Essential Questions: Who's Afraid of Beauty?

Edited by Jane Guthridge

Jeri Eisenberg, Autumn Ash, No. 5, 2014, pigment ink on Japanese Kozo with encaustic medium, 36 x 34 inches

For much of the history of Western art, physical beauty was the expression of an ideal and by the Renaissance, beauty and divinity became intertwined. As abstraction developed, formalist ideas, which had their own elegance, became paramount, but by the era of Abstract Expressionism beauty in art was something to be scorned. Now the pendulum is slowly swinging back.  

Deborah Kapoor I’ve been grappling with this one in my own work of late. My undergraduate experience was one that disdained beauty, so I have that awareness in my own history. I think part of the concern is over-sentimentalizing things. But I am compelled in this era to seek beauty as an escapist relief from our times. Is that over sentimentalizing? Maybe, but right now it feels like emotional and even intellectual survival.

Jeri Eisenberg I spent a significant portion of my MFA thesis addressing the 'beauty dilemma'. Given the work I was—and still am—producing, I had to. I felt then, and still feel, as if I am flying in the face of strong winds with regard to the extent to which my work seeks beauty. As a child of my times, I have long accepted the truism that art need not be beautiful, as much as I accepted the truism that not everything beautiful is art. I have chafed, however, at the contemporary notion that something could no longer be art if it were beautiful. Or at least it could not be 'good art' or 'meaningful art' or 'important art'.

After reading and writing on philosophers, critics, and theorists addressing the notion of beauty, I concluded that for me beauty plays an essential and vital role in life, and that to banish it from art for political or other reasons would only leave us poorer. I found myself most in sync with the theories of Elaine Scarry, a Harvard aesthetician, who proposes that the value of beauty is that it produces a "radical decentering." You are no longer the center of your universe. Beauty acts "like small tears in the surface of the world that pulls us through to some vaster space . . . Beauty quickens. It adrenalizes. It makes the heart beat faster. It makes life more vivid, animated, living, worth living."

I believe these effects justify the seeking of beauty in art. Beauty consoles, and that serves to place suffering in a philosophical perspective. It allows us to go on, even in face of suffering, injustice and other social ills, precisely what you have to do to fight the battle the next day. This seems like reason enough for beauty to me.


Paula Roland, Language of Beauty VI, 2011, encaustic monotype on shikoku paper, 39 x 25 inches 


Joanne Mattera Reflecting on Jeri’s comments, particularly "the notion that something could no longer be art if it were beautiful," I will share a bit of the lead to the essay I wrote in 2007, for Luxe, Calme et Volupté: A Meditation on Visual Pleasure, which I curated for the Marcia Wood Gallery:

“Earlier this year, after a day of studio visits and an evening of gallery openings in Chelsea, I took a short taxi ride up Eighth Avenue with Marcia Wood and the editor of a New York-based art magazine. The back-seat conversation was, of course, about art. Marcia mentioned that I was curating a summer show for her gallery, and because we were nearing our destination, I described it simply as ‘a meditation on visual pleasure.’

“’Ah, beauty,” said the editor. ‘Isn’t it nice that we can talk about it again?’”

Christine Shannon Aaron I want beauty to be part of my work, but not beauty alone. Perhaps beauty draws the viewer in, but the more the viewer is engaged the more unsettling, bittersweet, uncomfortable, intimate, powerful, ugly, uncertain, or evocative the work becomes. I want there to be reasons and questions that urge the viewer to come back again.

What I find most interesting in my critique groups is this: Someone hangs his or her work. Usually there are a couple of pieces we sigh or ooh and ahh about initially. They are the ones that are most conventionally beautiful or accessible. Interestingly, after moments it is usually not the one that we engage with most fully. We end up talking about and being most engaged with the more difficult, less easily definable work, the work that digs deeper and has more to say and reveal. I think people can use the medium of encaustic (and other mediums too) in the same way. While it can be a surface attraction without much beneath, it also has the possibility of being a material that allows an artist to create work that speaks to the artist's voice and concept and authentic expression.

Debra Claffey Beauty, not attractiveness, prettiness, and/or symmetrically appealing, is our glimpse into the nature of the universe (which is, of course, love). It can be ugly like decomposing, destructive like fire, fractal and self similar, simple elegance, but it's all the life force (chi). The best art taps into this, no matter the surface appearance or subject.

Heidi F. Beal My personal definition of beauty is that which epitomizes absolute truth and authenticity. It often provokes a sense of Godliness. When this truth and authenticity is edited and composed with artistic precision, it becomes more beautiful. But for me, beauty can also be painful, uncomfortably emotional, or what the conventional would consider repulsive. One of the most beautiful moments of my life was the day my father passed. My mind is still filled with beautiful truthful images of that hospice room.

Anna Wagner-Ott When I paint I tend to disrupt the image if I see too much sweetness or prettiness. My personality comes through my work; it is not my intent to achieve a beautiful painting. Having said that, I find that as I am getting older I am longing for the peace, quiet, and simplicity, staying away from the busy, over-painted surface. I think looking for the beautiful is in the eye of the beholder, and often what is beautiful for one viewer/maker is not beautiful for another.

Anna Wagner-Ott, Some Like It Hot, 2918, encaustic on canvas-wrapped panel, 20 x 24 inches

Joanne Mattera Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but there are acknowledged aesthetic elements that comprise formal ideas of beauty: harmony of order, pattern, shape, texture and color put together in ways that evoke feelings of pleasure, maybe feelings of the spiritual as well.

Jeri Eisenberg I think one of the biggest traps in the debate about beauty is the demand that it be definable. I am troubled little by the fact that what is deemed to be beautiful may vary so from era to era, and from culture to culture. What is critical to me is not beauty's theory, but beauty's impact. And perhaps that is the point: Beauty defies theory. It refuses to be placed within intellectual categorizations because it is a phenomenon that does not speak to the intellect. And yet this is certainly not to suggest that beauty's effect is not real and knowable.

In the words of Peter Schjeldahl: "Beauty will be what it always has been and, despite everything, is now in furtive and inarticulate ways: an irrepressible, anarchic, healing human response without which life is a mistake."

Amy Weil Confucius said of beauty, "Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it." I think it is experiential rather than intellectual and therefore difficult to say why something is beautiful. You can talk about composition, color and line, but in the end it is my physical and emotional reaction to the work that determines whether something is truly beautiful to me. Yes, wax is seductive, but it must transcend its materiality in order for the work to hit me on that level. I believe intention has to be present, otherwise it is just decorative.

Paula Roland I have wrestled with the beauty issue for ages. I think the conflict is with beauty versus decoration. Beauty can have depth and meaning, whereas decoration does not.

In 2012, after fighting (and winning!) against a dastardly disease, I decided that I wanted my next work to be less intellectualized. I only wanted to see beauty, but wanted to find what was essential in it for me. I titled the series Beauty's Language and wrote this as a prelude to my statement: “Charting the resonance of personal meaning, of fluctuating networks, fluid and layered, and how and where they take me. An experience and a form of knowing, beauty’s language, is something that I must experience to understand myself.”

Deborah Martin When I was in graduate school beauty was definitely frowned upon, considered unimportant and frivolous work. My paintings and drawings were considered out of touch with important issues of the time because of my commitment to the beautiful. I still am committed to beauty and my job as an artist is to create something worthy and beautiful. In a world today where there is so much ugliness and despair beauty is more important than ever a tonic for our souls.

Lorraine Glessner There is nothing wrong with beauty! Adding beauty to the world is one of the most important reasons for being an artist.

Lorraine Glessner, Flowers of Laughter, 2017; encaustic, collage, pyrography on panel; 24 x 24 inches

. . . . .

Further reading

Books recommended by Deborah Kapoor
. The Sense of Beauty  by George Santayana

. A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

Recommended by Jeri Eisenberg
. On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry

. The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty by Dave Hickey
. The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetic and the Concept of Art by Arthur Danto
. Essays by Peter Schjeldahl, including Notes on Beauty

A Visit with Leslie Neumann

With a splendid article reproduced here, an upcoming solo show, and a home and studio set into a breathtaking corner of the world, ProWax member Leslie Neumann is living the life.

"The Last Dog Standing in Arepika"

By Julie Garisto

Reprinted from Creative Pinellas, a publication serving the arts community in Pinellas County, Florida

Leslie Neumann stands on an embankment outside her home in Aripeka, Florida

Photo by Daniel Veintimilla

The Celebrated Landscape Painter and Conservationist Chats Up Her Days With Rosenquist and Love of Beeswax

A stitched panorama of the view from Leslie Neumann’s balcony

Photo by Daniel Veintimilla

Leslie Neumann wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world — easy to understand as we gazed at an amazing panorama of coastal marsh from her home-studio balcony in Aripeka.

We took multiple shots with the Canon and stitched photos in an attempt to capture the swath of tall skinny palm trees fortifying the horizon. They surrounded a wavy carpet of seagrass, mangroves and the deep-blue brackish water in Hammock Creek. A flock of Ibis whooshed by as an Anhinga vogued with her back to us, flaunting an elegant wingspan as she dried her feathers.

Neumann in her home studio next to one of her transitional works that combine dramatic earth and cosmos. Photo by Daniel Veintimilla

Taking it all in, we understood a little better the magical serenity and mystery evoked in Neumann’s encaustic/oil paintings — and the natural grandeur that inspired the lifelong artist to become a conservationist.

“I love where I live so much that I don’t go out as often as I should,” Neumann confessed. “Yesterday I was debating going to an event, and an osprey landed on my balcony with a fish in its mouth. I took it as a sign that I shouldn’t leave.”

Neumann has lived in New York and California but found her perfect little corner of the world in the Florida town of just around 500 residents, 22 miles north of Tarpon Springs. When she started building her house in 1989, a coterie of high-profile artists also called Aripeka home — James Rosenquist, who died less than a year ago in New York, Tony Caparello, Arline Erdrich, Dan Stack and Steve McCallum. McCallum, Stack and Neumann are the lone survivors. McCallum has relocated to Ohio, and Stack lives in St. Petersburg.

“I’m the last dog standing in Aripeka,” she quipped.

In the ’90s, the Aripeka artists gathered for “hootenannies” and lounged on the decks of each other’s boats. Rosenquist, according to Neumann, was a gregarious and down-to-earth neighbor who didn’t like to be alone. He enjoyed tinkering and entertaining and popped in from time to time with a six-pack of beer.

Neumann and Rosenquist (back to camera) at her wedding with Dan Stack in 1984. Photo courtesy of Leslie Neumann

“Jim brought the beer but moved onto to the hard stuff pretty quick,” she clarified. “He liked to moon us!” she added with a hearty laugh.

Rosenquist indirectly lured Neumann to Aripeka. The renowned pop art pioneer and contemporary of Warhol worked in residence at University of South Florida’s Graphicstudio, where other major figures such as Robert Rauschenberg taught workshops and contributed prints still in the studio’s permanent collection. While there he met Stack, who became his studio assistant for 10 years during the ’70s and ’80s. Rosenquist fixed Stack up with Neumann and they got married. The spell of Aripeka had eventually overcome Neumann, who worked as an art teacher in Queens and split her time between Florida and New York.

Neumann’s neighbors glide by in a kayak during our interview

Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

Her career improved exponentially in Florida. While she endured the loss of friends and her mother and a divorce, she enjoyed a string of successes, showing inClayton Galleries, the Gulf Coast Museum of Art and the Morean Arts Center, where she’s now on the Board of Trustees.

Neumann conceals feelings of loss with humor and moxie. She riffs on adulting. As situations arise with chores and paperwork involved, she shouts, “More homework!” and laughs. Yet, a visit to her immaculate, custom-built home with natural light, high ceilings and a third-floor studio seems to betray this notion. Meticulous portfolios on one side; pastel color-coded files with neat handwriting on another. All the while, wall-to-wall windows surround us with that amazing, distracting view.

The painter with her work, Rolling In, showing how a window of a detail can become another painting. Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

Her assistant, Evelyn Pazmino, helps with day-to-day business. Neumann, who doesn’t have children or go overboard on social media, gushed about Pazmino graduating from Pasco-Hernando Community College with honors on Facebook.

Neumann indeed values a solid artistic education and says artists should have a foundation of learned skills before attempting to find their own technique. Born in Plainfield, N.J., she received a BFA from the California College of Arts in Oakland and a Master’s in painting from New York University in Manhattan, followed by a fellowship from the New York State Foundation for the Arts, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State of Florida, and an Artist Enhancement Grant from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. In 2005, the Vero Beach Art Museum honored her with a 15-year retrospective of her work.

A meticulous arrangement of paints, wax, brushes and other accessories

Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

She says her dreamlike hot-wax abstractions came about quite serendipitously. “In New York, I had a lot of artist friends. One said to me: ‘I painted on this board and I hate it. Do you want it?’ I said, sure. Another friend said a few days later: ‘I painted with this wax and I hate it. Do you want it? I said, ‘Sure!’ ( laughs) I needed the board to the paint with the wax, and I thought, ‘Okay, I got what I need.’”

Neumann’s encaustic paintings show the poise and control of a master with elements of unpredictability. She writes in her artist statement that she’s inspired by the natural forces found in cosmic and terrestrial landscapes. Neumann uses oil paint and applies the wax with a brush while it’s still hot. After it congeals, she scrapes through to reveal another layer of color; she then engraves pictographs, words and marks into the molten wax.

Neumann prepares to demonstrate her process. Partner Michael Binford observes in the background

Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

“It’s not because I don’t plan ahead … my planning doesn’t seem to matter,” she said during a demonstration. “My paintings have a life of their own. They evolve and I follow them wherever they go.”

She jokes about her perceived inability to multitask. A perfectionist who spends hours painting, Neumann says she likes to keep life as simple and stress-free as possible. At 68, she’s vibrant, slender and healthy, crediting yoga and meditation as her lifesavers.

We ask her questions while she works and she doesn’t mind the interruptions — not too much anyway.

The demo featured Leslie Neumann’s Reflections 52 (Sea Fog), 24 x 52, in progress

Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

“This will drive you crazy, but the longer you know me, you know I can only do one thing at a time … okay, I can do two things at once (laughs). I can tell you this without breaking my concentration: The wax is of made of beeswax, powdered pigment, what gives it its color, and a little bit of Damar Resin, which is a binder. … I also paint with oil paint. Those pigment sticks are oil paint in stick form. So, the oil paint and the wax are compatible with each other. You actually don’t mix them together. That’s verboten. You’ll see while I paint that I apply a layer of wax, a layer of oil paint and a layer of wax. It’s truly an amazing process.”

Wellspring 44×36, Fiery Marsh 36×44, Blazing Heart 45×32. All part of Wetlands series. Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

Neumann starts with an “underpainting” or sketches in oil paint to get an overall idea, then she starts to apply wax, layering, and then a shift occurs when it starts to look like something. “That’s when the reluctant and disciplined editor must appear,” she says. “I don’t try to replicate what I see, but what I feel about what I see.” Neumann’s tools include a heat gun, iron and palette knife. 

Michael Binford and Leslie Neumann share a toast on Neumann’s balcony

Photo: Daniel Veintimilla

During our visit, she transforms a treeline to a dreamlike scene with golden sunbursts that becomes more and more otherworldly as she refines it.

Michael Binford, Neumann’s life partner for the past two years, chats up Neumann’s cosmic paintings. I ask if NASA images inspired them. Neumann says no; they’re from her imagination. Binford commented that he noticed remarkable similarities when photos were released after certain works were completed. A geography professor at the University of Florida, Binford is a kindred spirit who’s studied and cherishes Florida’s primitive landscape.

“We’re very similar in where we are in our careers,” she said. “He’s very passionate about what he does, and I’m passionate, and we love to recreate together.”

Neumann is still passionate about conservation. She belongs to the Gulf Coast Conservancy, a 501C3 not-for-profit land trust, started in 1992. “I had never done land conservation work prior to moving here,” Neumann said, “but I was raised in a family that was very egalitarian and very involved in civic matters. We liked to think that we could have a positive impact on the world if we were just active and committed, so I had a long history of activism.”

The efforts of Neumann and others in the Conservancy helped rescue 14,000 acres of coastal wilderness. “Our founding member, the now deceased artist Arline Erdrich, must be credited with the idea that we could either fight each injustice, fire by fire, or we could have a much more broad and comprehensive manner of preserving land, which is what we choose to do,” she explained. “So, with the help of other more established land conservation groups, such as the Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society and the Alachua Conservation Trust, we put together an ambitious plan of creating wildlife and nature corridors along the Gulf Coast in Citrus, Hernando, and Pasco counties.”

Work in progress for an upcoming exhibition 

For the past several weeks, Neumann has been channeling her love of nature and concerns into large-scale works for her next solo show, Leslie Neumann: Manna from Heaven…and Earth, at the Morean Arts Center this spring. She’ll be showing new works in tandem with a group show,  Water over the Bridge: Contemporary Seascapes. Show dates are May 11 thru June 23. “I’m using dramatic stormscapes; to express our current political conditions,” she explained.

While Neumann has an undeniable activist streak, the joy and the magic of being close to nature will always drive her muse most.

“I had an experience this morning that would you would have really loved,” she shared via email. “I walked up to the bridge at dawn and saw the eclipse of the moon as it sank in the west — and because it’s a supermoon, the tide was super low.  So there were hundreds and hundreds of wading birds enjoying being able to fish in the mud flats.

"Ah, Aripeka.

"Is there any wonder I choose to stay here?”

. . . . .

Creative Pinellas highlights the best in Pinellas County’s visual and performing arts. "Our multimedia coverage of this dynamic cultural scene includes timely features, event previews, and perspectives from casual to critical, focused on the arts in all genres."

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In Five Words: Lia Rothstein

Curated by Debra Claffey

Grey Matter, 2017; found object with encaustic, archival pigment photographs on handmade kozo with encaustic medium, horsehair and wire; 11 x 8 x 2 inches

Below: Detail from an alternate angle

Decomposition

Riven

Neural

Synaptic

Tangles

Lia Rothstein is visual artist, curator, gallerist, and teacher working in New Hampshire. She will be presenting at the 12th International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown this June. Her work will be exhibited at A Smith Gallery, Johnson City, Texas, May 25 through June 24, 2018.

liarothstein.com 

Some Recent Exhibitions by our ProWax Members

ProWax members live throughout the United States and around the world. Time and distance keep us from seeing everyone's exhibitions, so a few of our members have shared installation images of their recent solo (or two-artist or featured-artist) shows. We take you to Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and across the pond to Ireland.

                                                         Catherine Nash

An Inner Astronomy at the Adobe Barn Gallery at Triangle L Ranch, Oracle, Arizona, February 8-March 20

Installation view of Catherine's mixed-media installation

Above and below: Two closer views of the desk

Below: Wide-angle view of the space

Writes Catherine: "I can spend hours staring into the sky, mesmerized by the expansiveness of the sky, pondering our place in the universe . . . the sky is a window to the infinite. Through time, humankind has sought to explain and fathom the mystery of our being: in these bodies, on this planet, in this galaxy through mathematics and science and religion. My studies in archeo-astronomy—the exploration of how varied cultures have explained the mysteries of the stars and sky through mapping, symbols and myth—as well as my own dreaming and explorations have informed An Inner Astronomy." 

. . . . .

Howard Hersh

Within/Without took place at Duval Contemporary in San Francisco, January-February

The exhibition followed a month-long artist-in-residency at Local Language in Oakland, December through January. Says Howard, "Local Language is a design, print, and fabrication shop. I was able to produce and exhibit wall drawings printed on adhesive-backed vinyl that were cut on a CNC machine, then painted, floating a few inches off the wall."

Dimensional paintings created in the artist-in-residency program at Local Language in Oakland, California

Closer view below

Local Language continues the story: "Hersh experimented with two new ideas: printed wall drawings and constructed wood paintings. These pieces create a deeper and wider field of vision, inviting viewers to likewise expend their understanding of context and  their place within/without structure."

Tech notes: The CNC machine is a large, computerized flatbed router, says Howard. The operator feeds the machine an Adobe Illustrator file. The painting structures were cut from one slab of wood. Howard used acrylic paint for this series.

Installation view from Duval Contemporary website

Howard's work, above and below, from the Duval Contemporary show

Howard continues: "Christine Duval, a longtime curator and gallery director, saw my work online,. visited my studio, and mounted the show several months later. She chose  important pieces [from the residency] and presented them beautifully on warm gray walls."

. . . . . 

Steven J. Cabral

The Depth of Stillness at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, January 3-28

You can read about Steven in a studio visit here. From the article: "He starts each new work as an investigation both personal and formal–a spiritual journey in his studio. There is a spacious quality of Steven’s work that feels intimate, that invites. Then the distinct lines map out a direction for us to contemplate."

Partial installation view 

Above: Ukiyo 8

Below: Ukiyo 6

Both 2017, encaustic and oil on panel, 20 x 24 inches

. . . . .

Lisa Pressman

The Heart of It at Jen Tough Gallery, Benicia, California, February 9-22

In this exhibition Pressman turns inward, focusing on where the work comes from, “turning the outside noise down and tuning in to the inside.” Writer John Seed comments, “Pressman is attracted to the personal and the familiar, which she recasts into explorations of mood and color. Working in series, she creates families of imagery that share thematic points of departure while generating individual works that are discrete and distinctive.”

Above and below: installation grids

Installation view

. . . . .

Beverly Rippel 

Guns and Gun Violence in America: Too Many, Too Close at Cambridge College, Charlestown, Massachusetts, February 28-March 18

Thirteen paintings from Beverly's Water Pistols and Cap Guns Series, 1992-2018, were featured in this group show, sponsored by Violence Transformed of Boston.

Pink Cap Gun I, 2010, oil on linen with encaustic, 50 x 52 inches

Installation view

Just Once, 1996, oil on linen, 25 x 45 inches

Beverly writes: "I am often asked what got me started painting guns. I realize now that ideas began to germinate back in my college days while I was studying Art and Cultural Anthropology on the conservative campus of the University of Maine in Orono in the late 1960s.The Viet Nam War was on. Young boys–not yet of drinking age–were getting their draft numbers, and I was one of 100 or so students who protested the war by marching on campus with classmate and leader, now writer, Stephen King. In studying 'cultural artifacts' of various indigenous peoples, I began to look closely at and contemplate the American Gun Culture. (I would add that I came from a family of gun owners and hunters, including my paternal grandmother who was from rural Maine.)"

Here, Orange Cap Gun I, 2014, oil on linen with encaustic, 52 x 50 inches

. . . . .

Joanna Kidney

Metamurmuration at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland, March 3 - April 10 

Metamurmuration is a monumental spatial drawing. Composed of thousands of particles of suspended felt, it trails and swarms through space. Pattern unfolds through the repetition of the deconstructed particle, opening out into an infinity of simultaneous micro and macrocosms. Over 200 people have participated in making this piece of work since 2015, the mundane, repetitive labor recalling assembly lines and mass production, craft and tradition.  

 Installation views above and below

"Two apparently opposed but actually linked ideas seem to underlie Kidney's work: the one and the many. That is how, on the one hand, we experience the world from the point of view of a distinct, individual consciousness, while on the other, each individual is actually a complex amalgam of myriad processes and systems—and a minute constituent of an immense, dynamic universe. Duality and opposites turn up throughout her work: movement and stillness, chance and design, particle and duration and stasis, repetition and change."

—Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times, March 7, 2018

. . . . .

Jasper Johns

We close not with a ProWax member, but with a certain towering figure in the world of encaustic, whose 60-year retrospective, Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth, is at The Broad in Los Angeles through May 13.  A related New York Times article by Deborah Solomon offers an interview with the artist.

Installation view
Photo: Pablo Enriquez, from California Home Design website

The Flags, 1958, is in the exhibition. In the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, it was photographed when the museum's new building opened in 2015
JM photos above and below left

"In explaining the source for his flag paintings, Mr. Johns has always said the same thing. The idea came to him in a dream. He does not care to elaborate, or to indulge in dream analysis . . .

"Mr. Johns’s early flags and targets, as everyone now knows, rewrote postwar American art by repudiating most everything about Ab Ex — the splashy emotionalism, the metaphysical longings, the well-rehearsed enactments of agony and ecstasy played out against the quaint bohemian backdrop of Tenth Street and the Cedar Tavern.

"Mr. Johns’s early flags were radical because they did just the opposite. Instead of turning private feelings into bland public statements, he claimed public symbols for the realm of inwardness and private experience." 

--Deborah Solomon from the NYT article