REVIVING TINKERBELL

THE DISEMBODIED SPIRIT
On view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine
From September 25 to December 7, 2003

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
—From Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Most people are familiar with Peter Pan, written by J.M. Barrie. It started out as a play, later became a novel, and eventually caught the attention of Walt Disney, who turned it into the 1953 animated film. The story revolves around Peter Pan, a little boy who won’t grow up, and Never Land, the enchanted place where he lives. In Never Land, there are pirates, mermaids, and, most importantly, fairies. Tinkerbell, a fairy, is Peter Pan’s valiant companion. She is so valiant, in fact, that she drinks poison intended for Peter. As it turns out, Peter has a fierce attachment to tiny Tinkerbell, and in the play, he appeals to the audience for help: “Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!” Children clap, adults clap, and this belief in fairies, in a spirit world, is enough to revive Tinkerbell.

In 1904, when the play was first performed, it seems that J.M. Barrie was less than sure that audiences would clap for Tinkerbell. Barrie actually paid people to initiate the clapping in the first performances, but he need not have bothered. The audiences were more than willing to clap for Tinkerbell, and they have been clapping for her for nearly a hundred years.

How those early audiences yearned for a spirit world! Indeed, if we are going to be honest, we must admit that even today, we still yearn for one. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, there is an exhibition called The Disembodied Spirit that examines our longing for the spirit world. It traces the development of “spirit photographs,” which became popular after the Civil War; examines spiritualism, scientists, and ectoplasm; and illustrates our continued interest in the spirit world. Disembodied Spirit does this primarily with photographs, old and new, a medium that people initially assumed had captured the truth. It’s a fascinating exhibition, with much-needed accompanying wall texts, that traces the history of the relationship between science and religion, how they complemented each other and how they undermined each other. In addition, it shows how we are still grappling with those very same issues today.

From one of the wall texts I learned “Spirit photography was a material manifestation of Spiritualism, a popular and controversial mid-nineteenth-century religious movement. Practitioners of Spiritualism believed in the immortality of the soul …Spiritualism evolved during a crisis of faith in the nineteenth century.”

Technology, the Industrial Revolution, and, of course, Charles Darwin pulled the religious rug out from under society, but they gave little in return in terms of comfort and spirituality. The story of evolution, while fascinating, can hardly compete with the power of the bible. Yet, both could not be true, and scientific evidence pointed toward evolution rather than the bible. Today, this struggle is far from over as many schools in the United States grapple with teaching either creationism or evolution.

However, in the nineteenth century, scientists as well as the bereaved paradoxically turned to new technology to prove the existence of a spirit world and the immortality of the soul. “Science and religion, too, did not view their tasks as opposed…”. This might make modern readers smile and shake their heads, but in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, many unseen things were being discovered. “Researchers were proving that people were surrounded by invisible forces such as gravity, electricity, and bacteria.” Why not a spirit world as well?

Why not indeed? Nineteenth-century photographers were certainly willing to “prove” the existence of a spirit world. For a fee, of course. In Disembodied Spirit, there are a series of small black-and-white photographs with one or two sober subjects—sometimes men, sometimes women. In some of the photographs, little faces float over, under and sometimes even through the subjects. In others, ghostly hands hover over a woman’s head or a shadowy woman holds an anchor across a man’s heart.

Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884) provided “theatrical examples of spirit photography,” and they certainly do look staged. In one, a veiled woman seems to be admonishing the subject, also a woman. In another, a robed figure floats over two seated women. These pictures are hardly comforting, but they are dramatic.

Then, we get into the photographs of ectoplasm. No, this was not invented by the director of the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. Instead, it is “a white viscous substance mysteriously produced by mediums in the twentieth century.” In various photographs, white goo either pours forth from women’s mouths or covers their faces. Trust me, this looks as nasty as it sounds. However, in a modern photograph, a woman has what appear to be smoky flowers spilling from her mouth. Needless to say, the flowers are a big improvement over the goo.

Little faces hovering over men and women, a robed figure floating over two women, and ectoplasm spilling forth. It’s a clear case of con artists and believers. Modern viewers, of course, have no doubt that what they are seeing is trick photography designed to fool the gullible.

Today, few people would be taken in by these pictures, yet Disembodied Spirit wisely includes modern photography that also focuses on the spirit world. We might think we know better, but in our imaginations, we still yearn for something more than the solid world in which we live. We long for a spirit kingdom, and modern photographers use their imaginations as well as their cameras to conceive of such a realm.

Duane Michals’s nasty little vignette is called The Bogeyman, and it is a series of seven small black-and-white photographs. A little girl reads in a chair. The room seems empty except for her chair and a coat hanging on a rack. The little girl stops reading and looks at the coat. Something is not quite right. She goes to the coat. The child opens the coat but finds nothing. The little girl falls asleep in the chair; the coat gains legs. The coat moves toward the child. The coat carries the child away.

Mr. Michals’s work effectively taps into our fears. As children, we just knew there were bogeymen waiting for us, and even as adults, a small part of us still thinks this is true.

Jim Campbell’s Untitled might be more ethereal than The Bogeyman, but it is just as haunting. It’s a large photograph of a street with moving images of ghostly pedestrians. Even though it’s easy to figure out “the trick,” Mr. Campbell’s work somehow still manages to be spooky.

Mariko Mori brings an eastern sensibility to this exhibition. In Last Departure, he put three huge prints on aluminum and wood panels, and it looks as though they are floating in front of the wall. A young woman stands in a gleaming airport of light and steel. She wears a white wig, white boots, a white plastic-looking mini-dress, and she has a cartoonish look. Two shadow images flank the young woman, and it is obvious that they are all the same person. Last Departure provides a striking example of how the spirit world and the technological world can be combined. Somehow, the Japanese excel at this, and the enchanting movie Spirited Away came to mind as I looked at Last Departure.

The Disembodied Spirit is a huge, fascinating exhibit, which this review can only begin to explore. Funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Disembodied Spirit is a traveling exhibition that will stay at Bowdoin College Museum of Art until December 7. After that, it will travel to Kansas City, Missouri, and Austin, Texas. In addition, a fine catalogue (also called The Disembodied Spirit) accompanies the exhibition and is available for sale at the museum gift shop. After seeing this exhibition, I was struck once again by how Maine, a small state, has such vibrant and varied art. The Disembodied Spirit is a terrific exhibition, and readers who live within driving distance of Brunswick, Maine, (or Kansas City or Austin) should definitely plan on seeing it. It’s not often that an art exhibit provides spiritual history as well as fine art. The Disembodied Spirit does both.

 

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