Surviving Raw Fiction at The Brooklyn Museum

I have barely been surviving Raw Fiction. I feel there is a wealth of creativity ready to burst forth. I've been a dry well filling up with thought, laughter, tears, anger, revelation and peace for the past few years. In many ways Raw Fiction was inspired in order to survive life and I created this blog with a humorous but pertinent title. For a fiction writer to coordinate an administrative intensive project such as Raw Fiction, on top of my job, my dog, my Spanish lessons, all of which are necessary to the maintenance of my jubilant spirit, she chooses to leave no space for elongated creative time.

This blog was my consolation prize: required written expression - which has gradually become less creative since the project start.

The youth I am working with are amazing but I could certainly challenge them more, make things more fun, go more in-depth. Potential is ever-expansive.

I've also been working more hours at work than expected. I'm pretty sensitive to boredom and I'm usually pretty good at side-stepping it but it's taken hold. I'm distracted and unfocused. I have two events coming up and I can't really wrap my head around them.

However, even though I feel this lethargic slump, I know it's just my body's way of telling me to slow down and go in search of inspiration.

I found a collection of short stories by Colette, who is not at all on my curriculum, and have been  relishing in a short novella about a heterosexual couple posing as lesbians who run a sex vacation resort for the aristocracy because they are apparently hiding from the law. I have been away from the demands of lesson planning. I have been reading for my own pleasure. And today was the first I have left work on time (a luxurious 2pm) this week, I came home feeling no more pressure of responsibility than that which drives me to walk my unsocialized dog since Raw Fiction has a field trip on Saturday and then it's Spring Break.

I showered well and long. I dressed up and I went to get cash at the museum ATM. I got called inside. There was a banner on the outside of the museum featuring a hand and the word "hi." It was presumably the only exhibit I hadn't yet seen. Entering the museum was splendid. An open to-go coffee cup sat on the guard's empty desk. The man at the membership desk didn't give me the third degree about the purpose of my visit like the overeager buzz-killer did on my last visit.

I entered unmolested like it was still the year 2000. I dashed up the relatively discrete Stairway D and exited on the 3rd Floor. Egyptian art. I walked past the paintings in the large gallery where First Saturday's dance parties were formerly held. And I walked up a flight in search of the exhibit whose advertisement had greeted me. On the wall in the elevator bank I saw I name I cherish and hadn't known was visiting: Kathe Kollwitz. I made a beeline toward the Stackler Center greeting my reassuring staples, Mikalene Thomas, Kara Walker, and Nick Cave, en route. I opened the door to the gallery of feminist art and was overwhelmed by a magnificent display of quilts. Women's history. Women's art. Women's expression. It was amazing but too overwhelming to thoroughly absorb knowing that there were Kollwitz works on display very near by.

     

I spent time with these live works. I originally found Kollwitz at the Strand Bookstore before it was renovated to feel so, so . . . clean? is that the word I'm looking for? Orderly? Before it was renovated and when the art books were on the ground floor. I absorbed her and filled myself with the beauty and healing she was able to produce from her evident pain. Her realist depictions of the German human experience in the 1920s are far more hopeful and, perhaps, thus radical than her expressionist contemporaries.

I walked away from the Kollwitz exhibit and rested for a bit near my nourishing staples and looked out over the vast gallery. A guard appeared at another terrace, I kept feeling like they were watching me, those women in unbecoming grey uniforms. I decided to visit El Anatsui again, since I was so close. I headed up to the fifth floor and breezed through American Art to special exhibits.

Even though I'd already seen this exhibit twice it was my first time without too many people. The experience was less urgent and I felt the freedom to revisit that which moved me most. His wood. His work, tapestries and sculpture fits into his concept of the Nonfixed Form, this means that each piece has an inconstant composition that can reinvented by the curator and the space in which the work is displayed. I'll let his work speak for itself.

I took a spin through the art of the Americas and was drawn to the small Native American section. The Dakota war club below caught my attention for a first time. There was even video footage that dated back to before the invention of the moving image. I stopped to watch but a tourist felt comfortable sharing my space. I moved on and responded with a smile to his dismay and informed him that I come every few weeks so I don't need a shared perspective.

 Next I was drawn to a portrait I know well. Luigi Lucioni's Portrait of Paul Cadmus. 1928. Gay artists. I'm sure I've read the description before but this was the first time it registered. These beautiful and brave young artists.





I left the museum before the Thursday night extravaganza took off. I was going to have a coffee or wine at the new cafe looking out into the courtyard but I wouldn't endure the sterile atmosphere and the women in cafeteria uniforms. A singer and a flutist warmed up on the stage of the grand lobby. The grey outside welcomed me and I left to buy suitable clothing for the burial of Harry Tarzian that will be held in Greenwood Cemetery tomorrow. He is the man who provided my mum with the job that enabled her to raise me and my sisters very nicely with above average vacation time and the radical flexibility to be a mother. May you rest in peace Harry, Hardware store owner and passionate photography hobbyist.