Friday, January 29, 2010

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

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

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

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

Monday, January 25, 2010

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?"

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

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.

Monday, January 18, 2010

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, 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.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

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.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

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)

Monday, January 11, 2010

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, "ev
olution 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 t
he 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.

Friday, January 8, 2010

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?

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

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?

Monday, January 4, 2010

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-r
ay 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.

Friday, January 1, 2010

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:


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!