A Stroll in the Gallery - Le violin de Ingres

Man Ray. Le violin de Ingres. 1924.

Doctoring photographs was nothing knew when Man Ray created this iconic image in 1924. Photographers had been retouching photos ever since Niépce and Daguerre invented the medium in the early 1800s. Indeed, an early test of the “art” in photography was evidence of the photo-maker’s hand in the print. It was understood to be a sleight of hand, known to discerning connoisseurs but not the public at large. What was astounding and revolutionary about Man Ray’s work was the obvious irony of his manipulation. To impose anachronism on it, Le violin de Ingres can be viewed as the Mother of All Photoshopped Images.

The model here is the legendary Kiki of Montparnasse, demurely Orientalist in her salad days.

A Stroll in the Gallery – Women in Art

I want to learn how to do the type of photo montage in this YouTube clip of Women in Art. I like the way rotating images produces the effect of turning heads and smoothes the segue from image to image.

It reminds me of a cherished scene I witnessed at the NGA in Washington. As a father holding hands with two young daughters marched triumphantly into the Rotunda, he quipped, “There you have it, ladies, 500 years of Great Art in half an hour!”

Hats off to Ms. Modigliani for showing me this one.

A Stroll in the Gallery: The Artist and His Mother

Arshile Gorky. The Artist and His Mother. c1926-c1942. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Duke Ellington in Paris

Herman Leonard. Duke Ellington at the Olympia Park Theater, Paris. 1958. Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans.

NPR (050707) featured an interview with Herman Leonard reminiscing about the jazz musicians he photographed over a 60-year career. The NPR web page includes photos and text:

Photographer Herman Leonard, 84, captured jazz giants like Billie Holiday and Miles Davis on film as they worked in smoky, cramped, late-night clubs. But he almost lost his amazing collection to Hurricane Katrina.

As the storm bore down on New Orleans, Leonard rushed most of his negatives to a vault at a museum near his home. However, thousands of his prints were lost to the flood waters.

Some of the photos that were salvaged went on display last month at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. And Leonard's latest book, Jazz, Giants and Journeys, includes a full collection of photos that span his long career.

Leonard tells Michele Norris he's grateful for what he was able to salvage from the storm, but much like favorite recipes, photographic prints never turn out the same way twice. He hasn't moved back to his home city of New Orleans, and says he'll live there again only if the city can regain some semblance of what it once was.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Billie’s Killer Shoes

Herman Leonard. Billie Holiday’s Shoes. 1955. Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans.

Jazz photographer Herman Leonard told NPR why he chose this shot Lady Day’s shoes: "I thought to myself, this sort of epitomizes her life. She was in chains most of the time. She never really had any full control of her own life," he says. "I like to photograph images — particularly of well-known people — where you don't see their face, but the image does express part of their personality."

A Stroll in the Gallery: Big Ol’ Kiss

Henry Butler. Big Ol’ Kiss. 2005. Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans.

When I searched for “blind photographer” I got dozens of results for bird blinds a photographer might buy and use to hide in. Therein lies a story, but I may not get back to it today. When I tried again with “photographer who is blind,” the first result was Henry Butler, the New Orleans pianist and recording artist. He also does photography. “Big Ol’ Kiss” comes from How EYE See It, a 2005 show at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans. The show’s web page includes more than 30 of Henry’s images plus a short video in which he talks about his motive and process as a blind photographer.

“I was always curious as to why sighted people looked at images and got so focused and intrigued by and enamored with images on paper or on canvas,” Henry says. “So I decided I needed more than just an intellectual explanation for what I was either touching or realizing through somebody else’s eyes. I decided maybe I’ll just become a participant in capturing visual images.”

I went looking for an image created by a blind photographer to illustrate that point, precisely, in my M.I.T. talk. The talk is titled “Re-Imagining Accessibility in Participatory Culture.” The meaning of accessibility goes deeper than minimum standards of access to media allowing passive consumption. Accessibility’s deeper meaning is engagement in creating and transforming media. Henry was curious about the power of visual images, and he knew he wouldn’t understand that power until he began to make visual images for himself. He wanted to participate.

I’ve had a similar experience this month as I’ve constructed the PowerPoint presentations that support the Re-Imagining Accessibility talks. PowerPoint is a highly ritualized use of visual rhetoric supporting, sometimes displacing, oral discourse. PowerPoint always alienated me in meetings and seminars when my role was limited to passive visual consumption. I didn’t begin to make peace with PowerPoint until I figured out how to work with it using my own accessible technology. Now I’m re-imagining its creative possibilities for me. And I’m thinking about how a blind rhettor can re-claim a little gaze in visual rhetoric.

A Stroll in the Gallery: The Repentant St. Peter

El Greco. The Repentant St. Peter. 1600-1605. Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C..

In April 1999, after resonating deeply with the bearded voyager ‘s supplication in Thomas Cole’s painting, I found the same gesture in El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter. I was struck then by the sinewy muscles in Peter’s arms. This is a working man, not a pope. Of what did he repent?

Eight years later, what I remember is the simplicity of Peter’s gesture, not the painting’s vivid color or details such as the tear in the saint’s eye. It is the deeply felt humanity, not the saintliness, that moves me.

Again, I invoke the poetry of Yehudi Amichai: Gods come and go. Prayer is constant.

A Stroll in the Gallery: The Voyage of Life

Thomas Cole. The Voyage of Life: Manhood. 1842. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Looking at Thomas Hart Benton’s murals last week made me think about Thomas Cole’s panoramic series of allegorical paintings, The Voyage of Life. The series consists of four large paintings, not quite wall-sized but each deserving a wall of its own. Trying to imagine a room surrounded by Benton’s murals led me to remember the various galleries in which I’ve experienced Cole’s masterpiece.

The National Gallery of Art moves its collection around every few years, sometimes with disappointing results. You may expect to find old favorites in a cul-de-sac with a comfortable couch where you can contemplate quietly, only to find the paintings relocated to a busy thoroughfare. That happened to me in 2004, the last time I viewed The Voyage of Life. The paintings were hung in the museum’s southeast quadrant in a “vestibule” gallery leading to four other galleries. Four paintings, four walls, four doors, no couch – and a constant stream of chattering people moving in every direction. The location certainly had high foot traffic, and that would be good if the goal were selling Voyage of Life appointment calendars, umbrellas and tote-bags. High traffic, however, is reversely proportional to quality viewing. I missed the lonely cul-de-sac in the southwest quadrant where I’d spent hours looking, thinking, and writing about these paintings.

The Voyage of Life: Childhood; Youth; Manhood; Old Age.

When I first looked at Cole’s paintings I was but a callow youth, like the boy in the second painting, restless and ready to chase castles in the air. I didn’t care much for Cole’s allegorical content. Then and now, I thought the angel’s depiction as symbolic radiant light was contrived. But Cole’s sweeping landscapes caught my imagination. The contrast between dramatic foreground and limitless horizon never failed to move me. It is a painterly effect that may not be perceptible with the eye alone while standing in a real landscape. The effect also is perceptible to the heart, to some vestigial memory of place. It is the depiction of feelings provoked or inspired by the landscape. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries this quality was called ‘The Sublime.” If the angel seemed a little hokey, Cole’s treatment of distant shadow and light on the horizon was numinous. And yes, even as a callow youth, I knew and used that word. In time I came to know other painters from the Hudson River School whose style is called Luminist.

Cole’s allegory began to resonate for me only after my own bateaux had been battered in life’s cataract, as suggested by the third painting. Ms. Modigliani and I spent a rainy April afternoon with The Voyage of Life in 1999 shortly after my mother’s memorial service in Yellow Springs. We went to Washington to complete Mary Lou’s rites at the National Gallery of Art. I looked at the bearded man still standing in his boat, improbably, after a long, treacherous run through the rapids. I thought, that’s me, this is my life. Then I remembered a line from a poem by Yehudi Amichai: Gods come and go. Prayer is constant.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Arts of the City

Thomas Hart Benton. Detail of Arts of the City. 1932. Whitney Museum of American Art (original installation), New Britain Museum of Art.

This image is part of a large wall mural called Arts in the City, which itself is one of an assemblage of large murals called Arts of Life in America. The murals were painted in 1932 in a room of the Whitney Museum of American Art in its former Greenwich Village location. A substantial part of the work was installed in 1953 in the New Britain Museum of Art, which hosts the virtual gallery where the murals can be seen in much greater detail.

I stumbled upon this image in a Google search for images from the Harlem Renaissance. Most of what I found were grainy, B/W photos, so Benton’s vivid colors and dramatic composition caught my eye. It may not be the broadest representation of the time and place, but it conveyed what I wanted to say about the mixing of race and class in Harlem. The Collyer Brothers definitely were isolated from that social milieu. Since then I’ve thought about Harlem’s role as one of America’s preeminent creative centers.

Finding this image and putting it into my first PowerPoint presentation was the moment I discovered that I could play in PPt. Until then, PPt had been a barrier to overcome, not a tool for my own creative discovery.

This is the first image of my Gallery Stroll series that I have seen only digitally, not physically. Now I’ve added the New Britain Museum of Art to my wanderlust list so I can stand in a room surrounded by the Benton murals.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Blind Boy Reading with His Lips

David Seymour. Blind Boy Reading with His Lips. 1948. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This photograph was part of a David Seymour retrospective exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art In 2006. Seymour was better known as Chim (pronounced “shim” in French), a contraction of his Polish surname, Szyman. He was a pioneering photojournalist in the 1930s who co-founded the legendary photo agency, Magnum Photos, along with Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Brasson.

The photo was taken in Italy in 1948. The boy is reading Braille with his lips because he has no arms. Chim’s humanity and trusting rapport with children is obvious in the way he framed this shot. The image conveys the patient work done by a blind reader to gain access to a text. It expresses one of my deepest convictions about disability: the work of accessibility is creative work.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Blind

Paul Strand. Blind. 1916. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This photograph of a blind beggar in New York City has haunted me ever since I saw it in a Paul Strand retrospective at the East Wing in 1990. It documents a slice of social history at the height of the “Progressive” Era when New York officials required beggars to be licensed. The beggar’s license number is pinned to her coat above the placard that identifies her as blind. The image stirs fierce feelings in me reaching back to 17^th century Paris and its convenient myth of The Court of Miracles.

Strand captured novel candid images of street people using a large format camera tricked out with a right angle lens. He appeared to be photographing some neutral scene, not his unsuspecting subject. He was too shy, or too ethically naive, to ask permission.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day

Claude Monet. Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day. 1906. National Gallery of Art, Washington

A Stroll in the Gallery: Venus with a Mirror

Titian. Venus with a Mirror. ca 1555. National Gallery of Art, Washington

In the same way Friday afternoons lead to Café Mouffe, Sunday mornings make me want to stroll through an art museum. Not a forced march, mind you, and not culture creep in a blockbuster cue, 20 seconds per viewer per painting. I want to stroll and be surprised. I want to visit old flames like Venus with a Mirror and rediscover passionate engagement.

Were I in Washington this morning, I’d take the Metro to the Archives stop and head for the Constitution Avenue entrance of the National Gallery of Art. I’d plan to arrive just before the grand bronze doors were unlocked. While waiting I might muse on the historical fact that President James Garfield was assassinated on the spot in 1881, when it was the site of a busy railroad station.

Then I’d sweep up the white marble staircase to the black marble rotunda. Returning to this glorious space never fails to move me. I find a bench, sit, and soak it in. Over the years I’ve chosen the rotunda with its cathedral light, its resplendent fountain and resonant echoes as the sacred place where I honor my parents. For me it is a place suffused with meaning and emotion, what Pierre Nora calls a lieu de memoir. Since I am now the steward of my parents’ Yellow Springs house, memories of them are always near to hand. I come to this soaring rotunda to celebrate their spirits. And I thank them for bringing me to the National Gallery of Art as a child.

After the rotunda I choose a direction for my stroll. I could turn east and head for the Monet gallery that is sure to hold Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day. Or I turn west and head for the Titians. The Monet gallery will have relaxing sofas and a stream of people passing through. Bracketed by innumerable Madonna’s with Child and popely/princely portraits, the Titian gallery may be the route less traveled. If there’s a sofa, too, it might be a hidden garden of delight.

I spent a week reading and writing in these galleries in the spring of 1999, three decades after my parents brought me here for the first time. Three months after my mother’s death, it became a spiritual journey to coming to rest here. (See the March 11 Stroll for Mary Lou’s most-cherished painting at NGA.) In the Monet gallery I’d try to read Paul Tucker’s biography of the painter, but I spent more time listening to snatches of conversation as others adored the paintings. I realized then that my experience of art in museums draws as much on the social context overheard in the moment as on direct visual perception. That’s how a half-blind flaneur looks at paintings.

In the Titian gallery I sank into the sofa and read John Hale’s magisterial history, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. What a place to read such a book! I filled a notebook with writing about art and history. I paused often to gaze across the gallery at Venus with a Mirror. At a distance of 15 feet I couldn’t begin to see any detailed form beyond a blur. I knew the form; it was a lieu de memoir. What I could see, or apprehend, was the warm, rosy glow of the goddess’s skin.

When I first saw the painting at age 14, I learned how the experience of art could arouse me. Arouse is not a metaphor. Strolling through a museum with Ms. Modigliani is the most enchanting kind of foreplay on a rainy afternoon. At 14 I was amazed to think that Titian must have felt this way about Venus (and the artist’s model) when he painted her. He was approaching 70 then, and he kept the painting in his studio until the day he died. I have to smile now at callow youth and everything left to learn about the sensuality of old men.

At 14 I also apprehended something about painting that would take years to articulate. What makes an oil painting distinct from every other form of visual representation (including this digital image of an oil painting) is the way oil-based pigment absorbs light. Pigment not only reflects light, it absorbs it to some degree and depth, depending on the thickness of paint and varnish applied to the canvas. Titian may have been the first painter to discover how light could animate skin tones. Warmth of fleshly color, not erotic form, breathes the palpable, glowing life into his nudes. In this art Titian remains the master and Venus his muse.

What’s He Smoking in that Pipe?

Auguste Renoir. Claude Monet. 1872. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

As the old mountain song about a bear goes, “He ain’t ever been caught, ain’t ever been treed. Some folks say he looks a lot like me.” But we were so much younger then. My goal now is growing old with a Monet graybeard and water lilies in the garden.

Ten Years of Ardor for Ms. Modigliani

Amadeo Modigliani. Nude on a Blue Cushion. 1917. National Gallery of Art.

Happy Anniversary, Ms. M.!

A Stroll in the Gallery: A Girl with a Watering Can

Auguste Renoir. A Girl with a Watering Can. 1876. National Gallery of Art, Washington

My mother’s most favorite painting at NGA. Posted today in memory of her birthday.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Francesca von Habsburg

Francesca von Habsburg NT 022507/print

In case, at this point, you are inclined to dismiss her spendthrift passion as the grande folie of a rich heiress, it’s worth remembering another art-crazy heiress who after half a lifetime of not amounting to much developed a passion for avant-garde art and bought it out of a sense of public service to the artists who made it. In Peggy Guggenheim’s case, they were Braque, Picasso and Ernst.

Another art-crazy heiress comes to mind: Helen Birch Bartlett. She lived/died and spent her daddy’s fortune along the way two decades before Peggy Guggenheim hit the scene. Helen was collecting/exhibiting modernist art before there was a Guggenheim Museum or MOMA. She induced/endowed the Art Institute of Chicago to open its first gallery of modernist paintings (hers, of course) in the 1920s. You can see them today in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection on the second floor – Seurat, Van Gogh, Picasso, and more. People in Yellow Springs know her for a different reason. She was the sensitive young girl who wrote poems beneath an oak tree overlooking the Cascades. Daddy bought the place and made it a nature preserve called Glen Helen.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Helen Birch Bartlett

Photo source: Art Institute of Chicago

Frederic Clay and Helen Birch Bartlett, c. 1923. Photograph
courtesy of Libby Bartlett Sturges.

See the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.