Out and Back

Face time with an old friend

During my years of studying art history in college, one of the most memorable courses I took was a course on women artists.  Anyone with any familiarity with the history of art knows that for a long time women artists were regularly omitted from the standard art history texts, so even in the mid-90s it was a pretty novel thing to have a class completely devoted to them.

One of the great female painters I "met" during that semester was a tremendously gifted artist named Romaine Goddard Brooks.  Her biography fascinated me right away -- she had survived a horrible childhood (an abusive mother and a mentally ill brother were just part of the package) but went on to study painting and music in Europe and make a name for herself as an artist.  Most of her paintings are portraits of people she knew, and she used a color palette similar to Whistler's.  I remember being awestruck by her self-portrait the first time my professor showed it to us in class; it was so different to me than anything I'd seen up until that point.  She painted herself against a gray sky and desolate buildings, dressed in mostly black with her eyes barely visible beneath a top hat.  Though the setting and colors are bleak, she looks strong. Resolute, even. I fell in love with her then and there.

I devoured everything I could find about her and spent hours searching for images of her work.  I wrote papers on her and am pretty convinced I read just about every word that had written about her.  It got to a point that one of my art history professors would ask me, "Have you found out anything more about her?" whenever we would meet.  (We both knew darn well who "she" was.  He even put up her self portrait during my comps -- a requirement for graduation -- and said, "Now, this one might be a tough one for you..." with a gleam in his eye.)

As much time as I spent learning about Romaine, I never got a chance to see any of her work in person. When I was in Paris about ten years ago, I called one of the lesser museums that supposedly had one of her portraits in its collection, but my wretched French wasn't enough to get me confirmation as to whether or not it was currently on view.  Her self portrait, I knew, was part of the collection at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, but I never seemed to be in DC at a time when the museum was open.

Until today.

I'm in DC this week for work, and things wrapped up early enough with my client today that I was able to sneak over the museum for an hour or so.  I searched high and low for Romaine's self portrait, and finally found it on an upper floor in the "visible storage" section.  (Visible storage is a popular exhibition technique with many museums these days since it allows them to display more of their collection but at the same time protect it from too much wear and tear.)

I wept when I saw it.  Seeing it in person was so much more powerful than all the times I've seen it in books, on slides, or on the internet.  For one thing, I could get close enough to it to look into her eyes.  They're definitely hiding in the shadow of her hat, but they're there, and today I feel like I truly met her gaze. The starkness of her color palette was made even more apparent for me, also.

There was a little bench in the aisle where her painting hung, so I sat with her for a while and let her look back at me from the canvas.  I had to leave sooner than I would have liked, but as I left I whispered, "Good to see you."

Here's a link to Romaine Goddard Brooks' self portrait on the Smithsonian's web site.  It goes without saying that the web version doesn't do the real one justice.

The beauty of isolation

I found a very nice slide show essay about Edward Hopper this morning on Slate.  It's worth checking out.  Hopper has always been one of my favorite artists.  When I was working on my undergraduate degree in Art History, I found myself drowning in all kinds of aesthetic, artistic, and philosophical sensibilities.  There were plenty of artists and artistic movements that I had to study but that didn't move me in the slightest.  (I've mentioned before that I found Jackson Pollock irritating... he's just one example.)  As a result, the artists whose work I did love provided a welcome respite from the stuff that didn't rock my world.  Hopper was one such artist.

In 2002, my husband and I went to Chicago for a long weekend, and our itinerary included a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.  I was eager to see one of the most famous pieces in their collection, Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, but I had completely forgotten that what is arguably the most well-known Hopper painting was also a part of the permanent collection.  When I stumbled into the room where Nighthawks hung, I was struck dumb.  This painting never fails to take my breath away.  All kinds of stories fill my head when I look at it.

Despite my love of Nighthawks, my favorite Hopper painting is probably this one.  One of my first real jobs was working as an usher in a movie theatre, and although working in a theatre was probably a lot different when Hopper made this painting, I've always related to it because of my own experience.  I can remember popping into one theatre or another at the multiplex where I worked, ostensibly to tell people to take their feet off the seats, but more so I could just spend a few minutes alone with my thoughts.  I got good at disappearing when there was some particularly odious task to be done, such as scraping gum up off the carpets or schlepping candy down from upstairs in order to restock the snack bar display cases.  I doubt the usherette in Hopper's painting ever had to clean up chewing gum or replenish the toilet paper in the bathroom, but she definitely looks like she has a lot on her mind.

My favorite Val Kilmer story

I know I've mentioned that I love actor Val Kilmer.  I just watched Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and I laughed so hard I had an asthma attack.  I fell in love with his Batman, I think his Doc Holliday rocked, and I was moved by his performance in At First Sight.  The guy is a genius (and the fact that he's easy on the eyes doesn't hurt either!)

Val's been on my mind since my viewing of KKBB this weekend, so I thought I would share my favorite Val Kilmer movie-viewing story.  First, a preface:

I majored in art history in college.  I wrote my thesis on Leonardo da Vinci and The Last Supper (this was before Dan Brown's novel came out and all the hoopla started, incidentally.)  I studied abroad in Milan and to say that I steeped myself in Italian Renaissance art would be an understatement.

In addition to my obsession with the Italians, I found time to study and fall deeply in love with 20th Century American art.  A Mark Rothko painting can reduce me to tears, I think Andy Warhol was a genius, and I could spend hours looking at Hopper's The Nighthawks, for instance.  But there was one movement, and in particular one painter, whose appeal I could never fully understand: Jackson Pollock and the abstract expressionists.

Abstract expressionism -- particularly Jackson Pollock's work -- never appealed to me.  I found it to be sloppy, indulgent, and tacky.  Could I appreciate its importance to art history? Yes.  (It did, after all make the USA the center of the art world for a time, which was a big deal.)  Did I want that crap hanging in my house? No way.  (There are exceptions -- the astute among you will note that Mark Rothko, who is a favorite of mine, was also considered a part of this group.  But when my advisor put up a slide of Pollock's One during my comprehensive exam, I said, "Why are you showing me this crap?")

So, when the movie Pollock came out in late 2000, of course my husband asked me, the art historian, if I wanted to see it.  My response was, "Eh, let's wait for the video," which isn't surprising considering how I feel about Jackson Pollock's work and the movement he was a part of.

So what in Sam Hill does this have to do with Val Kilmer, you ask?

Well, not long after thumbing my nose at the movie (at least until it came to Blockbuster) I was reading an article about it which mentioned that Willem de Kooning, another abstract expressionist (whose work I do find marginally more interesting than Pollock's) was being played in the film by..... my man Val.

Finding that out completely changed my mind about seeing the movie, so we went to the nearby multiplex to check it out.  Val's role could generously be called a cameo, but he was just brilliant.  It was worth the price of admission just to watch him be de Kooning for a few minutes.

In addition, seeing Pollock actually gave me a greater appreciation for Jackson Pollock, his life, and his work.  So, in the end, Val Kilmer did what no art history professor of mine could.  And for that, I salute him!

I'm a Lichtenstein!

I always wanted to be pop art.  (Click to enlarge in order to get the full effect.)

Every so often, the art historian in me comes out to play.  My three favorite artistic periods/movements are the Italian Renaissance, Futurism, and Pop.  (That is one heck of an art cocktail, to be sure.)  I wrote my thesis on Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper, and Boccioni's States of Mind reduce me to tears, but my lifelong dream is to own an Andy Warhol Brillo Box, a Jeff Koons sculpture, a Wesselman nude, and, of course, a Lichtenstein.  Since I'm not a wealthy woman, I have to make my own collection, hence the cross-eyed self portrait that I doctored in Photoshop.  Those are called Ben Day dots, by the way.

I'm currently taking suggestions for what my speech or thought bubble should say.

An art-related rant

Today I found myself asking a lot of questions about what constitutes art.  (I was a judge at a small arts and crafts show, and found myself disagreeing most vehemently with the opinion of my co-judge.)

I tend to ask more questions about the nature of art than the average person, because I have a degree in art history and some studio art training.  (I will be the first to admit, however, that I am MUCH better at looking at, reading about, and discussing art than I am at actually making it.)  I will also admit that today I got a little snobby... some of the pieces in the show could have been found in any hotel room in America.  They were derivatives.... well-crafted derivatives, but derivatives nonetheless.  Not surprisingly, they were the pieces that people were the most attracted to.

Can someone please tell me what happened to abstract art?  Perhaps I've been buried in the art history books for too long, but when did people become so.... (I really don't want to say it) ignorant about art?  I know that over time we have consistently rejected abstract art in favor of figural art.  That's been the trend and I don't think it will change anytime soon.  But let us also remember that impressionism was a radical departure from the norm in its day, too, and now it's so over-exposed that you can't go anywhere without finding a Monet or a Renoir.

Those who go straight to the "easy-to-look-at" art don't know what they're missing.  Personally, I could spend hours with the works of Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Mark DiSuvero, to name a few.  On the other hand, I confess that I have yet to find anything by Jackson Pollock that I can honestly say I LIKE.  But I still enjoy looking at his work and appreciating where he fits in the great canon of art history.  I even went to a theatre to watch the movie about his life.  (Actually, I went to see "Pollock" so I could watch Val Kilmer play Willem DeKooning for ten seconds, but that's beside the point.)  And I like to wander into galleries and check out what living artists are creating and selling.  Invariably, I gravitate to the abstract stuff.

I have always agreed with the philosophy that art is a reflection of its age, that the history of art is, in fact, the history of humanity.  Sometimes a work of art is the only piece of information we have about a particular time period or society, and every work of art we lay eyes on can tell us something useful about a) the person who made it, and b) the society or time period it reflects.  So what does that say about us as a people when we eschew abstract art for stuff that is, effectively, a cheap knockoff of the past?  As far as I'm concerned, it says we've all got a BAD case of denial about who we are.  It's like we're afraid to look in the mirror because we might not like what we see.

Forget buying the world a Coke.... I'd like to buy the world a MoMA membership.