Impressionist Exhibits! Go! Go! Go!

The Impressionists are making quite an “impression” in the south this summer. Impressionism is easily one of the most recognized and loved of the modern art movements with well-known artists such as Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Cezanne decorating the white walls of museums. These artists captured the world with new waves of light, color, and paint application that changed the course of modern art to this day.

Until June 29 the Arkansas Art Center has a fantastic exhibit of Impressionist art titled “The Impressionists and their Influence.” Additionally Memphis’ Brooks Museum and Dixon Art Gallery are collaborating in their own Impressionist ventures to highlight a similar display of high quality pieces from the art movement.

If you’re in Arkansas or Tennessee, please try to support your local art galleries. These exhibits are high quality shows that rival big city museum displays, so take advantage of the close proximity and low cost of admission.

Ernest C. Withers Worth Remembering

A recent visit to Beale Street in Memphis with some friends led me to the gallery of Ernest C. Withers, one of history’s most prolific photographers of African American history in 20th century America. Having taken many art history and photography classes, I’ve run across Withers’ work numerous times, but this particular visit finally brought his work to life for me.

In late December of last year I was devastated to read that the famous civil rights photographer had been a covert FBI informant in Memphis. Withers provided a first hand visual account of southern civil rights movement: the murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery bus boycott, the crisis of the Little Rock nine at Central High School, the integration of Ole Miss, the Memphis sanitation strike, and eventually the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

One of his most famous photographs is of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the funeral of Medgar Evans, a man who literally fought to the death for the abolition of the Jim Crow laws. Withers captured the tireless hardship of the fight against segregation, shown clearly in the pain and stress apparent on King’s face.


Though it has been proven through a series of investigations that he was in fact working for the government during the time he spent with King and his contemporary revolutionaries, does the value of his work diminish? I think not. He managed to document one of the greatest movements in American history and despite his reasons, he gave us some of the most incredible examples of documentary photography in photographic history. The Ernest C. Withers Gallery remains open on Beale Street in Memphis, TN if you are willing to visit and make your own judgments of the photographer's merit.

Thinking with the Wrong Head

Before you even read my post, the article here deserves primary interest. I owe all credit to the geniuses at BigThink.com for relating Rep. Anthony Weiner's recent public debacle to an art historical precedent.

As Bob Duggan says in his BigThink post, Congressman Weiner's misguided digital communiqués pick up upon a tradition that has been prevalent in visual media essentially since the dawn of time when men decided that they ran the world (though we'll leave the specifics of that debate up for discussion). In short, men have always believed that bigger is better - and you better make it known who's the cock of the walk, so to speak. Duggan cites the infamously challenged progenitor King Henry VIII's portrait by Hans Holbien the Younger. The King here was trying to prove visually, before he had proved physically, that he had the might to produce a male heir. Duggan also goes on to smartly note that phallic symbols not only connote material power, but spiritual right as well with Leo Steinberg's thesis that "many images of Jesus Christ as an infant emphasized his genitalia." Thus the purely visceral concept of human sexuality and passion transcends into the religious realm of divine authority manifest in, of all things, a penis.

So where does this art history put us in regards to the contemporary world? Well, far from the divine rights of kings I'd say. I understand and very much enjoy Duggan's perspective on the male desire to visually prove to us what apparently eludes verbal description. But it's also important to note that Anthony Weiner was not, in any way, deliberately tapping into this art historical tradition. For one thing, his tweets or e-mails were intended for private communication, and even so the accompanying text with the images were of a nature decidedly less high-brow than the potentially lush spiritual metaphors of a gift bestowed from God. The argument remains, however, that for centuries even before written history (see inset of the erect bird-man from the Lascaux cave paintings circa 15,000 BCE), men and their phalluses have had the insatiable urge to demonstrate visual virility to an audience with or without our pre-approved consent.

Perhaps we should all just bite the bullet and, ahem, head-off (apologies) the inevitable sex scandals a la Weiner and Schwarzenegger by allowing powerful men to display at the forefront of their public persona their magnificent, proud arsenals in the way of King Henry VIII. On the other hand, I may just prefer to swallow that bullet instead.

Source: http://bigthink.com/ideas/38836