Georgianna Houghton: Things of the Spirit

 

She called them "spirit drawings" but they were also abstract or else couched in a vocabulary to which she along held the secret decoder. It is tantalizing to wonder whether Houghton and Klint ever met on Klint's visits to London. Overlapping layers of swirls and circles in vibrant colors are dynamic features in the works of both artists. They are hardly the type of art expected from women at the time.

Born in Spain, Georgianna Houghton lived for most of her life in London.  Like Hilma af Klint after her, Houghton took part in séances and averred that she painted at the direction of the spirit world.  Male artists like Kandinsky and Malevich who were long credited as the creators of the non-objective style were also involved in exploring the things of the spirit.

Image: Georgianna Houghton (1814-1884) - The Eye of God, 09/25/182, watercolor and gouache on paper, laid on board, Courtauld Institute, London

Hilma af Klint: A Cartography of the Spirit

"Land lies in water; it is shaded green.

Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges

showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges

where weeds hang from the simple blue to green.

Or does the land lean down to lift from under.

drawing it unperturbed from itself?

Along the fine tan sandy shelf

is the land tugging at the sea from under?"

   - excerpt from "The Map" by Elizabeth Bishop, from North and South (1934)f

To me, Seven-Pointed Star looks like nothing so much as a map. Knowing that Hilma af Klint was born into a family of naval officers and cartographers, the comparison seems spot on. She spent her entire life pondering  in monumental paintings. the spiritual dimensions of science.

She was a member of the second generation  of women who were allowed to study at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm where she was able to sketch male nudes in life class. What were considered unseemly activities for a woman interested af Klint not at all. She traveled far and wide, visiting Norway, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and London. Not everyone was accepting of those female students.

"It takes a man to create a Parthenon  frieze or paint the Sistine Chapel." 

"Woman must go. Immediately. Has a single one of these weak women at the Academy become an artist? For me there is not one who has any value at all." - 1889

These misogynistic comments came from fellow Swede Carl Larsson, an artist known for idyllic scenes of family life. 

Klinr spent her entire life pondering the fundamental conditions of existence in monumental paintings. Her ideal building was a spiral; she would have been thrilled with the Guggenheim Museum's retrospective of her work and that the exhibition single-handedly changed the shape of art history. 

Image: Hilma af Klint - Group V, Series, Seven-Pointed Star, Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Sylvia Sleigh: The Group

 

"A.I.R. does not sell art; it changes attitudes about art by women. A.I.R. offers women a space to show art as innovative, transitory and free of market trends as the artists' conceptions demand."

The group that called itself A.I.R. first met on Match 17, 1972 in a SoHo storefront. The  women founded a cooperative gallery to show art by women at a time when commercial galleries showed mostly work by men. There had been a demonstration at the Whitney Museum in 1970 brought attention to its paltry representation of women artists (five per cent). It was the painter Howardena Pindall who suggested the name A.I.R.

Who were they?  Susan Williams and Barbara Zucker were joined by Dottie Attie, Rachel bas-Cohain, Judith Bernstein, Blythe Bohnen, Maude Boltz, Agnes Denes, Daria Dorosh, Loretta Dunkelman, Harmony Hammond,  Ann Healy, Laurace James, Nancy Kitchell, Louise Kramer, Pat Lasch,, Rosemary Mayer, Patsy Norvell, and Howardena Pindell.

A.I.R. Gallery went on to curate groundbreaking exhibitions of art by women from Japan, Israel, Sweden, and the Third World in its first decade. 

Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010) was a Welsh painter who lived and worked in New York City.

For more about A.I.R. go here.: A.I.R. Gallery.

Image: Sylvia Sleigh - A.I. R. Group Portrait, 1977-1978, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum, NYC

Winter Trees: Gandy Brody

 

"Suddenly, in every tree,

an unseen nest

where a mountain

would be."

 -  excerpt from "Choices" by Tess Gallagher

"Even Gandy's clothes seemed to have opinions." - Elaine de Kooning

"What sort of an age is this/ When to talk about trees/ Is almost a crime/" - Bertold Brecht, translated from the German by C. Salvesen

One of Brody's last paintings from 1975 bears the title I am a Tree. Trees bear an oblique symbolism in Brody's work, as does this tortuous looking specimen in The End of Winter; gnarled  branches caught on the diagonal, presented in unexpected shades of red and orange. Nature aslant, abstract but still evocative of nature. In  this typical Brody landscape there is no horizon, just a space that has no beginning and no end. Although working at the fringes of Abstratct Expressionism, Brody had a style of his own.

Here sooty remnants of snow show no trace of their former pristine whiteness, an in between moment when green struggles to reassert its presence in a dun-colored earth

Brody (1924-1975) knew he wanted to create something but what?  On his way to painting (he studied in New York with Hans Hoffmann,) he studied modern dance with Martha Graham and hung around New York clubs in the early days of  bebop. He had met and befriended the vocalist Billie Holiday in the early 1940s, rescuing her runaway dog Moochie He had already been painting for a decade when he realized he was an artist. 
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Brody divided his time between New York City and rural Vermont for much of his career and died too soon at age fifty-one.

Image: Gandy Brodie - End of Wi nter, 1956, oil on composition board, Whitney Museum, NYC.

Jane Piper: A Feeling For Color

"I didn't know such paintings existed. I had seen some things that were involved with color abstraction, some Picassos and Braques, but then when I saw the Matisses I didn't know what hit me. The experience threw me into a whole new emotional world of color and feeling." - Jane Piper on first seeing Matisse at the Barnes Collection.

Albert C. Barnes was Matisse's most ardent patron in America; the Barnes Collection eventually included about five dozen of his paintings. In 1930 when Barnes met the painter, he commissioned a three panel mural that would eventually span the Main Gallery at the Barnes. 

 

Jane Piper (1916-1991) grew up in Philadelphia and spent a year in France before studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.  She studied privately with Arthur B. Carles, another neglected modernists, whom she regarded as her most important teacher.  The influence of Matisse was noticed early on in her career; Piper, like Matisse, created a sense of space through her use of color. She said that she finally captured the sense of space that she wanted on the canvas through the liberal use of white, that this color corresponded to what she felt about the space.  She preferred still life painting above all because it fit easily into her way of life, allowing her to organize and control the placement of the objects.  That Piper was able to achieve this through white, turning  an absence into a presence, is comparable to Matisse's use of black but more subtle and mysterious.

Image: Jane Piper, Almost A Cross - 1988, oil on canvas, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica.

Orangerie: A Moveable Garden

  

"I peeled my orange

That was bright against

The gray of December

That, from some distance,

Someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands." 

                        -"Oranges" by Gary Soto

The most popular fruit in the world is the orange.  Its association with winter holidays makes perfect sense, a fruit that looks like the sun is fit  for purpose in the darkest time of year.

When Charles VIII invaded the Italian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century he was smitten by a love for oranges. The orange trees were shipped in their root balls; on arrival the French gardeners bathed the roots in milk and honey. When Charles returned home to his chateau at Amboise he built France's first orangerie.  His wife, Anne of Bretagne, not to be outdone, built an orangerie for herself at Blois.

Henry II built one for his wife Catherine de Medici in 1533 and one for his mistress Diane de Poitiers. 

This competitive one-upmanship continued for centuries; each successive monarch felt the need to create a bigger, more elaborate hothouse for their precious citrus fruit.

Known as the Sun King, Louis XIV could just as well have been called the Orange King. He commanded a twelve hundred foot orangerie in the shape of a half moon to be built as a setting for masked balls and garden parties. His gardeners invented an ingenious method to make the trees  bloom year-round. This was also when the French began to pour hot orange juice over roasted chestnuts. C'est si bon!

The Musee de l'Orangerie was built in 1852 to shelter the orange trees from the Tuileries gardens. A typical orangerie, its glazed windows faced south to capture as much heat as possible. These hothouses evolved into the prototype for the modern greenhouse. At the turn of the century it was converted to a warehouse.  Claude Monet donated his panoramic water lily canvases to the nation; the paintings were installed in 1927 after the painter's death.

Image: Sergio-Gonzalez-Tornero - Orangerie, color intaglio print, 1966, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica,

Scarab-Like: Mark Innerst

"Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs, emanations expanding to great size." - Carlos Castenada, from The Fire From Within

Mark Innerst is known for  paintings of luminous landscapes so it is possible to see in Scarab-Like a portal to another time and place. He has used the beetle  shape as a frame for a star-flecked night sky through a scrim of trees. The gem-like tints are true to history; blue was the most common color for glazes. A divine manifestation of the early morning sky.

In Egypt by about 2055 BCE an impression of a beetle, called a scarab was a sought-after amulet that was believed to bring good luck to its  owner. It was often worn in the form of a ring. The term scarab comes from Scarabaeus sacer, the family name for ding beetles. Rolling a ball of dung was likened to the heavenly cycle of regeneration.

Image: Mark Innerst - Scarab-Like, 1992, oil and acrylic on panel, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica.

A Predilection For Onions: Mary Ann Currier

"How easily happiness begins by

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter

slithers and swirls across the floor

of the saute pan, especially if its

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions."

 - an excerpt from "Onions" by William Matthews which first appeared in Poetry in August 1989

Something about a still life painting turns its subjects into objects of desire. That is what happens in Mary Ann Currier's Onions and Tomato.  I want to chop them into small pieces and make soup. Three onions and a tomato, round, shiny, and luscious, guarded by a utility knife and a pot that functions as a mirror as well as a receptacle

Mary Ann Curries (1927-2017) had a predilection for onions. Currier chose onions as a favorite subject for their humble origins in fields of muck, the subtle variations in their color, and because they maintained their freshness while she finished painting them. She painted only from real fruit and vegetables, never from photographs although the realism of her paintings is breathtaking. 

Currier was born in Louisville.  Her parents emigrated to the United States from  Germany after World War II.  She studied art with many GIs, often being the only female in her classes.  She did advertising spreads, stationery, and then moved on to portraiture, finally finding her niche as a still life painter.  She had her first exhibition at the relatively late age of fifty.

Image : Mary Ann Currier - Onions and Tomato,1984, oil pastel on mat board, Metropolitan Museum, NYC

Stephen Mueller: Orpheus the Enchanter

Everyone is smitten with the half-man half-god that was Orpheus.  Even the skeptical Carol Ann Duffy sounds sneakily admiring about: 

"the kind of a man

who follows her round

writing poems,

hovering about

while she reads them,

calls her his Muse,

and once sulked for a night and a day

because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns."

 -  Carol Ann Duffy, from The World's Wife Vancouver, Anvil Press: 1999.

Is he  a charlatan?  Who cares when he is such an enchanter?

Here we are light years away from the nightmarish vision of the Jan Brueghel the Elder, a  world inhabited by lizards in red nightcaps, moths with owls' heads and a couple marooned in a boat in the branches of a tree. Monteverdi in 16th century Mantua emphasized the tragic undertones in Orpheus' music. There is a deliciously comic aspect to Mueller's Orpheus.  His multicolored lyre entrances humans and animals alike, its notes float in the air like so many joyous balloons.

Stephen Mueller (1947-2011) was an American painter whose work was never completely abstract; he incorporated spiritual motifs from Persian miniatures to Mexican ceramics.

Image: Stephen Mueller, Orpheo 2, 2010, acrylic on canvas, Munson Williams Proctor  Arts Institute, 

Utica

Jane Freilicher: Dark Afternoon

"Light is like oxygen in a painting;  without it a painting is dead. It doesn't breathe. " - Jane Freilicher

As we change our clocks, the effect of seasonal light is on our minds. 

Dark Afternoon was painted from Freilicher's lower Manhattan apartment in late autumn. Gray light coming in through the window gives no explanation for the concentrated liveliness of the plants on the yellow tablecloth or its source. It's  focus is on  the light  in retreat.  Freilicher used her  home as her studio. Her still lifes are not posed; they just are. She never strayed far from home, dividing her time between the city and Water Mill, Long Island.   

 

Unlike, say,  artists beginning with  Chardin, Freilicher did not isolate her subjects against a neutral background. This tradition in still life painting began in 17th century Europe. Then in the 19th century the still life began to appear in landscapes.

Freilicher does not seem preoccupied with composition, the resulting effect is one of freshness. Her paintings are filled with specific details but the artist withholds narrative cues.  Rather, she integrates them into a natural backdrop - landscape becomes part of the still life. The two elements remain separate but share a common ambience. Domestic and natural settings have a relaxed relationship as they do in life.  For her objects become events to be regarded with curiosity. 

  

Image; Jane Freilicher - Dark Afternoon, 2001, oil on linen, Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica

Ruby Sky Stiler

"Let's not shame our eyes for seeing. Instead, thank them for their bravery."

  - Joy Harjo, from Conflict Resolution For Holy Beings, W.W. Norton, New York: 2015

The place of the occupational self portrait in the history of painting stretches back more than five centuries. Catharina van Hemessen at her easel, painted in 1548, may be the first self portrait by an artist.  A painter of the Flemish Renaissance, van Hemessen was born in Antwerp 

Ruby Sky Stiler joins the estimable company of such painters as Judith Leyster, Sofonisba Anguissola, and Elisabeth Vigge le  brun. Self Portrait with Blue Palette demonstrates the artist's familiarity with both ancient and modern techniques, making for a stimulating blend of Native American pottery  and weaving with flattening elements borrowed from cubism. I even detect  hints of the black and white chairs designed by Koloman Moser  for the Purkersdorf Sanitorium in 1903. You can have fun with Ruby Sky Stiler's work, spotting various combinations of elements.

Born in Portland, Maine in 1979 Ruby Sky Stiler studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design and the School of Art at Yale University.  She lives in New York City.

November is Native American Heritage Month.

For further reading:

Everything You Think you Know About Indians Is Wrong by Paul Chait Smith University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 2009

We Had A Little Real Estate Problem by Klipf Nesteroff, Simon & Schuster, New York: 2021.

Image: Ruby Sky Stiler -  Self Portrait with Blue Palette - 2018, acrylic paint, acrylic resin, paper, glue, graphite on panel, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, NYC.

Hilary Mantel: Stories Of Her Youth

Learning to Talk, originally published in Great Britain in 2003, is likely to be  the last book we will ever have from Hilary Mantel. Mantel died suddenly in September of 2022. Her publisher described her, accurately I think, as one of Britain's greatest novelists.

In her introduction to this new edition, Mantel gives us to understand  that the stories  sprung from her memories if her own childhood in a northern England "scoured by bitter winds and rough gossips tongues. "All the tales arose out of questions I asked myself about my early years. I cannot say that by sliding my life into a fictional form I was solving puzzles - but at least I was pushing the pieces about"

The rigid class structure  that governed  postwar Britain makes itself felt early and often, The little girl is sent to elocution lessons because " I hadn't learned to talk proper."  "(E)veryone was policed by gossip," she remembered.

"Curved is the Line of Beauty" concerns her mother's new boyfriend Jack Mantel who comes to live with the family is "your definition of a man, if a man was what caused alarm and shattered the peace."

Her mother defied the conservatives mores of that time and place by living  for a time with two men, two more than her Catholic religion would approve. "Mercy was a theory I had not seen in operation. I had only seen how those who wielded power extracted maximum advantage from every situation."Then when Hilary was eleven the family, except for her father, moved away to escape the local gossip and Hilary never saw her father again.

. 

Mantel's descriptive powers are deceptively simple. She describes a neighbor girl as "meager like a nameless cut in a butcher's window;" a missing pet is "only my stepdog." Or this, "(W)e continued to live in one of those houses where there was never any money, and doors were slammed hard." Words that stay with the reader.

 

Image: Milton Avery - Poetry Reading, 1957, oil o canvas, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica

Raymond Han: The Many Shades of White

 

"Look how white everything is," Sylvia Plath marveled in her poem "Tulips." That's what I think when I look at paintings by Raymond Han. Of course these shades of white contain colors as you will know if you have ever watched white paint being mixed in a store. 

An embroidered cloth  gives structure to the china arranged on the table. A cream pitcher is the focus of the picture. A blue and white teapot is decorated with japonisme; opposite is a Japanese cup. Greenery in a small cup is a touch of unruly nature in the midst of order. A spoon, a fork, a desert plate, and a few other small items complete the tea table. Why does that teapot seem subservient to the cream pitcher?

I have looked at Still Life with Rose Geranium in person several times. Fittingly, a print of it hangs  in the Terrace Cafe at  the museum. It was my introduction to Raymond Han whose bravura handling of shades of white is the signature of his still work. A gentle version of photorealism, in contrast to the sharp edges in the work of Janet Fish or Richard Estes.

The term still life appeared in late 16th century Netherlands; in French it is nature morte or 'dead nature'.  Intriguingly, the objects in a still life often appear to have individual personalities.

Raymond Han was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and lived near Oneonta in upstate New York for several years before his death in 2017. Han was one of seven children born to Korean immigrants. First he earned a scholarship to the Honolulu Museum of Art; then he moved to New York City where he studied  at the Arts Students League.

Image: Raymond Han - Still Life with Rose Geranium Sprig,  1980, oil on canvas, Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica

Jaune-Quick-To-See-Smith

 "Where we lived, the settlers built their houses. Where

we drew fresh water, the oil companies sucked oil.

Where deer ran in countless numbers, we have a new

mall. Where the healing plants thrived; the river s

burning. Now, a fence cuts the road home. Next the sky

will be tethered and we will pay for air."

   -"Where we lived, the settlers built their houses." by Joy Harjo, from Conflict Resolution For Holy Beings, New York, W.W. Norton: 2015

When she was a little girl her father would draw small pictures of animals for her to carry with in her pockets. It was so enchanting that she decided to become an artist when she grew up.  But when she got to college, a professor told her that women could not be artists. Fortunately, she ignored his advice.

For Smith, painting is a meditative process. Satire is a tool she uses to highlight stereotypes about American Indians. "My art, my life experience, and my tribal ties are totally enmeshed. I go from one community with messages to the other, and I try to enlighten people." As an example, in one painting of the country she removed  the names of states except those American names - 27 of them when translated into English.

Jaune-Quick -to-See Smith (b.1940) grew up on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. She is a member of the Salish and Kootenah Nation. She earned an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of New Mexico.  Her work has received numerous awards over the years,

Image: Jaune-Quick-to-See Smith,  2021 acrylic and collage on canvas, courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery, NYC.

Pablo Picasso: Boisgeloup In The Rain

Paul Verlaine  described rain as "long sobs of Autumn's violins."

Admittedly, this painting by Picasso shows us spring rain but I think the epigraph fits.
 

Boisgeloup is an old stronghold dating from the Middle Ages. The town is located in the French region of Haute-Normandie. It became the home of Pablo Picasso in 1930. He Made a studio where he built sculptures in plaster, iron, and bronze. On the property there was a large outbuilding where he installed a press for engraving. He lived there for six years with his mistress Marie Therese Walter while his wife Olga stayed in Paris.  There is a small museum L'Atelier du sculpteur that displays his works. 

Image - Pablo Picasso - Boisgeloup in the Rain, 30 March 1932, oil on canvas, Musee Picasso, Paris.

Stella Polaris: Helen Frankenthaler

There was always more subject matter in abstract painting than artists were willing to admit. The title may have been an allusion to a work by the 18th century French philosopher Voltaire. Frankenthaler used the three primary colors; then white was layered over them in a series of ..gestures.

Her precociousness was well known; at twenty-three Frankenthaler was already able to command the controlled freedom (yes!) which became her trademark.

Her color field paintings with their stains and washes of color are always less monochromatic than they appear at first glance. She  usually laid the paint on heavily at first and then washed over with water. Marks, spatters and a wide variety of technical means.  At least once, in 1976, she employed a window cleaning blade on a long handle to get the effect she was after. A number of Frankenthaler's works have elements of overt subject matter in them.  Of Faerie Tale painted in 1976 she remarked matter-of-factly that is was a painting of a window but then added,  "I don't know whether I meant or just this second projected that image." 

In response to the strictly gendered stereotypes of the 1950s, Frankenthaler held herself aloof with the press. "There are three subjects I don't like discussing: my former marriage, women artists, and what I think of my contemporaries."   Fortunately, Frankenthaler lived to see better days and greater appreciation of her work, living until at age eighty-two, she died in 2011.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler - Stella Polaris, 1990, acrylic on canvas, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, NYC.

 

Bob Thompson's Antique Figures

"The stars are scattered in the sky

irrespective of our need

for swans and lyres and charioteers

Our dreams are foolish

and our constellations

fictions

that wouldn't fool a child. We reach them anyhow

as if God were a coloring book

as if, like the blacksmith god,

we thought to catch Love

in a net."

 -- "Hephaestus" by Linda Bamber from Metropolitan Tang, Jaffrey, NH, David R. Godine: 2008.

Currently touring  major American museums is the first retrospective in over twenty years devoted to  the African American artist  Bob Thompson, This House Is Mine  (Smart Museum in Chicago, High Museum in Atlanta, Colby Museum of Art in Maine).

This House Is Mine stakes Thompson's claim to be the inheritor of European traditions of Greek and Roman mythology and Renaissance Italy.  It's no exaggeration to say that Thompson's output was voluminous - more than 1,000 works in oil, watercolor, gouache. In a period of full time painting that lasted eight brief years, really a mote in the eye of Western art, Thompson  was fiendishly productive; he moved so quickly, onlookers had trouble keeping up.

Riff is a term of art for Thompson whose friendships with New York jazz musicians are frequently  commemorated in his paintings. He riffed  on Piero della Francesca (illusionistic spaces) and Francisco de Goya (dark and doom) and, here and there, on surrealism, too. Old Masters were  deeply unfashionable at the time, leaving the field to Thompson and he made the most of it. He made hiss first trip to Italy in 196, thanks to a grant.

His paintings are populated with human and animal figures mingled together, if uneasily.  Crowds of  monstrous creatures emerge from the shadows (see the brown bat at the far right (above) in The Drying After. Theatrical scenes become allegories of contemporary nightmares through distorted perspectives. 

All are saturated colors like none seen since the time of the French Fauves (Wild Beasts).

Bob Thompson (1937-1966) died in Rome in 1966 following gall bladder surgery. 

Image: Bob Thompson - The Drying After, 1961, oil on wood panel, Art Institute of Chicago

Raoul Dufy: The Case For Beauty

"A well  painted turnip is more significant than a poorly painted Madonna." - Max Liebermann

Not many artists are so distinctive that an adjective is coined in their honor but here is one: "Dufyesque." 

Early on, Raoul Dufy (187-1953) became adroit at effacing the ugly, a talent that came in handy  for someone born in  Le Havre. Guidebooks agree the port  city is one of the least attractive cities in France. With its hustle and bustle, Le Havre provided the animation that was a characteristic of his work. But give Le Havre credit for its municipal art school where young Dufy began his art education.

Raoul Dufy had seen a retrospective devoted to Vincent van Gogh two years before he painted La Dame en Rose. Until then Dufy had shown little interest in painting human figures. Van Gogh's influence is obvious in the use of black outlining and  the halo of broken lines that makes the green room vibrate with energy.  The uninterrupted line of nose and eye brow is an elegant gesture. No chair is visible  although  she appears to be sitting. The pink dress barely suggests her figure; it is her face that is the center of attraction. A sliver of a gray door at left and an orange triangle. are the only hints of a location. At first the identity of La Dame en Rose (The Woman in Pink) was something of a mystery. She is thought to be Eugenie Brisson, his future wife. 

After his mandatory military service Dufy won a scholarship to L'Ecole  des Beaux-Arts in Paris. During its brief heyday, bracketed by the Autumn Salons of 1905 and 1906, Fauvism was an experiment in color for its own sake that shook the staid French Academy to its boots. Dufy soaked it all up as he worked on improving his drawing skills.

By the late 1940s Dufy's ability to paint was so severely limited by rheumatoid arthritis that he had to fasten the brush to his hand. He died in 1953; the cause was intestinal bleeding, likely caused by his treatment with cortisone

Toward the end of his life Dufy saw himself dismissed as little more than  an illustrator. Accused of lacking seriousness, his brilliant performance has been overlooked by his critics. In recent years though Dufy's star has been on the rise because so much contemporary art is cold and impersonal. Indeed, Dufy has been called a modern-day Watteau for his depictions of the divertissements of the bourgeoisie  and their charming impermanence. "If Fragonard could be so gay about the life of his time, why can't I be just as gay about mine?" he retorted.

Image: Raoul Dufy - La Dame en Rose, oil on canvas, 1908, Pompidou Center, Paris.

Jennifer Bartlett: Five In The Evening

"Bartlett is an artist in the Renaissance tradition, equally engaged in philosophy, naturalism, and aesthetics, constantly questioning herself and the world with her favorite mantra, 'what if'?' " - Terrie Sultan

"She was outspoken and seemed very sure of herself, and she made people angry, especially  men." - Elizabeth Murray,  a painter herself, as well as Bartlett's friend

What Bartlett did sounded like conceptual art but with its bright colors and clusters of objects it didn't look like it. 

Air: 24 Hours takes place around Bartlett's home and studio in Manhattan. To make  a cycle of passing time combined her fascination with the organizing possibilities of the grid and a feeling for the rhythms in nature. Arbitrary parameters stimulated her imagination, as they did for other artists in the 1970s like Sol Liewtt and Frank Stella. Things withheld hover over the paintings, giving them an air of  mystery. We are never certain whether we have recognized the artist's intentions fully. Bartlett revealed that ,"The Air paintings are derived very loosely from snap shots."

The clock is a time organizer while the natural elements add sensual detail. Notice in the lower left corner of  the canvas the small clock, its hands positioned at precisely five. The series is  enigmatic, but 5 PM  reads as a pond with goldfish circling four lily pads. They remind me of Japanese koi fish. The message of the Air series is that existence is  always in flux.

Jennifer Bartlett (1941-2022)  attributed her affinity to water to her childhood  in Long Beach, California.  She received an MFA at Yale University "I'd  walked into my life," she told Elizabeth Murray.

Image: Jennifer Bartlett - Air: 24 Hours -- Five o'clock, 1991-1992,oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

Fairfield Porter: The French Connection

"Order seems to come from searching for disorder, and awkwardness to come from searching for harmony or likeness, or the following of a system. The truest order is what you already find there, or that will be given if you don't try for it. When you arrange, you fail.' - Fairfield Porter

"The same water -  a different wave,

What matter is that it is a wave. 

What matters is that wave will return.

What matters is that it will always be different.

What matters the most of all: however different the returning wave, 

It will always return as a wave of the sea.

What is a wave? Composition and muscle. The same goes for

lyrical poetry."

          - Marina Tsvetayeva

By what alchemy do flat patches of color look like the waves of an incoming tide? A non-realistic painterly style characterized by flat patches of color is how, and that wave rolled in from France. I see the whitecaps as decorations on the blue/green breakers. Fairfield Porter's interest in decorative motifs was inspired by his admiration for the French artists known collectively as Les Nabis, in particular Pierre Bonnard. In his paintings Porter combined realism with flat abstraction; among his friends was fellow artist  and abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning.  Porter was a figurative painter  in the post-war years when American abstract expressionism was triumphant. While at the Parsons School of Design, he  studied with Jacques Maroger, a French art restorer.

During the Christmas holidays of 1938, Porter attended an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago of works by Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. The exhibition came as a "revelation of the obvious" as Porter would recall to interviewer Paul Cummings in the 1960s. Why, he wondered, would he paint any other when way "it's so natural to do this." He also told Cummings, "I think that Ingres's remark that 'I leave it to time to finish my paintings' is true in a very wide and profound way."

Image: Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) -  The Wave , 1971, oil  on canvas, private collection