Fallen Mias
Artist
Walton Ford
(American, b. 1960)
Date2000
Mediumwatercolor, gouache, ink and pencil on paper
Dimensions60 1/2 x 119 3/4 in.
ClassificationsWatercolor
Credit LineCharles F. Smith Fund
Terms
Object number2001.45
Description"As Asia's spreading economic crisis shows, nowadays we're really all connected," Ford has observed. "I love narrative painting, and I'm using it to explore this kind of big theme. I use symbols that are deliberately obscure, so it's not a super-easy read. I'm after something like you see in Bosch: You can't really figure it out exactly but you get the idea."1(1) For many years Ford has been aware of the role of three leading primatologists: Jane Goodall, Dianne Fossey, and Birute Galdikas- all of whom focused world attention on animals facing extinction during the final decades of the twentieth century, a period of unprecedented population growth and economic expansion. In particular, Ford remembers when Galdikas was featured in "National Geographic" in the 1970s as a comely young scientist photographed in Borneo observing the orangutan that have preoccupied her ever since. Orangutans ("mias", in Indonesian) live solitary lives eating fruit in arboreal settings. It has always been difficult to observe them because they are so elusive. In Ford's painting a dominant male is swinging from one branch to the next wielding a camera complete with a lengthy telephoto lens. To the left is a woman in hot pursuit. Adjacent are two young orangutans that may or may not be the subject of the male's jealousy and implied aggressive behavior. In effect, the male has turned the tide and made the scientist the subject of his scrutiny by seizing her camera. The lower right-hand portion of the paper reveals the jungle habitat of these animals being destroyed by an enormous conflagration. Indeed, large multinational conglomerates are currently decimating the landscape, harvesting valuable timber and burning what remains.
The riches of Indonesia are being depleted at an alarming rate.
Galdikas, once the darling of environmentalists, has been discredited in recent years as her scientific research has been supplanted by an emotional response to the plight of the orangutan. She has rescued them forcibly from captivity and has increasingly turned to mothering them in an attempt to keep the species alive. As the site for this drama, Ford chose Galdikas's research station, in a remote part of Borneo. Here the orangutans once roamed freely but many now linger around the research station, living on handouts and causing their pattern of socialization to change dramatically. Whereas they once were solitary, they have become increasingly aggressive and violent as their world disintegrates. Donations to support the reserve have declined due to Galdikas's aggressive and increasingly eccentric behavior. Symbolic of this decay is the decrepit dock, seen behind the orangutans. Now older, much heavier, and increasingly isolated, Galdikas is the object of the fury of the very animals that she has tried to rescue and preserve. Nature has gone amok in a bizarre twist of circumstances.
Ford has artificially aged the paper to make it appear several hundred years old. Since the conquest of Africa, Asia, and South America, the colonial powers have combined their exploitation of their newly acquired territories with a scientific examination of the flora and fauna of that region. "Fallen Mias" is part of this tradition insofar as the medium and the inscriptions are consciously archaic. The naturalist Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin, and many others published illustrated tomes describing and cataloguing the newly discovered species of the remote corners of the planet. Examples were invariably killed and stuffed and returned to the capitals of Europe and America to grace museums and university science centers.
Although Ford is an antiquarian, the enormous size of the watercolor is characteristically contemporary. Furthermore, the dates written in the upper left-hand corner refer not to the date of the artist's work but to the time spent by Galdikas in Borneo. The inscription from Edgar Rice Burrows next to the date is from the adventure story "Tarzan" and refers, enigmatically, to the encounter between man and beast. As always, Ford alludes to both fact and fiction, which he weaves into his contextual narrative.
The artist claims to see both "negative and positive" aspects of the scenes he describes.2 (2) Certainly, there is considerable irony in this work. As we observe with fascination the scientist frantically attempting to retrieve the camera, the instrument that has enabled her to lovingly document the habits of these gentle giants, we notice with horror that other men are destroying their natural habitat. The observer cannot but wonder at the thoughts of the orangutan. Which species has actually attained a higher level of evolution? Certainly, it is a foolish animal that fouls its own nest. DH
Bibliography:
"Walton Ford", exhib. cat. (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, 1997); "Avatars: The Watercolors of Walton Ford", exhib. cat. (Long Beach: University Art Museum, California State University, 1999); "Brutal Beauty: Paintings by Walton Ford", exhib. cat. (Brunswick, Me.: Bowdoin College Art Museum, 2000).
Notes:
1. Edward Gomez, "Past Is Present," Art and Antiques (December 1998), p. 64.
2. Interviews with the artist, June 1 and 22, 2001.
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