One Million Pageviews

Really successful Internet sites such as Drudge Report can clock one million pageviews in an hour. Some blogs can probably hit that mark in a couple of months or maybe less time.

Art Contrarian is a small blog with limited focus, but it hit the 1,000,000 pageviews mark sometime today.

So many thanks to you, the regular readers and those who drop by occasionally for making Art Contrarian reach this milestone.

H.R. Giger: A Note Regarding Taste in Art

Swiss fantasy artist Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" "H.R." Giger (born 1940) died 12 May 2014 as a result of injuries from a fall. The event was met with many expressions of sadness and regret on the Internet. A biographical sketch of Giger is here, and an example of his art is shown at the top of this post.

I too regret his passing, as I do for most other people. I must add that I knew little about him while he lived. Yes, in art sections of bookstores I noticed books displaying his works. But I never picked them up or thumbed through them. And not being much of a moviegoer, I never saw "Alien," which apparently was a career breakthrough for Giger thanks to his design work for the film.

You see, I think Giger's work is pretty awful to look at. Dark, depressing, convoluted. Nothing there to mesh with my personality.

Yet there are many well-qualified observers who are smitten by his images. And I will say in Giger's favor that his paintings are technically well-done. Moreover, his intent was serious, unlike so many postmodern artists who seem to be showoffs and self-marketers rather than serious professionals (please take their statements about their "art" with a large amount of salt).

The Night Watch Everywhere!

Perhaps the most famous painting by the prolific Rembrandt is The Night Watch (its popular name) which is given a place of honor in the refurbished Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Here it is in its new setting. I took this photo and the others in this post when visiting Holland in September of this year.

It seems that The Night Watch can be hard to avoid. Near central Amsterdam is the Rembrandtplein, a square renamed in honor of the artist. And in that square I found a sculpted version of the painting:

Having finished the Amsterdam part of our trip, my wife and I picked up a rental car and drove to Delft. While there, we visited the Royal Delft factory, the last of the makers of Delftware. Part of the facility is a small museum featuring creations the firm has made over the year, including ...

Travel Pix: Europe, 2013

I'm back in Seattle following a 16-day European visit. Sorting through my trip photos, I came across six that while not directly art-related, I thought were nice enough to share. No digital adjustments were made -- what you see is what came directly from the camera. Click on the images to enlarge. The picture above is of the market square (Markt) in Bruges, Belgium taken during a pause in a rainstorm.

Brussels near the Grand Place, as seen from our hotel room. The tower is that of the Hôtel de Ville.

Two old structures wedged near the rue Saint Julien-le-Pauvre in Paris.

Looking up at the Eiffel Tower while waiting for the elevator to arrive. The glass ceiling is dirty, but its effect interested me.

Carriage ride tourists seen in Ghent, Belgium.

The Seine in Paris near the Notre Dame at twilight.

* * * * *
Images in this post Copyright 2013, Donald B. Pittenger.
Bloggers have my permission to use any of the images above provided their source is credited. Commercial use in the sense of travel sites or other Internet or printed publications requires my permission on a case-by-case basis: contact me via the email address on this blog.

New York City Notes

I spent nearly ten years of my life within striking distance of New York City. But I've seldom been there since around 1990 and my touch with the place is pretty well lost.

One advantage to seldom visiting a city is that changes that might be too gradual to perceive by residents can be clearly seen. I was in New York for part of a day recently thanks to an unwanted layover on our return flight from Paris and was able to stroll a segment of Fifth Avenue, among other streets. And I indeed noticed changes.

What I noticed was that Fifth up to around 55th Street was no longer so ritzy or upscale as it was in the 1960s and before. Back then, there were nice stores along that stretch such as Bonwit Teller and Scribner's bookstore. These have been replaced to a considerable degree by the likes of H&M, a retail chain featuring budget-priced clothing. Shops in Rockefeller Center facing Fifth Avenue now include Bananna Republic, which features moderate-priced clothing. Other nice stores in the upper 40s have been replaced by souvenir shops and other socially lesser forms of retail.

What this seems to represent is the continuation of a long-term geographical trend whereby fancy stores gradually migrate up Manhattan Island, mostly along or near Fifth Avenue. But the Fifth Avenue retail zone is blocked on the north by Central Park. So outlets for Hermès and its likes above 59th Street can be found over on Madison Avenue rather than Fifth.

Unfortunately, my time in New York was far too limited to allow a more systematic exploration of parts of Midtown that I used to know well.

And as for the photo at the top, it's one I took in lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center site.

Blogging Note: Off to Europe

This is to let you know that I'll be in Europe for a couple of weeks or so, but that posts should continue to appear as usual on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The itinerary is: Amsterdam, Haarlem, The Hague, Delft, Arnhem, Cologne, Bruges, Ghent, Brussels and Paris, topped by an unplanned layover in New York City.

I'll be visiting art museums when and where I can fit them into the kind of tourism I prefer: getting to know cities. If any readers know of any not-so-famous-hidden-gem museums in those places, let me know via Comments or email (which I'll check whenever I have a little spare time and can find a WiFi hotspot for my iPad Mini). I can't promise to visit such places, but will try to do so when circumstances permit.

Blogging Note: I Started a New Blog

As regular readers know, I enjoy posting about automobile styling. And as you can see on the right-hand panel, I even wrote an e-book on the subject (another one is on the way). I don't want to short-change those readers who expect me to write about painting and other graphic arts, so I thought I'd reduce the amount of car stuff by putting much of it in a different blog.

That new blog is called Car Style Critic, and you can link to it here.

However, I'll still be cross-posting some of my styling posts here because (1) I need to keep my blogging workload under control and (2) many Art Contrarian readers might find them interesting.

Speaking of Art Contrarian, I've made some cosmetic changes. Probably the most important one is an increase in the size of the body type to improve readability. I finally figured out how to change the photo of me. And I added links to the book cover images to assist all of you who are anxious go to Amazon to purchase the books for downloading to your Kindle or iPad.

30 Years of Personal Computing (For Me)

For most readers younger than 35 or so (in America, at least), personal computers have been part of your environment about as long as you've been mentally aware of the world around you. Chances are, if you are towards the higher end of the age range just mentioned, your family might not have had one at first, but maybe your school had a few or perhaps friends' families did. And of course there was advertising for them, not to mention specialized stores selling them.

Nowadays, personal computers are so common that many households have several. At my place, we have two desktop machines, one laptop computer and a tablet computer, with another tablet purchase contemplated. If you consider "smart phones" computers -- and a pretty good case for that can be made -- we have two of those. So the tally comes to six computers for two people, or three per capita. I suspect this isn't unusual in middle-class America.

But for people older than 50, say, personal computers were a Big Deal when they first reached the market, especially for someone like me who needed to crunch numbers on a fairly large scale.

Back then, most "graphics" was in the form of X's and other symbols arranged on a screen, though before long one could buy a graphics card to insert on the motherboard, this allowing linear graphic displays. Remember the Hercules board, anyone? Today, of course, the graphical interface is the real computer, so far as the average user is concerned.

IBM Personal Computer - 1981
Apple II computers were too memory-limited for me, but the IBM PC had real potential. The machine shown above looks like the one I bought once I landed a contract to develop a software system using the APL programming language. The potential on-board memory was 640 KB, but I started with about half that because just about everything to do with personal computers 30 years ago (I got mine in May, 1983) was really expensive, especially memory (over the next couple of years I up-graded in steps to the maximum). My system, including a dot-matrix printer cost me around $3,500 -- about $8,200 in 2013 dollars according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator. A box of 10 floppy disks was something like $49, if memory serves.

My new machine wasn't bottom-of-the-line, however. Like the one in the picture, it had two floppy disk drives -- and they were double-sided drives so that my floppies could hold twice as munch data as earlier, single sided ones could. About the time I bought my PC, IBM came out with a PC that had an actual hard drive that could hold a massive 10 MB of data. (These capacities are microscopic compared to what a typical computer holds today.)

Even though I have fond memories of my first computer, I would never ever want to go back to using one like it. But in its day it was a marvel that helped me earn a living.

Seen in Florida

Compared to places I've lived such as Korea and Upstate New York, Seattle has a pretty mild winter. My wife, who lived for many years in California, begs to differ. Seattle's winters feature short days, plenty of overcast and even rain. Although it isn't frigid, it can be pretty gloomy. So we head off to sunnier places for much of November through March. For the last two years this has included Florida, at the opposite corner of the contiguous United States.

It turns out that the airline distance from Seattle to Orlando or Miami is about the same as to Honolulu. Plus, the route is over land, unlike the Hawaii run that is seriously lacking in emergency landing fields. Better yet, with a rental car, one can range over a lot of Florida to visit a variety of sites, unlike the islands where you are pretty much stuck once you arrive.

Even though many readers, especially those living in the Midwest and Northeast, have visited Florida, I thought I'd post some photos I took so that others might become aware of what can be found there.

Vizcaya

A few miles down the shoreline road from downtown Miami is the Vizcaya estate, built by the bachelor scion of a farm equipment manufacturer who, like other rich Americans, brought many objects of art and architecture from Europe to the New World. The Wikipedia entry on Vizcaya is here. Photography of the interior is forbidden, so I can offer only some exterior views.

South Beach

The South Beach portion of Miami Beach is perhaps best known these days for its collection of Art Deco style hotels that were built in the 1930s and very early 1940s. Aside from the buildings, I have to say I'm not fond of South Beach, lively though it can be. Many of those buildings along Ocean Drive have restaurants by or even on the sidewalks, and there are so many and competition is so fierce that a number of them hire pretty girls to entice you to a meal.

New River, Fort Lauderdale

The southeast coast of Florida is home to thousands of fancy boats and yachts that somehow weather the occasional hurricane. The photo below was taken from the Riverwalk in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Tarpon Springs

A short ways north of St. Petersburg on Florida's west coast is Tarpon Springs, a small city with a large Greek population. One can eat lots of Greek food, enjoy watching the boats and even take a tour out to an island on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico.

Universal Studios, Harry Potter Area
The Big Deal for tourists in the Orlando area is Walt Disney World. But once that becomes old hat, there are other attractions, one of which is the east coast version of the Universal Studios theme park. So far as I'm concerned, it's okay, but doesn't measure up to Disney. The area I liked best was devoted to Harry Potter. Below are a few street scenes. Yes, it was actually raining that day.

Hard Rock Cafe

You have to eat someplace. So my wife chose the Hard Rock Cafe, a venue we normally avoid. The most striking thing for me was the pink Cadillac rotating above the bar.

Really Small American Cars, 1935-1955

During the early years of the American automobile industry, the size, mechanical configuration, type of power and general shape of cars was something being sorted out. That era was largely over by 1915 or thereabouts. And by 1930, most American cars fell into size ranges that were generally proportional to price classes. This became the norm until about 1960, when brands began sprouting "standard size," "compact," and "intermediate" models.

But even in that era of stable stratification there were exceptions in the form of cars built smaller than entry-level Fords, Chevrolets and Plymouths.

The 1938 American Bantam shown above was one of a little more than 4,000 built during the years leading up to World War 2. Other versions were produced in the early 1930s under the aegis of the American Austin Company.

The Crosley car was part of Powell Crosley's manufacturing and broadcasting empire. Cars were built from the late 1930s into the early 1950s with a wartime hiatus. The top image in this group shows a 1939 model. The middle image is of a 1947 sedan, about 14,000 of which were sold thanks to the postwar seller's market. The lower photo is of the Hotshot sports car from 1950-52. A roadster version with doors was manufactured 1949-52 and sold slightly better. Total postwar Crosley production was a little more than 75,000.

And then there was the King Midget, a tiny car built from 1946 until the late 1960s. Estimated production is 5,000. I have never been able to understand why anybody would buy one, but a few people did.

What I'm Up To

In 2012 I finally finished "Art Adrift" and had it published as an e-book on Amazon. The publishing process, once I learned it, was simple enough that I decided to write more books.

As 2012 draws to a close, I'm working on a book about American automobile styling. I posit two periods when the appearance of cars was evolutionary. Otherwise, aside from occasional exogenous nudges due to technological advances and government regulations, automobile styling has been far more a matter of fashion than design in the pure, ideal sense. The book will be richly illustrated to show the reader how my thesis applies.

While that is going on, I'm mulling about a book dealing with the early 20th century ideology/religion of Functionalism as applied to the fields of industrial design and architecture. No real thesis yet, but I'm collecting material on the subject.

And it also seems that I'm done yet done with Art Adrift. I recently read a couple of chapters and spotted enough typos needing correction to persuade me to do a clean-up to have in place for new purchasers before the end of the year. It's available now.

Turner Prize Finalists 2012

For the United Kingdom's avant-garde art world, the Annual Big Deal is the Turner Prize, named after the 19th century painter J.M.W. Turner, who many art historians regard as a precursor of modernist art because of the semi-abstract quality of large areas of many of his later paintings.

The Turner Prize is only one of several important scheduled events that reveal the present Modernist Art Establishment take on what art ought to be. But for what it's worth, here is a link to the 2012 prize finalists with the winner identified.

I find it interesting that only one of the four finalist works involved graphic art. The other three involve Installation, film and video (as best I can tell from the citations). None of the finals painted in oil.

This serves to help confirm the speculation in the final chapter of my book, Art Adrift, that self-styled avant-gardists had to abandon painting for other media because there was little room for major innovation in painting after 1920 or thereabouts.

Seen on the Road, November 2012

If it's Novemeber, then that's when my wife and I are on the road down to Las Vegas and then to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and points north.

Here are a few things that caught my attention.

Yes, Las Vegas has lots of "visual clutter." But that's what can make it interesting. I don't gamble, but instead while away our annual weekly stay by strolling the streets, casinos and shops looking at architecture, products and people. The photo above features the plaza in front of the Venetian casino.

Nearby is the Fashion Show indoor mall which has many of the same upscale shops found in the casinos along with some of the usual mall fare. I have no idea what to make of that structure in front of it. Chalk it up to being in Vegas, I suppose. The truck with the sign advertising girls who really want to come visit you is one of a fleet that prowls up and down the Strip.

I noticed the "tasteful" jacket and matching shoes in a show window of the Billionaire shop in the Palazzo casino. Items in the shop are very expensive (more than a thousand for a pair of shoes, for instance), and if that jacket is any indication, marketed to the nouveau riche.

Meanwhile, over in the Wynn's, these ladies are setting up a window display at the Chanel shop. It seems that this season Chanel, Dior and some other couturiers are into puffy, above-the-knee dresses. Chanel in all its Vegas shops (and elsewhere, I suppose) has the mannequin's normal fake hair topped by a Louise Brooks style helmet wig of an unnatural shade (the wig leaves some of the other "hair" showing in all cases). I am not sure what Coco herself would make of this, given her preference for simple, understated, practical clothing.

On to Santa Barbara and its Nuevo Paseo, a downtown outdoor shopping mall. Before the Great Recession, Santa Barbara had plenty of stores. But now one sees a noticeable number of closed ones such as this former chocolate shop. Note that the Santa Barbara area has plenty of rich people. I noticed empty stores up in Carmel as well, Carmel being even more upscale. Given that the voters of California just voted in an income tax increase, I expect to find even more empty stores the next time I visit.

Speaking of Carmel, I thought it'd be fun to toss in a photo of Storybook Style as found in the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea itself. I've photographed this one before, but always there were cars parked in front, preventing a full view. I took this on a dreary day just before shops opened.

I thought they had been consigned to History. But no! It seems that Oscar Meyer has had some new Wienermobiles built such as this one seen in northern California. Long may they roll.

Artist to Admiral, Admiral to Artist

This is about an oddity, a random happening that occurred (oddly enough) for contemporaneous families.

Let's start with Augustus John (1878-1961), best known as a portraitist who sired children by his wife and other women. His second son (by his wife) was Caspar John (1903-1984), who went on to become First Sea Lord (1960-63), attaining the rank of Admiral of the Fleet in 1962. In the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord is the highest position that an officer can attain.

Then there is Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves (1872-1948), Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet (1934-36). As his Wikipedia entry indicates, Reeves was a key figure in the development of carrier-based aviation. On a lesser note, he has been credited as the first football player to wear a protective helmet. Unlike Caspar John, Reeves did not lead a navy, but his position was that of top operational officer.

Reeves' oldest son, Joseph Mason Reeves, Jr. (1898-1973, biographical snippet here, became an artist (although he too served as a naval officer, though briefly). He trained at the University of California and, after the Great War, in Europe. Unlike Augustus John, he and his work are not well known today. Below are a few examples of his paintings I found on the Web.

Gallery

Marjorie Moore

Portrait of a young woman

Seated woman

Woman in evening dress

Woman in red shawl

Like John, Reeves seems to have done a good deal of portrait painting. The examples I found were all of women. I rate his work as adequate, but just barely.

500,000

Sometime today, 19 September 2012, the 500,000th page view will be registered for this blog.

Thank you for visiting here.

Blogging Note

For the last few months I've been on The Big Push, an effort to complete the first draft of a book about the crisis of innovation in Modernist painting. Well, I finally completed drafting all the chapters plus a preface, and I'm setting it aside for a while so I can take a more objective look at it later.

Another reason it's getting set aside is that I'm about to head to the British Isles for much of August. I'll mostly be touring, but will visit art museums where I can, probably in Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow (too bad the Hunterian will be closed).

Blog posts will continue to appear on the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday pace while I'm away, thanks to the magic of scheduled posting times. What will probably suffer is response to comments. I'll bring my iPad, but will be at the mercy of Internet availability as well as that clunky iPad virtual keyboard.

I'll report what I find interesting after I return home 29 August.

Roadside Encounters: Vancouver Island

Last week I was traveling, not writing (the "new" posts you saw were drafted earlier).

But I was taking pictures along our route in the southern half of Vancouver Island in Canada's British Columbia province. Here are some of the things I saw:

Gallery

Along the Strait of Georgia that separates Vancouver Island from the mainland there are many inlets, populated small islands and harbors. Getting around by boat can be a necessity or a hobby, depending. This view is a small part of the harbor in downtown Nanaimo.

Nearby is a station for floatplanes, a more expensive way of getting around. Shown here are two de Havilland Beavers of Harbour Air, a major local airline. Click here for more information on the aircraft. Note that the plane facing the camera is an original version, powered by a radial reciprocating motor. I saw one or two others during our trip, but most Beavers seen in this corner of North America have been converted to turboprop power, as is the case for the background Beaver.

Morning low tide at Parksville.

Here is a goat munching away on grass. So why did I bother taking his picture?

It turns out that the goat is grazing on the roof of a store-restaurant in the town of Coombs. If you are in the Parksville - Qualicum Beach area, just ask the locals where to find "goats on the roof."

West of Port Alberni on Sproat Lake can be found a Martin Mars flying boat used for dumping water on forest fires. As you can read here, the Mars was the largest production U.S. flying boat, developed and flown during World War 2. The end of the war curtailed production at seven examples. I knew that survivors had been used for fire fighting, but was surprised they were still at it. I hope at least one winds up in a museum, restored to original Navy specifications.

This a view of a beach from a fancy restaurant in Tofino, on Vancouver Island's wet, often stormy west coast. We got soaked the day before while exploring the town on foot.

Back on the dry eastern side of the island is Comox, where there is a RCAF (currently Canadian Forces) airbase. There is a small air museum there along with a few historic aircraft. This is a CF-100 Canuck interceptor from the 1950s; for more information, see here.

Here's part of the harbor scene at Cowichan Bay. Not shown is a nearby strip of feely-groovy super organic shops and eateries.

Harbor taxis put on a "water ballet" once a week in Victoria.

Vacation ended, the Coho ferry boat sails from Victoria to Port Angeles on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula.