The World’s Most Expensive Photograph

The World's Most Expensive Photograph

(No, I Don't Get It, Either)

Sigh.  As if yesterday’s story on Peter Woytuk’s “installation” on Broadway was not enough to break the fragile crystal of this aesthete’s heart, now we have news that Rhein II, a 1999 photograph by Andreas Gursky, was sold at Christie’s New York for the world-record-setting price of $4,338,500.  You can see the photograph yourself, above.

Well .. where to begin?  Let’s start with Christie’s own Web site, which reads that the photo is a “breathtaking masterpiece of scale and wonderment, as well as the icon of Andreas Gursky's pioneering photographic oeuvre."

Well, at least the Christie’s copywriter is earning his or her money.  This ink-stained wretch goes on to write, “reaching out towards infinity, the work invokes a contemporary take on the ‘sublime’ with the astounding perfection of line and color achieved through the invocation of an apparently natural landscape."

The 73x143 in. color print is face-mounted to Plexiglas (no note if the buyer paid extra for that) and was bought by a “distinguished German sucker collector.”

Now, I’m sure that printing a picture that is 73x143 is a formidable task itself; and I’m sure that the good Mr. Gursky (born 1955) photoshopped it to his heart’s content.  However, this is a perfect example of the breakdown of our collective aesthetic sense, and how the hucksters have invaded a once rarefied realm.  Then again, I’m sure our “distinguished German collector” is not really interested in the arts, but is that most horrible kind of parasite, the art speculator. 

Perhaps a scam of such magnitude is only possible in our current Balkanized intellectual environment, where the world’s most famous auction house would engage in such monumental flummery as to pawn a holiday snapshot off as art and expect a gullible public with deep pockets to buy it as such.  Regular readers of this blog will think back to our recent examination of various masterpieces based on the Biblical David, and wonder what has happened to both the arts and the people that support them. 

I know I do.

I would like to break precedent here at the Jade Sphinx and make a direct offer to Christie’s.  Below are two recent camera-phone snaps taken while visiting Stony Brook, Long Island.  To quote Christie’s again, the viewer is "not invited to consider a specific place along the river, but rather an almost 'platonic' ideal of the body of water as it navigates the landscape".

Yeah.  That’s what I meant.  An opening bid of $1 million (I’m not greedy) can take them away.  Surely there is a “distinguished German collector” for me, too?

Peter Woytuk’s Large Animal Sculptures Invade New York

There are times when your correspondent can only shake his head in disappointed wonderment.  It seems, at times, as if New York actively demonstrates that it can only support public art that is ugly, irrelevant or meretricious.  After the appalling Frederick Douglass statue in Harlem and the gaudy Andy Warhol in lower Manhattan, how much lower can the City Fathers sink?

There answer is: lots lower.  Currently the city is under siege, an attack calculated by the Broadway Mall Association, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and the Morrison Gallery of Kent, Connecticut (note that Morrison is safely several states away).  The weapon, a series of “whimsical and captivating sculptures” dumped on city streets from Columbus Circle to 168^th Street. 

The sculptures are the work of Peter Woytuk (born 1958), who obviously took his early experiences with Play-Dough too closely to heart.  What can one say of Woytuk, other than yet another “artist” has flimflammed civic-minded boobs?  Here is a snippet of Woytuk’s bio, courtesy of his representative, the Morrison Gallery:

In recent years, Peter has been experimenting with life-size and monumental sculpture. His group of bulls, in particular, were first selected because he was attracted to the "sprawl of mass" displayed by seated and reclining bulls on the farms surrounding his former studio in New England. In his interpretation, Peter has somewhat altered their shapes. As he explains, "they're basically large volumes of simplified bovine forms. Their backbone contours, the overlapping silhouette lines of bull groupings, mirror the shapes of the hills surrounding my studio. I kind of like to think of them as the cow as landscape." Ultimately for Peter, the end result is not only the objects themselves but also the way other people respond to and interact with them. He is pleasantly surprised that the bulls have "become sort of a playground for children. They're inviting and great to climb on," he explains.

Peter's decision to create large-scale sculpture has brought about an interesting dilemma –where to have such enormous work cast. For his larger sculptures, Peter has been using foundries in Thailand and China. According to Peter, these facilities, which are used to "working on twenty-foot Buddhas," have "the ability to pour very large-scale sculpture. They're almost unique in their capacity to melt and pour a great amount of metal." The resulting product is finely crafted under the scrupulous direction of the artist.

Ah … finely crafted under the scrupulous direction of the artist.  In short, high-end junk for a people who no longer believe in real art.  One is delighted, however, that children are smart enough to know a large-scale toy when they see it, and act accordingly.

The above bird (bird?) can be found at the train station at Broadway and 72^nd.  It is representative of the show, which is to say that none of the other pieces are better or worse.  Another worm at the core of the Big Apple…

Frank Langella at the Cornell Club

                          

Your correspondent had the great pleasure of listening to a question and answer session with legendary actor Frank Langella last Friday at New York’s Cornell Club.  The luncheon event, presented under the auspices of the Hudson Union Society, presented Langella in a discussion about his latest star turn in Terrance Rattigan’s (1911-1977) Man and Boy, and then opened the floor to questions.

Langella is one the Americans actors who has carved-out both formidable film and stage careers.  For over 30 years he has morphed from a handsome leading man to a distinguished character player; Broadway roles have included Noel’s Coward’s Gary Essidine (Present Laughter), Sir Thomas More (A Man For All Seasons), actor Junius Booth (the interesting and overlooked Booth by Austin Pendleton), and, of course, Dracula in the Edward Gorey production of Dracula.  (He played a vampire of another type recently in Frost/Nixon, rightly portraying the former president as a slightly rancid revenant.)

Langella’s film career has been more spotty.  Studios worked to make him a mainstream leading man (playing Dracula as a romantic idol, for instance, or in the wonderful Those Lips, Those Eyes), but Langella was never wholly successful as a traditional lead.  Langella’s persona is too epic, too dangerous, and too larger than life for conventional leads.  By temperament and by technique, he is ideally suited for such figures as Sherlock Holmes and Leonardo da Vinci, Prospero and Cyrano.

Langella has had a formidable handicap to his classical theater ambitions – he is an Italian-American born in New Jersey.  (I well recall one waggish New York Times reporter calling him, “Bayonne’s gift to classical theater,” which is both snobbish and stupid.)  Langella, born in 1938, joins a small, select group of North Americans – Christopher Plummer and Kevin Kline come to mind -- with capabilities at classical parts to rival their European counterparts. 

If you have the opportunity to see Langella in Man and Boy, do not miss it.  Rattigan’s 1963 drama about a monstrous captain of industry, and how he ruins the lives of both investors and his own son, could not be timelier as the temperature drops around our Occupy Wall Street heroes. 

Last Friday, Langella was an amusing interview.  He graciously answered questions about his turn as Dracula – though it’s quite clear that he is more than tired of it.  (“It took the industry 10 years to forget that I played Dracula; it took me 10 minutes.”)  He also revealed that he is a dedicated craftsman as well was a great artist – he believes in being on and delivering for audiences.  If you can’t ‘turn it on’ or ‘turn it off,’ you should not be an actor.  He also told of an actor who had played Hamlet and three months after the run, could still not let go of the role.  “Then you did it wrong,” Langella said.

Happily, he spoke at length about Cyrano, who has played three times on stage, and he is preparing to direct a production next year.  It’s Langella’s belief that there is more than a little Cyrano in every man.  “We are all blocked by something – we think we’re too fat or think we’re too ugly, or that our nose is too big – and because of that, we’re unworthy of the love of a beautiful woman,” he said.  “But what Cyrano missed is that he was loved for his soul, and if a person has a beautiful soul, he is always worthy of love.”

Langella spoke with a mix of nostalgia and amusement about his upbringing in a noisy Italian-American home.  (“If pots weren’t flying, I thought something was wrong.”)  He also spoke at length about his preference for stage work, and how proud his is that his has mainly been a theatrical career.

It is always alarming to see a great actor at his ease.  I had the impression that I was with an indulgent uncle rather Dracula, Cyrano and Prospero.  But that is Langella’s point – there is something grand and elemental in even the most quiet people.

Caravaggio’s David and Goliath

We go from the sublime David of Michelangelo to the profoundly disturbing David and Goliath of Caravaggio.  Born Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Caravaggio was the original ‘bad boy’ of art.  His remarkable body of work, with its heightened drama and use of differing levels of dark paint, created the bridge between the High Renaissance and the Baroque school of painting.

Caravaggio trained in Milan under a master who had trained with Titian.  He moved to Rome while still a young man in his 20s and quickly set up a reputation as a painter of considerable skill.  He also established his reputation as a wild man – drinking, brawling and having a string of affairs with young boys.  He killed a man in 1606 during an argument, and fled Rome with a price on his head.  He was involved in serious fights in 1608 and 1609 (in Malta and Naples, respectively), and died at 38 from a fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany, while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.  This picture of David and Goliath was sent ahead of Caravaggio to Rome as a Papal offering prior to his pardon.

Let’s look at this remarkable picture.  If you look closely at the upper left hand of the canvas, you’ll see that David has just entered a tent, presumably the tent of Saul, to display the head of Goliath.  Notice that the sword is at an angle to David’s groin, another (perhaps unconscious) instance of the Renaissance mind eroticizing David.

It is reported that Caravaggio referred to the figure of the young David as “il suo Caravaggino” or, in English, “his little Caravaggio.”  This pun has puzzled art historians for centuries.  Was Caravaggio referring to his young studio assistant (and probable lover), or did he paint a picture of his younger self?

If Caravaggio did indeed paint his younger self as David, this picture becomes even more amazing because Caravaggio modeled the face of Goliath on himself, as well – making this picture of David and Goliath a double-portrait.

The face of Goliath is not that of a monster nor giant, but a dissipated satyr.  The eyes are heavily lidded and puffy, the mouth slack and weak, the teeth rotting, the hair long and unkempt.  But, underneath it all, is there not a resemblance between David and Goliath?

Even more remarkable is the expression of young David’s face.  There is none of the serene self-satisfaction of Donatello, nor the heroic resolution of Michelangelo.  Rather, this David seems mournful as he regretfully holds the head of Goliath into our view.  Could this not be Caravaggio looking regretfully upon his older self?  Or, if as is supposed, this picture was a Papal offering, a promise that the older, monstrous Caravaggio is now dead, eliminated by his own better self?

Caravaggio’s David and Goliath is a puzzle inside of mystery – and one of the most enigmatic works of the Renaissance.

Michelangelo’s David

Michelangelo’s David is, of course, the most famous male nude figure in the world.  It has been photographed, recast, and rendered into kitschy souvenirs.  But despite five centuries of familiarity and more recent efforts to render the masterwork irrelevant or banal, this 17 foot colossus maintains its power to enthrall, inspire and move.

Its gestation was not easy.  The work was originally entrusted to Agostino di Duccio (1462) and then to Antonio Rossellino (1476), but both gave it up as a bad job.  The block of marble mined from the Opera del Duomo of Florence was flawed with veins, was too tall and too narrow, and otherwise unacceptable.  Leonardo also turned down the job (no surprise there) and the marble slab was left in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo until 1501.

When the David project was resurrected by the gonfalonier Pier Soderini, who was engaged in another artistic and intellectual revival of Florence, he approached Michelangelo.  That artist – an incredibly difficult, arrogant, argumentative man – could not resist the opportunity to succeed where other artists had failed.  He was only 26 years old and would complete the commission in two years.

David was originally commissioned to be one of a series of statues lining the roof of the Florence Cathedral, but David was placed instead in a public square outside the Palazzo della Signoria.  Its reception was both rapturous and censorious.  Soderini thought the nose too big – Michelangelo went up to the face and pretended to chisel away at it.  Soderini was satisfied and Michelangelo secretly cursed him as a fool.  Some conservative factions – and philistines seem to be with us in every age – threw stones at it.

Where to begin writing about this, perhaps the greatest achievement of Western art?  That David is beautiful is a given, but what can we glean about the statue other than youth and beauty?

First, let’s see where this David is different from the David of Donatello and Titian.  The first thing you’ll notice is what is missing – Goliath.  There is no headless body, no foot resting on the severed head.  Indeed, Michelangelo depicts David before killing the giant – his hand holding the stone that will kill Goliath close to his thigh, sling at the ready, eyes on his adversary.

Note, too, David is heroically nude, in the Classical mode.  This David is not just the Biblical David, but also every hero from antiquity through to the present day.  The statue is Perseus and Achilles and Hercules as well as David – he represents an ideal of young heroism.

Unlike most statues of antiquity (or those based on a Classical ideal), Michelangelo eschews the placid beauty of the face for one of handsome intensity.  Seen from the front, David has a handsome and resolute profile.  But approach the statue from other angels and the face alters – intensity turns to thoughtful composure to a face coldly assessing a great danger.  It is this human dimension that elevates Michelangelo’s David from some chilly ideal of humanity and breathes life into the figure.

The head and hands seem to be slightly too large to accommodate the figure.  The common view is that, since it was meant to be viewed from below, that Michelangelo made them too large to accommodate the change in perspective.  I, myself, do not agree with this theory.  Rather, I think the head and the hands are accentuated because they are the organs of thought and action.

Michelangelo’s David is such a part of our environment that it seems almost impossible to imagine the world without it.  It is my favorite work of art, and a large porcelain copy is on my desk as I write these words.  The figure of David provides both solace and inspiration, and remains an ideal – physical, spiritual and intellectual – to which we can all aspire.

Titian’s David and Goliath

Simply a magnificent painting by the Venetian painter, draughtsman and designer Titian (born Tiziano Vecellio 1489-1576).  Perhaps the greatest Venetian painter of the Renaissance, Titian was called by his contemporaries The Sun Amidst Small Stars (after the final line of Dante’s Paradiso).  He was a remarkably versatile painter, equally at home with landscapes, portraits and large narrative pictures.  He is particularly important to art history because of his unique mastery of color.

Titian was born in Pieve di Cardore, in Venice, and lived to be quite an old man by Renaissance standards.  His style changed often throughout his lifetime, but his serious study and application of color was a constant throughout his career.  His later works were, perhaps, muted compared to his earlier pictures, but his overall approach also grew in subtlety. 

This painting is now in the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. It was originally made as a ceiling painting for the Santo Spirito in Isola; Titian made two other ceiling paintings for that church, Cain and Abel and the Sacrifice of Isaac. 

Look at the barren landscape Titian uses for his tableaux – nothing save some rocks and the merest hint of vegetation and blasted scrub to the right.  The place – and perhaps not even the time – are not important in this picture, rather, the only reality of the picture is the eternal struggle between boy and monster that take up frame.

Unlike Donatello’s bronze David (or Michelangelo’s, which we will look at later this week) David is mostly clothed.  (Indeed, he wears more clothing than the traditionally heavily armored Goliath.)  Curiously, his simple tunic rides heavenward, revealing his leg and the curve of his bottom.  His arms, too, are extended heavenward, obscuring his face and placing emphasis on his musculature.  I find this fascinating – the Biblical text specifically describes David as ‘beautiful,’ but it seems as if Renaissance artists make a point of eroticizing the boy hero.  This is not surprising as David was the patron saint of the Florentine state, and the Renaissance put a very high premium on male beauty.

David’s physical proximity to the fallen giant is surprisingly intimate, as if here were straddling the corpse of his foe.  The size and musculature of the brute are clearly contrasted to that of the boy; this painting includes a particularly gratuitous wound where the head was severed from the body.

Titian’s superlative use of color is also demonstrated by the exsanguinated body of Goliath.  The arms and head are already white marble, the blood having run from his dreadful neck wound.  The face of Goliath, though fierce, seems curiously at peace.  One cannot help but wonder if this monster is glad to finally be free of his own brutality.

Titian again uses vibrant color in the sky and the heavenly light it sheds on the scene below.  Look at how the clouds draw in white-yellow radiance close to the opening, and build into brownish grays moving away from the light.   More importantly, look at how the light plays on the arms of the triumphant David, also highlighting part of his torso and his leg – as if God sends a signal of approval to His champion.  The same light falls on Goliath, but rather than adding tints of celestial color, the light of heaven renders him yellowed or dead white.

One last thing before we stop looking at this extraordinary picture – note Titian’s command of drawing.  The basis of all great painting is sound draughtsmanship, and take particular note of Goliath’s toes and fingers, the curve of his great sword or the extreme foreshortening of the composition.  This is a splendidly drawn painting, and Titian’s anatomy and composition – his entire dramatic narrative – are unlike any other depiction of the story.  Titian’s David and Goliath is, simply, one of a kind.

Donatello’s Bronze David

I thought it would be interesting to look at how some of history’s greatest artists depicted the Biblical David, who slew Goliath and later became King of Israel.

The story of David and Goliath is powerful in its simplicity.  The Israelites are battling the Philistines to no avail because they have the great giant, Goliath, on their side.  The Philistines challenge the Israelites – if one of them could best Goliath in one-to-one combat, that outcome would decide the battle.

No Israelite is brave enough to take up the challenge other than David, a simple shepherd boy who it too young to be a solider.  Without armor or weapons, the boy uses his slingshot to daze Goliath with a stone before decapitating him with his own sword.

The great Renaissance master Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (known as Donatello) (1386–1466) undertook two statues of David.  The first, in marble, is, to my mind, a negligible work.  But his later David in bronze (seen above) is a remarkable achievement.  This bronze David is the first unsupported, standing work cast in bronze during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding male nude sculpture made since antiquity.  It captures David after defeating Goliath, one foot triumphantly on the giant’s severed head.

The statue appears to have been cast some time in the 1440s, and Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects wrote that it stood in a column designed by Desiderio da Settignano in the middle of the courtyard of the Palazzo Medici.  The inscription reads (translated into English) as: The victor is whoever defends the fatherland.  God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe.  Behold!  A boy overcame a great tyrant.  Conquer, o citizens.  David was the figurehead of the Florentine state, and the Renaissance was a rich in depictions of him.

The figure’s history is a little spotty – there is no surviving documentation for the commission of the statue, though it is assumed that it was created for the Medici family.  We do know it was in the courtyard of the Medici Palace in 1469, and it bounced around from the Palazzo della Signoria to the Pittia Palace, then the Uffizi and then the Bargello, where it can be found today.

It is perhaps impossible for us with our 21^st Century eyes to appreciate how remarkable, how revolutionary Donatello’s bronze actually is.  First off, the centuries long Dark Ages were drawing to a close, and Donatello, certainly a Renaissance figure, went back to the traditions of Classical antiquity and depicted the saint as a heroic nude.  His nudity further indicates the presence of God – a small boy, without armor, is able to defeat the heavily plated Goliath through God’s grace.

And yet … and yet, to our eyes (and perhaps those of the Renaissance) there is something uniquely disturbing about Donatello’s David.  To our eyes, David is more than a little feminine.  The hat (a contemporary Renaissance era hat, oddly enough, garlanded with laurel leaves) and boots seem to highlight the boy’s nudity.  And the Goliath’s sword is so enormous compared to David’s physique that it completely infantilizes him.

Also, look too at David’s delicately curled hair, his hippy voluptuousness, the emphasis Donatello places on the lower stomach – this David is eroticized and feminized at the same time.  More interesting still is David’s left hand resting on his hip and bent left leg, which to our eyes read as ‘come hither,’ rather than stoically triumphant.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Donatello’s bronze David is the expression on the face.  David, an untried boy, has just gone from obscurity to become a hero to his people, vanquishing a giant in the process.  Shouldn’t we see resolution?  Or relief?  Or even heroic self-confidence?   Instead … there is a blank, almost placid beauty.  Many poets of the Romantic era insisted that there could be no great beauty without some strangeness in the proportion, and I could think of no better illustration of that notion than Donatello’s David.

The Jade Sphinx at 100

No, I am not 100 years old, appearances to the contrary.  Rather, this post marks my 100^th entry to The Jade Sphinx.  When this blog started last April, I approached it with considerable trepidation.  Is there room (even interest) on the Web for a blog dedicated to the Fine Arts?  Indeed, aren’t the Arts (with a capital A) an elitist construct, somehow profoundly anti-American, and mostly irrelevant?  Even more important – would I be able to sustain it?

So it is with a great deal of satisfaction that I can say now, 100 posts later, that the Arts are not irrelevant, and that there is a healthy interest in them.  The Fine Arts remain a vital part of the American conversation and continue to inform and inspire.  With little or no outreach, The Jade Sphinx has managed to survive 100 posts with reads well in excess of 10,000.  That somebody out there other than myself cares has, more than anything else, made my experience a deeply pleasurable one.

It has taken some little while for The Jade Sphinx to find its voice and mission, but I hope that it has evolved into something that you enjoy reading.  We will continue to feature book and film reviews, overviews of artists both historical and contemporary, interviews with writers and artists, and turn a critical eye at our contemporary culture.  But more importantly, The Jade Sphinx is a celebration of beauty and seeks to be an oasis for those interested in the Fine Arts in a cyber culture that is too often contemptuous, ironic and vulgar.

Readers will also have noted that I make frequent references to Oscar Wilde as patron saint of this blog.  That is not intended in any way as ironic or meretricious; it was through my youthful readings of Wilde that I first realized that art (and its essential component, beauty) were necessary ingredients of the human experience, and were part and parcel of what made life worth living.  And while this column would never argue that art and beauty trump morality, compassion, tolerance, generosity, wisdom or kindness, it would indeed argue that art without meaning and without beauty is a cold intellectual game hardly worth playing.

One last thought – our arts today are too often merely entertainments.  Americans are, as a people, entertaining themselves into irrelevance.  The Fine Arts often have the ‘stigma’ that they are hard work, require intelligence, that too much thinking is involved.  Well … that’s right, though it’s hardly a stigma.  It is wonderful to be entertained, and I will confess to liking just as much trash as the next fellow (perhaps even more!), but entertainment does not supply the nourishment, the life-affirming qualities, and the insights both personal and cosmological, that can be found in the Fine Arts.  If you have to work for it – it’s probably worth having. 

Let’s hear from you.  What of The Jade Sphinx has made you think?  Moved you?  What painter or picture or book or writer have we introduced you to?  And what would you like to see next?  Let us know.

For the rest of this week, we will be focusing on the Biblical story of David and Goliath and how it has inspired artists for centuries.  Come back tomorrow – and the day after and the day after that.

Many thanks,

James Abbott

The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

There are many types of holy book and each and every one of them – from the Bible to the Talmud to the Koran – is alternately filled with good sense, vague posturing passing for profundity, and plain old garden variety stupidity.

Many artists consider The Art Spirit to be their holy book.  Like many holy books, it is a compilation of miscellanea masquerading as a coherent text, and it shares all of the virtues and faults of other holy books – which is to say, ultimately, you get out of it whatever it is you bring to it yourself.

The Art Spirit is a compilation of the teachings, letters and overheard comments of painter Robert Henri (1865-1929), a leading figure in the misnamed Ashcan School of art.  Henri was born Robert Henry Cozad in Cincinnati, and was a distant cousin of painter Mary Cassatt.  The family moved west and founded in town in Nebraska, called Cozad.

Henri’s father soon became embroiled in a ranching dispute, and shot a man in self defense.  He took the family to Denver, Colorado, and he changed his name to Richard Henry Lee, and his sons posed as adopted children, Frank Southern and Robert Earl Henri.  Some time later, the family moved back east, first to New York and then New Jersey.

Henri studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before moving to Paris to study at the Academie Julian, where he worked with the great master William-Adolphe Bouguereau before entering the Ecole des Beaux Arts. 

Henri built a formidable career for himself, organizing several landmark shows and painting a number of original and striking pictures, including Salome and The Snow.  He closed out his career by becoming a celebrated teacher at New York’s Art Students League from 1915 to 1921.  It was there that former pupil Margery Ryerson gathered his various musings on art, painting and what it meant to be an artist and published it under The Art Spirit in 1923.  (Other students included Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and George Bellows.)

I’m not sure if The Art Spirit was meant to be read from front cover to back as a consistent narrative of some kind, but it is a delicious night-table book for random sampling.  There is a lot of gold to be mined here, such as:

There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.  In fact it is not only among the artists but among all people that a greater appreciation and respect for the human body should develop.   When we respect the nude we will no longer have any shame about it.

This is good, too:

Don’t worry about your originality.  You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.  It will stick to you and show you up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.

Also good are Henri’s thoughts on the reasons for study:

If you are studying art and not making compositions, my advice is to begin immediately.  You study from the model mainly to get experience.  Your composition is the expression of your interests and in making your compositions you apply what you learn when working from the model.  Your object in painting from the model is not to become a painter of school studies, but to become a painter of whatever you have to express with figures, portraits, landscaped, street scenes, anything, in fact, that interests you.

I’m less impressed with Henri when he is vague.  For instance, I’m not at all sure what he means here:

I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens.  And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and explain the things of one’s own time.

Or something.

And, of course, no holy book would be complete without some outright stupidity.  Henri dishes it up with:

If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message.

Be yourself today and don’t wait till tomorrow.  He who is master of what he has today will be master of what he has tomorrow.  Many things we know are true that we have never made a part of us.  An artist is a master at the start, if he is ever going to be one.  Masters are people who use what they have.

Don’t demonstrate measure but demonstrate the results you may get from the employment of measure.  There is geometry in all good expression.

In a canvas there are two orders working together, the dynamic and static.

Things are an interesting interval away from you, as well as across the canvas.

Look for echoes.  Sometimes the same shape or direction will echo through the picture.

Got that?

The Art Spirit is certainly not to every taste.  It is, however, a fascinating look into the mind of an artist who gave serious thought to his craft, his artistic tradition, and his place in the world.  Sure, much of it is silly, but a great deal is also profound. 

The Irish Chamber Orchestra with Leon Fleisher at the Piano

Your correspondent managed to escape any possible Halloween evening unpleasantness when he was surprised with a gift to see the Irish Chamber Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.  It was a remarkable concert.

A word first about the Irish Chamber Orchestra: the orchestra is recognized as one of Ireland’s greatest cultural assets.  This year, the orchestra will conduct an extensive US tour as part of the Imagine Ireland/A Year of Irish Arts in America 2011 with pianist Leon Fleisher.

The orchestra is conducted by Gerard Korsten and is led by Katherine Hunka.  Both are to be commended for making the Irish Chamber Orchestra a cultural force to be reckoned with.

Of course the story of Leon Fleisher is well-known.  One of the greatest pianists of his generation, Fleisher lost the use of his right hand at the height of his career.  Following this disaster, he mastered many one-handed pieces--before many decades later, he regained use of his right hand.  It is one of those dramatic, highly emotional stories that the world of classical music seems to so richly provide.

Alice Tully Hall, home of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, has been refurbished over the past few years.  I find the redesign of the concert hall to be a welcome change – it is a comfortable room that acoustically creates a very full sound.  Some find the acoustics generate a sound too loud for chamber music, but, as my tastes run towards orchestral pieces, I find it perfect.  Unfortunately, the hallways seem more mindful of a Soviet detention center, and the security staff needs to be better trained.  (Note to Alice Tully Hall – tell security that this is not Stalinist Russia.)

The concert opened with the Symphony No. 96 in D major, “The Miracle,” by Joseph Haydn.  This was a delightful piece, played with a great deal of snap and verve by the orchestra.  Korsten conducted like a man made of music – he nearly danced before the musicians and his enthusiasm was infectious.  Wonderfully done.

Haydn was followed by the Concerto for Piano (Left Hand) and Orchestra No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 53 by Sergei Prokofiev.  Section I, Vivace, was an amusing and entertaining piece with a great deal of clockwork momentum.  This forward motion is not lost in the Andante, which is extremely powerful and mindful of emerging from some dream of transcendence.  The piece is complete with all the Russian fillips expected from Prokofiev and, true innovator that he was, the composer seems to end the piece in mid-note.  It is both jarring and effective.

The third piece was, sadly, the one misstep of the evening: Termon (On the 10^th Anniversary of 9/11) for Uilleann Pipes and String Orchestra by Micheal O Suilleabhain.  The piece is filled with twee Irish shtick, delivered in a lugubrious manner to impart a sense of mourning.  If Termon is meant to inspire feelings of pain, it did.  Mostly in my ears.  Any other ambition was unmet.

(A parenthetical note here on the art of September 11^th.  Perhaps no event in human history since the crucifixion has been so fetishized as the terrible events of Sept.11^th.  Yes, it was a horrible day and dreadful things happened.  Yes, it was an affront to human reason and human dignity, and lives were cut short by barbarians in a brutal and terrible way.  But in 10 short years, more art commemorating 9/11 has been created than any representation of, say, the French Revolution, which is an historically more important event.  Could we please have a moratorium on September 11^th until history allows us to better understand it?)

Happily, the concert ended with the sprightly Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, by Ludwig Van Beethoven.  Often undervalued among his symphonic works, No. 7 is magnificently joyful and energetic.  Amazingly, Symphony No. 7 was written largely while Beethoven was recovering from an illness, but you could not tell that from the composition.  It is a full-bodied, enthusiastic work, and the Irish Chamber Orchestra was equal to the task.  It was a delight to be there, and a performance of the No. 7 that I will never forget.

More information on the tour can be found here: http://ico-ustour.com.  If the Irish Chamber Orchestra tours near you, they are not to be missed.