Kurt Wenner

Xintiandi Art Festival, Shanghai, China, Kurt Wenner

It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

On at least two or three occasions I've written about street art, sometimes called sidewalk art, or pavement art, all meaning more or less the same thing. In fact, when I taught art at the elementary level, every year in the fall I would load up with colored chalk and take my classes out to decorate the many sidewalks and sometimes the empty parking lot. For the most part, each kid worked on his own area and parents probably wondered when they got home, "What the hell you been doing that you got so dirty?" If the kids themselves complained, I simply reminded them that "Side-walk art is a dirty business but someone has to do it." For the most part, I simply wandered amongst them handing out pious pontifi-cations as to what they might try next or how they might improve their efforts. Mostly I simply kept them on task and scanned the clouds hoping it didn't start raining. So, although I've never actually tried such art, and I'm way to old to crawl around on hard concrete to start now, I do know a bit about the whole subject. Or, at least, I thought did until reading the reminiscences of a real street artist named Kurt Wenner.

 

Andrea Pozzo's painted ceiling in the Church of St. Ignazio, 1685, Rome

A few years ago I took it upon myself to write about a couple sidewalk artist, Joe Hill and Max Lowry (3D Joe and Max). Another time I highlighted the street artist, Joe Mangrum, who works not with chalk or pastels but with colored sands creating decorative floral and symmetrical designs. For that reason when I came across the work of the American artist, Kurt Wenner, though quite impressed with his talent and audacity, not to mention his incredible work ethic, I was more than a little skeptical of his claim to have invented sidewalk art. He didn't, of course. Sidewalk art seems to have originated in England more than a century ago. However, in digging a bit deeper I discovered he claims only to have invented a certain type of sidewalk art, anamorphic 3-D pavement art. Let me be perfectly frank here, I'd never even heard of anamorphic art, (pavement or otherwise). Well, actually, turns out I was aware of such art, I'd just never heard it called that. Anamorphic art involves Anamorphosis, which is a distorted view or perspective requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point (or viewing angle) to reconstitute the image. The science of such art had its birth during the Renaissance in the work of Leonardo, Hans Holbein (the younger) and later, during the Baroque era, the ceiling paintings of Andrea Pozzo as seen in his magnificent dome and vault of the Church of St. Ignazio in Rome (above).

Born about 1960 (sources are slim in this regard) in Ann Arbor, Michigan,
Wenner lived for 25 years in Rome, but now resides in the United States.

Typical of Wenner's Rome work.

Kurt Wenner's claim to have "invented" 3-D street art seems valid. I've done some looking at others doing similar work and I can find none of them having been at it since 1984. Mostly such work became popular in the 1990s. Outstanding street artists such as Julian Beever, Manfred Stader, and Edgar Muller all seem to have come later and been heavily influenced by Wenner. Wenner is a man who has paid his dues, his first mural commission coming when he was just sixteen. Though born in Michigan, Wenner grew up in Santa Barbara, California, where he first tried his hand at 3-D pavement art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. A year later he helped found the first street painting festival in the United States, at the Old Mission, about the same time he began to support himself with mural commissions. After high school, Wenner attended the Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center College of Design, before finding a job working for NASA as an advanced scientific illustrator, creating conceptual paintings of future space projects. Then, in 1982 Wenner sold all he had and left NASA to go study Classical art in Rome.

Rome favored the religious classics, in northern Europe, Wenner discovered a newfound creative freedom where his tromp l'oeil pavement art could flourish.

Ceres Banquet, Kurt Wenner

In Rome Wenner learned the art of living on the street, drawing on the street, and surviving upon the proceeds from nearly worthless Italian coins. Actually the money was pretty good, only very heavy. Few merchants or banks wanted anything to do with the tons of coins (literally) he accumulated in his studio. Finally, he found a pizzeria near the Trevi Fountain where people exchanged paper money for coins to toss in the fountain. The owner was expecting a bag or two of coins. Wenner delivered a roomful or two of coins. Later Wenner moved on to Germany and Switzerland where he was able to go beyond drawing copies of the famous art he found in Rome's museums to original, secular works, which allowed him to develop an all new form of anamorphic perspective designed to be seen up close, rather than several stories above a church floor. This gradual development of a new set of rules for drawing is the true nature of his invention of 3-D pavement art. The only problem in working in northern Europe was the colder, wetter weather and the penchant German cities have of washing down their sidewalks every morning. Like most artists, Wenner didn't care much for getting out of bed before dawn to rush back to his drawing from the day before to protect it from destruction.

Las Vegas, Chevrolet, and art with "depth."

Kurt Wenner is also a first-rate
portrait artist as well.

Having extolled the talent and virtues of Kurt Wenner and some others of his ilk, I have two problems with 3-D street art. The first is its transient nature, at the mercy of rain, footprints, vandals, and municipal sidewalk cleaners. Of course, sidewalk artists have long since dealt with this unavoidable problem by switching to paint on walls or simply accepting the fact that sidewalk art is a performance rather than a product. Very well, if they can accept that role, so can I. However the second limitation I see to such art is much more fundamental. It is totally beholden to a second art form in order to be effective. Anamorphic perspective has only one optimal viewpoint from which it must be seen and photographed for it to be fully effective, not to mention that in order to have any chance of preservation, it simply must be photographed. Even when the work is done inside, away from the brutal elements, which have no respect for fine art, such work is never intended to be permanent. Even in is most serious form (as in the case of Wenner) it is art akin to "trick" photography--fun to look at, and a performance fun to watch--but at best, it's only a showcase for the artist's other types of work. Fortunately, in this regard, Kurt Wenner is well equipped to make the most of his eye-catching strengths (above, right).

Ho, man, what time is it? What year is it?

 

Painting Bridges

The Brooklyn Bridge, Leroy Neiman

If you're a landscape artist of some standing, the chances are you've painted at least one bridge sometime during your lengthy contribution to art history. Speaking of history, the experts tell us that the oldest existing bridges today can be found in Greece dating back to the 13th-century BC. I doubt they've been painting them that long, but artists have long liked painting bridges. I've painted a few highly salable covered bridges (bottom, paintings, not the bridges themselves). Years ago I painted the bridge crossing the Muskingum River into my hometown. That was about 1990. They tore it down shortly thereafter and replaced it with a strange, asymmetrical, concrete arch affair which I also painted. Then I went back in history and found photos of the original steel truss bridge, which washed away in the devastating 1913 flood. I sold all three to a local restaurant where, I assume, they still hang today. For the most part, bridges are graceful, sometimes quite beautiful, and they're laden with a boatload of symbolism. They bypass problems, they smooth out the rough spots in our lives, and they connect things, both literally and figuratively. You know something is important when its noun form also becomes a verb. That is to say, bridges bridge.

The Langlois Bridge at Arles, 1888, Vincent van Gogh

Leroy Neiman's Brooklyn Bridge (top) is one of my favorites; but some other very important artists have also painted bridges, though most of them are far less important than the New York City landmark. Vincent van Gogh painted The Langlois Bridge at Arles (above), in 1888. It's still there today, likely because van Gogh painted it. The Impressionist, Alfred Sisley, painted The Bridge at Villeneuve la Garenne (below), 1872. It looks to be a little more important a thoroughfare than van Gogh's modest little span. So far as I know it is also still in place.

The Bridge at Villeneuve la Garenne,1872, Alfred Sisley

Without doubt, the consummate bridge painter of the Impressionist era would have to be Claude Monet. He may also be the only artist who ever designed and built his own bridge, literally painting it (a pale green) then setting about painting pictures of it. His Japanese Bridge over the lily pond at Giverny was the subject of no less than twelve painting efforts, between 1897 and 1899 (mostly 1899). I've seen it. I've walked across it. I only wish I'd had time to paint it, although the skies were drizzling rain at the time. Rain or shine, I could see why Monet loved it so much and why so many artists since his time, in visiting his home and gardens at Giverny, have also set up their easels before its graceful wooden beams (below).

The greatest bridge builder and painter of the Impressionist era.

For the most part the bridges artist paint are more important than the artists who paint them. In fact, their social importance and architectural/engineering beauty is likely why artists paint them. One of the oldest bridges in Europe spans the Arno River at Florence, Italy. The present Ponte Vecchio (below), built to replace some earlier wooden spans washed away by flooding, was completed in 1345 on a site where the river is at its narrowest, and where a Roman bridge had stood more than a thousand years earlier. As bridges go, it's not very attractive. In fact, of all the bridges ever painted by artists, this one vitally needs the artist's touch to imbue it with any sense of romantic beauty associated with most other such spans. Photographs actually tend to emphasize its uglier qualities. The Ponte Vecchio also has the distinction of being a key part of the first urban rapid transit system ever built. Designed by the famous art historian, painter, and architect, Giorgio Vasari in 1565, the Vasari Corridor passes over the shops along the bridge in order to connect the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence's town hall) with the Palazzo Pitti, allowing Cosimo I de' Medici to ride his horse to work each morning without encountering the rush hour traffic in the streets below. To enforce the prestige of the bridge, in 1593 the Medici Grand Dukes prohibited butchers from selling there. Their place was immediately taken by gold merchants. They're still there today where once hung out over the edge of the bridge the city's butcher shops (a great convenience for disposing of unwanted meat scraps). The bridge narrowly escaped destruction by the Nazis when they evacuated Florence in the waning days of WW II. It was the only bridge crossing the Arno left in place.

The Vasari Corridor remains today, though it's been turned into an art museum
featuring portraits of famous artists of the past from around the world.

Almost as old, and also in Italy, painters have long flocked to the famous Rialto Bridge crossing the Grand Canal in Venice. The present stone structure replaced two earlier bridges which had collapsed under the weight of spectators watching; parades of boats in the water below (that must have put a damper on the festivities). It was designed and completed in 1591 by the appropriately named Antonio da Ponte (Ponte means bridge in Italian). So radical was it's design at the time many feared to cross it, expecting it to suffer the same fate as its predecessors. They needn't have worried. The ultimate in Venetian bridgework has been there now for over four hundred years.

Big name artists such as Venice's own Canaletto and the American painter John Singer Sargent have all painted the Rialto. For some unknown reason, Sargent chose to paint under the bridge. Maybe it was raining at the time.

One of the strangest looking bridges ever painted by artists (or ever built for that matter) is London's Iconic Tower Bridge, completed in 1894 to span the Thames without, at the same time blocking it to ship traffic. It's a drawbridge, the mechanical elements hidden inside medieval Gothic towers on either bank of the river, which are joined at the top by a then state-of-the-art steel truss span to allow workers to cross the rive while the bridge below is open to nautical traffic. It's often mistaken for the tuneful "London Bridge" which was not falling down but was, in fact, taken down and shipped block for block to a site in the Arizona desert as the centerpiece for a housing development.

It's in London but London Bridge it's not.

The other two most painted bridges in the world are both American suspension bridge, one each firmly ensconced on each coast. Unlike London Bridge, which the Brits sold to the Americans, the Brooklyn Bridge has never been sold, though many have tried. Designed and build in 1883 by John Augustus Roebling and later his son, Washington Roebling, at great cost both financially and in the loss of lives, the Brooklyn Bridge across the East River is actually a few years older than London's Tower Bridge, though decades ahead as to engineering and design. Like the Tower Bridge, it's stone towers have Gothic elements as seen in its pointed arches, but beyond that, with its Roebling invented steel cables, the two bear few similarities as to size and appearance. Starting about 1920, the American artist, Joseph Stella (below-left), practically made a career for himself churning out dozens of modernist paintings inspired by its design. Or, maybe he was just taking his cues from Claude Monet.

The Brooklyn Bridge definitely has a personality all its own, depending on how you look at it.

And finally, the "baby" of the bunch, the 1930s vintage Golden Gate Bridge across the entrance to San Francisco Bay is probably the most visually impressive of the whole lot. Though no longer the longest or tallest, or most trafficked bridge in the world, that hasn't kept daredevils, suiciders, or artists from taking advantages of its graceful, towering curves. Of all these bridges, this is the only one I've ever actually crossed, though I've seen from a distance the Ponte Vecchio (I was not impressed). I could never say that about the Golden Gate. Whether on it, or looking back at it from Marin County, its northern terminus, the only word that comes to mind is "awesome." I'm guessing all the artists below would agree with me on that.

By the way, the Golden Gate Bridge is a rusty red, not Golden.

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Millfield Bridge, 1970, Jim Lane
(I've never crossed this one either.)





 

Robert Capa

Death of a militiaman, September 5, 1936, Robert Capa. This photo may be the first in the history of warfare to capture a combatant at the moment of death.

I've long claimed, and history has long ago proved, that art and war don't mix. Artists flee the death, destruction, and uproar of war like the plague, and very often take their art with them. We saw this happen during both world wars. The wars changed the artists and their art most profoundly. That was especially the case shortly before the Second World War when Europe's loss of great artists was America's gain. The center of gravity in the art world moved across the Atlantic to New York where it has mostly stayed in the seventy years since the war's end. Of all the major artists in France, only Pablo Picasso remained in Paris for the duration, while virtually all other fled either west or hid in the South of France. Now, having once more made a case for art and war being antithetical let me counter that in saying the one type of art actually thrives on warfare. In its reaction to the brutality of war, photography is not beautiful in the sense we think of the art beauty of painting, for example. However if we think in terms of an art that conveys the most profound truths regarding the human condition under stress, followed by the joy and relief when war ends, then no art except photography (and moviemaking) comes even close in its creative power to move men's minds as does the artist risking his life to capture its worst moments. Picasso could paint a thousand Guernicas without conveying the horror and accompanying emotional impact of a single photo by the Hungarian photographer, Robert Capa.

Leipzig Suicide, April 20, 1945, Robert Capa.

That single photo came in 1936 as Robert Capa worked in Spain, photographing the Spanish Civil War, along with Gerda Taro, his companion, and David Seymour, his professional photography partner. In 1936, Capa became known around the world for the "Falling Soldier" photo (top) long thought to have been taken in Cerro Muriano on the Cordoba Front of a Marxist militiaman, who had just been shot to death. It has long been considered an iconic image of the war. In more recent years scholars have come to question the authenticity of the photograph as to its location, and the identity of its subject. Be that as it may, Capa's image is no less compelling as an anti-war statement quite apart from any questionable details. Capa was, of course, simply lucky, having been in the right place at the right time, his itchy trigger finger tripping the shutter at precisely the moment when the "luck" of his subject suddenly exploded within him. However luck had nothing to do with Capa's equally stirring Leipzig Suicide (above) in which he was one of three press photographers called in to document the cyanide suicide of Leipzig's Deputy Mayor and Municipal Treasurer, Dr. jur. Ernst Kurt Lisso (at his desk), and his wife, Renate, on the couch, next to their nineteen-year-old daughter, Regina. The place was the city's town hall as the family sought to avoid capture by American soldiers closing in on the city. Being an artist during a war takes a strong stomach.

Capa shot four wars before being killed by a landmine in Indochina in 1954.

Robert Capa was born Endre Friedmann to the Jewish family of Júlia and Dezső Friedmann in Budapest, Austria-Hungary in 1913. His mother, was a native of what is now Slovakia. Capa's father came from the Transylvanian (now Romania). When he turned eighteen, their son decided there was no future for him under the Hungarian regime following World War I, so he left home for Berlin. Capa originally wanted to be a writer. However, when he found work in photography, he grew to love the art. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Capa fled to France in 1933 to avoid persecution as a Jewish journalist and photographer. However, he found it difficult to find work so he decided to change his Jewish name, adopted the name, "Robert Capa." Cápa (shark) had been his nickname in school. He felt that it would be recognizable and American-sounding, since it was similar to that of film director Frank Capra. He found it easier to sell his photos under the newly adopted "American" name. Over a period of time, with the help of his girlfriend Gerda Taro, Capa gradually assumed his new persona while Gerda acted as an intermediary with those who purchased the photos taken by the "great American photographer, Robert Capa." Capa's first published photograph was of the Communist leader, Leon Trotsky, making a speech in Copenhagen in 1932.

Capa met and became friends with the American writer, Ernest Hemingway,
during the Spanish Civil War. He was among the first photojournalists
to experiment with color photography in its infancy.

As World War II, began, Capa had moved from Paris to New York City, both in looking for work, and to once more escape Nazi persecution. During the war, Capa was sent to various parts of the European Theater areas on photography assignments. He first worked for Collier's Weekly, but was fired as an "enemy alien" photographer. He switched to Lifefor whom he was to work intermittently for the rest of his life. During July and August, 1943, Capa was in Sicily with American troops, near Sperlinga, Nicosia and Troina. By October of that year he was in Naples where he photographed the Naples post office bombing.

Photographing a war makes peace more precious.

However, Capa's greatest challenge and triumph came on D-Day, June 6, 1944, as he landed with the men of the 16th Infantry Regiment as part of the second wave of troops hitting Omaha Beach on the Normandy coast. Capa used two cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. He took 106 pictures in the first two hours of the invasion. Unfortunately, when Capa returned the unprocessed film to London, a fifteen-year-old darkroom assistant at Life accidentally set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion of three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eleven frames were recovered. Capa never mentioned the loss of three and a half rolls of his D-Day landing film to the boy's supervisor. However, those eleven shots that remained became known as Capa's Magnificent Eleven. They depicted the landing and heavy resistance from German troops in their bunkers along the Atlantic Wall with such forceful power as to visually rival his earlier photo of the dying militiaman. Decades later, another great photography artist, Steven Spielberg, is said to have been inspired by these images in filming Saving Private Ryan.

From Omaha Beach to a day on the beach (1948) with Pablo Picasso and family,
followed by a stopover at the Louvre (above-center).

Henri Matisse, France, 1950,
Robert Capa,

Although it may seem like it sometimes, wars do not go on forever. They do end. Otherwise, we might not know when the next one begins. What do photojournalists do between wars? Well, in Capa's case, they photograph painters, particularly Pablo Picasso (above) and Henri Matisse (right). Matisse was still at work when Capa photographed him in 1950 at the age of eighty-one. Matisse died four years later in 1954. Even war photographers thrive on beauty, as seen in Capa's image of Hollywood actress, Ava Gardener (below), whom depicted in color during the making of The Barefoot Contessa in Rome in 1954. Later that year, while on another assign-ment from Life magazine covering yet another war (the French misadventure in Indochina), Robert Capa became a victim of the war he was bringing home to American readers when he was killed, having stepped on a landmine. He was forty-one. 


Ava Gardner, The Barefoot Contessa,
1954,  Robert Capa

 

It's About Time

Frangrila Flower time lapse photograph

When we talk about something being three-dimensional, we are usually speaking in terms of either illusion or reality. If it's illusional, it's rendered on a two-dimensional surface having length and width and giving the appearance of depth. If we're speaking of reality, as with a sculptural item, then the art object actually has three dimensions, length, width, and depth. What we don't often realized is that such work also has a fourth dimension--time. Without that most important element in its design the object simply wouldn't exist. When an artwork is, for some reason destroyed, it's first two or three dimensions cease to exist. Only the fourth dimension remains as fragments, ashes, gases, whatever. It's no longer a work of art, but in that man can neither create nor destroy matter, only change its form, as when an ice sculpture melts into water, then the remnants continues to exist in the fourth dimension--time.

 

Portrait with watch, 1560, probably of Cosimo de Medici I, Duke of Florence,
probably by the Renaissance master Maso de San Friano.

Su Song Astronomical Clock
11th century, Kaifeng, China

This fourth dimension has fascinated artists for centuries, probably since they first began to measure time...however crudely, as with the Su Song Astronomical Clock (left) dating from the 11th-century. More recently, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence has been tryin to date, and authenticate a circa 1560s portrait of a wealthy Florentine holding what may be one of the earliest pocket watches (above). Moreover, as artists have tackled the topic of time in their works, the one most common element to be found is our only known instrument for measuring time--the clock. Undoubtedly, the most famous such painting attacking the concept of time is Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory (below) painted in 1931. Indeed, time, especially since Dali, has been one of the most persistent subjects to be found in Surrealist Art. Time is both real and surreal. Real, as measured by various timepieces, and surreal as in dreams and memories. Each of us has a surreal time machine in our heads allowing us to travel back in time during both our waking and sleeping moments.

The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Salvador Dali

Though the fourth dimension has always been an element in all art, until the early years of the 20th century, it was mostly a static element, an absolutely essential factor but one which contributed little to the message conveyed by the art. The smile on the face of the Mona Lisa never changed, though in reality, it was probably momentary. Michelangelo's David is depicting in frozen contemplation of the giant Goliath, not in actually slaying him. Then with the advent of motion pictures, The Great Train Robbery depicted a crime in progress. D.W. Griffith moved on to depicting an entire war. In more recent generations, photographers and computer geeks have made it possible for still photos to suddenly come to life as with the time lapse animated gif at the top. Visually, having learned to speed it up and slow it down, we no longer see time in quite the same way as before.

Dance to the Music of Time, 1638, Nicholas Poussin

Until the modern era, artists had to be satisfied with illuminating the concept of time, as with Nicholas Poussin's Dance to the Music of Time (above), from 1638. Poussin could only work with the symbols of time. His four dancers represent the four stages of life constantly revolving around Man: Wealth, Pleasure, Industry and Poverty. There is a strong grip between the hands of Pleasure and Wealth, as Poverty desperately grasps for the hand of Wealth. Industry, Poverty and Pleasure all looking towards Wealth while she meets the gaze of Father Time. He plays the music for the dancers symbolizing the element of death which is always present in life. The little boy on the right watches the hourglass signaling the passing of time while the boy blowing bubbles on the left suggests the brevity of human life. It's no accident that we combine the two words "life" and "time" to created a single whole--a lifetime.



Cole's allegorical history approach to time.

Other artists such as Thomas Cole have taken a broader, philosophic look at time as seen in his five paintings making up his Course of Empire series (above). He paints the same landscape view as if looking out the window of a time machine traveling from the past toward the future yet ending far in the past. His view is at first brutally Savage, then comfortingly Pastoral, followed by the optimistic Consummation of mankind's yearning for wealth, culture, and prosperity. Then Cole suddenly takes on a pessimistic outlook as seen in his Destruction and Desolation. Cole could not depict time itself, but he did manage to depict its effects upon human existence.

 

Starry Night, 1889, Vincent, van Gogh

Tempus Pecunia Est,
(Time is Money), 
2010, Richard Harpum

Vincent van Gogh, in giving us his Starry Night (above), from 1889, tries to explore the momentary passing of time, though by today's standards, as lovely as the painting may be, he failed miserably in that effort. His stars glimmer, his swirls of paint suggests he'd like them to move across the sky, though he apparently had little understanding of the rotation of the earth in pursuing the painted illusion. My own efforts in dealing with the fourth dimension have taken a symbolic track, usually in the form of still-lifes such as It's About Time (below). Another artist, Richard Harpum, combines the still-life with both Surrealism and symbolic elements in his Tempus Pecunia Est (Time is Money, left), dating from 2010. Being a portrait artists, my strongest interest in time has to do with it's effects it has upon the human face. As a Junior in college back in 1971, I tackled the aging process starting with the face of a one-year-old boy, then tracing the effects of time for the next sixty-four years (bottom). I called it How to Grow a Man in Sixty-four Easy Lessons.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

It's About Time, 1981, Jim Lane

Copyright, Jim Lane

How to Grow a Man, 1971, Jim Lane

J. Alden Weir

The Spreading Oak, J. Alden Weir

"I never in my life saw more horrible things... They do not observe drawing nor form, but give you an impression of what they call nature. It was worse than the Chamber of Horrors." --J. Alden Weir, Paris, 1877

If you haven't guessed by now this twenty-five-year-old "American in Paris" for the first time in his life was reacting in disgust to a new type of painting he'd just encountered--Impression-ism. Weir was accustomed to painting in a realistic, American Academic style as seen in his The Spreading Oak (top). What he encountered in Paris were paintings such as Claude Monet's Landscape with Thunderstorm (below). Today we'd call his reaction "culture shock."

Landscape with Thunderstorm, Claude Monet

Julian Alden Weir was no "babe in the woods" when it came to art. Born in 1852, he was one of sixteen children. His father was none other than the painter, Robert Walter Weir, a professor of drawing at the Military Academy at West Point, who had once taught James McNeill Whistler. His older brother, John Ferguson Weir, also became a well-known landscape artist painting in the style of the Hudson River school. He was professor of painting and design at Yale University from 1869, credited with starting the first academic art program on an American campus. The younger Weir had, himself completed his initial art training at the National Academy of Design in the early 1870s before heading off to Paris in 1873 to study at the city's famed École des Beaux-Arts. While there, he studied under the famous French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme.

 

An artist matures, and reserves the right to change his mind.

About the same time he mailed off his diatribe denouncing Impressionism, Weir met his father's former student, James McNeill Whistler in London, shortly before returning to New York City. Although Weir's painting style didn't change appreciably, his having become acquainted with Whistler and his work may well have changed his attitude toward Impressionism. Upon his return to New York, Weir became a charter member of the Society of American Artists and continued exhibiting his work at the National Academy of Design, where he had first displayed his paintings in 1875. He earned income through portrait commissions and teaching art classes at the Cooper Union Women’s Art School, the Art Students League, and in giving private lessons.

Fireside Dreams, 1887, J. Alden Weir

Weir's works as a young artist centered on still-lifes and the human figure, which he rendered in a realist style as he grew to like the work of Édouard Manet. In fact, Weir purchased two paintings by Manet in the early 1880s, Woman with a Parrot and Boy with a Sword, for a New York collector. It took a while, but gradually, Weir was beginning to lose his loathing for French Impressionism. One of his own paintings, Fireside Dreams (above) from 1887, while certainly no treatise on Impressionism, does suggest a loosening of brushwork influenced by Whistler and indirectly, the French art he'd so detested.

The Weir Farm is open to artists and tourists today.

The Christmas Tree, J. Alden Weir

In the 1880s Weir moved to rural Ridgefield, Connecticut, where he had acquired a farm through his marriage to Anna Baker in 1883. While there, he strengthened his friendship with artists Albert Pinkham Ryder and John Henry Twachtman. The art of Weir and Twachtman was quite similar; and the two sometimes painted and exhibited together. Both taught at the Art Students League. Weir's The Christmas Tree (right), depicting his daughter, is from this period. By 1891 Weir had fully changed his mind about Impressionism, having come to accept and adopted the style as his own. His one-man show at the Blakeslee gallery in the same year clearly displayed his newfound love for that which he'd once rejected. His work demonstrated a tendency toward a lighter palette of pastel colors and broken brushwork akin to the Impressionists. Weir's The Red Bridge (below), from 1895, is considered his best work and demonstrates quite well, not just his acceptance of Impressionism but his wholehearted embracing of the style.

The Red Bridge, ca. 1895, Julian Alden Weir

Dry-point etching, J. Alton Weir

Weir's wife, Anna, died in 1892. Soon afterwards, Weir married her sister, Ella Baker. This time he inherited another farm in Windham, Con-necticut. This was not the first time he had ever seen the Windham farm. Weir had been there with Anna some ten years before. On his first visit in 1882, the beautiful farm and sur-rounding village made quite an impression on him. About the same time, Weir took up etching, depicting his new land and the local "color" in black and white. (Actually, his ink was brown, and his paper more tan than white as seen below.) Weir's untitled dry-point etching (left) indicates a mastery of the technical intricacies of this antique medium.

The Stone Bridge, 1887-93, J. Alden Weir

During the remainder of his life Weir painted impressionist landscapes and figurative works, many of which centered on his Connecticut farms. His style varied from traditional, vibrant impressionism to a more subdued and shadowy tonalism. In general, Weir's paintings done after 1900 showed a renewed interest of the Academicism similar to his work in his younger days, with subjects treated less realistically and a greater emphasis placed on drawing and design. His The Bridge--Nocturne, (below) is from 1910 and bears a strong resemblance to the nocturnal work of his friend, Whistler. Weir's other love besides painting was dogs and hunting as seen in one of his later efforts painted about 1912 (bottom). It would seem that artists have the right to change their minds...then change back again if they like. J. Alden Weir died in 1919.

Urban art, The Bridge--Nocturne, 1910, J. Alden Weir

Rural art, Hunter and Dogs,
1912, J. Alden Weir

 

An Artist's Duty

Learning, perfecting, proclaiming, promoting, and teaching.

I've long been of the opinion that artists have a duty to mankind. Summed up in a nutshell, they should:

learn their art, perfect its craft, proclaim a message, promote their persona, then teach all of the above to everyone who will learn.

All that they should do in roughly that order of precedence. Of course, believing that, and actually achieving it are two different things. Moreover some artists have strengths in some of those areas and not in others. That's certainly the case in my case. Fortunately, while there is, of necessity, a sequence, there's also a degree of simultaneity as the artist grows older and begins to fulfill some of those ideals. Learning art and seeking continuous technical improvement are virtually impossible to separate. Likewise, proclaiming a message and promoting oneself as the messenger go hand in hand. And finally, everyone who teaches also learns in doing so. Thus it becomes an unbroken circle.

 

The Charles Willson Peale Family, 1771-73, Charles Willson Peale

Surprisingly, very few artists have succeeded equally well in all these endeavors. Those who have are the exception, men such as the early American art patriarch Charles Willson Peale, for instance, who became on of the outstanding artists of his time and place then proceeded to teach his family, sons and daughters alike, everything he knew about art (among other pursuits). The late 19th-century artist/illustrator Howard Pyle is another excellent example. His list of Brandywine associated artists is as broad as it is long.

 

Howard Pyle, and students, Frank Schoonover and Stanley Arthurs

In the area of architecture, virtually no one stands up to this high bar (or even comes close) better than the eccentric Wisconsin genius, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright's Guggenheim Museum and his Fallingwater have become iconic monuments to that farsighted genius. Today his Taliesin East (Wisconsin) and Taliesin West (Arizona) stand as lasting tribute to his own work, but also his ideals, and the two or three generations of followers he has inspired.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Frank Lloyd Wright, the 20th-century's greatest architect.

In the art of motion picture storytelling, only Steven Spielberg, whom I once named the greatest artist alive today, measures up in all five of the areas mentioned above, in films as diverse as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to Schindler's List. Each and every film he has ever made had an important message, sometimes subtle, sometimes not; while the list of both actors and other filmmakers he has directed or influenced can be equaled by few others in the history of moviemaking. James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh, and Quentin Tarantino all point to Spielberg as having taught or influenced them in a significant manner.


Words for every artist.

In the area of photography names such as Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, and Alfred Eisenstaedt among a host of others, come to mind. All have left behind substantial bodies of groundbreaking work, but also whole libraries of books in which they dispense both message and media manipulations providing an immense library of insights and experiences that would have been forever lost had they not risen to challenge the final, ultimate duty of every artist.

Almost too many photographers to mention.

The sculptor, Auguste Rodin was one of the few such artists who not only mastered the many sculptural media of his time, but produced an impressive body of work in each of them. Many other sculptors down through the centuries have done likewise; many of them, such a Bernini, Donatello, Michelangelo, and others may well be considered to have been superior to the 19th-century Frenchman, but few, if any, have combined their output with a concerted effort to pass on their art to others of their time to such a degree as Rodin. A whole generation of sculptors studied in his workshop. These include Gutzon Borglum, Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brancusi, Camille Claudel, Charles Despiau, Malvina Hoffman, Carl Milles, François Pompon, and Clara Westhoff. Rodin also promoted the work of other sculptors, including Aristide Maillol and Ivan Meštrović whom Rodin once called "the greatest phenomenon amongst sculptors." Among sculptors whose work has been strongly influence by Rodin include, Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Bernard, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, Adolfo Wildt, and Henry Moore.

The Thinker from the Gates of Hell, 1917, Auguste Rodin

I hope you'll excuse this little exercise in name-dropping. Some might be taken aback by the number of famous artists not included (and there probably are some who should be here but aren't). However, as mentioned in the beginning, a great many artist have taken their broad experiences and technical expertise to their graves with them, having made little or no attempt during their lifetimes to pass any of it on. Michelangelo comes to mind in this regard, as does Picasso, Pollock, van Gogh, and a distressingly long list of others who selfishly seem to have been more interested in producing art and/or promoting themselves rather than preparing others. And though their influence have often been quite profound, their teachings have been, at best, secondhand. An artist should leave behind far more than an illustrated legacy.