Post-Modernist Painting

Post-Modernism is the term used to describe the dominant trends in visual art today. As a term it is somewhat of a catchall but most critics agree that in the 1970s there was a fundamental shift in art away from the concerns of Modernism. Simply, Modernist artists were interested in creating new forms and, in their embrace of the new, each movement was in a creative dialogue with the past. Not so for Post-Modernists. After Modernism came to an end, there was no tradition to look to for guidance or to push against.

Each dominant movement of Modernism set out to get beyond some aspect of traditional painting: the Fauvist wanted to get beyond the actual color of things; the Cubist wanted to get rid of a stable perspective, the Futurist wanted to get beyond static painting and introduce time into their work, the Dadaist got rid of artistic control and opted for randomness and chance, the Surrealist dismissed rational ordering of our waking life and asserted the primacy of dream images, the Expressionist wanted to be done with subject matter trumping an artist’s response to the subject, the Pop artist got rid of the whole foundation of representational art and the Minimalist wanted to strip away everything but materials and surfaces.

Each Modernist movement chipped away at shared ideas of objectivity as expressed in traditional painting. They did so by exploring the subjective state of the artist. Suddenly there was a shift from accurate depiction of the external world to representing the internal states of the artist. With Modernism how the artist thought, felt, and desired became part of the subject. The notion of a shared perception became suspect and as a result no movement lasted very long.

Post-Modernist art has two main influences: Pop art and Minimalism. From Pop art, Post-Modernist artists inherited the notion of working by means of constructing a narrative by selecting from a pre-designed set of images. From Minimalism, Post-Modernist artists learned that each item is taken at face value and that there is nothing beneath the surface. In short, the Post-Modernist artist is free to trade in superficial images, to construct and combine them in any order and to arrive at any meaning.

Post-Modernism does not look to an objective nature for the source of information (as representational painters in the past may have) nor does it actively rebel against this outlook (as Modern artists did). Post-Modernism has no interest in doing either for to do so would make it part of a tradition. How contemporary representational artists handle the problems of Post-Modernism is the subject for another time.

Minimalism and the End of Modernism

Minimalism was an art movement that was contemporaneous with Pop art and was one of two (the other being Pop art) major influences on Post-Modern visual art.  Through its consistent stripping away of subject, pictorial illusion and artistic expression, Minimalism signaled the end of Modernism.

Coming after Abstract Expressionism, what the Minimalists inherited from the Abstract Expressionists was the idea of the reduction of subject and pictorial space to events on a surface.  But this is all they took away. Instead of expression, the Minimalist practiced an art of no-expression.  Instead of gestural marks, the Minimalist went for hard edge surfaces.  Instead of the symbolic, the Minimalist favored the literal.  In short, to the Minimalist a black square of paint on a canvas was simply that a black square of paint on a canvas.

If anything the Minimalists thought that the AbEx painters weren’t consistent in their approach. To them the AbEx artists were caught up in expression, injecting the subject of self-expression where there ought to be none. Jackson Pollock famously remarked, “that I am nature” when he was criticized for no longer painting nature.   Ad Reinhardt, an Abstract Expressionist that led the way to Minimalism, said, “The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with the getting rid of nature."

What we have with Minimalism is the logical conclusion of what was started by the Abstract Expressionism, a complete break from the past.  Minimalism with its desire for reduction turned away from both illusionistic and expressive painting with nature as its source and guide.  All that was left was the physical presence of the artist’s material. 

The main problem with Minimalism was to determine what shape would the work take.  This would be answered literally.  Artistic freedom was in the selection of the shape of the work and many artists played with geometry.  Some painted only regular geometric shapes on canvases where as others worked on non-traditional shaped canvases (both regular and irregular geometric shapes) and while others began to paint three dimensionally by extending their shapes into space. This last tendency blurred the line between categorical distinctions of drawing, painting and sculpture favored by Modern artist.

If I imagine a home decorating store with all of its cans of paint, I can see the problem of Minimalism.  If all one has are materials then what is to guide one in the creative act?  Without a plan, how does one know what can of paint to purchase and for what purpose?  If the Minimalist were interested in stripping away aspects of art than why is it that they left artistic selection?  Several musical composers followed this train of thought and composed mathematically.  This way there was a plan, the music was determined without the influence of the composer. Just as Minimalism concluded Modern art, it gave rise to Post-Modernism.  It seems that Post-Modernism was a fait accompli as Minimalism simply left too much unresolved.  We shall see how one of the foundational problems of Post Modernism, (namely, out of many equally valued choices, how does an artist select what to work with and what to do) plays itself out.

Warhol and French Realism

Andy Warhol, "Last Supper", 1986

 

Andy Warhol more than any artist helped shape the visual culture of post-World War II America. Often considered a Pop artist, I wanted to look at Warhol as a representational artist and to see how he changed American art.  I believe Warhol completely changed the ideological foundation of representational art from operating under the influence of French agrarianism (hand and land) to that of American capitalism (machine and money).

Pop art as a movement came along after Abstract Expressionism.  The Abstract Expressionists broke with artists of the past by working with both a personal symbolism and by dismissing the notion of looking at nature.  Pop art contained objects, subject matter, figures and portraits.  It was a representational art that had all of the aspects of art that the Abstract Expressionist painters wanted to leave behind. 

Warhol was trained as a traditional illustrator and his work in the 1950s resembles the shaky pen and ink linear style of Ben Shahn, a leading artist of the previous generation of Social Realists. This linear style has many artistic precedences and can be seen in the work of the French Neo-Classicist Ingres or the British Classical draftsman John Flaxman.  Warhol from his earliest days as an illustration student was an heir to a tradition of representational art and, unlike Abstract Expressionism,  was one that remained fascinated by image making and representation.


Before we continue, it’s important to consider the foundational ideas of representational art for a moment.

In the late nineteenth century most professional American artist were trained in France.  The French artists and teachers at that time taught a Romantic Realism (Gerome), Classical Realism (Bougereau), Naturalism (Breton) or, to a lesser extent, Impressionism.  Each movement had its origins in the French Realist movement of the 1850s (notable examples are Courbet and Millet).  Arguably mid-century French Realism was the strongest influence on early twentieth century representational American art.

There were three main principles of French Realism:

1.)   indebted to the philosophical movement of empiricism, these artists were keen to depict what could be seen by one’s eyes;

2.)   they were influenced by Socialism and were concerned for the poor over that of a growing wealthy class; and

3.)   they romanticized an agrarian lifestyle that stood in strong contrast to the newly developing industrialized world. 

Warhol broke with each of these and replaced it with a new form of representational art that was ahistorical and non-traditional.  We’ll take a look at each in turn.

Warhol used silk screening as a method of image production and though his work was hand made, it wasn’t made from scratch. Rather, Warhol made aesthetic selections from a set of pre-designed objects; he selected photos of items or products, already in the market place.  His personal style and resulting individualism were due to recombining existing elements in a unique way.  By contrast, the French Realists had a firm belief in objective observation and full faith in their ability to accurately depict what they saw.  They were not concerned with aesthetic choices as an end in itself.  They lived at a time when they believed that reality was knowable and it probably never crossed their minds to be interested in a system of objects and signs from which reality is selected and constructed.

Warhol depicted everyday objects that were newly available to the consumer.  Their mass produced uniformity ensured that they were the same regardless of the income level of the purchaser.  Additionally, Warhol worked with popular imagery of glamorous stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and Elvis Presley.  These images represented a type of symbolic American royalty. Their glamour is what inspired awe from others and set theses stars apart from everyone else.  The French Realists wanted to paint what they saw and what they saw was a disparity between the wealthy class and the peasant class. They were concerned with depicting a social condition of poverty not consumerism. They chose to show the struggles of the peasant class depicting them as individuals, not symbols, whose lives were shaped by long hours of work. Their paintings were made as a criticism against the encroaching ideas of the new enterprising industrialists.

Warhol desired to remove the evidence of the handmade from his work and to emulate the machine. Warhol’s machine minded outlook was in direct opposition to the rustic aesthetic of the French Realist. The French Realist depicted laborers working with their hands and felt there was dignity to manual labor.  Warhol often worked with serialization and repetition to foreground the mass produced aspect of products.  Mass production allowed large profits to be accrued through fast and efficient productivity. Mass production of such a large scale was only possible due to the use of machines in industry.  The French Realists depicted a more deeply textured and less uniform lifestyle dependent on manual, not machine, labor. 

Though in some ways I have sympathy with the French Realists I cannot deny that their worldview doesn’t quite fit in with America as it is now.  Part of the issue is that Americans in the late 20th Century moved away from a country lifestyle to that of a city lifestyle.  Family farms were sold off to developers of shopping malls or suburban homes and people worked for companies. As the nation became a service economy, shifting away from a manufacturing based economy, people stopped working with their hands.  With more leisure time, people sought out new forms of entertainment.  The country became enamored with ever changing popular ephemera and was less interested in the solemnity of paintings of peasant farmers.

In summation, by breaking with art derived from a French Realist tradition, Warhol filled the void with: subjective selection (not objectivity and empiricism), consumerism and awe for the symbolically glamorous (not socialism and sympathy with individual peasants) and a machine-made aesthetic (not hand-made).  This was a shift from what an individual’s eye could see about the natural world to what the advertiser’s camera caught about the merchandizing world. It was a triumph of a new American capitalism over the old world French agrarianism. 

As we continue to live in a Warholian world it is not easy to see how the old world sentiments could reappear in painting without looking like kitsch art, sentimental romanticism or insubstantial decoration.  This is the difficult problem that traditionally minded representational artists of today must confront.

It is interesting to note that Warhol was a lifelong Catholic, attending Mass several times a week.  However, religious subjects and themes rarely made it into his art because he felt that his religious life should remain private.  Given Warhol’s influence it is fun to speculate on how the art world would be different (and what representational artists would have inherited) if he created and publicly released religious art throughout his career.

An interesting exhibition of his more than 60 Last Supper images was on display from 1999-2001 at the Guggenheim Museum Soho. You may read more about it here: http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/warhol/

Larry Rivers and Return of the Figure

Larry Rivers Detail of "O'hara with Boots on", 1954, NY Times photos

Larry Rivers (1923-2002) was an artist whose work falls between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. Coming of age among jazz musicians and beat poets, Rivers is characterized as having a bold and frenetic personality.  Perhaps due to his energy, it is difficult to easily summarize Rivers' body of work as it fits into many categories or sometimes none at all.  He worked on large historical paintings that were in some ways a pastiche of the past, filmed television documentaries, painted groundbreaking still lifes of everyday objects, and completed a series of lithographs which included text by poet Frank O’hara.  Additionally, Rivers painted nudes and portraits, made sculptures, acted in films and designed sets and costumes for opera.  While his late paintings appear to me garish, flat and impersonal, his work from the 1950s is interesting and it is what I want to consider in this post.  

    

In the 1950s, He had been a student of Hans Hoffman but abandoned a completely abstract style.  Rivers being ahead of fashion, began to include figures and narrative into his paintings. A large painting entitled “George Washington crossing the Delaware” from 1953 is indicative of his work at this time. It is at once semi-abstract and semi-representational and thus difficult to describe. A comparison to DeKooning’s series of Women paintings completed at the same time is helpful. 

DeKooning’s work is full of furious paint marks that seem to try to eradicate the figurative elements that keep popping up on the canvas. In this way, DeKooning was moving towards abstraction, trying to exorcise the figurative artistic training of his youth. However, Rivers’ work looks as if a fog that having not yet lifted obscures the visual tableau.  It seems that at any moment the forms will become more clear and precise and certainly less abstract. It is interesting to note that the painting  "George Washington Crossing the Delaware" was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York very soon after it was completed.       

Rivers’ paintings of the 1950s often depicted his friend the poet Frank O’hara or his mother-in-law in the nude. These works are at the same time scrutinizing and intimate and harken back to an old tradition.  In some he paints with only black and white while in others he paints with a limited palette reminiscent of past masters.  He has a somewhat flattened style but through numerous brushstrokes he achieves volume.  Perhaps it was a result of lack of training but his volumes are never exactingly specific.  His work appears more sincere than accurate.     

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the paintings become looser and he develops a simpler style. In the past, this type of work would have been considered a sketch or an etude.  However, it is one of the aspects of 20th century painting to take something not fully formed and consider it a finished work. They are not without charm but in many cases he uses the image as a foil for larger ideas about painting.  He adds text alongside the image both as a playful descriptor as well as flattening decorative element.  Later, perhaps out of an impulse for the simple, he moved into collage and then silk-screening.  These works are no longer paintings but Rivers uses historical figures and narrative elements more freely.  Away from the nude, Rivers was able to explore more theatrical scenarios. In some he uses everyday objects (such as flags or Camel cigarette packs) that resonated with Pop artists.

There are two fundamental problems of post-World War II American painting: how to show that painting figures is worthwhile and how to create a narrative work that resonates with viewers.  This apparently is difficult to resolve, as there is always the issue of time intensive training.  Moreover the problem is exacerbated by the lack of a fundamental uniting mythos.       

Larry Rivers seems to have gotten at the problems outlined above in his own way by using a divide and conquer method.  First he worked with the figure, painting from observation and then he worked with complicated narrative subjects by any means available.  Unfortunately, it was a highly idiosyncratic method, too personal and difficult for younger artist to build upon.  His contribution, however, was to Pop art and the symbols the artists used.  In many ways, the ideas expressed in Pop art are the closest we, as a culture, come to having a shared set of beliefs.

 

In 2008, a major exhibition of works from Rivers’ early years, 1952-66, was held at Guild Hall in East Hampton.  Follow the link to a good article about it:

http://www.hamptons.com/detail.php?articleID=455

1950s and American Neo-dadaism

In recent posts I have been interested in looking at the development of American painting immediately before and after World War II.  Although there were numerous artists working in a variety of styles, Abstract Expressionism has come to dominate the history of this period. What I would like to look at briefly in this post is a style called Neo-Dada.

Neo-Dadaism is often looked at as a transition style between the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s and the Pop artists of the 1960s.  Neo-Dadaism takes its name from the Dada art movement which came about in Europe around the time of World War I. Like its namesake, Neo-Dadaism was characterized by playfully extreme insouciance. Taking Modern art as its target for folly and criticism, Neo-Dadaist quickly set about to undo what the Abstract Expressionists had created.  Abstract Expressionist artists were very interested in putting to rest the need for a subject matter in art.  However, the neo-dadaist such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns slyly introduced it back.

Rauschenberg was wildly creative in comparison to the more cerebral Johns and he set about dismantling the venerated categories of distinction held by Modern art; namely, drawing, painting and sculpture.  By making three-dimensional artworks of found objects that were assembled and subsequently painted by him, Rauschenberg dispensed with two long held beliefs of Modernism; namely that painting occurs on canvas and that the painted image is flat.

Heading off in a different direction, Johns began working with familiar symbols such as maps, targets and flags.  In doing so he re-introduced subject matter but also played with notions of representation and objecthood.  Simply put his painting of a flag is simultaneously a painting (a representation of a flag) and a flag (an actual object).  Moreover, Johns chose mundane objects that were often overlooked and elevated them to high art.  In so doing he attacked the notion of high art as established by Modernism.  By placing these innocuous objects next to Abstract Expressionist paintings, the grand gestures of the latter began to look silly.

I find it ironic that a painting of an American flag could take the steam out of Abstract Expressionism (an art form that was strongly influenced by European art). The Neo-Dadaist were not interested in tradition but rather in doing something new. They didn’t look back to pre-Modern European art at all.  Their work was a critique of modernism and in dismantling modern art they had nothing to offer to replace it.  Thus Neo-Dadaism was unsustainable as a cohesive movement.  Perhaps this is why many of the artists went their separate ways pursuing disparate and highly individual albeit ahistorical styles.

By the end of the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism gave way to Pop art, which relied heavily on representing objects of all kinds. By exploring the many layers of subject matter that occurred when diverse objects were suddenly juxtaposed, Pop art signaled the end of Abstract Expressionism and more than any other movement continues to shape American painting today.

Fairfield Porter and American Painting

Fairfield Porter, "Velazquez Study", 1974

 

Fairfield Porter is a singularly unique American artist whose work connects the art of 19^th century painters known as the Nabis with post-World War II figurative American painting. Born into a wealthy Midwestern family and educated at Harvard, Porter was at times a host to many younger American painters, an art critic, a poet and a troubled artist-hermit. He struggled through the 1930s to find his way with paint but came into his own in the 1950s.  His figurative work was ascending just as the critical attention was quickly turning away from it.  Inspired to take up figurative work by comments made by the Abstract Expressionists proponent and critic Clement Greenberg, Porter placed himself squarely within the New York School of art.

Porter came about when the figure and representational painting were being directly challenged as a viable artistic activity. His subjects were thought of as having the look and feel of a comfortable New England bourgeois lifestyle.  But Porter didn’t see it that way.  Rather, he chose the subjects because they were easy, that is, the views of Maine he painted were those that he saw just out his door.   In this way he was a pragmatist not an old guard reactionary.

Porter suggested that he was interested in the process of painting and not the subject.  Process is a broad term that encompasses the manner an artist paints as well as his interest in his own activity. For Porter, painting was "the connection between yourself and everything ... you connect yourself to everything which includes yourself”. I have sympathy with this sentiment and I would refer to this as a painting practice whose goal is the further realization of one’s subjective state in paint.

Looking at Porter’s work, I can see the delight in abstract patterning that he must have picked up on in the paintings of the Nabis as well as the abstract painters in his social circle. His painting seems simple and easy but I am doubtful that this was the case. Often graphic clarity and well-positioned tones do not easily come into existence and Porter’s years of struggle bear this out.

Currently, what is of interest to me about Porter is that he highlights a particular type of artist cut off from a European artistic tradition of observation. That is, I believe, many artists of the 20^th Century were culturally cut off from investigating the visual field as a subject.  After Cezanne and the School of Paris, artists began to see painting as a series of artistic choices. One no longer practiced painting with an open receptive attitude asking questions like “is this brush mark on the canvas the exact shape that I see?”.  Rather the artist began to impose his own views about the world on the canvas stating “this is the shape I want it to be”. Unfortunately, this modern belief establishes a fundamental separation between the artist and the principles of the natural world leaving one to push paint around guided by artistic principles alone.

I have come to see Porter as endeavoring to understand the abstract underpinnings that belie a very specific and detailed painting practice that has the honest  observation of nature at its core.  Interestingly, Porter long believed that Velazquez was the greatest of all painters of the past.  He said, "[Velázquez] leaves things alone . . . . It isn't that he copies nature, but he doesn't impose himself upon it. He is open to it rather than wanting to twist it . . . and he also knows when it's unimportant to pay attention."    In terms of openness to the visual field and sensitivity to human form I would agree.

Quotes in this post come from a wonderful article by Klaus Ottman called "An Unfinished Quality": Fairfield Porter's Creative Process”.  The essay was authored to coincide with an exhibition of Fairfield Porter at the Parrish Art Museum April 11- June 13, 2010.

 You may view Klauss Ottman’s article here: http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/9aa/9aa336.htm

You may view an archive of Porter’s work at the Parrish Museum here: http://www.parrishart.org/parrish.asp?id=130

Painting Demo: Green Heirloom Tomato

Dennis Cheaney "Green Heirloom Tomato" , 2010, 4"x4"

There are numerous ways to paint.  For my 4 inch x 4 inch paintings I like to work alla prima on a white support (oil-primed linen adhered to board).  Here is a seven step procedural outline on the creation of my painting.

Step 1:  Make a quick drawing with burnt umber and mineral spirits.

As I was composing on the canvas, I had to discover what size and placement of the tomato I liked. Notice that the tomato was drawn in twice.  The larger outline filled the panel quite nicely but didn't leave room for the folds of the drapery.  Later, however,  the folds were removed.

Step 2:  Put in the darks and cover up the white of the canvas.

It is difficult to see all the values and colors against a white canvas.  It is helpful to get rid of the problem  by quickly filling in the background and foreground.

Notice that the paint sometimes overlaps the contours of the tomato.  With alla prima painting, I like to rediscover the contours by shaping the wet paint.

Step 3:  Mass in the forms of the tomato.

Start with the darks and progressively add lighter mixtures. The tomato in nature is rounded and the painting should clearly show the general gradation on a rounded form.

The paint is opaque.   I like to have enough paint on the canvas to cover an area as well as a little extra.  This extra quantity of paint allows itself to be pushed around on the canvas and reshaped as needed.

Step 4:  Complete the mass-in and reshape the contour.

The tomato has been completely massed-in and the paint reshaped in order to better express the  tomato's surface.  The contour has been more clearly defined.

The end result is that the paint layer of the tomato is a little rounder and smoother than it was in the previous step. 

Step 5: Reshape the background and foreground.

The paint of the background drapery has been reshaped and in the process the paint ridges have become less prominent.

The smaller forms of the foreground, which appear as little bits of light and color, are put into the wet paint.

Step 6: Place in the smaller forms of the tomato.

The small forms of the tomato are light and give extra specificity to the tomato's form.  The highlights are placed in.  They appear sharper and lighter than the other parts of the tomato.

I felt that the background drapery distracted from the tomato.   I readjusted the still life arrangement and brushed out the background paint to match up with the light effect on the new still life.

Step 7:  Place in the smaller forms and specific details.

This is the final stage. I placed in the remaining highlights around the tomato.  I added the smaller forms and details of the stem and its leaves.

Once the whole thing was painted, I was able to adjust the wet paint to appear as sharp or as subtle as what I was looking at.

This is my standard process and it took about four hours.

Socialist Realism: The Style of Soviet Art

Vera Mukhina "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman", 1937

I am interested in looking at the origins of American art and tracing the varieties of realism and its critical reception through the 20th Century.  In previous posts I looked at three dominant art movements in the United States during the 1930s:  Regionalism, Social Realism and Abstract Expressionism.   In this post, I wanted to briefly explore the government approved style of art in the Soviet Union that existed alongside these three art movements in America.

From the early 1930s-1950s, Socialist Realism was the form of art that flourished under the approval of the Soviet Government. It was a state sponsored artform in which the art was used as a tool to educate the people about the benefits of Communism. Socialist Realism took as its themes the worker, the government bureaucrat or the military man, commemorating each as a hero. A specific genre of celebrating the cult of personality of Stalin was particularly favored.

Coinciding with the rule of Stalin, Socialist Realism was fashioned to be a deliberate turning away from the excesses of Modern art.  Interestingly, during the Russian Revolution of 1917 some party officials saw the then new Modern art as sympathetic to their goals.  The Bolshevik and the Constructivist artists were together breaking with the old bourgeois culture. By 1918, the old style academies were shut down by the new government's educational and cultural minister.  However, after a debate during the 1920s among the party officials about the purpose of art, it was decided that the complexities of modernism were to be replaced with a simpler, more proletariat-friendly art.  This ended the period of post-revolution art (also called Heroic art) and ushered in the new Soviet art, Socialist Realism

For its clear and easily understood manner, a representational style was favored. In painting, realism was narrowly proscribed to be the sympathetic depiction of the daily reality of the worker and anything that showed the unpleasantness of Communism was to be avoided. Often landscape paintings depicted abundant fields or industrial subjects that showed the efficiency of the Soviet economy.  In sculpture, Socialist Realism looked back to the severe style of Republican Rome and depicted young and strong figures fresh from work, tools held high above their heads.  

The forms of Socialist Realism were inorganic, rigid and inflexible. As a style, what it lacked in human warmth, it more than made up for in powerful presentation, especially the public sculpture. As with all totalitarian art, one could tell that people were to be sacrificed on the altar of government plans.

Realism as an art movement has always had socialist leanings.  From its inception in mid-nineteenth century France, there was a tendency of realist artists (such as Courbet and Millet) to avoid subjects that appealed to the ease and comfort of an aristocratic culture.  Foregoing depictions of sitters in well-appointed apartments, the Realists artist showed people at work. Often the artists celebrated a return to nature and deliberately choose subjects that showed evidence of a dignified albeit hard life born out through manual labor.

An interesting and beautifully illustrated book published in 1998 called Socialist Realist Painting shows Socialist Realism in its full and proper context.  The author Matthew Brown traces the origins of Socialist Realism prior to the Russian Revolution and well beyond the death of Stalin when Modern art was allowed into the nation. Mr. Brown does a wonderful task in revealing the paintings that were produced that didn’t fit into the approved style.  Many of them are great works filled with empathy and humanity that somehow survived destruction by government censors.
  
One of the strawman arguments that  Modern art and Post Modern art aficionados have put forth is that figurative work (especially that inspired by Classicism) is fascist.  It seems to me just as people may go about doing many things (such as joining any political party and choosing to do good or bad), that figurative art may do many different things.  It may commemorate great military battles,  depict important religious events, celebrate the human in action or capture the fey expression of  a society debutante.  What was interesting to me as each art movement vied for cultural dominance in the United States was that the artist was always free to do and depict what he desired.  This was true then as it is  now.  Sadly, it wasn't the case for the artist in the Soviet Union.

Freedom and Abstract Expressionism

Jackson Pollock "White Light", 1954, Collection MOMA

Coinciding this month with the large Abstract Expressionism show at MOMA in NYC, a fascinating article written in 1995 has been re-circulating online recently.  Though it has been over 50 years since its critical emergence, Abstract Expressionism (AbEx) is still what many people think of as the American art form. How did this happen?

At the close of World War II, there were three coexisting movements in American painting, each vying for critical dominance: American Regionalism, Social Realism and Abstract Expressionism.  Artists that belonged to the two former camps populated their paintings with people and they were often awarded large public commissions or included in prestigious museum exhibitions. After 1953, this changed and Abstract Expressionism, an open ended art, free from depicting people, places or events, became the de facto American art form. As it so happens, the CIA secretly funneled money into cultural foundations that were solely created to exclusively promote Abstract Expressionism.

According to the article’s author Frances Saunders, the CIA was involved with financing traveling   exhibitions during the 1950s that promoted Abstract Expressionism throughout the US, Europe and the Soviet Union. The US was engaged in dismantling the Soviet ideology at every turn and, to the CIA, art was another means to fight the cold war. To its promoters, AbEx was known as free market painting and the exhibitions were to show that there was no official style and no government censorship.  By the CIA’s analysis, everyone would conclude that the US government was unrestrictive and that in America artists could do whatever they desired.

By contrast, at this time Socialist Realism was the government-sanctioned style of the Soviet Union. Socialist Realism was a figure-based art, which took inspiration from the severe art of the Roman Republic. Often depicting a young handsome couple valiantly holding aloft sickles and shears or peasant farmers gleefully gathered around Stalin, Socialist Realism expressed the idea of the worker as hero and the virtues of the Stalinist state.

By promoting AbEx, the CIA believed they were promoting freedom of expression to the world at large. The CIA never interacted with the artists but rather gave money to taste makers and backed off letting them run with the organization and presentation of the art. In the quest by these cultural institutions to dominate the discussion anything representational or figure-based became suspect.  In the end, the figure in art became associated with a totalitarian impulse.

Soon the best practices of representational painting were abandoned in the art schools and what took generations to build up was destroyed by a single generation.  Art curricula dedicated to the freedom to pursue any form of  expression so consistently denied students the opportunity to pursue a particular path, namely that of representational art.  It is unfortunate that what started out as a platform to showcase examples of freedom par excellence devolved, in the hands of academicians and tastemakers, into soft totalitarianism.

Read the article "Modern Art was a CIA Weapon” by Frances Stonor Saunders here:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-a-cia-weapon-1578808.html


In 1999, Ms. Saunders published a book on this topic:  The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

Jack Levine and Social Realism

Jack Levine "Adam and Eve: Expulsion" 1981

Recently the artist Jack Levine passed away at the age of 90. I vaguely remembered the work of Levine and the online retrospective that accompanied his obituary was a good reminder of his painterly talents. 

Levine, whose parents were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, grew up in Boston and attended Harvard where he studied under Denman Ross.  He was associated with the Boston Expressionists, which included his fellow classmate Hyman Bloom and Karl Zerbe.  Levine’s early work is strongly influenced by Oscar Kokaschka and Chaim Soutine and reveals a strong wit and a talent for social commentary.  His early work is expressive and evocative rather than accurately descriptive.

After graduation he was employed for five years by the Works Progress Administration. He participated in exhibitions at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum as well as New York’s Museum of Modern Art before serving 3 years in the Army during World War Two.  In 1951, Levine toured Europe on a Fulbright Scholarship and became enamored with El Greco’s mannerist distortions.

It is interesting that in Levine’s case studying mannerist distortions actually meant that he learned restraint.  Always a deft painter, after viewing El Greco his contours became clear and he learned to control his raw expressive power.  He moved away from boundless shape and color to depicting forms that were contained within line. 

Never at home with only pure expression, Levine populated his pictures with people. However, his interests weren’t those of an academic or realist artist as his instinct towards the human form was always that of a caricaturists. Though Levine surely bumped shoulders with the American Regionalist and the Abstract Expressionists, he belonged to the movement known as Social Realism.

Social Realists were concerned with depicting the daily life of the Amercian working class in an un-romanticized manner. Many of the artists had socialist leanings and were influenced by the French Realists Millet and Courbet (whose own artistic ideas were strongly influenced by the French Socialist thinker Prudhon) .  It is interesting to note that Social Realism in some ways resembles that of the contemporaneous movement known as Socialist Realism, the official art of the Soviet Union.  However, unlike the Socialist Realism of the U.S.S.R., the Social Realist in the U.S. were free to depict whatever they desired. 

Many Social Realists were interested in eschewing prettifying effects in order to create works that empathized with the downtrodden worker.  As a movement it shared a common sentiment with the New York Ashcan school, which flourished in the early 1900s prior to the interest in the School of Paris brought to the US by the Armory Show. Similarly, the Social Realists fell out of favor during the rise of Abstract Expressionism, a movement influenced by the imported European Expressionism that came about between the two world wars.

Since the 1960s, Social Realism has fallen out of the spotlight.   Levine’s last retrospective was in 1978 at New York’s Jewish Museum so it is no wonder that I had a hard time recalling Levine’s work.  Moreover, since the death of his wife in the early 1980s, Levine became increasingly interested Hebraism and quietly produced many masterful paintings based on the Old Testament.  In this way Levine has become a New Old Master following in the footsteps of Rembrandt (who interestingly had influenced Levine’s adolescent painting idol Soutine).

Too long out of the public eye, Levine is about due for some public admiration just as the world is about due for some good painting from the Old Testament.

Rest in Peace, Jack Levine (1915-2010).

Grant Wood and American Regionalism

Grant Wood "Self-portrait" ca 1932-41

A new biography by R. Tripp Evans called Grant Wood: A Life, is a recent attempt to re-examine Grant Wood. Wood (1891-1942) was an American artist that belonged to a small group known as the American Regionalists who worked in the period between the two World Wars.  Last Sunday’s New York Times book review by Deborah Solomon is informative and interesting as it interprets Wood’s work as a type of nostalgia art. She asserts that Wood practiced elegiac painting and, feeling not quite home among his countrymen, Wood longed for the past. 

I don’t quite see it that way. As an artist, Wood had two purposes: he wanted to depict the look and feel of what he saw and he wanted to make it memorable and timeless. As an American Regionalist, Wood departed from the then-popular style of European Modernism and took as his subject rural American life. America is what Wood wanted to faithfully record and to make from it an art for the ages.

Unlike his colleagues Benton and Curry, who depicted American epic tales through large robust figure compositions, Wood tended to focus on portraits or landscapes. He adopted a Flemish style of painting he gleaned from looking at the works of Jan Van Eyck during his few visits to Europe. The uneasiness that the reviewer Deborah Solomon is picking up on, I believe, is the unintentional by product of this type of close-scrutiny painting. 

In the self-portrait above, Wood paints in a manner reminiscent of the 15^th century masters.  He presents an intimate head and shoulders portrait in the close foreground, surrounded by a vast expanse of rolling farmland. A water-pumping windmill is prominently featured to his left.

It is important what Wood depicts around him, namely the farmlands and a windmill.  This type of Aeromotor windmill was a major factor in making semi-arid land into sustainable farmland.   This windmill was so ubiquitous that it is still often today called “the American Windmill”. Though it is used and manufactured in several countries, it has reached the status as a representative symbol of America.

The painting is a tribute to a type of midwest American:  someone whose thoughts and feelings are intimately connected to the land, the seasons and to the viability of the family farm.   The painting is a portrait and as such Wood dutifully captures the psychological complexity of the sitter, himself. However, I believe, he was aiming for something much greater; he intended to capture the important dramatic role, as food producer and thus sustainer of life, that the heartland uniquely plays in America’s psyche. 

American Regionalism was an attempt at honest reporting that walked the line between nationalism and romanticism. It was devoted to the land, the people and the stories of America.  It was a short-lived movement that took place away from the cities. After the end of World War II, it was eclipsed by Abstract Expressionism (the New York City based art form often vigorously promoted as the genuine American art form).

At the very least American Regionalism is an important bridge between academic art of the Nineteenth century and Abstract Expressionism.  As a movement, it came about when what was American art and what was modern art were unsettled issues.  By the 1950s modern critics believed the issue solved, perversely linked this movement to Italian fascism and American Regionalism fell out of favor. It’s nice to see that this movement and the artists are being reconsidered for it was the last time that such an ambitious style emerged in the States.

Read the book review: www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/books/review/Solomon-t.html?pagewanted=all

Lost Michelangelo painting found?

Michelangleo "Pieta" drawing ca. 1538-44 Gardner Museum & Kober family"Pieta" (NYPost)

 

In early October of this year, a lost painting by Michelangelo may have been found.  The painting belongs to the Kober family of Buffalo, NY and is estimated as being worth up to $300 million. An exciting historical find.  But is it really a Michelangelo?

A Michelangelo "Pieta" painting is documented in Vatican letters to have been painted for Vittoria Colonna around 1545.  Michelangleo, born in 1475, would have been 70 years old when he painted it; nearly 45 years after his famous "Pieta" sculpture in St.Peter's Basilica, Rome.  

Interestingly, there is a drawing at the Gardner Museum in Boston of the same subject, which the museum dates to 1538-44.  A side by side comparison, as shown above,  reveals that the drawing was done by an artist extremely sensitive to human form.  Michelangelo was a master of human structure and could depict not only the effects of physical forces on the body but he knew how to do so for the utmost poetic effect.  Sadly, the painting  lacks any sensitivity or vitality.  

 Moreover, Michelangelo being a sculptor knew how to keep his forms organized in a hierarchical arrangement: the largest underlying form was clearly revealed and never overtaken by the smallest forms. The painting shows, especially in the costal arch of the rib cage, an extreme flattening with a poorly understood arrangement of shapes that break up into an inorganic pattern.

Continuing, the forms of Christ's face and forehead are primitive as are the forms of the cherub's left scapula.  Many of the forms are inexpertly delineated and harshly cut-off from the neighboring forms.  This is a common mistake of the novice who has understood how to see separate forms but not how to interweave the forms into a supple, cohesive whole.  The virgin's face is a distorted mask that lacks any emotion.  

It is an interesting find but I doubt this is by the great Michelangelo.

Photo from NYPost. com and you may read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mike_found_in_buffalo_Or3Ok3NfUR21qEqBxK3u2H#ixzz14rA1UbTj

Sargent Mural Studies at MFA Boston

Studies for "Achiles and Chiron" by John Singer Sargent

I’ve always admired the artist John Singer Sargent.  In particular I enjoy his two murals located in Boston, one at the public library and the other at the museum.  Recently, I had a few hours to tour the Museum of Fine Arts and I headed to the grand rotunda to view Sargent’s several panel cycle of Greek myths that celebrate, among other things, the human body in movement.

The museum has undergone a major renovation and there have been curatorial changes throughout the museum.  A nice change was the room beneath the grand rotunda which was recently hung with some of Sargent’s preparatory studies for his mural.  This room is uniquely designed to house such an exhibition as it has a giant oculus in its ceiling and allows visitors to view the central portion of the mural above. Along the walls of this room are about a dozen sketches in both charcoal and oil paint. 

The charcoal studies are mainly of single figures kneeling, reaching, or stretching heavenward.  Sargent showing his mastery of human form filled the sheets with additional studies of arms, legs and feet.  A great surprise to see was a full value tonal study for “Chiron and Achilles” which appears in the upper corner of a sheet of hand studies.

The oil studies are elegantly painted. Though they are done with bold strokes that block out the major structures of the figures they are restrained by a red contour. This contour enables the viewers to clearly read the shapes of the forms at a distance.  I assume the red color keeps the contour light and allows for increased visibility at great distances. 

It is rare to view both the completed work and the sketches more or less side by side and it is worth taking a visit.  The MFA has a wonderful online database that one may access for free.  Typing in “Sargent” will allow you to view 10 pages of sketches, a few of which were on view.   Here’s the link: www.mfa.org/search/collections?keyword=sargent