Notes on Rubens' "Prometheus Bound" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Pt. 2
That the Rubens in question hangs at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art is serendipitous— that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is what it is, is
serendipitous too. Why it has to be that the PMA is a half-buried treasure— the
American press corps has no allegiance to/with major high art consonance, or
to/with telling the truth about what/where the real centers of power are in
America— is the same reason that the Philly Free School, at this stage of its
infancy in ’14, also must remain a half-buried treasure. Nevertheless, a solid
argument could be made that (the Met in NYC notwithstanding), even before PFS,
the PMA made Philadelphia, for major high art
consonance, securely the capitol of the United
States (and the RodinMuseum,
situated in the same neighborhood, enhances this impression). The United States, like the Philadelphia it encompasses, abounds in
mysteries and inversions, and is not nearly as cohesively simple-minded as
century XX Europe would have us believe. The PMA, especially after PFS,
encapsulates its own mystery— that it subsists as a self-contained,
self-sufficient aesthetic ecosystem (the middling shows which pass through it
accounted for) make an implicit argument for depth, complexity, and historical
awareness as indigenously included in the American “package deal.” Abby Heller-Burnham,
particularly, grew into her genius from this soil: first Philadelphia’s,
then America’s.
The gist argument here is that latent in the United States has always been a certain amount
of secret depth, from which could possibly grow the kind and manner of art
solidly constructed enough to forge a new, historically aware, aesthetically
rich America.
If, within a volatile cultural context, a site for this development were to be
chosen, the most considered choice, owing to the PMA and for other structural
reasons, would have to be Philadelphia rather
than New York,
once other contenders were whittled out. By letting “Prometheus” occupy an
entire wall in the European Art wing, the PMA has unwittingly consolidated and
highlighted the struggle any cache of American artists would have to face, to
create and sustain an indigenous vision of major high art consonance from
within the continental United States. From corrupt, rotten to the core
institutions and government art-funding organizations, to a comically banal,
vapid press corps; and a society specifically structured (against the
ostensible, barely acknowledged in practice American grain) against cohesive
individualism and the pursuit of material backing for individual endeavors,
especially cultural endeavors meant to encompass/assimilate significant
expanses of world cultural history, favoring European history specifically.
This vantage point undermines the amorphous, undercooked foundations of
American art at any given present moment. Owing to the PMA, it is important to
note that there is a Philadelphia conspiracy behind PFS, a subtle current
working in our favor from the beginning; just as Rubens “Prometheus,” out of
his own nobility and capacity for self-sacrifice, generates a current which
allows us to sympathize with his plight and inverse crucifixion, and
encouraging us to scrutinize to what degree our motivations are as pure as his.
The way I configure the Philadelphia
conspiracy behind PFS, the school where Abby and Mary pursued their art
certificates— the PennsylvaniaAcademy of the Fine Arts
(PAFA)— does not figure into the equation. Conversely, and oddly enough the
buildings which constitute the PAFA campus in CenterCity
do— their Old European elegance, solidity, and dignity created a space in the
two painters for personal elegance, dignity, and solidity to enter.
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