Publisher’s Blog
September 3, 2010
The Art of Making Art
What follows is a wonderful historical record of how a particular artist resolved the issues of a particular subject, to yield a masterpiece of art. It was written by Blaise Cendrars in 1924, about his friend, the painter Robert Delaunay, and the creation of his painting, Champs de Mars: The Red Tower (1911)*
The Eiffel Tower
-dedicated to Madame Sonia Dulauney
“…In the years 1910, 1911, Robert Delaunay and I were perhaps the only ones in Paris talking about machines and art and with a vague awareness of the great transformation of the modern world.
Paris World Fair Exhibition, 1900
At that time, I was working in Chartres, with B…, on the perfecting of his plane with various angles of incidence, and Robert, who had worked for a time as a journeyman mechanic, in some artisan locksmith shop, was prowling, in a blue coat, around the Eiffel Tower.
One day, as I was coming back from Chartres, I fell out of the car at the exit of the Parc du Saint-Cloud and broke my leg. I was carried to the nearest hotel, the Hôtel de Palais, kept by Alexandre Dumas and his sons. I stayed there, in that hotel bed for twenty-eight days, lying on my back with a weight pulling on my leg. I had the bed pushed against the window. Thus, every morning, when the boy brought me my breakfast, threw open the shutters and opened the window wide, I had the impression that he was bringing me Paris on his tray. I could see, through the window, the Eiffel Tower like a clear flask of water, the domes of the Invalides and the Panthéon like a teapot and a sugar bowl, and Sacré-Cœur, white and pink, like a candy. Delaunay came almost every day to keep me company. He was always haunted by the Tower and the view from my window attracted him strongly. He would often sketch of bring his box of colors.
It was thus I was able to be present at an unforgettable drama: the struggle of an artist with a subject so new that he didn’t know how to capture it, to subdue it. I have never seen a man struggle and defend himself so, except perhaps the mortally wounded men abandoned on the field of battle who, after two or three days of superhuman efforts, would finally quiet down and return to the night. But he, Delaunay remained victor.
And now, think of my hotel window opening onto Paris. It was the subject of all his preoccupations, a ready-made painting which had to be interpreted, constructed, painted, created, expressed. And it was quite difficult. In that year, 1911 Delaunay painted, I believe, fifty one canvases o f the Eiffel T
ower before succeeding.
As soon as I could go out, I went with Delaunay to see the Tower. Here is our trip around and in the Tower.
No art formula known until then could make the pretense of resolving plastically the problem of the Eiffel Tower. Realism made it smaller; the old laws of Italian perspective made it look thinner. The Tower rose above Paris, as slender as a hat pin. When we walked away from it, it dominated Paris, stiff and perpendicular; when we approached it, it bowed and leaned out over us. Seen from the first platform, it wound like a cork screw, and seen from the top, it collapsed under its own weight, its legs spread out, its neck sunk in. Delaunay always wanted to depict Paris around it, to situate it. We tried all points of view, we looked at it from all angles, from all sides, and its sharpest profile is the one you can see from the Passy footbridge.
Robert Delaunay, Champs de Mars: The Red Tower (1911-pre-1923). Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection.
And those thousands of tons of iron, those 35 million bolts, those 300 meters high of interlaced girders and beams, those four arches with a spread of 100 meters, all that jelly-like mass flirted with us. On certain spring days it was supple and laughing and opened its parasol of clouds under our very nose. On certain stormy days it sulked, sour and ungracious; it seemed cold. At midnight we ceased to exist, all its fires were for New York with whom it was already flirting then; and at noon it gave the time to ships on the high seas. It taught me the Morse Code which allows me today to understand radio messages. And as we were prowling around it, we discovered that it exerted a singular attraction for a host of people. Lovers climbed a hundred, two hundred meters over Paris to be alone; couples on their honeymoon came from the provinces and from abroad to visit it; one day we met a boy of fifteen who had traveled from Dusseldorf to Paris, on foot, just to see it. The first planes turned about it and said hello, Santos-Dumont had already taken it for his destination at the time of his memorable dirigible flight, as the germans were taking it for their target during the war, a symbolic and not a strategic target, and I can assure you that he wouldn’t have hit it because the Parisians would have killed themselves for it, and Gallieni had decided to blow it up, our own Tower!
So many points of view to treat the problem of the Eiffel Tower. But Delaunay wanted to interpret it plastically. He finally succeeded with the famous canvas that everybody knows. He took the Tower apart to make it fit into his frame, he truncated it, and bent it to give it 300 meters of dixxying height, he adopted 10 points of view, 15 perspectives, so that one part is seen from below, another from above, the houses surrounding it are taken from the right, from the left, bird’s-eye view, level with the ground…” (1924)
*Excerpt from, Transforming Visions- Writers on Art, an Art Institute of Chicago publication, Bullfinch Press, Little Brown & Co., 1994
August 3, 2010
Through the Eyes of a Child
Drawing by Keira Bucher, age 5
The exuberance of a child exploring her world is a pleasure to watch. Children convey an unbridled truth and inventiveness in their observations of the people and objects around them. Most importantly, they believe in the absoluteness of their place at the center of the universe and the fantastic possibilities of everything within their reach. The magic of children’s art lies in its ability to engage the imagined world, unencumbered by rules of physics or probability; where they may ascribe unique shape and color to everything they see around them. We were all part of that world at one time in our lives. We once all intuited the secrets to unbridled creativity. At one time, we were each artists in our own right. Only a small fraction of us, however, have attempted to find our way back.
The idea that modern art looks like something that can be accomplished by a child is a cliché. Yet, most artists understand that to paint in an abstract style is more difficult than representational art by an order of magnitude. The logical breakdown is two-fold: first, to assume that the child is intending to create an abstract work of art. They are, in fact, using untrained muscles and a set of drawing skills not yet impacted by the rules of perspective, relative size and color guidelines that impede the rest of us. They are working hard to create a realistic drawing and, for them, their effort, no matter how quaint or ‘primitive’ in our view, is usually a success in theirs; the second is to assume that the professional artist is incapable of creating a refined rendering of their subject. Suspending the formal rules of rendering or mark-making in art, in the interest of a desired effect or impact on the viewer, is only possible once you understand what those rules are! Their finished product may look accidental or even erroneous, but the intention is most often deliberate and calculated.
Wassily Kandinsky, Little Pleasures (1913) includes references to drawings of his childhood village in Russia
To what end, you may ask?
In order to understand the apparent visual link between children’s art and its possible influence on the ‘childlike’ features of certain modernist works, it is important to highlight the research of Jonathan Fineberg and his publication, The Innocent Eye (1997). Years of exhaustive research on the topic resulted in his curating a 1995 exhibition, “The Innocent Eye-Children’s Art and the Modern Artist”, at two European museums. Feinberg noted that, “the roots of child art lie in the Romantic movement and their notion of ‘genius’ in the form of childlike innocence. Accordingly: they believed that children have more direct access to artistic inspiration; the ability to see things objectively (what Ruskin, in 1850, called, ‘without consciousness of what they signify’; the ability to see beyond the appearance to the ‘truth’ of things and fourth; a privileged view of the mysteries of life.” (Editor’s note: as youths, they were believed to be that much closer to their Creator, chronologically— and therefore, to the spiritual—than their adult counterparts).
e notion of what Ruskin had termed, ‘the innocence of the eye’ was transformed into an active aesthetic principle.” So, as the turn of the 20th century ushered in a whole new way of looking at and thinking about the world, led by advances in science, industry and technology, artistic pursuits had to go in search of appropriate inspiration. One result was the re-birth of the naïveté of simpler times. It took the form of the Arts and Craft Movement in the U.S. and t he introduction of African and other remote tribal cultural influences in artistic expression, drawn from worlds far-removed from Western society. This so-called ‘Primitivism’ was an increasingly important influence in the work of major European artists of that time. There was erroneously thought to be a bridge between these far-flung examples of crudely-executed figurative sculpture and drawings and the creative output of children. Although misguided in their view, misogyny and ethnocentrism nevertheless prevailed, as newly-explored parts of the world opened to the scrutiny of the Anglo-European intellectual community. 
Pablo Picasso, Paloma en Bleu (1952)
As a result of this assumed link, the experimental, even politically-radical climate within artistic movements in Europe, surrounding the World War I period, would begin to make allowances for the inclusion of children’s art. As more traditional sources of inspiration and old-school methods of making art were being challenged, new, more ‘modern’ approaches dominated the scene. Again, Fineberg notes that Andre Derain commented, in 1902, “I like to study the drawings of kids. That’s where the truth is, without a doubt.” August Macke, in The Blue Rider Almanac commented, “Are not children more creative in drawing directly from the secret of their sensations than the imitator of Greek forms?” And he observes that, for the Dadaists, childhood served as a symbol of their strategic retreat from social norms in search of spontaneity. For the Russian Symbolist painter, Leon Bakst, “what delights and moves us [in children’s’ pictures] is candor/sincerity, movement and clear, clean color.”
Artists like Henri Matisse noted the importance of children’s art, but did not eagerly embrace it as an influence in his work; Wassily Kandinsky collected children’s work and actively included imagery from some of these drawings in his paintings, particularly in his earlier pre-war landscapes; Picasso was known to say that, “when [he] was a child, [he] could draw like Raphael. It took [him] years to learn to draw like a child.” While he never admittedly embraced children’s motifs in his work, he was known to follow, with interest, the drawings of his own and other children. Ironically, it is to certain aspects of Picasso’s oeuvre that the attribution of ‘childlike’ is most frequently applied. This is clearly unwarranted, as the complexity of his imagery is often veiled in the appearance of simplicity, even crudeness. These characteristics of seeming spontaneity and simplicity-of-line took him, as for most artists choosing to work in this style, years to perfect.
Jean Dubuffet, Poiro Zanzibar (1962), Private Collection
Joan Miro and Paul Klee are often seen to work in a ‘childlike’ style of simple geometric forms and scattered, gravity-defying figuration. For Klee (see above, Angelus Novus, 1920), as Fineberg points out, “the discovery of a set of his own childhood drawings set him on a path of cataloguing ‘these primitive beginnings of art’… and to have them serve, in part, as coordinates for his own mature artistic journey.” For Miro, on the other hand, the author notes that his fascination with the drawing of his own daughter, born in 1930, held him spellbound. Unlike his own childhood drawing, which lacked spontaneity and exuberance, Miro spent his lifetime trying to recapture the direct connection to the subject that he believed characterized children’s art. As he told the French art critic, Dora Vallier, “The older I get and the more I master the medium, the more I return to my earliest experiences. I think that at the end of my life I will recover all the forces of my childhood.”
It can certainly be said that, as the 20th century progressed and the post-World War II period ushered in the Abstract Expressionists like Pollack and de Kooning and Rothko, the art of throwing, dripping, splashing and troweling paint onto canvas in gestures befitting the most aggressive child reached a high point. The expressive immediacy of deliberately ‘bad art’ can be seen in later works by Jean-Michael Basquiat, Karel Apel, Phillip Guston and Jean Dubuffet. The point of their work is not to flaunt the rules learned as a result of years of art training, but to apply those skills in emulating the experiential directness and unfiltered sensations of a child’s perception of the world.
Their bold attempts at the mastery of naïveté could only be approximations of the truth, as seen through the eyes of a child. Over the generations of the modern and post-modern period, artists have embraced the knowledge that their work can only be a simulation of the vivid reality and unfiltered consciousness of childhood. And every artist has understood that there is no returning.
by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor
Reference: Jonathan Fineberg, The Innocent Eye, Princeton University Press, 1997.
June 30, 2010
Publisher’s Note: This Blog post, submitted to ARTES by one of our regular architectural contributors was just so humerous and quirky, that I just had to share it with my readers:
ProperEnglish, as in “Crikey, It’s the Loo!”
Author’s note: British-isms in the text, such as theatre, are bolded; translations, when deemed necessary, follow in parenthesis – for example, bingo wings (flabby underarms, a ssociated with elderly denizens of gaming parlors).
Kroon Hall, Yale University. Centerbrook Architects
Our guide, a tiptop British architect from Hopkins Architects of London, was showing us Yanks, Mark Simon and me of Centerbrook, several buildings that her firm designed in Nottingham, England (yes, as in “Sheriff of”). Centerbrook and Hopkins would be working together on Kroon Hall, the new home of Yale’s School of Forestry and Envi ronmental Studies. Within our half of the collaboration, Centerbrook was tasked with, among other things, translating British architecture into an American context.
I was aware that Hopkins’ portfolio bristled with impressive green architecture – vegetated roofs, mixed-mode ventilation, wind cowls, and the like – but our guide kept referring to the Plant Room on the roof. No greenery or greenhouse, however, was in evidence up there.
After three mentions, I had to ask. It turns out she was referring to the Mechanical Equipment Room, or MER, as we call it stateside. The difference between our two cultures, architecturally speaking, would prove to be greater than I had imagined. It was all a tad dodgy (tricky or suspect) at first.
Yale had selected Hopkins out of six shortlisted firms known for their experience in sustainable design (Centerbrook also was shortlisted). Kroon Hall would be a symbol of Yale’s commitment to the environment and achieve the highest levels of sustainability, a LEED Platinum rating. Because Hopkins had only built one project in the United States, the university wanted an experienced American firm to assist them as the Executive Architects. So the marriage was arranged between us and the Brits.
Hopkins is known for designing low energy, high performance buildings, with a commitment to an honest expression of materials in a modern idiom, using systems, materials, and detailing developed in Europe, but new to the U.S. market. One of our tasks was to make plans and documents comprehensible for American contractors and suppliers. This entailed translating Brit-Lish into Amer-English.
Mind the Gap! (Watch Your Step, More or Less)
Exterior, Kroon Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT
I thought it would be easy at first. Centerbrook has done some international work, and I have travelled a fair bit throughout England and Euro pe. I fancied that I was familiar with British-isms: WCs (bathrooms), lifts (elevators), colours, carparks (parking lots), smashing (jolly good), to name a few. But when it came to architectural terms, there was a whole new lexicon to master. We, and the project, could easily have fallen through the gap.
What in the Sam Hill are lippings, we beseeched? Answer: trim. Conversely, our colleagues from across the pond were anxious to know who, precisely, Mr. Sam Hill would be.
To compound matters, the Kroon Hall team included architects and engineers from Arup and atelier ten, each sporting a variety of accents from throughout the former empire, among them various American dialects. Also, because construction practices, procurements processes, and tight budgets and schedules would not allow a typical Hopkins building here, adaptations had to be made. Bespoke (custom made) elements were limited, so noble substitutions were found for Hopkins favourite items, while at the same time we were educating local contractors on the fundamentals of Brit-Lish: fittings (fixtures), skirtings (base trim), totems (bollards, or short vertical posts), and a bit of kit (equipment).
Cockups (Blunders) and Silly Buggers (Foolish or Irritating People)
To avoid committing, or being the abovementioned, we decided early on that our Title Sheet for Construction Documents should include a British-to-American Terminology Legend. This included 35 terms used by Hopkins and Arup in their drawings followed by the closest American translation, plus those blinking (damned) metric units. After a while we got the hang of it – 100 millimeters equals a little less than four inches. A wee bit is a quarter of an inch, or thereabouts, close enough. A pint of bitters is way bigger than a pint of Bud. We took to keeping a running list of all unknown terms as they came up, not just the architecturally-related ones. Some were a wee facety (a little rude).
Local Cuisine
We had to eat while we were in the United Kingdom, where we ingested succulent delicacies like Treacle Sponge (Steamed Sponge Cake with syrup or molasses cooked on top, often served with hot custard) and Spotted Dick (Steamed Suet Pudding containing dried fruit, usually currants, commonly served with custard). And you thought suet was for the birds! I’ll never forget mushy peas and rocket (a porridge dish and arugula), or nose and tail (often accompanied by jellied eels is all you need to know). We Centerbrookians will always have Fitzrovia, where we ingested pie (meat, not fruit) and pudding (dessert) at a friendly boozer (pub).
A Proper Aedifice
For all that potential confusion (and indigestion), the completed building turned out to be a spiffing (excellent) synthesis of the two cultures. Yale accomplished its goal of erecting a flagship building equal to its environmental ambitions. Hopkins was satisfied that Kroon Hall aptly represented its design and sustainable philosophies. For Centerbrook, not only was it a great opportunity to work on a significant piece of architecture, but it was also a chance to participate in a cross-cultural exchange of ideas and methodologies – a touch of Uncle Sam here, and a good bit of John Bull there.
Brilliant! (cool, awesome, sweet!).
by Jim Coan, AIA
Jim Coan is the Director of Architectural Practice and Building Science at Centerbrook Architects. He has been the Project Manager for a number of the firm’s larger projects including Kroon Hall at Yale University. In his career Jim has, only on rare occasions, found it necessary to use a dictionary to translate architectural terms.
June 11, 2010
Connecticut Art Trail Offers Strength in Numbers
Slater Museum, Norwich, CT
A reoccurring theme at this year’s Museum Association annual meeting, held on the West Coast, was cooperation. In these difficult economic times, it is more important th an ever for institutions to band together to more effectively and efficiently compete for the public’s attention and vital revenue. Across the country the issues are essentially the same. But given the universal scope and scale of the challenge, responses tend to vary widely. For a culturally-diverse community like Los Angeles, with more than forty museums within the city’s limits, the need to find common ground and related exhibition themes is essential to bringing people to their doors and vital young membership to their rolls. For many far-western and less-centrally located museums, the priority is outreach and cooperative programs with other cultural and educational institutions in the region, where a shared cultural legacy or historical narrative, with its associated artistic heritage becomes the ‘take home message.’ Fine Arts Magazine
Tufte Scupture Installation, Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT
Back East, the mood is a different one. Large urban art institutions continue to set the tone for ground-breaking and innovative exhibitions featuring, in many cases, the giants of the western European art movements of the last two centuries, as well as a cadre of emerging and established artists who stand at the center of the contemporary art whirlwind. Directors and curators vie for high-profile names and regularly march out portions of their vast permanent holdings, mixed with famous and not-so-famous works on loan, to drive home a curatorial message. With currently-planned expansions of the physical plant more the exception than the rule now, the emphasis for many institutions is to achieve a Wow! Factor in the absence of dramatic new accommodations.
In Connecticut, at least, there is one important exception to the temptation to draw back and hunker down. With a rich heritage of art production that dates back to the founding of the country in the 18th century, the state’s museums have often acted as repositories for some of the most famous and beloved works of art by American artists known today. While frequently traditional in nature (American Impressionism was born in Connecticut), a new generation of institutions has appeared on the scene, representing the contemporary art world in a thoughtful and dynamic way. The Connecticut Art Trail is a coalition of 15 museums and historical settings which run the gamut from one end of the state to the other and from Old Masters of the 16th century to Conceptual artists of the 21st.
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Founded in 1995 as the Connecticut Impressionist Art Trail, within recent years the organization has redefined its objectives and broadened it s cultural horizons. Under the guidance of Sandy Betner, who was hired as executive director four years ago, and an active board, the mission of the ‘Trail’ has been strengthened and redefined. “We are passionate about partnering,” Sandy tells me. “Being inwardly-directed if you’re an art institution is passé. In order to survive in this market, with so many high-tech products competing for the hearts and minds of the younger visitor, becoming outwardly-oriented just makes sense. We have studied the data and know that people are looking for value when they travel. They don’t want to spend hours in the car to come to just one place and not be offered a range of things to do once they get there.”
Working closely with the Connecticut Department of Culture and Tourism, Sandy and her team determined that many families travelling for fun or couples getting away for a weekend expressed a desire to have a ‘cultural experience’ be part of that journey. What the ‘Trail’ then did was to: group institutions that were part of the association by state region, combine them with other experiences (dining, attractions, lodging, sporting venues) and put mileage designations between these attractions (GPS co-ordinates are on the drawing board for the near future). Travel packages were then created, with hotel discounts and suggested itineraries. A dynamic Web site, featuring links to all of the museums and historical stops along the way is being regularly updated. “We want the museum experience to be fun and enlightening. We suggest that the museum staff take a step back and look at their facility from the visitor’s po
int-of-view. While museums used to be visual experiences, they are now more interactive. Our goal is to offer something of interest for all ages.”
The on-line visitor has the option to purchase an Art Pass for $25. This represents a $75 value and allows the purchaser to visit all 15 museums on the trail for any two-month period they choose. Children under 12 are free, when accompanied by an adult. Art Passes can be purchased on line at www.arttrail.org. “There is strength in numbers,” Sandy says. “We’ve known that basic fact for a long time. We have had good results applying that concept to the state’s wide range of world-quality museums.”
May 13, 2010
Finding the Unexpected: Art in Everyday Life
Image and irony. Culture and Kitch. The art of the unexpected and the humorous. Let’s take some time out from the serious business of art to visit a few sites in the world where art amuses, installations are enigmatic and a photographer’s lens is aimed at others; but we are, in fact, his subject:
This sight can be found close to the Interstate in Florida. It’s an attention getter aimed at selling something. Can you guess what?
This astounding array of lost luggage is stacked to the ceiling in the Sacramento airport. Rather than a baggage cart gone astray, it is a sculptural installation, ‘Samsonite’, by an unnamed artist who may have spent a bit too much time in airports and wants to get even with the system. Fine Arts Magazine
Here, the life guard on duty keeps watch over his flock. He stares at the horizon…the horizon stares back. But, hey, this isn’t what Baywatch is supposed to be and where’s Pamela Anderson?ine Arts Magazine 
Staying dry and hoping a cab will come by. I wonder if the artist is doing a water color? Fine Arts Magazine
Can you canoe? An aluminum canoe was ripped from its dock by a raging flood and sculpted to the tree by its force at the high-water mark. This New Jersey town left the installation piece in place as a memorial to the day their quiet stream burst its banks.
The entire staff at ARTES Fine Arts Magazine thanks you for you support. Consider this your invitation to our next Holiday party. A big company smile goes out to All!Fine Arts Magazine
French Impressionism Shares a Key Feature with American Impressionism
Is light the unifying element in these schools of painting?
Claude Lorrain, Landscape (1648)
The short, obvious answer is, yes…and the impact of light on the final result can vary dramatically.
Many painters promote themselves as ‘painters of light’. The simple reality is that without light, there would be no subject matter to paint. Even non-objective painting relies on the play of color (light waves across the visible spectrum) in contrasting and complimentary combinations to reach your eye and attract your attention. The minimalists, too, voided their canvases of most chromatics as a way of saying, “Hey, look what’s going on here…no color!” Color theory was thus being leveraged, in that case, by virtue of is conspicuous absence.
Claude Monet Haystacks Sunday Morning (1891)
So, light has served as an important compositional element in painting, especially since the Renaissance, when the use of light effects became essential for the portrayal of perspective and dramatic human action as an indispensible part of the artist’s skill set. But not until the mid-19th century, when we entered the period of early modern painting, did the use of light effect in painting take on bold new meaning. For the Impressionists, painting en plein air meant that light was to become a central element in their work, rather than a studio technique to achieve dramatic highlights. Their fractured brushstrokes, flattened perspective, chiaroscuro-style paint application and indistinct rendering of central subject matter meant that light had to be deconstructed in the artist’s eye (and mind) and then reassembled on canvas in its component parts. So, the compositional or spectral elements of the light they were enveloped in as they worked became a critical factor in defining the finished product.
Thus, the question needs to be asked: Was the light of provincial France an essential and critical element in the production of a style and body of work we now call Impressionism; or could it have happened anywhere?
Charles Davis, Twilight Over the Water (1892)
Drawing on the lessons learned in another part of the world where Impressionism flourished in the years that followed the French movement, we turn to New England and the American Impressionists: J Alden Weir, Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, Charles Davis and others. From two of these communities of artists who gathered to paint and critique one another’s work in Old Lyme and Cos Cob, Connecticut, we have a genre that closely approximates the experiences of the French Impressionist masters as they painted in the changing light of the day and the seasons.
Childe Hassam, The Nymph of Beryl Gorge (1914)
The unique feature of Connecticut shoreline light is the moisture-saturated nature of its proximity to the sea. The humidity and air-borne particles of water prevalent near bodies of water make for denser air, thereby softening detail in the viewer’s eye. It also makes for richer colors in everything they saw there, especially warm whites, reds and yellows. This same effect can be found in the South of France, where the prevailing North African winds (seasonal mistrals) blow Mediterranean sea air far inland. As painters, they would have seen similar color saturation on their Grand Tours of Italy’s Tuscan Region and the Cote d’Azure in France—also close to the sea and similarly affected by prevailing breezes. By contrast, the light in the mountainous regions of the Alps or the American West would be crisp and dry, heightening the effects of cool blues, purples and greens and preserving detail, even over great distances.
Claude Monet studied these light effects and produced a well-know series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, where the impact of time-of-day was a key factor in his use of color and shadow. Identical subject matter seems to shift and change shape from morning, to mid-day, to evening in these works. A similar examination of light’s impact on a subject can be seen in his 1892-4 series of paintings of hay rooks. Monet repeatedly set up his easel in an open field, overlooking the pastoral scene. There, he worked on multiple canvases, over the course of many months, to painstakingly record the changing effects of light on the façade of his now-famous subject.
For a Connecticut artist like Childe Hassam, light play was an essential element in achieving a sense of intimacy between their subjects and the viewer. Interior spaces where filled with the warm light of summer, offering as much gravitas as the other physical objects in the composition. The female figure, painted outdoors in the dappled light of a garden landscape achieved an intimacy and vibrancy that is immediately associated with the warmth of human flesh. Nature and humanity are merged.
Light and form, form and light: the two essential and inter-related components of art that define the third essential—emotional impact. -RF
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What I did for love!
There are so few occasions in life when you can truly say that, ‘you did it for love’. The experience of falling in love with an original work of art, together with those other moments when Cupid’s arrow strikes home, for most of us, can be counted on one hand. Wives, children, automobiles, jewelry, beautiful homes and exotic vacation spots can all evoke rapid heart palpitations and deservedly so. But surely, few of these earthly pleasures endure without a commitment from each of us to carry them close to the core of our being. And none certainly compares to a loving family and the life partner who made that all possible with you. Children too, are a perpetual blessing that evoke emotions that often exceed our wildest expectations (sometimes in ways we hadn’t counted on!).
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 a
re 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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Water on the Moon
Water is heavy. Anyo
ne who has traipsed a 24-pack of bottled water from the driveway to the house knows just how heavy water can be. Water is essential to this planet and life-sustaining for those of us who live on it.
The recent indignity suffered by the moon at the hands of scientists attests to how important finding water on a distant planet or moon is to our chances of successfully traveling there and thriving once we arrive. Astronauts can recycle their waste water on the way, but lugging a supply of H2O across the vast expanse of space to meet our needs for months or years is both costly and cumbersome (imagine the fuel costs and handling issues if you carried a 400-gallon drum of water in the trunk of your car!). An elementary problem like sustained hydration becomes a major concern for NASA scientists.
For those of us who are earth-bound and plan to continue to be so, what can the quest for water on the moon teach us about ourselves? As artists, we hope to communicate vital information through our work across the seemingly boundless void between ourselves and the ‘dark side of the moon’, called, public perception. And what constitutes sustenance for artists while they work? Sure, food, clothing and shelter—the wellspring of life as we know it on this planet. But, what else drives us to create as a means to those practical ends?
Our own person
al version of a moon probe happens when we send our latest work on a trajectory out into the world. And, for the artist, analysis of the ‘six-mile high spray’ at point-of-impact takes the form of the response of critics, gallery owners, collectors and editors who stand by, binoculars and notes pads at the ready. Everyone watches and waits to see if there are life-giving elements in the work and whether a spur of interest can move the viewer to explore, in depth, the various complexities of the piece and their meaning. For a few lucky artists, pioneering colonies of believers may soon set up encampments over these small, life-emitting oases of earnest intentions, known as the ‘artist’s vision!’
For artists of any stripe, we harbor a shared belief in the universe of ideas. All things are possible in the world of the imagination. There is no out-there, out there. It is all in here. The studio version of a moon probe is wet paint poised on a brush before a blank canvas; a pencil hovering above a clean sheet of paper; or restless hands poised on the silent keyboard of a grand piano. Through our creative effort, we hope to find water, insuring that our journey can be sustained. We are hoping against hope to find signs of life.
by Richard Friswell
*Art by Roxanne Faber Savage
‘The Journey’
My tiny capsule
tumbles end over end,
flung into darkness,
charting the empty void.
Skirting the edge
of pumice moon
held by pull of orbits,
to pass behind its sheltering face.
Man-in-the-Moon stares
with indifference.
Curled like a fist,
wide-eyed,
shallow breathing
and pounding heart
give voice to the fragile life within.
Only the pulse of suns
and velvet depths of universe
hold me
for God’s own hand to safely deliver.
-rf
*Original art by Roxanne Faber Savage: www.roxanneprints.com
Lunae M, mixed media, 2008
Plastic Moons 1, paper lithograph, 2007
Swimmer 3, Monoprint, 2007
* * * * *
Can We Say, ‘Primitive’?
Prehistoric Altamira cave paintings, France
In the 1990s, I recall watching Sister Wendy Beckett, the reluctant celebrity spokesperson for a popular PBS series on art appreciation. This sequestered nun, who for decades had lived under a vow of silence, had gained notoriety for her views on famous works of art and now stood in her nun’s habit waxing vociferously before the prehistoric Altamira cave paintings. Self-taught and passionate about the history of art, she gestured at the figures of stampeding bison and elk behind her and said, “These images are 15,000 years old. In the millennia that followed, art didn’t get any better than this, just different.”
In a few words, she summed up the argument for why we should not apply the word, ‘primitive’ to any artistic or material object from cultures far removed from our own tastes and values, simply because we do not understand them.
Early 20th C. Yombe maternity figure, Rep. of Congo
On this, All Saints’ Day (November 1st), cultures throughout the world travel to cemeteries to celebrate the lives of deceased loved ones and ancestors, long-dead. It is a joyous event, with food shared and offered up and tender care given to the graves of the deceased. As hard as this may be to understand, are these rituals anymore primitive or morbid than our pagan celebration of Halloween the day before?
So, as we seek to understand the art and cultures of other peoples, especially in this period of inclusivity in our own history, where does the word ‘primitive’ fit in our lexicon—or does it at all?
Mid-18th C. graven image, Wakefield, Massachusetts
Nineteenth century adventurism and usurpation of far-flung lands led to many abuses. Western cultural ethnocentrism and misogyny, combined with common practices of tomb raiding, careless and heavy-handed archeological ‘digs’, amounting to blatant theft of cultural artifacts, led to the unregulated and unquestioning sale of untold priceless artifacts to countless private collectors and newly-founded museums in many western countries.
These illicit activities had the effect of bringing to public attention new categories of art and artifacts that defied aesthetic understanding and categorization, under conventional Western terms. The word, ‘primitive’ was often used to describe objects of great inherent beauty and value, but, as it happened, just not to those currently in possession of them! It became a term that was applied to cultural artifacts that people were seeing, but not understanding. The rich symbolism, iconographic significance and ritualistic import of these art forms were left behind, as surely as the societies from which they had been taken.
Only with the increased awareness that the emerging field of cultural anthropology brought to the table in the mid-twentieth century, did questions begin to be raised about the possible inherent beauty and significance of these plundered treasures, culled from worlds so far apart and unfamiliar from our own.
H.W. Janson’s well-know 1962 text, ‘History of Art’, devotes nine full pages to a discussion of ‘primitive art’. Featuring mostly African, Inuit, Pacific islands and native American sculpture, Janson’s narrative is a compelling and useful read—because it offers what I believe is a helpful definition of what ‘primitive’ is and how it can be independently and respectfully applied to cultures, separate from their art forms, in various parts of the world.
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, Mus. Modern Art, NYC
Thus, Janson defines ‘primitive’ in a social/cultural context as; “societies remote, isolated and set apart physically from the rest of the world; using Stone Age or ancient tool methods; rural and self-sufficient; tribal, not city-states; without written records, thus, ahistorical; static, not dynamic or progressively expansive; defensive toward outsiders and favoring ancestral worship.”
Karl Schmidt-Ruttloff, Maidchen aus Kowno, 1918
This behavioral definition, while largely outmoded in today’s world of global interconnectivity, sheds light on a useful distinction between a cluster of societal postures that make for a collective identity, on the one hand, and the art and artifacts produced by those same societies, on the other. Though socially isolated, this particular definition does not detract from the fact that these ‘primitive’ communities may be capable of creating objects with all the inherent qualities of beauty, form and balance that rival objects more familiar to our Western eyes. Thus, primitive is a term reserved for the chosen lifestyle of selected cultures or peoples, not necessarily for their material output.
By the early 21st century, many art history texts had had relegated any discussion of ‘primitive’ to the primitivist movement of the early modern period. Then, artists like Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Henri Rousseau sought to capture the simplicity of form and composition seen in works from Africa, Columbian America and the pacific islands, as well as children’s art, folk and naïve art (now called ‘outsider art’) and even that of the mentally ill! Like other artists of that time (including Picasso), there was a shared assumption about the primal authenticity and purity of form that elevated these foreign objects to the realm of the mysterious and iconic—yet another likely disservice to their practical and functional indigenous origins.
So, elegant art and artifacts can emanate from so-called primitive cultures, although fewer such societies functioning in isolation from the rest of the world exist today. It is important to note however, that their art is not, by definition, primitive. Our view of it may be affected by our own ignorance or misinformation, but not necessarily by any limitation in their vision or ability to convey symbolic meaning through the objects they, themselves, value and revere. -RF
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