Detecting More Art

Continuing a casual habit of inspecting the art work used as set decoration in films and television, I've grabbed a couple of interesting screen shots from Downton Abbey's alleged Piero della Francesca painting (or study for a larger piece, as the plot develops).

Not only are the season one and season five images themselves different, but so are the frames. I'm not the first one to notice this, as a quick Internet search confirms. A historian also disputes the authenticity of the piece and the fiction of the Crawley family owning it in the first place.

Truthfully, I'm pretty forgiving of these inconsistencies, especially when I love the fiction bringing art to us masses. Maybe that's why I related to Cora more than any other character at the Abbey.

The explanation, I think, is that prop masters may not anticipate what their show will require in future seasons, and how many seasons those shows will run. In Downton Abbey, the first della Francesca might have been lost between seasons one and five, requiring a reconstruction, frame and all. The latter set piece makes appearances in two episodes (two and four), and was a major plot point in that season.

Following my mother into her addiction to the Brit series As Time Goes By, I also get a kick out of noticing things like the brass bed that switches between two different designs as the series goes on through 10 seasons. And the front door that changes door handles on the inside and colors on the outside. It pleases me that my observational powers have not completely abandoned me.

Love, hosaa
frittering life away in details

Shadow's Revelation

 

The sunrise cast the same framing shadows this morning that it did two years ago, in the picture above. It suddenly struck me why I never noticed this phenomenon before, in a space I've now occupied for 40 years.

I retired. I no longer vacate this morning gallery in order to hurry to work.

Why should shadow

reveal my frame of mind?

Is it the art of my heart

or the artifact of evaporating shine,

a vision long neglected

in the haste of a

busier time?

 

The fleeting, floating frame

reminds me of a time

when dreams came easily.

There once was a

wonderfulness there,

slight, divine. 

love, hosaa
shadow watching

Later That Morning

The only movement
crossing the horizon
is a bird that's not a crane
and a crane that's not a bird.

"Little Sky" by Molly J. Meyers, 2022

Love, hosaa
window watching

Post updated March 27, 2023, to include images

Reading 2021: A Lotta Books and a Little Sky

 Unlike other end-of-year book lists, this isn’t a list of favorites published during the previous year. This is just me going through what’s been on my bookshelves for a long time (recommended unit of measure: decades). 

An exception to that general principle is Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, Klara and the Sun, read within two days of receipt and highly, highly recommended.

As I did last year, I mixed classic and not-so-classic fiction, nonfiction, plays, poetry, humor, short, long, and interstitial magazine articles (New Yorker, mostly; Smithsonian continues to neglect art and art history). Once again, my goal was to finish everything I started, even if I didn’t like it much. There’s something to be said for reading what someone took the trouble to write. Karma, or something. 

My 2021 reading list, in somewhat chronological and/or thematic order:

• The Iliad, Homer. Mythology. A Victorian-era prose translation.
• The Odyssey, Homer. Mythology. Same, but read a few months later. Some critics have called Iliad a man’s story (wars and such) and Odyssey a woman’s story (romance, and a virtuous hero who reminded me quite a bit of Russell Crowe in Gladiator).
• Bulfinch’s Mythology, excerpts on the Trojan War and the Fall of Troy—to help figure out what happened in Iliad and Odyssey.
• Joy in the Morning, P. G. Wodehouse. (Re-read.) Fiction, humor. Jeeves.
• John Glenn: A Memoir. One of my virtuous heroes. I love how he loved his wife, Annie.
• Where No Man Can Touch, Pat Valdata. Poetry; women in aviation history. Timely reminder that women had the right stuff, too.

• Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts. History, women. Referring to women by their first names rather than last makes the stories more intimate, but harder to keep track of who’s who. 
• 3 Plays by Thornton Wilder, to wit, Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. (Re-read.) We’re getting Our Town this season at Shakespeare Theatre Co., but somebody really needs to stage Skin again. 
• A Pale View of the Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro. (Re-read.) Fiction. Prepping myself for the anticipated new book. And you can never have enough Ishiguro.
• Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro. Fiction. Technically science fiction (artificial intelligence, human enhancement), but if you only read it that way, you miss the point and pain and pleasure of Ishiguro’s storytelling.
• The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton. Philosophy, sociology. What’s it like to be an office worker (accountant) or somebody who checks on power lines or sells aircraft parts? These activities to earn money to live life seem rather pointless to de Botton, who comes off kind of judgey in this.
• Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll. Children’s fiction. Another one of those books I never got around to reading before. Can’t remember it now. (Pass judgment on my powers of retention, not on Lewis Carroll.)
• American Discoveries, Ellen Dudley and Eric Seaborg. Nonfiction—outdoors, memoir. Shortly after my former co-workers left The Futurist they took on the project of connecting the various hiking/biking trails from California to Delaware. They also got engaged! 

• Ninth Street Women, Mary Gabriel. Art history, biography, women. Five influential modern artists in mid-century New York: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hardigan, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell. I look for them now in every museum. Again, I notice, women biographers refer to their subjects by first name. Only five main ladies to keep track of, but I still had to look back at the chapter title to remember who I was reading about. (I have almost no retention anymore.)
• Raven Girl, Audrey Niffenegger. Fantasy. Art and storytelling, evidence that fairy tales are not passé.
• The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. Poetry, biography. More about Jackie later on the reading list.
• Persuasion, Jane Austen. (Re-read.) Fiction. Maybe my favorite Austen heroine, the overlooked and undervalued Anne Elliot.
• Lincoln and Shakespeare, Michael Anderegg. History, biography. Really overly academic treatment of Lincoln’s fondness for the theater and for Shakespeare in particular. Good tidbits on American theater, but sourcing and citing is numbing to a casual (non-academic) reader.
• Seventeen, Booth Tarkington. Fiction. Oy. This sample of early 20th century Midwestern humor doesn’t really age well. Or do we accept minstrels and suburban prejudice as “of the era”? I did like his Penrod, though.
• My Brother, Grant Wood, Nan Wood Graham et al. Art history, memoir. Nan loved her brother deeply, recounting his life endearingly though perhaps not fully. Some things just aren’t anyone else’s business, and I appreciate the more-relevant focus on Wood’s art and influence.
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. (Re-read.) Fiction. My notes record that I was bawling my eyes out at the end. I do love my virtuous heroes, even if it takes them the whole story to get there.
• Moon Shot, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (et al.). Memoir, history, space program. A bit of de-mythologizing after The Right Stuff. And a slightly different take from John Glenn’s on that famous confrontation among the rival Mercury 7 astronauts. Bear in mind that all memoirs are exercises in self-justification, to some extent. Probably.
• Cymbeline, Shakespeare. Play. Nice reunion of lost sister and brothers. Shakespeare makes you cry whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy.
• Myths of the Greeks and Romans, Michael Grant. Mythology, literary history. Overview of origins of myths and how different cultures adopted and adapted similar stories. It’s academic but not daunting. [Note, this is the point when I picked up Odyssey.]
• Woe Is I, Patricia T. O’Connor. Grammar. Not to be used as a reference: It’s not set up like a Strunk and White or AP Stylebook, and anyway O’Connor’s preferences are out of date. I broke my rule of not writing in the margins, but this book needed amendments.

• Is Sex Necessary? James Thurber and E. B. White. Humor, satire. A fake academic treatment on the subject. With Thurber’s cartoons.
• All the Time in the World, E. L. Doctorow. Short stories. Chilling stories told in Doctorow’s straight-forward, seemingly acritical, in-the-moment style. Most pertinent to today, I thought, were “Walter John Harmon,” about a cult leader, and “Jolene: A Life,” a young woman drifting through life into sexual servility.
• The USS Emmons: Eyewitness Accounts from Survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, transcribed by Cheri Pierson Yecke. Better than a Spielberg movie. 
• The Book of Will, Lauren Gunderson. Play. How Shakespeare’s colleagues collected and recollected what they could of Shakespeare’s scattered works to compile the First Folio. Which almost left out Pericles (a favorite of one of Gunderson’s characters).
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Shakespeare. Play. Of course. I loved how his daughter, Marina, dealt with pirates and procurers. The power of innocence is that it can bring out the best in people. Even fiends.
• And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini. Fiction. Brother and sister (and many others) in Afghan in tumultuous times. I don’t know why this stayed on my shelf so long, unless because I read a bad review. My favorite Hosseini book yet.
• Inventing Leonardo, A. Richard Turner. Art history. My late college professor’s comparative study of Leonardo studies through history. Academic. Led me to:
• Leonardo the Florentine, Rachel Annand Taylor. Art history, biography. Taylor was a poet and obviously a classical scholar. It took forever to read this, with having to Google-search every other reference. But in the end I feel I know Leonardo and what motivated him: Beauty. It also seems clear Leonardo was almost universally loved and admired for his charm and grace. I kept picturing him played by Colin Firth. Hope that’s okay.
• My World and Welcome To It, James Thurber. (Re-read.) Short stories, humor. It’s odd how racist the humor could be at times, mostly lampooning a character’s maid’s dialect. Still, Thurber was the author of some of my favorite themes, such as not mistaking a container for the thing contained. And “you can look it up.”
• “Symposium,” Plato, in The Portable Plato, edited by Scott Buchanan. Philosophy. Dialogues on Love. Actually pretty funny. Socrates could be a hoot, apparently.
• Mrs. Kennedy and Me, Clint Hill. Memoir. Jackie Kennedy’s bodyguard tells a riveting tale. Hill’s admiration borders on infatuation but doesn’t go over the line. His sense of guilt in not saving President Kennedy (he was guarding Mrs. Kennedy, not the president) is heartbreaking. The bit about keeping her away from Onassis was somehow funnier than it should have been.
• The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family. Photography. Richard Avedon’s portraits of the Kennedy family between election and inauguration. Interesting look at how editors chose which images to publish from the contact sheets, and how Avedon teased the images into art.
• Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand. Play. Courtly love, misguided romance. Or something. Cyrano wields words and swords. 
• The Man Who Invented Christmas, Les Standiford, plus A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens. Literary history. I’m not sure I’ve seen a definitive version of the Carol, or none that pleased me as much as the non-definitive musical versions, but it’s nice to learn the effects of a walk in Manchester on a creative mind.
• A Christmas Story, Jean Shepherd. Short stories. Repackaged stories that formed the basis of one of the all-time great Christmas movies. Midwestern mid-century humor at its best.
• Woman in the Dark, Dashiell Hammett. Crime fiction. Because what’s December without a little noir.

Finally, there was a little unpublished volume I put together myself via Snapfish, by way of Christmas/Hanukkah presents for friends and family. Limited edition (10 copies printed only), called Little Sky.

Little Sky layouts. Copyright 2021 C. G. Wagner

Love, hosaa
writing a little, reading a lot

Detecting Art

With enough time on my hands (and apparently I have) I could easily spend two days "researching" the art work used as set decoration in classic TV shows and movies.

My first detection came years ago while watching Bewitched and noting the reproduction of Picasso's "The Old Guitarist" in Samantha and Darrin Stephens' living room.

It wasn't until I actually visited the original at the Art Institute of Chicago that I realized the set decorators of the classic sit-com hung the image on its side. A few others here on the internet have noted the error. Reportedly the picture was hung this way because it was too tall for the set, which begs the question, Why didn't they just find a horizontal masterpiece? Bewitched apparently abandoned Picasso after the second season.

Another mystery (or series of mysteries) obsessed me over the last couple of days after watching Elaine May's classic 1971 dark comedy A New Leaf. Though I've been a fan of the movie since it first came out, eagerly snapping up the VHS tape (with the wrong soundtrack) and then the DVD (original soundtrack restored), I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the art work in the set decoration of hero Henry Graham's apartment. The paintings are clearly "modern" (with a sprinkling of "primitive" sculptures) and intend to showcase the character's wealth.

A recent course on modern art at the Smithsonian set my curiosity for mid-Century American abstract expressionists (and others of that era), so I made it my unassigned mission to find out who these artists were. But I only found one I could definitively source.

The piece featured most prominently in Henry's (Walter Matthau) posh apartment is Multifarious (1959) by Morris Louis.

I am sorry to say I could not source any of the other artists, though the styles are very recognizably those of well known artists from the era. Mark Rothko? Barnett Newman? Robert Motherwell? Adolph Gottlieb?

In the film's credits, several galleries are given credit for providing the art (Marlborough-Gerson Inc., Edward R. Lubin Inc., Andre Emmerich, and French and Company). It's possible these particular pieces remain somewhere in private collections, never auctioned or sold to museums, and thus no records or images of them exist on the internet.

The image of Multifarious, identified above, is copyrighted by the Maryland Institute College of Art, but MorrisLouis.org states that the provenance of the painting is the estate of the artist and its whereabouts is unknown.

There is some evidence at least one piece in Henry Graham's collection is a work of fiction. The sculpture at risk of being destroyed by a young wedding guest is identified as a "Montrazini"--an artist who appears nowhere on the Web except in references to this film!

"She's unscrewing my Montrazini!"

At any rate, I've flunked the art identification exam. But I've enjoyed the investigation!

Love, hosaa
Returning over A New Leaf

Audience for an Audience for the Sun

A fun thing to do in downtown Washington, D.C., on your lunch break is go visit a museum. The Smithsonian, National Gallery of Art, and a lot of others are available, mostly free, and if you're in the neighborhood, even a quick visit is rewarding.

By quick, I mean, spend at least a few minutes really looking at something and thinking about it. This week I chose the Smithsonian American Art Museum, or SAAM, randomly got on the elevator around from the G St. entrance, went to the second floor, and was immediately floored by this:

People in the Sun (1960), Edward Hopper. SAAM. Photo: C.G. Wagner

The "really looking" prompt comes from the inspirational and insightful Amy Herman, author of The Art of Perception and Visual Intelligence. She spoke at a convention I worked at last year, and the latter book was one of my Metro Book Club selections.

Amy Herman book signing, ISRI2017. Photo: C.G. Wagner

So what did I see when looking at people looking at the Sun? Amy suggests starting with the basics: how many people, how many men, how many women, children? What are they wearing? What are they doing? She would advise not ascribing emotional undercurrents to the subjects but describe behaviors and any visual cues. What looks out of place? What is missing?

With this in mind, I see five people: two men and two women in front, and another man by himself in back. The people in the front row are looking ahead, and they're more formally dressed than the man in back, who is reading something. (Note to reader: I just edited "looking" in the previous sentence; I originally used "staring," which has emotional or non-emotional undertones.)

Beside the man alone in back, there is a chair that has a green blanket or other object in it. The people are together in the left side of the composition while the right side shows the environment they're looking at. It is a landscape with a low row of evenly sized hills or mountains, with a field of golden brown grass in front. The people are seated in rows, as in an outdoor auditorium or waiting room.

The portion of the composition with the most "activity" (human beings being alive on the Earth) is crowded and visually alive, and yet the actual subjects are not engaged either with each other or with their environment. One man has a pillow behind his head and is slumped more than the others. The blonde whose face cannot be seen appears to be turning slightly toward the man next to her, and her arm poised on the armrest, perhaps to move forward in the next moment.

Amy wants us to ask questions. What don't we know?

1. Are the people waiting for something, or are they already there, watching?
2. What are they waiting for, or watching?
3. What is the younger (I think) man in back reading?
4. Is what he's reading connected to what the others are watching/waiting for?
5. Is he related to any of the others?

The storyteller in me wants to say that young man a rogue nephew along for a free trip but unwilling to enjoy himself. Either that or he is the only one truly engaged in the moment, reading the brochure as I read the captions beside the paintings in the museum.

---

Since everything is related to everything, I'll mention that I just finished my latest Metro Book Club selection, 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. (It's actually his novelization of the screenplay for the film, which I've never been able to sit through in its entirety.) In it, Clarke's description of the sunset as seen from within the rings of Saturn is breathtaking (surely it would get a rise out of Hopper's passive audience):

As Discovery curved still closer to Saturn, the Sun slowly descended toward the multiple arches of the rings. Now they had become a slim, silver bridge spanning the entire sky; though they were too tenuous to do more than dim the sunlight, their myriad of crystals refracted and scattered it in dazzling pyrotechnics. And as the Sun moved behind the thousand-mile-wide drifts of orbiting ice, pale ghosts of itself marched and merged across the sky, and the heavens were filled with shifting flares and flashes. Then the Sun sank below the rings, so that they framed it with their arches, and the celestial fireworks ceased.

While I applaud from the audience gallery, gazing into the yellowing pages of a 95-cent paperback (printed about 8 years after Hopper painted his Sun-gazers), I can only wish Sir Arthur had been alive to inspire the voyager NASA is sending to the Sun tomorrow. Godspeed, Parker Solar Probe.

Love, hosaa
inspired by the Sun-inspired

Adjacent Universes

A couple of weeks ago, on a mission to hit over 10,000 steps on a normally inert Sunday, I went downtown to explore one of my favorite museums, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). It's one museum past the arguably more popular National Air and Space Museum as you head in the direction of the U.S. Capitol.

I also got to try out the camera on my new phone. Not bad, once imported into editing software.

Anyway, in addition to the dancing in the Potomac Atrium, which is always colorful and fun, my favorite space in NMAI is the Universe gallery, a place to explore the relationship between humanity and our environment in a mystical and emotional way. As you wander under the starlit ceiling, you're invited to stop at video monitors, sit on a quiet bench built for maybe three or four folks, and watch a little animated story about how the elements of the universe came to be. There are jealous sisters who choose between two stars to be their husbands, and there is a raven who stole the sun away from the greedy chief who kept it for himself.

Connection to the stars and the earth must be somewhere in our DNA. We anthropomorphize as we gaze at stars and see hunters, bears, ships, all elements of our human stories. This connection is comforting even in its lack of scientific reason.

I didn't give myself a lot of time on that hot Sunday afternoon, but I had enough energy to go next door to see what Air and Space had to say about the universe, as the gallery is conveniently located on the first floor.

As you enter the gallery, chaotic with crowds gathering around various universe-exploring instruments and tributes to the inventors who invented them, you are encouraged to take out your smartphone and download an app to listen to the audio tour (I didn't; I'm new to smartphoning and don't trust apps - but that's another blog). As an alternative, you could bend down and read very long text captions accompanying the exhibits. No place to sit, and too many people trying to engage at the same time.

I thought as long as I was there I'd look for the astronomer I've lately been obsessed with, thanks to Timeless, the TV series that recently besmirched the good name of David Rittenhouse, but unfortunately he was absent from the exhibit. I visit his portrait whenever I go to the Smithsonian's Portrait Gallery.

David Rittenhouse, by Charles Willson Peale

Anyway, I was just struck by how different these experiences were, not just of our conception of the universe but also of our communication of it. Both human-centered, but in different ways. A&S celebrates our intellectual accomplishments in reaching for the stars while distancing us from the experience. Meanwhile, NMAI celebrates our connection to nature and the spirituality of that connection.

Maybe we all are inspired differently We all see something different when we look up. But the point is, as Neil deGrasse Tyson advised, Look up.

NASA

love, hosaa

looking up, where there be inspiration

"Where Is Love" and "The Touch of Art"

Time to catch up again.

The last two performances I saw at Round House Theatre had nothing to do with each other; one was produced by Adventure Theatre MTC, the children's theater training camp at Maryland's Glen Echo park, and the other was RHT's entry in the regionwide Women's Voices Theater Festival. And though they had nothing to do with each other, Oliver! and Ironbound had more in common than the latter did with another WVTF entry at Ford's Theatre, The Guard.

[I interrupt this brief recap to report another RHT-hosted production I saw a few days before Oliver!, evidence of which is a xeroxed list of the 11 "clumps" of one-minute plays in the obviously named One-Minute Play Festival. The audience seemed to be composed mainly of authors of the 50 or 60 "plays," who laughed and cheered noisily in support of each other's art. I can recall almost none of this now, not even the date of the production, which failed to make it onto the one-page info sheet.]

Adventure Theatre's Oliver! happened to be my first exposure to the stage version of one of my all-time favorite movie musicals. My 12 1/2 year-old within is still in love with Jack Wild's Academy Award-nominated performance as the Artful Dodger, so my biases on movie versus stage were pre-formed. I loved the dancing in the AT show, and I thought the little actor playing Oliver (Franco Cabanas, per my program) had a gorgeous voice. The failure to cast a like-sized Dodger, as in the movie with Wild and Mark Lester, proved a big disappointment to me, and their voices never blended in that chummy way they should.

The next RHT production, season-opening Ironbound, was a world premiere play by Martyna Majok, focusing on the struggle of a single immigrant mom, statically positioned at a bleak New Jersey bus stop, poised between failed romances.

As far as women's voices go, this was one I couldn't really relate to, and it was yet another one of those stories about people I simply don't want to spend time with. Yet, upon further review, I found the story had a lot in common with Oliver!. Like the orphan begging to be fed more of even the worst gruel, ironbound Darja (Alexandra Henrikson) hungers. That ill-defined hunger exposes her to a cruel lover or two, a cruel life, and a cruel yearning, "Please, sir, I want some more."

I think what Darja wants is to matter. Her "where is love" plea is a demand for respect. Things seem to turn around for her when she meets her own "Artful Dodger" in the form of a random kid (William Vaughan as Vic), who finds her at the bus stop one night, badly beaten up, and reaches out to help her.

Ironbound's William Vaughan and Alexandra Henrikson. Photo by Cheyenne Michaels, RHT/Facebook

Moving along on the Women's Voices series, The Guard actually had less to do with "women's voices" and turned out to be the kind of play I wish I could write: witty, touching, philosophical, a portrayal of what art means to us (me). It was a bit smutty, though, so I'm happy to leave it to more sophisticated talents.

Playwright Jessica Dickey's story starts and ends with a museum guard (Mitchell Hébert) goaded into touching Rembrandt's painting, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer.

The Guard's Mitchell Hébert, Katherine Tkel and Josh Sticklin. Photo by Scott Suchman, Ford's Theatre/Facebook

This "touch" takes us back in time to Rembrandt's (Hébert again) daily life, and then further back to Homer (Craig Wallace) complaining about people wanting to write down his poems. They're meant to be heard, he says, so people can zone out if they want (says Homer/Wallace, glaring at the audience). Back to the guard's present, he has been fired for touching the art. He then devotes himself not to art, but to life, caring for his partner (Wallace again), a dying poet, tenderly touching his head as Rembrandt's "Aristotle" touched the bust of Homer.

love, hosaa
touched by art

Art versus Art Book: A Day with the Phillips Collection

A little bit of art therapy never hurt anyone, so off I went the other day to The Phillips Collection off Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., where the big show on now is Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities. It was here and in the room downstairs containing D.C. and Baltimore area twentieth-century artists that I was reminded again why you need to visit art in person and not just buy the exhibition books. Nice souvenirs, but not the same, really.

Yearning to get in? Bernardi Roig's light sculpture Acteón (2005), detail. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Roig's The Man of the Light (2005) illuminates the trek upstairs in the Phillips's grand stairwell. Photo via The Phillips Collection.

During my visit, I tried to spend a little more time looking at the art, noticing and noting. For example, there was a bit of damage at the bottom of Orange and Red on Red (1957), one of the four large canvases in the Rothko Room, which I never noticed before.

In the D.C.-Baltimore room, I loved the collection of like-themed circles and colors with Thomas Downing's Grid 31 (1970) and Blue Spell (1964) with Gene Davis's Untitled (1971) tall vertical rainbow board and the LED installation of concentric colored squares by Leo Villareal, Scramble (2011), which I'd advise you not to stare at. It'll burn your retinas out. 

It was Blue Spell that kept me a bit more spellbound, a piece that would seem somewhat monochromatic if examined from afar (or from a book), but upon closer inspection reveals the surface texture of the canvas and the subtle shadings of the acrylic paint. When you can see this evidence of the process, you are in the same room with the artist.

Blue Spell, 1964, by Thomas Downing (1928-1985). Photo by giveawayboy, Flickr, Creative Commons

But in that room there was one "Which thing here is not like the others" piece in Morris Louis's Seal (1959), a blue-black-ivory swash of formless abstraction departing from the neat geometries of Downing, Davis, and Villareal.

Upstairs was a tribute to art collector Anita Reiner, to whom Duncan Phillips once said, "Young lady, you always have to meet new art half way." She apparently didn't think much of the Rothkos. 

I especially loved two pieces glancing across the room from each other with complementary compositions of groups of people: Shilpa Gupta's untitled archival print showing schoolboys lined up along a shore, each imposing a "see," "hear," or "speak no evil" gesture on the boy in front of him; and Shirin Neshat's Soliloquy Series (Veiled Women in Three Arches) (1999), another group but not posed, expressing a more natural, quiet but disquieting feeling. With the boys, I felt the story was imposed on them. I would like to know more about both groups, but I was disappointed not to get more caption information, which was hard to find (the captions were grouped on one panel and positioned in the archway entrance to the gallery) and hard to read once you could find them (eye-test small print).

Finally, upstairs were the Neo-Impressionists, those pointillists (and others) who break moments down to study their creation by light and shadow. Here is where you really need to be in the same room with the art works to appreciate them. As I said, I'm usually all about the souvenir exhibition book so I can keep my art experiences alive. But the sample book left in one of the galleries here was a real eye-opener. 

I stopped in front of the mesmerizing Jan Toorop landscape, Broek in Waterland (1889), with its pattern of light and dark, aqua and amber, a twilight sky casting the figures in the foreground into quiet silhouettes. But the plate for this painting in the exhibition catalog didn't come close to matching the live canvas. The book flattened, muddied, and muddled the colors into almost a sepia tone. I held the book up to the light, right below the canvas; another couple in the gallery saw and had the same complaint--no match. In fact, even this image from the Web doesn't adequately capture the canvas in the room, although the figures are sightly more distinct.

Broek in Waterland (1889), Jan Toorop (Dutch, 1858-1928). Image via Wikiart.org

All this is a gentle note to self, Self: Go visit art. You know Paul Klee always makes you smile.

Young Moe (1938) by Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879-1940). Image via The Phillips Collection.

Love, hosaa

Meeting art (old and new) half way.

Reflections: Art Day Out and Old Friends

Always take the opportunity, when you can, to let art expose itself to you. Downtown for an "informational interview" yesterday, afterwards I found myself once again in the neighborhood of the divine National Museum of Women in the Arts, where I got to visit a few of my old friends - Alice Neel, Frida Kahlo, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, et al.

I also took more time with some other, iconic pieces in the New York Avenue mansion, including Ellen Day Hale and Lilla Cabot Perry occupying this cozy niche:

Another is Alice Bailly, whose selfie features a peculiar reflection across the lens of her monocle:

Alice Bailly (Swiss, 1872-1938). Self-Portrait, 1917. 

According to the caption, this side of her face is apparently painted out, "reflecting what may be a dissociation of the artist from her own image--in short, an identity crisis." More likely, IMO, it reflects a real reflection, the movement of light across her face at that moment in time. That is, after all, what cubism and the futurist movement were about, incorporating the third and fourth dimensions on flat 2-D surfaces.

But the greatest pleasure is in welcoming some newer (new to me) sisters now exhibiting in the third floor permanent collection, including these sadly sweet kiddies by Amy Sherald:

Amy Sherald (b. 1973, Columbus, Georgia). They Call Me Redbone But I'd Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake, 2009

Amy Sherald (b. 1973, Columbus, Georgia). It Made Sense...Mostly in Her Mind, 2011. 

The captions were helpful to me here; the flattened style was the result of treating the skin tones in "grayscale" (there is some tint, you can see, even in these very poor reproductions. Sorry). The children are dressed playfully, but their somber and expressionless demeanor illustrates a deep-seated sadness. Still, the bright, primary colors in which they "play" give me a sense of innocent hope for them.

The other piece that captivated me at the museum was this (again, playful) Edwina Sandys bronze in its own stairwell niche:

Edwina Sandys (b. 1938, London, England). Flirtation, 1994.

Edwina Sandys (b. 1938, London, England). Flirtation, 1994.

Edwina Sandys (b. 1938, London, England). Flirtation, 1994.

I don't suppose the fact that I'd just had pears and bananas for breakfast had anything to do with why this piece caught my eye! Face it, who doesn't like flirty, birdlike fruit.

The second floor was closed off for between-exhibitions reconfiguring, so my visit was a little shorter than I would have liked. (And when, oh when, will the Mezzanine Cafe ever serve food? Nary a morsel in any of my visits.)

So over the blocks I go toward the Smithsonian American Art Museum to see what's what, and what was what now was the fabulous Richard Estes exhibit. Speaking of old friends! Estes was among the "superrealists" I covered in my senior year seminar on modern art. That was decades ago, and the man is still working his magic!

Okay, I don't want to go to Copyright Jail, so go here to see an example of what Alice Bailly started with that reflection in her monocle:

https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/estes

Bus With Reflection of Flatiron Building (1966-67)

Checkout (2012)

What we see are multiple images, reflected, contorted by other, overlapping realities. In many of the images, people are seen from different angles. The effect of the pictures, though serene in tone, is a taut reminder that we not only see, but are seen by others, whose eyes may see us in twists and turns, fractured and filtered through many surfaces.

Love, hosaa

reflecting on art

P.S. - I still love the old Greyhound Bus Station on New York Avenue. The birds loved it, too:

All photos posted here are by C. G. Wagner. If you use them, credit them, and link back here. Thanks.

Flying Art in Bethesda

Back from the Bethesda Row Arts Festival yesterday, going in for day two today. I knew as soon as I saw the flying elephant from last year--and in the same spot along Woodmont Ave.--that I'd be seeing some familiar work this weekend.

Though I was keeping my eye out for new stuff among the wood and fabric and metal and glass works and the photos and paintings, I really did want to check in first to see if Brad Pogatetz was back. And there he was, in the same spot as last year, and with as many folks flocking into his tiny booth as before. (See my previous report, "Art of Devastation.")

Bethesda Row (Maryland) Arts Festival, Oct. 18, 2014 - Brad Pogatetz's booth. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Brad Potatetz (left) takes a break at the Bethesda Row Arts Festival, Oct. 18, 2014. Photo by C. G. Wagner

I got to chat with him briefly, and joked that I thought I could point out the pieces that were new since last year. One of the "devastation" images that caught my eye was the gigantic rusted industrial hook hanging from an abandoned warehouse or factory, shot from below so that the eye traces frayed ropes to the opening in the ceiling above. Brad confirmed that this was a newer image, and he used it on one of his new business cards. (I didn't spot it online, but check out his New Work under Galleries at his site.)

The subjects in Brad's photographs are abandoned human spaces--factories, stadiums, depots. Naturally, I am curious about their stories, but as an artist, Brad is attracted to patterns, colors, lights and shadows.

I asked him if he thought about putting together a book: "Yes!" he replied quickly and brightly. He said he gets asked that question a lot, and I confessed I probably asked him the same thing last year.

Sample business cards, text added.

So, what else is on display? Again, maybe I'm seeing too much of the same thing, and not much stands out anymore. I love the wearable art, the beautiful garments in varieties of fabrics. But it is too tempting to my compromised budget, so I had to pass those booths and admire from afar.

What did stand out were the flying sculptures. Right, mobiles. The Calderesque whimsies by Bud Scheffel cast interesting shadows on the booth's backdrop and soaring silhouettes against the bright blue autumn sky.

Bethesda Row Arts Festival, Oct. 18, 2014 - Bud Scheffel's booth. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Bethesda Row Arts Festival, Oct. 18, 2014 - mobiles by Bud Scheffel. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Bethesda Row Arts Festival, Oct. 18, 2014. Mobile by Bud Scheffel. Photo by C. G. Wagner

On the other side of the street, air space was claimed by another metal artist, Michael Gard, whose balletic forms danced through light and re-created space with their shadows.

Bethesda Row Arts Festival - Oct. 18, 2014. Michael Gard's booth. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Bethesda Row Arts Festival - Oct. 18, 2014. Sculptures by Michael Gard. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Bethesda Row Arts Festival - Oct. 18, 2014. Sculptures by Michael Gard. Photo by C. G. Wagner

Love, hosaa

Looking up, seeing dance

Art Out of the Closet--and Drawers

The decluttering project is unearthing some long-buried "works" by her own self. The file cabinet yielded multiple copies of early drafts of oft-rejected stories, along with their respective rejection slips.

Much of this is getting tossed. I saved a few originals (and the rejection slips, in case I become "a cult failure").

And out of the closet come the canvases from my studio work at college, all with their respective layers of grime and dust. The ones that were in the closet are now in the trash. Just because I can't really throw things away, I took a few photos.

Click on thumbnails to enlarge. (And if you're tempted to use them, please credit: C. G. Wagner.)

There was one that was in the closet that I think I'll keep. The caption (added long after the class) is what saved it:

I have six canvases from that era that are still on my walls (for now):

  Detail:

  Detail:

And these are behind my sofa, which means I never look at them. Thank goodness. They're on the chopping block:

Love,
hosaa, decluttering.