David Hockney

NoteWorthy Art Books, 2020

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

While PhotoBooks have been an all-encompassing passion of mine these past four+ years (though of course I had some earlier), Art Books have been a passion ever since I first saw one, or, for over half a century. Before I could go to a gallery or museum, here was a way to see all, or a selection of, the work of an Artist or a group of Artists- in one portable package. I was instantly fascinated by that, and I still am. Yes, physical books because Art, or Photo, eBooks are few and far between- still. The quality of the physically printed Photo, or Photo of a Painting, is still unsurpassed. In 2020, museums and galleries were closed for much of the year all over the world. For me, and perhaps innumerable others, Art Books were there, 24/7, to provide a means of exploring, seeing and studying Art. Fittingly, as they were for me before I was able to go to shows in person, this year, in my world entirely without any other people for 11 months, Art & PhotoBooks were my sole companions.

Having presented my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2020, (as well as in 2019, and 2018), this year,  I’ve decided to also present my thoughts on the Art Books I’ve seen in 2020 that I most highly recommend for the first time. All of these books, I highly recommend, so I’m not picking one out of them as “most highly recommended.” Here they are-

NoteWorthy Art Books of the Year, 2020

Philip Guston Now, DAP/National Gallery of Art, and
Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting

After a gap of 15 years between retrospectives of his work, two excellent overviews of Philip Guston’s remarkable oeuvre are published in one year. Deciding which one to get is hard. Both have a lot going for them. For someone looking for one book with the most images in the largest size, along with one of the finest texts of Robert Storr’s career, Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting is the choice. For someone looking for the only place to see the most controversial show of 2020, now postponed to 2024, along with an equally excellent text, Philip Guston Now is an excellent choice. For the serious Guston aficionado, the only choice is to buy both. For someone already familiar with Philip Guston’s work who wants to learn more about his work, either book will provide countless fresh insights.

Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting may be the finest achievement in the long career of author Robert Storr. Yet, I give special credit to Philip Guston Now for being one of the most remarkable exhibition catalogs I’ve ever seen. Personally, I find its text by co-curators Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene and Kate Nesin, to be nothing short of brilliant both in its content and how it flows seamlessly from period to period through the Artist’s long career, treating the whole in a fresh way. This, alone, would be enough for a high recommendation, but the book is taken to another level by the addition along the way of pieces by 10 Contemporary Artists- William Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, Tacita Dean, Peter Fischli, Trenton Doyle Hancock, David Reed, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, Art Spiegelman and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Most provide unique insights into specific works by Philip Guston and a number of them directly address the “hooded”/klan works, the focus of the controversy around the show the book was published to accompany.

Dana Schutz’ Essay in Philip Guston Now.

The show, also titled Philip Guston Now, was first postponed due to covid to July, 2021, then  controversially postponed, again, to 2024 by the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Tate Modern, London, where it is scheduled to be mounted. “We are postponing the exhibition until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted.1.” Like many others, I am at a loss to understand that statement. On the one hand, it denigrates the intelligence of visitors. On the other, what if 2024, isn’t that nebulous “time” the message speaks of under whatever unmentioned criteria they’re using to determine it? However, the show’s catalog did come out this year in anticipation of the originally scheduled opening. Its inclusion of the featured pieces by those 10 Contemporary Artists is exactly the kind of thing Art monographs need more of, in my view, as they struggle to remain relevant- given how many other books already exist on most Artists, and the large expense involved in creating them in what may be increasingly challenging times for museums who, largely, publish these books.

The reproductions of the Art in Philip Guston Now only adequate in terms of quality, in my opinion, are best used for reference to the points large and small being made throughout the text. Some of the Art is reproduced one image on a page with a copious border, others are 4 to a page. It does include new Photos taken in Philip Guston’s studio, which appears to be largely as he left it. The other big reason for getting this book is to see the works in, and to have a record of,  this important show, so you can prepare yourself to see it, IF it ever opens. Also important to note- many works will not appear in each of the four scheduled stops the show will make. So, the catalog is the only place to “see” the whole show.

The large 13.35 by 11.5 inch pages create an almost 27 inch spread making the images in Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting the largest in any Guston book to date, and with over 850, the most images in any Guston book as well. This will make it a slam dunk choice for many, but take a look at both.

The illustrations are better and more numerous (850) in Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting, whose 13 1/2 by 11 1/2 inch size is more accommodating close study. Get that book for the best current overview of the Art. As for its text, Robert Storr contributes one of his finest efforts, apparently the results of many years of work. As good as the text in Philip Guston Now is, Mr. Storr’s doesn’t take a back seat to any Guston book I’ve seen to date, which is why a recommendation for both books is the only one I can give at this point. They join Philip Guston: Retrospective, published by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2003, to accompany the last major retrospective of his work and now out of print, my go-to Guston book to this point, as standard references to the work of this enduringly contemporary Master.

Drawing for Conspirators, 1930, Graphite pencil, pen and ink, colored pencil, and wax crayon on paper, seen at the Whiney Museum in July, 2015, in America Is Hard To See, the most recent showing of this work. A number of the essays in Philip Guston Now reference this work.

Before continuing, I feel I must briefly address the controversy centered around the show’s inclusion of Philip Guston’s klan Paintings. I’ve been somewhat surprised that the attention seems to focus on his late klan pieces. I think it’s important to remember that they go back to when the Painter was about 18. In Philip Guston Retrospective, the backstory is relayed on pages 16 & 17. It begins by quoting Mr. Guston-

“I was working at a factory and became involved in a strike. The KKK helped in strike breaking so I did a whole series of paintings on the KKK. In fact I had a show of them in a bookshop in Hollywood, where I was working at that time. Some members of the klan walked in, took the paintings off the wall and slashed them. Two were mutilated. That was the beginning.”

(The text then continues) “The Ku Klux Klan, also known as the Invisible Empire, had a significant membership in California in the 1930s and 1940s, and Los Angeles County was its most active Klavern. Guston and several other of his friends also painted portable murals for the John Reed Club on the theme of ‘The American Negro.’ Guston’s submission was particularly volitile. Based on the Scottsboro case, in which nine black men were sentenced (many said on false and circumstantial evidence) to life in prison for raping a white girl. Guston’s mural depicted a group of hooded figures whipping a black man. The murals were eventually attacked and defaced by a band of ‘unidentified’ vandals. The experience of seeing the effect of art on life and life on art never left Guston, and the unsettling image of the hooded figure was branded into his visual imagination.”

In the 1930s, in addition to strike breaking, the klan also targeted Jews. Philip Guston, originally Philip Goldstein, was Jewish. Of course, their main target were Blacks.

Artists don’t live in the nebulous times those 4 museum directors speak of in their postponement statement. They live, work, and often respond to, the times of their lives. Philip Guston lived long enough to see that racism was deeply embedded in the fabric of American life, possibly even in his own life. I believe those are things that may have influenced his later hooded figure/klan works, though they are for each viewer to interpret for his or herself. If this ins’t the time for all of us to look inside at ourselves and see how we can be better, how do we know 2024 will be a better time to do so?

NoteWorthy Art Book of the Year, 2020

Noah Davis, David Zwirner Books. An early candidate for the most important new Art monograph of the new decade might be hard to top for that title in the next 9 years. Noah Davis passed away of cancer at the very young age of 32 on August 29, 2015. Still, the amount he accomplished and the work he created in such a short life will live on indefinitely. Editor Helen Molesworth was Mr. Davis’ personally chosen curator, and she curated the show that opened earlier this year in NYC, which  I wrote about before it moved to The Underground Museum, L.A.., which Noah Davis founded with his wife, the Artist Karon Davis. The text includes interviews with those who knew Mr. Davis, including legendary Painter Henry Taylor, Deana Lawson, Lindsay Charlwood, Dagny Corcoran, Daniel DeSure, Thomas Houseago, and Venus X by Ms. Molesworth. Only the second book on his work thus far, it will remain the standard reference for the time being, and a standard reference regardless of what else comes out on one of the most important Artists of  our time. It’s only too bad Mr. Davis didn’t live to see it. Noah Davis was not only an extraordinary Painter, he was one of the Artistic visionaries of our time. He showed it was possible to succeed as an Artist without gallery representation, and then he audaciously founded his own museum to serve audiences he felt were being left out by the existing museums. Generations to come will be influenced and inspired by his Art. Generations of Artists will be, also, influenced by his example. 

From 2020, let’s set the wayyyyy back machine back to the very first Art Book to captivate me when I was a kid was Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, by Bob Haak, published by Abrams in 1969. A large (13.5 by 11 inch), 348 page hardcover, with 612 illustrations including 109 hand-tipped color plates, it had these words on the front flap-

“There emerges, in this book, a Rembrandt who is human, fallible, majestic- a man who went through all the common vicissitudes of life and yet was determined to remain true to himself as an artist.”

I’d never seen anything like it. Here was an entire world, the entire life and work of an Artist that just exploded in front of me, singeing my mind as I turned each page, as Rembrandt’s wondrous turned painfully sad life went on, accompanied by the Artist turning his hand from Painting to Drawing to Prints, and back, each among the supreme works done in the medium by anyone, before or since. Most of all, it was the incredible humanity in his Art that has stayed with me to this day. He rendered everyone, from beggars to the exalted, babies and the very old, and foremost among them, he rendered himself, continually throughout his career, from early on, until near the end, creating a body of Self-Portraits, the like of which the world had never seen. Those words on the flap turned out to be the key! As the years went by, I began to understand where that unequalled humanity in Rembrandt’s work came from. Such is the power of a truly great Art Book.

Fast forward a half century to 2020 and the release of 3 great books on the Master, each one of my NoteWorthy Art Books, 2020…

The heavyweight champions. The Complete Paintings weighs in at 17.78 pounds, The Complete Drawings & Etchings at 14.99 pounds.

Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings, Taschen XXL Series
Rembrandt. The Complete Drawings & Etchings, Taschen XXL Series
Rembrandt. The Self-Portraits. Taschen XL Series. Nothing more needs to be said- These will remain THE standard visual reference books for Art lovers on the work of the foremost Painter of humanity in this house for the foreseeable future or until the experts change their minds, yet again, on what is, and what is not, from the hand of the Master and deserves to be included. And you know they will (though not the last WORD, for that Gary Schwartz’ amazing books on Rembrandt will retain their prominence in this household). Again. In the meantime, bliss out in peace. Even Mr. Schwartz approves in an Amazon review2. With all due respect to the esteemed authors, in my opinion, these books would be closer to “perfect” if they had his contributions. Photography, paper, binding, finish are first rate all around. 

After all these years, well into the age of the selfie, this first body of Self-Portraits still remain at the top of my list of favorite Art works.

It’s a bit bold of Taschen to publish these books given the still in-flux state of what exactly is a Rembrandt, and given that the esteemed publishers have not yet issued a revised version of any of the XXL books. My guess is they felt the completion of the Rembrandt Research Project’s work, published in a six volume set, the last in 2014, provided an opportunity for a collection. I’ve recently heard of at least one change to the accepted canon, but for better or worse, anyone wanting to see the most Rembrandt in a large size will be left with these three books as the best option for the foreseeable future.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Taschen XXL Series
As I just got through saying about the original Dutch Master, if you want to see as much of the work of the late New York Master, Jean-Michel Basquiat as possible in one volume, as LARGE as possible, Taschen’s XXL Jean-Michel Basquiat is the only book for you. Yes, another Taschen XXL on this list this year. Look at the $200. list price (for this and for each of the Rembrandt Paintings and Drawings books) this way- You’d have to spend a large fortune to travel to the world to see all the Art contained in one of these, IF the work happened to be on view. Even then, you won’t get to see it this close up in what is usually, very good to excellent Art Photography. And consider that much of the key work of Jean-Michel Basquiat is in private hands because the museums were slow to accept and buy his work. They missed the boat. Private collections rarely show or lend their work making the chances to see more than 5 Basquiat Paintings anywhere at any time extremely rare! That’s exactly why I spent so much time running around seeing the 5 Basquiat shows mounted here in NYC last year. My pieces on them are here. In all that effort, I still only saw about 130 or so pieces!

David Hockney: Drawing From Life, National Portrait Gallery, London
The incredibly prolific Mr. Hockney has had a life long obsession with Drawing. That alone makes him a man after my own heart. I’ve followed along with his Drawing evolution with empathy. He’s often spoken of the challenges of Drawing and man, could I relate to them, as I spent 3 days every week Drawing at The Met for about a decade. Sometimes, I’d look at his Drawings and I could see my own efforts. But, most times I looked, he was light years beyond me. His use of an incredibly wide range of Drawing tools and media is unprecedented among major Artists 0in Art History- everything from chalk to graphite to the iPhone and iPad. With each new tool he found his own way, and achieved remarkable results (like his huge, multi page iPad Yosemite Drawings) that are all the more remarkable for being instantly recognizable as David Hockneys. He’s also been proflic in the number of books published on his Art. Yet here is the first collection of part of his Drawing oeuvre this century (the David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective, 1996, the last overview I can recall). It’s wonderfully done and ingeniously designed, with chapters following the Artist’s evolution of a single subject each, culminating in his Self-Portraits. Published to accompany the show of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, it’s a remarkable book that due to its ingenious concept has an unexpectedly personal feel to it- as you turn the pages, you begin to feel you know each subject. It’s particularly recommended to Drawing students and lovers of the endangered Art of Drawing.

Francis Bacon or The Measure of Excess by Yves Peyre, a friend of Mr. Bacon’s, stands in front of the new monograph on Cecily Brown. Cecily’s father, David Sylvester, was also a long time friend of Bacon’s and gave us the enduring classic Interviews with Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon or the Measure of Excess, Yves Peyre, ACC Art Books.
Slowly, steadily and continually, the late, great British Artist has now established himself in the upper echelon of Artists I am absolutely obsessed with. To the point that the LAST thing I need is ANOTHER Francis Bacon book. I’d never heard of Yves Peyre, though the cover says he “was a close friend of the artist.” He’s also a poet and has authored a book on Henri Michaux. Well, some of Mr. Bacon’s other friends have already given us books on Mr. Bacon, from David Sylvester (Cecily Brown’s dad, who’s Interviews with Francis Bacon remains most essential) and Michael Peppiatt, down, including another poet, Michel Leiris, and most of them are quite good and have held up for a few decades already. Some of them also offer quite good collections of reproductions of Mr. Bacon’s Art (something EVERY Francis Bacon books seems to need to give us). Yet, as a one volume overview of Francis Bacon’s career with excellent, full 11.73 by 9.83 inch page reproduction, Francis Bacon or the Measure of Excess is my current recommendation and personal choice as a one volume visual reference. The texts of the earlier books remain important, and recommended, summing in a nutshell why it’s VERY hard to have only one Francis Bacon book. Even if you have other books, Mr. Peyre shines the new light of a fresh approach to Bacon, which is somewhat remarkable given how many others have chimed in on his work already, during his life and since his passing in 1992. Of course, if you want THE Francis Bacon publication, the 5 volume Catalog Raisonne is still in print at 1,000 British Pounds a copy, plus shipping. I’ve seen it, and it is exceptionally, even remarkably well done, with Martin Harrison, the foremost authority on Bacon today, astoundingly uncovering 100 previously unseen works (Oh! To find just ONE in a flea market…). The Bacon Estate says it will never be reprinted, and so likely will never be “cheaper.”

Sofonisba’s Lesson, Michael Cole, Princeton University.
Wait. What? Who? Sofonisba Anguissola, 1532-1635, was a female Painter & educator in the Renaissance. Believe it or not, a female Painter in the Renaissance. And a great one, in my view. To say her work has been in eclipse since would be an understatement. I, for one, was unfamiliar with her or her work until I saw this incredible, irresistible face staring out at me from the cover. I doubt I’m alone in that. The Met appears to have nothing by her. Neither does The Frick. Ah, but one person who immediately saw her talent was Il Divino himself, Michelangelo, who informally gave her advice! Nuff said. There is no possible higher recommendation in the Art world than that. Into the gap of knowledge for the rest of us mere mortals steps Michael Cole’s beautifully done, concise, monograph that goes a very long way towards putting her back on all of our maps, where she belongs to stay, in my view, henceforth, as the true Master Artist she was.

As you can see both of these Portraits are first rate, but look at the table covering, left, and the collars and cuffs on the right. For me, there are number of different techniques, even styles, on views in each work and that speaks volumes about the depth of her skill.

At 2.5 pounds, it’s not as big in size or as weighty as the Rembrandt or Basquiat XXLs on this list, yet I admire this book so much that if it weren’t for Noah Davis being released this year, it might well be my NoteWorthy Art Book for 2020. A lesson for all those Artists struggling for recognition today- Sofonisba’s Lesson comes 12 years before the 500th Anniversary of her birth in Lombardy in 1532. Better late, than never.

Goya Drawings, Thames & Hudson/Prado Museum.
Back in the day before Photography with chemicals ruled the world, Drawing & Painting were the primary means by which events of the day were recorded or, along with those past, recreated. Primary among the great Artists who recorded the events of their day remains Francisco Goya. While his The 3rd of May, 1808, is perhaps, his most well-known such work, though we have no way of knowing if the Artist actually witnessed this scene personally. He also created a large body of Drawings the scope of which, and the humanity of which, only Rembrandt’s can equal in my mind. Like the original Dutch Master, Goya’s Drawings magically capture a pose or an expression in an almost impossible economy of line, while looking for all the world like they were done quickly, without second thought. Ahh…Drawing at its most sublime. 

2020 saw the release (or at least the availability in this country) of two excellent Goya Drawings monographs, both of which are published by no less than the Prado Museum, home of the world’s finest & most comprehensive Goya collection, one of which is a NoteWorthy Art Book for 2020. Goya Drawings immediately becomes the choice resource for the lay reader, the Drawing or Painting student or Artist, and for the serious Goya student. A remarkable overview that does not scrimp on detail, insights, or the number of color images, in manages to stay concise and succinct. I picked it and didn’t know what to make of it from very generic front cover. “Goya Drawings”? That’s a huge subject for such a small book. Once I opened it I could not put it down. Sure enough, his Drawings over his entire career are covered, period by period in depth, and while not each and every one is covered, the overview is broad enough to convey the big picture  but can be dipped in to at any point for a closer study of any one work, which is written about on the page with its illustration- quite rare in a comprehensive book like this, and an indication of its superb design.

Finally, along with the other Goya Drawings book they published this year, Francisco de Goya: Cuaderno C (or Sketchbook C), which reproduces in facsimile one of his sketchbooks, both books are part of the Prado’s continued effort to make its Goya riches available to the public, online for free, and in these two modestly priced and superb books, Goya Drawings was released in honor of it’s 200th Anniversary in November, 2019. Bravo!

I Am Still Learning, c.1825-8, Lithographic crayon on grey laid paper,  on the next to final page. Goya was about 80 when he Drew this symbolic Self-Portrait. A fitting culmination to an immortal career, …and to this piece as words to live by.

Afterword/Forward to 2021

We’re not out of the pandemic woods yet. It might be a while before we are. I hope and pray not a long while. We shall see. Still, many smaller businesses have permanently left us. Many others are hanging on. I have been staying to myself this year, which means living in complete isolation for all of 2020. Yup. You read that right. I will only go into an enclosed space if I have to. Still, I have made very brief journeys into local bookstores, and peered in the window from the street of others, to see how busy they were. Frankly, what I’ve seen is very scary. Throughout the week, you could roll a bowling ball down the aisle of almost any bookstore here and hit no one. On the weekends, they’ve been closer to normal. Part of that is, no doubt, early holiday shopping. Still, the big takeaway for me is that the time is now- today and 2021, to support independent bookstores if you want them to survive. Many of the books and Artists I discover each year (and have my entire life) I’ve discovered browsing books in bookstores- including Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, by Bob Haak, shown earlier, 40 years ago. You can’t do that online. I’ve been waiting for eBooks to begin to replace physical Art & PhotoBooks for many years now. As 2020 closes, it doesn’t seem that we’re any closer to that than we were 5 or 10 years ago. A high quality eBook could replace most Art books published today- IF the image quality was comparable. They’re not. Screen image quality is nowhere near that of printed image quality. Then, there are Artist’s Books and PhotoBooks. Many of both are painstakingly crafted in every single detail, down to each material used, which no cyber experience can match. These books are often works of Art in themselves, and for many Artists & Photographers who don’t have gallery representation, they provide a primary focus for having their work seen on their terms, the way they intend it to be seen. Physical books in general have a charm and provide a tactile experience no eBook can match. If you value books, like I do, consider supporting your favorite local indie bookstore in person or online. While you can.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Better Days Ahead,” by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson from the album Secrets, 1978…

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  1. Here. ↩
  2. With a caveat on the Drawings volume, so he went ahead and created a concordance to ease referencing the new Schatborn reference numbers Taschen’s behemoth uses to refer to the work to the standard Benesch numbers, available here! ↩

Draw!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

 For The Record #4.

Is Drawing becoming a lost skill in today’s world?

Michelangelo, Archers Shooting at a Herm, Red chalk, seen at The Met’s unforgettable Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer in 2018.

That would be tragic. For any number of reasons, perhaps the foremost being that I believe Drawing is an essential life skill. The cellphone camera seems to be replacing Drawing for many people, and I think this is shortsighted1. Drawing is a fundamental way that humans have communicated and expressed themselves for many tens of thousands of years. No doubt, even before the advent of writing and language. Its value to Art and Artists over the centuries can be seen in any museum. Beyond Art, Drawing is an important way of putting ideas down, or mapping out your thoughts. It’s an important means of thinking visually that nothing known to me can replace.

An Artist who Draws almost exclusively, Chris Ware’s fold-out cover for the hardcover edition of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth took Drawing in entirely new directions in 2000. It’s part map, part story, part Art, part mind map, yet somehow, it all holds together. And, it also gives one an idea of what the amazing 380 pages inside are like. Is it any wonder the book was seven years in the making?

When I first tried to paint, I immediately realized I needed to work on my drawing, first, to paint the way I wanted to paint (yes, small letters. No Art with a capital A in this case). I proceeded to draw, daily, for the next decade. I still haven’t gone back to painting. Drawing became an obsession for me, both doing it and studying it’s amazing history in Art.

Ingres, Portrait of a Lady, 1815-17, seen at The Met in 2012 in very low light to protect it. I spent the better part of a decade trying to figure out HOW Mr. Ingres created incredible Drawings like this. In Secret Knowledge, David Hockney surmises that he may have used a camera lucida to draw the head from life, then sketched the rest fairly quickly. Regardless, it borders on the miraculous.

As time has gone on, particularly over the past decade, though there have been some monumental museum Drawing shows of work by the masters, I’ve seen fewer and fewer Drawing shows by Contemporary Artists.

An exception. Raymond Pettibon, No Title (It sounds powerful…), Ink, acrylic and collage on paper, 60.5 x 101 inches, seen at Zwiner in 2017.

Along with really looking, and learning to see, Drawing is invaluable in developing an eye. Try drawing anything. It forces you to really see and to really be clear about what you see so you can render it. I spent a few years drawing Sculpture in The American Wing Courtyard in The Met three times a week. One of the great things about that space is that it is faced and covered with glass. The light constantly changes, and if you sat there long enough, which I did countless times, day changed to evening and then to night. This is a real challenge to anyone trying to render an object with a pencil, like it would be to someone Painting outdoors. It forced me to learn how to look hard and fast, before the light I was trying to render changed. Of course, I could have drawn from a Photograph, but I found I learned much more trying to draw a Sculpture on the spot. 

Vincent Van Gogh, Harvest in Provence, 1888, Reed pen, quill and ink over graphite on wove paper, from Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings. Vincent was one of the first Artists to fascinate me in my early teens when I discovered him in an early visit to MoMA. As time has gone on, I’m still amazed at how he saw the world, which you can really see in his incredible Drawings. Here, he almost Draws in shorthand. Look at the sky, and the way he renders most of the scene using lines and dots. There’s so much to look at, the figures almost disappear. The only thing he’s darkened is the cart in the center. Once you compare this with  the Painting he did of this scene, it might be apparent why.

When I’m first exploring an Artist, I want to see their Drawings. If they haven’t created any, I look into why not. Maybe they can’t Draw? Many Painters, like Richard Estes and Rod Penner, Draw their work directly on their canvases, creating an “Underdrawing,” as have countless Painters for centuries before them, and so don’t make standalone Drawings. If they have created Drawings, I want to see what role Drawing plays in their work, and I want to see what their Drawings reveal about it. Yes, there are Artists I admire who either don’t make separate Drawings or don’t Draw per se, but I’ve come to realize that they are in the minority. 

 

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Drawing of the Winslow House, 1893-7. The actual house may still be seen in Chicago. Drawing seen at MoMA in 2017.

Any number of Architects have made Drawings, often to present their ideas to their clients- Presentation Drawings, like the one above by Frank Lloyd Wright, that are now considered Art. Beyond their beauty, these Drawings serve any number of other purposes from showing an idea to a client, to helping engineers, landscape designers and urban planners understand the project.

Nasreen Mohamedi used Drawing both as the primary discipline of her Art and also for other reasons in other ways, as in her diary, two pages of which appear above, seen at The Met Breuer’s landmark, opening, show of her work in 2016. She, apparently, went back and colored out most of the lined pages but left words or sentences here and there legible. Did she do this for Artistic reasons? As a reminder of things left undone or to be remembered? Or…?

David Byrne, Tree Drawing, from Arboretum.

In 2003, the Musican & Artist David Byrne published his book of “tree drawings,” Arboretum. The fascinating Drawings inside show other ways in which Drawing can be used. He discussed them here. Three are shown here.

David Byrne, Drawing, from Arboretum.

Some border on graphs.

David Byrne, Music Tree, 2002, from Arboretum.

Others on maps.

Three iPad Drawings by David Hockney, seen at The Met’s David Hockney show in 2018.

On the positive side, Technology has brought new ways one can Draw into the world. David Hockney is among the many using the iPad to create museum level Art.

Nasreen Mohamedi Untitled, circa 1970, seen at The Met Breuer in 2016.

In some ways, it’s akin to her Drawings, her primary medium after her early work, and in other ways, it’s not. When I first saw “Untitled,” circa 1970, above, I thought it was a piece of fabric. I stood in front of it for almost 30 minutes in utter disbelief that it was a Drawing, and one of THE most amazing I’ve ever seen. I subsequently christened the late Ms. Mohamedi, “The Goddess of Line.” It was said that “She was one person who was always in tune- life, work, the way she dressed, how she talked, behaved- each always totally in tune with the other, one straight line2.” During her lifetime, she was largely unknown, and so she gave many of her pieces away as gifts. Eventually, a crippling illness robbed her of her ability to Draw, before tragically taking her life at just 53 in 1990.

Ms. Mohamedi taught, and those she came in contact with have continued to spread her name and influence. Thankfully, currently and in the recent past, there are other Artists, like Mr. Hockney, William Kentridge, Raymond Pettibon, Marcel Dzama, Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, R. Crumb and Chris Ware for whom Drawing is central to their Art. My hope is they, and all the other Artists who Draw, inspire the next generations of Artists to continue Drawing, if schools continue to stop teaching it. The Met, MoMA and many other museums have Drawing workshops, but beyond Art, institutions in other realms, and businesses, benefit from Drawings to no end. They have a stake in this, too. It’s going to take many people and organizations from all walks of life who realize what’s at stake take action to reverse the direction things seem to be taking. Human creativity has always found ways to express itself. I’m hoping that continues to find popular expression in Drawings. The time is NOW! to make sure. Before it’s too late.

Today, there are infinitely more Drawing tools, and ways to Draw, available than ever before. So, pick up a pencil, or use whatever device you’re reading this on, express yourself, nurture your creativity and ideas, and Draw!

For The Record is a series of pieces that are about key/core subjects & beliefs that underly everything else I’ve written here. The first three parts are here. 

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

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  1. David Hockney, the legendary Artist who has Painted, Drawn and Photographed, has spoken at length about the shortcomings of the camera. Over the past three years, I’ve come to agree with him. ↩
  2. Here ↩

Art- With A Capital “A”

For The Record #1. First part of a series.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Back at The Met, May 6, 2018. The Museum, as it’s referred to, is one of the world’s great repositories of Art with a capital “A” with collections covering 5,000 years of it from all cultures in all its forms. It’s also one of the very best things about living in NYC. No. It’s THE best thing in my opinion. 1,700+ visits in since August 1, 2002, every time I turn the corner and see the building looming in front of me, I still get a chill down my spine. I touch the corner as I go in each time as a way of saying “Hello” to an old friend and to give thanks for each and every opportunity I get to do so.

To mark the 4 and a half year Anniversary of NighthawkNYC, during which I’ve published 225 pieces in 240 weeks (Phew…), I thought I’d take the opportunity to set the record straight on a few things that I feel are at the core of what I believe, and what I’ve written here. Perhaps I should have “explained” them at the beginning instead of letting those who’ve read these pieces (for which I Thank You) wonder, “What the heck?” Well, better late than never. Herewith the first installment in a brief series called For The Record. Consider them “footnotes” or “addendums” to every piece I’ve written.

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling reproduced as part of The Met’s staggering Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer, 2017-8, one of the sublime experiences of my life.

First- Art is of one of man and womankind’s supreme accomplishments in my view. I believe there should be some distinction between the Art of someone like Michelangelo and, say, the art of someone learning (said with all due respect).

Various young artists, unknown titles. A display of children’s art beautifying an NYC public school under renovation.

That’s why I capitalize Art and its associated terms (Artist, Painter, Sculptor, Musician, Painter, Photographer, et al.). It’s my way of showing these people the respect I think they’ve earned and deserve. I’ve done this here since Day 1- July 15, 2015, and I’m sure there are some who frown at me for doing it, and some who disagree with me for doing it. Along the way, I’ve seen a few others doing it this way and frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t become more widely adopted. I hope it does soon.

The terrific, and terrifically overlooked, Honore Sharrer’s, Workers and Paintings, 1943, Oil on board, seen at MoMA. Some of the Art she includes are Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Picasso’s Girl before a Mirror, and others by Jean-Francois Millet and Diego Rivera. Though this work and the originals of most of what she includes in it are 100 years old, +/-, for me, this and all of them are Art. Will the future agree? Time will tell…

“What makes a work of art? I don’t know. There are lots of people who tell you they are making art. Maybe some of them are, but I’m not sure that’s true for all of them. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but that’s not a phrase I would use. I’d prefer to say I’m making pictures – depictions.” David Hockney, A History of Pictures, with his capitalization, eBook P.2.

I’ve held David Hockney’s writings, and ideas, in the highest regard since his revolutionary, and eternally controversial, book Secret Knowledge came out in 2001, but I find it cumbersome to use the word “pictures” here in place of “Art.” Regarding what “makes a work of art?,” as he asks, it seems to me that it takes hundreds of years for the dust to settle on what’s being created in our time and for something, a “picture,” as Mr. Hockney says, to be considered “Art” (IF it continues to speak to people). None of us will be around when that bell rings. So, in the meantime, I’ve opted to use the term Art, capital “A,” respectfully, applying it to all working Artists, present or past.

Thanks, Twyla. I couldn’t have said it better. And so, this scene has appeared in my Banner, sans moving truck, for the past year. If that truck is waiting for me, it may have a long wait. I haven’t been out of Manhattan overnight since February 4, 2012. The Joyce Theater, December, 2019.

The other reason I do it is because Art is my religion. Frank Lloyd Wright, who I consider to be an “ultimate Artist,” capitalized Nature since it was his religion. Art is mine.

Reach out and touch faith. For me, going to The Met is going to church, as I said early on. At this point in my life, it feels like Home. Back Home, again, late on December 22, 2018. Weather be damned. It’s always beautiful inside.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is ”Personal Jesus” by Martin L. Gore of Depeche Mode, from their 1990 album Violator. They perform it here on Letterman–

For The Record is a series of pieces that are about key/core subjects & beliefs that underly everything else I’ve written here.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

Looking At The Past And Seeing The Future

Written by Kenn Sava

“Johannes van Eyck made this,” the inscription by the Artist reads in this detail from “The Arnolfini Portrait,” which he also dated 1434. Closer to Van Eyck Photo.

Is Jan van Eyck the “greatest” Painter ever?

“Wait? Kenn Sava call someone ‘the greatest’ anything? I thought he didn’t believe in qualitatively comparing Artists or Artwork?” I don’t. There’s no such thing as “the best” in the Arts. Yet, the work of Jan van Eyck seems to me to be beyond the boundaries of normal discourse. I’m asking technically now. In that sense, and instead of “greatest,” let’s put it this way- Does Jan van Eyck (and, possibly, his brother Hubert, who may or may not, have worked on some or many of his early pieces before passing away in 1426) remain unsurpassed among Painters? If you or yours know of a greater technician in the history of Painting, by all means, set me straight. I’d LOVE to see him or her. Still, technique is only a means to an end, right? On its own, it doesn’t make something “Art.”

When I was a kid, freshly a teen, I discovered the work of Jan van Eyck (JvE) in this book-

I’d never seen anything like it. I still haven’t. There are a lot of ways you can discover an Artist you previously didn’t know today. Back then, coming across a book on him or her in a library, bookstore or a friend’s house, were the primary means for me. It’s now one of a number of primary means. In what was a black & white world at the time, impossible to imagine today, seeing this kind of color was part of the revelation. The closer I’ve looked over the decades, I’ve found his work is like the proverbial onion- There’s MUCH more going on in it than beautifully meets the eye at first look, with virtually every single detail carrying layers of meaning that have taken the intervening 600 years to begin to unravel.

On my 17th birthday, the first day I was eligible for it, I went to get my driver’s license- a big deal as we all know for anyone heretofore confined to riding bikes or walking. I went to take my eye test and the tester said, “Read the chart on the wall.” “What wall?,” I replied. Crushed. I had to go and get glasses. Finally, I passed and got the treasured document.

Freedom!

A week or two later,  bright and early one August Saturday morning, I took my first extended driving trip. I got in the family car and drove it to Washington DC by myself, a trip that took me well over 5 hours. I parked in front of the National Gallery of Art and went inside. I looked at one Painting for about 30 minutes, and left. I got in my car and drove all the way back.

A few months later, I did the same exact thing, again. I went back to see Jan van Eyck’s The Annunciation a second time.

Jan van Eyck, The Annunciation, c. 1434/1436, Oil on canvas transferred from panel, 35 1/2 x 13 7/16 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Photo.

For me, this work summed up everything I loved about Painting, most of which I wasn’t able to put into words at the time. Only now, looking back on it decades later can I see in it the germs of any number of things that have continued to interest me since. This time, however, I looked at a second Painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’ Benci, (c. 1474/1478, Painted only about 40 years later!1 to this day my favorite Leonardo (“favorite” does not mean “best”).

Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’ Benci, c. 1474/1478, Oil on panel, 15 x 14 9/16. Historians believe that at one point this portrait had folded arms below what remains today. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Photo

I then stopped in the gift store and bought a poster of the Van Eyck, I got in my car and drove home.

Such was the effect Jan van Eyck’s work had on me. It still does.

These days, I don’t have to get in a car and drive almost 6 hours to see one of Van Eyck’s incomparable masterpieces. Now, I can see much of what the Master created that resides in museums all around the world without leaving my chair. In fact, I can now see them INFINITELY closer than even Mr. Van Eyck may have. How astounding is that?

Jan & Hubert van Eyck, Detail of the “Deity Enthroned” section from the Ghent Altarpiece, before restoration. Note the 1cm scale in the lower left corner. 1cm is .4 of an inch! Screenshot of Closer to Van Eyck Photo.

Closer to Van Eyck centers around the incomparable “Ghent Altarpiece” (as it is known today. The Artist’s name for the work is unknown) and its ongoing restoration- all 11.5 by 15.5 feet of its inside AND 11.5 by about 7 3/4 feet of its exterior (seen when the panels are closed)! 

The 8 panels visible when the work is closed seen before restoration. Closer to Van Eyck Photo.

The same 8 panels seen closed after restoration. Closer to Van Eyck Photo.

Well, what we have of it after its six century journey that saw part of it looted by Napoleon’s armies in 1794, the whole stolen by the Nazis in WW2 and stored in a salt mine. One of its panels (the so-called “Just Judges,” seen in a copy in the lower left corner of the Photo below, which may contain a Self-Portrait) was later stolen by an incredibly selfish sacristan and has still not been recovered.

Hubert & Jan van Eyck, the “Ghent Altarpiece,” 11.5 by 15.5 FEET, mid-1420s to 1432, Oil on 24 panels, 12 seen here with open. In this Photo, the  work is seen prior to restoration which has begun with the exterior panels. NPR Photo.

For me, the Ghent Altarpiece is on the shortest of short lists of the supreme accomplishments of human creativity.

The public restoration of the exterior panels of the “Ghent Altarpiece” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (i.e this is the view museum visitors can have of the ongoing work). Photo: KIK-IRPA, Brussels. From Closer to Van Eyck.

On Closer to Van Eyck you can study each of the 20 panels in the infinite detail of 100 billion pixels in macrophotography, infrared macrophotography, infrared reflectography and x-radiography. The Ghent Altarpiece would have been enough- MORE than enough to make Closer to Van Eyck one of the world’s most essential Art references, but it’s been continually expanded to the point that it now covers THIRTY SIX other works by, or attributed to, Jan Van Eyck from museums all over the world.

“Further works” above and beyond the “Ghent Altarpiece” by, or attibuted to, JvE that can be studied in extraordinary detail on Closer to Van Eyck, each one a masterpiece in its own right now numbers an incredible 36.

These include my old friend The Annunciation in DC. Good thing. I haven’t owned a car in over 20 years.

I didn’t see it like this. Detail of The Annunciation. Notice the scale on the lower left. 4mm is .15 of one inch! Closer to Van Eyck Photo

Having the chance to study Van Eyck to this degree should lead to countless new discoveries about his work and working methods. It may also help answer some long standing questions, of which there are too many to number. Beginning, perhaps, with this one. Even to this lay viewer, at normal magnification, it’s obvious The Annunciation is not the co-called “hyper-realism” or whatever other meaningless box some try to use to stick Artists in. For all of the astounding detail in The Annunciation, and other works by JvE, the figures of Mary and the Angel are oversized relative to the room they’re in. It goes without saying that for one of the supreme Masters of Painting this was intentional.

Small wonder. "Saint Barbara," 1437, Jan Van Eyck. Barely 12 inches tall.

This is as close as I’m ever allowed to study a Van Eyck in person. ” Saint Barbara“ looms larger than life here in this incredible Drawing by Jan van Eyck from 1437 that’s barely 12 inches tall. I don’t believe this is due to the Saint being closer to the viewer. From my piece on Unfinished at The Met Bruer in 2016.

Why did he choose to do this? David Hockney may provide an insight. In A Bigger Message: Conversation with David Hockney, by Martin Gayford, Mr. Hockney says, “If you look at Egyptian pictures, the Pharaoh is three times bigger than anybody else. The archaeologist measures the length of the Pharaoh’s mummy and concludes he wasn’t any larger than the average citizen. But actually he was bigger – in the minds of Egyptians2.” From there, you can look as closely and as deeply as you want. No matter how closely I look, the wonders never cease.

“The Arnolfini Portrait,” Full common title, “Portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and his Wife,” (Title given by the Artist is unknown), Signed(!) and dated 1434, 32 1/4 x 23.6 inches, National Gallery, London, Photo.

Two works recently added to Closer to Van Eyck are two of his most renowned masterpieces that reside at The National Gallery, London, home of “The Arnolfini Portrait” and “Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?).“

Ready for its close up. “The Arnolfini Portrait” lying on the table to the right in September, 2017. Closer to Van Eyck Photo.

I spent an hour in the small gallery that contained them during my last trip out of NYC overnight in 2012 the day after I saw the once in a lifetime Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, at London’s National Gallery, the most complete display of Leonardo’s surviving Paintings ever mounted. It’s difficult for me to imagine a harder test than seeing the work of any Artist virtually side by side with that of Leonardo’s. Eight years later, the time I spent in that small gallery remains indelible. Seeing “The Arnolfini Portrait” in person was overwhelming. Then, I saw this-

Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), 1433, Oil on oak, 10 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches. National Gallery, London, Photo.

Though I’d seen it in books countless times, standing right in front of it, all of a sudden, I was gripped by an unescapable feeling. This IS him! Why do I believe that Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait) is a Self Portrait? It doesn’t feel like the kind of portrait that would result from a commission- unless the commissioner was quite unconventional, and not one of the other portraits JvE did were “unconventional” in this sense. For one thing, he has a stubble. It’s too hard for me to believe that anyone commissioning a famous Artist (which he was) at the time would want to be immortalized with stubble. For another, the chaperon on his head is up on the sides. It looks positively sculptural- almost like a John Chamberlain. This has the look of someone who’s busy working on something that involves frequent turns of the head, often quick ones, and is keeping it out of the way by tucking it up on its sides. Compare this work with “Portrait of a Man with a Red Chaperon” in Berlin, also on Closer to Van Eyck. Here, the sitter has no stubble and his chaperon is very neatly positioned on his head. Also, the sitter looks straight ahead. In the London Portrait of a Man, he looks askance at the viewer- like he would if he were Painting himself by looking in a mirror- as David Hockney surmises in his revolutionary and essential book, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. Finally, the sitter looks out at us over almost 600 years with a quiet confidence and surety that, along with that almost avant-garde chaperone on his head, convinces me that here is a very unique man, one with the confidence to show the world, and time immemorial, who he really is, doing what he loves doing. Jan van Eyck may have Painted himself in reflection in the famous mirror in “The Arnolfini Portrait,” and in one or two other works. These may provide some additional insight when looking at Portrait of a Man.

Jan van Eyck, Detail of the signature and the mirror immediately below the chandelier, seen further below, from “The Arnolfini Portrait.” It’s long been thought there’s a reflected “Self Portrait” in it of the Artist standing in the doorway in blue. Certainly an “unconventional” one, if it is. Velazquez borrowed this idea in Las Meninas, 222 years later in 1656. Notice the miniature scenes from the Passion of Christ around the mirror, and the reflected chandelier(!), all the while bearing in mind that when I measured this section in Photoshop, the entire mirror, with its frame, measured 3.85 inches in diameter! This is the closest we have been able to study this…until now. National Gallery, London, Photo

“The Arnolfini Portrait” has now been added to Closer to Van Eyck. The public has never seen it like this. Finally(!) we can see what is going on in the famous convex mirror. A number of historians believe JvE is in the blue coat. Seeing this, I now wonder if he wouldn’t be the gent in the back in the red. 2mm is .078 of one inch!

Among the others, perhaps most fascinating to me are the two figures in the middle distance of Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, the figure on the right in the red chaperone I suspect just might be a Self-Portrait of Jan with his mysterious brother Hubert to the left.

Detail of the middle distance of Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, in the Louvre, just one of the “other” works by/attributed to JvE that are included on Closer to Van Eyck. I’m stuck on the idea that this is a portrait of Jan and his brother, the virutally lost to history, Hubert van Eyck. Note the red chaperone and the nose on the figure I believe may be Jan, and compare both to Portrait of a Man. From Closer to Van Eyck.

IF this is a dual portrait of the brothers it would be the only one known of Hubert during his lifetime3 One of 5 surviving documents that mention him during his lifetime say he was a Painter “without equal.” Well, he was older than Jan. In it, we see the face of the man in profile showing a prominent nose, and his red chaperone is down as he is not working. Finally, in Portrait of a Man, we don’t see the sitter’s hands, as we do in a number of JvE’s other portraits. This leads me to believe they were busy Painting. All of these reasons, and a gut feeling, reinforce my feeling that the Portrait of a Man is a Self-Portrait. Interestingly, around the frame of that work (see Photo posted earlier), apparently in his own hand, is written “Als Ich Can,” JvE’s motto (“As I can,” with “Ich” a play on Eyck) along the top, and “Jan van Eyck made me on 21 October 1433” along the bottom. Of course, the experts have argued about this back and forth for almost 600 years. I’m convinced. Ok. Now, back to world peace…

Detail of “The Arnolfini Portrait.” The section of the chandelier beginning at the top of the sole flame is about 5 inches tall by 6.7 inches wide. HOW could anyone paint this in 1434? The sole lit candle makes me believe this Painting is a memorial commissioned by the man, Giovanni Arnolfini, who JvE may have also Painted by himself, for his wife, Costanza Trenta, who died the year before, and who stands under extinguished candles. National Gallery, London, Photo

Part of me has been searching for “the next Van Eyck” my whole life. That is both unfair and unrealistic. Times were so different back in 1400 I’m sure I can’t begin to imagine it. Oil painting was, virtually, a brand new medium at the time, and for centuries it was said (by Vasari, apparently incorrectly) that Jan van Eyck had “invented” oil painting. If he didn’t, he was certainly among the very first to master it on the highest level. The craft and Art of Painting were different then, too, apparently. In Secret Knowledge, David Hockney sheds much light on what may, or may not, have been some of the techniques Artists from around JvE’s time, forward, including Vermeer, may have used to create some of these works which, like the chandelier in Van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait,” seem to border on the impossible. Optics. If they did use optics, in no way does that diminish the achievement, in m view.

The evidence for JvE’s candidacy for technical supremacy may never be presented better, or in more detail, than it is on Closer To. Leaving that pointless question aside leaves you free to look and marvel. You will never see it better in person- no matter HOW close they let you get to his work with your naked eyes. The ramifications of this are staggering to consider. Among them, this quickly came to my mind-

Is THIS the future of seeing Art?

It’s not hard to think that, one day, museums might follow suit doing something similar with works in their collections and posting amazing, super high resolution macrophotography on their sites. In 100 years, will ALL museums be online with sites like this, where, no doubt for a fee, you can visit any work in their collection and study it in virtually infinite detail? I’m not sure how many Artworks I’d want to study as closely as I want to JvE’s. Most Art is best seen from a comfortable distance. Yet given the difficulties in seeing Art in person now almost anywhere- glare, uneven or poor lighting, inferior glazing, etc., etc, it’s a situation crying out for something “better.” And, we may get “something else,” until that “better” is found- if it ever is.

Panel XIV of the Ghent Altarpiece, during final inpainting. Saint Bavo Cathedral © Lukas-Art in Flanders vzw; photo: KIK-IRPA, Brussels. When I look at the Painting of this section, the miniature street scene in the background, only a small piece of it seen here, makes me wish JvE created more secular Art. From Closer to Van Eyck.

And so, for all of these reasons, I bestow the first NighthawkNYC Art Website of the Year Award on Closer to Van Eyck, which, like NighthawkNYC, is free- so far. In this one site, we get to see the distant past as never before. And, possibly, the future.

Rembrandt never left Holland during his lifetime. Closer to Van Eyck is making it possible for me to never leave NYC, again.

At least NYC is home to three works thought to be by “Jan van Eyck and Workshop,” as all three are labeled. “The Crucifixion” and “The Last Judgement” seen above at The Met (both may be seen on Closer to Van Eyck), and “The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, Stl. Elizabeth and Jan Vos,” on view over at the Frick Collection. By the way, that gentleman existing to the left is the same Met Guard Fred Cray featured in his PhotoBook, Changing of the Guard! Well? It’s a small world, and getting smaller…

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “You Can Leave Your Hat On” by Randy Newman.

My thanks to Lana Hattan.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. It is reported that Jan van Eyck’s portraits were admired in Italy in the 1430’s. Is it possible Leonardo knew the work of Van Eyck? ↩
  2. eBook version, P.61 ↩
  3. Some believe Hubert may have Painted this. Some others believe Jan may have contributed. I’m skeptical on both counts for any number of reasons. For starters, I can’t believe either would have been capable of the terrible geometry of the grave. ↩

On Painting & Photography

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (except *)

Note- Robert Frank has been mentioned in many of my pieces over the past 3 years of my “deep-dive” into Modern & Contemporary Photography, a realm that he had a seminal role in creating with the publication of  The Americans. When the sad news came that he had passed away at 94 on September 9th, I was finishing yet another piece that he is a part of- one that summarizes some of my thoughts on Painting & Photography these past three years, and also marks the 60th anniversary of the American publication of The Americans. Too far along to change, I’ve left it as it was, and added this as my “R.I.P.”  That Robert Frank was, and remains, one of the most influential figures in Art of our time was already testified to within.

Subtitle- “On Rembrandt’s 350th, and Robert Frank’s 60th”

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1660. The Artist is seen here in the last decade of his life. Seen on March 26, 2015 in The Met’s former European Paintings galleries.

When I look at Art, sooner or later, my thoughts involve Rembrandt for any one of a myriad of reasons. I do my best, however, to keep my thoughts about his death to a minimum, so this is going to be purposely short. Rembrandt was pretty poor the last decade of his life. His prior fame had deserted him as if he were a fad, or a “mania,” like tulips were in 1637 when he was 30, and combined with an extravagant lifestyle1 that he could no longer maintain, he lived in housing for the poor at the end2. When he died, at just 63, he was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. 20 years later, his bones were destroyed, as was the custom with the remains of such unfortunates. The church, where his unmarked grave was, finally got around to erecting a plaque, inside, in 1909. It redeemed itself some 30 years later when a young Jewish girl who was in hiding nearby from the Nazis took solace in the sound of the church’s bells. Today, there’s a statue of Anne Frank outside the church. His Art largely fell into eclipse, except for a few artists he influenced, for about 100 years, as hard as that is for us to imagine today. October 4, 2019, happens to be the 350th anniversary of his death.

Seen in situ. One of the glories of New York. Five of The Met’s Rembrandts seen in the European Paintings Galleries on June 10, 2017, before the current skylight renovations caused their relocation to the Robert Lehman Collection galleries. When I think of “home,” this gallery comes to mind.

I’ve remained passionate about the work of Rembrandt van Rijn since I was in my early teens and he is one of very very few Artists I can say that about. Almost no where else have I found the humanity, and the depth and range of humanity, I find in Rembrandt. Because of this, I find his Self-Portraits particularly fascinating. In the end, they show me that the Artist, himself, was every bit as human as anyone he ever depicted.

Rembrandt after Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, ca.1634-5, Red chalk, 14 x 18 inches, From The Met’s Lehman Collection. Seen in 2016.

Few other Artists I’ve seen have the power to say as much with just a few strokes as can be seen time and time again in his Drawings- like this one, in which Rembrandt manages to capture the entirety of Leonardo’s masterpiece (and add some additional elements that may have come from a print of the Painting he saw- Rembrandt never left Holland) in so few strokes, you can almost count them.

Self-Portrait in a Soft Hat, 1631, Etching completed with black chalk. The Artist was about 25 at this point at the beginning of his career. Seen at the Morgan Library in September, 2016.

Today, he’s honored as Holland’s favorite son. Public places have been renamed in his honor. (“Rembrandt Square,” etc., etc.). In 2015, the country paid a record price for 2 portraits by the Master, 180 million dollars, splitting the cost with France (for the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum), partially (largely?) because of their value to tourism, (i.e. so they can continue to cash in on him). Pretty ironic given how he was treated near and at the end of his life.

The most Rembrandt Self-Portraits in one place I’ve yet been in were these five etchings seen at Rembrandt’s First Masterpiece at the Morgan Library in September, 2016. I was shocked to see them when I walked in. I had no idea they were included.

So, to me, his end is one of the most unfortunate, and saddest, chapters in Art history. I’m not so sure it’s a cause for all that much celebrating. The world of Art seems to agree. There’s only one museum (as far as I know) anywhere in the world mounting a show of Rembrandt’s work that might be construed as honoring/memorializing it anytime close to that date, with that one actually opening on October 4th3.

Nonetheless, the chance to put a big round number on the front of a marketing campaign seems to be all that’s required for Taschen to leap into the breach with three new volumes in their XL (aka “HUGE!”) series of books. Well? In 87 years, for the 400th anniversary of his birth in 2106, actual physical paper books may be a thing of the past4 Whether they arrive as physical books, ebooks, or whatever form books will take in 87 years, I won’t be here to see them. As I write this, the first of Taschen’s “trilogy,” Rembrandt: The Self-Portraits (R:TSPs, henceforth) is out and in wide distribution. It’s a handsome volume, with a nifty cover image that displays one of 6 different Rembrandt Self-Portraits depending on the angle you look at it. I picked it up in a store and passed, even though nothing Rembrandt did has held me more spellbound for so long as his Self-Portraits have. So, why did I pass on this complete collection of them?  I was extremely disappointed that the great Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz wasn’t involved in it, and from what I understand isn’t involved in the other two volumes either. That statement will serve as my protest since I subsequently bought R:TSPs. With all due respect to the scholars chosen, no one will replace Gary Schwartz for me when it comes to Rembrandt- or any other Artist he turns his unique skillset to (Dear Mr. Schwartz, If you happen to see this? Jan van Eyck, Please?). Suffice it to say that the renowned Professor, Simon Schama, host of the PBS series, The Power of Art, dedicated his own Rembrandt biography, Rembrandt’s eyes, to Gary Schwartz.

“I regard Rembrandt’s self-portraits less as assertions of a strong personal identity than as a means to help the artist, like Saint Paul, become more like other people. Behind them lies a man who depended on his art to offset imbalances in his life and his relations with others.” Gary Schwartz.

Focusing on what we do get, the book itself is large, oversized as they say in the trade, a full 10 x 13.5 inches and weighs about 4 1/2 pounds, very light for a true Taschen XL which generally weigh in around 20 pounds. Its 176 pages contain a succinct essay and the rest of the book is Rembrandt, in my view, at his best. The reproductions are very good5, with many being reproduced in actual size.

A publicity shot by Taschen. Rest assured the copies sold in the USA are in English.*

Rembrandt was the first Artist to create a body of Self-Portraits. Yes, the cheap headline is “Rembrandt Invented The Selfie,” which, without looking, I’m sure has already been used to death. That’s not true. He was not the first to do a Self-Portrait, just to create a body of them among Artists known to us today. And what a body of work they are! We don’t have his diary, but, though it’s dangerous to read too much into the SPs (unless you want to), they are not really “pure” autobiography beyond the fact that yes, they do indeed depict the Artist, and we get to see his famous visage evolve as the years and decades go by. Exactly what is going on in each of them has been the subject of much conjecture, and I suspect will continue to be for as long as people look at them. He created them in oil, in ink, and with an etching needle (in Paintings, Drawings and Etchings). Though I love everything the man did, for me, they have been THE supreme body of Art since I saw my first one, shown up top, at The Met way back when. If I had to live the rest of my days only being allowed to look at one work of Art (oh jeez), it would be a Rembrandt Self-Portrait. But, please don’t ask me which one. Right now, I would select his Self-Portrait with Two Circles in England, but that choice is often a factor of which one I’ve looked at last. I’d take any of them- Painted, Drawn or Etched. And in R:TSPs, we get to see every one of them (they say).

Two pre-release copies of Rembrandt: The Complete Paintings, left, flank a copy of Rembrandt: The Complete Drawings & Etching, which complete Taschen’s “trilogy.” As close as I’ve gotten- so far.

While I am very much looking forward to seeing Rembrandt: The Complete Paintings (TCP, henceforth), it should be mentioned that though The Rembrandt Research Project issued its latest volume of what it calls the “Corpus” of the Master’s Paintings in 2016, the controversy around what that body “should” consist of shows no signs of ending, and so? Buyer beware! What’s agreed upon as his complete Paintings will, very possibly, change in the near future. So, even 350 years after his sad demise, this will most likely not be the “final word” on the subject.

Still, there’s so much of what RvR has accomplished in his other work that can be seen in his Self-Portraits. You can trace a good deal of his development as an Artist in this work. And then? There is the incredible Painting! No matter how much Painting I’ve seen in the 40 year (next year6 I’ve been going to shows, my mind always comes back, for a variety of reasons, to “how Rembrandt Painted it.”

Ok. So, you’re wondering- What does all of this have to do with Robert Frank?

Robert Frank: The Americans, my copy of Steidl’s 50th Anniversary edition, 2008.

Questionable timing aside, for me, the real value of RvR:TSPs coming out now has been the bath of the icy cold water of “reality” it’s thrown on my deep dive into Modern & Contemporary Photography, by which I mean post-Robert Frank’s The Americans, the most seminal PhotoBook of our time. 2019 marks the 60th Anniversary of American publication of The Americans (and there’s been almost no fanfare about that- as far as I’ve seen thus far)7. This fall/winter marks 3 years of my “deep dive” into this realm of M&C Photography that I consider The Americans the first bookmark in, a beginning of, in a sense. I started from the place of believing that Photography had not, as yet, earned its place with Painting, Drawing and Sculpture. Looking at R:TSPs? I realized that after everything I’ve seen, I can’t say my mind has been changed all that much. For one thing, though, it’s still a very young medium- particularly when compared to thousands of years of Painting. After all, they’re marketing the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s passing, and he’s thousands of years after Artists started Painting. Jan van Eyck was one of the first to use oil paint in the early 1400’s. Photography (with chemicals) has been around since Sir John F.W. Herschel coined the word in his paper “On the Art of Photography; or the Application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the Purpose of Pictorial Presentation,” on March 14, 18398– 180 years. But, the more I look at both, there’s one thing that strikes me as a major difference between Painting and Photographs-

Time.

It takes time to create a Painting. Even if the Artist does one quickly. In most Paintings, it takes longer to apply one brushstroke than it does to create most Photographs.

I think I can see that. And, I think it’s telling.

I’m not the only one.

David Hockney, Don & Christopher, Los Angeles, 1982, Polaroid collage “Joiner.” Seen at David Hockney, The Met, January, 2018.

Earlier this year, while I was formulating my thoughts on this subject, before I saw R:TSPs, I came across 2 books by David Hockney, Cameraworks, 1984, and Hockney on ‘Art,’ conversations with Paul Joyce, published in 1999. In both of them, Mr. Hockney 9, a man who has created both Paintings and Photographs (since 196710), and innovated in both realms, put into words much of what I was thinking- uncannily. “During the last several months I’ve come to realize that it has something to do with the amount of time that’s been put into the image. I mean, Rembrandt spent days, weeks, painting a portrait. You can go to a museum and look at a Rembrandt for hours and you’re not going to spend as much time looking as he spent panitng- observing, layering his observations, layering the time.” “My main argument was that a photograph could not be looked at for a long time. Have you noticed that?,” David Hockney, Cameraworks, P.9. There. He just said it for me.

Recently, in these very pages, without any question from me or the knowledge that I was working on this piece, the Photographer Fred Cray said– “One of the concerns I’ve always had with photography is the way it holds up on the wall with paintings and other media. Photography often seems thin and quick compared to painting.”

Anytime I see a Photographic portrait, my mind (at times, unconsciously) always turns to Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits (though, much of what I’m saying here could also be said for almost all of his portraits, as Mr. Hockney inferred). Not as a way of qualitatively comparing them. As a means of gauging the impact. They are the benchmark for me. Most of the time, the impact of the Photography in question isn’t the same. I wondered why for most of the first two years of this dive. Early in 2019, it hit me. Time. Time is a key element in Painting. In so many ways. From the time each stroke takes to apply, to how long it takes to complete the work to the rendering of time, itself, in the work. These are not questions most Photographers have to face. They deal with questions of light and setting before the fact, then they’re finished- unless they modify it later in printing, or digitally.

Unknown Artist seen Painting on 7th Avenue, NYC, September, 2019. Yes, he got a parking ticket. Many Street Photographers would have been done long before this gentleman got set up.

Of course, Painters have ways of dealing with this question to ensure whatever level of consistency in the lighting they want. They can work in their studio, or they can work from a live subject, a still life, a Photograph, a Drawing, or what have you. Even au plain air, as the Artist above, is doing. Time is effecting the result in other ways. My feeling is it’s this passing of time, in this multiplicity of ways, that it takes the Artist to create the work that is manifesting itself in the work in subtle ways, maybe some of them are so subtle as to be subconscious, but that are nonetheless part of what the viewer experiences. With each brush stroke, time is passing, and in a real way, time is being layered on to the canvas. Time is absolute in a Photograph- it’s the same time at the top as it is at the bottom, unless you’re shooting with a time lapse, like Stephen Wilkes.

All of this also serves to remind me, again, of possibly why great Contemporary Painters, like Richard Estes, John Salt, Rod Penner, and David Hockney as well, among many others, use their own Photographs as part of their working process, but the reason they are Painters and not Photographers is because of what they find lacking in Photography- what it can’t present of their vision that Painting can. They’re not alone. The list of great Painters who also took Photographs at some point is long- ranging from Thomas Eakins, Edgar Degas and Edvard Munch, through Ralston Crawford and Robert Rauschenberg, and even Picasso. I find it telling that not a single one of them identified himself as a “Photographer.” Only Charles Sheeler was dually identified and that might be because his Photography earned him money to support his Painting.

Then, in the midst of all of these thoughts, a terrific new book was released by Steidl, Dave Heath: Dialogues With Solitude, the catalog for a show at LE BAL, Paris in 2018. It gave me pause for thought.

My copy of Dave Heath: Dialogues With Solitude, Steidl, 2019.

WHO is Dave Heath?

From Dave Heath: Dialogues With Solitude, Steidl, 2019. *Photo courtesy of Steidl.

It turns out that Mr. Heath was, not is, unfortunately, but his work struck me every bit as hard as any I’ve seen in this 3 year deep dive. Particularly, his portraits, and specifically his portraits of one subject not looking at the camera.

Dave Heath’s earliest body of work are Photographs he took while serving in Korea in 1953-4, including this one. From Dave Heath: Dialogues With Solitude, Steidl, 2019. *Photo courtesy of Steidl.

It turns out that he was not only a master with a camera- a master of the Portrait, he was, also, a master printer. To the point that no less than the aforementioned, esteemed, Robert Frank paid Mr. Heath to print his work for what I believe was his first solo show at no less than the Art Institute of Chicago in April, 1961, a byproduct of The Americans’ release here two years earlier. That says it all.

My copy of Dave Heath’s A Dialogue With Solitude in the 2000 Lumiere Press edition. The books is on the right. The print is in the sleeve to the left.

Captivated by what I’d seen in the Steidl book, which is very well printed, in my opinion, though, unfortunately, Mr. Heath, who passed away in June, 2016, was not involved in it, I learned that Dave Heath’s “masterpiece” is the PhotoBook, A Dialogue With Solitude, 1965, a subject I am quite familiar with. I hunted down a “reasonably” priced copy of the 2000 Lumiere Press limited edition reprint with a signed & numbered print. The reprinted edition includes a letter from Robert Frank. The print in my set is “Washington Square, New York City, 1958.”

Washington Square, New York City, 1958. A Photograph that leaves me speechless, and turns my thoughts to Rembrandt.

It’s one of the very greatest accomplishments in PhotoBooks I’ve yet seen. Given what I said about his printing, the inclusion of a signed & numbered print in the Lumiere Press edition is a key. When I saw it for the first time I had a feeling that was closest of any Photograph I can think of to that I get while looking at a Rembrandt Portrait. Of course, as always, your results may differ.

For some reason that I can’t fathom, the word is that “Mr. Heath’s work went out of style.” Well? Rembrandt, too, “went out of style,” for well over a century, as hard as that might seem to believe to us now. Now, with Steidl’s Dave Heath: Dialogues With Solitude, it seems to me that a show or a book that returns a great, overlooked or forgotten Artist to the world has done that world a great cultural service. I can’t think of a higher purpose for either.

David Hockney, Perspective Is Tunnel Vision, Outside It Opens Up, 2017, Acrylic on two canvases. David Hockney shows how the camera sees in “tunnel vision,” single point perspective,” versus how humans see with what he calls “reverse perspective,” with infinite vanishing points, born of driving through a 10 mile long tunnel in Europe then suddenly coming into the great outdoors in 198511.

Reading David Hockney further, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Photography, he speaks time and again that cameras, while being great at reproducing two dimensional objects12, do not see the way humans do. He has devoted much of his subsequent Painting career (as seen in his fascinating recent shows) to challenging traditional perspective and exploring the innovations of both Renaissance masters and the masters of Cubism.

David Hockney, Grand Canyon I, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 96″ hexagonal, seen in April, 2018. Outside, it, indeeds, “opens up.” The Artist has also begun cutting the corners off his canvases to reinforce his ideas.

In 1999, Mr. Hockney asked, “How many truly memorable pictures are there? Considering the millions of photographs taken, there are few memorable images in this medium, which should tell us something. There have been far more images made this way than the sum of all previous images put together.” (Paul Joyce, Hockney on ‘Art’, P.43.) One thing that’s changed since Mr. Hockney said those words is that there are now more cameras in the world then there are people. It seems to me that that’s going to be a factor in this. The sheer number of Photographers versus Painters is, and is likely to remain indefinitely, skewed incredibly. Incalculably. It makes the odds of a “great” Photograph out of the billions being taken incrementally greater. “Quality only comes with quantity,” legendary Photographer Daido Moriyama said explaining why he takes so many Photos, in How I Take Photographs, page 7313.

I’ve noticed that the rise of Photography has coincided with a relatively ”quiet period” in Painting, in some ways. While this has lasted a few decades, more recently, I don’t have to look any further than my own 200+ piece Archive. I’ve said a number of times that one of the reasons I decided to focus on Photography the past three years was the lack of Painting shows that spoke to me sufficiently to undertake the work these pieces require. I wonder how much longer this will last- Is this an anomaly, or is this the beginning of the way things are going to be? Will we see the number of painters going forward that we’ve seen for the past 500 years? Of course, sheer numbers, or the lack of them, don’t guarantee masterpieces or geniuses. Greater numbers only serve to increase the odds.

At the three year mark, I’m still not convinced that Photography will come to be seen as Art in hundreds of years when that question is decided, IF anyone still cares about Art then. But? If they do, my bets are that Rembrandt’s will still be among the work most highly appreciated.

A work like Dave Heath’s Washington Square, New York City, 1958, gives me hope that Photography may still get there. Is it, as Mr. Hockney said, an image in a billion? Or is it an indication of what might be possible in the medium? I will continue to look…

Meanwhile, on October 4th? I’ll just light a candle. To go with the one in memory of Robert Frank. While I continue my dialogue with Davids Hockney and Heath…

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Grace,” written by Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas from Jeff’s immortal album, Grace. I worked with Mr. Lucas, and I booked Music into the now legendary NYC Music Club/Cafe, Sin-E in 1993, shortly after Jeff had played and recorded there. And then? He was suddenly…gone. I never met him or heard him perform in person. One of the great regrets of my life.

BookMarks–

My copy of The Rembrandt Book, (THE Rembrandt Book, or TRB, as I call it), by Gary Schwartz. In my opinion, it’s a model of everything a truly great Art monograph should be.

In addition to the books I referred to above, if someone were to ask me to pick one book on Rembrandt? I would choose The Rembrandt Book, by the aforementioned Gary Schwartz. It’s a book designed for readers both new to Rembrandt or expert on the Dutch Master, and so, it’s a book for a lifetime of enjoyment and research. Published in 2006 by Harry N. Abrams, it’s the SECOND full length monograph on Rembrandt by Gary Schwartz, and they couldn’t be more different (In a world where ANYone else would be thrilled to write one magnificent book on Rembrandt? HOW incredible is that?) or compliment each other better. TRB is oversized at 10 x 13 and weighs 6 pounds, but it is my bible on Rembrandt, and if I can’t find what I’m looking for there? I go to his prior monograph, the equally highly regarded, Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings, 380 pages and 3.6 pounds, published by Viking in 1985 (and I believe this book has been reissued at least once). Both books can be found very reasonably (for less than they were originally published for) in very good condition. Along with my Sister Wendy books, they are the foundations of my Art library.

Another book that’s very relevant to this discussion, and has been essential for me- one I don’t see recommended nearly often enough, is Believing Is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography) by the renowned Errol Morris. 

My prior pieces on PhotoBooks are here. 

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  1. You can still visit the beautiful, large, expensive house he bought at Jodenbreestraat 4, in Amsterdam. ↩
  2. Excuse me for seeing a lesson for today’s Art world in this, but I do. If this could happen to one of the greatest Artists who ever lived? It can happen to anyone. ↩
  3. The Wallfar-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Germany is having a show of Rembrandt’s Graphic Work that opens on, yes, October 4, 2019. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is hosting a Rembrandt-Velazquez show that opens a week later. ↩
  4. Gary Schwartz says there are some documents that raise the possibility that Rembrandt may have actually been born in 1605 or 1607  (Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book, P.15). I don’t think a year on either side of 2106 is going to make a difference regarding my being around to see it. ↩
  5. My one caveat being that they chose to reproduce only the detail of the early works in which RvR Painted himself as an onlooker in a crowd, denying the viewer the full context and setting. ↩
  6. I consider the incomparable 1980 Picasso Retrospective at MoMA the real beginning of my “looking career” at shows. Looking at Art books predates that by about a decade. ↩
  7. The Americans was first published in 1958 in France by Robert Delpire, and in 1959 by Grove Press in the USA. ↩
  8. //iphf.org/inductees/sir-john-frederick-william-herschel/ ↩
  9. Who, in addition to being a world-famous Painter, has also authored two important books on Art & Art History- Secret Knowledge and A History of Pictures ↩
  10. David Hockney, Something New Exhibition Catalog, 2018, P.6 ↩
  11. David Hockney, Something New Exhibition Catalog, 2018, P.5 ↩
  12. Afterall, what we have in Rembrandt: The Self-Portraits, and every other mass produced book of Paintings, are Photographs of Paintings. ↩
  13. For much more on how Daido Moriyama feels about whether Photography is Art, see P.205-6 in the chapter titled “The Real Daido Moriyama,” in this same book, How I Take Photographs. ↩

2018: The Year In Art Seen, And Met

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Will Art ever be more popular than it is now? On January 4th, 2019,  The Met announced another attendance record was set in 2018 when almost 7.4 million visited The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer or The Cloisters1.

On this late summer day, I’ll be lucky if I can figure out a way to get up the stairs to get in! Click any Photo for full size.

Simply put, when I think back on 2018, I’ll remember the extraordinary number of truly great shows I saw at The Met and The Met Breuer this past year, among those 7.4 million. While I certainly spent quality time at the other Museums and saw wonderful shows at each of them (not to mention countless galleries and a few Art & Book fairs), it’s almost impossible to top the list of shows The Met, collectively, mounted this year- especially when you consider that I didn’t even see the biggest show of them all- biggest by attendance that is, the show that drew 1,659,647 visitors- Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (I saw the parts of it that were installed outside of the show proper).

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination– A view of part of the show installed to the south of the Great Staircase.

I chose to skip it. My friend, the fashion Blogger extraordinaire, Magda, saw it and did a terrific piece on it, here.  As for the Art I saw in 2018? I’ll remember most standing on this spot near the south west corner of the 2nd floor of The Met, and marveling at the sight in front of me in a 270 degree range.

I’ve never seen the likes of this before. A 270 degree panorama from “the spot.” 2nd Floor, Metropolitan Museum.

Before my eyes, there were no less that 4 major and/or historic shows going on within yards of each other AT THE SAME TIME!

A fortnight of heaven. From right to left- 1- Rodin At The Met, 2- Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer, 3- David Hockney 80th Birthday Retrospective, 4- Birds of a Feather: Joseph Cornell’s Homage to Juan Gris. This photo was taken on February 4th, 2018. The last day all four of these shows were open at the same time.

Behind me, to the far right in the panorama, above, was Rodin At The Met (1, above), which I had just walked through to get to this spot.

Rodin, The Tempest, before 1910, Marble, seen in Rodin In The Met.

Just to my right was the once in a lifetime Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer (2), containing 133 of the Master’s Drawings and 3 Sculptures. Just to the left of that was the David Hockney 80th Birthday Retrospective (3). Down the hall to the left, Birds of a Feather: Joseph Cornell’s Homage to Juan Gris (4) recently opened. The run of all four overlapped from January 23rd to February 4th, when I took the above, just 13 days.

Had enough? C’mon. This is NYC!

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire, Oil on canvas, 1833-36, on loan from the New York Historical Society. Installation view of Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings. 170 years later, they would inspire Ed Ruscha to create a contemporary version that was shown in conjunction with the National Gallery, London, incarnation of this show.

ALSO going on at that very moment down in the American Wing, Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings was a quite pleasant surprise, AND, over at The Met Breuer, the revelatory Edvard Munch: Between The Clock And The Bed was closing that very day! The Met, typically, has up to 25 shows up at any one given time. But, SIX MAJOR Shows up at the same time is extraordinary. WHERE else in the world does that happen?

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, 1940-43, Oil on canvas. His last significant “self-scrutiny” as he referred to his self-portraits, he stands before the faceless clock and bed, in front of his Paintings.

Thus far, I’ve written about 3 of them-

Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer

Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings

Edvard Munch: Between The Clock And The Bed

Given all of this, even before January, 2018 was over, I knew nothing was going to top The Met in Art in NYC this year. But? Keep an open mind, right? Let em try! Well, now that the year is over, and I take stock at all that happened, nothing changed my mind. In fact, there were more great shows at The Met as the year unfolded. So much happened that in spite of all of my coverage, there are other shows and Artists I feel the need to show and talk about. I’ve decided to focus on 3 Artists here I encountered or discovered in Met shows in 2018- one, very famous, another, who recently passed without receiving as much acclaim as I feel he deserves, and a third who, I feel, is one of the most important Artists of our time.

First, a spot quiz- Before you read the caption, who is this by?

Tyger Painting No 2, by David Hockney, 1960, when the Artist was about 22, Oil and mixed media on board.

When I saw that David Hockney was installed right next door to all the treasures by no less than Michelangelo, the Artist called “Il Divno,” I couldn’t help but wonder what that initial phone call was like…a Met executive reaching out to Mr. Hockney by phone, saying something like, “David, this is _______ from The Met. We have some good news for you, and, maybe, some not as good news for you. The good news is The Metropolitan is giving you an 80th Birthday Retrospective! Congratulations! The not as good news is it’s being mounted right next to a once in a lifetime Michelangelo show containing 133 of the master’s Drawings and 3 of his Sculptures…” And you say you want to be a famous Artist? Stay humble. Fame is relative, possibly fleeting.

The Met reported 702,516 people visited the Michelangelo show, and 363,877 attended David Hockney.

I haven’t spent much time looking at the Art of David Hockney, but I have with his exceptional books, particularly the now classic, Secret Knowledge, and the fascinating History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen. Secret Knowledge, which has made a real contribution to Art History, was nothing less than a bombshell when it was released in 2001. His, and physicist Charles Falco’s, theory that the Old Masters (including Jan van Eyck, my first personal God of Painting) used optics, recently developed in Van Eyck’s time, to get the incredible realism they achieved was deemed heresy. Until you looked at the “evidence” they presented, including a huge wall Hockney created of postcards of Paintings created before 1400 and up to modern times that showed a sudden sharpening of their realism occurring about the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Upon closer look, their theory made perfect sense. I wished it had come years earlier when I was struggling to learn how to draw by “eyeballing” my subjects, which, of course, continues to have its place. Secret Knowledge became a superb BBC TV Documentary, and then a television series, and its impact is being felt to this day. The 2016 Film Tim’s Vermeer shows inventor Tim Jenison using these techniques to “re-create” how Vermeer might have done his Paintings. Of course, Secret Knowledge is a theory, not history, though as I said, it’s one that makes sense. Perusing it and A History of Pictures, released in late 2016, I was led to Cameraworks and his interviews on Photography, which I’ve found equally compelling. So, the David Hockney Retrospective gave me a long-delayed chance to consider his long, prolific and restless Art career. Afterall, since the passing of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, he is oft referred to as “England’s foremost living Painter.” 

Arizona, 1964, left, Portrait Surrounded by Artistic Devices, 1965, right.

Though his popularity would be a while coming, requiring a move half way around the world to California, David Hockney showed a remarkable tenacity early on, Painting in styles that were, well, “different” from that of any other Painter of the time. He moved from abstraction to works that were somewhere between abstract and figurative, generally including a figure, before landing on a style that retained his use of color while becoming even more representational.

A Bigger Splash, 1967, Acrylic on canvas. Without the unseen swimmer, the splash becomes a passage out of Abstract Expressionism, jarring the all too peaceful scene.

Moving to LA, his style exploded into color, a sudden taste for representationalism in a style that came to epitomize upper class California living to the point that its now sparked something of a “response,” from Ramiro Gomez, who focuses on the workers maintaining these places-

Ramiro Gomez, No Splash, 2013, 96 x 96 inches, after David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, 1967, focuses on the pool workers instead of the residents. Photo: Osceola Refetoff for Charlie James Gallery

David Hockney could have continued to paint these ad infinitum and, no doubt, sell every single one he produced. But, he’s far too restless, and curious, to stand in any one spot for too long.

The Twenty-Sixth Very New Painting, 1992. Picasso and Cubism have never been very far from David Hockney’s mind- to this day.

He then revealed his own take on portraiture in single subjects and couples before exploring, and breaking the boundaries of, Photographic perception with his “joiners,” which explored his belief that we don’t see the way the camera sees- with a fixed, single, viewpoint.

In Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April, 1986, #1, 47 x 64 inches, a “joiner” composed of hundreds of Photographs, David Hockney explores his belief that a camera has a fixed viewpoint and a single vanishing point. So, putting hundreds of Photos together creates many. He’s said he considers this work “a panoramic assault on Renaissance one-point perspective2.”

All along he drew, and he drew and he drew. There were times when I admit looking at his work and wondering how well he could draw but being well acquainted with the difficulties involved in mastering the line, as the show moved through his Drawings, its seminal and central place in his practice becomes clear as he relentlessly forged ahead. As the Drawing section ended, he seemed to me to have finally made peace with Drawing, having taken it from graphite on paper to the use of the Camera Lucida and more recently, to the iPhone and the iPad.

Three iPad Drawings, shown in-progress side by side in the final room.

His painting, too, continually evolved over the years and decades.

A Closer Winter Tunnel, February-March, 2006.

He left LA to return to the home his late mother had lived in and turned his attention to a little known area called the Yorkshire Wolds and created a remarkable series of landscapes, including some multi-panel monumental works, along with multi-channel videos that show this area that no Artist had previously “discovered” to be full of picturesque wonders.

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1971. The “coolness” here can be partially explained by the fact that this was a rare commission the Artist accepted and so, he didn’t have a personal relationship with them.

Mr and Mrs Ossie Clark, 1970, Photograph. Not mentioned anywhere in the show, and not very well known, is that David Hockney used Photographs, usually his own, as source material for years. Later, he finally created Photographs as stand-alone works. It’s fascinating to see what’s changed in the finished Painting. (From David Hockney on Art, Conversations with Paul Joyce, P.14, hence the curve.)

Personally, I find a cool distance in most of David Hockney’s work (felt most clearly in his double portraits, but present in everything from his landscapes to his single portraits) that the bright colors and the often undeniable beauty do not hide. This works to his advantage during the period he spent immortalizing the Yorkshire Wolds, beginning in 2005, until about 2013, near where he grew up, seen before. It’s hard for me to look at these beautiful works without being a little bit reminded of the work of another of his long time influences, Vincent van Gogh. Particularly because Mr. Hockney chose to largely create these works on the spot, en plein air, during all four seasons, late winter seen above. The passage of time looms large in this series of works, as it has in the intervening years since Mr. Hockney worked in these fields as a  young man. Yet, in them we see everything change- the seasons, the weather, individual trees, everything except the Artist. That we can only see through surveying his work through the years.

Ordinary versus Reverse Perspective.

David Hockney revealed an Artist who doesn’t get enough credit for his progressiveness, the resistance of his work to current fads, and its individuality. From the beginning he turned a deaf ear to trends and norms, rejecting both Abstract Expressionism and Pop while somewhat brazenly, and frankly, featuring homosexuality (which was illegal in England until 1967). After the tragic death of an assistant, Mr. Hockney sold the Yorkshire house in 2015 and returned to L.A. “Reverse perspective,” as he refers to it, has taken full hold in his most recent work, as seen in the final gallery at The Met, and at Pace on West 25th Street in David Hockney: Something New in Painting (and Photography) (and even Printing), in April and May.

Here, in David Hockney: Something New in Painting (and Photography) (and even Printing) at Pace, spring, 2018, Mr. Hockney cleverly manages to include all the works on the surrounding walls in the Pace show in this Photographic Drawing, as he calls it, which forces the eye to move around the work, each stop becoming a new perspective.

Taken to another level, I think, he’s also comparing Photography to Painting. In addition to his fascinating thoughts on perspective and how cameras see versus how humans see, I found he had already put down in print quite a few things I was feeling about Painting versus Photography a year and a half into my deep dive into “post-The Americans” Photography. I’ll save those for another piece.

Mr. Hockney has been first a number of times, so far, in a rage of realms, including Photography. Being first is not something history often rewards. David Hockney’s popularity seems to know no bounds, and his influence is there to be seen in the work of any number of Artists. Yet, as with every other Artist, posterity will decide where David Hockney’s Art belongs, and time will tell if it will be as popular in hundreds of years as it is now, or not. In the meantime? I’m interested to see what this Artist who lives to create does next.

Coincidentally, and fortuitously, 10 days after I took that panorama from “the spot,” The Met’s William Eggleston: Los Alamos opened, giving me a chance to revisit the work of the Artist who’s show at David Zwirner in December, 2016 led to my deep dive into the world of Contemporary Photography. I wrote about Los Alamos here.

Exit/Entrance installation view of History Refused to Die, showing the recto of the titular work, the recto  is seen below, center.

After the six major shows ended, I returned to The Met to see History Refused to Die, a sleeper of a show publicity-wise, that honored the recent gift to The Museum by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation by featuring a selection of 30 Paintings, Sculptures, Drawings and Quilts from it by self-taught contemporary African American Artists, highlighted by a number of truly amazing works by the late Thornton Dial (1928-2016).

Thonton Dial, History Refused to Die, 2004, Okra stalks and roots, clothing, collaged drawings, tin, wire, steel, Masonite, steel chain, enamel and spray paint, front, center. Verso of the work seen above.

Mr. Dial created a body of work after having watched the events of 9/11 on television. It, and the subsequent war were the subjects of a few works seen here, among others.

Thornton Dial, 9/11: Interrupting the Morning News, 2002, Graphite, charcoal, and watercolor on paper.

Thornton Dial, Victory in Iraq, 2004, Mannequin head, barbed wire, steel, clothing, tin, electrical wire, wheels, stuffed animals, toy cars and figurines, plastic spoons, wood, basket, oil, enamel, spray paint and two-part epoxy putty on canvas and wood.

Thonton Dial, The End of November: The Birds That Didn’t Learn How to Fly, 2007, Quilt, wire, fabric, and enamel on canvas on wood.

While I returned a few times to see Mr. Dial’s work again, I was also impressed with that of Ronald Lockett (1965-1995), a cousin of Thornton Dial.

Ronald Lockett, The Enemy Amongst Us, 1995, Commercial paint, pine needles, metal and nails on plywood.

One of the great things about this show was the complete freedom the Artists worked with. It’s hard for me not to believe that that was one of the benefits of being self-taught in their case. Yes, even today, you can be a self-taught Artist and still get in to The Met’s Permanent Collection.

Over my 1,500+ visits to The Met, I’ve spent countless hours sitting there in front of Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950, Enamel on canvas, 105 x 207 inches, dating back to before I started counting my visits. Seen here on August 31st, at the entrance to what was then the Abstract Expressionist galleries.

Just to the left of one of the two entrances/exits to History Refused to Die, I paused to revisit an old friend.  Almost 30 years ago, I sat on those benches for hours on end staring at and contemplating one of the most remarkable and revolutionary Paintings in Western Art, Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950, at the time my favorite Painting in The Met (“favorite” does not mean “the best.” I don’t believe in that), and, perhaps, the crown jewel of The Met’s Abstract Expressionism collection. In my opinion, this is a key wall in The Met. Its the entrance to the Abstract Expressionist galleries behind it, and it looks out to visitors passing the “corridor” I’m standing in going to the stairs. Over all these intervening decades, its never been moved from this spot. Little did I know when I took this Photograph on August 31st, it would be the last time I would see it here.

Fall brought the revelation that was Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017, which opened at The Met Breuer just before History Refused to Die closed. Finally, and currently, back at 1000 Fifth Avenue, while the very good Delacroix show was going on down the hall, Epic Abstraction, opened on December 17th, a show I also find somewhat remarkable. It’s an “ongoing” show, meaning it has no end date at this point, largely because it and Reimagining Modernism, downstairs on the first floor, are reinstallations of works from The Met’s Permanent Collection, along with a few loans (in the case of Epic Abstraction).

Immediately adjacent to the sign, mere steps into the show, lookie here! It’s my old friend Autumn Rhythm! 

When I walked in the first time, I was startled to see that the show begins with Autumn Rhythm! Wow. They moved it! While I admired it at the beginning of this “epic” show, questions immediately flooded into my mind. An Abstraction show that BEGINS with Autumn Rhythm? That’s incredibly bold. Talk about throwing down a gauntlet for all that’s come after. Well, the subtitle of the show is Pollock to Herrera, so, chronologically, this is the beginning. That Sheena Wagstaff, Randall Griffey (credited with organizing Epic Abstraction & Reimagining Modernism- kudos) and the Modern & Contemporary Staff chose to move Autumn Rhythm and give it pride of place in this show I take as a “sign” they may agree with me about its importance. While I wondered what is going to maintain this level in the rest of the show to come, my mind then turned to the inevitable question- WHAT did they choose to hang in that prime spot where Autumn Rhythm hung for the past few decades?

Epic. Jackson Pollock, 3 Drawings, each, Untitled, 1938-41, Colored pencils and graphite on paper.

The first room is entirely devoted to the work of Jackson Pollock, except for one work- Kazuo Shiraga’s Untitled, 1958! Highlights, besides the reinstalled Autumn Rhythm include 3 spectacular colored pencil Drawings that should permanently quiet anyone who thinks that Jackson Pollock couldn’t draw. As remarkable as this start was, the second gallery is entirely devoted to Mark Rothko, save for a central sculpture by Isamu Noguchi! This is sure to stagger any long time Met goer. For decades, only 2 or 3 Rothkos have been on view at any given time. What museum on earth, besides the National Gallery in Washington, has enough Mark Rothkos sitting in storage to fill an entire gallery? Talk about an embarrassment of riches. I couldn’t believe it. Instantly, my fears about how they were going to keep the pace of this show going disappeared. Of course. They topped themselves.

Finally, making it through the first two galleries, still in shock, I turned the corner to finally see what was now in the spot Autumn Rhythm occupied. A sharp right turn, and my eyes alighted on this-

Mark Bradford, Duck Walk, 2016, Mixed media on canvas. Taking its title from Chuck Berry’s strut across the stage strumming his guitar, now hangs where Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) hung for decades.

If you don’t think a lot of thought went into this, Untitled, 1950, by Clyfford Still, one of Mark Bradford’s influences, hangs directly adjacent to it on the wall to the right, with the Sculpture, Raw Attraction, 2001, by Chakaia Booker, Rubber tire, steel, and wood, between them, behind the lady in red, and Tanktotem II by David Smith, barely seen at the far left.

Mark Bradford’s Duck Walk, 2016, a Mixed media on canvas diptych floored me the minute I saw it. It’s every bit as daring as Autumn Rhythm, in my opinion, done in a completely unique way, as Pollock’s was 66 years earlier in 1950. Mark Bradford uses layers of colored paper that he cuts through using a very wide range of techniques. Of course, Mr. Bradford didn’t do it in a vacuum. He’s had influences, including David Joseph Martinez and Clyfford Still, who’s been somewhat overlooked it seems to me among Abstract Expressionists. But not by Mark Bradford.

Detail of the center where the two canvases meet. Interestingly, the two pieces are shown in the opposite configuration on The Met’s website.

“Abstraction for me, I get it-you go internal, you turn off the world, you’re hermetic, you channel something. No. I’m not interested in that type of abstraction. I’m interested in the type of abstraction where you look out at the world, see the horror-sometimes it is horror-and you drag that horror kicking and screaming into your studio and you wrestle with it and you find something beautiful in it. That’s what I was always determined to do. I have never turned away.” Mark Bradford3.

Mrs. N’s Palace, 1964-77, by Louise Nevelson. Notice the black line on the floor going off to the left. That was left by a wall The Met took down to install this monumental work, the back of which is to the left. I’ve never seen this space, the room behind the Mark Bradfordls Duck Walk open like this before.

Now? Four visits in to Epic Abstraction, I can think of no other work in the show that deserves to be hung in this spot more. It not only holds its own with anything else in the show, which is a who’s who of Modern & Contemporary Abstractionists that includes de Kooning, Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Franz Kline, Carmen Herrera, Cy Twombly, Dan Flavin, Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell (including some pieces I’ve never seen on view), along with Pollock, Rothko and Noguchi. I was also very pleased to see that The Met managed to get a great work by a great contemporary Artist before the Artist’s prices made it possible only by donation. (Recently, tennis star John McEnroe sold a Painting by Mr. Bradford for over 12 million dollars at auction-to the Eli Broad Museum, in LA). It now joins single Paintings by Kerry James Marshall4 and Jack Whitten in The Met’s Modern & Contemporary Art collection, a collection that, unfortunately, can’t compare with the collections of museums in Chicago, L.A. or San Francisco in works by these Artists, at this point, due to…? I don’t know why. The Met owns 2 Paintings and a set of 6 prints, which are currently on display in the Drawings & Print Gallery, by Mark Bradford, seen below, with the accompanying card-

On the heels of Tomorrow is Another Day (named for the last spoken lines in Gone With The Wind), the show he mounted at the 2017 Venice Biennale after being chosen to represent the USA5, and his current installation, Pickett’s Charge, his largest work to date, currently on view at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington (well, if and when the government re-opens, through 2021), I believe Mark Bradford is one of the world’s most important living Artists. He is an Artist who has been speaking truth about the reality of the world and the issues it faces from early on in his career and doing so in his own ways, developing unique techniques in a variety of medium. “The world is on fire,” he said in a 2017 interview in the catalog accompanying Pickett’s Charge, “whether we like it or not.” “I do feel there are moments in history when the intensity of the world in which you live comes to your door. We are at that moment now. There’s no way around it. Politically and socially we are at the edge of another precipice. I’m standing in the middle of a question about where we are as a nation6.”

Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies By The Sea, 1996, 75 1/4 inches x 18 feet 5 inches, left, Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Studio), 2014, Acrylic on PVC panels, 85 5/16 x 119 1/4 inches, right.

It’s also hard for me to not look at the choice of installing Duck Walk in this spot as a statement. Has the baton been passed to the next generation? Mark Bradford was born in 1961, 5 years after Jackson Pollock’s tragic early death. This baton passing might have also be happening downstairs in the Modern & Contemporary Mezzanine, Gallery 915, The Met’s large Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies by the Sea, which for many, many years has occupied an end wall, has been moved to a side wall, and its former spot is now occupied by Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Studio). (Note- Anselm Kiefer was the subject of Provocations: Anselm Kiefer at The Met Breuer in early 2018).

If you continue further down the stairs to the first floor, you’ll discover the early Modern Art galleries have, also, been completely reinstalled, as Reimagining Modernism 1900-1950. It’s endlessly fascinating to me to see which pieces have come on display and which have gone into storage, (or loan?)

The signs they are a-changin’

Times are changing at The Met, in the Modern & Contemporary Galleries, and in the rest of the Museum, as new Director Max Hollein now takes charge (though I imagine Epic Abstraction & Reimagining Modernism were being planned prior). Along with The Met as a whole, the Modern & Contempoaray Department had another remarkable year. The list of memorable and/or important shows that have already appeared at The Met Breuer continues to grow. This is the second time in three years I’ve singled out Sheena Wagstaff and her Modern & Contemporary Department for having great years in NYC Art. Yes, the New Museum, who I singled out last year, continue to impress and grow, and yes MoMA had a number of memorable shows this year, including Stephen Shore  and two featuring the work of Charles White, the Guggenheim impressed with Danh Vo and Hilma af Klint, but none of them had the year The Met had, in my view, particularly in Modern & Contemporary Art.

They started from so far behind compared to the other Museums. I wonder how many others are now noticing.

BookMarks- I only list items in BookMarks that I strongly believe in and personally recommend. If you like what you see here, you can make a donation to help keep NHNYC.com ad-free through PayPal by clicking on the box to the right of the banner at the top of the page that will take you to the Donation button. Your support is VERY much appreciated. Thank you!

David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge (New and Expanded Edition): Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters is one of the most revelatory Art History books of the century thus far and is recommended to the Art History buff and the Art student. The Expanded Edition is only available in paperback, but it is the version I recommend. Keep an eye out for the excellent 2 part BBC Documentary, too.

His A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen, is a wider look at Art History, seen from an Artist’s perspective, which makes it somewhat unique, and is recommended for the general Art History student and buff. There is also a version for children.

Hockney’s Cameraworks is a remarkable book, unlike any other Photography monograph I know of. It includes a look at his Photography through 1984, along side a fascinating interview. Currently out of print, it’s highly recommended to Photographers, Hockney fans, and those interested in this sticky debate about perspective in Art, and definitely worth looking for. Copies in very good condition (minimal wear to the book or dust jacket, without marks of any kind or writing) may still be found for less than 100.00.

The best overview of Thornton Dial’s work, currently, is Thornton Dial in the 21st Century published by Tinwood Books in 2006. The time has come for a complete, comprehensive monograph on his life and work, and this, the best we currently have, is recommended until it arrives.

Mark Bradford (Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series) is the best and most current introduction to Mr. Bradford career. After that, it’s a toss up between 2010’s Mark Bradford published by Yale U. Press or Tomorrow Is Another Day, one of Michelle Obama’s “personal favorites.”  The Yale book is the most comprehensive book on his work to 2010, with the best images of his work to that date, while Tomorrow is an in-depth look at the work Mr. Bradford created for the US Pavillion at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Coming Up” by Paul McCartney fromMcCartney II, 1980, seen here performing it with Wings, and Linda McCartney, Live in Kampuchea, 1979-

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  1. Met attendance numbers quoted in this piece are from this press release. ↩
  2. //www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/106006/david-hockney-pearblossom-hwy-11-18th-april-1986-1-british-1986/ ↩
  3. Mark Bradford: Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series, Interview with Anita Hill, P.18 ↩
  4. The Met also owns a woodcut (a print) by Mr. Marshall ↩
  5. Containing work that is now on view at the Baltimore Museum, under its Director, Christopher Bedford, long one of the leading Mark Bradford champions ↩
  6.  //hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/mark-bradford-picketts-charge/ ↩