painting of the month

Autumn -- Mary Cassatt (1880)

george and georgia

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE, whose latest paintings are being exhibited at the Anderson Galleries, is our only woman painter whose art is a natural flower of life. The tart axiom of George Moore, that woman always paints in evening dress, has been shattered forever by the burning intensity of this Texas woman's art.  (The New York Times -- January 16, 1927)

The actual essay being referred to here is George Augustus Moore's Sex in Art, taken from this decisively damning paragraph:

In her art woman is always in evening dress: there are flowers in her hair, and her fan waves to and fro, and she wishes to sigh in the ear of him who sits beside her. Her mental nudeness is parallel with her low bodice, it is that and nothing more. She will make no sacrifice for her art; she will not tell the truth about herself as frankly as Jean-Jacques, nor will she observe life from the outside with the grave impersonal vision of Flaubert. In music women have done nothing, and in painting their achievement has been almost as slight. It is only in the inferior art--the art of acting--that women approach men. In that art it is not certain that they do not stand even higher.

George Augustus Moore (1852-1933) was born in Ireland and spent much of his life in London and Paris; he originally hoped to be a painter but turned to writing instead.  Some of his novels were considered to be realistically progressive but his thoughts on ladies in the arts seem rather reactionary.  I don't think he ever met Georgia O'Keeffe or acknowledged her work but I sense that her opinion of him would have been just about as dismissive.

(Pictured:  Portrait of George Moore (1879) by Edouard Manet; Georgia O'Keeffe in Hawaii, 1939 -- Wikimedia Commons)

blue splendor

Ferris Bueller aside, sometimes you really do just have to step off of the treadmill of life and contemplate something amazing.  This 1977 six-panel stained glass series -- the "America Windows" -- was presented to Chicago's Art Institute by Marc Chagall to commemorate the American Bicentennial and in memory of Mayor Richard J. Daley.  (And yes, they were featured in Mr. Bueller's big day off movie.)  They were removed for a few years during the construction of the Art Institute's Modern Wing; they have been back since 2010 and are beautiful, bright and liberating -- and this is only a camera phone photo so imagine their true glory.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.  -- Marc Chagall (quote courtesy of www.brainyquote.com).

maybe he was hiding out in jersey?

"In 1949, five years after its disappearance from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a small, fourteenth century wood panel of Saint Thomas attributed to the workshop of the Sienese painter Simone Martini was returned.  The thief either was unable to dispose of it, grew tired of it, or became remorseful.  He wrapped it in a few layers of tissue covered by brown paper and mailed it back, with the museum's address in block letters and a fictitious return address."

Excerpted from The Art Stealers, Milton Esterow (Macmillan Publishing, 1973)

Pictured:  Saint Thomas -- Simone Martini, circa 1317–19, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Workshop of Simone Martini (Italian, Siena, active by 1315–died 1344 Avignon)
Date: ca. 1317–19
- See more at: http://www.metmuseum.org/search-results?ft=simone+martini&x=0&y=0&rpp=10&pg=1#sthash.9TuDaYTu.dpuf

Workshop of Simone Martini (Italian, Siena, active by 1315–died 1344 Avignon)
Date: ca. 1317–19
- See more at: http://www.metmuseum.org/search-results?ft=simone+martini&x=0&y=0&rpp=10&pg=1#sthash.9TuDaYTu.dpuf

Workshop of Simone Martini (Italian, Siena, active by 1315–died 1344 Avignon)
Date: ca. 1317–19
- See more at: http://www.metmuseum.org/search-results?ft=simone+martini&x=0&y=0&rpp=10&pg=1#sthash.ogW9pOlw.dpuf

painting of the month

Young Woman Drawing -- Marie-Denise Villers, 1801 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

reverently creative

If you're going to be in the NYC area anytime from mid-February through May 26th, Manhattan's Museum of Biblical Art is featuring "Ashe to Amen:  African-Americans and Biblical Imagery."  The exhibit includes works of inspiration by such fine artists as Romare Bearden, Clementine Hunter, Henry Ossawa Tanner and the pictured Holy Mountain III by Horace Pippin, one of Pippin's deeply spiritual visions on canvas finished shortly before his death in 1946.  

I will preach with my brush.  -- Henry Ossawa Tanner 

Pictures just come to my mind...and I tell my heart to go ahead.-- Horace Pippin

Pictured:  Holy Mountain III -- Horace Pippin, 1945 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Permanent Collection)

painting of the month

Four Aces: Simultaneous Image -- Olga Rozanova, 1915 (State Russian Museum)

brilliant oranges

 

Like an orange, Henri Matisse's work is a fruit of brilliant light. 

Guillaume Appollinaire

 

Pictured:  Open Window at Collioure -- Henri Matisse, 1905 (National Gallery of Art) & Still Life with Oranges -- 1913 (Musee du Louvre)