Hyman Bloom

Rabbi with Torah, 1945, Hyman Bloom

Hyman Bloom

In 1940, Hyman Bloom was dubbed the "Greatest Artist in America." Of course, that's easy to say, but hard to prove. It might help to know who said it. That would be none other than art critic Clement Greenberg. Still not convinced? How about we add the names Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning? Okay, that's a bit more impressive, even though at that early date, before the war, none of these would-be stars of modern art were exactly what you'd call household names. And while we're dropping names, add to the list Ashile Gorky and John Marin, who, along with Bloom, Pollock, and De Kooning, were among only seven artists receiving Guggenheim Fellowships to represent America at the 1950 Venice Biennale (the world's most prestigious international art competition). Pollock and De Kooning considered Bloom "the first Abstract Expressionist artist in America." And since American artists, in effect, gave birth to Abstract Expressionism, that might be considered quite a distinction. Yet, even though the same year, the Whitney Museum of American Art gave Bloom a highly regarded retrospective, why is it, given all these other instantly recognizable artist icons, we find ourselves wracking our brains, not recognizing the name Hyman Bloom?

 

Seascape II, 1974, Hyman Bloom

Hyman Bloom was born a hundred years ago, 1913, within a decade of most of the others we've mentioned. He was Jewish (as was Greenberg), born in what is now Latvia, but then a part of the Russian Empire. Thus his work was influenced by his Jewish heritage, but also a long list of others, including Albrecht Altdorfer, Grunewald, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, William Blake, Rudolph Bresdin, J.M.W. Turner, John Martin, Chaim Soutine, and Denman Ross. That's quite an artistic pedigree, especially for an abstract expressionist. In truth, in studying Blooms work, it's not hard to see elements of each of these historic artists. The only reasonable reason to account for Bloom's relative obscurity as compared to these other stars of the famed New York School would seem to be that his career peaked too soon.

 

Nightfall (detail), 1981, Hyman Bloom

Jackson Pollock hit pay dirt with a four-page spread in Life magazine in August 1949. De Kooning rose to fame in 1953. Gorky's fame came mostly after he hanged himself (at the age of 44) in 1948. Marin's reputation came to life somewhat earlier, in the 1930s, but he was by far the oldest of the lot (born in 1870). And then there was Greenberg, who was in fact, more a writer than painter, and has the distinction of having been one of the first to embrace Abstract Expressionism and thus the entire "faculty" of the New York School. Though it might be going a bit far to say Greenberg made it all happen, he certainly played a part in elevating himself and the others to stardom. It would seem that Bloom simply fell through the net. We might suggest, in fact, that Abstract Expressionism came and went leaving Bloom in is colorful dust. Not so fast. Hyman Bloom had one important advantage. Pollock, De Kooning, Gorky, and all the others lived and died in the previous century. Bloom lived well into the 21st Century, until 2009, in fact, when he died at the age of 96. Longevity has its advantages. Only as they commenced writing his obituary did critics begin to ask, whether, quite possibly, and despite all the others, Hyman Bloom might actually have remained the first, perhaps even the greatest abstract expressionist in America.

Wrestlers, ca. 1930, Hyman Bloom, Harvard student drawing created from memory.

 

Mention This, Not That

Could I have just a little of both?

My wife is a foodie. That is, she watches the Food Network on TV a lot, counts calories, reads labels, and is very conscious of what she eats. She also harps a lot when I don't follow her great example. My theory is, you only live once, and so what if my favorite cherry smoothie cuts one or two seconds off my lifespan with every sip. My wife also follows the "Eat this, not that" articles which often appear in magazines having to do with making wise choices as to similar food items. Along that same line of reasoning, I've decided to suggest certain, names people should mention in discussing art which are "healthier, lower in calories, and less pretentious" than the "brand name" artists with whom everyone is already familiar and who have become tired, overexposed household names. For instance, mention Leger, not Picasso.

 

Mention this...not that.       

Pablo Picasso was famous for Cubism. Some wit has labeled Fernand Leger Leger's art "Tubism" because of it is similar to Cubism only more rounded, sometimes having cylindrical qualities. Leger and Picasso knew one another and ran with the same Paris West-Bank crowd. And even though Leger was a few months older than Picasso (they were both born in 1881) there's no doubt who influenced whom. Both men took their brief flirtation with their favorite "ism," and worked at refining it, then moved on. Leger died in 1955 at the age of seventy-four. Picasso died twenty years later, in 1975, at the age of ninety-four. Picasso must have eaten a lot more of "this," not "that."

Mention this...not that.     

Rembrandt van Rijn is considered the greatest of the Dutch Golden Age painters. Carel Fabritius might well hold that high position of esteem had he lived past the age of thirty-two. Rembrandt died in 1669 at the age of sixty-three. The two were not exact contemporaries as were Leger and Picasso. Rembrandt, born in 1606, was sixteen years older than his talented young student. Fabritius died tragically on October 12, 1654, when a gunpowder magazine near his studio exploded, destroying about a fourth of Amsterdam, and taking the life of the young artist, along with that of his student, Mattias Spoors. As the self-portraits (above), painted when they were approximately the same age, demonstrate, the two were definitely cut from the same cloth.

Mention this...not that.       

Norman Rockwell is probably the best-known, most beloved American artist who ever lived. He had a whole host of imitators. Jon Whitcomb was not one of them. If anything, we find the iconic Rockwell imitating Whitcomb as seen in the comparison to two similar portraits of mid-20th-century movie stars Janet Leigh and Ann Margaret painted roughly at the same time. Whitcomb's stock in trade was beautiful women. Rockwell painted...well, rather ordinary women (to say the least). Rockwell, born in 1894, was twelve years older than Whitcomb, born in 1906, but both worked well into their eighties. Their style is similar, but only because public tastes demanded it. Rockwell's paintings told stories. Whitcomb's illustrated stories. If he tried, Rockwell could paint beautiful women too.

Mention this...not that. 

In 1940, the famed art critic, Clement Greenberg, called Hyman Bloom, "the greatest artist in America." Where was Jackson Pollock? Painting living room walls? Well, yes, that's not far from the truth, except they were more like post office walls. Pollock was working for the WPA Federal Art Project at the time. Clement Greenberg, later had a few kind words to say about Pollock too, words like "volcanic, undisciplined, explosive, and compulsive." (He meant them as a compliment.) Born in 1912, Pollock was, in fact, a year older than Bloom. I guess, you might say that the latter artist "bloomed" first.


Modern Art to mention...if you can.

These are only a few possibilities. If you want to dig a little, you might mention Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull in the same breath (Trumbull being the less well-known). And the next time someone goes on about Claude Monet you might casually mention Blanche Hoschede Monet, who happened to be his stepdaughter and a highly talented Impressionist in her own right. If you really want to open up a can of worms, you can compare Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas Poussin. Don't forget to mention the Poussinistes and the Rubenistes. In any case you'll sound more aesthetically astute if you mention the more obscure artists rather than the household names.

A mix of the famous and those who
should be more famous.

 

Charles Hopkinson

Growing old on canvas.            

I like to think that I'll grow old and gray, passing away with a paintbrush in my hand sometime after the centennial of my birth. Perhaps minus the paintbrush, we all have such delusions. Actually quite a number of artists born in the past century or two have often come close to that distinction. Picasso was ninety-two when he died. Marc Chagall lived into his 97th year, Hyman Bloom, the Jewish modernist lived to be ninety-six, Willem de Kooning, ninety-two, and of course, Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses lived to be 101. Charles Sydney Hopkinson lived to be ninety-three. For those not familiar with the name, Hopkinson was mostly a portrait artist. He was born in 1869, died in 1961. I'm a portrait artist, born in 1945. I'm in relatively good health; I have a wife who watches my diet; an agile mind, good genes, a few cases of prolonged longevity in my family tree, and still get around pretty well--so far so good.

 

Charles Hopkinson Self-portrait,
ca. 1890, around twenty years of age.

Charles Hopkinson Self-portrait,
1961, age ninety-two.

Hopkinson struck me as interesting in that, as a portrait artist, he painted his first self-portrait around the age of twenty (above, left). He painted his final self-portrait when he was ninety-two (above, right). Obviously he was no Dorian Gray. What is most interesting are the self-portraits he painted between 1890 and 1961 (top). He painted some sixty-seven other self-portraits at irregular intervals throughout his life, approximately one every two or three years. Even Rembrandt didn't leave such a painted record of himself growing old (counting Rembrandt's etched self-portraits, they're about neck and neck). And while Hopkinson was no Rembrandt, his self-portraits offer a level of insight into his character and his own self-image to rival any by van Gogh, Rembrandt, or Picasso.

Edward Estlyn Cummings, age one,
(though he looks somewhat older than that),
Charles Hopkinson

Charles Hopkinson was a New Englander, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his father the owner of a private school from which Charles graduated in 1887, then enrolled in nearby Harvard where he began his art career drawing cartoons for The Harvard Lampoon. Choosing to become an artist, Hopkinson graduated from Harvard straight to New York's Art Students League and from there to the Academie Julian in Paris. By 1895 he was exhibiting in the Paris Salon. He returned to New York in the mid-1890s to try and establish himself as a portrait painter. His first commission came to be something of a curiosity, the first portrait of the poet, E.E. Cummings, before he became famous. Cummings (right), is said to have been about a year old at the time.

Hopkinson, his wife, and five daughters pose for a family portrait, 1923-24.

Yacht Races, Charles Hopkinson. Sailing is in
the blood of virtually every New England artist.

Despite E.E. Cummings, Hopkinson's career as a portrait artist was off to a rocky start. He had better luck in returning to France where he became adept at painting with watercolors along the Brittany coast and touring Europe in pursuit of Velasquez, El Greco, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt (who perhaps inspired his penchant for self-portraits). The early 1900s were a turbulent time for Hopkinson as he divorced his first wife, Angelica, married a second, Elinor, and became the father of a daughter, Harriet, born in 1904 (four more daughters were to follow during the next ten years). Although he displayed in prestigious shows and won several awards (usually bronze) it wasn't until he began painting portraits of his uncle and his friends that his career began to gain altitude. His uncle happened to be Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard University. He painted his uncle six times. During the next several years, Hopkinson became the Harvard house portrait artist.

Photography magnate, George Eastman, poses for a 1929 Hopkinson portrait
(apparently not done from a photo).

President Calvin Coolidge, 1931,
Charles Hopkinson

Although he exhibited in the landmark 1913 Armory Show in New York, Hopkinson was not a part of the New York art scene. He was too "Boston" for that, preferring to paint watercolor seascapes of the rocky New England coast or racing yachts (above, right) instead. But for the most part, that was just a summer diversion. During the course of the next several years, as a popular portrait artist he painted such personages as John D. Rockefeller Jr, (1927), George Eastman (of Eastman Kodak, 1929), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1930, the first of three). And in 1931, Hopkinson painted the official White House portrait of President Calvin Coolidge (left) after he'd left office.

A much more relaxed 1952 portrait of the Hopkinson granddaughters,
Mary, Alice, and Marjorie

Two generations of Hopkinson girls.

Over the course of his lifetime, Hopkinson painted over eight hundred portraits, some bearing the likenesses of those quite famous, others simply friends and those who could afford his fees. In later years, following the death of his second wife in 1947, Hopkins mostly collected awards and honors. He traveled around the world, spending time with friends in Europe and one of his daughters in New Zealand. He painted what he saw there in watercolor, and what he saw in the mirror each morning in oils. His palette lightened, his style became looser, his later portraits centering mostly on his five daughters and their daughters.

Embassy Garden, New Zealand, 1952, Charles Hopkinson

 

 

The Venice Biennale

As we arrived in Venice this summer, it was hard to ignore Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant, perched in front of Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore just across the water from St. Mark's Square. The inflated sculpture, depicting a pregnant woman handicapped by the drug, Thalidomide, was part of the British presence at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

A few days ago, in exploring the art of the early abstract expressionist, Hyman Bloom (08-24-13), I mentioned in passing his having been a part of the American delegation to the 1950 Venice Biennale (Biennial, in English). I called it in the briefest terms, "the world's most prestigious international art competition." It is that, of course, but so much more. We might be tempted to call it "the World Series of art," though that phrase may be too American to be appropriate. Perhaps a better designation would be "world's fair of art," though these once popular international extravaganzas are now becoming somewhat rare, not to mention inconsequential. That does not describe the Biennale (pronounced bee-en-AL-ee). Held, as the name suggests, every other year (odd numbered years since 1993) it's about as consequential as the world of art gets these days. Likewise, the image of a world's fair with dozens of national pavilions in a park-like setting is quite accurate. The United States has had a (somewhat dated, architecturally) pavilion there since 1930.

The American pavilion, circa 1930, seemingly designed by
Thomas Jefferson with an assist by Louis Sullivan.

Venice's Giardini, the World's Fair of Art.

The Giardini, is a large park on the eastern tip of the main Venetian islands. Though ignored by the city's populace and somewhat rundown most of the time, every two years the park is immaculately spruced up to host the Biennale. I counted thirty permanent pavilions on the map (above), the largest being Italian (of course) the smallest, next door, that of Iceland. The American pavilion is near the center, in a "U" shape accentuating a modest Greek portico, probably thought to be quite appropriate eighty years ago, though hardly an exemplar of American architecture today. Each pavilion houses what is presumably the best that country has to offer in the way of art, with each curator striving to out-stun visitors with their artistic daring. Countries not having pavilions display at various palazzos elsewhere in Venice. Work too large for inside display is likewise farmed out to various important sites around the city. One such work I couldn't help but notice was that of British artist, Marc Quinn (top). My question was, in seeing this eye-catching piece displayed on the piazza just to the left of Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore, "I wonder if anyone asked the local parishioners if the they wanted a huge, pregnant, naked woman on their front doorstep?"



The Venice Biennale, 1954, Francis Bacon,
Lucien Freud, and Henry Moore were the headliners.

The Venice Biennale first began in 1895 as little more than a local art show run by the city emphasizing the sale of local decorative arts. As the 20th century dawned, the show gradually became international. From 1907 on, permanent national pavilions began to pop up with Argentina being one of the first. After WW I modern art raised its startling head as many modern day art icons began to display their work. Names such as Braque, Matisse, Calder, Dufy, Arp, Giacometti, and Rauschenberg dot the list of prize winners. By 1930, the show had grown too big for the city of Venice to handle, so it was passed off to the country's fascist government which initiated similar, but separate, festivals in music, film, architecture, and dance during the off years. What had, before, been mostly an art sales event became a true competition as Grand Prizes were initiated for painting and sculpture. Such prizes were abandoned in 1968 in favor of a lifetime achievement award and another for "Best Pavilion." Called the Leone de'Oro (Golden Lion), this list has since grown to include two more categories, Best Artist and Best Young Artist.

The 2013 Venice Biennale Russian pavilion
---beautiful, highly scientific, and I didn't understand a work of it.

After time-out to have a world war, the Biennale became more about prizes than sales, which were officially suspended in 1968. In more recent years, the Post-Modern era has seen the Venice Biennale become far more about the making of artists' international reputations than selling or even winning prizes. The 2013 show hosted some 300,000 visitors, though the real audience came via television and the Internet. Mere paintings (no matter how large) hanging on pristine white walls are ignored in favor of room-size installations, ostensibly promoting some important theme or protesting some social injustice, but all too often seemingly more intent upon shocking the viewer or creating massive, stunning, visual impressions. However, stunning people gets to be harder and harder every two years. In defining the Venice Biennale, perhaps it would be best to call it a barometer registering the state of art in the world today.

Spiral of the Galaxy, a giant bronze seashell also by Marc Quinn.
My first impulse was in wanting to touch it. A guard nearby said, no in Italian.