Was William T. Trego America’s Greatest Disabled Artist?

One of the biggest problems with lists is that with lists come labels. A list of African-American artists or women artists already sets them up as different (and perhaps less, somehow) than artists on another list. But sometimes lists also celebrate difference and how individuals overcome challenges and thrive in a society that can be less than totally accepting. Few people know the name of the disabled 19^th century American artist William T. Trego, even though one of his paintings, The March to Valley Forge, December 16, 1777, remains a staple of American history textbooks looking to illustrate one of the great turning points of the American Revolutionary War. In So Bravely and So Well: The Life and Art of William T. Trego by Joseph P. Eckhardt, we learn Trego’s remarkable tale of overcoming the effects of childhood polio, which left his hands paralyzed, to attend art school and even study in Paris in his pursuit of a career as a painter, all during an era when the physically disabled were perceived as mentally disabled, too, and in which the idea of accessibility for all remained nearly a century in the future. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Was William T. Trego America’s Greatest Disabled Artist?"

[Image: William T. Trego (1858-1909), The Color Guard (French Dragoons Charging), 1890, oil on canvas, H. 35 x W. 45.75 inches, West Point Museum, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York.]

[Many thanks to the James A. Michener Art Museum for the image above and to the University of Pennsylvania Press for providing me with a review copy of So Bravely and So Well: The Life and Art of William T. Trego by Joseph P. Eckhardt.]

With Friends Like These: How Isamu Noguchi Became an Artist

If the The Noguchi Museum’s 25^th anniversary exhibition were an episode of Friends, it would be titled “The One Where Isamu Became an Artist.” On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1922-1960, which runs through April 24, 2011, demonstrates just how Isamu Noguchi navigated through the worlds of sculpture, painting, dance, theater, and even architecture and design with a little help from his friends. Borrowing bits from different means of expression, Noguchi added them together into the greater sum of his sculpture. With friends like Arshile Gorky, Constantin Brancusi, Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, and Louis Kahn, Noguchi became an artistic force transcending traditional boundaries. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "With Friends Like These."

[Image: Isamu Noguchi, Arshile Gorky, De Hirsh Margulies. Hitler Invades Poland, September 1, 1939. Crayon and sealing ink on paper, 17 1/2 x 22 7/8 in. © 2010 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. © 2010 The Arshile Gorky Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy Gallery Gertrude Stein, New York.]

[Many thanks to the The Noguchi Museum for providing me with the image above and a review copy of the catalogue to the exhibition On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1922-1960, which runs through April 24, 2011.]

Going Deep: Art and the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop

When critic Randall Jarrell mentioned Vermeer in a review of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, Bishop excitedly expressed her joy over someone making the connection. We can only guess how she’d feel about Peggy Samuels’ Deep Skin: Elizabeth Bishop and Visual Art, in which the Drew University professor analyzes the influence of more modern artists such as Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, and Alexander Calder on Bishop’s poetry. “From the late-1930s through the mid-1950s, Bishop drew on visual art intently to work out her own aesthetic,” Samuels asserts. Like a great quarterback, Samuels huddles up these visual artists and the poet and explains how they team up to create a whole new understanding of surface and depth in images and words. Deep Skin goes deep, and scores. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Going Deep."

[Many thanks to Cornell University Press for providing me with a review copy of Peggy Samuels’ Deep Skin: Elizabeth Bishop and Visual Art.]