Art appreciation

"Era of Cool" show at the Westmoreland.  Art by John Van Hamersveld.
August 17, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I can't draw. I can doodle, and scribble and do good design. I've even thrown a few nice pots in my time. I'm fine with that.

And yet ... besides wishing that I could sing, I wish, I wish my brain was built for the super-driven creativity and exultation of purpose on display in "Era of Cool,"  now at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

I'm more of a dilettante. I love learning new things, that's my passion and my weird discipline, I guess. Still, when I see cool art like this, I feel on the outside looking in. Why doesn't my brain work this way? I want it to, but ...

Blah, blah. Anyway. This art speaks to me because it is referential, not realistic. That sense of representation is why I love the Impressionists. They took reality and beautifully reduced it to shape and color. This is not to say I don't love the work of painters like Caravaggio or Vermeer. Their art is stunning and sends you deep into pondering the stories of the people they painted. But the artists who can strip off detail and take reality down to its essentials, I don't know why, but their work really does it for me.

In the 1960s, John Van Hamersveld used a photo of surfers, reduced it to its bones and made a poster for the movie Endless Summer that is just as stunning today as it was then. The yellow sun at the center draws you in, and you can see how the surfers converge toward it, chasing the light and the wave.

I had some 90 minutes to see the exhibit on Saturday, which is about my max time for gallery wandering. Admission is free. Plus, I got to see a painting by one of my favorite American artists, Milton Avery.

Here is my Endless Summer image.
Taken at Dormont Pool in Pittsburgh, around 5 p.m.
August 19, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Pittsburgh and G-20

The Group of 20 will meet here in September. I guess the buzz-o-sphere has been all a-twitter about it. There were letters to the editor in the Post-Gazette shortly after the announcement from local readers complaining about the snickering in the Washington press corps after the announcement was made.

How boring.

When I first moved to Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, and then moved back in the mid 1980s, the city was exiting its first Renaissance. It was much more beautiful than it had been 20 years previously. The air was cleaner, new buildings had gone up (unfortunately at the expense of some beautiful old ones) the sports teams (except for the Penguins) were winning.

Cleveland, on the other hand, was just starting to see a boost in development in the Flats, but Downtown was dying. Higbees, Halles, May Co. were dying and/or about to disappear. The Browns and Indians were losers and played in drafty Municipal Stadium, which at least had the cachet of having been built as an Olympic venue, rather than an ugly cookie cutter multi-use stadium like Three Rivers here or Riverfront in Cincinnati.

Cleveland had the Rapid. Pittsburgh still had creaky trolleys. Cleveland had a dirty river, Pittsburgh had three of them.

For all the similarities, there was a lot of snide comparison in Pittsburgh about the Mistake on the Lake, and then, in the mid to late 80s, Pittsburgh was named one of America's most livable cities, which prompted tons of provincial crowing. Cleveland, feeling inferior, began a thankfully brief, and incredibly embarrassing PR campaign that had this slogan to offer:

"If New York's the Big Apple, Cleveland's a Plum."

Why? There was and is no basis for comparison. Why would you put yourself in that ridiculous position? Pittsburgh is the same, provincial and insecure and hence all the crowing, and indignation about being dissed, over G-20.

I like it here. I've lived in a lot of places and I think the near-Midwest, I guess you could call it, really has a lot going for it. Low cost of living, proximity to the East Coast. Good pro and college sports for the most part. Museums, bike trails, lots of great state and local parks. Nice, if underused, airports. If we had good inter-city train service, we'd be set. And Pittsburgh really needs light rail transit from the airport to downtown and from Downtown to the university center in Oakland. That's been talked about for at least as long as I've lived here, if not longer.

Still though, pretty here and pretty in Cleveland. We should support each other, not snicker. We both have a lot of great amenities and truthfully, it's a lot nicer living in a smaller city than a larger one. People are friendly and mostly more laid back than those who live amid the crowds of New York, Washington and Boston. Mostly.

I think the world and the Washington press corps will be impressed with Pittsburgh. If we did have a light rail from the airport to Downtown, the Romare Bearden mural at the top of this post is the first thing they would see once they got off the train Downtown.

I never fail to be absorbed by how it shows history, the passage of time and beautifully uses the repetition of shapes and patterns to make its point.

This station will be closed soon for two years as construction continues on a light-rail spur to the North Side and the mural will be taken down for repairs. I'll be looking forward to seeing it again in its old spot. And hoping that new eyes will see it, too.