The ‘Art’ of Susan Sontag Tuesday, Feb 9 2010 

Art history and On Literature and art , , , Lori Gordon 5:05 am

Vesuvius Errupting During the Day

So I’m on a retro reading binge at the moment, and this moment very much revolves around Susan Sontag.

Read. Her. Again.

While “The Volcano Lover” as a title sort of trends toward bodice-ripper, this is one of the most literary of the literary fiction I’ve read. And it involves art. And it plunges to the depths and crests of character development. It is based on the life of Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy to the Neapolitan royal court in 1764 (“the Cavalier”). But it is really about his infatuation with collecting. Sculpture. Ancient Greek and Roman artifacts. Caravaggios. Anything and everything. He is driven by it. He even climbs into Mount Vesuvius and collects its lava rocks. He meets other collectors – but they are all different types of collectors than he. Some collect to show off their collections. Some collect Bellinis, golden candlesticks, reliquaries, Poussins,  but hide them from the world. Some are more interested in the chase – ”to find the xxxx!” they say — more than staring at their newfound capture day in and day out. On to something new! they say.

The Cavelier ponders the idea that art can either be temporary or eternal. War can torch the halls and massive buildings where artifacts are incinerated to dust. But other pieces live on eternally (e.g., relics from the ancient Greeks t hat have somehow survived centuries), and as humans we are just a fleeting image of life on earth. The holders, the caretakers, the admirers of these great objects have more of date with mortality than the artifacts themselves. He thinks that the reason we sometimes become beholden to certain objects is because they have no contract on life – there’s no predestined date with death like the one we have with another human.

Sontag is brilliant in “The Volcano Lover.” There’s so much more to savor. It definitely merits another read. But in a few years – I have so many other books on my list right now!

 

Matisse & A.S. Byatt: On Art In Literature Wednesday, Feb 3 2010 

art , , , Lori Gordon 6:39 am

File:Matisse-Woman-with-a-Hat.jpg

Woman With a Hat, Henri Matisse (1905)
San Francisco Museum of Art

So many works of fiction either focus centrally on art (think A.S. Byatt’s “The Matisse Stories”) and others weave it into the plot in nuanced ways (Susan Sontag’s “The Volcano Lover”). The Matisse Stories is a compilation of three stories, and in each a woman’s life is touched by the paintings of Henri Matisse. It’s been referred to as a “still life” of ordinary women: a teacher who must psycho-analyze her self-absorbed hairdresser while staring at a Matisse on the wall in his salon, a housekeeper with a passion for knitting (right under the nose of two arrogant artist employers), and a professor discussing his affair with an art student.

Byatt doesn’t overly describe the Matisse paintings that were the inspirations for these stories. In fact, she provides little description of them, which propels the reader to look up the works, to study them independently, wonder why she chose these particular paintings as the stories’ muses. And then, once the reader has done that, the story seems to go on and on and on, as the reader compares and contrasts the art to the plot points, the characters, the setting. It, therefore, makes these short stories seem like long, delicious novels.

The stories, at points, feel light and airy, and then deep and intricate. Characters evolve. Plots take a turn.

Grabbing snippets of Matisse’s “world views” here and there throughout the stories, you start to wonder about his character, how his ideas and views fit into all of this, how they inspired it. How, as an ordinary woman – like the women in these stories – would he influence my life? What about his infatuation with color? With his supposed repression of women? You ask him to pull up a chair and discuss.

We can only imagine.

 

Chasing Art Wednesday, Jan 27 2010 

art , Lori Gordon 3:44 am

Vermeer, The Concert

The Concert, Vermeer
Taken from the Dutch Room gallery in the Stewart museum in 1990

Will we ever recover all of the great art that’s been lost over time? Sometimes I’m drop-jaw about what sometimes can happen to art. How can people be so clumsy as to “fall into a Picasso” at an art museum, which is what just happened on Friday with “The Actor” at the Met. All this art being dropped, shredded (Sotheby’s in London), thrown out for trash (immpressionist paintings in Manhatten), cannonized by a wrecking ball (the Netherlands), tripped over by a shoelace into a Ming vase (UK), or knocked to the floor to smithereens by an errant elbow (Tavern on the Green), is giving me anxiety!

And how about all of the art that’s been stolen? I just finished reading “The Heist”, a great read on the heist of the Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, et al. at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in 1990. So many people went on the hunt, but all leads have run dry. There are many eccentricities about the Gardner museum and the case that make it unique — that per her will, all of the art remain on the walls as it was in Gardner’s time, that the thieves may not have discriminated which art they chose to take (several of the most expensive pieces were left untouched), etc. etc. It’s a fascinating romp, complete with the Boston mafia and the IRA. Interested in a moderately fascinating read? Check out the FBI’s Art Crime Team website: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/arttheft/northamerica/us/notices.htm.

I’m surprised that people seem to be so good-humored about these travesties (at least that’s the way the press spins it), but then again, we’ve got some great artists now creating some great art. Not that it will replace, but it will make up for what we’ve lost in a different way.

 

Istanbul: The Next Art Mecca Thursday, Jan 14 2010 

art , , Lori Gordon 3:16 pm

The New York Times a few weekends ago featured an article “The 31 Places to Go in 2010″. In it, they pronounce Istanbul as an art mecca:

The reputation of Istanbul’s contemporary art scene has been steadily growing in recent years, with the Web site ArtKnowledgeNews.com recently calling it “one of the most innovative in the world.” That reputation is bound to be burnished even more this year, now that Istanbul has been named the 2010 European Capital of Culture (a designation it shares with Essen, Germany, and Pecs, Hungary). There will be a series of events, gallery shows and stage performances throughout the city to mark the occasion. (A complete list of events can be found at en.istanbul2010.org/index.htm.)

But one of the best ways to get a crash course in what Istanbul’s leading artists are up to right now is to spend some time wandering around the Misir Apartments (311/4 Istiklal Cadessi), right on the busy pedestrian thoroughfare that cuts through the trendy Beygolu neighborhood. Inside this elegant, early-20th-century building are some of the city’s most cutting-edge art venues, like Galerist (www.galerist.com.tr) and Gallerie Nev (www.galerinevistanbul.com)

Hmm, add this to my slight obsession with Orhan Pamuk’s writing and his efforts to promote art in Istanbul, and I think this trumps MY list of “where to go next”.

 

Art Triumphs over Philosophy… as a Hedgehog? Tuesday, Jan 5 2010 

art , , Lori Gordon 7:08 am

Does art do a better job of conveying the human condition than studying philosophy?

I’m in the midst of reading Muriel Barbery’s incredible novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I admit, I just finished another book that is in my top-ten all-time delicious books, The Matchmaker of Perigord, by  Julia Stuart, and so I am less over-the-moon about Hedgehog (how relative life is!). Barbery writes

One wonders why universities persist in teaching narrative principles on the basis of Propp, Greimas or other such punishing curricula, instead of investing in a projection room. Premise, plot, protagonists, adventures, quest, heroes and other stimulants: all you need is Sean Connery in the uniform of a Russian submarine officer and a few well-placed aircraft carriers.

While I wouldn’t argue that Sean Connery is “everyday” or Hollywood either, I think what Renee, one of the oxymoron protagonists in the story (smart but unschooled, has read Kant and Marx, appreciates Mozart and Vermeer, yet a concierge in an apartment building in France) learns is that life is best learned by living it; it’s found in both the glaring and nuanced realities of life. We just have to learn how to observe it. And who are better observors but artists?

 

The Year in Art Wednesday, Dec 30 2009 

art Lori Gordon 3:08 pm

In a pictorial that summarizes the major art trends for 2009, the New York Times captured Holland Carter’s view:

“Artwise, there were still big-deal shows – Afghan gold at the Met, Arshile Gorky in Philadelphia, Titian & Co. in Boston – but our major museums were mainly in austerity mode, concentrating on small, collection-based exhibitions, a pattern likely to hold for years.”

While I did notice that the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gauguin exhibit this year used many works from its own collection, this isn’t a new phenomena for the museum. Looking back at the exhibitions over the past two years, the museum has incorporated many of its own works in shows, and several — including the Arms and Armor, Monet to Dali, and Van Gogh to Picasso — highlighted primarily CMA-owned works. They’ve been busy — co-curating shows while keeping up with a massive renovation that extends into 2014.

Artistic Luxury: Fabergé Tiffany Lalique
Oct 19, 2008 to Jan 18, 2009

Arms and Armor from Imperial Austria
Feb 24 – Jun 01, 2008
Icons of American Photography
Jun 24 – Sep 16, 2007
Shiva: A Recent Acquisition
Jun 24, 2007 to Jan 13, 2008
Ansel Adams: A Legacy
May 20 – Aug 19, 2007
Building for the Future
May 08, 2007 to Jun 18, 2008
Monet in Normandy
Feb 18 – May 28, 2007

 

The Hirshorn’s Big Blue Balloon Monday, Dec 21 2009 

art , , Lori Gordon 12:25 pm

DC’s  Hirshorn museum recently released plans to create a new meeting space that fills its courtyard and mushrooms above the roof. What’s fascinating about this is that it’s a balloon. Literally. A big blue one. To be blown up in May and October of each year to provide a temporary space for concerts, performing arts, and films. The New York Times loves the idea, the Washington Post is iffy. DC is often set on edge by these kinds of things (remember how the Corcoran trashed plans for an ultra-modern Frank Ghery addition a few years ago?). “What will the tourists think?” The Washington Post sums up their worries:

…if a precedent is established to build temporary structures so as to have greater aesthetic freedom (and less bureaucratic interference), then they may well proliferate, with further impact on the look and design of the city.

I suppose DC has a smaller footprint and a more consistent architectural style (Neo-classical/Beaux-Arts) than many other cities, but a little spice would liven it up. Though they’ve already tried “spice” with the Hirshorn’s architecture — the building is often called “Bunshaft’s oversize toilet seat”. Apparently they are still acclimating to Gordon Bunshaft’s 1974-designed building.

 

Wayne Thibaud at the National Gallery of Art Wednesday, Dec 16 2009 

art , , , Lori Gordon 7:42 pm

My cakes!

Well, not really – not in a full-on Thibaud exhibition, at least. But something perhaps much more fun! On the National Gallery of Art’s classroom education page, you can decorate your own Thibaud cakes! Here’s some I “decorated.”

http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/interactive/cake.htm

 

Spontaneity According to The Cubist: Andre Lhote Wednesday, Dec 9 2009 

Art and Politics , , Lori Gordon 2:14 am

Andre Lhote

La Danse au bar (Gypsy Bar), Andre Lhote

One of the novelist-bloggers that I follow, Christina Baker Kline, posted a quote by Andre Lhote (1923) that to me gets at the heart of writing (because that’s the craft, or some would argue art, that I know best):

The essence of art is sensitivity.  How does one retain the freshness of sensitivity?  Answer: By working without worry, freely.  How does one work freely?  By possessing a technique which permits one to work spontaneously:  it is necessary, therefore, to possess the elements of this technique.  Meditation in front of the works of the masters puts one in possession of the eternal rules of art.  Once these rules are learned there is nothing left but to know how to apply them to one’s own temperament.

Funny how a French sculptor and painter who worked in modernist styles including Fauvism and Cubism and was part of a group of revolutionaries including Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Jacques Villon, and writers somehow have the same world view. Bridging art and writing… It just shows that concepts and the words to describe those concepts are timeless…

 

No Art? For Real? Sunday, Dec 6 2009 

art Lori Gordon 9:32 am

Last week I was on business travel to DC to check in with colleagues and meet with clients. It essentially entailed one long strategy meeting where two people fell asleep, and lots of planes, trains, and automobiles.

As this time required sitting in one long strategy meeting, I jumped out of my seat at the breaks to explore. Usually I walk the halls to check out the corporate art (because other than bland carpet, there is really nothing else to stare at), and sometimes I walk away from some huge  installation or work on paper thinking wow, that was pretty off-the-wall/odd/bizarrely-chosen.  WHY did they choose that particular piece?

But worse, is when there’s NO art. And this was such a case.

I was in a slick, new, fabulously designed, glossy-floored government building in Arlington, and one would expect there was art. Some sort of art. Something. Anything. But along those long, sinuous halls was… nothing! Nada! A few miles away, my company’s headquarters has tons of art, seemingly in every nook and cranny, the cafeteria, outside each elevator – commissioned art, employee art (including the winners of photography contests that are extremely competitive), and just great random pieces that provide that visual pickup you need during the day.

Some research on corporate art shows that the government may not be the number one consumer of art:

“We define a corporate art client in our field mainly as a hospitality account” explains Tony Barrett, director of sales for Bentley Publishing Group in Walnut Creek, CA. “That is, someone who supplies art to hotels, vacation properties, restaurants, corporate offices and healthcare facilities.” These are all venues that are in constant need of artwork, often with rotating collections that change several times a year.”

So I suppose that makes sense. I guess. Restaurants, hotels want to create a mood, a synergy, a personal connection with the client that will lure them back. Does the government have no similar incentive?

So on this trip I was disappointed. Perhaps the architecture was enough, because it was a beautiful building (er, compound, as every government building is now a sprawling monolith, even in downtown Arlington). Next time I’ll have to ask the taxi to weave through downtown and stop off at the Philips gallery (Man Ray is there now!). Or National Geographic headquarters (the Terra Cotta Warriors are there now!).

 

At the Intersection of a Museum and a Book: Orhan Pamuk Wednesday, Dec 2 2009 

On Literature and art , , , , , Lori Gordon 10:32 am

One of my favorite authors, Orhan Pamuk, has a new book hot off the presses The Museum of  Innocence. To complement the book, he is opening a museum. I’m not positive, but this seems the first time such a thing has been done. Here’s a description from the UK’s Guardian:

 The Museum of Innocence… contains a locator map for his museum, and a free entrance ticket. The actual museum, in an Ottoman-style house along a stretch of antique shops in hilly Cukurcuma, will hold Istanbul ephemera that Pamuk gathered for inspiration while writing his Proustian … epic of lost love. … He told me his “museum of the everyday”, which holds everything from ferry tickets and women’s hair clips to a quince grinder, would have a display for each of the novel’s 83 chapters.’

Pamuk describes the relationship of the museum and novel: “The museum is not an illustration of the novel and the novel is not an explanation of the museum. They are two representations of one single story perhaps.”

Pamuk’s other literary ventures have been laced with art, including My Name Is Red, which details the murder of a miniaturist painter in the Ottoman Empire. And I thought his breathtaking descriptions of Istanbul in his memoir Istanbul (which details his life growing up in the Turkish city) were poetic and extremely visual, like landscapes launching off of the pages into your lap. Also, according to the New York Review of Books, “As a young man, his great hope was to become a painter, and he started, he notes wryly, by producing imitations of Monet and Sisley and Pissarro…” It seems Pamuk turned from copying the masters to absorbing himself in the awe of everyday people and life and painted a verbal canvas.

I’m thinking Turkey might be the country we indulge ourselves in next summer, and if so, this is one museum I’m not going to miss!

 

Art to Get Over the Hump Sunday, Nov 29 2009 

art , Lori Gordon 10:29 pm

There is the Temple (Parahi te marae), 1892

I visited the Gauguin exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art today, and in this whirlwind trip through the exhibit (every one of our family members seemed to be on a very different schedule, needing to be three places at once), I was able to latch on to bits and pieces of the audio tour. I was struck by how one’s profession can really turn on a dime, just as Gauguin’s did. Apparently, it wasn’t until 1882, after a stock market crash and recession rendered Gauguin without a job as a broker, that Gauguin decided to abandon the business world to pursue life as an artist full-time.

I wonder, after this recent stock market downturn (which has, though, over the last few months climbed up nicely), how many people in the finance industry turned from their jobs to embrace their inner artiste?  I know that when the going gets tough for me at work, I get out my paints and just paint away. It’s REALLY bad art that appears on my canvas. Really. No, really, it is. But that’s okay. It’s therapeutic, and somehow just fleshing out whatever pops into my head (sort of as a physical manifestation of my inner thoughts) gets me over the hump.

Perhaps the big banks and people on the Street should have invested in an easel, modeling clay, or signed up for an Intro to Glassblowing class.

 

Oh! The Ideas, Arguments, and Pontifications Out There… Tuesday, Nov 24 2009 

art Lori Gordon 6:34 am

Hungarian National Gallery, 2009

Sometimes when I research ideas to write about in this blog, I’m overwhelmed by the interesting thoughts, analyses, and nuggets of light I find. Art bloggers can launch such deep thoughts! Below are a few I found this morning that I’d love to explore more fully. Good stuff. (I’m also inspired by random travel pics, like that to the left.)

  • From Art 21: In a recent interview in the New Yorker, artist-of-the-moment Urs Fischer said something about how art and memory work together… something about the experience of art not being confined to the present-tense experience of being in a gallery, looking at a thing. Part of art’s test is in its retention in the mind, how it returns and why.
  • From Artworld Salon: Stefan Leijnen and Liane Gabora, researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada, point out that too much creativity may not be a good thing. Their argument boils down to this: Innovation–creativity–is necessary to introduce new ideas. But for any innovation to take root, it must also be copied. Society depends not just on creators but also on followers. If everyone invented and no one imitated, we wouldn’t advance through innovation.
  • From the Guardian: The new Vincent van Gogh – The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition reminds us [that] his ambition as a painter depended on words to give it focus and direction. Writing in 1888 to Theo from Arles, he says: “I saw a magnificent and very strange effect this evening. A very large boat laden with coal on the Rhône, moored at the quay. Seen from above it was all glistening and wet from a shower; the water was a white yellow and clouded pearl-grey, the sky lilac and an orange strip in the west, the town violet. On the boat, small workmen, blue and dirty white, were coming and going. Carrying the cargo ashore. It was pure Hokusai. It was too late to do it, but one day, when this coal-boat comes back, it’ll have to be tackled.” The language here is more than just the counterpart to a picture. It is actually a step in the process towards the picture. It’s a different kind of proof of Van Gogh’s practicality – and of the way that practicality is often linked to something like exhilaration.

 

Can’t Escape Gauguin… Tuesday, Nov 17 2009 

art , , , , Lori Gordon 9:57 pm

Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven

I felt very cultural this weekend: on Sunday I went to see the symphony AND spent time at the Gauguin exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art. And I put the finishing touches on my rockin’ gingerbread house entry for the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s annual gingerbread show (which is actually a fantastical Museum of Contemporary Art made out of gingerbread). Whew!

This was my second trip to see the Gauguin show (first take I wrote about here), and I’m sure I’ll go back several more times before it leaves in January. But my impressions (Take II) were more complex (delightedly!) than the first round.

I’m not sure what other artists are so “self reflecting” — that is, in newer paintings, they physically paint in/allude to previous works — but Gauguin surely is a master. His motifs are bathers, pitchers, the color yellow, the white Brittany hats. I mentioned this in my previous blog, but it was even more apparent to me at Take II.

Gaugin’s use of yellow, particularly in his later years in Tahiti, is prolific. Perhaps it started in Arles with his Yellow House days with van Gogh and transcended time. The show’s catalog states that at first Gauguin claimed credit for van Gogh’s adoption of yellow as a favorite color. But ultimately the opposite was true: Gauguin embraced yellow after being impressed by van Gogh’s yellow-on-yellow paintings of sunflowers. And Gauguin used canary yellow paper for a series of zincographs (medium where an artist draws directly on a metal plate with a black crayon) that chronicled Gauguin’s early career and travels to Martinique, Brittany, and Arles and reiterated his motifs. (Interestingly, the CMA owns a complete set of the zincographs, which is rare, because Gauguin only made an edition of 30.) The zincographs were a watershed in Gaugin’s work: the motifs are resemblant of Claude Monet’s grainstacks and Jasper Johns’ stenciled number paintings.

I also noticed that Gaugin has a tendency to paint mid-pose — he captures a boy fixing his shoe, and blossoms just beggining to bud (rather than in full glory). I was struck by his interest in the non-interesting stages of hum drum daily life. But capturing these humdrum moments makes the viewer stop, go back, and look again. It’s inspiring that the humdrum can, in fact, be interesting.

And he disdained pointilism!


 

 

Gauguin’s Gals Wednesday, Nov 4 2009 

Art and Politics , , , Lori Gordon 9:01 am

Joys of BrittanyThe Cleveland Museum of Art is hosting “Gauguin: Paris 1889″, featuring a recreation of the “radical independent exhibition that Gauguin organized (and shamelessly self-promoted) on the grounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris”.

It was unbelievable.

The exhibition is only exhibiting in two places — Cleveland and Amsterdam – hence the CMA’s insanely awesome marketing: “The man shunned civilization. (So it’s only appropriate that he’s making just one US stop.)”.

What struck me about this exhibit is Gauguin’s sensitivity to the people he saw and painted, much moreso than Van Gogh (and they lived in Arles together, painting for several months). Although I think that Van Gogh’s portraits and subjects are richer, more intense, electrifying, I think that Gauguin had a better way conveying people and their moods, and well, the reality of their lives. In this exhibition, the innocense and movement in his subjects (specifically his primary subject matters in this exhibition, which were the Breton girls dancing and the woman with red hair in the waves) is arresting, and I have thought about these anonymous people over and over again since I saw the exhibit last weekend. And so they are striking in a different way than Van Gogh’s studies.

In this exhibit, Gauguin’s oils, chalks, sculptures, and wood carvings all run central to two themes: his life in Brittany and life in Tahiti. And he keeps dabbing a brilliant red/orange to make a tiny splash on each composition (a single carnation on each of the Brittony girls ‘dresses; the vibrant red hair on the girl in the waves). We walk through daily life in Brittany — largely seen through children’s eyes, and the series aptly named “Voipini Suite: Joys of Brittany” – but we also see very deep, intellectual themes running through, particularly with the violent green waves and the woman thrust in them. Her body takes up the entire picture, so that the viewer feels almost caught up in the waves with her. In the end, when he was in Tahiti, he created a self-portrait with his face very dark (disturbance, insecurity), and in far in the background, off to the sides, are a small white cloth (indicating the white Brittany hats of the women and children there) and a red swath of paint (indicating the woman’s vibrant red hair). In this exhibition, Gauguin came full circle with his themes and his work.

In the waves

 

Cartography That Inspires Art Sunday, Nov 1 2009 

Art and Politics Lori Gordon 10:25 pm

Fiona's Wave, 2005

“The Map as Art,” a new book edited by Katharine Harmon from Princeton Architectural Press, describes how artists draw on the rich landscape of maps for inspiration. Since I have a degree in Urban Geography, this is an especially interesting topic for me (though my career didn’t exactly follow that path!). While I haven’t read this book, just the reviews and descriptions of it prompt lots of thoughts.

First, the overview:

In a series of chapters—Conflict and Sorrow, Global Reckoning, Personal Terrain, Inner Visions, etc.—the book shows how artists use the map as a tool to investigate identity, political allegiance, economy, the environment. The publisher has a great discussion of why artists would choose maps as inspiration:

[Maps] lead to different destinations: places turned upside down or inside out, territories riddled with marks understood only by their maker, realms connected more to the interior mind than to the exterior world. These are the places of artists’ maps, that happy combination of information and illusion that flourishes in basement studios and downtown galleries alike.

In my classes at the University of Maryland, we studied digital cartography, primarily creating remote sensing images. These were comprised of heat sensitive coloration showing variation in weather patterns, land use, and population. I suppose I struggle with this type of cartography as being art because these images are automatically generated; I wasn’t placing broad swaths of green or blue where I was inclined to do so. The computers are in charge. However, I think that The Map As Art would argue that the value of this map to the artist is that it offers new ranges of color or a means of conceptually interpreting a physical object (which is what artists often do).

Above is an image of another way that artists can use maps: by literally cutting them up to craft a work on paper. From Katharine Harmon, the book’s editor: “[In Fiona's Wave, 2005] Matthew Cusick creates outsized collaged paintings from fragments of atlases and school geography books published between 1872 and 1945, a time of much mapping and remapping.”

It’s interesting that just as cartographers try to capture movement and change of a culture, environment, and even politics, this seems to be the very thesis of many artists as well.

 

Can Its Description Make it Art? Wednesday, Oct 28 2009 

Art and Politics Lori Gordon 2:53 pm

oilOil, Edward Burtynsky

Looking at a photograph of thousands of tires doesn’t really compel me to think hard and stare long at the composition, the light, the perspective. Until I read the title. “OIL”. Now it grabs me emotionally because it makes a political/social/environmental statement. Interesting how context (sometimes positioned by words) can change our appreciation of something.

 

Distortion, Glorious Distortion Monday, Oct 26 2009 

Art and Politics , , , , Lori Gordon 4:20 am

modiglianiElongation, distorted hands, feet, necks. This is the single-most characteristic that I look for and admire in works. If it’s stretched, pressed, enlarged, or diminished beyond its normal state, I love it. And for this, I cannot get enough of Modigliani.

Those necks! Those eyes!

Less obvious is the use of elongation in Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus. The elongated right hand of the disciple sitting at the table draws the viewer in to the painting.

caravaggiosupper_at_emmaus_national_gallery_london

And distortion can portray a sense of the grotesque, the humor, the abstraction of a figure or scene. I especially like the abstraction in Eastern European art, particularly Russian art, like Kandinsky, which inspired some of those in the surrealist movement.

kadinsky

 

To The French, Art Trumps Economy Wednesday, Oct 21 2009 

art Lori Gordon 12:50 pm

arles

On my way out of the French embassy in DC a few weeks ago (I took part in an annual embassy tour), I picked up “France magazine No. 90″ from a gorgeous ($$$) breakfront in the marbled lobby. Just one of many marketing tools in Washington, one would think that a magazine such as this would focus on a country’s economic entrees. But no this one. The French embassy’s magazine focuses on “the best of culture, travel, and art de vivre.”

But now that I think about this, how better to push your economy by playing the hand that you are dealt… and France has been blessed with great art and great beauty over the centuries (rather than technical or commercial innovation). This is, after all, how everyone views France, so I agree, French embassy, show it off to the nth degree!

The magazine’s feature articles include:

  • Arles Goes Gehry
  • The Art of Christian Boltanski
  • Artisanal Beer

Fabulous. The graphics-infused magazine is a tromp through high-end stores in Paris, all aflurry with radical new designs in furniture. And exposes on small towns in France feature, guess what? The art. This tiny town has X-number of theaters, X-number of galleries, X-number of artists-in-residence. And the article on artisanal beers — who would think art would come into play with beer? — is complete with an Art Nouveau poster of a drinking hall by Alphonse Mucha, created in 1897. The article on the tiny town of Arles makes the case that it could become the next Bilbao as Frank Gehry is “sketching its future.”

French embassy, I’m sold! I’m on the first plane to Arles. Or pretty much to ANY tiny town in France, for that matter, as I would surely be surrounded by art.

 

“Mona Lisa” aka “La Giconda” aka “A Certain Florentine Lady” Monday, Oct 19 2009 

Art and Politics Lori Gordon 8:13 pm

earring

Slate has a fabulous article out “Mona Linda? Nah. How About Mona Lisa?” that discusses the origins of an artwork’s name. Who decides what to call an old painting?

The article reveals that until the 17th century, artists rarely chose names for their works, choosing instead general, non-specific names like “Profile of a Young Woman”.

It’s a wonder how these pieces were referenced and recognized with 100% veracity, especially when there were so many drawings or sketches made prior to the actual oil, that were also sold across the market?

What was most fascinating to me, however, is that Dutchman Johannes Vermeer, one of the most celebrated artists of all time (and who has recently had a resurgence with a few of his works traveling in the US, as well as the bestseller by Tracy Chevalier a few years ago “The Girl With the Pearl Earring”) also blazed another trail by being one of the first artists to bestow a conceptual title on one of his works:

Vermeer painted a self-portrait called The Art of Painting. He never sold the piece, keeping it in his home until his death in 1675. Historians believe Vermeer himself named the work because his widow identified it by the moniker very shortly after his death.

Also how many names can the ”Mona Lisa”  have? Perhaps squabbling art historians all wanted to lay a claim to history with a new name.

16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari, considered by many to be the first art historian, is  the man who identified the sitter for Leonardo’s most famous painting as Florentine aristocrat Lisa del Giocondo. This hypothesis gave rise to the popular name Mona Lisa in England and the United States. Many French and Italian critics, however, refer to the work as La Joconde or La Gioconda, respectively, referring to the sitter’s family name. (Interestingly, these phrases translate loosely into English as “the one who smiles.”) Prior to Vasari, the painting had been called A Certain Florentine Lady or A Courtesan in a Gauze Veil.

 

Next Page »