JJ Valaya, Paradox 9 (2011)

The idea of contemporary India, and a quintessential one at that—a conglomerate of many Indias, with its fluid social fabric and multitudes of people—is the paradox that confronts the photo-artist, JJ Valaya, an accomplished designer and pioneering fashion guru. Through his viewfinder, Valaya captures the fascinating multiplicity of a burgeoning city where he has lived and worked for decades, tantalizing us with loving and nostalgic glimpses of this place he knows so well: glamour and grime; sophisticated and commonplace; classical and popular; rich and poor; old and new—whether spontaneous or carefully-planned—all are framed by the photographer’s eye in different parts of Delhi, India’s capital city. artes fine arts magazine

JJ Valaya at work on streets of Delhi

Selecting his images after eight months of research and planning for cast, costumes and settings, the final shots offer telling comments about his belovedly-complex and multi-layered India, as seen through the eyes of an expert. His locations include historic sites as well as popular local dens. His characters and scenes feature some familiar people and happenings in and around Delhi. The context is contemporary and the images reflect an interesting mix of well-known personalities; but he also offers portrayals of ordinary people, spanning several generations. Original and authentic costumes, some created by Valaya himself (and others borrowed from private collections, including those representing India’s royal past), are pictured in his work. Valaya’s pictorial personalities include illustrious dancers, entertainers, actors, designers, social activists, athletes, hoteliers and models, as well as some common folks—tailors, embroiderers and master cutters—most known to the artist. “The idea was to engage anyone who projected the aura required to recreate a particular era,” explains the artist.

Prop on way to photo shoot as models stand by

The production of Valaya’s images involves long treks through the busy streets of old and new Delhi- with a five team member photography crew, camera equipment in tow. The energy and excitement that accompanies these adventures assumes unexpected twists and turns, the occasional u-turn and a frequent change of plan. The artist is quick to choose the “right site” at “the spur of the moment,” setting up an impromptu studio and installations for the shoot. The strikingly avant-garde photography team is usually followed by amazed crowds and amused onlookers, some of whom were keen to appear in the shots and happy to join in, whilst others find the whole exercise bizarre enough to offer a loud, liberal dose of hilarious comments, most wondering if it was all for a Bollywood movie! The artist notes that the palpable excitement and commotion of the spontaneous goings on around him always add another dimension to the atmospherics. In spite of this commotion, he is nevertheless able to add breathtaking images, with his signature surrealistic touch, to the collection, as if they have emerged from an other-worldly twilight zone.

JJ Valaya during shoot for Paradox 19

JJ Valaya, the Jodhpur-born couturier, has always been fascinated by what has been described as his fondness for “gold braid and tassel.” In pursuit of his passion for art photography, he shifts his gear from the manicured glamour of the fashion stage to the dust and heat, hustle and bustle of Indian streets. The quest to create a niche for himself as a photographer in the nascent fashion industry began modestly, as he could not afford to hire a professional crew to work with him. He began by organizing his own fashion shoots, editorials and campaigns. His fashion photography quickly turned to a passion, with financial success following thereafter. Gradually his fascination with the camera flowered into a full-blown affair with art photography, as well, reflected in this collection of vivid images of the city he calls his own. Using a high-resolution Canon 5d Mac 2 camera, he makes limited edition prints etched with archival ink on archival paper. His artistic imagery is closely linked to what Valaya does in fashion. Like the world of fashion, the subject, casting and costumes are all pre-planned; but unlike his fashion shoots, the frames and the locales are spontaneous. The characters wear no makeup and there is no additional styling or artificial lighting. Relying on natural light only, the emphasis is on the subject and his/her surroundings—as featured in the images of the artist at work.

Paradox 1 (2011)

Portraying the past-as-present and the mundane as high culture, Valaya encapsulates the shades and shapes of India into a series of seamless shots. His spontaneous shots freeze the moment. His discerning eye and ‘ways of seeing’ turn old dilapidated buildings, disbanded furniture and old streets in middle class neighborhoods—already buzzing and action-packed—into Art Deco curios with iconic importance. Ordinary people turn into performers for each shoot, as they adorn costumes, vintage robes and ornate jewels; seeming to relish playing the dressing-game to the hilt and assuming various roles set against carefully-selected backgrounds. While the choreographed images evoke impressions of the Indian royalty of a by-gone era, the grandeur and persona of Valaya’s images continue to live in public memory in various erstwhile states-of-mind. They also capture the intangible quality of today’s changing India, “harking back to the past, but also yearning gapingly into the future,” bringing the history and reality of the many Indias to life.

Valaya’s photo sessions sometimes entailed the occasional on-edge moment, as well as some fun-filled ones. The expedition to Jama Masjid that took place on Bakra Eid, the holy Muslim festival—one of the busiest days of the year— was one such experience. The street markets were busy, with those milling about earnestly engaged in selling and buying goats for sacrifice. A much-delayed start, given the model’s late arrival, got disrupted further when it began to pour rain just as the photography session was to start. With no readily-available shelter, the crew sat, waiting, for over two hours in the car. And just as Valaya was about to call it off for the day, the rain suddenly stopped and clouds parted just long enough for him to capture the mosque bathed in the most magical surreal sunlight. “There was a definite divinity at play!” the artist told me while describing the particular incident.

Paradox 2 (2011)

Trying to compose the picture with Neesha Singh sitting on the steps at Jantar Mantar— one of India’s most photographed monuments—was also a bizarre experience. As the artist stood at its highest point, looking down at the stairs and the shadows below, it immediately struck a chord with him. But there was a stray dog that kept following him and the model, refusing to leave them or the site. He kept coming back despite getting shooed away by people who considered the animal a nuisance. Finally, “as soon as my subject took her place, the dog simply ambled in and placed himself at her feet, as if it had just hung around to tell me that I needed him!”

And Lord Shiva as a Child, blissfully asleep, is featured in another image; while the caption accompanying it speaks of a temple dedicated to Lord Hanuman, the monkey god! The cycles parked against the railing on the sidewalk in the busy, buzzing Sarojini Nagar market made a picture-perfect backdrop for the young boy reclining on the bolster in the photographer’s frame. Assuming a look of innocence and with bare feet, he was otherwise majestically decked out in cap, jewelry, ring, necklaces and angrakha (long flowing robe), posing in a style that implied royal breeding. Captured in another frame, while the artist worked on this image, are hundreds of amused people, converging to watch the goings on.

The concept of wrestlers’ court, known as the pehelwan akhada in local parlance, is a familiar one in India. Some such wrestling courts can be found even today in the heart of Indian cities! JJ Valaya takes his viewers to one such court at Aya Nagar in South Delhi. He frames his photograph in a ‘tongue in cheek’ manner, juxtaposing the fully-decked out young urbane athlete, seated comfortably in an ornate chair in front of a line-up of well-built, bare-bodied local lads dressed in just a loin cloths or underwear. The image engagingly captures a scene of one of India’s still-relevant classes.

Left: far: Paradox 6 (2011); near: Shoot on streets of Delhi 

Paradox 8 (2011)

Another familiar Indian sight is the roadside barber, known locally as hajam or nai. His presence is another unique feature integral to the life style and culture of this country. He can often be found in the most precarious and unlikely locations. Positioning himself in the middle of a bustling, congested cityscape, he sets up his impromptu barbershop, so that passers-by— amongst the teaming millions—will find him both easy to access and affordable. With scant tools-of-the-trade, including a mirror often perched against a wall or tree trunk, a rickety chair placed opposite, shaving brush, cream and a variety of oils neatly arrayed on a shelf or table, these impromptu barber ‘shops’ can often be spotted at the boundary walls along crowded roadsides, at bus stops and railways stations—anywhere and everywhere. The barber in this Valaya photo eagerly left his customer sitting in the chair to pose for the shoot, gripping his cycle, with the fashion model perched upon it, her arm resting on the shoulders of the young woman standing by.

Paradox 17 (2011)

The artist then takes his viewers to another forgotten historic site—the Ugrasen ki Baoli at Hailey Road, near Connaught Place—in central Delhi. The dilapidated, multi-layered architectural marvel carries great social and cultural significance for India. The sunken steps offer an imposing, textural contrast to the scale of the carefully-groomed, imposing image and majestic posturing of the Maharaja walking up the stairs. The royal aura looks somewhat haunting, augmented further by the comparatively distant and diminutive appearance of the local band players who are more often spotted playing at Indian weddings. The solitary dove that, “appeared at the perfect moment in the perfect place…” right above the Maharaja’s head, seems to add another element of intrigue to the image.

Paradox 19 (2011)

The blatant play of caste politics in different regions of India is manifest in the numerous statues of the legendry scholar Ambedkar, popularly known as Babasaheb, that dot the countryside. Though born in a poor, untouchable caste, he rose to great heights and is credited with drafting the Indian constitution. Some of his statues were built to honour the great man; but hundreds of others are located at crossroads, more for the sake of form and to win votes. In this frame, the young lad, Aryan, is dressed to the hilt and seated with crossed legs in an ornate chair in the company of Valaya’s master cutter, with Ambedkar’s statue perched on a high platform in the background. Knowing that the photo shoot took place in New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave, adds complexity and interest to an already-multilayered story. And as an ironic note to the day’s shoot, ten minutes into the project, the six-year old son of one of JJ Valaya’s friend, took everyone by surprise, including his own parents, when he declared, “for the amount of work you’re making me do, you should be paying me.” It served as a jaw-dropping comment on the modern world: from scholar Ambedkar, gazing down from his lofty perch, to youthful entrepreneur, Aryan, in the mix and offering a harsh dose of reality!

Two beautiful ladies majestically seated and immaculately dressed in similar ornately embroidered sarees and elaborate jewelry, appear in another Valaya image. Representing two different generations and cultural eras, coming together despite the age gap, it also speaks of a woman’s unflinching love for shringar or adornments.  This generational play is taken to another level, spanning religious and professional interests, in the picture featuring young Ananda, grandly-attired and seated in a chair, watched over by the aged embroiderer, Mohammed, standing behind in what looks like a shanty home interior (See Paradox 9, opening image). The scene takes place in Dhobi Ghat (washermen’s colony), situated in the centre of India’s capital city!

Paradox 20 (2011)

In yet another image, a celebrated Indian artist is featured, decked out as an emperor. Wearing a sherwani (long flowing overcoat) and pagadi (turban or headdress), offset with pearls and jewels and pointed embroidered juttis (shoes), he is shown walking through the precincts of the historic monument Qutab Minar, a hot-spot for tourists (see image-in-the- making with JJ Valaya, above, right). The calligraphic markings in the background offer a nostalgic, vintage commentary on another India of an erstwhile era.

The couturier’s parallel creative voyage reflects a secretly-nursed romance with his camera which he describes as his “karmic connect.” His engaging narrative compositions reflect his ability to seize the moment, reconstructing in the real world, images that are at first, only ideas. His canvas is the vast expanse of Delhi and the cultural melting pot of the Indian nation: its spirit and atmospherics, layers of buzz and humanity all serving as sources for inspiration. Once a seat of imperial power for several dynasties—and now the capital of an independent, democratic and ever-changing India, Delhi is Ground Zero for JJ Valaya’s compelling images of India and its people, executed with cultural sensitivity and craftsmanship.

Paradox 21 (2011)

His visuals manipulate context, bringing to the fore the complex socio-cultural fabric of the nation—piercing through and poking at its seemingly inconsistent hierarchy and heroism, feudal legacy and democratic leveling—to reveal its hauteur (on the one hand) and its textural, Realpolitik, on the other. The concurrence of contrasting opposites in Valaya’s photographs represents a pastiche of different time periods, which, while not deliberately premeditated, seem somewhat stage-set, all the same. His goal of highlighting the realities, tensions and dualities of life in our contemporary Indias, is successfully portrayed in his work.

Valaya’s cyclorama rolls back and forth, creating a multi-layered collage of many Indias—inundated with a range of colours, smells, feelings, visuals and ‘happenings’—as the country’s gritty underbelly comes face-to-face with the elegant and sophisticated. Juxtaposing the grand with the simple, mixing the bizarre with the sensible, his photographs manage to replay history in a contemporary context. Valaya’s images also remind one of historically-sensitive Company Period artwork, including that of Raja Deen Dayal. In Valaya’s world, there are royals and commoners, palace precincts and street bazaars, pedigree pets and stray animals, well-known figures and teeming, unknown crowds, ornate settings and graffiti-strewn backgrounds— the sum of which creates a cultural free-for-all space, blurring the socio-cultural divide between this and that India, or the Indias of then and now.

By Sushma Bahl, Contributing Writer

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Sushma K. Bahl, MBE, is an independent curator of cultural projects, arts adviser and writer, based in Delhi. Until 2003, she led on the British Council’s cultural policy and program for India, spearheading several initiatives, including the first-ever Festival of India in Britain and the Enduring Image exhibition from the British Museum together with numerous associated events and collaborative arts-related projects. In recent years, she curated a series of art exhibitions, including Keep the Promise, raising funds for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals; Contemporary Chronicles in Miniature Art, featuring works from India and Pakistan; Vistaar and Convergence, two separate exhibitions involving collaboration between artists and designers; Annanya, an overview of contemporary Indian art and Ways of Seeing, winning the IHC Art India Award for best-curated group show. Read Shushma Bahl’s article on the Convergence exhibition here: http://www.artesmagazine.com/2011/01/new-delhi-critic-sushma-bahl-examines-link-between-art-and-applied-design/

She was also the co-director for Indian arts at the Gwacheon Hanmadang Festival in South Korea (2004); guest director for XI Triennale-India (2005); co-curator for V9/U9 Indo-UK digital art project and Art Link, Indo-German artists’ residency (2006, 2007), Project Consultant for Bharat Rang Mahotsav XII and jury member for the 14th Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh (2010).

Sushma Bahl is author of 5000 Years of Indian Art (2011), by Roli Books (soon to be distributed in the U.S.). She has also edited and written for books on artists Thota Vaikuntam, Paresh Maity, Satish Gupta and Shuvaprasanna, amongst others, and is on the advisory panel of several arts institutions in India and abroad.

Contact her at: sushmakbahl@gmail.com

S

(Left) [IMAGE 1] Godfried Schalcken, Young Girl Eating Sweets (detail), 1680-85, oil/panel, 73 x 61″.  Collection Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo. Image courtesy Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts fine arts magazine 

Image 2: Collectors, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo. photo: Walter Silver

Given their nationalities, it may seem obvious that they would collect Dutch and Flemish art, but it was carriages, sporting prints and a farmhouse that they owned in New Hampshire which launched their adventure as collectors. Only when Peter Sutton, then curator of European Painting at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, suggested they start collecting paintings representing the Netherlands’ Golden Age did they turn to Old Masters. 

In creating a collection composed of exemplary work of the most significant Dutch and Flemish artists of the seventeenth century, the van Otterloos have been guided by Dr. Simon H. Levie, former director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and Dr. Frederik J. Duparc, former director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The works span the genres that characterize Golden Age painting: church interiors and townscapes, portraits, scenes of everyday life (“genre” painting), seascapes and landscapes, and still lifes. 

Today the van Otterloos’s collection totals 68 paintings, as well as a smaller number of additional pieces representing the decorative arts. Part of the collection has already been exhibited at the Mauritshuis. “In the Netherlands, people are familiar with Dutch painting as part of their heritage,” Mrs. van Otterloo noted, four days before the exhibition opened at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, earlier in 2011. “We’re really excited and eager to know what people will think.” When asked what she would like visitors to be aware of, she replied, “The beauty and quality of the works. It’s a wonderful survey of Dutch painting.” 

Martin Luther attaches his 95 Theses (1517). Image not part of PEM exhibition

The exhibition was organized by The Peabody Essex in conjunction with the Mauritshuis. Dr. Frederik J. Duparc is the guest curator, and Karina Corrigan, the H. A. Crosby Forbes Curator of Asian Export Art at Peabody Essex, is the coordinating curator. 

In 1555, only 38 years after Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, nailed to the door of the church in Wittenburg, Germany (left), sparked the Protestant Revolution, the seventeen provinces of the Low Countries came under the control of Philip II of Spain. In 1579, the seven northern provinces, which were largely Protestant, united in the Union of Utrecht; two years later, they declared their independence from Spain. For the new United Provinces, the following century would be marked by enormous economic growth fuelled by trade, and by the unprecedented prosperity and cultural flowering known as the Dutch Golden Age. 

Image 3. Note: Reference all image detail below. Click here to enlarge

Wealthy merchants, bankers and other prosperous citizens replaced monarchs and the aristocracy as patrons and collectors of art. This led to the rise of an open art market. Paintings tended to be fairly small in size and scale, as they were purchased not for churches or palaces, but for private homes. Subject matter was secular, spanning a range of genres, including portraits, facial studies, townscapes, church interiors, scenes of daily life, home interiors, landscapes and seascapes, and still-lifes. Modesty was a virtue, though it did not preclude national pride. 

The highly detailed, lifelike rendering characteristic of Dutch painting of the era resulted in works that appeared highly realistic; but it was a deceptive realism, tempered with imagination and altered by the artist to achieve a particular end. 

Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection opens with an introduction to the Golden Age. A photograph of the van Otterloos greets visitors as they enter the first gallery. A large map shows the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Three landscapes – February by Jacob Grimmer, a miniature painted on copper by Brussels-born Jan Brueghel the Elder and entitled, Village Scene with a Canal, and Hendrick Avercamp’s larger Winter Landscape near a Village [IMAGE 3] provide visitors with views based on areas indicated on the map. 

Image 4

The low two-drawer oak and ebony ribbank cupboard, ornamented with geometric and figurative carving, is characteristic of the Southern Netherlands and is the only Flemish cupboard in the exhibition. In the seventeenth century, houses had few pieces of furniture, which took up valuable space and was expensive. Elaborately carved furniture was a status symbol. A four-drawer cupboard, or beeldenkast, of oak and ebony seen later in the exhibition, demonstrates a design associated with the Northern Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam [IMAGE 4 ]. 

Image 5

Jan van der Heyden’s View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam [IMAGE 5, and link to video clip at end of article] in the second gallery exemplifies the genre known as townscapes. In contrast to many of his other paintings, Van der Heyden’s rendering of the church, a well-known symbol of Amsterdam, is unusually faithful to the actual structure. The church was completed in 1631 and was the largest Protestant church in the world until the construction of Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London. It is still the largest Protestant church in the Netherlands and is the burial place of Rembrandt. Anne Frank mentioned the church’s set of bells (carillon) in her diary; she could not help hearing them, for the Westerkerk is located not far from the building in which she and her family hid during World War II. An interactive in the PEM exhibition gallery enables visitors to listen to the sound of those bells. 

Church interiors were also popular subjects. Such views were simultaneously scenes of everyday life in a religious setting. In the absence of crucifixes and other imagery that Dutch Protestants renounced—because they associated them with Roman Catholicism—the interior architecture of the church assumed a new importance. The Van Otterloo collection includes three examples, one by each of the three seventeenth-century masters of the genre: Gerard Houckgeest, Pieter Saenredam, and Emanuel de Witte. 

In The Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William of Orange, by Gerard Houckgeest, monumental sun-dappled columns frame the tomb of the great hero of the Dutch revolt against Spain. Darker tones prevail in Emanuel de Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam [IMAGE 6]. This latter work is one of the relatively few paintings in the exhibition executed on canvas, rather than on panel. 

Image 6

The introduction of private citizens as patrons and collectors of art contributed to the demand for portraits, a genre that ranked only below history painting in the traditional hierarchy of subject matter. Rembrandt van Rijn, the most famous portraitist of the Golden Age, arrived in Amsterdam at the age of 26 from his hometown of Leiden and in just a year was known as the finest portrait painter in the city. 

The Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh [IMAGE 7 ], which Rembrandt painted not long after his arrival in Amsterdam, was purchased by the van Otterloos in 2005. Rembrandt knew the sitter; he was living in her cousin’s house, and two years later, another one of her cousins would become his wife. 

Image 7

The other great portraitist of the Dutch Golden Age, Frans Hals, is represented in the van Otterloo collection by his Portrait of a Preacher. Flemish by birth, Hals was just a child when he moved with his family to Haarlem. While he is particularly well known for his group portraits of civic guards of Haarlem, he also painted a smaller number of individual portraits as well as genre scenes. 

It is difficult to imagine the Dutch Golden Age without genre painting, or scenes of daily life. Barber-Surgeon Tending a Peasant’s Foot by Isaack Koedijck [IMAGE 8] , shows a barber-surgeon, a legitimate medical practitioner in seventeenth-century Northern Netherlands, treating a patient. Koedijck and his wife spent most of the 1650s in Asia, where he was in the service of the Dutch East India Company, or VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). The VOC, which was founded in 1602, possessed a monopoly on Dutch trading activities in Asia and played a major role in the overseas trade of the Dutch Republic. 

The placement of the open window and hanging birdcage recall the composition of The Arnolfini Portrait (also referred to as The Arnolfini Wedding) by the early fifteenth-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. The open book on the table in the background has only recently been identified, for Koedijck did not show the title page. An actual copy of the book may be seen in the exhibition in a display case next to the painting, while on a nearby wall, an interactive–one of three in the exhibition–invites visitors to further explore Koedijk’s painting. 

Image 8

Additional examples of genre scenes are exhibited in the fifth gallery. In Sleeping Man Having His Pockets Picked [IMAGE 9] by Nicolaes Maes, the pickpocket openly acknowledges the presence of the viewer, whom she invites to keep her secret as she puts a finger to her lips. Maes, who was a student of Rembrandt, painted genre scenes for not quite five years before beginning a long career as a successful portraitist; such scenes are therefore relatively rare. 

In the same gallery are examples of another genre of Golden Age painting associated specifically with the Dutch: the tronie, or facial study. Though related to portraiture, the tronie is not to be confused with it; a tronie is not intended to be a likeness of a specific person; the sitter, who may well be a model, is not expected to be identified. The van Otterloo collection includes three such works, exhibited side-by-side: Jacob Backer’s Young Woman Holding a Fan, Salomon de Bray’s Study of a Young Woman in Profile, and Jan Lievens’ Young Girl in Profile [IMAGE 10] . 

Image 9

While most of the art of the Dutch Golden Age drew its inspiration from contemporary life, classical antiquity also provided themes for artists, thanks in part to the availability of translations of classical writings and a high level of literacy. Twenty-year-old Aelbert Cuyp marries a classical subject to the landscape genre in Orpheus Charming the Animals [IMAGE 11 ]. Enticed by his music, an assembly of animals and surrounding trees listens to the Greek god Orpheus, whose mother, Calliope, was the muse of epic poetry. The presence of an elephant, an ostrich, two tigers and a camel – animals that would have been considered exotic – reminds us that the seventeenth century also saw the rise of cabinets de curiosités, or curiosity cabinets, which housed collections of objects ranging from natural history to antiquities, and which served as forerunners to museums. 

Contrasting with the classical setting of Orpheus Charming the Animals is Gabriël Metsu’s Old Woman Eating Porridge, a theme that was pioneered some twenty years earlier by another artist represented in the van Otterloo collection, Gerrit Dou. An elderly woman eats a bowl of porridge while her cat keeps her company at her feet. The simple interior speaks of virtue and modesty, while the fur of the cat is rendered with the same careful attention to texture that characterizes so much of Dutch Golden Age painting. 

Image 10

The small oak table, displayed near the painting, is also part of the van Otterloo collection, giving visitors to the exhibition an opportunity to see an actual table of the type depicted in Metsu’s painting. 

Landcapes and seascapes constitute a significant part of the van Otterloo collection, and are displayed in the seventh gallery. The foremost of all Dutch landscape painters, Haarlem-born Jacob van Ruisdael, is represented by three paintings: Wooded River Landscape, View of Haarlem [IMAGE 12] and Winter Landscape with Windmills. 

Seascapes reflect the importance of water in Dutch life, for water, which was ever a threat to the low-lying land, also led the nation to international power and wealth. Not surprisingly, the seventeenth century was a vital era for Dutch marine painting. Artists rendered details with the realism for which the period is renowned, even while incorporating imaginary and symbolic elements. Leiden-born Willem van de Velde the Younger is considered the most important seventeenth-century painter of the genre. His ability to convey atmospheric effects, as evidenced in works such as Fishing Boats by the Shore in a Calm, reminds us of the influence that the plein air seascapes of such later Dutch artists as Johan Barthold Jongkind exerted on the work of the young Claude Monet. 

Image 11

Also on display in this gallery is the painting that launched the van Otterloos’ Dutch and Flemish collection: Jan van Goyen’s River Landscape with Peasants in a Ferryboat. 

An exception to the smaller size and low horizons of most Dutch landscapes and seascapes is Jan Both’s Italianate Landscape with Travelers on a Path. This large fantasy landscape has never hung in the van Otterloos’ home, owing to its size; it shows the influence of Both’s visit to Italy, as well as his fondness for the light-infused work of French artist Claude Lorrain, a Both contemporary. 

Image 12

The last gallery of the exhibition is devoted to still-lifes. In contrast to the distant views and outdoor settings of landscapes and seascapes, the still-lifes present intimate, close-up views, most often of flower arrangements or food. Still Life with Flowers [IMAGE 13] by Rachel Ruysch—one of the very few women artists who achieved renown during the Golden Age—is one of several floral still-lifes in the collection. Like landscapes, still-lifes ranked lower in the hierarchy of subject matter than did portraiture and genre painting, but nevertheless enjoyed great popularity. Artists blurred the line between reality and fiction to produce aesthetically pleasing results, and thus did not hesitate to combine flowers of different seasons, no matter how realistically they might render them, in a single bouquet. 

A live, albeit sleeping, animal enters a still life in Gerrit Dou’s Sleeping Dog [IMAGE 14, below], showing a small dog curled up by an earthenware pot and a bundle of firewood. Dou, who studied under Rembrandt and achieved considerable success in his own lifetime, also painted animals and scenes of daily life. 

Image 13

Two pieces of blue-and-white kraak porcelain in Breakfast Still Life with a Ham and a Basket of Cheese by Flemish artist Pieter Claesz. remind us of the enormous importance of trade in the Dutch Golden Age. Kraak ware, produced in China for export between the late sixteenth and early decades of the seventeenth century, arrived in the Netherlands on the ships of the VOC (Dutch East India Company). Next to the painting, a small linen press made of oak, ebonized fruitwood and beech shows visitors how the Dutch expertly pressed the table-cloths and napkins that feature in Claesz.’s and a number of other Dutch works. 

The organization of the exhibition by specific genre such as portraits, still-lifes and seascapes, coupled with lively and informative wall texts, makes the exhibit accessible to visitors whatever their prior knowledge of Dutch art. The inclusion of furniture and other objects helps viewers better understand the lifestyle of the individuals and spaces portrayed in the paintings, while interactives turn them into active participants, providing opportunities to experience the collection by hearing and touch as well as by sight. The interactives also permit the inclusion of information, some of it in game format, which might otherwise have been omitted, and will help to draw in younger visitors. The overall accessibility of Golden mirrors the friendliness of the collectors themselves, both in their openness and enthusiasm in discussing their collection and their hopes for the exhibition with this writer and others, and in the remarkable generosity they have shown in their lending policy. This is an exhibition not to be missed! 

By Susan E. Schopp, Contributing Writer 

On Display at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, now through February 12, 2012 

Visit the Peabody Essex Museum site; watch and hear Bach’s Tocata in D Minor on the Westerkerk carillon at: http://www.youtube.com/user/peabodyessexmuseum#g/c/A0433BEDF9C81A8A  

 An award-winning, full-color 404-page catalogue, “Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection” accompanies the exhibition and is available through the museum Web site at: www.mfah.org  [IMAGE 14, left]. 

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Susan E. Schopp is an independent scholar specializing in the shipping of the Canton trade, c. 1700-1842. She holds a Diplôme d’études supérieures in museum studies and a Diplôme de recherche in East Asian art history from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Her current research focuses on chop boats. In her spare time she is a member of the volunteer crew of the full-size, fully operational reproduction East India ship, Friendship of Salem. 

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Image References: 

² Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo in their home in Massachusetts. Photo: Walter Silver. Image courtesy Peabody Essex Museum. 

³ Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape near a Village, c. 1610-15. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

⁴ Cupboard (Beeldenkast), 1620-40. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Photo: Walter Silver. Image courtesy Peabody Essex Museum. 

⁵ Jan van der Heyden, View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam, c. 1667-70. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. 

⁶ Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, c. 1660-65. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Museum of Fine  Arts, Boston. 

⁷ Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh, 1632. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

⁸ Isaack Koedijck, Barber-Surgeon Tending a Peasant’s Foot, c. 1649-50. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Peabody Essex Museum.  

⁹ Nicolaes Maes, Sleeping Man Having His Pockets Picked, c. 1655. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

¹⁰ Jan Lievens, Young Girl in Profile, c. 1631-32. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 

¹¹ Aelbert Cuyp, Orpheus Charming the Animals, c. 1640. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. 

 ¹² Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem, c. 1670-75. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. 

 ¹³ Rachel Ruysch, Still Life with Flowers, 1709. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. 

 ¹⁴ Gerrit Dou, Sleeping Dog, 1650. The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

“Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.” ~Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

The sixteenth century marked the dawn of a new age of inquiry, understood by many as the earliest beginnings of the modern age. Religious fervor, superstition and broadly-held, ancient views of the structure of the Universe, planet Earth and the natural order of all life forms were slowly giving way to rational examination and the application of objective observation to everyday phenomena. Scientific study, a novel and often theologically dangerous pursuit, had finally begun to attract the attention of a select few. With the help of the newly-invented moveable print, paper production (a concept brought west from China, via the Silk Road), the application of mass-produced texts and illustrations spawned a widening community of intellectuals; and with them, a body of knowledge that would soon comprise a Northern European Renaissance in the arts and sciences. These analytical trends would form a systematic model for understanding the mysteries of nature that persists to the present day.

Above: Hendrick Goltzius, The Great Hercules, 1589. See End Note #1, below. artes fine arts magazine

Arthur M. Sackler Museum, one of Harvard University Museums, Cambridge, MA

Harvard University’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum has mounted an extraordinary collection of original sixteenth century images, in a show entitled, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. According to Susan Dackerman, Curator of Prints for the museum, artists did not simply work as illustrators in the service of the scientific community. “The prints, drawings, books, maps and scientific instruments of the period suggest that artists played a more active role in facilitating the understanding of new concepts in astronomy, geography, natural history and anatomy, by using their representational skills to give them visual form.” She points out that the production of scientific images and objects was often ”a collaborative enterprise among artists, astronomers, cartographers, botanists, medical practitioners and instrument makers.”

The flexibility and economy of multiple-copy, paper printmaking meant that images could be widely and inexpensively circulated, folded, cut, hand-colored and assembled into various functional objects. Curator Dackerman notes that the exhibition contains several examples of sundials, globes, astrolabes and anatomical models and employs facsimiles of many of these objects “installed throughout the galleries to give visitors a unique, hands-on opportunity to manipulate and appreciate the functions of the early modern devices.”

Categories of knowledge in the 16th century were organized very differently than by contemporary standards. Professional occupations based on empirical investigation were just coming into their own and, as a result, many realms of scientific inquiry which, today, would be worthy of study and life-time devotion, were grouped together. As such, the Sackler exhibition skillfully promotes visitor understanding of these groupings—room-by-room— by carefully combining objects and images into relational paradigms, as if seen through 16th century eyes!

One important category, touching on topics as far reaching as the Solar System and immediate as human physiognomy, was natural philosophy. Not to be viewed in the current sense of the philosopher’s role, they set aside superstition and dogma to examine the physical universe as it was perceptible to the senses—seeking to understand and explain natural events through the application of knowledge and reason. This new field included natural history, which described particular properties of objects in the natural world, and because it included the study of plants, animals and minerals, it was closely associated with the study of medicine. There was also the field of mathematics, which included arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and astrology. Because the mechanical arts (engineering, architecture) were so closely akin to applied mathematics, it also included an examination of issues associated with navigation—a field in need of practical and immediate solutions, given the nascent efforts at global exploration and discovery.

Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), From Nova reperta (New inventions and discoveries of modern times), c. 1599-1603. See End Note #2.

Dackerman observes that, ”during this period, methods of inquiry changed from relying solely on ancient texts to incorporating observation and hands-on experience [with] nature. Cosmographers, medical practitioners, and natural historians, as well as artists, used these new methods in the pursuit of knowledge.” As an example, documentarian Stadamus (Jan van der Straet) produced a catalogue, Nova reperta, illustrating nineteen new inventions, including a plate by an unknown engraver showing the various stages of copper plate engraving and printing. Far from being illustrative, careful observers of the illustration could become acquainted with the printing process for their own purposes Printmaking was truly revolutionary because of the power of mass-produced information to distribute and educate a broader swath of an increasingly literate population.

In fact, Stradanus’s Nova reperta: New inventions and discoveries of modern times (c.1599-1603) features the printing press as the central design element on the title page of his publication. Positioned on either side of the press are two medallions celebrating exploration—the discovery of the Americas on the left, and a star symbolizing the discovery of true north on the right. The exhibition catalogue calls attention to the “string of prints draped above the printing press, emphasizing the mediums capacity for multiples and its key role in disseminating new knowledge.

As noted, paper’s ease of manipulation and the fecundity of prints contributed to their efficacy in producing and spreading knowledge. An excellent example of this in the exhibit is Peter Apian’s The emperor’s astronomy (1540). The lavishly-colored dials, with multiple moving parts, allowed the user to show the movement of the planets, calculate lunar eclipses, and tell time. In this text, which features both northern and southern celestial hemispheres—reflecting an expanded view of a Eurocentric world and the influence of Albrecht Durer’s celestial charts (also appearing in this exhibition)—highlights the ways in which printed material served as a medium of exchange for scientific information among artists and cosmographers in Nuremberg, a dynamic center for the production of scientific instruments and prints in northern Europe, at the time.

Right: Heinrich Vogtherr the elder, Anatomy, or, a Faithful Reproduction of the Body of a Female, Strasbourg: Jacob Fröhlich (1544). (near: viewing flap raised; far: flap lowered). End Note #3.

As a fascinating example of manipulated content (what, today would be called a `pop-up’ book), the exhibit offers Heinrich Vogtherr, the elder’s Anatomy, or, a faithful reproduction of the torso of a female (and male). Both the original and a hands-on facsimile of the illustrations are available for examination by museum-goers. Curatorial notes explain that, ‘Vogtherr exploited the adaptability of paper to illustrate an understanding of human anatomy gained by methods of direct observation, surgery and dissection; the latter being considered controversial in the 16th century.’ Confounding the age-old museum admonition: Do Not Touch, this and other displays produce a curious, secret delight in manipulating the pieces of the illustrated text, in full view of museum personnel; delving deeper into the layers of skin, organs and bone, in much the same way that fascinated Renaissance readers must have done. The power of intellectual discovery remains undiminished as a fact of human nature, then as now.

Unknown woodcutter, Anatomy of the Bones of the Human Body (1493). End Note #4.

In a move from sophisticated to quaintly naïve, is the anonymously-produced woodcut with hand-coloring, Anatomy of the Bones of the Human Body (1493). The earliest known example of a printed representation of the human skeleton; curling banners, inscribed in Latin, float like well-ordered Pringles beside articulated bones. A grinning skull—a Renaissance version of an amiable Freddy Kruger—seems eager to reveal all to his audience of curious viewers, proffering a half-hearted wave from the crest of a grassy, green knoll. A text box tells us that the print was “made in Paris by the very learned man, Master Richard Helian, doctor of arts and medicine.” It also notes that the image was “successfully multiplied through the art of printing.” This version of ‘outsider art’ may be viewed as mildly humorous by today’s standards. But, it would be a mistake to underestimate the significant value of such illustrations as edifying for a 16thcentury population, for whom even the most basic features of the human body would have been shrouded in mystery and meritriciousness. Simplified versions of this very image appeared in a number of subsequent instructional medical treatises.

Andreas Vesalius, Title page, Seven books on the fabric of the human body (1543). End Note #5.

Instructional manuals and guide books (vade mecum) of all kinds were being generated during this period. Publications, like Leonhart Fuchs’s encyclopedia (1542) extolled the virtues of direct observation of plant species for purposes of identification. Another, a how-to manual, entitled Intrument book (1533), by Peter Apian, captures the passion-of-the-day for learning about the natural world and conveys the importance of measurement. Underscoring the use of standardized instruments was key to the creation of a uniform and consistent body of knowledge about natural phenomena, making it available to a broader audience. Instrument book contained images of devices that could be cut out and assembled, with directions for their use. Around the same time, Andreas Vesalius published, Seven books on the fabric of the human body, a ground-breaking atlas of anatomy for physicians and scholars. Sackler Museum exhibition organizers point out that, “Its title page makes a powerful statement in favor of observation and experiential learning [in the progression of knowledge]. At the center of the image, Vesalius, the teacher performs a dissection, holding back the flesh of a cadaver to give excited onlookers a better view of the internal organs.” They also note that the classical architectural backdrop, in which the scene occurs, visually reinforces the spirit of ancient Greco-Roman revivalism that so colored Renaissance thinking.

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I (1514). End Note #6.

Symbolism and allegory, two other features of classical thought, frequently found their way into Northern Renaissance prints. Cornelius Cort combined allegory and anatomical information to represent the five senses, thus conveying the importance of direct experience in our understanding of the natural world. His print series contains multiple symbolic references to objects and animals associated with the senses. A spider web evokes the sense of touch, rays of sun suggest sight. Accompanying texts then assign each sense to corresponding organs, both internal and external. Albrecht Durer, a master printer and intellectual giant in his time, sought to capture various emotions through the same clever use of signs and symbols appearing in his work. In his, Melancholia I (1514), the gloomy, angelic figure of Genius, head canted against her idle hand, is surrounded by the tools-of-the-trade of geometry and architect. Symbols too numerous to detail abound in this image, but the interface between the human psyche and natural (and metaphysical) forces, for Durer, identifies these two essential elements, as requisite in an evolving understanding of the human condition and intellectual pursuits.

Visual metaphors, too, are also artistically employed to convey national power and prestige. Jan Saenredam’s Map of Northern Netherlands (1589), even accounting for its marginal embellishments, is technically accurate. For historian, maps such as these, clearly revealing artistic influences in its production, yields a wealth of information about the land and coastline of 16th century Netherlands. Exhibition organizers note that, “The inclusion of a compass rose, as well as dividers and a distance/measurement key in the lower left corner, suggests the print’s use in navigation. However, the map also functions as an allegorical image of a nation on the rise. Nationalistic overtones are apparent in the crest with the lion, a symbol of the Netherlands. The ships in the harbor likely referred not only to the explorations being undertaken, but also to the nation’s [maritime] might; the vessel on the left is firing a cannon.”

Hans Baldung, called Grien, Dissection of the Scalp (l.) and Brain (r.), 1541. End Note #7.

One outgrowth of this period of scientific investigation and observation was to begin to move away from the ancient belief in the causal connection between human personality and the presence of absence of enigmatic humours coursing through the body. While not wholly abandoned for another two hundred years, the exhibition contains early examples of anatomical dissections of the brain, postulating relationships between human behavior and neurological structures. Hans Baldung created woodcut images of the human brain. Designed as instructional sheets, anatomical detailing is sparse and supporting descriptive material lacking. But, as an historical marker for the creation of prepared material for use in later instruction and training, the exhibition’s, Baldung: Study of the Mouth and Tongue and Study of the Head, from Walter Ryff’s carefully-named, On the most sublime, elevated and noble creature of all creature (1541), stands out as a cautious, yet brazen foray into the realm of objective observation—and a tenuous challenge of old-world, Biblical views of human sanctity.

Georg Glockendon the elder, after Hans Burgkmair the elder, People of Africa and India (detail),1511. End Note #8.

As if by extension, other investigators, working in conjunction with artists, began to explore the influence of physical environment on cultural characteristics. Continental exploration of Africa and the Americas was open far-flung doors previously unknown or little-understood, exotic cultures. In a print by Hans Burgkmair, a series of frieze-style images detail a trading journey from West Africa to India made by Tyrolean merchant Balthasar Springer in 1505 (People of Africa and India, 1511). Exhibition material points out that, “…notes and sketches in Springer’s journal provided the source material for [the] image, which ‘maps’ the people, plants and animals from foreign land forms. Before the 16th century, peoples, plants and animals of foreign lands were relegated to the margins of maps. Here, they are the primary subjects. The [image] offers impressions of family life, social hierarchy, and material culture, as well as information about plants and animals. These images might have been among the first representations of human beings in Africa and India that sixteenth-century Europeans saw.”

Jacques de Gheyn II, Great Lion, c. 1590. See End Note #9.

Observation of life on earth was not confined to humans and plant life. Many fascinating and dramatic images of the animal kingdom were rendered, as well. Probably drawn and or engraved for first-hand observation, Jacques de Gheyn’s Great Lion (c. 1590), was one of the most popular prints of its time. The natural posture of the creature, the eye for realistic detail (paws, skin folds) and the sense of power of the creature (long a symbol of power, the engraving bears the inscription, ‘fearless, but alert’), this image may owe its popularity to the perception by the viewer that one was standing before the animal. But, its most important contribution to the lexicon of images being produced during this critical period in nascent scientific observation was the apparent transition from the antediluvian notion of a superordinated representation of species, to the specific: this image is about one particular lion and its observable traits, not a class or species.

Jan Saenredam, Beached Whale near Beverwijk, 1602. End Note #10.

In the realm of the specific, an incident on the waterfront of Beverwijk, Netherlands, in 1602, provided residents there with the opportunity to observe a rare phenomenon in nature—the beaching of a full-sized Sperm whale. As curious members of the community are pictured gathering around the leviathan, in an engraving by Jan Saenredam, naturalists are also represented, as they can be seen gathering numeric data from the creature. Measurements of length and girth—even blowhole size—are recorded in an effort to understand this particular mystery of the deep. The artist, too, is pictured in the lower left corner of the image, recording both the excitement of the event and the work of investigators for later use in preparing the engraving. For ‘Pursuit of Knowledge’ exhibition organizers, the scene portrayed epitomizes the melding of scientific investigation and artistic collaboration at a defining moment in early modern history.

Surely to be counted as one of the geniuses of the Northern European, early Renaissance was Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). He was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the region ever since. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. His watercolors mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium. In his lifetime, he was also known to produce a number of theoretical treatises, involving principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions, which were published posthumously.

Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, 1515. See End Note #11.

The Sackler Museum exhibition contains several important examples of Durer’s printmaking. As iconic example of a Dürer animal rendering (though not, as in the case of Saenredam’s Whale or de Gheyn’s Great Lion, for first hand observation), is Rhinoceros (1515). Consider a remarkable creature—defying even the most fantastical imaginings of Europeans of that time—Dürer produced a dramatic portrait of the animal. It was (and still is!) captivating, by reason of the artist’s au fait command of the woodcut medium and for the primal power evident in his subject. Claiming that it was a ‘faithful’ rendering, the image appeared time-and-again as collectable prints and in animal encyclopediae. Exhibition organizers point out that, “with the exaggerated tactility of its plated hide…it can be seen to embody the process of which it is a product: printing itself.

Albrecht Dürer and Johannes Stabius, after Conrad Heinfogel, Map of the Northern Celestial Hemisphere, 1515. End Note # 12.

As further evidence of his technical proclivity across a wide range of subjects are Durer’s celestial charts. On view are Durer’s (working with astronomers, Johannes Stabius and Conrad Heinfogel) Maps of the Northern and Southern Celestial Hemisphere (1515). Exhibition notes explain that, “Durer’s celestial charts are the first known printed maps of the northern and southern celestial hemispheres. Based on Ptolemy’s 2nd century catalogue of the stars, they document what, in the 16th century, was current knowledge of the skys. The artist presents a 3-dimensional concept—a celestial sphere- in 2-dimensional form by flattening it. Line of longitude radiate from the center.” Durer’s vivid animation of the colorful creatures inhabiting the twelve signs of the zodiac, overlaying the observable constellations, represents a melding of objective science and ancient belief-systems drawn from astrology that characterized the transition from superstition to science during the early Renaissance.

Hendrick Goltzius, Portrait of Nicolaus Petri van Deventer, 1595. End Note #13.

Emblematic of the exhibition’s motif—the mutually-enriching relationship between art and science during a period when the boundary between the two was not as sharply drawn as today—is dramatically embodied in a rendering by the little-known, Hendrick Goltzius. A portrait of the mathematician and astronomer Nicholaus Petri van Deventer, rendered during this epochal period, projects all the same regal bearing as portraits of kings and princes by other, better-known artists. And like other portraits, commissioned to extol the interests and influence of a monarch, this image was devised as a promotional device to promote the subject’s manuals on mathematics, accounting and the use of globes. Petri is pictures with globe and dividers, with other instruments, like a sextant and rulers on the table. Above his right shoulder is a polyhedron, symbol of proficiency in geometry; above the left, an armillary sphere, denoting knowledge in the field of astronomy. These tropes are intended to communicate to the sophisticated reader that Petri is a master in various disciplines and in the world around him. As noted in the exhibition text, “Despite the inscription at the top of the print (‘Man proposes and God disposes’), Goltzius presents [his client in a flattering light], as an expert in full control.”

The rich collection of over 200 prints and artifacts on exhibit at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum is drawn from the university’s extensive collection. The exhibition reinforces the premise that there were close and mutually-beneficial links between artists and scientists, emphasizing that exchanges of influence could work both ways. Artists-as-skilled-technicians and scientists eager to shed the medieval label of extraneous dabblers found solace and respect in one another’s skills. The invention and expanded use of the printing press, paper production and broader dissemination of printed images and text created a ‘perfect storm’ in the late 16th century—the powers of observation and the desire to investigate any-and-all features of the natural world combined with the artist’s ability to give form and substance to those discoveries. This partnership gave rise to a period of prodigious learning known as the Northern European Renaissance.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

The exhibition, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe will be on display at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum until December, 10, 2011 and then at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL from January 17th-April 8, 2012.

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 End Notes:

Image 1. Hendrick Goltzius, The Great Hercules, 1589, engraving sheet. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gray Collection of Engravings Fund, G4613. Photo: Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, Harvard Art Museums, © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Arthur M. Sackler Museum, one of Harvard University Museums, Cambridge, MA

Image 2. Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), From Nova reperta (New inventions and discoveries of modern times), c. 1599-1603. Hans Collaert the younger, after Nostradanus, Title Page (detail). Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston, BF.1998.9.10.

Hans von Gersdorff and Hans Wechtlin the elder, Instruments for Use in Cranial Surgery, in Gersdorff, Field manual for the treatment of wounds, 1540. End Note #14.

Image 3. Heinrich Vogtherr the elder, Anatomy, or, a Faithful Reproduction of the Body of a Female, Strasbourg: Jacob Fröhlich, 1544. Woodcuts with hand-coloring and letterpress. Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, ff QM33.A16. Photo: Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. (left: viewing flap raised; right: flap lowered)

Image 4. Unknown woodcutter, Anatomy of the Bones of the Human Body (1493). Woodcut with hand- coloring. Photo: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München.

Image 5. Andreas Vesalius and unknown woodcutter, Title Page, from Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septum (Seven books on the fabric of the human body), Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1543. Woodcut and letterpress image. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the SmithKline Beckman Corporation Fund, 1949, 1949-97-41a.

Image 6. Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514. Engraving. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of William Gray from the collection of Francis Calley Gray, G1098. Photo: Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, Harvard Art Museums, © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Image 7. Hans Baldung, called Grien, Dissection of the Scalp (left), Exposure of the Hemispheres of the Brain (right), from Walter Ryff, Des Aller furtrefflischsten, höchsten und adelichsten geschöpffs aller Creaturen […] (On the most sublime, elevated, and noble creature of all creatures), Strasbourg, 1541. Woodcuts and letterpress and hand coloring, sheets. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the SmithKline Beckman Corporation Fund, 1982-40-1f-o.

Image 8. Georg Glockendon the elder, after Hans Burgkmair the elder, People of Africa and India (detail), Neuremberg, 1511. Woodcut and letterpress from five blocks on six sheets, frieze. Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University. Purchased with the Susan A.E. Morse Fund, 1962, Typ 520.11.428 F.

Georg Brentel the younger, from Pamphlet describing the construction and function of a conical sundial, 1615. See End Note #15.

Image 9. Jacques de Gheyn II, Great Lion, c. 1590. Engraving. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Fund for the Acquisition of Prints Older than 150 Years, 2009.46. Photo: Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, Harvard Art Museums, © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Image 10. Jan Saenredam, Beached Whale near Beverwijk, 1602. Engraving. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Kendall Collection, 2001.100.6017.

Image 11. Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, 1515. Woodcut and letterpress. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Stephen Bullard Memorial Fund, by exchange, 68.247. Photo: Photograph © 2011 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Image 12. Albrecht Dürer and Johannes Stabius, after Conrad Heinfogel, Map of the Northern Celestial Hemisphere, 1515. Woodcut with handcoloring. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Inv. 118930. Photo: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München.

Image 13. Hendrick Goltzius, Portrait of Nicolaus Petri van Deventer, 1595. Engraving. Harvard University Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of John S. Newberry, M6486. Photo: Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, Harvard Art Museums, © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Image 14. Hans von Gersdorff and Hans Wechtlin the elder, Instruments for Use in Cranial Surgery, in Gersdorff’s Field manual for the treatment of wounds, Strasbourg: Hans Schott, 1540. Book with woodcuts with hand-coloring. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the SmithKline Beckman Corporation Fund, 1949-97-11. Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Image 15. Georg Brentel the younger, from Pamphlet describing the construction and function of a conical sundial, Lauingen: Jacob Winter, 1615. Pamphlet with engravings and woodcuts. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Fund for the Acquisition of Prints Older than 150 Years, 2007.205. Photo: Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, Harvard Art Museums, © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The 'Z'-Chair, a Zaha Hadid design, on view at PMA

On view through spring, 2012, the Philadelphia Museum of Art features a unique exhibition, Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion. This show includes furniture and design objects in a space entirely transformed by the prominent female architect. The fluid, site-specific installation is the first of its kind in the United States, assembled by a team of designers from Hadid Architects. The show reflects Hadid’s seamless work methods, as well as her technological breakthroughs in architecture and design. artes fine arts magazine

Hadid's Opera House, Guangzhou, China (2010)

Born in Bagdad, Iraq, Hadid is known worldwide for her visionary architecture. She is responsible for many breakthroughs in her field, and is the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She is the founder of London-based Zaha Hadid Architects, and has numerous projects completed around the world, most recently including MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century in Rome (2009), Guangzhaou Opera House in China (2010), and Olympic Aquatics Centre in London (2011). She is now based in London and works internationally in the fields of urbanism, architecture and design.

Mesa Tables, Design by Zaha Hadid

The museum gallery housing the exhibition, in the Perelman building, is completely transformed. The installation greets the viewer with sleek, attention-grabbing furniture and functional objects, such as the Z-Chair, Vortexx Chandeliers and the Mesa Table. To the left, there is a rippling wall—a temporary structure built on site. This undulating form also serves as a shelving unit for Hadid-designed objects, including limited-edition footwear, jewelry and silverware. The silver lines painted on the floor echo the shadows made by the furniture, creating a seamless visual composition.

Lighting plays an important role in this exhibition. The metallic chairs and tables reflect the natural light casted from the window, evolving and morphing as they are viewed from different angle. The functional objects on the shelving unit, including Flatware, Crevasse Vases and other items seem to flash from the light cast through a small opening in the shelves. The Vortexx Chandeliers, continuously changing hues with the use of high-intensity, light emitting diodes LED, cast an ephemeral glow on the surrounding objects and walls.

Flatware, by Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid makes it a goal to integrate her designs to their environment. In this exhibition silver lines painted on the floor fuse the shadows to the objects, at times creating a 3-dimensional effect. The fluidity in her work stems from her creative process. According to curator Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, Hadid works on her designs simultaneously, having several computer screens open at a time with various objects and architectural images, resulting the work that is interrelated and flowing. Design similarities can be seen throughout both her architectural and object designs.

Most objects in the exhibition are made from steel, aluminum, and polyurethane, apart from the sofa, which is upholstered with metallic fabric. Despite the hard materials, the objects are surprisingly organic. They walk the line between fine art and product design, and are often viewed as functional sculptures. Hadid sells her objects as both art and useable products.

Hadid's Z-Car I, a Hydrogen-powered, 3-wheel prototype

Some of the highlights of this exhibition are the mini-sculptural jewelry pieces—Celeste Necklace and Cuff and Glace Collection Jewelry—which are both made with Swarowski Crystals. Like most of the objects in the show, the unusual jewelry shapes elevate them beyond mere utility, to become works of art. Another unexpected design offering by Hadid, is the hydrogen-powered, three-wheel vehicle, Z-Car I prototype. It is presented outside the immediate gallery area, gracing the hallway of the Perelman building with its aerodynamically sleek, quirky presence. As if to leave no part of our lives unattended to, the exhibit also features futuristic Hadid footwear designs, produced in conjunction with clothing brand Lacoste.

Not only does this show offer an exclusive look into the future, with spectacular Hadid designs, the museum also honored the architect with a Design of Excellence Award on November 19, 2011. Collab, a volunteer committee specializing in design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be presenting this award to Hadid, with her multi-faceted contributions in the fields of design, architecture and urbanism. The architect used the award event as an opportunity to share her views on design with the audience.

By Ekaterina Popova, Contributing Writer

Visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art at: www.philamuseum.org

See more of Zaha Hadid’s design concepts at: www.zaha-hadid.com

Urs Fischer, Statue of Rudolf Stingel (2011). Part of 3-sculpture, 'Untitled' series

The tone of the 2011 Venice Biennale seems different from Biennales past. The political bludgeoning of the viewer is milder this year, and the curatorial mystification less extreme. A lot of thinking out loud is in evidence instead, as if the Biennale were puzzling over the proposition of a world exposition of contemporary art in the year 2011 and forcing visitors to ponder their role in attending one.

The three sculptures in Urs Fischer’s Untitled (2011) are not reassuring on this score. Soaring dozens of meters into the air is a full-size wax replica of Giambologna’s, Rape of the Sabine Women (1583), (below). A male waxwork in sport jacket and glasses regards the statue from across the gallery, and to the side is an empty office chair—also in wax—in which the man (or perhaps Fischer) might work when he is not visiting art fairs. The artwork, viewer, and chair are not just uncannily convincing replicas; they are candles. Each has a wick that was lit during the opening of the Biennale, and ever since, the three have been dripping, oozing, sagging, and dropping appendages. By and by, artwork, viewer, and “workaday world” will end up ignominious puddles on the Arsenale floor, consumed by time, necessity, and the perversity of Biennales. fine arts magazine

Urs Fischer,detail, Rape of the Sabine Women (2011). Part of 3-sculpture, 'Untitled' series

Though it might be some comfort to think of us all in this together, artworks and audience alike, the Biennale is not about reassurance. Confusion and questioning are its imperatives and the maze is its unannounced symbol. As ever, the official sites of the Giardini and Arsenale are exhausting warrens of art, with off-site shows hidden away all over Venice. On San Giorgio Island, a full-blown labyrinth has opened in honor of Jorge Luis Borges, and adjacent is the exhibition, Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images, a truly memorable exploration of the mathematical intricacies of weaving. In Dorsoduro, the idea of the tapestry labyrinth becomes political in Flying Carpets, by the Tunisian artist, Nadia Kaabi-Linke. Its suspended wires and crossbeams evoke both a loom and the carpets woven on it, but suggest as well a web and the jointed legs of a spider, and ultimately, the bars of a jail cell. The hanging metal casts a maze of shadows over the viewer, making the flying carpets of art and the steel trap of state oppression impossible to distinguish.

Penelope Grayson: Weaving Words and Images

Viewers may seek relief from the incessant tangles and conundrums in a roomful of soft couches in the Arsenale, where they can sprawl out and watch a film. But do not be fooled: there is no such thing as a Biennale couch potato. It takes twenty-four hours to watch this movie, Christian Marclay’s video The Clock, and the viewer does so in a state of Trivial Pursuits alertness. The Clock, shown earlier this year in New York, is composed of thousands of clips from the history of film, each with a timepiece registering a successive minute of the day, sometimes several clips for a single minute. Since directors typically cut in clocks at times of high tension, each clip is a Lessing-esque “pregnant moment,” like Keats’s “still unravish’d bride of quietness”: an arrested instant which, for those in the know, brings the rest of the movie flooding back. Or it would do if the next clip were not already demanding attention, and then the next, and the next.

Marclay strings together twenty-four hours of these ticking time bombs, denying viewers rest or resolution, though providing a lot of movie-buff delight. The guessing and marveling never let up. Who knew there were so many clock shots in the movies, and where is that one from—and that one? The final wonderment is that the readings on the clocks are precisely the same as the ones on our watches. In this respect, The Clock is a model of neo-classical decorum: the time of the spectacle and the audience’s time are one. We are back at Fischer’s candles, our fate merged with that of the art we gaze on.

Nadia Kaabi Linke, Flying Carpet

Time and the viewer: it is a challenging relationship. All over the Biennale, dark screening rooms beckon. The video art this year is virtuosic: works on the order of Bill Viola’s or Pipilotti Rist’s are no longer exceptions. Indeed, one begins to wonder whether the days of painting, photography, and sculpture are numbered. I stick my head in at Anton Ginzburg’s At the Back of the North Wind in the Palazzo Bollani and emerge reluctantly forty-five minutes later. I would happily have gone on staring at these time-kissed panoramas of Russia indefinitely, except that the Biennale contains thousands of other works. It is a quandary: you can either slight the videos and see the Biennale, or slight the Biennale and see the videos. Unless you take up residence in Venice till November when the Biennale ends, you cannot do both, and so the matter of comprehensiveness joins the others on the docket: does a world exhibition of contemporary art on this scale make sense in an age of video?

Christian Marclay, The Clock, 2010 (video)

Nick Relph’s Thre Stryppis Quhite Upon ane Blak Field is a case in point. Ostensibly, it is a bio-pic about the abstractionist Ellsworth Kelly, but this bewildering three-channel video, watched long enough, transforms art commentary into an art form. Exploring the “sources and analogues” of Kelly’s painting, Relph superimposes Kelly’s color planes over footage of tartan weaving mills, Comme des Garçons catwalks, avant-garde choreography, ethnographic spinning, and historical events of all sorts. He also cuts in interviews about Kelly with prominent curators, such as Rob Storr, Ann Tempkin, and the late Anne d’Harnoncourt. The color filters overlap the video material in ever-changing permutations, evoking more complex associations for Kelly’s work than discursive criticism could ever achieve. Taking it in requires a lot of viewing time.

Anton Ginzburg, At the Back of the North Wind

But equally perplexing are the questions about nationalism running through every aspect of the Biennale. This year’s title, ILLUMInation, projects a dim view of the subject in its slighting lower case. Here the Biennale interrogates its own past, for like other world fairs, it has always been organized according to countries. Since 1907, pavilions began dotting the grounds of the Giardini, permanent structures that are built, owned, and curated by foreign governments as proof of their nations’ cultural status on the world stage. Countries that do not own pavilions compete for space in the sprawling Arsenale or in palazzos, churches, galleries, and warehouses all over Venice. According to the 2011 Biennale curator, Bice Curiger, more countries than ever are entering exhibits and plans for new permanent pavilions are rising. She notes the Chinese people’s pride in their new pavilion (and hopes for “happy news” concerning Ai Weiwei); she regrets the absence of an Egyptian exhibit (and hails the developments that stood in the way). The cheering-on of nations is still official Biennale policy.

Nevertheless, ILLUMInation relegates nationalism to the shadows. Of the fifty-four Biennales to date, the last seven have included an autonomously curated international exhibition, and for Ms. Curiger, this is the future. She conceives of artists and viewers alike as “cultural tourists,” pursuing values exceeding political borders or national ideologies. To offset the official pavilions, she has commissioned “para-pavilions”: nonce structures designed by one artist to exhibit work by an artist from a different country. She has also encouraged collective shows that ignore citizenship, such as the Arab world’s The Future of a Promise (which includes Kaabi-Linke’s Flying Carpets). Norway has forgone a national exhibition altogether to sponsor an off-site lecture series with a slate of international theorists. And fittingly, 2011 is the first year the Roma are in the Biennale, their video installation documenting the injustices they have suffered at the hands of national governments.

Nick Relph, Thre Stryppis Quhite Upon ane Blak Field (video)

But the Polish pavilion delivers up the final coup de grace. The Poles are represented for the first time by a non-Polish artist: the Israeli, Yael Bartana. Her video trilogy, “…and Europe will be stunned,” documents the rise of the fictitious Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP). Its goal is to settle three million Jews in Poland in order to make Polish identity whole again. Visitors to the Polish pavilion receive JRMiP membership cards and tote bags, and place their names on invitation lists for an international congress to be held in the coming year. Then they sit down to watch Bartana’s hour of videos documenting the history of the JRMiP.

The first video presents the messianic founder of the movement, a non-Jewish Pole who stands in a ruined Nazi stadium before a handful of youth-brigade followers. Without the Jews, he thunders into a megaphone among the weeds and rubble, Poland has no identity. Poland must regain its Jews if it is ever to be healed. The rosy-cheeked pioneers cheer and wave, their red neckerchiefs quivering in the breeze, their knees dimpling under their khaki shorts.

Venice Giardini, site of many national Biennale pavilions

By the second video, the movement has made great strides. Heroic Jewish settlers are planting crops and taking their well-earned rest in sun-splashed Polish fields. Straining on stout cables, the muscular youths and eager maidens of the JRMiP raise roof beams that echo the Star of David that frames the Polish eagle on the JRMiP flag.

But tragedy strikes in the final video. The charismatic leader of the movement, suddenly deceased, is lying in state in a mausoleum. Outside, a memorial rally is in progress, with distinguished speakers addressing the multitudes. Jews being Jews, however, there are as many viewpoints as there are speakers, and each is more eloquent than the last. The leader’s widow reiterates her husband’s dream of a Jewish Renaissance in Poland, and youthful followers decry the nationalist chauvinism that led to Poland’s loss of a Jewish Other. A Holocaust survivor living in Israel supports the restitution of her family’s Polish property, but bristles at the thought of living on it. A Jewish art historian sporting an Islamic scarf discourses on Enlightenment internationalism, and an old-style Zionist insists that the only safe dwelling place for Jews is the nation state of Israel. The vast crowd cheers and waves regardless.

Yael Bartena,'...and Europe will be stunned.' Trilogy (video)

The rhetoric of the speakers is so moving and the crowd so responsive that it takes a while to register the differences in what is being said, and at times one can hardly believe one’s ears. Hearing Holocaust anti-Semitism passionately denounced, or universal human rights championed in this absurdist context, is almost unbearable. The parody is so dense and directed so even-handedly that we are left with nowhere to stand, all ideological ideals combusting. The coinage “Zirony” comes to mind; it is no accident that an Israeli artist has made these videos. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Poland—or at least the Polish pavilion—has indeed repatriated its absent Jew in the person of Bartana (who lives, however, in Berlin).

Above, left: Though JRMiP does not exist, Bartana has designed its manifesto and logo: a blood-red Polish Eagle combined with a Magen David. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction further, membership cards and tote bags are available.

Yael Bartena,'...and Europe will be stunned.' Trilogy (video)

As one staggers out of the Polish pavilion, the International exhibition offers a perplexity that may be the undoing of the entire enterprise. Venice Biennales are programmatically devoted to contemporary art, but this year the headline artist is the sixteenth-century Tintoretto. Three of his immense canvases have been lifted from the church of San Giorgio and installed in the entrance gallery of the International Pavilion. Bice Curiger wanted them there, she says, because she was tired of Biennales that seem like spaceships landed in the middle of nowhere. Contemporary art springs from earlier art, she insists, and Tintoretto is an experimental, anti-classicist artist who speaks directly to the present.

Perhaps he does, but we must strain to hear him over the army of security guards blocking the view and shrieking threats when visitors so much as finger their cameras. Photography is not prohibited elsewhere in the Biennale, but then Tintorettos are not there either. Evidently the guards have not been informed of the conversation in progress between the past and present, or more likely, they see how lopsided an exchange it is. It takes only three Tintorettos to turn the whole Biennale into “everything else.” It is not that contemporary art cannot measure up to that of the Renaissance. (Even if you thought so, would Tintoretto be the standard to apply?) Rather, the Tintorettos remind us of the staggering context that surrounds the Biennale. Venice is tough competition for a contemporary art show.

The Grand Canal, Venice

If the Biennale is a contemplation of history, spectatorship and cosmopolitan complexity, Venice forces us to experience these imponderables head-on. Visitors divide their time between marveling and getting lost; after a while, the two seem much the same. This is life as bewildered, bemused, and thoroughly beguiled connoisseurship. Have I mentioned the color of the water in the lagoon—the purest aquamarine; or the holes in the cloud formations, clearly left there so baroque angels can peer down; or the sheer ecstasy of fig marscapone gelato? At the end of the day, who would not trade the wax puddles on the floor of the Arsenale for the delicious perplexities of Venice?

By Wendy Steiner, Contributing Writer

Harbor, Newport, RI, at peak of the season. Photo: Keith W. Stokes

Newport, Rhode Island, widely renowned for its Jazz Festival every August and its Gilded Age, turn-of -the-century mansions—many of the most awesome overlooking the Atlantic – is filled to the brim with hidden and not-so-hidden treasure. Saying that this small enclave of some 26,000 year-round folk (swelling three-fold, plus, in the summertime) is an embarrassment of riches, is a gross understatement, for around every corner await astonishing surprises, many of mesmerizing proportions. fine arts magazine

On a recent, 2 night, 3-day visit there, I dined and wined—well, actually, vodka is my preference— and toured some of the city’s finest wonders.

The Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt's 70-room Italianate Newport 'cottage'

Right off the bat, after checking into The Clarkeston – yes, I’d gladly stay there again – I took my father’s advice: “See everything in one fell swoop, get the lay of the land, then return to those places you want to see in depth.” I hopped on the Viking Tour’s Trolley for a guided tour and for ninety minutes was treated to an eye-popping, history-rich lesson in “Newport 101”.

The town’s many Gilded Age mansions cum museums are its biggest draw, as everybody dreams – gilt by association – of being rich. Around three hundred thousand of those dreamers visit the art-filled troves every year. Two of the most popular—Rough Point, the 49-room home of Doris Duke until her death in 1993, and The Breakers, the Vanderbilt’s 70-room summer Italianate “cottage” designed by Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) were at the top of my list. Hunt also designed the façade and the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. His last work, the Breakers, was built in 1893-95, and is over-the-top in royal grandeur. The main hall is fifty wide-by-fifty long-by-fifty feet tall, and a John La Farge (1835-1910) stained glass skylight hovers over the grand staircase. Rough Point, however, its rich interior filled with French furniture, Chinese porcelain, Turkish carpets, and paintings by Gainsborough, Van Dyck, and Renoir– all collected by the tobacco heiress, herself– has a homey, lived-in feel. So personal and present is Duke’s taste that one almost expects her to suddenly waltz into the room. For those interested in fashion, The Sporty Style of Doris Duke exhibition is on view through November 5, featuring a selection of Duke’s clothes and photographs documenting her surfing, swimming, playing golf and tennis, as well as scuba diving and bowling.

John N.A. Griswold House, home of Newport Art Museum & Art Association

Another architectural classic was Richard Morris Hunt’s first major Newport commission–The John N.A. Griswold House (1864). It is the main building of Newport Art Museum & Art Association’s three-building campus, and houses the museum’s permanent collection and exhibitions, both focusing on the work of Newport and southeastern New England artists– contemporary and 18th, 19th and 20th Century. Its walls are a lively walk through the history of American art, populated with paintings by Fitz Henry Lane, George Inness, William Trost Richards, John La Farge, and Gilbert Stuart. Also on view, following in the footsteps of their respective fathers, are works by John Allen Twachtman (1882-1975), son of John Henry Twachtman, and Gilbert Stuart’s daughter, Jane (1812-88).

China Blue, with an installation piece from Firefly Projects. Photo: David Hansen

On the contemporary scene, during my early June visit, I viewed still-current, solo exhibitions by artist China Blue and Trent Burleson, whose work occupies the museum’s largest gallery, with around 22 bird paintings, most dated 2010. This uber-prolific artist is obviously a factory unto himself! Many of his birds soar in full flight, diving for berries and insects amid beautifully-rendered foliage. Though reminiscent of Audubon, they are post modern in their soft colored tones and slightly blurred execution. Viewing Burleson’s paintings, as museum curator Nancy Whipple Grinnell suggests, is as though we are seeing them “through a gossamer veil.” His exhibition ends August 17th.

Firefly Projects is China Blue’s ‘fragility of life’ installation, occupying a chamber-like gallery on the first floor. A small, dark room, it is lit with twinkling blue lights, while sounds, robotics, and several electrifying photographs create an other-worldly feel, where the artist brings us back to our ‘collecting fireflies in a jar childhood.’ Commanding pride of place are two 7 ½-foot artist-constructed trees, on whose thin wooden branches perch flashing LED fireflies, all faithfully synchronized to mimic a mating dance. Known internationally for her interest in the intersection of science, art and technology, the iconoclastic Blue has recorded vibrations emanating from the Eiffel Tower, as well as sounds permeating Venetian canals, the latter with recording devices fixed to the underside of a gondola.

International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum, Newport, RI

The two biggest surprises – who knew such museums even existed – are the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum and the National Museum of American Illustration at Vernon Court (1898), a Beaux Arts adaptation of a 17th century French Chateau. The mansion was designed by Carrére & Hastings, architects for the New York City Public Library, the U.S. Senate Office Building, and the Frick Collection in New York, and features the work of the most illustrious illustration icons: Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, NS Wyeth, JC Leyendecker, Charles Dana Gibson, and Howard Chandler. Sharing the spotlight through the summer, along with Norman Rockwell’s America exhibition of 70 paintings, is another surprise–writer Tom Wolfe’s humorous pen and ink illustrations from his book, In Our Time, a compilation of essays originally printed in Harper’s Magazine, during the 70’s.

The International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum—with its 13 manicured grass tennis courts—shares grounds with the recently renovated 1880 Stanford White Casino Theatre, where Orson Wells, Helene Hayes, Lillian Gish, Will Rogers and Oscar Wilde tread the boards. How’s that for theatrical history!? The museum itself, in the historic Newport Casino, was designed by McKim, Mead & White in Victorian shingle-style, and chronicles the history of tennis from the 12th century to the present, in its 18 galleries. It overflows with tennis memorabilia– photographs, videos, art, fashion, trophies, and attire–many donated by the game’s biggest stars: Gussy Moran’s once “scandalous” 1949 Wimbledon lace-trimmed tennis ensemble and a Chris Evert portrait by Warhol – he is everywhere – are among them. While I am still skeptical of interactive anything, I did find the museum’s touch screen research kiosks addictive!

John LaFarge, Snow: January, Southerly Wind, Cloudy Sky and Sunlight (1879), o/c. Courtesy Wm. Vareika Fine Arts

The most serious museum-quality gallery in Newport– some say in all of New England– is William Vareika Fine Arts. I happened upon this little bit of heaven – think of it as a mini Metropolitan Museum or even a room or two at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts – at the tail end of the stunning John La Forge: In Paradise: The Painter and His Muse exhibition, curated by William Vareika, gallery proprietor. Enough of the show remained, though, to set my head spinning! The gallery specializes in the purchase and sale, of 18th, 19th, and 20th century American paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints. One is apt to run across the work of John La Farge, whose estate they represent, as well as the work of William Morris Hunt, John F. Kensett, Winslow Homer, Worthington Whittredge, Alfred T. Bricher, William Trost Richards, William S. Haseltine, George Bellows, John H. Twachtman, Childe Hassam, John S. Sargent, and Martin Johnson Heade– all American artists inspired by Newport’s unique society and the sublime natural environment of Narragansett Bay.

Cloyery Georges, Carrefoure at Adjame (2010). Courtesy Cadeaux de Monde (Gifts of the World)

While my days were spent running with the big boys, on Newport Gallery Night which occurs the second Thursday each month from 5:30-8pm, I managed to get up close and personal to some of the local artists, thanks to my guide du nuit, Katie Dyer, the proprietress of Cadeaux de Monde (Gifts of the World). Her domain is an eclectic, green, fair trade, international folk art gallery, including several of Newport’s own contemporary artists.

My tour started at Cadeaux with Nina Hope Pfanstiehl, a local jewelry and ceramic artist, demonstrating various jewelry wire wrapping techniques. Also catching my attention – it practically jumped off the wall – was Carrefoure at Adjame, an exquisite city scene painting by Cote d’Ivoire painter Cloyery Georges. Interesting, also, was T.M. Dyer’s abstract pen and ink drawings lining the walls of Galerie Escalier, a section of Cadeaux dedicated to New England artists.

Edward Fey, The Sooloo of Salem, Mass (2010). Courtesy Harbor Fine Arts Gallery

Harbor Fine Art Gallery—in a 1704 wooden building in the historic downtown area for 3 years now—specializes in Rhode Island artists, primarily plein air painters, whose subject is Newport and its surroundings. Artist Betty Anne Morris owns and operates the gallery, also featuring original glass art and jewelry. It functions as a studio, as well, where visitors can experience artists immersed in creating new pieces. Laura B. Fernandez’s stained glass fishes, Edward Fey’s ship paintings, and Kathy Weber’s peopled beach scenes are veritable showstoppers. Following a plein air workshop, Morris– previously a leather and freeform basketry enthusiast and purveyor of antiques—very successfully dedicated herself to outdoor painting. She recently converted the top floor of the gallery into The Borden House B-no-B, meaning a soft queen size bed there and breakfast at one of many nearby eateries.

Didi Suydam, PaTh (2005), digital print, 40x40" Courtesy Didi Suydam Contemporary

Artist Didi Suydam and husband, sculptor Peter Diepenbrock, founded Didi Suydam Contemporary 12 years ago, and feature fine art and studio-designed jewelry. The gallery is architecturally light and airy, modern and minimal, and housed in an historic firehouse. It is also a showcase for their own work. While Suydam’s jewelry was displayed elegantly in the back of the gallery, it was her stunning black and white digital photography in front that held my eye. PaTh (2005), an other-worldly photograph of storm clouds–with a graphic ‘T’ symbol placed slightly left of center–is the artist’s attempt, as she explained to me, “to visually convey the metaphysical notion of alternate or coexistent, concurrent realities. The image and the presence of the symbol,” she adds, “may also be interpreted as a metaphor for the passage from the life experience to an afterlife experience.”

The Lady Who Paints Gallery houses both the studio and gallery of Rosemary Kavanagh O’Carroll and is one of the most unique art-viewing spaces in Newport. Part warehouse, gallery, and a little bit salon, it is dedicated solely to her own work, most based on her life experiences. The very Irish O’Carroll – reddish brown hair and freckles add to her charm – is a consummate story teller, verbally and in paint, following her passions wherever they lead.

Rosemary Kavanagh O'Carroll, Flamenco Dancer (2010). Courtesy The Lady Who Paints Gallery

In Grenada, Spain, she explored a cave below Alhambra, where, “There were flamenco gypsy dancers and I was totally fascinated. The woman dancing was intense and raw. There weren’t any windows in the cave, no air to breathe, but it was the real thing. I pulled out my sketch book and started going to work,” O’Carroll told us. “I took photos of her different movements and worked on the paintings in my studio back in America. To document migrant workers, I flew down to Florida, rented a car and drove to Homestead, where they toil in the fields.” Both trips yielded a series of paintings.

Since The Lady Who Paints was the last stop on our whirlwind treasure hunt, I was able to sit and chat for a while. It was a lovely way to end the evening. But this all was just the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully I would be able to return soon, to discover even more!

By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer

___________________________________________

Newport Contact Information:

Below you will find the websites as well as the telephone numbers of the B & B that I stayed at, the room was large and airy, and the home cooked breakfasts scrumptious, the 3 restaurants I ate at – I had a different lobster dish at each one – and every museum and gallery venue that I visited.

While prices fluctuate season-to-season (summer is the high season), accommodations, eateries, and entertainment can be found to fit every pocket, from baked beans and beer to champagne, caviar, and a yacht in the harbor. Newport’s official website www.gonewport.com also has a wealth of information, from travel packages, special deals, and events, to where to stay, eat, shop, and things to do.

Bannister's Wharf, Newport, RI. Photo: Newport Breeze

The Clarkeston www.innsofNewport.com 28 Clarke Street (800) 524-1386

Viking Tours www.vikingtoursnewport.com (401) 847-6921

The Breakers 44 Ochre Point Avenue www.newportmansions.org (401) 847-1000

Rough Point 680 Bellevue Avenue www.newportrestoration.org (401) 847-8344

Newport Art Museum & Art Association 76 Bellevue Ave. www.newportartmuseum.com (401)488-8200

International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum 194 Bellevue Ave. www.tennisfame.com (401) 849-3990

National Museum of American Illustration www.americanillustration.org (401) 851-8949

William Vareika Fine Arts Gallery 212 Bellevue Avenue www.vareikafinearts.com (401) 849-6149

Cadeaux du Monde 26 Mary Street www.cadeauxdumonde.com (401) 848-0550

One of many Norman Rockwell originals on view at Nat'l Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI

The Lady Who Paints Gallery & Studio 94 Bridge Street www.theladywhopaints.com (401) 450-4791

Harbor Fine Arts 134 Spring Street www.harborfineart.com (401) 338-4462

Borden House B no B 134 Spring Street www.bordenhousenewport.com (401) 338-4462

Located in an old fire house, 25 Mill St. www.didisuydamcontemporary.com (401) 848-9414

The Lady Who Paints Gallery and Studio www.theladywhopaints.com (401) 450-4791

Newport Jazz Festival www.newportjazzfest.net (800) 745-3000

Great shopping and yacht watching at www.bannisterswharf.com

Gas Lamp Grille, 206 Thames Street www.gaslampgrille.com (401) 845-9300 $$

The Cliff Walk Terrace at the Chanler Hotel 117 Memorial Blvd. www.thechanler.com (401) 847-1300

One Bellevue Fine Dining & Seafood Restaurant at the Viking Hotel One Bellevue Avenue www.hotelviking.com for Reservations (401) 848-4824 $$$

Flo’s Clam Shack, 4 Wave Avenue www.flosclamshack.net (401) 847-8141 $

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

Alice Ball House, New Canaan, CT. Design by Philip Johnson (c.1950); Interior Design, Victoria Lyon; sculpture, Matthias Alfen; Photo, Eric Roth.

 “I shall confess to you that I have only had one teacher: the past; only one education: the study of the past.”  - LeCorbusier (1929)  

Moored like sleek Cigarette boats in a harbor full of luxury yachts, the growing number of New Canaan ‘moderns’ (more than 75 exist today), offer an unexpected visual respite in a small New England town where, for generations, tradition has ruled supreme. Their sleek, simple façades, flat roof lines, and ample, oversized windows will either shock or delight the observer today, much as they did more than a half century ago, when they were first constructed. Just like an overpowered speedboat, these bad boys of the harbor (and the men who conceived them) were out to make a point—and they succeeded. fine arts magazine  

Walter Gropius, Director of Bauhaus School, Germany; then Harvard's Architecture School director, inspired the 'Harvard Five'

These distinguished New Canaan architects, known as ‘the Harvard Five’ (Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson and Eliot Noyes), introduced a novel design sensibility on the American scene, beginning in the late 1940s. Their designs were shaped by an unexpected post-war prosperity and honed by a desire to upend the notion of “traditional house and home.” Clean angles, open floor plans, efficient space utilization and an unencumbered connection with nature and the materials of construction were foremost in their minds. Many critics found the structural solutions they applied to these design goals cold and uninviting. However, a handful of visionaries saw in modern homes the promise of an exciting, open lifestyle—a setting in which the American dream of luxury living could finally be realized.  

The visual language of modernism is an acquired skill; it requires that the viewer be ready to open his or her eyes to the possibility of elegance in its simplest form. The pristine architectural gems that dot our landscape symbolize another time in our history, a time when life promised to be carefree and filled with leisure hours. These rare creations—extant now in just a few locations throughout the world and constantly threatened with destruction—stand as symbols of a belief that innovative architecture could somehow point the way to making our world a better place to be. For that reason alone, the mid-20th-century moderns, living monuments to that conviction, deserve to be appreciated, preserved, and cherished.  

50s Look magazine life-of-ease ad, with caption,"Go, Robo-mower, and bring me the shapely form of my next-door neighbor's sunbathing wife!"

Modernism—the cultural shift that led, in the early 20th century, to radical changes in art, design, literature, architecture, and political expression—carried with it the idea of, ‘a break from old ways of thinking.’ This is the accepted sense in which the term modern is often used today, on issues ranging from child-rearing to space travel to religious beliefs—that is, meaning new, different, or non-traditional. But for most of its brief history, modern also meant controversial! With that in mind, we will be tracing modernism from its earliest European origins to a warm spring day in Berlin when, in 1933, a dedicated group of architects, artists and weavers were led away at gunpoint for their radical views about modern design.  

'White City' Chicago International Exposition 1893

It is one of the accidents of history that an unlikely Midwest American city first became the laboratory for modernist experimentation. The Columbian Exhibition in 1893 (held in Chicago in honor of Columbus’ journey 400 years earlier) featured an exhibition called ‘The White City’ —a classical Beaux Arts showcase of American industrial engineering, designed by D. H. Burnham. Appalled by his excessive use of decorative detailing, Chicago resident-architect Louis Sullivan fulminated that “it would set American architecture back for half a century.”  

Sullivan, like some of his European counterparts at the time, was decidedly anti-ornamentation. Extensive decorative embellishments had been a feature of many architectural styles of the 19th century, including Victorianism- and for some it had run its course. In 1892, Sullivan declared that, “We should refrain from the use of ornamentation for several years and concentrate entirely upon the production of buildings well-formed and comely in the nude.” Listening well and carefully watching Sullivan’s every move was a young assistant in his Chicago firm—Frank Lloyd Wright.  

Frank Lloyd Wright (c.1900)

Soon on his own, Wright was just 34 when he introduced his design for a ‘Prairie House’ in 1901. His answer to a concern of the day about the deleterious impact of industry on artisanship was to advocate for the use of the machine to bring out the beauty in natural construction materials. Wright’s vision for residential living was uniquely American and unlike anything seen before. The “prairie look” featured a cruciform footprint; asymmetrical wings; deep, overhanging roof lines that floated above bands of transom windows or glazed walls, forming deep shadows that emphasized the horizontality of the structure. His “organic architecture” took full advantage of its natural setting, both settling into it and appearing to float above it at the same time.  

Wright saw the space within the building as the “reality” of that building, and he avoided the sensation of being walled in through the ample use of glass and open-floor planning. He advocated for “…the destruction of the box—in the corners and at the junction of the walls and ceiling—where windows would let light flow in and create light play in the room.” Thus, the simple geometrics that often served as a starting-point for a design were soon softened and redefined by the creative use of light, space and interior appointments. Eschewing the past, architects like Wright would apply a range of new building materials along with carte blanche from their forward-looking clients, willing to pay for that experimentation, to create something truly unusual on the American landscape.  

Wright-designed Robie House, Chicago, 1907-09

Wright was not the only one responding to the changing social climate around him. Europe, too in the early years of the 20th century was in flux. A call for modernization could be heard in industrialized countries on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to this call for ‘the new’, the first two decades of the 20th century saw a profound and dramatic increase in creative output by the architectural, artistic, literary and musical communities. An extraordinarily concentrated burst of creative energy occurred during this time, unlike anything seen since the Renaissance. The culture of change had reached a tipping point—perhaps because of the steady and irrevocable march of industrialization, or the rise of nationalist fervor among certain European nations, or maybe because the reality of the new flying machine and the speed and excitement of the automobile had managed to grip the human imagination– It could now be said that the Modern Era was officially underway!  

Villa Stein de Monzie, by Le Corbusier, Garches, FR, 1928, featuring an early garage

In France, architect, Charles Edouard Jeanneret, who adopted the name Le Corbusier was particularly taken by the purity of line and form extolled by the modernist movement. His designs from the period of the 1920s were reductionistic in the extreme, celebrating the virtues of simple geometric forms. Like other European designers, Corbusier extended his belief in the purity of basic shapes to other endeavors, including painting and industrial design. His aesthetic that, “a house is a machine for living in”, spoke as much to his belief in the universal order of simplicity in design as it did to the firm hold that science and engineered solutions for everyday problems had on the imagination of his contemporaries.  

While elsewhere in Europe, a group of artisans banded together in Weimar, Germany in 1919, determined to revitalize the charter of the defunct Berlin-based Arts and Crafts School of the previous century. They called themselves the Bauhaus School. Given that the country was gripped by social unrest, monetary inflation, and political instability after World War I, the mere fact of the creation of such an ambitious project in light of the times was remarkable. Headed by architect Walter Gropius (who had viewed the American architectural scene around Chicago in the 1890s and called it “the look of the future”), the school attracted the best and brightest of the time, including furniture designer Marcel Breuer, artist László Moholy-Nagy, and architects Josef Albers and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, among others.  

Bauhaus School exhibition flier during Weimar location years

For the next 14 years, the staff and students of the Bauhaus School redefined modern design in everything from apartment buildings to serving spoons. The creative energy at the school was fueled by a belief that design should not be defined by tradition, but by a constantly renewing and critical analysis of society’s needs and values. Open to more eclectic influences than the American modernist movement, Bauhaus faculty regularly included some of the best-known abstract painters, photographers, surrealist writers, fabric artists, muralists and actors of the day. Underlying all their efforts was the now-famous dictum put forth by faculty member Mies van der Rohe, “Less is more.”  

Soon, though, the winds of war began to blow again in Germany. The radical views about social change and the experimental art forms they supported soon brought the school to the attention of Hitler’s ultra-right National Socialist Party. Deemed degenerate by the state, the Bauhaus School (staff and students alike) were soon functioning under the watchful eye of the Gestapo. On April 11, 1933, the school was closed by Nazi police, who arrived with weapons drawn.  

This unfortunate turn of events impacted directly on the core members of the Bauhaus faculty—Gropius, Breuer, van der Rohe, Albers, and Moholy-Nagy, who eventually immigrated to America. Consistent with the axiom that “every time a door shuts, another opens,” these masters of the modern would soon imprint a new generation of architects and designer much closer to us here in the United States.  

St Georges Hall, Liverpool (1854). Fine example of Neo-Classical architecture

History teaches us that no important cultural shift occurs spontaneously, without the emergence of novel and sometimes hotly-debated ideas that spark the imagination. The seeds of Modernism that eventually flowered in the 20th century were, in fact, planted three centuries earlier, during a period in the late 17th century that later came to be known as, The Enlightenment. During that period, European philosophers first wrote about the power of the individual to determine his own fate. This was a revolutionary—possibly even heretical—idea in the 1600s, when the power of religion and superstition largely held sway over public behavior and beliefs. In 1689, John Locke, an English intellectual, declared that “every man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” (borrowing from these sentiments, “Happiness” came later, thanks to Thomas Jefferson.) Locke was not alone in his thinking. The emergence of scientific inquiry, the printed book, industrialization, the growth of cities, the loss of political influence of the church, the challenge to the divine right of kings to rule unconditionally, and the new concept of “free will and self-determinism” all had the effect of defining a new way of thinking for the average 18th-century man-in-the-street.  

Thomas Jefferson-designed Montecello (late 18th c.) Mathematical perfection in American Classical-inspired design

This reformist wave was accompanied by some new ways of thinking about architecture, too . . . or, rather, some new old ways of thinking. With the emergence of enlightened thought, which placed a premium on the wisdom of once-idyllic and grand civilizations, came a renewed interest in ancient Greco-Roman style. The search for perfection and balance in nature and design was to be rediscovered in the works of Greek and Roman philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. Eighteen-century exploration and colonization of, and trade with, increasingly far-flung, exotic locales triggered further interest in non-European cultures. Egyptian, other North African destinations and Eurasian and Japanese design elements soon worked their way into architectural motifs, creating a blizzard of building styles and rampant eclecticism in design…with names like federalism (Neoclassical with certain American influences, such as the eagle motif); Greek Revival; Gothic Revival; Romanesque Revival; Colonial Revival; Tudor Revival; Spanish Revival; Beaux Arts; Arts & Craft; and Victorianism, to cite just a few.  

Haute Victorian design- Carson Mansion, Eureka, CA (1895)

Throughout most of the 19th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, the architectural agenda was being defined by nobility and the aristocracy. Design was the pursuit of the privileged and those favored with the money and time to indulge. The vast disparity in wealth found in all of Western Europe and in the newly-formed United States, for that matter, meant that a handful of powerful and influential individuals (and those employed to express their vision in bricks and mortar) set the stage for architectural fashion. And for them, there was a shared belief that historical hindsight held the key to enlightened reasoning.  

It took the flowering of the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and the emergence of a newly-created middle class, demanding realistic and affordable housing near the city-centers where they were increasingly employed, to finally move the design and construction of mass housing into the realm of the realistic and practical. Here, we can finally say that American initiatives in factory and residential design led the way; and by the late 1880s, Europe was looking to us for inspiration and direction in innovative architectural design.  

Invention of standard 2'x4', balloon frame made mass production housing possible in late 19th c.

It was at this critical juncture that the term modern was first used to describe the shift in values away from established, traditional ways of thinking and toward the search for solutions for the rapidly emerging class of workers and their families. The term cut across class boundaries and touched every aspect of human behavior; but when it came to architecture, modern soon took on the meaning of fast, practical and affordable (milled 2”x4” lumber in various lengths and the ‘balloon frame’ of standardized home construction used even today made their appearance at that time). The class-conscious posturing of previous generations, given expression through their elaborate homes and buildings, gave way to the new reality of a melding of culture and class at the urban neighborhood level–meaning that the expression of wealth and influence through adornment and embellishment became less important than the rapid and practical accommodation of families, workers and the wide range of facilities needed to support them. These pressures to produce on the part of designers and builders, alike, first gave rise to the axiom that, “form follows function”, clearing the way on the eve of the 20th century for a new of thinking about architecture, for which the term modern was soon appropriated.  

Along with the emergence of a new, residential middle class in both Europe and the U.S., innovative commercial building materials were being introduced—materials that could serve the growing space and performance demands of industrial, and retail construction: fireproof steel beams, cast-iron façades, reinforced concrete, and plate glass. With these products, architects were being increasingly called upon to design large, well-lit, utilitarian spaces for large-scale production, where efficiency and unimpaired performance were the main requirements. These newly-developed construction materials, along with the mechanical lift and the telephone, made the creation of the first multi-story building (meaning over three or four stories) possible in the 1880s. The Flatiron Building, NYC (1902), left, was an example of a structure that took advantage of diminishing land resources in the city and the invention of the Otis ‘Lift’, which meant buildings go be taller than four stories.  

Jacques Henri Llartigue, Grand Prix de Circuit de la Seine (1912)

Due to rapid innovations in both science and industry, society was gripped by a desire for the changes in life style that these improvements promised. A call for modernization could be heard in most industrialized countries. Harking this call for ‘the new’, the first two decades of the 20th century saw a profound and dramatic increase in creative output by the architectural, artistic, literary and musical communities on both sides of the Atlantic. An extraordinarily concentrated burst of creative output occurred during this time, unlike anything seen since the Renaissance. The culture of change had reached a tipping point—perhaps because of the steady and irrevocable march of industrialization, or because of the call-to-arms by sociopolitical activists like Marx, Baudelaire and Nietzsche, or maybe because the reality of the new flying machine and the speed and excitement of the automobile had managed to grip the human imagination– It could now be said that the Modern Era was officially underway!  

By Richard J. Friswell, Managing Editor  

Editor’s Note: The vital role of architect, Philip Johnson, a protégé of Gropius and his impact on the growth of American Modernism, will be the subject of Part IV in our series.

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

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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.

I

Slung around the harbor and plaza side of the structure is a bulging swath of glass that cuts across the concrete mantel like a 3-D sash that terminates in geodesic knots, a nod to Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain. Inside, this is the place to meet, a gathering spot for the photo op, perhaps the podium, or the bar, depending on the occasion. This cool windshield-like fixture admits as much light as it permits the gaze of the crowds to float outward onto the harbor, the airfield next door and the Verde Gris of Tampa Bay – a compelling vista.

Welcome to interior museum planning as of 1.11.11, when the Dali Museum opened: 68,000 square feet divided into public space, offices and last but not least, galleries. The Dali brand gift shop, where one arrives, is a surrealist chotztke paradise. Save for a greeter to point the way, one could wander there endlessly, perhaps taking a Catalonian bean soup and alighting in the adjacent open café for a glass of Rioja. If you remember why you came here, you may now buy your admission ticket.

With deference to Frank Lloyd Wright, you start at the top floor, awash in natural light. Ascending via elevator or a single helix stairwell – tight, when up and down visitors employ it simultaneously – one enters gallery spaces that may be cavernous or confined or both. The installation sweetly begins with the narrative of mega-benefactors A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, who befriended Dali, and their first acquisition Daddy Longlegs of the Evening – Hope! Arranged chronologically, the early impressionist still life work, nudes, (particularly Femme Couche, 1928), as well as landscapes notable for their oyster white light, are installed in close quarters that suggest nothing more than a high ceilinged storage area.

In 1925, Dali read Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams which catapulted his imagination, style and subject matter in new directions. At this point, the gallery space likewise opens up. Un Chien Andalou, 1929, an absurdist film made with Luis Bunuel is projected large-scale onto one wall of a vast rectangular space. So enjoyable is the phenomenon of viewing video in situ, that one never wants to enter a small darkened place segmented behind a curtain again. Sculptural objects co-mingle, like Venus de Milo with Drawers, 1936, (having white fur knobs), extending the cathartic relief of Surrealist humor to previously unrealized dimensions.

Augured by the seminal Nature Morte Vivante (Still Life – Fast Moving), 1956 the next paintings gallery heralds several key works, including the oft reproduced Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko (Second Version), 1976 – which is also the collection catalogue cover, (by Robert Lubar); and the image adorning, for example, a hotel corridor at the Hilton in Pinellas Park, Florida.

The hauntingly powerful works, Old Age Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages), 1940, through The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1 952-54 – here the iconic melting watches; and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 1958-59 articulate Dali’s breadth of artistic concerns. But although there is breadth, there is not necessarily breathing. This installation does not permit the depth of perspective, the arc one of the peripheral walk, or the generosity of space that allowed one to absorb, much less luxuriate in, each work in the previous building. That generosity might now be called wasted space. Or perhaps, interest in this collection is simply greater than expected, and so one jostles for space.

The installation’s last progression – there are a total of over 2,100 phantasmagorical Dali holdings, so exhibitions revolve – is the “Nuclear Mysticism” period, the artist’s response to a perceived lack of spiritualism in Abstract Expressionism. (He felt a computer could generate a Mondrian or Pollock.) Monumental canvases like The Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1969-1970, which seems to hale Jim Dine’s Venuses, document the classicism, supernatural aura and transcendental concerns of Salvador Dali. What painter working today is consumed with reconciling the metaphysical with the political, scientific and the psychological?

Having broken early on from Andre Breton, Dali’s sweeping, alchemic worldview ultimately became self-referential, and simultaneously validated. When the artist consolidated his works in the Teatro-Museo Dali in 1974, diametrically opposed events unfolded: his beloved wife and muse Gala died; King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia became honorary patrons of The Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali; and Dali was honored with the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, the State’s highest award, all in 1982 – the same year the Salvador Dai Museum first opened in St. Petersburg Florida.

Beyond the kitsch, the caricature and the reputed 400 blank pieces of paper Dali signed – or because of it – this prolific artist’s oeuvre is accessible. Diverse mediums such as holograms, jewelry, film, sculpture, painting and works on paper, represents exactly what the artist sought—an amalgam, a holistic view and a way of seeing things. Take a look at the influence in fashion, personified by the apparition Daphne Guinness. Such creative whimsy filled the crowds on opening day at The Dali Museum, when a Dali impersonator and a Salsa band sizzled on the outdoor plaza with rhythm and beat beneath this latest signature piece. The ingrained dance steps of well-dressed patrons patterned the sunlight and suggested that it’s this composite that will likely succeed – and outstrip its predecessor – not solely as a museum with a great biographical collection, but as a fascinating cultural destination. Does the building become as iconic as the artist?

The artist and building converge into a seamless whole, a Dali universe. 40,000 visitors have toured the museum since it’s opening last month. One Saturday alone recorded 2,300 guests. With over a $1,000,000 in revenue since 1.11.11, this Dali Museum generated a quarter of the annual revenue above its previous location. Surrealism is getting real; its imagination and lofty ideals got packaged here with zest and panache, without the pretense, and coalesced into the intuitive experience one craves.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer