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  • Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
    Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
    A fascinating and highly entertaining look at one of the most important families of the Renaissance era--the Medici.
  • Sister Wendy - The Complete Collection (Story of Painting / Grand Tour / Odyssey / Pains of Glass)
    Sister Wendy - The Complete Collection (Story of Painting / Grand Tour / Odyssey / Pains of Glass)

    “Sister Wendy Beckett has transformed public appreciation of art through her astonishing knowledge, insight and passion for painting and painters.” This set includes Sister Wendy's Story of Painting, Sister Wendy's Odyssey, and Sister Wendy's Grand Tour. Simultaneously delightful and scholarly--this is a must have for anyone interested in art history.

  • Exit Through the Gift Shop
    Exit Through the Gift Shop
    When British stencil artist Banksy traveled to Los Angeles to work, he came across obscure French filmmaker Thierry Guetta and his badly organized collection of videotapes involving the activities of graffiti artists. Inspired, Banksy assembled them with new footage to create this talked-about documentary, and the result is a mind-boggling and odd film (so strange as to be thought a hoax by some) about outsider artists and the definition of art itself.
  • The Impressionists
    The Impressionists
    A dramatization of the Impressionist movement as seen through the eyes of Claude Monet. Highly entertaining and informative.
  • The Impressionists: The Other French Revolution
    The Impressionists: The Other French Revolution
    A very personal and revealing look at the personalities that created Impressionism.

Entries in Expressionism (28)

Monday
Apr092018

“A Signature at Gunpoint Cannot Lead to a Valid Conveyance”

Egon Schiele - Woman Hiding Her Face (click photo for larger image)“The Art Newspaper” reported on April 6th that London art dealer Richard Nagy has to return two Egon Schiele works worth $5 million dollars to heirs of Holocaust victims. Although Nagy argued that his purchase of the works was entirely legal, Justice Charles E. Ramos posited that the manner of the initial seizure of such works undermines this argument. “A signature at gunpoint cannot lead to a valid conveyance.”

The battles and debates over who legally holds title to works alleged to have been confiscated by the Nazis during WWII continue—as do the lawsuits over such art. In 2005, Massachusetts industrialist David Bakalar claimed ownership of yet another work by Schiele. That suit was won by Bakalar, on the grounds that the heirs of the original owners did not claim their right to title soon enough. According to the 2016 Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (HEAR)—claims can now be made on Nazi-looted work up to six years after they have been discovered.

In both cases noted here, the original owner of the art in question was Fritz Grünbaum.

Grünbaum was an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, operetta and pop song writer, director, actor and master of ceremonies. He was also a  well-known collector of Austrian modernist art. Of the more than 400 pieces he owned, 80 of them were works created by Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Grünbaum was killed in Dachau concentration camp in 1941.

In many such cases, proof of original ownership cannot be determined, nor can it be proven that such items were stolen by the Nazis. Richard Nagy intends to appeal the decision on the basis that evidence of seizure of the works by the Nazis does not exist.

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was one of the leading figures of Austrian Expressionism, whose works embody an “unprecedented level of emotional and sexual directness and use of figural distortion in place of conventional notions of beauty”.

The work featured here is one of the two works awarded to Grünbaum’s heirs. You can read more about Schiele right here on What About Art?

Friday
Nov172017

Alma Thomas: A Force in the Washington Color School

Alma Thomas, Breeze Rustling Through Fall Flowers, 1968, Acrylic on canvas - 58 7/8 x 50 in. - The Phillips Collection - Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)Alma Thomas (ca. 1891-1978) was an African-American Expressionist painter and art educator. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C. Thomas began to paint seriously in 1960, when she retired from her thirty-eight year career as an art teacher in the public schools of Washington, D.C. In the years that followed she would come to be regarded as a major painter of the Washington Color Field School.

Thomas was in her eighth decade of life when she produced her most important works. Earliest to win acclaim was her series of Earth paintings—pure color abstractions of concentric circles that often suggest target paintings and stripes. Done in the late 1960s, these works bear references to rows and borders of flowers inspired by Washington's famed azaleas and cherry blossoms. The titles of her paintings often reflect this influence. In these canvases, brilliant shades of green, pale and deep blue, violet, deep red, light red, orange, and yellow are offset by white areas of untouched raw canvas, suggesting jewel-like Byzantine mosaics.

The works featured here is composed of a vertical grid of closely spaced stripes filled with bars of contrasting colors on a painted white ground. The acrylic paints are thinned almost to the point of transparency, retaining the luminous quality often associated with watercolor. The modulated white background functions in the same way the white of watercolor paper can glow from beneath the painted surface. Thomas sometimes produced as many as twenty watercolor studies before beginning a painting on canvas.

Monday
Oct232017

Emil Nolde and the Medievalists

Emil Nolde - Crucifixion (The Life of Christ) - 1912 - Oil on canvas - 87x76 in. - Nolde Stiftung Seebüll  (Germany - Neukirchen) (click photo for larger image)The artists of the Modern Era were determined to shake off the dust of the Renaissance—and the canons of classical approaches that had “ruled” them for over 400 years. Perhaps ironically, many primary resources for the Moderns came from the Medievals! Modern Art draws heavily upon medieval art—in its approaches to color, line, surface imagery, abstraction and subject matter. In addition, art forms invented in the Middle Ages—such as woodcuts, wood carvings, and everyday items elevated to the status of art—were revived during the Modern period.

Emil Nolde (featured elsewhere on this site) was heavily influenced by medieval art. A restoration of specific, Christian imagery, in a new, colorful style, was not only a hallmark of his oeuvre but an important contribution to Expressionism and the northern visual arts tradition.

Unknown Master, Italian - Crucifix with the Stories of the Passion (detail) around 1200 - Tempera on wood - Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (click photo for larger image)The medieval work featured here shows one of the scenes (a Deposition) from the Stories of the Passion. It was created by one of many unknown masters of the Middle Ages. The Nolde painting featured illustrates how his compositions abstracted and exaggerated forms to delineate figures in a compressed space, bypassing the use of traditional linear perspective to relate the story.

Monday
Jun122017

Marsden Hartley: An American Expressionist

Marsden Hartley - Mount Katahdin, Autumn No. 1 - 1939-40 - Oil on canvas - Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (click photo for larger image)Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was one of a circle of American modernist painters that included Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Arthur Dove and Charles Demuth.  

Hartley had his first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery in New York. Extensive travels acquainted him with a variety of modern movements. He was first moved by Cézanne, and the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, then later by his contact with the German Expressionists. All of what Hartley absorbed contributed to a distinctive, personal style, seen best in his bold paintings of the harsh landscape of Maine. 

Maine held some very painful childhood memories for the artist, and yet it became his primary and most profound resource later in life. In his last ten years, Hartley alternated between New York City and Maine. When he was sixty-two years old, he made a pilgrimage to Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in the state. This painting commemorates that accomplishment and captures a view of the mountain beloved by decades of American writers and painters. This work “embraces the modernist potential of the famous mountain while capturing a vivid sense of Hartley’s intimate relationship to his native countryside.”

Hartley was also a poet and essayist, and his writings continue to move people.

I’ll be offering an art history class on Marsden Hartley next Fall at LMCCE. Keep your eyes open for that one.

Friday
May122017

Marianne von Werefkin: Stunning Expressionism

Marianne von Werefkin - Sturmwind (Storm Wind) c. 1915-17- Oil on canvas - 47 x 62 cmRussian-German-Swiss Expressionist Marianne von Werefkin (1860-1938) met fellow artist Alexei Jawlensky in 1892—and moved with him to Munich in 1896. She put her own painting on hold for over ten years for the sake of his art—but began painting again in 1906. 

While in Munich, the couple met Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter. The four artists frequently painted together, in the open air, in and around Murnau—a rural town outside of Munich where Münter owned a house. They founded a new artist-group in 1909, the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Association of Artists in Munich, NKVM). It became a forum of exhibitions and programming. After a few years, however, Kandinsky and co-member Franz Marc distanced themselves from this group and formed Der Blau Reiter ( the Blue Rider), which covers the second phase of German Expressionism.

At the outbreak of WWI, Werefkin and Jawlensky moved to Switzerland, eventually settling in Geneva. By 1918, the couple had separated and Werefkin moved alone to Ascona, located on the shore of Lake Maggiore, in Switzerland, where she remained for the rest of her life. She continued to paint in the Expressionist style. She also formed another artists’ group, Großer Bär (Big Bear) in 1924.

Werefkin’s work embodies influences from both Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch, yet her results are uniquely her own. She is one of many female artists to whom a great deal more scholarly attention should be paid.