The Vermeer Museum in Delft

Delft in South Holland was the place where famed painter Jan Vermeer (1634-1675) lived and made his comparatively small number of paintings. It is a pleasant small city that's worth a visit if you are in the Netherlands and would like to see more of the country than Amsterdam.

Besides getting a sense of Vermeer's roots, you can visit the Vermeer Centrum Deft which does its best to inform you about the artist. What you won't see there are original paintings due to their rarity and high market value. (I suspect that strongly attributed Vermeers are virtually "priceless" because they are in important museums, and no such museum would part with a Vermeer under any but the more dire of circumstances.)

What you can see are full-size reproductions of his paintings with explanatory captions that include the work's current location. Many are here in the United States; they can be found at the Met and the Frick in New York and in the National Gallery in Washington. Also pictured is a painting owned by casino owner Steve Wynn of Las Vegas, but its attribution is weak, as a glance at the image will suggest.

On the upper level of the museum are items of interest to artists and people interested in the technology of painting. Included is a camera obscura, but the museum does not commit itself to whether or to what extent the device was used by Vermeer. Below are some photos I took of that part of the museum. Click on them to enlarge.

This chart indicates the colors thought to be most often used by Vermeer.

In Vermeer's day, artists had to mix their own paints. This display explains how it was done.

Here a viewer can compare a reproduction of a Vermeer painting to a rough approximation of his studio setup.

Vermeer was careful in his used of perspective. This exhibit shows how he might have constructed perspective for multiple vanishing points along a horizon line.

Alexander Mann: An Almost - Glasgow Boy

Alexander Mann (1853-1908), as this Wikipedia entry indicates, had an independent income and so could paint pretty much whatever and wherever he pleased.  Because he was born in Glasgow and at times associated with some of the Glasgow Boys, he is considered part of that group even though he really wasn't at the time.

Mann is one of those competent painters active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were overlooked by art historians until fairly recently.  Actually, Mann is still overlooked, as best I can tell, outside the British Isles.  One reason might be because he never quite painted a "masterpiece" work.  Another might be because he never quite settled into a signature style, making it difficult for viewers to say "Aha! That's by Alexander Mann!" when wandering through galleries.

Matter of fact, even though I've visited some of the most important art museums in England and Scotland, I don't remember seeing a Mann painting.  If I actually did walk past one, his name never caught my eye.  Nevertheless, based on some of the images below, it's hard to deny that he had talent and could do good work.

Gallery

Girl at Dusk
A nice example of use of broad, distinct brush strokes.

Hop Pickers Return - 1883
Bastien-Lepage influenced the Glasgow Boys and many others around the early 1880s. His subject matter and style had its greatest influence on Mann in this painting.

The Shipwright's Daughter - 1883

Pine Trees by the Coast, Levanto

Mediterranean Village at Sunset

Tangier from the Dunes - 1892
Mann also did landscapes.  Not impressionist, but not traditional either.  Reminds me most of some proto-Impressionist paintings by the Italian Macchiaioli group.

By the Findhorn - 1886

Soubrette - 1883

Helen Gow
Interesting composition and pose.

Up Close: Manchess at the Society of Illustrators

I like Greg Manchess' way with brushwork, having written about him here and here.

Lucky me, I was subjected to a 24-hours layover in New York City when returning to Seattle from Paris last month, and was able to visit the Society of Illustrators' digs on East 63rd Street where they are holding an exhibit of Manchess' works through 26 October.

The paintings were scattered around the walls of the upstairs dining room. Lighting conditions varied, but I tried my best to photograph details in such a way that his brushwork was revealed. Below are some of my photos. I decided not to include images of complete works, because that doesn't concern me in the present case. The small images below approximate a distant view; click to enlarge to observe the brushwork in more detail.

Gallery

As you probably noticed, Manchess likes to work with square-tipped brushes, though he uses other brushes when needed, especially for details. His level of experience has reached the point where his brush strokes are both economical and decisive. I envy that.

Jean Hélion: Apostate Abstractionist

Jean Hélion (1904-1987) gained artistic notoriety during the 1930s as an abstract painter. Then he threw that overboard in the early 1940s when abstract painting was in the process of becoming the dominant avant-garde style. That took intellectual and economic courage, because most of his contemporaries were heading in the opposite direction.

His Wikipedia entry is here and his obituary in The New York Times here, the latter indicating how he managed to escape captivity during World War 2, making it all the way from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to New York City. The two sources agree that one of his wives was Peggy Guggenheim's daughter Pegeen, but disagree as the his total number of wives.

Even though Hélion rejected abstraction, he remained Modernist in his depiction of representational subject matter. That is, he usually considerably simplified shapes, used flat areas of paint and distorted perceived colors. I go into a good detail of such practices in my e-book on art.

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Photos of Hélion early in his career and later

Untitled No. 19 - 1933-34

Composition abstraite - 1934

Ile de France - 1935

L'homme à la cravate tordue - 1943

Nude with Loaves - 1952

Blue Roofs, Paris - 1958

Luxembourg Gardens, Indian Summer - 1960-61

Triptyque-du-dragon - 1967

George Stavrinos at Society of Illustrators

Fashion illustration, aside from pattern packets and low-end catalogs, has traditionally assumed the form of stylized, often sketchy pictures. So back in the 1970s and 1980s I found it interesting when paging through The New York Times to find fashion illustrations that were tightly drawn. They stood out due to their contrast to the ink wash drawings that populated other advertisements, and were signed "Stavrinos."

That would be George Stavrinos (1948-1990), who died young thanks to his lifestyle choices.

His works and biography can be found in issue number 41 of Illustration magazine. And the Society of Illustrators has an exhibit devoted to him in its New York gallery: it closes 19 October.

I recently visited the Society's digs to view works by Greg Manchess, but took time to take a few photos of the Stavrinos display.

Gallery

A nice touch was a drawing board/work area re-creation.

Here are two detail shots of the above.

Besides finished drawings, the exhibit had some workup examples showing reference photos, an intermediate study, final art, and a clipping of part of a published ad. Note that Stavrinos hewed closely to his reference photos. That was necessitated by his very tight rendering style that left little room for inventing details in garments folds and so forth.

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.

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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.

If Salvador Dali Had Styled Cars

A comparatively easy way to increase fuel efficiency in the wake of the gasoline shortages on the 1970s was to improve the streamlining of cars.  Ford was one of the first American manufacturers to do this in the early-to-mid 1980s, the best-known example being the Taurus line.  These early wind tunnel tested Fords tended to have windows featuring large-radius corners.  This was something in the spirit of 1936 vintage models from General Motors, Chrysler and others introducing all-steel bodies in those days when metal stamping technology could not easily accommodate tight surface curves.

But when the aerodynamic Fords appeared, stamping technology didn't force large-radius window corners; stylists apparently chose strong rounding as a means of emphasizing the curved design theme derived from the wind tunnel testing.  At the time, I felt that all that curving wasn't really necessary and resulted in designs that seemed excessively soft looking; more crisp styling elements in the details would have been better.  And of course others came to the same conclusion, so today's aerodynamically efficient cars include many crisp elements along with the curves.

So why, when it came time for a complete 1996 redesign on the Taurus, did Jack Telnack and his crew decide to emphasize curves even more than they did for the original Taurus design?  I have no idea, other than they might have decided to zig while the rest of the industry zagged.  Or perhaps corporate management interfered.

In any case, while the Taurus design had some nice features (I like the subtle sculpting around the front of the hood and fenders), other parts of the car are simply odd -- especially the windows at or near the rear along with the instrument panel.

In fact, I now entertain the amusing thought that surrealist artist Salvador Dalí of drooping watches fame could have been on the Taurus styling team had he lived long enough.  This is especially true for the station wagon model, the subject of this post.

Gallery

Here is a general view of the 1996 Taurus station wagon showing the subtle front end styling and hinting at the window curves towards the rear.

This appears to be a factory photo showing the rear of the wagon.  It was taken from close to the ground, a view few people normally have of the car.

I found this image on the Internet.  The car is painted white, eliminating distracting highlights and allowing us a good view of the large, rounded, droopy looking window shapes around the rear.  The rear passenger door looks to be the same as that for the sedan, a cost-saving detail (no special door tooling for the station wagon version).  The problem, as I see it, is that the rear area window treatment is not integrated with the rest of the design.  In particular, the upper edge of the rear side windows fails to link to the upper edge curves of the other side windows, giving the window a tacked-on appearance.

This is the Taurus instrument panel where curves further abound.  To me, the problem area is the cluster in the oval at the center, just forward of the shifter lever.  Control buttons are strewn across it in a somewhat organic pattern, not in well organized (from an ergonomics standpoint) groupings.

Also posted at Car Style Critic