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I often point out in my lectures that art is a fickle mistress, for whom mutual appeal and attraction can change on a dime. With so many artists in the world and so much art to choose from, how does one go about selecting the right piece for you? This question becomes much more complex when considering market trends, artist reputation, auction activity and, for that matter, global markets. My advice: shut all of that out and buy what you love.

Art endures. It carries us, like only family can, because it serves as a constant reminder of how precious and beautiful the world can be when we are in the presence of an object created merely for its own sake. Art has little or no utility, in the absolute sense. It exists to give us joy. Few things are valued and passed on after we go. The house and cars are sold, the furniture discarded, clothing given away, the jewelry and silver divided up.

But good art persists. It may be gifted to museums or collections for future generations to enjoy. It soon enjoys a place of honor in the home of the next generation. Its message gets stronger with the passage of time; its colors and composition never get tired or commonplace.

Love endures beyond our years here on earth in the memories of our loved ones. Art can deliver a timeless message that serves as a symbol or beacon of our good taste, our values and our commitment to surround ourselves with the very people and objects that truly matter. Art, like love, is eternal.

For Kathy, with Love

Illustration detail: Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907-08); William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Cupidon (1756)

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 Left: Tarshito (Italy), Applauses (2007) Made at Tarshito studio with Isabella De Chiara, Roma e Agnieszka Blazy, Polonia, Angela Ferrara,Bari; Martinelli Corato, and Bari, metal structure and ceramic hands. Photo: Edward Rubin. artes fine arts magazine

Marc Quinn (England), The Chromatic Archaeology of Desire (2008) Painted Bronze. Photo: Sergio Martucci

 The show was founded fourteen years ago by Paolo De Grandis, and cleverly scheduled by that chief curator to run alongside the Venice Film Festival and overlap exhibition dates with the Venice Art and Architectural Biennales; the exhibition hosts thousands during its month-long run. This year, OPEN 14 was co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa, Ebadur Rahman, Nevia Capello, Christos Savvidis, and Gloria Vallese. Vallese also curated the highly-touted Cracked Culture? The Quest for Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art , with Wang Lin. The Venice Biennale Collateral Event featured twenty-eight artists from Albania, Bangladesh, China, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iran, Italy, Romania, and Switzerland.

Feng Feng (China), W Fountain 2010 installation. Photo: Courtesy Arte Communications

The first work was visible even before the boat docked—The Chromatic Archaeology of Desire (2008), London-based artist Marc Quinn’s super realistic painted orchid. Perched atop a tall pedestal, it was an elegant poem in bronze, speaking to the beauty and fragility of everyday life. Down the road, were 3000 of Romanian artist Martin-Emilian Balint’s laminated cardboard figures, housed in a small, multi-level vitrine on wheels. Titled Embrace (2011), the marching figures stood shoulder-to-shoulder, seeming to offer an expression of love as they welcomed visitors to the island. Across the street, echoing similar sentiment, was Applauses (2007), above, a tall metal vase covered with hundreds of ceramic-crafted open hands. Created by Italian artist Tarshito, the vase was significantly placed at the entrance to the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria Hotel, where it appeared to applaud the arrival of its guests.

Filippo Zuriato (Italy), “Hey?!!” (2011), painted terracotta. Photo: Sergio Martucci

Several show-stopping and intellectually-challenging works welcomed viewers to the Lungomare G. Marconi, the section of the exhibition most densely arrayed with art. In city terms, it runs some five-or-six blocks. First to catch our eye, and especially hypnotic when lit up at night, was Chinese artist Feng Feng’s stunning W Fountain (2010), an intensely-bright yellow McDonald’s sign, the iconic form turned upside down. Also prominently featured in Vallese’s Cracked Culture exhibition, W Fountain is the artist’s comment on the rampant spread of Western culture—in this case, fast food. Some ten feet away, separated by a tree and some foliage—as were most of the works along this botanical stretch—was, Hey?!!, Italian artist Filippo Zuriato’s terracotta sculpture of a young Chinese boy enclosed in a wire cage. Dressed in the ubiquitous outfit of the American West—a T-shirt and jeans—the boy points to his almond-shaped eyes. The work, in which the boy boldly calls attention to himself, was open to a myriad of interpretations: possible loss of identity one; loss of freedom, another.

Ronni Ahmmed (Bangladesh), The Tomb of Qara Köz (2011), eggs, acrylic sheets, wood. Photo: Sergio Martucci

Across the avenue, enticingly situated at the entrance to the beach, was Bangladesh artist Ronni Ahmmed’s intricately constructed sculpture, The Tomb of Qara Köz (2011). Rooted in Opera Aperta, or ‘open work of art,’ as set forth by Umberto Eco’s book of the same name, and traditional Bengali theatre (both of which use history to tell their stories), Tomb was composed of three layers of 1254 glasses, each holding a cartoon-painted egg in the manner of Bassano, Veronese, and Tintoretto. The pyramidal sculpture, top-heavy in meaning, was meant to recall, as the catalog informed us, the campaign of the Mughal princess Qara Köz, who exerted powerful influence amid the Medici’s Florence. The sculpture’s three planes paid homage to Venice’s Bengali immigrants, the adventures of Pinocchio, and Fairytale, Ai Weiwei’s 2007 Documenta installation. This trio of influences inspired Ahmmed, in emulation of Weiwei, to invite 101 Bengalis visitors to his tomb, to record their secret desires, pay alms, and make their wishes come true.

Alfred Milot Mirashi (Albania), Do, Try (2011) - iron, aluminium, glue, plaster, jute, foam, gold paint, fibre glass. Photo: Sergio Martucci

 Back to the residential side of Lungomare G. Marconi—lined with a steady stream of stately mansions—could be seen Albanian artist, Alfred Milot Mirashi’s Do, Try (2011), a large, severely- bent, partially-painted golden key, reminiscent of Oldenburg’s sculptures of everyday objects. Though minimally constructed, it maximized the ideas it conjured, as everybody the world over, not only deals with keys, but uses that word in many contexts. ‘Key to my heart’ quickly came to mind, as did ‘key to the city’, among others. Though these are popular uses, according to curator Rahman, Mirashi, the artist is thinking about the human body— the twisted, tormented people “who reach out, body and soul, in their yearning for peace.” Given the key’s contorted anatomical referencing, it seems the artist’s wish for universal peace would be a long-time coming.

Marina Gavazzi (Italy), His Holiness (2011) tubes, digital print on plastic support. Photo: Sergio Martucci

Italian artist Marina Gavazzi set her incendiary sights on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, in her four-sided installation, His Holiness (2011), particularly the shameful attempt by the Vatican’s highest echelons to cover up sex crimes against minors by priests, especially in the United States. Digital prints of the pope were printed on plastic panels, the Holy See engulfed in flames. Presumably in hell, he faced punishment for centuries of violence inflicted by the Church, in the name of their creed, against the people. The artist cited the Inquisition in her catalog essay, but the legion countries—both past and present—complicit with the Vatican’s actions, remained unnamed. Perhaps there were just too many to list, especially in such proximity to the Vatican.

Puni (Italy), Openings (2011), wood, PMMA, brass, enamel. Photo: Sergio Martucci

 The conceptual works of Puni and Marilena Vita, two Italian artists, added a bit of levity to the exhibition. Openings (2011), Puni’s installation comprised a common door, set upright on a patch of green grass. Like Mirashi’s key, Do, Try, serves as an everyday object and a universal symbol; like the key and its many interpretations, the viewer was encouraged to make of it what they would. Our first thought, given the door’s bucolic setting, was one of freedom, entering a new world. On closer examination, the words ‘Emergency Exit’ appeared on the door, exposing the other side of the coin, alerting us to the ever-present possibility of imminent danger. Also playing with our minds, as well as our eyes, was Marilena Vita’s Legs (2011), a compelling, surreal photograph, printed on vinyl, of the artist’s long legs. One set of legs is real, the other, reflected in a mirror and appearing in reverse, seems to be growing out of the first set of legs. With our perspective disoriented, our eyes work overtime to make sense of what we were looking at.

Casagrande & Recalcati (Italy), Fiori (2011), oil on board. Photo: Courtesy Arte Communications

I ended my tour of OPEN 14—which began, upon my arrival in Venice, with an orchid, and finished in the lobby of the Excelsior– just in time for a cocktail at the hotel’s renowned Blue Bar, I might add—as I stood mesmerized in front of another floral work, Fiori (2011), an astonishingly beautiful painting of flowering peonies by Milan-based artists, Sandra Casagrande and Roberto Recalcati. Melding a color palette of luxurious creams and pinks, evoking the voluptuous imagery of French Rococo painters Jean Honoré Fragonard and Francois Boucher, together with the kind of lingering Hollywood close-ups that forever etched Greta Garbo’s face in our collective memory—the artists have rendered a cinematically-exquisite floral motif in paint, whose silky petals actually appear to be opening in slow-motion. It is here, imaginatively savoring the heady aroma of the perfumed bouquet, where we get to experience the magic of art in all its multi-sensory glory. . .

By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer

OPEN, International Exhibition of Sculpture and Installations is held In Venice, Italy in the fall of each year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Susan E. Schopp, Contributing Writer 

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

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

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

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

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Image References: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carole Feuerman, Grand Catalina (2005-11) oil paint on resin (o/r), 62x38x17"

My first encounter with Grand Catalina (2005-11) came unexpectedly, as I thumbed through the pages of the gallery section of an art magazine. Her uplifted face, eyes closed, suited and capped for laps in the pool, skin still moist with droplets of water as she appears to slip from the water, riveted me in an unexpected moment of intimacy with this life-like image. Lashes and brows neatly arrayed, the pouting lips appeared ready to gasp for a breath of pool-side air. If her eyes were to finally open, I wondered if she would be surprised to see me—a stranger, so close by!? The work conveyed a sense of strength and capability, while also offering an alluring vulnerability and sensuality. In the few moments that I studied the image, I imagined that this larger-than-life-sized figure, seemingly brimming with self-assurance, would have no difficulty managing whatever the world handed her, once she finally emerged from her momentary reverie. artes fine arts magazine

Carole Feuerman with Survival of Serena, Green Cap (2006-11), o/r, 38x84x32" Photo: Alvaro Corzo V.

This, I would soon learn, was the work of New York realist sculptor, Carole Feuerman. A veteran of over four decades of creative work in many sculptural mediums—including resin, marble and bronze—Feuerman sculpts life-sized, monumental and smaller-scale works that encompass her signature trompe-l’oeil technique. Feuerman shares a hyper-realism tradition with artists like Duane Hanson and George Segal, but with a critical difference: approachability.

Reflections (1985), o/r, 75x21x21" Photo:David Finn

When hyper-realistic sculpture first appeared on the gallery and museum scene in the 1980s, these iconographic figures served as a timely, three-dimensional narrative for a human condition steeped in stereotyping and emotional objectification. It was time for the Me Generation, characterized by self-absorption and enhancing personal status. Reflecting that contemporaneous motif, Duane Hanson’s Tourists or Queeny were works based on social and class-based stereotypes, to be mentally catalogued and observed from a distant, carefully-proscribed insular world—like characters in a wax museum—seen, but seldom touched. George Segal ‘s somber, unpainted plaster cast figures were often arranged in groups, appearing like actors in an urban drama, suggesting alienation, latent aggression and indifference; or as single, expressionless figures trapped in a world of secretiveness, isolation and emotional alienation—quietly-despairing characters in a disconnected world.

For Feuerman’s work—sculpted first in plaster, then cast in bronze or resin, before being meticulously painted—the effect is not alienation, but intimacy. Her mostly-female forms appear to radiate an inner life, one of both mysterious sensuality and self-possessed consciousness, all-the-while inviting inclusion in their personal space. If the eyes are the window to the soul, her sculptures, portrayed predominantly with eyes closed, are denying us access to those deepest realms-of-consciousness that might resolve the mystery. Instead, Feuerman tantalizes and seduces the viewer, offering a voyeuristic connection to the personal space behind the eyelids of her figures. We are invited to watch a lone female figure emerging from a shower as she wraps a towel around her hair; another floating languidly in an inner tube; another appearing to stand waist-deep in a pool, hugging a large beach ball; yet another grips the end of a surfboard as a wave presumably surges around her. The artist draws the line at the act of seeing; engaging the viewer, while depriving us of the ability to ever ‘know’ the true spirit of the character. Herein lies the power of the artist’s statement.

Blue Venus (1996), o/r, 36x24x16"

Feuerman’s figures, in spite of their nakedness or isolation, exude confidence and personal power. Freshly emerged from their cleansing bath or pool, her Eve-like creations are still dripping with fresh droplets of water—a symbol of their close ties to nature’s life-giving force. As David Rubin, of the San Antonio Museum of Art said, in a recent review, “As females, these figures personify heroic archetypes, women who are proud of their bodies and triumphant in their achievements. As metaphors, they are expressive of hope and determination, and of the faith that accompanies the drive to push forward on life’s journey, regardless of the challenges or obstacles that threaten to deter us.”

Paradise (1997), o/r, 26x16x9" Photo:Alvaro Corzo V.

In no small way, this critique of Feuerman’s work is a reflection on the trajectory of her career as a sculptor. Emerging as an artist in the early years of the Feminist movement, she decided early-on to produce work that challenged the tiresome cliché of the woman as ‘the weaker sex.’ From the beginning, Feuerman committed herself to working with the human form. The raw power of her imagery, more literal and figurative than symbolic, she worked to transcend the ascription of erotic or provocative and instead, represent personal power and the pure narrative essence of objective realism in her rendering of the human body. The risks in becoming a hyper-realist were great. Functioning artistically on the verge of the simulacram threatens to produce an empty, representational shell—imitative and convincing—but devoid of emotional intent. But, Feuerman’s sculptures exceed the bounds of mere mimicry to become powerful symbols for the human experience. The philosopher, Nietzche warned that any effort to imitate reality relies too heavily on constructs of reason and language, to the exclusion of the senses. The result, he claimed, would be a mere perversion of the truth.

City Slicker (1982), o/r, 31x21x14"

But, Feuerman’s hyper-reality, guided by keen sensory instincts, borne of life experience, and finely-tuned artistic sensibilities, results in sculpture that achieves a universal truth: a strong emotional tie between subject and object—between the viewer and the viewed—that invites an intimacy and level of empathy not often found in a creative endeavor such as this. Far from detachment, a figurative work like Paradise (1997), invites us all to imagine a time when we could once again (or wished we could) float thoughtfully on a raft in a warn sea on a languorous August afternoon.

On a recent visit to Carole Feuerman’s studio, we discussed the primary motivation for her work. While one of the foremost hyper-realist sculptors in the world, she is yet modest and unassuming. She does not view her work so much erotic or sexual, as sensual and meditative. “I want to capture the universal feeling of the fleeting moment. When my figures are rendered with their eyes closed and deep in thought, it’s like I’m presenting a story in the making. I want the viewer to complete the narrative, she tells me.” Her studio assistants busy themselves during the time I am there, shaping plaster forms, readying molds, applying base coats on nearly-completed figures, all under her careful direction. “I am the only one who can paint the final layers of the skin. The difficulty comes when it is time to represent those subtle features, like veins and blemishes, which lie just below the surface and help to create a feeling of authenticity.”

Feuerman studio, interior

Tree (detail), 2009-11, o/r, 62x37x29"

In fact, Feuerman’s studio is part gallery, too. Work from several periods of her prolific career are on display, offering up a gathering of now-familiar personas who have turned out to see what comes next! The sculpting room is generously confectioned, from floor to ceiling, with plaster dust. Row upon row of shelves are stacked high with errant body parts of every type: spare heads, torsos, hands, ears and feet—a surreal, contemporary laboratory-setting for creating the next Prometheus. A work-in-progress lies prone on a work table: a life-sized male figure in plaster, slated to become an athlete doing a hand-stand. Together, we lift and balance the figure against a column, as Feuerman checks for anatomical accuracy with a view to balletic grace in the final product. This is art by consensus, as the whole production team (including this author) weighs in on the details of the final execution. Nearby, a serene female figure Tree (2009-11), nude except for a bathing cap, patiently observes. As though having just risen from the sea, in a perfectly-proportioned, 21st century version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, she appears to be quietly marveling at all the fuss.

Across from the showroom and office area, and far-removed from the welter of plaster appendages, is the painting room. There, Feuerman’s assistants sit meditatively—like monastic scribes toiling over illuminated manuscripts—applying layer-upon-layer of paint to figures now waiting patiently for their turn to be ‘brought to life.’ Mounted on panels or sitting on table tops, the addition of lashes, brows, hair and (in some cases) acrylic water droplets, the artist’s final touches, completed with her signature style, will be the jolt of creative energy that finally animates these figures.

Butterfly (2008), o/r, 21x22.5x21" Photo:Ali Elai

Feuerman’s sculpture walks the fine line between reality and deception, inviting us to explore our emotional response to this nexus. The syncretic link is the artist’s realization of the intense physicality, passion and sensuality found in her figures’ otherwise mundane poses. “My work is about relationships,” Feuerman explains, “exploring the secret interiority of the individual and a woman’s relationship to herself. I hope to touch an emotional level that might otherwise be inaccessible. My objective is to do more than breathe life into my sculptures, but to explore the inner life of the character, much like a novel might.” Is it autobiographical, I ask? “Perhaps, but, I like to think of my works as larger than life—gods and goddesses of the Everyday.”

Critic, John Yau addressed the material connection between the viewer and Feuerman’s figures in a recent review. He states that, “[her sculptures] evoke an inner life, one that invites the viewer’s speculation as well as signals the distance between them and us. We can never know what they might be thinking. And that perhaps is the point. […] We see their bodies, but not their souls. By having their eyes closed, Feuerman inflects a fundamental aspect of her sculptures: they exist in the same physical world as we do, but they are also removed from us. This inflection causes the viewer to become self-conscious; looking is framed as an act of voyeurism.” But, unlike the voyeur, these figures are inviting us to share in the ecstasy arising from the simple sensual pleasures of water, sun and air—leading by example, rather than inclusion in their private reverie.

Water Sports (2011), o/r sculptures with interactive floor projection of water

Feuerman has recently begun to explore the kinetic effects of water on her bathing figures. “Water is the universal connection to life,” she tells me. “An important new phase in my work will be to incorporate computer technology developed recently that projects an image on the floor or wall and will respond realistically to physical touch. Sculpted figures can be bathed in a large field of blue light that realistically ripples when the movement of a toe or hand is introduced. “This kind of interactive sculpture can heighten the sense of connection to the work and give the viewer a real-time experience with the installation,” she explains. Feuerman said the technology is ready and hopes to introduce it in a number of upcoming shows, both in the U.S. and Europe.

Hands on Face (c. 2008), o/r

This latest phase in Feuerman’s oeuvre represents another round of experimentation in hyper-realistic sculpture’s ability to extend beyond the boundaries of literalism and mimicry, to endure as a rich commentary on contemporary life. Her keen observations of the smallest gesture, the portrayal of flesh as a complex, viable organ capable of sweat, blemishes and myriad flaws, the private joy of sensuality, eroticism and self-assuredness portrayed through subtle gestures and the narrative elements of her work—inviting a push-pull between the visual and tactile— have continued to resonate. As the critic, David Bourdon wrote, “What makes [Feuerman’s technical proficiency] all the more powerful is that everything she does is in the service of the figure; all her attention is devoted to achieving verisimilitude. The works are like mirrors, but, like the mirror one encounters in fairytales and myths, they reveal a deeper truth about us.”

The General's Daughter (detail), 2008, o/r. Photo:David Finn

In her conversation with me, the artist underscored that she wants her sculptures to function as a book, revealing glimpses of the inner life of her characters. But, while messaging in the visual arts, unlike story-telling, is denied the luxury of unfolding over time, Feuerman’s work nevertheless embodies the element of time as an essential component of its impact on the viewer. Her narrative is never fully disclosed, often hidden behind closed eyes and self-satisfied gestures of confidence and eroticism. This rarified atmosphere of self-confidence, mystery and anticipation opens the door to a range of reactions and feelings. Each work, carefully crafted to defy simple interpretation and deflect full disclosure, becomes a Rorschach test—or perhaps a tabula rasa—onto which we project our own impulses, thoughts and emotions. Feuerman’s sculptures may seem frozen in time, but they persist in revealing themselves at particular moments of intimacy, heightened sensory awareness and vulnerability; thereby inviting us to consider our physicality, and our own stories, during an encounter with her work; asking whether we could embrace, once again, the sensual world that we, too, once knew this well.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Carole Feuerman’s awards and schedule of past, present and future exhibitions are too numerous to mention here. To see more of her work and learn more about the artist and her accomplishments, go to: http://www.carolefeuerman.com/

Or Jim Kemper Fine Art’s artnet site at: http://www.jimkempnerfineart.com/

O

Left: Chris Antemann (detail), A Tea Party (2010), porcelain, decals, luster. Kamm Teapot Foundation Collection. artes fine arts magazine

Fuller Crafts Museum, Brockton, MA

When figurines succeed in pushing the envelope of our assumptions, they do so because the radical social narrative staked out by much of today’s contemporary art has not typically considered the artist working in clay, particularly on a diminutive scale. But, this exhibit challenges that premise, doing so in ways that open doors for a powerful body of work from figurative artists working in the ceramic medium. According to Gail Brown, with a long history of curating in the crafts world, “the work of these contemporary artists features diverse ideas, arresting forms, and provocative subjects [which] illustrate the continually-evolving tradition of figurative ceramics. These monumental and meaningful statements in small formats hold a fascinating disproportionate power—adding dramatic resonance and a sense of intimate communication.”

Ronna Neuenschwander, an artist exhibiting in the show (below, left), provides a prospective on mankind’s long-standing fascination with the creation of figurative talismans: “Humans have had the urge to create and possess figurines since prehistoric times. The Venus of Hohls Fels, the first of the venus figurines was made approximately 40,000 years ago, and is the oldest example of figurative prehistoric art. This figure was presumed to be an amulet related to sexuality and fertility. Likewise, the Venus of Willendorf, created in 22,000 BCE holds a power mysterious and intriguing. It is believed that people created and carried or wore figurines to give protection or the powers they desired. The attraction of figurines then and now tends to be one of identifying with certain attributes one wants to acquire. Today we create and collect these figurines to identify with their qualities- be they elite, genteel and refined, or exotic and provocative-they are powerful and desirable. By taking the gamut of these images, and disassembling them, we may get a fresh look at who we are and what we yearn to be.”

Left: (far) Ronna Neuenschwander, Breaking  the Mold I (2011), ceramic mosaic, grout. Courtesy of the artist; (near) Venus of Willendorf (24-22,000 BCE, stone. Collection Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Inspired by the past, yet distanced from it, Fresh Figurines is redolent with contemporary political and popular cultural messaging, intent on recasting gender roles, social mores and self image; re-worked with a generous infusion of traditional glazes, eerily-familiar motifs (for those of us who remember that knick-knack shelf of our childhood) and re-appropriated classical themes. Curator, Brown, makes the point in her overview of the exhibition that, “Throughout history, small-scale, self-contained article endure: from artifacts, effigies and tomb objects to exquisitely-crafted handmade figures and scenarios referencing life style and social mores, the pop culture of the day and the celebration of tribal figures, in situ. From European porcelain houses, Chinese export porcelain, and English folk ceramics, to the glut of manufactured collectibles with retail goals focused on the mantle piece and, since the days of the Grand Tour, the unrelenting, international plethora of tawdry and ubiquitous tourist souvenirs, figurines reign. The presence and persistence of these formats—from objet d’art to the commodities of the day—inspire and/or provoke.”

In its historical context, the name ‘china’ is a direct reference to the origins of porcelain in China over 3000 years ago. In the seventeenth century, trading routes were established between the Far East and Europe introducing this refined and translucent ceramic to a new continent.

The Painting Room, Meissen Factory, ca. late 19th C.

Europeans were fascinated by the beauty and mystery of porcelain. The tremendous demand for porcelain as well as the inherent difficulty in transport inspired many Europeans to attempt to replicate its qualities. Unlike cruder forms of earthenware, porcelain is industrially made, specifically with the fine, white clay of decomposed granite rock. This white clay is what gives porcelain its beautiful translucency. It was not until 1709 that German chemist, Johann Friedrich Böttger, in collaboration with two other chemists, devised a formula for porcelain. The following year, production commenced in the small town of Dresden. The factory was later moved to the more metropolitan city of Meissen as insulation from the political turmoil that was taking place in the European countries, east of Germany.

In its first few decades, the Meissen factory manufactured mostly table service. It wasn’t until the late 1730′s that a talented young sculptor by the name of Johann Joachim Kändler created small figurines in porcelain. Soon, the entire royal court community had their likenesses reproduced as delicate figurines. For many generations to follow, these intricately-executed porcelain figures served as a principle main-stay for the original Meissen Company, inspiring many other manufacturers on the Continent and in England to follow suit.

Chris Antemann (detail), A Tea Party (2010), porcelain, decals, luster. Kamm Teapot Foundation Collection

Among the forty-two artists whose sculpture makes up the eye-opening Fresh Figurines exhibit, certain pieces garnered particular attention. The show’s pièce de résistance is a multi-figure work, clearly informed by the Meissen legacy: Chris Antemann’s A Tea Party. In a cleverly-conceived display of overstatement, a banquet table is heaped with confections of every imaginable variety. This is action-central for a gathering of naked men and barely-clothed, coquettish women, languishing over tea and titillation, reminiscent of the salacious dinner-seduction scene from ThomasFielding’s 1749 fictional narrative, Tom Jones. The drama and sexual energy being played out between party guests is skillfully captured by Antemann’s deft manipulation of clay at the subtlest level. The ‘fourth wall’ is clandestinely breached by an alluring seductress, who invites the viewer into the party. She sits astride her chair, semi-concealed from her naked courtier by a fan, making sly eye contact with museum-goers, as we vicariously—if only momentarily—become part of the festivities. The artist summarizes the work when he writes, “I am expanding upon my previous parodies of decorative figurines by delving into the darker side of relationships and domestic rites: twisted tales of master and servant, the innocence of the maid, the dominance of patriarchal desire. Tricked out in frilly camouflage, these characters disregard tradition, exposing society’s cistern of unmentionables.”

Pavel Amromin, The Photographer (2008), porcelain, glaze, underglaze, luster. Courtesy, the artist.

Another work that addresses the curatorial observation of “added drama and inverse power to the diminution of size by the material prowess, complexity of narrative, uninhibited natures and significant social comment,” is The Photographer, one of a series of works on display by Pavel Amromin. Benign-looking, floppy-eared domesticated creatures, depicted in soft, earth-tone pastel glaze, play out their small dramas on Baroque gold-trimmed stands, lush with delicate beds of grass and fanciful flowers. On closer examination, though, they are strangely hybridized human figures with dog-like heads, engaged in acts of atrocity and inhumanity. In one scene, a weapon-bearing creature, naked except for black combat boots, blithely photographs another naked, dead body—thoughtless and insensitive, perhaps; but symptomatic of our “war breaks out, details at 11!” cultural ethic.

For Amromin, the artist, “There is a long tradition in art, literature and film by which the act of war is venerated and integrated into the social fabric. Gore and terror of combat are transformed into a bittersweet adventure of shared courage, sacrifice and nobility. Chaos is turned into order and the senseless gains meaning. The same transformation occurs in the work, however while some things are sanitized and glazed over, some are left in plain sight. The figurine has long been an object representing the jubilant self-image of the patron. It asks: ‘Is this glory? Is this the dignity, purity and beauty of a soldier’s mission?’”

Cynthia Consentino, Virgin II (2011), commercial figurine, dolls legs, mixed media. Courtesy, the artist.

Fresh Figurines brings home the message of the sacred, as well as the profane. A piece by Cynthia Consentino offers a gently humanizing perspective on a familiar icon; although the artist expressed a concern at the show’s opening that it might offend some. Her Virgin II invites a reconsideration of the classic, prayerful pose of Mary, mother of the Christ Child, with parting blue robes and oversized legs in plain view. This theantropic interpretation is designed to shed light on our humanity, as well as on the subject, herself. It calls the question of idealizing our New Testament heroine and invites a more immediate (and perhaps genuine) connection to universal motherhood—someone without the trappings of myth, and capable of ‘standing on her own two feet.’

Consentino notes, “Virgin II is part of a new series of sculptures incorporating commercial figurines with sculpted parts. Taking the ubiquitous knick knack, or religious statue and altering it allows for new meaning and a broadened role for the familiar. Originally a white porcelain figurine (stopping below elbows) her lower body was sculpted and commercial doll legs were added to complete her figure. It is not meant to be irreverent but rather be a playful re-examination of an influential figure.”

Jeremy R. Brooks, Form-Form (2011), cast plaster, paint. Courtesy, the artist.

Equally as compelling as Virgin II, but for different reasons, is Jeremy Brooks’s Form-Form, an enigmatic work whose flowing organic, blue-gray painted form stands out in marked contrast to other more figurative pieces in the exhibit. Perhaps informed by Edward Tufte’s Negative Space studies or Rachael Whiteread’s 1993 groundbreaking, House, Form-Form explores a hidden construct that undergirds a familiar object: the space beneath a garden statue of Jesus. Denatured through transformation, this subtly-conceived form of rolling contours and intriguing shifts of light and dark becomes a discourse on one of many hidden structural underpinnings, forever unnoticed in our daily rituals (imagine: bridge girders beneath your commuter route; the shapes on the underside of your dining room table, the dank tunnel complex beneath a steam-emitting manhole cover).

Rachael Whiteread, House (1993), concrete.

Brooks challenges the viewer to find beauty in the mundane, in the same way that the visible Jesus that inspired his work—an iconic all-weather figure of Christian salvation—is slip-cast in Hydrocal and painted to achieve mimetic value as a model for beauty, truth and salvation. By virtue of its ubiquity, it then becomes a numbingly-familiar fixture in the landscape. What is hidden, and subsequently revealed, he believes, can also achieve renewed relevance and aesthetic appeal. He describes it this way: “Form-Form is a cast interior space of a slip-cast figurine (Jesus in the Garden). It testifies to a shifted use of material, form and concept. The work is categorized by a search for the tension that exists between an initial iconographic source […] and a related abstract form—the cast interior space of the figurine.”

Hide Sadohara, Untitled (2011), Recycled Stoneware. Courtesy, the artist.

Mortality may be the message of Hide Sadohara’s wall sculptures, Untitled: images of an aging Popeye and Olive Oyle, constructed of recycled stoneware. Reminiscent of animated cartoon shorts from the 1950s and 60s, we are asked to recall a pre-pubescent time when notions of immortality and invincibility went unexamined; a pre-politically correct period in our history when villains with black hats and curly mustaches could pummel the hero with impunity, only to then see him miraculously return to normal and save the girl! Sadohara stares into the faces of these mythic figures and imagines their humanity. No slick airbrush or forgiving artist’s hand here. In defiance of the once-heroic gods and goddesses of ancient Olympus, the tribulations of aging can be seen extracting a toll on our contemporary version of a muscle-bound, spinich-guzzling Zeus and demurring Aphrodite.

Abraham Lincoln said, “By age forty, you get the face you deserve.” For Sadohara’s once-ageless Popeye character, a hard life, fear and conflict—a roadmap of furrows, wrinkles and contorted features—seem writ large on the face of the figure. More a metaphor for the human condition than a caricature, Sadohara’s work reminds the viewer (who is compelled to make eye contact because of the way the piece is hung), that Popeye (and Olive, also on display) may have been heroes for another, simpler time; and that for each of us, the passage of time brings us closer to confronting our own frailties and demise. As the artist describes it, “My intention for this particular piece is to provoke the sense of irony by making them life size, especially when the (invited) artists were asked to execute their work within the context of the figurine format/size. I also decided to finish my work with the realistic rendition of the human anatomy. There is something unnerving about seeing cartoon characters brought to life when those same features are stuck on the face of a realistic depiction of that character.”

Paul Delaroche, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833), o/c. National Gallery, London.

I am reminded of Paul Delaroche’s monumental 1833 narrative painting, The Execution of Lady Jane Gray—a poignant study of adolescent innocence and courage in the face of royal predatory ambition—when I view Jessica Stoller’s Untitled, in the exhibit. For generations of National Gallery visitors, the work has served as reminder of the expendable role of women at the dawn of an age when enlightened thinking would not-quite-soon-enough redefine gender and social roles, as Western Europe inched toward modernism. Stoller evokes tales of risk and mortality linked to beauty and social station in her figurative representation of a severed head resting beneath the frivolous adornments of privilege. Vibrant and attractive women gone missing, later to be found dead and dismembered, could be story ripped from today’s headlines, and then rendered here in clay.

Jessica Stoller, Untitled (2010), porcelain, china paint, luster. Courtesy, the artist.

And so, Stoller applies the modeling techniques of another, more romantic era, to weave a tale of death and perverted ambition, proffering a dose of irony in the process. Deceptively charming and initially perplexing, it is only with more careful study of the piece does the realization dawn that something is amiss here.

Stoller’s oeuvre, as she describes it (only one piece appeared in Fresh Figurines), would likely resonate with the London crowds often found studying Delaroche’s Jane Gray—a painting with appeal to generations of museum-goers—as a study in the fine line between virtuous innocence and feminine ambition, power and its perversion. As she puts it, “The figures in my work range from Rococo nobility and adolescent girls in petticoats and bows, to women evoking religious martyrs of the past. The notion of these collected objects as predominantly decorative, weak and inherently female are subverted as the figures depicted are purposely innocent and sexual, self-sacrificing and violent, powerful and unaware of the power they possess. Through figures with contorted facelifts, bound feet with miniature dimensions and oddities which inspire imitation and awe, I examine cultural ideas of perfected beauty and its relationship to the grotesque. Through seemingly benign in content and size, my figurines hint at an alternate world of intricate perversion.”

Linda Cordell, Jolie Laide Masquerade (2011), porcelain, bronze, foam. Courtesy, the artist.

With just a partial sampling of the wide variety of works on display at the Fuller Craft Museum’s Fresh Figurines reviewed here, it is well worth the trip to discover, in Gail Brown’s curated show, the enduring power of small-scale works to enthrall in the world where the focus is often on BIG. Figurative ceramics appeal, for reasons linked to our collective unconscious as a symbol-rich civilization, for their effigaic properties, their paired-association to childhood memories and comforting domiciles long-vanished, as well as to our instinctive propensity to collect. This last point ushers in a connection to the work in Fresh Figurines worth underscoring. With many of the companies producing figurines for decades, if not hundreds of years (i.e.-Meissen, Hummel, Nymphenburg, Della Robbia, Chinese traditional porcelain, to name a few), links to a contemporary audience are well-established and well-known. But, once again, these are not your grandmother’s porcelains.

While glazing and firing techniques have remained largely unchanged over the years, contemporary works imagined and executed by ceramicists are extending the boundaries of the art form to new frontiers. Politically and socially informed, technically agile and heaped with narrative purpose, today’s Fresh Figurines are not merely anchored in the past, but act as powerful and compelling messengers about a post-modern world-in-flux. I believe exhibiting artist, Linda Cordell (above left), summarizes the agenda of the contemporary ceramicist best when she says, “Figurines are social propaganda; carefully displayed vignettes announce beliefs, ideals and desires of the owners. The artifice of portraying an animal in an idealized setting defies our unease and contentious relationship with nature. The distortion and abstraction of the platform contrasts with the diminished masked object—nothing is what it seems.”

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Fresh Figurines: A New Look at an Historic Art Form

Fuller Crafts Museum, Brockton, MA

Now through February 5, 2012

View their diverse collection and exhibition schedule at www.fullercraft.org

Barkley Hendricks, 'Black River from the Elgin Road View' (2005), o/c. Courtesy the artist & Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

Before even seeing it, I made a judgment on this show. And I was right. The landscapes that Barkley Hendricks has made are revelatory in ways so precise and disarming that they trained me instantly. An enlarged capacity to respond to them was guaranteed simply by looking.

Eleven of these scenes share a single tight space in the gallery. Not crowded, the varied shapes of the canvases obviously invite congregation, like an assemblage of mezzotints on a Victorian parlor wall. Each tondo and oval and lunette is like a shifting image in a lantern slide show, introducing a distant country to a dazzled audience. artes fine arts magazine

'My Back to the Bulldozer' (2008), o/c. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

This is Jamaica, but it is also resonant of Vietnam or any colonial landscape with violence just beneath its fantasy of paradise. On one canvas where an unpainted edge reveals the impasto around it, there is a literal equivalent to the many strata of memory that the surfaces of things can keep from us. But the process of exposing this underground is not all the work of nature; Hendricks is reading excavation, and not erosion, in the piece entitled My Back to the Bulldozer. The machine is made visible by the damage it has done. One single gouge of red earth across a wounded field tells the story of every other ravaged ground. A human mark has remade in the earth, and is now remarked by the hand of the painter.

These multiple small panels move the observer from stone to meadow to surf to darkening clouds, all the fragments from which the world is assembled. But each one is as complete in itself, as any of John Constable’s studies for patches of sky. A separate series of larger watercolors achieves a similar effect by different means. In both Turquoise Sky and Three Trees, the thin edge of a verdant horizon forces the eye up to the airy processions that push out over the paper’s end.

’Turquoise Sky’ (Lovers Leap Series) (1991), w/c on paper. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

Two of Hendricks’ signature full length portraits are hung at either side of the landscape grouping, making a frame out of another of the artist’s visions of the world. Set apart that way, they even more emphatically evoke the tradition which celebrates those figures of self-confident splendor found in the court paintings of Goya and Thomas Lawrence.

There is a further variation on that theme in two large format color photographs (The Twins and Swimming Pool Attendant) which go beyond being a record of a tourist’s encounter – or an anthropologist’s – to measure out the balance of stance and demeanor in the human figure. They are a reminder that the mysteries of affect have long been one of this artist’s central subjects.

‘Swimming Pool Attendant’ (1977), Chromographic print. Courtesy W. Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, CT.

Another grouping of work assembles a small constellation of unfamiliar fruits, and although only one of them includes the term ‘erotic’ in its title (and suggested by its framing) all of them are sensually charged, their taste and smell made tactile. But these are not Nature’s version of adult toys. Rather, they might serve as sexual reliquaries or votives – especially where the image is touched with gold leaf – small, but deeply felt prayers of thanks for passion’s gift.

There is thanksgiving, too, in the banana leaves which are both botanical record and exercises in form. That these are domesticated plants is a surprise revealed in the delicate pencil outline of their clay pots.

But for all the varieties of mastery here, the landscapes are what I went to again before I left, making sure of my remembering. There should be room for them in anyone’s memory.

By Stephen Kobasa, Contributing Writer

Barkley L. Hendricks: Some Like it Hot, focuses on the artist’s work created in response to his travels to Jamaica and West Africa. With their compelling scenery and inhabitants, these tropical regions have provided him with a wealth of inspiration, and the resulting photographs and paintings represent a significant portion of his creative output. The exhibition includes large-scale figurative paintings, a series of landscapes on lunette and tondo shaped canvases, renderings in oil and watercolor of fruits and vegetation, and photographs selected from his prolific production in that medium—among them a suite of photographs of activist and Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti  (left) that will be exhibited for the first time.

Now, through December 18, 2011

The William Benton Museum of Art,

University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

860-486-1705

www.thebenton.org

Edgar Degas, La Toilette (1884-86) Private Collection. See End Note #1

 “I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine…of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament—temperament is the word—I know nothing.” ~Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, best known in the public imagination for his more sentimental, impressionistic works—ballet scenes, race tracks, opera and music hall scenes—was, first and foremost, a student of the human figure. With the current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Degas and the Nude, a first-ever sweeping survey of some of his best and also least-known figurative works, here is an artist who still has the capacity to shock and surprise. Pulled from the extensive holdings of the MFA, The Musee D’Orsay, in Paris and dozens of other private and public collections, Degas and the Nude offers a retrospective of his work over a fifty-year time frame, from his days as a classically-trained student, to his ‘modern’ work at the turn of the 20th century. Much to the dismay of many late 19th century critics and the Parisian public-at-large, Degas, the radically-inventive artist, challenged a then, time-honored establishment’s approach to representing nude subjects, as he relentlessly strove to capture the most intimate and disarmingly candid moments in their private lives. artes fine arts magazine

Edgar Degas, Self-Portrait (1886)

The nude figure was, in fact, critically important to the art of Degas from the beginning of his career in the 1850s to the end of his working life at the dawn of the 20th century. The MFA exhibition presents works in every medium that Degas practiced: drawings, both academic and experimental; paintings made for official exhibitions and those never seen by the public in his lifetime; pictures in pastel, the medium most associated with the artist; sculpture, both in wax and bronze; printed media, including etchings, lithographs, and the monotype which he mastered. This common thread throughout the show is the human figure, transformed in his hands from the classically portrayed symbol of perfection and grace—to the most modern of demystified subjects—where composition, color and objectivity became his signature style. But, this was to be an approach to subject matter that, for Degas, would be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

E, Degas, Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1863-65), Musee d'Orsay. End Note #2

In his student years, Degas was captive to the nostalgic tastes of the past, as were so many French artists working and learning in the state-sanctioned, tradition-bound ecole d’art. Like so many Romantic era painters who went before, he initially wanted to be a history painter: to paint monumental stories from the past, the Bible and classical mythology. The exhibit features drawings from those years, as he studied the nude form in both the classroom and abroad, in the museums of Paris and Italy. Following the traditional plan of a young artist, he sketched classical sculpture and works by renaissance masters, like Michelangelo and Botticelli. Also working with live models, he began to adopt his own style, capturing likenesses that would soon appear in his own paintings. He later painted his only ‘historical’ work, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, showcasing the use of nudes in support of his desire to create an important work. Exhibited in the annual show of the Academie des Beaux Arts, in Paris in 1865, its portrayal of violence and complex action can be broadly understood as an illustration of war’s atrocities, but also an examination of man’s inhumanity toward women in a time of war. It would be Degas’s first and last historic painting, as he was about to step off in a new direction: interpreting the nude body—not in classical or historical terms—but as a contemporary figure in her own setting.

According to show curator and MFA’s Chair, Art of Europe, George Shackelford, “For Degas, these early years weren’t just an education in history, technique and anatomy, but something much more. As he relentlessly copied the nudes of the Old Masters and drew from live models, he developed a desire to be rigorous, but also rigorously original: a desire he would bring to bear in his important early paining of the nude, Young Spartans Exercising, and that would continue for the rest of his career.” Degas was in many ways, his own teacher, insisting critically, “that I get it into my head that I know nothing at all. That is the only way to go forward.”

Edouard Manet, Effect of Snow, Montrouge, Dec. 28, 1870

The son of a Parisian banker, Degas was closer to Manet than any other Impressionist in age and social background. Manet, who he met in 1862, and his artistic circle gradually persuaded Degas to turn from history painting to the depiction of contemporary life. The two artists were present and involved in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the humiliating siege and blockade of Paris that brought the city’s population to near starvation. The civil war that immediately followed, pitting Socialist Communards against Republican monarchists, led to further wide-spread death and chaos in the streets, leaving an indelible mark on both artists and the intellectual community as a whole. With the restoration of government and civil order, the Impressionists once again turned their attention to pastoral and bourgeois themes—in celebration of the ‘new’ France, while Degas headed in a very different direction.

The Serious Client (1876-77). End Note #3.

In the 1870s, Degas set out to work on a series of nudes that were neither classically-based nor studies for larger paintings. In fact, this series of monotypes were decidedly anti-classical, even as the idealized body of his earlier works gave way to more natural interpretations. Largely unknown until after his death, the works depict prostitutes in Paris’s high-class brothels. The pictures are explicit in detail—emphasizing the prostitutes’ heavy, full breasts, large bodies, and luxuriant pubic hair—and sometimes sexually explicit as well. Degas never intended these pictures to be seen publically. Both intimate and revealing of both subject and artist, they represent an extended engagement by the artist with an indecent, but widely accepted, underbelly of Paris bourgeoisie society. They were based on observation and study, but also on contemporary public opinion regarding sanitation, disease, morality and social standing.

Upon closer examination of a work like The Serious Client (1876-77), Degas may be invoking a role that John House (Impressionism: Paint and Politics, 2oo4), calls the flâneur-detective. Always the objective observer, the artist enters the forbidden world of the brothel “to find order and meaning in the seeming incoherence of the modern urban environment.” The standard markers of difference—class, sex and race—are very much at play in many of Degas’s works, and his brothel monotype series is no exception. Given the context of the pictures, the artist is making clear distinctions between male and female, working and upper class, master and servant. The women are portrayed through posture and dress as being clear about their functionary role. The setting, by extension, is pictured as conspicuously overdone, yet hermetically sealed from the outside world by mutual agreement among all parties. Men of influence move through the space—typecast as in control, on view…and fully dressed to reflect their professional status in society.

The Siesta-Scene from a Brothel (1870-80). End Note #4.

For a brief period of time, in the 1870s, Degas embraced the view of certain members of the scientific community, who believed that physical characteristics were seen to relate to social standing and typecasting. Individual physiognomy was thought to predetermine such traits as intelligence, criminality, and emotional stability. Ironically, this male-generated theory was held to be particularly attributable to members of the opposite sex. In the brothel series, as well as in some early ballet drawings and painting, Degas was inclined toward typecasting, where working-class dancers were shown with snub noses and slightly simian features, conforming closely to stereotypical ideas of the physiognomy of the lower classes. Fortunately, for his career and reputation, Degas ultimately rejected these theories, going on to become a leading proponent of artistic representation of the working poor.

As an employed technique, monotype was considered an experimental and contemporary medium. Lacking an etched or engraved plate, the process depended on paint or ink being applied directly to a smooth metal plate, which was then run through a press. Special effects and changes in the images were an inherent part of the process, with certain parts of the finished image left to chance. Degas fully exploited this characteristic in his use of monotypes to represent the settings and figures in the brothels. Spontaneity and loosely-defined details characterized the finished product—an important step for the artist as he moved away from his classical training and into the realm of sensory impressionism.

Degas’s focus shifted again in the late 1870s, when he turned his attention to the outside world. Here, his female models were pictured in private settings, often alone: lounging, reading, stepping into or out of the bath. Recurring themes became a feature of his work, with naturalism ‘coloring’ his style as he moved farther away from the classical traditions that were his roots. Still enamored of monotypes, Degas continued to rely on the medium as he broadened his repertoire of subjects. But now, he was running inked plates through the press twice, creating ambiguous, sensual and shadowy images that could then be further enhanced with chalk and colored pastels.

Nude Woman Standing, ca. 1878 (left: See End Note 5) invites the viewer to share a private moment with his model. In this remarkable work, consciousness, rather than nudity, is the principle theme. As if caught unaware, the woman has withdrawn into herself, appearing to forget for the moment that she is in the presence of another. We marvel, today, at reality TV participants, as they reveal all in front of prying cameras; yet this work illustrates how easily we can slip the reins of self-consciousness and retreat into our own thoughts and emotions. Cool flesh tones on pale blue paper help to avert the simmering sensuality that would ordinarily accompany a drawing of this kind. The figure grips her temples, elbows resting on her knee. Posed against a stark background, evidence of her toilette is nowhere to be seen. She is frozen in contemplation—a static drama unfolding before our eyes. Degas’s mastery of the human gesture is in evidence here: the artist’s machinery of illusion in full swing as he asks us to consider this simple scene as an homage to everyday life and our own vulnerability, uniting us in our humanity.

Degas exhibited small pastel nudes in the Impressionist exhibit of 1877. Now affiliated with the Impressionists, he sought safety and expanded recognition in their numbers. Nude Woman Drying Herself, 1884-92 (near right, End Note #6) was completed during that time in the hopes that it would serve as a showpiece for his skills and garner the attention of buyers and the critics, either with the Impressionists, or on his own.

His friend Henri Gervex had exhibited a large painting of a nude, Rola, in 1878; its treatment of a naked prostitute provoking both public admiration and criticism. At the same time, painter and collector, Gustave Caillebotte was finishing large-scale male and female nudes, including Man at His Bath, 1884 (above right, End Note #7). Degas’s unfinished Nude Woman Drying Herself is evidence of his intention to create a modern oil painting with the scale of Gervex’s canvas, but with a greater sense of narrative detachment than he had demonstrated in the pastels, monotypes and etchings of the previous decade, in keeping with Caillebotte’s unabashed realism.

Henri Gervex, Rolla (1878). End Note #8.

The last Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 was a pivotal moment for Degas. He showed new works—including a group of bathers. The exhibition checklist announced a “Suite of female nudes” by Degas: “bathing, washing, drying themselves, wiping themselves, combing themselves or being combed.” These works represent one of Degas’s highest achievements as an artist. Executed in pastel, the medium held strong appeal for him since it yielded effects of line, tone and color simultaneously. As he had done with monotype, the artist fully exploited the expressive possibilities of the medium: wiping and blending colors, smudging and carving into the surface with the butt-end of his paint brush.

As most contemporary museum visitors know, dancers were a favorite subject of Degas. He remained fascinated with the moving body throughout his career—specifically the dancer’s body. First, he would sketch them nude, or work their images in clay or wax. Carefully studying these gestures, movements and poses at moments of stillness, he would then clothe the dancers in tutus for final versions in oil or pastel. While no longer actively portraying prostitutes, his interest in ballet was not far removed from this unseemly side of Paris culture. Unlike today’s classical dancers, 19th century ballerinas generally came from working class families and, because they exhibited their scantily-clad bodies in public—something that ‘respectable’ bourgeois women did not do—they were widely assumed to be sexually available. They were often ‘sponsored’ by wealthy businessmen, who exchanged their patronage for sexual favors. Several of Degas’s paintings contain images of these men, sitting on the sidelines of a rehearsal; or conversely, mothers of the dancers hovering nearby at rehearsals and performances in order to safeguard their daughters’s virtue.

Right: After the Bath, Woman with a Towel (1893-97). See End Note # 9.

This careful analysis of his subject, and strong reliance on the studio setting to achieve a finished piece becomes an important way to understand that, while Degas was a champion of the Impressionist movement (and accepted as one of their own in exhibitions and in personal friendships), his working style did not qualify him for what contemporaneous critic, Jules-Antoine Castegnary called, “modern forms of naturalism.” By this he meant a certain spontaneity-of-response by the artist (plein air painting, for example), together with an objectivity of representation. While Degas certainly qualified in the latter, his allegiance to draftsmanship, boldly-calculated compositions, and a methodical (classically-styled) approach to repeatedly rendering his subject, placed him in a unique category. Yet, as a consequence of his studio-based use of seemingly-spontaneous mark-making, his bold use of color and loosely-configured drawing techniques, today we consider Degas’s work an important part of the Impressionist genre.

Jean Auguste Ingres,The Valpincon Bather (1808). Louvre, Paris.

Drawings and paintings during this period highlight Degas’s continuing focus on the backs of his models. Trained in the tradition—and an admirer—of neo-classicist painter, Jean Auguste Ingres, who famously extolled the female back as a sensual anatomical feature (see: The Valpincon Bather, 1812), Degas, too, was to follow in the footsteps of this master of the neglected side of the nude, throughout his career. Since the 1870s, Degas had used the back as a locus of character and expression: in depictions of women walking, of mounted jockeys or dancers in the wings. But the bather’s back is more complex. Degas almost never depicted his bathers, except from behind. Perhaps he did not want to show their faces, to create identifiable individuals—women with names, identities and personalities. The female form, for Degas, was now more iconic or symbolic, than real, as they focused on the same everyday tasks, like bathing or drying, common to everyone. By stripping his bathers of specifics, the back served as a locus for the body’s expressive powers and poetic center.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, Degas’s art making underwent a transformation—one that was subtle, but also completely revelatory. His nudes became a vehicle for experimentation, in style and method, as well as impact. His earlier, methodical etchings gave way to expressive lithography. Drawing, the cornerstone of his practice, shifted from the careful pencil academies to strokes of charcoal or black chalk for forceful studies of nude bathers. He tossed aside the care with which he had approached Scene of War in the Middle Ages in the 1860s to create oil paintings with celebratory swaths and daubs of paint. As a key sign of the times, Impressionism transitioned to the more personalized work of the Post-Impressionists. And perhaps, (like Monet during this same period) Degas began fell prey to failing eye sight, dogging him as he aged. Anatomical accuracy became less important to the artist than expressing emotion and feeling that were palpable in the work.

The Tub (1886) Musee d'Orsay. End Note #10.

On exhibit, The Tub (1886), like other works in which Degas achieves drama with unusual perspectives on his subject, assumes an oblique—even severely geometric angle: the tub and the crouching woman, both vigorously outlined, form a circle within a square. The remainder of the rectangular format is filled by a shelf so sharply tilted at an unnatural angle that nearly shares the plane of the picture, itself. On this shelf Degas has placed two pitchers (note the curve of the small one fitting into the handle of the other), which are not in-the-least foreshortened. Here, the tension between two-dimensions and three—surface and depth—comes close to the breaking point. The carelessly placed brush, with its handle hanging precariously over the edge, tempts the viewer to reach out and grab it before it tumbles to the floor.

Degas would revisit the same theme and position with his models, over a period of two decades. With slight variations, all would be placed in the same anonymous pose, with strict physical demands placed on the women during the posing process. The pose he demanded was difficult to hold. “Standing on her left leg, her knee slightly bent, [the model] lifts her other foot behind her with a strong movement, graspsher foot with her right hand, while her left elbow shoots out to maintain her balance,” as one observer described it. “For a whole minute, she remains almost immobile, her muscles all taut; but suddenly her left leg shifts and—in order not to fall—she has to give it up.”

After the bath, Woman drying Her Neck (1895-98). End Note #11.

In the 1890s, Degas’s propensity to revisit familiar poses reached new levels. Repetition intrigued him, as did (in all likelihood) the enthusiastic market for his work by galleries and collectors. He began copying himself by placing smooth tracing paper over previous works to translate poses, one to the other. During this time he also began using recent charcoal drawings and tracings as the basis for finished pastels, as he had done with monotypes earlier in his career. Repetition could simply be a matter of revisiting favorite poses, but for Degas, the concept was more complicated. With changing times and shifting social values in the face of Western Europe’s industrialization and modernization, themes of war’s inhumanity and the abuses of women meant that motifs embodied in some of Degas’s work, going back decades, were still resonant. The image of a woman in one bathing scene—head bent, one arm curved across her chest, the other lifted into the air, palm upward—as though gesturing, partly in defense, partly as a warning, was reminiscent of a figure in his violent 1963-65, Scene of War in the Middle Ages. Across thirty years, the emotions remain constant, while the social context changes.

Dancer...(1896-1911) Note #12.

By the late 1880s, Degas’s eyesight had begun to fail, perhaps a result of an injury suffered during his service in defending Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. After that time he focused almost exclusively on dancers and nudes, increasingly turning to sculpture as his eyesight weakened. In his later years, he was concerned chiefly with women bathing, entirely without self-consciousness and emphatically, not posed. Despite the seemingly fleeting glimpses he portrayed, he achieved a solidity in his figures that is almost sculptural.

In later life, Degas became reclusive, morose, and given to bouts of depression, probably a consequence of his increasing blindness. His monotype Coastal Landscape ,c. 1892 (left, below, End Note #13) an unusual work from this period, is an unexpected instance of Degas presenting an outdoor scene with no obvious figures, showing an imaginative and expressive use of color and freedom-of-line that may have arisen, at least in part, as a result of his struggle to adapt to his deteriorating vision. Show organizers invite viewers to detect the subtle suggestion of a reclining figure disguised in the hillside, however; positing that it served as a gentle send-up to Monet, the consummate landscape painter, from an old colleague and adversary who made the representation of the human form his life’s work

Near the end of his career, Degas was already well-known throughout Europe and in North America. Collectors from Paris, London, New York Chicago and Boston vied for his work, many purchasing his bathers from the 1880s and 90s. His reputation was also strong among his peers, bridging the generations between the Paris avant garde and a new generation of artists for a new century. In 1918, at the sale of Degas’s atelier after his death, the broader public viewed many of his works for the first time. Most connoisseurs were shocked by what they saw—dozens of works by this painter of dancers on the stage, of jockeys, laundresses, and milliners. “We looked at these walls,” wrote one of Degas’s friends, “covered with works that were powerful but horrible, which frightened us all the more because the energy of their lines and the beauty of their tones kept us from looking at or thinking of anything else.”

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Rare film footage of Edgar Degas, Paris, c. 1914:

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END NOTES:

1. Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), La Toilette (1884-86), pastel over monotype laid down on board. Private collection. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
2. Edgar Degas, Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1863-65), oil on paper. Paris, Musée d’Orsay. ©Photo: Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
3. Edgar Degas, The Serious Client (1876-77), monotype on woven paper. National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa. Purchases 1977. Photo ©National Gallery of Canada. National gallery of Canada, Ottowa. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
4. Edgar Degas, The Siesta—Scene from a Brothel (1878-80), monotype in black ink. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Katerine E. Bullard Fund in memory of Francis Bullard 61.1215. Photo: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
5. Edgar Degas, Nude Woman Standing (ca. 1878), black chalk and pastel on blue wove paper. Paris, Musée d’Orsay. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
6. Edgar Degas, Nude Woman Drying Herself (1884-92), oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Carl H. de Silver Fund 31.813. Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
7. Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894), Man at His Bath (1884), oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds by exchange and from the Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, Edward Jackson Holmes Fund, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, Gift of Mrs. Samuel Parkmen Oliver—Eliza R. Oliver Fund, Sophie F. Friedman Fund, Robert M. Rosenberg Family Fund, and Mary L. Cornille and John F. Cogan Jr. Fund for the Art of Europe. Photo: ©Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
8. Henri Gervex (French, 1852-1929), Rolla (1878), oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris (on deposit at Musée des Beaux Arts des Bordeaux). Bequest of M. Bérardi, 1926 BX E 1455. Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts des Bordeaux/Art resource, NY.
9. Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman with a Towel (1893-97), pastel on brown cardboard. Harvard Art museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of mrs. J. Montgomery Sears. Photo: Allan Macintyre ©President and Fellows of Harvard College. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
10. Edgar Degas, The Tub (1886), pastel. Paris, Musée d’Orday, Bequest of Comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
11. Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Neck (1895-98), pastel on woven paper. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911 RF 4044. Photo: Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN; photographed by Patrice Schmidt.
12. Edgar Degas, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (modeled between 1896-1911, cast between 1921-31), bronze. Paris, Musée d’Orsay, acquired through the generosity of the heirs of the artist and of Hébrard. Photo © Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
13. Edgar Degas, Coastal Landscape (ca. 1892), pastel on paper. Collection Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski.  Boston only.

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

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

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

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

Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, PA

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

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

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

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

Steiff bears, early 20th c.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jolly Jocko and Hiking Bear (c. 1930).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Autumn Miller, Contributing Writer

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

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Works Cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

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

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 End Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Willem de Kooning, Woman III (1953). Private Collection

 “The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”  —Willem de Kooning

They say that autumn is the time when the boundary between the living and the dead; worldly and other worldly; waking and dreaming; and the conscious and unconscious mind, is minimal. If so, the moment is right to look at Willem de Kooning’s layered retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Works are scraped, drawn, pastel filled and painted to elicit the passage of time, and in describing origins, merge the seen and unseen, and what no longer exists. In this space, the artist has poured himself throughout a lifetime of intertwining, which appears, like DNA in the final galleries. There can be no more graphic depiction of the intimate autobiographical workings of a man within his time…but also without time. artes fine arts magazine

W. de Kooning, Special Delivery (1946). Coll. Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Gallery, Wash., D.C.

DeKooning’s permeable works — figurative within abstractions, then abstractions at the end of his life that danced away like figures – lodge in the psyche. Once characterized as out of step with his contemporaries, the Abstract Expressionist of the New York School, de Kooning’s work conveys the sensation that everyone else was out of sync. His oeuvre was more personally exploratory, iconoclastic and multiple in approach than a movement. The art critic Thomas Hess wrote of de Kooning’s 1946 work, Special Delivery, “Shapes do not meet or overlap or rest apart as planes; rather there is a leap from shape to shape; the ‘passages’ look technically ‘impossible.’ This is a concept which comes from collage, where the eye moves from one material to another in similar impossible bounds. De Kooning often paints ‘jumps’ by putting a drawing into a work-in-progress, sometimes painting over it and then removing it, using it as a mask or template, sometimes leaving it in the picture.”

The most psychologically ambiguous works come midway through the exhibition in the seminal Women I, II, III series. Are they hostile? No. Are they kind? No. They resonate because they are the way that a woman can be. Never have I identified as closely with these paradoxes, or been clenched by as raw a visceral grip as through these paintings, whether viewing them for the first time, over twenty five years ago, for the duration of this show. Like the Archangel Michael, de Kooning’s Women carry the balance of heaven and hell, demon and goddess, both represented seductively in the schema of their personas.

(Left, near) Juan de la Abadia, St. Michael Weighing Souls(1490), Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunga, Barcelona, SP; (L,far) W. de Kooning, Woman with Bicycle (1952-53).

Of the Women series, de Kooning made references of a kind of transcendent influence: “First of all, I felt everything ought to have a mouth. Maybe it was like a pun…maybe it’s even sexual…I don’t know why I did it with the mouth. Maybe the grin. It’s rather like the Mesopotamian idols, you know. They always stand up straight looking to the sky with this smile, like they were just astonished about the forces of nature, you feel – not about the problems they had with one another.” The gaze is otherworldly.

Hess analyzed de Kooning’s works for their process and for their armature, particularly since in the case of the drawings Woman (Seated Woman I) and Untitled (Two Women), the narrative was essentially unfathomable. He said, “The vectors of the drawing seem to have become the parts of a giant watchworks which tick around the figure, hiding, revealing, then hiding her again as if she had become a part of time…perhaps some idea about the bending nature of space and time informs this image.”

W. de Kooning, Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brother (c.1938).

The’ jump’, a visual and psychological synapse through the void, the convergence of space and time as well as its ‘bending’ all point to a non-linear universe by which de Kooning was compelled. In April of 1937, John Graham published an essay in, Magazine of Art, entitled; ‘Primitive Art and Picasso,’ where the artist and African sculpture were discussed in the context of Jungian psychoanalytic theory.  According to the chronology in John Elderfield’s brilliantly comprehensive exhibition catalog, de Kooning remembered borrowing this article from Jackson Pollock. That February Graham had published System and Dialectics in Art, which weighed the impact of Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious relative to art. A materialized unconsciousness appeared early in de Kooning’s Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brother (c. 1938). The personal unconscious and collective consciousness later collided and manifested themselves in de Kooning’s Women. A more gender ambivalent dialogue between animus and anima appeared in Figure (1944). Preceding depictions of Men examined the subject, together with what was felt. The emotional content was wrought by eroded or compounded layers that created an aura of the mystical feminine around the sitter. The effect is one of memory – simultaneously past and contemplated – that evolved in Men, then the Women, and finally became decomposed and deconstructed in the landscape abstractions.

W. de Kooning, Seated Figure (Classic Male), 1940.

Throughout this 200-work retrospective there are penetrating (early) and exhilarating (later) works. Undeniably, this is a landmark: it is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s entire oeuvre, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is its only venue. (de Kooning’s first one man exhibition, at Charles Egan Gallery, opened at the time of his forty-fourth birthday, so this delay is perhaps symmetrical.) Less subjective are the quantifications: approximately 16,000 square feet, or, the museum’s entire sixth floor gallery space is given over to de Kooning: A Retrospective. Among the artist’s most famous paintings, Pink Angels (1945), Excavation (1950) and the celebrated third Woman series are presented, together with breakthrough black and white compositions (1948-49), where one discovers that a line is not a line, but rather a Rorschach test.

Every period and medium with which the artist was engaged is present, including the largely unseen (no pun intended) theatrical back-drop, the 17-foot Labyrinth (1946). Equally unguarded and sweeping was Jerry Saltz’s seminal review in the September 20 issue of New York Magazine which he concluded by saying “I challenge any of them (the curators) to name one thing wrong with any work on view here. What we see, from beginning to end, is a cosmos unto itself, visual wisdom for the ages.”

W. de Kooning, Black Untitled (1948). Coll. Metropolitan Museum of Art

The show begins with the primordial soup of de Kooning’s early cosmos – the deep and dark amorphic oil on paper/cardboard mounted on wood compositions like Nightsquare (c. 1949) and Black Untitled (1948), which seem animated by ghostlike forces and which were informed by events such as seeing Merce Cunningham dance, evading the too literal metaphors of developing Surrealism, and experiencing the bombing of Hiroshima. These curvilinear works flourished with an expressionist infusion throughout the years. As witnessed by de Kooning’s academic representational still lifes that toy with volume and the figurative drawings that hint at alienation, de Kooning was always interested in more than meticulous rendering where he felt he would “loose his mind.” He alludes to dimensions beyond the seen, metaphysics, and a fascination with vortices of space. De Kooning said, “The stars I think about, if I could fly. I could reach in a few old fashioned days. But physicist’s stars I use as buttons, buttoning up curtains of emptiness. If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself and wonder where my fingers are – that’s all the space I need as a painter.” Stars as buttons summons the transcendent William Blake, whose power is revisited here.

W. de Kooning, Untitled XII (1982)

Once the viewer has penetrated the vast waves and oceans that constituted the artist’s unmediated mind, and is treated to the less seen, heavy and gnarled sculpture, an epiphany occurs. When one steps into the bright light of the late works – these accomplished while the artist was in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease – refine, rework and cultivate anew a lyricism to express the formless form, the unembodied volume, the definite indefinite. As de Kooning climbed closer to his own white light, the palette becomes sublimely light, innocent and pure, the lines uncomplicated and devoid of gravitas.

Tony Vaccaro, de Kooning painting in East Hampton, L.I. studio (1953)

Theodor Adorno, the writer on classical music had this to say about de Kooning’s final epoch: “The power of subjectivity in the late works of art is the irascible gesture with which it takes leave of the works themselves. It breaks their bonds, not in order to express itself but in order, expressionless, to cast off the appearance of art. Of the works themselves, it leaves only fragments behind, and communicates itself, like a cipher, only through the blank spaces from which it has disengaged itself. Touched by death, the hand of the master sets free the masses of material that he used to form; its tears and fissures, witness to the finite powerlessness of the ‘I confronted with Being’ are its final work.” de Kooning moved toward the infinite metaphorically, in afterlife; during life it was a concept he channeled and which sustained him.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer ©2011

The exhibition is on view at the Museum of Modern Art through January 9, 2012

www.moma.org