Viscosity

At Utah State University I teach students in the Art Department how to paint. For many painting instructors, that might mean primarily a focus on theory and concept. I'm talking here about the kind of people who never miss an opportunity to use the word "reference" as a verb. But in the courses I teach, I do spend a considerable amount of time actually talking about the physical activity of painting. I don't think it hurts anyone to know how to mix color or to use a system based on local values to create order in an image. But even given my willingness to deal unashamedly with the mechanics of painting, I can't always shield my students from the esoteric stuff. And the fact that I keep coming back to, is that in painting, viscosity counts for a lot. And the truth about viscosity, is that it's virtually impossible to explain it verbally. If the paint has the right viscosity, it's easy to make it do what you want. If the viscosity is wrong, you can forget it. Recently I learned, it's the same when you're making Spätzle.


About this time a year ago, I was in Essen, enjoying an expat Thanksgiving dinner at Seitenblick. I ordered, ate and later wrote about a fabulous meal of Kurbisspätzle, or Pumpkin Spaetzle, pan fried with sauerkraut. We decided to try making it at home about a week ago, but we didn't get the Zähflüssigkeit right and our noodles turned into a kind of spätzlemässig brick. It was still good sliced and fried with the sauerkraut, but I think we'll cook a turkey this Thursday just the same.

The contrast between then and now is interesting in other ways too, and the blog allows me to go back and see more or less exactly what I was doing a year ago. Then, I had just gotten started on several paintings and managed to complete at least one of the larger oils. Now, I'm working intermittently in the studio and starting to think about preparations for the exhibition I'll be doing in January. A year ago, I was spending time with Thore, a one year old German native, trying to bring him up to speed on the American blues tradition. I don't really know what's happening with Thore now. He never calls, he doesn't write... If he's like many of his countrymen, I imagine he celebrated Tag der Deutschen Einheit recently and is trying his best to avoid the Schweinegrippe. When he's little older, I'll ask him if he's can help me out with some Spätzle tips. Until then, I'll just stick to painting and try to get the viscosity right.

Neue Bilder

A Visiting Artist from Korea has mounted a beautifully executed exhibition of 20 white canvasses here on campus in Logan. The canvasses arrived direct from Utrecht Linens on our loading dock two weeks ago and went straight into the gallery. Other than a single number on each, the canvasses are unchanged from the way Utrecht sent them out. I've never been much of an art collector, but this show is so impressive, I've made arrangements to purchase the entire thing. Twenty flawless canvasses do have an eerie kind of beauty to them and I'm at least a little sad that as soon as I get my hands on them, I'll begin the process of screwing them up with a lot of painting.

It's easy to forget, but fundamentally, I am a painter. And now that I've been back in Utah for about 15 weeks or so, I'm actually getting some work done too. My studio here in Logan is less than a fifth the size of where I was working in Essen, and my employer here seems to think I have nothing better to do than teach classes and write an unending stream of "mission statements," but in spite of everything, I have managed to get back to work. I'm busy now finishing a series of paintings I began this Spring in Germany and left more or less intentionally incomplete. The work is going far better than I expected and I'm already making plans for new paintings.

And with my soon to be accomplished purchase of the decidedly "conceptual" exhibition now up in the Twain Tippetts Exhibition Hall in the Fine Arts building, I shall not want for surfaces to paint on. If everything continues to go well in the studio, I'm planning a trip to San Francisco in the early Spring that will lead eventually to an exhibition there in the coming year(s.) I can only hope that any exhibitions I wind up doing will be as successful in the sales department as the one currently on view here in Logan.

Rauchverbot

I watched Fritz Lang's M the other day. It's a great film. Visionary, innovative: a masterpiece. But what really amazed me about the film, was how much smoking was going on in Germany between the wars. Nearly every character in the film smokes incessantly and at times it seems as though the set must be on fire as clouds of the dense white fog drift across the screen, often totally obscuring characters and action. Many characters smoke cigars, some pipes, others cigarettes and lots are smoking with bizarre equipment I can't even identify. I saw funny little pipes with tiny cigars sticking out the top, cigarettes in holders that might double as a monkey wrench in a pinch, cigars that looked like gentleman's hosiery wrapped loosely around a fistful of oak leaves. I'm glad I don't smoke, but if I lived in Berlin during the Weimar years, I don't think I could have resisted.



The Germans are, of course, still dedicated smokers. The first time I lived there in the early 90's, smoking was permitted everywhere with the welcome exception of specific train cars. Lunchtime at the university cafeteria put me in mind of an iron smelting plant I visited once as a kid in Pittsburgh. Dinner out had to be planned for a place with outdoor dining and forecasted winds of at least 7 on the Beaufort Scale.

Since those days, the European Union has dragged Germany kicking and screaming into the modern anti-smoking world. During my most recent year there in 2008-09, new laws were passed by each of the German Länder that outlawed smoking in many public places such as restaurants. Each State has its own laws but as soon as they were passed, a variety of interest groups began negotiating for exceptions. We were initially delighted by the ability to dine out smoke-free, but the reality was, that in most restaurants, there was always someone smoking. Usually it was wafting out from the kitchen, where the waiters and cooks were lighting up. Sometimes it was a diner at the table next to yours, which, the waiter patiently explained, was the "smoking area." But more often than not, it was just people ignoring the ban. Few people, pro or con, seemed to know what the law really said about banning smoking and fewer people cared. Normally very law-abiding, this was an aspect of German behavior that I wasn't ready for.

Over time, we identified a few places where the ban was enforced and avoided the rest. On the train platforms, smokers were relegated to small areas marked by a painted box and mostly smokers seemed happy to restrict themselves to those areas. Ultimately, I forgot about the issue entirely. Entirely, that is, until I watched M again this week. Could it be that the smoke was Fritz Lang's clever symbol for man's inhumanity to man, or maybe a veiled thumbing of the socialist nose at a growing fascist movement during the 30's? Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were, after all, each outspoken about their opposition to smoking. I'll have to give Metropolis another viewing and see if the filming there was equally smoke filled. Until then, smoke 'em if you've got 'em.

Hände hoch!

Will I write a post about the German artist who is doing an installation featuring 1000's of garden gnomes giving the Hitlergrüß? No, it's just too easy. Go to www.zeit.de and read about it yourself. I'm weary of all this "former times" stuff.

Instead, I watched a real American movie this weekend and want to comment on that. It was a movie from the 90's, a relatively innocent time in America, and starred a bunch of people who haven't done many films since then, but it also featured Charlie Sheen in a starring role. It was called something like, Navy Sea Lions and was all about the dedication of a select group of guys who work hard, recreate hard and smoke terrorists when they're not busy playing hilarious pranks on one another. The film begins with a wedding: one of the Navy Sea Otters is planning to marry. He feels guilty that he's abandoning the team, even if only in spirit, but his commanding officer tells him that commitment is the highest goal. Two things are made clear by this opener. One, this character will be the "sensitive one." Two, he'll die in reel three.

There was a lot not to like in the movie, but it was oddly satisfying as well. Watching the Navy Walruses on R&R for example was a real embarrassment. Driving wildly in golf carts, beating up innocent citizens, littering: these guys have a carbon footprint as big as all outdoors. But when stirring music plays as they all leap from an airplane somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean, it's enough to make even William Penn find some minor mid-east nation and liberate stuffing out of it.

It's a paradox to me that today people seem to fret constantly about violence on television and in film. And God help anyone who would buy his or her child a toy gun. When I was a kid, I never left the house without being properly armed and our "toybox" was a former military footlocker, chock full of paraphernalia my dad brought home from WWII. What kid in 1962 didn't have a combat helmet? I had several and received in addition, a full Zorro outfit complete with cape and Zorro shotgun for Christmas one year. Zorro never used a gun of any kind, but I never let that dampen my enthusiasm and chanted "The fox so cunning and free!" as I carved a large "Z" in our family's bathroom door.

The thing is, we were comfortable with violence, but knew that in a situation in which our lives were threatened, we would only need to shoot the gun out of the other guy's hand. On one favorite TV show of the day, Seahunt, Lloyd Bridges never fought with a gun, since all encounters had to take place underwater. It wasn't possible to shoot guns out of hands on that program, but it was understood that the knives one brandished in the underwater fight scenes could only be used to cut air hoses. There was the obligatory "underwater struggle for the knife" scene in Navy Manatees too, but the Charlie Sheen character uses the knife to cut his assailant's throat. I thought these guys were supposed to be trained in underwater combat?

There seems to be a cycle of ever increasing violence in America today and it's affecting Germany as well. It seems hardly a month goes by that I don't hear a story about some nitwit shooting as many people as he can in a public space. The death counts are lower in Germany, where the perpetrators are denied automatic weapons, but I read recently about one dedicated would-be mass murderer there who went at it with a knife. So I was relieved and gratified when I visited a local store yesterday to pick up a new pair of work pants and saw the sign pictured below. It may lead to a boycott of the store by people who see it as a violation of their Second Amendment rights, but I for one think it's time we draw a line in the sand on this issue.

Störungsmelder

Update: Die Winkelständer

Loyal Forschungsjahr readers will remember a post I did just under a year ago about clothing racks in the shape of swastikas that were proliferating in Kik outlets all over Germany. What's up with that story? Have the racks remained in place, slowly but inexorably converting all shoppers to a form of paramilitary fascism the free world abhors, or did the German High Court outlaw the asozial racks? I was curious and did a few searches earlier this evening. Using a variety of search terms, such as Kik, Nazi, Winkelständer, I searched on Google for updates. Each search led me right back to this blog. Apparently there is no new information about the controversy. I am the final word on Nazi-influenced clothing display.



I'll continue to seek out closure on the issue, but for the time being, we have to be satisfied with another shocking and insidious neo-nazi plot to win the hearts and minds of unsuspecting Germans through discount clothing. I'm referring to the infamous "NS-Style" hoodies that, until recently, were being sold at Real. I first learned of the threat through a blog called Störungsmelder. A recent post there describes the hooded sweat shirts on sale at a large German chain called Real. The hoodies are brown (!!!) and have the phrase "NS-STYLE" and "Advanced Man" across the chest. For American readers without the background to understand the difficulty, NS could stand for National Socialism, the formal name for the Nazi party. And "Advanced Man?" Might it not be a reference to the wearer as an Übermench, or superior person? Yeah, I guess so, and while we're at it, let's not forget that Santa is an anagram of Satan.

The Störungsmelder writer approached the Real manager and the issue reached the highest levels of Real administration. After a few days the Press Spokesman for Real, Albrecht von Truchseß, called the reporter back and said he found the situation "Extremely irritating." When asked about where the blame might lie, von Truchseß excused the manufacturer who was "probably some guy from Bangladesh, without a clue about National Socialism." Instead, he said Real took responsibility and that the slip up was simply human error. About 1000 sweat shirts were pulled from the shelves and young, fashion conscious neo-nazis will simply have to go elsewhere for their fascist outfits.

My attitude toward this event was one of mild amusement until further reading led me to the difficulties faced by the English sports clothing brand Lonsdale. According to information I read at a variety of sites, Lonsdale is a favorite of neo-nazis throughout Europe. With the Lonsdale logo on your chest, it's possible to wear a jacket that covers the beginning and ending letters of the brand logo yielding the following:

LONSDALE

NSDAP was the abbreviation for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei and apparently that's close enough for the skinheads. Lonsdale has done a lot to combat this association with the radical right, including refusing to deliver clothing to known right wing retailers and creating the "Lonsdale Loves All Colours" ad campaign. Who knew?

Lonsdale has been fairly effective in discouraging this negative association with their brand, but neo-nazis are not deterred. A new brand, Consdaple, was founded by a German far right politician in imitation of Lonsdale, to supply neo-nazis with clothing that displays the full "NSDAP" acronym. It's a kind of determination I can easily identify with, having used the batik process to create my own "FRODO LIVES" T-shirt when I was in junior high, but I can't condone the content. And clearly I was way too cavalier in my amusement with the original Kik Winkelständer story. Bad people may in fact really try to communicate with specially shaped clothing racks and it's up to us to stop them.