A Convergence
of Convergences:
A Contest.
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For more information
about this contest,
click here.
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Contest Winner No. 37.
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Shipwrecked
Desperation.
By Charles Mudede
via Matt Haber
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From the blog of Seattle's
alternative weekly paper The Stranger.
(http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/04/rock_bottom)
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Rock Bottom.
The image on the cover of today's New York Times ...
... brought to the surface of my awareness this painting:
Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream (1899)
And that painting brought to the surface this other painting.
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (1778)
But the first image, the image from rural Zimbabwe, is the true image of being stuck in life. Those young men have nowhere to go, particularly the one with the bust radio on his legs. The baked wall of the hut, the dead dust, the sole source of energy, the corn, that's not growing fast and plentifully enough—this is the rock bottom of the world. I don't think they are listening to the results of the election. Not news, but music. On the radio Oliver Mtukudzi sings "Ruki," a sad but pretty song about how certain people are just lucky ("ruki") and others are not.
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Weschler Responds.
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Friend of the Contest Matt Haber turned us on to this recent Web posting by The Stranger's Charles Mudede, relating a recent New York Times photo of desperate stasis in Zimbabwe (waiting out news of the results of the recent presidential election) to Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream (1899), in which Homer, in turn, was clearly riffing on John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark (1778). (Robert Hughes offers an interesting comparison of those two paintings in his American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, noting that in the Copley painting rescue is near—and indeed Watson did live to tell the famous tale—whereas in the Homer the lone, black shipwrecked sailor's circumstances seem decidedly less promising. Peter Wood, for his part, in an essay reachable by way of the Wikipedia entry on the painting, has suggested that, with The Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer may have been intending a commentary on the dismal situation of blacks in the post-Reconstruction South, as Lincoln's democratic vision precipitately faded during the final decades of the 19th century.)
I myself might have added Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, from 1819, to the mix,
noting how the polarities of news-spreading are now conspicuously reversed: In the Géricault and the Copley, the painters were depicting and further broadcasting imagery of at-that-time widely reported and discussed events in the news. In the Times photo, the guys in the picture are portrayed as themselves waiting out, waiting for, the news, though the same sense of shipwrecked desperation conspicuously pervades all the scenes (and people of color are prominent in each).
As for what it's like to sit there, in the comfort of our breakfast nooks, gazing on the desperation of others, I am in turn reminded once again of that Eric Fischl painting I cited a while back (see Contest Winner No. 9):
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OTHER WINNERS.
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1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper
2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter
3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth
Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler
4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen
5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem
6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic
7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin
8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker
9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park
10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky
Weschler's Second Interlude
11. Love and War by Kim Wood
12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb
13. The March by Emily Marvosh
14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson
15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn
16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb
Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler
17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper
Carnival of Convergences
Weschler's Fourth Interlude
Aftersquib to the Foregoing
18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer
19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz
20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley
A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney
Another Carnival of Convergences
21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld
22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch
An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge
23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch
26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland
Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs
27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee
Carnival of Convergences No. 3
28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn
Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler
29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss
The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler
31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel
32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen
An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler
Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler
Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 4
Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler
33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva
34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia
Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler
35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling
36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch
Carnival of Convergences No. 5
Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler
37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber
38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter
Cameras, Action! From Disney World to St. Peter's Square, the Mediative Flight From the Immediate by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 6
Convergent Postscripts by Lawrence Weschler
From Da Vinci to Duchamp, by Way of Russia by Lawrence Weschler
Venus on a Vespa, Berger on My Mind by Lawrence Weschler
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