Big Game Hunter

Born in Berlin, Germany on August 18, 1869, Carl Rungius spent much of his youth in the Berlin Zoo, drawing the caged animals pacing back and forth. Like many Germans, he fell in love with the romanticized idea of the American Wild West. It was not until 1894, however, that Rungius finally visted the United States, finding his way to Wyoming to hunt and sketch the animals he hunted. From those face to face encounters, Rungius came away with such stunning wildlife scenes as American Black Bear (above, from 1929), which combines the beauty of the animal itself with the splendor of its natural setting. Rungius found a second home in the Western United States, setting up a winter base in the art world back in New York, but returning each summer to hunt for new subjects. Few artists capture the raw power and majesty of large animals in situ the same way that Rungius does. The same anticipation the hunter feels waiting for the animal to strike pervades Rungius’ art.

In addition to traveling in America, Rungius ranged up to the Canadian Rocky Mountains, hunting and painting such animals as the bighorn sheep in works such as In the Clouds (above, from 1940). Rungius told one interviewer a story of hunting in the mountains, shooting a large goat, and darting out of the way before the thrashing, dying animal knocked him from his perch to certain death below. Even without the animals, Rungius’ landscapes could stand alone for their realistic depiction of rarely scene spots as the heights of the Canadian Rockies. Although many of the titles of Rungius’ paintings simply bear the names of the animals depicted, Rungius’ often waxed poetic, as he does here with “In the Clouds.” Other titles refer to mountain sheep as “old gentlemen,” illustrating Rungius’ hands-on approach to pursuing and painting these animals. Rungius often travelled alone on his hunts, accentuating the sense of communion with nature as he had only himself to rely upon. Rungius’ rugged individualism helped make him a kindred spirit of these animals who also dealt unassisted with the elements to survive.

Rungius justly receives credit for helping in the conservation of these animals. Works such as The Last of the Herd (above, from 1900) alerted Americans to the plight of the fast-disappearing American Bison, better known as the American Buffalo. President Theodore Roosevelt’s nascent conservation movement found a powerful visual ally in Rungius’ work. Unfortunately, Runguis had to kill his subjects to paint them so accurately. Rungius would shoot his prey, carry it back to camp, rig it up into a life-like pose with ropes, and sketch at his leisure, drawing on memories of his encounter with the living animal to fill in any gaps in realism. A century earlier, John James Audubon depicted the birds of North America using a similar technique, murdering to dissect the visual essence of nature’s creations. A true outdoorsman, Rungius’ work did more good than ill in the final tally, reminding people then and now of the beauty of nature’s creatures great and small.

I Shall Return

Annie, Alex, and I have returned from our annual pilgrimage to the New Jersey Shore. Alex was a little less willing than MacArthur to get his feet wet in the surf, but he had a great time splashing in the pool with his cousins and just chilling with a snack in a beach chair (above). At the Boardwalk, Alex indulged both of his major obsessions: cars (below) and jumping (on a trampoline; far below).

As promised earlier, Art Blog By Bob will resume regular programming on Monday, August 18th. Here’s hoping that everyone’s taken time to enjoy their Summer and is ready for another great fall season of new art exhibitions and new art books.

Wanna Get Away

Annie, Alex, and I will be packing up everything but the kitchen sink and heading down to an undisclosed location on the New Jersey Shore for some fun in the sun this week for a much needed and greatly deserved vacation. I can’t promise to kick it “old-school” like William Glackens’ Beach Umbrellas at Blue Point (above, from 1916), but there will be boardwalks and salt water taffy involved.

Art Blog By Bob will resume programming on Monday, August 18th. Until then, take this month’s beach-related poll, check out some of the great art blogs on the blogroll at right, or stroll through the archives and enjoy the memories.

Aloha!

Hungry Heart

While working in his Paris studio in 1924, Chaim Soutine hung an actual side of beef as a model for his Carcass of Beef (above, from 1924). Soutine, who died on August 9, 1943, grew up in such poverty in his small Jewish town in Lithuania that we only know he was born sometime in 1894. Accustomed to hunger since childhood, Soutine saw the beef as a beautiful still life rather than a meal. Despite the protests of neighbors, who could smell the rotting meat, Soutine continued to paint, accustomed to hatred directed at him since his earliest years. His devoutly Jewish community condemned any form of art. Soutine actually received beatings at the hands of siblings and neighbors when he tried to draw. When one neighbor family beat Soutine for trying to draw their father, Soutine’s mother sued them for damages. Fittingly, Soutine used the money awarded to enter art school in 1909. After a year of scraping together enough cash to buy a fourth-class ticket, Soutine boarded a train to Paris and a life of more poverty and struggle, but freedom, finally, to pursue his art.

Once in Paris, Soutine soon united with equally poor, equally creative artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Jacques Lipschitz, Marc Chagall, and Fernand Leger. Soutine and Modigliani shared rooms until Modigliani’s death in 1920, which wounded Soutine deeply. Soutine’s portraits, such as Pastry Cook with Red Handkerchief (above, from 1922-1923), show Modigliani’s influence in how they distort the human figure, but add a whole new level of violence beyond Modigliani’s contortions. Unable to hire models, Soutine painted anyone who would sit for him, including the simple waiters and cooks who lived and worked in his neighborhood. In 1923, Soutine’s ship finally came in in the person of Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who purchased sixty of Soutine’s paintings for his collection that would eventually become the Barnes Foundation. Never again would Soutine need to worry for money.

But new worries came in the form of anti-Semitism and the Fascist Nazi regime when they invaded France during World War II. When the Germans bombed Paris during World War I, Soutine fled to southern France and painted such Van Gogh-inspired, pseudo-Cubist works as Céret Landscape (above, from 1919). Unfortunately, nowhere in France could Soutine find safety from the Nazis. Soutine often slept in forests during rainstorms to elude capture, which exacerbated the stomach ailments he faced his entire life. Just two weeks before the liberation of France by the allies in 1944, Chaim Soutine died during a long-overdue operation on a massive stomach ulcer. From inconceivably humble beginnings, Soutine rose to the heights of the art world, painting an oeuvre that influenced later artists such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud and perhaps even the Abstract Expressionists. Ignoring the hunger in his belly, Soutine never failed to feed the hunger in his heart to create images reflecting his inner turmoil.

Tough Act to Follow

It’s always tough following a great opening act. In fifteenth-century Netherlandish art, Hans Memling had to follow on the heels of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, two of the greatest early innovators in painting. Before he died on August 11, 1494 (born sometime after 1430), Memling created a large body of beautiful religious works full of imagination, such as the central panel of his Last Judgment Triptych (above, from 1467-1471). Christ returns on the Day of Judgment seated upon a rainbow (interestingly, and accurately, depicted as a ring) while Saint Michael weighs the scales and separates the saved from the damned below. The heavenly host gathered around the Savior and the risen dead scattered about the armored angel form another larger circle, creating a rippling effect with Christ at the center. Unfortunately, Memling copied much of this composition from one of van der Weyden’s altarpieces. Memling may have studied under van der Weyden, so imitation doesn’t seem that outrageous. However, because of modern expectations of originality, Memling stands accused of unoriginality, a charge he never faced in life.

In fact, during his life, Memling enjoyed a large and wide reputation. The Medici commissioned The Last Judgment Triptych shown above, although events conspired against its delivery to Italy. Wealthy patrons from as far away as England paid Memling handsomely to create works for their churches, always with an eye on getting the best painters to include their images in the works so that everyone knew who was footing the bill. But not all of Memling’s religious works were for-hire devotionals. In 1489, Memling completed his Saint Ursula Shrine (above, from 1489), a gilded wooden reliquary said to hold personal artifacts of the saint herself. The paintings on the sides tell the tale of Saint Ursula, daughter of a Christian king who agreed to marry a pagan prince only if he converted. No patrons appear anywhere on the work. This reliquary appeared before the public only on Saint Ursula’s feast day each year, making it a rare treasure made more for piety than praise.

But even Saint Ursula’s Shrine may have been based on another, perhaps solid gold model. Memling, however, did sometimes look forward rather than back. In the front panels of his Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation (above, from 1485), Memling sexes up the vanitas theme that would become commonplace a century later. An alluring nude appears sandwiched between skeletal Death and bedeviled Hell. She holds a mirror up to her face, enjoying the view. The Devil to her left, with a face leering from its torso, seems like something out of Hieronymus Bosch until you realize that Bosch comes after Memling. Did Bosch see such works by Memling or were such innovations simply “in the air” at the time? In a period in which attribution alone is difficult, influence seems even sketchier. The monster eating the damned beneath the two-faced devil may have risen up from Memling’s imagination whole or been just another “borrowed” idea from contemporaries. The sexuality of the central nude, however, seems chronologically out of place, more modern than anything else, albeit with the wide-hipped conventions of beauty of the time. Perhaps our modern, vainer times make Memling’s vain lady seem strikingly one of us. Memling suffers from the expectations of later times, doomed to play second banana to his predecessors and unappreciated for the variations he played on those themes.

Stuck Inside His Own Head

On September 15th and 16th this year, Damien Hirst will attempt to revolutionize the art world—again. At an auction at Sotheby’s Hirst is calling “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,” Hirst looks to cut dealers out of the art market equation entirely and auction new works directly to the public. (Sotheby’s press release is here.) The prize offering, according to Hirst, will be his Golden Calf (above, with Hirst himself), a bull wearing a solid gold disc on its head and 18-carat gold hooves inside a chamber full of formaldehyde. Hirst hopes to rekindle memories of The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, the fourteen-foot shark he preserved in formaldehyde in 1991, as well as cash in like no other artist in history. Other artists, such as Jeff Koons, have offered new work at auction, but never at anything near the scale of Hirst’s September date at Sotheby’s. Sotheby’s estimates that Hirst’s Golden Calf will sell for between $15.7 $23.6 million USD. Of course, Hirst imagined a big payday for For the Love of God, his diamond encrusted skull sculpture, and that failed miserably, with Hirst himself organizing a group of buyers just to save face. Hirst’s usual dealers, many of whom got roped into the diamond skull buyback fiasco, say publically that they support Hirst in this “groundbreaking” endeavor, but privately express pain over what they feel is a betrayal and a harbinger of things to come. It may be “Beautiful” inside Hirst’s head right now, but in the art world, already suffering from the effects of America’s staggering economy, the picture isn’t nearly as pretty.

The Sotheby auction appears to be stage two in Hirst’s master plan to rule the art world. Stage one was the opening of his Marylebone store and website Other Criteria. The Other Criteria store offers t-shirts (some examples above), postcards, plates, books, and even some artwork all by Hirst or his studio. Other, up-and-coming artists share some shelf space with Hirst’s offerings, but the main marketing plan centers on all things Hirst. Sadly, it is these very up-and-coming artists hurt the most by Hirst’s auction stunt. Struggling artists yet to make a name rely on dealers to give them a chance. By circumventing the dealers, Hirst denies them the revenue that allows them to take chances on new artists whom the public has yet to discover. Of course, many young artists today market directly to the public through the internet, but even that system relies on the public finding such artists mostly by chance. For the lack of a better system, galleries remain the best delivery system for new art. Stories are already begin to appear despairing of the number of small New York galleries closing due to the current financial crunch. When only the big galleries remain, even those will be forced to take fewer chances and to concentrate on name brands. The publishing world already suffers from this syndrome, with giants such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter sucking up so much oxygen that new authors can never take that first breath.

Those looking to hype Hirst’s venture compare this auction to audacious gestures of the past like Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. But where Duchamp’s urinal poked fun at the art establishment’s excesses, Hirst’s ploy celebrates them. Instead of elevating the artist, Hirst’s money-grabbing stunt diminishes him. The photo of Hirst standing beneath his Golden Calf (above) makes him seem small and insignificant next to the beast itself, the golden idol to which he prays. Those who support Hirst’s auction scheme remind me of those who believed in “trickle-down economics” during the Reagan years. If Hirst succeeds (and that remains a big “if”), the wave he will bring won’t raise all boats but will instead sink them. Rumors that Takashi Murakami could follow Hirst’s example might be the first sign of an art dealer apocalypse. Perhaps Murakami and other artists are waiting to see just how well Hirst fares before taking the plunge, too. Hirst’s success isn’t guaranteed. As I said before, For the Love of God failed to generate the buzz and revenue Hirst hoped for. The beast in the box motif begun with the shark seventeen years ago seems horribly dated now. With The Golden Calf, Hirst tries to mash both of these motifs together, which I read more as the sign of desperate rather than a world-conquering artist. Like a shark, artists such as Hirst need to keep moving to stay alive. Stasis means slippage in today’s art market. It’s easy to root against Hirst’s success for all the reasons I’ve listed above, but perhaps the greatest reason is that he represents the worst element of big-name branding not only in the visual arts but all modern culture. The only response to such schemes is to stop feeding the sharks and allow the little fish room to swim and grow.

Deeply Superficial

Andy Warhol once said that he was “deeply superficial.” Born August 6, 1928, Warhol spent his entire life proving how superficial even the deepest thoughts really are. Pop Art itself always seemed committed to erasing the lines between high and lowbrow, leveling off everything into some kind of ironic middle. About a year before his death, Warhol created a four-paneled Self-Portrait (above, from 1986) of himself in his trademark shock wig. Warhol silk-screened four photos of himself onto the 6-foot-square canvas slightly out of register, achieving a blurred effect as if he were somehow out of phase with this plane of reality. Warhol never truly got in step with the world, always too ironic and self-conscious to allow himself to participate in the everyday. And when he did function in this reality, he obsessively watched himself functioning, recording every trivial aspect, apparently to emphasize its very triviality. Warhol’s life after he became “Warhol” the brand was like a loop of film playing over and over endlessly.

Warhol holds the distinction of creating the most unwatchable film of all time—Empire. On July 25th and 26th, 1964, from 8:06 pm to 2:42 am, Warhol filmed the top of the Empire State Building in real time. (A still from the film, not much different from film itself, appears above.) For eight hours, the sun sets, floodlights go on, and office windows flicker on and off. Warhol refused to allow abridged versions, stressing that the unwatchability of the movie was the point. Only Warhol would create a film with the goal of not having it seen. Awash in eccentricities and surrounding himself in equally unconventional people, Warhol lost touch with the things of this world in the mid-1960s and never found his way back. The one link he maintained with reality seems to be his religious faith. A devout Byzantine Rite Catholic, Warhol attended mass every day, volunteered at homeless shelters (imagine seeing him in the soup line), and created religious artworks not found until after his death. Perhaps Warhol sought the comforts of the next life so strenuously that his life on Earth seemed less real than Heaven.

Warhol managed to take the secular figures of American culture and iconize them into saints. Elvis Presley in Warhol’s Triple Elvis (above, from 1963) looks like a medieval triptych all by himself. In Warhol’s eyes, Marilyn Monroe became a modern Madonna, minus the virginity. Warhol didn’t create the American cult of personality, but he gave it hyperbolic visual form. I’d like to think that Warhol shaped his overwrought images with at least a pinch of sarcasm, recognizing how modern media figures served as poor stand-ins for the religious heroes of his faith and the mythic standard-bearers of civilization’s past. Today, any hope of sarcasm or irony seems long dead with no hope of resurrection. Perhaps only an enforced viewing of Empire could break the spell Warhol helped cast. If eight hours of watching nothing happen doesn’t impress on you the banality of modern iconography, nothing will.