Small Wonders

At a time when few American male artists achieved a high standard to match their European counterparts, Sarah Goodridge stood as one of the few women artists who rose to the heights of the profession. Born February 5, 1788, Goodridge painted her own self-portrait many times, including one in 1845 shown above. In that Self-Portrait, done in miniature in a tiny display case, as were most of her small, delicate, detailed works, Goodridge portrays herself working hard at her profession of painting, borrowing from the tradition of male painters who portrayed themselves proudly at work. Rather than looking confidently at the viewer, however, as most male artists did in their professional self-portraits, Goodridge lowers her eyes to the task at hand in a gesture that can be seen as one of feminine humility or, as I prefer to see it, one of concentration in the task at hand and a disdain for the recognition she knew was never coming as she neared the end of her life.

One of the leading miniaturists in the Boston area in the first half of the nineteenth century, Goodridge knew and painted many of the famous figures of her day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Daniel Webster. The Self-Portrait of 1830 (above) shows Goodridge at the height of her powers, confidently looking out of one of her own miniatures. After the death of Webster’s wife, however, that relationship may have become much more intimate. The 1828 self-portrait now known as Beauty Revealed may have been a gift from Goodridge to Webster, who kept it in his possession for the rest of his life. In Beauty Revealed, Goodridge painted her own breasts on a small piece of ivory so thin that light could shine through it, accentuating the glowing effect of the alabaster skin. Around the breasts, the displaced clothing acts almost as a curtain opening upon a private show. John Updike and others have surmised from this image and the fact that Webster’s heirs destroyed all of Goodridge’s letters to Webster as proof that the artist and the statesman conducted a heated affair. However, Beauty Revealed is more evidence of Goodridge’s skill and amazing self-confidence than of any love affair.

In a way, it’s a shame that Goodridge restricted herself to miniatures, such as the one above. Self-taught, Goodridge did receive some instruction from Gilbert Stuart, but her success came almost exclusively from her own abilities and in the face of the pervasive sexism of her time. Women artists of that time, even those as talented as Goodridge, were often forced to paint miniatures out of the belief that they were too frail for grand history painting. Fortunately, most museums recognize the skill involved in these tiny portraits and display them with contemporary works on canvas, but the size and fragility of these works continues to contribute to their being overlooked. Any history of women artists in America should start with Sarah Goodridge, the woman brave enough to bare herself to the world, even if at first only to an audience of one.

Picturing the Revolution

“The road from the icon to the photograph is long,” says Alexander Rodchenko at the very beginning of Michael Craig’s 1999 documentary Alexander Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-garde, released just in 2007 on DVD by Copernicus Films. Using archival film footage as well as Rodchenko’s own art, all set to the strains of Dmitri Shostakovich and other Russian avant-garde composers of the time, writer-producer-director Craig recreates the spirit that drove Rodchenko and the Russian avant-garde to believe in the Socialist revolution and to create a whole new visual language to accompany that brave new world.

Craig begins by setting up not only Rodchenko’s development as a photographer but also the development of photography itself—a still-new medium in the early twentieth century. Just as Rodchenko came to photography after a career in painting, photography itself continued to borrow heavily from its fine art roots—until Rodchenko vowed to free both himself and his newly chosen field from that burden of the past, which came to represent all the burdens of the past that the glorious revolution strove to shake off. Craig shows how Rodchenko’s abstract painting, founded primarily on the use of lines, translated into Rodchenko’s photography, which sought out the lines in modern architecture. Rodchenko took that seeking of lines even further in his concept of “persepectives”—unique photographs taken down from or upwards to extreme heights, such as his photograph of a series of apartment balconies (above). Through these perspectives, Rodchenko hopes “to demonstrate the aesthetic of the urban world” and the new relationships forged in that world, all with the goal of serving those living under Socialism. Moscow becomes Rodchenko’s “laboratory,” Craig writes, within which he wandered, continually hunting for new and challenging angles to photograph and share with his comrades. Rodchenko disdained the intentionally staged photograph, always looking to photograph everyday life but in new ways to help further the understanding of the effects of the new ideology on the everyday Russian. Craig masterfully demonstrates the social mission and relevance of Rodchenko’s avant-garde art, bringing a sense of meaning and mission so often lacking in modern art. Using Rodchenko’s own words and images, one can’t help but believe in the sincerity of his ideals, even when doubting the possibility of their attainment.

By first showing Rodchenko’s photographs of different buildings and then slowly melting into footage of those same buildings today, Craig conveys a sense of Rodchenko’s art as something truly living and vibrant. The faces of the common people Rodchenko photographed back then (such as the woman shown above) could easily be seen on those same streets today. When the film turns to Rodchenko’s foray into advertising as a means of reaching the masses through his art, his influence on even the Western world becomes clear. Craig and Copernicus Films have created several other films analyzing different aspects of the Russian avant-garde, including Architecture and the Russian Avant-garde; Mayakovsky; Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde; Kandinsky and the Russia House; and David Burliuk and the Japanese Avant-garde. If the other films (which I have not seen) share the same detailed research and production values as Alexander Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-garde, they should add up to a significant scholarly contribution to the area.

For American audiences, I can only compare Alexander Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-garde to an American Masters special on PBS, except that the 40-minute film’s narration is much faster paced and literally jam-packed with detail. For anyone interested in photography, art history, or twentieth-century political history, this film will dazzle you with detail and make you want to watch it again. I only wish that I could find such challenging work on American television. Craig does make use of an actor to play Rodchenko (so often the downfall of so many historical projects), but never allows us to see that actor’s face, offering only glimpses in mirrors (above) and shots of his bald head from behind. Such elusiveness allows us to believe we’re actually watching Rodchenko ponder his next move as his own words “speak” through the narrator.

“Gentleness is a posthumous honor,” the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote of Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian-avante garde poet who worked with Rodchenko many times and later took his own life after cracking under the pressures of creating revolutionary art. With Alexander Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-garde, Michael Craig and Copernicus Films have paid Rodchenko a similar honor in presenting his life and art gently and honorably—free of the ideological baggage so often superimposed by the historical hindsight of the Cold War and the fall of Communism. Rodchenko the avant-garde prophet, burning to lead his people to the promised land of Socialism’s ideals through the fresh eyes of his photography, emerges as a heroic figure. Despite his call for “workers not geniuses” to serve the cause, Rodchenko’s own genius left a body of work that still makes us see the world anew and wonder what could be.


[Many thanks to Michael Craig and Copernicus Films for providing me with a review copy of the DVD Alexander Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-garde and the images from the film shown above.]

A Series of Tubes

An artist that should find a place in U.S. Senator Ted Stevens’ heart, Fernand Leger took the Cubism of Braque and Picasso and rounded it off, creating his own form of Cubism later known as Tubism. (And, no, surfers did not call it “tubular.”) Born February 4, 1881, Leger painted works such as The Card Players (above, from 1914) while still under the influence of Italian Futurism. In The Card Players, Leger creates players more machine than human, consisting of a series of tubes connected together more than anything resembling flesh and blood. A friend of other abstract artists such as Robert Delaunay and Francis Picabia, Leger painted in an increasingly abstract style up to his involvement in World War I, which changed his work immensely as the marriage of man and machine no longer seemed like such a fine idea.

After the war, Leger returned to a more classical style of painting in works such as Three Women (above, from 1921). The rounded forms and cylinders of Tubism remain, but Leger paints here flesh and blood rather than the cold, hard steel of The Card Players. Like many artists between the wars, Leger couldn’t return to a purely abstract style or develop a purely classical one, so he creates hybrids such as Three Women, a unique take on the nude that borrows from everyone from the Greeks up to Cezanne in portraying the nude female body. Whereas some of his abstract brethren, such as Picabia, followed the path of chaos even further after the Great War, Leger stepped back from the precipice and reevaluated his art.

While living in the United States during World War II, Leger became less and less abstract in his style, creating works such as Three Musicians (above, from 1944). Like Picasso’s Three Musicians , Leger takes advantage of the interplay of the three figures and their instruments to create interesting contrasts of color and shape. Unlike Picasso, one of the sources of his early Tubist Cubism, Leger no longer relies on heavy distortion of the human form. Their faces are stylized masks in many ways, but nothing like the excessive primitivism of Picasso’s faces. Near the end of his life, Leger turned to Socialism in hopes of making a better world. His desire to bring a sense of humanity to the often cruel twentieth century succeeded in humanizing his art.

Standing Up for Freedom

Thanks to the homey glow beaming from so many of his works, Norman Rockwell suffers from the reputation of being old-fashioned and out of touch with the events going on around him. Born February 5, 1894, Rockwell once held the undisputed title of artist most likely to appear on the wall of Americans who “didn’t like art.” (Thomas Kinkade most likely holds the title today.) Behind the folksy exterior, however, Rockwell firmly believed in the ideals of America and expressed them in his art. Freedom of Speech (above, from 1943) belongs to a suite of four paintings he created that are collectively known as The Four Freedoms. Inspired by a speech given by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Rockwell wanted to embody those ideals in the faces of the simple people of America, such as the man rising to speak at the town meeting in Freedom of Speech. When fascism threatened to destroy those freedoms, a threat that was still quite real in 1943 during the midst of World War II , Rockwell himself stood up and spoke his mind through such inspirational images.

Time did not soften Rockwell’s stance on freedom and civil rights. Twenty years later, Rockwell watched the protests against integrated schools in the Southern part of America and painted The Problem We All Live With (above, from 1964). The sight of the fragile young black girl clutching her book while surrounded by her protectors on the way to school poignantly demonstrates the cruelty of denying equal education to such children. The tomato resting on the ground, thrown by a protester, only hints at the escalating violence that surrounded the exercise of basic civil rights at that time. I always laugh at those who dismiss Rockwell as “just” an illustrator and wish they could discover his courageous political side.

I grew up with Norman Rockwell in many ways. My family doctor displayed a print of Rockwell’s painting in which a little girl holds up her doll for the doctor to listen to with his stethoscope. I remember quite often waiting on his examination table and looking at that print. Rockwell holds a special place in my heart for his many baseball pictures as well, especially Bottom of the Sixth (above, from 1949). When I was young, I collected autographs of active and retired baseball players using a book that actually listed their home addresses. This book even had addresses for old umpires, including the umpire depicted in the center of Rockwell’s painting, “Beans” Reardon. So, I have a small reproduction of Bottom of the Sixth signed by good old “Beans” right there on the chest protector. I’m sure it wouldn’t get much on Antique Road Show, but I still cherish it today.

In Vino Veritas

While Rembrandt painted introspective self-portraits and Vermeer designed quiet, meticulously lit interior scenes, Jan Steen painted the partying side of seventeenth century Dutch life and art. Between his birth in 1626 and his death on February 3, 1679, Steen crammed plenty of life into his fifty-three years on this earth. His Self Portrait as a Lutenist (above, from 1660 to 1663) shows how he always was the life of the party. Like his slightly earlier contemporary Frans Hals, Steen painted scenes of domestic happiness for the growing middle class market. About 350 of the 800 paintings he was known to have finished survive, giving us a healthy look at this joyful artist.

Steen’s grew up surrounded by alcohol in the household of his father, who was a brewer. Intoxication is clearly the theme of The Drinker (above, from 1660). Interestingly, Steen chose to paint himself and his wife, Margarete, as the tipsy couple. Steen looks directly at the viewer, smiling almost idiotically with pipe in hand, over the unconscious form of his wife, whose one shoe has fallen off and lays in the foreground. Self-portraits such as this led to legends that Steen himself drank too much, but no facts back up that argument. It’s a remarkable portrait for the sheer unflatteringness of the depiction of himself and his wife. Steen rejects any glamour in getting drunk, choosing instead to depict the human frailty at the source of seeking solace in the bottle.

As wonderfully lively as Steen’s party pictures are, there is always a moral tucked within. The Life of Man (above, from 1665) shows a typical tavern interior full of people of all ages enjoying themselves with food and drink. Everyone seems to be eating oysters, the famous aphrodisiac, revealing that more than playful flirting was on their minds. At the top of the painting, a curtain is pulled back, making the scene seem more theatrical than real. Beneath the curtain, in the attic above the partiers, a young boy blows soap bubbles while sitting next to a human skull. The skull and soap bubbles symbolize the reality of death and the fragility of life, respectively, something the revelers below have momentarily forgotten. In showing both sides in this tableau, Steen runs the whole gamut of human existence—both the joy and the sorrow. Steen clearly knew how to party, but also knew the score when the party was over.

In the Name of Love

To mark the New Year, January’s Art Poll By Bob asked “Which of the following years in art do you consider your favorite?” and you answered, leading to the first tie in poll history: with both 1541 (Michelangelo completes The Last Judgment and his work on The Sistine Chapel; El Greco born) and 1863 (Manet exhibits The Luncheon on the Grass at the Salon des Refuses and paints Olympia, ushering in the age of Impressionism; Edvard Munch born) getting 13 votes. 1793 (The Louvre opens in Paris, beginning the phenomenon of the public art museum) came in second with 9 votes, followed by 1949 (LIFE Magazine asks if Jackson Pollock is “America’s Greatest Painter”; Abstract Expressionism takes hold; New York becomes the art capital of the world) with 8 and 1889 (Van Gogh paints his Sunflowers; The Eiffel Tower opens as part of the transformation of Paris) with 7. Amazingly, the usually popular Van Gogh came in dead last this time.

The longer that poll ran, the more great years came to mind, as I’m sure they came to yours.

For February, to celebrate Black History Month in the United States, I decided to ask, “Which of the following African-American artists is your favorite?” :

Romare Bearden

Beauford Delaney

Aaron Douglas

William H. Johnson

Jacob Lawrence

Horace Pippin

Martin Puryear

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Kara Walker

Kehinde Wiley

There are so many great, yet unrecognized African-American artists that this list just scratches the surface. I wish I could have added Aaron McGruder, whose manga-inspired, politically incorrect comic The Boondocks (above) never failed to make me laugh and think. I only listed those artists that I know well, so please add in comments any names you think should be included and why. This entire blog is a learning experience for me (and I hope in some small way for my readers), so I look at this poll and this month as an opportunity to learn more about the contributions of African-Americans to the world of art. From pioneers such as Tanner to modern artists such as Walker and Wiley, they have left their mark on American and world art, regardless of how much we realize it.

If you find that none of these names are familiar, take a moment to click through and learn more about these artists and the meaning behind their lives and work. I’m sure you’ll find a favorite in no time.

The Voyage of Life

Filled with the spirit of Transcendentalism thanks to contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Cole created such transcendent landscapes as The Oxbow that helped him found the first true American art movement—The Hudson River School. Born February 1, 1801 in England, Cole became the first American artist to truly explore the visual and spiritual potential of the unique American landscape. From his beginning in art copying casts at the early PAFA in the 1820s to his move to upstate New York, Cole drank in the beauty of nature as well as the enlightened romanticism of the Transcendentalists to create a wholly new symbolic view of nature. In The Oxbow, we see a majestic view of the bend in the river from the vantage point of the artist himself, with his easel and paints abandoned in the foreground, giving only a hint of the human hand behind this depiction of nature.

Cole applied his symbolic vision of landscape to how the making and breaking of nations leaves its mark on the Earth. His series titled The Course of Empire, painted from 1834 through 1836, follows civilization from The Savage State, through The Arcadian or Pastoral State, to The Consummation of Empire, and, finally, The Destruction of Empire (above, from 1836) and Desolation. In The Destruction of Empire, all hell breaks loose as the trappings of civilization fall prey to humanity’s destructive impulses. The statue of the heroic warrior in the foreground literally loses his head as all those around lose theirs. Works such as Volney’s The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires impressed on many nineteenth-century intellectuals the cyclical nature of civilizations throughout history, which Cole stirringly represents in his series.

To mirror the cyclical nature of societies with the cyclical nature of a single life, Cole painted in 1840 the series The Voyage of Life, a series that depicts symbolically Childhood, Youth, Manhood (above), and Old Age. Cole wrote the following of Manhood: "Trouble is characteristic of the period of Manhood. In childhood, there is no carking care: in youth, no despairing thought. It is only when experience has taught us the realities of the world, that we lift from our eyes the golden veil of early life; that we feel deep and abiding sorrow: and in the Picture, the gloomy, eclipse-like tone, the conflicting elements, the trees riven by tempest, are the allegory; and the Ocean, dimly seen, figures the end of life, which the Voyager is now approaching." In Cole’s vision, human life literally merges with the natural landscape in the end, physically consummating the spiritual union Cole and the Transcendentalists saw as a life-long affair. Cole’s landscapes continue to inspire through their beauty and symbolic weight as much as through their enduring optimism and spiritual hopefulness.