A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Michelina Docimo, CSBA, Contribuying Writer  

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

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

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

Alex Maclean  

www.alexmaclean.com

J

Left: John James Audubon        
Hooping Crane (Whooping Crane)        
handcolored lithograph – double elephant folio size, 1834        
Museum Purchase made possible by Carol Cope and the Museum
Museum of Nebraska Art Collection
Fine Arts Magazine 

John Syme, John James Audubon (1826)

Audubon embraced a passion for exploration, and transformed himself from a French gentleman into an American wilderness man. The artist was fond of myth and legend – and he played his romanticized role as an expeditionary well. Many rumors, some perpetuated by the artist himself, aided this image. In one of these rumors, Audubon was purported to be the son of a French nobleman; in another, Audubon was the pupil of the great French master, Jacques-Louis David. Whether these attributions are fact or fiction, it remai ns that John James Audubon is an historical figure worthy of recognition. 

The Early Years

Audubon was born in Santo Domingo, now Haiti, in 1785. His father was a French sea captain and plantation owner, his mother, the captain’s mistress. Audubon’s mother died shortly after his birth, but it was several years before the boy came to reside with his father’s legal family in Nantes, France. Mrs. Audubon embraced the boy as her own, and saw that he was provided with the lifestyle of a young country gentleman. From an early age, Audubon maintained an interest in the natural world around him, and responded to it with drawn images of the flora and fauna he observed. 

In 1803, when he was 18, Audubon traveled to America to avoid conscription into the Napoleonic army. There he was expected to look after his father’s investment property, the estate at Mill Grove (near Philadelphia). In fact, there was really very little overseeing to be done on the property and the young man was able to live a life of few cares and responsibilities. Through his prowess at hunting, he amassed an extensive collection of wildlife specimens, which were preserved and used for sketching. Young Audubon is credited with conducting the first known North American banding experiment, in which he discovered that the birds known as the Eastern Phoebes returned to the same nesting sites each year. 

In 1805 Audubon returned to France for a year, where he perfected many bird sketches. Upon returning to America in 1806, he continued drawing and developed a specialized technique of using wire armatures within specimens, enabling him to pose birds in life-like poses. However, though very happy with his artistic pursuits, he longed to explore a career beyond the estate. In 1807 he traveled to Louisville, Kentucky to establish business connections, returning to Mill Grove the following year to marry fiancée Lucy Bakewell and whisk her to Louisville. The year 1810 must have been a pivotal point in Audubon’s life. That year the young man met ornithological illustrator Alexander Wilson, who was considered the father of American ornithology. After viewing Wilson’s work, Audubon’s business partner Ferdinand Rozier told him his drawings were better and convinced Audubon to publish his work. 

The following years were punctuated with unrest for the family, which had by then grown by two sons (two daughters died). In search of business opportunities, the family relocated several times. After several business successes including general stores in Missouri and Illinois, Audubon overextended himself in an economic downturn and was distracted by his passion – painting birds instead of minding his business ventures, leading in 1819, at age 34, to his imprisonment for a period on bankruptcy charges. 

The Professional Artist and The Birds of America 

J.J. Audubon. Whooping Crane-Young (Sandhill Crane), handcolored lithograph-octavo size, c.1839-42. Gift of Harold & Mahanan Andersen, MUNA Collection

For a time, the Audubon family subsisted on the meager earnings that the artist made as a charcoal portraitist. Settling in Cincinnati in 1820, he worked for a time as a taxidermist. Unsatisfied with this way of life, the artist made a drastic decision. He was determined to travel the Mississippi in search of bird specimens, which he intended to introduce into a grand art and science book form. Accompanied by an assistant, a gun, art supplies, and little else, he took on the persona of a seasoned frontiersman. Gone were the days of dressing as a businessman – Audubon embraced the hardship of frontier travel and reinvented himself as a rough-hewn explorer and naturalist. 

Upon reaching New Orleans, Audubon and his assistant Joseph Mason, his 12-year old pupil, tried to amass money for a great expedition. In the meantime, Audubon earned a little money to send home by doing miscellaneous artwork. Lucy was able to support the family by serving as a tutor to the gentry. In 1822 Audubon, accompanied by his sons and assistant Mason, journeyed to Natchez, Mississippi. Over the next two years, Audubon honed his style and created an impressive collection of bird drawings, for which Mason had rendered many life-like backgrounds. 

J.J. Audubon, American Buffalo or Bison, octavo size, n.d.; acquired by gift of Cliff & Mary Hillegass, MONA Collection

In 1824 the artist traveled to Philadelphia to seek support for his grandiose bird project. However, Audubon was rejected by most of the connoisseurs he had hoped to impress. His buckskin attire, greased hair, and lack of educational credentials made them suspicious and uncomfortable. Furthermore, many were unwilling to accept Audubon’s new, lively portrayals of birdlife because they had a financial investment in the now deceased Alexander Wilson’s work, and saw Audubon’s superior drawings as an economic threat. Audubon was a shameless promoter of his own art, and his criticisms of Wilson’s uninspired and lifeless bird poses failed to endear him to those he met. Unable to find a publisher first in Philadelphia and then New York City, the artist looked to England. 

Upon arriving there in 1826, Audubon was confronted by a quite different audience. The people of England and Scotland were intrigued by the looks and manner of Audubon’s frontier persona. Indeed, to them he looked like a romanticized character from a James Fenimore Cooper story. Audubon’s “frontier” birds were admired as well, and the artist began looking for an engraver to help him render saleable prints. The artist entered into an agreement with William Lizars of Edinburgh to execute the prints, but Lizars completed only ten plates before pulling away from the project. 

J.J. Audubon, American Red Fox, handcolored lthograph, imperial size, 1844; MONA Collection

The artist pressed on, forging a business relationship with London engraver Robert Havell, Jr. The two men worked closely together to retain the artistic integrity of the prints, and were even able to improve some of the compositions. The result: The Birds of America, a series containing 435 hand-colored plates of life-sized birds. The lithographs, measuring more than two by three feet each, were issued in four volumes, including a synopsis and index, between the years of 1827 and 1838. They were accompanied by a five-volume work called Ornithological Biography, which contained Audubon’s scientific essays about each of the birds included in the project. These sets were sold by subscription at the regal price of $1,000 each, and Audubon’s tenacious marketing skills enabled him to sell more than 200 sets over the years. Audubon was now able to live comfortably and with some renown. 

In 1829 the artist returned to the United States. He continued to travel and collect specimens to supplement The Birds of America, but returned to England only twice to view the production of the engravings. In 1838, the last print was issued. However, Audubon envisioned more for The Birds of America. By 1840 the artist was determined to make more copies in a smaller, more compact edition, called an octavo. Audubon contracted with Philadelphia lithographer John T. Bowen for this project. Audubon, his son John Woodhouse, and the lithographer began careful production, and the project was complete by 1845. 

Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America 

Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA), Kearney, NE

Audubon seems never to have tired of his artistic and scientific pursuits. In 1842 he began taking subscriptions for another exciting project, Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. It was his desire to compile another collection – this time featuring mammalian life. The year 1843 brought yet another expedition for specimens – this time, Audubon traveled west to the upper Missouri River and to the Dakotas. In 1845 the first folio, or section, of Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America became a reality. Unfortunately, Audubon’s sight was failing. He began to show marked traits of senility and was unable to continue with the project. His son John Woodhouse continued to collect specimens and to create images for the volume, but Audubon suffered a stroke just prior to the completion of the third and final folio. John James Audubon, an American legend, passed away at his New York estate in 1851 at the age of 65. 

The Museum of Nebraska Art holds 19 works by John James Audubon including the seven-volume Birds of America. 

by Kristin Gebhardt, Contributing Writer 

Visit the Museum of Nebraska Art at www.mona.unk.edu 

T

Left: Pair of vases, France (probably Paris), about 1820. Hard-paste porcelain decorated in polychrome enamels and gilding; ht: 28 ¾”, wd: 12”. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Miss Clara Endicott Sears . Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Gilbert Stuart, Portrait of David Sears Jr. (1815), oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

To minimize competition, the king enacted laws that severely restricted the activities of other porcelain manufacturers, but as the porcelain industry began to have a positive impact on the French economy, Old Paris porcelain manufacturers eventually enjoyed more latitude in their operations. Many Old Paris porcelain artisans also had their own patrons from the French nobility, catering quickly to changing styles and customs. The French Revolution had severely affected the porcelain industry in Paris, with its attacks against the wealthy aristocracy. The result was the proliferation of other factories, whose autonomy allowed them to finally free themselves from the established monopoly held for years by Sèvres.

19th C. Boston residence of David Sears, Jr., now the Somerset Club

This pair of ornate mounted vases on pedestals flanked by gilt handles in the form of winged female busts was ordered from Paris in 1820, by Bostonian, David Sears Jr. (1787-1871). They were to decorate his new Boston residence, on Beacon Hill, designed by Alexander Parris in 1819. Today, the building serves as the home of the prestigious, Somerset Club. David Sears Jr. had earlier inherited a tremendous estate from his father, amassed during the China Trade. The vases were later bequeathed to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1960, by his descendant, Clara Endicott Sears.

François Gerard, Portrait of Empress Joséphine of France (1895). Private Collection

While Mr. and Mrs. David Sears were living in Europe between 1811-1814, they spent time in Paris, frequenting the circle of Empress Josephine. There, they likely admired the elegantly mounted porcelains they saw in and around the city. [1] It has been suggested that this pair of vases was formerly “from the possession of the Empress Josephine of France, the wife of Napoleon the First, acquired at the breaking up of her, Château de Malmaison…” [2] However, we know from memorandums from David Sears that he requested from Paris “…two large Porcelain vases to place in the niches—The price limited to 500 francs each.” [3] The association with a pair of vases from Malmaison may have been perpetuated by the 1886, Memoir of the Honorable David Sears, stating that he “ornamented the original doorway of his new house in Beacon Street with a pair of beautiful white marble vases saved from the wreck of Malmaison.” [4]

The model of the MFA vases was most likely made in the factory founded by Jean Népomucène Hermann Nast (1754–1817) and later managed by his sons. Their creations was introduced at the 1819 “Exposition des Produits des Manufactures” and again at the 1823 Exhibition, when King Louis XVIII purchased two of them. [5] According to critics, “the Nast brothers won the highest award at the [Paris] Exhibition of 1819, as well as personal congratulations from Louis XVIII. They had been displaying some outstanding pieces…[including] monumental vases.” [6]

A. Garvise, Vue de la Malmaison No. II, Paris, hand-colored engraving (circ., early 19th C.)

Derived from the Greek amphorae, the elegant antique form of these vases demonstrates the talent and skill of the Nast workshop. Although unmarked, the extensive use of gilding and the richly-painted large reserves depicting pastoral and Classical scenes on are typical of French porcelain of the 1820s when ornamental vases used to decorate mantels became fashionable. [7] The matte and duller gilding of the handles, the lower section of the body, and the stem of the foot is achieved by applying gilding to unglazed porcelain and emphasizes the painted reliefs. The quality of the painted and gilt decoration and the technical feat of execution entirely out of porcelain, without the additional support of bronze mounts for the delicate handles, are all characteristic of the style of the Nast brothers. [8]

Future galleries dedicated to 19th century decorative arts will highlight the MFA’s unparalleled holdings of European ceramics.

by Rebecca Tilles, Contributing Writer

Rebecca Tilles is a curatorial research associate in decorative arts and sculpture in the Art of Europe Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and has assisted with the exhibitions “Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815” (2007) and “Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection” (2009). She holds a BA in French and French Cultural Studies from Wellesley College and an MA in European Decorative Arts from The Bard Graduate Center in New York.

______________________________________________________

[1] Milo M. Naeve and Lynn Springer Roberts, A Decade of Decorative Arts: The Antiquarian Society of The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: The Institute, 1986), p. 70.

[2] Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 1800-1840 (New York: Baltimore Museum of Art and Abbeville Press, 1993), p. 43.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Dernières Acquisitions du Département des Objets d’Art du Louvre 1990-1994” (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1995), p. 262-264.

[6] Régine de Plinval de Guillebon, Porcelain of Paris 1770-1850 (New York: Walker, 1972), p. 101.

[7] Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, “Paris porcelain in America,” in The Magazine Antiques (April 1998), p. 554.

[8] “Un Age d’Or des Arts Décoratifs 1814-1848 (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux,1991), p. 144-145.

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

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

The Story Within The Threads

Navajo Loom and weaver, circ. 1920

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Navajo rug. Center diamond shows Hispanic influence (1925)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Textiles as Material Culture

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

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

Contremporary Navajo rug illustrates individual innovation and outside cultural influences

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

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

by Judy Newland, MA, MS, Contributing Writer

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

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

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt (circ.1910)

This is a tale of two historic homes in a beautiful seaside, New England town, and of how visionary zeal and coincidence braided history, friendship and a passion for things beautiful together in a most unusual way…

On May 1, 1915 Alfred Vanderbilt boarded the Lusitania bound for Liverpool as a first class passenger. It was a business trip, and he traveled with only his valet, leaving his family at home in New York. On May 7th, off the coast of County Cork, Ireland, the German submarine, U-20, torpedoed the ship, triggering a secondary explosion, sinking the giant ocean liner within eighteen minutes. Vanderbilt and his valet, Ronald Denyer, helped others into lifeboats, and then Vanderbilt gave his own lifejacket to save a female passenger, even tying it onto her himself, since she was holding an infant child in her arms. His selfless actions cost him, and those of 1197 other passengers, their lives. Fine Arts Magazine

WW I recruiting poster, following the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, which killed Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt’s fate was ironic, as three years earlier he had made a last minute decision not to return to the United States…on the Titanic.

Thus, ended the life and colorful saga of one of America’s wealthiest men. He was of a generation of Americans who rose attained power and prestige, born of family legacy. The privileged class at the end of the 19th century had made their money in industry: steel, oil, railroads and manufacturing. And many of these families fled the crush of New York City for the fresh ocean breezes and genteel lifestyle of in Newport, Rhode Island. There, they planned and constructed great stone, seaside fin-de-siècle ‘cottages’; elaborate and massive homes in the classical European style, still standing today, emblematic of an era in American history, sometimes called the Gilded Age.

Vanderbilt Hall, Newport, RI, built be Vanderbilt for his mistress in 1909

In 1909, when Alfred Vanderbilt was still very much part of the Newport scene, with his family’s homes, The Breakers and Marble House, on prominent bluffs overlooking the Atlantic, fate dramatically altered the course of his life. A chance encounter in Central Park with a beautiful woman would provide Newport with an architectural treasure, standing today in a restored setting—the vision of yet another wealthy businessman—this time in 21st century style. Vanderbilt Hall, in the heart of Newport, was originally erected by Alfred for Agnes O’Brien Ruiz, wife of the Cuban attaché, who became his mistress after one day managing to bring her unruly horse under control in the city’s park. This fervent affair drew the wrath and indignation of the Vanderbilt family and it soon came to an end. Tragically, Ruiz was disowned by her husband and committed suicide a few years later.

Over the decades, Vanderbilt Hall has found many uses, principally as a hotel. But time and neglect took their toll on the building and much of its inherent charm was lost to expedience. Then, in 2007, the property was purchased by Peter de Savary, an English businessman with global property holdings and a vision for what Vanderbilt Hall might once again become.

Vernon Court, Newport, RI, home of the National Museum of American Illustration

Just as the Alfred Vanderbilt saga played out, another wealthy individual had taken up residence at nearby, Vernon Court, on prestigious Bellevue Avenue. Constructed in 1898 by architects, Carrère and Hastings (NY Public Library, U.S. House and Senate Office Building, Flagler Museum, Frick Museum), in the style of an 18th century French country chateau, Vernon Court served as a summer cottage for the young widow of wealthy businessman, Richard A. Gambrill. Surrounded by beautiful gardens, inspired by those of Henry VIII for his ill-fated queen, Anne Boleyn, and adjacent to Stoneacre, a park conceived by Frederick Law Olmstead (New York’s Central Park, Boston’s ‘Emerald Necklace’), it was a showpiece in many ways. It remained occupied by descendants of the family until 1956 and filled many uses over the decades since, until purchased in 1998 by Laurence and Judy Cutler, founders of the National Museum of American Illustration (NMAI).

It is here that the story of two historic properties and the divergent objectives of their two owners intersect.

Englishman, Peter de Savary is known internationally as a businessman, luxury hospitality property developer and a 1983 America’s Cup competitor for Britain. He is also an avid art collector. Various homes throughout the world house hundreds of his period works from Old Masters to the Romantic Era. It was not until he decided to undertake the renovation of the then-closed Vanderbilt Hall property in 2008 that he contacted New York City art dealer and 20th century American illustration art expert, Judy Cutler. They had met before, in 1998, when the Cutler’s purchased the property that was to become their museum from its current owner, Peter de Savary, befriending one another in the course of the transaction. Her art gallery was, as they had discovered, directly across the street from de Savary’s New York City apartment!

Vanderbilt Hall, now a luxury masion hotel and spa, owned by Peter de Savary

De Savary’s vision for Vanderbilt Hall, which he was then converting into an exclusive, membership-based resort hotel, was to capture a certain feel—of optimism and good times, of hope and a sense of home. With just 33 suites, it would make a glittering statement about a time long-past, when Newport thrived as a destination for the rich and very rich, and America enjoyed a period of prosperity. The ‘Roaring ‘20s’ were called the Jazz Age, the Age of Intolerance, and the Age of Wonderful Nonsense. But, under any moniker, the era embodied the beginning of modern America. Numerous Americans felt buoyed up following World War I (1914-18). The period of a deadly worldwide influenza epidemic (1918) had also abated. The new decade would be a time of change for everyone —only to be brought to an abrupt end by the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great depression that followed.

But, the spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of optimism associated with modernity—and a break with tradition. Everything seemed possible through modern technology. New inventions, especially automobiles, moving pictures and radio, proliferated, bringing ‘modern times’ to a many Americans. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality in daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, in reaction to the mood that gripped the country during the ‘war to end all wars’. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, captured the tenor of the times best when he wrote:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning– So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - The Great Gatsby, Ch. 9

Howard Chandler Christy, Stephen Foster Composing, ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’, originally painted as a 3-part panel.

Peter de Savary wanted to capture Fitzgerald’s mood of unbridled optimism when it came time to install art at Vanderbilt Hall. For this, he contacted Judy Cutler to learn more about how early 20th century illustration art might help set that very mood. Collabortating as a team, each room, from the 24-karat gold leaf dining room, to the area surrounding the many restored, working fireplaces, to the most intimate corner of the property, was hung with authentic, rare and strikingly dramatic examples of illustration art for a period-appropriate touch of elegance.

John Lagatta, The Bather (circ. 1935)

The artistic centerpiece near the lobby is a three-panel screen, by Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952), now hung like a painting. It is densely embellished, in a modern variation of Rococo styling, titled, Stephen Foster Composing, ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’. In it, the alluring young woman of the song’s title languishes on a sofa, gazing directly at the viewer, while among the many naked figures, Christy’s mistress dances on the far left. It is spicy and suggestive—much less saccharine than hasty perusal would suggest. Vanderbilt Hall is filled to overflowing with brilliantly-colored, familiar works like this and those by other noted illustration artists, including Pruett Carter, William Soare, Earl Steffa Moran, Julian De Miskey, Earl Bergey and Elbert McGran Jackson. If these artists’ names are unfamiliar to aficionados, it should be noted that they worked largely for the booming magazine and advertising trades in the 1920s and’30s. Their images graced the covers of such cultural icons as Vogue, Colliers, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, American Weekly Magazine and the New York Herald Tribune Sunday Supplement. Deliberately evocative and sexually suggestive in ways that would never do today, these skillfully-executed works conjure a time that we would like to believe was simpler and social issues were more easily navigated.

Rico Tomaso, Center of Attention (1934)

By far, my favorite pieces in the Vanderbilt Hall Collection include one hung in the breakfast café by John Lagatta entitled, Bather (circ. 1935). For anyone who has not viewed illustration art ‘up close and personal’, the lessons that this painting teach are important. First, the technical merits of the work, including pronounced and skillful brushwork, image composition and color layering that would be the envy of any artist; the sentimental theme, while contrived, conveys a specific, unstated tension between the two figures and a charming period-specific flavor that gains in aesthetic appeal over time; and lastly, the use of light to dramatize the interaction and heighten the illusion of depth and surface planes with merely a few well-chosen brush strokes are just short of masterful.

Another favorite hangs in the dining room and it just might be everyone’s favorite work. It is a sultry portrait of a 20’s socialite, by Rico Tomaso, titled, Center of Attention. She sits on a bar stool, surrounded by men, draped in silk and gazing over her shoulder at something or someone of interest in the distance. Seductive, childlike, sophisticated, bored, calculating, manipulative, naive, unnaturally beautiful are all terms that come to mind, simultaneously, when considering this painting. A 20’s version of Paris Hilton, this mystery woman is clearly in command of the scene. Tomaso’s subtle portrayal of this inscrutable, physically-appealing individual, who sits idly by, as the men surround her competing for attention, is all captured in this small, but elegant painting.

The works were, of course, all purchased by Peter de Savary from Judy Cutler’s, American Illustrators Gallery, in New York City . For anyone interested in an expanded, dramatically-more comprehensive tour of illustration art, the Cutler’s, National Museum of American Illustration, is a short distance away at Vernon Court.

Charles Dana Gibson, The Market Basket (circ. 1900)

A suitably elegant setting, the mansion currently houses the museum’s extensive collection of American illustration; the Gilded Age in architecture is contemporaneous with the “Golden Age of American Illustration”, and is a theme on which the collection focuses. Over a period of more than forty years, the Cutler’s collection has grown to become remarkably comprehensive. Anchoring the collection are some of the iconic drawings of Charles Dana Gibson (the Gibson Girls), paintings by Howard Pyle, the father of illustration art, his students, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth and J.C. Leyendecker , who in turn influenced many others, like Norman Rockwell. The NMAI has the second largest collection of Norman Rockwell paintings, next to the Rockwell Museum, itself, in Stockbridge, MA.

The museum also includes the work of J.M. Flagg, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Frederick Remington, to name a few. Hung in abundance throughout elegantly-appointed rooms in the house, the exhibition presents more like a salon than museum. Personal touches and period furnishings add to the visual appeal of the works, contextualizing them for the viewer.

Panels from Maxwell Parrish's, A Florentine Fete (1911), hung in the Rose Garden Loggia at National Museum of American Illustration

For any that would argue illustration art is not ‘serious’, consider first the technical merits of the work and the fact that many artist, adopting this genre did so because of a lucrative publishing market, that sought out competent image-makers to support their editorial content and offer visual appeal at the newsstand. Director, Judy Cutler points out that, “At that time, if you were paid in advance to complete a work of art on a specific theme, then you were not considered a serious artist.” Consider that many illustrators trained with well-known artists of the early 20th century and that some, like Rockwell and Flagg, during their long careers and on their own initiative, tackled profoundly important patriotic and politically-charged issues as subject matter for their paintings (Artist, James Montgomery Flagg, himself, was the model for Uncle Sam in the iconic, ‘I want YOU! poster).

Maxfield Parrish, A Florentine Fete (1911), detail

Commenting on her own extensive collection of illustration art, celebrity, Whoopi Goldberg, describes the strong emotion and magic associated with finding well-crafted illustration plates of her childhood books. She points out that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel was, in its day, illustration art! It should also be noted that early 19th century painter, John Trumbull, was intent on documenting key events in the American Revolution, before they were lost to collective memory. His brush was his camera of the day. Winslow Homer began his career as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. George Lucas, director and master story-teller on film, defines illustration art as, “Cultural artifacts infused with a sensibility of time.” For Lawrence Cutler, this means that, “illustration art carries with it a sense of history; either defining who we are through mass-produced images, or reflecting our identity as discovered through the artist’s eye.”

Norman Rockwell, Miss Liberty, Saturday Evening Post cover, July 1, 1943

A breathtaking series of large panels by Maxfield Parrish, hung in the Rose Garden Loggia and the stairwell leading up to the second floor, is an astounding representation of the early Art Deco style, epitomized by Parrish. Once adorning the 175’-long cafeteria walls at Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia (publisher of Ladies Home Journal), this commissioned series, entitled, A Florentine Fete (1911) was acquired by Judy Cutler when the business closed several years ago. Theatrical and romantic in their conception, each panel radiates with individual motifs and implied dramatic ‘moment’. Yet each is infused with the rich glowing color and subtle inflection of gesture or intent. One less obvious theme linking the works is the repeated appearance of Parrish’s companion, Susan Lewin. These panels, once part of a work-a-day office building setting, are well served in the naturally-lit loggia, garden views outside every window.

Norman Rockwell’s, Miss Liberty is another favorite, not to be missed. The central figure, preoccupied with her heavy burden, seems poised to bustle directly off the canvas. She represents America herself, carrying symbols of many of careers that women in the 1940’s were prohibited from. Rockwell captured a seminal historical moment as doors were being opened to women in the competitive market place, previously denied them. With humor, dynamic action and rich symbolism, he thus educates the viewer on an important issue in our collective history, without uttering a syllable.

Vanderbilt Hall and Vernon Court are symbols of a common history that define what Newport, Rhode Island once was. Both homes embodied the hopes and dreams of a people and era, long-past. Henry James once bitterly remarked that the Newport ‘cottages’ should stand there always, reminders “of the peculiarly awkward vengeances of affronted proportion and discretion.” But James could not imagine the dreams of a new generation and the re-purposing of these splendid spaces as havens of enlightenment and rejuvenation.

Thanks to people like Peter de Savary, and Judy and Lawrence Cutler and their exceptional efforts, Newport Lives!

by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

Please post your secure comments in the section below. We welcome your feedback.

_______________________________________________

Visit Vanderbilt Hall at www.vanderbilthall.com

See the collection of illustration art and scenes of Vernon Court at www.americanillustration.org

The Kolb Brothers Hanging, Grand Canyon (1904). Photo by Ellsworth & Emory Kolb, courtesy Cline Library, N. Arizona Univ.

 The Grand Canyon is wild and unforgiving. But it is also one of the most stunning landscapes on Earth—a place for recreation, reflection and reverence. A beautiful Smithsonian exhibition allows us to marvel at this natural wonder without camping equipment, emergency rations or rappelling ropes.  

Featuring 60 framed photographs, Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the Grand Canyon Association. The exhibition is now midway through its national tour, and can currently be seen at the Durham Museum in Omaha, Neb., on view through September 12, 2010. If you can’t swing a visit to see this natural wonder in Arizona, perhaps you can catch a glimpse of the canyon’s beauty when the Smithsonian traveling exhibition comes to a venue near you. The exhibition tour continues through 2013, and the full itinerary can be seen at www.sites.si.edu. ARTES Fine Arts Magazine  

Jack Dykinga, Toroweap Overlook in Morning Light (1987). Photo courtesy J.Dykinga

Grand Canyon National Park, 2,000 square miles of snaking river beds and sheer rock walls, is a world like no other, where vibrant cliffs and flowing water create a striking complement to the Western sky. ‘Lasting Light’ reveals the dedication of those who have attempted to capture the Grand Canyon on film from the earliest days to modern times. Covering nearly 125 years of photographic history, the exhibition includes images of early photographers dangling from cables to get the perfect shot, their cumbersome camera equipment balanced precariously on their shoulders. More modern images are bold and dramatic, revealing the canyon’s capricious weather, its flora and fauna, waterfalls and wading pools, and awe-inspiring cliffs and rock formations. The stunning contemporary images were selected by representatives from Eastman Kodak’s Professional Photography Division and National Geographic.  

‘Lasting Light’ chronicles the development of Grand Canyon photography as we know it today. As revealed in the exhibit, Timothy O’Sullivan, a Civil War photographer and veteran, took the first pictures of the Grand Canyon on behalf of Congress in the early 1870s. It took a minimum of three and half hours to make a single image, and he had to prepare the plates in the field using potentially explosive production materials. The work was dangerous and unpredictable.  

Dugald Bremner, Travertine Terraces, Havasu Creek (1990). Photo courtesy D. Bremner

Three decades later, Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, two steel-working brothers from Pittsburgh, brought the Grand Canyon to the masses in the early 1900s. The brothers became known for their pictures of tourists on mule rides, and later made history in 1912 as the first Colorado River travelers to film their adventures with a moving picture camera. As the brothers pointed out, the journey was not always glamorous. One afternoon, Emery reported that the group had “walked 22 miles and climbed over 5000 feet,” each carrying 20 pounds worth of film. Yet “the pleasurable thrills we experienced . . . when we developed our plates more than made up for any discomfort we may have experienced.”  

With evermore remote and unexpected images, the brothers greatly expanded the breadth of Grand Canyon photography. Following in the Kolbs’ footsteps, the 26 contemporary photographers presented in the ‘Lasting Light’ exhibition have also changed the way we see and experience the Grand Canyon.  

“What you do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American should see,” Teddy Roosevelt urged. Roosevelt, ever the naturalist, was just one of the canyon’s devotees. There are millions of others, including the 26 featured photographers of ‘Lasting Light’, who ran the river and climbed the rocks to capture these breathtaking images.  

S & A Partners, Rainbow (1995). Photo courtesy S & A Partners

“The Grand Canyon taught me a way of seeing. How to see light and design,” said featured photographer John Blaustein. Grand Canyon photographer Jack Dykinga notes, “I think I’ve experienced every single mood of the canyon, from sandstorms to ice storms, to waiting out dangerous conditions in a cave. For a photographer, mood is what elicits impact and emotion.” These and other intriguing narratives accompany the spectacular photographs, giving audiences the artists’ personal insight into the power of the Canyon.  

As photographer Stephen Trimble points out in his book, Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography, “…as every other photographer who comes to the Grand Canyon, I’ve been humbled by the place and its checklist of challenges: vastness, remoteness, ruggedness- and on the river, the constant danger of water damage to equipment and the sickening sound of sandy grit in lenses and camera bodies.”  

Trimble also notes that the exhibition gathers these stories, the pictures themselves “and the tales behind the photographs, intimate moments from the lives of men and women in love with the crazy notion of bringing home in their pictures the light and space and rocks and river of the Grand Canyon.”  

Travelers who want to see the incredible scenic chasm in person can celebrate the National Parks during fee-free days this weekend, August 14-15, during which visitors will not be charged entrance fees to the Grand Canyon. http://www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparks.htm.  

Learn more about the Grand Canyon Association, a non-profit membership organization that supports education, scientific research and other programs for the benefit of Grand Canyon National Park and its visitors, at www.grandcanyon.org.  

SITES shares the wealth of Smithsonian collections and research through a wide range of exhibitions about art, science and history with millions of people outside Washington, D.C. For more information on exhibitions and tour schedules, visit www.sites.si.edu.  

by Lindsey Koren, Contributing Writer

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Running Fence (1976)

The museums of Washington, DC are renowned for their exhibitions of eminent artists. Only infrequently however–in that city of policy and politics–do three exhibits appear in tandem, showcasing the work of artists who contributed to altering the definition of art in the twentieth century. This spring and summer, viewers are offered an opportunity to observe the National Gallery’s, Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg; Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s: Remembering the Running Fence, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Fine Arts Magazine

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, California coastline

The latter is not only the jewel in the crown of the shows, but also perhaps one of the premium exhibitions a Washington, D.C. museum has mounted in years. This exhibition, organized by George Gurney, Deputy Chief Curator, is a memorable documentary display of this decisive project. It offers in-depth content, exquisite production and the daily showing of three enlightening films—The “Running Fence” Revisited, (2010) a new film co-produced by the museum and Wolfram Hissenby; Running Fence, (1978) by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin and Running Fence with Commentary, (2004), by the artists and Albert Maysles. The majority of the exhibit is based on the Christo/Jeanne-Claude archives and it contains many of the 400 “Running Fence” items the museum purchased in 2008. Smithsonian American Art Museum’s director, Elizabeth Broun, had the foresight to purchase this collection stating, “This was the seminal project in their careers and the most inspiring of all their projects.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Sketch for 'Running Fence' (1976)

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s signature style became the wrapping or marking of a structure or area with fabrics, resulting in impressive and oft-controversial art, because of its scale and location. Their wrapping of Berlin’s Reichstag in white fabric and aluminum and, more recently, Gates, (2005), with thousands of saffron vinyl panels stretching across Central Park in New York, remain memorable, despite the controversy and debates surrounding each. Although, as a rule, their art is about aesthetic impact rather then political critique—beauty, joy and experiences—as well as inviting viewers to see the familiar unsullied are at its core. However, Running Fence was not only spectacular in scale and complexity, but also functioned as an ironic metaphor about freedom and bringing people together. Christo, born in communist Bulgaria, experienced first-hand the restraints of the Iron Curtain. As a result, he perceived Fence not as a barrier, but as a means to creative collaboration. Moreover, he realized that the landscape of the American West has as much to do with fences as with wide-open spaces and the myth of endless opportunity.

Christo and 'Running Fence' terminates in the Pacific

In our current post-9/11 age, filled with fear of terrorism, one begins to wonder if Running Fence could be built today. Imagine two New York artists who are naturalized American citizens, with foreign accents, getting the cooperation and permission of 59 sheep and dairy farmers to construct an enormous fabric fence under the rubric of art, in California’s Sonoma and Marin Counties. The voracity among some opponents is dramatically captured in an early scene in the Maysles film, when a man shouts, “That’s art? Some lousy curtain coming through here…Hell with it. I’m against it. I think it’s stupid.”

Running Fence still remains one of the most notable land-based works of art, despite being removed in September, 1976, after standing for only fourteen days. It is one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s most ambitious constructions, at 18-feet-high, it was fabricated from 2,222,222 square feet of heavily-woven, white nylon fabric and hung from a steel cable strung between 2,050 steel poles, each 21 feet long. It spanned 24½ miles, as it snaked across the grasslands and through the hills of central California, finally terminating in the Pacific Ocean.

Allen Ginsberg, utility man, New York Horbor (circ. Oct 30, 1947), Coll. National Gallery of Art, gift of Gary S. Davis, (c) 2010 The A. Ginsberg, LLC

The photographic documentation of Running Fence, manages to capture the enormity and complexity of the project in only a handful of images. The strength of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s show is that it captures the complexity and perseverance needed to take this project from concept to execution, through drawings, media projection, photographs, and models. The detailed drawings, some eight feet wide, disclose the artists’ awareness about the landscape’s natural topography. On view is a 58-foot-long scale model of “Fence,” adorned with tiny paper flags, in lieu of the nylon cloth, as it coursed along highways, through a small town and ultimately, to the ocean. The 240 photographs by Wolfgang Volz, Gianfranco Gorgoni and Harry Shunk tell a captivating story about endless town meetings and difficult encounters with the 59 rancher-families, as well as much-needed cooperation by county, state and federal agencies, engineers, surveyors, fabricators, politicians, and citizens. The cost for this temporary work was estimated at three million dollars. As a measure of their commitment to the project, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, themselves, paid the expenses through the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and original lithographs.

The exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, contains 80 photographs taken with his simple Kodak camera. The show is based largely on a gift of images to the National Gallery, by Gary S. Davis, as well as some private lenders. The first gallery contains youthful portrayals of Beat Generation writers, like Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The second displays photographs from the early 1980s, until Ginsberg’s death in 1997. In spite of the prestigious National Gallery venue, the photographs do not rank high on artistic merit. Ginsberg saw these pictures only as mementos of shared moments with friends. In fact, until 1983, they were filed away and forgotten. Only when Ginsberg donated his papers to Columbia University, did an archivist bring this assortment of old pictures to the poet’s attention. Ginsberg saw little that was poetic about them; but recognized that the power of celebrity and fame lent them historic and cultural value.

Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs at rest in the side yard of his house, Lawrence, KS, May 28, 1991. Coll. National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary S. Davis (c) 2010 The A. Ginsberg, LLC

In an interview with Thomas Gladysz, Ginsberg said of this collection: “If you’re famous you can get away with anything…I know a lot of great photographers who are a lot better than me, who don’t have a big pretty coffee table book like I have.” [1]  Robert Frank is to be credited for encouraging Ginsberg to reprint his snap-shots, even guiding him to experts who would be capable of transforming his visual reminiscences into museum-quality imagery. The combination of the by-gone Beat Era, along with Ginsberg’s later handwritten captions at the bottom of each famed subject, further manages to elevate these humble snapshots to the level of art.

This two-part exhibition reveals an odd divide between the early and later Ginsberg photographs–the youthful pictures from the 1950′s and 1960′s reveal exuberance, creativity and camaraderie between fellow writers. The portrayals from the 1980s and 90′s perhaps unwittingly expose how drugs, alcohol and hard living took a toll on the lives of this creative group of friends. More than a collection of photographs, the exhibit documents the harsh underbelly of a countercultural generation, affording viewers an uninhibited glimpse into the lives of a close group of writers, who pushed the boundaries of acceptability in an age of conformity. Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator, Department of Photographs, organized the exhibition and assembled a noteworthy 137-page catalogue.

Yves Klein, Untitled Anthropometry (1960), Courtesy, Hirshhorn’s Collection

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s exhibition, Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, co-organized with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis [the show travels to the Walker in October], is the first major retrospective of Klein’s work in the United States in nearly 30 years. It is as much an exhibition about showmanship as art. At the time of Klein’s aesthetic explorations and quixotic artistic theories, his work was viewed as radical. However, it effectively inspired artists and major artistic movements, including minimalism, conceptual art and performance art. Today’s generation of emerging artists revere Klein and his output. Nuances of his ideas are evident in much contemporary art.

Klein’s artistic career lasted only seven years. He died young, (at age 34 of a heart attack in 1962) leaving a star-like persona and an aura which veils his legacy. With the passing of time however, retrospectives exhibits such as the one at the Hirshhorn can be helpful in sorting out art from adulation. In that regard, this show has both strengths and weaknesses.

Ives Klein, Blue Venus (1960)

This exhibit, co-curated by Kerry Brougher, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Hirschhorn, and Philippe Vergne, Director of Dia Art Foundation, includes an assortment of work, along with documentary films that are especially informative. Despite the fact that the show contains work from lackluster periods in his career, Klein was resourceful in generating work that defied classification. He redefined both painting and sculpture, just when formalist mid-century tenets of Modernism were restricting artistic growth. The work on exhibit discloses Klein’s quest for combining visual/ experimental fabrication, with concerns about the spiritual. There are a range of examples from Klein’s major series including his distinguished: iconic blue monochromes; Anthropometries; sponge reliefs; Fire Paints; ‘air architecture’ projects and planetary reliefs. A gem in this show is a small intriguing piece, Ex-Voto St. Rita, (1961) (Klein traveled to Cascia in Italy, to place an ex-voto in the Saint Rita Monastery), his offering for receiving the commission for the Gelsenkirchen Opera House, Germany. This infrequently loaned piece, only rediscovered in 1980, is a see-through Plexiglas box containing three compartments; one filled with his signature International Klein Blue (IKB) pigment, one with pink, and one with gold leaf. It is both compellingly beautiful and intriguing.

Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void); Photomontage by Harry Shunk, performance by Yves Klein at Rue Gentil-Bernard, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Oct, 1960

Klein painted monochromes as early as 1949. In the show’s entrance, an assortment of diminutive and badly executed pieces in green, bright pink and innumerable other colors are not stupendous. However, Klein’s early experimentation with color becomes evident here, since portions around the canvas edges are unmarked, resulting in fragmentation and accentuation of pure color. His acclaimed color, IKB, reminiscent of ancient lapis lazuli and used frequently in Christian medieval paintings, was inspired by Klein’s revulsion with spectators who perceived his early monochromes as stylized interior decoration. Dazzling power pervades the blue monochrome, panels begun in 1955, as well as a representation of his intense blue sculptural forms. Especially impressive are the Monogolds from 1960 and 1961. Some works bring together a series of rectangles, assembled into grids; others consist of mobile gold leaves affixed to a panel covered in burnished gold, which quiver at the slightest breath.

Throughout his brief career, Klein was an artist who eagerly pursued painting to produce a conspicuous body of work. Conversely, he staged a series of events in which he cunningly criticized conservative ideas of painting and sculpture. In his 1958, The Void, he removed everything in the gallery space except a large cabinet, painted every surface white, and then staged an elaborate entrance performance for opening night. He was known to exhibit an empty space at the Iris Clert Gallery. In 1960, he published a faux newspaper and, in 1962 he sold certificates for non-existent works of art. Klein is known for his photomontage and perhaps his most noted piece is Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). Examples of all these non-representational works can be seen at the exhibit. Some critics and art historians classify Klein as a Neo-Dadaist/Conceptualist. On one hand, this is conceivable, since in 1948 at the age of 20, he fashioned his renowned emblematic gesture of signing the sky and laying claim to that kingdom. On the other hand, I concur with Thomas McEvilley, who in his 1982 Artforum essay, deemed Klein a forerunner of Post-Modernism [2].

What connects the artists in these three shows (Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Ginsberg and Klein) is their quizzical attitude and a hunger to push the predictable. By pushing the creative envelope, they hurdled conformist barriers long before the post-modern era made those kinds of risks commonplace. Their remarkably varied works reflect the care and complexity with which they responded to the shifting standards of their time.

by Elaine A. King, Contributing Writer

Freelance Critic & Curator

Professor, History of Art, Theory & Museum Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsbugh, PA

_______________________________________________

[1] Allen Ginsberg, Edmund White, Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996, an interview with Thomas Gladysz, New York, Harper Collins, 2001

[2] McEvilley, T. Yves Klein: Messenger of the Age of Space. Artforum 20, no.5. January, 1982. pp. 38-51.

P

(left) Charles Burchfield (1893–1967),Yellow Afterglow, July 31, 1916, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 20” x 14”, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, Gift of Tony Sisti, 1979. Fine Arts Magazine. Whitney Museum of American Art.

Having lived and painted in Burchfield’s locale for more than 20 years, I was particularly pleased this winter to visit a fascinating new exhibition, Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield. Curated by the artist Robert Gober (b. 1954) for UCLA’s Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where it premiered in October, this groundbreaking show is now at the Burchfield Penney Art Center (BPAC) on the campus of Buffalo State College, and will next visit New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art.  

As the first major exhibition of Burchfield’s work since 1995, Heat Waves is notable for the fresh perspective offered by Gober, who is widely known for provocative, exquisitely crafted sculptures that evoke the complicated mysteries of domestic life. Ann Philbin, who directs the Hammer Museum, invited Gober to organize the show after she discovered a Burchfield drawing in the artist’s home. Setting aside his own work for a full year, Gober seized this opportunity to investigate a master he had long admired, and traveled to Buffalo to delve into the Burchfield archives at BPAC. The handsome exhibition catalogue has been enhanced by several authors, including BPAC curator Nancy Weekly and Cynthia Burlingham, respectively director of the Grunwald Center and the Hammer’s deputy director of collections, who contributed important insights on the artist’s life and use of watercolor.  

C. Burchfield, The Four Seasons, 1949–60, Watercolor on pieced paper mounted on board, 56” x 48”, Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Encompassing paintings, drawings, journals, wallpaper designs, doodles, and ephemera, Heat Waves reanimates Burchfield’s work and reframes our image of him as a family man painting in his backyard studio in Gardenville, New York, insulated by brushes and sketchbooks. Instead it reveals the complex world of an artist who had a profound appreciation for literature and classical music, and who lamented the problems of success in the art world even as he benefitted from its privileges.  

Burchfield’s Backyard  

Charles Ephraim Burchfield was born in Ashtabula, Ohio, a small town on Lake Erie’s southeastern shore that was shaped by the burgeoning coal, steel and railroad industries. Burchfield’s father died when he was four, prompting his mother to return with her six children to Salem, Ohio, where her family provided support. Young Charles found consolation in the sequences of nature that played out in the surrounding woodlands and byways. There he collected moths and botanical specimens, and made drawings of anemones and wrens in the grape arbor. From adolescence right into his early seventies, Burchfield kept journals that provide a counterpoint to his paintings; they reveal the rich interior life of an artist who struggled with financial uncertainties, notated bird songs, and kept meteorological notes on a calendar, because, as he wrote later, it was “important as you look back over a month what kind of weather you had.”  

In 1916, upon graduation from what is now the Cleveland Institute of Art, Burchfield won a scholarship to the National Academy of Design in New York, but he quit after his first day of life class there. (He’d had enough of art school and never warmed to the figure.) A fortuitous encounter with Mary Mowbray-Clarke, co-owner of the Sunwise Turn Bookshop, led to Burchfield’s first significant patronage, followed by connections with galleries such as Montross, where he showed for several years before moving to the Frank Rehn Gallery. Returning to his beloved Salem late in 1916, Burchfield took an accounting job and embarked upon what he later called his “Golden Year,” during which he produced more than 200 paintings and cultivated many of the themes that came to fruition subsequently.  

In 1921, Burchfield moved to Buffalo to design wallpaper for M.H. Birge & Sons. He had married Bertha Kenreich, with whom he went on to have five children. Bertha was an ideal artist’s partner, unflinchingly supporting his decision in 1929 to leave Birge in order to paint full-time, and becoming a devoted archivist of his reviews. Their marriage provided a foundation of joy and security, enabling Burchfield to weather the storms of self-criticism and illness, and to continue taking artistic risks right into old age. Over the next three decades, he achieved professional success through sales, exhibitions, and awards, always painting what was close at hand: the railyards, ravines, and vernacular architecture of Western New York.  

Burchfield dismissed critics’ characterization of him as a Regionalist, however. Although he drew inspiration from his environs, he worked deliberately to express the deeper, universal forces suggested by place. Indeed, few of Burchfield’s titles refer to specific locations. Historian Kenneth Ames writes that “Place, in any petty political sense of the term, is not what Burchfield was about. It was more important for him to live in a comfortable and manageable world… Western New York gave him… easy access to Buffalo… and to the open countryside. And it gave him his own backyard.”  

Neighboring Backyards  

Rebecca Allan (b. 1962), Infant Stream/Wappinger Creek (2009), Acrylic on canvas, 58” x 64”

As a painter who spent my early years in Ashtabula and later lived 15 miles from Burchfield’s studio, my thinking has long been informed by his art. In 1985, for example, I helped reframe several Burchfield drawings that were being prepared for auction from Buffalo’s Sisti Gallery. (Tony Sisti often exhibited works by Burchfield and made a significant bequest of them to the BPAC.) Some of the drawings I handled contained notes the artist had made to himself. These were executed rapidly, as if Burchfield couldn’t wait to get things down because there was so much more to see, and to be remembered back in the studio. Burchfield’s lyrical, note-to-self drawings were never an end in themselves, but rather a means of preserving his visual memories. Looking at them day after day, I came to understand how a drawing might remain a flexible scaffold upon which a painting could be developed, rather than becoming overly polished or virtuosic.  

In addition, the poetry in Burchfield’s evocative titles formed a parallel in my mind with those of the Armenian-American painter Arshile Gorky (c. 1902-1948), who also relished music, and drew upon childhood memories of gardens. Titles such as The Sphinx and the Milky Way, Cornfield of Health, One Year the Milkweed, Song of the Telegraph, and Yellow Afterglow reveal a shared appreciation for language and metaphor that is often embedded within a painter’s experience.  

R. Allan, Turning Course (2009), Acrylic on canvas, 58” x 54”, Collection Mike and Doris Simon

Painted in Salem the year Burchfield graduated from art school, Yellow Afterglow [1] deftly captures the transitional moments after a summer rainstorm. From his backyard, looking past the tobacco-colored house toward East Fourth street, Burchfield paints a sulfur-yellow sky enclosed by dusky green and black masses of foliage. Menacing silhouettes of telephone poles and trees seem to hiss with electrical energy. The graphic play of light and dark in this composition reflects the artist’s awareness of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and Chinese landscape paintings, both of which he had seen in Cleveland. Using opaque watercolor (gouache), Burchfield expertly controlled his degrees of transparency, simultaneously suggesting the permanent and ephemeral aspects of weather and light. Not surprisingly, watercolor would always remain his preferred medium.  

My own paintings are derived from observations of weather and water as carriers of the transformative power of nature. The fluctuating tides and textures of Lake Erie, the massive ore boats that move toward and from its horizon, and its daily variations of color constitute my earliest memories. Now, whether I am working along the Hudson River, in the Pacific Northwest, Virginia, or Maine, I think about how water influences and mirrors its surroundings.  

For example, I recently painted Infant Stream/Wappinger Creek and Turning Course in response to a tributary of the Hudson that traverses 36 miles of woods and marshland. With these works, I strove to translate the spatial, ecological, and geological qualities of my chosen sites into a visual equivalent of the watershed landscape that goes beyond the place itself. In this respect, Burchfield’s interpretations of the contained spaces of thickets and streams—and also his ambition for an artwork to transcend the specificity of its source—still resonate powerfully for me.  

A Vision More Timely than Ever  

C. Burchfield, Sun and Rocks, 1918-50, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 40” x 56”.

Although Burchfield suffered periods of illness and self-doubt during his last two decades, the paintings of this period are imbued with a cosmological majesty and a visionary sense of awe. Consciously revisiting the work of his formative years—which he believed to be more improvisatory and less encumbered by realism—he created larger works that were literally reconstructed from earlier paintings. For example, The Four Seasons (1949–60) is composed of several sheets of paper added to an earlier, central sketch. This exuberant picture conflates the seasons in a single, symphonic image, framing space through a telescoping stand of animated trees and invented flowers. Trees in the distance form a Gothic portal—essentially Burchfield’s private cathedral of nature. Cadmium red and yellow brushstrokes surround the trees and radiate from the sun, producing an otherworldly glow that might be read as life-giving warmth or destructive fire.  

Many paintings from this late period express a dual vision of redemption and apocalypse, a reminder that life and death are often in close proximity, and never further than one’s own backyard. In our own era, which seemingly suggests that enlightenment is to be attained only by journeying great distances, now is an ideal moment to re-consider Burchfield’s remarkable—albeit more intimate—vision and achievement.  

by Rebecca Allan  

Rebecca Allan is a New York-based painter whose work examines the landscape and aspects of music. She is also the head of education at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Material Culture. A solo exhibition of her recent work will be held in September 2010 at Gallery 2/20 in New York.  

You can see more of her work at www.rebeccaallan.com  

Editor’s Note: Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City www.whitney.org , now, through October 10, 2010  

This article first appeared in the April 2010 issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine and is presented here with their permission. Visit their site at www.fineartconnoisseur.com  

Endnote: 1. Yellow Afterglow does not appear in the show, Heat Waves in a Swamp.  

T

(left) A hand-drawn still from a Kentridge animation (1998-99).  Kentridge’s drawings and stop-motion videos often have a subtle but reflectively political undertone, investigating the cultural dualities of South Africa and the artist’s birth city of Johannesburg. Fine Arts Magazine

“Charcoal…became a way of thinking, rather than a physical medium.”– William Kentridge

 William Kentridge is an active visual artist born and based in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose wide-ranging activities encompass stage direction and writing. After studying political science at university, he became involved in theater and film production. In the late 1980s, while he was in his late 30s, he began creating his signature animated films called “drawings in motion.” These animated works reflect the history and social circumstances of South Africa, where he continues to live and work. While characterizing his career as a series of failures, he remarked that there remained a strong determination to create something and express himself in some way. He finally found joy in the creation of a simple monotone world woven into drawings made with single colors.

One of his early creations, a series of films featuring the character Soho Eckstein, relates the history of his home country with the pains it inflicted. This series drew worldwide attention as an artistic expression resonating with postcolonial criticism upon showings at the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale and the 1997 Documenta X. In 2009, Mr. Kentridge was selected for the “Time 100,” Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

W. Kentridge, Image Series (date unkown)

Using a simple technique that he himself calls “stone-age filmmaking” — namely, the laborious process of filming, frame by frame, a series of ceaselessly changing charcoal and pastel drawings — Mr. Kentridge has injected the traditional technique of drawing into diverse media, including animation, video projection and stage set design. Thus, he has created a new contemporary vehicle of artistic expression within which various media fuse together in multiple ways. His works deal with the history and social circumstances of a specific geographic area, but have acquired universality in the fact that, through his deep insight and profound reflection on the nature of human existence, they afford opportunities to consider the fundamental issues that could face any individual in the world.

W. Kentridge, What Will Come, from The Five Themes Exhibit (2009)

Underlying his works and activities is a determination to examine the universal issues confronting modern people. He accomplishes this by traveling back through the history of visual expression, persistently questioning such issues as the ways in which people may build a relationship with the world, the ambiguities of goodwill and oppression, and the conflicting and ambivalent disposition of the individual. While remaining in the remote country of South Africa, Mr. Kentridge continues to make a great impact on contemporary art in Western society. His world, full of sharp intelligence and profound poetry, exerts great influence on other artists — and provides individuals worldwide with courage and hope that their attempts and practices may still be effective and fundamental even amid the stagnation of our contemporary society, swirling with political and social unrest.

“How do we make sense of the world?” Raising this question through his art, Mr. Kentridge wants his works to convey the idea that anyone has the power to actively reconstruct a way to see the world. In expressing his delight with his selection for this honor, he commented: “I am particularly happy that activities of artistic expression and thought are placed under the single category of Arts and Philosophy in the Kyoto Prize.”

He currently has a traveling retrospective titled “Five Themes,” which features his charcoal drawings and animated projections. The exhibit will be on view next at the Jeu de Paume in Paris from June 29 to September 5. There is also another original Kentridge exhibit—a selection of charcoal drawings from the collection of Brenda Potter— at the Taylor Museum / Colorado Springs Fine Arts from July 24 – Oct. 24, 2010.

 

About the Inamori Foundation and the Kyoto Prize

Founder, chairman emeritus of Kyocera, maker of ceramic electronic components, solar panels, cell phones. Trained Buddhist priest heads Inamori Foundation, which awards Kyoto Prize.

The non-profit Inamori Foundation was established in 1984 by Dr. Kazuo Inamori, founder and chairman emeritus of Kyocera and KDDI Corporation. The Kyoto Prize was founded in 1985, in line with Dr. Inamori’s belief that a human being has no higher calling than to strive for the greater good of society, and that the future of humanity can be assured only when there is a balance between our scientific progress and our spiritual depth. An emblematic feature of the Kyoto Prize is that it is presented not only in recognition of outstanding achievements, but also in honor of the excellent personal characteristics that have shaped those achievements. The laureates are selected through a strict and impartial process considering candidates recommended from around the world. As of the 25th Kyoto Prize ceremony (November 10, 2009), the Kyoto Prize has been awarded to 81 individuals and one foundation — collectively representing 13 nations. Individual laureates range from scientists, engineers and researchers to philosophers, painters, architects, sculptors, musicians and film directors. The United States has produced the most recipients (33), followed by Japan (13), the United Kingdom (12), and France (8).

Robert Fulton's North River Steam Ship made the trip from New York City to Albany in 32 hours in 1807, opening the Catskill to tourisms

In the early 1800s, the natural splendor and proximity of the upper Hudson River Valley served as an ideal tourist’s retreat for the new middle-class population of a burgeoning New York City, just a few miles to the south. By newly-invented steamboat (also a Hudson River first) and train, they came in search of the wonders of nature described in the literature and poetry of America’s new literary class. But, they came for more– they came in search of the native character and sense of place that could define them as ‘Americans’. The first Catskill mountain resort appeared in 1824 and a nascent group of painters, plying their trade as portraitists and engravers in the city, soon discovered the rich potential for dramatic subject matter that the river and its surrounding mountains offered. Fine Arts Magazine

Daniel Huntington, Samuel F.B. Morse (1900) Coll. New York Chamber of Commerce, New York State Museum; gift of Partnership for New York City, Inc.

Prior to the 1820s, American painting largely focused on popular themes, including portraits, Biblical motifs and allegorical scenes based on ancient history. Romanticism in all its artistic forms was flourishing in Europe. But, the newly-formed United States—apart from the traditional painterly themes noted above–was still reveling in the images of the Revolution, as skillfully represented in the manneristically heroic and detailed style of John Trumbull. (look for his portrait of Jefferson on a 10-dollar bill!)

Trumbull founded the Academy of Fine Arts in New York (1816), but several years later it was subsumed into the National Academy of Design (1825), created by his rival and fellow painter, Samuel F.B. Morse (a skilled artist, best known for his invention of the telegraph and Morse Code). New Jersey engraver, Robert Durand was invited to teach painting at the Academy. Coincidentally, Thomas Cole, English-born and trained as an artist in Philadelphia, came to the Hudson Valley in search of the idylls so vividly described in the words of fellow-Englishmen, like poet, Percy Shelly. His early efforts as a landscape painter came to the attention of Trumbull, and then Durand and, together with William Cullen Bryant, the poet, the core group of what would later be known as the Hudson River School of painters, was created (but not known by that name until 1875, when the term was derisively coined by a newspaper critic).

Numerous painting expeditions by this small, but growing, group of artists up the Hudson River to a point just below Albany where it narrows, yielded a body of work that embraced certain distinctive features—elements ‘colored’ by a number of factors unique to the time and for these artists, in particular. They shared a belief that these natural wonders as well as other splendid vistas around the world would soon disappear in the face of metropolitan expansion and industrialization. As a result, they approached their task with a certain missionary zeal.

John Trumbull , The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, (preparatory drawing), 1786. Private Collection

They sought to capture a grandeur and magnificence in nature untamed; the result of God’s loving and creative hand here in North America and proof of His Divine Providence—evidence, through nature’s wonders, of our manifest destiny as a People. They infused their paintings with light and color that drew attention to eternal cycles of nature that had persisted for eons before man’s arrival on the scene; they diminished the presence of the human figure in their panoramic views by portraying him as a small, insignificant player in a grand and powerful natural drama; they often used light and colorful sunsets/sunrises to symbolize divine oversight of dramatic natural settings that had been placed into man’s hands for safe-keeping (a veiled warning for the future); and they often painted on a grand scale, using massive canvases and even larger, ornate frames to capture the immensity of the natural world, providing the viewer with a ‘you-are-there’ experience. The pure scale and mastery of paint and perspective made many of the works by the Hudson River artists the visual and experiential event of a lifetime for those who might pay a fee to view a single, large work, complete with decorative palms set to either side to help set the scene. America’s new cultural vitality had now been captured on canvas.

Thomas Cole, Mt. Aetna from Taormina, Sicily (1843)

“For Cole, Church, Durand, Cropsey and others, portraying such subjects as cascading falls, violent cataracts, florid sunsets, placid bays and towering mountainscapes in large scale was typical. These works offered the viewer a unique, spiritual bond with nature and The Creator. Capturing the sense of ‘the Sublime’, or a direct connection to God and His greatness through the rendering of their subject matter was a key to the success of the work for these painters,” Phagen described, as we stood in front of her favorite piece, an immaculately detailed and colorful work by Frederic Church, entitled, Autumn in North America, 1856. “This treatment of the landscape was not a first—the English landscape was being interpreted by writer William Gilpin and others in the late 18th and early 19th century for its picturesque aesthetic. The focus here, however, was to create visually awe-inspiring works; paintings that would take your breath away. But, at the core, the focus was always on the individual painter. His personal perspective on any subject would have been informed by his roots in European art and travel and his unique approach to looking at the world”, she tells me.

Asher Durand (1796-1886)

Thomas Cole (1801-1848)

Matthew B. Brady, "Thomas Cole," daguerreotype, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Edith Cole Silberstein

Cole is considered the principle founder of the Hudson River School of painting. After making several trips to the Catskill region, in 1827, he established a studio and temporary residence at Cedar Grove, in the town of Catskill, NY, convincing Durand and others to join him on outings there. Nine years later, he would marry the niece of the owner of the house and make it this his permanent residence. Using this location as a base, he and his colleagues, Sanford Gifford, Asher Durand and a favorite student, Frederic Church, would venture out into the hills and valleys of the surrounding mountains to paint what they saw there.

Thomas Cole, "The Course of Empire: Consummation" (1836)

Cole, a deeply religious man, portrayed nature as a romanticized setting, viewing man in a diminished station, standing in awe of the grand panorama. This view of the world around him was both poetic and rendered in a style that captured an ideal harmony between man and nature in an Edenic world. Cole’s view of the wilderness and the noble demeanor of the Indians often appearing in his works were almost certainly colored by his reading of Cooper’s, Last of the Mohegans. In Cole’s interpretation of the world around him, he expressed the common bond that exists among all of humanity and our ultimate ties to the natural world. This romantic view of the ‘Family of Man’, for Cole and other early proponents of the Hudson River School, would prove more allegorical and fanciful with the passage of time, as the signs of commercialization and industrialization of their pristine landscapes were spreading rapidly (the railroad, particularly, became a poignant symbol in Cole’s scenes for man’s encroachment on natural surroundings). Other works he completed during his brief life (he died suddenly at age 47) also bore credence to his personal convictions about the pantheistic and moralistic stage on which man’s tenuous drama with the forces of nature would play out. His skillful use of light and shadow, his placement of solitary figures in a grand landscape and his rich atmospherics all served to reinforce his belief in, and representation of, “all that is glorious around us.”

Frederic E. Church (1826-1900)

Frederick Church, Autumn in North America (study)(c.1856). Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie,NY

Church’s prodigious output over the course of his lifetime clearly establishes his as one of the giants in the field of the Hudson River painting genre. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he became a student of Thomas Cole at the age of eighteen (from 1844-46). By age twenty-three, he was already a member of the prestigious New York City-based, National Academy of Design. Church’s talent was apparent from the beginning of his career, with even his earliest works garnering him praise and attention from critics and patrons alike. By any standard, The artist rose to prominence early on and enjoyed a reputation as one of the most skilled interpreters of the natural environment of his day.

Frederick Church, Niagara (1857) Corcoran Gallery of Art, Wash. DC

First as a student-artist and then, as his work matured technically, Church traveled from his home and studio in New York City to the hills and ravines of the Hudson River to sketch and paint time-and-again. After his acceptance to the Academy, his travels widened and, by 1851, his painting, New England Scenery, shown at their spring art exhibition, fetched a record price and critical acclaim. Widening his scope of interests, Church traveled to South America, Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1850s, bringing back studies and notes that would serve as the basis for a series of large canvases that depicted exotic and little-known scenes, ranging from simmering volcanoes to dense jungle foliage to heaps of ice on frozen seas. His pièce de résistance was a dramatic, 1857 depiction of Niagara Falls (then a common, if not overly-developed tourist destination), where the viewer is held, as if suspended over the turbulent deep-green water’s edge, as the falls froth and tumble into the foam-filled chasm far below. A rainbow hovers overhead, signaling the presence of the sacred in nature and demonstrating Church’s uncanny eye for creating lush atmospherics with paint. Exhibited as a single work throughout the U.S. and in London, thousands paid the admission price of $.50 to stand before the painting and experience the power of the Falls and the mastery of Church’s painting skills.

He followed this with another masterpiece, this time depicting the verdant forests and snow-capped peaks of Ecuador, in his, The Heart of the Andes (1859). Church completed it at the age of thirty-three and was already internationally-known, 12,000 people went to see this painting in just three weeks, while it was on exhibit in New York.

But, his greatest masterpiece was yet to be completed as his life was about to change in unexpected ways.

View from the Bell Tower, Olana, Olana State Historic Site, (c) Andy Wainwright, photo, 2004

In 1859, at the showing of his Andes painting, he met and soon married Isabel (Carnes) Church. Having lived the bachelor’s life for several years, he then gave up his New York rented-apartment life (though maintaining his studio, first at the American Art-Union and then at the Tenth Street Studio Building, for another thirty years) and sought property in his beloved Catskills. His search led him back to land that he had visited and loved as a student, with a commanding view of the Hudson. Here, the flow of the river slows by a bend, creating a widening, lake-like area called, Inbocht Bay. This ‘bend in the river’ would be immortalized, as it served as subject-matter for endless renderings by Church and other artists in the years to come.

Directly across the river from one-time mentor, Thomas Cole’s, Cedar Grove property and within proximity of many of the landmarks made famous in the paintings of Cole, Church, Durand and others, Church acquired several parcels in the years spanning 1860-1867, culminating in the choice summit parcel, offering a panoramic view of the river in both directions as well as the distant mountains to the west.

East Facade of Olana, Olana State Historic Site, (c) Andy Wainwright photo, 2004

He then departed on an extended, 18-month trip to Europe and the Middle East with his wife, son and mother-in-law. While there, he produced hundreds of oil studies and drawings and discovered an architectural heritage that would significantly influence planning for the main house on his property, once he returned home to Hudson, New York. In his travels, Church not only took in the visual wonders of the ancient world, the castles of Europe and its scenic rivers but he also acquired hundreds of artifacts that would later adorn his home on the river.

Once back in America, Church retained the services of architect, Calvert Vaux (who co-created Central Park with Frederick Law Olmstead) to create a magnificent home in the Moorish style that had so impressed him during his travels. Made from rock blasted for the foundation and local brick from the nearby town of Hudson, the finished house– exotic in its visage but practical for a large family and staff– offered commanding views of the river and mountains from the windows, observation tower, veranda and porches on three sides.

Church considered Olana his tour de force and during his life, planted several thousand trees on the 250 acres he ultimately owned. “Church considered this to be a three-dimensional canvas on which he could paint the details of the house and the surrounding countryside”, Curator, Valerie Balint explained to me. “By the time construction was nearing completion in the 1870s, Church was no longer able to work on large-scale paintings due to his severe arthritis. Olana served as his last and ultimate creation…a painting come to life.”

+ + + + +

Second Generation: The Tonalists

Sanford R. Gifford, Tappan Zee Bay (1868) Collection Loeb Art Center, Vassar College

It is in the nature of an historical artistic retrospective to place distinct boundaries around ‘schools’ or movements. By the mid-nineteenth century, a new style of painting was appearing to supplant the Hudson River movement. Known as the Tonalists, many of the same artists who had shaped a reputation for themselves as first-generation Hudson River painters were being influenced by the tempered brush strokes and idyllic scenes of the French Barbizon School of painting. With its focus on well-ordered, pastoral scenes, a mood of intense quietness or stillness, neatly divided canvases with balanced parts– sky, middle ground and fore-ground– and finished works without visible brush strokes or other evidence of the artist’s hand, the Tonalists now portrayed nature as non-threatening and controlled—no longer man’s awesome adversary, but a benign backdrop to a new, more secure American way-of-life. Tonalism introduced a new, refined sensibility to American landscape painting.

Tonalism was really just an extension of earlier efforts to capture nature, but with the moderating effects of European formalist influences (principally, the French École and Symbolism) and perhaps a touch of timidity not found in the bold work of the first generation of Hudson River painters. Many of the Hudson River artists went on to paint, ‘tonally’ and many of these Tonalist painters completed works in other styles. Frederic Church, one of the founders of the Hudson River School, has some of his later works grouped with the Tonalists. Other well-known painters in this later period were George Inness, Jasper Cropsey, John Frederick Kensett, Martin Heade and Sanford Robinson Gifford.

Jasper Cropsey, Artist Sketching on Greenwood Lake (1869) Loeb Art center, Vassar College

It is best to consider Tonalism an ‘influence’, rather than a major movement. When compared to the drama and sweeping visual excitement of the Hudson School, Tonalism’s contribution was solid though modest, indeed. But, even this renewal of familiar themes with a slightly different twist was not enough to sustain the Hudson River School of painting and its variations in the public eye. Its remarkable 50+-year run was unprecedented in the emerging world of ‘modern’ art. But, it eventually lost ground to the inevitable march of civilization and scientific advances: the newly-invented camera offered images that could equally amaze and entertain; the vast American west was made accessible by train, affording vistas that further sparked our natural (and national!) curiosity about the unknown and the unfamiliar and Charles Darwin’s recently published book on the origin of the species (1859) cast doubt in the minds of many about the divinely preordained march of the natural world toward order and greater perfection.

The Hudson River—the river of natural wonders—had now lost much of its luster for the emerging middle class, who flocked to America’s Far West, taking in the splendor of exotic destinations like the Colorado Rockies, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.

George Innes, Passing Clouds (1876) National Gallery, Wash., DC

But, Tonalism enjoyed a period of popular appeal from approximately 1860-1875 (some would extend the period into the early 20th century). While it could claim genuine American roots however, it would soon pale by comparison with the quintessentially American art sensation that was about to follow!

Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and the ex-patriot, James McNeill Whistler (himself part of the Tonalist movement) ushered in a third generation of authentically American painters when they arrived on the scene in the last quarter of the 19th century. Master mark-makers, all, they would change the face of American art: centralizing and moving the human figure into the foreground and replacing the drama once found in the landscapes of Hudson River genre with human pathos and representations of everyday life. They breathed vitality into the American persona and, in that gesture, expressed the essence of what it meant to be an American. Henceforth, the focus of their work would be in the mutual interplay between figure and setting, each a necessary ingredient for the other–capturing the public imagination and establishing a truly authentic style of American art at the dawn of a new century.

Conclusion

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits (1849), Crystal Bridges Museum, Littlerock, AK

My journey began at the mouth of the Hudson and ended near its source—a reversal for sure—in the usual order of things. But, I was committed to discovering the river in the way that Henry Hudson had and to travel north from New York City in the same manner as the artists of an earlier time; so that I, too, could experience the splendor and wonders of the Hudson in much the same way as they had.

What I found along the way was a study in contrast—a co-mingling of old and new, affluent and working class neighborhoods, economic viability and time-worn towns and villages hugging the river banks and too, the ubiquitous freight trains—some as long as small towns—snaking along the river’s edge, with their lonely whistles echoing among the hills from the valley below. But, America was there in the New York accent left behind by the Dutch, the neat farms and courteous conversations of a community of people far removed from the urban pressures of the city, a few miles south and, always, the natural beauty of the river—glimpsed at every bend in the road. Here, through a complex interplay of historical events, political theater, literary conjuring and the remarkable talent of a handful of artists who developed an original American artistic style and then helped to perpetuate it for nearly a half-century, I believe our American persona was born.

Thus, the Holy Grail of at least one version of authentic America can be found in the Hudson River Valley. I would argue that it was the very first miulti-generational initiative, aimed at defining a genuine American ‘voice’, following the Revolution. Built on a foundation of Dutch and English influences of the 17th and 18th centuries (and to a lesser degree, French and Native American), the writers, poets, architects and painters of the early 19th century looked to Europe for influences and inspiration. But, ultimately, they directed their creative energy toward the development of a unique style that drew heavily on their indigenous surroundings.

View of the Hudson River, looking north

Europe was replete with history. Evidence of faded civilizations and generations long-passed could be found in throughout the cities and countryside of Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. A period of rediscovery of the beauty and perfection of these ancient ruins in the mid-18th and early 19th century coincided with a series of progressive or liberal philosophical writings espousing the rights of man and a new interpretation of how universal forces may affect his future role on society. This period of, ‘Enlightenment’ borrowed heavily from the accumulated wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans, holding much of the intellectual community in its grasp on both sides of the Atlantic. This progressive trend in thought and action extended well into the second half of the 1800s.

Thomas Cole, Falls of Kaaterskill (1826). o/c. With permission: Warner Collection, Tuscaloosa, AL.

Enlightened thinkers sought perfection in the natural universe, where balance, form and the natural order of things would inspire a search for symmetry in virtually every human creative endeavor. This classical revival triggered the Romantic movement, in reaction to the rationality and empiricism of enlightened thought, seeking instead, to express man’s more emotional human nature.

Asher B. Durand, Study from Nature: Rocks and Trees (1836). Loeb Art Center, Vassar College

Rather than focusing on ancient ruins as a metaphor for perfection, the Hudson River School of painters broke stride and offered the natural landscape as a stage setting for the American Romantic narrative, drawing literally from the natural wonders of the New World. For an artist like Frederic Church, his monumental treatment of a subject like the Parthenon (1871) will stand as a masterful rendering of Old World classical perfection. Ultimately, though, for Church, the man-made harmony of the Parthenon would pale by comparison with his beloved Olana and the Hudson River vistas surrounding him. There, he would find beauty in the natural order of things—the God-head of nature’s own perfection.

So, for Church, Cole, Durand and the others who sought to express the transformative and redemptive powers of the natural world through their work, The Hudson and its surrounding Kaatskills were an ideal laboratory. For them, God’s creative energy was contained in the world around them—a Eucharistic offering that could be so easily sacrificed by man’s neglect, or through whose redemptive powers, He and the artist, working together, could transport the viewer to a different, higher level of emotional purity. Rather than borrowing from the classical lessons of the past, enlightenment for the Hudson River painters was symbolized in a perfected relationship with the perceived order found in the natural world.

In this thoroughly modern premise of, ‘knowledge gained in the present, through inspired observation’ lies a novel sensibility: the seeds of the American spirit and the new American identity.

The Hudson, River of Dreams, and its people are one.

by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

Read Parts I-III in the ARTES ‘Feature Articles’ Archive