28 June 2022
June 7, 1916: Charles Burchfield And A Hot Day In Ohio
21 June 2022
Paula Rego: The Dance
Paula Rego was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1935, an only child in a privileged family. At the time the country was ruled by the fascist dictator Antonio Salazar. His regime was hostile to women, a Latin version of kinder, kuche, kurche, So, although Paula's mother began to draw at the age of four there was no chance that she could make a career of art.
In 1951 Rego moved to England to study art at the Slade School under the care of a guardian; her family was quite conservative although strongly anti-fascist. Her father commissioned her to create murals for a workers' canteen in 1952 but it was a decade later before she began to exhibit her work in group shows in London.
The British Royal Academy has described Rego as "one of Europe's most influential contemporary figurative artists." In 2010 she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth for her contributions to the arts. Indeed the British were so fond of Rego that they routinely referred to her as a Portuguese-born British artist.
Rego died on June 8, 2022. Her granddaughter Grace Smart, a theatre designer, tweeted : "Paula Rego was a fantastic and world changing artist, and grandma. She taught us how to sew, draw, put on eyeliner, and tell uncomfortable stories." That last may be what the late critic Robert Hughes was referring to when he remarked that if there were two or more people in a Rego painting something bad would happen to one of them.
Image: Paula Rego - The Dance, acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, Tate Museum, London.
14 June 2022
Winslow Homer: Summer Night
07 June 2022
Judy Chicago: Rediscovering Praxilla of Sikyon
"Most lovely of the things I have loved and lost; the sunlight,
"next, bright stars, the moon,
ripe gourds, the fruit of apple trees, the pears."
- Praxilla, circa 441 BCE
Anyone who has studied ancient Greece has probably heard of Sappho of Lesbos. Born around 630 BCEm Sappho lived for about six decades and her lyric poetry earned her the sobriquet "the Tenth Muse." Higher praise cannot be imagined.
Praxilla was a native of Sikyon, a city-state on the Gulf of Corinth. It took Judy Chicago's Dinner Part to pay proper tribute to Praxilla of Sikyon, one of thirty-nine women honored with hew own specially designed place setting at a non-hierarchical triangular table. You can see in this photo some of the 999 women whose names are inscribed in gold on a white tile floor. More than four hundred women participated in making The Dinner Party.
Lesser known than Sappho, in her day Praxilla was called "immortal tongued'", in a time and place where women participated in public and religious events. Today her lyric poems survive only in fragments and paraphrases; primarily "table songs" they were meant to be sung after dinner as guests imbibed wine from drinking gourds.
Image: Judy Chicago - Praxilla, (from The Dinner Party), ceramic, textile, porcelain with rainbow and gold luster, 1974-1979, Brooklyn Museum, photo courtesy of the museum.
21 May 2022
Raoul Dufy: The Picture Stares Back
12 May 2022
Gabriel Orozco: A Porcupine Eats A Tortilla
04 May 2022
Nils-Udo: Garden By A Stream
23 April 2022
Charmaine Watkiss: Tenacity Serves the Warrior Well
17 April 2022
Odilon Redon: A Green And Pleasant Woodland Floor
11 April 2022
Jean-Baptiste Leroux: A Green Thought In A Green Shade
In "The Garden," British poet Andrew Marvell (1621-1878) imagined it as a place for place for contemplating the beauty of nature, albeit a highly cultivated version. As anyone who has ever donned a pair of gardening gloves knows there is a world of work that goes into cultivating that serenity.
Jean-Baptiste Leroux was born in Touraine, France. The Loire River meanders through the region and this geographical happenstance, made it a favorite of Renaissance French kings. During the Hundred Years' War, Torraine became the seat of king, safely away from Paris. For its many elegant chateaus, the region was nicknamed "the Garden of France/"
The young photographer Leroux made that journey in reverse.. In Paris he became the director of the Nikon Gallery in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. After meeting the owner of the nearby Chateau de Courance, Leroux began to exhibit his garden photographs. His favorite subjectss are gardens and architecture. His eponymous Collection Jean-Baptiste Leroux is part of the Reunion of French National Museums.
Image: Jena-Baptiste Leroux - Potager, undated, color positive photography, Collection Jean-Baptiste Leroux, Paris.
25 March 2022
Spring: Weather of Expectation
12 March 2022
Ilya Kaminisky and Alexander Archipenko: Ukrainian Artists
'Years later, some will say none of this happened; the shops were pen, we went to see puppets in the park.
And yet on some nights townspeople dim the lights and teach their children to sign. Our country is the stage: when patrols march, we sit on our hands. Don't be afraid, a child signs to a tree, a door.
When patrols march, the avenues empty. Air empties but for the screech of strings and the tap tap of wooden fists against the walls." - "And Yet, on Some Nights" by Ilya Kaminsky, from Deaf Republic, Minneapolis, Graywolf Press: 2019
Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964) was born in Kyiv when it was part of the Russian Empire. After stuying at art schools there he moved to Moscow where he was able to exhibit some works in group shows. In 1908 he moved to Paris where he lived in La Ruche, a Russian art colony. While in Paris his sculptures earned him th nickname "the father of Cubist sculpture.
Archipenko emigrated to the United States in 1923, becoming a citizen six years later. He broke with the neoclassicism of Rodin and Maillol; he reimagined the human figure in three dimensional space through contorted planes set in negative space.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa in 1977 when Ukraine was one of the union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Kaminsky is hard of hearing as a result of a case of mumps he suffered as a small child. The Kaminsky family was granted political asylum in the United States in 1993 because of Ukrainian anti-semitism. Ilya Kaminsky settled in Rochester, New Yotk. He has published two collections of poetry Dancing in Odessa (2004) and Deaf Republic.(2019). Three Per Cent, published monthly by the University of Rochester Press has been inspired by Kaminsky's championing of literary translation.
Image: Alexander Archipenko - Carousel Pierrot 1913, paint on plaster, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
08 March 2022
Inimitable Rose Wiley
28 February 2022
Louise Moillon: A Bunch Of Asparagus
"someone will remember us/ I say/ even in another time." - Sappho, Fragment 147
In full, the title of this painting is Fruit Basket With A Bunch Of Asparagus but the foretaste of spring in the bunch of asparagus is irresistible. The eye is drawn by a spotlight of mysterious origin to the to the lower right quadrant of the canvas. Against an indeterminate backdrop, fruits and vegetables are rendered with a naturalism replete with elegance as well as clarity.
Most of Louise Moillon's paintings were made between 1629 and 1637;a short but impressive career bracketed by a long life. Her father and stepfather were artists and art dealers who provided the young Louise with a workshop, training, studio space of her own, and - crucially - clients for her work. Who her primary teacher was is uncertain although her uncle has been suggested. Eventually King Charles the First of England acquired five of Moillon's still lifes for the royal collection. Indeed, during her lifetime, Moillin's work was widely admired but, like so many other female artists, her reputation faded after her death for lack of champions.
Louise Moillon (1610-1696) was born in Paris; her family resided in the Pont Notre Dame section of the city, a haven for French Protestants who had been forced into internal exile by ferocious religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. Thanks to her father's participation in art local fairs, the young Louise came to know several Dutch painters. Their influence on her style is apparent. Her still life paintings are ensconced in the atmosphere that Lawrence Gowing identified in the paintings of Vermeer aas "an envelope of quiet air."
Image: Louise (Louyse) Moillon - A Basket Of Fruit And A Bunch Of Asparagus, 1630, oil on wooden panel, Art Institute. of Chicago.
13 February 2022
On The Avenue With Marisol Escobar
02 February 2022
The Toyland Of Joaquin Garcia-Torres
Torres-Garcia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but in 1891 the family returned to his parents' homeland. In Barcelona Joaquin enrolled in art school. Recognition came in 1903 when Antoni Guadi invited the younger artist to collaborate on creating stained glass windows for the (still incomplete as of today) cathedral Sagrada Familia.
Torres-Garcia began teaching at the Mount D'or School in Barcelona in 1907.A proponent of the progressive pedagogy of Maria Montessori, he included making of wooden toys in his curriculum He got the idea to make toys with detachable parts to encourage the students to be creative.
During a stay in Paris in 1912, he discovered Cubism But the need to make a living turned him into an itinerant artist who would crisscross the Atlantic several times. Visiting New York City and meeting the Dutchman Piet Mondrian influenced his toy-making; the constructions became more geometrical and the surfaces arose from the construction rather than applied as decoration.
By the time of his death in New York in 1949, Torres-Garcia was recognized as an important figure in introducing modernism in the Americas. His paintings are included in the collections of Reina Sofia in Madrid, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Image - Joaquin Torres-Garcia - untitled toy, circa 1917-1932, oil painted on carved wood, Ortizar Prijects, NYC.
20 January 2022
Cubist Cheese
For some unfathomable reason the British writer G.K. Chesterton started the rumor, "Poets have been mysteriously silent about cheese."
In this still life by Luis Fernandez, there is Swiss cheese in front, I think ,and a brick of Stilton (possibly) in back. As for those apples, all angles and marmoreal faceted surfaces, they remind me of glass paperweights. Welcome to the world of Cubist cheese. Salvador Dali's notorious limp watches in The Persistence of Memory (1931), were inspired by Camembert. Cheese in art has a long and intriguing history.
How cheese is aged is a story in itself. Affinage is the process of aging cheese in a cave; an affineur is a person who tends these works in progress for months or even years, until they are ready to be eaten. Other French terms are fromage (cheese), fromager (a cheese monger) and fromagerie (cheese shop). All cheeses that have rinds need to be aged in a cave. And the rinds need to be carefully monitored, high humidity maintained and mold evenly brushed over the surface of the wheel at regular intervals. What this means is that during the pandemic, affineurs are essential workers.
On Sunday, September 26, 2021, a group calling themselves 315 Foodies (for the Central New York Area Code 315) met to assemble what the Guinness Book of World Records was on hand to certify as the world's longest charcuterie board at 315 feet. Cheese mongers from around the region took part, using wooden cheese boards that interlocked like puzzle pieces; each board one foot long.
Before there was cheese in upstate New York, there was water. About 11,000 BCE, a glacial waterfall carved out the gorge where Little Falls now stands. From this point, rivers to the east drain toward the Atlantic and to the west the fluvial deposits go toward the Great Lakes. The Mohawk River gorges and the Erie Canal, both running east to west, made a flourishing mill culture that brought prosperity to Little Falls - grist mills, paper mills, flour mills, sawmills, and textiles mills.
During the second half of the 19th century the city was known as "the cheese capital of the world," thanks, in no small part, to the promotional zeal of local newspaperman Xerxes Willard. Then, as now, dairy farming and cheese making are important to the New York State economy. The Chobani yogurt Company was founded in 2005 by a Turkish immigrant in South Edmeston, a hamlet located south of Little Falls.
Note: History records three painters named Luis Fernandez, one a 17th century Spanish history painter, one a contemporary Venezuelan, and this Luis Fernandez (1900-1973) , an Asturian artist who studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Barcelona. In 1924 Fernandez moved to Paris where he met Braque, who introduced him to Cubism. Fernandez died in Paris in 1973.
You can order a wide selection of chesses and other comestibles at Calle1945.
Image: Luis Fernandez - Nature morte, pommes et fromage (Still Life with Pommes and Cheese), no date given, oil on board, Musee d'arte moderne, Paris.