Suzanne DeCuir

2010-11-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

As you'll see by the previous entry, I've wrapped up the art history blog, but if you'd like to see what I'm working on with my artwork and schedule of exhibits, then please visit my website. Thanks.

2010-06-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

This week marks one year since I started this blog. I began with the intent of plugging some of the gaping holes in my knowledge of art history, and I feel that while there is still so much to learn, the holes aren't quite so gaping. Tempus is fugiting as far as time to paint goes, and so in order to be able to devote more time to pushing the paint around, I've decided to wrap up this project. So this last one today will be it.

Just read a really long piece by Russian-born artist Olitski describing the incredibly long time it took for him to break into a gallery. (Of his appointment with dealer Betty Parsons years ago, he recalls the assistant saying, "Oh, she must have forgotten. She's gone for the day."

Finally, he got his foot in the door when he made up a story about a persecuted Russian artist who had painted these pictures - would the dealer (Alexander Iolas) please take a look? Iolas proclaims him a genius but insists on meeting the artist. Olitski has no choice but to tell the truth. He got his show.

Here's one I like for its rich layering, called Third Day, acrylic on canvas, 2000. Since I'm trying to create richer surfaces and experiment with color, I'm finding out how hard it is not to have some of those colors just go flat or come forward too much. Somehow there is both tension and harmony here, don't you think?

Above left at top is a print by Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Weil, Untitled, 1950. Included it today for its balancing theme and ghostly character.

Thank you all who've visited, commented and lurked.

2010-06-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Tomato, tomahto. . . how about Brancusi ? If you're like me you have been pronouncing it incorrectly for years - just learned it's pronounced Brancoosh- and it's Romanian, not Italian. He left Romania early in his life to study and work in France, but evidently he never really stopped creating art that had its touchstones back in Romania.

In Writers on Art, the British novelist Paul Bailey talks about how Brancusi "revivifies the images of rural Romania - the Byzantine icons, the wayside crosses and altars, the 'death poles.' (p. 257)
(About those death poles which I'd never heard of - apparently Ceausescu bulldozed quite a few village graveyards, destroying many - but they point toward the sky and signify the soul of the deceased on the way to heaven.)

Above is The Kiss. Maybe he got the idea for the theme from Rodin because he worked in his studio for two years at the beginning of his career. There are a number of versions of this. This particular one was carved in 1907 and adorns a grave. (Many of Brancusi's early commissions were funerary monuments.)

Bailey feels that given the sculptor's Orthodox background, he probably saw death as a part of life, and did not feel it needed to be sentimentalized or glossed over. The man and woman are carved out of rough stone, and certainly do appear to be united (even codependent). Reminds me of Cycladic sculpture in its simplicity. What do you think?

So many artists are lauded for their ability to simplify. But it is so hard to do well. Look how perfect this Sleeping Muse is. Just enough detail. Just the right size (6 x 11 x 7). Amazing.

2010-06-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I'm racking up overdue fines, but I've been hanging on to a book, Writers on Artists, that has paired writers with artists, each writer taking a few pages to talk about an artist. Today, sitting in the 55 degree summer weather at the neighborhood pool I had plenty of time to read about Chaim Soutine. You probably already know that he did not live a very long life.*

Now that I've talked about how great this book is, I'll complain that there is a seam running right thru the painting, and all kinds of searching online proved futile in finding another version of this painting, Man Walking the Stairs.

Can you make out the painting? Here's what English poet, Tom Paulin, (who grew up in Belfast) has to say about this painting:

. . .the stairs are outside in a stormy garden where they seem as wile and as bent as the trees an Gogh or Kokoschka would've recognized which isn't to say it's at all a secondhand garden only these trees are ecstatic dionysiac deeply unsettled oil and ocher and deadened raw. . .(page 289)
(I have yet to paint a dionysiac tree; best done under the influence?) He goes on in to talk about how the trees almost resemble a mob which "turns all those swirls into street action . . .

Of course, there's much more than I can include here. We'll never know what Soutine's intentions were, but here are Paulin's thoughts in free verse about the man who is "hunched or contorted in some way" and

has he his hands behind his back like a prisoner?
so maybe he is taking a last look over his shoulder?
-it could be the Bridge of Sighs then transposed to nature?
though of course a garden is more than nature
just as the Bridge of Sighs is more than a stone opera
just as the man climbing the steps or the stairs is more than a man climbing
in the year nineteen hundered and twentytwo
-like a prisoner or a refugee this man's been told - walk!
and everything - storm trees oily shapes colors
everything in the painting is unhappy is coerced
or coercive
except within it the spirit of the painter that represents
the man
almost as though he's the Wandering Jew who has been
ordered to act the part of a felon
desperately treading a treadmill in a circus tent
that a big wind blown into rips and tatters

*Soutine was born in Lithuania in 1893, managed to study art over the objections of his family, went to Paris where struggled to paint and live, working to dig ditches. A wealthy American collector, Albert Barnes, noticed his work, bought several paintings, and helped him climb out of poverty. During the WWII he managed to hide with the help of friends, but his lover, Gerda Groth, was captured and sent to a concentration camp. They never saw each other again. He died of an illness in 1943. (Writers on Artists, foreward by A.S. Byatt, 2001)

2010-06-17T06:48:00.000-07:00

Monday's post included a sculpture by Bernar Venet that I came upon in a magazine. He joins the long list of sculptors I knew very little about. The challenges of sculpture, of course, are the same as with painting - what to do when it's all been done?

In an essay he wrote in the seventies, Venet discussed the philosophical underpinnings of his work:

For Venet, there was an overabundance of nonfigurative and figurative imagery in the visual arts. Indeed, he thought that they had been done to death, and that the only way to rescue art from itself, from entropic redundancy, was by basing it on the mathematical graph- which for (Jacques)Bertin was the only true monosemic image. It is a completely rational model, Venet wrote, arguing that art must become "solely a place of manifestation of a code." (ArtForum, February 2003)

ArtForum's Donald Kuspit continues: Is it correct, then, to consider Venet's sculptures and drawings in this exhibition as illustrations of this code and, as such, conceptual? Are they a kind of applied mathematics? Not entirely. Each of Venet's "Arcs," 1976- (not included in this show but see image below), is a measurable segment of a circle's circumference, usually accompanied both in the title and work itself by the mathematical formula that "describes" it. But Venet also makes "Indeterminate Lines," 1983-, which he regards as "free" and "not definable mathematically"-thus wittingly subverting his own premises, as though to signal that rendering a code artistically is implicitly irrational. . . . .the graph line becomes convulsive and eccentric, seeming to lose its bearings. It becomes playful and unpredictable. . . . Indeed, it becomes a grand gesture-an eloquently dramatic expression of space. As Venet says, "randomness is one of the rules of the game," which produces at least the appearance of absurdity, "freeing sculpture from the constraints of composition."

Above intederminate line (rolled steel, 1994). Here are Arcs from the 2009 Venice Biennale:

If you go to his website, you'll see that he provides both a brief and a detailed biography. Naturally, I went for the brief version, but there were so many tantalizing tidbits that I had to go back and read the detailed version.

Here are a few: "Creates a ballet, Graduation, to be danced on a vertical plane" and later, "decides, for theoretical reasons, to cease producing art."

The bare bones are: born in France in 1941, is incredibly versatile and following the hiatus from art, works in a wide range of media: painting, sculpture, soundwork, furniture, and photography.

I'm always very wary of anything that seems gimmicky, so I was kind of surprised to like the 15- second video sound piece that pops up automatically when you click on his website. Sounds like church bells; makes you want to be part of the action. What do you think?

2010-06-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks several people have asked me to include a little more about what I'm working on, so here goes. Above is a detail from a painting I'm still struggling with. I'm interested in playing with ideas of and obliteration and erasure. I've always loved maps and history, so I've been looking at the idea of how places can be wiped out and then papered right over, or built upon, and then others go on about their business with no idea of the destruction beneath their feet. But of course some people do know, and do remember, and so that must alter their feelings about the place.

Above is the corner of Holmes and Reva in Cerritos, California. I used to drive past it on during the late 1986 after an Aeromexico plane came down, wiping out 10 houses, damaging a lot of others, and killing a total of 83. First the debris was cleared up, then there was a big dirt lot for awhile, and finally, after I didn't seem to be driving that way anymore, big giant houses when up to replace the more modest 70s ramblers surrounding them. And now, if you go to Realtor.com, you can see that one is for sale for 950K. I'd be surprised if there was any mention of the history of that plot of land. And would it matter to you? Would you feel as though you were buying a house of spirits? Does what you don't know really not hurt you? (Do I sound like Carrie Bradshaw trying to be Isabel Allende?)

Anyway, with the boon of Google maps, it's possible to drop in on places we remember that have been altered, that carry some memory of fear or horror, and see what the look like now, after the events/construction/activity of a few decades or a few centuries have obliterated their appearance and rearranged the atmosphere of the place.

Do you have places you recall as especially interesting or powerful? Were they meaningful only after you read about the history of the place or did you have an instinctive response to the place before learning its past?

P.S. If you'd like to read more, there's a short LA Times article written 10 years after the crash. I found it interesting that almost no one agreed to be interviewed and those questioned told the city they did not want any commemoration of the event. Only one family of those who lost relatives stayed in the area (and that family is interviewed.) All the others left.

2010-06-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

A friend from LA who comments often on this blog sent an article I've long since misplaced but still recall comparing Agnes Martin to Georgia O'Keeffe and coming down squarely in favor of Martin (feeling that O'Keefe was too kitschy).

Her work is always spare and often based on clean, geometric grids or simple lines across the canvas.

Here's Stars. Although it looks like a graph at first glance, I like the fact that the color is not uniform but shifts subtly throughout. The edges looking almost like fabric, and the tiny grid pattern and border are not uniform either. Looks like small stitches across the bottom near her signature. All those human touches to alter and soften an image that might have looked machine-made reveal the hand of the maker.

Trolling for information about her, I came upon a video created in 1997. Even if you only watch the first two minutes, you get a sense of her clear and simple approach to painting: get out of your own way, be still and wait for inspiration to come to you, and then paint. She shuns anything that seems to be too intellectual, preferring an emotional response. (Her hair is pretty no-nonsense as well). She died in Taos in 2004. I was surprised to learn she started her college career at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, my husband's hometown and the city where "my" gallery is. Not a ton of artists jump from Bellingham to Columbia University, and not too much later, a solo show at the Whitney.

Here's another, entitled Falling Blue (1963). Have you seen her work in person? Somehow I don't think the feeling of harmony and ability to be mesmerized can really come thru on a tiny computer screen. With Falling Blue, you get a tiny sense of the shimmer and beauty of this; like the other, it looks like fabric. (Some of hers are silk screen, but the SFMOMA website does not describe the medium for this, so I can't tell.)

In the video interview, she talks about having given up meditation once she mastered the ability to empty her mind. To me, it looks the work of an uncluttered mind. (No plastic Barbie toys underfoot on her floor.)

Finally, while reading about her I stumbled on a photo of Bernar Venet's sculpture Indeterminate Lines, rolled steel, 2003. Why do I like this so much? Seems a two-person show of Martin and Venet would be just the thing - hers so uniform and controlled, his so bent and moving and weighty.

2010-06-07T06:45:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's NY Times Sunday magazine there was an intriguing article discussing an art theft blog - did you see it? It's run by a fellow who goes by the name Turbo Paul. As Virginia Heffernan reports, he is "a self-described former dealer in stolen antiques" but now is on the other side, digging and blogging to track down and help recover stolen art.

One of his blogs, Stolen Vermeer, is devoted exclusively to reporting on the two decades-old investigation into the recovery of works stolen in 1990 from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The other blog, Art Hostage, tracks a number of art thefts worldwide.

This passage from Heffernan's article provides a feel for the insider nature of Turbo Paul's blogging:

. . . Turbo Paul knows everything about cops and robbers -- or seems to. Sure enough, by May 22, he was proposing what the Paris heist (of May 20th) meant; who was sending signals to whom; who was humiliated by the heist and who had the last laugh. He said his blog was besieged by visitors with prestigious IP addresses, and when I asked, he passed on the routing information of his readers: Justice Department, State Department and F.B.I." (p. 20)

It dawned on me that maybe we should hire this guy to start looking for Osama Bin Laden. . .or figure out how Lance Armstrong is getting away with doping, or exactly what happened with the Gores.

Above left is one of the stolen paintings, Woman with a Fan (1919) by Modigliani. (I was not familiar with that painting; the shapes seem to work together so well, with the rectangle in the top left balancing beautifully against the shape of her ear and the tip of the fan.) I think you will find these blogs pretty entertaining. No attempt to be politic, circumspect, or balanced. Refreshing.

Just noticed that in today's NY Times (C1) there is a review of the memoir Priceless: How I went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. The author, former FBI agent Robert K. Wittman, features prominently in Turbo Paul's blog posts, since he's the undercover agent who was hot on the trail of the works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Read the review here.

2010-06-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading an interesting blog post from May 31st about Sargent's Daughters of Edward Boit at this link (Alchemist's Pillow) so I've been thinking about how difficult it is to capture a likeness, especially with just a few strokes. This is Two Women by Iraqi painter Faik Hassan.

Others have pointed to Bonnard and Picasso as artistic influences (see Art, edited by Robert Benton, p. 273), and that makes sense to me, but what I am amazed by is the ability to nail down these portraits with a few tones and a few swipes of paint. I've been struggling this morning with a face for a commission, wiping it off, starting over again, and so on, and then I open this book and see these two.

Well, he did win a scholarship to go to Paris during the 30s and study at the École des Beaux Arts. (That little piece is missing from my backgound, alas.) Upon his return to Iraq, he established and led the painting and sculpture department of the Institute of Fine Art. In addition to landscapes and portraiture, Hassan also created a large mural in Tiran Square as one of a number of projects he worked on to serve his country. He died in 1992.

Here's one I like from the Dijla Gallery.

Unfortunately, the title is not posted, but it is oil on canvas. Monochromatic scheme works for me, and besides, I've always liked nun paintings. Time for a shrink?

2010-05-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm just not clever enough to tie in Memorial Day with some work with war imagery.

Even though I've lived in Washington state for a total of almost 13 years, I feel as though I barely know the names of the leading artists here, many of whom are still alive and painting. While thumbing through a book on NW painters I came across George Johanson. Apparently, when his left Seattle he was only 17. He came to the Portland Museum Art School from Seattle in 1946 on an art scholarship awarded by Scholastic Magazine. Aside from trips to Paris, Mexico and time spent studying in New York, he never really left, teaching for 25 years at the Museum Art School and developing a career in painting and printmaking.

I've never really gotten too excited about Surrealism, so when I read that he felt drawn to it, I thought, hmmmm, oh well. But look at this above- isn't it colorful and interesting? (The seam down the middle is from the book's spine.) I really like the strong use of negative space, the bent perspective, the repeated curves, unexpected colors. What do you think?

Here are two more and they seem to be coming more from an abstract expressionist interest, don't they? This is Western Exposure:

Trying to identify just what it is that I like about these. Maybe the combination of very small and very large, strong simple shapes, maybe the foreground figures that are just suggested.

This is Mirror Window. Below it is one that's from a gallery exhibition this year, called Nude with Mirror. (Here's a link to the Mark Woolley Gallery in Portland, as well.) What do you think?

2010-05-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've always liked the chalkboard-like paintings of Cy Twombly without really understanding what it was that drew me in.

In a book that does an interesting job of choosing writers to talk about artists, Philip Hensor (The Spectator and other British newspapers) discusses Twombly's work and offers his view that "obliteration is always intimately connected with writing in Twombly. . ." (p. 137, Writers on Artists, DK Publishing, 2001)

The writing is "on the teasing edge of legibility; but falling off that edge, rather than clinging on. . . They are not the writing of a teacher communicating with his class. . . to borrow a phrase from Barthes, the degree zero of his paintings, which wipe out meaning like a classroom duster, which obliterate writing so thoroughly while evoking it. . ."(p. 137)

I think I agree with Hensor that Twombly's paintings are more powerful when they do not bear too explicit a meaning. Here is the Hero and Leander triptych.
In the first, Leander drowns.

In the second and third, only the waves after the drowning are depicted.

The dark area of the second must be the spot where he went under. Hensor feels the third is the most beautiful; it's kind of hard to get a feeling for the sense of open space and merging of sea and sky in the third one when the image is small on the screen here.

In any case, I think maybe Hensor is right that more "backstory" doesn't really add to this; the interest in his work draws from its inexplicable nature, don't you think?

The Untitled piece at the top is from 1967. This Hero and Leander group dates from 1984.

He is still working and painting at age 82, taking his work in new directions.

This last, The Rose (2008) is from a show last year in London at Gagosian Gallery. He works big, so this would cover a large space on the wall. Have you seen his work in person?

2010-05-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a work of art is so familiar you don't really look at it very closely, and then when you do, you realize you never really looked at it that carefully in the first place.

Reading Kirk Varnedoe's A Fine Disregard, I came across an interesting essay on Rodin's Burghers of Calais. He's a little hard to summarize because he always supplies quite a lot of background and context, but I'll do my best:

Varnedoe says that Rodin did nothing to hide the artificiality of his art. Joint lines show and marks of modeling are not hidden in any way. He often made up scores of "spare parts" he used to put together figures: hands, feet, knees, etc. "Such physical, literal instances of sculptural fragmentation and repetition in Rodin negated basic conventions of wholeness, illusionism, and narration.. . In one way of thinking, it is precisely this split between content and form that makes Rodin's work modern.

With the Burghers of Calais, Rodin took a medieval story familiar to all schoolchildren of the time, of how six citizens volunteer to be sacrificial hostages to an English king in order to end of long, wartime seige. As Varnedoe explains, "Dissatisfied with the old conventions of summing up such a story in one hero or rhetorical gesture, he decided that, to get at the truth of what happened, the monument should treat all six equally. To do that, he tried to "imagine the moment of commitment when the victims prepared to march out to what seemed certain death, decomposed the even, conceptually and practically, into the smallest bits." (p. 133)

"He studied not just every man, but every arm, every hand, and even every finer, as an individualy entity, in order to build up an atomized repertoire of discrete units of expression."

Making sense so far? So he has this "lavish palette of recombinant possibilities" and what does he do? Something strange. I never noticed this til now, but two of the figures have the same head, and a third has that same face, only slightly altered. The same fingers appear on several figures, and when Rodin put the whole thing together he did nothing to try to link them by gestures or glances. They are also all sitting on different bases, but their heads are all level (when a more common set-up would have been a pyramidal arrangement).

Varnedoe makes his case that Rodin's decisions stem from his conception of the meaning of this event. These are people caught in various stages of unresolved inner struggle, trapped in private agonies of regret, isolated from one another as they search their minds. But the recurrent parts, suggest that these victims are also part of a collective, and so interchangeable and similar in certain ways. Of course the monument also calls to mind the struggle between the sense of public duty at war with the individual's own private will. (p. 138-9)

As usual, Varnedoe has a LOT more to say, but I think this is enough to get a feeling for his thoughts on how artists play with possibilities, in this case fragmentation and repetition, and from this trying out of forms in new contexts, find new ways to model the world.

I guess maybe all these plastic Polly Pocket and Barbie parts on the floor here at home could find new uses, but new meaning? Not so sure about that.

2010-05-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's always wise to look for the personal details of someone's life to show up in an artist's work, but it's kind of tempting with Artemisia Gentileschi. (No, she was not a butcher or anything. . .who's that contemporary chef/author, Julie of Julie and Julia fame, the one who wrote a book about butchery?)

Here's Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes (1612-21). Apparently this portraitist and painter of religious scenes depticted this as many as six times. According to Dr. Robert Belton (Art, p. 248), Gentileschi was trained by her father and heavily influenced by Caravaggio. She follows his lead with strong lighting and a deep, black background.

Here's Caravaggio's from 1598, and what some critics have called a rather hesitant, squeamish Judith shrinking a bit from the task. Her maid looks rather up in years, especially compared to the stronger, younger maid in Gentileschi's version. In Art, Belton mentions an additional reason for the artist to focus on such a gory scene; as a 19 year-old Gentileschi claimed she was raped by one of the artist's in her father's workshop.

If you don't recall the Biblical story, here's a summary. In the Old Testament, the Jewish widow, Judith, saved the city of Bethulia from siege by the Assyrians by adorning herself and venturing into the enemy camp to gain access to the Assyrian general, Holofernes. He invited her to a banquet intending to seduce her, and while they were alone at the feast, Judith took advantage of Holofernes' drunkenness to decapitate him, and returned to Bethulia with his head in a sack. The Jews saw Judith as a virtuous heroine, but Klimt portrays her as a Viennese femme fatale. (from Wet Canvas)

It does seem as though you're yanked into the present day with Klimt's version. It's just arresting in its power, don't you think? You are drawn instantly to that face, but when you take a second to see those fingers, the picture has even more impact. Honestly, though, I don't think I would have looked at Klimt's as carefully if I hadn't seen Gentileschi's and Caravaggio's first. What is your reaction?

2010-05-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm casting about for an artist to talk about and find one really close to home - my friend Christopher Harris creates his art with a pinhole camera - these are long exposure photos made with a lens-less camera. They have a moody, intriguing blurred quality that takes them away from realism toward Rothko country (that's kind of to the north of Marlboro country, minus the carcinogenics). As he explains, "His landscapes and seascapes are meditations on transcendence, a quality Americans have associated with the West for two hundred years."

His latest series will be exhibited at Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle beginning June 3rd. They are part of his Skagit Series focussing on twilight views of abandoned boats, winter trees, and other shapes barely visible in the fading light. (You'll have to go in person; I have no images yet to post.)

Above is Canola Field. This was taken in Nez Perce County in Eastern Washington.

And here's Rodeo, taken with a small, pocket-size camera, left intentionally with this grainy, scratched look. I'm not sure why, but I seem to prefer images that require some scrutiny, that are not easy to assess with a quick glance.

I really like the movement and the spontaneity of this one. Living in the Northwest, I think gray has become my favorite color by default or osmosis.

I like the way pinhole photography magically reduces the world to its simplest elements of color and shape. I don't know enough about it to figure out how many decisions are still left for the artist. Do you know?

2010-05-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

I've had this Klimt book for ages but never really bothered to read it, preferring to just leaf through and skip the text.

The other day while the girls paddled around the pool at the health club I took a few minutes and learned a few things about the progression of his work.

At left is Portrait of Fritza Riedler (1906). I don't know about you, but it always seems interesting to me to trace the trajectory of an artist's work.

Here is the Portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstien.

This is thought to be a transitional work between the rather traditional kind of portrait he'd created with Portrait of Sonja Knips. As Maria Constantino points out in Klimt, at first glance the portraits don't bear much resemblance to each other, but each does have the same triangular composition as well as "a certain tension, expressed. . through the hands." I had not noticed those hands, but they are indeed clenched, not very Sargent-like, lacking those soft, loose brushstrokes.

One of the more interesting things Constantino points out is the halo/crown kind of decoration Klimt creates around Fritza Reidler's face. She suggests the idea for this came from Klimt's study of Velasquez (apparently on display in Vienna at the time). Remember that Lady Gaga hairdo on Maria Theresa of Spain (1652-3)? You'll have to scroll back up to see the decorative treatment Klimt creates around the figure's head in the first two portraits on this post. Just jumps out at you.

I worry so much about avoiding any kind of borrowing of other artists' ideas, but here's another instance of taking an idea, and carrying it in a new direction. Alfred E. Newman and I should relax.

2010-05-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

Clipped an article about Frank Auerback so long ago I cannot find it in my not-so-organized studio. He came to mind after looking at those highly-textured Joan Brown paintings of last week. (I saw one recently at SAM here; the pigment must have been nearly an inch thick.)

Anyway, I have no idea how Auerbach voted in the recent election, but he certainly must have seen plenty of rounds of governmental musical chairs over the decades. Although not quite a household name here, is well known in Britain for his rich surfaces and his penchant for building up and scraping off layers to get what he's after.

This is Rebuilding the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square (1952). I love those colors, so hard to make rich and not dull and drab. What do you think?

He found his first painting subjects literally right at his feet. He recalled the time after World War II when the English were rebuilding the vast sections of London that had been bombed out during the Blitz:

“London after the War was a marvellous landscape with precipice and mountains and crags, full of drama… and it seemed mad to waste the opportunity and not to take notice of the fact that there were these marvellous images… all around one”.

There was, Auerbach says, “a sense of survivors scurrying among a ruined city… and a sort of curious freedom… I remember a feeling of camaraderie among the people in the street”. For Auerbach, the sense of survival must have seemed particularly profound. He had been sent to England from his home city, Berlin, shortly before his eighth birthday and the outbreak of war. Both of his Jewish parents were killed in the concentration camps and Auerbach made London his new home. (from the Courtauld Gallery bio)

This painting was his first, painted when he was only 21 years old, entitled Summer Building Site (1952). Evidently he labored over some paintings so long that the buildings had been completed and opened for use by the time he finished his work.

He studied art at St. Martin's as well as the Royal College of Art in London. His later works include portraits of friends as well as cityscapes. He is still living and working in London at nearly 80 years old. Pretty inspiring, don't you think?

2010-05-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

Since spending time with Joan Brown's paintings, I've been looking at some of another Bay Area Figurative artists work - David Park. (He was one of the earlier group that included Bischoff and Diebenkorn; Joan Brown was considered part of the second generation.) At left is Bus Stop (1952). That small figure to the left of the word "coach" just holds those two areas together like a staple, doesn't he? I like the simplicity, the limited palette, the occasional curve to break up the verticals. What do you think?

Here's one you could go see if you're anywhere near the Hackett Freedman Gallery. It's called Nude with Striped Rug.

This one seems to have a whiff of Matisse about it, doesn't it? Also makes me feel a little better about my hips. . .maybe time for the gym.

2010-05-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

This is a self-portrait by Joan Brown, one of the second generation of Bay Area Figurative painters. I have a tattered magazine copy of this hanging near my easel; it's hard to tell here, but the eyes are very interesting - different colors.

I like her use of color, strong negative shapes, that sort of chopped off shoulder.

Why is this Green Bowl (1964) so appealing to me? Maybe it's the texture, the two shades of brown inside the bowl, the wandering edge of the bowl . . .it does seem to be a descendant of Cezanne's aesthetically, doesn't it? Has that same interest in things as objects to contemplate rather than to use.

I think sometimes you can go nuts trying to search around for just the right subject, but Brown painted her family, household objects, and sometimes included symbols that held meaning for her. One more - obviously had a sense of humor. Take a look at this one called People and Eye Trees in the Park in Madrid (1961).

Sadly, she died at only 52 in an accident in India that happened during the installation of one of her art pieces.

2010-05-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

Quick - how long ago was this painted? 5 years ? 50 years? 90 years?

Well it's a John Marin from 1926 Mt. Chocorua #1.

Not many major artists of the day were working in watercolor, I don't think. (Sargent comes to mind, but he died in 1925.) After studying art in Philadelphia, in 1905 he left for Europe and stayed for six years, no doubt taking in the work of Cézanne, the Cubists, and the Fauvists.

A few important connections made a difference is his work becoming known. Stiegletz learned of him thru fellow photographer Steichen, and the former exhibited Marin's work in his studio and made introductions for him to others in the art world. Art collector Duncan Phillips was taken with his work, describing him as both an impressionist and an expressionist, "because he could capture a moment and location as well as his subjective response to it." (from Phillips Collection bio)

Marin is quoted as saying: Painting is like golf; the fewer strokes I paint, the better the picture. And that's the trick isn't it . . .which strokes?? Takes a lifetime to figure it out!

Above is Brooklyn Bridge (1912).

Here's another from this series, also 1912, that I like even better with its strong diagonals and sense of movement, a feeling for the high energy city and the structures being built.

His use of line is so good, isn't it? Doesn't seem tacked on, but absolutely right and necessary. What do you think?

"The world of proximate things. . .exists for Cézanne as something to be contemplated rather than used." Meyer Schapiro

2010-04-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

How about just a little more time spent thinking about Cézanne this morning before dismantling the still life of apples and oranges in my kitchen to make lunches? It's astonishing to me that once you have a new way of looking at things you can see so much more. Above is Still Life (1883-87).

Art historian Meyer Schapiro talks about the contemplative, detached stance that Cezanne takes and how that can be seen his approach to still life:

Cézanne's still life is distinctive through its distance from every appetite but the asthetic-contemplative. The fruit on the table, the dishes and bottles, are never chosen or set for a meal; they have nothing of the formality of a human purpose. . . .Rarely, if ever, do we find in his paintings, as in Chardin's, the fruit peeled or cut; rarely are there choice objets d'art or instruments of a profession or hobby. The fruit in his canvases are no longer parts of nature, but though often beautiful in themselves are not yet humanized as elements of a meal or decoration of the home. (Only in his early works, under Manet's influence, does he set up still lifes with eggs, bread, a knife, and a jug of wine.) (p. 14 - 15, Cézanne, Meyer Schapiro)

Here's Still Life with Apples (1895-8). He's right, don't you think? These are objects to arrange, explore, depict in color to create volume, and so on, not to eat for lunch.

Not at all what Chardin was up to - here's Still Life with Plums (1730).

What's fascinating to me is that Cézanne's contemplative, aesthetic approach to the world of objects extends to his portraits as well. Here's Card Players (1890-2). Off to the kitchen to cut up that real fruit. Please tell me what you think. . . .

2010-04-26T06:45:00.000-07:00

Came across an excellent book by art historian Meyer Schapiro. (By the way, his NY Times obit is worth reading.) Does it matter that his take on Cézanne was published more than 40 years ago? I don't think so:

"The objective world isn't just represented - it is recreated through strokes of color. The world he creates is colorful, varied and harmonious. . . it is a creation of the mind of the painter who is making us aware of a decision of the mind and operation of the hand. In this complex process. . . like the effort of a philosopher to grasp both the external and the subjective in our experience of things, the self is always present, poised between sensing and knowing, or between its perceptions and a practical ordering activity, mastering its inner world by mastering something beyond itself. (Cézanne, Meyer Schapiro, Abrams, 1965)

Okay, this is starting to explain things for me. This "practical ordering activity" of Cézanne's has him deciding to tilt tabletops and fragmented solid forms. Schapiro explains further:

To accomplish this fusion of nature and self, Cézanne had to create a new method of painting. . . He loosened the perspective system of traditional art and gave to the space of the image the aspect of a world created free-hand and put together piecemeal from successive perceptions, rather than offered complete to the eye in one coordinating glance as in the ready-made geometrical perspective of Renaissance art. The tilting of vertical objects, the discontinuities . . .contribute to the effect of a perpetual searching and balancing of forms. (p. 10)

Reading Schapiro, it's clear that Cézanne did not sit in his studio and cook up a new approach to painting and then set out to make masterpieces in this style. He searched, and experimented, and looked to try different ways of composing what was in front of him, different ways of ordering the world, "an order arising from mastery over chaotic impulses. . . "

It gets easier to see what Schapiro was talking about once he compares Cézanne's work to Monet's.

In Monet's The Beach at Sainte-Adress, the painting is divided into large areas of land and sea, and the colors in Monet's share a similar value and intensity. There is an airy feeling about Monet's and a gray tone unites it.

Below is Cézanne's Bay from L'Estaque. Schapiro points out that the division between the land and sea receives greater emphasis, the contrasts are heightened through the use of such strong colors, and the treatment of shapes is different.

The triangles of sea and land are more strongly connected as shapes that interlock. There is a weight to the sea. Monet's inclusion of small things which attract the eye and interrupt the large forms give the sense of a passing moment, where Cézanne's approach is to emphasize "the grandeur of the scene."

Seeing these side by side, what Schapiro is saying makes sense to me: there is drama, solidity, and weight in Cézanne. Not what Monet was after at all. What do you think? Does this make sense?

2010-04-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

Weird coincidence - my book is open to a page with André Derain and I'm ready to write something about his work and the encouragement he received from his dealer, Ambroise Vollard. But in my scattered Friday morning mindset I decide to check email first, and there is a link sent by my friend Beth. And it's about the works of Derain and others that will be auctioned by Sotheby's. Many have not been seen in decades. Click here for the complete article from ArtDaily.org. Here's an excerpt:

The extraordinary trove of treasures was discovered in 1979 in a bank vault at the Société Générale in Paris. The works had been deposited there during 1939, soon after Vollard’s death, by Erich Slomovic, a young Yugoslav and associate to Vollard to whom the dealer had consigned the works. Soon after depositing the works, Slomovic fled to Yugoslavia where he died at the hands of the Nazis at the end of 1942. As a result, the contents of the vault remained untouched for 40 years. On 21st March 1979, the bank was permitted under French law to open the vault and to sell any contents of value in order to recoup some 40 years of unpaid storage fees. As a result, the collection was consigned for a sale to be held at Hotel Drouot in Paris in March 1981. The announcement of the sale, however, was swiftly followed by legal challenges as a result of which the sale was cancelled. Those challenges now finally resolved, the works will now be sold by agreement among the legal beneficiaries of the Vollard Estate and will finally make their long-anticipated appearance on the market at Sotheby’s sales in London and in Paris in June.

Here is La Tamise et Tower Bridge (1906), with the kind of intense colors Derain and fellow student Maurice de Vlaminck experimented with. Dealer Vollard suggested Derain go to England to see what this approach might yield in those environs.

Lately I've been spending more time thinking about those 4 corners and how to play them - he's got interesting stuff going on in all of them, doesn't he?

Your eye just moves from one place to another - And who would try those two red boats to the left of the Tower Bridge? But they work as one unit, anchoring the space, I think. Looking at the water where those two boats touch the surface, he's chosen more moderate tones of soft blue and ochre; they seem really important to calming down the effect, don't you think? Otherwise the painting would just be screaming at you.

Get your paddles ready. Here's one from the long-hidden cache, Arbres a Collioure (1905), ready for auction:

2010-04-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

Who was Fateh al-Moudarres? A diplomat? Pulitzer-prize winning author? I think it's kind of awful that I can name dozens of American artists but would be hard pressed to name artists from any Middle Eastern countries. Somehow I feel sure that educated people in the Middle East could easily name artists both here and there.

Above is the oil painting Wedding in the Kalamoon Mountains, (1977) one of his most well known works. He was also a sculptor, poet and novelist, studied in Rome and Paris, taught in Damascus where he influenced many Syrian artists, and died in 1999.

Below are two untitled gouaches on wooden board (1966) by al-Moudarres, a Syrian artist:

A lot of his work was inspired by icons, ancient symbols and traditions. I don't know about you, but I like the scratched surface, with those the colors from the underpainting coming through. Evidently, he rarely used writing in his work, but in this piece appear the first words from the Qur'an Chapter 108 - "Surely we have given thee abundance."

Having experimented with combining any kind of figuration with abstraction, I know how hard it is to integrate the two successfully. One element often winds up looking tacked on or just not inevitable and necessary. These just seem right to me. What do you think?

(For the British Museum's brief bio, see this link.)

2010-04-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Came across an interesting interview with Luc Tuymans, the Belgian painter, in the February issue of Art in America.

I think it's always tricky to try to have your paintings carry any kind of political or cultural meaning, but in my humble opinion, he succeeds where so many others either state the obvious or go for something gimmicky.

He has a retrospective on right now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the show will travel to Dallas, Chicago, and Brussels.

After exploring WWII themes that grew out of his exploration of family members' involvement on opposite sides of the war, he turned his attention to a wide range of subjects, including governments and power, violence, cultural influences. Above is Secretary of State.
While the title of this painting is just what it describes, he chose her image as part of a larger show called "Proper" about various aspects of the Bush administrations, its people and its policies, going at them indirectly.

"Like Colin Powell, Rice had adapted to racism in order to succeed. She had learned to be composed, determined, proper."

Also included in the retrospective are "two distinct but surprisingly related bodies of work, one about the Jesuits ("Les Revenants" 2007) and the other about Walt Disney's dreams ("Forever" 2008). Tuymans says:

I didn't come from the right social layer, but in Belgium the power structure has deep roots in the Jesuit system. And whatever one may think about them, they've been important for image-building in the West - just think of Rubens and the Baroque. Both the Jesuits and Walt Disney were involved with crazy utopian schemes based on taking fantasies and turning them into entertainment. But the consequence of instrumentalizing fantasy is that you delete its content, everything that makes it exciting.

I'm not sure that I'm following every thread here, but, he goes on to explain that his assistant came upon some old pictures on the Web that showed the opening day of Disneyland. Tuymans was interested in using photos that revealed all that was not utopian, sentimental, and sunny, so he worked with images of the things that went wrong, including a gas leak in the Alice and Wonderland ride and a problem with a collapsing turtle float in the Light Parade. He painted both. Here's the float painting, called Turtle:

As you can see, he leaves a lot of room for the viewer to see what he/she wants to see. "I have to degrade the image, to make holes in it, 'leap holes' you might say, because what stimulates me most in an image is inconsistency." (p. 81)

I like this open-ended approach to image creation. One critic admitted he always sees a wedding couple when he looks at Turtle. I have to think that would be just fine with Tuymans. What do you think?

(By the way, this link will connect you to an article about Tuymans.)

More Chardin

2010-04-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

I'd rather ignore the dishes in my kitchen in order to look at a few more of Chardin's. Above is A Glass of Water and a Coffee Pot. (c. 1760)

I didn't know that Proust loved Chardin, too, but now I see why that should not be surprising.

"You have already experienced it subconciously," (Proust) wrote, "this pleasure one gets from the sight of everyday scenes and inanimate objects, otherwise it would not have risen in your heard when Chardin summoned it in his ringing commanding accents." (p. 215)

As Michael Kimmelman puts it in The Accidental Masterpiece, Chardin's style was "extravagant understatement."

Over and over Chardin returned to pots, pans, onions, and eggs, finding something lovely and harmonious in the simple, homey objects. "The art historian Michael Baxandall has pointed out how, by causing viewers to linger over his various little objects, Chardin was subtly devising works that have multiple points of focus, and thereby expressing contemporaneous theories about how we do not take in complex space all at once but instead piece together the accumulated perception of different colors and shapes." (p. 218) Here's Still Life with Jar of Olives.

What do you think? Does this make sense?

2010-04-14T06:32:00.000-07:00

Michael Kimmelman's book, The Accidental Masterpiece, On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, is one I pick up from time to time, and always find something to think about. Above is Soap Bubbles.

Every great painter is great by his or her own terms, Antoine Watteau's terms differeing from Gustave Courbet's, Jacques-Louis David's from Wassily Kandinsky's. Chardin was as great as any artist by the terms he set for himself, which were incredibly narrow: for almost his whole career, spanning half a century, nearly every minute of it spent in Paris, Chardin focused on what was not much farther than three or four feet in front of his nose. . . .Chardin's people are maids and schoolteachers and wives, absorbed and inward turning, oblivious to us. Their absorption becomes the emotional essence of the work. (p.215)

He feels they are not the same as Vermeers, bathed in light, kind of other-wordly figures. Rather these people are real and solid, not so ethereal. What I didn't notice at first is that the compositions are relatively spare; every detail is not included. This seems to contribute to the serenity of the works.

As far as Kimmelman is concerned, Chardin had absorbed the philosophies of the times, understanding Locke and Newton. Kimmelman says critics have pointed to the paintng, Lady Taking Tea, as proto-modern "because the figures in them seem so completely absorbed in what they are doing, modernism exulting in the inward-looking autonomy that defines pure abstract painting". So perhaps the painting "is not just a picture of a woman drinking tea but a a mediation on our perception of a woman dringing tea. . . it's a picture about seeing, in other words." (p. 217)

What do you think?

More on him in the next post, I think. I'm interested in learning more about how Chardin influenced Cezanne and delighted Proust.

My daughter is always pestering me about my subjects, saying, how about doing a teapot? So far, no teapots.

2010-04-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

I wish I still lived in LA, because I would definitely want to go to the reception this Thursday night at the Andrewshire Gallery on Wilshire Blvd. My former teacher at Otis, Franklyn Liegel, will be part of an exhibition called Mind Game. At left is a detail from Clandestine Gaudi, a piece that will be in the show.

As you can see, he works in collage and assemblage and creates richly layered pieces. Some of these are from previous exhibitions. (These blue pieces are posted on this blog spot called Said and Done.)

You can see that he does not limit himself to simple rectangles. In class, we experimented with all kinds of canvas combinations, including diptychs with panels of uneven sizes. At left is Barcelona Dwelling. This and more pieces are posted on the Art Center site (where he also teaches).

I've had a number of teachers who are able to help with technique, but most can only show you how they paint. Franklyn was the only teacher who seemed to be able to help each student start finding his/her own style, and the first to help me realize how important it is to immerse yourself in images, to look and look, until you see what it is you respond to.

Do you say "break a leg" with an art opening? Probably not. So, thank you and congratulations, Franklyn.

2010-04-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

Kids are on school break so there's less time for posting - I will punt by posting some recent paintings by an obscure painter living in the NW - me. Here are several I've been working on for the Urban exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum Gallery coming up. Do they look suitably urban?
This is Work Zone:

This last is Front Window/Monorail. Maybe they all would benefit from provocative, cool titles, of which I have none. . .

"For me nothing is abstract. In fact, I believe there is nothing more abstract than reality." Giorgio Morandi

2010-04-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

Giorgio Morandi is in the business of subverting the conventions of seeing. It makes perfect sense that he loved Cézanne, who had a related desire to strip things down, to see them again as if for the first time. Morandi shares Cézanne's acute attentiveness and desire to lift off the veil of convention from visual experience, but there is in Morandi something belated, something beyond the present moment that is not found in Cezanne. The very last paintings in this show are almost like afterimages: those blots of shape and color and light that remain even after you have closed your eyes to the things themselves. In these last works, the relations between objects and empty space, between solid form and air, between the edge of one thing and another are persistently questioned. (from Mysteries of the Rectangle, Siri Hustvedt, p. 131)

I've liked Morandi ever since my Franklyn Liegel, my teacher at Otis, brought a book with Morandi still lifes to class. But of course I've never been able to figure out why I liked them. Hustvedt does seem to devote the time to looking at art. (She talks about her 11 year-old daughter coming to the museum with drawing paper, knowing that they'll be hunkering down for hours in the gallery, in this case the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice.)

Anyway, Hustvedt overhears a bewildered man who enters yet another room ahead of his wife, and turns to call to her, "More bottles!" Then comes the wife's reply, "I told you. They're all the same." They're right, but Hustvedt is interested in figuring out what it is Morandi is seeing.

Above is Still Life with Yellow Cloth (1952). She does a much more complete job of untangling all the possibilities explored in Morandi's work, but for this short space, I'll mention what I found most compelling. What she is struck by is the relationship between the shapes, how a symmetrical object has become asymmetrical on the canvas. Other critics have wondered if his still lifes seem to resemble Italian cityscapes, with their earth tones, their architectural look, their horizon lines. She seems more intrgued by the soft lines of hard objects, the way the lips of some of his bowls wobble and bend like the cloth nearby. In this painting, she points out the black shadow area between the brown bowl and the white jar, and how the light illuminating this group of objects would not be strong enough to create such a black, black shadow. It's as though he's created another shape with that shadow that stands on its own - because he's interested not just in the things, but in the spaces between them. (p. 123)

As a painter who has been interesting in a reductive approach, I was struck by this comment as well: "He did not feel that by reducing the numbers of the objects he painted, he reduced the range of his vision. On the contrary, the very narrowness of the field became the vehicle of his liberation. This is a modernist position. As for Giacometti, as for Beckett. . . reduction opened up possibilities that inclusiveness did not have. From a few things, you get everything." p. 132

Is this making sense? What do you think?

(P.S. to Julie - what is the name of the novel on Morandi?)

"When am I going to turn blond?" Carolyn, my black-haired daughter, when 4.

2010-04-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

"Up until then, I had not considered that a black woman could be considered as a goddess of love and beauty. Even I took the classic European ideal for granted." p. 14*

I came across these words of painter, photographer, and printmaker Kerry James Marshall in a book that surveys decades of work through the year 2000. (Marshall teaches at the University of Illinois.) Here is Blue Water Silver Moon (1991), acrylic and collage:

There's something so graceful and beautiful about that pose. I like that her head almost blends in completely with the upper edge of the image. And those circles - why do they work so well? Describing another painting, Marshall talked about the challenge of maintaining a sense of dimension while trying to make his figures as flat as possible. To get that density, he said he sometimes painted the black figures as many as eight or nine times, trying to find as many combinations of warm and cool blackness as he could, "to make them breathe more." (p. 90)

Below is Voyager (1992), with its themes of birth, death and journey.

Marshall often likes to combine elements of history and references to contemporary culture in his work. It's hard to see the detail because some of it is so light, but the name of the boat, the Wanderer, was evidently a luxury schooner that was refitted in order to transport slaves. The last slave crossing from Africa to Georgia was made by this ship in 1858.

"The male figure is fugitive, largely obscured by the sail, while the female sits prominently in the ship's prow, garlanded with roses. The work is embellished with delicate line drawings derived from Afro-Cuban nsibidi and anaforuana signs and symbols used in religious ceremonies. . . .Haitian vévé symbols. . . and medical illustrations of embryos." (p. 15)

I'm sure you noticed the nsibidi right off the bat - actually I had no idea what all these symbols were. I need more obvious clues, like the skull at the bottom.

This last one is Bang (1994). In the book, Marshall talks about the irony of the African American experience of holidays, and how it seems to him that it is Black people who seem to celebrate the holidays most vigorously, barbecuing on the 4th and so on.

(There's an interesting short article about the controversy this painting caused when the curator of an insurance company's collection (Progressive Corp.) hung this painting near the cafeteria in the Cleveland headquarters. The artist came to the site to discuss and defend his work. Click here for more on this.)

Do you know his work? What do you think? I usually resist work with political or social themes somewhat reflexively, but I am drawn to his with their layered imagery and visual complexity.

* Kerry James Marshall, text by K. J. Marshall, essay by Terrie Sultan, conversation with Arthur Jafa, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2000.

2010-04-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

It's Good Friday, I have dinner for 16 to plan for on Sunday, and I've done absolutely nothing beyond making a list and pulling a few weeds in the yard. So I think it might be wise to simply post a few of these portraits by not-so-heralded Cecilia Beaux, contemporary of Sargent and just imagine some of these folks are on their way.

At left is Sita and Sirita, (1893). Who does she look like? I think the answer is Emily Blunt, at least around the eyes. Here's a close-up:

This is Ernesta (Child with Nurse) 1894:

Here below is the Last Days of Infancy (1883-85). The subjects are her sister and her nephew. If you do not have guests coming and/or are have a much tidier house, you might want to click on this Last Days link to read more about how this painting was entered in the Paris salon exhibition and led to the beginning of Beaux' international fame. (Doesn't Cassatt have a similarly posed portrait? Found it - see at the very bottom, it's Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878.)

An entirely different approach with Cassatt - maybe this is the after Easter relaxation pose:

2010-03-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

Came across a marvelous book called Mysteries of the Rectangle by Siri Hustvedt while looking through the Bellevue library yesterday. In it she talks about how mesmerized she was standing in front of Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Neckace.

She stood so long and got so close to it that the guard got nervous and waved at her to step back.

During the four hours she stood there, she had this strange feeling that it was "something other then what it appeared to be." (p. 12)

As Hustvedt explains, the woman seems to be looking in a mirror, but there's so much light coming in the window that she almost seems to be looking out the window. She's holding up the necklace, but it is so subtly rendered the pearls don't seem to command much attention. She stands completely still, not really caught in a moment of action.

Unlike so many other Vermeers, this painting has an empty center. Vermeer had placed a map in the wall but x-rays show that he eliminated it. He covered much of the floor with great folds of cloth. He eliminated a musical instrument that had been on the chair. Nothing interrupts her gaze. She is not aware of any onlooker either.

As Hustvedt looks, she thinks about all those paintings in the genre of women at their toilet, but can't shake the feeling that this seems to be about something else, as well. The woman does not seem to be yearning for antyhing, nor is she caught up in her own vanity. All of a sudden, she says the word "Annunciation" popped into her mind. A pursuit of this possible allusion of Vermeer's sends her scurrying to art books, and she turns up several paintings in which Mary looks just as self-possessed and contemplative; her arms are raised this way, as well.

While Hustvedt is careful not to reduce the painting to this only possibility, she does feel there may be something suggested here by the artist. She notes the shape of the woman, who does look as though she might be pregnant. She is also somewhat amazed to notice what appears to be an egg in the window sill. Of course, she admits this is likely an architectural window detail, the painter doesn't include it in any of his other many-windowed paintings. Here's a slightly larger version; the egg is on the top of the sill by the drapes.

So, what do you think? While others have pointed out that Vermeer manages, through his use of light, to make the everyday somewhat sacred, she suggests that in this painting he might be intending to provide an allusion that hasn't been noticed before. (By the way, Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock was there at the exhibit and she mentioned this idea to him. He agreed it was possible.)

2010-03-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

Maybe she thinks the hat is too big or she's wondering what happened to her blouse. Hmmmm. Thought about posting this without any words at all, asking commenters to say whatever they'd like about this Egon Schiele work entitled, The Scornful Woman. But as I read more about him, he seemed so interesting I couldn't resist including a few words about him.

When the artist was still a teenager, his father died of syphilis. Schiele passed the entrance exam for the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and studied there for three years, although the school's conservative approach did not suit him. Eventually he approached Klimt who agreed to mentor him (although mentor was probably not used as a verb back then - I don't even like it as a verb today.) Mentor or not, he developed his own style of Expressionism and founded the New Art Group (Neukunstgruppe) and became part of the Viennese artistic world.

In 1911 he met Valerie (Wally) Neuzil. They decided to leave Vienna (see bio) and moved to his mother's hometown of Krumua in Bohemia. They lived together out of wedlock and he used her as well as other young women as models. Their bohemian lifestyle did not go over well (even in Bohemia), prompting a move to Neulengbach outside of Vienna. They continued to attract attention for their lifestyle, culminating in his arrest for allegedly seducing an underage girl.

While police were in his studio to arrest him, they seized scores of drawings they considered pornographic. Not one to waste time, he spent the days in jail creating a series of 12 sketches. Ultimately, he was only sentenced to three days for possessing "indecent" drawings. He continued with art in this vein; while many works share Klimt's decorative interests, Schiele seems to delve also into themes of sexuality and anguish. At left is Standing Woman in Red.

In 1914 he met Edith Harms, whose family lived near his studio. A year later, he decided to marry her, although evidently he expected to continue his relationship with Neuzil. She saw things differently and departed, never to see him again. In response to her departure, he created Death and the Maiden:

Art critics feel his work mellowed somewhat following his marriage. Not long after they married, WWI began. He made it through the war without fighting on the front; officers apparently noticed his talent and allowed him to guard prisoners, sketching while on duty.

Although he was successful in having his work included in a number of exhibitions, his life was cut short. In 1918 his wife contracted the Spanish flu and died. He died three days later at the age of 28. As I was posting this, my 9 year-old daughter came to peer over my shoulder. Looking at this Standing Man with Red Loincloth she said, "that's kind of scary." What do you think of his work? I think he's an amazing graphic artist. I do not have such a strong feeling for line; his use of line is so dramatic and intense, isn't it? While he seems mainly interested in the figure, there are occasional still lifes or landscapes, but even they are tortured. I will find one and add it.

Okay, here it is at left, a sunflower, dead of course, with all the angles of one of Schiele's human figures.

2010-03-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's refreshing to look at something that's nothing like anything you would ever try to undertake - all those curves and not one offset by a geometric shape. Do you like that it's pushed so far toward abstraction that you can really tell exactly what your vantage point is? After a few minutes, it seems to me that maybe the viewer is looking down on a beach and the sea from a great height. And what is the shape on the upper right that seems so necessary to the composition?

I even kind of like the artist's signature smack dab in the middle of the painting. Have you heard of him? This is Landscape by Thomas Mukarobgwa. Evidently he is entirely self taught. He developed an interest in art while working as a gallery attendant at the National Gallery of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He was fortunate to have the encouragement of the gallery's director and became one of the founding members of an art school that started in the museum's basement. He began to gain some notoriety during the 60s, and some feel his work shows similarities to that of the German Expressionists (Art, Dr. Robert Belton, p. 367). (By the way, he sculpted more than he painted, but also kept his job as gallery attendant until 1997 when he was in his seventies.)

And now it's off to make the dreaded school lunches which, by my calculations, I will still be making into my seventies. And you? Are you making something today - besides lunches, that is?

2010-03-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law, Fred Moody, sent me this funny story from the NY Daily News about how scholars have discovered that through the years, in various works of art, the portion sizes at the Last Supper have been super-sized, just as they have in life. But the article only included Da Vinci's fresco from 1495-8, leaving inquiring minds frustrated and looking for other works to study. So I did a little checking around to see what I could discover in the way of culinary evidence. You'll notice that only tiny rolls can be seen above. Maybe that's a platter of something on the right - hard to see on this screen. (Anyone have a larger version?)

A hundred years later, in 1592, the meal had morphed a bit in Tintoretto's version:

Okay, so this is actually a different meal, Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus (1601), but they seem to have a quite a lot of food groups covered here:

And lastly, this was created by Marcos Zapata in 1753, about a hundred and fifty years have Da Vinci's. By this time that bread is the size of a Subway sandwich, and not too unleavened looking either.

Credit for this photo: www.reflectionseurope.com.

The dish in the center looks like an alien life form but is actually a guinea pig, a local favorite in Peru where this graces the walls of the cathedral in Cuzco. A blogger pointed out what she believes is a resemblance between Judas (lower right) and conqueror Pizarro. She may be right. Here he is, at left.

If you're interested in following this trail any farther, I'll warn you that any Last Supper search online leads to a crushing number of versions and parodies, from the Simpsons to Star Wars.

2010-03-22T06:30:00.000-07:00

If you listen to NPR on Saturdays you might hear the word puzzle show called Says You!. On it, panelists are asked to guess the definitions of obscure words. Saturday, one of the words was "ophthamolophilia" -one panelist guessed it meant being in love with your eye doctor, but in fact it means love of being stared at. I'll be on the lookout for chances to drop this in conversation.

The panelists would have had fun with some of the terms I've learned reading about icons. Virgin Glykophilousa? It's a term applied to certain icons classified as Virgin Elousa in which Mary bends tenderly to touch her cheek to the cheek of the infant Christ. Glykophilousa is from the Greek and means "sweetly kissing." There are seven different descriptors, all of Mary icons, each referring to a special way she is posed. This is Virgin Hodegetria - image of Mary holding the infant Christ on her left arm with Christ grasping a scroll with one hand and make a gesture of blessing with the other. This dates from the 13th century and is actually tempera and silver leaf on panel with pigmented glazes over gesso and parchment on panel. Scholars think this was made as a personal devotional piece and brought to Sinai during a pilgrimage, and then offered as a gift to the monastery. (Icons from Sinai, Robert Nelson and Kirsten Collins, J. Paul Getty, p. 141)

How about this one, below? The inspiration for Led Zeppelin perhaps? This dates from the late twelfth century and is based on St. John's Climacus' writings, "The Heavenly Ladder." As you can see, climbing those thirty rungs isn't that easy, with devils tempting you and causing some to fall along the way. As you can see, in the lower right a group of intercessors send up prayers to help the strugglers. And the guy second from the top in the fancy clothes? Evidently, it's the archbishop Holy Antonios who might have been either the donor or the recipient of this icon. (Didn't quite get the message about not being concerned with worldly things, I guess.)

One more thing - while it's obviously made to inspire, not entertain, you have to get a kick out of the devil giving this poor guy a rap on the head with his mallet.

I'll get back to more recent artworks later in the week, but I couldn't help but spend a little more time enjoying these creations. The time, the patience to make these amazes me. What do you think?

2010-03-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

While museums are great places, there is something to be said for seeing art in the place it was created, or at least NEAR the place. Maybe your appreciation is enhanced when more of your senses are involved (bus fumes, aching feet, coming in from the heat of the streeets). I remember the excitement of visiting Akrotiri in Santorini, and being so disappointed to learn that the mosaics uncovered there had all been moved to the museum in Athens. When we followed up a week later and saw them there, somehow they had lost a little of their enchantment.

Have any of you been to Sinai? I have not. Above is the monastery of St. Catherine's which houses the world's most important collection of Byzantine icons.

Get ready for this title: Archangel Michael with Donor Monk. I found these images in a beautiful book called Icons from Sinai by Robert Nelson and Kirsten Collins, but I have to say I chuckled to come across this description of the icon, depicting "the relatively diminished scale of the anonymous monk" who kneels before the archangel. Relatively diminished? I'd say so.

Although this dates to the 13th century, there does seem to be something contemporary about it, don't you think? What is it? The flatness, the expressionist lines of the wings and tunic, and I suppose that interesting way of playing with scale. What do you think?

It is fascinating to read about the details I'd never have noticed. Evidently archangel Michael is often depicted in court garb, but here he wears a purple tunic, dark blue mantle, and red shoes, which apparently are usually reserved only for the Byzantine emperor. Apparently Michael was important enough in Byzantium to have two feast days set aside for him.

Two possibilities are offered for the archangel's pose - the stance may call to mind the angels at Christ's baptism, who hold the clothes he will wear after he emerges from the Jordan; or the icon-maker was referring to the participants at the Divine Liturgy (Byzantine tradition) who receive the Eucharist with covered hands. (p. 151)

I'm not sure it matters that we'll never know what the intention was. It's just remarkable that something made with tempera on wood is still here at all.

2010-03-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

There's something inherently ridiculous about a book called 1000 Paintings You must see Before you Die. So why did I pick it up at the library? Probably to see why they would have dedicated three whole pages to quattrocentro painter Tommaso di Giovanni Masaccio and not a single tiny entry to Milton Avery. . .and way too many entries for Unknown. Did come upon one I liked, although I'm not sure it warrants a trip all the way to Helsinki. So maybe this book is useful, after all.

Here's Autumn, the Five Crosses (1902) by Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Evidently he designed this for a mausoleum built in memory of an 11 year-old girl, with the crosses symbolizing the death of summer, or so says 1000 Paintings, page 553. (Seems more likely they symbolize the little girl's death, don't you think?) The distant blue is a vivid cobalt, but stays put somehow, and the large shapes are simple and powerful, especially those mysterious gold/green shapes in the ocean at right. What do you think?

Now that I think about it, maybe I like it because it reminds me of Milton Avery. Here's his Yellow Sky (1958):

2010-03-12T06:43:00.000-08:00

Names of movements have a way of sounding dated pretty fast, don't they? How current does Futurism sound right about now? (Up with People, anyone?)

My friend, Bill, sent me a link to a site showing paintings of Giacomo Balla, who signed the Futurist manifesto a hundred years ago. At left is Flight of the Swallows (1913). He was interested in exploring the dynamism, speed, and vibrancy of the rapidly changing world; the movement later lost some steam and became associated with fascism, but that wasn't the early focus of its proponents.

Evidently, Balla studied the optical possibilities opened up by time-lapse photography and sought to depict rapid motion in paint. Here's Swifts: Paths of Movement and Dynamic Sequences (1913). The very idea of undertaking something so painstaking and ambitious just amazes me.

His most famous work is probably Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash - proves anything at all is a worthy subject.

I have not yet embarked (sorry) on a dog series, but perhaps it's time.

2010-03-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a moody work I love for its bold brushstrokes and big blocks of color. There seems to be motion, everywhere, don't you think? In the slashes of the sky the foreground, those solid shapes of houses that lean like people in a moving crowd. The artist seems to have made good use of those dangerous thalo blues and greens. They have such strong tinting power they can really run away with your painting if you're not careful.

This is Paysage by Maurice de Vlaminck, who evidently spent a good deal of time in the company of Derain and Matisse, working in the Fauvist style initially, and then later, after the influence of Cezanne came into play, moved away from the earlier use of strong color.

Apparently this extroverted, largely self-taught artist was greatly affected by his World War I experience. Afterward, he withdrew to the French countryside, kept to himself, and limited his palette to more somber colors. (Art, Dr. Robert Belton, p. 483.) What do you think of his work?

2010-03-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

Isn't this cool? It's called Portrait of Francesco, Julian and Bruno (1991). What looks like smudged vining charcoal is actually soot from a candle flame used to create this large work on canvas by Jiri Georg Dokoupil (born in Czechoslovakia in 1954).

The artist based this work on a photo of his Swiss art dealer, Bruno Bischofberger, who's flanked by the artists Julian Schnabel (right) and Francesco Clemente. What interests me are the just-rightness of his decisions of what to nail down and what to leave unfinished. The faces are just enough. The portions of painting in the background work as effective bookends, bleeding into the sleeves of the artists. Looks dashed off but everything works - including the missing feet and the space left empty in the foreground. What do you think of it?

He paints, as well, and I found those works equally intriguing, especially the way he plays with scale and perspective. See Galerie Bruno Bischofberger. Here's Haus und Malven, (1999) below. Since it doesn't look like I'm likely to attend the Oscars anytime soon, at least it might it be fun to look forward to saying one day, "Excuse me, I've got to take this call from my Swiss art dealer."

"Music is what happens between the notes." Duke Ellington

2010-03-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

Evidently, this is one of Nathan Oliveira's favorite remarks. At left is Man Walking (1958). According to biographer and curator Peter Selz, Oliveira has never been interested in creating narratives in his work, preferring to explore the figure more obliquely:

I do not look at modern art as a linear experience, continually in competition with itself, devouring itself - a game for popular sociaty to play. I rather believe in an art that layers time upon time, an art that simply reaffirms our presence and the depth of our existence on this earth, our planet in the universe. (Nathan Oliveira, Univ. of CA Press, p. 9)

I've been doing a lot of creating and destroying of layers, etc. with my work, and I tell you, it's really hard to settle on the right amount of presence and delineation of a figure or object. Somehow he seems to get it just right. Here's Spring Nude (1962):

Others have pointed out the echo of Munch's work, Puberty.

There are those hunched shoulders, but Oliveira's has a whole different feeling of expansiveness to the space around her, a she herself is more of a cipher with undelineated features. What do you think?

One of his teachers early in his career was Max Beckmann. Can you imagine? Here's
Oliveira is still alive and making prints at 81 years old. Here's Red Rocker (2005)from the website of DC Moore Gallery:

"expressing all the golden flashes of the mind..." Joan Miró

2010-03-02T09:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, when I was young I thought Miró was female, perhaps a descendant of one of those other girls, St. Augustine. Even as I got older, I didn't really understand his work, so I'm trying to grasp it now. Shown here, Blue II (1961)

The more I read about him, the longer this post got, so I'm a day behind as I try to cut it down. Was it Mark Twain who said something along the lines of, "if you want it shorter, I'm going to need more time?"

Like so many others, Miró began with a more or less conventional, representational style, but as a young man he was certainly aware of what was happening in the art world (and even attended the same Spanish art school as Picasso, ten years after Picasso knocked everyone's socks off there). The son of a clockmaker, a shy boy driven to a nervous breakdown trying to follow his father's plans for him to work in commerce, he stuffed his early pictures with the things of the real world: animals, objects, places in the countryside of Catalan.

Author Mario Bucci (Miró, Hamlyn Publishing, 1970) traces the evolution of his style, pointing out influences in Portrait of Ricart. "In the background, an immensely intricate Japanese engraving shows Miro's love for the infinitely small and refined. . .; on the left, an area of pure yellow, on which the shape of a palette is. . .anticipates the ciphers and abbreviations" of Miro's later work.

The head is broken down into its fundamental masses, as are the disjointed hands, suddenly calling to mind the carved hands and faces of the Romanesque saints found in the ancient churches of Catalonia, which his friend, Jose Pasco, had shown him. (p.17)" This portrait dates from 1917.

According to Bucci, this next painting marks the last painting in which he strove to represent actual things and places in excruciatingly minute detail. Hemingway loved it so much he bought it, taking up a collection among his friends to cover the cost. (Miró didn't really want to sell it, and so had put a high price on it.) It's called Farmhouse (1921-2).

Now, with The Farmer's Wife, he breaks with the realism and heads toward pure symbolism. "He took for his model a figurine from a set depicting the birth of Christ in the manger, and the Farmer's Wife retains some of the plaster-cast immobility of this figurine, her enormous Picassoesque feet symbolizing her attachment to the earth, for she is the very incarnation of firmness and solidity.".

And by the time he painted Ploughed Earth, he'd completely abandoned any objective of rendering objects realistically. By the time he painted this, 1923-4, he was ready to join the newly formed group of Surrealists, but he remained always a bit on the fringes, following his own ideas of rendering the thoughts of the subconscious.

Miró said, "If I think of a a beetle or a snail, it can be as big as a house, and my imagination can amplify a toy so that it symbolises the entire human race. Thus, if I want to depict these things as I imagine them and feel them inside me, I will allow my instinct to guide my hand on the canvas." Here's Catalonian Landscape (1923-4)

One must have a very strong personality and will to work to feels that the "golden flashes" in your mind are worth putting on canvas, especially when you are hungry and exhausted, don't you think? (Who knows what his work might have looked like with a Trader Joe's nearby.)

I wonder how aware Miró was of the work of Paul Klee. Do you know?

2010-02-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Thinking about Raphael Soyer of the previous post led me to read more about the painters working a decade or two before him, in particular Robert Henri and the members of the Ashcan School. Although he studied art in the Philadelphia as well as in Europe, it was while biking through France and Belgium in 1895 that he had a road to Damascus experience upon discovering the work of Franz Hals (The Eight, Monhonri Sharp Young, p. 20).

At right is Franz Hals' Portrait of a Man in His Thirties (looks older than that to me, but then, no heating, no generous Dutch vacations, and just wearing that collar would be exhausting. ..) Below is Henri's Jimmy O'D (1925).

Henri was a passionate believer in realism. He had turned his back on the impressionists, looking instead to the work of Velasquez, Hals, Eakins and Manet as models. He loved teaching (Hopper was a pupil), loved to discuss art, literature and culture, often late into the night: Living in Philadephia from 1891 to 1895, Henri taught all day and talked all night, which did not leave him much time for his own work. (p. 22)

It must have been hard for him to watch changes in the art world sweeping through:

In 1910 they (the Eight) organized the enormous Independent Exhibition which anybody could get into as long as he was a friend of Henri. Then, in 1913, his friends put on the immense Armory Show. When the other side, the abstract side, won, they could not believe it; they could not believe it all their lives. They went on doing good work but they did not conquer. The realist revolution did not take place, but the abstract revolution did. (The Eight, Mahonri Sharp Young, p. 12)

What do you think? Can't close without this sidebar: Did you know that his real name was Robert Henry Cozad, but after his father argued with a cattleman, the rancher drew a knife and Henri's father shot him? The family fled town, the rancher died from his wound, and the senior Cozad was charged with murder. The family all changed their names and the boys passed off as adopted sons. Apparently Henri covered up the story his entire life, despite the fact that the murder charges were eventually dropped. (p. 16)

2010-02-24T10:46:00.000-08:00

Social-realist painter Raphael Soyer joins the looooonnnngg list of painters I know nothing about. Learned that he emigrated to NY from Russia, became part of the Fourteenth Street School in the 1920s, and later taught at the Art Students League. While he created a number of studies of the unemployed during the Depression, he also focused on his family's middle class Jewish life, and here above, his fellow artists. He explained:

Farewell to Lincoln Square (1959) was painted in the Lincoln Arcade Building located in Lincoln Square, on the eve of it being demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. I loved that building. Many American painters from way back lived and worked there. The painting depicts the exodus of its denizens. . .with myself waving farewell. (from Painting the Century, R. Gibson, p. 178)

Others have pointed out that the woman in the foreground in Farewell echoes the central figure in Rodin's Burghers of Calais (1884-88) which I never would have picked up, but here it is below. Wonder if that's a subconcious connection on the part of the artist or an intentional one. What do you think?

2010-02-22T06:40:00.000-08:00

Although she is a lot more famous for her oils, I think I like her watercolors just as well and maybe more. I remember seeing a room full of them at the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe last year. They are tiny, many only about 10 x 12, and they date from the early part of her career when she was living in rural Texas, teaching art. Perhaps if you're not interested in clearing brush, making art might sound like a good alternative.

Evidently she had seen an exhibit of Rodin watercolors a few years earlier while living in New York, and had not forgotten them. At right is Rodin's Reclining Nude, 1900.

Here's another of Rodin's from his series of nudes. Uses line in a way O'Keeffe does not.

She takes a bolder approach, doesn't she? Above left is a somewhat larger piece- 18 x 13 1/2- part of Nude Series VII. What do you think? I really like the minimum of detail, lack of features, strong negative shapes; there's no concern for precise proportions (that big hand just feels right the way it is), but such sensitivity to those curves. I'm sure there's more that makes this work, but I can't put my finger on it.

2010-02-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

Talk about multi-tasking. Artist Ian Fairweather started drawing seriously while otherwise occupied as a prisoner of war in France during WWI. This was also the time that he began to teach himself Chinese. After the war he studied drawing at the Hague as well as forestry at Oxford, but finally settled on painting at the Slade school in London.

Later travels took him to Canada, China, the Dutch West Indies, and Australia. Apparently these were not Abercrombie and Kent style tours - he did a lot of living and traveling on the cheap, and even after successful shows in Australia and London, he lived out his last years in a thatch hut he built for himself on the island of Bribie off Australia. (Well, I guess we all have different goals; probably got by without a coffee maker, too.)

Others have pointed out the influences of Chinese calligraphy, batik designs, and Cubism in his work. Above is Monastery (1961). There's something alive about the use of line, isn't there? And those borders work so well, don't they? I think if you took away the borders, there would be something incomplete about this, and some tension would be lost. But I think if you added two more borders, the painting would become sort of static. What do you think?

It's too bad we have to look at this on a small screen. At 56 7/8 x 73 inches it probably knocks you out.

2010-02-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

Nothing like getting to the end of a long day and finding a painting that looks a bit like you feel (at least I hope I don't look like this). Isn't it haunting and beautiful in its simplicity? It's called The Old Farmer (1903)

I had never heard of Paula Modersohn-Becker. Apparently, she found her initial inspiration at the artists' colony of Worpswede near her family home in Bremen. The emphasis at the colony was to look to convey simple, humanistic values; often farmers or mothers with children were subjects that interested the colony artists.

She took classes there and moved to the colony to live and work, but eventually went to Paris on 4 different occasions to study and see the work of other artists. She chose the first date of her departure for Paris symbolically - the last day of 1899. In Paris she met Rodin, took in all that was happening in the world of French art, and came away impressed by the work of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Vuillard, and Cezanne.

What do you think? Do you like those buttons as much as I do? And those shoulders that seem so narrow but are at such an interesting angle; are they coming forward or not? There is something resigned but also strong about this woman. With her head so close to the top of the frame, she seems to be pushing out from her boundaries.

According to an interesting site (Galerie St. Etienne in NY), Modersohn-Becker's work did not receive much attention until the 1950s. Her life was very short - she died in 1907 at the age of 31. The cause was cardiac embolism which occurred just a few weeks after giving birth to her first child.

Larry entered the scene like a demented telephone. Nobody knew whether to put it in the library, the kitchen or the toilet. But it was electric.

2010-02-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

Frank O'Hara

On Presidents Day it would be fun to be at MoMA in New York having a look at Larry Rivers' take on Washington Crossing the Delaware. While the original version has George striking a preposterous pose while the boat cuts through jagged chunks of ice, this George is a lot more human, a smaller-than-life guy alone in a rowboat, while men and horses remain scattered about. Here's Rivers on how his idea took shape after finishing War and Peace:

Tolstoy’s novel was not something I could see, not a figure or a landscape, a church or a mountainside. By meshing Napoleon’s invasion of Russia with contemporary life, Tolstoy set me on a course that produced Washington Crossing the Delaware…… This work was going to take my style of painting, charcoal drawing and rag wiping, to a new height. The mixture of grand art and absurdity was with me from the beginning. (from Larry Rivers Foundation site)

Rivers painted this figurative work in 1953 while many in the NY art scene were whipping up purely abstract works, and many feel his work is an early combination of Pop and Abstract Expressionism. His subjects weren't always new takes on iconic subjects; he also focused on everyday people and objects. In fact he painted his mother-in-law which strikes me as a really risky gambit.

There's a good bio of the artist at the Larry Rivers Foundation site. Apparently he began as a jazz saxophonist before he became an artist. He also forged a lifelong friendship with Frank O'Hara and the two exchanged letters and ideas, collaborating on projects for years.

What do you think of his work? I love the combining of graphite and oil and have been experimenting with that myself. Let's see. . . Obama shoveling snow? Clinton undergoing stent surgery?

2010-02-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

I continue to be interested in influences - the tangled effects of circumstance and luck - and so it was interesting to come across the work of David Alfaro Sisqueiros, a Mexican painter and muralist. As a teenager he first became a political activist, and remained so his entire life.

He earned a scholarship granted by the Mexican government following his involvement in the revolution there and went to Europe to study from 1919-22. While, there he met Diego Rivera, was exposed to Cubism, and came away impressed with the work of a number of European painters, especially Cezanne.

Later, in the 30s, he became an influential teacher in New York. One of the students in his experimental workshop, Jackson Pollock, was impressed with Sisqueiros' ideas about 'pictorial accidents' as well as his use of industrial materials (blow torches, pyroxylin paints used in the car industry, spray guns).*

In El Botero, above, I love the way he plays with scale, enlarging those hands so that they're bigger than the rower's face. And if you put your hand over your eyes to block your view of curves in the upper right, I think you find that you really miss them as a counter-balance to the strong, red diagonals of the oars. Once I was told about the influence of Cezanne, it seemed obvious with those textures and the chunky blocks of color. What do you think? Had you known about him?

*from Art, by Dr. Robert Belton, Watson-Guptill

2010-02-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

The last few posts have been pretty long, so I thought it might be a good idea to shift the balance to something lighter today.

I think it's always interesting to see what art an artist keeps - here's Cezanne's The Three Bathers. Matisse bought this, a bust by Rodin, a Van Gogh drawing, and a few other pieces even though he and his wife were in dire financial straits.
Here's Head of a Boy by Gauguin:

What would you want nearby to study and enjoy? Any of these? Here's Matisse's Dos I (Back I), 1908-9 - probably shipping from France would be prohibitive, so maybe I'd have to pass on this, but isn't it powerful and mysterious in the way the figure's face is turned away?

What about Vuillard? Here's Mother and Sister of the Artist, 1893. Talk about playing with perspective and decorative pattern. (And it would work well hanging over the dinner table at Thanksgiving - keep everyone in line. . .)

Diebenkorn? Here's Albuquerque, 1951. (I have been there and it looks just like this.)

Something more contemporary? I'd love to see what you'd want to look at every day.

2010-02-08T06:30:00.000-08:00

Since 2/1, we've been looking at the ideas in A Fine Disregard, Kirk Varnedoe's book on what makes modern art modern. He believes "the modernity of Degas's picture (Place de la Concorde, left) does not lie just in some step it provides on the way to Matisse and to Stella."

Varnedoe combed through scores of stereoscopes to see if Degas would have "found" something similar to his Place de la Concorde painting and appropriated it. He concluded that nothing available to him in the world of photography had the same "sense of reality, this world of the odd and contingent, of the accidental and the ephemeral,this offbeat sense of the crazy street." Varnedoe believes that his painting is "neither the product of photography's nature nor a given of modern society, but a construction willed into being by an artist." (Keep in mind that Kodak did not come out with a camera capable of producing snapshots until 1888. Place de la Concorde was painted in 1875.)

Here's The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), 1888 and Munch's Evening on Karl Johan Street , below, (1892):

Varnedoe feels this Gauguin work is clearly indebted to Degas: "the near-space enlargement of the peasant woman beholding this hallucinatory vision of Jacob wrestling with the angel is a modified transcription of Degas's cafe-concerts and theatre pieces. He feels that those large, confrontational foregrounds in this and in the work of Munch are not really rejections of Realism; it's a tweaking of Realism's conventions, a way of turning up the volume on selected aspects of Realism --not so much a break with tradition as an offshoot.

In this matter of traditional versus modern spatial structures, and borrowed versus created innovations, The Vision After the Sermon helps us focus on some basic questions of originality. The composition here is taken from Degas, the line quality owes a lot to Daumier, the branch comes out of Hiroshige's plum branch, the wrestling couple is lifted from Hokasai's sketchbooks, and the flat planes of color and bold outlining derive from contemporary stylistic experiments by Gauguin's younger associate Emile Bernard. Yet the picture was boldly original. It's a "cobbling together of something new out of a grab bag of local and imported pieces." (p. 94)

And what about Matisse? Looking at Harmony in Red, Varnedoe sees it as a reimagining of an old theme - the comforts of home. I could paraphrase, but he says it better:

By enlarging the repetitive simplified swags of the wall pattern, and giving both that design and the intense red such dominion over the relatively thin and spindly imagery of nature seen through the window, he imparts a near-ecstatic pulse of life to what others might see as a quiet modest moment of decorative table preparation. In every respect, the opulence in this picture, the thrilling, engulfing energy that spills out of its borders, is tied to the simple act of arrangement at its center; it has to do with the immense enrichment of human life through culture, conceived not in terms of the additive piling-on of acquisitions, but in the attentive reconsideration of what lies to hand. (Apparently he had owned that piece of fabric for years, using it in other paintings as a backdrop.)

The eliminations and simplifications - the reduced detail, or most notably the minimized cues for depth - are pursued with this end in view - of reopening, rather than narrowing, the play between what we know and what we discover, between our awareness of a limited set of conventions and our ability to enlarge our response to life through their manipulation. (p. 95)

Are you at the blah, blah, blah point? Does this make any sense to you? Or is this heading off into rather high-flown, enigmatic realms of philosophy?

While most of this makes sense to me, it seems what matters is whether you need all this critical background to feel that expansiveness when you look at Harmony in Red, or whether it just works and you're transported, engulfed in that strong color. What do you think?

2010-02-05T06:33:00.000-08:00

If you're just joining the conversation about the ideas of the late Kirk Varnedoe and what makes modern art modern, you might want to go back to the two previous posts starting on 2/1 to catch the thread.

We talked about how Degas "discovered a world of space in the peculiar margins of perspective conventions" that others had noticed but not used in their art (A Fine Disregard, K. Varnedoe, Harry Abrams, Inc.). Volumes have been written about how Van Gogh, Gauguin, and others were greatly influenced by Japanese prints, primarily those of Ando Hiroshige. But Varnedoe thinks that artistic influence went in the circle.

Here's Plum Estate by Ando Hiroshige (1857). Van Gogh produced a painting almost identical to Hiroshige's but he also adapted the looming foreground in this painting, Spring in Arles, below,(1889).

While Varnedoe provides a lot more background than I have room for here, much of what he says boils down to this: "The tradition in which One Hundred Famous Views of Edo was made was a tradition of Japanese engagement with Western perspective."

He cites a book by historian Henry Smith who points out "long before there was Japonisme in Europe, there were waves of European influence in Japan." The first wave was in the 1600s, primarily with religious art. The second wave was in the 1730s and included Dutch books with interior views, landscapes, and anatomical charts. He believes the Japanese were fascinated by perspective and began to copy, but without understanding all the principles.

Some Japanese artists, like Shiba Kokan, produced "fully perspectival views," but others felt free to splice together aspects of perspectival systems, resulting in images that have figures, objects or still life grafted onto scenes depicting deep space. (pages 56-57)

It's Varnedoe's theory that as these Japanese artists experimented, they solved problems in their own ways and became quite inventive in their rather flexible approach to perspective.
"One solution to the problems Hokasai had. . . was to give up on the ideal of a continual recession into space." (p. 57) Notice the splice of foreground directly over the background view of Fuji in his famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

By the time you get to Hiroshige, working later than Hokusai, you're noticing some comic inventions with perspective, such as Naito Shinjuku, Yotsuya, in which the horses hindquarters are looming in the foreground. (Apparently Shinjuku was a brothel area outside Edo, and poetry going back decades mentioned the mixing of two aromas - perfume of the courtesans and odor of the horse manure.)

Below is Degas' Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys (1876), with Hiroshige's Ushimachi, Takanawa beneath it.

Varnedoe is not suggesting that the Europeans simply copied the Japanese, but that perhaps a number of things were brewing at once (including some borrowing from the earlier Realist tradition). He thinks the Europeans, and Degas in particular, were more than responders, inventing in their own way, and that Degas was constantly moving figures around, taking a figure from one painting, a staircase from another, and trying something new every time he made a picture. He thinks that Degas and others probably figured out the same things the Japanese did - "that you do not have to construct space as a deep stage and coherently organize everything to fit consistently into it; if you layer together little and big elements, foreground and background parts, and leave out the transitional middle ground, the viewer will use these clues to fill in the binding, overall space."

Here's The Ballet from 'Robert Le Diable' (1876) - only foreground and background!

In fact, Varnedoe points out that Degas had been splicing elements together for years, as early as this painting, Woman Leaning Near a Vase of Flowers, 1863.

He says, "Mechanically, in fact, in the Woman Leaning, Degas seems to have begun with a perfectly normative and conventional conception of a flower still life; then he added a little of another, portrait convention, and the result became something that alters both parts, and will not settle down into either norm. The portrait aspect now involves a sense of personality that depends on the dialogue between her sense of inwardness and the expansive beauty of the still life, and suggests thereby a whole different format for showing being and surroundings, person and place, as interconnected bearers of identity."

Of course, there's much more in A Fine Disregard but I fear I'm running on too long.

He discusses the innovative compositions of Munch, Caillebotte, and Gauguin, all taking bits and pieces of conventions which they were now familiar, and rearranging them in new ways to make paintings that produced a different world view, a different mood, or a new way of looking at the individual in society.

Maybe Gauguin and Matisse deserve a day, and then that will be enough on his ideas about the "road to flatness" and what makes modern art modern.

Time to start work on a horse's hindquarters series. . . actually I have an opening reception today for an exhibit so I need to get out the door. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

2010-02-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

Continuing today with a look at the ideas of Kirk Varnedoe*. In his book, A Fine Disregard, he talks about what he feels are deficiencies in the most common approaches to understanding modern art. (See 2/1 post.)

Before talking about Degas' Place de la Concorde, Vicomte Lepic and his Daughters, (1875), it might be a good idea to spend just a second explaining the commonly accepted ideas about how modern art developed. Varnedoe says:

There has been a kind of orthodoxy, inculcated in countless devotees, about how it all came to be; and the doctrinaire version of that story, of Edouard Manet who begat Paul Cezanne who begat Pablo Picasso, in a march out of servile naturalism into the promised land of abstraction , explains what has happened in art since 1860 about as adequately as the seven days of scripture account for the fossils in the Devonian shale. . . . Any account of modern art's origins has to tie together a bewildering variety of objects and events, from Manet's urbane spaces and Claude Monet's landscapes, through styles as disparate as Paul Gauguin's flat color and Georges Seurat's dots, to the more hermetic departures of Picasso and Georges Braque in Cubism. The tendency has been to describe all these "rapid-fire changes as a march of progress and explain the welter of new forms as revelations of necessary truths." There was a belief by some of these explainers, that there must be sources in science, mathematics, mysticism, primitive art, and so on, that formed the basis for these truths.

At the same time, others looked to other explanations, primarily having to do with a distillation of each art form as it "moved toward a purer and purer nature." Still others explained modern art by looking at the social context of the artist and his/her times. Was Seurat commenting on a problem of leisure time in Paris? (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-6), above left. What about Manet's bar scenes? Were class distinctions being examined?

Varnedoe thinks all of these approaches are either incomplete or just do not work.

We do not have to agree either with Seurat's color theories or with his anarchism to find profound human content in his landscapes, any more than we have to be Einstein to be fascinated by Cubist portraits. And only an infinitesimal percentage of those who jammed Picasso's 1980 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, or who have come to stand before Pollock's drip paintings in various degrees of bewilderment and thrall, cared an iota about the historical destiny of the picture plane. And yet people . . .have found in these odd and difiuclt things a rich spectrum of meanings and uses. . ." (p.20)

Modern art, he says, "did not originate in the wholesale overthrow of all conventions. . .It has been the product of individual decisions to reconsider the complex possibilities within the traditions available (to the artists), and to act on basic options that were, and remain, broadly available and unconcealed."

So Degas, in Place de la Concorde (Vicomte Lepic and his Daughters), did not find a photograph with the quite common feature of a looming distorted foreground and just try it out. He was already somewhat in the habit of assembling his compositions by moving elements around quite freely. He just made some new choices. In composing this painting, he has made a series of decisions - to crop the figure at the knees, to place the figure of Lepic off center, to move the horizon higher - but not, Varnedoe asserts, because he saw all this done in photographs. For whatever reason or reasons, he was feeling freed from the constraints of perspective, of creating a foreground, middleground, and background, in his compositions. So he made a modern picture:

What's odd about Lepic (in Degas' painting) is that he is striding past without looking at us, so that we have a portrait's intimacy with a narrative, genre aspect added to it. And what's even odder is that it is set in the middle of a cityscape. The cityscape is not so odd. The portrait is not so odd. The genre scene is not so odd. What is new and crucial is a portrait-cityscape-genre scene, which is the form of something unknown; a new sense of the engagement of a private personality with a public space, a new sense of how one might define singular personal identity in modern Paris. (p.88)

I know this is getting long, but I want to add that the influence of optical devices was not new. Several centuries before, Canaletto would have been set up with his device in the Piazza San Marco, and as Varnedoe points out, a number of Lepics would have wandered by in the foreground. But he would have ignored them; he did not choose to paint a figure looming in the foreground. At right, Piazza San Marco, 1757.

There's more, to this, of course, that brings in the influence of Japanese prints. But Varnedoe thinks we have this backwards, that the influence began when Japanese artists saw European pictures composed using perspective. More Friday. Would love to know what you think of all this, or if you already came upon these theories when they were first published.

*Varnedoe, who died in 2003, was the Director of the Dept. of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Prior to that, he taught at Stanford, NY University's Institute of Fine Arts, Columbia, and Williams College.

2010-02-01T07:10:00.000-08:00

Well, having discussed the influence of Japanese prints on the work of Van Gogh a few months ago, I will now proceed to eat my hat. In my most recent attempt to understand modern art, I just started reading A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern by the late Kirk Varnedoe. With great excitement after only a few pages, I flipped to the beginning to find the publication date. . .1990. Oh well, the ideas seem new to me! (Have you read this? Or the more recent compilation of his lectures published posthumously in 2006, Pictures of Nothing?)

Anyway, in the opening pages he refutes two broadly accepted ideas: that the invention of photography greatly influenced the work of Degas, Caillebotte, and others of the time, and that European painters started heading on the "Road to Flatness" because they were so taken with the look of Japanese prints.

Before looking at what Varnedoe has to say (later this week), it might be a good idea to explain the title. He writes that back in the 70s he traveled to the north of England where he studied a marker erected on a grassy playing field. It says:

This stone commemorates the exploit of William Webb Ellis, who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game. A.D. 1823

Varnedoe borrows this metaphor of grabbing the ball and changing the direction of the game and uses it throughout the book. He believes artists have made changes that grew out the conventions and traditions of the time, and rather than breaking sharply with those traditions, they've grabbed pieces of what was at hand, sometimes literally right on their drawing tables, and used those odd bits in new ways to change the game and take art in new directions.

Above is Degas' Place de la Concorde (Vicomte Lepic and His Daughters), 1875. Next post will talk about Varnedoe's thoughts on what makes this painting modern and all that might have influenced a composition like this one.

2010-01-29T06:40:00.000-08:00

Does this language strike you as a tad anachronistic? "At the beginning of the reign of Philip III, El Greco's client base was expanding. " (p. 185)*

Just think what he could have accomplished with Twitter. Marketing efforts aside, late in his career and in the last decade of his life, El Greco had moved into a larger studio in Toledo and at last had the time and the means to work on his own paintings as well as his commissions.

Although this painting was never finished and the figure of St. John is bizarre it's so big, I still like its expressionistic quality - the looseness, the sense of movement, those figures twisting and changing at the moment of the Apocalypse. Quite a departure from the kinds of works his contemporaries leaned toward. The Vision of St. John dates from between 1608-14.

Some critics have suggested that El Greco's elongated figures are the result of an astigmatism, but in my reading I've found many who disagree and you can read why here. In brief, they point out that 1) the tendency to elongate the figure grew out of the Mannerist style that helped shape El Greco's work in the early stages of his career, and 2) that a person with an astigmatism would not draw some figures in typical size and others larger and that, 3) the effects of astigmatism do not change over one's lifetime, but El Greco's depiction of figures did change . In any case, St. John certainly looms in this work. What do you think?

Here's a more conventional El Greco, Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino. (Looks like a college boyfriend of mine.) The richness of the browns doesn't really come across on a monitor. Time to go to Spain, I guess.

*from El Greco to Velazquez by Schroth and Baer, MFA Boston, 2008

"What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming." Degas

2010-01-27T06:26:00.000-08:00

Those words of Degas don't really relate to this post; I just loved that statement.

Isn't it almost as interesting to see what an artist omits as what he/she includes? Came across this Degas, Dancers Practicing at the Bar, (1876-7). Of course your eye goes right to that watering can that mimics the shape of the dancer. Degas later regretted including that can and wanted to paint it out. But, the owner of the work. who was also a friend of Degas, wouldn't let him do it.* (If you're wondering what a watering can's doing in a studio, apparently the can is used to spread dust on the floor for the dancers.)

As a painter you sometimes just can't stop looking at an element you decide is not right. I remember my Otis instructor, Franklyn Liegel, suggesting you block out the element (by putting one hand over one eye) and see if you will miss the element if it's gone. Trying it with this painting, I certainly don't feel I miss that can. What do you think? It must have practically ruined Degas' feeling about that painting, wanting to change it but not being allowed to do it.

*From Masterpieces of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale U. Press, 1993, p.232

2010-01-25T06:49:00.000-08:00

Been thinking about political cartoonist David Levine who died last month at 83.

I think as a tortoise I am always intrigued by stories about hares. The Artist Magazine interviewed him not long before he died, and he explained about his early interest in cartooning. Years ago the Disney Studios held a contest, asking applicants to send their renditions of Goofy. He sketched something and sent it off. A representative from the company contacted him, telling him that they were impressed with his work, and saying they'd like to invite him to come out and see them. "I can't," he told them. "Why not?" he was asked. "Because I'm 9 years old."

Levine began taking classes at Pratt Institute and the Brooklyn Museum while he was still a high school student. Later, he joined the staff at the New York Review of Books in 1963. His tenure there lasted until 2007 when macular degeneration made it difficult for him to do fine line work with pen. He continued working in pencil after leaving the review.

You can't think of him without recalling his depiction of LBJ opening his shirt to reveal his Vietnam-shaped scar, above. Novelists may be adept at revealing character over the course of a few hundred pages, but to reveal the failures and limitations of his subjects while still conveying some sympathy for the individual (at times) - and all in black and white - that's genius, don't you think?

One more thing - apparently he enjoyed playing tennis. When someone compared him to Daumier he had a ready riposte: "Did he have a backhand?"

2010-01-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

It's always fun to come across a painting you don't know well that has a connection to one of your favorites. While we've all seen this oil, Breakfast in the Loggia, a dozen times in anthologies with its perfect rendering of light and shadow, I had not realized 'til yesterday that Sargent had painted the same two women in watercolor. Below is The Garden Wall; I came across it in Awash in Color, by Reed and Troyen. I learned that the subjects of both paintings are Jane Emmet von Glehn (later de Glehn), an accomplished painter and wife of painter Wilfred von Glehn and on the right, Lady Richmond, wife of the artist Sir William Blake Richmond. (p.163)

They traveled often with Sargent and his sisters; these works depict their lodgings at a friend's villa near Florence. (Now why don't I have any friends with villas?) The author points out that Sargent enjoyed experimenting with compositions that might create a bit a narrative, but never provides too much info.

He places these figures just far enough apart that there is a bit of spatial tension, isn't there? We are not given clues to what might be discussed between them, but the face of Lady Richmond on the right does make you wonder if she has just stopped reading her book in order to make a remark or reply to something Jane has said. It's commonplace for an artist to try to engage the viewer in 2010. Not sure how often that strategy was employed a hundred years ago. Do you know?

The other bit of info we'll never have is whether or not he intended for this to look so unfinished, with that wonderful sketched-in wall behind the left hand figure. And that shawl he has is rendered in such detail it almost becomes the focal point. All those decisions about the attitude of the figure, the mood - and Sargent seems to nail them with such confidence. Just another day's work for him, I guess.

2010-01-18T06:22:00.000-08:00

With the awful circumstances in Haiti, I woke up thinking about Jacob Lawrence's chronicling of the slave revolt that led to freedom from the French in 1804, the only successful slave uprising in the Western Hemisphere. Is it possible that it's been two hundred years since a big, positive change happened there?

The series of 15 paintings (called Toussaint L'Ouverture after the name of the revolt's leader) was created in 1937-38 when Lawrence was just 21 years old. Reading about him on kera.org, I came across a remark that his colors are bold but silent. At first I thought, that doesn't make much sense, but the more I think about it there's some truth to that. The colors are strong, but not shrill. They settle down and work harmoniously, don't they? How did he manage that? Here are three, all from this link.

Above is Strategy. This next one is The March.

In Deception, L'Ouverture has been tricked and captured in 1802. He spent a year in prison, and died there, but Haiti won its independence the following year. Apparently they were forced to pay reparations so crushing that the country has never been able to climb out of debt.

2010-01-14T05:34:00.000-08:00

I must admit I don't always know what's going on in Chagall's paintings. Trying to understand his work better, I cheated a little yesterday and checked out a children's book from the library. And it's all there - author Ernest Raboff does not provide TMI. Instead there is just enough about Three Candles (above) to give you a foothold: the sense of movement, the mood of happiness in the painting of a bride and groom who move through the air on some kind of magic carpet, the glimpses of his hometown in Russia that he includes in so many paintings.

Those white flowers that seem likes stars or small clouds add to the dreamlike quality common to so many of his works. I think there have been a lot of attempts to emulate this style, but they just come off as shallow and new-agey. What gives these their "rightness"? Is it the richness? Complexity without clutter? I don't know, but I think if that bride were at a slightly different angle, there would be something not quite right, and the painting would not work nearly as well. They float - but they are alive and real. What do you think?

After leaving his native Russia to study in Paris, he explored Fauvism and Cubism, but ultimately he forged his own style. That's always the hard part, isn't it? Still working at it.

2010-01-13T12:32:00.000-08:00

Do you look at art sometimes and resist reading anything about it because you really prefer not to have any information? Sometimes it's just enough to look and think about it. So if you want, don't read any further and just taken in Vuillard's oil, The Nape of Misia's Neck, from 1897-99.

For a few years now I've had a doorstopper book on Vuillard (published to accompany an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. several years ago) and I've looked at this piece a zillion times - today for the first time I read the notes about the painting and they gave me a whole new perspective. Apparently, Vuillard was very charmed by Misia, a talented and charming pianist who became a muse for him as well as for others (no, not Tiger). She was married to Thadee Natanson, and Vuillard and other painters including Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir used to gather at their house.

Misia's memoirs were published after her death:

The echoes of this agitation (the Dreyfus affair) reached me at Villeneuve, and I decided to leave for Paris earlier than usual. Vuillard then said he wanted to take a last walk along the banks of the Yonne, and we started at dusk. Looking dreamy and grave, he led me beside the river amongst the tall birches with their silvery trunks. He moved slowly over the yellowing grass, and I fell in with his mood; we did not speak. The day was closing in rapidly, so we took a shortcut across a bare beetroot field. Our silhouettes were insubstantial shadows against a pale sky. The ground was rough, I tripped on a root and almost fell; Vuillard stopped abruptly to help me regain my balance. Our eyes met. In the deepening shdows I could see the sad gleam of his glance. He burst into sobs. It was the most beautiful declaration of love ever made to me.
(p. 220, Vuillard, produced by the publishing office of National Gallery of Art, Washington, editor Judy Metro, 2002)

2010-01-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's because my house is always a wreck and his world his so ordered, but I've always been drawn to the clean simple lines and strong primaries of his work. Doesn't he look like a buttoned up Dutchman?

Lots has been written about Mondrian's interest in Theosophy, but it seems that the question that matters is - how does it influence his work? You can read a short definition of Theosophy here, a lot more here, or you can just skip to this quick, in-a-hurry-Monday-morning rundown I came across in Carel Blotkamp's Mondrian:

What he did borrow from theosophical sources is the firm conviction that all life is directed towards evolution, and that . . . "the goal of art is to give expression to that evolution." p. 15

According to Blotkamp, in Mondrian's thinking, "evolution was closely bound up with destruction." He moved from depicting flowers in states of decay to completely abstract works that suggest the destruction of the incidental and the creation of a "purer image of reality." Here's an early work, Windmill (1911) - hasn't given up the form for pure abstraction yet.

At last, something about his work was starting to make sense to me. And Blotkamp goes farther to say:

By 1917=18 Mondrian had removed from his paintings the last vestiges of spatiality, capturing the planes within a network of lines. In his next phase, he makes further compositional changes in which "the colour planes have been destroyed as form: they are either pushed over the edge of the painting over traversed by lines, while the lines enclosing them always continue far beyond the planes."

Below is Composition in Red, Blue and Yellow (1940-44).

It was something I hadn't thought about, but Blotkamp says that "Mondrian was aware that these lines conducted themselves in such an independent fashion that they were in danger of becoming 'form', and in the early 30's he attempted to prevent this by doubling the lines or occasionally executing them in color."

You can see, with Victory Boogie Woogie, 1942-4 below, that toward the end of his life he began to break up the lines completely, creating the "cancellation of form in favour of relationships." (p.15) What do you think of this diagonal composition?

Okay, so that seems to me what I have in happening in my living room. Form has definitely been ignored in favor of relationships.

2010-01-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

You can convince yourself that it's okay to see paintings reproduced in a book, but there really is no other way to see sculpture except in person. Went to the Seattle Art Museum the other day to see the Calder exhibit and was taken aback by the added beauty of the mobiles' cast shadows. (Obviously the mobile above, Red Lily Pads, 1956, was not in the exhibit, but since they wouldn't let me take pictures, I wanted to include one that looks so much better in place than it would look in a book.)

At SAM they have wisely built some temporary walls so that just about every sculpture is set near a white wall, capturing the shifting shadows. The other thing you can't really get from a book, is the immediate sense of the size of the pieces. Maybe you are a careful caption reader, but I'm not, so I'm always surprised when a painting or sculpture is smaller or larger than I'd always imagined it. Below is the small, Polychrome Dots on Brass, 1964.

The last surprise was the 1961 video playing in the back room. It was Calder performing his miniature circus. The clip is a lot longer at SAM, but this will give you an idea of his whimsical creations, first made in the 1920s when he was an art student in New York. He had a journalism assignment for his part-time job, and was sent to sketch a Ringling Bros. circus. Captivated, he made his own figures from wire, wood, metal scraps, and performed this traveling circus for his artist friends (Miro, Mondrian, Arps, to name a few).

It seems that when you start to worry to much about the sales part of art, you can feel the joy part begin to evaporate. Maybe bending a few wires into . . .a tiny swim team? . . would be fun. What are you making?

2010-01-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

Don't you think Vermeer deserves more than one day? I think I've been avoiding him because he's just, as my 13 yr old might say, like so awesome, totally. Okay, she doesn't say "totally" very often. She doesn't say anything now that she's finally got a phone and can text everyone.

Mute people, especially women, are so often the focus of Mr. Awesome's gaze. In the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, I find his use of negative space seems to really lock the shapes of the composition in place - the sliver under her left arm, between her left hand and the chair, and especially above her left shoulder where the map of Holland is aimed right at her. Although apparently her clothing was typical for a woman of means at that time, the use of the water pitcher, the window, all that blue - he certainly seems to be making sure we'll think of Mary.

While I think the word "luminous" is overused in a zillion contexts, it does apply to his paintings. His ability to conjure up a room bathed in light is all the more magical when you consider that Delft is under gray skies as many as 300 days a year. He must have had a remarkable memory to reproduce a special quality of soft, warm light not seen everyday.

It's small, only 18 X 16, and it's at the Met in New York. Better to see this than stand outside those studios watching for Matt or Meredith, don't you think?

2010-01-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

Got up too late to make lunches AND write about Vermeer, so Vermeer had to wait. When he died in his forties he left 11 children - glad I'm not making those lunches. . .

I think it's intriguing when researchers are able to x-ray paintings and see what decisions artists made about what to add or eliminate. In A Woman Asleep (also called A Girl Asleep), although it's very hard to see, there once was a dog in the doorway on the right and a man in the back room. Vermeer decided to paint both of them out. Of course we'll never know why, but it seems that in many of his paintings, he liked to provide a few clues as to what the scene was, a letter arriving for instance, and then leave the rest of the narrative (there's a modern word) to the viewer's imagination. (Others have pointed out that he probably got the notion for this painting from a similarly-posed sleeping maid in a Rembrandt work. I have so far been unable to find a copy of that painting, but I'll keep working on it. - A few hours later, I came across Rembrandt's Girl Asleep at a Window.

I don't know, but it seems to me that A Woman Asleep is a tad more interesting without all the detail. We can see there is some sort of overturned goblet and that the table covering is bunched up. A big gathering to clean up after? Legitimately tired after hard work? Or shirking her duties after a few drinks? Critics have naturally noticed and commented on the cupids on the wall behind her. We don't know more and never will and that's what I like about it. What do you think?

P.S. Since another Vermeer, The Milkmaid, below, came to the Met in NY last fall, there's been a lot written about whether or not there is a good deal or just a little suggestiveness intended by Vermeer in his depiction of her. Click on the Met's link in this paragraph to read more.

2010-01-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

For New Year's Day, I thought it might be fun to present a series of details from paintings and see if you can guess the artist and the painting. For some of the more difficult ones, I've added an extra image, so just scroll down slowly to reveal the second image. I'd love to know how easy you find these.

At left is the first which you'll probably guess easily, although you might not recall the title.

1) A personal favorite:

2) A little obscure

3) Easy one

4) Hint - loves black

Extra detail if you need help:

5) You either know it or you don't, so I'll include a single image:

6) Hint: Tonya

Bigger detail:

7) Hint - test on Friday

Bigger detail for this:

8) Don't Trip:

Bigger detail:

9)

And a bigger detail if you need it:

How did you do? Here are the answers:

The first one, not numbered, is Girl with the Red Hat, Jan Vermeer, c. 1665-6

1) The Embroidered Dress, Edouard Vuillard, 1891

2) Untitled (Nude Model with Bischoff Painting), Manuel Neri, 1958

3) Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue, Piet Mondrian, 1930

4) La Rue Mosnier aux Drapeux, Edouard Manet, 1878 (Points for getting the artist since the title is too hard to remember)

5) Prayer for the Rain, Fateh Moudarres (Points for anything you remember at all)

6) The Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddington Loch, Sir Henry Raeburn, 1784

7) The Gross Clinic, Thomas Eakins, 1875

8) Nude Descending a Staircase #2, Marcel Duchamp, 1912

9) Untitled (Two Men at the Shore), Paul Wonner, 1960

I think any more than 3 or 4 is doing very well unless you work at the Met or the Louvre. Happy 2010!

2009-12-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

Honore Daumier's work makes me think of Dickens, maybe because he reminds me of Arthur Rackham, who illustrated the version of The Christmas Carol we read last week. Aren't the faces marvelous? I love the lack of finish and the dashed-off quality to this print, called Deux Buveurs (Two Drinkers) 1857-60.

Apparently he developed a lifelong hatred of bureaucrats and attorneys during his first job in a bailiff's office. (Those first jobs stay with you - explains why I never go into Kentucky Fried Chicken.) He learned lithography and became very accomplished as a political cartoonist, once landing in prison for his sketch of King Louis-Philippe as Gargantua. (1832)

At the end of his life after his eyesight had failed him and he was reduced to penury, his friends organized a retrospective of his paintings. For the first time, his talents as a painter became known to a wider audience. It really was long after he died that his renown grew.

Here's Reading a Poem, 1857-58. Despite the cracks in this oil, I hope you can make out the lovely hands emerging out the deep shadows. I love that red curve of the sofa tying the figures together and the repeated curves and lines of the framed portraits. What do you think?

Finally, here's Two Sculptors (1872-75), painted during the last decade of his life. According to Michael Pantassi, writing in Daumier, the figure on the right probably represents a student awaiting the appraisal of his elderly instructor who peers closely at the student's work. Always an uncomfortable moment - with the economy of a caricaturist, Daumier conjures up those faces with only a few strokes. I still can't do that.

2009-12-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

I always seem to be interested in influences and beginnings, so I was intrigued to learn that Henry Moore was the seventh child of a Yorkshire miner. (Awful to think about the amount of talent never developed because the artist is stuck in a mine somewhere in England or China or Africa.)

So where did that early impulse toward making art come from? Apparently he had decided to become a sculptor by age 10 or 11. He was blessed with the good fortune of receiving support for his artistic interests, with great encouragement coming from a grammar school teacher. And ten years later, after two years of war service he was able to study art with the help of an ex-serviceman's grant, studying first at Leeds and then in London.

He made countless trips to the British Museum to study art and sculpture of many cultures. I guess it's not that surprising to learn that seeing a pre-Columbian chac mool (above) had a powerful effect on him and led to one of his most important early sculptures, below, Reclining Nude (1929).

(He was also knocked out after seeing Matisse's The Bathers.)

Moore describes the kind of sculpture he most admires: it's "not perfectly symmetrical, it is static and it is strong and vital, giving off something of the energy and power of great mountains." His interest in the English landscape comes through in his creations, where knees and breasts are like hills and mountains. And those empty spaces within the sculptures are made use of, too, aren't they? Here's Reclining Nude, created when he was in his early thirties.

Through all the many years of work, he never really headed into complete abstraction; there always seems to be some connection to the human figure. I don't think you ever get tired of looking at his work. What do you think?

Fifteen minutes of fame arrive at the last second. . .

2009-12-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

Something encouraging seems called for on Christmas Day. Did you see the widely reprinted piece about Carmen Herrera, the 94 year-old artist who finally achieved some measure of notoriety at age 89? (This is Untitled, 1958)

If you didn't see it, here's the short version: this Cuban-born artist had been painting seven decades, had several shows over the years at respected venues, but never really gained broad recognition or even sold any work (any!). And then, five years ago, collectors and art historians started to take notice. Her minimalist paintings with geometric designs are now hanging at the Tate Modern and MOMA, to name a few. The article is worth a few minutes.

So there's still time! I'm going to get to work now on one I can sell around 2046 or so.

"One must have a mind of winter. . ." Wallace Stevens

2009-12-23T06:39:00.000-08:00

The other day I heard a wonderful snippet of a local public radio piece about Wallace Stevens' The Snow Man and woke up thinking about winter paintings.

I guess it's not that surprising to learn that Bruegel was influenced by Hieronymus Bosch who packed so much into his work. You can make out hunters returning to the village, skaters on the lake, a figure crossing the bridge, birds overhead. And he organized all this along the two diagonals, the hillside line stronger than the diagonal created by the hunters and tree trunks. That green of the sky and water really lends a feeling of cold and misery, doesn't it, despite the way the villagers seem to be carrying on? No pocket warmers or battery-powered socks in 1545. It's said that the artist was sometimes referred to as Bruegel the Peasant because he'd go to the trouble of donning disguises in order to blend in at weddings, etc., the better to gain insight into the lives of the people he wished to depict. (Wondering about the "h" in Brueghel? It seems that he dropped it after 1559, but his two sons, also painters, continued to use the "h".)

This second painting, Snow at Louveciennes was painted in 1878, the year before Wallace Stevens was born far away in Pennsylvania and more than 300 years after Bruegel let the "h" go.

This Sisley painting draws you in like a vortex, with the one-point perspective and central figure. You are drawn to that solitary figure like a magnet. Lonelier than the Bruegel, isn't it? And monochromatic rather than high contrast - creates a very different feeling.

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

2009-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

Does your dentist look like this? Grant Wood grew up in Iowa, drew camouflage on cannons during WWI, traveled to Europe to learn about art, and returned with a conviction that he preferred to paint in the style of the old masters. He spotted this structure with its Gothic revival window and created a subject by enlisting the aid of his dentist and his own sister, Nan. Some suggested he was making fun of stalwart, Midwesterners, but he denied the accusation. Not sure just why American Gothic has become such an icon - what do you think? I had never really looked closely at it 'til now since there's that "I already know this painting" feeling about it.

Sr. Wendy often has something interesting to say, so I searched for her viewpoint:

The subjects' motivations, even when considered as father and daughter, are unclear: The man may be a farmer holding a pitchfork, nothing more than a piece of farming equipment. Or he may not be a farmer at all, but a preacher, perhaps, jealously guarding his daughter from male suitors. Critics who interpret the woman as his daughter have often assumed she was a spinster -- but just what kind of spinster is left to the imagination. Some see the stray curl at the nape of her neck as related to the snake plant in the background, each one symbolizing a sharp-tongued "old maid." Sister Wendy sees in the curl, however, a sign that she is not as repressed as her buttoned-up exterior might indicate.

Let's hope she's right about that curl. Here's another - his mother with a plant. Maybe I'm just in a punchy, pre-holiday mood, but it made me laugh. It's called Woman with Plants and according to Wood's estate website, it depicts his loving, strong Midwestern mom against the landscape she knew and loved. The decision of his to make her loom so large must be the feature that gives it such a sense of caricature, I guess. What do you think?

2009-12-18T11:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, and you thought you hadn't been hitting the gym often enough. . . isn't this intriguing? It's been awhile since I've been to the Art Institute of Chicago, but it's hard to forget this meticulously rendered portrait. (By the way, did you read in last Sunday's NY Times that "meticulous" also means fearful? This is definitely scary.)

Was interested to find out that Albright painted this in 1929-30 working from a model who was about 20 years old. Apparently he was fascinated by all things related to aging and death and drew upon his experience as a medical illustrator during WWI to render incredibly detailed portraits or macabre but somehow dignified individuals.

What do you think? Those objects on the table and floor are slipping out of the frame; in fact doesn't everything appear askew, adding to the mood of unease and precariousness? The title is Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida (The Lord is in His Heaven and I in My Room Below). What do you make of the subtitle with its echoes of Robert Browning?

Lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal and that I'm out of my mind, but that's just too bad... Claude Monet

2009-12-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

This photo of Monet in his third studio at Giverny was taken in the 20's - check out the size of that palette.

Among the frustrations that plagued him as he sought to finish his water lilies panels were some problems with his eyesight. He suffered from cataract problems and a rare condition called xanthopsia:

"Monet is most upset by the colors; he sees everything yellow," noted opthomologist, Dr. Coutela, in 1923. By the next year, he'd had several operations and the xanthopsia no longer plagued him. He continued work on the water lilies and received ongoing communication and encouragement from Prime Minister Clemenceau. Problems with his eyes continued to drive him to distraction. "It's disgusting, now I see everything in blue!" he explained to visiting Professor Jacques Mawas in 1924. "How do you know you are painting in blue?" the professor asked. "By the tubes of paint I choose."

Special glasses were made for him that helped a good deal, and once more he dove into his work. Apparently he was somewhat mercurial, working feverishly and then stopping for days and not painting at all. He had plans to bequeath to his country the best of the water lilies (what he called the Decorations, designed to adorn the walls of a large room). I guess frustration with government was common in his era too. In 1920 he sniped, "I will bequeath the four best series to France, which will do nothing with them."

Here's The House from the Garden, painted in 1922, the year before he died at age 86. Apparently, during the latter years, he could no longer back up 15 feet or so and still see the work well. You have to wonder how much of the increasingly abstract nature of his work was due to eyesight and how much was artistic vision and intention.

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." Claude Monet

2009-12-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

Thinking about water lately, as I've logged a lot of time watching moving water at swim meets. (Dali's melting clocks come to mind, too.) Been thinking about Monet's lifelong fascination with water and persistence in looking endlessly at nature as it changed around him.

At a remove of a century, I think it's common to look back and assume that an artist would recognize a subject where and as he/she found it, and just set up to capture the scene. I was interested to learn that there was a fair amount of stage managing that Monet undertook to get his subjects the way he wanted them. And he faced his share of frustrations along the way.

When he first moved to Giverny in 1883 he encountered a few problems. He had brought 4 boats with him from Paris, but because of the tides and the narrowness of the channel, he could not bring the barge he used as a studio close to the house at night (he wanted to paint from the boat instead of the riverbank.) "I'm afraid I've made a mistake by settling so far away. It all seems quite hopeless" he wrote to gallery owner Georges Durand-Ruel. He started to feel better about things once he found a place to leave the boat, settled in, and started "to get to know a new landscape." (p. 19, Monet's Years at Giverny, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

He discovered a row of poplars less than two miles away in a marsh in Limetz. He was so entranced by them that he paid a lumber dealer not to cut them down immediately after they had been sold.

He also had to make some arrangements to make sure he could work on his largest series, the water lilies. He had to get permission from the city council to decree that he could divert a branch of the Epte River which crossed his land. The council made the diversion conditional - he was not allowed to impede the flow of the water with sluices; it needed to flow freely to ensure there was no health hazard to those living along the river.

What makes them so mesmerizing? No reproduction does them justice. Have you seen them? This description offered by Maurice Guillemot seems to get at the shimmering, changing quality of the painting:

On the glassy surface of the water float lilies, those extraordinary aquatic plants whose large leaves spread wide and whose large exotic blossoms are curiously unsettling. . . .The colors are fluid, with marvelous nuances, ephemeral as a dream.

"No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes."

2009-12-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

As one who tries to tear through work at 100 mph, this idea has a certain appeal. Doesn't this drawing have a restful, haunting look? It's called Mother and Child and was drawn a century ago in 1910. The decision to give features to only one figure makes it more powerful, somehow, and also more contemporary looking. What do you think?

Came across the work of this artist I knew nothing about, Kathe Kollwitz. She left East Prussia (now Russia) to move to Berlin, married a doctor there who operated a clinic in a very poor area. There she saw first-hand the effects of poverty in the early years of the 1900s. She managed to combine motherhood with her work as an artist focusing on printing, etching and drawing. Kollwitz was quite affected by the struggles of the common workers and families in difficulty:

"I must express the suffering of humanity that never ends." In her journals she described "the woman watching who feels everything. …"

The youngest of her two sons was killed in the first World War. She was initially supportive of his patriotic wish to volunteer for the war, and so was thrown into years of second-guessing and regret after his death. It took her twelve years to complete a memorial sculpture, called The Grieving Parents. It stands in Vladslo, Germany, a few miles from Ypres, the site of the vast cemetery for the dead of WWI.

She did not leave Germany during the war, but was forced to leave her home and studio since it was largely destroyed during bombing raids. She worked up into her seventies and died in 1945 just before the war ended. She also lost a grandson during the second World War. She always retained her passion for making art: "For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying."

2009-12-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

I realize I'm missing a Kandinsky show in New York right now at the Guggenheim. Have you seen it? (This link will take you to a 5 minute, very interesting video put together by the museum to explain his working methods, themes, etc. Do not be distracted by the curator's hair - she is quite impressive.) It seems like Kandinsky is popping up all over the place, even in Tuesday's Science page of the NY Times with these marvelous circles:

Doesn't it seem like these blurred out edges are crucial to the rightness of the painting? Makes the circles appear to be weightless, perhaps. He prepared to be a lawyer, but after seeing an exhibit of Monet's work, he decided to turn to art. How often has that happened? Apparently Kandinsky moved through a number of styles in his career.

According to Dr. Robert Belton, writing in his survey, Art, Kandinsky's move toward abstraction was hastened after a singular incident. He returned to his studio one evening, and was "enchanted by a picture he did not recognize. It turned out to be one of his own paintings lying on its side. Kandinsky immediately realized that subject matter lessened the impact of his pictures. . ." Many of his works were greatly planned, and X-rays reveal grid patterns on the canvas along with notations in German as to colors to use in various portions of the painting. Curators have noted that he sometimes departed from his plans.

I think Impression II (below) is just fabulous - so full of movement and so spontaneous looking. I didn't realize that Kandinsky had studied the cello and was an amateur chamber musician. He painted this in 1911 two days after attending a New Year's concert of Schoenberg's music in Munich.

Apparently some preparatory sketches reveal that the large black shape suggests a grand piano. The diagonal compositional scheme is interesting and contributes to the sense of motion. The music he heard would have been atonal; no doubt he is trying to capture a sense of what was heard that night. If a painting can look loud, this is it. What do you think of it?

2009-12-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

As I play around with color and shape, I am ever more amazed at how Van Gogh could get away with such strong color. He didn't choose all pure colors, though. In L'Arlesienne (Madame Ginoux) the yellow background does not have to fight against the dark green table or the dull flesh tones of her face and hand.

The portrait seems to be all angles and directions - the books, the curvy chair, the yellow shapes under her right arm and between her back and the chair - and most interesting to me, the eyelashes projecting from the outline of her face.

Elsewhere, Van Gogh wrote: "I want to paint men and women with something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we now seek to give the actual radiance and vibrancy of our colorings."

Should we be depressed or inspired to read that this picture was "slashed on in an hour"? (p. 88, Van Gogh, Meyer Schapiro)

Here's another I wasn't familiar with. Have you seen it? (Maybe not - just noticed it's in a private collection in South America.) Really interesting use of perspective, position of the legs, and means of pulling together the lower and upper halves of the painting by use of color and line. Again there are those little jigsaw bits seen in the first painting - under his right arm and between his hat and shoulder. He's always looking around for a shape to delineate, but somehow it seems right and inevitable.

This one probably took a full 90 minutes. . .

2009-12-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

Cezanne's Still Life with Apples, 1890-94

Ever since seeing Milton Avery's work about 5 years ago at the Hammer in UCLA, I've long been fascinated by him. (I realize there's a Cezanne posted above - getting to that.)
I'm still trying to figure out why. His work looks so simple - but there's something not so simple going on. In Milton Avery, The Late Paintings, there's a whole lot of erudite analysis of Clement Greenberg's view of Avery's work along with a lot of speculation as to the degree to which Wallace Stevens poetry may have influenced him. . . but for my money, the best insight comes from the words of the artist himself:

To the so-called conservative art lover, a picture is beautiful if it looks just like the subject, and, of course, the subject must itself be pretty. Then again if the subject is a poetical landscape, a lively snow scene, or if, in a nude, the model is voluptuous and pretty, this viewer has gotten his thrill and is satisfied that he has seen and knows what is "great art."

With this attitude there is no argument, for it is [as] futile to argue about art as it is about religion. But I cannot help but feel that this attitude is unfortunate. The so-called modern artist (and I insist the work "modern" is as confusing and ambiguous as the word "beautiful"" looks for plastic values where the conservative seeks representation. that is, the modern looks for design of form, line, color and spatial arrangement, where the conservative looks for "soul," "beautiful expression," and so-called "realism." Personally, I can see as much if not more, spirituality and soul in a painting of apples by Cezanne as in a Madonna and Child Surrounded by Angels and All the Hosts of Heaven by Murillo for the reasons I have expressed above. If people do not agree with this conception, well and good. All I can say is that they do not get the same experiences out of life and art as I do. (p. 26, Milton Avery/The Late Paintings, Robert Hobbs)

His paintings are known for their interlocking forms, design stripped to essentials, achievement of depth through the use of color instead of linear perspective, and focus on seizing "the one sharp instant in Nature, to imprison it by means of ordered shapes and space relationships." (p. 53) I struggle a lot with what to leave out. He just seems to know.

Here's Breaking Sea (1952):

His daughter, March, was a frequent subject of his paintings. Here's Adolescence, (1947). The reproductions do not have the same presence as the originals. What do you think of his work?

2009-12-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here's Velasquez' The Surrender at Breda (1634-5).

I remember seeing this at the Prado some years ago. Honestly, I think the only reason I stopped is that I lived near Breda (in Holland) as a child. To the contemporary eye it looks so conventional, with the Mona-Lisa-like plains in distance, all that attention paid to uniforms, the spears of the winning side thick and vertical, the ceremony of the vanquished handing over the keys to the city, etc. But the soldier on the left staring at the viewer strikes a more modern chord. Kind of arresting in his gaze. Almost steals the painting. There's another face looking out from the far right -- who is it? Some have suggested it's Velasquez himself.

I started writing this post last week, and lo and behold in today's NY Times there's a review of a show at the Metropolitan in NY about Velazquez and the controversy surrounding the painting, Portrait of a Man. The questions are two - who is it? and was it painted by Velasquez or his pupil, son-in-law Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo? Although you practically need a magnifying glass to compare the figure on the far right of the Breda painting to the figure in Portrait of a Man, there definitely is a resemblance. A Facebook page for Velazquez would be really handy right now - or would he have been a MySpace guy?

Experts are leaning toward attributing the Portrait to Velazquez. By examining other paintings known to be created by his pupils, they point to those lesser paintings flaws: less confident brushwork, a less-taut shape of the collar, a muddiness around the jaw. To my untrained eye the Portrait certainly does seem to have been painted with an air of authority. Nothing equivocal about the choices made. What do you think?

(All the pictures on-line are muddy looking because the picture has just been restored; this one I took with my camera from the newspaper, so you can see the crease in the paper- sorry.)

2009-11-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

I love what Michael Kimmelman, art critic for the NY Times, has to say about Wayne Thiebaud's work. In his book on the consolations of art he talks about why they appeal to us, and I think he nails it. What do they possess that other deceptively simple works lack? Above is Pies, Pies, Pies from 1961.

Kimmelman says:

After a while Thiebaud's pictures prompt something more complicated than plain joy -- as with Chardin, closer to the nature of memory, which is always a tricky affair. This reaction slowly registers in our minds as the gap between what actually was -- between those cloying Boston cream pies that we really ate nad the gum-ball machines that ate our pennies - and the world as we wished it to be. Thiebaud gave us not real cheese but Platonic cheese, as the writer Adam Gopnik once put it. And this gap between reality and desire ushers in, in Thiebaud's art, even more than in Chardin's a sadness after the first leaping rush of pleasure. Thiebaud's art is not about the perfect world. It is about the fact that the world never was and still isn't perfect, except perhaps the little imaginary part of it to which we can briefly retreat in these paintings and thereby glimpse the way all things ought to be. (p. 222-3, The Accidental Masterpiece)

I think he may be right. He goes on to consider the artist's depictions of people and explains his view that Thiebaud's people are more like Vermeer's than Hopper's lonely figures. They may be minutely described, but we can read just about anything into those faces. We cannot ever really know more about them than we can about strangers we pass in the store or on the street. Here's Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring along with Thiebaud's Two Kneeling Figures.

What do you think? Do you agree? Are they ciphers?

2009-11-28T08:04:00.001-08:00

Charis Wilson died November 20th at 95. The LA Times carries the obituary of this free spirited woman who met Edward Weston when she was 20 and he was 48. She became his wife and muse for many years, and used her writing talent to edit many of his books and write several of her own.

This photography still seems compelling after so many years. Why is it so intriguing? Is it better not to see her face?

I would love to hear a few comments. . . .are you out there? Bill M.? Pamela? Julie?

2009-11-25T06:34:00.001-08:00

A short post so you can start peeling those potatoes. . .

In On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, Michael Kimmelman says:

Most artists, like most people, have one good idea or maybe two in life, and that sustains them. In the best circumstances, that's plenty for a career. George Morandi, the great Italian still life painter, quietly toiled away in Bologna, in the home he shared with his mother and three unmarried sisters, in a bedroom that doubled as a studio, seemingly oblivious and immune to shifting tastes, painting little bunches of bottles, bowls, and biscuit tins. His message - look slowly and hard at something subtle and small = was simple but turned out to be plenty. It sustained him.

What do you think? Are you in the middle of exploring an idea that will sustain you?

"If art isn't playful, it's nothing." David Hockney

2009-11-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

It seems that I am still struggling to understand the problems of perspective and how they relate to Cubism when David Hockney comes along and explains it so well I can finally get it through my thick, many-sided head. Above is Picasso's Portrait of Emilie-Marguerite Walter, 1939, alongside her photo.

Hockney asserts that the "major problem with traditional perspective, as it was developed in fifteenth-century European painting and persists to this day in the approach of most standard photography, is that it stops time. For perspective to be fixed, time has stopped and hence space has become frozen, petrified. Perspective takes away the body of the viewer. You have a fixed point, you have no movement; in short you are not there, really. That is the problem. Photography hankers after the the condition of the neutral observer. But here can be no such thing as a neutral observer. For something to be seen, it has to be looked at by somebody, and any true and real depiction should be an account of the experience of that looking." (from David Hockney, A Retrospective by Tuchman and Barron.

As he explains in much more detail, there's really no going back once you understand that the viewer is part of the view, or as Juan Gris said that "Cubism wasn't a style, it's a way of life." He also points to the words of Pierre Daix who explained that this revolution in the understanding of pictorial space was "in all probability linked to the simultaneous fact that physics was simultaneously destroying our three-dimensional space time perception." (from Neuchatel: Ides et Calendes, 1979, 184; translation: "Vogue par David Hockney," Vogue, Paris, Dec. 1985-Jan. 1986. 256.

Endless inventive, Hockney has been finding new ways to break up space, eliminate borders and include the viewer for decades now. And in all this, he sees a way to be free and play, without the constrictions of one-point perspective. Not sure if I'm encouraged or discouraged by all this ability and originality. What do you think?

Here's his current website where you can view the photocollage, Prehistoric Museum Near Palm Springs, 1982, as well as one of his more recent works painted in England, Garrowby Hill (1997).

2009-11-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

Above is Mulholland Drive.

David Hockney continues to amaze me with his endless inventiveness. He seems to be interested in understanding everything from physics to optics - and all his studies spill over into his work.

One of his prints, Nichols Canyon, hangs over our piano, so I was interested to come across his thoughts on another work from that time period. Remember seeing Mulholland Drive at a retrospective years ago at LACMA - it's the giant one, 7 feet by 22 feet. What I didn't know then how he was exploring the way time and space are dealt with by the artist. He had been browsing through a book called Principles of Chinese Painting by George Rowley.

He got so excited he sped over to Metropolitan in New York to see Chinese scrolls. What captivated him was not brush work or subjects, but the way the Chinese dealt with depth and perspective. Here's the explanation he gave in a lecture at the time:

When the Chinese were faced with the same problem of spatial depth in the T'ang period, they reworked the early principles of time and suggested a space through which one might wander and a space which implied more space beyond the picture frame. We restricted space to a single vista as though seen through an open door; they suggested the unlimited space of nature as though they had stepped through that open door and had known the sudden breathtaking experience of space extending in every drection and infinitely into the sky. (David Hockney Retrospective, Tuchman and Barron, LACMA)

He was fascinated by the way the viewer takes in the images on the scroll a little at a time as it is unrolled. (These unroll horizontally, not vertically, and come out of a box you hold in your hands. You cannot just glance at them.)

Hockney explained how the experience of viewing a work on the scroll, watching the landscape literally unfold, scene by scene, and tree by tree, without and borders or breaks, is quite a dramatically different experience from viewing a Western landscape while you're standing completely still and looking at one place.

Being Hockney, he has a lot more light to shed on this, all pretty interesting, I think. Do you like his work as much as I do? A quick look at his work is always fun, but for me, understanding what he was up to adds a whole other dimension to my appreciation.