Connections: Whitman, Duchamp, Ericsson ... A collage of ideas linking Walt Whitman to Marcel Duchamp to TR Ericsson.
Funny how connections appear out of seemingly disconnected places and times. In many ways Walt Whitman’s life and writings provide lots of connections between him and the world he lived in and to now in the world we live in today. His writings about what he witnessed are relevant to what we see today. For example, there have been many mentions in the news about the Brooklyn Hospital Center’s efforts to care for those suffering from COVID-19. This hospital, one of many, is struggling to care for all those seeking help. This is the same hospital where Whitman visited several times before and during his volunteering to tend to the wounded Civil War troops. Whitman wrote in detail about the hospital - how it looked and who it served in his days. A keen insight into how the hospital has served a diverse group of patients then now. If Whitman was around today I am sure he would be talking about the impact of this pandemic on the hospitals, health care workers and the many affected peoples around the world.
These connections between Whitman’s times and now are also evident in the art world. It is a pleasure to talk about these links with my colleagues including Matt Miller, member of the Walt Whitman Initiative and author of several publications on Whitman such as Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass.
The term “collage” is a familiar word to me through the world of art history. Recently I had included two examples of collage in an exhibition I curated at the Center for Book Arts:
Chanting the Square Deific by Meg Hitchcock based on Whitman's poem and Language Collage - Walt Whitman by Evelyn Eller. The Hitchcock collage is created from letters cut from an old German Bible. The Eller collage incorporates words and images of and by Whitman on green and yellow papers in an effort to invoke Leaves of Grass.
Matt and I have shared a few words about Whitman and his connection to collage. Here are some highlights of the conversation:
Matt:
Yes, I have seen images of those collages online, though not in person. It's interesting to me that visual artists are now using Whitman's words in visual arts collage, since Whitman himself used words in a collage-like manner to create the poems that make up Leaves of Grass. I doubt many artists know about the ideas in my book, and I wonder if Whitman's example might provide inspiration for different approaches to collaging Whitman in their own work.
In general, one question that continues to preoccupy me is the question of how much the concept of collage applies and carries across genres. As you know, collage as it has traditionally been conceived is usually thought of as a visual art practice, and my understanding is that even the word, "collage," which derives from the French for "to glue," was first used in reference to Picasso, though of course there are countless examples of what we think of today as collage that can be found in work by earlier artists in various cultures across the world. One such example can be found in the work of Walt Whitman, and I believe Whitman deserves greater credit for his role in the development of the concept of collage as a creative practice.
Whitman did not refer to his word-collages by that name. He struggled with how to define and describe his creative practice, even in his notes to himself. Not only did Whitman not have recourse to the word “collage,” as it is used in terms of art and literature today, he also lacked access to related terms such as “pastiche,” “montage,” or “found art.” Lacking a critical lexicon for his creative method, Whitman worked with the tools at his disposal. In an early notebook, Whitman offers this puzzling definition for the Italian “rifacimento”: “riffacciamento - rumble (sort of mosaic work mixture mess.” The word “rifacimento,” which Whitman likely encountered in reference to operas, refers to a modernization of a musical or literary art work, and Whitman’s misunderstanding(there is no intrinsic mosaic-like quality to rifacimentos) seems to reflect his preoccupation with his evolving creative process. Introducing his prose collection, Specimen Days, Whitman described a creative back-story for his book in which he would “go home, untie the bundle [of notebook fragments], reel out diary-scraps and memoranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages, and let the melange's lackings and wants of connection take care of themselves.” It’s clear he's describing a process akin to collage making with words, and the result, Whitman unabashedly announced, was “the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.” I find his obvious pride in the work's fragmentary nature to be quite revealing. For work to be "fragmentary" was pretty roundly considered an insult back in Walt's day.
My main point is that Whitman, like Duchamp, employed found art to create his greatest works. Since Whitman is a poet, his found art were words that he cut and pasted from various sources, ranging from his own diaries to science textbooks to newspaper accounts, and assembled them together into his poems. If we care about the history of art and literature, we should revisit the question of how collage and found art practices came about and consider Whitman and his crucial role in the development of these practices.
Deirdre:
I agree that Whitman deserves more credit for his role in the use of collage as a creative practice. He was so prolific and innovative in many ways and his writings override his other achievements. Lots of artists have created fragments which later would integrate into a larger more complete work.
William Blake comes to mind. During his lifetime, he created fragments of writing and art that he would then weave into a more final creation. We know that Whitman knew of Blake (1757-1827) and was influenced by his work. Another artist who you mention in your outstanding book is Marcel Duchamp.
Both artists are connected through time and they both remain influential especially on the work of contemporary artists. Similarities include:
Their ideas continue to reverberate today.
Duchamp was known as the most depicted artist of his time by other artists.
Whitman was known as the most photographed poet of his time.
They both were very interested in knowledge and books and performed librarian’s duties, without formal training, at some point in their careers.
Whitman and Duchamp's work lives on not only through their own creations but in the work of artists, writers, musicians and others who create art as they have been inspired by their ideas and writings.
My own interest in Marcel Duchamp grew through my research on his historical connections with the Brooklyn Museum as his Large Glass was shown in an exhibition in 1926 that he helped organize with Katherine Dreier. The Brooklyn Museum Library holds some very interesting works by and about Duchamp including this surrealist catalog with a foam breast.
Reading Matt’s book cited above and viewing a recent exhibition entitled Depicting Duchamp rekindled my interest in Duchamp's work. Curated by Duchamp scholar Francis Naumann this exquisite exhibition included older and newer depictions of the artist. This exhibition was the last held one at the gallery but scholarship continues on via his website. Naumann’s writings on Duchamp are worth reading, especially this book which takes one through all phases of the artist’s works. The day I visited the exhibition I was delighted to meet TR Ericsson whose work of art in the shape of a cue ball caught my eye. Ericsson’s work is familiar to me through his magazine entitled Thirst (a few issues are in the Brooklyn Museum Library), his zines as well as his photographic works. If you want to know more about his work check out Crackle & Drag, a compelling overview that is part artists' book and part exhibition catalog. The book, shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook Awards, beautifully summarizes Ericsson’s works created so far by the artist utilizing a wide range of media and techniques. In her essay "Our Images Are Our Ghosts", Barbara Tannenbaum sums up Ericsson's work:
A blend of Ericsson's current interest in new media with his training in old master techniques, his process for these works is an odd hybrid of the mechanical and the handmade combining photography and printmaking with painting and drawing.
Sculpture is also a key part of Ericsson's work. I see his Marcel Duchamp (Cue Ball) as a connector to the influence of Duchamp similar to Whitman’s ongoing influence on artists as well as others. In conversations with the artist we have also discovered that Whitman has played a role in his artwork. In 2015 Ericsson made a film-poem, entitled “Crackle & Drag”, a collage of technologies: 8mm, still images, video, audio and animation based on images drawn from his family archive. The audio consisted of recordings of his mother's voice messages left on his phone. One scene is of a bonfire of burning books and an edition of Leaves of Grass is visible in the pile with the Whitman poem entitled Joy, Shipmate, Joy! glowing in the embers.
Small world we live in. It all seems to be a big collage and all one has to do is to look to see the connections. Indeed we are living in a tumultuous time similar to the times that Whitman and Duchamp lived in. Perhaps we can focus on their works and the art created by artists influenced by these masters as a way forward out of this mess.