I threw away my work from the fall 1970 group exhibition at 567 Queen Street West in Toronto. After ten years or so in apartment storage, it was a quick toss into the bin outside. The nineteen cardboard and paper works, variously touched up with ink and pencil, had been glued onto hand-sawed wood frames. Bundled with twine into roughly a 2 x 3 x 4 foot package made the procedure efficient.
Reading the newspaper while having a cup of coffee in the morning, had been the theme for the work – and then there were the trees on nearby Brandt Street. The trees didn’t immediately fit in with the theme, but perhaps they did. From the daily Toronto Star weather forecast to The Heart of Juliet Jones comic strip, a piece of CBC Radio promotional card featuring graphic of a cup of coffee, to the four trees, all had been sublimated through graphite and ink to paper. All can be traced to experiences of a five-year-old in transition from Espoo, Finland to Gothenburg, Sweden.
A sample strip: The Heart of Juliet Jones by Stan Drake from 1967 for King Features Syndicate
Expansive countryside flipped into restrictive, urban hotel confinement, generating a stream sensory material edging on trauma at times. Perhaps it’s another way of saying that things were particularly memorable then.
My copy of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Copyright 1912, Flamingo Edition 1972Laocoön Group, Marco Dente’s engraving, c. 1515, early visual record of the sculpture as it looked after the 1506 excavation, before later restorations—most notably, Laocoön is shown with the right arm missing
The Laocoön Group was famously unearthed in Rome on January 14, 1506, in the vineyard of Felice de Fredis, on the Esquiline Hill near the Baths of Titus. Pope Julius II sent Michelangelo and the architect Giuliano da Sangallo to inspect the find. Marco Dente’s engraving, c. 1515. It gives a remarkably early visual record of the sculpture as it looked after the 1506 excavation, before later restorations—most notably, Laocoön is shown with the right arm missing.
Atlas Film Studios in Morocco is the largest film studio in the world by land area, spanning over 322,000 square feet. Morocco has a thriving movie industry, and Atlas Film Studios is at its center. Variations on the image of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders has proliferated over the centuries. Its depiction has stuck with me for as long as I can remember, Atlas having graced the cover of a Finnish encyclopedia called, Pikku Jattilainen (The Little Giant), a book that we owned.
The 1944 Pikku Jättiläinen cover has the distinctive image of a kneeling figure carrying the globe on his back, with PIKKU JÄTTILÄINEN printed above it. It was edited by Yrjö Karilas and published by WSOY (Werner Söderström)
The circle of my five-year-old world was tiny. I knew just three of its four quarters. To the north behind our house was a community center with an outdoor stage that put on a production of Hansel and Gretel. Across the road on the south side was a house with a coffee grinder, clearly visible through its kitchen window. Downhill to the road east lay the city – just a bicycle ride to the Helsinki Police Department for my father.
The road westward, however, was ripe for discovery, and its opportunity arose with a convenient distraction. On this particular day, my mother was hosting a hen party. A discrete slip, followed by a quick walk, for what seemed like forever, took me to a crossroads. When the evergreen horizon of teeth began morphing into silhouetted scarecrows, I knew it was journey’s end. Somewhat winded upon my return, I was pleased with my mother’s steamy chicory coffee – milky with a side of “korppu” (coffee bread rusk). With a dunk and rotation of the crisp around the rim of the cup came a sense of completion and satisfaction – an adventure private to myself. The background chatter and laughter of the hen party supplied its soundtrack.
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun(1997) was substantially produced and filmed at Atlas Corporation Studios in Ouarzazate, Morocco
Shooting for Scorsese’s Kundun began at Atlas Corporation Studios on August 26, 1996, finishing on December 20. The Atlas Mountains and desert landscape stood in for the Tibetan “Roof of the World.” Other Moroccan locations were used, but Atlas Studios was the main base. Still there, are the massive Tibetan palace sets and gates that were built for the biopic by Dante Ferretti, a production designer known for constructing historical worlds that are as much psychological spaces. He created a Tibetan world within Morocco.
Kundun screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, not only based it on the life of the 14th Dalai Lama, but cooperated with him and members of his family during its development. A crucial scene has a 19-year-old Dalai Lama travelling to Beijing in 1954-55 to meet with Mao Tse-Tung. Written into the script is his recollection of their exchange word for word: “Your attitude is good, you know. I understand you well. But you need to learn this: religion is poison. It undermines the race and it retards the progress of the people. Tibet has been poisoned by religion.”
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun(1997), Dalai Lama at 19 meeting with Mao Tse-Tung
Mao’s phrase “religion is poison” becomes the hinge of the entire film. What follows is the destruction of Tibetan religious culture, the violence, and the Dalai Lama’s ultimate flight into exile. The young Dalai Lama had arrived optimistic and hopeful, even having considered reconciling some Marxist ideas with Buddhism, but the meeting was a train wreck.
The Atlas of Greek mythology, a second-generation Titan, had unparalleled physical strength. He was the battlefield commander for the older generation of Titan gods, who ultimately failed in their rebellion against Zeus and the Olympians. His punishment was harsh and highly visible, Zeus condemning him to stand at the western edge of the world to hold up the celestial sphere on his shoulders for all eternity. Geographically, his shoulders would have covered what is now the Atlas Mountain Range. While contemporaries render him holding up the world, in Greek antiquity it was the sky that he held up.
Tibetan Buddhists at its Canadian Cultural Centre during Dalai Lama’s visit on October 31, 2007 in Toronto. Photo by Beatrice Egolf
Titan Road is a street in west-end Toronto. On Wednesday, October 31, 2007, the 14th Dalai Lama visited the Tibetan-Canadian Cultural Centre which had just opened there. He blessed the facility and greeted hundreds of people, with crowds reportedly lining up around the block for hours. I can attest to that since I was there. The printing company that employed me was at 30 Titan Road, the Dalai Lama’s visit taking place at number 40, just next door.
All morning, that day Tibetan monks made their way by foot, single file, down the street eventually encircling the Titan Road buildings at 30 and 40. We listened to continuous reports on the radio as the car with the Dalai Lama progressed to its destination here. When he did arrive, I felt that I needed to witness the event, like many others. It seemed odd to have been close enough to the Dalai Lama to have shaken his hand and said hello, had I wished to.
Dalai Lama at Tibetan-Canadian Cultural Centre during his visit on October 31, 2007 in Toronto. Photo by Beatrice Egolf
More significantly, as I reflect now, is the Dalai Lama’s stopping by the entrance of our building on Titan, less than 30 feet from the carpentry shop that had fabricated my Meditations on Space panels. (The current occupant at 30 Titan Rd., Unit #1 is MedPure, a medical supply facility). The book work was printed December, 1996. Shooting for Scorsese’s Kundun at Atlas Corporation Studios in Morocco finished on December 20, 1996. My own construction, painting, and publication had synchronized with Ferretti’s set design and Scorsese’s filming of Kundun to the same month and year.
The problem of making images of what we see and don’t see, what we believe and don’t believe manifests at critical points in history. As events unfold and are recorded, their divisions and distinctions are made clear.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Conversion of Saint Paul (c. 1601), oil on cypress wood (later transferred to canvas). Originally painted for the Cerasi Chapel in Rome but rejected by the patron’s heirs, the work is now in the Palazzo Odescalchi
The Cerasi Chapel in Rome rejected this 1601 first version of Caravaggio’s Conversion of St. Paul. Crowded, theatrical, and filled with supernatural action, it’s dramatically different from the later more well-known painting. Here, Caravaggio paints a visible Christ in the heavens accompanied by an angel. Saul has just fallen from his horse. Soldiers, a rearing horse, and swirling movement fill the composition as a brilliant light pours downward from the divine apparition.
The question remains, “Why did the patronage heirs of the Cerasi Chapel reject the first effort by Caravaggio?” It has been suggested to have been too complicated and unconventional. Significantly, the artist here had painted the miracle as a public spectacle rather than a private spiritual experience. Caravaggio’s early ambition had been to advance the monumental in Renaissance art with his own brand of naturalism. His first version renders the heavenly figures corporeal. In the second version they are invisible. Now with Saul’s physical blinding, the viewer is “blinded” to his heavenly vision, as were Saul’s companions.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Conversion of Saint Paul (c. 1601), oil on canvas, 230 × 175 cm (approximately 90½ × 69 in), the Cerasi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome
Caravaggio’s second treatment is, in fact, more truthful to Luke’s Book of Acts account. Chapter 9:3-4 “And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Verse 7: “And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.”
Caravaggio was part of an emergent Baroque art that arose directly from the conflict between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. While the Catholic Church employed art as a weapon to fight Protestantism, Protestants introduced a new iconoclasm that stripped church interiors of icons, saints, and martyrs, for a secular art, emphasizing landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes. Dutch Baroque and Rembrandt typified this shift.
Image storms, or “Beeldenstorms,” as they were called, swept through Protestant regions, crowds destroying centuries of Catholic art, statues, and stained glass. It is no mystery why Vermeer’s preference was everyday domestic scenes with realistic portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.
Fra Bartolomeo, Portrait of Girolamo Savonarola, 1498, oil on wood, 47 x 31 cm, Museo di Marco, Florence
The Renaissance and Catholic world had already endured its own “Bonfire of the Vanities” about a century before Caravaggio. A huge pyramid in the Piazza della Signoria was set on fire at the direction of Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola. Not just paintings and drawings, but musical instruments, books and manuscripts, jewelry and fine clothing, just about anything associated with beauty, ergo vanity, went up in flames.
The Christian world, however, had essentially “settled” the issue of image depiction by the 8th century at the second council of Nicaea (year 787), in great part courtesy John of Damascus, one of the last great Church Fathers of the Eastern Christian tradition. Monk and theologian, he had summarized in “The Fount of Knowledge” that because God truly became human in Jesus Christ, the invisible God took on a visible human nature. Therefore, Christ can legitimately be depicted in images. The Incarnation affirmed at Nicaea made sacred art theologically defensible. Subsequently, how this has played out through the course of art history speaks for itself in its manifold movements.
Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, 1993, University of Chicago Press. Cover image: Henri Fantin-Latour, Self-Portrait, Louvre Museum, Orsay Museum Collection
The publication of the Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind (1993), had been a response to a 1990 exhibition at the Louvre of the same name, the first of a series of shows titled Parti-pris or Taking Sides. Its curators had welcomed the gaze of Derrida on this first exhibition about blind men and visionaries. His reflection, they felt, went “to the heart of the phenomena of vision, from blindness to evidence.” Acknowledging perhaps some difficulty for the neophyte, they continued, “…that at end of the journey each one will have found their own light: what one learns here, in the literal as well as the figurative sense, are the ways of opening eyes.”
Steve Rockwell, Memoirs of the Blind (Antoine Coypel), 2018, acylic on dArt International paper, 21” x 16”. Grid transcription enlargement of Antoine Coypel‘s Study of the Blind, Louvre Museum as reproduced on page seven in Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind
In his Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida observes that blindness is an interruption of Nature, but also an affliction of the will, the will to see [voir] and the will to know [savoir]. He references Christ’s condemnation of the Pharisees, men of letters whose blindness persisted from a wilful refusal to look inside themselves. Derrida cites Isaiah’s prophecy, where Christ said “…you will indeed look, but never perceive …they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes…”
Steve Rockwell, Meditations on Space (Galerie Lahumière, Paris), 1996, acrylic on panel painting, 32” x 32”
A kind of blindness occurred during the ninth stop of the Meditations on Space, my “odyssey” through art galleries in Europe and North America. It was my first Paris meditation, October 3, 1995. As I described it, ” Galerie Lahumiere was in the process of opening up for the day when the lights blew. Patrice Blanc found the fuse box and told me that the bulk of galleries in the area were at FIAC, the annual Parisian contemporary arts fair. He didn’t think many gallery principals would be available because of the show. He gave me a book on abstract art.” This made it a triple blinding: gallery illumination dimmed, gallery area principals vanished, and the masking of visual figuration within art itself.
My Meditations on Space paintings are the result of a thought experiment on the limits of sight, the edges of what we see within and without. Anyone can do this. In a completely dark room wave your hands before your face as you open and shut your eyes. That visible pattern of tiny points of light that you see is not interrupted or disturbed, suggesting that what you see is entirely within you. The retinal screen within your eye is the tiny wall against which images are projected gradually as the room illuminates. My surprise was the realization of not ever being able to see absolute black. The scintilla are always there, less visible against something white, but always present.
A pleasant way to enjoy a sunny afternoon in New York City is to explore a hidden treasure located just across from Central Park and steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite having visited New York City numerous times, I had never taken the opportunity to experience the Frick Collection museum. While strolling through the city with the lovely Theodora Chizoman Anurukem, an elementary school teacher, we paused on a bench near Central Park. Nearby, we saw a banner promoting the Frick museum, which led us to discover that we were conveniently situated right across the street. To our surprise, there were a large number of visitors for a museum of its scale. Notably, the museum enforces a policy that prohibits entry for children under the age of ten, which effectively excludes families with young children from attending.
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), Sir Thomas More, 1527, oil on oak panel, 29-1/2 x 23-3/4 inches
The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, NY which opened its doors to the public in 1935, boasts one of the most distinguished collections of European paintings globally. Located within the Henry Clay Frick House, built in 1913, the establishment includes a garden and a central fountain situated in the middle of the residence. Its collection showcases artwork ranging from the early Renaissance to Impressionist period, arranged without a specific logical or chronological sequence.
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Mistress and the Maid, 1664-67, oil on canvas, 35-1/2 x 31 inches
The collection features two notable paintings by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) and one by John Constable (1776-1837). It is particularly impressive that Frick was able to obtain three works by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), especially considering that the artist only painted 34 works in his lifetime that are acknowledged as genuine. Like many collectors, Frick focused on depth, often obtaining multiple works from the same artist. His collection includes five pieces by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), four of which are large-scale full length body portraits, two portraits by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (1490-1576), four by George Romney (1734-1802), and three by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669), including one self-portrait. Additionally, it features two iconic portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), three paintings by El Greco (1541-1614), four by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), five portraits by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and eight by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641).
El Greco (1541-1614), St. Jerome, 1590-1600, oil on canvas, 43-1/2 x 37-1/2 inches
The collection is further enriched with five landscape paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), as well as works by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Anton Mauve (1838-1888), Claude Monet (1840-1926), and Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660). Beyond paintings, it also includes carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and period furniture.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669), Self-portrait, 1658, oil on canvas, 52-5/8 x 40-7/8 inches
Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was a prominent American industrialist, financier, and art patron, known for establishing the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing firm and later serving as chairman of Carnegie Steel Company. In the later part of his career, he played a crucial role in the creation of U.S. Steel, which emerged as the largest steel producer in the world.
Gerard David (1460-1523), The Deposition, 1495-1500, oil on canvas, 56-1/8 x 44-1/4 inches
Frick wed Adelaide Howard Childs from Pittsburgh on December 15, 1881, and together they had four children, two of whom passed away in infancy.
On July 23, 1892, Frick survived a harrowing assassination attempt, during which he was shot twice at close range and stabbed four times in the leg while attempting to subdue his assailant. Frick miraculous survived.
Gerald Kelly (1879-1972), Portrait of Henry Clay Frick, 1924, Oil on canvas, 29-1/4 x 24-1/4 inches
In 1912, Frick and Adelaide while on vacation in Europe had planned to return to New York aboard the RMS Titanic’s maiden voyage, accompanied by J. P. Morgan. However, they canceled their journey after Adelaide sustained a sprained ankle in Italy, thereby narrowly avoiding the disaster that befell the ship.
Frick died of a heart attack on December 2, 1919, at the age of 69. He was buried in Pittsburgh’s Homewood Cemetery.
A scene suggestive of the Abd el-Rassul family discovery of the royal cache years before officially revealing it in 1881, and their sale of artifacts and mummies through antiquities dealers
I was introduced to Ramesses I, the founder of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty, in his then Wellington Street West residence in Toronto in the late 1990’s by Bill Jamieson. It is difficult to describe my sense of excitement, as the identity of the mummy was just in the process of being confirmed. Egyptologist Gayle Gibson had made evaluations. There had been discussions with the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta for a possible sale. After scans, anatomical analyses, and comparisons with royal mummies Jamieson’s Egyptian collection went to Atlanta in 1999. Then in 2003, Ramesses I received a ceremonial state welcome and was placed on display in Egypt’s Luxor Museum, barely two miles from where Ramesses I ruled just over 3,200 years ago.
William Jamieson, Treasure Trader. Promotional photo for his 2012 reality television series on (History Canada) Television. Eight half-hour episodes premiered after his unexpected death from heart attack in 2011
Socially, it had been the shrunken heads that broke the ice. Jamieson’s purchase of the Niagara Falls Museum collection, however, was the big story. The timing mattered. He came across as a grand curiosity-cabinet figure at a time when museums were beginning to reconsider the ethics of collecting. Essentially, he had been a Toronto contractor whose loft became a museum, and who now holds a place in history for discovering a lost Egyptian pharaoh.
William Jamieson acquired not only the Egyptian collection from the old Niagara Falls Museum but also many of its other ethnographic and natural history objects—including a number of shrunken heads (tsantsas)
Jamieson’s loft was his business headquarters, his client list including the Royal Ontario Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Christie’s, and Sotheby’s. Objects came and went as he bought, researched, authenticated, and sold. His 6,000-square-foot home with 14-foot ceilings held thousands of objects; Egyptian mummies, one of the world’s largest private collection of shrunken heads (about a dozen), South America, Africa, and Oceania tribal art, electric chairs and Medieval torture devices, coffins, anatomical specimens, and curiosities from around the world. His Halloween parties became legendary. A sweeping curved staircase cut through the loft’s three floors making the panorama equal parts Madame Tussauds and Twilight Zone. Visiting guests reportedly included Tim Burton, Steve Tyler, and Mick Jagger.
To many, the definitive cinematic Ramesses is Yul Brynner in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments
Historically, Ramesses I ruled a mere two years, leaving little dramatic material for filmmakers. The reign of his grandson, Ramesses II (“Ramesses the Great”), on the other hand, stretched 66 years, with a trail of monumental temples. While traditionally identified as the pharaoh of the Exodus story, scholarship renders this less than definitive. Ramesses I came to the throne around 1292 BC, as Egypt reached the height of New Kingdom power, placing him at the beginning of the last great flowering of Bronze Age civilization, before its collapse a century later.
