Ernest Henry Schelling, Drawing by John Singer Sargent (1912)

We continue our brief look at drawings by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) with this terrific drawing of Ernest Henry Schelling (1876-1939).  I am enjoying these drawings so much that perhaps we will come back to them after the holidays.

Schelling was an American pianist, composer and conductor.  He was principal conduct of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 1935 to 1937, and was also a composer of note.  He wrote for the piano, orchestra and chamber ensembles, but most of his work is now forgotten.  His major success was a symphonic poem, Victory Ball, based on the anti-war poem by Alfred Noyes, which was a success in early electrical recordings, recorded by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.  He was also the first conductor of the Young People’s Concerts of the New York Philharmonic, a tradition most famously carried on by Leonard Bernstein.

Schelling was married twice; he married Lucie Howe Draper in 1905, and remained with her till her death in 1938.  In August, 1939, he married his second wife, Helen Huntington Marshall, when he was 63 and she was 21.  A member of the venerable Astor family, Marshall and Schelling would remain together only four months: he would die of a brain embolism in December 1939.  Marshall was at his bedside at his death.

There are many things to love about this drawing.  First, look at how Sargent uses the paper itself as a drawing tool.  The paper has a high rag content, giving it more “tooth.”  This allows the paper to capture more of the charcoal dust.  (My former teacher, artist Ephraim Rubenstein, once told me that drawing in charcoal was “rearranging dust.”)  The charcoal also has a harder time of reaching the deeper ridges of the paper, which gives some charcoal drawings a luminescent quality.

If you look really closely, you can also see the paper-maker’s monogram (Michaellet) to the left of Schelling’s head.

Now, look at Schelling’s hairline, right over the bridge of his nose.  Sargent captures the flow and direction of his hair with a few very bold and very dark lines, the rest is just a dark mass (probably rubbed in with the artist’s finger), and lighter highlights were created by using an eraser.  On the right side of the picture, Sargent suggests Schelling’s hair against the dark background by simply applying the charcoal more lightly – there is no “hard” line to separate the figure from the background.  Simple, elegant and effective.

Look at Schelling’s jawline going down the left side of the canvas.  You can actually see one or two initial lines Sargent made before deciding on his final line; he also offsets the very hard line of Schelling’s chin by erasing the line of his head (probably by using his thumb – the mark looks about thumb-size).

Schelling’s mustache is more suggested than rendered.  If you look closely, you’ll see that it is a swatch of dark charcoal with a few outgoing directional lines to make it flow. 

Sargent makes the eyes limpid and alive by applying the eraser to pupil to create a sense of reflected light.  He also suggests depth and delineates the eye sockets at the same time with a single, strong line over each eyelid. 

He also manages to create Schelling’s costume with a few unfussy lines (notice how one shoulder is almost invisible). 

This is a little master’s class in how it’s done.  Anyone interested in drawing – as artist or aesthete – can learn much from a close examination of the work of John Singer Sargent.

A special Thanksgiving message tomorrow!

Drawing of Kenneth Grahame by John Singer Sargent (1922)

Though it takes us by complete surprise, this week is Thanksgiving; and with that means the holidays are upon us, ready or not.

I wanted to start the season with something that resonated with the child within us all, without yet fully embracing the holidays.  Who better than Kenneth Grahame to meet the need?

We here at The Jade Sphinx think one of the greatest classics of English literature is a novel for serious children and frivolous adults, the magisterial Wind in the Willows (1908), by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932).

Willows, like most of Grahame’s oeuvre, focuses around ideas of escape: Rat and Mole spend their boyish bachelorhood picnicking along the riverbank, simply “messing around in boats.”  His book the Pagan Papers (1893), is about the joyous sense of freedom he had in his youth (and, by comparison), the lack of such freedoms he had in adulthood.

This is not surprising considering Grahame’s tumultuous life.  He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.  His mother died when he was five, and his alcoholic father gave young Kenneth and his brothers and sister to the children’s grandmother, in Cookham in Berkshire.  Grahame loved the countryside there, and it was there that he was introduced to the pleasures of boating.  These years in Cookham would be remembered as the happiest of his life.

Following his years at St. Edward’s School in Oxford, Grahame wanted to attend Oxford University.  He could not do so, his guardians claiming that it was too expensive.  Instead, this sensitive and introverted boy was sent to work at the Bank of England in 1879, where he rose through the ranks until retiring as its Secretary in 1908.  The reason for his retirement was that an anarchist broke into the bank and shot at Grahame three times, missing each shot.  The incident forever shattered his nerves; he would move back to the country in an effort to find peace.

Grahame published his first book, The Pagan Papers, in 1893.  He would follow this with his first two great novels about children, The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898).  He would not write again until after marrying Elspeth Thomson in 1899.  They had one child, a son named Alastair (nicknamed Mouse), born blind in one eye and plagued by various mental problems.  Grahame would tell Mouse stories about the woodland denizens around them.  These stories would eventually morph into Wind in the Willows.

Sadly, the stories provided only a limited amount of succor to Alastair, who would commit suicide by lying on a railway track two days before his 20th birthday.  The train would completely sever the boy’s head from his body, and Grahame was called to identify the remains.  The sight would haunt him for the rest of his life.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was one of the greatest, and most prolific, of fin de siècle artists.  A gifted portraitist, Sargent was also painter of many magnificent landscapes, a champion draughtsman and watercolorist, and he also painted the mighty frescoes found in the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

We will look at Sargent’s life in a little more detail tomorrow, but for now: after a lifetime of painting some of the finest portraits of his generation, Sargent painted less and drew more as he grew older.  He found drawing a release from painting; providing him with much the same sense of freedom Grahame had sought all his life. 

Sargent was able, with a stick of charcoal, to capture the essence of his sitter in a few hours (sometimes … a few minutes), relieving him of the burdensome process of multiple sittings and coloration. There are dozens of Sargent portrait drawings … and after the holidays, we’ll look at a few more.

But now, look at how Sargent masterfully captures Grahame.  Drawn in 1922, just two years after the suicide of Alistair, here is a man who was shot at in more ways than one.  His face has an austere quality, which is not surprising as he was reported to be emotionally distant … but what Sargent captures more than distance is disguise.   Grahame’s mouth is large and sensual, his chin strong and resolute.  But both of these features are hidden by an enormous walrus mustache; these were not uncommon in Edwardian men, but one feels that Sargent knew that the point was concealment and not fashion.  Half of Grahame’s face is in shadow, as if he would hide from us, if he could.

In terms of technique, it’s amazing what Sargent can accomplish with a few simple strokes.  His drawing is never fussy or overdone; the scattered quality of Grahame’s hair is suggested with some powerful strategic strokes, his shirt and jacket survive as just the barest outlines.  The planes of his face have been roughed-in with some hatching on the side of his charcoal, but the wonderful (and evocative!) lower lids of his eyes have been caught out with eraser. 

The entire picture is a little master’s class in quick portraiture, and it tells us a great deal about the genius behind The Wind in the Willows.  A sad and tragic man is here, revealed by Sargent’s incomparable skill.

Another Sargent drawing tomorrow!

The Last Command: Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn, by Kirk Stirnweis (2001)

The dramatic defeat of Gen. George Armstrong Custer at the Little Bighorn in 1876 has been the subject of several paintings by major artists.  But for today, I thought we would take a look at a work by the relatively little-known, working artist Kirk Stirnweis (born 1967), The Last Command: Custer and the 7^th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn.

Stirnweis was born in Suffern, New York, and grew up in Connecticut. He would eventually move with his own family to Montana, Arizona, and then back east to New Hampshire; while keeping a foothold in Loveland, Colorado.  His father was a professional illustrator, and his mother had a background in graphics.  He drew constantly as a child, and his family would often discuss art around the home.

During his high school summers, Stirnweis would draw and paint at the nearby Silvermine Artist Guild. During the same period he studied anatomy with a retired surgeon, taking one of the doctor’s first classes working with professional artists. Stirnweis was taught to master composition by copying the works of the Great Masters, and was encouraged to go into illustration to hone his skills to a professional level.

Kirk was educated at several different schools studying marine biology and medicine, holding degrees in radiologic sciences and Medical imaging. But his scientific studies did not keep him from art: immediately after high school he did illustration for Field& Stream, Harlequin Romance Novels and Leisure Books, and the Danbury Mint. 

Stirnweis says, For the past 20 years I have been painting and sculpting western/historical subjects, mostly Native Americans, mountain men, prairie women, land and seascapes nautical subjects and wildlife of all kinds. Out of the blue I was commissioned to paint Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn; a daunting task. To complicate matters I had virtually no knowledge of U.S. cavalry at the time and only scant knowledge of the battle. After months of intensive research, hours spent with experts on the subject and several visits to the battlefield; I started painting. Three months later I completed The Last Command. The homework was exhaustive but well worth it, the painting had reaped the distinction of being written up by a West Point graduate and historian as: “The most accurate depiction of the Custer Battle EVER!” An enlarged Copy of the painting now hangs in the renovated Museum of Military History in KS. Subsequently, I was invited to the 125th anniversary of the Little Big Horn Battle, where I met with Native American Veterans of Foreign Wars and Chiefs of the Crow Nation. They expressed their appreciation for the noble way that I depict their culture in my paintings and sculpture.

This is quite a dramatic painting, despite some rather telling flaws.  While Stirnweis has a great gift for painting dramatic faces, the figures all seem to inhabit different pictures, rather than act as an integrated group.  Indeed, in some figures, it seems as if they have no lower body whatsoever.  (Where is the rest of the bugler and his horse?)  Also under-realized are the two fallen horses, one on the left and the other, right.  Neither seem to fully inhabit the picture, and it looks like Stirnweis relied too heavily on tall grass to address issues of foreshortening.

But Stirnweis’ failings are solely those of technique: in terms of drama and composition, he performs admirably.  The gentle rise of the mountain allows the eye to read the frame from the fighters on the left, through the main action on the rise, and then scan back left (to the beginning) by following the trajectory of the arrows.  Stirnweis also uses the empty bask spaces of the West to heightened effect:  aside from another regiment battling in the distance, these men are alone and vulnerable.

Stirnweis also amps the drama by depicting many of the men already wounded or injured, but continuing to fight on.  The look of steely determination on the faces of the small knot of five men dead center of the picture tells the entire story. 

This is an admirable addition to the iconography of Little Bighorn.

Hector Reproaching Paris, by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1824)

We close our brief visit with painter Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1783-1859) with his 1824 picture, Hector Reproaching Paris, which now resides in the Amiens Museum.

Your Correspondent must confess to never having seen this picture in person, and the photographic representations I’ve been able to find online are not great.  But, it is so interesting that I couldn’t let our look at Delorme pass without a few thoughts on it.

We had written about the very formal Neoclassical Empire style, and how Delorme seemed to separate himself from that tradition a bit, thanks to the influence of his love for Italian Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and Raphael.  This picture here, with its rigid formalism and tableaux-like staging, is more in line with the style of Delorme’s time, but he still manages to incorporate some Renaissance-Mannerist thinking.

Those who remember their Iliad, recall that the whole disaster was predicated on Paris falling in love with, and taking away, the beautiful Helen of Troy.  Her defection leads to a cataclysmic war, one that takes the life of Paris’ brother, Hector, who is killed at the hand of Achilles.

Delorme’s picture illustrates the scene where Hector breaks into the lovers’ apartments to call Paris to war.  (In the text, Paris is already preparing for battle when Hector enters, but Delorme creates more drama with his staging.)  Delorme’s craft perfectly captures the differences between Hector, the warrior, and Paris, the lover.

The world of Paris and Helen is one of love and sensuality, presented in a pale, golden light.  A statue of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) holding a dove (symbol of peace) stands in the background, while fragrant blossoms are strewn about the floor and the table is set with food and drink.  On the floor is the lyre that Paris has dropped; he stands partly on it, as if burying his worldly pleasures.  The sensuality of this realm is underscored by the nudity of Paris and Helen; particularly that of Paris, who is caught between the opposing worlds of love and war.  In an ironic touch, Paris grows more naked still – he is removing his wreath – before donning his helmet and armor.

Paris is in marked contrast with the placid and serene beauty of Helen.  She is the lynchpin of the entire tragedy, but remains a passive object to the passions around her.  More important, this perfumed world of love and pleasure is rightly her realm, and she is perfectly at home in it.  It is the figures of Hector and Paris who are the aliens or partial visitors to this space.  (Indeed, note how her pose is similar to the statue of Aphrodite in the background.)  The peacock feathers strike a note of vanity, while the leopard skin on the bed adds a bit of wild carnality.

Hector, depicted largely in shadow, appears as a representative of war, complete with red mantle.  The shield and spear are near-black outlines (the spear being particularly phallic) – this darkness announces the darkness of war.  Indeed, the right-hand side of the canvas, where Paris reaches for his armor, is also dark; the lovers exist in the shadow of war.

Delorme relies on chiaroscuro, more a Renaissance than Neoclassical technique, to provide the contrast between the worlds of love and war, of indulgence and discipline, and of pleasure and duty.  More important, the shadowy figure of Hector is supremely out-of-place in the world of Paris and Helen.

As we saw with Hero and Leander and Cephalus and Aroura, Delorme clearly always sides with the lovers.  I’m with him.

Hero and Leander, by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1814)

We see here a very different type of picture by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1783-1859), Hero and Leander, painted in 1814.

This is a Greek myth telling of the love between Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite that lived in a tower in Sestos beside the Hellespont (Dardanelles, today), and Leander, a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait.  Leader fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to be with her.  She would light a lamp at the top of her tower to help lead the way for him.

Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love, but Hero was a virgin.  Leander tells Hero that Aphrodite would not value the supplication of a virgin, and convinces her to let him make love to her.  Their love affair lasts through the summer; but on one stormy night, the waves buffet Leander, who becomes lost; the storm also blows out Hero’s guiding light.  Leander drowns, and when Hero sees his dead body, she throws herself over the tower’s edge, uniting them in death.

This tale has been popular with painters, poets, troubadours and writers for thousands of years.  (One wonders if the seed of Romeo and Juliet can be found within it.)  Of the many literary retellings of the story, perhaps the best known was by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593).  In Marlowe’s version, Leander is spotted during his swim by Neptune, who confuses him with Ganymede and carries him to the bottom of the ocean.  Neptune is clearly besotted by the young man.  Marlowe writes of "[i]magining that Ganymede, displeas'd, [h]ad left the Heavens ... [t]he lusty god embrac'd him, call'd him love ... He watched his arms and, as they opened wide [a]t every stroke, betwixt them would he slide [a]nd steal a kiss, ... And dive into the water, and there pry [u]pon his breast, his thighs, and every limb, ... [a]nd talk of love," while the boy, naive and unaware of Greek love practices, protests, "'You are deceiv'd, I am no woman, I.' Thereat smil'd Neptune.”  When Neptune realizes his mistake, he brings Leander back to the shore, giving him a bracelet that would keep him safe from drowning.

Leander arrives at Hero’s tower.  She answers the door to find the youth nude, and after much love talk, consummate their relationship.  The poem ends with dawn approaching; Marlowe was never able to finish his epic; he would be murdered in a barroom brawl before completion.

Delorme would no doubt have been aware of Marlowe’s text, and it’s possible to see where it informed his painting.  With his delicate curls, beatific smile and shimmering, supple body, Leander is quite beautiful.  Hero anoints his tresses with perfume (or, perhaps, sweet-smelling oils) taken from the open box beside them, a particular irony, seeing that the youth is doomed to drown.  Take a moment to look at how wonderfully Delorme delineates each of Leander’s fingers (on Hero’s shoulder).  These are not the fingers of a Samson, but, rather, a pretty boy.  And though he looks up at Hero with adoration, he is a little … sappy.

The most splendid component of this picture is the glorious Hero.  Once again Delorme harkens back to Raphael for inspiration of the heroine’s face.  But it is in the depiction of her voluptuous (and, frankly, sexual body) that the quality of the picture rests.  It is no mistake that the centerpiece of the entire painting is Hero’s mons veneris; it lies dead-center in the picture, and Delomre’s use of light draws the eye’s attention directly to it.  It is also the center of the figure, and the playful gestures of both her arms and her legs seem to stem from it.  (Even the application of perfume is code for what is going on, as the couple rejoices next to an open box.)

Delorme’s coyness extends to the background, where he has a makeshift curtain block the background window; he places the lyre at the base of Aphrodite’s statue.  In the symbolism of ancient Greece, Orpheus was able to play the lyre in such a way as to knock down stone walls.

This is a witty, beautifully constructed picture.  Not inexplicably moving, like his Cephalus and Aurora, but accomplished nonetheless.

Cephalas Carried Off by Aurora, by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1851)

Here is a wonderfully (and unexpectedly) tender painting by an artist we have not covered before, Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1783-1859).  He is not as well known in the United States as he should be, but his relatively small oeuvre is replete with delicacy and grace.

Delorme was born in Paris and was a student of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824) – who was, himself, a student of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), whom we have covered many times in these pages.   The influence of both Girodet-Trioson and (once-removed) David are readily apparent.  Delorme was, in many ways, an exemplar of the classical style of painting of the Empire period.  He painted a number of significant works, including pictures for the palaces of Versailles, Fontainbleau, Neurilly and Compiegne, as well as various Parisian churches.

Like his masters, Delorme produced pictures featuring monumentally sculpted figures in a posed, almost tableaux-like composition.  His interests were historical and mythological, like others of the period, and he sought to tell universal truths about people through evocations of a more sublime ideal.

However, Delorme parts company with his contemporaries because he also carries within his worldview an earlier, Renaissance ideal.  Following his apprenticeship, Delorme spent many years in Italy, where he became enamored of the works of such later Renaissance figures as Raphael and Michelangelo.   The influence of these painters – more human, more emotional, more fluid -- lent his work an added depth; almost as if the Mannerist experiment added a touch of humanity and emotion to what is a technically brilliant, but emotionally cold, school of painting.

The story of Cephalus and Aurora is told in Book Seven of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cephalus, an Athenian hero, falls in love with Procis, and marries her. Shortly afterwards, while hunting deer, he catches the eye of Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn.  Though a Goddess, Aurora was sexually adventurous and was frequently attracted to young mortal men.  Descending from her mountain home, Aurora carried Cephalus off with her. However, on finding that he remained faithful to Procris, she allowed him to return home, privately swearing vengeance. She caused a spirit of jealousy to infect their marriage and this eventually resulted in the accidental death of Procris who suffered a wound inflicted by Cephalus with his enchanted hunting spear. 

For a story with such a tragic ending, this is an exceptionally sweet and affecting picture.

Let’s start with Aurora.  The debt to Raphael is particularly strong in this picture, as is evidenced by the serene beauty of Aurora, and the delicate pansexuality of the putti.  The gossamer quality of her hair, along with the placidity of her gaze, mark Delorme’s Aurora as a Renaissance figure.  Look, too, at her delicately drawn feet, and the diaphanous quality of her dress, which renders her leg visible.  This is draughtsmanship of a high caliber, and the subtlety of the lighting effects are clearly influenced by Late Renaissance (or Mannerist) painting.

Cephalus also looks more like a Renaissance figure than a figure from the French Empire era.  Delorme paints a male figure of heart-breaking beauty.  Look at the graceful lines of the body and the angelically handsome face; it’s impossible to look at Cephalus without a sense of awe at his transformative beauty.

Delorme achieves this with strategic lighting effects:  his strong brow and sensitive line of nose are well lit.  The light then accentuates the wide, capacious breast, lilting down to the stomach and growing darker, darker around the powerful legs.  The artist also hints at the width of his body by the hot, white light of the right knee, popping up behind the shadowed foreleg.

But the real heart of the picture is Aurora’s hand, placed lovingly on the breast of Cephalus.  This component, if nothing else in the picture, is the work of pure genius.  That one touch denotes romantic love, sexual passion, possession, gentleness and protection.  The impression transcends the emotional and moves into the range of the elemental.

Artist Leon Kossoff (born 1926), would often look at the paintings of great masters, sketching his own conceptions of the art before him.  He would often sit before a painting of Cephalus and Aurora (though, the one he gazed at compulsively was by Poussin).  One day, he had a transformative experience before the painting, which he remembered thusly: It seemed as though I was experiencing the work for the first time.  I suppose there is a difference between looking and experiencing.  Paintings of this quality, in which the subject is endlessly glowing with luminosity, can, in an unexpected moment, surprise the viewer, revealing unexplored areas of self.

That is exactly how I react to Delomre’s depiction.  That glowing quality of luminosity completely takes me by surprise, and I feel as if I’m keying into some extraordinarily powerful emotional undercurrent.

“Artist” Jeff Koons Scams $8 Million for Coloring Book #4

"Artist" Jeff Koons (left) and Owner of the Sacramento Kings, 

Who Will Go Unnamed to Save Him Further Embarrassment

The latest Jeff Koons (born 1955) assault on public taste and mores just arrived in sunny Sacramento, CA.  And in doing so, he made a cool $8 million.  Nice work if you can get it.

The sculpture, Coloring Book #4, was just set into place outside the Golden 1 Center, standing on a pedestal near what will be the main entrance of the arena’s northwest corner. 

Coloring Book #4 is 18 feet tall, and is part of his Coloring Book collection, a series the artist said was inspired by the (hardly Renaissance-worthy) notion of a child coloring out of the lines of an image of Piglet.

Just take a moment to let both the money involved and the inspiration to sink in.  Good?  Let’s proceed.

As the huckster artist explained to The Sacramento Bee in 2015: I hope that a piece like Coloring Book can excite young children who are going hand-in-hand with their mother and father and with their sisters and grandparents to a sporting event (at the arena), that all generations can find some contemplative interaction with the piece.

Or something.

Most of this latest attack on public taste was funded by the Sacramento Kings; the city of Sacramento also threw away $2.5 million for its share of the public financing of the Golden 1 Center.  (This money came from the Art in Public Places program, which clearly has a very loose definition of both “art” and “public places.”)

I must make it clear that my disgust with this has little to do with city fathers spending $8 million on art.  Actually, I think city, state and federal governments should increase arts spending, not cut them.  Art spending increases, say I!

What I find so clearly offensive is spending money on bad art, or worse still, non-art.  Think, for a moment, about “public art projects” (for want of a better term) of earlier times, and compare them to the rubbish pushed down our throats today.  Where are projects with the sobriety, seriousness and artistic virtuosity of the Jefferson Memorial, the Tower of Pisa, Notre Dame … good heaves, we could even make a case for Mount Rushmore… 

But we do not create public work like this, mainly thanks to Modernity’s flight from beauty, the decadent and debased language of contemporary art criticism, and the sick influence of money by uneducated, tasteless collectors.

Let’s look at this $8 million piece of “art.”  It says … nothing.  It is a towering, misshapen mess, made of reflective material that mirrors its surroundings, but does not comment or improve upon them.  Even for the sake of argument, Piglet is invisible (for those Pooh fans hoping to salvage something from this debacle); and the contours and colors have no power of suggestion or reference.

Had Koons spent $1.95 on a bellows to blow color-tinted bubbles, the result would be much the same.  Here is a work without intelligence, without virtuosity, and without any internal coherence.  Simple human ethics should shame him out of the field of artistic endeavor, and make his name a byword for chicanery, hucksterism and bad taste.

Our feelings about Koons are best summarized by the late, great art critic and humanist Robert Hughes (1938-2012), who wrote (about including Koons in a new program on art): Jeff Koons [is included]: not because his work is beautiful or means anything much, but because it is such an extreme and self-satisfied manifestation of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks. Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him. He fits into Bush's America the way Warhol fitted into Reagan's. There may be worse things waiting in the wings (never forget that morose observation of Milton's on the topography of Hell: "And in the lowest depth, a lower depth") but for the moment they aren't apparent, which isn't to say that they won't crawl, glistening like Paris Hilton's lip-gloss, out of some gallery next month. Koons is the perfect product of an art system in which the market controls nearly everything, including much of what gets said about art.

The United States is filled with artists, great artists, doing great work.  Work that really is about transcendence, connecting us with the sublime, and fostering the better parts of our basic humanity.  Why do we reward the Jeff Koons of this world, and not them?  When will art replace hucksterism, and when will the public rise in a body and reject this junk?

We have recently arrived on the West Coast, having left a New York where countless people spend a significant amount of time urinating on public art.  It may be the most base and unhygienic mode of criticism I have come across, but they were doing they best they could.  And looking at Koons’ latest ‘masterwork,’ the memory brought a warm, yellow glow.

Waiting and Mad, by Charles Marion Russell (1899)

We finish our brief look into the internal workings of the mind of Charlie Russell, Cowboy Artist Extraordinaire, with this witty and wonderful picture, Waiting and Mad (1899).

People who have known Your Correspondent for some time have surely heard me say, “I’ve been married for 26 years and I’ve spent 23 of them waiting.”  As someone who regularly waits by the door, waits by the shower and waits in the car while my Much Better Half does whatever it is that he’s doing, the feeling in this picture is very familiar.  And I’m sure the look on my face is much the same.

Just to be upfront about it – I love this picture.   Though Charlie was merely a capable draughtsman of the human form, every detail of this picture speaks volumes.

The story is clear from the surroundings and the look of … sultry disgust on the Indian woman’s face.  Here is a beautiful and sexualized woman – notice the nearly exposed breast and the provocative curve of hip.  Her pallet is ready for company, but the fire in the foreground has grown cold (a witty joke), the dinner bowl is now empty, and the long pipe is cast aside and unused (ditto).  Like the wispy smoke from the dead fire, there is only a dissipating trace of something that was once hot.

Most delicious of all is the look on her face: a mixture of disappointment, fury, resignation and bored familiarity.  One has the distinct impression that this has happened before, and will probably happen again in the future.  And she knows it.

So … why do I like this painting so much?  Mainly because Charlie’s views on humanity were much smarter and commonsensical than the ways we are taught to think today.  Charlie knew many Native Americans in his time in the West, and genuinely liked them.  He was one of nature’s democrats – he judged people as individuals, and knew that, as groups, people are more alike than they are different.

Today, we are taught that our differences matter more than our similarities, and that our cultural peculiarities are some sacred carapace that protect us from being more like one another.  Charlie would’ve thought we were crazy (and I’m with Charlie).  This picture works so well because Charlie was able to capture the look of everyone who has ever waited for their wife or husband to show up.  It would be the same picture if the woman was in an Asian setting, or a Middle-European one, or in a contemporary American home: and that is Charlie’s point.  We’re all people, and we’re all more alike than we are different.

Charlies notions don’t have much currency in today’s world, but how much of commonsense does, nowadays?

Next week: New and Noteworthy Books  

Loops and Swift Horses are Surer Than Lead, by Charles Marion Russell (1916)

Here is a wonderful action painting by our friend, Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), the Cowboy Artist.  Charlie is a good saddle pal to us here at The Jade Sphinx, and Your Correspondent has been trying to get a sense of the man and his philosophy through his pictures. 

We can start with the obvious: the title of this work, Loops and Swift Horses are Surer Than Lead.  In the survey of Western Art we have done here over the years, we have had occasion to look at several pictures that include bears in an attitude of menace.  In fact, after Native Americans, bandits and over-zealous lawmen, perhaps the bear is the most frequently represented foeman in Western Art.

However, most any of Charlie’s contemporaries would take the obvious route, and paint a picture of Western figures shooting and killing the bear.  (Or, reaching for their rifles to do so, or putting them down after they have done so.)  Not Charlie.  His cowboy heroes, though obviously well-armed, rope and scare the bear away to safer climes.  Always more Roy Rogers than Clint Eastwood, Charlie didn’t see the West as a vast panorama of hardship and cruelty, but, rather, a boyish paradise of freedom and fun.

This is where Charlie differs most significantly from the artist frequently associated with him, Frederic Remington (1861-1909).  For Remington, the West was unending hardship, merciless desert and physical exertion, a battle for survival to be won or lost.  It is Remington, of course, who created in his work the now-familiar Western trope of the bleached steer skull that can still be seen in countless depictions of the West.  Make a wrong move, Remington implied, and you’ll end up the same.

If this picture is any indication, perhaps Charlie’s vision was the truer one.  Loops and Swift Horses now hangs in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and is based on a true-life incident.  This painting came about by way of his friends, the Coburn brothers of the famous Circle C Ranch in eastern Montana, where they described the roping of a giant brown bear. Artistic license was taken when Charlie turned the bruin into a Grizzly, but the rest of the story was true right down to the landscape in the background: the scenic Coburn Buttes.

The dominant color of the picture is blue, but Charlie manages to mute or pop shades of it to represent everything from trees to sky to mountains, to foreground scrub.  Yes, the color never becomes monotonous or gimmicky. 

Charlie was also the master of figures in motion.  His horses move.  Many of our greatest artists have been able to depict horses of majesty, of size, of monumentality, but Charlie’s horses are seen in dramatic action, twisting or jumping with a febrile life of their own.  I can think of no finer painter of American horses than Charlie Russell

Finally, Charlie underscores the tumultuous action of the picture with a rainstorm in the middle-distant horizon.  Like all Western landscape pictures, the view-horizon is vast, going on for miles.  Thus the far-off rain storm underscores the ‘storm’ of action going on between cowboys, horses and bear. 

Speaking of movement, take a moment to look at the bear.  It twists and pivots on unsteady ground … you can almost feel the weight of the animal as it is pulled and slides down the natural incline.  The cowboys, too, move as if in motion, alternately pulling or swinging their lariats.  And notice the cowboy on the right, looking over his right shoulder, with right leg raised as counter weight to keep in saddle.

This is a really good picture, and something mysteriously akin to the essence of Charlie – not only is his West a world of action, freedom and camaraderie, but it can be a fairly bloodless one, too.  Charlie loved the animals he found out West (when visiting cities, he always went to the local zoo, where he said he felt most at home), and it’s not surprising that he would depict his heroes scaring away the threat of a grizzly, rather than killing it. 

Perhaps we should all take a page from Russell’s notebook, and produce work that preserves the best parts of ourselves (or, at least, the myth of the best part of ourselves).  The more I look at Charlie’s work, the more convinced I become that we need more artists like him now.

Laugh Kills Lonesome, by Charles Marion Russell (1925)

It’s no secret that we here at The Jade Sphinx love the work of Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), the cowboy artist.  The boyish Russell went West in his early youth, and worked as a cowboy, watching the waning days of the American West with an artist’s eye.  He didn't seem to be very effective in the saddle, but it was all he wanted and he was happy.

Charlie not only loved life, he loved his life.  He wanted to be a cowboy in his earliest boyhood, and went West as soon a he had the chance. 

Charlie’s vision of the West was a boyish one, full of endless prairies and freedom.  His was an eternal boyhood – both promise and nostalgia at the same time.  The West (and his boyhood) became to him a Lost Eden which he missed and to which he could never return.

The sense of loss, though, was not a bitter nor astringent one.  In fact, it grew into some of a sweet wistfulness.  Charlie was too happy a man – too content with life and his place in it – to allow loss to play to great a part.  It’s a lesson we can all take from this maddeningly simple yet complex man.  The more I read about Charlie, the more I think I know him, the more I feel some vital core essence of the man is slipping through my fingers.

This week, we will look at three of Charlie’s pictures.  (I only think of him as “Charlie,” it’s almost impossible to think of him under his full moniker.)  They are not necessarily his best (nor most representative pictures), but they illustrate something of his philosophy, I think.

Exhibit A: Laugh Kills Lonesome, painted in 1925 and now in the Mackay Collection in Helena, Montana.  It was painted just a year before Charlie went to the Last Roundup, and if ever an artist painted an end-of-life farewell, it is this.

Charlie paints the figures in a markedly sketchy manner: it’s not verisimilitude he is after, but mood.  The sky and surrounding landscape are simply laid out in muted, cool colors.  The moon shines brilliantly in the distance, and the stars seem almost heavenly, but they do no wash the picture with cool light – they are distant and fairly unobtainable.

The realm warmth of the picture comes from the campfire, which brings a warm glow to the chuck wagon, a few simple tools, and the cowboys themselves.  There is nothing of particularly high mark in their attitudes or actions; it is simply a group of men content after a hard life of labor, loving the outdoors, their lives, and one another.  One of them smokes a contemplative cigarette, another pours the last of the coffee, and two of them share a game of cards.

But the arresting figure is the man standing on the right, hat back, coat open, body receptive to capture the campfire’s warmth.  Who is it but our old friend, Charlie Russell, the Cowboy Artist.  We have seen in the past that Charlie was not averse to putting himself into his own work, and there he is, holding his lariat, smoking a cigarette, and perhaps looking at the fire die down as his own life draws to a close.

Charlie was in ill health for the final years of his life, and he is evidently looking at his own past in this painting.  But it is not a look of regret or of loss; if anything, it’s a look of satisfaction.

Perhaps the truest nugget of the real Charlie Russell can be found in the picture’s title:  Laugh Kills Lonesome.

There, in a nutshell, is the essence of Charlie Russell.

Batman Breeds Thoughts on Culture High and Low, Along with Musings on the Current Cultural Crisis

Yesterday we looked at Glen Weldon’s wonderful new book, Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, and that got us to thinking.  (Before we get to thinking, though, let’s reiterate that Weldon’s book is quite terrific and highly recommended.)  Is Batman art?  And is a deep engagement with Batman (or other facets of Nerd Culture) a worthwhile endeavor?

Before we start exploring, let’s set some ground rules.  We here at The Jade Sphinx have given serious consideration to pop fiction and film, along with kiddie books.  We have also examined literary, artistic and musical works by great masters.  Clearly, we think that pop fictions are worthy of serious consideration … but the mistake this discussion often makes is equating serious consideration with serious art. 

But that is not the case.  Kiddie lit and pop fiction can be crafted with varying degrees of artistry, but that does not necessarily make it art.  Oh, it can be art, but it does not transmute into art simply through virtue of its examination.  A doctoral thesis on Batman, for example, may result in a diploma, but the intrinsic quality of our pointed-eared friend and the body of work about him remains unchanged.

Now, the call to canonize kitsch is a relatively new phenomenon.  From the 1930s through the 1960s – a time of unprecedented media saturation – junk art for children was enjoyed by children.  In what seems was a more innocent time, there were whole industries creating art for children: comic strips and books, movie serials, radio shows, animated cartoons and hosts of literary options created expressly for everyone from beginning readers to teenagers.  Adults could sometimes dip in an appreciative toe to remember the sweet currents of youth, and may even enjoy much of the material, but to become an avid consumer of such was a sign of feeble-mindedness.

Pop fiction for adults also fully realized (and embraced) its limitations.  One well remembers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dedication to his 1912 novel The Lost World (a masterpiece of its kind): I have wrought my simple plan/If I give one hour of joy/To the boy who’s half a man,/Or the man who’s half a boy.  That lovely and poetic preamble is suitable for so much that came before and after, everything from Fu Manchu and Tarzan, to James Bond and Indiana Jones.  Good pop fiction can be terrific stuff: insightful, bracing, engaging and amusing.  It is not to be sneered at; nor, however, is it to be overestimated.

We are not saying, to be clear, that it is impossible for a piece of genre fiction or popular entertainment to elevate into the realm of higher art.  Wind in the Willows, The House at Pooh Corner and Peter Pan are magnificent books, transcending the designation of mere kiddie lit to soar to literary heights.  And one need only to think of Poe, of much of H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson, of Graham Greene or Dashiell Hammett, to realize that many classic novels could also be shelved in the genre sections of your local bookstore.  But, again, such company doesn’t elevate a genre en toto.

But over the last few decades what has changed in the culture at large is a flight from adulthood and complexity, from the challenges of great art and great beauty, and a retreat into comfortable and childish enthusiasms.  Worse than that, consumers of pop culture are demanding that attention not only be paid, but that entry to the Canon is fair and just.  And, in so doing, they debase the wonderful raw power of pop fiction, and the innocence of kiddie lit.

In the 1990s, I was frankly amazed at the adult craze for Harry Potter books.  This is in no way to say that these books were bad, but they were written for children, and a deep identification with them signifies a lack of seriousness.  Worse still, as more and more adults read them, the books lost more and more of their grounding in a child’s world, ending with what was to be the Gotterdammerung of kiddie books.  It became almost impossible to read the last novel in the corpus and remember that it all started with some kids playing ball from atop some brooms.

Much the same thing for adults who obsess over Batman.  It is adults (of questionable maturity) who have demanded the darker, brooding, psychopathic Batman.  It was the same adults who have consigned the sunnier, smiling, and more optimistic Superman into oblivion, insufficiently violent or complex and now hopelessly passé.

What these adults playing with children’s toys forget is that amusements made for children cannot bear the weight they wish to impose upon them.  We are supposed to move on from the amusements of our youth to more challenging, complex and elevating fare.  Enjoy them as palette cleaners, but then get onto the main meal.  The answer is not to make Batman relevant to adults (an impossibility), but to embrace the challenge of real adult art. 

And, again, read and look at what you want.  But a steady diet of aesthetic and cultural junk is much like a steady diet of junk food: it will significantly impair your physical and mental health, greatly diminish your quality of life, and, in the long run, it will kill you.

Now, we make our children’s entertainment for adults.  I can think of few more damming condemnations of us as a culture and as a people that we actually make Batman or Superman movies that are so violent … that children cannot see them. Stop for a moment and ponder how … impossible that would have been as little as 50 years ago.  The idea of a “serious” Batman movie would have been met with well-deserved derision.  But not today.  The cheapening of our culture since the 1960s (and the concomitant tenets of aesthetic relativity), have made this dumbing down not only possible, but inevitable.  The highest grossing films of the year are blockbusters based on 40 year old superhero comics.  This lack of adulthood has poisoned our language, our music, our political discourse. 

This corruption has bled into everything.  For example, in the just-released Against Democracy, a political screed published by Princeton University Press (!), author Jason Brennan breaks the body politic into three classes:  hobbits, hooligans and vulcans. 

Hobbits…?  Vulcans...?  Really?  Is that what 21^st Century adulthood has become?

I love pop fiction.  And when pop fiction is working on all cylinders, it can be wonderful, terrific and … art of a kind.  But it’s like a twinkie: I’ll eat them, but it’s not my sole diet.  And if the very notion of adulthood is to survive, we have to get back to the business of serious art, or our emotional, intellectual and philosophical selves are finished.

Tomorrow: James Bond – it aint art, but nobody does it better.

The View of the Plaster Cast Collection at Charlottenborg Palace (1830)

We close our birthday celebration of Christen Købke (born 1810) with this witty picture, The View of the Plaster Cast Collection at Charlottenborg Palace, painted when the artist was just 20 years old.

Artists of that era spent much of their time drawing from plaster casts; in fact, in many academies, it was standard practice to draw from plaster casts for several years before moving into drawing from the live model.  Artists thronged to ateliers and museums to stand before casts and draw from a variety of different angles, learning perspective, anatomy and proportion.

The casts here so scrupulous tidied by an attendant are of a sort to be found in most top-tier collections.  (For example, in the upper right is the celebrated marble relief in the Louvre of Apollo, Artemis and Leto.)  This witty picture mixes the exalted with the mundane – fabulous pieces of art dusted by a household servant.

As usual, Købke is in full command of light and color.  Anyone looking at a plaster cast would say that it was ‘white,’ but, instead, look at the medley of colors Købke uses.  He takes into account light, shadow, surrounding colors and time of day – yes, the casts are ‘white,’ but white reflecting the world in which they inhabit. 

Købke also employs shadows with a clean and unfussy hand, while posing for himself another challenge in a difficult pose: our servant is leaning forward, reaching out, but also elevating his head.  Købke makes the difficult look easy.

Portrait of Frederik Hansen Sødring by Christen Købke (1832)

Just to get this out of the way, though something about this picture looks a little … off, I love it unreservedly.  It is by Christen Købke, born today in 1810, and depicts his friend and confidant, the landscape painter Frederik Hansen Sødring (1809-1862).

Købke painted portraits, landscapes and architectural paintings. He liked to paint things close-at-hand (like yesterday’s landscape that was almost right outside his door), and the vast majority of Købke’s portraits depict friends, family members and fellow artists.  This beautifully composed work is emblematic of his innate sense of coloration and his mastery of everyday life. In 1832 Købke shared a studio with Sødring, and painted this portrait which now hangs in the Hirschsprung Collection.

Sødring was the son of a merchant, and was born in Aalborg.  He lived in Norway before studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (beginning in 1825).  He married Henriette Marie de Bang (1809–1855), and had several children before dying at the early age of 52.  The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts was one of his beneficiaries, where he established a scholarship in his name and left money for the widows of landscape painters.

We know that Købke and Sødring were great friends, but know very little about the actual mechanics of their friendship.  Though married himself, to Susanna Cecilie Købke (1810–1849) in 1837, Købke had a gift for enduring male friendships.  He was often traveling across Continent with brother landscape painters, and seems to have spent little time at home.

Now, take a moment to look at this wonderful picture.  To the modern eye, something seems a tad off in the composition: one wonders if Sødring’s head is a tad too large, or if his body haunches unnecessarily in the middle.  I think, while looking at it, that these issues resolve themselves when we see that Købke set himself the difficult task of capturing Sødring in an unusually convoluted pose.  The young artist perches on the edge of the chair, drapes his body backward, while thrusting his head forward and shifting slightly to the side. 

At first, this seems unnecessarily fussy until one realizes that this is exactly how a painter would sit while backing away from his easel.  His trousers bunch up and puff around his pelvis because his body is sliding within them while the seat of his pants stays on the chair.  When one realizes the challenge that Købke set for himself, the result is nothing short of astonishing.

Now, look at the frank and friendly countenance of Sødring and you will see not only the charming ruddy completion of a northern European, but you’ll notice that his left eyebrow is starting to beetle.  Then, Købke captures the lines of his shirt and the pattern of his silk vest with a minimum of fussiness.  And speaking of attention to detail: look closely at the thumb struck through the palette and you will notice that there is a smudge of paint on Sødring’s thumb.  The paints on his extended palette are arranged in color-wheel order, and the wood bears the paint stains of previous use.

There is so much in this picture to admire.  I love the panels in the wall; I love the creeping flower behind him; I love the top of his own easel reflected in the mirror above him.  This picture seems so careless, so effortless, but closer inspection reveals that it is a work of great detail, subtlety and affection.  

A View of One of the Lakes in Copenhagen, by Christen Købke (1838)

This week we celebrate the birthday of Christen Schiellerup Købke, who was born on May 26, 1810.  He had a brief life, dying in 1848, but this Danish painter born in Copenhagen to Peter Berendt Købke, a baker, and his wife Cecilie Margrete, was one of the greatest artists of the Golden Age of Danish Painting.

One of 11 children, Købke was a student of Copenhagen Academy and, from 1828, a pupil of Christoffer Eckersberg (1783-1853), who influenced his style.

Starting in 1834, his landscapes acquired a more solemn and emotional quality, inspired by his interest in Caspar Friedrich (1774-1840).  He left for Rome in the summer of 1838; during his journey, he visited Dresden and Munich.  In May 1839, he arrived in Naples, and he stayed there until August 1840, copying the Pompeian frescoes in the National Museum. 

He lived in Capri with his compatriot painter, Constantin Hansen (1804-1880).  When he returned home, he turned his Italian life studies into large-scale painting.  He worked on the interiors of the Thorvaldsen Museum, and in 1845, he moved back to Copenhagen.  He had hopes of being called into the arts academy, but when that didn’t happen, money concerns forced him to start working as a decorator.

Today we look at one of my favorite Købke pictures, A View of One of the Lakes in Copenhagen, painted in 1838 and now at the Copenhagen National Gallery of Art. 

In this oil, two women stand on a short wooden pier in the tranquility of the summer twilight, watching a boat move away towards the far lake shore.  The delicate silhouette effect accentuates the slightly melancholy mood of the scene and the hour, and simultaneously suggests the artist’s sensitivity in communicating the naturalness of the scene.  The Danish painter acquired this ability during his long apprenticeship to Eckersberg, during the time the two men traveled together, sketching the Danish countryside from life.

Before deciding on the definitive layout for this painting, Købke executed various sketches of this view that he knew and loved – in fact, Købke lived right on the lakeshore.

Though Købke is clearly a gifted draughtsman and painter, there is something else going on in this picture that makes it so special.  First and foremost, Købke had the most important gift an artist can have – that of composition.  The layout and design of the picture frame is what makes the finished work so haunting and evocative. 

Købke also has the gift of subtlety – a sense of wistful yet intense emotion is captured by the artful placement of a few carefully rendered figures.  There are no faces in anguish or delight, no straining muscles or fiery (or smoky) colors, but still Købke manages to create a world of emotion without.  Amazing.

More Købke tomorrow.

The Sacrifice of Isaac, Franz Anton Maulbertsch

To Your Correspondent, it’s one of the most inexplicable passages in the Old Testament.  In order to assure himself of Abraham’s devotion, God orders him to kill his son, Isaac.  And … Abraham agrees. 

In Genesis 22, you will find the tale of how God had Abraham take Isaac up to the land of Moriah (a great distance away), separate the boy from the bearers and others that travelled with them, and then had the poor boy cut and carry wood for his own sacrifice.

Abraham readies the alter and wood, only to then bind Isaac and place him upon the pyre.  He is about to stab the boy to fulfill God’s command when God sends an angel to stop him.  God provides a ram, stuck in the nearby bushes, as a substitute, and one assumes that they went home, with Isaac never to turn his back on his father or trust him again for an instant.

It is stories like this that make Your Correspondent, a product of 13 years of private Catholic schooling, wonder if anyone reads this stuff critically.  The Biblical point here is that Abraham, after luring his son away from witnesses and making the poor boy carry the wood for his own funeral pyre, is viewed heroically because he valued God’s word more than he did the life of his own son.  The religious reading of the story puts a smiley face on an act of stupefying barbarism.  It’s an act of religious obligation counter to common sense, ethics and even fundamental morality.  This is the kind of thinking that leads to jihadism, suicide bombings, and the murder of abortion providers, much less countenancing child abuse.

We have looked at a number of brilliant depictions of this fable in the past, and to that list we must add that of Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796), currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.

Looking at Maulbertsch’s work, one marvels at his ability to tell a story vertically.  For much of his work, the story sweeps up and down, rather than across.  Maulbertsch packs a great deal of drama in this picture, mostly communicated through composition and coloration.  Indeed, though Maulbertsch was a capable painter, his true genius lie in color and composition.  Weaknesses in drawing and painting are more than compensated for by his use of both to drive the narrative.  He has an artistic point of view – something that some more technically skilled painters lack, leaving their work sterile or unmoving.

The painting swoops from lower left (the angel’s wings and Isaac’s wonderfully lit legs), though the body of the boy and leading up to Abraham’s face, the light reflected on his helmet, and his upraised knife.  In that bottom to top arc, we have the entire story of the near sacrifice, told with impressive narrative thrust and significant drama.

No one would accuse Maulbertsch of delicacy when rendering the human face; indeed, many of his faces are indistinct or only adequately drawn.  Look, however, at Abraham’s face, which is very striking indeed.  Shown only in half light, this is the look of religious mania at its worst – the satisfaction evident on his face is consistent with people who have gone blood simple, and relish the act of murder.

Another reading is, of course, that Abraham’s face is lustful.  Time and again in depictions of Abraham and Isaac from artists as diverse as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Titian, we have seen something in the myth that seems to inspire dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.  All of these painters have fetishized Isaac to some degree, and Maulbertsch is no different.  Note the radiant, heavenly light specifically highlighting his muscular legs and flat stomach, focusing its spotlight on his private parts.  Discreetly covered by the torn fragments of his robe, there is no mistaking that the focal point of the painting is Isaac’s groin. Indeed, if the eye flows up in a straight line, Abraham’s knife is directly over Isaac’s genitals.

Though rendered without “fussiness” or fine detail, Maulbertsch’s take on the Abraham/Isaac myth has an almost Mannerist monumentality and epic feel.  It is not my favorite painting of the myth, but it may be one of the most idiosyncratic.