New York: Stoops In The Snow

Image: Martin Lewis - Stoops in The Snow, 1930, Harris Scrhank Gallery, NYC.

To read about Martin Lewis, please go to Martin Lewis's New York City posted here 10 July 2008.

"Drinking The Stars"

Is that a fountain or a geyser of champagne I see in Leon Benigni's Lido (1923, Georgina Kelman Gallery, NYC) ?

At this time of year as our thoughts turn to champagne, let us remember  Dom Perignon (c. 1634-1715), the man credited with putting the bubbles into champagne.   Like so many stories, this one is not so simple as it appears.  In fact, the Benedictine monk labored long and hard  to stamp out bubbles (technically known as re-fermentation in wine making) for his king, Louis XIV.  The came Claude Moët (1683-1760), an enterprising merchant specializing in sparkling wines, who became a favorite of Madame de Pompadour and an official purveyor to royalty by the grace of her paramour, Louix XV.   It was another Frenchwoman,  Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Cliquot (1777-1866), who brought the drink of kings to the nouveau riche after the Revolution.  Indeed, the company Veuve-Cliquot (Ponsardin) still bears the name of the widow (veuve) of Francois Cliquot.

Although the champagne coupe had been invented by the English in 1663, the French appropriated it by spreading delicious rumors that it had been modeled on the breast shape of one or another French aristocrat, possibly the aforementioned Madame de Pompadour.  Today the flute appears to be the more popular glass for champagne but, at least at weddings, the traditional coupe is still the glass of choice.  These delicate pastel champagne cups were designed by Emile Galle, circa 1902-1904 and are in the collection of the Musee d'Orsay.  The blue and green coupe has shimmering ribbed sides, while the pink and green coupe is decorated with green dots. I cannot choose between them.

Finally, from Delbeck & Cie in Reims, center of all things champagne, comes an ingenious answer to the infernal internal combustion engine - the champagne-powered car!  Happy New Year!

Skating

"Spring is past, and Summer's past,

Autumn's come, and going;
Weather seems as though at last
We might get some snowing.
Spring was good, and Summer better,
But the best of all is waiting,-
Madame Winter-don't forget her.-
O
You
Skating!

Spring we welcomed when we met,
Summer was a blessing;
Autumn points to school, but yet
Let's be acquiescing.
Spring had many precious pleasures;
Winter's on a different rating;
She has greater, richer treasures,-
O
You
Skating!

Gleam of ice, and glint of steel,
Jolly, snappy weather;
Glide on ice and joy of zeal,
All, alone, together.
Fickle Spring! Who can imprint her?-
Faithless while she's captivating;
Here's to trusty Madame Winter.-
O
You
Skating! "
 - Skating by E.E. Cummings
Image: Burkhard Mangold - Town Hall Pavillon  Zurich, 1910, Albertina Museum, Vienna.

Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel

Image: Gertrud Reinberger Brausewtter - Nativity scene, 1917.

"Angels In Our Countryside"

"Les anges dans nos campagnes
Ont entonné l'hymne des cieux,
Et l'écho de nos montagnes
Redit ce chant mélodieux"

There is something homely and charming in the opening of this medieval  Langeudoc carol:  "Angels in our countryside..."     Now part of southern France, the Languedoc  has been home to, or invaded by, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Vandals, Visigoths, Saracens, and others I've forgotten to mention.  However it came into being, Angels We Have Heard on High  fixed a moment of joy in time. 

Image: Jean Goodwin Ames (1903-1986) - Star Angel, c.1951, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, CA.

Our Winter Number Begins Here

Image: Edward Penfield, from a golf calendar for the year 1899, National Museum of Catalan Art, Barcelona.

Features include:
Telegrams of the Soul by Peter Alternburg, Treason by Hedi Kaddour, Mina Loy, , and Jacques Prevert.
Artists include:
Jean Goodwin Ames, Daphne Maugham Casorati, Lucien Levy-Dhurmer, Vilhelm Hammershoi,  Fernand Khnopff, Henri Le Sidaner, Carl Moll & Alma Schindler (Mahler), Otto Prutscher, Hiroshi Yoshida.

Visions Of Sugar Plums



These wooden dolls have captivated me for more thaa a year but I've been unable to find any information about their designer Lotti Hamm, other than that she was one of many designers who worked with the Wiener Werkstatte and made these popular, sturdy toys.

The dolls are similar to the Kokeshi dolls of Japan, in being made of wood and decorated with  bright colors and distinctive styles that enage a child's imagination.  Like the electric train that circled the Christmas trees of my childhood, Coltellachi has put the monuments of Paris on rails, with Eiffel's tower leading the way, circling merrily.

Images:1. G. Coltellachi, Vogue (Paris), September, 1949.2. Lotti Hamm for the Wiener Werkstatte, c. 1914-1932, MetropolitanMuseum of Art, NYC.3. Lotti Hamm for the Wiener Werkstatte, c. 1914-1932, MetropolitanMuseum of Art, NYC.

Inside The Museum

In a season full of rituals, here is another to consider: the ritual of attentive looking.  The art objects encased in glass cubes seem to observe the sketcher in Francois Borisrond's Museum of Man with amusement.  Who's zooming who, indeed.

Attentive looking takes place in what museologists call  "the aesthetic museum."  Museum builders have deliberately drawn parallels between their 'temples of culture' and the temples of early religions. Here art objects are displayed to encourage concentration. Gone are the rows of paintings from floor to ceiling and the ornately carved frames that echoed the owner's taste in furniture.  The spiral staircase that circles up to the second floor of painter Gustave Moreau's house (now a museum) takes us back to this other age.

The Louvre Museum in Paris was not the first public museum but it is exemplary in so many ways.  In the wake of the French Revolution, the Louvre Palace was confiscated from the royal family, the building converted to a museum,  and its art collection  opened to the public. Galleries that had previously existed to enhance  the pleasure  and prestige of monarchs became, in the 19th century, places where people could be educated in the art and identity of their nation.  Gradually that mission has been superseded by the rearrangements of art historians. 

One of their number, Carol Duncan, describes the royal  display of art as "the gentlemanly hang."  If you have been in a large art museum, you have seen its remnants in the statues of early Greece and Rome interspersed with Dutch and Italian paintings of the Renaissance.  Curiously, another element of princely style long abandoned, has reappeared on the Internet: the penchant for juxtaposing pictures based on their ostensible subjects, as in Flemish, French and Italian versions of Venus or a number of posts on this website.

In The Museum Age, Germain Bazin puts it like this:

"Statues must be isolated in space, paintings hung far apart, a glittering jewel placed against a field of black velvet and spot-lighted; in principle, only one object at a time should appear in the field of vision.  Iconographic meaning, overall harmony,aspects that attracted the nineteenth century amateur, no longer interest the contemporary museum goer, who is obsessed with form and workmanship; the eye must be able to scan slowly the entire surface of a painting.  The act of looking becomes a sort of trance uniting spectator and masterpiece."

I can only add that it is easy to imagine sitting in the Nymphaeum at Musee de l'Orangerie and experiencing a floating sensation.

The Grand Gallery at the Louvre (at left) looks much different than it did when it was a royal residence, although it still functions as a space to stroll, sotp, and chat in.  The skylights, added in the early 20th century along with white painted walls, not only open the space up to please modern eyes, but the light coming from above seems to point to the pictures.  As usual, what our eyes have come to accept as neutral is the consequence of our experiences.  George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, also  now a museum, has interiors that have been repainted at least twice in the 20th century.  Before World War II the rooms were awash in pale pastel shades, similar to the colors of faded ukiyo-e prints.  This was thought to be historically accurate as that is what restorers had found on the walls of old homes.  In recent decades, further research has revealed the colonial taste for bright colors and the rooms have been repainted in blues, greens,and reds that contemporary museum goers find garish.   

What to do with art works that were never intended for a western-style museum poses a problem to be solved by each museum designer.  The  African  drums on display at the Museum of African and Oceanic Art in Paris are presented in a style whose authenticity we are in no position to judge. The motivation is to enable us to look at the works in a way that we find comprehensible.

This relates to the oddly austere setting provided for Art Nouveau furniture at the Musee d'Orsay.  We are certainly able to see what is there, but what is missing may be just as important.  Just compare this to the exquisite recreation of Lucien Levy-Dhurmer's Wisteria Dining Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

There we see a room as it designer intended and as it was lived in by the client.  Levy Dhurmer's painted murals are bathed in an approximation of the  gas lamps used in Paris , circa 1910. 

Night time at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valenciennes makes for a pair of bookends with Boisrond's Museum of Man.   Narcissus stands on his pedestal, his companions in stone as self-absorbed as he is.   The elevator, a metal column, becomes another sculpture, in this gallery without attentive lookers.

Images:

1. Francois Boisrond (b. 1959) - Museum of Man, 1980, Pompidou Center, Paris.

2. Rene-Gabriel Ojeda, photographer, Grand Atelier, house of Gustave Moreau, Moreau Museum, Paris.

      3. Caroline Rose, photographer - Salon of Egyptian Antiquities, Louvre Museum, Paris.

      4. Gerard Blot, photographer - A Gallery at Musee Marc Chagall, Nice.

      5. Herve Lewandowski, photograhper - Salle des Nymphees, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris.

      6. Daniel Arnaudet, photographer - Grand Gallery, Louvre Museum, Paris.

     7. Les Tambours a Fente (Nord Ambryn) - Museum of African & Oceanic Art, Paris.

     8. Jean Schormans, photographer - Majorelle art nouveau room, Museee d'Orsay, Paris.

     9. Lucien Levy-Dhurmer, photograph courtesy of Victorianweb.org - Wisteria Dining Room, Metropolitan Museum of     Art, NYC.

     10. Rene-Gabriel Ojeda, photographer - Ernest Hiolle - Narcissus, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes.

Procession

During the 14th century, landscapes began to interest artists.  You see them in religious subjects of Flemish and Florentine images becoming more than elaborate backgrounds.  Various reasons are offered for the change: increasingly sophisticated scientific knowledge of nature, rising prosperity and the desire to display one's worldly goods being two of them. 

In Benozzo Gozzoli's The Middle King, the lands and fortifications belong to the monarch, reflecting his wealth and power but they steal the show, thanks to Gozzoli's virtuoso display of detail.  "See," the work seems to say, "what wondrous things I can do with my brush."

What a pleasing and playful looking countryside Gozzoli's Piedmont is.  This could be the backdrop for  Shakespeare's Italian plays. When Helena journeys to Florence to prevent her husband Bertam from betraying her, she may have passed through such gates (All's Well That Ends Well).   Valentine sets off to Milan to broaden his horizonson on such roads (Two Gentlemen Of Verona).  If you listen you may even hear echoes of Kate and Petruchio sparring their way toward love.

"His landscapes, which are crowded with birds and animals, especially dogs, are more varied, and alluring than those of any predecessor; his compositions are crowded with figures, more characteristically true when happily and gracefully occupied than when the demands of the subject require tragic or dramatic intensity, or turmoil of action; his colours are bright and festive. Gozzoli's genius was, on the whole, more versatile and referential than particularly original; his drawings exhibited some imperfections, especially towards the edges, and in his draftsmanship, and in the perspective of his elaborate buildings. In fresco-painting he used the technique of tempera. Of his untiring industry, the intensity of his work and the number of paintings produced are the most convincing proof... In rectitude of life he is said to have been worthy of his first master, Fra Angelico." -  entry on Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1421-1497) Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911.

Image:  Benozzo Gozzoli - Fresco of  The Middle King, c.1459-1460, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence. 
You may also be interested in Medieval Townscapes, posted here 7 September 2007.

Correspondences: The Bathers

 Entire books have been devoted to the art of bathing, whether  swimming or taking a bath.  One of the most stimulating is Bodies, Bathers, Beauty: The Visceral Eye by Linda Nochlin (Harvard University Press: 2006).   Separated by decades, these two bathers are united by the sense they convey of bathing as a bracing and buoyant activity.  Kupka's painting, from early in his career, already shows him fracturing the picture plane, suggesting that he might have taken some inspiration from the way light fractures the surface of  water. Demarchy's use of indigo pate de verre is a visceral reminder of the bath water.   Similar in pose and color, they almost seem to speak to each other.

Images:

1. Frantisek Kupka - Water. The Bather, c.1906, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nancy.

2. Jean-Pierre Demarchy - La Baigneuese, 1968, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nancy.

There At The Secession: Broncia Koller-Pinell

Vienna at the fin-de-siecle was hardly a hospitable place for women. They were discouraged from taking part in public life except as mothers and playthings of men, subject the inconsistencies of a double standard reinforced by untreatable venereal diseases. The obstacles must have seemed enormous but some hardy souls persisted.  For instance, women were barred from the Viennese Academy until as late as 1920, forcing young women like Broncia Koller-Pinell to study art privately with the men who were willing to teach them.

Bronislawa Pineles was born  on the 23rd of February 1863 in Sonak in Galizia, now  part of Poland.  The family moved to Vienna in 1870, changing their name to Pinell and becoming part of  the prosperous Jewish community.  Already artistically inclined, Broncia received  her  instruction at age seven from sculptor Robert Raab.  She studied painting  with Alois Delug in Vienna and then the art academy for women  in Munich  from 1885-1887. Her early paintings were well received by  Viennese critics.  After that first  successful exhibition in 1885, she would exhibit her work  at the legendary Kunsthaus  Vienna in 1908 and 1909.

She was introduced to Dr. Hugo Koller (1867–1949) a  physician and physician,  by composer Hugo Wolf.   Before the marriage, Hugo Koller had to withdraw from the Catholic church because mixed marriages were not permitted between Jew and Catholics at the time. Holy Blood, dedicated to her mother-in-law, suggest that Koller-Pinell may have converted to Catholicism, at least formally or perhaps it is a tribute of affection. (The miniature at the top left corner of the painted frame is a portrait of Frau Koller.)

 After their marriage  in 1891, Hugo Koller, who was also a collector and art patron, promoted Broncia's career.  He knew the Secessionists and, later, the members of the Wiener Werkstatte.  Like other artists  around Gustav Klimt, Koller-Pinell (as she now called herself) worked in the flat, decorative  manner of the Secession. The bookplate she designed for Hugo reveals the obsessive book collector who owned several thousand volumes, many of them rarities.

In 1904 the  couple inherited a house in Oberwaltersdorf and commissioned Josef Hoffmann to renovate it in the Viennese style. The interior was designed jointly by Broncia and Kolo Moser. The home house became a popular meeting place for artists  and intellectuals including Franz von Zulow and the young Egon Schiele, mentored by Koller-Pinell. 

Daringly, for her time, Koller-Pinnell painted nudes, most  memorably Mariette, at top.  In 1907, she painted The Artist's Mother seated in profile, which has  been compared to James McNeill Whistler's portrait of his mother - high praise aesthetically.  Koller-Pinell's nudes radiate a spirit of self-possession; they are not positioned as offerings to the viewer. In common, both portraits have the flattened backgrounds and geometric designs of Secessionist style.  Also, Koller-Pinell's woodblock prints are usually square, the shape associated with the influential Jugenstil journal Ver Sacrum.

 Frequently she painted her daughter Sylvia and also Anna Mahler, daughter of Gustav Mahler, at least twice  Yet Koller-Pinell's  name rates no mention in Henri de la Grange's monumental biography of the composer which also gives short shrift to  Anna herself.  On the pictorial evidence, both girls liked parrots. One wonders about the relationship between the painter and the young girl who went on to become a professional sculptor.

.

The Vienna Kunsthaus art show  of 1908 was recreated at the Galerie Belvedere in October of 2008. The original epoch making event featured Koller-Pinell's work within the circle of fellow artists: Emil Orlik, Otto Prutscher, Maximilian Kurzweil, and those already named.  So far as I can tell, her work was not given its proper place in the recreation. 

 Elena Luksch Makowska, Tina Blau, Olga Wisinger Florian,  and Marie Egner  were other successful artists but none equalled Koller's Pinell's curiosity, experimentation, and sure sense of what she could achieve with her art. 

Broncia Koller-Pinell died on the 24th of April 1934 in Oberwaltersdorf, before the full horror of National Socialism.

Paintings by Broncia Koller-Pinell:
Mariette, 1907, Vera Eisenberger collection, Vienna.
Sylvia With Birdcage, undated, Vera Eisenberger collection, Vienna.
The Artist's Mother, 1907, Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.
Anna Mahler With A Parrot, 1910s, Kunsthaus Hieke, Vienna.
View Of The Karlskirche-Vienna, undated, Dorotheum, Vienna.
Photograph of the opening of the Vienna Kunstschau, 1908, Bildarchiv, Vienna.

The Laziest Gal In Town

"Nothing ever worries me,
Nothing ever hurries me.
I take pleasure leisurely
Even when I kiss.
But when I kiss they want some more,
And wanting more becomes a bore,
It isn't worth the fighting for,
So I tell them this:

It's not 'cause I wouldn't,

It's not 'cause I shouldn't,

And, Lord knows, it's not 'cause I couldn't,
It's simply becasue I'm the laziest gal in town.
My poor heart is achin'
To bring home the bacon,
And if I'm alone and forsaken,
It's simply because I'm the laziest gal in town.
Though I'm more than willing to learn
How these gals get money to burn,
Ev'ry proposition I turn down,
'Way down,
It's not 'cause I wouldn't
It's not 'cause I shouldn't,
And, Lord knows, it's not 'cause I couldn't,
It's simply because I'm the laziest gal in town."
 - Cole Porter, lyrics & music, The Laziest Gal In Town, 1950, for the film Stage Fright
Image: Georges Lepape, La Femme Chez Elle, 1920s., France.

The Owls

"Under the overhanging yews,

The dark owls sit in solemn state,
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.

Motionless thus they sit and dream
Until that melancholy hour
When, with the sun's last fading gleam,
The nightly shades assume their power.

From their still attitude the wise
Will learn with terror to despise
All tumult, movement, and unrest;

For he who follows every shade,
Carries the memory in his breast,
Of each unhappy journey made."
 - The Owls by Charles Baudelaire

Images:
1.  Utagawa Hiroshige - Smalll Horned Owl On A Maple Branch Under A Full Moon, Museumof Fine Arts, Boston.
2.  Helen Tupke-Grande (1874-1946)  - untitled/ Three Owls, c.1920.