She’s (Almost) Baaack
Johannes Vermeer, Girl Reading a Letter Before an Open Window, 1657-59, oil on canvas It’s thought this young woman Vermeer painted around 1659 wants out of that open window and into a larger life, perhaps with the person who has sent the love letter she is reading. Why? Well, in the mid-17th century (their Golden Age) the Dutch made extensive use of symbolism to communicate meaning. The open window as a symbol of escape is still recognizable but today we probably wouldn’t associate the bowl of fruit in...
read moreDistance Learning
Edward Hopper, Western Motel, 1957, oil on canvas So, today I’ve been thinking about the relationships between Richard Diebenkorn’s and Edward Hopper’s art. They aren’t accidental. When Richard Diebenkorn was learning to paint in the 1950’s, Abstract Expressionism was the vogue. So much so that, in a determination to be ‘with it,’ the San Francisco Art Institute recruited several “AbEx’s” from the East Coast and more or less banned realistic painting. The...
read moreCalifornia Beauty Contest
Granville Redmond, Malibu Coast, Spring, @1910, oil on conavas Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape #1, 1963, 60 1/4 x 50 1/2″, oil on canvas Which painting do you prefer? One of my favorite art critics recently wrote of the painting on the bottom “There may be no more beautiful painting of California than this 1963 work by Richard Diebenkorn.”* And, Wow!, that is saying a lot.I can certainly see the critic’s point. Diebenkorn is one of my favorite artists, Cityscape #1 lives right here at SFMOMA and is a painting I knows...
read moreThe Maine Thing
Certain American artists live in an exalted realm for me, their works so excellent and reviews so extensive that I shy away from saying anything about them. But today images of two of them, the writer E.B. White and the painter Winslow Homer, unexpectedly arrived in my email, and this has prompted me to dare a few words. Probably I needn’t worry about taking them down from their pedestals. Neither of these iconic artists likely gave a hoot whether they were on anyone’s pedestal. Homer devoted numerous paintings to...
read moreJapanisme, Oui
A friend asked for my thoughts on the Asian Art Museum’s current show Looking East, How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh, and Other Western Artists. Certainly, it’s a very high quality show, broad-based from fine art to clothing, furniture, photography, the decorative arts. The signage is thorough and informative and the crowds it is attracting would be the envy of most museums. What’s missing for me would be impossible to include: the shock of the new. Once upon a time, in about 1849 in Paris, virtually no one had laid eyes...
read moreCollecting – A Few Early Thoughts
If you wish to collect art, your walls needn’t look like this picture. In fact, you can buy just one artistic object, learn from it that you have no interest in collecting and be done. And that piece can be from an art or craft fair, an artist friend, a rummage sale. It can cost only a few dollars. However you begin, I guarantee you that your life will be changed by bringing art into it. What that change might be is personal. You might be interested in the period portrayed in the work and begin researching it; you might have enjoyed...
read moreGrandPop of Pop
My recent romp through a few new tech gadgets put me in mind of the French artist Fernand Leger. The Impressionists flirted with statements about technology, but Leger was one of, perhaps the, first to directly address the human and social effects as well as the scientific understandings that accompanied it. Along with several other French artists and painting colleagues at the 1910 Salon d’ Automne, Leger was definitely among the first to introduce Cubism to the public eye. Over the years Leger’s conical and tubular forms with...
read moreOf Course He Doesn’t
Someone recently got another of his serial 15 minutes of fame organizing a Renoir protest at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was a nothing event except that it has given me an excuse to revisit Pierre Renoir, many of whose works warm my heart every time I encounter them, even in pictures, posters and greeting cards. So, I am a fan of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. But Renoir has many strong detractors who see his work as too sentimental, too pretty, purely decorative. Or as one Renoir hater in Boston recently put it: The...
read moreEssential Home
Oh Goodie!! A Vermeer painting I didn’t know existed until today! And being (always) a homebody and (now) a city person, I was instantly taken by this naturalistic townscape. It is a slice of daily, domestic 17th century life in Delft so exquisitely rendered that it captures the poetic beauty of and reverence for everyday life throughout Holland. In its tidy, clean, unadorned simplicity, The Little Street is essentially a portrait of Holland. In Vermeer’s time, the virtuous Dutch home had risen to the level of sanctuary, the...
read moreDeliveries
The other day I was expecting a delivery of a fairly expensive garment I’d ordered on line. As the day went into evening, I kept going to my front door to see if the package was there. Finally, just before going to bed I looked one more time – and there it was on my doorstep. At 10 p.m. – which meant that someone had to drive alone in the dark of night to bring me a luxury item I had effortlessly ordered on my computer. I felt relieved the delivery was safe, but, more than anything now, I felt forlorn and guilty....
read more