Crowing Proclaimed, no Crow Eaten

The tiny image above is the largest I could find showing the American Artist magazine cover for its June 2012 issue.

The image is of a study or uncompleted painting in the Joaquin Sorolla museum in Madrid. I stumbled across it while visiting in October 2010, photographed it, and included photos such as the one below in this post.

I took the photo because it was the only example I knew of showing his way of blocking in his subject material.

That post was linked by Charley Parker's Lines and Colors blog, leading to a significant rise in readership here.

So far as I'm aware [pats self on back], my image was the first of Sorolla's painting to appear on the Internet.

Blogger Visits Art School Open House

Actually, the Open House involved many of the departments at the University of Washington, but I went because (1) I could visit the University's Henry Art Gallery for free, and (2) there were supposed to be some interesting activities at the School of Art where I did my undergraduate work.

Let's look at some photos I took to set the scene, and then I'll do some follow-up commentary.

This is part of a timeline display in the Henry Gallery. I'm probably being delusional, but somehow the selection of events strikes me as having a political bias.

The founding collection of the Henry Gallery contains some noteworthy late 19th century paintings including a Bouguereau. Here, alone in a room, is the only item of traditional art I could find on display.

Two of several examples of Installation Art on view that day. The people at the far right of the lower photo are real, by the way.

These are student drawings for Art 190, the introductory drawing course. I was told that not all those taking 190 are art majors. Nevertheless, these are part of a hallway display that apparently serves to demonstrate what the students are up to. The items shown here are typical of the quality of the entire display. Note that perspective is poorly done and that ellipses are also incorrect. Why didn't the instructor actually teach the students how to do these basic tasks?

Another hall display, this probably from a life drawing class where the students must have been asked to draw with expression but not violate the model's proportions. The results are better.

An event at the School of Art that I wanted to attend was a set of lectures by Art History majors. Unfortunately, I was about to leave for Florida and didn't have the time. Here is a list of the lecture topics taken from a handout:

"Constructing a Colonial Identity: Eighteenth Century Paintings of Indigenous Families in New Spain"

"Magic and the Miracle - Working Image: The Interplay of Art and the Supernatural in Fifteenth Century Italy"

"Enduring Disassociation: Mixed Racial Identities and Historical Interpretations"

"Modernity and Artistic License: Neo-Victorianism as Other"

"Classicizing Proximity: The African in Seventeenth-century Rome"

Okay, let's unpack those lecture titles that with one exception are likely related to Masters theses and PhD dissertations of the presenters. Race/ethnicity? Three of the five seem to deal with that, an obsession of a certain line of politics common to most colleges and univerities.

The title mentioning "the Supernatural" is harder to puzzle out. Could it have to do with religion? That would make sense where Italy in the 1400s is concerned. I can't think of many (any?) paintings featuring ghosts from that era, but I'm no expert and could easily be wrong.

Wikipedia indicates that the term "Neo-Victorianism" has to do with a number of things including people doing dress-up in 1880s clothing and the Steampunk literary genre. The term "Other" has been used to refer to racial/ethnic/subcultural groups that are ignored by the mainstream, yet pose some kind of ominous threat or other to it. Well, that's my superficial impression. So where do Modernity, Artistic License and a possibly sinister Neo-Victorianism intersect? Beats me, so I'm sorry I couldn't get to that lecture.

What strikes me is that none of the titles suggests serious study of the history of art. I'll accept that MA theses aren't expected to be much more than dry runs for further scholarly exercises. But every subject listed above (the last two by PhD students) is trivial and to my mind greatly off-topic if the topic is art history. Where current academicians see scholarship, I find strong evidence of politically induced intellectual rot. If I were running the university I would fire the Art History faculty to ensure that no other students waste precious years of their lives on the study of the irrelevant.

Illustration Features Coby

The illustration above (click to enlarge) is by Coby Whitmore (1913-88) whose career flourished in the years before television began killing off the big general-interest magazines.

Whitmore could be classed as one of the "big head" school of illustration, where backgrounds disappeared and the focus was on a gorgeous women who sometimes had a handsome man in the scene as a supporting cast member. And there might be a few stage setting details such as an end table, doorway or chair sketched in. That "big head" phrase was derision from a slightly earlier generation of illustrators who included detailed backgrounds in their work, the implication being that the new breed was lazy.

Me? I think Whitmore's work is terrific.

And if you are a Whitmore fan or are curious about my enthusiasm, grab a copy of issue number 37 of Illustration Magazine. It contains a long, well-illustrated article on Whitmore that features many quotations from the artist. Such quotes are rare in Illustration because in many cases their subjects died many years earlier and left little trace other than fading pictures in crumbling magazines.

Be warned that Illustration can be hard to find on news stands (try Barnes & Noble bookstores first) and the publisher often sells off his on-line order supply fairly fast. I got to the point where I subscribed to the magazine to ensure that I could get a copy.

Gem of an Automobile Museum

Automobile museums are all different, yet in many ways similar -- especially the Important Museums. By that I mean car museums with large collections here in America seem obliged at have at least one Duesenberg, one Cord, a Ford Model T, an early 1900s antique of some description, a Packard from any era plus at least one car from the 1930s with either a V-12 or V-16 motor.

So it was with surprise and pleasure that I recently visited the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, a gem filled with cars seldom seen here in the United States. Moreover, the collection is built around a theme: most car museums strike me as being filled with whatever nice-to-have vehicles that pop up on the market, creating a sort of random effect.

The Tampa Bay museum's collection core is built around two poles. One is cars with engines in the rear, the other is cars with front-wheel drive. Oh, and those cars had to be from the era 1920-1950. Because most cars with those characteristics were built in Europe in those days, I saw many cars that I've never encountered in person before. (Sadly, I've never visited European Automobile museums; one does have to make travel compromises with one's spouse, after all.)

Let's take a look at some photos from my visit:

Gallery

Ruxton - 1929
Ruxton was an American front-wheel-drive car that reached the market when the Great Depression hit; only a few hundred were made. The four-tone paint scheme was designed by Joseph Urban who also created a similar scheme based on blue.

Tracta E - 1930
Another low-production fwd car, this by Jean-Albert Gregoire (1898-1992) of France, father of numerous automobile engineering innovations. I confess not to have heard of the brand before.

Aero - 1937
Another brand previously unknown to me. This fwd car was built in Czechoslovakia.

Tatra T87 - c.1942
The Czech Tatra firm built several series of rear-engined cars from the mid 1930 to the late 1970s. The one shown here is to me the archetypical version.

Tatra T97 - 1938

Tatra Tatraplan - late 1940s

Voisin C7 - 1927
The power train layout is the traditional front-motor-rear-drive. I include it because it's a Voisin and it's body is constructed of wood and doped fabric of the Weymann type.

Panhard Dynamic - 1938
Some (many?) French cars are rather ugly, and this Panhard is near the top of the list. The drive train is conventional. But note the covered wheels and three-piece wraparound windshield. And if you look closely, you'll find that the steering wheel is mounted at the middle of the dashboard -- neither right nor left. In the 1930s, luxury French cars had right-hand steering while mass-market cars mounted the steering wheel on the left. Traffic in France followed the German and American pattern, so expensive French cars were better suited for driving in Britain or Czechoslovakia. Apparently Panhard wanted to split the difference.

Santa Barbara: Smaller Museum, Useful Collection

Some museums are more comprehensive than others. Nevertheless, some specialization is necessary due to inevitable budgetary limitations. And then there is the factor of donations of art over the years.

Other specialization is voluntary. For example, New York's Museum of Modern Art, as its name states, focuses on modernism in its various guises. And the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York set in motion a de-acquisition program a few years ago in order to focus on art of the recent past (scroll down in the link for more information).

I suspect most art museums fall into the former category with some added policy steering by whoever is running things at any given time. The result of all this is a museum's character as perceived by visitors. For instance, the largest art museum in my neck of the woods is the Seattle Art Museum. The downtown building has some paintings from 1500-1700, a lot of modernist art and a decent collection of art by Northwest "mystic" painters such as Morris Graves and Mark Tobey. What is almost completely missing is 19th and very early 20th century art, though some bequests might improve matters eventually. The Portland Art Museum down the freeway in Oregon is much stronger for that period.

Another west coast museum in an even smaller metropolitan area that has some nice late 19th and early 20th century paintings is the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, described in the link. Its web site is here, a link to its European collection is here and the American collection link is here.

The collection links are worth exploring because they contain thumbnail images of many (most? all?) the works in each collection; I saw a number of these recently while visiting Santa Barbara. To me the most impressive work that I don't illustrate below is William Merritt Chase's portrait of his wife, a large painting that might or might not be finished -- detailing other than the face is somewhat sketchy.

Here is a sampling of items in the collection. Aside from the Monet, none are well-known, but they provide viewers a decent idea as to what some famous artists were doing.

Gallery

The Manhattan Club (Stewart Mansion) by Childe Hassam - c.1891

Steaming Streets by George Bellows - 1908

Les bles murs by Jules Bastien-Lepage - 1884

View of Paris from the Trocadedro by Berthe Morisot - 1872

Waterloo Bridge by Claude Monet - 1900

Notre Dame Dorée by Maurice Utrillo - 1911

2nd Blog Birthday

Today marks two years since the first post of this blog appeared.

The start was slow, daily pageview tallies were in the 40-80 range for the first six months. But the pace picked up and now pageview counts are nicely in the 1,000-1,500 range (viewing drops off around any Saturday) and the cumulative amount as of this posting is about 360,000.

It's getting to the point where I'll allow advertising. That will make both Google and my wife happy and will help subsidize the research that goes into many of the posts you read here.

So a hearty thank you to all you readers, be you regulars or occasionals, for motivating me to keep the blog rolling.

In the Beginning: Marcel Duchamp

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 - 1912
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) painted little after completing the iconic work shown above. Instead, he focused on playing chess, advising art collectors and creating non-art assemblages that he claimed were art, setting the stage for all that wonderful Postmodernism we've been subjected to for the past 50 years.

But his past, those pre-"Nude" days, are largely terra incognita so far as Standard Narrative Art History is concerned. Perhaps that's because it might damage Duchamp's reputation if

this image was widely known and associated with his name.

What you see is a detail of the painting below.

Portrait d'Yvonne Duchamp-Villon née Bon - 1907
I spotted it recently while visiting the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.