America the Beautiful on Display

American Art is in the news right now. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has just completed a complete overhaul of the American Wing, one of the brightest jewels in the Museum's ever-fascinating profusion of courts, corners, and dedicated spaces. The official announcement describes 'expanded, reconceived, and dramatic new galleries' - I can't wait to see it and promise a full report when I do. In the meantime, American Art is also on display in Paris at the Louvre, with the exhibit 'New Frontier: l'art americain entre au Louvre' (American Art Enters the Louvre.) As you can tell by the title, there is nothing reconceived here; this is the first time American Art has ever been shown in the Louvre. The show is a collaboration with three American Museums, and the focus is on the art of the 19th century, particularly that of Thomas Cole. Thus the apt title 'New Frontier'; Thomas Cole is considered the founder of the Hudson River School, the group of landscape painters including Frederic Church and Asher Durand, who painted the expansive (and fast disappearing) wide open 'new' world of the Americas. Phenomenal artists with a jaw-dropping legacy of enormous, magnificent canvases, their brushes often seem to have been dipped as much in Romantic longing as in paint - luminescent lighting effects in many of the works evoke an intentionally moral and spiritual aura. The Met owns several prime examples of the Hudson River School, including Cole's The Oxbow: View from Mt. Holyoke, Massachusetts after a Thunderstorm (1836) and Heart of the Andes by Church. (Parisians will have to travel to New York to see those 19th c. American icons.) The Met is not limited like the Louvre, which allows no art in the collection more recent than the 19th century, but most of what you'll see in the American Wing is of the Colonial period to the end of the 1800's,  including decorative arts as well as painting and sculpture. Among the prize works are favorite portraits by homegrown artists, most of whom made their names by starting with study in Europe - Benjamin West (born in Pennsylvania, who stayed on in London to become Painter to King George III and to train other American artists), John Singleton Copley, Thomas Sully, Charles Wilson Peale, and others. We owe many of our ideas of our Founding Fathers and the beginnings of this country to the portraits by these painters. One of the most interesting discoveries in the Met's on-line American Collection was portraits by men who we know much better as scientists and inventors. Robert Fulton, before he gave himself over to the subject of steam power, was known for his delicate miniatures of fashionable ladies (as in this watercolor and ivory portrait of Susan Hayne Simmons) and especially for his fine attention to hair and jewelry. Samuel F. B. Morse, who like Fulton trained in Europe, tried his best to make it as an artist, but finally gave it up - and invented the telegraph! This beautiful painting from 1836-37 is an allegorical portrait of his eldest daughter, Susan, as a muse of drawing. Charles Wilson Peale, another of America's pioneering artists, was as well known in his time for his museum of natural history, which included a mastodon skeleton that he 'obtained' in 1801. His 'cabinet of curiosities' occupied the second floor of the State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia. There is something very right about this championing of both arts and science in one individual that fits the American creation story of idealists with big ideas but with their feet on the ground, ready to roll up their sleeves and do what had to be done. American art in both New York and Paris attests in many ways to the beauty and magnitude of that founding philosophy. 

Take a tour of the new Met Galleries

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/20012492?vid=f43563f3-25d4-4793-b356-37656fa87504

Words and Art, Art and Words - Now, Then and Always

Words and visual art. The combination is an old and fruitful one, not just something invented by grafitti artists. I find a lot of it in contemporary art, so here's a look back at the tradition. Posters, of course, have a starring role. The inventive compositions of Toulouse Lautrec, among the best of all poster designs, went hand in with the development of color lithography at the end of the 18th century. If you've ever pined to be part of the nightlife of turn-of-the-century Paris, like Marion Cotillard in 'Midnight in Paris', you can blame it on those lively Lautrec posters! (see more about poster history with the weblink below) Further back, you can find the Greeks including lettering on their ceramic vessels, prompting understanding of complex stories of gods, heroes, and mythic events with what are essentially the credits. This example is a bit gory, but at least you know who's doing what. Beautiful examples of words and art abound in Western Art. The magnificent Book of Kells, from the 9th century, is more art in words than words with art. Each vellum page, decorated heavily with color and twisting puzzles of design and Christian meaning, is a tribute to artistic imagination and invention - and courage. The Book of Kells was created during the so-called 'Dark Ages,' when European civilization was at daily deadly risk from marauders - it is thought to have been created in the Abbey of Kells, north of Dublin (where it now resides in Trinity College) though may have been created elsewhere and brought along with monks fleeing the Vikings. A bit later, in more peaceful times, words and images come together in ways that reflect increasingly worldly concerns. Bestiaries, which had a fruitful period of popularity during the Middle Ages, began as reflections of a Divine Natural World, but evolved into explorations of early science. Illustrations and descriptions may border on - or be - fantasy, but they attest to a growing human hunger for knowledge about the real world. Speaking of fantasy, William Blake lived in a world that wasn't quite of this earth at times and he documented his visions carefully in words and images. His beautiful poem, Tyger, is here illustrated in his unmistakeable style. It's impossible to consider words and art without including the masterful Arabic tradition, in which there is virtually no division between art and calligraphy. Non-Arabic readers don't need to struggle with the question of what is being said (often references to Allah and the Koran) to marvel at the compositions of gorgeous forms and twining shapes. This exquisite example is by a living calligrapher named Ozcay (see more of his impressive work with the weblink below.) Modern American artists working with imagery and words include Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol, for very different purposes. Twombly, in his wonderful series "Fifty Days at Illium" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, connects back to those Greek ceramic artists, using words and names to help tell his personal story of attachment to the Greek myths and European art, while Warhol makes typically wry comments on consumerism and the place of commodities in American life. And of course, there's grafitti - it won't go away, it's been around as long as there have been walls to write it on. The current moment of grafitti is an exceptionally creative one - you may not agree with the principle of grafitti but there's some beautiful work out there helping carrying on a long tradition of words and art. 

http://www.designhistory.org/posters.html

http://www.ozcay.com/galeri/mehmed

What is your favorite work of Art and Words? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

High Branches - The Center For Art in Wood

Of Chinese astrology's five elements, wood is associated with harmony and cooperation. Wood is also the heart and soul of the newly reinstalled Center for Art in Wood in Old City, Philadelphia, and harmony and cooperation are on full display. The Center for Art in Wood, which began in 1986 in response to a series of exhibitions and symposia, is recognized as 'one of the most valuable resources for the education, preservation and promotion of the field of art made from wood.' Residencies and outreach programs, an extensive permanent collection, exhibitions, and a research library mark it as the heart of an intriguing traditional and contemporary world. This is not a jolly uncle's good-natured whittling; the woodworking here is the absolute pinnacle of art, form, imagination, and craftsmanship. "Turning to Art in Wood: A Creative Journey," the 25th Anniversary exhibition of the permanent collection (on display until April 21, 2012) is a stunning experience, organized to invite the viewer on a meandering path from one breathtaking piece to the next. Make your way through the beautiful airy space, noting how groups of objects focus on a technique, a type of wood, another marvelous idea of how to coax the amazing material of wood into yet another fantastic form and finish. Whatever you think you know about woodworking, you're going to be surprised by how much more there is to be imagined, built, turned, polished, created. Wood in all forms sits on the floor, stands on pedestals and platform, hangs on the walls; one engaging work, a pile of rough, unfinished turned forms clusters against one inner wall under a video showing the artist, Robin Wood, at work. Silent but dynamic, Mr. Wood's presence in the gallery is a quietly compelling reminder of the labor that went into each of these objects, no matter how perfectly pristine the finished result. 

Pristine is certainly the word for Galen Carpenter's exquisite inlaid vessel made of common chipboard inlaid with exotic rosewood and zircote, a combination that is as successful as unlikely. Color makes a good pairing of Hap Sakwa's highly polished Torus bowl of laquered poplar and maple and Robert F. Lyon's The Turner's Palett #2, a simple form delightful in its construction of basswood and colored pencils. Some pieces take a whimsical tack, like Jack Larimore's hefty chairs, titled Natural Desire, which spoof the idea of function into rich substantial sculptures, and Joanne Shima's Child's Chair, reminiscent of Gerrit Reitveld's painted icon and seemingly built of nostalgic TinkerToys. Gianfranco Angelini's elegant curved plate is one of many examples of unusual woods used for fine woodworking; his is a combination of common maple with Peruvian Palo Santo, a wood that is said to have been used by the Incas for spiritual cleansing. If I had to pick a favorite it would be very difficult but I might opt for Dale Nish's Nagare Vessel. The wood, wormy ash, lends natural holes and trails to a topography that is a beautifully conceived and finished conversation between artist, material, and nature itself. The result is a perfect reminder of the spirit of harmony and cooperation represented by the woodworker's art.

The Center for Art in Wood is at 141 N 3rd Street Philadelphia 19106

Turning to Art in Wood: A Creative Journey is on display through April 21, 2012

http://www.centerforartinwood.org/