Artists of the Future

Artist of the future--Kandinsky would approve.

 

From the time I was an adolescent, I've always been a great fan of the future. I mean, where would we be without it? In writing in this space before, I've dealt with all manner of topics having to do with the future: Future Housing, Electronic Art, Futurism, Digital Art, and Science Fiction art, to name just a few. Having dealt with the art of the future, I think it only appropriate to deal with artists of the future. If you want to see the work of great artists of the future, look no further than your refrigerator door. That assumes you have school age children or grandchildren, of course. I don't often present myself as an "expert" on any subject having to do with art other than those in my book, Art Think, (available at right). However, having taught art in public schools and privately for more than twenty-six years, I claim, in all modesty, to know a thing or two about artists of the future. True to form, I do spend some paper and ink in my book discussing art education, so this will barely touch on the topic.

 

Kindergarten Canadian style, circa 1898.

Today, artists of the future begin their formal academic art training in Kindergarten. They've been doing so for almost two-hundred years now. Kindergarten began in Germany around 1837, though there were experiments with early childhood education dating as far back as 1779 in France, Germany, and England. Though the German term, kindergarten, meaning "children's garden," didn't arrive until the 1830s, such efforts to provide formal instruction to children from the age to two through seven were a logical outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution. When parents, especially young mothers, were working in factories, they needed childcare. Private nannies were expensive, and in any case, not the province of the new middle-classes starting to benefit from industrialization. Thus, what began first in Bad Blankenburg, Germany, within a century, had spread to virtually every industrialized country on earth.

 

Kindergarten, Germany, mid-1950s,
at a time when Kindergarten was not common in the U.S.
(Notice the war-torn school in the background.)

The next ??
Half work, half play.

Strangely enough, the United States did not embrace kindergarten as rapidly as did Europe. I didn't attend kindergarten during the 1950s when I was of the age to do so. In fact, I think it was not until the late 1960s before the movement spread to the "backwoods" of Ohio where I grew up. My son attended kindergarten in the 1980s. As a parent, I was startled to learn that, by then, kindergarten had changed. It was no longer the daycare year of learning and socializing through play. Kindergarten had usurped the entire curriculum of what had been the first grade when I was a kid. There was still the element of fun and games, even the proverbial "nap" in the afternoon (more a boon for teachers than the kids), but children were being carefully screened as to whether they were "ready" for Kindergarten. As a substitute Kindergarten teacher for a few days during the last months I taught, I quickly came to realize that Kindergarten teachers work their "butts" off and (to a somewhat lesser extent), so do the kids.

 

Kindergarten art history--Hans Hoffman.
(The Hoffman source of inspiration is in the center.)

Teaching placement of warm and cool colors
(detail from above mural).

Though it may not be too obvious in seeing their art, the work of these artists of the future is highly structured. A kindergarten teacher does not just plop down a wad of clay before a child with the instructions "do your own thing, kid." Though a very brave kindergarten teacher may still provide instruction in the fine (but quite messy) art of finger painting, most painting at this level is done with a brush, most drawing with a pencil, and most color instruction with good old Crayolas. Likewise, the kindergarten teacher is also responsible for providing inspiration and suggestions as to content for his or her art protégés. It might be as simple as a few stuffed toys arranged into a still-life or as complex and conceptual as an age-appropriate five-minute video or world hunger. Instruction as to drawing and painting techniques is usually minimal--"don't eat the crayons" or "don't drink the rinse water." I was heard to tell a student once, "Let's just paint on one side of the paper, okay?" The resulting art is always abstract--that is, reality, filtered through the child's hyperactive mind.
 

After Kindergarten, the art "guide."

Of course, artists of the future don't stay in Kindergarten but for a few months. For the next several years they find themselves participants in a race between their growing conceptual cognizance and their rapidly developing motor skills and eye-hand coordination. From kindergarten through the sixth or seventh grades, this is the time when public school art instructors tend to guide as much as they instruct. Creativity rules! However, once puberty sets in, art teachers rule! (sometimes with an iron fist). If the teaching of art in public schools is to be criticized, it comes down to too much instruction before puberty and too little after this life-changing period sets in. Before puberty, young artists thrive on freedom of expression. After puberty, they can often drown in it.

 

The highlight of every academic art year, the May "salon", often in the school library.

Freedom without drowning in it.

As anyone who has ever gone through it will tell you, adolescence is a difficult period in life. That's no less the case in terms of academic art instruction. There is a craving for the "how to" combating a rebellion in the area of "what to." Art teachers find themselves cast into the position as referees in this battle, introducing new skills daily while trying not to squelch six or seven years of hard-won creative expression. Then, by college time, the artist of the future is once more slipped back to an emphasis on creativity this time coupled with the added complexities of aesthetics. In choosing to pursue a "higher" education in art, these artists of the future are often startled to realize they are no longer going to be taught the "how to" of painting or drawing, but very often the "how not to" as their professors strive to break them free from the inevitable bad habits acquired since Kindergarten. All I can say is, good luck, artists of the future, it won't be easy.

All too often, at all instructional levels, the emphasis is on the product,
not the process. Then, after college, that emphasis is necessarily reversed.





 

 

Singin' in the Rain

Easily the best of the best on all counts (great poster, too).

When I was around nine or ten years old, some group in my hometown was holding a fundraising variety show. This was back in the days before TV took over the entertainment world, when people actually paid money to see local "talent" get up on a stage and make fools of themselves. A year or two before, my father had taken part in a similar affair in which virtually all the men in town dressed up in drag for a farcical little play called The Womanless Wedding. It was hilarious. My first stage performance wasn't quite so funny (at least not for me at the time) though probably, if I had a video of it now, I'd die laughing. Two other boys and I played the male roles in the signature dance number for Singin' in the Rain. The film came out in 1952, so this was probably about 1954. I like to think I was the Gene Kelly type but probably much closer to Donald O'Connor. We sang and danced (sort of) in yellow rain coats twirling umbrellas around without even so much as a drop of precipitation. I was mortified. My dance partner was probably the fattest girl (my age) in town.

 

Sing along if you know the words, and you probably do. Hollywood legend has
it that Gene Kelly did this number in one "take." He didn't. It took three days.
By the time he was finished, he was running a fever of 103.
 

(Sorry about the ads here and below, just click through them when you get the chance.)

Despite my ignoble introduction to the song and dance world, I've come to love both the song and dance and, indeed, the entire movie. Apparently, so have a lot of others; Singin' in the Rain is often rated among the top two or three motion picture musicals, and indeed, often in the top ten greatest American films ever made. I'm going to do something I've never done in before in writing about cinematic works of art. I'm going to illustrate this piece using only clips from the film (except for the poster, top). Simply posting photos of a musical as light and lively as Singin' in the Rain would be tantamount to singin' in a closet.

Donald O'Connor stole the show with this classic comedy dance routine.

Shooting the number ended up putting him in the hospital.
In watching it, you'll be surprised it didn't kill him.

During the 1930s and 40s, MGM Studios was the king of film musicals. From their first Academy Award winning musical, The Broadway Melody in 1929 until the advent of television walloped the movie industry in the mid-1950s, MGM amassed a musical film library second to none. MGM producer, Arthur Freed was something of a genius. He went back though the studio's film vault and culled from it the best songs from the musicals he found, then charged studio writers, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, to tie them all together into a modern film musical utilizing the talents of Howard Keel and Oscar Levant. Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor were both second choices as the screenplay developed. The ingénue role, played by Debbie Reynolds, was originally suppose to go to Judy Garland until she was fired by the studio in a contract dispute (though Kathryn Grayson, Jane Powell, Leslie Caron, and June Allyson were also considered).

 

Three song numbers from Singin' in the Rain have gone down in the archives of movie musicals as classics. This is the third one. For a novice dancer, 20-year-old

Debbie Reynolds easily holds her own with her veteran dance co-stars.

Taking their cue from the winning formula of The Broadway Melody, the MGM screenwriters set their story in the late 1920s as sound hit Hollywood. Forced to compete with the sound pioneers at Warner Brothers, MGM was, ironically, the last major studio to decide "talkies" were more than just a fad. However, once they embraced sound, they quickly discovered that audiences would pay well to see Broadway entertainment on the big screen; and that, moreover, film allowed them to do things from a production standpoint the Broadway stage could only dream about. Also, if a dancer slipped and fell or a singer hit a sour note, they could just cut out that part and continue. With the likes of Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly however, such missteps seldom occurred.

 

Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen struggle with the "high tech"

production difficulties of early motion picture sound.

 



Singin' in the Rain is fascinating for it's fictionalized version of the transitional agony the industry, and particularly several major film stars at the time, went through with the advent of sound. Microphones were highly directional and picked up noise much better than dialogue. Suddenly dialogue, and the writers who could write it, were worth their weight in gold. Voice coaches had a field day, while those in need of them, often found themselves out of work. In the movie, Don Lockwood, (Gene Kelly) successfully adapts. His leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) does not. The clip above, presents a comic episode from the filming of an early sound feature demonstrated the extent of such difficulties. The clip below, for those not so inclined to watch the whole film, (spoiler alert! for those who are so inclined) features the climax of the movie, which is both sad and funny at the same time, probably very much like my juvenile stage debut at "singin' in the rain."
 

 

Lip synching has never been funnier...or more disastrous.

Pavel Filinov

Heads, 1910, Pavel Filinov--not Cubism but not far behind it.



Pavel Filinov Self-portrait, 1921--certainly as
probing as any Picasso ever painted.

I have had the feeling at times, in teaching art history (particularly that of the early 20th century), that many people feel artists utilizing varying degrees of abstraction did so simply because they were unable to master the presumably more difficult art of Realism. Seldom do such people make that claim overtly, but the thought seems to often underlie their attitude regarding Modern Art. There's certainly nothing new in such thinking. In fact, it is undoubtedly less prevalent now than it was then, when such early experiments with Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism began shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Those, such as the Pre-Raphaelites, who labored endlessly over their anal-retentive works, felt threatened by artist such as Whistler who could "whip out" an apparent gibberish of paint in as little as a couple hours. Of course, this fear flew in the face of the fact that nearly non-representational work (such as Whistler's nocturnes) often took longer to produce than Realism, if for no other reason than chronic indecision on the part of the Abstractionist as to what "worked" and what didn't. Realism had teachable, "absolutes" of human anatomy, linear perspective, lighting, illusions of mass, familiar content, etc. It demonstrated a great deal of skill. Abstraction had virtually none of these attributes. It was, instead highly subjective as artists tried valiantly to communicate messages not lending themselves to Realism in the first place.

 

Banquet of the Kings, 1913, Pavel Filinov



Girl with a Mandolin, 1910, Picasso.
 

Of course the "king" of Expressionism and Abstraction (not always the same thing) was Picasso. However there were artists like Picasso in other countries, particularly Germany and Russia breaking much the same ground in painting. One of them was the Russian painter, Pavel Filinov. His painting, Heads (top) from 1910, was no more than three to five years behind what Picasso had been doing, and in some ways surpassed Picasso's painted images for that time. His Banquet of the Kings (above) of 1913, was likewise in no danger of being mistaken for a Picasso, but lends itself to Filinov having the title: "The Picasso of Russia." Of course Filinov would have undoubtedly not liked being compared to any other artist, even Picasso. But, in its own way, in Filinov's own style, both paintings above were no less "Modern" than those of Picasso.

Portrait of E. N. Glebova
(the artist's sister), 1915, Pavel Filinov.
We are indebted to her for the
preservation of her bother's work in
the face of years of Communist rejection.

Pavel Filinov was born in 1883, two years after Picasso. He died in 1941 some thirty years before Picasso. Early 20th century communications being what they were, its problematical whether they initially knew of one another's work. (I'd say, probably not at the time.) As Picasso's Girl with a Mandolin (above, left) from 1910 would seem to suggest, they were both moving in the same direction, if not on the same path. Both artists were academically trained (Picasso as the result of academic instruction from his father). Even a cursory look at their early works should lay to rest any doubt that both could handle Realism as well any painter of their generation. Pavel later wrote that Cubism was formulated on the principles of surface geometry whereas his "Analytical Realism" dealt with elements of the "inner sole." Filinov therefore contended that his art had moved past Cubism. It took several more years, but by the early 1920s, as seen in his Abduction Nessus and Deianeira (bottom), even Picasso himself moved past Cubism into an art that, at times, resembled that of Pavel Filinov.

Abduction Nessus and Deianeira, 1920, Pablo Picasso--moving past Cubism.

 

Robert Feke

The Family of Isaac Royall, 1741, Robert Feke (one of his earliest).

Robert Feke Self-portrait 1741-45

One of the realizations that comes from traveling abroad is that of just how young our American nation really is. Italy, for instance, has an art history more than two thousand years old. France, if you count the Lascaux cave paintings, may well be ten times as long. On this side of the Atlantic, even if you include Colonial art, you're talking barely three-hundred years. Time and again I've looked at a Colonial era painting and misjudged it's age, thinking it was much older than it was. Sometimes I've been off by as much as a century. Some might be surprised to realize that the earliest colonial paintings were tavern signs, and even there we're talking about "art" from the early 1700s. In the area of sculpture, such art was in the form of grave stones. When painting developed in Americas it was in the form of portraits, though virtually nothing along this line was painting in the English colonies dating from the 17th century.

Faith Savage Waldo Cornelius, 1750, Joseph Badger

Mary Winthrop Wanton, ca. 1740,
Robert Feke

Mrs. William Dudley Elizabeth
Davenport, 1729, John Smibert

A portrait by an unknown artist,
ca. 1747. The "state of the art"
typical around the time Feke
began his career.

Many of the first Colonial era portrait artists were anonymous. In looking at some of their work you can quickly understand why (right). Two of the earliest to actually sign their names to their paintings were Robert Feke and John Smibert (Smibert was somewhat earlier than Feke). Feke began painting about 1741, perhaps with the portrait of himself (top, left). His first big commission, that of The Family of Isaac Royall (top), also dates from 1741 when he moved to Boston and set up shop. Smibert was his main competitor. Smibert was good (above, left), but Feke was better (above, right), though the difference between them sometimes comes dangerously close to splitting hairs. Only the portraits of Joseph Badger (above) even begins to match those of Smibert and Feke, and only as distant third at that. Boston was probably the most economically flourishing of all the Colonial cities, and where there is money, there is art.

Young Benjamin Franklin, 1748,
Robert Feke

Feke's portraits were exceptional for the mid-18th century. He'd conquered human anatomy, learned to paint textiles and all manner of feminine finery, was a master of extraneous details (such as the table covering in the Royall family painting), and from all indications, developed adequate skills in capturing a likeness. Though it's impossible to judge the accuracy of Feke's likenesses, it's axiomatic that a portrait artist simply doesn't paint portraits if he or she hasn't mastered that basic skill. Robert Feke (born in 1705) was younger than his portrait competitor by some seventeen years. Smibert was born in 1688 and died in 1751, just one year before Feke. Both men improved remarkably over the course of their careers (especially Smibert). Feke left behind only about 60 portraits from his brief, eleven-year career.

Paul Revere, 1770, John Singleton Copley--influenced by Robert Feke

Given the state of the art of portraiture at the time, painters as talented as Smibert and Feke had no shortage of wealthy merchants wanting to be immortalized in paint. Smibert was an imported, academically trained painter, born in England, who had studied portraiture there an elsewhere in Europe during the 1720s. Consequently, one would expect Smibert's work to be more highly finished and more accomplished in appearance. It wasn't. At best, it was simply more British. Feke, being self-taught, was apparently a fast-learner as well. The improvement in his latter portraits over his early work in just the eleven years before his death in 1752 is remarkable. These two artist, but especially Feke, took art of portraiture from the primitive level of anonymous painters to that of Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and John Singleton Copley in little more than thirty years.

 

 

Pavel Fedotov

Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich Visiting the Camp of the Finland Regiment of Imperial Guards on July 8, 1837, painted in 1838, Pavel Fedotov--boorring. 

Pavel Fedotov Self-portrait, 1840s.
He's captured the look of boredom well.

Sometime around 1977, the country singer Johnny Paycheck (no relation to Johnny Cash) had a hit record written by David Allan Coe, titled, Take This Job and Shove It. My guess is there's not a single one of us who, at one time or another, hasn't had the urge to sing that song to our boss--or at least silently mouth the words. In 1844, a Russian artist named Pavel Fedotov did just that. Pavel was the regimental painter for the Finland Regiment of the Imperial Guards in St. Petersburg. That position would, today, be filled by a photographer or videographer, but back then the painted or drawn pencil image had to suffice. His job was to paint pictures of anything officially important that happened, and when not occupied by that, to paint portraits of any important official who happened by. His painting of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich Visiting the Camp (top) gives some idea of the stifling routine he endured. Although Fedotov began as a something of a rank amateur, he studied briefly at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. He gradually got pretty good at what he did simply because he did so much of it. In fact, Fedotov became quite a master at painting watercolor portraits. I've tried it. Believe me, it ain't easy.

The Difficult Bride, 1847, Pavel Fedotov--the type of work he longed to do.
 

Even after moving on, Fedotov was still
in demand for his characteristically
insightful portraits. This one dates
from 1846.

Portrait of N. P. Zhdanovich at the
Harpsichord. c.1849-50, Pavel Fedotov.
The neck seems a little long and
slender, but quite elegant.

Even though the job paid quite well, had good job security, combined with lots of perks, and likely the 19th century version of a good medical plan, for a creative individual like Pavel, it was nothing more or less than a colossal bore. So, perhaps in an impulsive moment of pique, he quit. History doesn't record his exact words but he might well have been the inspiration for David Allan Coe's country music classic. It was probably not the smartest move any artist ever made. Fedotov did, after all, have a wife and kids back in Moscow to feed. But congratulatory crowd scenes and pompous, portraits of buttoned-up Russian army officers was not his cup of vodka. The two portraits above (left and right) are typical of Fedotov's skill in capturing character, not just a likeness. Though portraits paid the bills, Fedotov wanted to paint genre, and specifically satiric genre such as his Difficult Bride (above) from 1847. It was something he had, in fact, been doing secretly for some years before quitting his "day job."

The Major's Marriage Proposal, 1851, Pavel Fedotov.
Though time and custom have obscured the humor somewhat,
it's unlikely the artist could have done such a painting as a regimental artist.



Fedotov's not-so-ringing endorsement
of the matrimonial state.

A necessary trait for any good satiric artist is a sense of humor, preferably one with a well-honed cutting edge. Fedotov seems to have honed his to a nearly lethal level. If the satiric humor is not obvious in his The Major's Marriage Proposal (above) from 1851, it's quite obvious as he depicts the dubious delights of family life in his cartoon-like Get Married, Gentlemen! That Would Come in Very Handy (right) from around 1840. Even today, 175 years later, we "get" the joke. Several of Fedotov's paintings from the early 1850s recognize his new freedom to lampoon the officers he knew without much apparent love from his days in the military. His 1850 The Office and his Orderly (below) are couched in a biting wit which, to us, seems funny, even "cute." I doubt if the army officer would be amused, though.

The Officer and his Orderly, 1850,
Pavel Fedotov. The "orderly" is the
standing figure in the foreground.

Fedotov's Newly Decorated (The Morning after the Official Has Received His First Decoration) (below), from 1846, painted shortly after his leaving the military, is even more mocking and hilarious. Such an image could have gotten him court martialed or even made him the subject of target practice just two years before. However, Pavel Fedotov's downfall was not artistic, or even satiric. The Russians, after all, are possessed with a sense of humor not unlike the rest of us. No, Fedotov's problems were political. He was associated with the Petrashevsky social-democratic group, which went on trial for their democratic social views, persecuted and prosecuted by the Russian government. Though Fedotov was never tried himself, the fear of prosecution was enough to land him in a mental institution where he died in 1852 at the age of thirty-seven.



Newly Decorated (The Morning after the Official Has Received His First Decoration). 1846, Pavel Fedotov

 

Giovanni Fattori

Cowboys and herds in the Maremma,1894, Giovanni Fattori.

Giovanni Fattori Self-portrait,
1854

Back in the mid-1960s, the Italian filmmaker, Sergio Leone, shot a series of three "western" movies in his native Italy starring Clint Eastwood. They came to be known in the U.S. as "spaghetti westerns." Although Giovanni Fattori was not a filmmaker, he completed several paintings of real Italian cowboys herding cattle and other livestock similar to Cowboys and herds in the Maremma (above) from around 1894. None of them much resembled Clint Eastwood. He was also fond of painting farm animals, especially, it would seem, a team of white oxen pulling a red cart. I came upon at least a half-dozen different paintings with apparently the same pristine bovine team. His Farmer with Bullock Cart (below) from 1897 is one of the better ones.

 

Farmer with Bullock Cart , 1897, Giovanni Fattori

Giovanni Fattori didn't start out wanting to be a painter of farmers, cows, and horses. Born in 1825 in Livorno, Italy, he first studied with local artists before moving on to Florence's Academia di Belli Arti, although it seems he was more interested in reading Medieval adventure novels and political activism than in painting or drawing. During this same time he began hanging out at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence with artists such as Giovanni (Nino) Costa, Silvestro Lega, Giuseppe Abbati, Cristiano Banti, Odoardo Borrani, and others who later came to be known as the Macchiaioli (pronounced MACK-key-a-OLy). This tongue-twisting group were fascinated by the French Barbizon painters and the novel idea of painting outdoors, on location, though in a somewhat more realistic mode than the Impressionist, who were just starting their endeavors at the time.

Mary Stuart at Gravestone, 1861, Giovanni Fattori

Fattori's early work involved a desire to paint history, specifically the Medieval history he loved reading so much. His Mary Stuart at Gravestone (above) is representative of his high-minded artistic calling. However, there wasn't much market for English history in Italy at the time so Fattori turned his attention to Italian battle scenes and military art with somewhat more success, though these came at a time when such art was slipping from public favor, even in Italy. His Charge of the Cavalry at Montebello (below) dates from 1862, and depicts a minor battle in the Second Italian War of Independence. It was awarded prizes in competition but was little appreciated in the marketplace. It looked like a pitched battle but, who could tell what was happening?

Charge of the Cavalry at Montebello, 1862, Giovanni Fattori.
Those who relish battle scenes like lots of details with their death and
destruction and devastation. Fattori's battles didn't measure up.

Farmer with a Collapsed Horse,
1903, Giovanni Fattori

As he labored to care for his wife, who was dying of tuberculosis, Fattori began to rely on portraits, landscapes, and genre more and more to eke out a meager living. Then, with the death of his wife in 1867, Fattori moved to Florence and a larger studio where he once more tried his hand at battle scenes celebrating Italian victories down through history. It was a valiant effort but it didn't fly. Instead he became a leader in Italian Impressionism and plein-air painting, which is where all the farmers, horses, cowboys, and ox-carts came in. He married a second time, only to once more lose his wife to an untimely death. Money problems continued to dog his efforts to exhibit and sell his work. He continued to teach at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, though with no small amount of desperation as he began to see his students gravitating toward Post-impressionism and the many separate painting styles falling under that broad designation. In his old age Fattori once more married, his third wife becoming his caregiver in the years leading up to his death in 1908. Giovanni Fattori is buried in his hometown of Livorno not far from a museum dedicated to his works.

The Stirrup, 1880, Giovanni Fattori--a painter with a sense of humor.

 

Fernando Amorsolo

Man with a Chicken, 1938, Fernando Amorsolo



Fernando Amorsolo
Self-portrait (detail), 1942

Virtually every nation on earth has an individual they term their "National Artist." Sometimes there's a bit of disagreement as to which of several artists it might be but... The bigger the nation, the longer its cultural history, the more vibrant its art world, the more likely the disagreement as to which artist deserves such a title. In England, for instance, a reasonable argument could be made in favor of Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, even Francis Bacon. In France, where the art history is still longer, names such as David, Ingres, Manet, Monet, or Picasso (even though he was Spanish) might be mentioned. American art historians might propose Stuart, Church, Sargent, Rockwell, or Warhol, as candidates for such an honor. In a small country, such as the island nation of the Philippines, however, there would be general agreement. That man would be Fernando Amorsolo.


Defense of a Filipina Woman's Honor (detail), 1945, Fernando Amorsolo.

A WW I Amorsolo bond poster.

Fernando Amorsolo was born in 1892, a time which allowed him to see a great deal of Filipino history. The Philippine Islands were still under Spanish rule. The Americans had yet to set foot on the island, the wars were mostly a part of the next century, and national independence was an undreamt dream. Amorsolo died in 1972 at the age of eighty. Not only did he see all of the above, he even painted some of it. Actually, for an artist who might have built a career around simply painting the cataclysmic events of his time, Amorsolo could hardly be termed a "history painter." Although he did a few pieces in the latter years of WW II depicting the suffering and destruction of the war, such as his Defense of a Filipina Woman's Honor (above) from 1945, Amorsolo was far more interested in painting the good times--especially if there was a pretty girl involved.

Bathing Girls, Fernando Amorsolo. Most of the artist's nudes were neither titled or dated.

Magdalene,1919, lithographic
print, Fernando, Amorsolo

The artist knew a thing or two about pretty girls. He was married twice and had a total of fourteen kids, many of them pretty girls. Five of his children went on to become artists themselves. With a growing family such as that to support, Amorsolo also knew how to turn a buck. As far back as about 1919 he was making and selling lithographs of pretty nude girls, all of which were...pretty nude (right). American GIs loved them. They were a staple of his "art for sale" portfolio virtually all his life. Yet such works from Amorsolo's brush were seldom overtly erotic; they weren't far removed from the calendar pin-up girls of the time. Usually, they were simply bathing in a picturesque stream (above). Amorsolo painted an astounding 10,000 paintings in his lifetime, for many years turning out as many as ten a week. Some critics have cast a negative light on this "commercial" aspect of Amorsolo's work, but with fourteen hungry mouths to feed...

Planting Rice with Mayon Volcano, 1949, Fernando Amorsolo
--the land, the people, their livelihood, and the constant threat of cataclysm.

Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco
Aquino, ca. 1953, Fernando Amorsolo

Of course, there was much more to Amorsolo's work than a bodacious bunch of bathing beauties. A man doesn't earn the august title "National Artist" without having a good deal more depth to his work than that. Amorsolo painted the people of his land, his family his friends, his neighbors doing what they did. His 1949 Planting Rice with Mayon Volcano (above) is one of his best "national artist" paintings. His Man with a Chicken (top) from 1938 is more typical, though. While it's not blatantly obvious, this man does not fondle his chicken hoping for more eggs or tastier thighs. He's is a cock fighter. He is lovingly massaging an athlete, and likely his meal ticket. (The "chicken" is probably a rooster, in any case,)

Return of the Fishermen, Fernando Amorsolo

His most famous wartime painting.

It's tempting to want to categorize Amorsolo as a genre painter, or a landscape artist, or more likely, a figure painter. But that would understate his importance. There is a classical idealism, which the artist rendered with truth and harmony, balance and beauty, alongside a national concept of the Filipino character rooted in rural communities enjoying the cycles of village life. When he wanted to be, he was a painter of gorgeous landscapes (above). He loved painting equally gorgeous girls (with or without attire). When the opportunity came, Amorsolo could also paint portraits, as seen in his youthful painting of the future Philippine President, Corazon Aquino (above, right), though most were of American generals and statesmen occupying his country after the war. And when war intruded into his happy homeland, the man could paint history as well (above, right and below). That kind of versatility is the very definition of a "National Artist."

Rizal Avenue in Ruins, 1945, Fernando Amorsolo