Perspectives on place are subject to change

Sense of place varies from person to person and group to group. This should go without saying. But it's worth remembering that place meanings are dynamic, contested, and subject to change over time. What one group values highly another may not care about at all.

Epistemological pluralism is one way to describe it. But there's a lot of syllables in them there words. Another way to think of it is in terms of Mile's Law: Where you stand depends on where you sit.

The ways in which one person or group values something is deeply entwined with history and cultural perspective.

A story from Indian Country Today media network demonstrates this. It shines a light on an icon most Americans take for granted: Mount Rushmore. Before it was the powerfully symbolic Mount Rushmore it was the powerfully symbolic Six Grandfathers. What was once revered by the Sioux has since been desecrated and turned into something that is currently revered by most Americans.

And, someday, it will change again.

Describing "Christ Riding a Donkey, ca. 1450"

     Standing at the center of Brittingham Gallery II in the Chazen Museum of Art is a wood sculpture, a palmesel, titled “Christ Riding a Donkey, ca. 1450.” The artist is unknown.

     Its unrefined hew and tattered polychrome finish display the vintage patina that every modern “Welcome To The Cabin” sign strives for. It is 58 inches long and 62 inches tall, about 3/4 life size. The donkey is dark grey and the Christus’ robe is blood-on-brick red with gold around the neck.

Palmesels were designed to ride atop a wheeled cart in a Palm Sunday processional. Once a year, they would depict Christ’s triumphant ride into Jerusalem. They were relatively common in Western Central Europe before the Protestant Reformation, the Late Gothic period, after which they were banned. Many were destroyed. This simple yet intriguing piece is a rare find as only a few dozen exist throughout the world.

Professor Frank Horlbeck of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) analyzed this figure along with fourteen others from around the world. It was brought to the UW museum in 1977 after having been purchased in London and examined in Rome. The subtitle on the label at the time said only “Austrian, fifteenth century.”

Horlbeck determined that the wooden sculpture had its provenance in Tyrol and was possibly from the workshop of Master Leonhard Brixon, which flourished from 1440 to 1476. The actual identity of the artist will never be known. A project such as this, probably for a medium sized church, would have been assigned to an apprentice woodworker. 

In the 1977-78 Elvehjem Bulletin Horlbeck wrote that although this piece has some of the markings that are consistent with Brixon’s work, it was most certainly not created by the Master himself. The Christ figure, Horlbeck notes, has an expression that is “at once pensive and kindly.” 

Looking directly at the face, the gaze stares blankly, slightly to its left. It is a look of recognition, without specific adoration, as if Judas was there and trouble was in the air. 

The donkey’s head, back, and rump create a perfect horizontal plane. Its ears stick straight up about eight inches, as if listening its way through the crowd. The eyes scan the nearby ground. This beast of holy burden looks like it has led a life of work. Hard work.  As if thinking “If this guy could really walk on water, he should be lighter.”

Thin striations of paint in various regions can be seen on the torso and parts of the donkey’s hindquarters. The robe drapes across and down the entire body. Full covering of the body is typical of Gothic period sculpture. Exposed are long, slender fingers and toes.

On top, the golden crown looks to be missing what could have been small spires or even jewels. But jewels would be too much for this simple piece. Christ’s hair and beard are composed of thickly carved strands. The hair feathers back, flowing from beneath the crown like thick brown cornrows. Sampson could only have be so lucky.

The rider’s left hand would have held leather reigns, now missing. Nails in the donkey’s head show where bridle straps had been affixed. The right hand is bent at the elbow and two fingers are raised in a peace sign. This configuration, a sign of blessing and a hand that guides, is consistent among most, if not all, palmesels.

Simple beauty, deep history, and what could be described as “folk art” style coalesce in this charming piece of pre-Renaissance iconography. Having wound its way from Western Central Europe to Midwestern America over the centuries is an impressive journey. It will no doubt continue to be appreciated by many, rejected by a few, and perhaps inspire many more artists for yet another 550 years.

Inhabited Landscapes on display

For Madison locals interested in artistic representations of humanity's relationship with the Wisconsin landscape -- beautiful black bears dusted with snowfall amid a curtain of pine boughs and birch trees, etc. --

The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters is hosting what looks to be a great show called Inhabited Landscapes at the Overture Center's Watrous Gallery, Sept. 10 - Oct. 27, 2013.

"The work in Inhabited Landscapes goes beyond the decorative or the descriptive, asking the viewer to enter the artists’ interpretations of our place in nature."

Paintings, drawings, and prints will be displayed by seven talented Wisco artists. An opening reception is scheduled for Sept. 15 from 2-5pm. Two different gallery talks are also scheduled: Charles Munch and John Miller (Oct. 4, 5:30 pm) and Tom Uttech (Oct. 9, 1:30pm).

See you there.

John Dewey on Temporary Disorder and the Vogue of Immediacy.

I found a paperback 1958 printing of John Dewey's Art as Experience (1934) on the library sale shelf for fifty cents. This passage jumped out at me as I thumbed through it this afternoon:

"The live creature demands order in his living but he also demands novelty. Confusion is displeasing but so is ennui. The "touch of disorder" that lends charm to a regular scene is disorderly from some external standard. From the standpoint of actual experience it adds emphasis, distinction, as long as it does not prevent a cumulative carrying forward from one part to another. If it were experienced as disorder it would produce unresolved clash and be displeasing. A temporary disorder, on the other hand, may be the factor of resistance that summons up energy to proceed the more actively and triumphantly. Only persons who have been spoiled in early life like things always soft; persons of vigor who prefer to live and who are not contented with subsisting find the too easy repulsive. The difficult becomes objectionable only when instead of challenging energy it overwhelms and blocks it. Some esthetic [sic] products have an immediate vogue; they are the "best sellers" of their day. They are "easy" and thus make a quick appeal; their popularity calls out imitators, and they set the fashion in plays or novels or songs for a time. But their very ready assimilation into experience exhausts them quickly; no new stimulus is derived from them. They have their day -- and only a day."

From Chapter VIII, "The Organization of Energies," page 167.

Gifted or Not, The Poetry of Place

From Wallace Stegner's The Sense of Place:

"No place, not even a wild place, is a place until it has had that human attention that at its highest reach we will call poetry. What Frost did for New Hampshire and Vermont, what Faulkner did for Mississippi and Steinbeck for the Salinas Valley, Wendell Berry is doing for his family corner of Kentucky, and hundreds of other place-loving people, gifted or not, are doing for places they were born in, or reared in, or have adopted and made their own."

See there? It says gifted or not. Anyone can do it. All of us, by invoking the places that we love, can produce the poetry borne of that love. Let it seep. Let it heave. Give it graciously to everyone. Emplace yourself in the language of that love, in the geography of that emotion. Give yourself over to the poetry of your favorite places. Big, small, or otherwise. If it's special, let us know.

Discovering a Sense of Place

Invoking Wendell Berry, (“if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are"), and including readings by many others (e.g., Wallace Stegner, Mary Pipher, Aldo Leopold, Daniel Coleman, Scott Russell Sanders, Susan Cerulean, etc.), the Northwest Earth Institute offers a "Discovering Sense of Place" online course.

It looks like over 11,600 people have taken the course. Other topics include voluntary simplicity, addressing climate change, sustainable systems at work, etc.

Any Topophilian readers ever taken a NEI course?

Of Horses and Men (and Women)

"The outside of a horse brings out the best of the inside of a man."

These wise words were spoken by my dad's cousin's wife's father, a man I've never met. But they get straight to the value of working with animals of all kinds -- to "bring out the best" in our own humanity. Animals can bring us to a place of inner peace difficult to find among people.

Place is something "out there" no less than it is something on "the inside of a [hu]man." We bring to spaces our own set of feelings and thoughts. Places become special because we feel differently having been there. Perhaps like being in a horse barn. Or a good (healthy) dog kennel. Sharing these places of grooming and training, love and respect, deepens even further the sense of being part of something special. Horse people know what I'm talking about (yet I don't even come close to being one).

The quote above, from 90 year old Vince Crawley, came from an AgriNews article highlighting the Murray County Classic draft horse show I'm planning to attend this weekend, part of the North American Six Horse Hitch Classic Series.

I'll be trekking from south central Wisconsin to far southwestern Minnesota. The drive across southern MN is one I made with my family hundreds of times as a kid. My parents grew up in the county seat of Murray County, Slayton, MN. Talk about a sense of place. There's something very distinct about visiting the place where your parents (and in my case, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins...) are from.

This weekend I'll take my daughter there and we'll watch a dozen different teams compete. I'll take a crack at describing it when I get back.