Michelangelo's Encore

Entertainers delight in doing encores. Painters do them too, though usually with somewhat less panache' than their initial performance, and often with no small amount of dread, having already done their best, just in trying to match their original effort. Put yourself in Michelangelo's place in 1536. He's 61 years old. He would live to be 89, but even at that, his days of nimbly scaling scaffolding were rapidly waning. Following the death of Pope Clement VII, he was called back to Rome from Florence by the new pope, Paul III, to do another fresco (a medium which he hated). Worse than that, he was being asked to do an encore performance in the very room bearing his greatest artistic masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel. The wall behind the altar had been in a state of ugly disrepair for a generation or more. Even while the ceiling painting under Julius II, there had been discussions of what to do about it. However given the state of Julius's health, his tomb had seemed more pressing, so the matter was put on a back burner.

The Last Judgment, 1536-41, Michelangelo

When Michelangelo arrived in Rome, he came thinking the scene would be a resurrection, only to find that, with the change of popes, there had also been a change of concepts as well. Pope Paul III wanted a last judgment. Very well, whatever popes want, they generally get, and Michelangelo, even at sixty-one years of age, was never one to shrink from such a challenge. He would do an encore with such a powerful explosion of dramatic images as to make his ceiling seem to be merely a warm-up exercise. He must have reasoned that a last judgment could be such a cataclysmic spectacle as to dominate even Genesis and the story of creation itself. He started to work in 1536 and poured five long, hard years of his dwindling life into the masterpiece. And like everything else he ever painted, the work was as controversial as it was wondrous. When it was finished and unveiled in 1541, it was received with equal parts of awe, shock, and praise.

One might think that painting a mere wall, even one seventy-some feet tall, would seem like child's play for a painter who had labored flat on his back for four long, excruciating, turbulent years painting a ceiling more than twice as large. Perhaps, but the wall was not without its difficulties. First of all, two windows had to be removed, the old frescoes torn down, and even two lunettes of his supposedly sacrosanct ceiling (containing the first seven generations of Christ's lineage) had to be destroyed by the artist's own hand no less. What a traumatic experience that must have been. Moreover, once he began, he encountered a visual problem unlike any he'd had to deal with in the ceiling work. The Last Judgment would be seen from the floor of course, but unlike the ceiling, which was a uniform distance from that floor, the wall ranged from a mere ten feet at the bottom to the full 70 feet at the top. It meant painting the lower figures (the damned) about half life size while those near the central figure of Christ were nearly twice life size. Of course, all these trials and tribulations would quickly be forgotten once the painting was finished and the praise and adulation he'd experience in the completion of the ceiling began rolling in.  Wrong! Times had changed. The Counter-reformation had set in. About half the people who saw the scores of writhing, naked figures in the finished fresco hated it.

Antoni Gaudi

Sagrada Familia, (scale model),
1882 to present, Antoni Gaudi

As painters, we tend to think that we "own" the various historic art movements our craft and the practitioners thereof have fostered over the years. We seldom stop to think that there is Baroque music or Impressionist poetry, or that Dada also had its manifestation in drama. Surrealism is an interesting example. Did you know there is Surrealist architecture? Really! Did Salvadore Dali take to designing skyscrapers? No, although he dabbled a little in fashion design, Dali left the Surrealist architecture to a fellow Catalan, a man by the name of Antoni Gaudi (pronounced GOW-dy). Never heard of him? Well, if you lived in Barcelona, Spain, you would have. His magnificent cathedral, the Sagrada Familia, there is practically the logo for the city, even though mostly it consists of the crypt and eight bottle-shaped spires making up the transept. 

Sagrada Familia, 2009 photo, still only about
50% complete

The rest of the structure is unfinished, and likely to remain so well into the next century. But the visual image Gaudi left behind when he died in 1926 is so extraordinary it would seem to have come from a Star Wars epic rather than the late nineteenth century.

Casa Mila, Barcelona, 1907, Antoni Gaudi

Gaudi was born in 1852. Some critics would class his life's work more as Art Nouveau than Surrealist, but in truth, if it looks like it was painted by Dali, it must be Surrealist, and that's exactly the case with his greatest (completed) masterpiece, the amazing Casa Mila. In describing the structure one has to dispense with traditional architectural terms other than to say it is "approximately" ten stories tall and has doors and windows. It's an apartment building and occupies a street corner on a busy urban thoroughfare in Barcelona. Gaudi hated straight lines. He bowed to them only in his door and window frames. That's about the only place you'll find 90-degree angles too. There's not a rectangular room or vertical wall in the whole structure. Roofs, walls, balconies and window openings are curvilinear, chimneys (of which no two match) are cone shaped that, like the rest of the structure, ripple, flow, and bulge. Ornamentation is rich and, for lack of a better term, "vegetarian." It looks like something out of a science fiction movie built by a race of giant wasps.

Gaudi has even contributed his name to our vernacular--gaudy. It's something of a misnomer though, because, while his structures are quite phantasmagorical, his colors are very earthy, nothing at all like the strident, perhaps discomforting hues we might associate with the word. Gaudi's work is a strange anomaly. His inspiration seems to have been nature itself, rather than other architects or architectural styles. Likewise, his work is so unique, he's had few if any followers. And, while his building medium of choice would appear to be free-formed concrete or stucco, the facade of Casa Mila is actually cut stone the roof, marble tiles, the chimneys constructed of the fragments of that stone left over from construction, concreted together along with tiny pieces of broken glass as they spiral into the sky. Even the floor plan has a sort of random quality to it, centered on one oval and one fan-shaped courtyard providing light to inner rooms. If you should ever visit Barcelona, seek out this 1907 vintage structure, but take note--signs along the street remind pedestrian tourists to beware of passing cars. People have actually been killed gawking at this structure.

Annie Leibovitz

Beckhan: Got Milk?, 2006,
Annie Leibovitz

She may not be the most well-known photographer working in America today, but I dare say very few Americans have not seen her work. It's hard to pick up a magazine without finding somewhere between the covers, and maybe even on the back cover itself, one of her photos. She's paid very well for it too, by the American Dairy Council. The fact is, few other photographers could get so many famous people to look so silly in their "milk mustaches" as Annie Leibovitz. But then, famous people, the beautiful people, celebrities, are her stock in trade. No other artist of either sex working today has ever shot so many of them and in doing so, captured their personal essence so well. From the time she went to work for Rolling Stone while still a student at San Francisco Art Institute in 1970, to the present day, her photo credits include names such as Jodie Foster, Whoopie Goldberg (in a milk bath), Sting, Ella Fitzgerald, Carly Simon, Vannessa Redgrave, Clint Eastwood, and on December 8, 1980, she shot John Lennon, just five hours before Mark David Chapman did.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980,
Annie Leibovitz

Annie was born in 1949 in Westport, Connecticut. In 1975, she moved from shooting pictures for Rolling Stone to shooting the Rolling Stones.  In 1983 she moved from Rolling Stone to Vanity Fair, and from there to a high-profile career as a freelance artist, often as famous herself as some of the celebrities she photographs. In spite of the rather weird things she sometimes gets her subjects to do (tying up Clint Eastwood, smearing Sting with mud), she considers herself first and foremost a portrait photographer, though seldom in the tradition of the head and shoulders, balanced lighting, studio tradition we often bring to mind in that context. In fact, she seldom works from a studio. And some of her location shots take as much "setup" work as might be expected for a complex movie scene. The hallmark of her work is personality, whether shooting a First Lady or a Las Vegas showgirl. Some of her best work, she insists, is at least partially accidental, seemingly quite informal, though in fact, her "candid" portrait of Liberace, for instance, took several hours to compose.

Scott Thorson and Liberace, 1981,
Annie Leibovitz

A veteran of dozens of photo expositions of her work, including an exhibition which toured Europe, Annie Leibovitz was teamed with writer Susan Sontag in a book and an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington titled simply, "Women."  It was a simple theme, but one which allowed both breadth and depth. Within it she displayed Hillary Clinton next to a group shot of Mississippi debutantes, opposite a static portrait of berobed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Conner standing beneath a portrait of a chief Justice from the 1800s (the only male in the entire show). She depicts in black and white, Las Vegas showgirls in nondescript street clothes next to their nearly nude photos in strident color, garish costumes, and full body makeup. Her subjects range from the noble--a 91-year-old, floor scrubbing Oseola McCarty, who donated her life's savings of $150,000 to a university--to the exploitative, a nude, bearded Jennifer Miller, who one day grew tired of shaving. The 70 portrait Corcoran show ran for more than a year.

Vogue cover, 2009, Annie Leibovitz

Andre Derain

Every style of painting has artists from the past whom its devotees fervently admire. Realists worship Corot and Courbet; Impressionists, Monet and Renoir; Expressionists van Gogh and Gauguin; Abstractionists, Picasso and Kandinsky; Surrealists, Dali and Miro, and so on and so on. There are those like myself who worship lines and order while others detest both in favor of free-flowing emotional expression, regardless of style. If this latter group is in search of a painting icon from the past to whom they might pay homage, let me suggest one--Andre Derain (pronounced der-RAN).  This contemporary of Picasso, heir to van Gogh, protege of Matisse, and colleague of Vlaminck could easily be considered one of the most expressive of the Expressionists and among the least bound by traditional art styles or painting techniques. Right-brained painting mavericks would adore him.

Fishing Boats on the Collioure, 1905, Andre Derain
Derain's work bears the hallmarks of Matisse,
while Vlaminck is more akin to van Gogh.

Derain was born in Chatou, France, in 1880, his father a pastry shop owner who had dreams of his becoming an engineer. While still a teenager however, young Andre showed such skill and determination in becoming a painter, his father had little choice but to send him to the Academie Carriere in Paris (little choice because it was all he could afford). There he met Matisse. There he picked up Fauve (beastly) color. While still a student under Matisse, he was involved in a minor railway accident where he met fellow victim, Maurice Vlaminck, who was also a rebellious young color-demented painter. Discovering they had much in common, the two young pups decided to spend the summer of 1900 near Derain's birthplace where they rented a dilapidated old house situated on an island in the Seine. There, while worrying daily that the structure might suddenly tumble into the river, they set up shop to each other how to paint.

Tugboats on the Chatou, 1906, Maurice Vlaminck
In this painting and the one above, depicting
similar subject matter, one can discern both
the similarities and differences in  the work of
Derain and Vlaminck.

As much as they had in common, there were still differences. Like Matisse, Derain struggled through much of his early career to try and organize his wild color tendencies; while on the other hand, Vlaminck never even tried. Having been influenced by Matisse, Derain tried to plan his colors and compositions; Vlaminck just let the inspiration and paint flow. Derain tried to followed in the path of van Gogh and Matisse, Vlaminck couldn't be bothered following any path. Derain was caught between the two. But what seemed like an artistic conflict, eventually became his greatest strength, both influences serving to diversify as well as moderate his style.  As a result, at the early age of 25, Derain encountered a gratifying affirmation of his artistic worth which two of his idols, van Gogh and Gauguin, never had. The canny art dealer, Ambroise Vollard, one day visited his studio; and on the spot, bought out everything he had in stock, the whole lot, a total of 25 paintings in all. Vollard saw Derain as a young Cezanne, and knew a good deal when he saw it. He recognized the young artist's work as a congenial hybrid, blending the best of van Gogh, Cezanne, and Matisse into an art that was easier to "live with" than any of the others, and for a price he knew he could market. For the Expressionist painter, that's an ideal worth striving for.

An Artist's Swan Song

As we grow older, pass the age of fifty, begin to think of retirement, pass sixty, and finally do retire, we have a little more time on our hands. We begin to contemplate the fact that, though none of us know exactly how many more years we have to paint, it is a finite number and it's not getting any larger. Arthritis begins to be felt. The glasses begin getting thicker and thicker. Cataract surgery and joint replacements become table conversation, and it begins to dawn upon us that if there remains any great paintings we want yet to do, now is the time to get started on them if we desire any degree of certainty that they will ever be finished. And finally, we come to the realization that we had best be choosing our swan song. It's almost like writing a last will and testament. How do we want to be remembered?

Interior of a Cafe, 1880-81, Edouard Manet

The French artist, Edouard Manet faced this dark question at an age when today, most of us have never given it a passing thought. He was 50. For several years he had suffered from Locomotor Ataxia.  He could no longer stand for more than a few minutes and as the disease progressed, he eventually had to give up walking due to the severe pain in his legs. He tried hydrotherapy and massages but found them more torturous than the disease itself. He switched to pastels for much of his late work because he found them less demanding. He tried retirement in the country but was so bored he quickly fled back to the city where he threw himself into the social life he'd so relished in his youth. He painted a few portraits and in 1880-81 an oil and pastel Interior of a Cafe. It is a rather sad, deserted painting, obviously the work of a sick man.

A Bar at the Follies Bergere, 1882, Edouard Manet

But it was the inspiration for one last great painting, A Bar at the Follies Bergere, painted in 1882.  Although he sketched at the follies, the painting itself was done in his studio where he hired an actual barmaid to stand behind a marble-topped bar littered with bottles, fruit, glassware, and backed by a mirror in which he reflected the gay environment of the nightclub and even the face of the would-be viewer.  He could work on it for only short periods of time and even then the effort must have been excruciating.  Follies was not his last painting, however. The following year he once more returned to the country where on rare occasions he painted outdoors, drawing upon his Impressionistic tendencies. His final works were of the bouquets of flowers sent to him by well-wishers from all over the country. Late in April, 1883, the maid of his friend, Mery Laurent, arrived with still more blossoms. He asked her to sit for a portrait holding them. The unfinished work, in pastels, was found on his easel the day after his death on April 30, 1883. He was 51.

An American van Gogh



Chain Gang, 1939,
William H. Johnson

He could almost be considered an American van Gogh. The similarities are uncanny. William Henry Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina, around 1906, the son of a black laborer who shoveled coal for the railroads. At the age of 17, he went to New York to study art at the National Academy of design, and then in 1926, moved on to France where he met his Danish wife, a weaver by the name of Holcha Krake. With the approach of WW II, he returned to this country where he had some modest success with a few New York gallery shows, and even had a painting, Chain Gang, displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Such meager success was not enough to live on though. He worked as a teacher for the WPA in Harlem and at the Brooklyn Naval Yards. In 1944, his wife died of breast cancer. After the war, he packed up all their belongings and bought a ticket for Denmark, apparently hoping to marry Holcha's sister.  She had other ideas.

Jacobia Hotel (Florence, SC), 1930,
William H. Johnson
Here the similaity to van Gogh is most
noticeable.

William Johnson's early works were expressionist landscapes. In France, his work was more impressionistic very much like van Gogh. Eventually, he settled on a flat, two-dimensional style which makes up most of his work. His subject matter included urban couples dancing, making 1940s style fashion statements, black soldiers from WW II, southern tenant farmers with their horses and mules, working the land, their faces often expressionless, their hands and feet seemingly enlarged by years of tortured labor in the fields. It was not the kind of thing selling in the postwar New York art market. He was eventually reduced to painting on burlap and discarded plywood.  His style appeared crude and unschooled. It was neither, but the color of his skin served to reinforce such judgments. Galleries and museums weren't much interested. 

In Denmark, finding his wife's sister not much interested either, he moved on to Oslo, Norway, where police found him wondering the streets, homeless, but with over $6,000 in his pocket. In 1947 Willie Johnson was deported back to the United States, committed to a mental institution, diagnosed with paresis, a brain disease caused by syphilis, and declared mentally incompetent. His last painting is dated 1956. He died 14 years later, his work stored and damaged in a leaky warehouse. During the 1950s, through a long chain of judicial events, his work was declared worthless. It eventually ended up with a now-defunct Harlem social agency which, in closing its doors, passed it on to the Smithsonian Institution.  Some thirty years after his death, thanks to the institution, Johnson's work was restored, and made the subject of numerous shows, while reproductions of his brightly colored paintings adorn calendars and postcards. In 1998 and again in 2000, Johnson's descendants claimed the artist's work was stolen from them, and filed a $100 million lawsuit to reclaim it. The suit was dismissed. Meanwhile, Willie Johnson lies buried beneath a small stone bearing the number 5405, among the waist-high weeds of an abandoned cemetery behind the abandoned Central Islip Psychiatric Center on Long Island.

Altarpieces

Several years ago I completed a triptych altarpiece. I was somewhat surprised that most people had never heard of a triptych (altarpiece or otherwise) and are really handy with the proverbial "blank stare" when I mention the term. Even two categories of people, artists and the clergy, whom one might think ought to have some idea what I'm talking about, often don't. When I default into my "teaching mode" they quickly come up with the "I knew that" response (in affect if not in words), and the conversation moves on from there. It's a little humorous as well as dismaying. I guess I hadn't realized how "antique" altarpieces were.

The Last Judgment, 1445-50, Rogier van der Weyden

Speaking of altarpieces, perhaps the "granddaddy of them all," (or for the feminists) "mother of all altarpieces," is by Rogier van der Weyden, a nine-panel polyptych in which he chose as his subject The Last Judgment (above). 

Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, Jan van Eyck

Painted between 1444 and 1448, it is rivaled only by Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (above, 1432) and Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece ( below, 1512-15). 

Isenheim Altarpiece, 1512-15
Mathias Grunewald

The first two are polyptychs, the latter, slightly larger than the other two, is a triptych. Of the three, van der Weyden's style and subject seems the most dramatic and spiritually expressive. The "Isenheim" is three totally separate scenes (plus a "disposition" at the bottom), each dramatically beautiful in its own way, but lacking much intention toward unity. The "Ghent" is the more complex of the three, the upper part depicting a series of full-length portrait images while the lower part is made up of five panels depicting a single religious festival. Perhaps borrowing from this concept, van der Weyden's seventeen-foot-long masterpiece, as the name suggests, depicts a single, unified theme, its nine separate panels united by a golden cloud tying the composition together into a whole.

In terms of art, when we think of "last judgments," only one image presents itself--Michelangelo's magnificent Sistine Chapel wall behind the altar (though not technically an altarpiece but a fresco mural).  Michelangelo's vision was horrific. Van der Weyden's is elegant. A hundred years older than Michelangelo's, it appears to have had no influence, and very likely, Michelangelo was unaware of it. But in many ways, it is superior to Michelangelo's. The central panel is unique because it has two centers of interest, Christ, above, balances precariously on what appears for all the world to be a rainbow, while below his spherical footstool, the archangel, Gabriel finesses a scales, weighing in the balance, the souls of the nude, mortal figures populating the lower, earthly realms, with the damned shrinking away to hell in the far left (Christ's left) panel while an angel leads the saved into heavenly ecstasy in the far right (Christ's right) panel.  A mid-level golden cloud supports a host of full-length portraits of sundry saints and seraphim observing the spectacle. Though truly an altarpiece, the painting does not reside in a church, but in a hospital which, in deference to the sick and dying who might pray before it, would explain it's somewhat less than horrendous depiction of this ultimate trial.