Carel Willink's Imaginary Realism

Carel Willink (1900-1983) experimented with various Modernist "isms," finally settling into a version of "Magic Realism" that he called "Imaginary Realism." Essentially, everything in his paintings was done in a realistic manner, but placed in unusual circumstances, as the images below indicate. I find them strange, yet oddly appealing.

Willink's short Wikipedia entry is here and a useful chronology on a website devoted to him is here.

Besides his Imaginary Realist paintings, Willink made a good living as a portrait artist, his portraits usually featuring the hard-edge style of his other works.

Gallery

Farmhouse with tree - 1918
Painted before he assumed his signature style.

Stadsgesicht (Cityscape) - 1934

The Dirigible - 1933

Self-Portrait with Wilma van der Meulen - 1934
Wilma was his first wife. She died in 1960.

Landschap met omvergeworpen beeld - 1942

Mathilde tussen de monsters - 1966
Mathilde de Doelder was another wife -- his second according to the second link above. Some sources state that he had four wives; if so, Mathilde would be the third. A while after they divorced, she was found dead, naked in bed, a gunshot wound to the left temple and a gun held in her right hand. These last two details lead some to speculate that she was murdered.

Reclining Venus - 1975
The subject is Sylvia Quiël, Willink's last wife, some 44 years younger than he. She has devoted the time since his 1983 death to her art and his memory.

Willink painting Sylvia

The Slightly Surreal, Illustration-Like Intellectual Art of Mark Tansey

Late February, we visited The Broad, a new museum in downtown Los Angeles (background here). The collection of Eli and Edythe Broad is housed there, a collection focused on postmodern art of the period 1960-1990, if the impression it gave me is halfway correct.

I am not a fan of the kind of art. Nevertheless, I did come across a few artists and their works that interested me. One of these was Mark Tansey (b. 1949) who I was essentially unaware of. Some background regarding him can be found here, here and here.

Some examples of his work are below. All the paintings date from 1979-90, a period when he did what I consider his most interesting work.

Gallery

The Innocent Eye Test - 1981

The Occupation - 1984
1980s New York City occupied by 1914-vintage troop from Imperial Germany.

Triumph of the New York School - 1984
Allegory showing Great War clothed French artists surrendering to World War 2 garbed New York modernists.

Triumph ... key to depictions
I found this helpful graphic on the web.

Action Painting II - 1984

Forward Retreat - 1986

Forward Retreat: flipped detail
I took this photo at The Broad.  From right to left are (1) a 1917 Great War French soldier, (2) a 1914 German Great War Soldier, (3) a 1917 Great War British or American soldier, and (4) a polo player.

Constructing the Grand Canyon - 1990

A Short History of Modernist Painting - 1979-80
Another painting I saw at The Broad.  Below are some detail photos I took.

History ... detail

History ... another detail

History ... yet another detail

Automobile as Genre: Robert Bechtle

Robert Bechtle (b. 1932) is a genre painter of the so-called photorealist variety. Come to think of it, almost any photorealist painting is genre because it depicts what a photograph (or combined extracts from several photographs) captures of the everyday physical and social world of humans. Bechtle's Wikipedia entry is here.

Bechtle bases his paintings on photographs he has taken. Unfortunately, I have never seen one of his paintings in person, so I can't report just how hard-edge they are. But a video posted on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art website suggests that there is painterly action when viewed from really close.

One thing I especially like about Bechtle's art is that he includes carefully done images of actual automobiles -- not some tossed-off generic car-shaped collection of paint that I find all too often.

Gallery

'58 Rambler - 1967

'62 Chevy - 1970

'64 Valiant - 1971

'71 Buick - 1972

'63 Bel Air - 1973

Alameda Gran Torino - 1974

S.F. Cadillac - 1975

Near Ocean Avenue - 2002
I find this interesting because it looks like Bechtle used an old slide or print as its basis. That is, the colors have yellowed and the cars shown in the foreground are no more recent than the mid-1970s -- yet the painting is dated 2002.

Alameda Intersection - Clay and Mound Streets - 2004
This is the painting featured in the video linked above.

Santa Barbara Motel - 1977
I include this to show that Bechtle paints subjects other than cars. Indeed this looks a lot like some motels near Santa Barbara's waterfront, though I can't say which one he's depicting here.

Ernest Board, Historical Painter

Ernest Board (1877-1934) spent much of his career in Bristol, his best-known works dealing with historical aspects of the city. Around 1912 he was commissioned by Henry S. Wellcome to paint a series dealing with important exploits of science.

Biographical information regarding Board is skimpy on the Internet. This source states:

"Painter of historical subjects and portraits; mural decorator. Born at Worcester and was educated in Bristol. Studied art at the Royal College of Art, at the Royal Academy Schools, and later in the studio of Edwin Austin Abbey. Exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1902. L[i]ved in London and later at Albury in Surrey. Died on 26th October 1934 aged 57.

"Board was a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (R.O.I.) and the Royal West of England Academy (R.W.A.)."

An artist club, the Bristol Savages, has this to say:

"Born in Worcester in 1877 but moved to Bristol at an early age. Educated at the Merchant Venturers` Technical College, then at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. Later he joined the studio of A. E. Abbey [sic?] In 1902 he exhibited at the Royal Academy. He joined the Tribe in 1907 and was President in 1918. The most famous of his paintings “The Departure of Sebastian Cabot from Bristol” hangs in the Bristol Art Gallery alongside which hangs another fine painting of great personalities in Bristol`s history presented as a group meeting. Many other of his works are also in Bristol Art Gallery. He was commissioned to carry out mural decoration in the Houses of Parliament and in the Council Chamber of Bristol Corporation. He was also an excellent artist in stained glass. Several of his portraits hang in the Wigwam. He was with the Tribe until 1932. At that time he was far from busy and depressed and he decided to leave Bristol and try his luck in London. The hoped for luck in London however did not materialise and he moved to Farley Green in Surrey where he designed and painted an altarpiece. He died in 1934 aged 57."

Some of Board's large historical paintings from the early 1900s are mural-like with a whiff of Pre-Raphaelite sensibility, an appealing combination. His Wellcome paintings are more conventional.

Gallery

The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot on their First Voyage of Discovery, 1497 - 1906
This painting has intrigued me ever since I saw a snippet of it as a book cover illustration.

Allegorical Picture of Bristol - 1917

King Edward IV and His Queen, Elizabeth Woodville at Reading Abbey, 1464 - 1923

Edward IV being Entertained by William Canynges at His House in Redcliff Street, 1461 - 1918
Biographical information on Canynges is here.

The Burial of William Canynges at Redcliffe Church, 1474 - c. 1915

Robert, Earl of Gloucester, Building the Great Keep of Bristol Castle, 1116

Latimer Preaching before Edward VI at Paul's Cross, 1521 - 1910

The Unloading of Two Captured Spanish Treasure Ships at Bristol in September, 1745 - 1927

William Harvey Demonstrating His Theory of Circulation of Blood before Charles I - after 1912

Study of a girl in a boat
I include this to show that not all Board's paintings were tightly brushed.

Alfredo Ambrosi, Aeropittura Artist

Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi (1901-1945) -- Wikipedia entry in French here -- was not the most famous or best practitioner of Aeropittura, a late form of Futurism, but I thought it would be worth presenting some of his paintings here.

I posted on Aeropittura here and about Tullio Cruli, perhaps the best of the lot, here.

Gallery

Colosseo - Colosseum
Aerial view of Rome's Coloseum from the northwest.

Aero-ritratto di Benito Mussolini aviatore - Aero Portrait of Benito Mussolini, Aviator - 1930
Related to the upper painting of the Colosseum, but the city view is extended to around the Piazza Venezia where Mussolini's famous speech-site balcony was located.

Fiesta aerea - Aviation Meet - 1932

Prima crociera atlantica su Rio de Janeiro - First Trans-Atlantic Crossing, Over Rio de Janeiro - 1933
Italo Balbo, head of Italian aviation, led two long-distance formation flights across the Atlantic, the first to Rio in 1930, a later one to the USA in 1933.

Volo su Vienna - Flight over Vienna - 1933
This commemorates the Gabriele D'Annunzio-led 9 August 1918 Flight over Vienna, an exceptionally long-distance operation during the Great War.

Aero-ritratto di Gianni Caproni - 1938
Portrait of airplane designer and builder Giovanni Caproni.

Pronto per l'attaco / Canale di Sicilia, 1942 - Ready to Attack
A World War 2 scene.

William Penhallow Henderson's New Mexico Paintings

William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943) was one of a number of artists who moved to the Taos - Santa Fe part of New Mexico around one hundred years ago. In Henderson's case, this was in part because his wife was tubercular and it was thought that the dry climate would be helpful (and she did live for 36 more years). Here is some biographical information on Henderson.

What I find interesting about Henderson, Ernest Blumenschein, Buck Dunton and others of that New Mexican migration cohort is that their painting styles had similarities. Could it have been the climate, topography and Indian subculture of north-central New Mexico that molded their paintings? To some degree I think this was so. But not to the degree that the California Impressionists' art was influenced by their subject matter. New Mexico painters also tended to be influenced by art style fashion, and one strong fashion prevalent from the late 'teens through the 1920s and well into the 1930s was what I've called Modernism-Light. That is, forms were simplified, often with a hint of reduction to geometric shapes, and certainly by elimination of some surface detailing. What I am not yet sure of is whether buyers of such paintings demanded that style or if there instead was subtle peer pressure or group-think going on.

Gallery

Little Sister (The Chaperone) - ca. 1916

Holy Week in New Mexico - 1919

La Tienda Rosa - ca. 1920

Noon - 1920

Feast Day, San Juan Pueblo - ca. 1921

Fiesta Brown Eyed Beauty - 1924

Cerro Gordo Before the Sangre de Christo Mountains - 1930