Is Facebook too Conservative for Contemporary Art?

Just judging by the number of artists I’ve friended on my blog’s Facebook page, a lot of present-day artists use Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild to promote their work. The social network just offers too many opportunities to reach a wider audience that not taking advantage of that potential seems wrong. Unfortunately, Facebook’s rules against certain kinds of material, specifically nudes, threatens to censor artists who depict the human body. Two articles in the latest issue of The Art Newspaper discuss this threat to artistic expression looming on Facebook. The question that many artists and art collectors are now asking is this: Is Facebook too conservative for contemporary art? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Facebook too Conservative for Contemporary Art?"

[Image: Anders Zorn. Female Nude (detail).]

Looking Presidential

In celebration of Halloween, the October Art Poll By Bob asked, “Which of the following paintings seems the spookiest?” You voted William Blake's The Ghost of a Flea (1819-1820) as the spookiest, with 17 votes. Arnold Böcklin's The Isle of the Dead (1880) and Salvador Dalí's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) tied for second, with 15 votes each. Edvard Munch's Vampire (1893-1894) with 11 votes, Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare (1781) with 10 votes, Albert Pinkham Ryder's The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse) (1895-1910) with 9 votes, and Andrew Wyeth's Jack Be Nimble (1976) with 5 votes rounded out the field. Suffering the indignity of the first shutout in Art Poll By Bob history, David Wojnarowicz's Fire (1987) came in dead last with the doughnut of shame.

In honor of the tomorrow’s United States Presidential Election, I’ve decided to ask “Which of the following official Presidential portraits seems the most presidential to you?” (The Obama carved pumpkin [above, from Yes We Carve] would be an unconventional, yet very cool choice.):

Gilbert Stuart, George Washington (aka, the Lansdowne portrait, 1796)

Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Jefferson (1800)

George P.A. Healy, John Quincy Adams (1858)

George P.A. Healy, Abraham Lincoln (1869)

Anders Zorn, Grover Cleveland (1899)

John Singer Sargent, Theodore Roosevelt (1903)

Aaron Shikler, John F. Kennedy (1970)

Simmie Knox, Bill Clinton (2000)

Stuart’s almost regal Lansdowne Portrait actually started the tradition of official presidential portraits. Little-known George P.A. Healy painted every official presidential portrait from John Quincy Adams through Ulysses S. Grant, so he made the list twice. (Plus, I think he captured the stiffness of J.Q.A. perfectly.) Peale, Zorn, and Singer all earned fame beyond their momentary brush with high office. Shikler’s haunting posthumous portrait of JFK is familiar to most Americans even if the artist’s name isn’t. Simmie Knox makes the list for being the first African-American artist to paint an official presidential portrait and for capturing the Big Dog perfectly. I wish I could have added Thomas Eakins’ lost portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes. Eakins reportedly painted Hayes working at his desk on a sweltering summer day as bullets of sweat streamed down his reddened face. First Lady and Temperance movement queen “Lemonade” Lucy Rutherford reportedly so hated the portrait that she had it destroyed. The idea of a hard-working president seemed uncouth, I guess.

So, rock the vote and vote for the most “presidential” presidential portrait. And, tomorrow, vote for the most presidential president!

[This is Bob of Art Blog By Bob and I approve this message.]

How Swede It Is

A contemporary and rival for important portrait commissions of John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn painted some of the most wealthy and important people in the world around the turn of the twentieth century, including three United States Presidents. His portrait of Grover Cleveland (above, from 1899) shows the only elected man president for two nonconsecutive terms years after his time in office. Born February 18, 1860, Zorn captures the toll that eight years in office took on Cleveland as well as the liveliness that made Cleveland the last president to get married while in office. Zorn traveled throughout his career, much like Sargent, making friends with fellow artists wherever he went, such as with Rodin during his time in France. Unlike Sargent, Zorn is largely forgotten today—one of those painters that open-eyed gallery goers are drawn to by the sheer quality of their work rather than by the name on the wall plaque.

Aside from his stunning portraits, Zorn’s works most often gracing museum walls are his nudes, such as Frileuse (above, from the 1890s). Zorn’s early nudes display his realistic bent, but he soon developed a more Impressionistic style, such as that seen in Frileuse. Again, like Sargent, who I see as the closest “known” artist to gauge the “unknown” Zorn against, Zorn flirts with Impressionism but never fully goes into it stylistically. Hints of Renoir’s bathers appear in Zorn’s young female nudes cavorting in rivers or bathing in tubs. The sensuousness that Zorn injects into his female nudes may owe something to his time spent with Rodin, no stranger to the female form.

Despite his peripatetic ways, Zorn always returned to his native Sweden and native Swedish subjects. A Musical Family (above, from 1905) stands as one of the many genre scenes Zorn painted of the small-town life of rural Sweden, where any entertainment to be had needed to be made by the people themselves. In the middle of the fire-lit room, the red dress of the woman playing a stringed instrument flames up and directs your eye to the very back of the picture immediately, pulling you across the dance floor as if you were joining in the festivities. With a series of loose brushstrokes, Zorn creates the male violinist in the upper right corner intently bowing his instrument. Anyone who could conjure up such figures with a few gestures deserves to be better known.