Self-Portrait in Self-Portraits

Anyone who has been watching Simon Schama’s series The Power of Art on PBS here in the United States has been witness to some really amazing television. But perhaps the most powerful episode of that series was that featuring Rembrandt van Rijn, born on July 15, 1604. I’m not surprised at the quality of Schama’s coverage of Rembrandt considering how amazing his book Rembrandt’s Eyes was. As Schama points out in his program, Rembrandt remains a compelling figure because of the psychological depth of his works, especially his self-portraits—approximately 200 of which he did over his 65 years of life. The portrait above, from 1629, shows the 24-year-old hotshot just as he began to make a name for himself, taking lucrative commissions, opening up his own academy, and accepting students into his studio.

Schama offers the self portrait from 1640 (above) as evidence of Rembrandt’s salad days. He strikes a pose from a portrait by Titian, elevating himself to the status of art titan. Rembrandt covers himself in the finery of the wealthy, showing off the wealth that allowed him and his wife Saskia to start a family and move into a palatial home. Sadly, from this peak, Rembrandt soon begins his fall. In 1641, his only child to survive to adulthood, Titus, is born. Unfortunately, the toll on Saskia’s health is too great and she perishes in 1642. Rembrandt then begins his spiral into financial difficulty, difficult relationships with women, and a loss of popular and critical standing in the art world as he explores a new style of interior self-examination and leaves behind the stuff of surfaces and simple pieties that made his fortune and name.

This portrait from 1669, Rembrandt’s last year, shows him in all his weariness. The ravages of time appear in the topography of his face. His eyes shine with a somber introspection, as if looking into the future towards the acceptance his own time could never grant. When modern artists such as Picasso arrived at the point at which they needed to explore their own identity through the self-portrait, it was Rembrandt who provided the most powerfully honest example.

In addition to the sad self-portraits of his later years, Rembrandt increasingly examined the scenes of Christianity, bringing the same rugged, homely honesty of his self portrayals to his depictions of Christ. In contrast to the composed, almost serene visions of the crucifixion found in Renaissance art and elsewhere, Rembrandt’s scene at Golgotha swarms with the chaos of an execution, which it was. By including the two thieves in the scene and the title, Rembrandt invites all sinners to participate in the moment, bringing each viewer into the picture and removing all distance forged by time and degree. Just as Rembrandt’s self-portraits celebrate the human, in all its glory and weakness, his religious images celebrate the divine in all its glory and, paradoxically, its humanity.

More Than Just a Kiss

Is there any more reproduced yet misunderstood image than Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (above)? Klimt, born July 14, 1862, receives many gushing romantic “oohs” for his work as it hangs in reproduction on the walls of homes and offices. But look a little closer. The woman turns away from the man’s kiss, perhaps in submission, perhaps in refusal. The woman’s arms and hands seem bent awkwardly, as if in a struggle. Finally, the feet of the woman dangle precipitously over the edge of a flowered cliff, as if she were being pushed into the abyss. Although Klimt believed in strong women and the power of love, The Kiss is not necessarily the place to be looking for either in his work.

Klimt’s The Embrace is everything The Kiss is supposed to be. The couple both stand and there is a sense of mutuality free of any resistance by either party. In fact, the woman seems to be actually supporting the man with her strength. Also, the symbolism of Klimt’s decorative robes indicates an integration of souls that The Kiss does not. In The Kiss, the man’s robe of squared shapes stands in contrast to the woman’s robe of circular objects—and even threatens to engulf the woman’s form. In The Embrace, the squares and circles of the robes melt together, symbolizing the union of male and female, the marriage of true minds. The dark, forboding background of The Kiss also gives way to the exuberant Art Nouveau swirls of The Embrace, indicating to the viewer that life and love live here.

Klimt’s paintings exemplify the wonders of the Art Nouveau style. Taking the gold engraving skills taught to him by his father, Klimt decorated some of his works with actual gold. In Judith and the Head of Holofernes (above), Klimt even engraves the title of the painting at the top. Klimt’s use of gold brings an ancient, almost Byzantine feel to many of his works. Seeing one of these golden paintings in person is almost a religious experience. Many of the women in Klimt’s works seem like religious icons in such golden contexts. Adele Bloch-Bauer, subject of the portrait purchased by Ronald Lauder for $135 million USD for the Neue Galerie in New York, is only one of the many powerful women placed upon a pedestal by Klimt.

Klimt’s symbolic style of painting emphasized his personal spirituality and optimism. In Death and Life (above), the skeletal figure of Death on the left, decorated with cross-like figures (perhaps a commentary on conventional Christianity), seems small and weak beside the wide column of living humanity on right, where men, women, and children coexist in a cocoon of integrated circles and squares, indicating the harmony of the sexes and the vibrancy of life. Egon Schiele drank in Klimt’s overflowing spirituality and patterned much of his own life-affirming art on his predecessor. Personally, Klimt has always been one of my favorite artists of all time. Getting to know his works and his philosophy can be an eye-opening experience. Sometimes a kiss is more than just a kiss.

The Lost Boy

While I was reviewing the catalogue to The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso, I couldn’t help but think of the lost boy of modern art and modern portraiture—Andrew Wyeth, who celebrated his 90th birthday on July 12th. Cursed by popularity, Wyeth suffers under critical exile from the modernist cannon. One of the most jarring moments I’ve ever had in a museum was at the MOMA when I turned away from their selection of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings and came face to face with Christina’s World, Wyeth’s most enduring image and a contemporary of those Abstract Expressionist paintings. That juxtaposition forced me to realize that paintings by Wyeth such as Alvaro and Christina (above) (Wyeth’s elegy for Christina Olson, the subject of Christina’s World, and her brother Alvaro) belong as much in the modern cannon as any other. Wyeth’s puckish humor and Peter Pan-like nature make him, even after nine decades, seem like one of the “Lost Boys,” but his exclusion from the histories of modern art make him truly the lost man of modernism.

The Mirror and the Mask brought to the forefront of my attention the issues of representation and misrepresentation in modern art. Despite his dedication to realism and his archaic tempera painting medium, Wyeth plays with these issues as much as anyone. In Alvaro and Christina, Wyeth uses the images of two doors to symbolize their closed existences, both before and after their deaths. Doors play a big role in the personal mythology of Wyeth’s world, offering openings into new possibility as well as lost opportunities. An equally symbolic portrait missing the physical presence of the ostensible subject is Groundhog Day (above). Here, Wyeth portrays Karl Kuerner, the German farmer and World War I veteran who was his neighbor in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Whereas Alvaro and Christina’s worlds are closed, as symbolized by the closed door, here Kuerner’s world is revealed through the transparent window. Outside the window we see the end of a log, its jagged, teeth-like end threatening in a wolf-like way, symbolizing Kuerner’s violent past. (The PMA’s Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic exhibit and catalogue marvelously documented the evolution of Wyeth’s drawings of an actual wolf dog into a wolf-like log.) The simple detail of a knife next the dish on the table with no fork, indicating that Kuerner ate only with a knife, further exposes the raw violence of the subject. Kuerner and his farm served as an endless source of fascination for Wyeth and are now part of the Wyeth “experience” offered by the Brandywine River Museum.

Finally, I’d like to just marvel with you for a moment over the sheer ability of Andrew Wyeth. In Wind from the Sea (above), Wyeth depicts a ragged lace curtain dancing in the wind. Wyeth says that the window in the painting hadn’t been opened for years. When he opened it, he found his subject. Wyeth continues to paint with exquisite detail in the demanding medium of tempera even at the age of 90. At the press preview for the William Ranney exhibit at the PMA, I spoke with someone who worked at the PMA and the Brandywine River Museum about Wyeth and his upcoming 90th birthday. We both marveled at his ability to still paint at such a high level. Wyeth has been painting at a high level since his first sold-out watercolor show in 1937 put him on the artistic map, over 70 years ago. As popular and lauded as Wyeth has been in his long life and career, I still can’t help but feel that true appreciation of his art won’t come until he himself has died. As much as I wish he could be around to experience that, I also believe that he also knows that his real time of acceptance is yet to come. So many photos of Wyeth over the years show him in the middle of his famous high-pitched laugh. I can’t help but picture him laughing last over the critics.

Beloved and Accursed

Amedeo Modigliani, whose first name means “beloved of God,” entered this world on this date in 1884. More than perhaps any other modern artist in the early twentieth century, Modigliani adopted the style of African art and reshaped that “primitivism” into his own artistic idiom. His sculpture Head (above) seems like something straight out of African art. In his short thirty-five years of life, Modigliani crammed in more than enough living and loving for a dozen artists.

Modigliani’s nudes and other sensual works often seem to be the work of a man trying to make up for lost time or a man knowing his time is short. For Modigliani, both were true. After suffering through a series of childhood illnesses, Modigliani feared that he would die as a 14-year-old before seeing the great Italian masters’ paintings in Florence, Italy. When he survived, his mother took him to see Florence and his life in art was born. As an adult, Modigliani moved to the Montmartre section of Paris to live La Vie Boheme with the other impoverished artists, smoke hashish, and drink absinthe, all of which, added to his tuberculosis, contributed to his early demise. The nickname other painters used for Modigliani—“Modi”—also was a pun for the French “maudit,” which means “accursed.” Combined this pun with the meaning of his first name, Amedeo Modgiliani was literally blessed and accursed.

Modigliani met Jeanne Hebuterne, a young art student, in 1917. (Portraits of Jeanne by Modigliani appear above and below.) Within a year, she bore his child, also named Jeanne. By all reports, their relationship was passionate and violent, due in part to her family’s objections to their relationship and their continued poverty. Modigliani finally succumbed to his tuberculosis on January 24, 1920. Jeanne, nine months pregnant with their second child, leapt from a window two days later, killing herself and their unborn child. The story of Modigliani ranks second only to Van Gogh’s in terms of drama and pathos in the annals of art history.

Of course, such a story couldn’t possibly be enough for Hollywood. The 2004 movie titled simply Modigliani, starring Andy Garcia in the title role, does the typical Hollywood hatchet job on Modigliani’s legend, inserting some absurd painting contest and even rewriting the details of how Modigliani actually dies. Taking liberties with the basic story is standard operating procedure in filmmaking, but Modigliani takes it way too far. Modigliani deserves far better. I always remember the scene in 1987’s The Pick-up Artist where Robert Downey, Jr. practices his come-ons in a mirror and says “Did anyone ever tell you that you have the face of a Botticelli and the body of a Degas?” I always thought that he should have added, “and the neck of a Modigliani…”

Comic Evolution

Editorial cartoonist Mark Wuerker evaluates the state of the American editorial cartoon world in his piece "The Evolution of the Toonosphere." Thanks in part to drastic budget cutbacks in newspaper staff and the overall depression of newspaper readership and sales, the print newspaper editorial cartoon has become a rare thing. The current political climate in the United States doesn’t help much either when hoping to speak truth to power. Fortunately, as Wuerker points out, the internet has provided a new outlet for the editorial cartoonist hoping to present their point of view to the public free of censorship. Personally, I look forward every Tuesday to reading on the internet the weekly This Modern World comic of Dan Perkins (aka, Tom Tomorrow). Sadly, Dan Perkins’ work appears only in small, alternative print publications—a sign of the sorry state of editorial comics in this country.

The art of the editorial comic took another blow this week with the death of Pulitzer Prize-winner Doug Marlette on July 10th. (A recent strip by Marlette appears above.) Marlette was an equal opportunity satirist, jabbing at both sides of the political spectrum. Back in 2003, a Marlette cartoon titled “What Would Mohammed Drive?” drew a heated response (which I felt was partially deserved). Marlette defended “What Would Mohammed Drive?” by saying that he meant only militant, radical Islam and not Islam as a whole (a fine point that I felt his blunter image didn’t support, but that’s a matter of opinion). In that same defense, Marlette took the opportunity to defend the vocation of editorial cartoonist in America:

“Political cartoonists daily push the limits of free speech. They were once the embodiment of journalism's independent voice. Today they are as endangered a species as bald eagles. The professional troublemaker has become a luxury that offends the bottom-line sensibilities of corporate journalism. Twenty years ago, there were two hundred of us working on daily newspapers. Now there are only ninety. Herblock is dead. Jeff MacNelly is dead. And most of the rest of us might as well be. Just as résumé hounds have replaced newshounds in today's newsrooms, ambition has replaced talent at the drawing boards. Passion has yielded to careerism, Thomas Nast to Eddie Haskell. With the retirement of Paul Conrad at The Los Angeles Times, a rolling blackout from California has engulfed the country, dimming the pilot lights on many American editorial pages. Most editorial cartoons now look as bland as B-roll and as impenetrable as a 1040 form.”

Sadly, we can now add Doug Marlette to that list of “professional troublemakers” now gone. Hopefully, a new generation of internet-based editorial cartoonists will pick up the torch passed on by these greats. Hopefully, they will prize passion and integrity over careerism and ambition in the exercise of their talents.

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Gentle Mentor

When I saw the Pioneering Modern Painting: Cezanne and Pissarro 1865-1885 exhibit at the MOMA in 2005, I came away with a greater understanding of Paul Cezanne, whom I already knew very well, but I also came away with a greater appreciation and affection for Camille Pissarro, born on July 10, 1830. (Cezanne [on the left] and Pissarro [on the right] appear above, heavily bearded and ready for some en plein air painting.) Pissarro’s great-grandson, Joachim, Head Curator of Drawing and Painting at the MOMA, curated that show, so you could accuse him of understandable bias, but I think that the gentleness and generosity of Pissarro, “the father of Impressionism” in the eyes of many, transcends any bias.




Born on the island of St. Thomas, Pissarro’s mixed lineage of Portuguese Sephardic Jew made him an outsider even among the outsiders of nineteenth century French art. After studying under Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet, Pissarro himself painted in a realistic style that soon evolved into proto-Impressionism. In works such as The Garden at Pontoise (above), you can see the softness and gentleness as well as the master draftsmanship of Pissarro. Pissarro, in turn, became a mentor and friend to other artists, such as Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas. All of these artists spoke of Pissarro with respect and love in later years, even as their reputations soon eclipsed his.



One of the great features of the MOMA exhibit in 2005 was the ability to see the same scene painted by Cezanne and Pissarro from different perspectives, as if you were there on that day, walking from one artist’s easel to the other, seeing the same world through two different, yet complimentary eyes. Few other artists convey to me this same warmth of community within the art world. The Romantic notion of the artist as individual rebel often conflicts with the reality of just how close a community these artists tried to forge. Van Gogh longed for a community of artists in Arles, failing to connect with Gauguin. Pissarro’s genius, however, allowed him to see the genius of others, even the cantankerous Cezanne, and embrace their differences and find common ground. In works such as Haymakers Resting (above), we see Pissarro toy with proto-Pointillism before giving that up and returning to more standard Impressionism. Such versatility of technique goes hand in hand with Pissarro’s versatility of spirit—his ego and artistic soul was large enough to encompass not only different styles but also different artists. Pissarro remains one of the many “minor” masters deserving of greater repute.

[BTW, The Jewish Museum in New York will feature an exhibit titled Camille Pissarro: Impressions of City and Country this September. ]