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Pantheon of Modern Gods
An Anthropological Expedition into Corridors of Power
Paintings & Sculptures by Mihaly, Extended a Second Month until May 5, 2009
Louise Jones Brown Gallery, Bryan Center, Duke University
120 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708 (919) 684-2323
Here are 15 of the 40+ Works in the Show:
-DEDICATION-
My friend Ahmed Fadaam is a very sensitive, intelligent, exquisitely insightful man. His eyes
are a bit lighter than mine,
but otherwise we are pretty similar-looking. He was born
22 days after I, 6,246 miles to the southeast.
We're both parents, sculptors, artists.
In fact our sculptural work is rather similar. We both create idealized, realistic, heroic figures. "The beautiful human spirit:
dreaming, soaring, reaching heavenward." This
could describe separate pieces created independently by either of us. We enjoy the study
of
anatomy and truth be told, our models seem to be more often female.
Ahmed had an excellent university position as an artist/sculptor and professor. Unfortunately, his studio, office, classrooms, life's work got
blown to pieces in the early hours of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
From the wreckage he rose like one of his heroic figures to find meaning in the chaos.
As 1,000,000+ of his neighbors were killed in the few following years he became a
NYTimes reporter, then the Iraqi NYTimes bureau chief in Baghdad.
He'd drive around his hometown following columns of rising smoke to locate scenes of grisly death. Untold thousands are poisoned by
substances like Depleted Uranium in places like Iraq. Depleted Uranium munitions, literally a radioactive waste, vaporize upon explosive contact. Peer-reviewed
studies
have shown the radioactive residue to travel 26 miles,
a distance greater than the diameter of Baghdad.
I contrast this nightmare (Google-Image-Search Iraqi birth defects if the word 'nightmare' doesn't ring true') with my own tranquil suburbia where the
most outwardly apparent controversy is
between rust and
terracotta-colored mulch.
Some supporters of this type of warfare argue D.U. is not so dangerous. To them I say, "Excellent, since I now know how to procure depleted uranium I will be
more than happy to bake chocolate
brownies spiked with this radioactive waste. Call me and we'll arrange a picnic.
Ahmed and his family are some of the millions of Iraqis blown to the winds as refugees. His wife and children are presently in Syria. He has been
in the pastoral tranquility of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill for most of a year. Ahmed's immediate family are the lucky ones,
mere
thousands of miles apart, they breathe! His wife and two children will stay in
Damascus when he returns home in April to capture more
snapshots of truth.
"Pantheon of Modern Gods" is dedicated to Ahmed and his children, as well as the 100's of 1,000's of children
successfully liberated both from family
and life itself. Works in this collection incorporate
souvenirs of suffering such as human bones, broken toys, and depleted uranium.
For Epiphany I snapped human bones in my hands to fit them, rainbow lollipops and colored, plastic Easter eggs into
a blender. They were clean and dry. Dust filled my nostrils and memories. Though
nothing, NOTHING like Ahmed's memories, I hope
this mental picture completes
your contemplation of this art.
-CRITICAL REVIEWS- (so far)
Mihaly Offers Send-Up of Modern Idolatry
in Sculpture, Paintings
By: Claire Finch
The Chronicle 3/26/09 |
Media Credit: Eric Mansfield
Artist Robert Mihaly uses an adventurous variety of media in his Pantheon of Modern Gods,
a commentary on contemporary popular culture now on display in the Bryan Center's Louise Jones Brown Gallery. |
Cradled in Robert Mihaly's arms is a sock monkey, with its limbs torn off and replaced with grotesquely protruding human bones.
Visitors to the Bryan Center Sunday witnessed this scene along with the opening of Mihaly's exhibit, A Pantheon of Modern Gods: An Anthropological Expedition into Corridors of Power. The monkey, entitled "Cherub," is characteristic of Mihaly's work, which routinely employs human bones, bone dust, blood and gunpowder to convey illuminating social commentary.
The show contains a selection of oil paintings and sculptures, replete with religious iconography and titled after what Mihaly considers contemporary deities, such as the Goddess of Conformity and the God of Central Banks.
"Most of the gods here are what someone might call false gods," Mihaly said. "They're not the gods I'm recommending, lets put it that way. They're ones that I see in the world that move people."
Luring people into the gallery is "Goddess of Media," an image of Scarlett Johansson dressed in religious robes, the flattened style of her body typical of iconographic church paintings. Splatters of black paint violently mar the left side of her face as she holds up two newspapers emblazoned with apocalyptic headlines. Surrounding the work is a heavily carved and gilded frame, accented liberally with blood and bone dust.
The most powerful works in the exhibit, however, are the ones that suggest frightening political possibilities. Displayed together are "Goddess of Eugenics" and "God of Universal Pandemics." The former is a replication of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus," except the central figure's body is pierced with bullet holes dripping authentic blood. The latter work features a man sporting a gas mask as biohazard signs float whimsically around his head. Both paintings are supplemented by remarks of well-known leaders detailing past and current plots to cleanse the population. All Mihaly's works are similarly accompanied by quotations, subtly shaping viewers' opinions.
"Instead of having a description on his cards, he has a slew of quotes," said junior Grace Huang, head of the Visual Arts Committee, which organizes the Brown gallery's exhibits. "You can see what he's trying to show, but there's still a lot of interpretation."
A more controversial sculpture depicts a female form supporting a lead canister that contains a piece of depleted uranium-a known toxic substance.
"The radioactivity of depleted uranium is extremely small and certainly stopped by a sealed lead canister," wrote Warren Warren, James B. Duke professor of chemistry and radiology, in an e-mail. "The biggest danger with uranium, as with any other heavy metal, is that it is toxic. You don't want to swallow or inhale much of it."
Overall, Mihaly's combination of the gaudy and the gory underscores how death is viewed and consumed culturally.
"There are tons of images of death in our culture," Mihaly said. "And here I am, holding a sock monkey with legs made out of bones-but I'm trying to convey that death is not cool. It's just not cool to be reckless with peoples' health."
A Pantheon of Modern Gods: An Anthropological Expedition into Corridors of Power is on display now through May 5 in the Bryan Center's Louis Jones Brown Gallery.
ORIGINAL LINK: The Chronical
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Staff photo by John Rottet - 'Goddess of Conformity' is among the pieces in Mihaly's show. The Brown Gallery's
manager calls the show 'one of the more in-your-face sort of exhibits.' |
Staff photo by John Rottet - Mihaly made this frame for 'Goddess of Conformity.' He
uses 23k gold leaf in his handmade frames. |
Staff photos by John Rottet - Artist Robert Mihaly puts some white highlights on a painting
called 'Demon of Peace,' part of his show 'Pantheon of Modern Gods: An Anthropological Expedition
into Corridors of Power.' |
Artist gives an edge to his study of power
By: Elizabeth Shestak
The News and Observer 3/08/09 |
DURHAM -- Robert Mihaly is in his backyard hunching over a rectangular piece of wood roughly the size of a picnic table, scrutinizing the seemingly random swirls of black paint he has just drizzled across it.
Yes, the squiggles matter. Propped up on a few tubs of kitty litter to keep it off the lawn, the wood has been painted a bright white, and small carvings are scattered over it. Look closely, and you see that those carvings are bodies and pieces of bodies. The white board now looks like a battlefield -- especially since Mihaly has also drizzled red paint, a color named chianti, across it.
"I thought it looked a little like blood," he says.
In this piece, "God of Secret Agencies," the blood is fake. But in other works, he uses blood meal fertilizer as well as bone, teeth, gold and depleted uranium. All are ingredients in some of the more than 30 pieces he created for a solo exhibition that opened this weekend and runs for a month at the Louise Jones Brown Gallery at Duke University's Bryan Center.
"Pantheon of Modern Gods: An Anthropological Expedition into Corridors of Power" includes paintings, sculptures and pieces that resemble modernist installations.
Uranium? No problem
No one at the university has raised concerns about his using uranium in his art. Mihaly says it was surprisingly easy to acquire the material from a company over the Internet. But he did check with Ben Edwards, a Duke health physicist, about whether a small, protected sample was safe to display, and the answer was yes.
"Few things evoke such a rapid, unfiltered emotional response as the three-bladed radiation symbol or the word radioactive," Edwards said. "Mihaly's use of naturally occurring radioactive material in this work astutely taps into this strong visceral reaction."
Rachel Pea, the gallery's manager, said Mihaly certainly had the most edgy proposal of all the gallery's applicants.
"It should definitely be one of the more in-your-face sort of exhibits," Pea said.
Explaining his choice of media, Mihaly says: "Why blood and bones? It's about integrity to the artistic materials. It wouldn't make sense to portray international crime syndicates with media such as pink bubble gum."
He also employs Catholic imagery, quotes from elected officials, and children's toys, among other items, to challenge the viewer's ideas on war, politics, money and religion -- generally speaking, the fabric of society.
"The God of Central Banks" is shown in a carved wooden frame Mihaly has painted with reds and golds. The red paint has been spiked with bits of blood meal, and the gold is actual gold leaf. The Federal Reserve and World Bank logos and dollar signs are emblazoned on the frame.
A piece titled "Epiphany" features a shiny white blender filled with human bones, crushed rainbow-color lollipops and plastic Easter eggs. Next to it are quotes about the United States' bombing campaign in Laos from the 1970s, as well as a phrase out of a Dr. Seuss book.
Life out of stone
Mihaly, 42, has had a long career as a sculptor, carving life out of Indiana limestone and marble. He served as artist in residence at the National Cathedral in 1996.
But the most recent stage of his career has found him focusing on the use of color. Something about the lusciousness of color allows him more options to express political and social views, he says. After decades of depicting what others have commissioned, he says, he made the current exhibition more about his personal ideas.
One reason Mihaly's work was chosen for the gallery was that he lives in Durham. The gallery receives 50 to 60 proposals every year for its visiting artists series but only displays five to eight, in hopes of drawing students to explore the local art scene.
Mihaly hopes to get a message across.
"God of Whitewashing" is a bar of translucent soap spiked with real human teeth. It's paired with an adult male toothbrush and a little boy toothbrush as an allusion to the statement of former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo that even child testicular torture could be legal. Mihaly includes transcripts of the interview in which Yoo made the statement and of congressional hearings where military officials spoke about such practices.
"All of these works in this collection are very much about justice," he says.
eshestak@mac.com
ORIGINAL LINK: The News and Observer
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Gods of Power and Greed Clash with Human Bones and Depleted Uranium at Duke Art Show
ArtDaily.org 3/26/09
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DURHAM, NC.- When Duke University offered to host an art exhibition for accomplished artist Robert Mihaly they had no idea what they were
getting into. It turns out two decades of chiseling elaborate stone and marble sculptures for the elite had prepared Mihaly for a fight.
In 1997 he’d taken the Washington National Cathedral to small claims court over what he considered a point of honor. Now, like a mad
Quixote, he’s battling greater foes: those he sees as Modern Gods: “Global Military Empire, Central Banks, the Brainwashed Herd.”
Typically this deviant transgression wouldn’t be tolerated at an elite bastion of privilege like Duke. But his work seems to have
slipped passed the gatekeepers. Perhaps Duke was expecting work similar to the gargoyles he carved for them in 2002. Indeed the 40 works
in this solo show demonstrate his brilliant technical aptitude with oil paints and chisels. However, he's gone a few standard deviations
beyond the expected. He's plastered the walls between his artworks with 54 pages of documents and quotes attacking economic and military
injustices perpetrated by the elite.
The artwork itself employs media such as human bones, blood, and even depleted uranium (actual radioactive waste obtained in a roundabout
way from Oak Ridge National Laboratories.) This shocking break with decorum seems to be a hit with the students. VisArts Committee Director
Grace Huang says, “it's drawing a lot of attention and spurring a lot of wonderful conversations.” Even Janicanne Shane, staff advisor to
the Duke University Union's VisArts Committee said, “I’m very taken by it. It is extremely powerful.”
Mihaly is intransigent. He said, “Dr. Martin Luther King spoke on these hallowed grounds, and I return, demanding justice! I consecrate
these bones in the name of all the beleaguered human beings tormented by secret agencies and the War on Terror.”
It may be that people are so dazzled on a purely visual level that he gets away with impertinent messages and what some might see as
sacrilegious materials. Though not exactly religious or irreligious, the works employ traditional accouterments of religion such as
in his 23k gold-leafed, 45” x 54”, oil painting “The God of Central Banking.” The stylistic appropriation of Christian veneration
symbolism is complete with a halo about Ben Bernanke’s head. Carved into the wooden frame are the Federal Reserve and World Bank logos,
dollar signs and more. The chalky white dusting upon the work is actual bone dust, and the red coloring imperfectly covered by the gold
leaf literally includes blood. Mihaly has apparently flung black paint onto the final graven image.
Mihaly, who considers himself a Guerilla Teacher, paces the gallery lecturing visitors. In his arms is a sculpture entitled “Cherub.” It
is a sock monkey incorporating actual human bones as limbs and a jauntily-positioned human vertebra upon its head.
Mihaly has lived solely on sculpture commissions for twenty years and this has allowed him to remain the ultimate outsider. A self-taught
workaholic, Mihaly even built a four-story castle known as Castle Mont Rouge upon Red Mountain in Rougemont, NC. Mihaly says his maverick
existence has allowed him to “escape the asylum of the controlled matrix.” Contemporary artists usually opt for ambiguity when it comes
to prodding at the elite power structure. As John Dillinger said, “That’s where the money is.”
Like a jester of the Middle Ages, Mihaly says what just isn’t said in the manicured gardens of the elite. His work points to dark shadows
of inhumanity. Typically, images of all artworks are submitted to Duke several weeks prior to exhibits at the Louise Jones Brown Gallery
so that they can be documented for insurance purchases. By some fluke, this did not happen this time. The work was not pre-approved by a
bureaucracy that typically protects its charges from blasphemies, secular and otherwise.
Thus at 2:00 a.m. the night before the March 7 opening, an outsider with a burning vision and passion for justice slipped these masterpieces
of cultural resistance past confused guards. The work remains, and has been extended for a second month.
ORIGINAL LINK: Art Daily
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