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.

Gwynn Murrill ~ Coyote VI and Karl Hofer ~ Early Hour

Usually I don't think of Coyote VI when I'm looking at Karl Hofer's Early Hour from Week 15 here at Fifty Two Pieces. But as I walked down the corridor where Early Hour hangs, the image of the dog looked so much like a coyote that I stopped in my tracks to look again at Hofer's painting. The dog is very stylized. Your mind makes it a dog probably because it's lying in bed with the couple early in the morning. But look again and perhaps it's not really a dog, perhaps it's a coyote and a metaphor for something else.

Gwynn Murrill's animals are all highly stylized. She looks to the positive and negative space. The next time you're in the plaza area of the Portland Art Museum you should definitely take a close look at the surface of the sculpture. The skin of Coyote VI is an amazing combination of gold, brown and red. Then compare the surface as it reflects the light of the sun and compare it to the darker under belly that is in the cooler shaded area. Different surfaces, different effects. Spend a few moments with Coyote VI at different times of the day. You'll come away with a different impression each time.

Karl Hofer - The Wind

Sitting here in Brooklyn, it's hard to imagine what Karl Hofer must have experienced once the Nazis took over the German government in 1933. First he was removed from his teaching position at the Berlin Academy (Lehrverbot) as a "Judeo-Marxist destructive element" and deprived of the right to exhibit (Ausstellungsverbot). In 1938, the Carnegie International jury awarded its $1.000 first prize to Hofer's The Wind, today's post here on Fifty Two Pieces.

Joseph Goebbels, the Fährer of Nazi, took umbrage with Hofer having received this award, especially for this particular painting. Many saw the two defenseless figures huddling against the wind, the ill wind faced by non-Nazi Germans. Goebbels was so furious that Hofer was subject to the most crippling of all measure taken against artists, Malverbot (deprivation of the right to paint). Described by Grunberger, Malverbot was the worst measure taken.

"Lest the Malverbot should be circumvented in the privacy of an artist's home, the Gestapo would carry out lightning raids of inspection, checking up—as in Carl Hofer's case—on whether the paint brushes were still wet. They also placed lists of proscribed artists in the paint shops, so as to cut off their supply of materials at source."

Special note: This post was written while I helped our host Rick prepare stuffed artichokes. Chop garlic, do search on Google. Zest lemon (no zester), continue to research. "Need more garlic." Chop garlic, write post. "Need onion." Chop onion, publish post. 

Karl Hofer - Other Paintings on the Internet

Santa Denunziata was painted by Karl Hofer in 1941. That was the year his former wife Mathide Hofer was denounced by a Gestapo informant and sent to Auschwitz where she died in 1942. Hofer was quoted as saying at the time: "When they are finished with the Jews, they will start with the artists, and with all of those who cannot defend themselves." Hofer was officially banned from painting in 1938 by the Nazi government. He painted this and a number of other works in secret between 1938 and the end of World War II in 1945. I've found the reading for this week to be very somber and chilling. That mood is seen in the other two paintings in this post; I found all three paintings on the Internet.


Night of the Dark Moon (on the left) was also painted by Hofer during the period when he was banned from the practice of his art. Finished in 1944 it preceded a particularly dark piece done in the wake of the end of the war. Dance of the Death, 1946 (on the right) shows an extremely morbid view of life even after the war. I'm feeling quite fortunate to be alive now and living in this country.

Two and Early Hour - Paintings Linked by Inspiration

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

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

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

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

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

Early Hour - Karl Hofer

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

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

Sunday Morning waking up and touching you 

You’re always warm at 9 a.m 

Pillows close and I can feel you wanting me 

When I go back to sleep again...