Mao and Pluto (rich color variations)

Mathieu, Stephan. 2010. “Anamorphosis.” https://soundcloud.com/engin-da-l-k/anamorphosis.

Visitor to the Warhol exhibit says to guard, "Who is that?" pointing to a huge, mural size painting of Chairman Mao. Guard replies, "He was probably some guy famous in the seventies."

There's a photograph, maybe I imagined it, of Andy Warhol praying during a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. In the photograph it's a typical scene there, one I see almost every time I visit, of worshipers in pews, attentive to the mass as tourists roam the flanks, but in this photograph there's Andy among the crowd framed so you know it's him with the grandeur of that beautiful space and the bishop leading the mass present in the scene. [If you find a picture like the one I've described here (you the reader), please send it to me.] I wasn't particularly interested in the art of Andy Warhol when I was younger but the spirit of it was always close (if one believes in spirits) and emerged more into a conscious interest when I was studying art at University, late in my studies. That interest has nothing to do with celebrity per say rather what I sensed in the work, particularly from my chosen medium of photography, the ability to hide in plain site or amplifying the ability to mask in plain site with the same questions of purpose we are all called to (all of the living) or likely what I imagine all of the living are called to (why are we here and what are we going to do about it in the time we have). Then there are the odd coincidences in my life related to his art that amplify themselves once these synchronisms become apparent. Like the glass effigy of Chairman Mao (a likeness made from the same painting Warhol made his massive copy) found abandoned in one apartment I rented which now remains a mantle piece in my home along with a growing collection of similar kitsch-based dictator likenesses it has inspired. So it was in New York this past week that I visited the Whitney exhibition on Andy Warhol with a fervency of a communion with saints. Still, I was disappointed, not because the exhibition wasn't good (it was), rather because it failed to deliver the unanswerable or, more likely the case, that my growing experience sees the hands of curation crafting a story different than I imagined, less engaged than that which I want to see revealed there (at least to which I had secretly communed for years).

Warhol, Andy. 1973. “Mao | The Art Institute of Chicago.” 1973. http://archive.artic.edu/modern/mao/.

In the not so wild west, but wild enough to distend lives, in Jackson Wyoming, for several youthful years, while managing a custom photo lab in the final days of chemistry-based photo imaging before the commercial world went digital, I often spent my days in complete darkness with delicate processes. A literal darkness. Learning the contours and surfaces of the darkrooms and how to move in them purposefully taught me something better than the images produced. It taught me a kind of resilience to loss, the blindness of not knowing what's there and preparing for the possibility of what comes next. It was like mining, I imagine, for the earth's treasures and risking health and fortune for a chance at more or just a chance at discovering what's latent. It's the movements I recall most, not the images, though there were several wonderful photographer/adventurers that would go on to success and some fame.
Now, on a flight across the Atlantic Ocean, with a cat and child asleep in my lap and a cramped back, with Warhol's Mao on my mind, I began thinking of all the world's melodies, if all of them together would be gathered in one listening space, and after, from that single point, their secrets discovered and revealed (music as a collective), there might follow a rest or a peacefulness and a human sigh. Then the movement would take precedence (like imaging in the darkrooms) and upon re-listening (after the discovery) one melody would resolve until the next one replace it until the perfect one is found that matches our creation, satisfying all (waiting hungrily for the morning snack to arrive imagining Pump Up the Jam to the lyrics 'Soup, soup du jour"). The big news of the year, if we are permitted to mix the years and we could choose the happenings or thoughts that so move us from any time, is not from this year but three years ago when a machine called New Horizons made this photograph of Pluto, once a part of the noble nine planets of the solar system, de-graded later (like a death) via systems of classifications and professional agreements, to not-a-planet, rather a distant object among the many in the far reaches of our sun's nuclear warmth.

“The Rich Color Variations of Pluto.” 2015. Solar System Exploration: NASA Science. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/795/the-rich-color-variations-of-pluto?category=planets/dwarf-planets_pluto.