The call went out all over the land: Get to work, Americans.
And they will — grabbing their brushes and easels, their musical instruments, their pens and paper, their laptops and scripts.
The news media have chronicled the attacks on New York and Washington with the immediacy and urgency our culture seems to demand. Yet, it will be up to the artists — painters, musicians, playwrights, sculptors, dancers and scribes — to interpret the past week’s events just as artists have done since the first prehistoric drama was captured on cool cave walls.
Performance artists, photographers and video artists, because of the nature of their medium, will likely be the first to offer up their creations. And there will be the usual rash of insta-books, made-for-TV quick flicks and musical pieces pegged to CNN headlines. For many artists who talked to the Tribune, though, it will take time to forge a vision from horror and grief.
“The thing that I found in this past week is that I have such an incredible overflow of emotion,” said Augusta Read Thomas, composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who was trying to focus on her music when the Tribune called. “On the best of days, I cry at Hallmark card ads. I just have been crying non-stop. . . . That’s surely going to come out in the music somehow, but it will be in a very personal and digested way. And I don’t even know what it will be. I have no idea. But I know that my life will never be the same again. Ever.”
Jonathan Hull, author of the recent novel “Losing Julia,” which takes place, in part, during World War I, said it was too soon to know how the tragedy will affect him as a writer.
“But there’s an enormous amount of material here for artists from all walks of life,” he said. “It seems that the entire human soul, from its darkest to its brightest corners, is being publicly excavated there in Manhattan.”
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Shattering violence and large-scale disaster have long been the subject of art, from the soaring epics of the ancient Greeks to the intimate confidences of Anne Frank’s diary, from the heartfelt folksongs of the Vietnam era to calculated, edge-of-your seat disaster movies shipped out of Hollywood.
And in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the poems came almost immediately: tributes to the dead, salutes to the heroes. Some paintings and plays, short stories and sculptures, musical compositions and novels will take longer as the artists process the images and emotions.
But if history is any indication, the creations will come, even as Picasso’s “Guernica” followed the Spanish Civil War and Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” followed World War I.”The oldest extant play in the Western tradition deals with the Persian War,” says Tracy Davis, a Northwestern University professor of performing arts, citing “The Persians,” by Aeschylus. The play, which dates to 472 B.C., tells of the Greek victory at Salamis, where the playwright himself possibly fought as a warrior.
Shakespeare, Davis notes, drew on armed conflict for his history plays, many of which are set during wars waged by British kings. And the Bard even found inspiration in what for him was very recent history — the political intrigue and turmoil that characterized the reign of Henry VIII, the father of Shakespeare’s monarch, Elizabeth I. Meanwhile, the modern era, says Davis, is replete with artistic responses to cataclysmic events, ranging from “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a grim story about real people at the time of the Holocaust, to Samuel Beckett’s absurdist “Endgame,” often considered a reaction to the prospect of nuclear apocalypse, and David Rabe’s “Streamers,” which was inspired by the Vietnam War.
While some artists address the historical tragedies that affect our soul, others — such as Frida Kahlo, whose physical suffering was the centerpiece of much of her art, and Hollis Sigler, whose breast cancer was the subject of her best known work — tackle the traumas that affect our bodies.
Selected works of Man Ray, whose later art was affected by arthritis and age, are part of “eMotion Pictures: An Exhibition of Orthopaedics in Art,” a juried exhibition that opens this weekend at the Chicago Cultural Center. The show features works by 51 artists living with orthopaedic conditions, as well as other works by the surgeons who treat them.
It is difficult to predict the nature of the art that will flow from the terrorist strikes. Some of it will doubtless soothe and provide comfort. Some will interpret the events of last week as a trenchant and immutable statement on human nature. Some will ask difficult questions and demand honest answers. The following interviews were conducted with a range of artists in an attempt to shed light on how the creative community will come to express what is for many people the inexpressible.
Billy Collins
Named U.S. poet laureate in June, Collins is also an English professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York.
“I’m still numb. The nib of my pen feels completely splayed,” Collins said following last week’s attacks, adding he had no plans to write about the attacks, certainly not soon. “A quick Polaroid representation is not to be desired.”
“I have a feeling, when I sit down to write again, it will not be about that. But it could be a little poem of affirmation, a poem about eating a bowl of cereal or possibly a poem of gratitude at being alive or that shows respect for the chain of moments that hold our lives together.”Attempts to deal directly with the Sept. 11 attacks, Collins said, are likely to miss the mark. “There will be dozens of poems written about that day. There will be explicit artistic responses to that. But most of those attempts are doomed to failure. The temptation is to say the right thing. . . . Like the Holocaust, like the assassination of Kennedy, the subject may be almost too heavy for art to handle [directly]. If the subject is approached in a frontal way, the aesthetic results are often not desirable. Emily Dickinson said: `Tell the truth, but tell it slant.’ You have to go in through a side door.”
“Poetry is kind of the original grief counseling center,” Collins said.
Robert Falls
Artistic director of the Goodman Theatre, Falls has staged such works of tragedy and social crisis as “Galileo,” “Death of a Salesman” and “Hamlet.”
“Artists do their best when they continue their work. Certainly there might be examples that responded to a crisis that 20 years later seemed revelatory, but I think the most important thing is that artists get back and do their work, whatever the stories they’re telling. That’s how artists historically have dealt with things like this, and that’s how we should continue to deal with it. By doing, which is hard enough,” said Falls, who was in New York on Sept. 11, re-casting “Aida.”
“There may be a work of art that will emerge from this time that addresses the events of this time,” Falls said. “But, on the other hand, I think it’s enough to put on any piece of art in this time. That’s a heroic effort itself. There’s this hunger for art right now. People want to go into museums and look at paintings, they need to go to a symphony, and they need to go to the theater, which provides the same sort of comfort church provides: people gathered together to hear a story.”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
At 82, he is the grand old man of countercultural art and poetry in the U.S.
“This is the first overt manifestation of the Third World War — with the emphasis on the `Third World,'” Ferlinghetti said. “Art can no longer afford to say nothing. From now on, the artists are going to have to be committed to something beyond their own careers. They’re going to have to be committed to saving civilization. They’re going to have to say important things. They’ll have to say something coherent and something important in relation to our existence today — after Sept. 11.” Ferlinghetti, who was active in the anti-war movement of the 1960s, said artists again will become social activists. “They’ll be on the side of peace and non-violent action,” he said. “And they’ll be more in solidarity with Third World writers and Third World artists.”
Cary Nelson
English professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
After the hijackings, Nelson read a poem in his classes:
“. . . One hundred and forty-six died in the flames/On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes –/The witness in the building across the street/Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step/Up to the windowsill, then held her out/Away from the masonry wall and let her drop./And then another. As if he were helping them up/To enter a streetcar, and not eternity
“A third before he dropped her put her arms/Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held/Her into space, and dropped her . . .”
The poem, by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, describes the Triangle sweatshop fire of 1911, but the parallels with the recent disaster in New York were clear to Nelson. “A poem can . . . keep alive those things about an event that are in some ways most troubling,” he said.
He expects the best literary responses to the destruction of the twin towers to do much the same thing. Among the images he thinks will resonate with poets: broken bodies, victims falling through the air and planes striking skyscrapers. Such art will be sobering, and Nelson believes that’s for the best. “I don’t see any reason why we deserve to feel better about this. And I would say, God help us if we do feel better about it.”
Evan Hunter
Hunter, 74, has made his living writing about conflict, crime and violence. More than 50 of his 113 novels have been murder mysteries published under his pseudonym, Ed McBain.
While make-believe may pale in contrast to the real-life drama of this month’s disasters, fiction has nonetheless played an important role in the past in helping the nation cope with trauma, Hunter said. “In bad times — and I think there are some really bad times ahead — fiction in the form of books and movies and plays have always thrived,” he said. “All during the Depression, people went to the movies and read books. All during World War II, people went to the movies and read books.”
And it wouldn’t be surprising if thrillers and mysteries continue to remain strong sellers. “The reality [of modern life] is often too much to bear so people turn to fiction where everything turns out all right in the end,” he said.
Hunter noted many World War II novelists had served in the military and had experienced combat firsthand. But in the case of the recent tragedy, Hunter said, “All that the novelists are living through is the aftermath.”
Ted Meyer
The L.A.-based artist has a rare genetic disorder that required hip replacements. A series of paintings called “Structural Abnormalities”(pieces of which are included in the Chicago Cultural Center exhibition), was created prior to the surgery and marked a change from previous works inspired by Desert Storm, Rodney King and burning buildings in L.A. Today, he is making monoprints of those scarred by surgeries as well as paintings titled “Unsung Heroes.”
“I found [these monoprints] are very therapeutic not only for me but for the people I’m doing them of because they felt that nothing good could come of these massive scars on their bodies and yet I have managed to make art out of them,” he said. But his work has been stalled: “I was not able to paint last week,” he said of his “Unsung Heroes” portraits that include a veterinarian, city planner and the lab tech workers from whom he gets his medications. “Finally [Sunday] night, I thought, maybe I’ll start painting again this week.”
Augusta Read Thomas
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Composer-in-Residence.
“There will be a few people that ally their work to the headlines. But we, as a culture, have to look at a piece of art on its own terms. Is it good or bad?
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“[With] a current affair — a measles epidemic, the bombing of the World Trade Center, or anything else that we want to fill in the blank with — I tend to digest these things very deeply and not to react with a commercial [response]. My next symphony will not be called `World Trade Bombing Symphony.'” Somebody will write that symphony, but it’s not going to be me. That’s not to say that I’m not in this profound way feeling such an overflow of emotions from it. For example, the Holocaust has deeply, deeply affected me. It’s as if I lived through it. I wasn’t even born. [But] I don’t want to call my next piece `The Holocaust Movement.'”
Tracy C. Davis
Professor of performing arts in the departments of theater, performance studies and English at Northwestern University.
“The dramatic artist, by using the spoken word, in contrast to visual artists or musicians, can make these events more immediate. They can get to you in more ways than art or music. . . . Unlike film, the theater invites more reflection on its own tradition and helps us look at the past in a different context. If you think of `Casablanca,’ it’s the 1940s. It’s never another time,” she said. But “The Persians” could be staged with men and women in business suits using cell phones, she added, “and a new work could be referential to other works about cataclysms of the past.
“Much of what theater artists do in response to the events last week will be predictable. There will be realistic renderings, stories based on people actually involved and adaptations of other texts. All the usual techniques will be employed. But those probably won’t be the works that last,” she continued. “The works that last will be the ones we can’t predict.”
Nicholson Baker
Novelist best known for “Vox,” published in 1992.
“I stopped writing for a while [after last week’s attacks]. I was in Washington when the Pentagon was hit. I looked out the window and there was smoke,” said Baker.
For a writer or another artist, the creation of art “is the only meaningful retaliation — to point out some beautiful part of life that has nothing to do with war and misery,” he said. One irony, he said, is that he, like probably many artists, is drawing inspiration from the selflessness and dignity of those caught in the tragedy.
“You see certain people telling their stories,” Baker said, “and, although I’m crying as I watch a guy talk about losing 700 employees [at the World Trade Center], there was a nobility about him that was inspiring. . . . There’s a level of pathos that reminds you why stories are written and heroes are celebrated.”
Joanna Scott
Author of last year’s “Make Believe,” as well as an English professor at the University of Rochester.
Scott noted that in 1949, as details of the Holocaust became public, a despairing Theodor Adorno, a leading German philosopher and critic, said, “After Auschwitz, it is barbaric to write poetry.” Said Scott, “The question posed by Adorno after the Holocaust and paraphrased into a cliche — How can we continue to write poetry? — has been answered by persistence. Writers will write until they are silenced.”
Nancy Van Goethem
A figurative artist who has been displaced from her home and studio in Battery Park City, a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
“We know that what has occurred in our back yard is going to change us,” she said of herself and her husband, writer Lawrence Joseph. “How? We don’t really know yet. . . . The thing that struck me [was] the firemen already working. Some of them were very contained. Some of them were crying while they were working. I saw so many different emotions on their faces. It was so profound. I know it’s going to impact me because all my paintings have to deal with people. But the firemen — I was moved by their solidarity and I was moved by the strength in their numbers and I was moved by the way they were moving. But their faces — so many incredible emotions — I know that’s going to come out in my work somehow.”
Lawrence Joseph
Poet and author whose works deal with cities and war, including his most recent volume, “Lawyerland.”
“I think every artist in New York City will be affected in some way. Just the physical reality of it is going to affect everybody in ways we don’t know yet. And those who write in terms of the place and terms of setting, it’s going to affect them dramatically. . . . Something like this is going to penetrate the imagination of writing about New York or art about New York . . . because of Manhattan and its presence in our national cultural life.”
Eric Simonson
The director is staging Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” about the ravages of war, at Steppenwolf Theatre, where he previously directed “The Song of Jacob Zulu,” about apartheid in South Africa.
“When we were rehearsing `Jacob Zulu’ at exactly the same time as the Rodney King beating and the L.A. riots, [there] was this combination of quiet anger and sorrow that everyone walks around with, and yet we continued to work on the show,” he recalled. “You can’t describe how you feel in the moment until after the fact. You can only look back a couple of months later and say, `Well, this is how it affected the show, and this is how it affected us.’ I think the same thing is happening now.
“How artists will deal with this tragedy we won’t know for a while. I don’t think you can deal with it instantly. Everyone is still figuring out the circumstances, and who the enemy is. And that’s strange,” he said, adding that works have dealt with real, cataclysmic events in the past including “Mother Courage,” which Brecht wrote in 1943, during World War II, while in Sweden in exile from Hitler’s regime. “But he set the play during the Thirty Years War, which took place from 1618 to 1648, involving the provinces of Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and France, among other countries. He could have written a play about a tyrant. But he chose to take a microscopic look at the common person and how they might be corrupted into believing the war was a good thing for them. Mother Courage is a gypsy businesswoman from Bavaria who goes around with her three children . . . and makes her living selling goods off soldiers . . . “
Brecht’s message involves how war corrupts not leaders or generals but ordinary people. “She’s you and me,” Simonson said. “Brecht gives us a perspective on war as an epidemic throughout history.”
Ned Broderick
President of the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, Broderick served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. He is a painter and sculpture.
“I . . . know that people went through times of catharsis that take them outside of their current lives into another way of looking at the world. What it does [for me] is rekindle a lot of old things . . . It’s powerful imagery and painful to watch.
“I’m certain that if it wasn’t for my experiences in Vietnam I would not have been an artist,” he added. “Many different instances kind of build up a certain critical mass and you basically become a very different person. You begin to look at the world differently. I remember reading once that somebody said the creative aspect of art is made of two things: that’s pain and isolation, and Vietnam gave us plenty of that.”