Full Moon, Winter Crossing by Peter Fiore

It’s always a pleasure for us to cover contemporary artists here at The Jade Sphinx, and when coming across the fine work by artist Peter Fiore (born 1955), I wanted to take a closer look at one of my favorite paintings, Full Moon, Winter Crossing.

Fiore is predominantly a landscape painter; he has won a number of awards, including first place for landscape in the Art Renewal Center’s Annual Salon, along with receiving the Grand Prize in the America China Oil Painters Artist League (ACOPAL).

 

Fiore was born in Teaneck, NJ, and studied at Pratt Institute and later at the Art Students League in New York.  He is also a professional illustrator, collaborating on thousands of projects while also working on the faculties of Pratt, Syracuse University and the School of Visual Arts.  He lives with his wife, the sculptor Barbara Fiore, alongside the Delaware River in northeastern Pennsylvania.  Readers are encouraged to look at his Web site at:   http://www.peterfiore.com/.

Many of Fiore’s paintings are wintry landscapes.  As your correspondent considers this the most beautiful time of year – and thinks Pennsylvania among the most beautiful of places in the United States – I wanted to show you Full Moon, Winter Crossing, painted on linen and about 48x60 in diameter.  As Fiore writes on his Web site: I am especially drawn to the winter landscape. It is a time when the earth loses its leafy covering and reveals it's true self. Covered in snow, the world reflects light and creates a spectrum of colors that are both dramatic and beautiful.

Well… where to start on this wonderful picture?  First, I am struck by the stark beauty of the winter landscape.  The dead trees stand silent sentinel at the riverside, and bits of withered vegetation struggle to peek through the snow.  A small house is visible in the distance, but there are no lights in the window to connote a sense of hearth; there’s no fireside warmth on this night.

For Fiore, the river is a living thing.  It captures the moonlight and reflects it back, reshaped on the currents of water.  The shadows of the bridge create rich shadows which shimmy, and the water grows more darkly blue as the eye travels left, away from the moonlight.  And this is not the placid water of a summer day – this water flows.

Another striking thing about the picture is the quality of light.  Look at how Fiore plays the moonlight on the bridge top, illuminating the steel girders with yellow highlights.  More interesting, look at how he plays the light on the pier supporting the bridge or on the snow in the foreground:  shadows are not black (or brown washes), but nighttime blue in the cold evening light.  Even the moonlight that catches the rippling water has a quality of coldness that perfectly captures the season.

Despite the empty house and cool colors, there is still an element in the picture that is welcoming and beautiful.  This is not winter desolation, but, rather, winter in all of its cool, clear, crystalline beauty. 

One last thing – sometimes the power of a painter in not in the finished picture, but in the sensory associations it suggests.  Though there is nothing at all overt in the picture, what I sense looking at Full Moon, Winter Crossing is not the cold, nor the damp of the water, but a sense of quiet – the special muffled quality to the air that only a snowy winter day offers.  It is, like many interesting pictures, powerful in its suggestions as well as its representations.

Modern Master Max Ginsburg Wins for “War Pieta”

There are many current artists producing remarkable work, though one may never know it looking at most gallery offerings or contemporary arts journals.  However, there is a growing tide of modern masters working in an artistic tradition that requires true skill, virtuosity and vision.  One of these is Max Ginsburg, who recently won the Best In Show prize of $10,000 for the 2010/1011 Salon Competition bestowed by the Art Renewal Center for his stunning War Pieta.

First, a word about The Art Renewal Center (ARC), created in 2000 by a group of artists, art collectors, historians, and enthusiasts.  The ARC advocates standards of craftsmanship and excellence while maintaining a virtual museum with over 63,000 images in its library – a treasure trove for the serious art student or connoisseur.  ARC’s Salon Competition seeks to recognize modern masters of drawing, color, form, vision, light and composition.  As Kara Ross, ARC Director of Operations, writes about the awards this year:  “Nothing says more about a culture then the art it idolizes. It represents what it values, what it thinks about, and essentially what it deems worth remembering. Art is the representation of a people, encapsulating its essence on every level. The artists participating in this competition are helping to bring the culture back to its most important root, its humanity.”  The ARC can be found at: www.artrenewal.org.

Max Ginsburg was born in Paris (his parents were travelling) in 1931.  His father was portrait painter Abraham Ginsburg.  Max came of age during a dark period of American art, when a market-driven modernist establishment actively devalued the place of both representational art and of beauty.  He worked for many years as an illustrator while painting pictures depicting life in New York with a raw energy and a keen eye for detail.

One of the many canards that the modernist establishment hurls at real artists is that the beau arts tradition is played out, that is has nothing left to say because it deals mostly in trite, idealized images.  This puffery is easily dismissed by reality and a quick survey of much of the contemporary work in the realist tradition, which actively seeks to reconnect art with our humanity.

Ginsburg is firmly in this tradition.  A quick look at his oeuvre (and you can find it here at: www.maxginsburg.com) shows a painter clearly in the classical tradition grappling with real-world issues.  His painting depicting the horrors of Abu Ghraib is a stunning masterwork that combines imagery of the crucifixion of Christ with the tortures committed by a corrupt, amoral American military.  Other pictures deal with contemporary families losing their homes to foreclosure, homelessness, and economic chaos. 

War Pieta is a disturbing image.  It is also a powerful, poignant, beautifully rendered one.  As Ginsburg writes on his Web site: “I sought to symbolically connect, and contrast, the image of a real mother screaming in anguish over the death of her soldier son with the Old Master images of the Madonna mourning the death of her son in a rather unreal, quiet and serene way.”

In this, Ginsburg succeeds powerfully.  Ginsburg’s sense of color is sure, his composition sound and his control of anatomy terrific.  Behind the horribly mangled American soldier and his devastated mother are burning oilfields, the focus (and the prize) of this horrific folly.  This riveting and wrenching work is the artistic equivalent of a gut-punch; close your eyes and you may find the image still seared into your retina.  The pain is palpable, the mother’s scream unquiet in our imagination, and the brutality of her son’s mutilation leaving us all somehow guilty and complicit.  I imagine, one day, it will be the centerpiece of a George W. Bush Presidential Library, depicting his greatest and most vicious crime.

Max Ginsburg has created a picture for the ages.