Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies and Irises, Favorite Flower?

Ah, two days after Christmas and it's Monet time here at Fifty Two Pieces. The piece of the week is Monet's Waterlilies. Meandering around the internet I find multiple references to Monet's favorite flower. Now most of us might think it was a waterlily. After all, that was what he painted for so many years. But some would have it that the iris was his favorite flower. The iris isn't paramount in most people's minds or museums, but there are some images on the internet.


And Voice from the Couch weighed in with this ... "Lilies, I don't remember any lilies at Giverney except those fields of them heading towards the Mediterranean".

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies

Much has been written of Claude Monet's failing eyesight and how it would have affected paintings such as the Portland Art Museum's Waterlilies painted during the period 1914-1915. As early as 1905 Monet no longer saw colors with the same intensity as he had done before. Time marched on and his perception of color continued to deteriorate. In 1912 he was diagnosed with nuclear cataracts in both eyes by a Parisian ophthalmologist. Although he finally consented to an operation on his right eye in 1923 he spent many years seeking other solutions all the while refusing surgery. He was aware of the poor results on others including Mary Cassatt. Lisel Mueller presents another view of Monet's perception of color and image.

Monet Refuses the Operation

BY LISEL MUELLER

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Monet on Christmas Day

Monet has been in my thoughts today. Primarily about light. Light from my window here in Astoria. Start with the light from the stars at 2 am. Then the moon descending across the sky until it sets and the stars became even brighter. The overall brightness of the sky increased with the sunrise and the glow of pink on the clouds. Then the sun reflected from the water and now the pink of the sunset. It's been almost the full cycle. During all of those changes I thought of Monet and his various series – the haystacks, the cathedrals, the waterlilies. I'm most grateful that the Portland Art Museum has one of Monet's Waterlilies.

And for me this particular painting is one of the best. Waterlilies has a level of abstraction that attracts me. And yet I know without looking at the title that the subject is waterlilies. How much better can that be? The color is vibrant. Some say that was because Monet's eyesight was deteriorating from cataracts and that intense hues would have appealed to him. Even without cataracts they appeal to me. Look at it closely and you can start to see fish swimming in the water. Those little circles are most definitely from fish. Ask any person who fishes and they'll tell you. Like all of the pieces of art featured here in the last year, to truly appreciate the wonders of this painting, you'll need to see it in person.

Since I'm not near the museum, on this Christmas Day my present to myself was watching the light reflected from the Columbia River here in Astoria, Oregon. Different light and different water than Monet's but light and water nonetheless.

Voice from the Couch: Nice choice of river photos. I like the verticals of the piers with the verticals from the Waterlilies.

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies

Dateline: December 24, 2009
Today marks the first day of the last full week of Fifty Two Pieces. It's been a great year and we'll have a recap on December 31. For now though we'll move along with our piece of the week, Waterlilies by Claude Monet. Some say it's the anchor of the first floor of the CMCA at the Portland Art Museum. It certainly commands your attention as you come up the stairs. Although it's neither signed nor dated, scholars have placed it as having been created sometime between 1914-1915.

Voice from the Couch and I are headed to Astoria and will be there through Christmas. Since Voice helped select this week's piece ("why don't you do the Monet?" were the exact words), I'm certain he'll have a few pithy comments and more suggestions during the week.

Dan Flavin ~ (to Donna) II Background Information

Take a close look at the image of untitled (to Donna) II 1971 and then look at the original image used here at Fifty Two Pieces on December 17, 2009. Notice anything different? Voice from the Couch is always up for these sorts of questions and his response was the image is flipped. Yes, indeedy, that is a true statement. As the image exists out there on the internet, the blue bulb is on the left, pink on the right. Truth in blogging, I must tell you that as exhibited at the Portland Art Museum the blue tube on untitled (to Donna) II 1971 is on the right, pink on the left, yellows on the bottom. Images seem to get reversed as you can see in the Flickr photos below. Some show the blue on the right and others blue on the left.

Being intrigued by whether the blue should be on the right or on the left, I did some further sleuthing and found this image in "Portland Art Museum - Project for the Millenium". Voice from the Couch is kindly assisting in bringing you this image.

Not completely satisfied and knowing that Flavin made copious notes for each of his pieces, I did some further investigating into untitled (to Donna) II 1971. Flavin did dedicate his works to people – artists he admired such as Constantin Brancusi and Vladimir Tatlin, artists who were his friends like Donald Judd. It's unclear though who Donna was. What is clear is how untitled (to Donna) II 1971 should be set up. "How do you know that?" Voice from the Couch asked. Michael Govan's book "Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights" lists all of the 'untitled (to Donna)'s'. It turns out there are five editions of this work, each a bit different than the other. To complicate matters editions 4 and 5 have what I'll call a companion edition 4a and 5a. Click here to see the Google Book Result showing the colored layouts of the editions. Here's a written summary including the number fabricated:
untitled (to Donna) 1 1971 four bulbs (yellow on right, pink on left, two blues on bottom
Fabricated - 1
untitled (to Donna) 2 1971 four bulbs (blue on right, pink on left, two yellows on bottom
Fabricated - 2
untitled (to Donna) 3 1971 four bulbs (blue on right, yellow on left, two pinks on bottom
Fabricated - 1
untitled (to Donna) 4 1971 four bulbs (blue on right, yellow on left, one pink on top, one pink on bottom
Fabricated - 1
untitled (to Donna) 4a 1971 four bulbs (yellow on right, blue on left, one pink on top, one pink on bottom
Fabricated - 0
untitled (to Donna) 5 1971 four bulbs (blue on right, pink on left, one yellow on top, one yellow on bottom
Fabricated - 4
untitled (to Donna) 5a 1971 four bulbs (pink on right, blue on left, one yellow on top, one yellow on bottom
Fabricated - 4
The question still remains in my mind why the signage in the museum shows a Roman numeral and every place else lists an Arabic one. Does it matter or not? Some might say yes, since Flavin was such a stickler for documentation.

Dan Flavin ~ (to Donna) II, His Light and Others

Dan Flavin's week here at Fifty Two Pieces is almost over and we haven't included a single portrait of this artist who had studied to be a priest, served in the Air Force during the Korean War, worked as a guard at various New York museums, changed how we looked at florescent lights, married his second wife in the rotunda of the Guggenheim and ultimately died of complications from diabetes. To make up for that, here is Portrait of Flavin in Kornblee Gallery. It was taken by Arnold Newman in 1967 for Look Magazine. Those jagged edges make it a unique image, one that is not easily forgotten - much like experiencing a roomful of his work. The caption for this portrait says it all.

Flavin's 'proposals' usually take possession of an entire room, making it part of, rather than a container for, the effect. To simulate this, fold the four walls in the photograph up.

untitled (to Donna) II 1971 or as it is sometimes listed untitled (to Donna) 2 1971 is situated on the second floor of the CMCA at the Portland Art Museum. It does become part of the corner where it's installed. The other day the blue tube wasn't on and the entire effect was different. There was no mixing of the palette and the wall seemed so sterile by comparison to its normal colorful glow. Flavin's work in florescent tubes changed the public's view of this standard industrial light. There is other art at the museum that uses light, not florescent, but in the case of Joseph Kosuth, neon.





Five Words in Orange Neon is also part of the collection at the Portland Art Museum. To quote Flavin, Kosuth's work is what it is... five words in orange neon. Compared with Flavin's florescents though it's a different type of light, a different artistic approach. And one that enchanted Emma Paget. After her grandmother took her to the Portland Art Museum, little Emma sent a thank you note and included her version of Kosuth's sculpture.

Kosuth's orange neon has entranced young and old alike. A quick look at Flickr with Portland Art and neon as tags and you'll see any number of images of his work at PAM.
From a different museum and a different artist comes another view of light. Olafur Eliasson's take on light and our perceptions of light can currently be seen in Kanazawa, Japan. Just keep clicking on the page after you initially go to his website (click here) and you'll be able to view a portion of the exhibition. In 2008, I was able to experience Eliasson's exhibition entitled "Take Your Time" at MoMA. The museum's site has quite a few videos and other information about this artist's work with all of our senses, including sight and how light affects our perception of the world around us. The direct link for Eliasson at MoMA is here. Youtube has a portion of some of the MoMA videos. Watch them and you can hear Eliasson talk about his work and see some of his installations.

Dan Flavin's Light in Tadao Ando's Vessel

In an interview in December of 2007 Steve Morse told Matthias Waschek that as curator of the Flavin retrospective at the Pulitzer, in the world renowned architect Tadao Ando's building, he was not creating Flavin's work but rather acting as translator who spoke Flavin's language.
What a wonderful description of a curator's role in the process, and what a great first question for an interview.
I'm sure we all have our opinions about what makes this work. Does the light make the work? Does the curator make the work? Does the artist make the work? This is like owning an idea, does anyone really own an idea? Flavin's work feels like ideas. They feel open and free, like they don't belong to anyone. Flavin's retrospective required curators to apply his light to another artists' light, Tadao Ando. This was a thoughtful pairing, I'm sure, because these are two connoiseurs.
I had the opportunity to visit Ando's new building at the Clark Art Institute earlier this year and was blown away. The light of an Ando building is so present, so much a part of the space, it felt heavenly in its simplicity. To add to one of his buildings dozens of Flavin light sculptures must have been just phenomenal. Phenomenal for Flavin fans, but what about Ando?
Flavin's florescent surely cast a glare on Ando's use of natural light and ability to capture it so seductively. Could one still feel what the sun and shadows were doing to those walls during the Flavin exhibition? Whether a museum is a sculpture or not, it is there to house objects, and I'm sure Ando was proud to see his creation full of Flavins'. But Ando's buildings are sublime and complete, so if I were only to see this one once I don't know that I would want to see it full of Flavins. Then again, who else could make an Ando glow so brightly?
To see more about the exhibition check out this amazing web catalogue.

Dan Flavin ~ Untitled (To Donna) 2, 1971

Earlier today I had plans for writing about many things Flavin. Life intervened. I did experience light though. And light is what was important to Dan Flavin. The light for me today was Northwest light, gray overcast between rainstorms. Amy Gray and I (the two conspirators here at Fifty Two Pieces) took a hike. Of course it wasn't the conventional hike in Forest Park. We did one of the trails that bisected Wildwood, which runs more than 26 miles, and went past an encampment of who knows what gnomes. This particular trail is definitely off the beaten path and one that you should probably not do alone even if you're a guy. Hold still long enough and you can hear the whistling from Deliverance. Be that as it may, the trail itself was beautiful -- untouched and unspoiled by the multitudes. The green of the moss was Flavin Green, intense and holy. Being the former altar boy and seminary student, Flavin read and wrote poetry. Here is some poetry that he wrote in 1961 a few years before his first all florescent piece posted yesterday.
There were a number of to Donnas like the one here at the Portland Art Museum and their tubes were arranged differently. That's a discussion for another time and place, perhaps here on Fifty Two Pieces, but not tonight.

Dan Flavin ~ (to Donna) II and Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy

It's all about the light – that could be the subtitle of this post. With Dan Flavin (whether it's the Portland Art Museum's Unititled (to Donna) II or this image of Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy (the Diagonal of May 25, 1963) or any of his other more than 750 light sculptures), it's all about the light. Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy (the Diagonal of May 25, 1963) goes by many names. Sometimes it's listed as the Diagonal of May 25, 1963 and sometimes as the Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi). By whichever name it's listed, this single flourescent tube is the first piece of sculpture Flavin created with just florescent lighting. Prior to that he had been combining both florescent and incandescent lighting in his works.

In 1964, Dan Flavin had this to say about this work and his use of light in general.

"The 'diagonal' in its overt simplicity was only the installation of a distended or luminous line of a standard industrial device. Little artistic craft could be possible." 'Craft', in its strict, traditional definition may be absent from Flavin's oeuvre, but creativity, vision, and intellect remain commanding forces, The 'diagonal' of which the artist speaks is one his seminal works, 'the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusci)' (1963). It presents nothing more than an eight foot long yellow - or "gold" - fluorescent light. This sparing composition was the result of a searching artistic exploration: the hunt for a format which "with obvious electric light ... could become my standard yet variable emblem—the 'icon'"

.
Hear Flavin give an abbreviated version of his artistic statement in this very brief video...


And as a continuation of this week's string of videos here's another from David Zwirner, NYC (Nov 2009). Thanks to Youtube we can all enjoy room after room of Flavin light.

Dan Flavin in the Corner

I cannot believe it is week 51 already. One week left. We've almost made it for an entire year- here is a good dance to represent how that makes me feel:

But if you want a little more serious Flavin education, watch this:

And how does this make me feel?
Makes me feel like my New Year's Resolution for 2010, to give away at least one thing every day, is a good one. Why? Because my husband says if I give away 365 things I won't have anything left.
Flavin says, you go girl.