This past weekend saw two paintings by George Inness at auction, one with a Pittsburgh connection. The first was offered by Fontain's Auctions in Massachusetts and sold for $10,000, exceeding the estimate of $5,000-$6,000. The price would seem very reasonable. We wrote to ask for a condition report and found that there was much inpainting in the sky. The auction house said they couldn't see any reason why the sky would have been impainted, however. The second seemed to be an early Inness and bears more likeness to a Hudson River School painting than the later style he was well known for. It shows a stream and birch trees. The interesting thing to those in Western, Pennsylvania is the label on the back "J.J. Gillespie, 35 Wood Street." At some point the painting had been in Pittsburgh's first art gallery. If you're in the market for an Inness or painting with a Pittsburgh connection, you may be in luck... Midwest Auctions had some sort of difficulty and the this Inness will be relisted.

The artists whose work will be featured in Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International were announced recently by Douglas Fogle, curator of contemporary art at Carnegie Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition. The show, on view from May 3, 2008, through January 11, 2009, will include some 200 works in diverse media by 40 emerging and established artists from 17 countries. As the pre-eminent international survey of contemporary art in North America, the 55th exhibition in the 112-years-old series continues the historic legacy set forth by previous Carnegie Internationals in presenting new and compelling works by artists from around the world.

Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International Artists

Doug AITKEN, United States, b. 1968
Kai ALTHOFF, Germany, b. 1966
Mark BRADFORD, United States, b. 1961
CAO Fei, China, b. 1978
Vija CELMINS, United States, b. 1938
Phil COLLINS, England, b. 1970
Bruce CONNER, United States, b. 1933
Peter FISCHLI, Switzerland, b. 1952 and David WEISS, Switzerland, b. 1946
Ryan GANDER, England, b. 1976
Daniel GUZM�N, Mexico, b. 1964
Thomas HIRSCHHORN, Switzerland, b. 1957
Richard HUGHES, England, b. 1974
Mike KELLEY, United States, b.1954
Friedrich KUNATH, Germany, b. 1974
Maria LASSNIG, Austria, b. 1919
Sharon LOCKHART, United States, b. 1964
Mark MANDERS, The Netherlands, b. 1968
Barry McGEE, United States, b. 1966
Mario MERZ, Italy, b. 1925, d. 2003
Marisa MERZ, Italy, b. 1931
Matthew MONAHAN, United States, b. 1972
Rivane NEUENSCHWANDER, Brazil, b. 1967
NOGUCHI Rika, Japan, b. 1971
Manfred PERNICE, Germany, b. 1963
Susan PHILIPSZ, Scotland, b. 1965
Wilhelm SASNAL, Poland, b. 1972
Thomas SCH�TTE, Germany, b. 1954
Ranjani SHETTAR, India, b. 1977
David SHRIGLEY, England, b. 1968
Paul SIETSEMA, United States, b. 1968
Rudolf STINGEL, Italy, b. 1956
Katja STRUNZ, Germany, b. 1970
Paul THEK, United States, b. 1933, d. 1988
Wolfgang TILLMANS, Germany, b. 1968
Rosemarie TROCKEL, Germany, b. 1952
Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL, Thailand, b. 1970
Andro WEKUA, Georgia, b. 1977
Richard WRIGHT, England, b. 1960
YANG Haegue, Korea, b. 1971

The lecture “Seeing the Industrial City: New York and Pittsburgh” given by the Westmoreland Director Judith O’Toole was held on a snowy gray Wednesday, in a small auditorium of the museum. The shocking impact of ash can school could be well understood even before the lecture was given if one had just spent a few minutes in the first floor landscape room before heading to the lecture. The western PA Scalp Level artists captured the sheer beauty of nature serenity that was, at that time, gradually eroded by industrial scenes. Yet in the dark pallet of ash can school, it is the mundane urbanity, noisy traffic with pollution and ordinary working class people that were celebrated. Between the death of George Hetzel and young John Sloan’s move to New York, only seven years elapsed; but the art had decided to advance in such an unprecedented pace that the un-morale-lifting ugliness arrived before the general public could even imagine it, not to mention criticize it with objectivity.

Interestingly, although the Eight were remembered as a group which initiated the ashcan movement, their styles and subjects varied greatly. Robert Henri, the most famous painter and the mentor for some others, painted with calmness and ease. In his portraiture, the sitters stand elegantly out of darkness bearing an intimate freshness. Ernest Lawson, by contrast, was not in the vein of Henri and more interested in pure landscapes. John Sloan, who worked as an illustrator for Philadelphia Inquirer, has the astonishing directness of brushwork, almost as effective and efficient as George Below, another student of Robert Henri.

Sloan’s New York captured a city where destruction and construction were equally dominating, a city of mass population of diversity and quintessentially a city of ever-lasting activity. There is always a strong sense of narration in all these paintings. The moments in the big oil paintings, neither the climax nor the beginning or ending of some events, have the immediacy that intrigues people into the scenes that could nevertheless be ignored in life. These were echoed by some of Sloan’s drawings also featured in the exhibition. At the turn of the 20th century he worked as a news-paper reporter in Philadelphia but soon lost the job when photographing gradually took it over. Those drawings are evident of Sloan’s most important training for his later style: quick narrative sketching that captured only the necessary details. His “Red Kimono on the Roof”, the simplified city background almost is almost bordering catoonish, but his remarkable brush strokes of describing a girl in red out of dull buildings with wood peg in her mouth make the work surprisingly inspiring, a combination of accident and familiarity, like a color version of Bresson’s decisive moment.

More Sloan’s lectures will be held in Westmoreland Museum of American Art in the coming weeks.

The last time I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art the Wrightsman Galleries was closed. One could glance in to the collection of mostly French Period rooms, but not enter. The history of the French Period Room in the United States dates back to the Gilded age that also saw the construction of large Boulevards in Paris.

“The Past Present and Future of the Period Room, a symposium in honor of the reopening of the Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts,” was held at the Met February 15 and I took the opportunity to attend.

The idea of the period room offers a unique potential, only surpassed by the house museum, to see decorative arts items in their intended context. At the time many of the period rooms in the Wrightsman Galleries were brought to the United States, all things French was highly sought after as the most advanced form of decoration and popular with dealers and decorators including Duveen and Allard and patrons including Morgan and Vanderbilt.

Its worth noting that many of the period rooms did not come to the U.S. destined for museums. The were instead installed into large New York town homes and estates in places like Newport, Rhode Island. The rooms were often bought and sold several times before ending up in their for all intents and purposes permanent homes in the Met. One even ended up in a Jerry Lewis movie after being sold to 20th Century Fox.

The symposium included a variety of lectures on subjects such as chandeliers, preservation, patrons and paneling. Most importantly, it provided an opportunity to revisit the rooms with the information gained from the symposium in mind.

Some of my favorites include the Bordeaux room once in French Neo-Classical home at 9 East 71st Street. My very favorite in the Wightsman Galleries however is not French at all, but the Dining Room from Lansdowne House designed by Robert Adam.

The Met also has a unparalleled collection of American Period Rooms, some of which are not currently on view. Another great place to see Period Rooms is the Brooklyn Museum.

I’m curious how prevalent the idea of a period room is in the homes of today’s elite. I would think that while artifacts are sometimes installed, the idea of a period room in a private residence is not common. I’d be interested in hearing stories to the contrary.

Even though Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin has used pastel extensively back in 18th century, the Pastel Society of America was only founded a little more than 30 years ago. (After the death of Mary Cassatt and William Merritt Chase, the pastel as a painting medium almost died.)

The opinion that only oil paintings are worth displaying still prevails. Even though pastel works does not need as much attentive preservation as other formats of works on paper such as watercolor or charcoal, there are far less popular in the market or in the museums. Carnegie Museum of Art does not have any pastel works on display while the permanent collection on display at the Butler Museum of American Art contains only one pastel work (by Mary Cassatt). The only exception would be Met probably because they have too many works and much more space.

The show which takes up one big room in the museum is a manifestation of how flexible pastel can be. Among them there are a photo-realism depiction of an alley in sunset by Brian Cobble, Daniel Greene’s full size incisive study of Robert Beverly Hale and Rae Smith’s impressionistic fogging scene.

The study of Robert Beverly Hale by Daniel Greene is magnificent. Simply it is the homage made by one of the most influential portrait artists to the one of the most foremost figure drawing teachers, also the best demonstration of the principles of chiaroscuro and observation from life. The contrast between warm and cool, light and shadow recedes behind an overall impression of an aged man of dignity and wisdom. But a close look of the techniques shows that every stroke is a tour de force of Mr. Greene’s confidence and mastery skills. The final version of the pastel painting has a more meditative feeling because Greene lowed down Mr. Hale’s eyes as if he is brooding and muted the yellowish background with more peaceful green .

If Greene’s work shows that pastel portrait can be as much effective as oil one, Sam Goodsell’s “Threshold” makes sure that everyone realize pastel can make a different portrait from oil medium. The surface of the paper shows through the lightly-covered layers of pastel its own neutral color in both human figure and the background, thus harmonizing the whole picture. Strokes are visibly light and relaxed, yet the natural spontaneity was built on solid form and great composition. Unlike a lot of pastel works I have seen, the palette has only a few limited colors; but they are just as efficient as the huge variety of colors that were used by Greene.

Rae Smith’s Morning Mist #7 is Eric’s favorite of all paintings in the exhibition. The pink purple color that dominates the fog scene is so unconventional yet totally convincing. The suggestive rising sunlight and the mystic depth of wood drew one into the scene.

Brian Cobble’s photo-realistic “Lexington Alley” portrays a sense of uneasiness under the wholesome, somewhat nostalgia sunset light. But a very close examination (which set the alarm on several times) showed that it is not a painting of hygiene touches. Mr. Cobble has put numerous tiny lines of different colors on top of each big color patch, almost like pointillism except the fact they are so light that optically they are submerged into the original color. In some way, he reminds me works by Edward Hopper with the same kind of loneness looming out of balanced geometric suburban setting. It is not the void of human figures in a picture full of evidence of human traces that stirred my feelings, it is the incongruity between austere harsh lines of geometric architecture and the rampant natural grasses which reclaim their territory in the suburban land that made me wonder: As people move out of the center cities, have they got closer to the nature?

The show will continue until Feb 29, 2008.

ARC’s new article about the top 225 most popular artists is interesting but astonishing to read. I love ARC as it is one of the most comprehensive online museums that provides digital reproduction images with amazing quality. But everyone would immediately question the credibility of the list. Why Bouguereau?

The fact that William Bouguereau is the most favorable artist by the ARC can obviously be seen from the enormous number of images provided by the website and from the fact that most of the webpages are decorated Bouguereaurianly. Therefore the popularity of the artists has been tremendously biased by how ARC is campaigning a few artists. With bombing pictures and links around each page, it is no wonder that visitors will more likely to click on William Bouguereau than Augustus John whom is even not represented by ARC.

The absurdity of the list which may be sniffed by scholars with laughs, sadly, reflects how general people may be influenced by the publicity. Even more astounding is that the internet begins to play a critical role in promoting certain artists. True, we can and should deny that the hit count is equivalent to the popularity, but one cannot and should not deny either that ARC’s popularity (through google search engine) definitely may imprint its own taste into some visitors.

The logical is quite simple here. The mistake is that ARC confused the number of views within its website with the real popularity, which is a much bigger and more complicated terminology. How can one measure the popularity of the old masters? By the number of works displayed in the museums? (Then sadly Vemeer cannot take any seat in the top list) By the number of books published? (Well, Bouguereau and Gerome are less studied in United States. After all, each nation has his own champions.) Or by the auction record? (Klimt is ranked after 160.) No one can give a definite answer about the popularity. More importantly, probably talking about popularity is meaningless since art survives only in the most personal involved manner. Unlike Pepsi against Cola, the popularity of art means nothing when it comes to individual.

Thus, it is imprudent that ARC names its own favorable list for the most popular. Through the list, it can be seen that ARC has a preference of French Academy Art or similar style that creates grand and beautiful images with perfected draftsmanship. Bouguereau, if not the best, has seldom be equaled for his culminating skills in such a style.

When the Frick Art and Historical Center at Point Breeze assembled a collection of Bouguereau for the special exhibition about one year ago, it did bring a lot of audience. Behind the unbelievable beautifully painted skin-tone and angle-faced peasant girls, I felt, as those critics in the 1920’s, that they are astonishing but not touching. The strict formality and subjects, accompanied with the expected composition and colors, makes the eyes fatigue quickly just after a few paintings. In other words, Bouguereau belongs to some minority group of artists whose works would arouse more acclaim if standing alone but may stale when combined together. (Interestingly, Met only shows two of William Bouguereau the last time I visited there. By contrast, they have a full room of Corot.)

There is a kind of coldness in all those paintings no matter whether it is about religious or idyllic as if the beautiful girls were cladded not by the immaculate glazes of opulent oil paint, but by Bouguereau’s seriousness. The irony between truly convincing three dimensional volume & human figure and the detachment and exactness of the feeling made me finally understand that Impressionism happened not accidentally as any art would face a sharp turn when a certain style or form reached the climax: At its peak, the art style strangulates instead of inspires. And the depressive residual can still be felt now.

Another interesting observation of the top list is that there is almost no modern or contemporary artists listed. By the fair use standard, unless the artist has died more than 100 years, the image copyright can always be a tacky issue. By totally avoiding the modern or contemporary artists (with some exception probably from other sources), ARC has created an incomplete museum that strikes the contrast between the most updated media format and the anachronous content.

In the end, just a trivia fact: George Inness, Eric’s most favorable painter is only ranked 129. He must regret that he should have clicked the pictures of Inness’ paintings every hour from ARC website.

Full article can be read at:

LINK