The Brooklyn Bridge was an engineering marvel that changed New York. On completion in 1883, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world, the first steel-wire suspension bridge, and the first bridge to connect to Long Island. The bridge was lucky enough to be built when stereoview cards were popular, and so today is a frequently appearing image on these cards.

Stereoview cards contain a set of photographs taken by a camera with two lenses. The images are about 2.5 " apart, which is approximately the distance between our eyes. When viewed in the prismatic lens of a stereoviewer, the brain perceives them as a single image in 3-D.

Stereoview cards are quite collectible today. They are relatively easy to find if you know where to look and show landmarks, genre scenes and important events. While not many of us alive today can remember when stereoviews were popular, many of us can remember the ViewMaster, which works on the same principle. (a nice bakelite viewmaster is a great thing to have too!)

Three images of the Brooklyn Bridge include one by the Keystone View Company from Meadville, Pa; one from William H. Rau in Philadelphia and one from Underwood & Underwood from New York. In 1920, the company sold most of its catalog of views to the Keystone View Company.

While for the most part stereoviews are associated with the Victorian-era, the Keystone View Company and a subsequent company manufactured the cards into the 1970s. If you search for the cards on ebay, you may find some pornographic images which found their way onto the cards in the 1950s.

It's difficult to determine the actual photographer of many of the images. Of particular interest is the work of William H. Rau, a noted landscape photographer who was at one point on assignment for the Pennsylvania Railroad. His work is in the collections of several American Museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Rau also photographed the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon. I am not sure how many of the images on cards with a Rau label were actually taken by him.

Museums are always collecting. I have found a tea pot in the Brooklyn Museum which was produced in the 1990’s for Target stores. Based on my observation, today major traditional American institutions mostly concentrate the contemporary arts. Such practice is NOT because they have changed their directions; on the contrary it is the direction that they have always been following: collecting contemporary art. By committing collecting arts through the times, they’ve shaped the aesthetic tastes of the public and quietly assembled works when they were still affordable.

That is not the case for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by Alice Walton. No major American art museums will feel its 19th century collection complete without paintings by Hudson River school artits, early portrait painters like Copley, Stuart or Peale. The same can be said for works by Andy Warhol or Edward Hopper to lead the 20th century collection. But without years of primary collecting, Crystal Bridges has to start from scratch for everything.

Last Friday’s press release showed that Francis Guy’s “A Winter Scene in Brooklyn” was the museum’s latest acquisition. The painting was exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum in 2006 along with their own version. Possibly painted by Francis Guy’s last year, the two were almost identical except the one in Brooklyn Museum lost about 2 feet on the left side due to a fire. It was said that the one bought by Alice Walton once had a painted balustrade along its lower edge but was trimmed for unknown reasons. If so, the feature that evoked the artist’s window ledge would surprise all those 20th century artists who claimed inventing more naturalistic or accidental cropping compositions. At a time when there is no nationally recognized style or high demand for landscape paintings, Guy, trained as a tailor and silk dyer, painted his window scenes no less than five times.

I am personally not a fan of Francis Guy. His paintings have tremendous historical value for sure. “Tontine Coffee House” in New York Historical Society, painted in 1797 tells a vivid story how Wall Street came into being. The village scenery of Front Street and Fulton Street, long disappeared after the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, provided scholars of the architectural, economic, social and ethnic views of Brooklyn in 1820. Guy, like other early landscape painters, has a peculiar detail-oriented tendency. The dramas, anecdotes, and humors were found here and there in carefully arranged objects and humans to provide a narrative sub context. If Hudson River School is going to be blamed for their tedious copy of nature, Guy, their predecessor, showed an amateurish understanding of naturalism by giving everything sharp edges.

But the painting does have its charm. Instead of looking from the far back to grasp the magic light in Durand’s landscape, one is enticed to get as close as possible to examine the daily life of the people in Guy’s “A Winter Scene in Brooklyn”. (About 40 names of the houses, stores, shops or people are identified in Guy’s painting! Don’t forget to look at the person on the chimney!)

But I would doubt such findings as the black person’s name is Samuel Foster would have the same "wow" effect in Bentonville, AR. A Winter Scene in Brooklyn is essentially Brooklynite. For those people who jog on the promenade and wonder why there are so many Asian wedding photo sessions under the Brooklyn Bridge, the painting reminds them of Brooklyn, although it has become much bigger and more diverse, it still holds a home feeling. The visitors to Crystal Bridges may successfully identify the painting as a primitive landscape, yet they would not have the chance to hop on the subway from the museum and get off at Clark Street and overcome all the obstacles now blocking the ferry to see what it's like now and thus deeply appreciate the genius of Francis Guy.

The deaccession at the National Academy (NA)seems to be related to Crystal Bridges too. News broke out that Nation Academy sold two important paintings (one by Church, one by Gifford) from their permanent collection to pay their bills. Where the two paintings went has yet to be revealed, but the disclosure of selling works reminds New Yorkers of the outcry of the public when New York Public Library sold Kindred Spirits by Durand to Crystal Bridges Museum.

I have been to National Academy for both visiting exhibition and doing research. They do have an extensive permanent collection since every new academician is supposed to submit a diploma painting. But they don’t have a permanent place to exhibit them. Their permanent collection thus is most likely to be in the storage. This coming February, NA will have an exhibition to highlight some of their permanent collection. I agree with Eric that it is better to show artworks in public regardless of the location than store them in the dark room.

National Academy also mentioned that these two paintings were not diploma works but were donated by another member. This statement, in my mind, neither legitimizes nor invalidates their deaccession activity. Just because it is donated does not make a painting less important or less valuable. Ethnically, selling donated objects (more common in Natural History Museums nowadays because some donors insisted to donate their whole collection in the past) is in general against the donor’s intention. The donor of the two paintings must have regarded NA the most proper organization to place the asset. On the other hand, legally it is up to the museum who determines how to dispose the artworks when they do not want to show them permanently. I hope that the original donor would be happy to know that sometime soon the two paintings would be hung publicly.

My two cents: Don’t blanketly donate artwork to museums, at least not in unrestricted terms. They have thousands of objects collecting dust in the darkness for years. Why bother another one?

It's not a secret among antique dealers that folks in the American South have a better appreciation for American Decorative Arts. I suppose to some extent this may extend to American paintings. I haven't noticed a tour of American Art before 1880 being offered at the nearby Brooklyn Museum. Although there have been tours of the Dutch houses in the museum, I haven't noticed a tour being offered of the 19th Century Period Rooms.

Now there's some speculation that Alice Walton, already the possessor of Durand's Kindred Spirits, has bought two paintings from the collection of the National Academy. On an emotional level, it's sad to see them leave New York. From a practical point of view, I'd say a painting on display in Arkansas is better than one stored in New York.

I hope that a new administration will help bring some renewed pride in America and interest in objects and paintings from the first century of our existence. We need the likes of Alice Walton, like Ford, Rockefeller, Hogg and DuPont before her, to breath new life and interest to American Art and Decorative Arts. I hate seeing our great collections of American Art overlooked. Nature hates a vacuum and the vacuum that New York creates, Arkansas fills.

No word than the nature dreamer can better describe Blakelock, whose poetic paintings are now exhibited in National Academy. “The Unknown Blakelock” brings some of the key works of Ralph Albert Blakelock from the museums and collectors of the country into the National Academy.

The three moonlight paintings, one of the two major subjects that associated with him, were hung side by side in the gallery. The silhouetted massive trees, the greenish bluish sky, and the high-keyed moon of heavily impasto vividly display mysterious scenery which is at once intimate, personal yet surreal. It is almost monochrome. Its two dimensional graphic pattern was laid down on super rugged surface: the texture itself provides an additional layer of viewing: abstract, accidental yet fascinating like a magic spell.

The scales of the paintings are medium or small, yet my heart was still immersed in the poetic moon light when I stepped out of the museum after the research on Henry Golden Dearth in the museum archives. I knew a second visit was a must. It didn’t take me that long to go back: in fact only about 24 hours. Daingerfield, his first biography writer remarked that Blakelock only depicted two phases of nature: twilight and moonlight. If so, moments of solitude and silence are a requisite of appreciation. For a long time, there were only Eric and me surrounded by the paintings of Blakelock. (Though next to Guggenheim, the National Academy was not crowded on Saturday.)

There are two pieces of facts that really contrast with the underappreciated status of the artist and draw my attention: Blakelock is the one of the most forged American artists if not the most forged artist in America. And his work in the collection of National Academy and Sheldon Museum of Art are among the favorites of the artist members and local practicing artists.

However, Blakelock stands by himself as one of the less known artists from art history point of view: A follower of Hudson River School at his early career; an outsider of the Barbizon school. And even though was paired with Ryder for the abstract patterns, forms in their works, in general only Ryder is credited as the precursor of the American abstract modernism.

In those moonlight or twilight paintings, I saw the sculpted layers of paint being built up and scrapped down and the forming of paint partially by consciousness, partially by subconsciousness and accidents. No doubt Blakelock lived in his own realm which is quite different from those of Barbizon school: Dwight Tryon and Alexander Wyant belong to the old world, even though they have abandoned the keen observation of nature and favored a more evocative personal expressiveness. Blakelock, by painting from his internal feeling and insights, had gone further to show the dream world that did not has its prototype in the real world. If Henry Ward Ranger dabbed the color with varnish to advance the range of oil paint from translucent to opaque, Blakelock’s obsess with the ruggedness of canvas anticipated the 20th century modern art when the surface structure of paint speaks as loud as the content itself.

There are other works that surprised me by their being un-Blakelock. A painting of sunset with seals has dazzling colors: The warm orange red on top of blue sky and sea water is not something untypical. However, if the pattern of the tree branches surrounded by the yellowish cloud echoes Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in his painting which bears the same title, here the range of the colors that he adopted plays dramatic music scores. (I could almost hear the hymn of the splendid sunset sung by those seals painted suggestively.) A still life painting of bee on thistle blends the hi-fi effect of blowing up details with its mysterious background. It does not have the exactness and perfection as Georgia Keefe, but the light pinkish/purple flower out of the hazed dark green accented by a oversized bee is so audacious in its high-contrast that highly decorative flowers boldly attacked by John Lafarge would look from the old world.

The second room in the exhibition displayed works in a more coherent style. The Pegasus with a few others seems to be more about patterns, forms and shapes than what they really represent. A few were painted probably in a rush that the wood panel corner was left unpainted; others seem to have lost the original colors due to the coal tar ingredient used by Blakelock. (His paintings must be disastrous project from conservator’s point of view.) The moonlight owned by and Sheldon Museum of Art, hung above fireplace of the room. If color (or devoid of color) and music can be used to describe the three moonlight paintings grouped together in the first room, this undated moonlight reminds me of late Blakelock’s mental illness. The clouds around the moon bear striking contrast between fire-burning neuroticism and suppressive coldness. Like the thistle, the clouds popped out visually and physically. I looked up: it was hung high and not much detail can be obtained. The natural light shone onto the surface, but the night is still dark, irresistible and chilled my spine. It is a lonely night, and like his other paintings, there exudes a sense of unease and insecurity. Beyond that, words fail; only emotion stirs like the burning clouds. A plaque on the painting next to it comments:

What if the clouds one short dark night, hide the blue sky until morn appears
When the bright sun that cheers soon again will rise to shine upon earth for endless years

The Unknown Blakelock is on view at National Academy Museum till Jan 4, 2009.

In the 20th Century there have been a number of approaches to painting industrial America. It took some time for artists to work their way up to the task, and some of the first attempts were corporate. In fact, the notion of corporate sponsorship remains in much of industrial art throughout the century.

One place to start is in 1855 with "The Lackawanna Valley" by George Inness. The painting, now in the National Gallery, was commissioned by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and depicts the company's first roundhouse at Scranton, and integrates technology and wilderness within an observed landscape. As his career progressed, Inness would not continue to depict a landscape blended with industry.

The word "industry" in the 21st Century (and late 20th), might just as easily be referred to as technology. A pioneer at bringing technology to his art and work is the photographer William H. Rau. Like Inness, Rau was commissioned, this time by the Pennsylvania Railroad. As revolutionizing as the technology of the steam train was on transportation, photography was as much on the art world. The picturesque images taken by Rau introduced Americans and Europeans to the scenic countrysides not easily accessible before the train. Curiously many of Rau's photographs do not show trains. The images show a peaceful co-existence between nature and human civilization. They are not unlike a landscape by William Wall, or a painting by Russell Smith. The difference is in the Wall painting, there's a sense of timelessness, as if the state of things would remain that way forever. That's a popular notion in sentimental paintings, but not one embraced by Rau. Many of his images provide a clear sense that there is a steady march of progress. An obvious example is in an image of a half-built Philadelphia City Hall.

Corporate commissioning of industrial art may have reached its climax in a series of calendar prints done by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1930s-1950s. During the war effort, the images even incorporated politics, and as government and industry merged in the market, so did they in the commissioned art. One of my favorite by Dean Cornwell shows Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeve as smoke billows and trains thunder below. There's a certain fascist element to it, one that has repeatedly surfaced into the 21st century in war time. Through the mid-century, smoke had been alligned with progress. The sentiments of the Hudson River painters are completely absent from this image, and never again would industry and the pollution it created be so glamorized.

Some of the best images of industrial America can be found in the work of Aaron Henry Gorson, who painted Pittsburgh's steel mills. Gorson seems unmotivated by the politics that often invade art, the sense of progress, environmental damage or workers rights. When you look at his work, you don't see a march of progress, rather an attempt to see industry for what it was physically. Gorson finds the beauty in industry and captures it. The smoke, the colors, the reflections in the water-Gorson seems to look at it all as if it were a tree or sunset. Gorson's work was commissioned, however, by Andrew Carnegie, Mrs. W. S. King, the wife of a glass manufacturer; the Mellon family; and Charles Schwab. Like many of his benefactors, Gorson later moved to New York and began painting scenes of the city and views of the Hudson River, but continued to create works showing the steel mills of Pittsburgh.

Most associated with industrial art today is Charles Sheeler. I found it amusing that a web site about "Objectivist Art" listed Sheeler as an Objectivist artist. Objectivism is the philosophy of writer Ayn Rand. I felt like emailing the creators of the site this quote I located by Sheeler.

"I find myself unable to believe in Progress--Change, yes. Greater refinements in the methods of destroying Life are the antithesis of Progress. Where is the increase in spirituality to be found?"

I'm in my infancy in regards to my knowledge about Sheeler, but it would seem he is more likely being critical of the depersonalization of industry, or just depicting the way in which we can see the world around us.

Sheeler was also commissioned, by Ford Motor Company to photograph and make paintings of their factories and by Fortune magazine to "reflect life through forms…" that "trace the firm pattern of the human mind." Sheelers paintings were based on photographs, and so even the more personal painting had its origins in the mechanical photograph. I don't know for sure if Sheeler, known as a precisionist and modernist, was criticizing the loss of humanity in the modern world. To me there's elements of both admiration from the shape and form of architecture and machinery, and some sense of loss. However, when he painted the barns in Doylestown, the technique is no different. We may, on the other hand, be thinking too much about it.

"To a man who knows nothing, Mountains are Mountains, Waters are Waters, and Trees are Trees," Sheeler wrote. "But when he has studied and knows a little, Mountains are no longer Mountains, Waters are no longer Waters, and Trees are no longer Trees. But when he has thoroughly understood, Mountains are again Mountains, Waters are again Waters, and Trees are Trees."

Like artist William Merritt Chase during his life, I have often enjoyed the beauty of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. In the days before the park was developed, city dwellers (living ones) might have found retreat in nearby Green-Wood Cemetery. Founded in 1838, this "park" for the dead was often enjoyed by the living.

I had known Chase painted scenes in Prospect Park. What I didn't know on my first trip to the cemetery was that Chase was buried there. In fact, he is one of a number of artists for whom Green-Wood is a final resting place.

The map you can pick up in the gatehouse lists several of these artists including Louis Comfort Tiffany and John LaFarge, both known for their stained-glass, as well as Jean-Michael Basquiat. I had also known cabinet-maker Duncan Phyfe was buried there and made a point to find that spot (I wondered if he might be laid on a lyre sofa inside). [Update 11-09-08. Yesterday I learned Joseph Meeks is also there].

On further inspection the list grew. Both Thomas and William Hart, New York landscape painters, are in Green-Wood; as are Currier and Ives. While Asher B. Durand's most famous work may be on its way to Arkansas, his grave is in Green-Wood. The painter of urban life, George Bellows is there along with John Frederick Kensett, a luminist painter and founder and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The list goes on... Eastman Johnson, Thomas Crawford, Violet Oakley, George Catlin, William Holbrook Beard, Edwin Forbes, I suspect there are more. And this doesn't touch poets, architects, singers, musicians or actors.

Some might think it morbid to visit a cemetary. Yet these resting places are filled with art and sculpture, both in the monuments and the landscape. Green-Wood Cemetery in particular is also apparently filled with artists. I can understand why they might have thought this was a good place to spend eternity.

"Where can I see it? "
"Why can't you put them into DVD and make them available?"

These are the two questions from the panel discussion of Jesper Just's Romantic Delusion exhibition last Saturday at Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Just tried to answer them in a positive way, while the curator Patrick Amsellem kept silent about the touchy questions. It is another moment of romantic delusion when public's naive questions are averted through careful phrasing. (In this case, Just's just-so-so English helped a little bit.) I looked at Eric when hearing such questions. We both smiled, but said nothing. But we know: Artworks exhibited in major museums are not meant to be affordable, or should I rephrase this way--artworks that can be bought in mass production with abundant availability won't be exhibited in museums?

It is true that no gig-lee prints can substitute an original painting even though the coloration is identical. Photos and sculpture are more tangible. Photos can be reproduced from the negative films or now a digital file infinitely and sculpture can be cast hundreds years after the molds were made. On the other hand, the audience have their legitimate reasoning. Videos are a different type of art media. The copy process from one disk/tape to another does not diminish the quality of the artwork. So why not if one of the goals of his art is to outreach the public?

Nothing is more controversial when the originality of the video comes to the panel discussion. If all arts are supposed to be consumed, the consumption of video art is the closest to the commercial activity: Between the clear defined start and end, the minds watch the specific clips as time goes by. Some people may get confused or bored, but that may happen in commercial movies too.

The difference between the consumption of commercial movies and of art videos lies in the density. The density of information, emotions and subcontexts in Just's Bliss and Heaven is so great that the second time I watched it brought me some new thoughts and understandings. of equal amount as the first time. Seldom do people go to watch the same movie twice, because blockbuster movies are meant to be easily grasped and lightly consumed with coke and popcorn. The length, on the other hand, goes the opposite. I doubt one can concentrate more than one hour for a movie made by Just. He himself admitted that he would probably never make a commercial one. The ambiguity lies in the concise format and the richness of the emotions will be diluted if a story is told in clarity and well-defined Hollywood style.

"The market for this type of movies is small. " Jesper confessed in the end. "And the cost to make such movies is large." But the question is who betrays who facing the embarrassing result that art movies cannot find audience while audience cannot find art movies? Just said he would have another show in a gallery next March, before that all New Yorkers will have to come to Brooklyn Museum for the four short movies. (He has made more than 20 movies. so far)

From a collector's point of view, I have no desire to own a movie, even if I can have it autographed, even if I can watch it a dozen times and still find something new. I may, if possible, go to the gallery to watch them and thus consuming them. A necessary channel should be built to connect the two parties who complains "the man who is not there".

Jesper Just has a website. If you are interested, visit Jesper Just.

With Judy Kim, curator in Exhibition Division of the Brooklyn Museum, I had the opportunity of looking at the installation of the upcoming Gilbert and George exhibition opening on Oct 3, 2008. The exhibition installation is quite fa way from being ready, in fact all I saw is a model of the special exhibition space with miniature photos representing the real ones that had been carefully selected by the artists to suit the architecture design of the museum and would be hung within two weeks.

I have not been an avid fan of modern arts; nevertheless it always strikes and intrigues me to learn about the abundant and colorful personal lives of modern artists. In a recent talk at Met about J. M. W. Turner, audiences gave laughs when they heard the anecdote that the first American collector of Turner called his works “a bit indistinct”. Such incomplete or even inaccurate stories just enrich the public’s view of artists and brought viewers closer to the canvas from a different dimension.

Gustave Courbet, in my mind, is the first painter that extensively and intentionally commercialized his privacy and made his personal life accessible to public critics as much as his works. In a recent book “The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture” by Chu, it was said that Gustave certainly knew being covered by the media was definitely an advantage compared to stay behind the canvas void of characters, even though the media spotlights may be focusing on controversy or scandals.

By the time of Andy Warhol, artists had raised their own personal life to such important career access that it not only entangled with their works, but also was the framework under which each individual work sprouts out bearing the birth mark of their lives.

Just as any works of art should not be cheaply copied to tarnish its freshness and originality, Gilbert and George have been carefully fending and preening their personal images so that they are enough covered with eccentricity or modernity but not to a degree to pierce through the mystery veil of their living as an art work. After all, great works of art rely on their inexplicability and multifaceted perspectives; a nailed definition means a loss in another possible angles. Gilbert and George call themselves living sculptures, yet although the sculptures have been greatly observed, no biographical material has come mature for such a long period of partnered career: Even more, the elimination of their surnames means their names have been modernized as an integral part of their works and such elimination actually carries additional interpretative potential for those who like to pry.

And like their personal lives which blur the difference between unostentatious reality and staged performance, Gilbert and George’s works as a whole are a striking contrast between ever-changing artistic probing and stylish consistency. Their techniques have changed constantly from black and white blocked projection photo making in the 1970’s to bold colored collages in 1980’s to nowadays digitalization from 2003 onward. And their topics reflect what were current in Britain such as urbanization, race issues or terrorism. On the other hand, they stick to their style for more than four decades. Being able to speak in the same language grammatically with possibly additional vocabulary for a variety of subjects may sound easy in life, but sticking to artistic principles in the flood of new styles/trends and even faster-paced changes in critics tones is admirable.

In some sense, the way they call their life a work of art is legitimate in that their photos contain their own portraiture in abstract or sensual settings. In B&W, they were young and avant-garde experimenters. In the eighties, they opted for vibrancy, somewhat tacky colors and acted godlike to look down at young, beautiful teens. And now they have become gloomier, darker, angrier, or in the most recently series alien to the new century. The upcoming show will not display their works chronically, but the sensual and psychological changes in how they present themselves into the large photos would touch those who can separate the most personal self projection and examination from the over-saturated stained-glassed surroundings.

Looking at the slides, it is hard for me to reconcile their works with detail-oriented photos. Even though they are largely made from techniques of photo making, they are graphic, collage in nature and chromatically distorted in colors, a meditative dichotomy between flattening in 2D and deepening in meanings. The monstrous scale and devoid of minutia of reality settings calls for attention and interpretation of every viewer.

When asked about how progressive and revolutionary they are in the history of modern art, Judy urged us to think what were popular and main-stream and what were not in the 1970's . In the era of art market still being dominated by paintings, their probing into capturing their momentary life art into life size photos stripped off anything unnecessary must be explorative. Then I was stunned one of their images made in 1980's: Twenty Eight Streets is a photo collaged with street signs from London, almost with a machine-like coolness. In the middle, however, there was a wall, captured with naturalism in B&W, but presented abstractly since it can only be seen through two human-shaped holes among all the street signs. It is as if someone has burned the machinery conformity to show the empty wall, though nothing special, radiating a sense of humanity, partly from the human shape holes, partly from the same warmth due to the organic yet accidental arrangement of film grains that was epitomized from Bresson and his contemporary. This is the only work that among all in the slideshow does not have their clear portraits. In the age of digitalization, they were late technique adopters. One thing for sure, they would probably never grasp the master level of photoshopping which is so rampantly taught in most of the design schools. But Gilbert and George, by presenting them in a film-styled hollow grayness, show their homage and root in traditional photograph art or art in general: In front of art, they are serious and thought-provoking, as they have been through their lifelong living performance; thus why would they be washed away by the advent of the new technology?

Most Chinese of my generation have an inexplicable profound love of Monet and his impressionism fellows. When Internet was not available in most of China in the late early 1990’s, Western Art seldom reached the public outside the major art institutes. Among the few magazines for English language education, quite a few chose famous artworks for their covers and occasionally some biographical articles were published not for art purpose, but instead as general reading materials. That was unfortunately or in some way fortunately my first art education. I remember Rembrandt’s dramatic light, a few Flemish works, but most often there would be some Impressionism works.

For most of the Chinese students, Rembrandt is hard to appreciate. His brushworks can hardly be appreciated without standing in front of the real paintings; and his subjects mostly human beings in the context of religions or history necessitate a not-so-short introductory article which never existed in such magazines. Impressionism paintings, on the other hand, choose the landscape which always has a universal appeal regardles of regions or languages. What’s more, without any difficulty its bright and high contrast style always caught my eyes immediately even on a small print compared to the dim forehead/nose light from Rembrandt.

In the early 1980’s, China in the post-Culture-Revolution period, was in a cautious mood to catch up with the world with respect to art. On the one hand, there had been a void in Western Art appreciation (except Russian schools) for such a long time, anything that could fit in would do. On the other hand, the shadow of linking Western Art with reactional, degenerate and debauchery forms still lingered. Even though the young generation would love to embrace the current trend, their minds were not ready. For them, the unavoidable ideological wrap on top of futurism, abstract, or pop art had to wait another 10 years to disintegrate when the capitalism itself gradually rooted in the political and economic infrastructure.

Thus, Impressionism, the newest or the latest classical Western Art, naturally became the top choice or the safe bet. Impressionism has been around for more than a century, thus its archaic identity marks its irrelevant to the current capitalistic world. However impressionism, by and large, is still active in the Western world. The painterly looking was such a departure from the traditional art that it for sure shocked the eyes of young Chinese artists at that time. Most importantly, the way impressionists painted: plein-air, broken color, complimentary vivant color-theory, dry, chalk style brush stroke, and even the pointillism that are characteristics of Impressionism liberated people’s mind about what defines art. (I remember an article talked about artworks is not a snapshot of realism, but an emotional representation under a controlled mind of intellectual.)

When I came to US, I went to National Gallery of Art and Art Institute of Chicago where I spent most time in those impressionism galleries. They are hard to miss because these galleries are filled with Asian faces. The aesthetic pleasure from looking at the artworks far way to get a whole feeling and then speculating the creation procedure with close-by study had such a charm that it would be so boring afterwards to look at works by the 18^th century old masters. For visitors with no or little Western Art background, the ones that please the eyes win.

But as I returned at the second and third time in the National Gallery of Art at DC, I began to get tired of the vivid color pallets of the paintings. Artworks, for both the creators and the audience, are supposed to be liberating-- or at least inspirational; but were they painted by habit? Years later, I read the book by Wolf Kahn who said artists once grasped the new skills should move on otherwise their spontaneity would fall into the victims of their habit. I began to question myself whether it is a fallacy to rely purely on eyes whose pleasure tends to be superficial. After all, aren’t great artworks glorifies more at the second or third look?

At the same time, I was attracted by a beautiful autumn scene by Corot in the National Gallery of Art. It was low-key in tone, comparatively small in size and harmonious in color; but there was a profound nostalgia in the painting: a dirt road, rustling trees and a traveler on horse. It is something that I have not experienced before, but somehow I knew how Corot must have felt about it when he painted. That began my love to Barbizon school, which preferred poetic and personal expression of humble or mysterious landscape under unified dark tone.

Today, when I look back, it may seem a little bit absurd that I was not obsessed by Impressionism at that time, but I did appreciate that at least Monet brought me into the galleries and museums. The history of art is a long chain of different schools and styles, all of which contribute. A new style must have some sort of prototype before and serves as foundation to later ones. Interestingly, Henry Ward Ranger, the founder of Old Lyme School and the most important American Barbizon School painter left the art colony four years after he started the group, simply because Child Hassam brought a sharp change to the style in the artist colony. 

“It is too civilized”, Ranger said when he left. (But he kept good personal relationship with Hassam.) Later Ranger, in an interview, expressed what he thought about the impressionism:

They did not recognize that a “low-tone phase of nature painted too light is as false as a high-keyed phase painted too low.” In the end, this school, which began in defiance of convention, created rigid conventions of its own with only certain colors representing light. Purple was always shadow and nature was painted just as it was. Earlier artists painted in studios and the paintings were the refined result of long and ardent toil out-of-doors.

The ever-changing transient light, that is quintessential Impressionism, is not what defined the Northeast. In some way, the New England autumn scenes find their voice through Ranger by his fastidious application of yellow, brown glaze for an overall warm atmosphere. Even in Pittsburgh, I felt the autumn overwhelmingly breadth-taking, with nostalgia and sorrow. The depth, silence and smell would make a light pallet-execution unbearable for puritan ethics. True, there is color even in the shadow; but as Ranger put it there must be a fundamental law obeyed in the art that persists through all ages: a quality that is always sane and untouched by all passing fads.

In reading the book “American Art In the Barbizon Mood,” I am surprised to find out American Barbizon school is yet to be defined even though the exhibition was held in Washington DC more than 30 years ago. Tonalism is in general used to define the same school, although tonalism itself is such a very vague term that when Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco had the exhibition of American Tonalism paintings, the show featured the painters Whistler and Dewing along side with Tryon and Eaton.

It is not a surprise that such a term as American Barbizon is not firm since the school itself did not last very long. To some extent, it serves as a bridge between the Hudson River School style and American Impressionism. The early works of Inness bear strong influence from Cole and Durand. It was only after the American Civil War that Inness began to forgo the niggling detail that once dominated the large canvases. Later, when Henry Ward Ranger came to Old Lyme to build up his colony, he found out that although he could attract a group of like-minded painters, he could not stop the trend. The Old Lyme sees the rise of Impressionism from Willard Metcalf and Theodore Robinson, both of whom were Old Lyme painters.

But most of all, it is the American Barbizon itself that somewhat distorted, if not betrayed the group of painters that it represented. True, some of them may have seen the silvery grayness of Corot or solemnity of Millet even though it was very rare to see these works within US before the civil war. Some of the painters such as Inness and Robert Crannell Minor even went to Europe for study, however most of these painters grew by themselves and may develop their artistic styles in their own course. To say they are the followers of Corot was more a critic’s idea and dealers’ promotion than their own intention.

And what a difference it makes when the so-called Barbizon school crossed the Atlantic! For Millet, the rural life bears the same amount of the sentimentality and elegance as the perfect male and female bodies in the hands of David and Ingres. But for Americans painters, there was no such passion found from mundane peasantry life. How could they, right after the civil war, when farming was still associated with the south and black labor. Thus in William Morris Hunt, there was a broader subject matters that associated with the general pastoral life without giving out the hint of laborious farming.

Barbara Novak, in her book about Hudson River School paintings, said that the grand scaled, untainted landscape is god’s gift to Americans and thus the vistas with magic light show the audience the new continent in the way God perceives it. If so, such notion began to shake in the minds of American who had gone through civil war and Darwinism. The rapid industrialization in post-civil war period saw fast change in Northeast landscape. God’s garden was no long viewed as American’s superiority against the European’s old civilization; instead it gave in for railroad, farming and bourgeoisification. Thus, it was natural that a group of artists began to view the landscape in a more nostalgic mood. Instead of looking down at the grandeur with a dominating control of details and free of any trace of human brush touch, they began to walk into the woods and experience them as human beings. The cool objective mind softened to the stirred emotions that had been constantly worried about the erosion of the landscape from industrialization. Visible strokes were implemented to enhance the live experience as if the landscape breathed its texture into the canvas.

When John Francis Murphy was praised as American Corot in the late 1870’s, he quietly saved those reviews about him but said little. He may have seen some paintings by French Barbizon painters, but the Mecca of Barbizon paintings in US at that time was not in New York but in Boston where Vose Gallery fervently promoted the school. But Murphy didn’t have to speak out for the inspiration of his style: He just lived with it. He took the occasion to visit Walden Pond and transplanted pine seedlings from Thoreau’s cabin to his Arkville Studio.

There, right by the pond, Thoreau already dictated what would be painted after his death by the painters of the next generation:

The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. … a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation.

I have known the name of the painter John Francis Murphy since I began to study American paintings. He was associated with the American Barbizon and Tonalism schools without geographically joining the Old Lyme Colony.

Thus when a painting of Murphy offered by John Moran Auction’s showed up, it immediately caught my eye.

The painting was dated in 1876 which was a crucial year for Murphy. In 1874, Murphy spent the late summer and early autumn in Keene Valley, a trip that cost him almost all his finished work. The trip was a turning point for the 31 year old painter, it was both a success and a failure. He was photographed in the company of Winslow Homer and enjoyed a sense of professional acceptance from fellow painters like Wyant, Tryon; but when he tried his best at a fashionably large canvas in the manner of Church and Bierstadt, he couldn’t transform lakes and mountains into miracles of light and air. Therefore, there were no further attempts in his career to pursue grandeur or sublimity, in his own words: he could add nothing to a genre already mastered by his “seniors”. In 1875, he left Chicago to live in New York. He lived on 205 East 32^nd Street. His career had a slow start. In fact, the first six months of 1876 brought him only $76 income. But it was this period that he began to mature into his style: the fondness of vapor, shadow, and mystery, all painted in a soft mood.

It is not a surprise that Murphy’s most admired writer was Thoreau. It was the intimate nature, or habitable wildness that dominated his canvases. Interestingly, by the time Murphy was elected to become a full academician, the Hudson River School style gradually became obsolete and Americans grew to favor paintings that appealed to feelings first instead of the intellect or moral sense.

In this painting, I see neither eternity nor serenity. The wind blows, the clouds fleet, the tree whistle. Somber mood comes through the low land bushes that are combed by brooks. Nothing is decisive, or final. But the transient moment has a sheer beauty that can hold eyes long enough as if the beauty lies within the uncertainty. Isn’t it true that sometimes the best sceneries happen at the most unexpected places or moments? Murphy knew it and registered the transient beauty into something lasting ever.

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.

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

A hansome pair of Joseph Ryan Woodwell paintings sold at auction this weekend. Wiederseim auction house had estimated the paintings would fetch between $200 and $300, far short of the $2400 they ended up bringing. The last Woodwell painting I know of to come up at auction was in October of '06. That painting, somewhat larger than the ones this weekend fetched $4100. Still, this weekends offering was a pair and they appear very representative of Western Pennsylvania.

The pair of paintings show a river scene, perhaps the Niagara River, and a wooded landscape with a small cabin. The description read "Pair of oil on canvas landscape paintings signed "J. R. Woodwell" and dated 1861. 7.5"x9.5""

Woodwell would sometimes travel with George Hetzel to the area known as the Scalp Level, an artists retreat near Johnstown. Unlike Hetzel, Woodwell's compositions featured clear signs of human life. Woodwell studied in Paris in the 1860's and adopted impressionism.

Woodwell exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition, National Academy of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, and Panama Pacific Exhibition of 1915. He worked in Pennsylvania, California, and Niagra Falls. He was an original trustee of Carnegie Institute and chairman of the Fine Arts Committee during the last two years of his life.

Woodwell was born to Pittsburgh cabinetmaker Joseph Woodwell. His daughter, Johanna Woodwell Hailman would also become a well-known Pittsburgh artist. A portrait of him by Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins is in the Carnegie Museum of Art.

The pair of paintings was won by a floor bidder.

There are several great places to view works by Woodwell in Western Pennsylvania. The Westmoreland Museum of Art has a few and if you're ever in the Carnegie Music Hall there are several hanging in the lobby (one similar to the pair sold at auction) along with other Western Pennsylvania paintings often missed by visitors to the museum.

The day of the opening reception of Douglas Cooper’s new exhibition “Stairways to Heaven” at the Concept Gallery happened to be gray, cloudy and cold, typical of Pittsburgh weather in January.

Inside the Concept Gallery, the reception was crowded and light warm and amicable. Yet no viewers would fail to recognize those six foot vine-charcoal drawings displayed where they had been minutes ago.

In almost all drawings (It is hard to determine whether we call them paintings or drawings since the vine charcoal on paper is covered with transparent acrylic vanrish. The indefinite gray-degree of vine charcoal provides arresting contrast of light and shadow), Cooper chose the most idiosyncratic subject: hills and stairways. The hills arch up from the Ohio-river valley and take the huge proportion for the foreground. They would have looked cartoonish if in a small format, but such disproportioned compositions in ambitious sizes challenge and confront each viewer without even giving them a chance to take them light.

Viewers browsing through from one end to the other would possibly grasp more than one story lines. Here the linear perspective is only used to distinguish the foreground and the back but within the foreground multiple perspective were chosen to skew and slant different parts. Such angularity was chosen carefully: they were confronted at some places (mostly at the top of buildings) with others but later tension got released when different angled walls merge into the ground.

Even though most of the viewers can identify almost immediately the scenes through some iconic buildings or geographic features, they may be confused if they take the reality for granted. Cooper’s Pittsburgh is mixed with reality and imagination, past and present: here day light of the grand vista view fades away as soot-polluted air forces foreground houses lit with electricity; Mellon Area, the doomed Igloo, is grounded beside long-gone smoky chimneys; even school buses and cars greet each other obsolete and new.

There is a kind of Gershwinian spontaneity in these drawings: Like those stories in the traditional Chinese paintings with parallel perspectives, the narration seldom focuses on one specific point. Pedestrians climb the stairway, cars bump into the view and landscape is ever-changing with the wind blowing the smoke. Instead it is the hustle bustle city living (regardless old or new) that was on exhibition.

In the book “The Culture of Cities”, Lewis Mumford says:

“Cities are a product of time: buildings and monuments and public ways, more open than the written record leave an imprint upon the minds even of the ignorant or the indifferent. Through the material fact of preservation, time challenges time, time clashes with time. Layer upon layer, past times preserve themselves in the city until life itself is finally threatened with suffocation.”

Pittsburgh had reached its climax before its industry backbone experienced a sharp turn. The resurrection is taking gentle touches on the faces of the city, but over years, changes have been made to cover almost every facets of the city living except its reputation. Cooper, a native Connecticut who has been in Pittsburgh for more than two decades, wove the nostalgia for industrial glory into the modern immediacy, by doing so he is telling a series fairytales orchestrated with time and space that manifest the ideal urban milieu.

Almost accidentally, before I went to the opening reception, I visited Gilliland Gallery in Ligonier where two types of Pittsburgh painters were presented and cherished. The first group is scalp-level painters headed by George Hetzel. While the industrialization was beginning to make the permanent mark in Pittsburgh, those painters retreated to the unspoiled rural forest near Johnstown for inspiration. The other is Christian Walter who loved as much the gray-skied western Pennsylvania landscapes as working-class people and industry scenes. But the WPA era scenes of Pittsburgh have a striking darkness, machine-coldness and oppressing harness: viewers can be impressed, but not as for living potential. Unlike either of the two types, Cooper made it clear that the hustle bustle city living can be exploited as having been at once timeless and immediate.

Coming out of the Concept gallery the cold night had almost fallen. Regent Square was lively with stores and restaurants. But there were not many people in sight. The light beams from the cars clashed angularly and lit up the few pedestrian who walked in a hurry to the next warm stop. Different sounds, different colors and different lights collaborated to sing the utmost motif of the city-living symphony. It was neither loud nor pure; but the sonority sounds pleasing, as those hanging inside the gallery.

Even when Met was packed like a sardine can, visitors at Frick Museum can still walk leisurely with enough space and time to ponder. A lot of rooms inside the Frick Mansion are still kept as what they were like when Henry Frick was alive. Knowing that all these extraordinary art works were amassed through one man’s pocket and placed inside the magnificent building brings to the amateur collectors both awes and sour reminder of the heights to which the combination of fortune and passion can rise.

Of all the portrait paintings, one impressed me the most: Portrait of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein, the younger.

Holbein’s sitters always enjoy relative flat light which allows their feature revealed with extreme delicacy. If one has just passed works by Rembrandt, Holbein’s works would look tremendously accurate yet lack of dominant power. (How can one pass Rembrandt without stopping and holding his breadth?) But that is who Holbein, the younger was: the supreme portrait master without bravura, flourish or facile virtuosity. He only pleases eyes of those who seek nothing of exaggeration, who would not be beguiled by affectations and mannerisms.

In the portrait of Sir Thomas More, one can instantly sense the extremely subtlety and accuracy of the modeling of the head. But the more time he can spare at studying it, the more he can conceive. A close look at the clothes will reveal how masterful Holbein’s handling of detailed accents was. The color of the velvet does not differ too much from that of the fur collar; but the texture of each material is dazzling true that one could almost feel the as silky of the velvet as fuzzy soft of the fur. But if one stands five feet away, nothing can distract him from seeing the character. All the accessories, stressed and related perfectly with one another, merge with the whole drawing, thus making the figure at the first glance formidable.

An appeal to the human beings is just one of the essentials of a masterpiece of portraiture. If Holbein’s careful selection of essentials which add almost a narrative sense of nobility and eminence is too forceful for the first impression, then his understanding of the beauty of human countenance and personality portrayed the truth of the sitter. True, one may feel the need to bend down his knees in front of the portrait, but NOT because of More’s rank or statute, but of his paramount deep thinking.

Here is the amazingly incongruity that have been layered down through Holbein’s skill, intelligence and heart. On the one hand, More looks almost unapproachable. Holbein chose the three quarter view and let More stare ahead without any hint of communicating. Thus viewers can sense the seriousness of the moment without the chance to disturb the contemplation of the thinker. On the other hand, Holbein showed the humanity side of the sitter with almost cruel accuracy of physical aging. Holbein’s observation was full of homely, tender feeling. He didn’t hesitate in registering the wrinkles and wears in More’s face with such delicacy. More’s unshaved face indicates he was not aware or did not care about his immortality image, nor did the painter want to flatter his sitter. In fact it is this sincere peculiarity that captured the unique quality of the character who preaches the world of harmony, orders and disciplines. More is not immortal: he was tired, worn at the moment, but nevertheless kept focused and concerned. Holbein, understanding and penetrating the strong mind of the intellectual, painted with equal mind-forcefulness and imbued More with radiating humane glow.

At the moment when he was to be beheaded, More said “I die … the King’s good servant, but God’s first.” I stood there long enough and tried to decipher his mind in vain. More’s eyes possess such tremendous fortitude and determination that nothing could bend or stop. In this painting, Holbein reached his peak with austerity and reticence that have not been surpassed. To some extent, Holbein painted not only his personality, but his tragic fate.

The talk given by Ellen Lippert, which was titled “Winslow Homer: Saga and Salesman” provided a unique angle about the artist whose wood engravings are on the current exhibition at Hoyt Institute of Art. All prints are loaned from Butler Museum of American Art, whose collections have time and again amazed me by its breadth and depth. (Who would expect a town losing more than 50% of its population still holds a world-class museum?)

In general, wood engravings may not be eye-catching if they are placed in prestigious museums. Not only do they lack color, but also they are not original drawings. Based on conservation standards, prints can usually be displayed under light for no more than fourteen weeks before they are sent back to the dark storage rooms. Therefore it is actually very rare to see a comprehensive collection of Homer’s engravings displayed in one instalation.

Although Homer quit working as an illustrator in 1870’s and never went back, those engravings (made by someone else) covered quite a time span of his career. There are works as early as the civil war era and some date to the late 1870’s (such as “breeze up”). But the works done for the Harper’s Weekly highlights the exhibition. After all these works were done by Winslow Homer who came out of the Bufford’s workshop with fine lines that are quintessential to a wood block artist.

Some early double-paged prints seem to be directly detached from the magazine so that some have holes in the middle while others bear visible creases and wrinkles. Additional new copies of the magazine contents are displayed beside those prints. But looking through those wood engravings from Harper’s Weekly, one can easily feel unimpressed. Those B&W pictures are far away from his powerful Proust’s Neck crushing wave scenes. They were strict in both techniques and subjects; the figure drawings are more primitive and tightly controlled. (His late marine paintings, in contrast, grow into their own world.)

But a close examination of the works shows the opposite: In my mind, such a unique experience as a frontline illustrator defined Homer as a painter.

In the first place, viewers are naturally drawn into the contents of the pictures. Homer didn’t beautify or glorify the war and the soldiers. He did depict the battle scenes: A Bayonet Charge was one of the most disturbing drawings of all, in which soldiers from both sides, running out of the bullets, fighting as close to the enemy as to death. But most were not. It could be because of the propaganda purpose, or censorship burden; however, no matter for what reason behind it he added a glow of humanity for the soldiers. In “A Card Game”, there was a Bruegelian merrymaking atmosphere, even though viewers know there must be some grin battle looming ahead of the short feast. “Sleeping on their Arms”, was published in 1864, but no victory could be sensed. Instead the harshness was suffused into the winter scene. Sleeping soldiers were tired, so were the few on duty. However, the comradeship sparked out of the bald trees and bare sleeping ground. Above all, Homer focused on the soldiers who underwent the crudeness and threatening that readers stayed back could not imagine.

Those pictures provided no clue that his later style would be from the content perspective. Throughout his career, Homer was gradually drawn to the mighty nature that eventually all human were obliterated from his paintings. For him, moon, rocks and waves provided enough dramas for a soul of solitude. However, as a painter, Homer’s growth was more linear than disruptive. If one can move away from what was drawn in the picture and focus on how they were drawn instead, he can easily feel the linkage among his paintings: the design.

Several of Homer’s late works bears remarkable directness no matter what the subjects are. In “After the Hurricane”, the slightly tilted human figures were isolated from the sea by the wreck. There were no devastating nature scenes, but the image was effectively narrative by Homer’s choice of the boat which was placed with the opposite diagonal angle and his choice of body gesture which recalls classical reclining figures. The relative close distance brings up both dignity and sorrow from the tragedy. In “Right and Left”, viewers witness the process of the death from the two ducks. Such closeness can be valid only if viewers take the imaginary duck’s point of view, thus Homer brings down the viewer into the action. Then the hunter, no matter how small he has been drawn, takes the substantial meaning to balance the picture. Even in those Proust’s Neck pictures, the directness and boldness of paint brush cannot disguise his marvelous composition which is at once both natural and authoritative. Back to those civil War pictures, the soldiers were drawn in groups and forms of human figures gave away to more important overall composition. In most cases, he brought up the view closer so that there was a strong sense of narrative. Although he used lines succinctly and efficiently, he gave great detail to the center of the story and used airy perspective to render the background if necessary. No other early works than his most successful drawing “The Sharpshooter” could more effectively demonstrate Homer’s consistency as a designer. Here, we see the sniper from the bird angle, just like how we perceive those ducks. In both cases, Homer chose the perspective that were the most impossible yet the most narrative. High in the air, we observe of the sniper, in silence and in awe and expect the inescapable death execution, which he painted again more than 40 years later.

Secondly, although there was no record of how close Homer were to the battle scene, no one could walk out of the most bloodiest war in history without being changed. Civil War was the last war in history that infantry still marched out of the trench toward the enemy and the casualty lined up with every step they made. At the same time, the long-distance weapon was also first brought up to the military so that battle killing can be as remote and cold-blooded as murder. Homer’s “The Sharpshooter” differs from the rest in that here the soldier was drawn with a machine-like coldness. He can be observed, but not approached. He can be drawn, but not depicted. The gun, the half-shaded face showed a moment of deadly silence. Almost out of nowhere, now human can be killed without blood-shed or desperate cry's. Life has never become more fragile than ever before.

After the civil war, Homer’s ostensible subjects changed: soldiers became peasants or fishermen. But the nature didn’t grow more amenable. Instead, it still keeps its mighty power, as deadly as the rifle in the sharpshooter. Against this rugged nature, those ordinary people bear the same reticence and solitude as those soldiers. They are unnamed, uncharacterized, and unassuming, because in front of the unconquerable nature, the fragile humans struggle.

No classical, allegorical or historical topics interested Winslow Homer. Instead he chose the unpredictable commune between human and nature. Death or the hint of death (such as in “Saved” or “The Wreck”), which Homer may have witnessed as early as in war period, surfaced time and again in his paintings. In those paintings, the human beings, no matter how mundane, are depicted as hard-working, taciturn and serious in spite of all foul or malicious may happen ahead. He is now regarded as one of the most authentic American painters. And he deserves it.

January 8 - February 29, 2008

Main Galleries: Winslow Homer: The Illustrator (1857-1888)
Explore Winslow Homer’s career as a commercial illustrator. Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Opening Reception: Sunday, January 13 from 2-4 pm

Also the website has a booklet about the artist in pdf format.
http://www.hoytartcenter.org/pdf/Homer.pdf

New York has never seemed to be so crowded before.

At Armani Exchange, one of the upper-scale apparel stores lined in SOHO area, I was literally squeezing in to try a coat on. I was puzzled by the untold shoppers who grabbed jackets or jeans as if they were displayed in dollar-trees. In the end, I quit without buying the coat. It was not the price tag (though it IS more than I would have expected), it was the crowd that made me feel I was wasting money on something cheap.

Later on, a similar scenario happened in Metropolitan Museum of Art. To view a small-scaled painting by Vermeer in the special exhibition titled “The Age of Rembrandt”, I had to see it through a wall of human heads.

The show, although championed by Rembrandt, includes works by Dutch painters in their golden ages. They were NOT new or special: All works are collections of MET, except they are rearranged following the order of acquisition. Thus it is quite a task to find all five Vermeer in the total of 12 galleries, not to mention through flocks of visitors. In the case when the view of pictures are half blocked by people, the donor’s names, which are, in some cases, placed above the painting in huge font, attracted my attention more easily. In fact, the exhibition is not about the golden age of Dutch painting, it is a nostalgia gesture of the past golden age of patronage. I am not sure that Vanderbilt should like the idea of having his name shown prominently above masters’ works, at least he would not enjoy J. P. Morgan’s name is equally mentioned; after all, in the age that fortune had been amassed in an unbelievable speed for these few starring magnates, the art trophies can only belong to one person in the end.

On May 29, 1913, New York Times published an article titled “J.P. Morgan’s Art to Remain Here”. In a letter from Morgan to the Trustees of the museum, it reads “It is my desire that the objects of art left by my father should be exhibited for the benefit of the public as soon as may be. I know that it was in my father’s mind to make a load exhibition of the of them in the new south wing which is to be built, ….” The south wing construction, at that time, has not been approved yet; but Mr. Morgan made it clear that there is NO question of breaking up the collection or sending part of it elsewhere so that the public will see the entirety of the collection (bronzes and jewels etc.) which was believed unsurpassed.

The first batch of Rembrandt from J.P. Morgan happened even earlier. In June, 1906, the Rudolph Kann art collection including eight Rembrandt, four Rubens and six Van Dyck were bought through J. P. Morgan for $5,500,000. Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, the second director of the Met at that time, was summoned to France to give consultant to Mr. Morgan. Although he didn’t tell the reporter whether Morgan bought the entire collection for the museum or not, the great businessman conducted his purchase in his dominant, forceful way, for he must for sure know such great collection would never depreciate.

In today’s perspective, J.P. Morgan’s presidency of Met coincided and clashed with his own desire of collection. If Marion True, the former antiquities curator of Getty Museum, was accused based on several artifact of minor value in her vacation home, then by normal ethnic code, the way that J. P. Morgan summoned the MET expert cross Atlantic for his service would have caused a shocking scandal. On the other hand, without the fortune of J. P. Morgan, the Met (which is about 80 years younger than Louvre) could have hardly achieved today’s status. By 1920, a tablet to J. P. Morgan was installed in the northwest pier supporting the central dome of the main Fifth Avenue Hall. It reads: “Erected by the museum is grateful remembrance of the services of John Pierpont Morgan, …. He helped to make New York the true metropolis of America; his interest in art was lifelong, his generous donation to it commanded world-wide appreciation: his munificent gifts to the museums are among its choicest treasures. ”

In the same year, William K. Vanderbilt contributed “the Noble Slav”, an early work by Rembrandt. Considering the drawing and print department of the Met grew up through Cornelius Vanderbilt’s initial donation with 670 works in 1880, and even more some of the1920 donation had been loaned to the Met during Corneliu’s last year, W. K. Vanderbilt’s generosity was probably just forced under the shadow of his father’s legacy.

The golden age of patronage didn’t last long. By the First World War, the starring collectors such as Altman, Huntington, and Morgan have gone. And after the two wars, the focus of art in US had been shifted from European masters to domestic newborn. The older generation collectors like Cornelius Vanderbilt who only collected European works were perpetually constricted by the dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow, between academic pedantry and pavement slang. For them, the rise of American Art as a defining force was not within their sight. It was after the Second World War that Henry Luce brought public attention to the American Art and called Jackson Pollock the greatest living painter in the United States. Through his efforts (which can be seen through not only Met, but also Brooklyn Museum of Art and New York Historical Society), the most of the collection legacy in the 20th century should be called American Century.

Such patronage system can seldom be found nowadays. The new generation of philanthropists such as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet are more focusing on health improvement and poverty reduction in global perspective. Money has flown more toward humane activities and research instead of art forms. On the other hands, enthusiastic art collectors such as Ronald Lauder are assembling art for their own galleries. Thus it is specially nostalgia for the Met to show its homage to the hands which didn’t hold the brush, but signed the contract.

Of course, the Met won’t label the exhibition as “$ matters”, instead it claims that such arrangement has its own benefit for it shows from a historical point of view a change of public tastes (or maybe more precisely a change in magnates’ tastes). However, I found it implausible. The availability of works by Dutch masters has always been limited. Thus the acquisition sequence doesn’t reflect too much about the taste change in social context, more likely it reflects what pieces were available in the market at certain time (mostly due to 3Ds: death, divorce or debt). Thus all five Vermeer are separated just because they were not bought together. Or because Benjamin Altman donated all of his collection to the Met upon his death, the works got united together even though certain works appear much weaker than others.

But in regardless to the awkward arrangement, Rembrandt stands out. Under the immaculate brushes of Dutch painters, one can always sense a yearning for seeking, something deeper than the oil surface. For Frans Hals it may mean amicability and accessibility of characters, for Aelbert Cuyp, it may be the tranquility and homecoming-like comfort; but only Rembrandt searched as a real thinker, who pursued something opposite: problematic, unsolved yet true.

One may have to pass numerous master pieces at Met without or with only one glance; but almost no one would hurry up in front of Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer. (Interestingly, that is the only painting by Rembrandt which was actually bought by the museum) The curator’s audio tour interprets the painting as contemplation of immortality. Aristotle, well-dressed with shining gold-chain, loses his minds besides the bust of the blind Homer. He is, as the talk indicated, not communing with Homer. Instead he is asking himself: Will I obtain such immortality centuries after? The answer falls in the darkness between the figures.

Yet for Morgan and Vanderbilt, they knew they would.

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.