In a world and age that seemed to conspire against her sex, Rosa Bonheur was lucky enough to have an enlightened father. Born March 16, 1822, Bonheur benefitted from her father’s belief in Saint-Simonianism, a form of Christian socialism that believed in the equal education for women. That sect held that every living creature possessed a soul, even animals, and, therefore, deserved to be treated as such. Not only did this belief inform the early feminism that helped Bonheur rise, but it instilled in her a profound respect for many animals, which manifests itself in works such as The Horse Fair (above, from 1835-1855). Bonheur loved animals and owned horses, lions, and an otter during her life.



Like Thomas Eakins, Bonheur knew animals from the inside out, attending and even performing dissections of animals. Her knowledge of anatomy fueled the realism of works such as Plowing in Nivernais (above, from 1850), which combined her love of animals with the popularity of rural genre scenes in the nineteenth century. During her lifetime, Bonheur became the most famous and financially successful female artist in the world. When social mores denied her and other female artists access to the human figure, Bonheur instead found drama and expression in the struggles of animals at work. Bonheur truly found a soul yearning for freedom in the animals in her paintings that is as expressive and nuanced as any ascribed to human beings.



Because she never married, wore men’s clothing, smoke cigarettes, and lived in houses with women friends her entire adult life, Rosa Bonheur is today held up not only as the one of the first great modern woman artists but also as one of the first great homosexual artists. Bonheur explained her mannish dress as necessary for someone working with animals all the time. Same-sex relationships in the nineteenth century held an entirely different meaning than they do today. Despite no evidence of sexual relationships with her women companions, modern critics looking for gender-based critiques have latched on to the circumstantial evidence to laud Bonheur as a lesbian pioneer. If that serves their needs in some way, then more power to them. However, I think that such labeling diminishes the real power and versatility of Bonheur’s art, especially in works such as Couching Lion (above, from 1872), which beautifully illustrates the power of the spirit of the lion in the same way that William Blake’s illustrated poem “The Tyger” gets to the essence of the creature. Bonheur’s ability to see past the physical into the spiritual realm of the animal kingdom matches her ability to transcend the limitations imposed on her gender and realize a whole new world of expression.

The first issue of a new photography journal titled Photographies is now available free online. In their Editorial Statement, they express a desire “to construct a new agenda for theorizing photography as a heterogeneous medium that is changing in an ever more dynamic relation to all aspects of contemporary culture.” They chose the title Photographies plural to convey the multiplicity of the medium “rather than a monolithic photography” singular. The articles in this first issue are excellent, although they do get rather academic and theoretical for some, if that’s not your thing. Give it a look now, as future issues are most likely not going to be free online.

I found Andre Gunthert’s article "Digital Imaging Goes to War: The Abu Ghraib Photographs" particularly interesting. (WARNING: The actual Abu Ghraib torture photos are duplicated. Not for the queasy.) Gunthert examines the phenomenon in which those photographs became “the first digital images to be counted among the most celebrated icons of our time.” Sadly, it took these photos to garner for digital photography a status it previously lacked, thanks mainly to the ease of manipulation. First, the criminal case stemming from those photos gave them a legitimacy. Later, the adoption by the media and the repeated reproduction of the photos gave such figures as Satar Jabar, better known as the “Hooded Man” (above), iconic status in mainstream culture. “The iconographic repetitions and exchanges between the press and television channels had already organized the multiple occurrences of these visual documents as news: with the evolution of the electronic network, the Internet became a third actor in this redundancy, which contributed to the production and repetition of such icons,” Gunthert writes. “This aspect is particularly true of the photographs of the Iraqi prison from their first diffusion through three concurrent media and, constituted as evidence, inevitably helped the images to become monuments.” It’s difficult to accept these shameful images as “monuments,” but it’s even more difficult to argue against their monumental status in our recent social discourse.

Gunthert also discusses the sea change the Abu Ghraib photos performed on digital photography itself. Previously, digital photography was known for its ephemeral nature—take as many shots as you like and delete the duds later, as Annie and I like to say when trying to capture Alex at his cutest moments. The Abu Ghraib photos, by becoming iconic, have raised digital photography to the same level of permanence as previous photographic technologies. It would be interesting to know what Stephen Eisenman, author of The Abu Ghraib Effect (my review here) would think of Gunthert’s argument. Not to put words in his mouth, but I’d guess that Eisenman would say that any permanence we find in the Abu Ghraib photos comes from the culturally created cruelty embedded in Western iconography. Even though these are new photos in a new digital format of new abuses, they show us nothing we haven’t seen many, many times before. Of course, as Gunthert argues for the permanence of these images, the collective “amnesia” of America and its press has left them long behind as yet another election looms.

The United States Government recently launched a new arts education program titled Picturing America supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Believing that “[g]reat art speaks powerfully, inspires fresh thinking, and connects us to our past,” Picturing America will offer to schools (kindergarten through grade 12) and libraries 40 large (2 x 3 ft.), high-quality color reproductions of the works they’ve selected as well as a Teachers Resource Book and additional materials and lesson plans available on their website. Any time a government, especially the United States Government and particularly the current administration, gets into the business of selecting the art that will define a culture, it seems to be a complete recipe for disaster in terms of the miseducation of youth along the lines of what the powers that be want them to believe. When the NEH announced this program, I was reading Michael Brenson’s Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Arts in America, which relates the NEA’s rise (the Kennedy and Johnson years) and horrific, seemingly irreversible fall (the Reagan and Bush I years), so I was immediately cynical. I’m still cynical.



Picturing America gathers the usual suspects. Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware appears on the cover of the brochure, of course. Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Grant Wood, Thomas Cole, Edward Hopper, and plenty of other dead white males make up the majority of the list, as would be expected. Realism rules the day, with Richard Diebenkorn representing modern abstract art by himself. Jackson Pollock was good enough to represent America during the Cold War, but doesn’t carry the same rank today. You can argue both the choices of artists and the artists all day, but I’ll mention the first things that jumped out at me. N.C. Wyeth appears with an illustration to The Last of the Mohicans (above, from 1919), but Andrew Wyeth doesn’t. Eakins appears, but with the watercolor John Biglin in a Single Scull. Couldn’t they get The Gross Clinic, perhaps the single greatest painting done by an American? John Singer Sargent, the eternal expatriate, makes the list with Portrait of a Boy, whereas one of his portraits of the rich and powerful would have been much more representative of both him and America at the turn of the twentieth century.



Clearly the people making the choices anticipated special interest group complaints, making nods toward inclusivity, but just barely. Of the thirty-six named artists, only two are women: Mary Cassatt and Dorothea Lange. Where have you gone, Georgia O’Keeffe? Only three African-Americans—Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Martin Puryear–make the cut. Puryear’s Ladder for Booker T. Washington (above, from 1996) is the most recent work included, but seems included more for the double dipping it offers in providing an African-American artist honoring an African-American figure in a non-confrontational way, unlike say Kara Walker, who would offer the triple lindy of an African-American woman dealing with racial issues, albeit in an extremely confrontational and controversial way. Perhaps the next occupant of the White House can rectify the lack of women or persons of color in this selection from first-hand experience of what it’s like to be part of one of those groups.

On one hand, Picturing America provides a valuable service in bringing art into American classrooms and libraries. Anything that brings about greater arts education in this country is definitely welcome. In Visionaries and Outcasts, Brenson recounted a 1960 speech by President Kennedy in which he pointed out that America was a country but not a civilization, because a civilization has a sense of its own culture through the arts. Perhaps these images will help foster some civilization in our troubled times. On the other hand, the blandness (literally the “whiteness”) of the selection, especially in the use of familiar images already in history text books, robs the program of any immediate visual impact it may have had. With all respect to N.C. Wyeth and his capacity to inspire young imaginations, I think that a Pollock hanging on a classroom wall would have opened up whole new possibilities for students. Add in the rather tame suggested classroom questions, which instructors unfamiliar with the arts would be presenting, and any optimism I have for this program is muted. The timing of this initiative leads me to believe that the Bush II administration hopes to improve its poor image, especially in the arts, during its last days. That’s the cynic in me. I’d love to be proven wrong, of course.

One of the greatest Swiss painters ever and one of the shining lights of Symbolism, Ferdinand Hodler was born on this date in 1853. With works such as Day II (above, from 1904-1906), Hodler spiritualized the idea of the nude for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These nudes follow the European cult of the body that was taking hold around that time and would evolve later into a component of the master race philosophy of Nazism. Hodler himself believed in humanist ideals, condemning the German military for atrocities committed during World War I. I’ve always thought of Hodler’s Swiss mix of symbolism and classicism as the painterly equivalent of the films of Ingmar Bergman, matching the lyricism of Bergman at his most hopeful in such playful nudes.



Hodler loved the landscape of his native Switzerland. Works such as Der Niesen (above, from 1910) show the pristine, cold beauty of that place. There’s such a range in Hodler’s work, moving from such figure-focused paintings of expressive nudes to completely uninhabited scenes of water, mountains, and snowy fields. The rock face here almost becomes a human face, seen in profile. The clouds nearly vibrate with agitation, expressive in a way that El Greco and Van Gogh have more famously. The slate blue sky speaks of the cold of the mountains but also speaks of the cold of the universe looking down upon humanity. In these landscapes, Hodler matches Bergman in the pessimism of his worst cinematic moments, questioning the existence of a higher being existing in what often seems an icy and unforgiving universe.



When Hodler’s mistress was diagnosed with cancer in 1914, he spent a great deal by her side, often painting her in her misery. Hodler’s The Dying Valentine Gode-Darel (above, from 1915) belongs to a series of paintings the artist made documenting her struggle and his emotional response to it. Hodler’s devotion to his mistress while remaining married was certainly problematic, but his empathy can’t be questioned. Like Munch, Hodler took a fascination with the slow march towards death and depicted it with unflinching realism. Munch’s The Sick Child generates more pathos through the youth of the victim, but Hodler achieves something equally stirring in the passing of an adult, even someone as potentially unappealing as a mistress. The American way of death so divorces us from the reality of the process that looking upon such scenes, commonplace just a century ago in many developed countries and commonplace today in the third world and war-torn lands, is like looking into a dream—or a nightmare. I’ve always wondered if it was a particular trait of people from that part of the world—Munch’s Norway, Bergman’s Sweden, or Hodler’s Switzerland—to look more clearly upon death as a cold, hard fact of their lives and transform it into art.

“I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.” Piet Mondrian wrote those words in 1914 while still searching for the style that he made so uniquely his own. Born March 7, 1872, Mondrian’s distinctive works, such as the early Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red (above, from 1921) led to no school of imitators. The school of Neo-Plasticism is, at least in mainstream culture, a school of one. With the three primary colors and a series of simple black lines, Mondrian developed an entire visual language of expression amazingly full of personality and emotion.



In 1917, along with Theo van Doesburg and others, Mondrian helped found De Stijl (The Style), a multimedia group of artists all searching for a new brand of abstraction that would express the harmony so sorely needed in the wake of World War I. I’ve always thought of the straight, bold, black lines of Mondrian’s works as the mark of a control freak striving to impose some sense of order upon his world. While Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red seeks harmony in peacetime, with its use of multiple colors to represent the vibrant world reawakening after war, Mondrian’s Vertical Composition with Blue and White (above, from 1936) starkly employs only blue among the black lines and white spaces to represent the encroaching disorder of World War II and fascism in Europe. Mondrian scales back the colors of his world as the armies march forward toward conflict. The control freak gets more and more desperate and the lines he uses to contain the chaos threaten to break.



Fleeing to the safety of America, Mondrian found a whole new world of color to be expressed in his personal style. His most famous work, Broadway Boogie-Woogie (above, from 1942–1943) mimics both the famous New York City traffic gridlock as well as the rhythms of the popular dance music of the time. The controlling black lines disappear as the small blocks of primary colors literally dance for joy over their newfound freedom. Of course, each of these works also succeed as paintings free of biographical details, but I find it fascinating to read between the lines, as it were, and find the personality of Mondrian in these seemingly personless arrangements of colors and lines. In such readings we replicate the “high intuition” Mondrian used in creating these paintings and find the beauty within them.

The Brooklyn Museum has taken a bold step into the new online frontier with their groundbreaking exhibition Click! A Crowd- Curated Exhibition. Inspired by James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds, which argues that the cumulative opinions of a group are often better than those of an “expert,” The Brooklyn Museum puts that idea to the test in a museum setting. From March 1st through 31st, photographers can submit online work relating to the theme “The Changing Face of Brooklyn.” From April 1st through May 23rd, anyone can go online and judge the submissions. Finally, from June 27th through August 10th, the results will be available online and in person at The Brooklyn Museum. (You can even sign up for e-mail reminders of the different deadlines—vital for the calendar-challenged.)

For anyone who thinks they know better than the experts, this is a chance to put your skills to the test. I love the concept not only for the way it employs the internet, but also for the inclusivity of it all. The Brooklyn Museum’s choice of theme should make this a true community event, drawing in people in meatspace as well as cyberspace. As Leonard Cohen once sang, Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.!

My personal idea of the ultimate artist was born on this date in 1475—Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni commonly known as Michelangelo. From the ceiling and The Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel to the Pietà and the David, Michelangelo is, as Giorgio Vasari praised him in his Lives of the Painters, the ultimate Italian Renaissance artist. Whole big, beautiful books have been written about Michelangelo, so there’s no use in me trying to somehow encompass this giant in a few words. So, I’ll concentrate not on what he finished so gloriously but, rather, the traces of genius he left in the works left unfinished, either intentionally or unintentionally. Drawings such as his Study for Adam (above, from 1510-1511) show the artist’s mind at work, formulating the ideas he would embody in figures such as the first man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo used such drawings both to prepare for and to begin his frescos. To meet the deadline imposed by rapidly drying plaster, Michelangelo would take drawings, prick tiny holes along the lines, and force powder through the holes, which would provide an outline for him to paint within. Most of those drawings were destroyed, “worthless” once they had served their purpose. One of the things I’d love to do once I invent a time machine would be to gather those “worthless” drawings as the master cast them aside.



The Renaissance abounds with master draftsmen. Drawing truly became an art form in itself during that time, the basis for all painting and sculpting. Looking at The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John (above), you feel as if you are looking through the mists of time to the power of Michelangelo’s hand. Somehow, the mistiness of this drawing only adds to the mystery. I read recently that a new study of Michelangelo claims that many of the drawings currently attributed to Michelangelo were really done by students or imitators. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m not sure I’d care if it was. If they were really the works of students or imitators, they would still be of the high quality Michelangelo demanded and express the same humanist belief system his figures embodied. If those values come second hand, they still remain the same values.



One of the great temptations when going to the Accademia in Florence is to see David at the end of the hallway and rush to his side. Along that hallway, however, literally dwarfed by the giant, are several of the unfinished sculptures (such as The Captive, above, from 1527-1528) Michelangelo began for the tomb of Pope Julius II. These Captives are literally held captive within the stone. Michelangelo claimed that he could “see” the figures he was carving within the stone. These examples show the result of stopping in the middle, before the form could be freed. Michelangelo achieved a mythic status in his lifetime, as if he created his finished masterpieces through pure magic. I love the rougher side of Michelangelo because it shows the hard work behind the magic, the sweat that helped shape those iconic works. We remain as star-struck today by his achievements as those who knew him five hundred years ago. “Certainly he was sent into the world to be an example to men of art, that they should learn from his life and from his works,” Vasari wrote of Michelangelo, “and I, who have to thank God for felicity rare among men of our profession, count among my greatest blessings that I was born in the time when Michelangelo was alive, and was counted worthy to have him for my master, and to be treated by him as a familiar friend, as every one knows.” Vasari loved to exaggerate, but I think this is him at his most sincere.

In one of his letters to his brother Theo, Vincent van Gogh spoke of an American artist whose work "struck me dumb with admiration.” That artist who dumbstruck van Gogh was none other than Howard Pyle, born March 5, 1856. The dean of American Illustration at the beginning of the twentieth century, Pyle founded the so-called Brandywine School of art, beginning with his star pupil N. C. Wyeth and continuing with the next two generations of Wyeths, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. Pyle specialized in the special magic of myth and legend aimed at the imagination of the young, particularly in his works The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and his four-volume set following the exploits of King Arthur and his court. Thus the Princess Cometh Forth from the Castle at Twelve O’Clock (above, from 1902) shows the florid, detail-rich style of Pyle when tackling Arthurian tales and other grand subjects. Anyone looking for the roots of the Wyeth imagination need search no further than the works of Howard Pyle.



Pyle loved illustrating tales of pirates with works such as The Buccaneer (above). The pure menace such cutthroat figures exuded made for the high drama on the high seas that Pyle loved to put not only into pictures but also into words. That high drama, however, never came at the cost of questionable morality. Pyle always maintained very high moral standards for his works, continually conscious of the malleability of young minds. When retelling tales of Robin Hood in which the classic anti-hero robs a wealthy villain of all his treasure, Pyle rewrote it so that the loot was divided three ways between Robin, the rich man, and the poor. In Pyle’s Sherwood Forrest, Robin Hood takes some from the rich and gives some to the poor. Pyle’s Robin also only kills in self-defense, setting the stage for Hollywood’s similarly sanitized version of Robin Hood.



I remember driving down to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania late last year and passing Pyle’s old home, known as Painter’s Folly, and the building that once housed his school, now used by the local government. Nearby lies the site of the Battle of Brandywine during the American Revolution. Pyle found the mythology of the founding of the United States of America as enticing as that of Europe. His painting The Battle of Bunker Hill (above, from 1897) shows the meticulous detail he brought to all his works as well as the same drama found in his tales of Arthur or Robin. Pyle traveled to Italy in 1910 to study mural painting and died there of a sudden kidney infection. How his art, and that of his students, would have evolved after prolonged exposure to the Italian Renaissance, we’ll never know. At the very least, his choice of Chadds Ford, with its echoes of the dark forests of Europe as well as the origins of the American nation, created a magical place to which later generations continually returned and still return for a source of inspiration.

When Louis XIV, the Sun King, saw the works of Charles Le Brun painted on the occasion of his return to Paris, he almost immediately named him “First Painter to His Majesty,” and later crowned Le Brun with the title of “the greatest French artist of all time.” Born February 24, 1619, Le Brun helped forge what came to be known as Louis XIV style, developing a specific “look” to go along with the power of the throne. Portraits of Louis XIV by Le Brun (above) show the monarch as the ultimate action hero—the energetic superstar upon whose larger than life existence rested the fate of the French nation and people. Few artists painted better public relations for their patron than Le Brun did for Louis XIV.



Like any good propagandist, Le Brun needed to find precedents for his subject’s greatness in history, some link to the glorious past. Taking Alexander the Great as his ideal, Le Brun painted a series of works based on the ancient adventures of the young conquerer, including Alexander in Babylon (above, from 1661). In addition to being great PR, these Alexander paintings are also great painting—not always a given in the world of official art. The rollicking collection of figures against a beautifully painted landscape recalls the works of Nicolas Poussin, with whom Le Brun studied in Rome in the 1640s. Poussin’s dual love of antiquity and nature rubbed off on his pupil, as seen here. I especially like Alexander in Babylon for all the tiny little narrative scenes played out by the clusters of characters, with the golden chariot of Alexander remaining the quiet eye of the storm as he surveys his latest world to conquer.



Le Brun used his talents to decorate the royal palaces of Versailles, either with his own work or by directing the work of other artists. By using the full power at his disposal, Le Brun set the standard for French art for a generation and, perhaps, beyond. The lessons of Le Brun’s classicism in the service of contemporary power were not lost on French neoclassicists such as Jacques-Louis David when the royal power slipped into the hands of Napoleon and the French People during the French Revolution. It is important, however, to always remember that Le Brun’s talent never faltered despite his comfortable position. His Pieta (above), done for one of the royal altarpieces, takes the familiar religious trope and adds a beautiful physicality to the depiction of Christ, whose sprawling dead body convincingly weighs down upon the Virgin Mary. As much as Louis XIV used Le Brun, Le Brun in turn used Louis XIV in the sense that he took that royal patronage and created timeless works of art that served his contemporary master yet also kept an eye on the future.

The sufferance of her race is shown,
And retrospect of life,
Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;
Yet is she not at strife.

Her children's children they shall know
The good withheld from her;
And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer--
In spirit she sees the stir.

Far down the depth of thousand years,
And marks the revel shine;
Her dusky face is lit with sober light,
Sibylline, yet benign.

“Formerly a Slave. An Idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the SpringExhibition of the National Academy, 1865” by Herman Melville

When Herman Melville saw a portrait of a former slave named Jane Jackson painted by Elihu Vedder, he felt inspired to write the poem “Formerly a Slave” copied above. Born February 26, 1836, Vedder normally painted in a symbolist style, taking mythological material such as the sphinx and creating dreamlike scenes such as The Questioner of the Sphinx (above, from 1863). Melville, however, sensed the “sibylline” quality of Vedder’s painting of Jackson in the “depth of thousand years” in her face. (Vedder later painted Jackson as the Cumaean Sibyl.) Melville’s admiration for Vedder continued, leading him to dedicate his 1891 collection of poems titled Timoleon to “My countryman/ Elihu Vedder.” Although some (including Wikipedia) allege that Melville and Vedder knew one another, they never met. Vedder’s thank you note to Melville for the dedication to him arrived after Melville’s death. Few American artists worked in a Symbolist style, so Melville quite easily saw a kindred spirit in Vedder, a true visionary of the late nineteenth century once forgotten like Melville yet still awaiting a rediscovery.



Vedder gravitated to fellow visionaries throughout his career, both living and dead. A poet himself, he knew Walt Whitman and later became friends with William Butler Yeats. The Pre-Raphaelites greatly influenced his work and, by extension, introduced him to the work of William Blake. In The Pleiades (above, from 1885) we see both the visionary style of Blake as well as the idealized female form (the “stunner”) of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Pleiades were seven nymphs of Greek mythology who were the daughters of Atlas and gave birth to children by Zeus, Poseidon, and Ares. In Vedder’s eyes, they are the epitome of female beauty and grace, idealized figures swirling about in luxurient drapery and shining as brilliantly as the stars named after them.



I’ve always found the Symbolist style to be fascinating. When the narrative elements verge on the obscure, it veers into proto-Surrealism. When the narrative strays into the obvious, it derails into the facile. Vedder always seems to steer the proper course, as in works such as The Sorrowing Soul Between Doubt and Faith (above, from 1887). The poor soul in the center finds herself torn between following the secular wisdom of the ages (symbolized by the greybeard on the left) and the spiritual uplift of religion (symbolized by the angel on the right). By defining secular knowledge as “Doubt,” Vedder answers the question almost immediately, but in that triumvirate he neatly encapsulates the central dilemma of the Victorian age–hold on to the faith of their fathers or accept the new tenets of Darwinism and science. Although he labels one side as “Doubt,” the tension remains in that the old man and the knowledge he offers remain attractive to at least part of the questioner’s mind. In such images, Vedder speaks to the same dilemma America faces today as debates over evolution and the separation of church and state continue to bring sorrow to the national soul.