Titanic
STANLEY TIGERMAN
After decades of dominance, in the 1970s the architectural style of Mies van der Rohe that had held the American architect in its grips was beginning to wane. Modernism was being replaced by postmodernism, and the clean minimalism that was considered the paramount of aesthetic style was being challenged by iconoclastic ideas that uprooted the very principles the modern nation had based its visual language. Yet, as architectural schools and practices around the country were rebelling against Miesian ideals, Chicago, where van der Rohe had held the position of director of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology was the last hold out of his pure, unadulterated philosophy. Tigerman created this photocollage of the Rohe’s famous ‘Crown Hall’ building sinking into the depths of the ocean as a sort of ultimatum to the architectural institutions. He mailed out the image to leading figures in the medium, with the option for a one way ticket on the Titanic, implicitly urging them to adapt, improve, modernise or die. The work has become a landmark of postmodernism, and a watershed moment in the history of American architecture, serving as the most implicit nail in the coffin of van der Rohe.
Stanley Tigerman
STANLEY TIGERMAN, 1978. PHOTOCOLLAGE.
After decades of dominance, in the 1970s the architectural style of Mies van der Rohe that had held the American architect in its grips was beginning to wane. Modernism was being replaced by postmodernism, and the clean minimalism that was considered the paramount of aesthetic style was being challenged by iconoclastic ideas that uprooted the very principles the modern nation had based its visual language. Yet, as architectural schools and practices around the country were rebelling against Miesian ideals, Chicago, where van der Rohe had held the position of director of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology was the last hold out of his pure, unadulterated philosophy. Tigerman created this photocollage of the Rohe’s famous ‘Crown Hall’ building sinking into the depths of the ocean as a sort of ultimatum to the architectural institutions. He mailed out the image to leading figures in the medium, with the option for a one way ticket on the Titanic, implicitly urging them to adapt, improve, modernise or die. The work has become a landmark of postmodernism, and a watershed moment in the history of American architecture, serving as the most implicit nail in the coffin of van der Rohe.
Greyed Rainbow
JACKSON POLLOCK
Jackson Pollock was at the height of his fame when he started to abandon the medium that had brought him there. Working with a more commercial gallery, that called for a more demanding production schedule from Pollock, he sunk deeper into alcoholism, depression and the ‘drip paintings’ that had made him seemed to represent a past he was no longer in touch with. This is one of the last substantial abstract works that Pollock made, and one of the few in his later career that still features the elements of chance creation that defined his major period. This painting can be read as a self-portrait of Pollocks interior life, as bright splashes of color, hopefully suggestions of the rainbow sit in the bottom third, increasingly obscured by a darkness that seems to overtake and move down the canvas in a chaotic dance. The rainbow has been greyed, the light are going out of the artist’s spirit and he paints in an attempt, perhaps, to communicate the internal turmoil that he cannot put into words.
JACKSON POLLOCK
JACKSON POLLOCK, 1953. OIL ON LINEN.
Jackson Pollock was at the height of his fame when he started to abandon the medium that had brought him there. Working with a more commercial gallery, that called for a more demanding production schedule from Pollock, he sunk deeper into alcoholism, depression and the ‘drip paintings’ that had made him seemed to represent a past he was no longer in touch with. This is one of the last substantial abstract works that Pollock made, and one of the few in his later career that still features the elements of chance creation that defined his major period. This painting can be read as a self-portrait of Pollocks interior life, as bright splashes of color, hopefully suggestions of the rainbow sit in the bottom third, increasingly obscured by a darkness that seems to overtake and move down the canvas in a chaotic dance. The rainbow has been greyed, the light are going out of the artist’s spirit and he paints in an attempt, perhaps, to communicate the internal turmoil that he cannot put into words.
Figure with Meat
FRANCIS BACON
In 1650, Diego Velazquez was commissioned to paint a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The resulting images is one of the most famous works in art history, but was received with controversy in its day for the accuracy of, and lack of flattering to, its subjects. Almost exactly three hundred years later, Francis Bacon - the great British post-war painter - took Velazquez’s vision and distorted, corrupted, and expanded it in a series of paintings known as the ‘Papal Portraits’. Much as the original work made Velazquez his name, Bacon is still remembered perhaps most strongly for these works. The artist never worked from life, instead drawing from photographs, found images, and visions in his mind, often with all three in combination. The resultant works are journeys into darkness, nightmarish visions where Innocent X becomes a prisoner in a glass box, tormented by brushstrokes and carcasses, his mouth open as he screams in silence. It is unclear if Bacon’s Pope is the butcher of the beef behind him, or an equal with it just waiting to be killed but the painting grapples with a complex relationship to religion, and an upturning of the art historical order.
Francis Bacon
FRANCIS BACON, 1953. OIL ON CANVAS.
In 1650, Diego Velazquez was commissioned to paint a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The resulting images is one of the most famous works in art history, but was received with controversy in its day for the accuracy of, and lack of flattering to, its subjects. Almost exactly three hundred years later, Francis Bacon - the great British post-war painter - took Velazquez’s vision and distorted, corrupted, and expanded it in a series of paintings known as the ‘Papal Portraits’. Much as the original work made Velazquez his name, Bacon is still remembered perhaps most strongly for these works. The artist never worked from life, instead drawing from photographs, found images, and visions in his mind, often with all three in combination. The resultant works are journeys into darkness, nightmarish visions where Innocent X becomes a prisoner in a glass box, tormented by brushstrokes and carcasses, his mouth open as he screams in silence. It is unclear if Bacon’s Pope is the butcher of the beef behind him, or an equal with it just waiting to be killed, but the painting grapples with a complex relationship to religion, and an upturning of the art historical order in terror and beauty.
Couple in Bed
PHILIP GUSTON
This remarkable double portrait of Guston and his wife Musa, who died the year this work was completed, shows the artist at his most vulnerable, personal, and revealing. Curled in the foetus position, his limbs emerging from crumpled covers, he holds with equal strength the two things that have kept him together in his turbulent life, love and art. The couples faces are pushed together in a kiss as they lie on the pillow, their forms merging together into a single, abstract block of flesh like a naive Klimpt. As the child of Jewish refugees in Canada, who witnessed the suicide of his father and death of his brother before he was 18, Guston began as an abstract expressionist until he moved into large scale, almost cartoonist works that addressed the contemporary injustices of the world and worked through his past trauma. Painted towards the end of his own life as well as his wife’s, the work is both ode and penance - after decades of strife and trouble, of personal trauma, financial hardship, ill health and plunges into darkness through his art and his mind, it is touching if not surprising that at the end of his career, Guston moves to the most simple and relatable imagery of his career. Gone are illusions to the Holocaust and the Klu Klax Klan, to violence and disharmony that featured in so much of his most celebrated work and instead, the artist becomes a child again, clinging on for dear life to to his dual salvation.
Philip Guston
PHILIP GUSTON, 1977. OIL ON CANVAS.
This remarkable double portrait of Guston and his wife Musa, who died the year this work was completed, shows the artist at his most vulnerable, personal, and revealing. Curled in the foetus position, his limbs emerging from crumpled covers, he holds with equal strength the two things that have kept him together in his turbulent life, love and art. The couples faces are pushed together in a kiss as they lie on the pillow, their forms merging together into a single, abstract block of flesh like a naive Klimpt. As the child of Jewish refugees in Canada, who witnessed the suicide of his father and death of his brother before he was 18, Guston began as an abstract expressionist until he moved into large scale, almost cartoonist works that addressed the contemporary injustices of the world and worked through his past trauma. Painted towards the end of his own life as well as his wife’s, the work is both ode and penance - after decades of strife and trouble, of personal trauma, financial hardship, ill health and plunges into darkness through his art and his mind, it is touching if not surprising that at the end of his career, Guston moves to the most simple and relatable imagery of his career. Gone are illusions to the Holocaust and the Klu Klax Klan, to violence and disharmony that featured in so much of his most celebrated work and instead, the artist becomes a child again, clinging on for dear life to to his dual salvations.
The Girl by the Window
EDVARD MUNCH
Surreal manifestations of modern anxieties, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch used individual vignettes to speak to universal themes of loneliness, despair, and pain. Yet while his work has consistency in its emotional potency, his variation of style is enormous. This delicate, romantic image of girl, standing at the billowing curtains of a window in her flowing night dress as the light illuminates squares of darkness was painted in the same year as his more famous ‘The Scream’. While the latter work has become one of the most famous pieces of modern art, acclaimed for bold brushstrokes and radical composition that was inspired by his visits to mainland Europe and interactions with the impressionists and symbolistS, ‘The Girl by the Window’ speaks more to his native Scandinavia. Both in its romantic subject and its aesthetic style, it is a work firmly in the tradition of Northern Europe and yet for all of its simple, innocent beauty, there is the Munchian sense of disquiet across the canvas. We become voyeurs, peering in on our unknowing subject in the small of the night, watching a private moment of worry or despair as she contemplates, unaware of our presence.
Edvard Munch
EDVARD MUNCH, 1893. OIL ON CANVAS.
Surreal manifestations of modern anxieties, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch used individual vignettes to speak to universal themes of loneliness, despair, and pain. Yet while his work has consistency in its emotional potency, his variation of style is enormous. This delicate, romantic image of girl, standing at the billowing curtains of a window in her flowing night dress as the light illuminates squares of darkness was painted in the same year as his more famous ‘The Scream’. While the latter work has become one of the most famous pieces of modern art, acclaimed for bold brushstrokes and radical composition that was inspired by his visits to mainland Europe and interactions with the impressionists and symbolistS, ‘The Girl by the Window’ speaks more to his native Scandinavia. Both in its romantic subject and its aesthetic style, it is a work firmly in the tradition of Northern Europe and yet for all of its simple, innocent beauty, there is the Munchian sense of disquiet across the canvas. We become voyeurs, peering in on our unknowing subject in the small of the night, watching a private moment of worry or despair as she contemplates, unaware of our presence.
The Advance Guard
FREDERIC REMINGTON
Less concerned with history than with mythology, Frederic Remington created a persona around himself that matched the vision of America that he created with his inks, oils and watercolors. An illustrator of the ‘Old West’ who became lauded on the East Coast for his portraits of cowboys, native Americans, ranchers, military men and great battles on horseback, his work sits somewhere between historical record and fantastical storytelling. The work is narrative and dramatic, capturing moments of action with dynamic composition and modern aesthetics, and Remington spent time in the landscapes he painted enough to capture a truthful accuracy to the color, light and natural forms. Yet this technical accuracy did not translate into a historical one, and Remington’s vision of America was just that: a vision. It was, however, strong enough to ingrain his ideas into the popular imagination such that the common understanding of the ‘Old West’ is in part the creation of a wealthy New Englander, educated at Yale, and hired by Harper’s to create illustrations that would excite and enthral their readers.
Frederic Remington
FREDERIC REMINGTON, 1890. OIL ON CANVAS.
Less concerned with history than with mythology, Frederic Remington created a persona around himself that matched the vision of America that he created with his inks, oils and watercolors. An illustrator of the ‘Old West’ who became lauded on the East Coast for his portraits of cowboys, native Americans, ranchers, military men and great battles on horseback, his work sits somewhere between historical record and fantastical storytelling. The work is narrative and dramatic, capturing moments of action with dynamic composition and modern aesthetics, and Remington spent time in the landscapes he painted enough to capture a truthful accuracy to the color, light and natural forms. Yet this technical accuracy did not translate into a historical one, and Remington’s vision of America was just that: a vision. It was, however, strong enough to ingrain his ideas into the popular imagination such that the common understanding of the ‘Old West’ is in part the creation of a wealthy New Englander, educated at Yale, and hired by Harper’s to create illustrations that would excite and enthral their readers.
The Blind Leading the Blind
PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER
Bruegel takes a small parable from the Gospel of Matthew, no more than two lines in most translations, and turns it into a painting that serves as aesthetic masterpiece, political allegory, and medical record. Six blind men follow in a diagonal line, holding onto each other by hand and stick. They walk, accurately, with their heads facing up, relying on other senses to orientate themselves. Each of them has a different affliction that has lost them their sight, ranging from corneal leukoma to a removal of the eyes themselves, and Bruegel paints these conditions with such accuracy that modern doctors can diagnose each figure with ease. The biological accuracy of the figures is but one small element of this painting’s majesty - compositional Bruegel pulls off a masterful trick. Dividing the scene into nine equal parts, where visual and informational conflict exists throughout and angling the entire movement downwards to disorientate us, the result is that when we look at the image, it is very hard to dwell on a single element. We become the blind man being led, our vision blurs and moves the longer we engage with the work until, like the figure leading the pack, we fall into its corners and cannot escape.
Pieter Breugel the Elder
PIETER BRUEGEL THE EDLER, 1568. DISTEMPER ON CANVAS.
Bruegel takes a small parable from the Gospel of Matthew, no more than two lines in most translations, and turns it into a painting that serves as aesthetic masterpiece, political allegory, and medical record. Six blind men follow in a diagonal line, holding onto each other by hand and stick. They walk, accurately, with their heads facing up, relying on other senses to orientate themselves. Each of them has a different affliction that has lost them their sight, ranging from corneal leukoma to a removal of the eyes themselves, and Bruegel paints these conditions with such accuracy that modern doctors can diagnose each figure with ease. The biological accuracy of the figures is but one small element of this painting’s majesty - compositional Bruegel pulls off a masterful trick. Dividing the scene into nine equal parts, where visual and informational conflict exists throughout and angling the entire movement downwards to disorientate us, the result is that when we look at the image, it is very hard to dwell on a single element. We become the blind man being led, our vision blurs and moves the longer we engage with the work until, like the figure leading the pack, we fall into its corners and cannot escape.
Sunset
PAUL KLEE
In music theory, “Polyphony” refers to the combination of multiple tones or melodies to create a textural sound. Paul Klee was a trained and talented violinist, as well as a radical visual artist of the Bauhaus, and he took his understanding of music theory into the visual realm to create an aesthetic idea of polyphony in painting. The concept needs little explanation that is not provided by Klee’s work itself, and his idea that music was key in creating new, abstract art runs through every element of his painting. Here, in ‘Sunset’, we can see a remarkable visual harmony formed through separate aesthetic, painterly melodies. Abstract, geometric forms, tenderly painted but not altogether gentle in their rigorous shapes, take up the bulk of the compositional weight, set against an ebbing background of soft hues that reveal the artists hand. Above these, fit into the forms, is an intricate pattern of dots that bring a pace, and frenetic energy to the work, while a bright, single colour red sun sits at the base, a small arrow indicating its direction of travel. The work has a natural rhythm to it, each element works in harmony with the next, while retaining an individual visual feeling. Klee creates an orchestra of forms, techniques and colors and conducts them towards a piece of modernist beauty.
Paul Klee
PAUL KLEE, 1930. OIL ON CANVAS.
In music theory, “Polyphony” refers to the combination of multiple tones or melodies to create a textural sound. Paul Klee was a trained and talented violinist, as well as a radical visual artist of the Bauhaus, and he took his understanding of music theory into the visual realm to create an aesthetic idea of polyphony in painting. The concept needs little explanation that is not provided by Klee’s work itself, and his idea that music was key in creating new, abstract art runs through every element of his painting. Here, in ‘Sunset’, we can see a remarkable visual harmony formed through separate aesthetic, painterly melodies. Abstract, geometric forms, tenderly painted but not altogether gentle in their rigorous shapes, take up the bulk of the compositional weight, set against an ebbing background of soft hues that reveal the artists hand. Above these, fit into the forms, is an intricate pattern of dots that bring a pace, and frenetic energy to the work, while a bright, single colour red sun sits at the base, a small arrow indicating its direction of travel. The work has a natural rhythm to it, each element works in harmony with the next, while retaining an individual visual feeling. Klee creates an orchestra of forms, techniques and colors and conducts them towards a piece of modernist beauty.
The Incredulity of St. Thomas
CARAVAGGIO
Removed from context or adornment, the viewer becomes part of an intimate exchange. There are few clues as to time or place, the garb is simple, peasant robes, the background is dark and anonymous and the lighting so artificial as to almost seem more real than reality itself. This was the genius of Caravaggio, in this, one of the most important works of the Baroque: an ability to, as he so often did, take religious stories out of antiquity and bring them fiercely into the contemporary world that even five hundred years later they feel modern. Jesus is bathed in light that makes him emerge from the oil and seem almost real as his disciples gather round. Thomas, who had doubted his faith and Christ’s return, proves his finger into the open wound in Christ’s side. It is a tangible display of flesh, and confirmation that the son of God is both man and divine. Yet, this proof materialises in the medium of the painting as well of the subject. Christ as an eternal figure, always relevant, always human, is exemplified in the rich chiaroscuro of Caravaggios brushstrokes - as Thomas’s doubting was allayed by direct contact with flesh, so too is ours by being allowed entry into this scene that feels so tangible.
Caravaggio
CARAVAGGIO, 1601. OIL ON CANVAS.
Removed from context or adornment, the viewer becomes part of an intimate exchange. There are few clues as to time or place, the garb is simple, peasant robes, the background is dark and anonymous and the lighting so artificial as to almost seem more real than reality itself. This was the genius of Caravaggio, in this, one of the most important works of the Baroque: an ability to, as he so often did, take religious stories out of antiquity and bring them fiercely into the contemporary world that even five hundred years later they feel modern. Jesus is bathed in light that makes him emerge from the oil and seem almost real as his disciples gather round. Thomas, who had doubted his faith and Christ’s return, proves his finger into the open wound in Christ’s side. It is a tangible display of flesh, and confirmation that the son of God is both man and divine. Yet, this proof materialises in the medium of the painting as well of the subject. Christ as an eternal figure, always relevant, always human, is exemplified in the rich chiaroscuro of Caravaggios brushstrokes - as Thomas’s doubting was allayed by direct contact with flesh, so too is ours by being allowed entry into this scene that feels so tangible.
Conversation II
PICABIA
Francis Picabia is perhaps the ultimate artist’s artist. On the fringe of nearly every major Early 20th art movement, he never quite felt at home in any. Associated at some point with Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Picabia is most easily classified as Avant-Garde. One need not look further than Conversation II to see this. Painted in 1922, it is proto Pop Art exploring the two oppositional forces in Picabia’s life – the rigid lines represent order and mathematics while the floating bodies convey a sensual humanity he could not resist. Picabia was in a constant state of duality, existing between movements, straddling eras and ways of thinking, and he allowed this conflict to come through in his work. He lived extravagantly, earning a good living off his art and a large inheritance from his mother. He was a drifter and a dabbler, exploring his contemporary age with freedom.
Francis Picabia
FRANCIS PICABIA, 1922. WATERCOLOR ON BOARD
Francis Picabia is perhaps the ultimate artist’s artist. On the fringe of nearly every major Early 20th art movement, he never quite felt at home in any. Associated at some point with Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Picabia is most easily classified as Avant-Garde. One need not look further than Conversation II to see this. Painted in 1922, it is proto Pop Art exploring the two oppositional forces in Picabia’s life – the rigid lines represent order and mathematics while the floating bodies convey a sensual humanity he could not resist. Picabia was in a constant state of duality, existing between movements, straddling eras and ways of thinking, and he allowed this conflict to come through in his work. He lived extravagantly, earning a good living off his art and a large inheritance from his mother. He was a drifter and a dabbler, exploring his contemporary age with freedom.
Stoke-By-Nayland
JOHN CONSTABLE
Born in a small village in Suffolk, on the east coast of England where marshy land and rivers cut through a gently ebbing, pastoral countryside, the painter John Constable never strayed far from his home. So affectionate was he to his native landscape, that even today the area around his village is known as ‘Constable Country’. Yet his ties to his home were, at least to his contemporaries understandings, detrimental to his career as they led him to reject opportunities that would move him elsewhere. History has proved Constable right for his decisions to stay close; the works he painted of verdant fields, glistening rivers, and aching trees revolutionised landscape painting with a return to composition from nature, rather than the imagination. Constable painted this view of Stoke-By-Nayland, the neighbouring village to the one he was born in, many times throughout his life. Almost always from the same angle, with the same trees in the foreground and the same church behind, a church he had painted the altarpiece for as a young man, that they serve as a biographical record of his life. It was a dedication and love for his homeland that led him to such repetition - “I should paint my own places best”, he said, “painting is but another word for feeling”.
John Constable
JOHN CONSTABLE, 1836. OIL ON CANVAS.
Born in a small village in Suffolk, on the east coast of England where marshy land and rivers cut through a gently ebbing, pastoral countryside, the painter John Constable never strayed far from his home. So affectionate was he to his native landscape, that even today the area around his village is known as ‘Constable Country’. Yet his ties to his home were, at least to his contemporaries understandings, detrimental to his career as they led him to reject opportunities that would move him elsewhere. History has proved Constable right for his decisions to stay close; the works he painted of verdant fields, glistening rivers, and aching trees revolutionised landscape painting with a return to composition from nature, rather than the imagination. Constable painted this view of Stoke-By-Nayland, the neighbouring village to the one he was born in, many times throughout his life. Almost always from the same angle, with the same trees in the foreground and the same church behind, a church he had painted the altarpiece for as a young man, that they serve as a biographical record of his life. It was a dedication and love for his homeland that led him to such repetition - “I should paint my own places best”, he said, “painting is but another word for feeling”.
Black Cross, New Mexico
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
On her first visit to New Mexico in 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe would take long walks in the nighttime desert, and encounter mysterious crosses dotted throughout the landscape. Simple, folk objects; they became to her these strange spectres of religion in a land of arid nature, that they took on the form of a ‘thin dark veil of the Catholic Church’. These crosses were most likely placed by a Catholic lay brotherhood known as the Penitentes, marking the routes to their informal church like structures called moradas. Yet for O’Keeffe, they became something else entirely. “Painting the crosses”, she said, “was a way of painting the country”, and this is evident in their composition. Reducing these already simple objects to their most formal elements of shape and color, and magnifying them from there, she sets the cross against the surreal New Mexico background, its crossarm almost enforcing the horizon behind it. O’Keeffe would settle in New Mexico some 16 years after this first visit, and become amongst its most celebrated and famous daughters, but it was these early cross paintings that established her relationship with the state and her as a leading American modernist.
Georgia O’Keeffe
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, 1929. OIL ON CANVAS.
On her first visit to New Mexico in 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe would take long walks in the nighttime desert, and encounter mysterious crosses dotted throughout the landscape. Simple, folk objects; they became to her these strange spectres of religion in a land of arid nature, that they took on the form of a ‘thin dark veil of the Catholic Church’. These crosses were most likely placed by a Catholic lay brotherhood known as the Penitentes, marking the routes to their informal church like structures called moradas. Yet for O’Keeffe, they became something else entirely. “Painting the crosses”, she said, “was a way of painting the country”, and this is evident in their composition. Reducing these already simple objects to their most formal elements of shape and color, and magnifying them from there, she sets the cross against the surreal New Mexico background, its crossarm almost enforcing the horizon behind it. O’Keeffe would settle in New Mexico some 16 years after this first visit, and become amongst its most celebrated and famous daughters, but it was these early cross paintings that established her relationship with the state and her as a leading American modernist.
Christ Crucified
DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ
The flesh of Christ is so alive, so exquisitely rendered in oil such that we can almost see the pores of his skin, as to cause devotion and reverence at the sheer sight of it. This was the intended effect. Velazquez was painting at the time of the Catholic Reformation where an enormous emphasis was placed on Transubstantiation and thus the body of Christ was seen as a symbol of rebellious Catholicism in the face of the rising Protestantism. Hired as a court painter of the Spanish King Phillip IV, who tolerated a slow pace of work because he saw that he was a once-in-a-generation genius, Velazquez moved more towards religious imagery and away from the historical work and portraiture that had made his name. The paintings made under this patronage are amongst his most famous and significant, using his immense technical skill and a deep understanding of the transformational power of art to create stirring works of holy ordinance that elevate history and allegory into something tangible.
Diego Velázquez
DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ, 1632. OIL ON CANVAS.
The flesh of Christ is so alive, so exquisitely rendered in oil such that we can almost see the pores of his skin, as to cause devotion and reverence at the sheer sight of it. This was the intended effect. Velázquez was painting at the time of the Catholic Reformation where an enormous emphasis was placed on Transubstantiation and thus the body of Christ was seen as a symbol of rebellious Catholicism in the face of the rising Protestantism. Hired as a court painter of the Spanish King Phillip IV, who tolerated a slow pace of work because he saw that he was a once-in-a-generation genius, Velázquez moved more towards religious imagery and away from the historical work and portraiture that had made his name. The paintings made under this patronage are amongst his most famous and significant, using his immense technical skill and a deep understanding of the transformational power of art to create stirring works of holy ordinance that elevate history and allegory into something tangible.
Target
JASPER JOHNS
In order to create something new, Johns had to destroy all that he made before. An abstract expressionist up until the mid 1950s, Jasper Johns looked for a way to move beyond the movement and found it in simple, recurring motifs, but before he progressed with the new artistic career that would make his name, he destroyed all the canvases that he had produced before. The target was the perfect image for an artist looking for explicit meaning. Instantly recognisable, pre-existing, simple in it’s formation but open in its interpretation, from 1955 to 1961, John produced dozens of paintings and drawings featuring the target. There is something quintessentially American about John’s targets, tapping into a primary color Pop feeling that below it’s light joyousness perhaps hides something sinister. Too, for all of his attempt to abandon the Abstract Expressionist movement he had worked in, its influence is visible in the brushstrokes and the unusual application of encaustic, a hot wax mixed with pigment, that make up the image, hiding visual depth and the proof of a human hand in each stroke.
Jasper Johns
JASPER JOHNS, 1961. ENCAUSTIC AND NEWSPAPER ON CANVAS.
In order to create something new, Johns had to destroy all that he made before. An abstract expressionist up until the mid 1950s, Jasper Johns looked for a way to move beyond the movement and found it in simple, recurring motifs, but before he progressed with the new artistic career that would make his name, he destroyed all the canvases that he had produced before. The target was the perfect image for an artist looking for explicit meaning. Instantly recognisable, pre-existing, simple in it’s formation but open in its interpretation, from 1955 to 1961, John produced dozens of paintings and drawings featuring the target. There is something quintessentially American about John’s targets, tapping into a primary color Pop feeling that below it’s light joyousness perhaps hides something sinister. Too, for all of his attempt to abandon the Abstract Expressionist movement he had worked in, its influence is visible in the brushstrokes and the unusual application of encaustic, a hot wax mixed with pigment, that make up the image, hiding visual depth and the proof of a human hand in each stroke.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI
Amongst the most reproduced works of art in all of history, it is easy in the face of such abundance to forget the sheer revolutionary importance of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The first in series of thirty six views of Mount Fuji that Hokusai produced, and printed in an edition of roughly 100 from the original woodblock, the work gained immediate praise in his native Japan and shortly after in Europe, where it inspired the Impressionist movement. The print, as with others in the series, used the color Prussian Blue for the first time in Japanese print art, bringing a boldness to the medium that had not been seen before. Too, it combined traditional Japanese printing techniques with a European graphical perspective, synthesising the two continents disparate styles into a single work that could speak loudly across cultures. These two novel changes marked a shift in art history and a movement not to a homogenised global style but certainly towards a common language.
Katsushika Hokusai
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, 1831. WOODBLOCK PRINT.
Amongst the most reproduced works of art in all of history, it is easy in the face of such abundance to forget the sheer revolutionary importance of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The first in series of thirty six views of Mount Fuji that Hokusai produced, and printed in an edition of roughly 100 from the original woodblock, the work gained immediate praise in his native Japan and shortly after in Europe, where it inspired the Impressionist movement. The print, as with others in the series, used the color Prussian Blue for the first time in Japanese print art, bringing a boldness to the medium that had not been seen before. Too, it combined traditional Japanese printing techniques with a European graphical perspective, synthesising the two continents disparate styles into a single work that could speak loudly across cultures. These two novel changes marked a shift in art history and a movement not to a homogenised global style but certainly towards a common language.
Review
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
“I consider the text of a newspaper, the detail of photograph, the stitch in a baseball, and the filament in a light bulb as fundamental to the painting as brush stroke or enamel drip of paint.”, said Robert Rauschenberg. He is describing his ‘Combine Paintings’, of which Untitled is amongst the very earliest, that marked a major shift not just in the Abstract Expressionist that was the dominant movement of the day, but in the course of American Art. They bridged a gap between Abstract Expressionism and the soon emergent Pop Art, combining found imagery and pop culture objects with a saturation of thick, impasto paintwork and an openness to chance operations and randomness that allows for perceptual shifts in the work. As Rauschenberg developed this style of art-marking further, the images became more refined, clearer in their messages and ideologies. Yet here we see the beginnings of change, the first step towards a flattening of mediums where painting and sculpture became not separate practices but something combined.
Andres Gursky
ANDREAS GURSKY, 2015. INKET PRINT.
We rely on photography for truth. Passport photos, war reportage, evidence, and documentation have established photography as a new eye, able to capture the world in absolute objectivity and spread an honest message far and wide. Yet from it’s origins, the medium has been manipulated in darkrooms and in camera, untruths are as much a part of the photographic story as their opposite. Andreas Gursky, amongst the most commercially successful art photographers in the world, established himself taking large scale photographs, in exacting detail, of a globalising world in the 90s. Trading floors, supermarkets, rivers, and nightclubs were depicted in monumental prints, and there was a remarkably objective eye, neither celebrating nor condemning the subjects but simply showing them in all their detail and beauty. So when, in 2015, he started to show photographs devoid of tangible truth, works composed digitally in his studio to create imagined scenes and places, he was simply shifting his focus to operate in a long tradition of photographic deception. Here, four German chancellors, who between them had ruled Germany since the mid 70s, sit behind glass, staring at the work of Abstract artist Barnett Newman. The scene never happened, Gursky used 5 photographs he had taken to construct this imagined observation, but it’s lack of historical grounding does not extend, perhaps, to a lack of truthfulness in its message.
Marine
HENRY MATTSON
In Woodstock, New York, Henry Mattson could starve more slowly and more comfortably than he could in the city. This was his own admission and resignation, that life as an artist would not bring wealth or comfort but was worthwhile nonetheless, and he could live in Woodstock for pennies on the Manhattan dollar enough to pursue the only thing he ever wanted to do. Born in Sweden, he arrived in America at the turn of the century with thirteen dollars in his pocket. He picked up irregular work at machine shops, harvester companies, and landscaping firms while taking art classes in the evenings and painting as a hobby. He was encouraged by his mentor to give up painting and find a trade, advice Mattson followed for a little while until he found it impossible to continue to deny his truest desire. So to Woodstock he went, subsidising his painting with odd jobs until, through perseverance and talent, he became nationally renowned and a hero of the artists movements of upstate New York. He was, in so many ways, an archetype of the American dream, and of the northern dreamer of folk tradition who believed in beauty so much that he risked it all, and won.
Henry Mattson
HENRY MATTSON, 1933. OIL AND WATERCOLOR ON CANVAS.
In Woodstock, New York, Henry Mattson could starve more slowly and more comfortably than he could in the city. This was his own admission and resignation, that life as an artist would not bring wealth or comfort but was worthwhile nonetheless, and he could live in Woodstock for pennies on the Manhattan dollar enough to pursue the only thing he ever wanted to do. Born in Sweden, he arrived in America at the turn of the century with thirteen dollars in his pocket. He picked up irregular work at machine shops, harvester companies, and landscaping firms while taking art classes in the evenings and painting as a hobby. He was encouraged by his mentor to give up painting and find a trade, advice Mattson followed for a little while until he found it impossible to continue to deny his truest desire. So to Woodstock he went, subsidising his painting with odd jobs until, through perseverance and talent, he became nationally renowned and a hero of the artists movements of upstate New York. He was, in so many ways, an archetype of the American dream, and of the northern dreamer of folk tradition who believed in beauty so much that he risked it all, and won.
The Shaman
JOSEPH BEUYS
An elusive guru of modern art with mysterious and dark origins - the life of Beuys was an extension of his performance art. As teenage volunteer for the Nazi air force known as the Luftwaffe, he began to consider life as an artist. Later on, Beuys would often tell the story of his body being salvaged from the wreckage of his crashed plane by the indigenous people of Crimea and nursed back to health wrapped in fat and animal skins. The plane crash happened but no other part of the story was true - instead it was a way to bridge a gap between his fascist, violent beginnings and the deeply humanist, emotional, shamanistic artist he became. He crated a charismatic, messianic persona that was deeply spiritual, and proclaimed far and wide the healing power of art in a world that was wounded. “Our vision of the world", he said, “must be extended to encompass all the invisible energies with which we have lost contact.” This work, ‘The Shaman’, is a self portrait - an animalistic form appears in the centre and above it, the disembodied hat-wearing head of Beuys, all rendered in a thick, almost blood-like red. It is the portrait of a spiritual man, not unfamiliar with the darkness of violence.
Joseph Beuys
JOSEPH BEUYS, 1984. SILKSCREEN ON CARDSTOCK.
An elusive guru of modern art with mysterious and dark origins - the life of Beuys was an extension of his performance art. As teenage volunteer for the Nazi air force known as the Luftwaffe, he began to consider life as an artist. Later on, Beuys would often tell the story of his body being salvaged from the wreckage of his crashed plane by the indigenous people of Crimea and nursed back to health wrapped in fat and animal skins. The plane crash happened but no other part of the story was true - instead it was a way to bridge a gap between his fascist, violent beginnings and the deeply humanist, emotional, shamanistic artist he became. He crated a charismatic, messianic persona that was deeply spiritual, and proclaimed far and wide the healing power of art in a world that was wounded. “Our vision of the world", he said, “must be extended to encompass all the invisible energies with which we have lost contact.” This work, ‘The Shaman’, is a self portrait - an animalistic form appears in the centre and above it, the disembodied hat-wearing head of Beuys, all rendered in a thick, almost blood-like red. It is the portrait of a spiritual man, not unfamiliar with the darkness of violence.
Painting, New York, January 1936
CHARLES BIEDERMAN
Ideologically absolute and socially difficult, Charles Biederman rose through the ranks of American artistic society quickly. He gained recognition for technical skill and conceptual ideation but with it, a reputation for being difficult to work with. He dropped out of school, fell out with curators and gallerists, abandoned artists and influences in a strong-headed search for artistic truth. In 1936, he was being touted as one of the key players of American Modern Art but by 1937 he had all but abandoned the style that had brought his acclaim. The painting here, full of loose, naturalistic forms and anthropomorphised shaped would later be rejected by Biederman and replaced with strict geometry. There was, he thought, an incompatibility with the modern world of mathematical rigour and the depiction of biological shapes, a so called ‘conflict of forms’ of which he fell on the geometric side. Not long after, Biederman would reject painting altogether, instead working in three dimensional reliefs and mixed media collages to communicate his ideas of the modern world. Biederman was restless and cocksure, paying little attention to social convention or norms in pursuit of greatness. He found it.
Charles Biederman
CHARLES BIEDERMAN, 1936. OIL ON LINEN.
Ideologically absolute and socially difficult, Charles Biederman rose through the ranks of American artistic society quickly. He gained recognition for technical skill and conceptual ideation but with it, a reputation for being difficult to work with. He dropped out of school, fell out with curators and gallerists, abandoned artists and influences in a strong-headed search for artistic truth. In 1936, he was being touted as one of the key players of American Modern Art but by 1937 he had all but abandoned the style that had brought his acclaim. The painting here, full of loose, naturalistic forms and anthropomorphised shaped would later be rejected by Biederman and replaced with strict geometry. There was, he thought, an incompatibility with the modern world of mathematical rigour and the depiction of biological shapes, a so called ‘conflict of forms’ of which he fell on the geometric side. Not long after, Biederman would reject painting altogether, instead working in three dimensional reliefs and mixed media collages to communicate his ideas of the modern world. Biederman was restless and cocksure, paying little attention to social convention or norms in pursuit of greatness. He found it.
Winter
ANDRIAEN VAN DE VENNE
Commercially viable but laden with political and religious allegories, the work of van de Vedde achieved him enormous success and fame in his lifetime, becoming a popular illustrator of the current day. This work, one of a series depicting the changing seasons, is exemplary of his style, full as it is with wry wit, shrewd observations and a genuine, aesthetic beauty. Revellers skate across a frozen lake at the height of winter, wearing ornamental garb that shows their wealth. To their left, an old, peasant women and her two young children stand with a look of worry across their faces, on the precipice of the land and water. It is a painting of two halves, a sign of the differences in culture explained through the mediums of the earth. On the bank, there is poverty and crudeness; a man defecates by a tree while a dog does the same infant of him, a figure looks perversely at the revealed bottom of a fallen woman and the trees are bear and sad. The colours are muted browns and greys that speak to a sadness of the winter period. Yet, on the right hand sign, a winter sun shines and wealth abounds in fanciful dress, playful movement and bright colours. Van de Vedde creates a work of truthful duality, a portrait of a nation in winter time, divided by inhabiting the same space.
Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne
ADRIAEN PIETERSZ VAN DE VENNE, 1625. OIL ON PANEL.
Commercially viable but laden with political and religious allegories, the work of van de Venne achieved him enormous success and fame in his lifetime, becoming a popular illustrator of the current day. This work, one of a series depicting the changing seasons, is exemplary of his style, full as it is with wry wit, shrewd observations and a genuine, aesthetic beauty. Revellers skate across a frozen lake at the height of winter, wearing ornamental garb that shows their wealth. To their left, an old, peasant women and her two young children stand with a look of worry across their faces, on the precipice of the land and water. It is a painting of two halves, a sign of the differences in culture explained through the mediums of the earth. On the bank, there is poverty and crudeness; a man defecates by a tree while a dog does the same infant of him, a figure looks perversely at the revealed bottom of a fallen woman and the trees are bear and sad. The colours are muted browns and greys that speak to a sadness of the winter period. Yet, on the right hand sign, a winter sun shines and wealth abounds in fanciful dress, playful movement and bright colours. Van de Venne creates a work of truthful duality, a portrait of a nation in winter time, divided by inhabiting the same space.