Chiaroscuro

As a rule, I don’t much care for naturalistic still life or scenic paintings, even if the technique and the realism of it borders on flawless. This is especially true of outdoor rural scenes. Maybe it has something to do with my Midwestern upbringing in which every other bank, building lobby, and school seemingly has a print or a painting of a field, a barn, some haystacks, or a scene involving cows or horses hung in it as a subconscious way of informing you that yep, you’re in Illinois and just a mere stone’s throw away from many, many acres of soy and corn fields that are separated by fewer and fewer geometrically separated roads the farther you go outward.

With that said, there is something about Andrew Wyeth’s Wind From The Sea that I absolutely love. To be sure, I could point to its realism as the primary reason of why I love it (the curtains are painted so well you can practically feel the breeze from the window hitting you) but mostly I think that this painting’s greatness lies in how Wyeth is able to make something beautiful by relying mostly on a palette of browns, blacks, and burnt yellows. It is an Autumnal palette, and one that can feel too lifeless if not executed properly.

For the most part I think almost everyone that lives in a part of the world that experiences all four seasons enjoys Autumn (or, at the very least, enjoys the beginning weeks of it). The temperature becomes calmer, even a little bit cooler, the trees become fiery, the kids are back in school, and the weather reminds us that Thanksgiving, the first snow, and Christmas aren’t far away. As Autumn trucks along, though, we also tend to get sick of seeing all of the dead trees and, depending on where you live, the blank, cemetery-like fields. From the viewpoint of the former, Wind From The Sea could be seen as something sad: its reliance on dark colors and the dead-looking grass in the background and far from pretty interior paint of the wall and the barely visible sea and the overall overcast feel of the scene can all conspire to make you feel cold.

But then again… as dreary as it may look, the window is open; the breeze is coming through softly. This has always made me think that despite its overcast feel, maybe this is just one of those days that look ugly outside but the actual weather is somewhat pleasant. Like a late September day that is beginning to warm up after a storm has passed through and the sun has yet to shine through.

Artistically speaking, this painting has all of the elements that good construction is built upon: the lacy curtains provide the focus; the sky in between the tree line and bottom of the window make for a good horizon line; the inset wood of the window and inset arteries of the pull-down shades add a nice geometry to the composition; the sliver of sea in the background seems to mimic the slivered crack in the wall, possibly calling a subconscious attention to how slow and subtle nature makes its mark on our surroundings.

Or you could just look at this painting for exactly what it is—an attempt to realistically capture the essence of a room. (Wyeth painted this and many others, including his most famous work Christina’s World, while living at the Olsen House in Maine.)

Like most works of art, perception drives your love (or hatred or indifference) of the piece. To me, this painting has always been synonymous with Autumn, and the beginning of Autumn through Thanksgiving is my favorite time of the year. Everything from the changing trees to the seasonal Goose Island Harvest Ale to the warmth of Thanksgiving, they are all things (and many others) I look forward to when they arrive. And looking at Wind From The Sea makes me think of all of those things. Even if it looks a little overcast.

Andrew Wyeth is considered by many to be one of the best American painters of the 20th century; his influence is pretty wide (everyone from fellow artists to Mr. Rogers and Charles Schulz admired and referenced him) and rightfully so: the man was capable of bringing to life an otherwise banal and borderline ugly room.

by Andrew Wyeth
Tempera
1948

The painting that defines Edward Hopper on a mainstream and iconic level is Nighthawks. This painting should be instantly recognizable, even if the name of the artist rang no bells for you when you read the previous sentence. Nighthawks is an iconic painting on many levels; if nothing else it is a modern equivalent to Rodin’s famous sculpture in that you cannot help but to externalize your own commentary onto the piece of art. The Thinker causes the viewer to wonder what exactly the man is thinking about. Likewise, Nighthawks can cause the viewer to wonder in no particular order: what brought these people together? is the couple on a date? why is the one guy alone? why does the couple look disinterested in one another? And so on and so forth.

What most people miss about Nighthawks, however, is that Hopper chose to not show the entrance of Phillies (the name of the diner). In a way, these patrons (and employee) look to be either trapped inside of this place, or escaping from their own lives—depending on how you want to look at it. I bring up this decision by Hopper to subtract a crucial perspective element because in Rooms By The Sea his perspective element with regards to an entrance or main door is exaggerated.

In the house that exists in this painting, if you were to walk out the front door it would appear that you would fall into the sea outside.

Obviously, this perspective from within this house could just be visual slight of hand—i.e.–this house lays parallel with the beach and, thus, when looked at from within at a certain angle the beach becomes invisible and all that you see is the ocean. But still, those odds seem slight as the way that Hopper has painted this picture seems to indicate that the body of water is literally right outside the house and that there is no ladder or steps leading to it.

As for the interior of the house, from what Hopper is showing us, it appears to be kind of drab: a single picture hanging on a wall, white walls, white door, green carpeting, a dresser, a couch. Rooms By The Sea showcases two of Hopper’s greatest strengths: perspective and light. The focus of this painting, unsexy as it is, is a white wall and the sunlight coming in through a door. His sense of artistic geometry here is subtle, as you have the aforementioned focal elements set alongside a beautiful horizon line of sky and deep blue in the distance. The blues don’t account for much of the whole of this piece but the space that they occupy makes for a terrific compliment to the reds and browns of the couch and dresser and the deep green of the carpet that sit on the opposite side of the painting.

It would be understandable for some to see this painting as being emblematic of a kind of low-level depression. Plain walls, no signs of bustling life, and a front door that could possibly lead you to your demise has a certain sad quality to it. And, to be sure, Edward Hopper was a master of painting scenes and people that could project a kind of sadness about it that is subtle and beautiful and thought-provoking. But to me Rooms By The Sea is something that is both surreal (I believe that Hopper’s placement of the water was meant to be exaggerated) and hopeful—the main blank wall in the foreground being something that will eventually be colored and adorned with framed pictures and art, and become welcoming.

Rooms By The Sea is a great example of clean and simple design. While some may look at this piece and think that it is too bare and too minimal, and that the interior of this house should be more colorful and alive, I ask you to keep this in mind: if Hopper had decided to adorn these rooms with visually pleasing colors and decor, this piece would be boring. By having a bland focus couched by lively colors Hopper, in a way, is asking you fill in the blanks. Or to put it another way, he wants to know what you think of the rooms—what type of person/people would live here? are they young or are they old?… This is what great art should do, it should make you ask questions.

And while Rooms By The Sea will never be confused with Nighthawks it does show how supremely talented Edward Hopper was, both in terms of design and an ability to create environment (whenever I look at this painting I feel like I know exactly how that house and the water outside of it should smell).

by Edward Hopper
Oil on canvas
1951

Andy Warhol loved almost every single facet about celebrities—the idea of celebrity, the beauty and production of it, and the idea that a person’s face could become its own brand, idea, ideal, and anything else that could make up the construct of a Zeitgeist.

I believe it is fair to say that Andy Warhol was the first 20th century artist to discover that a picture of a celebrity could unlock hundreds or thousands of subconscious thoughts in the minds of the people who viewed it. This is not to say that Warhol took the idea of celebrity further than what it was. This is also not to say that Warhol was the first man to come up with the idea of mass producing pictures of beautiful, well-known women and make it artistic. No, what Warhol did was take images of celebrities and turn their already-ubiquitous presence and make them into a symbol—either as a symbol of truly unattainable iconic status (the piece Gold Marilyn Monroe, with its inherent shrine-like idea) or as a symbol of a kind of pop intellectual commerce (like the dual dueling Elvis’s—by taking images of images of celebrities and adding copies of them Warhol was essentially saying “You know what this is, you know that you’ve seen this very image possibly many times before and, yet, it can still make you see this person in a different light.”) And because the colors are sometimes heavy and not within the lines and the nuances of a facial expression are replaced by a single color, Warhol was even playing with the idea that a celebrity’s image is not always something that they, the celebrity, have a say in.

Andy Warhol’s most memorable celebrity lithographs are the ones of Marilyn Monroe. But for me, personally, I’ve always had a fondness for Liz, the picture of Elizabeth Taylor with the deep red background. Maybe it was because the first Warhol book I bought had it on the cover. But mostly I think it has to do with Taylor herself and her beauty and her sexuality of her youth.

The easy way to describe Elizabeth Taylor is this: she was the opposite of Marilyn Monroe. Black hair instead of blonde, girl next door instead of a dream vixen. The more complicated way to describe Elizabeth Taylor: her beauty and allure and sexuality rivaled Monroe’s, it’s just that it didn’t hit you right away. Monroe was literally a dream girl, someone who had a physical perfection about her that seemed to be conjured by the gods; her sexuality was up front and it seemed completely malleable. Taylor’s beauty was more refined and almost royal (Taylor looked like she could be a queen, whereas Monroe would be the woman that the king would have an affair with). Monroe married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, two Great Men from opposite ends of the spectrum. Taylor married very popular and powerful men too, but those marriages appeared to have more to do with proximity and blind passion rather than level-headed decision making.

Which leads me back to this piece, Liz.

Before Elizabeth Taylor got married a bunch of times and befriended Michael Jackson and was a diva behind the scenes and came out with a perfume that had a commercial in which she interrupts a poker game, she was a young, iconic, beautiful girl. She was a like a mixture of Shirley Temple and Audrey Hepburn. She had one of the most recognizable brunette hair-colored faces in the world. And like all celebrities worth their salt, the right image of them at the right time can eradicate the negatives and enhance the positives about them. Warhol was keenly aware of this, it is one of the things that drew him into the fascination with celebrity. It is probably why he once said, “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re so beautiful. Everything’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

To some people Liz is just an offset picture of Liz Taylor. To me, as someone who was not alive during the height of her popularity, this picture says more about her than any of her studio stills. You couldn’t possibly capture her beauty like this with a camera at a photo shoot—the red background, the red of her lips, and the blue eye shade: sure it all looks fake and exaggerated. But isn’t that the exact essence of how we like to think of celebrities?

I will take this kind of exaggeration when it comes to beautiful celebrities over scripted interviews and enhanced body parts and the desire to defy aging every time.

by Andy Warhol
Color offset lithograph on paper
1964

I’m not gonna lie: when it came to writing about Salvador Dalí for the first time on this site I had to fight back the urge to write about The Persistence Of Memory. (For those of you who may not recognize the title, The Persistence Of Memory is the painting that has a few melted watches gracing it.) Persistence is so synonymous with Dalí that I ultimately decided to go into a different direction because, well, what more could I offer about his most famous painting that hadn’t been written before?

So I decided to write about Raphaelesque Head Exploding instead, a painting that, much like his take on the Last Supper and the crucifixion of Jesus, is an adaptation of an original piece (in this case, a painting by Raphael of Madonna).

What makes Salvador Dalí so important not only within the world of art but within society in general is that he visually unlocked what Sigmund Freud tried to capture in words with The Interpretation Of Dreams. In mainstream culture, Freud has become (to a degree) a crazy Austrian who thought that you always want to subconsciously have sex with your mother. Of course, this is an extremely broad view of the man, but you get the picture. The term “Freudian slip” could have never come into our mainstream lexicon if we all didn’t agree that the guy was prone to some round-peg-in-square-hole type thinking. The Interpretation Of Dreams, though, has its moments of profound clarity: in particular, the idea that dreams are essentially the product of your subconscious collecting things throughout the day, only to expunge them at night in random intervals. This idea is pretty much taken as a given nowadays but in the 19th century this was extraordinarily groundbreaking. Freud (at the time) brought a clarity to something that was previously unclear (or in some cases, completely not thought of).

The same goes for Salvador Dalí. There were plenty of painters before him who painted obscured, abstract, or nonsensical things that would become the precursors to Surrealism, but Dalí brought a clarity and exactness to the method that was groundbreaking. The detail that Dalí was capable of painting on canvases is astonishing, made all the more so because his landscapes and abstractions seem so real.

Which brings me back to the painting in question. This looks like something that could appear in one of your dreams. The front and top of the face is made up of many small geometric, molecular, and watery shapes, whereas the inside back of the head is a cathedral ceiling complete with an opening at the top of the dome/head. The background is a nice color that somewhat resembles an old map. Now, reading this description only it could be easy to think of this image as being absurd. What point is an exploding head trying to make? Is there something deeper going on in the background with the presence of the cathedral wall and light? What does it all mean?

The background story behind this painting is that Dalí believed that the makeup of certain people contained otherworldly elements. He once said about this, “there are residues of substances; it is for this reason that certain beings appear to me so close to angels such as Raphael and Saint John of the Cross. Raphael’s temperature is like that almost chilly air of spring, which in turn is exactly that of the Virgin and of the rose. I need an ideal of hyper-aesthetic purity. More and more I am preoccupied by a idea of chastity. For me, it is an essential condition of the spiritual life.”

What you see in this picture may be different than the source inspiration, but you cannot deny that the attention to detail here is very dreamlike which, in turn, makes it seem familiar. And just like our own dreams, we may not always know what they intrinsically mean, yet they somehow make sense to us in some capacity more often than not (i.e.–typically, the strangest dreams you will have will be because of stress, and not because you are genuinely afraid that a fedora-wearing llama that smells like ginger is going to press a button and cause you to be hunted down by men who look like post-Wrestler Mickey Rourke).

And so this exploding head of Madonna, burnished with warm colors and accented with a bright orange-yellow slant of light that brings the nose and mouth into focus, it may not make sense on the surface but underneath there are plenty of things to dissect and find an intangible connection with.

And I’m sure Freud would have been intrigued that Dalí chose Mary as the source image of a piece that involves explosion.

by Salvador Dalí
Oil on canvas
1951

Even now in the 21st century amongst all of the technological advances that have been applied to cameras, televisions, and computer monitors, a simple black and white photograph taken decades ago can stop you in your tracks. What is it about black and white photographs that they can mesmerize us so easily? Why is it that a picture of the Snake River by Ansel Adams will always seem better than someone else’s black and white photo of the same river taken near the same time of day and within the same vicinity from where Adams snapped his picture(s)?

I am sure that the short answer to both of these questions for most of us involves the contrast of light and dark as well as timing. Black and white photos remove a lot of needless elements and the way that they provide a natural compositional focus can be breath-taking. As far as timing goes, that is what really separates the masters from the wannabes.

Unlike painting or drawing or sculpting which—more than anything else—requires patience, an ability to turn flaws into seamless elements, and time, photography requires a lot of timing especially when it comes to black and white photography. Too much light, not enough light, missed that facial expression by a second, the angle is off by a few degrees: all of these and more are things that can conspire against the development of a great photograph.

There is a veritable treasure trove of great black and white photographs I could have chosen as the first one to write about but ever since I was a kid I was always mesmerized by Milton Greene’s photo of Marlene Dietrich for Life magazine in 1952 (a photo that I have always just nicknamed “the legs photo.”) My grandparents used to have Life photo compilation books on the coffee table in their second home in Michigan and when I was like 9 or 10 I would plumb through them on days when the weather was uncooperative and that is when I was first introduced to this photo.

When we think of beautiful female celebrities we usually picture them with sultry smirks, come hither eyes, or heartbreaker smiles. We do not typically imagine them without any facial features at all, if for no other reason than it usually hinges on objectification to do so.

But what Greene does here with this picture is more or less redefine how to view the female body. By bringing the focus to Dietrich’s blonde hair and slender legs he produced a photograph that is alluring precisely because it is not outwardly sexual.

My favorite aspect of this picture when I was a kid was that it stuck out against all of the other pictures in those compilation books: every other picture had a timeless quality because facial expressions play such a huge part of them. I still like this photo of Dietrich because of that reason. But as I grew older I also began to appreciate the notion of “less is more” when it comes to trying to capture beauty. And a picture of a woman exposing only her legs and short wavy hair is analogous to this concept.

by Milton H. Greene
Black and white photograph
1952

I had every intention of writing a separate introduction for this site. I really did.

But I kept going back and forth as to how to even start the first paragraph. I wrote what felt like fourteen different variations of how to explain the significance of the stationary fine arts (i.e.–paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures) but none of them felt right. Then I thought about starting off with an anecdote from my art student days but that felt a little too solipsistic. Finally, I thought about starting the introduction off with a story about how I was first genuinely introduced to art; about how my junior high and sophomore year high school art teachers influenced me but I thought that that might come across as too cliché. So I decided to scrap an introduction altogether and allow The Starry Night to act as my introduction.

In my mind there is no painting more beautiful than Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. In fact, I would rank this painting just beneath Anna Karenina in terms of the greatest artistic achievement that any member of genus Homo has ever created. And I write that last sentence without any hint of irony or hyperbole. The Starry Night has so many beautiful qualities about it: it has a sense of movement (the edges that make up the swirls of wind, the outer strokes surrounding the stars); it is comprised of so many wonderful shades of blue and green which conspire to make such a breath-taking palette; the oversized, dark cypress tree that acts as a focal point and a counterbalance to the sun-like moon (which in turn provides a unique balance to the piece as a whole); the exaggerated spire on the cathedral that towers over the rest of the village which always makes me think of a subconscious projection of trying to find meaning in life (which in turn makes me see the painting as being far more profound than it seems at first glance). And this is not to say that because there is a disproportionately large church and spire in the piece that religion is a central theme (though you may certainly feel free to see it this way). To me, the placement of the church and its spire represent a kind of desire to want to achieve balance. If you were to draw imaginary lines down the middle both horizontally and vertically you would see that the spire is almost at the midpoint of the painting (it would occupy the lower right quadrant). Add to this that the scenery takes place at night (when a church would presumably be closed) and what we know about Van Gogh’s personal struggles and it looks like the kind of touch that someone looking for stability in their life would add to their picture. While the painting itself can be seen or interpreted as being almost dreamlike in nature, its point of view was very much grounded in a realism that Van Gogh saw with his own eyes. It is an exaggerated projection of a real place, which in turn makes that place more real than a photograph.

Anyone who knows only the Cliff’s Notes version of modern art history knows the outline of Van Gogh’s life—that the only paintings he ever sold while he was alive were brokered by his brother to people who were not really interested in them in the first place; that he cut off his ear; that he might have been crazy, irrespective of the whole ear cutting-off chapter of his life; that he died a broke and (mostly) forgettable artist. I could use the previous sentence as a segue into how Van Gogh’s life is a metaphor of struggle, or how it’s a minor tragedy that people don’t always recognize great art when it is in front of them. But to do so would be unfair, especially the last half of the previous sentence. Anyone can assign a declaration of praise (or an abusive condemnation) towards any piece of art, even if they are unaware of “the whole story” behind it.

Case in point: if I chose to do so I could plumb through some books and websites about Van Gogh and this painting and find out what exactly the meaning of the church is or why the cypress tree is larger than it should be. But, quite frankly, I don’t want to know that stuff. This is a painting that is visually beautiful to me for my own reasons, and it is so visually pleasing to me that my mind compiled its own thoughts and back story about it.

And at the end of the day this is one of the defining features of what fine art is: when you see something that is beautiful you begin a process—sometimes subconsciously, sometimes consciously—whereby you wind up taking ownership of its meaning. What I mean is that sometimes great art speaks to you instantaneously and without any back story whatsoever, and other times its greatness grows with multiple viewings and a delving in to the artist’s personal life and/or struggles. For me, The Starry Night had me the first time I saw it in fifth grade before I ever knew anything about Van Gogh and his struggles, and his friendship with Gaugin.

So, with all of this in mind I present Van Gogh’s most recognizable masterpiece to serve as the introductory post for this site. The aim of this site is to offer up critiques of art through a prism of different voices. Future posts may only be 100 words, or near 1,200 words like this one, or beyond. Whether it be timeless, beautiful, or haunting, great art affects everyone differently and this site will allow people to write about how their favorite pieces affected them or made them see a facet of their world differently.

Van Gogh saw a typical nighttime setting and instead of painting it as is, he opted to turn the sky into a sea of harsh lines that, when put together, evoke movement and grab your eyes and make them follow their path around the piece. He made stars look like miniature suns being reflected on ripply water. He created something that taps into the part of our mind that mostly lays dormant in our day-to-day lives, and can only be coaxed out of its cave when something truly inspiring conjures it out.

by Vincent Van Gogh
Oil on canvas
1889