here's something on my mind

I saw Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo on Saturday. SFMOMA is doing a small Herzog retrospective in conjunction with the Kiefer show. I am so eager to expand my thinking about Kiefer that I show up for the Herzog films, although I show up with some reluctance.

About ten years ago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis did a comprehensive retrospective on Fassbinder in conjunction with the Joseph Beuys retrospective. Day after day, for most of a month, I spent my evenings with Fassbinder. Before each film, I would roam the Beuys exhibit. It was a highlight of my amateur, art-loving life.

I would love to capture the fineness of that Fassbinder experience. I fell in love, anew, with the medium of film.

What SFMOMA is doing with Herzog is just not the same. They are only showing a handful of Herzog films. And the Herzog movies are spread out. Showing up every couple of weeks does not have the same impact of daily movies.

I am wishing I knew an art historian or two that could help me think about the art world's fascination with Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. Kiefer and Richter are widely considered the two most important artists working today. Both German. It must be significant that 'the two most important artists working today' are German. Off the top of my head, I think, of course, that these artists are examining, on our collective behalf, the legacy of irrationality played out by Hitler. The stream in human consciousness that made a Hitler possible is a stream within us all. It is easy to assume that 'the two most important artists working today' are working through this stream on our behalf. Is this a hopeful thing, to examine genocide from WWII? Does it heal the stream?

I have a lot to think about. Maybe that's why I've been writing so little.

Fitzcarraldo.

It is an amazing movie about an opera lover, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (the locals call him Fitzcarraldo) seeking his fortune in old-time Peru so he can build an opera house and bring Caruso to perform. A crazy, Irish dreamer. Business men are making fortunes all around Fitzcarraldo. Watching Fitzcarraldo yearning to join their ranks made me think of how I imagine semen seeks to penetrate the egg. I imagine sperm rushing out of a man into a woman and then hurrying into her vagina, on autopilot, seeking the egg. What becomes of these determined cells when they do not find an egg? What becomes of their determination if they find an egg but do not penetrate? Today I am thinking I understand what becomes of semen unable to implant: male energy. Sperm unplanted.

Fitzcarraldo is a fascinating movie. Fitzcarraldo buys an old steamer ship and drags it up a mountain and down the other side to another river. To make the movie, Herzog literally dragged an old steamer ship up one side of a mountain and down the other. Is art a good enough reason to destroy part of a rain forest? Like failed sperm, Fitzcarraldo's ship does not achieve his goal. He is a failure once again. But Herzog achieved his goal; his movie was made. Did Herzog achieve penetration?

During the whole movie, I was thinking about some of the monumental art created by males. I was thinking of James Turrell's big desert project and Robert Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty'. Donald Judd's Texas town thing.

I tried to think about monumental art created by women but, so far, I can't think of any female artist that uses the earth on a large scale to reveal her vision.

Mount Rushmore (well, we won't call it art but it is a monument to the unplanted sperm, eh?). The pyramids were surely created to sate some male ego, not a female one. Skycrapers.

What makes an artist like Herzog want to drag a steamship up one side and down the other? What drives a guy like Turrell to devote many years of his life creating an installation that has him carving up the earth? Why wasn't the earth good enough the way it was? What leads a single human being to have enormous visions and then to set out creating them, even if it means altering huge chunks of the planet? What's going on?

What was going on inside Hitler when he began to nurture his ideas about genocide? What made it possible for him to ever think he had a right to make his ideas real? What makes any of us think we have a right to create the lives we wish to have? And where does the line between our individual self and the collective get drawn?

I love Fitzcarraldo's quest, to have an opera house in the jungle. What is more romantaic than opera in the jungle?! I love Herzog's quest, to create monumental art. I love Smithson's Spiral Jetty.

I think, however, that this male energy to conquer and dominate has to be checked. I don't think it is very far from dragging a steamship up the side of a mountain to make a movie to fighting wars for oil.

Well, I'm running out of time. . . have to get to the pool. . . but this is one of the things I'm thinking about this week while I cannot write.

I don't mean to imply that there is something wrong with this male energy. I am wondering about it, that's all. Maybe stilling this energy instead of relentlessly unleashing it into the world is what males need to do to serve the human community. Maybe everytime a proud male thinks of a gigantic project, he should go on a silent meditation retreat until he gets over it. Maybe the human race can't afford all the conquering anymore.