Archive for February, 2010

This is the time of Holi, a spring celebration in India also known as the Festival of Colors. According to the Hindu calendar, it typically falls at the end of February, start of March. Holi is an ancient occasion with many legends attached to it, but the overarching ideas behind the festival are the triumph of good over evil, the ushering in of spring and getting the gods on-side for good harvests throughout the year.

The main Holi event is an almighty clash of colors that unfolds in the thronged streets. Children and adults of all ages spill out of their houses with colored pigments in a rainbow of shades to dust, smear and coat each other top to toe, calling out “Holi Hai” as they do so. It’s also possible to drench each other with colored water, prepared with mixed dyes from the rows of pigment kiosks that line the streets at this time of year. Holi is India’s second biggest festival (after Diwali) and much-loved for its exuberance and loosening of societal rules. Mostly, it’s memorable for its intoxicating medley of colors exploding all round.

There’s a wall at the NGA that’s flooded with color, albeit in a slightly more ordered way. It dates from 1993 and has a seriously long title: Wall Drawing No. 681 C / A wall divided vertically into four equal squares separated and bordered by black bands. Within each square, bands in one of four directions, each with color ink washes superimposed. This is by Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007), an American artist who first came to public attention in the mid 1960s with “structures” (a term he preferred to “sculptures”) and big drawings like this. He was also a prolific painter and printmaker.

LeWitt was born in Connecticut to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He travelled to Europe before serving in the Korean War, thereafter moving to New York in the 1950s to study at the School of Visual Arts. He is well known for this sort of large-scale wall drawing (in the NGA’s East Building), of which well over a thousand have been made. In keeping with the way he worked, LeWitt’s wall drawings are usually executed by other people, who follow detailed how-to instructions supplied by the artist.

As is clear from this work, LeWitt is into line and regularity in a big way. He’s a fan of geometry and measurement, which lends his art a distinctive, clean exactitude. What’s most amazing about the strict order of this arrangement is that out of the lines and the repetition comes joy. The patterning escalates the beauty of the colors, causing them to come alive in combinations before the eye. The lines start to stress movement, revealing (for me) how a diagonal has more momentum than a horizontal. Overall, it’s a dazzling effect, not dissimilar to the fresco wall art LeWitt would have seen in Europe.

Many critics described LeWitt as a Minimalist, but he himself denied this association. Instead in 1967, he coined the term “Conceptual art” to describe his work. This radical move changed the way people thought about the relationship between an idea and the art it produces. For LeWitt, art was about a concept first and foremost (manifested in the fact that he delegated the execution of his works to others), saying “Ideas cannot be owned. They belong to whoever understands them.” What an exhilarating thought, that we might get to the workings of this artist’s mind just by looking at this wall in the NGA. Failing that, it’s our very own chance to get up close with a festive flurry of vibrant colours.

Magni - The Reading Girl

Brains are the brand new status symbol, as people predict that this decade will be all about IQ. After years of an extreme intellectual diet that had current affairs at one end and tacky celebrity gossip at the other, the middle ground of brain-nurturing stuff is back, giving us a chance to re-flex our flabby noodles.

Suddenly we’re seeing a feast of things to feed our intellectual curiosity. The School of Life is an alternative learning centre for adults set up in London in 2008. Its calendar of events includes talks and workshops geared to providing a place to think intelligently about life’s challenging questions. Also in Britain is Intelligence Squared, the country’s top debating forum, which stages discussions on a variety of topical issues between politicians, journalists and media people. The live events attract thousands, with millions more watching online. Then there’s TED, an American organization that invites specialist speakers (from neuroscientists to Hollywood directors) to give an 18 minute talk on any subject, which also clocks millions of views on the internet. And isn’t it interesting that one of the best-selling books at Christmas was Flip It, a self-help book that promises to sort your brain for clearer thought?

The Italian sculptor Pietro Magni (1817 – 1877) offers a 3D vision of our new intellectual zeal. Born in Milan, Magni studied at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts before moving to the workshop of a fellow sculptor. His marble figure The Reading Girl (model 1856, carved 1861) made his career, bringing acclaim and fame in both Europe and America. The work sticks to the artistic tradition of verismo (or “realism”), which was popular in Italian art in the middle years of the 19th century. There’s a lot of delicate carving that’s gone into making the different textures (cloth, skin, hair, paper, wood) come alive and look believable. One English critic who viewed the work in the 1862 International Exhibition in London wrote: “Magni’s Reading Girl, truthful … to the hem of the garment, to the turned leaf of the book, and the torn rushes from the bottom of the cottage chair.”

But this sculpture isn’t just about looking real: there are levels of intellectual and emotional complexity that make it rich with significance and resonant with meaning. The girl sits on a rough rush chair, on a simple tile floor, suggesting she’s of the poorer working-class. She’s homed in on and, judging by the tear streaking her left cheek, moved by her book. The words – legible in the first exhibited version of the sculpture – are lines by an Italian poet who championed freedom during the Italian uprisings of 1848. Our girl also has a portrait medallion around her neck, of the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi. So she’s learning about (and feeling support for) the imminent “Resurgence” in her country that will lead to its eventual unification.

Psychological research shows that an important part of a contented life is to spend some of your day thinking about ideas or purposes that are bigger than you are. That means finding things to cultivate and expand your mind, in meaningful, unpretentious ways. And it seems we’re spoiled for choice just now. But I want to return to The Reader just before I sign off because, we couldn’t help but notice that she’s wearing just a nightie, that has slipped off one shoulder to reveal a breast. Provocative and seductive, this must surely have enhanced the work’s appeal wherever it was shown. But hey, I guess she’s telling us that engaging your brain is sexy again.

If you live in a city somewhere in the world, then you’ll know the highs and lows of metropolitan life. On the up side there’s buzz, and bakeries, bars and brasseries opening all the time. There’s culture, whether it’s theater or museums you like. In fact, whatever you’re into is on your doorstep, be it food, fashion, friends, or fun. But there are down-sides too, don’t forget. Who here likes bumper-to-bumper driving, or metro trains so packed you’ve no option but to park your face in someone’s armpit? What about those huge queues at the ATM or the feeling, frankly, that you could do with a breath of fresh air?

If you’re an urbanite, you’d better brace yourself for more of the good and bad of the city. Just 100 years ago, less than 5% of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2008, for the first time in humanity, that figure exceeded 50% and by 2050, the number will have reached 70%, representing 6.4 billion people. In the last two decades, the urban population of the developing world has grown by an average of 3 million people per week!

If reading about this extreme push towards urbanization has got you feeling claustrophobic and in serious need of a cottage out in the country, then Camille Pissarro (1830 – 1903) is here to help with a painting that shows delight in the city scrum. While not the most famous of the Impressionists, Pissarro played a part in binding the movement together (he was the only artist to participate in all eight of their shows, for example). As an Impressionist, Pissarro liked painting outdoors but later in life, when ill health prevented this, he’d paint street scenes from hotel windows. Boulevard des Italiens, Morning, Sunlight (1897) is just such a scene, showing one of the four ‘grand boulevards’ in Paris (named after the Théâtre des Italiens built on it in 1700s, now replaced by the Opéra-Comique).

Pissarro anchors the composition with the large road running into the picture. His screens of trees add a feeling of depth through superimposed layers. He’s using the short-broken strokes typical of the Impressionists here, which creates that vibrating atmosphere you’ll get at the start of a busy day on a busy street. Here, those ordered building facades at the top of the picture give way to a flurry of whipping tree branches, before the chaos comes in at street level. There’s activity all around: carriages, coaches, horses and hundreds of people, clustered and milling here, isolated or in pairs there. Pissarro’s paint application is perfect for injecting a kind of unpredictable urban energy into the work: I get the feeling he’s seeing one organic organism here from his high-up hotel room.

This picture shows how Pissarro takes pride in a pulsing, Parisian scene. Even late in life, he enjoys picking out the particulars of his metropolis, relishing the hustle and bustle of his human hub. During the 19th century, Paris had hosted a number of World’s Fairs. These huge public events displayed an arresting array of things such as engineering feats (the Eiffel Tower served as the entrance arch to the 1889 Exposition), and new machines and gadgets. There were often artistic and musical attractions, entertainment shows and exhibits representing peoples and places from around the world. These Fairs made people feel their city was the most exciting place on earth, and Pissarro would see one more in 1900. It’s this confidence and optimism that he taps into in his picture, and it’s what we’ll want too, as we head towards incremental urbanisation.

The question “Do blondes have more fun?” has taxed some big brains over the years. Recently, top academics gathered at the Sorbonne in Paris to mull it over. A few years ago, Joanna Pitman’s book, On Blondes came out, with its detailed study of the significance of blonde hair through history. Even Charles Darwin turned his formidable grey matter to this matter, analyzing if hair color plays a part in choosing sexual partners.

Today, in my first ever video blog, I’m pondering this question with the help of Neroccio de’ Landi’s Portrait of a Lady (c. 1485) at the National Gallery of Art and at my local hair salon (special thanks to Violet Hair and Skin Care in Georgetown).

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PANKS (Professional Aunts No Kids) are on the rise! With a funky new name and a cool new profile, real (and elected) aunts are shaping up to be the most fun family member. The acronym comes courtesy of the American website savvyauntie.com, which provides a forum for aunts with no experience of children of their own, on topics such as activities to engage youngsters and the best age-appropriate gifts to buy. It seems it was high time for the childless aunt role to get a shake up since the landscape has changed, says Melanie Notkin, Savvy Auntie superior and founder of the website. Apparently in America, 45% of women under 44 currently don’t have children and in the UK research by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education suggests that 30% of current female university graduates are expected never to have kids, for whatever reason.

PANKS are valuable and popular since, put simply, parents need all the help they can get, especially these days with busy lives all round. In her 2010 bestselling book Committed, author Elizabeth Gilbert says it’s high time the auntie brigade gets a rebrand. She argues that aunts have always been crucial to social cohesion and that “as a species, we need an abundance of responsible, compassionate women on hand to support the wider community.”

I went on the hunt for an NGA PANK and found one in the form of the female artist Berthe Morisot (1841 – 1895). One of the mainstays of the Impressionist movement, Morisot participated in all but one of the group’s eight shows and often hosted meetings at her home. She came from a prosperous family with distinguished artistic connections (her great-grandfather was Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard) and her varied education included lessons from the French landscape painter Corot.

This picture is called simply The Mother and Sister of the Artist (1869 – 70) and is one of Morisot’s largest works (101 x 82 cm). She’s known for this kind of charming domestic scene: this one was begun when Morisot’s sister Edma Pontillon stayed with the family to await the birth of her first child. Morisot’s casual composition, with figures and furnitures gently overlapping, creates a homey feel. Some lithe, loose brushstrokes (on the back wall and Edma’s robe) add a sense of spontaneity. Best is Morisot’s ability to render the delicacy of light, to show in oil how a sun-shaft passing through a window makes things look and feel different.

Morisot received help from the painter Edouard Manet (with whom she had an artistic rapport) on this work. Manet’s confident brush is seen in the older woman’s face and dress, differing from the more fiddly refinement of Morisot’s touch in her sister’s features and the floral upholstery. Morisot wasn’t a pushy painter in terms of her style, but she needed to be pushy to get her work shown, since women’s art was widely derided at the time.

For a while Morisot relished the perks of being a PANK, spending time with nephews and nieces, spoiling them, enjoying the fact she could hand them back the moment they became irritable. In 1874, she married Edouard Manet’s brother Eugene and they had one child, Julie, four years later. So even though her time as PANK proper was short, her art tells me Morisot never struggled to see the serene and satisfying privilege of this position. Need more convincing? Just check out The Cradle (1872, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), an utterly enchanting picture that shows Edma with the new baby.

I was into American Idol long before I married an American and moved to his country. This global behemoth of an entertainment show is now rolling through its ninth season. For the uninitiated few, Idol is a reality television competition that finds new solo musical talent. It debuted in 2002 and has since become one of the most popular shows in the history of American TV. As well as the singing from boys and girls aged 16 – 28, a huge part of the show’s popularity stems from the panel of judges, which includes acerbic Brit music exec. Simon Cowell and the (new this season) talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres.

This time round, we’ve already seen the nation-wide auditions (episodes in this phase tend to show us the crazies and the crazy-goods, as well as a smattering of heart-tugging contestant stories). There’s also been Hollywood Week, in which all those given a “golden ticket” in the early rounds are whittled down to the top 24. Finally it’s time for the first of the live shows: tonight the 12 remaining girls will sing for the public vote.

If you’re into music, but not the hype and manipulation that comes with a large-scale production like American Idol, then you could do worse than pay a visit to the NGA. Among the gallery’s myriad artists depicting musical themes, Orazio Gentileschi (1563 – 1639) is in my top 12. His Lute Player (c. 1612 – 1620) takes as its subject moments of pre-show excitement. Gentileschi was born in Pisa and moved to Rome in his teens, where he was first mentioned as an artist in the late 1580s, decorating the Vatican library. It was not until around 1600, when he fell under the spell of Caravaggio, that he began to strike out as a painter. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 – 1610) was also in Rome at the time and Gentileschi became one of the earliest and most gifted followers of his style (known as the “Caravaggisti”).

The emotional realism, evocative lighting and simplified composition in the Lute Player are all things that Gentileschi picked up from Caravaggio. There’s a placid sense of poise, even a delicate thrill of tension in the depiction of the preparation of an instrument for play. As the woman leans in, head bent and hands engaged, we too quiet down to concentrate. It’s unusual that she’s seen from the back, turned a full three-quarters away from us. This creates a special sense of introspection, as if we’re lucky to even be here. One thing Gentileschi delights in is detail and the rendering of textures. Just look at the sheeny belly of the lute, or the gloss of her hair. See the rich red velvet billowing over the chair and the fine white shirt cloth spilling forth from her bodice. The quality of light is also key, falling in from the right to make things glow: the resulting soft shading on her face and the objects lends a certain intimacy.

Gentileschi based this image on a painting by Caravaggio, also called The Lute Player from the 1590s (three versions of the work exist, the one shown here is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg). What Gentileschi does even better than his mentor, for me, is tap the potential of things before they happen. As long as we look, we’re left in delicious anticipation of the sounds that the assortment of instruments and song sheets will produce. It’s a wonder that something so silent can resonate so well in our imaginations. That’s why Gentileschi’s my Art History Idol.

On April 30th 1789, George Washington took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. He wrote to his friend James Madison (who later served as the fourth President) of his hopes for the job: “As the first of every thing in our situation will serve to establish a precedent, it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.” Washington was in office from 1789 to 1797 and it’s due to his major role in the formation of the US (as well as the part he played in the American War of Independence), that he’s still referred to as the “Father” of his country.

Today is the birthdate of a man branded on the mind of America and beyond. The details of Washington’s life are documented and disseminated, recited in classrooms, written into bestsellers. We know it was his great-grandfather John who immigrated from England in 1657 and we’ve read all about his time as a warrior and a statesman. It was Washington who gave his name to the city I now call home, and his face adorns every one dollar bill I spend and earn. And yet, though his life and achievements are archived and quantified, how much of a measure of the real man can we have? How hidden is Washington behind his masks of history and legend? The paintings I’ve seen tend to put him into soft-focus, for warm images of a worthy, wig-wearing old man. Most artists also seem to cut down the size of his nose (thought too big to be beautiful) and dull the glint in his eye.

Fortunately for us, there’s a sculptor at the NGA who refused to shy from the President’s nose and alacrity. Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741 – 1828) got closer to Washington than most and provided us with some of the most honest and raw portraits of the man. Houdon was a versatile French neoclassical sculptor who trained under French masters before completing his studies in Rome. He started his career with sensual, mythological figures in the Rococo style before becoming increasingly in demand as a portraitist, eventually casting and carving some of the greatest figures of his day.

Houdon’s bust George Washington (1786) was the result of direct meetings between the two. In 1785 Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson selected the artist as “the best in any of the European states” and sent for him to spent a couple of weeks at Mount Vernon. In this time, Houdon took measurements, made wet clay life models, plaster casts and even a plaster life mask (1785) while the President sat for him. These models were all used in a series of portrait commissions of Washington.

The plaster bust at the NGA shows just how well Houdon was able to capture the spirit of his subject. His approach is direct and unadorned: he’s got Washington in something similar to classical garb, hair combed back off his face. There’s a slight arch in the brows and a startling tenacity in the gaze (I think this is the keenness other artists have tended to miss). The nose rises loud, proud and undiminished from the smooth planes of the cheeks. The profile reveals more of the ravages of time, in the sagging under-chin and flesh folds on the neck. Houdon is said to have struggled to get Washington’s facial expression just right, until he witnessed the President dismiss a greedy horse trader. So I suppose it’s thanks in part to Houdon that we get to see something so fresh, real and human from Washington today.