21 March 2023
Georgianna Houghton: Things of the Spirit
17 March 2023
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.
08 March 2023
Sylvia Sleigh: The Group
Image: Sylvia Sleigh - A.I. R. Group Portrait, 1977-1978, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum, NYC
03 March 2023
Winter Trees: Gandy Brody
"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.
12 February 2023
Jane Piper: A Feeling For Color
20 January 2023
Orangerie: A Moveable Garden
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,
10 January 2023
Scarab-Like: Mark Innerst
03 January 2023
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.