painting of the month

The White Veil -- Willard Leroy Metcalf, 1909 (Detroit Institute of the Arts)

RIP to one cool cat

Jazz great Dave Brubeck died this morning, just a day short of turning 92.  I know that this is generally an art blog, but I grew up seeing the cover of The Dave Brubeck Quartet's classic Take Five among my mother's pretty extensive record/CD collection and it was one of my first perceptions of modern art.  The cover was done by graphic designer  Sadamitsu "S. Neil" Fujita (1921-2010) for the original 1959 album, and Brubeck and his quartet also used a work by Joan Miró for their follow-up Time Further Out.   Here's a YouTube video of Take Five the composition featuring Fujita's cover, if you literally want to take five in memory of all the talent involved -- musically and visually.    

pablo and georges

"Two figures stand out among the creators of Cubism--Picasso and Braque...Picasso represents the adventurous and chimerical exaggeration of Spain.  His genius is informed by an insatiable creative power.  He is full of vagaries and fantastic imaginings, but he has always been a self-critic even in his most brilliant phases of negation.  Braque, on the other hand, brought to Cubism a constructive, positive and logical element that is typically French.  Picasso denies, Braque accepts...."

From The Holiday Painter -- J. Martin-Barbaz (Emerson Books, 1961)

Pictured:  The Accordionist, Pablo Picasso (Wikimedia Commons) and Aria de Bach, Georges Braque (National Gallery of Art)

painting of the month

Still Life Composition -- Maria Blanchard, 1916/17 (Wikimedia Commons)

the queen's many faces

From its very beginning on November 2, 1755, the life of Queen Marie Antoinette was destined to become the stuff of history and legend, novel and film.  She grew up in the center of royalty, was married at age fourteen as part of a royal alliance, produced royal heirs and went about living as she had been raised -- as a royal entity.  Her 1793 execution by guillotine came as the result of revolutionary fervor, a people's rebellion fueled by contempt for monarchies and social injustice.  She was reportedly not as indifferent to the plight of her subjects as rumor would have it, and it's unlikely that she ever made any glib suggestions that peasants go eat cake or even brioche.

Still, she was high-spirited and undeniably caught up in court society, her style and beauty at first delighting the French people, then turning against her amid accusations of adultery and extravagance.  And along the way there were numerous portraits painted of Marie Antoinette as Dauphine and then Queen, notably by artist Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun as the official royal portrait painter until 1789.  Lebrun went into exile after the royal family was put under house arrest by the Garde Nationale, and Polish-born Alexandre Kucharski became the official portraitist instead.  One might think that by that point there would be no more royal portraits, but Kucharski did produce some paintings of Marie Antoinette in her last years, works rather different from Lebrun's sumptuous depictions.  The Widow Capet's final days and death came with as much dignity as she could muster, though she was said to be also quite ill with other physical ailments -- a state suggested by the Sophie Prieur portrait modeled from a Kucharski painting.  Though some were bayoneted by protestors in the heat of violence, most portraits of Queen Marie Antoinette survived the Revolution; Marie Antoinette herself, of course, did not. 


Pictured:
Queen Marie Antoinette of France -- Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun,1778
Marie Antoinette in a Muslin Dress --  Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1783
Marie Antoinette with Her Children -- Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1787
Marie Antoinette -- Alexandre Kucharski, ca. 1791
Queen Marie Antoinette of France in the Prison Temple, ca. 1793 -- Sophie Prieur (after Kucharski)

painting of the month

Waterfall -- Arthur Dove, 1925 (The Phillips Collection)

the lost eye

It seems that the large blue mystery eye that recently washed up on a Florida beach belonged to a swordfish, pretty callously cut from the fish itself and tossed aside but maybe that's just how the fisherman's world goes.  Still, the first thing I thought of when I saw the news item was Odilon Redon's Eye Balloon, and then Redon's Cyclops as well.  One eye alone can look so reproachful, even if it belongs to a Cyclops or a balloon or a once mighty fish.

Pictured: Swordfish eye; Eye Balloon and Cyclops (Odilon Redon, 1840-1916)

painting of the month

Lantern Parade -- Thomas Cooper Gotch, ca. 1918 (the-athenaeum.org)

random artist's birthday: william dyce

Born today in Aberdeen was 19th century Scottish painter William Dyce (September 19, 1806 - 1864).  Dyce studied at the Royal Academy and then in Rome for nine months, and he would become highly influential in arts education later in his career.  Many of his works involve religious subject matter and Pre-Raphaelite inclinations, but his scenes of daily life are also quite distinctive.  Said to be "as keen in speech as in visage," Dyce died while in the midst of an exhaustive project of frescoes at Westminster Palace.  The series involved the Legend of King Arthur and was never finished. 

Pictured:  The Garden of Gethsemane -- William Dyce, 1860 (National Museums Liverpool) and Welsh Landscape with Two Women Knitting -- William Dyce, 1864 (National Museum Cardiff)

painting of the month

Still Life with Buddha, Lobsters and Oysters -- Lovis Corinth, 1916 (Galerie G. Paffrath, Germany/www.the-athenaeum.org)

164 years of caillebotte

Gustave Caillebotte was born today in 1848 in Paris; his family was well-to-do and socially established, and before fully focusing on art, Caillebotte studied engineering and law.  He was part of the French Impressionist circle and not only bankrolled exhibits of their work but helped keep some of his comrades afloat -- particularly Monet.  Still, Caillebotte's paintings aren't really as impressionistic as those of the others and have more of a defined and often distinct perspective.  Caillebotte's 1877 Paris Street, Rainy Day is perhaps his best-known effort and now a focal point of the Chicago Art Institute's collection, but there are many other great Caillebotte paintings, a few of which are pictured here.  Caillebotte died far too young from pulmonary problems at the age of 45, and his far-sighted generosity continued on after his death with the placement of his fellow Impressionists' works at the Luxembourg and The Barnes Foundation. 


Pictured Caillebotte paintings:  On the Pont de l'Europe, circa 1877 (Kimbell Art Museum); Sunflowers on the Banks of the Seine, 1886 (the-athenaeum.org); Fruit Displayed on a Stand, circa 1881 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

painting of the month

Family of Swans -- Henri Edmond Cross, circa 1899 
(image from the-athenaeum.org)

georgia and lake george

In 1916, photographer Alfred Stieglitz was asked to look at some drawings done by then-unknown art teacher Georgia O’Keeffe. Stieglitz was immediately fascinated by O’Keeffe, and even though Stieglitz was nearly a generation older, O’Keeffe was attracted to his wisdom and influence — and to his growing passion toward her as an artist and a woman.

From that point forward, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz would become creatively linked, with an eventual marriage that lasted until Stieglitz’s death in 1946. Georgia's relationship with Alfred naturally made her part of the Stieglitz lifestyle, which included a longstanding connection to the upstate New York region known as Lake George.

Stieglitz’s family owned a large home by the beautiful Adirondack lake, and Stieglitz himself enjoyed visiting the house and getting away from Manhattan, especially in warmer weather. O’Keeffe had been raised on a farm and had no problem acclimating to country life, but unfortunately the Stieglitz summer landscape was generally full of noisy visitors. Beyond Stieglitz’s various relatives, other artists or writers were also invited to stay. Stieglitz ran the influential 291 gallery and had edited the magazine Camera Work, and through both ventures he had developed a busy social circle.

For O’Keeffe, managing the Stieglitz entourage was something of an aggravated obligation. Stieglitz was so tireless in promoting her art and always hoping to keep her happy that at first she put up with the lack of space and peace needed for her to truly create. Still, when Stieglitz sold his family’s expansive home and opted for a smaller farmhouse, O’Keeffe began to experience feelings of entrapment. Stieglitz’s strong personality and work methods also clashed with O’Keeffe’s more internalized process, so that even once the guests had left, she continued to feel boxed-in.

The Shanty

Luckily, not long after the move to smaller quarters, O’Keeffe noticed what had once been a spot for local dances. The place was called the Shanty and was on the Stieglitz property, and despite the fact that it was rundown and in need of much renovation, Georgia decided to make the Shanty her creative refuge.

Stieglitz objected that the cost of repairs to the building might be too high, but Georgia found friends and family to do the work instead — and she also picked up her own tools and got busy herself. Through these collective resources, O’Keeffe’s resurrected Shanty came into being in late August of 1922.

O’Keeffe was not as prolific as she had hoped to be in her shanty space, and her first months of semi-freedom did not result in as much as she had hoped. Perhaps out of guilt — or perhaps to just free her mind from the whole situation — she ended that summer by canning fruits and vegetables, preparing delicious meals and otherwise making Stieglitz happy with her more domestic talents.

My Shanty

O’Keeffe did manage to paint a portrait of her new Lake George studio in 1922, a study in deep tones with a small, pure white window frame. Rather than being an obvious symbol of liberation, the Shanty looks dark and closed-off under a thickly clouded blue-gray sky. O’Keeffe reportedly chose these colors in response to the comments of some of Stieglitz’s male artist comrades, including Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley, who claimed that O’Keeffe’s palette was too bright.

While O’Keeffe’s painting may appear to be a concession, upon closer examination My Shanty, Lake George is most likely anything but deferential. Firstly, O’Keeffe’s choice to paint a building which she had discovered and worked personally on the renovation of is a statement in itself. Secondly, O’Keeffe almost seemed to take the darker colors favored by "the men" — as she often called Stieglitz’s male artist friends — and create a defensive aura around a place she had claimed as her own.

Heading Southwest

Even with her Shanty, O’Keeffe ultimately found various aspects of life with Stieglitz to be too overwhelming and headed west to find more open views and spaces. By 1940 she was spending most of her time in New Mexico, where she would produce her iconic desert paintings. Alfred Stieglitz remained in New York; the couple stayed married and corresponded frequently, but actual visits grew farther apart.

After Stieglitz died in Manhattan in July of 1946, Georgia made their final trip together to Lake George to scatter her husband’s ashes on the property. She understood why Stieglitz would want to be there in spirit, since the place had meant so much to him for so long. When O‘Keeffe died in 1986, however, her ashes were scattered over her New Mexico Ghost Ranch, which had provided her ultimate refuge and which had become her own sacred space.

(originally published @ Suite101.com)

Sources
    O’Keeffe and Stieglitz: An American Romance -- Benita Eisler (Doubleday, 1991)
    The Phillips Collection -- Georgia O'Keeffe, My Shanty, Lake George, 1922 (pictured)
   

painting of the month

Sailboats at Sunset --

Ferdinand du Puigaudeau, 1864-1930

(from www.the-athenaeum.org)

barnes on bloomsday

Today is Bloomsday, or the literary holiday honoring the June 16th, 1904 novelscape of James Joyce's masterwork Ulysses and its main character Leopold Bloom.  June 16th, 1904 was also the day of Joyce's first significant romantic encounter with Nora Barnacle, who would eventually become his lover, muse, mother of his children and wife -- all pretty much in that order.

Author Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) did some interesting and adventurous interview work -- aside from writing her own fiction -- in the earlier decades of her career, and many of these interviews featured illustrations by Barnes as well.  This portrait of James Joyce is a wonderful example of her artistic talent and accompanied Barnes' Vanity Fair interview of Joyce from 1922. 


(image from wikimedia commons)

transit of venus and birth of venus

The Birth of Venus -- Odilon Redon, 1912 (from www.the-athenaeum.org)

vibration of colors

"How to define my attitude towards Tamayo's work?  Rotation, gravitation:  it attracts me, and at the same time, it keeps me at a distance--like a sun...little by little, with slow, stubborn self-assurance, it unfolds and becomes a fan of sensations, a vibration of colors and of forms that spread in waves...."

Octavio Paz, Essays on Mexican Art (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1993)

Pictured:  Las músicas dormidas -- Rufino Tamayo, 1950 (Museo de Arte Moderno)

pre-raphaelite mother's day

Earth Mother -- Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1882 (Worcester Art Museum)

studs centennial

Activist, author, and great talker Studs Terkel would have been 100 on May 16th, had he not signed off forever on Halloween of 2008. Studs was born in New York with a given name of Louis; he came to Chicago when he was eight years old with his parents and made the city his home base for the rest of his life.

Studs had a long-running radio show on Chicago’s WFMT, on which he did many an interview in his characteristic raspy voice. Terkel also wrote several books, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1985, and he often used the oral history format in order to keep the full power of a person’s words and experiences.

In Terkel’s Coming of Age, he conducted interviews with a wide range of older Americans to give a collective portrait of how they felt about growing older, and what they had witnessed in their particular slice of the 20th century. One of the interviews in Coming of Age is with Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), the prolific African-American artist who created such great works as the Migration of the Negro series, as well as portraits of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, and another series detailing the life of abolitionist John Brown.

Since May is Older Americans Month, and since Studs sadly isn’t around to remind us about his book, an excerpt from Jacob Lawrence’s interview seems apropos:

How I became an artist? In elementary school, we were given crayons, poster paint, and were encouraged to put down color. In the great 1930s, I heard stories from older people…[t]hey’d talk about Marcus Garvey, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass. I’d walk the streets of Harlem and hear corner orators talk about these people. It inspired me. I realized I couldn’t tell their lives in one story, so I painted a series of their lives....

When I was a youngster growing up, a person would never attack an older person, a weaker person, because of the fear of God. Now an older person is vulnerable because of something lost, a sense of morality, of ethics…I’m not pessimistic. I think about these things. I talk about them. I feel as long as there’s one person or two people who are aware of the quality, of our capacity to think and feel, we’re on pretty sound ground. I hope so.

From Coming of Age, Studs Terkel (St. Martin’s Press edition, 1995)

painting of the month

Red Kimono on the Roof -- John Sloan, 1912 (Indianapolis Museum of Art)

cooper and the carpathia

Philadelphia-born artist Colin Campbell Cooper was on board the RMS Carpathia in April of 1912 when the Titanic made its fateful voyage; the Carpathia became a rescue ship for 710 Titanic survivors and Cooper memorialized the event in this featured painting.  Cooper and his wife, artist Emma Lampert Cooper, were also kind enough to offer their own cabin so that at least a few of the traumatized Titanic passengers could have some peace after their ordeal.

painting of the month

Nuns on the Roof -- Marjorie Phillips, 1922 (The Phillips Collection)

northside algren

Chicago author Nelson Algren would have marked a 103rd birthday today, if he hadn't left our sphere in 1981 after suffering a heart attack. Though Algren was born in Detroit, his family moved to Chicago when he was a child and he would be emotionally and artistically linked with the city for the rest of his life. He did abandon Chicago for the East Coast in his later years, feeling that he wasn’t appreciated by his hometown despite the fame he had achieved through publication of such novels as The Man with the Golden Arm and Never Come Morning.  Apparently at the time he left you could barely find his books in the Chicago Public Library, though they are certainly there now.

Algren was streetwise yet poetic, turning blighted urban views into hauntingly beautiful scenes. He could also peer into the soul of a desperate man or woman and find a whole range of experiences and emotions -- and what had led them to turn to the needle or the bottle, or to a life of crime. He wasn’t much of a schmoozer and called things as he saw them, which often led to his disenfranchisement from the literati of his day. He had a long-time affair with French writer Simone de Beauvoir, but that ended with a bittersweet (generally more bitter than sweet) resentment, much like his departure from Chicago.

Reading Algren’s works is a great way to learn about the man and the Chicago neighborhood in which he found his writing “zone,” the then-predominantly Polish area called The Triangle. Algren probably wouldn’t recognize much of his gentrified, hipped-up Triangle now, but a fine way to go back in time beyond reading Algren’s fiction is to check out Call Northside 777, a film based on the real case of a Chicago man imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit. It has an unusually low-key tone for a 1948 movie, with Jimmy Stewart playing a reporter unraveling errors of justice. Stewart's quest leads him to the Polish corners of the South side, but Call Northside 777 also hits the titled North side as well, offering a cinematic window into some of the bars, streets, and people of the Triangle area and truly bringing Algren’s words to life.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing ever since. -- Salvador Dali

painting of the month

The Artist's Party -- Joseph Delaney, 1941-43 (Indianapolis Art Museum)

the success of curiosity

Artist and diarist Marie Bashkirtseff's reaction to first seeing John Singer Sargent's 1884 Portrait of Madame X or Portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau:

"It is a success of curiosity; people find it atrocious. For me it is a perfect painting, masterly, true. But he has done what he saw. Beautiful Mme. ____ is horrible in daylight...."

the individualist

Author and philosopher Ayn Rand was born today in 1905 and died in 1982 at the age of 77. Her perhaps best known work is the architectural epic The Fountainhead, which follows the career of the intense and uncompromising Howard Roark along with many other less idealistic yet occasionally more intriguing side characters. This uncompromising cat enjoys idling by the novel for some reason and tries her best to shred its 695 pages. She may be identifying with The Fountainhead's (anti)heroine Dominique Francon -- and like Dominique is also willful, beautiful, and gets a twisted pleasure out of destroying things.

painterly spirit of the place

Above all, the outdoor painter should get the character and feeling of the place he portrays on his canvas. If in Spain, his picture must look like Spain. The air must be transparent, the architecture clean-cut against the azure. If it be Holland, the atmosphere must be moist, the air like a veil, and with all this there must be nothing in the work that will be mistaken for the smoke-laden air of England. Only thus, by this fidelity to the very nature and spirit of a place, can the picture be made to express the essence of its life, which is really the heart of the whole mystery.

Excerpt from Francis Hopkinson Smith's Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago given in 1914, which is probably why the outdoor painter portrayed scenes on his canvas while all the ladies perhaps stayed indoors and made a nice pitcher of lemonade to quench the outdoor painter's deep artistic thirst.

Pictured: The Port of London -- Claude Monet, 1871

painting of the month

Colored Forms II -- August Macke, 1913 (Wilhelm Hack Museum)

mary and the bullfighter

As a young woman, Mary Stevenson Cassatt was determined not to let her gender keep her from becoming a serious artist. Following her graduation from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she trained with Academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris and in 1872 visited Italy and Spain to study the works of the Old Masters. In Madrid, Mary greatly admired the 17th century art of Diego Velázquez at the Museo del Prado. Mary was perhaps also inspired to travel to Spain by the work that Edouard Manet had exhibited following his own 1865 Spanish visit. Manet had a strong influence on younger painters of his time, and his striking Dead Toreador and The Bullfight no doubt caught Cassatt’s eye.

The Spanish culture and visual landscape were exciting to Mary and after Madrid she went further to Seville. Cassatt’s subtlety comes through in her 1873 painting Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla, while her skill with color and detail can be seen in On the Balcony, where two young women flirt with a suitor. Cassatt captures the flowered dresses, bright shawls and coy expressions of the women, while making the male presence less facially detailed yet still dominating as he extends his arm proprietarily. The woman in red seems wistful as the man focuses attention on her companion, and she gazes down at life beyond her railed perch with perhaps a longing to find a truer love.

In the same year’s Offering the Panale to the Bullfighter, Cassatt set up a scene between another woman with a flower in her dark hair giving a bullfighter a panale, or sweet treat. In this painting, Cassatt minimizes the girl while fully showing the bullfighter, his expression just a shade arrogant and expectant. He is, after all, a killer of the bulls (!) and women surely adore him. Cassatt again offers a fine sense of masculine/feminine physical stances, with the bullfighter’s dominant posture and the woman’s more yielding position.

Cassatt’s After the Bullfight could be considered her most intriguing Spanish-influenced painting, mainly because of the artistic statement it makes. In Cassatt’s day, a kind of artistic decorum allowed men to paint nudes, dancers, actresses, or whatever female they happened to be obsessed with — as long as the work kept within the boundaries of what was then considered decency. 19th century women artists, however, generally had to limit their paintings to still-lifes, landscapes, classical or Biblical scenes, portraits of other women, children or animals, with maybe an occasional husband, brother or fatherly study.

In Cassatt’s After the Bullfight, a toreador smokes a cigarette and savors his latest triumph. He looks confident both inside the arena and beyond it, yet he is not a romantic caricature. Here Cassatt not only chose a subject equal to the Spanish works of Manet, she asserted her right as a female artist to depict a virile and attractive man.

Cassatt’s knowledge of bullfighters is presumed to not have come from actual attendance but from Théophile Gautier’s 1845 Travels in Spain. Gautier’s guidebook gives extensive and graphic details of the bullfight tradition and the ornate outfits of those involved, noting how the toreador “has no defensive armour, he is dressed as if for a ball…a pin could pierce his satin jacket; all he has is a bit of stuff and a frail sword.” Gautier also notes the crowd’s enjoyment of the sport’s violence and love for the man who either kills or is gored by the enraged and tormented bull.

After her Spanish sojourn, Mary Cassatt returned to Paris. She was eventually invited to exhibit independently with the French Impressionists by Edgar Degas, and she would become close friends with Degas and linked with the Impressionist group throughout the rest of her life.

Sources:

• After the Bullfight, Interpretive Resource – The Art Institute of Chicago
• Offering the Panale to the Bullfighter – The Clark Art Institute

suzanne and somerset

Suzanne Valadon was born in 1865 and grew up fatherless in Paris. She learned to fend for herself early on and held various jobs, including being a circus trapeze artist. Her striking looks made her a sought-after model to such painters as Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, and she also found a teacher and patron in Edgar Degas. Suzanne had many romances and eventually gave birth to painter Maurice Utrillo, though it was never clear as to who Maurice’s real father was. Suzanne’s art showed a fine use of color and unique perception, and as a feline lover, she did a truly outstanding job in depicting cats.

Somerset Maugham often included artist characters in his novels, and in The Razor’s Edge it seems pretty likely that Suzanne Rouvier came from Suzanne Valadon. Maugham describes his Suzanne’s independent yet resourceful nature and her own artistic work, both as muse and creator. In the novel, Suzanne has an affair with Larry, but when Larry is ready to say goodbye, she doesn't question his need to move on.

Suzanne Rouvier is one of the more vibrant characters in The Razor’s Edge, though Maugham does tend to minimize her artwork. He describes Suzanne as essentially mimicking her artist lovers’ styles, “landscape like the landscape painter, abstractions like the cubist,” until her present lover and patron tells her not to imitate men but to use a more feminine style, and to not “aim to be strong; be satisfied to charm.” And while the real Suzanne Valadon encouraged her son to take up painting to challenge his often self-destructive behavior, Razor’s Edge Suzanne has a daughter instead and pragmatically urges the girl to learn to type and study stenography.

Click to see Suzanne Valadon’s portrait of composer Erik Satie, another of her boyfriends and one who apparently was quite crazy about her. It seems that her perception of Satie was quite good and not just imitative -- and unlike Suzanne Rouvier -- that her pursuit of art might have been more than a hobby “she got a lot of fun out of.”

(Pictured: Suzanne Valadon by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen)