Jean-Honore' Fragonard

Probably none of us could say that we are all that we could  be as artists. Given our talent and education, most of us could be more than what we are. It's a matter of priorities of course. We have chosen to place creature comfort, security, families, spouses, and other interests ahead of the effort to become "great" artists. Sometimes it is simply a matter of laziness. Other roads are broader, easier to travel. That was certainly the case with Jean-Honore' Fragonard. Born in 1732, the son of a glove-maker, in the South of France, he grew up in Paris, had a fine education, and went to work in a law office. His employer, seeing that he had a greater interest in art than law, suggested he study at the Ecole des Beaux-arts. Finishing his studies there, he served apprentices under such outstanding artists as Boucher and Chardin, then went on to win the Prix de Rome. There, studying at the French Academy he absorbed the great works of antiquity, returning to Paris as an accomplished painter of portraits and traditional academic subjects.


The Swing, 1767-68, Jean-Honore' Fragonard

A plump, cheerful man, he quickly became bored with such "official" work and chose instead, the highly popular rococo style and lighthearted, decorative subject matter. He married a childhood sweetheart who bore him several children. Instead of doing "great" work he chose instead to do the charming, mildly erotic, fantasy visions for the boudoirs and parlors of the high society gentry, painting for art dealers and collectors rather than museums and Salons.  He became wealthy at it. Perhaps his best, and certainly his most famous, work was his 1768, romantic delight, "The Swing."  This modest little painting (only 32" x 25") has come to typify the best (and some would say, the worst) of the Rococo style.

The Baron de St. Julien (something of a playboy) originally commissioned a history painter by the name of Doyen to do the work, giving specific instructions that his mistress should be pulled in her swing by a Bishop; and that he (the baron) should be placed in the painting in such a way that he might see her legs (and a good deal more, actually). Shocked at the request, Doyen refused the commission and suggested Fragonard in his place. Fragonard had few moral qualms about such a salacious painting, though he did substitute the woman's husband pulling the swing in place of the Bishop. The Baron lies hidden in the bushes in the lower left portion of the painting while the husband is in deep shadow at the far right. Centered in a bright ray of sunshine is the lovely young mistress, kicking off one slipper in the direction of her illicit gigolo. The painting is a riot of deep, fantasy woodland landscapery, symbolic antiquities, and dappled sunlight, highlighting unexpected details.  Fragonard was working well beneath his potential, but at least he enjoyed what he did. Alas, once the Rococo style lost favor, he found himself old, without commissions, or influence.  In 1806, he died impoverished and forgotten.

Jean Auguste Ingres

One of the things that always amuses me in teaching art history was the reaction of teenage boys in viewing some of the classic nude female figures. Once they got past the initial embarrassment, which was often covered up with humor, or at least some giggles, there always arose the question, "How come they're all so fat?" It was, of course, a ready-made opening into which I could launch a discourse on the ever-changing ideals of feminine beauty. And the boys were right. By our centerfold standards, every last one of them could stand to lose thirty pounds. What I tried to explain initially was that in the period of time which they were exploring, being thin, indicated poverty--a lack of the wherewithal to feed oneself adequately. "Robust" proportions, on the other hand, were a sign of a sumptuous (though not necessarily healthy) lifestyle and therefore some degree of wealth.   
   
Artists and designers are directly responsible for our ideals of feminine beauty. Today, we blame designers for dictating that every woman should be six-foot tall and barely tip the scales at 120. However the further we go back into art history, the more responsibility artists, particularly painters, have to bear. Before men even began painting the female nude, they began to make value judgments, often sexual in nature, as to the ideal model. Then, having chosen her, they continued to mold her by pushing paint this way and that until they arrived at their ideal Venus, Aphrodite, Eve, or Odalisque. Whether goddess or prostitute, their images had an effect upon all those who viewed them. Women took their "looks" based upon what these artists dictated because men chose their women based upon these ideals.  
   


La Grande Odalisque, 1814, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

One of the most grossly dictatorial artists along this line was Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (pronounced Ang). Born in 1780, he lived to the ripe old age of 87 and during much of this time he was such a powerful influence upon both French painting and high society few had the nerve to dispute his elegantly drawn female figures whether clothed or otherwise. The most prodigious student of Jacques-Louis David, (pronounced Da-veed), Ingres emphasized drawing over painting, mass over color. His Grande Odalisque, painted in 1814, is perhaps his best-known work, and certainly a prime example of the lengths to which an artist will go to bend, shape, fold, and mutilate the female figure into his ideal of feminine beauty. Everything about the Turkish harem mistress is elegantly boneless. There is a contorted quality to the pose, and her arms, her legs, even her fingers remind one not so much of limbs but tentacles. Even her feet seem to lack any anatomical structure. Everything is serpentine. Her torso is elongated to the point Ingres seems to have added at least two or three extra vertebrae, yet her hips seem generous to a fault. Though a master of drapery, textures, and painting technique, he would put to shame today's fashion designers in his single-minded subjugation of the female figure.  
          

Jasper Johns

Artists have painted from their dreams, either directly or indirectly, for hundreds of years. The surrealists made it the primary cornerstone of their work. The fact that some of these dreams more nearly resembled nightmares only served to heighten their impact. Strangely enough, dreams played a part in the inspiration of one Pop artists too, a style of painting not usually associated with the wakeless state. That artist was Jasper Johns, and the painting was titled Three Flags. Painted in 1958 with encaustics on canvas, the painting is a mere 45"x30" (modest by Pop standards). Its most unique dimension however is not is length or width, but its third dimension.  It is 5 inches thick.  We've all seen it no doubt, kind of a wedding cake version of the American flag--three flags, each about an inch an a half thick, each slightly smaller than the other, stacked one upon the other.


Three Flags, 1958, Jasper Johns


Johns claims that he had a dream one night that he was painting a flag. Not one to take such forms of inspiration lightly, he did so, in effect, "fulfilling his dream". The interaction of dreams and reality as applied to Pop art is unique, to say the least. It also adds a unique perspective to a painting that otherwise might border on the bland at best, and trite at worst.  It's hard to imagine an image more fraught with symbolism than the American flag, yet Johns steadfastly claims no symbolic meaning to his work. It is merely a Pop icon with a sort of conflicting perspective operating in such a way to at least briefly startled the viewer. The image physically juts forward while visually receding in that each overlapping image of the familiar "stars and stripes" becomes smaller.

Johns' was born in 1930 and was a good friend of Abstract/Pop  transitional painter, Robert Rauschenberg. Like Rauschenberg, his work was also influence by composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. However, Johns' work, unlike Rauschenberg, was pure pop, with no traceable pedigree lines back to Abstract Expressionism other than their close friendship. Johns' work also differs from  Rauschenberg's, in that it was just as likely to be sculptural as rectilinear. But always there was the removal of an everyday item--a coffee can with paint brushes protruding, a beer can, spectacles, a flashlight--into a sterile, gallery setting, framed or unframed, emphasizing not symbolism or function, but elemental design. Given the fact that much of his best Pop work was done in the late 1950s before Pop was chic, a strong case could be made for considering Jasper Johns, above all others, as the "Father of Pop Art."

Japonisme



Portrait of Emile Zola, 1868, Eduoard Manet


Hanging today in an old railway station which the French have wondrously converted into an art museum called the Musee d' Orsay, is a fairly large portrait linking two men who, one might say, had some modest impact on nineteenth century art in their country. The portrait is of Emile Zola, a writer and art critic of no small influence in his time. The portrait was painted by the even more influential Edouard Manet in 1868.  In today's art world its very existence might be cause for scandal in that it was very much a "payoff" on the part of the artists in gratitude for the writer's kind words regarding his work. But in Paris, in that day, it was merely the polite thing to do.



Olympia, 1863, Eduoard Manet



While the portrait is an excellent example of Manet's work and also an excellent likeness of his friend, perhaps most interesting in the work is not the figure but the background.  On the wall, besides a print of Manet's Olympia, the shockingly confrontational, 1863 painting of a naked courtesan which Zola had so eloquently defended, are two Japanese prints. Their use in the background of the painting probably says more about Manet's tastes than any interest Zola may have had in such exotic artistic imports.  From these prints, Manet imported his tendency to flatten forms, one of the main complaints by art critics of the time regarding his Olympia. A similar shallow depth of field and flattening of the figures can be seen in his Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) also painted in 1863.


Luncheon on the Grass, 1863, Eduoard Manet


Manet wasn't the only French artist taken with art from the Japanese islands. Edgar Degas tried the realistic subjects and new compositional arrangements he found in studying them. Vincent Van Gogh like the sparse harmony he saw while Mary Cassatt, in creating woodcut prints of her own work, seems to have identified more closely with the Japanese compositional tradition than she did with its European counterpart. In fact, the simplicity of Japanese design and aesthetics crept into quite a number of areas less directly associated with prints or painting, such as architecture, household items, even industrial design. By the 1870s it could be found in many European specialty shops, art galleries, and department stores. The French infatuation with anything Japanese became so noticeable in fact, art critic Phillippe Burty even gave it a name--Japonisme.

Jan Vermeer

In a day when any artist worth talking about has his complete biography available on the Internet, it's difficult for us to imagine an artist about whom very little is known. That would be the case, however, in looking at the life of Jan Vermeer. He lived in the first half of the seventeenth century in Delft, Holland, the son of an Innkeeper. He died at the age of 43, bankrupt, leaving behind a wife, eleven children, and no more than forty known paintings, all of which would go a long way in explaining his chronic money problems. He seems to have been well thought of by his fellow artists in that they twice chose him as president of the local artists' guild. Beyond that, we know little about the man.


Allegory of Painting (The Artist's Studio),
1665-67, Jan Vermeer


Characteristically, the one painting that appears to be a self-portrait depicts the artist's back to the viewer. The painting, titled Allegory of Painting (the Artist in his Studio), is also one of his best. Vermeer paints himself seated at his easel in a cluttered, well-lit studio, apparently working on a portrait of a well-dressed young woman bearing an over sized volume, her face and figure lit by his trademark window on the left. The actual light source is obscured from view by a massive, patterned draper. The tiled floor gives evidence of an interest in perspective, and the whole of the composition is marked by a crisscrossing pattern of vertical and horizontal lines with an occasional diagonal to avoid monotony. Nearly all of Vermeer's paintings follow this basic formula--a middle-class woman involved in some routine, female duty lit by natural light from the left with exquisite attention to minute detail, color, composition, and texture.

View of Delft, 1660-61, Jan Vermeer

Every one of Vermeer's works are interiors. Even the two urban "landscapes" he painted are seen through a window. One is titled The Little Street, painted in 1658, and is remarkable in that it crops the facade of a building on the right while using only minimal linear perspective. Like his other paintings, the three female figures in the otherwise deserted street scene are engaged in simple domestic chores. His other landscape, a View of Delft, painted around 1660, is considered one of the best-loved landscapes ever. Even during his lifetime, perhaps even by the artist himself, his works were considered experimental, which would probably explain why, when he died, he was largely forgotten as an artist for nearly 200 years.

Jan Brueghel

Anyone who has ever followed in the footsteps of a famous father knows it can be a curse as well as a blessing. While there is instant name recognition, there is also an elevated standard of quality which the son or daughter must live up to. Most people are familiar with the work of Northern Renaissance artist, Pieter Brueghel, famous for his landscapes and peasant genre subjects. His son, Jan Brueghel, was born in 1568 just before his father died. His brother, Pieter Brueghel (the younger) was also a successful artist. Growing up without the influence of his painter-father, Jan was taught the gentle art of watercolor by his maternal grandmother. Perhaps because of this, the style and substance of his painting is nothing like that of either his father or brother. And judging by one of his most famous works, Allegory of Sight, it would appear, at least insofar as technique and audacity were concerned, he was twice the painter either of them were.



Allegory of Sight (detail), 1617,
Jan Brueghel

Allegory of Sight is one of a series of five paintings, each devoted to one of the senses. And since painting has an obvious link to sight, it is by far the best. The paintings were commissioned by the Antwerp city fathers as a gift for the reigning monarchs of Spain as they paid a call on the Netherlands, which they ruled at the time. In each of the paintings a nude Venus is surrounded by objects connected to the particular sense portrayed. Curiously, in this particular painting, Venus, the goddess of love, displays for her young son, Cupid, a painting of Jesus restoring sight to a blind man--talk about a mixture of the sacred and profane!


Allegory of Sight, 1618, Jan Brueghel, Peter Paul Rubens
(Not the same as the 1617 painting above)

 The huge, 12 by 14 foot painting is basically an enormous still-life set in a museum cluttered with all manner of sculpture, scientific instruments, paintings, exotic animals, maps, globes, decorated cabinets, tapestries, and other miscellaneous collectibles having a Dutch connection. Off to the right is a painting of a Madonna and Child by Rubens, done by Rubens, making this work a collaborative effort by the two painters. I counted nearly two dozen other highly detailed paintings within this painting, not counting a background hallway hung floor to ceiling with other ill-defined paintings interspersed with larger-than-life sculptures. On the floor, front and center, is the comical rendition of a small ape with a pair of spectacles making an amusing allegorical comment regarding the fact that all painting, even one a grand as this, is, to one extent of another, merely copying.

Jamie Wyeth

One More Step, Mr. Hands, 1911,
N.C. Wyeth

The name Wyeth is a twentieth-century icon in American Art. Through three generations, the name has been synonymous with art in the town of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Beginning with the work of N.C. Wyeth's illustrations of gallant knights and ladies fair in children's books during the first decades of the twentieth century, through the delicate, lonely work of his son, Andrew Wyeth, to the expressively realistic portraits of his son, Jamie Wyeth, there is an art that is thicker than water or blood. It is an entire "school" of art referred to as the Brandywine School, and a spacious museum at Chadds Ford dedicated to preserving it. 

Christina's World, 1948, Andrew Wyeth

Critics have scorned the work of both N.C. Wyeth and his son as empty nostalgia, cold and desolate, hard and unfeeling. Perhaps even worse, they've largely ignored the work of Jamie Wyeth, the 64-year-old heir to the family art dynasty. The public, on the other hand, loves them all. Though N.C. Wyeth was primarily known as an illustrator, Andrew, who literally grew up in his father's studio, came by his success and fame in the more traditional way, starting with a first show in 1937 that sold out, and continuing with the painting Christina's World, which won him fame in 1948. More recently, the secret Helga Testorf paintings of his long-time mistress brought him fame of another kind.


John F. Kennedy, 1965, Jamie Wyeth


The work of Jamie Wyeth, while totally different in style, owes much to his father's choice of subject matter even though Jamie claims to have been more influenced by his grandfather's work. Jamie's portraits have included a posthumous painting of John F. Kennedy commissioned by Jackie in 1965, as well as such celebrities as Andy Warhol, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rudolf Nureyev. Among the not-so-celebrated are portraits of pot-bellied pigs, Black Angus cows, vultures, his wife, Phillis, and bales of hay. At the opening of a show juxtaposing work of grandfather and grandson, an elderly woman cornered Jamie and raved over how much she'd enjoyed his illustrations in such books as Treasure Island and Robin Hood when she was growing up. Rather than correct her mistake, the junior Wyeth thanked her for a man he'd never met.  His grandfather died in 1945, the year before Jamie was born.