The truly Old Masters, Volume 1

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Richard Lewis

The story of a great artist whose life is tragically cut short, like Raphael, Van Gogh, or Caravaggio, is one of the most popular themes in art history. But what about the artist who lived a rich, full life? There are far more great artists who lived to be 75 or older than those who never reached 40. In fact, there are so many that we will need more than one installment to highlight them all. ‘Volume 1’ of The truly Old Masters features artists who lived all or most of their lives before the twentieth century and were not Americans.

The popular idea that the greatest work of any artist is already done by the age of thirty, flies in the face of countless examples of mature works of genius. Why should anyone be surprised that a talented artist will benefit from longer study of any art form? The colorful paper cut-outs in Matisse’s Jazz and Michelangelo’s Dome of St. Peters are just two examples of a tour-de-force by truly old masters.

Hokusai (1760-1849) [89], Self-portrait at the age of 80

The maxim of Hippocrates, Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long, life is short), is both a blessing and a curse for artists. That’s because so many, like the great Edo era artist Hokusai, are never satisfied with their past works and count on reaching a ripe old age to finally become successful. He explained,

“From the age of 6, I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50, I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75, I’ll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80, you will see real progress. At 90, I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self ‘The Old Man Mad About Drawing.”

While Hokusai only lived to be 89, he somehow managed to create over 30,000 works before his death. Among them are some of the most famous Japanese woodcuts, like the iconic “The Great Wave.” He also invented a revolutionary genre of sketchbooks called manga, whose influence continues to today.

But still Hokusai wished to live longer to make even better works. He would have understood completely what Leonardo da Vinci is reputed to have said as he lay dying in the arms of the King of France at the age of 67 — “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”

Below is a gallery with later work by artists who may have thought life is too short but lived long enough to truly become old masters. [Click on an image to begin slide show.] Continue reading →

The Horse from the Battle of Little Big Horn

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Richard Lewis

Joseph No Two Horns, He Nupa Wanica (Hunkpapa Lakota), Horse Effigy, c. 1880. Wood (possibly cottonwood), pigment, commercial and native-tanned leather, rawhide, horsehair, brass, iron, bird quill. Length: 38 1/2 in. South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre.

Joseph No Two Horns‘s Horse Effigy is not only a powerful sculpture, but a portrait of a beloved horse ridden to victory in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In a recent exhibition of Plains Indian art with hundreds of objects at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, it regularly drew the biggest crowds. His horse’s death in that battle haunted the artist for the rest of his life.

Joseph No Two Horns, 1939. Notes from Colonel A.B. Welch.

In 1876, No Two Horns or He Nupa Wanica, was a 24 year old Hunkpapa Lakota warrior following his chief and cousin, Sitting Bull, when he fought in the most famous battle of the Great Sioux War. Popularly known as Custer’s Last Stand, it is called The Battle of Greasy Grass by the Lakota. On June 25th, General George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were scouring the Montana territory looking for about 800 “hostiles” as reported by his scouts. Custer expected to easily drive them back into their reservations. Instead, when the Seventh Cavalry attacked what they thought was a small village, Custer and his men found themselves facing the combined forces of thousands of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors.

Drawing by Joseph No Two Horns. c. 1876.

Joseph No Two Horns, Death of Blue Roan Horse. c. 1876. Drawing on paper, 8 x 10 “. State Historical Society of North Dakota.

In the battle, No Two Horns’s blue roan suffered seven bullet wounds before collapsing, but not before carrying No Two Horns to victory over the army of General George Custer. For the rest of his life, until his death in 1942, he portrayed this event in colorful drawings and paintings, as well as sculptures.

This wooden sculpture from 1880 shows his galloping horse is in the midst of battle. It stretches and strains, fighting to keep moving as death nears. His eyes are brass tacks, his leather ears are pulled back. Bullet wounds across his body run red. His mouth is covered in blood and red dyed horse hair dangles to represent blood running from his mouth. Like a skilled animator, No Two Horns pulls the horse’s torso into the long line of its motion path.

The love of horses is an important part of Plains culture and one of the many atrocities of General Custer’s Seventh Army was their systematic slaughter of Plains Indian ponies. The Lakotas were a warrior society and these effigies or Dance Sticks were used in ceremonies and dances to prepare for battle or celebrate victories. This is, however, the only existing Dance Stick that shows the entire body of a horse.

No Two Horns remains one of the most famous artists of the Plains Indians and his effigies the model for many other Plains artists. Today, his Horse Effigy is not only the most prized object in the collection of the South Dakota State Historical Society but their symbol.

While a veteran of more than forty battles, Joseph No Two Horns did not brag about his exploits. In 1926, No Two Horns participated in the ceremonies honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He said he danced for the ‘soldiers who were so brave and foolish.’

[Thanks to Danyelle Means for corrections to this story.]

Guess What? How the teacup got its fur

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Richard Lewis

Méret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur), 1936. Fur covered cup, saucer, and spoon

The concept for Méret Oppenheim‘s most famous sculpture, Object (Luncheon in Fur), was born in a conversation with Pablo Picasso at a Paris café.

As Rebecca Mead tells it in the March 23rd issue of The New Yorker:

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Surrealist artist, had tea with Pablo Picasso at the Café de Flore, in Paris. Oppenheim was wearing a bracelet, of her own design, that was clad in ocelot fur. Picasso admired it, noting that one could cover anything with fur. Soon afterward, Oppenheim produced her most famous work: a teacup, saucer, and spoon covered with the creamy-tan fur of a Chinese gazelle. The piece is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and is celebrated for its suggestive conjunction of the domestic and the erotic.

After Picasso’s casual observation, Oppenheim, who was just finishing her tea, reportedly joked “even this cup and saucer.” As the idea took hold, she turned and called out, to the amusement of all, “Waiter, a little more fur!”

Object is rich in sexual connotations, its back story in art world connections. Also seated at the table during the conversation was the photographer, Dora Maar — she and Picasso were then lovers. Maar posed for some of the most intense paintings Picasso ever made. Oppenheim herself had posed for their friend, the photographer Man Ray.

Méret Oppenheim by Man Ray (American, 1890–1976) 1932. Gelatin silver print (solarized)

The unforgettable sculpture came to life when André Breton, the leader of the French Surrealists, asked Oppenheim to exhibit something in their next exhibition in Paris. Oppenheim went to a local department store to purchase the cup and saucer and the marriage of fur and teacup was consummated. It was Breton who came up with the name “Luncheon in Fur” (Déjeuner en fourrure), as a reference to Édouard Manet’s famously scandalous painting of 1863. The imaginative bracelet that caught Picasso’s eye was later bought from the struggling, young artist for a few Swiss francs by the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

Object was later exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which purchased it in 1946. Its fame has only grown since then.

If all the talk of the eroticism of Object eludes you, simply imagine drinking hot liquid from the furry cup.

Cold? Rembrandt’s studio was probably colder.

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Richard Lewis

In Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, there is a small Rembrandt of an artist at work in his studio that symbolizes the difficulty of making art. The dark, large canvas on the easel seems huge and forbidding. With thick, spread legs, it dominates the picture and looms over the artist, who appears to have backed away from it, perhaps in fear.

However, this painting has taken on a whole new meaning for me because of this frigid winter in the Northern U.S. While I never gave it a thought in the past, the artist (who resembles Rembrandt) is clearly unnaturally bundled up in heavy clothing even though he is inside.

What is going on? Is the studio cold because the artist lacks the money to heat it? Or is it something else?

Painted around 1628, when Rembrandt was in his early twenties, the studio’s bareness could simply depict a struggling, young artist and the tools of his trade. We can see his palettes hanging behind him, brushes and a maul stick in his hands. To the right, is a large grinding stone where he makes his paints. To the left, is a table probably with jugs of oil and solvent.

If you visit Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam – Rembrandthuis — you can see many of the same things and even witness a demonstration of how he ground his dry pigments into a paste by mixing them with oil. This stone looks nearly identical to the one there.

Hendrick Avercamp, A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle, c. 1608–1609, oil on panel, The National Gallery, London

But his clothing is a clue to something else. In 1628, Europe was in the midst of what is known as “the Little Ice Age.” By the time of the painting, global cooling had been underway for more than a century. In winter, the canals of Holland would freeze over and not thaw again until late in the spring. Growing glaciers had crushed small villages in Switzerland. The importance of the North American trade in beaver pelts was a direct result of climate change. Rembrandt’s artist is probably wearing a felt hat quite popular in this era and made from those pelts. [The phrase “mad as a hatter” comes from the dangerous effects of the chemicals used to treat beaver fur.]

At the time of this painting, Amsterdam was rapidly growing and had become the most important port and economic center of Europe. Homes were heated by burning peat harvested from bogs. Because of the rapid growth of Holland’s population, however, the peat bogs had nearly been exhausted and peat’s cost skyrocketed.

The combination of expensive fuel and the peaking of The Little Ice Age made for a poor time for a young artist to start his career. No wonder he is bundled up and fearful. It was really a cold world out there. I hope he sold the painting.

How to Nap like Dalí

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Richard Lewis

Salvador Dalí, Sleep, 1937

While dreams were the source of his imagery, Salvador Dalí felt that sleep was a great waste of time. Whenever he was getting sleepy, he would sit in a stiff, Spanish “bony” armchair with a metal key in his hand. Just below his hand, he placed a dinner plate. As soon as he nodded off, the key would slip out of his hand, hit the plate with a loud “CLANG!” and wake him up. According to Dalí in his 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, anyone who followed his method of “slumber with a key” would “wake up inspired!”

This kind of very brief nap is called by scientists “hypnogogic” and is known for releasing a rush of creative thoughts. Other famous nappers who believed in only sleeping a few hours a day were Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Edison’s technique. (Illustration by Jeff Warren)

Da Vinci is reputed to have had a method, known as polyphasic, where he slept fifteen minutes every four hours, never going beyond a total of five hours a day. Lord Byron, Thomas Jefferson, and Napoleon are also said to have used this approach, which causes vivid dreams.

Dalí wrote, “At the age of six I wanted to be Napoleon – but I wasn’t.” At least, he later slept like him.

Salvador Dalí sleeping on a couch

George Nakashima: From Internment to New Hope

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Richard Lewis

George Nakashima (Photo: L. Barry Heatherington)

George Nakashima credited a dark chapter in our nation’s history for his success as one of the twentieth century’s greatest furniture designers. Born in Spokane, Washington, the child of Japanese immigrants and descendants of samurai, Nakashima first studied forestry but later earned degrees in architecture from the University of Washington and MIT. After receiving his Masters, he sold his car, bought a round-the-world steamship ticket and traveled around the globe seeking inspiration. First came a year in France, then a visit to North Africa and two years in an Indian ashram. He landed finally in Japan, where he immersed himself in Japanese culture.

In Tokyo, he met the American architect Antonin Raymond, Frank Lloyd Wright’s chief assistant on his Imperial Hotel. Nakashima was hired by Raymond and gained his first experience designing furniture on a dormitory project. He also met Marion Okajima, like him an American of Japanese heritage, and they soon married.

With the threat of war looming, the young couple returned to the United States in 1940 and started a small furniture workshop in Seattle. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Nakashima, his wife, and baby daughter were rounded up and forced into an internment camp, like 100,000 other Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. The family was sent to the Minodoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. Years later, many internees would remember these lost years with justifiable sadness and bitterness. Despite being loyal Americans, they were taken from their homes and imprisoned without trials or due-process. But George Nakashima remembered these years differently.

: Newspaper headlines announcing Japanese American relocation. February 1942.

: Japanese-American internees in Idaho at the Minidoka War Relocation Center

: Nakashima at work

In this isolated desert camp, Nakashima met a traditional Japanese craftsman in his forties, Gentaro Hikogawa, a meeting that would change his life. The man became his master and trained the young architect in traditional Japanese wood-working tools and techniques. For Nakashima, the Idaho camp’s unhurried pace, isolation, and peaceful existence were essential to his mastering the craft of furniture making.

Hikogawa stressed the importance of patience and reaching for perfection. Nakashima, who had once studied forestry, recognized a natural combination between ancient wood-working techniques and respect for the spirit of the tree. For him, furniture making was a partnership and his role was to provide the tree with ‘new life.’

In 1943, Antonin Raymond convinced government officials to release Nakashima and his family, acting as their sponsor and arranging for him to work at Raymond’s studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania. His plan was to create a studio that combined the practices of the International School of architecture with traditional Japanese techniques.

: Conoid bench

: Home

: Wood with chalk markings

: Coffee table

: Butterfly joints mend splits

: Home

: Coffee table

: Desk

: Nakashima & conoid chairs

After the end of World War II, Nakashima established his own furniture studio in New Hope and became world-famous as one of the fathers of the American Crafts Movement. Each piece of furniture was finished by hand and custom designed to reflect each commission and the unique quality of the wood. Today, his work is in private collections, like the Rockefeller family’s, and many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, and Morikami Museum. In 1983, he was declared a “sacred treasure” by the Emperor of Japan.

His philosophy of furniture making is best expressed in his own words:

A visit to Matisse’s ‘crowning achievement’

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Richard Lewis

For the conclusion of his 2010 BBC documentary, Modern Masters: Matisse, the British critic Alastair Sooke visited Matisse’s Vence Chapel in the south of France for the first time. In this segment, Sooke is overwhelmed by emotion, while he contemplates how the old, frail artist managed to have a final burst of creative energy at the very end of his life.

Designing the Chapel began in the late 1940s. Matisse, already in his late seventies, was recovering from surgery for intestinal cancer and had nearly died. His nurse was a former model, Monique Bourgeois, now a novice Dominican nun, Sister Jacques Marie.

The project confused his friends like Picasso, who knew Matisse was an atheist. Yet Matisse called the Chapel his ‘crowning achievement.’

Matisse in bed working on Vence Chapel c. 1950

Matisse drawing a head for the decoration of Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence (The Matisse Chapel) in his studio/room in the Hotel Regina, in Nice-Cimiez, 1950. Photo by Walter Carone/Paris Match.

To celebrate the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, The Cut-Outs, which opened this month, the Café presents Sooke’s moving tour of the the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France. Or as most of the world knows it — Matisse’s Chapel.

See and hear Matisse — drawing with charcoal and scissors

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Richard Lewis

The following two short videos provide brief glimpses of Henri Matisse at work in his studio. In the first from 1946, he draws a portrait of his grandson, Gerard, with charcoal. In the second, he was filmed near the end of his life “drawing with scissors,” which is how he described his method of working with hand-colored papers.

Besides the rare opportunity to see Matisse at work, we can also hear his voice in the first video. He is explaining how he thinks about drawing. His comments translated into English are:

“Me, I believe that painting and drawing are the same thing. Drawing is a painting done in a simpler, limited way. On a white surface, a sheet of paper, with a pen and some ink, one creates a certain contrast with volumes; one can change the quality of the paper given supple surfaces, light surfaces, hard surfaces without always adding shadow or light. For me, drawing is a painting with limited means.”

Lydia Delectorskaya, Hôtel Régina, Nice, c. 1953
Courtesy Henri Matisse Archives

: Jaqueline Duhême standing in front of designs for the Tree of Life stained-glass window for the Chapel of the Rosary, Vence.

: Matisse working on a cut-out, c. 1949.

Jacqueline Duhême, one of Matisse’s studio assistants in the late 1940s, describes how he made his cut-outs here.

See Monet Painting Waterlilies

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Richard Lewis

In our continuing series of peeks into artist studios — a unique item. A rare 2 1/2 minute film that shows Monet painting his waterlily pond in Giverny in 1914. And his little dog, too.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, c. 1915
Neue Pinakothek, Munich Germany

[Thanks to Vincent Pidone for the tip.]

Oscar Wilde on Whistler and vice-a-versa

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Richard Lewis

Oscar Wilde

Speaking of his friend, the painter James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Oscar Wilde once said,

“Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and I believe still spells it, with a capital ‘I,'”

a legendary put-down applicable to far too many artists, writers, and other creative types.

Wilde, the author of The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, was one of the great wits of his age. His target was one of the first American modern artists, best known today for a portrait called by most “Whistler’s Mother,” seen less often in art books and more in sentimental greeting cards and even a postage stamp. This, rather than the above quote, would have horrified Whistler, who intended the painting to be a dispassionate revolutionary statement of art for art’s sake. He had titled it Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.

J.A.M. Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, Louvre, Paris.

J.A.M. Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871. Louvre, Paris.

Continue reading →

Lewis Art Café

An on-line salon of art, artists, and travel

Category Archives: Lives of the Artists