Month: May 2020

Art in Every Season

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I love how with a flick of its wrist, Memorial Day turns on summer. Rain, cold, wind… MEMORIAL DAY… sun! warmth! Summer! It was especially blatant this year. Last week I was bundling up to go outside, this week we’re pulling out our bathing suits and paddleboards. Summer is most definitely here, and I don’t think we’ve ever needed it so desperately!

My guess is that most artists love season changes because they get a fresh new look at their subjects (Monet! Van Gogh!) Nicolas Poussin painted a series obviously named The Four Seasons. Poussin was primarily a landscape painter, which is evident in these paintings, but he incorporated stories from the Bible for each season. Not surprisingly, Spring is the story of Adam and Eve before the fall. Everything is new and cheery! Life is good! But to quote Jon Snow… winter is coming.
The sun is rising and life is good… for now.
Poussin uses the story of Ruth and Boaz for summer. This is one of my favorite Bible stories, and I love that Poussin picked it for the world’s most popular season. Boaz was a farmer and aren’t farmers the heroes of summer? This is their season!  And if they happen to fall in love with a hot widow working in their field, then all the better! Not to mention, that does not look like fertile soil to me, so props to Boaz for taking a run at farming there.
Love is in the air!
Autumn depicts the two spies, who brought word back to the Israelites that the Promised Land was going to be awesome. To prove it, they carried giant grapes back on poles, yelling, “think of the wine we can make with these babies!” Or something like that. Experts think Poussin painted this picture last. That irks the Type-A in me. You have to paint the seasons in some kind of order, Nick!!
Two out of twelve spies recommend the Promised Land.
Of course, Noah’s flood is winter. Bleak, depressing, blah. Poor winter always gets the shaft, never mind the sparkling snow, glimmery icicles, sledding, skiing, snowmen, and skating. Says the girl who loves Michigan. It’s a devastating painting. We need more post-flood rainbow pictures, if you ask me. The Deluge, as it is called, is a big deal. Tons of art historians and experts think it’s the greatest painting of all time. They don’t say that about any old painting. Part of their reasoning (that I find most interesting) is that Poussin didn’t go nuts with disaster. The people are just starting to feel nervous, they aren’t panicking yet. We know how the story ends, so their slight unease just breaks the viewers’ hearts even more. Not to mention the snake creeping around on the rocks, and the dark sky. The whole thing is very foreboding.
Aka: The Deluge. Doom, gloom. Winterfell.
The Four Seasons was one of Poussin’s last works. He had developed awful tremors in his hands by the time he set to work on this, so it took especially long to make. His poor health caused him to live as a recluse, which feels so relatable right now. He didn’t have assistants helping with his art, which was rare. I’m always happy to discover prominent artists that worked alone.

I hope your week is full of hope, romance, and tasty grapes, with no snakes to be seen!

Learning to Love Still Life

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I’m just going to rip this band-aid off: I think still life paintings are boring. Always have. Even the genre name incites an image of somebody sadly throwing up their arms, disappointed in another day, and moaning, “Still. Life.” But these paintings of fruits and flowers can’t be ignored. All the greats have done a still life at some point, and I figured maybe I just didn’t know enough about them. My mom used to quote Lincoln at us all the time: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better!” So I thought maybe the same rang true for still lifes.

A while back somebody gave me some notecards with Van Gogh’s sunflowers on them. I still have them. I suppose I could send one out with my electrical bill or something- but they aren’t appropriate to send to a friend for any occasion at all. Despite the yellow, which is usually so cheery, VVG manages to make them sad:
This was basically how I felt when it rained all day Monday.
The yellow he used was a brand new pigment at the time, and to say Van Gogh was a fan is an understatement. He went nuts for the yellow! And his buddy Gaugin was nuts for the paintings. VVG gave him a couple as a gift (not on notecards), and Gaugin tried to claim another one as payment for some work he left with VVG. That ruffled some feathers, but they seemed to move past it eventually. 

Here is another still life I sort of like. Not as much as his painting of John the Baptist’s beheading, but that just says more about me as a person than anything else. I give you, Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit:

At first I wasn’t exactly sure why I liked this better than other still lifes, but I’ve got it now. It’s the light background. Part of my problem with other still life paintings is that they’re often so dark I can hardly make out what’s what. Leave it to Caravaggio to do something cool with light. Also, in true Caravaggio fashion, his fruit is beginning to spoil. There is some conversation about whether he was just using whatever fruit was available, or intentionally used bad fruit. I set up camp in the latter group.

This next one gets a place on my list of good still lifes because there is so much to look at! For a still life, it is really entertaining. 
You might have to zoom in on this to get the full effect.
For one thing, there aren’t any fruits or flowers! Already very different. Pieter Claesz was famous for his still lifes, or (here’s a new word for me) vanitas, still life paintings that include symbols of life and death. See? Interesting! He adds a twist to this vanita by capturing a self-portrait of himself at the easel. Look in the crystal ball- there’s Claesz! I love it when artists hide little surprises. I also appreciate that he lightened the whole painting up with the violin. 

Tom Wessellmann was a more contemporary still life painter. Maybe I like his still lifes because they’re more relatable? Or because they’re brighter? Whatever the reason, I think all 3 million of them are a blast (just kidding about the 3 million number, but he did paint a lot of them.) 
Don’t you just want to sneak one of those Cokes right off the canvas?
Okay, okay, I’m warming up to still life paintings a little bit! I may always prefer a portrait or landscape painting over a bowl of fruit, but it turns out many still lifes have a lot to offer! Agree? Disagree? Do you have a favorite still life painting?

Mother, Mother, I Want Another… Painting!

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Shout out to all you Mamas out there! Mother’s Day is upon us! I read that moms spend three 40-hour weeks changing diapers per year. Even though my kids are waaaay done with diapers, I shall be repeating this fact to everybody in my family forever. There are no studies on other bodily fluids we clean up (or milk spills. Or Legos.) but suffice it to say, we spend a lot of time with paper towel.

Though she wasn’t a mother, herself, Mary Cassatt seemed to have a really good handle on what motherhood looks like. Her depictions of mothers with their kids are spot on. I love that she doesn’t try to make it look glamorous or easy, but does capture sweet moments with loving moms.

Take Young Mother Sewing, for example.

She’s probably sewing a mask for pandemic protection.

This isn’t the stiff portrait of some royal family trying to be something they’re not. It’s a mom, so used to having a kid hanging on her, she doesn’t miss a stitch. I’m guessing the little girl was asking for a cheese stick, and when her Mom said “It’s almost dinnertime,” the little girl looks at the painter as if to say, “can you believe this lady? I’m so taking one anyway.”

It is always a wonder to me how artists put colors together. The grass and the two dresses should look awful together, but Cassatt makes it work beautifully, then adds the orange flowers that bring the whole color scheme to the next level, in my opinion.

Here is another one I love by Mary Cassatt:

Look at those bulbous sleeves!!

If you know me, you know I love love love putting my nose right into a baby’s soft little cheek. Just letting it sink right in. Faces don’t have that kind of elasticity forever, so it’s imperative you do it as much as possible when you have a baby or toddler. Also, it turns out they don’t always love that particular display of affection when they are teenagers. I’m certain this mother knows that and is savoring this moment. Again, I love what Mary does with color, the gold sleeves and then that little green ribbon? It just works!

Cassatt has a million more Mother/Child paintings, each with their own darling merits. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t put my favorite of her paintings here:

No fancy posture here!

I know this girl! I’ve seen her in my daughters’ faces when they’re bored, tired, or trying to figure out what to do next. In the next frame, her mom walks by and says, “Legs together! You’re wearing a dress!” Then plops the dog (who isn’t supposed to be on the chair) onto the floor and slouches down beside her daughter. They sit silently, then the Mom nudges her daughter’s foot and says, “I could go for a three o’clock cup.” The daughter replies, “I’m bored.” And the mom says, “Let me get my coffee, then you want to play Uno?” And the girl is rejuvenated until 10:30pm when the Mom is telling her to “GO TO SLEEP” for the fortieth time.

But that’s just speculation.

Happy Mother’s Day, friends!!