Work of the Week
Our visitors have weighed in: the Work of the Week has consistently been the most visited page on the website while the museum was closed.
While the museum is open again, we decided to continue this feature for your reading pleasure. Some weeks, you will be able to come and see the work in person after reading; other times you will discover works that are currently in storage and learn more about our extensive collection.
September 28, 2020: Nicole Eisenman, “Sun in My Eye on the Beach”
Eisenman’s practice, while firmly grounded in the figurative tradition, constantly reimagines and transforms it. Indeed, in 2015, the artist was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant precisely for “expanding the expressive potential of the figurative tradition in works that engage contemporary social issues and restore cultural significance to the representation of the human form.” And expand the very notion of figuration she does, not only in painting but also in scultpure (her installation Procession may have been the most talked-about entry of the 2019 Whitney Biennial).
Our painting is a case in point. While solidly based in the figurative tradition of portraiture (after all, Eisenman was doing figurative painting well before it became fashionable again) it gently walks us through the history of abstraction – from cubism to Philip Guston – and adroitly transforms it into her own expression. CFAM’s self-portrait references cubism and its preference for the general over the individual, seen from multiple simultaneous perspectives. The abstracted face is profiled against a similarly abstracted background, which nonetheless suggests a specific place: the deep blue of the sea below the horizon line contrasting with the sun-filled, palpably hot yellow of the beach.
The location is Fire Island off the South Shore of Long Island, NY, where the artist spends her summers. The palette is bold, rich and textural with a lusciously painted surface enhanced by the vibrancy of the thickly applied color and the exuberance of the painterly gesture. In earnest, this online reproduction does not do the original justice so I encurage you to go to the Alfond and see it in person. And when you go, you will agree that the painting offers incredible rewards to those who practice slow looking. The artist herself encourages us to heed the calls for slowing down in a rushed society, and to linger, noting that “the more time you spend with a piece, the richer it becomes.”
September 21, 2020: Ficre Ghebreyesus, “Shepherd”
When CFAM reopens next week, you will see this painting by Ficre Ghebreyesus (1962-2012) in the collection gallery. Titled Shepherd, it is not a very large painting – and yet it draws you in with unusual force. First you notice the materiality of the paint – earthy, substantial yet light – and then an almost circular motion draws you towards the center, the composition revealing itself one layer at a time. The abstracted animals in the foreground lead to the more defined white horse behind them; from there, the mauve-roofed house to the left and the outsized plant stem to the right contour and contain the rest of the composition, where the protagonist, a shepherd the color of dark earth, leads other, less expected, animals. The world depicted is inviting, full of wonder and questions. Does a shepherd tend to lions and panthers? Does a flower the color of light earth become a tree? Do rocks resemble animals and vice-versa? The answer is always yes, in Ghebreyesus’s beautifully imagined world.
I started to understand that private world when I read Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir The Light of the World, written just after she lost Ghebreyesus, her husband of 16 years, to cardiac arrest. It is probably the most beautiful book dedicated to love and loss, grieving and resilience that I have ever read. Alexander captures – with the poetry that’s uniquely hers – the delicate, colorful balance between real and imaginary, between the world of the painter’s childhood and his dream of Africa, and of a better world: “Ficre did not paint what he saw. He saw in his mind, and then he painted, and then he found the flowers that were what he painted. He painted what he wanted to continue to see. He painted how he wanted the world to look. He painted to fix something in place.” I invite you to come see Shepherd at the museum sometime soon and let yourself drawn into the hopeful, joyous world of Ficre Ghebreyesus. It is a salve for the soul.
Ena Heller, Ph.D.
Bruce A. Beal Director
See this work by Ficre Ghebreyesus on our Collection page.
September 14, 2020: Faith Ringgold, “Tar Beach”
Have you ever lost yourself while staring at the night sky? As a child I would spend hours looking up into it, splitting time between front porch and bedroom window. The stillness of my body—laying peaceful, fixed gaze—belied the flurry of imaginative activity happening within. Whether it was unobstructed views of endless gleaming star fields or the interruption of a glowing skyline that felt like a fictional world, I was bewitched by the romance of its inky darkness. I did not know it then, but these were formative moments, shaping my imagination and turning me into a life-long dreamer. Creativity was born in the infinity of the night sky, as it became the backdrop for my most intricate daydreams. I have thought back to those moments a lot over the past six months, subconsciously resurrecting my old hobby as a coping mechanism in the face of a chaotic year.
The power of imagination to lift us up out of turbulent realities and allow us to consider the potentiality of something better, something more is at the heart of Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold. A brightly colored woodblock print, the work captures a scene from the daydreams of Miss Cassie Louise Lightfoot, the eight-year-old protagonist of what would later become Ringgold’s children’s book, also titled Tar Beach. Cassie, pictured soaring high above New York City with her brother Be Be, has a superpower; she can fly. This ability grants her the freedom to go anywhere and imagine a different life for her and her family, unencumbered by the circumstances of her reality. As an artist and activist, Ringgold’s career has been dedicated to exploring themes of race and gender equality. She grew up in the creatively fertile Harlem Renaissance, a time and place where perceptions of black culture and identity were redefined. Her work incorporates the narrative traditions of quiltmaking and African American history with great resonance, serving as platform to share her story and that of those before her.
As we enter the second half of a year shaped by external complications, turn to your imagination with the same kind of limitless potential as Cassie. May your struggles give way to progress and innovation. And if you need some inspiration, come visit the museum where Tar Beach will be on view all semester as a reminder to never stop dreaming.
Alexia Lobaina
Associate Curator of Education
Read more on this work by Faith Ringgold on our Collection page.
September 7, 2020: Willem de Kooning, “Two Women”
A monolith in American Abstract Expressionism, Dutch-born artist Willem de Kooning had a diverse artistic career lasting for over five decades. I first encountered the work of de Kooning in person during 2017 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washinton, DC. As I rounded the bend of the donut-shaped building in the exhibition Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection, de Kooning’s Woman/Verso: Untitled of 1948 greeted me from the wall of the gallery. The subject of the painting had a single distinguishable eye, a toothy grin, and multiple arms partially obscured by her yellow hair. The earliest surviving painting in de Kooning’s most famous series, Woman/Verso: Untitled actually represented the artist’s second foray into the application of figural abstraction to depict the bodies of women. He also painted a series of women in the early 1940s, and he would later revisit the subject with this series of monochromatic lithographs in the 1970s.
At first, de Kooning’s grotesque abstractions may appear simple and unplanned. However, the artist spent a surprisingly large amount of time on his compositions. For example, MoMA’s Woman I took a period of two years from 1950 to 1952 to complete. Visitors to the artist’s studio described de Kooning’s artistic process as intermittent--short periods of vigorous activity followed by long sessions of close looking. In fact, many of his figural representations actually began as abstract compositions where the artist would find and accentuate biomorphic details in his gestural brushstrokes. This approach would come to characterize de Kooning’s unique brand of Abstract Expressionism, and it allowed for the creation of wholly abstract works alongside works depicting somewhat recognizable figures. It is likely that de Kooning began this lithograph in much the same way as his paintings--as a collection of abstract lines and shapes that were then guided and transformed under the supervision of his “aesthetic conscience.”
Ultimately, de Kooning’s violently heterosexual depictions of the female figure would stir controversy and attract personal accusations of misogyny. The placement of de Kooning’s Woman I and other paintings in the galleries of MoMA would prompt second wave feminist scholar Carol Duncan to write the scathing article “The MoMA’s Hot Mamas.” She criticized de Kooning’s manipulation of anatomy as an assertion of ownership over the female body and compared Woman I to contemporary Penthouse magazine advertisements and depictions of mythological Gorgons. It is tempting to read into comparisons to monstrosity in this lithograph; while the figure on the left clearly wears high heel boots, the feet of the figure on the right are distorted, barefoot claws.
De Kooning unfortunately passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s in 1997. Since his colossal 2011 retrospective at MoMA, de Kooning is now one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. Works by Willem de Kooning will undoubtedly continue to promote critical discussion as they are formally dissected and reexamined by new voices in the scholarly community.
Isaac Gorres
Fred Hicks Intern
Read more on this work by Willem de Kooning on our Collection page.
August 31, 2020: Shirin Neshat, “In Deference”
I first encountered Shirin Neshat’s work in an AP Art History course in high school. I researched Neshat’s 1994 “Women of Allah” series—which garnered the artist significant attention in the art world—and was struck by the simplicity and poignancy of the distinctive black and white photographs. I was especially captured by the work Rebellious Silence, a self-portrait of the artist whose eyes stare directly out at the viewer from a face inscribed with Arabic calligraphy. When I began as a student at Rollins and entered CFAM for the first time, I found myself again gazing into the eyes of this powerful artist whose My Beloved featured in the museum’s 2016 exhibition Displacement
This year, the museum welcomes a second work by Neshat into the collection. Taking the form of a diptych, In Deference (2018) invites comparison between two figures whose costume, gesture, and expression imitate one another but whose images likely elicit different reactions from the viewer. The artist appropriates Spanish artist El Greco’s The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest (ca. 1580) which she places alongside a contemporary photograph of an Iranian woman in traditional dress. This unexpected juxtaposition begs the viewer to consider their perceptions of the two figures, carefully reflecting on personal biases and (mis)conceptions of the “Eastern” and “Western” individuals. The title of the work, “In Deference,” suggests both respectful regard and humble submission, perhaps implying a power differential between the figures. The title could also represent a play on words, alternatively relating to the phrase “in difference,” which underscores the perceived disparities between the Iranian woman and Spanish man. Asserting her own Middle Eastern, female perspective, Neshat encourages us to critically consider how we view those seemingly different from ourselves.
Take a closer look at In Deference in the upcoming exhibition ReOrienting the Gaze, opening in January 2021 at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum,
Morgan Snoap, Rollins ‘20
View this work by Shirin Neshat on our Collection page.
August 24, 2020: Reginald Marsh, “A Young Woman Reading on the Subway"
I recently read Jennifer Egan’s historical novel Manhattan Beach, a noir thriller that transported me to New York during World War II. The main character, Anna Kerrigan, comes of age at a time when the country grappled with war abroad and its effects at home. Resilient and determined, Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard as a diver repairing ships. The rich descriptions of the naval yard, the city streets, and the dark, smoky nightclubs, paint a vivid picture of the context in which she lived and worked. Newspapers reported on the war in Europe, and she learned of individuals’ experiences through letters and friends’ accounts. While reading, I thought about how young women experienced the city at this historical moment.
The story of Anna reminded me of Reginald Marsh’s A Young Woman Reading on the Subway, a small watercolor in the museum’s collection. Well-known for his depictions of the urban environment in New York, Marsh’s paintings and illustrations capture scenes of common, everyday people in clubs, subways, and dance halls. In this image, a young woman is seen reading a newspaper on the subway. Oblivious to the gaze of the spectator, she appears focused on what she is reading, perhaps the latest reports about the war. The figure is certainly the center of attention; Marsh accentuates her dress, high heels, and bright blonde curls; she is young and attractive. But the image also captures a snapshot in the daily routines of many young women at the time who became crucial pillars in the labor force while men were abroad. As we celebrate the 100-year anniversary of women’s suffrage, I think of young women then and now, working to improve their lives, contribute to the betterment of our society and our economy, and on the importance of access to education and opportunity for all.
Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D.
Curator
View this work by Reginald Marsh on our Collection page.
August 17, 2020: Patrick Martinez, “Then They Came for Me"
CFAM acquired this work after including it in the summer 2017 exhibition Patrick Martinez: American Memorial. We chose it because it resonated with the present while offering historical context; as a teaching museum on a college campus, we are keenly interested not only in showcasing art that addresses issues that are current and hard to put into words, but also framing it within the powerful arc of history. Only by understanding our history can we make sense of the present and hope to build a better future. That has perhaps never been felt more acutely than today, as our country is reckoning with the powerful movement demanding racial and social justice, true equity and inclusion. Today, Martinez’s work shines with renewed resonance.
The words featured in neon go back to World War II and the Holocaust. The full quote ("First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist/Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist/Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew/Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me") was written by Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. Frequently used in popular culture and public dialogue, it has become shorthand for inaction against injustice.
Martinez uses the quote differently than most. His medium is neon – familiar in commercial signage and advertising, ubiquitous in contemporary urban environments. The artist talks about driving home at night through downtown Los Angeles, his hometown, and taking in the “visual codes” all around him. He also talks about the seductive quality of neon, which is unfortunately often stripped in so much modern advertising. Here, by contrast, the seductiveness is teased out, manipulated to strengthen the message: the bright colors belie the gravity of the subject. Once we go beyond the familiarity of the format and the unexpected color scheme, we see and read the words differently. The commonplace becomes profound; we need to stop and reflect.
Today, we hear about the scale of the protests and why this movement feels different than others. We also worry about maintaining the momentum and making sure that it leads to meaningful change. In this context, the call against apathy spelled out by this work becomes a call to action that we should all heed: may we not let it come true, once again. That is why we included this work by Patrick Martinez in our fall exhibition Art Encounters: Community or Chaos?, dedicated to the power of contemporary art to denounce injustice. We hope you will stop by to see it in person once our museums reopens on September 18.
Ena Heller, Ph.D.
Bruce A. Beal Director
To read more on this work by Patrick Martinez, please visit our Collection page.
August 10, 2020: Hiram Powers, “Faith"
Hiram Powers was celebrated during his time as the foremost American sculptor, lauded for bringing the dominant Neoclassical sculptural style to the United States. Powers—who was born in Vermont and spent his formative years in Cincinnati—moved to Florence in 1837, drawn by the presence of high-quality marble and workmen with long experience in shaping it. In 1843 he made The Greek Slave, a semi-allegorical representation of a bound young Greek woman from the time of the Greek Revolution. Playing into racist and Orientalist stereotypes about supposed Turkish barbarism, the sculpture caused a sensation in the United States, where it drew huge crowds, scandalizing viewers who were uncomfortable with nudity in art. The Greek Slave is widely credited with normalizing a certain kind of classical female nudity in American art. It also catapulted Powers to new heights of fame, turning his Florence studio into a must-visit for American and British tourists in Italy. While there, they could sit for a portrait bust by Powers or purchase a copy of one of several allegorical sculptures including this one, Faith, representing a generalized ideal that appealed to many of Powers’ wealthy patrons.
Already by the time of his death in 1873 Powers was falling out of popular favor, with audiences in both Europe and the United States coming to prefer more naturalistic work by sculptors like Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Auguste Rodin, the latter of whom is the foremost figure in the development of sculptural modernism. As a result, Neoclassicism has come to seem bland and sterile next to the emotional dynamism and formal innovations of the twentieth century. Sculptures such as these, however, are valuable for the windows they provide into the mindset of the dominant white Protestant culture of the nineteenth century. Powers, like many of his contemporaries, was simultaneously uneasy with and drawn to the nude body. In order to resolve this tension, he relied on his Swedenborgian beliefs. Swedenborgianism, also called the New Church, was a religious movement based on the beliefs of eighteenth cetury Swedish clergyman and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg that gained widespread currency in Europe and the U.S. during the nineteenth century. Swedenborgians believed, among other things, in the unity of the soul and the body. This belief allowed Powers to justify his use of nudity through the pursuit of the perfect body, the proper representation of which would help viewers towards an understanding of spiritual purity.
Powers was well known for his perfectionism, rejecting sculptures in which the marble showed even the smallest dark spots or other imperfections. This quest for a pure whiteness was tied to his New Church beliefs, and it was also something of a personal brand. It is also inescapable, however, that Powers made Faith and similar sculptures during the run-up to and aftermath of the Civil War, giving his quest for pure whiteness a decidedly racial cast. Powers was not an abolitionist—a cautious and conservative man, he considered the movement socially dangerous, though he opposed slavery as a general moral principle. The Greek Slave was nonetheless taken up as a symbol by many abolitionists, who found the figure’s Christian modesty useful in their rhetorical campaign against American slavery. Yet it is also the case that Powers’s—and his colleagues’—emphasis on the purity of white marble itself has a racial dimension. By insisting that only the purest white marble can represent the perfect body—and thus the perfect soul—Powers implicitly, if not intentionally, helped set the boundaries for inclusion in the American spiritual and political community. He was neither the first nor the last to participate in the equation of whiteness with purity or moral rightness, but his work offers us the opportunity to consider other unspoken assumptions which underlie seemingly innocuous works of art.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
Read more about Hiram Powers' work on our Collection page.
August 3, 2020: Eadweard Muybridge, “Plate No. 602 from Animal Locomotion"
Born in England towards the end of the Georgian era, Eadweard Muybridge was an early photographer widely credited with the invention of the motion picture. At age 20, Muybridge moved to the United States--first to New York City for five years followed by San Francisco. Following a traumatic accident in 1860, which saw Muybridge ejected from a runaway stagecoach, the artist began his career as a photographer under the pseudonym Helios. His images of the rugged landscapes of the American West rapidly earned him critical success, drawing the attention of numerous government commissions in the following decades.
In 1872, Muybridge was hired by California Governor Leland Stanford in a professional relationship that would continue for over five years. Stanford--a prominent horse breeder--wished to settle the ancient debate over whether all of a horse’s hooves left the ground in a gallop. Before Muybridge was tasked with photographing this action, the motions proved too fast to decipher with the naked eye. In 1877, the photographer spaced cameras rigged with tripwires beside a racetrack in Northern California, allowing him to individually capture successive images of a horse’s gallop--much like the images of the trotting horse on this plate from CFAM’s permanent collection. Muybridge’s photographic observations proved definitively that there is a moment in a horse’s gallop when all four hooves lift off of the ground, but it was not the moment that was expected.
Before Muybridge’s original photographic studies of horses, the exact leg placement of a horse remained an open question in its faster gaits. Prior to 1877, the artistic convention of a “flying gallop” was extremely prevalent in equine art; horses were depicted in bounding leaps with all legs outstretched. Muybridge’s studies revealed, however, that the aestheticized position--which appears extremely logical to this day--was only a fantasy. Instead, the moment when all of the hooves leave the ground actually occurs with the four legs bunched under the horse. The artistic implications of this discovery were profound. Napoleonic French Classicist painter Ernest Meissonier, who had spent years trying to visually discern the movements of horses’ legs, wrote in reaction to Muybridge, “After thirty years of absorbing and concentrated study, I find I have been wrong. Never again shall I touch a brush!” Of course, Meissonier continued with his artistic career, but this dramatic response illustrates the inadvertently unsettling nature of Muybridge’s findings. The Pony Express even altered their postmark, which had previously displayed a horse in a flying gallop, to reflect the discovery.
After recording these images, Muybridge placed them in a rotating drum and projected them onto a screen with a lantern, effectively creating the first motion picture. Unfortunately, Muybridge did not realize the full potential of his discovery. Following the invention of embryonic cinema by Muybridge, other artists and scientists built on and improved the technology in full recognition of its narrative potential. By the turn of the twentieth century, celluloid film reels had been invented, and an explosion of French narrative cinema spawned from the prolific Parisian film studios of the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès.
This plate was originally included in Muybridge’s 1887 Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, a publication that would go on to inform later artistic depictions of a wide array of animals conducting movement. Muybridge’s magnum opus included 781 collotype plates illustrating different animals climbing, running, and flying--including sloths, camels, capybaras, and eagles.
Isaac Gorres
Fred Hicks Intern
Read more about this work by Eadweard Muybridge on our Collection page.
July 27, 2020: Carlos Dávila Rinaldi, “Departure"
Weekend getaways, honeymoons, family reunions, weddings, business trips—travel largely halted for several months because of COVID-19. In this historical moment, airports look and sound different; the experience of travel transformed to adapt to the current circumstances. After cancelling travel plans and rearranging our lives to stay healthy and keep others safe, I barely remember the last time I traveled and how it felt to do so without worrying about a potentially deadly virus.
Generously gifted to CFAM by an anonymous donor earlier this year, the painting Departure by Puerto Rican artist Carlos Dávila Rinaldi explores visually the experience of air travel. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1958, the artist was introduced to aviation and travel at an early age through his father who was an Air Force Sergeant. For Dávila Rinaldi, airports are rich environments that stimulate his creativity: “People in a hurry, others lost looking for their gate or just learning of a delay, the all familiar airport scene where some of us begin to taste the rush of traveling to a familiar place or perhaps somewhere you’ve never been. Airports are my kind of habitat...sensory overload at its fullest.”
Created in 2009, Departure is imbued with new meaning in today’s context. Bold, gestural markings across the surface of the canvas suggest the sights, sounds, and movement of passengers through an airport terminal. Against a muted background, thick, black lines, patches of bright yellow, and red evoke the fast-paced nature of this environment. Like catching a glimpse of a suitcase rolling by or the colorful pattern of a passenger’s clothing, each area of the painting plays its part to convey the intense and chaotic experience of the airport. In smaller light blue, lavender, white and gray sections of the work, the artist seems to capture details of objects around him, those perhaps perceived while glancing around the gate and taking it all in. Here, Dávila Rinaldi dissects the chaotic environment he experiences when traveling and transforms it into an equally intense and fragmentary visual. His expressive abstract style is informed by tachism, a mid-twentieth century artistic style characterized by spontaneously applied patches of color and the emphasis on the artist’s feelings and individual experience.
Departure captures the commotion and anticipation that many travelers feel right before embarking on a journey to another location. With the effects of the pandemic being felt around the world and air travel severely reduced, I can’t help but wonder what airports look like today. What are the sounds that fill the terminals and the gates as few passengers wait to board their flights? When will we be able to resume travel? How will it be different? Until then, art can transport us to unexpected places, it can help us imagine other ways of being together, and it can inspire us to rethink how to experience the world.
Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D.
Curator
Learn more about our collection
To learn more about Carlos Dávila Rinaldi’s work, visit www.davilarinaldi.com
July 20, 2020: Becky Suss, “Houseboat on Dull Lake in the Valley of K”
When I first learned of this new acquisition by Becky Suss in The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, I was immediately captivated by the intricate interior—from the whimsical bedframes, elaborate carpets, and animal cut-out windows to the glimpse of patterned tile, ornate woodworking, and detailed Kashmiri khatamband ceiling. As a Decorative Arts historian, I have always been drawn to domestic interiors and the objects that adorn them, and I am particularly interested in how those spaces create a feeling or ignite memories. I value the way Becky Suss’s paintings invite viewers to explore new spaces and find meaning in the way the everyday spaces shape us.
Becky Suss’s domestic interiors render familiar settings constructed from the artist’s memories and imagination. She started this body of work by reimagining her grandparents’ mid-century modern house on Long Island. The home, demolished after their passing, became memorialized in her paintings through her depiction of the rooms and the objects she inherited from them. Suss continued to build spaces inspired by her experiences, including her therapist’s office, great aunt and uncle’s house, and parents’ friends’ apartments. She has expanded her settings to incorporate her imagined spaces of children’s chapter books.
As she builds her child’s library and reflects on her own childhood, she recalls picturing the places in the stories her father read to her. This painting explores Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Suss identifies this book as “a magical-feeling book that described beautiful faraway places,” and her painting combines both her memories of the book and her father’s recounted travels to Kashmir in the 1960’s. She depicts here the houseboat where a father and son stayed on Dal Lake in the Valley of K. They each had wooden carved bedframes, one in the shape of a peacock and the other of a turtle, in neighbouring bedrooms.
These spaces, whether inspired by life or books, hold personal significance to the artist and were integral in her development from childhood to adulthood. By creating paintings of domestic interiors, Becky Suss generates a level of familiarity for all ages and welcomes viewers to discover them and draw personal connections of their own. Ultimately, spaces, objects, stories, and memories of the everyday are critical in modelling the way we see the world and form our ways of thinking and understanding. This work has not only introduced me to new spaces, but has also inspired me to revisit and treasure the places that have influenced me.
Elizabeth Coulter
Former Associate Curator of Education
View this work by Becky Suss on our Collection page.
July 13, 2020: Romare Bearden, “Byzantine Frieze (from the series Ritual Bayou)”
This week’s Image of the Week is Byzantine Frieze, one of the six lithographs from American artist Romare Bearden’s Ritual Bayou series. Bearden had a solid reputation as a painter from the 1930s to the 1960s, but his career really took off when, in the early 1960s, he began to experiment with collage. Bearden, who moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to Harlem with his parents when he was very young, had always gained inspiration from Black life and culture. In 1963 he joined a group of other African American artists in New York to form Spiral, an informal organization dedicated to discussing art, politics, and Civil Rights from the perspective of Black artists. Bearden brought with him to a meeting of the group a collection of clippings he had made from his wife’s magazines, intending to use them in a collaborative collage that would comment on the issues they were discussing at meetings. The other members weren’t interested, but Bearden began to experiment with the clippings on his own, blending them with paint, gouache, and other materials to create densely layered compositions.
From the beginning, Bearden was interested in the reproductive possibilities of his collages, exhibiting them in 1964 as a series of Projections, large-scale reproductions made with a photostat machine. They caused a sensation, launching Bearden to new heights in the art world, culminating in a one-man show at the Museum of Modern art in 1971. That show was entitled The Prevalence of Ritual, and featured collages based on Black life in the South, including many that would form the basis for works in the Ritual Bayou series. Starting in the early 1970s Bearden became interested in printmaking, and he began to work with Shorewood Studios and other printers to make works that would enable people of relatively modest means to own his work. Ritual Bayou was intended as the first set in an intended eighteen-print Portfolio, though Bearden’s process proved too laborious, and he eventually moved on to other projects.
Byzantine Frieze is particularly interesting, because it highlights one of the most striking aspects of Bearden’s work. At the Art Students League in the 1930s, Bearden had studied with the German-American painter George Grosz, one of the foremost participants in the neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movements of interwar Germany. Grosz and his colleagues were pioneers of socially conscious art, which was also dominant in the United States during the Great Depression. Bearden long believed, however, that Grosz’s most important contribution to his development as an artist was his emphasis on art history. In between painting demonstrations Grosz showed his students slides of works from the Renaissance to more recent times, and Bearden always returned to Old Masters such as Johannes Vermeer as well as more recent artists, including Pablo Picasso and Hannah Höch. In Byzantine Frieze he combines all of these interests, presenting his images of Black women and children in a flat, orderly procession reminiscent of the mosaics of the Roman Empire. The combination of the strong figures of the women with knives, blood, and other hints of violence demonstrates Bearden’s commitment to showing both the triumphs and tribulations of the African American experience, always with his eye to the history of art.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
To learn more about this work by Romare Bearden, visit our Collection page.
July 6, 2020: Pedro Reyes, “Protesters I-IV”
Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees, among other things, the freedom of expression and assembly: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”[1] These principles, which are key to American democracy, are very much on the collective mind today. With recent demonstrations across the country and around the world, protestors denounce police brutality and racial injustice, and demand change that results in accountability and justice for all.
In this powerful sculpture, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes exalts the importance of individual and collective effort to effect change. Protestors I-IV is composed of four individual sculptures that when viewed together, convey the power of multitudinary demonstrations. Each figure performs an action—one speaks through a bullhorn while the other three hold signs and stand at different heights. Although the signs are intentionally left blank, one can project on them any number of slogans and statements. Therefore, the artist invites viewers to imagine themselves participating in this protest and elevating their collective voice for justice and equality. The faceless figures are not meant to represent specific individuals, on the contrary, they remain anonymous and underscore the importance of unity and community in public protest.
Incorporating different media and processes in his practice, Reyes’ creative work is driven by the pursuit of social change. Trained as an architect, Reyes’ treatment of the figure in this work, playfully celebrates figuration and abstraction in favor of a visual that the viewer must complete and activate. Although Protesters I-IV were created in 2016-17, the group sculpture takes on new meaning in the current context, reminding us that contemporary artists do not work in a vacuum and that their artistic practice is often informed by personal as well as social, cultural, and political circumstances.
[1] U.S. Constitution, amend. 1.
Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D.
Curator
See Pedro Reyes's work on our Collection page.
June 29, 2020: Emory Douglas, “Warning to America-We are 25-30 million strong”
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Emory Douglas moved with his mother to San Francisco when he was eight. At age 21 he began taking commercial art classes at City College, working as a designer and printer at local advertising agencies and community print shops. He was a frequent visitor to the Black House, a cultural center co-founded by future Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, where he also met Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Douglas took part in several of the early actions of the Black Panther Party and contributed his graphic design and printing skills to the Black Panther, the group’s influential weekly underground newspaper. As Black Panther Minister of Culture Douglas was responsible for the paper’s visual style, which combined the iconic forms of commercial advertising with the aesthetics of revolutionary poster art from anti-colonialist movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Douglas’s goal—realized in the pages of the newspaper and on standalone posters—was to create an aesthetic that would allow as many everyday African American people as possible to identify with his figures. These posters, which the BPP distributed in the tens of thousands to Black neighborhoods during the late 1960s and early 1970s, present a vison of powerful Blackness that Douglas envisioned as a pointed repudiation of the peaceful and accommodationist rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, as it was originally called, was formed in response to police harassment and brutality, and saw the protection of Black people against police abuses—including murders—as the absolute core, foundational effort of its revolutionary praxis. Frustrated by the inability of the Civil Rights movement to prevent these ongoing abuses, Douglas joined Newton, Seale, and other members of the BPP in advocating that Black citizens organize patrols to monitor police activity in Black neighborhoods, though their ability to do so was curtailed by a 1967 law that banned the open carrying of firearms in California. In a 2017 interview with the activist, curator, and performance artist Jarrel Phillips, Douglas explicitly connected the activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s to today, noting that Black Lives Matter and other protest movements have arisen out of the same rage at ongoing police abuses.
CFAM owns several of Douglas’s posters from The Black Panther. Warning to America-We are 25-30 million strong is one of the most iconic of the group. Depicting a grim-faced African American woman in profile view, the poster is a masterclass in economy of form and color. Douglas was one of the first artists to depict Black people using the visual style of midcentury commercial art, and the figure’s full lips, natural hair, and dark skin were intended to help the newspaper or poster’s audience to identify with the BPP’s revolutionary aspirations towards an armed and self-sufficient Black populace. The gun, modeled after the AK-47 that was and remains a popular choice among insurgents and revolutionaries, is rendered disproportionately large, emphasizing its iconic, sinister stopping power. The button on the woman’s sleeve, which reads “Self Defense,” is formally united with the gun by Douglas’s use of bright orange pigment, both of them standing out in sharp contrast to the muted tones of the woman’s skin and clothing. Though the BPP has often been noted for its tough, macho aesthetic, Douglas’s drawings and poster frequently feature Black women, indicating his and the Party’s awareness that an activated Black revolutionary lumpenproletariat would require the participation of women.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
See Emory Douglas's work on our Collection page.
June 22, 2020: Andrea Bowers, “Community or Chaos”
Illuminated by bright yellow and blue neon letters, Andrea Bowers’ Community or Chaos is prominently displayed in the lobby of the museum. Each letter is encased in cardboard structures that shape the words Community or Chaos as they vibrate and buzz inviting us to reflect on their meaning today. Born in Wilmington, Ohio, Andrea Bowers’ artistic practice is centered on political activism and social justice issues. Working in a variety of media—drawing, text, neon, installation, video—Bowers makes statements and raises questions about feminism, immigration, racial injustice, and social inequities.
In this work, Bowers uses neon, a medium typically associated with commercial signage and advertisement, to draw attention to the urgency of racial justice and the history of the fight for equality in this country. The words are from the title of Dr. Martin Luther King’s last book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? published a year before he was assassinated in Memphis, TN, in 1968. In the text, Dr. King examines race relations, calls for unity and peaceful activism, and draws a clear distinction between non-violent engagement and the tactics of the Black Power movement. He reflects on the social and political changes brought about by the civil rights movement and ponders how these could shape the future of American society. Today, more than fifty years after Dr. King posed the question Where Do We Go from Here? we revisit the meaning of the choices presented, chaos or community. Amidst recent massive protests against racial discrimination and police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis this past May, Bowers’ piece takes on renewed meaning and urgency. In the last decade we have seen excessive force used against African American men and women—the cruel killings of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others—demand that as a society we reconsider race relations and acknowledge the work we need to do, and together, do it to effect just and positive change.
Created in 2017, Bower’s neon piece is a call to ponder and reassess Dr. King’s words in our moment, and reflect on the meaning they have in the 21st century, in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the demands to reform the police force and eradicate systemic racism. The work is a call to action, a call to think about what kinds of changes we want to effect on our society. Dr. King concludes his book by saying “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.”[1] Like other contemporary artists in the museum’s collection whose practices engage in social and political activism—Hank Willis Thomas, Patrick Martinez, Kara Walker, among others—Bowers here invites us to re-examine our individual stance and its impact on the collective.
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, ed. Vincent Harding with Foreword by Coretta Scott King (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), p. 202.
Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D.
Curator
See Andrea Bowers's work on our Collection page.
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[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, ed. Vincent Harding with Foreword by Coretta Scott King (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), p. 202.
June 15, 2020: Patrick Martinez, “Po-lice Misconduct Misprint (natural yellow)”
Patrick Martinez’ art depicts and documents real-life situations. His practice is anchored in his surroundings, whether it’s pop culture, the media, or utilitarian neon signs he would encounter driving home at night. Often, the images he chooses are filtered through personal experience. Growing up in North East Los Angeles, Martinez – who is of Filipino, Mexican and Native American descent – saw and experienced discrimination from an early age. “I’ve seen [my brother] and my neighborhood friends be mistreated by the police at a very young age. I’ve been harassed simply because I was in the area.”
Martinez started documenting social violence – largely due to police brutality – in the early 2000s; it was only a decade later, however, that his focus sharpened. By then, the way we consume images had changed: increasingly, we were witnessing horrific murders – be it Eric Garner in Staten Island or Michael Brown in Ferguson – in real time. The immediacy of images seen by millions of people made a different impact; their fleeting nature was what Martinez wanted to change. “If I paint these scenes, he noted, art is a way of cementing that moment in time.”
Po-lice Misconduct Misprint (natural yellow), from 2016, belongs to that body of work. The top register depicts the shooting of Walter Scott on April 4, 2015 in North Charleston, S.C. Stopped for a non-functioning brake light, an unarmed Scott was fatally shot in the back by a police officer as he was trying to flee. The middle scene records the death of Eric Garner on July 17, 2014. Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, was approached by the police on suspicion of selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. Moments later, he was held in a chokehold that killed him. His cries of “I can’t breathe” – heard 11 times – are newly and tragically resonant today. The bottom does not depict a specific incident, but rather symbolizes countless instances of systemic mistreatment disproportionally affecting African American and Latino people in New York during the stop-and-frisk program initiated by then mayor Mike Bloomberg. This reminds us that along with Garner and Scott, along with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, there are countless others that have been harassed, attacked, and murdered. In the artist’s words, his works are “about honoring people who have been mistreated or have lost their lives” due to police brutality.
The aesthetic of the print relies on traditional Pee-Chee folders, a common item of American stationary first created in 1943 and used by school children through the end of the 20th century in parts of the country. Named after the original peach color, the folders depicted students playing sports or engaged in other school activities – young, athletic figures embodying the apparent ease of growing up in the US in the post-war years. By replacing them with images of discrimination against black and brown Americans, Martinez subverts a familiar image and makes it newly poignant precisely by showing the opposite of what was originally intended. While at first the scene of Eric Garner being pinned to the ground may seem vaguely reminiscent of sports wrestling on traditional folders, at closer glance it reveals itself as the brutal murder first seen on video. The artist adds interpretive depth to visual immediacy; the angle chosen – with Garner’s grimaced face and outstretched arm in the foreground – emphasizes the horror and desperation to engage the viewer’s pathos. Therein lies the difference art makes; beyond “cementing moments in time,” it gives them interpretive context and infuses them with empathy.
Ena Heller, Ph.D.
Bruce A. Beal Director
To view more work by Patrick Martinez, visit our Collection page.
June 8, 2020: Jacob Lawrence, "Revolt on the Amistad"
A group of massed, twisting figures, rendered in bright, even color, struggle desperately in a tight, even claustrophobic space, the threatening black-and-blue waters of the ocean lapping from the bottom of the frame. At first glance this picture seems to approach full abstraction, but as one spends more time looking at it definite forms begin to emerge. A group of figures—some with dark skin and others with light—are engaged in a desperate struggle, clawing at one another’s eyes, and plunging at one another with bloody knives. A broken piece of shackle hangs from the forearm of a Black man in the center of the composition as he fights desperately with a White man who clings to a rope. The twisting violence of the scene is made even more shocking in the light of the sinuous beauty of the forms.
The story depicted in this print, a silkscreen by the American artist Jacob Lawrence and his collaborator the master printmaker Lou Stovall, is one of the most celebrated in American history. The print, as its title makes clear, depicts the famous revolt of the enslaved people on the Spanish ship La Amistad. Sengbe Pieh (often known as Joseph Cinque) a Mende man who was one of several dozen captives on the ship bound for Cuba, freed his fellow slaves and commandeered the ship, instructing his erstwhile captors to return to Africa. The Spaniards set sail for the mainland of the United States instead, confident that they would be vindicated in their claim to ownership of the Africans in the United States, where slavery was legal. The cause of the Mende people became a national cause célèbre, with the United States Supreme Court ruling in 1841 that the Africans were free, due to the fact that their capture was not legal under United States law. United States v. Amistad, as the case was known at the Supreme Court, became a rallying cry for the increasingly influential American abolitionist movement, and held particular significance for African Americans, both free and enslaved.
Lawrence has long been known as one of the foremost artists of the Harlem Renaissance. His series depicting important figures and events in Black history, including Toussaint L’Ouverture, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, and the Great Migration, are accompanied by didactic captions in clear, straightforward English, reflecting his desire to create art which would speak to the experiences and history of all Black people in the United States. He has been underappreciated, however, as one of America’s foremost modern artists of any race. Revolt on the Amistad, which was made late in his long and prolific career, shows his absolute mastery of the forms and techniques of modernism. The tight, swirling forms of the print, as well as its shallow depth of field and exacting use of flat planes of color, are the apotheosis of Lawrence’s style, which was heavily influenced by Fauvism, Cubism, and other modernist styles. His use of color in this and other works rivals that of Matisse and other masters, and Revolt on the Amistad’s evocation of the grim horrors of history and the necessity of struggle are reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
To read more on this work by Jacob Lawrence, visit our Collection page.
View Lawrence's Harlem Scene (The Butcher Shop) here.
June 3, 2020: Dawoud Bey, "Janice Kemp and Triniti Williams"
A dimly lit, quiet devotional space holds two serious, still figures. Though intimately cropped with an uninterrupted gaze towards the viewer, the two pews in the foreground and their shared pose— one arm across the chest and head resting in hand—creates a slight distance from the viewer. The mirrored composition, subtle and nuanced, is a union of opposites; separate and unified, older and younger, knowing and inexperienced, present and withdrawn, accessible and unreachable, individual and communal, time passing and time standing still.
This emotional photograph, a part of the series the Birmingham Project by Dawoud Bey, mourns the tragic losses and grave injuries during the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing and ensuing civil unrest in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Virgil Ware (13), and Johnny Robinson (16), young African American girls and boys, lost their lives that day due to acts of racial violence. To recognize these victims on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, Bey took a series of photographs in Birmingham of residents that symbolized the ages of the adolescents lost that day and the ages they would have been if they lived. Here, he juxtaposes the portraits of Janice Kemp and Triniti Williams sitting in pews of the Bethel Baptist Church, selected for its integral part in the Civil Rights Movement. Their intimate portrayals in a sacred space unveil layers of history and intergenerational trauma, and beckon to the viewer to reflect on history and the present.
On September 16, 1963, a day after the horrific event, President John F. Kennedy stated in response to the violence:
“If these cruel and tragic events can only awaken that city and state - if they can only awaken this entire nation to a realization of the folly of racial injustice and hatred and violence, then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost."
Now, 2020, over five decades later, the United States still faces senseless violence against black people and more innocent lives have been lost due to institutional racism and hate. As I experience this work by Dawoud Bey, I am overwhelmed with grief and a sincere longing for true progress.
Elizabeth Coulter
Associate Curator of Education
To read more on this work by Dawoud Bey, visit our Collection page.
June 1, 2020: Cobi Moules, "Untitled (Playground)"
In honor of Pride month, I wanted to feature the artist Cobi Moules, an advocate and documentarian for the LGBTQ+ community. Through his paintings and drawings, he not only documents his self-journey as a transgender and queer person, but he also dedicates his practice to create better representation, provide a greater sense of belonging and interconnectedness, and generate more visibility for the LGBTQ+ community. Recently, he embarked on a new series titled Portraits of Affirmation in which the artist painted intimate, miniature portraits of non-gender conforming and trans people. The project gives “visibility, affirmation and love” to those figures whose lives have been controlled and endangered through legislation.
The aforementioned project is a newer development in the artist’s oeuvre, as he is best known for his self-portraits. Through self-portraits he examines his personal narrative and identity over time. Some of the self-portraits show him in isolation, while others present multiple portrayals of the artist in one picture plane, like this work. His multiple selves create playful scenarios to explore, revisit, and in some cases reinvent his relationship with his personal history and identity. He is pictured here as a thirteen-year-old in various ways on a playground, the ultimate space for discovery, imagination, and fun from childhood through adolescence. He is shown removed, pensive, inquisitive, free, explorative, spirited, and joyful all at once. This work not only conveys the complexities of the self, but also investigates a sense of belonging and exploration.
Though this work is based on his personal experiences, the concept can connect to so many people. He shows the freedom and ability to express different aspects of the self, and thus encourages all viewers to be whoever they are in defiance of societal pressures.
Elizabeth Coulter
Associate Curator of Education
To read more on this work by Cobi Moules, visit our Collection page.
May 25, 2020: John White Alexander, "Portrait of Annie Russell as Lady Vavir in Broken Hearts"
Sunday marks the 105th anniversary of the death of John White Alexander, an American painter whose portrait of Annie Russell as Lady Vavir in Broken Hearts is one of CFAM’s most recognizable works of art. This painting, which has belonged to Rollins since 1938, depicts not only a major figure in Rollins history, but also a key moment in Alexander’s career.
John White Alexander was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh. Orphaned at a young age, he was taken in by Edward J. Allen, a local luminary who would become his guardian and lifelong mentor. Like many artists of his generation, he got his start in commercial illustration, producing drawings to be translated into wood engravings for Harper’s Weekly and other periodicals, becoming a specialist on Pittsburgh subjects, in particular the city’s burgeoning industrial economy. With the money from his illustration work and the support of Allen, he spent several years in the late 1870s studying in Europe with the American artist Frank Duveneck. A particularly formative experience was in Venice in 1879, where Duveneck’s group overlapped with James Whistler, who had retreated to the city after his infamous libel trial against the critic John Ruskin. Due to the influence of Duveneck, Whistler, and others he met in Europe, Alexander would become a strong believer in the philosophy of “art for art’s sake,” working to create artworks whose chief concerns were aesthetic, rather than moral or philosophical.
Returning to New York in 1881, Alexander continued to work for Harper’s while establishing himself as one of the most in-demand portrait painters in the city. One of his specialties was portraits of luminaries of the stage, and he executed portraits of John Gilbert, Joe Jefferson, and Russell, including both the CFAM portrait and another work which is currently unlocated. Portrait of Annie Russell as Lady Vavir shows the actress in her costume, facing away from the picture plane and staring at a large glass bowl, from which a spray of pink flowers overflows. Though it is a portrait, Russell’s face is obscured, and the focus becomes more on the long, columnar form of her body, which seems almost to sweep upward from the floor. Her smooth angularity stands in contrast with the round form of the bowl, with which she is united by the pink flowers extending from her left shoulder.
This painting was most likely executed in 1887, months before Alexander’s marriage. After this event he would increasingly focus on purely aesthetic representations of women, rather than commissioned portraits. These works, perhaps best exemplified by his best-known work, Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1897, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), demonstrate many similarities with Annie Russell. Featuring women in abstract, largely two-dimensional spaces, these pictures seek to represent not so much individuals as aesthetic objects. The female form was frequently used in this purely decorative manner at the end of the nineteenth century, and Alexander developed into an expert at representing these private, slightly otherworldly visions of female beauty. CFAM’s Portrait of Annie Russell, with its shallow space and enigmatic picture of the actress, is a step in this direction. The portrait remained a prized possession of Russell’s, who evidently felt it captured something essential about her. It also, however, signaled a bold new direction in John White Alexander’s work, which makes it a perfect exemplar of both his early and late artistic styles.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
To read more on this work by John White Alexander, visit our Collection page.
May 18, 2020: F. Holland Day, "Ziletta"
F. Holland Day, the creator of this work, would be considered something of an eccentric today. In fact, he was considered something of an eccentric in his own day, as well. Day was the son of a successful businessman in Norwood, Massachusetts, and early on showed an interest—nurtured by his parents—in art and literature. Though he did not attend college, Day quickly fell in with a crowd of bohemians in Cambridge and Boston, with whom he carried out wide-ranging discussions on art, beauty, and life, often over beers in one of a number of out-of-the-way taverns on either side of the Charles River (which divides the cities of Cambridge and Boston). During this period Day became fascinated by the work of British artist and social reformer William Morris, whose Kelmscott Press produced lavish editions of works by Romantic poets and copies of illuminated Medieval manuscripts, among other delights. Determined to follow in Morris’s footsteps, Day established the firm of Copeland and Day with a friend. They quickly made an impact on the American art book market, producing the first American editions of such important works as Oscar Wilde’s Salomé and the periodical The Yellow Book, both illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.
In addition to his work in publishing, Day traveled widely in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, bringing back with him a large collection of traditional costumes, textiles, and furnishings. He became known for wearing these garments around Boston, cutting an extravagant and eccentric figure in the buttoned-up city. In the 1890s he became interested in photography, which had not yet become the artistic medium we know it as today. Photography was first popularized for the creation of portraits, and in the latter half of the nineteenth century became increasingly prevalent in various scientific disciplines. Day, who was entirely self-taught in the medium, was a pioneer in its use as an artistic medium. He is now recognized as one of the earliest and most important exemplars of the movement known as pictorialism. Pictorialist photographers self-consciously sought to make works of art, manipulating both the composition and development of a photograph to create an artistic image. Frequent elements of pictorialist photography include allusions to classical art; enigmatic subject matter; hazy, gauzy, and blurry images; and strong contrasts between light and dark.
Ziletta, this week’s Work of the Week, bears all the hallmarks of Day’s pictorialism. The young woman—perhaps a classmate of his from Boston’s Chauncy School—wears a head wrap, earrings, and dress that Day likely brought back from his travels. The origin of the name Ziletta is unclear, though one clue comes from an alternate title, Woman in Gypsy Costume. There is no evidence that Day knew any Romani people, and the title and accompanying costume are reliant on familiar stereotypes. The young women faces the camera directly, her luminous dark eyes staring intently—yet mysteriously—ahead. The light source is such that half of her face is brightly illuminated, while the other half is thrown into dark shadow. The background is a mottled blur, keeping the viewer’s attention squarely on her strong and beautiful face.
Day’s photographs of women gained him wide renown on both sides of the Atlantic, and he was invited to join the Photo-Secession by its founder, Alfred Stieglitz, another leading pictorialist photographer. Day refused, however, preferring to maintain his autonomy. Throughout the proceeding decades he pursued that vision where it took him, including to places which made others uncomfortable. He scandalized his neighbors in Norwood in 1896-1898, staging a series of outdoor Crucifixion scenes—inspired by the famous Passion Play at Oberammergau in Germany—in which he played the role of Jesus. He also made a number of strikingly beautiful, enigmatic male nudes, subjects which were controversial during his time. Eventually, Stieglitz and other members of Photo-Secession moved on from pictorialism, coming to favor a style they called “straight photography” which was supposedly free of the artistic flourishes and manipulations that characterized pictorialism. Day fell increasingly out of step with these currents and was largely forgotten as a pioneer of American photography, though recent scholarship has gone a long way towards reviving his reputation and historical importance.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
To read more on this work by F. Holland Day, visit our Collection page.
May 11, 2020: Tom Peterson, "The Divine Comedy"
A new acquisition to the permanent collection of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Tom Peterson’s The Divine Comedy was donated to the museum by the family of the artist following his unfortunate passing. Peterson had a long history with Rollins College; he taught at Rollins as a Professor of Art from 1958 to 1992. Although initially trained in painting, Peterson expanded his artistic practice to include sculpture, photography, and printmaking, and frequently collaborated with other artists in the Orlando area.
This painting references the titular narrative poem by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a work of Italian literature originally published in 1320. Dante’s Divine Comedy chronicles the author’s supposed visit to the realms of the afterlife, narrated in first person. Towards the right of the composition, Dante the Pilgrim—the figure holding a book—traverses through Hell, indicated by the fiery orange background. Specifically, Peterson referenced the thirteenth canto of the Inferno, where Dante and his spiritual guide Virgil journey through the forest of the suicides in the seventh circle of Hell. In the Inferno, violence against oneself is punished by the transformation of the body into a tree where the mythical harpies nest. In the narrative, Dante plucks a twig from a gnarled branch, only to witness blood gush from the wound and the trunk angrily yelp at him.
Peterson indicated the grotesque transfiguration of humans into trees with the inclusion of two disembodied heads in the branches. However, according to Rima Jabbur—a current Professor of Art at Valencia College and frequent Peterson collaborator—the trees in the composition were also inspired by the sculptural artworks of Orlando-based artist Cheryl Bogdonovich. In a phone interview with Morgan Snoap, the Fred W. Hicks Curatorial Fellow at CFAM, Jabbur reported the critical response to Bogdonovich’s composite sculptures. Many viewers interpreted the branched creations as appearing “Hellish” or representing the mythical dryads.
On the opposite side of the painting, Beatrice--Dante’s deceased love and allegory of purity--is depicted in triplicate. Jabbur posed for Peterson as Beatrice, marking this canvas as a collaborative effort between numerous local artists. By repeating the vision of Beatrice, Peterson potentially underlined the importance of the number three in Dante’s source text as a reference to the Holy Trinity and the Judeo-Christian practice of Biblical numerology. Dante’s Divine Comedy is split into three cantiche—the Inferno (Hell), the Purgatorio (Purgatory), and the Paradiso (Heaven)—with each cantica containing exactly thirty-three cantos. Dante’s fascination with triplets even extended to the content of his Divine Comedy—at the end of the Paradiso, he recounted witnessing a triple rainbow, symbolic of the three arms of the Holy Trinity.
This obsessive and repetitive structure is subtly repeated in Peterson’s painting through the rough division of the canvas into thirds, each likely referencing a cantica of the titular subject. Save for a brief appearance at the end of the Purgatorio, Beatrice does not fill an active role in the story until the Paradiso, where she serves as Virgil’s replacement guide in the spheres of Heaven. Thus, the left side of the composition can be interpreted as representing the Paradiso, the right side symbolizing the Inferno, and the dark, recessed space between the two poles constituting the Purgatorio.
Ultimately, Peterson’s The Divine Comedy grapples with a literary behemoth that has pervaded the Christian imagination with its detailed, sometimes enthusiastic descriptions of eternal punishment and salvation. In one canvas, Peterson effectively chronicled Dante’s journey from Hell to Heaven, a journey that continues to captivate literary scholars to this day. Peterson’s The Divine Comedy faithfully represents select passages from its source text, standing as a carefully orchestrated yet spatially enigmatic contemporary reinterpretation of Dante’s 1320 masterpiece.
Isaac Gorres
Fred Hicks Intern
See Tom Peterson's work on our Collection page.
May 4, 2020: Cig Harvey, "Scout and the Clementines, Rockport Maine"
Surrounded by a pristine bright white interior, a little girl peers sweetly over the edge of the table, the vivid orange clementines spread across the surface slightly disrupting her outward gaze towards the viewer. The scene, simultaneously still and fleeting, features the artist’s daughter Scout. It is one among a few photographs from Harvey’s series You an Orchestra You a Bomb in which Scout appears.
Cig Harvey describes that the series examines her relationship with life itself, and it began after a critical moment in her life. Harvey was in a car accident, and though physically unharmed, she did not speak for six weeks after the event. She was overwhelmed with thoughts of what could have happened if her daughter had been in the car with her. The idea that anyone’s life can change drastically in an instant altered Harvey’s perspective significantly, especially with her role as a mother. She noted:
"I became a better photographer when I became a mother, and by better, I mean the work got more complicated and less decorative, because my world became more complicated. The world became more beautiful, and it also became more terrifying."
These extremes are illustrated in the title of the series You an Orchestra You a Bomb, meaning there are beautiful components that make an orchestra, and terrible things that make a bomb. Her photographs explore the in-betweens of the terrifying and beautiful, and particularly consider the magic in daily life seen from Scout’s vantage point.
In recent times, I’ve looked at this work with refreshed appreciation and it has encouraged me to find the magic in the everyday too.
Elizabeth Coulter
Associate Curator of Education
See Cig Harvey's work on our Collection page.
April 27, 2020: George Grosz, "City Lights"
Art is often a reflection of the circumstances in which it is created, and a powerful testament about the human condition that emerges from personal and collective experience. There are plenty of instances in modern history that evidence the need to create in moments of great upheaval. Avant-garde movements were born in Europe during WWI and major shifts in artistic style developed as the United States recovered from the Great Depression. Like literature, theater, and music, an artistic gesture can capture the gravitas of a historical moment in a way that, even decades later, resonates with contemporary viewers.
In these times of social distancing and stay at home orders, cities around the world have been transformed in a way that perhaps we haven’t seen in our lifetime. Through this situation, I have been thinking about works in CFAM’s collection that capture the effects of world-wide events on the urban environment and the artist’s experience. In City Lights, German American artist George Grosz depicts Houston Street, Manhattan in the 1940s. We see the street at an angle, as if we were crossing and approaching the sidewalk. Neon signs indicate the entryways to hotels, a barbershop, and other places of business. On the right, a solitary figure approaches in the viewer’s direction towards the overthrown trash bins in the foreground. Far from idealized, the scene conveys a sense of the mundane; the blotchy application of color emphasizes the ordinary in this city view.
Grosz lived in Europe during the First World War and experienced chaos and political upheaval before he emigrated to the United States in 1933. His work is characterized by bold criticism of the political class and military officials, and a pessimistic view of society; he had joined the rebellious Dada movement in Berlin in 1918 and later, together with artists Otto Dix (1891-1969) and Max Beckmann (1884-1950), they became known as Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity. During the Second World War Grosz lived in New York where he taught at the Art Students League. His encounter with the metropolis is documented in numerous works from the 1940s, which focus on various aspects of the city. The war altered life in New York with many institutions temporarily transforming their facilities to accommodate production for the war effort and implementing the dimming of neon signs and lights to avoid potential enemy attacks.
More than 70 years later, New York, along with so many other cities around the country are being transformed once again by the measures implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19. I can’t help but wonder how the current experience of the city and the “new normal” will be represented in works of art for future generations to learn about this moment, just like Grosz’s works continue to resonate with us today. Looking at City Lights I try to imagine how an artist who left Europe after WWI to escape Nazi persecution arrived in New York in search of freedom and opportunity and experienced the changing urban landscape, transforming all around him as the U.S. entered WWII.
Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D.
Curator
To read more on this work by George Grosz, visit our Collection page.
April 20, 2020: Albert Bierstadt, "Shoshone Indians Rocky Mountains"
Albert Bierstadt was one of the most famous painters of his day, a fame he earned for his monumentally sized compositions depicting the soaring mountain landscapes of the trans-Mississippi American West. These canvases, which are so large they can be hard to fit even on the larger-than-usual walls of art museums, are impressive for more than just their size. Bierstadt’s smooth handling of the paint, the way in which his landscapes blend together into seamless and coherent wholes, belies the preparatory work that went into his compositions. While many of Bierstadt’s preparatory drawings were lost when his palatial home and studio burned in an 1882 fire, a number of them survive. CFAM holds one of the best of them, which I have selected to be this week’s Image of the Week.
In 1859 Bierstadt accompanied a U.S. Army surveying expedition to Nebraska and Wyoming, commanded by Colonel Frederick W. Lander. The artist, who had recently returned to his native New Bedford, Massachusetts from Düsseldorf, had decided to focus his career on the American West. Düsseldorf, which was home to one of the best-regarded art academies in the world during the 1840s and 1850s, favored a smooth and highly finished style of painting, executed in the studio rather than out-of-doors, as would become the fashion later in the nineteenth century. This preference for studio work did not mean, however, that artists trained in Düsseldorf ignored their surroundings. Part of the success of the studio model was a reliance on preparatory sketches and drawings, ranging in quality from quick, crude pencil that captured basic forms to relatively finished compositions such as this one. Bierstadt executed this sketch while out in the field with Lander, perhaps at the end of a long day of riding and sketching on the plains. Then, when he got back to the East Coast, he moved to the famed Tenth Street Studio Building in New York and set to work turning this and similar sketches into a finished painting.
That painting, Rocky Mountain, Lander’s Peak, was not finished until 1863, and is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The finished painting is huge—over six by ten feet—while this sketch is quite small, measuring 5 by 7 and 5/16 inches. In the sketch, however, we can see Bierstadt working out several of the compositional features of the finished work, including the relationship among sky, land, and water, as well as the integration of the Native American people into the landscape. Unlike colleagues like George Catlin and Charles Bird King, who presented portraits of named and recognizable Native American people, Bierstadt is not concerned with individuality. In both this sketch and the finished picture, he integrates the Shoshone into the landscape, representing them as part of the natural scenery rather. The pyramidal grouping of five individuals at center mirrors the shape of their tipis to the right, and the more distant mountains. The stability of this formation suggests the native people as immutable and unchanging features of the landscape, standing them in contrast to the dynamism that Bierstadt—along with most Americans of the time—believed characterized Americans of European descent. During his travels he wrote frequently to the East Coast press, urging his fellow artists to depict these people, who he believed would soon disappear from the landscape. Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak was a sensation, selling for $25,000, the most of any American painting to that point. It, and the large numbers of similar paintings turned out by Bierstadt and others during and after the Civil War, formed part of the visual culture of westward expansion, helping to accelerate the dispossession of indigenous peoples from the land. Shoshone Indians Rocky Mountains is thus not just a record of how the Rocky Mountains looked in the 1850s, but also of how white Americans thought and felt about them during the era of Manifest Destiny.
Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow
To read more on this work by Albert Bierstadt, visit our Collection page.
April 13, 2020: Lavinia Fontana, "The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion"
There are several reasons I chose this painting to start our “work of the week” series besides the obvious timing during the week following Easter Sunday. Even outside of my bias of having been trained as an Italienist, the painting is one of the most important Old Masters in our collection (as a mature work by one of the few female artists of the Italian Renaissance known to us today) and one of less than a dozen by the artist in American museums. Moreover, it was the one painting in the collection of CFAM that I was rather familiar with before I started working here, having requested it for a 2011 exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art. Upon my arrival at Rollins, and finally seeing the painting in person, I fully understood why the curators of that exhibition had been so distressed when the loan was not approved.
Up close, the painting – its diminutive size notwithstanding – has immense power. The skillful composition with Christ at the center, his body surrounded by six attending angels whose stances, each mirroring another, create a delicate ballet-like movement while directing our gaze in all the right places for deciphering the iconography: the dead Christ, the cross from which he had just been taken down, the column of the Flagellation. The diaphanous pinks and light yellows of the angels’ vestments, as well as the stronger red and blue directly flanking Christ, emphasize the pallor of his dead body as well as marking him as the center of the composition. And yet, for all the narrative episodes clearly referenced (see also the Crown of Thorns and whip in the foreground), this is not a narrative painting, but rather a meditative piece – an aid to prayer and contemplation. This is reinforced by the angel to the right of Christ, robed in red, the only figure in the painting looking straight out, inviting beholders to think about what they see, and contemplate the meaning. This, together with the small size of the painting, suggests that it was intended for private devotion, likely in the private residence of the (unfortunately unknown) wealthy patron for whom it was painted.
The odds that Lavinia Fontana had to overcome to become a successful artist in 16th century Italy were enormous. And it was harder still, as a woman, to receive commissions for religious art – considered of a higher order than other genres, such as portraiture. Indeed, we know that Lavinia enjoyed both private and public commissions for mythological and religious works, and quite a bit of recognition in her time. Yet even an avowed admirer – and actual patron – of the painter wrote, a few short years after our painting was created, “This excellent painter, to say the truth, in every way prevails above the condition of her sex.” After her death, she descended into obscurity, to be rediscovered only in the late 20th century, with the ascent of feminist art history. Amazing, in this context, is the fact that The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion entered CFAM’s collection as early as 1936, the first important Old Masters painting to do so. I so wish I could ask the donors if they knew what an exceptional painting they had and thank them for giving it to our museum.
Ena Heller, Ph.D.
Bruce A. Beal Director
To read more on this work by Lavinia Fontana, visit our Collection page.