An African-American in Paris

Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American painter to gain an international reputation, was born on this date in 1859. Tanner spent most of his life in Paris to escape the racism he found in America and died there in 1937. The Banjo Lesson, one of Tanner’s many paintings depicting the life of African-Americans in the late 19th century, appears above.

Tanner studied under Thomas Eakins at the PAFA from 1879 through 1885. Eakins’ influence shows through clearly in how Tanner approached his subjects in a realistic manner. Tanner’s studies in Paris also helped shape his painting technique. In 1891, Tanner briefly returned to Philadelphia, where he painted The Banjo Lesson and similar scenes, such as The Thankful Poor (above), which was purchased by the comedian Bill Cosby in 1981 for $250,000 USD. Sadly, despite his obvious talent, Tanner felt unappreciated by the American arts community and returned to Paris to stay.

Tanner enjoyed the more liberal racial attitudes of Paris and eventually married Jessie Macauley Olssen, a white musician. In Europe, Tanner abandoned his scenes of African-American life and devoted himself to biblical paintings, such as The Annunciation (above), in which Tanner’s wife served as the model for the Virgin Mary. I’ve seen The Annunciation many times at the PMA and always wonder at the combination of homely realism and the fantastic depiction of the Angel Gabriel at left as a being of pure light. I’ve always seen Tanner’s religious works as a great “what if”: What if Eakins had the same depth of religious feeling that his student Tanner had? Fortunately, Tanner’s works more than suffice.

Artists such as William H. Johnson sought out Tanner in Paris as a forerunner and example of what an African-American artist could be, especially one who has chosen the life of an expatriate. Tanner continues to serve as an example to African-American artists and as a reminder of the price America has paid for its own intolerances.

Cutting and Pasting

Kurt Schwitters, Dadaist, Surrealist, and pioneering installation artist, was born on June 20, 1887. One of his collages, The Cherry Picture from 1921, featuring a mix of colored and printed paper, cloth, wood, metal, cork, oil, pencil, and ink, with a bunch of cherries in the middle, appears above.

Schwitters never really fit into the categories of Dada or Surrealism during his lifetime, and was actually refused “admission” into Dada circles for being too bourgeois. Perhaps his boldest works were his installations, such as The Merzbau, a series of rooms full of found items arranged by Schwitters in Hannover, Germany. Unfortunately, the original Merzbau was destroyed in World War II, but Schwitters attempted new installations after fleeing Germany as the war approached. (Stills from the original Merzbau appear above.)

Falling under the Nazi label of “Degenerate Art,” Schwitters took his innovations to England and even built a Merz installation in the Lake District of the English Romantic poets. His As You Like It of 1946 (above) shows how he continued to develop his collage technique in England, where he died in 1948. Many Schwitters-esque collages are passed off as works by the master, leading to efforts to document all of his works to ensure the safety of buyers.

Schwitters collages and installations lack most of the confrontational aspect of most other Dadaist or Surrealist art. He’s the “comfortable” Dada artist that we can invite into our living room and not worry about what will happen to the furniture. In death, Schwitters has been accepted into the Dada/Surrealist circles, where his reputation will only grow as recognition of his pioneering installation art increases.

Self-Recognized Genius

How could you not love an artist who could title a work in praise of his own genius? The Genius of Salvator Rosa (above) pays tribute to its maker, Salvator Rosa, born on June 20, 1615. Painter, musician, poet, playwright, and actor, Rosa even fit in some insurrectionist mayhem in his busy and colorful life. (A discussion of the symbolism of Rosa’s Genius is here.)

Rosa knew and was influenced by the two premier French landscapists of the 17th century, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Despite these influences, Rosa’s landscapes have a darker, more sinister feel to them, as in his Landscape With St. John the Baptist Pointing Out Christ from 1655-1660 (above). As psychologically penetrating as Poussin could be, Rosa strikes perhaps an even deeper note through his troubled scenery. Or perhaps I’m just conditioned to see greater psychological depth in the proto-Romanticism struggling to be born here. Today, Rosa stands more as a transitional figure rather than as one of the standouts of the 17th century, neither excelling in the visual language of his time nor developing enough of the Romantic visual lingo of the future to be a true precursor.

One easily sees how Rosa influenced Henry Fuseli in such paintings as Jason Charming the Dragon (above). Rosa gets so close to the excesses of Romanticism that you wonder how he didn’t take that final step. In his personal life, Rosa took the ultimate step of joining the insurrection of Masaniello against Spanish rule in Naples in 1647 as part of the Compagnia della Morte, a company of painter-soldiers led by painter Aniello Falcone that roamed the streets of Naples stalking Spanish victims, even if they sought religious sanctuary. With that stroke of fate, Rosa joins Caravaggio on the short list of painters who wielded a sword as boldly as a brush.

Masterpiece Theater

Watching the first night of Simon Schama’s The Power of Art series on PBS last night fulfilled all my expectations. I’ve only watched the Van Gogh segment so far, but that’s enough for me to know that Schama’s brought the same insightful, pyrotechnic approach to this project that he’s brought to all his past performances. Having finally seen the program, I can finally respond with some confidence to TIME Magazine’s art critic Richard Lacayo and his charge of Schama’s Power as “Overpowering.”

Lacayo half-praises the project with the disclaimer that it’s “a bit of an oddball production” in places. He bemoans the use of filmed dramatizations throughout. I agree that filmed recreations have become the bane of documentary filmmaking today (just try and watch anything on the puerile History Channel without rolling your eyes at the bad acting and even worse writing). However, as Lacayo admits, the performance of Andy Serkis, the actor who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, as Van Gogh is amazing. Serkis recreates Van Gogh in all his gentleness and mania, bringing to life the insatiable bookworm, the spiritual visionary, and the tortured invalid with equally brilliant facility. (His nuanced readings of passages from Van Gogh’s letters make me long for an extended audio book of Serkis channeling Vincent’s innermost thoughts.) Seeing Serkis makes me wonder how there can be such a drop-off in quality, as Lacayo suggests, but he’s seen the subsequent episodes and I haven’t, so I’ll withhold judgment there.

I take the most offense in what Lacayo sees as the “overpowering” aspects of Schama’s presentation. Lacayo reels back from Schama’s “strident vocalizing” in his narration. Watching and listening to Schama, I didn’t see as much stridency as one expert’s enthusiasm for his subject. (Americans may also be taken aback by people actually enunciating their words rather than chewing them, as we colonists have done to the mother tongue.) Schama may declaim a bit too loudly, but Van Gogh’s life was lived loudly, vividly, and, yes, stridently. The “power” in The Power of Art comes across loud and clear in Schama’s voice, especially when he strides across the technicolor landscapes Van Gogh painted. Along with Serkis’ performance, Schama’s voice and physical presence in the natural surroundings and cramped alleyways of Van Gogh’s life bring the physicality of Van Gogh the artist and the man back to life with a, yes, overpowering immediacy even more striking due to the “museum-ization” of Van Gogh and all the other artists Schama celebrates in his series.

In The Power of Art, Van Gogh walks the earth again. Comparing Van Gogh’s Sower (above) to its inspiration, Jean-Francois Millet’s Sower, which Schama sees as “rooted to the ground,” Schama says of Van Gogh’s version that the sower treads “lightly, like Jesus upon the waters, on a bed of color.” Pithy, witty, and sometimes startling moments like these abound in Schama’s narration, re-materializing the ghosts of art history’s past, reconstituting and refreshing the power they once had over our imagination. If that seems overpowering, then all the better.

A Crushing Bleakness

Peter Schjeldahl’s review in the June 11/18 issue of The New Yorker of the Richard Serra retrospective at the MOMA leaves me befuddled. Despite finding that “a bracing bleakness descends,” when he thinks of Serra’s art, Schjeldahl can’t help but feel that “he is not only our greatest sculptor but an artist whose subject is greatness befitting our time.” I have grave doubts and reservations about Serra’s greatness and how “befitting” he is to our time. Serra’s One Ton Prop (House of Cards), one of his many menacing, “could fall at any minute” sculptures, appears above.

I don’t think I can ever think of Serra and not think of the workers who have been killed or maimed by his works. I understand that the apparent danger of his works is the source of their bite, but that danger has been more real than apparent more than once. In 1971, a worker was crushed beneath a two-ton metal plate at the Walker Art Center and died. When a 16-ton piece fell on a worker in 1988 as he was helping dismantle it, that worker lost his leg. The inconvenience and, possibly, danger of Serra’s Tilted Arc (below), which had been installed in New York’s Federal Plaza, led to its removal in 1985. Defending Tilted Arc, Serra said at the time, “I do not think it is the function of art to be pleasing. Art is not democratic. It is not for the people.” Such anti-democratic, anti-populist remarks sound strange in the mouth of a man who welds together gigantic public sculpture. If public sculpture isn’t for the public, who IS it for?

Nonetheless, Schjeldahl responds that “[t]aking a childlike view may be the best way to relax with and, to the extent possible, enjoy Serra’s art. Don’t try to understand. Play.” I ask you, would you let your children “play” in these sculptures? (The MOMA actually tries to portray these works as jungle gyms on steroids in some of their advertising for the Serra show, placing wide-eyed toddlers in the belly of the metallic beast.) I appreciate Schjeldahl’s attempt to get the viewer to loosen up and enjoy the ride, but I wouldn’t let a child ride a rusty rollercoaster either. Issues of safety aside (and I’m overstressing those issues, I realize), I can’t understand how Schjeldahl sees intimacy and joy inside these sculptures. I’ve only been inside a Serra sculpture once and recall any lasting memories other than claustrophobia and forbidding coldness. Of course, those may be my own projections, but how inviting can rusting metal possibly be, regardless of how beautiful that patina becomes?

Schjeldahl sees Serra “conserv[ing] a battered modernist confidence in the collective genius of experts, a priestly class that confers meaning and direction on society,” believing that “[h]ardheaded secular culture can make no greater claim to spiritual efficacy than it does in this show, appropriately housed in the high church of the twentieth century that is MOMA.” Perhaps putting a positive spin on Serra’s anti-populist strain, Schjeldahl returns to his child metaphor and finds comfort in the idea that Serra’s sculpture represents the work of “sensationally competent adults” in the world. I just can’t buy into that brand of elitism distancing the daddy artist and infantilized viewer. If, as mentioned elsewhere, art is the new religion, I don’t see Serra’s denomination offering comfort or inspiration, but rather a distant and unresponsive god.

Perhaps it’s Serra’s strutting machismo that turns me off, although perhaps even Serra himself now finds the “cowboy” mentality distasteful, as evidenced by his drawing of an Abu Ghraib prisoner with the caption “STOP BUSH” at the 2006 Whitney Biennial. If Serra himself has changed or mellowed, his sculptures, despite the wear and rust of the years, continue to threaten and bully those who approach them, if not physically then most definitely spiritually.

Another Pretty Face

Thomas Sully, American painter born in England on this date in 1783, was one of the most celebrated portraitists of his age on both sides of the Atlantic. His portrait of the young, pre-“We are not amused,” Queen Victoria, circa 1838, appears above.

Sully studied in America under Gilbert Stuart and later went back to England to study with Benjamin West. During his travels, Sully was able to paint portraits of most of the major political and cultural figures of the day. His portrait of an aging Thomas Jefferson appears above. Sully painted portraits of other revolutionary war figures, such as George Washington and John Adams, as well.

I’ve seen Sully’s portrait of the famous early 19th century actress Fanny Kemble (titled Frances Anne Kemble as Beatrice, above) at the PAFA many times. Sully specializes in a wonderful dreamy look that works well in depicting women and children romantically, but not so well for historic figures such as Jefferson or Washington. I’m sure young Queen Victoria appreciated the gentle touch, but as much as I see a kindness in the face of Sully’s Jefferson that I believe was there in real life, Jefferson seems to dissipate into thin air in his painting rather than stand as firm as his convictions, something I’ve always sensed in the American Revolutionary portraits of Charles Willson Peale and Stuart.

Child Asleep (The Rosebud) (above) from 1841 epitomizes Sully’s approach for me. It’s a lovely scene that tugs at anyone’s heartstrings, whether they’re a parent or not, but it lacks definition and form beneath the light romantic touch. Sully often draws comparisons to Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose work influenced Sully’s studies in England, but Lawrence’s work has a substance I don’t see in Sully’s. As I’ve remarked before, there’s a life in the eyes of Lawrence’s portraits that few can match. Where Lawrence paints a true, living image, Sully is sadly just another pretty face.

Secondary to None

Baccio Bandinelli (1488/1493-1560), The Descent from the Cross, c. 1528/1529; pen and brown ink over black chalk (Private Collection)

The German artist Adolph Menzel lived the motto “Nulla dies sine linea,” or “No day without a line.” The artists featured in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibit Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings prove that those are excellent words to live by.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and The Morgan Library and Museum join together to present this incredible collection of European master drawings collected by a single, anonymous collector in just the last eleven years. As the Director’s forward to the catalogue says, “the quality of her collection bespeaks her profound knowledge and connoisseurship.” Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Andrew Robison of the National Gallery of Art and Rhoda Eitel-Porter and Jennifer Tonkovich of The Morgan Library and Museum not only have assembled a magnificent exhibit but have also written a beautiful and informative catalogue to compliment it.
One of the strengths of the collection is its early Italian drawings from the age of Michelangelo and Da Vinci. Neither of those greats appears here, but this exhibit demonstrates the massive depth and breadth of talent of draftsmanship during the Renaissance like few others. Familiar names such as Fra Bartolommeo, Correggio, Bronzino, Parmigianino, and Sodoma appear, but it is in the resurrection of these names as living, breathing artists that this exhibit excels. Baccio Bandinelli, once the rival of Michelangelo as a sculptor, lives again in the presentation of his boldly drawn, almost Michelangelo-esque Descent From the Cross (above) from 1528/1529. Even Giorgio Vasari, now known mainly for his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the first compilation of artist biographies and study of art history and styles, shows off his drafting skills. (As an added treat, one of Vasari’s drawings has notes for his Lives written on the back.)

Federico Barocci (probably 1535-1612), Madonna Reading, with the Christ Child on her Lap; verso, Torso of a Bearded Man, 1568/1580; black and red chalk with pink, light blue, yellow, orange, and brown-red pastel on blue-gray paper; verso, black chalk with pink, red, and brown pastel (Private Collection)

The Madonna Reading, with the Christ Child on her Lap (above), from 1568/1580, demonstrates the pioneering work in pastels by Federico Barocci. Pastels suffered under the misconception of being a lesser medium until the 19th century, but Barocci’s work proves that artists hundreds of years before Degas made that medium their own. Such re-evaluations of media and techniques lay at the heart of this exhibit and any exhibit on drawing, in my mind. Although many drawings are prepatory works for paintings, they should no longer be considered lesser works and should be appreciated for the techniques and talent behind them.


Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), Christ and the Woman of Samaria, mid-1640s; pen and brown ink with brown and gray-brown wash with corrections in white (Private Collection)

The idea of drawings as primary works unto themselves, rather than servants of a final work, seems to originate with Rembrandt. In Ferdinand Bol’s Christ and the Woman of Samaria (above), from the 1640s, Bol uses the same vibrant lines and bold strokes of his teacher Rembrandt to revisit a familiar biblical scene and infuse it with new life. Rembrandt, who is not represented in the collection, looms over much of the drawing of the 17th century and later, freeing the medium of drawing from second-class status and freeing the hand of the artist from the purely classical lines of the Renaissance to express the emotional strokes of early Romanticism and Modernism.



Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Moonlit Landscape with Lovers and a Church, 1797/1798; pen and dark brown ink with brown, gray, and blue washes, heightened with white and touched with yellow and pink chalks, over graphite, with border lines by the artist (?) in pen and black ink (Private Collection)

Caspar David Friedrich’s 1797/1798 A Moonlit Landscape With Lovers and a Church (above) heralds this new wave of Romanticism. Andrew Robison’s short essay accompanying this work deftly analyzes the potential symbolism of Friedrich’s tiny work and also places it within the context of his later, grander Romantic landscapes. The works collected from the 19th and 20th centuries represent a turn away from the earlier religious works towards more individualized, humanist subjects. For example, Ingres’ double portrait of himself and his wife offers a glimpse in graphite into the artist’s soul that few other works by him allow.



Adolph Menzel (1815-1905), Seated Man Leaning Forward, 1887; graphite with stumping (Private Collection)

Friedrich’s drawing is only part of the second area of strength of the collection—later German drawings. Adolf Menzel’s Elderly Man Leaning Forward (above) from 1887 is done entirely in graphite, showing how Menzel was able to master that deceptively simple format and construct an almost sculpturally solid portrait full of fascinating textures.

Käthe Kollwitz (1867 - 1945), Grieving Mother, 1903; black chalk and graphite on greenish wove paper (Private Collection)

Käthe Kollwitz’s Grieving Mother (above), related perhaps to her Mother and Dead Son series of 1903, continues the collection’s exploration of German draftsmanship. The exactingly drawn hands of the grieving mother, who may be resting her head on a pillow or her child’s dead body, express the anguish we cannot see in her hidden face. Kollwitz’s portrait of herself at 60 years of age, also in the collection, reveals the weariness and the pride of the artist with an honesty seldom seen outside of the portraits of Rembrandt.

I’m leaving out many of the well-known names also in this exhibit (Degas, Constable, Gainsborough, Delacroix, Fragonard, and Redon, to name a few) because the true stars of this collection are the medium of drawing and the vision of this single, anonymous collector. Such exhibits of the lost masters of the past as well as the forgotten aspects of better-known genius should go a long way in establishing the field of drawing and works on paper as second to none.

[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings and the images from the exhibit.]