Lyonel Feininger, Untitled (Cours de la Reine, Paris), 1931

One of the most versatile talents of the modern art movement in Germany, the American-born Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) is celebrated as a master of caricature, figurative painting, and a distinctive brand of cubism, but he also created a fascinating body of photographic work that is virtually unknown. Drawn primarily from the collections at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, the exhibition Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939, presented at the Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, through June 2, 2012, offers the first opportunity to consider his achievement within the medium. Around 60 of Feininger’s photographs, as well as related works on paper and two of his early cameras, are on display. The exhibition was curated by Laura Muir, Assistant Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums. Muir also authored the accompanying catalogue. artes fine arts magazine

Untitled (Houses and Streetlamp), Jan. 15, 1906. charcoal on paper. Busch-Reisinger Museum. Gift: Julia Feininger

The photographs are complemented by an installation of about twenty-five of the artist’s drawings and watercolors, plus a major painting from the collection of Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum. The Harvard exhibition is the latest—but probably not the last—in a series of Feininger retrospectives offered by various museums in Europe and the U.S. in recent months. Each has been a re-examination of aspects of a rich and varied artistic career—painter and composer, caricaturist and wood carver, an oeuvre spanning several decades—as the artist stood at the cusp of the modern era. As this exhibit has traveled from Berlin to Munich to Los Angeles’s Getty over the last year, this final stop in the tour represents the return home of this rare collection.

No stranger to conflict and controversy, the trajectory of Feininger’s life was constantly impacted by events, both political and cultural. Born in New York City, he returned to Germany at the age of sixteen (1887) to become a leading figure in the German Expressionist movement and the Bauhaus School.

The Studio Window (1919), o/c. Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum-Zentrum Internationale Skulptur, Duisburg.

Laura Muir notes that, “Feininger’s status as an artist in Germany had reached new heights in the early 1930s, when his work was the subject of several major exhibitions; among them a well-received retrospective organized in honor of his sixtieth birthday in 1931 by the Nationalgalerie at the Kronprinzenpaliais in Berlin. His success as a modern artist, however, also made him a target of the National Socialists, who increased their attacks on the avant-garde after coming to power in 1933.”

Having left Dessau, home of the Bauhaus School, in that same year, the Feiningers took up residence in Berlin. Laboring under the effects of the Nazi ban on ‘degenerate modern art,’ Muir explains that, “Feininger responded to the ‘systematic suppression of cultural elements’ by further engaging his immediate surroundings with his camera. He continued to take his camera out onto the streets, but also produced many photographs within the confines of his own home, often photographing from the window of his second-floor Berlin apartment.” The reliance on interior, harshly-lit shots and the shadows and soft atmospheric glow of his streetlight photographs during this period evokes earlier works (1928-29) and may reflect yet another period in the artist’s life when alienation and isolation are an ever-present and threatening reality.

By the late 1930s, the escalating Nazi campaign against modern art finally forced him to flee back to New York, after an absence of fifty years. As a result, his painterly marriage of abstraction and recognizable imagery, particularly architecture, seascapes and figurative works, became a readily-recognizable style on the American cultural scene. It was also in this period that he produced a series of photographs of New York City at the peak of its Golden Age, during and immediately following World War II.

Untitled (Negative Image of Burgkuhnaueer Allee 4 at Night), 1928.

The Arthur M. Sackler exhibition, though, focuses on the productive, late-in-life period between 1928 (when Feininger first took up the camera while still in Germany) and the late 1930s, when he was exploring an array of avant-garde photographic techniques and making his own prints. Despite his early skepticism about this “mechanical” medium, the painter was inspired by the enthusiasm of his sons Andreas and T. Lux, as well as the innovative work of his fellow Bauhaus master and Dessau neighbor László Moholy-Nagy. In the fall of 1928, the 57-year-old Feininger began to conduct his own experiments, discovering in photography a new means of energizing and advancing his artistic program.

Muir’s research also draws on Feininger’s extensive correspondence housed at Houghton Library and her interviews with the artist’s recently-deceased son, T. Lux. The majority of Feininger’s photographs, which he shared with only a few close friends and family, remained in his private collection until his death in 1956. In 1987 his son T. Lux donated them to Houghton Library. The exhibition also includes key loans from other US and German lenders, including the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

“When he took up the camera at the Bauhaus in 1928, Lyonel Feininger was at the height of his fame as a painter. While he remained committed to that practice, he saw photography as a new means of exploring his interests in reflections, transparency, and the effects of light and shadow,” said Muir. “Experimenting with night imagery, negative printing, multiple exposures, and radical enlarging and cropping, he created a strikingly modern yet surprisingly personal body of work that has remained virtually unknown.”

Bauhaus, March 26, 1929

Feininger’s first photographs were atmospheric night views of the Bauhaus Building and the nearby neighborhood, including Untitled (Night View of Trees and Streetlamp, Burgkühnauer Allee, Dessau) (1928) [see catalogue cover, below] and Bauhaus (Mar. 26, 1929). In Halle, while working on a painting commission from the city, Feininger recorded architectural sites in works such as Halle Market with the Church of St. Mary and the Red Tower (1929–30), and experimented with multiple exposures in photographs such as Untitled (Street Scene, Double Exposure, Halle) (1929–30), a hallucinatory image that merges two views of pedestrians and moving vehicles. One of his Halle paintings, Bölbergasse (1931), makes an appearance in Untitled (Unfinished Painting in Studio, Halle) (1931), an image that explores the relationship between the canvas and the space in which it was created.

Untitled (Lux Feininger, Deep in der Rega), 1932

During summers in Deep an der Rega, a small fishing village on the Baltic Coast (in present-day Poland), he returned to his longtime subjects of seascapes and bathers in photographs such as Untitled (Lux Feininger, Deep an der Rega) (1932), a lively snapshot of his son suspended above the water in a back flip.

Curator, Muir notes in her catalogue essay: “Earlier that summer Feininger had noted the appearance of swastika flags on the beach, which signaled the end of Deep as a peaceful refuge. Despite deteriorating conditions, Feininger returned to the town for the next three summers. In 1935, however, after several run-ins with a local Nazi official over Julia’s Jewish background, it became clear that [his] time there had come to and end. In September, 1935, he described to Julia, who had stayed away from Deep that year, how the Nazis were building a ‘city of barracks’ in ‘our dune forest,’ adding: ‘we never should again feel happy here, so let us not regret too much. It is unwholesome to hang one’s heart so on a locality, after it has been ‘murdered’.”

Drunk with Beauty, 1932

In the months after the Nazis closed the Bauhaus and prior to Feininger’s departure from Dessau in March 1933, he made a series of unsettling views of mannequins and reflections in shop windows such as Drunk with Beauty (1932). In 1937 the American-born Feininger permanently settled in New York City after a nearly 50-year absence, and photography served as an important means of reacquainting himself with the city. The off-kilter bird’s-eye view he made from his studio Untitled (Second Avenue El from Window of 235 East 22nd Street, New York) (1939) is a dizzying image of an American subject in the style of European avant-garde photography, and mirrors the artist’s own precarious and disorienting position between two worlds and the past and present.

Muir points out that, “For a painter who took up the camera late in life, photography provided Feininger not only artistic stimulation, but a new sense of vitality that inspired him into his final years. He saw it as a new means of picture-making—a tool of painting. Adopting the innovative techniques of his contemporary, László Moholy-Nagy, he was able to address his own distinct vision and artistic concerns. With the camera, these rarely-seen images represent an innovative body of work that is sophisticated and modern, but also enigmatic, expressive and deeply personal.”

Image, right: Untitled (Second Avenue El from Window of 235 East 22nd Street, New York), 1939.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

The exhibition, Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939 is on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA until June 2, 2012.

Winner, German Photo Book Award in Gold 2012: The Feininger photographs catalogue has been awarded gold by the German Photo Book prize 2012. The jury referred to Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939 as a “small, but sparkling art historical treasure.” It is available in both English and German translations. To order by email, contact: am_shop@harvard.edu.

Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939

Essay by Laura Muir, Assistant Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum

ISBN 978-1-891771-56-9

cloth (paper over board); 152 pages; 111 color illus.; 8×10-3/4 in

$45 ($40.50 for members)

Published by the Harvard Art Museums and Hatje Cantz Verlag.

This book is available in a German edition, ISBN 978-3-7757-2788-4.

The exhibition and catalogue are based on new research on the collection of the artist’s negatives and slides in the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s Lyonel Feininger Archive, which has only recently been catalogued and digitized, making it fully accessible for the first time (see link, below).

Online Resource: Lyonel Feininger: Photographs provides access to a searchable database of more than 18,000 negatives and slides housed in the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s Lyonel Feininger Archive. The site also includes slideshows, information about Feininger’s photographic subjects, and a chronology. More at www.harvardartmuseums.org/feiningerphotographs

Kiera Beecher, Age 5

The idea that modern art looks like something that can be done by a child is a cliché. Yet, most artists understand that to paint in an abstract style is more difficult than representational art by an order of magnitude. The logical breakdown is two-fold: first, to assume that the child is intending to create an abstract work of art. They are, in fact, using untrained muscles and a set of drawing skills not yet impacted by the rules of perspective, relational size and color guidelines that impede the rest of us. They are working hard to create a realistic drawing and, for them, their effort, no matter how quaint or ‘primitive’ in our view, is usually a success from theirs; the second is to assume that the professional artist is not capable of creating a refined rendering of their subject. Suspending the formal rules of rendering or mark-making in art, in the interest of a desired effect or impact on the viewer, is only possible once you understand what those rules are. Their finished product may look accidental or erroneous, but the intention is most often deliberate and calculated.

To what end, you may ask? 

Above right: Wassily Kandinsky, Little Pleasures (1913) includes references to drawings of his childhood village in Russia

 In order to understand the apparent visual link between children’s art and its possible influence on the ‘childlike’ features of certain modernist works, it is important to highlight the research of Jonathan Fineberg and his publication, The Innocent Eye (1997). Years of exhaustive research on the topic resulted in his curating a 1995 exhibition, “The Innocent Eye-Children’s Art and the Modern Artist”, at two European museums. Feinberg noted that, “the roots of child art lie in the Romantic movement and their notion of ‘genius’ in the form of childlike innocence. Accordingly: they believed that children have more direct access to artistic inspiration; the ability to see things objectively (what Ruskin, in 1850, called, ‘without consciousness of what they signify’; the ability to see beyond the appearance to the ‘truth’ of things and fourth; an privileged view of the mysteries of life.”

Left: Paul Klee, Angelus Novus (1930)

Fineberg then goes on to say that, “As realism and then Impressionism placed unprecedented priority on objective, unfettered vision, the notion of what Ruskin had termed, ‘the innocence of the eye’ was transformed into an active aesthetic principle.” So, as the turn of the 20th century ushered in a whole new way of looking at and thinking about the world, led by advances in science, industry and technology, artistic pursuits had to go in search of appropriate inspiration. One result was the re-birth of the naïveté of simpler times. It took the form of the Arts and Craft Movement in the U.S. and the introduction of African and other remote tribal cultural influences in artistic expression, drawn from worlds far-removed from Western society. This so-called ‘Primitivism’ was an increasingly important influence in the work of major European artists of that time. There was erroneously thought to be a bridge between these far-flung examples of crudely-executed figurative sculpture and drawings and the creative output of children. Although misguided in their view, misogyny and ethnocentrism nevertheless prevailed, as newly-explored parts of the world opened to the scrutiny of the Anglo-European intellectual community.

Pablo Picasso, Paloma en Bleu (1952)

As a result of this assumed link, the experimental, even politically-radical climate within artistic movements in Europe, surrounding the World War I period, would begin to make allowances for the inclusion of children’s art. As more traditional sources of inspiration and old-school methods of making art were being challenged, new, more ‘modern’ approaches dominated the scene. Again, Fineberg notes that Andre Derain commented, in 1902, “I like to study the drawings of kids. That’s where the truth is, without a doubt.” August Macke, in The Blue Rider Almanac commented, “Are not children more creative in drawing directly from the secret of their sensations than the imitator of Greek forms?” And he observes that, for the Dadaists, childhood served as a symbol of their strategic retreat from social norms in search of spontaneity. For the Russian Symbolist painter, Leon Bakst, “what delights and moves us [in children’s’ pictures] is candor/sincerity, movement and clear, clean color.”

Artists like Henri Matisse noted the importance of children’s art, but did not eagerly embrace it as an influence in his work; Wassily Kandinsky collected children’s work and actively included imagery from some of these drawings in his paintings, particularly in his earlier pre-war landscapes; Picasso was known to say that, “when [he] was a child, [he] could draw like Raphael. It took [him] years to learn to draw like a child.” While he never actively embraced children’s motifs in his work, it is to certain aspects of Picasso’s oeuvre that the attribution of ‘childlike’ is most frequently applied. This is clearly unwarranted, as the complexity of his imagery is often veiled in the appearance of simplicity, even crudeness. These characteristics of seeming spontaneity and simplicity of line took him, as for most artists choosing to work in this style, years to perfect.

Jean Dubuffet, Poiro Zanzibar (1962), Private Collection

Joan Miro and Paul Klee are often seen to work in a ‘childlike’ style of simple geometric forms and scattered, gravity-defying figuration. For Klee, as Fineberg points out, “the discovery of a set of his own childhood drawings set him on a path of cataloguing ‘these primitive beginnings of art’… and to have them serve, in part, as coordinates for his own mature artistic journey.” For Miro, on the other hand, the author notes that his fascination with the drawing of his own daughter, born in 1930, held him spellbound. Unlike his own childhood drawing, which lacked spontaneity and exuberance, Miro spent his lifetime trying to recapture the direct connection to the subject that he believed characterized children’s art. As he told the French art critic, Dora Vallier, “The older I get and the more I master the medium, the more I return to my earliest experiences. I think that at the end of my life I will recover all the forces of my childhood.”

It can certainly be said that, as the 20th century progressed and the post-World War II period ushered in the Abstract Expressionists like Pollack and de Kooning and Rothko, the art of throwing, dripping, splashing and troweling paint onto canvas in gestures befitting the most aggressive child reached a high point. The expressive immediacy of deliberately ‘bad art’ can be seen in later works by Jean-Michael Basquiat, Karel Apel and Jean Dubuffet. The point of their work is not to flout the rules learned as a result of years of art training, but to apply those skills in emulating the experiential directness and unfiltered sensations of a child’s perception of the world.

Their bold attempts at the mastery of naïveté could only be approximations of the truth, as seen through the eyes of a child. Over the generations of the modern and post-modern period, artists have embraced the knowledge that their work can only be a simulation of the vivid reality and unfiltered consciousness of childhood. And every artist has understood that there is no returning. -RF

Reference: Jonathan Fineberg, The Innocent Eye, Princeton University Press, 1997.

T

Above: Part of a mosaic pavement with the personification of the month of April. Early 6th century, stone and marble. From Thebes, Chalkis, 23rd Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of culture and Tourism. artes fine arts magazine

Mosaic Depicting Autumn. Fig. 1 Note Below.

Drawing from both Byzantine and Christian historical materials—this cross-cultural exhibit focuses on the continuation of the antique past, even as it faded into memory; the rise of a Christian empire in the east, even as the western Roman empire disintegrated; and the disruption of old ways of life, as new patterns and social systems were consolidated. Still under the spell of ancient Greek aesthetic influences of Plato and Socrates, these cultural artifacts of the early first millennium, AD, seem to bridge the gap between traditional object d’art and practical pronouncements of belief—between “beauty’ and purposeful messaging. The displays capture the rich diversity that was Late Antiquity, its religious art (Christian, pagan, and Jewish), civic statuary, and architectural and mural decorations from both private homes and public meeting places, as well as cult objects and luxury items, with imagery drawn from mythological and biblical stories. Most importantly, however, the exhibition illustrates the rise of Christianity and its continuity with its past, as Christians borrowed imagery and beliefs from their familiar cultural environment, transforming them forever.

Vibrant and personal, the professing of belief in the new Christian god in the earliest centuries of the first Millennium was dangerous, indeed. As the ancient world slowly collapsed under the weight of its own internal and external threats, the upheaval and co-mingling of political and social beliefs, the introduction of new ideas in art, philosophy and religion co-existing with the old and threats to populations by invading forces from the north and east, made for uncertain times. Known as Late Antiquity, this transition, focused largely on the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, led to a period of tremendous instability and extraordinary cultural innovation as the ancient world faded and a new world of enlightened self-expression was born. Far from slipping into an age of darkness, western civilization was once again on the cusp of a new, risky and far-reaching discovery of its relationship to a re-defined divinity. Once thought to consist of a cadre of the super-powerful and accursed, occupying the remote mountains and skies far above and beyond the reach of mere mortals, the newly-discovered Christian God would, in fact, was believed to dwell among them.

Late Antiquity was an era of profound transition between the world of antiquity and that of the Middle Ages. The three centuries between the founding of the Roman Empire under the emperor Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) and the reign of the emperor Constantine I (305–37) witnessed the birth and growth of a new religion: Christianity. It was Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, who made two crucial changes, by granting Christianity the status of state religion in 313 and by moving the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople in 330.

The 3rd century marked the historical turning point for the empire, which was besieged from within by economic turmoil and corruption, and from without by “barbarian” tribes on the move. Political upheaval and social anxiety have served as an explanation—if not strictly the cause—for the rise of Christianity, which, once established by Constantine I, eventually brought about a cultural change that often has been viewed negatively, as the beginning of the Dark Ages.

The momentum of Christianity carried with it some violence against the pagan vestiges of the previous era, but Christianity was also a religion of hope, especially for the common man. Classical learning became secondary to a heightened investment in spirituality, which also brought an intense focus on eternal salvation, saintly intercession, and daily interactions with the divine. This was a period not entirely at odds with its classical heritage. Art and architecture flourished, building upon old forms, abandoning others, and creating new ones.

The center of gravity had shifted eastward to the Greek world and beyond, which was vibrantly alive. From Greece to Asia Minor and Syria and throughout the Near East, major cities boasted thriving communities. While the Western Roman Empire fell, in the east arose the cultural stronghold known as the Byzantine Empire.

New investigations into the period of Late Antiquity have expanded eastward as well. Merely describing this period as a poor reflection of an earlier grandeur no longer suffices to explain a world of impressive complexity, syncretism, and interaction. This exhibition provides an opportunity to see Late Antiquity within the context of cultural richness and diversity, produced by vibrant interactions within the grand arena of the eastern Mediterranean.

The End of Antiquity? Cultural and Religious Interactions

Herakles and the Hydra. Fig. 2 Note Below.

Initially, Christianity was a small but rapidly growing cult in an empire with religious practices as diverse as its populace. In addition to the classical pantheon of gods, there were numerous mystery cults, such as that dedicated to the Persian savior Mithras, as well as fertility cults, such as those of Isis and Magna Mater, which had spread throughout the Roman Empire. Many other gods and local and household deities fulfilled a variety of supernatural roles, overseeing the welfare of the living, from marriage and childbirth to illness and death.

The rise of Christianity in this cultural milieu resulted in its adaptation and incorporation of a number of artistic forms and subjects. Portrait statues, sometimes reworked from antique sculptures, and architectural spolia used in new buildings served practical concerns but also demonstrated an appreciation for eclecticism and openness to diverse styles. Christian artists took advantage of familiar imagery, modifying it for Christian congregations in churches, as well as in the more intimate domain of homes and tombs. Artists also sought new ways to express in visual terms the message of Christianity, such as the narratives of the New Testament and Christ’s Triumph over death.

By the end of the 4th century, Christianity was dominant among the empire’s religions, although other forms of worship had by no means been eradicated. Paganism continued, but pagan art and literature became increasingly part of the culture of society’s elite. Thus, subjects from classical mythology could be enjoyed in surviving classical works of art or be redeployed in the creation of new luxury objects.

From Philosophers to Apostles

Bust from a Herm. Fig.3 Note Below

Over the course of the 3rd and 4th centuries, the apostles of Christ acquired a status similar to that accorded pagan philosophers, who were regarded as venerable teachers and spiritual leaders. The portrayal of apostles in art relied on the adoption of characteristics that best suited their function as Christianity’s first teachers. Philosophers were usually depicted as bearded, sometimes balding, wearing undecorated togas, and holding scrolls. These attributes signified to the viewer that the subject was a contemplative man.

It was not unusual to find portraits of philosophers elevated to the exalted company of deities and emperors. In Aphrodisias in Caria, for example, honorary portraits of the emperors, gods and goddesses, heroes, and esteemed philosophers were erected in public spaces. As late as the 6th century, groups of philosopher statues could be seen decorating civic monuments. Not only were they set up for commemoration, but portraits of prominent figures were also at times even venerated. Pliny (1st century AD) writes that disciples of the philosopher Epicurus carried his portraits in procession at collective celebrations and privately kept his image in their households. The emperor Alexander Severus (d. 235) is said to have honored portraits of gods, deified emperors, philosophers, and even Christ. Nor were Christians immune to this tradition. Saint Augustine of Hippo tells us that his friend Marcellina, the sister of Saint Ambrose of Milan, burned incense and kneeled in front of the images of Christ and the apostle Paul, along with those of Homer and Pythagoras.

As Christianity came to be the dominant religion, images of the apostles gained importance as they, too, became displayed in public spaces, in monumental art of building interiors, and in private settings.

Christianity on the Rise: From Recognition to Authority

Pendant of Constantine I. Fig.4 Note Below.

Christianity, unlike Judaism, was not at first a recognized, and therefore legalized, religion of the Roman Empire. As a consequence, sporadic and at times intense persecutions of Christians were carried out. The emperor Nero blamed the unpopular Christians of Rome for the great fire in 64 and executed many of them in various grisly ways. Though often unmolested for years, Christians at other times suffered greatly for their religious beliefs and practices.

At the end of the 3rd century, when the empire was in a state of upheaval, the emperor Diocletian divided the administration of the Roman territory between four rulers. The so-called tetrarchic system, however, did not last very long. Constantine I (r. 307–37), ruler of the west, defeated his co-ruler Maxentius in the Battle at the Milvian Bridge in 312, crediting his victory to the sign of Christ under which he had fought. Thereafter, Constantine’s first official edict (313) declared all religions of the empire legal. This made Christianity an officially recognized religion and guaranteed the freedom of public worship. Constantine’s edict came only a few years after one of the most brutal of Christian persecutions carried out under Diocletian.

As the first Christian emperor, Constantine I forever changed the course of the Roman Empire. With the single exception of Julian the Apostate, all subsequent Roman emperors were Christian. Imperial patronage allowed for and indeed actively encouraged the construction and adornment of Christian places of worship, and major churches and shrines were soon built in Rome, the Holy Land, and Constantinople. Christianity set the course for the entire state, as doctrinal and theological disputes precipitated seven ecumenical church councils, beginning with the First Council in 325 convened by Constantine I in Nicaea. In 380, the emperor Theodosios I declared Christianity the official religion of the empire, which gave it an unprecedented religious dominance and marginalized all other religions.

Urban Realities

Corinthiian Pilaster. Fig. 5 Note Below.

Roman cities were embodiments of civilization as political and cultural centers and symbols of prosperity and achievement. Their monumental public spaces, linked by portico-lined thoroughfares, forums, baths, and theaters, reminded residentsand visitors alike of the power and fortune of the empire, while temples of the pagan gods stood as symbols of the empire’s divine provenance and stability.

Female Bust. Fig.6 Note Below.

A period of transition that began in the 3rd and 4th centuries witnessed a decline of the quintessential Roman city. A number of the older cities retained some of their luster, but many underwent population shrinkage and physical decay, and only the new imperial capital, Constantinople, flourished. City walls were constructed, indicating vulnerability from external invaders. Exercising its greatly increased power, the Church became one of the principal urban authorities. Its bishops were leading patrons of architecture, constructing numerous church buildings in most urban centers. Temples and other pagan structures became quarries of building material and decorative spoils that were used to create new urban settings and imagery appropriate to the needs of the imperial religion.

Urban elites continued to dominate the city life of a few Late Antique cities, most notably Constantinople. Generous donations to churches, commemorated by inscriptions, provided an effective means of self-promotion and of demonstrating piety. In the private sphere, the wealthy were able to create quite a different effect, with lavishly decorated houses and rich mosaic floors boasting images of abundance or personifications of the months; their reception halls often contained remarkable collections of ancient sculptures with pagan subjects. All of this was at odds with the public display of Christian piety, and on occasion provoked some prominent bishops to speak out against such duplicity of standards.

Daily Life

Marriage Ring. Fig.7 Note Below

Life for the common man in Late Antiquity for the most part underwent change slowly, almost imperceptibly. It was disrupted only by random, sometimes catastrophic events that brought on a more rapid rate of change. Worship of the pagan gods continued throughout the 4th century and survived, albeit in a more limited fashion, even into the centuries that followed. Daily life went on as it always had, with people sharing the same concerns as their ancestors—marriage, childbirth, illness, and death.

Nevertheless, gradual but profound change was under way. By the 3rd century, citizens of the Roman Empire had already lost some of their sense of security. Constant pressure at the borders, coupled with internal political, military, and social troubles, contributed to a general anxiety. In search of answers to these problems, citizens increasingly turned to supernatural powers for their security and well-being.

Cross. Fig 8 Note Below.

The next three centuries brought about tremendous social changes. Although Christians put their faith in Christ, they also feared various demons and lesser spirits that sought to harm humans. In reaction to these fears, desert monks and holy ascetics rose to great prominence and high esteem, often becoming arbiters of the holy and guardians against evil spirits. They were called on to purge places that were believed to be inhabited by pagan spirits, as the Christians’ own pagan histories still lingered in social consciousness. Prestige and wealth still wielded considerable power, but a sense of democratization began to emerge as Christians from all social levels and backgrounds gathered together in churches to participate in communal services and the commemoration of saints.

Early Christian Worship

The earliest form of Christian worship was focused on communal gatherings within the privacy of a household—either in houses given over entirely to such a role, with individual rooms accommodating various functions, or in meeting halls within larger houses. Little is known about the liturgy during this period. According to Pliny, who presided over trials and executions of Christians in the early 2nd century, the Christian practice was to meet before dawn, sing hymns to Christ, swear oaths to forsake all crimes, and then share a communal meal (probably the so-called agape feast).

Composite Capital, 4 Rivers. Fig. 9 Note Below.

After Christians were granted the freedom to worship openly, churches rose across the Roman Empire. The architecture of surviving churches from the 4th through the 6th century reveals aspects of Christian ritual. The nave of the church, appropriating the architecture of the Roman basilica, facilitated the assembly of large crowds. The sanctuary, where the altar was located and the mysteries were celebrated, was at one end of the longitudinal axis of the basilica, and usually, after the 4th century, at its east end. Only clergy and the emperor were allowed in the sanctuary, which was partitioned off from the laity by a low chancel screen. Ambos—raised platforms accessed by stairs—were constructed in church naves to serve as additional focal points for the liturgy and for the reading of the Gospel. The 4th century saw the rise of martyria, buildings constructed to enshrine holy sites or to house relics of Christian martyrs. Martyria engendered and inspired pilgrimage, as Christians believed that relics and the locations of biblical events were imbued with sacred energy.

Theologians viewed the church as a reflection of the heavenly hierarchy and its spaces as symbolic of spiritual ascent. Between the 5th and 7th centuries, the liturgy evolved and was constantly modified by the addition of new rites and chants.

Death and New Life

Tomb Painting. Fig 10 Note Below.

Over the course of the 4th century, the veneration of martyrs developed into one of the Christian community’s fundamental practices. In the period of Christian persecution, those who willingly went to their death in the name of the faith were considered heroes and therefore worthy of reverence. Christians collectively venerated the martyrs at their tombs, erecting spaces made especially to accommodate visiting pilgrims.

At first, martyria were shrines or small chapels built over burial sites of martyrs, but in the 4th and 5th centuries, grand basilicas and centrally planned buildings provided the venerable Christian dead with considerable public visibility.

The relics of saints were considered potent even when divided and dispersed. By the late 4th century, a major new custom of consecrating all Christian churches with relics placed in reliquaries within or beneath altars came into being. Access to relics was through special small window-like openings that allowed strips of fabric to be lowered into saints’ tombs or oil to be poured into reliquaries, insuring sacred charge through contact with the relics. Oil would be distributed in special small flasks (ampullae). Pilgrimage to martyrs’ shrines and other holy sites—called loca sancta—became an important cultural phenomenon in Late Antiquity. According to Christian belief, these holy places insured access to the supernatural power of the saints.

Stone Reliquary Lid. Fig. 11 Note Below.

Typically, Christians were buried in a cemetery or in a family tomb, according to his or her station. Initially, Christian communities shared their cemeteries with other groups, but gradually they began to have separate cemeteries. The interiors of catacomb tomb chambers, graves, and the memoria of the wealthy were decorated with frescoes depicting Biblical stories and Christian symbols. Humbler burial cells were sealed with plaster or marble slabs upon which names and prayers were inscribed and objects such as gold-glass medallions were embedded. Burial ad sanctos, or near a holy site containing the relics of a saint, became the most desirable location for burial, though only the wealthiest and most prominent Christians would receive such an honor.

The Genesis of Christian Art

Head of Aphrodite. Fig 12 Note Below.

At first, the visual language of Christians was one of symbols. These symbols—the cross, the Christogram (chi-rho, the initial letters of the name of Christ), the fish, the anchor, and so on—were eventually joined by a broader repertoire of figurative art that appropriated pagan motifs and iconographic formulas and adapted them to a new Christian context. The motif of the vine, previously associated with the god of wine, Dionysos, became a reference to Christ, the “true vine.” The figure of the orant, a personification of piety, became the image of a faithful Christian with hands outstretched in prayer. The image of the shepherd carrying the lamb (kriophoros), common in scenes of idyllic life, became identified as Christ the Good Shepherd. Scenes of Christ’s life and His miracles replaced the mythological stories of pagan heroes on carved sarcophagi.

Orans Youth. Fig 13 Note Below.

Ultimately, Christianity triumphed over paganism. This led to an increasing readiness on the part of Christians to appropriate aspects of ancient art for their own purposes. Ecclesiastical art followed funerary art, both pagan and Christian; churches were images of Paradise, filled with lush depictions of rich foliage, Dionysian vines, genre scenes, and fantastic animals that suggested bounty and prosperity. Architectural elements and examples of church furniture demonstrate the appropriation and modification of old forms for new religious needs, such as the “Christianization” of columnar orders and the kivoria (ciboria) above ambos (pulpits). Together with adaptation of old building types for new functions, the basilica (based on the pagan Roman secular building type) and the centrally planned church (based on late Roman mausoleums) collectively reflect a process of transition.

Even while integrating old forms, Late Antique Christians forged a new visual language. Certain artistic modes changed leading to the dominance of two-dimensionality in art, which was deemed ideal for expressing spiritual concepts through physical matter. Perhaps the most ubiquitous of pagan art forms—the portrait of an individual (both three- and two-dimensional)—was gradually replaced by its two-dimensional Christian counterpart, the icon. Depicting Christ, Mary the Mother of God, apostles, or saints, the representational value of the icon was commonly accompanied by miraculous powers possessed by the image itself.

Edited by Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Visit the Onassis Cultural Center at: www.onassisusa.org

Illustrations:

Figure 1. Fragment of a Pavement Mosaic Depiction of Autumn. 4th c. Marble, limestone, glass tesserae. Found in the Siregkella-Antonopoulou plot, Treatrou Street, Argos. Argos Storerooms of Argos Museum. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Justinian II Coin (detail) Fig 14 Note Below.

Fig. 2. Plaque Depicting Herakles and the Hydra. 4th c. Roman bronze, inlaid with copper, brass and silver. Princeton University Art Center, Carl Otto von Keinbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund. Photo: ©Trustees of Princeton University.

Fig. 3. Bust from a Herm. Late 2nd –mid-3rd c. Parian marble. Found opposite the southeast corner of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Delphi, Archeological museum. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Fig. 4. Hexagonal Pendant with Double Solidus of Constantine I. Late 4th c.. Gold. Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection. Photo: © Byzantine Collection, Dumbarton Oaks, Wash.,D.C.

Icon of Christ Fragment. Fig 15 Note Below.

Fig. 5. Corinthian Pilaster Capital with Relief Figure of Kabeiros. Early 4th c. White marble, fine grained. From the Hall of the Octagon in the palace of Galerius, Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Archeological Museum. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Fig. 6. Female Portrait Bust. Circ, 400. Marble. From Kopanos, near Veroia. Thessaloniki Archeological Museum. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Fig. 7. Marriage Ring of Aristophanes and Vigilantia. Late 4th-early 5th c. Byzantine. Gold. Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection. Photo: © Byzantine Collection, Dumbarton Oaks, Wash.,D.C.

Fig. 8. Cross. 5th c. Gold. Athens, National Archeological Museum, Sathatos Collection. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Marriage Plate. Fig.16 Note Below.

Fig. 9. Composite Captial with Depiction of Four Rivers of Paradise. 6th c. White marble. Found in early Christian basilica at the “Mnemata” or “Anathema or “Palaiokklesis” site, Thaumakos of Phthiotis Hypati, Byzantine Museum of Phthiotis. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Fig. 10. Tomb Painting with Christogram. Mid-4th c. Fresco on plaster. Found in a tomb in the eastern early Christian cemetery of Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki, Museum of Byzantine Culture. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Fig. 11. Lid of Stone Reliquary. 5th-6th c. Limestone. Athens, Benaki Museum. Photo: © 2011 Benaki Museum, Athens.

Fig. 12. Head of Aphrodite. 1st c. Parian marble. Found near the Tower of the Winds, in the Roman Agora in Athens. Athens National Archeological Museum. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Mummy Portrait. Fig. 17.

Fig. 13. Plaque with a figure of an Orans Youth in Relief. Late 5th-early 6th c. Ivory. Found in the sanctuary of an early Christian basilica in Paliochora, Maroneia. Kavala, 12th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, Megora,Tokou. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Fig. 14. Gold Solidus of Justinian II (685-95 and 705-11), detail. Mint: Constantinople. Gold. Princeton, Princeton University Numesmatics Collection; purchase 2009 with funds from the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund. Photo: © Numesmatic Collection, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Fig.15. Part of an Icon of Christ. 6th-7th c. Encaustic on wood. From Egypt; acquired in Egypt, 1936. Athens, Benaki Museum. Photo: Benaki Museum, Athens.

Figure 16. Plate with Marriage of David to Michal (128-30). Constantinople workshop. Silver, cast, hammered, engraved, punched, chased. Found at Lambousa, Cyprus. Nicosia, Cyprus Musem. Photo: © Cyprus Museum, Nocosia.

Fig. 17. Mummy Portrait of a Woman (ca. 120). Encaustic on wood, remains of textile. Egypt, Faiyum, probably Hawara. Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum. Photo: © The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

 “The artist recognizes the unknown as a workable reality”   ~Cornelia Kubler Kavanagh, Sculptor

Right: Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green leaves and Bust (1932). Private Collection

 OOOH my Goodness!

Munch's, The Scream, a pastel, recently sold for $120 M

With more record-setting prices being realized in the art auction market recently, ARTES fine arts magazine in asking the question: is the economy showing signs of rebounding or is this a false indicators of good times around the corner, once again? The answer resides in a deeper understanding of the profile of the headline-grabbing purchases and the anonymous buyers bidding behind the scenes. In recent weeks some rare and high-profile works have come to market. Well-known artists like Picasso, Munch, Klimt and Gauguin are likely to draw global attention in any venue they appear, but original works by these masters are rarely seen in the retail marketplace. And with the ephemeral nature of ‘long-term value’ in many forms of contemporary art still open to debate among art portfolio experts and art economists, alike, works by modern masters seem like the equivalent of conservative, large-cap, dividend-bearing stocks—that is, less cyclical and more value-proven.

Like bees to honey, vast sums of international money, all privately controlled, comes forth to stake a claim on the early-to-mid 20th century paintings, drawings and sculpture advertized by the major auction houses. Be clear—these are not museums and public institutions vying for these acquisitions. Budgets for even the largest and most established art institutions may be generous, but none sets out to consummate a purchase with the intention of making headlines for “the most money ever spent on a ….” An impulse buy of this kind would not sit well with governing boards or supporting philanthropic patrons of those museums, only hurting their curatorial objectives and public profile in the long-run.

Picasso’s Femme Assise Dans un Fauteuil (1941), a portrait of Dora Maar: $29.2 M in this week's auction

Record-setting purchases are being set by private, international players, where ego may override any notion of well-defined collection objectives. Often bidding anonymously, or through agents or intermediaries, millions trade hands after just a few brief minutes of bidding, only to have the gavel come down as the public watches the briefly-appearing masterpiece disappear for decades more, behind the walls of a private estate in Dubai, Russia, Brazil or China. Are these expensive collections little more than the Victorian-era equivalent of sterile ‘Cabinets of Curiosity,’ merely providing a ‘storehouse for all the “wonders of creation” for the amusement and curiosity of friends and visitors? We may never know. One thing is clear, however, the wealthiest among us are supporting the secondary art market at the stratospheric end of the spectrum of collectable art. The reality is that the economy for the rest of us—the 99%—is making a slow (and what will probably be a decade-long) recovery. Here’s the good news in that: if you step away from the glitz, glamour and rarified climate of an evening auction at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, to consider the vast mid-range of work by established and emerging artists that is always coming to market, this remains an excellent time to begin a collection or to add to those beloved ‘masterpieces’ that may already grace the endless corridors and cavernous rooms of your own modest abode.

Editor’s note: This month’s featured portrait, Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) was the previous record-holder at $106.5 M (2010).

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Richard Friswell,

Publisher & Managing Editor

Janet Bellotto, The Lure (2011) Digital video, appropriated footage 1 min

The artist Janet Bellotto’s exhibition The Lure, seen at the De Luca Fine Arts Gallery several months ago, proved intellectually engaging in the infinite number of ideas that it conjured, and was, at its very root, sensuous, seductive, and romantic, albeit in a self-contained, carefully-orchestrated manner. That is, despite the traditionally feminine thematic elements of flowers and perfumed fragrances inherent in the work, the Dubai/Toronto-based artist displayed not one ounce of sentimental gush or sappiness. An experimental artist at heart, with a bent towards the natural and social sciences, she excludes no method or persuasion a characteristic that Bellotto is known for –to get to the heart of the matter. In this 2011 exhibition, using video, sculpture, and photography, the artist adopted a cubistic approach to explore the subject of scent from many angles. artes fine arts magazine

Bliss or Torture (2011) Lenticular Photograph, 36 x 36"

Effectively curated by gallery director Corrado DeLuca, The Lure began in the street-facing front window of the gallery with a large, intoxicatingly blood-red circular photograph of a bouquet of red roses entitled Bliss or Torture (2011). Like other works of Bellotto on display, it appeared to be alive and moving…the eye-fooling trick at work? The artist’s use of a lenticular printing process, a technology in which a special lens produces layered images to create an illusion of depth, allows the image to flip back and forth when viewed from different angles. Like temptation itself, Bliss or Torture, was both inviting and portentous—a point the artist successfully entertained in other of works on view.

While the beauty of Lure appealed primarily to the bodily senses—visual first, then olfactory—at its core, the exhibition’s conceptual nature required thought and contemplation, for each flower-based work became a receptacle of the artist’s ideas. For those who elected to take the course, it was also a study of flowers—red and white roses, narcissus, dandelions, deadly nightshades, daffodils—as metaphors for the power of fragrance to cite history, trigger memory and awaken our emotions. Bellotto also hinted, not too subtly, I thought, of her  own experience with “clouds of scent that follow many people,” as well as  aromas infusing the air in perfume parlors that are predominant in the United Arab Emirates—Dubai in particular—where she co-chairs and teaches in the Department of Art and Design at Zayed University.

The Grass Is Greener (2011), 12x6x5", India ink, perfume oil, glass

Entry to Lure was an encounter with The Grass is Greener (2011), a blown glass, shell-shaped sculpture filled with grass-scented oil, colored black with the addition of india ink, the very oil, as the artist informed me, that instigated this project. “The smell of the oil reminded me of cut grass, something not usually found in the desert climate of the Emirates.” Further embracing the sense of smell, Bellotto’s Flora from the Emirates (2009), portrayed a museum-type vitrine lined with vials of perfumed oils. “I began collecting various perfume oils that reminded me of nature – or nature- filled moments that I could not experience in the UAE. The purpose of putting them on display was to create another picture of the flower, a visual transition through the colors of the scents.” Indeed, this is exactly what happened. In “viewing” the vials, each with its own color and fragrance – grass, saffron, rose, jasmine, and oud, whose smell is reminiscent of a damp forest wood – I found myself trying to visualize, but actually succeeding with the more familiar flowers, grass, and plants, that the oils were extracted from.

Right: Flora from the Emirates (detail) ,2009, 24″ x 24″, Perfume vials, perfume oil.

Weed of Dreams (2011), 23x30" Archival pigment print, perfume essence on Arches paper

In Floral Façade (2011), four facemasks on paper with perfumed essence, Bellotto fashioned a series to fool the eye, nose and mind, not unlike various species of insect-eating plants using these same elements of form, color, and smell to mask their imminent danger. Like unsuspecting insects, one is drawn to the beauty of the flowery masks; on closer inspection, however, their beauty turns horrific, the realization gradually occurring that each mask, deliberately camouflaged with an enticing design, is used solely to enable its wearer to breathe, not only easily, but sometimes, to breathe at all. Mirror of Opposites and Envy, the smallest and simplest of the masks, half-face masks, in fact, are the type used to filter air for asthmatics and others with respiratory problems. The most ghastly of the group – ironically the most compelling in size, shape and design – proved to be Weeds of Dreams and Deadly Bed of Roses, full-face gas masks worn by firemen and soldiers at war.

In The Niche of Your Hair (2011), a literary-based wall installation, Bellotto (right), whose hair is down past her waist – perhaps, like many coifs in the Emirates, even perfumed – made use of the peineta, a large decorative comb worn under a mantilla or lace covering, as a metaphor relating the scent and flow of perfume and its romanticism, to that of the hair. Each of the seven acrylic peinetas on view, all intricately designed and laser-cut by the artist, contained words from the title or body of poems discussing perfume. Here the romantic sonnets of Baudelaire, Shakespeare, and others, served her well. In one peineta, Bellotto, in a bow to the multibillion dollar cosmetic industry, used the words Montezuma Red, the color of the lipstick that Elizabeth Arden created for women in the armed forces during World War II, to match the red on their uniforms.

Blow (2011), Digital Video, appropriated footage 1 min

The two most mesmerizing works in Bellotto’s exhibition – due to their cinematic beauty – were her digitally-manipulated videos, The Lure and Blow (2011). In each one-minute piece, assembled from Internet-appropriated footage looped to run continuously, she managed, without wandering too far from her exploration of perfumed fragrance and the olfactory sense, to link the visuals’ rhythms to the viewer’s own breathing patterns; and perhaps, if one’s imagination allowed—as mine did—to one’s sexual responses. In Blow, a row of Narcissus lined up like dancing chorus girls at the skirt of a stage, performing nature’s dance. They first appeared as buds, then, like the shooting fireworks of an orgasm, exploded violently into bloom. The Lure (see opening image) pitted two contrasting elements– a large, wavering pink flower and billowing puffs of smoke–face to face. Just as in life, Bellotto left it to the viewer to determine whether the subject was a kind of symbolic, balletic pas de deux, or a duel to the death.

By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer

The Lure, appeared at De Luca Fine Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada, in November, 2011

www.delucafineart.com

Odd Nerdrum, Black Fur, o/c, 29 1/2 x 25 1/2"

“When I paint, I struggle, as if in the water. I will try with all means not to drown. Sandpaper, rags, my fingers, the knife—in short—everything but the brush, which is rarely used.” ~Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum’s most recent series of paintings appears to have arrived at his latest New York gallery show from a far-away place and time. And more than being redolent with personal messages of survival, each seems freighted with allegorical and cautionary tales from the past, about dangers we face in a post-apocalyptic modern world. Pulling back the curtain on the landscape of Nerdrum’s imagination doesn’t reveal images of some Hieronymus Bosch, biblical Armageddon, but rather, suggests dramas of resourcefulness and triumph of the human spirit. Portrayed in the hushed, muted, painterly earth-tones of Rembrandt, Brueghel, Caravaggio, among other Old Masters, each work is carefully conceived as an encrypted narrative waiting to be deciphered; each a study of indomitable will and fierce personal integrity in the face of adversity. arts fine arts magazine

You See We Are Blind, o/c, 73 x 100 3/4"

In this new body of work, all made in the last four years, the iconoclastic Norwegian painter continues his exploration of the universal human condition. But here, themes of confinement and escape seem paramount in his mind. Dogged by legal issues and the threat of imprisonment for tax evasion in his native Norway, Nerdrum conjured these thirteen paintings as a meditation on the freedom of movement and the liberated human spirit. Now living and working in Maisons-Laffitte, France, near Paris, his themes of alienation, flight, rebirth and reconstruction all seem bathed in a subtle new light. For Nerdrum, the Old Masters of Europe’s North Country, succeeded in capturing the sun’s oblique rays, filtered through dusty windows and reflected off walls of private chambers, to illuminate and animate their subjects.

But even as a studio painter, Nerdrum’s work is never captive to those four walls, as he continues to shape a world of his own imagining. Civilization as we know it is stripped away—obscured by darkness, lying in ruins in the distance or veiled in layers of clouds. The essential, unifying element in his work continues to be the human experience, and the vulnerabilities that result from confrontations on that journey.

In You See We Are Blind, three women are perched in a primeval setting, each armed with a frail staff for assistance, perhaps as they await an unlikely rescue. Two are in conversation; the third woman separate from the others, is deep in thought, downturned corners of her mouth revealing an undefined sadness. Pathos and isolation—even (possibly, especially)in one another’s company—are motifs here. Emotional rescue, as well as the need for physical safety in a bleak, deserted landscape, are also recurrent themes, weaving their way through this and other Nerdrum works.

In Arcadia, o/c, 50 1/2 x 44 1/4"

The Forum show includes two self-portraits, the artist staring plaintively into the space just beyond his world, in both. Nerdrum’s decades-long exercise in self-revelation continues as in these works, he appears to be establishing his role as scribe and prophet for the uninitiated and uninformed. Timeless and enigmatic, the artist’s Baroque stylistic links to Rembrandt are reaffirmed in his use of rich browns, chiaroscuro highlights and luminous flesh tones. Each portrait appears to address us from the past, directing our attention to cautionary tales of life in a post-Apocalyptic world and to the themes of stewardship and civility, that just might offer redemption. In Arcadia, presents the artist-as-dreamer, cloaked (or more accurately, shrouded), emerging from a darkened forest into the foreground, right hand poised and animated. Might we be a welcome visitor from the present, offering a message of hope? In another, Self portrait with Child’s Skull, the artist-as-scribe carefully observes and records our actions—a clever, conspiratorial interplay between viewer and viewed, in which we become ensnared in his humanistic narrative. The presence of the child’s skull in the work serves as a clear reminder of death’s unrelenting presence in all of our lives and the power of affirmation on the path to self-awareness.

Self Portrait with Child's Skull, o/c, 34 1/2 x 30"

Some might find the themes under development in Nerdrum’s paintings self-evident and trite. And for the artist, that just might be the point. In the early 1970s, he would emerge from among the group of young painters to become one of the leading figures to revolt against the dogma of Modernism. In 1999, Odd Nerdrum declared himself a kitsch-painter, identifying with the notion of cheap or shoddy artistic motifs, rather than with those of the rarified contemporary art world. Initially, his declaration was thought a joke. But later, with the publication of articles and books on the subject, Nerdrum’s position, valuing a naturalistic view of the world, where differing ideologies, dogmas, and social perspectives can successfully co-exist, is considered an implied criticism of contemporary art.

In his 2001 book on Nerdrum, Richard Vine writes, “The anxious dialectic between self and world, self and group, will go on, [his] images attest, for as long as the human race persists. The sea, that enduring metaphor for eternity and the fathomless unconscious, laps at many of his scenes. … Thus on the liminal shore between land and sea, time and eternity, consciousness and unconsciousness, the wanderers pause to confront the realm from which all life emerged. … The implicit sexuality of their quest, made manifest in those pictures where the actors are pregnant, highlights the aloneness one can feel even in the most passionate encounters, even at the climactic moment of putative fusion.”

Night Jumper, o/c, 114 1/2 x 81 1/2"

Rather than being other-worldly, as some critics have noted, these most recent paintings are clearly ‘of the earth.’ The action is grounded in landscape, and life appears to spring from the soil, playing out dramatically in ambiguously threatening scenes or, in one case, hover ing with gravity-defying grace, above terra firma. In Night Jumper, four figures sleep around a fire in an inhospitable world, while another appears above them, magically suspended in mid-air, as if the fire has propelled him upward. The horizon’s curvature divides the action and, therefore, the dual message of this painting: hope and despair; renewal and resignation. The two sleeping female figures are pregnant, offering unfulfilled promise for the future; the two males are turned away, unaware of the scene unfolding. Defying gravity—as if rising from the flames—the ‘night jumper’ takes action to enter a world of his own, separating himself from the indifference below. Here, a symbol of resurrection or spiritual awakening captures the essence of Nerdrum’s work: a celebration of life and human experience in the face of adversity, universal spiritual values that he believes remain true over time.

Birds, o/c, 39 3/8 x 35 3/8"

Certain pieces in the show are more effective than others, in my opinion. Paintings like Mother and Daughter and Birds were showpieces for Nerdrum’s painterly technique and were, I am certain, redolent with symbolic meaning. However, they did not seem to elevate or progress the dialogue between the painter and viewer in ways that could be accessed, without the benefit of clarifying text or explanation. Titles are ambiguous and these figurative portrayals have the same hollow-eyed, bruised look of so many of his works, without the visual cues that would progress movement beyond the sense of, once again, being confronted by survivors in yet another of Nerdrum’s battered wastelands.

Egg Snatchers, o/c, 70 1/2 x 79 1/2"

Egg Snatchers had been moved temporarily to the gallery booth at the Armory Show, replaced by a small photograph of the piece. Here too, the actual work may have spoken volumes. But, without explanation, the viewer is left to wonder about this large painting—and in it, Nerdrum’s virtuosic use of metaphor and symbolism. The timeless nature of his figurative renderings, completed in his layered, mannerist style, are both ancient and modern at the same time. But, where is the narrative taking us? Are we in the land of the sacred or the profane…or both? If this is an auto-reflexive work, what is the message; if this is referential, what is to be learned?

Tourettes, o/c, 60 x 54"

A work with strong appeal is one that, as it turns out, may have a more personal meaning to the artist than to others. Tourettes pictures a woman standing against a tree in a dimly-lit forest while behind her, at a distance, a group of figures gathers in a circle and a fire glows threateningly. Gazing toward the viewer, the woman conveys a message with her eloquent, poised hands. Nerdrum shares a secret with the world through this enigmatically-named painting—that he, in fact, suffers from Tourette’s syndrome. Characterized by multiple tics and compulsive utterances, this neurological condition can often be embarrassing in public and debilitating throughout one’s life. The artist has struggled to manage the symptoms, most effectively with meditation. His experience with this disease has helped him explore from within and focus on what is essential to the human experience. The figure of Tourettes stands confidently in a glade. Far from the dangers around her, she is signing in the Buddhist tradition, the Akash mudra—thumb and middle finger about to touch—a gesture to help center energy, nourishing any part of the mind or body that is lacking. For Odd Nerdrum, whose thematic work deals so profoundly with the survival and well-being of humankind, this painting, particularly, is about his own journey toward healing.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

An exhibition of 13 recent paintings by world-renowned artist Odd Nerdrum will be on view at Forum Gallery, 730 5th Avenue, New York City, from March 8 through May 5, 2012. The Forum Gallery exhibition is presented in cooperation with The Nerdrum Institute.

I

It might come as a surprise that one of China’s most significant contemporary artists chose to focus his attention on tobacco, but given the trajectory of the artist’s career—particularly his interest in history, material culture, language, and the systems of meaning set up by society—it seems preordained that he would eventually gravitate to the subject.

Above: Pipe, 2004; seventh stem added in 2011, Wood tobacco pipe with six added stems and tobacco. Fabrication assisted by Michael Muelhaupt. Courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Photo: Travis Fullerton artes fine arts magazine

Xu Bing printing on a tobacco leaf, 2000. Photo courtesy of Duke University

The history of tobacco’s spread from the New World to become a global phenomenon is a rich and complex story that involves physiology, agriculture, commerce, and social custom. There are more than 300 million Chinese smokers (2) (more than the entire US population), yet the Tobacco Project’s subject is not contemporary Chinese society, but rather one artist’s personal response to a plant whose widespread use has a lot to tell us about human nature (and frailty). From the beginning of “lighting up,” tobacco’s various subcultures around the world have shared a similar romantic fascination with the herb. As the Chinese poet “Mr. Wu” wrote in the eighteenth century:

Puffing fragrance, exhaling the Sage’s vapor;

Bluish tendrils born from the subtle smoke.

The Gentleman’s Companion, it warms my heart

And leaves my mouth feeling like a divine furnace (3).

Xu Bing’s interest in language has manifested itself in a body of work that is strongly conceptual in nature, and Tobacco Project’s use of research, archival materials, and text points to the artist’s idea-driven methodology. But, as with Xu Bing’s other endeavors, Tobacco Project tempers its conceptual approach with the stunning use of materiality. The Museum’s galleries are not only filled with a range of objects made from the world of tobacco culture, but also the strong and immediately identifiable aroma of cured tobacco products.

Calendar Book, 2000, “American Spirit” cigarette boxes, artist’s father’s medical records, plastic desk-calendar frame 3 1/8 x 4 7/8 x 7 ½”, fabrication assisted by Jason Wagner.

Xu Bing’s personal circumstances are crucial to helping us to understand the artist’s influences in the creation of Tobacco Project. During China’s Cultural Revolution (4), when he was nineteen years old, he was relocated (as were many Chinese people) to a rural agricultural area. Spending nearly three years working in a farming community left him with an understanding and respect for farming as a way of life. This connection with the land and the people who farm it was reawakened during his visits to the tobacco farms of North Carolina and Virginia. But it was another personal connection that loomed larger over the subject of tobacco: in 1989, at the age of sixty-four, his father had died of lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking (5). Included in the exhibition are several works that allude to this fact, including Calendar Book, an assemblage that combines a plastic desk calendar with printed cigarette boxes, a double cigarette, and copies of the artist’s father’s medical records.

Xu Bing, Traveling Down the River (2004). on display, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

On entering the museum we are confronted with two works that speak of the transmission of tobacco culture from the New World to China. Traveling Down the River consists of a reproduction of the renowned 42-foot-long scroll painting, Along the River during the Quingming Festival, by the artist Zhang Zeduan (1058–1145). Created before the introduction of tobacco to China, it pictures a panorama of human activity along the Bian River in Henan Province. Overlaid down its length is a 42-foot-long cigarette that is lighted periodically during the duration of the exhibition (right & below), leaving a trail of ash (and burnt scroll) that marks the fire’s progress (6). The rivers of China are the transportation arteries that brought Western influences, including tobacco, into China from abroad. It is believed that the Portuguese first brought tobacco to southern China as early as the 1540s, with the smoking habit enveloping most of the country by the middle of the seventeenth century.

Traveling Down the River (detail), 2004, Specially-made long cigarette, burned on a reproduction of Along the River during the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145)

While Traveling Down the River can be read as a visually poetic response to tobacco’s spread (and its destructive impact on human well-being), the adjacent work Prophecy is a pointedly ironic chronicle that records the trade in tobacco products between the United States and China over the course of almost a century. Beginning with a copy of a British American Tobacco Company (BAT) stock certificate and marketing agreement with a Chinese firm, it includes documents showing BAT’s subsequent profits in China, copies of correspondence regarding the donation of BAT’s assets to Duke University by its owners, a check and related documents from Duke University to Xu Bing for the creation of Tobacco Project, and finally a copy of a check from an American collector who acquired a work from Tobacco Project. The linkage between the American and Chinese economies is not just a recent phenomenon, and Prophecy documents a circular connection across both time and space.

1st Class, 2011, ca. 500,000 “1st Class” cigarettes, adhesive, carpet, ca. 18’ x 38’

The dramatic centerpiece of Tobacco Project is the work 1st Class, a carpet-like sculpture resembling a tiger-skin rug that has been made of over a quarter of a million cigarettes. The piece’s title refers to the brand of cigarette used in its fabrication: 1st Class, an American discount brand that is primarily marketed through convenience stores. In China, tiger skins have traditionally been status symbols, and the demand for the pelts along with a rapidly shrinking natural tiger population has led to the recent phenomenon of “tiger farms,” where tigers are raised for both skin and bone (tiger bones are used in traditional Chinese medicine) (7). 1st Class is an object of undeniable beauty, yet it is made of the most common vehicle of nicotine addiction. By reveling in contradiction the work eloquently speaks of the allure, glamor, and status that humans connect with both consumer goods and risky behavior. What is more glamorous: James Dean with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, or a tiger skin rug underfoot?

1st Class (detail), 2011, ca. 500,000 “1st Class” cigarettes, adhesive, carpet.ca. 18’ x 38’. Courtesy: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

In 2007 the artist made his first trip to Richmond to discuss the possibility of expanding Tobacco Project into an exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The area around Richmond was also a major center of tobacco production, and this visit, along with subsequent ones over the course of the next three years, led to both the recreation and/or reconfiguring of earlier tobacco-based works and creation of new ones for this exhibition. For example, 1st Class is the recreation of Honor and Splendor, a similar work that was made for an exhibition of works from the Tobacco Project in China at the Shanghai Gallery of Art in 2004. Many of the new and/or reconfigured works in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Exhibition, including 1st Class, were made in Richmond with the help of students from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Tobacco box labels with appealing branding, images.

One of the new works that resulted from Xu Bing’s time in Richmond was Backbone, a book project created in collaboration with his friend René Balcer. Visiting the archives of the Valentine Richmond History Center, a museum dedicated to the history of the greater Richmond area, Xu Bing became fascinated with a collection of historical stencils that were used to print tobacco brand names on boxes and crates. The romantic and suggestive nature of the brand names—DEW DROP, OH MY, VIRTUE, BLACK SATIN, QUEEN OF THE EAST, etc.—led Xu Bing and Balcer to conceive of work that would be a poem dedicated to the African-American women who worked tirelessly in the tobacco processing industry. Xu Bing’s interest in language, coupled with Balcer’s background as a writer (he has been a writer and producer for television’s Law & Order, in addition to other television and film projects) proved to be a fruitful combination, leading to the creation of a piece of concrete poetry that has the rhythm and cadence of a traditional blues song. Indeed, this resemblance led to Balcer recruiting Captain Luke Theyer and Big Ron Hunter, blues musicians from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to record a song using the words from the piece (8). Xu Bing’s and Balcer’s unusual interrogation of history and material culture led to the creation of these genre-bending works that profoundly reveal underlying truths about the history of tobacco production in the American South.

Another work that was the result of the artist’s investigation into the archives of the Valentine Richmond History Center is Reel Book. Influenced by the form of traditional Chinese handscrolls, which are long, narrow scrolls (as long as eight feet) that display a series of painted scenes, Reel Book is a roll of 1-1/16 inch-wide uncut cigarette paper that has the entire text of the book With The Poets In Smokeland laboriously hand typed along its length. Published in 1890 by Allen & Ginter, a Richmond cigarette manufacturer, With the Poets in Smokeland is an illustrated compilation of over forty works of poetry dedicated to tobacco. As with a Chinese handscroll, Reel Book is a linear experience, but given Xu Bing’s interest in language the imagery is delivered with words, not pictures. The following is from the introduction to the book:

“In all climes and among all races of men the language of tobacco is the same… It is universal, whether it be in the pipe of the student or the cigarette of the man of leisure; fully nine-tenths of the human race, in some form, burn incense to the gracious Goddess Nicotiana.”

Above: Reel Book, 2000; modified in 2011, Continuous roll of cigarette paper, typed with text from With the Poets in Smokeland (1875–90), wooden crank mecha­nism, printers ink, 16 1/2 x 29 x 10 1/4″. Typing by Andrea Donnelly; crank mechanism fabricated by Brad Johnson, Harvey Craig, and Alan Dippy, courtesy of the Duke University Museum of Art; rubber stamp by Jill Zevenbergen.

Redbook, 2000, “Zhonghua” cigarettes, rubber-stamped with various English translations of quotations from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book; original metal case

Many of the small works included in Tobacco Project are made of tobacco and cigarette ephemera. They juxtapose found language with found objects to uncover hidden truths embedded both in tobacco products and the cultures that created them. An example of this is the work Redbook, which combines a metal box of Chinese Zhonghua cigarettes with text from the book Quotations by Chairman Mao (see detail, left, below) (9). Zhonghua is a Chinese luxury brand, traditionally favored by the ruling elite, and recently adopted as a status brand by the rising class of Chinese entrepreneurs. A Chinese Web site that sells Zhonghuas advertises the brand by stating: “This is the preferred cigarette for factory bosses all around the southern coast belt of China. Bosses lose face if they smoke anything else.” (10)  Carefully rubber stamped on the twelve cigarettes in the box is the following quote from Chairman Mao: “Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history, such is the history of civilization for thousands of years. To interpret history from this viewpoint is historical materialism; standing in opposition to this viewpoint is historical idealism.” In this simple work, Xu Bing has managed to summarize the sweeping changes that have swept over China in the last several decades. To contemporary factory bosses, Chairman Mao represents the past, yet they can’t escape class struggle as they participate in China’s role in the exploding global economy.

At the center of this exhibition is tobacco, with its various meanings radiating out in fascinating and unexpected directions. Similarly, the work Pipe (opening image) included in Tobacco Project has tobacco at its center; in this case the smoldering bowl that the world has shared for 500 years. The seven stems (each from a different culture) that radiate from Pipe’s central bowl are competing, yet complementary, axes around which the story of Nicotiana turns. As Xu Bing has written about Tobacco Project:

“I am interested in an examination of inherently human issues and weaknesses through an exploration of the extensive, entangled relationship that exists between human beings and tobacco. Historically speaking, our human connection to tobacco is at times distant and at times close. In some eras tobacco is seen as something good: men and women, young and old all take part in its use. It could be said that today we have reached the summit of man’s rejection of tobacco…. Everyone knows that tobacco is harmful, but we are inseparable, caught in an entanglement that resembles the relationship between lovers: getting too close is no good, but neither is being too distant…. In truth, it is nearly impossible to pass judgment on the physical harm that tobacco does to us and at the same time pass judgment on all of those limitless things that we gain from within its shroud of smoke.” (11)

Right: Students, Samantha Lotko, Alexandra Lotko and Margaret Elkins examine Xu Bing’s Light as Smoke, 2011, a 440-lb compressed block of tobacco with raised text: “Light as Smoke. ” Tobacco leaf courtesy of Marvin Cogshill; fabrication assisted by Michael Muelhaupt. Courtesy: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts originated Xu Bing’s Tobacco Project, after which it traveled to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Interestingly, Connecticut shares with Virginia a history of tobacco production, with the Connecticut River valley being the only region in the United States that produces premium cigar wrapper tobacco. As a fifteen year old in 1944, Martin Luther King, Jr., made his first trip outside the then-segregated south to pick tobacco for a summer in Simsbury, Connecticut. King came north with fellow Morehouse College students to earn money to pay for school, living in a dormitory built at the edge of a tobacco field (12).

By Richard Klein, Exhibitions Director

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

The exhibition, Tobacco Project, will be on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum until June 10, 2012 

Special thanks go to John B. Ravenal, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the VMFA, who was responsible for the complex task of organizing the exhibition; Xu Bing’s assistants in the United States, Jesse Robert Coffino and Yao Xin, for their help with installation at The Aldrich; Kelly Burrow, assistant registrar at the VMFA, and Mary Kenealy, The Aldrich’s registrar, for their logistical support; and Michael Muelhaupt, a former student of Virginia Commonwealth University, for supervising the installation of 1st Class. Both the VMFA and The Aldrich are particularly grateful to Caroline Hsu-Balcer and René Balcer for their support of the exhibition. Special appreciation goes to The New York Botanical Garden for growing the living tobacco included in the exhibition at The Aldrich (in blossom, left) , and, for providing the artist with materials, to Marvin Coghill, and to Phil James of Mundet International.

Of course, Tobacco Project is ultimately the result of the dedication and insight of the artist. We are grateful to Xu Bing for an extraordinary experience that transcends both Chinese and American culture to become truly universal.

___________________________________________________

Foot Notes:

1. Duke University was founded by Washington Duke (1820–1905), a cotton farmer who turned to growing tobacco in 1859. His sons subsequently founded the American Tobacco Company, helping make North Carolina the heart of an international tobacco empire.

2. Smoking Statistics Fact Sheet (2002), World Heath Organization, Western Pacific Region, www.wpro.who.int/media_centre

3. Quoted from Charles C. Mann’s book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf, 2011), p. 165.

4. The Cultural Revolution was an often violent socio-political movement that occurred between 1966 and 1976. Set into motion by Mao Tse-tung, its goal was to enforce socialism by purging both capitalist and traditional cultural elements from Chinese society.

 5. Details of Xu Bing’s life were gleaned from both conversations with the artist and John Ravenal’s essay “Tobacco as a Universal Language,” included in Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, Duke/Shanghai/Virginia 1999–2011, the book published  by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2011 in conjunction with the exhibition at the VMFA.

 6. The Quingming Festival is an annual springtime celebration where people remember and honor their ancestors at gravesites. One component of the festival that deepens the possible meanings of Traveling Down the River is the burning of “spirit money” and paper replicas of material goods, such as cars, homes, and most recently, mobile phones. In traditional Chinese culture it is believed that people still need these things in the afterlife.

 7. Debbie Banks, Made in China: Tiger Skin Rugs, The Asia Mag, May 17, 2011. (www.theasiamag.com/perspectives/made-in-china-tiger-skin-rugs)

 8. BackBone: lyrics by René Balcer; music by Captain Luke Theyer, Big Ron Hunter, and Michael Sackler-Berner; musicians: Captain Luke (vocals) and Big Ron (guitar).

 9. Commonly known in the West as “The Little Red Book,” Quotations from Chairman Mao is a book of selected statements taken from the speeches and writings of Mao Tse-tung, former leader of the Chinese Communist Party. It was published and distributed from 1964 through 1976.

10. TigerPipes.com, a company specializing in the sales of Chinese tobacco products.

11. Xu Bing, “Tobacco Projects 1, 2, 3,” in Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, Duke/Shanghai/Virginia, 1999–2011, p. 67.

12. Steve Hartman, Martin Luther King Jr. Shaped by Connecticut Town, CBS Evening News, January 17, 2011.

 “Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.” ~Gwendolyn Brooks, American Poet (1917-2000)

Left: Joan Miro, Woman, Bird and Stars (1942), Gouache on paper. Private Collection 

Rococo-era etching, Filippo Bonanni, Viola Player (1723)

The colorful harbingers of spring feel like Rococo embellishments at the end of a winter survivor’s tale. While this one was historically mild, turning the page of the calendar to the heading “April” always feels like a victory of light over darkness, green defeating gray, face-to-the-breeze and a respite from the huddled rush, via the shortest route, from point A to point B. Art openings abound; concert schedules to be held on rolling verdant lawns of city parks are announced; Thespians rehearse for the 3-act plays they’ll be taking on the road; children can be heard on school playgrounds—barely-constrained energy—ready to bolt for summer’s promise; unseen creatures in primordial pools behind my studio begin to stir and cry out at dusk. The awakening of the cycle of life and human spirit is palpable all around us.

Richard Friswell, Publisher & Managing Editor. Photo: K. Arcano

ARTES, the fine arts magazine continues to spread its wings as it sprout new roots: our phalanx of contributing writers grows, while ARTES‘s global reach is reflected in our feature articles—from Delhi, India to Venice, Italy; Sao Paulo, Brazil to Portland, Maine. Readership continues to expand, as we remain committed to the idea that full-length feature articles, with strong curatorial and historical links can be a viable part of the Internet-based Information Age. With more than seven million hits projected for 2012 and enough articles being read on each visit to constitute a small-to medium-sized library, ARTES is a valued resource for experts, collectors, students and the artistically-inspired around the world. For its writers—curators and academics, practicing artists and critics, economists and social historians, and others, ARTES is an excellent literary vehicle for putting one’s thoughts out into the world and, in fact, reaching an international audience.

ARTES is renewing its CALL FOR WRITERS who are interested in contributing to the magazine. Accolades and increased name recognition within the sometime-baffling metrics of search engine recognition may be small consolation for the absence of monetary compensation.  But, for an artist with a successful museum or gallery show, an artists’ public relations company with a client-base looking to you for guidance in the marketplace of ideas, a museum with an extraordinary new upcoming exhibition, or a professor or curator with an interesting perspective on a familiar topic in art history, or an artist’s life work, consider publication in ARTES. Our virtual magazine’s reach goes beyond the time-delays of the printed word, beyond the distances of traditional geographically-bound distribution routes and stressed retail settings; as we deliver our passion for art, architecture and design directly and instantly to the hearts and minds of our readership.

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Publisher & Managing Editor

I

Santa Barbara Post Office c. 1920. Future home of SBMA

This architectural gem, with its elegant permanent collection came to my attention because of the recent installation of a newly-conserved, first-or-second-century Roman statue, the Landsdowne Dionysus. With its arrival comes a unique opportunity to witness the professional care and attention that attend a museum’s responsibility in caring for and conserving artifacts from the past; then to beautifully present them in ways that contextualize their importance in the grand scope of history. The recently-refurbished Santa Barbara Museum of Art accomplishes both tasks in ways that win accolades.

But, first a bit of contemporary history…

Ludington estate, ‘Val Verde,’ Montecito, CA, built 1918

Charles H. Ludington was a corporate lawyer and investment banker. For a number of years, he was involved with the Curtis Publishing Company, best known as the publisher of the popular magazine The Saturday Evening Post. Charles Ludington passed away in 1927 and son, Wright Ludington inherited his estate. He rechristened his home Val Verde and engaged nationally-known landscape architect Lockwood de Forest Jr., to transform the gardens. De Forest worked on the gardens on and off for most of the rest of his life; they are his crowning achievement. The estate’s reservoir became a swimming pool and Ludington had an art gallery built to house his growing collections. Ludington utilized the atrium to house his collection of classical statuary.

Wright Ludington’s love of art can be traced back to family trips to Europe in the 1920s. He was an eclectic collector. He gathered antiquities from the Middle East, Greece, and Rome, some more than 4,000 years old. He also collected modern masters such as Picasso, Matisse, Dalí, and Degas and was often ahead of the curve in recognizing talent. An accomplished artist in his own right, Ludington studied at Yale, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Art Students League of New York. During World War II, he designed camouflage for the Army.

Ludington was one of the founders of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, serving as a vice president of the board in 1940 and president in 1951. He endowed the central atrium of the museum to hold his donated collection of classical sculpture, in honor of his father. Over the years he gave the museum over 300 pieces, including an impressive collection of Asian artwork in 1983, again, in honor of his father. Through his gifts Ludington hoped that others’ lives “will be enriched as mine has been by the many wonderful things artists can tell us.”

Wright Ludington passed away in 1992 at the age of 91.

Lansdowne Dionysus being prepared to travel to the Getty Villa for conservation.

In 2009, the Museum acquired two significant works of art that were originally part of the Ludington collection. The works included a Roman sarcophagus of the 1st or 2nd century CE, and a large fragment of a monumental marble statue dating from about the 2nd century CE. Transporting, conserving, and cleaning a 900-pound, over life-size fragment of marble Roman statue can be a daunting process. It took months of careful planning and conservation assistance from neighboring J. Paul Getty Museum’s Antiquities Conservation Department. The sarcophagus was in good enough condition to be put on view, but the statue fragment had been displayed outdoors for many years, suffering the effects of environmental exposure. A conservation effort would first be needed, before this antiquarian treasure could be placed on display.

The Dionysus sculpture was originally lifted from a bog along with more than 70 individual works of ancient sculpture at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli in the mid-18th century. Constructed around 120 CE, the Villa had been lavishly decorated inside and out with some of the greatest Roman works of all time, most based on Greek originals. The systematic excavations at the site sparked a flourish of antiquarian, architectural, and artistic study of the spectacular buildings, and sculptures that were being unearthed. Some of the other marbles from that bog are now housed in other prestigious museum collections, including the Capitoline Museums, the Louvre and the Vatican Museums.

When the Dionysus torso was excavated, it came into the hands of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716-1799), a sculptor who ran a large workshop in Rome restoring ancient marble sculptures. Cavaceppi’s records show that the torso received a new head, arms, legs, and a support consisting of a tree trunk entwined with grapevines (see illustration) to satisfy the taste of the day for whole statues, rather than archaeological fragments.

Left: Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, engraving of Dionysus from multi-volume, illustrated record of the works of art, published in 1768-1772.

The restored Dionysus was then sold to the first Marquis of Lansdowne (1737-1805), a British politician and art collector who amassed a spectacular collection of ancient marble sculpture to adorn his house in London.

In 1930, when Lansdowne’s descendants put his sculptures up for auction, the Lansdowne Dionysus was purchased by Wright Ludington. The statue was brought to California, the 18th-century restorations were removed, and the remaining ancient torso was installed in the gardens of Ludington’s Val Verde estate in Montecito―until 70 years later, when SBMA was able to acquire it.

Once in the collection of the museum, the piece was carefully inspected and a conservation plan was developed. Identified through its “attributes” (an animal skin and a chiton, traces of which are discernible on the piece) as a representation of Dionysus, the god of wine, the sculpture was conserved by Elizabeth (‘Liz’) Chayes and Jerry Podany, independent contractors, in consultation with curators and conservators at the Getty Villa in Malibu, CA..

Newly-installed Lansdowne Dionysus on view in SBMA’s Ludington Court

According to Liz Chayes, there are many challenges in conserving a stone sculpture that has been exposed to an uncontrolled, outdoor environment. Aside from temperature fluctuations, dirt accumulation, and moisture, there are microorganisms, algae, and lichen that can deteriorate and discolor the stone. Chayes also had to contend with the fact that the Lansdowne Dionysus has been restored numerous times in the past, sometimes almost beyond recognition.

After a careful and systematic cleaning of the marble, the piece was stabilized to improve its structural integrity, as the original stand it had been mounted on created pressure on the marble and an increased propensity for fracture.

Only after its comprehensive restoration could the authentic Lansdowne Dionysus be installed in the museum’s Ludington Court, joining the important group of antiquities that Ludington had given to the Museum years earlier. Over the years, Ludington had donated hundreds of works to SBMA, ranging from antiquity to the 20th century, including the magnificent Lansdowne Hermes, which has graced the Museum’s Ludington Court since 1998. After many years, Hermes has now been reunited with its equally extraordinary counterpart.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is a privately funded, not-for-profit institution that presents internationally recognized collections and exhibitions and a broad array of cultural and educational activities as well as travel opportunities around the world.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA.

Open Tuesday – Sunday 11 am to 5 pm. Closed Monday. 805.963.4364

To learn more about the extensive museum holdings, spanning 5,000 years of world cultural history, visit: www.sbma.net

John Mellencamp, MMEAEH (2012), Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”

John Mellencamp is a natural storyteller. Known over the course of his successful four-decade music career for his acutely observed songs about the American landscape and its cast of characters, Mellencamp has been equally productive if less recognized as a painter mining similar terrain. He first threw himself seriously into art in the late 1980s, making stark, expressive portraits of family and friends as he studied the craft and history of painting. In recent years, he has incorporated the looser, more jangly rhythms of street art into panoramic canvases that reflect his social and political activism also present in his music. “The songwriting and the painting are very closely knitted together,” says Mellencamp, who often will pick up his guitar or start a canvas without premeditation and see what suggests itself to him. “Everything is a possible song. Everything is a possible painting.” artes fine arts magazine

Dog Boy (2007), Oil on canvas, 48” x 48”

From April 12 through June 10, 2012, the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville brings together his first museum show—a retrospective view of more than 50 canvases in Nothing Like I Planned: The Art of John Mellencamp. “He is a great American musician from an agricultural heartland, which is close to our own agrarian roots,” says the museum’s executive director Lois Riggins-Ezzell, of Mellencamp who was born in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, in 1951 (he’s still based in Indiana outside Bloomington) and cofounded Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and Neil Young in 1985—a series of annual concerts to help keep American family farmers on their land. “In his painting, he speaks to the voice of the heartland which is about doing the right thing and about equality and humanity and about the dignity of the farmer and the laborer and the dignity of the musician. His paintings speak to how the light sees us and how other people see us and to the depth of how we see ourselves in the dark.”

Hud (1995), Oil on canvas, 20” x 20”

While Mellencamp has never been interested in whether he captures a faithful likeness of his subjects, he is after a kind of emotional realism and does follow certain “rules” of painting. Influenced by his mother who painted in the basement of the family home throughout his childhood, when Mellencamp showed early interest in drawing and painting, he had his first formal training at the Art Students League in New York with the portrait painter David Leffel in 1988. From him, Mellencamp learned the technique of painting dark to light in the manner of Rembrandt and other old masters. “It’s as big a rule as you can’t put the roof on the house until you have the foundation,” says Mellencamp, who studied as well with Jan Royce from the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. He also began his own self-education in art history, visiting museums across Europe and America whenever he was on tour and studying a broad spectrum of artists and the mechanics of their work. “I’m always looking to see if there was drawing on the canvas, if it was projected, or if it was coming strictly from someone’s imagination,” says Mellencamp, “if they had a model or if they did it from a photograph, what kind of medium they must have used, any other tricks of the trade.”

Under the Lights (1991), Oil on canvas, 36” x 30”

His discovery of early 20th-century modernists including Chaim Soutine, Walt Kuhn, and particularly the German Expressionists Otto Dix and Max Beckmann pointed the way toward a visceral, pared down approach to portraiture. “German painting remains the basic foundation for what I do, same as folk music is the foundation of my songs,” says Mellencamp. “Discovering Beckmann to me was like discovering Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan.” Mellencamp’s paintings from the 1990s—of family and friends and many of himself—show lone figures isolated frontally against simple, shadowy backgrounds. They stare down the viewer or off into space with eyes both tough and vulnerable, projecting a psychological intensity akin to Beckmann’s self-portraits with his sad, glowering eyes. Mellencamp’s portraits all tell personal stories, be it John After Heart Attack (1994), a harshly painted dead-on view of the artist looking haggard after suffering a brush with mortality, or John with Puppet (1992), a severely angular self-depiction with a marionette dangling from his elongated fingers. It suggests disgust or defiance at the feeling of being manipulated. A more complex, multi-figure canvas was painted in the aftermath of Mellencamp’s difficult divorce from his second wife. Titled Gates of Hell (1991-92), two figures stand stiffly side by side, not unlike the dour couple in Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic, with two bloodthirsty dogs howling in front of them and the shadow of Satan on the back wall. It is a brutal allegory for emotional torture.

MLK (2005), Oil on canvas, 48” x 72”

Coast to Coast (2005), Mixed media on canvas, 58” x 144’

Mellencamp doesn’t wince at grappling with issues of his heart, whether autobiographical or political. Since 2005, he has taken on themes such as racism, war, faith, and justice and broken with some of the formalism of his earlier work. He often paints in a freer, more graffiti-like style, layering text and pictographic images on canvases evocative of the frenetic street-art energy of work by Jean-Michel Basquiat and influenced by the anonymous murals he sees out car windows when he travels around the country. In MLK (2005), scrawled over a canvas with an oversized face of a scared African American man are the words “Martin Luther King had a dream and this ain’t it”; a row of crosses along the top form a sort of crown over the man’s head. Using a mix of oils, house paint, and spray paint, Mellencamp says the painting flowed from him spontaneously and he was surprised but pleased with the raw expressionistic quality. Coast to Coast (2005) is a dense collage of quickly painted words and images mapping the quilt of America, including a man being electrocuted representing Texas, the couple from American Gothic modified with bleeding eyes standing for the farmers of the heartland, and the dignified, sorrowful face of a Native American looming over the southwest. “I finally got the confidence to paint as a 12 year old,” says Mellencamp, who felt he had to master the rules of painting before he could mess with them.

SAVANNAH GA (2012), Oil on canvas, 48” x 48”

Even in his most freehand works, he always pays attention to what he calls the “math”— like the beats per measure in a song—that gives a sense of structure and balance to his compositions. Mellencamp particularly likes the austere geometry of his recent painting Savannah, Georgia (2012), a return to his formally constructed portraits. Here a well-dressed but shifty-looking man stands dead center, his head just grazing a 5’ tall horizontal white chalk line behind him across the murky brown background with the stenciled letters “SAVANNAH GA POLICE DEPT” below. Essentially a mug shot, plucked from Mellencamp’s deck of characters known or imagined, the painting both yields and withholds information, as do all his portraits in some way, raising as many questions as it answers.

For Mellencamp, painting has always been a refuge, a solitary antidote to the hectic life of touring and performing. He doesn’t see it as a precious or rarified activity but rather about staying productive, keeping his mind engaged, making something out of nothing. “Every day that I walk up in my art studio and I complete a painting, I have something to show for my time,” says Mellencamp, who sees himself painting through old age. “I have millions of them in me.”

By Hilarie M. Sheets, Contributing Writer

Hilarie M. Sheets is an independent critic and journalist focused on contemporary art and culture. She is a contributing editor to ARTnews and writes regularly for The New York Times, Art + Auction, W, and Art in America. She has authored numerous gallery exhibition catalogues for artists including Tom Otterness, Will Ryman, and Enoc Perez.

Visit the Tennessee State Museum at: http://www.tnmuseum.org/

See family photos and listen to John Mellencamp perform Small Town: