Dorothea Lange

Toward Los Angeles, California, March 1937. On the road with Dorothea Lange.

Dorothea Lange, 1935-39

Although I don't often write about photographers (not as often as I should, anyway), for several years I've admired the work of Dorothea Lange and wanted to do a piece on her. So, I started collecting examples of her work. These are not the best of her work because virtually all of her high resolution nitrate negatives, very carefully composed, flawlessly lit, deeply touching works can be so labeled. These are the ones which touched me. You won't find her 1936 Migrant Mother among them. There would be no need. It's probably the most iconic photographic image of the entire Depression era, perhaps even of the entire 20th century. It has literally become the face of the 1930s. You will find several other migrant mothers...migrant fathers too, and perhaps most tragic, migrant children scarred for life, but also tempered by the desperation of the times, for the rest of their lives--survivors.
 

August 1936. Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Sequoyah County drought farmers. "Nothing to do," said one of them. "These fellers are goin' to stay right here till they dry up and die."

As I searched the archives, trying to find Dorothea Lange, what I found was not so much the supremely talented artist with her camera, but a portrait of this nation during the worst of times, bringing into sharp contrast the selfish whining and griping about our current "bad" times. Many complain about our present day social "safety net" and compare it to a hammock (it's not). Dorothea Lange exposes a rudimentary safety net with holes so large, a mesh so wide open, so incredibly bias and inept, that whole families of ten or more fell through it or, simply out of pride, refused to seek help. It's not uncommon for the work of a photo-artist to tell a story. For four long, hard, desperate years, 1935 through 1939, Lange's work is an ongoing narrative, each exquisite, black and white image adding another page, another voice, another yearly chapter to the history she compiled on the road during that time. In view of that, I'm going to do something here I've never done before. I'm going to allow the artist's images and her own words to tell her story. It's a long story. Once I began collecting images, I found it extremely difficult to stop.

August 1936. "Family between Dallas and Austin. The people have left their home and connections in South Texas, and hope to reach the Arkansas Delta for work in the cotton fields. Penniless people. No food and three gallons of gas in the tank. The father is trying to repair a tire. Three children. Father says, 'It's tough but life's tough anyway you take it.'

July 1939. Gordonton, North Carolina. "Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. Note kerosene pump on the right and the gasoline pump on the left. Rough, unfinished timber posts have been used as supports for porch roof. Negro men sitting on the porch. Brother of store owner stands in doorway." Our second look at this establishment, last seen here two years ago.

October 1939. "Mr. Dougherty and one of the children. Warm Springs district, Malheur County, Oregon."

August 1936. "People living in miserable poverty. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma." A good (or bad) example of the Depression-era shantytowns known as Hoovervilles.

August 1936. "Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father's ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief rolls in Iowa to which state they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. 'We don't want to go where we'll be a nuisance to anybody."

July 1936. "Hoe culture in the South.
Poor white, North Carolina.

August 1939. Migratory boy in squatter
camp. Has come to Yakima Valley,
Washington, for the third year to pick.
 hops. Mother: "You'd be surprised
what that boy can pick."

July 1939. "Zollie Lyons, Negro sharecropper, home from the field for dinner at noontime, with his wife and part of his family. Wake County, North Carolina.

August 1939. "Drought-stricken farmer and family near Muskogee, Oklahoma. Agricultural day laborer."

June 1938. Pittsburg County, Oklahoma. "Family walking on highway, five children. Started from Idabel, bound for Krebs. In 1936 the father farmed on thirds and fourths at Eagleton, McCurtain County. Was taken sick with pneumonia and lost farm. Was refused relief in county of 15 years' residence because of temporary residence elsewhere.

May 1942: Members of the Mochida family awaiting
evacuation bus at Hayward, California.

The New York Times critic A.D. Coleman called Lange’s photographs “documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crimes.” During the early the war years, Lange spent time documenting the plight of Japanese-American citizens hustled off for the duration of the war to Americanized versions of concentration camps situated in sparsely populated areas from California to as far east as Arkansas. Ever sensitive to the public relations bombshell they were astride, the federal government impounded photos such as The Mochida Family (above) until long after the war. Ironically, those Lange had photographed while "on the road" during the late 1930s would have envied the conditions in these camps.

Despite the hard times, America during the Depression did not lose her sense of humor... nor did Lange. The dilapidated hotdog stand might not have been exactly booming, but it stood as a harbinger of the "fast food" of the more hopeful future.
(I wonder if the Trojans knew about this?)

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Click below for an excellent video featuring the work and voice of Dorothea Lange.







 

Eugenio Granell

The Pleasure of Bathing, 1943, Eugenio Granell.

Eugenio Granell Self-portrait, 1944.

As one accustomed to researching and writing about art, it's not at all uncommon for me to encounter artists touted as having been the first to produce a type of work, or do this, that, or some other often not particularly outstanding accomplishment. What is a good deal more uncommon is to come upon an artist listed as being the last of a certain breed. Of course, that's something of a risky designation in that there's always the possibility someone else will come along, take up the calling, and thus garner the crown as having become the NEW last. However, in the case of Spanish artist, Eugenio Granell, who died in 2001, I think his claim to fame is relatively safe.


The Ceremony of the Tribal Lamp, 1996, Eugenio Granell.

Break in the Clouds, 1940,
Eugenio Granell
(one of his first paintings).

If you were expecting to see Daliesque images, forget it. Eugenio Granell was no Salvador Dali, though they were contemporaries and I would imagine Granell admired Dali's work (who doesn't?). My guess is that Granell has won his "last" designation by the simple expediency of having outlived Dali, Miro, Ernst, Man Ray, Duchamp, and all the others. He was 89 when he died. In terms of style, there are the recognizable Surrealist motifs, but quite often Granell's work looks far more like that of Picasso than that of any of his colleagues in the Surrealist movement. His Ceremony of the Tribal Lamp (above), painted in 1996, near then end of his working career, bears a strong resemblance to that of Granell's more famous Spanish compatriot. His Pleasure of Bathing (top) painted back in 1943, shortly after his discovery of his painting interests, is considerably more in line with traditional Surrealist images. Surrealism would appear to have worn thin and worn off as he grew older.

Metaforia, 1957, Eugenio Granell--Picasso-esque Surrealism.

Iron Age Horse, 1990, Eugenio Granell.

Eugenio Granell led a rough life. Born on the northeastern coast of Spain in 1912, the fact that Granell survived all the other Surrealists is no small achievement. Originally he was a musician, writer, and left-wing political activist, which got him in considerable hot water as Francisco Franco rose to power in the Spanish pre-civil war days of the early 1930s. For those not well-versed in Spanish politics, Franco was a Fascist, Granell was a Marxist Communist; although in later years politics took a back seat to painting as he was forced to flee Spain to France, followed by Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and finally, New York. There he met and fell in with a number of other French and Spanish refugee artist such as Marcel Duchamp, José Vela Zanetti, and Josep Gausachs.

Nadja Finery, 1950, Eugenio Granell--a Surrealist fashion show?

Franco won the civil war and came to power as dictator of Spain in 1939 where he ruled with something of an iron fist until his death in 1975. From 1955 through 1985, Granell lived in Manhattan's Upper West Side, painting and teaching as a Professor of Spanish Literature at City University. After the return of democracy to Spain with the ascension of King Juan Carlos, Granell was able to return to his native homeland where he was honored with a host of awards, honors, and accolades. In 1995, he established the Fundación Granell in his hometown of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. The museum is advertised as the only one in the world devoted solely to Surrealism. It contains works by Granell, of course (over 600), but also paintings and sculpture by much more well-know Surrealists such as Picabia, Duchamp, Man Ray, Breton, and others...but no Dali. Apparently Dali doesn't count, even though he has a museum in Florida (plus one to spare in Barcelona).


Fundación Granell,  Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.

 

Charles Gleyre

Lost Illusions, original 1843 version, Charles Gleyre

Charles Gleyre, Self-portrait, 1850s

Can you imagine being an art instructor and looking down at your class roster to find the names Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille, and James McNeill Whistler listed among your new students? The year was 1862 and that was the surprising discovery of Monsieur Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre, the owner and operator of a private Paris art academy. Gleyre knew there would be trouble when four out of five of these new students (all in their early 20s) wanted to paint outdoors. And primarily, they were interested in painting landscapes. Gleyre had been a student of the famous painter, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He taught anatomy and classical painting. These guys were more interested in the flirting with the nude model than in painting her. Moreover, Gleyre hadn't painted a landscape in years and never in his life painted outdoors. They wanted to go on a painting field trip to the forests of Fontainebleau forgodsakes, a train ride of several hours. Gleyre informed them in no uncertain terms that if they wished to go traipsing through the woods with paint boxes, canvas, and easels in hand they'd do so without him. He had a business to run, after all.

 

The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau, 1865, Claude Monet
--not quite Gleyre's area of expertise.

Gleyre's many students.
One must have modeled in exchange for instruction.
Another has a halo.

Indications are Gleyre's four renegade future Impressionists did just that, missing classes more often than not. Only the sullen American, Whistler, took his studies seriously, by attending classes regularly (along with Gleyre's numerous other students, of course). Gleyre had taken over the private academy of Paul Delaroche several years before, in 1843, when his friend began teaching full-time at the French academy. It was an ideal situation. He could pretty much paint full-time while twice a week earning a little extra (often he charged nothing) teaching and mentoring students either without the talent, or perhaps, the money to attend the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Some of his students were brushing up their skills hoping to pass the Ecole's strenuous entrance exam. Others were hardly more than what we'd term today as hobbyists. Gleyre was a confirmed bachelor, somewhat the quiet, intellectual sort, and a precision painter almost to a fault. Although his style might suggest otherwise, technically speaking, Gleyre was not an academician. However, had he not been Swiss, not been somewhat reluctant to promote himself and his work, and more prolific in his output, he, like Delaroche, might well have become one.

 

The Three Farm Workers, 1835, Charles Gleyre, a watercolor from his middle-eastern trip.

Born in 1806 and orphaned at the age on nine, Charles Gleyre was raised in Lyon by an uncle. He began studying painting intensely as a teenager before taking off on something of a "field trip" of his own to Italy for a time, then for six more years wandering about Greece, Nubia, Syria, and Egypt, applying his skills and brushing up on the exotic middle-eastern culture. His time abroad was cut short by an eye infection garnered in Egypt and a persistent fever he picked up in Lebanon, forcing him to return home to recover. Six months later he moved to Paris and set up his own small studio where he began working out ideas which had been formulating in his mind during his illness. In 1840 he sent his Apocalyptic Vision of St John to the Paris Salon, which first brought him to prominence, followed in 1843 by Evening (top, later renamed Lost Illusions) It won him a second class medal. In the years to come, Gleyre occasionally entered the Salon competition, but refused to indulge in the popularity rat race that was the mainstay of the Paris art world at the time. His The Departure of the Apostles to Preach the Gospel (below), from 1845, was one of his few Salon entries following his "retirement."

 

Departure of the Apostles to Preach the Gospel, 1845, Charles Gleyre

Daphne and Cloe Returning
from the Mountains, 1850,
Charles Gleyre

Gleyre's Lost Illusions has taken its place as his masterpiece. He claimed it represented a vision he had once experienced while sitting on the banks of the Nile while in Egypt. The painting depicts an aging poet watching pensively as a mysterious boat carries away his youthful dreams and illusions, personified by music-making maidens and a cupid strewing flowers. Although the figures in the painting wear classical Greek attire, their vessel resembles a dahabiyeh, an Egyptian river boat. Interestingly enough, one of his students, Léon Dussart, later began a copy of Lost Illusions (bottom), which Gleyre later finished over the course of two years for the wealthy American art collector, William T. Walters. It's interesting to compare the two versions, separated by some twenty years. Although there are a few portraits in amongst Gleyre's work, his paintings, taken as a whole, would be best categorized as Romantic Classicism. Intermixed with the mythological are religious works with a generous seasoning of refined eroticism (left). Gleyre died suddenly in 1874 at the age of 68, leaving behind several unfinished works, not surprising in that, ever the perfectionist, he often painted intermittently on the same painting for several years. Today, we would consider Gleyre something of a "laid back" aesthetic nerd, certainly not the ideal painting instructor for the likes, of Monet, Sisley, Bazille or Renoir.

Lost Illusions, 1865 version, Charles Gleyre

 

Frederick Goodall

The Waters of the Nile, Frederick Goodall



Frederick Goodall Self-portrait,
1883

Art dynasties are not all that common but where they have existed they tend to fascinate me. In the U.S., we had the Peale family in Philadelphia and later, the Wyeth's of Brandywine. In France, the Pissarro family has long been a major name in Impressionism. In England, it's the Goodall family of artists, starting with the engraver Edward Goodall born in 1794, and four of his ten children, Edward A., Walter, Frederick, and their sister, Eliza. The next generation included Frederick Goodall's sons, F. Trevelyan, and Howard, as well as a nephew, John Edward. The third generation includes Edward A. Goodall's grandson, Canadian artist Edward Goodall, and his brother, the art restorer, Stewart Goodall. Judging from the extensive family tree, the Goodall's were quite prolific in more than just art. One of the most prolific (seven children) and the most prolific artist of all these was Frederick Goodall.

Travelers Resting in a Tavern, 1852, Frederick Goodall--a pre-Egyptian painting.

Leaving a Church in Brittany, 1840.
Goodall was 18 at the time.

Frederick Goodall was born in 1822 and garnered his first art commission at the tender age of sixteen when the famed, British engineer, Isambard Brunel, hired him to paint six watercolors of the ill-fated Rotherhithe Tunnel then under construction (the first tunnel in history to go under a navigable waterway). By the age of thirty, Goodall was an associate member of the Royal Academy, having exhibited their regularly since his teen years. Most of his work during this period consisted of portraits and genre scenes of British life (above). His work was good, if in no way outstanding, quite typical, except for his youth, of British painters of the mid-19th century.

The Finding of Moses, 1862,
Frederick Goodall

Goodall's big break came in 1858 when a group of friends invited him to accompany them to Egypt. While there, he set up a studio in Cairo when the German watercolorist, Carl Haag, while also venturing out into the wilderness landscape, often living among Bedouin tribesmen, painting and drawing like a couple wild-eyed tourists just about everything they encountered. Egypt and the Arab native population were exotic, colorful, and loaded with background material for religious paintings, all of which were quite popular back home in England. Goodall stayed in Egypt for seven months of high times and hair-raising adventure. At one time the two of them barely avoided being stoned for drawing portraits in the marketplace. In the end, he packed up hundreds of drawings and watercolors as well as 130 oil sketches, sandwiched between buttered paper to keep them from sticking to one another. His Waters of the Nile (top) is likely one of this group. These he shipped back to London while accompanying Haag to Jerusalem for another month.

The Flight into Egypt, 1885, Frederick Goodall (one of two versions)

An architect's drawing of Goodall's
Graeme's Dyke, 1870

During the next ten years Goodall was a spectacularly successful artists, earning as much as ten-thousand pounds per year (a massive sum at the time). He painting little else other than scenes from Egypt and religious works such as his 1862 The Discovery of Moses (above, left, two versions) and the first of two version of The Flight into Egypt (above). He gained full membership to the Royal Academy, married for a second time after the death of his first wife, then started a second family in a newly built Tudor mansion located in suburban Northwest London, which he called Graeme's Dyke (later changed to Grim's Dyke, and today used as a hotel (112 pounds per night). He entertained lavishly, educating his growing family, and in the process, spending his generous income as fast (or faster) than it came in.

Frederick Goodall in his studio, 1902

Apparently having used up all the resource material from his first trip to Egypt, in 1870, Goodall returned to that country for yet another round of painting and drawing. Having discovered a winning formula, Goodall continued painting canvases large and small featuring Egyptian scenes. In 1890, he was forced by his creditors to sell his suburban mansion and move to central London closer to the schools attended by his youngest children. He continued painting into the early 20th century though, as he approached his eighties, he found himself unable to maintain his prodigious output. His financial problems escalated. He was declared bankrupt in 1902, his belongings and remain paintings auctioned off to an art market no longer enraptured with "all things Egyptian." He died penniless in 1904.

Today's Grim's Dyke Hotel, Harrow, northwest London,
Frederick Goodall's extravagant dream house.

 

Eva Gonzales

Portrait of Eva Gonzales, 1869-70, Edouard Manet

Eva Gonzales Self-portrait, 1860s

The most valuable aspect in studying history has little to do with memorizing dates and names. Those are only peripheral means to an end. No, the important thing about history is the way in which it provides a context for the present. Whatever perspective might be used--military, political, social, artistic, economic, religious--history allows us to frame our world today in a manner through which value judgments regarding current events can be made more accurately. Nowhere is this more the case than when we look at social customs at various mile markers in history--fifty, one-hundred, one-hundred-fifty years ago. A hundred-fifty years ago would be 1864. The U.S. Civil War was still raging. In Paris, ladies' dresses were as wide as they were tall. I've always wondered how women managed them in using an outside toilet (history doesn't tell us that). Speaking of ladies, they were worshipped and admired for their beauty, charm, and child-raising talents. They were placed high on a social pedestal (and then told to stay there). A lady who cared anything about her reputation did not go out without a gentleman escort. She was obliged to wear a torturous corset (below) to maintain an hour-glass figure (whether she had one or not). Even relations between a husband and wife were surprisingly formal. And never, under any circumstances, was a woman to compete professionally with her male peers (if, indeed, she had any).

 

A Loge in the Théâtre des Italiens, 1874, Eva Gonzales

Study at a Window, Eva Gonzales,
not portraits, just studies.

Eva Gonzales was a lady artist, a French Impressionist of Spanish descent who, indeed, had several male peers. She was born in 1849. At the age of sixteen, as upper-class young ladies were expected to do, she began developing her innate talents. In this case, music and painting. She studied first under the French society portrait artist, Charles Chaplin (not Charlie Chaplin, he hadn't even been born yet). Then, shortly after she turned twenty, Eva Gonzales became the only formal student of the French painting icon, Edouard Manet, who promptly used her as a model for a portrait exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1869. (Several of Manet's Impressionist friends also painted her.) She appears quite attractive, and though she had developed no small amount of talent, one still might reasonably ponder whether it was her feminine charms or her painting skills which won her a place in Manet's studio.

The Awakening, 1877-78, Eva Gonzales.
Manet would have insisted the model be nude. (The model was Eva's sister.)

Woman with a Bun, Eva Gonzales--
the subject is hair, not nudity.

In many ways, Gonzales and Manet were much alike. They were of the same social class. And, though they both painted Impressionistically (at times), neither stooped to displaying with the "disreputable" Impressionist as did Morisot and Cassatt, both of whom she undoubtedly knew and considered friends. Like her female counterparts, Gonzales' choice of subject matter was limited almost exclusively to women and children. It is there where any similarities to her painting instructor ended. You won't find any Olympias or naked ladies picnicking in the grass with fully dress gentlemen among her work. Her work is quite feminine and highly refined in every respect except perhaps her Impressionist style. She used her family and female friends as models, posed (or caught) in their daily lives of social restraint and refinement.

Reading in the Forest, Eva Gonzales. Where's the impressionist color?

La Toilette, 1879, Eva Gonzales

Eva Gonzales, like any good Impressionist, sometimes ventured outside, though there are precious few landscapes to her credit and most of her paintings of nature involve female figures enjoying it. Frankly, she wasn't very good at painting nature--Monet had nothing to worry about. Besides a few landscapes, I found one painting said to be of The Blue Mosque (below). I'm guessing it was done by copying another painting, or from a photo, in that it is so inaccurate as to have cause me to go in search of which Blue Mosque she might have painted (there were about ten of them in her time). It appears to be based upon the one in Istanbul, though there's no record of her ever having visited that part of the world. Islamic architecture was not her forte.


The Blue Mosque, Eva Gonzales (apparently the one in Istanbul).

The Window, Eva Gonzales.

That's not to in any way unduly limit Eva's skills as a painter. As her lovely young ladies depicted in The Window (left) would attest, she was the equal of any portrait painter in Paris at the time. Instead, as I've indicated above, her painting limitations came largely as she politely and strictly observed the social limitations imposed upon upper-class ladies of her day; and as the result of one other limiting factor. In 1879, Eva married a graphic artist named Henri Guérard. On May 6th, 1883, She died giving birth to their first child. She was thirty-four. Her total number of paintings number less than a hundred. History tells us death has a way of limiting an artist's output. Eva's mentor, Edouard Manet, had died just six days before.

The Clarion, 1869-70, Eva Gonzales--one of her few male portraits.

 

Art and Jesus--the Resurrection

Noli mi Tangere, 1306, Giotto

The Resurrection, 1463, Piero Della Francesca

Christ's resurrection is what makes His life meaningful. Without this single, earth-shattering event, Jesus would be, at best, just another Hebrew prophet and teacher. Yet some of the earliest depictions involving Jesus' resurrection concentrate on his confrontation with Mary Magdalene as seen in Giotto's somewhat awkward, 1306 fresco, Noli mi Tangere (above). Piero della Francesca presents us with a triumphantly victorious Christ, another fresco image this one much more carefully composed, yet one which is rather cold and statuary. The image today resides high on a wall facing the entrance of the artist's hometown church in Sansepolcro, Tuscany. College Art history students know it as the most endlessly analyzed composition in the history of art history.



The Resurrection, 1442-45, Luca della Robbia

Noli me Tangere, 1581, Lavinia Fontana

The Italian artist, Luca della Robbia, chose to create a high-relief, glazed terracotta sculpture of the risen Christ with his 1442-45 The Resurrection (above) for the Duomo in Florence. Even a momentary study of the work finds it as having heavily influenced della Francesca's 1463 fresco (above, right). Over a hundred years later in 1581, Lavinia Fontana, was one of the few women to portray the life of Christ as she also explores the relationship between the risen Christ and Mary Magdalene in her painting Noli me Tangere (left). Jesus mistaken role as a gardener is accentuate by her inclusion of a spade in his left hand and a rather awkwardly rendered, ridiculous looking hat. Not only that, but she paints Jesus as being obese.

The Angel is Opening Christ's Tomb, 1640, Benjamin Cuyp
 

The Resurrection of Christ,
1565, Tintoretto

And once more we look at the work of Tintoretto and his Resurrection of Christ (right) from 1565. It is a typically overpopulated, Mannerist handling of the resurrection. Despite his usual dark, melodramatic forms, this time his work is largely without some of the compositional complexities seen earlier. In contrast, from the north of Europe around 1640, the Dutch artist, Benjamin Cuyp, much better known for painting cows and other livestock, shows us The Angel Opening the Tomb (above), preceding the resurrection itself. It's a refreshing, if somewhat melodramatic departure from many of the Italian depictions. However, even the occasional Bible reader will note that the tomb is nothing like that described in scriptures. Such discrepancies, here and elsewhere, are most likely caused by the artist's lack of ready access to the printed texts and multiple translations we have today. In such a vacuum, artists tend to portray such things patterned after their own cultural understanding.

Doubting Thomas, 1602, Caravaggio
 

He Lives,
20th century, Simon Dewey

The famous Italian artist, Caravaggio, in 1602, chose to explore the Doubting Thomas (above), no longer doubting the resurrected presence of Jesus. The 20th century artist, Simon Dewey, in his version, He Lives, (left) depicts the resurrection quite accurately from scripture, though his work, and that of many contemporary artists tend to be somewhat less dramatic than in the past. My own version, borrowing my title from Dewey, seeks to be both. In doing so, I faced the same quandary as dozens of other artists, now and then. In painting one of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible, do you paint the scene in a natural, human manner and let the drama arise in the viewer's emotional understanding of the incident? Or, do you attempt a literal representation of the supernatural and risk becoming melodramatic, or perhaps falling short of that which the viewer imagines? There's also the risk, in trying to do both, of, in fact, doing neither.

Copyright, Jim Lane

He Lives, 1999, Jim Lane