Fifty Two Pieces

Goldfish in Portland

2011-04-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

That would be Goldfish Bowl at the Portland Art Museum...

Here's Roy Lichtenstein's Goldfish Bowl currently on view at the Portland Art Museum. It's on loan so if you want to see it in person you'll need to plan ahead since the owner could decide to take it back at any moment.

As Lichtenstein did in a number of his images, he's triggering off of another artist's work. Here it's Matisse's Goldfish and Palette. Matisse had created two goldfish scenes in 1914. This one is an abstraction of an earlier more conventional view. He's outlining the forms in black as Lichtenstein repeated in his bronze sculpture.

.(also posted on my other blog)

Vincent Van Gogh ~ Happy 157th!!!

2010-03-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, if Vincent Van Gogh were still alive he'd be 157 years old. We featured Vincent during Week 38 here at Fifty Two Pieces. Going back and rereading the week, I was reminded of not only him but also a number of other artists, including Robert Colescott, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney.

Here's the reprised post for Tuesday of that week.
Van Gogh ~ Appropriations by Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Colescott

At least two of the artists we have featured here in Fifty Two Pieces have painted appropriations of Van Gogh's work. Roy Lichtenstein from Week 37 made this print of Bedroom at Arles with Drawing on the verso in 1992. Evidently, Vogue Hommes, Paris, published a special hand signed catalogue, portfolio in a limited edition of 50. The illustration on the reverse (shown here on the left) was made when Roy Lichtenstein spilled coffee on the print during the signing. In addition to this print, Lichtenstein also painted an oil of Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles. It is shown below on the left as well as Van Gogh's original version of his Bedroom at Arles.

Robert Colescott from Week 20 was another artist famous for his appropriations of work by fellow artists. His versions became riffs and parodies. One of his most famous was of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters. Both images are shown below and it's fairly clear which artist was responsible for which painting.

Gregory Grenon ~ Sighting at the Ecotrust Building

2010-03-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

This painting, "I'm Very Well Protected (1991)" by Gregory Grenon (week 16), can be seen at the Ecotrust Building. A local artist here in Portland, you can see his oil paintings on glass around town. Two of them (images here) are in the entryway of the Westin Hotel on SW Alder. Three clues that you're looking at a Grenon. His images are almost always of women. The colors are intense. The surface is glass, not canvas or board.

Lee Kelly ~ Reprised, Part of the Portland Transit Mall

2010-02-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

On one less than sunny day, I walked past this sculpture by Lee Kelly the artist of Week 23 here at Fifty Two Pieces. It is part of the Portland Transit Mall, very near Burnside on SW 6th Ave. Since Kelly is a long-time Portlander, Portland is graced with many of his works. I selected the post from 5 June 2009 to reprise. I love the shot of Kelly working in his studio -- those hands have created so much.
For all of the posts from Week 23, click here.

Originally posted on Friday, 5 June 2009
Lee Kelly ~ The Hands that Made "Arlie"

Here are the hands of the man who made Arlie, our featured sculpture of the week. Lee Kelly was born in 1932 and has made art longer than probably most of the people who read this blog post have been alive. He has done so many things in those seventy-seven years. Think about that, seventy-seven years alive on this planet, living in the Pacific Northwest. Born in Idaho he spent part of his childhood here in Portland, served in the Korean War and returned to the Portland area. He has travelled widely, across many continents and his artistic works reflect those experiences as well as the totality of the life he has led.

He is an inspiration for the artists and public here in Portland providing much needed support for the artistic community when he could easily not be involved. There are a few videos of Lee Kelly available to watch on the internet. This one from OPB will really give you an insight into the man and his art. Those of us who have experienced his works are fortunate and those who are part of his inner circle are the ones who are truly blessed.

Lee Kelly has a studio in an old barn on property outside of Salem. That's where he has creates his art by welding and grinding. It would be a real treat to visit there. Not all of us can do that. So Oregon Public Broadcasting did a video interview of him there in Salem. The video linked here cannot be embedded as youtube and vimeo productions can be. So for a look at Lee Kelly, his life and his art, click this link ... Lee Kelly on OPB.

John Buck Reprised and Now on the Green Line / Transit Mall

2010-02-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

Lodge Grass ~ 2000

Cast bronze, 49.5 x 15.5 x 12 inches, Edition of 3

Back in May, Fifty Two Pieces featured John Buck. The Portland Art Museum owns a number of his wooden pieces. Lewis and Clark is home to some of the very tall bronze sculptures. However, all of us in downtown Portland can now enjoy one of his smaller, four feet high, pieces. Lodge Grass is a cast bronze and is located on SW 6th, just south of the rather large Lee Kelly that we'll have to showcase in the future. Portlanders are very fortunate to have so much public art on their streets.

John Buck from Inside His Studio TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2009

Amy's link yesterday to ARTWORKS will give you an insight into John Buck, the man and how he came to be a word carver. All through school his sculptures had been made from found objects from other people's yards. During a semester abroad spent in England while he was in graduate school, Buck found that he was cut off from that source. As a result, he began to use the piles of wood the school provided him. He says it took him a while but he finally bonded with this new process and the rest is history so to speak.

John Buck's own website John Buck Art opens with the image above, a look inside his studio. This and other photos from his spread in Montana would indicate that he has spent many years collecting tools and carving pieces that he can use in future assemblages. Here's another view of his studio.

It's almost as if you can see the bones of the works he will create – a look inside John Buck's mind.

Lovejoy Bakers and Sol LeWitt

2010-01-26T14:51:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular pages here at Fifty Two Pieces continues to be one of Sol LeWitt's. I've linked it below this image that I took of a Sol LeWitt inspired piece. You can find this striking yellow piece of art outside of Lovejoy Bakers in The Pearl here in Portland.

FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2009

Sol LeWitt - Incomplete Open Cubes, 122 All Together Now

Franz Kline ~ Reprised and with a Mind Open to all Kinds of Things

2010-01-19T16:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is just not a reprised piece from our archives. I've decided to include some additional content that I came across while trolling the internet. Voice from the Couch knew that I wouldn't be able not to add to this site. Here's a nugget from Crown Point Press ~ well worth the five minutes.

Franz Kline 1959, Steve Martin 1981 ~ Rue originally posted 02/05/09

This piece by Franz Kline, famous Abstract Expressionist painter, is entitled Rue (on loan to the Portland Art Museum from a private collection). Like his other paintings, Rue is the result of Kline having lived for many years in New York. He said that the feelings aroused in him by seeing the city for so long was what he painted. Although some abstract expressionist painters of his day left their paintings untitled. Kline chose to name many of them. Just before his first one man show he asked Willem and Elaine De Kooning to help him name his paintings. "[I]n a spirit of levity with a bottle of scotch on the table," was how Elaine would later describe the eight hour naming session. My own mind turns over the word rue and I chuckle thinking about the person who rues the day that he ate the rue he had found on the "rue".

Kline definitely belongs to the sub-group of abstract expressionists known as action painters. In my reading I found this quote from his friend Philip Pavia , "When I would visit Kline in his studio, he had stretched a large canvas on the wall, and underneath he would push with his feet a wood beer box to a certain spot. After a few trials and errors, he fixed the box into a right spot. He then slanted a plank from the floor with one end on the beer crate. A temporary ramp. Coming up the plank and down the plank, he slanted his brushstrokes for long strokes or short ones, and some of them were very loaded with paint."

Although Kline's paintings were the result of the emotions the city aroused in him and he didn't care to be in his painting, one owner of Rue did say that he could see himself in it. Steve Martin is listed as being the previous owner of this painting and had always said that he wanted to be part of it. The Portland Art Museum is also exhibiting the photo Annie Leibovitz took of Steve Martin in Beverly Hills when he posed for his portrait. Complete with black brushstrokes on his white suit, Martin realized his dream. A companion photo appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

Prague Panoramas -- Josef Sudek Sausages, 242 and counting

2010-01-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

Just this last week, this page has become very popular with visitors. So for everyone's enjoyment, I've decided to have Josef Sudek's Prague Panormas be the Reprise of the week. Expect to see more of Sudek, later in the year. His work was exceptional.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2009 Prague Panoramas -- Josef Sudek Sausages, 242 and counting

Josef Sudek was a master photographer, a genius with the lens and his use of light. Two areas of his photography have intrigued me -- his panoramic series made in the 1950's and his portraits. Many who are familiar with his work are unaware that he used his genius to take portraits of his family and friends. Those photographs will have to wait for another day.

For today, praha panoramaticka (Prague Panoramas) take the spotlight. In the early 1950's, Sudek acquired an 1894 Kodak Panorama camera. This camera had a spring-drive sweeping lens that made a negative 10 cm x 30 cm (4"x12"). Sudek used this camera on his daily journeys through Prague and the surrounding countryside. One admirer wrote... "The unusual format with its extreme proportions of 1 x 3 and the special distortions caused by the sweeping lens are extremely demanding, like the constraints of a sonnet. Yet like any set of artistic constraints, the peculiar requirements of the panoramic photo offer opportunities not found elsewhere. Sudek never tired of exploring the possibilities of the photographic sonnets he could make with his antique mechanism whose shutter speeds were marked simply "fast" and "slow". With it he gave us a geodesic feeling for the country-side which far surpasses anything we get from isolated views, and in Prague itself he showed how the River Vltava is an integral part of the city and how the labyrinthian quality of the city is offset by its broad open spaces. He was never short of resourceful ways of using the panoramic format. Before the horizontal panorama had yieided all its secrets, Sudek turned the camera on its side and gave us vertical panoramas!"

Prague Panoramas was published in 1956 and is one of the most sought after books in European antiquarian book shops. There are reprints available, but they too are quite pricey. On-line images of these photographs are limited to a few horizontals, but no verticals (ah, change the google search ever so slightly and voila, there's the vertical, see upper right). As you enjoy the composition and light in the following images, think of Sudek and his remarkable sense of humor... On February 26, 1956, Sudek jokingly remarked about his Praha Panoramaticka which was about to go to press: "made 242 sausages of Prague so far; at least 60 more left to make".

And last but not least, the European Commission has Sudek panoramas in one of their conference room. The overall effect is gallery-like until the people have arrived. Perhaps this was why Sudek preferred his photos without people unless he was taking an actual portrait. To be continued...

Back by Popular Demand ~ The Two Roys and Kris

2010-01-06T18:34:00.000-08:00

A number of people have asked about what's happening to Fifty Two Pieces, now that our original commitment of 52 pieces has been met. Reviewing the stats from our accumulator, Stat Counter, we've noticed that even the most loyal haven't seen all of our posts. Without further ado, we're reprising some of our own favorite posts, not on a regular basis but probably once a week, more or less. So check back in occasionally and you'll see some of our own personal favorites. And now for The Two Roys and Kris... WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 Roy Lichtenstein ~ Sweet Dreams Baby with Roy Orbison Earlier this week I mentioned Roy Lichtenstein's sense of humor and how it came into play with his choice of words for this image – Sweet Dreams Baby. Once I started to think of the usual endearing use of that phrase, it was extremely difficult not to hear Roy Orbison singing what some think of as his signature song, Sweet Dreams Baby. So although Roy Lichtenstein listened to classical music while painting in his studio, I'm certain he would enjoy the sight of Bruce Springsteen playing backup to Roy Orbison in the version of Sweet Dreams Baby posted below. More Words, Images and Music But wait, more music can be heard while looking at the prints in Word and Image/Word as Image. For example take a peek at William Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode. This engraving is from a set of four and concentrates on Squanderfield's bride. She's having her hair done while listening to the lawyer Silvertongue (you have to love the choice of names). Just in case there's any doubt about the affair between those two, Hogarth has placed a black servant boy playing with a broken horned statue in front of them – Squanderfield should know at this point that she's "fooling around". There's a great deal to see in this engraving, including Silvertongue's portrait on the far right wall. Hogarth did the faces and heads but had Simon Francois Ravanet complete the background because of its technical demands. While taking in Silvertongue and the rest of Squanderfield's friends, listen to Kris Kristofferson singing Silver Tongued Devil and I.

The Top Ten

2009-12-31T14:15:00.000-08:00

Here's our list of the top ten artists at Fifty Two Pieces and the pages that made them so popular. Like most popularity lists this one is skewed by length of time a page has been circulating on the internet. Although Raphael and La Donna Velata made the cut it was just barely. However, Raphael only first appeared during the last week of October. Part of the reason Josef Sudek is a front runner in popularity has to do with the world wide audience Fifty Two Pieces has. Visitors come from all over the world and make frequent revisits. Although most of the over 17,000 visitors are from the United States, Canada and Great Britain, people from over 100 countries have dropped in on Fifty Two Pieces.

Check out these artists and the other 42 that we have presented in the last year. For each one on the Top Ten List we've also included a link to all of their posts.

Franz Kline
Franz Kline - Rue and Steve Martin
Etchings and Poems

All things Franz Kline...

Sol LeWitt
All of Sol LeWitt's Incomplete Open Cubes

Sol LeWitt's Letter to Eva Hesse

All things Sol LeWitt...

Karl Hofer

Early Hour

All things Karl Hofer...

Josef Sudek

Labyrinths and Windows

Prague Panoramics

Portraits of Czech Friends

All things Josef Sudek...

px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_e7W7UB1fb7Q/SqmLmPaC9ZI/AAAAAAAABlU/JiE_TL7YeUY/s200/Artist%27s+Studio+" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379984718957835666" />Roy Lichtenstein

Van Gogh Appropriations

Sweet Dreams Baby

All things Roy Lichtenstein...

William Adolph Bouguereau

Nature's Fan

All things Bouguereau...

Ann GaleInspiration from Lopez Garcia and Giacometti
And Lucian Freud

All things Ann Gale...

Gustave Courbet

Self Portraits

All thing Courbet...

Mark Rothko

No. 14 - 1960

Other Visiting Rothkos

All things Rothko...

Raphael

La Donna Velata and La Fornarina

All things Raphael...

Amy had this to say today...

My personal favorite, the artist I most enjoyed learning about this year, is you LaValle. This project taught me so much about partnership in writing and learning. It has been invaluable for me. I have logged into Fifty Two Pieces for the last time and no new years resolution will ever be the same.

LaValle had this to say on this last day of 2009...

Starting tomorrow, I'll no longer be thinking about what I'll be writing about on Fifty Two Pieces, nor will I be researching what that writing will be about, nor will I be waking up early to actually write it. Not doing all of that in turn will be leaving hours of extra time every day. What is she going to do you might ask? Voice from the Couch is also waiting to hear and not too patiently for that answer.

Well, I'll be starting a photography blog Portland Through My Lens. I'm challenging myself to ride the Portland Streetcar every day of 2010 and take photographs and post at least one of those images. The restrictions I'm imposing on myself are that the photos must be either from the streetcar or within two blocks of the streetcar. And I should amend the challenge to everyday that I'm in Portland since I do hope to travel sometime during the year. I'll have to come up with a sub-challenge for those days.

2009 has been a fine year, full of lots of planning, website maintenance and many discoveries. Thank you Amy for a great year. And thank you to everyone, all 17,000+ visitors, who have helped to make the year as good as it was.

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies and Mark Rothko

2009-12-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Voice from the Couch couldn't put down the Monet and Modernism book. He had already read up on Andy Warhol and then found Mark Rothko in an earlier section. Voice had this to say... "Well of course, Rothko would be connected to Monet. This is great." Some time later, Voice let me have the book back and I was able to continue my reading on Rothko and some of his thoughts on Monet.

The reactions [of the viewers]...say unanimously my work has the power to convery anew way of looking. This message becomes visible through a new structural language they have never experienced before. In my pictures you find an unspoiled, conscious, elemental humanity. Even the pictures of Monet have something of this, which is why I prefer Monet to Cezanne... Despite the general view that Cezanne created a new way of looking at things and was the father of modern painting, I prefer Monet. Monet was the greater artist of the two. I don't agree with the current public opinion about the colorists and their art... because color in itself is among the sensory components of art.

This quote is from a conversation between Rothko and Alfred Jensen on June 17, 1953.

The two paintings above show Claude Monet's Water Lily painting from 1916 and on the right Mark Rothko's untitled, 1952 in similar yellow greens and lavenders. Rothko has taken the horizontal Monet with its visual field of waterlilies and made it vertical. Rothko carries the abstraction one more step. Take a look at the Rothko piece and you can that see his technique of taking spaces filled with color and then have them hover is very similar to the inner spaces of surface found in Monet's waterlily paintings.

And of course there is also the series aspect of Rothko's work. Much like Warhol (see yesterday's posting), Rothko is indebted to Monet for pioneering the concept of repetition, the creation of a series. A prime example of that would be his Seagram murals (see below). Originally designed for the Four Seasons the original plan was for seven – that is all the rooms the restaurant could handle. How many did Rothko produce? Not just the nine that ultimately became part of the Tate collection but 21 others for a total of 30. To see all of the Tate murals click here. There's also a curator's video at that site as well as gallery notes. The image below is of three of the murals. Voice from the Couch is making plans to see these sometime this year! Until then he plans to make frequent visits to the Portland Art Museum's Monet - Waterlilies.

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies and Andy Warhol ~ Flowers

2009-12-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

These two images are part of one of Andy Warhol's very successful series using the flower motif. The Flowers series in 1964 was based on a photograph of hibiscus flower blossoms. Warhol saturated the large images of the flowers with intense color and put them on a verdant background. They really do seem to float off the canvas much like Monet's treatment of lilies in his pond. Warhol deeply admired Monet's waterlilies spending much time with them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

So in addition to leaving the artists of the next generations the legacy of rich, varied color, Monet also introduced the 20th century art world to the concept of the series - "a systematic approach to the the subject of art and to pictorial means." His many studies of light and haystacks, cathedrals and waterlilies were the precursors to the many varied uses of a series. Some artists may present images in series so that all things are different, for others, the images are increasingly similar. Monet's Legacy Series - Order and Obsession in Hamburg in 2001 explored the connection between Monet and artists of the twentieth century. It's catalogue was intended to:

investigate the historical and cultural backgrounds against which artists began to work in series. Factors such as the advent of industrial mass production and the accompanying development of reproductive techniques will be taken into consideration, as will philosophical issues such as the notion of the whole and its parts, the individual and the collective, perception, space, movement and time.

Warhol is quoted in Monet and Modernism, another exhibition during 2002 as having said...

Most artists repeat themselves all their lives. Isn't life a repetition of the same things happening all the time? I just like doing the same thing over and over again. It's one way of expressing yourself! All of my motifs are always identical but also very different. They change wit the luminosity (of the color), with time, and with the atmosphere. Isn't life a series of motifs that change while they go on repeatin themselves?

If you listen carefully, you'll probably hear Claude Monet agreeing with those last two sentences.

Unfortunately Claude Monet's Waterlilies is the only waterlily painting owned by the Portland Art Museum. So to see a series of them in person, you'll have to travel to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art and see all three of theirs. Or you can do a search on Google.

Voice from the Couch sat down with Monet and Modernism last night and had this to say...
"Hmmm... Warhol was born in 1928 and died in 1987.
You have to include this portrait. Those eyes in the negative will stay with you all next year."

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies and Ellsworth Kelly, Tableau Vert

2009-12-28T17:18:00.000-08:00

This Ellsworth Kelly painting, Tableau Vert, is the first one he painted after he returned from his trip to Giverny to see Claude Monet's home. That was back in August of 1952. Kelly had just discovered that Monet had painted work after the infamous Haystack series. When Kelly arrived at Giverny, he saw a different Giverny than we see today or when Monet was still alive. After Monet's death in 1926, his house and gardens had not been kept up and had fallen into a state of disrepair. At the time Monet's stepson, Pierre Hoschede took Kelly to the studio to see the paintings that had been completed after 1900, Kelly walked into a building where pigeons were flying around. Those birds had entered through broken panes of glass. Leaves were strewn on the floor probably similar to the peanut shells at certain bars. However, the room was filled with paintings of waterlilies - about fifteen of them were over twenty feet long. Kelly describes them as "overall compositions of thickly applied oil paint representing water with lilies, no skyline. I felt that these works were impersonal statements. ... Monet's last paintings had a great influence on me, and even though my work doesn't look like his, I feel I want the spirit to be the same."

Ellsworth Kelly recently gave Tableau Vert to the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. In an interview he talks of how he created it "by mixing blues and greens to echo the colors of grass underwater". Unhappy with the result when he finished it, he had set it aside until 1985. At that time he had this to say “I liked it, but perhaps that was because time had passed." Now that Tableau Vert hangs at the AIC it presents new challenges that would probably interest Monet. Like most paintings it changes colors depending upon the light that it is seen under.

Photographer Robert Hashimoto, has worked for the AIC for more than 25 years, and says that Tableau Vert has been the work that has been most difficult to shoot. Although the name of the painting translates as "green picture" it is a mottled blue-green. Hashimoto felt that to him the painting seemed almost blue when he had it in the studio. Here is how the resolution of that issue went down.

The photo proofs were made on an ink jet printer and compared with the painting in the galleries. Digital prints “metamerize” in mixed daylight and tungsten light, making the colors look strange under different wavelengths. The warm, yellow Tungsten light used in the galleries makes the painting look greener than it does in the color-balanced light of a photography studio. “Perception of color is so subjective,” Robert says, “everyone sees color differently.” After cataract surgery, Robert now sees far more intense colors than he’d seen before – particularly in the blue end of the spectrum. “That’s when I call someone in to give me a second opinion,” he says.

Monet, having had his own issues with both cataracts and myopia, certainly would have taken great interest in how the issue of light unfolded in this scenario.

If you want to see Tableau Vert in person, you'll have to travel to Chicago and visit Gallery 297 in the new Modern Wing of the AIC. Of course, Monet's Waterlilies is a bit more accessible for those of us who live here in Portland. We just need to go to the second floor of the CMCA at the Portland Art Museum.

Voice from the Couch reminded me to tell you that the photo of Ellsworth Kelly in this post is of Kelly while he was painting Tableau Vert in 1952.

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies and Irises, Favorite Flower?

2009-12-27T20:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-24T05:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-23T05:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-19T07:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-18T10:14:00.000-08:00

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.

Dan Flavin ~ Untitled (To Donna) II 1971

2009-12-17T17:46:00.000-08:00

Dan Flavin was my choice for this week at Fifty Two Pieces. I've always been intrigued by what Flavin could do with a palette restricted to the colors from florescent bulbs. In this case, pink, blue and yellow tell the story. While you're looking at this sculpture, remember what Kenneth Noland the famous color field painter said about his paintings.

I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.

Enjoy the music, I'm off to an holiday event!!!
Flavin's Untitled (To Donna) II 1971 can be seen on the second floor of the CMCA at the Portland Art Museum.

Albert Bierstadt ~ Mount Hood and Randy Gragg

2009-12-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

This December seems to be the month for Albert Bierstadt's Mount Hood (located on the second floor of the Portland Art Museum in the American Galleries). It's not only been the focus of this week's edition of Fifty Two Pieces and Arcy Douglass' Artist Talk at the Portland Art Museum on December 10 but also central to Randy Gragg's post on the Portland Monthly website. I'm including the last part of that post to end this week. I don't think anyone expresses the positives of Bierstadt's Mt. Hood and its importance to Portland better than Mr. Gragg.

Given Portland’s location 80 miles inland, the Columbia River our only connection to the larger world, it’s not surprising that the most dominant feature of the landscape—Mount Hood—became the city’s focus: we the congregation, the volcano the altar.

Maybe painter Albert Bierstadt sensed Portland’s possibilities when he painted Hood in 1869. One of the mid-19th century’s most famous and flamboyant artists, Bierstadt took home world-record sums for his paintings and even charged admission to his shows. Though he never made an accurate painting in his life, preferring instead to collage together bits and pieces of the best landscapes he saw on journeys across the West, he played it pretty straight in his single portrait of Mount Hood. He painted the perspective of the volcano that Portlanders now know and love, but swapped out the dumpy little village then nicknamed “Stumptown” for the Columbia River and Multnomah Falls.

Bierstadt’s painting debuted at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 before being shipped to his London studio. While on a visit to London soon afterward, Simeon and Amanda Reed—the future founders of Reed College—bought the piece and packed it back home. It eventually landed at the Portland Art Museum in 1953, where it now hangs on permanent view.

Were Bierstadt standing today at the spot where he made his sketches, it’s easy to imagine that this time, dazzled by the way Portland’s skyline sparkles in the green and so politely bows at midpoint to gracefully vignette our mountain, he might just leave the city in.

Albert Bierstadt ~ Mount Hood, Muybridge and Colescott

2009-12-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

This week of Albert Bierstadt started with Arcy Douglass' Artist Talk about Bierstadt's Mount Hood at the Portland Art Museum on December 10. He mentioned that Bierstadt had dabbled in photography (box camera, glass plate, albumen print variety). Earlier I had read that Bierstadt's two brothers were photographers. Considering that I've been accused of spending far too much time on the internet, I felt compelled to search for some photographs of or by Bierstadt while on location. Imagine my surprise when I found this brightly colored image of a painting by Warrington Colescott – 1872: Edward Muybridge photographs Albert Bierstadt painting Yosemite Valley. Colescott (Robert Colescott's older brother) painted this watercolor in 1993.

Check out the photo on the left. It was taken by Edward Muybridge, the famous English photographer, while both he and Albert Bierstadt were in Yosemite in 1872. Bierstadt had busied himself painting Bridal Veil Falls, Nevada Falls and many other oil sketches of the Yosemite Valley. Muybridge had taken photos of Yosemite, the Indians who were there at the time and Bierstadt. Further searching turned up websites that contained more photos from Muybridge's trip to Yosemite. The photos make an interesting documentary and show that the Paiute Native American Indiams were inhabiting Yosemite in 1872, contrary to the information from the National Park Service. You can read more about this difference of opinion between the Paiute and the National Park Service here and here and here. I always thought it was the Miwok, but then I had visited Yosemite and looked at the National Park Service presentations.

Note: Check the Comments for remarks by Voice from the Couch.

Albert Bierstadt ~ Mount Hood, Bridal Veil Falls and Valerie Hegarty

2009-12-14T16:46:00.000-08:00

Albert Bierstadt painted Bridal Veil Falls (above and on the left) sometime between 1871 and 1873. At three by nearly eight feet, it's another of Bierstadt's grand paintings with amazing light and filled with the Manifest Destiny for which he is famous - similar to the Portland Art Museum's Mount Hood. It currently hangs in the North Carolina Museum of Art. Right next to Bierstadt's painting of Bridal Veil Falls is Valerie Hegarty's Fallen Bierstadt, 2007. Hegarty's work hangs in the Brooklyn Museum.

Look at Valerie Hegarty's work and you'll see she's recreated Bierstadt's painting from Yosemite but then deconstructed it. The painting is decomposing before our eyes. Made of foam core, paper and wood it's as if nature has taken Bierstadt's creation and had her way with it. Hegarty challenges our perceptions of painting and reality. The Brooklyn Museum presents us with a view of Hegarty and Fallen Bierstadt, 2007 in this video.

More of Valerie Hegarty's work can be seen here.

Camping in the Cascades

2009-12-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

By: Joseph Powell

Hungry for bootprints, shades of differences,
we've come to think like the earth.
In the valley below, it was summer,
dim air-conditioned houses sulked,
days flat as fallow fields.
We climb back in time:
yellow fawn lillies, shooting stars,
ferns curled tight as snails.

We meet grimed climbers coming down,
each wrapped in a heavy calm
that bears the unsteady weight of each foot.
Out of the blue, one mountain
after another steps forward, beckoning.
How far can we go?
Finally at Deep Lake, other tents
scattered along the shore,
we eat and watch a half moon rise.
The stars that guided seafarers,
kings, whole milleniums of geese,
awaken slowly in uninterrupted sky.

Our lives shrink to incandescent flames
that blink on the surface of the lake.
Smoke climbs its rope of air
and disappears into the dark
like our own best thoughts.
Nocturnal eyes open, claws flex.
Faithfully, we lie on the ground
spinning slowly through space.
Heavenly bodies shine through our sleep.

Happy Birthday LaValle, you brilliant burst of light!

Albert Bierstadt ~ Mount Hood, Yosemite and Blueberry Hill

2009-12-12T06:25:00.000-08:00

During Arcy Douglass' Artist Talk at the Portland Art Museum about Albert Bierstadt's Mount Hood on December 10, Douglass mentioned that the USPS had included one of Albert Bierstadt's painting as part of a commemorative stamp series entitled "American Treasures". That comment drove me to the internet to find out which painting. The painting they chose Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California serves to trigger in each of us who has seen Yosemite our own memories of that incredibly beautiful valley. Bierstadt had travelled west to experience Yosemite in person after having seen Carlton Watkins photographs. He spent seven weeks in the area and fell under its spell, painting Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California in 1865. At nearly 5 x 8 feet, the painting is typical of Bierstadt's style. The Picturing America website has this to say about Bierstadt and Yosemite.

Bierstadt possessed an uncanny understanding of what Americans in his time wanted to believe was waiting for them on the western frontier: a Garden of Eden blessed by God, untouched by civil war, and holding the promise of a new beginning. His romantic paintings embody the collective hope that a remote landscape could heal a nation’s wounds. The preservationist (and Sierra Club founder) John Muir, Bierstadt’s near-contemporary, affirmed the idea that the Yosemite Valley could refresh the spirit: “The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,” he promised prospective tourists, “while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

How you might ask could all of this be linked to Blueberry Hill? The internet is truly a seamless web. It turns out that not only was Bierstadt's Yosemite Valley painting included as part of the USPS commemorative stamp series but it was also included as part of a scene in Terry Gilliam's 1995 film "Twelve Monkeys", accompanied by several doctors singing Blueberry Hill. The list of vocal artists who have sung that song is quite long and includes Gene Autry, Elvis Presley, Elton John, and the Rolling Stones. One of my favorites is by Bruce Cockburn and can be listened to here in his slowed down version with Margo Timmins, the lead vocalist of the Canadian band Cowboy Junkies.

Albert Bierstadt ~ Mount Hood, Artistic License

2009-12-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

The other title for this post could be truth in blogging. At the core of last night's Artist Talk discussion at the Portland Art Museum was the representation of Mt. Hood as opposed to its actual size. The gist of that was if a person stood on the Washington state side of the gorge and looked at Mount Hood the actual height would have had to have been upwards of 25K feet to have been the size in Bierstadt's painting. Putting aside the ethical issues raised and debated last night, I feel that I should post some photos of Mount Hood for those of you who are not familiar with it. Keep in mind that even cameras distort reality just as Bierstadt, Church and Moran did in the 19th century.

The lead image is from Portland, up at the top of one of the hills near downtown Portland, as is the next one from a spot just to the west of downtown. The last is from a spot closer to the mountain. Mt. Hood is an icon that is always in my mind's eye.

Albert Bierstadt ~ Mount Hood

2009-12-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

This post could have been entitled view from my window – not the idyllic country setting but the looming white mountain, the sleeping volcano with the name Mt. Hood. Albert Bierstadt created this painting in 1869. He and his contemporaries are no longer with us but the mountain continues to live on in the painting and as part of the view of the people who live in the greater Portland area. The main reason for selecting this painting as the piece of the week here at Fifty Two Pieces is that it will be Arcy Douglass' subject at the Portland Art Museum Artist Talk tonight, 10 December 2009. Check back with us during the course of the next week to hear more about Douglass' talk, Albert Bierstadt and Mount Hood.

Marcel Duchamp ~ Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960

2009-12-09T06:11:00.000-08:00

Voice from the couch, "I went down to the Portland Art Museum and saw the Duchamp."
Me, "What did you think?"
Voice from the couch, "Liked it. I could actually see the images. The computer screen just didn't do it for me."
Me, "True."
Voice from the couch, "We saw one of those pieces at MoMA last year. The color chart one, upper right hand corner"
Me, "Color Chart? I guess I'll have to go back to the museum. I can't see it."

Back to the museum I went and found the Tu m' originally created in 1918 and now packaged in its reproduced form in the Boite-en-valise. Check out the upper right hand corner the next time you're at the museum. Or visit the Museum of Modern Art website and you'll find the video below. Watch it here (you'll hear one of MoMA's curators) or watch it there (and see many other videos).

Voice from the couch, "Be sure to tell them the size of the original." Good point. The original of Tu m' is 27 1/2 x 119 5/16 in. Quick math puts it at about 3 ft by 10 ft. When we saw this at MoMA, the bicycle wheel and the hat rack loomed above us with the color swatches projecting surreally from the canvas. And how could we forget the bottle brush, three safety pins, and one bolt.

Marcel Duchamp ~ Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F - Coffee Mill and Maria Martins

2009-12-08T20:42:00.000-08:00

While "unpacking" Marcel Duchamp's Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960 (figuratively, of course) I read about his original journey out of France with all of the copies of his work that would later go into the various issues of the Boite – the original limited edition, and the subsequent Series. The Portland Art Museum's is labelled as part of Series F. The internet and legend has it that Duchamp had decided to return from France to the United States because of the advancing Germans in 1941. Duchamp is said to have posed as a cheese merchant and claimed the reproductions in his suitcase to be cheese, in order to smuggle his works through German checkpoints. If you look at Duchamp's life and work from the metaphor of chess that he loved so much, the whole idea of the Boites is like a series of chess moves – idea to have a miniature museum of his work, create reproductions, make announcement of the deluxe edition in 1940, decide to leave Europe, plan and execute removal of the "museum pieces", produce first edition and then subsequent ones with additional reproductions. It's quite a story and the best account I've found so far can be found by clicking here. It's a great read and you'll find out that Series F was put together by none other than Duchamp's stepdaughter, Jacqueline Monnier in Paris. So this piece is quite the world traveler.

You may wonder what this has to do with today's lead image of Duchamp's Coffee Mill (1911). I became fascinated with it when I saw it in the Boite (expanded version) and its relationship to Maria Martins. It turns out that at one point Maria Martins owned the original of this painting as part of her art collection. Martins was a world-renowned sculptor who during the forties was having an affair with Marcel Duchamp. They were artistic soul mates as well as lovers at the same time as she was married to the Brazilian Ambassador to this country. At some point their affair ended. They continued to correspond as artists and friends. That relationship was so strong that Duchamp made it a point that important pieces of his work were hers. The Coffee Mill was one of those pieces. Originally Duchamp painted it for his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon to hang in his kitchen. The Coffee Mill in the Boite is a pochoir reproduction that Duchamp favored for its accuracy. Perhaps one day, the display at the Portland Art Museum will change and the Coffee Mill will be shown so we won't have to just view it as a speck in the expanded version above. You could of course travel to the Tate in London to see the original that once hung in Raymond's kitchen and was owned by Maria Martins (photo on left). To view the Portland Art Museum's display as you'd see it today click here.

Marcel Duchamp ~ Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, Rrose Selavy but no Chess

2009-12-07T00:01:00.001-08:00

The image above is the expanded view of what I had seen yesterday of Marcel Duchamp's Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960 at the Portland Art Museum. PAM has consolidated the box so that it looks more like the image on the left. After writing the post on Saturday about Duchamp's affection for chess (Saturday seems like such a short time ago), I decided to go venture down to PAM and see if I could see any chess images in the Boite. Alas, that wasn't to be. There are any number of images - just about what you see on the left but not all of what is shown above. Not one of them has a chess theme. However, there is at least one piece of art not represented in either of these images. On the left hand hinged cover and on the side we can't see is Duchamp's Nude Descending the Staircase. The original of that piece was shown here at the Portland Art Museum back in 1913 just after it was exhibited in the Armory Show. You can read more about that here at Fifty Two Pieces, just click this link. Back to the Boite. What I did discover that intrigued me were the two pieces by Rrose Selavy. Rose, as you'll recall from earlier posts at Fifty Two Pieces was Marcel Duchamp's feminine alter ego. His other self was birthed in 1921 and soon started to create art work of her own.

First up is Why Not Sneeze Rrose Selavy? This piece either carries the attribution Rrose Selavy or Marcel Duchamp, depending upon which book, website, museum is being quoted. In either case, Duchamp or Selavy created this Readymade of 152 marble cubes in the form of sugar cubes with thermometer and cuttlefishbone in a birdcage. Unless you're at the museum you'll probably not see the tiny three dimensional cut-out of this piece. It sits almost like a small crown inside the red Boite itself. Click on the enlarged expanded version of the Boite above and you might make it out. It's mostly grays and not the wonderful representation to the left.

Selavy was also represented with the piece La Bagarre d'Austerlitz, The best view of this is to look at the expanded version, second row from the bottom, far right hand image. Hmmph, Voice from the Couch is saying. How can anyone possibly see that? He's right. You'll all need to visit the Portland Art Museum or the closest museum that has a Boite on display and examine it closely. Each series is substantially the same, but the contents of the series vary from series to series. The Portland Art Museum has Series F.

Rrose Selavy, Duchamp's alter ego, kept him busy from the moment she was created in 1921. If she wasn't busy making art, she was having her photo taken or image painted. Duchamp spent a great deal of time preparing himself for these photo shoots as well as any time he ventured out into the world as Rrose. Man Ray took a number of portraits of Duchamp and of Rrose Selavy. Here's one of Rrose and then a portrait done by Carlo Mariani in 1990 from Ray's image. Duchamp would certainly love the visuals here. Mariani portrays Duchamp as the feminine Selavy but retains more of his masculine features. And then Mariani put in the additional tweak of Duchamp/Selavy in a da Vinci Mona Lisa pose with the added starter of the mustache and goatee from L.H.O.O.Q. (also in PAM's Boite).

Chess and Conversation

2009-12-06T11:54:00.001-08:00

My dad taught all of his children to play Chess when we were very young. We played each other and we played him, many, many times. He rarely went out, but when he did it was over to Dubersich's house for a game of Chess. One game took hours as they were rightly matched.
I know how to play Chess, but I never do. My last wonderful Chess moment happened five or six years ago when I challenged a good friend's beau to a match. This is the kind of guy that whips out a complete New York Times crossword in fifteen minutes, the kinda guy who can spend twenty minutes silently petting the cat and half an hour at a garage sale looking at records, but can't handle five minutes of small talk, and doesn't think he should have to. I didn't think I stood a chance against him but knew I had to win. He didn't know I had it in me, which worked to my advantage, I kicked his ass. It felt sweet like victory should.
Chess is not an easy game to play or win which is why everyone should know the game, it's a lot like life.
Duchamps suitcases are a lot like life too. Boxes full of compartments like little houses full of rooms, each one stuffed with reproductions of other things, toilets, art, vases all in miniature. The boxes are carefully constructed, like little houses, one after the other.
I can imagine Duchamp and his wife, the two of them cutting out the pieces. Maybe they went back and forth in conversation the way players at chess go back and forth taking turns harrassing the other with a move well played, like words well spoken. In Chess it is discouraging to your opponent both your good strategy and your thoughtless move. As in conversation, where both parties rely on thoughtful participation, if one strays down a random course unrelating she may leave the build up of the topic and the conversation will likely end. In Chess if you don't pay attention or think you have something completely different in mind, you may fall to your death in one false move.
In both cases unless the other player is made to follow his opponent's idea or is able to pull him back to his own course, the game will end. The better conversation and the better Chess game are almost always those that last longer. In either case, to make this work, each participant must always be thinking simultaneously about what is happening at that very moment and the thing which he is surely missing and attempt to find it before it finds him. And a good player understands where it is she is going without knowing all the moves that will get her there until she has to make them. She must make them at just the right moment.
The longer the conversation, the longer the Chess game, the longer the trip. We all agree we would like to have the longest trip here as possible, as long as it's a good one. Duchamp clearly agrees, as each valise takes a while to unpack.

Marcel Duchamp ~ Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, seeking chess & John Cage

2009-12-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

Marcel Duchamp has made previous appearances here at Fifty Two Pieces. Several weeks ago, I posted two of Florine Stettheimer's portraits of Duchamp. One included reference to his penchant for chess and the other what I see as a saint-like portrayal. It turns out in reading up on Duchamp this week that his brother taught him to play the game when he was eleven and living in France. Chess continued to be part of the rest of his life – so much so that in 1923 he reportedly gave up art to become a chess master and win the French Chess Championship - he did win a number of tournaments, just not that one. Although he didn't stop making art, chess did dominate his life between the years of 1923 and 1933. In an effort to bring about wider appreciation of the game, he curated a number of art shows dedicated to chess, included chess in his art and even made a chess board.

It's been said there are no coincidences in life. Recently I listened to an NPR podcast of Terry Gross interviewing John Cage. Who does Cage mention during the course of 20 minutes – none other than Marcel Duchamp. Cage and Duchamp were friends and chess was a focus of many of their visits. Many times Cage only played with Duchamp's wife Teeny because he, Cage, played so poorly. Cage recounts that sometimes Duchamp would nap while watching the two play. Other times he would be exasperated with Cage and his game. When Duchamp did agree to play, he would spot Cage a Knight (nice). In any case, Duchamp agreed to meet Cage for a performance of Reunion in Toronto in 1968. The two men played chess on a glass board with special sound hookups. The idea of the composition was to "bring together many sound systems, each activated by a different composer, like a coming together of people (Reunion)." Performed once, it was photographed by Shigeko Kubota who later issued a video with sound and her photographs of the event.

Since chess was such a major portion of Duchamp's life, I'm heading to the museum to see if there are any chess images visible in the Boite-en-valise as it's currently displayed at the Portland Art Museum.

And to end this post, here's my current favorite image of Duchamp.

Marcel Duchamp ~ Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960/a video and another view

2009-12-04T17:21:00.000-08:00

PAM's Boite -en-valise, Expanded View
Marcel Duchamp's Boite-en-valise seems quite full. And it turns out from this image of the Portland Art Museum's Boite (shown to the left and above) there's even more in that box. The National Museum of Scotland owns one of the "original" valise versions bound in leather. Here is what their web site says about Marcel's creation. All of them are said to be substantially the same ...

This leather case contains sixty-nine miniature reproductions of Duchamp's works. This is number two of twenty-four de-luxe versions of the case. Each of these features a different, hand-coloured 'original' fixed to the inside of the lid. The box 'unpacks' in such a way that some sections slide out, with other folders and black-mounted prints inside. For Duchamp there was no clear distinction between the original and the reproduction, a concept cleverly embodied in this piece. The case is also reminiscent of a travelling salesman's display case, containing a selection of Duchamp's pre-1935 work like a portable museum, made for his move to New York in 1942.

And here's a link to the Smarthistory Duchamp video made here at the Portland Art Museum. You'll hear Chief Curator Bruce Guenther and Smarthistory's Dr. Beth Harris discuss Duchamp and his work. Click here - it's about four minutes long.

Marcel Duchamp ~ Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960

2009-12-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago when Fifty Two Pieces featured Florine Stettheimer, we posted several of her portraits of Marcel Duchamp. So Duchamp has been on our minds. The Portland Art Museum has one of his works, the Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960. There's quite a bit going on with this piece, a little of this, a little of that. Some have characterized these pieces as Duchamp's portfolio in a suitcase or box. Stay with us this week and see more of this work, some videos, perhaps a poem or two. We never know at the beginning of the week what will take place. For those of you who want to see this piece in person, it's at the top of the stairs on the second floor of the CMCA at the Portland Art Museum.

Anish Kapoor ~ Hexagonal Mirror Inspired Poetry

2009-12-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

Six of us docents entered the gallery in which Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror hangs at the Portland Art Museum yesterday. As we approached this reflective piece our individual and collective realities were altered. We each saw a slightly different perspective of our group and the room as we moved forward, stood still, move backwards together. As we explored and talked, our world changed. Hundreds of eyes, then hundreds of mouths, then our faces would appear. And as the images in each reflective six sided piece of reflective stainless changed, we found our voices amplified. Whispers from the bench were amplified and carried across the room. We were alone, together, whole, fragmented. Kapoor's piece is definitely a reason to visit the Portland Art Museum even if you have seen or don't want to see China Design Now or Raphael's La Velata again. I'd recommend all three but I'd recommend starting with Kapoor.

Each of us docents wrote for eight minutes towards the end of our time at the museum. We could write whatever we chose. Here is a piece written by one of our group - I chose it for my love of eyeglasses of which I have five active pairs, only one diamond but five glasses. The special perks of being one of the writers of this blog is to choose what is posted...

A Moment of Clarity

(with a nod to Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror)

I wake up with a start
Then a slow inkling
A Blur Feast at dawn

I reach over to the bedside stand
groping for my designer glasses .. my Anish Kapoor
coolest glasses ever
Shiny reflective
I-see-You-but-You-can't-see-me-Anish-Kapoor-Alternative-Universe-Spectator-Spectacles

There You are next to me
reflected, refracted,
fragmented,
scattered
all over the room.

I move and the wall curves
the picture colors pulse like
goldfish mouths O-O-O-O

Get it together! You can't go out
in the world all schizoid like this
multiple personalities writhing like snakes on Medusa's Head

And You talk fast at me with your myopic words
Take off those Anish Kapoor specs right now!

And I say low and slow NO Never! You blind man.

Anish Kapoor ~ Hexagonal Mirror on 4, Brancusi on 1

2009-12-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

This week's piece on Fifty Two Pieces is Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror, a highly reflective multi-faceted metal sculpture. Two days ago I posted about two other note-worthy sculptures, both of which are reflective metal. Tony Cragg's work is currently on display in the Portland Art Museum's main lobby. John Chamberlain's Neptune's Cap is unfortunately long gone. All three of these pieces are/were here on loan. However, PAM is fortunate to have Constantine Brancusi's A Muse completed in 1918 as part of its permanent collection. Museum patrons take note that this was a gift of Patron Sally Lewis back in 1959.

What these two images off the internet don't show is the truly amazing reflections on that highly polished bronze sculpture. Stand just right and you see the entire gallery behind you and yourself four times. You become the sculpture's muse or your own, however you choose to interpret that. You'll also notice that the images are reversed. Which one is correct? Always an interesting question on the internet. I'd recommend a trip to the museum, but for those of you who aren't in the immediate vicinity, I'll let you know that our Muse's dominant hand is the left one. I'm not certain what Brancusi would have thought of cyberspace but I'm thinking he probably would have been an eager beta tester.

Fly Eye and the Amazing Hexagonal Mirror

2009-11-30T19:06:00.000-08:00

Being with Hexagonal Mirror makes me appreciate the eye of the fly- if you were to push the thing in from behind that's what you would get, one giant insect eye. In this case I am the insect, seeing the world around me in thousands of tiny mirrors.

I see all these pieces of me separated from each other. In one mirror is my mouth and there it is again and again, dozens of my mouths in little seperated compartments populate one area of the mirror.

Even more wonderful than my closed mouth in forty mirrors is the echo I get when I stand in the sweet spot. It vibrates off the walls of the Hexagonal Mirror. So I stand within the tiny reflected pieces of me and make the biggest noises I can make. The noises get bigger than I can make them because they bounce off the walls. I am made bigger and smaller in this place, and everything about me is multiplied.
LaValle is right about entering a new world, this piece of art is a world with it's very own version of every person that enters it. It has it's own silent sound system just waiting to be turned on, the only thing about it that reminds me of the world I know is that it looks like a fly eye, and really, what is more amazing than that?

Anish Kapoor ~ Hexagonal Mirror on 4, Tony Cragg on 1

2009-11-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

The Portland Art Museum has been very fortunate to host the works of world class sculptors such as Anish Kapoor, the artist of this week's piece on Fifty Two Pieces (see image of Hexagonal Mirror on the left). And in some cases these pieces are reflective metal like Kapoor's. Right now the museum is also exhibiting Tony Cragg's sculpture that remains untitled but stands over seven feet tall. You can see this reflective spiral if you choose the main entrance on SW Park. After you've gone through guest services, you can watch the world through the reflections created by Tony Cragg and by your own mind as it puts together images from the four walls around it –– three sides are Asian, including the red from "China Design Now" and the fourth is from the park across the street. Remember, as you're looking at what's reflected, that only about 25% of what goes to your visual cortex comes from your retinas. Ah, and in my case I'm thinking of the other reflective sculpture that the Portland Art Museum had on display for over two years beginning in 2005 – John Chamberlain's stainless steel Neptune's Cap.

This 8 x 6 x 4 foot sculpture of stainless steel graced the Link Gallery and would stop many visitors for longer than the usual thirty seconds that they would normally spend at most works of art. During the majority of its time here, it reflected this rather large painting by Larry Poons. Keep in mind that Chamberlain's original design was for the sculptor, Donald Judd. Neptune's Cap was to be submerged in the swimming pool at Judd's compound in Marfa, Texas. Unfortunately, Judd died in 1994 while the work was still in design. Chamberlain finally completed the piece in 2005. Since I now know where the piece was originally intended to be shown, I have a difficult time not thinking of kelp - beautiful reflective ribbons from the sea rather than Poons' pinks. Many thanks to Bruce Guenther, Chief Curator at the Portland Art Museum, for arranging these extraordinary loans.

Anish Kapoor ~ Portland and Chicago

2009-11-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

Anish Kapoor is well known for his very large usually reflective sculptures. Although Portland is not home to one of them, Chicago, on the other hand, is. Kapoor's Cloud Gate graces Millennium Park and the natives refer to it as the Bean which it, of course, resembles – you have to love those Chicagoans for accuracy. The Cloud/Bean is Kapoor's first site specific installation in the United States. In addition to the above images of the Cloud, I'm including a video and a link to another in an effort to keep the posts uncluttered. Click here for the additional video. Right now we'll have to settle for the Hexagonal Mirror currently on view at the Portland Art Museum and this week's piece at Fifty Two Pieces.

Speaking of Chicago, I'll take this opportunity to also tout the symphony at Grant Park there, Millennium Park's outdoor music venue. Carlos Kalmar (the Music Director of the Oregon Symphony) is the Principal Conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival. Chicagoans love him. They come out in the rain to watch and listen to him conduct. They truly know genius when they see it. The night we watched him conduct he arrived with his hair combed close to his head. We were convinced he had done something to his usual "fro" that would keep him from conducting with his usual eloquence. No, we were wrong. He started fine and within 10 minutes his hair had dried (he must have been caught in the rain) and conducted a superb evening of music. So the next time you're in Chicago, visit Millennium Park. In addition to all of its other activities and sculptures, you'll be able to personally take in the Cloud/Bean. If you time your visit right you'll also be able to hear Kalmar conduct for free.

Anish Kapoor ~ Hexagonal Mirror

2009-11-27T08:19:00.001-08:00

I wish I could say that the above images are of Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror at the Portland Art Museum. Alas, the museum has a No Photography rule. As a result, photos of Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror that is currently on the 4th floor of the CMCA are few and far between. At some point though, images should begin to appear on Flickr much as the ones in the image above have. They're of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's version of the Hexagonal Mirror.

As you can see from the images above (click here to go to that page on Flickr), you won't just view the Mirror as a spectator, you'll be a particpant with it. You'll walk around the room, move in closer, move away, walk around the room some more. It will completely entrance you. Don't miss this sculpture – it's on loan and could be off display at any moment. The first time I went to PAM to see it, I was the only person in the gallery. The effect of the light from the southern windows and the wolves baying from the Kiki Smith wall hanging was as if I had entered the Underworld. Fortunately, I found that if you stand in exactly the right spot, just to the right of center, you'll see dozens of reflected Emergency Exit signs to take advantage of.

Anish Kapoor ~ Hexagonal Mirror

2009-11-26T06:59:00.000-08:00

For all of you who are in Portland for the foreseeable future, you'll be able to enter the world as created by Anish Kapoor. This Hexagonal Mirror (shown here as a work in progress) is now on display on the 4th Floor of the CMCA at the Portland Art Museum. Anish Kappor is famous for his reflective sculptures of all shapes and sizes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a similar one on display in its Modern wing but viewing that one will cost you a plane flight and lodging expenses. So take advantage of the opportunity and visit this unique sculpture soon.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Contemporary of Duchamp, O'Keeffe and Stein

2009-11-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

Those brown eyes of Marcel Duchamp will pierce right through you and find your true identity, resistance is futile. Florine Stettheimer may not have met with financial rewards from her artistic work during her lifetime but artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Demuth all thought highly of her work. And Gertrude Stein benefitted from the success of Virgil Thomson's production of Four Saints and Three Acts based on Stein's libretto. Key to that success was Stettheimer unique set design.

Duchamp

Duchamp spent considerable time with Florine and her two sisters attending their Salon and giving them French lessons when he first arrived in America during World War I. The sharing of ideas during those years of friendship makes it easy to understand his affinity for Florine's symbol filled paintings such as the Cathedral series and her many portraits. Duchamp organized the 1946 retrospective of Stettheimer's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

O'Keeffe

Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe also gathered at the Stettheimer apartment. “She put into visible form in her own way, something that they all were, a way of life that is going and cannot happen again, something that has been alive in our city.” In 1938, Stettheimer and O'Keefe were the only women artists whose work was included in the exhibition of American art organized by the Museum of Modern Art to travel to the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. Stettheimer portrayal of Stieglitz has O'Keeffe appearing out of the background. It hangs in Nashville so if you're ever there you'll be able to see it in all of the glory of Stettheimer's color palette.

Stein
Stettheimer received much critical acclaim in 1934 for her work as set designer on Virgil Thomson's opera of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts. Stettheimer utilized cellophane extensively in the scenery and costume design. Unlike most designers, Stettheimer created little figures to show how the costumes should be designed. This little maquette reflects the all black cast Thomson used to portray the European saints. It was after the success of Four Saints that Gertrude Stein returned to America for her lecture tour. Thomson's opera with Stettheimer's sets played a major role in Stein's level of celebrity.

At The Met with Eve and Florine

2009-11-24T07:55:00.000-08:00

Last week I went to the Met with my Aunt Eve. Eve lives in New York, I grew up in a tiny Oregon town. I thought of her often and how someday I would visit her in the Big Apple- imagining a city as ripe and sweet as something that grew on the trees outside our house. I thought I would go the day I graduated from high school, but until last week I had never visited Eve. She's painted all the walls in her house, and her fireplace and shutters. She says this is the fourth time she has re-primed and painted the hearth:

We went to the Met, she wore at least a dozen colors and I was head to toe in black, she threw a crazy scark of me, so we would match. We wandered for hours, until we came to the Stettheimer wall:

I read the wall panel for my favorite of Florine's paintings, The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue:

Wall Panel: In each of her Cathedrals, Stettheimer uses architecture to organize her composition. In this case it resembles a real Cathedral, perhaps Saint Patrick's Church on Fifth Avenue, although the newlyweds emerge from underneath a bright red canopy and matching carpet that seem to belong more to the Plaza Hotel than to a church. All around this central scene, activities depicting other aspects of conspicuous consumption abound, seemingly unaware of the wedding taking place. This wild activity energizes the canvas just as it energizes Fifth Avenue on a Saturday afternoon in December.
I didn't say anything, and neither did Eve. We just looked. For a long time.
Later I was thinking about the painting, we were sitting on the couch together.

I said, remember that big painting with all the colors, on the wall- there were four of them- they were street scenes of New York. She nodded. I said, I think I would like to write about those for my blog this week. She frowned, I didn't like those paintings she said. Why? I asked. There was nothing I could find to like about those, but I loved the frames.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Portrait of Myself

2009-11-23T06:12:00.000-08:00

Florine Stettheimer really didn't like to have photos taken of her. So unlike her sisters Ettie (writer) and Carrie (crafter of dollhouses), there are not many photographic images of her available. To make up for that though, Florine did include herself in many of her paintings and did at least one self-portrait – Portrait of Myself, today's lead image. Florine lived a life of privilege. She and her sisters spent much of their lives in Manhattan and frequently visited Europe where Florine studied with various artists and schools. Her only solo exhibition in 1916 was somewhat of a disappointment to her so she chose to exhibit only occasionally in group shows after that. As a result not many were aware of her work while she was alive and after her death it has only been recently that she is being recognized at major museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art usually has an entire gallery wall devoted to her work. And of course, the Portland Art Museum has her Portrait of My Teacher. Below are photos of Florine (one of the very few in existence) and one of each of her two sisters.

Florine Stettheimer, ~ 1920

Ettie Stettheimer, 1932

Carrie Stettheimer, 1932

The three sisters entertained on a grand scale having parties and afternoon salons in their Manhattan apartment. Some of their well known friends were Carl Van Vechten, Francis Picabia, Leo Stein, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Charles Demuth, and Marsden Hartley. Stettheimer painted a number of their portraits including these two of Marcel Duchamp and Carl Van Vechten.
Marcel Duchamp, 1923

Carl Van Vechten, 1922
Most of us are more familiar with Duchamp than we are with Van Vechten. Picking out the symbols she used in Duchamp's portrait, I found reference to his cultural allegiances to both the United States and France and his love of chess. The woman in that painting it turns out isn't Stettheimer but his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. And of course the clock most probably is symbolizing his fascination with time and space.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Cathedrals of Broadway

2009-11-22T07:02:00.000-08:00

Florine Stettheimer painted her Cathedrals series over the course of fifteen years. All four of the paintings are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection although they may not all be hanging on the gallery walls at any one time. Cathedrals of Broadway is a perennial favorite and shows Stettheimer's distinct style. Once you've seen a Stettheimer how could you not recognize the bright colors and figure filled images as being hers. She paints a New York that is much like it is today, a city that never sleeps. In Cathedrals of Broadway painted in 1929, about the same time as the Portland Art Museum's Portrait of My Teacher this week's piece, you can take in a time of change. Silent movies are on the way out and are shown with the word Silence roped off. The talkies have arrived and are symbolized by the newsreel clip in the top center showing the beginning of baseball season. As she did in many of her paintings, Stettheimer included herself. In Cathedrals of Broadway, she is entering on the painting's left with her older sister Stella and her cousin Walter Wagner.

Cathedrals of Broadway inspired poet Naomi Shihab Nye to writed "The World, Starring You" that was included in Heart to Heart a book of poems inspired by Twentieth Century American Art. Nye is quoted in the introduction of Heart to Heart as she talks about Stettheimer's work ... "her scenes woke me up with their beautifully luscious shapes and colors of flowers and figures, and gave me a deep feeling of closeness with the times in which she lived." Here is Nye's poem that accompanied Stettheimer's Cathedrals of Broadway.

The World, Starring You
Naomi Shihab Nye

Florine, we would live inside your colors! Red joy,
golden rushes of hope, the 1929 we will never see.
Names of radiant theaters flame your sky – RIALTO – ROXY –
citizens mingling in pearls, top hats, inside a glittering flare.
Where have they gone? a ticket booth waits like a small domed mosque.
An usher – or is he a policeman ? – wearing white gloves and yellow cape
pivots between welcome and EXIT. Even the mayor looks smart.
Frills and flgs, banners, tiny dancing sprites . . .
You painted the flurry and flux,
abundant addresses of Broadway welcoming crowds.
I like the fanfare, the dreamy dazzle, canopies of light!

Florine, the early 20th century chimed like a chord,
but we are hobblers at the millennium, cleaning out our drawers,
nothing looks enough like you.
The age of gracious penmanship was yours.
Balance your globe on tipsy clock,
lift the darkness with arches and stars.
And ever, ever, a roped-off fluted SILENCE at the center.
Take us where you were and where you are.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Portrait of My Teacher

2009-11-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's post was to honor Jeanne-Claude, wife and partner to Christo and all of their mutual works. Those works are not housed in museums but in the collective memory of us all and to some extent so is the work of Florine Stettheimer. Unlike Jeanne-Claude whose work will always remain in the memories of those who saw it on site or are looking at in print or more probably on-line, some of Stettheimer's works are hung in museums. This was not always the case. Born into a family of money and privilege, Stettheimher pursued art, studied art in Europe and upon her return to the United States at the outbreak of World War I, mounted a solo exhibition that did not meet with financial or critical favor. Stung by rejection, you might imagine that she would have put away her brushes and gone to her room, but no she continued to paint, changed her style – painting in a unique modern and some would say feminine motif and only showing in select small group exhibitions. Her instructions upon her death were for her heirs and assigns to destroy her ouevre. Fortunately for all of us they ignored that instruction. As a result the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as countless other museums have any number of Stettheimers on exhibit.

Stettheimer paints with bright full colors as you can see in Portrait of My Teacher, Fraulein Sophie von Prieser. She has a calligraphic use of line that shows itself in this painting with the inclusion of Fraulein Preiser's name in the fence. Looking closer at the painting and you'll see a portrait of Stettheimer as a young girl above the mantel, sitting next to a Hellenic bust. That bust comes down through the ages looks timeless compared to the aged look of Fraulein Prieser. And on the small table is a framed portrait that some say is Stettheimer herself. The colors in the painting range from deep blues and greens to bright reds oranges and yellows. Stettheimer paints an optimistic view in 1929 that continued through the Great Depression and on into WW II. She died in 1944 before the end of the great conflict. Her paintings live on though and are the favorites of many including Matthew Stadler who wrote about her in the online zine Doppelganger back in 2006.

Not Stettheimer But an Homage to Jeanne-Claude

2009-11-20T05:40:00.000-08:00

Jeanne-Claude ... 13 June 1935 - 19 November 2009

Thank you DK Row for your article about Jeanne-Claude and her visit to Portland on Oregonlive linked here. More here. And here. And here.

"In their beckoning but impenetrable Other-ness, their aloofness from whatever meanings we would try to attach to them, The Gates always reminded me of that jar in the Wallace Stevens poem, the one that "did not give of bird or bush/like nothing else in Tennessee." .. Richard Lacayo

Florine Stettheimer ~ Portrait of My Teacher

2009-11-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

This week's selection at Fifty Two Pieces carries a rather long title. Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) painted this image of her teacher and entitled it – Portrait of My Teacher, Fraulein Sophie von Prieser. It's a long title and the image is a beautiful homage to a woman who instructed another woman when she was growing up. Stettheimer painted this in 1929 when she was fifty eight, about the same age I was when I first saw this work of art. Portrait of My Teacher is one of a number of portraits of people from Stettheimer's childhood who she painted during the years of 1928 and 1929. There's a great deal going on in this painting. Even without being in the gallery with it, you'll be able to scan, quantify and qualify a great deal of what Stettheimer produced in this portrait. Start with the thought that there is not just one portrait. How many portraits are there represented?

Amy went through the Metropolitan in New York today. One of their galleries is filled with Stettheimers. Amy is scheduled to be weighing in later in the week on this woman painter from the beginning of the 20th century.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit and Photographs

2009-11-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

When I see works of art, I usually end up wondering who the artists were, how did they live their lives, what did they look like? Earlier in this week on Helen Frankenthaler and Spaced Out Orbit, I posted a video about her and her life (linked here). Since then I've begun looking for images of her on the internet and have found a number that show her and some that show her with her art. Here's what I've collected so far.

The Early Years – 1950's

Jackson Pollock, Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner and an unidentified child

1957 from Life

The 1960's and one from 1970
"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about."

During this period Helen Frankenthaler was married to Robert Motherwell

1970
After Motherwell
Frankenthaler and Motherwell divorced in 1971. Spaced Out Orbit was painted in 1973. She made several trips West during the seventies. Our Orbit may have been the result of one of those trips. Here she is in the next two decades...

1984
1991

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it--well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that--there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." ...Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler will turn 81 on December 12. I share her birthday and that pleases me.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit and the Clement Greenberg Collection

2009-11-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

How is it that the Portland Art Museum has such a strong collection of painters representing Abstract Expressionism (Frankenthaler, Hoffman, Pollock, Gottlieb), Color Field movement (Noland, Louis, Olitiski and Dzubas) and Post-Painterly Abstraction (Bannard, Poons) (amongst others in each area)? Well, these were all painters who art critic Clement Greenberg in the 1950's and later championed as being integral to the new movement of painting in New York City. They were his friends and as such he was able to amass a collection of art from them. The art filled his home (Spaced Out Orbit hung behind Greenberg's desk chair for sometime) and storage areas. So much so that when he died in 1994, his widow Janice Van Horne took nearly all of what Greenberg had collected and sold it en masse so that 159 works of art could be acquired by the Portland Art Museum in 2000. PAM's collection went from 0 to warp speed in this area of art overnight. Although some parts of the collection are scattered throughout the CMCA (Center for Modern and Contemporary Art), e.g. Horacio Torres nude study is on the third floor, most of the collection that is exhibited is on the second floor.

Helen Frankenthaler's Spaced Out Orbit hangs next to Jules Olitski's The Prince Patusky (a story for another time). On the adjoining wall are Kenneth Noland's No. 1, and Friedel Dzubas' Found. Dzubas and Frankenthaler were sharing a studio on West 23rd in 1952. The night Frankenthaler officially finished Mountains and Sea, Dzubas called Clement Greenberg to announce that he needed to get right over because something odd and beautiful had emerged. Later, Greenberg who was Frankenthaler's lover at this point decided to invite two friends to Frankenthaler's studio -- Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. Both of these men were bowled over by what they saw. The three Noland, Louis, and Dzubas along with Olitski quickly adapted the pour/stain technique to their painting style. Frankenthaler was an integral part of the development of Color Field Painting.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit descended from Mountains and Sea

2009-11-16T15:35:00.000-08:00

Earlier in the week, I mentioned that Spaced Out Orbit is an example of the staining technique called "soak-stain" Helen Frankenthaler had developed in 1952 and first used on the painting Mountains and Sea. Frankenthaler had seen Jackson Pollock with his canvases on the floor and dripping and pouring his beautiful fractals. What she did was to place a giant canvas on the floor, seven by 10 feet, dilute her oils with a mixture that included turpentine and proceed to pour the paint onto unprimed canvas. What happened was that the paint seeped into the canvas becoming an integral part of it. She didn't just leave the paint there though -- working the paint with brushes and blotters. Some have said the overall effect of this soak stain was that of a watercolor with the personality of an oil. Frankenthaler moved on from using thinned oils though. She had noticed that the thinned oils left a faint oily stain around each color area. In 1962 she began to use thinned acrylics to create her soak-stain paintings. Thinned with water, the paint left no halo effect, the colors seemed brighter and more intense. During this time she also began to leave some of the areas of her canvas blank to "let it breathe". Spaced Out Orbit is one of Frankenthaler's acrylics. Painted in 1973, it is quite small at 42" x 72" compared to the size of Mountains and Sea.

Doing a search for videos on Helen Frankenthaler will net you some compilations of her life and work as the one I posted on Friday (linked here). You'll also find these two videos of how to do the soak-stain method with multiple references to our woman Helen Frankenthaler.
Stain Painting Part I from Portland State University

Stain Painting Part 2 from Portland State University

Like a Ship at Sea, The Mirage of an Arabian City

2009-11-15T16:27:00.000-08:00

There is something so wonderfully feminine, loose and liquid about Frankenthaler's work. It is like air and water and dripping cracked eggs. Her paintings are boundary-less, there are no hard edges, just endings to colors that become other colors. The pink of Spaced Out Orbit has a quality so vast, as if it is a city floating out in front of me, far away. Or a ship on the sea. Wherever it is, it carries it's own atmosphere. What I love about Spaces Out Orbit is that Frankenthaler knew when to stop. It is a skill to not go too far, and for her to have left so much empty space and to have known the delicate balance of completion, shows her intuitive wisdom. She often covered her canvases head to toe, take a look.
Here is "Seeing the Moon on a Hot Summer Day" done in 1987. Beautiful, amazing, but full. Or check out the one below, "May 26th Backwards" done in 1961. That's my birthday.

From the same website where I pulled these images, I found these Frankenthaler quotes.

"I had the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I had the landscape in my mind and shoulder and wrist."

"Every canvas is a journey all its own."

It is almost like birth, her paintings. It is almost like she is giving life to something that was already there, and she knows it.

Space Cloud, Mirah's Serenade

2009-11-14T15:32:00.000-08:00

Today I will be writing about the local singer and songwriter, Mirah. Watch this clip of her with the Portland Cello Project, from January of this year:

Mirah, Portland Cello Project & Flash Choir - Generosity from Jon Manning on Vimeo.

Frankenthaler's Spaced Out Orbit became the inspiration to a Mirah song in September at the museum's event Shine A Light. The Museum invited the PSU Social Practice Program to have an event inviting a new and young crowd to the museum for one late night. Each student was given a stipend for an art project, one student invited local musicians to "serenade" particular works of art. Mirah chose Helen Frankenthaler's Spaced Out Orbit. I cannot help but hum the ethereal acoustic minor chord lyrics in my mind when I see the piece. Mirah stood barefoot with her guitar which dwarfed her, in front of the crowd. She is a tiny thing, Spaced out Orbit floated behind her. It was the final event of the evening, at just before midnight. The words I remember her repeating go "on a space cloud with you" and the song seemed, to me, to be about a passionate relationship that had no grounding.
The sweet and melancholy chord slides up the scale as it passes over the word "space" and lands smoothly on the word cloud.
Here is what Mirah had to say in an interview with Popcorn Youth a few years ago:
"But the really nice thing about playing solo is the way that I’m able to concentrate on stage. I can be easily distracted by other people. Like, ‘How are they doing? Are they okay?’ (Laughs) So I have these issues and I try to work on them in my life. Solo shows are focused and personal time for me."
It makes sense that Mirah, as an artist, would take the inspiration of Frankenthaler for her "focused and personal artistic moment" at the museum event. The relationship she sang about put the two women together, for me. The song she wrote is not one I ever expect to hear again, but it lives inside that painting now.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit

2009-11-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Here it is Week 46 of 52 Pieces. That leaves six more weeks. For all of you who read this regularly you'll notice that I seldom write too very much about myself. Spaced Out Orbit combined with Orphee last night has put a different slant on my perspective. Helen Frankenthaler is our person of the week. She is an outstanding artist who was the one who put the color field painters on the map. Not to say that they would have never gotten there but, hey, they were all men – Kenneth Noland, Jules Ulitski (my favorite), Jackson Pollock and the whole raft of others who floated into the genre. Without her in 1952, thinning out her paint mixture and flowing it onto her unprimed canvas to create Mountains and Sea, all of those men would have continued on as Abstract Expressionists for who knows how many years.

There are any number of biographies of Helen Frankenthaler out there that will tell you that and that she and Clement Greenberg were lovers before she married Robert Motherwell, that she was the daughter of a prominent New York judge, that she was well educated and that she held her own in the 50's 60's and on into the 21st century. Helen Frankenthaler celebrated her 80th birthday in 2008 on December 12. She has created works of art in painting and printmaking for more than sixty years. Well, I've written almost two paragraphs and realize that I've only talked about Helen Frankenthaler and nothing about what I was originally planning on writing. Frankenthaler is that enthralling. It's been a tough day, I'll leave that soap opera for another time. I will say that instead of reading all of the bios on Frankenthaler, take a few minutes and view this very well put together video that was made in honor of her 80th birthday. I had no idea before seeing this that she was such a hottie. There is no wonder that she and the critic Clement Greenberg were lovers for six years and that Robert Motherwell later married her. If I I had been a man in the 1950's, I would have wanted to have dated her, married her, been the father of her children. Most of all I would have wanted to have worked near her as did artists like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. Here is to Helen Frankenthaler as we approach her 81st birthday, not one I'll forget since she and I share birthdays.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit

2009-11-12T18:05:00.000-08:00

Helen Frankenthaler painted Spaced Out Orbit in 1973. The Portland Art Museum acquired this painting as well as 150 other works of art from Clement Greenberg's estate in early 2000. There's much to write about Frankenthaler, Greenberg and the Portland Art Museum's aquisition during the next week. For now just take in the lushness of that pink swath floating across this immense canvas.

Or emerging from another world. Having just returned from the 12 November performance of Glass' Orphee here in Portland, I'm thinking Underworld, other world. And Spaced Out Orbit seems to be coming at me from somewhere else. Emerging through the mirror and now with me to join this world for some period of time.

Deborah Butterfield - winter, summer, rain and sun

2009-11-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

Martin Friedman, Director Emeritus of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, discusses in the video linked below the issues of selecting sculpture to be shown outside. The core of these decisions is based on whether the sculpture can withstand the elements of the seasons -- winter, summer, rain, sun. I might add for Minneapolis -- snow, not inches but feet. In any case, the Walker Art Center is home to Woodrow, the first bronze sculpture Deborah Butterfield had made. Prior to that her work had been in metal, sticks, mud, not necessarily suited for the outdoors whether in Minneapolis or Portland. Do a Google search for Deborah Butterfield, click on images instead of web and you'll see any number of her pieces. Or go to Flickr and do a search and the same will happen. Butterfield is everywhere. If you should want to visit, she has homes in Montana and Hawaii which she shares with John Buck, another sculptor of note. Fifty Two Pieces presented a week of John Buck earlier this year. That week is available by clicking here.

Deborah Butterfield ~ Dance Horse and relative at Purdue

2009-11-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. We look similar. And we're related. Deborah Butterfield, the sculptor who created us, makes horses. Some say she has a horse obsession. If you're looking for us, you find us everywhere. A few of us have been able to stay home in Montana. Others of us have have been let loose so to speak and now live elsewhere. Some of us are still inside like I used to be when I first came to the Portland Art Museum. Others of us now live outside like my still unnamed relative (seen in the image above) who just arrived last month at Purdue University in Indiana. Yikes, it's cold there and she is out in front of the Yue-Kong Pao Hall, which opened in 2005. That's the home to the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts.

Much as I do, this horse looks like she's made of wood. I really like the whole positive, negative space thing people talk about – how you can see me for all of what I am and could be in your eyes, but not at the same time. Then look close and you can see the texture and color of wood. Some people actually touch me, expecting that I'll feel softer than the bronze I'm made of, more like the driftwood they "see" with their eyes. How did Butterfield do this? From a collection of wooden sticks, logs and branches, she creates my being. Then there's a lot more work that is best described in this article written about my Purdue relative...

"Photographs of the sculpture were taken before it was carefully disassembled. The individual pieces were then covered with a ceramic mold material that was fired in a kiln, burning away the wood but leaving an impression in the ceramic. After cleaning, the molds were used to cast replicas of the original wood in bronze, and then the molds were destroyed when the bronze was removed to ensure the sculpture is unique. After reassembly of the various parts, the bronze was then treated with a chemical solution that formed a patina that closely emulates the character of the original wood. In most cases, the patina and texture are so effective that viewers believe they are actually viewing a wooden sculpture."

In any case, I may or may not weigh more than the Purdue horse, who everyone says weighs 1,700 pounds. If only more of you would bring me apples and carrots, I know I'd best her on the scales.

Garcia Lorca

2009-11-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

It is fitting that I would find in my search for horses in literature such a wonderful poem by Garcia Lorca. I have been studying the Spanish Civil War, and in so doing I have been reading the biography of Martha Gelhorn, one of America's most important journalists of the 20th century. Gelhorn covered war all her life, beginning with and driven by the Spanish Civil War. Lorca lost his life right at the beginning of that war. His death fueled that fire. I love this poem, I've only read it twice, but I love it. I don't know yet why or what it means. I need to take time to read it again and again.

Romance Sonambulo

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

--My friend, I want to trade
my horse for her house,
my saddle for her mirror,
my knife for her blanket.
My friend, I come bleeding
from the gates of Cabra.
--If it were possible, my boy,
I'd help you fix that trade.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
--My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed.
Of iron, if that's possible,
with blankets of fine chambray.
Don't you see the wound I have
from my chest up to my throat?
--Your white shirt has grown
thirsty dark brown roses.
Your blood oozes and flees
around the corners of your sash.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
--Let me climb up, at least,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.
Railings of the moon
through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood.
Leaving a trail of teardrops.
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green,
green wind, green branches.
The two friends climbed up.
The stiff wind left
in their mouths, a strange taste
of bile, of mint, and of basil
My friend, where is she--tell me--
where is your bitter girl?
How many times she waited for you!
How many times would she wait for you,
cool face, black hair,
on this green balcony!
Over the mouth of the cistern
the gypsy girl was swinging,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
An icicle of moon
holds her up above the water.
The night became intimate
like a little plaza.
Drunken "Guardias Civiles"
were pounding on the door.
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea.
And the horse on the mountain.

-- Federico Garcia Lorca

Deborah Butterfield ~ Dance Horse and the Kentucky Derby

2009-11-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

Deborah Butterfield is known worldwide for her horses, better known than Michael Brophy whose painting hung behind Dance Horse back in 1999. Perhaps it's having horses be the core of her ouvere. In any case, her sculptures, and they are of horses, are in the collections of almost all of the major museums in the country. How did this fascination start? Many biographies cite that she was born in San Diego, California, on the day of the 75th running of the Kentucky Derby and that Butterfield herself credits this event as determining her career as a modernist sculptor of horses.

Listening to her talk about the core of her work, she tells us of how we changed the horse and the horse changed us. These videos, recorded at a presentation to docents at the Nevada Art Museum in November 2007, are short and will take just a few minutes to view. Listening to Butterfield talk about her work is most compelling.

Butterfield at the Airport

2009-11-07T13:56:00.000-08:00

If you ever get a deja vu feeling when you see the horse in the sculpture court it could be that you are remembering, faintly, the ones you saw near the airport. In 1995 the Portland International Airport commissioned some of Butterfield's horses to graze the drive as one leaves the airport. They have names. These two are Lyon and Princess Pine.
Made to look like wood, the wood pieces are each cast into molds, she burns out the stick and pours in molten bronze. She has to assemble them in wood first and take numerous photographs so when she has all the bronze pieces she will know how they go back together. Having made horses in wood that deteriorated over time she decided she needed a permanent fix to her wooden horses, and as creatives do, she made it happen.
My latest horse story is something I picked up from watching Philip Glass speak at the museum last week. He was talking about his work setting Jean Cocteau's film Beauty and the Beast to opera. Glass explained how Cocteau's hidden message of magic and power was a metaphor for the life of the artist, or for anyone whether she calls herself an artist or not.
The Beast tells Beauty that she can have all his magic powers, the horse, the mirror, the rose, the key and the glove.
As Glass pondered the meaning of the five powers he quickly concluded that Cocteau's horse stood for strength and determination. The rose stood for the goal, which is beauty. The mirror stood for the path that the artist, or person, must take. The key is the technique that the artist employs. But he couldn't figure out what Cocteau meant by the glove. He showed the audience the scene in the film where the beast removes the glove and gives it to Beauty.
It is a velvet and gold threaded bejeweled thing. Glass says it was when he realized the detail in the glove that the fifth magic power made sense. The glove stands for nobility and pride, it means the artist must know she is noble and worthy of the path and the goal and that she has the right technique to ride the horse of strength and determination.
Philip Glass and Jean Cocteau are in good company with Deborah Butterfield and her noble horses.

Deborah Butterfield ~ Dance Horse, Inside

2009-11-06T19:32:00.001-08:00

Ten years ago, Dance Horse lived inside. Here is a shot of Deborah Butterfield's sculpture on the 4th Floor of the Hoffman Wing at the Portland Art Museum in 1999. Standing as regal as it does out in the Sculpture Garden today, it somehow has a different overall aura. I feel less like offering it an apple or a carrot. Why is that?

Take a tour through Flickr.com using the tags Portland, art, and museum. You'll see any number of photos. Now go to the museum's official website and read the rules. I have been fascinated by what people have taken photos of and then chosen to upload on Flickr. All of that takes intention. And intention defines a major portion of modern art.

Deborah Butterfield ~ Dance Horse

2009-11-05T08:20:00.001-08:00

When you're walking by the Portland Art Museum, you're able to see a portion of the collection without even stepping through the doors, let alone paying admission. This week's selection here at Fifty Two Pieces is one of the many sculptures in the outdoor Sculpture Garden. Rain or shine, day or night, Deborah Butterfield's Dance Horse stands as if looking for a carrot, apple or maybe some alfalfa. Butterfield is known for her horse sculptures. This week well be looking more closely at Dance Horse as well as some of the others that she has created over the years and released into the wild.

Raphael ~ La Velata

2009-11-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I've been here in Portland since October 24 and I'll be here for another two months. Each day except Sunday and Monday is the same for me. Visitors start to visit at 10 am except Sunday when it's at noon.Security seems to always be here. Monday the museum is closed so I'm pretty much by myself except for that ever present Security. I'm really beginning to like this touring away from home. Home for me is the Palatine Gallery at the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy. Back there sometimes people hardly even stop to see me, the place is so large. They've seen so many other paintings; they have an agenda; they're hungry; they're tired. Here in Portland, they've made a special point to come and see me. They stand close, not as close as Raphael did, but close. It's good to look into their eyes and see my reflection. I hear them talk about how I look. They stay for a long time, ten or 15 minutes just looking. That's a good feeling.

I'm dressed in creamy silk, I'm like a portrait in beige and white. I wanted to wear more red but Raphael said no. When you come to see me you'll see how he painted my veil and the background, they're so similar in color but not. And then look at the gold trim on the sleeves. And those sleeves – I loved how the material was so very full. He said that with all of those creams against my skin tones I would attract more attention. People would stay longer to look at the way the shadows change, how the values of the colors shift. Look at how he painted the folds of the sleeves. I'm positive he put those three bows around my neckline so your eyes would be certain to take in all of my neck around the back even. He also insisted that strand of hair on my forehead be not quite in place. I wanted to put it back but he said no. "This is how I remember you. Sitting there across the room from me with that all knowing gaze. Men will look at you and see you as a sensual woman. Women will look at you and see you as a sensual woman. Both will see you as a strong person, someone to reckon with." That's what I remember him saying. Oh and other things but they were just between him and me.

I'm glad he waited to paint me in 1516. His style of painting seemed so much more realistic than what he had done five and ten years before. He used a technique called sfumato that Leonardo had developed. (Here's a definition from About.Com Sfumato: A word, from the Latin (via Italian) fumare ("to smoke"), used to denote a painting technique. Sfumato means that there are no harsh outlines (as in a coloring book) present; areas blend into one another through miniscule brushstrokes, which makes for a rather hazy, albeit more realistic, depiction of light and color.) My skin does look quite marvelous especially compared to that of Maddalena Doni - take a look at her portrait on the left. Raphael painted her back in 1506. I also prefer how he did my necklace and hair ornament. There's a nice contrast with my skin but they're not gaudy or ostentatious. Speaking of flash, look at her left hand – does she have enough rings on? Raphael hid my left hand in my portrait. In La Fornarina, the ring is shown, albeit small and discreet. That pleased me.

You'll really get to know me when you come to the gallery. Be patient and maybe you'll have some time with just me alone (the security officers are very discreet). We'll have that moment where we can exchange glances. And then you'll want to see me again and again. You'll have that chance until January 3 and then I go to Reno, Nevada for a few months and then off to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After that you'll have to visit me in Florence, Italy. I hope you do come while I'm here though.

Raphael- Hot Babe Thanks to his Mother

2009-11-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons Raphael was so cheerful and love clearly burst out of him, was because his parents loved him. His father did everything he could to encourage his son as an artist and when he took the boy away from his mother to be taught by professional painters it is written that she wept tenderly. It's not to say that he was a mollycoddler but he loved his parents and this allowed him to more freely express his love to the ladies. Which he did by painting them so erotically, by signing his name on their arm bands by painting their eyes as a reflection of his own gaze upon them. I look at La Velata and it is as if she is looking into me, she is inviting me to look into her. He was sexy and talented and he didn't even have to have a dark hidden and horrible childhood to escape. I'm still more attracted to Carravaggio- but that could have somethign to do with the person from whom I took that course.

Raphael ~ La Fornarina, School of Athens

2009-11-02T04:01:00.000-08:00

Picasso's image of Raphael and La Fornarina (Margherita Luti being the star of both La Fornarina and this week's La Velata) that I posted on Saturday has lingered in my memory. And it wasn't the shoes although I do have a shoe fetish. It was seeing Michelangelo peeking out from under the bed. What made Picasso put the Great One's image in his etching? We could conjecture on that all day. I do remember from my reading about these two greats, Raphael and Michelangelo, that Michelangelo disliked and distrusted Raphael. He saw a man, eight years younger than he, take on Rome and win over the favor of the Pope. There he, the great Michelangelo, was on his back in the dark and dank Sistine Chapel doing frescos when he'd rather be creating sculpture. Raphael, Mr. Suave and Debonair on the other hand, was over painting the Stanze, warm and able to mingle. And he obviously was using his creations ... Raphael hadn't always painted in this new and wonderful way that so enchanted the Pope – the audacity of this newcomer.

Of course, Michelangelo didn't like or trust many people. High on the list of people he didn't like was not only Raphael but also Leonardo. While Michelangelo was busy dealing with his paranoid thoughts, Raphael continued with his affable lifestyle and even paid Michelangelo homage by painting him into his School of Athens. That fellow on the steps, the one with the beard and holding his head in his hand, was not in the original drawing but was added after Raphael was allowed to see Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel prior to its completion. Whatever else you can say about Raphael, he was definitely a social creature. So social that I'm convinced if there had been a Facebook and computers when he lived, he would have had his iPhone with him at all times and would have been using the Facebook application. At least two other people agree with me.

This first link is to a selection of Raphael's friends on Facebook. It's the least elaborate of the two I'm linking to on this post. I'm thinking this was Raphael's first attempt at Facebook. The second one up is to the Notes section of a Raphael Facebook page where Raphael is very forthcoming. In this case, the creator has put together four translations of a reputable biography of Raphael -- in Arabic, Italian, French and English (English is at the very bottom). Raphael, I'm certain, is looking down with approval. He's probably politicking to have Facebook added to the applications available in Heaven. We'll all have to wait and see.

Most Beautiful Raphael

2009-11-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

My personal favorite of all Raphael's beauties is the Sistine Madonna. The Virgin in this case is both confident and hesitant, it is biological- she's not the strongest but she's the most beautiful.
Christ, who often looks so strange in Renaissance painting, looks like a real child for a change. The way she clutches him as her veils fly behind her and she walks on clouds, you can tell she's not looking forward to what is to come.

Raphael ~ Margherita as La Fornarina obsessed by Raphael, Ingres and Picasso

2009-10-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Not only is Margherita Luti thought to be the sitter for Raphael's La Velata (currently on view here at the Portland Art Museum), history has it that she also is the woman in La Fornarina. No longer as demure, Margherita is mostly naked. She has the same pearl bauble on the silk turban on her head as she does in La Velata. But, the other jewelry is quite telling, a tiny ring on the first knuckle of the most important finger of her left hand and a blue armband that proclaims the artist's name Raphael of Urbino in big gold letters. As Amy said yesterday, "ah love". The up and coming Raphael would have hurt his standing with the monied Rome and Florentine aristocracy if he had married this mere daughter of a baker from Siena. However, that didn't keep him from having her around him almost constantly. She is purportedly not only the object of beauty in La Velata and La Fornarina but also the model he used for many of the women in his other paintings. What have others made of this painting and Raphael's relationship with Margherita?Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1814 decided to let us all know his opinion of Raphael and La Fornarina. That armband with the gravure of Raphael's name meant to Ingres that our man Raphael and Margherita were an item. In his Raphael and La Fornarina, Margherita sits on Raphael's lap. They had been embracing, but now she stares out at us while he looks back at his composition, paintbrush in hand ready to put on the wet red paint at the end of the bristles. Ingres painting helped keep this romance alive another century until Picasso picked up the meme when he did his 347 series. At the age of 87, Picasso did 347 etchings during a six month period. That's an incredible output for anyone let alone someone nearing ninety years of age. And since Picasso had always been known for his obsession with sex it's not surprising then to learn that each and everyone of these etchings is sexual in nature. And 25 of them are of our man Raphael and La Fornarina. Some include noted members of history such as the Pope and Michelangelo. In the one shown below Michelangelo is peeking out from under the bed. For those who want to see more of Picasso's 347 series, click here.
You have to love those shoes. Sex and shoes, the two s's in life.

The Story

2009-10-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Oh how we love the story. The characters are interchangable, one article written about Margherita and Raphael compare them to George Clooney secretly marrying his house keeper. Characters change, but it's the story that matters.
I was listening to a thesis on C.D. about Margaret Atwood's short story, Happy Endings. In it, she takes two people- John and Mary- and hypothesizes six story lines in what is called Meta-literature; a post modern writing style of fiction that brings the reader into the conversation by actually asking you to listen, or telling you what you are thinking.
Atwood takes this couple, John and Mary, and rewrites their storyline six times. Each time she is explaining both the creation of story and the creation of life. Her writing is like thinking in that she is contemplating plot, and how it is written, and how many plotlines there can be to any one story, as if she is wondering about it herself.
In story line A- the one she calls The Happy Ending- the couple falls in love, gets married, have challenging and fulfilling careers, fun vacations, challenging and fulfilling hobbies, lovely children, they grow old and eventually die.
The thesis writer points out that even her language- challenging and fulfilling- are words that parody the things they mean. She follows this story line with five others, the one where John uses Mary for sex, Mary cheats on John for a younger man with a motorcycle, John and Mary have economically different backgrounds and face a Marxist break down...etc. Atwood concludes that all stories are easy to begin, that the true story connoisure is the one who makes the middle the most interesting, and that they all end the same. she writes:
John and Mary Die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.
Raphael and Margherita have the story line we love the best. The one that preserves them forever. He was in the height of his career and she went off to a convent to die of a broken heart. They don't grow old together, they don't have children, and we still don't know if they ever had that rumored clandestine marriage ceremony. He was supposed to be wed to the niece of a Cardinal to increase his stature, but he never did. In the end they die, but in life they loved. Part of that love was what kept them apart- Raphael loved a simple peasant and Margherite loved a star artist, neither would ever have the life of the other even if they took each other for lovers.
We have the story. And everyone knows the best story illustrates itself in language, words make pictures we can see, pictures that breathe. Raphael, possibly more than any other artist the world has ever seen, was able to do that in painting. La Velata breathes, she tells us a story without whispering a single word. And she is here, now, for a little while.

Raphael - La Donna Velata, Margherita Luti

2009-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen this painting is here in Portland. You can pay $5.00 over and above regular museum entrance costs, whatever that is for you, and see this amazing piece of priceless Renaissance art (truth in blogging Mr. Row from the Oregonian, take note). The Portland Art Museum is hosting this masterpiece by Raphael until January 3. At that point you can travel to Reno, Nevada and then after that to Wisconsin to see her. She will leave the United States in June of 2010. The price of the airfare to see this masterpiece escalates substantially after that. Summer fares to Florence, Italy from Portland - $800 at the least, at the back of the plane. Now add in meals and lodging and then the euros begin to slide through your fingers like sand on the beach.

Stand in the southern most gallery of the Portland Art Museum and you will see her breathe. Much as she probably did for Raphael. Stories vary but this one from Wisconsin catches the heat of the moment...

Raphael’s personal life was complex. He never married but was reputed to have had many relationships. In 1514 he became engaged to Maria Bibbiena, the niece of an influential Cardinal and Raphael’s friend. The marriage never took place, and she died in 1520. Raphael lived a grand lifestyle in Rome and attained some status at court. It is believed that he died on his 37th birthday in 1520. He left a significant portion of his estate to Margherita Luti—La Donna Velata—and he was buried in the Pantheon.

Look at her eyes and her mouth, I think of her saying to Raphael as she exhales, you will pay for this later.

Update - 10 November 2009:
Barry Johnson wrote a compelling article on La Donna Velata. I think of it as what should have been written in the Oregonian when this exquisite painting first arrived here in Portland. Click here to read Mr. Johnson's Portland Arts Watch article.

Sue Coe ~ Portraits

2009-10-28T06:23:00.001-07:00

Who are these women? They are Texas prisoners who are HIV positive and are HIV peer educators in their prison unit. As part of a project by Dr. Eric Avery, Sue Coe visited the University of Texas Medical Branch in 2006 and during interviews created these portraits as well as others that illustrated parts of their lives that increased the likelihood of their becoming HIV positive. Made with Conte crayon the colors in the portraits are similar to what the women used for make-up. Actual cosmetics were forbidden so these women used the dyes from candies such as M&M's to create the effects of shadow, liner and mascara. Links to read more about this project are here and here.

In 1994, Coe and Avery had worked together on another project. At his request she went to the Infectious Disease Ward at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She sketched patients with AIDS. This was in the height of the AIDS pandemic. All of the patients she sketched died. To view these portraits, visit this link.

Sue Coe ~ Animal Therapists

2009-10-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Continuing with yesterday's theme of a different view of Sue Coe, here is an image of a piece with simple compassion. The bond between animal and human literally jumps off the page.

Sue Coe ~ A Different View

2009-10-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

Do a Google search for Sue Coe and you'll find her very political images. She is unrelenting. Yet there are a few images that show a softer Coe, ones that reflect the humanity and humor you'll find if you see her in person. One of those images is from a series that she made during the time she spent with her mother in England during the eleven days prior to her mother's death. Coe and her sister Mandy Coe stayed with their mother helping her to fulfill her desire to die at home.

This and others from that were exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. From their website... "Coe's poignant drawings focus on her mother’s hands and head, perhaps a person’s most expressive features. A social and political activist, Coe’s portrayal of her mother’s suffering relates to her larger body of work in which she often gives voice to the weak and disenfranchised in society. "

Sue Coe ~ Visited Portland in 2007

2009-10-25T06:07:00.000-07:00

PORT - Portland art + news + reviews used this image to announce Sue Coe's lecture at PNCA back in 2007. PNCA had mounted an exhibit of her work at its Feldman Gallery and Project Space. This and a number of other pieces in that show dealt with ships of animals that are transported from Australia to the Middle East. They're packed tightly into old freighters without food or water with voyages lasting weeks. Ultimately the ones who survive are slaughtered. Then there are the ones who die when the ship they're on catches fire. The crew abandons the ship, it sinks and the thousands of sheep drown. Another image from that exhibit shows ships passing in the night.

What motivates Sue Coe to create art that is a graphic witness to the treatment of animals, apartheid (she tackled the "suicide" of imprisoned blacks in South Africa), and treatment of prisoners (a series on women in Texas prisons)? It probably comes from her childhood living near bombed out buildings from WW II in England. From a young age she worked in factories and saw her future as limited by both poverty, class and being a woman. She also lived a block away from a slaughterhouse and grew up hearing the screams of the animals that went in alive but came out as meals. She realized once she had gotten herself into art school that she could bear witness to the inequities of life through her work. In 1972, Coe made a decision that would allow her to more readily put her work out to the world. She moved from England with its stricture of class to New York. Immediately hired by the New York Times to create illustrations of the news, she soon found her work in other publications such as the New Yorker and Time magazines. The Los Angeles Times published an interview with her (linked here) where you can read about her working in a Mars candy factory, growing up in England and her mounting activism after entering art college.

Sue Coe's lecture here in Portland ended with her offering the print shown below for sale. As a fund raiser for Farm Sanctuary, she sold the print for twenty dollars cash. That is typical of Coe, raising money for causes that are important to her and providing art to those who want it but might not otherwise be able to afford it.

Sue Coe, Not so Bad

2009-10-24T10:38:00.001-07:00

I read the article LaValle posted yesterday. Judith Brody makes some points that definitely re-routed my thinking about Coe's work. In the first place, she points out that all art is porpaganda, it is impossible to remove the artists' feeling of what is right or wrong from the work they create, how can one fault Coe for that? Propaganda is natural.
Secondly, regarding critics, it is comical that those people who use propaganda themselves can possibly criticize o thersfor doing the same, and if you read the criticism of Coe's work with that in mind it does sort of make it all seem like hogwash.
I think the biggest success of Coe's work is the title. She calls this piece Greed and it does capture the feeling of complete desolation and loss-but like an arrow that hits the wrong target, I don't think the images themselves describe greed, or that it is even fair to categorize these images and sk them to find reason when the cigarette could be a cell phone, the gun a car, the blood could be oil.
I think the truth, which is that the darkness inside that causes greed, is not really formed by the instruments before us in the image, but by our deeply ingrained desire to live and fear of death. A greed for life is the only thing that can cause the darkness seen in Coe's image.
The title might make one assume that consumerism, guns, drugs, fast food- these are agents of destruction and cause the outcome seen in the image. I think these things come later, and are the effect of greed. The greed as the hunger to control the outcome of our lives and the ones we love causes suffering you can feel in the painting by Coe, but she has used images to get us there which I dont think are really responsible. Or at least not more responsible than everyday things like ipods and lattes. Why alcohol and not coffee?
If we've turned to these things, out of bleak and hollow eyes because we can no longer stand to live our lonely lives, we cannot turn our garbage cans upside down and say "this is because of you- empty hamburger wrapper, gun powder, bloody gloves, this is because of you- that I look this way!"
I think the real problem is the immediate association one makes when encountering a work of art like Greed, that by association to particular objects you have figured out the work, and that it is really too disgusting to stay with. And though you don't like it, there is the critical next step, to form an idea as to why you don't like it. This may be too much to ask, and for that reason I am not completely sure her use of imagery is successful, but maybe it's just not always successful, and in that way it truly resonates with life.
Like greed itself, Greed the painting is demanding, with no payback. It shares no heart and sheds no light, but if you stare it down you can see the comical.

Sue Coe ~ Greed and Politics

2009-10-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Sue Coe is one of the most politically oriented living artist. Her work addresses issues such as animal rights, war, consumption, waste head-on. Greed hangs next to one of Robert Colescott's paintings, Knowledge of the Past is the Key to the Future. Colescott is another artist who presents us with political and racial themes. Read reviews of Colescott and you'll find references to humor. Sue Coe shows us no humor and that's what makes her art difficult to view at times. Judith Brody in "Sue Coe and the Press: Speaking Out" starts her review with this:

Exploring with Sue Coe is no gentle stroll through cloistered sanctuaries of art. She makes uncompromising demands. She demands to speak freely. She demands viewers go eye-to-eye with the equivalent of road kill. She demands unflinching openness in full view of painful contradictions. Essentially, Coe demands that we re-examine our assumptions. When reading her books or looking at her images, the natural reaction is to turn away, to shut out horrific truths. One cannot meet her work without encountering resistance. This is inevitable, because this is her intent.

I recommend Brody's article. She not only reviews Coe but also the reviewers who have reviewed Coe - a review of the review that was.

While working on this post, I came across this video. While not directly related to Sue Coe or Greed, it is one of the best short films I've seen in a while. Considering the events in Amy's life and mine this week, I've decided to post it. Watch it and you'll have a look at James Joyce and Samuel Beckett at the Pitch n' Putt.

Greed ~ Sue Coe

2009-10-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

How does one begin to describe this Sue Coe painting? These rifles, this blood, the bullet holes, the kneeling man, the splash of red, the animal, a big black cat.
A collage of beer cans, McDonalds trash, cigarettes and a hollow eyed figure looking out.
Greed by Sue Coe is a black hole of sickness, something I have never given my attention. Maybe this week, as in weeks past, I will learn to care for something that I currently detest.

The Week of Masks ~ That Was The Week That Was

2009-10-21T02:06:00.000-07:00

This week has been a week of firsts. It's the first week that we haven't followed a particular artist throughout the week. It's the first week that we've looked at masks. And it's the first week to have a post showing all of the images of the week. Below are three tables I created after finding the HTML coding instructions for making tables with images on Blogspot.

Amy started the week with two images of Eagle Woman. The second Eagle Woman mask is the one in the Portland Art Museum. You can catch her at the museum or on Flickr with the tags of mask and Portland Art Museum.

Next up was Phillip John Charette's Raku Amikuk mask that you can find in the Artic area of the museum. That mask was followed by a post with an image of Charette holding a Nepcetat mask from the collection. I couldn't help myself that day I had to include the skateboard challenge mask in the post with Nepcetat.

The week ended with the Wolf Forehead Mask and an Inuit mask of a seal. Along the way there were a few videos that included Native American flute music. As they say, "That was the week that was."

Mask - Inuit

2009-10-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

Look closely at this mask and you'll see features of both a seal and a bird. It's thought that perhaps the carver wanted to portray a spirit that would belong to both the ocean and the air. The tribes from Western Alaska created spectacular carved masks. They were intended to represent the spirits of nature. Those spirits control the harsh elements of the world allowing man to survive only with their favor. This mask was used by hunters to honor a seal-like spirit in the hopes of guaranteeing a steady supply of game for food. Quite a bit of the 18 x 20 inches of this mask is made up of feathers. However, it still looks like it would be heavy on the head.

Mask - Wolf Forehead

2009-10-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

Wolf Forehead Mask is the description of this mask. Yikes, look at that tongue. Hungry would be how I would describe this creature and a formidable presence. The red in this mask fascinates me. From that tongue move up to the red in the nostrils, the red around the ears, inside the ears and on the cheeks. Red is a powerful color. Whoever would wear this mask would be a major force. Dated around 1880 from the Northwest Coast, it's made of wood, hair, copper, opercula shells, cloth, and pigment. At 15 inches by eight and eight it would be hefty enough to be wearing at any type of ceremony for any length of time.

Reading about the wolf in the Northwest Coast culture, I found this...

People respect the wolf for its strength, agility, intelligence and capacity for
devotion. The wolf's vocal range and communicative powers are impressive,
and Northwest Coast peoples traditionally believe in the potency and magic
of speech and song. Wolf is sometimes an agent of transformation, and
is a popular figure in crest, story and shamanic art.

And here are any number of wolves set to flute music, enjoy...

Nepcetat and Skateboards ~ Phillip John Charette

2009-10-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted Phillip John Charette's Raku Amikuk mask, one of the Portland Art Museum's fine Native American masks. In searching for another mask for this week's Mask theme here at Fifty Two Pieces, I came across this image of Charette. He is holding an outstanding example of the most spiritually powerful of all Yup'ik masks, the Nepcetat. The advantage to this image is that you can tell that the mask is quite large because of the scale indicated by Charette and Bill Mercer to his right. Mercer used to be the Curator of Native American Art.

And since I'm running with Charette, I'll leave you with this mask that Charette created as a result of a challenge by some skateboarders in his neighborhood. The story goes something like this... one of the locals gave him a broken skateboard and challenged him by saying "I'll bet you can't make a mask out of this." Another skateboard and more parts arrived and this mask is the result.

Phillip John Charette ~ Raku Amikuk Mask

2009-10-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Phillip John Charette's Raku Amikuk mask is on permanent display in the Native American Arctic Room Collection of the Portland Art Museum. Charette says that the mask sculpture "teaches us to be aware of our surrounding and to tread lightly when we are in unfamiliar territory. This mask is good for anyone who does much travel in unfamiliar or dangerous territory."

At a size of six by five feet the mask is quite large. It's main body, ears, hands, and labrets are hand sculpted and carved. It has been Raku Fired with custom glazes made by artist. Charette also made the Dichroic glass beads that are located on the forehead. Those beads represent spirits that influence this being. There's a great deal going on in this mask. Take a look at the teeth, the outer feathers and labret bones. They are hand sculpted porcelain. The red oak frame is bent using a traditional method and attached to the mask with rawhide. Charette used horse hair fired porcelain to create the outer feathers and are meant to represent chaos in traditional spirtual beliefs. Instead of traditional Owl feathers Charette used dark turkey feathers to "represent spirits in the universe this being can see." The back of mask is painted with spiritual symbols.

Phillip John Charette's Native American name is "Aarnaquq", which in the Yup'ik language means "The One Who Is Dangerous".

In addition to masks, Charette also makes flutes. Here he is performing "Raven Finds the Meal".

The Real Eagle Woman

2009-10-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

Today I share with you the mask at the Portland Art Museum. Before the mask was behind a case someone once stole one of the little eagles. They simply took it off the braid and smuggled it out of the museum, maybe they even crossed a river with it. It showed up later and someone recognized it, the museum got it back, now she's behind glass. Sort of an ironic twist of events, that she lives so caged when she is all about being free.

Eagle Woman, and other Masks

2009-10-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

This is a week of masks, for fifty two pieces. I am showing Eagle Woman, not the exact mask at the Portland Art Museum, but a sister to that mask, almost like a mask for that mask. Because really, whatever mask one wears it says something so real about who is underneath it, that a mask should be portrayed as a mask that it is not.
Eagle Woman has a story. She was a beautiful maiden who flew away to live with Eagle, her true love, leaving her family behind. After years of living in the sky with Eagle she felt very lonely for the life she'd left. One day she couldn't take it any longer so she took her two babies and flew the coop. She got to a wide wide river, one her babies couldn't fly across. She decided to tie them into her hair and swim across, eventually finding her family on the other side.
Kids really dig this story, like most stories I know that are Native American it resonates to the soul, it weaves simple and complex human themes into an engaging metaphor.
Halloween is around the corner, I'm contemplating dress up themes. One idea is to be someone who dances because I have a goal to do more of that in the very near future. Maybe I can create a mask and weave a story about me into it, like Eagle Woman with her babies in her braids. I can play out the story of the person I've become, transforming for just one night.

Ruth Bernhard ~ Seeing Lifesavers in a Different Light

2009-10-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

What to photograph today? Some of us walk the streets. Others take photos of loved ones. Some of us are drawn to flowers. Ruth Bernhard was drawn to light early on. Armed with her first camera and with little money, she evidently bought a package of Lifesavers and some straws. This was back in 1930 when she was twenty-five years old.

Here in her own words are how her career started...

“I became a photographer by accident, after I came to the United States. When I arrived in 1927, I had no job, no profession, and no money. My father supported me while I learned English, but in 1929, he announced that it was time for me to have a job. An acquaintance by the name of Ralph Steiner, who worked for the magazine The Delineator, was looking for a darkroom assistant. That is where I learned to be a photographer. However, the job itself was very uninteresting. After six months I was fired. I used the ninety dollars I received as severance pay to purchase an 8 x 10 view camera, a tripod, and other darkroom equipment. With only pennies left, I purchased straws and Lifesavers at the dime store, which became the inspiration for my first two photographs”.

So there you have it. You just don't know where life will take you. From a package of Lifesavers, Ruth Bernhard lived a full life, all 101 years of it. To end the week of Ruth Bernhard here on Fifty Two Pieces, I'm reposting her Recipe for Life.

Bernhard, but not Bernhard

2009-10-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

I am trying to decide what to write today, about Ruth, and as I think and stare at the screen Kate Burns enters the office. She says "Not to be nosy, but this is a postcard and I can't help but read it...who is K-1 and K2?" Then she carefully drops the postcard from over the pony wall and it floats down to me. It is Heinz Hajek-Halke and it is the most beautiful image I have seen all day. It is from LaValle, and she writes Berlin is surreal. I look up at Kate. "K-1 and K-2 come from a Frank Ohara poem, and they mean keenest." Kate smiles and shows me her postcard "I got a sexy woman."
I know Ruth Bernhard would draw attention to this postcard, so it is the image of the day. Bernhard and Hajek-Halke were in an exhibition together called Nude Visions earlier this year in the Munchen Stadtmuseum.
Were you there K-2?

Ruth Bernhard ~ Nudes and Light

2009-10-12T04:25:00.000-07:00

Two days ago I was immersed in Ruth Bernhard and her capturing of light, quite phenomenal. In addition to Doorknob, the Portland Art Museum also holds in its collection, Nude in Box. The power of her work was still with me when I visited the Galleria dell'Accademia to see amongst other works of art Michelangelo's David. Lucky for me the Accademia has extended "Perfection in Form", an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's work. Mapplethorpe's photographs are hung in the same gallery as the David as well as other rooms. Bernhard and Mapplethorpe's light became entwined in my vision. As I walked among the nudes and still life images I kept wondering what Mapplethorpe and Bernhard would have said to each other if they had met. That same question applies to Mapplethorpe and Michelangelo. The spokeswoman for the Accademia had this to say about Mapplethorpe and Michelangelo, two controversial artists of their times.

For those of you interested in some of the photographs from the Accademia exhibit, click here. And last but not least, I'm including a few of Bernhard's nudes (on the left) next to a few of Mapplethorpes' nudes (on the right). I think Ruth and Robert would have had a good time talking about photography and life. ...

Bernhard, the Poet

2009-10-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

"I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help." Ruth Bernhard
There is no doubt her photographs of female nudes are sexy, but she never thought of them that way. Bernhard said all her work was about light and shapes, which are the poetry of an image. She said light was her paintbrush and paint. This photograph of Bernhard was taken by one of her last students, they were on their way from class back to Ruth's accomodations on Whidbey Island. The student asked Bernhard if she could take a photo, Ruth said "make it snappy." The student got out of the car and ran around to Ruth's side just in time to see her strike this pose.
"The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony."
Bernhard read light as if it were poetry and described the world as if she were seeing it through a viewfinder. Her reverence for nature reminds me of my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver's partner was the photographer Molly Malone Cook. They worked side by side for years intertwining their two disciplines. Oliver said of Cook's photographs that they taught the beginner poet "to see, with searching attention, and compassion." I feel the same as I read about Bernhard, I am taking a fresh look at photographs I've seen before.

Ruth Bernhard ~ Relationships

2009-10-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

Here in Firenze it's almost 9:00 am on 11 Octobre 2009. A quick check of the internet before we go out for our walk netted me the weather (mostly cloudy with a few sprinkles) and some Facebook time. Just for fun I typed in Ruth Bernhard and found that she has a page on Facebook.

Bernhard was a complex person and that complexity was exhibited in her relationships with people as well as her art. Lifting from the Facebook content is this summary of her life. Marriage early on with her women partners would have been impossible. Why she and Price Rice never married is open for discussion.

By the late-1920s, while living in Manhattan, Bernhard was heavily involved in the lesbian sub-culture of the artistic community, becoming friends with photographer Berenice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland. By 1934 Bernhard was almost exclusively photographing women in the nude.[citation needed] It would be this art form for which she would eventually become best known. ... By 1944 she had met and became involved with artist and designer Eveline (Evelyn) Phimister. The two moved in together, and remained together for the next ten years. They first moved to Carmel, California, where Bernhard worked with Group f/64. Soon, finding Carmel a difficult place in which to earn a living, they moved to Hollywood where she fashioned a career as a commercial photographer. In 1953, they moved to San Francisco.

Ruth Bernhard was full of life and continued to have relationships until her death in 2006. These included Price Rice, an African-American Air Force colonel 10 years her junior, whom she had met when he took one of her classes in the seventies. Price accompanied Bernhard while she taught, lectured and traveled. Bernhard had stopped producing new work because of impaired concentration due to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty household heater. When Price died in 1999, she began a relationship with the woman photographer Chris Mende. They were together until Bernhard’s death in 2006.

Look carefully at Bernhard's work and you can see the interweaving of those relationships in the fabric of her art. I'm out the door now to catch the light here in Firenze. Ciao.