Surprised by the Wikipedia “Picture of the Day” on this Christmas Day, and on my phone this morning; for the real thing, so to speak, is known to me, and to be viewed just a very few kilometres away from where I live in Germany. The picture depicts one of the panels of Hans Pleydenwurff’s “Dreikönigs” altar piece in the famous medieval St. Lorenz church in the heart of Nuremberg.
Panel from the “Dreikönigsaltar” (the Magi), Hans Pleydenwurff, mid-15th century, St. Lorenz, Nuremberg.
Reminded me also, and not gladly so, of one of my plans earlier in the year that went awry, and that was to visit Ghent to see Jan Van Eyck’s restored altar piece in St. Bavo’s Cathedral, and a greater exhibition of his works at the Museum of Fine Art. Alas. For the moment at least, here is a visual tour of the exhibition that was forced to close early. And, a lot has been written about it, and especially the “mystic lamb” – for instance, here at the NYT, and by Jonathan Jones at The Guardian.
Looking again at some of Van Eyck’s work, and other early Netherlandish painters, elements from that school can be discerned in Pleydenwurff’s work; just a generation on and in southern Germany.
Irrespective, there is one part of me pleased enough that some more diverse (if you count “women” as diverse!) historical figures, are finding their way into public spaces. And, of course, that Virginia Woolf should find a place now in Richmond, where she lived for a long period, is fitting. Though sitting on a park bench watching the day go by – is that not a bit too Mrs. Dalloway? As the tortured soul she does not have to be depicted, but… And, whether this trend is stretching to people of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds (beyond Gandhi and/or Mandela) I have not heard. Then, there is the sceptical me, one who can’t help but doubt whether any number of busts, statues, plaques, do very much in the way of taking the viewer (or casual passer-by) beyond the public space into the public consciousness; whether they really tell us anything of the person, the time and circumstance, and are in the end only sentimental reflections of a work’s creator and the society and time in which he/she/they lived, rather than that of the subject.
There are indeed enough that one could be well rid of – for instance, Cecil Rhodes; a hullabaloo that spans continents, and Sloane; now put under wraps at the British Museum. A couple of years old now, but this is an opinion on the greater global predicament of just what to do with some of these guys (they are mostly “guys”!). And Jonathan Jones questions the whole “folly of depicting history through the dead art of statues”, and pleads for “serious art” and a contemporary approach that remembers without the false promise of restoration. His “selfie in bronze” description is spot-on – and not unlike my reflections above.
…and into the light of day. Gifted now to Charleston, an extraordinary collection of erotic works by Duncan Grant; and as explained in this BBC News video clip:
Produced during the 1940s and 50s, the more than four hundred works were given by Grant to his close friend and fellow artist Edward Le Bas (here some biographical details at Charleston, and here some of his work at the Tate) in 1959, and after Le Bas’ death in 1966 presumed to be lost. We now know, they just moved on; changing hands, ending up about eleven years ago with the theatre designer Norman Coates, and it is he whom is to be thanked for providing for this interesting addition to the complicated artistic legacy surrounding the Bloomsbury Group.
It also says something, and one tends to forget, about just how very recently it is that society (and not just British) has changed such that homoerotic works, like Grant’s drawings, may be openly shared without fear of legal repercussions or gasps of outrage.
Cover of “The Americans” by Robert Frank, Grove Press (2nd Printing, 1969)
At The New York Timesan interactive photographic portrait of a photographic portrait – this latter, from the legendary 1959 book The Americans by Robert Frank. The cover of that book is a startling image of a street car in segregated New Orleans taken by Frank during a road trip through the United States in 1955-57, and the NYT piece by Arthur Lubow uses that image as the impetus for an interpretation and a comparative study against other works of visual art – exploring racial and social division, hierarchy, symbolism. I don’t need to say how powerfully this rings, but should mention how unwelcome Frank’s “America” was to critics of the day. Here is a link to a working print of the “New Orleans Trolley-car” from the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art – more generally, a great online resource for looking at Frank’s extensive work.
A startling, comparative photographic study at The New York Times! Inspired by the solitude and deserted streets of a city under lockdown, the photographer Mauricio Lima has returned to the scenes of Eugène Atget‘s Paris of a century ago. Startling is; how ever much things change, devoid of the human factor, it is that which endures, in essence unchanged, that comes to the fore. One is invited to consider the act of habitation as a continuum, as bringing with it responsibilities – for the place in and of itself, for its history and its future, and for all the generations who have and will occupy that space.
Atget’s work is perhaps familiar to many from nostalgic postcards or illustrations, and I probably also similarly first encountered his work; one is tempted to think it a feat unto itself how Paris has been able to spin images that suggest melancholy and desolation to enhance itsimage as the city of lights, lovers …! Rather contrary sensual perceptions, but perhaps there-in lay the abiding allure of these photographs; they capture the essence of an urban landscape, and that in turn captivates the human heart.
…the incomparable significance of Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime. The scene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way.
from part VI of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin, 1936.
In my opinion a remarkably accurate analogy, for Atget has with almost forensic rigour extricated place from its human constraints, assiduously excavating the remnants, giving them every subjective advantage, and thereby humanising them.
A few years ago, an old worn paperback came to my attention at my local library’s bazaar -costing all but nothing, I was momentarily taken aback because I knew of it’s legend status amongst aficionados of the history and art of photography, but then kindly took it off their hands!
Cover of “Atget Paris”
Portrait of Atget, by Berenice Abbott, 1927
IVe Quartier Notre Dame
From my copy of “Atget Paris”, Eugène Atget, ed. Hazan
On any one of my next flânerie, be the streets deserted as they may, I’ll look again and differently, and see how rich they are in hidden humanity – and wonder at how the eye can deceive and all that exposed by a technical apparatus in the right hands.
In the last week or so, two disparate associations have made me consider just how much European culture (that is, the western Christian version) has invested in commanding the narrative of (their) inherent superiority, and how even today there are some who would seek to reverse or suppress an appreciation and wider representation of cultural diversity. To perpetuate their lineal myopic narrative they return now, as was so during the Enlightenment, to the Mediterranean and Aegean of the classical antiquity.
Firstly, the bizarre Presidential decree, entitled – believe it or not – “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”, that instructs planners and architects to resist the dictates of a zeitgeist determined to be obsessed with diversity and inclusiveness (and presumably any innovative design tendencies of the 20th century), and instead adhere to a traditional architectural form, that is, one inspired by the classical lines favoured in the founding years of the new republic and perfected in the moral wastelands of the antebellum South.
The Call-Collins House, The Grove: Tallahassee, Florida
As The New York Times says in an editorial:
…The proposed executive order reflects a broader inclination in some parts of American society to substitute an imagined past for the complexities and possibilities of the present. It embodies a belief that diversity is a problem and uniformity is a virtue. It is advocating for an un-American approach to architecture.
Beyond the retrograde aesthetic that seems to be espoused, I can’t help but ponder that here we have another insidious attempt by the President and his cohorts to undermine a fragile social cohesion, and that along racial lines. One can well imagine how the power and grace of David Adijaye’s wonderful National Museum of African American History and Culture would send them off on a delusory tangent, whereby the Times’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes this wonderful piece offering a more nuanced definition of “classical” – but then “nuance” is not a category applicable in some thought processes.
David Adijaye’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
And a second association arose out of my reflections upon visiting an exhibition in Frankfurt a few days ago. At the Liebieghaus, and entitled “Gods in Color” , displayed were an impressive range of reproductions of antique sculpture reimagined in the colorful splendour of their time.
My own photograph of the polychromy reproduction of the so-called Small Herculaneum Woman type, Delos, 2nd c. BC
I was interested in many different aspects, including the historical narrative and cultural significance of the sculptures, the techniques and materials used in their creation and the contemporary techniques used to expose the polychromy. But, prompted by learning (short video clip below) that there had been evidence enough in the 18th century of antique polychromy, contrary to the essentially monochrome narrative inherited from the Middle Ages, and, further, that the preeminent art historian of the time, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (this a Wiki link, better is this from a 2017 exhibition in Weimar, unfortunately only in German), was erroneously seen as a proponent of the marble-white theory (until 2008!), I have been thinking a lot about the enduring public perception of the “whiteness” of antiquity – be it in sculpture, attire…and buildings.
Gods In Color – Golden Edition (to August 30, 2020)
And here I return to the very Trumpian view of the architectural imperative: the State embellishing (better said, white-washing) history and defining the present in the image of this falsely received and often discredited past.
Library of Congress file card, circa 1936. Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Like many others I suppose, I have this Dorothea Lange photograph, mostly referred to as “Migrant Mother”, imprinted on some region of my brain. For me, it has come to represent the extreme rural poverty of the United States in the Great Depression years between the World Wars of the 20th century. When, then, I was writing about Marilynne Robinson’s “Lila” last year, it seemed like an appropriate visual representation of the itinerant life Lila led as a child and young woman.
My copy of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, 1939.
And whenever I think about John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath I also have such images in my mind’s eye; going now to look, I see the cover print is in fact not from Lange rather includes one from Walker Evans of a farmer family – one not unlike the Joads perhaps.
It is interesting to note that both Lange and Evans worked for the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration during the 1930s. Whether their paths crossed I can’t say, but it is as a consequence of this government employment and many of their images therefore falling in the public domain, that we may thank for their continuing presence today.
Not living in NYC nor likely to get there anytime soon, this NY Times magazine piece on the current MoMA exhibition Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (through May 9 2020) is informative only indirectly, but does provoke anew thoughts on internal migration, and the underlying circumstance of economic hardship abetted by the unholy alliance between the machinations of big capital and the vagaries of climate and land, and its more sinister iteration when it is driven not only by economic needs but by racism and segregation – the great migratory movements of African-Americans out of the South, northward and westward, in search of jobs and dignity.
On the MoMA website are some wonderful resources that hopefully will remain available long after the exhibition finishes. And here is a trailer that gives some sense of an extraordinary woman who sought and found the human condition in every face, and whose photo-journalism has become art without losing the power of the very real moments she captured with her eye and camera.
Trailer to “Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures” exhibition at MoMA
