Is It Time to Re-Redefine "Art"?

The Wall Street Journal's Arena section for 9 April had this article by Kelly Crow about the new home of New York City's Whitney Museum. I gather that some artists, presumably those of the Installation Art ilk, will be allowed to pound nails in floors along with other tasks while setting up their exhibits.

Which brought to mind that I'm not inclined to purposefully view any kind of Installation Art. Matter of fact, I do not consider Installation Art to be art at all. Nor most (all?) of what they call Concept Art. Nor Video Art. Nor Performance Art. Nor a whole bunch of Other Art.

I am not prepared to propose a definition of Art, probably a hopeless task. Well, actually, I will sort of propose something like a definition of art after laying a little groundwork.

Nowadays, it seems that just about anyone can proclaim himself an Artist. A few credentials such as a college degree or studio training are helpful, but not necessary: consider the case of postmodernist icon Jean-Michel Basquiat. Having proclaimed himself Artist, said Artist or a supporter proclaims that whatever he's making or doing is Art. And the Art Establishment often goes along with the gag, as it did with Basquiat.

Therefore, in today's world, anything can be Art, provided an Artist or Art Critic or Art Expert says so. The result of this is that the word Art has been rendered essentially meaningless.

My humble proposal is to reserve the word Art for what were called Fine Arts back in the late 19th century.

This might seem to rule out illustration, for example. Which would be too bad, because there are plenty of examples of 1890-1960 illustration that are as good as or better than much of what passed as Fine Art. On the other hand, if painting / graphic arts (in general, not just Academic works) is one of the Fine Arts, then many forms of illustration would qualify.

What my proposal rules out is much of what passes for Art today. I recognize that lines still have to be drawn, but that's the way the world is. For instance, surely someone would claim that Tracey Emin's Bed is actually sculpture, which it clearly isn't: It's a publicity stunt.

Setting aside that sort of quibble, the next task is to invent a name (or names) for all those newfangled non- Fine Arts that have emerged over the last century or so. Right now, I have no decent ideas, but I'll let you know if and when I do.

Towards the End: George Henry

George Henry (1858–1943) lived into his mid-eighties, and his career consisted of two stylistic phases with a transition point around the time he was 40. For this post, I'll consider the second phase as "towards the end" even though it lasted for decades. However, Henry (biographical link here) did his most interesting work during the first part of his career as a prominent member of of a Scottish group of painters known as the Glasgow Boys.

Henry's Glasgow Boys phase lasted into the mid-1890s when he and fellow "Boy" E.A. Hornell spent more than a year in Japan. Henry's paintings made there retained many characteristics of his Scottish works. Perhaps because of changing fashions and the need to support himself as an artist, Henry soon thereafter began painting in a more traditional fashion. So whatever modernist traits were used in Glasgow Boys art were largely abandoned and few others were incorporated to even a slight degree thereafter.

Below are examples of Henry's post- Glasgow Boys painting. Dates are included where known, but most seem to have been made between 1900 and 1930.

Gallery

Through the Woods - 1891
An example of Henry's Glasgow Boys era painting to set the scene -- not one of his better ones, however.

The Tortoiseshell Mirror - 1903
His Glasgow Boys paintings were set out of doors, but now he tries an interior scene.

Lady Margaret Sackville - ca. 1910
Henry also did portrait work to make a living.

The Reading - 1913
An interesting, and not characteristic Henry painting -- though the landscape in the background has his touch (see "Sussex Landscape" below).

Lady in Black - 1919

Brambles - 1920
Here Henry recalls Japan with a kimono-clad British woman. The treatment of the foliage weakly echoes his Glasgow Boys work.

Lady in a Green Dress

Poster art for the London Midlands & Scottish Railway

Sussex landscape - 1930
Henry painted landscapes while a Glasgow Boy. The color schemes were fairly similar to this, but the subject matter was depicted in a more decorative manner.

Lady with Goldfish
I'll guess this was painted around 1910 or 1915, and like it a lot. I think Henry made the woman's face interesting, and the toned-down color scheme is pleasing. It might have been improved by reducing the sharpness of detail for her left hand (it pulls the viewer's eye too far to the right).

Dan Sayre Groesbeck: Illustrator, Muralist, Man of Mystery

Dan Sayre Groesbeck (1879 - 1950), illustrator, muralist and Hollywood movie industry artist, was born and died in California, is known to have served in Russia's east coast while in the Canadian army, but much of his first 40 years of life is poorly documented and was subject to exaggerations and other distortions by the man. His formal art training seems to have been minimal, but he succeeded because he had a knack for capturing people's looks, clothing styles and, especially, visualizing dramatic situations and settings. Which is why he became the go-to concept artist for famed director Cecil B. DeMille and others from the early 1920s until his death.

As noted, Groesbeck's life and half of his career are difficult to pin down, but I offer this link as a reasonably good source.

Here are examples showing Groesbeck's mature style.

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Three apparently related illustrations of women costumed with large headgear.

Large painting/mural titled "Landing of Cabrillo" at the site of the future Santa Barbara. This was painted for a Santa Barbara bank, but spent years in the county courthouse as noted here.

Groesbeck painted a set of large murals for the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, an outstanding example of 1920s Spanish Revival architecture. Above is the left hand segment of a larger mural.

This seems to be concept art for a movie. Its title seems to be "Abigail Hale on trial at the Old Bailey for 'Unconquered'."

Costume design for Edna May Oliver as Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet." 1936.

Vladimir Sokoloff as Anselmo in "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Depiction of Akim Tamiroff as Dominique You in "The Buccaneer."

The Gottlieb - Raeburn Connection

Adrian Gottlieb (b. 1975) is one of the most skilled portrait artists at work in America. The biographical note on his website is here, though as of the time I'm drafting this post (early April), it looks like it needs some updating.

My most recent encounter with his work was this March at the S.R. Brennen Fine Arts gallery in Palm Desert, California (web site here). One Gottlieb painting caught my eye to the degree that I pulled a scrap of paper from my pocket and wrote a note to myself.

What struck me was that it was done in the spirit of a Sir Henry Raeburn portrait that I am familiar with. I do not know if Gottlieb was aware of that particular Raeburn work, so what I show below might be simple coincidence. And if Gottlieb did know the Raeburn painting, it was an excellent source of inspiration.

Gallery

A Long Life
This is the Adrian Gottlieb painting I saw at Brennen's.

James Watt (cropped image) - 1815
This painting can be found at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. I wrote about it here.

Christopher Nevinson's Urban Paintings

Christopher Richard Wynne (C.R.W.) Nevinson (1889-1946) was part of the first generation of strongly modernist British painters, befriending and later feuding with, for example, Wyndham Lewis. Nevinson was influenced early in his career by Futurism and Cubism, though he seldom plunged very deeply into their desiderata. Perhaps innate English conservatism and practicality held him back more than he thought or wished.

A fairly long Wikipedia biography is here, and I wrote about his Great War paintings here.

This post features his depictions of various cities. As is often the case for artists of his time, he never really settled into a signature style. Actually, he did have a style used during the first two or three years of the Great War that he is best known for. But he didn't stick with it. The images below are arranged in approximately chronological order.

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The Railway Bridge, Charenton - 1911-12

Le vieux port - 1913

Bravo! - 1913

Paris Fortifications - 1913

Temples of New York - drypoint etching, 1919

Soul of the Soulless City (New York, an Abstraction) - 1920

New York by Night - ca. 1920

Quartier Latin ca. 1920

La Corniche - 1920

Victoria Embankment, London - 1924

Notre Dame de Paris from Quai des Grandes Augustins - 1920s

London, Winter - 1928

The Strand by Night - ca. 1937

Thameside - 1941

David Curtis, Contre-Jour Painter

David J. Curtis (1948- ) is an English painter adept both in watercolor and oil. His background is unusual in that he led an engineering team at Hawker-Siddeley till 1988 when he began painting full-time. (Another engineer-artist that comes to mind is R.G. Smith, who painted aviation scenes with impressive atmospheric environments.) Curtis' Web site is here, and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters page dealing with him is here.

A good many works by Curtis are of the contre-jour kind, where the light source (the sun, in Curtis' images) is behind the subject. Normally, artists have the light source behind the painter or towards one side or another, illuminating the subject directly or from an angle. James Gurney discusses contre-jour painting here.

Needless to say, to be an effective contre-jour painter, one must have a very good color sense. This Curtis has. He also has a feeling for making strong, interesting compositions.

Gallery

Moorings on the Chesterfield Canal

Fine Autumn Day, Clayworth Wharf

Mooring at Hayton-Chesterfield Canal

Pembrokeshire Sea Cliffs, Port St. Justinian

Rocky Cove, Lleyn Peninsula

Vintage Car Workshop

George Henry: The "Glasgow Boy" Years

George Henry (1858–1943) was a prominent member of a group of Scottish painters known as the Glasgow Boys. The "Boys" were strongly influenced by the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage whose works were exhibited in London 1878-82. Glasgow Boys paintings tended to be toned-down, featuring earth colors such as browns, ochres, faded greens and such -- in line with what northern Europe offered in dreary terms of light and foliage for a good part of the year.

Not much biographical information on Henry was on the Internet when I drafted this post, so make do with this brief Wikipedia entry. More can be found in Roger Billcliffe's book about the Glasgow Boys.

I find Henry and most other "Boys" interesting because their works show us that there was a lot more going on in the art world of the 1880s than the Impressionism and post-impressionism in France that histories of art still focus on.

Gallery

Brig o' Turk - 1882

Eyemouth - 1883
Two fairly early landscapes.

Noon - 1885
One of Henry's best-known paintings.

The Hedgecutter - 1886

Autumn - 1888
The brushwork, color usage and clutter suggests the influence of E.A. Hornell, a fellow Glasgow Boy. They spent a year and a half in Japan around 1894 and jointly painted "The Druids" (see below).

Galloway Landscape - 1889
This somewhat distorted and decorative painting is considered significant by art historians and critics because of its use of modernist elements.

Barr, Ayreshire - 1891
Another painting with more modernist influence than usual for Henry. By the early 1900s he reverted to a more traditional painting style, even eliminating Glasgow Boys elements.

Poppies - 1891

Rowans - 1895
Henry and Hornell made paintings featuring young girls. Henry did this for a comparatively short time, but the latter part of Hornell's career was largely based on such subject matter.

The Druids: Bringing in the Mistletoe - 1890
A work jointly painted with Hornell. This painting has always fascinated me, so I visit it whenever I'm in Glasgow.