Rembrandt's human Jesus

It's hard to imagine coming face to face with a celebrity: what would you do if Angelina Jolie suddenly showed up at your local supermarket? And when it comes to Jesus - famous, divine, historical//mystical - it's impossible. Art doesn't help. The model most people know, especially if they went to Sunday School, is a sort of candy-colored pretty Jesus who looks to be of vaguely Scandinavian heritage. Even 'good' art, and there is an enormous amount of good religious art - art history would be nowhere without Christian imagery - keeps Jesus at arm's length or further. Byzantine versions set the standard for the stern aloof Jesus, very beautiful, but definitely not someone you could sidle up to to ask for a favor. A most famous Byzantine image is Christ the Pantocrator - the Judge - one who appears disinclined to give time off for good behavior. The other extreme is Guido Reni's gentle, painfully beautiful 16th c. Jesus, who suffers great agony without any messy blood or dirt. But then comes Rembrandt. A traveling show, called Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus is now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, after a stay at the Louvre, and before it goes on to Detroit. It's a small, focused show of quiet pleasures for a Rembrandt lover like me, with a good audioguide to give background on why his versions of Jesus are so revolutionary. First of all, this Jesus is Jewish, just as the real Jesus was. Rembrandt whose house was smack in the midst of the Jewish population of Amsterdam, delighted in the fresh possibilities of this exotic group, newly arrived after persecutions elsewhere. It is said that he became close friends with several Jewish neighbors, and he certainly found models for his oh-so-human Jesus. There is a wall of small studies of heads in the exhibit, the same but different by a slight twist of the neck or a shift in the glance. As I made my way from one to the next, the humanness of Jesus made itself felt, and by the end I could believe him fully capable of sadness, compassion, maybe a little anger, and even a head cold. Rembrandt is the most unusual of religious painters for a number of reasons. Religious painting, long associated with the Roman Catholic Church, was far out of favor in fiercely Protestant, fiercely and newly independent 17th c. Holland. Icons and saints had been banished from the churches; artists painted portraits, landscapes, and earthy genre scenes. Rembrandt painted those too, but he also looked to the Bible, reading it for himself and looking around to see its lessons writ in the faces and gestures of his fellow Amsterdamers. They may wear the requisite Biblical gear, but his saints are a little dumpy, with fleshy Northern faces, and his Jesus is local, and human.

Note: Rembrandt was one of the greatest printmakers in all of history, and there are several etchings in the exhibit. This one, officially titled "Christ Preaching" but known as "The Hundred Guilder Print" because of its high price, is one of his masterpieces.

Stormy Art for Stormy Weather

A hurricane is a strange event. In my Philadelphia neighborhood, not so far from the coast, full of majestic trees in parks and old churchyards, we worried about branches falling in the heavy winds. Instead we got tons of rain with very little wind and no damage to speak of. We were lucky - not so much those in other places, especially inland areas of Vermont and New York State, where they must have thought a hurricane was not their concern. So, with those unfortunate places and people in mind, here are a few examples of Stormy Art from other times and places. Nobody ever did rain and wind like Hiroshige and Hokusai, the grand Ukiyo-e masters of late 19th century Japan. One glance at Hiroshige's Oshashi Bridge & Atake in a Sudden Shower (1856) and you feel the water pelting down your neck and soaking your clothes. Hokusai's marvelous Ejiri in Suruga Province (1830-1833) with his signature view of Mt. Fuji makes you grab for your hat. This windy image has had a rash of imitators lately, most notably Jeff Wall with his A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993) - detail here - and also Carrie Marill's A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai) 2009. And then there's Winslow Homer, the taciturn New Englander whose watercolors are the stuff of magic. He turned his attention to stormy weather more than once, with some of the greatest examples coming from his trips to Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas in 1884-1885. One of the most poignant of his narratives in paint is The Gulf Stream (1899) in which a lonely sailor sits helpless, his mast broken and his boat adrift, as the sharks gather in the waves around him. For him the storms - all storms -  are nearly over, whether the cloud in the distance is coming or going. 

And lastly, a bit of Romantic sentiment to point up the truth and strength of the others. Pierre-Auguste Cot painted The Storm in 1880 with his toolbox full of allegory and pictorial illusion. His reference is not the driving force of the wind or the very real need to take shelter, but the charm of the Greeks and their stories. The past week of earthquakes and hurricanes will also be the stuff of stories, some charming, some not. Good luck to all those who are still struggling with the aftermath of Irene.

Painting the Town with Oldenburg, Furness, and PAFA

Philadelphia, already rich in public art, has a new guy in town. Claes Oldenburg was here Saturday, installing his giant, goofy 'Paint Torch' at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Goofy, for Oldenburg, is a term of endearment. His witty, double-take inducing sculptures stop even the Philistines in their tracks - a giant flashlight amid the neon of Las Vegas, a fountain of flying orange peels in Miami, huge, helter-skelter bowling pins in the Netherlands, an ice cream cone teetering over a shopping street in Cologne, Germany. And many more. Claes Oldenburg studied in Chicago then made his name as a Pop Artist in New York in the 60's, with works like 'Soft Toilet' (1966) now in the Whitney Museum of Art, where I once read a note from him saying something about wanting people to see the objects for their forms and shapes, not for their function - that in time the function might disappear, but the object would still be beautiful. The idea is already well along, as with his wonderful 'Typewriter Eraser' (1999 - National Gallery of Art) - try explaining that one to a 15 year old. 'Paint Torch' is the 4th Oldenburg in Philadelphia - it joins 'Big Electric Plug (1970) at the Art Museum, 'Split Button' (1981) on the Penn Campus, and the iconic 'Clothespin' (1976) on Market Street by City Hall. 'Paint Torch', 51 feet high, with a blue handle and a full brush or orange paint in mid-swirl, includes a six-foot glop of a drip for the pavement. Oldenburg sat watching the installation Saturday from a bench, directing it to the exact angle he wanted, the one he thought looked most welcoming. It does have an arc, as you can see by the pictures, that appears to wave you into the plaza of the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts - and over from  the huge spanking new convention center across the street. Part of the wit of the work, as with most of Oldenburg's public art, is the context, in this case the also witty, arty, extraordinary Victorian extravaganza that houses the oldest art museum and school in the US. (founded in 1805 by painter Charles Wilson Peale and sculptor William Rush.) The building, which was dedicated in 1876, is a masterpiece by the great Frank Furness who designed more than 600 buildings, too many of which have been destroyed (and was also a Civil War hero) though there are other splendid examples in and around Philadelphia. He was a major influence on later architects of note, including Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. So a great deal of brush-swishing has gone on in that building - Oldenburg's 'Paint Torch' is a very contemporary tribute to past glories and to the future brilliance being honed in the PAFA school. One of the most famous names associated with PAFA is that of Thomas Eakins, the great American Realist painter, who began his career as an inspiring and iconoclastic teacher in the Furness building the year it opened. On a sadder note, 'Paint Torch' is Oldenburg's first work installed after the 2009 death of his beloved wife and working partner, Coosje van Bruggen, who was essential to his life and work from the 1970's on.
See a slide show of 'Paint Torch' being installed (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/08/23/arts/design/Arts-Brielfy--Oldenburg.html
The website of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen with a full list of work and installations
http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/