William Glackens: Forgotten Father of American Modernism?

With a $20,000 check and instructions to bring back “some good paintings” from friend and financier Dr. Albert C. Barnes, American artist William Glackens set off for Paris in 1912 with carte blanche to buy the very best modern art he could find. Long a champion and connoisseur of European and American modernism, Glackens sent back to Barnes 33 works by now-renowned artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent Van Gogh that helped shape the collection that eventually became The Barnes Foundation. Glackens, however, was much more than a buyer. Glackens early on bought into the ideas of European modernism and interpreted them for an American idiom, as can be seen in a new exhibition at The Barnes Foundation. William Glackens, the first comprehensive survey of this undeservedly neglected artist in almost half a century, makes a powerful case for William Glackens as the forgotten father of American modernism. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "William Glackens: Forgotten Father of American Modernism?"

Why Does George Bellows Take Such a Critical Beating?

You’d think that a giant retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC would, at least momentarily, make George Bellows the king of the art ring. But once again Bellows finds himself the disputed champion of the sports-related paintings that made him an acclaimed artist in his own time before his tragic death at the too-young age of 42. The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl’s review (titled “Young and Gifted”) raises the typical and, I believe, unfair criticisms of Bellows, who is too often diminished for the things he wasn’t and not often considered for the things that he was in the short time he had to do them. For someone who should stand among the first rank of American artists, why does George Bellows take such a critical beating? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Does George Bellows Take Such a CriticalBeating?"

[Image: George Bellows. Stag at Sharkey's, 1909. Oil on canvas. Framed: 110.17 x 140.5 x 8.5 cm (43 3/8 x 55 5/16 x 3 3/8 in.). Unframed: 92 x 122.6 cm (36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection.]

[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, for providing the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition George Bellows, which runs through October 8, 2012.]

How Andy Warhol Ended up in a Crater on Mercury

Andy Warhol looked for fame any place he could find it, so news that a crater on the surface of the planet Mercury has been named in his honor comes as no surprise. Warhol joined 22 other famous dead artists, musicians, and writers in that distinction recently, according to a NASA press release last month. It may seem like one small step for Warhol, but it actually might be one giant leap for late 20^th century art’s acceptance on a universal level. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Andy Warhol Ended up in a Crater on Mercury."

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.]