Moby-Dick 2001: An Artists' Forum: Introduction

Moby-Dick 2001: An Artists’ Forum Introduction ROBERT K. WALLACE Northern Kentucky University ny sub-sub-librarian paging through the official program of the MobyDick 2001 Conference a decade or century from now would think Athere had been seven visual artists present at the Artists’ Forum in the early afternoon on October 18, 2001, the first day of the Conference. Unfortunately, the day and event now known as 9/11 intervened between the printing of the program and the opening of the Conference, causing Thanasis Christodoulou and Vali Myers to cancel their flight plans to New York from Athens, Greece, and Melbourne, Australia, respectively. Last-minute family vicissitudes prevented American artists Mark Milloff and Jody Foster from traveling to New York for the event. So rather than seven artists speaking at the afternoon Forum, we had only three. The three who did speak, Aileen Callahan, Robert Del Tredici, and Abby Schlachter, fully engaged the audience with their opening statements-as well as in the lively question-and-answer session that followed. The Artists’ Forum was a plenary session held in the Lowenfeld Exhibition Hall on the tenth floor of the Axinn Library at Hofstra University. (Miles away but visible from the hall’s western windows was the injured skyline of Manhattan.) As Callahan, Del Tredici, and Schlachter rose to speak in succession about how their own works had been inspired by the art of MobyDick , they were surrounded by the Moby-Dick art of Milloff, Callahan, Myers, Del Tredici, Paul Jenkins, William Kienbusch, and Frank Stella. The podium for this session was immediately in front of Milloff‘s seven-foot-wide pastel entitled The Chase-Third Day. Throughout the remainder of the conference, as successive panels convened in this same high-perched, art-filled room, the faces of this painting’s doomed crew held grimly to their space greeting each new set of speakers who led one session after another until the Closing Reception on the Third Day with Walter Bezanson as our featured speaker. I will never forget the way the slanting afternoon sunlight warmed Walter’s cheeks, along with those of his stalwart pastel companions, during the retrospective remarks in which he brought to life the successive generations of Melville scholars who have undertaken the literary side of The Chase over the L F V I A T H 4 h A J O L R N A I - O F M F I L I I I - F S ~ u n i r i 4 9 A R T I S T S ’ F O R U M past five decades during which the paintings on the surrounding walls had also been created. Visual artists like to be represented by the art they create more than the words they might say. If, however, you provide them with a forum, they will, inore often than not, surprise themselves as well as their auditors with newfound and freshly-phrased insights, whether about process or inspiration or the inevitable relation between the two. For reproductions of all of the visual artworks that were included in the Conference exhibition, Artists After MobyDick , you may consult the illustrated catalog that was published as the October 2001 issue of Lmiathan. For representations of the words spoken by the artists who did attend the Artists’ Forum, you may read the following statements. They are presented in the order in which each speaking head floated up alongside those pastel heads on the tenth floor: Callahan, Del Tredici, Schlachter. Here, as in the Forum itself, their words are preceded by those of Thanasis Christodoulou, who had sent a written statement from Volos, Greece, to be read in Hempstead, New York, making him, in his words as well as his art, present in spite of his absence. Melville’s Painting A. C. CHRISTODOULOU Volos, Greece T o produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme” writes Melville in Moby-Dick. In a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he confirms that the mighty theme “that impelled” his “book”was “the pervading thought.” If we realize that Melville speaks literally and means exactly what he says, then his words are revealing. He wrote a book not for a...