Archive for February, 2010

This is Super Bowl Sunday, a holiday dedicated to the championship game of the National Football League (NFL). Of course, I knew nothing about this before moving here, but have since learned that the Super Bowl has been going for 43 years and is a highlight of the country’s sporting calendar. This year’s game pits an underdog against a top dog: the New Orleans Saints are in their first Super Bowl since the franchise began, while the Indianapolis Colts are going for their second championship since 2007. Buoyed by a surge of national support as the unlikely contenders, the Saints have “been waiting our lifetimes for this to happen.” But the Colts surely have the edge going in, with one of the best quarterbacks of all time leading their team.

As I started to learn more about the game, imagine how thrilled I was to be invited to an actual Super Bowl party. This is it, I thought, the chance to watch the game with Americans, get invested in the sport and learn the finer points of play. “Sure, we can do that if you like,” said our prospective host, “but we only really watch it for the ads.” This flummoxed me. The ads? But I now know that the Super Bowl is the most-watched annual American television broadcast and commercial airtime is so expensive that companies pull out all the stops in creating top-quality advertising for breaks in the game.

Before the ads addle our brains, let’s look at Jean Béraud (1849 – 1936), a Russian-born French artist based in Paris. Béraud was a student of Leon Bonnat and first exhibited his paintings at the Salon in 1872. His work Paris, rue du Havre (c. 1882) is one of his many scenes of Parisian life during the Belle Epoque (a period in social history from late 19th century to World War I when stability prevailed among major European powers).

This is a picture about the trappings and tastes of peaceful, prosperous times. Well-dressed women and suited-and-booted men throng the city street, dashing here, calling a carriage there. The woman in the foreground moves her skirts to reveal a fine lace petticoat and dainty toes. Her nipped-in-at-the-waist jacket, decorative floral brooch, beige leather gloves and frothy hat are all the height of fashion.

But it’s behind all this that the real subject of this picture unfolds: it’s those ads plastered on the façade of the building. Béraud also worked as a commercial artist from time to time: perhaps that’s why he’s tuned in to the ads here. They form an eye-seducing patchwork of colours and diverse text. Béraud, whose painting style stands somewhere between the precise art of the Salon and the looser Impressionist look, adds a good amount of detail in this section of his painting.

Apparently, watching and discussing the commercials during the Super Bowl has become a significant aspect of the event. But surely the real event (for the advertisers at least) will be the mass move all of us make to the shops, badgered into buying the things they showed us in the breaks. Certainly in Béraud’s scene, the ads seem to have done the trick: there’s barely a shopper here not clutching one or more bags, bulging with the latest fashions, trinkets or technologies. Known for his truth-based humor and delicate mockery of Parisian life and pass-times, is Béraud telling us something here? It seems he’s saying that, at this rate, shopping will become a national sport.

Did you commit to cutting out booze at the start of the year, sick of the nausea and headaches that followed so many merry nights in December? You’re not alone, since going easy on the grog is a top five new years resolution. It seems we all have a sense of how good less wine and beer can be for us: cleaner livers, leaner waistlines and frankly how refreshing to feel less fuzzy in the morning. But we’re a few weeks in and moving towards mid-month (statistically the time when resolutions fall by the wayside), and we might be slipping a little in our resolve. So if you spent last night catching up on all the Friday nights you’ve missed out on since Jan 1, today’s post is chosen to make you feel a bit better about it.

Think of Bacchus and a Faun as a little cultural anesthetic, in theme with any indulgence from your night before. This bronze sculpture stands in the West Sculpture Court of the NGA: it’s a work of no fixed attribution, believed to be by a Milanese artist working in the second half of the 16th century (dates are estimated 1580/1600). To be honest, if your current state is a little fragile, it’s a relief to focus on one thing at a time, so not the person who made this, just the sculpture at hand.

It shows Bacchus, the God of Wine (this is his Roman name, he’s called Dionysus in Greek mythology). He’s easily identified through his symbols: ivy or vine leaves woven into his hair, grapes in his right hand, a drinking vessel in his left and – here’s the dead giveaway – the little chap at his heels. This is a satyr, the traditional male companion of the God of Wine. Satyrs look human from the waist up, but goat-like from haunches to hooves. When not with Bacchus, carrying grapes like this one is doing, a satyr might roam woods and mountains, often sporting a sizable erection (they’re some of the lustiest figures in Greek mythology).

This piece is pure pleasure to look at. The material is seductive in itself, burnished to a high sheen, its lustrous surface gleaming like well-oiled skin. The composition is arranged around a series of tense and relaxed lines. Bacchus assumes a contrapposto pose (where one leg is straight and the other relaxed, throwing hips and shoulders in opposite diagonal planes). This lilting pose was pioneered by ancient sculptors, keen to give their figures naturalism and a sense of incipient movement. By exaggerating the pose (pushing out the left hip, snaking the torso, lifting the back foot almost off) we even get a little drunken swagger. Dynamism comes with the raised right arm, outstretched in a way that was popular in late sixteenth-century sculpture (and only possible in a material such as bronze, which has tensile strength).

Bacchus was the favorite god of the ancients and who can blame them? As well as wine, he was the figurehead of ritual ecstasy, leading his followers in bacchanalia (wild parties of physical excess). He was also known as Liberator, freeing us from our normal selves. Quite often he was portrayed in text and image as hugely fat, bloated and bulky from too much bingeing. Luckily for us however, it seems our Anonymous Milanese artist looked instead at sleek, muscular classical prototypes for this fine-tuned physique. Thank goodness he did because frankly, did a hangover ever look so good?

Towards the end of last year, Switzerland stunned Europe by banning the building of minarets. Vital in securing votes for the measure was a shocking poster, which has since been blamed for deepening hostility towards muslim immigrants and stirring up media and legal storms. Alexander Segert (manager of the Swiss People’s Party PR firm) designed the image. He’s come up with controversial stuff before, ignoring taboos and scoffing at political correctness. This latest work shows a Swiss flag, studded with minarets that rise off it like missiles. To the left there’s a woman glowering at us from inside a niqab. STOPP is written in big black letters below, underneath which JA (for the vote) in red.

This is old-fashioned propaganda art. The unmoving image fixes an idea in the viewer’s mind and the information is reduced to the basest level. This kind of campaign is an occasional feature of European politics, cheap to produce and easy to billet around a small country. It’s typically aimed at a target audience (in this case low income, little schooling) and – here’s the frightening bit –  designed to get people to respond without thinking. Segert explains that he shaped this message to “go straight to the stomach, not to the brain, and connect with specific emotions involving fear… and safety.”

If Segert goes for the guts to provoke a visceral reaction, then the Japanese artist On Kawara (b. 1933) goes for the brains and an intellectual one. Kawara is a practitioner of Conceptual art (where the concept is the most important aspect of a work) and he’s been dealing with big ideas (time, life and death) his whole career. In the 1960s (he’s lived in New York since 1965) he started recording his life with maps of daily walks and cab rides, and lists of the people he met. He’d send telegrams to friends saying “I am still alive” (he’s now doing the same on Twitter) and postcards, stamped with his address and the time he got up. He’s famous for his date paintings (over 2,000 of them), which record the date on which they were painted in white letters and numbers on a plain background.

Kawara’s work Title 1965 in the NGA is fascinating in that to some degree it’s comparable to a piece of propaganda art. It’s simple in its arrangement, made up of 3 rectangular canvases hung side-by-side. The information is clear, projected in clean white letters on a red background: “1965” center, “One Thing” to the left and “Vietnam” to the right. You can almost hear Segert approving of the work, saying that “it looks simple”.

But does Kawara go for our guts? There’s the “1965″, branded on most minds as the year the US started bombing Vietnam (also 20 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Does that red have some blood connection? It’s a specific colour called “magenta”, named after a battle in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. There’s definitely enough allusion to make us feel uncomfortable.

But that’s where any similarities with propaganda stop. You see, for a Conceptual artist like Kawara, his work needs to instigate an intellectual process. Sure, there are political elements here (the date, the words, the colours) that might cause some intuitive reactions and connections, but this is not an aggressive work with an agenda, in the way that Segert’s poster is. It’s not about getting us to “respond without thinking”. Ultimately Kawara is keen for us to keep our intellectual faculties intact when looking at Title. Because after all, without our intellectual engagement with his work, it’s lost its point entirely. Now isn’t that shocking?

To some, February can feel like a drag. It’s cold outside and still dark a good deal of the day. There’s snow in trees in some parts, slush in the gutters in others. The warm cheer of December and New Year festivities is a distant memory and spring still seems quite out-of-reach. So this is the time to let your mind wander, away from your desk or your living room chair to far-flung and fabulous, less-February places. You might be thinking of glistening warm waters and light sandy beaches. Exotic animals and beautiful plants. The chance to lie out and soak up the sun. We’ve got the picture so clear in our heads, but how to turn it into a reality?

Luckily, help is at hand in the form of American landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826 – 1900), whose crisp and clear style is just what we need to lend physical credibility to our fantasy trip. Born in Connecticut, Church was the first artist to study under Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848) – the leading landscape painter of his day – in the 1840s. Under his tutelage, Church became one of the most important of the second generation artists to emerge from the Hudson River School, the mid-19th century American art movement that created grand, romantic landscapes.

El Rio de Luz (The River of Light) dates from 1877 and is an imagined view, a sort of painterly collage, based on sketches and notes that Church made during a trip to South America in 1857. Church was a well-travelled artist, taking many extended trips abroad. He was particularly taken with Colombia and Ecuador, where he spent considerable time and where he first traveled in 1853 after reading the work of the naturalist Alexander Humboldt.

What’s so alluring is the pin-sharp detail of this visual scene, called forth convincingly from Church’s recollections. Even thought there’s been some time lapse since his South American travels, this view looks fresh and alive. There’s exquisite attention to detail in the exotic foliage, for instance. See the ferns in the foreground and the spongey mosses clinging to the tree. There are crackling vines and patches of dense undergrowth. In the middle-ground there’s a flock of flying water birds, caught in the vapors that rise off the water. As an artist Church was intent on capturing the wonders of the world, and recording accurately natural phenomena. He spent a good deal of time on scientific study and it’s his knowledge of optics, meteorology, botany, and ecology that so enhances a work like this.

But in addition to the keen naturalist’s observations, there’s an epic feeling of the sublime that saturates this tropical sunrise. The small sun, seen through a veil of cloud, sets up some stunning lighting effects. The whole scene is unified, bound together by a shimmering light that falls, picking out leaves, sitting on water and illuminating the sky. There’s harmony in the color palette of greens and yellows and a pleasing calmness in the composition.

Like his teacher Thomas Cole, Church was in awe of nature’s raw beauty and often made her look almost super-natural. Yet coupled with this, he fills his pictures with plenty of realistic details and a sense of tangibility. So if Church can call forth an image like this in his mind, what’s stopping us leaving on countless imagined trips this month? And failing that, you never know where a visit to an art gallery might take you.

Yesterday was Groundhog Day in North America. It’s when groundhogs are said to come out of hibernation to check the weather. If it’s sunny, the animal will see its own shadow, get scared and burrow back in its den for another 40 days. If on the other hand it’s cloudy, the groundhog won’t be frightened by its shadow and will be content to stay above ground, indicating an early spring for us all. The largest Groundhog Day celebration here is held in Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania, where crowds can reach 40,000. Yesterday Phil, the town’s resident groundhog (made famous in the 1993 film Groundhog Day), predicted more cold weather for the States: “as the sky shines bright above me, my shadow I see beside me: six more weeks of winter it will be!”

So it’s with the animal’s prognostication still ringing in our ears, and the snow falling softly in Washington DC, that we turn to today’s picture Snow in New York (1902) by the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929). Henri was a member of the Ashcan School, a realist art movement that came to prominence in the early 20th century. Members of the School were known especially for paintings portraying scenes of daily life in New York’s poorer neighborhoods.

This cityscape oozes a weathered sense of the everyday. It’s very spare in its use of color, almost monochrome, with the picture surface divided into distinct patches. There are the dark tones of the brownstone apartments and lighter areas for the city blocks of office buildings behind. There’s the yellowing winter sky and the brighter snowbound street. This schematic cutting up of the canvas settles a sense of stability and calm into the picture, so that looking at it, you get that magical hold-your-breath hush that often accompanies a snow-fall.

The oil paint Henri used here sits in hardened ridges and rivulets on the picture surface. While he first studied art in Pennsylvania, Henri went on to spend a good deal of the 1890s in Paris, where he was taken by the daring brushwork of the French artist Eduoard Manet (1832 – 1883). Manet avoided subtle gradations of tone and smooth finish, working instead in blocks of color with expressive brushwork. We can read Henri’s brush movements in the snow banking at the sides of the street, or the tracks running in the ground.

Henri also looked at 17th century Dutch realism for ideas. See the dirty greying slush that has sullied the fresh fall and the yellowing mush on the carriage wheels. There’s a dreariness in the presentation of the buildings and a sense of daily-grind that suggests the artist’s desire not to idealize. There’s also a feeling of immediacy here, brought into further focus by the inscription of the exact date March 5 at the lower left side of the picture, suggesting perhaps that this was painted in one go as an instantaneous artistic record.

Henri taught at the New York School of Art before founding his own school a few years later. He urged his students to focus on reality, even if it was banal or harsh. “Draw your material from the life around you, from all of it,” he said, “there is beauty in everything if it looks beautiful to your eyes.” So, even if we’re fed up with the freeze and sick of the sight of slush, if we listen to Henri, we might see fresh beauty where we didn’t before.

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, relating to an early episode in Christ’s life. Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth to complete Mary’s ritual purification. On entering, they met Simeon the Elder, who’d been promised that he “should not see death before he had seen the Messiah of the Lord” (Luke). On seeing the baby, Simeon’s prayer prophesied the redemption of the world by Jesus: “He is a light which will shine for those who do not know God.” This day is also celebrated as Candlemas, when candles are blessed for use in church throughout the coming year.

There’s an artist at the NGA known for his sublimely evocative depictions of candlelight. His name is Georges de La Tour (1593 – 1653) and the few facts we have about his life indicate that he enjoyed a successful, somewhat low-key career in his native Lorraine (now part of France, but at this time an independent duchy). This work The Repentant Magdalen (c. 1635/40) shows that de La Tour, like many artists at the time, was indebted to Caravaggio (1571 – 1610), an Italian painter renowned for powerful scenes and dramatic lighting effects. Caravaggio’s influence was spreading throughout Europe in the early-mid century after his death, with followers posted all over Europe.

And yet de La Tour was no slavish imitator: here it’s clear that beyond the obvious trademarks of the Italian master’s style, he imbues this painting with his own sense of grandeur and solemnity. The Magdalen was supposed to have led a sinful life until her sister persuaded her to listen to Jesus, after which she became a devoted follower of Christ. Here she’s sitting at a table, propping her head in her hand. With her left hand she touches a skull, also reflected in the mirror in front her. Both skull and mirror are vanitas symbols, or emblems of the transience of life. These assembled objects, matched with Mary’s brooding expression, fill the picture with an intense sense of contemplation.

What is of course most breath-taking here is the candle-lighting. This is a nocturnal scene, lit by one flame dancing from behind the skull. Because the wax and wick are shielded from the viewer, the setting and subjects are shrouded in a mysterious demi-glow. Sharp shadows cut across the Magdalen’s cheek and right hand. See how the the skull proper is silhouetted while the eyes and nose cavity glimmer ghoulishly in the mirror. There’s something spine-chillingly inventive about making the scene so dark and limiting the colors so drastically. By using a single light source, de La Tour carves out simple masses in a sparse yet effective way.

The 17th century church held Mary Magdalen up as a repentant sinner. Within this context (and bearing in mind that de La Tour was from a strong Catholic community), the candlelight becomes almost like a spiritual balm, absolving Mary of her demons and revealing to us the flickering light of her spirituality. But this picture is transformative for another, much more physical reason. When standing in front of it, because of the shrouding gloom, your eyes literally have to “get used to the dark”, just as they would in a room lit by a single candle. What a mesmerizing way to draw us into the picture. And what a way for us to mark Candlemas today.

There’s an ancient Greek myth that’s well-suited to this time of year, when the cold keeps snapping and we’re wondering when milder weather will return. It’s about the goddess of spring Persephone, and her mother Ceres, goddess of grain. Wherever Ceres walked, cornfields sprang up ripe and ready for harvest. As Persephone skipped beside her, she’d coax the fresh young shoots into life.

On the day our story begins Persephone was on a mountain side, singing to the wild flowers. She hardly noticed as a dark shadow crossed the sun: this was Pluto, king of the Underworld, in his dark chariot drawn by horses. When Pluto saw Persephone he wanted her for himself, so he swooped down, snatched her and dragged her off underground. Far away, Ceres heard a faint cry and ran, panic-stricken, to where Persephone had been. All she found were trampled flowers. She cried out and began a frenzied search for her daughter.

French sculptor Michel Anguier (1612 – 1686) chose to cast this moment in his sculpture Ceres Searching for Persephone (model 1652, cast 1652 – 70s). Anguier was born in Normandy but moved to Paris at 15. He spent the 1640s in Rome, living in an artists’ colony. While there he did some work under the Italian sculptor and architect Bernini, carving relief decorations for the interior of St Peter’s basilica. Italy gave Anguier a love for classical art and subjects, traceable in this work. Some things look classical (Ceres’s sandals, hair and wreathed head), but there’s a level of emotion in her face and that jutting right arm (only possible in a material such as bronze, which has tensile strength) that reflects 17th century taste. See also the dragon (emblem of the Underworld?) snaking at her feet for added tension. This figurine stands a mere 54cm tall and yet packs a visual punch. Light glides over the burnished surface of the bronze, which is riddled and rippled with finely-cast detail. Ceres’s draperies swirl over her shapely form, leading the eye in feverish movement that reflects the urgency of her hunt.

Persephone was distraught in the Underworld. Pluto tried to cheer his queen with gifts, but she turned them away. When he offered her food, she refused to eat. Above ground the earth had suffered through her absence. Leaves had fallen from the trees, fruits failed to grow and nothing ripened on the bough. Grasses turned brown and flowers died. Eventually, seeing all this, king of the gods Zeus ordered Pluto to return Persephone: he said that since she hadn’t eaten while in the Underworld, she was unconnected to it and thus she could leave.

Unwilling to relinquish his bride, Pluto turned to cunning. As she was on her way out, he gave Persephone a pomegranate, cajoling her to taste just a little. Hungry and relieved to be on her way home, she counted out six seeds and ate them slowly, one by one. This changed everything: when Zeus got wind of it he decreed that Persephone would now have to spend six months of every year in the Underworld, one month for each of the seeds she’d eaten. So it was that the seasons were born. When Persephone is in the Underworld nothing much grows above ground. But when she returns to Ceres for the rest of the year, the earth springs into life as she pushes plants, fruits and flowers to flourish.

This myth, so laden with emotion, is the source for Anguier’s miniature masterpiece. Today, both story and sculpture can open our eyes to the age-old rhythm of winter ceding to spring. It’s just a matter of when.