Tag Archives: st. louis art museum

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The Sinking of the Titanic – James Cameron, M. Night Shyamalan, Max Beckmann, and Some Haiku – 100 Year Anniversary

One hundred years from this coming Saturday night, the HMS Titanic struck an iceberg, broke into pieces, and slipped into the cold Atlantic and into legend.

It would be quite a task to collect all the reams of paper, the miles of celluloid, and the billions of bytes that have been dedicated to discussing the mysteries or assigning the blame or drawing the lessons–all the visions and revisions–of that sad night.

James Cameron, the director of Titanic (newly re-released in 3D) has spent a considerable portion of his life and fortune toward both significant real life discovery and fictional storytelling about the ship.

Several years ago I used to try this Titanic joke–though it was really quite short–out on friends:

Me: “Hey, I just read on the Internet that James Cameron is going to team up with M. Night Shyamalan to make a sequel to Titanic.

Friend: No way!

Me: Yeah. It’s going to be a metaphysical, disaster thriller called “Icy Dead People.”

And as an aside, a freak iceberg–perhaps a mystical, imaginary one–would be as good as an explanation as any as to the mystery of the disintegration and sinking of M. Night’s movie career…but I digress.

To reflect rather more seriously on the Titanic tragedy though, the painting above by Max Beckmann hangs in the Saint Louis Art Museum and is a pretty effective depiction of the harsh, cold sea in contrast with the ironically warm lights of the doomed ship. Though in reality the sea was quite a bit more calm on that night–at least until the ship went down–the painting works as an expressionist piece depicting the turmoil and despair that the people must have experienced.

And, to add my own tiny poetic contribution to the titanic Titanic colloquy, here are some linked haiku:
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glimmering city
on waves, portholes like strata,
ship as metaphor

ship as metaphor
a horizontal babel
towering in waves

towering in waves
the snows from ten thousand years
chilling black waters

chilling black waters
pour through the jagged gash in
the pride of an age

the pride of an age
is settling down, down, down
the cold atlantic

__________

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Burning Rods – Anselm Kiefer – St. Louis Art Museum – Forest Park

One of my favorite pieces in the St. Louis Art Museum collection is Anselm Kiefer’s Burning Rods which Kiefer created after the Chernobyl disaster, and which is perhaps an equally apt reminder of the greater disaster that nearly was as a result of the earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan this past year (which was bad enough in any case).

The texture and details of this piece are amazing. Here is the description from SLAM’s web site.

Lead, straw, porcelain, and iron converge in a vast charred landscape of blackened furrows leading into a distant horizon. Created after the Chernobyl accident, this painting depicts a landscape ravaged by nuclear disaster. The painting’s monumental size and imposing physical bulk are matched by its ambition to address the profound issues of death, destruction, and renewal that are found in the experiences facing humanity today.”

Another favorite Kiefer piece of mine is currently in storage as the museum is throwing out a new wing (to be opened in 2013) and the vibrations from the construction were not playing nice with its delicate broken glass, or so said a docent today. Breaking of the Vessels commemorates Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany and is equally impressive in scope and detail.

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A Time for Seeing – America’s Heartland Remembers – Art Hill 9/11 Memorial – Forest Park, St. Louis

On Sunday, I wrote a sister piece to this post about simply being at the St. Louis 9/11 memorial, and the importance for me to not take photos on that day.

Today, I visited with my camera and some of the same thoughts went through my head as on Sunday. And yet, even so, I hope these photos let you experience this memorial a little yourself, to see both the scope and intimacy of this installation and the care with which it was both erected and is being visited. Even on this rainy Wednesday evening, there were visitors–a man in a business suit, a couple, a family. May God continue to bless and heal the families who lost loved ones on that day.

The memorial is scheduled to remain up until September 18th.