Pyrotechnic Art

Angelfire Indoor fireworks. Fifty years ago, indoor fireworks were all but unheard of.

Cinderella Castle Spectacular,
Charles Ridgway photo print.

It's not surprising that almost since the first universities back in Medieval times, that they've offered degrees in "Arts and Sciences." Of course, there are many apt instances when art augments the sciences and vice-versa. Usually one tends to predominate over the other. As the traditional means of creative expression, art tends to dominate the sciences. In others media, such as creating with glass, lights, gemstones, precious metals, and the proverbial "earth, wind, and fire," the sciences are beautified by art. Sometimes the two meld together on something approaching an equal footing. To some extent the art to science ratio in a given type of creative expression, has chang-ed noticeably in the past hundred years as the technical control elements of art have been strengthened and refined. That has certainly been he case with what I termed "earth, wind, and fire." When they combine with a degree in the science of mathematics, we've come to call them "fireworks," or the more modern term "pyrotechnics."

Royal Fireworks Display, London, 1749, hand painted etching.

A fireworks castle (tower) built to support
fixed pyrotechnic images, at an international
competition in Tultepec, Mexico, 2013.

Certainly the sciences are important in pyrotechnic art. If the science is slighted, people die. In May, 1983, eleven workers were killed in an explosion at a secret, unlicensed, fireworks factory hidden away on a farm near Benton, Tennessee. By the same token, without the element of art, pyrotechnics would be little more than deafening explosions. Today, thanks to advanced "rocket science," computerized controls, enhanced by carefully orchestrated recorded mus-ic, I find myself questioning whether pyrotechnics are now more art than science. It seems that once the science is mastered and deference to it carefully observed, the element of art, with its near-infinite depth and possibilities, begins to dominate. We have only to observe the work of a probably frustrated British artist in 1749 (above) as he tried to do justice to a no doubt spectacular (for its time) fireworks display along the banks of the Thames in London, to realize how far we've come. Unlike Disney's efforts (above, left) today, the "castle" in the background was real, the monotonous golden fire fountains, despite their numbers, were but crude imitations of volcanism.

Fireworks, 1912, Isaak Brodsky

Even as late as 1912, even with the advent of modern-day oils, even with the freedom of rampant Expressionism at the time, artists such as Isaak Brodsky, in his painting Fireworks (above), still found himself struggling to even hint at the awesome spectacle of a London fireworks display. Note the use of variously colored bombshells in the distance. If early 20th-century painters struggled, photographers, with their lagging exposure times and black & white film, didn't even try when it came to fireworks. Why bother? Under the best of circumstances the results would equate to taking a shower with your clothes on. You wouldn't see much. Today, of course, the reverse is true. Few painters would dare go up against an experienced color photographer in trying to capture a fireworks display. Locally, my wife and I try every year to attend the Marietta, Ohio, Sternwheel Festival (below) fireworks extravaganza. Notice the waterfall display from the bridge in he lower right corner.

The best fireworks display in West Virginia (seen over the Ohio River).

Today, even small cities like Marietta boast of their signature fireworks festival, often on July Fourth, but also on other holidays such as New Year's Eve, Veterans Day, Labor Day or, as with Marietta, merely the second weekend in September. One such community apparently sets off fireworks on Easter (below). What a joyous manner in which to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

While all shell bursts tend to have a somewhat flower-like shape, this one in particular would seem to set the gold standard in that regard.

St. Louis' Gateway Arch silhouette

New Year's Eve, precisely at midnight local time, virtually every major city around the world has a tendency to EXPLODE with pyrotechnical lights and color, usually forming a backdrop to their most famous urban landmark. In New York it's Times Square (below, left); in Sydney, Australia, their Opera House and Harbor Bridge (below); as well as in San Diego, Dallas, Milwaukee, and Williamsburg, Virginia. In St. Louis (left), the fireworks highlight their Gateway Arch (July Fourth), while in Paris (below, right), it's the Eiffel Tower, (July 14th, Bastille Day). In our nation's capital, the fireworks erupt every July Fourth and (both figuratively and literally) every four years on the night before a President is inaugurated.

New Year's Eve 2012, Times Square

The Eiffel Tower, Bastille Day, Paris,

Sydney, Australia, the Opera House and Harbor Bridge, New Year's Eve

Don't try this at home.

Fireworks can be art, but also inspire art,
as with this fused glass sculpture, Pyrotechnical-1,
by the husband and wife team, Jeff & Jaky Felix .
 

 

Konstantin Somov

Open Door onto a Garden, 1933-34, Konstantin Somov

I suppose everyone had heard at least once, the phrase, "...born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth." The phrase usually brings to mind a person having, by accident of birth, had the positive elements of wealth, education, opportunity, social skills, and moral upbringing all served up on a silver platter and all but guaranteeing womb-to-tomb success in life (depending upon one's definition of success). Or at least, that's what I've been told. God knows, I've known little of that from personal experience. I've always been so middle-class my initials even fall in the middle of the alphabet. Personally, the best I can claim is that I've played reasonably well the cards I've been dealt in life. The same could also be said of the Russian watercolor painter/illustrator, Konstantin Somov, his life, and his silver spoon.

Copyright, Jim Lane

The lower-right image is brilliant. I'll have to try combining a still-life with a self-portrait sometime. (The lower-left image had the date, 1928, inadvertently omitted.)

I suppose it's not surprising that Andrey Ivanovich Somov, a 19th-century curator of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, should have a son, Konstantin Somov, who, in childhood, showed the talent and desire to become a painter. His self-portrait montage (above) doesn't go back quite that far, but does present an interesting overview of the artist's development physically, stylistically, and psychologically over the course of his more than forty years as an important creative force in pre-revolutionary Russia. Born in 1869, young Somov's family was far from wealthy by Imperial Russian standards. I suppose today we'd class them as upper middle-class (or lower upper-class?). Andrey Somov, though curator of the imperial art collection and thus having plenty of important "connections" in the Russian art world at the time, was still, simply a government bureaucrat serving at the personal and political whims of Imperial Russian nobility.

The Rainbow, 1928, Konstantin Somov

Young Konstantin's training as an artist, quite naturally began at home, but just as naturally continued at the Imperial Academy of Arts under academic classicist, Ilya Repin, from 1888 to 1897.(Art studies were quite open-ended at the time, dependent more on financial considerations than curriculum or calendar.) So long as you could afford the tuition (which was likely free since his name was Somov), a student could, theoretically, become what we'd term today a "professional student" often up to the time he or she was hired as an academy instructor. There's no indication Konstantin Somov ever taught there, but he certainly made the most of his time there. His Impressionist landscape, The Rainbow (above), from 1928, sold at auction in 2006 for $7.33-million an auction record for Russian art. I'd consider his time at the academy well spent.

Walking in Winter, 1896, Konstantin Somov

Lady and Harlequin (Fireworks),
1912, Konstantin Somov

It's not difficult to spot Somov's major art influences--Fragonard and Watteau. The problem was, both these iconic artists were French (not Russian), and both were from the previous century at the time. Add to that the strict academic demands of Ilya Repin, and it's little wonder much of Somov's work seemed old-fashioned even before their watercolors were dry. Somov's Lady and Harlequin (Fireworks) (left) is reminiscent of the 18th-century French Rococo era. Somov's Walking in Winter (above), from 1896, though obviously referencing the 19th-century in fashion and painting style, at best represents art that, by the early 20th-century. was some fifty years out of date. Somov did a whole series of watercolors based upon the harlequin theme between the years 1910 and 1920.

Lady in Blue. Portrait of the Artist Yelizaveta Martynova, 1900, Konstantin Somov

Dating from around 1900, Somov spent three years working on what some critics consider his most important single work, Lady in Blue (above). The portrait is of the artist, Yelizaveta Martynova. The exceptionally long "work in progress" period was the result of Somov having deliberately painted the portrait in an 18th-century manner, though the results bear a much stronger resemblance to the near-photographic style of the British Pre-Raphaelite of the late 19th century than anything of either French or Russian origin.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Somov's portraits vary in style from Realism to Impressionism to Expression, a trait common among Russian artists during this transitional period from Academicism to various stirrings coming then to be known as "Modern Art."

However, Lady in Blue , regardless of style, is totally different than Somov's other portraits, especially those dating from the 1920s. The upper left painting (above) is of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Somov, a 1925 portrait of the artist's nephew, while the large, central figure is a Portrait of Andrey Somov, the artist's father, from 1897. The lower-right portrait is of the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov also dating from 1925.

Copyright, Jim Lane

The male version is at left, the large, oval, Summer Morning, from 1932, is at right.

Finally, one other facet of Somov's work needs to be dealt with. Despite a slightly old-fashioned quality in much of the artist's watercolors and published illustrations, there was nothing the least bit old-fashioned about Somov's nudes. As seen in his self-portraits painted prominently using mirrors, Somov also used mirrors with his nude bedroom scenes as well, as can be noted in his male and female dressing room paintings (above). Much more prominent in Somov's work with nude figures is his love of the male nude (speaking both figuratively and literally). Konstantin Somov was homosexual. Normally I don't mention an artist's sexual orientation unless it plays a significant, pivotal role in his or her overall work. As you can see in the very carefully edited montage (below), Somov meets that criteria. Not only was Somov gay (in today's parlance) but so were most of his friends who were involved in the 1898 founding of their monthly publication World of Art. There are so many paintings by Somov featuring very modern looking, handsome, naked, young men it's hard to pinpoint precisely how many were professional models and how many were lovers. In any case, he seems to have forsaken watercolors in favor of oils or tempera when it came to painting his male nudes.


Copyright, Jim Lane

Most of Somov's nude figures were a good deal less modest or discreetly
posed than these. All are overtly erotic in nature.

The Lovers, 1933, Konstantin Somov

It would do Somov an injustice for me to suggest that all of Somov's nude figures were blatantly homosexual. His The Lovers (right) from 1933, obviously is not. It is, in fact, much more erotic than most of Somov's male bedroom images. It is also, I might add, discreetly cropped for use in this format. I should also take note of the fact that Konstantin Somov had a rather sharp, if somewhat warped, sense of humor as see in his painting of a Greedy Monkey (below) from 1928. His watercolor drawing from Book of the Marquise. Illustration 2, (bottom), from 1918, also suggests this amusing personality disorder.

A Greedy Monkey, 1929, Konstantin Somov

With the coming of the 1918 Russian Revolution, and his more astute reading of the "handwriting on the wall" than we've seen by other Russian artist, Konstantin Somov, with no family ties to speak of, became a traveling man, escorting exhibitions of Russian art to Venice, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Birmingham (UK), Copenhagen, Belgrade, and other culture capitals of Europe during the remaining twenty years of his life. At one point Somov and his traveling roadshow found their way to New York City where he decided to stay while the art went back to mother Russia. He took up residence in the United States, but found the country "absolutely alien to his art." Old-fashioned art and a gay lifestyle don't mix very well (even in New York during the "roaring" 20s). In any case, Somov moved back to Paris, where he died in 1939, shortly before yet another war tried to catch up with him. His Open Door onto a Garden, (top) from 1933-34, is a surprisingly realistic image from the final period in Somov's eighty-year career. Ironically, alive or dead, Somov continued to have one-man shows as late as the 1950s.

Book of the Marquise, Illustration 2, 1918,
Konstantin Somov. A man's gotta do
what a man's gotta do.

 

Let There Be Light...

The nearly hypnotic lava lamp from the 1970s.

Ask yourself, "Where would art be without light?" The "duh" answer would be, "in the dark." Wouldn't we all. Though we seldom think about it, even those who deal with lights daily in producing art, but the two are really quite "joined at the hip," with light being the most important of all art elements. Genesis 1: 3 in the Bible tells us "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." The next verse goes on to say He fully approved of what he saw. Light, then, is electromagnetic radiation striking the eyes, leading to the stimulation of the optic nerve, which leads to the brain...whether God's or our own. Of course God's own light, and our most common source of light, is the sun (thermonuclear light). As the history of light developed (below) man discovered thermal light (the torch and/or bonfire) followed by the much more portable and far less dangerous lamp. Everything since then, oil, kerosene, gas, electric, etc. has just been a matter of refinements involving economy, safety, intensity, and convenience.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Light: God made it, man dimmed it and spread it.

A 19th-century oil lamp.

Starting with the highly decorated Hebrew clay lamp (above, right), man, in his ingenuity and eternal search for physical beauty, has, for centuries, been designing light, both insofar as its use and effects, as well as in its manner of delivery. Starting with olive oil, which is not at all very flammable, then various other animal and vegetable oil derivatives, such "artificial" artificial lighting has enhanced mankind's existence in virtually every way possible. Starting with items such as the Victorian oil lamp (left) followed by various incarnations fueled by natural gas (below), leading eventually to the illogical mixture of electrical heat, wax, and water of the 1970s lava lamp (top) there has long been a design element associated with such devices intended to enhance their beauty and practicality.

Gas Lamp, Chancery Lane, London

During the 19th-century, designers had as much fun 
designing outdoor lamppost as the lights themselves.

During the latter half of the 19th-century, outdoor gas lighting came to major cities around the world. Designers had a high old time striving to outdo each other, not just with their lights, but the lampposts as well (right). However, it's only been since the advent of the 20th-century and the mod-ern use of electricity for lighting that the creative juices of light fixture designers have really been unleashed. Today, with the right ingenuity and he right amount of money, virt-ually anything is possible as to scale, intensity, movement, color, sequence, source, and control. With the advent of lasers and computer control-led pyrotechnics, never before has light itself been such a popular and exciting art form. Even antique styles involving gas, and oils can now be updated to the convenience and economy of electricity as seen no where else better than our own White House East Room chandeliers (below).

Tastes change; sometimes for the better, sometimes not

The north portico lantern is one of the
oldest White House light fixtures.

During the 1902 renovation of the White House interior, President Theodore Roos-evelt and the architects McKim, Mead & White commissioned the noted New York firm, Edward F. Caldwell & Co. to provide lighting fixtures. In the East Room were hung three massive electric chandeliers made of cut glass and gilded brass by Christoph Palme & Co., Parchen, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary). However, only a year later the chandeliers were taken down and the diameter of the lower portion reduced in size. They were shortened and modified again during the Truman Renovation (1948-1952). Each chandelier currently consists of about 6000 pieces of glass weighing about 1200 lbs. (the East Room ceiling was renovated too). As many a collector has discovered, antiques are fun to look at but far less so to live with.

Even "cut" glass today very likely isn't.
It's only a light fixture, if it looks the same
hanging from the ceiling, why worry about
close inspection.

Many artist/designers today choose
fiber optics as their medium of choice
for interior lighting.

In shopping for designer lights and lamps today, a little "bling" goes a long way, especially insofar as the wallet is concerned. The ones pictured below emphasize simplicity over expensive hardware and crystal. Designers have now come to realize that Lucite can be molded and polished to look like cut glass with little loss in the way of appearance but with a great deal of loss in cost and weight. Although most buyers don't realize it, there is a great deal of difference in the quality of light rendered by the various sources of lights today far more than in the past. Still they boil down to warm light and cool light as illustrated in the "eyes" (below) The upper set is not only lighter but cooler than the "warm" set below them. As a general rule, most thermal light sources are "warm" while florescent and LED lights, cool to the touch, are also cool as to color value too.

Cool eyes (top) and warm eyes (bottom). light "color" makes far more differences to painters and photographers than to most buyers of lighting devices.

Aspers Casino at Westfield Stratford City in east London. One of the most spectacular
single unity of lighting I encountered in researching this post.

 

Anton Solomoukha

Little Red Riding Hood Visits the Louvre, 2008, Anton Solomoukha

Anton Solomoukha

It's not often in this day and age that one stumbles upon an artist that has, in effect, "invented" a new type of art. He calls it "photo painting," though the term stands wide open for misinterpretation. It's not painting from photos, or painting on photos, or paintings of photos nor even photos of paintings. In that I'm running out of prepositions to italicize, let me explain that "photo painting" is actually painting with photos, and it's the province of the Ukrainian photographer, Anton Solomoukha (beware trying to pronounce that name unless you're Ukrainian). How do you paint with a photo, you ask? Well, in Solomoukha's case, you first choose an instantly recognizable famous painting, preferably one peopled with a dozen or more figures (preferably nude or semi-nude and preferably female). Then you travel to some "barn" of a studio along with a dozen or more models ready, willing, and able to get naked (or mostly so) and to follow directions much like that associated with movie making. Then this director (Solomoukha) simply arranges his figures in some approximation to that of the famous painting he has chosen. If you try this yourself, don't forget to give the resulting photo a startling title along with a subtle reference to the original artist.

Ingres' The Turkish Bath, (far left) and Solomoukha's two versions.

Susanna and the Elders
(after Tintoretto), Anton Solomoukha

Little Red Riding Hood Visits the Louvre (top), from 2008, is one of several photo paintings based upon Solomoukha's seeming obsession with the children's story heroine. His two versions of Ingres' 1862 The Turkish Bath (above, left). As if Ingres' classic image wasn't sufficiently erotic, both of Solomoukha's version easily outscore Ingres' efforts. In fact, that tends to be the case with all Solomoukha's photo paintings as compared to their classic inspirations. Solomoukha's Susanna and the Elders (left) is very loosely based on Tintoretto's 1555 version. However, this subject was literally "done to death" during the Baroque era so it's difficult to say precisely which artist from that period most influenced Solomoukha. The referenced artist could just as easily be Peter Paul Rubens, Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and numerous others, though Tintoretto probably painted the most different version of the classic naked young lady and the dirty old men.

Little Red Riding Hood Visits Chernobyl, (after Las Meninas) Anton Solomoukha

Little Red Riding Hood Visits the Louvre,
Anton Solomoukha

Little Red Riding Hood is recurring reference in an ongoing series as seen in his Little Red Riding Hood Visits Chernobyl (after Las Meninas) (above) and Solomoukha's Little Red Riding Hood (right). I have no idea what order any of these or others in the series were painted, though they all seemed to have been done around 2006-08. However the version at left and the one at the top seem not to reference any one single Louvre painting so they may date from early in the series. That's not the case with the artist's Little Red Riding Hood Visits the Louvre: The Abduction of the Sabine Women (below) in which she can be quite plainly seen in the lower right corner enjoying the hell out of the ruckus. The work is based upon Nicholas Poussin's version painted around 1633-34, which is visually referenced on the wall in the background.

The Abduction of the Sabine Women, (after Nicholas Poussin), Anton Solomoukha

That's not the case with Solomoukha's Raft of the Medusa (below), based upon Gericault's 1819 masterpiece which, though also in the Louvre, is probably not a part of the Little Red Riding Hood series in that there's no obvious visual reference to the young lass.

Raft of the Medusa, Anton Solomoukha.
According to Solomoukha's version, the Medusa must have had a mostly female crew.

Born in 1945 when the Ukraine was still a part of Russia, several of Solomoukha's photo painting tableaus were shot amid the radioactive ruins of that country's Chernobyl during a brief visit (is there any other kind?) in 2006. Solomoukha's Chernobyl. The Swimming pool. Scene of The Massacres of Scio (below), has a dismal, decadent, ghostly aura quite in keeping with the location and with Delacroix's version painted in 1824. In contrast, Solomoukha's "lightens up" with his reference to Caravaggio's Bacchus (bottom) which has a playfully amusing character to it, though Solomoukha may be the first artist in history to render the god of the grape as a transsexual.

Chernobyl. The Swimming Pool. Scene of the massacres of Scio, Anton Solomoukha

Solomoukha's Bacchus (left) and Caravaggio's (presumably) male version (right).

[I'm sorry if the rampant nudity in this piece offends anyone, but it's one of the basic hallmarks of virtually ALL Solomoukha's work, and this artist needs to be known and seen. Believe me, the works displayed here are quite tame as compared to most of Solomoukha's pieces.]

















 

Deer Paintings

Whitetail, 1990, Bruce Miller

Shadows of Bow-hunting
Whitetail Deer, Michael Sieve

I have to wonder in researching this topic if there's ever been a single artist who hasn't, at one time or another, painted deer. The sheer number to be found on the Internet and the incredible variations to be seen suggest to me that this Monarch of the Glen (below), as Sir Edwin Landseer termed what is probably the most famous deer ever painted, may, in fact, be a universal favorite for all painters (not to mention art buyers). As with all specific content areas in art, the quality ranges over the proverbial, good, bad, and ugly, which also suggests the universal appeal these graceful woodland creatures hold for artists of all levels of expertise. Although many artists have painted deer in isolation (myself included), the very best works feature them in their natural environment, which therefore demands that the artist also be adept at painting woodland landscapes as seen in Bruce Miller's 1990 Whitetail (above). Michael Sieve's Shadows of Bow-hunting Whitetail Deer (left) is an especially adept handling of snowy shadows and watery reflections.

 

Monarch of the Glen, 1851, Sir Edwin Landseer.
This British stag has sold a lot of insurance.

Red Deer, 1913, Franz Marc

Landseer may have created the most famous deer painting, but he was far from the only famous artist to take on the subject. The 19th-century French Realist, Gustave Courbet's Dead Deer (below) from 1857, underlines the fact that painting deer also brings to the fore the intimate association with deer hunting. If the prehistoric cave artists are to be believed, that may well be the earliest manifestation of such art. Franz Marc's Red Deer (right) from 1913, presents a Cubist take on the subject, which would seem to indicate that the such works transcends many different painting styles and eras. It's difficult to pinpoint just why this should be, but it may be nothing more complex than the simple shape, delicate grace (or noble strength), and benign character of the animal itself.

Dead Deer, 1857, Gustave Courbet

Along the same line as Courbet's Dead Deer, the Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, found the image of a The Wounded Deer (below), from 1946, the perfect symbol for her tortured existence during the latter years of her life. The deer is an assimilation of her Mexican and European heritage with the image of Kahlo’s head placed on top of a stag, pierced with arrows. The arrows no doubt refer to her pain and suffering due to her injuries, as well as her injurious marriage to Diego Rivera. An ancient Aztec symbol, the deer symbolizes the right foot, alluding to her injured right side, the foot of which had been crushed in a bus accident. Her right leg was fractured in eleven different places. One year before her death, this leg was amputated up to her knee, due to complications from gangrene.

The Wounded Deer, 1946, Frida Kahlo

Chinese deer by Ya Cong.

The universality of the deer as a subject for so many artists can be seen in the fact that it can be found in the art of virtually every country in the world where deer are to be abundant. The colorful red Chinese deer (no pun intended) by Ya Cong (right), I found especially appealing, though admittedly, I know very little about oriental art. My own ventures into deer painting date mostly from the mid-1970s with two virtually identical images painted on canvas and black velvet, with another deer in a winter scene (below), the three painted over a period of three years.

Ohio being the "Buckeye State."

What A Deer, Jessica Buhman

I've also painted deer in their natural habitat as seen in the 1997 painting. Flora and Fawn (below). The slide was made in the days before digital photography so it didn't "clean up" very well. The watercolor image titled What a Deer (left) by Jessica Buhman illustrates that painting deer, not only does not demand a natural habitat, it doesn't even necessitate natural color. This is painting, after all we're talking about, not color photography, a point lost on so many art buyers who seem not to consider anything other than paintings of realistic deer in the wild. From the title to her colorful Expressionism, What a Deer seems obviously painted by a woman to appeal to feminine tastes. I'm sorry if that sounds sexist, but in art, here and elsewhere, there is a definite gender divide as to content, handling, and style. For the men, I couldn't help being amused by James Dwyer's Deer Camp II (bottom) sometimes known by the more apt title Deer Camp Surprise. Notice their breakfast sliding off into the fire.

Flora and Fawn, 1997, Jim Lane

Deer Camp II, 1954, James Dwyer, originally an ad for Winchester rifles and ammunition.

A dedicated deer lover.