Between Two Worlds: The Unveiling of Yasuo Kuniyoshi

When the Whitney Museum of American Art decided to stage in 1948 their first exhibition of a living American artist, they chose someone who wasn’t even an American citizen, but only legally could become one just before his death. Painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi came to America as a teenager and immersed himself in American culture and art while rising to the top of his profession, all while facing discrimination based on his Japanese heritage. The exhibition The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, which runs through August 30, 2015, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, unveils an amazing story of an artist who lived between two worlds — East and West — while bridging them in his art that not only synthesized different traditions, but also mirrored the joys and cruelties of them. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Between Two Worlds: The Unveiling of Yasuo Kuniyoshi."

Seeing the Funny Side of Sainthood

When the Vatican recently cleared both Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II for sainthood—a hyper-holy two-fer—critics all along the political spectrum grumbled over the honoring of one man or the other. Like the chipped and worn statues of Christian antiquity, the image of sainthood’s taken a beating over the centuries. Just as modern medicine’s makes the required miracles harder to come by, modern cynicism sees more flaws than faith. Michael Landy: Saints Alive, which runs through November 24, 2013 at the National Gallery, London, puts a modern spin on the sainthood system through a series of kinetic sculptures designed not to move you towards piety but to move you to a new perspective on what it means to elevate a person to spiritual superstardom. By seeing the funny side of sainthood, Landy pokes fun at the past while also warning us about the idolatry of the present. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Seeing the Funny Side of Sainthood."

[Image: Michael Landy. Spin the Saint Catherine Wheel and Win the Crown of Martyrdom, 2013. Mixed media. 371 x 440 x 84 cm. Michael Landy, courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery, London. © Michael Landy, courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery, London / Photo: The National Gallery, London.]

[Many thanks to the National Gallery, London, for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to Michael Landy: Saints Alive, which runs through November 24, 2013.]

[Many thanks to Hugh, my eyes in London, for pointing out this exhibition to me and sharing his insights.]

 

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Francis Bacon, Triptych Inspired by T.S. Eliot's 'Sweeney Agonistes' (1967). Oil on canvas, 198 x 147.5 cm each. Courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1972. © Estate of Francis Bacon. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2008.

As much as one wonders at the paintings reproduced in Francis Bacon (edited by Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens), the catalogue to the Tate Britain exhibition celebrating the centennial of the birth of the painter Francis Bacon, perhaps even more fascinating are the photographs of Bacon’s studio, which has become as much a shrine as an archaeological dig site for fans and scholars since the artist’s death in 1992. “The veil of myth has become attached to the discarded photographs, loose leaves and books, boxes and scraps of clothing,” Gale and Stephens write in their essay, “On the Margin of the Impossible,” of what they call a “composting of detritus.” In many ways, Bacon’s studio served as a physical analogue for the workings of his mind, which could pull together disparate elements across different fields and arrive at works such as Triptych Inspired by T.S. Eliot's “Sweeney Agonistes” (above, from 1967). In this catalogue, Gale and Stephens gather together essays that pick up “these fragments” Bacon “shored against” his “ruins,” to borrow a phrase from Eliot’s The Waste Land, and try to piece together into understandable form an artist always greater than the sum of his parts. “I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them,” Bacon once famously said, “like a snail, leaving a trail of human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime.” This catalogue and exhibition follow hot on the trail of Bacon’s humanity—the sublime, the tragic, and, yes, the sometimes slimy.


Francis Bacon, Study from the Human Body (1949). Oil on canvas, 147.0 x 134.2 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Purchased 1953. © Estate of Francis Bacon. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2008.

Martin Harrison tackles the issue of Bacon’s take on art history in his essay, “Bacon’s Paintings.” “Francis Bacon’s relationship with art of the past was dynamic, if complicated,” Harrison writes with great understatement. Bacon openly admired works by Honore Daumier, El Greco, and a host of others. Not only did Bacon lean heavily upon Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X in creating Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953), but he also saw Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus as instrumental in his development. “If you don’t understand the Rokeby Venus you won’t understand my paintings,” Bacon claimed, thinking perhaps of works such as Study from the Human Body (above, from 1949). As Harrison points out, Bacon embraced the old masters more as he gained fame and actually distanced himself from more modern influences he once praised, such as Henri Matisse and Chaim Soutine. Bacon consciously scripted how art history would see him. “Bacon professed to be indifferent to the interpretations attached to his paintings,” Harrison asserts, “yet he suppressed texts of which he disapproved.” As Victoria Walsh writes in her essay, “Real Imagination Is Technical Imagination,” “Bacon created his own translator in David Sylvester,” the British art critic who eventually became Bacon’s confidant and semi-official critical outlet. The 16 years that now stretch between today and Bacon’s death provide the necessary space for these critics to step away from Bacon’s looming presence in the art world in life to more clearly see his work in death.


Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944). Oil on board, 95 x 73.5 each. © Tate.

Although critics early on recognized Bacon’s debt to the movies in his works, that connection remains a fascinating source of new insights on the artist. David Alan Mellor’s “Film, Fantasy, History in Francis Bacon” traces Bacon’s love of film back to the very beginning of the modern cinema, when the 13-year-old Bacon saw D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) in 1922. Bacon studied the work of all the great early directors, including Abel Gance, Fritz Lang, and Sergei Eisenstein. The artistry of these directors challenged the other visual arts to keep up. “Film had stolen something of the vitality and the powers of disclosure of painting,” Mellor writes, “it could transcribe history.” Bacon looked to steal back the magic of painting from film. Mellor connects many of Bacon’s works to specific film moments. Critics have long analyzed Bacon’s repeated use of the “screaming nurse” from the Odessa Steps sequence of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, but Mellor points out the connection between the triptych technique of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (above, from 1944) and the cinematic triptych technique used by Abel Gance in the climax of his 1927 masterpiece, Napoléon. Bacon clearly internalized many of the images he saw flicker before him over the years, and Mellor digs into that past to resurrect lost influences such as Gance, one of the many great silent film directors who have nearly disappeared thanks to the physical disappearance of their films.


Francis Bacon, Triptych—In Memory of George Dyer (1971). Oil on canvas support, each: 1980 x 1475 mm painting. Fondation Beyeler, Basel. © Estate of Francis Bacon. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2008

In his essay “Comparative Strangers,” Simon Ofield touches upon the issue of Bacon’s homosexuality and his art. Researching the men’s magazines and bodybuilding magazines that Bacon mined for visual inspiration, Ofield sees these magazines as “making connections between photographic images and certain (and uncertain) knowledges of social, sexual and aesthetic practices and pleasures.” Such publications served as “places where desire took shape—sites of production and seduction,” Ofield writes. Bacon allegedly indulged in the bad-boy fantasy, most famously in his tragic relationship with petty criminal George Dyer, subject of Triptych—In Memory of George Dyer (above, 1971), painted after Dyer’s suicide. Dyer’s tribute goes beyond pure homosexual love and incorporates Bacon’s interest in painting from photography, as he had used snapshots of his former lover in painting the piece. Bacon saw the world through photos, Gale and Stephens suggest, “as if, by viewing photographs, one inevitably reviewed reality more intensely.” The blurring of candid snapshots caused by motion also involved Bacon’s beloved idea of chance. In the Dyer triptych above and many other works, Bacon “harness[es] chance gestures,” believing that “chance is not simply an artistic strategy but a fundamental part of an attitude to life,” Gale and Stephens write. Placing faith in chance rather than some idea of god, Bacon “sought to express what it was to live in a world without God, a state of existence that was merely transitory without reason or afterlife.” Stealing a page from Nietzsche, Bacon found a way to be an optimist in a world constantly aware of its own death.

Francis Bacon, Study of a Nude (1952-1953). Oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm. Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, University of East Anglia. © Estate of Francis Bacon. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2008.

Bacon once called the sum of his work, “The History of Europe in My Lifetime.” The twentieth century’s long parade of inhumanity that marched past Bacon’s view fed his visual imagination as it shaped his soul (if he acknowledged the existence of one). “I think of myself as a kind of pulverizing machine into which everything I look at and feel is fed,” Bacon once revealed. This wide-ranging catalogue and exhibition de-pulverize much of what Bacon digested and recreate the artist as a young man, before fame formed the brand name of “Francis Bacon” and he began to shape his own legacy by force of sheer will. Bacon’s style, sexuality, and subject matter will certainly dissuade and attract viewers, but the reality of his work demands some response from each of us who know that the history of his lifetime found in his works is the history of our own, or at least the history of what shapes our world today. Like a fine team of archaeologists, Gale and Stephens dug deep into the subject of Francis Bacon and exhumed not only the artist but the man and mind behind the art.

[Many thanks to Tate Britain for providing me with a review copy of Francis Bacon (edited by Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens) and for the images above from the exhibition.]

Holy Toledo

Doménicos Theotokópoulos, better known simply as El Greco, did more than his share of traveling during his lifetime. Born October 1, 1541 in Crete, El Greco traveled to Rome in 1570 to hone his already formidable skills. Although Michelangelo, Raphael, and other giants of the High Renaissance no longer lived, their influence was inescapable. However, El Greco found himself drawn the school of Mannerism and masters such as Tintoretto and Titian. El Greco soon took the eccentricities of Mannerism beyond acceptable levels for Italy and traveled to Spain in 1577 in search of royal patronage from King Philip II. The good Spanish king longed for a proper Counter-Reformation artist who would place religious substance over personal style. El Greco sadly didn’t fit the bill, but he remained in Toledo for the rest of his days. El Greco’s View of Toledo (above, from 1596-1600) shows the then-vibrant city, the religious capital of Spain in its day, beneath a tormented sky. Arriving during the height of the Spanish Renaissance, after artists such as Alonso Berruguete had already pushed the envelope of what was acceptable stylistically, El Greco should have fit right in, but his unique style, although enjoyed by some contemporaries, remained an enigma for most until the twentieth century, when Expressionism and even Cubism “discovered” El Greco as a long-lost predecessor.

Despite the overarching influence of Michelangelo, or perhaps because of it, El Greco couldn’t stand Michelangelo. El Greco believed Michelangelo to be a good man who just didn’t know how to paint. In 1610, El Greco painted his version of the Laokoön, the classical sculpture unearthed during Michelangelo’s time that some suspect Michelangelo sculpted himself and planted to cause a stir. In El Greco’s version, that classical, Michelangelo-esque story gets the full El Greco treatment. The tight arrangement of the original sculpture comes unravelled in El Greco’s hands. Even the snakes seem stretched across the landscape. So many El Greco works stretch vertically that this horizontal work stands out even more. In the background , El Greco models the doomed city of Troy with the Trojan Horse at its gates on his adopted home of Toledo. Compositionally, El Greco’s version is brilliant—years, if not centuries ahead of its time. Painting at a time when religious works always were the most profitable, El Greco’s choice of a classical subject done in such an un-classical way seems odd, unless he intentionally wanted to cast off the burden of Michelangelo and all he stood for once and for all.

When El Greco died in 1614, The Opening of the Fifth Seal (above, from 1609-1614) remained in his studio, finished or unfinished depending on who you ask. El Greco remained one of those strange offshoots of the tree of art history—a fruitless branch until the twentieth century adopted him almost three centuries later. Paul Cézanne saw traces of what would flower into Cubism in El Greco’s stylized figures and landscapes. Pablo Picasso saw such bizarre figures as the risen souls of The Opening of the Fifth Seal and incorporated El Greco’s vision along with countless other influences into his landmark Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Much modern appreciation for El Greco comes from the fact that our eyes are now accustomed to his style after more than a century of similar stylistic experimentation. Taken out of context, El Greco doesn’t seem that different from us today. Returned to his context of time and place, El Greco becomes once again as foreign and difficult to understand as his name once was to his Spanish contemporaries.

Fathers and Sons

After the death of his father Pedro Berruguete, Alonso Berruguete questioned whether to follow in his father’s footsteps as a painter or pursue a career as a lawyer. Years later, when Berruguete died on September 25, 1561, many considered him the “Spanish Michelangelo,” the one artist more than any other who translated the Italian Renaissance into the Spanish Renaissance. Born around 1488, Berruguete’s rebirth and moment of epiphany came when he traveled to Florence and Rome in 1504 and saw the works of Michelangelo firsthand. Berruguete soon earned a place in Michelangelo’s workshop and learned at the feet of the master and befriended other young artists such as Andrea del Sarto and Bartolommeo Bandinelli. Berruguete trained as a painter with his father, but under his spiritual “father” Michelangelo, Alonso became a sculptor, creating years later works such as The Sacrifice of Isaac (above, from 1526-1532). Part of the San Benito altarpiece, The Sacrifice of Isaac shows the dramatic expressiveness of Michelangelo’s sculpture and painting that captivated the young Spaniard. Berruguete adds to the drama of the piece by painting the sculpture, adding to the liveliness and expression of the figures more than unadorned carved wood possibly could.

Berruguete brought Michelangelo-esque touches to his painting as well. In Salome (above, from 1512-1516), we see the young seductress looking down upon the severed head of John the Baptist. The bizarre calm with which she looks upon the head shows the influence of Mannerism upon Berruguete, who tried to amplify reality to the point of hyper-reality in pursuit of Michelangelo’s forcefulness of effect. Unable to match Michelangelo in technique, Berruguete resorted to other means to attract the same kind of religious fervor from viewers. Most of Berruguete’s works show episodes of great ecstasy or great agony, but Salome arrives on the scene after the fact—the calm after the storm of John’s martyrdom. Berruguete painted Salome at the end of his time in Italy, just before returning to Spain in 1517. In 1518, Charles V of Spain appointed Berruguete court painter and sculptor, positioning him to set the standards of taste for all of Spanish art.

It’s easy to see parallels between Michelangelo’s Dying Slave and figures such as Berruguete’s Saint Sebastian (above, from 1526-1532) from the same San Benito altarpiece that The Sacrifice of Isaac belongs to. Yet, Berruguete doesn’t just imitate Michelangelo’s art but extends certain elements of it, adjusting the settings on the drama just enough to create a difference but not set the entire work out of balance. With the official seal of approval of the Spanish court, Berruguete influenced an entire generation of Spanish artists who followed the example of Michelangelo and the other Italian Renaissance giants yet added their own subtle flavor. I look at this Saint Sebastian and imagine a young El Greco arriving years later from Greece, standing before this or some other work by Berruguete, and thinking, stretch the torso a bit here, extend the arms, lengthen the face… Alonso Berruguete’s wise career choice helped shape the direction of Spanish art for generations.

A Sun Among Stars

When critics search for the “father” of modern, twentieth century art, they continually roll the calendar back further and further, beginning with Picasso, then Manet, and then usually Velazquez, finding the earlier “father” by looking at whoever the preceding “father” was looking at and learning from. El Greco often gets a nod, which seems quite false considering how his influence and popularity is largely a modern phenomenon—a case of “fatherhood” after the fact. As argued in Late Titian and the Sensuality of Painting (reviewed here), the succession seems to end in the person of Titian, whom even contemporaries called "the sun amidst small stars" during the star-studded Italian Renaissance. Titian died on August 27, 1576, leaving no direct heirs, but artists such as Velazquez, El Greco, and Manet all looked to him for inspiration and guidance. Born sometime between 1477 and 1490 (maybe), Titian’s origins are lost to us, but his role as the origin of much of the modern art sensibility are increasingly being understood. In works such as his Bacchus and Ariadne (above, from 1520-1523), we see Titian’s famous gift for color along with his amazing eye for composition. Such inventive re-envisioning of mythological themes provided a template for later artists to riff on old material in new ways that modern artists still use.

When it comes to artistic bravado, the first names you may think of are Courbet or Pollock, but Titian knew the true meaning of attitude before all of the moderns. Over the centuries, many candidates have stepped up as the model for the Man with the Blue Sleeve (above, from 1510)—the poet Ariosto, one of Titian’s patrons, even Titian himself. What can’t be questioned is the arrogance in the sitter’s eye. The hyperrealism of the painting once led many to think that Giorgione, one of Titian’s contemporaries, was the artist, but the swagger of the sleeve dangling over the side of the window frame is pure Titian. Like Michelangelo, Titian flourished in the patronage-driven art world of the Renaissance while never pandering to the market, letting his amazing skills do the talking. Again, the famous Titian color bursts out of the dark background with the stunning blue of the man’s sleeve, but it is the psychological acuity of the face of elitism that serves as Titian’s signature here.

Late Titian and the Sensuality of Painting concentrated on the last twenty-five years of Titian’s life, when his brushwork became increasingly loose and expressive. In Danaë (above, from 1544-1545), Titian paints the nude with the softness and freedom that the Impressionists would later make famous. The pose itself, in which a large-scale nude sprawls across the width of the image, may have inspired Manet to paint his Olympia, the work that launched the Impressionist movement or at least the antiestablishment wing of modern art. Like Manet’s Olympia, Titian’s Danaë takes a real-life courtesan (allegedly the mistress of a Cardinal who commissioned the painting) and mixes contemporary sexual reality and ancient mythology into a crossover hit that coexists on both planes. Such self-conscious playfulness with the nature of reality itself, combined with all his other innovations, helps place Titian on the throne of “father” of modern art, at least until the next artist comes along to topple him off.

The Last of His Kind

When Tintoretto died on May 31, 1594, you could make the argument that the Italian Renaissance died with him, or at least the last great artist of that world-changing art movement. Born 1518, Tintoretto studied under Titian briefly, but educated himself for the most part by studying the works of Michelangelo and other giants. Titian reportedly tossed the teenaged Tintoretto from his workshop after seeing some of the young artist’s drawings. Whether Titian acted out of jealousy or the realization that Tintoretto was too independent minded to teach is unclear. Tintoretto’s different approach is clearly seen in works such as Christ at the Sea of Galilee (above, from 1580). Rather than dominate the scene from the center, Christ appears to the side, seen from behind, with the Apostles’ boat closer to the center, deep within the image. The agitation of the sea itself mirrors the agitation of the Apostles, a touch the young El Greco appreciated when he saw Tintoretto’s work during his time in Venice and brought back with him to Spain.

The dynamism of the best of Michelangelo’s works appears in scenes by Tintoretto such as Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (above, from 1580). Tintoretto knew what a hectic household looked like, being the eldest of 21 children. Again, Christ is off to the side, with the center occupied by the void between Christ and the two women of the title. Like the eye of a hurricane, that calm, still center holds together the swirling activity all around. Even the billowing drapery of the figures seems animated. A second male sits slightly back in the distance, unidentified, but serving the important role of completing the circuit of heads between Christ, Mary, and Martha. With such frenetic, kinetic energy, Tintoretto both pays homage to the animated vision of Michelangelo and points forward to the non-stop, action-packed art of the baroque.

Nearly a century after Leonardo da Vinci painted his definitive The Last Supper, Tintoretto painted his version (above, from 1594). Whereas da Vinci paints with mathematical precision, focusing all eyes on the central figure of Christ and thus emphasizing the doctrinal truth of his central role in Christianity, Tintoretto approaches the subject from a wholly different vantage point. Christ remains at the center, but the supper table extends diagonally across the picture, diminishing Christ in some ways in relation to the Apostles seated at the end closer to the picture plane. Perhaps Tintoretto wanted to express a different doctrine—the importance of Christ’s followers in taking forward his message from that final meal together. Amazingly, as this human element literally juts out, clamoring for attention, a heavenly host attends the miracle, achieving a balance of sacred and profane that exemplifies the highest ideals of the Renaissance. Tintoretto certainly knew the past and was wise enough to see the future, painting both into his art.

Past and Passed

When Thomas Hart Benton painted a mural cycle for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair to represent the state of Indiana, he wanted to show the entire history of the state—good and bad. Born April 15, 1889, Benton drew fire for one panel called Parks, the Circus, the Klan, the Press (above, from 1933) in which he shows the Ku Klux Klan, a powerful, racist presence in Indiana in the 1920s. Amazingly, the murals made it to the World’s Fair, but later languished in various homes until Indiana University took them. The infamous KKK mural, which made brought Benton his first fame, now occupies a college classroom. “History was not a scholarly study for me but a drama,” Benton later said, reflecting his belief in history as a study of people and their stories rather than dry facts and dates. While Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists were painting the history of Mexico, Benton painted America’s past in his dramatic, muscular style, perfectly suited to the brawny persona the nation was beginning to adopt as it assumed a more prominent role in the world between the wars. Sadly, that approach to the past eventually resulted in Benton himself being passed by.

Benton saw history as specifically social history—the tale of people rather than rulers and their armies. In another state mural, for his native state, A Social History of the State of Missouri, Benton painted Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in one panel (above, 1936). In showing Huck with Jim, the escaped slave, Benton took on the issue of race again, bringing it home, as it were, to the deep South, which still employed the Jim Crow laws resulted from the failure of Reconstruction. Along with Grant Wood, Benton most often gets labeled with the Regionalist tag, which I’ve always seen as a diminutive assessment. Benton and Wood are much larger than just the region they come from. Clearly, they paint what they know, but the slice of American life they portray applies in many ways to the entire American odyssey. Benton studied in Paris for years and credited El Greco as an influence, making claims for his innate “American-ness” or “Midwestern” qualities seem thin.

Benton’s moment in the sun was quite brief. By the 1950s, modern art had quite literally passed him by. Despite his deep hatred for modern art, Benton actually contributed to the phenomenon that made him seem a dinosaur in teaching Jackson Pollock, whose Abstract Expressionism replaced Benton’s masculine Americanism with a new brand for the Cold War years. Benton’s later works seem painfully awkward, such as The Twist (above, from 1964), which tries to show the dance craze years after the height of its popularity. Benton’s marrying of his hate for modern art and modern art museums with his homophobia, calling the typical museum "a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in his gait," led to his marginalization in the 1940s and makes him seem even more like a caveman today. At his best, Benton helped paint the history of the American people. At his worst, Benton embodied some of the same narrowing prejudices that he brought to light in his art.