Two and Early Hour - Paintings Linked by Inspiration

Some of us are inspired to create poetry after we see a painting or a sculpture. Others of us use the image of another artist to create an image of our own. That is what Katie m. Berggren did in today's image, Two. As she writes on her website...

"I had this drawing completed when a friend sent me an image of Karl Hofer's painting "Early Hour" (I can't find it online). Hofer's image inspired me to work my drawing into a painting. In the end, I am pleased with how the socks on the floor draw some of the attention away from the couple on the bed."

The inspiration to write this post came to me earlier this morning. Still under the duvet and with my head on my pillow, I remembered how seeing Hofer's Early Hour had compelled me to search out more references to it. Katie Berggren's image as well as Micah Sunshower's Myspace page (Early Hour is included as one of his images) became linked during that research period. My eyes had immediately gone to Berggren's painting on the Google image page. A couple in bed, these two are in the sleep dance embrace. Together yet separate, they move in that other world we go to each day. On the other hand, in Hofer's, the man is almost a viewer, part of the scene yet removed. This separation between the man and woman made me wonder what was happening to Hofer when he painted Early Hour.

Early Hour was painted in 1935, a year after two major upheavals in Karl Hofer's life. As a result of the rise of Fascism in Germany, Hofer had been dismissed from his teaching post as a professor at the Kunstschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1934. The other pivotal event in 1934 was his separation and divorce from his wife, Mathilde. Mathilde Scheinberger was a Jewish singer when they had married in 1903.

During my own early hour, I began putting stories together. Early Hour was Hofer remembering better times with his former wife. Early Hour was Hofer with a different woman, together with her but still very much part of his former life. Or maybe Early Hour was a couple Hofer had seen as he walked past a room. Perhaps only the dog at the foot of the bed really knows for certain.

A Woman and Her Dog

I can't think of another painting in the entire museum of a comparable couple. This is the pair who, when the museum closes and the guards go home, rise and run through the place like it's the garden of eden.
I wanted to see more of this subject, so I did an image search, the closest I could get to a couple in bed with their dog, was this modern stock photo.

So I narrowed my search to a woman and her dog, and this is what I got.

This is the simple relationship,the one that doesn't need interpretation. This we often overlook and take for granted. What draws us in is the relationship between people, the complicated and muddled emotional roller coaster we go through with the ones we go to bed with.
Kark Hofer painted many scenes of people in relationship, some say these are to celebrate human solidarity. His paintings are stories.
In Early Hour the dog gives the story structure.
Because he is soundly sleeping we know this is not the moment after sex, we also know that the man has not shot straight up in bed as though out of a nightmare, that he has either slowly lifted himself onto his elbow, or that he has been in that position long enough not to wake the dog. The dog is the humble servant, the loyal companion to the vulnerable woman, nude and uncovered in a bed with her lover.
The man, who seems to be in his lover's bed, with his lover's dog, is red, dark, contemplative, angular and sharp. It almost seems that he is troubled over something. Straight lipped wth his knee in the air. I wonder what he is thinking.
Who is she, who am I, who are we, what is this, emotions emotions emotions. And she sleeps, and he wonders.
But not the dog. The dog just holds her under him, waiting to see what she does when she wakes, not at all interested in thinking about what that will mean, but relaxed knowing his only task is to protect and love her. Its simple enough to induce sleep.

I get the sense that this is her home, the blue curtains are drawn, the windows blown open, her love, like a bird, has flown in. He watches over her. But who is more likely to be there tomorrow?

Early Hour - Karl Hofer

The room is saturated with red, brown and orange - a quiet morning filled with the warmth of the day before and the rhythm of the night. The walls, the blanket, the man, and the dog are enclosed in those earth tones. Outside the window we see the light of day, the crisp morning. We stand at the edge of the draped doorway and peer into this private moment. Those drapes have the same coolness of the window as do the sheets and body of the woman.

I'm always stopped by Early Hour painted by Karl Hofer in 1935. It was one of his paintings that was not destroyed by the Nazi regime when he and his art were deemed degenerate. When I first saw Early Hour in 2005, I could hear Helen Reddy singing the lyrics to I Didn't Mean to Love You.

Sunday Morning waking up and touching you 

You’re always warm at 9 a.m 

Pillows close and I can feel you wanting me 

When I go back to sleep again...

William Sartain Thomas Eakins and Alfred Maurer - Ramblings

Yesterday Amy mentioned the shoes in the painting, The Aqueduct. I checked the image here on the website and on the postcard I had purchased from the museum. Feet, I could barely see the figure let alone the feet. Being able to see the details is a good reason to go to the museum. Not only did I get to see those feet, I was also able to study the figure a bit closer. The shoes looked like they had been in the dust and dirt around Algiers for some time, perhaps the person's favorite shoes. Or maybe his only pair – for me the person is male. Talking with one of the Security officers she and I vacillated but then decided at least for the day the figure was a man. After coming to that conclusion we spent quite a bit of time looking at the sky. Sartain has a fine combination of green and blue surrounding those arches. The painting is as much about the sky as it is the arches of the aqueduct. (On the left is Sartain's self portrait.)

Alfred Maurer appeared on my right, tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me of a couple of things as I talked with the Security officer. "Willy and Tom Eakins were good friends. They went to grammar and high school together as well as Paris. Tom also dated Emily Sartain, Willy's sister, but that's an anecdote for another day." Maurer feels a bond with Sartain since they both had poor relationships with their fathers. Wanting to change the subject, Maurer insisted that we go look at his portrait of George Washington and his wall mate, Annette Kaufman. They both hang in the gallery next to the The Aqueduct. Maurer enjoys the beauty of Annette Kaufman everyday. She is certainly luminous in the painting by Milton Avery. The sparkle in her eyes lets you know she's a force to reckon with. Maurer nudged me and I told the Security officer that of all of the painters and portraits in the room where we were standing, Kaufman is the only person still alive. At 95, she still lectures, discussing the music of her husband Louis Kaufman. Maurer grinned when he thought about the beautiful Annette Kaufman and the red shoes he imagines her wearing. Of the four he asked me to publish only the last pair would probably be appropriate for walks on the roads outside of Algiers. These photos were all taken last summer in Manhattan on some of the same streets that the Kaufmans, Eakins, Maurer, and Sartain all have walked.

Red Shoes

I was standing with the Aquaduct, fairly close to it, writing about it, when I began a line about the figure's bare feet. So I got closer and saw that the feet aren't bare at all, they have tiny red shoes on, red like dried blood. Almost black. Why, I wondered, did I think the person would be barefoot? I suppose I assumed it was a made up place, a made up person, a made up wall. In made up places I go barefoot. But this is a real person and probably a real wall. Nothing really all that mysterious about it.
The realization of the red shoes excited me, like a secret. I suddenly knew something I didn't know a moment before and that I felt fairly confident a lot of other people who have looked at this piece didn't know.
This speaks to the sense of ownership we feel about art after we spend a length of time with it. When we see it change when the light changes. When our mood directs us to understand things about it that we didn't see when we were in a different head space. The art keeps opening to us and we feel more and more like it belongs to us, not just as an object of some value monetarily, but as a kindred spirit.
It acts as a placeholder in our memories. A painting that hung on my bedroom wall as a child now hangs on the wall of my niece. It marks a period of time in my life, like a box of letters would.
The docent art show at the church across from the museum opened yesterday. The range of mediums, subject matter and style is impressive. It is the first time I have been surrounded by artwork of people I know so that I am not guessing what the artist is like, I am interpreting the art through the person I already know, and thereby deepening both the bond I feel with them as well as a deeper appreciation of the work.

William Sartain and Alfred Maurer -- Alike in So Many Ways

William Sartain and Alfred Maurer were both painters. They also both had fathers involved in the printing business. Alfred Maurer's father Louis had been a Currier and Ives lithographer and ran a lithography venture, Maurer and Heppenheimer. Alfred apprenticed there before moving on to his painting career. Recall from our Maurer week, Louis Maurer never approved of his son's painting and withheld his approval during the seventeen years they lived together after Alfred returned from Europe. Alfred committed suicide in the doorway to his father's room two weeks after his father's death at one hundred years of age.

William Sartain followed his father into the engraving world. His father, John Sartain, was known as the most accomplished engraver in America. William or Willy as his friends called him trained as an engraver with his father, apprenticed to his brother Samuel, fought in the Civil War and subsequently helped his father on commissions without recompense. His work was picked up by one publisher. Being a smart business person, Willy invested that money in government bonds. From those proceeds and continued revenue from royalties, he was able to achieve his dream of becoming a painter, spending eight years in Europe.

However, much like Alfred Maurer, he sought his father's approval. And much like Maurer that approval was denied to him. So you'll have a better appreciation of how bad their relationship was, keep in mind Sartain was back in the United States in time for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. His father who was in charge of the American painting section made certain his son's work was not accepted. At some point as a result of this type of rejection, Sartain destroyed much of his early work. Fortunately for Sartain and for us, his father died in 1897 and was not able to continue such unbridled rejection of his son.

The mezzotint shown in today's posts is what John Sartain wanted his son to continue to create. William Sartain was driven to create more and ventured forth to paint beautiful tonal landscapes, Oriental paintings and many portraits before his death in 1924.

In his letter William Sartain says "the sun is the life of everything here." Yesterday my husband and I hiked Coyote Wall and the Labyrinth, a gorge trail just east of Bingen, Washington. It was one of the best days I have had in a long time. The sun was shining, all the spring grass was that vibrant green and tiny wildflowers were blooming all over the cliff faces. The streams were trickling off the rock walls and the forest was damp and cool but not cold. It was where "the curious things are" as Sartain would say. I could have, like Sartain in Algeria, sat and sketched and listened for weeks in the new exotic place where I found myself. In the forest the birds were chirping and I felt like the "rapt audience" Sartainmentions in his letter.

Algeria’s history, something I know nothing about and had to google, goes back farther than many surviving cultures. The first inhabitants go back to the Neolithic period. 8000 years ago the nomadic population there began making rock paintings on the walls of caves, as in the picture seen here. Today, cave art is the most famous example of Algerian painting, and caves are the most visited tourist attractions for art in the country, acting as museums.

I recently attended a lecture at PNCA given by W.J.T. Mitchell http://http://www.pnca.edu/exposure/pncafive/600/pncafive-idea-studio-lecture-on-visual-studies, he talked about the future of the image by relating it to the past. One theme he stated was the use of animals in art, that what we will do to the animal we will do to the human. That by looking at the image of the past we see where the future of the image is going.

It was a fascinating lecture, slides of Lascaux cave paintings juxtaposed to images from the movie Jurrasic Park where the dinosaur gets caught in the beam of a light projector that plasters text against his scales.....anyway, the fact that the Aquaduct is related to Algeria and that it is a wall not unlike the inside of a cave and that these people were some of the original cave painters and that at least according to Mitchell the future of the image can only be understood through the study of the past of the image places Sartain somewhere along that time line. And I guess the place I would like to do my deep thinking about it is in the Gorge atop Coyote Wall on a sunny spring day.