2 exhibits at Portland Museum of Art show off photography, decorative arts

At the Portland Museum of Art, photography and so-called “decorative arts” (or “applied arts”) currently occupy center stage: “Ming Smith: Jazz Requiem — Notations in Blue” (through June 7) and “Precious: The Value of Ornament” (through July 19). Neither genre is often highlighted in this depth, so both are refreshing in their own ways. They also illustrate the PMA’s desire to mount exhibitions that more fully represent the tremendous diversity of the museum’s holdings.

MEANS TO AN END

Ming Smith, now on the cusp of 80, is an intriguing personality. Part of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, she pioneered forms of photographic expression that departed from formal portraiture and street scenes that had characterized the work of other Black photographers preceding her (i.e.: Gordon Parks, Anthony Barboza—an early influence—and others). It also differed from the work of Black colleagues with whom she interacted as the first female member of the Kamoigne Workshop in Harlem (Roy DeCarava, Louis Draper, James “Jimmie” Manus et alia). Her work stands out from these icons by its highly emotive nature, a quality arrived at by her use of multiple image-manipulation techniques.

Many of these techniques have been used by earlier innovators of the medium. For instance, photographers have been hand-coloring their images since Swiss painter Johann Baptist Isenring applied a mixture of gum Arabic and pigments to daguerreotypes in 1839. Another Ming practice, blurred focus, was employed effectively by Uta Barth, Bill Jacobsen, Sally Mann and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others, in the 1970s. 

Yet Smith’s objectives are different. She was drawn to Europe in the 1970s, where the work of many Black photographers and other artists was received with more enthusiasm than in her native country (she is Detroit-born, Ohio-raised). Smith was married to jazz saxophonist David Murray, with whom she traveled extensively. The exhibition title references the jazz club milieu that became one of her most enduring subjects. 

Through the use of blurred focus and long exposures, many of these jazz club images become abstracted in a way that conveys the syncopations of the music — its backbeat, comping, call and response, improvisation, and so on. An image like “Untitled (Jazz Series)” from the early 1980s records the movement of lights in a way so abstract that it appears as nothing so much as notes on a musical staff.

Smith encountered many famous photographers, including Brassaï (her homage “For Brassaï” is reminiscent of his Montmartre café scenes) and Lisette Model. She also absorbed the work of others through books and exhibitions. We can see traces of Diane Arbus in her photo of Carnival de Paris, “Social Distancing.” In “Self-Portrait as Josephine” of 1986, Smith dresses herself as another personality — here Josephine Baker — something Cindy Sherman was becoming famous for at that time. We can intuit her love of Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” in works like “Lady at the Louvre” and “Survivor.” 

Smith’s stunning portrait of choreographer Judith Jameson feels more aligned with what her Black colleagues were doing, except for the lighting and high contrast. Most of the picture is a void of black curtains in a darkened room. Jameson is illuminated by a sliver of light between the parted drapes. This touches on Smith’s distinctive brand of expressiveness. The dramatic chiaroscuro intensifies our emotional response. It is not just a photo; it is a feeling.

This signature resonates throughout the exhibition. Her use of soft focus is not merely visual but captures something more abstract and ephemeral about her subjects. In “Nuns in Rome,” for instance, it adds mystery and a sense of spiritual presence in the image. “Sun Ra Space II” captures the charismatic trancelike performances of the composer, musician and poet. “She is able to make the aural visual,” reads the perfectly articulated wall label, “… created by her technical innovation in lighting, shutter speed, and relative movements of camera and subject.”

To these same expressionistic ends, Smith tints some of her photos and directly paints on others. She applies yellow pigment to “Sunflowers 3,” brightening the dark, heavy skies of the original photo, visible across the gallery. Called “Goghing with Darkness and Light,” she shot the image after asking their van driver to stop along the side of the road in Germany because the scene reminded her of van Gogh’s famous paintings of sunflower fields. 

“Leaning Tower of Pisa” is “enhanced,” as she says, with ribbons of color that appear like streamers in the foreground, heightening our tactile perception of the image and also casting it not only as joyful, but specifically, through the presence of a Black man on one of its tiers, as Black joy. (Black joy is another significant throughline of the exhibition.) 

Finally, there is something luxurious about the oversized format of these images, several never before printed. They monumentalize everyday moments, radiating a pure love for life, people and the beauty of nature.

ESSENCE OR EMBELLISHMENT?

Over 25 percent of the Portland Museum of Art’s collection is decorative art. It represents one of the fastest growing areas of acquisition. Years ago, I’d pass vitrines filled with these objects feeling disappointed that many people just gave them a cursory glance on their way to the “real” art. This was due partially to their siting in passageways, by elevators or other transitory locations, partially to the lack of context in the way they were presented.

That changed with “Passages In American Art,” the museum’s rethinking of their collection, most strikingly with a presentation of crystal sugar bowls and casters exhibited within the context of a discussion of Maine’s role in importing sugar that was planted and harvested by enslaved people on Caribbean islands like Cuba. This case was nestled within a larger examination of the way rich colonists’ thirst for luxury items drove this sort of exploitation. I would never look at another sugar bowl without the awareness of the larger issues at play in their production and use.

“Precious” offers more essential contextualization, sparking questions such as: Why do we silo decorative arts as qualitatively different from so-called “fine” art? Why do we value them differently? When does a three-dimensional object apotheose from “decorative” to sculpture? 

Luckily “Precious” takes no firm position, which helped me clarify for myself, without assigning greater or lesser value to either, that there are most certainly differences between these categories. They have to do with creative intent, with what is added or “extra” and what is innate, and with the presence or absence of conceptual framework.

First, however, an incontrovertible similarity. What all the objects on display have in common is, principally, rigorous craft and technique—whether that means painting on porcelain or on canvas, manipulating clay and glazes, blowing glass, working with precious metals and both precious and semi-precious stones, employing beading and so on.

So, what makes, for instance, a circa 1900 pliqué-à-jour pendant with an enormous emerald by René Lalique a “decorative” object and Lauren Fensterstock’s “When a Third Sun” (made of glass, vintage crystal, quartz and mixed media) a “sculpture?” To my mind, it has to do primarily with creative intent. Lalique’s stunning pendant was conceived as an adornment to beautify the body, a cherished possession the wearer certainly loved, but that also telegraphed ideas about her sense of style, sophistication and social status. It was something “additional” rather than essential. 

Conversely, the materials and skill inherent in Fensterstock’s sparkling sculpture are a means to an end, a way to express meaning, here signifying Buddhist beliefs of impermanence—of material, of earthly life, of conceptual forms, and so on. The idea is primary, while the materials and craft are in service to the idea.

More closely related, yet separated by intent, are a 19th-century unicorn figurine made of glazed earthenware, hand-painted enamel and gilt, and Katie Stout’s “Yellow Edith,” a massive “vase” of glazed and lustered ceramic. The unicorn, in its diminutive size and cutesy fantasy, is essentially a kitschy tchotchke of no utility. Stout’s vase is also kitsch and sans utility, but in a knowing way that challenges the very messages the unicorn implies (such as appealing to—if not also made by and for—women). As the accompanying brochure informs us, “Stout is primarily interested in interrogating traditional narratives about beauty, glamour, and kitsch,” which she does “by pushing ‘beautiful’ objects to almost grotesque extremes.”

Some objects need no comparison to elicit interesting quandries, none better than a pier mirror from 1917 called “Maiden with Parasol.” It is reverse-painted on glass with an image of a petticoated woman admiring a bird singing on the stem of an enormous flower. But before we have time to relegate this to the realm of “decorative art,” we notice that the image was painted by Rockwell Kent, much better known for his monumental landscapes. So, does the fact that it was painted by a great painter make it art? To me, no, because it is, again, extra decoration added to a utilitarian object. 

Beads in this exhibition — commonly associated with jewelry — here are used instead as a material for sculpture in Brian Smith’s “Gay Bar” (a beaded shell communicating messages of environmental concern, queer places of gathering and more). Jeffrey Gibson uses beads to produce a sculpture that signals Indigenous and queer identities. Ornamentation in both these objects is a carrier of meaning, something no one would say about the unicorn figurine or a leaf brooch by Marcus & Co. from 1900.

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland and can be reached at [email protected]. This column is supported by The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

IF YOU GO

Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square, Portland. Through June 7 (“Ming Smith”) and July 19 (“Precious”). Wed.- Sun. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fri. until 8 p.m. 207-775-6148, portlandmuseum.org