Artists Married to Artists

Bruce Nauman and wife, Susan Rothenberg

Although it happens, most artists are not married to other artists. Someday, I'd like to submit a questionnaire to those artists not married to other artists and ask them, "If they had it to do over again, (all else being equal) would the like being married to another artist?" Of course the next question would be, "Why or why not?" The responses would, I'm sure, be interesting. Bruce Nauman and Susan Rothenberg have had it both ways. Since 1989 they've been married to other artists (each other). But both came from divorces from non-artist spouses. Not surprisingly, they prefer the present arrangement to their former relationships. They feed off one another. Their work is almost diametrically opposite. She paints. He does everything but paint. He creates outlandish sculptural installations, often involving videotaped elements. She creates painted, horse-like figures. He raises the real thing. They live on a ranch outside Galisteo, New Mexico. He looks like the rancher he is. She looks like the woman next in line at the supermarket.



Impending Doom, 1996-97, Susan Rothenberg

Both artists came to prominence in the 70s, Nauman in the forefront of every new art movement that came along, often, in fact, instigating some of them. Rothenberg, on the other hand, was first cast as a New Image painter, whatever that is. Even Rothenberg isn't sure. A decade later she was labeled a Neo-Expressionist--only a slightly better defined term. Influenced by Guston and DeKooning, she is, nonetheless a figurative painter, her work strong, but not confrontational (at least not as compared to her husband's). She is outspoken, critical, first and foremost, self-critical. If she doesn't like an artist's work she quickly tells you so and why. If she doesn't like her own work, she talks it out with her husband who often helps her solve the problem. Her 1996-97 painting, Impending Doom, (above)" with it's heads peering down at a (dead?) body lying face up in the center of the paintings, is typical of this process and her recent work. Her horses are from her first marriage, rampaging, but minimalist, portraits of her psyche at the time. Even now she paints psychological self-portraits.

Carousel (Stainless Steel Version), 1988, Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a thoughtful, quiet, hardworking sort, nothing like you'd expect, given his loud, violent, podium-pounding, sculptural installations of screaming clowns, homicidal couples, linked with neon signs, bearing inane, often obscene phrases. His work is claustrophobic and disturbing, bordering on the psychopathic. One of his works, dating from 1988, titled Carousel (Stainless Steel Version) is made up of rotating taxidermy casts of horses and dogs, chasing one another. A more recent work, from 1990, entitled Ten Heads Circle/Up and Down (bottom, right) consists of cast heads mounted in pairs, joined at the top of the head (the upper one upside down), suspended from the ceiling with wire--ideal for the foyer maybe, but certainly not for the living room. His more recent work is in the form of grating, repetitious, rhythmic, music videos hearkening back to the sounds of John Cage, Phillip Glass, Lamont Young, and Steve Reich with a touch of Andy Warhol to occupy the screen. Rothenberg points out, with regard to her husband's recent work, that sometimes, "painting" does not involve paint.

 



The Fence, 2006-07, Susan Rothenberg

Ten Heads Circle/Up and Down,
1990, Bruce Nauman

 

 

 



Rockwell, Kinkade, and Gerome

Norman Rockwell, Thomas Kinkade, Jean-Leon Gerome

I knew when I wrote recently on Jean-Leon Gérôme and mass marketing in 19th century art reproductions, I'd hear from someone who'd take issue with my using in the same sentence the names Rockwell and Kinkade, the two most notable examples of 20th century success in this area. So, when I got a note from one of my most faithful readers taking me to task for doing so, I was hardly surprised. Actually, I can recall a time a few years back when I rather vehemently debated the Rockwell-Kinkade comparison. So, I guess I should note that there are some differences between these artists. Whereas before I concentrated on their similarities, let me here talk about their differences.



Deer Creek Cottage, 1995,
Thomas Kinkade
 

Homecoming Marine, 1945,
Norman Rockwell

While both Rockwell and Kinkade are what I'd term "feel good" artists, they've approached their art from different angles. Kinkade, on the one hand, had a very limited, very focused, yet very powerful vehicle for achieving this aim. It can be summed up in the word "home." This simple little four-letter word strikes a chord in the soul of us all. Just try changing your home sometime and see what kind of emotional stirrings and chaos it creates. Kinkade visually stereotyped and homogenized these powerful emotions with his quaint, hearth and heart cottages and Victorian homestead celebrations of life and levity to an almost unimaginable degree. My devoted reader mentioned the word "truth" in her distancing herself from Kinkade while embracing Rockwell and Gérôme. And in fact, there's not a lot of modern-day truth in Kinkade's nostalgically optimistic domestic cuteness as compared to the reality of most of our daily lives. But having said that, I must point out that a similar cuteness and persistent optimism pervades much of Rockwell's work too.

Saying Grace, 1951, Norman Rockwell--a search for truth.

The difference is that Rockwell always focused upon the happy inhabitants of Kinkade's sweet little cottages, rather than on any narrow, symbolic, architectural tie that binds. Thus Rockwell seemed always to at least be in search of truth in the life and times in which he lived. By contrast, Kinkade simply proclaimed that he'd found truth and then in his picturesque cottages, happily sought to dwell with it, displaying a complacent lack of curiosity for any other possible existence of truth. In so doing he appears to have been blind to any other form of truth, thus severely limiting any degree of truthfulness his work might otherwise have embodied. Yet in fact, despite Rockwell's apparent broadness of focus in search of truth, there is only slightly more of it in his largely rural and small town images than in Kinkade's attempt to capture the same idealized existence in depicting only the architectural containers of this sweetly provincial lifestyle. The difference is, Kinkade's pretty containers mostly seem empty of life despite the glowing lights in his windows. Rockwell's equally quaint genre scenes, for whatever they may lack in hardscrabble truth and reality, are always full of life.

Combat de Coqs, 1846, Jean-Leon Gerome--
moral dilemmas, no answers.

Now, to add Gérôme to this equation, unlike Rockwell and Kinkade, rarely if ever does he "descend" to the sweet genre of his own nineteenth century life and times. Like Rockwell, Gérôme is also in search of truth, but his search takes on moralistic tones, dallying with questions of right and wrong, calling up often grave moral dilemmas while providing no answers. In effect, he relies upon his viewers to know the obvious moral truth even as he also invites them to toy with what I'd call the "what if" factor, vicariously placing themselves in his exotic narrative scenes of academic realism to speculate upon the momentary pleasure of enjoying the immoral "wrong" answer to his proposed questions.

Freedom of Speech, 1942,
Norman Rockwell--timeless truth.

Thus Gérôme's appeal was one of moral familiarity while at the same time allowing a degree of moral ambiguity not to be found in the work of either Rockwell or Kinkade. And if Rockwell had limited himself merely to simple, twentieth century genre, we'd have to say Gérôme’s efforts contain a good deal more depth and truth. But we all know Rockwell's work often to be much more timeless than this. At his best, Rockwell could rise to a level of truthfulness and profound importance far above Gérôme and light years beyond Kinkade. But it's hard to breathe as an artist at such rarefied heights, and we can hardly blame Rockwell for merely visiting them rather than trying to live upon them. In contrast, perhaps the biggest fault we can rest upon Kinkade is his never having aspired to depict anything more than his (and our) symbolic abodes - our least common denominator level of emotional creature comfort.

Therefore, as I said initially, what these three artists share, beyond a certain comforting level of unambiguous technical skill, has more to do with mass marketing than either truth or similarities of content. Kinkade relies upon his own marketing savvy over creativity. Rockwell let The Post and Curtis Publications worry about his marketing, leaving him free to concentrate strictly upon product alone. And as I mentioned in an earlier blog (9-12-12), Gérôme had his father-in-law, to do the same, though in his case the ties were obviously much tighter, practically putting him in a position as "staff artist" for the Goupil marketing juggernaut. So while the use of the word "truth" is not irrelevant in discussing such art, in that is has more to do with its intellectual and emotional appeal, by the same token, it has little to do with the individual successes of each man.

Rock Art

Rock Art deer

Experts say it's a new style of rock art seldom seen before. When Dan Arnold, an amateur spelunker/archaeologist, found the place two years ago, he at first thought the cave bore the artwork of a bunch of stoned-out hippies. There were some discarded beer cans, evidence of campfires, and more than a little graffiti on the walls along with the ancient drawings. Some of the graffiti dated back as far as the 1800s. But there's no question, even to the casual observer, as to what's recent and what's old. Tainter Cave is some 250 feet deep and much of the best work is deep inside in what is called the "dark zone" where natural light has never penetrated. This, and the ideal temperature and humidity present, account for the artwork's remarkable state of preservation.

Tainter Cave entrance before the steel gate

The cave's location is a secret, to keep away vandals; and even if you were to find it, a recently erected, massive steel gate just inside would thwart the curious. Rock art, despite its name, is highly fragile. We can tell you that it's in south-western Wisconsin and if you want to see it, artists' reproductions and photos posted on the Internet. What makes the site all the more remarkable is the fact that both drawing and painting is present, as well as Native American artifacts stretching back several hundred years. This was no ancient bit of petrographic interior decoration, but apparently a shrine dedicated to ritual, used for hundreds of years. Stylistically, the art is very linear, stick-like, boxy, even abstract, closer to Mondrian than the realism of Lascaux (prehistoric cave paintings in southern France).

Earth and Sky (ignore the grafitti)

More than one hundred images line the walls and ceilings of the cave (a quantity more than doubling the previously known prehistoric art of the Midwest). Some are readily identifiable. There is a landscape-like depiction of earth and sky (above) as well as hunters armed with bows, a bow man (below, right), thunderbirds, deer, running, jumping, even a pregnant doe (below, left). Paintings include horned bison and abstract symbolism that will probably never be deciphered. Carbon dating has placed the charcoal drawings from around 900 CE. Artifacts found are somewhat more recent. But one image, representing a long-horned buffalo may date to as early as the end of the ice age, almost 10,000 years ago. This may be the oldest American art to be found.



Pregnant deer

Bow hunter

Showing Picasso

Reina Sophia National Contemporary Art Museum, Madrid, Spain



Here's a question for you. If you were the curator of a major art museum, what artist or artists might you draw from in putting together an important exhibition? What theme might you use? What might you call the show, aside from the ever-present colon in the middle of the title? What artist would you choose? Dürer? Rembrandt? Monet? Cézanne? Matisse? Rockwell? Wyeth? Picasso? Okay, given this list, adding others if you like, which artist's work might you think would be the most difficult to pull together for a major exhibit? It might surprise you, but curators all over the world would quickly choose their pick--Picasso. Certainly Paloma Estaban would echo that sentiment. Paloma was a curator at the Reina Sophia National Contemporary Art Museum in Madrid. And if you've never heard of this museum before, you might want to remember the name. It's where you would go if you wanted to see Picasso's Guernica.

Guernica, 1937, Pablo Picasso

Several years ago (2001), when Paloma began putting together a Picasso retrospective, "Picasso: the Great Series," she sent out some 200 letters to museums and collectors all over the world. She got back only one response. Despite the museum's spotless reputation, Miss Estaban quickly realized you don't just drop people a note asking to borrow their Picasso. Three years of repeated phone calls, travel all over Europe and the United States, and hundreds of personal, one-on-one meetings came and went before she managed to collect the 120 works by the Spanish expatriate for her show. One might think--given the fact that often this 20th century master turned out more work in a single year than many artists have in an entire lifetime--his work, despite his popularity, or conversely, perhaps because of it, would be relatively easy to come by. Not so in either case. It would seem that, unlike the work of many modern artists, people really become attached to their Picassos. Even museums find them hard to part with, even for a few months.

Women of Algiers, After Delacroix, 1955, Pablo Picassso

Add to this the enormous insurance and shipping costs and a Picasso show is not only difficult, but exceedingly expensive to mount. This show drew holdings from the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as from private collections in Japan, the US, London, and elsewhere in Europe. The show concentrated on Picasso's most prolific period, stretching from 1952 until his death in 1973 at the age of 91. It included several of his tribute pieces such as Women of Algiers, After Delacroix, Las Meninas, After Velázquez, and such original compositions as The Painter and his Model and Shade. Of course, in arranging such a show, it helps to have the painter's son, Claude, on your side too. Miss Estaban even managed to borrow Velázquez’s original Las Meninas to hang next to Picasso's tribute to one of the most influential artists in his life. And, while Picasso has often been criticised for "stealing" the work of the artists he admired most, side-by-side comparisons reveal instead a face-to-face confrontation on the part of the artist with the same creative process as experienced by Velázquez and others. The tributes were pure Picasso with little more than passing resemblances to the work of the ancient masters he worshiped. And inasmuch as Picasso lived most of his life in Paris, this show marked a rare chance for Spaniards to see firsthand the works of the countryman they share with their neighbour to the north.

Las Meninas, After Velazquez, 1957, Pablo Picasso

The Best of the Resurrections

He Lives, 1999, Jim Lane

Several years ago, I became fascinated with religious painting. I've consequently taken to studying more closely those biblical painters of the past as a measure of my own meager efforts; and as a foundation upon which to stand in somehow trying to reach beyond what they had to say in speaking visually and spiritually to my own a Postmodern world. If that sounds like quite a mouthful, it is, and the challenge is just as monumental. My own venture into this painting genre was quite tentative and serendipitous. Though I'd painted a montage portrait depicting episodes in the life of Christ years ago, and a single head and shoulders portrait of Christ years before that, I was by no means very knowledgeable or adept at this type of art. I came to it perceiving a surprising paucity of religious depictions of the resurrection, seeing in this a chance to make my own mark using the subject. Today, I've moved on from painting religious works to exploring the life of Christ through a video montage of the painted religious works of great artists down through the centuries. I've completed the selection of works and I'm currently nearing completion of the script.

The Resurrection, 1596-1600, El Greco

Ironically, what I've found in pursuing my studies of religious art from the past is that my initial perceptions as to the relatively small number of paintings depicting the resurrection was based at least partially on my own ignorance of some very respectable efforts along this line by some very respectable artists. I was aware of one by Piero Della Francesca painted in 1450, and dimly aware of another by Matthias Grunewald, the third panel in the Isenheim Altarpiece. Neither were particularly influential. Della Francesca's painting is rather static and uninspiring. With Grunewald's work came the other extreme. I found it to be too melodramatic and demonstrative. Since attempting my own version of this earthshaking event, I've come across a couple more. Without a doubt, my favorite is that painted around 1600 by the Greek/Spanish painter, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco (left).

The nine-foot-tall painting, now housed in Madrid's Prado, is everything I might have aspired to had I ever seen it before doing my own version. In fact, had I seen this one first, I might well have asked, "Why bother?" In it, a life-size, nearly nude Christ strolls weightlessly forward from a writhing mass of semi-nude Roman soldiers seemingly exploding in worshipful ecstasy as they behold his lean, slender, graceful majesty. El Greco's trademark elongated figures further enhance the linear power of this spiritual masterpiece. Bearing a pristine white banner and trailing a brilliant red robe, the figure of Christ is both sensuous and mystical. A diamond-shaped halo breaks with tradition in marking his divinity, not that any such outdated (even for that era) device is necessary. The work is mannerist in style, heavily influenced by Michelangelo, and prefigures much of what is best from the Baroque era. And, as I suggested earlier, I'm glad I didn't see it until after I'd completed by own visual statement on the subject (top).

Causes of the Renaissance

The right time, the right place--
Renaissance Italy

If you've ever taken an art history class, or even one in art appreciation, you know that the era they call "The Renaissance" is held in reverence something just short of the second coming. This "reawakening" is set up on a historic pedestal intended to inspire a worshipful awe as everyone from the highest high-priest-art-history-professor to the lowest graduate-student-teaching-assistant-altar-boy marches around it swirling incense, and sprinkling holy water while intoning the words of "Raphaellll... Michelangelooo...Leonardooo". Meanwhile all us art appreciators genuflect and murmur an appreciative background litany of gasping ooo's and ahhh's at every Madonna, David, and Mona flashed upon the screen for us to identify, categorize, memorize, and immortalize. Then when it is all done, we take an essay test and I'd bet dollars to donuts the very first question is: "Discuss the causes relevant to the development of the Renaissance and their effect upon the various forms of art of the time." (Or something to that effect.)



Lorenzo di Medici, Girolamo Macchietti,
the birth of banking, making money
with money

Well, let me answer the first part of that question in one word--money. Of course that's a gross oversimplification and would rate a single word response--explain! Actually, it's not only an oversimplification, it's also a bit inaccurate. Actually credit would be a better response. Now, let me explain. During the Middle Ages, there were two-forms of trade--gold, and barter. Gold was in short supply until the new world explorers robbed the native Americans and flooded Europe with it. And Barter was terribly inefficient. Credit, on the other hand (basically letters of credit), couldn't be easily stolen, weighed very little, and was an efficient way of transferring huge amounts of wealth. Which brings us back to the original answer--money. Without large amounts of it, there were only fortress prisons in which those who had accumulated some wealth relied upon ugly stone walls to avoid being murdered in their sleep. When it became economically feasible to enclose an entire city in fortress walls, then those with money could begin to relax and enjoy it, which meant a craving for beauty, which meant art. The city of Florence, Italy, is a classic example.



Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Michelozzo, Florence

Italy (see map at top left), jutting its booted peninsula out into the maritime trade lanes of the Mediterranean, was ideally suited to taste, and enjoy this new found prosperity first. They spent the 13th and 14th centuries accumulating great wealth and the 15th and 16th centuries enjoying it. Even in Florence today, the palazzos of the Medici (right) and other wealthy families still have a fortress-like quality to them, but inside, as they open into delightfully sunny courtyards (bottom), there is light--light to see paintings hanging on walls, to enjoy tapestries, to admire garden sculpture, fountains, and manicured landscapes. And with wealth comes time--time to enjoy reading and writing poetry, music, great novels, opera, and high fashion. All of these things come together to define the Renaissance and to impact the arts. So, the next time you take an art history course, and it comes time for the final exam, just cut and paste this explanation and you'll be home free.

Palazzo Strozzi courtyard, Florence, Italy. Money=time=beauty=art. 

 

Rembrandt's Women

Artemesia, 1634, Rembrandt van Rijn, the one consistent, characteristic trait--honesty

A Girl at a Window, 1645, Rembrandt van Rijn,
young and old, pretty to pretty ugly...

 

If you were asked to guess the most popular content area in art during the last five hundred years or so, what would you guess? Would it be landscapes, or maybe still-lifes, or religious scenes, non-representational, animals, history, figures? I don't have a definitive answer for this, I just got to wondering. I have a category that I'd place high on the list, if not at the top--women. I guess technically such would fall within the scope of figures, as would, no doubt, portraits as well. But figural painting is such a broad category it seems to me to be unfair to make all the other categories compete with it. Of course, today, figural paintings, even including portraits, would probably be well down the list in terms of popularity. Today, as never before, the landscape is undoubtedly the most popular. That's a pretty safe statement, but beyond that, all other categories would be open to argument. Of course, it's no surprise that women have historically rated so high as artists' favorites in that until the last fifty years or so, painters were proportionally as high as 80 to 90 percent men; and women have always been pretty popular with men. And going beyond this, I'd venture to say that no artist in any century has ever captured the essence of the female sex in his art better than did Rembrandt van Rijn.

Bathsheba Bathing, 1654, Rembrandt van Rijn,
never one to forgo a rationale for painting a
female nude, especially a biblical one.

While he seems to have loved and respected them deeply, his depictions of them are always wrought with absolute honesty, every bump, every lump--every nuance from cellulite to garter-marks. He'd never make it in today's art world. Yet whether painting them clothed or nude, awake or asleep, as mothers or courtesans, biblical or mythical, servants or queens, Rembrandt's women all have one thing in common--an uncompromisingly sympathetic expression on the part of their artist. It would be easy to argue and hard to refute that Rembrandt understood women and explored them more deeply in his art than any artist before or since.

Woman in Bed, 1645, Rembrandt van Rijn

 

Yet it would appear that, except for a few commissioned portraits, he painted his women using just three models--his wife, Saskia; Geertje Dircks, his son's nursemaid; and Hendrickje Stoffels, his servant girl. All three of them he knew sexually and depicted erotically at various times. In fact, his A Woman in Bed (left) seems to have physical elements of all three. But this was only one facet of his knowledge and appreciation for women both visually and physically. When we look beyond his paintings, at his etchings and drawings we get an even deeper perspective into both the breadth and depth of his female studies. It is a look that is so complete that, taken as a whole, we might even class them as an historical documentation of the life of 17th century Dutch women in general. We see them caring for children, making love, having their hair done, performing bodily functions, cooking, dressing, reading, in high fashion, and completely nude. Some are exceptionally beautiful, some merely pleasant, others quite common, and a few downright ugly. We see the feminine sex from childhood to withered old age. And before we've seen very many of them, we easily sense an empathy that couldn't be more sensitive or profound if the images had, in fact, been painted by a woman.



A Woman Hanging on a Gibbet,
1664, Rembrandt van Rijn

Rembrandt's women ranged in scope from a two-and-a-half-inch etching of his mother to a four-foot high painting of Lucretia, (two, actually, bottom) a Roman wife about to stab herself (the second, having done so) after having been raped. But perhaps the prize for the most startling female image in Rembrandt's entire oeuvre has to be reserved for A Woman Hanging on a Gibbet (right). Drawn in 1664, just five years before his death, even by today's shock-art standards, this work is disturbing. To render it, Rembrandt traveled to the killing grounds at Volewijck a ways outside of Amsterdam. There he found Else Christiaens, who had been executed for the murder of her landlady. The court had ordered she be struck several times on the head with the same axe used in her crime, and her body fastened to a pole with the axe over her head, there left to decay and be eaten by birds. Okay, maybe Rembrandt would have done all right in today's art world.

Lucretia, 1664, Rembrandt van Rijn

Lucretia, 1666, Rembrandt van Rijn