The School of Hard Knocks

Man in a Red Beret (van Gogh), 1888,
Paul Gauguin

As one who has studied the lives of hundreds of artists spanning hundreds of years, I cannot help but be impressed with how troubled the vast majority of great artists have been over past centuries. One would almost come to consider major trials and tribulations some kind of prerequisite to greatness. Rembrandt lost most of his family in death and had money troubles galore. Michelangelo was quite possibly the loneliest artists who ever lived (mostly by choice). Like Rembrandt, Monet was plagued by money troubles for much of his life. More than a few artists have committed suicide and those who didn't were often prone to various undiagnosed mental problems, depression, bad tempers, criminal records, marital infidelity, alcoholism, drug addiction, and a whole host of untreated, or untreatable illnesses. Though in the 20th century a surprising number of artists have lived and worked well into their 80s and even 90s (such as Picasso), over the history of art, deaths of artists in their 30s and 40s were quite common (Pollock and Raphael, for instance). Of course, we are all aware that the poster boy for the painting school of hard knocks was Vincent Van Gogh, but it's also interesting to note that his one-time colleague, Paul Gauguin, actually comes in a close second.

The Swineherd: Brittany, 1888, Paul Gauguin

Born in 1848, Gauguin never picked up a brush until he was almost thirty. Even though he tried for a time to settle down, marry, raise a family, and work a nine-to-five job (as a stock broker, no less), there was an element of wanderlust in his soul dating from his youth spent in Peru, and six years at sea as a merchant marine. He took up painting as a hobby to relieve the stress from the daily grind of a bourgeois daily life. He learned to paint from the Impressionists and fell in love with their spontaneous color and the joy of creative expression he found in his art. But rather than giving him some sort of release, painting served only to further unsettle his life. Finally, he broke. In 1883, he gave up his "so-called life", left his wife and five kids, to devote himself totally to his art. He fled the painful pressures of urban life for the rural tranquility of the backward French province of Brittany on the northern coast of France (above).

I Raro te Oviri, 1891, Paul Gauguin, his mature Tahiti work

Except he wasn't happy there. He was constantly moving back and forth between villages before "escaping" again to the French Caribbean island of Martinique for a short time, only to return once more to Brittany, and from there to Arles where he had his turbulent, short-lived association with Van Gogh. Then it was back to Brittany again, from there to Tahiti, back to Brittany for a fourth time, back to Tahiti, and in a final act of desperation, deeply in debt, terminally ill with syphilis, and in trouble with the law, he ended up in the Marquesas Islands where he died. Even Van Gogh didn't bounce around that much! Gauguin was filled with disdain for the pretentious, "civilized" world in which he'd grown up and which had little use for either him or his work. He searched in vain for something simpler and better in a natural, unspoiled, primitive environment only to find he still needed the very art world from which he had again and again tried to flee. Perhaps it might have been better for them both if Gauguin had tried harder to hang in there with Van Gogh.

Samuel Henry Kress



An S.H. Kress store, Berkley, California, 1933

The next time you walk into a K-Mart, here's something to think about. Where did the "K" come from? Many readers may remember visiting the "five and dime" when you were growing up? It might have been a Ben Franklin, or a Woolworth's, or perhaps an S.H. Kresge store. If you're old enough, (and lived in the right part of the country) you might remember, years before that, Kresge's were called Kress 5-and 10-cent stores. The first one opened in Memphis in 1896. Before long there were some fifty Kress stores all over the South, and eventually in the West. Their founder was a former school teacher named Samuel Henry Kress. He was born in 1863, the day after the Battle of Gettysburg, not far from there in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Right out of high school, he began taching school in a one-room building for the exorbitant salary of $25 per month. Unbelievably, he managed to save part of that salary and invested it in a stationery store in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. It was from this that the Kress chain developed, and it was Kress who put the "K" in K-Mart.

Samuel H. Kress, 1952,
Leopold Seyffert

In the 1920s the Kress Company moved its new headquarters to New York and there Kress ensconced himself in a two-story penthouse where he began amassing a collection of Italian painting, sculpture, and furniture. In these posh surroundings, he lived until his death in 1955.  By that time, his art collection amounted to 1,424 paintings, 171 sculptures, 31 drawings, 1,307 small bronzes, and hundreds of other miscellaneous art objects. The place must have more resembled a warehouse than penthouse. He'd originally intended to endow a national museum, but inasmuch as his friend, Andrew Mellon, beat him to it, he instead donated 386 paintings and 24 sculptures to the National Gallery in Washington. However, this hardly made a dent in the stash.

Laocoon, 1610-14, El Greco, 
one of many gifts from the Kress Foundation
to the National Gallery of Art In Washington, D.C.

The rest he doled out to 18 municipal museums in cities where there had long been Kress stores, in effect returning to the communities that had made him rich, an art token of his esteem. In addition, 23 colleges and universities also received art for their campus galleries. Having some more left over, dozens of very small museums around the country received similar gifts of from one to three paintings. His offerings were so generous that in some cases, cities had to construct new buildings just to house his donations. Even churches and schools benefited. Numerous European cities also benefited from the Kress largess in preserving many famous architectural landmarks. The Kress Foundation also supports libraries and educational institutions with books, slide collections, manuscripts, and archives. And today, many promising young scholars receive Kress Fellowships allowing them to study art abroad.  Something to think about the next time you pass a K-Mart--a thrifty school teacher who really made a difference.

Renaissance Cities--Rome

The Rome we all know and love today. The stonework would have been much the same 500 years ago, just add weeds, reeds, cats and rats.

Artists, when they have the opportunity to travel abroad, usually have a short list of "must see" cities.  Paris, London, and New York of course, probably Athens, Venice, Florence, in the Far East, Kyoto, and without a doubt, ROME! Rome, the eternal city, home of St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Forum, ancient Roman ruins, fountains at every street corner, churches on every block, sidewalk cafes lining the Via Veneto, the seven hills, the Vatican Museums, the trendy shops, the Catacombs...  Well...okay, you might skip the Catacombs, but there's little wonder they call it the eternal city--it would seem to take an eternity to see it all. I spent one day there and saw maybe one tenth of it. That's Rome today. 





Porticus Octaviae, Ettore Roesler Franz painted

a scene not unlike one might have encountered

in Renaissance Rome

Five hundred years ago I could easily have seen it all in a day and had time to throw back a few goblets of cheap wine at some squalid little inn, hoping to rinse away the dust from my throat after a long day of dodging sheep, geese, dogs, street urchins, and a motley assortment of beggars, muggers and outright thieves. It would have been near the bottom of any artist's list of favorite cities to visit, and indeed, those who went there, went for only one reason--the Church. The pope lived in Rome...well, really in a seedy sort of a suburb to the west on a hill called Vatican. No one in their right mind would have lived in Rome proper in those days. It was a filthy, squalid, damp, dump of a city overgrown with weeds, congestion, and ruins--medieval in the worst sense of the word. The Renaissance may have been settling onto Vatican Hill but it was nowhere to be seen along the Via Veneto.

By 1642, Rome was no longer the squalid roads of ruins Michelangelo knew.

But when the church called, the stars of the Renaissance (sometimes reluctantly) came. Working for the church didn't pay well. The merchants of Venice or Florence offered far better wages and much more comfortable accommodations. But it was service to God and Pope that brought them, and inspired them to the kind of greatness that within little more than a hundred years made the city the number one place on earth to go and study art. The city changed too. When the popes no longer felt the need to lavish money on St. Peters, they began to look about them and to share the wealth, so to speak. The fountains, the churches, the piazzas, the ruins, all came to life as the city rediscovered itself. The French established an academy of art in Rome that was the grand prize in its yearly Salon competition, the Prix de Rome--the Prize of Rome. Today, Rome is a prize, along with its Italian people, their culture, their music, their food, their ambiance, and still the number one city in the world to go and study art.



The Pantheon miraculously survived the fall of Rome and the Renaissance building boom that so devastated the Coliseum.





Likewise, much of the Roman Forum wasn't so lucky.

Robert Delaunay

Homage to Bleriot, 1914, Robert Delaunay

From time to time in researching the work of various artists I come upon the name Robert Delaunay. It seems he was an important influence on any number of the 20th century's best and brightest, yet surprisingly, there is very little in the history books about the man. In fact, you can find almost as much on his wife, Sonia. Of course she outlived him by some 38 years so perhaps that's the reason why. Have you ever seen a somewhat abstract, perhaps rather Cubistic painting of the Eiffel Tower?  Chances are, unless it happened to be one by Marc Chagall, it was probably by Robert Delaunay. It's little wonder, he painted the damned thing over sixty times, starting about 1910 until he died in 1941.  He was infatuated, one might even say obsessed with it, referring to the Paris landmark as the "Center of the Universe."  Even one of his best known paintings, an otherwise fairly abstract Homage to Bleriot, painted in 1914, has a small Eiffel Tower in the upper right corner, accompanied by the circling biplane in which Louis Bleriot first flew across the English channel that same year.  For a time at least, it would seem, Delaunay was also into current events.

Les Coureurs (the Runners), 1913, Robert Delaunay,
Note the similarities to Picasso. This work predates
Picasso's Three Musicians by some eight years.

Robert Delaunay was born in 1885. His parents divorced while he was quite young and he was raised by a wealthy uncle who sent him to a decorator's studio for training in the arts. There he was first exposed to Impressionism and especially the work of Cezanne, who was only then first becoming a prominent influence in painting. Though he flunked the "leaving exam" he apparently left anyway, and immersed himself it the heady, creative atmosphere of the Paris art world that was the first decade of the 20th century, taking after such painting icons of the time as Monet, Pissaro, Bonnard, and Gauguin. However, it was Cezanne that he kept returning to for his greatest inspiration. In due time he discovered the church of Saint Severin, and it is his towering, soaring abstracted arches that brought him to the attention of Wassily Kandinsky, who invited him to display in Germany with Der Blaue Reiter group. It was also about this time he met Sonia Terk, whom he married in 1910.

Simultaneous Constrasts: Sun and Moon,
1912-13, Robert Delaunay

Aside from his abiding love of the Eiffel Tower and his young wife, Delaunay also had a great love of Cubism. Following an earlier affection for Neo-Impressionism, a sort of deconstructionist Cubist style marked his work for the next few years until he became absorbed in color and a movement the poet, Appolinare, termed Orphism. Though much more complicated than this, it was basically a synthesis of Fauvist color, Futurist dynamism, and Analytic Cubism seeking to follow the rhythms of nature, but not its appearance (which, amittedly, sounds pretty complicated in and of itself). Many of his paintings from this era employed multi-colored disks, allowing him to relate the color wheel to various extraneous colors and develop a theory of "simultaneity" of color and contrasts, juxtaposing primary colors to their complementary counterparts and studying the effects they might have upon one another. Working with him, his wife also delved into this and other color phenomena while also pursuing a career as a stage and costume designer, even developing her own line of fashions in the 1960s and 70s. So the next time you see the name Delaunay, think Cubist Eiffel Towers, Orphism, color disks, and don't forget Sonia.

Not to forget Sonia--Miriam Schapiro, 1923, Sonia Delaunay

Richard Anuszkiewicz

Richard Anuszkiewicz

When Richard Anuszkiewicz (pronounced Anna-SKEV-ich)  first exhibited his work at The Contemporary Gallery in New York in 1960, critics hardly knew what to say. The vast majority had been weaned on Abstract Expressionism, and though Anuszkiewicz work was non-representation, one thing it wasn't was expressionistic, and it stretched the definition a bit to even call it abstract.  In fact it was about as opposite of Abstract Expressionism as could be imagined. One complained his work, "...makes havoc of normal vision."  Another found them, "...so intense as to make one wince." Yet another critic noted that they, "...dazzle and perplex the eye."  Still another compared the experience of seeing Anuszkiewicz's work to, "...putting one's finger in a light socket." Others found it hard to focus upon them. What could be so troubling to the critics that they found it hard to even look at Anuszkiewicz's work? Perhaps there should have been a sign outside with the words, "Welcome to OP art."

Aside from the physical aspects, the retinal fatigue that is at the core of Op Art, that which makes it move and sometimes also makes it moving, was a more profound aspect--its disturbing departure from every definition of abstract art critics had become accustomed to. This was premeditated art, not action painting. It was as coldly contrived as Pop Art, it's partner in crime in usurping the place of Abstract Expressionism. Op was pure design, downright scientific in its approach, as left-brained as Pollock had been right brained  Critics were use to analyzing the artist's personality through his work, writing reams as to what the painter might mean to imply in prose so esoteric even the artists themselves were often left puzzled, scratching their heads in reading a review, while muttering, "Damn, I'm good."

Knowledge and Disappearance, 1961, Richard Anuskiewicz

Anuszkiewicz's Op art demonstrated a physical presence, totally devoid of any meaning, a device with which to explore how human eyes and brains reacted to juxtapositions of dissonant or exactly complementary colors, combined with lines which created disconcerting, convex/concave illusions that, while vibrating, were also vibrant in their brilliance, poised in their harmony and beauty. Pictures on web sites, even in books, can't even come close to the powerful effect these works have upon the viewer. One is left questioning how something so incredibly beautiful can play such tricks on the eyes, indeed, even resulting in painful discomfort. Anuszkiewicz 1961 work, titled Knowlege and Disappearance, has this effect. Pop Art is often accused of "killing off" Abstract Expressionism. It's a bum rap, in that the 50s "bull in a china shop" movement was already on its death bed, dying of old age. Pop, and Op were merely what came next, pall bearers perhaps, whose only crime was to benefit from its demise. Op inherited the abstract qualities, Pop some of the expressiveness. Both have long-since blown their inheritance, but in their high-flying glory days, they redefined art, demanding that critics and connoisseurs alike write home for a reality check.

Reginald Marsh

Manhattan Skyline with Brooklyn Bridge, Reginald Marsh

One of the interesting changes in the American art world today is that it no long has a capital. Today an artist has just as great a chance at making a name for himself on the West coast, in Florida, Minneapolis, Texas, Chicago, or the East coast. However, during the first half of the 20th century, aside from possibly Philadelphia, nearly all "important" art was done in New York City. If the artists didn't actually live there, they certainly sold there and became famous there. It is little wonder, therefore, that no other city in the U.S. has been so profoundly studied in art as the "Big Apple." This phenomena undoubtedly started in the 1800s, but it was only with the Social Realism of John Sloan and the Ashcan School painters that we begin to see the real New York. This affection among artists for the city didn't end there though. During the 1920s right up through the 50s, at least until the New York School did away with representational subject matter, the high and low life of the city was a favorite, even dominant subject for the artists of the art capital of the western world.

Figures on the Beach, 1921, Reginald Marsh

Two artists stand out in the post-Ashcan era of New York art--Edward Hopper and Reginald Marsh. And it was Marsh, far more than Hopper, who really captured what it was like to live in this city during this era. Marsh's work is seamy and steamy, from Bowery bums to Coney Island, from Battery Park, to the depths of the subways that tied it all together, Marsh was painted every sooty detail. It's a wonder he never got mugged! He painted the great American melting pot form the inside, recording its crowded streets, its dangerous docks, seedy bars, burlesque houses, teeming tenements, sweltering beaches, and the desperate poverty that gave the Depression its bad name. Even though his art background was in magazine illustration for such slick, haut couture periodicals as Vanity Fair, aside from an affection for signage and a seemingly obligatory female figure, usually clutching her purse, passing uneasily through the unkempt, male riffraff cluttering the streets, there is little that is fashionable in most of his painting.

Tattoo and Haircut, 1932, Regina Marsh

Marsh was born in 1898, the son of not one but two artists, Fred Dana and Alice Randall Marsh. Like many children today, he first drew cartoons. Four years at Yale and several more studying with the likes of John Sloan and George Luks at the Art Students League found him a job working for the Daily News, Harper's Bazaar, and The New Yorker. During the 1930s e painted murals for government buildings. His fresco seco (dry plaster) paintings of ocean liners such as the SS Normandie arriving in New York was about as close as he ever got to the brighter, cosmopolitan side of his city. More typical is his Tattoo and Haircut, a 1932 egg tempera peek at a seedy, subway barber shop. Always the careful draftsman, Mash hated oils, felt much more at ease with watercolor, and found his true love when Thomas Hart Benton introduced him to egg tempera in the 1930s. Marsh died in 1954, but even in the midst of the Abstract Expressionist movement, his work continued to bring good prices as well as the love and respect of the "restless natives" of his brisk, brusque, bustling, hometown.

Raphaelle Peale



Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos, (minus the drape), 1809-14, John Vanderlyn

Americans have always been a tad bit prudish. We still are, though not to the degree we were a hundred years ago, or two hundred years ago. For several years in the early part of the nineteenth century, the Hudson River School painter, Asher B. Durand owned John Vanderlyn's painting of Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos. It's a lusciously beautiful, amply endowed vision of female loveliness, languorously arrayed across a red blanket and white sheet asleep in the forest. She's also very nude. The painting was done around 1814 and for years, Durand hung it in his drawing room. Not wanting to offend anyone, especially the delicate sensibilities of the ladies in his household, he kept it covered with a drape. His male friends, even then, considered this something of an amusing compromise. One in particular, Raphaelle Peale, chose to satirize this prudery in a painting of his own. It's called Venus Rising from the Sea--A Deception (After the Bath).

Venus Rising from the Sea--a Deception
(After the Bath), 1822, Raphaelle Peale

I guess such a painting took a fair amount of explaining, judging from the length of the title. If you go looking for it expecting to see a naked lady, Venus or otherwise, emerging from her bath, you're going to be in for a surprising disappointment. You'll see a tantalizing bit of bare ankle and a nude arm. The rest of the painting is a fool-the-eye still-life of the drape.  But don't go away disappointed, it's a very beautiful drape. In fact it's exquisite, perhaps more beautiful in its own way than the presumably voluptuous tease it supposedly conceals. It appears to be a folded bed sheet gracefully hung with pins from a rope draped across the upper part of the canvas. It is painted in warm, rich, tonally vibrant, but neutral colors so natural and pleasant one hopes it is real so as to be able to peek behind it to see the naked lady. And if you're wondering how a bed sheet could possible be the subject for an interesting still-life, the irony of it is that, though we've all seen quite a few naked ladies before (painted and otherwise), it's rare in that very seldom do we see such a gorgeous painting of a bed sheet.

Bowl of Peaches, 1816, Raphaelle Peale

Raphaelle Peale was born in 1774, the eldest son of the preeminent colonial portrait painter, Charles Willson Peale. One wonders if the father might have been a little disappointed that his eldest son didn't follow in his huge footsteps in becoming a portrait painter too, though goodness knows he had enough other painting sons and daughters who did just that. Instead, like his uncle, James Peale, Raphaelle gravitated toward the solitary art of the still-life. And while his uncle painted deliciously sensuous pears, grapes, overripe apples, and the like, Raphaelle's fruit bowls were noticeably simpler with his tastes gravitating toward peaches...that's it...just peaches (and perhaps an occasional bit of watermelon or lemon). His Bowl of Peaches from 1816 is less fussy than his uncle's but like the bed sheet (from 1822), the colors are so warm and soft, the light and composition so natural they appear far more real and tempting.  Like the rest of his siblings, Raphaelle was taught by his father to paint. Though some consider him the best of the clan, actually, he never went very far with his art. His much-loved still-lifes can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. (In truth, he did paint a few portraits as well.) All his life he suffered with gout, and later from alcoholism. He died in 1825 at the age of 51.