Morris Louis, Painter's Painter

I often think of Morris Louis and his short, brilliant career. A man who was old enough to have known many of the Abstract Expressionists – those heroic Americans who forged a new expression in opposition to the hegemony of European art (especially Picasso) – and  a man who knew something about color, enough to make some of the most startlingly beautiful large-scale paintings of the 20^th Century.

Morris Louis was a humble teacher of art, but part of an ambitious circle of painters, including Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons and Jules Olitski, who were committed to a new vision of formal painting someone dubbed the Color Field School. Lyrical Abstraction was another name used at the time. The names, no matter their origin, are appropriate  because these men were able to make art from the simple notion that color is best experienced as a sensation that fills the vision and the mind with sensory experience. Sometimes this experience is both memorable and mystical. The latter is controversial, as anything that refers to Spirit and Modernism in the same breath must be. That aside, to witness the Spirit at work one needs only to direct one’s eyes to the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Morris Louis (and a few others). Their content, beyond the merely descriptive,  was unspoken - or secret -  (their titles are notoriously unhelpful).  No matter, all three managed to achieve an unmistakable sense of awe through the scale of their paintings and their very obvious simplicity.

Louis had two periods: the Veils and the Unfurleds.  The example I reproduce here comes from the Veils, because I happen to think these are the most arresting. It’s important to remember that each of Louis’s paintings is immersive (by which I mean that when viewers are within a few feet of the canvas, they feel immersed in the experience, the effect due probably to the approximately 10 to 15 feet wide by 9 or 10 feet high size canvases the artist produced. They were made by letting the paint flow in carefully planned directions, probably by lifting and tilting the canvas as the wet paint flowed down over it.,  The paint had been carefully diluted to be transparent and liquid, making the painted surface entirely flat, a goal of the painting aesthetic of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

These works sometimes suggest to me flowers of many colors blossoming from their buds; and, other times, Salome’s veils as she danced for Herod; and, other times, the muscularity of a force of nature.

Louis died of lung cancer in 1962 at the age of 49, likely due to inhaling the fumes from Magna, an oil-based acrylic auto body paint, that had been custom prepared for him by Leonard Bocour and Sam Golden. Like Pollock, he worked standing over his canvases which he had affixed to stretchers to permit movement. And like Helen Frankenthaler, he developed and refined his own method of using paint as a staining medium., with no surface texture. His paintings have been collected by museums and individuals with great enthusiasm since his death, and now they are in public and private collections all over the world.

Louis is one of several little known master painters of the late Abstract Expressionist period. He should probably be accorded the title “painter’s painter”, because, although he is not widely appreciated by the general public, he is very much admired among artists. This post was prompted by a visit to the Seattle Art Museum, which recently hung its Unfurled.

Original or Costly Mistake?

A story in The New York Times about a woman arrested for trafficking in forgeries of Abstract Expressionist paintings brought to mind the idea that it must be easier to fake a Jackson Pollock than a Rembrandt. For one thing, even the experts are often stymied by supposed originals. They resort, in the case of Andy Warhol (who produced multiples of silk screened stock photos), to hiring experts who reputedly can determine if there is any mention of painting X in the artist’s recorded oeuvre. In other words, is there any proof the artist did this? Like evidence of a crime, only experts, we’re led to believe, who are extraordinarily familiar with the artist’s work, can discern the correct attribution: original or bogus original.

In the case of accused tax dodger and agent for phony art, Glafira Rosales, who is now in jail awaiting trial it's now pretty clear than her supposed gold is actually pyrite. If found guilty of these crimes, the 56 year-old could face five years. Not so bad for duping dozens of wealthy non-experts, not to say fools, and scoring over $15 million. And in the bargain she also brought down Knoedler Gallery in New York, probably the most visible international dealer in modern the art of the Abstract Expressionists.

Reading between the lines in the story, I got the impression that the FBI had agents on the case for some time. Then the IRS got involved, since Mr. Rosales had not paid taxes on her millions. And since she is a Spanish national who  stashed her loot in Spain, I can only guess what European officials came to bear down on her.

But back to the question of authenticity. It has often been said, to the point of tedium, when looking at a Pollock or a Rothko, et al, that “my ten year old daughter could do that”. Which could be true if the girl had been painting for decades, learning a subtle craft and then applying her knowledge and intuitions to major works that hang  in museums and private homes world-wide. No, I want to put that notion to rest. No youngster could conceivably make a Pollock or a Rothko, not even the immature works by these modern masters. I know none of this is convincing if you insist on remaining ignorant, but try to hear me over the noise in your consciousness, this is great art, contributing great things, great ideas and great accomplishment to history. We will never see their likes again.

 

Here's a fun brain tickler: which one's the forgery? The top is "Elegy To The Spanish Republic" The bottom is I don't know. Both cost millions. One is worth less than the canvas it's painted on. But then, who cares? My ten year old could do this.

 

 

Ellsworth Kelly: Expressionist Master

I don’t often think of the work of Ellsworth Kelly, except when I find one on a museum wall or displayed in a sculpture park. Recently, on a visit to the National Gallery in Washington D.C., I encountered a beautiful shaped canvas work (Blue Violet Curve I (1982) see above), typical of the artist, abstract yet somehow recalling a natural shape, reduced down to a few elemental forms and artistic decisions.

In this case, it was a work from the 1980s, when the artist was in his late 50s with his own niche between the Abstract Expressionist movement that had captivated world art since Jackson Pollock and minimalism that had led modern art since the 1960s.

The work to which I refer is small by Kelly’s standards, a mere 6x5 feet, consisting of a blue arc on a white background. The first thing I noticed was the subtle yet obvious optical illusion that the arc is actually a fan, the left side shorter and thus appearing to tip away from the viewer. Of course the choice of foreground or background is based solely on the optics of blue on white. In fact, it could go either way: white foreground, blue background or blue foreground, white background. In other words, it could depict a fan shape lying flat on a white ground or a deep blue, limitless space, like the track of a wind shield wiper revealing the sky.

This is the kind of ambiguity in which Kelly revels. Much of his work since about 1950 is made of simple, beautifully rendered geometric shapes, in primary colors, black and white. The magic is in the scale. The artist has the uncanny ability to match the clearest shape with the optimum scale so that the works appear to float, or “stand” as artists would phrase it. These works are stunning in any architectural milieu that does not crowd them.

This is an artist with an uncanny feel for scale and color and form. With no discernible content, Kelly’s art is so good that one feels in the presence of a master. Like all true masters, he is able to evoke wondrous things in simple paint and canvas, pencil on paper and in steel.

 

A case in point is the excellent steel rounded square at the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery (Stele II, 1973 (approximately 8 x 8 feet), see above). Floating above the lawn, this painted steel work suggests an object like a kitchen utensil, giddily enlarged. Because of its scale and its float, it is reborn as something beautiful that is not a trope. The mystery here is in the shift from something mundane and transitory to something immutable. A unique American master, Kelly makes representations of perfection by means of the manipulation of materials that would otherwise mean nothing.

 

 

Picasso: Trading on Le Reve

The sands of art world time and money are shifting again. SAC’s (hedge fund) founder Steven A. Cohen has just bought a Picasso. Still enmeshed in a legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission over insider trading – offering a $616 million settlement so long as there is no admission of guilt – Cohen purchased a $60 million home in East Hampton in which he will presumably hang “Le Réve” (The Dream) (above) by Pablo Picasso.

Cohen purchased it in 2013 from Stephen A. Wynn (casino entrepreneur) for $155 million and it is now the most expensive piece of paint and canvas ever. In 2007, Wynn notoriously pushed his elbow through the painting during an animated conversation in his office in Las Vegas. Now repaired, and the gash Wynn made in the art work (mostly) invisible, the painting has been sold to Cohen for a record price six years later.

“La Réve” was in Mr. Wynn’s collection since 2001, so he may have thought it was about time he moved it. He’d looked at it long enough, perhaps. Or he wanted to make room for another work of art in his “vast”  art collection, as it was described in The New York Times. Or, as a gambling man - a superstitious lot - , he may have seen the whole elbow-through-the-painting incident as a harbinger of bad luck, cutting into his pleasure of ownership.

Cohen is not known as an insightful art collector, although now he may have a claim to that reputation. But no matter how he's called, he’ll always be better known as a profiteer. We conceive of him as a flamboyant money maniac. But that’s a preconception. Surely not all multi-billionaires who own the most expensive  duplex apartment in Manhattan - now up for sale at $115 million - can be objects of ridicule and even disdain. They must be at least part human, and therefore subject to some of the same joys and sadnesses as other members of our species. Yet, they manage to keep it to themselves, no doubt comforted by the beauty of their vast art collections.

Picasso, also a very wealthy man, was  a man of strong emotions, from cool to sentimental. This may be what Cohen and Wynn have in common with the modern master, but lacking his creative talent and instead having in abundance a talent for extracting crumbs from the cake, like Gordon Gekko.

As to “Le Réve”(51 x 38 inches)  (1932), it is an excellent example of the artist’s late synthetic style, with a clearly erotic theme.  It will look fine hanging on a wall in one of Mr. Cohen's homes.Stephen Wynn and Le Reve

Damien Hirst: Metaphysical Artist for Our Times

 

A few years ago, in 2007, British artist Damien Hirst exhibited a diamond-encrusted platinum cast of the skull of a 19th century man. 8,601 stones cover every external surface, the largest over 50 carets. The work (shown above), which cost $23 million to make, was sold for about $100 million. Its title is For the Love Of God.

 It is estimated that 47 year-old Hirst (born 1965) is the richest artist in the world. He lives on a large estate in the English countryside. He keeps a studio staff of dozens of trained artists that churns out works on order. Yet, despite his assembly-line methods, his work is in great demand.

 Hirst's wealth aside, the question is often posed: "Why so morbid? Why so much talk of death?", because he does seem fascinated with the greased sled we're inevitably all riding.

 Some critics assert that this is because he is a sensitive man living in difficult times. Economic decline, global warming, terrorism. By this argument, Hirst's near-obsession with death becomes a commentary, and not at all as morbid and lunatic as it first appears.

 Other critics assert that he's a sensationalist who would do anything to provoke the public because of his perverse need for recognition. He needs to be noticed. But that itch must have been scratched by now - after over two decades in the limelight, internationally lauded and placed into the pantheon of other break-through artists, such as Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp.

 A third, less well known critical theory is that Hirst is a metaphysician who looks at basic things and makes art from his observations. This theory may have seemed ridiculous when first proposed, but it is gaining traction as time goes by. Not so long ago Hirst showed us pickled dead animals and gave the results thoughtful titles, such as The Physical Impossibility of Life In the Mind Of Someone Living (1992). A provocative title for a disquieting exhibit of a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. And now, a worthless dead man's skull made priceless by a London jeweler.

 But is it art?

Surely Hirst is an artist who helps the world by revealing mystic truths. Or at least by alluding to mystic truths about life, death, and money. What are these mystic truths he is revealing? With the shark it may be in the form of a question: in what sense is a dead animal, preserved from decay, an intimation of immortality? And it may be that to bring an actual dead animal into an art gallery is to comment on the notion that once a work of art goes on public display, it is dead.

But that is for the artist to know, and the rest of us to find out.

 Hirst should be lauded for taking on the subject of death and dying. It is an uncomfortable discussion and it is one most of us would prefer to avoid, until absolutely necessary.

As Dylan Thomas wrote, "After the first death, there is no other". Let Damien Hirst prove him wrong.

 

 

Wassily Kandinsky: Father of Abstract Painting

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was the son of a Russian merchant who becamse a lawyer and academic, and one of a small circle of artists who so influenced the direction of art in the twentieth century that it can be said he changed painting forever.. He was a devout Russian Orthodox believer and a follower of Madame Blavatsky, who was as proponent of Theosophy, spiritualism and the occult. Kandinsky was author of a seminal manifesto, “Concerning the Spiritual In Art” (1910), a work that lays out  his conception of the language of the soul in form and color, and establishes a foundation for abstract art.  It is influential to this day.

The artist is credited with making some of the earliest advances in modern abstract painting that reverberate to the present, over 100 years since he painted them. Now in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, many of these oil on canvas paintings, made between 1911 and 1914, are regarded as the earliest pure abstractions, consisting of striking color, lines and shapes that allude to a real-world narrative of mythical horsemen and mountain valleys, in what Kandinsky hoped would be the painterly equivalent of the music of Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

These paintings show Kandinsky exploring the essence of time, place and appearances. At this point, Kandinsky was an artist in search of something ethereal, something spiritual, manifest in the natural world. As his career progressed, the artist abandoned the references to the visible world characteristic of his lyrical expression for a more formal, geometric style, typical of the Bauhaus, where he taught. Some art historians trace this transformation to the experience of World War I, which so devastated Europe and forever altered its cultures and societal structures. As a consequence of their alientation from the past, many artists turned to the esoteric, embracing obscurity and secrecy.

I offer two examples of Kandinsky’s work. Composition VII, 1913 (79 inches X 118 inches) (above) is from his early abstract work, when the ideas were fresh. The other is Composition VIII, 1923 (55 inches X 79 inches) (below) from the Bauhaus period, when the artist had turned to more restricted, some would say refined, forms. Kandinsky’s work was well known to young artists of the 30s and 40s, including Arshile Gorky, Joan Miro and Jackson Pollock.

Van Gogh:Good and Beautiful

Sure it’s good, but is it good for you? Since Aristotle, philosophers have puzzled over the question “What is beauty?” The basis of aesthetics, up until the early 20^th century, was the pursuit of an answer to this age-old question. In the early decades of the last century, artists and philosophers alike expended considerable energy coming up with one theory after another, all ultimately to fail in getting down to the essence of beauty – beauty itself, without any need for an object of beauty.

I find that the greatest pleasure in my pursuit of the beautiful is my discovery of what is moral. I think beauty is good in that sense; it leads people to contemplate basic questions of how to live a good life. That is why I want to surround myself with art, because not only does it fill me with pleasure, it also creates in my mind a version of the good which is, at least, worth testing.

May I offer an example?

Here is something that is good on a painterly level. It shows skilled craftmanship plus an extraorindary ability at self-expression. Van Gogh painted “Gauguin’s Chair” during one of his manic periods when he made dozens of paintings a month. This one was done after he and Gauguin went their separate ways, an event that troubled Van Gogh for the rest of his short life. The painting is rich, it is good, and it is suffused with grief. The empty chair becomes a universal symbol of loss and it fills me with strong, resonant emotion, as I reflect on the people I’ve lost.

An eminent art historian, connoisseur and appraiser in the first decades of the 20^th century, Bernard Berenson wrote, “art must be life enhancing”.