Oh Captain my Captain by Ivan Majdrakoff

Oh Captain my Captain, one of Mr. Majdrakoff’s totem series is forty inches tall and fourteen inches wide at its widest part. Like all of Majdrakoff’s works it is flawlessly balanced in a kind of anthropomorphic configuration built around a single wooden armature. At the top is a rectangle, actually, an eight by ten-inch wood picture frame attached vertically. Hanging from the top member of the frame is a machinist’s caliper. Inside the frame is a large capital letter "A." Within the "A" are a marble and a rusty piece of baling wire. Running somewhat diagonally across the bottom third of the frame is a very rusty kitchen knife on which is attached a tiny plastic pig. Majdrakoff’s totems are a clarification and intensification of the global life experience; nothing, even the most diminutive child’s toy, is an irrelevant identifier of our universal kinship.

Beneath the picture frame rectangle at the top, the totem is dominated by horizontal objects in descending order: a cribbage board, ruler with epaulets attached to each end, another ruler, single-row abacus, full abacus, plastic ruler and a broken wooden fuel tank measuring stick. The very bottom of the totem is dominated by a woman’s bright red high heel shoe, toe pointing down.

A few pegs are stuck in the cribbage board and at one end is a red bicycle reflector. Attached to the first ruler beneath the cribbage board is an old hand-magnifying glass through which we see a portion of the cribbage board enlarged. In the center of the magnifying glass is a small crustacean. The ruler on which the magnifying glass is attached is raised from the armature by a single wood alphabet block. Beneath the alphabet block is a small wooden box in which the handle of the magnifying glass is stuck and on top of which is attached the skull of a raptor. The raptor’s beak rests on a round piece of marble on which is glued a foot, possibly from the same raptor.

Under the full abacus is a rubber stamp with a fish image, on top of which is a red crayon. Inside the brilliant red ceramic high-heeled shoe is a single black checkers piece and an open clamshell with two marbles. The toe of the shoe rests on another round piece of marble and a red checkers piece shares space on the marble.

Obviously, an artist like Majdrakoff is meticulous in ascribing significance to even the tiniest brushstroke in his painting or object attached to a totem or title. Nothing is simply present for the sake of design alone. That said, the epaulets and red shoe stand out as the key signifiers in this piece. We live in a technological society, which, Jacques Elleul would remind us, inclines us increasingly toward martialization. The menacing gold and black of the epaulets is balanced with the capricious, passionate red shoe. Since Michael Powell’s film adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson story of The Red Shoes, red shoes and art are inescapably synonymous in the art community. It is not merely coincidental that the red shoe (art) is at the bottom of this piece. Brilliantly calling attention to itself but inexorably buried beneath all the rulers, insignia, measurers, cutters and calipers is art.

Our eyes bounce back to the top, the big A in the picture frame….measured art, experiential art from childhood marbles to labor and baling wire….art dissevered. So art balances tenuously at the extremities of games, armies, science and mathematics. People are more inclined to give close examination to a cribbage game than to a work of art. The mini-Okeefe skull reminds us that occasionally art and science meld but the plethora of measurers below quickly brings us back to the reality of a science-minded society. The diminutive red crayon, tucked inconspicuously among all the precise quantifiers, suggests relentlessly the low station of art in a society which practically insists on veteran-ship as a prerequisite to public acclaim.