Why do I love Frida and her art? Let me count the ways. She’s a story teller and a truth teller. She’s creatively, emotionally, socially, politically and relationally fearless and courageous. She’s resilient and persistent. She’s independent. I went to the Dallas Museum of Art this week to see the Exhibition ‘Frida: Beyond the Myth’. It’s organized as a chronological review of her life and art and uses photographs, drawings and paintings to examine and explain how her biography was so important to her creativity and resulting artwork.
Frida with Cigarette,, Altavista, 1941 Nicolas Muray, gelatin silver print
This stunning photo shows how truly determined and successful she was in being herself, fully and completely, with no apologies and no regrets. She had immense pressure to conform throughout her life and at every turn she chose to stand her ground and say, ‘This is me, take me or leave me’. This led her to being respected around the world by thousands of artists and art patrons, even as she confronted their culpability in bending to the status quo that she herself would not.
THE ACCIDENT
The seminal event of her life was a trolley/bus accident when she was just 19 years old. She suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs and collarbone, dislocated shoulder, crushed right foot and multiple fractures in her right leg. She was not expected to survived and as a matter of fact, her then boyfriend, who was also in the accident and injured, though less severely, advocated assertively for the doctors to work hard to save her when the inclination was that she was probably not going to make it.
The Accident, 1926
THE FIRST SELF-PORTRAIT
Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress, oil on canvas, 1926
Kahlo is known for her self-portraits and here is her first known one. Painted a year after the accident she gave it to her boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias in appreciation and in hopes of keeping her in his thoughts while she continued to recover.
THE ABORTION
Years later she was romantically attached to Diego Rivera, one of the most famous of all Mexican muralists. Upon finding out she was pregnant Rivera demanded she get an abortion, which she did. It was the first of many. This image illustrates the severe depression she suffered as a result. It is one of the first where she illustrates a cycle of life, something she returns to again and again.
THE DEBACLE
In the early 1930s Diego Rivera was invited to create a number of murals around the United States. They all ended up being controversial but none more so than his mural at Rockefeller Center in New York City. It depicted the heroes of the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and around the world. This of course did not go over well with the ardent capitalists of New York, especially the Rockefellers. The mural was condemned and covered up after many many months of work on his part.
My Dress Was There Hanging (New York), oil and collage on masonite, 1933-1938
Frida was incensed by what she saw as the blatant hypocrisy of America in condemning Rivera’s work while promoting itself as a paragon of Christian humanity toward others. If that was so, why were the unemployed allowed to starve? That and many other questions haunted her and this painting was her effort to express that by showing the disparity between the collaged unemployed below with the ostentatiousness and seduction above.
My Dress Was There Hanging (New York), close up
Frida in front of the Unfinished Communist Unity Panel, New Workers School, 1933, Photograph by Lucienne Bloch
THE SUICIDE OF DOROTHY HALE
One thing Kahlo was above all else was direct. She wasn’t obtuse or hidden in her visual story telling. This didn’t always work well for her. In 1939 Clare Booth Luce commissioned Kahlo to created a portrait of remembrance for the mother of Dorothy Hale, an actress who had committed suicide by jumping out of a New York Skyscraper. Kahlo did not paint a portrait of remembrance, she painted a very graphic and direct image of Hale falling to her death. Luce wanted to destroy the painting as it was deeply disturbing to her but was talked out of it.
The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1939, oil on masonite with hand painted frame
The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, close up
SELF – TRANSFORMATION
Kahlo continued to paint self portraits throughout her life but they changed as she got older. No longer do you see her refined and elegant with her hair up. Now she is starting to show herself with her hair down, more casual and unkempt, something that had to do with her being bedridden in pain but also because she no longer was driven to adorn herself, to be ‘attractive’ to Rivera or anyone else.
Self-portrait with Monkey, 1945, oil on masonite
Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947, oil on Masonite
STILL LIFE
As she became less mobile she spent more and more time painting symbolic images and still lifes. That didn’t mean she gave up imbuing her images with meaning. As you can tell in Sun and Life the symbolism is strong, with a fetus, labia images and shooting phalluses. This was painted not long after she had her 4th abortion so it is likely it all refers back to the complicated sexual and emotional relationship she had with Rivera.
Sun and Life, 1947, oil on Masonite
Sun and Life, close up
In this still life you can see similar imagery reflecting her identity. The sensual cut open fruit, the Mexican flag and native parrot all show parts of her, as does the flag impaling the fruit, not unlike how she was impaled in the accident so many years before.
Still Life with Parrot and Flag, 1951, Oil on masonite
BEDRIDDEN
For the last years of her life she was completely bedridden, unable to go anywhere. She was in constant pain and the various surgeries she underwent through the years had all failed to alleviate it. She painted from her bed until she could no longer. She died in 1954 at the age of just 47.
Frida Painting with Diego Rivera looking on, 1951
THE END
In the end it has to be said Frida Kahlo led a very tortured and sad life in many ways. She would agree, not being one to have a pretend happy disposition when it wasn’t warranted. There is a type of person who wears their heart on their sleeve. Kahlo was like that but instead of on her sleeve she wore it in her paintings. They are masterful dissections of a deeply wounded soul, baring the most intimate of feelings for all the world to see. She was one of the first true autobiographical artists and her influence in the art world has been felt ever since.
Frida with Magenta Rebozo, 1939, Photograph by Nickolas Muray
Artists I Love – Figures from the LACMA Permanent Collection
When we vacationed in LA in the summer of 2024 I knew I wanted to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It was one of my favorite museums when I was growing up in LA and when I lived there again as a young adult. The main reason I wanted to go was because of a special exhibition of Ed Ruscha’s lifetime of work. He is among the top artists in my life. You can see why in the post, ‘Artists I Love: Ed Ruscha‘ from 2015. The images in that post were from a retrospective of his work at the Denver Museum of Art and covers most of what was in the LACMA exhibition.
I didn’t know what I would find in the permanent collection but was very pleasantly surprised. I easily took over 100 photographs of the art in that collection and obviously had to edit it down. No surprise, I found the figurative theme most interesting. This selection is centered in the Expressionist paintings of the early 20th century. The paintings that are not in that movement either lead the way into the expressive use of form and color the expressionists are known for or show the lasting affect expressionism had on painting later in the century.
The Impressionist Revolution – From Monet to Matisse
Selections from the Dallas Museum of Art Special Exhibitions
Not an Apple
A few weeks ago a friend of mine who was trying to make a political statement online showed an apple with accompanying text saying “This is a watermelon. If you see an apple it’s because you are a right wing conspiracy theorist.” The inference being it should be obvious to everyone it is an apple, not a watermelon, and those who think it’s a watermelon are being deceived by the main stream media. I called her out on this post, not only because I disagreed with her politics, but because she herself began by believing a lie. She said it was an apple. It was not an apple, it was a photograph of an apple.
An Impression
Simple as it may be, this is a mistake many people make about art as well and this was the delusion from which the Impressionists set out to free themselves. No longer were they going to create something that was built on a lie. They were no longer going to try to convince their audience the painting before them was actually the person, place or thing. They would paint in such a way that everyone would know it was not the real thing but a creative representation made with brushstrokes of paint on a two-dimensional surface. It was an impression. It was the most radical idea in the history of painting up to that point and it turned the art world upside down as a result. For many decades they were not accepted, they were even hated, because they broke a sacred illusion that had lived in art for hundreds of years, the illusion of reality.
The Geniuses
Here are 10 examples of paintings by some of the great impressionists and those that came them; the post-impressionists, the pointillists, and others. Take a look at the whole painting then at the close up showing the actual paint strokes. If you have a large screen view it on that. They were geniuses of the first order and the magic is real.
‘Wow, it looks just like a photograph!’ school of adoration
When you look at art in the future hopefully you will be less enamored with the ‘Wow, it looks just like a photograph!’ school of adoration. It isn’t the height of skill to be able to do that actually. Anyone can learn how, I know because I taught drawing for a decade and had students who couldn’t draw a stick figure render incredibly life-like drawings at the end because their skills improved. But the best of my students weren’t the ones who could do that. The best were the ones who had something interesting to say. They had a unique way of seeing and creating and their artwork reflected that. That, to me, is the sign of a true artist.
I am starting a new series, ‘Authors I Love’, a companion to my ongoing series ‘Artists I Love’.
OLD AND NEW
I love reading big old books. The longer and older the better. Why? For one reason, it allows me to travel. I was explaining this idea to my wife today after I finished ‘Middlemarch’ written in the 1870s by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). She asked if it made me want to live in the Victorian era in Great Britain. I said, yes and no. Yes, because reading the book was like traveling to a different time. You know how when you go to a new place you see so many things that are familiar but not? There are buildings like at home, but different. Food like at home, but different. Humans like home, but different. The same is true of literature from the past. It is familiar but different. Then again, no. In Middlemarch the language is so rich and vocabulary so extensive that it is like going where they speak English in such an unfamiliar way that you feel like you are hearing it for the first time. Not old from a different era, but new, like a revelation of what could be.
Selected Works by George Eliot
MIDDLEMARCH
‘A Study of Provincial Life’ is the subtitle of the book. And indeed the story is about the goings on in the provincial town of Middlemarch in England in the early to mid 1800s, right in the heart of the Victorian era. The story starts and ends with Dorethea, an intelligent and unique woman who wants to do good in the world. Her only avenue for this it seems is to find a husband who is contributing to the betterment of the world in a big way and help him in that task. She does find this man and fully expects her marriage will lead to the future she envisions for herself. It does not go according to plan.
Eliot sculpture in her hometown of Nuneaton, UK. The town also has a hospital, hospice and school named after her.
Meanwhile, others in Middlemarch are trying to make their way in the world, either through marriage, if they are a woman, or in the church, business, politics, farming or other areas of commerce if they are a man. Much of the story revolves around women both pushing their way into areas that typically are the realm of men and demurring to the men and staying in the background. I said ‘both’ instead of ‘either’ because all the women do both. The tension of who they want to be and who they feel restrained to be is palpable in every chapter and drives much of the novel.
It is also about young people chaffing at the bit of tradition and ‘the way things are done’. Pushing up against that is the height of bad manners and a number of the younger characters suffer career and life setbacks because of their attempting to move forward in science, medicine, politics, society and religion.
Middlemarch book cover illustration
I love her crafting of words to create character, mood, environment and more. Here is an example –
“She was glowing from her morning toilette as only healthful youth can glow; there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel eyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing whiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to wind about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with a tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which kept its loveliness against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow.”
Middlemarch book cover illustration
And here is another, this one delving into the psyche of humanity.
“She sat tonight revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day, her lips often curling with amusement at the oddities to which her fancy added fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lap they alone were rosy.”
You can find more quotes at the end of this post.
Here is a link to a more thorough and thoughtful appreciation than I can give. The Genius of Middlemarch
Hand cast of Eliot’s hand
Eliot, being one of the most famous writers of her era, had a death hand cast made instead of a death mask to honor and highlight her accomplishments as an author.
Here is a photo of her. She looks surprisingly like Oscar Wilde, don’t you think?
George Eliot
Oscar Wilde
SILAS MARNER
I have heard the name most of my life. I knew he was a victorian character but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if he was created by Dickens or Dickensen or any other author. Once I got this book I knew of course. I bought it to read Middlemarch and it wasn’t planning on reading any of the other stories, at least not right away. But I was not ready to be done with Eliot and I have always wanted to know who Silas Marner was in literary history so now was my opportunity to find out.
from 1985 film
The full title of the book, ‘Silas Marner – The Weaver of Raveloe’, tells you who he is, at least professionally. Like Middlemarch this book shows a slice of provincial life, but with the focus on one particular character. Marner is a solitary man living along on the edge of town. He weaves linen that he then sells through various stores or directly to some of the wealthier women. He is seen as an eccentric man with whom good society would not entertain a relationship. They would however buy his product as he is a meticulous weaver who does excellent work.
book illustration
He saves his gold coins religiously and obsessively counts them at night. Through a series of horrible circumstances he has those coins stolen from him. He, nor anyone else, knows who stole the coins. Meanwhile through another series of horrible circumstances he becomes the caretaker of a baby who is not yet able to walk.
book illustration
This conjunction of loss and gain is at the heart of the story and at the heart of Marner’s transformation within himself and within the community. There are good and bad people throughout but in all cases the personalities are complex and subtle, rich characters who are not cliche cut-outs of virtue or vice.
book cover illustration
The story is ultimately uplifting and inspiring but it is never cloying or pandering. It’s a great place to start reading to get an appreciation for Eliot’s work.
from 1916 film
Once again she has some astute quotes that show her insight into human nature.
“A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.”
“The yoke a man creates for himself by wrongdoing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.”
Brother Jacob
I thought this was probably about a monk but it wasn’t. It is a short story about a greedy man, David Faux, who steals from his family and sets off overseas to seek his fame and fortune as a confectioner. He leaves behind a brother who is an ‘idiot’ (Eliot’s term, not mine). I think now he would be seen as neurodivergent, perhaps with Down Syndrome. The story then fast forwards many years and David reappears under another name in a nearby village where he runs a successful confectionary shop. His bright future in marriage and business is dependent on it never being found out his real name and place in the world. Suffice it to say this does not go according to plan.
One of the best plot devices Eliot uses is the man who has it all planned vs the messiness and unpredictability of real life. While she allows it to happen to most everyone in all her stories, it is especially satisfying when it is combined with the underlying moral failures of a character.
The Lifted Veil
This amazing short story is a departure for Eliot in that it is about the supernatural. The protagonist finds he is able to hear peoples’ inner thoughts. Everyone that is but his brother’s fiance, on whom he has a crush. His mind has to imagine what she is thinking and because he is completely enamored of her he creates a deep and rich inner thought life for her. That drives him into even deeper love.
The story is about what happens when he no longer has to see her from a distance and suddenly is able to hear her thoughts as well. Are his hopeful conjectures of her deep inner life proven true or are they dashed? It’s worth reading to find out.
More Middlemarch Quotes
“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”
“But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt…had for the general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.”
“A man vows, and yet will not cast away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.”
“Fear is stronger than the calculations of probabilities.”
“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think it’s emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.”
“But even while we are talking and meditation about the earth’s orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is the stable earth and the changing day.”
“For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.”
“Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.”
“Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say.”
“I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest – I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much.”
“There is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus.”
“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”
“The truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
“Philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.”
“Her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.”
“When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.”
“Solomon’s Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.”
“Selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance than anything else in the world.”
“There is no religion to hinder a man from believing the best of a young fellow, when you don’t know worse. It seems to me it would be a poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don’t believe such harm of him as you’ve got no good reason to believe.”
“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.”
This summer I went to visit my daughter Rebekah and her family in Virginia. I was particularly excited to spend time with my 10 year old granddaughter, Vivian. The first day we went museum hopping in Washington, DC. We spent time seeing selections from the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art and The National Archives. Vivian was a trooper, walking over 9 1/2 miles that day with nary a peep. Bribing her with Boba Tea at the end helped.
The first four shown here are from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery called ‘BRAVO!” which highlighted people in the entertainment industry over the decades. I was particularly taken by these paintings of women and their stories of overcoming strong obstacles to achieve their goals. The fifth, ‘Amarilla’, was elsewhere in the museum but I really liked it so I included it.
I recently ran the Cowtown Half Marathon in Fort Worth, Texas and took the opportunity while there to visit one of my favorite museums, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. I’ve been a number of times before while visiting my niece who attends TCU nearby but this time I made sure to take pictures of some of my favorite pieces in the collection.
The Carter is one of 3 museums in the same location. The others are the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Kimbell Art Museum, both of which are incredible in their own right, both architecturally and because of the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions.
No offense to Fort Worth’s more attention-getting cousin, but Dallas doesn’t have anything on Fort Worth when it comes to museums. Don’t get me wrong, I love the DMA, but these three museums are really special.
Chimney and Water Tower, Charles Demuth
Two Herons 1948-50, William Lester, Oil on Masonite
I was raised in a family with art on the walls and art history all around me. I studied art and art history all through undergraduate and graduate school. As a result there are many artists whom I have known about and seen their work over many decades. This is especially true of the work of the early and mid-twentieth century American artists, some that my Grandfather and Grandmother collected. One artist among this group was Stuart Davis. I saw many of his pieces during my studies and some in person. I always liked his work but had never really seen the entire breadth of his accomplishments until I went to the ‘Stuart Davis – In Full Swing’ exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
What did I find? I found an innovative abstractionist before there was such a thing, an insightful pop artist before pop art existed and, most surprisingly, a musician who whose instrument was paint. Here are a few pieces that illustrate how the thread of these three ideas weave seamlessly together throughout his career.
POP BEFORE POP
Starting in the late 50s and blossoming in the 1960s, pop art became all the rage. It was a communal reaction from many younger artists to the abstract expressionism then prevalent in the art world. The pop artist was intent on engaging with popular culture instead of withdrawing from it. The 60s were a time of great social upheaval and for many artists trying to be a part of that while painting something that had no visual relationship to it was impossible. So, they took ideas and images from their environment, especially in the area of advertising and mass media (what social media was called before it was social). They then transformed these images in size, material, intent and location to have the image be more than just a soup can or comic strip or American flag. They became commentary and critique at one level and formal visual statements at another.
They were thought of as wholly original and American in their creative use of the world around them and had much acclaim and fame as a result. Only, it really wasn’t as original as we supposed. Stuart Davis had thought of the idea and painted many canvases exploiting the idea in the late 20s, 30 years before.
Here is a popular mouthwash of the day and a typical print advertisement promoting it.
Davis took the product image and created still lives based on them, using it as a starting point for a formal exploration of shape, color, form etc. and at the same time introducing social commentary about popular culture of the time.
Odol, 1924, Oil in canvasOdol, 1924, Oil in canvasLucky Strike, 1924 – oil on paperboard
As you can see, Davis was exploiting the commercial world around him for artistic and social expression well before the pop artists came around. This is evidence that no matter how original a movement seems to be you can usually find roots and reasons behind its development that show an incremental development from work that has come before.
ABSTRACTION
Once Davis started down the road of using objects from day-to-day life for his subjects he quickly moved beyond mere representation. He did this by adding another element that would gain great traction later in American life and that is abstraction. This was not a concept he came up with, it had been germinating in Europe for at least a decade or two. Malevich, LIssitzky, Kandinsky and Mondrian were all moving decisively in that direction in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
As a matter of fact, Davis was very attuned to this European movement from the time he attended the famous Armory Show of 1913 in New York City. While pure abstraction wasn’t highly visible at that show, it was hinted at in many of the works. In subsequent years the European abstract artists work continued to be known about and seen in America on occasion. But, here is what is interesting. The majority of collectors and artists purposely rejected the European idea of abstraction in favor or what became known as American Regionalism. In an effort to delineate boundaries between the two continents and forge their own identity, American artists went in the opposite direction, towards a social realism and narrative story telling.
All except Stuart Davis. Instead of reacting against abstraction he decided to investigate it and find it’s expressive value. And so he embarked on a great journey of combining abstraction with visualization of external subject matter in a completely unique way.
Salt Shaker, 1931, oil on canvasEgg Beater #4, 1928, oil on canvasEgg Beater, 1928, oil on canvas
Above are just three examples of this idea in action.
VISUAL MUSIC
As much as I like narrative stories, representation and messages in art, the number one thing I must have for me to be satisfied with a piece is compositional harmony. It has to be composed well and be balanced. That isn’t as easy or pat as it sounds. It takes meticulous seeing and it takes a courageous willingness to destroy part or all of an image to make it work right.
One of the most amazing things I discovered as I walked through this exhibition at Crystal Bridges was how much I was taken in by the composition of almost every single piece. I saw a genius-level use of color, rhythm, pattern and tone to develop the compositional flow. It was incredibly impressive to me at a root level.
One thing I always tell people when disparage abstract art and wonder why it has any value is for them to think about music. Do they demand lyrics be added to a symphony for it to be worthy of attention? Do they demand a beautiful Spanish guitar solo be punctuated with a story-teller standing next to the player explaining what each passage is supposed to mean and how it all fits in to a specific story? No, they don’t. Why? Because they know sounds can be beautiful, profound and meaningful without a verbal element to them.
The same is true in Abstract art. It can be seen the same way a symphony or guitar solo is heard. It can have its own visual beauty without having to be a representation of something outside itself. And Davis was deeply enmeshed in that idea. He was immersed in the world of Jazz in New York and beyond and he worked profoundly hard to bring that jazz sensibility to his visual art.
But it goes beyond just one canvas having jazz rhythms. It’s the whole idea of improvisation that Davis embraces. Just as a Jazz artist plays the same tune each night at the club, but improvises it differently each time, Davis did the same from canvas to canvas. As a matter of fact, much of his later work was variations on a theme he had developed earlier in his career.
Here are a few examples of that improvisation on a theme over the years.
Town Square, 1929, watercolor, gouache, ink, and pencil on paper
Check out the transformation of the scene from the image above to the one below. ‘See’ it as you would listen to music and let your eye travel around the two images the way you would listen to two different parts of a symphony. There is echos and hints of each in each other but they are both completely unique.
Report from Rockport, 1940, oil on canvasFrom top left clockwise – Landscape, 1932-35; Shapes of Landscape Space, 1939; Memo, 1956; Tournos, 1954
Let your eyes bring about the different feelings you get by looking at each piece the same way you would let your ears take you to places in your mind while listening to music.
Little Giant Still Life, 1950, oil on canvasSwitchskis-Syntax, 1950, Casein on canvas
Let the colors guide you the way different instruments guide you through a musical composition. The horn brings up something different in you than the violin. Green and black bring up something different from blue and pink.
American Painting, 1932, 1942-1954 – oil on canvasTropes De Teens, 1956, oil on canvas
AND MORE
It’s not enough to limit Davis to just 2 or 3 Art Appreciations lessons. The joy isn’t in always categorizing an artist’s work into little bite size pieces. Sometimes you just sit back and not worry about the label, you just enjoy the visual music.
Here are some examples of his work I think is amazing. It gives me pleasure to investigate and discover. And that is always enough for me in art.
Summer Landscape, 1930, oil on canvasLandscape with Garage Lights, 1932 – oil on canvasArboretum By Flashbulb, 1942, oil on canvasCliche, 1955, oil on canvasThe Paris Bit, 1959, oil on canvas
CONCLUSION
This is just a small sampling of his work and a micro look at a few of his career phases. I recommend you spend some time reading up on him and looking at more of his work. You won’t be disappointed. The catalog from the show pictured at the top of this post is an excellent source for artistic and social information about his life and times. It includes a wide array of images, 2 long and interesting essays and an in depth chronology. I highly recommend getting it if you like his work.
Neil Jenney
From 1982-1994 I worked on getting my Master of Fine Art degree from San Jose State University in California. I took a number of high level art theory and criticism seminars where studied intensely studied the recently past and current styles in the art world. Foremost among those at the time was Neo-Expressionism. There were many compelling artists working in this style that I liked, including David Salle, Robert Longo, and Eric Fischl. In addition we studied other strains, including the Pattern and Decoration movement, which I liked quite a bit.
One artist I discovered at the time stood out to me. He stood out because he was was not part of these or other contemporary movements. He was completely unique; sophisticated, astute in his subtle social and political messaging and unabashedly contrarian in his relationship with current art. His name is Neil Jenney and he is the next artist in my ‘Artists I Love’ series. Links to the other artists in the series can be found in the menu above and in a list at the end of this post.
Window #6, oil on panel with painted wood frame, 1971-1976
What you see here is one of the signature paintings of his career. It’s a detailed oil painting of a landscape, but not one where you can see much. It’s as much about what you can’t see as what you can. It’s seems to be a window high up in a room, you are looking out, but what really is out there? You can’t see much, just the tree and the sky. But you can also see something that doesn’t seem to fit. A cloud that almost looks like a marshmallow. It’s way too perfectly formed to be a real cloud so what is it? Good question. Too bad you can’t see more, right? Or wait, maybe not seeing more is what makes you think more intensely about what isn’t there. Maybe your imagination is engaged. Maybe it’s great art because of that. I think it is.
But let’s go back a bit to get a little better glimpse of the ideas behind his work.
BAD PAINTING
What you see below is a bad painting. It’s bad on purpose to make a statement. Back in the late 60s a new genre came into being called ‘Photorealism’. Artists took a photograph of a scene and painted it to an extreme level of accuracy. They actually enhanced the scene often to be even MORE realistic than the photo. Neil Jenney hated this trend. He understood the technique took some skill but for what purpose? To just recreate a photograph? He saw it as soulless and trite. He said to a friend that instead of having a bad idea and doing it well, “it would be better to have a good idea and do it terrible!” Which is exactly what he did. He called it good drawing, bad painting.
Saw and Sawed, acrylic on canvas with painted wood frame, 1969
Here is an example of the art Jenney was seeing when he decided to go in the opposite direction.
Robert Bechtle, Alameda Gran Torino, 1974, oil on canvas
He continued in this vein for a few years and was rewarded with his work being designated as ‘bad painting’, not as a derogatory critique, but as a positive statement about a new sort of realism.
Birds and Jets, Acrylic on canvas with painted wood frame, 1969
Threat and Sanctuary, acrylic on canvas with painted wood frame, 1969
Girl and Doll, Man and Mirage
What do all these have in common besides the ‘bad painting’ technique? They are all about a relationship between two things. The purposeful lack of details in both the paintings and the titles were Jenney’s ingenious way of being a social and political artist without being pedantic or propogandistic. His message is a starting point of an idea, a hint towards a concept that the viewers have to figure out for themselves. It’s one of my favorite attributes of great art and he does it immaculately in these paintings.
GOOD PAINTING
The good paintings were a result of two things. One, the limits of doing ‘good drawing, bad painting’, and two, the plethora of artists who had started to do similar work. Jenney is a contrarian and really dislikes doing what the crowd does. The combination of those two things caused him to decided to do ‘good drawing, good painting’. He started doing very detailed and highly accurate realistic paintings. But, as in the bad paintings, he does not spell things out. He just gives clues. The good paintings are as much about what is not seen beyond the frame as it is what is in the frame.
It also is about the relationship between words and images, as are the ‘bad paintings’. It’s another element that resonated with me, as you can tell by how prevalent words are in much of my work.
Meltdown Morning, 1975, oil on board with painted wood frame
It’s not the best reproduction but in the distance on the right you can see the hint of yellow. That could be a sunrise but it could be a nuclear accident. There is power in the ambiguity and simplicity, as well as in the contrast between nature and man.
North America Acidified, oil on panel with painted wood frame, 2013
A beautiful scene of nature, but the ominous title says something else might be going on.
Atmospheric Formation – Rabbits, oil on panel with painted wood frame, 2005
Sometimes it’s just light hearted play Jenney indulges in.
Morning, Evening, oil on panel with painted wood frame, 2012
I love these images because they just say so much about perception and how minimal it can be and one can still know exactly where you are and what time of day it is.
Ozarkia, oil on panel with painted wood frame, 2012
North American Aquatica, Oil on Panel with painted wood frame, 2006-07
Modern Era, Oil on panel with painted wood frame, 2006
I think this is a very sophisticated critique of modern art. Not pedantic or overly weighed down with opinion, but in it’s simplicity one can see the disdain.
Improved Picassos
Here’s an idea for a sure fire way to be criticized: Decide you can improve upon the paintings of the perhaps the greatest artist of the 20th century. Jenney decided to do just that. He happened to see someone in the Port Authority terminal in NYC selling painted reproductions of Picasso paintings. He bought one from him and decided to improve it, fixing what he saw as incomplete or bad passages in the art. Then he framed them how he would like to see them, instead of the way he saw them framed in the famous museums of the world.
It’s a cheeky and pretentious effort to do something like this, but Jenney didn’t care about what others would think. He wanted to ‘fix’ them so he did. Other people didn’t like it? Too bad for them. I have to admit I really love that ‘in your face’ attitude he has. It’s liberating for artists to see this and realize decisions about our creativity are ours to make, not someone else’s.
He eventually commissioned the artist who did the original copies, Ki-Young Sung, to paint specific Picasso pieces he had always wanted to rework.
Improved Picasso – Boy and Horse, original on left
Improved Picasso – Marie Therese Leaning, original on right
Improved Picasso – Igor Stravinsky
Improved Picasso – Bathers
Improved Picasso – Woman
Conclusion
Neil Jenney is my favorite type of artist, maybe because I feel a kinship with his outsider status. Outsider doesn’t mean uneducated, unsophisticated, or untalented. It simply means the artist does not fit in, either on purpose or by virtue of place, time and style, with the prevailing trends of art at the time. He or she can still be quite popular among collectors and other art people, but it’s a popularity based more on genuine admiration for the work than on any commercial or social advantage one might get by having a piece by the artist.
When I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 1978 I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Within 3 months of my arrival the Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, and City Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by former Supervisor Dan White.
Three years later a bust honoring Mayor Moscone, created by the artist I am highlighting today, was unveiled. Here it is.
The artist is Robert Arneson. Take a close look at the detail picture. Can you see the ‘Twinkie’ and the ‘bang, bang, bang, bang,; on the pedestal? Those referred directly to the assassination, along with the imprint of a gun on the backside. As a result, the bust was rejected by the City Council and not put in City Hall as expected. The other result was Robert Arneson and his art became known throughout California and the nation.
I was at the start of graduate school at San Jose State University and learning about the fantastic artists that practiced in Northern California. There are already two of them in this series, Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn. And another was Robert Arneson.
Robert Arneson, 1930 – 1992
Arneson was a co-founder of the california ‘Funk Art’ movement of the 60s and 70s. He was not a painter but a sculptor using ceramics combined with non-traditional objects. He was breaking the mold of what ceramics should be by moving away from functionality and creating political, social, artistic and personal statements driven by his personality, aesthetics and beliefs.
Self
I thought about not putting a photograph of him in the article because, well, here… take a look at who his subject matter most often is.
Kiln Man‘Pic’, 1980, Lithograph. Photo courtesy of Rob Corder‘Brick Bang, 1976‘Head Lamp’, bronze with wood and bulb, 1992
Humor as Social Commentary
Obviously you can see he is very funny and works that humor into his art. But it’s more than just silly humor. It’s using humor as satire, and farce to make a statement about the social and moral issues of his time. He is in that long tradition in art that reaches all the way back to Honore Daumier in France, through to William Hogarth in Britain and on to Thomas Nast in America to name a few. Satirical art that pushed the powers that be by lampooning them has continued into the present day of course, with it’s most tragic manifestation being in the murders of the staff of Charlie Hebdo by Islamic terrorists in France in January, 2015.
It takes courage to make fun of people for a reason, and Arneson didn’t shy away from it. But, as with the great satirical artists before him, he often wasn’t pointing so much at a particular person as he was using that person as an example of a larger corruption, a more widespread idiocy in society or morals.
Colonel Hyena, ceramic on metal base, 1985Hiroshima UrnNuclear Warhead, 1984‘Primary Discharge’, 1990, earthenware and glaze
Upending the Classical
He also liked upending the aesthetics of the classical. To do this he literally just did it. He took something classical, a column. And upended it by adding a head on top, on bottom, falling off, etc. Of course the head in all these cases was his own.
Pedestals, 1992, Bronze, UC San FranciscoBig Laughs, CeramicTemple of Fatal Laffs – detail
Egg Heads
Towards the end of his life Arneson started doing a series that seemed more melancholy and universal, the ‘egg head’ series. They are more of a meditation on life and death than anything else, and it makes sense that they would be as Arneson was by this time diagnosed with cancer and was struggling with these monumental issues.
WorthSee No Evil, Hear No Evil (Egghead series), 1989, UC Davis
And More
As with any prolific artist there are a lot more pieces you won’t ever see than that you will see. Here are some others I thought worthy of your attention.
Wolf Head (Jackson Pollack), 1989, Bronze and RedwoodSinking Brick, 1966, terracottaBrick Bang, 1976Golden Rod, 1969, Luster Glazed CeramicBenicia Bench, 1991, Bronze
Courage of the Artist
What I appreciated about Arneson more than anything else was his determination from early on to be truly himself. What I mean is he withstood pressure to be a classic ceramic artist, to be serious, to be socially active the way others had been before him. But those things weren’t him and he knew it. He stated in his life and in his work, ‘This is who I am and what I do. These are my creations done as I see fit.’ Which is, after all, the essential job description of an artist.
Resources
To learn more about Arneson and his art world, you can use these resources:
Some artwork photographed by Rob Corder. You can see a much larger collection of Arneson’s work at Corder’s flickr page as well as extensive photographs from many art museums.
People tend to put professional photography into a very serious box. It’s used to show the worst of humanity and nature, a very serious thing. It is also used to show the highlights of both, which ironically is usually just as serious. It is true that in recent years, with the advent of the cell phone camera and the internet, everyday snapshots of very funny events and juxtapositions have proliferated. But in professional photography, seriousness still is given the top shelf on which to reside. It’s not that different than in cinema. Funny movies and comedic actors just don’t get the same level of respect and reward as do those that are serious.
But, in spite of that, we still have great comedic movies and actors. We also have some very funny photographers. Foremost among them in my mind is Elliot Erwitt. He is one of my all time favorite photographers. He spent 50+ years as one of the preeminent photographers photographing the world. He was a founding member of Magnum, the elite photography agency started by Robert Capa mid-twentieth century. He eventually became its president. He took some of the most iconic and important political and social photographs of that century. He was a VERY serious photographer. At the same time he was the least serious photographer you will ever find.
The perspective of Erwitt is not to be purposely funny. It’s to record a world that has interesting juxtapositions that can sometimes be very funny. They can also be poignant and stark in their irony and pathos as they reveal the human condition.
Dogs and other animals
No one has ever been better at capturing the humanity of the Dog and other animals.
I have been drawing and photographing the nude figure since I was 17 years old in High School. As I matured, one of my goals in doing the nude has been to juxtapose the inherent sensuality of the nude with something that offsets it. It can be humor, a unique visual perspective or something disturbing. I want there to be an element that draws people away from the sensuality just enough to make them stop and think about it. I was inspired in that direction in no small part due to Erwitt and other photographers ability to do that so successfully.
I have focused only on what I think are his humorous pieces. He took photos of some of the worlds most important leaders and entertainers as well as some of the iconic national moments in America. If you like what you see here, do an information or image search of Elliot Erwitt. There are fantastic collections of his work out there as well as revealing articles and histories of his place in 20th century photography. He’s well worth exploring further.
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You can see and read the entire ‘Artists I love’ series here or by going through the list below.
