If you've been to the Carnegie Museum of Art recently, you may have noticed some new items in the galleries. Among these is a painting by Asher B. Durand. This kind of landscape painting may be out of fashion, but the thing about Hudson River Paintings, you know a good one as soon as you see it. You also are greeted with an immediate sense of confidence the United States (or artists) hasn't known for some time. Few painters since have been this sure of themselves and the world or celebrated it with such clarity. At the time of creation, the United States was far from being a world power, hadn't known the civil war and could focus all of her energy on building the nation. Unfortunately this meant cutting down the trees and a changing landscape that made scenes like this one fade like passing frames in a film. Hudson River painters like Durand would celebrate nature, humans in nature, and the natural wildness as a feature which distinguished our continent from that of Europe.

...and there's still a week or so to make the trip to Washington DC to see Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape More new items at the Carnegie

Coast of Capri, the only painting by Johan Christian Dahl exhibited by Carnegie Museum of Art seems out of place among paintings advocating grandeur and sublimity. The painting purveys mystic and meditative, as if there is an unknown force behind the scene that even its thoroughness goes beyond grand and sublime.

There is no wonder that Johan Christian Dahl always reminds me of Casper David Frederick. The two men once lived in the same house and exhibited together. Yet the Norwegian painter is more reticent in his words. Unlike Frederick, whose landscape paintings are disguise forms for life voyage and moral advancing, Dahl didn’t bring such austerity above the moody oil surface; instead he dug it into the landscape and let the viewer discover the deep intention that he planted.

While the life of Casper David Frederick has been studied thoroughly, Dahl, who is usually called Casper’s follower, didn’t receive enough attention nowadays. In the description note provided by Carnegie Museum of Art, it is said that Coast of Capri was the work following Dahl two-year’s stay in Italy. However, another source from Sotheby’s states that Dahl got married in June of 1820 and the very next day he left alone to Italy where he remained one year. Thus the two sources disagreed with how long Dahl stayed in Italy. The exact length of his stay in Italy is of great importance here because Dahl’s several most famous paintings were about scenes in Italy.

More than one house tour has left somewhat of an empty impression. So many of today’s old homes, restored to a new-like state on the outside are left without much of a trace of the old inside. Occasionally the staircase, or at least the newel post and railing is there, or a brick wall that never would have been exposed in its own time. Its often that most of the interior walls have been removed, bathrooms expanded into once bedrooms and recessed lights in the ceilings.

Its all for want of an urban space, which we now associate with the lofts retrofitted into old warehouse buildings. These became popular in the 1980s and today, when they are not available, we tend to rip apart an old townhouse to make a pseudo loft apartment.

These homes then are filled with contemporary furniture, sometimes with a Pottery Barn or even Ikea look, and once in a while with some higher-end modernistic furniture, with colorful blown glass, frameless paintings lacking any representation, leather, stiff-looking cushions and plenty of chrome.

Somewhere the value and attractiveness of the antique has been lost.

It could be that the country look of the antique which has been popular for some time just can’t fit into an urban space. Decorating with primitives, aside I long to see a town home filled with mahogany and brass.

It’s not necessary to fill a home exclusively with antiques. Some people who enjoy the look of antiques like to put old and new together, often using antique accents with new seating furniture.

Let’s take a look at this Almafi collection at Macy’s for example. It has a sophisticated modern look to it. It’s a look many urban homeowners might try to replicate or build upon. Now imagine taking away the chrome table and the ottoman.

Consider the look achieved when placing an empire sideboard on the wall behind it and a Caucasian rug that picks up some of the rust tomes from the sofa. Now place a Chinese table in the center where the ottoman or coffee table would be and a large fern where the chrome table had been. A real painting framed with significant size and depth (gold leaf is great) would add even more. You really don’t want that mirror above your sideboard!

Of course once you start buying antiques, your room will quickly fill and until it's time to part with the non-antiques, only unlike the antiques, you’ll find they’re worth a fraction of what you paid for them. Even as the antique furniture market has remained relatively flat in recent times, new furniture depreciates quickly.

Of course if you’re out to decorate a room, the right antiques aren’t at the mall or furniture store. You have to look for them and if there’s one thing modern people don’t have much of, it's time.

That unfortunately leads many who like the antique look to instead go for fake antiques—cheap imports made to look classic and old. Yet remember you’re probably going to be living with whatever you buy for a while, and while there’s no good cheap way around the time commitment it takes to learn about and find good antiques, having that kind of quality can be well worth the extra effort.

You also might think an empire sideboard would be outrageously expensive. Yet they are often less than what you might think and less than what you would pay for an item of comparable quality at a fine furniture retailer. Consider comparing a sideboard such as this one with this one sold recently at auction. Both are quality furniture, but one is the real antique. Now when you think how easy it is to spend that much on a big screen-television or computer, something you’ll never be able to get much of any money back out of, its becomes easy to convince yourself to spend the money.

(Photo, home circa 1950 decorated with antiques)

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to travel with a piano across the Alleghenies before the days of trucks, railroads or even canals? Yet an ad appearing in the Post-Gazette of July 20, 1813 suggests someone did just that.

The advertisement of 1813, published some sixteen years before the completion of the canal, informs readers only that a fine-toned piano forte was for sale. A maker is not identified and it is unknown where the instrument was manufactured. It could be that the piano traveled, somehow, from Baltimore or Philadelphia, but it could also have been made at home.

With advertisements appearing as early as 1814, Charles Rosenbaum was one known maker, and he seems to have worked in the city for five years. The quality of his work suggests a degree of cultural sophistication unexpected in a frontier town, and reinforces the complexities and cost of importing goods from the east.

Yet if Rosenbaum was the first manufacturer of piano fortes in Pittsburgh and he set up shop in 1814, then the piano advertised in 1813 could not have been made by him. If it had journeyed across the Alleghenies, it wouldn’t be the only piano to do so. Family history tells us that a Philadelphia-built piano forte owned by General Richard Butler was given to his daughter Mary in 1791, just before leaving on a fateful military expedition. In 1791, the piano forte somehow made it over Indian trails from Philadelphia to what is now Lawrenceville. It’s now located in the Heinz History Center.

(shown is a New York made piano forte now at the Westmoreland Museum of Art)

Getting to the Toldeo Museum of Art always had been put on the backburner, I had known there were great works there, but there never seemed to be time for it on trips along Interstate 80. An extra long trip (to Iowa) this past weekend had to be broken into two legs and finally stopping at the Toledo Museum of Art was in the cards.

On arrival the building appeared quite large and unfortunately a 4 pm Saturday close only left about an hour and a half. Had I known there was that much to see I would have left earlier. More, its well worth an extra trip with it as the only destination.

Starting in the American Galleries, I counted two works by Gilbert Stuart, a John Trumbull, three by George Inness, two by Thomas Cole, a stunning Winslow Homer and a Gifford that lured me to linger in its stead. There was also a cup by Paul Revere, an exceptional Copley, a pair of Duncan Phyfe chairs and a Seymour sideboard.

As you might imagine this took the bulk of the hour and a half. This left little time for the European galleries and none for the rest of the museum. I did get a good look at a bronze of Hercules and Antaeus, a pair of candlesticks by Robert Adam as well as works by La Pena, Manet, Gainsborough, David and more.

I'm not sure where the Toldedo Museum of Art ranks among America's finest, the Met, National Gallery, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, LACMA, Boston and others, but without completely exploring it, I'd put it almost in line with the Cleveland Museum of Art. Its clear the city of Toledo, a city that has somewhat faded from having any national prominence, has a museum of national importance and one a lot of larger cities could only dream about.

Dinosaur bones may not exactly fall into the category of art, but you wouldn't be the first artist to be intrigued by dinosaur bones.

In 1801, a mastodon specimen was discovered near Newburgh, N.Y., and the portrait painter Charles Willson Peale was called in to assist. Peale, the polymathic "artist of the American Revolution," brought along his son, Rembrandt, to assist, and together they excavated an almost complete skeleton.

You won't find Peale's mastodon in Pittsburgh, but you will find a mastadon along with a mamoth and other prehistoric creatures. They all seem to be roaming around a new landscape.

I'm thinking of the book "Why Cats Paint" and wondering what the result would be if one of these creatures had tried their paw, claw or hoof at art. Anyway, I'd hate to clean that litter box.

The exhibit reopened this weekend at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. take your scetch pad. MORE PHOTOS

A Philadelphia auction is offering several original photographs by William Rau. Its not hard to find examples of Rau's work on stereoview cards or in books. Rau may be best known however as a photographer for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rau captured the industrial encroachment of the natural landscape as well as the Scalp Level painters captured the absence of it.

Rau was hired in 1890 by the Pennsylvania Railroad and in 1899 by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, for which he produced a series of views from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. He also recorded the Johnstown flood and the 1904 Baltimore fire. It reminds me of the commissioned work by George Innes in the National Gallery. Rau was no run of the mill company photographer, however. The artistic value of his work rivals many landscapes painted by well-known Pennsylvania painters.

Some of Rau's extrordinary landscape photography can be seen at LACMA in LA, the Cleveland Museum of Art, MOMA and a large collection is on view at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Loretto (a short and scenic drive from Pittsburgh).

The earliest homes in Pittsburgh that still stand date to around 1830. Since demolished from this period was “Picnic House” built around 1835 by William Croghan and Mary Croghan Schenley, the granddaughter of James O’Hara. The ballroom from Picnic House is now in the Cathederal of Learning.

Several pieces of furniture exist from the house including a chair at the Heinz History Center and a recamier at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The Carnegie also has a matching recamier and nine other chairs. The pieces have not been identified as being produced in Pittsburgh, and while convention would suggest they came from New York, it was at least technically possible furniture of this quality could have been produced in Pittsburgh.

Our first evidence is a Pittsburgh Cabinetmakers Style guide from 1830 that shows furniture with charateristics of that being produced both in New York and Philadelphia. A copy of the guide is at the Winterthur Library.

It would of course take a skilled painter to create the designs on the furniture from Picnic. There is evidence there were a number of skilled painters skilled at ornamentation, portraits and signage in Pittsburgh at that time.

Most notable of the painters in Charles Lambdin who adverised in 1824 as having been trained by Thomas Sully. A painter named J. Cook advertised himself as a portrait painter as early as 1811. Also in 1811, J. T. Turner advertised all sorts of painting and even lessons. Most notably Turner reports that he was lately of New York. Joseph Jenkins advertised his services as a portrait painter in 1824 and R. B. Harris advertised himself as an ornamental painter in the 1830s. I have no evidence to show that portrait painters like Lambdin ventured into painting ornamentation on furniture, but technically they would likely have the necessary skill and we know other painters, such as Edward Hicks, painted decoration on carriages. Painting then was often seen more as a skilled craft, like cabinetmaking, than a fine art.

The other feature on the furniture from Picnic is gilt and “gilt bronze” as it is referred to in literature at the Carnegie. However, Wendy Cooper in her book "Classical Taste in America" referring to the chair refers to Egyptian ornaments as “cast brass.” I learned recently that what is called "gilt bronze" is usually brass, in chandeliers anyway, so that may be the case here. Inspection of the chaise lounge at Carnegie does appear to have gilt. There were a number of foundaries in Pittsburgh early on, as well as silversmiths and other craftsman who might have been able to produce these ornaments on demand. They could also have easily been imported from Boston or England.

The structure is maple, grain painted to look like Rosewood.

The Carnegie currently has a show "Popular Salon of the People: Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annuals at Carnegie Museum of Art, 1910–2006" which contains several works by Pittsburgh artist Johanna K. Hailman. Known for painting flowers, Hailman also apparently tried her hand at painting steel mills. Her work along these lines hangs in the show near the master of the Pittsburgh mill, Gorson.

I hadn't been aware of Hailman until recently when I came across her while researching Pittsburgh furniture. Her father, Joseph Ryan Woodwell was also an artist, and her grandfather was a cabinetmaker.

Woodwell operated a furniture workshop and wareroom in Pittsburgh until 1845 when he sold his interest in the business and went into the hardware trade. The hardware store continued to operate until 1954. A Pier table by Woodwell is on display at the Heinz History Center.

The show also includes the work of Lila Hetzel, the daughter of Scalp Level painter George Hetzel.

In conjunction with the 97th Associated Artists of Pittsburgh exhibition, "Popular Salon of the People" is a historical survey featuring the work of more than 75 notable artists who have participated in the annual survey shows. The show includes John Kane, Malcolm Parcell, Aaron Gorson, Samuel Rosenberg, Raymond Cimboli, Marie Kelly, Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, and Jonathan Borofsky.

Fall is a good time to go out and look for "Cropsey Red." Not just any red leaves, but the red that clings to the trunk resulting from vines that turn red and result in red structural center in a fall tree.

Fall was also a good time for a drive to the National Gallery to view not only trees on the way, but to get another look at a large painting by Jasper Francis Cropsey, "Autumn-- On the Hudson River."

Painted in 1860, the magnitude of the work might cause it to be confused with a Bierstadt, and the seemingly typical nature of the landscape might be passed by without providing much inspiration on the beauty of the scenery. A closer look will reveal the work is actually telling the story of the European settlement of the "new world."

Follow the scene from right to left and you'll see what I mean. Let your eye wonder down the path toward the town and into the sunrise. It also attempts to show man as neither subservient or a conquerer of nature. Its this balance thats so important to try to meet today as nature more often strikes back violently against mans abuse.

Leaving Washington and driving up Interstate 95 towards Philadelphia I observed miles of cars waiting at a toll booth, spewing carbon dioxide and thousands of engines idled. This seemed a waste, both in terms of time and economics, but also in terms of the harm done to the planet. Couldn't each car be affixed with a magnetic strip as part of the inspection process so they could at least keep moving through the tollgate?

The Hudson River Valley certainly still has its charms, but for now it would seem man has taken the position as a conquerer of nature. Cropsey's scene almost seems naieve, perhaps not unlike Edward Hicks when he painted babies sitting beside wildcats--in peace.

There is an important place in our world for these idealistic sentiments, however. It reminds me of the criticism of Jefferson for owning slaves and writing that "all men are created equal," a fault no doubt, but a notion of considerable value and one that future generations could strive towards. It was problematic for Jefferson to live up to his ideals, and more importantly problematic for the future society to reconcile itself with these ideals.

Perhaps paintings like Cropsey's Autumn on the Hudson River can be viewed today in a similar way. How can we reconcile our practices with our ideals? How can we make sure the story our lives tell live up to this notion of a peaceful co-existence with nature?

An example of Cropsey Red in the DeYoung

Looking through old Pittsburgh newspapers on microfilm I came across an ad for a portrait painter named James Lambdin. I had never heard of Lambdin, but the mention of his being a pupil of Thomas Sully in the ad caught my attention. I should have just Googled images, but not ever hearing of Lambdin I mistakenly assumed he was an artist lost to history. I headed to the census records at the library and on my way to the third floor decided to stop and search the auction records as well as catolog for books about Sully, which I hoped would mention Lambdin.

Both produced results that were suprisingly fruitful to me. I didn't need to search census records to see when Lambdin moved to Pittsburgh--he was born here in 1807. I guess amateur historians like myself mistakenly assume most of the people and things, at least as they relate to a European cultural tradition, in early Pittsburgh came from Baltimore or Philadelphia. The newspaper ad was from 1824, not long before Lambdin left Pittsburgh. Lambdin headed South for Louisville and then trading time between Pittsburgh and Mobile, Alabama.

Lambdin then moved to Philadelphia (which may have had more imports like Lambdin from Pittsburgh than we often assume) where he spent most of the remainder of his life.

Its curious that Lambdin studied in Philadelphia under Thomas Sully from 1823-25 and yet placed the ad in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1824. Also his son, George Cochran Lambdin, also a noted artist, was born in Pittsburgh in 1830. Lambdin traveled to Washington and painted many portraits including presidents. he was a professor of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania and an officer at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

William Russell Smith was a student of Lambdin.

Apparently the Carnegie Museum of Art has two works by James Lambdin, a portrait of Henry Clay and one of Benjamin Darlington. I am not sure whether these works are not on display or I have failed to notice them.

Book review by Eric Miller

At the time he turned forty the painter Martin Johnson Heade had yet to produce a distinguished painting. In 1859 he rented a studio in New York 's Tenth Street Studio building and changed his fate. His contact with other members of the Hudson River School radically improved his work. Unfortunately Heade later moved to Florida and was all but forgotten.

New York wasn't the center of the art world in the 1850s it is today, but Heade's story shows that New York was well on its way to being a place where people make things happen. In turn, the city makes people happen.

Leaving Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol also went to New York. Unlike Heade, Warhol never left New York and is never to be forgotten. Like Warhol's Factory, the Tenth Street Studio of the Hudson River painters allowed Heade to meet other painters, as New York allowed artists to meet people of other professions, with divergent expertise, at random, that helped their career. Except if going to New York is a purposeful act, it might not be as random as we might assume.

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After the pastel workshop by Kevin Mclatchy at Hoyt Institute of Art, I didn’t create anything satisfying. It is hard to concentrate when you know you have to finish something within one and half hours and it is even harder if you try to do a landscape painting from places which do not inspire you. Nevertheless, the workshop was quite useful for future practices.

Mr. Mclatchy picked up pastel after he took a workshop from Wolf Kahn. The immediacy of the medium and Kahn’s landscape style which lingers between representational and abstract inspired him to work on the medium for the past twelve years.

“You know the nice thing about pastel is that the values are already there. You just have to pick one.” He commented. “In oil, you don’t have such advantages.” Value is his emphasis in the workshop. He first instructed everyone to mass in white, gray and black in order to understand the shape and relationship. At that time, I wished there would be a digital camera so that I could take pictures in B&W! It was very hard for me to filter out all the color information or convert colors into grayscale.


In his demonstration, he didn’t sketch in detail: No scale calculation, no compositional planning, and no value drawing. He simply started drawing a few lines for the tree trunk, his main object in the middle of the paper and felt how to evolve afterwards. There arose at times myths where those lines ended in relationship to others, which seemed not only puzzled me but also the artist. But he quickly moved along and decided, at the same time when he was drawing, which direction to go. The more pastel pigments he laid down, the more specific the subject became, and the more clearly how the myth was going to be solved.

Unfortunately, his contemporary style didn’t fit in most of the reference books with traditional approach in minds. When I tried to mimic his style: loose strokes, scribbling lines, and most of all drawing with energy, the fundamental rules were totally forgotten. Colors are not strengthening each other, light and shade lose their suggestive meaning and layers of pastel soon dulled the Canson paper.

In his book, Wolf Kahn says artists should not paint with insights, but with instincts. Yet in workshop, insights and habits can be described and taught, yet instincts, fleeting like light, are indescribable. Kahn said it won’t work if one focuses too much on those rules. Great art comes out of artist’s hands and mind undisturbed by those established laws; although it is true that afterwards one may find those underlining rules, while never been sensed consciously during the creation of the work, do apply to it or even contribute to its success.

Such statements, which philosophizes the creation of art work, can hardly be applied to amateurs, who are as hard to remember those rules (composition, color, balance, etc) as for artists to forget them. Pragmatic tips can be better grasped in workshops, although it is true some of Kevin's metaphorical instruction may be understood a few years later as I progress (if only I could still remember what he said by then).

But he did not force everyone to make some changes and try to show demonstration directly on participant’s work. Instead he tried to understand from everyone’s perspective and then gave some suggestions. This is really what I appreciated from the workshop. As a student of Kahn, Mr. McLatchy values the spirit of exploration. Kahn once suggests that once one begins to grasp, he should stop immediately and move on to something new. Otherwise, he falls into the trap of painting by habits. (I asked Mr. Mclatchy what he thought of some old masters who repeatedly painted the same subject with perfection. He said some works may seem perfect, but lack of emotions and energy. )

Well, my pastel drawing is far from perfection after one day workshop, but it made me excited with the medium and inspired me to try more.

Kevin Mclatchy's website is here.

Collecting is about acquiring things valuable, or should I say invaluable? From toy trains to vinyl records, what matters is personal experiences and feelings. It does not surprise me that some vinyl record cost so much that you probably will never listen to them in your lifetime in order to maintain prestine considition.

One example is shown now on eBay (item number 130153471140). It is the first press and it is unplayed. But above all, it is Milstein. An elite fiddler who has been enshrined by intellectuals around the world.

If the first press is the reason to expalin such a frenetic bidding on Milstein's record, then farewell can be linked with another high-priced item sold on eBay related to Milstein. (Item number is 170148163142). This one is even a CD of his last recital. Although apparantly it has been out-of-print for a while, the master tape must be well-represerved since the recital was held in 1987.

If you think $51.48 is too much for something reprintable, an Amazon seller has marked the price tag over 200 dollars.

Of course, one can wait. Unlike art works by deceased artists, CDs are mass-produced. And the chance that he can buy the same program at regular price in the future is not unrealistic at all. One example is the long-waited 6CD set of Michael Rabin. Before EMI reissued the set last year, it was over 250 dollars everywhere. Now you can probably get it below $50.

Winston Churchill once said “the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” This quote as I learned of it came from a book about the Luminist painter Fitz H. Lane, a transcendental-influenced Unitarian. The author, James A. Craig had something more to say on the way time relates to ourselves and the age we occupy.

“Steamships and railroads may have their day, cities may stretch from one end of the continent to the other, but ultimately these achievements will prove short-lived. While mans presence on the landscape will prove fleeting, spiritual truth, like these boulders, will endure.”

The view is one not unfamiliar to Western Pennsylvania “Scalp Level” painters like George Hetzel. The Scalp level school is considered a subset of the Hudson River School. Fitz Lane was not a Hudson River School artist, per se, but during his career went from painting busy harbor scenes to quiet and timeless harbors almost devoid of human activity.

The quote brought me to thinking about Pittsburgh and its art and our inability to look back far enough to see the future.

I can’t think of too many timeless images of Pittsburgh. The images that come to mind are primarily pubescent images of Pittsburgh landscapes almost always telling a story of a busy inland port. Even these images are overshadowed by images of Pittsburgh as a manufacturing center. Yet before the sky was brightened by factory flames, the city thrived without smoke and factories. Even farther back and we find a serene and timeless natural setting the Scalp Level or Hudson River painters would have found enticing.

Today we are confronted with several realities that are sure to shape our future to one degree or another. One of these is global warming, which has already returned many of us back to an age when nature was a conquerer more often than something conquered.

The short days of heavy industry in Pittsburgh are certain to grow shorter as our history grows longer. The physical Pittsburgh in the 2030s may more closely resemble the Pittsburgh of the 1830s than the smoky Pittsburgh of the 1950s.

A need to reduce greenhouse gasses and the arrival of peak oil may bring our city with a declining population to live closer to the geographical boundaries of previous centuries. The rivers, once a depository for waste, are again becoming the center of our life and image. The beauty of the landscape will continue to return. As oil becomes scarce, local farming, and even basic product manufacturing may again become practical, profitable and necessary.

Industry will not be likely to grow to anything comparable to the 1960s, but local industry like cabinet-making, carpentry, glass making and even textiles could become more of a necessity everywhere. Pittsburgh will again be an exporter, and the rivers will again see far more than coal barges. Not to be mistaken, it won’t be 1830 all over again. The technology we have and continue to develop won’t go away and will be our primary export then as now.

Since the time of the Scalp Level painters and Fitz Lane we have lost our ability to see the timeless beauty of our Pittsburgh. We’re not interested in art depicting such landscapes as the camera sent art in a myriad of directions more than a century ago. Transcendentalist thought was interrupted by Charles Darwin and a new view of nature as a violent struggle. Yet modern art may have to eventually look to the future by looking back to the Hudson River School.


While the Scalp Level painters here in Western Pennsylvania revolted at our emerging industry and sought to capture a disappearing natural landscape, eventually painters like Aaron Gorson came to see beauty even in our industrial landscape. For good or bad, that landscape was not timeless.

Today then it is perhaps a challenge for us to take on a task not unlike that at hand for Gorson. Artists in Pittsburgh and elsewhere can look forward by going back and attempting, despite the violent struggles of evolution and an increasingly hostile climate, and see the timeless wonder of our world once again.

Here are the two tests that you may take it at lighter side.

"True or fake art" is a test based on modern and contemporary works. I scored 75 in this test.

"Famous or unknown artist " is a test with mostly impressionistic works. Although I scored another 75, two works that I identified as by Eisenhower were categorized into unknown artists group, which I disagree. (The second one by Eisenhower is an imitation of his teacher, Arnold Grabone, whom I am quite familiar with) So actually I only made one mistake in this test.

It is no accident for less-trained eyes to score higher in the second test. Impressionism's focus on primacy of colors can hardly be missed. But the eyes can be easily confused by abstract modern art works. Those whose eyes are used to tonal syntheses of paintings find their acuteness is hampered or dissipated in these wild concepts.

Knowing how to draw is no longer an absolute necessity for modern painters when personal expressions chooses succinctness and "true and tried" is violated with only the intention of violation.

The current bubble market of modern and contemporary art is largely due to a small circle of elite collectors, but also contributed to by the general public, who sense them in awe and mystery. The ambiguity of the works invites people to discover, and the pride stemming from "conquering" or "deciphering" conceptual works pleases them.

But this is true to all spectacular visual art works. They do not just interest people, they make people discover. Yet in representational works, the relationship of shapes, colors or deeper meanings are no less intriguing than those modern works. It is the general public who are fenced by their knowledge of terms and logic ( trees, lake, or horses) fail to recognize more, if not less, can be found from those works if they are willing to study them with the fresh minds and keen eyes. .

For me, paintings are meant to represent volume. In older masters' works, it means perspective; in modern era, it means depth. Rothko's minimalism works have tremendous depth because of their density, texture and scale. From the visible struggling and laborious strokes one is convinced by the credibility and complexity in works by De Kooning or Pollock. But when such depths disappear, as have often happened nowadays, modern art is squeeze into some special conceptualized taste, so that knowing who painted them is more important than seeing the works themselves.

The Carnegie Museum of Art has on display two pieces of furniture that give us some insight into furniture making in Western Pennsylvania. The first is a tall case clock made by Thomas Hutchinson. The face of the clock bears his name and is labled Washington, Pa. The case features many elements known to be hallmarks of Western Pennsylvania furniture including a vine and leaf inlay design.

The earlier furniture such as the case clock seems to be better chonicled that later furniture, made after 1830. The Carnegie also features a sideboard labled as being made by Henry Beares. The sideboard has many features of a Philadelphia piece, although it does seem to have more mass than comparable Philadelphia furniture.

One has to assume it would not be unique. The book Pittsburgh's Commercial Development shows furniture being shipped both to and from Pittsburgh as early as 1835 (the earliest year the book covers. Newspaper ads feature other companies making furniture in Pittsburgh and Allegheny in the 1830s, including the Allegheny Chair at the corner of Ohio Street and "the Diamond" in Allegheny.

Both examples in the Carnegie serve to show that the quality of cabinet making in Pittsburgh from the late Eighteenth Century through the 1830s was fairly sophisticated and even somewhat comperable to what was being made in the East.

The legend of Maestro Rostropovich (March 27, 1927 – April 27, 2007) will reach a new height when Sotheby's will auction his outstanding collection this month.

As a self exile, he soon proved he can just conquer the world with his cello. From reportedly a cello, one dog, two suitcases and two children, the Russian couple amassed a huge collection of Russian art and antique within three decades. From art market stand point of view, Rostropovich strategic decision in speciality of collection with respect to the timing of both buying and selling is extremely successful. On the other hand, the couple, being deprived of the citizenship, he collected Russian antiques only because that's how they felt they were rooted. The current collection, to some extent, is the materialized nostalgia of the great cellist.

The collection for the auction can be seen here.

Sewickley Gallery Walk
Where: Sewickley
When: Sept 14, Friday, 6-9 PM
Website: http://www.sweetwaterartcenter.org/gallerywalking.asp

Shadyside Art Festival
Where: Shadyside
When: Sept 14-16
Website: http://artfestival.com/art_festival/sept_2007_2.php

The opening reception of recent works by Joe Witzel is held at PANZA Gallery in Millvale yesterday. Joe, living in Troy hill of Pittsburgh, frequently drives up to Moraine State Park to draw the goldenrods in different seasons. When I stood in a full room of goldenrod paintings in vivid colors and eye-catching forms, the first question I asked is why I didn't see the beauty of them before, which have filled the slopes of shopping malls around Pittsburgh with their untamed green and bright yellow.

All goldenrods are painted with pastels, but they look more like oil paintings from Van Gogh: short strokes wildly drawing in diagonal manner, the majority in green and yellow, and the visible thickness of bright yellow tints built up on other layers. All these indicate energetic creation processes in plein-air. Later, Joe told me most of the works were done within three hours range on-site, with possibly some final touch-ups in his studio.

Looking closely at those pastel paintings shows that Joe specifically has chosen grey green paper for most of his works because he did not physically blend colors. Thus a base color with the right tone and hue is cruicial. Without being covered fully with Unison pastel sticks, the papers , here and there, show the base color and give the depth and vibrance to the whole pictures.

In most cases, he places strokes of different color on top of others. Sometimes feathering or scumbling are used but kept at minimum. Therefore, each stroke preserves its pristine freshness, yearning to tell people how the whole image comes into being from hands with masterful drawing skills once you can step back to allow different strokes of colors blend into your eyes.

The Canson paper that he used for the majority of the pictures cannot hold many layers thus mistakes made can hardly be corrected without compromising the raw state of stroke work. He told me there are some failed pieces but these survived successful works look incredibly crispy and clear compared to Wolf Kahn’s haze color patches.

Other ink and pencil drawings show Joe is very efficient in his drawings. Each line has its meaning. There is no scribble or smudge. Shades and shadow are done by changes in intensity and density of short strokes. If Wolf Kahn’s pastel determines his oil work, then Joe’s economical stroke style in pastel can be fully appreciated in those ink and pencil drawings.

Mainly Goldenrod – Recent works by Joe Witzel can be seen until Sept 29, 2007 at PANZA Gallery.

The Hoyt Institute of Fine Art now features a special exhibition of works by Wolf Kahn in pastel, a medium what Khan calls his determining medium. On the one hand, it is special to show works in a medium whose directness and freshness are less known compared to oil paint; on the other hand, the show is more business-driven. The collection is from Khan’s associated gallery and every painting is for sale. The underlining drawback is that it is not a flashback of artist’s growth and changes in his long artistic career, but instead a show of recent works: All works are freshening even bordering experimenting, but none go beyond his own color theory which signifies his late mature works.

It is almost impossible to describe Khan’s style in one or two words. In his early days, he was influenced by George Seurat. Such an impact of the optical color-mixing from pointillism resides in his pastel works even though his subjects matter has become succinct to almost abstract. In the current show, he chose white water-color paper exclusively. The irregular rugged surface naturally pops out in forms of tiny spots optically mixed with color patches, thus providing a more luminous atmosphere. His blending, on the other hand, reminds me of George Inness. Layers of colors float on top of each other as if there exists such inner glow that drives those colors out of the paper.

Kahn did not deny the influence of modern painters which is synthesized in his works. When being viewed from a distance, Khan’s semi-minimalism works indicate more depth in colors than space from perspective. Such depths loosely relates him with Rothko, however, they differ not only in subjects (Khan’s are more representational), but also in the degree of meditation. In Kahn, there is an illusion of movement in those abstract colored shapes. When those pastel works are viewed closely, the traces of creativity can be as easily identified as those in Pollock’s works: either in the complicated light on the wall, or among the branches of woods, he applied his strokes in abandoning style, yet the layer relationship between each color seems both improvising and controlled. When his works are examined with focus on stroke structure, one can see how he dragged in effort the defining lines on top of other base layers. If De Kooning explored the possibility of the driest method for oil painting with his newspaper, direct tube, then Khan somehow tries to reach the same kind of stroke effect by making the driest medium look wet. Those strokes, thin or thick, are a variety from less defined to very rugged and demands viewers to explore hidden energy under the peace.

But above all, viewing works by Kahn is essentially an examination of his signified color theory. No matter whether the painting is abstract (for woods topics) or representational (for barn topics), it is the colors that draw spectators to discover beyond the subject matters: How do the colors interplay with shapes and lines and what kind of mood do they lead to?

In his woods series, paintings are composed of levels of stripes, triangles or irregular rectangles, whose simplicity is disrupted by vertical tree trunks. (The tree trunks are further disillusioned from a variety of horizontal short branches) However, colors play up the foreground from confrontational relationship but play down trunks by dissolving them. Thus when the crowns are founded again popping out of the sky, there is a sense of intimacy and satisfaction obtained through the discovery.

Here are some of his words about colors:

For the artist, purple has special qualities. The smallest variation in density of tone is significant. Purple can be made to appear airy or heavy. (Try to make a heavy yellow or an airy black.) It can describe a wide range of psychological meanings, from celebratory to tragic.

Bright orange is one of those really good attention-grabbing colors. It resists being used in a subtle way....It seems made to order to represent intensity, exuberance, and heightened feelings generally, without the hidden threats as does the color red. It relates wonderfully to cool blues....It has a very complex relation with magenta, red-purple, and an equally strong one with blue green....

There remains the question of when, exactly, to employ this useful color...The answer is: in fall, and at the time of brilliant sunsets. Then no one can quarrel with one’s use of orange, since it is sanctioned by actual occurance in nature.

The exhibition “Wolf Kahn Pastels” can be seen at Hoyt Institute of Fine Art until Sept 28, 2007.

A couple updates on furniture-making in Pennsylvania. First, my friend loaned me a booklet published in 1982 from the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Apparently there was an exhibit at the former facility in Oakland. The book covers clocks, chests, slant-front desks, glassware and silver. The book was reprinted in 2001, but I couldn't find a copy available online. The research does not provide insight into what was made in Western Pennsylvania after 1820.

Yesterday I also had the opportunity to visit Neshannock Woods, a cabinetmaker and antique dealer near Grove City. A period workshop provides insight into how furniture was once made. There are also some period Western Pennsylvania pieces available for purchase including an 1837 empire chest with origins in Washington, Pa.

You can visit them online at Neshannock Woods

While furniture made in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and New York has been well documented, furniture made in cities like Pittsburgh remains to be fully discovered.

When the city and environs began to be settled in the late eighteenth century it was difficult to transport furniture from East-Coast cities. It would seem much of what was used in Pittsburgh, Washington and Greensburg at that time might have been made here.

A review of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1800 onward shows advertisements for cabinetmakers starting around 1811. By 1840 there were at least seven cabinetmakers and a number of companies including the Allegheny Chair Company on Ohio Street at the Diamond. By 1835, the book Pittsburgh’s Commercial development shows furniture being both imported and exported from Pittsburgh. Before 1811 there are quite a few advertisements from merchants in Philadelphia and Baltimore advertising wares.

There are documented pieces from Western Pennsylvania before 1800, but the extent of refined furniture manufacturing in Pittsburgh at that time remains largely unknown (at least to this author).

The early pieces that are known range from simple to sophisticated, from plain walnut to fine inlay featuring vines and leaves.

What were the influences? Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York? How much of the style is home-grown? How can Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania furniture be identified? Who were the cabinetmakers before 1800? What did the products made by the companies advertising after 1811 look like? These are questions I’d like to attempt to answer.

If you have any insight, please contact me.

Time: Sept 14-16

Place: Walnut Street, Pittsburgh, PA (between South Aiken Avenue and South Negley Avenue)

The best feature of the 10th Annual Art Festival on Walnut Street is that it is a juried show, which command the artists to balance between unique artistic inspiration and pop-market demand. (Sadly, the two sometimes do not converge.) Around 150 exhibitors will be presented.

Detailed information can be found at here.

Eric Zafran gave an interesting lecture about William Bouguereau yesterday at Frick Art and Historical Center in Point Breeze. But in the end, when one of the audience asked the question why Bouguereau was so “tasteless” from modern perspective, Dr. Zafran, while pointing out Bouguereau negative role in Academy by blocking and suppressing new movements and styles, failed to explain why the painter’s perfection has not been fully appreciated NOW.

From my point of view, two reasons contribute to today’s Bouguereau’s lukewarm reputation; one from the audience, the other from the painter himself.

“There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian,” Bouguereau said in 1895. Unfortunately, it is partly his perfect craftsmanship that has blinded some viewers from piecing through the sheer beauty to explore the emotion power. Those immaculate hands and feet, exquisite skin tones, and subtle details make eyes stay and unwilling to probe further. The great paintings command viewers constant looking: The more one looks, the less apparent the surface would appear and the more unconscious and conscious thinking it may involve. That is the joy of visual art. It may only take a few seconds for one to go through Rothko’s Red and Orange, but some can feel totally dissolved in the color after a few minutes’ close stare. Portrait by Rembrandt may have only a dip of light on the tip of the nose, yet their eyes are always penetrative and unfaltering true. Bouguereau, on the other hand, has too much to offer for the pleasure of eyes: the tender veins from the arms, the warm pink along the nail grooves, the nuance in light and shade of the body. The viewers, when intoxicated with the immediacy of proficiency and effectivity, would bother to challenge themselves no further.

Bouguereau’s denigration in reputation began as early as his death when Edward Munch had painted his Dance of Life while Gustav Mahler just finished his No. 6 symphony in tragic manner. Idealism would only be linked to naivety and French Academy was deemed as “old establishment” after two world wars. Execution became less and less important than concepts in post-war period. It was not until recently that Bouguereau has begun to receive attention in both academia and market.

Bouguereau’s poetry and harmony are as simply effective as effervescence and happiness in Mozart’s music. Most of those who enjoy Mozart seldom study him. The glossy texture seems easy to “understand”, yet requires too much energy and time to grasp the deep meaning under streams of notes. The declination of classic music in the rise of pop and rock alienates the majority of audience in the same way as the modern art propaganda has done to school of old masters. Thus it was not an incident that the majority of the audience in yesterday’s lecture are gray-haired.


Secondly, his desire for happiness, beauty and purity leads to somewhat monotonous topics and styles. Bouguereau said nothing is more difficult to paint children. In his paintings they caress, touch, kiss or sleep in untainted innocence and ultimate joy. His shepherd woman, (modeled consistently with a woman named Carmen in reality) is called “princess transformed into rustic”, and if her clothes were taken off, would be as sensual as the nymphs. For over five decades, he didn’t progress in his artistic style, nor his subjects, which becomes both his pleasure and his necessity of living. It is true that antiquity or classicism has never totally fallen out of style in art history, but fastidious nicety and exactness may.

Bouguereau once said: “One has to seek Beauty and Truth”. But when truth is contradictory to beauty in his art, he unmistakenly favored the latter. As early as1850’s and 1860’s, he explored dark and violence in both mythological and religious themes (Dante And Virgil In Hell and The Remorse of Orestes). But soon he abandoned such efforts and changed to paler palette and elegant topics. His human figures became always gorgeous, void of defect and somewhat (particularly in mythological themes) mannered. Any potential tension is lost in bright yet soft light, which in turn dissolves into silky skin. To some extent, his genre paintings are of no difference from those mythological ones: no matter who he painted, they are always as perfect as those in arcadia. Thus he locked himself in a golden cage of what he thought paintings should be: only about beauty and true joy as opposed to truth.

The idiosyncrasy of Bouguereau’s stringency in styles and topics can be best observed in Carnegie Museum of Art, which displays art works chronologically. His 6-footer of a peasant girl (Haymaker), a little plump yet tender and smooth stands against small spontaneous works by Manet and Sisley. Such striking contrast may confuse some visitors as if the painting came from the age of Jacques-Louis David or Jean Auguste Ingres. (Unfortunately, the museum does not have any works of the two for such comparison) Often after viewers have expressed their admiration of technique, they soon move to the other side of the wall, where the loose and painterly style of Monet’s seashore catch their eyes.

In 1895, Henry Clay Frick bought the painting named Espičglerie (Mischievous girl) from William Bouguereau for $5,000. (For a quick comparison, one year after the Carnegie Institute acquired “The Wreck” from Winslow Homer at its first international exhibition at the same price, which is the highest price for a single work Homer had ever got in his lifetime.) For Henry, the subject reminded him of his deceased daughter Matha, who, if still alive, would have been the same age as the girl in the painting . He kept the painting all his life because he must have seen something deeper than the angle face, something stirred by another affectionate father, who had also seen death of two children in his life time.

It moves me too to see his painting of children, regardless of dreams, fantasy or reality. There under the sheer beauty lies the harmony of love, passion and consummate mastery execution.

(PHOTO: Butler Institute of American Art, one of many U.S. Museums with a free admission policy.)
I remember a story told to me in California about some travelers from Pittsburgh wondering around Europe, in a museum looking at dinosaur bones. One commented to the tune of "there's nothing like this back in Pittsburgh." Just then the other pointed to a label that indicated the item was a "copy of the original at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.

Folks at the Carnegie have been busy recently renovating our famed dinosaur exhibit and it should be a time for a monster of a celebration. It is time for that celebration, unfortunately it will be accompanied by a stone-age decision.

The Carnegie announced this week admission prices will increase with the opening, by as much as eighty percent.

Undoubtedly this decision is rooted in a need for additional revenue in order to continue the improvements to the largely state-supported art and natural history museums. Unfortunately the move will likely result in making art and history less accessible in Pittsburgh. This is unfortunate for the public and for Pittsburgh as it continues to grow into a thriving community of art and artists.

Sadly it may not even accomplish the intended effect of increased revenue.

Take the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery, also in Baltimore, as an example. These institutions recently converted to a "free admission" policy and have since seen about a 15 percent increase in attendance, with a more diverse and younger audience. Some members also have upgraded memberships.

A Press release from the Walters and the BMA reported that during "Free Fall Baltimore" in October and November (2006), the BMA had 44,700 visitors and the Walters had 39,194 visitors—both among the highest attendance recorded for those months during the past five years.

The Baltimore Museum of Art’s total museum attendance was 124,125 visitors from October 1, 2006 through March 31, 2007, an 8 percent increase over a two-year average of the same period. More, first-time visitors made up 37 percent of admissions.

During October 2006, the first month of free admission, the BMA recorded 24,200 visitors—the highest attended October in the past five years. The BMA also had an 89 percent increase in participation of Sunday family art activities.

The Walters Art Museum’s total museum attendance was 103,531 visitors from October 1, 2006 through March 31, 2007, a 38 percent increase over the same six months of the previous year. First-time visitors made up 43 percent of admissions, an increase from a 36 percent average. The museum’s diversity in admissions rose to 18 percent persons of color, nearly doubling from spring 2005. During October 2006, the first month of free admission, the museum recorded 21,523 visitors—the second highest October attendance in the past five years and an 80 percent increase from October 2005. The museum has also experienced triple-digit growth in children and family art activities.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art also recently went "free." Museum Director Maxwell Anderson told another publication that among the top 100 museums in America, excluding the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the average revenue from tickets to art museum budgets is about 4 percent, yet public and media focus when measuring museums is all about attendance.

No doubt, the move would seem to cost money. A lead gift of $800,000 from Baltimore City and Baltimore County allowed both museums to eliminate admission fees and become free to the public for the first time in two decades. Additional support for free admission was received.

One might suspect that if four percent of a typical museums total budget comes from admission that additional revenue in gift shops, cafe's, parking and the like might more than make up the difference.

Of course a "free" program that seems to work in Cleveland, Indianapolis and Baltimore might not for some unknown factor work at the Carnegie. Still an eighty-percent increase in admission fees would seem to put further out of reach the treasures at Mr. Carnegie's museum, making art and science less accessible to the masses. On one hand this may encourage more membership purchases, then result in more repeat visits, but how many families of four will be willing to dish out about $52 to attend? Is it enough to make them spring for the $130 family membership? Or will it make the visit to see the dinosaurs an infrequent or once in a childhood event?

What would Mr. Carnegie think?

"Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth."

Nashville may be a long way from Greece, but the city’s Centennial Park may be as close as you can come without leaving the United States. Also, until the Greek ministry completes its program of restoration and reconstruction of the original Parthenon, the Nashville replica may be the closest you can come to the building as it was built by the Greeks in 400 B.C. anywhere.

The Parthenon, from the Greek word parthenos, meaning maiden or virgin, was built as a home for Athena, the protectress of Athens. While the original Parthenon was used initially as a treasury, it was later used for a variety of religious purposes. It was a Christian Church and a Mosque. In 1687, an ammunition dump inside the building was ignited. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures.

The structure in Nashville had a little better luck, but its survival into the present time was all but assured. Nashville’s Parthenon was originally built as a temporary structure for Tennessee's 1897 Centennial Exposition to celebrate the state’s 100th birthday. Like the World’s Columbia Exhibition in Chicago five years before to celebrate the anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the New World, the celebration was late. Tennessee became a state in 1796. Originally built of plaster, wood, and brick, Nashville’s Parthenon was rebuilt in the 1920s on the same foundations, but with concrete.

Nashville’s Parthenon replica was built at a time of a rebirth of interest in Greek and classical architecture in the United States. The 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago gave birth to the City Beautiful Movement which saw the construction of classical buildings and grand boulevards from Cleveland to San Francisco.

Nashville’s replica is a fine surviving remnant of the movement. The bronze entrance doors on the east and west sides are the largest of their kind in the world. The pediment reliefs were created from direct casts of the originals in Athens.

While visitors to the Parthenon in Greece are treated to a construction site, visitors to Nashville’s replica can enjoy an art museum containing American landscape paintings and an expanse of green known as Centennial Park.

Once known as the “Athens of the South,” Nashville is not the only place where one can get a taste of the Parthenon in the United States. When Steel Magnate Andrew Carnegie stood on a Pittsburgh hilltop pondering an “Athens of the North” which would become Pittsburgh’s cultural center, what he had in mind was a cultural facility that would collect the old masters of tomorrow.


To house them, and perhaps to lend them some continuity from the ages, a neo-classical building in the spirit of the City Beautiful movement was erected to house an art gallery, natural science museum, library and music hall. Later the building would be adapted to include a room based on the Parthenon’s original interior space.

While the original building designed by Longfellow, Alden and Harlow was begun during the World’s Columbia Exhibition in Chicago, the Hall of Architecture, modeled on the Parthenon's cella, or inner sanctuary, was designed and added by Alden and Harlow in 1907, twelve years before Mr. Carnegie’s death.

The expansion further embraced the Greek tradition and provided halls for exhibiting casts of sculpture and architectural elements from Greece and Rome, as well as an opulent music hall foyer that rises 45 feet to an elaborate carved and gilded baroque ceiling atop colossal columns of green Tinos marble from Greece.

Moreover, the Hall of Sculpture is crafted of Pentelic marble from the same Greek quarries that supplied the stone for the Parthenon. The Hall of Architecture, which includes casts of the original Parthenon pediment friezes was created when collections of architectural plaster casts were numerous. Today the collection is unique in America and remains one of the three largest collections still on exhibit in the world. The collection also includes the largest cast in the world, the facade of the French 12th-century Abbey Church of St.-Gilles-du-Gard. While to the unknowing viewer the casts may seem like mere copies of the originals, some of the sculptures cast have deteriorated to the point where the casting actually more closely resembles the original form.

In the Hall of Architecture sits a smaller replica of the Parthenon created by students at Carnegie Mellon University, a school as endeared to Andrew Carnegie as the Museum.

Athens, of course, is named for the Goddess Athena. While a statue of Athena once stood in the Parthenon, today the only place to get a full sense of the building and the sculpture is in Nashville. Other replicas and recreations of Athena exist, but Nashville is the only place where Athena and her house are seen together.

The statue of Athena wasn’t in place for Tennessee’s late birthday in 1897, rather she was unveiled in 1990. Nashville’s Athena was created by artist Alan LeQuire and was modeled on descriptions given of the original. The modern version took eight years to complete.

The original Athena was created by Pheidias, known as the greatest sculptor of classical antiquity. The statue was unveiled and dedicated in 438 or 437 B.C. While it no longer exists, Athena appears on Athenian coins of the second and first centuries B.C. Later, Romans copied the statue in small-scale. Even today on the Acropolis you can see the outline of Athena’s base in the Parthenon.

The honor that Nashville holds may be short-lived, however. On a recent guided tour through the Hall of Architecture in the Carnegie Museum of Art, I thought I heard that a statue of Athena would soon adorn that space.

In any case, Centennial Park in Nashville and the Carnegie Museum of Art are great places to go to learn about Athena and the Parthenon, not to mention the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the British Museum in London, where the original 'Elgin Marbles' the Nashville reliefs were cast from are housed, the Louvre, where a Roman replica of Athena is on display and the Greek and Roman Galleries in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Oh, and if that’s all old hat, you might even consider a journey to see the Parthenon itself.

It was the first time I went there for figure drawing. As the event coordinator Phil said, there was no model training in the pittsburgh area and the gallery is by his acknowledgement the only one in the metro area which both provide figure drawing session and model training at the same time. "The next closest one that you can find is in UK, but they only offer cerfiticate, not training." Phil said, "here you have the artists giving you suggestions and help."

The session lasts for three hours with a break in the middle featuring complimentry food and snacks. Today's model is Myron who has been modeling for more than seven years. He talked about his first experience (always difficult as one can imagine) and his most difficult session (3 minutes gesture drawing lasting for three hours at CMU, which exhausted him as much physically as mentally). "You see someone put a price tag of 800 dollars for a painting, you think wow, that is expensive." He commented, "but you know, to get to that level, there is a long way. And the price is really not that much if you appreciate all the efforts made through years." He said that with his body straight and tight and his eyes looking down pensively as if a flash of growth of artists came into his mind.

If you are interested in figure drawing, please contact with Phil Keniston at 412-600-1664. He can also be reached through email (figuresession@verizon.net).

As with its past tradition, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art contitue its commitment to the regional artists.

From May 11, 2008 to June 8, 2008, the Juried Biennial will be hold featuring artsits from within a 100-mile radius of Greensburg.

Earlier this summer I picked up a stack of “The Arts” magazines at Wexford General Store, an antique mall on Old Route 19, north of Pittsburgh. I thought I was going for a quick diversion, and ended up in the 1920s New York art world. How wonderful antique shopping can be! I had not been familiar with the magazine and don’t know when it stopped being published. The dates I have go into the 1930s.

One item of immediate interest was the fact that Charles Sheeler took many photographs for the publication. The particular issue I am looking at now from July, 1923 has photographs of works by Constantin Brancusi by Charles Sheeler.

Sheeler’s beautiful photographs are accompanied by an article by “M. M.” about Brancusi in which the author contends that for Brancusi art doesn’t exist by itself, rather being an instrument for the propagation of the religious idea. I had admired works by Brancusi before, but never thought much about them. When reading the article in The Arts, I was immediately struck by a parallel between something as abstract as a Brancusi and painters of the Husdon River School, which flourished with the idea that god is perfect, and he having created nature, it is also perfect.

Brancusi did not seek to imitate of course, rather to “give the sensation of reality without reproducing or imitating.” The author continues “art must enter the spirit of nature and create, as does nature, beings with forms and lives of their own.” Although it may not be in the spirit of the intent, it would seem to me that sentence could translate into “art must become god, or at least commit a god-like act within nature.”

While appearing very modern, the work of Brancusi doesn’t step far from an old paradigm, just replaces Christianity or Transcendentalism with Taoism. Any appreciation for modern art does not, in the opinion of the article’s author, spread to the bulk of it in the 1920s. “Nothing has done more to harm modern art… than the avalanche of pseudo-artists who, having nothing to say, have wanted to speak a language of which they knew nothing,” he or she writes. “Let us not mistake modern art with modern artists, let us not mistake reality with appearances.”

It’s clearly the quality of art that the magazine emphasizes and it’s noticed elsewhere including in an article by Charles Downing Lay about the framing and hanging of oil paintings. After a series of guidelines for hanging paintings, including lining up the horizon lines in paintings hung side-by-side, not using wires to suspend paintings from rails, not using artificial picture lights and removing glass because of the reflections. After these “tips,” the author provides some insight into his art idea—it’s important to keep exploring art and little need to confine oneself to a period or style. “It is the quality of the picture, not the style of the time, which makes a picture valuable, and high quality is not confined to any age.”

“If we cannot buy pictures and outgrow them and pass on to something better it must be that the pictures mean little to us, and that our hearts are in the safe deposit box with the securities.” It would seem even the hanging of pictures calls upon a religious experience of sorts, not unlike Brancusi or the Hudson River painters. “Spiritually they minister to our highest desires for order, in a too disordered world, and for harmony in a life which is sometimes out of tune, and for balance when the blindfolded lady of the scales seems indeed blind to injustice and cruelty. Their influence for happiness cannot be denied no matter how little our spiritual growth has progressed.”

eBay Title: STUNNING FOREST VIEW, SENSATIONAL ATTRIBUTION! 1870's

Winning Bid: US $5,900.00
Number of Bids: 25
eBay number: 190134710763

This seller sometimes relists items that have been sold, the amount of which is high enough to wonder what's behind those "unsuccessful" transactions. From my memory, some of the paintings have been relisted more than twice. Each time there will be a few months hiatus period. The current winning bidder is from Denmark (the same as the seller) and has only 7 feedbacks. We will see whether the item will be relisted in the future.

The outcome result of Barridoff Auctioni on Aug 3 proves that there are plenty of money of investors and collectors, as long as there are quality of works in the market.

Most of the paintings were sold within estimation, with only a few expections such as the first lot (a 19th century painting of Hong Kong port with exceptional provnenance), a painting by Rackstraw Downes (Lot 148), Carmen Laffon's work (Lot 51) and in particular a sunset painting by William Henry Buck which was sold six times higher than the upper estimate.

However, works by bigger names were not quite that popular: an oil painting on board by George Inness was sold for $22,000, a study by Bierstadt was sold for $40,000. Aaron Gorson's powerful steelmill painting with several others didn't sell because the final bids were below reserved values.

But these are mostly small, in fact some can be called tiny if ones consider the normal size of Bierstadt.

In a recent Antique Digest, it was stated that with the current booming art market, collectors will pay price A for a work by a painter B because money can be accumulated fast in the strong economy while paintings by masters are only limited.

But still, results from Barridoff show that quality sells, or simply size matters, at least for some period or style.

More result can be found at here.

Finally, after four classes from "I can't draw" art class offered by Carnegie Museum of Art, I drew a picture that was satisfying, both for the picture itself and my pet

The course is compact with five sessions emphasizing on contour drawing, gesture drawing, pespective, value and figure drawing. It is fun, especially when what you draw is NOT what you do to make a living; thus even mistakes can be taken as light as the vine charcoal.

Having been taken photos for the past few years, it was quite different experience when pictures are created not through camera lens. For me, taking pictures is like finding Eden. As what Thomas Cole once said, the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our ignorance and folly, thus photographing is a process of sifting uncessary for the pure and beauty. Drawing is opposite: nothing is there on the white paper. If Eden can be found through the lens, then drawing lifts the person to the state of almighty whose power creates the paradise.

More classes can be found here.

This Friday and Saturday explore the Design Zone and Penn Avenue during Art Squared , a weekend of art featuring new art exhibits and studio tours on August 3 and 4.

The weekend of art kicks off on Friday evening, August 3, with Unblurred: First Fridays on Penn. Various galleries in the Penn Avenue Arts District (4800-5500 Penn Avenue) will open their doors and showcase a variety of artwork and performances.

The celebration of art continues in Lawrenceville on Saturday, August 4 from Noon to 5 p.m. with the Lawrenceville Artists’ Studio Tour. Visit the working studios of 12 artists to see how local art is made. Meet Design Zone artists who produce a wide range of art, including scuplture, drawing, metalwork, painting, fine furniture making, photography, and stained glass. Maps will be available at coffee shops along Butler Street.

In the upcoming auction by Barridoff, one of Gastave Courbet's landscape works is estimated between $30,000 to $50,000. Thus another painting offered on ebay which is attributed to him draws my attention.

It does bear a signature, which looks like Courbet. Unfortunately, that's all it appears to share with other Courbet works.

The seller copied the biography information from Wikipedia, yet didn't even tell who attributed the work, which was done by palette knife in an impressionistic manner. Well, if it is by the seller, then why didn't he read his own description that stated that Courbet painted in a realistic style? Plus the back of the canvas shows that the age of the painting that does not appear to show more than 100 years of age. (The seller dated the work in 1870's.)

Even worse, this is from a dealer who has more than 2700 feedback score and has sold many art works from Denmark. It may be carelessness on the part of the seller, but it would seem suspect that such a name could be added to a listing purely by accident. Like the not so old antique placed in a dusty corner, it looks like this attribution could be here to insure such a work will be “discovered.”

After all it is the name of the attribution which is too "sensational" to miss!

Attributions are, in the nature of the case, only offered for artworks whose authorship is not otherwise already clearly marked or signed. A signed painting is never "attributed", it is either considered genuine, or it is not. The signature itself forms the "attribution". And in the case of an artwork bearing what appears to be the artist's signature, only two judgments are possible: 1) that the signed artwork is genuine and therefore cannot be attributed, or 2) that the signed artwork is a fake and therefore cannot be attributed to the artist whose name it bears.

More can be read at here.

There were more young visitors in Andy Warhol museum than Carnegie Museum of Art on Friday night, possibly due to the fact that going through exhibitions sprawled on seven floors may kill someone old, possibly due to the wine tasting party which was hosted in the lobby.

On one hand, there are a lot to explore in the museum ranging from oil painting, photographs to films and Warhol’s own collections; on the other hand, the first floor, with walls of biography in words and pictures but few art work, is enough for a lot of visitors, including me.

More than 20 years have passed after Warhol’s death, his fame hasn’t faded. What he has drawn bring colossal sum of money from auction houses; but what he has said and the impact of his words cannot be simplified to the number of digits behind the dollar bill sign.

I am no high-brow art critics, but neither in his works nor from his minds can I find things that are of beauty or moving. Warhol prefers talkers to beauty, as he claims “one’s company, two’s a crowd and three’s a party”; but not every talk can be meaningful especially if one cannot keep his mouth shut. Warhol asked people only to look at the surface of his works, which bear his glamour like shimmering silver. But I probe no further, because the surface provides few clues about what it is. After all, among the three most influential American post-war artists, Hopper is reflective, Pollock is primal, yet Warhol refuses any summarization.

In a recently published book (“The most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth Century Media Culture” by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu), Gustave Courbet was described as the first artist who realized to win publicity is more important than to win jury prize in modern era; if so, Andy Warhol is then the consummate icon and true master of art publicity. Courbet allowed anyone to caricature him publicly while Warhol, even though saying too much, never precisely explained what he thought of his works, thus what we perceive him today has been metamorphosed and transfigured through media reviews. The media, naturally chose the most accessible and tangible perspective -- the artists, his words, his behaviors and even his life, but NOT his works.

People, especially young generation have always something to say about Warhol. For them, the wine tasting party at Warhol Museum is essentially Warholian-spirited; and going through the seven floors of works after half-drunk is only icing on the cake. The same group who can talk about Warhol for hours may stumble when the subject changes to Pollock or Rothko because the latter represent what the majority of artists are: inaccessible except through their artworks.

Wandering back to the museum lobby, I sneaked into the quiet basement, where I took some B&W photos from a self-served photo booth. The pictures have washed-out effect as if from the 50’s. In them, I have four different facial expressions. There were no motives behind them, just four different expressions, at the surface.