(upbeat music) - [Lara] Wander through another world in the paintings of Donna Moylan, you Albany professor Rakhee Balaram, shows us how art history can fight injustice, and catch a performance by Kate McDonnell.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA, A House for Arts.

- [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, The Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation and The Robison Family Foundation - At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Lara Ayad, and this is AHA, A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

Where do we find Matt today?

Let's follow him to find out.

(slow music plays) - I'm here in Kinderhook, New York to look at the poetic paintings of artists of Donna Moylan, follow me.

(slow music playing) - [Donna] As a kid growing in Boston in a big family, the fact that I had this facility for drawing men naturally being in art classes is not exactly put on me, but it was inevitable.

And I got so used to it over time that is when I was about, you know, even 11 or 12.

I was asking for lessons at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

So I was always in there, but I didn't have a sense of what was the deep impetus to make art.

And therefore, at a certain point, I left school and went to Rome where I stayed for 23 years.

(gentle music playing) What I really wanted to do is find out why I would be making art, what possibly I could contribute.

(gentle music continues) All the time that I was there, I was studying art, you know, from all the different periods that you can find in Rome, which is basically from Prince pre-history to contemporary art.

And I had very good teachers, people to guide me through all that.

So gradually, I think I was kind of growing up.

Obviously it was, I was growing up and reading and studying and understanding more what I could do.

When I came back to the States in the early '90s, I was having shows, I had already begun to have shows.

(gentle music playing) I always thought I'd be an abstract artist, but I'm still not an abstract artist.

It's figurative, and someone recently told me it's poetic, and that's what I like, I like to think it's poetic.

That there's sort of a moment that captures a thought, or an awareness, a situation of an idea striking you.

I employ lots of iconography from different periods in different cultures, but when I started, it was much more conceptual.

I had this idea that a painting could be kind of a diagram.

So the different parts of the painting would be telling what the painting was about.

Like, I might have a picture of a castle, a center of a huge painting and stripes of color all around that were the same colors that I used to paint the castle.

There's one that's here, a huge piece that shows an interior of a castle in Carseta, Italy.

And it shows all these stairways going in different directions and they put these bands of red color in front.

So it looks almost like it is in black and white, it's only in black and white except for these red bands of color.

So I liked that it's looks, it's so interior with all these areas going in and out and up and down, although it's not like asker painting or a drawing, it's very specific.

It reminds me of looking into a body like a mouth or something, and I liked that, I liked that painting More these days, I'm creating little narratives in the painting.

Partially this year of the pandemic has been useful for being here in the studio for long, you know, for long periods of time.

I mean, every day I'm in here, five or six hours.

So I use the pandemic as a theme.

Some of the pieces are kind of humorous, I made little viruses in all different shapes, you know, popping all over the landscape, or paintings of like these pods that we were living in that are connected, we can see the little rooms inside, or houses scattered over mountain ranges because it's such a huge deal, this pandemic.

The fact of wearing a mask is fascinating to me anyway, you know, there's so much more to us than what we're showing at the moment.

So, you know, that aspect of then hiding your face literally, and then taking it off.

At least for me, it has a lot, it's very interesting.

You know, the stunning fact that we're having this pandemic kind of stopped us in our tracks.

The whole winter's gone by really, you know, and yet it's also long, it's very strange.

When COVID is over, it'll be great.

I think there's going to be so much gladness.

People will just be sparked up and galvanize and you know, all this creativity will be, you know, exchanged and discussed and enjoyed, and I really think it will be a big boost, don't you?

- Rakhee Balaram is assistant professor of global art and art history at the University at Albany.

Her new books explore modern art in India and the art of French feminism.

What can these art histories teach us about our current political moment?

I sat down with Rakhee to find out.

Rakhee, welcome to A House for Arts, it's such a pleasure having you - It's such a pleasure to be here.

- So I understand you've done a lot of prolific work academically and in terms of curation and exhibitions but just to give our audience a little sense of all the things that you've been doing recently, I understand that you just came out with two new books, Counterpractice which is about a French feminism and art, and an edited volume about Twentieth-century Art in India.

So, and I know you have also two doctorates which is a lot of doctorates.

You have one in French literature and the other one's in art history.

How Rakhee did you get so interested in both subjects?

What inspired you to tackle both of those things?

- Well, I would start with my grandfather who was a movie producer in India in the 1950s, and very early on, I understood the power of images and the stories behind them.

And I would say that my current books are a reflection of those parallel interests.

So for example, in Counterpractice, I look at women's art in the 1970s in France, and this is a result of spending an enormous amount of time with artists, seeing their work, hearing their histories.

- [Lara] And these are still living artists?

- And these are still living artists or were living artists.

And what I've done is I've sort of put their histories together in order to really take account of what was happening in the 1970s.

It was a time of great activism, it was following the events of May '68 which was a student and worker uprising.

- In France.

- In France, in Paris specifically.

And I also, by taking this into account upbring women's art into a larger picture of women's philosophy, women's literature, women's dance, women's theater, et cetera.

So it's really trying to position women's visual arts practices within this larger history.

- Right, and just their creative output.

I mean, when I think of France at that time and in the early 20th century, I think of, you know Simone de Beauvoir and Lucilia Eriegary and I'm sorry for my pronunciation, but Eriegary and just the amazing things they put out as well as the art.

And I'm curious to know, though, when we're thinking of visual arts or more art more widely, what is women's art?

Is there a way to define that?

- Women's art, if we're going to be very broad, is art made by women.

And there are as many types of art made by women as there are women, so I would like to really think about that category.

And if we go back, let's say to a pioneering art historian from the United States, Lyndon Auckland, in 1971, she asked this question, why have there been no great women artists?

And 50 years later, we are still asking that same question.

Christian Dior, the Paris Fashion House a few years ago had the models walk with t-shirts that said why have there been no great women artists?

So very clearly, this is a question that affects the current generation.

- Right, and it's worked its way into popular culture, right?

I mean, a fashion runway is the prime way to kind of send a message out and it gets people asking questions.

- Absolutely, and France is a fascinating case because already in the 19th century, there were women's only exhibitions but in the 1970s, women lacked institutional opportunities.

And so speaking to them, seeing their art and writing a book about it is a way to add to that cultural memory.

- Right, I know that writing books about art history is one way to tell a story and a very rich story about the history of art, but what about curatorship too?

'Cause I know that you've also curated or organize your own show of contemporary art in Gorgon which I understand is right outside of new Delhi in India.

- Correct.

- Tell us a little bit about that exhibition, how did you go about choosing which artists you wanted to exhibit in the show?

What was its major goal?

- Well, at the time it was the height of globalization and Gorgon was changing overnight.

I was teaching in a university in new Delhi at the time and I saw buildings sort of take over this city, and- - That was around 2011?

- That was around 2011, exactly.

And I thought, is there another side to this story you know, at the same time, we see these state there are buildings, we also see, or people were experiencing power shortages, water shortages.

There was an enormous amount of pollution, there were migrant workers without proper support and day labors.

And I thought, well, one way to take into account these two realities was to create an exhibition.

And what I did is I invited artists from India as well as Indian American artists based in New York to come together to try to address this issue.

And what I had chosen to do is to try to tell the story through sensitive materials, through fragile materials like paper and feathers and fibers.

- Why is that so important to use these very kind of delicate fragile materials?

- I think that the delicate materials represent the sensibility of the people and the impact of globalization.

So for example, these materials could be erased by globalization.

And perhaps if we look at them and we see their inherent worth, we can think about preserving them.

So indirectly, they speak to the people.

- Why is it important to study art history now?

I know that you write books for both scholars and students to read about and to learn, why is it important in this current cultural or political moment we're in to learn about say the history of women's art in France or the history of both women's and men's art in India over the past 100 years, what do these kinds of stories help for us say in our fight against injustice, or our fight for women's rights, or just getting through the pandemic lockdown, what does art history bring to the table in that sense?

- Well, I would say that the global is not somewhere out there, it's right here where we stand.

And so, for example when we look at a book like Counterpractice and we're thinking about women's art practices in the 1970s, we understand these are women who faced obstacles and they responded by incredible creativity and innovation and courage.

And I think there's- - Yeah.

- I think there's a lesson for us in there.

- What does some of their works look like?

Can you give us a little bit of a picture?

- Oh, the works are very diverse so sometimes performance art forms of installation, for example, and then painting, drawing photography, sculpture, there is a diverse as the women who are represented in the book.

- So tell me a little bit then too about what is the, if there is one art scene, what is the art scene or many arts scenes look like in India right now?

Because whenever we learn about the modern in the early 20th century, we are really thinking too about the legacy for the contemporary as well, right?

- That's right, and I would say that in the case of Indian art for example, in major cities around the country, the contemporary art in particular is as sophisticated as anywhere in the world and it's in dialogue with contemporary art all over the world including not too far away from us in New York city.

So Indian art, particularly in the 80s, 90s and 2000s has developed to represent new media, forms of new media, performance, installation, documentary video.

And so you find that the art is very much in relationship, in dialogue with what's happening around the world.

- Why do you think that artists in India today are so attracted to things like new media?

And I guess I'm picturing things like video, or you know, time-based installations, or sound, what's so appealing about that?

- Well, I think that's, I mean, that's a terrific question.

In part, I think it's because there are so many, IT hubs in India.

And so there's a question of how the body is in relationship with technology.

And so for example, in 2018, India had its first exhibition of human machine collaborations in an exhibition of artificial intelligence and art.

So you can see that they're very much at the cutting edge of trends and technologies.

- Yeah, it sounds like artists are really thinking very carefully about what are these changes taking place around us?

What does that mean for us right now?

What does it mean for the future, right?

- That's right.

- Yeah, so I'm just curious to know too where do you see art history going after the pandemic and the COVID lockdown?

Like, how is it that art history can help us with understanding our situation right now with the limitations we have?

And I wanna go back to you're talking about the body's relationship with technology, I can't help but think of everybody being limited to using Zoom for instance, right now.

You know, do people get disembodied in that sense?

And what is our history, how does our history help us understand this?

- Well, I think with Zoom that this question of disembodiment through technology is something that artists have been looking at for quite some time.

But I think it unfortunately took the pandemic for most of us to actually feel that sensation.

I would say that the pandemic has been a time of questioning for all of us.

And that it's revealed to us both our vulnerability as well as our strength.

And I would say that art has always spoken to those two realities.

So I think it's important to turn to art as much as to turn to each other and that is one way I think that we'll be able to get through this current moment.

- Absolutely, yeah.

I think we're all forward to that kind of communal getting together, right?

- Exactly.

- Rakhee, thank you so much for being on A House for Arts, it was so great chatting with you.

- It was great chatting with you as well, thank you so much.

- Please welcome Kate McDonnell.

(guitar music playing) - For a song I'm gonna do it's called Pilgrim.

(guitar music continues) I'm Kate McDonnell.

(guitar music playing) ♪ I am a pilgrim ♪ ♪ Without a compass ♪ ♪ I'm a stranger to myself ♪ ♪ I long for home ♪ ♪ A home I've never seen ♪ ♪ But I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ ♪ I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ It is mansion on the hillside ♪ ♪ And it's called the house of dreams ♪ ♪ You couldn't pay me enough to live there ♪ ♪ It's not everything it seems ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ It's got halls, and walls and doorways ♪ ♪ And marble floors that gleam ♪ ♪ Everything you ever wanted ♪ ♪ And nothing that you need ♪ ♪ I am a pilgrim ♪ ♪ Without a compass ♪ ♪ I'm a stranger to myself ♪ ♪ I long for home ♪ ♪ A home I've never seen ♪ ♪ But I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ ♪ I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ I could tell you I have done wrong ♪ ♪ And I've lost sight of all that's right ♪ ♪ If I met the bird of paradise ♪ ♪ Would I hear her song tonight?

♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ I wish I were a big old oak tree ♪ ♪ Standing tall out in the sun ♪ ♪ With my branches stretched to heaven ♪ ♪ And all my work here would be done ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ But I got miles and miles to travel ♪ ♪ Before the setting of the sun ♪ ♪ I will fall down on my knees ♪ ♪ When my race is run ♪ ♪ I am a pilgrim ♪ ♪ Without a compass, yeah ♪ ♪ I'm a stranger to myself ♪ ♪ I long for home ♪ ♪ A home I've never seen ♪ ♪ But I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ ♪ I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ ♪ I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ ♪ I'm always moving somewhere else ♪ (guitar music playing) So this next song is called Ballad of a Bad Girl.

It's the title song for the new album, CD production, whatever we call it these days.

And I'll just play the song.

(guitar music plays) It's kind of a dark story, hope you like it.

(guitar music playing) ♪ My sister's name was Jezebel ♪ ♪ She dd the best she could ♪ ♪ Folks called her a bad, bad girl ♪ ♪ She's just misunderstood ♪ ♪ Her hair's so black, and green and blue ♪ ♪ Like sunlight on a starling ♪ ♪ She'll go with anyone they said ♪ ♪ She's anybody's darling ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ My sister's name was Jezebel ♪ ♪ That's what daddy named her ♪ ♪ I was a younger by one year ♪ ♪ Helpless while he shamed her ♪ ♪ While daddy hanged Jezebel ♪ ♪ Mama looked the other way ♪ ♪ I knew we had to grow up fast ♪ ♪ And make that bastard pay ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ One day he came home stumbling drunk ♪ ♪ As mama went to town ♪ ♪ She said you keep that fool inside ♪ ♪ He'll hit the creek and drown ♪ ♪ Oh, girls are strong when times are tough ♪ ♪ We did what needed doing ♪ ♪ All alone when ma' came home ♪ ♪ Two girls in coffee ruins ♪ (guitar music playing) ♪ My sister's name is Jessica ♪ ♪ She changed it 'cause she could ♪ ♪ Folks call us those bad, bad girls ♪ ♪ We're just misunderstood ♪ (guitar music playing) (upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with WMHT on social.

I'm Lara Ayad, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, The Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation, and The Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.