Ideal City

Ideal City

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Honoring Saint Nicholas


San Nicola in Carcere, Rome
December 6 was the Feast of Saint Nicholas which is celebrated around the world and honors the legend of the generous saint who is better known to many, of course, as Santa Claus.  This sneaky saint was a secret gift giver and was known to leave coins in shoes left out for him.  So if you participate in “secret Santa” activities, you are following a grand tradition.  San Nicola (as he is called in Italian) lived in the fourth century and was a Bishop in a part of what is now Turkey.  His many miracles have also led to him being called “Nicholas the Wonderworker.” 

One of the oldest churches in Rome is dedicated to Saint Nicholas.  It’s called San Nicola in Carcere (St. Nicholas in Prison) as this was the site of a jail during the Roman empire.  

The church was likely constructed in the 6th century and rebuilt a number of times thereafter.  It is built using the “Spolia” from three different temples that stood here when the area was part of the Forum Holitorium in the early years of Ancient Rome.   Spolia means architecture and architectural fragments repurposed for new buildings.  Many of the buildings in Rome, both pagan and Christian, contain spolia of earlier structures. One can clearly see the columns and entablature of the temples which make up part of the exterior walls of the San Nicola.

When Paul and I visited this church we were amazed at the variety of columns, both their designs and materials, that were incorporated into the interior walls of the church as well.  We paid a Euro to an attendant and he gave us a tour of the church's lower level.  We were able to seehow the columns of two different temples were an integral part of the church walls and foundation.



San Nicola in Carcere is on a rather busy street in Rome.  It is very close to the Bocca della Verita (the mouth of truth) best known through the film “Roman Holiday.”  Almost every day a line of tourists wait to put a hand in the “Bocca.”  If you don’t lose your hand, you can prove that you tell the truth.
 

We never took the time to test our honesty.  But we had fun watching the tourists try their luck.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Contemplation

Mark Rothko (1903-1970)
Untitled, 1968
Acrylic on paper on hardboard, 23-3/16 x 18-3/4 inches
Gift of the Mark Rothko Foundation, (ARS New York)
Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Sometimes art needs no explanation.  I am heading to yoga and will think of this when I am doing "shevasana."

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Art, Commemoration and Controversy in San Francisco





Robert Arneson (1930-1992)
Portrait of George (Moscone), 1981 
(7′-10 x 29) Image via cometogether.com

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk.  That event is one of those “do you remember what you were doing when you heard” moments for me.   I lived in San Francisco at the time and had seen Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk just a few weeks before  at a Preservation Hall Jazz Band concert in Golden Gate Park.  Mayor Moscone was quite a favorite of us young liberal folks in the city at the time, and Milk had recently made history as the first openly gay person to be elected to a public office.  The future seemed quite rosy in San Francisco in 1978.  That night I walked down to City Hall plaza and held a candle along with thousands of other people.  The killer was a former City Supervisor, Dan White, who was trying to get his job back (he had resigned).  Moscone,  reportedly at the urging of Milk, refused.  White snuck into a basement window of City Hall and gunned the two men down in their offices.  Less than a year later, on the eve of Harvey Milk’s birthday, White was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter (a surprisingly light conviction)  based on what has come to be known as the  “Twinkie defense.”  He claimed that he was so depressed as the result of a junk food diet he was not competent at the time of the shootings.  Rioting ensued at City Hall Plaza when the verdict was announced.  San Francisco’s acting mayor at the time,who would go on to serve two more terms, was Dianne Feinstein, now senior U.S. Senator from California.  

Milk has been wonderfully memorialized and immortalized in the film starring Sean Penn. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/)  In the early years of the AIDS crisis, one of Harvey Milk’s aides, Cleve Jones, used the annual memorial march that took place every November 27 to call attention to the lack of government acknowledgement of the disease that was killing so many gay men.  From this activism emerged another memorial – the NAMES project, popularly known as the AIDS quilt.  So Milk’s legacy and his memorialization has given rise to an enormous and inventive memorial tradition.  Squares from the quilt travel around the country.  In fact there are some in New Hampshire this month to commemorate World AIDS Day on December 1. (http://www.aidsquilt.org/)

 The Aids Quilt, 1986, Washington, DC

George Moscone’s legacy will always be attached to Harvey Milk.  But there was also an interesting controversy surrounding a sculpture that was commissioned to honor the Mayor’s memory.   In 1981 the George R. Moscone Convention Center was ready to open.  The city’s Art Commission chose ceramic artist Robert Arneson to create a memorial bust of Moscone. Arneson was a longtime art professor at UC Davis and was a leading proponent of “Funk Art” which basically took the function out of ceramics and incorporated everyday objects into the work.  It was socially conscious, yet often irreverent, humorous and sometimes confrontational. 
 
Arneson’s bust depicted a caricature-like portrait of the mayor, as the Commission expected.  But its five foot ceramic pedestal was festooned with bullet holes, the words “Bang Bang Bang,” “and Harvey Milk too,” an image of a Twinkie and other graffiti-like images and text that refered to Moscone’s death and the resulting controversy surrounding the near-exoneration of his killer. The Art Commission asked Arneson to make some changes.  He refused and the sculpture was returned to him.  Today a much more conventional bronze sculpture in the Moscone Center honors the slain Mayor. 

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Happy Anniversary to Alice in Wonderland


                
Lewis Carroll  (1832-1898)
Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Maid"   ca.1859
Albumen Silver Print
16.3 x 10.9 cm (6 7/16 x 4 5/16
 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation,
  


On November 26, 1862, a shy mathematician and published poet sent young Alice Liddell a manuscript of a story he had written to amuse her and her sisters.   Alice was ten years old. Charles Lutwidge Dodson was 30.  The manuscript was published a few years later as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under the author’s pen name – Lewis Carroll.


Dodgson was a close friend of Alice’s parents.  Her father was dean at Christ Church College where Dodgson lectured in mathematics.  A socially awkward man with an embarrassing stutter, Dodgson developed strong ties with the Liddell’s children.   He would often take Alice and her two sisters on boating trips and entertain them with stories that would serve as the basis for his Alice narrative.


One of Dodgson’s hobbies was photography.  This was a common pastime for educated people of means during the Victorian era, and Dodgson was considered quite talented at this new invention that combined scientific as well as aesthetic knowledge.  Like many photographers of his day, one of his favorite subjects was children.  A number of his photographs were of young girls in various states of undress posed in artistic “tableaux.”  At his death, the artist left 3000 negatives which included portraits of the cultural elite in his social circle as well as their children, a number of whom were posed in artistic settings.  There is ample evidence to suggest that the young subjects always had parents or a guardian present during these photography sessions.  Nevertheless, Charles Dodgson has been under suspicion, especially in these past few decades, of having an unnatural sexual interest in young girls and in Alice in particular.   These photographs, plus Dodgson’s known attachment to the Liddell family and reports of a sudden, unexplained break in their friendship, have given rise to a number of treatises (both non-fiction and fiction) that Dodgson’s interest was not purely artistic. 
 

In truth, the bodies of children, girls in particular, were quite common in art of Victorian England.  The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, another upperclass “hobbyist” was part of Dodgson’s and the Liddell’s  circle.  Cameron, who received a large measure of acclaim for her work, would frequently pose young unclothed children in narrative tableaux.  Dodgson was also friendly with a group of writers and artists who called themselves the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.”  This group wanted to return to art that they perceived as simple and pure -- the Medieval and early Renaissance art before Raphael.  They portrayed women as innocent, simple, virtuous creatures in constant danger of falling from grace, or as seductive femme fatales.  Not surprisingly, the innocent young girl became a standard figure in many Pre-Raphaelite works.  In fact, John Ruskin, one of the leading critics of the day, is rumored to have never consummated his marriage to his wife Effie (who ran off with the painter John Millais) because he was so horrified to discover that she had pubic hair. 


 
 
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)
Venus Chiding Cupid and Removing His Wings, 1872 

                                          Albumen Silver Print, National Media Museum, The Royal Photographic Society

It is evident that during this period childhood innocence and virtue was celebrated and often expressed through the innocent youthful naked body. The truth is, we really don’t know whether Charles Dodgson had an unnatural interest in young girls.   However, based on the taste and standards of art of the time, we cannot condemn him based on the photographic evidence alone.




Friday, November 25, 2011

Turning the Stake


Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake, 1873
oil on canvas, 101.3cm x 151.4cm 
Cleveland Museum of Art

Today I met my friend Megan at the YMCA for a post-Thanksgiving workout.  We have decided to join Concept 2’s “Holiday Challenge” and erg at least 100,000 meters between November 24 and December 24.  The company will donate two cents for each kilometer once we reach our goal. I’ve chosen my donation be directed to Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.  The state is still struggling to recover from the devastating floods in late August and I have many friends whose homes and livelihoods were affected.    I made a small dent in my 100K – I have 97.5 to go!


One of my favorite American artists is Thomas Eakins.  Since I started rowing two years ago I’ve looked more closely at his paintings of scullers on the Schuylkill River.  A Philadephia native, Eakins was an amateur rower, a sport enjoyed by the students at University of Pennsylvania as well as the social elite of Philadelphia. At the time rowing was fairly new, but also the most popular spectator sport in America .  Thousands of dollars were often wagered on race outcomes.  Eakins’ favorite subjects were the most famous professional rowers of their time, the Biglin brothers.  Today perhaps not the best, but the most notorious rowers are the Winklevoss twins, Harvard rowers and Mark Zuckerberg foes, who have been immortalized in this scene from The Social Network (with the gorgeous Army Hammer playing both roles)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwIPDpRuyNk&feature=related

Eakins had a nearly scientific approach to painting.  After art school and the requisite “grand tour” of Europe, he took anatomy and physiology classes at Jefferson Medical College to help him more accurately depict the human form.  In addition, he was an early adopter of the camera as a tool to aid his painting and he experimented with techniques to help capture humans and animals in motion.  It was Eakins who brought the photographer Eadweard Muybridge to the University of Pennsylvania  to make thousands of photographs recording people and animals in “locomotion.”  To read more about Muybridge and these groundbreaking studies at Penn go here:  http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/muybridge/muybridge.html.  

Thomas Eakins,  
Motion Study: George Reynolds nude, pole-vaulting to left, 1885, 
Dry-plate negative, 3 7/8 x 4 5/8"

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art



It makes sense that Eakins would be fascinated with trying to capture the movement of both the athlete and his boat as it moves so swiftly across the water.  Scullers are ever conscious of the position and relationship of each part of their body as they repeat and perfect the stroke cycle, of where their oar enters and leaves the water and of the pattern of “puddles” they leave.  Eakins was clearly aware of all of this as a rower himself, and one can see his attention to these details in the eleven paintings he made of the brothers.  In this painting, we see the midpoint of the first American pairs race, a five mile ordeal against rowers from Pittsburgh (we can see them in the background struggling to reach their turn).  The brothers won by more than a minute and were declared World Champions.  Megan and I plan on rowing doubles next summer (we’ll each have two oars instead of the single oars of a pair).  We’ll be thinking about the Biglin brothers and Thomas Eakins as we work on our technique.
 

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving


Norman Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978)
Freedom From Want, 1943
(Reproduced in March 6, 1943 The Saturday Evening Post)
this is a reproduction of a Buy War Bonds poster
Original: oil on canvas,  116.2 cm × 90 cm 
I’ve never liked Norman Rockwell’s work (well, at least since adolescence turned me into a cynic).  His version of America was too white, too saccharine, too much sunny nostalgia for my taste.  (If you’ve seen the film Pleasantville  you know what I mean).  However, art historians have begun reconsidering this artist’s work in context and examining his life a little more closely.  I’m starting to come around.   As it turns out, Rockwell may have been painting away some demons. 

Today, on this most national of holidays, I couldn’t write about anything else but Norman Rockwell’s iconic Freedom from Want, a painting that has come to be known as the Thanksgiving painting.   It was one of a series of four paintings the artist produced in response to President Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union address of 1941, often called the “Four Freedoms” speech.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.—Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

By the end of that year the United States had entered into World War II. 

The Saturday Evening Post published essays on the Four Freedoms in February and March of 1943 accompanied by Rockwell’s illustrations.  Students in the “Town Meeting” class taught by Maura MacNeil and me studied Freedom of Speech which Rockwell considered to be the most successful of the series (and I’ll write about that at some other time). However, Rockwell’s image of three generations of a white, middle class family gathered around an abundantly set Thanksgiving table as an illustration of Freedom from Want has become the best known and most beloved of this series.   It is important to think about the impact this charming scene must have had on its audience in 1943. Most Americans would not have experienced a Thanksgiving of such abundance (and in such a beautiful setting) during the years of the Great Depression leading up to WWII. In addition, many American families had close friends and relatives away at war and rationing was in full effect by this time.  This happy American family sitting around the abundant table was a fantasy.  Rockwell was well aware of this.  “I paint life as I would like it to be” he stated. [1]  And he, like many Americans at the time, envisioned a post-war America through a nostalgic lens.   Later in his career, Rockwell would become a bit more political and realist in his work, and thus more controversial.    But for most people he remains the artist who painted life as it used to be, even though it never really was.

Here’s a link to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts :   http://www.nrm.org/


[1] Wright, Tricia (2007). "The Depression and World War II". American Art and Artists. HarperCollins Publishers

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Preparations Commence


Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin  (b. 1699, Paris, d. 1779, Paris)
Servant Returning from the Market (La Pourvoyeuse(The Provider)) 1738
Oil on canvas, 46 x 37 cm
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin  (there's a version in the Louvre as well)

When we look at this painting we think we know what is happening.  A cook, or maid, is piling up the provisions in preparation for a feast, or perhaps moving them to another spot.  At any rate, she is clearly in charge of the food here.   Look at the large loaves of bread, the big bird (a turkey perhaps?) with its legs sticking out of the sack, the jug on the sideboard and the wine bottles on the floor.  The woman’s attention seems to be focused on something happening in the background – a maid is greeting a man at the door.  Is he the master of the house, checking on the preparations?  Is he the one who has “provided” for this meal?  One of the titles for this painting, after all, is “The Provider.”   Is the provider the one who prepares the food, or the one who pays for it?
Although we can’t say with certainty what is being depicted, we can enjoy this painting as a celebration of the abundance of good food and its preparation.  Chardin’s paintings celebrates the simplicity and intimacy of a bourgeois lifestyle that is focused on an honest, moral way of life. 
I am drawn to Chardin’s respect and appreciation for the  simple aspects of life.  He honors the preparation of the meal as much as, if not more than, the meal itself.  At this time of year, when I am involved in preparations for a family feast, I often find my most pleasurable experience is in the working, not in the consuming.  It’s great to put a beautiful roast or luscious cake out for friends and family.  But the act of preparing it – making sure the seasonings are correct, that the freshest ingredients have been selected, etc.  give me as much pleasure as seeing the end result.  Perhaps this is partly what Chardin honors, and why I prefer “The Provider” in all its ambiguity as the title of this work.
Chardin was  a very successful artist in 18th century Paris, but not a very prolific one.  He only painted 200 canvases in his 50 year career, yet prints of his work were wildly popular and he made a nice living with his scenes of cozy domestic interiors, genre scenes and still lifes.  His work was not typical of his time.  The “Academy” – the official tastemakers -- expected large heroic history paintings, bold colors and complex compositions.  The aristocracy (and therefore the artists who made work for them) preferred painting, sculpture and architecture that was characterized by complex and intricate forms and patterns.  They commissioned work for their “hôtels” (urban mansions) and palaces that featured the leisurely activities of the upper classes posed in gorgeous landscapes and luxurious interiors.  Pastel colors, light, loose brushstrokes and intricate sinuous lines were the fashion of the time. Pleasure became an art form and a way of life.   Despite rejecting rococo subject matter and aesthetics, Chardin was still greatly admired by the aristocracy, including Louis XV.  His beautiful renderings of textures, of the play of light across surfaces and his comparatively simple images and compositions must have been a welcome change from the frippery of much of the art of this period.
 For a great interpretation of the excess of this period, watch Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette,  I think she really gets the aesthetics and overindulgence of the period. 

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

It's Time for a Feast!

Paolo Veronese  (b. 1528, Verona, d. 1588, Venezia) 
Feast in the House of Levi, 1573
Oil on canvas, 555 x 1280 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

Click the link to read more about Veronese and this wonderful Last Supper he made for the refectory of a Dominican church in Venice.  Last Supper you say?  Why is it called "Feast in the House of Levi"?  Well, take a closer look.  There are a few too many people at the this banquet and far too much frivolity for a conventional Last Supper.  The air of sadness and foreboding we usually find is absent here.  Veronese was enjoying a surprising amount of artistic freedom and celebrating the wonderful luxurious life of Venice in the late 16th century.  This was the eve of the Counter-reformation, however, and Veronese was in danger of being accused of heresy.  He was given three months to make changes, but instead changed the title of the painting.  So the Dominicans were allowed to keep their painting and Veronese was allowed to keep his head.

Perhaps Monty Python was thinking about Veronese when they performed this skit about "Michelangelo's Last Supper"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-v-f2mT94Y

This painting has always spoken to me of a joie de vivre, of a total embrace of life, luxury and beauty without reserve or remorse.  It is so grounded in human pleasure, while still emphasizing a profoundly spiritual message as well.  Here the religious and secular, the sacred and profane, merge in a wonderful feast of the senses.  May we all experience such reveling in a similar way this Thanksgiving.