MWW Artwork of the Day (4/12/16) Paul Sample (American, 1896-1974) Sand Lot Ball Game (1938) Oil on canvas Arkell Museum, Canajoharie NY (Gift of Bartlett Arkell)
Spring is definitely here and summer beckons, the sun is shining, there’s finally some warmth in the air, and professional baseball leagues all over the globe are getting into full swing: time for all red-blooded boys and girls to dust off the mitts, grab a bat, and head to the sandlots. Baseball, like Hope, springs eternal.
Future historians may well decide that baseball was America’s greatest contribution to world culture. As the great American poet (and baseball fan) Walt Whitman observed when the game was still in its infancy: “[Baseball] — it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere —- belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”
But the most memorable oration about the Great American Game remains this:
“I don’t have to tell you that the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked time with America as it has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers. It is the same game that Moonlight Graham played in 1905. It is a living part of history, like calico dresses, stone crockery, and threshing crews eating at outdoor tables, It continually reminds us of what once was, like an Indian-head penny in a handful of new coins. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again.” – J.D Salinger in Ray Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe,” p. 213. [but hear the wonderfully deep and melodic voice of James Earl Jones as Terence Mann in the film adaptation “Field of Dreams”]
* The Museum Without Walls also has a special collection of baseball photos, with accompanying original essays on the history and characters of the game:
MWW Artwork of the Day (4/11/16) Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) John Biglin in a Single Cell I (c. 1873) Watercolor on off-white wove paper, 49.2 x 63.2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Fletcher Fund)
Eakins was yet another native of Philadelphia, the city that produced most of America’s artists in the 19th and early 20th centuries. An influential teacher as well as pioneering photographer, he is today recognized as the most important American realist painter of his era. Eakins had done the obligatory visit to Paris, studying art there for nearly four years, but, aside from a lasting appreciation for the works of the French realists Courbet, Corot, and Gêrome, his stay there left no imprint on his work, which was dedicated to portraying American subjects in a distinctly American style. For Eakins, this style was rooted in a scientific analysis of the things he saw before him, his ego taking a back seat to his empirical vision. He thus eschewed the metaphysical overtones of the Hudson River School and had nothing but contempt for paintings full of allegories or moralistic exhortations. He was the first artist to use photography for preparatory studies of a subject he would paint. That they were often nude studies eventually led to scandal and dismissal from his teaching post at the Philadelphia Academy of Art. His artistic output was evenly divided between portraits of well-known contemporaries (e.g., Walt Whitman) and scenes taken from American life, like the rowing picture above.
The Schuylkill River runs through the heart of Philadelphia. In the 1870s rowing caught on there in a big way among its middle-class citizens. Rowing clubs sprang up overnight on its banks, light racing craft swarmed the river on weekends, annual competitions were held, the winners becoming local heroes. Eakins, himself a skilled oarsmen, celebrated these new champions in a series of paintings, in much the same manner and spirit as the ancient Greeks memorialized their Olympic heroes in sculpture. The scientific precision with which the rower’s arm muscles and the ripple effect of the oars on the water are drawn are good examples of Eakins’ artistic credo in action.
More of Eakins’ paintings and watercolors appear in the MWW exhibit/gallery: * Americana IV: Democratic Vistas - Thomas Eakins & Winslow Homer
MWW Artwork of the Day (4/7/16) Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819-1904) Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds (1871) Oil on wood, 34.8 x 45.6 cm. National Gallery, Washington DC (Gift of The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation)
Heade was the only major American artist of the nineteenth century to make important contributions in landscape, marine, and still-life painting. Here he offers viewers an intimate glimpse into the exotic recesses of nature’s secret garden. Lichen covers dead branches; moss drips from trees; and, a blue-gray mist veils the distant jungle. An opulent pink orchid with light-green stems and pods dominates the left foreground. To the right, perched near a nest on a branch, are a Sappho Comet, green with a yellow throat and brilliant red tail feathers, and two green-and-pink Brazilian Amethysts.
Perhaps inspired by the writings of Charles Darwin, the artist studied these subjects in the wild during several expeditions to South America. The precisely rendered flora and fauna seem alive in their natural habitat, not mere specimens for scientific analysis. Defying strict categorization as either still life or landscape, Heade’s work reflects the artist’s unerring attention to detail and his delight in the infinitesimal joys of nature.
More of Heade’s exotic flora and fauna paintings appear in the MWW exhibit/gallery: * Americana III: Westward Ho! Natural Grandeur, Human Genocide
MWW Artwork of the Day (4/5/16) Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930) Spring (1986) Encaustic on canvas, 190.5 x 127 cm. Private Collection
In 1985–86, the ever-eclectic Johns made four 75 x 50 inch encaustic paintings – Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter – which might be read as an allegory of his life and interests, as well as referencing a longstanding artistic and literary tradition of works about the four seasons and four ages of man.
The series dates from a period when the artist was moving between residences and in one of the many turning-points in his career. So, in a sense the paintings can be seen as a collaged form of “taking stock” when one is moving, and a taking stock that occurs at a certain point in life. Each painting has a similar structure. A silhouette – presumably of the artist himself – dominates the canvas, perhaps a evocation, perhaps not, of a 1953 Picasso painting (The Shadow) in which Picasso’s shadow falls across the floor of his studio. Each features art works by the artist or in his possession, as well as other cherished possessions. And the “season” of each is economically evoked in a few strokes, as in the streaks of rain here.
Critical interpretation of the works vary widely. John Russell in his NY Times review thought that “in ‘Spring’ there are many references to the way in which a given image can secrete a secondary meaning that turns its first one inside out. There is a version of the 19th-century visual conundrum in which a drawing of a pretty young woman can also be read as a portrait of an androgynous old crone. Fullbodied goblets, read in reverse, turn out to hold human profiles captive. A schematic drawing of a decoy duck relates to a well-known passage in Wittgenstein… If 'The Seasons’ does have a central meaning. it may well be that catastrophes can be borne, however awkwardly and painfully, and that a shattered self can be put together again. The potential of regenerative feeling, like the potential of painting itself, is ever-present, if we know how to get through to it.”
Jill Johnston, in her monograph “Jasper Johns: Privileged Information,” focusses on the theme of autobiography in Johns’ work when assessing the “Four Seasons.” Key to her analysis is her identification of the motif from the Isenheim Altarpiece: “It is even more difficult to see here since Johns deliberately obscures its presence by covering it with the cross-hatching that evokes the earlier painting Between Clock and Bed as well as the Corpse and Mirror paintings and others in that patterned, cross-hatched mode. The Isenheim altarpiece, an extremely large work with several "openings” (every time you “open” an altarpiece, you reveal another set of images – most open once; this one opened three times – was created for a monastic order which treated the victims of St. Anthony’s fire. In the Renaissance, patients were supposed to look at the repulsive figure in the painting, see in him the identification which he makes with St. Anthony, and through St. Anthony, an identification with the sufferings of Christ. Ultimately, this suffering would lead to salvation if the patient had faith. In Johns’ painting, the redemption which would come through religious belief is replaced by a redemption which comes through art. Johns does something unusual with this because he places himself in the position of victim and the position of savior. At the same time, his literal presence in the painting takes the form of a shadow, an insubstantial form with no body. The Four Seasons would therefore seem to unite two themes of Johns’ work: the theme of denial of self (in earlier works, denial of objecthood and denial of meaning, as when he uses paints the letters “red” in blue paint) and the identity of self (object, word, meaning). Whereas the early paintings express these themes in linguistic or semiotic terms, the later paintings express them in a more personal and autobiographical mode, making the fundamental issue throughout Johns’ work the question of where does identity come from.“
Johns is one of the featured artists in the the MWW exhibit/gallery: * American Moderns V: Pop Goes the Art World
MWW Artwork of the Day (3/29/16) George Luks (American, 1866-1933) The Miner (1925) Oil on canvas, 153 x 128 cm. National Gallery, Washington DC (Chester Dale Gift)
Luks was the senior member of that group of “Ashcan School” artists who put the grittiness of American life back into American painting. Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1866, he attended the school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1884. He spent the following ten years in Düsseldorf, Paris, and London, and may have studied in various art academies in these cities. Upon his return to the United States, Luks worked for the art department of the Philadelphia Press in 1894 and the following year traveled to Cuba as an artist-correspondent for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. In 1896 he joined the staff of “The New York World” as an illustrator and cartoonist.
While at “The World,” Luks renewed an earlier friendship with William Glackens and Everett Shinn. Both illustrators were also committed to painting, and Glackens encouraged Luks to experiment with the medium. By 1904 Luks was accomplished enough to exhibit with his friends at the National Arts Club in New York. Four years later he joined seven other artists under the leadership of Robert Henri in forming a group that rebelled against the academic art establishment. Known as The Eight, an exhibition of their work became a progressive force in American art, revitalizing realist painting. Throughout his career, Luks sought out working class subjects for his art. He exhibited paintings and drawings of urban life and city dwellers in the Armory Show in 1913, which showcased modern art.
Luks continued to paint and exhibit and taught for several years at the Art Students League in New York. He founded his own school and painted alongside his students until his death in 1933. (adapted from the NGA catalog)
Luks is one of the featured artists in the MWW exhibit/gallery: * The Ashcan School – Urban Realism Comes to America
“On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many Great Depression relief programs created under the auspices of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which Roosevelt had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and other federal assistance programs put unemployed Americans to work in return for temporary financial assistance. Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.While FDR believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, he also expressed disdain for doling out welfare to otherwise able workers. So, in return for monetary aid, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They restored theaters–such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C.–and built the ski lodge at Oregon’s Mt. Hood. The WPA also put actors, writers and other creative arts professionals back to work by sponsoring federally funded plays, art projects, such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.Opponents of the New Deal in Congress gradually pared back WPA appropriations in the years leading up to World War II. By 1940, the economy was roaring back to life with a surge in defense-industry production and, in 1943, Congress suspended many of the programs under the ERA Act, including the WPA.“| -History.com
This week in History: May 3, 1952 First aircraft lands at North Pole May 4, 1965 Willie Mays breaks National League home run record May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard becomes first American in space May 6, 1940 John Steinbeck wins Pulitzer for The Grapes of Wrath May 7, 1994 Munch’s The Scream recovered after theft May 8, 1945 V-E Day is celebrated in America and Britain May 9, 1914 Woodrow Wilson proclaims first Mother’s Day holiday
Cogan is best-known and most prolific as a painter of America’s urban environment, focusing on lesser-depicted areas rather than landmarks. His style is realist, but with very limited brushstrokes, which seperates it considerably in technique from contemporary academic realism - though the accuracy of lighting means that from middle-distance his images have a photographic quality.
Thomas Cole was an American artist known for his landscape and history paintings. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. Cole’s work is known for its romantic portrayal of the American wilderness.
