Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

A Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays to everyone who's been following things here on Art Blog By Bob over the years. 2010's been an eventful year. Alex is a year older now. Little brother Jamie arrived in February and has been 10 months' worth of love. I completed my MA in Education and plunged into the teaching profession full time. Ironically, I fled the corporate world and found myself teaching a college class in, of all things, writing for the corporate world. Blogging for Big Think has changed the look and feel of Art Blog By Bob from the first few years--making it less personal at times--but I hope that the same individual voice comes through in the writing. However, going professional, so to speak, doesn't allow me to indulge in these personal little asides. So here are some photos to put you in the holiday mood. Peace and joy to all in a better and more beautiful 2011.

A Is for Art Museum: Children and the Gift of Art

What do you get for the child in your life? That’s the big question for so many people around this time of year. If I can make a suggestion for a gift that keeps on giving—for a lifetime—give the gift of art. I recently took my older son to experience a child-oriented activity at our local museum and he came away from it with a new joy in the simple acts of looking and making something with his own hands. If you’re trying to teach a child the alphabet of life, you can do no better than starting with “A Is for Art Museum.” Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Is for Art Museum."

[Image: Pablo Picasso. Three Musicians. Oil on canvas, 80 ½ x 74 1/8 inches, 1921. Philadelphia Museum of Art: A.E. Gallatin Collection, 1952.]

Welcome, Jamie!

Our family welcomed with much love Jamie (above) into the world early Tuesday morning of this week. Mother, Big Brother Alex (meeting Jamie below), and Dad all doing fine. Dad will recommence blogging as soon as possible. Double the boys, double the fun. And half the sleep.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Annie, Alex (shown above), and I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I apologize for the light to nonexistent blogging over the past few months. School and family have left me little time to indulge in the pleasures of blogging. Our family has also had to deal with the passing of my Father-in-Law, making 2009 an especially sad year for us. However, 2010 brings the promise of a new life into our family in the form of another son due in March. Also, I will be returning to blogging, but not as a rank amateur but as a paid professional for Big Think. I'll be thinking bigger than ever, so please come by and read along again with me on art, the universe, and everything starting January 1st. More details to follow, but for now hug the ones you love and take lots and lots of pictures. You'll be glad you did.

Third Time’s a Charm

Today is Alex’s third birthday. Annie and I can’t believe how big our little boy (above and below) has grown. He learns more each day and teaches us more about ourselves every day, too. Annie and I want to share every experience possible with Alex, including art. He’s been to several museums and exhibitions so far, but his favorite museum remains the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, most art museums have a please DON’T touch policy that three-year-old children cannot understand. The next time we get to the PMA, however, I’d like to take him through the collection of armor. He enjoys playing with his knights and their castle so much, I think he’d get a kick out of seeing real knights’ armor. Maybe he’ll be too spellbound to want to touch, but I doubt it.

Like all kids his age, Alex is endlessly hands on. When he painted a pumpkin for Halloween, he got as much paint on the pumpkin as he did in his hair. When he paints with his (fortunately) washable paints inside, the piece of paper ends up a dark, sopping wet collection of paint. Alex will call me or Annie to sit and paint with him sometimes and I always find myself enjoying the pure pleasure of aimlessly applying paint to paper. Picasso said that he spent his entire life trying to make art like a child would, and I understand exactly what he meant when I make art next to Alex. To us, it looks like nothing, but to him, he sees things that we only wish we could dream of.

I often wonder what Alex will think of this blog when he’s old enough to read it. By the time he’s old enough to appreciate this blog, the idea of blogging might seem Paleolithic compared to whatever new waves of media wash up in the meantime. I like to think of this blog as my mind cracked open and spilled out on a daily basis, with just enough structure to make it coherent. When Alex finally decides to slough through the spillage, I hope he recognizes some of the parts of myself that I try to share with him every day in person. Maybe he’ll even recognize some of those parts mirrored in himself—but only the good parts, I hope.

I started this blog as an educational tool for myself—to learn as much about art as about myself. Alex was just a baby when I started. Having that little wonder in my life made me want to push myself beyond the limits of what I was and find out just how far I could go. Every great artist needs to find some inspiration to continue on. Annie and Alex inspire me to live not only for today but for tomorrow as well.

Happy Birthday, Alex!

Merry Christmas

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6


Right after Thanksgiving each year, I gear up to get myself into the Christmas mood. If you pull up to a stoplight and see some nut singing at the top of his lungs to a CD of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, especially “For Unto Us a Child Is Born…,” that might be me. I also like to mix in some Rat Pack. Bare Naked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings" has become a new favorite. Decorating the house and putting up the lights outside always seem like a pain at the time, but it’s worth it just to see how much Alex (above and below) enjoys all the preparations. Seeing Christmas through Alex’s eyes reminds me of what it was to be a little boy at Christmastime and what it is to believe in a wonderful world again.

Annie, Alex, and I wish everyone out there a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukhah, Blessed Eid, and Happy Kwanza! May you all have a safe, healthy, and happy holiday wherever you are. Art Blog By Bob will be on holiday hiatus until after the New Year. See you in 2009!

Connecting the Dots

As we gathered ourselves to leave after watching Wall-E on Alex’s first trip to a movie theater, I looked up during the credits just in time to see an homage to Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (above, from 1884-1886). Seurat’s placid park scene has become one of those comfortable pieces of cultural furniture, like the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s David. Born December 2, 1859, Seurat would probably be quite dismayed by such a development. As James H. Rubin argued in Impressionism and the Modern Landscape: Productivity, Technology, and Urbanization from Manet to Van Gogh (reviewed here), Seurat and his friend Paul Signac developed pointillism as a more scientific style to mimic technological progress when Impressionism had grown too mainstream and failed to address the changing industrial world or the populist leftist politics emerging with the rise of the modern middle class. It’s impossible today to understand just how much a revolution in the sense of rebellion Seurat’s paintings and style was at the time. The optical theories upon which Seurat based his carefully placed dots (Sunday Afternoon took over two years to finish) seem commonplace today, but at the time challenged cherished ideas of how we perceive the world. As hard as it is to believe now, Seurat was a rebel.

Two years after finishing Sunday Afternoon, Seurat painted The Sideshow (above, from 1888). Moving inside from the bright light of the day, Seurat paints a scene lit only by gas footlights. The brilliance of his outdoor scene gives was to the murky half darkness of the stage upon which the performers caper. In The Sideshow, Seurat not only breaks down color into tiny pieces but reduces the scene and the people in it into simple shapes. The musician at the center morphs into a triangle resting on top of a rectangle, with a lighter-colored circle for a face. Seurat creates an overall impression of cold, inhuman, mechanized precision, as if the background and the characters were stamped out in metal by an assembly line. If Sunday Afternoon shows the mixing (or lack of) between the socioeconomic classes, The Sideshow shows how popular, lowbrow entertainment belongs solely to the lower classes and how such diversions may have a deadening effect on their minds, growing as murky as the dim lights around them.


Of course, it’s easy to go overboard on the cultural and socioeconomic content of Seurat’s work. The first thing that comes to my mind when seeing Seurat’s Le Port de Gravelines (above, from 1890) is not the role of the shipping industry in late nineteenth century France but the beauty of the sweeping curve of the bank as it hugs the blue water while the powder blue sky echoes above. Seurat seems comfortable today because his style is irresistibly sensual. Like Cameron in that scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, we can’t believe the magic trick of all those dots evolving into a recognizable face. Sadly, Seurat died in 1891 at the age of thirty-one, just a year after finishing Le Port de Gravelines. Like so many other young rebels, Seurat never had the chance to grow old and, perhaps, change his spots. Reassembling what Seurat first meant by his work is as daunting a challenge as guessing how he himself would have connected those dots decades later.

A Time to Give Thanks

A Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! (Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want [above, from 1943], part of the Four Freedoms series, provides the appropriate visual.)

I personally want to give thanks first and foremost for the person who keeps me sane on a daily basis within the cocoon of her love—the beautiful, the intelligent, the laugh-out-loud funny, the ever-patient Annie. Second, I want to thank Alex for being the most magical child in the world and allowing me to relive all the wonders of childhood again. Without my family, I am nothing and could accomplish nothing.

I give thanks, too, for my extended family and friends, too numerous and humble to be named here.

I give thanks for the Obama victory and the Phillies’ World Series Championship. I underestimated how much God loves me until he dropped those two great moments in quick succession. (God, if you’re still listening, a guilt-wracked Dick Cheney’s confession implicating the rest of the Bush mis-Administration would make a nice Christmas gift. No wrapping involved.)

Lastly, but not leastly, I give thanks to all the people who drop in here and peruse my ramblings. I’d still do it if I was the only one listening (it is cheaper than therapy), but knowing that I’m not just typing into the internet void makes it even more gratifying.

Feel free to include your thanks in comments. Share the love until new posts and a new poll arrive on Monday, December 1st.

And the Winner Is…

Alex the Judge contemplating how wonderful life is over a plate of French fries.

Then, a moment to contemplate the Phillies’ World Series Championship as the entries are tossed into the hat for the drawing to see who will win a copy of Nicole Dacos’ The Loggia of Raphael: A Vatican Art Treasure, published by Abbeville Press.

Alex the Judge pulls the name from the hat…

Alex the Judge drunk with the sense of power that the Art Contest by Bob can bring…

And the winner is… Michael C.! Congratulations, Michael!

Thank you to everyone who played and thank you, again, to Abbeville Press for sponsoring this amazing giveaway!

Thank You, America

I want to thank America for restoring my faith in humanity and electing a man of intelligence and integrity to the Presidency of the United States last night. (Alex, above, thanks you, too.) The fact that he is a man of color just adds to the magic of this moment, perhaps the first time that our country has ever truly transcended the petty cruelty of racism. This is just the beginning of the beginning of a new era, but the idea that a new day is dawning on our country after the long night of the past eight years makes me excited about the future and proud of my country.

Start Shouting

And the wise man say I don't want to hear your voice
And the thin man say I don't want to hear your voice
And they're cursing me, and they won't let me be
And there's nothing to say, and there's nothing to do

Stop whispering, start shouting
Stop whispering, start shouting

And the mother say we spit on your son some more
And the buildings say we spit on your face some more
And the feeling is that there's something wrong
Because I can't find the words and I can't find the songs

Stop whispering, start shouting
Stop whispering, start shouting

Dear Sir, I have a complaint
Can't remember what it is

It doesn't matter anyway
It doesn't matter anyway

— “Stop Whispering” by Radiohead

The main reason I’ll be voting today appears above and below. If you don’t have a youngster in your life right now, I ask that you think of a little boy named Alex who loves to ride the train at the zoo (above) and whose patriotically decorated wagon won the second place ribbon in the last Fourth of July parade (below). He and his friends will be the ones paying in treasure and, perhaps, blood someday for the mistakes of the last eight years. As some of my more vocal commenters know all too well, I believe that Barack Obama should be the man to lead us out of the darkness of this sad era. More than anything else, I want to believe that today’s election will end the years of whispers and begin the years of shouting—a regaining of our country’s true voice of reason, justice, and compassion. Misguided “wise men” have silenced true debate for too long in the name of false patriotism. True patriotism doesn’t fear anything, especially open debate and passionate questioning of what direction this nation should take.

Alex is still too young to understand what’s going on. One day I want to be able to show him this post and these pictures and tell him his parents voted for him, for his future. Like Obama, Alex is a mixed kid—half-Chinese and half-Irish/German. Obama, Alex, and all the other mixed kids represent the future of America, the next step in the grand experiment of democracy in which we recognize our differences as the essence of who we are. Today, we vote to take that step together for ourselves and our children and to leave the prejudices and injustices of the past behind.

Stop whispering. Start shouting.

Not Just Kids’ Stuff

Cover image, courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

When you become a parent, your entire world changes. As your child grows, you try to bring that entire world to them in all its color and beauty. For anyone who loves art and wants their child to love it, too, Maria K. Shoemaker and Katy Friedland’s A Is for Art Museum (above) is a good place to start. Using the entire width and breadth of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Shoemaker, the PMA’s Senior Curator of Education, and Friedland, Manager of Family and Children’s Programs at the PMA, use every children’s educational trick in the book in this book to make the journey through the alphabet a treat for the ear and the eye as well as for the imagination, planting the seeds so that parents can nurture the budding art lover deep inside every kid. “Here is a building filled with art. What will you find inside?” the first page reads, with the majestic classical columns of the PMA sitting atop the Rocky Steps drawing the young reader in for closer inspection. With such a great start, the fun (and learning) is just beginning.


The Kiss (Constantin Brancusi, French, born Romania, 1876-1957). Limestone, 23 x 13 ¼ x 10 inches, 1916. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arsenberg Collection, 1950.

Like any good children’s book, A Is for Art Museum will keep adults interested, too, wondering what will happen next. “D is for Dancer” brings us to the Edgar Degas’ statue of the Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. I can just imagine the feeling of a child, perhaps a little girl taking her first dance class, connecting with this image and later even going to see the sculpture itself at the museum—a friend waiting for her all this time. “E is for Eyes” presents the museum’s collection of miniature paintings of eyes, one of the wonderfully strange slices of the past hidden in plain sight in one of the museum’s lesser travelled rooms. “K is for Kiss,” featuring Constantin Brancusi’s The Kiss (above) calls on youngsters to stretch their minds to see the two figures smooching. When “N is for Neck” rolls around, the authors ask the young reader to try physically stretching his or her neck just like the woman in a painting by Amedeo Modigliani does. Labels such as classical, Impressionist, modern, or even foreign have no place in this alphabetical tour of cultures and styles, opening up the child’s imagination to a literally boundless world.

Three Musicians (Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, Spanish, 1881-1973). Oil on canvas, 80 ½ x 74 1/8 inches, 1921. Philadelphia Museum of Art: A.E. Gallatin Collection, 1952.

The first time I flipped through A Is for Art Museum, I did so with my 2-year-old Alex in my lap. He knows all his letters, not necessarily all in order, so he was able to concentrate on the visuals of the book. (The inclusion of uppercase and lowercase letters—not always a given in alphabet books—shows that the educators knew what they were doing.) When I came to “M is for Musicians,” for which the authors made the remarkable choice of Pablo Picasso’s Three Musicians (above), I asked Alex if he could see the instruments. Finding anything in Picasso’s Cubist jumble challenges most adults, but Alex didn’t “know enough” not to try. After a few valiant guesses, Alex looked up at me and I showed him where they were. The look of discovery in his eye alone was worth the price of the book. It said, “Of course, there they were all along.” Not every work in the book is as challenging as Picasso’s, but the diversity of the works will keep the inquisitive child coming back again and again to find new things they didn’t see before. I can easily imagine A Is for Art Museum serving as the beginning of an art scavenger hunt through the PMA with kids giggling in the galleries as they come face to face with their new “old” friends.

The Orchard Window (Daniel Garber, American, 1880-1958). Oil on canvas, 56 7/16 x 52 ¼ inches, 1918. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Centennial gift of the family of Daniel Garber, 1976.

I can’t imagine any better advertisement or marketing tool to the four-and-under set than A Is for Art Museum. The heavy hitters in the Philadelphia lineup, such as Picasso’s Three Musicians and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers are here, but quieter gems such as an ornate German helmet from the armor collection and a Qing Dynasty dog cage. The choice of works such as Daniel Garber’s The Orchard Window (above) lends a distinctly Philadelphian flavor to the book, too. Proceeds from the launch party for A Is for Art Museum will go towards providing free copies to local libraries, Head Start programs, and community centers, adding to the aura of good feelings surrounding this book. Even if you’re not from Philadelphia, A Is for Art Museum will pull you and your child into the circle of readers and art lovers and never let you go.

[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for providing me with a review copy of Maria K. Shoemaker and Katy Friedland’s A Is for Art Museum and for the images above.]

Heroes and Heroines

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), Fishermen at Sea, 1796. Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 122.2 cm (36 x 48 1/8); framed: 112.8 x 142.5 x 10.5 cm (44 7/16 x 56 1/8 x 4 1/8). Tate, London, Purchased 1972. © Tate, London

Over Labor Day weekend, just before the Met closed their exhibition J.M.W. Turner, Annie and I were able to make it up to New York City. I reviewed the catalogue last year, while it ran at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and have been patiently waiting until it came within visiting distance from our home (and with handy grandparent babysitting service nearby). Turner may have been the first real artist that captured my imagination to the endless possibilities of paint. My youthful reading of John Ruskin’s writings championing Turner shaped my earliest impressions, but decades later, Turner still surprises and astounds. Even an early work such as Fisherman at Sea (above) knocks me out. I’ve seen it in reproduction plenty of times, but seeing it in person struck me more than I anticipated. I like to use Annie as a gauge for just how powerful an artist is. I’m too close to the art to trust my judgment any more, but she loved Fisherman at Sea as much as I did for its beautiful, romantic darkness. Surrounded by all the Turner-esque sunrises and sunsets, this moonlit work felt like a cool oasis before moving on to the next rooms and the more intense works.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), The Field of Waterloo, 1818. Oil on canvas, 149.3 x 238.8 cm (58 3/4 x 94); framed: 185 x 277.5 x 18 cm (72 13/16 x 109 1/4 x 7 1/16). Tate, London, Bequeathed by the Artist, 1856. © Tate, London

It’s easy to lose sight of Turner’s historicity in light of his pre-Impressionism and, especially in the later works, even proto-Abstract Expressionism. After standing before The Field of Waterloo (above) for a few minutes, I walked away thinking it may have been the greatest anti-war painting of the nineteenth century, or at least in the British tradition. Seeing the mass of humanity laid low by warfare as women and children search for lost husbands, fathers, and sons, the idea of Waterloo as a victory completely disappeared for Annie and me. As a kid, I loved reading military history. Those maps with the big thick arrows cutting across, usually with the generals’ names emblazoned on them, seemed like a great, glorious game. It all seemed so heroic, and neat. Turner displays true heroism in showing the dark side of war, the dirty secret that warmongers don’t want to get out. Such a picture couldn’t have been popular among Turner’s contemporaries, who cast Napoleon as a villain to be had at any cost much as Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden fit that role in our day. The cost is always acceptable, of course, when someone else is paying it.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1834. Watercolor on paper, 23.3 x 32.5 cm (9 3/16 x 12 13/16). Tate, London, Bequeathed by the Artist, 1856. © Tate, London

The highlight of the exhibition for me was seeing my favorite painting from the PMA, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834, surrounded by the watercolors Turner madly dashed off as the London crowds assembled to witness the conflagration. Painted with just a few colors, each of these (one example above) blooms with fiery red set within a penumbra of dark blue. I found myself looking back and forth from the watercolors to the oil painting, trying to recreate in my mind the link forged in Turner’s mind between them. Of all the rooms of the exhibition, I felt that this room centering on that one painting captured the energy and passion of Turner better than any other. Annie and I agreed that the matching up of the “preliminary” works with the “finished” work increased the enjoyment of all the paintings. For me, it also blurred the line between preliminary and finished. Each of these watercolors deserves a permanent exhibition space as much as the final oil painting. I’ve always believed that the combination of such works to tell the “story” of a painting provides the public with an invaluable glimpse into the working methods of the artist. “I have no secret but damned hard work,” Turner loved to tell his rivals and critics. In those watercolors, the secret is revealed.

Annie and I also were able to catch the Met’s Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy exhibition in its final days. It was a thrill to see superhero costumes from the movies such as Superman, Batman, and even the recent Iron Man on display with fashion designers’ interpretations on those characters. Some of the work seemed a little too cobbled together in a Project Runway kind of way, but I’m no expert on what’s “fierce” or not in fashion. A bittersweet moment came when we turned a corner and saw the original Wonder Woman costume worn by Lynda Carter on the 1970s television show (above). Memories of being a 9-year-old boy sitting agog on his parents’ living room carpet watching a woman from another world (played by a real-life woman who looked like she came from another planet) run across the screen raced through my memory. Sadly, looking at the costume made me feel older than my years. Poor conservation or the decay of poor original materials had left the blue elements of the costume looking a sickly shade of purple. Amazingly, Lynda Carter has aged better than her former costume. I’ve read elsewhere that Lynda Carter wore two different costumes, one for acting in and one for posing in (i.e., she’d fall out of it if she moved). I believe that the Met put the posing costume on display, but the pale mannequin standing in for the lovely Lynda was a poor replacement for the real thing, or at least my memories of a 30-year-old television show.

[Many thanks to Alex's Gung Gung and Pau Pau and to his Uncles Gary and Johnny for watching Alex while we went to the Met.]

Child’s Play

One of the great joys of parenthood is reading to your child. All those great illustrated books that you tucked back in the back of your mind as adulthood crowded the front suddenly emerge from your subconscious. So many contemporary illustrators owe a huge debt to their Victorian forebears, who essentially created the idea of illustrated children’s tales and, therefore, childhood itself. Arthur Rackham stands among the first-rank illustrators of that initial wave of creativity. Born September 18, 1867, Rackham first gained the public’s attention with his illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (originally part of The Little White Bird) by J.M. Barrie. (Rackham’s frontispiece appears above, from 1906.) Seven-day-old Peter Pan watches fairies flee from him as he stands among the garden’s trees, which twist with almost sinister intent. Director Guillermo Del Toro credits Rackham as one of the visual influences for Pan's Labyrinth, in which nature itself seems to conspire against the young child’s happiness in her fulfillment of her quest. Rackham’s images appear as fresh as they did over a century ago, with none of that Victorian mustiness.

Rackham achieves that perfect balance of realism with magic that makes the magic seem actually believable. In one illustration for Flora Annie Steel’s 1918 edition of English Fairy Tales, Rackham shows “The giant Galligantua and the wicked old magician transform the duke's daughter into a white hind” (above, from 1918). The fidelity of the white hind makes the grotesque giant and wizened wizard almost believable. That balance is the key to all successful children’s illustration, at least for me, and Alex. One of Alex’s favorite illustrators, Sylvia Long, can put rabbits in pajamas or eyeglasses on bears and make even adults momentarily suspend their disbelief thanks to her superior draftsmanship. Rackham worked at a time when the line between book illustration and fine art wasn’t as clearly drawn as today and even exhibited some of his work in the Louvre in 1914. Only in the last twenty years, after a long dismissal of such art as kid’s stuff, have collectors and museums re-recognized the artistry of creators such as Rackham.

Rackham turned his eye to other subjects that were certainly not child’s play, but no less imaginative. In 1910, Rackham painted a series of illustrations for Richard Wagner's "The Ring" (one example above). The sense of flowing movement from upper left to the dark right corner is effortless. We feel as if we’re falling with the figures Rackham draws. The sharp diagonal line reveals Rackham’s interest in Japonisme, especially ukiyo-e, Japanese wood-block prints, which opened the eyes of Western artists to new compositional possibilities. Rackham also illustrated Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and tales by Edgar Allan Poe, among other “adult” works. If you want to lump Rackham in with any group of artists or movement, Art Nouveau would probably suit him best, but there’s an individuality to Rackham’s art that keeps it fresh and virtually as timeless as the wonder of childhood itself.

I Shall Return

Annie, Alex, and I have returned from our annual pilgrimage to the New Jersey Shore. Alex was a little less willing than MacArthur to get his feet wet in the surf, but he had a great time splashing in the pool with his cousins and just chilling with a snack in a beach chair (above). At the Boardwalk, Alex indulged both of his major obsessions: cars (below) and jumping (on a trampoline; far below).

As promised earlier, Art Blog By Bob will resume regular programming on Monday, August 18th. Here’s hoping that everyone’s taken time to enjoy their Summer and is ready for another great fall season of new art exhibitions and new art books.

Wanna Get Away

Annie, Alex, and I will be packing up everything but the kitchen sink and heading down to an undisclosed location on the New Jersey Shore for some fun in the sun this week for a much needed and greatly deserved vacation. I can’t promise to kick it “old-school” like William Glackens’ Beach Umbrellas at Blue Point (above, from 1916), but there will be boardwalks and salt water taffy involved.

Art Blog By Bob will resume programming on Monday, August 18th. Until then, take this month’s beach-related poll, check out some of the great art blogs on the blogroll at right, or stroll through the archives and enjoy the memories.

Aloha!

Misunderstanding, Persecution, and Neglect

In 1894, after losing his teaching job at the PAFA amidst a sexually charged scandal that would plague him the rest of his life, Thomas Eakins wrote: "My honors are misunderstanding, persecution & neglect, enhanced because unsought." Born July 25, 1844 under an unlucky star, Eakins may be the greatest artist America has ever produced, certainly the greatest Philadelphia ever birthed, and yet also the most unjustly neglected. Growing up in Philadelphia and fascinated with Eakins’ work since I was a teenager, I can’t help but see Eakins around every corner. Annie once asked me what great painting I’d like to own. When I told her Eakins’ The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull) (above, from 1871), she did the next best thing—she made it the wallpaper for my laptop. Now, Eakins portrait of his friend Max Schmitt stares out at me each time I turn it on, but my eyes often turn to Eakins portrait of himself rowing away into the distance. Each time we drive along the Schuylkill River and see Boathouse Row, I think of Eakins and this painting, however briefly. Each time we cross the Girard Avenue Bridge, shown in the distance of The Champion Single Sculls, to make a U-turn after visiting the Philadelphia Zoo, I think of Eakins and this painting, however briefly. (While visiting the zoo with Annie and Alex, I sometimes think of how Eakins’ pet monkey Bobby ended up there after Eakins’ death and wonder if any of Bobby’s ancestors still swing in those habitats.) But all those brief moments of reflection add up to a huge ghost that haunts the city like Hamlet’s father, asking to be revenged.

Sidney Kirkpatrick actually titled his great biography The Revenge of Thomas Eakins, in response to the hatchet job by Henry Adams titled Eakins Revealed. I’ve read both, as well as every other major book on Eakins. The sum of such reading infects me with the ability to merge the city and the artist almost entirely. A Phillies game harks back to Eakins watercolor of baseball players practicing in 1875-style uniforms. Walking past Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and their statue of Dr. Samuel D. Gross calls to mind The Gross Clinic and how that work was almost taken from Philadelphia. For someone who has been dead for almost a century, Eakins still gets around, at least vicariously through my thoughts. When the PMA exhibited Eakins’ The Swimming Hole (above, from 1884), I made sure to take a good long look before it went back to it’s home museum in Texas, part of the great Eakins exodus in the years after his death. Eakins almost sheepishly raises his head above the water in the lower right corner of the painting, looking on at the young men cavorting in the water. Many read sinister narratives into Eakins’ watery self-portrait here, usually centered around homoerotic voyeurism, but I prefer to see Eakins as an unapologetic student of the human form literally worshiping at the feet of God’s greatest achievement.

When the National Academy of Design in New York invited Eakins to join their organization, they asked him to submit a self-portrait. Eakins’ Self-Portrait (above, from 1902) shows the artist gone from riches to rags. His jacket is clearly worn in spots. He’s painted himself poorly shaved. His eyes seem sad rather than proudly brilliant. In this self-portrait, Eakins showed to the world the effects of the years of “misunderstanding, persecution, and neglect.” In many ways, Eakins’ plight mirrors that of Philadelphia itself. Home to the Centennial celebration of 1876, Philadelphia stood as one of the most prosperous manufacturing cities in the world. As the decades passed, those factories gradually closed, jobs disappeared, neighborhoods went bad, and a general sense of malaise and inferiority took firm root in the soul of the city and its people. Everything from the trivial (losing sports teams) to the deadly serious (astronomical murder rates) contributes to the second-class city mentality that Philadelphia imposes upon itself as it slinks into the shadow of New York City. I feel the same fury for my city’s fall as I do for Eakins’ eclipse, believing that the answer to one may actually rest in part in the answer to the other. I’ve been toying around with the idea of writing a short book with a title something like “Thomas Eakins’ Philadelphia.” Aside from finding the time and energy to write a formal proposal for a publisher, I wonder if I’ll ever find the time and energy to write such a book while working a full-time job and being a full-time husband and father. Part of me, however, would love to do it for no other reason than to show my son and future generations of Philadelphians that their city has a great and powerful past all around them that makes them second to nobody. The ghosts are already speaking to them, calling them to better things, if they will simply stop and listen.