Max Liebermann

Max Liebermann's version of Seurat's La Grande Jatte, Garten lokal an der Havel
(ca. 1900), is handled loosely even my impressionist standards. No Frenchman
would have rendered such a mélange. Though the content is the same,
the differences are stunning.

Self-portrait with a Brush, 1913,
Max Liebermann

When we think of Impressionism, we think first and foremost of French Impressionism...and with good reason, in that the movement began in France, and some might say ended there too. Yet I've also written about English Impressionism (09-03-12) as well as American Impressionism (Maurice Prendergast, 12-04-11) (Childe Hassam 12-03-10), and I don't doubt that there was probably Spanish and Italian manifestations of the style as well. In any case there was certainly a German Impressionism and its leading proponent was Max Liebermann. His work bears the unmistakable mark of the French brand, as well it should, he studied there for four years shortly after the Franco-Prussian war just as French Impressionism was starting to gain a foothold in the rough and tumble Paris art scene.

Boys Bathing, 1898, Max Liebermann

But Liebermann was no Frenchman. His work is thoroughly German, if not in style, certainly in content. In flipping through his hundreds of extant works, there is, of course, nature. I would have said "landscape" had I been talking about French Impressionism, but Liebermann's version of the ubiquitous Impressionist landscape is mostly cultivated and urban, often populated to the point of seeming "busy" as in his Garten Lokal an der Havel (top). He loved painting beach scenes depicting nude bathers, though apparently German women were more modest than their French counterparts. His nude bathers are almost entirely male (above). Liebermann also painted café life, women working in factories, ice skaters, boaters, street scenes, and intimate bedroom scenes (and I do mean intimate in the most intimate sense of the work). He was an excellent impressionist portrait artist, in fact, rivaling van Gogh in the number of self-portraits he left behind.

Martha Marckwald Liebermann, 1896,
Anders Zorn

Max Liebermann was born in 1847. He lived through eighty-eight years of European turmoil, serving as a medic in the little dust-up of 1870-71 with the French. Liebermann reluctantly supported his country during WW I. However, as something of an "art politician" during the 1920s, with the advent of National Socialism, his work fell into disfavor. The Nazis discarded it like used toilet paper. He died in 1933, spared the worst of the agonizing years that followed. His wife, Martha, was not so fortunate. Invalided with a stroke, having been forced to sell the family home in 1940, she was notified she would be deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. She took her own life just hours before Nazi authorities came to take her away.

Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple, 1879, Max Liebermann
(Liebermann was Jewish)

 

Juliusz Kossak

The Battle of Ostroleka, 1873, Juliusz Kossak

Juliusz Kossak, 1899,
Leon Wyczilkowski

I've never written about a Polish artist before, and I must confess I know next to nothing about Polish art so I've no idea if Juliusz Kossak is a great Polish artist or merely a very good one. But any artist who becomes the progenitor of four generations of painters and poets can't be insignificant. If you like horses and enjoy 19th century battle scenes involving the cavalry, you'll love the Kossaks. I've painted a few horses in my lifetime (portraits) and I'll confirm, it's awfully easy to paint bad horses. Any equine lover can easily spot anatomical errors while the effort to render the illusion of a shiny coat doesn't come easily. Couple that with huge canvases depicting a whole cavalry unit, both men and horses under combat stress, actively fighting another whole cavalry unit in the helter-skelter melee of battle, and you have a compositional and technical nightmare. Add to that the human figure dressed in flamboyant cavalry uniforms and the artist had better be...not just good...but great.

 

Faithful Companion, 1871, Juliusz Kossak

Juliusz Kossak loved painting battle scenes, it didn't matter which war, or even whether there were horse involved (though usually there were). Moreover, he also like painting the moments before and after a battle as seen in his touching Faithful Companion from 1871. His battles ranged from those of the Crusades to contemporary scenes of the Crimean conflict and the Franco-Prussian war of the early 1870s. He was born in 1824 and died in 1899 so he lived near and during some of the bloodiest conflicts of the 19th Century. Surprisingly, considering their unforgiving qualities, Kossak preferred watercolors over oils--difficult scenes with a difficult medium. He also liked painting massed armies, often parading, a delicate proposition considering the limitations as to size that painting on paper presents.

 

Wojciech Kossak Self-portrait
with a Horse.

Beyond his own painting career, Kossak taught his son, Wojciech (1856-1942), to paint as well, though the son's work follows that of his father insofar as military content is concern, the younger Kossak preferred oils and a looser, more impressionistic style. Moreover, the son also taught his son, Jerzy Kossak (1886-1955) to paint while the girls in the family, Zofia, Maria, Magdalena, and Gloria (from three different generations) became accomplished writers and poets. In more recent years, descendants of the painting Kossaks have conducted summer painting and poetry workshops at the family estate, Kossakowka near Krakow, Poland.

 

Miracle 15 August 1920, 1930, Jerzy Kossak. The younger generations painted WW I.

 Note: For a little fun with a Kossak painting, click here. Tip: Don't click and drag, just click to pick up, and click again to release.

 

The Guggenheim--New York

Wright's masterpiece close-up.

In doing my homework for our trip to Venice I was studying the Peggy Guggenheim Museum there (formerly her villa) at which time I realized that of all the great art museums I've written about, including the Guggenheim Bilbao (09-21-12), I'd never covered the "granddaddy" of them all, Wright's swirling Fifth Avenue creation in New York City. In discussing the Guggenheim, I'm torn between talking about the museum itself, its holdings, or its creation. I've already written about its progenitor, Solomon Guggenheim and his niece, Peggy (06-29-11), and the inimitable Mr. Wright (01-12-12), so there's not a lot left to be said (by me, at least) as to background.

The Guggenheim as originally built 1956-59.

Speaking of backgrounds, the museum itself now has a new (as of 1992, that is) background designed by New York architect, Gwathmey Siegel, a ten-story, 51,000 square foot rectilinear limestone tower which effectively blocks the cacophony of Manhattan skyscrapers which previously cluttered the landscape. Though some objected to the dramatic departure from Wright's organic structure, none have been as vehement as those Wright encountered himself in his conception of the original museum. The tower with additional gallery space and offices does not compete with Wright's design but accentuates it by its contrasting simplicity.

The Guggenheim today. Now if someone could
just find a way to remove the intrusive lamp pole...

Though considered by many as the crowning achievement of Wright's career (he died shortly before it was completed) what has now become a New York cultural landmark was by no means an "easy sell." First commissioned in 1943, the design went through thirteen years of often acrimonious design negotiations between the notoriously cantankerous architect, the Guggenheims, and their foundation before construction finally began in 1956. Even after it opened in 1959, New York art critics found it difficult to accept a building more iconic than the art it contained. Wright insisted the building be as modern as its art, an organic space designed to compliment the art. Critics claimed it competed with the art. Ironically, both were correct, which in retrospect seems a rather meaningless controversy.

 

Wright's creation is as spectacular inside as outside.

Inside is the art, works dating back to the birth of Modern Art with the late 19th century impressionists up through the formative years of the early 20th century to cutting edge 21st century exhibitions as fresh as tomorrow. In listing the names of iconic painters and sculptors from the past century of Modern Art, it would seem easier to name those not included in the Guggenheim collection, except that, actually, I can't think of any. Basically, if the Guggenheim doesn't have it, MoMA does. What MoMA doesn't have is Frank Lloyd Wright. His downward spiral of sloping galleries is worth the cost of admission (Adults--$22, Seniors--$18, children under 12--free) with the art simply an extra, added bonus. I know, that's not the way it's supposed to work, but if it takes a spectacular museum to bring people to see its art, this may be one instance when the end justifies the means.

 

 

 

 

Hans Hofmann

Works by Hans Hofmann

Would you believe, the man on the right did all three paintings? No? If that was your reply, you'd be correct. Hans Hofmann (one "f") did the abstract painting above (as well as his self-portrait, right). The squirrel was painted by a different artist, who lived in a different century (spelling his name with an additional "f"). The Red Squirrel (center) was painted in 1778 by a German Hans Hoffmann, a great admirer of Albrecht Durer (who sometimes went so far as to sign his animal paintings with Durer's distinctive "AD" logo). The colorful abstract (left), To Miz, Pax - Vobiscum, was painted in 1964 by a different German, the more well-known, Hans J. Hofmann, who was, apparently an admirer of no one but himself. One of the websites I visited in pursuing my research had the squirrel attributed to the 20th century Hans Hofmann (along side his actual work), complete with a biography lifted from Wikipedia. The point in all this is that, in doing art research on the Internet, let the "buyer" beware.

Interior Composition, 1935,
Hans Hoffman--a dozen years
before its time.

It wouldn't be going too far, I would think, to nominate the 20th century Hans Hofmann as the "father of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism." The man had quite a number of that group's early abstractionists as his students, influencing such names as Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Wolf Kahn, Louise Nevelson, Larry Rivers, and the art critic Clement Greenberg (who was highly influential himself). Even before he migrated to the United States in 1933 (fleeing Hitler's Germany) he had, for two years, been teaching during the summer months in California. Taking up residence in New York, he taught at the Art Students' League before opening his own schools there and in Provincetown, Mass. Hofmann was something of a "painter's painter," doing work that, at the time (and probably even today), only other painters could really appreciate. Not only that, he wrote and taught what he thought, long before the seeds of his art philosophy took root and sprouted in the 1950s.

Magenta and Blue, 1950, Hans Hofmann

What was this philosophy? In his highly influential book, Search for the Real, Hofmann argued such views that: "...each medium of expression has its own order of being;" that "color is a plastic means of creating intervals;" and "any line placed on the [blank] canvas is already the fifth [line]." Hofmann lived to be 86 years old, long enough to partake of the Abstract Expressionist fruit he'd planted in the minds of his students. And though he was an intellectual, lacking the flamboyance of a Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning, his solid exploration of color masses has stood up quite well against the work of all those he taught to think as well as paint.

 

The Conjuror, 1959, Hans Hofmann--a progression to abstraction

 

William M. Harnett

Job Lot Cheap, 1878, William M. Harnett

William M. Harnett

I've written on tromp l'oel (fool the eye) painting quite a number of times (09-30-10)(07-16-11)(10-01-12)(03-17-13), and though I've mentioned him many times, it came as something of a surprise to realize I'd never actually written about the "king" of such work, William Harnett. Although I've never been one to limit myself to a single content genre as Harnett did, I've always enjoyed trying to emulate or even surpass his efforts. I think the thing that attracts painters to tromp l'oel painting is the opportunity to "show off" so to speak their expertise in eye-hand coordination on such a plainly obvious "stage." Still-life painting, second only to the landscape, is often the first "stage" upon which many artist attempt to perform. It's a means of painting from "life" yet without the difficulties of changing light, movement, and time (unless painting fruit). Yet, true tromp l'oel adds one more requirement--a very shallow stage, usually less than six inches, otherwise the three-dimensional elements of the still life begin working to destroy the illusion. Basically, that means painting fairly "flat" still-lifes.
 

Job Lot Cheap, 1892, Frederick Peto. Harnett and Peto were close friends but
that didn't keep them from competing, each trying to out-paint the other.

William Harnett, born in Ireland in 1848, may have been one of the first still-life painters to realize this "shallow" factor. Having been born during the Irish potato famine, he was fortunate that his family could afford to emigrate to the United States. Harnett became a U.S. citizen shortly after the Civil War and made a living as an engraver of fine silver dinnerware, while studying art at night school, first in his hometown of Philadelphia, later in New York at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. His earliest paintings date from the mid 1870s. Job Lot Cheap (top) is one of his earlier works, displaying two of the most noticeable attributes of Harnett's work, his still-lifes appear not to be deliberately "arranged" (even somewhat disarranged), and they depict very common, everyday objects the viewers would likely confront daily, yet without seeing them as apt subjects for an artist. (His friend, Frederick Peto painted his version with the same title, above, a few years later in a sort of running competition between the two men that lasted most of their lives.)

Vanitas - Still-life, 1625, Pieter Claesz--contrived and by no means common objects.

Harnett was by no means the first artist to try to "fool the eye." The early American painter, Raphaelle Peale, had been most notably successful in the U.S. while Dutch painters such as Evert van Aelst, Pieter Claesz (above), Floris van Dyck, Christian Berentz, Floris van Schooten, and Jan Jansz Treck not only invented the genre but lifted it to high art in the rarified world of 17th century Dutch painting. What Harnett did, aside from continuing to popularize this type of work here, was to realize the importance of the shallow depth of field in enhancing the tromp l'oel illusion of reality. Beyond that, he did so many of them, to the exclusion of virtually any other type of work, that he became quite good at what he did. He didn't even leave us a self-portrait.

1883                                   1884                                        1885
After the Hunt, 1883-85, William M. Harnett.
(The differences in coloration is largely photographic.)

After the Hunt, 1885,
William M. Harnett
the oddball in the series.

After the Hunt, a series of four paintings (above) done over a period of three years (1883-85) marks the high point of Harnett's career. At first glace three of the four appear to be the same painting, though it takes but a moment to notice subtle differences. Only the bell of the horn exceeds the three to four-inch depth limitation Harnett seems to have imposed upon his objects. The fourth in the series (left) is so radically different as to seem to be part of the series only by virtue of its title.

Hollywood

Perhaps the second most familiar Hollywood landmark, the Melrose Ave. gate to Paramount Studios.

Cities sometimes become synonymous with certain of the arts. Venice, where I am today, is a painter's paradise, a mecca for thousands of artists over the centuries whose works survive to give us a colorful, in-depth look at the city's past. Rome is a city of sculpture. Paris boasts its architecture. Vienna is famous for its classical music. In the United States, Nashville, Tennessee, symbolizes country music, while on the "left coast" is another city synonymous with a single art form--Hollywood. In fact, the word has come to represent the entire film making industry. The fact that most films today are not made in Hollywood itself but elsewhere, near and far from it in southern California and around the world, seems to make little difference. Hollywood is a mystique, perhaps as much as it is a community.

Originally intended to be short-lived (18 months), Hollywood's trademark sign has lasted
longer than most of the studios looking up at it's lofty heights.

Like virtually every city on earth, Hollywood's beginnings were humble, though even in its founding bore traces of its make believe future. When we visualize early Hollywood our mental images center upon the famous "Hollywood" sign atop Mt. Lee overlooking the glitz and glamour, yet the sign (originally Hollywoodland) was a relative latecomer (1923). When Cecil B. DeMille, and Oscar Aphel filmed the first Hollywood feature film, Squaw Man, in 1914, using as their studio an old barn, Hollywood was already home to Nestor Studios (below), a film factory founded in 1911, which was then cranking out, one western, one drama, and one Mutt 'n Jeff "one-reeler" per week. And before that, in 1906, the Biograph Company shot A Daring Holdup in Southern California, in the Los Angeles area. None other than the legendary D.W. Griffith, working for Biograph at the time, is said to have shot the first film in Hollywood in 1910 (a 17-minute short titled Old California). Thus when land developers Woodruff and Shoults, came along with iconic blinking sign, Hollywood had long been a growing, bustling, easy money film community/real estate development.

Nestor Studios ca. 1912, the first of the Hollywood "film factories"

Hollywood (the name dates from 1888) became "tinsel town" as the result of two factors. First, it was blessed by some three-hundred days a year of sunny weather (ideal for the "slow" films of the time needing exceptionally bright lighting). Second was the Edison motion picture cartel in the east, busily suing the pants off any film maker who dared not to lease their equipment. In the first decade of the 20th century, California was a long way from Edison's New Jersey home base and considered safe from litigation. Of course the legal hassles were eventually settled during the 1920s, but by that time Hollywood had it's sign, its Paramount, its Warner Brothers, RKO, and Columbia. Palm trees were planted, mansions were built in the Hollywood hills, the town was annexed by Los Angeles (to gain access to public utilities), and Prospect Avenue became Hollywood Boulevard. The city had already become legend.

An old map indicating the original limits of Hollywood, ca. 1920.

I wouldn't be the first person to proclaim that "Hollywood is weird." When the town came into existence in 1903, they banned movie theaters (they had none so it made little difference). The early residence also banned the sale of alcohol (which was quite plentiful, in any case, so that too made little difference). After its annexation to Los Angeles, both restrictions went by the wayside. In the early days, "getting to Hollywood" meant a two-hour streetcar ride up Hollywood Boulevard from Los Angeles, and before the so-called "star system," actors and actresses seldom had their names on the screen, performing anonymously for as little as ten dollars a day. Though usually associated with movie stars, most today live elsewhere, having headed for the hills nearby. In fact, several of the major studios have done the same. Only Paramount, Universal, MGM, and a few others have not taken up residence in nearby areas such as Century City, Culver City and Burbank. Hollywood isn't what it used to be, but then, it's barely a hundred years old, as compared to Venice, which is well over a thousand.

This Hollywood map from the 1950s, while somewhat whimsical,
gives a good feel for "what's where."

James Montgomery Flagg

I Want You, 1917, James Montgomery Flagg
--the face perhaps most responsible for winning WW I.

James Montgomery Flagg
Self-portrait, 1956

If the name at the top doesn't ring a bell the image above should. A few days ago (03-30-13) I ranted regarding those who use the modifier "only" in connection with the word "illustrator." James Montgomery Flagg was an artists who ranks, perhaps a notch below Rockwell, but who also serves to prove the point that illustrators often have a greater impact on history and who we are today than most so-called "fine" artist who have ever live. He was born in 1877 and died in 1960 at the age of 82.

The invention of Uncle Sam ranks right up there with that of Santa Claus as among the most influential men who never lived. Of course Flagg didn't "invent" Uncle Sam any more than another illustrator, Thomas Nast, invented Santa Claus. Flag and Nast merely showed us what these men looked like--in Flagg's case, like himself. He used his own hansom face as a model (adding a few wrinkles along the way). The pose wasn't original (borrowed from a similar British recruitment poster), nor was the costume or the white goatee, but the face was pure Flagg (originally to save time, if not money, in hiring a model).

 

Flagg as Uncle Sam posing his model.

The Red Cross needed Flagg too.



The Fencer, (the alternate
title is obscene),
James Montgomery Flagg

Now, lest you get the notion James Montgomery Flagg painted only patriotic recruitment posters, there was another side to the man. He was a very adept portrait painter. Also, in addition to run-of-the-mill magazine ads, usually for men's clothing (in which he demanded his name not be used), Flagg was Life Magazine's answer to Norman Rockwell, but with something of a spicy twist. Beyond that, however, the man also loved painting nudes, as seen in his voluptuous The Fencer (left). And, while many artists down through the centuries have painted nudes, Flagg did so on a regular basis, supplying fodder for pinup calendars, salacious, even by today's standards, but considered just short of hard core pornography in that era.

Nervy Nat took his airship to Venus (in search of girls, what else?) The welcoming party left something to be desired, as did his crash landing in Paris.

I've always liked artists with a sense of humor; and Flagg's was nothing if not sharp, sometimes to the point of lethal. He was, in fact, a thoroughly adept cartoonist, who enjoyed his altar ego, Nervy Nat (above), with a gusto ranging from merely funny to hilarious. Nor did he take himself and his profession as sacrosanct. His photos with a female manikin hint not only at his sense of humor but his tightfisted grip on the dollar as well. Who needs a live model when you have a vivid imagination? 



Flag with his studio assistant

Flagg's sense of humor extended
to his covers for Life, this one from
1910.