Archive for January, 2010

The biggest food trend of our time is surely sustainability. Where food comes from, who it goes to and how much there is to go round are all questions that have become familiar to most of us. Sustainability is the thing that has always underpinned the argument for buying organic, local and seasonal food.

Sustainability certainly makes sense, particularly in our ever-expanding world. There will be 7 billion of us by 2011, meaning meat-eating will continue to rise and fish stocks will continue to deplete. These are times that call for us to look very carefully at the world’s ability to feed itself.

Vincent van Gogh’s Farmhouse in Provence (1888) evokes a simpler time, when things at least appeared more abundant: this rural scene is ripe with life, bursting with health and growth. The son of a Dutch pastor, van Gogh (1853 – 1890) worked for an art dealer, as a teacher and as an evangelical preacher before devoting himself to painting with the same zealous insistence that he had brought to his sermons. In a career lasting only about a decade, he created some 1,000 paintings.

This picture – soaked with bold colors and studded with vigorous brushstrokes – reveals his strikingly original, intense style. It was painted during van Gogh’s time in Arles, a city in the South of France, where he’d gone in hopes of bettering his health and founding an artist’s colony. It was a wild and productive time for him: from the start of 1888 to his departure just under 15 months later, he produced more than 200 paintings.

It’s clear from this picture than van Gogh adored the sun in Provence: it bakes this view into a simplified, almost pattern-like state. His colors come to urgent life in these luminous conditions. A rich brown-yellow saturates the whole, plastering a sense of happiness and heat onto the canvas. Look how he sets up complimentary pairs for added vibrancy (green and red on the flowers in the foreground, pink and turquoise in the clouds and sky). These particular combinations combust the colors before our eyes. The dark outlines filled in with color (seen on the blue-black gate of the farm) reveal the influence of Japanese prints that the artist first came across in Paris.

The brushstrokes here are characteristic of much of van Gogh’s work towards the end of his life. We can see his markings clearly, since in most areas he worked with a brush heavily loaded with oil paint. The result is called impasto, thick layers of paint visible on the canvas. There are fat dabs for the red flower heads and linear dashes to denote the grasses. See how the clouds roll under his hand and how he literally seems to ‘weave’ the textured fence. It’s energizing just to look at this pulsating painting.

As many will know, van Gogh suffered from mental imbalance during his life and took his own life at 37. Despite his early demise however, he is a key figure of Postimpressionism and has made an indelible mark on modern art.

This painting bristles with van Gogh’s intense response to nature, which might just reinvigorate our current endeavors in pursuit of global sustainability. Whether you subscribe to sustainability or not, now is the time to assess our over-consumption and come up with solutions for a more fertile future.

So what will it be? Thin ‘n’ flaky or thick ‘n’ crusty? Apple, blueberry or peanut butter chocolate chunk with extra whip on top? You’d better pick your favorite quick, because today is National Pie Day in the States! It’s a day we owe to the American Pie Council (APC), an organisation committed to raising awareness, enjoyment and consumption of pies across the country.

I’m learning there’s a distinct pie heritage that flavors the American experience. Pies are a sweet constant of life in the US, baked into the rituals of family and community. Recipes are passed from one generation to the next and pie plates and utensils become family heirlooms. Most of the major festivals here feature some specific pie: pumpkin or pecan at Thanksgiving and apple on the Fourth of July. So today of all days is really the time to slice up and indulge in a piece or two of pie.

But before you hit the bakery or start rolling out your pastry, feast your eyes for a moment on today’s work, Glass Case with Pies (Assorted Pies in a Case) from 1962. This is by Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), one of the most original artists working in the US. He’s famous for his giant sculptures of food and for his soft sculptures of typically rigid objects. Born in Stockholm to a Swedish diplomat (he became a US citizen in the 1950s), Oldenburgh moved to America as a young boy. He lived in New York and Chicago growing up and studied at Yale before settling in New York.

His stack of pies is an experiment of sorts. He’s seeing what happens to an everyday object when you change its make-up and alter its environment. Will the pies still be pies? He hasn’t made these with flour and eggs, but with burlap (a hessian-like material) soaked in plaster, arranged in tins and painted with enamel in ‘pie’ colors. There’s a double-crusted chocolate on top, lemon meringue under that and blueberry under that. Pumpkin next? Custard below that? I’ve yet to determine the bottom-most flavour but we get the picture: these are almost pies in our eyes, looking quite life-like and good enough to eat.

So it’s more their environment that’s challenging the pie-ness of the pies. Oldenburgh puts his models into a glass-and-metal case, which is set behind glass by the NGA. It’s interesting what occurs: since we’re not seeing the pies in a kitchen or bakery, he evokes our senses and somehow heightens them by not allowing us to do the things we’d normally do with pie (smell it, touch it, stuff it down our throat).

This is a whimsical work that reveals some of Oldenburgh’s artistic inspirations. There’s Dada, a subversive movement that emerged at the time of WWI, seeking to break down traditional values in art, replacing them with new forms of expression. There’s also Surrealism, beginning a few years later, which looked at the subconscious and challenged perceptions of reality by using dream-like imagery. By blending these references, and by re-constituting and re-homing his pies, Oldenburgh has us ‘seeing’ pie in a whole new way.

This is possibly one of the most enticing works in the NGA. As the Pie Council puts it: “There’s something touching about giving someone a gift as special as a pie.” President Obama cited “resisting pie” as his main personal objective for this year, but I’d challenge even him to resist the confections that Oldenburgh has cooked up.

A small village in Australia has become the country’s first bottled water-free town. Bundanoon in New South Wales is a community of 2,500 people saying no to mass-marketed, still water sold in sealed “single-use” plastic bottles. Good on them, as our global bottle habits are bad. Bottled water has a huge carbon footprint (much bigger than tap), and costs up to 500 times more. It saps precious water sources and creates a serious solid waste problem (over half of the bottles go to landfill).

So why do we stick to the bottle? The billion dollar water companies would have us believe that their stuff is cleaner and healthier, but tests prove quite the opposite. Recently, five US water brands and a sample of tap water from a drinking fountain in central New York were sent to a microbiologist at the University of New Hampshire. He tested for bugs and concluded that there was “actually no difference” between the bottled and tap waters. Worse still, check the small print and you’ll find that Everest Water is in fact from Texas and Glacier Clear Water is not from a glacier at all, but reprocessed from a tap in Tennessee.

It’s clear we need to rethink our water ways. Perhaps the American artist Robert Gober (b. 1954) can inspire us to look afresh at the benefits of tap water. His work The Slanted Sink (1985) hangs in the East Building of the NGA. Gober (who lives and works in New York) often uses familiar things like doors and body parts in his work and deals with themes of childhood, sexuality, memory, loss and spiritual redemption. This haunting Sink is one of a series of similar plumbing fixtures that established his reputation in the 1980s.

At first it looks like a bog-standard kitchen fitting; but then closer inspection reveals that it’s hand-made, meticulously crafted from plaster, wood, steel, wire lath, and semi-gloss enamel paint. So he’s taking something mundane, and loading it with meaning. A sink is an object familiar to most, so he’s guaranteed audience connection. But by introducing the drunken angle, it’s suddenly less everyday, more odd. We’re at once comforted by our recognition of the shape and finish of this thing, and unsettled by its floating ‘homelessness’ on a flat blanched wall. It’s a ‘not-quite-sink’ and as such it’s witty, in a way.

It’s when we consider where and when this was made – in New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic – that The Slanted Sink gets clogged up with ideas of memory and loss. Gober is among only a few openly gay American artists to achieve an international reputation and a lot of his work draws on his sensibilities and experiences as a gay man. Hence we could look at this work as a homage to a simpler time scrubbed free of illness (Gober’s father was a tradesman), or as an testament to the disturbing disconnectedness of losing a friend in their fight for life. Look for the faucet and you won’t find it here: could this stand for thwarted attempts at cleansing and redemption?

Gober speaks of ‘remaking’ memories through the prism of current experiences. Of his childhood fascination with sinks he recalls: “I remember thinking that life would be different when I could see for myself the interior of the sink.” What if life could be different in the everyday, simply by each of us looking with new eyes at the potential of a sink? A daily decision to turn on the tap and a small action not to buy a bottle could be the start of a whole new lease of life for the environment.

The Smithsonian National Zoological Park in DC is now only a few minutes from where we live. It’s a huge urban wildlife with species and habitats from tropical rain forests to local woodlands. It’s a great place, dedicated to leadership in animal care, science, education and sustainability. One of the Zoo’s most popular attractions is the Big Cats exhibit. Sadly, one week ago today, they lost their female lion Lusaka to ill health and old age.

Today’s picture Daniel in the Lions’ Den (c. 1614/16) honors lions in captivity. It’s by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640), the most influential Baroque painter in northern Europe. His masterful style owes much to the time he spent in Italy as a young man, seeing classical sculptures and works by Titian, Michelangelo and Raphael, among others. In his career, Rubens worked for the highest-ranking European patrons and he could only meet the huge demand for his paintings with the help of a workshop of pupils and assistants.

Ours is a powerhouse of a picture, measuring 224 x 331cm and tackling one of the great Old Testament stories. Daniel was condemned to spend a night in the lions’ den for his crime of worshipping God instead of the Persian King Darius. Here we have the morning after the night before: the stone is rolled off the mouth of the den and Daniel is giving thanks to God for pulling him through in one piece.

Rubens melds realism with theater for maximum impact here and hammers home the human part of this religious drama. Take Daniel’s pose: head flung back, hands in a white-knuckle grip, biceps bulging, buttocks clenching and legs all a-twist. It’s this dramatic physical gesturing that reveals Daniel’s feelings and gives the work it emotional baggage. There’s great stage lighting too: a shaft enters through the mouth of the den, highlighting the creamy, unblemished quality of Daniel’s skin. This in turn is contrasted with the shaggy lion manes and rugged rocks. That bright red cape is a show-stopper, creating a diagonal gash that reminds us of the bloody mess that could have ensued, had Daniel not endured through faith.

But the tour de force in this painting is surely the nine burly lions, both male and female, that circle, prowl and growl inside the den. Talk about overwhelming the viewer: the animals are shown life size! A few of them (the males placed left and right foreground and the one standing on the rock) are looking out at us, catapulting us terrifyingly into their midst. It’s a sure-fire trick for getting us to invest in the story. It’s small wonder that Rubens could capture the essence of lion movement, behaviour and physical detail (black lips, hanging teeth) so convincingly: he spent hours in the royal menagerie in Brussels observing and sketching the big cats there.

As well as the obvious religious narrative, this painting is about capturing one of nature’s most impressive beasts. Rubens does an incredible job of conveying their wild essence and beauty. Just as Lusaka at the National Zoo became an ambassador for her species, illustrating the appearance and behavior of lions, so too this painting becomes a rare up-close-and-personal exploration into the character of these mesmerizing animals.

“So much light is shined on gymnasts, football players, singers and actors. It’s not often that you get to shine a light on academics.” That’s Mark Burnett, prolific reality show producer, who’s come up with another bright TV idea. Our Little Genius is a game show on Fox that gives children the chance to put their knowledge on a chosen topic to the test for cash prizes.

Whatever your thoughts on exposing minors to the pressures of a show like this might be, it’s undeniable that Our Little Genius taps into a current TV trend. From Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? to a recent episode of MTVs True Life that tracked a pack of super-bright teens (and even the broadcasting of the Scripps National Spelling Bee), TV seems slowly to be turning its attention to what really matters: our grey matter.

Two members of an all-round, high-achieving family are represented in Rubens with a Geranium (1801) at the NGA, by the American artist Rembrandt Peale (1778 – 1860). Peale’s father, the artist and museum proprietor Charles Willson Peale, gave all of his 17 children an auspicious start in life by naming them after famous artists and scientists. But Pappa Peale didn’t always get it right: Rembrandt followed in the footsteps of his namesake to become a painter, while his brother Rubens, shown here, became a botanist, despite his name!

Here’s Rubens aged 17, presenting an early horticultural triumph (this geranium specimen was reputedly the first grown in the New World). He’s proud of his potted phenomenon, touching the terra-cotta tenderly and letting the tendrils tousle his hair. But this picture is as much a record of the artist’s skills as it is of the progress of a young scientist. Because even though Rembrandt is a little longer in the tooth than some of our TV prodigies, he’s still only 23 when he paints his brother in this picture. There’s a wonderful naturalism here that’s based on his careful attention to detail. See how he captures the onset of decay on a leaf near the bottom of the plant. There’s subtle shading to bring out the shape of the nose and brows and and look how the light (which shines in from left) glints pin-sharp on the rims of the specs.

It seems Rembrandt was much like the precocious genius type we are seeing more of on our TV screens. He made his first work (a self-portrait) at 13. He worked as a museum director while still in his teens. He’d painted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson from life by his 22nd birthday. In the year he painted our Rubens portrait, he also found time to dig up prehistoric mammal bones near New York and take them to London for exhibition the following year. Rembrandt’s reference point for all this early achievement was most likely his father who, in addition to his artistic pursuits, worked as a sometime soldier, inventor, agricultural reformer, author, political activist and naturalist.

Rembrandt went on to have a career of almost 70 years, producing over 1,000 works. This is all well and good, but just sometimes it’s a comfort, when we’re in the presence of these high percentiles people, to see that even they are human and prone to the odd hiccup or mistake. Because – and forgive me for pointing out the obvious here – did anyone else notice that he’s given Rubens two pairs of glasses?

Babies will be more intelligent if their mothers view works of art while pregnant – at least according to one Russian museum. In St Petersburg, women are joining art tours in hopes of broadening their unborn baby’s mind. This intra-womb education program was conceived by a Russian psychologist who believes that Mums-to-Be should look at gentle, beautiful images to send intellectually stimulating impulses to Baby.

One artist in the NGA who was intrigued by the stages of a child’s intellectual development (albeit from birth) is Thomas Eakins (1844 – 1916). Like Bellows from yesterday’s post, Eakins was an outstanding 19th century Realist painter. His picture Baby at Play (1876) is one in a series of family portraits he created in the 1870s and shows his two-year-old niece, Ella.

Instantly eye-catching is the size of the baby: Eakins creates Ella life-size on the canvas, which makes her very present. He uses his understanding of the human body (acquired in anatomy classes while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy), to give the tot an uncanny realism. See her sausage-like fingers and dimpled knuckles. Eakins is good when it comes to shading to lend a thud of physical baby weight. Ella’s lit from top left, so we get the crown of her head highlighted and her round cheeks caught in a glare. Parts of her embroidered dress are cast into shadow, but we get a nice clear view of her fantastic striped tights. The entire painting is composed around the central pyramid of the baby (a shape echoed in the stack of wooden blocks), lending an air of tranquility.

It’s remarkable, when considering this picture, to think that before the 19th century children barely featured in painted portraits. They’d get a look in if they were the offspring of royalty, rulers or gods but even then, children were presented as mini adults, trussed up and looking serious. So little Ella, caught off guard in an informal setting, is still something of a novelty in her time.

And that’s before we’ve considered the best thing about this picture. You see, Eakins was always fascinated by the ways in which we absorb information and assimilate behavior (he was a teacher as well as an artist). In his hands, this painting becomes more than a cutesy toddler snap and evolves into an insightful record of the early stages of intellectual development. First, he lowers our vantage point, bringing us down to Ella’s level, which helps us relate to her more directly. Next, see how he’s captured her casting aside the infantile doll and horse and cart: instead she’s studying some alphabet blocks. Could it be we’re witnessing Ella make first contact with the adult world of letters and language? In any case, Eakins gives us a rare glimpse of the challenges of early childhood, seen in the intense concentration on the baby’s face.

Was Ella exposed to art while still in the womb? Who knows. From the way she’s getting to grips with her ABCs, I’d hazard a guess and say yes. But whether any of us “saw” pictures before we were born or not, it’s never too late to start gaining from art.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, a holiday that marks the birth and celebrates the life of the iconic godfather of the American civil-rights movement. As one of only four U.S. federal holidays that commemorate an individual, today records the important role King played in this country’s history.

This remains a thought-provoking day, with no place in D.C. more powerfully linked to the memory of King than the Lincoln Memorial, site of his famous I Have a Dream address in 1963. That speech followed months of campaigning to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, where at times protests had become violent, with both demonstrators and policemen using extreme force.

Today’s picture conveys some sense of the violence that came to be a part of the African-American civil rights movement. Both Members of this Club (1909) is by the American artist George Bellows (1882 – 1925). The painting shows a bout between two boxers, one white and one black. The work was inspired by real fights that Bellows attended at an athletic club in New York. Since such matches were illegal in the city at the time, private clubs made fighters a member for the night to get around the law. For me, in the context of today, the title of this painting is evocative in that the two subjects are united by their membership, as boxers both, not defined by other factors.

By the end of the 19th century, the U.S. had forged its burgeoning history, bloody and proud, and a distinctive American style of painting soon followed. An artist like Bellows is classed as a Realist, painting the raw vitality and survival instincts of New York’s lowest classes (and by association, modern America). You can almost hear the heavy suck of air as Bellows picks out the heaving rib-cage of the white fighter with heavy gashes of beige paint that bubble in places with pinkish blood. Every muscle in the white man’s raised right arm bulges and strains: Bellows clearly paid attention in anatomy class.

The overall composition is dominated by the shape of the black fighter’s body. A sinewy line that travels through the elongated leg, over the arching back and up to the knotted left arm creates a rocketing diagonal that gives the picture an explosive energy. The contrasting skin tones of the two accentuate the lop-sidedness of the triangle their bodies together create. It’s precarious, this instant of teetering balance that’s captured, resulting in an ominous feeling of impending crash and boom.

What’s perhaps most chilling is the ‘invisibility’ of the fighters. The white man’s eyes are lost (all we see are bloody stains covering his chin), while the black man’s features blur with the background as he burrows his head into his opponent’s chest. By contrast, notice the eery faces of the audience gathered round: a gallery of ghostlike visages leers gleefully at the struggle in the ring. In front of this baying crowd, our fighters have become faceless arbiters of aggression and hate.

Bellows followed the advice of his art teacher to “express the spirit of the people today.” His gutsy subject matter and bold brushwork tell a story of the great human drama that can unfold in the lives of ordinary people. For all those commemorating King’s life today, thoughts will surely also turn to those ordinary people whose lives were touched – in a big or small way – by one of the greatest dramas of American history.