Designs for the Future (from the Past)

The future as seen in the 1960s. What's wrong with this picture? What did the artist get right?

During the next few weeks and months I plan to explore the work of those artist/designers who are brave enough to attempt to predict the future and design that which they foresee. In large part, I've already done that in the realm of architecture and to a lesser degree, automobiles, two of the most common areas of design prognostication, so I'll not rehash those two areas, but instead delve into designs of less common items. However, it is totally foolish to try predicting the future without studying the past, not so much what worked in the past but what didn't. Where did design predictions miss their mark and why? Why do we still wear three-button suits that would not have been notably strange looking a hundred years ago? Why do we all not zip around too and fro with jet packs strapped to our backs...or belts? Why do so few cities not have Disney designed monorails for mass transit? Why do we not receive food from restaurants to eat at home via pneumatic tubes? And why did no one in the past predict the digital revolution and design laptop computers accordingly? What is it that influences the design future?

 

What happened here?  Why didn't this design..."fly"?

Why aren't we eating designer
strawberries as big as your fist?

Basically, these influences are not all that mysterious. There are limited to only four. First and foremost are basic scientific breakthroughs (the transistor, for example).  Second has to do with economic or cost break-throughs (the automobile, for exam-ple). The third is social change (women in the workforce, for ex-ample). The fourth such influence upon future design is advertising (the electric razor, for example). Never do these factors operated independ-ently. The automobile came as a re-sult of the internal combustion engine. The cost of building them came down due to mass production. The sheer number of them sold has had a lot to do with the needs and income associated with there being two breadwinners in most families. And advertising served to accelerated and consolidate the impact of all these elements. Cars look today like flashy metal jellybeans because of scientific breakthroughs in aerodynamics, leading to streamlining, which led to lower operating costs, which led to computer generated designs suggesting a single "perfect" shape deemed to be efficient, yet attractive to the consumer as promoted in all forms of advertising media.

 

Skype from the 1880s. Right idea, wrong design.

Probably more than anything else, the "look" of the future has a great deal to do with infrastructure. Automobiles led to paved roads. Paved roads led to faster cars and less "clunky" designs. Faster cars led to freeways. Freeway and the vehicles on them led to suburban sprawl. Suburban sprawl led to cracker-box single-family bungalows, "ranch" style homes, and overcrowded highways, which led to city center core redevelopment featuring contemporary, high-rise living spaces near similar work spaces. If you want to get still more basic, it's not a great stretch to say that all this came about when steel replaced cast iron in building engine blocks allowing a portable fuel like gasoline to power millions of tiny, nearly simultaneous,(but powerful) explosions without blowing that which housed them to smithereens. Once the costly super highways were in place, even Walt Disney's futuristically design monorails couldn't revitalize mass transit with it's erratic timetables, lack of privacy, and inconvenience (except in congested areas where those highways could no longer grow to meet drivers' needs).

 

Future design is always a mixed bag, somewhat better, somewhat
worse than the present; yet in many ways, surprisingly similar.

Japanese bikini jeans

So, if you're painting a picture of the future, erase the past. Erase all forms of mass transit. Erase jet packs and egg-shaped personal vehicles. Draw your buildings taller, add more trees to cleanse the air, pile on the robotics and information technology, layer clothing, minimize the outlandish, eroticize to your heart's content (left); sex has a way of driving technology and science. Most of all, keep in mind the four influences having to do with designing the future: science/techno-logy, economics, social changes, and informational overload. Futuristic de-sign follows all these factors, it does not lead them. Ten-lane super high-ways bordered by electronic, ani-mated billboards were not designed so Henry Ford would have a place to drive his Model-T.

Why was this vision of the future so slow in coming?
What happened to the bubble-top?
What? No seatbelts?

A flying cruise ship from the 1960s.
Another idea that didn't fly (thank God).

 

Painting Feet

Ascension of Christ, 1958, Salvador Dali--seeing Christ from a different angle.

This is not a lesson on "how to" paint feet. I suppose, perhaps, you might consider it a lesson to help you paint feet. But most of all it's about painting feet and how artist down through the ages have handled the problem of rendering what has to be one of the ugliest parts of the human anatomy God ever devised. And yet, there are artists who apparently enjoy painting feet; who glorify them; who emphasize them. They may, in fact, have something of what we call a foot fetish. It's about artists who, on rare occasions, have even managed to paint beautiful feet...depending upon the eye of the beholder, of course.


The Crucifixion, 1512-15, Mathias Grunewald

It might be fair to say that Jesus Christ has had his feet painted more often than just about anyone in the history of art. Salvador Dali's Ascension of Christ (top), dating from 1958, is certainly not the first time anyone painted such a depiction though it may be one of the most unusual, and in its own way, one of the more beautiful. Compare it to The Crucifixion (above) by the German artist Mathias Grunewald, painted around 1512-15, as the central panel in the Isenheim Altarpiece. Crucifixions from the Northern Renaissance tend to be gruesome. This one is that, but also occupies a place well towards the top of any list of the ugliest paintings ever rendered. Grunewald's nail-pierced feet of Jesus (lower-right detail) are downright painful to look at...just as the artist intended.

Lamentations over the Dead Christ. ca. 1490, Andrea Mantegna

Hardly much better in that regard are the feet of Jesus in Andrea Mantegna's 1490 Lamentations over the Dead Christ (above). His work, a masterpiece of foreshortening, represents Italian Renaissance painting at its best. It's as technically adept, compositionally daring, and emotionally moving as anything painted by Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, or any of the other quattrocento demigods. I have to wonder if, five-hundred years later, Dali wasn't influenced by Mantegna when he chose to paint a risen, triumphantly ascending Christ emphasizing the soles of his feet. Noticed that, unlike Mantegna, Dali chose not to depict the nail holes in Christ's feet.

David's feet by Michelangelo--cut from marble between 1501 and 1504.
they're huge, but no match for those of Constantine.

Statue of Constantine, Rome, the foot

Painters have never had a lock on depicting feet. Sculptors as far back as the Egyptians cut them from red sandstone while later, around 315 AD, the marble Colossus Statue of Constantine (right) has feet some five feet, eight inches in length. That's somewhere around a size 67 E. Italy is famous for its custom-made men's footwear, but that would have required leather from an elephant. It's little wonder his sculptor carved him barefooted. Constantine may have led the pack in terms of big feet, but Mich-elangelo's David (above) had some rather large "footsies" as well, and he was still a growing boy. I think it's fair to say David's feet are a good deal more gracefully carved than Constantine's surviving exam-ple. The seated figure of Constantine would have been about forty feet tall. Incidentally, Michelangelo is said to have had a part in "saving the pieces."

The critical factors in drawing feet--position, angle, age, and lighting.
In painting them, add to that the complexities of flesh tones,
muscular definition, and somewhat more detail.

Anyone who has ever struggled in a figure drawing class to render that which they hope looks vaguely like a foot can easily appreciate the difficulty to be found trying to paint them, or still worse, trying to carve one or more from marble. Never fear, Irys Ching has come to your rescue with her "foot chart" (above). I won't say there's every possible angle and position you'll ever encounter, but you might fine it useful to make a printout of the above image for future reference. In teaching school kids figure drawing I constantly had to point out that drawing the stereotypical side view of a foot is far different from that of the front. In drawing feet, perhaps as much or more than any other part of the body, drawing what you see, is critically important, rather than what you think a foot should look like.

Irys Ching's  foot "steps" in foot painting.

Irys Chink has made a similar chart detailing the various foot steps (I couldn't resist that) in drawing and painting a foot (above). As in drawing hands, I recommend drawing the overall shape of the foot as if it's wearing a sock, before adding details, especially toes. Divorcing shape from details tends to allow more accurate judgments in eye-hand coordination. Embodying a totally different approach to "foot art," Vitoria Duarte (below) nearly overwhelms us with her expertise in anatomical foreshortening, which serves to emphasize the feet in all their homely splendor.

As most people would say, "Oooooo, gross!"

Either Big Foot or the Emperor Constantine was here.

Hands and Baby Feet, Svenja

 

Raja Ravi Varma

Group of Girls, Raja Ravi Varma

Lady with Swarbat, Raja Ravi Varma

Short of actually visiting a foreign country for an extended period of time (a month or more) the best way to learn about that country, its people, its culture, it's history, religion, and geography is by studying that country's art. A nation's art is always reflected by its artists and that which they create. Artists create what they know best and what the love most. After their own family, virtually every artist, whether they realize it or not, loves his or her way of life more than anything else. And, of course, that way of life is a mirror image of the country in which they live. I once did an Egyptian painting. What did I paint? King Tut and Nefertiti. They were stereotypical historic icons having little or nothing to do with present day Egypt, its people, their way of life, their religion, culture, etc. One reason I'm reluctant to write about oriental art is because there's way too much of it, going back way too many centuries, and it's way too complex for this old man to assimilate to the degree necessary to write intelligently about it. The same is true of two or three other such cultures. One such country's art is that of India. Nonetheless I shall try...and likely fail...in discussing the work of probably the greatest painter that country has ever produced--Raja Ravi Varma.

If it's not a beautiful lady, it's probably a self-portrait.

Victory of Meghanada, Raja Ravi Varma

American writers have to be careful in talking about artists from India. We don't dare refer to them as "Indian artists." There's a great risk that, in doing so, we immediately bring to American minds the work of Native-American artists (to be politically correct). Rajq Ravi Varma was an artist born in India. He was actually born in a palace, the Kilimanoor Palace, in 1848, located in the southernmost province of India, then the Kingdom of Travancore (now the state of Kerala). His mother was of the aristocratic Nair caste. In India, unlike other countries, titles and inheritances are passed down through the matriarchal side of the family. The Nair caste lived in large, multi-family compounds such as the Kilimanoor Palace, all of them related to a single female ancestor. That being the case, Varma's children were part of their mother's family. Kilimanoor was a feudal estate within the Kingdom of Travancore. Ravi Varma had a sister and two brothers, both of whom were also painters. Ravi Varma married well. In 1866, at the age of 18, Varma married a daughter of the Royal House of Travancore. She was twelve years old at the time. Their progeny was vested with the succession to the throne of Travancore, his children being royal by birth. It was an arranged marriage in the proper Indian manner, and was apparently harmoniously successful. The couple had five children. Their elder son, was excessively spiritual. He never married and eventually renounced his lineage, leaving home in 1912. The younger son, Rama Varma, inherited his father's talent. One of Varma's granddaughters later gave birth to Chitra Thirunal, the last ruling Maharaja of Travancore (before the British took over).

Galaxy of Musicians, Raja Ravi Varma

Raja Ravi Varma's career as an artist was promoted by both his wife's (royal) family and The British administrator, Edgar Thurston. The young artist learned the basic locally through schooling in Madurai. He received widespread acclaim after winning an award for an exhibition of his paintings in Vienna in 1873. Varma's paintings were also sent to Chicago's World's 1893 Columbian Exposition where he won three gold medals. Later, Varma travelled throughout India in search of subjects such as Hindu Goddesses or South Indian women, whom he considered the ultimate in feminine beauty. He is particularly noted for his paintings depicting episodes from Indian mythology, though his style is often criticized as being too showy and sentimental. Varma's Group of Girls (top) would seem to confirm this view. However, his Galaxy of Musicians (above) suggests otherwise, as it depicts Indian women dressed in regional attire playing a variety of musical instruments popular in different parts of the country.


A representative sampling of Varma's women of India.

By far, the vast majority of Ravi Varma's work is of beautiful young women or girls, reflecting India's matriarchal society (above). Varma's work became especially well known after 1899 when he bought, then brought, a lithographic printing press to Mumbai. The press was managed by Varma's brother, Raja Varma. The oleographs (color lithographs) produced by the press were mostly of Hindu gods and goddesses and were very popular. They continued to be printed by the thousands for many years, even after the death of Ravi Varma in 1906. His oil painting, The Historic Meeting (below) dating from 1880, came to be considered one of his best as a result of its having been printed in this manner. The scene depicts the meeting of the Maharaja of Travancore and his younger brother as they welcome Richard Temple-Grenville, Governor-general of Madras.

Historic Meeting, 1880, Raja Ravi Varma

 

Bernard van Orley

The Destruction of the House of Job, 1521, Bernard van Orley

Even those artists today who still paint religious subjects, have probably never painted a triptych altarpiece. Even during the two or three centuries before and after the Renaissance, when they were most in demand, the Catholic Church was the main driving force in their creation. No so much today. I could find only two or three that were painted during the past hundred years. One of them was my own, titled The Death, Burial, and Resurrection (below) painted more than fifteen years ago. 

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Death, Burial and Resurrection, Jim Lane

Some, such as the Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers are world famous. The same is true of the Merode and the Isenheim altarpieces. If they were for sale (which they most assuredly are not) would each be worth multiple millions of dollars. Mine, I'd sell for a few thousand, which is probably why I'll never sell it. It does not sit on or behind a church altar but rests in storage, having not even been displayed now for more than ten years. Take it from me, there's not much of a market for triptych altarpieces anymore. However, back around the time of the Renaissance that wasn't the case. Today, just about every major Catholic church in Europe has one, which means there's hundreds of them by almost that many artists. One of the most prolific such artists was the Flemish painter, Bernard van Orley.

Portrait of Bernard Van Orley by Albrecht Durer, (above, left), or maybe the portrait is of a wealthy Brussels businessman named Bernhart von Reesen. In any case, the memorial statue of van Orley in Brussels seems modeled after Durer's image.

Along with one or two others, Bernard van Orley is regarded as among the leading innovators of 16th-century Flemish painting. He adopted the style and manner of the Italian Renaissance, especially that of Raphael. His paintings are executed with great care to minute details and stand apart for their brilliant colors. Orley's The Destruction of the House of Job (top), from the 1521 altarpiece, The Virtues of Patience Is an excellent example of his use of color. When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1520 for the coronation of the new emperor, Charles V, he called van Orley "the Raphael of the Netherlands". Dürer, stayed as a guest in van Orley's home for a week during which time he also painted a portrait some scholars identify as van Orley (above, left). In any case, Dürer had a profound influence on van Orley. In later works he tried to find a synthesis between the German Dürer and the Italian Renaissance master also greatly admired, Raphael.


Diptych Altarpiece of Sts. Thomas and Matthias, 1512, Bernard van Orley

Bernard van Orley was born around 1491, but possibly as early as 1487 (birth records back then weren't what they are now). He was born in Brussels to a family with a long lineage of successful artist, one which van Orley made even longer in that four of his nine children (that is to say, all the boys) became artists. His father and brother were also painters. Although van Orley studied in Rome, possibly under Raphael himself, it's far more likely he learned his trade from his father first in that there were very few painters of any importance in Brussels at the time. Van Orley's earliest signed work is a diptych altarpiece (two panels) titled variously The Apostles' Altar or The Altarpiece of Sts. Thomas and Matthias (above), which dates from 1512.

The Last Judgment, 1525, Bernard van Orley

The triptych The Last Judgment (above) is considered one of van Orley's best. It was commissioned by the almoners of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp around 1525. It is notable for its originality and mastery of painting technique. On the back is a painting in grisaille (monochromatic black, white, and grays) by Peter de Kempeneer, who was an apprentice in the van Orley's workshop at the time. Another altarpiece, probably from around the same time, is the Haneton Triptych (below) which combines a non-traditional pieta with portraits of local donors. The center of the triptych offers Christ's entombment, the Virgin Mary, St John, Mary Magdalene, and the two others a few moments before Christ's burial. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus appear in the rear, linked to the group by the crown of thorns so as to remind viewers that it was they who took Christ down from the cross.

Haneton Triptych. ca. 1520, Bernard van Orley

The Altarpiece of Calvary (below) in Bruges, dates from 1534. It was commissioned by Margaret of Austria originally for a funeral monument in the church of Brou in Bourg-en-Bresse in Burgundy. The side panels were done much later by Marcus Gerards the Elder. The central part represents Calvary, the left panel the Crown of Thorns, The Scourging of Christ, and Christ carrying the Cross. The right panel depicts The Pietà and The Limbo of the Just.

Only the central panel was painted by van Orley.

During the latter years of his life, from about 1526 to 1531, Bernard van Orley became involved in designing tapestries such as The Battle of Pavia series (below), one of a set of seven. The seven small cartoons are owned by the Louvre. In these tapestries, Bernard van Orley created with historical authenticity and great detailed on a grand scale, using life-size figures within his imagined surroundings. Near the end of his life van Orley began designing stained-glass windows. The windows in the north transept of the St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral in Brussels depict members of the House of Habsburg (Charles V and his wife Isabella of Portugal), Charlemagne and Elisabeth of Hungary, along with scenes from the Legend of the Miraculous Host.

The Battle of Pavia (tapestry), 1526-31, Bernard van Orley

A highly flattering Portrait of Charles V,
1516, Bernard van Orley, or more
likely his workshop, this being one
of seven copies.

From 1515 on, van Orley and his workshop received many orders for portraits, including those from the royal family and from people connected to the court. In 1516 he painted seven portraits of Charles V, who had just become King of Spain, as well as portraits of his brother Ferdinand, later the King of Hungary, and his four sisters (destined for the King of Denmark). Finding more demand for his work that he could supply, Van Orley started his own workshop, becoming one of the first entrepreneurial artists in Northern Europe. Along with his workshop, van Orley produced dozens of portraits while becoming a leading designer of tapestry cartoons and stained glass windows. In 1527, when van Orley, his family, and several other artists, fell into disgrace because of their Protestant sympathies, the family fled Brussels and settled in Antwerp. With the coming of a new Regent of the Netherlands, Maria of Austria, five years later, Bernard van Orley returned to Brussels where he died in 1541.

Charles V at the Age of Ten, Bernard van Orley.
The Hapsburgs were a highly-inbred,
bug-ugly clan of monarchs.

 

Tin Can Art

Festive tin can flowers decorating a chain link fence
surrounding an urban community garden.

Andy Warhol may have been the first,
certainly the most famous, tin can artist.

Over the past several years I've touted a number of rather weird art media from ice and snow to fire and water. Obviously, on the weirdness scale, tin cans kind of fall somewhere in between those. I should point out that tin cans today are not made of tin but steel, or in the case of beverages, aluminum. Thus, when I refer here to "tin" cans I'm speaking generically, and not actually referring to cans made of tin. However, sometimes the steel is still tin plated or features a plastic coating on the inside, depending upon the acidity of the contents and other factors. Quite apart from the metal, insofar as the artist is concerned, there are two types of cans, the painted ones (aluminum beverage cans) and the ones with paper labels. Unless your name is Andy Warhol, it's best to remove the paper labels before utilizing the can as part of your artistic endeavors. (Be sure to rinse or wash out the inside too.) Once the can is stark naked, the result is a shiny surface that, with a little elbow grease, lends itself to polishing. If, on the other hand, you wish to go in the opposite direction, there are chemicals coatings available which produce an accelerated rusting effect (by accelerated I mean several weeks outside exposed to the weather). Laura Jacoby's tin can tops (below) is an outstanding example of this effect.

Laura Jacoby's tin can top art utilizing a rust accelerating coating.

Barbie will love you for it.

Tin cans are a very humble, plentiful, virtually free art material allowing the artist to feel noble in preserving our environment through recycling. However, though an inexpensive means of creating long-lasting sculptural art, very often the materials necessary to mount, bind, color, and preserve the metal don't come cheap. Nancy Adams (below) works on a rather large scale, using an oxyacetylene torch to create and decorate her various metal containers. If you're drawn to this rather "macho" type of tin can sculpture, you might first want to check out the prevailing price of such a torch, then the cost of the gases needed to have some fun with it. Speaking of fun, don't try this at home without adult supervision. Get someone who knows to show you how to use the damned thing before sparking it up. To the other extreme, the tiny, pin-cushion rocker (right) requires only needle-nose plyers, some glue, fabric, a cotton ball or two, and lots of patience--perfect for Barbie's playhouse.

Nancy Adams uses an oxyacetylene torch to etch
decorative lines into her big tin can.

My Garden Helper, Deb Cohen

In that tin cans come in quite a variety of sizes up to and including 55-gallon drums, the same is true as to the scale in which a tin can artist may choose to work. Deb Cohen's My Garden Helper (left) might require a garage workshop, while the delicate, Latas Dedinho (finger cans, below right) or Jill Porter's Coke can earrings (below) could be considered kitchen table art.

Polished metal jewelry.

You don't have to tell anyone they're made from a Coke can.

Aluminum cans are a delight to work with, though somewhat delicate when finished.

And while we're on the subject of Coke cans, in addition to fine jewelry, the Coca-Cola company makes a damned fine automobile too, at least when Jo Sanderson of Sandy's CanCars (above) gets done sipping their fine carbonated beverage. Wouldn't you just love to cruise "the strip" in a machine like that?

I'm not sure what's in the cans but whatever the case, it probably tastes like chicken.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that not all tin can sculptures require some form of bonding. There is a whole genre of such art which has come to be known as "stacked can art," (above), probably first pioneered by a bored stock boy at Safeway (an American grocery retailer). Best of all these art gallery installations do not require the emptying of such cans...just a good, sturdy floor and a ban on shopping carts.

One of the foremost experts on tin can art.

You know you've come upon an important, legitimate, art medium when you see magazines and how-to books published on the subject (above). Major art galleries and museums have also added legitimacy to tin can art. Hundreds of thousands of viewers have no doubt seen Jeff Koons' Michael Jackson and Bubbles. Now Sunland, California, artist Seaton Brown has created a 144-square-foot portrait of the King of Pop using 1,680 empty soda pop cans (below). The contents, bubbles included, have gone down the drain. Brown doesn't drink the stuff. Normally, the 40-year-old artist likewise doesn't dabble in "Pop" art or other alternate media. He earns his living from oil paintings and as a freelance illustrator. Yet the whole concept was too good to resist--Pop as a style, pop cans as a medium, the "King of Pop" as the subject. Brown says about 20% of his raw materials came empty, purchased from a recycling station. For the rest he paid retail, spending, he estimates, about $600 on soda cans both empty and full, and another $400 on other materials. The tricky part, he notes, was finding good skin tones. The solution came in the form of the cream soda, root beer, and cherry-vanilla flavors of the Whole Foods brand. Whole foods?

Seaton Brown's King of Pop. It makes me thirsty just to look at it.

A picture frame made from pop cans.
Andy Warhol, the original "King of Pop," was my idea.

 

Maksimilijan Vanka

The Apse mural, St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church, Millvale, Pennsylvania,
the work of the Croatian artist, Maksimilijan Vanka.

It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant so many people are of geography. Even in finding on a map some of the lesser-known states in the United States, they have to do more than a little searching. Ask most people where Montenegro, or Bosnia, or Serbia, or Croatia might be located and they'd not have the foggiest idea. Just for the record, they're collectively known as the Balkan countries located along the Dalmatian coast east of the Adriatic Sea. Even with a fairly precise geographic description such as that there might come a blank look followed by the question, "Where's the Adriatic Sea?" Before we can talk about a country's art and artists, it seems to me knowing where in the world that country is located should be a prerequisite. Maksimilijan Vanka was an outstanding artist born and trained in Croatia, but who emigrated to the United States in 1931, settling in the Pittsburgh area where his best know work graces the walls of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale. You may not know where Millvale is but I'd hope you have some idea where Pittsburgh might be.

St. Nicholas, outside and within.

Millvale, Pennsylvania, is an industrial suburb northeast of Pittsburgh where a large number of Croatian immigrants settled around 1900 to work in the Pittsburgh steel mills. Most were highly religious and most brought with them their ethnic version of Catholicism. Two neighboring Croatian Catholic parishes sprung up, Millvale, and just to the west, Troy Hill, each with their own parish church. The two parishes were combined in the late 1990s. However, two such nearby places of worship, in the age of the automobile, were more than the parish could afford. One had to die that the other might live. After a lengthy court battle, the Troy Hill Croatian Catholic Church met with the wrecking ball in 2013, the property sold to the state for the widening of Route 28 through the neighborhood. Fortunately the Millvale church survived; and with it, the impressive murals of Maksimilijan Vanka.

The image (top-left) is a self-portrait with the artist's daughter from the Millvale murals

Maksimilijan Vanka was born in 1889, possibly the illegitimate son of Rudolf Hapsburg, the Crown Prince of Austria, and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (had not WW I interfered). The boy was sent to live with peasants, but at the age of eight was discovered by his maternal grandfather, spending the rest of his childhood living in a castle. As a young man, Vanka studied art in Zagreb, Croatia, and Brussels, Belgium. During World War I, being a pacifist, Vanka refused to serve in the regular army, choosing instead to serve with the Belgian Red Cross. After the war, he taught art in Zagreb.

Vanka freely intermixed ethnic Croatian scenes such as this with religious figures in Croatian dress.

Vanka's wife was Jewish. In the early 1930s, as anti-Semitic fever grew in southern Europe, Vanka had the foresight to flee with his wife and young daughter to America, settling in the Croatian community north of Pittsburgh. In 1934, he first exhibited his landscapes, still-lifes, and paintings related to Croatian culture and nationalism in Pittsburgh. As a result, he came to the notice of the Rev. Albert Zagar of St. Nicholas Millvale Parish. Three years later, in 1937, Zagar commissioned the murals. Vanka's daughter, Peggy, recalls that her father worked painting the murals at a furious pace. He usually worked between 16 to 18 hours daily through the entire week. He worked without a watch so as not to be influenced by the time of day. The murals, some 20 in all, cover the walls and ceiling of the church. They were painted in two, eight-week-long sessions, one in 1939 and the other in 1941. The starkly vivid murals before and after the war are strikingly different.

 

Clicking on the image makes the captions easier to read.

A Wounded Friend, Maxo Vanka.
(The image is not cropped; it's what
happens when the artist runs out
of paper for his image.)

Murals painted before the war depict Croatian immigrants coming to America to seek a better life, grateful to have escaped the slaughter taking place in their homeland. Murals painted after the war are much more striking and vivid with dark and haunting themes. Vanka was a committed pacifist, the intensity of his beliefs depicted clearly in his murals. One scene is of the Virgin Mary coming between two warring soldiers. Another depicts two soldiers battling each other, but this time it is Jesus who attempts to intercede. One of the soldiers accidentally thrusts his bayonet into Jesus' heart, causing a look of utter surprise and pain on Jesus' face. Another mural features a foreboding figure, dressed in black, with a gas mask over his face, depicting the horrors of war and the evil of those who would send men into war. To Vanka, there were no justifiable reasons for war. Maxo Vanka lived to be seventy-four years of age. He drowned in a swimming accident off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 1963.

The upper mural image is from the 1939 session while the lower image dates from the 1941 session.

In 1990, church members became alarmed at the deteriorating condition of the Vanka murals. They formed the non-profit Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka. In the years since, they have been leading a campaign to clean, restore and properly light the murals. The group is committed to raising approximately $600,000 in two phases. The most recent report has them having raised $120,000 toward their Phase I goal of $230,000, which will provide for the cleaning and restoration of seven murals; installation of energy-efficient lighting; and expansion of public information. A substantial loan from the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese has been granted for building upgrades. Restoration of the remaining 15 murals is included in Phase II funding, which is forecast to cost some $350,000.

Winter Afternoon, Maximilian Vanka