A Unique Friendship

Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo of his excitement about “the modern portrait,” a picture that renders character not by the imitation of the sitter’s appearance but through the independent, vivid life of color. Van Gogh’s subject in this painting, Joseph Roulin, worked for a post office in the French town of Arles. He was not a letter carrier but rather held a higher position as an official sorting mail at the train station. Van Gogh and Roulin lived on the same street in Arles and develop a strong bond. Van Gogh eventually painted a total of 25 portraits of Joseph Roulin and his family.

Joseph Roulin, 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

While working on the above portrait of Roulin, van Gogh wrote to his brother, “I am now at work with another model, a postman in blue uniform, trimmed with gold, a big bearded face, very like Socrates.” Indeed, the modest postman has all the authority of an admiral.

The picture shown below, which van Gogh boasted of having completed quickly in a single session, was painted after Roulin got a better-paying job and left Arles. Some scholars think that this portrait was not painted from life but rather from memory or from previous portraits.

Joseph Roulin, 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh Credit: Kroller-Muller Museum

Vincent recognized Roulin’s qualities as an honest father to his family, a charitable and a good man. Indeed he proved to be a close friend of Van Gogh. Roulin wrote letters to Vincent’s brother Theo keeping him updated on his brother’s condition. He also kept writing to Vincent after he was admitted to the institution in Saint-Rémy.

Thanks to the old postman and his family – to their kindness toward this eccentric and troubled painter – Van Gogh was able to produce some of his best loved works.

This black and white photograph of Joseph Roulin was taken a few months before his death in 1903. It is an extraordinary confirmation of the painter’s impression.

You can get a better impression of this unique friendship by reading one of Joseph Roulin’s letters to Vincent like this one from August 19, 1889 from the Van Gogh Museum:

http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let796/letter.html

 

 

 

 

 

Nicolas Party: A Vivid and Simplified Style

Swiss artist Nicolas Party

Nicolas Party got his start as a graffiti artist in the 1990s. He then earned his BFA from the Lausanne School of Art and his MFA from the Glasgow School of Art. Primarily known for his color –saturated paintings and murals, he also makes painted sculpture, pastels, installations, print and drawings.

Party’s work combines historical and contemporary techniques. Inspired by the graphic landscape of David Hockney, the bright color planes of the Fauves, and the flat figures found in medieval Christian paintings, Party selects and re-imagines familiar pastoral scenes, arrangements of fruit, or coffee pots and reuses them in his work in a unique way.

Among his recent solo exhibitions in Europe was “Boys and Pastel,” an amusement park–like installation inside Inverlieth House in the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh. Spanning every inch of the seven gallery spaces, Party’s work transformed the venue with gorgeous colors and upbeat humor.

Installation Boys and Pastel at Inverleith House. All work (c) Nicolas Party

In his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., Swiss artist Nicolas Party and his two assistants worked to transform the Dallas Museum of Art’s Concourse into an enchantingly surreal landscape.

Photos of Nicholas Party in action. Images taken on Tuesday, August 9, 2016.

Two Men in Hats at the Dallas Museum of Art (c) Nicolas Party

Rather than treat the space like a museum, the artist’s mural builds on the fact that it surrounds a walkway. “The people here are moving, they don’t stop. That was my main inspiration for the space. Instead of creating an exhibition space, I wanted to create a path and use the real function of the space,” Party says of the fluidity of the corridor.  Nicolas Party: Pathway will be on view through February 5, 2017.

Party captures so much energy in his still life’s and portraits.

Landscape 2014 (c) Nicolas Party

Nicolas Party portrait purchased by Gregor Staiger Gallery in Basel Switzerland

Tree Trunks 2015 (c) Nicolas Party

Party lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. I look forward to seeing more of his work.

 

 

 

Contemporary Western Art

On a recent visit to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming I found myself drawn to their contemporary art selection. Here are four of my favorites:

Tonto’s Dream, 2013 by David Bradley. Credit: Whitney Western Art Museum/Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Artist David Bradley is a Minnesota Chippewa Indian whose work often comments on the commercialization of Native cultures in a humorous way. Here, he portrays Tonto, the Indian sidekick of the Lone Ranger, a popular TV character from the 1950s. Western clichés and Indian stereotypes fill the canvas: Buffalo Gals, ghost riders, and Tonto himself. Traditional Native American culture survives in a few scattered beads, pottery shards, and petroglyphs, while the widespread symbol of today’s American Indian the casino, is prominently represented by signs and a deck of cards.

The painting is based on a famous 1897 work by the influential French artist Henri Rousseau called “The Sleeping Gypsy” (shown below).  For Bradley, the lion is transformed into this mountain lion. In the foreground, that sleeping gypsy is now a sleeping Tonto. If you look on the left-hand side, you’ll see the Lone Ranger peeking out from a rock.

The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897 by Henri Rousseau. Credit: Museum of Modern Art

By referencing iconic works of European art like “The Sleeping Gypsy,” Bradley asserts his right to tap into artistic traditions beyond his roots and adopts it for his own.

The Menagerie, 2007-2011 by Michael Scott Credit: Whitney Western Art Museum/Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Michael Scott is a contemporary artist who currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Scott finds inspiration for his subjects and style in history, art history, and the western landscape and people near his home. In “The Menagerie” Scott imagines Buffalo Bill as the caretaker for an exotic bird menagerie. Symbolism for each bird references the personality of Buffalo Bill, who stands as the “ring leader” of the birds in the painting. Note the hummingbird at Buffalo Bill’s left ear, which was a symbol used by 17^th century European artists to signify the fleeting nature of life. The peacock is associated with vanity and therefore reflects one quality of Buffalo Bill. The composition and subject reference a major American 18th century painting by Charles Wilson Peale that depicted a self-portrait of the artist in his museum (shown below).

The Artist in His Museum 1822 by Charles Wilson Peale
Credit: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

A Contemporary Sioux Indian, 1978 by James Bama Credit: Whitney Western Art Museum/Buffalo Bill Center of the West

James Bama left a successful illustration career and his New York home for the solitude of the Absaroka Mountains of Wyoming and life as a Realist painter. Often overlooked in the scope of American art, Bama’s paintings hold their own when compared to other outstanding American Realists.

Bama has portrayed a contemporary Indian who maintains a relationship with the past but has to find his place in the white man’s world. The message on the wall behind the subject echoes the artist’s theme of the nonacceptance of Indians in mainstream American society.

The Wild Rose by Buckeye Blake Credit: Buffalo Bill Center for Western History

Buckeye Blake’s painting, The Wild Rose, ia based on world-champion bronc rider Fannie Sperry Steele and her trick horse Sultan. Steele is a rodeo legend from Montana who was the first woman inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame. “I love the West as well as its history,” Blake says. “It’s a delicate balance in a hard land, an epic nuance in an incredible orchestration of light, shadow, color, and space—to begin to capture such a symphony is both sacred and humbling.”

Fannie at the Winnipeg Stampede, 1913

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua Hammer’s Story of The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

Abdel-Kader-Haidara Photo by Getty Images

Abdel Kader Haidara was a son of a scholar who grew up in an intellectual environment in Timbuktu. He was not a wealthy person. After his father’s death in the early 1980s he inherited the family’s centuries-old manuscript collection.

In the 1980s Abdel Kader Haidara, at the request of the Ahmed Baba Institute, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. He was traveling on camels across the Sahara and on riverboats, going to small villages, to find and purchased these manuscripts. They represented a whole strain of Islam that was moderate; that celebrated culture, diversity, secular ideas, poetry, love, and human beauty.

A detailed view on the illumination of a Koran bought in Fes in 1223.  (Photo by Xavier ROSSI/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.)

12th century Koran from Abdel Kader Haidara’s private collection Getty Images

Gold illuminated Koran Photo by Getty Images

Detail of an ancient Arab manuscript from Timbuktu ca. 1223 owned by the Library of the Ahmed Baba Institute of Islamic advanced studies and research.

Stephanie Diakité (referred to as Emily Brady in The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer) was an unlikely ally for Timbuktu’s manuscripts. She grew up in Seattle, a deeply intelligent and highly educated woman with short blond hair. On a trip to Timbuktu 20 years ago, she met Haidara and his documents and found a calling: The texts, she says, “do something for me nothing else ever has.” Diakité apprenticed with master bookbinders and has spent her life shuttling back and forth between the United States and Africa, working on conservation projects. When Haidara realized he had to spirit the documents out of Timbuktu, Diakité was the first person he contacted. The two friends spent days in Bamako cafés, sipping tea and devising plans.

Stephanie Diakite, Abdel Kadel Haidara and an elder from one of Mali ‘s manuscript holding families Photo attributed to Stephanie Diakite

While the Islamists set about imposing their rules in Timbuktu, Haidara and the other librarians undertook one of the greatest cultural evacuations in history: The manuscript collections were secretly packed into metal trunks, loaded onto mule carts, and hidden in private houses and then in the Malian capital, Bamako. In January 2013, 15 jihadis made a bonfire of 4,000 manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Institute. But by that time many of the jewels of the collection were already in safekeeping.

Almost all of the manuscripts survived the Islamist occupation. About 377,000 of them have been collected under one roof in Bamako, Mali’s capital, where a Minnesota-based foundation run by a Benedictine monk and ancient manuscript expert, Columba Stewart is digitizing them and helping to restore those that are disintegrating. He is very much involved in this, traveling to Bamako on a regular basis.

As for Abdel Kader Haidara, he is hoping that he’ll be able to return these manuscripts to Timbuktu some day, but he’s waiting. Timbuktu is now a ghost town — tourists aren’t going there, flights aren’t going there. It’s very sad. The glory days of Timbuktu may never be recaptured, given the strength of the Islamists — the terrorists in that area, in that part of the world.

 

 

Portrait of an Artist

Self-portrait, 1944 by Helen Lundeberg Photo: Laguna Art Museum

Helen Lundeberg was born in Chicago in 1908. At the age of four her family moved to Pasadena, California.  She was a gifted child and as a young adult was inclined to become a writer.  After graduating Pasadena High School in 1925, a family friend sponsored Lundeberg’s attendance at the Stickney Memorial School of Art. There, she was a pupil of Lorser Feitelson, a New York artist recently returned from Paris. Eventually, Feitelson and Lundeberg married and remained lifelong artistic collaborators. Together they founded a new style of art called New Classicism or Post Surrealism. They described this art as a fusion of the dreamlike style of Surrealism with the formal structure of Renaissance paintings.

From 1936 to 1942, Lundeberg was employed by the Works Progress Administrations’s Federal Art Project for which she produced lithographs, easel paintings, and murals in the Los Angeles area.

WPA Mural: Pioneers of the American West .1908 by Helen Lundeberg. Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Irises, 1936 by Helen Lundeberg

Artist Flowers and Hemispheres, 1934

Her work often contained paintings within paintings as in one of her best known paintings shown below.

Double Portrait of Artist in Time, 1935 by Helen Lundeberg. Credit:
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Selma (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) 1957

Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson, 1974 Photo by Fidel Danieli in the Archives American Art

In the 1960s and 1970s, Lundeberg continued her journey through abstraction, exploring imagery associated with landscapes, interiors, still lifes, planetary forms and intuitive compositions she called enigmas. She switched to liquid acrylic paint that allowed her to depict brighter and fresher colors. In the 1980s, Lundeberg created her final body of work – a confident series of paintings that deal with landscapes and architectural elements.

Forms in Space, 1971 by Helen Lundeberg

Blue Planet, acrylic on canvas by Helen Lundeberg

Repeatedly described as formal and lyrical, Lundeberg’s paintings rely on precise cacompositions that utilize various restricted palettes. This creates images that posses a certain moodiness or emotional content unique to her work.

Untitled, by Helen Lundeberg

Untitled (March), 1969 by Helen Lundeberg. Credit: Louis Stern Fine Art

Interior with painting, 1982 by Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg in her studio ,1982 by Harry Carmea

Throughout her 60-year career, Lundeberg imbued her work with a personal vision, exposing the imaginative world of her mind.  Created with a palette of muted hues, Lundeberg paintings are best known for radiating a sense of calm and order.  She died from complications with pneumonia at the age of 91.

 

 

 

Islamic Father of Evolution

Al-Jahiz (776-868) was a philosopher, poet, zoologist and writer, one of the few Muslim scientists.  Born in Bazra, Iraq, he was a celebrated writer who loved amusing anecdotes .  He was also a keen observer of the social and natural worlds. Al-Jahiz wrote over 200 works, the most famous of which was his 7 volume Book of Animals – Kitab al-Hayawan, which (even incomplete) runs to seven volumes in the printed edition.

(Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Despite the title, the Book of Animals is by no means conventional zoology, or even a conventional bestiary. It is an enormous collection of lore about animals – including insects – culled from the Koran, the Traditions, pre-Islamic poetry, proverbs, storytellers, sailors, personal observation and Aristotle’s Generation of Animals.

 The “literary” quality of the Book of Animals, however, should not obscure the fact that it contains scientific information of great value. Anticipating a number of concepts which were not to be fully developed until the time of Darwin and his successors 1,000 years later, al-Jahiz toys with evolutionary theory, discusses animal mimicry – noting that certain parasites adapt to the color of their host – and writes at length on the influences of climate and diet on men, plants and animals of different geographical regions. He even gets into animal communication, psychology and the degree of intelligence of insect and animal species. He gives a detailed account of the social organization of ants, including, from his own observation, a description of how they store grain in their nests in such a way that it does not spoil during the rainy season. He knows that some insects are responsive to light – and uses this information to suggest a clever way of ridding a room of mosquitoes and flies.

Few manuscripts of the Book of Animals survive. Even more important than the text, however, are the superb miniatures, which illuminate it. Illustrated Arabic manuscripts of any sort are extremely rare. One surviving copy of the Book of Animals held in the Ambrosiana Library in Milan has 30 miniatures.

The Crocodile from The Book of Animals by Al-Jahiz Credit: © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy/Bridgeman Images

Queen Taking the Fruit from a Plate Offered by two Handmaidens from The Book of Animals by Al-Zahiz Credit: © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy/Bridgeman Images

For his speculation environmental determinism, food chains and the struggle for existence, Al Jahiz is considered the father of modern evolutionary theory.

Looking Skyward for Optimism

“As If It Were Already Here” sculpture for Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway by Janet Echelman

Making sculpture to visually knit together the fabric of the city Janet Echelman’s art is made by hand-splicing rope and knotting polyester twine into an interconnected mesh with more than a half-million nodes. Monumental in scale and strength, yet delicate as lace, her sculpture responds to ever-changing wind and weather. The sculpture is completely soft and constructed from highly technical fibers that are 15 times stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and resilient. By day the artwork blends with the sky. At night colored lighting transforms the work into a floating, luminous beacon.

Night shot of “As If It Were Already Here” sculpture by Janet Echelman

The artwork incorporates dynamic light elements which reflect the changing effects of wind. Sensors around the installation register fiber movement and tension and direct the color of the lights projected onto the sculpture’s surface.

Asked to express the spirit of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s work and mission in a sculpture, and to create a heart for their new global campus in downtown Seattle, Janet Echelman created “Impatient Optimist.”

“Impatient Optimist” Seattle, 2015 by Janet Echelman

Night shot of “Impatient Optimist”, Seattle 2015. Sculpture by Janet Echelman

“1.26” is a travelling sculpture about the interconnectedness of our world. It has been installed in 5 cities and 4 continents. Originally commissioned in 2010 for Denver, CO it then traveled to Sydney Australia in 2011, then in Amsterdam in 2013 and on to Singapore in 2014. Shown below in Montreal.

“1.26” sculpture by Janet Echelman

It takes a crew of construction workers and structural engineers plus the cooperation of host city to install one of Echelman’s creations.   Here’s a time-lapse video of the Boston installation:”

Boston installation rising above the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

 

A Thousand Year Old Secret

A statue of a sitting Buddha that made its way from a temple in China to a market in the Netherlands revealed an extraordinary secret — a 1,000-year-old mummified monk inside.

Researchers at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands made a shocking discovery when they did a comprehensive 3-D CT scan on an ancient Chinese statue about four-foot tall and found a mummy inside. Sitting in the lotus position on a bundle of cloth, the mummy fits within the statue perfectly.

“On the outside, it looks like a large statue of Buddha,” the museum said in a release. “Scan research has shown that on the inside, it is the mummy of a Buddhist monk who lived around the year 1100.” Glowing through the statue’s golden cast, the human skeleton is believed to belong to Buddhist master Liuquan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School. The mummy was discovered when a private buyer brought it in for restoration.

The process of self-mummification is a known tradition in countries like Japan, China and Thailand, and was practiced over a thousand years ago. The elaborate and arduous process includes eating a special diet and drinking a poisonous tea so the body would be too toxic to be eaten by maggots. It was not seen as suicide and only high-ranking Buddhist masters were allowed to practice it, in order to reach Nirvana. This mummy is one of more than 20 existing mummies who died this way, but it’s the first to be found inside a statue

An archaeology curator from the Drents Museum suspects that for the first 200 year, the mummy was exposed and worshipped in a Buddist temple in China…only in the 14^th century did they do all the work of transforming it into a nice statue. The mummified body was covered with clay around 200 to 300 years after the monk’s death, followed by several layers of enamel and finally golden paint, to make the statue glow.

The statue is now housed in the National Museum of Natural History in Budapest and will move to Luxembourg in May as a part of an international tour.

Art & Medicine

A number of medical schools have adopted courses to train doctors in observational skills by studying great paintings. Physicians say the practice can help them become more observant, inform them about how society viewed medical conditions in the past, and connect them with the craft of medicine at a time when their profession is increasingly shaped by technological advances.

Modern doctors may be able to look to the paintings of Old Masters like Raphael and Rembrandt for practice in assessing their patients’ general health and finding clues about their ailments.

“The School of Athens” by Raphael Credit: Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican

Note the detail shown below of Heraclitus from “The School of Athens” who represent Michelangelo, according to evidence of sketches by Michelangelo’s friend Vasari, and also in poetic depictions of his health problems by Michelangelo himself. The unusual shape of his knee might be a representation of gout, an acute form of arthritis.

Detail of Heraclitus from “The School of Athens” by Raphael

St. Peter Healing the Sick with his Shadow by Masaccio Credit: Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy

In Masaccio’s painting one of the figures represented in the bottom left corner looks like a polio victim:

Detail from St. Peter “Healing the Sick with his Shadow” by Masaccio

“The Inheritance” by Edvard Munch Credit: Munch Museum, Oslo

“The Inheritance” is based on an experience Edvard Munch had at a hospital in Paris.   In a waiting room he observed a tear-stained mother with a dying child on her lap.   The child was infected with syphilis, a fatal venereal disease that can be passed from parent to child. The little child’s body is depicted with an abnormally large head, thin limbs, and a red rash on its chest.   The painting provoked strong reaction in Munch’s day boldly touching on many taboos such as sex, venereal diseases and even prostitution.

“A Family Group” by Thomas Jones Barker

Some observers say the girl in the painting by Thomas Jones Barker which hangs in the Taj Hotel in Boston might have had Down Syndrome…see detail below:

Detail of “A Family Group” by Thomas Jones Barker

“Portrait of a Young Man” by Bronzino Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY

Doctors seem fascinated by the Italian Renaissance painter Bronzino’s “Portrait of A Young Man” and other portraits that show subjects with one eye that is shifted dramatically to one side. A number of doctors that saw these portraits diagnosed the sitters with strabismus, or “wandering eye.”

Will studying art make a better doctor? At least one class at Harvard’s Medical School meets at the Museum of Fine Arts. Weill Medical College of Cornell University has offered a noncredit art course in collaboration with the Frick Collection in New York City for eight years, while Yale Medical School runs an art observation course for medical students that is now a required class.

Sometimes, doctors look at symptoms and review tests but forget they are looking at human beings, which can lead them to miss something important in the diagnosis. Applying the skills learned in art history reinforces the fact that, as a doctor, you have to look at a person as a whole – not just the disease.

Stunning Greek Mosaics Uncovered

A team of archeologists from Ankara University recently unearthed three ancient Greek mosaics in the Turkish city of Zeugma near the border of Syria. The excavation project began in 2007 when the area was flooded due to the construction of a dam on the Euphrates River. Fearing that the ancient treasures of Zeugma would be lost forever, the archaeologist rushed to excavate, protect and conserve these remarkably intact glass mosaics that date back to the 2nd century BC.

The first mosaic depicts the nine Muses in portraits. This mosaic was originally in a large room of a house that archaeologists have named “House of Muses.” In the center of the mosaic is Muse Calliope who is surrounded by her sisters. According to ancient Greek poet Isiodos, Calliope was the greatest and finest of the nine Muses, the protector of Epic Poetry.

The second mosaic depicts Oceanos a divine personification of the sea and his sister Tethys. What is really striking about this mosaic is the wonderful and vivid colors used as well as the beauty of the heroes’ faces. Experts say that special glass mosaic pieces have been created for this mosaic alone.

Photo: Adam Jones

Mosaics were an integral part of homes installed in a room so guests could admire them while chatting and drinking. Subject matter was carefully selected according to the function of a room. For example, a bedroom might feature a mosaic portraying lovers. Common mythological figures were gods, goddesses and ancient heroes.

Zeugma was a rich and cultural city founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals and later taken over by the Romans. Due to the high volume of road traffic and its geographic position, Zeugma became a collection point for road tolls. Political and trade routes converged here and the city was the last stop in the Greco-Roman world before crossing over to the Persian Empire. Archaeologists estimate that the ancient city had a population of 80,000 citizens at its peak and approximately 2,000-3,000 houses. Twenty-five of them remain under water.

At the close of the 2014 field season the excavation team will switch gears to work on restoration and conservation. A temporary shelter has been build to protect both the ancient structures and numerous visitors from Zeugma’s harsh climate, where summer temperatures average 97 degrees F.

Photo by Matthew Brunwasser

While many of the mysteries of this ancient city will remain forever sealed under the waters of the Euphrates, archaeologists are convinced that Zeugma has only started to tell its story.

Detailed mosaic of a girl Credit: Zeugma Museum