Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
File under: Zooming Out/Zooming In
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore pulls from her own experience of sexual assault and navigating complex family relationships: those that are broken, strained, enduring, and incomplete to convey how the explicit personal violence people experience is (perhaps among other things) an abstraction of the implicit systemic violence that goes unaddressed in broader culture. And, in doing so, Touching the Art is a necessary work of radical compassion.
I had never heard of Gladys Goldstein, Sycamore’s grandmother, who was an American artist of notoriety in the last century. The exploration of Mattilda’s relationship with her exposes not only the sexism, racism, and anti-semitism Goldstein was mired in as she made her personal and professional choices, but also how surviving those elements contributed to a silencing of queerness that trickled down into the following generations. And the Patriarchy. Oh! The Patriarchy. And within this compassionate telling, I received glimpses of the greater art world, the historical and social lay of the land in Baltimore, and places I recognize in my own neighborhood in Seattle.
Mattilda’s deeply researched book reinforces to us that people and culture exist in a composition of negative and positive space. Our individual lives can only push so hard on the weighted and imposing negative space of culture. Despite the tough assignment, though, there can be no waiting for the context to change, and so push we must. Those of us who chose to effort towards what I call “stopping the shit from rolling downhill" have our work cut out for us. If you identify as one of us, this book can be a resource, a rest stop, a chat with a loving friend who sees you.
I especially appreciate how the author seems to understand the spoonfed quality of linear narrative is also a part of normalized imperialist, capitalist, white-supremacist oppression. Being trusted to navigate the negative space in a written format is a profound delight, indeed.
