Archive for January, 2010

Many of us spend much of life regretting what’s done in the past and worrying about what’s to come in the future. Whether it’s “I shouldn’t have said that” or “I’m concerned about how this will work out”, most of us dedicate serious mind-time to worry. While some degree of thinking about the past or future is necessary and can be useful (helping to lay an issue to rest, planning not to make the same mistake again), it’s when worry starts to take over your life in the present that it becomes destructive.

Living in the present is a good habit to get into, and focussing on feelings and impressions in the current millisecond moment can make you feel calm. Animals are exceptionally good this: whether they’re eating or sleeping or running hell-for-leather, they’re always living, bang in the moment. It’s the animals in our lives (at home, the zoo, even on safari), that remind us we’re essentially a lot like them, and that it’s a bad idea to ignore our basic needs and appetites.

Today’s picture is called Head of a Dog (1870) and is chosen to inspire us to live in the present. It’s by one of the best-loved artists of the 20th century, Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919), who has his own lesson to teach about cherishing life in the here-and-now. You see, Renoir didn’t achieve success with ease. He came from a poor family and started work at 13, as an apprentice porcelain painter. He took a job decorating blinds before enrolling at the studio of the Paris-based Swiss painter Charles Gleyre. This is where he met the core of the future Impressionist group. While Renoir didn’t draw on his master’s clean academic style, he did listen when Gleyre told him to capture subjects outside. This sort of on-site painting became a central tenet of the Impressionist approach and by the late 1860s Renoir would regularly work beyond the confines of the studio.

His little dog reveals the easy charm of Renoir’s Impressionist phase (he would later change to a more severe style). He was a skilled colorist: even though he’s dealing with a limited palette here, he works the browns, beiges and whites in a virtuoso way, overlaying colors in some parts, blending them on the canvas in others, keeping certain colored areas clean and clear. He’s also showing us his free brushwork, seen in the texture of the dried paint on the surface. Renoir talked about having to “caress his canvas” and that’s certainly the case in this pup he whips up with a confident collection of strokes.

Renoir enjoyed only sparse success at the Salon in his early career (the Salon was France’s official art exhibition and it was important to make it there if you wanted renown and work) and the financial rewards for him were meager. It’s ironic that Renoir produced some of his most engaging and joyous images at a time when he was struggling to survive financially. It was only in the late 1870s that his fortunes changed, when he found a supportive dealer and a few loyal patrons.

So it seems that despite regrets about his past and vivid concerns for his future, Renoir still found a way to engage with his present and see the beauty and good in it. His picture of a little dog suggests he had a practiced eye when it came to noticing things as they occurred in his day. Look how well it worked out for Renoir. I’ll certainly be trying to see my world in a similar way.

Something magical is happening in our times. Slowly and subtly, since the big recession settled in, there’s been a shift in thinking and priorities. Before, we’d all spend after work and at the weekends, buying products to please us and experiences to entertain us. Now, with workloads cut and incomes reduced, it seems we’re looking for ways to have fun and good times for a fraction of the previous price. A recent New York Times/ CBS News poll found that nearly half of Americans are now doing more with friends and family. People are once again discovering the simple joys of gardening, cooking, reading and other hobbies and there’s a new focus on DIY projects around the house and getting stuck into community activities. Suddenly, people are creating a whole new ethos on how to spend time in rich and meaningful ways, without serious costs attached. All it took to get us here was the greatest recession in living memory.

One artist at the NGA who captures the spirit of this new way of thinking is the French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827 – 1875). His marble Neapolitan Fisher-boy (1857 – after 1861) is a celebration of free and simple pleasures. Carpeaux was the son and grandson of stone masons and showed promise from a young age. In 1854 he worked as a sculptor on the renovation and expansion of the Louvre in Paris. He was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome scholarship the same year, and he left to study in Italy in 1856.

This work wasn’t commissioned, Carpeaux just felt inspired to make it. He claimed he based it on a boy he’d seen during a trip to Naples. As a sculpture it brims with exuberant energy. The boy’s bent his knees and is crouching on the ground. We can only imagine he’s scooped up that shell from the city shores. There’s a freshness to the pose that has a lot to do with the split-second balancing act Carpeaux portrays: a second later and he might tumble to the side. And yet it’s balanced (the legs swing to the left and the body to the right) so that the composition ‘works’ overall.

Carpeaux was a provocative artist and in the habit of challenging academic traditions in sculpture. He avoided the serenity of the classical works that were still popular in his day. So here his subject is an exotic little character from the rough streets of Naples (as opposed to some calm and beautiful god or goddess). He adds a local-style hat for authenticity and ring of lustrous locks escaping wildly from underneath. See the detail and definition of the boy’s anatomy. These are all things that give the work a distinctly ‘new‘ sense of life. Carpeaux submitted a plaster model of this work to the French Academy while still a student in Rome and carved this marble version several years later. When it showed at the Salon exhibition of 1863, it riveted audiences and helped brand him an emerging star.

What’s so captivating here is the intensity of the boy, hunkered down, arms tense, fingers splayed. He’s caught up in a moment of sheer delight, listening for the sounds of the sea, filled with mischief and intrigue. What a magical moment for a sculptor to see, earthy and everyday though it may be. His vision can resonate with us as well, suggesting a low-cost wealth of experiences that await, if only we take care to find them.

Granola grasped by the handful mid-morning. Trips to the cookie jar with afternoon tea. Late-night fridge foraging for chunks of cheese. Whatever’s on your nibbling list, it seems we’re all obsessed with a little light snacking. Between 1977 and 2002, the percentage of Americans eating three or more snacks a day increased from 11% to 42%. That’s quite a rise, especially considering it wasn’t so long ago that there weren’t any snack machines on your office floor and gas stations sold only gas. These days there’s food everywhere and we’re bombarded by opportunities to munch around-the-clock. The US consumed $68 billion in packaged foods in 2008, which sounds to me like a serious snack habit. But then again, when hunger pangs strike at those in-between-meal times, and a doughnut is winking at you from the stand, it’s ever so hard to resist a snack attack.

One artist who’s definitely not helping is the American John Fredrick Peto (1854 – 1907). The effect of seeing some of his paintings at the NGA is like walking around the supermarket on an empty stomach: you get distinctly peckish. Peto was a still-life artist and painted food most convincingly, Breakfast (c. 1890s) being a case in point. Peto trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he was influenced by the Irish-American painter William Michael Harnett. See the Harnett signature bottom right of this picture? This was was believed to be by him until 1949 when art historical studies revealed that a number of Harnett-attributed paintings in private collections and museums were in fact by Peto. As the attributions got straightened out, interest in Peto grew and he emerged as a gifted painter, with loose brushwork, warm tonality and an aura of subtle melancholy.

Breakfast is simple yet mouth-watering fare. There’s a pretty cup and saucer, embellished with a meandering floral design. The handle of what must surely be a knife lies to the right of the arrangement. Then, and this is the good bit, there are two buns placed at the edge of the table. One’s even balanced on the rim of the saucer, so we can better admire it’s crusty top and shell and the soft dense dough inside.

Both Peto and Harnett were masters of what’s called trompe l’oeil (or “fool the eye”), a genre of still-life that aims to deceive the viewer into mistaking painted objects for reality. In Breakfast, Peto is depicting his objects in accordance with a set of rules unique to the trompe l’oeil genre. For example, he’s represented the cup and bread life size and he’s avoided cutting off the objects (save for the knife), as this would suggest the depiction isn’t real. The main technical device he uses is to arrange the subject-matter in a shallow space. Notice how he’s bunched the objects right up against the picture plane. Then he’s shaded things (see the saucer, for example) to suggest roundness and depth without our eye actually seeing real roundness or depth.

This is how, with artistic sorcery and a little reliance on the fallibility of human perception, Peto tricks us into thinking there’s a snack waiting on the table. A hot tea or coffee and some fresh warm buns. See what I mean? He gets the taste buds going. But as long as we’re snacking on art, I don’t see a down-side.

Scrolling through TV channels the other day, Little Miss Perfect caught my eye. I’d never heard of this program before, but was hooked in minutes. The show follows moms and daughters stopping at nothing to win a pageant crown, in regional, state and national competitions. Small girls (some as young as three or four) get dolled up by Mom, then hit the stage in false lashes, sheer stockings and kitten heels. They compete in a series of rounds, like “Wow Wear” (themed costumes, booty shaking), “Beauty” (evening dresses, stiff smiles) and “Interview” (“what would you do with $1m?”). The show’s pageant expert says that girls in the pageant process make friends, learn communication and self-confidence and practise losing (or ‘not winning’) with grace. But it doesn’t take much footage of stressed out Moms and crying contestants to tell a whole other story.

I think I might have spotted a little pageant princess in the NGA. Her name is María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga (later Condesa de Chinchón) and she was painted in 1783 by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya (1746 – 1828). Goya was an outstanding painter of the Romantic movement who conjured up memorable, ambitious images of the human soul and war. But in fact, Goya first made his name as a portraitist, increasingly in demand from the 1780s. In 1783 he was called to the royal residence by the Infante Don Luis, brother of Charles III, to paint a family portrait. He ended up painting individual portraits too: this one shows Don Luis’s daughter.

Maria, a future countess, is shown aged three or four. She’s decked out in the fashionable attire of an adult lady of the Spanish court. See how her waist is cinched in by the sky-blue bodice and how the white lace froths over her little form, shimmying at her neckline and dancing over her skirts. She’s adopted a mature stance at the edge of a terrace she’s standing on. Goya may have diminished the scale of the wall behind her to make her appear larger. The mini dog at her feet – made faintly ridiculous by the mop of hair in his eyes – reminds me of the props that Little Miss Perfect Moms make for their daughters.

Maria was a member of a royal family and as such accustomed to official and state portraits. Nonetheless, what’s ever-so-slightly unsettling about this picture is the way she’s gazing out at the viewer. There’s a bright-eyed innocence glowing in her face that’s very much at odds with the clothes she’s dressed up in and the setting she’s shown in. Her cheeks look flushed beneath her bulbous headdress. Those large lucent eyes, capped by her fashionably fine brows, seem to question the viewer. And might her little rosebud mouth be poised for protest?

Goya went on to paint Maria three more times during her life and the two built up a sympathetic relationship. This little girl later became one of the most tragic figures at the court of Charles IV, trapped in a humiliating marriage to the King’s minister, arranged by the Queen for her own duplicitous purposes. There’s no way Goya could have known all that the future held in store for Maria. Still, he’s caught an edge of discomfort and sadness here that might act as a warning for pageant Moms today.

Today Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address. If, like me, you’re less familiar with the American political calendar, this is an annual speech in which the President reports on the condition of the nation and outlines his agenda for the upcoming year. The address is required by the US Constitution: “He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Today’s address will be Obama’s first and will be given on Capitol Hill. As well as the Senators and Congressmen present, millions around the world will watch as it’s aired on major TV networks. Obama will have planned the words he’ll deliver; everything from content to character and cadence will have been judged with care. But in addition to what he’s saying, given the fact of global live streaming, he’ll have thought about how he’ll look up there. These are image-obsessed times and we’re all used to perusing an appearance for clues, instincts, impressions. So for any politician planning to persuade and inspire, his picture is worth a thousand words.

For a memorable image of authority in the NGA, look no further than Titian (c. 1490 – 1576) and his portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti (1546 – 1548). Titian became the greatest painter of the Venetian school by revolutionising each type of painting he touched (from altarpieces to mythological scenes) in a long and productive career. He was a celebrated portraitist, injecting fresh vim into portrait poses and new vigour into portrait sitters.

Gritti was elected Doge (Duke) of Venice in 1523, after serving as military commander and diplomat for the city. He was a forceful ruler with a taste for the arts. But over and above the biographical facts, what can Titian’s picture convey about the essence of the most powerful man in the State?

From the way he’s filling the screen, the message is he’s impressive. Titian grows Gritti from side to side, and top to bottom, carving out a colossal physical presence. It makes you feel small to stand in front of him. The robes and conical hat of office glow, resplendent in deep reds and rich golds. Those bauble buttons glitter and act as a visual chain, linking your eye towards the face. And what a face. Gritti looks like he’s just jerked his head over to his right to stare sternly out to the crowd. Titian’s strong tonal contrasts bring out a thundering personality by furrowing the brow and drawing the mouth shut tight.

Gritti was no placid ruler, so Titian makes him dynamic with a twisted pose (head to his right, torso to his left). This spontaneous movement is enhanced by the Duke’s right hand, gathering up his robes as if striding out. Titian’s free brushwork (especially later in his career) made his painting very expressive. It’s this that gives the fur its texture and the buttons their bulk. But it’s also his brushwork that pricks and prods this ruler into life on the canvas. It’s as if the confident sweeps of paint are absorbed by the character of the sitter, layering up his pungent painted personality.

It’s amazing to think that Titian painted this picture some years after Gritti had died. Could there be a better testament to the undying authority of this ruler? Or, more to the point, a more powerful projection of leadership by an artist? I doubt it. So it seems that in politics, a picture really can do some talking.

Whenever humans interact, faces provide a key source of social information. Our brains are programmed to ‘read’ features like words, gauging size and shape as part of a bigger picture. We look out for sexual dimorphism (how masculine or feminine a face is) and assess levels of symmetry. Studies even suggest that we are intuitively drawn to faces that resemble and reflect our own. Let’s face it, from the time we’re born (“he’s got Mum’s nose and Dad’s eyes”) to much older age (investing in creams, treatments, even surgery), as a species we tend to take things very much at face value.

One artist looking at our facial focus is the Korean-American Byron Kim (b. 1961). His work Synecdoche (1991 – present) is a large, multi-paneled (429 at last count) portraiture project. Each panel is painted a single shade of pink, brown or tan, reproducing the skin tone of a different person who sat for him (Kim approached strangers in the park, friends, family, famous artists). An alphabetical grid of names on a nearby wall matches sitters to their color patches.

It’s a special experience, standing before Synecdoche in the lower gallery of the East Building. The crisp grid-lines (11 down, 39 across), rectangular panels and flattened colors link the work to Minimalist painting of the 1960s (and someone like Ellsworth Kelly, who we looked at on 15th Jan). But in addition to this aesthetic connection, since its debut in 2003, people have been anxious to see in Synecdoche daring declarations about race. Is Kim holding up a mirror to our obsession with skin color, showing us how we’re all just a few notches from each other on a color chart? Is he throwing the very concept of racial division into question? It is interesting, as your eye skirts over the panels, how the colors begin to meld into one as the rigid divisions begin to blur. Kim has described how difficult it was for him to mimic accurately a person’s exact skin tone since different parts of a body appear different in color and since faces “change color” when they move.

Synecdoche (which comes from Greek for ‘simultaneous understanding’) is a literary term referring to a figure of speech that takes a part of something to stand for the whole. For example “all hands on deck” or “all feet to the dance-floor” are expressions using synecdoche, where hands and feet stand for whole people. This work then deals with parts representing a whole, “all of us”, in the mind of the artist. It mounts a racial and cultural “mosaic” that is flexible (it can be installed in an infinite number of ways) and accommodating (it’s open-ended, and will continue to have “portraits” added to it). “I wanted to concentrate on something very small to evoke something very large” says Kim.

What’s radical here is the facelessness of the portraits. Even though Kim used 10 x 8-inch panels (a common size for portrait photography), his pictures give no indication of the sitters’ features. Synecdoche suggests color and features are but small indicators of our actual identities. What matters is the bigger picture, in which our connectedness is clear and our differences are diminished. Whatever the meaning of this monumental work, let’s face it: it’s refreshing to look beyond skin deep.

Today is Robert Burns Day, commemorating the life and work of the Scottish Romantic poet Robert Burns (1759 – 1796). Regarded as the national poet of Scotland, Burns is the man who wrote Auld Lang Syne, a song sung at New Year’s celebrations around the world.

Throughout Scotland and Northern Ireland (and in Scots and poetry societies everywhere), tonight will be given over to a Burns Night Supper, which have been held annually since the time of the poet’s death. Whether formal or informal, a Burns Night Supper is always entertaining. Haggis (the national dish containing sheep’s heart, liver and lungs mixed with oats and simmered inside the animal’s stomach) is served as someone reads Burns’s poem Address to a Haggis. And as if that’s not enough to give you heartburn, there’ll also be lashings of whisky, further recitations and dancing into the night.

The NGA has a lively link to Robert Burns in the portrait John Tait and His Grandson (c. 1793), by the Scottish painter Henry Raeburn (1756 – 1823). The main subject, John Tait, was a lawyer and a friend of Burns, who he’d initially met through his sister-in-law. Tait entertained the poet at his estate in Ayrshire in 1787. John’s son Crawford (whose little boy Archibald Campell is shown here) was also a friend of the poet.

This painting brilliantly reveals the way that Raeburn worked. Aside from a couple of months spent in the studio of Joshua Reynolds (the 18th century English painter), and a few years during which we think he traveled through Italy to look at art, Raeburn was largely self-taught. His works combine intuition with raw talent and demonstrate his highly personal technique.

See the loose application of paint in the flickering oranges of the background and the juddering brushstrokes that mark out the shapes of the leaves. Looking at John’s face we get a tangible sense of personality, from his open gaze and the turn of his lips. It’s such a skill, to be able to map out a face and hair with a sparse series of strategic strokes as Raeburn does here. This is a technique he developed called “square touch”, which is free brushwork without underdrawing.

The arrangement of this picture is clever in that it makes us interact with the sitters. Raeburn sets John’s chair at an angle and crops the bodies of his sitters, creating the illusion that we are in their company. His points of interest and expression (their faces and hands) are placed on a clear diagonal. The natural interplay between these two is touching: Grandpa dangles a pocket watch while Archie toys with the chain. See the compositional harmony created by the juxtaposition of their hands. What a wonderful move also to frame the little boy’s face with his upraised arm, allowing us to gaze at leisure at his glistening eyes and apple-red cheeks.

Raeburn became the leading Scottish portraitist of his day, with even royalty clamoring for his talent (he was knighted during George IV’s visit to Scotland in 1822 and subsequently appointed King’s Painter for Scotland). Such accolades seem fitting for an artist who can whip up the kind of fresh, life-like portrait we’ve been looking at today. Pairing old with young and suffusing the lot with a hearty family glow, this is just the thing to warm us up on a cold Burns Night. This and dram of whiskey, that is.