Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore discusses her book 'Touching the Art', exploring topics such as women in abstract expressionism, queer identity, structural racism, Jewish assimilation, and family gaslighting. She also delves into her relationship with her grandmother, an abstract artist, and the emotional connection to her art.
The book explores the complicated relationships between the author and her grandmother, highlighting the struggle of loving someone who disagrees with fundamental aspects of one's existence.
Art, specifically Gladys' abstract paintings, offers the author a space to dream and imagine a creative life, while examining themes of aesthetics, artistic autonomy, and the limitations placed on women artists during that time.
The author's writing style embraces contradictions and complexities, seeking to uncover multiple truths even when they seem mutually exclusive, reflecting the messy and permeable aspects of life.
The book confronts societal norms and expectations, using writing as a means of survival to expose lies, uncover truth, and depict telling the truth as an act of love.
The book celebrates the transformative power of art, exploring the author's deep connection to her aunt's art, inviting readers into the gaps of loss and longing, and presenting a gift toward the future through speculative nonfiction.
Deep dives
The Complexity of Family Relationships
The book explores the complicated relationships between the author and her grandmother, Gladys, as well as her father. Despite inspiring the author's creativity and imagination, Gladys rejected aspects of the author's queerness and unconventional choices. The author delves into the contradictions and paradoxes present in their relationship, highlighting the struggle of loving someone who disagrees with fundamental aspects of one's existence. The author also addresses the gaslighting and denial surrounding her father's abuse, recounting the family's reaction and their refusal to acknowledge the truth.
The Power of Art and Creativity
Art, specifically Gladys' abstract paintings, plays a central role in the author's relationship with her grandmother. The book explores how Gladys' art offered the author a space to dream and imagine a creative life. It delves into the process of writing about visual art and the challenges of describing abstract paintings without visual aids. The author's engagement with Gladys' art leads to introspection and self-discovery, while examining the larger themes of aesthetics, artistic autonomy, and the limitations placed on women artists during that time.
Embracing Paradoxes and Complexities
The author's writing style seeks to hold and make space for binaries, oppositions, and paradoxes. It reflects the inherent contradictions and complexities of life, relationships, and personal experiences. By embracing contradictions, the author aims to uncover multiple truths, even when they seem mutually exclusive. This approach is seen in the exploration of political, emotional, and mystical dimensions, and in the author's ability to simultaneously love and disagree with her grandmother. The book is a testament to the power of embracing the messiness and permeability of all aspects of life.
Writing Against the Lie and Telling the Truth
The book confronts and challenges societal norms and expectations, particularly those related to upper mobility, class attainment, and straight acceptance. The author uses writing as a means of survival, seeking to expose lies and uncover truth. By writing against the lie, the author aims to create openness and dialogue surrounding difficult and uncomfortable subjects, such as abuse, trauma, and family dynamics. Telling the truth is portrayed as an act of love, even when it involves facing rejection or denial from those closest to us.
The Power of Art to Create Connection
The book explores the author's deep connection to her aunt Gladys's art and how it inspires a sense of child-like excitement. The author uses writing as a way to experience a sense of existence that was not possible for her due to childhood trauma. Through her writing and vulnerability, she hopes to create connections with readers, inviting them into the gaps of loss, longing, and desperation. As the book progresses, the author immerses herself in extensive research, discovering new layers of history and making connections between different artists and historical events. The book ends with a sense of infinite possibilities and the potential for further exploration.
Speculative Nonfiction and Imagining Otherwise
The book combines true historical research with speculative elements, challenging the inevitability of history and inviting readers to consider alternative possibilities. By overlaying Black history, Gladys's personal history, and the Jewish experience, the author creates echoes between different narratives and raises questions about what could have been. This speculative approach also extends to imagining conversations between artists who never met, such as Gladys and Grace Hartigan, exploring what they could have learned from each other and what they lost by not connecting. Through this speculative nonfiction, the author presents a gift toward the future, imagining a different path for Gladys and reflecting on the transformative power of art.
Exploring Identity, History, and Love
The book delves into the complexities of Jewish identity and the author's own exploration of Jewish assimilation and complicity in white supremacy. It challenges the notion of Jews automatically aligning with social justice causes and uncovers the contradictory histories of Jewish involvement in both anti-racist activism and supporting segregation. Amidst the research and historical narratives, the author's love for Gladys and her art shines through. The book becomes a testament to an imagined otherwise, an envisioning of what Gladys and the author could have fully become if not constrained by societal norms and trauma. It is a celebration of art's ability to transcend boundaries and a reminder of the power of connection and love in shaping our identities and understanding our histories.
Exploring Jewish history and its impact on personal identity
The podcast episode delves into the exploration of Baltimore's Jewish history and its influence on the speaker's personal experiences and identity. It highlights the complexity and contradiction within Jewish communities, such as the discriminatory practices they faced while also enforcing racist and anti-Semitic housing covenants. It discusses how this history of assimilation, racism, and participation in structural inequality has shaped the speaker's uneasiness in Jewish spaces and their understanding of their own Jewish heritage.
The power of speculative history and the practice of writing
The episode explores the importance of speculative history and the practice of writing in understanding complex historical and personal narratives. It emphasizes the role of memory, imagination, and the gaps in language in evoking feelings and creating possibilities. The speaker reflects on the legacy of segregation and structural racism, drawing connections between the experiences of black artists and the exploration of their own family's anti-blackness. The episode also delves into the collaborative relationship between artists and the transformative power of art in creating new perspectives and emotional experiences.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore returns to Between the Covers to talk about her remarkable new book, Touching the Art. A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is above all a complicated love letter to Mattilda’s grandmother, abstract artist Gladys Goldstein. Through an exploration of Mattilda’s love for Gladys’ art, Touching the Art becomes a book about so many things—women in abstract expressionism, queer identity and homophobia, structural racism and white flight, antisemitism and Jewish assimilation into whiteness, family gaslighting and middle class norms, and dreams and visions of solidarity and liberation both in the world of art and in the world.
For the bonus audio archive, Mattilda contributes a reading of the first chapter of their future book Terry Dactyl. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.
