Raiment of the Soul

by 1821-Greek Independence Day20th century ArtArtGreek ArtStudent Activities
Photographer Vangelis Kyris and Artist of Embroidery Anatoli Georgiev
Costume of Dimitrios Mavromichlis, 19th century, Hand finished silver embroidery, using silver stitching carousel and cord, on printed cotton canvas, 126×104 cm. https://gallerykourd.gr/el/raiment-of-the-soul-2/

”The focus of this exhibition is the traditional Greek costume. Simple or more elaborate, everyday or festive, with embroidery and gold decorations, it is not a simple garment. It is a complex semiotic portrait of the person who wears it” said President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou in her greeting at the opening of the exhibition Raiment of the Soul at the Acropolis Museum (December 20, 2022, until April 2, 2023).https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/topics/culture-society/7819-raiment-of-the-soul

There are seventy artworks presented in this fine exhibition. They are embroidered photographs of garments and costumes mostly of the 19th century, safeguarded in the past and present with the love and care of people, mainly the personnel of the National Historical Museum of Athens, but also of other Greek Museums. Two artists are responsible for this unique body of work, photographer Vangelis Kyris and artist of embroidery Anatoli Georgiev. They collaborated with Museums holding these precious costumes and chose the ‘right’ contemporary models to wear them. Then, Vangelis Kyris photographed each model capturing the essence of the costume she/he wore. When the photos were printed on large pieces of cotton canvases, majestic like Renaissance paintings, Anatoli Georgiev, using gold or silver thread stitching, silk or cotton threads, cord, sequins, metallic or knitted buttons… embroidered seminal parts of the costume’s original needlework, creating ‘poetry’ through texture. https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/temporary-exhibitions/raiment-soul

The artists see their project, as a  journey from the past to the future, with the present as a boat. For Vangelis Kyris beauty is what soothes your gaze and educates your soul, and for Anatoli Georgiev, it is Measure, balance, the feeling that what you see elevates your aesthetics.https://www.ifocus.gr/magazine/editors-choice/3044-xronia-polla-ellada-me-endyma-psyxis and https://www.womantoc.gr/stories/article/afto-pou-anakoufizei-to-vlemma-sou-mia-ksexoristi-ekthesi-gia-tin-oraiotita-ton-pragmaton/

For me, Raiment of the Soul is the best way to Celebrate Greece and its  Independence Day!

Photographer Vangelis Kyris and Artist of Embroidery Anatoli Georgiev
Costume of Dimitrios Mavromichlis, 19th century, Hand finished silver embroidery, using silver stitching carousel and cord, on printed cotton canvas, 126×104 cm.
https://gegonota.news/2023/01/25/endyma-psychis-20-dekemvriou-2022-26-martiou-2023/

Demetrios Mavromichalis was the fifth son of Petrobeis Mavromichalis. He was born in Mani, and lived for many years in Paris, upon his return he followed a military career, reaching the rank of lieutenant general. He was a supporter of King Otto I of Greece and took part in the revolution of 1862. As a politician, he participated in the governments of Voulgaris, Kanaris, and Benizelos Roufos. Presented by Kyros and Georgiev in the Acropolis Museum Exhibition, Mavromichalis’s Portrait comes alive and embodies the spirit of Greece through colours, movement, and texture.

Photographer Vangelis Kyris and Artist of Embroidery Anatoli Georgiev
Esther Mastrogianni wearing the Epirote Costume of Kyra Frosyni, 18th century, Hand finished gold embroidery using cord, stitching, and metal sequins on printed cotton canvas, 130×170 cm. https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/temporary-exhibitions/raiment-soul
Acropolis Museum View of the Exhibition Raiment of the Soul with the original Costume of Kyra Frosyni in the Collection of the National Historical Museum of Athens https://www.okmag.gr/lifestyle/protaseis/endyma-psychis-mia-monadiki-ekthesi-me-endymasies-istorikon-prosopon-sto-mouseio-tis-akropolis-me-protovoulia-tis-mariannas-vardinogianni/

Euphrosyne Vasileiou is better known as Kyra Frosini. She lived in Ioannina, in Epirus and she was famous for her beauty and spirit. Kyra Frosyni was executed for adultery in Ioannina by the Ottoman governor Ali Pasha of Ioannina along with 17 other women. She was allegedly executed for political reasons and was thereby viewed as a national heroine. Her violet-coloured dress represents the finest of 18th century Greek craftsmanship. The Kyros and Georgiev Portrait of Kyra Frosyni is ‘alive’ and stunningly ‘beautiful’ in its regal disposition.

Photographer Vangelis Kyris and Artist of Embroidery Anatoli Georgiev
Anatoli Georgiev wearing the attire of Vaso Brajević a Serbian general who became a hero of the Greek War of Independence known by the nickname Mavrovouniotis (“Montenegrin”), 19th century Greek traditional costume, Hand finished gold embroidery using gold  metal thread, stitching, cord and metal sequins, on printed cotton canvas, 126×103 cm. https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/topics/culture-society/7819-raiment-of-the-soul
Protected…until the day…detail from the costume of Vasos Mavrovouniotis… by Vangelis Kyris https://www.facebook.com/v.kyris/photos/a.598821666844976/2920413098019143?locale=el_GR

Vaso Brajević was a Serbian general who became a hero of the Greek War of Independence known by the nickname Mavrovouniotis (“Montenegrin”). His life was adventurous, risk-taking, and bold. Anatoli Georgiev wearing the attire of Vaso Brajević  Mavdovouniotis presents a striking and dramatic Portrait of a truly revolutionary personality of a harsh but ‘Romantic’ era.  

For Student Activities on the Greek War of Independence, please… Click HERE!

For a short Video on the Exhibition Raiment of the Soul, prepared by the Acropolis Museum, Click… https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/temporary-exhibitions/raiment-soul

Hartwell Memorial Window by Tiffany

by 20th century ArtAmerican ArtArtArt NouveauStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Tiffany Studios (1902–32, American Manufacturer), Agnes F. Northrop (American Artist – 1857–1953, Designer), Louis Comfort Tiffany (American Artist – 1848-1933, Manufacturer)
Hartwell Memorial Window (Detail), 1917, Leaded glass, 798.7 × 554.7 × 42.5 cm, the Art Institute of Chicago, USA https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/after-100-years-obscurity-brilliant-tiffany-stained-glass-window-shine-chicago-180977850/

The stained glass artist for Tiffany Studios, Agnes Northrop, was at the height of her power in 1917 when she designed the dazzling Hartwell Memorial Window by Tiffany, dramatically backlit to mimic sunlight flooding through, creating a kaleidoscope of color. As head of a group called “The Tiffany Girls,” she created some of Tiffany’s most memorable windows and was the first at the preeminent studio to execute landscapes and gardens in stained glass. She was a true virtuoso in what was referred to at the time as painting in glass. https://classicchicagomagazine.com/tag/hartwell-memorial-window/

Agnes Northrop was one of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s most trusted designers and a member of the famous Tiffany Girls. The great Master did not work alone. “Tiffany” designed artworks that were high in demand, and he employed hundreds of artists and artisans. Amongst them are the Tiffany Girls, entrusted with some of the most complex design work in Tiffany’s studios, including window and lamp design, glass selection, and glass cutting. Interestingly, Tiffany thought a woman’s sense of color and the nimbleness of her fingers to be superior to a man’s and entrusted his female designers with this essential part of making his windows. https://driehausmuseum.org/blog/view/from-the-collection-landscape-by-agnes-northrop

Agnes Northrop, American Glass Artist, 1857-1953
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102156729

Agnes Northrop was born in Flushing, Queens, in 1857 and died in 1953 in the Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan at age 96. She was most likely introduced to Tiffany in the late 1880s and by the 1890s had, according to Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen (Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art),  forged an independent role for herself within the studio. https://americanart.si.edu/blog/eye-level/2016/27/305/glass-gardens-agnes-northrop-designs-louis-c-tiffany

Among the first six designers hired by the company, as early as the 1880s, Northrop’s talent was recognized by Tiffany, who entrusted her to design the company’s famous stained glass windows. She was also one of the few women actually given credit for work in exhibitions and catalogs. She was known for her talent in composing floral scenes and was given the prestige of a private studio in Tiffany Studios’ Fourth Avenue building. https://driehausmuseum.org/blog/view/from-the-collection-landscape-by-agnes-northrop

Hartwell Memorial Window (Detail), 1917, Leaded glass, 798.7 × 554.7 × 42.5 cm, the Art Institute of Chicago, USA http://www.ravenswoodstudio.com/project/hartwell-memorial-window/

The Hartwell Memorial Window is one of the most extraordinary leaded glass windows ever made by Tiffany Studios, the leading glass firm of America’s Gilded Age. It was commissioned, over a century ago, by Mary Hartwell, to honor Frederick Hartwell, her late husband. It was originally gifted to the Community Church of Providence, Rhode Island, and remained in the church sanctuary until 2018 when a unanimous decision by the congregation saw it handed over to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was wisely thought that in the Art Institute the precious Tiffany Memorial Window would be well conserved, and appreciated by a wider public. The Art Institute of Chicago welcomed this extraordinary gift and installed the Hartwell Memorial Window in the Henry Crown Gallery at the top of the Women’s Board Grand Staircase in the Art Institute’s historic Michigan Avenue building.

For a Student Activity, inspired by Hartwell Memorial Window by Tiffany, please… Check HERE!

An Art Institute conservator works on the restoration of the Tiffany Studios’ Hartwell Memorial Window by Jonathan Mathias https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/5/25/22453083/art-institute-chicago-tiffany-hartwell-window-stained-glass

Freedom From Want by Norman Rockwell

by 20th century ArtAmerican ArtArtPowerpoints
Norman Rockwell, American Artist, 1894-1978
Freedom From Want, 1943, Oil on canvas, 115.16×89.20 cm, Story illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943. Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA, USA https://www.nrm.org/2016/11/freedom-want-1943/

On Thanksgiving Day remember Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) and Give thanks for each new morning with its light, / For rest and shelter of the night. / For health and food, / For love and friends, / For everything they goodness sends… and ‘feast’ your eyes with Freedom From Want by Norman Rockwell.

The ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, the 1941 State of the Union Address by US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is the only Presidential speech in American history that inspired a multitude of books and films, the establishment of its own park, a series of paintings by a world famous artist, a prestigious international award and a United Nation’s resolution on Human Rights. On the 6th of March 1943, The Saturday Evening Post published Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, a painting inspired by the ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, and one of my favourite Rockwell paintings.  https://fdr.blogs.archives.gov/2016/01/06/four_freedoms/

Norman Rockwell had a long-standing collaboration with The Saturday Evening Post, which he considered to be the greatest show window in America. The collaboration started in 1916, when the 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for the magazine, and continued over the next 47 years. By 1963, when the collaboration with the Post ended, 322 Rockwell paintings had appeared on the cover of the magazine. https://www.nrm.org/about/about-2/about-norman-rockwell/

Freedom From Want is an iconic Rockwell painting we associate with Thanksgiving. Did Norman Rockwell paint Freedom from Want to celebrate a Thanksgiving feast?

No, he did not! Freedom From Want was one in a series of four paintings Rockwell made in response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address known as the “Four Freedoms.” (The other freedoms were “freedom of speech,” “freedom of worship,” and “freedom from fear.”) He offered the series to the Office of War Information (OWI). The Office turned him down ‘unceremoniously,’ answering back to him… ‘The last war, you illustrators did the posters. This war, we’re going to use fine arts men, real artists.’ https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

Norman Rockwell, American Artist, 1894-1978
Freedom From Want was reproduced in millions of posters promoting the sale of War Bonds. Charleston Museum, USA https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

However, Ben Hibbs, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell’s devoted ‘employer,’ had a different opinion! Rockwell’s paintings of the Four Freedoms were published, and they became so popular, that the magazine decided to offer prints for sale. The OWI, which had turned down Rockwell just a few months earlier, asked to use prints of the paintings in a war bond campaign that would ultimately garner over $132 million in bonds and stamps. Bottom line, millions of posters of Rockwell’s paintings were distributed across the country and posted in schools, libraries, and post offices. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

Freedom From Want depicts an idealistic white, middle-class family seated around a crisply adorned dinner table. The patriarch, placed at the head of the table, presides over the holiday gathering accompanied by the family matriarch, who presents a roasted turkey, the ‘piece de resistance’ of the artist’s painting. In a typical Rockwell manner, the people portrayed in the painting were his friends, family, and neighbors in the town of Arlington, Vermont, whom he photographed in his studio and painted into the complex composition individually (they never sat together). https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485  and https://www.nrm.org/2012/10/collections-four-freedoms/

Norman Rockwell, American Artist, 1894-1978
Freedom From Want, detail, 1943, Oil on canvas, 115.16×89.20 cm, Story illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943. Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA, USA https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

Rockwell’s painting has its critics and its supporters. Even Rockwell himself thought that it ‘lacked a wallop.’ There are, however, many more who treasure it. Like Deborah Solomon, his biographer, who goes so far as to call the light-filled canvas ‘one of the most ambitious plays of white-against-white since Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 1.’ For me, the composition is highly organized, the colour tones are warm (even the whites), and light is soft. This is a family scene we have all experienced, a moment we cherish, and a Norman Rockwell painting we love! https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

I would like to draw your attention to page 82 of Picturing America, and how masterfully the controversy over Rockwell the artist, or Rockwell the illustrator, is addressed… Rockwell had been born into a world in which painters crossed easily from the commercial world to that of the gallery, as Winslow Homer had done. By the 1940s, however, a division had emerged between the fine arts and the work for hire that Rockwell produced. The detailed, homespun images he employed to reach a mass audience were not appealing to an art community that now lionized intellectual and abstract works. But Rockwell knew his strengths did not lie in that direction: “Boys batting flies on vacant lots,” he explained in 1936, “little girls playing jacks on the front steps; old men plodding home at twilight, umbrella in hand — all these things arouse feeling in me.” https://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide/English/English_PA_TeachersGuide.pdf

For a PowerPoint on Norman Rockwell’s paintings of the ‘Four Wants,’ please… Check HERE! 

Smash the Hun

by 20th century ArtAmerican ArtArtPowerpoints
Edward Hopper, American Artist, 1882–1967
Smash the Hun, 1918, WWI poster by Edward Hopper for the in-house magazine of the Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company in Brooklyn, where Hopper worked as an illustrator (issue of Feb 1919)
https://rockwellcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Hopper-Smash-the-Hun1.jpg

The American artist Edward Hopper is acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. He is known for his oil paintings of urban life scenes, behind windows and across streets, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, some of which have become highly popular images, like the Nighthawks (1942, Oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm, Art Institute of Chicago). He is less known for the attention he has paid to landscapes, particularly landscapes of New England, like Cape Ann Granite (1928. Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 102.3 cm. Private Collection). He is even less known for his early illustrations… like Smash the Hun…his ticket to success.

Edward Hopper, American Artist, 1882–1967
Self-Portrait, 1925–1930, Oil on Canvas, 64.5 × 51.8 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA https://whitney.org/collection/works/6068

In 1918 Edward Hopper was thirty-six years old and still struggling for artistic recognition. He was born on July 22, 1882, in the charming riverfront village of Upper Nyack, New York, where he spent his formative years. He grew up, comfortably, embraced by an educated family that was involved in the arts, and went to museums, concerts, and other cultural events. Inclined to draw as a child, Hopper was supported by his family to pursue the arts, but being of practical mind, his parents suggested he chose to study Illustration for a career that would provide him a steady income. Hopper took courses at the Correspondence School of Illustrating and at the New York School of Art. Noted illustrator/painters Arthur Keller, Frank Vincent Du Mond, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Robert Henri were among his teachers, and John Sloan, who worked regularly as a commercial illustrator prior to 1916, was an early influence. His strong, and dynamic illustrations for trade publications are memorable… but this is not what he really wanted, and by 1918 he was getting restless… https://www.thoughtco.com/edward-hopper-biography-4165484 and https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Unknown-Hopper–Edward-Hopper-as-Illustr/3CFFF3BDEE4BBFF2

Unduly… it was the art of illustration that won Hopper his first kind of fame. According to Gail Levin, who wrote Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Bert Edward Barnes, editor of the Morse Dry Dock Dial, liked his work and probably persuaded him to enter the contest for a propaganda poster sponsored by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation in 1918. The agency had been created in September 1916 with the authority to build, purchase, lease, or requisition vessels needed for the war effort.

Barnes encouraged Hopper to visit the shipyard to get the right feel, and volunteered one of his employees, Pete Shea, to model for the poster. He also had Shea photographed in the pose and gave a print to Hopper, who recalled in an ironical sketch: “I got this big Irishman to pose for me in the shipyards, with the background of ship’s ribs, that sort of things. I had his swigging a maul, and the maul was aimed at a bloody bayonet sticking unpin one corner. I titled it ‘Smash the Hun’; it was pretty awful and I don’t think it was ever published.” In fact, Hopper’s design appeared on the cover of the Morse Dry Dock Dial for February 1919.

The four-colour poster won Hopper the three-hundred-dollar first prize among fourteen hundred contestants. Since the armistice was declared before the poster could be reproduced for mass distribution, Hopper’s fame came from the exhibition of Smash the Hun along with nineteen other finalists in August 1918, in the window of Gimbel’s department store on Broadway, where, according to the press, ‘thousands’ saw the ‘stirring pictures placed on vie.’ The papers reported that the wave of popular excitement swept up Hopper’s model, Shea: he enlisted in the Navy.

Interesting to read… Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography by Gail Levin https://books.google.gr/books?id=6Dh2gFK-lecC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Hopper+Smash+the+Hun&source=bl&ots=qjJ-w8SQPt&sig=ACfU3U2U_AkbuBJuhjWMNGjQXS_edv90bw&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwif6dug0Yf6AhXGSPEDHWFXCpw4ChDoAXoECBQQAw#v=onepage&q=Hopper%20Smash%20the%20Hun&f=false pp. 108, 116-117

For a PowerPoint, titled Edward Hopper: The Early Years, please… Check HERE!

An interesting Video Presentation of The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator. The Video was created for the Exhibition that was on view at Norman Rockwell Museum between June 7, 2014 to October 26, 2014… https://www.facebook.com/historyofart2016/videos/200213034763003

The origins of Edward Hopper’s earliest oil paintings by Louis Shadwick “cuts straight through the widely held perception of Hopper as an American original,” and helps the reader understand Hopper’s artistic journey. https://burlington.org.uk/media/_file/generic/202010-42790.pdf and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/some-edward-hoppers-earliest-works-were-copies-180975958/

Rooms by the Sea

by 20th century ArtAmerican ArtArtPowerpoints
Edward Hopper, American Artist, 1882–1967
Rooms by the Sea, 1951, Oil on canvas, 74.3 × 101.6 cm, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, USA https://www.edwardhopper.net/rooms-by-the-sea.jsp

John Keats (1795-1821), as a true Romantic… dwells in Solitude, alone, in pleasant surroundings rather than in a city populated by murky buildings… O solitude! (he writes) if I must with thee dwell, / Let it not be among the jumbled heap / Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— / Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, / Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, / May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep / ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap / Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. / But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, / Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, / Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, / Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be / Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, / When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. Edward Hopper (1882–1967) with his painting Rooms by the Sea creates, visually, an Icon of his own Solitude! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46561/ode-on-solitude and https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/52939

Ever since Hopper visited Cape Cod, back in 1930, he fell under its spell… As Gregory Dicum of the New York Times wrote… At low tide, the warm water of Cape Cod Bay recedes to expose banks of smooth sand, which swarm with kids, dogs, and blissfully vacationing parents. As the sun sinks toward Provincetown, it cuts through a hazy summer sky, shimmering off the quicksilver bay. Hopper was enchanted! Summers on Cape Cod were welcoming and joyful… so in 1934, he and his wife, Josephine, built a modest summer house/studio, a classic Cape, but for a huge north-facing window. For nearly 40 summers, Hopper returned to this simple dwelling to enjoy and paint… the ease of an open landscape of beach, heath, and woodlot.

Arnold Newman, American Photographer, 1918-2006
Portrait of Edward Hopper, Aug. 14, 1960, in Truro, Mass., in front of his Cape Cod Studio https://alanclaude.com/blogs/news/edward-hoppers-cape-cod-studio

In 1951, a mature Edward Hopper painted Rooms by the Sea, a view of what Hopper would have seen out the back door of his studio… the expanse of the Cape Cod sea and the bright sunlight. What an interesting, awkward,  composition! A white, wide wall dominates the center of the composition, dividing his canvas into two distinctive parts. The left side depicts an ordinary room glared with boring tones. The right side, bathed in sunshine, presents the vastness of the sky and the energy of the sea. This is the painting of an artist who liked us to focus on mood more than detail, and the mood is that of silence and solitude. Let’s not forget that the original title of the discussed painting was Rooms by the Sea. Alias the Jumping Off Place. https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/52939 and https://www.edward-hopper.org/rooms-by-the-sea/

Edward Hopper, American Artist, 1882–1967
Two Studies for Rooms by the Sea (recto and verso), 1951, Charcoal, 21.4 × 27.8 cm, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/132659

The Art Critic Clement Greenberg persuasively described Edward Hopper as a bad painter but a superior artist. I would like to wrap this presentation up with what Greenberg further wrote: “Hopper is not a painter in the full sense; his means are second hand, shabby, and impersonal, But his rudimentary sense of composition is sufficient for a message that conveys an insight into the present nature of American life for which there is no parallel in our literature, though that insight in itself is literature.” So interesting… Reviewed Work: Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography by Gail Levin, by: Alan Rutenberg, The American Scholar, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Autumn 1996), pp. 628-631 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212573

For a PowerPoint on Hopper’s Cape Cod, please… Check HERE!

An interesting Video, titled Summer On Cape Cod with Edward Hopper, by curator Joachim Homann of Harvard Art Museums… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9KzVQ_9qQI

Hand With Seaweed and Shells by Émile Gallé

by 20th century ArtArtArt NouveauFrench ArtPowerpoints
Émile Gallé, French Artist, 1846–1904
Hand With Seaweed and Shells, 1904, Glass modeled under heat with inclusions of metallic oxides, veins, applications in low and high relief and wheel engraving, 33.4 x  13.4 cm, Musée d’Orsay
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/exhibitions/hand-seaweed-and-shells-emile-galles-artistic-testament-196300 and https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/51791464437097192/

Charles Baudelaire wrote… Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer! / La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme / Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame, / Et ton esprit n’est pas un gouffre moins amer.     /     Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image; / Tu l’embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton Coeur / Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur / Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.     /     Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets: / Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes; / Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes, / Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!     /     Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables / Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remords, / Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort, / Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables! Could the amazing Hand With Seaweed and Shells by Émile Gallé in the Musée d’Orsay celebrates the symbolic role of the sea as well? https://fleursdumal.org/poem/113

The French designer Émile Gallé, a pioneer glassmaker of the late 19th, and early 20th centuries was a leading creator of the Art Nouveau style. According to the POLA Museum of Art experts, Art Nouveau is characterized by curvilinear lines inspired by natural organic forms. Gallé was at the forefront of glass art in this style. He produced a succession of outstanding artworks incorporating his knowledge of the natural sciences, particularly botany and biology, and his outstanding technical expertise. The art production by Gallé, with their plant, insect, animal, and sea creature motifs, can be compared to the act of collecting nature. https://www.polamuseum.or.jp/en/exhibition/20180317s01/

Back in 2004, Musée d’Orsay organized an exhibition titled La Main aux algues et aux coquillages. Le testament artistique d’Emile Gallé to celebrate the centenary of Émile Gallé‘s death (1846-1904). As the title indicates the Exhibition was centered on the artist’s ultimate masterpiece, generously donated to the museum by his descendants in 1990, Hand With Seaweed and Shells. https://archivesdunord.com/5291–p-galle-le-testament-artistique-p-.html

Hand With Seaweed and Shells is the last work of crafted glass produced by the master from Nancy and represents the culmination of his technical mastery. It was exhibited at the Decorative Art Exhibition in Nancy in October 1904, a month after the artist’s death. This exceptional glass sculpture has been hot when modeled, metal oxides were used, and the engraving has been made in relief at the base. The artist used the marbling technique and glass applications in low and high relief. Finally, the engraving was done with the help of a wheel. https://www.wikiwand.com/fr/La_Main_aux_algues_et_aux_coquillages and https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/hand-with-seaweed-and-shells-emile-gall%C3%A9/3QH1q7j-jzvqaw

Émile Gallé, French Artist, 1846–1904
Hand With Seaweed and Shells (Details), 1904, Glass modeled under heat with inclusions of metallic oxides, veins, applications in low and high relief and wheel engraving, 33.4 x  13.4 cm, Musée d’Orsay https://www.panoramadelart.com/main-galle and https://art.rmngp.fr/fr/library/artworks/emile-galle_la-main-aux-algues-et-aux-coquillages_inclusion_grave-a-la-roue-verre_cristal-matiere_application-a-chaud_1904

According to the Musée d’Orsay experts, Hand With Seaweed and Shells is a strangely and ambiguously connoted work questioning if the artist’s work depicts a Hand coming out of the water or if it shows a Hand slowly sinking into it. Does it symbolize life or death? Is it an allusion to Aphrodite being born from the foam in the Ionian sea, or to Ophelia floating along the current? Is this Hand, despite appearances – fineness of the fingertips, shells looking like rings – really a woman’s hand, or is it the artist’s own hand? Whatever the answers are, this is exceptional… a work of art inspired by the world of the sea. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/exhibitions/hand-seaweed-and-shells-emile-galles-artistic-testament-196300

For a PowerPoint on Émile Gallé and the World of the Sea, please… Check HERE!

SS Normandie Poster by Cassandre

by 20th century ArtArtArt DecoPowerpoints
Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, known as A.M. Cassandre, Ukrainian-French Artist, 1901-1968
SS Normandie, 1935,lithograph in colours, printed by Alliance Graphique, Paris, 98 x 61cm, Private Collection
https://d2mpxrrcad19ou.cloudfront.net/item_images/1207624/11871155_fullsize.jpg

SS Normandie was the ultimate transatlantic ocean liner – assuredly of the 1930s, but perhaps of the entire 20th century. She had abundance – she was novel, innovative, glittering, exceptionally advanced, truly sensational. Her French creators, designers and decorators sought perfection… SS Normandie Poster by Cassandre says it all! https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-brief-but-glorious-career-of-ss-normandie/

SS Normandie ocean liner was a showcase of French technological prowess and Art Deco design.  Her purpose was distinctly threefold: To be the largest liner afloat (the first to exceed 60,000 tons and 1,000 feet in length), to be the fastest ship, and, thirdly, to be an extraordinary floating center of ‘everything French’ – from food to decor to style and fashion. A.M. Cassandre was invited… to create a Poster for her May 29, 1935, inaugural crossing to New York. The artist responded… and created his most iconic work, and the best-known image of the Normandie ocean liner. The simplicity and symmetry of Cassandre’s frontal view of the looming hull of the liner immediately convey its gigantic scale and streamlined elegance. https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-brief-but-glorious-career-of-ss-normandie/ and https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1405126/normandie-poster-cassandre/

SS Normandie departing Le Havre on her maiden crossing to New York, May 29, 1935
https://www.prints-online.com/french-liner-normandie-leaving-le-havre-may-1935-4383271.html

As Cassandre explained… A Poster unlike a painting, is not, and is not meant to be, a work easily distinguished by its – manner – a unique specimen conceived to satisfy the demanding tastes of a single more or less enlightened art lover. It is meant to be a mass-produced object existing in thousands of copies like a fountain pen or automobile. Like them, it is designed to answer certain strictly material needs. It must have a commercial function. Cassandre’s revolutionary designs introduce a new visual vocabulary, graphic concepts, and challenges that artists found difficult to surpass.  http://hogd.pbworks.com/w/page/18698596/am%20Cassandre%20-%20Dubonnet%20poster

Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, known as A.M. Cassandre, 1901-1968
https://www.grapheine.com/en/history-of-graphic-design/cassandre-the-magnificient

Cassandre’s work, almost a hundred years later, is still identified as a masterpiece of the Art Deco style… precise and boldly delineated geometric shapes and strong colours. In the SS Normandie poster, Cassandre’s sky is always blue and the sea is always green and the (mechanized) black prow cuts through the (natural) waves, leading a flock of white gulls, as it sets world speed records. What an intimidating, and dramatic composition! This is the first time an artist depicted a ship with an exaggerated and massive bow. This is the first time an artist brilliantly used thirteen white birds, on the left flank of the ship’s prow to further illustrate the massive size of the ocean liner, and give life to his composition. The artist foregrounded the modern technology on the front of the ship, dramatizing the power and speed of its huge engines while allowing the passenger cabins to flare out at the edges. Heralded by the French flag, the ship is tipped with streaks of red, acting as explanation points. https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/the-art-deco-posters-of-cassandre-part-two/

An advertisement for the Normandie and her first arrival in New York City on June 3, 1935, stated that The arrival in New York Harbor of the gigantic superliner Normandie will inaugurate a new era of transatlantic travel. She will set new standards of luxury and speed, steadiness comfort, and safety…not merely the largest liner afloat (79,280 tons)…but in almost every respect a new kind of liner! https://vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-328930764/

For a PowerPoint on Cassandre’s work, please… Check HERE!

Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso

by 20th century ArtArtPowerpoints
Pablo Picasso, Spanish Artist, 1881–1973
Mother and Child, ca. 1921, Oil on canvas, 142.9 × 172.7 cm, Art Institute, Chicago, IL, USA
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/109275/mother-and-child

Mother’s Day is an age-old tradition that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, who held spring festivities to honour Rhea, Μήτηρ θεών, the Mother of the Gods. Let’s celebrate Mother’s Day, the 8th of May in 2022, with a poem by Lola Ridge (1873-1941)… Your love was like moonlight / turning harsh things to beauty, / so that little wry souls / reflecting each other obliquely / as in cracked mirrors . . . / beheld in your luminous spirit / their own reflection, / transfigured as in a shining stream, / and loved you for what they are not… and the painting Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso at the Art Institute of Chicago…  https://poets.org/poem/mother-1

Picasso’s painting of 1921 exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, depicting a Mother and Child has an interesting story to tell! More so, the relationship Picasso had with the Art Institute and the city of Chicago, a city the artist never visited, is interesting, and goes back in time! In 1913, for example, the Art Institute of Chicago became the first American art museum to present Picasso’s work when it hosted the Armory Show from March 24 to April 16. In 1923, a gift to the Institute by Robert Allerton, a businessman and Art Institute trustee, a drawing of a Young Woman and a Man (1905), became the first Picasso work of art to enter the Institute’s collection. In 1926, The Old Guitarist (1903–04), became the first Picasso painting to be put on permanent display, definitely a daring step at the time. In 1954, the Art Institute acquired Picasso’s painting Mother and Child (1921). Today, the Art Institute of Chicago has in its collection 357 works of art created by Pablo Picasso. https://www.timeout.com/chicago/art/the-art-institute-of-chicago-celebrates-picasso

The Picasso-Art Institute relationship gets especially interesting in 1968 when William Hartmann of the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect company, visited Picasso and showed him a photograph of the artist’s painting Mother and Child as exhibited at the Art Institute. Picasso, according to Stephanie D’Alessandro, Curator of Modern Art at the Art Institute on the 2013 Exhibit Picasso and Chicago, upon seeing the photograph disappeared and came back with a fragment of a painting depicting a seated man. Give this to Chicago. They’ll know what to do with it, the artist apparently said to Hartman. Picasso’s gift, the Art Institute experts realized, had once been part of the Mother and Child composition in the Institute’s collection. When we X-rayed the painting [to see the layers that had been painted over, D’Alessandro explained …we discovered that the man was originally dangling a fish over the child’s head. What a story… https://www.timeout.com/chicago/art/the-art-institute-of-chicago-celebrates-picasso

Pablo Picasso, Spanish Artist, 1881–1973
Mother and Child and Fragment of the “Father”, ca. 1921, Oil on canvas, 142.9 × 172.7 cm, Art Institute, Chicago, IL, USA
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/109275/mother-and-child

Between 1921 and 1923, when the Chicago painting of Mother and Child was created, Picasso was a happy man! He was married to Olga Khokhlova, a Russian dancer of the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, and the father of a boy named Paulo (Paul, b. February 4, 1921). During this relaxed period of time, Picasso produced according to the Art Institute experts, at least twelve works on the subject of mothers and children, returning to a theme that he had explored during his Blue Period. But whereas those figures are frail and anguished, his classical-period figures, with their sculptural modeling and solidity, are majestic in proportion and feeling. The 1921-1923 paintings were influenced by ancient Roman Art monumentality, figurative Renaissance frescoes, the finely modeled odalisques of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the late, oddly proportioned female nudes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and his own family life. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/109275/mother-and-child

Pablo Picasso, Spanish Artist, 1881–1973
Mother and Child and Fragment of Mother and Child (as presented in the Art Institute of Chicago 2013 Exhibition Picasso and Chicago), ca. 1921, Oil on canvas, 142.9 × 172.7 cm, Art Institute, Chicago, IL, USA
Photo Credit: https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/travel/2013/03/09/exhibit-looks-at-chicagos-love-affair-with-picasso/

The Mother and Child painting by Pablo Picasso at the Art Institute of Chicago is majestic in proportion and feeling. The depicted infant sits on the mother’s lap and reaches up to touch her. The woman, dressed in a Grecian gown, gazes intently at her child. Behind them stretches a simplified background of sand, water, and sky. Picasso’s treatment of the pair is not sentimental, but the relationship expresses the serenity and stability that characterized his own life at this time. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/109275/mother-and-child

For a PowerPoint on the 1921-1923 theme of Picasso’s Mother and Child, please… Click HERE!

Suzanne Valadon

by 20th century ArtArtPost-ImpressionismStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Suzanne Valadon (Marie-Clémentine Valadon), 1865-1938
Self Portrait with Family (Suzanne Valadon is in the center, flanked by André Utter and her mother, with her son at the foreground), 1912, oil on canvas, 97 x 73 cm, Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/cyjjkkA#&gid=viewer-lightbox&pid=0

The French artist Suzanne Valadon is the protagonist of a unique Exhibition at the Barnes, in the heart of Philadelphia, that introduces to the general public a late 19th – early 20th-century Woman of extraordinary qualities. The Exhibition will be open to the public until the 9th of January, 2021, and so far, the Artist and the Exhibition have been described as… A thrilling tour of [her] portraits, nudes, still lifes, and drawings by The New York Times, or… A brilliant artist making breathtaking paintings that have the flat, colorful solidity of Gauguin, but a piercing intelligence and emotional insight by The Washington Post, or… She is a maverick artist, who often drew from her own life to create a body of work that envisions the 20th-century woman by WHYY, and Breathing new life into rebellious early 20th-century art by the Broad Street Review. https://www.barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/exhibitions/suzanne-valadon?gclid=CjwKCAjwzaSLBhBJEiwAJSRokgRhEY928WI-tXfLFrUON5esRwP3uD8RRKR9pNAu2rdgIPlxP88W8hoCkC4QAvD_BwE

Maurice Utrillo and his mother Suzanne Valadon, c. 1890 by an unknown photographer
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M_Utrillo_et_sa_m%C3%A8re_S_Valadon_vers_1890.jpg

Born Marie-Clémentine, Suzanne Valadon, was born into poverty, as the daughter of an unmarried domestic worker. She grew up in Montmartre, the bohemian quarter of Paris, supporting herself from the age of ten with odd jobs: waitress, nanny, and circus performer. A fall from a trapeze led her in a new direction…that of modeling for some of the most important artists of her time. She was more than a model… she became the muse and the friend of artists like Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Miguel Utrillo, who agreed to give Maurice, Valadon’s son, born out of wedlock, his last name and legally recognize him as his son. Suzanne was artistic. She loved to draw while in the company of her artists/friends, practice her skills by observing them paint, and with the encouragement and tutelage of her mentor Edgar Degas, learn how to master the art of drawing and etching techniques. Valadon soon transitioned from an artist’s model into a successful artist with …a complicated personal life. She was a free spirit and a bohemian in every sense of the word… Suzanne Valadon, her second husband André Utter, and her son Maurice Utrillo were known as the trinité maudite (cursed trinity) because the family environment was characterized by violent outbursts, reconciliations, and alcoholism. https://nmwa.org/art/artists/suzanne-valadon/ and https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/10/15/renoirs-art-model-was-the-greatest-painter-you-never-heard-of/?fbclid=IwAR33WEcmDTxJ4n84O07M7RIJ1rv5WaCZb8Xtc8auSwKRndJhQPfTpaliFZI and https://www.arts-spectacles.com/Valadon-Utrillo-et-Utter-la-trinite-maudite-entre-Paris-et-Saint-Bernard-1909-1939-du-16-octobre-au-12-fevrier-2012_a6460.html

Suzanne Valadon (Marie-Clémentine Valadon), 1865-1938
Self-Portrait, 1898, Oil on Canvas, 40×26.7 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suzanne_Valadon_-_Self-Portrait_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

The artist is famous for her unapologetic female and male nudes… bold, controversial, and provocative! My favourite Valadon painting is her 1912 Self Portrait with Family…odd, disturbing, and unconventional. https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/cyjjkkA#&gid=viewer-lightbox&pid=0

Suzanne Valadon (Marie-Clémentine Valadon), 1865-1938
Self Portrait with Family (Suzanne Valadon is in the center, flanked by André Utter and her mother, with her son at the foreground), 1912, oil on canvas, 97 x 73 cm, Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Portrait_de_famille%2C_1912_-_Suzanne_Valadon.jpg

The Centre Pompidou painting shows Suzanne Valadon in the center, flanked by André Utter, her second husband, her mother Magdeleine Valadon, and her son in the foreground, Maurice Utrillo. Suzanne Valadon is the only one directly facing the viewer, but she does so tentatively, with her hand on her chest… Utter and Madame Valadon are gazing to their right, each foreseeing a different future: the young man looks confident and rather content, while the woman – all wrinkled and slightly hunchbacked, with the corners of her mouth turned downwards – appears resigned. Maurice Utrillo’s depiction earns the most sympathy, for he seems to be the most miserable and out of place, gazing melancholically with his head leaning on his hand, as if he simply cannot muster the energy to stand or sit upright… What an unusual family portrait! https://artschaft.com/2018/05/23/suzanne-valadon-family-portrait-1912/

For a Student Activity inspired by the Exhibition at the Barnes, in Philadelphia, please… Check HERE!

Suzanne Valadon (Marie-Clémentine Valadon), 1865-1938
Portrait of the painter Maurice Utrillo, 1921, Collection of the City of Sannois, Val d’Oise, France, on temporary loan to the Musée de Montmartre, Paris
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurice_Utrillo,_par_Suzanne_Valadon.jpg

A Religious Scene in Thessaloniki

by 20th century ArtArtByzantiumStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Walter S. George, ? – 1962
Watercolour Painting of the North Inner Aisle Mosaics in the Church of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki, 1907 (Mosaics date to the  century), Sheet No. 2, Watercolour on Paper, 35.56x 45.72 cm, Photographic Library of the Warburg Institute, London, UK
Konstantinos Males, Greek artist, 1879-1928
Religious Scene, oil on card laid on canvas, 67 x 47 cm, Private Collection
https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Religious-Scene/7FC6668E4C9D5951

I have to confess; I was not familiar with Konstantinos Maleas’s painting Religious Scene in Thessaloniki depicting the Enthroned Virgin with Child and attendant Angels. I do not own the 2000 Adam publications book on Maleas by Prof. A. Kottidis, where, apparently, on page 83, the painting Religious Scene was first presented (another embarrassing confession!). To my defense, I am familiar with a painting of the same religious scene (Mary, Child, and Angels) by Walter S. George, a British architect, who, in 1909, while still a student at the Royal Institute of British Architects, was commissioned by the British School at Athens to go to Thessaloniki and participate in a project to publish a corpus of its Byzantine Monuments including the mosaic composition of the Enthroned Mary. Is it a mere coincidence? https://www.politeianet.gr/books/9789605003616-kotidis-antonis-adam-konstantinos-maleas-1879-1928-110647

Walter S. George, ? – 1962
Watercolour Painting of the North Inner Aisle Mosaics in the Church of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki, 1907 (Mosaics date to the  century), Sheet No. 2, Watercolour on Paper, 35.56x 45.72 cm, Photographic Library of the Warburg Institute, London, UK

The years George was working in Thessaloniki, 1906/7-1909 were crucial for the city and the British interest in Byzantine Art. On the 1st of August 1907, the Ottoman authorities embarked on major renovations on Casimir Camii, originally the Byzantine Church of Hagios Demetrios, and in the course of repairs, an unexpected discovery occurred… unknown, magnificent mosaics, quite well preserved, on the wall of the North Inner Aisle of the almost dilapidated Church came to light, astonishing the world! George put himself to work, and on the 1st of September 1909, he delivered a set of eighteen sheets of coloured drawings to his patrons at the  Byzantine Research and Publication Fund in London. Sheet No.2 of the set, depicts the Mosaics over spandrel C of the inner aisle colonnade and, extending asymmetrically, over arches 3 and 4 (from left to right). The discovered mosaics, among them the Enthroned Virgin, were of high quality and well preserved, stirring the interest of Byzantinologists around the world who rushed to Thessaloniki to study and document them.

Carte Postale of the Church of Saint Demetrios before the fire of 1917 https://docplayer.gr/41759103-3-os-ai-5-os-ai-naodomia.html
Konstantinos Males, Greek artist, 1879-1928
Religious Scene, oil on card laid on canvas, 67 x 47 cm, Private Collection
https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Religious-Scene/7FC6668E4C9D5951

Konstantinos Maleas is one of my favourite early 20th century Greek artists. A Romios by birth, and a graduate of the Great School of the Nation in Constantinople, Maleas studied Architecture in Paris and eventually Painting, at the École des Arts Décoratifs, and under the tutelage of the Neo-Impressionist Henri Martin (1901-1908). After completing his studies in Paris, Maleas returned to Istanbul, traveled extensively in the Middle East and Egypt, published his exploits, got married, and in November 1913, settled in Thessaloniki as chief engineer of the city’s Municipality.

Maleas’s Thessaloniki of 1913 was no more the city Walter S. George documented in 1907/9. During the course of the First Balkan War, advancing without hindrance, the Greek Army found itself outside Thessaloniki, exactly on the eve of the Hagios Demetrios’s feast day. Late in the evening of the 26th of October, 1912, Hassan Tashin Pasha, Commander of the Turkish Eighth Army Corps, signed the protocol authorizing the surrender of the city to Constantine, Heir Presumptive, and Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army at the time. After almost half a millennium of Ottoman rule, Thessaloniki became a Greek city once again. The Church of Hagios Demetrios and its beautiful mosaics were a Byzantine monument, residents and sightseers felt drawn to visit, pay their respects, photograph… and rarely, like Konstantino Malea document in painting! His beautiful Religious Scene is yet another testament of how important these newly discovered mosaics were among specialists like Walter S. George and art aficionados like Konstantinos Maleas. https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Religious-Scene/7FC6668E4C9D5951

Then, disaster stroke on the 5th of August 1917… a  great fire swept through the thriving city of Thessaloniki destroying two-thirds of the city’s center, including the magnificent Church of Hagios Demetrios and leaving more than 70,000 homeless. The beautiful Mosaics of the Church’s North Inner Aisle discovered in 1907 were gone forever! Few photographs and even fewer paintings, created with care and sensitivity by artists like Walter S. George and Konstantinos Maleas are all that remains. …..

For a Student Activity on Maleas’s A Religious Scene in Thessaloniki, please… Check HERE!