Frederic Auguste Bartholdi

One of the most unforgettable moments in any movie I have ever seen occurred near the end of a classic Charleton Heston epic set a thousand years in the future. Heston, a marooned astronaut on horseback, rides along a deserted beach exploring an unfamiliar planet. Suddenly, as he rounds a cliff, to his dismay and despair, there looms up before him a giant, greenish, metal relic of a bygone age.  For the first time he realizes that he has not landed on some upside down world where apes rule and men are hunted like animals, but on his own Earth, several hundred years after a nuclear war has devastated the human population and left the simian survivors to evolve their own higher intelligence and peculiarly superstitious society. What brings this all home to him is, of course, the arm, torch, and upper torso of the Statue of Liberty; cut to a close-up of our hero in anguished horror, fade to black, the end.

Bartholdi's original patent etching

Few symbols could elicit such gut-wrenching, ironic drama. Lady Liberty and her torch stands next to the Washington Monument, St. Louis's Gateway Arch, Mount Rushmore, and the Golden Gate Bridge as gigantic symbols of America. But all these pale in comparison to the beloved symbolism this monumental American logo bears for millions of Americans, many of whom, past and present, took the words of Emma Lazarus, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." quite literally. Lady Liberty is, herself, an immigrant. She was born in Paris around 1881, the brainchild of the noted French sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. She grew over an iron framework designed by Bartholdi's friend, Gustave Eiffel, and bore a striking, if slightly metallic, resemblance to Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People and the sculptor's own mother. Though basically conceived as a noble lady wearing a toga, holding aloft a lighted torch in the manner of a sculpted lighthouse, Miss Liberty went through quite a number of clay permutations before she donned her spiked crown and stone tablet bearing the date, July IV, MDCCLXXVI.

Stereoscopic image of Liberty's arm and torch, American Centennial Exposition, 1876

Bartholdi was born in Alsace, a border province of France, in 1834. When he was two, his father died so his mother took Auguste and his brother to Paris where he quickly displayed an interest in art. Initially he studied painting, then a little architecture, and finally decided he liked best to sculpt.  His early commissions were Napoleonic war heroes and marble busts. He embraced a military career during the Franco-Prussian War but after a number of unfortunate personal incidents, not to mention France's defeat at the hands of Germany in the war, he left his homeland with a bad taste in his mouth for a three month sojourn to America where he enjoyed a whirlwind tour and the opportunity to promote an idea that had bedeviled him for more than ten years.

Liberty's head on display in Paris, 1878

What Bartholdi proposed was a gift, a symbol of his country's appreciation for the close political, military, and cultural friendship they'd shared for a hundred years, and a token of the esteem the French held for the American ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice, not to mention our love of the grandiose. His idea received a warm reception from the powers that be at the time. A site was chosen, and Bartholdi hustled back to Paris to raise the needed $400,000 to create his masterpiece. It was supposed to have been done in time for the American Centennial celebration in 1776. Alas, it arrived some ten years late, but the forearm, and the symbolic torch of liberty did arrive in time and were used to inspire fair goers at the American Centennial Exposition (above) in the effort to raise the $225,000 needed for the base. It would seem the arm and torch also inspired another Frenchman, the writer Pierre Boulle, author of Monkey Planet, the novel upon which was based the movie, Planet of the Apes.

Satirizing Art

Wearing art...clever, funny, even educational, meaning no disrespect whatsoever.
Both Vermeer and Leonardo would be honored and amused.

I've always been of the opinion that art takes itself way too serious. In saying that, I have to confess I've been guilty of doing so far more often than not. I suppose the reason for this is that artists are constantly in search of respect for themselves and their output. "Serious" art tends to lead to their thinking that such respect also entails more sales, more awards, and higher prices. Perhaps it does, though I'd have to say the evidence of that is questionable at best--probably more conjectural than actual. One of the hallmarks of today's Postmodern art is the fact that it tends not to take itself too seriously (or tries not to). Art should be fun, perhaps even funny, and quite often makes its point far better when doing so using humor and satire.

 



Funny? Perhaps, but in poor taste at best, obscene at worst.
Michelangelo was not known for his sense of humor. He'd likely be outraged.

Estevez Gillespie, This Is Not a Medical Satire--
a tribute to Leonardo's Vitruvian Man (1490)
--no reflection on Leonardo though women today
might take issue. Perhaps a male "companion"
piece might be in order.

Several months ago I wrote on the subject of Funny Paintings. I'm not talking here of painting handlebar moustaches on the Mona Lisa. Dali not withstanding, that hasn't been funny since Marcel Duchamp first did it nearly a hundred years ago. Moreover, its also too easy a target as if she and Grant Wood's iconic couple had targets painted on their backs. The same applies to Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, last suppers, crucifixions, and various visual depictions of Jesus. They're not only not funny, but sacrilegious as well. Any point such "art" might make is heavily overshadowed by the element of disgust. Though not religious, the same applies to Munch's The Scream, any number of bare naked ladies lying about on couches, scatalogic, and or pornographic exhibitionism (as seen above) aimed at the perfectly respectable output of artists down through the ages. Such efforts by such "artists" is art desecration just as surely as if they'd attacked the work with a butcher knife. If considered to be art at all, what with various digital photo-editing software, it certainly can't be admired for the technical skill involved.

 



Chicquero does van Gogh's
Starry Night (1889), adding a
whole new dimension to face
painting. Vincent might not be
 "crazy" about the idea.

Not just wearing art, but
becoming art--Roy Lichtenstein's
Wham (1963) by Chiquero.
Satire,as with imitation, may be
the sincerest form of flattery.

Liberty Enlightening the World
regarding Women's Liberty.

It's far easier to make "new" art funny than to make the work of old masters amusing. For the artist attempting to make people laugh with his or her own art, all it takes is a sharp sense of humor, a daring attitude, and an overriding sense of good taste to keep from going "too far." From that point on it's only a matter of employing skills adequate to the goal. The problem with doing the same with "old" art is that doing so all too often leads to a classic piece of art becoming trite. If one artist makes fun of Bartoldi's Liberty Enlightening the World, it may, or may not, be humorous or "enlightening," but if dozens upon dozens, perhaps hundreds, of artists do so, it cheapens the work and its original theme. The trick is to cast a new, amusing light respectfully upon a given work of art, perhaps bringing to light a new, updated view of the artists original intent. In my book, Art Think (above, right) I employed a sketch of the Statue of Liberty dangling a burning bra in place of her torch. The reference was to the "Gorilla Girls" from the 1970s kicking off the Women's Lib movement by climbing to the top of the green lady and setting fires to their bras, then casting them down at Lady Liberty's feet.  Amusing? Slightly, perhaps. Disrespectful of Bartholdi or his work? Not in the least. Adding new meaning to the word "liberty" ? Certainly.

 

                   WOW! Mindboggling...funny...profound...fun...

Lighthouse Paintings

Colossus of Rhodes, Andrei Pervukhin

Unveiling the Statue of Liberty,
1886, Edward Moran

I'm not sure I should be writing about painting lighthouses or even lighthouse paintings. I've only done two (that I can recall) in all my years painting. One of them, the Nubble Lighthouse on the coast of Maine is titled Winter Light (bottom) shown next to a watercolor painting of the same lighthouse by another artist. Both are rather bland compared to those built by the ancient architects and sculptors from the past, the most powerful of which was the Rhodes Lighthouse (above) as depicted by the contemporary digital artist, Andrei Pervukhin. It and the Alexandria Lighthouse were listed as two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And lest you roll your eyes that anyone would build such a Colossus, keep in mind, it has been "guesstimated" to have been somewhere between 393 and 450 feet in height (120 and 140 m), roughly the same size of the big green lady lighthouse in New York Harbor painted by Edward Moran in his Unveiling the Statue of Liberty (left), in 1886. The Colossus of Rhodes was, for many centuries, the tallest man-made structure on Earth.

Choptank River Lighthouse, Cambridge, Maryland, Richard C. Moore

I'm tempted to say that no two lighthouses ever built have ever looked the same, but that would probably be overstating the case. Suffice to say there is a very, very, broad range insofar as appearances are concerned, determined by each ones purpose and location. Some are exceedingly graceful in their tall, noble beauty, while others are downright bug-ugly (above). In any case I'm also sure this wide variation accounts for much of their fascination for artists down through the ages. Painters as renown as the British artist J.M.W. Turner (below) to Claude Monet (below Turner) have turned their hands to painting lighthouses.

Bell Rock Lighthouse, 1819, J.M.W. Turner

The Jetty at Le Havre, 1868, Claude Monet

One of the most prolific lighthouse painters from the 20th-century was the New York-born Edward Hopper. And, although Hopper and his wife traveled far and wide over much of the country starting in 1927 when he sold a painting for the incredible price of $1,500. He was thus able to purchase an automobile for the first time. And though he'd long spent summers painting the New England coastline, he was now able to go in search of subject matter much more easily. Two of Hopper's lighthouse paintings, Lighthouse Hill (below, left) from 1927 and Lighthouse at Two Lights (below, right) from 1929, demonstrate both his affection for such lonely structures as well as his style in painting them. Many critics would go so far to say such works were also a reflection of the artist's quiet, reclusive, introspective personality. Hopper might well have made an excellent lighthouse keeper.

The subject reflects the man.

Hopper wasn't alone in painting lighthouses or in using them as a vehicle in revealing his own persona as an artist. Probably the most popular lighthouse in America, insofar as the painter's brush is concerned, would be the Portland Head Lighthouse on Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Completed in 1791, it is the oldest lighthouse in Maine. Today, the lighthouse is fully automated and maintained by the United States Coast Guard. The former lighthouse keepers' house is a maritime museum within Fort Williams Park. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Portland Head Lighthouse (below) is the fact that, having been painted by so many different artists, it allows us a glimpse into the different ways in which artists look at lighthouses in particular, and painted seascapes in general. Like lighthouses themselves, no two artists' renderings are alike.

The Portland Lighthouse, Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
(The two paintings without attribution are by unknown artists.)

Lighthouse I, by present-day folk artist, Warren Kimble,
perhaps the most personally distinctive lighthouse of the lot.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Winter Light, Jim Lane, the Nubble Lighthouse, also known
as the Cape Neddick Lighthouse, built for $15,000
in 1879, and still in use today.

 

Daniel Chester French

The Minute Man, 1875, Daniel Chester French

Yesterday (just below) as I was writing on the Lincoln Memorial, I realized I'd never written much on Lincoln's most famous sculptor, Daniel Chester French. In contemplating American art, sculptors tend to take a backseat to painters. This may, in fact, be true of art in general, but certainly in the case of American art. Sculpture never caught on as an important art form in this country as it did in Europe. For one thing, it was far more costly than painting, especially during the 19th century when sculpture meant mostly carving stone or cast bronze. Europe had money to spare. And, while Americans were not exactly destitute, what spare cash there was in this country more often went into infrastructure and business investments. I don't know, maybe Americans have always been more practical minded than their European counterparts. Certainly sculpture, among all the arts, may well be the least practical.

Photo by Daderot

The public tour of French's Chesterwood features both finished works and working models, as well as a look at the tools of his art.

Daniel Chester French was born in 1850.  He was a New England boy, the son of a lawyer, judge, and high federal official, growing up with neighbors like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the literary Alcott sisters, Louisa May and Mary, both of whom influenced him to become a sculptor. He studied at M.I.T. for a year and, more importantly, spent several years studying in Florence. You don't get much better training as a sculptor than in the marble-strewn backyard of the Renaissance. In returning home around 1875, French first gained recognition for his famous bronze statue of the Minute Man (top) commissioned by the town of Concord, Massachusetts. Bouncing around from Boston to Washington, DC, to New York for a time, French's reputation and connections with the "gilded age" upper crust brought him a long string of commissions for famous American patriots at a time when such stone idolatry was at its peak of popularity.

 

Andromeda, 1931,
Daniel Chester French

During his lifetime, French was considered the best America had to offer in the art of sculpture, rivaled only by another sculptor of Lincoln, Mount Rushmore's Gutzon Borglum (on a larger scale) and Frederick Remington (on a smaller scale). He could easily be considered the equal of France's Auguste Rodin and Auguste Bartholdi (the Statue of Liberty). During the six months each year, French worked from his summer home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which he called Chesterwood. It was there he first became associated with architect, Henry Bacon, his colleague on the Lincoln Memorial project. French called upon Bacon to design his studio and later supervise the building and remodeling of the house and other structures on the estate. During the winter French worked from a studio in New York. More than any other artist of the turn of the century period, Daniel Chester French was responsible for shaping and influencing traditional tastes and ideals in American art well into the 20th century, even extending beyond those of carved stone and cast bronze. He died at his beloved Chesterwood in 1931 at the age of 81. His final work, Andromeda (above, left), is displayed there today.

 

An excellent video on the man and his art: 
Daniel Chester French: Sculpting an American Vision

 

The Luxembourg Gardens

The Luxembourg Palace, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and sailboats

One of the greatest regrets I have from all my travels is that I did not have enough time in Paris to see all I wanted. Moreover, the chances seem slim that I shall ever get to go back and take in the "leftovers" that didn't make it onto my schedule the first time around (2015). I could easily spend a second week in the city. However, my wife didn't much care for Paris. She complained that everyone spoke French, she didn't like most of the ingredients in French cooking, and in any case, there wasn't much that interested her in the city for which she would be willing to be on her feet long enough to take in. I sympathize somewhat with her last complaint but find the all of them easily worth dealing with. It is Paris, after all. At the top of my "wish I'd seen" list would be the Rodin Museum, the Petit Palace, the Versailles Gardens, and the Luxembourg Palace and Gardens. The gardens especially should be near the top of any "must see" list of anyone visiting Paris. This is about that lovely mid-city garden spot and what I missed.



The Jardin du Luxembourg from the air (top), from a map, and from a map of
the gardens (middle) of the many queens of France which grace the gardens (bottom).

This marks the first of a series of items I'll be doing during the next few weeks and months in highlighting the most beautiful gardens in the world. The Jardin du Luxembourg and all the others were created by artists, which means they are manmade in design. I won't be including "National" Parks such as the Grand Canyon in this country or the Swiss Alps in Europe. They are, in essence, God-made parks, their beauty the grace of God. I think it unfair to compare them to the meager, contrived, decorative efforts of the landscape design artist. Doing so would be like comparing fountains and waterfalls.

The Medici Fountain in spring, autumn, and summer.

Marie de' Medici, of the Florentine de' Medici family, and the widow of France's Henry IV, also the regent for the King Louis XIII, decided to build a palace in imitation of the Pitti Palace in her native Florence. In 1611 she purchased the hotel du Luxembourg (today the Petit Palace) then began construction of her new palace. She commissioned Salomon de Brosse to build the palace and a fountain (above), both of which still exist. Around 1612, as construction was coming along nicely, she had planted 2,000 elm trees, and directed Tommaso Francini, and a series of others, to build a park in the style she had known as a child in Florence. Francini planned two terraces with balustrades and parterres laid out along the axis of the chateau, aligned around a circular basin (top). He also built the Medici Fountain (above) to the east of the palace as a nympheum, an artificial grotto and fountain, minus its present reflecting pool and statuary. The original garden was just eight hectares (a little short of 20 acres) in size.

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1829, Christophe Civeton

Some twenty years later, the queen bought additional land and enlarged the garden to thirty hectares (about 74 acres), then entrusted the work to Jacques Boyceau de la Barauderie, the head gardener of the royal gardens of the Tuileries and the Gardens of Versailles. He was one of the early theorists of the new and more formal jardin à la française (French Garden). He also laid out a series of squares along an east-west alley at the east end by the Medici Fountain, along with a rectangle of parterre de broderies of flowers and hedges in front of the palace. In the center he placed an octagonal basin with a fountain having a perspective toward what is now the Paris observatory. Having created all this, later monarchs largely neglected the gardens in favor of those at Versailles. In fact, around 1780, the Comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII, sold the eastern part of the garden for real estate development.

The Luxembourg Palace and the grand vistas of the Jardin du Luxembourg

An original model of
the Statue of Liberty.

However, in the years after the French Revolution, the new government expanded the garden to forty hectares (almost 99 acres) by confiscating the land of the neighboring religious order. Jean Chalgrin, the architect of the Arc de Triomphe, took on the task of restoring the garden. He revamped the Medici Fountain and laid out a long perspective from the palace to the observatory. He preserved the famous pepiniere, (nursery garden) and the old vineyards, while keeping the garden in a formal French style. A few years later, during and after the July Monarchy of 1848, the park became home to a large population of statuary Queens and famous women of France, lining the terraces. Late in the 19th century, there were added, monuments to writers and artists, as well as a small-scale model of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty. During the reconstruction, Gabriel Davioud, the Director of Parks and Promenades of Paris, built new ornamental gates and fences around the park. He also transformed what remained of the old nursery garden, at the south end of the park, into an English garden with winding paths, and a fruit orchard in the southwest corner.

A panoramic view of the Jardin du Luxembourg

Today, the garden is largely devoted to a green parterre of gravel and lawn enhanced by statues and centered on its large octagonal basin of water, with a central jet. There children sail model boats (top). The garden is famed for its calm atmosphere. Surrounding the basin on the raised balustrade terraces are a series of statues of former French queens, saints, and copies after the Antique. In the southwest corner, there is an orchard of apple and pear trees and the Theatre des Marionettes. The Orangerie displays art, photography and sculptures. The gardens include a large fenced-in playground for young children and a vintage carousel. In addition, there are free musical performances in a gazebo on the grounds next to a small café nearby, under the trees, with both indoor and outdoor seating where visitors may enjoy the music over a glass of wine.

A French sailor boy.

 

New York, New York

New York, New York

Anyone who has ever lived in New York City, or even visited the town knows the place is unlike any other on earth. Chicago may be America's heartland and Washington where all the noise comes from, but it is New York that is the face of America. The Statue of Liberty is plainly the nose on that face, a work of art appropriate to a city in which the "arts" have congregated largely because of the liberty her glowing torch proclaims. These artists of all kinds are the "makeup" of the city where the beauty they create is as vital as its soaring architecture in masking the ugly pockmarks of this massive, sprawling, urban monster. New York has always had Artists. In colonial times, it was the root, literally and figuratively, of the Hudson River School of landscape painting. But it wasn't until the 1920s when the precious liberty its statue advertises made it a magnet for artists all over the world; and where the roots of the New York School could grab hold.

Those roots sprouted in the moist dirt of John Sloan's Ashcan School. They were nourished by the prosperity, also the social, artistic, and intellectual freedom of the Jazz Age. They were hardened and deepened by tough times in the Depression, but fertilized by the Federal Arts Project of that era. They matured quickly in the face of a world war, ready to flower once that war was over. In 1940 there were 40 art galleries in New York City. By 1946 there were 150. Harper's Bazaar featured the work of Mondrian and Fernand Leger as backdrops for postwar fashion spreads. Salvadore Dali was decorating windows for Bonwit Teller Department Stores. Money, the lifeblood of art, could be heard jingling and crinkling all over the city as its corporate pillars replaced its aging bluebloods as the major collectors of art.

The Museum of Modern Art,
midtown Manhattan

The city welcomed it's emigre artists with open arms.  Its Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1929, exposed and expounded upon their work. It would be almost fifty years before Paris had a similar museum (the Pompidou Center) dedicated to modern art. As a town built upon the garment industry and other small manufacturing concerns, by the 1930s, when most of them went broke, New York had literally thousands of empty lofts simply begging to become artists' studios. The likes of Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and Kline could not have melded into a coherent art movement anywhere else in the world at the time. It was here they found the media and the market and the mouthpieces in the form of critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Abstract Expressionism and the New York School were not captives of the city.  The movement spread, but always, it retained the gritty essence of that city which shaped it and allowed it the liberty to paint a self portrait.

Chocolate Art

All chocolate, all competition winners

Ergonomic chocolate

I am sitting here before my desktop keyboard at the moment eating a square of Lindl 70% dark chocolate. It's not candy, It's chocolate, and it's even said to be good for me. Scientists say dark chocolate contains flavonoids which are instrumental in reduc-ing the likelihood of my devel-oping certain types of cancers. Sounds good to me. However, from what I've read, the medical jury is still out on that. More research needs to be done. Where do I volunteer? It would appear, according to the photo at left, that as soon as I finish typing this, I could also eat my keyboard (with a game controller for des-sert).

Roasted Cocoa Beans

A Chocolate Jester

Chocolate has been prepared as a drink for nearly all of its history. One ceramic item found at an Olmec archaeological site on the Gulf Coast of Veracruz, Mexico, dates chocolate's preparation by pre-Olmec peoples as early as 1750 BC. By the 15th century, the Aztecs controlled a large part of Central America adopting cacao into their culture. They associated chocolate with Quetzalcoatl, who, according to legend, was ostracized by the other gods for sharing chocolate with humans. The Aztecs valued cacao beans so much they often used it as a form of money. A turkey cost 100 cacao beans while an avocado was worth three beans. The Spanish may have encountered the cacao bean as early as Columbus' fourth voyage though it wasn't until they took it home and added sugar or honey to counteract its natural bitterness that chocolate began to catch on. The chocolate habit made its way from Spain to Austria and within a hundred years, was prevalent in its various forms throughout most of Europe.



Chocolate candy and the telephone came along about the same time,
but the first chocolate telephone had to wait a century or so.

Chocolate Sculpture by Mandrak

An unfortunate result of this growth in popularity was its hastening of the slave trade in the Americas as cacao plantations sprang up amid the tropical jungles. Producing cacao was a very labor intensive enterprise. Then in 1815, a Dutch chemist introduced alkaline salts to chocolate, which reduced its bitterness. A few years later he created a press to remove about half the natural cocoa butter fat from chocolate liquor, which made chocolate both cheaper to produce and more consistent in quality. This innovation had much to do with why Dutch chocolate is so highly regarded to this day. For the first time chocolate took on the solid form used in sculpting. By 1875, Henri Nestle had invented powdered milk, which he added to the chocolate liquor to create milk chocolate. Cadbury was manufacturing boxed chocolates in England by 1868. Milton C. Hershey purchased their technology and introduced chocolate candies to the U.S. around 1893.

A chocolate sculpture tableau in progress. Notice the missing hand and arms. These are mostly carved except for the repetitious clothing decorations. Virtually all chocolate sculptures of any size or complexity are assembled from separately created units.

A Statue of liberty, 1986
version--tthirteen feet tall,
2.5 tons of chocolate.

As an art medium, chocolate comes in two basic colors, white (without any cocoa solids), and dark, which contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine (both of which can be fatal for pets). Sweet chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cacao mixture leaving as little as a 15% concentration of chocolate liquor. The Europeans require a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. Semisweet chocolate is a dark chocolate with a low sugar content. Bittersweet chocolate is usually about one-third sugar with, more cocoa butter, vanilla, and sometimes lecithin added. Though more expensive than other types of chocolate, bittersweet (or unsweetened) is the preferred medium for artist choosing to carve their chocolate creations (it's denser and thus more stable). Although chocolate is most typically cast into sculptural shapes using molds, insofar as I'm concerned, that's manufacturing rather than sculpting. Typically, artists use molded chocolate when they need to attached repeated shapes to their work. The chocolate Statue of Liberty (above, left) was cast from a scaled down mold (intended for clay) created by the original sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi himself.

Virtually any common, everyday item can be replicated in chocolate. These "pumps" were likely made using molds, their decorations applied by hand using stencils.

Chocolate Eagle

Chocolate is not archival. There is no way to preserve a chocolate sculpture for more than a few months. And if it is to be consumed, anything more than a few days results in a layer of dust settling over the surface, making it, if not inedible, at least distasteful. Therefore, despite all the work, exhibitions of chocolate sculptures are usually quite short, seldom more than a few days. Moreover such works are also prone to breaking and melting unless adequate, and often quite extensive precautions are taken. For that reason, chocolate sculptors are a competitive lot, often going to extreme lengths to outdo one another and attract headlines (and most of all photos) publicizing their work. That was certainly foremost in the mind of Karl Lagerfeld and chocolatier Patrick Roger when they used 10.5 tons of chocolate to create an entire hotel room complete with a semi-nude guest relaxing in his "tighty-whities" (below). The installation was sponsored by an ice cream company.

Chocolate Hotel Room, Karl Lagerfeld and Patrick Roger

Some critics scorned the colossal "waste" of chocolate, not to mention the questionable taste involved in consuming chocolate coated ice cream confections in bed. Yet this piece is relative sedate compared to Death by Chocolate (below) depicting a dismembered human body, its entrails, sickeningly splattered across the display surface. While it may be creative, and certainly daring in concept, (whether rendered in chocolate or some other medium), such work also forces the question as to whether there may be some content areas which simply should not be explored under the guise of art. Human roadkill, to my way of thinking, would certainly come under that heading.

Death by Chocolate. Going too far?

White Chocolate Sandstorm, chocolate as a painting medium.
(Only the painting uses chocolate.)

For real chocolate art lovers.

 

Content Concepts

Color Harmonies, Josef Albers

Yesterday we explored conceptual art. Today, let's talk about concepts in general. The concept or idea is the root from which the work's message grows. Earlier, in discussing "art for art's sake," I noted that such art is often limited to formalistic design elements. We see this in the various squares and color juxtapositions of German-born artist, Josef Albers from the 1950s (above). Just assigning a title for each one (and keeping track of them all) must have been a major chore. There were hundreds of them.

The Three Wings, 1967, Alexander Calder

"Art for arts sake" is not necessarily divorced from all but the reality of its own existence. Alexander Calder's physical shapes and his title, The Three Wings, (above) tell us his concept is one of graceful aerodynamics, in which he contrasts its physical presence with the earth, wind, and sky of its environment.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, Umberto Boccioni

Boccioni employs a stylized figure as a means by which to explore time and space in suggesting the element of movement these two combined concepts allow (above). Unlike Calder, Boccioni demands a neutral environment typical of "art for art's sake" art. And unlike Calder's mobiles, which are physically moved by the wind, here movement is in the mind of the artist and the viewer, making the concept purely one of imagery and imagination. Thus, communicating the concept is much more demanding of the figure itself and the viewer's interaction with it.

Worker and the Collective Farm Girl, Moscow, Communist Art

For most of its history, art was much too important a vehicle in communicating concepts and ideas for the self-conscious dalliances of "art for art's sake." Nowhere is this fact more obvious than in patriotic art and its close cousin propaganda art. The line between them is real, though sometimes quite thin. Not only that, but the labels are interchangeable according to the viewer's point of view. Virtually every culture, every nation, every political faction, every ethnic group has an abundance of both. Is the towering sculpture Worker and the Collective Farm Girl (above), soaring over the streets of Moscow, patriotic while the billboards below are merely propaganda? Both are art. They communicate concepts in a creative manner. Americans might consider both to be Communist propaganda.

 

Tragic Prelude, 1938-40, John Steuart Curry

A close kin to both patriotic and propaganda art is history painting as seen in John Steuart Curry's Tragic Prelude (above). The difference, if there is one, is mostly a matter of timing,. In this case, the work was painted well after the Civil War (or War Between the States). As in the disputed name for the tragedy the title refers to, the strident figure of John Brown, who is either heroic (as Curry tends to see him) or dastardly as viewed by those who hung him in 1859.

 

Liberty Leading the People, 1830. Eugene Delacroix

In a similar vein, Eugene Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People (above), perhaps the French equivalent of Washington Crossing the Delaware or the Statue of Liberty (also French inspired and created). Liberty is a very French concept and the very fact that we have some degree of liberty today we owe figuratively, and in fact, literally to the French. (Remember Yorktown?) Though the French would claim Delacroix's work to be highly patriotic, in 1830 it was seen as a vitriolic piece of revolutionary propaganda. Those who win the revolution also write the history of the revolution and likewise get to label its art. Concepts are often controversial. Artists should not shy away from such concepts for fear of offending when in fact, virtually every social concept worth exploring is likely to offend someone. One person's patriotism is another person's propaganda.

Cookie Monster Leading the People, Combat Art—2011

Art should do more than merely entertain or decorate, it should also enlighten, seeking to persuade. Sometimes art can do all three as seen in the North African Arab Spring painting I've dubbed Cookie Monster Leading the People (above). The image entertains in making us laugh. I guess some might find it decorative to a degree, and even in its humor, we have to admire the revolutionary spirit which, if we compare it to other works in this genre (the previous three images), bears a number of similarities—lots of uplifted arms bearing arms.

 

The Creation of Adam (detail), 1508-12, Michelangelo--how we see God.

Throughout much of history some of the most powerful concepts employing art have been religious. Long before Pope Julius II browbeat Michelangelo into literally rising to the challenge of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and giving us the image of the ultimate Creator in the act of creating (above), art and spiritual concepts were intertwined. Religious concepts are, by their very nature, difficult to comprehend. God, himself, is difficult to comprehend. Think about it. What does God look like? If you find yourself picturing an old man with a white beard, thank (or blame) Michelangelo.

The Last Supper, 1495-98, Leonardo da Vinci

If, in partaking of Holy Communion (Eucharist, Mass, or the Lord's Supper), you find yourself contemplating Leonardo's deteriorated masterpiece purely from habit (above), then perhaps you might want to switch channels and try recalling Salvador Dali's more modern take on the concept (below). Though somewhat (perhaps unavoidably) influenced by Leonardo's imagery, Dali breathes new life into both the concept as well as the execution. His version seems much more spiritual, yet in its surrealism, more physically real.

Last Supper, 1955, Salvador Dali. The painting is close to overwhelming in person.

Some might claim that without a concept the creative effort has nothing to say, nothing to communicate and, in failing to communicate, does not rise to meet the definition of art. Of course, the concept of the concept is a relative concept. Scratch your head and read that again. Let me translate: The concept (idea) of the concept (message) is a relative concept (philosophical entity). It is relative in that a concept may be minimal, trite, tired, passé, overused, overexposed, hackneyed, and needless to say. From there they range all the way up the figurative ladder to the explosively, obscenely, outrageously controversial--that which is apt to offend not just the proverbial "somebody," but the universal "everybody."

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

Some content concepts might entail reaching too far.

Because of this broad range, some might say that art automatically has some kind of concept at some level. If true, then predicating one's definition of art on the concept of the concept is, to mix metaphors, skating on a slippery slope of thin ice. Perhaps it's a pointless debate in any case. The important concept here is not whether there is one but in choosing which one to communicate. The important matter for the artist is to consider the concept first. Doing so should cause an artist to climb that figurative ladder and pluck his or her concept from the highest shelf they can technically and intellectually reach (communicate). Anything less will cause the resulting work to be conceptually handicapped.