Lee Kelly ~ Reprised, Part of the Portland Transit Mall

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.

Lovejoy Bakers and Sol LeWitt

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

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

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...

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.

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies and Ellsworth Kelly, Tableau Vert

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?

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".

Monet on Christmas Day

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

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

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

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

Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies

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

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

Dan Flavin ~ (to Donna) II Background Information

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

Dan Flavin ~ Untitled (To Donna) 2, 1971

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Dan Flavin ~ Untitled (To Donna) II 1971

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

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

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

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.