Metropolitan Museum

Van Gogh’s Cypresses: Art From Hell

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

This new decade promptly brought with it the coronavirus pandemic, then a rolling lockdown in response. Isolation followed worldwide to a degree not seen since the equally devastating Spanish flu pandemic, 1918-20. I imagine most of us experienced isolation, or close quarters living, more than we had in our lifetimes. Still emerging from mine, as others are around the globe, it was somewhat ironic and timely that The Met chose Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) as the subject of its 2023’s summer blockbuster show. I also found it fortuitous. There’s spending a few years alone. Then, there’s spending virtually your entire adult life alone. As a momentous day dawned in my life, one I had dreaded spending alone- Who better to spend it with than Vincent van Gogh?

Perhaps no one I know of was more familiar with isolation and being alone than Vincent was. 

Welcome to The Met! In all my years of going to The Museum as I call it, currently 1,800+ visits since 2002, I’ve never seen TWO banners (left & right) up devoted to the same show. And, as I was soon to find out, it’s not like there weren’t other terrific shows going on! And, after all these years, I still get a tingle up my spine when I see this in front of me. Seen on June 2, 2023. Click any image for full size.

The Met’s Van Gogh’s Cypresses, centered on his depictions of the coniferous tree in his Art from March, 1888 through May, 1890, which the curators compare to his iconic sunflowers in his oeuvre. I, however, couldn’t get the backstory out of my mind. Rarely mentioned on the wall cards, was the utter hell Vincent was living through during the final year and a half covered by the show. In a life marked by struggle & loneliness, perhaps nothing he experienced was as bad as the confluence of hardships Vincent van Gogh faced from December 23, 1888 through May, 1890, when the show ends, 2 months before his death by suicide or murder.

The maze-like ticket line. You buy yours, then get on the “virtual line” and wait for a text…

I saw Van Gogh’s Cypresses three times. Each time, I bought my ticket, then waited on the “virtual line” for 2 hours before it was my turn to go in. Well, if I could pick a place on Earth to be “stuck in” with 2 hours to kill, “Oh, PLEASE let it be The Met!” Suffice it to say that during my waits I saw exceptional shows: Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid; Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter; In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met; and Philip Guston: What Kind of Man Am I? ! Two I’ve subsequently written about. PHEW. And then, I then spent close to 3 hours in Cypresses each time. 

During my wait I also checked out Vincent in the Permanent Collection upstairs to reconnect with his work that wasn’t in the show. I wrote about this gallery in 2018 when they were reinstalled after the skylight project had been completed here. Notice the light coming in from above.

Along the way, I realized I have been looking at Vincent for over 40 years. Van Gogh’s Cypresses is the FOURTH major Met Van Gogh show I’ve seen. In 1984, I saw Van Gogh in Arles. In 1986, Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvres (which includes the period covered in Cypresses), and in 2005, Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings. Each one terrific1. The common denominator of each show is Susan Alyson Stein, who was on the staff of the first two, rose to co-curator of The Drawings, and now curator of Cypresses. Her legacy at The Met is approaching that of Carmen Bambach, Met curator of Drawings & Prints, who has given us the landmark Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer and Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, among others. HOW Ms. Stein, her team, & The Met ever got MoMA to part with The Starry Night, perhaps MoMA’s biggest single attraction, for the entire summer amazes me.

You may never see this again. MoMA’s Van Gogh wall on July 4, 2023 with The Met’s Irises, center, in the spot previously (and currently as of October 20, 2023) occupied by The Starry Night. Unfortunately, its original pink background has faded and apparently can’t be restored.

On a visit to MoMA this summer, I discovered The Met had “traded”/lent Vincent’s Irises, 1890, for it, which MoMA hung in The Starry Night’s spot. Interestingly, both it, and the work to its left in the picture above, The Olive Trees- Saint Rémy June-July, 1889, were Painted while Vincent was in the Asylum, the subject of the central, Part II of the show, but are not included in Cypresses because neither depict them.

Meanwhile, at The Met, Cypresses begins in somewhat subdued, though beautiful, fashion.

Drawbridge, May, 1888, All Paintings shown are Oil on canvas unless stated. The cypresses stand off to the side.

Arranged in three Parts, Part I of the show takes place in Arles from March, 1888 to early Spring, 1889. Vincent is hard at work trying to build on all he’d seen in his prior 2 years in Paris, a time that saw his work go from the dark, almost monochromatic, earth tones of works like The Potato Eaters to vibrant color. His palette has opened up, his journey to being “the first great colorist. Great…great colorist,” as David Hockney called him2, has begun. Now, he was after a style of his own. Note the very flat sky in Drawbridge, the first Painting in the show.

Installation view of Part I. The entrance is at the upper right. Drawbridge, just shown, is straight ahead.

Throughout this period, and for the rest of his life, he juggled the influence of countless Artists, including the so-called Impressionists, the so-called Post-Impressionists and Japanese Woodblock Prints, all of which can be seen in Drawbridge. He had met and been influenced by Georges Seurat3, Paul Gauguin and Claude Monet (who was represented by Vincent’s Art dealer brother, Theo, for a time), among others. His mission now was to develop his own style and begin to have his work sell, like theirs was beginning to. Totally dependent on Theo for money to survive, the heat was on.

Garden at Arles, July, 1888. Another flat sky, but notice how everything else is different. It has an almost spontaneous feel to it, until you see the Drawing next to it, now below. It’s endlessly fascinating to compare them both. 

Looking at the Paintings and Drawings in Part I, almost no two share entirely the same style. In Drawbridge, and Garden at Arles, above the skies are fairly flat. That would end. Notice the difference in the landscapes in both Paintings, created 2 months apart. In Part 1 we see the state of flux his style was in, indicative of his efforts to meld all he had seen in Paris and in Japanese Prints into a style of his own.

Garden with Flowers, July-August, 1888, Reed pen and ink over graphite on wove paper. Yes, a reed pen, which is made by cutting and shaping a single reed straw or length of bamboo. In Part I, a Drawing is pared with its resulting Painting a few times. Though some of his work, like Garden at Arles, above, has a “spontaneously dashed off” look to it, this is deceiving. Studying both, it’s striking to me how exact Vincent was when it came to translating his work from Drawing to canvas. Close looking reveals that even the smallest details are faithfully copied over from one to the other. After. you’re done studying that, then ponder his choices of color for each part.

By 1888, his Drawings, on the other hand, needed no additional inspiration beyond what he seems to have learned from his passion for Japanese Prints, which he amassed a sizable collection of. At least, that’s the only explanation I can find for them- there is none in Western Art that I know of. His Landscape Drawings from this time, like Garden with Flowers above, were and are, singular. Ever since I saw them in depth at The Met’s Van Gogh: The Drawings show in 2005, I continuously marvel at how he now saw and rendered fields, trees, and skies, especially since earlier on his Landscape Drawings, like this one, were much more “traditional.” His evolution as a Draftsman was as quick and as stunning as that of his as a Painter, and are among the most remarkable things about Vincent’s Art career.

Theo would convince Gauguin to join Vincent in the Yellow House in Arles, after offering him financial assistance to do so. This would FINALLY be the beginning of the realization of Vincent’s dream of establishing the “School of the South.” Arriving in September, the two co-existed for a while, but their personalities were bound to combust at some point. Very little is said in the show about what happened to Vincent next.

Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, January, 1889. The culminating work in Part 1. The prevailing serenity of this work, with cypress branches surrounding the basket, is shattered when you realize that this was Painted a few weeks after the attack that resulted in Vincent cutting off his left ear! In and out of the Arles hospital in January, and caught in an overwhelming fear of another attack (which he would have a few weeks later4)- all of which he was dealing with alone- HOW is it possible he could Paint this?

On that fateful December 23rd, 1888, the stuff hit the fan with Gauguin. Things had been festering while the two passionate & volatile temperaments were largely stuck inside working in close quarters due to the winter weather, until the boiling point made Gauguin announce he was leaving Arles to return to Paris, ending their “experimentation” in the Yellow House and Vincent’s long-standing dream of a “School of the South.” As if this wasn’t upsetting enough, Vincent had just received a Letter announcing that his brother Theo planned to marry, ending his hopes for the two brothers to live & work together. These portents of abandonment, the dashing out of hope (critical for someone as isolated as Vincent was), and the impending Christmas holiday, which reminded the Artist of his horrible falling out with his family one Christmas past, apparently conspired to bring on an attack5. The exact illness Vincent suffered from is still the subject of hot debate 130+ years later. Some say it was due to his drinking. Other theories include syphilis and epilepsy. In the throes of all of this he cut off his left ear, apparently leaving only the earlobe, then wrapped it and took it to a brothel that Gauguin may, or may not, have been in at the time. Barred entrance, he presented it to the “sentry” at the door, then went home and collapsed6. Theo was summoned, but stayed only a few hours before rushing back to Paris(?), with Gauguin! Vincent was hospitalized in Arles, with an initial diagnosis by the 21-year-old medical student on duty as suffering from frontal lobe epilepsy.

Vintage advertisement for the Asylum in Saint-Rémy. Notice the walls around the Asylum. *-Photo from the Van Gogh Museum

He would be in and out of the hospital7 until, steps ahead of his neighbors who had signed a petition to have him removed from their midst, he decided to VOLUNTARILY admit himself  to the insane asylum in nearby Saint-Rémy, in May, 1889, which is the point at which Part II of Van Gogh’s Cypresses begins. Phew…

Installation view of Part II, which is centered on a veritable “murder’s row” of 5 Van Gogh Masterpieces, highlighted by The Starry Night, right of center, with the Met’s Wheatfield with Cypresses partially hidden by the column. In my view, these are some of the most unfathomable Paintings in the entirety of Western Art history given the circumstances of their creation. It’s stunning how The Starry Night breaks up the vibrant sunshine in the others as the only nocturnal work among them.

For the next year, in particular, and for the short rest of his life, his fears of another attack proved well founded. He had had smaller attacks before the December, 1888 attack in which he cut off his ear. He would have four serious attacks in the year he spent in the asylum.

“Each time he hoped would be his last. ‘A more violent attack,” he feared, “could destroy my ability to paint for good.’ But instead, the attacks grew longer and fiercer; the intervals between them, shorter; his behavior, more bizarre and violent. Once, while in the garden, he scooped up a handful of dirt and began to eat it. Another time, he assaulted his asylum escort, accusing him of being a spy for the secret police.”

“With each escalation, the misery between attacks deepened and the leash of restrictions tightened. He was confined to the asylum; then to his dormitory; then to his room; then to his bed. He spent almost two months deprived of “open air.” His throat swelled up with sores. He barely ate or spoke, and wrote no letters. At times, he longed for death, if only the next attack would be his last. ‘I hated the idea of regaining my health,’ he later recalled, ‘always living in fear of relapses … I preferred that there be nothing further, that this be the end.’” Van Gogh: The Life, P.772

When Painting was forbidden, that might have been the hardest for him being the only thing he cared about. Painting was all he had left. (I shuttered as I wrote that.)

A (partial) list of the breakdowns/attacks Vincent suffered as they appear in the Index of Van Gogh: The Life. Arles is where he was in Part I of the show, where the smaller attacks led to the big “ear-cutting attack”. He was in the Asylum in Saint-Rémy in Part II. Only the major, ear-cutting, attack on December 23, 1888 is even mentioned, in passing, in the show.

But, as horrible as all of that must have been, there were still more levels of hell in store for Vincent. Things got worse. 

“Is there a reason for today?
Do you remember?”
*- Cream “World of Pain”

If you love Vincent van Gogh, this woman deserves your thanks. Johanna (Jo) van Gogh-Bonger was Theo’s wife for a year and a half before he died of syphilis, six months after Vincent died. Vincent strongly resented her coming in and “taking” Theo from him. Though she knew nothing about Art she inherited Vincent’s Estate from his brother and went on to make Vincent one of the most popular & beloved Artists in the world today. She did it by realizing Vincent’s Letters were the key to getting people interested in him. She edited & published them, though her edition is out of print, and not the one seen here in The Met’s bookstore, June 2, 2023. Hans Luijten’s biography is extremely detailed and is recommended- after you read Van Gogh: The Life and Vincent’s Letters.

As if his all of that wasn’t enough, during this time, he often went for a month or longer without hearing from Theo, who was busy with his impending marriage to Jo Bonger, finding and preparing an apartment for the new couple, and then for the arrival of their first child- ALL of this pained Vincent greatly, Theo being his lifeline to the world & support in it. As if that wasn’t enough, furthering his intense feeling of abandonment & isolation, Vincent was not allowed to explore the surrounding countryside for the first month in the asylum. A man now regarded among the great Landscape Painters the world has yet seen was forced to settle for the asylum’s enclosed garden and seeing the surrounding countryside from his window- a window with bars on it!

Somehow, NONE of this stopped him from creating masterpieces.

Landscape from Saint-Rémy, June, 1889. June, the month after his arrival, would be the key month in his year at the Asylum.

“I have two landscapes on the go of views taken in the hills. One is the countryside that I glimpse from the window of my bedroom. In the foreground a field of wheat, ravaged and knocked to the ground after a storm. A boundary wall and beyond, grey foliage of a few olive trees, huts and hills.” Letter to Theo (Letter 779, June 9, 1890).

Painted in June, 1889, almost exactly one month after he arrived in the asylum, this is the view from his 2nd floor bedroom window- minus the bars. It’s very interesting to me that he left the bars out. (There is a work in the show of the wall in his studio that shows its window with bars, shown below.) It certainly wouldn’t have been salable at the time if he had included them, but, how much more so is this? This is a Painting about nature- the land (with distant, almost incidental, cypress trees), the hills, the sky- and not a defacto “self-portrait.” Or is it? The wheat has been “ravaged and knocked to the ground after a storm,” confined in a space bordered by “a boundary wall.” Is that an analogy to his condition and situation at the time? There’s nothing more about it in Letter 779, so it would only be my speculation. IF that is not the case, and Vincent’s sole intention is what we see- without the bars that he saw- then I find it utterly transcendent. Note the mountains and the way the huts are situated- they would have another life.

Inside his life in the asylum. Vincent was granted the use of an empty room downstairs from his room as a studio. Window in the Studio, October, 1889, Chalk, brush, oil paint, and watercolor on paper, seen in Part III, shows a window he saw the outside world through- this time with the bars on it. Note the Artwork hanging in the upper right corner.

The opening of Part III: Vincent’s window, left, with the actual work he shows in the upper right corner hanging next to it- Trees in the Garden of the Asylum, October, 1889, right. It shocked and almost overwhelmed me when I realized this work hung in his asylum Studio. As such it’s one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen (even beyond Art). Vincent chose this work to look at while he was living a horror show.

“Outside my window is a tree
Outside my window is a tree
There only for me” *

Here he is, having admitted himself to an insane asylum(!) with an ailment that doctors still argue about, entirely alone, surrounded by the insane, and living in fear of suffering another attack. Still, his Letters reveal he put himself under continual pressure to develop his own style AND create work that was salable to justify the expense Theo was incurring and, possibly, support himself. Yet, in spite of ALL of this he SOMEHOW managed to create 150 Paintings, including any number of masterpieces! Among them, what is now, perhaps, the most beloved Painting in the world- The Starry Night– which he Painted that same June- one month after entering the asylum, during a period when he was not allowed outside at night!

“I can hear all the cries of the city
No time for pity
For a growing tree
There is a world of pain
In the falling rain
Around me” *

Is this the “greatest” Painting in Western Art? While I don’t believe “best” exists in the Arts, a case can certainly be made that it is just that. I think an even stronger case can be made that it is the most revolutionary Painting of its time and before. It’s unprecedented. In any event, it certainly must be among the most loved today, if it is not THE most loved Painting in the world. But? It twasn’t always thus! There is no Painting I’ve stood in front of more often in my life than The Starry Night, June, 1889. That’s because MoMA owns it, I live here and I make a point of seeing where they have installed it on each visit8. No matter- Every single time I see it, it thrills me. Seen here during the first time of all those I haven’t seen it at MoMA. The Met, June 2, 2023.

That’s right- Perhaps, the most famous night Painting in Art history was Painted indoors because the Artist was not allowed outside at night. (Read that again. I almost typed it twice it’s so hard to believe.) When you compare it to Starry Night Over the Rhone, September, 1888, which he did Paint outdoors at night, the difference becomes obvious. Stuck inside, to create The Starry Night, he combined a few Paintings he had already created into a night scene. He “borrowed” the horizon of hills from the recently completed Landscape from Saint-Rémy shown earlier. Front left is a large cypress, the tree having arrived as a focus after having lived in the background as seen earlier. The Met’s curators make the case of the numerous meanings the tree has had down through the centuries, death among them, given its frequent appearance at cemeteries. Long life, another, given the 1,000 year life of some. It would be central for a few months that summer, then, it suddenly disappeared from his focus, again relegated to the distance. This makes me wonder if the cypress had a connection with Paul Gauguin, who Vincent was eternally trying to win back after the disaster before Christmas the year before. The sky, the stars and the moon, however, are something else entirely- something not based on an earlier Painting he or anyone else did. Here, in all its glory, we finally see Vincent coming into his own!

After he Painted it, Vincent came to regard The Starry Night as a “failure!” He sent it to Theo, as he did all his Paintings. Theo didn’t know what to do with it. He railed against Vincent exploring stylistically, considering efforts like this to be “unsalable.”

“’it is better to attack things with simplicity than to seek after abstractions’, he confessed to having erred in the past with images like La Berceuse and the second Starry Night (i.e. this one, from June, 1889), both of which he dismissed as ‘failures.’ ‘I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big,’ he wrote, ‘and I have had my fill of that9.'”

Vincent promised to toe the mark and produce more conventional work. That sound you hear is the wind rustling through the trees caused by countless millions of Art lovers today shaking their heads in disbelief.

You’re looking at the reason The Met had to get MoMA to lend them The Starry Night. Under the terms of its acquisition, the Met’s Wheatfield with Cypresses, June, 1889, is not permitted to leave the building. In the show, it was displayed immediately following the immortal nocturnal work. Both were Painted in June, 1889, as was Landscape from Saint-Rémy, shown earlier, making June, 1889 one of the most historic months in Art history. Wheatfield with Cypresses is usually displayed on its own wall in The Met’s Permanent Collection Galleries, signifying how The Museum feels about it, though they have 24 Paintings by Vincent! MoMA has 3. Wonder why I heart NYC?

Let’s think about it for a moment. The Starry Night is a one-Painting revolution that no one followed! Almost every other work of daring has inspired imitators or disciples, from Picasso’s Cubism to Seurat’s “chromoluminarism,” as he called his style (others have called it “pointillism”), to Jackson Pollock’s abstractions. Artists who are or were influenced by Van Gogh (like Edvard Munch) seem to me to be “more generally” influenced by him than influenced by The Starry Night specifically. Vincent, himself, infrequently revisited his Starry Night innovations later. Can you imagine what it would have been like if had taken them from the get-go in June, 1889 and ran with them?

Though it’s a copy of The Met’s Wheatfield with Cypresses, it’s titled A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, September, 1889, now in the collection of the National Gallery, London. The two were hung side-by-side in a once in a lifetime chance to study them together. I spent a few hours over 3 visits just going back and forth between these two masterpieces, comparing a detail in one with that in the other. Vincent’s style at this point bordered on total freedom, yet a close look reveals how amazingly similar these two Paintings are- except for the brushwork (and the clouds). The Met’s Painting is rich with impasto, the London picture is much more refined with a greatly toned down exuberance in the application of paint.

You never hear Vincent mentioned as an “abstract” Painter, yet looking at the “London” version of The Met’s Wheatfield, which Vincent Painted 3 months after the original, it would seem to me the case could be made as elements here border on abstraction. As if The Starry Night wasn’t enough of an indication of it, the two Wheatfields with Cypresses are more examples of how far he was now ahead of his time, in my view, having started out a mere 8 years earlier as a beginner! Just incredible.

One of the very best things about Art shows is the chance to see related pieces now housed in distant corners of the earth reunited for a brief moment, like this.

Yet, despite having this apparent “freedom,” he still stuck to his original composition down to small details, though with modifications. It’s fascinating to notice what he did change and wonder why.

Cypresses, June, 1889. To my eyes, all the forms seem to want to just fly off into what we might call pure abstraction. It’s interesting the taller cypress is cut off.

It seems to me that even more than Seurat, from June, 1889, on, Vincent was pushing the frontier of what would be called “Modern Art” a few years later. I wonder if not having a formal Art education allowed him this freedom to continually break rules he may, or may not, have even been aware of.

Meanwhile, over at the Guggenheim Museum, I saw this- Vincent’s Mountains at Saint Rémy. While not in the show, I’m including it because it was Painted one month after The Starry Night and Wheatfield with Cypresses in July, 1889. While it doesn’t include cypress trees (as far as I can tell), it says much about the direction Vincent’s style was going.

While many credit Manet as the beginning of Modern Art, a case can be made that what became known as “20th Century Painting” really started in the works we see on this wall that Vincent painted from June to September, 1889- while he was in an insane asylum.

Cypresses and Two Women, February, 1890, Oil on canvas. Vincent is back at work on the cypresses, and it all has changed so much. He intended this Painting to go to Albert Aurier, the author of one of the very first reviews of his work, in January, 1890, in appreciation. In it, he called Vincent a worthy successor to the seventeenth-century Dutch masters10. This work speaks volumes of what that meant to him.

After the June whirlwind, cypresses continued in his work, as we see in the remainder of Part II, then in Part III, they almost completely and suddenly disappear.

The final wall shows that by the end of his time in the asylum, in spite of all he had endured, Vincent had indeed created his own style.

The Landscapes in the final gallery are more varied, before the final work brings it all to a rousing climax.

A Walk at Twilight, May, 1890. The penultimate work in the show is a fresh and daring approach to early evening. All the trees, including the cypresses, appear to be vibrating as if trying to shake free of form. The cypresses, though, are now ancillary in the background.

In his Letters while he was there, Vincent speaks about wishing he could stay in the asylum. SOMEHOW, in spite of it everything, he managed to create 150 Paintings, including some of the great masterpieces in Western Art, as I said, while he was there. Then, in May, 1890 he left. Two full months later, he would be dead.

A Walk at Twilight, May, 1890. A cypress stands smack in the middle in an evening work that harkens back to The Starry Night from 11 months earlier, possibly proving that perhaps Vincent didn’t think it was such a “failure” after all. Painted 2 months before his death, it’s a work that can be read in any number of ways. For me, it may be the summation of Vincent’s achievement as a Painter and innovator.

By all accounts Vincent van Gogh was extremely hard to get along with, especially for any length of time. He drank too much. He smoked too much. He was obsessive about everything he cared about and he cared about a good many things. He could be intensely argumentative in defense of what he believed. He had a LOT of trouble finding love, or even real & lasting friendships, and on and on…Then, there’s his Art.

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, my personal favorite work in entirety of The Met, Painted on the raw, unprimed side of the canvas (because he had already Painted on the primed side and apparently couldn’t afford more canvas), which adds to the unique texture of the work. I’ve looked at it countless times over quite a few decades now and every time I see it, I marvel at its unique way of seeing the world. Interestingly, no Self-Portraits are included in the show. This was seen on September 15, 2018 in the Permanent Collection galleries.

“As for himself, he said, ‘as a painter I shall never amount to anything important, I am absolutely sure of it11.”

Vincent was a very astute observer of Art and Artists even before becoming a Painter. So, it’s odd he was so wrong about his own Art. Still, here’s the thing I can NEVER get past-

Beginning at the incredibly late age of 27, Vincent’s Art career lasted exactly TEN YEARS from July, 1880 to July, 1890!12
His entire Painting career lasted barely NINE YEARS, from 1881 to July, 1890!

The fact that one could ask the impossible to answer question “Is The Starry Night the greatest Painting ever?,” as I posited earlier, and have it taken seriously regardless of the outcome, shows me how utterly remarkable what Vincent van Gogh’s accomplished in one decade is. Painters as diverse as Francis Bacon and David Hockney, both astute, lifelong students of Art history, consider him to have been right up there with the very greatest Painters who ever lived! Far be it from me to argue with them, but that they would consider someone who Painted for 10 years in those terms is hard to imagine. The approximately 2,100 Artworks he created, including about 860 Paintings are extraordinary- if only for their stylistic diversity as I’ve found looking at them for 40 years13.

In 2018, I wrote a piece wondering what Vincent would make of his popularity today. For someone who lived without anyone in his life, and so little acceptance & love THIS level of both- worldwide- would have to be both the ultimate irony, and completely overwhelming.

With all he had to face- isolation, loneliness, fights with his parents14, illness, poverty, years of struggle and rejection attempting to find his way in various occupations, and everything else- though a good deal of it (if not all) he brought on himself (could anything make him more human?)- before becoming a beginner Artist at 27(!), HOW is it possible he was able to overcome ALL of it to create many of the most beloved works of Art in the world, including a good many while in an insane asylum?

The only answer I’ve found is that he loved Painting THAT much. No matter what, no matter everything I’ve delineated above, and everything else I haven’t- he overcame ALL of it by Painting.

It just boggles my mind.

*-Soundtrack for his piece is “World of Pain” by Gail Collins & Felix Pappalardi and recorded by Cream on Disraeli Gears, 1967.

 

(A “Postscript: My Journey to Vincent” follows below, or may be seen here.)

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  1. Each lives on in terrific catalogs, which are all highly recommended. ↩
  2. David Hockney on Vincent van Gogh. ↩
  3. Vincent’s time with Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard and Charles Angrand in Asnières, a Parisian suburb, which directly precedes the period of Cypresses, was the subject of a fascinating show at the Art Institute of Chicago concurrent with, but otherwise not connected to, Van Gogh’s Cypresses ↩
  4. on February 4, 1890, per vangoghletters.org ↩
  5. In Van Gogh: The Life, the authors, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, correlate Vincent’s attacks with the level of stress & strain he was under. ↩
  6. Van Gogh: The Life, P.704 ↩
  7. and having the 3rd attack since December on February 26, 1890 per vangoghletters.org ↩
  8. As I’ve written, it’s endlessly puzzling how MoMA can spent 2 BILLION dollars on renovations this century and apparently never consider where they are going to display their most popular pieces- particularly The Starry Night, which has continually been relocated often without ever finding the “perfect” spot. ↩
  9. Van Gogh: The Life, P. 784 ↩
  10. Here ↩
  11. Van Gogh: The Life, P.743 ↩
  12. Like that of Jean-Michel Basquiat. ↩
  13. Just page through a copy of Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, one of my Desert Island Art Books, to see for yourself, the “Brick” edition is about $25. new. ↩
  14. His mother, Anna Carbentus, who had Painted and gave him his first Drawing lessons, and who survived him by about 17 years to 1907, 2 years after the first big Van Gogh show mounted by Jo, never warmed to his Art (Van Gogh: The Life, P.795). ↩

Louise Bourgeois’s Guarantee of Sanity

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Show Seen: Louise Bourgeois: Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In spite of having seen at least two prior shows of her work, until the moment I walked in through the entrance, above, I had no idea that Louise Bourgeois was also a Painter. This wonderfully concise show proved a revelation. Her Paintings, which predate her well-known Sculpture, turn out to be every bit as unique, personal, and captivating as her free-standing pieces.

The Runaway Girl, 1938, Oil, charcoal and pencil on canvas. After marrying in Paris, Louise moved to NYC. She came to feel guilt about her sudden departure. Here, she shows herself, with long hair as usual, suitcase in hand, with symbolic references to what she left behind in the background as she floats over jagged rocks, implying a difficult path.

“The Runaway Girl who never grew up…
I do not need a safety net,
Breakfast, big lunch or afternoon snack
I do not need any visitors, telephone
Calls or small mash notes…
I don’t need anything, I don’t confuse anything.
I can wait, I am not afraid. I am grown up.
Nothing is missing.”
Louise Bourgeois1

They’re also as open-ended, and each is autobiographical, beginning with The Runaway Girl, 1938, at the entrance. Beyond her guilt at running away was the pain she suffered discovering her father’s affair with Louise’s nanny- a dual betrayal. “Fear and pain were her main subjects,” her friend, the Art historian Robert Storr said2.

Yves Tanguy, Title Unknown, 1926, Oil on canvas with string and collage. This is about as close as I’ve come in looking for a predecessor to Louise Bourgeois’ Paintings. Seen at The Met. Not in the show.

Some Art historians mention Surrealism as a possible influence on Ms. Bourgeois’s Paintings. Personally, I don’t see it. The Surrealists largely Painted fantasies, dreams and nightmares. Ms. Bourgeois works from her life and her own experiences, even when they take imaginary forms. I don’t consider this Surrealism. The same was said about Chagall, who also worked largely from his own life experiences. Frankly, like Chagall’s, her Paintings don’t remind me of anyone else’s. The great Charlotte Salomon Painted her life, too, at the same moment Louise Bourgeois was (until Ms. Solomon was murdered by the Nazis in 1943). Ms Salomon’s work seems closer to Chagall’s, stylistically, than to Louise Bourgeois’s Paintings to me. Given all that went on in Art just in the first half of the 20th century, creating a unique style is pretty remarkable, and, along with the stellar quality of the work, begin the list of things she should be given more credit for. A good number of these pieces linger in my mind weeks after the show closed- like a person you encounter who has much on his or her mind and much to say, but didn’t say it out loud at the time.

Untitled, 1945, left, Painting: Red on White, 1945, center and Untitled, 1944, right

Louise was born on Christmas, 1911, left France for NYC in 1938, and lived many of her final years until her passing in 2010 around the corner from where I live now, unbeknownst to me.

For much of the last part of her life, Louise lived and worked in the two buildings to the immediate left of the red brick. They now are home to her Foundation. Late in her life Louise moved her bedroom to the first floor, behind one of the two windows, because the stairs were too difficult.

I might have passed her on the street. After she passed away, her home became the HQ of her Easton Foundation, which owns most of the work on display. (Take a look inside here.) Walking by it now, except for some intricate grating on the front door and windows (which was there when she was), it looks just like every other townhouse on the street. Given how unique all her Art is, this is somewhat incongruous.

Themes recur in Louise Bourgeois’s work. One is buildings as seen in each of these pieces. Her series of 4 canvases titled Femme Maison, 1946-7, Oil and ink on linen, center, will be addressed next. Later, buildings appear without human parts (as in both works to the far left), and they are stand-ins for humans. One building stands for a lonely person. Two separate buildings stands for an estranged couple. Three buildings is a triangle. These would seem to be influenced and inspired by life in the tall building jungle that was, and is, Manhattan, home of “Manhattanhenge” as Neil deGrasse Tyson calls it.

Louise Bourgeois’s Art was largely motivated by “her emotional struggles,” as former MoMA curator and Louise Bourgeois researcher Deborah Wye says, “This was something that plagued her for her whole life. And she said by making a work of art she could make these emotions tangible. Try to understand them. Try to cope with them. Try to hack away at them. And she actually called her art ‘her guarantee of sanity3.’” 

Femme Maison, 1946-7, Oil and ink on linen, occupy the central position in the show, as I show in the prior picture. Femme Maison translates as “woman house,” or “housewife.” In each, a woman is confined within a building, which references a part of the Artist’s past, as her role in society confined her. All 4 figures are naked from the waist down, exposing them to the viewer’s gaze. Her trademark long hair is seen in two. A stunning and singular expression, times 4, of a woman trapped in her role in Art history, at least that known to me.

In what appears to me to be one of the final shows, and perhaps the final gallery show, mounted under Sheena Wagstaff’s tenure as Chair of The Met’s Modern & Contemporary Department, Louise Bourgeois: Paintings is quietly spectacular. The feeling of discovering something “new,”exciting, and previously unknown, when you walk in is quickly reinforced by the variety, and similarities, in her work. Themes emerge. The mystery remains.

“1932,” 1947, Oil on canvas. 1932 was the year Louise’s mother passed away after a long illness. They had been very close, with Louise often serving as her mother’s nurse. Her passing precipitated the first of the Artist’s two suicide attempts, and recurring bouts of depression. According to the wall card, the figure to the left was a “more realistically rendered self-portrait in earlier stages.” Its closed room, its railing, the “anguished(?)” lone figure, and central spotlight, remind me of the settings of many of Francis Bacon’s Paintings that would coincidentally begin at this very moment.

I missed what looks to have been a terrific show at the Jewish Museum, Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter, due to the pandemic, but did see Louise Bourgeois: Holograms show at Cheim & Read and MoMA’s Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait excellent show of her Prints and book work, both in 2017. The variety of the work on view in these four shows (thanks to the Freud’s Daughter catalog) is extraordinary, and all of it is compelling.

Her Paintings were done in the FIRST decade of the SEVEN she eventually spent here. In the end, Louise Bourgeois lived, and worked, in New York City for an unheard of 72 years! In my book, she is what I call an “Ultimate New Yorker,” i.e. someone who has defined both what it is to be a New Yorker and who helped shape NYC in the Arts in my opinion, along with Patti Smith, Miles Davis, and others. Though she professes that these Paintings are “American, from New York,” in the quote above, I don’t sense much of the City in them beyond those that depict apartment buildings that look like those found here. They are more about a person living in the City. Buildings, though, are a metaphor for persons, as I said.

Reparation, 1945, Oil on canvas. Though the Artist shows herself as a girl bringing flowers to her family’s cemetery plot, there is no name on the sparsely Painted stone. So it could reference her mother’s or grandmother’s passing, or in a larger sense, mourn those she left behind.

In each of these de facto “Self-Portraits,” the Artist lays herself and her feelings daringly bare. While her Art didn’t “solve” her problems, it helped. Seeing them now, these Paintings may prove to be a touchstone for viewers, now and in the future, as I expect them to continue to rise in stature. Stylistically, they blend abstraction and realism selectively, often in the same piece. Finally, they also provide fascinating background material for pondering her Sculpture and Prints that followed for the rest of her career.

Untitled, 1946-7, Oil on canvas. World War II, guilt, and here, fear, are subtexts in many of her Paintings. I should say I see fear in this piece, which is one of a few pieces that depict this building in the show, the others having an unstated dread and menace to them as well, perhaps part of her agoraphobia.

Thinking about this show, I couldn’t help but recall the case of Jack Whitten, who had a long career as an important Painter, only to leave a comparably important,  large body of unknown Sculpture behind when he passed in 2018. Louise Bourgeois’ Paintings were shown and known, but it was early in her career, before she attained the status her Sculpture brought her. Both bodies of unknown and lesser known work were shown by Sheena Wagstaff in two of the more fascinating and memorable shows under her remarkable tenure. I imagine that this show may have been originally planned to be installed at The Met Breuer before its sudden closing.

Untitled, Oil on canvas, left, Untitled, Oil and chalk on canvas, right, both 1946. During one visit, another visitor asked me if the work on the left was a guillotine.

In the Press Release announcing the show, Sheena Wagstaff said about it, “To date, it is not widely known that Bourgeois was active as a painter in New York for ten years, a period when the city became a vital international hub amidst critical debates around painting. This exhibition reveals the foundational DNA of the artist’s development of themes that would subsequently burgeon into three dimensions, and preoccupy her for the remainder of her long career.”

All of this was “just” preliminary to her long career as a Sculptor, and work in other mediums. Her late Paintings, like these two, begin to look like her Sculpture. Sculpture, she said, enabled her to see what she was feeling in three dimensions. Deborah Wye said, “She said there was no rivalry between the mediums for her in which she worked. She said she just said the same thing but in different ways4”

And so, “Painting” as painting was over for Ms. Bourgeois.

Moving from Painting to Sculpture. Femme Volage, 1951 left, and Dagger Child, 1947-9, both Painted wood and stainless steel. Woman in the Process of Placing a Beam in her Bag, 1949, Oil on canvas, far left.

Being a self-professed and long-standing Paintings guy I really wish Louise had kept on Painting in addition to Sculpting, but her Muse carried her to 3 dimensions. Some Prints on view in An Unfolding Portrait involve brush work, continuing the thread in a sense. She made Prints for the rest of her life. Her Prints were first the subject of a 1995 MoMA show and their 2017 Unfolding Portrait show, which lives on in its wonderful catalog. Deborah Wye, then a MoMA curator who devoted a large part of her career to studying Louise Bourgeois’s output, curated both Print shows as well the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at MoMA in 1982, the very first show of its kind given to a woman Artist at MoMA5. She has also created a website of Ms. Bourgeios’s complete prints, which may be seen here.

Fallen Woman (Femme Maison), 1946-7, Oil on canvas. As in almost all of her Paintings, her past and present experiences and the resulting guilt, angst and duality are transformed into wonderfully succinct compositions. “The woman depicted here, visually cut in two by a dark building, embodies the rejection, fragmentation, and abandonment that the artist experienced and feared…,” per the wall card.

“Why have there been no great female Artists?,” is the title of a book, and a question I’ve heard many times over the years. There are, and have been. MANY of them.

Untitled, 1946-7, Oil on canvas. Bacon, de Chirico, Miro, Chagall come to mind when I see this, but none of them combined these elements into one piece before Louise Bourgeois did here in what may be her most iconic Painting, which, again, features her long hair.

The history of Art has been largely written by men, museum collections largely curated by men, to this point. It’s only been this century that that has begun to change. It’s really only since the opening of the global Art market in the late 1980s and the accompanying relentless search for Art of value- anywhere by anyone, that more women Artist have begun to get the attention so many have stood up and demanded for so long. There’s still a long road ahead.

Beyond her iconic Sculpture, her Prints that I saw at MoMA in 2017, her Holograms that I saw the same year, and her Installations, Louise Bourgeois created an important body of Paintings, one that deserves a special place of import among those created by women Artists in the 20th century, as well as by Artists, period. I believe that as time goes on, more and more people, who know her name, but not much about what she did beyond her Spiders, Louise Bourgeois will be an Artist who moves more and more into the mainstream. Her work is so diverse, extending across mediums, techniques and time, that it actually reminds me a bit of one of her contemporaries- Pablo Picasso. That’s said not as a comparison, but to mention the similarities and variety in their work. I would not be one bit surprised to see a Bourgeois/Picasso show one of these days. Maybe MoMA’s next Bourgeois-related show6 show ?

Louise Bourgeois, with her long hair, with Untitled, 1946-7,  on her easel, circa 1946. It’s fascinating to compare what we can see of it in this Photo with the Painting we have, above.

Louise Bourgeois channeled her problems through unending creativity into an extraordinary and extraordinarily varied body of work. In spite of two suicide attempts7 earlier in her life, she overcame everything she lived through and felt about it to survive to be 98! There is much in that, as well as in her work, to inspire others. Jerry Gorovoy, her assistant and friend for 30 years, wrote in late 2010 after Louise’s death-

“Though her work was raw self-expression, it was also her way of understanding herself. It has a timeless dynamic that goes way beyond the visual: a profound capacity to awaken in others a heightened consciousness of what it is to be alive.”

Her ceaseless multi-dimensional creativity is up there with Picasso’s, Joan Miro’s, Marcel Duchamp’s and Robert Rauschenberg’s- the giants of endless invention in the 20th century. Add her name to that list if you haven’t. For her own creativity, as well as the quality and timelessness of her Art, it belongs there. 

*- Soundtrack for this Piece is “Cherry-Coloured Funk” by Cocteau Twins from Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990.

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

  1. Quoted in Louise Bourgeois, Askew and d’Offay, 2013, p.42. ↩
  2.  Robert Storr, Ted Talks, 5/11/18 ↩
  3. Deborah Wye, MoMA Talk, 9/17/2017. ↩
  4. Deborah Wye, MoMA Talk, 9/17/2017. ↩
  5. In 2018, I published my own list of these in my Yoko Ono piece, since there is no “official” list- still! I wonder why. ↩
  6. Update 9/2/22- Since writing those words I’ve discovered a gallery show, Louise Bourgeois – Pablo Picasso: Anatomies of Desire, was held at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, in 2019. From seeing the catalog, it sure looks like it’s not only an idea who’s time has come, but there is more to mine in it. ↩
  7. per The Met’s wall card for “1932.” I can find no other reference to more than one attempt. ↩

Not Your Father’s Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents is now over. If you missed it, one of the few places you can still see a bit of it is here! If you appreciate that, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Ahhh….The summer blockbuster. What would Art life be without one? In spite of covid, we’ve been blessed here in NYC with big and memorable shows the past two summers, though of course, remaining careful is the only way to see one. So, I donned my double masks and went to see this year’s summer-fest, Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents, at The Met.

Winslow & chill…Detail of Lady of Santiago (Girl With a Fan), 1885, Watercolor on paper. Less than one quarter of the whole 8 7/8 by 11 1/2 inch piece is shown. How this is Painted is just stunning. Look at her face! Look at those Palm tree leaves! Not bad for not having any lessons, right? His mother was an accomplished Artist and gave Winslow some help early on, later he took a few lessons in Oils, beyond that, he was self-taught.

Interestingly, and probably purely coincidentally, Winslow Homer turns out to be almost an exact contemporary of the Artist who enthralled me last summer, Paul Cézanne, he of Cézanne Drawing at MoMA: Cézanne, 1839-1906; Homer, 1836-1910! Cézanne was, and remains, one of the most influential Artists of his time. Winslow Homer, though continually popular since he began creating, has not enjoyed the same reputation as a ground-breaker as the French master. To this point.

You’d need a telescope to see The Gulf Stream, center, from the show’s entrance, which announces it as the centerpiece for the entire show. There are a lot of very good Paintings before and after you get to it.

That sound you heard might be the tides beginning to turn after Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents.

The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement, from Harper’s Weekly, July 12, 1862, Wood engraving on paper. A number of Homer’s War pieces compile different scenes he may have witnessed on one of his trips to the front of the Civil War into one composition. I wonder if this is the case here. Homer was about 26 at the time he created this Drawing which was sent back, and then engraved by someone else. (* Not included in Crosscurrents. Smithsonian Museum of American Art Photo)

After early work as a free-lance illustrator covering the genteel life around him, Winslow Homer moved to NYC in 1859, where he took a few lessons in Oil Painting at the National Academy of Design with Frederic Rondel. He took a job as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly right after the Civil War started in April, 1861, and much to his surprise, quickly found himself at the front in Virginia! It was there that he would come into his own, creating a body of War Illustrations that was important, historic, and ground-breaking, becoming, along with renowned Photographers Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner, America’s first visual War reporters.

Crosscurrents begins at this point, in 1863. With 88 Oils and Watercolors, covering the full range of subjects the Artist rendered after he found himself and his direction during the War, and tracing the rest of his long career, the show is centered around The Met’s masterpiece, The Gulf Stream, 1900,1906. Work after work shows the lie to the out-dated standing perception and in its stead reveals how shockingly contemporary Winslow Homer is, 112 years after his death. The feeling one leaves the show with is akin to “How could we have missed so much in Winslow Homer?”

The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Oil on canvas. As time went on, he felt he needed a different medium to express the depth of what he wanted to communicate. So, in 1863, he turned to Oil Painting, a medium he had only briefly studied. The soldier’s jacket lies to the right in this powerful image from the end of the War and the beginning of the Reconstruction. Originally, the scythe’s blade was even longer.

Part of the reason opinions on Winslow Homer haven’t changed is there’s been a lack of big Homer shows, and even Crosscurrents isn’t a full blown retrospective. The Met and National Gallery of Art in Washington had a Homer Retrospective in 1959, which the catalog shows to have had around 130 works. The Whitney had a Homer show in 1974 that had 200 works (per its catalog). For perspective, Winslow Homer created 300 Oil Paintings and 685 Watercolors, plus Prints and Drawings over the course of his career1. 2022 is proving to be a fortuitous time to see 88 Homers. 

Prisoners from the Front, 1866, Oil on canvas. The work that made Winslow Homer’s name, reputation and career. It was then quickly acquired by the young Metropolitan Museum.

Before the War ended, Winslow wound up making multiple trips to the Virginia front. Of one, his mother wrote-

“Winslow went to the war front of Yorktown and camped out about two months. He suffered much, was without food 3 days at a time & all in camp either died or were carried away with typhoid fever- plug tobacco & coffee was the staples…He came home so changed that his best friends did not know him, but is well & all right now2.”

The War forever changed Homer, and his Art. The genteel subjects were gone. To go deeper, he finally turned to Oil Painting in 1863 at the age of 27, fairly old to begin.

Sharpshooter, 1863, Oil on canvas. Not bad for a first Oil Painting, right?

“He was painting by eye, not by tradition; painting what he saw, not what he had been taught to see.” Lloyd Goodrich3

Sharpshooters were, perhaps, the most deadly branch of the Army in the Civil War. The series The Civil War: Brothers Divided, credits sharpshooters with winning the Battle of Gettysburg, and by extension the Civil War4. In Sharpshooter, we see one taking aim. In 1896, Homer recalled-

“I looked through one of their rifles once when they were in a peach orchard in front of Yorktown in April, 1862. The impression struck me as being as near murder as anything I ever think of in connection with the army & I always had a horror of that branch of the service5.“ He included this sketch in his letter-

His very first Oil Painting, Sharpshooter, 1863, opens the show in attention- grabbing fashion. When I look at it, I feel for whoever may be on the other end of the telescope. After seeing the Drawing, I believe that’s what Homer intended.

There it is: right from the very first work, and then time and again, as I walked through the 40+ years of his career covered in Crosscurrents, what stands out for me is his empathy. This is what makes Winslow Homer special in his time, and timely today.

His strikes me as being on the level of the empathy I see in Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, and especially in Goya. All his life he traveled, and many of his pieces reflect things he actually witnessed (some were based on newspaper reports). This combination of observation with his inherent empathy brings an uncanny “realism” to his work, even allowing that some pieces are based on the accounts of others, and some are compilations of events. And so, taking his Paintings as “documentary” is a bit problematic. I prefer to focus on the empathy.

Defiance: Inviting a Shot before Petersburg, 1864, Oil on panel. A Confederate soldier about to get what he’s asking for- two small puffs of smoke are seen at the middle left would seem to indicate the dare accepted, the shots on their way. And so, this is the flip-side of Sharpshooter.

On an adjacent wall, the very next Painting would seem to indicate the Artist may have been thinking similarly. Perhaps, he felt he wanted to be clearer about his intentions, and create a “more direct” work? Here, he shows us the opposite viewpoint. Brilliantly paired in the show. Defiance is utterly remarkable. It’s not like the sharpshooters needed a lot of help.

A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876, Oil on canvas. Seeing this work from 11 years after the end of the War and the middle of the Reconstruction made me wonder if I’ve seen a more powerful 19th century American Painting. Who else Painted anything like this before 1900?

Then, in the period after the War, the Reconstruction, Winslow Homer did something no other Artist I know of did- He made Paintings showing the life of the newly freed Black men and women, and in the process created a unique record of part of their experience, and race relations in the country, at the time. This is another thing that makes him a ground-breaking Artist and gives hm much relevance, today. In A Visit From the Old Mistress, 1876, volumes are said in the eyes and body language. Early on, the Mistress held a red flower in her right hand, which the Artist Painted over after changing his mind. Over time, a hint of the red has become visible near her shoulder. Given that much (but not all) of what he shows us are scenes he witnessed, I’m left to wonder if he saw this scene and the one below. If not, how could he have Painted them so convincingly? His empathy powerfully comes through, yet as strong as it is, here and in all his work, he never hits the viewer over the head with it, and it is his subtlety that I believe has caused the appreciation of his empathy, power and brilliance to be somewhat under-appreciated for so long.

Dressing for the Carnival, 1877, Oil on canvas. A tour de force in so many ways beginning with color and ending up in a timeless meditation on so many things. Who else Painted anything like this?

In 1873, Winslow Homer produced his first Watercolor (at about 37 years of age!). They would become both rightly revered for their virtuosity among any done during his lifetime and extremely popular, helping the Artist survive. No small thing since after Prisoners from the Front, he struggled to regain the same level of success with his Oils, which continually disturbed him, no matter how popular his Watercolors became. Along the way, his focus changed. He turned to the sea. First, in Cullercoats, England, than in New England, and finally in the Gulf Stream- the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba and Florida. Based in Prouts Neck, Maine, he regularly traveled south to avoid the harsh northern winters. That might  be why there was only one Winslow Homer snow scene in the show!

Eight Bells, 1886, Oil on canvas, struck me as endemic of Homer’s work on man & the sea. Here, two sailors take measurements. Man trying to understand the sea.

Of course, Winslow Homer is rightly revered for his sea pictures. Along with the intense, timeless drama in many of these pieces, what has always stood out for me is his mastery of rendering the sea itself. Crosscurrents includes quite a few highlights, including some daring sea rescues Homer witnessed or read about. Regarded so at the time, Winslow Homer remains one of the real masters of sea Paintings. No mean feat in a country about 100 years old at the time in view of the long history of sea Art in many other countries.

Oranges on a Branch, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Hypnotically beautiful, during one visit, another visitor nearby railed against the inclusion of the building on the lower right in this rare Homer Still Life. Oranges were something of a delicacy at the time, and a treat as a staple at meals in the Bahamas, they would seem exotic to many contemporary American viewers.

As darkly hued as many of his Oil Paintings are, as a result of his yearly winter trips south, all of a sudden come his Watercolors that just explode with light and color.

Native Hut at Nassau, 1885, Watercolor on paper. During his trips, Homer kept a close eye on the local population and had a gift for capturing their lives in extraordinary works like this, a scene he may have seen on a walk from his luxury hotel. While picturesque elements of the piece would appeal to American viewers, the condition of the local’s lives is front and center. Again, something not many were doing in 1885.

Homer’s Watercolors were extremely popular with collectors, and even he seemed to get caught up in it. He’s quoted in the show saying-

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”

At The Met, they indeed glisten with the beautiful light he found in the Bahamas and elsewhere on the Gulf Stream. But, for me, it’s his Oils that are the revelation, and which largely serve to rewrite our perception of him. Homer followed sales of his Oils closely, and took the results personally, particularly when they were misunderstood. His Watercolors cast his subjects in a different light, no pun intended, and seem to me to be more meditative, while his Oils bring the power.

A Garden in Nassau, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Another poignant example shows a child outside a walled private garden. A small detail- Homer’s watercolor palm leaves are always amazing, and offset the sparseness of the wall.

Still, a number of those on view, like these two above, get to the same power, empathy and subtlety, seen in his Oils.

Shark Fishing, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Ummm…I think they’re going to need a bigger boat. The shark is similar to one seen in The Gulf Stream, 15 years later.

In 1885, while in the Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer may have seen and recorded a boat in distress in a sketchbook. The sketch was in the show, as were a number of fascinating Watercolors that seem to reveal something of the development of The Gulf Stream Oil Painting over the next 21 years. Not all of the pieces I’m showing here were in the show’s Gulf Stream section. I’m including Shark Fishing, above, (which is not a disaster work like the others), due to the similarities between the shark in The Gulf Stream. It also includes two Black sailors.

Sharks (The Derelict), 1885, Watercolor on paper. It would seem that this was a work that informed The Gulf Stream, with many of its familiar compositional elements, minus the sailor.

The Gulf Stream Oil was displayed in 1900, then Homer reworked it in 1906. (Possibly in response to criticism?) The Met quickly acquired it the same year.

The Gulf Stream, c.1889, Watercolor on paper. What would be the final composition is taking shape.

In this version, there is no sign of rescue, which is closer to the Oil as it was originally displayed. No water spout to the right. The sailor looks down in the direction of the sharks.

The Gulf Stream, 1900, 1906, Oil on canvas. It was praised and condemned early on. From The Met’s Audio Guide- “When the Worchester Art Museum was considering its purchase, two women Trustees objected to the unpleasantness of the subject. Homer wrote to his agent- “The boat and sharks are of very little consequence. You can tell these ladies that the unfortunate negro who is by now so dazed and parboiled will be rescued and return to his friends and home and ever after live happily.” In 1906 he added the ship on the upper left horizon. 

Not many images exist of The Gulf Stream before his 1906 modifications of it, most noticeably adding the ship on the horizon in the upper left in 1906. A print displayed nearby shows the work as it originally was displayed in 1900 without it. Was it added in response to the worry for the lone sailor expressed to him by viewers? In a letter to his dealer the Artist vehemently expressed that “the subject of this piece is its title.” It’s hard for me to see one subject in it. I’m puzzled by how the man is Painted, and why he is looking off to our right. Perhaps, Homer felt that looking straight ahead, as he does in the Watercolor above, was too obvious. Some see the Painting as being inspired by the recent death of Homer’s father. Yet, he had produced Watercolors of this subject 15 years before. Whatever the case is, it again features a Black man. Perhaps the most iconic American Painting to do so from its time, or earlier. Or, from substantially later, for that matter.

Natural Bridge, Bermuda, 1901, Watercolor on paper. It’s hard for me to look at this and not think of Cézanne’s rock formations I showed in my Cézanne Drawing piece his last year that were done at almost the same time.

“If a man wants to be an artist, he should never look at pictures.” Winslow Homer quoted in Lloyd Goodrich’s Winslow Homer, P.21.

Winslow Homer kept to himself. His life is in his work. He refused to cooperate with his biographer and so very little is known about his possible influences. Writers and critics have been left to wonder about them, and I do, too. He spent 10 months living in Paris when much was going on in the Art world there. Yet, almost nothing is known about how he felt about what he saw. I see bits of Manet, Monet, Cézanne and Goya in his work. Is it coincidental?

Near Andersonville, 1865-66, Oil on canvas. The wall card speaks of the “Black woman emerging from a darkened interior, standing on a threshold and contemplating an uncertain future” near Andersonville, the site of an horrific Confederate prison.

Strong women are also featured in Homer’s work. The Black woman in the stunning early Oil, Near Andersonville, above, and women he encountered in the seaside communities he lived in in Cullercoats, England, and New England, like this one-

The Gale, 1883-93, Oil on canvas.

Again, something not many other Artists were doing at the time.

Right and Left, 1909, Oil on canvas. Homer’s next to last Oil Painting.

Late in his life, he turned his attention to mortality and the struggle of life and death, animal versus animal and man versus animal, as here, and of course earlier, he had depicted the struggle of man versus man, in the Civil War, and man versus the sea. It takes an effort to find the hunters in the piece, since the work is designed to show us the scene from the victim’s viewpoint, like Defiance, shown earlier. This is something unique in my experience to Homer in Art.

As if ALL of that isn’t enough, Winslow Homer’s compositions continually surprise me with their originality. Right and Left being one classic example among many. Something he is not generally appreciated for.

Winslow Homer with The Gulf Stream and his palette in his Prouts Neck, Maine Studio, c. 1899-1900

Francis Bacon said whether something was art or not wouldn’t be known for 75 to 100 years. I’ve always felt it took longer. Still, at about 100 years since his passing, it seems to me that Winslow Homer’s stock is beginning to rise to about mark twain (2 fathoms, or 12 feet, the depth the river must be for a riverboat to pass safely), also the pen name of almost an EXACT contemporary of Winslow Homer- Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910, being 1 year older, and passing in the same year! Like Mark Twain is, for many among American Novelists, in my book, Winslow Homer is just about at the top of innovative and important 19th century American Painters, for his Paintings, his mastery of Watercolor, and his illustrations.

Regardless of how the future looks at him, it seem to me that he’s certainly an Artist with a lot to say to us today. His technique catches the eye, then his subtlety and empathy hold the mind, and the heart.

*- Soundtrack for this Piece is- (“I ain’t gonna work on) Maggie’s Farm (no more),” by Bob Dylan from Bringing it All Back Home, 1965.

This Piece is dedicated to Amy Harding (who made a long trip to see this show, particularly admiring Dressing for the Carnival), for her help in getting this piece published and her long-time support!

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

  1. According to Helen A. Cooper, Winslow Homer Watercolors, P.16 ↩
  2. Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation, P.34 ↩
  3. Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer, 1973, P.17 ↩
  4. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5427912/ ↩
  5. https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/army-potomac-sharp-shooter-picket-duty-10711 ↩

Francisco Goya: Modern Art & Photography Begin Here

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The seemingly all-seeing eye. Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Plate 1, 1799, Etching, aquatint, drypoint, burin. The wall card reads- “In the first plate from the Caprichos, Goya presents himself as a sardonic observer of contemporary society.” Exactly what we’ll see in the rest of The Met’s Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Francisco Goya’s Paintings are on the “must-see” lists of many museum goers, particularly the 200 or so portraits he did of royal, aristocratic or upper-class patrons over his 39 years as a court Painter1. Like this one-

Francisco Goya, Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784–1792), 1787-8, Oil on canvas. One of the most charming Paintings in The Met for many. I can’t help but think it’s also more. An allegory about the end of  innocence? On the right, small birds in a protective cage. On the left, a magpie is eyed by cats. Any wonder this was the last Goya portrait commissioned by the child’s father, the Count of Altamira? Herein lies a hint of what lurks in Goya’s Graphic work. Its young subject died at age eight, 4 years after posing for it. A final touch- the magpie holds Goya’s card with his signature in his beak. *- Met Museum Photo of the work unframed.

But, to get the full picture of Goya’s Art, I believe his graphic work deserves every bit as much attention. Yet, chances to see his Drawings & Prints in depth are rare due to the fragility and light sensitivity of the originals. In 2015, a complete set of Goya’s timeless Print series Los Caprichos (the Caprichos) was shown at The National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, which I wrote about here. 2015 also saw the last large Goya Retrospective in the U.S., Goya: Order and Disorder, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which I actually made a day trip out of town to see and wrote about in the same piece. 

Goya after Velazquez, A False Bacchus Crowning Drunkards, 1778, Etching. Goya achieved, and demonstrated, his mastery of of the challenging medium of Etching copying the earlier Spanish master as in this remarkable Print done when Goya was about 32. And, he had the confidence to modify the composition of one of the greatest Painters of all time.

In the intervening 4 1/2 years, I’ve been preoccupied, if not obsessed, with exploring Photography & PhotoBooks, so when I finally got to see Goya’s Graphic Imagination at The Met in April with about 118 Drawings & Prints, I wondered if I might be able to spot Goya’s influence on Photographers and Photography, and on Modern Art in general for that matter.

“Both types of works on paper are closer to one another than they are to Goya’s painting. Paintings are a public expression. By contrast, an album of drawings is intimate and personal. These smaller-scale works served as a platform for Goya to think through his most private ideas.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Goya’s eye, which seems to look askance at us in the Self-Portrait that opens Los Caprichos, up top, apparently never rested. He recorded much of what he saw in his Sketchbooks, which have largely survived. Over time, his beliefs ran in and out of sync with those of the powers that be, so he became adept at keeping his opinions to himself. It is in the privacy of these Sketchbooks that he gave full reign to what he felt about all he saw around him while keeping his position at court. He eventually rose to the exalted position of First Chamber Painter in 1799.

Title page to the first edition of Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), 1863, 24 years after the invention of chemical Photography. *- Met Museum Photo. Due to the protective low lighting in the show I was unable to take satisfactory pictures of much of the show without a tripod, so in those cases, I am using The Met’s Photos. This page was not included in the show.

A number of his Drawings became the basis of his Prints, including  Los Caprichos and later, inspired by the Peninsular War, 1807-14 and the Madrid Famine, 1811-12, Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War). It was the 10 or so Prints from this series, equal parts “graphic” and revolutionary, on view in The Met’s show I looked forward to seeing most. Due to those ever-changing political winds, it wasn’t until 1863, thirty-five years after Goya’s death, that the world got to see his Fatal Consequences of Spain’s Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices, as he had originally titled a set of 85 Prints that he gave to an associate during his lifetime, when it was finally published under the title Los Desastres de la Guerra with 80 Prints2.

Plate 15 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘And there is nothing to be done.’ (Y no hai remedio.) *- Met Museum Photo.

“Every figure in Los Desastres de la Guerra plays a specific role, defined by gesture, expression and costume. Nothing is superfluous.” Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la guerra, P.17

The series shows things never before seen in Art to that time, including graphic depictions of the horror of war, imprisonment and famine. About two hundred thirty years earlier, circa 1633,  Jacques Callot published his Print series Les Grandes Miseres de la guerre or The Miseries and Misfortunes of War. Of them, the Art Gallery of NSW, Australia, which owns a set, says– “Callot’s series is less an indictment of war than a moral tale about the unhappy consequences that befall the undisciplined soldier.” Callot’s Prints are in a long landscape format, and show what they depict at a distance. It is thought Goya owned a set of them, and they may have been an inspiration for him. In his series, Goya puts the action full frame presaging the words of Robert Capa, famed for his 20th century war & conflict Photographs, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

Plate 1 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): Sad foreboding of what is going to happen (Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer), ca. 1815 (published 1863), Etching, burin, drypoint and burnisher. *- Met Museum Photo.

As powerful & profound as they are, there’s an element of them that is particularly puzzling. In more than one work, Goya’s caption gives the viewer the idea that what he’s showing are things he actually witnessed. DID Goya see the things he shows us?

DID he? Or, didn’t he actually see this happen? The title says he did. Plate 44 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘I saw it.’ (Yo lo vi.). *- Met Museum Photo.

There is some debate around this. Wikipedia says repeatedly that he went around and saw the battles of the Peninsular War- without quoting a source for these statements I have seen no where else. While it seems it would have been hard for him to miss the daily effects of the Madrid Famine going on around him, the Artist going to battle scenes is harder for me to imagine. He was in his 60s and had suffered a serious illness that left him completely deaf. If he didn’t actually go to them, he could have been inspired by news accounts or from the accounts those closer to the action.

Preperatory Drawing for Plate 64 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘Cartloads to the cemetery.’ (Carretadas al cementerio.) *- Prado, Madrid Photo.

Plate 64 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘Cartloads to the cemetery.’ (Carretadas al cementerio.). Here an extremely rare opportunity to compare the Drawing, above, with the final Print. *- Met Museum Photo.

At this point, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for certain how much of what we’re shown, if any of it, the Artist actually personally witnessed first hand. I’ve come to feel that thinking about this is a waste of time. Goya was an Artist- not a Photographer. He was working before the invention of chemical Photography and setting down his ideas by hand on paper, stone or canvas. With all due respect to the skill of Artists who Drew and Painted down through history, Drawing & Paintings done from life or memory are incapable of showing us the real world as it existed. Time is a key element in Drawing & Painting and in the time it takes to make one the world has changed. The people in it have moved. The light has changed. Things have happened and finished. In war, particularly, things happen way too fast to be captured accurately in a Drawing, let alone a Painting. They can give us a sense of what happened. What Goya is showing us is “something else” than the full reality of the moment- even if he did see it happen right in front of him. It’s his vision of things. If he tried to render it accurately to the scene in front of him, it’s still only an approximation. We’re seeing it through his eyes, and, as becomes apparent as you look at his Drawings & Prints, he does have a point of view.

The line for Goya extends further down the hall to the left than you can see here. April, 2021.

After seeing them in the show, it’s hard for me to think that these unprecedented images are not precursors of so-called war and conflict Photography. After the show I began to look to see if the Photographers, themselves, acknowledged this. In 2005, the renowned British Photographer Don McCullin, renowned for his coverage of the Vietnam War, among numerous other conflicts over his long & eventful career, told the BBC “When I took pictures in war I couldn’t help thinking of Goya.” Elsewhere he said, “…if what happened in front of my eyes was like a scene out of Goya. I wasn’t there to make icons. I had to bring back information that could possibly prevent other such miseries.” In those words I feel a simpatico with what Goya might have been trying to accomplish in Los Desastres de la Guerra .

Garroted Man, 1776-78, Etching. Done at about age 30, Goya’s second etching! A forerunner of Los Desastres, is also one of his most unforgettable images. According to Janis Tomlinson, Garroting “was considered one of the more humane forms of execution3.”

If a Drawing is incapable of showing us the complete “reality” of a scene, then it is what some might call today, “conceptual.” I was struck by some similarities of Goya’s Prints with so-called “conceptual” Photographers, who modify or create scenes from scratch that they then Photograph, like Duane Michals, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson or Deana Lawson. Goya, too, may have been creating a scene on paper to make it express what he saw in his mind’s eye (keyword= may).

Plate 30 from The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra). Proof, without caption. Without the titles makes them infinitely harder to decipher. According to the wall card, here, people fall to the ground after a building explodes.

Yet, no writing about these work exists in Goya’s hand besides the captions on the plates.

“It is important to emphasize that the inscriptions are not titles. They are captions that encourage a potential understanding. The captions do not explain the work for us. The meanings are often unclear, but this isn’t because Goya was being obtuse. He was thinking through drawings and prints for his personal purposes, and as such, there is no need for him to explain their significance to himself. His works on paper are so internal and layered that they would have sparked multiple associations, even for Goya.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

So, the captions add another layer of mystery to what we’re seeing! Duane Michals captions many of his Photographs right on the print itself. Robert Frank wrote directly on the image as his career went on, and so does Jim Goldberg, among others. Coincidences? Possibly.

Jim Goldberg, Ron E., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 2014. *- Magnum Photos Print.

During the lockdown I read Believing is Seeing by Errol Morris. Among Photos taken from 1855 until very recently, Mr. Morris examines the work of the 1930s Farm Services Administration (F.S.A.) Photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and the evidence that they may have modified the scenes of some of their most iconic F.S.A. images from the 1930s. Modifying a scene to make it closer to what the Artist or Photographer is seeing in his or her mind’s eye would make them kin to what we see in Goya’s Drawings & Prints. So, it doesn’t really matter all that much if Goya was actually present when the events he shows us were happening. “The FSA collection (in the Library of Congress) therefore offers scholars an unparalleled opportunity to place masterworks, such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), in the context of companion images taken on the same day. This visual evidence offers a much more reliable guide to the photographer’s original intent than the artist’s recollections recorded decades after the fact,” James Curtis, the author of Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered, said here. (The other images Dorothea Lange took that day in the archive may be seen here.) In my view, it doesn’t matter if the F.S.A. Photographers, “posed” subjects or modified scenes as Mr. Morris’ and Mr. Curits’ books suggest. Like it doesn’t matter if Goya saw “I saw it.” Even if, say Dorothea Lange, did modify the scene somehow4, she did not change the woman’s situation, which is the real and lasting point of the Photograph. At the end of the F.S.A. chapter in his book, Errol Morris concludes, “It is the idea that the photograph captures that endures 5.” It seems to me, regardless of their genesis, it’s exactly the same with Goya’s Prints & Drawings.

“The demise of Goya’s fortunes at Court has been attributed to his objections to the repressive nature of the restoration regime. Yet he had long survived within politically charged surroundings, and it seems likely he would have kept his political opinions to himself.” Janis A. Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.221

Goya, Self-Portrait, c.1796, Brush and point of brush, carbon black ink, on laid paper, seen at the show’s entrance.

After escaping trouble for his views after the Peninsular War, it finally caught up to him leading to his leaving Spain and becoming an exile in France near the end of his life, where he died at 82 in 1828. His remains were later exhumed and reburied in Madrid in 1919. As far as being the possible “Father of Modern Art” goes, I think a great case can be made for his nomination. Goya’s extremely wide range of subjects, from the royals to the incarcerated preshadowed the work of many Artists & Photographers of the past century. And he never minced the Drawn line, or words, when calling out those he felt were wrong. When I say “Modern Art & Photography Begins Here,” I’m not so much referring to the stylistic innovations though they are there for all to see, and his later Paintings were certainly ahead of their time, I’m referring to the content, and the depicting of what was not seen in Art to that point. Goya’s Drawings & Prints, and his Paintings, like the 2nd & 3rd of May, 1802, break away from the chains of Pontifical or Royal commissions. They show us a world that is all too familiar to us today. A world that has seen no end of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.

In considering Goya’s candidacy as the “first modern,” it feels that he lived too long ago to be considered. Yet, it’s interesting to realize that Goya was born in 1746 and died in 1828. J.M.W. Turner, who’s work is often seen as “modern” lived from 1775 to 1851. Charles Dickens, who’s novels captured the “modern world” as soon as anyone else’s, lived from 1812-1870. Edouard Manet, often mentioned as one of the first moderns lived from 1832, only 4 years after Goya’s passing, to 1883.  James McNeill Whistler 1834-1903 and Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890, was born 25 years after Goya’s passing. Chemical Photography was introduced to the world in 1839- eleven years after Goya’s death. Goya seems perfectly situated chronologically.

The Custody of a Prisoner Does Not Call for Torture (La seguridad de un reo no exige tormento)
ca. 1815; published ca. 1859. While not a part of the posthumous La Guerre set, Goya included a number of Prints of prisoners in the set he gave a friend during his lifetime. I’m also including this as an example of the show’s low, protective, lighting. This may be seen with better lighting in a Met Museum Photo, here.

Between his Paintings, his Drawings and his Prints, taken as a whole, Goya shows the full range of people, from all layers of society, from those of privilege to prisoners without privilege. People living in the utmost splendor to people starving to death, extending on what Rembrandt had done. Some of it was timely, referring to people and events only known to specialists and historians now. Much of it is timeless since human nature hasn’t changed. Met Curator McDonald sums this up-

“Not much changes. The same idiocy, cruelty, and violence take new shapes, but Goya captured those universal anxieties. So much of what we are dealing with now can be identified in Goya’s art—there’s politics, conflict, bloodshed, and ignorance of the impact of our actions fueled by stupidity and bad choices—the same old problems.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Plate 79 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): Truth has died. (Muriola verdad). 1814–15, published 1863. The penultimate Print in the series. Met Museum Photo.

It was interesting to me that Goya’s Graphic Imagination. was on view a few hundred feet away from another major show of the work of another Artist who was focused on people: the famous and the already forgotten- Alice Neel: People Come First. It’s also interesting that both shows were up during the pandemic: our own 21st century horror show. As big a test of the resilience of New York as I hope to ever see.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Outside of Space & Time” by David Byrne & St. Vincent from their classic album Love This Giant.

BookMarks-
The Met’s catalog for Goya’s Graphic Imagination is exceptional. It features large, often full page plates of all the works on view on very nice stock and includes very insightful text from the show’s curators. These texts include numerous insights that weren’t included on the wall cards in the show. And so, it’s one of the better books on the subject of Goya’s Drawings & Prints and a very good place to start for those who want to know more about the show or the subject. Highly recommended.

The best overview of the work of Goya known to me is Janis A. Tomlinson’s Francisco Goya y Lucientes : 1746-1828 , published by Phaidon, which is my go-to book for all things Goya. In fact, I’ve relied so heavily on it that I am now on my second copy. Beware of nebulous listings on Amazon! This is a large book- in both hard & soft cover editions. There is apparently a subsequent smaller softcover edition I have not seen. For studying the Art, the large edition, which has over 250 images, is the one you want. Out of print, but quite inexpensive in Very Good condition, the hardcover is the way to go especially since it is really no more expensive than the softcover and its binding should last longer. 

The best overview on Goya’s Drawings is called simply that- Goya Drawings. Published by the Prado Museum, Madrid, who hold the world’s greatest collection of Goya’s work. It was one of my NoteWorthy Art Books of 2020. It also contains a few Prints but most of its 250 reproductions are of his Drawings, sectioned from all through his career with insightful text in English in a nice, smaller size.

Janis Tomlinson has also written two books about the prints.Graphic Evolutions The Print Series of Francisco Goya (Columbia Studies on Art) and Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la Guerra. Both are excellent and recommended, the latter the most comprehensive book on Los Desastres available. They are a bit harder to find in very good condition, but worth seeking out. Goya’s War contains reproductions of the all 80 published Prints in Los Desastres. It was only published in softcover. 

Photography Related-

Errol Morris’Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography is a fascinating deeper look at iconic Photographs starting with Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimean War, 1855, to current events, causing the reader to question his or her beliefs about just what these images say and what they conceal. Extremely wide-ranging it’s an essential book for Photographers, Art lovers, Art writers and anyone who cares about images.

James Curtis’ Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: Fsa Photography Reconsidered (American Civilization) is lesser known and a ground-breaking look at the work of the Farm Services Administration Photographers, including Walker Evans, Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange. It puts their most famous images into the context of the Photographer’s work that day and analyzes them in a bigger picture way revealing much that is not apparent in the one, famous, Photograph that was widely circulated.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

  1.  Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.1 ↩
  2. Also, as Janis Tomlinson points out- “For if, as the artist himself admitted, only twenty-seven sets of Los Caprichos had sold in much better times, how could he hope to find buyers in a capital devastated by war for these images of brutality, sadistic indifference, and tragic resignation?” Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la guerra, P.17 ↩
  3. Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.44 ↩
  4. James Curtis interview with Errol Morrisin Morris’, Believing is Seeing, P.138 ↩
  5. Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing, p.185 ↩

Vincent van Gogh- Home, At Last


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Vincent van Gogh spent his life looking…for things he never found. Detail of his  Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887. All works shown were seen at The Met and are oil on canvas.

While a reported 1,000,000 visitors have been busy seeing Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination on The Met’s 1st floor, downstairs in the Costume Institute, and uptown at The Cloisters1, many visitors may have missed the fact that there is big news upstairs at 1000 Fifth Avenue. No, I’m not talking about the skylight renovation project, which is ongoing, and which has thrown the European Paintings galleries into a bit of temporary chaos. I’m talking about the fact that happy times have again returned to Gallery 825 near the southern wall of the Museum in the European Paintings galleries on the second floor, where The Met has reunited, what for me, has long been one of the glories of it’s collection, and one of the glories of NYC: 10 of their Paintings by Vincent van Gogh, now that all of them by the beloved Artist have returned from loans.

HOW great is it to be able to walk into a room and see THIS? For me, it’s one of the great joys of life in NYC. One part of the newly reinstalled Gallery 825 showing 9 of the 10 Van Goghs in this room. #10 is on the other side of the Self-Portrait with Straw Hat in the vitrine. This shot was available for literally one second over 3 visits and the 3 hours I spent here recently.

A further 6 are adjacent to them in Gallery 822, making 16 of the 18 oil on canvas Paintings they own by my count on view at the moment.

1,500+ visits in I rarely pay attention to gallery # signs. You really can’t go wrong in The Museum. I always just wander and enjoy being surprised. For those with limited time, yes, it might be best to have a plan. Or? Just wander.

Of the 6 or 7 million folks who visit The Museum from all over the world, I’m sure seeing these works are on the lists of many. I made a visit to see their reinstallation, which puzzles me is some regards, and I had a revelation that caused me to make 2 return trips solely to further study what I found.

Also in Gallery 825, opposite the Van Goghs seen above, is a beautiful selection of work by his friend, Paul Gauguin, with works by Pointillists, including George Seurat, and a Rousseau, filling out the room. Seeing the Gauguin, I was struck by the thought that they have, and will, spend much more time together in this room than he and Vincent did in real life, a bit of a poignant reminder of the temporary nature of all of Vincent’s relationships and friendships, besides that with his younger brother, Theo (which did have some lapses, due to disagreements).

Across from Vincent in Gallery 825, is a corner of Paintings, an amazing sculpture(!) and a wood carving(!) by his friend, Paul Gauguin.

Regarding the installation of the Van Goghs in Gallery 825, two caveats. First, the works at each end of the wall are a bit difficult to see due to the placing of the guard rope. It’s worse for the smaller work on the left, Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885, than it is for the larger work, First Steps, after Millet, 1890 at the other end.

Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885, left, Sunflowers, 1887, right.

Regardless? My rule of thumb is this- “If THIS was your ONLY Painting by Vincent van Gogh- Would you hang it like THIS?”

First Steps, after Millet, 1890, quite popular with visitors, is a bit hard to see. When you stand near that post, you’ll understand what I mean. Rousseau’s The Repast of the Lion, 1907, is hung on the wall, right. It may have been interesting for visitors if The Met hung one of the 6 oil Paintings they own by Van Gogh’s cousin Anton Mauve (1838-1888), his only teacher (for a short time), here. Rousseau is far more popular.

This may, or may not, be a function of the fact that gallery space in the European Paintings Galleries is a bit scarce right now due to the skylight renovations. It pains me to no end there are only THREE Rembrandts on view at the moment!, so it’s great timing that at least the Van Goghs have been reunited.

The other caveat is in seeing the work on the front of Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, The Potato Peeler, 1885. It’s a work from his earlier, “dark,” period and due to the glare from the lights, is very hard to see due to the reflections on the vitrine they’re in. It probably needs a vitrine with self-contained lighting on each side, which may not be practical due to conservation issues. It’s so darkly Painted it makes me wonder how popular Vincent would be now if he had continued Painting with this palette for the rest of his career.

The Potato Peeler, 1885, with Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, on it’s back. Yes, Vincent was so poor, he had to use the other, unprimed, raw side of his canvases, in this case to Paint the astonishing Self-Portrait. Admittedly, a very difficult piece to light, particularly in a vitrine. A better view is here.

Coincidentally to the return of the Van Goghs, I’ve been absolutely lost in Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s, 2011 Van Gogh: The Life, as riveting a 976 page biography as I’ve ever read. Messers Naifeh and Smith, coming off the Pulitzer Prize for their Jackson Pollock biography, spent ten years in painstaking international research, with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, tapping into 100 years of Van Gogh research, a wealth of previously unmined sources (including hundreds of unpublished family correspondences), and of course, Vincent’s justly famous letters, themselves fresh off the completion of the 15 year Van Gogh Letters Project, which, with the Van Gogh Museum, revisited every existing letter written by or received by Vincent. The results were published in 2014 in a 6 volume profusely illustrated (Vincent’s letters contain many drawings and illustrations) and completely annotated hardcover set, Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Letters, that clocks in at 33 pounds (only a few left- hurry! See BookMarks at the end), or the entire corpus is now available for free online!! Van Gogh: The Life, is so big, Naifeh and Smith have created a website to contain the full versions of the book’s extensive footnotes, picture galleries and an extensive bibliography. Their book has been called, “The definitive biography for decades to come,” by Leo Jansen, curator, the Van Gogh Museum, and co-editor of Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Letters.

It’s about time! It’s hard to think of any other Artist born after 1850 who’s life (and death) is shrouded in myth, fantasy and fiction more than Vincent van Gogh’s has been.

Cypresses, June, 1889

Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, exactly a year after Vincent van Gogh died. His parents had a son, who they named Vincent, who was stillborn in 1852, and laid to rest under a marker inscribed “Vincent van Gogh.” His mother, Anna Carbentus, “never understood her eldest son…As time passed, she liked him less and less. Incomprehension gave way to impatience, impatience to shame, and shame to anger. By the time he was an adult, she had all but given up hope for him. She dismissed his religious and artistic ambitions as “futureless wanderings” and compared his errant life to a death in the family. She accused him of intentionally inflicting “pain and misery” on his parents. She systematically discarded any Paintings and Drawings that he left at home as if disposing of rubbish…She outlived Vincent by 17 years. Even after his death, when fame belatedly found him, she never regretted or amended her verdict that his art was “ridiculous2.'”

Yikes! WHAT can you possibly say to that? Still? As late as 1888, 2 years before he died, THIS is how he longed to see her- with an approving smile for him. Something he probably had to imagine. His father, Dorus, a Parson, was left to try and intermediate, but more often then not, having his own passionately held ideas and beliefs, that rarely seemed to coincide with his eldest son’s, met with little success.

Vincent van Gogh, First Steps, after Millet, Oil on canvas, 1890. It’s hard not to see Vincent’s yearning for family in this scene. Here, the subjects are, ironically and fittingly, frozen in time- forever apart. Painted after an original chalk and pastel Drawing by Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875, one of Vincent’s biggest influences), because, he said, Millet “had no time to Paint them in oils3.” The compositional changes he made to the original are fascinating.

To say that Vincent wound up pining for the love of his family his entire life, that he never received to the extent it was “enough” for him, would be a huge understatement. At 11, they dropped him off on the steps of a boarding school 13 miles away from the home he longed to be in and said goodbye to him. It was an “abandonment,” his term, he never got over. At one point, he wrote about his parents, “(They) cannot feel for or sympathize with me.””(They) completely lack warm, live sympathy.””They are creating a desert around themselves.””(They) have hardened their hearts.””(They) are harder than stone.””When I’m at home, I have a lonesome, empty feeling4.” For the rest of his life, which would largely be lived away from home, he valued nothing more than trying to win back their love, or, failing this, to find a surrogate family to fill this need, which he never did for long. Vincent’s two attempts at a relationship (the word “romantic” doesn’t seem appropriate), first to a widowed cousin, the second to a prostitute pregnant with someone else’s child, that he hoped would lead to marriage and thereby family stability, ended in humiliation. The closest he ever got to having a lasting friendship was, mostly at a distance, with his younger brother Theo.

While living this loveless, largely friendless life he went from one utter failed attempt at a job or career to another, until, finally, in August, 1880, he turned to becoming an Artist as a last resort. A month short of ten years later, in July, 1890, he would be dead. He was just 37 years old. In August, 1882, he wrote about having a feeling that he would not live long-

“I would like to leave some memento in the form of Drawings and Paintings…I have to accomplish in a few years something full of heart and love, and do it with a will. Should I live longer, so much better, but I put that out of my mind. Something must be accomplished in these few years5.”

 

Sunflowers, 1887. About as “alive” as still life gets. It positively bursts with so much energy you might think it was on fire.

In his short Artistic career, he would leave about 2,100 Artworks, including an astonishing 860 oil Paintings, and those letters. His contemporary, Claude Monet, was born 13 years before him, in 1840, and died 36 years after him, in 1926, outliving him by almost 50 years to age 86. If Vincent had lived to be 86, he would have passed in 1939. IF he had been as productive for those 50 years as he was in his first 10? He would have left us 10,500 Artworks, including 4,300 oil Paintings! But, given how hard his life was to that point and the wear and tear it took on him, and that he had what were, possibly, both diagnosed and undiagnosed illnesses6, it was probably a very long shot, at best, he ever had a realistic chance of making it to 86.

Irises, 1890, the last year of Vincent’s life. The “pale” background is due to the fading of the original color.

I was one of the millions who grew up with Irving Stone’s Lust for Life. Reading it as a teenager, I naively took it as fact, not realizing there was such a thing as a “fictionalized biography.” Irving Stone set out to make biography as exciting as dime store novels. He did this to Michelangelo, too, with The Agony and the Ecstasy. In both instances, Art lovers are left to dig on their own in the historical record for the facts. Often overlooked by those who think Lust is a “biography” is the section of “Notes” warning the reader that he had to concoct scenes. Writing 40 years after Vincent passed, he never knew him. Making matters worse, he seems to have relied on people who weren’t there for “information” on key scenes, like his death. The resulting Film of the same name brought all of this to countless millions more. After reading Lust, I was compelled to dig deeper, to get “closer” to Vincent. I was given a 3 volume older edition of his Complete Letters, which is way more compelling than any novel (even one, like Mr. Stone’s that draws on them), and now with Van Gogh: The Life, the background has been filled in with 100 years of verifiable research. There’s no longer any need for fiction-  The real story is a way better page turner! If you love his work, dig deeper into his life and you’ll be rewarded by getting closer to the Artist. Reading Vincent’s letters, and now The Life, what comes consistently across to me is his LOVE for Life. When I look at his Art, I see an Artist who loves what he sees and wants to preserve it with pen or paint. Even during his earlier period when he Painted very poor farmers and others in a very dark palette. He Paints them to honor their work and their lives.

Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885. The Photo is distorted because, as I said, it must be seen at an angle.

At The Met, seeing these works together again, I was struck by how very different they are. Though they were Painted over less than 8 full years, they’re different one from the next. They’re different from virtually everything else of their time.

Vincent desperately wanted to be a Portraitist. He (over)spent much of his limited budget on models, but, as in so many other things, he was his own worst enemy in that he began Painting from life before he finished his studies, according to his Cousin Mauve, and others. The results are often a bit “rough,” but just as often surprisingly poignant and unique, particularly in his Self-Portraits, which he did so many of when he lacked for other sitters. It’s hard for me to look at any of Vincent’s portraits and not think that he was really Painting himself, particularly when he Paints people he barely knows. Here, it’s hard not to see another instance of his longing for family and domesticity. La Berceuse (Woman Rocking A Cradle; Augustine-Alex Pellicot Roulin), 1889 (who he knew better than most), It’s an image of home and family he Painted to hang in the famous Yellow House he briefly shared with Gauguin. If that string she’s holding wasn’t tethered to the cradle, she might be floating away like the flowers in the background almost appear to be.

His portraits look like no one else’s. Ditto his landscapes7, his interiors and still lifes. The same can be said for his Drawings, which were unforgettably seen in The Met’s landmark Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings show in 2005. And, they’re different from what’s come since. His work set the stage for what is called Expressionism, though no one else seems to have directly pursued his stylistic innovations, like his use of wavy lines to depict nature.

Meanwhile, Wheatfield with Cypresses, 1889, gets it’s own wall in Gallery 822.

Who else Paints like this?

This is all the more remarkable when you consider how little training in Drawing & Painting Vincent received, which, beyond his own studies of Charles Bargue’s legendary Drawing Course, and other texts, amounted to a month with his cousin, Painter Anton Mauve, and some classes, including a short-lived enrollment in Paris classes that were also attended by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Much of the rest can be attributed to talent, though part of the individuality in his Art can be attributed to isolation, I think. He worked most of his entire 10 year career by himself, with only occasional company or interaction with other Artists, though he voraciously and passionately looked at Art for most of his life, even long before he was an Artist. He assimilated all that he saw, felt it deeply and thought about it continually, yet he was able to create Art in his own style that, while partially based in Millet, he continually evolved. So much so that no two of these 16 works (in both galleries) are really in the same style, there are differences between each and every one of them. Most unique of all, to my eyes, is the Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat. Though at first glance it looks to be somewhat “pointillistic,” it’s not. Only Vincent achieves a somewhat similar effect with lines instead of dots. The results are something else entirely.

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, one of my personal favorite works in entirety of The Met, Painted on the raw, unprimed side of the canvas, (as you can see in the detail posted at the beginning), which adds to the unique texture of the work. Painting on this side can cause conservation problems, though it looks good for 131 years old.

I’ve looked at it countless times over a few decades now and every time I see it, I marvel at it’s unique way of seeing the world. Though I’d stood here countless times before, suddenly something struck me. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Midway through my visit, I moved away from the Van Goghs taking in the whole group. As I stood there, I noticed people posing for pictures with Vincent’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.

People from who knows where.

That day, I was in the middle of the section of his biography where he desperately tries to see the object of his love, his widowed cousin, 35 year old mother of one, Kee Vos, who had adamantly rejected his proposal of marriage in August, 1881, with the infamous words, “Never, no, never!” (Vincent was 28). Not one to give up, EVER, he relentlessly pursued the matter, finally traveling to see her that November, only to find her absent. “At one point, he put his hand over a gas-lamp flame and demanded, ‘Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in this flame.’ Someone eventually blew out the lamp, but weeks later his burned flesh was visible from a distance8.” The longing and the emotional scars remianed for the rest of his life.

In the long, beautiful, letter he wrote to Theo after this event (Letter #193, December 23, 1881), showing every ounce of his talent as a writer, after a long summary of the event, he said-

“I can’t live without love, without a woman. I wouldn’t care a fig for life if there wasn’t something infinite, something deep, something real. I will not, I may not live without love. I’m only human, and a human with passions at that, I need a woman or I’ll freeze or turn to stone, or anyway be overwhelmed.”

128 years after his death on July 29, 1890, I couldn’t help but notice that there were no shortage of women who wanted a picture with him. Many of them had, no doubt, traveled quite long distances, themselves, to get one.

Then, I started to notice whole families posing with his Self-portrait.

Hmmm…

I did a quick mental scan of the building. I can’t think of another work in the entire Museum that families pose in front of for a group self-portrait (feel free to let me know if you can).

Vincent, calmly looking out at us for all time behind glass, while I wondered, “What would you be feeling right now?”

Maybe it doesn’t happen often? I decided to go back 2 more times to see. Each time, the same thing happened- more families from all over the world, convened in front of one of my very favorite Paintings in The Museum, Vincent’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.

Why?

I didn’t ask, so I still don’t know.

Standing there during one visit the thought suddenly occurred to me- IF I was somehow permitted to be allowed to bring back any one person from the dead, that person would be Vincent van Gogh. (Hey, in your imagination, you’re free to do whatever you want, too.)

Why Vincent?

Smiling, while I had a tear in my eye.

Because for his entire life, Vincent wanted little else more than to be loved by his family. Failing to get that, he started looking for surrogate families that would accept him, but these situations didn’t last long. Here, 128 years after he passed away, all these families have come who knows how far, and in the midst of the The Met’s 4 NYC blocks full of the greatest Art created by woman and mankind, they feel compelled to gather as a group for a picture, AND INCLUDE HIM. Realizing this, I came close to being overcome.

I would just love to be able to stand there next to him and watch his reaction.

As close as I’ll ever get to knowing what it felt like to sit next to Vincent van Gogh. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Paris, 1887, Colored chalk on cardboard. Vincent and Toulouse-Lautrec were friends for a time while taking classes. They routinely ended their day in a bar. Here, in this marvelous, and unique side view of the Artist, no doubt Drawn from life, he shows Vincent with an absinthe glass in front of him. *-  Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Photo.

Today, Vincent van Gogh is, very possibly, the world’s most beloved Artist. For this almost entirely self-taught Artist, who was a virtual beginner at 28 years old, to create what he did in 10 years, in almost total isolation and become what he is now, is possibly the most astounding story in Western Art. The fact that his life was lived with so much hardship, suffering, loneliness and lack of acceptance serves to add even more layers to a hard-to-believe story. So, I would love to travel the world with him as he sees how millions of people around the world react to his Art today.

Would he be completely overwhelmed by all of this if he were to see it now? More than likely, it would be too much for him to grasp all at once. It would be for anyone.

I’ll never know.

There’s another question this “revelation” raised. Why? As in “WHY does his work speak to so many people?”

I think it’s because Van Gogh, throughout his life, in each different path he tried, what he sought, along with trying to win the love of his family, was to be consoled. This word comes up so often in Van Gogh: The Life that I started noting each instance. It’s continual and central to things that were important to him. He sought it in his efforts to become a Preacher. In his attempts at love. But, throughout his life he made Drawings and he collected prints (at one time, his collection of prints numbered over 1,000) that he continually rotated on his walls- before and during his Art career. He went to see Art in museums and galleries. Though they found his Paintings “unsaleable,” his extended family were part owners of one of the biggest Art Galleries in Europe9, where he worked for a few years. Looking back, one can see that throughout his life, even before he became a Painter, he had a passion for Art. He found consolation in Art.

“In Vincent’s reality, images evoked emotions. Born into a family and an era awash in sentimentality, Vincent looked to images not just to be instructed and inspired, but, most of all, to be moved.
Art should be ‘personal and intimate,’ he said, and concern itself with ‘what touches us as human beings10.'”

I think it’s, perhaps, the main reason he became an Artist- because Art offered consolation, and as Naifeh and Smith say, “No one needed consolation more than Vincent did.”

128 years later, his Art has consoled countless millions of Art lovers and continues to every day.

Vincent has found a loving family. At long last.

BookMarks-

The Van Gogh monograph section at the legendary Strand Bookstore.

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s, 2011 Van Gogh: The Life is compelling reading for anyone interested in Vincent van Gogh, or Art history. It’s written in a way that seems to have an Art audience in mind, with frequent digressions into matters like Art he was looking at, thinking about, hanging on his walls, what he was reading, as well as details about the materials he was using. The book is, perhaps, most widely known for it’s “Appendix A: A Note on Vincent’s Fatal Wounding,” separate from their main narrative, in which the authors make their case for believing that Vincent DID NOT commit suicide!, but rather was the victim of a homicide, accidental homicide, or an accident! As I said in the piece, the Appendix aside, the reason to read Van Gogh: The Life is that it’s built on extensive research bringing to bear the fruits of 100 years of Van Gogh scholarship that ends the need to rely on fictionalized accounts.

Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (Vol. 1-6), in 6 volumes that weighs 33 pounds is the current “definitive” edition. Published for the USA by Thames & Hudson, the hardcover box set currently lists at $650.00. As I mentioned in the piece, the entire corpus of Vincent’s Letter has been made available, for FREE, online. While the books look like they would be easier to use in some ways, the internet site is easier to use in others. For those wanting something a bit more shelf and wallet friendly, Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, by the same team and published by Yale University Press in 2014, contains 265 letters over 784 pages, a concise version that is far less expensive. Older editions of Vincent’s Letters are far cheaper in printed editions than the new, 6 volume edition, though not as complete, lacking the 4,300 illustrations, annotations, supplementary texts and newly discovered letters the new complete edition has.

Taschen’s Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings by Metzger & Walther has been released in a few sizes over the years, including a “small” version (5.5 x 8 by 2 inches and 2.8 pounds) that has sat on my night table for a good while. Generally, I prefer the largest size of Taschen’s Paintings books (because they give as close to a life size reproduction as possible, sometimes larger), but since they’ve never issued an XL size of this (probably because it would be XXL), I use this small one to explore his work, then look elsewhere for larger images of pieces I want to study closer. It’s very good for getting an overview and for seeing his progression during each period. At 19.95 list, with 774 pages and countless color illustrations, it’s one of the better deals in current Art books. Just remember- this current edition is small. It does exist in larger versions (including a few that are 2 volumes in a slip case) that are now out of print, but not expensive. With continued controversy about real and fake Van Goghs (akin to his countryman, Rembrandt), I hope the Van Gogh Museum will issue a definitive (for the moment) Catalogue Raisonne of his all of Paintings & Drawings, but nothing has been announced as far as I know11. So, in the meantime, the Taschen book remains the best place to start looking at Vincent’s work, in my view. The Van Gogh Museum has digitized much of it’s world leading collection of the works Vincent sent to Theo, who died a skance 6 months after Vincent, that were preserved by Theo’s wife, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (who the world of Van Gogh lovers owe an incalculable debt to for saving and promoting his work, and for preserving, compiling and first publishing their letters, and to their son Vincent Willem van Gogh, who established the foundation which led to the creation of the Museum), so those works, including their 200 Paintings, may be seen and studied there.

Out of print, but not expensive, is Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series), the catalog for The Met’s 2005 show of the same name mounted in conjunction with the Van Gogh Museum. The Met has made it available as a pdf for free here. I recommend it for Artists and Art Students interested in Drawing. Largely a self-taught draftsman (he studied Charles Bargue’s legendary Drawing Course on his own), Van Gogh’s Drawings reveal the limitations of his education (as do his Paintings), but do not get enough credit for their uniqueness and daring, in my view. The Charles Bargue: Drawing Course is something anyone interested in studying a “traditional/classical” method of Drawing, largely from casts, should check out, particularly if you, like Vincent, lack a teacher. Naifeh and Smith recount that Vincent didn’t complete his studies of Bargue due to an impatience to begin Drawing from life, which others told him he was not ready for. They may have had a point, but it’s also another reason his work looks like no one else’s.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “I’ve Been Waiting For You,” by another iconic individualist, Neil Young. It was memorably covered by yet another one- David Bowie, on Heathen in 2002. Yes, I resisted the obvious “Home At Last,” by Steely Dan.

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You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

  1. My friend, the fashion guru extraordinaire, Magda, wrote an excellent piece on the Cloisters part of the show, here. ↩
  2. Van Gogh: The Life, P32. Page numbers refer to the eBook edition, which has 1574 pages. ↩
  3. Van Gogh in Saint-Remy and Auvers, Met Museum, P.173 ↩
  4. Van Gogh: The Life, P.409 eBook edition ↩
  5. Van Gogh: The Life, P.569 eBook edition ↩
  6. Here. ↩
  7. Personally, I don’t see Vincent in the work of Edvard Munch (1863-1944), even in The Scream, as some do. ↩
  8.  Van Gogh: The Life, P.415 eBook Edition. ↩
  9. His uncle Cor, one of the officers of the firm did commission 19 Drawings from him, in two purchases. By the way, Vincent did sell more than one Painting during his lifetime. The exact number he sold is not known. ↩
  10. Van Gogh: The Life, P.475 eBook edition ↩
  11. The Van Gogh Museum has been producing catalogs of the Paintings & Drawings in it’s collection. At the moment the complete Drawings have been published in 4 volumes and 2 of the 3 volumes of the complete Paintings in it’s collection have been published. ↩

Now Is A Good Time To Join The Met- UPDATED 1/4/18

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

This is an update to my recent piece “Now Is A Good Time To Join The Met,” published on December 10, 2017.

Incomparable. That’s one way to describe Michelangelo. The buzz for Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer is that it’s “once in a life-time.” I’ve been anticipating it all year. With 133 of his Drawings(!). 3 Sculptures(!). His earliest Painting (The Met’s experts say it’s his. I’ve saw it in 2009 and it’s hard to argue with them)…That sounds about right. Here’s the sign at the entrance, fronting part of the scaffolding TM built to mimic Michelangelo’s own for the section on the Sistine Chapel. Click any Photo for full size.

Well? Anytime is a good time to join the country’s greatest Art museum. They can use the support. I’ve been a member of The Met since 2002, during which time I’ve gone over 1,400 times. It still truly feels like Home to me. Today, I renewed and a perusal of the shows up right now made me feel that it may be the most amazing lineup I can recall at one time.

Here’s what’s there right now–

*- The Met’s Current Exhibition page on December 8, 2017.

“He’s making a list
He’s checking it twice…*”

Let’s see…

–Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer 

-the David Hockney 80th Birthday Retrospective

–Rodin At The Met

–World War I and the Visual Arts

–Leonardo to Matisse: Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection

EACH one is a big show at 1000 Fifth Avenue. Depending on your stamina, seeing all of any one of those would make for a good visit to The Museum in itself. And? These smaller shows are also there-

–Frederick Remington at The Met

–Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists

–Cosmic Buddhas in the Himalayas

–Company School Painting in India (ca. 1770-1850)

–Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection

And? Since too much is never enough in NYC-

–Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed

–Modernism on the Ganges: Raghubir Singh Photographs

–Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950-1980

Are up at The Met Breuer.

Yes. Santa came early for NYC Art lovers. Suffice it to say that I, also, bought a new pair of shoes cause I expect to be wearing my current pair out soon.

And then there was this…

All I wanted for Christmas. My name up in lights on a wall in The Met! Actually, before I feel special, they do this for all new and renewing members. Pay attention. Your “immortality” lasts for 3 seconds.

Ahhhh…It’s good to be Home for the Holidays…

UPDATE– January 4, 2018. The world’s greatest Museum announced an “updated” admissions plan this morning. The gist of it is-

  • The “pay as you wish” policy will continue for all New York State residents.
  • This will be expanded to cover students from New Jersey & Connecticut.
  • Mandatory $25.(general)/$17. (seniors)/$12 (students) admission fee will be required henceforth for all of those from elsewhere/non-students from NJ & Ct.
  • All full-priced tickets will be honored for three consecutive days.
  • The “updated” policy will be implemented on March 1, 2018

This morning, Daniel Weiss, President of The Met, said-

“…The Met is a profoundly different place from that envisioned by its founders. Decades ago The Met made a decision to expand its operations and outreach and to become the Museum that we know today: a cherished institution that is both the top tourist destination in New York City and a world-renowned center of scholarship and learning.

Maintaining this level of excellence, and continuing to serve the New York region at the same high level, requires that The Met take stock and decide, once again, what kind of Museum we want to be for future generations. The world has changed dramatically in the almost 50 years since our admissions policy was last reviewed, and the way we budget and plan for the future needs to change as well.

What is clear is that our current pay-as-you-wish policy is no longer sufficient to meet the Museum’s daily operational demands. Paid admissions represent only 14 percent of our overall revenue, one of the lowest percentages among our New York City peers. Moreover, in the past 13 years the number of visitors who pay the full suggested admission has declined by 73 percent. We are now the only major museum in the world that relies exclusively on a pure pay-as-you-wish system or that does not receive the majority of its funding from the government.”

His full statement on the matter is here.

Personally? I’m for this. TM has an estimated 10 million dollar deficit. It’s the fifth consecutive year they’ve been in the red, with an 8.2 million shortfall in 2015-16. This at a time where they are the #1 most attended Art museum in the world.

The Met’s Grand Hall, December 28th. I can’t recall ever seeing TM as crowded as it was this weekend. There were waiting lines to see Michelangelo & David Hockney.

What happens when the Art boom fades, or slows? Yes, it’s easy for me to say I support this since I could get in paying what I wish. I could have for the past few years. I’ve been a Met Member since 2002, and I will continue to be a member. Why? I believe, for any number of reasons I’ve outlined on NighthawkNYC over the past two years, like here, they are the best Museum in the world. And? They need my support. And your’s, too. Remember that if you are one of those effected by the new policy.

Or? You could just join. As I said, this is as good a moment as any.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” writer & publisher unknown to me. Ok. I’ve been naughty. Coal for me. I’m used to it…

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

Words To Live By From Man Ray #2

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If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

“Originality is not sought after but imposed on a clear thinking mind by the exigencies  of the message to be conveyed. When that message is startling and different, the means to convey it become original and daring for others, although he who conceived, is not necessarily conscious of any kind of iconoclasm, but feels as if he is performing quite a normal act.”

Man Ray, “No. 72. Class (In Time) from Writings On Art, P.177. Published by Getty Research Institute

Man Ray, Obstruction, 1920/1961, Metropolitan Museum of Art-

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Close up on the top hangar.

DSC_5647PNH

One of the most unique Artists in history, Man Ray is one of those people who seems to continually appear…as one of the most revolutionary photographers ever, a painter (his first love), a sculptor, a graphic artist, and on and on…and also as a writer. He’s in all the major museums, but rarely gets a show of his own. I’ve always admired his work, and continually been surprised by it, and his accomplishment (as in “That’s a Man Ray, too?”) Having published a fascinating autobiography, perfectly titled “Self Portrait,” which drips with both insight and intrigue, now comes a collection of his writings about art. It’s a book that even rewards random reading- almost every page has a fascinating example of his one of a kind mind.

I think they make wonderful meditations…The first entry in this series appears here.

Soundtrack for this piece is, what else? “Man Ray,” by the Futureheads from their 2004 self-titled album.

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You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

The Day Before “The First Monday In May,” 2016

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“We know what you’all been thinking nude is the brand new yawn
Everybody’s just drinking inhibitions just gone
You don’t need to be rude
You don’t need to be wild
Whatever you do: don’t compromise and done with style
The gold standard crazy amazing
Upper echelon of groove
The gold standard crazy amazing
Turn it up let you body move”*

Here’s how the world famous 5th Avenue facade of The Met (TM) looks right now in preparation for it’s big close up- Monday’s “Manus X Machina” Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala Benefit, perhaps fashion’s biggest night of the year in this country when a who’s who of “stars” and “big names” will be walking through these tents and up the landmark stairs dressed to (hopefully) impress.

T-Manus and counting…It feels like the night before the Space Shuttle was about to blast off, here at The “Cape.”

Even though I’ve written about TM more than just about anything else this past year, and been there 3 times this week alone, of course, I’m not invited, so this is as close as I’m gonna get. Come Monday night? I’d never be able to get even THIS close.

The view behind the grey awning, and under the canopy going up to the front door. Remember celebrities- No sitting is permitted on the stairs between those banisters! Oh, and have your bags ready to speed the security bag check.

Someone’s gonna be busy over the next 24 hours! (If you want to see how busy they were, click here!) Inside the Great Hall, no signs of the impending festivities, yet. Yes, the flower arrangements are always beautiful.

I predicted in this Blog that 1,000,000 visitors would attend “Manus X Machina.” 2015’s “China: Through The Looking Glass” drew 817,000. Apple is sponsoring the show. Taylor Swift is involved. 1M would be great for TM. They took on a large expense with the new (and so far superb) Met Breuer, so I really hope it happens. I’ll be more interested in how good the show is. Andrew Bolton and the Met’s Costume Institute are “The Gold Standard” for fashion shows now, and they’ve raised the bar pretty high.

I’m excited for another chance to answer the eternal question- “Is Fashion Art?” Though I believe the female form is, I haven’t decided about Fashion. I do know that I really love looking at it and trying to decide.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, it’s time for this year’s “First Monday In May,” If you’re wondering what it’s all about, here’s a peak at what went into it last year-

Ok. It’s time for me to grab my Armani Exchange Tuxedo, It’s time to party!

“24 carrot hashtag, put Ur phone in Ur bag, ain’t nobody got 2
tell U put Ur hands in the air, say “Ow!
The gold standard, crazy amazing, upper echelon groove
The gold standard, crazy amazing, turn it up, let Ur body move””*

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “The Gold Standard” By Prince from his excellent 2014 album, Art Official Age, published by Universal Music Publishing Group.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

The Greatest German Reality Show Star, circa 1700

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited).

“My mama told me when I was young
We are all born superstars”*

Portrait of Matthias Buchinger, 1705

However you were born, the odds are you were more naturally capable right out of the box than Matthias Buchinger, who’s birth left him without hands or feet, and who stood a total of 29 inches (74cm) high. Yet, none of that stopped him from rising to the level of being called “The Greatest Living German” in 1726. Pretty darn lofty, for anyone. A Special Exhibition, Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger’s Drawings from the Collection of Ricky Jay, currently at The Met shows that, astoundingly, he nonetheless proves the equal of just about any other Artist in the entire Metropolitan Museum when it comes to technical proficiency. It will, also, give you pause for thought the next time you feel “incapable.”

When you do? Consider this- Many of the works he created, which are now rare, but astutely collected by Master Magician, Ricky Jay over the past 30 years, are tiny to begin with. Add to this that Matthias Buchinger (MB) was so adept at holding his pen between his “stumps” he was able to write forwards, backwards, upside down or in the most minute sizes possible to the extent that he created drawings out of minuscule words, an Art called Micrography. A close up look at one small portrait of him reveals that his hair is made up of nothing but very tiny words- a couple Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer.  The entire show probably takes up 400 square feet- not even big for a gallery show. Yet rarely will you find so much packed into each square inch.

An index-finger sized rendering of The 10 Commandments by Mr. Buchinger is so small I couldn’t read it with the magnifier.

While his Art is being honored in this show, as amazing as it is, it barely scratches the surface of what MB was capable of.

Buchinger surrounded by depictions of some of his skills.

He made his living touring Europe demonstrating the full range of his talents to the high & mighty as well as the common folk, in magic, calligraphy, making miniatures in bottles(!), threading a needle, loading a gun, shaving himself, playing music (he created some of his own instruments), playing games, among other things. Oh, and he was married 4 times and fathered 11 to 14 children!1

The second floor Drawings gallery, where the show is installed, is one of the must-see spaces in The Met. Shows change every 6-8 weeks here giving The Museum a chance to show off its extraordinary collection. Still, out of all the wonders I’ve seen in this space the past 14 years, I haven’t seen anything more consistently amazing than Wordplay.

I know what you’re thinking- today’s so-called “reailty” show stars wouldn’t even be good enough to apprentice on MB’s show!

Coat of Arms, 1738, Pen and ink on vellum, the last known work by Matthias Buchinger includes a self-portrait and autobiographical paragraph in the lower margin. Bear in mind this entire work is about letter size.

“I’m beautiful in my way,
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way”*

Was he the greatest disabled Artist of all time? I have no idea. I’ve been blown away by the work of Chuck Close (brilliant before his brain aneurysm, continually evolving in ever new ways since), and Hendrik Goltzius, a Graphic Artist possibly on par with Durer despite having a severely deformed drawing hand, among others, and they are all beacons of what the human spirit is capable of, in the Arts as in so many other aspects of life. Yet, I can’t say I’ve seen anything quite like that of the Art of the “Little Man of Nuremberg,”

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The Greatest German Living, a poem to Buchinger, 1726

“Don’t hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you’re set
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way, born this way”*

MB was, however, forced to turn to being a carnival side show act to gain appreciation for his abilities as an Artist as well as his many other skills, and to survive. The show includes a few works by other Artists of the same era who were also born without hands or feet, who made their living in the same manner. A “broadside” poster announcing the appearance of one is on view. MB would demonstrate his writing talents for show attendees for a fee and some of these souvenirs are on view here. (The Portrait of him surrounded by depictions of his skills bears his hand written inscriptions on the bottom margin.) Invariably, he always proceeds his signature with “Born without hands or feet…”

A portrait of Thomas Inglefield, also born without hands or feet, shows how Mr. Buchinger may have worked his magic.

Seeing all of this, and a smidgen of what life may have been like for these Artists in the 18th Century, it’s hard not think about the bigger picture.

Anonymous, Portrait of Johanna Sophia Liebschern, ca.1780-90,  the so-called “Fusskunstlerin,” or foot artist, as the piece is inscribed. It goes on to say, “she has no arms but is able to use knife, fork, and spoon with her left foot and feed herself, (and) is able to prettily write, sew, draw, cut a quill pen, load and shoot a pistol.” Like MB, Ms. Liebschern enjoyed considerable fame in her time, both voyeuristic and scientific.

“There’s nothin’ wrong with lovin’ who you are
She said, ’cause He made you perfect, babe
So hold your head up,
girl and you’ll go far”*

Thankfully, for the disabled, to my mind THE most overlooked group in our society, things seem to have gotten a little better. But, what do I know. I asked Magdalena Truchan, Fashion Guru, Designer, Artist and Blogger Extraordinaire over at her must read Blog, prettycripple.com, that very question- “Have things gotten better for disabled Artists?” She told me-

“I think lots of things have gotten better for disabled artists. They can make a living online as well and the world gets to see what they offer. There are so many groups out there that I come across who help disabled people. I read these things and smile. They have a better networking system today and while discrimination still exists people in the US don’t treat disabled people as lepers. Same in Europe. Life must have been hell for disabled people until the 70s in this country. Also, because of the the “bullying” problem for all people, now people are standing up to them and outing them on social media. So now it is un-PC to bully people. We have a long way to go but at least people have another avenue to voice themselves. You also see more disabled models and actors now. Although some disabled people on TV are not legit cripples. They are able bodied and stuck in chairs which sucks, but at least they are portraying disabled people.”

While it’s good to hear that, so much remains to be done for the disabled. I can’t help but wonder if part of the root of the cause of this slow progress might be that able-bodied people are secretly terrified of becoming disabled.? Even in this very show, the work is hung too high for wheelchair visitors to see, and though magnifying glasses are thankfully on hand, unless you are a bit over 6 feet tall, the higher works will still remain unavailable for close study, as you can see below. It must be a very frustrating experience for the disabled to come to this show. On the one hand they’ll be as impressed as anyone else by the work, but (unnecessarily) frustrated by the experience. What kind of message does this send?

The show is hung for the average size, or taller, standing adult.

That being said, this show is, also, a fascinating insight into the wondrous collection of Ricky Jay, renowned as the greatest living Sleight-of-Hand Artist and historian of its related arts, and who says that MB is “my flat-out favorite. I’ve been collecting materials on him for 30 years.2” Mr. Jay is someone who has spent his entire life mastering his craft, that way a great Painter or Musician does, all the while thoroughly exploring its history, researching its forgotten Masters, collecting rare books, artifacts and works of Art they created. This show is, therefore, is something of a byproduct of how he became who he is today. From what is on view here, the man has superb taste and a most discerning eye.

Be careful, Mr. Bond, or Ricky will turn your gun into a rabbit! Yes, that's the inimitable Ricky Jay in "Tomorrow Never Dies."

Be careful, Mr. Bond, or Ricky will turn your gun into a rabbit! Yes, that’s the inimitable Ricky Jay in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

It leaves me eager to see more of his collection, so I hope it marks the beginning of a relationship between TM and the inimitable Mr. Jay. For more on him, check out the two excellent documentaries, Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, which airs as part of PBS’ American Masters series, and, Hustlers, Hoaxters, Pranksters And Ricky Jay, here on youtube.

Isle of View. Untitled by Rachel Harrison from her Perth Amboy Show at MoMA. Does Art Have to be this hard to see?

While “Wordplay” is a shining example of attention being paid to an extraordinary and overlooked Artist- disabled, or not, in a show that will inspire all, it’s one thing to honor this Artist, it’s another to make it largely inaccessible to disabled visitors. I’m not sure that helps inspire other disabled Artists, or disabled people, and that’s a shame. (Luckily, however, the excellent catalog for the show, by Mr. Jay, features beautiful, clear and full size reproductions of many of the works on display, along with Mr. Jay’s one-0f-a-kind insights. I found I could see the works better in the book than by actually looking at the real thing). It says to me that The Met’s interest here lies in the Art itself, and while I understand that, I think they missed a chance to include more of the Art going public, namely the group that includes these wonderful Artists, themselves.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is”Born This Way,” by Lady Gaga, written by NYC’s own Stefani Germanotta, Jeppe Laursen, Fernando Garibay and Paul Blair, from the album of the same title and published by Sony ATV Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music Inc. and Universal Music Publishing.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

  1. Ok..ok…I’ll insert the famous Groucho Marx joke- “I like my cigar, too, but I take it out once in a while.” Sorry. ↩
  2. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ricky-jay-collection/3649/ ↩

Happy 86th Birthday, Sister Wendy! I Miss You.

This site is Free & Ad-Free!
If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited).

Today, February 25th, is Sister Wendy’s 86th Birthday…

In front of the trailer she now lives in, in seclusion. As seen in her 2006 book Joy Lasts published by Getty Publishing.

Remember Sister Wendy ? The English Nun who became the most unlikely Art expert & historian in the history of Public Television (and the BBC) in the 1990’s, and probably, the most famous Art expert in television history? To me, she’s a rare instance when “most popular” is also one of the best.1

I absolutely LOVE her!

Ok, I’m a failed Catholic and our spiritual worlds are an Atlantic Ocean apart, but I’ve never been so captivated listening to ANYONE, who isn’t an Artist, talk about Art as I have been listening to her. She has this amazing way of being true to herself and her beliefs while at the same time being honest and open minded about what she is seeing and, most importantly, the all too rare ability of making Art accessible to anyone. She accepts the “human-ness” of men (and women) in a surprisingly sensitive way. Her Love of God remains intact when viewing the work of the most “human” of beings, which depicts them doing the most “human” of things on a fairly regular basis. Hearing a (committed virgin) nun discuss nudity for example, or even sex, is at first shocking, until you listen to what she has to say. Otherwise, I would have turned her off in minutes.

If you’re looking to learn about Art History? I heartily recommend her videos and books. In either medium, start with “The Story of Painting,” which for me was just a magical experience. (Her other essential book, “1,000 Masterpieces,” strikes me as being the world’s-finest-Museum-in-a-book that comes with her uncanny insights on each work.) My copy of the book and the videos are still within easy access. Even if you know something, or a lot of things about Art & Art History, you’ll find her insights eye opening, her opinions unique. But don’t stop there. “Sister Wendy’s American Collection,” (SWAC) a 6 part tour of some of the finest American Museums, is also essential.

Not posed- This is really how they are in my apt. Her book sits between MIchelangelo’s Letters, Velazquez and Ingres. I need her more than they do.

Actually, looking at Met Director Thomas P. Campbell’s Instagram page, which I dipped into last week, I happened on this picture that reminded me of “SWAC.” A spoiler for the video on The Met- During her Tour of TM, SW makes a point of showing us her “favorite” works in the Museum! I’ve been there over 1,300 times. I knew most of the works she selected (Phew!), but I was left stunned by this fact- TM has over TWO MILLION works in their collection. I doubt ANYONE has seen them all. How does this 70-something Nun from England find a work like this-

which is small (less than 6 inches tall) and not exactly displayed front and center, in the middle of 4 City Blocks of Art? Next time you go? I dare you to find it, without asking. SW singled it out as one of the most beautiful works in TM. Wow! I just mean “WOW!” Yes, it is, but the sheer act of her choosing it among everything else will forever blow my mind, years before Thomas Campbell singled it out, above.

Think about that for one minute- Anyone who goes to a Museum goes with a list of things they want to see- favorite artists, works, special shows, and on and on. Very few go with an open mind to “just see.” What’s that old Zen Buddhist saying? ”In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” SW is an expert, yet, she goes to TM with an amazingly open mind and sees. That is just so incredibly hard to do.

To this day, anytime I see it, that’s what I think about- “Sister Wendy chose this.” When I first saw this in her video, my jaw hit the floor. Seeing Mr. Campbell post it on Instagram reminded me of that video. It also reminded me of how much I, and I think many, many others, miss Sister Wendy. While I respect her 2001 decision to devote her life to living in seclusion and contemplation, ending her career on television, she has unique and all too rare Gifts- The Gift of being able to make ANY Art as human as the Artist did (maybe more so), and especially of making Art more accessible than most other critics & historians, and then for instilling her passion and sheer love and respect for great Art in her viewers and readers. She certainly did, and continues to do that for me! I’ll be eternally grateful to her for that. But? As I said recently, adult Art Education is sorely needed today- countless millions need her gifts as much now as ever! Fortunately, she has produced a fairly large body of videos and books. Unfortunately, some of the videos seem to be slipping out of print (Hello, BBC Video? I seriously hope not!). Lesser known are her early writings for Modern Painters Magazine, back when it was something special. That was where I first discovered her.

Modern Painters, Writer’s Issue, Autumn, 1992. Sister Wendy’s name doesn’t even make the list of writers on the cover! Before the year was over, she’d be the star of her own series on BBC TV, Sister Wendy’s Odyssey.

I’m not that close with “the Man Upstairs,” but just in case She or He happens to be a NighthawkNYC reader, or sees this piece in His or Her Omnipotence- Could You do the Art world a big favor and tell SW it’s “Ok” to come back to us? For the rest of us mere mortals, wherever or however you discover her, If you want to learn about Art History, or discover more about it, or if you just want to find out what makes Art worth your time and maybe “get” what all the Art fuss is about- I hope you’ll give her your time. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, but I know one thing – For an Art Lover, or an aspiring one? Sister Wendy is blessing sent from Heaven.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SISTER WENDY, The Patron Saint of Art Lovers!

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Happy Birthday to You”

Update 12/26/2018- I was very saddened to learn of Sister Wendy’s passing today. My R.I.P. for her may be found here.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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

  1. Along with Kenneth Clark, Robert Hughes, Simon Schama, maybe one or two others I forget off the top of my head… ↩