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Tara Cady Sartorius

Synesthetes are people who associate with one kind of sensory impression when a different sense is stimulated. When they read "9" they might see the color green, or the sound of a flute might elicit the color purple. Such associations don't make sense except to the people who generate them, and such people might seem "odd" to non-synesthetes.

Visual artists are possibly the most practiced synesthetes. Their form of communication is almost always a reckoning between their thoughts and visual media. It is the challenge of the viewer to retranslate visual images back into thoughts in order to understand what the artist is "saying."

Understanding art can be easy when the art is a picture of something: a horse, a tree or a woman in a fancy dress. It's easy to say, "I like that horse," or "that's a lovely dress." Such pictures are clear windows on the worlds of the artists and the cultural contexts from where they came.

For some, art becomes more difficult when its meaning is less obvious. Nonrepresentational abstract art can be confusing to people who believe they are not in the "know." Viewers might feel excluded from an indefinable club that includes only those who speak a seemingly untranslatable language or recognize obscure and unspoken passwords.

Perhaps the main reason some people don't appreciate abstract art is because they just don't "get it," and there are few guideposts within the art itself to facilitate its appreciation. But how can a painter depict an emotion or an idea without using obviously recognizable objects? Wouldn't it be easier if the artist came right out and said it? Why should the viewer have to work so hard? Who can help unravel the mystery?

Enter the writer and the poet. Poets use combinations of words to paint pictures in readers' minds. Some poets even use their graphic talent to illustrate their own poems: A.A Milne, Shel Silverstein and Robert Blake are a few.

Most graphic artists could easily draw an illustration to accompany the first verse of the following poem, Tea, by Dorothy E. Reid: "The little old lady, Of the tall brick house; Perches on her shady, Lawn like a mouse."

Reid's words point the imagination in the direction of visual images. The person in the poem is easy to visualize, and it would be easy to draw a picture (even if only in one's mind) from this description.

Reid's poem invites illustration, but some poems don't. Consider A Caution by an anonymous poet: "If you your lips, Would keep from slips, Of these five things beware: Of whom you speak, To whom you speak, And how, and when, and where."

This is a poem about an idea. The only nouns are "lips," "things" and "five." It would be difficult to convey the meaning of it through visual art alone.

Finally, consider the well-known and overly simplified Zen Buddhist koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The words make sense grammatically, but they're also absurd. Koans--a form of poetic story or puzzle--were invented to offer Zen monks a way to suspend logic in order to ponder the spiritual or inexplicable. Arriving at one final answer is not the goal of a koan.

"Difficult" (nonrepresentational abstract) art just might be the Zen koan of the visual art world. The American Abstract Expressionists of post-World War II (a.k.a. "the New York School") challenged the very nature of art itself and began making works about the art-making process, art materials and visual perception. What one "saw" was not necessarily what one "got."

The art and artists (such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline) dared viewers to leave behind old assumptions about the purposes of art, and to consider new options. The art, itself, however, did not include a road map, so it tended to exclude those who simply didn't like what they saw at first glance. It still might today.

Grace Hartigan (b. 1922), who created the silkscreen print seen here, is considered a "second-generation" New York School artist. Attracted to and inspired by Abstract Expressionist art, Hartigan later broke from pure Expressionism by frequently including recognizable objects in her work.

On a Tar Roof was created as an "illustration" to the poem, Flashes, by James Schuyler (1923-91). Hartigan and Schuyler were already friends during the mid- to late-1950s. Floriano Vecchi paired Hartigan and Schuyler to work together for a publication titled Salute that he was creating for Tiber Press.

On a Tar Roof is one of three works in Hartigan's series with Schuyler. Originally untitled when bound with the poems, Hartigan titled her prints 30 years later (in 1991), using lines from Schuyler's poems as she signed unbound editions.

In On a Tar Roof, Hartigan depicts some recognizable elements of the New York skyline: the shape of the Chrysler building in the upper left corner and perhaps a rectangular window or another high-rise building in the upper right.

Hartigan's image comprises four layers of ink on cream-colored paper: A solid rectangle of white is first applied, followed by gray, black and finally, magenta. Her colors refer to those mentioned by Schuyler in his poem: silver, pink and (through his reference to tar) black.

Rather than literally depict a bird or a roof or smoke or rain, Hartigan suggests them through the bold black gestures that carry one's eye all around her composition. Both gray and black markings are graphic and expressionistic, drawn with loose spontaneity, then (possibly through photographic means) transferred to the silkscreen process.

The final magenta layer seems cut out in a stencil-like manner. The strong color focuses, directs and contains the eye within various parts of the print. Before it was printed, the colored ink was mixed with a transparent medium to reveal the gray and black layers underneath.

As an "illustrator," Hartigan has melded her work perfectly with the poem. The shape of the poem itself (if one draws a curved line around the first eight words in the poem, the black, curvy guitar-like form will result), the placement of the elements ("Chrysler Building", to the "west"/left, an eyelet form "not a hole" to the "south"/bottom), and the layering of meaning and colors in both works are masterful.

Both art forms leave viewers and readers room to visit places in their own experiences without being "wrong." Interpretation is not constrained by just one correct answer, and therefore invites the exploration and discovery of all sorts of connections.

After reflecting on both pieces it almost seems one work cannot exist without the other. That is exactly what happens to synesthetes: They synthesize aesthetic forms with one another to the point that they are inseparable. Welcome to the ranks of the "odd" ones--the ones that we once thought were so different from ourselves.

"Flashes,"
by James Schuler

Dark day
hard, swarming
west
the Chrysler Building
silver, soluble
south
not a hole
a depth
glistening almost
to pinkness
smoke
spreads, climbs
moves back on itself
hangs, dissolves, forms, goes, renews
mixed with cloud
steams
and darks
a bird
snapped by
it's raining
just in one spot
flashes
in puddles
on a tar roof
LANGUAGE ARTS

Project: Vacation in the City.

Key Skill: Understanding recreation and imagination.

Materials: The book, Tar Beach, by Faith Ringgold.

Procedure: Read the book, Tar Beach, to your class. Discuss the levels of imagination at play in the book and discuss the illustrations. What do this book and Hartigan's work have in common? What are the differences?

For Grades: 1-12.

VISUAL ARTS

Project: I'm Looking Through You.

Key Skill: Using transparency to create overlapping images and new colors.

Materials: Silkscreen set-up with stencils, paper, three different colors of ink and transparent medium to mix with inks.

Procedure: Have students design stencils that will take advantage of the various colors and shapes that can be created through overlapping imagery. Emphasize that each student should strive to produce at least five different colors from the inks provided.

For Grades: 7-12.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Project: The Image in the Word.

Key Skill: Illustrations based on creative writing.

Materials: Paper, pencil and assorted art media.

Procedure: This activity can be done in three ways: 1) Have each student write a poem, and then trade with a partner to create illustrations for each other's work. 2) Select a single poem, and have all students create their own interpretive illustrations. Compare similarities and differences. 3) Have each student write and illustrate his or her own poem(s) and create a class anthology.

For Grades: K-12. For lower grades, select a very descriptive poem and use procedure No. 2.

SOCIAL STUDIES/HISTORY

Project: By George.

Key Skill: Understanding social and political constraints of women.

Materials: Pencil, paper, Internet and research books.

Procedure: Grace Hartigan, at one time, produced her paintings under the pseudonym, George Hartigan. She did this to gain acceptance in a male-dominated art world, where it was difficult for women to gain recognition. Two other women (19th-century writers) adopted similar names: George Sand and George Eliot. Discuss or write about the similarities and differences between the three "Georges."

For Grades: 6-12.

SCIENCE

Project: Fugitive Colors.

Key Skill: Understanding effects of ultraviolet (UV) light on paper and pigments.

Materials: Science books and discussion.

Procedure: In the world of art conservation, a color is called "fugitive" when it changes over time. Exposure to light--especially UV rays--will cause paper to become brittle, will turn it yellow, and will fade many pigments. Try putting a piece of construction paper on a sunny windowsill with a solid form (coffee mugs work great) on top of it. Let it sit for two weeks. Do you see a dark spot where the solid form once was?

Acid-free paper is less likely to break down than other types. If an artist is concerned about preserving his or her art, then he or she will use acid-free paper. With regard to On a Tar Roof, Hartigan may have first printed a layer of white in order to strengthen the image, both in color and in longevity.

Grades: 2-12. Older students (grades 7-12) can be assigned to research and discover what it is that is in UV rays that causes them to corrode various materials.

RESOURCES

* Encarta[R] World English Dictionary [c]1999 Microsoft Corporation.

* Diggory, Terence, Grace Hartigan and the Poets: Paintings and Prints, 1993. Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

* Lieberman, Elias, Poems for Enjoyment, 1931. Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York & London

Tara Cady Sartorius is Curator of Education at the Montgomery (Alabama) Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to receiving her master's degree in sculpture and art criticism, she taught art for 10 years in public elementary schools in California.

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