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Category: art history

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Sounds like a spiritual problem to me

A possible Matisse among the paintings exhibited at a press conference in Munich (from AFP/Getty Images via the Telegraph website).
As the entire world knows by now, a cache of 1400 Nazi-looted artworks was found in 2012 in the apartment of an elderly man in Munich.
The pensioner first came under the suspicion of customs officials on 22nd September 2010 when he was seen traveling to from Munich to Zurich and back, with large amounts of cash, in a single day.
When they conducted further inquiries they discovered that he barely existed on official records: he paid no tax, held no social security records, and had never worked.
They then searched his flat and found the piles of paintings hidden behind cans of food in a squalid apartment. (The Telegraph)

Another painting displayed at the press conference (from AFP/Getty Images via the Telegraph website).
Cornelius Gurlitt apparently also owns a derelict house in an affluent suburb of Salzburg, Austria:
The gate to the back garden yawns open and a large crack in the backward-facing outer wall has been boarded up from the inside. Only this and some rusty latticed iron bars on the windows stand to deter intruders. (The Telegraph)
Leave aside the questions of how Gurlitt’s father acquired the work, what the Nazis really thought of so-called ‘degenerate art’, and why German authorities haven’t publicly identified the work so it could be repatriated to its former owners.
Ask instead what drove this man to hoard a billion dollars of stolen art while living in a hovel. These paintings—intended to bring joy and life—instead brought imprisonment and isolation. To me, that sounds like a spiritual problem.
La Sortie de Pesage by Edgar Degas.. One of the many works stolen from the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum on St. Patrick’s Day, 1990. At an estimated loss of $500 million, it was the largest private heist of paintings ever, and included a Vermeer, several Rembrandts, a Manet, and five Degas drawings.
“Artists tend to produce art as a vain bulwark against time, a gamble on posterity; and for many of the artists whom Hitler loathed, art was an explicit attempt to prevent him from getting the last word,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times.
This may or may not be true, and it’s worth asking why we produce art. (Myself, I don’t know.) But it’s also worth asking why clients collect art, and what that means when the acquisitional urge is perverted. Obviously Gurlitt’s soul was somehow twisted by being the recipient of these paintings, but how, exactly, did that happen?

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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A tonic after two days of Dead Baby Art

The Lord Is My Shepherd, Eastman Johnson, 1863
Yesterday Jane Bartlett sent thisto serve as a tonic for the two days I spent thinking about what she called Dead Baby Art. Another artist, Kristine Greenizen, calls it Damien HirstSteak Spectacular: spectacle that has little about the craft and thought of art in it.
To our modern eyes, The Lord is My Shepherd looks quaint, but it was painted in 1863, shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. There were roughly 4 million enslaved blacks in America, and by no means was emancipation assured.
A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves,  Eastman Johnson, c. 1862
“This painting is a statement, a teachable moment, and even harsh in its own way, but an expression that does not arrive before the work of art does,” Jane wrote. The message has not been divorced from the medium itself.
Johnson accords this young black man the dignity of assuming he can read and understand Scripture. Of course, you think, but that was by no means the universal opinion in 1863. The assumption that a black person could and should direct his own spiritual life was a politically- and religiously-charged issue at the time.
 Portrait of an Old Man in an Armchair, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1654
The painting appears dark to our modern eyes, but Johnson is deliberately modeling his technique after Rembrandt. Rembrandt did not always enjoy the cult-like status we accord him today. He was rediscovered in the 19th century by French intellectuals who saw in him a champion of realism (most notably, the poet Charles Baudelaire).
Johnson is classified today as a “genre painter” for his depictions of slave life. It would be more accurate to call him social realist in the tradition of the Barbizon painters before him and the Ashcan School who would follow. By using a technique he associated with social realism, he is making the political nature of his work perfectly clear. That we no longer see his paintings as revolutionary is a testimony to his (and other artists’) polemical skills: they have thoroughly converted us to their viewpoint.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Personal performance art, revisited

Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875, Thomas Eakins. Who knew Eakins was such a visionary?
Yesterday, I had a minor medical procedure done, which—as is the nature of these things—will be followed by a slightly-less-minor medical procedure. While discussing scheduling, the surgeon mentioned that he could do it either at an outpatient surgical center or our local hospital.
“How about an art gallery?” I inquired. “It would be perfect. This has all the great narrative themes: love, death, gore, fear, sex, nudity, pathos.”
The Agnew Clinic, 1889, Thomas Eakins
He studied the papers in his hands. “Unfortunately, your insurance doesn’t cover you for performance art,” he answered. “However, after January 1, 2014, under the Affordable Care Act…”

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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I don’t object because it cheapens sex, but because it cheapens art.

William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805). This is what conceptual art used to be about.
The Daily Mail reportedthat a young British art student plans to have sex in a public gallery for a project entitled Art School Stole My Virginity. It’s both sad and quaint that he imagines there’s anything left to shock in the act of sex. We Boomers, after all, got there long before him.
It’s the debasing of art I object to. Every time someone has a half-baked idea, they gussy it up and put it in a gallery. How often do they think they can do this before the word “art” has utterly no meaning?
Think of British art at the end of the 18thcentury—Reynolds, Stubbs, Gainsborough, Romney, Blake, Lawrence, Turner, and Constable, to name just a few. To paint at their level, they had to be great thinkers as well as great technicians.
In 1759, the English poet Edward Young published an essay called Conjectures on Original Composition. This argued that originality and creativity were more valuable than classical training. His ideas were seized by Goethe and the rest of the Sturm und Drang movement.
Nothing new under the sun, except perhaps that the murals in Pompeii were in a brothel, not a gallery.
On a practical level, the Cult of Genius meant artists were no longer considered craftsmen but intellectuals. The above artists were painting in that zeitgeist. It was appropriate in their case, but it ultimately led to the divorce of idea from technique that ends with sex being considered fine art.
The truly amazing thing would be if the kid made it through art school without losing his virginity. Or made it through art school without deciding he’s gay. Or actually practiced to master his art, which I suppose is part of the point, since virgo intactacan be loosely translated as “never having practiced.”

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The Witty City

The restored Hotel Lafayette.
My home town of Buffalo, NY is certainly one of the most beautiful cities in America. Each time I return, it’s in better repair.
Take the Lafayette Hotel, where I stayed this weekend. I remember it as a dilapidated building with one room open to the public. Local and out-of-town acts played the Lafayette Tap Room, using the former lunchroom as their Green Room. It was as if Father Time had locked the lunchroom door in 1960, not even bothering to clear away the dishes. I had lunch there yesterday; it is exquisitely restored to its 1911 grandeur. In contrast, the ballrooms, lobby and bar are all flamboyantly Art Deco in character.
Bar at the Hotel Lafayette.
Future Buffalo men watching the Bills from the mezzanine at the lunch room of the Hotel Lafayette (now run by the Pan American Grill people).
Next door is the former Adam, Meldrum and Anderson headquarters. There is a streak of whimsy in a city that maintains signage for a department store that’s been gone since 1994.
AM&A’s dress ads on Washington Street.
1912 Electric Tower.
Down the street is the Electric Tower, built in 1912 as a copy of the electric tower at Buffalo’s Pan American Exhibition. It is a Beaux-Arts confection of white terra cotta tile, an outstanding example in a city full of terra cotta architecture.
Buffalo’s City Hall
My favorite building, of course, is City Hall, which appears to be giving the finger to the world. In 1929, it was designed with a passive cooling system that took advantage of the prevailing Lake Erie breezes. Trendy, huh?
Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, Built to Live Anywhere, at Home Here (2010-2011, Nancy Rubins)
Somehow, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery has managed to continue obtaining fine work, despite the economic woes Buffalo has endured for the last half century. It has acquired an exuberant mash-up of aluminum canoes by Nancy Rubins for its front lawn. In a northern city threaded by fantastic waterways, it’s somehow topical (although, as the title indicates, that’s beside the point).
Across the street at the Burchfield-Penney Art Museum, there’s a son et lumière projection called “Front Yard.” Mercifully, it was cold, so our windows were rolled up. Thus we missed the soundtrack, which is computer-generated from local weather station readings. At the opening, “viewers were treated to work by ’70s heavyweights Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits and Steina Vasulka,” reported Colin Dabkowski in the Buffalo News. (The visuals change constantly.)
That’s so Buffalo—centered around the weather and redolent of the age of mullets. All it needs is a paean to Lou Reed (dead yesterday at age 71) and a reference to sports and it would be the perfect Buffalo experience. But don’t think I’m critical. Both installations are more thoughtful and grounded than the anodyne sculptures by Tom Otterness acquired by the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, which are redolent of nothing more than a tag sale in Manhattan.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven days of wood smoke and crackling leaves— The Heidelberg School

An autumn morning, Arthur Loureiro, 1893
I’m in Maine for my last 2013 painting workshop! The frost isn’t quite on the pumpkin (at least not in Rockland or Rochester) but autumn is in the air. I’m leaving some wonderful fall landscapes for you.
The Australian Impressionists are another group of painters I’ve shamefully neglected. The Heidelberg School derived its name from the then-rural suburb of Melbourne called Heidelberg, where the first painters in this group found their subject matter.
In August 1889, several  Heidelberg painters staged the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition in Melbourne. Most of the 183 works in the show were painted on 9 by 5 inch cigar-box panels scrounged from local tobacco shops. The show received the usual derisory comments from the art establishment but is now regarded as the landmark event in Australian art history.
Moonrise, David Davies, 1894

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven days of wood smoke and crackling leaves— Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Road in the Countryside, Near Lake Leman, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1845-55
I’m in Maine for my last 2013 painting workshop! The frost isn’t quite on the pumpkin (at least not in Rockland or Rochester) but autumn is in the air. I’m leaving some wonderful fall landscapes for you.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was so repressive in his color sensibility that sometimes it’s hard to know what season he was painting in. In a way, that’s no surprise; he had a narrower range of pigments available to him than the Impressionists who followed him. When he was doing his early plein air travels in Italy, there weren’t even paint tubes. (They were invented by an American painter, John Goffe Rand, in 1841.)
Nevertheless, Corot managed to anticipate the major theme which plein air painting continues to mine almost 200 years later—a fresh, vigorous painting style that describes the landscape without getting unduly hung up on the details.
The Bridge at Narni, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1845-55

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven days of wood smoke and crackling leaves—Arkhip Kuindzhi

A Birch Grove, Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1880
I’m in Maine for my last 2013 painting workshop! The frost isn’t quite on the pumpkin (at least not in Rockland or Rochester) but autumn is in the air. I’m leaving some wonderful fall landscapes for you.
I never give enough attention to the great Russian painters, an oversight I can’t correct here since they deserve a full week of their own. But today I’ll content myself with giving you a rather unusual birch grove by Arkhip Kuindzhi.

Kuindzhi frequently painted the play of light through trees. He painted birches countless times, although this is the only nocturne I’m familiar with (although this being Russia, it could just be late afternoon in late October). His paintings are often simplified, stylized, and monumental, which gives an unreal eeriness to his work.

Kuindzhi was orphaned young and grew up terrifically poor. He was forced to find his own art instruction. As an outsider, he was a natural to join the Peredvizhniki—“wanderers” or â€œitinerants”—a group of Russian realists who, locked out of the formal Academy, formed an artist’s cooperative.  Like the Canadian Group of Seven, these painters used landscape painting to make a case for the beauty and power of their native land.
Autumn Impassibility of Roads, Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1872
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven days of wood smoke and crackling leaves—Winslow Homer

The Veteran in a New Field, by Winslow Homer, 1865
I’m in Maine for my last 2013 painting workshop! The frost isn’t quite on the pumpkin (at least not in Rockland or Rochester) but autumn is in the air. I’m leaving some wonderful fall landscapes for you.
To say that a work is the greatest painting of a great painter is presumptuous, but I think this painting is Winslow Homer’s best. It was painted at a black moment in our nation’s history: Robert E. Lee had surrendered and President Lincoln had been assassinated just months earlier. The nation was just starting to look at the scope of its loss: almost half a million dead, another quarter million wounded.
This demobbed Union soldier holds his scythe like the Grim Reaper. We know too clearly the nature of the implied harvest. And yet there is something redemptive and hopeful in it, an echo of Isaiah’s “they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

The Pumpkin Patch, by Winslow Homer, 1878 (watercolor)

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven days of wood smoke and crackling leaves—Vincent Van Gogh

Autumn Landscape, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1885
I’m in Maine for my last 2013 painting workshop! The frost isn’t quite on the pumpkin (at least not in Rockland or Rochester) but autumn is in the air. I’m leaving some wonderful fall landscapes for you.
This painting is one of Van Gogh’s earlier landscapes.  He hadn’t stepped into his mature style, and was still painting more or less as a traditional impressionist. Nevertheless, it works, largely because of the magnificent drawing.
He wrote to his brother Theo about this painting: “You know those three pollard oaks at the bottom of the garden at home; I have plodded on them for the fourth time. I had been at them for three days with a canvas the size of, lets say, the cottage, and the country church-yard which you have.

“The difficulty was the tufts of havana leaves, to model them and give them form, color, tone. Then in the evening I took it to that acquaintance of mine in Eindhoven, who has a rather stylish drawing room, where we put it on the wall (gray paper, furniture black with gold). Well, never before was I so convinced that I shall make things that do well, that I shall succeed in calculating my colors, so that I have it in my power to make the right effect.”

Falling Autumn Leaves, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888 

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!