Fairfield Porter

Fairfield Porter under the Elms,
1971-72

He was a painter. Also, a writer, a Communist, an anarchist, an atheist, a husband, a father, a bisexual, and a realist painting in an abstract expressionist world. And though he steadfastly refused to partake of nonrepresentational art, he probably knew more about it and wrote more intelligently about it than anyone of his time. He was the first to recognize and propound the talent of his friend and fellow painter, Willem De Kooning. He had five children, one of them autistic (undiagnosed), a very liberal, understanding, tolerant, poet wife, and for something like 12 years, a gay house guest/lover (below). He came from a wealthy (though dysfunctional) Illinois family, was Harvard educated, traveled broadly, and once painted Leon Trotsky. He was fond of comparing himself to Dagwood Bumstead. His name was Fairfield Porter.

James Schuyler, 1955,  Fairfield Porter,
the man who came and stayed.

Porter was nothing if not complex.  He was a package of startling contradictions all of which coexisted beneath a surprisingly calm exterior. Born in 1907, it was well into the 1950s before he received any significant recognition for his work. Though some of his early work was steeped in socialist commentary, as he mellowed with age, so did his style and content. He was a wise and witty homebody, painting his family and the environs of his large, rambling house in Southampton, New York, and the family-owned Island off the coast of Maine. Surprisingly, Porter's painting is remarkably consistent. His early work is a little more controlled than that of the last two decades of his life, but never does he depart from his beloved landscapes, interiors, still-lifes, and portraits which are usually more figure studies than traditional posed portrayals.

The House with Three Chimneys, 1972,
Fairfield Porter, the family home.

Often Porter is intimately connected with the New York School, but the connection is more social than stylistic.  As a writer, he not only "discovered" De Kooning, but was instrumental in bringing to light the work of Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher, and Alex Katz as well. In turn, each of these abstractionists influenced his work. Porter's artistic roots hearken back to the French painters, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, whom he regarded as the true fathers of Modern Art. Setting aside the domesticity of his subject matter, Porter was a colorist often with decidedly Fauvist leanings. From his Abstract Expressionist friends he borrowed daring compositional proclivities, bolstered by their loose brushwork and sensitivities to the flatness of the painting surface. The illusions of Realism were always there, but so too was the recognition that his art was always first and foremost, paint on canvas. From the late 1950s on, Porter's work gained gradually, somewhat begrudging recognition not as a result of his own evolution as an artist, but as a result of an art world growing tired of Abstract Expressionism. Today, though still largely unknown by the public, he's recognized by the art world as one of the most important American painters of the 20th century. He didn't change...we did.

Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun



Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun Self-portriat,
1782

When we think of great portrait artists down through history, names like Raphael, Titian, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Ingres, Sargent, and even Van Gogh come to mind. All of them were males. When you think of great female portrait artists, whoa...we draw a blank. Those with very good memories might recall Rosalba Carriera, Angelica Kauffman, Judith Leyster, or maybe Artemesia Gentileschi. There are others, but none of them, or these, are at all in the realm of household names.  For those really attuned to the feminine side of art history, perhaps you've noticed an important name missing, and probably the best female portrait painter of all time--Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun.



Her best customer, Marie Antoinette,
 1783, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun



She was born in 1755. Her father was the respected portrait artist, Louise Vigee, her mother a peasant hairdresser. Both professionals, neither of them appear to have had time for her as a child. She was shunted oft to relatives in the country until the age of five when she returned to Paris and began taking drawing classes from her father. He died when she was twelve but by that time she was well on her way to stepping into his shoes. In fact, she was so successful, that by the time she was fifteen, she was making respectable sums painting very respectable portraits, so much so that she was threatened with arrest for...get this..."painting without a license." She quickly joined the Academie de Saint Luc. She was nineteen. And if a lifetime store of some forty self-portraits are to be believed, she was also very pretty, vivacious, witty, smart, charming, and talented. At the age of 21, she married an art dealer, J.B.P. Le Brun--something of a gambling playboy given to living off his family's wealth and her considerable earnings as an artist.

Alexandra and Elena Pavlovna,
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, the granddaughters of
Catherine the Great painted during
her stay in Russia

Elizabeth was prodigious if nothing else. She is credited with painting over 800 portraits during her 87 year life span. Twenty of them were of her best friend and client, Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. Her influence (or more precisely, her husband's) was responsible for Vigee Le Brun's acceptance into the French Academy in 1783 against the will of its almost exclusively male membership. But when the queen's fortunes fell into disarray in 1789 following the fall of Versailles to a French revolutionary mob, so did hers. She was forced to flee with her nine-year-old daughter, Julie, first to Rome, then Austria, and finally to St. Petersburg, painting hundreds of portraits along the way. Moreover, her private life was not without discord as well. Against her wishes, her daughter married a Russian nobleman and meanwhile, back home, because of her close ties to the monarchy, she was branded an emigre by the revolutionary French government. Her dismal excuse for a husband divorced her to protect his property from seizure.

Prince Heinrich Lubomirski
Posing  in Allegory of Alexander I,
1814, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun,
one of her more unusual portraits
painted after her return to Pais.

Twelve years she spent in exile, allowed to return only after a petition signed by 255 international artists was presented to the French government. She continued painting prodigiously after her repatriation, her work becoming an important influence for a new breed of Neoclassical artist such as Jacques-Louis David and his student, Jean-Auguste Ingres. David noted, when Vigee Le Brun's work was compared along side his, that her portraits appeared to have been done by a man, while his own looked like that of a woman. I think that was a compliment (not sure). She took it that way at least. No less a portrait expert than Sir Joshua Reynolds termed her "...the equal of any portrait artist living or dead, including,"  he added (the Flemish portrait idol of his day), "Sir Anthony van Dyck."

Eliel and Eero Saarinen

Finnish Pavilion, Paris Exposition,
1900, Eliel Saarinen

In very many endeavors in life, it's not uncommon for fathers and sons to work together. It's a tradition dating back hundreds of years, though we're most usually aware of it when we see the "...and son" painted on the side of a truck as a business name. Painters brought their sons into the business, also musicians, writers, and today moviemakers, actors, sometimes even whole families get involved as in the case of the Fondas, Barrymores, Baldwins, and Bridges. It was also the case with a Finnish father and son who were both outstanding architects--Eliel and Eero Saarinen.

The father, Eliel, was born 1873 in Rantasalmi, Finland. His father was a minister. Early on he had in mind to be a painter. Growing up only a short distance from St. Petersburg, Russia, he spent many hours studying the paintings of the Hermitage, especially those of Rembrandt. But in his mid-twenties, Eliel gave up becoming a mediocre painter for a profession in which he felt he could make more of an impact. Just a few years later, in 1900, he did, with his design for the Finnish pavilion at the Paris Exposition. While not seeming too radical in appearance, he broke with the Beaux-arts tradition of decorating everything that didn't move with motifs from the past. A year later, he made an even bigger impact with his Helsinki railroad station. In the early 1920s, his influential second place finish in the Chicago Tribune tower composition gave him the money ($20,000) and the confidence to move his wife, daughter, and thirteen-year-old son, Eero, to Chicago where he worked with a group of designers, architects, and engineers in an early attempt at urban renewal in downtown Chicago. The plans were too far ahead of their time. They were never implemented.

Photo by Revontuli

Helsinki Railroad Station, 1901 Eliel Saarinen

TWA Terminal, JFK International Airport,
New York, 1962, Eero Saarinen

However, lured away from Chicago to suburban Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the elder Saarinen did make a considerable impact with his designs for the Cranbrook Academy which included a boys school, a nearby girls school (Kingswood), and an art institute where he taught. It was there he began to work with his son, who later graduated not from Cranbrook, but Yale. The younger Saarinen's grand entry into the field of architecture came with his winning design for St. Louis's Gateway Arch in 1948.  Though it would be another 16 years before it was built, his majestic, stainless steel monument led to commissions for corporate headquarters buildings from GM, John Deere, Bell Telephone, and his Yale alma mater. These in turn led to his most celebrated structures, the birdlike TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport, and the even more spectacular Dulles International Airport Terminal outside Washington. In each case, there is exhibited an independence in his work from prevailing International Style glass boxes. They are dramatic, functional, often quite sculptural, and inevitably beautiful. Like his father, he detoured from the expected, prevailing styles, to the daring. Unlike his father, he evolved designs in no way evoking the past, and a style never etched in stone, yet always uniquely recognizable as his own.

Photo by Joe Ravi

Washington's Dulles International Airport Terminal, 1962, Eero Saarinen

Edouard Vuillard

Edouard Vuillard Self-portrait, 1889

Everyone, I guess, has their own little peccadilloes. One of mine is clutter. I can stand a little dust, even the unattractive, but disarray makes me nervous. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a neatness freak or compulsive about it, but too much "stuff" sitting around drives me crazy. I either throw it away or put it away. Don't peek in my closets, however. At least there, it's stacked stuff, hidden, out of sight, though I'm sure Fibber McGee (an old radio character) would feel right at home. For this reason artists who paint clutter make me nervous too. Therefore, Edouard Vuillard is not one of my favorite artists. Busy, busy, busy, not a square inch without stripes, flowers, jim-cracks and gewgaws; pretty well describes his work. I sometimes wonder if he made even Victorian art lovers shudder in dismay at his prim and proper over-decorated interiors (below). But lest I be accused of "playing favorites," I should also point out his work does have certain redeeming qualities.

Interieur, 1902, Edouard Vuillard,  here a
restful, relatively benign, patterned clutter.

Vuillard was born in 1868. He died in 1940. I suppose he can be somewhat excused for his penchant toward Victorian excess in that quite frankly, he never knew anything else. He never married. He lived with his mother and sister all their lives. They were seamstresses. Patterned fabrics were their lives.  And inasmuch as he often used them as models, his figures and surroundings tend to have a soft, heavily upholstered look about them. Though he was not an Impressionist his style was impressionistic. It was also very individualistic. He's often cast among the Nabis (pronounced NOB-ies) but in fact, shared little with them other than a reactionary distaste for Impressionism. But like the impressionists, his canvases are loaded with paint. Also, his compositions have a somewhat "unbalanced" snapshot quality to them suggesting he was not unfamiliar with photographic art if not in fact, working from photos.

Edouard Vuillard Self-portrait, 1892
Notice the differences in this rather
expressionistic image and the
1889 effort at the top.

In addition to painting, Vuillard was also into lithography. And given the fact that the Paris of the 1890s in which he came of age artistically, was very much "into" posters, it's little wonder that the two meshed. Though not as flat or as well-designed as those of the ultimate poster lithographer, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, his posters, far more than his painting, were to have a broad influence on those artists of the early Picasso era struggling to free art from the very excesses so disturbingly common in so many of Vuillard's paintings. Yet as his 1892 self-portrait suggests, at least some of his painting was not far removed from the second and third generation avant-garde painters who came to idealize him, in spirit if not in their actual painting style. There is a very hard edged, unsentimental, almost cubist look to the strikingly stark image. A contemporary of Matisse, one might expect his work to be quite similar since both men loved to play with patterned surfaces, but that's not the case. Matisse's colors depart reality for points unknown. Vuillard's never do. Nor do his compositions defy reality as do those of Matisse. Unlike Matisse, few have ever made an attempt to paint like Vuillard. But that never kept him from influencing the way they saw and thought about their art.

Breakfast at Villerville, 1910, Edouard Vuillard, a nervous, almost abstract, clutter
of shapes, masses, and colors.

Theodor Seuss Geisel

Dr. Seuss and his created critters

He was not the greatest artist in the world, nor the greatest writer, but in mixing, mashing, mauling, manipulating, masticating, mutilating, and mystificating a moderate mastery of both, he was able to charm the socks off children, parents, and teachers alike for the better part of two generations. His name was Theodor Seuss Geisel. And since his father always wanted him to become a doctor, he wrote under the name, Dr. Seuss, preferring to save his "real" name for more serious literary efforts. He needn't have bothered. There never was a more serious literary goal than teaching young people to love to read. And even today, some 21 years after his death, he's still the best-selling author of children's books in the world.

The first Dr. Seuss, 1936, now available on iPad

The good doctor of juvenile letters was born in 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of the curator of the Forest Park Zoo. There's no record that the zoo ever housed Grinches, Yertles, or cats wearing hats, but there's little doubt young Theodor was intimately familiar with their zoological inspirations. Giesel graduated from Dartmouth in 1925 and immediately set sail for Oxford hoping to satisfy the dreams of his father in acquiring a doctorate in literature. Instead he met and married a Miss Helen Palmer before returning to the U.S. to work as a cartoonist and writer for Judge magazine (kind of a 1930s version of Mad). His work also found it's way into more upscale versions of Life, Vanity Fair, and Liberty.

The first Seuss bestseller, 1954

In 1936, while on the boat to Europe for a vacation, Geisel became fascinated by the rhythm of the ship's engines.  He wrote his first book, And to Think That I saw It on Mulberry Street (above). The book was published in 1937, having gone through rejection by no less than 43 publishers (other sources set the count at 29) before a friend put up the money to see it printed. It didn't make any bestseller lists but enjoyed moderate success. The war years saw Geisel working in Hollywood for Frank Capra's Signal Corps Unit where he won a Legion of Merit and two Oscars for such blockbusters as Hitler Lives and Design for Death, both documentaries for the military. His cartoon, Gerald McBoing-Boing also won him an Oscar.

Fifty words for breakfast

Dr. Seuss' first big success in publishing came in 1954 when he became aware of just how boring most children's books of the day really were. Using a list of 223 Dolch Reading List words, he penned the words and illustrations for his immortal Cat in the Hat. It was an instant success. In 1960, in response to a bet from humorist, Bennett Cerf, that he couldn't write a book using only fifty words, Seuss cooked up a batch of Green Eggs and Ham. Cerf welshed on the bet. No matter, Dr. Seuss didn't need the money. A Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and a total of forty-four children's books to his credit pretty well cemented him a place in the literary hall of fame. Fortunately for all the parents and others who have had to read them aloud, the books of Theodor Seuss Geisel are loaded with grown-up wit and satire set to a catchy, if somewhat quirky, rhythm that fascinates at least through the twentieth reading. I know.  I've used them dozens of times in the elementary classroom, reading aloud while my meditating munchkin moppets mull their own manifestations of Seuss' sagacious sonnets.

Domenico Veneziano



The St. Lucy Altarpiece, 1445, Domenico Veneziano

The Martyrdom of St. Lucy, 1445,

Domenico Veneziano

As an artist, do you ever pause to reflect as to how your work will be seen five hundred years from now? Moreover, maybe the real question is if it will be seen five hundred years from now. Things happen. Wars, floods, fires, theft, political insurrection--art, being the fragile luxury it is, often suffers. Given the history of human development, it's a miracle we even have any art more than a hundred or two hundred years old. But even during wars, famine, pestilence, and tribulations of other sorts, heroic men and women risk their lives to steal away man's greatest art treasures, hiding them until better times return. We saw this in our century during the Second World War in Europe; but it happened again and again before that. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't come out of hiding. Those responsible for "saving" it die, get killed, or perhaps just plain forget where they hid the stuff.

St. John in the Desert, 1450, Domenico Veneziano

One of the greatest Florentine painters of the early Renaissance was Domenico Veneziano. Though he undoubtedly painted dozens, maybe hundreds of works during his lifetime from 1400 to 1461, only three major works survive and one of them has been split and split again into three or four separate units, spread between Washington, Berlin, Florence, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. That would be the Santa Lucia del Magnoli Altarpiece (top), the central panel of which is now in the Uffizi.  Besides the center panel, there originally were possibly as many as four predellas (side panels), one of which has been lost. The other three are The Martyrdom of St. Lucy (above, right), St. John in the Desert (above, left), and The Adoration of the Magi (below, right)." There is some question as to whether the latter of these, in the Staatlich Museen in Berlin, along with his The Martyrdom of St. Lucy is, in fact, a predella or a separate work. There are others, but they are of doubtful attribution.

Adoration of the Magi, 1440-43, Domenico Veneziano

Veneziano was originally named Domenico, de Bartolomeo di Venezia (no wonder he shortened it).  Born and raised in Florence, where he spent his entire life, indications are  he studied under the great Florentine painter, Masaccio. However there is not in any way the "heaviness" of Masaccio's style in Veneziano's work. In fact his painting is most noted for the lightness, its carefully organized, spacious perspective, and careful attention to the human figure. In a word, there is a "naturalness" about his painting in marked contrast to that which went before and as a strong influence upon that which came after. Leonardo's work bears traces of it. His perspective is letter perfect, though still on the one-point variety, typical of his day. And his backgrounds, carefully rendered landscapes, spawned later attention to this area of painting among Florentine artists.

Carnescchi Tabernaclel,
1435, Domenico Veneziano

Also surviving the ravages of time, is a fresco, The Carnesecchi Tabernacle (left), painted around 1435 (now in London's National Gallery) in which Masaccio's influence can be detected. And that's about it, folks. A lifetime of painting distilled into a few surviving, masterful works (one of which is in rather poor condition). And while you're pausing to reflect upon your work and the odds of it rendering you some semblance of immortality, keep in mind that Veneziano was one of the greatest painters of his time, yet, we barely know him.

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Said to be a self-portrait,
figure from Adoration of the Magi,
circa 1488, Domenico Ghirlandaio

To be successful as a professional, an artist must please those with the wealth to afford his services. This fact is as true today as it was five hundred years ago. The Renaissance painter, Raphaello Sanzio once likened this, quite favorably, to being a harlot. Today, as in Raphael's time, talent and hard work are important, but knowing the right people, and knowing how to curry their favor, is just as important if the artist likes to eat, even more so if he cares to live well. Though not from Florence, Raphael studied there for a time as a teenager and one of his best friends was another artist a little younger than he, named Ridolfo. Like Raphael, Ridolfo was quite good at painting portraits, which wasn't surprising considering who his father was. Ridolfo's father ran one of the most successful art workshops in all Florence. His name was Ghirlandaio (pronounced GER-land-EYE-o). Actually that wasn't his real name at all but something of a corporate identity his family and workshop had taken on to advertise the fact that, as goldsmiths, they'd invented and made popular gold garlands for women and girls of high fashion to wear in their hair. Ghirlande is Italian for garland, Ghirlandaio simply meant "maker of garlands." His real name was Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi. 

Though no gold hair garlands
survive from the period,
this book of hours has been
attributed to Ghirlandaio's
goldlsmithing workshop
dating from 1485

Domenico liked to design things made of gold, but even as an apprentice, cared little for making them.  He preferred to paint.  His early work bears the influence of the Italians, Masaccio and Fra Filippo Lippi, along with the Northern influence of Hugo van der Goes. It was a unique mixture. Along with his two younger brothers and later his son, the Ghirlandaio shop competed with that of the other major artist of the Florentine School at the time, Sandro Botticelli, for the important private and church commissions of the day--portraits, altarpieces, gold and silver chalices used to serve mass, and most importantly, the massive frescos needed to decorate all the new churches being built and remodeled under the economic prosperity of the ruling Medici and their wealthy banking partners.  Ghirlandaio knew how to please these wealthy families. He was a portrait painter, but more than that, he often used them and their offspring as models, painting their likenesses into important religious works. Add to this the use of their luxurious palazzos as settings and the modern dress of the day, one might think John the Baptist or the Virgin Mary were born and raised in Florence.

Birth of St Mary, 1586-90. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Santa Maria Novello, Florence, Italy

That's exactly the impression one comes away with in viewing Ghirlandaio's Birth of the Virgin, a fresco for Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The fresco, painted around 1486, framed between two highly decorated, square pilasters (with a third, identical one painted in between; becoming part of the scene itself), depicts the interior of the Tornabuoni home (wealthy friends of the Medici). A staircase is displayed on the left, while St. Anne, the mother of Mary, reclines somewhat stiffly on an elevated bed.  Five female members of the Tornabuoni family stand by bearing congratulatory wishes, observing the newborn baby (Mary) about to receive a bath. Ghirlandaio was as much a master of the rather complex one-point perspective as he was the standing figures, their portrait faces, and their fashionable attire. A wide, tromp l'oeil, sculptured frieze of putti near the ceiling of the room is especially eye-catching. But perhaps the most beautiful and exciting rendering in the whole painting is that of a lowly maid on the far right, pouring water into a bath basin. Like the illusionary sculpture of the frieze it does not appear to have been painted by Ghirlandaio or any of his brothers. The flowing, dynamic movement of the young girl's dress and the fluid grace of her face and pose suggest it was done by a talented young apprentice studying fresco in the Ghirlandaio workshop at the time. His name was Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Birth of St. Mary (detail) said to be by
the hand of Michelangelo