REGION > COLUMBUS, GEORGIA
NOVEMBER 5, 2018

I recently spoke with artist Jonathan VanDyke to reflect on his exhibition, The Patient Eye, at The Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia. Having known VanDyke’s work for almost a decade, I was struck by the multifaceted approach he took with research, performance and presentation. The exhibition consisted of two elements, two acts of looking: a 48-hour performance, during which VanDyke stood and observed 16 quilts, one at a time, for 3 hours each. All the quilts were selected by the artist from the museum’s collection. Simultaneously there was an exhibition curated by the artist with objects selected from the museum’s collection alongside his own paintings. Through our conversation I hoped to understand–what does it mean to have a patient eye today?

Daisy Nam: Could you talk about how this exhibition pulled together multiple strands of your practice?

Jonathan VanDyke:  For years I’ve been coming to painting through a holistic lens that incorporates the making, display, reception, and circulation of paintings themselves, along with the “performance of painters.” How are artists perceived by the wider world? How has painting maintained its persistence and high value in the market, and why? How do art viewers perform today, in the time of art fairs and social media? Around 2013 I started to see viewers taking selfies in front of my work. Painting became backdrop. This performance tackles some of these issues while quietly asserting a different way of looking and experiencing.

My paintings address legacies of gestural abstraction, abstract expressionism, and color field painting. I work on re-orientating these forms. Cutting up painted textiles into patterns that quote from American quilts is one way to do this. I also collaborate with other artists like dancers, who make the marks on the work, and frequently use everyday materials like used t-shirt fabric. Authorship becomes complicated.

Bradley Teal Ellis, David Rafael Botana, and Jonathan VanDyke working together in the artist’s studio, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

In my most recent work, the sheer amount of pieces in one painting and its overall compositional complexity rewards the viewer with sustained observation. In Columbus I observed two astonishing quilts that each had more than 10,000 pieces. I want to make a work like that.

DN: To start, could you talk about The Columbus Museum where your recent exhibition took place?

JVD: The museum is unusual because it holds both a collection of American art and a collection of historical objects and material culture of the Chattahoochee Valley region. I spent many days of research in the storage vaults. I could be viewing a Hans Hoffman drawing, then walk a few yards and handle parts of a cotton gin.

The museum is connected, by its charter, to the local school district, and it has a strong emphasis on education and community enrichment. And the museum is free! In New York City, $25 admission fees are now the norm, and this certainly limits access. I got the sense that the audience in Columbus felt ownership over the institution. There’s also a large military base in Columbus–Fort Benning–and throughout my performance I saw many visitors in uniform. That’s something you almost never see in New York art museums.

Jonathan VanDyke, The Patient Eye (Day 6), 2018. Photo by: L Fleming. Courtesy of the artist.

DN: How did the idea for the exhibition come about?

JVD: Jonathan Frederick Walz, who recently became the museum’s Curator of American Art, contacted me early in 2017 to discuss commissioning a performance that addressed their collection. He was organizing a season of projects around the idea of artistic labor. I came to the museum with a strong interest in re-thinking divisions between “high” and “low,” and I was really excited to discover that the museum was an ideal place to put these ideas into practice. The Patient Eye was the museum’s first presentation of performance art. I spent three trips researching their collection, the institutional culture and workings of the museum itself, and the surrounding region.

My project affected nearly every aspect of the museum’s operations. During my visits I asked a lot of questions to suss out the “norms” of the institution. The performance inserts itself within the life of the institution. I want this action to be a point of illumination, not a wedge or a shadow. 

The preparation for the performance was far more elaborate than I think anyone expected. The whole institution was so open and generous with me. I don’t think I heard a “no” once. As artists we’re constantly negotiating for space, time, and recognition, and this can be a drag on your production as well as your confidence. The museum’s attitude of support gave me room to push my own limits, and perhaps also theirs, and do my best work. Jonathan Walz and I came up with the idea for me to curate an exhibition. This allowed me to present my thinking to the public in a more long-term manner than the performance alone.

Detail quilt storage for Jonathan VanDyke, The Patient Eye, 2018. Photo by Jim Cawthorne. Courtesy of the artist.

DN: What did the audience see or experience when they saw your performance? 

JVD: The whole performance took place in the central rotunda of the museum. It’s this oval space that is three stories high. The quilts are so big and graphic that you could see them clearly in the distance as you entered the building. So even if you didn’t intend to be the audience for the performance, you couldn’t avoid seeing these objects. As with many of my performances, you may not have realized I was “performing,” but my unwavering attention, I hope, prompts you to wonder: What is that guy doing? Why is he still there?

I chose quilts that had rarely, if ever, been on public view. I wanted to attend to objects that had become nearly “invisible,” and make them visible. At the same time, I’m standing there, fully visible––but I could also be a bystander. It’s not entirely clear. I don’t make an elaborate entrance and there’s no stage or separation from the audience. I’m already doing what most visitors do in a museum–­–looking.

I designed the performance so that one quilt was displayed flat on a low platform, mimicking its original orientation as a bed cover. Simultaneously, one quilt was hung vertically, like a painting, except it was in the midst of the space so that you could see both its back and front–­–similar to how I display my own paintings. When it’s time came, the flat quilt would be moved to a vertical position through a rigging system pulling it into the air, almost like a curtain rising. That always felt like a dramatic moment. My stillness was a counterpoint to that action.

Jonathan VanDyke, Folding quilt for The Patient Eye (Day 3), 2018. Photo by: Sean Russell. Courtesy of the artist.

Jonathan VanDyke, Folding quilt for The Patient Eye (Day 5), 2018. Photo by: Sean Russell. Courtesy of the artist.

After a quilt was “performed with” it was taken to a large table off to the side, where it was prepped for storage. This was “offstage,” yet readily visible, and I wanted the audience to have access to this process. So much planning and finesse goes into caring for textiles. Volunteers were folding and handling the quilts, and this opportunity for contact with historic material had a significant impact on them. You’re folding the quilt like a blanket, realizing its weight and functional relationship to your body, but putting it in this special archival box, where it rests, as a museum object.

DN: The performance sounds like a ritualistic process, which the audience, including the volunteers, could access and experience.

JVD: I once visited the Duomo in Milan during a religious holiday, and they had a series of paintings that were hung high in the air, temporarily, almost like flags or banners. I love this idea of a painting as an event in time, removed from the wall. I’ve also seen Khmer statuary exhibited in museums in the West as priceless objects on pedestals, but in the National Museum in Phnom Penh, these objects are still actively worshipped and given offerings. I was so affected by seeing that.

I wanted to give quilts, which are both art and objects with a history of use in a domestic space, the same time, space, and language that we give to painting. Modern museums, contemporary galleries, and art fairs all use clean, white wall as a standard for presentation. This ritualizes or creates a “sacred” space for art, placing it in a purified context, removed from everyday life. Some scholars have traced the “white cube” to its origin in Protestant churches that were “whitewashed” after the Reformation. Art has always been connected to spirituality, but in the global art marketplace, it’s a taboo to talk about religion or spirituality in relation to art.

But I digress! What I’m circling back to is that quilts live in a hybrid spaces of the sacred and profane. In some cultures, like the Amish, you could describe the patient work of the quilter as a ritual or a form of veneration. In The Patient Eye, I’m ritualizing pedestrian actions–standing, observing, contemplating, being silent. I want to stretch these actions into almost impossibly long, extended gestures. Have you seen the photos of the Hindu Sadhus who hold one arm in the air for years on end? Persistence transforms the commonplace into the sacred.

Installation and performance view, The Patient Eye, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

DN: I haven’t, it sounds incredible. I can see how making a ritual out of a series of actions can produce meaning. Is performing these acts in public with others also part of that ritual?

JVD: It was important that my experience of looking at quilts be shared. In addition to project volunteers, many of whom were retirees, the museum connected me with the Art Department at Columbus State University. Mike McFalls, a faculty member there, supported the project from the beginning and involved his undergraduates, who took shifts being present in the galleries. Some of the best moments brought together an older volunteer and a student, who were otherwise strangers. Quilts themselves are often made and passed on intergenerationally.

Many art students, volunteers, museum staff, and visitors spent time standing and silently studying the quilts next to me. There was one art student who stood for five hours. These were the most powerful moments–­–standing in silence with a stranger, together directing all of your attention to the quilt and meditating upon it.

DN: Did you give them any prompts on how to look? Or did you let them have their own process of looking?

JVD: I met with all of the volunteers in advance and spoke about my intentions. With the students, we arranged for them to see the museum’s storage vault and speak with the staff so that they would have a deeper connection with the institution. I wanted this to be a rich experience for them. I had really transformative experiences in college working in museum storage vaults. But besides asking that they remain silent and put down their devices, I expected them to find their own process of looking.

“Standing up” for something is important for me, physically as well as metaphorically. I’m standing the whole time and I train to do that. For the students, doing something for that length of time and with that degree of focus, I think that’s where their participation can really open up a different way of thinking. An hour goes by and we’re doing exactly the same thing. It’s a form of insistence. But the mind is very active. As time passes and you’re only focused on one thing, you start to access memories and areas of thinking that–– given all of the distraction we live with––are usually buried and inaccessible.

DN: And the rigor of it too. Did you have a choreography of how you moved while looking?

JVD: I had three hours per quilt. After a couple of quilts the timing of my movements became consistent, even though I didn’t have a watch or clock. During the first 30 minutes I would stand far away and just be taking it in and getting to know the object. I’d then move a little closer until the quilt was the primary thing in my field of vision. I’d see what else became apparent, especially in terms of patterns and color relationships. During the second hour I would do a really careful analysis of the object, including looking at the back of the quilt. In the third hour I would stand back and have long moments of being really still in my body, focusing on my stance and my breath while looking.

Jonathan VanDyke, The Patient Eye (Day 3), 2018. Photo by: Sean Russell. Courtesy of the artist.

DN: Would you zero in on some details?

JVD: Oh yes. I would study individual stitches and the wear on one piece of fabric versus another. In one quilt, a blue-and-white “Irish chain” from the turn of the last century, the maker used only two fabrics, a plain white and a flowered blue calico. The blue pieces revealed great diversity in wear. Some looked almost new. I found this incredible detail! A few pieces looked like they had been part of the hem of a dress: one side was faded, then there was the worn line of a crease, and on the other side of this crease the fabric looked bright and new, like you would find if you undid the hem on a pair of old pants. 

These details allow you to “piece” together a story of the object and its maker. Had she originally made this blue fabric into a dress? Once the dress was worn out, did she cut it into pieces for a quilt? Did she save the scraps of fabric left over from making the dress, maybe even for years? Was the Irish-chain pattern, with its relatively small pieces, best suited for these scraps?

Unknown maker, Double Irish Chain Quilt, ca. 1900. Cotton, 85 x 69 in. Gift of Mr. A. Stephen Johnson in memory of Mrs. John T. (Ola Miller) Johnson, Miss Lura Frances Johnson, Mrs. Aldine S. (Mary Johnson) Johnson. The Columbus Museum. G. 1996.18 1/4.

This slow analysis of details was something I practiced in my 2011 performance observing a Jackson Pollock painting for 40 hours at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. I never physically touched Pollock’s Convergence, but I would sometimes stand an inch in front of the surface. I began to understand Pollock’s mastery of materials. But careful looking reveals your initial assumptions don’t hold up. You understand his process was a very active back and forth, with a heightened sense of intentionality. It’s the same when you’re looking at a really extraordinary quilt. The quilt offers you aesthetic pleasure, and you take that in. You also discover how the maker has utilized both thoughtfulness and improvisation together, in a way that makes a great piece of art.

Jonathan VanDyke, The Long Glance, 2011. 40-hour performance with Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, 1952. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Courtesy of the artist.

I wanted to give as much time and attention to quilts as we’ve given to iconic works of American art. Frank Stella’s early paintings, for example, are described as a breakthrough in geometric abstraction. These quilts are large-scale geometric abstractions made a hundred years before.

Angeline Pitts, Lone Star Quilt, 1875–1910. Cotton and plain feedsacks, 85 1/2 x 75 in. Gift of Mrs. Melvyn Ann Pitts Williams. The Columbus Museum G.2000.14.

DN: There could be something precarious about standing. It’s as if at any point you can walk away. But you choose to stand and very still. It heightens the choice.   

JVD: We tend to think of standing as a temporary gesture, but there are exceptions. Standing for this performance lined up with the context of Columbus being a military town––standing at attention is part of military life. You can also stand guard, or stand at watch. Is that a position of power? A position in which you offer protection, while also being vulnerable? In gay culture, historically there was the idea of the “watch queen,” who stood guard to keep an eye out for the cops, while others are cruising and hooking up in a public place, like a restroom. The watcher in that role is both a voyeur and a protector. 

And sitting would be too comfortable. I wanted to honor the objects and be present in a way that was challenging physically. If I’m sitting I can be read as another object in the room, with its own weight and heaviness. Sitting requires that you “fold” the body. If the quilts were unfolded from their storage boxes as they were brought into view, then I also should be “unfolded.” 

DN: It’s not only standing, but also watching or looking as you mentioned earlier, and stretching out these actions. 

JVD:  Yes, watching, looking, observing. We’re in an era in which attentiveness is politicized and commodified. Social media and digital technology demand our attention/inattention. We’ve become distraction addicts. We have a President who is constantly throwing out distractions to divert our attention from policies and issues that are destroying people’s well being and chipping away at democracy.

Jonathan VanDyke, The Patient Eye (Day 4), 2018. Photo by: Sean Russell. Courtesy of the artist.

Attention is valuable. Committing to looking at things that aren’t being looked at––there’s a strong politics to that. These objects are also gendered, and many are anonymous. The performance is a call to give attention back to objects made by women. They were not made primarily for sale or for an art exhibition––the chief demands of today’s art world––but for the enrichment of the home.

DN: How did you choose the quilts for your performance?

JVD: Quilting happens across ethnic, racial, and class lines. You have an opportunity to look at a really diverse swath of American culture through the study of quilts. I decided to focus on functional quilts. There have been various movements in which quilts were made as art objects for display. We have very little, if any, historical documentation about the quilts I chose, and it’s possible that they were shown in public spaces at some point. In the late 19th century, making “crazy” quilts became a popular pastime, and I’ve read about large exhibitions of them. This style of quilt is less ordered and patterned in its piecing, and often uses expensive fabric scraps, like silks, with elaborate embroidered over-stitching with colored threads. The museum has an extraordinary crazy quilt in its collection. I think it was from the 1890’s. The maker wrote to governors of every US state to ask for fabric scraps cut from their ties and handkerchiefs.

Ultimately I decided I wanted to look at objects that showed clear signs of household wear. I’m really interested in an object made out of necessity––­you're making a blanket because you need one, and because every scrap is valuable. And yet it is also an object of art and an index, so to speak, of time and place.

These quilts were embedded with stains of the household and of the body, which might be their “aura,” to bring in Walter Benjamin’s idea. People slept underneath them, maybe they dreamt and maybe had sex or even gave birth or died next to these objects. Once a quilt is in a collection, the museum follows protocols on how to handle them, and they can “treat” a quilt, but they can’t just wash it as it’s original owner would have. The stain becomes indelible. As someone who works with drips and stains and moving bodies in my own work, I feel a strong kinship with this type of material.

DN: So the backs of the quilts were as important in your performance?

JVD: Yes, I looked at all of the backs. It’s not unusual for advanced quilters to examine the back, where they can assess the stitching, and I saw some visitors do that. The museum’s Curator of History, Rebecca Bush, also became quite interested in these quilt backs and documented each one. 

Gee’s Bend quilters are known for how they improvise with previously used fabrics. The back of the Gee’s Bend quilt that I looked at used Hershey Chocolate Corporation sugar sacks from Cuba. The quilt was made in the 70’s, but those sacks might have been much older. I was born in Hershey, Pennsylvania, not far from the chocolate factory, and I wonder how these sacks came to her.

Stella Mae Pettway, Star of Bethlehem Quilt (verso, detail), 1970. Cotton, 94 x 93 in. Gift of Calynne and Lou Hill. THe Columbus Museum, G. 2002.41.2.

DN: There’s something about the backside–an alternative side of a story, narrative or image–that you’re attuned to. I thought of your curated exhibition and how you found two photographs of Alma Thomas. These two photographs were stuck back-to-back, their stories were meant to be told together. It never about a singular story.

JVD: The museum holds the personal archive of the great abstract painter Alma Thomas, who was from Columbus. I found two of her family photographs from the 1920’s that were stuck together. On one side was a photograph of Alma’s sister. Their mother was a dressmaker, and her sister is pictured standing outside, smiling and wearing a very fashionable outfit. On the other side is an image of Alma sitting and smiling as she looks up from her papers, in what was probably her own home. While these types of images must exist in many family’s archives, I don’t think we see them circulated broadly in American popular culture­–that is, early 20th century images of woman of color working in their own private spaces and enjoying leisure time. I wanted that to be seen. And because I work with so many textiles in my own abstract paintings, and both of my parents are skilled at sewing, I was excited to discover that Alma Thomas grew up surrounded by fabrics and patterns. The wallpaper I made for the exhibition included some images taken from a Godey’s Ladies Book that was owned by Thomas’s mother. Godey’s was published in New York and was like the Vogue or Bazaar of the 19th century. As a kid who grew up in the countryside, magazines like that were a space of fantasy and aspiration.

Unknown maker, Photo of Miss John Maurice Thomas, ca. 1920s. Silver gelatin
print on paper. 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. Gift of Miss John Maurice Thomas in memory of her parents John H. and Amelia W. Cantey Thomas and her sister Alma Woodsey Thomas. The Columbus Museum. G.1994.20.215A.

Unknown maker, Photo of Miss Alma Thomas, ca. 1920s. Silver gelatin
print on paper. 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. Gift of Miss John Maurice Thomas in memory of her parents John H. and Amelia W. Cantey Thomas and her sister Alma Woodsey Thomas. The Columbus Museum. G.1994.20.215B.

DN: Earlier you talked about quilting as a democratic medium, available to all regardless of race and class. Could you talk more about the gendered aspect? The makers were almost all female at the time, in the early 20th century? 

JVD: It’s very rare to find quilts made by men before the 1960’s. I certainly know of gay men who quilt now. Perhaps that is related to the legacy of the AIDS Quilt within our community, but I don’t know. I can’t really speak more broadly to who makes quilts today, except to note that after the Whitney Museum held a major exhibition of quilts in the early 1970s, the American quilting craze caught fire anew and has never really dwindled.

Gender was something that I gave a lot of consideration to in my performance. A friend from grad school, Sherri Lynn Wood, teaches improvisational quilting techniques across the US. My conversations with her were especially helpful. They prompted me to write a long essay for the exhibition. I am a cisgendered male artist coming from New York City to choose and observe quilts in an institution in the South, and I placed my body in relation to these objects. I wanted to be careful that there wouldn’t be a connotation that my presence was one of “authority.” I didn’t want it to look like any of this was a novelty for me or that my relationship to these objects was tangential. I felt it was important that I be transparent about my position.

I designed the installation to center and re-orient the institution around these rarely-seen objects. There was a long period where a male student and I were standing together for hours, silently paying homage to a quilt, you might say listening to it. I couldn’t help but feel that certain entrenched power dynamics were loosening up in those moments. That may sound idealistic, given our current politics, but I think these small gestures have to be enacted, or practiced, often and in real time.

DN: There was a campaign for Calvin Klein last season that seems completely at the other end of the spectrum of anonymity. The Kardashians are all wrapped in quilts in a barn.

JVD: Yes, they’re lounging on red-and-white quilts. 

When I saw this ad, I was comparing it to a 19th century photo of a circle of Dakota women quilting, appearing much less relaxed. Of course, you had to hold very still for early photographs, which has unfairly created an impression of 19th-century subjects as stiff. But the contrast with the Kardashians is still clear. There is something about them lying down, objects for the gaze, on top of these objects which were made through the labor of anonymous women. I don’t know what it connotes to place all of this together, but there is a semiotic question that might be parsed out. The quilt becomes a sign. What does that sign denote to the audience? 

DN: There is a “self-made” quality of the quilters and that of the Kardashians’ celebrity-dom. It was as if the ad was saying this is an American, and more specifically these are American women. But quilters were usually making these as a gift or for the betterment of one’s own home, whereas what they are doing is for profit, fame, and for themselves.

Calvin Klein Fall 2018 campaign with Kardashians.

Dakota farm women and children at a quilting party, c. 1885.

Do you think because quilts are considered craft, this type of work remains unknown? Even though there’s an incredible amount of skill and technological knowledge that goes into making these objects.

JVD: [Linda] Nochlin’s essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? holds up here. Structural barriers prevent women from entering into the art world. Most women in 19th century America didn’t have access to academic art training, time, or resources to pursue what were thought of as “higher” arts, like painting.

In every cultural moment there are people who figure out forms of artistic expression outside of the academy. But we lose sight of these objects because they don’t line up with the dominant story of art. One family who donated a large group of quilts to the Columbus Museum stated that they saved them at the last minute from a bonfire, thanks to a family member who recognized their significance. I was just doing research at The Library Company of Philadelphia. I spent time with the c.1880 notebooks of Daisy Lowengrund. She was making these incredible cut paper compositions that look like something from The Bauhaus decades later. What if Lowengrund had been given the same opportunities and respect given to male artists?

Jonathan VanDyke, The Patient Eye (Day 5), 2018. Photo by: L Fleming. Courtesy of the artist.

Daisy Nam is the assistant Director of the Carpenter Center for the Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jonathan VanDyke is a visual artist based in New York City. Recent solo exhibitions have appeared at 1/9unosunove in Rome, Loock Galerie Berlin, abc Berlin, Four Boxes Gallery in Denmark, and Scaramouche in New York. Recent performances and commissions have appeared at Storm King Art Center, Este Arte in Uruguay, The Power Plant in Toronto, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, The National Academy Museum, and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. His work has been widely reviewed in many publications, including Art Forum, TimeOut New York, Art Papers, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Modern Painters, Art Review, The Buffalo Review, and Creative Correspondence. VanDyke received his MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School at Bard College. He also studied at the Glasgow School of Art, The University of Glasgow, The Atlantic Center for the Arts (where he was mentored by artist Paul Pfeiffer), and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has been a faculty fellow at The University of Chicago, Illinois State University, The Pennsylvania Governor’s School for International Studies, and Krabbesholm Academy in Denmark, and currently serves on the faculty of both the Low-Residency and Devised Performance MFA programs at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and on the faculty of The Sotheby's Institute in New York.

jonathanvandyke.com

The Columbus Museum brings American art and history to life for the communities of the Chattahoochee Valley.

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1251 Wynnton Road
Columbus, GA 31906
information@columbusmuseum.com

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