UN Art

Dove of Peace, mosaic copy of
13th century original, presented
by Pope Paul II during his
1979 visit to the UN.

Whether art-related or not, as we plod through our daily work, most of us have known the feeling from time to time of "walking on eggshells" as we try to get the job done without offending a client or coworker. Some of us are better at it than others. Those with the experience of working in retail sales know the feeling intimately. Sometimes you have the feeling you might just as well have gone into the diplomatic corps. On a recent vacation cruise, we had as our dinner companions a delightful elderly gentleman (retired interior designer of retail spaces) and his fuss-budget wife who perfectly fit the stereotype of the "Jewish grandmother." To say she was a picky eater would be like saying Picasso was good at drawing. We lost track of the number of times she sent back her dinner entrees, sometimes twice in a single evening. We nicknamed them Sears and Senderback. The waiter though, an Italian gentleman if there ever was one, was always the perfect diplomat (as well he should be inasmuch as his tip depended on making everyone happy). He would have made a good UN Secretary General...or at least his assistant.

Elephantine in more ways than one.

Speaking of which, filling that post in real life is a South Korean gentleman named Ban Ki-Moon. Rather than walking on them, one of his duties is to diplomatically tiptoe among the fragile eggshells (and egos) involved in the handling of the many gifts of fine art donated to the United Nations each year. How do you tell an ambassador from a small, Pacific Island nation that his prized, stuffed, prehistoric fish has no place among such magnificence as a 2,700-year-old gilded statuette of the Egyptian god, Osiris, or a 2,000-year-old burial mantle from Peru? Or perhaps you'd like to deal with the gift of a life-size bronze statue from Kenya (left) whose freakishly large appendage left little doubt that it was a bull elephant. (A bit of improvisational landscaping tended to minimize this problem.) Even though he oversees one of the biggest and most valuable art collections on earth, Ki-Moon has no background in the arts. Such considerations would only muddy the water. His job is purely diplomatic.

The Code of Hammurabi (replica),
The original is in the Louvre.

The UN version of Picasso's famous work favors
a warm, tan to brown tone as opposed to Picasso's
shades of gray.

But lest you believe that UN art also means bland, UNart, hanging on the wall outside the Security council is the only authorized tapestry of Picasso's Guernica, on permanent loan from the estate of the statesman, former governor of New York, and former Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller. Nearby is a replica of a stone marker carved with the first written code of laws, given down my Hammurabi, king of Babylon nearly 4,000 years ago. It was a gift from Iraq. One thing you won't find displayed at the UN is artwork involving maps--too controversial (too many disputed borders). From an artistic standpoint, Ki-Moon sees his job as keeping the UN from starting to look like a curiosity shop, and making sure the fine art gifts are displayed in such a way as to enhance the minimalist style of architecture of the "home office." From a diplomatic point of view, his work is very much like that of the waiter on our cruise ship, to get the job done without offending anyone.

TheTudor Style

Authentic English Tudor, 1575-1620, Wealden, Englalnd

I wrote a few weeks ago about the eclecticism present in 20th century housing styles. I also mentioned that the mainstream style during the first half of the century was Colonial Revival. The eclecticism comes in the form of peripheral "eddies" to this mainstream, styles not popular enough to make much of a dent in the overwhelming preference for Colonial Revival, but by the same token, the choice of many upper and upper-middle class owners who eschewed the Colonial Revival perhaps because it was mainstream. I mentioned some weeks later the slightly grander cousin to Colonial Revival called Neoclassicism. And now, spiraling off much further afield on the opposite side of the Colonial Revival mainstream, we want to talk about what came to be known as Tudor.

Colonial American Tudor, before the revival.

Like the Queen Anne style, Tudor is something of a misnomer used more because that era in English history is fairly familiar. Like the term "Victorian," Tudor denotes much more an historic period that a style of architecture. The fact is, the predominant architectural style of the Tudor period was Jacobean. Technically we should therefore call the Tudor style Jacobean Revival. At the very least we might call it Tudor Revival, though in fact, in England at least, Tudor has been such a popular building style for so long no "revival" would be needed. However in the U.S., call it Tudor or Jacobean, the style would date back to the 1600s and was popular only because of it's simplicity of construction. It was quickly replaced by the contemporary English Adam style of the time once colonial builders were able to handle the rather more complex masonry and carpentry that style demanded.

American Tudor Revival, early 20th century

Whatever we call it, the style's most distinctive feature is its exposed timbers interspersed with stucco. In 20th century manifestations, the timbers are often dark brown, the stucco purest white; but in England particularly, and even somewhat in this country, the stucco may be off-white, tan, or (in Britain) brightly painted in a rainbow of hues. Coupled with this is the generous use of both brick and stone masonry, often in the same structure with no attempt to disguise "built on" additions whether in fact or imitative. Roofs are steep, usually slate, chimneys tall, windows grouped and plentiful, decorative details, florid over a geometric base. Arches often decorate entries while porches are rare. Windows are rectangular, often in one and two-storied bays with small leaded panes of glass in diamond shapes. The basic arrangements of rooms and exterior masses is almost always asymmetrical.

Simple Tudor veneer

With some notable geographic exceptions, this country has always looked to England for it's domestic architectural models. This is largely because, even well into this past century, those with the money to afford an architect were usually of English descent. Their lifestyle fantasies, not surprisingly therefore, centered upon English literary models. The first Tudor/Jacobean examples began appearing in this country about 1890 and were often quite pure copies of their English counterparts. As the 20th century dawned, the style became popular as a simple, inexpensive alternative to Colonial Revival because it was something of a veneer or mask that could be cheaply applied to nearly any type housing construction. Brick and stone could be laid up as a veneer, followed by half-timbers and lathe for the stucco. Roofs tended to be a little steeper than might be found on Colonial Revival homes, but other than that, it was only slightly more difficult to make a home look "Tudor" than "Colonial." The style continued in popularity up through the 1920s and 30s. After the Second World War, with the demand for rapid, plentiful, economical housing, it faded fast in that it was none of these. In today's eclectic mix of housing styles, Tudor is limited mostly to larger homes in that its masonry masses and wealth of stylistic details do not lend itself easily to homes on a more modest scale. Personally, I'm glad of that, Tudor has never been a favorite of mine.

Top Ten American Movies of All Time

Several months ago I went out on a limb and chose the top ten paintings of the last thousand years.  Well, inasmuch as the favorite topic at the moment among my friends seems to be movies, I'm going to crawl even further out on the proverbial limb and list the top ten movies of the last thousand years. I know, that sounds like a bit much, but since movies have only been around for a little over a hundred years, it's no great stretch. Speaking as one who has taught both film making and film history, I may not be the greatest expert in the world, but I do have some basis of judgment on the subject. Unfortunately, I am not conversant enough in foreign films to consider them in this list. Likewise, these are not necessarily my favorite movies; and the order of placement in the list may be arguable; but I feel firmly that these ten motion pictures are classics in every sense of the word and should be lodged in the film memory vault of every individual alive. 

10.  West Side Story--winner of ten Academy Awards; classic Shakespearean plot updated; still as relevant today as in 1961; young people who later became screen legends; the film boasts music and choreography as good as Broadway or Hollywood ever gets.

9.  Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)--Dating from 1963, not all the great ones win Academy Awards or strut their stuff in glorious color. Stanley Kubrick's chilling little cold war farce (which he wrote, produced, and directed) just before 2001: A Space Odyssey (tough call between these two) showcases George C. Scott, Keenan Wynn (son of Ed Wynn), and the late, great Peter Sellers in three different leading roles. (I know, that sounds impossible.) James Earl Jones and Slim Pickins also put in appearances. You know a movie has made an impact when it becomes an adjective--strangelovian.

8.  Birth of a Nation--Dating from the early silent era (1915), D. W.  Griffith taught Hollywood how to make movies. His four-hour epic is loaded with the blatant racism of its time, but the daring scope of its content, and its cinematography rise above that to achievements unknown in its day. Even today it remains a virtual "how to" book on basic film making as well as propaganda. It's American history (albeit from a Southern point of view) as well as film history of the highest caliber (best taken in small doses or with one finger on "fast forward").

7.  "Casablanca--Even 1943 "B" movies sometimes achieve greatness. This is a sentimental favorite with probably more unforgettable lines than any movie ever made. Like Strangelove, it demonstrates you can make great movies without great budgets. Bogart and Bergman--film chemistry just doesn't get any better than this.

6.  Titanic--Which just goes to show, you can also make great movies in spite of great budgets. Eleven Academy Awards and a zillion dollars in box office loot can't all be wrong. And to give credit where it's due, sharp directing, editing, cutting edge special effects, another Romeo and Juliet plot rip-off, and a great score don't hurt either.

5.  The Godfather (Part II)--The Mob never looked so good...or so human. Coppola's dark, mafia masterpieces are not among my favorites but I have to respect his work. Like so many great films, this 1974 sequel, is a blockbuster which could easily have gone terribly wrong, but didn't.

4.  Ben-Hur (1959)--The first motion picture to ever win eleven Academy Awards, with two or three of the most memorable sequences ever put on film. Easily the best film of the 1950s, it's a biblical saga with a powerful spiritual message, which yet manages to avoid becoming a Sunday school lesson.

3.  Gone With the Wind--What can I say about this 1939 epic that hasn't already been said a hundred times over? It's not a perfect movie. Selznick's pedantic paraphrasing of Margaret Mitchell's dialogue would not give Shakespeare cause for alarm; yet if movies are about greatness--pictures, music, drama, and great stories about great events told with great feeling--then this one holds up quite well now seventy-two years after it was made.

2.  Citizen Kane--Considered by many to actually be the "perfect movie," it's amazing how many films on this list were virtual one-man-shows. Maybe a single individual dominating every facet of the work is one of the most important prerequisites for greatness. Whether his name is D.W. Griffith, David Selznick, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, or James Cameron, in so many cases a single artist made the movie great despite sometimes incredible odds. This 1940 masterpiece wrote the sequel to Birth of a Nation insofar as cinematography is concerned.

1.  Schindler's List--I'm not ashamed to admit it. Spielberg made me cry.

Tilman Riemenschneider

Tilman Riemenschneider self-portrait

Here's a quick quiz. Who was Charles Daubigny? Who was Alfred Sisley? Who was Maurice Prendergast? Who was Armand Guillaumin? Very good, you said they were all Impressionist painters. Now, who was Tilman Riemenschneider? Whoa! Got ya there, right? Strange, you should recognize the names of the relatively minor Impressionists and not know the name of the greatest sculptor on the Northern Renaissance. Why is that? Well, it's really not too surprising. German art is not a big mainstay in American museums and for many, the study of sculpture in art begins with Michelangelo and ends with Rodin. Riemenschneider (pronounced RHEE-men-SHNIED-er) was a contemporary of Michelangelo and very much his equal (though bearing remnants of the Gothic style), while Rodin seems cloddish and exhibitionist in contrast to the Northern Renaissance master.

Holy Blood Altarpiece, Rothenberg ob Tauber, Tilman Riemenschneider, 1495-99

Riemenschneider was born in 1460 near Osterode, Germany. He grew up influenced by Durer and Roger van der Weyden. His earliest work is a tombstone of the Ritter von Grumbach it which the old Gothic style predominates. However work in wood, stone, and alabaster from just a few years later bears a remarkable Renaissance style--not that of Michelangelo (of whom he was probably unaware) but that of Northern Renaissance painters. Frankly, he had no peers in sculpture to emulate. His work seems to be three-dimensional renderings of what his fellow artists were doing in paint at the time, and is all the more remarkable for capturing much of what they could not--a sense of humanity imbued into his religious figures.

Standing Virgin and Child, 1460-73

Niclaus Gerhaert von Leiden

Curators go to some lengths to underline the importance of Riemenschneider's religious works by boldly comparing them side by side with those of other German sculptors of his time. Though quite beautiful, the work of sculptors such as Niclaus Gerhaert von Leiden, for instance, seems static and stoic. Riemenschneider's work is gentle, melancholic, and pious while being infinitely fascinating in its complex details. One is conscious of the physical yet entranced by his work's spiritual presence. So, next time you think sculpture, don't forget that German guy with the name that's hard to pronounce and impossible to spell.

Madonna and Child, 1495
Tilman Riemenschneider

The Most Beautiful Building in the World

The Taj-Mahal, Agra, India

Recently I've been writing about diversity in art appreciation. We've looked at poetry, at historic vision, at city planning, sculpture, motion pictures--all in hopes of broadening if not our definition of art, at least our consciousness of it. It's easy enough to look at a child's drawing and call it art, or our own, or to hold up even a practical item of exquisite design and handmade execution and see it as art.  What we don't recognize as often I think is that art which is so big, so overwhelming, so powerful we somehow think of it as an entity unto itself, rather than just another manifestation of art in the larger scheme of human creative endeavor. Today, for instance, I want to talk about what has been called by many as the most beautiful work of art of its kind in the world--the most beautiful building in the world.

Even up-close and personal and from
an oblique angle, the Taj-Mahal's
beauty is not diminished, only deepened.

It's old, but not as old as we might think. It was begun in 1632 on the Jumna River in North-central India, near the small town of Agra (once the capital of India). Located 128 miles down river from India's present day capital, New Delhi. Twenty-two years under construction, when completed in all its breathtaking, marbleized beauty, it became the final resting place for Mumtaz Mahal, the beloved wife of the Shah, Jahan. Today we know it as the Taj Mahal. We often think of it as a gleaming white, onion-domed temple-like structure of Indian architecture, but in fact, it's actually a mottled light gray of quite eclectic architectural origins. Though India is the home of several different architectural styles, the Taj Mahal, with it's four cylindrical minarets, not unlike the campaniles of Christian churches; borrows from western Islamic and Byzantine influences as much as those of India. The romantic monument to a husband's love of his wife would not seem out of place anywhere on the Asian subcontinent from the Bosporus to the South China Sea.

Few buildings, even architectural masterpieces,
look good from the rear. The Taj-Mahal is an
exception.

Mumtaz Mahal was more than just the wife of the Shah and the mother of fourteen of his children (she died giving birth to their fourteenth child). Though she lived in the harem with numerous other wives and concubines, she was his first wife, and as much her husband's advisor on important state matters as his wife, lover, and mother of his heirs. He even entrusted her with the all-important state seal. Her unexpected death devastated the Shah and all of India. Legend has it she requested on her death bed, that he build for her a monument of such perfect proportions and purity that no one could ever look upon it without sensing their love for one another.

Inside, the Taj-Mahal is not as expected, no
pale, monochromatic serenity but the golden
glow of intricate, spectacular mosaics.

No one has ever questioned either the Shah's undying love or the success of his endeavor. Original plans, upon completion of the Taj Mahal, called for an identical structure on the opposite bank of the river made of black marble to be used as a tomb for the Shah. The Shah himself died in 1666, imprisoned in the infamous Red Fort just across the river, but able to view from his cell the exquisite mausoleum he'd built for the love of his wife. The Black Taj, of course, was never built. More fittingly, Shah Jahan instead, is entombed next to the woman he loved, under his magnificent marble dome (below).

And finally, all that for this.

Nazi Confiscated Art

Woman with Oranges, 1880-81,
Aleksander Gierymski, recovered in 2010
at auction near Hamburg, Germany

Ever since the early 1950s, the art world had kept a dirty little secret. A surprisingly large percentage of the works hanging on the walls of museums all over the world are stolen. No, the museums didn't resort to cat-burglar tactics to fill their walls with masterpieces. It wasn't that overt. But by the same token, they also cannot claim to be innocent bystanders either. The thieves were German Nazis during World War II. The victims were European Jews and anyone else who stood in the way of Hitler's juggernaut as it rolled through Europe between 1937 and 1944. The Germans treated the art treasures from all ages, which they confiscated, as spoils of war. Their tastes were, for the most part, pretty conservative. They liked the literal, the realistic, the erotic, and the mythological. They hated abstract and expressionistic pieces, and had only a mild liking for work as recent as the Impressionist era. What they liked, they hung on their walls, what they didn't went into storage, and what they hated they destroyed or sold for quick cash during the war.

Le Quai Malaquais et l'Institut, 1903, Camille Pissarro,
discovered in a Swiss bank vault, had once graced the wall
of Nazi leader, Hermann Goring, sold in 2009 for $2.1 million.

With the fall of the Third Reich, things were a mess in Europe. Nearly every mainland economy was in shambles. Hard cash was in short supply. Great art wasn't. Instances of smaller art masterpieces being sold in military PX's were not unheard of. Allied military officers were known to have rummaged through the Nazi art stash, picking and choosing that which appealed to them not unlike their German counterparts had just a few years before. As things settled down in the ensuing years, the trade in stolen art became much more discreet, civilized, and institutionalized. Much of it was funneled through Switzerland, Austria, and Bulgaria. And all of it was dirt cheap by pre-war standards. First and second-rate museums all over the world saw a chance to shore up weaknesses in their collections at bargain basement prices. The works were sold through "reputable" international dealers and galleries. At least, at those prices, the museums hoped they were reputable, or in some cases, found it in their best economic interests to consider them so.

Paysage, 1911, Albert Gleizes. Though usually 
not fond of cubist work, the Nazis stole this
painting during WW II from a private home.

For some forty years, the "secret" was kept. Then two things happened. First was the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Records that had once abetted those keeping this secret fell open to public scrutiny. And second, computers made gathering, analyzing, and disseminating these records a relatively simple task. Suddenly, major and minor museums all over the world, but especially in the well-heeled ones in the US, were scrambling to make public amends. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts posted on their Web site seven paintings they thought may have been stolen, in hopes of finding their rightful owners. It had over 200 more with "shady" provenances for the war years. The Metropolitan in New York had over 300 in this category. The Museum of Modern Art had fifteen suspects. The Getty in LA and the Chicago Art Institute have a lesser but significant number as well. Museums in Cleveland, Seattle, North Carolina, and Texas have taken similar steps to try and cleanse themselves of their Holocaust art. It's a relatively safe step. Public penitence at this point in time is good PR; and despite computerization and new found European records, the fact is, after the Holocaust and some forty years of European turmoil, the human link with this art is largely broken. When museums are reduced to searching through the Internet for rightful owners they already know the chances of finding them are slim to none and in the absence of claims, their stolen masterpieces are still relatively safe.  But that's another dirty little secret.

Stevan Dohanos

Soda Fountain Dieter, 1954, Stevan Dohanos

When someone mentions The Saturday Evening Post, there's about a fifty-fifty chance the next words out of their mouth will have something to do with Norman Rockwell. And while Rockwell and the Post have practically become synonymous, that fact might well be seen as unfortunate in that it tends to bypass dozens of other excellent cover illustrators whose work, often reminiscent of Rockwell's, filled in the gaps between Rockwell's much anticipated appearances. And though it might seem, to his millions of devoted fans, blasphemous to suggest, a few of these covers were quite as good, some might even say better, than those Rockwell produced. One of these illustrators, at least on a par with Rockwell in many ways, was Stevan Dohanos.

Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1951,
Stevan Dohanos

The temptation is to compare Rockwell and Dohanos. It's much more revealing however to contrast their work. The masthead was the same, also the style and content, (the Post made sure of that); but there similarities end. Rockwell was older than Dohanos, an Ohio native born in 1907 near Loraine (on Lake Erie). Perhaps because of his age, Rockwell (born in 1894) had a kinder, gentler point of view...much more nineteenth century. Whereas Rockwell found loving humor, Dohanos used satire and underlined stereotypes. Dohanos painted the American culture of the era, often unsympathetically. No one ever accused Dohanos of sentimentality. Rockwell would paint what were basically realistic comic strips often in the mode of Dagwood and Blondie. Dohanos' work, if we are to use the comic strip vernacular, was more in line with Walt Kelly's Pogo. There was an edge to it.

Dohanos was interested in places and things revealing the peculiarly American point of view and way of life. If there were people involved, they were often depicted as obvious stereotypes, always used to make a point, rather than for their entertainment value. Often he had a habit of depicting figures from the back, disallowing the viewer to make any sentimental connection to the character. Dohanos studiously avoided the cute, the sweet, or merely amusing presentation in favor of images which spoke volumes about who we were, how we lived, how we thought, and what it meant to be an American in the mid-twentieth century. Although the points he made were never harsh, they sometimes weren't always particularly kind either.

Patriotic Band Concert, 1951, Stevan Dohanos

Some would say that the line between fine art and illustration is a delicate one of no great significance today. Rockwell's recent, gradual acceptance as a fine artist is evidence of this. But fifty years ago, any artist who tried to cross over would likely argue it was a murky, muddy, no-man's-land--a virtual minefield between two opposing art camps. In the 1960s, as the artwork on Post covers was gradually replaced by photos, Dohanos and others were forced to move on.  Giving up illustration for "fine" art wasn't easy. Old habits, old ways of thinking died hard. Some made it. Others didn't. For Dohanos, this crossover manifested itself in still-lifes, often depicting a quieter, more solemn salute to Americana in tempera and watercolor rather than the oils and simple, literal imagery demanded by his old employer.  Dohanos never became a household name, either as an illustrator. Perhaps there's room for only one name in the collective American mind in that category. Perhaps that's just as well though, because the major body of his life's work would seem to place him much more comfortably in the category of yet another famous painter of the American lifestyle--Edward Hopper.

Home Improvement, 1953, Stevan Dohanos