New Year's Resolutions, 2016

Remember Calvin and Hobbs?

The idea of making New Years' resolutions may be the oldest running joke in the history of mankind. The only thing I can think of more hilarious is the serious likelihood of actually keeping them. With that in mind, why not start out with the hilarious part and move from there to the serious possibility of actually keeping one? Having prefaced my New Year's resolutions in such a manner, here's what I propose to do in the way of self-improvement over the course of 2016:

Calendar art! Okay, maybe it's not art, but it's the best I could come up with on short notice.

1. Paint every day. Not all day, every day. That would be asking too much. I'm thinking more along the line of one minute per day in January, two minutes per day in February, and so forth. That would mean painting 31 minutes the first month (hey, I can do that), 58 minutes total in February (2016 is leap year, you know), 93 minutes in March, 120 minutes (a total of two full hours) in April... Okay, wait till I get done with the math... Hmm, WOW, 2,379 minutes! But then we must divide that by 60 minutes in an hour and... HOLY SMOKES! That adds up to a full 39 hours and 40 minutes for the year...almost a forty-hour week! The batteries must be giving out in my calculator...let's try that again...

2. Visit at least one major art museum this year. I'm thinking of one in particular, in Amster-dam... No, not the van Gogh Museum. I've been there, done that. You know...the other one...

In the middle of Amsterdam's central Red Light District, the Erotic Museum has an amazing collection of erotic artifacts from around the world. Their collection boasts
erotic fine art, ivory carving, paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture including
sketches by John Lennon, and an original Picasso.

There! How's that?

3. Give all my paint brushes a good cleaning. Look! see, I can keep New Years' resolutions! Now, if I can just manage to keep them that clean. Maybe if I skip the first resolution...

4. Find a reputable art gallery to represent me. This one said they kind of liked my work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Quit falling asleep while writing my blog.

6. Stop eating at my computer.

Some guy I met outside the Louvre.

7. Sell more paintings.














8. Don't write such long posts.

'Nuff said.

                 Happy New Year!

The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Pavel Tretyakov, the wealthy textile manufacturer who love art more than rubles.

For several months now, as I've written about the rich tradition of Russian art and artists. Again and again I've come upon references to the Tretyakov Gallery of Art in Moscow. At first I tended to look upon it as a curiosity, largely ignoring its importance in the Russian art world of the late 19th-century (not to mention today). But as time went on, it began to dawn upon me that I'd been underestimating the role of its founder, Pavel Tretyakov, as perhaps the most important private collector of art of his time. Although not an artist himself, Tretyakov was arguably the most important historic force in the shaping of present-day Russian art. Pavel, and to a lesser extent, his brother, Sergey, had money. More importantly, they also had refined tastes, which, taken together, along with highly regarded imperial art academies in St. Petersburg and Moscow, constituted the all-important impetus for a vibrant creative environments that has, for too long, been underestimated by writers, critics, and art historians in the West (myself included).

 

The Tretyakov Gallery is home to portraits of a broad range of Russian cultural figures, including the big three literary masters of their time, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy.

Perhaps the most surprising element in the story of the brothers Tretyakov is that they were not nobility. During the latter part of the 19th-century, there was developing a new layer of society. In various countries they went by various names. In the U.S. they were sometimes called the "robber barons." In Europe they were referred to as the bourgeoisie, which is usually translated as "middle class." Today, that brings to mind...well, most of us--struggling sometimes, but far from starving. Those of the Russian Bourgeoisie were, in fact, often quite wealthy, as opposed to the lower middle-class "commoners" (just a few notches above peasants). This level of affluence was usually associated with merchants and skilled tradesmen (sometimes including artists). As the industrial revolution spread across Europe from England, so too did entrepreneurship. The Tretyakov brothers inherited a company which designed, manufactured, and most of all, sold textiles (a business model we'd term as vertical integration today). Besides art, the brothers invested in real estate and various financial ventures. Their art collecting seldom earned them any profit but their other enterprises were such that they could afford to indulge in what was, even then, a very expensive hobby.

 

The Tretyakov today...with another addition well along in the planning stages.

Pavel Tretyakov was born in 1832. He and his younger brother, Sergey, along with three sisters, grew up in Moscow, the two brothers serving as errand boys in their father's textile family. When their father died in around 1850, the home schooled "errand boys" inherited the business and set about "growing" it to the point that at one time, they employed over five-thousand workers. When not on the factory floor, Pavel Tretyakov befriended artist, supporting some of them, as he began to acquire "important" pieces of Russian art (some relatively quite large). Beginning in 1850 when Pavel Tretyakov acquired his first two canvases, the collection grew to the point he had to add a large room to their family mansion on Lavrushinskiy Lane in Moscow just to accommodate their acquisitions. That was the first of as many as a dozen later additions.

 

The Tretyakov today occupies a block long complex just across the
Moscow River (and an island) from the Kremlin.

The Tretyakovs opened their museum to the public in 1867 as the "Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov," which eventually became the Tretyakov Gallery in 1896. By that time, the Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings, 471 sculptures and 10 drawings of Russian artists, as well as 84 paintings by foreign masters. During the following years, additions to the mansion were made in 1873, 1882, 1885, 1892 and finally in 1902-1904, when the distinctive facade, designed by architect V. Bashkirov was constructed. By that time, the Tretyakovs had given it all away to the City of Moscow. When the Communists took over, in 1918, the gallery was declared to be owned by the Russian Federated Soviet Republic and renamed the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Tretyakov treasures of every era from ancient icons to Malevich's Black Square (not shown).

The 1920s and especially the 1930s, art galleries and museums all over the world suffered financially. This was especially true in the case of the cash-poor Soviet Union. Rooms were closed off to save money, maintenance suffered, new acquisitions were practically nil, even if the artistic and political powers could have agreed on whether to welcome the work of modern Russian artists such as Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, Pavlovsky and others along side, works by the Social Realists favored by Communist party propagandists. (The Tretyakov today has both). Still, growth both in size and attendance, continued, with renovations in 1928, electricity in 1929, the conversion of a nearby church to a storage facility in 1932. Additional construction ensued in 1936 and 1940, all of his came to a screeching halt as Moscow was threatened by the Germans during WW II, and the entire collection (a small sampling of which can be seen above) was rolled up in tissue paper and carted off (literally in seventeen horse-drawn wagons) to Novosibirsk. Though the Germans never quite captured Moscow, the gallery did not reopen until 1945.

Art (galleries) now and then.

Today the Tretyakov is rated the third most important art collection in Russia (after the Hermitage and the Moscow Museum of Art). Pavel Tretyakov died in 1898 at the age of sixty-six. Were he still alive today he probably would recognize very little of what he'd find at 10 Lavrushinsky Lane, or indeed, the rest of the old neighborhood, which has largely been taken over by the museum, including a separate, but nearby museum (below) featuring 20th-century works created before, during, and after the Soviet experiment.

Tretyakov Gallery at Krymsky Val features 20th century art.

Caged Collection of Colored Cylinders, 2014,
conceptual art at the Tretyakov.

 

Andrew Johnson Portraits

A Lincoln-Johnson campaign poster,1864

Andrew Johnson, 1880, Eliphalet 
Andrews, official White House portrait.

Today is the birthday of another one-time President of the United States. Our seventeenth President, Andrew John-son, was born on this date in 1808. Johnson was one of a handful of men elected as vice-president to be suddenly elevated to the presidency as the result of the assassination of his running mate, in this case, Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865. Being inaugurated as President is a difficult situation full of unexpected challenges and circum-stances. Being abruptly thrust into such a high office at one of the most trying times in our nation's history is almost unimaginable. Another vice-president, Harry S. Truman who endured the same situation some eighty years later, put it this way: "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen upon me." Harry Truman took a bad situation and made the most of it. Andrew Johnson could not.

Andrew Johnson, after 1866,
Washington B. Cooper,  now in the
National Portrait Gallery

Andrew Johnson, as depicted posthum-ously by Eliphalet Andrews in 1880 (above, right) became President at perhaps the second worst possible moment in American history--the just days after the end of the Civil War. Lincoln, four years before, was likely the only President to have come to that office under more dire circumstance. At least, he'd been elected. Johnson, like eight others in American history, was not. Johnson's situation was made worse in that he was nominally a Democrat, but one who, as a Tennessee senator, had continued to support the union when his state seceded. Not only that, but his loyalty to the union included a strong loyalty to the assassinated President and his plans for putting the country back together again following the war. This brought him into a direct confrontation with a radical Republican party controlling Congress, which was more interested in punishing the South than restoring the union.



The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson,
Harper's Weekly, Theodore R. Davis

Senator Andrew Johnson,
1860, Samuel Shaver

As a result, Andrew Johnson is best re-membered as the first (of only two) Presidents to be impeached by the House of Rep-resentatives, and tried by the Senate. He was acquitted by just one vote. Some might argue that, in retrospect, had Lincoln's generous plans for Reconstruction been carried out by Johnson, despite Republican objections and obstruct-ionism, the nation might have largely been spare more than a hundred years of social conflict we now call the Civil Rights Movement. However, Johnson was no political saint. He was a dyed-in-the-wool racist, opposed to the fourteenth amendment giving former slaves the right to vote, and cared little for their social or economic plight, putting himself in the position of a strong "states rights" advocate. In short, he was a man out of step with the ruling Republican majority and worse, out of step with history.

Unpopular presidents are seldom pursued by artist wishing to paint their portraits.
However, photographers, such as Matthew Brady, weren't so particular.

First Lady
Eliza McCardle Johnson

Andrew Johnson was born into poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina, but moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains area of Greenville, (eastern) Tennessee at an early age. His father died when Andrew was a boy of three. His mother supported the family as a washerwoman. He had virtually no education as a child, becoming a tailor's apprentice when he was ten. He married at the age of eighteen a shy local girl of sixteen named Eliza McCardle who bore him five children, teaching them, as well as her husband, mathematics and how to read. Nearly fifty years later, as First Lady, Eliza McCardle (right) passed most of her White House social duties to her daughter, Martha. It would seem that President Johnson had more urgent items of business than posting for painted portraits. Only one, rendered during his presidency, is known to exist, that of Washington B. Cooper, now in Washington's National Portrait Gallery. It dates from 1866. There are, however, dozens of different photo-portraits of Johnson, principally those of the famed Civil War photographic pioneer, Matthew Brady (above).

Inasmuch as their are so few painted portraits of Andrew Johnson, this colorized image of one of Brady's photographs is all the more interesting, and surprisingly well done.

Part of a series of "Bad Presidents,"
contemporary artist, Jimmy Emery, has
created this painted caricature of Johnson.

Following his narrow scrape with impeachment, Johnson and his wife returned to Tennessee at the end of his single term in 1869. The former president remained active in Ten-nessee politics, seeking vindication, which culminated in his election as Senator in January of 1875, the only former president to return to Congress after his term in office. It was a short-lived moment, a brief special session during which the former president spoke from the floor on the Senate only once. After the session ended, Johnson returned home where he suffered a stroke on July 30th. He died the following day at the age of sixty-six.



Whether he was a "bad president" or not, Andrew
Johnson's bronze personage, joins that of all the other
Presidents (good or bad) on the streets of Rapid City,
South Dakota.

 

Woodrow Wilson Portraits

Woodrow Wilson,  Official White House Portrait, 1936, F. Graham Cootes

Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, was born on this date, in 1856. Many years later, Wilson recalled that his earliest memory was in hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President and that there would be war. Born and raised in rural Virginia, Wilson was a southerner through and through. His parents defended slavery and in fact, owned slaves. His father was a (Southern) Presbyterian minister. Woodrow Wilson began his education in the South at Davidson College in North Carolina, but when his father began teaching at Princeton University, he transferred there. He would one day become president of the New Jersey institution. He was a political science major, later a lecturer, debater, writer, administrator, politician, and a farsighted Democrat, becoming governor of New Jersey in 1910 following a progressive, but turbulent tenure at Princeton, which eventually made the school one of the premier Ivy League schools in the east. After only a brief two years as governor, and thanks entirely to a Republican party split between backers of William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson was elected President in 1912 with a mere 41.8% plurality of the popular vote, but a landslide of 435 electoral votes, capturing forty states. It's interesting to note that as rapid as Wilson's rise to power was, his official White House portrait by F. Graham Cootes (top) was not painted until 1936, some fifteen years after he left office and a full twelve years after his death in 1924. Wilson was a controversial President. As a progressive Democrat, in many ways Wilson might be considered the Barack Obama of the 20th century, serving two terms almost exactly one-hundred years before our current President. Many of the political battles he fought would seem quite familiar to us today.

 

Woodrow Wilson, 1921, Edmund Tarbell, National Portrait Gallery

By way of contrast, Wilson's National Portrait Gallery painting by Edmund Tarbell (above) dates from 1921. It, along with a similar portrait by John Singer Sargent (below, left), dating from 1917, were the two major "official" portraits for which the President posed at the White House. The painting by the Polish artist, Stanislav Rembski (below, right,) was commissioned by Edith Wilson many years later.

The wall map of forming the backdrop for the Rembski portrait reflects the post WW I national boundaries resulting from the Treaty of Versailles, which Wilson helped draft.

Of all the portraits of Wilson, only the posthumous Rembski portrait (above, right) from 1945 is in any way outstanding. The others are all quite traditionally dark in tone, reflecting the impressive magnetism of Wilson's personality rather than the office he held. The Rembski portrait, in contrast, is very much a post-presidency depiction. However, as striking and dynamic as it may be, the Rembski portrait pales in comparison to a 1919 portrait of Wilson by the British artist, Sir William Orpen (below) for whom Wilson posed briefly during his brief time in Paris helping negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WW I, founded the ill-fated League of Nations, and in its brutal economic reparations imposed upon war-torn Germany, set the stage for the political and social unrest resulting in the rise of Hitler and the onslaught of WW II. Wilson was a strong proponent of the treaty.

Portrait Of Woodrow Wilson, 1919, Sir William Orpen

The Treaty of Versailles failed to pass muster in the Republican controlled U.S. Senate by six votes. Wilson railed against the party claiming: "The trouble with the Republican Party is that it has not had a new idea for thirty years… The Republican Party is still a covert and a refuge for those who are afraid, for those who want to consult their grandfathers about everything." Sound familiar? Wilson mounted an intense public relations speaking tour in support of the treaty. As a direct result of the considerable stress and physical strain, while in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25, 1919, Wilson collapsed, suffering a stroke from which he never fully recovered. He was totally paralyzed on his left side.

The first wife, Ellen, by Frederic Yates (1906) .and Wilson's second wife, Edith, as seen by
Adolfo Muller-Ury in her official White House portrait dating from sometime after
their marriage but before the end of Wilson's second term.

A little more than a year after entering the White House, Woodrow Wilson's wife, Ellen, suffered from kidney failure as the result of a fall. She died in August 1914. For a little over a year, Wilson was a widower. However, around February of 1915, Wilson met Edith Bolling Galt, an attractive southern widow and jeweler. He fell in love, and in May, proposed marriage. She turned him down; but Wilson was persistent and the courtship continued. Edith gradually warmed to the relationship and they became secretly engaged in the fall of 1915. Many Wilson advisors had become concerned about the appearance of a premature romance so soon after the death of his wife. Nonetheless the engagement was made public in October and they were married on December, 1915.

Woodrow and Edith Wilson, a photo
after the stroke which strongly suggests
her role as, in effect, co-president.

As First Ladies go, Edith Wilson could probably be considered the most powerful woman to ever take up residence in the White House. For more than a year, the remainder of her husband's term in office, she worked nursing him back to some degree of health while, along with his doctor, shielding him from public exposure and the stress involved in his high office. Edith Wilson did not make presidential decisions, but she did have the final say as to what passed before the President--what was important and what was not. At the very least, she became his chief of staff, a powerful position in any administration, but as the Presidents wife still more so. Despite his stroke, which likely hampered his efforts to see ratified the treaty he'd worked so hard to shape, and thus the international peace-keeping organization riding aboard it, Wilson was nonetheless awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. On February 3, 1924, some three years after leaving office, Wilson died at his home of a stroke and other heart-related problems at age 67. He was buried in Washington National Cathedral, the only president interred in Washington, D.C.



Woodrow Wilson as seen by more recent artists.

 

Vasily Tropinin

Three young ladies...serfs? Perhaps. Two may even be the same model. Though
Tropinin painted the rich and famous of Russian Imperial society, he knew the plight
of the servant class well and depicted it with solemn beauty and empathetic understanding.

Art is uplifting. When we think of art is that sense, we usually contemplate the reaction of ourselves and others in viewing works of art. We seldom, if ever, think in terms of art being "uplifting" for the artist. Let's look at another term--slavery. I'm not sure about other countries, but I know in the United States we almost always think of slavery in terms of our own nearly two centuries battling this hated, immoral, demoralizing labor addiction. We think in terms of the tragic confrontation which ended it and, once ended, the hundred years or more which it took to recover from the stigma it cast upon both races involved. What do the two have to do with one another? First slavery was not limited to one nation. Various nations dealt with it in various ways; gave it various names; and abandoning it at varying times during the 19th-century. For instance, Russia banned it in 1861.

Boy with a Dead Goldfinch,
1829, Vasily Tropinin

In Russia, slavery was called serfdom, a relic of medieval times. There was little or no racial divide between master and slave but one far more universal, a division between rich and poor--those who owned land and those who didn't (or couldn't). The division between the rich and poor, grew from factors having to do with strength and weakness, literacy, as well as cultural and religious differences. Ultimately those who acquired the strength to subdue their fellow man were also (in the American cartoon vernacular) "smarter than the average bear." Vasily Tropinin was born a Russian serf. For him, art was uplifting in a literal sense. His Boy with a Dead Goldfinch (left), from 1829, is not literally a self-portrait, but captures in many ways the dreamlike determination that allowed him, through his art, to lift himself from abject slavery to freedom, and eventually, some degree of wealth and acclaim as a portrait artist.

Both self-portraits date from after the former serf attained his freedom.

Vasily Tropinin was born in 1776. He grew up in the small village of Korpovo of the Novgorod guberniya, an area in northwest Russia slightly southeast of the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Munnich family which owned Tropinin's family, gave him as part of their daughter's dowry to the Morkov family. They apparently recognized his nascent talent and intelligence sufficient to send him to St. Petersburg to learn the trade as a confectioner (a maker of cakes, cookies, candy, and the like). There, in the heart of Russian artist culture, the teenaged boy secretly slipped into free drawing classes at the Imperial Academy of Art (a ruse that would have been impossible in America). In 1799, at the age of twenty-three, his owner allowed Tropinin to attend classes at the Academy as a non-degree student.

Storm over the Grove, 1818-21, Vasily Tropinin

The right-hand image is one of Tropinin's final paintings
dating from about a year before his death in 1857.

In 1804 Tropinin's Boy Griev-ing for a Dead Bird (probably similar to the later painting, above, left) was exhibited in the Annual Academy of Arts exhibition where it caught the eye of a Russian Empress. The President of the Academy tried to intercede on behalf of Tropinin to get him freedom. However, Count Morkov, his owner, afraid of losing such a valuable possession, instead recalled his artist from St. Petersburg to his Ukrainian estate. There Tropinin was crudely reminded that he was only a slave. He was ordered to copy the works of European and Russian painters and produce portraits of the Mor-kovs (bottom). During the fol-lowing years in the Ukraine, Tropinin continued to study art. He created a broad variety of portraits, landscapes (above) and genre paintings. The most notable works of this period are a portrait of his wife (above, left) from 1809, and Head of a Boy (below, left), a tender, loving portrait of his son from about 1818, as well as a second one done two years later in 1820 (below, right).

Tropinin's son, A.V. Tropinin also became a portrait artist.

Portrait of Alexander Pushkin,
 1827, Vasily Tropinin

As a result of continuous urgings from his friends, in 1823, at the age of 47, Tropinin was finally given his freedom. He immediately moved to Moscow where he set up a portrait studio. The same year he presented his painting, The Lace Maker (top, right), and two other works to the Imperial Academy of Arts, whereupon he received the official certificate of a painter. The following year Tropinin was elected an Academ-ician, which meant he could then teach painting at an academic level. One of Tropinin's most famous portraits, that of the famed Russian poet, playwright, and novelist,  Alexander Pushkin (left) de-rived from this period. Starting in 1833 Tropinin taught Public Art Classes which later became the famous Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He taught there until his death in 1857. During his lifetime he painted over three-thousand portraits.

Family portrait of counts Morkovs, 1813, Vasily Tropinin

Girl with a Pot of Roses, 1850, Vasily Tropinin

 

Boxing Day Art

Boxing Day Empties, 2005, Lincoln Seligman

Not something most British do on Boxing Day.

Today is Boxing Day. Happy Boxing Day. Unless you live in England or some part of the British Commonwealth such as Canada (below), Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, South Africa, Guyana, Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, and other Commonwealth nations, etc., Boxing Day probably doesn't mean much to you. In fact it's altogether possible you've never even heard of such a holiday, though it's quite likely you've probably celebrated it in one form or another without realizing it. In the United States, we don't call it Boxing Day but we do celebrate it, in a manner of speaking, by using the day after Christmas to return all those gifts we don't want for cold, hard, cash; or to exchange those clothing gifts that don't fit for stuff that does. We also use this day as a time to recover from Christmas overindulgence (top) and prepare for New Year's Eve overindulgence less than a week later. With the mindset that every holiday begets its own depiction in the vast ocean of art content, I went looking for that art (paintings mostly) depicting Boxing Day.

 

Boxing Day in Canada, 1930, Armand Paquette--how I remember the day after
Christmas as a child--when we visited all our friends to see what Santa brought them.

First, for those, like myself, who have had little to do with Boxing Day, I guess I should provide a little background as to how this day-after-Christmas holiday came to be and what it has become today. Until a dozen or so years ago, if I'd ever heard of Boxing Day, I thought it was a day when people celebrated throwing away all the boxes their Christmas gifts had once occupied. Just why there should be a special holiday for such a mundane task seemed strange, but then, we celebrate Ground Hog Day in this country on February second each year, which involves far less reasoning. Let me also add that Boxing Day has absolutely nothing to do with the sport of boxing. Actually, in terms of sports, the British tend to associate Boxing Day with fox hunting and rugby rather than pugilism.
 

Boxing Day At Manor Glen, Tony Shore

In England, the holiday falls on St. Stephen's Day, though it has nothing to do with the first century martyr either. It dates back to the 1830s, as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box from those they serve. In fact, Christmas boxes go back still further to the seventeenth century, involving a present or gratuity given after Christmas to those who render services to the general public; or are employed by the upper classes as house servants. They, presumably, were at work serving their employers on Christmas Day and so had to wait until the day after Christmas Day to celebrate with their families. In this country, we don't have much in the way of human house servants. However, we do sometimes tip those who serve to make our lives more convenient, though it's usually done before Christmas. In the U.S. virtually all workers (except for those performing absolutely essential services) have Christmas Day with their families.



Among the earliest Boxing Day art, sometime during the mid-19th-century.

Boxing Day, Iryna Ivanova

So, what type of art is associated with such a strangely esoteric holiday. Well, I guess you'd say, strangely esoteric art. As mentioned above, there are lovely winter scenes depicting the upper classes off in pursuit of poor, defenseless foxes. There are paintings of norm-ally sane Brits taking a plunge in the frigid waters of the English channel at Teign-mouth (below) all for charity, of course; cartoons of Santa "chilling" after a hard night's work (bottom), but mostly photos of crazed, bargain-hunting British shoppers (left) going after deeply discounted merchandise not sold before Christmas--kind of like our Black Friday, only after Christmas. Quite frankly it's a holiday which has not generated much in the way of art, much like our American Thanksgiving. It's so overshadowed by Christmas art as to not have generated it's own visual content beyond some really weird disassociations.

Boxing Day Plunge, 2001, Claudia Williams

The main one who should celebrate Boxing Day.