Subtle Affinity

From April to Octo­ber 2017, a selec­tion of my abstract oil paint­ings was exhib­it­ed togeth­er with plants in the his­toric green­house at the Frick, a muse­um in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia. With its ele­vat­ed heat and humid­i­ty, a green­house is an unusu­al loca­tion for paint­ings, espe­cial­ly works like mine made with vital sub­stances: essen­tial plant oils on can­vas and human urine on cop­per. Part ani­mal, part veg­e­tal, part min­er­al, my paint­ings were already hybridized in mate­r­i­al terms, but the fer­tile con­di­tions in the green­house induced them to trans­form at accel­er­at­ed rates and in unex­pect­ed ways. Shar­ing affini­ties with plants, fun­gi, and insects, not to men­tion sun­light and humid­i­ty, the paint­ings embod­ied a new kind of agency and life cycles dif­fer­ent from what they would have had in con­ven­tion­al­ly con­di­tioned spaces aimed at keep­ing them for­mal­ly stable.

The green­house at the Frick was designed in 1897 by Alden and Har­low, an archi­tec­ture firm known for its sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al com­mis­sions, includ­ing the Carnegie Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry (also in Pitts­burgh) and City Hall in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. The Frick muse­um is named after the fam­i­ly to whom the prop­er­ty belonged orig­i­nal­ly. These were the same Fricks who even­tu­al­ly moved to New York City and whose home there became anoth­er muse­um, the Frick Col­lec­tion. Hen­ry Clay Frick made his for­tune turn­ing coal mined in the near­by moun­tains into coke, a mate­r­i­al nec­es­sary for the pro­duc­tion of steel. He sold much of his coke to the steel man­u­fac­tur­er Andrew Carnegie, who took Frick on as a part­ner in 1882. The Fricks moved into their Pitts­burgh man­sion in 1883 and called it ​“Clay­ton” as a play on Henry’s mid­dle name. The green­house was used pri­mar­i­ly to grow flow­ers for their new home. As the Fricks’ wealth increased and their estates mul­ti­plied, cut flow­ers were trans­port­ed east­ward by train to their oth­er homes in New York and Massachusetts.

Around the same time when the first iron and steel green­hous­es were being built in the mid-1800s, the term ​“green­house effect” came into use to describe the impact of gas­es that trap infrared radi­a­tion in the atmos­phere, keep­ing Earth’s tem­per­a­tures con­stant. One of the pri­ma­ry green­house gas­es is car­bon diox­ide, which was then being pro­duced at sharply increas­ing rates due to the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels, such as coal, and has since increased to a crit­i­cal lev­el in the earth’s atmos­phere. Coal is a rock formed from dead plant mat­ter con­vert­ed into peat mil­lions of years ago. When Frick’s green­house was built, it was as yet unknown that increased car­bon diox­ide would lead to glob­al warming.

The idea to dis­play paint­ings in a green­house grew out of my use of essen­tial plant oils in mak­ing my own paints. Essen­tial oils are typ­i­cal­ly used in nat­ur­al per­fumery and, med­i­c­i­nal­ly, in aro­mather­a­py. Research­ing the oils and their var­i­ous prop­er­ties, I learned that what we call oil paint­ing is, in fact, plant oil paint­ing. Around the 15^th cen­tu­ry, painters start­ed mix­ing dry pig­ments with plant oils. This inven­tion has his­tor­i­cal­ly been attrib­uted to artist Jan van Eyck, who was also known to be an alchemist, and that lat­ter inter­est may have influ­enced his exper­i­men­tal atti­tude towards nat­ur­al mate­ri­als, includ­ing plant mat­ter. Plant alche­my was prac­ticed as a form of herbal med­i­cine, and tinc­tures cre­at­ed from dis­tilled plant mat­ter were used as reme­dies. So, the same sub­stances used to heal were also used to paint, and that con­nec­tion per­sists even today. For exam­ple, lin­seed oil, the most com­mon binder in con­tem­po­rary oil paints, is pressed from flax seeds and is edi­ble. In its food grade form, it is called flaxseed oil, and peo­ple ingest it as a source of alpha-linolenic acid, an omega‑3 fat­ty acid believed to have a wide range of health benefits.

As I became increas­ing­ly invest­ed in using essen­tial plant oils in my paints, my research led me to the plants them­selves. I read about plant com­mu­ni­ca­tion and learned that trees and oth­er plants release pheromones to ward off preda­tors and to warn oth­er plants of impend­ing dan­ger. They also use these air­borne mol­e­cules to attract pol­li­na­tors, there­by spread­ing their own genes. Learn­ing about plant com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it occurred to me, was I some­how com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the plants when I was paint­ing? I was breath­ing in scents that have evolved as a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the nat­ur­al world, but since I am not a pol­li­na­tor, what mes­sages — if any — might the plants be com­mu­ni­cat­ing to me? Aro­mat­ic mol­e­cules first entered my nasal pas­sage, then pro­ceed­ed to the olfac­to­ry bulb in my fore­brain, where the infor­ma­tion was processed and sent to oth­er parts of my brain. In oth­er words, plant mol­e­cules were enter­ing my body phys­i­cal­ly and pos­si­bly affect­ing my thoughts, moods, and mem­o­ries. Dur­ing long hours of paint­ing and breath­ing plant oils, did I notice a change in myself? I felt more present, more con­nect­ed to the mate­ri­als with which I was work­ing. I won­dered, was that com­mu­ni­ca­tion some­how reflect­ed in the paint­ings I made with the plant oils? Were plant essences inspir­ing me through res­pi­ra­tion? That was the pos­si­bil­i­ty I sought to share through the exhi­bi­tion in the Frick’s greenhouse.

In addi­tion to the paint­ings I made with essen­tial plant oils, the exhi­bi­tion includ­ed oxi­da­tion paint­ings I made by apply­ing urine to a cop­per ground. Uric acid in urine oxi­dizes cop­per, turn­ing it green. Oxi­da­tion paint­ing was invent­ed as a genre in the late 1970s by artist Andy Warhol, who grew up in a neigh­bor­hood in Pitts­burgh not far from Frick’s green­house and even clos­er to the steel mills he oper­at­ed with Carnegie. Unlike my paint­ings in the green­house, Warhol’s oxi­da­tion paint­ings were not meant to keep chang­ing after they were fin­ished. To pre­vent such works from con­tin­u­ing to oxi­dize, strin­gent cli­mate con­trols are required, with sur­round­ing air kept ide­al­ly at a con­stant 70 degrees Fahren­heit and 55% rel­a­tive humid­i­ty. The oxi­da­tion process can be slowed by such con­di­tions but not stopped com­plete­ly. By putting my oxi­da­tion paint­ings in a green­house, I allowed them to change at a faster rate.

Think­ing about paint­ings that change led me to Oscar Wilde’s nov­el The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray, pub­lished in 1890, sev­en years before the con­struc­tion of the Frick green­house. Envy­ing the abil­i­ty of paint­ings to resist time, Dori­an wish­es he could switch places with his por­trait and remain vis­i­bly unchanged while the paint­ing aged. When he first per­ceives phys­i­cal changes in the por­trait and real­izes that his wish has been grant­ed, Dori­an won­ders more gen­er­al­ly if there is some as yet unde­ter­mined con­nec­tion between objects and human feel­ings. He asks, ​“Might not all things exter­nal to our­selves vibrate in uni­son, with our moods and pas­sions, atom call­ing to atom in secret love or strange affin­i­ty?” The affin­i­ty Dori­an expe­ri­ences between the paint­ing and him­self is at once mys­ti­cal and sci­en­tif­ic. In its sci­en­tif­ic use, affin­i­ty, also known as chem­i­cal affin­i­ty, describes the force by which atoms are held togeth­er in chem­i­cal com­pounds. Hap­pen­ing inside mat­ter, chem­i­cal affin­i­ty is not some­thing we can see with our naked eyes, yet we might intu­it it, as Wilde did in The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray: ​“Was there some sub­tle affin­i­ty between the chem­i­cal atoms that shaped them­selves into form and colour on the can­vas and the soul that was with­in him? Could it be that what that soul thought, they real­ized? – that what it dreamed, they made true?” Sub­tle affin­i­ty sug­gests that, through pro­longed, close atten­tion, vital con­nec­tions among things may become per­ceiv­able. In these slowed-down moments, the alive­ness in things can be felt and experienced.

The word ​“sub­tle” comes from the Latin sub­tilis, mean­ing, lit­er­al­ly, ​“fine­ly woven.” The idea of sub­tle affin­i­ty I am propos­ing here is like exam­in­ing woven fab­ric more close­ly and per­ceiv­ing threads not dis­cern­able at first glance or from a distance.

Look­ing into the weave of his­to­ry, per­haps there is a sub­tle affin­i­ty between Dori­an Gray and Hen­ry Clay Frick. Frick was 41 when The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray was pub­lished. Did he read it? Con­sid­er­ing the scan­dal the book caused, it is like­ly Frick had at least heard of it. Frick was known for being a ruth­less man of busi­ness. By 41, he was one of the rich­est men in the world and was known as the ​“King of Coke.” In 1889, eight years before the con­struc­tion of the green­house and a year before Dori­an Gray was pub­lished, a flood in John­stown, Penn­syl­va­nia, killed over 2,200 peo­ple. The flood was caused by a break in the South Fork Dam, which con­tained Lake Cone­maugh, a man-made reser­voir. On the shores of the lake was the South Fork Hunt­ing and Fish­ing Club, a pri­vate club for rus­tic get­aways by wealthy Pitts­burgh indus­tri­al­ists and their fam­i­lies. The club offered recre­ation­al escapes into seem­ing­ly pris­tine nature and away from the soot and smoke of the city, pol­lu­tion caused by the indus­tri­al enter­pris­es of many of the club’s own mem­bers. As one of the founders of the club, Frick was involved in the pur­chase of the land and its devel­op­ment. The club’s own­ers had altered the dam and were appar­ent­ly aware that it was faulty and might fail, yet they took no action to shore it up. Then the fate­ful day came. On May 31, 1889, after days of unusu­al­ly heavy rain­fall, the dam broke, flood­ing John­stown four­teen miles down­stream with a fero­cious force. Despite the dis­tance, there was no way to alert and evac­u­ate the city. Many peo­ple became trapped in the debris that piled up against the Stone Bridge, which still stands today. That wreck­age then caught fire, so those who didn’t drown burned. It was one of the worst dis­as­ters in the Unit­ed States up to that time. Despite evi­dence that the South Fork Club mem­bers had been warned and knew that the dam was vul­ner­a­ble, a court ruled that the flood was an ​“Act of God,” and they were nev­er held legal­ly or finan­cial­ly account­able. It is now pos­si­ble to look back on this event as a har­bin­ger of things to come with glob­al warm­ing and the increased sever­i­ty of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters exac­er­bat­ed by human activ­i­ty. Though there was nev­er a pub­lic admis­sion of guilt by the club mem­bers, a pri­vate con­fes­sion of sorts was per­haps made indi­rect­ly by Frick. On his deathbed, Carnegie asked to speak with Frick, and the lat­ter respond­ed with a note that read, ​“Tell him I will see him in hell, where we are both going.”

The rela­tion­ship between Carnegie and Frick had soured years before. In order to force Frick out of his com­pa­ny, Carnegie had giv­en him a mas­sive set­tle­ment. With this pay­ment, Frick moved to New York City in 1905, and he spent the remain­der of his life col­lect­ing art. One of the prizes of Frick’s col­lec­tion is St. Fran­cis of the Desert (1476−1478) by Gio­van­ni Belli­ni. Paint­ed 35 years after Jan van Eyck’s death, it is a remark­ably well-pre­served ear­ly work in oil on pan­el. St. Fran­cis is known as the patron saint of ani­mals and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. He was said to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er species, call­ing oth­er crea­tures his broth­ers and sis­ters. Once, when he was walk­ing in the wild, he came upon birds in a tree. He stopped to preach to them, and they flocked around to lis­ten. In Bellini’s paint­ing, St. Fran­cis is seen fac­ing the sun with his arms open. Per­haps he is receiv­ing inspi­ra­tion for his song Can­ti­cle of the Sun, also known as Praise of the Crea­tures. In the upper left-hand cor­ner of the paint­ing, a lau­rel tree also seems to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the sun, lean­ing back in a way that echoes the pos­ture of St. Fran­cis, with some of its branch­es raised towards the light. Is it pos­si­ble that liv­ing with this paint­ing in his New York man­sion made Frick more sen­si­tive to the nat­ur­al world and pro­vid­ed him with some heal­ing? Per­haps the spir­it of St. Fran­cis could be felt in the green­house where my paint­ings were installed. Along with humans, non-human vis­i­tors came and expe­ri­enced the works, includ­ing bees and but­ter­flies, pray­ing man­tis­es, moths, spi­ders, occa­sion­al birds that flew in, even the neigh­bor­hood cat. Insects were the most fre­quent vis­i­tors, and they became a part of both the expe­ri­ence of the paint­ings and the paint­ings’ expe­ri­ence, fly­ing around them, land­ing on them, and — strange­ly — some­times even dying in front of them.

The sum­mer of 2017 was par­tic­u­lar­ly wet in Pitts­burgh. There were fre­quent, tor­ren­tial rain storms, and those ​“rain­fall events,” asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change, soaked the green­house and mud­died the plant beds sur­round­ing the paint­ings. Despite the Frick museum’s best efforts, the paint­ings got dripped on from above and splashed from below. Con­tact with water accel­er­at­ed their rates of change. Mois­ture sat­u­rat­ed the can­vas­es, quick­en­ing their organ­ic poten­tials and mak­ing them per­fect hosts for microor­gan­isms. Over their six-month stay in the green­house, the paint­ings revealed images dif­fer­ent from those I had ini­ti­at­ed, devel­op­ing in ways inde­pen­dent of my ges­tures and inten­tions. For exam­ple, raw can­vas dark­ened as mold infil­trat­ed its weave, and paint bright­ened in con­trast. The paint seemed to emanate from the sur­faces, glow­ing bright­ly, as if lit from with­in or incan­des­cent. Mold grew in organ­ic pat­terns over straight lines I had drawn.

Sur­faces rep­re­sent­ed trans­for­ma­tions under­way. It was not easy for me to watch the process of the paint­ings chang­ing and decay­ing. The mold was lit­er­al­ly eat­ing them. In my stu­dio, I had spent many months mak­ing them, real­iz­ing their forms. They were fin­ished, but then they were food. When I first saw mold on the paint­ings, it was phys­i­cal­ly painful. It took time for me to adjust to their emer­gent aspects. Once I could let go of my idea of the paint­ings as fixed objects, I could relate to them dif­fer­ent­ly and con­sid­er our shared agency. I saw a new beau­ty in them. Some of the plants seemed to grow towards the paintings.

One of the lan­tana plants grew so close to one of the oxi­da­tion paint­ings that cop­per oxide fell on its leaves, dust­ing it with bright turquoise pigment.

Oth­er plants — such as laven­der, French marigolds, cone­flow­ers and black-eyed Susans — grew over parts of the paint­ings. The col­ors of their petals relat­ed in inter­est­ing ways to the col­ors in the paint­ings, some­times even match­ing them perfectly.

The paint­ings and the plants were becom­ing one con­di­tion. I could sur­ren­der the paint­ings to this process.

In late sum­mer, the show was at the height of its vital­i­ty. The plants were in full bloom, and the paint­ings were, too. They had blos­somed and borne fruit, man­i­fest­ing their resilience. In ear­ly autumn, the green­house was graced by vis­its from bum­ble bees and paint­ed lady but­ter­flies. The but­ter­flies land­ed on the paint­ings, drawn to them by their col­ors or their smells — or per­haps both. The pres­ence of these pol­li­na­tors was a hope­ful sign.