How Football Is Like a Modern Painting

As the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks prepare to meet this Sunday in Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium, you’ll hear a lifetime’s worth of metaphors for football, many of which have already been catalogued and parodied in George Carlin’s classic routine “Football versus Baseball.” One metaphor you’re less likely to hear is how football is like a modern painting, but that’s a common metaphor in one of the most unusual, but most insightful sports books written about the game—Nicholas Dawidoff’s Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football. If you’re a fan of football or just a fan of interesting, quirky writing that gets at the creative artistry of any activity, including sports, Dawidoff’s Collision Low Crossers is the book for you. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Football Is Like a Modern Painting."

Is Dying Detroit Trying to Murder its Museum?

How desperate can a city facing financial armageddon get? What’s the last resort for cities such as Detroit, wounded first by the failing American auto industry and then set bleeding like every other American city after the 2008 financial crash? Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr raised the possibility of selling the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, worth about $15 billion, to help pay off some of the city’s debt. Setting aside the complicated issue of whether a city even has the legal right to sell its museum’s collection like any other movable asset, does a city have the moral right to sell works of art? What would the long-term effect of making such a short-term decision? If dying Detroit murders its museum, will it lose its soul, and the soul of its people? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Dying Detroit Trying to Murder its Museum?"

Can an Artist Be Too Big to Fail (or Jail)?

The phrase “too big to fail” still rings hollowly and painfully for everyone who remembers the 2008 bailout of the reeling U.S. financial system that was termed necessary to avoid the kind of mess our economy’s currently facing now. When I read about Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum’s facing possible jail time over unpaid taxes and the possibility that he’d have to give up painting while incarcerated, I wondered if Nerdrum might be “too big to fail” or, in this case, jail. Even if guilty, is it ethical to force an artist, especially one in his sixties, to stop making great art? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can an Artist Be Too Big to Fail (or Jail)?"

[Image: Odd Nerdrum. Self-Portrait with Eyes Closed, 1991.]

Fire and Ice

Please click over to Picture This at Big Think to read "Fire and Ice," some thoughts on art history and the history of climate change both natural and man-made. J. M. W. Turner's Chichester Canal (above, from 1828) plays a starring role in a tale that begins in 1816—the “Year Without a Summer.”

A Kiss to Build a Dream on

For the first Art Poll By Bob of 2009 I asked, “Which of the following wintry works is the most chill to you?” You frostily replied that Pieter Brueghel the Elder's Hunters in the Snow (1565) was the chillingest, with 19 supporters, just edging out Caspar David Friedrich's The Sea of Ice (1823-1825), which received 16 votes. Andy Goldsworthy's Icicle Star (1980s) matched the late Andrew Wyeth's First Snow, Study for Groundhog Day (1959) with 10 votes. John Henry Twachtman's Winter Harmony (1890-1900) with 4 votes and Hiroshige's Mountains and Rivers on the Kiso Road (1857), Claude Monet's Snow at Argenteuil (1875), and Vincent van Gogh's Landscape with Snow (1888) with 2 votes each rounded out the field. Thanks to everyone who braved the cold and voted.

For February’s Art Poll By Bob, I’m heating things up. Love is in the air, so in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m asking, “Which of these famous kisses gets you in the mood?”:

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The First Kiss (1873)

Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss (1908)

Marc Chagall, The Birthday (1915)

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907-1908)

Roy Lichtenstein, Kiss V (1965)

Edvard Munch, The Kiss (1892)

Auguste Rodin, The Kiss (1889)

Franz von Stuck, The Kiss of the Sphinx (1895)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, In Bed: The Kiss (1892)

None of these smooches may reach the top 5 all time, like the kiss at the end of The Princess Bride (top of post), but they come close. Grab your sweetie, pucker up, and vote!

Just Chilling

Like a long holiday hangover, December’s Art Poll By Bob had to eventually come to an end. When I asked the following: “Which of the following Christmas stamps from around the world says ‘Christmas’ the most to you?” Strong to the finish were... the Finnish! With 16 votes, Finland's stamps featuring familiar characters by Finnish children’s book illustrator Julia Vuori and fancy “Frosty Night,” believed to be the world's first transparent stamp (designed by Nina Rintala), carried the day. Canada followed with 10 votes, Australia and England with 8, Spain with 6, the United States with 5, Ireland with 4, and Gilbraltar garnered a solid sole vote. Thanks to everyone who voted.

For the first Art Poll By Bob of 2009 I’m getting seasonal. Let me first begin by saying that winter is my least favorite season. I hate ice and snow. I hate shoveling it, driving in it, walking in it, you name it in it. (I’m not even a fan of Vanilla Ice [above], if you can believe it.) I agree that it can be beautiful to look at, but the thought of having to contend with it personally brings out the Scrooge in me. Putting personal prejudice aside, I ask, “Which of the following wintry works is the most chill to you?”:

Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Hunters in the Snow (1565).

Caspar David Friedrich. The Sea of Ice (1823-1825).

Andy Goldsworthy. Icicle Star (1980s).

Hiroshige. Mountains and Rivers on the Kiso Road (1857).

Claude Monet. Snow at Argenteuil (1875).

John Henry Twachtman. Winter Harmony (1890-1900).

Andrew Wyeth. First Snow, Study for Groundhog Day (1959).

Vincent van Gogh. Landscape with Snow (1888).

Grab a hot chocolate, sit by the fire, and pick the most chilling one of the bunch!

A Rogue and Peasant Slave

Legend has it that Pieter Bruegel the Elder would disguise himself as a peasant and crash peasant weddings and other gatherings to collect material for his depictions of that simple way of life. Born sometime in 1525, Bruegel became the greatest painter of the sixteenth century’s Netherlandish Renaissance before his death on died September 5, 1569. In works such as The Hunters in the Snow (above, from 1565), part of a larger series showing peasant life in different months, Bruegel shows hunters returning to their village after a long, hard slog in the January snows. Bruegel painted during the time now known as the Little Ice Age, when seemingly endless winters made an already tough existence even tougher. The matching green ice and sky breaking up the expanses of pure white snow enshrouds the entire scene with the sense of death, against which the tiny dark figures and their homes seem but futile efforts at life. Despite such hard times, Bruegel found a dark humor in life itself and painted both the pain and joy of the peasant life.

Bruegel traveled to Italy in the 1550s and saw the work of the great Italian Renaissance masters, but the greatest influence on his aft after 1556 or so was Hieronymus Bosch. Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death (above, from 1562) shows a shared demonological interest with Bosch, but maintains focus on the natural landscape and the everyday life of peasants. Malevolent skeletons mow down the living with scythes as a wasteland of withered trees and grass stretches to the horizon. Like Bosch’s works, Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death doesn’t leave much for the faithful to believe in. Living in the unforgiving, brutish world of the time, Bruegel refuses to depict a heavenly host arriving from on high trailing clouds of glory. The Protestant Reformation enflamed the religious passions for almost half a century by the time Bruegel painted The Triumph of Death, but the pessimism born of such religious conflict seems remarkably fresh.

Bruegel painted many conventional religious scenes, still the bulk of the art business in his day, but his The Tower of Babel (above, from 1563) shows that Bruegel could also paint a disturbingly unconventional religious work, too. Bruegel’s tower threatens to topple, just as in the Bible story, but anachronistically it bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Colosseum, a symbol both of the pride of the Roman Empire as well as the site of the religious persecution of the early Christians. Is Bruegel trying to say that the Reformation-era arguments recreate the language barriers of Biblical Babel, thus bringing down the entire “house” of civilization? In evoking Rome, does Bruegel blame the Pope, the bishop of Rome, for Europe’s decay? Regardless, Bruegel chooses the Colosseum, already in disrepair by his time, as a symbol of his time’s dysfunctionality. When he died, Bruegel ordered that his most subversive works be destroyed, fearing repercussions for his family, which included future artists Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Bruegel the Elder failed to live long enough to teach his sons how to paint, but in the legacy of his works he taught them, and others, how to think.

On the Nose

When Pope Sixtus IV gathered the fantastic four of Sandro Botticelli, Perugino, Cosimo Rosselli, and Domenico Ghirlandaio to paint new frescoes for the Sistine Chapel, Ghirlandaio’s reputation among that foursome was second only to that of Botticelli. Ghirlandaio’s The Calling of the Apostles (above) remains among the many wall frescoes overshadowed by Michelangelo’s achievements, but close inspection shows an artist worthy of a second look. The landscape that reaches back into the distance behind the flurry of figures at the front testifies to Ghirlandaio’s gift for realism in depicting devotional scenes. Sadly, the Resurrection fresco he also painted in the Sistine Chapel was destroyed, later to be replaced by Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. Michelangelo briefly served as an apprentice under Ghirlandaio, who died January 11, 1494, so you have to wonder what he may have felt painting the same scene on the same wall worked upon by his master four decades before.

In the convent of San Marco in Florence, Ghirlandaio painted one of his most enduring versions of The Last Supper (above, from 1486). Ghirlandaio creates a sumptuous dinner, filling the plates with bread, cherries, and more, and weighting down the table with cups and decanters. Following the common layout of the scene, he places Judas on the side of the table opposite Jesus, in contrast to the Da Vinci arrangement modern eyes have come to expect. The rich merchants of Florence would have easily seen a bit of their own life of luxury in the table depicted here. The warmth and humor of Ghirlandaio comes through in the cat in the right foreground, poised to pounce upon any fallen scraps.

My favorite painting by Ghirlandaio, however, is his An Old Man and His Grandson (above, from 1490). I remember seeing this in the Louvre amidst the other great Renaissance paintings. It stood out to me because of the stunning combination of realism in depicting the grandfather’s afflicted nose and humanism in showing the love and pride he took in his grandson. Such a figure could easily have become a Brueghel-esque grotesquerie, yet Ghirlandaio resists that impulse and paints the interior life of the old man beneath the disfigurement. I recall reading years ago Bernard Berenson and Giorgio Vasari on the Italian Renaissance and feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of names—long, long names. Ghirlandaio, however, always stuck in my mind as one to remember.