Milking the Art Market

Peter Max in his studio around 2014 featuring NCL's Breakaway for which he was commissioned to design the bow decorations utilizing a New York City theme.

For more than twenty-five years, my wife and I have been avid sea cruisers. We first ventured out for four nights aboard Norwegian Cruise Line's (NCL) ancient Sunward II back in 1988. (NCL had only two ships at the time). She wasn't huge by today's standards, a mere 486 feet long, built around 1971 and, until recently still in service, though having undergone several name changes and refurbishments along the way. It was aboard that ship that I first encountered Park West, a sea-going art galley specializing in limited edition prints and original oils by lesser-known artists. I've observed the company and their way of doing business on virtually every cruise since then. They display flashy paintings on easels in their leased space aboard their host ship and in some cases other public venues. They present art history seminars (such as the entire history of art in one half-hour PowerPoint nutshell). But their real bread and butter income stems from free champagne art auctions touting the investment potential of overpriced limited edition prints. "Let the buyer beware." Very often the star of these seaborne art happenings has been the psychedelic Pop artist from the 1960s and thereafter, Peter Max.

 

Peter Max Self-portrait, ca 1970s, now the
cover of his autobiography published in 2013.

This is not primarily about Peter Max however, but those (Park West among them) who continue to milk his style and popularity to the tune of several million dollars a year long after the artist has ceased to paint. If you've recently purchased a Peter Max original painting, likely on a cruise ship, I have some bad news: It was far more likely to have been done by Joe Nobody, and only signed by Max, who is suffering from dementia. Max, whose work was once a ubiquitous part of 60s counterculture (he did the cover of the Beatles' Yellow Sub-marine album) is now allegedly being manipulated to sign work as if it were his own, when in fact it's being produced by other artists, then sold by the Park West Gallery, a Southfield-based commercial art concern that sells his works primarily on cruise ships.

The Park West routine varies only slightly from one cruise line to another.

For the past five years or more, twice a week, Peter Max (born in 1937 and now 81 years of age) thin as a rail, with a sparse mustache, sometimes having little idea about where or who he was, arrived at his "studio." Inside, he saw numerous painters--some recruited off the street and paid minimum wage--churning out art in the Max aesthetic: cheery, polychrome, wide-brushstroke kaleidoscopes on canvas. Max was instructed to hold out his hand and for hours he signed the art as if it were his own, grasping a brush and scrawling "Max." The arrangement, which continued until this year, was has been described by several witnesses. While many successful, prolific painters use assistants to stretch canvases or do simple background work, in recent years, the Peter Max art factory has gone far beyond this threshold.

Degenerative Peter Max works from recent years.

In 1997, the artist expanded a partnership with Park West Gallery. The majority of its revenue comes from boozy auctions held on cruise ships. On the water at least, nobody sells like Max. For the 24 million people who take a cruise each year, Max is a star. This is an alternate, at-sea universe in which his works are the pinnacle of sophisticated collecting. Maxes can be found in Park West showrooms on all of the major cruise lines, including Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Norwegian. They promote the Park West auctions as an exhilarating onboard activity with complimentary Champagne, their cut being as much as 40% of sales, according to many art marketing experts.

Milking the Peter Max style to the tune of $93-million.

Adam Max, the son.

Max, received a diagnosis several years ago of symptoms related to Alzheimer’s Disease. He now suffers from advanced dementia. Friends say he has not painted seriously in four years. He does not know what year it is. He spends afternoons curled up in a red velvet lounger in his New York apartment watching the Hudson River. Though unable to create original work, his paintings continue to sell as new pieces on Park West cruises. Numerous lawsuits have been filed against Park West by disgruntled customers who have purchased artwork and later found it to be either a forgery or some other significant departure from what they were told when they bought it. Park West cus-tomers complained that they were led to believe they were buying “one of a kind” Max works that would appreciate in value, only to return to land (and reliable Wi-Fi) where they learn that the internet was glutted with similar works. One cruise-ship salesman is quoted as saying the that dementia had made Max "even more creative and prolific."

The earliest Peter Max flag painting I could find dates from 1960.



Peter Max and his second wife,
Mary, 2015.

In 2012 Max's studio was on the brink of bankruptcy as he struggled to create. But in seven years it has since made more than $93-million in sales, including more than $30-million in net profit in 2018 Witnesses said Adam Max, the artist's son, hired assistant painters to mimic father's work and that these imitations were being sold as originals to increase studio profits. The sordid tale doesn't end there. Adam claimed Max's wife, Mary, was physically abusing him, while she alleged that he had kidnapped his father to keep his studio scheme running. Ghost painters, kidnapping, hired goons, attempted murder by sneaking large Brazil nuts into smoothies--These are just some of the wild accusations that have come out of lawsuits launched by those closest to Max. Just recently, Max's daughter, Libra, has booted Adam from day to day management of the company and wants to return her father's studio to its 'original' vision. The lawsuits have now been settled or dismissed. Max's son and daughter were each given 40 percent of the company, while Max himself owned the remaining 20 percent. Strangely enough, Park West continues to maintain that each Max sold on every ship is unique. For all the controversy, their sales haven't taken a hit and Max's studio (known as ALP Inc) is doing better financially than it has in years.

 



Iconic Peter Max from 1999.



 

Victor Arnautoff

An unflinching, unfiltered view of slavery in 19th-century America.

Which is more important, an artist's intentions in creating a work of art or the public perceptions of that work in the following years? This question which has plagued the students staff, and community of George Washington High School in San Francisco now for several generations. The question is couched in terms of intolerance, prejudice, revisionist history, aesthetics, art history, censorship, politics, not to mention educational goals. The artist was a Russian-American muralist named Victor Arnautoff. The work in question is a 1,600-sq-ft, twelve panel art installation exploring the life of the school's namesake, George Washington. The New Deal-era murals, spanning the staircase and lobby, depict Washington in 13 scenes. Depending on whom you ask, the murals are either an unflinching look at American history, a stark depiction of violence against oppressed minorities--or both.

George Washington, Native American fighter and staunch believer in "manifest destiny."
Student comments are posted on the wall below the mural.

You'll not find George Washington with an axe and a downed cherry tree, or his throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River. Two scenes in particular have generated student complaints for more than 50 years. In one, the statesman stands over a map of a young America while pointing westward; at the end of his arm, four white settlers with rifles rendered in monochrome walk over the full-color body of a deceased Indian whose face is turned away from the viewer (above). At the dead man’s feet, another Native American, wearing a headdress, sits at a campfire and shares a pipe with another armed white man. On the opposite wall, the owner of the plantation at Mount Vernon confers with a white man who gestures at some of Washington’s slave laborers: a barefoot black man shucking corn, three stooped, faceless black women in the far distance picking cotton, and another black man hammering wood for a group of white men manufacturing barrels (below).

 

George Washington, master of Mount Vernon, and slave owner.

In April, 2019, an ad hoc committee recommended that the artwork be archived and removed. In a statement following the committee decision, the school district responded: “The majority of the group expressed that the main reason to keep the mural up at the school is focused on the legacy of the artist, rather than experience of the students.” Ostensibly, the matter will be decided by the city’s board of education, but because the school was built under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration--a Depression-era federal infrastructure program--the federal General Services Administration could have the final say. Under US law, the GSA owns and curates all WPA-era art in its fine arts collection.



Sprawling over 1,600 square feet on two different levels of the high school, Arnautoff's mural is notoriously hard to photograph.

So, who was this controversial, Russian-born, immigrant artist? Victor Mikhail Arnautoff was born in 1896, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest. He died in Leningrad in 1979. Although showing an early talent in art, during his early life young Arnautoff served as a cavalry officer in the army of Nicholas II during WW I. With the defeat of the Czar's forces, Arnautoff crossed into northeastern China and surrendered his weapons. He remained in China for five years as he again tried to pursue art, signing up for schooling in Harbin. However, he was so impoverished he was obliged to take a position training the cavalry of the warlord Zhang Zuolin. While in China, the would-be artist met and married Lydia Blonsky with whom he had two sons. In November 1925 Arnautoff came to San Francisco on a student visa to study at the California School of Fine Arts. There he studied sculpture and painting becoming active in the city's leftist arts scene. In 1929, Arnautoff and his family continued to Mexico where he became an assistant to the muralist Diego Rivera. In 1931 the family returned to San Francisco where, in 1934 Arnautoff was chosen to paint one of the murals Coit Tower murals. Later he was appointed technical director of the Coit Tower murals project with funding from the Public Works of Art Project. There he is prominently represented by a mural depicting San Francisco city life (below). This mural includes a self-portrait as well as a portrait of his son, Michael.

Victor Arnautoff came to his most famous commission well versed in the art of paint large scale murals.

George Washington high school was built in 1936. The experience of walking into the streamline modern-style building’s main entrance hasn’t changed in 83 years: after pulling open doors watched over by bas-relief sculptures of Edison, Shakespeare and Washington, students climb stairs flanked by the Arnautoff murals. When the frescos were unveiled in June 1936, the San Francisco Chronicle gave its unqualified approval: “Arnautoff goes back to the facts of colonial days, with all their conflict, idealism and fierce reality,” the art critic reported. Arnautoff meant to demythologize Washington. However, a present-day student "art critic" at the school, sees it differently, “The intentions {of the artist} matters, but the way it’s shown reflects poorly. If you looked at it not knowing the history of the work, you just see white people enslaving black people without any of the idea that this was the real history." He favors removing the mural. On the other hand, a previous GWHS graduate, counters that the debate should be about education, not destruction. She suggests a plaque next to each murals which explains its basis in history as well as Arnautoff’s credentials as a major artist. She adds, “What the artist is portraying in the murals are facts.”

George Washington High School (rear view), San Francisco, California.

What worries those wishing to preserve Arnautoff's murals is that the recommendation to archive and remove the artwork could be used as a template for addressing other controversial art. Thus, all New Deal murals would be vulnerable, starting with a series across town at Mission High School which includes Spanish missionaries teaching “neophyte Indians”, according to the title of one installation. They reason that if the George Washington murals can be destroyed, then no work of art that anyone finds offensive is going to be safe. And that’s an awful lot of art.

Alfred Hitchcock--Art Collector

Le Chevalier de la Mort, 1944, Salvador Dali

I often write on the producers of great art--the artists. Far less often, however, do I put in a good word for the consumers of great art--the art collectors. In great part that's because such individuals are seldom well known by the general public or because they are (and wish to remain) anonymous. High profile art collectors make themselves prime targets for theft or art forgeries. The cost of physical security for their works goes up, not to mention their insurance premiums. Nonetheless, there are a surprising number of such art collectors for whom neither of these factors are of any major concern. Not surprisingly many these collectors share a ZIP code starting with 900 or 902--the entertainment industry in and around Hollywood, California, 90027.

 

Art collectors so familiar they need no introduction.

Today we find names such a Leonardo DiCaprio (he does not second-guess his own likes and dislikes); Madonna, who has an impressive art collection worth more than a $100-million; Neil Patrick Harris, whose art collection focuses on contemporary art from up-and-coming artists; Steve Martin, whose collection, encompasses names such as Francis Bacon, Cindy Sherman, and Pablo Picasso. Add to these Elton John, who actually set a record in 1993 by buying Man Ray’s Glass Tears for $193,000. It is now estimated to be worth closer to $2-million. Other celebrities include Brad Pitt, Mary-Kate Olsen, Tobey Maguire, Jay-Z and Beyoncé...the list goes on and on, but I'm tired of name-dropping at the moment. Although each of these collections is unique, perhaps the most unusual Hollywood art collector of all time (he died in 1980) was that of the British producer/director of iconic mystery dramas, Alfred Hitchcock.

 

Hitchcock’s lifetime interest in art fed directly into his filmmaking

Although each collector's art holdings tend to reflect their individual tastes, background, and personalities, in exploring Hitchcock's art collection, it becomes all but impossible to separate the man an his art from that which he collected. Unlike most of the art collections mentioned above, Hitchcock's personal collection contained only two artist's originals, one of which turned out to be a fake. In 1944, the surrealist master, Salvador Dali presented his drawing, Le Chevalier de la Mort (top) to the director as a gift after the two collaborated on the dream sequence for the 1945 psychological thriller Spellbound. The other artist's "original" was a Picasso still-life which hung in the Hitchcock home for several decades until 1970 when the artist himself branded it a fake.

 

These are samples of each artist's work and may or may not be the actual paintings
which hung in the Hitchcock home.

The collection of Alfred and Alma Hitchcock reflects a wide variety of styles, artists, and subjects, more indicative of a lifestyle than a deliberate approach. Works in their eclectic collection are of variable interest and quality. This hodgepodge collection began around 1944. Hitchcock and his wife, began to choose new acquisitions together. The selection criteria were straightforward and loose. They never acquired a painting unless it was liked by both of them. Fortunately, they had similar tastes, leaning mostly toward colorful modernists. Alma’s favorite artist was Parisian painter Maurice Utrillo (above, left), while Hitchcock singled out Swiss modernist Paul Klee (above, right).
 



Venus With a Mirror 1555, Titian

The décor was unusual, to say the least, at Norman Bates’s 12-room motel in Hitchcock’s classic horror movie, Psycho. Menacing taxidermied birds framed the walls of the office parlor, later to earn a movie of their own. Hovering above was an assortment of painted female nudes that included a reproduction of Venus with a Mirror (ca. 1555) by the Renaissance artist, Titian. However the painting Hitchcock refers to in the trailer (above) is not Venus but A strategically placed copy of Susan-nah and the Elders from around the 1691, by Dutch artist Willem van Mieris. It concealed a peephole used for peer-ing into room number one. Like a Bar-oque version of Psycho’s famous show-er scene, Susannah and the Elders pits a vulnerably nude bathing woman against the violent voyeurism of a male predator.

Susannah and the Elders, 1691, Willem van Mieris

Hitchcock was an art connoisseur, an interest that began when he took art history and painting classes in London as a teenager. His first film industry job, in fact, was as an illustrator of intertitle cards for silent films. And he was an avid collector of art books, stockpiling them at home and at work. His office at Universal Studios contained a surprising number of art books, which Hitchcock liked to regularly consult, often choosing some illustration or other to show his art director and/or his cinematographer to indicate what he wanted in a particular shot. Hitchcock understood art, incorporated artworks of historical significance into his films, and was a collector. Moreover, his approach to filling the blank canvas of the silver screen was that of an artist. Hitchcock’s critics accused him of favoring image over content and compared his films to live-action comic strips. (The director didn’t disagree.) Scriptwriters sometimes complained about working with him because he imagined visually powerful scenes, but was less concerned with how they connected to each other in a convincing narrative. At home, the pictorial action of Hitchcock’s personal art collection must have held his attention in much the same way. He liked selecting paintings about which he could make up stories, perhaps mentally constructing a sequence of storyboards to follow—the image of an ominous tree by French artist Chaim Soutine that hung in his dining room, for example, or the mosaic of birds designed by Cubist George Braque that Hitchcock commissioned for his garden.

 

Inasmuch as no published inventory of Hitchcock's art collection exists, and both artists executed several similar versions of each work, it's impossible to know precisely which paintings Hitchcock owned. In any case, they were likely much like these.

The Hitchcock art collection was housed here in
the couples' second west coast home located in Bel Air.

 

German Expressionist Churches

Notre dame du Chêne, Viroflay, France, 1966,
Louis, Luc, and Thierry Sainsaulieu, architects.

I've traveled over much of Europe and seen quite a number of ecclesiastic architectural masterpieces, and if you're like me you have a pretty firm grasp on what a monumental church should look like. That is, they would be Gothic, enormous in scale, soaring to awe-inspiring heights, graced with acres and acres of colorful stained glass, and decorated in excess with stone carvings, everything from saints to gargoyles. Most such churches took decades, sometimes centuries to erect with iconic, world-famous profiles such as Paris' Notre Dame and Rome's St. Peter's Basilica. If that's what you picture in your mind's eye, you're obviously unfamiliar with German Expressionist architecture, in this case as applied to churches.

 

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tokyo, Japan. 1964, Kenzo Tange, architect.
The war touched the churches of Japan as well.

Several factors come together to produce such architectural works of art. First, Germany has long been a hotbed of Expressionism, whether in painting, poetry, music, drama, sculpture or, in this case, architecture. Second, in the aftermath of WWII, many, if not most of the monumental churches of Europe sustained varying degrees of bomb damage from superficial to smithereens. In some cases, reconstruction was out of the question. Building anew offered economic savings, modern day practicality, and opportunities for budding postwar architects to stretch their wings.

 

Grundtvigs kirken, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1921-40,  Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, architect.

Copenhagen’s Grundtvig’s Church (above) is a rare example of expressionist church architecture, and one of the most beautiful, not to mention well-known churches in that Danish city. The commission for the construction of a church to be named after the Danish philosopher and hymn writer N. F. S. Grundtvig was decided through a competition, won by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint in 1913. The foundation of the new church was only laid after World War I, in 1921. Building took place mainly from 1921 to 1926 when the tower section was completed, leading to the initial inauguration of the so-called Tower Church in 1927. Further work on the interior and on adjacent buildings continued until 1940 and was completed by Klint's son Kaare Klint after his father's death in 1930. The church stands at the center of a residential development also in yellow brick, designed by Jensen-Klint in harmony with the church. The most striking feature of the building is its west façade, reminiscent of a westwork or of the exterior of a church organ. It includes the 160 ft. (49 meters) tall bell tower. The imposing façade with its strong verticality guides the eyes towards the sky. The bottom half of the tower is simple brick while the upper reaches present the appearance of one solid, rippling surface. Klint decorated the nave with a version of the stepped gables common on Danish churches, but reinterpreted by doubling the apex. The nave was designed with generous dimensions: the triple-aisled hall church is 259 ft. (76 meters) long in total and 115 ft. (35 meters) wide; the nave has a height of 72 ft. (22 meters). The interior, inspired by Gothic architecture and comparable in size to Copenhagen cathedral, fits a congregation of 1,440. Some five million yellow bricks, a typical Danish building material, were used for the edifice. In its floor plan, the interior resembles that of a typical Gothic church with a nave, two lateral aisles and a small transept. Its proportions are also Gothic: a long, narrow nave, an extremely high ceiling, the columns which rise up to pointed arches and the ribbed groin vaults above the nave and aisles. But it is the yellow brick and the lack of ornamentation which contribute to the Gothic verticality while adhering to the minimalist modern aesthetic. The church boasts two pipe organs.

Saint Moritz, Augsburg, Germany, 2013, John Pawson, architect.
Expression mixes with minimalism.

The church of St Moritz has been through many changes since its foundation nearly a thousand years ago. Devastating fires, changes in liturgical practice, aesthetic evolution and wartime bombing have each left their mark on the fabric of the building. The purpose of this latest intervention has been to retune the existing architecture, from an aesthetic, functional, and liturgical perspectives, with considerations of the sacred atmosphere always at the heart of the project. The work has involved the meticulous paring away of selected elements of the church’s complex fabric and the relocation of certain artifacts, to achieve a clearer visual field. Drawing on existing forms and elements of vocabulary, an architectural language has evolved that is recognizable in subtle ways as something new, yet has no jarring foreign elements. Augsburg is approximately a one hour drive from Munich. Stripping back, cleaning up, re-surfacing and adding the cleanest palest of materials, Architect, John Pawson has lifted the interior out of its historic straitjacket to a seemingly ethereal realm. The thin slices of onyx replacing the existing glass of the apse window completely reinforces this feeling.

Opstandingskerk, Amsterdam, 1956, Marius Duintjer, architect.

Architect Marius Duintjer is well-known for his large-scale projects like the ABN AMRO building at Vijzelstraat and the Nederlandse Bank at Frederiksplein, both in Amsterdam. These buildings are controversial for their use of ‘brutal’ concrete supposedly to create an atmosphere of tranquillity and space. They were not well-received by the people and their popular nicknames were not at all flattering. Visual artist Jan Rothuizen called the ABN AMRO office ‘a stranded cruise ship’ and in the eyes of the writer Rudy Kousbroek building the Nederlandse Bank where the Paleis voor Volksvlijt (Palace of Folk Industry). Others termed it "the most extreme act of vandalism in Amsterdam after the war." Duintjer once work for Le Corbusier. Still, he cannot be seen as a functionalist like his famous master. Duintjer’s oeuvre is diverse. This is evident when you compare the bank buildings to the various churches he designed, for which he does receive popular acclaim. Whereas concrete is the main material for his office buildings, light constitutes the most important element for his churches. In addition to the building where the services are held, the Opstandingskerk (Church of the Resurrection) in Bos en Lommer also contains a rectory and a community center. The impressive high windows in the nave demonstrate how light with its strong symbolic value became the leitmotif of the design. The church’s exterior stands out for its 48-metre high bell tower which gave it its nickname "de Kolenkit" (the coal scuttle). This too is the vox populi speaking.
 

Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz, Berlin, Germany, 1933, Johann Freidrich Höger, architect.

Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz (Church at Hohenzollernplatz) is the church of the Evangelical Congregation at Hohenzollernplatz, a member of today's Protestant umbrella Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. The church is located at the eastern side of Hohenzollernplatz square in Berlin's borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The building is considered one of the premier pieces of Germany's Brick Expressionism. In 1927 the then wealthy congregation, whose parish then comprised the locality of Wilmersdorf, decided to build an additional church in the north of its parish. The congregation held a competition. Six or more architecture firms handed in their projects. An architect named Fritz Höger prevailed with the design of the architect Ossip Klarwein, who started to work with Höger by 1921. The construction lasted from 1930 to 1933. In March, 1933, the church was inaugurated. Soon after Klarwein, his wife and son emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, because of the Nazi takeover. Hohenzollernplatz is a testimonial to the unique quality of expressionist church architecture in Berlin. The naming of the church after the square was originally a solution for the time being, until another name might be chosen. Meanwhile the name became a brand, even though the debate goes on.

 

If you're one who thought all churches should be
beautiful, inside and out, this German expressionist
example of Art Brute might change your mind.

 

1880s Art

A May Morning in the Park, 1879-80, Thomas Eakins of Philadelphia, a shining star in the otherwise lackluster group of American artists of the 1880s.

In studying past eras of art, it's only natural that the further we go back from our own era, the less we are able to identify and admire the work of the painters, sculptors, and designers of the time. Gradually we come to the point that such studies are only of interest to artists and history buffs. Everyone else has a tendency to either yawn or laugh. Moreover, I have to start by disappointing all my American readers by noting here and now, that most of the outstanding art of the 1880s was not American. Sculpture and painting were both strong in the 1880s, but poster design from this era, with its Art Nouveau stylings, is often considered the most important artistic development of the time. And for those who like to laugh, I've included a fair sampling of the decade's design achievements in the creation of women's fashions. Sorry men, your clothes were as boring in the 1880s as the were in the 1870s and will be in the 1890s.


Dancers in the Wings, ca. 1880, Auguste Renoir. The strange cropping of the composition displays the influence of photography in Renoir's work.

Woman Sitting Under the Willows,
1880-81, Claude Monet

When people think of this era in art, painting seems first and foremost with impressionism for the first time starting to flex some muscle with the work of Claude Monet (right), Jean-Auguste Renoir (above), along with Degas, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, the only two women among the lot. As numerous as the struggling impressionists were becoming in Paris during the 1880s, they were outnumbered about ten to one by literally thousands of painters churning out work in the traditional academic style led chiefly by Alexandre Cabanel with mythical or allegorical works similar to Cabanel's Phèdre (below) painted in 1880. I should note that the 1880s was also the era of the American expatriates such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.

Phèdre, 1880, Alexandre Cabanel

Strangely enough, some of the most important paintings of this era were done by relative unknowns. One of these is Changing Pasteur (below), painted in 1880, by Antoine Mauve (yes, the same as the color mauve). Mauve was not French, but Dutch, born in 1838. His work is neither Impressionist nor Academic (academicians seldom painted cows). Mauve settled at The Hague about 1870, painting in the neighboring fishing village of Scheveningen. There he became part of a group of artists known as the Hague school, whose members specialized in representing landscapes and scenes of rural life in the Netherlands. In 1885 he went to live in the country at Laren, near Hilversum, where he brought together a group of landscape painters who came to be known as the “Dutch Barbizon.” Mauve’s pictures are subdued in color and similar to those of Gustave Corot in their harmonies of grays and blues. Changing Pasteur was one of his major pictures. He was also an accomplished watercolorist. Perhaps more important than all this though, his wife happened to be a cousin of Vincent van Gogh, to whom Mauve gave advice about oil painting in 1881 and 1882.

Changing Pasteur, 1880, Antoine Mauve

In looking over Mauve's work it's hard to see that any instruction he may have given van Gogh was of much consequence. Their work looks absolutely nothing alike. However, keep in mind, the 1880s were van Gogh's "student" days in which he was struggling frenetically to absorb anything and everything he could about painting. These were the days of van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, created in 1885. Picture in your mind the bleak setting, the artists use (or misuse) of color, with the grim work-worn faces of his Dutch compatriots. Compare that image to what may, in fact be an earlier work, Angelus, a copy of Jean-François Millet's most famous painting by the same name. You can compare the two (below). And before you think the less of van Gogh, copying the works of the masters was considered an acceptable, indeed, highly effective means of learning to paint.

I'd give it about a B-.

Jean-Michel Papillon from France is considered to be the first poster designer and the inventor of the wallpaper. Back in 1675, he engraved rustic designs into woodworks in continuous, matching patterns. But due to a painstaking process of poster production, posters appeared very slowly. Artisans had to engrave a poster into a wooden block or metal sheets manually, with little or no design and color. Everything changed with the birth of the lithographic printing in 1796. Lithography was invented by The Austrian printer, Alois Senefelder as he was searching for an alternative to expensive metal plate engraving. He offered a series of lithos, metal or stone carvings, tinted with ink to make a print. A list of European poster designers of the 1880s would read much the same as a list of famous European painters with names such as British artist, Aubrey Beardsley, Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt, Czech painter, Alphonse Mucha, and of course the poster child of all the poster painters, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Toulouse-Lautrec was the first artist to elevate advertising to the level of fine art, creating a shift in history that acknowledged that an important work of art could be an everyday poster in a nightclub. Soon the mass media embraced posters for promotional purposes in France and throughout Europe. Printed advertisements appeared in newspapers, theatre and opera shows in Paris started using "poster advertisements" to announce important events. Publishers and writers appreciated the new poster art. In 19th century, great lithographic designers like Raffet, Gavarni and Johannot illustrated the most acclaimed masterpieces of French literary works.

A sampling of European poster art from the 1880s in the Art Nouveau style.

When discussing sculpture of the 1880s, there's Auguste Rodin, then there's everybody else. As with painting, there was impressionism and the academics. Impressionist sculpture? We might say Rodin was to sculpture what Monet was to painting. Although Rodin couldn't (or didn't) sculpt in color just about all other attributes of impressionist painting can be found in his iconic works such as the Burgers of Calais, the Gates of Hell, St. John the Baptist, Balzac, and many others. He has often been compared favorably to Michelangelo whom he studied and copied. The two representative pieces below are so familiar they need not be identified. However, the same cannot be said for the Academic "everyone else" sculptures directly below Rodin's work.

Impressionism in the round.

(Upper left) Salammbo, Bronze, Paris, 1880, Emile Bruchon,
(right) Flower Basin with a Nude Drying Her Foot, ca 1880s , Ricardo Aurili.

Informal and formal.

Men's dressing gown, ca. 1880

And on a lighter side, the 1880s marked what might be called the zenith of Paris haute couture. The French were the first to make an industry out of fashion, not just dress-making, and they have been exporting their style since the 17th century which is frankly before most of the world even realized what fashion was. Fashion has always existed at the crossroads of art and consumerism and never more so than in the 1880s. Of course we're not talking just about women's fashions. Men's clothing styles also frequently had their genesis in Paris. Men do care about fashionable attire, just not as much as women. Below is an illustrated chart I put together detailing what women chose to buy and wear each year (dates are approximations). I keep wondering how the ladies managed personal hygiene wearing such tight, constricting frocks.

The tailored look for outside, the frilly ruffles and ribbons to impress one another indoors.

1880s swimwear---not much
chance to get a tan.

 

Maintaining the Sistine Ceiling

Present day art preservations work over (or under) the entire ceiling every year  maintaining the work of Michelangelo as well as that of the original restoration team.

Over the past several years during which I've "gone on" about art, I've taken several opportunities to sing the praises of the most unsung heroes of at art world--the art preservationists. Each major museum has an entire department staffed by up to a dozen experts and technicians who labor daily at the task of restoring old art to the point it looks new again. Hopefully the results are much the same as when the original artist finished the work. Occasionally these skilled technicians are assigned some major work of historic importance which lands them on the back pages of the local press, complete with before and after shots as well as photos taken while their work was in progress. Of course, the holy grail of such assignments was the restoration of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, begun in the mid-1980s and not finished until 1994. The project had involved a dozen restorers of the Vatican Museums and two interns who admitted how difficult it was to focus on just a few square inches of painting at a time while ignoring where they were and the wonderfulness of the heavenly masterpiece all around them.

 

The Prophet Daniel, before and after the original 1985-94 restoration.

Over seven-million visitors trek through the Sistine Chapel each year (I've been one of them) to admire both Michelangelo's ceiling and his famous Last Judgment behind the altar. That number of human beings can do a lot of damage. I'm not talking about deliberate harm but their body heat and their exhaling of carbon dioxide. The human body produces both heat and carbon dioxide. Protecting the frescoes against future damage was a key part of the restoration process. An air-conditioning system with some 92 sensors and necessitating 26km of wiring was installed to protect against rapid changes in air temperature and humidity. The air in the lower part of the building was to be kept cooler and circulate more rapidly to encourage dirt particles to fall to the floor rather than circulate up near the ceiling, while at the same time filtering out bacteria and chemical pollutants. The humidity must never be more than 60 percent and the carbon-dioxide level has to be kept lower than 800 parts per million. All these values have to be kept stable. But the number of people in the room makes that complicated. It can be one, or it can be a thousand. If they have to, technicians can completely change the air inside the chapel 60 times a day.

 

No, it's not some sci-fi monster but a movable platform from which preservation technician can work.



A master conservator demonstrates
a technique for removing contaminants
from a Botticelli fresco in the Sistine Chapel.

Throughout the day, a Vatican conservation technician monitors sensors in the Sistine Chapel that track all of the environmental variables. Yet, despite the Vatican’s best efforts, thin layers of contamination inevitably develop. Carbon dioxide reacts to the plaster of the frescos. Through the process of condensation and evaporation, bacteria accumulates. The result is an almost imperceptible whitish glaze of soluble salts above the surface of the painting. To prevent the work from being damaged, the staff cleans the frescos regularly and remove contaminants while they are still soluble, using a crane-like machine nicknamed the Spider—a Multitel SMX 250 self-propelled tracked platform (above)—to access the ceiling frescoes. Michelangelo would have loved one of these babies. Thanks to modern technology, reaching the ceiling of the Chapel may be a little easier these days, but no less daunting than when Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the chapel ceiling in 1508. Michelangelo and his assistants carried out the work with the help of a system of wooden scaffolds that had to be taken down, moved and reassembled as the work progressed. Today, the ‘spider’, a type of glorified ‘cherry picker’ has replaced the wooden scaffolds.  It’s four legs anchor securely to the floor as restorers and cleaners, armed with soft cloths, vacuum cleaners and brushes are lifted the 15 meters (about 50 feet) in the air bringing them face to face with Michelangelo’s lunettes.



The preservation team at work.

When that modern-day restoration project ended in 1994, a new one began: the careful monitoring and preventative conservation of the works, which are now seen by close to seven million visitors each year. The name of the game is Constant vigilance. The delicate artworks are carefully monitored to make sure they are not threatened by contaminants brought in by hoards of visitors (more than 1,000 can crowd in at a time) who inadvertently track in dirt, dust, and leave behind traces of hair and skin. The dusting and cleaning of the Sistine Chapel’s covered some two-thousand, five-hundred square feet of painted surfaces. It involved a dozen restorers of the Vatican Museums as well as that many more professionals in the art of dealing with dirt. Also, in their efforts to preserve the ceiling, the Vatican has installed LED lighting that doesn’t emit UV rays and won’t cause the paintings to fade. There is also a special HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) system, donated in 2014 by the Carrier Corporation, that keeps the temperature constantly between 22 and 24 degrees Celsius (71.6 to 75.2 degrees Fahrenheit). To keep out impurities, four diffusers bring in and take out air. At night, staff members painstakingly dust and vacuum the entire museum. (All dust is analyzed to detect bacteria or fungi.).

 

Cleaning the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Barely noticeable in the photo is the long arm of the "Spider "(the Multitel SMX 250).

Maintaining the Sistine frescoes is slow, tedious, back breaking work, but no one complains. They all know it is an honor and a privilege to be part of this team. They take their responsibilities very seriously. Their nights in the Sistine Chapel will be the fodder for many a story during their lifetimes, to be told over and over again, including the part about the party they once threw for themselves after cleaning of the hand of God touching Adam, infusing him with the breath of life.

 

A semi-fictional look at what Michelangelo went through--
 

 

Lizzie Fitch & Ryan Trecartin

Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch pose at the opening of their movie/art exhibit, Whether Line at Fondazione Prada, (Milan, Italy) 2019.

Almost fifty years ago, I earned my B.A from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. About forty-five years ago, O.U. bestowed upon me a M.A. in Art Curriculum and Instruction. Athens, Ohio, is a strange little community, thought probably not as compared to other university towns. The estimated population is about 25,000, not including another 29,525 students (as of 2018). Perhaps most peculiar is that politically, it's a bastian of progressive liberalism deep in the heart of Trump country. It's an attractive little bastian straddling the Hocking River, nestled in the hills created by the moraine from the last ice age. For the most part, the people are friendly, sometimes to a fault (i.e. nosey). All this and probably more would likely account for the migration of the rising conceptual artist, Lizzie Fitch and her longtime partner, Ryan Trecartin (above) from the megalopolis of LA. to the quiet little "burg" sometimes referred to as "Harvard on the Hocking."

 

Overview of the (as of yet unnamed) amusement park still under construction roughly five miles east of Athens, Ohio.

A 55-foot watchtower along one
of the park's woodland hiking trails

Athens is also a rather unlikely site for an amusement park, not to mention movie sets and ghostly female figures straight from a "B" movie horror picture show. Yet those represent the creative presence of Fitch and Trecartin. The two were originally from Ohio. Their hyperkinetic video works have one thing in common: a sense of overload, both linguistic and visual, leaving the viewer pleasantly adrift. Whether Line, the center-piece of a new exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, is no exception. It’s a whirlwind tale of rural gentrification, Amish identity, queer dance parties, DIY real-estate projects, and what happens when Mid-western manners are confronted by surreal bad attitudes.

 

 

A closer look--the Fitch-Trecartin home, video studio, and would-be amusement park.

The two conceptual video artists began developing a tract of land into an ever-evolving video set. They built a massive house (above) as part of a postmodern fever dream that nonsensically Frankensteined unrelated design elements into one semi-cohesive whole. Fitch and Trecartin are now continuing to expand their land into a sort of art-damaged amusement park. Building such a place with their own hands has not been a "walk in the park." They had a landslide, a mudslide. There was an unprecedented rainfall, and none of the buildings were done in the way that we originally envisioned, because of extreme weather delays. Farmers were even getting FEMA money. They ended up digging out the mud with their bare hands. The house they made combines wildly different styles and features into one. It's almost ready to move into--except for the septic system.

 

The viewing room, replete with old-fashioned Amish rocking chairs.

Whether Line explores the idea of a culture clash between all of the characters seen in the movie. Lizzie Fitch notes that almost everyone they’ve met has been very open, accepting, and curious. hey do have one neighbor, though, who’s very extreme. He definitely inspired a lot of the content in the movie, indirectly and directly. But that’s just one person in a whole community around them. They tell people they're making a movie. Then they jokingly add that they’re building an amusement park. But it’s not really a joke. They are, it’s just not a traditional one. There are certain traits of reality TV that went into the conception of Whether Line, particularly peoples’ new relationship to acting, and also the fear of acting. Ryan Trecartin explains that years ago, if someone asked non-actors if they would be in a movie, it would be, "Hell yeah! I want to be in the movie!" Now, however, they ask questions: “What’s the context? Where’s it going to show? What’s the meaning?” Fitch believes everyone has a relationship to their mediated self. Today, a lot of people have a fear of context being weaponized. People are more wary. There is more anxiety around cameras than there was just five years ago.

 

A Whether Line production still featuring Lizzie Fitch, Jason Rankin, and Ryan Trecartin.

On the sets of Whether Line, it always seems like everyone involved is having a lot of fun, as if it’s all a big, sprawling, unwieldy party. However, some scenes are difficult and painful with everyone working really hard, often doing every line 25 times. Fitch points out that it looks like way more fun than it is. Of course there are other scenes that are really quite a lot of fun to shoot. It depends on how they decide to direct the script. Sometimes it’s line-by-line, very formal, and other times the script is little more than a suggestion. While there is an agenda to it, there is also a lot of space for improv and invention and for people to add content and ideas. Those shoots are usually a lot more fun.



Much of the film is about finding a perfect place to settle. Have these artists done so? Although Fitch and Trecartin seem to love their new creation in its most unlikely setting, there's also talk of maybe moving somewhere for a year to do their next project. They plan to continue to add to their Athens County park and build it out. At this point, exhaustion has set in. Fitch insists she's not going anywhere fast. "This is the first time we’ve ever owned anything. We’re definitely not going to sell it. This body of work has just started."

Production still from Whether Line