I Am : Cultural Leadership and Human Progress in a World at War
Joe Kagle

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Start with Self: At this special time of cultural leadership and human progress in a world at war, standing on this ground in Tbilisi, one of the links on the great silk road chain of culture, commerce and information, the initial question any cultural leader should ask in this time called Post Modern is “Who am I?”. Post Modern is a time when technology has made unparalleled breakthroughs, advances in scientific knowledge, discoveries concerning outer space as well as the earth’s innermost core, the human body and its psyche. It is time to ask that question because the history of human relations is quite different. We have the widest gap between rich and poor in history, the slaughter of humans by humans over the last century is almost shocking (since it is harder and harder to shock us), and there has been an alarming growth in population. In less than 150 years, we have gone from a global population of 1 billion to about 6 billion and more than ¾ of the people live in developing countries. Also, we have more information in the midst of less understanding. Therefore in this sea of contradictions between technological advances and human progress derailment, I begin this talk with a question, “Who am I?” because as each of us walks the new “silk road of information” we attempt to balance the future shock of outside world data with self-knowledge. “Who am I?” is not a simple question. It is, though, an important first question to answer for everyone but especially for the cultural artist in each of us, who must create from the stuff of self through the material of the world. And I use the word “artist” to mean anyone who creates a new image or idea in any field, be that person politician, scientist, or painter. The line between professions is not clear cut today. So let us start this journey on the new silk road by opening our wallets and viewing our credit cards, our driver’s license, and any other identification tools that we carry. Therefore I start where each of us should start, with “SELF”.

I am 194264826449250001900011838531420325000940 etc etc etc and I am one, and sometimes two, and in the best of times, three, four and more when I reach out to those around me, when I envision myself as part of a working global system of human beings. It is a time when we all must identify our oneself in others.

I am Kagle, Louis, Joe, son, husband, teacher, father, brother, artist, professor, Fulbright Scholar, lover, museum director, thinker, human, one, other, self, non-self, collector, grandfather, Caucasus traveler, conservative, liberal, child, man, builder, packrat, entrepreneur, advertiser, lecturer, writer, etc etc etc etc and I too am a stone thrown in the water that makes ripples along the new silk road.

I am Pre-Modern- a believer, Modern- a searcher for truth, and Post-Modern- non-believer in certain religious practices or sciences which say they know an ultimate answer or media-generated outside answer. I am JUST SEARCHING FOR SELF within and without. I am questions more than answers. I am the smile on the Mona Lisa and the Beatle’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

I am “I you he she we. I you he she we. In the garden of mystic lovers, I you he she we. In the garden of mystic lovers, these are not true distinctions. I you he she we.”

I am “and” and “or”. I am the messager and/or the message. America is an “or” culture. Conservative or liberal. Republican or Democrate. For or against a war. Many places along the silk road are “and” cultures. You can be conservative and liberal and independent and something else. You can be for and against a war at the same time.

I am created from the stuff that stars and oceans and space and paintings and YOU are made of.

I am an advertised self. I read my clippings from time to time to learn what others think I am. I am inventing myself all the time, working daily on my art work.

Now that you know who I am in a post-modern world, ask yourself the same question, using all the tools that society gives you. We call this time in history, post-modernism, since we must name everything to understand it. I do not believe anymore in “Bigger, Better, Larger” in capitalism or communism. In art, I like doing what I do therefore I do it.. At this time in my life, I ask again, “Who am I?” You cannot give of yourself without answering that question. In a world at war, this is a time for giving.

Process for a Cultural Leader: And what can any cultural leader give to a society: experience, knowledge, intuition, visions and, in my case, a look at the history of America as a pathway of discovery. We have a short but intense history of lessons which I hope we have learned. We have, more than anything, the audacity to think that we can find the answer. That is an American strength and our weakness. It is strength because as a people we believe before any venture that we will prevail. It is a weakness when that belief becomes arrogance instead of humility.

Lessons Learned: As Harriet Mayor Fulbright observes, “Now for the first time in human history, one half of the world’s population lives in cities. That means that we are no longer surrounded by nature: we surround it. We will continue to lose habitat; and we lose biodiversity daily. With the loss of both, we reduce our capacity to respond to the stresses of everyday life, not to mention the extraordinary events that happen from time to time, such as war”. The war that Americans remembers most in its national psyche is the Civil War in the midst of the 19th century. And in the middle of that war, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill that began the great conservation movement of the century, establishing Yosemite and Yellowstone as possible national parks. Yosemite was viewed as “God’s gift to America” and Yellowstone as the “devil’s hole”. Later advertising and a change of rhetoric made Yellowstone part of God’s package of sublime beauty to all Americans. It was our “manifest destiny” to own the land, to exploit most of it, but here in these two places, to preserve it. Only the New England states in America were not happy with God’s movement to the West. For America’s early history, New England was “God’s country”. Now, God has migrated West. The Hudson River painters showed us this vision of God’s wonder in the East. Now artists like Bierstadt and Moran shows the East (where the money was) that sublime beauty lay in the West. It was not just showing the picturesque but it defined the West as God’s chosen place. Even the naming of the rocks was biblical: Cathedral Rock in Yosemite and the Mountain of the Holy Cross in Colorado. America believed that it had an unequal distribution of the world’s resources- human, natural, educational, technological, and financial. Not just the West but all of America was “God’s country”. In fact, another term was coined in the mid 19th century, “geographic determinism”. America was halfway between two great oceans and halfway between two poles. It was not until Darwin’s Origin of the Species (published in 1859 but only gaining intellectual power in America much later) that this concept of determinism or manifest destiny was undermined in academic circles and, even today, fundamentalists still use this argument of “God’s will” to justify many actions all over the world. The visual truth of a landscape had little to do with selling the West to the Eastern politicians of America in the 1860s and 70s.

And did the setting aside land for the preservation of nature for the people’s enjoyment work? Yes and no. Yes, there is a place which is safe for families to visit where at one time the air was clean and the vistas breathtaking. Olmstead, in designing the pathways, roadways and trails of the parks, made sure that democracy rules, that is, there were many curves so that multiple views of the scene were observed. Also the answer is “No”, today there are days when the pollution is so thick that one cannot see the tops of the mountains. Commercial signs litter the roads going into and leaving the parks. The problem may be that the 19th century looked at the world as an “object” to be owned, used or admired. The national parks became outdoor museums for God’s wonders with a political curator. The same system that we used for the American Indians, putting them on reservations, was used for nature. If we did not understand it, we set it aside.

Important Questions to Ask: Cultural leaders in any century are sometimes blinded by the major question of their time. The same question that was used to define 19th century art, “What is it?” was used to think about America’s national parks. Now, in contemplating contemporary problems, three other questions must be asked: “What forms does reality take?” (a science and cubist question of the basic forms: cones, cubes and cylinders of the world- an art question asked by Picasso, Braque and Kakabadze in the 1920s in Paris); “What forces are at play in the works creation?” (a question asked by Kandinsky, Pollock, Einstein and Frued in mid-20th century), and finally “What systems are involved in the work?” (a Robert Wilson and a computer question in late 20th and early 21st century). In picturing and conserving the modern silk road, it may take many nations and their cultural leaders to work together to develop a “system” to conserve the ecological, historical and artistic “systems” of the new “Silk Road”. To accomplish this, what is needed?- new thinkers who are cultural leaders.

Skills Needed: Again, I turn to my own experiences. Last year, in my Fulbright teaching here in Georgia, I taught situational leadership: that is, if you know nothing, you are told; if you know a little, you are shown; if you know as much as your mentor, you work in collaboration; and if you know more than your mentor, the mentor gets out of the way but finds you the resources to get the job done. What this takes is not academic learning but cultural learning. What this takes is patience. Again to quote Harriet Mayor Fulbright, “There is a growing realization that those in charge of governments and businesses have a profound impact on history, and recent research on effective leadership for the future has been extensive. One interesting research project focused on the actual skills needed and used by leaders, and its conclusions surprised many. It was found that only 10% of those skills were intellectual, or IQ, whereas 70% were based on what is called emotional quotient (EQ). What is EQ? Its components are: self awareness, or the abilitiy to see oneself accurately; management of one’s own emotions, to control surges of anger or anxiety; motivation of others- empathy and understanding of other, or the ability to see situations and feelings through another’s eyes; and the ability to make and maintain human connections through reaching out and careful listening.”

Cultural Leadership in Georgia and America: Today, across the world and along the modern silk road, cultural leaders are turning to the thinking of women in the 21st century because our education and training, as males of the species, were based on the 19th century “manifest destiny” concept that men knew best. I learned in Georgia that one element that kept this nation in tact during occupations by the Persians, Mongols, Turks and Soviets was the Supra, a mealtime toasting ritual to all those things that are precious to sustaining relationships: family, nation, heroes, freedom, guests, children, those who have died, etc. Mothers have always thought of family first and self after. In times of occupation, men and women need to begin thinking as mothers in the new cultural leadership positions. The nation and the human race are not two parts of a family, but an extension of one family. It took me eight months to build trust at the Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts. It was only then that I could create a resource room on American Art and American Architecture which (because my friends wanted it) bears my name. Over the last year, I have been working with artistic and cultural leaders in the Caucasus on a new Bauhaus for creative ideas (anything that is new where we do not place borders between disciplines, ideas or images). It is called Art Villa Garikula. Email has brought the world closer in terms of instant communication (not understanding but communication).

Rules for a Cultural Leader: Again I turn to self for some lessons learned before leaving American, during my Fulbright Scholar’s teaching in Georgia, and after returning home. These rules come from my discoveries in cultural leadership. My tools were simple: a set of eleven rules backed by experience and training. The first rule that I wrote down and still remember was given by my father who went to the tenth grade during the Depression and then dropped out of school. I was boarding the train to go to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 1951, the first of our family to go to college. He said, "I have never been there so you are on your own but remember when you get there, learn to meet people and situations and everything else will fall into place." Much later, I wrote:

Rule One: When breaking new ground, listen to everyone but follow no one.

It is a joy to return to a society where even the children celebrate art (opera, symphony concerts, drama, ballet and all the visual arts) as a daily ritual of life. As one elderly professor at the Academy (where I taught American Art and American Architecture) said at my farewell party, "We have nothing but we dance and sing."

Rule Two: When in doubt, circle the wagons.

When I arrived in Tbilisi, I thought that my most important job was in the classroom. I had retired from museum fund-raising and grant writing. I was mistaken. I found that my colleagues in the struggle of art needed help in finding sources of funds and ways to ask for needed resources. We, as a working consortium, learning from each other, circled the wagons. I am still doing that by email.

Rule Three: Luck comes to those who are prepared.

Before leaving American in 2001 to come to Georgia, I wanted some place where my skills as a teacher of art history, a museum professional and an artist were most needed. Taiwan I knew very well and had old and reliable friends there. Most of Europe I had traveled while teaching on World Campus Afloat and most of the orient I had experience while head of the fine arts department at the University of Guam and on my first Fulbright in 1966. I was looking for a new adventure. My Fulbright Scholar official duties in 2001-2002 were to teach American art, American architecture, museum studies (to museum professionals and art gallery owners), and lecture on democracy and education wherever the American Embassy of Georgia needed me. I discovered that you cannot do anything abroad without discussing "What is an American? (or Who Am I?) What does American freedom mean?"

The preparations were important. I wrote to 200 outstanding American architects and of those 70 sent firm profiles, books on their work, and other material on American architecture at their own expense. Names like Michael Graves, Philip Johnson, Steven Holl, Robert Ventura, and Rick Sundberg send books from their firms and their hearts. The same was true of American museums. Sixty eight major American museums responded by sending books that they published on American art and architecture. Of the 168 Texas artists that I asked to send materials, more than half is now part of the Kagle Resource Room for American Art and Architecture, which was opened by the American Embassy and the Georgian Ministry of Culture on May 22, 2002. I transcribed 44 videos on American art, architecture and art education from US to European electrical standards. I sent fifty two boxes of books and tapes. American museums, architects and Texas artists sent an additional one hundred and seventy boxes. It was only after I got to Tbilisi, Georgia that I was informed that the limit for the American Embassy's Fulbright Scholar allotment for pouch shipment to the Caucasus was four boxes for educational materials.

Rule Four: If they give you lined paper, write but across the lines if they don't tell you differently.

I had learned long ago it is easier to say, "I'm sorry, I did not know" than to get permission for anything which was not illegal but was outside the rules. It took me the whole nine months of my Fulbright Scholar's grant to organize the books, raise an additional $6000 to convert a dirty, broken wall class room into a study chamber which was bright and inviting, and find the Georgian architect to pull off the design for the room with imagination and perspiration. In the last year, friends have donated more books from their libraries and I have worked closely with the Tbilisi State Conservatory, Tbilisi State Academy of Fine Arts and Art Villa Garikula on a million dollar Gates Grant for resources that are sorely needed.

Rule Five: Walking on new ground, tread softly at first and hold the hand of a friendly, experience partner. I was the first art professional chosen by the United States Department of State to journey and educate in Georgia since its independence in 1991. Business and economics had had their share of scholars, none until me in the cultural field. When I arrived even the artists were still asking the 19th century question, "What is it?" while still trying to work with 21st century imagery.

Rule Six: Stop and watch the grass grow. You might learn something.

For the last ten years, I had been reading the poetry of Rumi, a 13th century Islamic poet who believed that all men could live together in peace, so we stopped in Cappadocia, Turkey and visited the nature-formed "fairy castles", a French description for the soft stone houses carved from the formations left after the ice age. This was also the place where St Nino studied before bringing Christianity to Georgia.

Rule Seven: First you shoot the arrows and then you paint the targets. You cannot miss.

I came to Tbilisi to teach American art and architecture at two major universities, and museum studies at the national museums. Therefore adjusting to the unknown, on the second day I was asked, "Do you wish to go to Kutaisi and represent America as our artist?" It took me a second to ask, "When do I begin teaching at the universities?" It was already the end of August and I had been told that I would start the beginning of September. The American Embassy representative answered, "I don't know yet." "Sure, I came to Georgia to have time to paint. I will go to the International Workshop on Contemporary Art for the month of September." "You will stay with the Governor. Is that OK?" "Sure (not knowing at all what I was saying "Sure" to)!" Kutaisi is a city of 300,000 people, in the region of Imeriti, governed by the Honorable Temerez Shasheaskvili. We stayed in the governor's home just on the edge of the tenements on the outskirts of the town. His home housed five families in a structure where Americans would have one family. I would recommend staying with a local host to anyone who wants to know Georgian family life, politics, religion, customs and social gatherings. We learned the difference between monochromatic systems of living (America a linear system of thought that starts at one point and ends in another in the future) and polychromatic systems (Georgia and the Middle East where thought is a spiral around an idea which may or not end in a point which can be in the past as well as the future). I taught corporate management (museum management) to individuals who have learned the "hurry up and wait" method of doing anything, who stop any action if there is a party or a funeral to attend, and who have not been allowed by the Soviet Communists to make any decisions on their own. "I don't know" became the major phrase I learned early and repeated often. When I inquired in January, "When will the second semester for the Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts (where I taught four courses) begin?", I was told by the Vice Rector, "February I or March 15". What I learned later was that he was telling the truth. It depended on the winter. I told my Tbilisi students, "If you come, we will freeze together but you will learn." I taught at six major universities all over Georgia, lectured to all kinds of groups on what is America and American education, art and architecture, served on panels to choose Fulbright Scholars to America, and helped students and university professors wishing to do research in America. I learned that Tbilisi had no public children’s playground therefore I raised the money and worked with dedicated Georgians to create the Reva Rapaport Children Playground (a prototype for what is to follow) which opened on May 7, 2002.

Rule Eight: When working in the unknown, any path will do. You can begin in the middle, work backwards or forwards. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Creativity is not a linear process.

New ideas were not tolerated in the Georgian society for centuries, except behind closed doors. The Soviets, the newest tyrants, had shut them out for eighty years.

Let me tell you two short stories of heroes on the modern silk road. David Kakabadze went to Paris in 1920, worked as the equal of Picasso, Brague and Leger. Today, he has his work from that period of time in the Yale Art Collection beside these better known colleagues. He came back to Georgia in 1928, was told that he could not think or teach modem ideas by the Communists, and died in 1952, unknown and pushed into poverty by the Soviets.

Alexandre Bandeladze isolated himself in his studio, unknown to everyone even to his closest family. He had seen one black and white photo of a Willem DeKooning painting with the caption, "American Degenerate Art". He taught only five students (who now are part of the leadership of European contemporary art). He created accomplished master works of "Abstract Expressionism" without outside information, except that one photo in the 1960s.

These are two stories of many all along the silk road.

Rule Nine: For a creative human being, it is just as important to forget as to remember.

I will forget the terrorists who were being bombed by the Russsian only ninety miles from Tbilisi. I will forget the long lines of men waiting for work beside the roads each day. I will forget that a college professor makes only $10 per month as pay and a pension for that same professor is $7 per month. I will forget that one million Georgians have left the country since 1989 so that one person in the family is sending home money to buy the greatest fresh bread and cheese in the world. I will remember the Georgian love of the arts, the hospitality where you give all that you can to a stranger who comes as a honored guest (one plate is always left open for the guest who might come), and I will keep alive the warmth of friendships made and the respect for education shown by all Georgians. Of course, I have put this into six written and drawn journals and on computer disk so that when I need to recall I can.

Rule Ten: Always leave the door open. The future is sometimes the past.

I have helped to assist with something that might be larger than any nation’s border; Art Villa Garikula, which will educate students from all over the silk road and Europe on new art ideas. I will continue to use the email airways to work with friends. I will try to get some of the brightest and best students to schools in America or anywhere where excellence is the rule and they can learn what freedom really means.

Why did the Persians, Turks, Mongols and Soviets wish to control this small nation? Georgia's geographical importance has been known for centuries as the crossroads of the commercial "silk road" between Asia and Europe. It is now the new silk road for oil and gas. It is the central stop on the information highway between Europe and the Middle East. It is a key nation in the spread of democracy to this part of the world. It is important as a stop on the cultural silk road of the arts.

And what did I learn while in Georgia? When I was asked, "What is America?" I said that it is three things: 1) Jeffersonian America where we educate the brightest and the best to lead our nation, 2) mercantile America. where business supplies the money to run a free government, and 3) Thomas Paine's America where there is one vote for each American where a citizen can get rid of the brightest and best who do not serve the people. No nation can have a democracy without that balance. Georgia, a new democracy, has had only one element, the education of the brightest and best. Another thing that I learned in Georgia (and after 9/11 all Americans learned it) is that: we are part of a global family. Killing terrorists will not stop poverty. Winning a war does not guarantee winning the peace. Great nations plan for generations, poor ones plan for Saturday night. What is needed is cultural leadership!

Rule Eleven: May the beauty I love be what I do.

As a Fulbright Scholar to Georgia in 2001 2002, I taught, lectured, painted, exhibited and wrote about freedom and its benefits. As the Islamic mystic poet Rumi wrote in the 13th century, "Birds fly in great sky circles of freedom. How do they learn this? They fall and having fallen, they are given wings."

Concluding Idea: The silk road was a traditional avenue for commerce, communication and information. It still is except the pathway now may be expanded to fill the whole electronic world. There is no section of the planet where information cannot penetrate. We now see with eyes from satellites (called “parallax vision” by Stephen Holl) as well as Renaissance perspective. One way of seeing does not stop when another paradigm appears on the scene (I thought at one time in my youth that a new paradigm totally replaces the old one but that is not true in many cases). What is true is that the old vision is now an archaic form or historical artifact. We use glasses when our eyes are not good enough, then we use telescopes and microscopes when glasses fail us. Lastly, we use visionaries to see beyond what we know or have seen. Cultural leaders with a high EQ are needed. The arts are not the fuel of the mind. That is education. The arts are the spark that sets that fuel ablaze. It is the source for a future passion on the modern silk road that will light a new horizon.

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