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.

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)

olga and rufino

I'm always interested in the muse behind the artist, so I was curious about Olga Tamayo, longtime wife of Rufino. This picture shows her literally behind him and almost blurred into an outline, but the following from the Santa Barbara Museum fills in what the photo obscures:

In 1933, Tamayo completed his first successful mural commission, a series of wall paintings in the entry stairwell of the Escuela Nacional de Musíca (National School of Music). It was while painting this mural that he met Olga Flores Rivas, a piano student at the school. Shortly thereafter...he pursued a whirlwind romance with Olga. After a three-month courtship and upon Olga’s proposal, the couple married on February 3, 1934. Although a talented musician with a budding performing career, Olga abandoned her musical pursuits to devote her efforts to promoting Tamayo’s career and managing their finances. For Tamayo, Olga became a lifelong muse—over his seven-decade career, he drew and painted many portraits of her.

The couple moved from Mexico to New York to Paris then back to Mexico, creating artwork, collecting artwork, and no doubt enjoying a very interesting life. Rufino Tamayo died in 1991, while Olga--still a few steps behind--followed him two years later.

georgia and eugene

This is a portrait of a young Georgia O'Keeffe, done when she was enrolled at New York's Art Student's League, circa 1908. The painter and Georgia's fellow student was Eugene Speicher, who had asked Georgia repeatedly to pose for him; when she kept refusing he noted that she might as well let him do her portrait since he'd probably become famous while she would just end up teaching art to girls someplace. Georgia took that insult quietly and sat for the picture; she looks really cute at that age and her hair is short and curly because she had recently gotten over a case of typhoid so severe that it caused her normally long straight locks to fall out.

So what became of Eugene Speicher? He was a success, particularly as a portrait artist, but I don't think he was honored with a U.S. postage stamp or made it to the White House to be honored by good old Ronnie Reagan. I wonder how he felt even back in the 1920s when O'Keeffe's floral paintings were fetching huge sums of money. Or whether she made sure to send him invitations to her exhibits, and whether he cared to receive them or not.

But you know, to this day there's always a lot of joking around in college and/or art school betweeen the sexes and maybe Speicher was just teasing Georgia. I like his portrait of her, and apparently he painted it rather fast--maybe because he was already quick and skilled with a brush, or maybe because he sensed Georgia really didn't feel like loitering around playing muse to his artistic presence.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

So said John Singer Sargent, one of the great portrait artists and artists in general of the late 19th and early 20th century. He reportedly often considered painting portraits of the wealthy or prominent to be tiresome, since you always had to make the subject look appealing in order to keep a decent reputation. Though I doubt he lost this gentleman as a friend, since he made him look quite regal. This is the Portrait of Dr. Pozzi At Home (Hammer Museum), done in 1881. Beautiful red robe and skin tones there.

I read that mega-developer Steve Wynn purchased Sargent's Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife (might have been nice to use her actual name beyond her wifedom, but whatever) and is going to hang it in his new and lavish casino. Vegas seems like a bizarre place for Robert Louis Stevenson, Wife, and John Singer Sargent to end up, but life is bizarre sometimes.

** Blogger has The Sixty Minute Artist listed in their noteworthy blogs this week, and it a) is indeed worthy of note, and b) seems great for both artists and/or the art-inclined. I personally loved the Cherry Pop Tart painting.

I first came across Foujita when I bought a postcard at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that was a self-portrait of him and one of his many cat muses. I always liked the gold earrings that he wore and would have loved to have seen him and all those other Montparnasse crazies running around in their heyday.

Phyllis Birnbaum's biography, Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita--the Artist Caught Between East and West, is nicely done and she's also translated and written about many other Japanese subjects, particularly women. Click here to read an excerpt from the Foujita book.