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The Desolate Illusion

The photography of art works is, in some ways, one of the most
subservient of all photographic genres. Art photography is an
area in which the creative license and instinct of the
photographer is sublimated in favor of obtaining an accurate,
complete and informative view of the art object being
photographed. Yet, under certain circumstances, the genre of
art photography can become one of the most imaginative and
flexible within the photographic medium. The photographs
contained in this book, which record the street art of an
explosive yet desolate Latin ghetto, illustrate the degree of
imagination, in terms of choice and decision making, that can
be brought to the genre.

For these art photographs are not simply pictures of wall


murals in the usual sense. In photographing the street art of
the ghetto, Philip Pocock has realized that it is not
particularly important that his photographs illustrate
closely, accurately and in detail their subjects the casual
street murals of the Lower East Side nor that these
photographs document for social and cultural purposes
transitional works of brief duration. In fact, of course, the
photographs do both of these jobs, and do so well. However,
the photographs, their importance and their meaning, derive
more from the determination of the photographer to reveal not
only the murals themselves, in all their flamboyance and
dilapidated condition, but also their context, which is
essential to an understanding of them. For, as is the case
with much of the art of our time, the context and the art
object are combined to create the aesthetic energy that can
produce meaning. It is, in this case, the imagination brought
to his subjects by the photographer that provides the viewer a
rich and stimulating opportunity to experience the complexity,
the sadness and the banality of the subject matter. The
imagination extends beyond the limitations of actual
photography for, in these photographs the very choice of
murals helps to create a coherent and concentrated viewpoint,
one that the typical visitor to the area would, in all
probability, not recognize.

One of the most perplexing characteristics of the genre of art


photography lies in the following contradiction. Is not the
apparent objectivity inherent to the photographic print
contradicted by the highly subjective, flexible and variable
-- indeed artful -- decision-making processes required to
create the photograph? It is this particularly photographic
dilemma, in terms of artistic process, that is so
perspicuously demonstrated in these photographs of the casual
murals of a brutal American ghetto.

As a rule, photographs of art works are supposed to accurately


measure the work of art. They are supposed to effectively
convey the proper light, color, texture and perhaps scale of
the art work. In general art photographs are best and most
interesting when they serve the cause of their subject, the
object of art. Thus such photographs are not supposed to be
art works themselves. They are not supposed to elaborate upon
the work not should they reveal, in any but the most general
way, the personality of the photographer. Photographs of art
works should not, themselves, be involved with social or
political issues; nor should they editorialize in any way.
Lastly, and most importantly, they should not interpret the
artists intentions, for to do so might seem to reflect
negatively, upon the quality of the art objects such
photographs are supposed to serve; as it may be argued that
the art object has failed to communicate entirely upon its own
terms.

In general it would appear that good photographs of art works


are those in which the subjective elements of the
photographers as have been reduced to the greatest extent
possible. However as any art photographer knows, art
photograph itself is rarely without art; i.e. the photograph
process involves manipulation, exaggeration and a measure of
adjustment through technic, technique or otherwise, in order
to create a satisfactory illustration of an art work. All art
works do not necessarily photograph well.

For example, the photographer of an "all black" painting by


the Minimalist painter Ad Reinhardt will encounter particular
difficulties. These paintings, predominately black, contain
surface gradations that are so subtle they are barely visible
to the naked eye for ~t first glance they seem to be merely a
black surface. Therefore, under the best of circumstances, a
photograph will probably fail to "pick up" the nuances, the
minute variations of black the artist has painted. The
photograph will show the essential blackness of the surface
but not the subtle degree of shading that give the black
paintings of Reinhardt their significance. Therefore the
photographer must take steps to manipulate his process in
order to simulate the visual subtleties of the painting and
reproduce an accurate illusion. In so doing he may find it
desirable to abandon a truly objective approach.

Through the manipulation of his tools, such as the mechanism,


film, light, framing, perhaps even "touching up" the print the
photographer implants a personal viewpoint upon the art work.
In this instance a series of subjective technical and
aesthetic decisions may be required in order to obtain an
objective photographic print of the work of art.

Just as the complex and delicate variations in the surface of


the black paintings require a particular approach for the
photographer, so do the wall murals scattered throughout the
Lower East Side urban landscape demand particular
consideration.

This particular consideration has to take note of such factors


as the highly temporary nature of the murals, painted with
ordinary paints upon cracked and even crumbling surfaces; the
addition of graffiti and other anonymous additions; the
problem of accessibility rises, as a work may become blocked
by parked vehicles or building alterations; lastly, and most
importantly, the immediate environment which provides these
murals with their context is in a state of constant change. As
Philip Pocock explains, his approach: "... was not to record
works of art themselves, as one might in a museum, but to
comment, criticize and expand upon them." The subject matter
of the photographs in this book is more complex than it may at
first appear. These are not merely photographs of wall murals,
for these are a special type of mural, differing markedly from
public murals in the usual Western sense. While a relatively
few of those photographed -- about one third of the group --
were presented to some of the community in advance, in sketch
form, most were done directly on the walls without the usual
preliminary steps. Furthermore, except for the few sponsored
by local agencies, most of the paintings were offered
spontaneously by the painters and, sometimes, their friends. A
few of the works were changed later, either by the original
artist, or by other persons.

Due to such factors these ubiquitous works require a somewhat


unique photographic approach. Though not sophisticated murals,
naiveté alone does not give them special importance. Naive art
is a common phenomenon and a frequent subject for study in the
history of Western art. Painting on the walls of caves, the
mosaic art of Roman cultures, medieval frescos, Romanesque
carvings and the primitive cartoons associated with anonymous
decorative art are but a few examples. All of these, to a
greater or lesser extent, are part of the history of such art.

Nor are the lower East Side paintings unique in terms of their
temporary nature, for artists of past and present have
frequently created works destined for a short-lived existence
including, for example, the painted designs that decorated the
facades of some Venetian palaces of the seicento as well as
wall works by contemporary conceptual and Minimalist artists
created for the life of the installation.

However when the iconographic and aesthetic factors described


above are combined with the extraordinary situation of savage
deterioration and utter desperation of their urban location --
not the worst neighborhood to be found in New York or other
American cities -- then, considering all these factors
together, we begin to understand the murals on their own
highly unusual terms. Recognition of the interaction of these
several factors will serve to reveal the aesthetic substance
of the murals and the personal photographic approach developed
by the photographer, who has explained: "Besides the images on
the walls, I photographed other elements, such as
architectural elements or human elements or elements of
texture. I wanted to create a tension, and convey the drama."

Thus given the special nature of his subjects –- naive


orientation, nearly spontaneous creation, absence of a visual
tradition, rapid deterioration and extraordinary location -
the photographs reveal that Pocock was correct in allowing
numerous details of the environment to combine with the
murals. In the final analysis the location itself may prove to
have been the single most important characteristic serving to
define the murals. The place for which these murals were made,
the Spanish ghetto, is a place of intense almost exhilarating
degradation. It may prove to be the catalyst and the energy,
blending and bringing together diverse elements to produce
works of unusual significance. Its special power is
appreciated by Pocock, who says, "I love the Ghetto. The
reason I choose this area is for its unity of time and place."

The murals that appear in these photographs represent a


mixture of styles and levels of amateur accomplishment, as
chosen by the photographer. Compositions consisting entirely
of graffiti type scribbles have been excluded. Of the works
illustrated, about one quarter of them were supported by
various community programs including; Cityarts Workshop,
C.E.T.A Workers, and local block associations, all programs
designed to promote community spirit and encourage talent. The
sponsoring groups did not consciously censor the artist's
ideas or proposals however at least some of the artists were
aware that, should they, offer works that might antagonize
elements within the community, they risked having their works
altered or defaced by those so offended.

The vague assumption that such art works beautify or somehow


improve the desperate facts of the slum is, of course,
facetious. It is almost preposterous to suggest that, through
such simple measures, the result of many years of constant,
deliberate and systematic official neglect could be reversed.
Forty years of public economic and social policy destined to
erode the essential urban qualities of industry, density,
service and transportation - polity equivalent to political
and social enslavement of the poor and cultural alienation of
the middle classes -- has lead ultimately to the inevitable
and predetermined result: the establishment under peacetime
conditions of the most deplorable state of urban desolation
known to Western civilization -- all the more deplorable
because of its deliberate and systematic implementation
through misguided social planning.

This remarkable and atrocious condition provides the context


and prepares the soil for the emergence of these murals, and
therein lies their greatness as it is recorded and explained
as a result through Pocock's subjective camera technique. The
murals may be interpreted by the viewer as the final gasps of
a fleeing population and a dying civilization. The
photographer himself lives in the ghetto he has so patiently
photographed. "To me," he explains, "it is a feeling of living
on the edge of civilization. I think of it as a view into the
future."

These murals represent attempts to come to terms with the


tragic, hopeless situation of the desolated old city through a
visual language. It is a crude language lacking in aesthetic
subtlety and, in a sense, it crowns a national social policy
so destructive, powerful and total as to have been almost
invisible. Its march, to complete a decivilization process
began in the utopian proposals of the parkway-automotive-
escapist delirium of the 1930's, in which the vital values of
an intense and civilized urban experience were exchanged for
vacant, anti-social and obsessively protective plans, policies
and promises. These took the form of a suburban cityscape with
its peculiar regressive patterns of distribution, space,
transportation and familial enclosure, all of which proved
enormously popular to a transitional and insecure culture.
Racism, intolerance, fear and suspicion were to be the new
motivating values and they found a happy welcome in the new
suburban scheme that was ultimately to drain the energy, the
vitality and the hope of the central cities. In time, perhaps,
this period of compulsive, prosperous decline into the age of
petroleum will ultimately be viewed as outdistancing in its
cruelty and cynicism even pre-meditated devastations of war.

Other than a few minor and safe exceptions -- Dominican and


Puerto Rican flags, for example -- the almost total absence of
"universal" political images from the walls of the ghetto is
of particular note. The clenched fist, the paving-block
missile, the helmeted police caricature -- even the hammer and
sickle -- are symbols that, quite naturally, typify the
revolutionary slogans of the walls of Paris in 1968 right up
to Rome and Milan today as well as contemporary Latin American
cities in political upheaval. Few of these traditional images
of revolt and political awareness have found their way into
these photographs for they are not to be found to any serious
extent on the walls of the Lower East Side.

The murals illustrated in this book are basically conservative


statements. Proper, almost prudish, they are certain to be of
interest to social historians. One might suppose, given an
environment of intense poverty and utter deterioration, any
spontaneous or quickly executed and relatively temporary
murals would be of a radical orientation, in terms of message,
or at least somehow socially provocative.

In startling contrast to such expectations -- as these


photographs document and a daytime stroll through the area
will verify -- the numerous wall paintings support, or would
seem to aspire to, sound, almost depressingly solid middle
class values such as those represented by respect for family,
god and country. Even politically, although one would
certainly expect radical political content, we find a
conventionality that is surprising if not banal. The political
indifference may be explained by the relatively
unsophisticated political awareness that seems to afflict
Americans of all social planes; or it may be due to the
familiar political contradiction which, at times, causes those
who have most to gain by radical political revolution to deny
radical political action and similarly advanced social values.
They will instead, support conservative and middle class
ideas, no doubt believing that what may be gained through
them to be preferable. For it need hardly be pointed out that
a few Puerto Rican flags do not represent authentically
political viewpoints, even these images are balanced by
patriotic motifs, including the Statue of Liberty.

While one hardly expects to stumble upon the theories of Marx,


Marcuse or Mandel splashed upon these crumbling walls, one
might, even though it is a Puerto Rican / Dominican ghetto,
come to wonder about the missing Fidel Castro and Che Guevera.
Cuban revolutionaries are, in all probability, not to be found
here because such figures are not synonymous with middle-class
American values or supported by popular media. For, in keeping
with such values -- the very social and economic preferences
that lead to the systematic evolution of the urban desolation
in the first place -- the Cuban heroes are disliked because
they stand for repudiation of the consumerist capital values
that, for the urban poor, remain so desirable and so elusive.
Furthermore one is, unfortunately, reminded of the traditional
and deeply rooted racial mistrust that exists between, on one
hand, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and, on the other, Cubans.
The Cuban ethic is viewed as excessively aggressive, ruthless
and therefore threatening, to other Latin peoples and the
subsequent lack of trust is frequently reduced to ethnic
hostility. While there is no clear indication of racial
antagonism evident in the-murals themselves -- no ethnic
slurs, no illustrations of ethnic failings -- the very choice
of subjects might, in this case, reflect underlying racial
friction and, a. least partially explain the strange lack of
enthusiasm for Cuban revolutionary ideals and anti-capitalist
political subjects. The missing references to Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and so on are more difficult to
explain Perhaps they can be written off as simply lack of
communication or yet another misunderstanding.

On the other hand many of the artists responsible for the wall
murals seem to have recognized, in numerous instances, a
relationship between urban landscape and painted illusion.
This is not to suggest that the artists have been able to
control in any way, the ambience, or surrounding landscape.
Rather they reveal an awareness of its reality, its special
identification and strengths and weaknesses. In such instances
factual images of the urban landscape have been visually
incorporated within the painted murals, thus inviting the
facts of the landscape into the illusory world of the painted
mural. In one spectacular example, cars parked in front of a
flashy Caribbean view are brought into the Caribbean locale.
In this case we have an interesting situation in that the
photographer has recognized the added interest the parked cars
bring to the veduta. Yet the artist surely must have been
aware of the fact of his mural alongside a parking lot, and
there are indications that the artist allowed this fact to
influence his choice of images and their placement.

In another example a potted tree in front of a green painted


landscape provides a sensitive and attractively energetic
composition. Snow covered cement tables in a shabby vest-
pocket park "fit in" to a sunny Caribbean view painted on the
wall, the dichotomy of seasons notwithstanding. The painted
view seems to have been scaled to correspond to the park
tables and benches. In another picture a bundled up little
girl passes before a huge Caribbean dancer.

Positive interaction between painted wall and urban detail


serve to remind the viewer that, in fact, this particular
urban community, a Spanish ghetto on the Lower East Side, in
spite of appearance, is not by any means completely "lost".
For here and there stability sticks out amongst the burned
buildings, rubble strewn streets and dilapidated storefronts.

These relationships between painted illusions and urban facts


may be described as positive interactions because they
indicate a deliberate, a planned effort on the part of the
artist to design the composition to take best advantage of the
reality of the location. There is another type of interaction
between painted illusion and urban fact that may be described
as "negative". In such instances the reality of the location
may add information that was not considered by the original
artist. Or, in another case, the reality of the decaying
location may take away information that the artist had
included in the mural, such as a graffiti smeared wall or a
fire or vandalism or destruction.

In some ways these latter, or "negative" interactions are more


abstract. At any rate they require more thought and are less
easy to appreciate or verify. They may involve, primarily,
accidental correlations discovered by photographer Pocock, or
they may involve objects chosen not by artist or photographer
but merely accidental facts of existence. For example, a mural
illustrating Puerto Rican and Dominican flags is photographed
from a sufficient distance in order to include the foreground
lot, the ubiquitous discarded mattress, the ubiquitous
sleeping addict. By including significant -- though perhaps
accidental or incidental -- foreground material into the
photograph, the photographer expands upon the meaning of the
wall mural. By involving the reality of the location with the
illusion on the wall, Pocock provides the means for
stimulating the energy of the overall scheme, in both the
"negative" and "positive" types of interactions described
above. Yet another example of the negative type of
interaction, between mural and reality, is the picture of the
Statue of Liberty before a sunset background, painted on a
wall below some broken-out tenement windows. The mural, seen
in conjunction with the broken-out windows above takes on a
particularly melancholy quality, as the brooding reality of
the tenement window glares down upon the fragile, sentimental
patriotic painting.

Interactions such as these abound and while some were not


necessarily planned or even noticed by the painters, their
presence serves to reveal the immediate social and
environmental context and thereby enrich the art works
themselves. A painting of a faded palm tree envelopes a row of
locks on a battered door, producing a social comment of
considerable strength.

The decision to include or discard, these urgent referential


details has been made by the photographer. Thus, through the
genre of art photography, is revealed the urgent role of the
photographer in expanding upon the meaning of the mural either
in support of the artist or, perhaps, in spite of the artist.

The painters of the murals are politically naive. They are not
professional and as a rule they do not possess serious
technical expertise in terms of painting, draughtsmanship of
principles of composition, except on a relatively elementary
level. As works viewed individually they may appear
unimportant or excessively casual. Pocock explains that, taken
individually, some of the murals photographed: "... do not
hold up as well as they do in a group. In this case the whole
is greater than the sum of the parts."

Nevertheless these artists have produced many startling views,


particularly in conjunction with their settings. The artists
have not attempted to improve the reality of the situation. On
the contrary they have produced works that seem to increase
the sense of desolation, the embarrassment of the degree of
human degradation of the neighborhood. Taken cut of context it
would be difficult to find any real merit in these works.
Their strength lies primarily in their location and their
relationship to it. Through a policy of neglect and the denial
of resources the world's richest capitalist society has turned
away from the people and the place of the ghetto. Yet a
constructive human spirit remains and it's manifestation is
found in the wall paintings of the Lower East Side
photographed by Pocock. It is only when seen first hand or in
expansive photographs -- photographs that reveal the total
ambience and provide referential information -- that their
true identification can be recognized. ''I hope I can convey
not just the murals but the experience of looking at them in
this area," Pocock explained. "I've been back to rephotograph
them recently. Most of them are no longer there."

In some European cities -- such as Rome, Paris or Venice --


the walls of buildings play an important role in urban
information distribution. Posters are distributed regularly,
for noncommercial purposes, informing the people of cultural
events, political rallies, birth and death announcements and
civic regulations. Private and social organizations, sometimes
illegally, make heavy use of the walls for their own
propaganda purposes. Political activists go one step further
and paint messages and slogans on the walls and they do so
extensively and on a regular basis.
The tradition of urban popular communication via the wall
medium does not exist in American cities for several reasons
primarily because the wall medium is limited to a pedestrian-
oriented urban system. One of the most pedestrian-oriented of
all cities, Venice, has developed one of the most active,
disciplined systems for wall communication on a major scale.
Indeed the history of Venetian painting can be interpreted as
a type or popular visual communication system created for a
public market. For it is, in this sense that the less cerebral
and more pictorially oriented Venetian style differs from the
styles of Florence and the High Renaissance.

Thus it is not entirely surprising that one critic (2) has


linked several pictures by the 18th Century Venetian painter
(1727 - 1802) Gian Domenico Tiepolo --son of the important
fresco painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo to some of the Pocock
photographs contained in this book.

The Tiepolo panels chosen for this imaginative comparison are


part of the series "Via crucis" (Stations of the Cross - 1747)
in the church of Saint Polo in Venice. It was suggested, for
example, that Tiepolo's panel of the first station, "Gesu e
condannato a morte" (Jesus is condemned to death) is, in a
general and, of course, casual way, similar to the mural of a
dancer with a red flag. The critic notes the dominant
architectural structure of the Tiepolo -- it seems to anchor
the dramatic occasion -- and points to a massive yellow
rectangular element in the Pocock photo that is not
dissimilar, in compositional terms. Furthermore Tiepolo has
painted a diagonal to the left, formed by the cross of Christ,
which in the Pocock composition, is reversed. A red flag, of
proportionately equal size is to be seen in almost the same
place in each work. Furthermore, a gesture of raised arms,
albeit located differently, dominates each work. Lastly, it is
noted that, in terms of color, yellows, reds and whites
dominate both works.

In another instance the Tiepolo panel of the eleventh station


"Gesu viene inchiodato sulla Croce" (Jesus is nailed to the
cross) is linked to the Pocock photograph of Dominican and
Puerto Rican flags above an addict sleeping on a discarded
mattress. Again the correlations are casual. For example it is
observed that the background figure or figures in each work
seem separated from the foreground images. The foreground of
the Tiepolo contains the figure of the dead, reclining Christ.
The Foreground of the Pocock photograph shows the addict, his
arm in a plaster cast one shoe missing sleeping or lying dead
perhaps upon a torn mattress. The addict is thus linked
pictorially and socially to the abused figure of Christ. (In
this case there is a marked qualification, as the foreground
figure in the Pocock is not an actual part of the mural;
though it is a part of the Pocock photograph, of course) In
both instances background figures appear to ignore the
reclining foreground figure.

(see notes on page)

The Tiepolo second station ''Gesu riceve la Croce" |Jesus


takes up His cross) offers correlation with a Pocock
composition of a storefront doorway. Tiepolo's great Roman
archway framing a Venetian lamp and the figure of Christ, and
His tormentors is reminiscent of the photograph depicting the
decaying doorway framing a standing youth for in the Tiepolo
panel an image of Tiberius stands above and to the side of
Christ while a figure of King Kong is painted above and to the
side of the youth posing in the Pocock. Again primary colors
stand out against white forms, light radiates from several
sources and heightened, theatrical contrasts abound. A
sweeping angular form created by the Tiepolo cross is
reflected, in a way, by the white post separating the tenement
storefront doorways. Again, in this instance, the Pocock work
is interpreted not merely in terms of painted images but by
the form of the storefront itself and the figure of the youth
posing therein.

The correlations introduced above are not, of course, intended


to be formal or in any way decisive critical analyses, or even
serious aesthetic comparisons. Rather they show, to a certain
extent, that there are casual but interesting compositional,
allegorical, emotional and populist factors that enliven the
Pocock interpretations of his subjects, factors that are not
without precedent in the history of Western visual arts. We do
not imply that there are any direct references or
''influences" linking the art of Tiepolo, on one hand, and the
wall painters of the Lower East Side, on the other. However
the question of a type of "spiritual" affinity is subject for
thought.

It has been pointed out that the exterior murals illustrated


in this book are, generally, without sophisticated political
intent while, at the same time, they eschew truly provocative
subjects or anti-social viewpoints. Partially this is due to
the absence of any tradition of urban wall communication in
our culture. Nevertheless good murals of authentically
provocative nature are, to be sure, found in public places in
New York City, though they are not "open" in the sense that
the Lower East Side pictures are out in the open. Yet it
should be pointed out that a number of the works illustrated
in this book are surprisingly sophisticated in humorous or
satiric terms, and they reveal a lively social sensibility on
the part of the artists. Vacationing Americans in Caribbean
locations are incongruous and funny. A middle-class suburban
couple -- the artist's parents perhaps? -- enjoying a cocktail
pinpoints an up-to-date awareness of the social and
behavioural extremes between, say, Dobbs Ferry or Bayshore and
the Lower East Side. Nevertheless these murals are intimately
linked to their time and place, perhaps more so than similar
art from almost any other period or culture. In all
probability, by the time this book is printed, and in keeping
with American urban tradition, the immediate past will, yet
again, be swept away leaving little of spiritual or practical
substance.

A disposable culture will, in time, be disposed. The built in,


temporary nature of American urban environments continues to
insure perpetual decline, as decline and desolation themselves
become values to be escaped rather than fought, marking a
cultural sensibility devoid of conscience or concern.

The murals of the Lower East Side represent, in their way, a


desperate and deeply human attempt to come to terms with an
urban policy and urban reality that defines and rejects human
consideration. The efforts of the artists are all the more
brave in that they are doomed.

Gregory Battcock
Venice, 1980

Notes:
1. This and all other quotations are from a recorded
discussion between the photographer and the author in New York
City on August 17, 1980.
2. From an unpublished paper by Sr. Therese Benedict McGuire.
1980.

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