The Young Mozart Playing the Organ by Heinrich Lossow

A marked change from yesterday’s picture, don’t you think?  Well … on second thought, perhaps not quite so much.

Let’s look at the picture first, and note what it does right.  Here two monks, one young and beautiful, the other older and somehow fretful, listen to the boy genius Mozart play the organ.  Some kind of musical worship is clearly planned, as can be seen by the music stands at the ready.  The fresco barely visible above the young Mozart’s head and the columns, cornices and elaborate moldings indicate that the church is rather a grand one.

Note how Lossow separates Mozart from the monks.  Not only is he elevated above their heads by the organ chair (which is also on a platform), but also by his elaborate blue coat, stockings and richly dressed hair.  Lossow further frames Mozart by separating him from his surroundings by the pillar on the right and the doorway at the left.  The sense of elevation is important … not only is Mozart literally above the monks, but he is metaphorically closer to heaven.

Lossow does, I think, a commendable job on depicting the church.  Like most churches, its coloration and light change depending on one’s vantage point, and the sense of massive space and monumentality is caught with what is really a minimum of detail.  The columns, archway, bit of fresco are there – but our imaginations fill in the rest.

Where the picture fails, I think, is the poor job Lossow made of foreshortening Mozart, as his overall proportions seem more dwarfish than youthful.  Also, a greater contrast of expression between the younger and older monk would have provided Lossow with the opportunity to make some deeper comment … an opportunity that is somewhat wasted here.

However, I think it is interesting to look at this picture with Lossow’s other work in mind.  Remember that Lossow was a pornographer of some note, and that yesterday’s picture of the rapacious sphinx also had a strong carnal undercurrent.  Simply put, what we see in The Young Mozart Playing the Organ is a forbidden pleasure.  Whether through fear of interrupting the boy genius, or because of burdensome strictures of their religious order against musical indulgence, the monks here are clearly enjoying a pleasure that they should not have.  It is of a piece with Lossow’s seeming preoccupations.

In that light, that is why I think Lossow missed a bet by not underscoring the expressions of the two monks with greater emotional detail.  It was an opportunity to tell a narrative on the effects of either pleasure awakening, or pleasure denied for years.  What is a simple, almost kitschy picture could have had true narrative heft and physiological insight.

More Lossow tomorrow.

The Enchantress by Heinrich Lossow

Well, if this didn’t enliven your Wednesday, nothing will…

I have not been able to learn much about German artist Heinrich Lossow (1840-1897).  Like many artists covered here, he was the son of an artist, sculptor Arnold H. Lossow; his brother, Friedrich Lossow, would become a noted painter of wildlife.

Lossow received some initial training from his father, and he later studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Karl Theodor von Piloty.  He continued his artistic training while traveling through France and Italy.

Lossow was also a noted illustrator, as well as a painter, enlivening editions of Shakespeare and many German novels; he was also curator of the Schleissheim gallery near Munich.  Lossow was a prolific pornographer in his spare time, and several drawings of the most salacious kind can be found through a quick Internet search.  His most interesting success in this field of endeavor is a painting called The Sin.  I’ll not reproduce it in these pages, but those interested in the private lives of nuns and priests can see it easily with yet another Internet search.

So, clearly Lossow’s imagination was … interesting, as can clearly be seen in today’s painting The Enchantress, which Lossow painted when he was 28.  In this picture, a young man falls under the erotic spell of a granite garden sphinx, locking one another in a passionate embrace.

Where to begin?  First, perhaps the most impressive thing about the picture is Lossow’s mastery of light.  The cool illumination is clearly moonlight, suffusing the entire scene with pale whites and blues.  Look, too, at the shadow thrown by the leaves on the sphinx.  That is the cool shadow of moonlight … and perhaps only the moon is the proper witness to what happens here.

The vegetation in this garden is lush … perhaps too lush for a proper garden.  Both the riot of vegetation and the moonlit gate in the background leave one wondering whether this is a garden or cemetery.

The man’s clothes are beautifully rendered, with an almost tangible sense of the velvet and satin.  But perhaps the most interesting thing about the male figure (and the painting overall) is the way in which traditional gender roles seem to have been switched.  It is the man who is supine in the embrace – indeed, his right hand seems to hold the amorous sphinx at bay.  Also, it is the female sphinx who holds him in place – look at the granite biceps and forearms tense as she closes tightly around her lover … or victim.

The headdress the sphinx sports also underscores her power as a pagan goddess and a figure from a dim, pre-Christian past.  Her otherworldly qualities are accentuated by the moonlight, and by her rather blank and terrible eyes.  Her claws would appear to be very dangerous – particularly when made of stone! – and the gentleman in her grip is clearly outclassed.  One wonders if he will survive this encounter.

There is a marked whiff of the unsavory in this picture.  Visitors to any collection of world class master paintings have seen various images of ancient monsters, creatures of myth and gods and goddesses.  But rarely have they reached from the cool depths of antiquity to prey upon modern man.  Or, perhaps this is Lossow’s not-so-gentle dig at various art connoisseurs and aesthetes.  A love of art can be a consuming passion, and this may be Lossow’s literal warning to anyone who loves art and antiquity too much…

More Lossow tomorrow.

Fred Plotkin of Operavore: Inaugural Speaker at Salon Thursdays at the Dahesh

To launch the Salon Thursdays series of free lectures at the Dahesh Museum of Art Gift Shop, curators selected one of the most learned and engaging fine arts critics and scholars in New York today, Fred Plotkin.  His presentation, Aida: One Woman, Two Nations, and Verdi’s Egyptomania, will take place at 6:30 PM on October 4^th at the Dahesh Gift Shop at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York.  People interested in attending can call the shop at 212.759.0606, or visit online at http://www.minimusdesign.com/dma/.  If you have an interest in Verdi, opera, or all things Egyptian, this is a must-see event.

Plotkin is familiar to radio listeners for his intermission features during the New York Metropolitan Opera international radio broadcasts, where he does audio essays, intermission features and is a popular guest on the Met's Opera Quiz. His seminars at the Metropolitan Opera Guild are always sold out and he has lectured about opera for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BAM, the Smithsonian, the Morgan Library, the Los Angeles Opera, the Wagner Society of Southern California, the Salzburg Festival and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Plotkin is also the author of the best-selling Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera and Classical Music 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Classical Music, which has also enjoyed a vogue in both the UK and China. 

Readers who are avid WQXR listeners can also read Plotkin’s entertaining and informative blog, Operavore, which can be found at: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/people/fred-plotkin/.  It is highly recommended.

Fred Plotkin took a few moments out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions prior to his lecture this week.

I’ve heard you say that Giuseppe Verdi was one of the most significant figures of the 19^th Century art world in Italy.  Why is that?

I would say that Verdi was the most significant cultural figure in Italy in the 19th Century. His life spanned from 1813-1901 and, though he grew up in a rural setting, he immersed himself in literature and music on his own. With his great genius, rigorous discipline and fiery though compassionate temperament, he saw his art as a vehicle for communicating his principles while never compromising the sheer visceral pleasure that his operas (really, music dramas) provided at the time and still do.

Can you tell us a little bit about how and why Aida was commissioned?

By the time Aïda was commissioned, he was in his mid 50s, the richest and most successful composer in the world. He had not written an opera for several years and could pick and choose his subjects. The commission came from the Khedive of Egypt to coincide with the opening of the Suez Canal and the Cairo Opera House. Ultimately, Rigoletto was the opening opera but Aïda did have its world premiere there. I believe that Verdi viewed Aïda as an opera that was meant for Italians to see and wrote it with them in mind. That will be part of the subject of my talk at the Dahesh Museum.

You have said that Aida is a profoundly political work.  In what way?

Aïda is about how private passions collide with public service. In addition, just because one nation can dominate another militarily, it does not mean that the occupied nation has been conquered on the deepest level. The title character in this opera may be a slave in one country but she does not forget that she is the princess of another. Even the conquerors (the Egyptians in this case) come to realize that their might can only go so far.

How has this work been interpreted – and reinterpreted – over the years?

In countless ways! Perhaps too many. I saw a production in Europe in which the Egyptians were Nazis and the Ethiopians were the oppressed Jews. This completely missed the point of the opera and trivialized the horrors visited upon Jews, gays, Gypsies and others during the Holocaust. I believe, with all operas, that superimposing a concept on an opera only diminishes that work. It is more important for musicians and stage directors to really apply themselves to understanding the intentions and aesthetics of composers and librettists and find inspiration from them.

Can you tell us a little bit about Operavore?  How did it come about?

I was approached by WQXR, America’s iconic classical music radio station, in the winter of 2011 to be a writer for their new blog about opera, then known as WQX-Aria. This was part of the station’s plan to expand its reach and connection with listeners (who are intensely knowledgeable and loyal) and to also create topics for discussion. In short order, the station added an Operavore feed in which you can listen to opera all the time streamed on www.wqxr.org. I was happy to sign on, with the proviso that I not do reviewing because I know so many people in the opera field. Instead, my two articles a week cover a wide range of issues that have opera as a common link. So I might write about singing, teaching opera, production design, politics, sex, food, wine, conducting, finances, and the five senses, all in relation to opera. I do one article a month as part of a series I call Planet Opera, in which I write about one city and its relationship to opera. These have included the more predictable places (Milan, Vienna, Barcelona) but also unusual but significant spots such as Ghent, Genoa and Dublin. Next up is Cincinnati.

Finally, do you have any projects in the pipeline you would like to share with our readers?

I lead a very popular series at the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò of NYU (24 West 12th Street) called “Adventures in Italian Opera” that is free and open to the public. In it, I am joined by great practitioners of Italian opera who come and talk--meaningfully, not superficially--about how they do what they do. This season’s dates are Oct 24 (Remembering Richard Tucker); Nov 9 (David Alden on directing Un Ballo in Maschera); Dec 3 (tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, star of La Clemenza di Tito and La Rondine); Feb 26 (Celebrating Giuseppe Verdi on his bicentennial); Mar 12 (José Cura on performing Otello); Apr 30 (Fabio Luisi, principal conductor of The Metropolitan Opera).

Many thanks to Fred Plotkin – we will be speaking with him again in the future!

The Dahesh Museum Launches Salon Thursdays, Offering Free Lectures at Their New Downtown New York Gift Shop

Last week your correspondent was invited to the grand opening of the new gift shop of the Dahesh Museum of Art, located at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York.  For the past several years the Dahesh has been a museum without walls, as significant portions of this important collection have traveled the world in various shows and exhibitions.  In conjunction with the new store location, the Dahesh has completely revamped their Web site, and readers are urged to visit it to learn about the collection and travelling shows: http://www.daheshmuseum.org.

The new space is also the location of an upcoming series called Salon Thursdays, where leading scholars of the arts will provide free programs starting at 6:30 PM.  For further details, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.  The initial series of Salon Thursdays include:

October 4: Aida: One Woman, Two Nations, and Verdi’s Egyptomania, presented by Fred Plotkin, celebrated author, scholar and blogger on all things opera.  His blog, Operavore (http://www.wqxr.org/#!/people/fred-plotkin/) is highly recommended to anyone interested in Opera and Classical Music.

November 1: Jean-Frederic Waldeck: A Nineteenth-Century Artist Painting Exotic Mexico, presented by Esther Pasztory, Professor of Pre-Columbian Art History at Columbia University, who will discuss the life and work of this quirky Orientalist who went to Mexico and made the ancient Aztecs vivid in an entirely modern way.

December 6: Making Their Mark: Drawing by Academic Artists in the Nineteenth Century, presented by Dr. David Farmer, Director of Exhibitions at the Dahesh, which will explore the role of drawing in the development of those artists who trained in the academies and ateliers of Europe and America in the 19^th Century.

The new store is a treat for aesthetes of all stripes, including beautiful things for the home, reproduction prints and posters, and an impressive collection of scholarly books on the Classical tradition.  More importantly, the offices of the Dahesh are now in one location, allowing museum administrators to better work together on travelling shows and creating a tentpole in Hudson Square to possibly reopen the museum downtown.

Your correspondent is a great believer in the Dahesh and its mission.  It is the only institution in the United States devoted to academic art of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  The curators and scholars there have worked tirelessly to reassert the work of Europe’s academic tradition in the broader context of European and American 19^th Century art.  They have managed to do this elegantly, despite the dismissal of academics chocking on a shallow, Post Modernist aesthetic, and a rapacious art market suspicious of actual beauty.  The genesis of the collection was assembled by Salim Moussa Achi (1909-1948), who envisioned a museum of academic European art.  Perhaps one day the dream will become a reality once again.

Tomorrow we will share a few words with Fred Plotkin, first speaker in the Salon Thursdays series and blogger at Operavore.

Gore Vidal

Does Gore Vidal (1925-2012) merit the title “artist?”  Yes, but not for the reasons generally cited.

Born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal in West Point, New York, Vidal was a prominent (and often badgering) voice in American politics, a writer of contemporary novels, and an occasional actor.  As an arts blog, politics are largely out of the purview of The Jade Sphinx, so we will simply note that Vidal was more often right than wrong in his views of America’s political and cultural decline, and leave it at that.

As a contemporary novelist, Vidal was certainly a mixed bag.  His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), caused a furor over its frank (for the time) depiction of homosexuality.  It was a bold move for a bold artist, but one that had considerable consequences:  he was blackballed by much of the literary establishment in a show of faux outrage.  (For example, Orville Prescott of The New York Times blocked any reviews of Vidal’s next five books.) 

One can’t but wish that all of the outrage was for something slightly more worthwhile, as Pillar is … slight, at best.  One of those largely plotless as-we-live-now novels that have choked novelistic creativity for the last 70 years or so, Pillar is remarkable only in that is has a gay character.  As a social document The City and the Pillar is fairly interesting, as an artistic achievement, it is largely unimportant.

When not writing mainstream novels, Vidal wrote three mysteries under the pen-name Edgar Box.  These novels, Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death Before Bedtime (1953) and Death Likes It Hot (1954), are agreeable without profundity.  He also spent time writing screenplays, notably doctoring most of the script for Ben-Hur in 1959.  Though lauded with Academy Awards, Ben-Hur never reaches the levels of art; it is certainly a diverting spectacle, but never nearly as serious as it takes itself to be.  Ever puckish, he sneakily inserted a gay subtext in the relationship between Ben-Hur and Messala without Charlton Heston ever noticing.

Perhaps feeling constrained by the reigning literary aesthetic of bland realism, Vidal wrote several fantasias or crypto-science fiction pieces, all to disastrous effect.  Live From Golgotha (1992) concerned time travel and the crucifixion, and may be the single worst novel of that year (or decade).   The Smithsonian Institution (1998) involved historical figures somehow alive in the basement of the Smithsonian (think Night at the Museum with a soupcon of pretention) and his 1957 play Visit to a Small Planet was a vehicle to skewer American foreign policy.  Planet was made into a film in 1960 with Jerry Lewis, which was, damningly, an improvement on its source material.

However, Vidal was a masterful essayist, and his books of essays are among the finest in the language.  Matters of Fact and Fiction (1977), The Second American Revolution (1983), Armageddon (1987), Screening History (1992), and Palimpsest: A Memoir (1995) are all extremely absorbing and deftly written.  Inventing a Nation: Washington, Addams and Jefferson (2004) and Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare (2009) also have much to commend them.  In his essays, Vidal’s writing is clear and coherent, filled with memorable aphorisms and soundly reasoned.  In fact, Vidal may have been America’s finest 20^th Century essayist.

Finally, we come to Vidal the historical novelist.  It is hard to assess his contributions to historical fiction “cleanly,” as Vidal the novelist was compromised by Vidal the polemicist who often had an axe to grind.  However, overlooking that major flaw, Vidal’s historical fiction managed to do something his contemporary novels could not: involve well-rounded, three dimensional characters in a compelling plot.  Of his historical fiction I strongly recommend Burr (1973), 1876 (1976) which is amazing for detailing the Hayes/Tilden election which would in so many ways prefigure Bush/Gore in 2000, and Empire (1987), which includes a somewhat bitter look at the emergence of contemporary American journalism.

Gore Vidal wanted to become a Great American Man of Letters, and, instead, became an important literary voice and often acted as the conscience of the nation.  His ambition may not have been achieved, but his achievements were ambitious. Our nation is poorer for his loss. 

Robert Hughes: The Loss of an Important Voice in the Art World

It is perhaps a bitter irony that the great art critic Robert Hughes (1938-2012) died on August 6^th – Andy Warhol’s birthday.  Warhol was perhaps, to Hughes, emblematic of all of the hucksters, scallywags, con artists and grifters that have taken over the art world since the rise of Modernism (and its unpleasant afterbirth, Post Modernism).  It was Warhol who opened the doors for such frauds and crooks as Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Tracey Eim, draining the ravished corpse of our culture of any remaining vestige of emotion, virtuosity or humanism.

Needless to say, the art establishment loathed Hughes, much as the crooked tailors in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes loathed the little boy who could not help crying, “but he’s naked!”  When slick-suited sharpsters in their squalid Soho PoMo galleries sell to the unsuspecting, unthinking and tasteless collector of today the latest bit of gimcrack tushery created by jaded cynics bent on furthering the greatest fraud in the history of human taste, the last thing they want to hear is an educated man crying … “but, really, it’s not very smart and certainly not very good.” 

Hughes was not against the idea of an art market, nor of artists making a living.  He wrote: On the whole, money does artists much more good than harm. The idea that one benefits from cold water, crusts, and debt collectors is now almost extinct, like belief in the reformatory power of flogging.  He simply saw the contemporary art market as out-of-control and contemporary artists as out-of-touch.

Academics are equally leery of Hughes: he refused to drink the Post Modernist Kool-Aid and was a highly engaging and readable writer equally at home on television.  Ivory Towers find such accessibility and clear-headedness both dangerous and enviable.  As such, Hughes never founded a school of criticism; he merely had legions of grateful readers.

Instead of writing to further the interests of a bloated, corrupt and rapacious art world, Hughes addressed the emotional and philosophical needs of the aesthete and the art-lover and not the crass art investor or star-schtupper.  His book The Shock of the New was also a BBC television series (first aired in 1980), and with it viewers were able to watch art criticism as a gladiatorial sport.  Hughes did not suffer fools or scoundrels gladly, and his withering dismissal of our common crap culture was always more nutritious than a Big Mac. 

To watch Hughes don his gloves and come out swinging, look at this brief clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtMqbbBZ24w.  Equally amusing is this clip, showing a considerably younger Hughes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euPx2QWVl3E&feature=related.

Hughes’ notions on art are now seen as provincial or prehistoric by many of today’s artists and scholars.  They are wrong.  Hughes believed in the notion of genius – someone who created great art of deep meaning after many, many years of study and apprenticeship.  Art, for him, was also a display of craft and mastery, of technical expertise matched with poetic vision.  There was no place in his aesthetic for dead sharks swimming in formaldehyde.

Writers often write their own best epitaphs.  Let’s close with some things Hughes wrote throughout his long career.  Here’s one example that delights my heart from The Shock of the New:

The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements.

From his memoir Things I Didn’t Know (2006):

I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it's an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails. I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unless the latter is a friend or a relative. Consequently, most of the human race doesn't matter much to me, outside the normal and necessary frame of courtesy and the obligation to respect human rights. I see no reason to squirm around apologizing for this. I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental, and boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has. I hate populist [shit], no matter how much the demos love it.

Robert Hughes was a first-rate mind engaged in looking at a blasted cultural wasteland unworthy of a child’s scrutiny.  He often was abrasive and condescending, but he was seldom wrong.  He will be missed.

An Evening With Celeste Holm

One month ago today we lost Celeste Holm (1917-2012), one of the few remaining figures from Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Of that august body, the only four survivors that come to mind are Olivia de Havillland (born 1916), Kirk Douglas (born 1916), Mickey Rooney (born 1920), and Shirley Temple (born 1928).  I’m sure it’s possible that, some 60 years hence, someone will write an appreciation of Ben Affleck while contemplating with nostalgia the Millennium Era of Hollywood, but I somehow doubt it.

It’s hard for people born into the era of movies like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and yet another version of Spider-Man, to remember (or understand) that films were once made by, and for, adults.  (And, seriously, does our culture really need a “realistic” Batman movie?  Isn’t the very phrase fairly insulting?  Could you imagine anyone with a straight face 40 or 50 years ago suggesting that adult audiences would greet the notion of a “dark” superhero film with anything other than blank incomprehension or withering disdain?  And isn’t this stuff supposed to be fun, anyway?  Please don’t get me wrong – I enjoy a Batman film as next as the next fellow, and was entertained by both the 1960s comedy series and the Tim Burton films.  But … have we degenerated so as a culture that the story of a millionaire dressed like a giant bat so he could punch a homicidal clown is now considered worthy of an “adult” take?)  In such an atmosphere, it’s somehow consoling to remember that films were once made by adults and not a culture of arrested adolescents.

Holm was a staple on Broadway and film for decades.  She won an Academy Award for her performance in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), one of the first films to seriously address anti-Semitism, and was nominated for her performances in Come to the Stable (1949) and the classic All About Eve (1950).  On Broadway she originated the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, and in 1991 I was lucky enough to see her as an aging actress in Paul Rudnick’s comedy about the ghost of John Barrymore, I Hate Hamlet. 

Holm had a very distinct screen persona.  Her somewhat plain, non-glamorous beauty hinted at an inner warmth, and her natural reserve suited her for roles as patrician or distant women.  Always more convincing as a socialite than a tart, Holm managed to bring an element of Yankee gentility to any endeavor.  To see two disparate sides of Holm, watch her nearly incandescent turn as a nun in Come to the Stable and then see her as chanteuse Flame O’Neill in the riotous comedy Champagne for Caesar (1950).  For a taste of her range, watch Holm cornered by the duplicitous Anne Baxter in All About Eve here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=987UWPKQVQA.

About 15 years ago I had the great pleasure to dine with Holm at the apartment of lyricist Fred Ebb  (1928-2004).  My friend, film scholar and writer Jim Nemeth, had “won” Holm for dinner at a charitable auction, and she regaled us for over four hours with stories alternately salty and scandalous.  For a woman so composed and serene onscreen, she could be quite surprising in the flesh.  (There is a reason it’s called “acting.”)  She spared nobody.

Asked about her Caesar co-star Vincent Price, Holm asked, “why would you want to know about him?  He couldn’t act.”  That was a comment not nearly as withering as her take on Stable costar Loretta Young, whom she called “a chocolate-covered black widow spider.”

About her Eve costars, she was equally brutal.  Hugh Marlowe was “dull,” and she had no comment on George Sanders, who she claimed only spoke to the director and never to the rest of the cast.  She called Baxter “ambitious,” and Bette Davis a word that rather rhymes with “ambitious.”

She had some genuinely nice things to say about her High Society (1956) co-star Frank Sinatra, but added, “you wouldn’t want to cross him.”  She dismissed Nicol Williamson (Barrymore in I Hate Hamlet) as a “drunk” and pronounced Julie Andrews (they worked together in television’s Cinderella) “cold.”  The biggest mistake of her career was not made by herself, but, rather, the producers of the film version of Oklahoma!, who did not ask her to reprise her stage role as Ado Annie.  Perhaps my favorite Holm-ism was her take on her fans:  “When someone tells me they like Gentlemen’s Agreement, I know they’re a West Side liberal.  When they mention Eve, I know they’re gay.”

It was, in short, an unforgettable evening.  Though I found the real Celeste Holm very different from the reel one, she was a woman who will be greatly missed.

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard Part IV: Don Juan and the Statue of the Commander

I had thought of ending the week with another example of the Neoclassicism of Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780-1850), but when I came upon this, I could not resist.

My readers are doubtless familiar with the story of Don Juan, the well-known libertine.  There are countless versions of the story, from Moliere and Corneille to Mozart and Byron.  The painter Eugene Delacroix (1798 – 1863) was particularly taken with Mozart’s opera, writing “What a masterpiece of romanticism!  And that in 1785!  … the entry of the specter will always strike a man of imagination.”

Delacroix was writing of the finale, where the ghost of one of the Don’s victims comes to escort the libertine to hell.  This picture looks so unlike most of Alexandre-Évariste’s oeuvre that I cannot but help but think it had some special significance for the artist.  It’s a little picture, no more than 16x13, and hardly on the scale of his deliberately executed Neoclassical masterpieces.  The brush strokes are clearly visible, and it is painted with a loose vitality that has more in common with the Impressionism that was still decades away than the Neoclassical ideal it would eventually shun.

Don Juan here is clearly heroic: with his athletic stance, burning torch and pointed beard and mustaches, he looks more like a figure from a swashbuckling novel than a dissipated roué.  His torch illuminates two ghostly female figures … other victims, or fellow neighbors in hell?  In most of the artist’s pictures, the figure of the Commander would be depicted in finicky detail, each chink and join of armor would be visible, along with showy touches, such as light reflected upon the metal.  Not here – the ghostly figure is suggested by some thickly painted brush strokes, the face no more than a few well-placed shadows. 

That this moment in the Don Juan story held some kind of import for Alexandre-Évariste is evident – he painted it more than once.  Why, I wonder?  It does not take an armchair Freud to see that the Commander is clearly a father figure.  Did Alexandre-Évariste have regrets about the way he treated his father?  Not only did he burn Papa Fragonard’s drawings, but he seems to have sat idly by while the old man was destitute (living by the good graces of another Neoclassicist, David.)  I can’t help but think that this picture is clearly tied to the artist’s psyche.  He paints Don Juan handsome and athletic – certainly the way that most of us see ourselves, despite what our mirrors tell us.  But this heroic figure is still undone by the physical, patriarchal figure of his past sins.  It does not seem to stretch the imagination too much to think that the events may be operatic, but the thoughts are autobiographical. 

If the picture was prophetic – that there is a hell and poor Alexandre-Évariste is indeed roasting marshmallows with other artistic villains like Cellini and Caravaggio – one can hope that he still has access to paint and canvas.  Work like this would merit a trip to the lower regions, if only for a visit.

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard Part III: The Lesson of Henry IV

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard’s accomplishments spanned a remarkable range of artistic endeavors, including paintings, sculpture, book illustration, Sévres porcelain and architecture.  His first listing in the livret of the Paris Salon was as an exhibitor in 1793, when he was only 13.  His work in the 1790s reflected revolutionary republican subjects in the neoclassical style, a dramatic break from the Rococo style of his father, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806).

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard really came of age during the restoration, when he changed his subject matter to suit then-contemporary tastes.  He ventured into new territory in 1819 when he attempted history painting.  He specialized in pictures featuring themes and images of the Middle Ages, in many way anticipating the works of later Romantic artists.  He also received important commissions for painted decorations for the Louvre, Versailles and numerous churches including Strasbourg Cathedral, the Church of Ste. Geneviéve, and Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.  He also exhibited easel paintings through the 1842 Salon and worked for the Sévres Manufactory, including both the design of porcelain forms and the decoration.

I must confess that I love today’s picture, the Lesson of Henry IV.  Henry IV (1553 – 1610) was one of the most beloved of French kings.  He managed not to take sides during the terrible Religious Wars, using politics and politesse to ultimately save the day.  He was also, by lights of those times, quite liberal, often working for the betterment of the common man.  It is to Henry IV that we owe a key phrase of our political language when he said, “If God keeps me, I will make sure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday.”  Sadly, Henry IV was murdered by a Catholic fanatic.  A statue to the monarch was erected just four years after his death.  It was destroyed during the later French Revolution, but Henry IV was the first king to be immortalized by a statue following the Revolution.  It would seem that even the French Revolution could not expunge the memory of an aristocrat so dedicated to the common good.

I think one of the reasons that Alexandre-Évariste depicted Henry IV during his school lessons is because of the truism that liberality, kindness, tolerance, courage, empathy, and good will are more often than not the products of education.  Even in our own world this is evident – a quick look at the kind of people who flock around dangerous anti-education demagogues like Rick Santorum demonstrates that a lack of proper schooling creates monsters.

I love this picture – mainly for its marriage of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.  Alexandre-Évariste digs into a remote and romantic past to show us the education of one of the great figures of French history.  Here, young Henry IV clearly astounds his professor by taking pen to parchment and recording the learnings from the large text.  The open window and the globe seem almost to add a Dutch flavor to the proceedings, as if Alexandre-Évariste were thinking of the great works of Vermeer while composing the picture.  And, again, Alexandre-Évariste shows himself to be the painter of light – see how the light on the floor and the wall where Henry writes trails the line of sun from the window.  The figure of the professor has a particular monumentality – as if Alexandre-Évariste were paying unconscious homage to Michelangelo (did he consider that Renaissance master one of his ‘teachers’?), and look at the line of calf and the modulation of the hands on Henry VI.  This is a beautiful and sensitive command of anatomy, particularly the anatomy of a child. 

Again – little things: the feather in the cap, the knot at the back of Henry’s waist, the white shirt cuff of the professor; these are the kinds of grace notes that can be hit only by the most sensitive and gifted of artists.  Not only is it a very accomplished picture, but it is very touching, as well.

More tomorrow!

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard Part II: Raphael Resuming the Pose of His Model

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780-1850), the son of a painter, fathered another painter, Théophile Fragonard (1806–1876).  I have not been able to find much about the relationship between Alexandre-Évariste and Théophile, but an intimation on the character of Alexandre-Évariste may best be gleaned from an anecdote concerning him and his father, Jean-Honoré.

Following the Revolution, Papa Fragonard’s pictures were considered irrelevant by the new power elite.  The rich Rococo curves and seductive colorations did not meet with Revolutionary zeal; and though Papa Fragonard’s political leanings were sympathetic to the Revolution, the new cultural arbiters would not meet him even halfway.  The unkindest cut, undoubtedly, was from his own son.

One day when Papa Fragonard was returning to his home, he saw smoke rising from the chimney and found that a bunches of his drawing were being burned by Alexandre-Évariste, who was shouting, “This is the holocaust of ‘good taste!’”  Surely there is a special place in hell for children like that.

Papa Fragonard left for Grasse in 1793 during the Reign of Terror (and I don’t mean the terror created by Alexandre-Évariste).  He returned to Paris a poor and broken man.  All of his patrons had disappeared, but he was saved from poverty by arch Neoclassicist Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who was clearly a better man than Fragonard’s own son.  David found him employment in the Museum Service, where he lived out the rest of his life.

In today’s picture, Alexandre-Évariste imagines the studio of the great Renaissance artist  Raphael (1483 –1520), while painting the Madonna.  I must confess that I have a marked weakness for paintings set in artists studios: they offer glimpses, both real and idealized, of the how a painter sees himself and his work.  That Alexandre-Évariste is a Neoclassicist is evident from the cleanliness and austerity of the studio he creates for Raphael: where such places are often case-study biohazards, Alexandre-Évariste paints a studio remarkably tidy and clean.  The mahl stick looks as if it has never been soiled by paint, and the easel unstained and the corner bust dusted. 

His version of Raphael is surprisingly blonde and girlish, the pink hose covering his legs complimenting the reddish-orange of his dress-like tunic.  He does have the important essentials right, though: Raphael reaches up towards his Madonna’s breast, and it was postulated at the time of his death that Raphael died from too many intense carnal experiences.  (Insert your own joke here.)  It is also possible that Raphael has in his studio the best behaved infant in the history of art history.  The pink cherub seems to sit contentedly by while the great artist puts the Virgin through her paces; I think, perhaps, the finished picture might have been more interesting if the infant was misbehaving.

Look at the subtle mastery of the work.  The rich shadow thrown by Raphael on his own canvas, the lines beneath the model Virgin’s robes, the hints of the picture-within-the-picture.  This is virtuosity of a type quite common at the time, but virtually unheard of in our artistically untrained era.

But what I find most fascinating about the picture is that Alexandre-Évariste actually alters his natural style to accommodate the picture.  He somewhat mistakenly puts Raphael in the Mannerist tradition, and paints in a style more consistent with the Mannerists.  Look at the pinkish coloration of the three principals, the billowing of the model Virgin’s veil, the carefully positioned shaft of light behind her.  All of this strikes me more as Alexandre-Évariste painting in a late Renaissance style within the confines of his own Neoclassicism.  Whatever his probably failing as human being, Alexandre-Évariste was a magnificent painter.

More tomorrow!