Wow! Eugene Epstein, the subject of my previous post, forwarded the blog link to his nephew AJ Epstein. And he sent me this message: “I thought I should make sure you had a copy of the animation I made from photos I took during my visit to the Academy a couple years back.”
He says this animation is made from hundreds of still photos he shot of the piece over about 20 minutes. “It’s not going to flow like video, but gives more depth of the image than video would thanks to the higher resolution from the photos.”
It’s so kind and generous of him to share this with us—and now you. Intrigued by Thomas Wilfred’s lumia compositions? You can purchase videos of these extraordinary works of light at AJ’s website Clavilux.org. Proceeds are used to support the preservation of Wilfred’s lumia compositions.
Last spring, boy was I excited to get a call from a New Yorker fact checker. She wanted to know if the museum indeed owned a work by Thomas Wilfred, and was it indeed a gift from Clare Boothe Luce, and was it in storage at the Academy? Our collections manager of European and American Art, Courtney Brebbia, confirmed that, yes, we do own a “lumia composition”—what the light artist Wilfred called his works.
A few weeks later, the June 27, 2011, issue of the New Yorker included the Talk of the Town piece “Lumia” by Gregory Zinman. It talks about the cosmic flame that appears at the beginning and end of Terrence Malick’s film Tree of Life, identifying it as Wilfred’s lumia Opus 161 (1965-66). It went on to say that only 18 lumia compositions exist today, and “Clare Boothe Luce’s is in storage at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.” It also talked about lumia aficionado Eugene Epstein, who owns eight of those 18 works. The retired radio astronomer and his wife, Carol, collect them—along with other art—and a wall of their California home is dedicated to the works.
Well, two days after Christmas, the Epsteins visited the museum, to see our lumia composition. Art handler Franklyn Donahue brought Convolux, Opus 160 up from the basement vault to the prints-and-drawings vault, where Theresa Papanikolas (Curator of European and American Art) and James Jensen (Curator of Contemporary Art) let Epstein have a close look at the work. Epstein was especially excited to see it because he had recently secured from the Yale University archives notes that Wilfred had made about it.
We crowded round him as he went down the document, reading out loud that when Wilfred completed the Lumia in 1966, it went first to Eindhoven, the Netherlands, for a big light exhibition, then was delivered to Clare Boothe Luce in 1967. Luce, who lived in Manhattan and Kahala at the time, in turn lent it to the Honolulu Academy of Arts where it went on view right away for a few weeks. The work was such a hit with viewers that she decided to “move up my plans and give it to them right now.” And she asked Wilfred to make her another one.
Examining the lumia, Epstein said, “It’s one of the most beautiful works he did.” After hearing about how it’s a work of illuminated light, and seeing the fantastic nebulae Opus 161 in Tree of Life, I was underwhelmed by what appeared to be the prototype of an early console TV, one side of it opaque plastic. It looked like something a mid-century American suburban dad tinkered on in his garage.
But we rounded up some chairs, plugged in the plug with fabric-covered(!) wire, and turned off the light. “Look at the colors!” exclaimed Epstein. “I’m blown away.” We all immediately started calling out the faces, landscapes, spacescapes and dreamscapes, and perfect settings for an apotheosis that we saw. Then we just sat in the dark and watched. You can watch for 15 days and 19 hours and not see exactly the same thing. What is on the screen—3D-like, luminous, mysterious, a kind of black magic—seems so sophisticated and modern even to Apple acolytes. The shoddy video snippet above does not do the lumia composition justice.
“I, my wife and my nephew (A.J. Epstein, who is also crazy about lumia, and who has visited the museum to see this composition), are so envious of this work,” said Epstein. Why? What makes it so special compared to the other 17 extant lumia compositions? “The vividness of colors,” said Carol Epstein. “Each composition is different.”
We reluctantly turned the light back on, and we all wanted to open the inside of the box, to see what created the fantastic light show. Donahue gingerly removed the back of the box to reveal what Zinman so perfectly described as “feats of bric-a-brac engineering.” Shards of colored glass, what appear to be jerryrigged hinges, pieces of metal and glue are the ordinary items that produce extraordinary visions.
Epstein takes umbrage at the description, explaining that Wilfred “had decades of technical experience—his instruments are very carefully put together—and they are rugged, often being on exhibit for years! Those hinges and restraint rods are not jerryrigged. And they are not random shards of colored glass he picked up on the beach. What he creates is a complex assembly of carefully shaped reflecting surfaces, moving, slowly, independently of each other, and a slowly rotating color wheel comprised of selected shapes and colors of stained glass.”
Papanikolas is overseeing the reinstallation of galleries one to ten, and is thinking about putting the Convolux on view sometime this year, when there will be an open spot available. We’ll keep you posted.
Every December, the museum holds Kama‘aina Christmas, its gala fundraiser. We are so grateful to the co-chairs, volunteers and attendees who make this amazing event happen—we depend on it. This year’s co-chairs were Susan Ing and Kitty Wo, who put together Merry and Bright—a sexily lit evening of art, food (Chai’s Island Bistro) and music (Honolulu Jazz Quartet with vocals by Starr Kalahiki!) on Dec. 10. Here are a few shots from the evening.
Do you need a holiday pick-me-up? Take a break from shopping at the Fall Young Artists exhibition—the fantastic artwork is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
At the opening last Saturday, throngs of parents, tutu, aunties, uncles, friends and art fans were on hand to admire the expressive, imaginative work by students who range in age from 5 to 18.
A big thanks to Willow (that’s her pictured above), for letting us use her gorgeous painting Pluto to create the wall graphic. Mahalo to K&D signs for printing and installing the vivid design!
On view through Dec 31
Tues–Sat 10am–4:30pm
Sun 1–4:30pm
Closed Dec 24 and 25
For the “Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City,” I had the opportunity to get behind-the-scenes access to the off-limits area of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Academy curator of Asian Art Shawn Eichman and I met the curatorial team of the paintings and calligraphy department in a modern, well-lit room furnished with large armchairs adorned with antimacassars and inspected each painting one by one on a large table.
As they recited the condition notes in Mandarin, Shawn translated their words into English and took shots of every condition detail while I feverishly transcribed for our English version of the condition report. As each painting was unveiled from colorful brocade bags and unfurled before us, I was dazzled by the procession of masterpieces from the Yuan to the Qing dynasties—I felt like Indiana Jones in a cave of treasures. From close up the paintings were awesome to behold.
Our interpreter from the Palace Museum’s Foreign Office kindly treated us to lunch at the staff lunchroom. To get there we walked through alleys flanked by immense walls. These pathways once traversed by dowager empresses are now traveled by staff bicycling to and fro across the vast areas within the ancient red-walled city of over 900 buildings—the largest palace complex in the world. Entering the functional lunchroom through a plastic curtain straight from a walk-in freezer, I was met by chairs and long tables reminiscent of my school days and large steaming trays of rice, chow fun, vegetables and other delicious offerings with the popular brown sauce often seen on Mandarin dishes.
The students of Lee Schaller’s Communication Arts 101 class at Honolulu Community College had a final project to do for this semester—an advertising and marketing campaign. They picked the Honolulu Academy of Arts to be the client. The students split up into three “agencies” and visited the Academy and Spalding House in September. This morning they each gave a presentation on campus to me and Schaller (who herself is an advertising and marketing professional who counts the museum as a past client).
They did a bang up job, coming up with mock ups of print ads, storyboards for a TV spot, media buying plan, and marketing schemes. And each gave me a polished printed version of their presentation. Very impressive work!
The teams were:
Kreative ADdiktion
Campaign theme: Two Hearts as One. Art for Everyone.
“As a group we decided that the ‘gap’ between the Honolulu Academy of Arts and The Contemporary Museum was like a bridge between two hearts. Coming together as part of the merger, it’s like two hearts beating as one.”
[AD]renaline
Campaign theme: Classic Meets Modern
“This slogan is what we felt would sum everything up. While the Honolulu Academy of Arts is the ‘classic,’ The Contemporary Musem is the ‘modern.’ The slogan explains each location while indicating that they have come together to become one entity.”
Ohana Ads
Campaign theme: Harmony of the Heart (they also created a slick logo of HMA, with the “m” a stylized, calligraphic heart)
“The themeline ‘harmony of the heart’ combines what art requires most—soul, in this case represented as a heart—with the merging of the museums. This is to show that The Contemporary Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts have not only merged, but have become unified in a much stronger, “soulful” way.
The students did an amazing job of absorbing all the elements of the museums, and synthesizing that information down to three strong campaigns with great accompanying graphics. The staff of the “new” Honolulu Museum of Art thanks you for your wonderful work. (I’ve already cribbed one idea for an upcoming ARTafterDARK graphic!)
Last night the Doris Duke Theatre screened From Here to Eternity, as part of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day AND the series “Bookish: Novels on the Big Screen.” It was great seeing Frank Sinatra in his Oscar-winning performance as scrappy, big-hearted Maggio, who is killed by one of his own, and aloha-shirted Montgomery Clift as the crazy handsome, hard-headed former boxer and ichiban bugler Robert E. Lee Pruitt who is shot by an MP (the first case of on-screen friendly fire?). Filmed on location on O‘ahu!
As Doris Duke Theatre director Gina Caruso says, you never know what you might experience at the venue—last night Gov. Neil Abercrombie attended the show. Gina convinced him to say a few words about the film, before the scheduled speaker Jeffrey Carroll, chair of the UH English Department. It turns out that the guv KNEW James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity!
“I read the book in 1959, during statehood,” said Abercrombie, and went on to say that along with Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, it is one of the greatest novels about World War II. (Did you know that the governor did his PhD on Norman Mailer? And even interviewed the great American writer several times.) “I wanted to say that in 1968, I was on my way backpacking round the world. On the Champs Elysées I went to see a film—because I wouldn’t have been on the Champs Elysée otherwise—and coming down the street was this bulldog. A short, thick, square-jawed, fierce-looking man. And I knew instantly that it was James Jones. I had just read an article on Jones in Esquire belaboring him and saying how he hadn’t lived up to his promise. I walked up and said ‘Excuse me, you’re James Jones. I just wanted to tell you, don’t pay any attention to those SOBs.” The then shaggy-haired backpacker went on to give a poetic speech about how Jones wrote true and from the heart (sorry, the governor spoke too quickly for me to get it all down). “And I fled.”
Two weeks later, still in Paris, Abercrombie read an article about Jones, and it included his address on the Quai d’Orléans on the Ile Saint Louis. He headed for Jones’ apartment to apologize. He knocked on the door and “an even fiercer” woman opened the door. Abercrombie explained that he was “the man that Mr. Jones met on the Champs Elysées two weeks ago.” The women asked him to wait at the door, then returned and told him to please stay, that Mr Jones wanted to invite him in for a drink, as soon as he finished his writing for the day. Abercrombie was shown to a large room which contained a wood Renaissance pulpit that served as the bar.
“He burst in the door,” said Abercrombie. “I immediately loved him because he’s short and thick like me.” And to his surprise, Jones told him, “I have been riding on the energy of our meeting for the past two weeks.” Abercrombie remains friends with Jones’ daughter Kaylie to this day.
Last month, BBC journalist and presenter Peter Snow interviewed Curator of European and American Art Theresa Papanikolas via Skype for a special Random Edition program on Pearl Harbor. The BBC producer and researcher Andrew Snow had stumbled upon British artist Charles Bartlett, and his close connection to Japan as an inspiration for his art. He interviewed Theresa about the painter and master printmaker and his work, which is included in the Academy’s collection.
Today is “the date which will live in infamy,” as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called famously called it, and the BBC ran the segment today. Have a listen. (Theresa’s section starts at 20:11.)
Pictured above:
Iwabuchi, 1916
Charles William Bartlett (1860-1940)
England/active Hawaii
Color woodblock print
Gift of Anna Rice Cooke, 1927
(5382)
Third in my series on being a courier for “Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City.” Part of my assignment was to fly from Honolulu to Beijing Capital International Airport on Japan Airlines via Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The reason for flying Japan Airlines was due to their generous sponsorship of all courier tickets and air freight charges. I left Honolulu around 1:00 pm and arrived in Beijing in the evening of the next day around 9:30 pm following a stopover in Haneda. Beijing’s ultramodern airport immediately impressed me with its sheer size and sleek design. It was very easy to change dollars into Chinese currency and get a taxi for the half-hour ride to town. Finding your way by yourself to foreign cities you’ve never been to is one of the exciting challenges of being a courier.
You encounter the new and unexpected everywhere you go, such as this scene taken at the Lama Temple (Yonghegong) in Beijing.
Several months before going to Beijing as a courier for “Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City” in October, I checked with my doctor for necessary immunizations. Some shots needed to be taken several months apart and timed to my departure. I also needed to obtain a visa from the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles to visit China. I had to apply for the visa about a month in advance of my departure. I also bought an unlocked world phone on eBay to use in China with a sim card purchased there. A simple guidebook was useful to get a sense of the layout of the city.
Our interpreter from the Palace Museum’s Foreign Office kindly treated us to lunch at the staff lunchroom. To get there we walked through alleys flanked by immense walls. These pathways once traversed by dowager empresses are now traveled by staff bicycling to and fro across the vast areas within the ancient red-walled city of over 900 buildings—the largest palace complex in the world. Entering the functional lunchroom through a plastic curtain straight from a walk-in freezer, I was met by chairs and long tables reminiscent of my school days and large steaming trays of rice, chow fun, vegetables and other delicious offerings with the popular brown sauce often seen on Mandarin dishes.
Third in my series on being a courier for 