James Bard




The Fanny, 1831, James and John Bard



If you know anything at all about artists, you know that, like doctors, they tend to specialize. I've always insisted that the greatest compliment one can pay an artist is to say he or she is versatile. No insult intended, but James Bard was not versatile. James (and in the beginning) his twin brother, John, from a very early age, specialized. Their earliest joint work dates from 1827, though it may be lost. The earliest confirmed work by the two that I could find is a watercolor from 1831, The Fanny (above). They were born in 1815, so that would have made them sixteen at the time. No, it does not depict an adolescent fascination with the female derriere but a fascination with steamboats, which by the time the boys became teenagers, were a daily sight in the harbor of New York City and on the Hudson River near where they were born.

 

Syracuse, 1857, James Bard

Neither of the boys had any formal art training. They learned to paint and draw the hard way (and perhaps the best way) by doing a lot of painting and drawing. Over the course of James Bard's lifetime, he painted or drew more than 3,000 different vessels, as well as multiple images (with different backgrounds) of the same boats. Though the twins' first efforts were somewhat crude, they improved notably during the 1840s when James began to paint on his own and switched to oils. Bard's painted backgrounds are improvised (at best) though, over the course of his career, he did managed to get a handle on painting water (sort of). The brothers' last joint effort is dated 1849. Historians suggest Bard painted virtually every steamboat operating in the New York area during his working lifetime. These same marine historians "love" his work in that it makes their work easier. In many cases, Bard's highly detailed, highly accurate images are the only record, not just of various boats' appearance, but of their very existence.

 

Norma, 1855?, James Bard. Though
specializing in steam, Bard also painted
the occasional sailing ship.

Though often painting for wealthy boat owners (his own brother-in-law, for instance) indications are he barely eked out a modest living from his work. There's no record of his ever owning real estate of having a checking account. Though Bard and his wife had six children, only one, a daughter, lived to adulthood. Though hundreds, of his works survive, details of the artist's life are sketchy. Some suggest the brothers ceased their collaboration when John joined the California gold rush. In fact, James apparently spent some time in California as well, painting Sacramento River steamers. In any case, he died penniless in the care of his daughter in 1897 at the age of 81.

 

Horse Jack of Woodbridge, NJ, 1871, James Bard

Unlike most artists, even those who specialize, Bard left behind no self-portraits, not even a faded photo so that we might know what he looked like. In fact, insofar as I can tell, only once did he depart from his artistic forte, a single instance when he painted a horse (right, quite unsuccessfully too, I might add). It was some fifty years after his death before anyone deemed Bard's work significant enough to mention in print. And like many such artists, it has been only in recent years that the steamboats of James Bard began bringing respectable prices, most being in the five-figure range. However one recently brought $200,000 at auction. Thus, in common with dozens of other "bread and butter" artists, only their collectors (or heirs) really profit from their work.

Syracuse (detail), 1857, James Bard.
As with the work of many self-trained artists, Bard
excelled at painting minute details. His relatively modest sized
paintings offer a wealth of information for marine historians.

 

Origami

Russian Peacock, 2012, Denierim (no scissors allowed)

This past spring, my granddaughter (along with my airman son and her mother) returned from a three-year stint in Japan. Being the exceedingly bright twelve-year-old she is, while in the land of the rising sun, she picked up far more than the rudiments of the ancient Japanese art of paper folding they call origami. (She's also into duct tape art, but we won't hold that against her). I've never been much of a sculptor and I'm doing good to fold napkins so they'll stand on their own, so she didn't even try to teach me even the simplest complexities of the art form. Suffice to say, her grandmother and I found her creations (and watching her create them) endlessly fascinating.

 

Wet-folded origami.

Origami is said to have originated in its earliest, simplest form around a thousand years ago, though it wasn't until the 17th century that the really good stuff like animals, flowers, and figures evolved. And to my surprise, there are actually a half-dozen distinctly different types of origami, including action origami, modular origami, wet-fold origami, Pureland origami, and Kirigami (which allows cutting of the paper). A few days ago I wrote on Mathematical art (07-17-13). It will undoubtedly come as no surprise to those adept at paper folding that the two are closely related. And, like mathematical art, the computer has intruded into the ancient art of origami design as well, eliminating much of the trial and error approach of the ancient innovators.

 

Origami for rich Republicans (impress your friends, use large denominations)

The starting point in origami is not the first fold, but the paper itself. Virtually any flat material capable of holding a crease may be used with varying degrees of success (money works well). However, traditional origami usually relies on a thin, tough, paper, cut to form a square, and usually colored on one or both sides. Size is irrelevant. Wet-fold origami requires a heavier paper with natural starches. This allows for curves, rather than the standard, angular folds. Often more than one sheet of paper, folded to interlock together, are used in the more extravagant constructions. Pure origami allows neither scissors nor glue, though some modern practitioners cheat a little on the glue restrictions.

It doesn't get much simpler than this.

For starters...

The ubiquitous crane (left, the bird, not the construction type) is often the first instructional piece. Directions (as seen above) almost always rely on drawings, and anyone with a modicum of eye-hand coordination usually achieves success. After that, it all comes down to patience, manual dexterity, and the ability to endure no small amount of frustration. Given enough paper and enough time, there is virtually no limit as to subject matter, even works inspired by M.C. Escher (a natural choice) and Vincent van Gogh (not so natural a choice). So far, I've not seen any origami portraits, but it might be fun to try. I'll mention it to my granddaughter the next time I see her.

Origami fashions, Bare Rose. They can only be worn once and are highly
restrictive of movement. (Heavy breathing causes tears and tears.)


 

 

Snow Sculpture

With apologies to Robert Indiana, some people LOVE snow.

That's snow ordinary Batman,
and far removed from an
ordinary snowman.

First you collect a LOT of the stuff. This sculptural medium is prone to very rapid deterioration on days like today in Ohio (92 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade). Seriously, I went in search of a cool topic for a very hot summer day. (It came down to either snow or air-conditioned art museums.) Although few people would claim to be sculptors, a similar few have never, ever, tried their hand at this sculptural media. And before you wonder why I'm waxing eloquent regarding the "Frosty" front lawn guardian of winter, let me assure you, this versatile, though quite frustrating and technically demanding medium, soars far beyond the common, everyday, run-of-the-mill snowmen we've all created as children or parents of children.

 

The Japanese have even perfected
the art of snow portraiture, in
this case, golfer, Ryo Ishikawa.

This is not about the seemingly more noble medium of ice sculpture (04-01-13). Though they might appear to be similar, snow is different from ice. Though winter wonderland artists might endlessly argue the point, to my way of thinking, and bearing in mind my rather limited experience in either medium, I'd say snow is probably the more technically difficult of the two. Ice is firm, hard, and relatively strong. Snow is none of these. Sculptors attack ice with chisels and chainsaws. Snow is delicately formed with butter knives, shovels, spoons, and maybe the occasional hacksaw. If all else fails, bare hands may be the order of the day. Whatever the case, the operant description of the medium, under even the coldest, most blustery, ideal winter conditions is "fragile." (Whee, I'm feeling cooler already.)

 

It doesn't snow much in Athens, Greece, so the Japanese constructed their
version of the Parthenon to commemorate the Athens Olympics in 2004.
(14 meters high, 20 meters wide, 26 meters long)

Snow sculptures (along with those of ice) are the hallmark of today's highly popular winter carnivals spread broadly over the northern hemisphere among countries all around the world. Harbin, China, has one of the oldest ones, St. Paul, Minnesota, one of the best in the U.S. If you're thinking in terms of rolling up a giant snowballs, and perhaps stacking them and patting them into shape with clumsy mitten-clad hands, you're definitely a rank amateur. Serious snow carvers pack their 20-30 degree material into rectangular cubes, leaving it to refreeze overnight, before upending their molds and moving the resulting blocks into position for carving not unlike the Egyptians used limestone three-thousand years ago.

 

How it's done--scaffolding, a broom, and a steady hand.

The difference is, aside from the temperature and overall weight of the materials, snow sculptors today are far more creative than their Egyptian counterparts. The best the Egyptians could do was Ramses II and maybe a sphinx or two. Though snow sculptors are the first to recognize and respect the limitations of their medium, there is virtually no theme (from the mean machine to the obscene extreme) which they will not attempt. There are failures. Snow does not "overhang" well (and if it does, not for long). Height seems to be no limitation, and snow takes well to small details, modeled or molded when the need for repetition arises. Far more than their icy counterparts, snow sculptors must be "engineers." Forget starting out with only a vague idea and hoping for the best. The most successful snow sculptures are drawn out, sometimes to full-scale, front, side, and top, then executed with all the precision of Michelangelo carving his David. Yet, unlike white marble, white snow is more forgiving, allowing for inspired, momentary creativity far more akin to wax or clay than any other medium. The only problem seems to be the lack of the sizable freezer space sufficient to preserve such works of art.

If you build it, they will come--the biggest fans of snow sculpture.

 

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is, first of all, a mountain, long before it became one artist's masterpiece.

Gutzon Borglum

Sometimes, an artist becomes so identified with a single masterpiece it's hard knowing whether to write about the art or the artist. That's definitely the case with Gutzon Borglum, the Danish-born sculptor, whose art has far overwhelmed his personage as an artist. Part of the problem is the name--not exactly unforgettable. He was also a sculptor, an art which has always taken a seat in the back of the bus insofar as name recognition is concerned. I've written on quite a number of them, sculptors whose work has become iconic--Bartholdi, French, and other monument carvers. Invariably, like Borglum, mention of their names in conversation usually brings a blank stare or the one-word question, "who?"



Mount Rushmore before 1927.
Washington took shape at the
highest point, slightly left of
center in the photo.

If the artist is not exactly a household name, certainly the story of Mount Rushmore has begun to approach the level of national folklore. The mountain was named for a prominent New York banker in 1885. At least he was prominent then, today...not so much. The Lakota Sioux tribe in the area had long called the mountain "Six Grandfathers." A sculpted tourist attraction was first proposed for the Black Hills area in the early 1920s, though the intent was for the site to be a mountain range called the Needles nearby. However Borglum quickly rejected that site because of the poor quality of the granite and the slender "needles," which he found too slender to accommodate his concept. Original backers had intended the memorial to honor western pioneers and explorers. Borglum rejected that too, in favor of a more national theme.

Even the model was monumental.

Abe emerges, wart and all.

As any artist will tell you, a lot can happen between inspiration and consummation. Borglum's original plaster model (above) shows the figures of Washington and Lincoln from the waist up, including hands and arms. A shortage of funds intruded upon that idea. Still, a lot that could have happened didn't. With minor refinements, the fourteen-year project managed to arrive at completion just before Pearl Harbor and without a single casualty or major conflict. Such a project has the bonus element of lifting an artist to a level where his talents are in demand for other projects. Marietta, Ohio, near my hometown, boasts a Borglum monument from the same period as Rushmore. (Hey, an artist has to eat.) Titled The Start Westward, and dedicated by President Roosevelt in 1938, it commemorates the 150th anniversary of the pioneer landing on the shores of the Ohio River at Marietta to begin "the start westward." Carved from native Ohio sandstone, despite efforts at preservation, 75 years have not been kind to Borglum's noble, frontier visages. Ohio sandstone is a wretched substitute for South Dakota granite.

The Start Westward, 1938,
Gutzon Borglum

The Start Westward,
(looking eastward).

 

Guercino

Guercino Self-portrait, 1635

In perusing the work of 17th century painters (especially Italian painters) it's sad to realize that any number of impressive, world class painters, heir to all the Renaissance had to offer, were, by the same token, so overwhelmed by the masterful works and fame of their forbearers as to be largely ignored, if not forgotten today. For every Michelangelo, Raphael, or Leonardo their were dozens of names like Piranesi, Federico, Zuccari, Pomarancio, Saracini, and Mengs who, had they live and worked  in different times, might now be household names. Even the big names from this era, Caravaggio, Poussin, Carracci, and Claude Lorraine have difficulty resting in the shadows of the Renaissance giants. They're known and well-respected by those of us involved in the arts, but virtually meaningless to everyone else.

Elijah Fed by Ravens, 1620, Guercino

One such artist deserving of much more name recognition than he gets is Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known by his nickname, Guercino, Italian for "squinter" (he was cross-eyed). Guercino was born in a small Italian village about halfway between Bologna and Ferrara in 1590. Indications are he was mostly self-taught, though, in his late teens, he was apprenticed to a Bolognese artist named Gennari, who has suffered the same fate as to fame as did his pupil. Such was his talent that by the age of 25 Guercino had moved up to the likes of Ludovico Carracci where he painted his first memorable works, Elijah Fed by Ravens (left) and Samson Seized by Philistines. Although working with Carracci, his work bears far more of a resemblance to that of Caravaggio, whose paintings he apparently knew only from second-hand sources. His most recognized work, Et in Arcadia Ego (below, right) from around 1618-22 bears many Caravaggio hallmarks, though traces of Guido Reni and Annibale Carracci can also be discerned. In effect, he seems to have soaked up the best of all those around him, in an eclectic style making his work quite popular at the time, but too amalgamated to cause much of a stir among art historians since.

Et in Arcadia Ego, (I, too, was once in Arcadia)
1618-22, Guercino

After laboring several years in Rome for several cardinals and a pope, Guercino returned to Bologna in 1642 following the death of Reni, where he set up an impressive workshop turning out over a hundred altarpieces and some twelve dozen other major works. The man appears to have not only been quite adept, but something of a slave-driving workaholic as well. His drawings in chalk or ink number close to a thousand. Never married, Guercino died in 1666 at the age of 76, a respectable old age for his time and a very wealthy man. Apparently hard work and talent may sometimes lead to fortune without also encompassing fame.

 

St. Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin, 1652-53, Guercino.
It's amazing what artists come up with when they feel free to speculate on saints.


 

 

Mathematical Art

Diagnosis Cancer, Titia van Beugen, Dutch mathematical artist.
She died of breast cancer in 2010.

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possess not only truth,
but supreme beauty--a beauty cold and austere, like
that of sculpture.”  --Bertrand Russell
                                         British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872-1970)

Very often artists, like the majority of other human dwellers upon this earth, are adverse to mathematics. Art and math would seem to be polar opposites--output from opposite hemispheres of the cerebral cortex. Few artists might argue with that, though, today, quite a number of mathematicians would. As a young man, I was endlessly fascinated by architecture (still am) but I was never very good at higher mathematics. I hated algebra, was barely on speaking terms with geometry, and terrified by calculus and trigonometry. Slide rules (remember slide rules?) always seemed like more trouble than they were worth, and I was born too soon to benefit academically from pocket calculators. Had all this not been the case, I might have become an architect rather than an art instructor/painter/writer.



The Meeting of Solomon and Sheba,
1450-52, Lorenzo Ghiberti, east door of the
Florence Baptistery--perfect perspective.

Actually the relationship between math and art is long and surprisingly intimate. By the 14th century there was a whole book on perspective by a mathematician named Alhazen, though it took mathematically inclined Florentine artists such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and his friend, Filippo Brunelleschi, to translate his by-the-book formulas into practical applications and teach them to all the mathematically adverse Renaissance artists to follow. Of course, architects such as Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, though artists, have, by necessity, embraced mathematics far more readily than did painters (for reasons outlined above). 

 And that's pretty much where things stood for five hundred years--mathematicians occasionally toying with art, but few artists, like myself, having more than a passing acquaintance with the underlying formulas governing the linear perspective they employed daily. Then came computers. Mathematicians, had, in fact, been graphing their obscure algebraic equations for centuries, but the calculations, not to mention the crudity of their tools, made such efforts way too time consuming to be more than a quickly passing fancy. Mathematicians had better things to do with their valuable time than draw pictures.

 

A Mandelbrot set, featuring
virtually infinite complexity.

With computers, first there was Mandelbrot--Benoit Mandelbrot (02-24-12), an IBM mathematician who, in 1979, with his pioneering work in fractal geometry, was among the first to grasp the fact that the ever-increasing speed of a digital processors erased the primary obstacle in the marriage of art and higher mathematics. But Mandelbrot was a mathematician first, and only an artist, of sorts, more or less by accident. But as computer technology eventually began to rely upon various graphic interfaces, the intricacies of Mandelbrot receded into the realm of fascinating oddity to be replaced by the practical mathematical and artistic demands of counting, collating, and coloring pixels for human consumption. 



Roots grown from multiple seeds using a constrained 3D DLA algorithm,
Paul Bourke, New Zealand mathematical artist



Frabjous, George Hart,
American mathematical sculptor

If you look at today's mathematical artists you find that, like Mandelbrot, they are virtually all mathematicians first, having developed a secondary interest in art. There's even a virtual math museum. Few, if any, of this new breed of artists even own a paintbrush, though some mathematical sculptors rely on traditional tools in giving substance to their computer-aided designs. Like all good artists, mathematical artists create work of great diversity visually, yet it is mostly of an abstract nature often utilizing a great degree of symmetry while having the "cold and austere" beauty Bertrand Russell found so enthralling.

The Apocalipse (Revelation), Anatoly Fromenko, Russian mathematical artist,
work not totally devoid of representational content.

  

 

Artist Stereotypes

copyright, Jim Lane

Virtually every major profession on the face of the earth has them--stereotypes. Cops eat donuts. Lawyers are crooked. Teachers have pets. Politicians lie. Prostitutes are sexy. Chef's are fat. Artists are weird. Musicians are weirder. Actors are the weirdest. The most common stereotypes are almost all negative though possibly, if one chose to pursue a little more effort, a positive could be matched against each negative. However, in some cases the effort might not be worth the effort. Some professions have quite a number of stereotypes--like farmers, truck drivers, and athletes. And, as much as we might abhor them, even the most abhorrent stereotypes have evolved based upon an element of truth. One might tend to doubt the talents of a skinny chef, for instance.

 

With regard to artists, my guess is they bear the burden of no more than an average number of stereotypes. There is a direct relationship between the number of stereotypes foisted upon a profession and the prevalence of that profession in society. That's why waitresses (excuse me, servers) have so many, while elevator operators have virtually none. In the overall scheme of things, artists, while fairly prevalent, are not all that important as compared to plumbers or airline pilots. And, in most cases, stereotypes of artists are quite innocuous, even, to a degree, flattering. All artists wear little black berets and white smocks (I own neither). All artists are slender from years of starvation. (I wish.) All artists have wildly unkempt hair and paint under their fingernails. (Where do I sign up for the unkempt hair?) And most of all, artists are temperamental (no comment).

 



copyright, Jim Lane

A stereotype suggests commonality. Yet, if you study the lives of artist down through the ages as I have, you'll find that artists have very little in common. In fact, they are far more different than they are alike. Let's start with what might be considered a basic, fundamental premise--all artists are creative. HAH! It might be easier to postulate that all artists are imitative. I suppose, if you were to define creative in its broadest sense (artists make things) there abides some element of truth. But if you seek to imply that all artists are highly original in their thoughts and output, I'll stick to my original reaction. All too often stereotypes are based upon a very limited number of (but very famous) examples. Van Gogh was insane, so therefore, all artists are at least a tad bit crazy. Picasso was a larger than life, workaholic, bull of a man, so therefore, all artists have the drive and sensitivities of a bulldozer. Edouard Manet was an effete, temperamental, impudent snob, so therefore all artists are wound tighter than an eight-day clock. There are many more, and very often, as with Picasso and Manet, at odds with one another.

 

copyright, Jim Lane

Quite frankly, there should be no artist stereotypes simply because, almost by definition, artists are (or should be) unique individuals, even if they do sometimes share a few similar characteristics (like a profound ineptitude in selling their own work). Visual stereotypes are, perhaps, the least valid where artists are concerned. Some, such as John Singer Sargent, worked in three-piece suits while Andy Warhol was known to paint in the nude. Most artists probably give little thought as to their attire (which may imply a stereotype, but in fact, indicates the absence of one). I propose that for every philandering drunk (Jackson Pollock) there is a devoted Claude Monet. I suppose if there is a single, overriding artist stereotype, it's the fact they're prone to talk too much. ('Nuff said.)