Richard Hamilton: The True King of Pop?

Michael Jackson proudly wore the crown as the “King of Pop” until his death in 2009. In the visual arts, at least for Americans, Andy Warhol’s ruled as the “King of Pop,” reigning as the prime example of Pop Art for the uninitiated as well as for connoisseurs. Most British (and more than a few American) art lovers, however, see Richard Hamilton as the true “King of Pop” and Warhol as just an upstart usurper to the throne. The Tate Modern’s new exhibition Richard Hamilton, which runs through May 26, 2014, provides not only a
survey of Hamilton’s greatest pop hits, but also a career-long survey that shows how he engaged with popular culture beyond just Warhol-esque celebrity and marketing gestures and got at the heart of what Pop Art should  and could be. Is Richard Hamilton the true “King of Pop”? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Richard Hamilton: The True King of Pop?"

The Other Victorians

One of my first subversive art experiences was watching Terry Gilliam’s animated collage title sequences for Monty Python. The Pythons loved to poke fun at the vestiges of stuffy Victorian culture in British contemporary life with the subtlety of that giant foot stomping down at the end of each Gilliam short. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art kicks back at the idea of a monolithically moralistic Victorian age and shows the subversive side of the Victorians themselves, who poked fun at themselves long before the Pythons. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Other Victorians."

[Image: Georgina Berkeley (English, 1831–1919), Untitled Page from The Berkeley Album, 1866–71. Collage of watercolor, ink, pencil, and albumen silver prints. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.]

[Many thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for providing me with image above and press materials for the exhibition Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, running through May 9, 2010.]

Awkward Positions

In an episode of Seinfeld titled "The Apology," Jerry’s new girlfriend Melissa walks around his apartment naked all day long. After enjoying the view for a while, Jerry soon learns the difference between “good naked” and “bad naked,” finally deciding he can’t take any more after Melissa does “a full bodyflex on a pickle jar.” Edgar Degas depicted the nude female form in various media in countless poses, but I can’t say that any of them qualify as “sexy.” In fact, Degas, born July 19, 1834, seems to specialize in Seinfeld’s “bad naked,” in which a woman contorts in some fashion that puts her in an unattractive light. Degas’ The Tub (above, from 1885-1886) shows a woman washing herself at one of the most awkward moments of the process, nearly bent in half. As with his images of dancers and the dance, Degas found the female form in motion endlessly fascinating, regardless of the aesthetics of the position itself. Yet the balance of the “good naked” versus “bad naked” seems horrible askew.

Critics debate Degas’ sexuality even today. We know pretty much nothing about his preferences in that regard. Degas’ devotion to art consumed apparently every ounce of his energy and passion. Critics also accuse Degas of misogyny thanks to antifeminist remarks he often made. Degas’ support of Mary Cassatt, however, seems to poke a hole in that theory, yet Cassatt’s own murky sexuality leaves Degas defenseless once again. Are Degas’ awkward poses of women a form of torture? Degas asked models to hold these sometimes painfully awkward poses for unbearable lengths of time. Was it sadism that led Degas to ask a model to raise her arms in the pose for Woman Combing Her Hair (above, from 1885-1886) long enough for him to capture the moment completely? Although Degas finds himself lumped in with the Impressionism crowd in histories of art, he considered himself a realist. Perhaps these awkward poses are simply a realist capturing the not-so-pretty picture of everyday life.

Degas even brought this awkwardness to his sculptures of women, as in Dancer Looking at her Right Foot (above, from 1895-1910). The figure stands so off balance that an additional support was added to keep her from toppling over. Degas used such sculptures to help him complete drawings or paintings when models weren’t available. He’d ask the models for such sculptures to pose nude to get the body right, knowing he could add costuming later. How long do you think Degas asked that young woman to model in such a position? I’ve always loved Degas work. I believe him to be the finest pastel artist of all time. As I’ve come to read more and more about Degas the man, however, it’s become easier and easier to read sinister overtones into his work. Whether that’s fair or not, I can’t answer. But I can say that there’s a lot of “bad naked” in Degas art if you look closely enough. For someone so attuned to the world of beauty, Degas excelled at making even the female nude look ugly and wrong.

Living Long, and Prospering

An Art Info interview with actor-director Leonard Nimoy and his wife Susan discusses how they’ve become avid collectors of modern art since 1987. Susan is a trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Nimoys have contributed to the MOCA’s exhibitions of emerging artists. Along with a discussion of their love of collecting, the interview features a selection of Leonard Nimoy’s own photography, which I found interesting in its almost classical approach. One photo from The Borghese Series (above) shows a hooded figure that seems almost from another planet. Didn’t Spock mind meld with this guy on Rigel VII?

Nimoy’s photography reminded me greatly of that of Edward Weston, especially photographs such as Nimoy’s Dance Nudes Series (above) and his Egg Series. Clearly, Nimoy knows the history of photography and appreciates figures such as Weston. Another photo, featuring a pair of disembodied hands, pays homage to Alfred Stieglitz, who did a similar study of the hands of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

Nimoy’s photography seems most interesting in his unique Self-Portraits, such as the double-exposure study shown above. In another self-portrait, Nimoy places his face, full of the marks of age and experience, in the foreground, while a nude woman lays in the background, slightly out of focus. It’s a fascinating study of the contrast of age and youth. I’ll confess to being a Trekkie and a devout follower of the original series. Along with Brent Spiner as Data in The Next Generation, Nimoy’s Mr. Spock always struck me as the most fascinating, complex character, thanks mostly to the ability of the actor behind the makeup. Nimoy’s autobiographies—I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock (yes, I've read both)–demonstrated that he was more than just a typecast actor. His photography proves that Leonard Nimoy truly has an artist’s soul.

Sad Times

Art critic Roberta Smith of The New York Times takes notice of the PMA’s Antonio Mancini exhibition in today’s edition. On one hand, it’s nice to see this sleeper of an exhibition get greater press, especially someplace as visible as the Times. However, the one thing that I loved the most about the catalogue to the exhibition (which I reviewed here) was that it totally resisted making the "Van Gogh angle" of the "crazy painter" the main focus. Smith makes some interesting comments, drawing parallels between Mancini and Balthus, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly, but falls right into the same, tired storyline of the mad painter. “Yes, I am a little bit nuts,” she imagines one of his paintings saying. Perhaps Smith takes that tack to pander to popular taste, which thinks that all artists are a bit daft, but you’d hope for something a little better from the alleged paper of record. Yes, Mancini had severe emotional and mental problems. Yes, he lived a strange, tragic existence. But to insinuate, as the mad painter storyline always does, that the art is a pure, unconscious manifestation of that madness rather than a talent developed by effort expressing a particular inner life does injustice to the artist and perpetuates prejudice against the mentally ill. (Smith also veers off into a critique of some of Mancini's paintings of children, likening them to Calvin Klein ads and thus skirting the periphery of a pedophilia accusation, maybe as another component of his "madness." Personally, I believe that Mancini's depictions of children are his most striking works in their honesty and intensity. They are truly cases of an "inner child" being let out, in this case on canvas.) When Annie, Alex, and I toured the Mancini exhibition after visiting the Renoir Landscapes recently, I was simply blown away, even after being somewhat prepared by seeing the works in reproduction first. Annie couldn’t believe how someone that good could remain unknown. The PMA’s exhibition hopes to create an atmosphere in which Mancini the artist can be rediscovered by a modern audience. Roberta Smith’s piece on Mancini the madman simply covers him up again.

Your Own Personal Jesus

Ewer with Jesus Healing the Blind Man and the Traditio Clavium, Rome, late 4th century; silver. The Trustees of the British Museum, London

My favorite scene in all of the Indiana Jones films comes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. As his father lays dying, Indy enters a room guarded by an ancient knight, who tells them that the true Holy Grail is one of the many vessels surrounding them. Elsa, the Nazi archaeologist, selects a beautiful golden chalice. “This certainly is the cup of the ‘King of Kings,’" the evil businessman says before taking a fatal drink. “He chose... poorly,” the knight says. “That's the cup of a carpenter,” Indy says, choosing a rough wooden cup. The Kimbell Art Museum’s current exhibition also chooses wisely in their presentation of Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art. In this exhibition and accompanying catalogue, we discover just how that humble carpenter evolved into the golden King of Kings. The silver ewer above encapsulates this dual nature, showing on one side Jesus healing the blind man (displaying the miracle worker and friend of the poor) and on the other one side Jesus handing the keys of power over to Peter (positioning Jesus as lawgiver and ruler passing on his authority to the Church and the governments it befriends). Picturing the Bible allows us to go back in time to the origin of Christian art and thought and see how Christianity became what we know today.

Engraved gem with Adam and Eve, Syria or Asia Minor, early 4th century; nicolo (banded agate). The Trustees of the British Museum, London

Jeffrey Spier, who conceived and organized the exhibition, provides an overview of the development of early Christian art in his opening essay, “The Earliest Christian Art: From Personal Salvation to Imperial Power.” Little Christian art exists that can be dated before the third century A.D. Slowly, however, as Christians attained wealth and property, they began to decorate their churches, tombs, and homes with art reflecting their faith, just as their non-Christian, pagan counterparts did. This new Christian art borrows from the existing pagan and Jewish models, reinterpreting the familiar motifs and scenes for the still-young faith. The fourth century A.D. gem shown above, engraved with a scene depicting Adam and Eve, would have been set as a seal into a ring, a later example of the early personal items that bore the first marks of Christian art. The story of Adam and Eve would have been familiar and comfortable from its use in Jewish art and yet would still mark the individual as a follower of Christ, the “new Adam” who died on the cross, the “new Tree of Knowledge.”

Sarcophagus with the Traditio Legis, Rome, last quarter of the 4th century; marble. Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence Antique, Arles, France

Christian art transcends the personal sphere and enters the public, political world with the acceptance of Christ and Christianity by Constantine the Great in 312. Legends tell of an epiphany in which God appeared before Constantine on the eve of a great battle for the control of the empire and assured him victory if he placed the sign of Christ on the shields of his men. That legend most likely arose much later to cement the connection between Constantine and Christ, but the marriage of religion and state power begins with Constantine’s ascension. As Johannes G. Deckers points out in his essay, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” “Beginning in the fourth century, the mild Son of God of the New Testament was eclipsed in art by the remote, all-powerful figure of the Pantocrator, guarantor of a hierarchical world order culminating in the person of the emperor.” Although the gentle Lamb of God motif appears under Christ’s feet at the center of the Arles Sarcophagus (above), the emphasis is clearly on the passage of the rules of law from the hand of Christ to St. Peter, who stands as a surrogate for the emperor. The small, antiestablishment band of Christians had made the big time and become assimilated by the ruling powers.

Ivory plaque with Pilate Washing His Hands, Christ Bearing the Cross, and Peter Denying Christ, Rome, c. 420-30, from the Maskell ivories. The Trustees of the British Museum, London

Several fascinating revelations arise from the discussions of the art. Truly startling is the idea that the cross was not a familiar motif in the earliest Christian art. If Constantine placed a symbol of Christ on his shields, it was most likely the Greek-lettered “chi-rho” Christogram—the savior’s monogram. The cross still carried connotations of shame and brutality that the early Christians didn’t want depicted in their art. An ivory plaque (above) shows one of the earliest uses of the cross in a compacted narrative scene of the passion and death of Christ, with Pilate washing his hands and Peter denying his Lord three times crammed in with a scene of Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha. Such concise composition creates opportunities for interesting parallels to be drawn within the image and with other images, promoting a level of exegesis—the elucidation of allegorical meaning on multiple levels—startling in its sophistication.

Book cover with scenes from the life of Jesus, northern Italy, second half of the 5th century; ivory with central figures of gilded-silver cell work inlaid with garnets. Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano e del Museo del Duomo, Milan

This sophistication appears most obviously in the elaborate Bible covers that were developed in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., as Christianity continued to grow in size and power. The example above shows the once-humble Lamb of God now depicted in gilded silver cells inlaid with garnets and other precious stones. Scenes of the life of Jesus appear in the ivory carvings surrounding the central motif. These expensive covers emphasized the importance of the gospels to Christianity as much as they displayed the importance of the individuals who paid for them to be made. The other half of this bible cover features a cross at the center, as bejeweled as the Lamb. Again, the two-sided nature of humble and powerful Christianity appears, but the balance is clearly moving towards the powerful.

Adam Naming the Animals, Rome (?), early 5th century, from an ivory diptych. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

Many of these book covers actually carry out visually the doctrinal questions of the day. Theological doctors of the early church, such as St. Augustine and Paulinus, exerted great influence on the visual “language” of early Christian art. The ivory diptych half shown above featuring Adam naming the animals belongs with another half showing the miracles of St. Paul. By juxtaposing Adam and St. Paul, the artist visually recreates the doctrinal concept in which St. Paul (who once was bit by a poisonous viper and survived) and Adam (who had dominion over all the beasts) could neither be harmed by beasts and, therefore, overcame nature through their virtuous devotion to God. Such complex visual language no longer exists today, something Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J., lamented in his analysis of the complex doctrinal concepts embedded in the Sistine Chapel in his work The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision (my review here). The fact that such intricate interplay between words and images exists within the tradition of Christian art from these earliest works to the heights of the Renaissance adds a whole new dimension to the genre and a coherence not obvious at first glance when placing these early ivory carvings and, for example, The Last Judgment side by side.

The Ascension, from the Rabbula Gospels, Syria, 586; vellum. Biblioteca Mdicea Laurenziana, Florence (Cod. Plut. I. 56, Fol. 13v)

In addition to the amazing covers of these early Bibles, the text itself became a work of art. In his essay, “The Word Made Flesh in Early Decorated Bibles," Herbert L. Kessler sees these illuminated scriptures as truly “living writing,” with initial capital letters transformed into a cross or a figure or the loops of letters embellished with symbols that emphasize or interact with the text itself. Another dimension that these illustrated works offer is in the inclusion of local artistic traditions or apocryphal religious accounts that would appeal to the intended audience using the work. The Ascension scene from the Rabbula Gospels (above) borrows from “extensive Gospel pictorial cycles originating in Syria—Palestine in the sixth century” that formed the basis for later Byzantine art. By including this local flavor, the gospels became that much more familiar and appealing to the worshiper. Such concern for catholic inclusiveness reminds me of Rowena Loverance’s study, Christian Art (reviewed here), which called for a renewed emphasis on the functionality and practicality she found in these early Christian works of art. If only the Catholic Church today could adopt a similar flexibility in approaching modern culture and assimilating it into their outreach to believers and nonbelievers.

Reliquary Cross of Justin II, the Crux Vaticana, Constantinople, 568-74; gilded silver over a bronze core, with inlaid gems. Treasury of Saint Peter’s (Capitolo di San Pietro in Vaticano), Vatican City.

Picturing the Bible saddens me in some ways. Although such works as the Reliquary Cross of Justin II (above) gleam with majesty and beauty, it’s hard to separate that shine from the tarnished history of religion used to justify abuses of political and military power going all the way back to Constantine. Steven F. Eisenman’s The Abu Ghraib Effect (to be reviewed here soon) would even argue that the rise of the cross as the primary symbol of Christianity over the Christogram or the Lamb of God reflects the violent, torture-laden history of the church and state union. However, the modern-day relevance of the early Christian art displayed in Picturing the Bible lies in the realization of the sophistication of the images. If we could only “read” the images surrounding us today with the same fluency that those generations up through the Renaissance could, perhaps that questioning eye could deconstruct the implications behind the imagery and challenge the institutions in power propagating the visual narrative we have come to accept unquestioningly. With such an eye we could “choose wisely” the proper sources from which to drink in our beliefs.

[Many thanks to the Kimbell Art Museum for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to the exhibition Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art and for the images above.]

Happy New Year

And so we’re told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes
On New Year’s Day
On New Year’s Day

From “New Year’s Day” by U2

I’d like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! Each year brings the hopefulness and sense of innocence of a child, hence the “New Year’s Baby” motif (an example shown above from 1908 in J.C. Leyendecker’s cover for The Saturday Evening Post a century ago). Let’s try to keep hope alive and retain some of that innocence, at least until Valentine’s Day, OK?

Ho Ho Ho

I would like to wish everyone a very, very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from me, the lovely and talented Annie, and the excited and wide-eyed Alex (above). Art Blog By Bob will be very quiet after this post until most likely the New Year as we enjoy the holiday with family and friends.



I’ve always been a big fan of Santa Claus as a cultural phenomenon. A history of images of St. Nicholas, Santa Claus in his previous life, appears here. Thomas Nast’s Victorian Santa Claus (above, from 1881) ranks up there with the iconic images of the Jolly One. Christmas really is a Victorian invention in terms of traditions, thanks mainly to Nast and Charles Dickens. Our conception of Santa today still relies heavily on how the Victorians imagined him. My Mom has a collection of Santa figurines showing Santa through the years hailing all the way back to the 1880s and up to the 1940s, when that image, at least in America, became set in stone. Perhaps that was for the best. Imagining a 1980s Santa in a Members’ Only jacket and spandex with a mullet makes me shudder.


Perhaps no American artist loved the idea of Christmas and Santa as much as N.C. Wyeth. (His rendering of Santa from 1925 is above.) A behemoth of a man himself, N.C. would dress up as Santa for his children every year. Andrew Wyeth describes the literally bed-wetting terror he felt as “Santa” stood at the foot of his bed. Jamie Wyeth once described sweating profusely in anticipation of Christmas morning, which is at least better than wetting the bed.

No slice of Americana can be complete without including Norman Rockwell, who painted Santa many times over the years, including the image above from 1939. I find Rockwell’s image of Santa mapping his route around the world fascinating in light of just how divided the world was in 1939 as war raged in Europe and threatened to engulf the globe. Santa’s string tying together all the good boys and girls around the world provides the link of hope that the world needed at that moment. We could use that link today, too.

My new favorite image of Santa is, of course, this year’s photograph of Alex with Old Saint Nick (above). Christmas is about children above all else. Here’s hoping that everyone finds the love and peace that comes with embracing the children around us as well as the child remaining within us.

Masqued Avenger

KAREN KILIMNIK, The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers, 1989/2007; Mixed media installation, variable dimensions; Installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art; Photo by Aaron Igler

“I meant it so you would feel like you just had walked into one of the episodes,” Karen Kilimnik says of her mixed-media installation The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers (above), “so I do mean it to be like you’re in a movie or something.” Face to face with Patrick Macnee as the steely John Steed and Diana Rigg as the lively Emma Peel from the old espionage television series, The Avengers, you enter not only the make believe world of spying and disguising, but also the pop culture-strewn, identity-questioning world of the art of Karen Kilimnik, who brings together her passion for classic art and her passion for modern celebrity ala Andy Warhol, whose autograph Kilimnik owns as a telling sign of her own insatiable fandom. In the exhibition catalogue to the show previously at the Institute of Contemporary Art, The University of Pennsylvania and now at The Aspen Art Museum, Ingrid Schaffner and others examine the many masks and masquerades of this unique, post-Warholian artist.

KAREN KILIMNIK, Me—I Forgot the Wire Cutters Getting the Wire Cutters from the Car to Break into Stonehenge,1982, 1998; water soluble oil color on canvas, 16 x 20 inches; Courtesy Nina and Frank Moore

“Sidestepping all of the anticipated postmodern positions,” Schaffner writes in her introductory essay, “Lives Naturally in World of Theatre + Illusion,” “Kilimnik’s art is disarmingly subjective—immersive, imaginative, opinionated, possessive. It simultaneously mediates and expresses those desires and emotions, which appear like the imagery itself, to be left critically unresolved, full of mystery and aspiration.” Kilimnik open-heartedly allows herself the pleasure of being a fan, the standard affliction of modern consumers of pop culture, and refuses to place judgment on the subject matter’s value or on herself for loving it so. “Kilimnik is taking the stand that Warhol so famously offered: the possibility of taking no stand at all,” Schaffner concludes. Like Cindy Sherman in her photographic series mimicking the conventions of old movie stills, Kilimnik tries on different personas in her self-portraits, posing as Elizabeth Taylor at one moment and as a vandal breaking into Stonehenge in another (above). Using what Scott Rothkopf calls Kilimnik’s “pitch-perfect ear for the telling cultural signifier,” the artist continually plucks from the stream of commercial consciousness the prize of the one concise image or combination of images that resonates with the viewer.

KAREN KILIMNIK, Should I, Like the Heroine of the Ballet, Defy the Command and Make a Dangerous--and Possibly Fatal--Bid for Freedom?, 1998; crayon and pastel on paper, 34” x 26”; Collection of Gregory R. Miller, New York ; Courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York

Like Joseph Cornell, Kilimnik’s acquisitive, inquisitive imagination lands upon the world of ballet in images such as Should I, Like the Heroine of the Ballet, Defy the Command and Make a Dangerous—and Possibly Fatal—Bid for Freedom? (above), which drops the visage of actor Leonardo DiCaprio into a tableu of an unnamed ballet. Kilimnik surrounds the images with a narrative of the ballet, showing the verbal facility that leads Rothkopf to call her “wordly wise.” The unwieldliness of many of Kilimnik’s titles weights down her often bare-bones drawings and paintings with added narrative heft, such as the Stonehenge self-portrait above and this ballet scene. The ballet in Kilimnik’s hands becomes a masque in the sixteenth-century sense, with individual dancers’ identities superfluous to the work at hand. “Borrowing” DiCaprio for the role of a prince or even interchanging the actual dancer’s identity for the role they play, Kilimnik stirs up a fluid sense of individual identity that gives full reign to the play of the theatrical in her works. In addition to watching balletic performances, Kilimnik herself has been taking ballet classes since 1999 to learn the steps and positions firsthand, something that you could never imagine Cornell or that ultimate devotee of the dance, Edgar Degas, ever doing. Kilimnik continually places herself within the action her art examines.

In the midst of Kilimnik’s love affair with such pop culture effluvia as the tragic events behind The Boomtown Rats’ song “I Don’t Like Mondays,” her 6-hour film obsessively rerunning the crueler exchanges of the movie Heathers, and the humorous appearance of The Pink Panther in so many works, it’s easy to forget the serious student of art behind the fangirl/woman. Kilimnik’s Master Hare, 6:45 p.m. belongs to a series of retellings of Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous portrait. By revisiting that image and placing the specificity of “6:45 p.m.”, Kilimnik, in Schaffner’s view, “turn[s] a romantic sense of the past into an operative present.” Or, as Dominic Molon in his essay, “Karen Kilimnik’s History Lesson,” puts it, Kilimnik’s homages to the art of the past, as well as her pop culture studies, “demonstrate how our obsession with history as mediated by movies, television, and, of course, works of art, gives the past its unshakable presentness.” Just as when she makes over Paris Hilton as Marie Antoinette in one painting, Kilimnik continually makes over the art of the past, even the recent past, into something startlingly, continually present and relevant.

Schaffner sees this constant presentness as the “intrigue of Karen Kilimnik’s romantic imagination,” in which “the world we live in is also shown to be the one we desire.” Rather than flee from the visual stimulation all around her, Kilimnik embraces it, bringing her imaginative power to bear in transforming it into something transcendent. Kilimnik’s art is “not so much an escape from reality but a way of knowing it,” Schaffner believes. Whereas artists of the far distant past turned to mythology, the Bible, and literature to speak the shared language of the time, Kilimnik turns to pop culture to speak the modern idiom of the most visual generation ever to walk the Earth. Neil Postman once warned in the title of his study of popular entertainment that we were Amusing Ourselves to Death. Karen Kilimnik, instead, shows us how to amuse ourselves to life.


[Many thanks to the Institute of Contemporary Art, The University of Pennsylvania for the review copy of the exhibition catalogue Karen Kilimnik and for the images from the exhibition.]

Ice Queen

In Harbin of Heilongjiang Province, China, snow sculptors from around the globe have gathered for the 20th International Snow Sculpture Art Expo. My vote for star of the show goes to Romantic Feelings (shown above and below), the 115-foot-high and 656-foot-long snow sculpture believed to be the largest in the world. Personally, I hate the snow, but I can’t help but find these sculptures to be very, uh, cool. Click through the photos in the link to see a huge, icy version of Rodin’s The Thinker. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

10 K

I've run in a couple of 5Ks, but this is my first 10K. Over the weekend, Art Blog By Bob passed 10,000 hits since I started keeping a tally. Many thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting and making this very fun venture seem all that much more rewarding. In the grand scheme of the blogosphere, 10,000 hits seems paltry compared to the big boys, but I'm more than happy with the traffic in my little arty haven.

Thanks, also, to all the students around the world who stumbled across my site recently in their heated frenzy to get term papers written. That surge of interest let to over 1,000 hits in just the past week or so. Rest assured that Saint Jerome, patron saint of students and subject of one of Albrecht Durer's greatest etchings (above, from 1514), is looking over your shoulder, probably trying to point out a misspelling. I hope that you come back to visit sometime when the call of duty isn't so pressing to share some of your thoughts in response to my ramblings.

And speaking of my ramblings, I hope that everyone resists the urge to plagarize from my pearls of wisdom. Remember, cheaters only cheat themselves in the end. Also, keep in mind that, regardless of how authoritative I may sound, I'm still just some opinionated guy on the internet with a blog. As much as I'd hate someone taking my work as their own, I'd feel even worse if they did that and flunked. Like Mr. Brady said, Caveat emptor.

Collected Works

Joseph Cornell, Interplanetary Navigation, ca. 1962; collage with ink on Masonite; Collection Satoshi Yokota, Japan; © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York

To collect anything requires a type of mania, a fetish for ownership of the desired object that cannot be sated until the next obsession takes its place. The art of Joseph Cornell epitomizes this type of madness, but the current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, reveals the method behind that madness. In the catalogue to the exhibition, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, founding curator of the Joseph Cornell Study Center, brings her encyclopedic knowledge of this encyclopedic artist to bear. Cornell absorbed almost every field of knowledge or art that came within his reach, whether it was classical music, motion pictures, modern art, ballet, penny arcades, or the books, magazines, and newspapers he would come across in his haunts. Even astronomy fell within his purview, inspiring works such as Interplanetary Navigation (above), in which he took the burgeoning sphere of new knowledge and imposed his sense of artistic order upon it in collages or shadow boxes. Hartigan helps navigate us through the deep and wide waters of Cornell’s intellect and demonstrates how Cornell deserves greater recognition in the pantheon of American modern art.

Hartigan challenges “the long-standing emphasis given to Surrealism’s role in [Cornell’s] emergence as an artist,” titling her essay “When Does an Artist Become an Artist?” Living and working in New York City, Cornell found himself surrounded by new sensations. New York’s theaters, museums, galleries, and bookshops serve as Cornell’s “sanctuary and retreat of infinite pleasures.” He described “awesome, religious moments in front of florists’ windows.” Rather than a product of direct artistic influence, Cornell benefits from the culture rising around him. “His multifaceted curiosity was innate,” Hartigan writes, “yet magazines and newspapers in the 1920s—including those intended for a broad rather than intellectual readership—devoted an engaging mix of informed and intelligent discussions on the arts.” Like Edward Hopper, John Sloan, and so many other artists in that place and time, Cornell found the new elevated trains fascinating in their voyeuristic potential to glimpse through windows into strangers’ lives. Cornell equates art with the experience of life itself—as just another window upon the world. Although aware of Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and others, Cornell lacks an epiphany, a Road to Damascus moment of conversion so easily fit into the narratives of artists’ origins. Instead, his is a slow process, a gradual accumulation of artistry mirroring his gradual accumulation of artistic material.

Joseph Cornell, Cabinet of Natural History: Object, 1934, 1936–40; box construction with photographs on paperboard; Private collection; © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York; photo: George R. Staley

After years of creating collages by cutting and pasting Victorian-era imagery, transforming banal material into art through unique juxtapositions and correspondences, Cornell hit upon his first masterpiece in his Cabinet of Natural History: Object, 1934 (above). Hartigan sees Cornell’s Cabinet as reflecting the Victorian era’s “absorption in things, from the common to the exotic” thanks to mass production and advertising spinning the fantasy of “a universe readily filled with necessities, inventions, and fancies.” The Cabinet also harks back to the Victorian use of shadow boxes as show pieces. Rather than the precious minutiae of life, however, Cornell fills his cabinet with his own most precious possessions—the scientists and artists filling and firing his imagination. Bottles representing Newton, Herschel, Pascal, and other scientists stand beside those representing the artist Duchamp and the author Edgar Allan Poe. Cornell conflates these two worlds in his desire to bring all experience under one roof, into one single box, and deny the modern phenomenon of specialization, which threatened to atomize culture and society. Hartigan feels that Cornell wanted to resurrect the idea of natural philosophy, in which science, philosophy, and art spoke the same language, sometimes even by the same person, specifically polymaths such as Newton and Pascal.

Joseph Cornell, “Penny Arcade” series, 1964; collage with ink and pencil on Masonite; The Dicke Collection; © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York; photo: Tom Powel Imaging Inc.

Cornell’s boxes and collages always have a sense of time, harking back but remaining in the present. “He was constantly clocking himself—chronicling what he had done, what he was doing, what he was not getting done, and what he hoped to do,” Hartigan writes, “in ways that suggest the tyranny of time, but also an awareness of a time line and continuum for his efforts.” Works such as his Penny Arcade series (above) embody Cornell’s nostalgia for his youth and the simple pleasures of that time but never allow escapism. They provide a window on time past but always with a sense of time passed, as shown in the weathered appearance of the penny arcade itself. In Cornell’s mind, these games represented the imagination itself, “wherein traveling agent balls release the dreams and inner visions of the poet-painters,” as he said in 1948. Cornell the pinball wizard never stopped playing games, and the agents of inspiration continually ricocheted around his imagination.

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), ca. 1945–46; box construction with blue glass; The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection; © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York; photo: Michael Tropea

It’s fascinating to wonder how Cornell would fare today, in a world even more inundated by visual stimulation than his own. When Cornell saw the 19-year-old Lauren Bacall star in To Have and Have Not in 1945, he went back to see the movie four more times. From that experience, Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall (above) was born. Cornell literally builds a shrine to Bacall’s youthful sexuality, capturing it and controlling it in a way, yet still celebrating it. Experiences such as his rapture over the young starlet seemed like ephemeral butterflies to Cornell that he desperately needed to pin down and preserve under glass. “Whether expressed by the frame of a box or a collage,” Hartigan writes, “his intent was similar—directing us to a highly defined space or field of vision for free-form contemplation.” In his portrait of Lauren Bacall, Cornell took the place of director, choosing the stage and scene in which he could contemplate her at his leisure. (Pass the popcorn, please.)

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Blue Sand Fountain), ca. 1953; box construction; Private collection; © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York; photo: Dennis Helmar

Hartigan’s succeeds in her monumental task of mapping out the universe that is Cornell. Like the grains of sand in Blue Sand Fountain (above), Cornell’s multiplicity often slips through the fingers of critics, but Hartigan never loses her grip on the man or his material. His ability to assimilate information still astounds me. One work, Variant Version for Mahler Maed.C.hen #2 (Symphony #3), demonstrates a deeply profound knowledge of Gustav Mahler’s difficult music. Speaking of his Third Symphony, Mahler once said, ““Just imagine a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the whole world—one is, so to speak, only an instrument, played on by the universe. . . . My symphony will be something the like of which the world has never yet heard! . . . In it the whole of nature finds a voice.” Cornell, too, hoped to give all of nature and the imagination a voice in his work, mirroring all that he knew and felt. Mahler titled sections of that symphony "What Man Tells Me," "What the Angels Tell Me," and "What God Tells Me." In many ways, Cornell’s works are what the universe told him, and he is still telling us those stories back.

[Many thanks to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination and for the images from the exhibition.]