Can Art Teach Patience?

Have you ever noticed how long people look at a painting in a museum or gallery? Surveys have clocked view times anywhere between 10 and 17 seconds. The Louvre estimated that visitors studied the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, for an astoundingly low average of 15 seconds. Our increasingly online, instantaneous existence accounts for those numbers, obviously. Can we ever again find the patience to look at art as it was meant to be seen? A recent article by Harvard University art history professor Dr. Jennifer Roberts argues not only that art requires patience, but also that it can teach “the power of patience.” Where patience once stood for the helplessness of standing in line at the DMV, patience, in Roberts’ argument, can now stand for empowerment, a “time management” choice that can drive us to look not just at paintings, but at our whole lives. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can Art Teach Patience?"

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?"

New World Order: The Art of the Americas Wing of the MFA, Boston

Aside from the almost comically anatomically incorrect shark, the aspect of John Singleton Copley’s 1778 painting Watson and the Shark that most catches my eye is the black seaman standing in the boat watching the shark attack unfold before him. With Watson and the shark forming the bottom two points of a triangle, the black figure crowns the peak. Copley originally painted a white seaman with long, flowing hair in that place, but changed to the black figure for the final painting. A copy of Copley’s painting appears in the newly opened Art of the Americas wing of the Museum of the Fine Arts, Boston (exterior view above). Just as Copley reordered the world of his painting and included the often excluded black face, the MFA reorders the world of their American art collection and goes global—mingling more than 5,000 works of art from North, Central, and South America arranged chronologically on four gorgeously redesigned floors. Works often relegated to special sections or (even worse) storerooms, find reintegration into the mainstream flow of art history in an almost sneak attack on the senses. This new world order of the American art world reflects the new reality of modern America. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "New World Order."

[Image: © Nigel Young/Foster + Partners.]

[Many thanks to the Museum of the Fine Arts, Boston for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to the opening of their new Art of the Americas wing. Short videos of the new MFA are available on their YouTube channel.]

Finish What You Started

How many Americans today could identify the classic portrait of George Washington on the one dollar bill as copied after the work of Gilbert Stuart? Fewer would even know that the original work (aka, The Athenaeum Portrait; above, from 1796) was never finished, just like the companion portrait of Martha Washington. Born December 3, 1755, Stuart earned a reputation as both the finest American portraitist of his time and the unreliable, debt-ridden, exasperating artist who failed to deliver time and again. Stuart lived large and well beyond his means, enjoying the company of the rich and powerful, including the men who would become the first six presidents of the United States, all of whom Stuart painted, or at least began painting.

Although born in the American colonies and beginning a career as an artist there, Stuart traveled to England to complete his training in 1775 as the hostilities that would become the American Revolution began. Whereas artists such as John Singleton Copley remained in America and adapted from portraits of the upper class to portraits of the new mercantile class, Stuart followed the money and continued to paint members of the upper class. His portrait of William Grant, better known as The Skater (above, from 1782) shows the influence of Benjamin West, who befriended and taught his fellow former colonist. Stuart soon commanded prices rivaling those demanded by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Unfortunately, success spoiled Stuart and his spendthrift ways forced him to flee to Ireland in 1787 to avoid debtor’s prison.

Stuart returned to America in 1793, after the Revolution. He soon began painting the new nobility of the young American nation, earning the distinction of being one of the few artists to have painted both King George III and George Washington. Stuart’s finished portrait of George Washington (aka, The Lansdowne Portrait; above, from 1796) shows the founding father in an almost royal pose, incongruous with the ideal of the early republic. When the nation’s capital moved to Washington, DC, Stuart opened a studio there in 1803 to be close to the seat of power. Stuart’s personal charisma made him the favorite portraitist of many of his subjects, charming even the curmudgeonly John Adams with his conversational skills. Sadly, like his contemporary Thomas Lawrence’s alcoholism, Stuart’s financial incompetence stood in the way of him achieving even greater things in art.

Transatlantic

Walking up the grand staircase of the PAFA, you slowly become aware of the two gigantic paintings on either side on the second floor, both by Benjamin West, one of the first major painters in American art. Born October 10, 1738 among a Quaker community in Springfield, Pennsylvania, West painted epic scenes from the Bible and history, many of which are still in Philadelphia over 200 years later. Perhaps my favorite West painting at the PAFA, William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (above, from 1771) shows the moment at which Pennsylvania and Philadelphia were born. West claimed that he first learned how to mix colors and paint from the Native Americans who lived nearby, which may have helped him in painting them in a sympathetic light in this painting—more noble savage than savage period. West served as a militia captain during the Indian wars of the 1750s, yet still didn’t adopt the common prejudice against Native Americans. This humanity helped catapult West into a grand career at a portraitist and, later, history painter.

West found success painting portraits of prominent Philadelphians, including his friend Benjamin Franklin, between 1746 and 1759. In 1759, wealthy patrons sponsored his trip to Italy to study the works of the masters such as Titian and Raphael. (Londoners would later call West “the American Raphael.” ) He moved to England in 1763 and soon became painter to King George III. West truly put himself on the art map with The Death of General Wolfe (above, from 1770), a stunning historical portrait of the dying hero cast in a classical light yet portrayed without classical dress—an innovation that fast forwarded epic history painting to the recent past. West paints in a bombastic style, with almost garish color. His figures strike theatrical poses that hammer home the message, with Wolfe himself posed like a Renaissance Christ freshly lowered from the cross. In The Death of General Wolfe, a Native American crouches in the middle, musing upon the death of Wolfe with his chin resting on his fist, as pensive as Rodin’s Thinker itself in the face of such heroic grandeur. As the second president of the Royal Academy of Art, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, West’s own thoughts on art influenced generations of artists on both sides of the Atlantic.

West’s giant paintings intimidate you with their size and scope. The PAFA's Death on a Pale Horse (above, 1817) hovers over you with the force of revelation, threatening to trample you in its path. Seeing this at the PAFA, you wish you could keep moving further and further back, but the railing of the staircase traps you. At Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, you can see West’s Christ Healing the Sick with plenty of room to move back, which seems to diminish the power of the painting. West’s works almost refuse to allow you to take them all in at once, forcing you to move about them as if you yourself were there in the scene. When an earlier version of the PAFA building burned down in the nineteenth century, firefighters had to cut West’s painting from the frame and roll it up to save it from the flames. The crowd assembled reportedly cheered at the sight of the saved behemoth. West’s paintings may have lost some favor with critics, but his influence on later American artists such as Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Singleton Copley will always save a place for him in the history of American art.

School Master

When Matthew Pratt’s cousin Betsy Shewell needed an escort for her trip to London in 1764 to marry the painter Benjamin West, Pratt jumped at the chance and changed the course of his life. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 23, 1734, Pratt became West’s assistant and then his first student, learning the profession of painting from one of the first accomplished painters associated with America. The American School (above) shows West’s studio in London circa 1765. West stands at the left, offering instruction to a student with a slate. Pratt places himself seated before the easel on the right, already seeing himself as a true professional. After four years with West, Pratt returned to Philadelphia in 1768 and embarked on his career as one of the premier portraitists of pre-Revolutionary America.

Philadelphia bustled with commercial, cultural, and political activity when Pratt returned to ply his trade. “The Athens of America” found itself at the crossroads of the waning days of colonialism and the emerging era of a new, free, democratic republic. Pratt painted royalists and revolutionaries alike. Figures such as William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland (above), painted in 1774, with their frilly lace cuffs, represent the royalists still clinging to hope that a separation with England could be avoided. Pratt painted all the famous figures of Philadelphia, including the wife of then-mayor Samuel Powel, Elizabeth Willing Powel. That portrait still hangs in the restored Powel House in Philadelphia, as vibrant as the day it was painted. Pratt learned well from West, using the same smooth surface technique and simple colors of his teacher.

After the revolution began in 1776, Pratt’s fortunes wavered. In portraits such as that of Commodore John Barry (above), painted in the fateful year of 1776, Pratt tries to switch gears and keep up with the times. Unfortunately, the quick switch from high society to heroes of the revolution didn’t suit Pratt’s style. Other portrait artists, such as Gilbert Stuart and John Singleton Copley, whom Pratt met in New York City in 1771, seamlessly adjusted to the new spirit in the air and churned out portraits of the new major society players. Pratt remains an interesting figure in pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia for how he captured and in some ways epitomized a way of life on the way out.

Fanfare for a Common Man

John Singleton Copley, one of the greatest artists of Colonial period America and the finest portraitist of pre-Revolutionary Boston, was born on this date in 1738. With portraits such as that of Paul Revere above, Copley brought the same grandeur and prestige to middle class merchants in the colonies as other portraitists had brought to the crowned heads of Europe.

Revere, famous subject of Longfellow’s “Midnight Ride,” holds one of his silver crafts in his hand in Copley’s portrait, part of the artist’s technique to replace the trappings of power in the portraits of royalty and create a new social dynamic in America through the portrait. Young America’s identity as a democratic society composed of individuals who rose on their merits rather than their lineage owes much to Copley’s portraits of men such as Revere, Samuel Adams, and many others.

Copley’s most dramatic painting, Watson and the Shark (above),[*] tells the story of Brook Watson, who survived a vicious shark attack in 1749 and rose to become Mayor of London. Watson, an orphan at a young age, lost his right leg below the knee to a shark while swimming in the waters off of Havana, Cuba—one of the first fully documented accounts of a shark attacking a human. Copley avoids a graphic depiction of Watson’s wounds by having the right leg trail off in the watery depths. Amazingly, considering the medicine of the time, Watson survived and thrived. Watson commissioned the painting from Copley so that it could be hung in a hospital as an example to youth that any disadvantage can be overcome with enough determination. Copley’s depictions of Watson and Revere both celebrate the power of the individual not only to overcome any obstacle but also to inspire others to rise themselves.

([*] It would be unkind to point out in the middle of Copley’s and Watson’s inspirational moment just how bad the depiction of the shark in Watson and the Shark is. Copley obviously never saw a live shark, but most likely only preserved jaws. His shark not only has forward-facing eyes, but also rather prominent lips. Nonetheless, the drama of the painting, including the poses of all those on the boat frantically trying to save Watson, more than makes up for the unfortunate shark. Cue the “Theme from Jaws” here, just in time for beach season.)