How Turner Loved Painting, So He Set It Free

“If you love someone,” pop star Sting sang years ago, “set them free.” Sometimes the first rule of love is forgetting all the rules that constrain the object of one’s affection, while trusting that the beloved will return on their own. Nineteenth century British artist J.M.W. Turner knew all the rules of painting from the Old Master tradition, but once he reached his seventh decade and found himself an Old Master, he began cutting ties to the old rules of his beloved painting and set it (and himself) free. The results, on glorious display at the Tate Britain’s exhibition Late Turner: Painting Set Free, heralded new directions in art followed by the Impressionists and nearly every modern art movement to follow. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Turner Loved Painting, So He Set It Free."

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?"

Is This the Missing Half of the Most Controversial Painting Ever?

If any painting could be labeled “not safe for work,” it’s Gustave Courbet’s 1866 L'Origine du monde (in English, The Origin of the World; and, once again, NSFW). Banned even from Facebook, proving that prudery’s alive and well in the 21^st century, Courbet’s graphically realistic painting of a woman’s nude torso went unseen by the public until 1988 and didn’t enter a museum collection until the Musée d'Orsay accepted it 7 years later. An article in Paris Match (available only in French) reports that a painting has been found that is the “lost” upper half of the painting (shown above), which shows the face of the model of the infamous work. Courbet experts argue over whether or not this really is part of the original L’Origine, but if it is, what does that discovery mean for that painting and for how we see (or don’t get to see) what has become the most controversial painting ever? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is This the Missing Half of the MostControversial Painting Ever?"

Is This the Greatest Mother’s Day Portrait Ever?

On the one day that we think the most about mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, and all other motherly types, it seems appropriate to ask what is the greatest Mother’s Day portrait ever? The first suspect that lines up in the mind is probably James McNeill Whistler’s 1871 painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, better known as Whistler's Mother (detail shown above). But the most obvious answer isn’t always the best one, assuming that there is such a thing as a “best.” Looking at how artists have pictured motherhood for us says a lot about them and almost as much about us. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is This the Greatest Mother’s Day Portrait Ever?"

[Image: James McNeill Whistler. Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, also known as Whistler's Mother (detail), 1871.]

Back to the Garden: The Pastoral Vision in Britain at the Delaware Art Museum

“And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang in “Woodstock,” the song that tried to capture the spirit of the generation-defining gathering. For artists working in Britain after the Romantic movement, getting back to the garden—getting back to a sense of the natural world as a spiritual realm—became the top priority. The Pastoral Vision: British Prints 1800—Present currently at the Delaware Art Museum traces the way artists tried to picture the pastoral aspect of British Romanticism over the course of two centuries. The results reveal much about both the art of printmaking and the art of depicting the abstract lurking in tangible reality. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Back to the Garden."

[Image: Morning of Life, 1861. Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). Etching, 5 3/8 x 8 1/8 inches. Gift of Dr. Charles Lee Reese, 1940.]

[Many thanks to the Delaware Art Museum for providing me with the image above and press materials for The Pastoral Vision: British Prints 1800—Present, which runs through August 15, 2010.]

Private Dancer

"Different men are moved or left cold by lines according to the difference in their natures,” wrote Robert Henri. “What moves you is beautiful to you." Born June 24, 1865, Henri found women dancers moving in their beautiful, graceful movements and bodily freedom. Henri and the several other of The Eight artists found the modern dance style of Isadora Duncan especially intriguing. (John Sloan painted a portrait of Duncan in action in 1911.) Throughout his career, Henri painted many dancers, but one dancer—Betalo Rubino—captured his imagination the most as a model. From 1909 up until at least 1916, the dark eyes and hair of Betalo provided the perfect focal point for Henri’s explorations into color. Henri’s 1909 Salome remains for many the pinnacle of his career, or at least of his dancer and dancing works, but he continued to move past the colorful drama of that work and seek out new combinations. Unlike Degas, perhaps the most obsessive painter of dancers ever, Henri always paints the dancer as an individual rather than as a type. Degas’ dancers are beautiful in design, but you never feel that they are alive. In contrast, Henri’s Betalo the Dancer (above, from 1910) almost vibrates with life. The vigorous brushwork gives the sensation of movement, as if Betalo herself were suddenly caught unaware by our entrance and just turned to face the viewer.

Betalo proved to be an ideal model for exotic dress. Her athletic dancer’s physique and pretty face enhanced the exoticism of the costumes in works such as Dancer of Dehli and Dramatic Dancer, both done in 1916. In that same year of 1916, Henri painted Betalo several times in the nude. In the version above, Henri surrounds the pale-skinned, dark colored beauty with blues, grays, and whites. Like Whistler in works such as Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Little Blue Girl (1898), Henri approaches abstraction in the composition of pure color compliments and contrasts but remains in the figurative tradition through the centering theme of the nude. Betalo must have seemed like a godsend of a model to Henri in her amazing versatility. A living, breathing example of chiaroscuro, Betalo exuded the drama around which Henri could experiment in color with full freedom. Betalo’s natural grace in motion comes across in Henri’s ability to paint her lounging but simultaneously raising herself slightly from the couch, as if anticipation of something or someone.


In the painting of Betalo nude above, also from 1916, Henri surrounds his private dancer with pinks and greens. As with the blue-gray nude above, the colors around her become echoed in her pale skin. Just as the dancing costumes clothed her in other paintings, the colors around Betalo “clothe” her in these nude paintings. There’s also that same sense of movement in Betalo’s reclining pose, as if she’s right at the moment of lifting herself into a new position. I doubt Betalo could hold such a suspended pose for long, but Henri tried to work quickly to get a sense of the essence of the moment. “Do it all in one sitting if you can,” Henri said of capturing the spirit of a model. “In one minute if you can. There is no virtue in delaying." For Henri, speed and movement were more virtuous than meticulous detail. Henri’s nude paintings of Betalo Rubino and other women around 1915 and 1916 present them as vital, alive, confident women rather than passive objects receiving the artist’s gaze. For many feminist critics, female nudes represent the repressive patriarchy of art history. I agree for the most part. However, Robert Henri’s nudes express rather than repress the fullness of womanhood and present the private dancer to the public eye in all her glory.

All in the Timing

It’s very ironic that it took a comedian—the manic Michael Palin of Monty Python fame—to resurrect the reputation of an artist known for the deathly quiet and stillness of his art—Vilhelm Hammershoi. Of course, Palin’s mind is much more versatile than that of a simple madcap, as his thoughts on Hammershoi prove, just as Hammershoi is much more than a kind of grand claustrophobic of art. Born May 15, 1864, Hammershøi studied painting as a young man and exhibited a portrait of his young sister Anna, titled Portrait of a Young Girl (above, from 1885), as his first public attempt at success. Although many, including reportedly Renoir admired Portrait of a Young Girl, Hammershoi failed to win the prize, just the first of many slights that would drive Hammershoi further and further into himself. Today, Hammershoi has become a “name” in the lexicon of Danish art thanks to several touring exhibitions of his work in the United States and Europe. Although portraits such as that of Anna and even nude studies by Hammershoi exist, the “branding” of Hammershoi as a reclusive, obsessive painter of interiors, almost exclusively the famous apartments he shared with his wife, has taken hold, possibly forever. Like Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh, Hammershoi suffers from an overabundance of psychobiography when critics try to grasp his work and understand the artist himself.



Part of the reason why Hammershoi seems to perpetually recline on the art historian’s psychobabble “couch” is the lack of source materials. Hammershoi’s silent works seem even more silent thanks to the lack of words left behind by the artist. Whereas someone such as the recently departed Thomas Chimes surrounded his works with volumes of verbage, Hammershoi deafens us with his quietness. Hammershoi himself seems to have been extremely shy, once famously traveling to England to meet his hero Whistler and then never mustering the courage to knock him up. Regardless, Hammershoi’s paintings, such as Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30 (above, from 1901), stand for more than agoraphobia. Painting his wife Ida in their home, Hammershoi captures the coziness of his domestic setting while also creating a fascinating composition of shapes. The frames on the wall echo the larger frame of the wall itself. The plates lined up on the table draw us into the picture, as if inviting us to sit down and eat as we listen to the music. The colors are somber, but the mood is not funereal. Hammershoi feels at home here, and wants us to, too.


I have no idea if artists such as Andrew Wyeth or Edward Hopper were ever aware of the work of Hammershoi. The plates in Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30 remind me of the plates in Wyeth’s Groundhog Day. Hammershoi’s Sunbeams, or Sunshine: Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams (above, from 1900) reminds me of Hopper’s quote that all he wanted to do was paint the play of light on a wall. Just like Wyeth made an entire universe out of his Chadds Ford surroundings, Hammershoi created whole galaxies out of a simple set of connecting rooms. Light coming through the window of his parlor served as the doorway to infinite. If William Blake could see infinity in a single grain of sand, Hammershoi could find it in a dust mote dancing in sunlight. If artists’ reputations can be likened to stocks, Hammershoi stock is rising slowly and, characteristically, quietly.

A Purpose-Driven Life

Born May 2, 1806, Charles Gleyre fills perfectly the definition of a late bloomer. Born in Switzerland, Gleyre moved to France as a small child after the death of both of his parents. After a few years of art school, Gleyre rambled through Italy to drink in the Renaissance before spending six years in Greece and the Middle East, including Egypt and Syria. While on this vision quest, Gleyre contracted ophthalmia, an inflammation of the eye that threatened his eyesight for the rest of his life. Gleyre, however, waited until his return to Paris to begin creating art based on all that he had seen. Gleyre’s Evening (later re-titled Lost Illusions; above, from 1843) won an exhibition medal and, more importantly, recognition from the art world. Remembering a dreamy evening he spent on the bank of the Nile River in 1835, Gleyre paints himself as a lyre-wielding poet watching a boatload of muse-like singers float away. Although Gleyre dipped often into his mental storehouse of Orientalist imagery, he had a clear-eyed view of the work of the artist and worked with a pragmatic single-mindedness that became legendary.

When Gleyre’s teacher, Paul Delaroche closed his teaching studio in 1843, he recommended that his students continue on with Gleyre as their teacher. Gleyre ushered in a golden age of the French atelier that would continue with the next generation of Jean-Leon Gerome, Leon Bonnat, and others. From 1843 through 1864, when Gleyre’s eye problems forced his retirement, great artists such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley studied under Gleyre, yet he never took a fee for teaching. Whereas other teachers try to create disciples molded in their own image, Gleyre imparted to his students a seriousness of purpose in the art life rather than a specific style of painting. Renoir loved Gleyre specifically for the free hand he gave to his students—allowing the young Impressionists to paint outdoors while he preferred working in the studio from memory. Gleyre’s Separation of the Apostles (above, from 1845) perfectly captures this sense of teaching and trusting that students will find their own way.


Gleyre lived an almost monk-like existence. He never married and actually saw marriage as an impediment to the careers of other artists. Gleyre literally married his work. Despite the sensuality of such works as La Danse des Bacchantes (above, from 1849), Gleyre was reportedly celibate his entire life. For him, the flesh painted on the canvas in mythological scenes always remained a myth, an unfelt abstraction. Gleyre earned a reputation for perfectionism that many of his students took away from his atelier. The way that Gleyre returned again and again to the same works can be seen, for example, in Monet’s obsessive series of water lilies, haystacks, cathedrals, etc., etc. Gleyre and Monet differ widely in style, but their commitment to depicting a personal vision is exactly the same. Like Michelangelo, one of Gleyre’s Renaissance heroes, Gleyre’s only secret was hard work, free of illusions of an easy life in art.