The Top Ten

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...

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.

Robert Colescott ~ Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder and Carrie Mae Weems

Recently I watched a group stand in front of Robert Colescott's Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder. It's huge, probably five by six - perhaps the height of the woman we're all beholding. Who is she? One said a model undressing for the artist. Another commented that's usually something that takes place before the painting session starts. Others took a look at her clothing – the garter belt and stockings, the bare buttocks. And then another person said. What if she's really putting her clothes back on? What is she doing there? Is she a model, is she a prostitute? Questions that Robert Colescott most assuredly wants us to ask and then answer them ourselves. How do we view the female model? Have we objectified the female body? What happens when the model is male? Do we have the same thoughts? What if the male is nude? Is that why men are usually so uncomfortable around paintings like the Portland Art Museum's Gary by Ann Gale. There he is sitting slumped in his chair, the chair where he sat for hours, full frontal. How is that different from paintings of women, either naked or half dressed? The woman in Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder is certainly more provocative. How would she be considered really more different than the women who were Matisse's models? All questions that bring me back to the post about Carrie Mae Weems' portrait of Robert Colescott during Week 9.


It's almost impossible for me to look at the blond in Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder and not think of Weems' portrait of Colescott. What has he done? Why is he standing with his face covered? How is that different than the blond? What role does the artist play? Why is Weems naked in her portrait of Colescott? Is she the artist or is she the model or is she both? What role do we the viewers play in this? Both Colescott and Weems challenge us to think about the female body. Colescott does it with more satire, more humor. But we are expected to think.

Final Comparison

“I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning . . . Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”
- Miles Davis

Why I can't stop with the Miles Davis stuff, when its Ann Gale week, is beyond me. The two have been linked for me for seven days now. This is an original Davis in pencil, paste and marker. It doesn't remind me of anything Ann Gale, except it makes me wonder what instrument she plays.

I have a mandolin and about a month of lessons down. But I quit. I think I will pick it up, turn it upside down, and play it the way I should have played it all along. With my left hand strumming, because I'm left handed.

Artist's Models, Inspiration, Meditation, Reps

Looking at Gary, you can wonder, “how long did he have to sit for this painting?” Ann Gale spends a great deal of time around her subjects even before “official” painting sessions begin. Once she starts with a model, she may have several sessions for a small painting or sketch. If the interaction between her and the subject coalesces, then three hour periods of painting, twice a week for anywhere from four months to three years begin.

That’s a long time to be sitting in one place and in Gary’s case, with no clothes. What makes a person agree to pose for three hours with only a short stretch break every half hour or so? Most of Ann Gale’s models are her friends or family, but others are professional models. One motivator can be money, but over and above that, some say that it’s the desire to be part of the creation of art, the artist’s inspiration.

During a painting session, the artist is busy, drawing or painting. What is the model doing other than holding still, holding a pose? Mostly they’re concentrating on what’s going on in the room, the sound of the pencil on paper or brushes on the canvas. Much like people who meditate, they watch their breathing and in many cases they’re monitoring their bodies, the muscles that may be cramping, the itch here, the chill there. Since Ann Gale’s portraits take years to complete in some cases, we the viewers are able to see changes in their moods and bodies. What we look like now is not what we’ll look like three years from now. Gale captures that transition in time, both in the portrayal of the subjects and the space around them.

Modeling is definitely hard work. Gary Stuart, one model, is quoted as saying “By the end of three hours I fell like I need traction.” Robert Treat, another model, says “For me, it is like reps. It is more of an athletic experience. That’s what the artists are doing as well, with their paintings and drawings: sketch, after sketch, after sketch.”

All of this discussion of modeling reminds me of the brief period five years ago when I posed for a group of artists in Santa Rosa. I was asked to wear different outfits of my choice for three separate sessions. Each session was broken into the classic minute, two minute, five minute, fifteen minute, half hour sketch periods. Since I had not done any posing before, the people participating were pleased with how well I could hold the poses. And yes, I did watch my breath and did become very attuned to what was happening in that room. One artist gave me this sketch to thank me for spending my time with them. She especially liked my choice of colorful biking clothes even though she did her sketch in black pencil.

Song One, Sixteen Minutes Long

Mission accomplished. I sat face to face with Gary, about seven feet away, and pressed play. Miles Davis and Gil Evans began Sketches of Spain with their rendition of Concierto de Aranjuez. It was written in 1939 by Joaquin Rodrigo for the palace gardens. The second movement is the one Davis and Evans cover, it was either inspired by the miscarriage of the composer's first child or the bombing of Guernica. Considering that, it surprises me that my take on Gary wasn't dark or depressing despite the pensive music and contrary to the descriptions of Ann's work, by critics I read online. In fact I felt immediately at peace with Gary and thought he seemed like someone who would enjoy the album with me, if he could hear it. Right away I noticed all kinds of places where the paint Ann used was brighter orange and fleshy pink. There is no light source in the paintings, but on the knees, wrists, ears and throat and in a band around his middle are these crisp pastel blocks. These are the areas most alive. Ann said in an interview once “the light is where the emotion is.” It isn't that Gary is, as John Motley of the Mercury said, “profoundly melancholy”, “vacant of expression” and “disconnected from the physical world.” I couldn't disagree more. It is that Gary seems to be human, and in this situation, as humans do, he has become a mirror of Ann. He is concentrating, with slow shallow breath and above all, patience. As the artist herself is patient, she is, after all, a self described "humanist".
Miles Davis said of the Concierto de Aranjuez “That melody is so strong that the softer you play it, the stronger it gets and the stronger you play it, the weaker it gets.” It was in the soft melodies that my heart beat hardest and when it began to grow louder it lost something. What I thought would be dark wasn't, This experience did not make me inward but open. I felt comforted by Gary and thought if he could say something it might be “could you please turn that up a bit?”

Floating Light

I haven't done my experiment yet, but I have done some research and I can give a teaser. Ann Gale has this way of making paint float on the canvas in front of and behind her subject which creates an almost ghostly atmosphere. It gives the figure a mood that is more than his or her expression.

The third piece on Sketches of Spain is called Will O The Wisp, taken from a 19th century gypsy ballet. More on the ballet later, but if you don't know what a Will O The Wisp is, I'll tell you it's another name for these flashes of light seen above bogs and marshes and thought to be spirits of the dead or ghosts. Folklore from the world over as long ago as the 14th century have included stories of these strange lights which science informs is the meeting of methane gas with hydrogen in the air that catch fire.

Ann Gale experiments with floating light as a paint technique, Miles Davis took a song about floating light from a ballet about a woman haunted by her dead lover. These two each created an atmosphere of another world and time using floating light as subject matter. This is just one thing Sketches of Spain and Gary have in common. Follow?

Lopez Garcia and Giacometti Also Inspired Ann Gale

Continuing directly from yesterday, Alberto Giacometti and Antonio Lopez Garcia are the other two artists Ann Gale cited as being influential in her development. The sculptor who places his subjects in motion with his control of his modeling has the spotlight on the left. A search on the "internets" and you'll find any number of other images of the people and creatures he has created to come into our lives. 

Antonio Lopez Garcia, on the right, is an amazing painter whose paintings look like photographs from a distance but as you come closer to them you find his brushstrokes adding atmosphere to his scenes. 

Another Ann Gale self-portrait is at the top looking towards two of the ones who influenced her.

Ann Gale Cites Lucian Freud

It was no surprise to me to read that Ann Gale credits three artists as influencing her work – Lopez Garcia, Alberto Giacometti and Lucian Freud. Freud's work has a similar effect, the subject is anchored to the painting but you very much feel that there you are sharing the same environment. It must have to do with the mark that each painter leaves creating light and movement. See if you can see the influences Sigmund Freud's grandson has had on Gale's work in these two self-portraits.

Sketches of Gary

Ann Gale’s portrait, Gary, hangs in the northwest gallery. When I find him, I stop. I don’t know what to think, so I don’t, I feel.

I am reminded of Miles Davis’ album, Sketches of Spain. It arrests me in a similar psychological place. Between being pulled in and pushed away.


In an attempt to understand this corner of my mind where these two pieces meet, I am going to do an experiment.
I will find out what happens when I sit with Gary for the duration of the Sketches of Spain album playing on my i-pod.

To be continued.