Dennis Miller Bunker

Chrysanthemums, 1888, Dennis Miller Bunker.




Head Study, (self-portrait), 1880s,
Dennis Miller Bunker

The Parisian art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. is often credited with having brought French Impressionism to the United States with his landmark exhibition in New York in 1886. Second only to Durand-Ruel, and no doubt influenced by his exhibit of works by artists Monet, Pissarro, and others, the American painter, William Merritt Chase, is the name most often associated with Impressionism on the west side of the Atlantic. However, Chase was not the only American landscape painter to see the Durand-Ruel show. Equally important at the time, Dennis Miller Bunker, as well as Childe Hassam, also looked and liked what they saw. Bunker, in fact, might today be considered the "father" of American Impressionism in place of Chase except for one unfortunate detail. He died of meningitis in 1890 at the age of twenty-nine.

 

Eleanor Hardy Bunker, 1890,
Dennis Miller Bunker. Even after switching
to Impressionism, his portraits remained
quite traditional both in style and color.

Bunker, like Chase and Hassam was quite predisposed to embrace Impressionism. All three had studied in Europe, particularly in France. However, when American artists flocked to Europe to study art in the late 19th century, they did not go to study Impressionism. They went to study the classics. Moreover, they studied under various academicians. And while they may have noticed the Impressionists, their work left little impression on these impressionable young artist. Only Hassam seems to have admired them, even in passing. Though painters in the U.S. were impressed with, Durand-Ruel's painterly impressionists, the public viewed them with no small degree of culture shock not unlike that of the Parisians some twenty years earlier. American viewers, however saw them as strangely exotic while Parisians viewed them as more or less fraudulent--slapdash globs of paint daubed around with an eye more toward quantity than quality. As Durand-Ruel himself put it, "In Paris they laugh. In America, they buy."



Tree, 1884, Dennis Miller Bunker--before he discovered Impressionism,
Bunker seems to have favored working from photos. Notice the flat, yet sloping
horizon, often an indicator of photographic sources. Though not derived from
photos, Bunker's color sense seems photographic to our modern-day eyes.

Despite some resistance by American critics, American painters took note that Durand-Ruel's show of imported Impressionism sold out. That being the case, artists like Bunker, Chase, Hassam, and a few others, already having absorbed European Classicism like proverbial sponges, took to sopping up the economic liquidity of Impressionism as well. Bunker's Chrysanthemums (top) was painted in Boston just a few months after the Durand-Ruel show opened in New York and is in stark contrast to his Tree (above), painted just four years earlier. Though his palette did not change appreciably (perhaps brightening a little) as Bunker embraced Impressionism, his The Pool, Medfield (bottom) from 1889 seems as thoroughly Impressionist as anything a French art dealer might haul across the Atlantic.

The Pool, Medfield, 1889, Dennis Miller Bunker
--Americanized Impressionism, rich, vivid, and high contrast.

 

Fritz Bultman

The Irascibles: from left rear: Willem De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne; next row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin; foreground: Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

One of the biggest components of success in art, as in most other vocations, is being at the right place at the right time. That's not the same as "pure luck" but it's a close cousin. It goes without saying that being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if not the same thing, is a reasonable corollary. Fritz Bultman had the misfortune to fall into both categories. It's a long story, but here's the gist of it. The year was 1950. The New York School of Abstract Expressionism was struggling to gain respect in the art world. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art organized a show they titled: "American Painting Today--1950." A group of up-and-coming artists (seen above) felt slighted and signed a letter to the museum protesting their conservative mindset. Somewhere, somehow, the group picked up the label "The Irascibles."

Fritz Bultman (1940s)

Fritz Bultman, along with his mentor, Hans Hoffman, and all those listed with the photo above, signed that letter. Although the group had much in common, they were really a group who weren't really a "group" except for the click of a shutter. The list of names reads almost like a "Who's Who" of Abstract Expressionism as they all posed in their dignified business attire for a Life magazine photo in support of their cause. Notice, there was only one woman, portrait artist, Hedda Sterne (though she is featured quite prominently). Notably missing from the photo are Bultman and Hoffman. Not all of those pictured became rich and famous abstractionist but a significant number of them did (including Hoffman). Bultman didn't. He and others have long postulated that had he been in the photo, he would have become much better known. Name recognition, and group association, especially where Abstract Expressionism was concerned, were very often keys to success.

Rosa Park, 1958, Fritz Bultman

Bultman was an ocean and a continent away in 1951 when the photo was taken. He was in Florence, Italy, studying the art of casting bronze with an eye toward becoming a sculptor (the field of Abstract Expressionist painting was becoming crowded, even then). Hoffman's whereabouts at the time is unknown, but in any case, his stature in having instructed most of the New York School during that era insured him all the recognition he would ever need. Bultman, however, was just one of many. Though it's unlikely his missing such an important "photo-op" had anything to do with it, upon his return to the U.S., Bultman went into a severe, four-year bout with depression, during which time he worked little. This period, 1952-56, was, of course, "prime time" for the Abstract Expressionists. Despite this, Bultman is considered one of the few Abstract Expressionist painters to have effectively integrated sculpture into his work.

Barrier (the Big Bird), Fritz Bultman

Mardi Gras, 1978, Fritz Bultman collage

In later years, Bultman, a New Orleans native, was instrumental in bringing Modern Art to the South. He studied in Paris during the mid-1960s where he broadened his art to include collage and stained glass. Though Bultman's work was never to headline that of the New York School, it is virtually indistinguishable from that of those who did. Critics and those who write about such things have often faulted Bultman's disinterest in what they term "art world politics." It's impossible to say which of these factors may have played the greater role in Bultman's career as a secondary abstract expressionist. Fritz Bultman died of cancer in 1985. Being in the right place at the right time is more than luck. It also takes intuitive foresight and planning along with a keen eye for self-promotion. Therefore, budding young artists: try not to miss any photo ops.

Fritz Bultman, (1970s), a photo-op he didn't miss.

 

Vlaho Bukovac

Gundulic's Dream, 1894, Vlaho Bukovac, French Academicism with a Croatian twist.



Self-portrait with Captain's Hat,
1902, Vlaho Bukovac

This past summer, my wife and I spent a day in Dubrovnik, Croatia. There I had a close encounter with that country's most important artist, the sculptor, Ivan Mestrovic in visiting his former home now turned into a museum. I was rather dismayed to discover neither the museum nor local book sellers had any books on this artist's work. Being a painter, I also inquired as to Croatian painters. None were mentioned, even though Vlaho Bukovac, arguably the most important Croatian painter in recent history was born just nine miles south of Dubrovnik in the small coastal village of Cavtat (1855). As with Mestrovic, you can even tour his former home in nearby Konavle. Though Mestrovic was a generation younger than Bukovac, he seems to have far overshadowed his countryman, which is somewhat unusual in that painters usually trump sculptors in any popularity contest.

Turkish Women in Harem, c. 1877, Vlaho
Bukovac, given as a gift to his mentor,
Archbishop Joseph Strossmayer. It would
seem a rather erotic gift for a priest.

Vlaho Bukovac was born in poverty, the son of an Italian innkeeper. As many such artists have found, exceptional talent is often a ticket from such hardship and obscurity. The passport, is simply hard work. At the age of eleven, an uncle took Vlaho to the United States where he learned English, as they both struggled in the post-Civil War period. When his uncle died around 1871, the sixteen-year-old returned to Dubrovnik to work as a seaman apprentice, which took him as far away as Liverpool, England, and eventually Peru. There he worked for a time drawing letters on coaches. In returning to his hometown around 1876, his talent in drawing brought him to the notice of the local archbishop, who arranged the necessary financial support allowing Bukovac to study in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. There he came under the influence of the quintessential academic painter of all time, Alexandre Cabanel.

Suffer the Little Children, 1880s, Vlaho Bukovac

Upon finishing his schooling, Bukovac remained in Paris for the next sixteen years, successfully painting portraits, nudes, and various religious subjects. His Suffer the Little Children (above) is from that period. Though it and most of Bukovac's other Paris works are staunchly Academic in style, Bukovac also picked up the essence of French Impressionism. However this loosening of his style was not to manifest itself for several years, until after he moved first to Belgrade, then Zagreb, and later Prague. He died in Prague in 1922. Though likely the only Croatian painter ever trained in Paris, Bukovac absorbed the prevailing style wherever he lived and worked. Thus he would have to be classed as an eclectic painter, his manner of painting changing greatly over the course of his career. Such artists, in not fitting neatly into any historic style, national, or ethnic category are often simply ignored by art historians, which may account for why Bukovac is so little know or appreciated, even in his Croatian homeland.

Reclining Nude, 1897, Vlaho Bukovac. Possibly his most famous work,
this painting sold in 2006 for just over $125,000.




 

Pretty Ugly Art

Autoportrait dans la salle de bain, 1988, Bernard Buffet--deliberately ugly.

Where would art be without adjectives? I'm not sure; I only know that without them, art would be damned hard to write about. Today as I was considering several artists I might expound upon, I came upon the work of the French artist, Bernard Buffet (born, 1928, Paris). His paintings do not appeal to me, but then I often write about artists I find unappealing. However in this case, as I got deeper and deeper into this man's body of work (he died in 1999), it began to dawn upon me that, hey, this guy did some pretty ugly paintings (especially his portraits). In arriving at such a drastic conclusion, I found myself pondering, did the artist just naturally produce ugly art or did he go out of his way to do so? Buffet's self-portrait (above) is an ugly face in an ugly place. Not all of Buffet's paintings are ugly, though I wouldn't go so far as to classify any of them as beautiful in the traditional sense of the word. His New York: Brooklyn Bridge (below), from 1989, looks familiar and is pleasing, strong, and quite "New Yorkish" in its bold, visual textures married to the subtleties of  Buffet's favorite colors. It's what I would broadly term "good" art.

New York: Brooklyn Bridge, 1989, Bernard Buffet.

There's another adjective (and a terribly overused one at that). Together with it's opposite, combined with "ugly," would make a apt title for a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. All of which begs the question, is ugly art necessarily bad art, and conversely, good art always beautiful? Our first impulse would be to answer both questions, yes. However, giving the matter a little deeper thought, (and fearing the use of absolutes in any context) the less obvious reply would be a somewhat cautiously uncertain "no." Then, the next thought might be, "...but don't make me have to prove it."

The Gunslingers, Justin Reed--the good, the bad, and the ugly.

After some consideration, one might decide the best course would be to divorce the good-bad continuum from that of beautiful-ugly. Associating them only muddies the water in both ponds. Here is where we insert the ancient, trite, but true maxim, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and assert the same to be true of "ugly." Both "bad" and "ugly" are negatives, presumably to be avoided, if not at all costs, then at least, whenever possible. Subjectively, art dwells upon beauty, often to an extent that might be considered unconscionable, while the world around us often seems unconscionably ugly. Is art, then, to ignore the ugly while only exalting beauty? Of course not. The news media, in fact, is often accused of doing just the opposite. Beauty is only achieved by appreciating its presence. Ugliness cannot be erased by simply ignoring it. In fact, a vital argument could be made that only by proclaiming its presence, can we combat ugliness. Thus we could say, some art should be ugly.

Woman V, 1952-53, Willem de Kooning.
No one ever used the adjective, "beautiful," regarding this piece.

 

Marcel Breuer

St. John's Abbey Church, 1954-61, Marcel Breuer

Marcel Breuer, 1969

Seldom has an architect been better known for what goes inside his buildings than the buildings themselves. Perhaps the only architect to ever be saddled with this distinction is the Hungarian-born modernist, Marcel Breuer. Born in 1902 of Jewish parentage, Breuer (pronounced BROY-er) decided he wanted to be an architect as a young child. At the age of eighteen he headed to Weimar, Germany, to become the youngest student in Walter Gropius' revolutionary Bauhaus Industrial Design School. There, with Gropius as his mentor, Breuer attended classes primarily in wood and metal fabrication. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, Germany in 1925, Breuer joined the faculty as head of the carpentry shop. He was 22.

 



Breuer chairs--strikingly modern even by today's standards,
most were designed between 1920 and 1940.

Though continuing his studies in architecture, during the 1920s and 30s, Breuer was able to live off his design fees. As an architect, he was completely overshadowed by his seniors, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Gropius himself, who, nonetheless funneled interior design commissions in his own projects to Breuer. However, with the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, Breuer renounced his Jewish heritage and fled to London. Then in 1937, he followed Gropius to the U.S. and a faculty seat at Harvard where Gropius had become the chairman of the graduate school of design. Shortly before the war, Breuer left the relative comfort and security of Harvard to partner with Australian-born architect, Harry Seidler, in New York. Once the war ended, Breuer started his own firm and received his first major commission as an architect, the design of the Bertram Geller House (the first of two) on Long Island.

 

Geller I (Bertram Geller House), 1945, Lawrence, New York, Marcel Breuer

The 1945 Geller House (above) is a relatively pure example of Bauhaus International style--two long, low, rectilinear modules of wood, glass, and stone ideally adapted to its environment. Today it appears fairly commonplace. Virtually every city in America had hundreds quite similar. In 1945, its radical "binuclear" design with its lengthy, horizontal, ribbons of windows was not at all popular with Geller's conservative Lawrence, New York, neighbors. Breuer divided the layout into two section, the living area, and the sleeping area, connected by a glass entry foyer. Inside, he furnished the house with his own furniture designs. Some fourteen years later, it was no longer deemed radical, so in 1959, Geller commissioned Breuer to build him another new home nearby. The Geller II (below), constructed mostly of glass and reinforced concrete, was daring for its time and still today quite unusual, combining the traditional Bauhaus rectangle with a broad, sweeping, arched concrete roofline.

Geller II, 1959-69, Lawrence, New York, Marcel Breuer.

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, 1958, Marcel Breuer

Whitney Museum of American Art, 1966,
Marcel Breuer

By the 1960s Marcel Breuer's reputation had grown apace with the importance of the buildings he designed. His 1958 UNESCO Headquarters in Paris (above) with its daring "Y" configuration and cluster of low-lying subsidiary offices, cemented his reputation as one of less than a half-dozen outstanding modernists, a leader in the second generation of Bauhaus architects. The UNESCO building was followed soon after by a similar office complex in 1963 housing the brand new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington, D.C. (completed in 1968). About the same time, Breuer landed the commission for the new Whitney Museum of American Art on New York's Upper East Side. Though panned by critics at its completion in 1966, amid the glass and steel towers passing for Modernism at the time, today the inverted ziggurat has become an iconic city landmark while its rivals seem stale and dated.


Breuer's own home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, dating from 1949, says a lot about the migration from the architect's Bauhaus origins to the Modernism of his later works.

Marcel Breuer's most striking architectural commission came relatively early in his career, 1954, when he was hired to design an abbey church for St. John's College in Collegeville, Minnesota (top). It evolved into being the most strikingly modern (even radical) religious structure in the U.S. Instead of a bell tower, Breuer designed a bell banner,  a towering wall, punctuated by a central, rectangular window framing a cross while just below, a broad, low opening displays a row of five bells. The "banner" is mounted upon a cast reinforced-concrete "easel" fronting a honeycomb façade of glass. A simple, Bauhaus "box" beneath the "easel" provides entry into the column-free sanctuary arranged in such a way that seating surrounds the altar on three sides, drawing worshippers into an intimate association with those celebrating mass. It was fortunate he was no longer Jewish.

The Wolfson House, 1949-60, may represent the most unusual assignment
Breuer ever received, the design of a house to be built around a travel trailer
(the opposite side of this photo).

 

Lodewijk Bruckman

Studio Bruckman, 1932, Lodewijk Bruckman

 

Lodewijk Bruckman Self-portrait, 1935

I've always been a great admirer of Surrealism. Having said that one might assume I'd also greatly admire Salvador Dali--which I do. I also like Rene Magritte. But there are others. Lodewijk Bruckman is one. Do I hear a chorus of "Who?" in the background? First of all, Bruckman was no Dali, either in the quality and nature of his work nor did he have Dali's flamboyant personality. Likewise, Bruckman lacked Magritte's subtle, rather dry sense of humor. Some critics and art historians prefer to call Bruckman's work "Magic Realism," though the line between that and Surrealism is spider web thin, if, indeed, it exists at all. In any case, it would take an entire paragraph or two to explain the differences. Whatever you want to call it, I like it.

Peace and Plenty, 1949, Lodewijk Bruckman



Coquette #7, 1954, Lodewijk Bruckman.
A tentative step toward the surreal.

I contend that before an artist can become a Surrealist one has to master Realism. The Dutch-born Bruckman (1903) fulfilled that requirement, though the style and content of his Realism before his coming to the United States in 1949 is so traditional as to be over-the-dining-room-buffet boring. His 1949 Peace and Plenty (above) might just as easily have been painting in 1549. The interesting thing about Bruckman is that he didn't suddenly decide he wanted to be a Surrealist. His evolution took several years during the 1950s into the early 1960s. His Coquette #7 (right) is both real and surreal, a carefully contrived traditional still-life without the "impossible" factor, but highly unlikely.  

Still-life, 1962, Lodewijk Bruckman,
Daliesque infinite blues.

Later we see the Daliesque, infinite blue backgrounds, then as the artist seemingly became more comfortable with his new type of Realism (call it magic, if you must) he begins to explore, though never venturing as far from Realism as Dali nor embracing the pictorial symbolism of Magritte, yet manifesting a subtlety lacking in the two biggest names in the genre.

 

Magjan's Dream, 1959,
Lodewijk Bruckman

The year 1959 seems to have marked a breakthrough for Bruckman. His Magjan's Dream (right) is surreal to the point it challenges believability with its weightless, ephemeral beauty, seemingly an attempt to "out-Dali" Dali. His 1962 Shell, Robe, and Eggs (bottom, left) seems to be a step back, once more drawing upon the graded blues of infinity and dreamlike weightlessness while heightening the minute details which evoke the conflict between reality and illogic that makes Surrealism so entrancing. Bruckman seems to have always been first and foremost a still-life painter. The eggs and eggshells, which occur again and again in his later surrealist works are likewise ever present in his still-lifes from the 50s and 60s, such as Where Is the Bird Who Fits the Feather? (below, right) leading one to wonder if he merely dabbled in Surrealism, fearful of veering too far from the beaten path, or if he truly evolved into a Surrealist, and perhaps even beyond that to this so-called "Magic Realism." Lodewijk Bruckman died in 1995 at the age of 92.



Where is the Bird Who Fits the Feather?,
1962, Lodewijk Bruckman

Shell, Robe, and Eggs,
1962, Lodewijk Bruckman


 

Impossible Photos

Relativity, 1953, M.C. Escher

Icon for the impossible.

We've all seen the line drawing at right and cocked our heads like mystified puppies, trying to make sense with our eyes of what our minds tell us is impossible. For years we've marveled at the richly drawn art of M.C. Escher, who made such visual nonsense seem logical and sensible. Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali went from drawing such images to painting them. They called it Surrealism. Since the coming of age of photography in the past hundred years, a few talented darkroom technicians have worked tediously to do the same. As we all know darkroom technicians are a thing of the past, or at least, the bleak dungeons where they once worked have given way to home computers which can accomplish far more with far less in creating believable photos of impossible scenes. In effect, they attempt to make the impossible appear commonplace.

 

Impossible Buildings, Victor Enrich

Those of us over twenty have come to instinctively trust photos. Art, on the other hand, has never had that luxury. Artists, even those as technically adept as Escher, can paint and draw virtually anything yet in viewing their work, we have come to place our naturally skeptical minds between the artist and his or her creation. That has traditionally not been the case with photographs, even though we've all heard of "retouched photos." In the past, the technical aspects of this "art" have been so demanding that its appearance has been rare. Then came Photoshop. Anyone who has ever tackled Photoshop or its imitators will tell you the learning curve in using it is quite steep. Nonetheless, artists having mastered it, as they say, are coming out of the woodwork. And though I've often bemoaned some of the manifestations of the digitalized of art, in this case my reaction is WOW! Fantastic! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Broken Vase, Eric Johansson (see video at bottom)

As with all types of art, there are several levels and depths to the art of making impossible photos. Even the very tag we use, "impossible" is inadequate to encompassing it all (left). At best, it means impossible with just a mere camera. The most common level in such art is that of photographic surrealism as seen in the work of Enrich and Johansson. On a slightly higher plane, is that which merely uses photo manipulation to show and tell, utilizing a photo where otherwise hand drawn art, with all its intrinsic viewer skepticism, would be required (below). And finally, there is the depiction of beauty, surreal, believable, exquisite, and wondrously enticing simply because it is photographic to a degree, the best synthesis of art and science, wherein the artist builds upon the photo (or photos) to achieve a whole new level of aesthetic excellence (bottom).

Old theme, new approach, the first ever photo of Medusa.

This......................................becomes this in the hands of the artist

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The best of the best, Eric Johansson explains how it's done: