democracy which, for all its glaring inequities, still lights the way to a world increasingly falling prey to fascism and dictatorship. As a European at a Thanksgiving after the 2016 election said, “What will we do without American?”

Emojis for the end of history

We live in a world where emojis are shortcuts that represent things, places, events, and emotions, but where only a limited range of emojis are available to users of mainstream social media who are invited to respond to posts on whatever the platform. When I started writing this piece about the political and psychological meaning of emojis available for reaction to Facebook posts, I discovered that, as I use Microsoft Word, which I get through my academic employer, as such I’m not allowed such add-ins in my text. As someone who teaches an MFA Thesis writing class, I can see how emojis would be seen as frivolous (and not worth paying extra for—I assume) when you require students to write clear, expository, discursive, professional text. Even as visual artists they are asked to write in a manner which, if individualized and hybrid (academic /non-academic) retains adherence to some professional standards even though such standards may be in increasing contrast to the way most young people communicate with each other, via texts, memes, and Tik Tok videos relying on ironic use of music clips and fanciful use of emojis for accent.

Since trump first began his occupation of the Oval Office in January 2017–I have never capitalized his last name and I never referred to him as President of the United States, nor even as the (now former) occupant of the White House but as the occupier, given that his share of the popular vote was so significantly lower than that of his opponent and that he was impeachable at the Oath, because as we incontrovertively know after January 6 and in the era of the Big Lie, he never had any intention of preserving, protecting or defending the Constitution of the United States—anyway…since 2017, I have been determined to never use the “Crying Face” emoji which is one of the seven reaction emojis provided by Facebook. Other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram offer even less choice, it is “heart” or nothing.

I call this one *Pudding Face*,
as in emoji of dictator’s face melting into a rotting puddle of suet

I have forced myself to always opt for “pouting face” because it is angry and orange but I would prefer “face with symbols over Mouth” which also is orange but has unprintable language across the mouth or, if Facebook offered it, and colored it orange, the emoji color of anger and rage, and by the way the color of trump’s face, I might use the hands framing the face Munch Scream-inspired “face screaming in fear” emoji.

The main thing is I was resolved to never use the “Crying Face” emoji as a response to the totalitarian actions of trump or to the actions his regime took that constitute crimes against humanity or to the more and more brutal evidence that a new breed of fascist storm-troopers are taking over not just this country but much of the world—because it seemed so defeatist. As the most tiny and utterly inconsequential of political gestures, I refused to enact or figure or symbolize defeat and when people respond to my frequently angry and also alarmists posts by clicking the “Crying Face,” I am annoyed. No, no. Be outraged, be angry.

Recently friends and I were jokingly comparing notes on which one of us was more of a pessimist. Apparently I fell in the middle of the three of us, with one friend maintaining that in being a pessimist you are most often proved right. In a conversation with a younger artist the spring of 2020, just a couple of weeks before the pandemic shut down the city, as we discussed all the terrible things we are living with and looking forward to, he said he was trying to be an optimist. No, no, I said, be a pessimist–and an activist: pessimist because in a crisis it seems better to be mentally prepared for what the worst might be and the fact that the worst may likely happen, but also activist because one has to try to fight back, there is no other option.

It is true that there is a kind of optimist who can visualize the worst, face it, refuse to submit to it, and also see and believe in activism and a better future. Rep. John Lewis was that kind of man, he seems to have been deeply optimistic, though also deeply realistic. Or was he deeply realistic but stubbornly and actively optimistic? At his funeral, his Chief of Staff Jamila Thompson said of him, “he was both human and divine.” I’ve NEVER heard that said about anyone in public life in America, except perhaps Abraham Lincoln. Most of us are just human and at best struggle to be a good person and a good citizen.

But my tiny bit of symbolic resistance is not much evidence of good citizenship, in fact it epitomizes the apolitical isolation of our era, but given the limited choices of response on Facebook, my tiny bit of resistance has been to choose anger as at least a limited symbolic visualization of non-acceptance of the status quo. I didn’t know the name for this frowning orange face is “pouting face,” that name is condescending. If you are bright orange with rage you are not pouting. Trump pouts, he’s a baby. I’m enraged and I’m terrified. We need a combination of “face screaming with fear” and “face with symbols on mouth.”

Mira Schor, *Help, Help,* 2017. Oil, ink and gesso on linen. “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the coming of the dusk.’” Here the owl and Minerva cannot help each other, as each is equally ensnared.

Since the pandemic altered socialized life on earth placing us in the weird purgatory we are now in, masked so we can’t even express emotion, project empathy, or solicit sympathy via our faces, my ability to hold the fort on symbolic anger is increasingly eroded. This week of December 2021 we saw proof positive that the long long carefully waged battle against a country that would at least try to represent something more than the rights of the very few and privileged, as voting rights and women’s rights to the autonomy of their own bodies are nearly erased in many states and white supremacists oligarchical minority party rule is upon us, I feel my internal wall of outrage weakening further under the flood of tears of mourning and of fear. I hover over “Crying face.” But I can still stop and think, NO. Must fight back.

And yet. Sometime during the second part of the pandemic I was shopping in a big supermarket outside of NY. Though everyone was still wearing masks as required, some of the store’s messaging from earlier in the pandemic, about mask wearing and limits on store capacity, has been toned down, while shelves still were empty here and there of basic products. The parking lot was empty relative to the beforetimes. At what would normally been the busiest part of the vacation destination community’s year, there was a sense of desertion. An emotion overtook me which took some time to name—it was, I finally recognized, mourning, a deep deep sense of mourning.

Weeping face emoji.

Dieric Bouts, Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Virgin) | The Art Institute of Chicago

One day last summer, I thought, maybe it’s a privilege to have lived long enough to witness the beginning of the end of life on earth.

Weeping Face emoji

Must fight back.

ps. I wrote much of this text and created most of the images in August 2020, but today felt like the day to finalize and publish it, and only after I had hit publish and sat down belatedly to read today’s Sunday New York Times, did I see this short piece about the most popular emojis of 2021. Apparently “tears of rage tears of grief” are not at the top.

The Osage Tree

A year ago today, out for an afternoon walk in Central Park, I came upon a few interestingly textured round hard green fruit along a path I often take. Someone explained to me that it was an Osage Orange from the Osage Tree. I immediately looked it up of course, and the next day I went back to pick up some more of the Osage Oranges (which of course are not oranges) because the wind was rising and soon they would fall, be eaten by squirrels, decompose, and also because someone had asked me where the tree was located in the Park and I wanted to locate it for them—in fact it is a small grove of Osage Trees right along the Western edge of the Park near 68th street and because the tree, its fruit, and its story intrigued me. I fell in love with it and what a gift to find something that gave that sense of discovery and yet had always been so close to home.

That second day, one year ago, a young woman noticed me gathering the green fruit and asked me about them just as I had asked passersby the day before. I could feel the tree and its fruit generate a chain of conversation as each person was drawn to the curiousness of these creature-like green balls lying on the ground. As I looked up and took some notes and pictures, she pointed to where there were still some on the branches. Then out of blue she asked me if I was an artist. I said yes in fact I am an artist but what made you ask that? She said that I had so much energy and seemed so purposeful that she wondered if I was an artist gathering the fruit for an art project. I thought, well I am gathering them for a project, Project Save My Life By Feeding My Spirit. I said that I found that being in the park with some (carefully landscaped) nature soothed my spirits. She mentioned that she was finding solace in the park since she had recently broken up with a guy who turned out to be a total liar (I thought, well as a nation we’re all trying to break up with a liar but he’s also a stalker and has crazy evil friends, but that is another story). Then she quoted something she had read by Alan Watts that had made an impression on her, “As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.'” The full quote as I found it online: “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.’ Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”

I thought about how the Osage tree at this point in the fall, in mid-November, has both green and yellow leaves, in fact still more green than yellow, and it still has some of its green fruit hanging on its branches. I’m at the beginning of the eighth decade of my life (I say that because it seems kind of incredible to me) but I am also as summer green as I am autumn yellow. I often despair but still have energy and spirit and hope to continue bearing fruit. The Osage tree is described (in the Wikipedia entry under its etymological name Maclura pomifera) as an “evolutionary anachronism” because of its roots in the Pleistocene era but it has many benefits: not only do squirrels and pigeons seem to love the fruit, but the trees’ deep roots and growth patterns make them ideal for hedges. Also the fruit are said to repel insects. The fruit at this point in the year have a slightly astringent and medicinal but not unpleasant smell which is perhaps what keeps insects away. As the ones I kept from last year attest, they shrivel and shrink with age.

Being an artist is difficult. Basically you are engaged in the making or writing or imagining something which in most cases no one else needs and few are interested in and, even if at some point you are in step with the Zeitgeist, the radical shifts in fashion and reversals of ideology that seem to occur pretty much every decade since the beginning of the modernist era make becoming an “evolutionary anachronism” nearly inescapable. An older artist has the task of remaining alive in their work—and also literally–in the face of an infatuation on the part of the art market with youth or, especially in the case of women, with such great old age that the women artists no longer pose a threat to the system and when they can no longer do more work with the belated support. In previous writings (see note below*) and artworks, I have noted the three ages of a woman artist’s life, “Young and Naked,” “Still Too Young,” and “Not Dead Enough.” I found support in the green leaves of the Osage Tree, in its unusual fruit, its evolutionary survival despite humans deeming it an evolutionary anachronism, and the fact that I can look for the tree again in the spring. Which I did.

And now I have come to another mid-November, the Osage Tree Grove still is more green than yellow, there seem to be fewer Osage Oranges on the ground, and yesterday the grove was fenced off except for a few people in some kind of Déjeuner sur l’herbe scene which I took as a living advertisement for an events business.

Now back to the studio and the prompts and permissions I’ve evolved over the years — “just paint a Mira Schor” I said to myself when I was in my twenties and that barely made sense because at that early stage, what, after all, was that? And then about twelve years ago I told myself, “just paint the worst or the stupidest painting (because you have already painted the stupidest painting).”

It gets harder to successfully play such tricks on yourself and the many shifts in art hierarchies, values, and fashion can begin to wear one down, particularly when they all too disconcertingly resemble something you have witnessed before. It is impressive and overwhelming to see so many young artists doing amazingly consistent, accomplished, impressive work in a style arrived at relatively early in their practice—and yet, for anyone who has been around for a while, in styles that seem unnervingly like older art styles including ones once successful, radical, or reviled. It is a weird thing–one wants modes of thinking in art to survive, one hopes valued traditions and forms continue to exist, but one hopes for acknowledgement and for a sense of interaction with the antecedents. Some of the past I experienced was pretty contingent so it is disconcerting when elements recur as efficient, consistent product. On the other hand, we see very successful older artists that are turning out work in their trademark style to satisfy their collectors long past the time when they were animated by search and discovery—in a way that makes me think of actresses who keep having cosmetic surgery to keep viable but thereby deprive us of what they might actually look like at 70 or 80 or 90. We know how interesting Henry Fonda’s face was in later life but we will never see that reality of Jane Fonda.

In a conversation about this, on the pattern of Artist X turning out Artist X works, I spontaneously said, “there is no Mira Schor,” echoing yet curiously altering my mantra from my 20s, “just paint a Mira Schor.” Yet, with my new spirit tree inspiring me and with my fresh Osage oranges scattered in the rooms I occupy, I’ll continue the project the young woman in the park apparently sensed, with all my mantras including a more recent one, “my work has to be a reflection of who I am, right this minute,” and the newest one–I return to my French education for this–“Il faut tenir le coup”–you have to take the blows, hang in there, hang tough–with this morning’s realization that whatever the market’s most recent stylistic infatuation is, it will shortly fade for whatever the next one will be, and that too will be as much a revenant or a replicant as it will be new. That doesn’t make me happy, the spinning bottle may not stop at a location near me, but it may help me adjust my perspective and hope the deep roots of the Osage Tree continue to yield bright green (though inedible) tough fruit.

“Miss Piggy and Madame de Beauvoir: A New Fable of La Fontaine: Cochon et Castor,” June 1, 2015 ; “Just a short message from Venus,” June 24, 2015; “Normalizing Inequity,” May 9, 2016

*Susan Bee and I invited a number of artists who had been working for at least twenty years (the amount of time we ourselves had been artists at that date) to answer a few questions about their practice “Over Time” for “Over Time: A Forum on Art Making,” published in our journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G, Issue #10, November 1991. Among the twenty-four artists who responded were Leon Golub, Nancy Grossman, Howardena Pindell, Carolee Schneemann, Lawrence Weiner, and Faith Wilding. A facsimile copy of this issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G can be found here.

The Obama Portraits

It’s surprisingly moving to see the Obama Portraits which are currently on a tour of cultural institutions around the United States and are on view at The Brooklyn Museum through this Sunday October 24. I bet I’m not the only person who got a bit weepy upon walking into the exhibition & catching sight of the paintings. People lingered in the space, standing close and looking, stepping away to chat or look at the film about the works running in a side room, then returning to the paintings. No one seemed to want to leave and everyone wanted a selfie or a picture of themselves in front of each, myself included.

okay I’ll get that part out of the way right up front:

I think it is fair to say that for the many Black visitors, it was an essential aspect of the event and it is particularly moving to witness how Black viewers engaged in this memorialization–something that the Obamas fully understood, took into account, and mentioned when the works were unveiled, but it mattered to everyone present. It is certain that after the ongoing, bruising, treasonous assaults on the most basic decency in the body politic over the last few years, there is a deep sense of loss and of nostalgia for a time when we had a President and First Lady who symbolically and in their personal behavior in their public roles were exceptional.

Indeed, the portraits themselves exemplify how the Obamas approached the symbolism & communicative meaning of every aspect of their public role, notably in their thoughtful and, historically speaking, groundbreaking choices of artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, and in their collaborative embrace of the formal and symbolic approaches chosen by these two artists for their portraits.

I had watched the public unveiling of the portraits online with moving and interesting remarks by the Obamas and by the artists and I had seen many pictures of the work but was curious what they would look like in person, since both artists relied on photo sessions & each, though very different as painters, has a flat painting technique.

Seen in person, the paintings hold their own as paintings, in addition to their symbolic importance and role as events. Though both flat paintings in oil, they operate differently on the spectrum of photo to painting.

Sherald’s Michelle Obama is a bit less resembling or less evidently photo-based, and the dress and the exquisite blue ground operate independently as beautiful abstract elements, with Sherald’s trademark grisaille representation of Black skin creating a pensive even mysterious mood, capturing the reflective private character of this publicly ebullient and outgoing figure. Speaking as a painter who was curious about the physicality of the surface, I did notice that unless viewed frontally, the skin area is painted with enough medium to be unevenly reflective, unlike the rest of the painting surface.

Wiley’s Barack Obama is a painting that is much more evidently based on photography in its brighter more artificial lighting, its frontality, and its surface. While Sherald’s Michelle Obama sits at some distance from the picture plane, protected from us by the expansive field of her remarkable abstract patterned silk dress, Wiley’s Obama sits much closer to the picture plane, leaning towards us with authority and with the slight coldness which is a facet of his remarkably self-contained character. He is up in our face, daring us to react to or contest his being.

Obama is seated in a chair which is in front of a wall of vines and flowers. This was considered a somewhat curious and unusual choice for an official state portrait when the painting was first revealed to the public, and yet it is remarkably effective in conveying the duality of Obama’s personality: leaning towards us is the powerful man, with large exquisitely drawn hands and a big most likely expensive watch just peeking from his jacket and shirt cuff. This is the official man, the man of power. The leaves and flowers represent the exotic background not just of the painting but the unusually diverse backgrounds of the person, the man with the Kenyan father, the childhood in Indonesia, the adolescence in Hawaii, the political career in Illinois, the Otherness of this quite unique individual who despite of and also because of all this complexity and exoticism, reached centrality in our troubled country.

The most interesting moment in the Barack Obama portrait is at the foot of the painting, where Obama’s feet meet the ground, except that is not exactly what is happening: it is more that he seems to be floating in space at that point in the painting, again emphasizing the complexity of Obama as a historical and public figure and perhaps, as also in the reflective and slightly melancholy though regal representation of Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald, reminding us in our current moment of political trauma, insecurity and, sadly, mediocrity, that there was a moment when this remarkable couple were the President and First Lady of the United States of America.

The Obama Portraits tour runs through May 2022. Upcoming venues include:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Los Angeles—Nov. 7, 2021–Jan. 2, 2022 High Museum of Art; Atlanta—Jan. 14, 2022–March 20, 2022 The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Houston—April 2, 2022–May 30, 2022

In the years to come

At the end of “Weather Conditions in Lower Manhattan, September 11, 2001, to October 2, 2001,” the first text that I wrote about the experience of witnessing some of the events of 9/11 “with my own eyes,” I noted in a May 2002 CODA,

“‘In the years to come.'” This is the irritating narrative device used by the writers of the American Experience programs on PBS this season [2001-2002], including their history of New York City. It gives the narrator an omniscient yet melancholic tone. Using this device one can place oneself at the inaugural of the memorials that will inevitably be built at the site–in all likelihood safe and unimaginative. Or one can imagine yet a further moment: In the years to come the destruction of the World Trade Center became a distant memory, as the people of New York adjusted to the new streets and buildings that replaced the behemoths that once had anchored the great skyline of New York.“

There was in the early years of remembrance an esprit to corps of the city and a fetishization of the events of the day that approached a romance. That gradually faded in the light of the war in Iraq and of the trump years. So how to feel about the anniversary in this twentieth year that has come?

And yet as the anniversary brings historic accounts and renewed viewing of footage, every minute of that first day, every image, is astounding.

Over the years I have published several versions of my first text describing what I saw with my own eyes that day, then my impression of the memorials, The Towers of Light, and the Memorial’s twin reflecting pools. With this tag you can work your way back through time through these recollections and photo essays of the day and its immediate aftermath, and critical views of what happened in “the years that came.” I’m compelled to share them yet again, despite whatever sense of estrangement from the intensity of the original moment.

This week I’ve watched a couple of documentaries about September 11. In one an image struck me and gave me another view of the small bit of personal experience that was instantly so searingly memorable–I expect to have forgotten things, which is why I wrote all these remembrances immediately as well as in “in the years that came,” to make sure that I remembered, but at this point I don’t expect to have images reveal anything I had not apprehended at the time. The film incorporated footage shot on September 11 by the Naudet brothers, Jules and Gédéon, who by happenstance captured the moment the first plane flew low over Lower Manhattan and hit the North Tower, sounds which I heard “with my own ears.” At the end of their documentation of the day itself, there was an aerial view of “Ground Zero” from that first night and I could place myself geographically in relation to what it showed.

From the bottom left of the picture keep going and I can follow a line about ten blocks north where I lay in bed in the fourth floor rear loft at 60 Lispenard Street, fully dressed except for pants which I placed on a go bag near the door, in case we would have to evacuate because of gas leaks or fire. The TV had gone out when the North Tower fell so paradoxically I couldn’t see the coverage of what was happening in my own neighborhood. I can place myself again in the dark, alone, in some form of shock and excitement, but that night I did not picture this scene just a few blocks from me, it was unimaginable.