Goya's Portrait of St. Ambrose

I would like to say a few words about this spooky and darkly beautiful painting done by Francisco de Goya in about 1796 or so that hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

           First off, the painting is quite big; bigger than the biggest flat screen t.v. on your block, say. Here sits St. Ambrose in his bishop vestments emphasized boldly in white and gold, huge beard and tall hat with a large open book on his lap and quill pen poised to write. He is looking upwards. The background is pure black darkness. Out of the total nothingness we see St. Ambrose huge, imposing with a tortured look upwards towards his God. His expression indicates that a communion with God in all his immense power is about to take place and is no small matter.
          This bishop seems to tell us with his look that when the awesome force of God hits you you feel it in your body and soul and are made to remember your own earthly limitations by being totally exhausted from such an experience.He looks up as if to say, "O  Lord, one more time and then let me rest tomorrow night, let me rest for one night until the overwhelming force of your truth blasts my consciousness once again." The man looks like a tortured soul.
          The painting itself demands attention. Out of a deep darkness emerges the holy man in his elegant clothing on the cusp of another direct communication blast wave. Here comes the light. He's got his paper and pen ready. He's got that look. I imagine he takes a deep breath. He is outside of time.

Poem of the Month (March) Larry Fopote

                                                   Tantrum In The Lockeroom

                  
               Gee, how many nails can I fit into this hammer
               and how many hours has the t.v. been on?
               Another Dollar Store is being built in town
               And no body likes M.C. Hammer anymore

                Why must we throttle and king prattle thru life lying about almost everything?
                Have we no guardian angels to helps us seek truth in this day and age?
                You mean to tell me, lowest of lows, that they don't have an app for that?

                We'll then to hell with it. I'm gonna throw a tantrum and shake my brooding soldier
                And imagine we're in the locker room
                And its half time of the biggest game of our lives.



Larry Fopote

Pilot Mountain, North Carolina

About the Poet:
Larry Fopote was born in Boon, West Virginia in 1974. When he was seven years old, his father, who was a Cardiologist landed a job at a prestigious hospital in Boston, Massachusetts moving the whole family in 1981.

From the age of seven until the age of twenty he was a big city kid. Then in 1994 he dropped out of Boston College and went to live deep in the woods in Southern Canada for a year on his own. The experience would have a profound impact on his life. He began writing poems during this time and eventually his first book of poems, 'Cry Me A River' was published by Wild Goat Press a year later. His poem, 'An American Gigolo With A Stutter' was included in the Anthology 'Best Mid-American Poems' of 1996 as selected by Jim Daniels. In 1997, Mr. Fopote absconded from society once again, this time relocating to a trailer in the middle of the desert ninety miles south of Alberqurque, New Mexico. Here he wrote his second book of poems entitled, "Taco Abuses and other Yellow Flowers" published a year later by the New Mexico State Press in collaboration with Milk It Arts Ltd. His poem, 'Fake Flinchers Make Lousy Bedfellows" was included in the Anthology 'Best  Mid-American Poems of 1999. That year he went back to Boston College to finish his degree in Social Economics and graduated in May 2001. He wrote only a handful of poems in those two years. In 2002 he dropped out of poetry all together explaining to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "There's so much bad poetry that its an avalanche. There's so many hungry poet dogs out there that I might as well let 'em keep yakking and eating eachother." He used his student loan money to finance a trip to Europe the last two months of 2002. He wrote only one poem in Paris, and legend has it it was a real doozy but he gave it to a waitress to whom it was dedicated and no one else has ever read it. In 2003 he was invited to give a Poetry Reading at Michigan State University as part of their Young Poet's Series.
 After reading the first two poems it became apparent he was intoxicated and Fopote stopped in the middle of the third poem and went on a fifteen minute rant on how technology was killing attention spans which spun into him insulting the crowd for their own stupidities. Somebody jokingly tossed a banana up and it hit him in the foot and this so infuriated Fopote he jumped into the crowd causing a melee. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He was arrested again in 2004 in Maine for possession of Cocaine. Three months later he marries a school teacher and they have one child and live in a cabin in Maine woods. in 2005 despite the incident in Michigan, he is asked to read his poems and does at Vermont University's, 'Young Poet's On the Rise' Series. By all accounts he's the most interesting and most authentically 'blue-collar poet' out of the group. He continues to work odd jobs to raise his child but in late 2006 in busted for possession of Cocaine. His wife and child leave him. His two previous books of poems are selling well for such small presses and were in the process of being reprinted. In 2007 His wife remarries and a long custody battle over their child ensues. While intoxicated crashes his car in Montreal and spends a month in the hospital.
While in bed writes first new poems in several years. The Book becomes 'Hokie Fudge Incinerator', a series of twenty eight poems. It wins the New England Young Poet's Award for 2008 and is nominated  for best book of poems by several magazines and journals.  He's arrested for drunk driving later in the year and also is beaten up by six men outside a bar in Manhattan during a visit to see his family. 2009 loses all award money and loan money in a three day gambling binge in Las Vegas. Arrested for a disorderly conduct outside a strip club in Vegas. Checks into a rehab facility in Maine in November of 2009. Stays until May 2010 when he marries a lady he meets while there and they have one child. They have been living happily tucked away in the woods in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina ever since and Missing Manifest Blog is glad to have received Mr. Fopote's first public poem in over three years and we think it should be our poem of the month for March.

Cleveland Museum of Art and Its Love for Technology

          Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art is the new gallery space devoted to using touch-screens as a way to enhance information about various art works in the collection and as a way to interact more directly with a particular piece. Touch the screen in one spot and it may give historical context to the actual painting that hangs three or four feet behind the flat-screen on the wall. Touch the screen in another spot and it might give you information on how the painting's particular process is carried out. On another screen you can drag your finger and it gives you a splatter/drip effect with which you can fill up the screen with colors and it informs you that you're painting like Jackson Pollack used to do.(Of course Pollack had his canvas on the ground and would physically encircle it, but nevermind) Kids love it!
          On another screen, this one equipped with a camera, you see your self and when you strike a pose, the screen searches a particular sculpture in the museum's database that some how matches up to the position your body pose is in. It then takes the picture with the art work next to you posing and you can email it to a friend. People get a kick out of seeing their pose linked with a Greek statue or a Religious figure. They laugh and have fun with it and a trip to the museum should be fun and loose and a sense of play should be encouraged to an extent.
          The problem, and it is a major problem from my point of view, is that the museum is elevating the technology over the experience of looking at the actual physical artwork itself. In Gallery One, in one area there is a flat touch screen and three or four feet behind it is a Picasso from his Cubist period. All day long kids and students, young and old, go up to the screen and touch it and learn about the historical context of Cubism. They can drag with their finger the different parts of the painting on the screen and re-arrange them in collage fashion and be silly with the arrangement. They can do all kinds of things with the touch-screen. But all day long what barely nobody did, was to go up to the actual painting and just look and take it in. Cleveland, we have a problem.

          Another aspect of CMA's emphasis on technology for the experience of the casual visitor is in the ability to sign out i-pad's equipped with a special art app so that when you wander around the museum and stop at certain pieces in the collection with an 'Art Lens' distinction on the placard, you raise up the i-pad and look at the piece thru the i-pad screen (thereby forfeiting an experience with the painting in its real size and presence) and you learn all sorts of historical context or scientific analysis on the layers underneath the painting or even little video tutorials on process. I can't help but to think we are infatuated with more and more information while at the expense of less and less meaning. It's a big mess when it comes to approaching a painting and absorbing its presence.
This culture has made mere 'image' everything. I'm all for using new technologies to enhance the learning about and better appreciating of artworks and I'm all for finding ways to get young children interested in the art museum but I'm not for any of it (and neither should the director) when these technologies are to the detriment of experiencing the actual art work. Everybody needs to take a deep breath and figure a way to help people realize that a picture of a Van Gogh on a digital screen or in a book or on a website is not the same and not as real as the actual painting. At this rate, in fifty years there will just be ultra hi-def digital reproductions of paintings hanging up in museums while the real ones collect dust behind the scenes and no one will seem to mind very much at all.