Clown Paintings

A group of clown by S.J. Mulak, 1975

In general, the popularity of various painting content areas hasn't changed very much down through the years. Landscapes have been popular for several centuries now and portraits far longer than that. On the other hand, religious works have slipped down several notches as churches found better things to do with their money than subsidize artists; and paintings of nudes are now far less popular since other visual media has been shown to be far more powerful purveyors of eroticism. Genre painting reached it's zenith with the pre-TV Golden Era Illustration during the first half of 20th-century, and in recent years has shifted its focused to cute little children and their cute, little cuddly pets. Any slack in that area has been taken up with far less cuddly wildlife paintings. Abstract Expressionism was something of a novel, art-for-art's-sake fad to begin with so, considered as a major content area, is barely worth mentioning. Likewise, still-lifes never were all that popular and still aren't. It would seem that automobiles are now the favorite of those liking still-lifes.

 

Howdy Doody and Clarabell, 1947-60

Ronald McDonald the collector's item.

Most of these shifts have been subtle, spread out over decades or even centuries. However, in one case, the popularity of one painting content area hasn't simply faded, it has plummeted. If you haven't already guessed, based on the examples above and below, I'm talking about clowns. As a child, the first clown I can recall was Clarabell on the old Howdy Doody Show during the early 1950s (above). Shortly thereafter, (1963) anoth-er clown first appeared, the famous Ronald McDonald (ab-ove, left) played by the then not-so-famous Willard Scott, later a weatherman on NBC's Today Show. In fact, he also took on the whiteface makeup of Bozo the Clown for a short time (below, upper image). All of these figures have been documented by painters over the years, and some (such as Bozo, below, lower image) not in the most flattering light. Comedian Red Skelton made an entire career out of not just being a clown, but in painting them as well.

Upper image: Bozo the Clown, digital painting by Brazilian artist, Nelson Nakashima.
Lower image: Evil Clown, Vectorish.

Emmet Kelly's Weary
Willie by Oberstein.

Another iconic clown, broke with the white-face traditional clown makeup going back more than one-hundred years to Joseph Grimaldi. He started out as a trapeze act, but after 1931 devoted himself entirely to his hobo character, "Weary Willie," based upon the hobos of the Great Depression Era. Besides in the circus, clowns are often featured at other enter-tainment events. Back during the 1970s, a Kelly type hobo clown was a repeated visitor to the Salt Fork Arts Festival in Cambridge, Ohio, where we often showed work. The two paintings below were from photos taken just seconds apart. I call them Man in Makeup 5 and 6. He was advanced in years and slightly hard of hearing. This type of clown has long been a favorite for artists, offering them an opportunity to playfully depict both humor and pathos.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Man in Makeup 5 and 6, 1978, Jim Lane

The abrupt decline in popularity of clown paintings can be mostly laid upon one individual and upon those artist painting clowns since the arrest of a clown named John Wayne Gacy in 1978. Many people, children and even adults, have long thought of clowns as "creepy." Gacy became known as the "Killer Clown," in that he would often dress up as a clown for charity events and children's parties. Gacy became infamous for luring teenage boys to his Cook County, Illinois, home and murdering them by asphyxiation or strangulation. Many of his victims were sexually assault and raped. This deranged man killed 33 young men over the span of 6 years. After being convicted of all 33 murders, he spent 14 years on death row before he was finally executed on May 10, 1994.

Clowns have taken on a whole new evil persona in the forty years since Gacy's "Pogo" gave them a bad name.

Although Gacy was no doubt responsible for jumpstarting the evil image so synonymous with clowns today, artist have, in large part, been guilty of perpetuating this image. Images of clowns which often frighten pre-teen children, seem to take on a sort of evil magnetism as those same children get older and become teenagers. Evil clowns are one of the best-selling items in the inventory of T-shirt merchants, not to mention young artists and those in the tattoo profession. In researching photos for this piece, some of the clowns scared even me. Incidentally, when I mentioned to my wife a moment ago that I was writing about clowns today, she suddenly broke into something approaching a "rant" as to the fact that "all clowns are evil" et cetera, et cetera. I did my best to convince her that her reaction was precisely what I was writing about and that, all clowns were not evil. I...don't think I succeeded.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Man in Makeup 4, 1972, Jim Lane

 

Washington Allston

Coast Scene On The Mediterranean, 1811, Washington Allston

I've long been of the opinion that all artists are multi-talented. Often their other talents are closely related to painting or their chief artistic interest. The painter Samuel F.B. Morse was, or course, a scientist and inventor, as was Leonardo. Winston Churchill was a brilliant writer and statesman, as well as quite adept at watercolors. Thomas Jefferson was a talented architect as well as an excellent writer, statesman, and a pretty good President. Besides painting and teaching, I've developed a talent for writing and videography as well as strong interest in architecture. Seldom have any of the artists mentioned, or those unmentioned, been equally strong in all areas (Leonardo having been the exception to the rule). On the other hand, Red Skelton painted clowns as well as he portrayed them. Moreover, I've always admired Tony Bennett as much for his paintings as his singing. The colonial American artist, Washington Allston, was a portrait painter and also a published poet.

The self-portrait dates from 1805, the Gilbert Stuart, from 1818.

Allston was born on a rice plantation on the Waccamaw River near Georgetown, South Carolina in the northeastern coastal area of the state. The year was 1779 so, not surprisingly, he was named for George Washington. His father, Captain William Allston, died in 1781, shortly after the Battle of Cowpens. Washington Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800 and shortly thereafter sailed to England in May 1801 to further his studies as an artist. He was admitted to the Royal Academy in London when the American-born painter, Benjamin West, was its president.

The Taming Of The Shrew, 1808,  Washington Allston

After absorbing what he could from West, Allston spent the next five years traveling about Europe, "museum hopping" from Paris to Rome and points in between. It was during this time that Allston met the writer, Washington Irving, another traveling American bearing the name of our first president. It was also around this time that Allston's appreciation for Shakespeare manifested itself with his The Taming of the Shrew (above), from 1808. Allston also painted scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, and the comic figure of Falstaff. After traveling throughout western Europe, Allston eventually settled in London, where he became famous for his portraits, landscapes, and religious works.

Christ Healing the Sick, 1813, Washington Allston

As mentioned earlier, Allston was also a published writer. In 1813, while still living in London, he published The Sylphs of the Seasons, with Other Poems. It was republished in Boston later that year. At the same time, Allston completed his Christ Healing the Sick (above). Several years before, Allston painted Moses and the Serpents (below), his first venture into religious art. In the years that followed, he also depicted scenes involving Jeremiah, Elisha, Elijah, Joseph, and others.

Moses And The Serpent, 1805, Washington Allston

Two years later, in 1815, Allston's wife, Ann (Channing), died leaving him saddened, lonely, and homesick for America. In 1818, Alson returned to the United States, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the remaining twenty-five years of his life. He died in 1843 at the age of sixty-three. During his years in this country, Allston trained a whole generation of American portrait artists including such names as George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg (his nephews), as well as his friend and Colleague, Samuel F.B. Morse. Allston has sometimes been called the "American Titian" inasmuch as his paintings often resemble the great Venetian Renaissance artist's work in their display of dramatic color and sharp contrasts. His work greatly influenced the development of U.S. landscape painting during the first half of the 19th-century. The west Boston neighborhood of Allston is named after him.

The Poor Author and the Rich Bookseller,
 1811, Washington Allston

The Tippler, Washington Allston

 

Celebrity Painters

DHead XXVIII--XXV, 1995-96, David Bowie

Over the years, I've written a few times regarding artists who were famous entertainers, but also painters, including Red Skelton, Tony Bennet, George W. Bush (I found him very entertaining at times), Dwight Eisenhower, Sir Winston Churchill and probably a few more that escape me at the moment. As with any group of artist, some of these were better (often MUCH better) than others. That's the case as well with the group of celebrities I'm highlighting today. They are, for the most part, second generation to the earlier group. In some cases, these individuals were artists first, before they made it in show business. One or two are, at best, what we'd term "Sunday painters." I've chosen eleven, which is not to say there may be others more deserving or that all these artists are creating equally. Naturally, with that many, I can't go into a great deal of detail about them or their work. If you like what you see, most are not all that hard to find online.



Trained as an artist first, music, songwriting, and performing came later.

Starting in alphabetical order, David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in 1947 and grew up in the Brixton section of London. Although his first schooling was as an artist, David was recognized at an early age for his musical ability. Growing up, his musical idols were Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. He formed his first band in 1962 at the age of fifteen. Despite the fact his early training makes him one of the best of the celebrity artist featured here, his career in music has so dominated his time and energy during the past fifty years his art has become little more than a welcomed relief valve for the stress and strain of the Rock world. His Child in Berlin (above) from 1976, depicts a young boy trying to get up the nerve to climb the steps to an appointment with his dentist. It's one of Bowie's best works. One has to wonder if his DHead XXVIII--XXV (top) may, in fact, feature portraits. See anyone you know?

Faces as creative on canvas as the ones he creates on film.

Knowing the comic actor, Jim Carrey, as well as we do, we have to wonder, in seeing his paintings, if he doesn't paint for the sheer fun of it. Given his movie roles, it's hard to imagine his taking art seriously. Carrey is a Canadian-American, born in Newmarket, Ontario, in 1962. Carrey was mentored by the much-put-upon standup comic and actor, Rodney Dangerfield, who helped him land several television jobs, eventually leading to a role in the comedy series In Living Color. That led to a long list of movie roles in which his facile face and zany antics came to be his most valuable asset. Today, Carrey is as much an Expressionist on canvas as he has long been on the silver screen.

A "Sunday" painter who had little regard (or time) for his art work.

For years, Johnny Cash doodled, sketched and, eventually, painted. He did so informally giving little thought to the possibility that his work would appeal to the fine art community. In 1993 Cash showed a friend, a painting he did titled Flight (above). Cash was encouraged to publish the abstract impressionist work making it available to collectors. The singer gave permission for Flight to be published as limited edition prints. The art galleries like his work. If Cash could have produce more such art to satisfy collector demand, he would have become an important painter. Unfortunately, due to his exhaustive touring and entertainment schedule, Flight would be the only painting he ever published.

A man who takes his art as seriously as he does his acting.

John Christopher Depp II is a self-taught artist, born in 1963. His first flirtation with show business came in the form of a garage band he joined in his hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky when he dropped out of school at the age of fifteen. The band ended up in California, then split up, forcing Depp to pursue odd jobs until a friend of his wife, actor Nicholas Cage. advised him to become a movie actor. However, Depp turned down his first starring role, for a similar role in the Fox TV series 21 Jump Street. His career has been one film success after another since then. Depp's portraits of Marlon Brando and Keith Richards represent two of his greatest career influences. In looking at his artwork, it's hard to tell who his artist inspirations may be.

The work of Phyllis Diller bears a strong resemblance to that of Matisse and Modigliani.

The comedienne, Phyllis Diller, died in August of 2012 after a fifty-year career in television and movies. Born Phyllis Ada Driver in 1917, she was from Lima, Ohio. The mother of five, she got her start doing fifteen-minute TV segments in Oakland, California. Dressed in a house robe, she called the show, Phyllis Diller, the Homely Friendmaker. The comedienne's whirlwind career, like that of so many celebrity artists, raises the question regarding their art, when did they find the time? Diller was a self-taught artist who began painting around 1963, long after her career was well underway. She worked in acrylics, watercolors and oils throughout the 1970s, filling her Brentwood home with portraits and still-lifes. In 2003, at age 86, she held the first of several "art parties," selling her artwork along with her stage clothes and costume jewelry. Her paintings often involved stylized female faces suggesting the warm, inner beauty of the "homely" friend maker.

Bob Dylan's art is sometimes described as "freewheeling," the title of his second album.

Poet and songwriter Bob Dylan's artwork has a very impressionistic feel to it in keeping with his "freewheelin'" personality. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, in 1941, after some fifty years as a traveling musician, the soon to be seventy-five years old, performer has now started to slow down, which means he has more time for his art. While travelling on tour between 1989 and 1992, Bob Dylan created a collection of drawings that were published in a book entitled Drawn Blank in 1994. These expressive works capture Dylan's chance encounters and observations. He claimed that the creation of these portraits, interiors, landscapes, still lifes, nudes and street scenes he were done to "relax and refocus a restless mind". In the autumn of 2008, the National Gallery of Denmark contacted Dylan and agreed to stage his first major exhibition in Copenhagen. Dylan regarded the "Drawn Blank Series" as a finished project and embarked on an entirely new series of paintings, sparking a period of intensive work and creativity. Dylan produced a series of more than forty paintings in less than a year. Not one to remain static in a single form of expression, Dylan is now experimenting and testing new artistic techniques. He now sees the "Drawn Blank Series" as not being representative of his art. He is more interested in directing attention to the "Brazil Series" (above), a rich body of work he feels offers a more accurate reflection of his adventuresome pictorial art.

More of a photographer than painter.

Film actor Dennis Hopper, though first and foremost an actor in such films as Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, (both opposite the iconic James Dean in the mid 1950s), he considered himself much more a photographer than a painter. In researching his art career, I'd have to agree with that; his photos are relatively easy to find, his paintings, what few there were, seem quite rare. Being an actor himself, as well as an excellent photographer, put Hopper in the enviable position of having intimate access to a host of other, legendary movie stars such as Paul Newman, John Wayne and others. Ostracized by the Hollywood film studios due to his reputation as a "difficult" actor, Hopper turned to photography in the late 1960s. During this period he created the cover art for an Ike & Tina Turner single, gradually becoming a prolific photographer, and writer. Hopper's early photography is known for portraits from the 1960s, which he did for Vogue and other magazines. His photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington and 1965 civil-rights march in Selma, Alabama, were published, leading to intimate, unguarded images of celebrities like Andy Warhol and Jane Fonda, which were the subject of gallery shows. Hopper died of prostate cancer on May 29, 2010, just twelve days after his seventy-fourth birthday.

Sir Paul McCartney--another musician who found refuge in art.

As a schoolboy during the 1950s, young Paul McCartney thrived on art assignments, often earning top honors for his visual work. However, his lack of discipline negatively affected his grades, preventing him from attending art college. During the 1960s, he delved into the visual arts, explored experimental cinema, his first contact with the London avant-garde scene being through artist John Dunbar, who introduced him to art appreciation and Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton. Later, after the Beatles swarmed to America, McCartney became interested in painting while watching artist Willem de Kooning work in his Long Island studio. However, it wasn't until 1983 that McCartney had his first exhibition, not in the U.S. but in Siegen, Germany. It wasn't until 2000 that the former Beatle exhibited his work in the U.K. Today, McCartney no longer paints much. He's involved in producing television and other creative outlets. He certainly doesn't need the money. He's reportedly the wealthiest entertainer in all England.

The angelic art of former Fleetwood Mac singer, Stevie Nicks.

Stevie Nicks insists: "I don't really call myself a painter...I draw. So I draw my pictures and then sometimes I paint them in and sometimes I don't. So I'm really more into the fine drawing... And I just draw little creatures, and little people and little bits of my drawing has gone out over the years. I'm going to do a book. I'm working on it now with my best friend. That's just art...art and some poetry and some little vignettes from my journals that I think are going to be really nice. And it'll be in the next year or two...so you'll get to actually see what I draw, because I've been doing this always, I've just never shown anybody. My drawing is like my meditation."

Rosie O'Donnell--abstract collages--with a message.

Rosie O'Donnell was born in 1962 in Commack, on Long Island. She is best known as a multi-talented celebrity of the stage, screen and television--a present day renaissance woman. A tireless philanthropist for needy children, Ms. O'Donnell, is a comedienne, former talk show host, actress, author, and the winner of 13 Emmy Awards. She is also a passionate abstract expressionist. After the 9-11 disaster in 2001, O'Donnell felt compelled to begin expressing her feelings on canvas. Her emotions spilled out onto the blank stretched whiteness. O'Donnell has the ability to transfer her talents into painting, with shear intensity and complete abandon. Attacking the canvas with a ferocity and with a freedom from inhibitions, she often intersperses words or statements with her images. She frequently incorporates found objects into her intriguing compositions; fragments of photos, nails, wire, newspaper clippings, plastic, wood, etc. anything to help her expel her innermost thoughts and transfer them onto her canvasses. Rosie is often compared favorably to the neo-expressionist, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both of them combine graffiti with collage, exhibiting a similar raw expression. They both have an innate inventiveness resulting in works that are innovative, controversial, and thought provoking.

Rocky? A painter? Who would have thought...

“I love art more than anything in the world except for my family, and I can’t imagine a more artistic environment than I’m in right now. I try to combine in my paintings cinematic feeling, emotional feeling, and sometimes actually writing on the page to combine all the different elements of communication.” --Sylvester Stallone





















 

Charles Spencer Chaplin

                     Click above--

Charlie Chaplin and his Little Tramp as seen in City Lights
and depicted by painter,  Renato Casaro.

Hollywood has always loved "rags to riches" stories. Unfortunately, it's fond of "rags to riches to rags again" stories too. It often seems that Hollywood treats some of its greatest talents in the same manner as its movie sets--what Hollywood builds, Hollywood reserves the right to tear down. In a nutshell, that pretty well describes the life and times of Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin. It would be hard to overstate the impact Charlie Chaplin had on the American film capital almost exactly one hundred years ago. It's not so much the "Little Tramp," though that was a brilliant piece of prolonged improvisation never seen before and seldom seen since. Mostly, however, Chaplin brought to Hollywood not just a new way of filming comedy, but a whole new way of thinking of comedy. Without Chaplin, their would likely have been no Three Stooges, no Martin and Lewis, no Hope and Crosby, no Red Skelton, no Woody Allen, no Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, nor Ellen DeGeneres, at least not in the manner we know or remember them today. Each in their own way, owes a debt of gratitude to the genius and creativity of Charlie Chaplin.

The Little Tramp makes his debut, Kid Auto Races at Venice, 1914.

The Little Tramp's paper dolls from
the 1920s demonstrate the variants
in Chaplin's tramp wardrobe.

The silent comedy of the 1910-1930 era is often referred to as "slapstick." Though it may have begun that way, Charlie changed and refined that. His slapstick was not of the Barnum & Bailey variety but one of his own invention--an intelligent slapstick, equal parts humor, pathos, irony, restrained physicality, and subtle romanticism. The year was 1913. The Little Tramp was born in the wardrobe department of Max Sennet's Keystone Pictures where Chaplin pulled together a look of strong contradictions--baggy pants, tight vest, huge, oversized, floppy shoes, and tiny moustache (above). Although the character developed out of the costume, it's what Chaplin did with the tramp which makes them both Hollywood icons. He was more than a talented comic actor, also a screenwriter, music composer (who couldn't read music), director, innovator, and producer. Chaplin's son once claimed that if his father could have sewn the costumes, he would have done that too. The word workaholic comes to mind.

Charles Chaplin, ca. 1903-08

Charlie Chaplin learned to make people laugh from the ground up, starting as a boy, observing London vaudeville comedians, watching his actress mother imitate people they saw on their street, and by actually performing on stage himself. He was in a stage version of Sherlock Holmes at the age of fourteen. Born in 1889, young Charlie learned the pathos and driving ambition early in life. His father was an alcoholic, his mother, though she lived to be sixty-three, the final twenty-five years of her life she spent in and institution for the insane. To say that Charlie and his older half-brother, Sydney, were underprivileged and poverty stricken, while accurate, would be better described as simply starving. Twice Charlie was put in an orphanage. We could legitimately call them "street urchins." As practically his only means of survival, Charlie and his brother began performing on the London vaudeville stage, eventually landing spots in a boys' group called the Eight Lancashire Lads. Their act involved clog dancing.

By the time Chaplin was sixteen he was starring in a major West End stage production. Meanwhile, his brother had joined the highly successful Fred Karno Comedy Troupe, becoming one of their key performers. As a result, he managed to wrangle a two-week tryout for his little brother. The very first night, performing at the London Coliseum, Charlie stole the show, far outshining Sydney, receiving great press reviews, and a long-term contract. He was still in his teens. When the group moved to the United States to join the American vaudeville circuit, Charlie and his brother went with them. It was some forty years before either went back to London. Six months into the tour, Charlie landed his first movie contract, with Keystone Pictures. (Remember the Keystone Cops?) At the time they were still making motion pictures on the banks of the Hudson. The year was 1913, Charlie was earning $150 per week.



Chaplin's Modern Times deals with his take on the industrial dehumanization
of the Depression era. It was released in 1936, an attempt perhaps
to make the jobless less unhappy at not having jobs.

Shortly thereafter the company (along with Charlie and his brother) landed in sunny California (mostly because it was sunny), and a certain real estate development named Hollywood Land began to take off. From that point on, the rise of Charlie Chaplin from bit player to millionaire Hollywood producer could be considered nothing short of meteoric. His first film, a one-reeler, was called Making a Living (below), which Chaplin disliked. It did, however, allow him to learn the film-maker's art (limited as it was at the time) from the ground up. The "Tramp" made his first appearance in Chaplin's second film and was so successful with audiences as to become Chaplin's only screen persona for then next ten years.



Making A Living, 1914, Chaplin's first film.

Two or three other "tramp" films followed, in which Chaplin clashed with uncooperative directors to the point Max Sennet allowed Chaplin to direct his next film himself. It was called Caught in the Rain, debuting in May of 1914. Keep in mind Chaplin had been working in films less than a year. Additional one and two-reel silent epics followed at the rate of about one a week. By the end of the year, Charlie landed his first starring role in a feature-length film directed by Sennet called Tillie's Punctured Romance (these titles crack me up) opposite Marie Dressler. So successful was that movie that when his contract was up at the end of the year, Charlie asked for $1000 per week. Sennet refused, so Charlie took his talents elsewhere.

Charlie Chaplin Studios, La Brea Ave. at Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, ca 1920.

The Little Tramp doll, 1918

Elsewhere was down the street to Essanay Film Manufacturing Company where he negotiated a contract for $1,250 per week with a signing bonus of $10,000. At Essanay Charlie asserted himself, gaining a high level of control over his pictures. During his time at Essanay, the Little Tramp became more popular that Charlie Chaplin, spawning a line of dolls (action figures today) other toys, books, comic strips, and miscellaneous merchandise. Real money began to flow in. Charley began to recruit a troupe of talented players for his films including his future wife, Edna Purviance, who was to work with Charlie in some thirty-five of his films (their professional relationship lasted longer than their marriage). Another year passed, Charlie's contract with Essanay expired, and this time he demanded a signing bonus of $150,000 and $10,000 per week. Universal, Fox, and Vitagraph looked him over, considered the matter, then shook their heads in dismay. No one in Hollywood was making that kind of money and Chaplin had only been in town something just over three years. Mutual Film Studio, however, looked at the deal, rolled their eyes in amazement, then apparently decided, what the hell, it's only money. The contract netted Chaplin $670,000 the first year, not just outstripping everyone else in Hollywood, but making the twenty-six-year-old former street urchin from London one of the highest paid people in the world. The public was shocked, the press outraged, but the studio seemed to think they got their money's worth.

The Kid was Chaplin's first
film to exceed an hour in length.

Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in
The Kid, 1921

A Dog's Life, 1918

Chaplin could have taken the money and ran but instead he used it to start his own movie studio where he could film whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, however he wanted, with whom he wanted, whenever he wanted, and take as long as he wanted--all of which he did, and still managed to show a profit. They began operations in January of 1918 and continued making movies at what was considered a ruinously leisure rate for the next thirty-four years. (Today, Chaplin's "leisurely" production schedule would be considered a breakneck pace). His most famous films all came from this period--The Kid, A Woman of Paris, A Dog's Life, Gold Rush (which earned $5-million), The Circus, City Lights, and in 1940 The Great Dictator which garnered five Academy Award nominations. It won none. The competition was simply too tough. Also, Chaplin's style of directing was starting to appear dated by that time.

The Great Dictator, 1940, ruthlessly mocked both Hitler and Mussolini while earning
Chaplin five Academy Award nominations. Chaplin plays both Hitler and a Jewish barber.

Even as his wealth, power, and popularity continued to soar, Hollywood began the process of disassembling Charlie Chaplin. It began when the British press excoriated Chaplin for not leaving his skyrocketing movie career to come home and fight in their so-called "war to end all wars." His difficulties exploded with his many legal battles and matrimonial squabbles (his divorce settlement with second wife, Lita Grey totaled out to some $600,000, a record at the time). Combined with these was his reluctance to embrace new technologies in film production (The Great Dictator in 1940, was his first talkie); his final film Countess from Hong Kong (1967) his only color or wide-screen film. Chaplin's troubles further escalated when his movies began to make strident, and highly effective social comments, which offended southern conservatives. Then, during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, Chaplin, calling himself a "peacemonger" was accused of being a communist. Since he was still a British subject, he was threatened with deportation.



Actor, Jack Lemmon welcomes Charles Chaplain back to the United States for an Honorary Academy Award after having been gone for twenty years.

Angered, Chaplin simply closed up shop in Hollywood and head back to England where he was later welcomed by the queen herself with a knighthood in 1975. He continued to make a few movies, mostly autobiographical in nature (Limelight), but mostly sought peace and quiet with his newest wife, Oona O'Neill (daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill) who was thirty-six years his junior, and with whom he had eight children. Chaplin was vindicated somewhat when, in 1972 the AMPAAS invited him back to Hollywood for an Honorary Oscar citing his decades of excellence in motion picture achievement. In his later years, Chaplin suffered a series of minor strokes which gradually impaired him to the point he could no longer communicate. He died in Switzerland in 1977 at the age of eighty-eight.

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Click below for a clip from Chaplin's Gold Rush from 1925, which he considered one of his best.









 

Indiana Art

William Merritt Chase, Self-portrait, 1915, Indiana's most famous artist.                  

Love, Robert Indiana, Indiana Museum of Art,
based upon a 1964 Christmas card for
New York's Museum of Modern Art.

In continuing my series dealing with the indigenous art and artists of the fifty individual states which are (more of less) united to make up our American nation, I continue to move clockwise around my home state of Ohio, this time to the state of Indiana. Indiana is west of Ohio, east of Illinois, making it the poster child for what most people think of as bland mid-western art. That's a false stereotype, of course, but not one that's altogether surprising. I've had to poke through a good deal of pretty bland (pretty, but bland) art to choose what you see below. In beginning, when we contemplate famous Indiana artists, we think mostly of just two names, William Merritt Chase (top, born in 1849) and Robert Indiana, the latter of whom was actually born Robert Clark but adopted the name of his home state early in his career.

 

New Harmony on the Wabash, 1842, Karl Bodmer
(German, but he once slept in Indiana).

Nik Daum, Mude 5, (Moody Nude).

As I've found so often in pursuing this series on the various states, quite often the best artists the states have produced no longer live in their home state. That was the case with Chase (born in Indianapolis) as well as with Robert Indiana (now eighty-six, born in New Castle, Indiana). Another favorite son artist, William Forsyth, was born next door in Cincinnati (Ohio) but spent his life living and painting in Indianapolis. Among other Indiana-born artist who have deserted the state are Red Skelton and his clowns, Daniel Garber and his Impressionist landscapes, John Rogers Cox and his stormy wheat fields, and more recently, Nik Daum and his moody nudes (mudes, right).

The Indiana Museum of Art--not what you'd call "mid-western bland."

Of course the place to see Indiana art is, of course, the Indiana Museum of Art (IMA, above). Outside you will find Indiana's Love, and and inside, works by the others listed above, as well as that of lesser-known artists such as Antreasian Garo (below), Ghada Amer, Tara Donovan, Kate Gilmore, Robert Irwin, Sol LeWitt, Maya Lin, Nam June Paik, and Heather Rowe.

Mural of Indianapolis, 1952, Indianapolis Children's Museum, Antreasian Garo

Just north of the museum is one of the largest sculpture parks to be found anywhere--one-hundred acres. Besides work by Indiana's Mr. Indiana, I was especially captivated by the suspended sculpture known simply as the IMA Rings (below), a collaboration between New York conceptual sculptors Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin and the IMA staff featuring two steel rings suspended from poles and nearby trees (you can hardly see the thin cables). The rings align with the sun during the summer solstice to form a single shadow on the ground. The rest of the year they seem like eerie UFOs hovering over the seasonal landscape, their shadows as fascinating as the rings themselves.

Align (the IMA Rings), Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin.

F1 Blue X Yellow,
Mina Papatheodorou-Valyraki

In exploring the art and artists of Indiana, I'd be remiss if not mentioning Indianapolis' greatest sporting attraction. Just as Kentucky races horses at their famed Churchill Downs, Indianapolis races horsepower at the "Brickyard"--the state's Indianapolis 500. Although "Indy Car" racing does not dominate the culture or art of Indiana as do horses in Kentucky, it's not hard to find and for the most part very reflective of the various art styles and eras since the founding of "The Five Hundred" in 1911. F1 Blue X Yellow, left by Mina Papatheodorou-Valyraki (not a very common name in Indiana) captures the roaring, whiz-bang, rough and tumble atmosphere of the race. (She's Greek, by the way.) A far more calm, pastoral landscape, then and now, is depicted by Indiana artists, Jacob Cox, with his Pogue's Run Swimming Hole (below, left) from 1840, and present day artist, Dan Woodson with his The Old Mill (below, right) from 2013, winner of the Best of Show award at the 2013 Indiana Artists Club Art Exhibit. (Does every state have an old mill just for artists to paint?

Pogue's Run Swimming Hole,
1840, Jacob Cox

The Old Mill, 2013,
Dan Woodson

Pre-release artwork for Raiders of The Lost Ark, 1981, Richard Amsel,
depicting Indiana's most famous archaeologist.