moving on

Not very far, just to a new blogger address...click here to visit and of course always feel free to look back on these posts and pretty pictures before you leave.

April is....

The cruelest month according to T.S. Eliot, and it's National Poetry Month, and it's also half over -- or there are still two weeks and two days left, depending on your perspective and whether you're a poem-loving pessimist or an optimist. A poet voted Class Pessimist and Greatest Wit in high school was Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961), who has a kind of restless stream of language, thoughts and moments quality to his work. Fearing also wrote a novel called The Big Clock, which was made into a 1948 film noir classic starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton and which is definitely worth seeing. This is a portrait of Kenneth Fearing circa 1935 done by artist Alice Neel (currently at NYC's Museum of Modern Art), and here are some excerpts from Fearing's "Love 20¢ The First Quarter Mile:"

All right. I may have lied to you and about you, and made a few

pronouncements a bit too sweeping, perhaps, and possibly forgotten
to tag the bases here or there,
And damned your extravagence, and maligned your tastes, and libeled
your relatives, and slandered a few of your friends,
O.K.,
Nevertheless, come back....

Because I forgive you, yes, for everything.
I forgive you for being beautiful and generous and wise,
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon you, in short, for being you.

Because tonight you are in my hair and eyes,
And every street light that our taxi passes shows me you again, still you,
And because tonight all other nights are black, all other hours are cold
and far away, and now, this minute, the stars are very near and bright.

Come back. We will have a celebration to end all celebrations.
We will invite the undertaker who lives beneath us, and a couple of
boys from the office, and some other friends.
And Steinberg, who is off the wagon, and that insane woman who lives
upstairs, and a few reporters, if anything should break.

99 candles

Author Nelson Algren would have been 99 today, and next year Chicago and maybe a few other places on the map will surely celebrate the centennial of his birth and life and work--hopefully in an offbeat and left-of-center manner, to match Algren's personality. This picture was taken by photographer Art Shay in about 1949 and shows Algren looking over a manuscript in his Wicker Park apartment. Shay was a good friend of Algren's and followed him around taking pictures during this time and for several years after, getting a glimpse of Chicago through Nelson's wise and weary eyes. The photos are now compiled into a book called Chicago's Nelson Algren (Seven Stories Press), and you can also see more of them through The Steven Daiter Gallery's on-line exhibit, all fascinating visuals to accompany this great writer's often poignant, often funny, often tragic words.

"An old wino dragging a pair of mottled suspenders to the floor wandered in from somewhere and asked wonderingly: 'You fellows remember me?' When none remembered he repeated the question to himself, with moving lips, as though he himself had nearly forgotten. Yet with each pulse beat his blood demanded to know, once and for all before it went cold for keeps, who remembered him and his mottled suspenders...."

Nelson Algren, The Man With The Golden Arm

sunrises and thunder showers

Arthur Dove (1880-1946) was one of America's first abstract painters and a collage artist as well, attempting to convey with his work the purest essence of whatever subject he had chosen. He wasn't greatly popular in his lifetime but has a strong reputation now and can be found in many major museums, and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth even has an umbrella designed with one of his paintings in mind. I know that the commercialization of art on everyday objects like mousepads and coffee mugs or tote bags is a touchy subject, but I'm not so sure that Arthur would have minded his Thunder Shower being turned into an umbrella. Because the umbrella theoretically will be outside in the essence of the rainy atmosphere he was trying to express, making the art umbrella of Arthur almost interactive.

Click here and here to read more about Mr. Dove, who once noted how the beaks of seagulls "look like ivory thrown slowly through space...."

(pictured -- Arthur Dove's Sunrise, 1924 -- now at The Milwaukee Public Museum)

the many moods of joseph

Artist Joseph Stella (June 13, 1877-1946) was born in Italy but came to New York as a young man to study pharmacology and medicine. The medical career was soon overwhelmed by Stella's increasing love of and talent for art, and Stella would eventually become a U.S. citizen and be considered one of America's finest 20th century painters. His interests were diverse and so were the subjects and styles of his works, ranging from realistic sketches and illustrations, Futurist-like portraits of the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island, fruit, flowers and tropical landscapes, the Virgin Mary, and whatever happened to his next phase of fascination. (Sounds like a definite Gemini.) He also liked experimenting with different materials and methods; the Dying Lotus pictured here is part of Dartmouth's Hood Museum collection and was done with pastels, colored crayon, and metalpoint. Stella himself said that from 1921 on he:

complied without any reserve with every genuine appeal to my artistic faculties...trampling those infantile barricades erected by tottering self-appointed dictators infesting the art fields....

That quote is from an article focusing on Joseph Stella's Pittsburgh drawings, which were used to illustrate how unfairly laborers, miners and immigrants were being treated at that time (circa 1908). Like Picasso, Stella went through different artistic periods, making it much more interesting for himself--and for us to follow his life's work and unique versatility.

without a trace

Lew Welch was one of the Beat Generation's West Coast members, starting out studying Literature with other Beat poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen at Reed College. He had a nervous breakdown in Chicago, pieced it together then worked as an advertising copywriter, then left it all to focus on his poetry and leading a truer life. He drove a cab in San Francisco and wrote some fine poems about the experience, and he also drove Jack Kerouac from San Francisco to New York in 1959--a long road trip that involved many stopovers and drinking binges and crazy poetic creations. In Big Sur, Kerouac's novel about his California sojourns, Lew Welch is Dave Wain, a lanky, loquacious, redheaded free spirit who drives a jeep named Willie all over the place. Kerouac (Jack Duluoz in the novel) notes that while Neal Cassady a/k/a Cody a/k/a Dean Moriarty had been the great cross-country driver to inspire On the Road, Cody still had driverly jealousy about his rival Dave's skill behind the wheel:

[Dave] comes blattin down to the bar in his jeepster driving that marvelous way he does (once he was a cab-driver) talking all the time and never making a mistake, in fact as good a driver as Cody altho I cant imagine anybody being that good and asked Cody about it the next day -- But old jealous drivers always point out faults and complain, "Ah well that Dave Wain of yours doesnt take his curves right, he eases up and sometimes even pokes the brake a little instead of just ridin that old curve around on increased power, man you gotta work those curves...."

Towards the end of his life, Lew Welch was starting to come into his own as a poet, but issues with alcohol and depression kept pulling him down into darker places. He disappeared into the California woodlands with a rifle in 1971 at the age of 44; he had left a suicide note, but his body was never found. It's highly unlikely, but since nothing of Lew was ever recovered we can always hope he just felt the need to walk away from a flawed life and didn't pull the trigger. Maybe he even started fresh under the name Dave Wain and he's 81 and living in Costa Rica and/or surfing the Internet right now in a quiet place. Or maybe he just vanished into the proverbial thin air and became part of the landscape he loved so much.

lorette and her coffee

This is one of my favorite paintings at The Art Institute of Chicago--Henri Matisse's Lorette With Cup of Coffee. Lorette or Laurette was an Italian woman who posed as Matisse's model for a series of paintings, coming along at a time when Matisse was ready for a change in style and method (1916-1917). I like the shapes and earthy tones of the painting, and I also like how there always seems to be someone quietly looking at Lorette at The Art Institute itself. It's not a prominently displayed or big crowd-drawing work, but certain people gravitate toward that corner. And then they may subconsciously want to get some coffee--I usually do, especially after wandering around the museum for a while then seeing that nice little saucer, spoon and cup.

what's in a hopper

This is a great link from The Museum of Fine Arts-Boston to an interactive feature on painter Edward Hopper. People have interesting reactions to Hopper, sometimes loving his work or sometimes finding him a bit hollow and depressing. There's a deliberate emptiness to his style, but just like with any kind of existing space, how it affects you depends upon what you project into it. The painting pictured here, Room in Brooklyn, may seem really spare and like the woman facing the windows might be lonely, but I see it as beautifully uncluttered and an escape from the city, and that she's finally got a chance to sit quietly and clear her mind. Hopper's famous Nighthawks painting is also thought-provoking, making us wonder what's going on with the film noir-ish trio at the counter and how does the clerk kid feel in their presence, but his Office at Night has more tension to me, with the guy at the desk pretending not to notice his shapely most-likely secretary or file clerk Miss Whoever as darkness falls around them....

art and the state

"The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable."

Robert Henri, 1865-1929

(This Henri painting entitled Landscape, Ireland done circa 1914 is available at NYC's Owen Gallery, if you've got any loose change lying around.)

the other impressionist

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) isn't one of the best-known French Impressionists, but his work is exhibited all over the U.S., most notably at The Art Institute of Chicago (Rainy Day: Paris Street, 1877). He also was the highly admirable and generous type of guy who had money yet shared it with his other artist friends, purchasing their works when they were down and out.

Caillebotte's will left all of his collected "charity" purchases such as paintings by Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, et al., to the French government. He wanted them to be displayed at the Luxembourg and Louvre Museums; the French government wasn't too convinced that the Impressionists were worthy of this honor at the time and only accepted a portion of the paintings. The rest ended up at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, even though the French reconsidered and tried to get those back in the 1920s but Dr. Barnes said sorry, no dice. The ones the French government did accept are now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Because Caillebotte was well-off financially, he had time to develop his various talents and interests at his own pace. Besides painting, he also designed textiles and liked to yacht and sail, and he especially enjoyed gardening. The Human Flower Project has a nice feature on Caillebotte, who apparently died while working in his garden. They note that only a savvy gardener could paint these pictured chrysanthemums in such a way, knowing exactly how the leaves and petals and roots would naturally arrange themselves.

Caillebotte was a great combination of wealth and talent, and a fine example of how money can be used admirably -- instead of on just a self-indulgent, late 19th century champagne, foie gras and women lifestyle. With some absinthe on the side.

jacob's world

Artist Jacob Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the 1920s and 30s and from an early age was fascinated by the sights and scenes around him. His mother was strict about going to church and she was also the primary reason that Jacob attended the free art classes available to children in the area after school.

This combination of an inspiring environment, the fiery Sunday sermons of the preachers, talk heard on street corners and working with color and form led Jacob to create his own style of narrative painting. Not just one picture but as many as sixty in a series, all on panels with accompanying text -- art that told a story, and in particular the stories of his neighbors and family and friends.

Lawrence's The Migration of The Negro series made him famous in 1941, and was immediately purchased by The Museum of Modern Art and The Phillips Collection. The Phillips Collection bought the odd numbered panels (there are 60 total) and they have a great website on Jacob Lawrence's life and career. This later painting (Eight Studies for the Book of Genesis No. 5 - And God created all the fowl of the air and the fishes of the seas) was done in 1989 and you can see how Lawrence still had the brightness of vision and vivid sense of color that he'd had 50 years earlier.

"I didn't think in terms of history...It was like I was doing a portrait of something. If it was a portrait, it was a portrait of myself, a portrait of my family, a portrait of my peers." (Jacob Lawrence, 1917 - 2000)