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.