Monday, August 16, 2010
Grumpy About Wagner
Yesterday I sat through the Seattle Opera's production of Richard Wagner's Tristn und Isolde (hereafter, T&I). And boy did it make me grumpy.
I suppose some of this is because I'm not a strong music fan in the first place and attend opera only because my wife would be very disappointed if I didn't accompany her to one.
The Wikipedia link above goes into a good deal of detail regarding T&I's background, plot and reactions to it over time. Apparently a number of well-known composers were enthralled by it and historians of music say the it was an influential work. Of course one can point to the artists who regarded Paul Cézanne highly and how influential his work was. That doesn't mean one absolutely must like T&I or Cézanne's paintings. I don't like either one.
My first problem with T&I was its length; with intermissions it ran four hours and 40 minutes. Three hours would be much more tolerable.
Secondly, the plot had very little action. Many important events were manifested in the form of characters singing about what had happened someplace or other off-stage: why couldn't those events have been dramatized?
Instead (point three), I had to suffer through a 40-minute stretch of the second act where Isolde and the love-potioned Tristan went through what I took to be a bunch of two-bit philosophizing and analogy-making about love. I quickly reached the point where I stopped reading the captions and gave serious thought to falling asleep, my time being cruelly wasted by matters that could have been disposed of in five or ten minutes.
T&I is a sung-through opera with no set-piece arias. No memorable melodies either, at least none that I caught. I also didn't pick up on leitmotifs that were supposedly there. So the music (which tended to underline sung thoughts or emotions) was lush, but to a large extent nondescript to my unmusical ears.
So for me T&I was basically a waste of time and money.
Many will disagree, and that's fine. I'm just venting here and don't expect to convert anyone to my point of view. Moreover I find that most operas are tedious, chewing up plenty of time where nothing much happens. And the songs about love strike the 2010 me as insipid even though they must have great appeal to 1880 others.
T&I was my third Wagner opera (after Der fliegende Holländer and Die Walküre), so three strikes and he's out, so far as I'm concerned.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
What did Josephine Look Like?
What did certain people who lived before the age of photography really look like?
In many cases, we can't be sure even where portraits are available. That's because some painters lacked the skill to render a good likeness. Other painters might have produced flattering images of their subjects.
One possible solution to this problem is to assemble a set of images by different artists and compare them. Where they tend to agree, it's fairly likely that is how the subject actually appeared.
As a test, let's look at a collection of images of Napoleon's first wife, the Empress Josephine. Several of the images shown are unfamiliar to me, so it's possible that I wasn't wise to rely on identifications provided by the Web sites I used as sources. I also wasn't able to identify the artist in some cases because no identification was provided. Cautionary notes aside, the focus should be on what the images tell us.
I suspect that sculptors tend to do more realistic images than painters, though they too might be tempted to flatter their subjects.
None of the images shows an open mouth -- but few if any portraits before 1900 showed teeth anyway. What we do see is a small, slightly pinched mouth in nearly every image. Why? This source states that "her blackened and rotting teeth were a direct result of the sugar saturated cuisine consumed during her childhood" in Martinique.
The 1814 painting and perhaps the one by Gérard suggest a fuller face than the rest, which indicate more of a V-shape. The Appiani painting is the only one that doesn't clearly show brown eyes.
Otherwise, there seems to be agreement that she had hooded eyelids, the tops of which sit under a strong ridge further defined by eyebrows that are fairly thick where they meet the nose. She also had strong cheekbones and a generally straight nose with a relatively flat underside. Her hair appears to be dark brown, and she favored wearing it with bangs in the front and upswept or collected at the back.
The most attractive depictions, I think, are the busts by Chinard and the sketch by Prud'hon -- which agree in most details. I would like to think this was how she really looked, even though a fuller face might have been the reality.
Too bad Daguerre didn't invent photography 30 years earlier (sigh).
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Painter Who Filled Sargent's Shoes
This summer London's National Portrait Gallery has been hosting a small exhibit of portraits by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), who in 1907 took over the role of Britain's top society portraitist after John Singer Sargent proclaimed that he was fed up with all that.
The de László Wikipedia entry is here and the artist's Web site is here.
De László was born in the Pest side of Budapest and received training in Hungary, Munich and Paris. He led a cosmopolitan existence as he gained fame and wealth painting portraits, but maintained an imposing home/studio in Budapest until his Irish wife persuaded him to move to London in 1907. Aside from a rough patch (house arrest) during the later part of the Great War, he thrived in England while sallying to the continent and America from time to time to execute other commissions.
László was skilled at painting men and children, but he is best known for portraits of women.
This was commissioned by Lord Curzon who was the notorious novelist's lover at the time (just before she was jilted).
This painting was done as a demonstration: details here.
Yes, it's the "Queen Mum" and this painting, on loan from HM Queen Elizabeth II, was one of the highlights of the NPG show.
Rivaling the Queen Elizabeth portrait at the small NPG exhibit is this one of the Duchess of Portland when she was nearing 50.
Like many other representational artists his his era and earlier, de László's reputation collapsed following his death. While Sargent, Anders Zorn, Joaquin Sorolla and Giovanni Boldini have been rehabilitated to some degree, de László remains something of an unknown. Reasons advanced for this include: (1) he was too facile, able to complete paintings in six or fewer sittings, (2) he painted aristocracy, a no-no in an era where egalitarianism dominated lip-service; and (3) the fact that most of his paintings remain in private collections rather than being "visible" in museums. This last problem was slightly mitigated by a 2004 Christie's exhibit in London and the current NPG exhibit mentioned above.
My take? I like de László's portraits a lot. They're unlike Sargent's in that he tended to paint "thinner" -- not so much paint on the brush. This makes his portraits slightly less dramatic. But he created good likenesses that are interesting to view even where we don't know what the subject looked like. He was hugely in demand for excellent reasons.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
How to Style Cars: 1955
In 1955 when I was a teenage car-stylist wannabe, a new book (cover image below) appeared on the market. It was filled with helpful tips and packed with examples of concept sketches and renderings by professional stylists and advanced students. I still have my copy.
So I was pleased to stumble across a post concerning it on the Dean's Garage blog. The illustrations shown here were pulled from that post, but I strongly urge interested readers to click on the link and scroll down to where links to other illustrations can be found.
The book was strictly monochrome, so color versions of the art (such as shown above) are sorely missing; nowadays such a book would have color. Some illustrations are simply workman-like and a few are beautifully done -- especially those by Richard Tatge who did the red turbine car. As a group, they are an interesting sample of styling ideas from the early-to-mid 1950s.
Aside from Tatge, most of the stylists whose contributions were in the book were good at rendering cars but not proficient at human beings. A few human figures were little more than poorly done diagrams. Interestingly, Tatge never seemed to have made a mark either in styling or related fields such as illustration if a recent Google search on his name is any evidence.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Artist as Brand-Name
Kelly Crow's 6 August Wall Street Journal article "Lust for Late" highlights higher sales prices for later works by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and -- the artist featured in the piece -- Salvador Dalí.
I find the following passage interesting:
The fever for late-period works is being driven by market demands as much as scholarly curiosity. Typically, the pieces created by major artists late in life aren't as prestigious or pricey as their early breakthroughs or prime examples. The art world, like the field of fashion or mathematics, likes to discover genius among the young while often dismissing whatever comes after as repetitious or second-tier.
But as artists' top works seep out of the marketplace and into museums, collectors' tastes begin "migrating to the supply," says David Norman, Sotheby's international co-chairman of Impressionist and modern art.
I find it interesting because it adds evidence for the supply-and-demand factor in art pricing. Elsewhere I've seen claims that one reason auction prices for French Impressionists has been high for decades is that the supply of first-rate 15th through 17th century painters has largely dried up.
But there is another factor in play: buyer caution. If one is in the mood to spend a few million dollars on a painting, the potential investment value of that painting is hard to ignore. (The exception is when a buyer truly loves a painting and plans to keep it for as long as he lives.) So rather than risk money on a recent artist whose long-term investment potential is unclear, go for undervalued works by proven artists even if this means ignoring the opinion of critics and curators.
Regarding Dalí, Crow observes:
Few artists could reap more from a late-period revival than Dalí. The artist created at least 1,200 paintings between his art-school years in the 1920s and his death in 1989. Yet he was only 36 when the Surrealists in Paris expelled him from their circle, citing his outsize ego and political apathy. As a result, more than half of Dalí's entire output is considered "late."
After breaking with the Surrealists, Dalí toyed with a variety of different topics and styles, a surprising mix that's reflected in the upcoming show at the High Museum. These include his 1951 "Christ of Saint John of the Cross," a nearly 7-foot-tall, photorealistic portrait of the crucifixion that's owned by Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and hasn't been exhibited in the U.S. for over 40 years. A pixelated rendering of Raphael's Madonna embedded within the outline of a huge ear in his "Sistine Madonna" from 1958 reveals Dalí's later fascination for trompe l'oeil. Other artworks tease out his boredom with Abstract Expressionism and his early nods to Pop, conceptual, video and performance art.
This assessment seems reasonable. Moreover, I don't consider his post-1940 paintings intrinsically inferior to his Surrealist efforts. In each era, he painted both good and so-so works. His drawing and prints are another matter, their value affected by uncertainty regarding fakes.
Actually, the business of artist-as-brand-name doesn't bother me. After all, how can an artist not be a "brand" if he is a professional whose main source of income is sales of his work. I can't think of any alternative, but if you can, please let us know in Comments.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Savage Adventures
The well-used expression "timing is everything" usually refers to something relatively short-term. But sometimes timing can be a matter of generations, as is the case with the subject of this post -- the pulp fiction hero Doc Savage.
Back in the 1970s and 80s I noticed a steady flow of Doc Savage paperbacks sporting James Bama covers such as the one shown above. I assumed it was some new sci-fi series and paid it no attention other than to wonder about the odd hairstyle Bama created for Doc. At any rate, I never bothered to buy any of the books. Such is the bliss of ignorance.
What I didn't know was that the Doc Savage character first appeared in the early 1930s in a pulp magazine series that ran till the end of the 1940s. When the series ended I was still reading comic books, never considered buying any kind of pulp (though the crime oriented ones with scantily-clad babes on their cover began to fascinate), and on the cusp of discovering science-fiction.
So timing-induced ignorance it was -- born too late to experience Doc in the original and too late to discover him in re-release (to do the latter, ideally I should have been a teenager).
I began my discovery of Doc Savage through my interest in Baumhofer's work even though I was familiar with Bama's career and Doc Savage covers. In the last few years I noticed a new series of reprints featuring the Baumhofer covers. When some of these trickled down to $2 remainder status items at a local cut-rate bookstore I bought a few to find out what this Doc Savage stuff was all about.
The "author" of the Doc Savage series was "Kenneth Robeson," a pseudonym created by the original publisher as cover for a number of ghost-writers who might be needed over time if the pulp series became successful. As it turned out, most Doc Savage adventures were either written by or under the scrutiny of Lester Dent, who offered yarn-spinning advice here.
Doc Savage is a highly improbable version of a human being. Trained by his father to grow into a large muscle-machine with instant reflexes and five senses that operate at near-ultimate capabilities, he holds a medical doctorate degree and invents lots of keen stuff to assist him in his crusade for justice in particularly bloodthirsty corners of the world including New York City. He has offices on the 86th floor of an anonymous NYC skyscraper and a nearby warehouse stuffed with a submarine, other water craft, a variety of special cars and trucks, several high-speed amphibious aircraft and other goodies I've yet to read about. This is funded via a precious metal mine in what once was the Mayan empire. From time to time Doc radios a request (speaking a Mayan dialect) and the locals collect and caravan out enough to keep Doc's operation humming.
Naturally Doc is too busy solving crimes, inventing things, doing his daily two-hour regimen of exercise and sense-enhancement training to pay much attention to women. But he doesn't chase after guys either. That's the way heroes of literature operated back in those days. Adventure readers -- especially teenage ones -- wanted lots of action and heroics; smoochy stuff was for the romance pulps that gals read. Also, Doc was pretty short on introspection, again unlike how a 21st century hero might be concocted.
Therefore, to my eyes Doc Savage is unbelievable as a real person. To most 1935 readers older than 18 or 20, he probably seemed off the charts as well. But the whole point of Savage and similar characters is that push beyond all reasonable limits of reality. Just sit back, relax and wipe out the cares of the day with a dose of Savage and his improbable adventures.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Vieux Montmartre
I took the above photo during a heavy squall just after leaving the main building of the Musée de Montmartre last month. The background structure houses exhibits and was the former home of artists such as Suzanne Valadon and her dysfunctional son Maurice Utrillo. The museum's Web site is here and a brief history here.
Montmartre was the center of Paris' bohemian-artistic crowd during the final decades of the 19th century and first few decades of the twentieth, when Montparnasse gradually usurped the avant-garde crown.
Although I've visited Montmartre perhaps half a dozen times over the years, I never bothered to visit its museum. Perhaps I figured it would be some kind of tourist trap. Too bad for me. I finally toured it in June and found that it was entirely legit and had several items of exceptional interest. Let me add that it helps if a visitor has more than passing knowledge of Parisian arts and culture of the era featured in the exhibits.
In the center of one room was an encased model of the district with small flags indicating where well known artists, writers and other notables lived. On a nearby wall I found...
This large painting once decorated a wall at the famous Montmartre hangout Le Chat Noir.
Another item of interest was what supposedly was the only known nude photograph of Valadon. She got her start as a model for artists including Renoir before becoming a painter herself. The image was certainly impressive, though I wasn't completely convinced that it was really of Suzanne. Her lower face has a pinched look that became progressively more distinct as she aged. I found this hard to detect in the photo, though it's possible the look was less prominent when she was, say, 20 years old.
A good reason for you to journey to Montmartre to see for yourself.
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