The Seeds of Expressionism

Although the romantic tendencies in us all sometimes causes us to think so, seldom does an artist's idea for a painting spring full-blown from his mind in some miraculous flash of God-given spiritual brilliance. If that is true of the individual artist and the individual painting, it also holds true in terms of art movements as well. Take Expressionism, for example. With its deepest roots in Germany with Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter, the tendrils splayed out in several different directions, to France and le Fauves even extending to Russia, Austria, England, and Norway, which each had a branch of the movement. It doesn't take an art history genius to recognize the seed that started it all--Vincent van Gogh. But Van Gogh alone cannot account for the broad diversity sprouting from this stalk. Van Gogh was luscious, sweet, and despite his background, optimistic. Expressionism also had a dour, sad, bitter, pessimistic flavor as well. Where did this element come from?

Two Skeletons Fighting over a Dead Man, 1891, James Ensor

He was a little younger than Van Gogh--born in 1860. He was from Belgium. His name was James Ensor, and he was as unknown, even today, as Vincent is famous. But unlike Vincent, he lived long enough (89 years) to see his influence felt in Expressionism, even though he was never really a part of the movement. An 1891 painting is typical. Wildly colorful and overtly humorous, it's entitled, Two Skeletons Fighting over a Dead Man (even the title is funny). The influence of Hieronymous Bosch is obvious. The painting is set on a sort of stage with various masked figures peering in from the wings and the audience while a grotesque man hangs suspended by his neck in the center (presumably the dead man). On either sides, two skeletal figures dressed in ragged women's clothes threaten one another with a broom, fishing pole, and umbrella. On the floor lying between them is another foppishly dressed skeleton. (What? Another dead man? Or is it a dead woman?). The painting is a riot!

The Skate, 1892, James Ensor

But there was another side of Ensor. A still-life painted the following year, while no less gruesome and only slightly less grotesque, bares the marks of a distinct Chardin influence (an 18th century French painter). The painting is titled The Skate. (Skate being a kind of fish.) The colors are more expressive, brighter, higher in contrast than anything Chardin ever did, but the work is no less realistic. And it is all the more powerful in its impact because of this realism. It is raw. Dominating the composition is the underside of a horrendously ugly stingray with a face like a monkey and a tail section to make one shudder. To the left are added the fresh Skate from whence comes the title and the raw redness of a freshly caught Conch (and I don't mean just the shell). Nothing from this period compares with this abrasive strain of expressionism except perhaps the work of Edvard Munch, who was an almost exact contemporary of Ensor. Munch is the third spiritual icon of early Expressionism. But unlike Ensor, he was more than just an early influence, he became an Expressionist, seeing the movement through to the end.

The 1930s

Washroom and Dining Area of
Floyd Burrough's Home, Hale County,
Alabama, 1936, Walker Evans

One of the blessings resulting from membership in what has come to be known as the "baby boomer" generation is that we were spared the suffering and memories of the two most difficult decades of the 20th century--the 1930s and 40s. Bad as the war years of the 40s were in terms of death and suffering at least both were encountered mostly elsewhere in the world and in general, they were a time of hope for a better tomorrow. The Great Depression of the 1930s, on the other hand, was a home grown tragedy mired in despair, and few who lived through this decade escaped without bearing psychological scars as a result. As art goes, there wasn't much of any consequence during either decade. The WPA sponsored some murals in public buildings that were, well, interesting, if hardly remarkable. And after the war the seeds of Abstract Expressionism began to sprout in New York which was to some degree noteworthy. However during this period, one art form did stand forth with remarkable valor and excellence--photography. It's interesting to note that during periods of economic hardship, art tends to embrace realism on the downward slide and idealism on the upswing. This perfectly describes art styles during this period. And the camera captured both with incredible fidelity.

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,
1936, Dorothea Lange 

The Farm Security Administration was established in 1935 during the darkest hours of the Depression.  Its director, New Deal economist and sociologist, Roy Stryker, felt the need to spearhead reform at all levels of rural society. He hired six photographers to show everyone else just how bad things really were. Three of the best, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Walker Evans took their cameras to the heartlands and heartaches of a troubled nation. They brought back over 270,000 negatives, some of which have burned their way into our national psyche like no other art before or since. Lange's Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (right) has often been called an American Madonna. The mother was 32 but looked much older, lines of worry and suffering etched indelibly on her tired face; while behind her, two of her ten children cower in fear, hiding their faces from the world. They could very well have come from the deserted prairie farmhouse in her 1938 photo Tractored Out, from Childress County, Texas, in which deep, curving furrows are plowed right up to the front door of a sharecroppers abandoned home.

Rehabilitation Clients, Boone County, Arkansas,
1938, Ben Shahn

At the dawn of the decade of the 30s, the typical image of the American Midwest came from the painter, Grant Wood. His dour, yet at the same time slightly humorous American Gothic, was hopeful and modestly noble in a sort of stiff, somewhat anxious way. Just five years later, Ben Shahn's photo, Rehabilitation Clients, Boone County, Arkansas (left), marks a 180-degree turnabout. The pose is the same (the figures are reversed, however). The bib overalls are the same. So are the dour expressions, but there is nothing the least bit humorous about this desperate depiction of Midwestern rural existence.  The backdrop is not Gothic Revival but the logs of economic lethargy. The look is not hopeful but hopeless. Walker Evans captures a similar stark existence minus the players in this social tragedy with his 1936 still-life photo, Washroom and Dining Area of Floyd Burrough's Home, Hale County, Alabama (top). The house is more upscale, the logs replaced by weathered siding, the worn, wooden floorboards scrubbed bare, but the furniture is stark and sparse. A towel hangs from a nail on the doorjamb next to a shelf with a small, metal wash basin. It is art rising to meet a need, then rising beyond that to the realm of greatness in becoming a sign of the times.

Thank God for Hollywood

Imagine the challenge of contemplating a blank canvas perhaps in the neighborhood of thirty feet tall and some forty feet in width. It that wouldn't be intimidating enough, consider being asked to paint on that canvas the interior of a great Baroque church or a grand palace complete with massive columns, intricate vaulted arches, statuary, and wall murals. Welcome to the world of eighteenth-century stage design where the architect and painter worked hand-in-hand to paint the enormous backdrops for the most popular form of entertainment of the day--grand opera. Even a Hollywood set designer could learn a thing or two from the Galli-Bibiena family of gifted designers skilled in all the theatrical arts of the time, when the soaring operatic presentations demanded everything from ornate palaces to pitched naval engagements. It was a time when grandiose theatrical effects blurred the lines between mechanical engineer, pyrotechnical technician, architect, painter, set designer, and interior decorator.

Set design by Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena ca. 1710. The actual backdrop
 was in color and has, of course, long since disappeared.

Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena's stage sets were often more inspiring than the wailing sopranos and bellowing baritones who found themselves competing with them for the audience's attention. Even in Venice, where performances of Grand opera were more important than the water in the Grand Canal, his towering backdrops broke new ground in painting, architecture, and set design. He invented what he called "oblique view" perspective. It was basically two-point perspective with a very low horizon, corresponding to the average eye-level of the seated theater audience.  (Previously one-point perspective, unrelated to the theater itself, had been the norm.) Combined with just enough peripheral set construction to confuse the eye, his architectural backdrops blended with them perfectly to form the illusion of spatial depth creating breathtaking vistas known as "inquadratura,"--what the French would call (albeit on a smaller scale), tompe l'oeil or "fool the eye" painting.

A set design in "ruins," Gaspare Galliari, ca. 1790

In Milan and Turin, the Galliari family specialized in similar larger-than-life paintings except that their specialty tended toward the pastoral landscape in which the use of aerial perspective attempted to delude the audience, transporting them to faraway lands of sweeping grace and beauty. Their architectural wonders tended toward ancient Roman ruins, Chinese temples, and exotic pavilions, or busy seaports offering shelter from vast, stormy seas. What they lacked in historical accuracy, they more than made up for in splendorous Arcadian grandeur. So, the next time you sit down before your French easel to contemplate a flowing stream and your all-American covered bridge, think briefly about the efforts your Italian painting ancestors went to in order to deceive and entertain the grand dukes and duchesses three hundred years ago. Then take out your mighty 16-by-20-inch canvas panel and thank God for Hollywood.

Today, we're left only to imagine theatrical scenes such as this by
Gaspare Gallari, in brilliant color, mounting 30 to 40 feet above the
 stage while measuring 50 or 60 feet into the wings.

Symbolism

Seurat's dots, Circus Side Show
(detail), 1887-88, Georges Seurat

We are often tempted, in our simplistic minds, to think that which followed Impressionism was automatically Post-Impressionism. And indeed, many art history books tend to take that approach, squeezing any number of quite dissimilar styles into one unholy lump. In fact, what followed Impressionism was a rather disparate fragmentation of styles. Seurat's Pointillism (right) is an example. Van Gogh's Expressionism is another. Two more unlike styles, methods, and mindsets in painting could hardly be imagined. The heavy, lumpy, solidity of Cezanne's work is yet another direction, as was the expressive Symbolism of Gauguin, or the Fauvist colors of Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck (below).

Les Ramasseurs de Pommes de Terre, 1905,
Maurice de Vlaminck

By the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in 1886, the artistic climate was changing. Van Gogh had arrived in Paris. George Seurat was presenting a painting that would mark the dawn of a sort of "scientific impressionism." Emile Zola was publishing a novel titled, L'Oeuver which was a thinly disguised devaluation of Impressionism and its painting icons, especially the work of Cezanne. And on yet another front, the journal, Le Figaro  published Jean Moreas' Symbolist Manifesto. As is often the case, that which is "new" attracts attention. Impression might appear fresh to the conservative art buyer only just coming around to accepting it's broken color and painting technique, but to the remnants of the Impressionist painters, and the next generation always waiting in the wings, it was old hat. It was a style to be imitated, as indeed was happening among the ever-present second echelon of less-talented artists of the time. Gauguin was new, Cezanne was new, Van Gogh was new; and it was to these relatively obscure creative geniuses to whom the in-crowd of French art gravitated in the final decade of the nineteenth century.

Orpheus, 1903-10, Odilon Redon

Perhaps the most exciting and most promising of all the "new" movements in art at the time was that of Symbolism. This group, led by Odilon Redon and including Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Emile Bernard among others, worshiped the work of Gauguin in content and Van Gogh in his expressive use of color. They returned to many of the literary and mythological subjects the Impressionist had rejected in favor of the here and now, in seeking an art that was beyond reality, not just illustrations of mythical legends in an academic style, but a probing look at the meaning of such legends, trying to make improbable beings live by putting the visible at the service of the invisible.  Redon's Orpheus (left), painted around 1903, is an excellent example of this effort. His insightful, Symbolist exposition of the Greek legend in many ways prefigures trends toward abstraction, Surrealism, and the various mystical art movements that came to the foreground during the first decades of the 20th century. Referring to this and other new art directions that followed Impresionism as merely Post-Iimpression, is like saying the horse and buggy was followed by cars.

Stephen Gjertson

Stephen Gjertson

It's not often that I write on the work of a living artist. There are a number of good reasons for this, but the most important one is that there are so many of them. A some years ago however, I came across one who made quite an impression on me. I must confess, until I saw his work, I'd never heard of him.  He's not exactly rich and famous...well, rich maybe, most of his work is sells in the five digit range, but in any case, he's no household name.  Speaking of names, his is Stephen Gjertson. (The "G" is silent.)  He lives with his wife and children in Minneapolis where he paints from his home studio like so many of us, enters juried competitions, and deals long distance with the gallery representing him in McDonough, Georgia. He is also a founding member of the American Society of Classical Realism. And if you thought all realism was cold and harsh like Wyeth, or cutesy sweet like Kinkaid, be aware that there is a happy middle ground somewhere in between, and Gjertson occupies a fairly good portion of it.

Whether displayed on the Internet or on a wall, Gjertson's work is impressive.

I guess one of the prerequisites I, and perhaps most artists, have in choosing the work of others to admire is that the artist easily and consistently does that which we have tried to do but cannot. In many ways, Gjertson's style and subject matter are in line with my own. He paints still-lifes, a few landscapes, some genre, portraits, and religious scenes. He was born in 1949 which makes him about my age too. Unfortunately, there the comparison ends. His educational background is as classical, as his style. It includes studies with Minnesota atelier of, Richard Lack, where he also taught for a time.  He has also spent several years traveling and studying in Europe. If one were to describe his work, the word "timeless" comes to mind, though many of his genre depictions are very much those of the 21st century. By timeless I mean that his portraits and still-lifes have a nineteenth, and even eighteenth century quality about them--quiet, refined, gentle without being sentimental.

Reflections, 1992, Stephen Gjertson

Gjertson paints in oil in a manner so traditional you might think he doesn't even own a camera. Every work is thoroughly developed in pencil on paper, then enlarged into a cartoon, before being transferred to canvas. One might almost think he'd studied fresco. He uses live models at every step of the way, often imposing upon his wife and children, all of whom appear at regular intervals in his work. A devout Lutheran, his biblical work ranges from a painfully untraditional crucifixion to include an expulsion from the Garden of Eden, So he Drove the Man Out, Rachel Weeping for her Children, based on an anti-abortion theme, and a colossal, and somewhat frightening, Maranatha, (The Return of Jesus Christ). Gjertson children, however, are among his best work as he captures the rich fantasy life of his son and daughters in paintings such as Reflections (left), The Late Show, and Admiration. I first discovered, Stephen Gjertson some 13 years ago, yet even now, in reviewing his recent work, he still stands apart in my mind as the living artist I most admire. Discover him yourself at:

www.stephengjertsonstudios.com
or:
www.stephengjertsongalleries.com

Spanish Painting

View of Toledo, 1596-1600, El Greco

When we painters think of the Renaissance today, our minds conjure up work by the Italian masters of course, and if we think a little harder, perhaps we move a little further north to the Germans, where Durer springs to mind. It would seem that the whole sixteenth century in art revolved around this north-south bipolar axis. Seldom do we hear much about French Renaissance art or English Renaissance art or Spanish Renaissance art  Basically there's a good reason for this. The fact is, there wasn't very much of it to the West while the East was still dominated by the Turks and Muslim calligraphic art. In the West we do find some notable Renaissance literature and music but insofar as painting was concerned, in Spain for example, it was mostly imported talent and it had to wait until the seventeenth century when El Greco hit town (Toledo, above, right) for Renaissance progress in painting to be felt.

Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, 1639,
Jusepe di Ribera

Yet, in general, El Greco's spiritual mysticism had little impact on Spanish art. In the early seventeenth century, that which we've come to know as truly "Spanish" painting came from the South. You're thinking, AHA, Velasquez, right?  Well, yes, but actually, two earlier painters, in a sense, paved the road for him. One was Jusepe de Ribera, the other Francisco de Zurbaran. Both were born in the 1590s and were somewhat older than Velasquez. Ribera studied in Italy and was the direct conduit for Mannerism and especially the style of Caravaggio's painting influence to be felt in Spain. His Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (left), painted in 1639, is a good example. The painting is a painfully grotesque image of the saint strung up and being flayed alive. The composition and lighting is Baroque, not Renaissance, though there is a "down and dirty" quality that goes beyond even the well-known "peasant" look of Caravaggio.

Apparition of St. Peter Nolasco, 1629,
Francisco de Zurbaran

Zurbaran was homegrown Spanish talent. He never studied in Italy and his work lacks the grittiness of Caravaggio. His Apparition of Saint Peter Nolasco (right), painted in 1629 would appear to be a strong influence for Velazquez's best work, not to mention that of his fellow Spaniard, Salvador Dali some three hundred years later. There is very much a surreal quality to the handling of the robes of the kneeling saint as he confronts the vision St. Peter, crucified upside down, glowing before him, casting an ethereal light upon his figure in the painting. Although Velasquez studied in Italy, it was not from the Renaissance he got his stylistic influences, but from the Mannerists, and his contemporaries, Baroque artists such as Titian and Rubens. However it was Zurbaran and Ribera from whence came the peculiarly "Spanish" flavor that came to make Velasquez the greatest painter Spain ever produced...well, until Picasso.

Soaring Art

Wrigley Building, Chicago, 1920-24,
Graham, Anderson, Probst & White

As one who has painted and taught painting for a number of years, it's always interesting the definition artists attach to the term "large." For the miniaturist, large means 4 by 6 inches or more. To most of us, large means we measure our canvases in feet rather than inches. To the sculptor, large gets into measurements denoted by yards or meters. Imagine working in a medium where large is measured in acres or stories. Imagine creating a work of art that could be seen from all over an entire city (on a clear day of course). We seldom think of architects as artists or skyscrapers as works of art unless and until we get to know them intimately. Often that means getting inside both of them. Entering what we commonly call the "skyscraper" is one of the most overwhelming art experiences imaginable. The lobby alone with its rich marbles, banks of gold-doored elevators, soaring ceilings, balconies, exquisite lighting, all this can be breathtaking, yet it usually occupies less than 1% of the total structure. Entering the mind of the architect, is much harder. We often find two beings, a creative genius harnessed by the hard-core, nuts and bolts logic of an engineer. Disney called them "Imagineers," and that's a pretty good synthesis of what it takes to be an artist on the grandest scale imaginable.

Tribune Tower, Chicago, 1925,
John Howells & Raymond Hood,
Gothic Revival

The grandest art form imaginable had a tortured birth. It was the direct result of skyrocketing real-estate prices in big cities. During the early 1800s however, it was held in check by the limitations of wood and masonry construction and the unwillingness of inhabitants to climb more than about six flights of stairs to get to the top (pant, pant, huff, huff). Two developments freed them to soar. One, was the Otis Electric Elevator, and the second was cast iron construction. Buildings topped ten, or twelve stories almost immediately. Traditional architectural styles struggled, but eventually managed to cope with the massive demands of this new art form. Then came steel, astronomical real-state prices, and express elevators. Buildings soared to twenty, thirty, even forty stories by the early 1900s. Stylistically, architects struggled mightily to encapsulate these steel-ribbed giants with Classical, Gothic, and Art Deco garments. They had varying degrees of success ranging from the comical to the inspiring.  The Wrigley building and Tribune Tower in Chicago, and the Chrysler Building in New York are some of the more successful examples of this struggle.

Philadelphia Savings Fund Society,
1929-32, Howe & Lescaze

Around the late 1920s, architects gradually gave up decorating skyscrapers to make them look like Gothic cathedrals of enlightenment, or Roman temples of commerce, or rocket ships aimed at the moon. Among the first to see the light was George Howe. Born in 1886, he was trained in the old school--literally and symbolically by the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Paris. In 1929, he and his partner, Swiss modernist, William Lescaze decided to let skyscrapers be skyscrapers. They evolved the slab.  Influenced by the German Bauhaus, they designed a building to be seen as an entity and style in itself.  Their 1929-32 Philadelphia Savings Fund Society building in Philadelphia was just that.  At approximately 40 stories it was by no means the tallest building of its time but it marked the first instance when this type of structure was shorn of comical gargoyles, an inspiring spire, even surface decoration. Constructed at the same time as the Empire State Building, it appears a good 20 years more advanced in design. A new architectural style had evolved. It did not belong to any one man, one nation, or even one continent. It was dubbed the International Style.