Lehmann-Made Tut-Tut, No 490 (1913). Coll. of L. J. Buehler, 1999. Gifted to Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, PA

“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.” ~Charles Baudelaire

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!” ~Charles Dickens

We may be shopping for the children in our lives, reminiscing about the holidays of our youth, or analyzing our portfolios, hoping that the decision to invest in Barbie instead of G.I. Joe this season turns out to have been the right one; whatever the case may be, whether or not they are a part of our daily lives, the December holiday season is upon us. This is the time of year when toys find themselves at center stage. artes fine arts magazine

Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, PA

Amid parties featuring our finest china and specially prepared meals, adults understand the inherent significance of a holiday, religious or otherwise, knowing that the music, dishes, and décor are not the reasons for the celebration in and of themselves, but the expression of an historical tradition based on an event like the miracle of the oil or the birth of Jesus Christ. However, while children can be told the significance of a date on the calendar, they often cannot grasp its full meaning without something tangible to bridge the gap between mature comprehension and youthful naivety. Often, that something is a new or special toy, which stamps the occasion with the kind of wonder and delight that children then continue to associate with holidays throughout much, if not all, of their lives. In short, toys have always made the holidays special for children, and that simple fact is being recognized this season by The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, Pennsylvania, as it warmly invites children and parents to come and enjoy a unique collection of antique toys which have been brought from their usual home in the Period House, Hoyt West, to the second floor of the Greek Revival style mansion known as Hoyt East, with plans to remain on display through the end of January.

Gifted by third generation furniture manufacturer, Louis J. Buehler, in 1999, just one year before he died, the Hoyt’s toy collection dates from the early 1900’s. Buehler’s grandfather, Gottlieb, had been born in Germany in 1857 where he trained as a carpenter. He emigrated to the US in 1881, bringing his woodworking skills with him, eventually settling in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he built a prosperous career making furniture. Louis succeeded him in the family business.

Left: Loius Buehler (c), with father (l) and grandfather, Gottlieb (r). c. 1920

While Louis never married or had any children of his own, he obviously cherished his possessions because, while he was still alive, he gifted a few important pieces to his nieces and nephews only to have them sell the items, which disappointed Buehler enough that he decided to give his estate to museums. Having been involved with museums throughout his life, he understood their continuous need for money, so along with his childhood treasures, furniture and art, he included The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in a trust providing annual support for display of the collections.

Steiff bears, early 20th c.

Some of the most noteworthy items include at least 1000 small lead figures. Some of the figures are animals and many are people, some British, German, Japanese, and American. There is a variety of turn of the century wind ups, most of which are still in working order, and a collection of at least a dozen board games that are among the few items which are not often shown.

Regularly on display in the Period House is a collection of Little Folks magazines, an educational board, a homemade doll house, built by his father, and a model of Buehler’s own house, which he built himself as a child. There is a tin tea set, a viewfinder with several slides, loads of Matchbox cars, many still in the original boxes, and a number of Steiff pieces. The Steiff bears are protected by a glass case, and the smaller of the two is most unique, with a removable head that reveals a glass vile within the cavity of the bear’s body, meant to hold candy.

Lehmann Halloh Motorcycle (1908). A 'Gyro Action' tin toy.

The toys themselves speak volumes about the material culture of childhood, a trending theme in today’s fine art galleries. They also remind us of what was happening in the areas of art, industry, science, and social progress during a previous age. Significant changes were occurring in the world of art and design during Buehler’s childhood, including a reconsideration of who sets artistic standards, and how art should be shared with the public. He would have witnessed the industrialization of America, which provided much of the subject matter for the realist movement. It was a new era, one of mass production, and popular culture grew to be a profitable national product. Tickets for a twelve-day cruise could be purchased for roughly $60, and the Ziegfeld girls earned $75 per week (Whitley 2008).

It seems fitting for Buehler’s collection, which includes such a charming group of tin toys, to have made its home in New Castle, Pennsylvania, which was known as the tin plate capital of the world in the early 1900’s, boasting the largest tin plate mill in America at that time.

Production of tin toys began in the mid 1800’s as an inexpensive alternative to wooden toys. Initially they were hand painted, until a process known as “offset lithography” began being used to print designs on flat tinplate, which was then shaped using dies and assembled with tabs. Leading tin toy manufacturer Ernst Paul Lehmann, of Germany, produced original, high quality designs, but eventually their proliferation tapered off in the U.S., when American manufacturers like Louis Marx and Company, amid post-World War I anti-German sentiment, tapped into a newly discovered supply of tin ore in Illinois.

'My Friend' celluloid & metal swimming figure, Japan, 1930s.

Again, war had an impact on tin toys, when the need for raw materials during World War II, halted production altogether; afterwards, under the Marshall Plan, Japan took over “all of the low profit, high labor manufacturing and the U.S. companies could sell the imported tin toy product. It worked better than expected, and Japan became a tin toy manufacturing force until the end of the 1950’s…In the 1960’s, cheaper plastic and new government safety regulations ended the reign of tin toys” (Konter 2010).

Perhaps the most remarkable piece on display at the Hoyt is a 1908 Lehmann Halloh Motorcycle, a ‘Gyro-Action’ mechanical tin toy, featuring rubber-coated wheels and a young male rider, clad with tall red socks, white skull cap, and blue jacket. The piece is in excellent condition, valued at roughly $2,900.00, with working gears and minimal wear. Another notable tin toy, a 1913 Lehmann Tut Tut No. 490, wind-up automobile in very good condition, features a red German eagle on the side and a driver blowing a horn (see above). This piece would likely sell for about $700 at auction. Comparatively, a red Louis Marx & Co. No. 7 Coo Coo Car tin wind up in somewhat better condition is worth slightly less.

Jolly Jocko and Hiking Bear (c. 1930).

While some certainly do it for the money, according to toy expert Robert Skingle, of Skingle Antiques, many collectors enjoy antique toys for a combination of two other reasons–the nostalgic sentiment that they convey, and the artistic quality of the toys’ design, all the way down to the graphics on the original packaging. From Japan in the 1930’s, a blond-haired, blue-eyed My Friend clockwork celluloid-and-metal girl swimmer wears a red bathing suit, and rotates her arms in a freestyle swim stroke. Its original box, decorated with red seagulls flying above the ocean upon which a sailboat can be seen in the distance, and a swimmer who appears to be soaring with them, features the Kuramochi trademark, CK. The Hoyt takes great pride in having this rare childhood plaything, complete with the original box, among those on display.

Wind-up tin alligator with skirted rider, 1930s.

Among the most charismatic toys in the Hoyt’s collection is a 1930’s wind up tin toy tribal figure riding atop an alligator, complete with original string reins, putting its value at approximately $250. A variety of wind ups are covered with soft fur, including an endearing monkey called Jolly Jacko who gazes into a pink hand mirror while combing his hair. He is joined by Stinky the Skunk, who hops when wound, wearing around his neck the original red ribbon with comical tag that reads ‘Caution,’ and Hiking Bear, who carries a red walking stick and, naturally, hikes.

Home-made motor yacht, made by Buehler father & son, 1930s.

Three large and lovely painted wooden boats, despite being safely perched on wooden stands, appear as if they are ready to set sail down a small and winding creek in a young child’s back yard. A popular pastime, Buehler and his grandfather built their own working sailboats, some of which were motorized. The open deck of one boat in particular features exquisite detail, including eight portholes, a life buoy, three fabric flags, a red and white striped canopy with a blue party light suspended beneath it, movable search light and throttle, spinning metal propeller, and an anchor whose tiny chain slinks gracefully in and out of a hole in the bow. The boat is wired so that, at one time, the spot light and a light inside the cabin would illuminate.

Of all the toys in the collection, the board games suggest, most clearly, the daily thoughts, actions, and expectations of young children during the first half of the twentieth century.  Perhaps this is because they implicitly require the participation of more than one child, and therefore one can imagine the interaction–including bits of conversation and mannerisms–that certainly played out among the living, breathing members of an older generation when it was young. It could be that the games inspire an adult viewer’s imagination more so than the individual toys, which primarily elicit nostalgic sensations; this, presumably, would not be the case for young visitors of the Hoyt, who would, hypothetically, reach for the wind ups or boats first.

Gilbert Co., Electric Eye (1935), 'an electric marvel'

The selection of games includes The Standard Radio Game, King Kong Oriental Checkers by Sam Gabriel & Sons Co., NY, and All Star Comics Playing Card Game by King Features Syndicate, 1934. Two exceptionally interesting games in the collection are the 1935 Gilbert Electric Eye, and the Playbox. Best known, perhaps, for its Erector Sets, The Gilbert Company produced a variety of scientific toys that tell of the technology of the day. Called ‘an electric marvel,’ this photoelectric device was surely a thing of wonder for the few affluent young boys whose families could afford such a cutting-edge plaything. The detailed instruction manual accompanying the Electric Eye proclaims its ability to turn on lights and radios, operate a burglar alarm, start and stop electric trains, and ring the door bell—all from a distance.

Parents Assoc., Pleasant Hill, OH, The Playbox, early 1900s, taught manners and skills

The set requires batteries, including a 22 volt dry cell, and two ‘C’ cells in the Power Pack to operate the low voltage relay. The switch linking the low voltage (sensitive) relay and the operating (power) relay is a primitive form of amplification. The Electric Eye is just one of the Gilbert company’s many products that targeted, through focused advertising campaigns, young boys who dreamed of adult achievement (“My Experience…”). To today’s children, this game would still appear to be scientifically challenging, but to an adult, it is the equivalent of, perhaps, a rotary telephone.

The Playbox, an educational toy from the early 1900’s produced by the Parents Association in Pleasant Hill, Ohio, claims to teach and drill children on a long list of skills, both academic and social, including Arithmetic, Astronomy, Botany, Geography, Ambition, Good Manners, Self-Control, and Tidiness. The sturdy metal box houses nearly 80 individual game pieces, including dominoes, checkers, ten-pins, marbles, a jointed ruler, and four brightly colored metal Versatilla Men, above which is written, ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ The most endearing feature of the Playbox is the black-and-white photo on the inside of the lid wherein several children, wearing tall white socks and Mary Janes, play a game together with pieces set atop a chair on the rug in front of a fireplace.

That photo, while not related to the Buehler household, appears as if it could have been taken just down the hall from where these items are displayed; The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts boasts a unique setting in which the period opulence and grandeur subtly blend with a sense of intimacy and comfort. This atmosphere somehow transcends the years which have passed since the mansion was occupied as a residence. So while the vintage toy collection displayed there may be received in different ways by children and adults, the glimpse into the past, through the lens of childhood trifles, is sure to engender pleasant feelings for all.

Above: The Buehler homestead (l) and a model of the house, built by Louis Buehler as a child (r), in the collection of the museum.

Certainly, those with an interest in vintage toys should plan to visit the Hoyt, where an impressive permanent art collection and variety of seasonal exhibits, as well as the beauty of the facility itself, make for a satisfying museum experience.

By Autumn Miller, Contributing Writer

Visit the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts collection at www.hoytartcenter.org

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Works Cited:

Konter, Stanley. Tin Toy History. Retrieved Nov. 13, 2011 from VirtualBargains.com.

My Experience with Gilbert Science Sets. Lindy Week Review. Retrieved Nov. 13, 2011 from Jitterbuzz.com

Skingle, Robert. Telephone interview. 15 Nov. 2011.

Whitley, Peggy. ‘1910-1919.’ American Cultural History. Lone Star College-Kingwood Library, 1999. Web. 7 Feb. 2011.

Above: Louis Marx & Co. No.7 Coo Coo Car (c. 1920) 

Karen Jacobsen, Chorus of Tubeworms, w/c, 48x48" Photo:Muscarelle Museum of Art staff

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”  ~Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.” ~ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” ~ Jules Verne , 20,000 Leagues under the Sea

Imagine, if you can, that your destination is a leviathan labyrinth, teeming with “never-before-seen” but now, “never-to-be forgotten”, vegetation, organisms and sea creatures, all thriving in abyssal sea vents, assuming a palette of cool, delicate gray and browns, juxtaposed with ochre, hot pink, red and oranges.

Experiencing Beyond the Edge of the Sea  is to embark on that deep ocean adventure –the thrill of the aqua-blue-through-black descent and search, primordial discoveries, and finally, the artful, intelligently-rendered seascapes that dramatically animate the voyage. artes fine arts magazine

Tu'i Malila Vents, Lau Basin, mixed media, 32x40"

The project is the other-worldly culmination of work by submersible pilot/ marine scientist, Cindy Lee Van Dover and artist/collaborator, Karen Jacobsen. The women have together pioneered numerous forays into the deep, culling their combined efforts’ trove to include 75 (plus five specially-commissioned) mixed media works, for the traveling exhibit–originally exhibited at The College of William and Mary’s, Muscarelle Museum. In speaking of the project’s import, museum director Aaron H. De Groft, references prehistoric cave painters and the likes of Darwin and Audubon, adding that “these two incredible women are as forward thinking and cutting edge for our time as earlier vanguards, Matilda of Canossa, Isabella d’Estes, and Maria de’Medici…”

“The deep sea is not an obvious place to dedicate a life to science . Few of us find our way there. It has none of the enviro-political cachet of an Amazonian rainforest, Alaskan tundra, or Arctic ice shelf. When I first became interested in the deep sea, there was not even the fantasia world tenanted by alien-looking and gigantically proportioned tubeworms to attract notice. Their discovery, among many others, was still several years away.” ~Cindy Lee Van Dover, The Octopus Garden, p.9.

Dr Cindy Less Van Dover, Alvin pilot, Exhibit curator

“My decision [as an artist] is to be in the field amidst my subject matter—this is not a novel inspiration. I follow in the footsteps of other naturalist artists, including the plein air painters, the Fauvists, and the others who have done the same thing for centuries. But my motif, my plein air, is plein eau (water), and I am submerged not at scuba depths but at bone-crushing depths of a mile or more beneath the surface of the sea.” ~Karen Jacobsen, Exhibition Catalogue: Beyond the Edge of the Sea, p. 20.

It was the mid-1970’s when three-person submersibles, Alvin and Cyana, were first built and available to the scientific community, allowing researchers to dive two and one-half miles down for deep sea exploration, revealing a “riot of life” thriving in sulfide-laden geothermal hot springs.

Aosisia species (probably new), Saguaro, Pacific Antarctic Ridge, 2334 meters (2005)

Not surprisingly, Cindy Van Dover was the first woman to pilot the Alvin and has availed her scientific mission of discovery of its technology in over one-hundred dives. Her technical expertise, paired with Karen Jacobsen’s naturalistic, creative sensibility in Beyond the Edge of the Sea, has gained the attention and respect of former NASA Astronaut and fellow-Alvin diver, Dr. Katherine D. Sullivan. She recounts in the show’s comprehensive catalogue, how her own admittedly stale memory of space travel only came to life when jogged, “like a bolt of lightening,” by a piece of inspirational music. And that from the first woman to walk in space! “Nearly a quarter of a century has passed, “she muses, “but this music has lost none of its effect: I’m instantly back in orbit when I hear it, completely absorbed in a flood of vivid memories.”

“Beyond the Edge of the Sea worked similar magic on me,” Sullivan continues, ”transporting me back to the pressure sphere of Alvin …nobody is ‘doing’ art or ‘doing’ science at moments like this. Instead, every fiber and cognitive circuit of your being is alert and active at once…open on all levels to learning, that most quintessential human activity.”

“Reaching the sea floor is a study in understatement. Although the technological feat seems akin to sending a man into orbit about the earth, Alvin dives up to 4,500 meters [14,000+feet] below the surface of the sea, day in and day out, following a routine that is stunningly anticlimactic. There is no countdown, no army of personnel to supervise the launch or recovery. Even the audience of curious scientists diminishes to naught after they have watched one of two launches […] The submersible’s and ship’s crews pride themselves on making the whole operation seem effortless. ~Cindy Lee Van Dover, The Octopus Garden, p.29.

Deep-Diving Human Occupied Vessel, Alvin. Photo: Mark Spear, Woods Hole Oceanographic Instit., MA

“The descent to the seafloor in Alvin is a lesson in the blue color palette, from vibrant tropical hues of cyan, cerulean, and turquoise, into more saturated cobalt, ultramarine, Prussian blue, indigo, anthraquinone deep blue, and on into inky black layers below 500 meters, where the last light fades away and there can be no more color. We sink further into darkness. Cindy slips a tape of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons into the player and the music seems alive as it rolls around the sphere.  Through the view port, small animal—zooplankton—flare like tiny shooting stars through space.” ~ Karen Jacobsen, Exhibition Catalogue: Beyond the Edge of the Sea, p.22.

The exhibition’s vibrant collection is especially attractive and effective in its uniquely intuitive blend of art and science– the “alien” life forms so sensitively and respectfully treated as to take on a naturalistic, rather than freakishly clinical, tone. Jacobsen confirms that she is devoted to striving to “emphasize a specific morphological attribute or behavior….once I immerse myself in an illustration, I always find some marvelous biological ingenuity, something beautiful and unique about the animal.”

Welk Snail, Hermit Crab, 6-Armed Starfish, Bering Sea (2003)

It is with a similarly respectful manner and sense of wonder that Cindy Van Dover shares her bottomless wealth of deep ocean knowledge and interpretation of its creatures, their behaviors and environments. She has also garnered the inclusion of several essays by other prominent members of the scientific community for Beyond the Edge of the Sea.

In his contribution to the exhibit catalogue, NASA’s John D. Rummel recalls chief Galapagos Rift scientist, Jack Corliss’ findings: “While details may be debated, this hypothesis offers a viable explanation of how life could both arise in an energetically and chemically dynamic environment capable of forming new organic molecules and, once established, survive recurrent asteroid impacts of Earth….then life might just as easily arise on other worlds where hot rock and water react to form hot springs.”

“The stunning implication is that submarine hydrothermal systems, fueled by the heat of volcanic processes, can support life in the absence of sunlight. Vent water may be the ultimate soup in the sorcerer’s kettle […] Deep-sea vents may have been the site where life originated on the planet.” ~Cindy Lee Van Dover, The Octopus Garden, p.56.

Eyeless Shrimp, Rainbow, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 2314 meters (2001)

“As we approach the periphery of the vent area, clues tell us we are getting close […] Soon we see the first white clams and mounds of mussels sitting in cracks between pillows of basalt. The sulfur yellow of the mussels against the blackness is a visual delight […] Small snails bejewel the mussels and lobster-like galatheid crabs perch like sentries atop the mounds. This is a warm and colorful oasis of life in a cold desert of black. ~ Karen Jacobsen, Exhibition Catalogue: Beyond the Edge of the Sea, p.23.

That possibility (or, if you prefer, probability) connects NASA’s astrobiological research for extraterrestrial life forms with that of man’s search for earth’s own biological origins.

Since Alvin’s earliest explorations, research from subsequent voyages has yielded and strengthened evidence suggesting that life on earth likely spawned in a young, deep-sea environment, and it has also strengthened Cindy Van Dover’s resolve to continue her ocean mission.

Lavender Octopus on Mussels, West Florida Escarpment Seep, 3293 meters (2000)

“Since the discovery of the hydrothermal vents in 1977,” says Van Dover, “the pace of exploration in the deep sea has steadily increased…Man has observed less than one percent of the seafloor…During the twentieth century, the deep sea became accessible. In this twenty-first century,” she predicts, “the deep sea will become known.”

And, thanks to the collaborative, innovative success of Cindy Van Dover and Karen Jacobsen in Beyond the Edge of the Sea, we, too, are able to share in that knowledge—and beauty—of the deep.

By Katherine Arcano, Contributing Editor

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Beyond the Edge of the Sea will be showing at the Ebling Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from September 16, 2011-January 31, 2012. Beyond the Edge was brought to UW in conjunction with UW-Madison’s Geology Museum, with funding provided by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

Scientific & Expeditionary Illustrator, Karen Jacobsen, at her shipboard work station (2003)

This exhibition is a collaborative effort involving Cindy Lee Van Dover, U.S. Navy-qualified, deep-diving Alvin pilot-in-command and explorer, with more than one-hundred dives to her credit. She is currently the Harvey W. Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography in the Division of Marine Science and Conservation of the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, where she serves as Chair of the Division, Director of the Undergraduate Certificate in Marine Science and Conservation, and Director of the Marine Laboratory.

Dr. Van Dover is the author of numerous scientific articles, as well as The Octopus’s Garden; Hypothermal Vents and other Mysteries of the Deep Sea. New York: Addison Wesley Press, 1996.

Scientific and expeditionary illustrator, Karen Jacobsen, has worked jointly with Dr. Van Dover for 15-years, accompanying her on numerous dives around the world and recording the findings of the Alvin’s deep sea explorations, both while on board the mothership, the research vessel (R/V) Atlantis, and back in her studio.

Crab species found with Whale Fall #7, Sagami Bay, 923 meters (2006)

The exhibition, Beyond the Edge of the Sea: Diversity of Life in the Deep Ocean Wilderness, curated by Dr. Van Dover, highlights the findings of numerous dives and represents a commitment on the part of these two experts to merge the language of science and art in unique and innovative ways. They bring the little-known and rarely observed world of undersea life to light in dramatic and colorful terms. Cindy and Karen have candidly shared their thoughts, feelings and observations, providing the world with extraordinary documentation of their shared experience, in the hopes of increasing understanding and appreciation for our deep-ocean environments.

The exhibition, Beyond the Edge of the Sea is available for showing at select venues. Please contact traveling exhibitions at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary, museum@wm.edu

Or go to the Web site: http//:web.wm.edu/muscarelle/exhibitions/traveling/beyond/images.html

Or contact the principles at:

Dr. Aaron de Groft, Director, Muscarelle Museum of Art: adegroft@wm.org

Dr. Cindy Van Dover: c.vandover@duke.edu or http://oceanography.ml.duke.edu/vandover/

Karen Jacobsen: insituart@gmail.com

In collaboration with: The Muscarelle Museum of Art; The College of William and Mary; Duke University and The North Carolina Maritime Museum.

With financial support from: The National Science Foundation and the NASA Astrobiology Institute

C

Closing out the business day, the city’s workers would file out to swarm I-95, or head for the Amtrak station or DART stop, and report in again the next day. Wilmington was another city whose ebb and flow ran in twelve hour tides. Little by little, restaurants and bars have begun to reclaim the shoreline that is the downtown. And now, World Café Live has opened at the renovated Queen Theater on North Market Street, delivering world class music to these revitalized corridors.

One tip-off that Wilmington was destined to become a musical epicenter is the musicians who have lived below the radar here. Resident, David Bromberg performed resoundingly at the Light up the Queen Foundation benefit in 2010, while New Orleans native Trombone Shorty played outrageous saxophone on the roof of the nearby Shop Rite! The Peoples’ Festival held annually on the riverfront honors one time Wilmington resident Bob Marley. But nothing exactly prepares you for the full on architectural overhaul at the Queen Theater or the radiance of its performance stage. Once a repository for fetid rain water falling through its roof, and an aromatic blend of rubble, pigeon droppings and mold below, this thoughtful renovation has brilliantly revived the stylized ceiling medallions, three ten-by-ten foot frescoed murals, and ornately-gilded surrounds beside the organ pipes. The restoration process has also unearthed a fiercely burning, but dormant underground love from the Wilmington community.

Originally conceived in 1789 as the Indian Queen Hotel, and then operated as the luxurious Clayton House, the Queen Theater morphed into a movie palace in 1916. By April 1959, it shuttered its once-beloved doors, following a showing of House on Haunted Hill perhaps presciently, and remained dark for the next five decades. Enter Hal Real and his Real Entertainment Group, a dynamic consortium of music club developers who collaborated with WXPN radio station on its maiden enterprise, World Café Live, in Philadelphia. Seeing the possibilities with imperturbability required Wilmington based real estate developers Buccini/Pollin Group and city officials to join the initiative to restore the Queen Theater. With straight faces, a Spring 2011 opening date was announced in October of 2009 on the 45,000 square foot project.

The finished building comprises great paradox; predictably dramatic spaces – the proscenium stage – combined with textured balcony seating and open plan for approximately 900 persons. The acoustics, both structural and mechanically-enhanced, are precise, clear, yet luminous and effective in a variety of ranges. Witness the intense complexity of opening act, Sonny Landreth, on April 1, followed by the intimate and personal renditions of Ingrid Michaelson’s sold-out performance.

The Queen serves all.

Telescoping from the spectacular to the specific is also the hallmark of its interior configurations. Generous spaces create a sensory time sequence that satisfies both a taste for imposing public domains and an appreciation for surface detail. Many of the oldest paint layers have been conserved in their naturally eroding state and preserved into collage like patterns. The bars are eco-friendly strokes of genius. Reclaimed from other, funky locations, they highlight the knots of pine or diagonal herringbone one expects to find in a Pocono lodge, or a shack at the beach. This familiarity of time-worn material and the surprise casualness of natural wood in a beaux arts environment is a welcoming and warming touch. In this building of somewhat grand volume, one makes small discoveries; ancient movie projectors found with their film reels still in place, a whiplash of time and space.

One might desire a parallel alternative to the rich vibrancy of the stage: Upstairs Live now serves lunch, happy hour and dinner. Or, take a break to the smaller downstairs bar, pop into the palladium windowed Olympia Room – sometimes used for private parties – or the witty gift shop, and you will have changed the gestalt completely and primed yourself for the dance floor. The Queen’s relationship to the street outside is direct and harmonious, if what you crave is simply air. Another passerby may spontaneously stop in, provided the evening’s musical act has not already had its tickets swallowed up. Reservations are recommended.

Wilmington’s many banks now advertise in the sponsor pages of the Queen Theater’s program. They too understand the importance of continuity and re-invention. Projecting civic pride to the Light up the Queen Foundation – the ongoing non-profit that brings talent, illustriousness, and history to their home base – makes banks seem almost human again. A crowd gathers on the sidewalk outside the Queen’s doors at night. For Wilmington, whose motto is A Place to Be Somebody, those words may finally ring true.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer

World Café Life at:

The Queen Theater

500 North Market Street

Wilmington, DE 19801

Tel: 302 994 1400

www.queen.worldcafelive.com

www.lightupthequeen.org

I

(Above) Stuart Davis, (1894-1964) United States, SWING LANDSCAPE (1938), o/c, 86 3/4 x 173 1/8”, Frame: 88 1/2 x 174 3/4 x 3 ½”. Originally painted by Davis for the Williamsburg Housing Project, Brooklyn, NY. ©2011, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana, #42.1. Photographers:  Michael Cavanagh and Kevin Montague fine arts magazine

Only then would I notice it, hidden in the shadows and veiled by the same ubiquitous gray that obliterated so many other features of this once-elegant building. Framed by dark walnut molding that coursed horizontally above a single door, marked ‘Postmaster’ in the center of the far wall, then moving upward at a forty-five degree angle from both sides to form an apex high above the floor, was a painted scene. Its colors dulled by years of neglect, I could make out a group of figures—Puritans by the look of it—the lead figure extending one hand toward a sundry collection of trade goods on the ground; the other upraised in the direction of a group of Native Americans, passive but cautious in the face of these strangers with their offer of uninvited largess. The scene appeared to represent, pictorially, my recollection of how my Connecticut city was once ‘purchased’ from the Pequot Indians, three centuries ago. Behind the gathering, the rendering ofa familiar landscape, marked by the convergence of three rivers and a configuration of rolling hills, mostly unchanged to this day.

I thought to ask myself at the time, “Who decided which scene should be painted here; how long ago was it done and who was the artist?” But, I must confess, the overall condition of the mural, the absence of dramatic lighting, or any signage describing its origins—together with the generalized indifference toward public art and its obvious Depression-Era stylistic influences—left most people, and me, cold.

As it turns out, the antidote for all of us, myself included, was the passage of time, a renewed interest in American art during the years leading up to and during the frenzy of World War II and—in light of our recent economic crisis—a fresh appreciation for the innovative programs that helped thousands and brought original art to hundreds of public places, like my once-regal post office.

A circa 1935 photo of FDR, rarely pictured in his wheelchair

Art had a friend in the White House in the 1930s. And it had the reluctant support of a divided Congress on how best to put America’s unemployed back to work. The Great Depression had taken its toll on everyday life, with snaking bread lines and desperate men selling what little they could offer on street corners, in every city in the country. Many had lost everything and hoped the government, under the newly-elected Franklin Roosevelt, could at least offer a hand up to a subsistence lifestyle. At the lowest point in the American economy, following the stock market crash of 1929, President Roosevelt proposed a far-reaching plan, as part of an omnibus recovery program, to put artists, crafts people and designers, among others, back to work in public spaces.

Coming into office in March of 1933, Roosevelt wasted no time implementing his economic rescue plan. The ‘New Deal’ was an effort to intervene in an unfolding economic disaster, quelling desperation and fear regarding rapidly deteriorating working and living conditions among a cash-strapped population. He believed that dependence on relief alone would destroy the American spirit and he mobilized the Congress to appropriate funds for a variety of infrastructure projects, including new roads, highways and public buildings. It is hard to imagine by today’s standards, with such skepticism and mistrust of the legislative process and the artistic establishment; but in the 1930s, artists and craftsmen figured prominently in plans to turn around the economic climate, while adding quality of life to the nation’s cities and towns.

Mount Rushmore's George Washington being maintained by WPA workers (1933-34). Courtesy National Parks Service, Mount Rushmore, S.D.

My source for understanding, in greater depth than the standard material usually available for examining the Federal government’s response to the crisis related to the artistic community, is William Barber’s, “Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity”: Federal Patronage of the Arts in the Great Depression (a complete citation appears at the end of this article). His title comes from Shakespeare’s, ‘As You like it’ and reads as follows: “Sweet are the uses of adversity/Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, /Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” These words aptly describe the wealth of art and craftsmanship that arose from a program aimed at drawing on the talents and resources of a community of artists who, in today’s culture, would certainly be passed over in a search for solutions to our economic woes.

Barber cites the ‘Mexican Connection’ as he describes the inception of a work relief program for artists, conceived in the first hundred days of the Roosevelt administration. Artist and former Harvard classmate, George Biddle, prepared a memorandum for FDR, who was busy working out solutions for the country’s banking and manufacturing sectors. Biddle’s memo “reported that artists in Mexico had produced the greatest national school of mural painting since the Italian Renaissance’ and, though working at ‘plumber’s wages’, they had. “express[ed] on the walls of the government buildings the social ideals of the Mexican revolution.” He proposed a similar program for U.S. government buildings, using young artists, “eager to express their ideals in a permanent art form, […] convinced that our mural art with a little impetus can soon result, for the first time in our history, in a vital national expression” (Biddle, in Barber:236).

Under the president’s direction, Biddle set out to bring the program to life within the bureaucratic morass of the departments and under secretaries that typically stood in the way of this form of liberal policy implementation. His primary requirements for launching a successful program were: first-rank artists; assignment of wall space to express social ideals of the government and the people and; complete freedom of personal expression and technical execution.

Ross Dickinson (1903-1978) Valley Farms (1934) o/c, 39 7/8 x 50 1/8”. Smithsonian American Art Museum Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.40

Biddle had in mind a specific list of artists, among them: Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Laning, Reginald Marsh, Henry Varnum Poor, Boardman Robinson and Maurice Stern. He envisioned this core group of artists getting to work and creating a groundswell of public interest, with the help of the press, ‘liberal’ magazines and other organization devoted to the arts. His first obstacle was the civilian body created during the first Roosevelt administration in the early 20th century—the Fine Arts Commission. Tasked to oversee the ‘artistic merit’ of proposed government projects, the conservative commissioners saw little merit in the ‘modernism’ of the artists Biddle selected, or for their liberal social agenda. In the commission’s view, the mural project was “reactionary” and “unsound”. The project would have foundered on the administrative rocks of Washington’s politically-treacherous coast, except for the one key factor. Biddle was able to maneuver through the shoals of the larger national financial crisis, finding a way to have funds from a larger appropriation redirected to his small program. Just one-million dollars out of a 12-month emergency allocation of $400 million would be enough to put scores of artists to work, in the short term and provide proof-of-concept, in the longer range.

The man selected to run this project (Public Works of Art Project, or PWAP), was artist, Edward Bruce. According to Barber, “Bruce shared Biddle’s enthusiasms for promoting art with a distinctive American identity. There were fundamental differences in their approaches, however. Bruce was not attracted to the idea that public wall space should become a vehicle for social commentary.” Instead, Bruce wanted artists to assume the symbolic role of “spokesman for his community”, uniting Americans around a common cause and offering “powerful encouragement” through their work. “He preferred to see the national experience celebrated in ways that braced the country’s badly bruised morale. If things worked out the way he wished, government-sponsored art would educate and elevate popular tastes, thereby stimulating an increase in private demand for the artist’s product…he did not believe that painters and sculptors could expect government to be their principle patrons over the long term” (Barber:239).

Paul Cadmus, ‘The Fleet’s In’ (1933), Navy Art Gallery, Washington Navy Yard, Wash., D.C.

The PWAP program began to ‘hire’ artists that same day, after funding was approved—on December 9, 1933. The job description was clear: encourage works that interpreted the American scene and retain the services of the most competent artists, not just the neediest. By the time the program ended in the fall of 1934 (end of the federal fiscal year), more than 3,700 artists had participated, producing nearly 16,000 items of art (McKinzie:27). A public event was planned at Washington’s Corcoran Gallery at the end of the program, to demonstrate the success of the program to the public. Censorship nevertheless, came into play here, as well. For certain paintings, like Paul Cadmus’, The Fleet’s In (right), it was pulled because it depicted of drunken sailors arm-in-arm with women of questionable reputation (Editor’s Note: This banned painting served as inspiration for choreographer, Jerome Robbins’s 1944 ballet, Fancy Free; and in the same year, the Broadway show, On the Town, with music by Leonard Bernstein . Most memorable from the theatrical hit: New York, New York ["…the Bronx is up but the Battery's down"]). “Critics noted the absence of nudes, night club subjects, pretty women, aristocratic men and genteel houses. [Instead, there was a] preponderance of machinery: locomotives; steamships; workers and common subjects of village and farm life” (McKinzie:30). Because these works were paid for by public funds, at the end of the exhibition, Bruce freely presented paintings to the White House, various cabinet departments and to the House of representatives office building (Barber: 241).

WPA artist, Walter Speck, working on mural at Local 174, Auto Workers Union Building, Romulus, Michigan (1937) Photo: Worldwide

With the end of the year-long PWAP program came a new burst of energy by Edward Bruce and the politicians (including the president) who believed in perpetuating the program in some form. In 1934, the Congress approved a department within the Treasury’s Procurement Division, called the Section of Fine Arts. Bruce was named its head and he set about to use the one-percent of federal building construction and renovation funds set aside for art decoration to further the recently-expired working artists’ program. Imagine in today’s political environment, a federally-baseddepartment such as this, with a committee formed to mitigate the conservative influence of the Fine Arts Commission, consisting of two members of the president’s cabinet, the National Planning Board chairman (the president’s uncle), an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, as well as architects, leading museum directors, artists and sculptors!

The newly-formed Section of Fine Arts was to open the field for competition to complete murals in many of the building around Washington, as well as ‘Section’ funding for buildings in other parts of the country. The already esteemed list of artists was expanded to include George Biddle, John Stewart Curry, Rockwell Kent, Leon Kroll, Eugene Savage, Gant Wood and sculptors Paul Manship and William Zorach. Many ultimately chose not to participate, citing possible bureaucratic interference. Ultimately, more than 1,100 building throughout the U.S., in 1,083 cities and towns received the attention of these and 1200 other artists. More than half their works appeared in post offices and many of us, today (like this author in younger years), stand beneath these expertly-rendered—but often forgotten or overlooked—murals, reflecting a time in history and a view of the role of the artist in our everyday live, that thrived from 1934-43. Next time you hold a Jefferson nickel in your hand, recall that it was designed by a Roosevelt-era artist, working as a part of Bruce’s, Section of Fine Arts program.

Nils Gren, Oveture to Spring (1936). Coll. Jefferson High School, Portland, OR.

But the ‘Section’ project, as successful as it was, was overshadowed by the larger and much better known, Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Federal Art Program (FAP). Much more far-reaching that either the Public Works Art Project (`33 to`34), or the Section of Fine Arts mural and sculpture project (`34-`43), FAP was part of an omnibus spending bill launched under the Roosevelt Administration in 1935, to boldly accelerate the slowly-improving economy, as it emerged from the Great Depression. The program put millions to work, building dams, canals, roads and public buildings. He also approved Federal One, which consisted of the FAP, as well as theater, music and writing projects. Harry Hopkins, a former Roosevelt aide, headed the program, sharing the same aversion to the ‘dole’ that drove Biddle’s gestation of the ‘work relief program for artists’ in 1933.

Generously funded by the Congress, $3 million was allocated for the first six months of the project, allowing for the hire of 5,300 artists, artisans and craftspeople. WPA’s Hopkins turned to Holger Cahill, a New Jersey art collector and social theorist, to run the FAP. Cahill, a colorful figure, saw elements in the American culture of violence and vulgarity. He looked to art as a way of transcending the obscene into something beautiful (McKinzie:79). Cahill believed that patrons of the arts were still being held in the grip of European tastes and that, as a consequence, American artists had little opportunity to be understood and appreciated by their own nation. Hailing artists like John Sloan, George Luks and George Bellows for their, “rediscovery of the American scene” and “clear return to the interest of the average man” who had “brought the gusty vitality of city streets into the staid salons of the genteel tradition” (Cahill: 14-15).

Robert Muchley, Work with Care (1941), relief printing on paper, 25x 19".

Structured differently than previous arts programs, Cahill’s far-reaching vision was of an American cultural scene saved by government support and intervention, meaning that our cultural heritage would not die the same death, in the face of industrialization, as traditional crafts of Asia and India. He…”pledged that what had happened in Asian nations would not be repeated in the United States. It was altogether in keeping with this purpose that slightly more than half of those on the projects’ payrolls were “’craftsmen, workers in commercial and applied arts’, while slightly less than half were ‘working in the fine arts’” (Cahill, quoted in Barber: 247).

For several years, the FAP spearheaded the creation of and defined the foundation for future community arts education programs in the U.S. Within the FAP organization, there were several sections: art production, art instruction and art research. Mural painting and fine art paintings and prints continued to find their way into public building around the country; public art education was available for children and adults in community centers, principally in the West and South and nearly 1,000 artists were employed to conduct art research under the Index of American Design program, cataloging nearly 18,000 watercolor renderings of American decorative arts from the colonial period through the 19th century.

Frank Rudkowski, American Industry (1941), New Britain High School, New Britain, CT

By 1939, internal divisions and a debate over the degree of control the government should exercise over the output and standards placed on artists and the increasing strain of responding to a mounting global crisis resulted in a decline of interest within the administration regarding the future of FAP. In that year the management of the program was turned over to the states. After 1941, many of these same artists and draftsmen began devoting their time to the war effort. Posters and placards, civil defense pamphlets and rousing military music all managed to keep thousands of artists, writers and musicians busy during the early years of the war. By 1943, WPA/FAP had lost its funding and the monies previously set aside for this unique program (a total of $35 million over 10 years) were redirected to the war effort.

“But, during that period, a total of 2,250 murals were placed in public building around the country (courthouses, hospitals, schools, libraries and even Ellis Island); 13,000 pieces of sculpture were positioned in such places as parks, housing projects and historic battlefields; more than 100,000 paintings were created and placed on loan to public institutions and; nearly 240,000 prints from 12,500 original designs were also placed in public venues” (Dows, quoted in Barber:249).

“The experience of federal patronage of the arts in the Great Depression left no lasting mark on American institutions, but at least one aspect of the legacy is memorable. Thanks to government support, a number of major contributors to the American art scene kept going through some dark days; among them were Jackson Pollock, Ben Shahn, William de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, [Stuart Davis] and Arshile Gorky” (Barber:254).

READERS’ ALERT! How you can help…

Today, nearly seventy years later, a new effort is underway to account for and catalogue the paintings, prints and murals that were produced during the period 1933-1943, under the Public Works of Art Project (`33-`34); The Section of Fine Arts (`34-`43); the Treasury Relief Act Project (TRAP,`35-`38, not mentioned in this article); and Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (`35-`43). The U.S. General Services Administration’s Fine Arts Program (GSA) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) are working together to locate, identify and recover lost portable works of art produced by artists through the New Deal era art programs of the 1930s and early 1940s.

Mary De Neale Morgan, Trees on Coast (c. 1935). Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Building Service, USGSA.

When a new deal artwork is offered for sale and/or is suspected to be federal property, OIG should be notified. In conversation with program coordinators, Jennifer Gibson and Kathy Erikson, they explained that the notification can be made by anyone, including, but not limited to the Fine Arts Program, a private individual, a museum staff member, art dealer, appraiser or lawyer. The possessor of the work(s) is requested to maintain care and possession of the artwork until research about title is completed.

If the artwork is determined to be federal property, The GSA works with the possessor to return the work of art to federal custody, with the ultimate goal of having the artwork loaned to a qualified institution. Gibson points out that in some cases, works have been transferred with ownership of a commercial building or house and the owner might not be aware of the fact that art found in any given location still maintains government ties.

If you are aware of a New Deal work of art that may be federal property, please contact the GSA’s Fine Arts Program at wpa@gsa.gov or the office of the Inspector General at fraudnet@gsaig.gov. The OIG can make every effort to maintain the anonymity of those persons who provide information.

You may also write for more information to:

Fine Arts Program

Office of the Chief Architect

U.S. Government Services Administration

1800 F Street, NW

Washington, DC 20405

www.wpa@gsa.gov

By Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

__________________________________________

Bibliography:

Barber, William J., “Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity”: Federal Patronage of the Arts in the Great Depression. In Economic Engagement with Art, History of Political Economy, Sup. to Vol. 31, ed. by Crawford D.W. Goodwin & Neil De Marchi. Durham, NC and London: Duke Univ. Press, 1999.

Cahill, Holger, New Horizons in American Art, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936.

Dows, Olin, The New Deal’s Treasury Art Program. In New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs, ed. by Francis V. O’Connor. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1972.

McKinzie, Richard D., The New Deal for Artists. Princeton, NJ: Prineton Univ. Press, 1973.

A mid-20th century architectural rendering for urban renewal

“E xcept man, nobody lies. A rosebush cannot lie. It has to produce roses; it cannot produce marigolds — it cannot deceive. It is not possible for it to be otherwise than it is. Except man the whole existence lives in truth. Truth is the religion of the whole existence — except man. And the moment a man also decides to become part of existence, truth becomes his religion.”   -Indian Mystic, Osho

Architectural Forensics is a term to describe how it is that the ‘built environment’ perfectly expresses the intrinsic quality of any society’s sociological, economic, and political nature. In the search for truth, the parsing of concepts, deliberation of ideas, or the use rhetorical analysis to glean the essence of our reality pales in comparison to the truth at it is revealed by the world which we have wrought; and with this fact, there can be no mistake or equivocation. fine arts magazine

Boston City Hall (KM&K Arch.,1962-67). Blocks of Boston's West End neighborhoods were torn down to make way for sprawling plazas and Brutalist-style I.M. Pei-inspired architecture

Architects and urban designers are renowned for their ability to define concepts by employing formal constructs and then to argue the merits of their design as is expedient to gain favor for their proposal. The completed projects however are rarely given the proper scrutiny to gauge the product against the initial arguments upon which the physical expressions are based; and when they are, it is clear that the idea rarely matches reality. Western Civilization’s fundamental philosophical postulation to reason can readily facilitate the contamination of the truth by infusing ulterior motives into its meaning; whether or not consciously intended in order to advocate a pre-conceived objective; the resulting built-landscape purveyed as a litany of conjecture in which we continually bear the consequences of real structures and places.

Once clear about our intent, there can be no equivocation about our perception. If the discovery of truth is our objective, then it exists all around us; ready to reveal the unassailable reality that will guide our course of action and indicate the direction of our pursuit. For example, one may argue the merits of permitting a modern glass and steel tower to occupy an infill site within the context of early 20th century, pre-war masonry apartment buildings on Park Avenue in New York City. The architect or developer may cite the benefits of infusing a contemporary architectural expressions to an otherwise tired streetscape; the visual benefits of contrasting transparent forms to masonry facades; the wonderful addition of a brutally honest structure to the dated historical formalism so prevalent in the neighborhood; and even argue the merits of including modern and ‘relevant’ forms of expression within an historic context… all which sound like cogent arguments at the front end of the process when the project strives to gain approval. Yet the simple reality of such an experiment has indicated quite a different legacy; one that has only served to erode a wholesome identity often caused by economic initiatives that are conveyed by architectural seductions. We know this to be true not as a consequence of clarity derived from the initial conceptual debate, but we know this truth to be evident because we can walk the streets and see and feel the physical evidence of our actions as one misguided seduction leads to others until integrity of the place has been thoroughly compromised.

Rendering of Le Corbusier's 'Ville Radieuse', his concept of 'machines for living' (1923).

When the initial arguments were made for the ‘Urban Renewal’ of the lower east side in Manhattan as the dereliction of these neighborhoods was considered to be unsustainable, theory usurped observation and the consequences were swift and dramatic. A wave of gentrification prompted the previous generation of immigrants to move further uptown and to occupy larger homes and more spacious neighborhoods. As soon as the migration had gained momentum degradation was swift even though the urban fabric remained in-tact and might have been resurrected. Concepts abounded for what to do with the tenement structures that lined the lower east side of downtown Manhattan. The prevailing notion that won favor conveniently employed Le Corbusier’s concepts of urbanism as described in his diatribe Toward an Architecture (1923). The concept that large, densely-populated towers, these ‘machines for living’, would be set within rectangular park-like green spaces and permit its residents a gasp of nature if they so dared to venture onto that barren land seemed like quite a good idea. Unfortunately for idealism; reality presented a far different picture; stark in its contrast where crime followed the anonymity of these faceless towers, while the utter segregation of an impoverished socio-economic class of the population was clearly defined by these piles of masonry blight. Traditional neighborhoods where migrants flowed into this nation and then graduated to another existence gave way to these new, urbanly-renewed ghettoes that held its inhabitants largely captive to the now very familiar architectural stereotype that defines public housing. We know this to be true because we see and witness the effects of this reality. There can be no argument to the expression of the world that we’ve built as is indicated by the construction as it exists, and the effects that are consequential to our built environment.

A typical New England 18th c. era village center- church, commerce and homes facing the town green

The truth as revealed by architectural forensics. We are the detectives who observe, investigate, and reveal unassailable realities as expressed by the physical world. The aim: to provide clarity as to the purpose and understanding of the consequences for that which we’ve created. What does the ‘village green’ tell us about 18th Century New England colonial society? That the church dominates the essential position of power, authority, and honor is no accident. Other homes that surround the ‘green’ are generally of similar if not identical shape, size, materials, and coloring to each other and they surround a very regular and ordered pastoral setting around which the townsfolk gather, share, provide, and protect one another from the threats of savages and secularism. The yearning for freedom, for equality amongst one’s brethren; to conform, to live humbly and yet with determination; to control their environment and yet with a clear respect that society persists or perishes at the whim of what nature issues forth, as conveyed by God’s will… All of these attributes are qualities gleaned from observation with just a modicum of written history that serves to temper the inclination one might have to go too far astray. The truth about this society, as immortalized by the wood frames and clapboards of their construction—what remains in our time and that which has long since disappeared due to our delinquency, obstinacy, ignorance, and willful intent—are quite simply more evidence that provides clarity of the society as conveyed by its architecture.

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591)

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591), serene, powerful, perfectly symmetrical in plan, the rotunda and cupola elements that terminate the center of the Greek cross plan; the point of focus to the entire composition, the universe where man is at its center, controlling of his destiny as expressed by this creation… the art which adorns the walls, ceiling, each and every nook and crevasse of this palatial home; the saturation of form and attention to each surface whether it be adorned or left spare as an intended repose; the owner’s clarity of purpose, no hesitation, willful, wonton, desirous, thoroughly committed in its expression of erudition; that art is the consummate expression of beauty; that beauty is both the point of departure and realization to what mankind can aspire in this life, perhaps the only life; as if that remains the sole vestige of his paradise and salvation. To observe any subject building; allowing it to speak through its form is a certitude upon which we can rely, because it is unassailable. We are witness to these realities; and only that awareness can provide clarity and meaning.

If Charles Darwin spent months on the Beagle floating up the Hudson River instead of off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, having sequestered his observations in an investigation entitled Conclusions of our Civilization instead of The Origin of Species, would we be any less impressed with the veracity of what he’d witnessed and assessments drawn accordingly? Society is, in fact, the expression of the environment that it has inherited coupled with the built environment that it has created. Our society has become overly seduced with the “what-ifs”, and no longer cares to acknowledge the “has-beens”; and yet we live in a world that we’ve made; there can be no dispute about that.

I’ve often thought that it is a fool’s errand that architectural publications and journals evaluate built projects shortly after their completion. There is hardly a message to be conveyed about a newly minted project that couldn’t be have already been reviewed when it was merely a conception on either the drawing board or in the fancy of one’s mind. A building or urban landscape can only be truly evaluated after it has existed for some substantial period of time; after when it has been burnished by the elements; trodden upon; been used and abused; becomes part of a fabric or recognized as a carcinogen that has assaulted the world already extant.

My position is quite simply to observe that which we’ve created in order to know the truth. The built environment is the perfect mirror in that it tells us everything about ourselves and perfectly expresses who we are; with utter disregard for propaganda or innuendo.

Architectural forensics is the tool to gain this understanding. They are clear and ingenuous; forensics discover the reality that gives birth to form and makes eminently clear the choices that may not have been initially understood because they were not yet expressed physically and could have been subject to willful or even unintended deception. We as employers of this powerful tool need know nothing about architecture or urban planning in order to draw our conclusions. In fact, we will no longer be seduced by the critical experts of architectural proposals as we become more confident that words cannot be used as a substitution for the reality of what buildings tells us through their forms and physical presence. We now possess the tools to have a clear understanding to the meaning of that which was destroyed in order to make way for the existence of a new structure; or even how a street, city, or forest may have benefited or suffered as a consequence of the new physical landscape . Truth gained in this manner of observation and description is unassailable.

Thus is the power and potential of Architectural Forensics- a force for truth and meaning.

By William Green, Contributing Writer

William Green holds a fine arts degree from Tufts University.  He continued his studies with a year at the University of Copenhagen, Royal Academy of Architecture; proceeding to the University of Colorado in pursuit of his Master of Architecture degree. This was followed by an internship at the prestigious Studio Coppola in Milan, Italy. After several years of practice and a number of awards, the opportunity to design offices for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc., in New York City, provided the impetus to establish his own firm in 1986.

William has served on the faculty of the New York School of Interior Design and has lectured at various universities and numerous design symposiums.

His firm can be reached at: www.wgaarchitects.net

I

Left: Robert Capa, Exiled Republicans marched down beach to internment camp, Le Barcarès, France (March, 1939), Negative, © International Center of Photography / Magnum, Coll., ICP. 

Cornell Capa, Robert’s brother and the founder of the ICP, had diligently tracked down each tale and vigorously sought out the negatives, but to no avail. When, at last, the boxes were opened for the 89-year-old Cornell, they revealed 126 rolls of film—not only by Robert Capa, but also by Gerda Taro and David Seymour (known as “Chim”), three of the major photographers of the Spanish Civil War. Together, these roles of film constitute an inestimable record of photographic innovation and war photography, but also of the great political struggle to determine the course of Spanish history and to turn back the expansion of global fascism.

One of three cardboard boxes of the Mexican Suitcase, containing Spanish Civil War images by Capa, Chim, and Taro. © International Center of Photography.

Jewish immigrants from Hungary, Germany, and Poland, the three photographers found a home in the culturally open Paris of the early 1930s. Friends and colleagues, they often traveled together in Spain. They published in the major European and American publications covering the war, regularly contributing to Regards, Ce Soir, and Vu, and then Life. Their combined work in Spain constitutes some of the most important visual documentation of the war. These negatives had been considered all but lost until 1995.

The Suitcase does not contain a complete collection of any of Capa’s, Taro’s, or Chim’s Spanish Civil War coverage, but includes many of the important stories. From Capa, we see images of destroyed buildings in Madrid, the Battle of Teruel, the Battle of Rio Segre, and the mobilization for the defense of Barcelona in January 1939, as well as the mass exodus of people from Tarragona to Barcelona and the French border. There are several rolls of Capa’s coverage of the French internment camps for Spanish refugees in Argelès-sur-Mer and Barcarès taken in March 1939. We have found Chim’s famous image of the woman nursing a baby during a land reform meeting in Estremadura taken in May 1936, as well as his portraits of Dolores Ibárruri, known as La Pasionaria. There are many images of his coverage of the Basque country and the Battle in Oviedo. From Taro, we have dynamic images of the new People’s Army training in Valencia, the Navacerrada Pass on the Segovia front, and her last photographs taken while covering the Battle of Brunete, where she was killed on July 25, 1937.

Robert Capa, Ernest Hemingway (3rd fr. left), NYTimes journalist Herbert Matthews (2nd fr. left), two Republican soldiers, Teruel, Spain (late Dec., 1937), Negative, © International Center of Photography / Magnum, Coll., ICP.

Exactly how the negatives reached Mexico City is not yet definitively known. In October 1939, as German forces were approaching Paris, Robert Capa sailed to New York to avoid capture by the Germans and internment as an enemy alien or Communist sympathizer.1 As far as we understand, Capa left all his negatives in his Paris studio, at 37 rue Froidevaux, under the supervision of his darkroom manager and fellow photographer Imre “Csiki” Weiss (1911–2006). In a letter dated July 5, 1975, Weiss recalled, “In 1939, when the Germans approached Paris, I put all Bob’s negatives in a rucksack and bicycled it to Bordeaux to try to get it on a ship to Mexico. I met a Chilean in the street and asked him to take my film packages to his consulate for safekeeping. He agreed.” Csiki, also a Jewish Hungarian émigré, never made it out of French-controlled territory and was interned in Morocco until 1941, when he was released with the help of both Capa brothers and arrived in Mexico late that year.

Csiki’s 1975 letter may be the earliest known document of the story of the missing negatives. Neither John Morris, a picture editor who first met Capa in New York in 1939 and remained a close friend and colleague until Capa’s death, nor Inge Bondi, who joined the New York Magnum office in 1950 and worked there for twenty years, recalls Capa ever mentioning the missing negatives or expressing any remorse that many of his most famous images of the Spanish Civil War had disappeared.

Fred Stein, Gerda Taro and Robert Capa on the terrace of Café du Dôme in Montparnasse, Paris (early 1936), Negative, © Estate of Fred Stein, International Center of Photography.

In 1979, on the occasion of the inclusion of Capa’s work in the Venice Biennale, Cornell published a call to the photographic community seeking any information on his brother’s lost negatives following the appearance of a text about Capa’s work by John Steinbeck in the French magazine Photo. “In 1940,” Capa wrote, “before the advance of the German army, my brother gave to one of his friends a suitcase full of documents and negatives. En route to Marseilles, he entrusted the suitcase to a former Spanish Civil War soldier, who was to hide it in the cellar of a Latin-American consulate. The story ends here. The suitcase has never been found despite the searches undertaken. Of course a miracle is possible. Anyone who has information regarding the suitcase should contact me and will be blessed in advance.” Unfortunately, no new information surfaced. There were discussions of a trip to Chile to seek out the “Latin-American consulate.” There was even a dig in the French countryside following reports that the negatives had been buried there.5 Nothing was found.

Gerda Taro, Crowd at the gate of the morgue after the air raid, Valencia (May, 1937), Negative, © International Center of Photography (ICP), Collection, ICP.

As for the suitcase, we now know that at some point it was turned over to General Francisco Aguilar González, the Mexican ambassador to the Vichy government in 1941–42. We do not know when or under what circumstances this happened. It is highly plausible that in the anxious, underground environment of the thousands of Jewish and foreign refugees seeking exit visas out of France in the south, Csiki sensed the danger of his situation and passed the negatives to someone who could either bring them to safety or immediately put them in hiding. Whether Aguilar was the knowing receiver of the negatives or whether he ever had any idea of their significance (or even that he possessed them) is not yet clear. It is perhaps because the value of the negatives was understood that they survived, yet it is also possible that they survived because it was not known what they were and they quietly escaped attention. Aguilar later returned to Mexico City, the negatives presumably packed among his belongings. He died in 1971. The whereabouts of the negatives were never known during Capa’s lifetime.

Chim (David Seymour), Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria), Madrid, (late April–early July, 1936), Negative, © Estate of David Seymour / Magnum, International Center of Photography.

In the ensuing years, there have been three other stories of major troves of Capa/Taro/Chim work being found in unexpected locations. In 1970, Carlos Serrano, a Spanish researcher in the Archives nationales in Paris, uncovered eight notebooks of contact prints of negatives made in Spain by Capa, Taro, and Chim. The small notebooks, about 8 x 10 inches, contain some 2,500 tiny images from 1936–39 pasted onto the pages, which functioned basically as contact sheets. These notebooks were produced to show the full coverage of stories to potential editors and to keep track of which images were used by the publications. Some of the images are annotated with consecutive numbers, others with publication information and other markings; some are identified by photographer and some are not. In total, these notebooks are the most personal and comprehensive artifacts of the work by these three photographers. In Capa’s possessions was a similar notebook with images from August 1936 by Capa and Taro. This is now in the collection of the International Center of Photography. The eight other notebooks remain in the Archives Nationales in Paris.

The history of the notebooks is also interesting. The record numbers of the notebooks indicate that they are part of a collection from the French Ministry of the Interior and Security of the State, which were entered into the Archives in 1952 without any indication of when or why the material was collected. The record numbers of the notebooks fall between the personal papers of Gustav Rengler, arrested by the French police in September 1939, and a folder from the Agence Espagne, the Communist agency in France that distributed news and photographs about the Spanish Civil War, which may have been raided during the same period.7 Richard Whelan, Capa’s biographer, has suggested that since the notebooks were used as a tool to sell pictures, it is possible they had been borrowed by the agency and never returned.

Chim(David Seymour), Mother nursing a baby while listening to political speech, near Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain (late April – early May, 1936), Negative, © Estate of David Seymour / Magnum, International Center of Photography.

In 1979, about 97 photographs of the Spanish Civil War were found in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This collection of prints was part of a case of documents and letters belonging to Juan Negrín, prime minster of Spain’s Second Republic, who lived in exile in France after the civil war until his death in 1956. According to Lennart Petri, the Swedish ambassador to Spain, a small suitcase containing the documents was delivered—we do not know by whom or in what circumstances—to the Legation of Sweden in Vichy. At the end of World War II, this case was sent to the Archives of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The documents and letters mostly date from the last months of the war, especially January 1939, and were organized into three sections: documents pertaining to the Ministry of National Defense, documents from other ministries, and general correspondence arranged alphabetically.

It is not clear why Negrín had the prints, although there is speculation that Capa actually gave him the prints in 1938 or 1939, possibly for distribution or for an eventual publication or exhibition. The images are from August 1936 through January 1938 and are by Capa, Taro, Chim, and the unexpected fourth member of this group of photographers, Fred Stein. The images span the war: Capa’s coverage of the bombing of Madrid in late 1936 and the Battle of Teruel in the winter of 1937, Taro’s of Segovia and Madrid in 1937, and Chim’s photographs of the Basque country. (Included in the group is one of two known vintage prints of The Falling Soldier.) The documents now reside in the Archives of the Spanish Civil War in Salamanca.

Gerda Taro, Republican soldiers, La Granjuela, Córdoba front, Spain ( June 1937), Negative, © International Center of Photography (ICP); Collection, ICP.

The negatives contained in the so called Mexican Suitcase were discovered among General Aguilar’s effects by the Mexican filmmaker Benjamin Tarver, which he inherited after the death of his aunt who was a friend of the General. After seeing an exhibition of Spanish Civil War work by Dutch photojournalist Carel Blazer in Mexico City, Tarver contacted Queens College professor Jerald R. Green in February 1995 seeking advice on how to catalogue the material and make it accessible to the public. “Naturally it would seem prudent to have this material…become an archive available to students and researchers of the Spanish Civil War,” Tarver wrote. Green, a friend of Cornell Capa, contacted Cornell and told him of this letter.

Cornell Capa subsequently made numerous attempts to contact Tarver and obtain possession of the film, but, oddly enough, Tarver proved elusive and disinterested. In the fall of 2003, in preparation for the 2007 exhibitions at ICP on the work of Capa and Taro, the late Capa biographer Richard Whelan and chief curator Brian Wallis launched a new effort to return the negatives to Cornell Capa. In early 2007, Wallis enlisted the aid of independent curator and filmmaker Trisha Ziff, based in Mexico City. Ziff first met Tarver in May 2007,14 and over the next several months helped to persuade him that the negatives belonged at ICP with the rest of the Capa and Taro Archives and a large Chim collection. No money was exchanged. On December 19, Ziff arrived at ICP with the Mexican Suitcase. The missing negatives had finally come home.

by Cynthia Young, Assistant Curator

The Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive

Visit this and other exhibitions at www.icp.org

For a critical review of Capa’s famous ‘Falling Soldier’ photo, go to: www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/robert-capa/in-love-and-war/47

The Morgan Library & Museum, view of the East Room (Library). photo: Todd Eberle (2006) copyright Todd Eberle

On October 30, 2010, The Morgan Library & Museum’s landmark McKim building will reopen to the public, following the completion of the most extensive restoration of its interior spaces since its construction in 1906. The building, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White, was once the private study and library of financier Pierpont Morgan. The Italianate marble villa, designed in the spirit of the High Renaissance, is considered one of New York’s great architectural treasures, and its interiors are regarded as some of the most beautiful in America. The $4.5 million restoration revitalizes the historic center of the Morgan, in many ways completing the institution’s dynamic transformation that began in 2006 with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano’s successful expansion and renovation of the campus. Fine arts magazine    The project provides enhanced exhibition space for the institution and enables the Morgan to share with the public more treasures from its world-renowned permanent collection. The inaugural installation demonstrates the extraordinary quality and scope of Pierpont Morgan’s interests as a collector and cultural steward. Nearly 300 objects dating from 3500 BC to the twentieth century will be displayed throughout the building’s majestic rooms in a series of rotating exhibitions. Previously, only about thirty objects were regularly on view in the McKim.   

The new Renzo Piano expansion of the Morgan. Photography by Michel Denance

The Morgan will celebrate the restoration project with a series of special activities, culminating with the October 30, 2010, public opening. Beginning with a media preview on October 21, the week-long festivities will include a special gala for Morgan patrons and a members’ open house. The public opening will include performances by student musicians from the Mannes College, The New School of Music, and the New-Trad Octet, as well as a special lecture by Morgan director William M. Griswold and docent-led tours of the McKim building throughout the day. Special screenings of the film, All the Beautiful Things in the World: An Introduction to the Morgan, also will be presented that day.   

“The reopening of the McKim building is a special moment in the history of the institution,” said Morgan Director William M. Griswold, who is guiding the first major capital project since he assumed his position in 2008. “The building is the heart and soul of The Morgan Library & Museum. Not only does it embody the taste and vision of the museum’s founder and patron, Pierpont Morgan, but over the years its beautiful rooms have become synonymous with all that makes the Morgan special. No visit to the museum is complete without a tour of the McKim building, and now, with this ambitious project and the installation of some of the Morgan’s outstanding treasures, that experience will be greatly enhanced.”   

Room-by-Room Summary   

The restoration project encompasses all of the McKim’s rooms and exhibition spaces. Key components include new lighting throughout the building to better illuminate its extraordinary murals and decor, the opening of the North Room to visitors for the first time, installation of new exhibition cases to house rotating displays of masterpieces from the Morgan’s collections, restoration of period furniture and fixtures, and cleaning of the walls and applied ornamentation.   

Library (East Room)   

Morgan's East Room Library. Photo by Graham Haber (2010)

  Pierpont Morgan’s stunning library, also known as the East Room, is defined by its majestic thirty-foot walls, lined floor to ceiling with triple tiers of bookcases made of inlaid Circassian walnut and featuring volumes of European literature from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. The library now will be equipped with a new state-of-the-art, yet subtle lighting system; a newly installed late-nineteenth-century Persian rug of the type originally in the room; and newly designed display cases that will be used to exhibit some of the Morgan’s most valued objects.   

The revamped lighting will allow visitors to fully appreciate the splendor of the lunettes and spandrels of the library’s decorative ceiling, the work of noted muralist Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928), which features cultural luminaries of the past such as Socrates, Galileo, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, as well as signs of the zodiac. The improved illumination also will significantly enhance the focal point of the room— the grand fireplace and sixteenth-century tapestry depicting the triumph of Avarice, from a series depicting the Seven Deadly Sins.   

The inlaid walnut bookshelves that contain the Morgan’s collection of rare books will be enhanced with nonreflective Plexiglas, allowing visitors to identify individual titles and to appreciate the beauty of the exquisite bindings more fully.   

An original pendant chandelier, preserved since its removal about seventy years ago and designed by twentieth-century New York designer Edward F. Caldwell, will be restored and rehung at the library’s entrance. Seating also will be installed to enable visitors to spend more time contemplating this extraordinary room.   

Prior to the restoration, only a handful of objects were regularly on view in the library. Highlights of the approximately one hundred rotating works that will be on display each year in this room include examples of some of the Morgan’s finest literary and historical manuscripts, medieval and Renaissance illuminated texts, music manuscripts, and printed books and bindings. Visitors will encounter a letter from fifteen-year-old Queen Elizabeth I purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1900; the manuscript for Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet (1833) with a torturous mass of revisions, corrections, and additions demonstrating the writer’s complex creative process; illustrated notes by Alexander Calder regarding the installation of his “stabiles” from 1941; the Reims Gospel Book, the Morgan’s finest Carolingian manuscript, written in gold at the Abbey of St. Remi (ca. 860); the manuscript of Mozart’s famed “Haffner” Symphony No. 35 (1732); a newly discovered manuscript for Robert Schumann’s “Des Knaben Berglied” (1849) acquired by the Morgan in 2009 and displayed for the first time; one of the earliest editions of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1483); the first edition of Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1872) with proofs of Tenniel’s illustrations; Mary Shelley’s annotated copy of her masterpiece Frankenstein (1818); and one of the Morgan’s three original Gutenberg Bibles (ca. 1455), the first book printed with moveable type.   

Study (West Room)   

 The Renaissance-inspired furnishings of the Study, or West Room, and the paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts displayed, reveal the breadth of Morgan’s interests and activity as a collector, and reflect his reputation as a “modern day Medici.” The room is defined by its sixteenth-century Florentine coffered wooden ceiling, red silk damask wall coverings patterned after the wall in the Roman palace of famed Renaissance banker Agostino Chigi, and fifteenth- to seventeenth-century stained glass fragments embedded into the windows.   

The Study will be enriched by a more substantive display of works from the collection that surrounded Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s, when he used the room for personal business, as well as with objects that have been acquired since. More than double the number of objects will be on view, including works never shown before, such as the 1530 Verrazano globe, one of the earliest known dated globes, and a bronze St. John the Baptist after Michelozzo. Other works include paintings by Hans Memling, Francesco Francia, Perugino, and Jacopo Tintoretto, among others.   

The steel-lined vault in the southeast corner of the room, equipped with a bank vault door and combination lock, is where Pierpont Morgan housed his most valued acquisitions, particularly his collection of more than 600 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The vault remained in use until 2003, housing by then the more than 1,300 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the institution’s collection. As part of the McKim restoration project, another modification to the Study makes the vault more accessible to visitors. The curtain currently shrouding the vault’s entrance will be removed, new lighting fixtures will be installed, and the vault shelves will be filled with sumptuous leather boxes that housed the Morgan’s manuscripts and rare books. Several small bronze objects and tomes in which many of Pierpont Morgan’s collections were published also will be on display. The vault’s original runner was conserved and will be installed in its original location.   

Additional works of sculpture such as such as the Bust of the Christ Child by Antonio Rossellino and Saint John the Baptist by Giovanni Francesco Rustici will be exhibited on the low bookshelves lining the perimeter of the room, and the lush, velvet-covered furnishings will be reupholstered to evoke the atmosphere of the study as it was in Pierpont Morgan’s day.   

North Room   

The North Room, former office of Morgan's first director, Belle da Costa Greene

 The North Room, the intimate office of the Morgan’s first director, Belle da Costa Greene, will open to the public for the first time, and will be transformed to feature the earliest works in the Morgan’s collection, including objects from the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as artifacts from the early medieval period. More than 200 objects will be on permanent view in this new exhibition space. The two-tiered room, lined with walnut bookshelves, features a ceiling of Renaissance-inspired paintings and a bronze bust of Giovanni Boccaccio on the mantle of the fireplace.   

Bookshelves along the perimeter of the room will be converted to exquisitely lit cases to display these items, notably a selection of Ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals collected by Pierpont Morgan. Dating from around 3500 BC, these miniature engraved stones were in use for about 3,000 years in the region referred to as Mesopotamia. These seals were the earliest known objects to use pictorial symbols to communicate ideas. Also on view is a selection of clay tablets, including a seventeenth-century BC fragment inscribed with the Babylonian flood epic predating the story of Noah’s Ark in the Old Testament.   

The room will accommodate freestanding cases for Near Eastern as well as ancient Greek and Roman objects, including a pair of intricately decorated first-century Roman silver cups and a rare thirteenth-century BC stone tablet featuring cuneiform inscriptions.   

The installation also will include jeweled and metalwork objects such as buckles, brooches, and other personal ornaments dating from the second to the tenth centuries, from the collection of Morgan trustee Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare, as well as an eleventh-century jeweled book binding. The Migration-era objects from the Thaw collection document the medieval period in Europe.   

The original chandeliers, removed two generations ago, will be refinished and reinstalled, allowing for optimal appreciation of the recently cleaned ceiling and upper-tier bookcases. In addition, two Egyptian basalt votive figures will flank the room’s fireplace on new pedestals.   

Rotunda   

The 1906 Rotunda, dramatic entrance to the original McKim building

  The Rotunda, originally entered through the grand doors facing 36th Street, is the dramatic center of the McKim building. Its intricate and elaborately decorated ceiling, also painted by Mowbray, refers thematically to the great treasures contained within this remarkable structure, depicting figures from classical antiquity and the great literary epochs of the past, including Homer, Dante, and Petrarch. The splendor of color and texture is supplied by variegated marble surfaces and columns, mosaic panels and columns of lapis lazuli.   

The marble surfaces and mosaic panels that are signature features of the McKim Rotunda have been cleaned and restored to their original grandeur for the first time in a century. New lighting will simulate the natural light that originally came through the oculus and will enhance the richly illustrated apse, ceiling, and lunettes.   

Prior to the restoration, the Rotunda was not used as an exhibition space. Now, new display cases will be installed, housing the first substantive display of the Morgan’s outstanding collection of Americana, including such great works as autograph letters by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, the Morgan’s life mask of George Washington, copies of the first Bible printed in America, and the Declaration of Independence.   

Edited by Richard Friswell, ARTES Executive Editor   

Visit the Morgan Library web site to learn more about McKim Re-opening Day events on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at www.themorgan.org  or call 212.685.0008   

                                                                                                   About the Restoration Project Team   

Roy Lichtenstein, Woman in Bath (1963). The Black-and-White Drawings (1961–68) On view at the Morgan from Sept. 24, 2010–Jan. 2, 2011

 Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum, is coordinating the reinstallation of collection objects in the McKim building; Exhibition design: Stephen Saitas, Stephen Saitas Designs; Lighting design: Richard Renfro, Renfro Design Group, Inc.; Architect of record: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP   

The Morgan Library & Museum   

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In 2006, the Morgan completed the largest expansion and renovation in its history, designed by architect Renzo Piano. This project, in tandem with the 2010 restoration of the Morgan’s historic McKim building, is giving the public unprecedented access to the Morgan’s world-renowned collection, which encompasses manuscripts, books, drawings and artwork ranging from Rembrandt to Picasso, Mozart to Bob Dylan, Dickens to Hemingway, and Gutenberg Bibles to The Story of Babar. A superb repository of the history, art and literature of Western civilization from 4000 BC to the twenty-first century, the Morgan today occupies a unique position in the cultural life of New York City and is one of its greatest treasures.

A

Above: Alex Maclean, Las Vegas, Housing subdivision built out in the desert, from his solo exhibition, ‘Vegas-Venice’  

Alex Maclean's, 'Vegas-Venice' at ERES-Stiftung, Munich, Germany

  Having traveled through much of the United States and parts of Europe, Maclean documents the changing landscape with stunning aerial images, traversing historical, as well as physical boundaries. He has earned a reputation by perceptively documenting the changing nature of the landscapes below him—from agricultural rows to city grids. The images he gathers serve as symbols for a larger matrix of ideas. On a superficial level, Maclean’s photos are spell-binding studies in geometric shapes and patterns. They might be initially dismissed as studies in form over context. But the power of the image and a more detailed analysis of his subjects draws the viewer back to read, inquire, and interpret the altered landscape more carefully. Only then does the viewer encounter the leit motif of Maclean’s work: the impact of the hand of man on his three-dimensional surroundings over the course of a fourth dimension, time.  

Alex Maclean, 'Vegas-Venice', Dense island settlement inside the lagoon is connected to the mainland by causeways

  Using the sun to cast light and shadow, Maclean captures the changes brought about by both human intervention and natural events, far below him. While hovering over a site in his fuel efficient Flight Design CT light sport aircraft, Maclean says his methodology is actually circular, rather than a linear approach to history. “My strategy with a subject is to rotate around it, while taking in the regional and cultural context. I then shoot at four different angles—vertical, oblique, horizontal and bird’s eye view,” says Maclean. “Different angles and shifting lighting can produce very different results when shooting the same subject, exposing years of stories.”  

It is human nature to take a chance; the American dream was built on it. Today, under the ominous cloud of global economic crisis and a wide range of environmental disasters, the dream seems more a mirage, not only in the U.S., but in every corner of the world. Maclean asks us to consider whether las Vegas and Venice, cities built by serendipity in unlikely and hospitable environments, (and staking their reputations on the game of chance), are destined to collapse in much the same way?  

Alex Maclean, 'Vegas-Venice', Las Vegas, single-use residential subdivision block devoid of any urban amenities

 The oldest casino in the world was established in Venice, the city of masks. Casinos once served as centers of gambling, dance, and decadence–a perpetual carnivale, as it were, where aristocrats and merchant classes alike were known to mingle. A similar portrait can now be painted of America’s, Las Vegas, the city of sin. Removed from reality, whether by desert or lagoon, both Venice and Vegas are suffering the consequences of excess and neglect of precious resources. Climate change is causing sea levels to rise world-wide, while Venice, sitting for centuries on its crumbling sub-structure of ancient foundations and pilings, is slowly sagging into the Adriatic Sea. Preservationists are taking measures to preserve the protective wetlands that surround the city, as well as to conserve some of the most beautiful art and architecture in the world. Vegas’ lights, too, are dimming, as real estate markets go bust and excessive water use to irrigate golf courses and maintain green lawns in a desert climate, is literally drying up the most precious of the city’s resources.  

File photo of debris at an abandoned Las Vegas construction site after economic down-turn

After photographing Las Vegas and Venice from the air, Maclean discovered in his studio that he had difficulty sorting the photos, noting that, “there were some images where even I had difficulty distinguishing which city was which. I started to see how the cities were coming undone. Side-by-side, I saw ‘waves’ of water and sand, serpentine canals and paved roadways, all emerging from fragmented lands. How can two such distant landscapes and cultures seem practically identical? I love land and am witnessing how history makes things valuable; how places are becoming memories; how we’ve become environmental refugees seeking shelter. I can’t walk away without taking a chance and hoping that what I do matters.”  

Maclean’s solo exhibit, Vegas-Venice, set to open at ERES-Stiftung in Munich, Germany, on September 7th, 2010, is an exploration of two very distinct landscapes in distress, the similar patterns that emerge, and how time changes our perception of what truly exists.  ERES-Stiftung is a non-profit organization that encourages a collaboration of the arts and sciences to better understand and communicate in an increasingly complex world. Rather than simply asking questions, ERES-Stiftung emboldens society to be part of the solution. www.eres-stiftung.de  

by Michelina Docimo, CSBA, Contributing Writer  

Michelina Docimo is a certified sustainable building advisor and writer. Her focus is on sustainable or “green” architecture, landscape, design, and the representation of nature in art. Her writings have appeared in ARTES Magazine, CT Green Scene, D’Art International, and other industry publications.  

Visit her blog http://michelinadocimo.com/myartobiography  

Over the past 33 years, Alex Maclean has exhibited his work in galleries all over the United States, as well as Canada, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. He has been the recipient of: the CORINE International Book Award: For OVER: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point, 2009; Boston Society of Landscape Architects: Award of Excellence, 2006; American Academy in Rome: Awarded the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture for 2003-2004; The American Institute of Architects: Citation for Excellence awarded to “Taking Measures Across the American Landscape,” 1997; The American Society of Landscape Architects: Honor Award in Communications bestowed upon “Taking Measures Across the American Landscape,” 1997; National Endowment for the Arts: Design Grant, 1990-1992; among a host of other honors. Some of his public collectors include: Banque Nationale de Paris, Centre Pompidou, DeCordova Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and J.P. Morgan.  

Alex Maclean  

www.alexmaclean.com

Navajo rug. A 'transitional' piece using both diamonds and pictoral motifs

 Two recent exhibitions looked at the multiple stories woven into textiles. Navajo Textiles: Diamonds, Dreams, and Landscapes was a year-long exhibition in three themed rotations held at the University of Colorado’s Museum of Natural History in Boulder, Colorado (May 31, 2009 – May 31, 2010). Trading Cloth and Culture was the spring exhibition at the Arizona State University’s Museum of Anthropology (April 8 – June 30, 2010). Both were created under the supervision of Judy M. Newland, the director of ASU’s Museum of Anthropology. In a two-part series, Newland and other members of the faculty and staff at ASU and CU have worked together to produce an important and unique narrative regarding the Native American culture of the Southwest and the important role that woven artifacts have played in understanding the indigenous communities of the far west and the global influences that affect the design work, even today. All pieces pictured are from the University of Colorado textile collection Fine Arts Magazine

The Story Within The Threads

Navajo Loom and weaver, circ. 1920

The University of Colorado, Museum of Natural History, in Boulder, Colorado has a marvelous record of celebrating Southwestern textiles. In their latest exhibition, Navajo Weaving: Diamonds, Dreams, Landscapes, more than ninety textiles were featured in three themed rotations, each with a different stylistic emphasis.

While exploring the approach taken for the exhibition, I thought about my Navajo friends and my own weaving background, and discovered that a friend from my past, Melanie Yazzie, is now an art professor at Colorado University (CU). After reconnecting and discussing ideas, we decided to collaborate. She brings a unique perspective to the project. She grew up near Ganado, on the Navajo reservation, where she watched her grandmother weave. As a printmaker, she brings all of these influences to bear in her own work. We spent countless hours looking at wonderful textiles and contemplating the weavers and their lives. During this process, themes emerged, and we eventually divided the textiles into groups to be exhibited in three rotations. Our collaboration brought a special point of view to the show, as she provided a sensitive cultural and artistic context to my love of weaving and exhibit development.

Wedge weave technique, 'slave blanket' made by Navajo servant in Hispanic household (pre-1876)

The Joe Ben Wheat Collection, at the University of Colorado, Museum of Natural History, is a world-class assemblage, encompassing more than 800 fine textiles from three Southwestern traditions – Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish American. The late Joe Ben Wheat, a CU professor and curator, was one of the great scholars of Southwestern textiles. He began his research at the university in 1972, developing the collection into one of the most historically and culturally significant collections in the country. Wheat not only identified and documented many rare pieces, but he studied the stories, people and culture behind the textiles. His systematic approach to the study of textiles established a foundation on which textile scholars have continued to build.

Mexican satillo serape, with Navajo center diamond influence (circ. 1750)

The collection is particularly strong in pieces for which Wheat was able to establish historical dates. They include, among others: the oldest documented Navajo blanket, collected by a US army officer in 1847 during the Mexican War; a wedge weave blanket woven about 1875 by a Navajo servant of a Hispanic household in southwestern Colorado and a rare “blue border manta” from about 1750, thought to be Pueblo, but later determined by Wheat to be a very early Navajo weaving. These documented pieces and Wheat’s dedication to using multiple research tools to compare and corroborate evidence established this rich research collection, which continues to grow through donations and purchases.

These treasured pieces have been exhibited many times, and are often featured in special programs and behind-the-scenes tours. The new exhibition, however, showcased the depth of the collection and included textiles never before been exhibited; a small number of 19th century rugs with the majority of pieces from the 20th century. The museum’s Navajo textile collection is part of a larger Southwestern tradition and illustrates many cross-cultural influences from Pueblo and Hispanic weavers. The borrowing of ideas and motifs is clearly seen in the textiles on display. Many of the Navajo textiles are woven by anonymous weavers and only fragments of their historical significance remain.

Navajo rug. Center diamond shows Hispanic influence (1925)

The first rotation, Diamonds and Beyond, focused on the diamond motif and included textiles that are vibrant in color and design. Navajo weavers have long used the diamond as a central element in their rugs and blankets. The earliest classic striped textiles were energized with the expressive use of diamonds, helping us see shapes or break them down, leading the eye on a path across the surface. They are also used as an organizing principle to make sense of the movement and activity contained in diagonal and zigzag lines. The visual power and graphic quality found in these designs is a testament to the creativity of generations of Navajo weavers. An emphasis on the contemporary weaver’s approach to design and the arrangement of design elements within each textile was highlighted through the work of rising star, Morris Muskett, a Navajo weaver and jewelry maker, who has several pieces in the Boulder collection, which also includes award-winning weavings from the Santa Fe Indian Market.

(detail) Yei figure represents Navajo dieties (date unknown)

The second rotation, Dreams, Schemes, and Stories, include narrative and image-based weavings, focused on the multiple approaches weavers use when designing textiles. Rugs developed in the 1880s contain innovative combinations of abstract patterns and pictorial elements such feathers, bows and arrows, cowboys, trains and all manner of animals; all reflecting changes occurring in the Southwest at that time. The contemporary piece by, Glenmae Tsosie, acquired in 1972, is a wonderful reinterpretation of modern art. Several ‘Storm’ pattern rugs show strong development of schemes, probably devised by traders. A large number of textiles using yei and yeibichei figures drawn from sacred imagery were on display during this rotation, including a unique vest with a yei figure on the front and back.

The third rotation, Landscapes, featured a variety of Wide Ruins, Chinle, and Crystal-style rugs, demonstrating how the Southwestern landscape influenced Navajo cultural and artistic traditions. Many of these textiles are made with yarns dyed with plants from the Navajo reservation. In this portion of the show, special emphasis is given to the art of natural dyeing and the aesthetic impact of color.

Navajo rug. Stylized corn plant, a dietary staple (1945)

Weaving comes from life experiences, the landscape, family, community and the outside world. Navajo weaving is a cultural expression in which each rug contains a woven history of the people. Change has been a constant in Navajo weaving. Designs and colors have evolved over the centuries, due to outside influences. Yet, the techniques have always remained the same. Weavers combined an individual sense of creativity and innovation with a practical approach to the market, and made textiles that reflected their shifting world. Even today, as designs, colors and materials change, the Navajo aesthetic remains recognizable and continues to produce visually exciting textiles that spring from this rich cultural landscape.

The makers of these textiles created extraordinary complex and exacting designs, often with a whimsical twist. They were woven for sale and trade and the threads contain personal and cultural stories, expressing the lives and land of the Navajo people. We may not know the individual stories of each weaver, but we do know that each one had a story contained within the threads. As weavers, spinners and dyers, we may appreciate the finely spun yarns, the beautifully dyed wool, or pleasing designs. As collectors, we may connect with an object that reminds us of favorites in our collection and of Navajo weavers and artists whom we know. These objects confirm that tradition and culture are not static, but continually transforming, as influences from the outside world bring change and innovation to a textile tradition that has survived despite many challenges. But the life of these weavers cannot be reduced to an object or text on a wall. Each textile reflects the personal and cultural beauty the weaver put into her creation. Each has a life of its own that continues to inspire. What more could a weaver hope for?

Textiles as Material Culture

Monument Valley, AZ, North Window, Navajo Nation. Dry climate preserved much of the fabric artifacts available to researchers today

Textiles are often forgotten or underrepresented in the archaeological record because most do not survive. Only those preserved in dry deserts, salty regions, and peat bogs linger long enough to add to the material culture record that consists mostly of ceramics, metal, and architecture. Cloth became common around 4,000 B.C. and textile production soon became the most important ancient industry (Barber, 21). In the Ancient Andes, cloth was more highly valued than gold or silver, the more hours devoted to production the greater value of the cloth (Murra). Too often textiles are part of a woven history that is ignored or forgotten. Most of us take our textiles for granted since we are so far removed from the production process. But before the Industrial Revolution everyone understood how textiles were made because they saw the making of thread and cloth at home every day. The average person spent more time making cloth than they did on food production. It is easy for us to forget the significant role textiles played in the past and how these artifacts can inform our research.

Contremporary Navajo rug illustrates individual innovation and outside cultural influences

In many cases we choose textiles for exhibition that have no history or only a partial provenance. Museum collections often contain objects with incomplete histories and we must seek out the hidden stories in the cloth. Many Navajo textiles in the exhibition Diamonds, Dreams, Landscapes, had no documentation on the maker. They were collected at a time when knowing the maker was not seen as important or the information was already lost due to trade.

The curatorial approach used for the Navajo textile exhibit was to focus on weaving as a dynamic, living experience that continues to be part of Navajo life. Navajo people and their culture are still vibrant, growing, and changing. The weavers are flexible craftspeople, innovative designers and the determined culture bearers for the Navajo Nation. My work on this exhibition sought to honor the legacy of Joe Ben Wheat’s approach to textile studies and museum stewardship; to use multiple research methods, to search out the lives and stories embedded in these weavings and to remember that a dynamic culture lives at the heart of the exhibition where life and art are intertwined.

by Judy Newland, MA, MS, Contributing Writer

Judy Newland is faculty associate in museum anthropology at Arizona State University and serves as the Director and Curator of Exhibitions for the ASU Museum of Anthropology. She has worked in the museum field for over twelve years at a variety of university museums. She teaches a graduate seminar in Exhibit Design and Development each spring semester. Judy received advanced degrees from at the University of Colorado-Boulder (MS Museum Studies/Anthropology, 2000) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (MA Textile History, 2007). She is a practicing tapestry weaver and her research includes archaeological textile fieldwork and weaving cultural practices around the world. Her research interests also include ancient Andean textiles and the production and meaning of indigo. She has a special interest in weaving in the Southwest.

Learn more at http://asuma.edu  and  http://cumuseum.colorado.edu

Florence at the Height of the Renaissance, by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1571)

 This essay is the second of a two-part series, and deals with the materials, techniques and physical history of easel picture-painting in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is inspired by looking closely at the collections of the National Gallery in London, England.    

 While there were certainly differences in the practice of painting north and south of the Alps – some mentioned in Part I and some to be discussed here – the similarities have often been underestimated. While a new Renaissance culture emerged first in Italy, and only slowly in spread to northern Europe toward the end of the fifteenth century, it would be misleading to conclude that Italy was always the primary source of cultural and artistic innovation. To do so doesn’t take into account the diversity of regional practices in both northern and southern Europe. Italy, for example, was not a unified entity but rather, an ever-shifting assemblage of independent political entities with varied histories, economies and cultural affiliations. We also tend to underestimate the speed with which ideas spread throughout Europe, even without the help of modern technology. Keeping this in mind, much of what was discussed in Part I regarding northern European painting, especially in Flanders, holds true for Italy: easel painting moved from panel to canvas, from tempera to oil, and from multi-part to single field formats, while the range of subject matter widened. Fine Arts Magazine   

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, Self Portrait, tempera on wood (1506). Gallery Palatina, Florence

  The medieval practice of painting on panel gave way to using canvas more rapidly in Italy, but this only occurred in one particular place. In fact, major centers such as Florence were as slow to give up panel painting as comparable cities in Flanders. The example of Raphael, one of the most famous of all Italian Renaissance painters despite his early death in 1520, is a case in point. During a prolific career that took him from Umbria to Florence and Rome, he painted less than a handful of known pictures on canvas in any genre. Painters working for the élite, as Raphael was, had little motivation to flout conventions that valued paintings on panel as more expensive to produce, more permanent, and hence more desirable than the more ephemeral paintings on fabric (which had their own long-standing tradition). It was the painters of the Republic of Venice who were the innovators in producing easel pictures on canvas. Why this was so is still a matter for discussion. The production of canvas was well-established in Venice during the Middle Ages, thanks to the demands of an extensive maritime commerce, and hence of a ship-building industry centered at the state-subsidized Arsenale, the largest shipyard in the world by the thirteenth century. Furthermore, the watery, damp environment of the city discouraged demand for fresco painting, which had become the preferred technique for decorating masonry walls throughout Italy. Frescos were the exception in Venice, although patrons did occasionally demand them, especially for exterior walls, ironically the most fragile of all; they have long-since vanished from the city’s buildings (although there are traces still to be seen in mainland cities that were formerly part of the Republic such as Treviso and Bassano del Grappa).    

Medieval painter's pattern book, c. 1450. Coll. British Library

  Painters and patrons rapidly took to the new practice of creating painted canvasses for interior walls. In the second half of the fifteenth century, narrative cycles were painted on canvasses stretched on wooden frames (now called “stretchers”), that in any other Italian city would have been applied as fresco to plaster walls. By the early sixteenth century, canvas was the norm for other genres, as well: portraits, pictures with newly-fashionable classical subjects, devotional pictures, and even altarpieces. As ceiling paintings on canvas began to rival wall paintings in popularity, and as bothtypes of pictures grew larger in size, standard widths of material had to be stitched together to achieve the desired size; the resulting seams can sometimes be detected by looking closely. Canvas could also be reused. The Venetian painter Tintoretto, who covered acres of wall and ceiling with his huge pictures, was particularly known for piecing together his canvas, sometimes of different weaves and sometimes re-cycled.    

Leonardo da Vinci, Composition Studies for the Last Supper (1490s), red chalk on paper. Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia

 In fifteenth-century Italy, as in northern Europe, underdrawings were ubiquitous and generally quite detailed. That they were based on preparatory sketches executed in various media on paper – the latter in general use since the later Middle Ages – is generally assumed, although few single sheet drawings survive from before 1420 or so anywhere in Europe. The medieval painter’s workshop practice of maintaining “pattern books”, full of detailed studies that included figural poses, drapery, ornamental motifs, and plants and animals, encouraged the reuse of previously-executed drawings in the composition of paintings. Pattern books were valued possessions, often passed down from father to son. They seemed to have fallen out of favor in the fifteenth century as the preparatory process was expanded to include many more studies for a given work, usually on single sheets, and ranging from studies of individual hands or heads, for example, to general compositional arrangements.    

Leonardo da Vinci. Virgin and Child with Saints Anne and John the Baptist (c. 1506-08), charcoal, chalk and wash on paper, National gallery, London (NGL)

 The most celebrated practitioner of this expanded creative process was Leonardo da Vinci, whose career began in Florence in the 1470s. His drawings demonstrate that the process of composing a painting was, in theory, endless. His studies ranged from the macrocosm to the microcosm, breaking forms down into their component parts, and those, even smaller, switching figure poses from left to right and then from right to left, turning a sheet over to continue a visual idea on the reverse when the first side became undecipherable. It was conventional practice by this time for a painter to create a “presentation drawing” to show a patron what his picture would look like s, and then frequently, a “cartoon”, which was the painter’s guide for the painting process itself. These two types of drawings usually strove for clarity rather than elaboration. One of Leonardo’s drawings – probably intended as a presentation drawing or a cartoon – was so highly finished that it created a sensation and was put on public exhibition in Florence in 1501. That drawing is lost, but the one shown here, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, is considered similar, and a variant of the same subject, although a few years later in date. It is not only a testament to Leonardo’s skill, but also a crucial piece of evidence for the profound change in the role and status of drawings taking place around 1500. They were no longer just workshop props, but potential works of art in their own right, documenting the new value placed on the creativity and fame of individual painters, and worthy of being collected by connoisseurs.    

Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Pear (Virgin and Child) (c. 1488), oil on panel. Bergamo, Accademia Carrara

 Most drawings were still used to create paintings, however. Even highly successful painters reused ideas and motifs already captured in drawings by tracing or pouncing. Copy and reuse had been guiding principles of workshop practice since the Middle Ages. Apprentices learned by copying, more often from the master’s pattern books than from nature. Their aim was to emulate the master’s style, a skill that enabled an apprentice to rise to the level of assistant and begin to work on the master’s pictures. Even as some painters began to expand the creative process in the fifteenth century, and as most encouraged their pupils to copy from nature as well as from their drawings, workshops routinely made replicas and variants of completed pictures and continued to do so throughout the Renaissance. Some of these were produced at the request of patrons (especially if the original was owned by someone of higher status), while others were sold on the open market. The latter were produced without an advance commission, although a picture could always be “personalized” at a patron’s request with a different background, more use of expensive pigments (especially gold), or the addition of a coat of arms or even a portrait.    

Workshop of Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child (c. 1475), oil on panel, NGL

 Giovanni Bellini, the most famous painter in Venice during the late fifteenth century, inspired and taught a generation of “madonnieri” who often specialized in devotional images of the Madonna and Child in the manner that he had popularized; most especially the half-length Madonna holding the Christ Child in front of a landscape, often behind a parapet, as seen in the two examples shown here – one by Bellini, the other attributed to his workshop. The number of surviving Venetian pictures of this subject testifies to the demand that must have existed, and suggests that a few of Bellini’s assistants specialized in the genre after setting up their own shops. Most buyers would have been satisfied with such a replica or variant “in the manner of Bellini”, even if it did not come from his hand or even from his shop, and the price would have been more affordable. Modern notions of the value of originality did not apply in the Renaissance, nor did that of copyright, although this is certainly the first period in western art when the idea of originality began to affect the reputation of artists and the price of their paintings and drawings.    

Cima da Conegliano, The Incredulity of St. Thomas (c. 1502-04), oil on panel, NGL

 As seen in Part I, Netherlandish painters took the lead in using oil paint for easel pictures early in the fifteenth century. Until recently, art historians assumed that this technique was first brought to Venice in the 1470s and was adopted enthusiastically by Venetian painters before it appeared elsewhere in Italy. Scientific analysis now suggests that the Italians were experimenting with oil as early as the 1450s, likely inspired by the Flemish pictures acquired by wealthy merchants and aristocrats, and by actual contact with the Flemish working in a number of cosmopolitan centers, including Ferrara and Venice. What was exceptional about the Venetian painters was their rapid, widespread adoption of the oil medium, as we see in the pictures of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1450-1516) and his contemporary Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459-c. 1517). The practice of glazing with pigments mixed in oil was the foundation of the Flemish approach (as discussed in Part I). Venetians pursued the same values as their northern models: reflectivity of light, glowing color, detailed description of material objects, and smoothly-finished surfaces where no brush stroke or other mark could be detected. Yet they also seem to have contributed to the evolution of the technique, especially in searching for more subtle, varied coloristic effects. Cima’s much-studied altarpiece, The Incredulity of St. Thomas, from c. 1502-04, is a case in point. Cima deepened the shadow of the Apostles’ draperies not only by the conventional practice of overlaying glazes of the same or related hues, but also by the much less common practice of glazing with the complementary hue, notably in the green draperies of the figures in the front row, where his final layer of glaze is a red lake. This achieved the desired effect of darkening the shadows and toning down the brilliant green, but simultaneously created a more complex hue, one not muddied by the addition of brown or black.    

A Renaissance apothecary, where pigments could be purchased

 Cima’s painting is often cited as an example of the expanding variety of the Venetian painters’ palette, most vividly seen in the brilliant orange-yellow of St. Peter’s robe. The artist used two related pigments here, both sulphides of arsenic that were seldom used in the fifteenth century, but would become signature pigments of sixteenth-century Venetian painting: the yellow orpiment and the orange realgar. Venice was a destination for the acquisition of pigments by out-of-town painters. Furthermore, by the 1490s, perhaps earlier, those pigments were sold by specialist “color sellers” (“vendecolori”). It was a profession unique to Venice at this time. Throughout the remainder of Europe (including the rest of Italy), pigments were sold by generalist apothecaries, as they had been since the Middle Ages and would continue until later in the sixteenth century. Specialist vendecolori may very well have tried to increase demand by offering new or, unusual products, and we think that their shops became destinations for a variety of artisans who used colorants to share ideas as well as purchase supplies.    

As painters in other central and northern Italian centers began to shift to oil, albeit more slowly than had the Venetians, they also experimented with the technique. Three panels from Perugino’s Certosa di Pavia Altarpiece, c. 1496-1500, provide a useful example. The technique used in the blue drapery of the Archangel Raphael is representative of a painter transitioning between tempera and oil. The underpaint is tempera, but the choice of a light (off white) hue is typical of the light-to-dark process of oil glazing, and the glazes added over the tempera layer are ultramarine mixed with oil, thus creating a rich blue, but allowing light to reflect off the underlying white and back through the translucent, blue-tinted layers of oil. Scientists at the National Gallery have found unusual mineral substances in some of Perugino’s pictures, including this, as well in those of many of his contemporaries, including Raphael. Here the underpaint of St. Michael’s armor is a combination of lead white with lustrous particles of a tin-rich bronze powder, also found in the off- white underlayer of Archangel Raphael’s blue garment discussed above. While the metallic gleam of the pigment would have been compromised or invisible mixed with opaque lead -white for underpaint, it is still intriguing to speculate that Perugino chose to experiment with this substance as he contemplated how to achieve the metallic appearance of St. Michael’s armor.    

Perugino, Certosa da Pavia Altarpiece (dismembered), (c. 1496-1500), tempera and oil on panel, NGL

 Powdered glass is another substance found in the glaze layers of Perugino’s paintings, and also in early works of his younger co-worker Raphael (who was possibly Perugino’s assistant at one time) such as the Mond Crucifixion from c. 1502-03. The glass would seem to be an additive not intended to affect the final appearance of the picture, but that subject is still open to debate. Was the glass simply a drying agent for the oil (painters had to wait for each layer to dry before adding the next), did it act as an extender, adding body to the very soluble red lake paint (where it is most often found), and/or were the particles of glass intended to add more sparkle to the final surface? Not coincidentally, we begin to see some painters at this time showing other evidence of an increasing sensitivity to the appearance of their oil paints by selecting their oil binder dependent on the hue of pigment used, as was the case in Raphael’s Crucifixion. He used the less common walnut oil as a binder for the whites and light blues of the sky because it showed less tendency to yellow, while continuing to employ linseed oil for more saturated hues where yellowing would not be a factor, linseed oil more generally preferred as it dried faster than walnut.    

Raphael, Mond Crucifixion (c. 1502-03), oil on panel, NGL

 Raphael’s picture also provides an early example of other changes in painters’ approaches to the oil technique, this time in its application, rather than in the nature, of the pigments. In the shadows of St. Jerome’s pale, purple-grey robe, Raphael used hatched brush strokes to create the shadows rather than floating successive glazes of red and/or blue to create a darker tone ( the National Gallery scientists point out that this area has altered to appear reddish-brown rather than the purple originally intended by the artist). The highlights in the subdued robe of the Madonna were glazed to allow the lighter under layers to show through, but instead of using a brush, Raphael used his fingers and the marks are visible. When painters began to leave marks with their paint, intentionally or not, they were beginning to manipulate the viscosity of oil paint in a way that interrupted the traditional anonymous, mirror-like finish of the final paint layer.    

Titian, Noli me Tangere (c. 1514), oil on canvas, NGL

 Here again it was the Venetian painters who most aggressively pursued new approaches to the oil technique that exploited the malleability of oil-based pigments as much as their transparency (although glazing was by no means abandoned). Titian (c. 1486-1576) and Giorgione (c. 1478-1510), a generation younger than Giovanni Bellini, but much indebted to him, took the lead. Titian’s Noli Me Tangere of c. 1514 provides a vivid example in the white loincloth of Christ. A relatively lean mixture of pigment and oil – using less oil to make the pigment thicker and stiffer – allowed the painter to accumulate the paint in globs that sat above the painted surface when applied with the brush. This is usually referred to as “impasto”, and it was used above all to create the optical impression of highlights. Furthermore, with a dry brush dipped in this mixture, a painter could drag the brush across the surface in a technique called “scumbling”, to produce the optical effect of transparency without glazing (an effect that would have been amplified by allowing the texture of the canvas to play a role). These approaches might be termed “optical approximation” as opposed to the descriptive application of oil paints that were then glazed to alter values, enrich hues and create life-like light effects.    

Veronese, Dream of St. Helena (c. 1570), oil on canvas, NGL

 Subtle distinctions in the texture of fabrics, even those of a single color, became a hallmark of this painterly style. As black became the fashionable color for the clothing of European élites in the sixteenth century, it was inevitably the color most often used in portraits. Painters rose to the challenge of monochromy by employing a full range of optical “tricks” to convey the differences between velvet, silk, wool and satin. These tricks included applying impasto, varying the direction and length of brushstrokes, and scumbling, in addition to glazing, varying hues by juxtaposing different black pigments (soot blacks, for example, produced a bluer black than bone blacks), and mixing in other colors. These subtleties are difficult to see in reproduction, especially in painterly pictures where heavy varnishes or past damage have abraded the three-dimensional surface. Such pictures are better examined “in person”, and we illustrate this point instead with a brighter, more colorful example by the Venetian painter Veronese (1528-88), his Dream of St. Helena of c. 1570, where one can see the play of the golden impasto highlights on her pink tunic, and for the blacks, a portrait by the Florentine Bronzino (1503-72). His Portrait of a Young Man of c. 1550, which also demonstrates that not all Italian painters adopted the Venetian’s painterly approach. Bronzino and his Florentine patrons preferred the slick, impersonal surfaces of traditional glazed paintings and an approach that relied more on traditional description than optical approximation. A closer look reveals, however, that despite his hard-edged contours, Bronzino’s interior modeling often relied on fluid transitions between colors produced by painting one pigment into another that was not yet dry, a technique referred to as “wet on wet”.    

Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1550), oil on canvas, NGL

 Finally, the framing of these simple rectangles of canvas, already stretched and nailed onto a wooden “stretcher”, was a relatively simple process. The taste for gilded frames seems to have been at least partially overtaken by a preference for frames of unpainted wood, often carved and sometimes touched up with gold. Venetian household inventories from the sixteenth century invariably refer to these frames as “walnut”, although it is impossible to know from the notaries’ generic short-hand how many were actually fashioned from that wood. These frames relate, not surprisingly, to contemporary taste in furniture, in which carved wood prevailed, with or without gilding; that was very different from the taste of earlier periods when furniture was invariably painted. What little we know about the price of frames suggests that they cost less than their earlier counterparts, often more elaborate (in part because they were used primarily for altarpieces and smaller religious pictures). In all periods it was certainly the cost of gold that drove up the price of a frame, although as new genres of picture appeared (in the period under discussion here, for example, portraits and pictures with classical subject matter), and as the formats were so often simple rectangles, carpenters and wood carvers could more easily find ways to simplify production and reduce costs.    

Looking closely at paintings as material objects is aesthetically rewarding. It also opens up the world of the past in at least some of its complexity, allowing us glimpses of the tastes and fashions, technologies, economies, and cultural aspirations of Renaissance painters and consumers. Coincidentally, the National Gallery in London is holding an exhibition from 30 June until 12 September, 2010 entitled Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries(www.nationalgallery.org.uk ) that explores some of these issues and also illuminates the role of conservation and scientific analysis in helping us to understand what we see.    

The author is indebted to the work of conservators and restorers at many museums in North America and Europe, but most especially to Dr. Barbara Berrie at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the scientists and restorers at the National Gallery of Art in London, UK. The latter’s important publication, The National Gallery Technical Bulletin has some articles accessible to the non-specialist, and the Gallery’s relatively new “Raphael Research Project” is an exceptional resource, providing a wealth of technical information and useful bibliography to all.    

by Louisa C. Matthew, Ph.D., Contributing Writer    

Louisa Matthew received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1988 with a thesis on the altarpieces of the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto. In addition to publications on Lotto, has published on painters’ signatures in Venetian Renaissance pictures and contributed to exhibition catalogues on various aspects of the same period. Recent work deals with the history of pigments in Venice, not only their use by painters but also their manufacture and commerce.    

A study of the profession of color seller in Venice, prompted by the discovery of a trove of documents in the Venetian state archives, has led to an on-going collaboration with Dr. Barbara Berrie, a chemist and senior conservation scientist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.    

Louisa Matthew is currently, professor of art history in the Department of Visual Arts at Union College, in Schenectady, NY. Grants have included a fellowship at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence Italy, a paired fellowship (with Dr. Berrie) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, and grants from the Delmas Foundation.