Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist

We close the week by returning yet again to the West of myth and of my yearnings and imaginings.  Why does the West of myth call to me so?  One would be hard pressed to find a place perhaps less suited to your garden variety aesthete, a man who prizes his lapis lazuli dressing gown more than any other article of clothing … or is that not quite so?  The West is a place of stunning natural beauty, and the myth of the men and women who made the West the very building blocks of literature and drama.  There is also a sense of freedom in the West, open ranges and the promise of endless opportunity.  Looking at images of the West, I feel young again.  And so, though some of my more waggish readers quip that I might someday need to rename this column The Jade Cactus, we will continue to look at art inspired by this uniquely American period of history.  (Besides, if Oscar Wilde could drink his way through the Old West while lecturing badmen and miners about Benvenuto Cellini, surely I can spend some time there in my imaginings.)

We have spent several columns looking at the work of Charles M. Russell, the famed “cowboy artist” (1864-1926).  Much has been written about Russell, some of it by the artist himself and his wife, Nancy Russell, and his studio assistant, Joe DeYong.  But there really was no full-scale, authoritative biography until Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist by John Taliaferro in 1996.  Taliaferro (born 1952), an independent historian and former senior editor for Newsweek, seems fascinated by classic Americana: another of his biographies is Tarzan Forever, the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Taliaferro’s Russell biography is a wonderful achievement: comprehensive, engagingly written, and put together with a deep sympathy for the man himself and his world.  Taliaferro tells us how Charlie, born of well-to-do parents back east, became enthralled with the West and became a cowboy before finding his own artistic voice and spending the rest of his life documenting what he saw with paint and canvas.  Charlie was perhaps his own greatest creation – he may have started out a dude, but he ended up the genuine article.

Much of what we “see” when we think of the West is the result of Russell and his contemporary, painter Frederic Remington (1861-1909).  These two artists, along with real-life scout and showman William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917) created many of the visual cues that we associate with the West, and their vision continues up to today in movies and television.  (Indeed, Russell was a great friend of early screen cowboy William S. Hart, and the painter was often on the set as Hollywood started envisioning the West.)

Taliaferro gives great credit to Nancy Russell for making Charlie a success, and this is, in many ways, a joint biography.  Taliaferro is also a smart and perceptive critic – I have been reading about both Russell and Remington for years, and Taliaferro provides the best summation of the differences between the two men that I have ever read:

…who did he think he was, painting the West in such a savage light?  There lay the grudge, and there lay the difference between the two.  Over and over, Charlie would appropriate Remington’s subject matter and designs down to the most minute cock of a rifle or snort of a pony.  But he always injected a different mood and message.  Remington was in many ways terrified by the West and its boundless physicality.  Indians were depraved fiends; whites were always innocent victims or plucky heroes.  Where Remington’s Blackfeet were thugs dragging home hostages, Charlie’s were a bedraggled but brave family struggling through winter.  Or when Remington painted a circle of horses fighting off wolves with their hooves, he succeeded in conveying only grisly violence; in Charlie’s version, the put-upon horses are making a valiant stand to protect their helpless colts.  To Remington, a rider turning in his saddle to shoot at his pursuers is A Fugitive; to Russell, a man in the same situation is an honest soul fleeing to safety.  Where Remington assigns heartless cunning, Charlie sees a more honorable instinct.  And though Remington had better command of color and was a superior draftsman, in his Western work at least he strove to communicate only militancy, danger and dread.  Charlie’s untrained hand was forever guided by sympathy.

Taliaferro’s book closes sadly (as it must, at this late date) with Charlie’s physical decline and eventual death.  However, Charlie Russell, history’s cowboy artist, was an anomaly among great painters in more ways than one.  On any list of truly great artists, Charlie Russell may have been the one who was, by and large, truly happy.

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

I was incredulous upon learning that Amsterdam, one of the most disappointing novels in recent memory, was also winner of the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.  It was not that the author, Ian McEwan (born 1948), is a bad writer; quite the contrary.  It was simply that in writing Amsterdam McEwan threw away a potentially wonderful book in order to tell a protracted and laborious shaggy dog story.  Though many post modernists may have found this final trick amusing, it produced nothing more than a sigh from me.

So, it was with some trepidation that I approached another of his celebrated novels, Enduring Love (1997).  Enduring Love is an interesting psychological novel, but also one that asks some rather large questions, such as, how do we fill up the empty spaces within ourselves?

Enduring Love details the plight of Joe Rose, a successful science writer.  One day he and his long-term lover, Clarissa, witness a hot air balloon lose control with a young boy inside the passenger basket.  Joe and several others grab the ropes that would secure the balloon to the ground, but a gust of wind pulls it from their hands.  One man, John Logan, holds on longer than the others and is carried hundreds of feet into the air before falling to his death.

To make matters worse Jed Parry, one of the men who also grabbed for the ropes, responds to the tragedy by asking Joe to pray with him.  In no time at all, Parry becomes obsessed with Joe, writing long love letters, calling him constantly, offering to bring him closer to God and hovering outside his front door.

The tragedy is that, despite all of Joe’s misgivings, he cannot make anyone believe that Parry is a threat or dangerous.  The police laugh off his concerns and Clarissa blames Joe himself for mishandling the situation.  In addition, Clarissa is not even entirely convinced that Parry exists outside of Joe’s imagination…

Though by turns a tragic romance, thriller and a novel of psychological suspense, I think McEwan is after bigger fish than mere thrills.  Joe, our successful writer, is a frustrated scientist.  He fills his world with reason and a dry catalog of facts; he fills his life by stocking his mind.  Clarissa is a scholar specializing in the work of poet John Keats, and spends much of her time tracking down lost or missing correspondence from the great poet.  She and Joe are also childless, and she spends a great deal of time with younger relations and the children of friends.  And Jed, who seems to have very little life at all, fills the emptiness of his soul with visions of God and worship of Joe.  In fact, the love he bears for Joe has very little to do with Joe the man himself, and is, instead, a grandly constructed romantic fantasia.  It’s not the Jed has sexual feelings for Joe, but, rather, Joe becomes a filter by which he can measure, dedicate and justify his own life.

One can’t help but think that McEwan is writing, in fact, a profoundly religious novel.  In an increasingly secular world, where many creeds seem to have become little more than cultural touchstones, how does one fill the void left by unanswered questions?  What are the stories and the myths we use to give meaning to our lives?  And, more importantly, can any of us really connect when we each ‘worship’ differently than eachother?

One more thing about McEwan -- despite the melodrama of the plot and complexity of the issues raised, the man has a real and pungent sense of humor and of irony.  Later in the story, Joe decides he needs a gun for protection.  He goes to a drug dealer of his acquaintance, Johnny, and they head out to buy it from some low-comedy thugs:

We were still stuck in traffic.  On the radio the jazz has been dishonestly succeeded by a program of atonal music, an earnest whooping and banging that was getting on my nerves.  I turned it off and said, “Tell me more about these people.”  I already knew they were ex-hippies who had made it rich in coke.  They had gone legal in the mid-eighties and dealt in property.  Now things were not so good, which was why they were happy to sell me a gun for an inflated price.

“Relative to the scene,” Johnny said. “these people are intellectuals.”

“Meaning what?”

“They got books all over the walls.  They like to talk about the big questions.  They think they’re Bertrand Russell or something.  You’ll probably hate them.”

I already did.

Enduring Love is highly recommended.

Pipe Dream Plays Encores! at New York City Center

New Yorkers actively engaged with the splendors of the Great American Songbook could do no better than making a regular pilgrimage to New York’s City Center for the Encores! series of musical revivals.  Encores! is dedicated to presenting rarely revived or otherwise little-known musicals complete with full book and score.  Artistic Director Jack Viertel and Music Director Rob Berman have done a wonderful service for theater-lovers and anyone interested in our musical heritage.  Encores! has played at City Center since 1994 and your correspondent has had more enjoyable nights at the theater in this venue than through any other in the city.  The recently renovated City Center is a glorious site, and to see classic musicals in this space is one of the privileges of living in the city.

The second show for the 2012 season is Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s little-seen (and littler appreciated) Pipe Dream, which originally opened in 1955.  It was their seventh show and a monumental flop.  Rodgers and Hammerstein had originally conceived of a stellar cast including Henry Fonda and, possibly, Julie Andrews or Janet Leigh.  These plans never came to fruition and the show’s eventual cast, including Helen Traubel and William Johnson, later came to believe the show was cursed.

Part of the original problem must have been the source material – John Steinbeck’s short novel Sweet Thursday, his sequel to Cannery Row.  Though it has the charm of being the only Broadway musical about a marine biologist and a prostitute, the original devastating reviews destroyed any hopes of a national tour or London production. 

So how does the new Encores! production play?  In three words: it’s just great.

Briefly: Doc, a marine biologist, lives his life free and happy.  He spends a great deal of time with his friends, beachcomber Mac and not-too-bright sidekick Hazel (actually a man with a woman’s name – his mother was not too bright, either).  He also spends a great deal of time with the prostitutes at Fauna’s house of ill repute.

Into his life comes Suzy, down on her luck.  Though she also ends up in Fauna’s house, she challenges Doc to be more than he is.  Eventually, they both grow into more ambitious and connected people, and fall in love.

Never a fan of the Rodgers and Hammerstein corpus, I must confess that this was the first time I’ve found a score of theirs to be … jaunty.  Writing about beach bums and loose women seem to have liberated their staid sensibilities, and both create a score that is bouncy, loose and fun.  The song Sweet Thursday has all the pizazz of a classic 1930s jazz number, and Thinkin’ is certainly the finest comic song in their repertoire.  Also terrific The Next Time it Happens and All At Once You Love Her, simply their most lilting first act closer.  One cannot but help think that a more ‘respectable’ show would’ve elevated several of these numbers into standards.

The cast is uniformly fine, with particular standouts being Tom Wopat and Leslie Uggams.  Wopat, once one of Broadway’s most trustworthy leading men, seems to be comfortably seguing into character parts and Uggams has a certain glamour that makes her compulsively watchable.  Television star Will Chase, as the hero Doc, is an extremely pleasing and handsome presence, and Laura Osnes sings Suzy with a warm and lilting grace.  Also effective is Stephen Wallem in the one-note role of Hazel – he manages to make what could be an annoying caricature a true comic turn.

It seems impossible that a show that features a reenactment of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in a whorehouse could be one of the sweetest things on Broadway, but that happens to be the case.  Kudos to the Encores! team for reviving this little-known show – this limited engagement is highly recommended!

The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti by John Addington Symonds

The great Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was the subject of much biographical interest in his own lifetime.  He lived to see two full-fledged biographies, both by rather historically unimportant painters, Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574) and Ascanio Condivi (1525–1574).  Both men were friends of Michelangelo, and that in itself is a testament to their stamina and quality of mercy.  As an artist, no one could touch Michelangelo; as a human being no one wanted to touch him…

In the centuries following Michelangelo’s death, many people attempted to retell his life, including his nephew.  Most of these books following his death are fairly worthless.  The Renaissance was a remarkable time in many ways, and one of the more interesting things about it is that manners and mores were changing at an alarming rate.  One of the facets of his life that raised eyebrows soon after his death was his love for Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c. 1509–1587). This relationship was the subject of much debate in his lifetime, and grew more loaded as the populace became more religious and faithful.  Michelangelo wrote many love sonnets to the young man, who was 23 years old when Michelangelo met him in 1532, at the age of 57.  Another beautiful youth, Cecchino dei Bracci, inspired Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams.  When Michelangelo’s nephew gathered these love poems for publication, he changed the genders of the intended to the female.

Another enduring myth generated post-mortem was that the great love of his life was aristocratic widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and corresponded with for decades.  Many have tried to build a legend of romance between the two, but the exchange of sonnets and the occasional afternoon grappa does not a grand romance make.

Credit for the first truly authoritative biography of the great artist must go to aesthete, Renaissance scholar and minor poet John Addington Symonds (1840 - 1893), who wrote The Life of Michelangelo Buounarroti in 1893.  Symonds was the first scholar to have full complete access to the Michelangelo family archives.  This alone is astonishing – the archives had remained closely guarded and only fragments were made available by friends of the Buonarroti family.  The Italian government gave Symonds full access to the archives in the early 1880s, thanks largely in part to Symonds’ impeccable Renaissance scholarship.

It was not just the breadth and depth of Symonds’ historical knowledge, but also the feeling and sensitivity of his artistic judgment that made him the ideal man for the job.  Symonds was also the translator of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, still the most poetic translation extant, as well as the author of biographies of Shelley and Ben Johnson.

Symonds also suffered much from his own conflicted sexuality.  Though largely homosexual, he married Janet Catherine North, and spent the rest of his life in passionate friendships with other (often younger) men.  As would be expected by someone so conflicted (and given the historical period, just two years before Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for “gross indecency”), Symonds vacillates between insisting that Michelangelo’s love of younger men was “spiritual,” or arguing that he was a remarkable man even if it were not.

And Symonds is a compelling, erudite and fascinating writer.  Here is he is, writing about Michelangelo’s David:  In the David Michelangelo first displayed that quality of terribilità, of spirit-quailing, awe-inspiring force, for which he afterwards became so famous. The statue imposes, not merely by its size and majesty and might, but by something vehement in the conception. He was, however, far, from having yet adopted those systematic proportions for the human body which later on gave an air of monotonous impressiveness to all his figures. On the contrary, this young giant strongly recalls the model; still more strongly indeed that the Bacchus did. Wishing perhaps to adhere strictly to the Biblical story, Michelangelo studied a lad whose frame was not developed. The David, to state the matter frankly, is a colossal hobbledehoy. His body, in breadth of the thorax, depth of the abdomen, and general stoutness, has not grown up to the scale of the enormous hands and feet and heavy head. We feel that he wants at least two years to become a fully developed man, passing from adolescence to the maturity of strength and beauty. This close observance of the imperfections of the model at a certain stage of physical growth is very remarkable, and not altogether pleasing in a statue more than nine feet high. Both Donatello and Verocchio had treated their Davids in the same realistic manner, but they were working on a small scale and in bronze.

Symonds’ The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti is available free for your e-readers at manybooks.net or Project Gutenberg, but there is also a splendid two volume edition published by the University of Pennsylvania Press with an introduction by art historian Creighton E. Gilbert that is quite wonderful.  If you have a serious interest in the life of the one of the greatest figures in art history, this is the place to start.

E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth’s Core!

Regular readers know my affection for all things William Joyce and The Guardians of Childhood, his on-going project of picture books and children’s novels.  Now just in time for Easter, Joyce returns with his second-ever novel in the series, E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth’s Core!

With the Guardians series, Joyce hopes to create an entire cosmology that incorporates all of the beloved figures of childhood: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Mother Goose and the Tooth Fairy, among them.  To create a backstory, Joyce has conceived of a cosmic battle bringing together all of these figures into opposition against Pitch, also known as the Boogeyman.  The first novel in the series, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, laid much of the groundwork and introduced us to North (who will later become Santa Claus), the wizard Ombric, the girl Katherine and the robotic Djinni.

Now that much of the necessary exposition is out of the way, Joyce jumps into this installment with a great deal of dash and a sense of high adventure.  In E. Aster Bunnymund, the children of Santoff Claussen are kidnapped by Pitch, and Katherine, Ombric and North band together to travel to the earth’s core to rescue them.  On the way, they enlist the help of the last of the fabled brotherhood of Pookas, the seven-foot tall warrior rabbit E. Aster Bunnymund. 

The initial relationship between the giant rabbit and Santa is one of petty bickering and snide remarks.  Though E. Aster Bunnymund is a tough egg to crack, he and North form an alliance that will clearly create the foundation of what will be a league of great children’s heroes.

William Joyce (born 1957) is, of course, the Academy Award winning author and film-maker.  His heartbreaking The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore was one of the more delightful and moving shorts of recent memory.  As is often the case with Joyce, part of the great delight is to track his many, varied and often uniquely intertwined pop culture inspirations.  Joyce’s imagination is like a great attic filled with comics, old TV shows, pulp novels and adventure stories, toys and Americana, and tumbled and jumbled together until it forms something uniquely its own.  Part of the great fun is running a mental finger down the line of his inspiration and watching him tickle the source.

E. Aster Bunnymund, with his large ears, inter-species bickering and snide comments about “humans” obviously is Joyce’s nod to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.  And much of the backstory for The Man in Moon (with his super-science Golden Age later destroyed in a cataclysmic space explosion) harkens back to Superman, as does Ombric’s inability to alter events of the past.  Joyce also provides a delicious echo of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles when he closes a chapter with, “Mr. North,” he said with dramatic relish.  “They were the ears of a gigantic rabbit.”

The most significant influence in the current book is, of course, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), author of several ‘Scientific Romances” set in the earth’s core.  (Burroughs so loved the earth’s core that he even set one of his later Tarzan novels there!)  In a neat bit of homage, Joyce employs Burroughs’ method of plotting by splitting his heroes into three separate narrative threads that meet in the closing chapters, and by creating a magnificent “vehicle of wonder” to get our heroes to the earth’s core: the rabbit’s wonderfully realized egg train, much like the Iron Mole in Burroughs’ novels.

Joyce pulls all of these tricks with great humor and elan.  This book is filled with delightful little throw-aways (books in Ombric’s library, for instance, include The History of Levitation While Eating and Mysteries of Vanishing Keys), and his chapter titles are a hoot (consider The Bookworm Turns or the chapter on warrior eggs called The Mad Scramble). 

But what impresses the most is not just Joyce’s narrative drive and endless invention and good humor, but his deep and committed belief in the world he has created.  Despite his pop culture references, Joyce is no ironist and his work is devoid of snark and sarcasm.  It is a fully realized universe created by a man with a mission – and we can feel Joyce’s commitment on every page.  It’s a remarkable performance.

If you do not already own a copy of E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth’s Core!, then hop to it!

Self-Portraits by Émile Friant Part Four

We finish our week-long pictorial autobiography of Émile Friant with this magnificent self portrait from 1925.  Our hero is 62 years old and would only live another seven years.

With a complete lack of vanity, Friant charts for us the changes in his physical self.  His hair has thinned even more, his ears have grown with age, his handsome face is lined with age and is now somewhat shrunken.  The raw energy of the man caught in the previous portraits is gone, and Friant is now a thin, delicate creature of unique loveliness.  His virile beauty is gone and has been replaced with a deeper, more touching ethereal quality.

Once again, Friant shows a remarkable sensitivity in the painting of his own hands.  His right hand (again!) holds the brush, and each finger is beautifully articulated.  But look, too, at his ear, previously hidden by his once-luxuriant hair.  (He even manages to delineate the sections of his hair matted with oil.)  The ear is beautifully molded and rendered, capturing the supple curve and creating a believable sense of depth. 

Unlike the previous three portraits, here Friant actually records his clothing with some exacting detail.  His Legion of Honor medal is proudly displayed on his lapel, and his suit coat, waistcoat, and tiepin are rendered in a naturalistic manner.  The stitching down the side of his trousers is perfectly visible, and the bulge of his pocket square visible in his breast pocket.  Friant, with this picture, is much fussier in his style and underlying drawing; as if wishing to demonstrate his increased virtuosity.  It is a picture by a master who has been painting for nearly 50 years, and has only increased in his powers.

Another change from the pervious self-portraits is that Friant is clearly not painting himself in this picture.  The figure on his canvas appears to be wearing a red blouse, and perhaps a long blue skirt, as well.  His palette, however, does seem to echo the rich ochre coloration of his surroundings.  (As always, the canvas is suggested with very Impressionistic brushstrokes.)

But what I think has changed the most over the course of the self-portraits we’ve examined here is the quality of his gaze.  Look closely at Friant’s eyes here.  If the previous portraits showed Friant eager, or expectant, or ambitious, or self-possessed, his brush here captures eyes that are deep with a benign wisdom.  These are eyes that have seen much and understood even more.  These are the eyes of a man who knows, an experienced man who now lives philosophically.  Yes, they are searching eyes, but also compassionate – a quality we have not seen on this artist’s face before.  The eyes in the other portraits looked directly at you, expecting to learn what they could from us, the viewers.  Now these eyes have seen all that was there, and forgives.  In short, they are the eyes of an artist.

Self-Portraits by Émile Friant Part Three

Today we move away from the young adult Émile Friant of 1887 to the ever-so-slightly older Friant of 1893.  Our artist is now 30 years old, and already the recipient of the grand prize at the Paris Salon and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.  He is an artist at the pinnacle of his success. 

Time has been, if anything, kinder to Friant that we might have supposed in his self-portrait of six years earlier.  Much of the puffiness of his face is gone, as are the jowls.  His hair is still thin, but it has retained a wonderful reddish tint, and his generous mustache and beard help to accentuate the almost luminescent coloration of his face. 

Now a man of means and affairs, Friant returns to his tie and frock coat, the self-conscious modeling in an artist’s smock now over. 

As in the earlier portrait, Friant delineates his face and hands with crystal clarity. Here there is not even an Impressionistic background to compete with the figure; Friant sits alone in thickly painted bluish-white background.  The hands are crafted with Friant’s customary delicacy and sensitivity.  Note how the light captures the subtle shape of his fingers from the knuckles down.  (Note, too, that yesterday Friant held his brush in his left hand, and today it migrates to his right!)

His face is a masterwork of blended colors, from nearly white to pink to near-purple.  And the hair atop his head and in his mustache and beard captures and reflects light, brilliantly illuminating nearly each and every individual hair. 

As usual, his coat, tie and canvas are mere suggestions, but look closely at his palette.  The overarching color is a bluish-white, the same at the background. 

What has changed the most over the last six years is Friant’s gaze.  His self-portrait at 15 was that of an inner-directed adolescent, ready to wrestle with the world.  His look at 24 was one of challenge and preparedness, as well as self-confidence.  Here, his gaze is that of one who has seen much, met with some success, and looks at the world from a perspective of experience.  The eyes are less clear, more heavily lidded -- more guarded, if you will.  It is possible to imagine that the Friant of the earlier two portraits had never been wounded in any way; not so the man of 30.  Life has left its mark on him, as it does all of us.

Self-Portraits by Émile Friant Part Two

Yesterday we looked at a boyish self-portrait by Émile Friant (1863-1932), executed when he was just 15 years old.  Today we jump ahead nine years, to 1887, when our artist was a young man of 24 years.

One of the things that fascinate me most about Friant is that his style and philosophy of painting seemed ingrained so early.  In the self-portrait at 15, Friant sought to capture his own visage in the most realistic manner possible while delineating his shirt, cravat and jacket in the most Impressionistic manner.  That (perhaps uneasy) truce is still much in evidence for this later picture.

First, let’s look at Friant.  The Friant of this picture is still a very young man, but also an accomplished artist.  He is one scant year away from winning the grand prize at the Paris Salon and two years from the gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.  His hair, once luxuriant, has thinned early and his face has thickened considerably.  His generous bottom lip is now more generous still, his nose flatter and the once square jaw has become unfortunately jowly.  He also has grown the bushy red beard behind which he would hide the rest of his life. 

One thing that has not left him, however, is the intensity of his gaze. That sense of challenge, that note of preparedness to meet adversity is still very much intact.  In fact, the gaze of the earlier portrait is perhaps inner-directed, as if mercilessly scrutinizing his own capabilities and zeal before the battle; the gaze here is a man sizing up the world and marshaling those forces within prior to battle.  It’s a remarkably naked look – not romanticized in any way, frank, openly ambitious, curious and intelligent. 

Please compare the now thickened face with the hand holding the brush.  Such delicacy of touch, such tapered and exacting fingers -- Friant paints his artist-hands with all the fidelity and realism of the face.  Both stand out in marked contrast to the manner in which the rest of the picture is executed.

Again, once away from his own very human flesh, Friant uses the tropes of Impressionism to render his own figure.  Look at the arm connected to that so-delicately-painted hand: the paint is applied thickly, the folds and grooves of the sleeve suggested with swathes of color, leading up to the collar of the smock which is nothing but indistinct suggestions.  The informality of the style matches his informality of dress: not only is Friant in his artist’s smock, but he wears no tie (unlike his 15 year old self).  The easel (or canvas) upon which he paints seems indistinct of contour (especially the outer line facing the artist), and the color of the back side of the easel/canvas colored and toned with obvious brushwork. 

Look, too, at how he captures the outside world beyond the windows with uncomplicated masses of white, gray and beige paint.  There is a gate beyond the window (and perhaps a tree), but the bars are not rendered with the same exactitude as his own face and hand.  The studio around him is also gray, with a sketchy bit of design work next to the window.

One of the most fascinating things about the 1887 self portrait is the figure outside the window (and behind a wall, it seems).  A man turns towards the window and looks inside the studio at the artist.  Who is this shadowy figure?  Is Friant making a comment on his own self-directed gaze, or perhaps articulating ourselves as we look at him?  Is Friant separating the artist from the rest of society?  (This is possible as Friant, sans tie and in smock, embodies the image of the artist that was a caricature even in his own day.)  Or perhaps it is the critic, looking over Friant’s shoulder and commenting upon work from which he is far removed?  It is just one of the many questions that come to mind when regarding this fascinating, neglected artist.

Self-Portraits by Émile Friant Part One

If art history is written by the winners, then many great masters were effectively excised from any sane chronicle of art history with the advent of Modernism.  One such talent was Émile Friant (1863-1932), a French naturalist painter born in the small town of Dieuze, about 25 miles northeast of Nancy, in eastern France.  Friant’s father was a locksmith and his mother a dressmaker.  Like many of the artists covered here, Friant was something of a prodigy.  Friant studied under Louis Theodore Devilly (1818-1886) while still a teenager; Devilly was the director of the school of drawing in Nancy and an advocate of realism. 

Friant was only 15 years old when he made his debut at the annual Salon in Nancy in 1878.  His great abilities were readily apparent; he was soon awarded a municipal scholarship for study in Paris. He entered the studio of the famous Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), but Friant felt constricted by Cabanel’s severe Academic style and returned home.  Friant was better inspired by other Lorraine artists, including Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) and Aimé Morot (1850-1913).  He would go on to enjoy a very successful career and win many honors, including the grand prize at the Paris Salon in 1889, the gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor that same year.

Friant eventually became a professor of painting in 1923 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France.  He was later promoted to the position of commander in the Legion of Honor, and made a member of the Institut de France.  Friant died from the results of a fall he suffered in Paris in 1932. 

Friant’s work is interesting as he seems to straddle two distinct epochs.  Though he may have balked at Cabanel’s training, Friant could never fully embrace the movement toward Impressionism.  Like the Impressionists, Friant painted pictures of everyday life – however, he did so without the splotchy tricks most often used by Impressionists.  Art history often calls those caught between the Academy and Modernism “Realists,” but to do so also does discredit to Friant’s masterful feel for color and tone.

Like many artists, Friant painted a series of self-portraits throughout his lifetime.  The portrait that we look at here is of the artist aged 15 or so.  Before looking at the art, let’s take a moment to look at the artist.  Friant at 15 is a very handsome youth indeed; his red hair is thick and bushy, swept over his large brow.  His eyebrows are thin and sculpted, his gaze steady and clear, his mouth well formed with a generous bottom lip.  His chin is square and his nose noble and straight.  In adulthood he would hide his good looks behind a bushy beard.

But it is his expression that is most arresting; or, perhaps it would be better to say his gaze.  This is not the gaze of a young man filled with dreams (or youthful indolence), but, rather the fierce look of a youth ready to grapple with the world.  His brows knit in concentration, his mouth set with determination, the muscles of his face tense as he considers his next move.  If not for the youthfulness of his hair and the smooth texture of his skin, this could easily be the portrait of an experienced soldier, a businessman of affairs, or a seasoned academic. 

Friant paints his own countenance in a classical manner – the realism of his hair, his features, the representation of his eyes and mouth – nothing about the head would be out of place in the most classical, Academic of paintings.  However, Friant’s brushwork becomes loser and less defined once we move away from his head.  His shirt collar and tie are little more than generously painted suggestions, and his coat conveyed with sketchily applied gray, blue and white paint. 

You could say that Friant’s early portrait seems to encompass all of the contradictions of his style and career – a naturalist painter finding a home in a modernist world.  It is an interesting moment in our art history, one that we will look at again tomorrow with a later self-portrait.

The Quest of the Sacred Slipper by Sax Rohmer

Few guilty pleasures in life are more delicious than immersion into the delirious, pulpy universe of Sax Rohmer.

Born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward (1883–1959) in Birmingham to a working class family, Rohmer initially toiled as a public servant before becoming a writer.  Rohmer was an incredibly well-read man and amateur Egyptologist; he also was a working writer in every sense of the term, knocking out magazine articles and comedy sketches. 

Rohmer published several stories and a novel before really hitting his stride in 1913 with the publication of The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.  This novel was actually a collection of several inter-connected short stories, strung together by one over-arching narrative thrust:  secret agent Nayland Smith and his comrade Dr. Petrie working to rid the world of an evil criminal mastermind bent on taking over the world.  The next two novels in the series, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu and The Hand of Fu-Manchu, were also short stories strung together.  When Rohmer revived the series in 1931, with Daughter of Fu Manchu, he turned to full-novel form.  Some of these later novels are the best in the series (such as the Trail of Fu Manchu), but the sustained narrative structures does seem to knock the wind out of some of them.

Rohmer also wrote several different series of detective novels, featuring such characters as Gaston Max and Morris Klaw (who featured largely in supernatural mysteries).  Rohmer was one of the most well-paid thriller writers of his generation, and for laughs would sometimes sign his name $ax Rohmer.  He and his wife moved to New York after World War II and he died in 1959 from avian flu.  His wife, along with his assistant, Cay Van Ash, wrote a splendid biography of the man in 1972, called, appropriately, Master of Villainy.  (Ash also wrote two Fu Manchu novels of his own, one featuring Sherlock Holmes, and they are equal to those of Rohmer.)

It’s hard to imagine the full impact of Rohmer’s legacy today, after Fu Manchu has been watered down by countless imitators and the tides of political correctness.  However, it’s safe to say that without Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith, there would have been no James Bond, as author Ian Fleming had said that Rohmer’s novels were a key influence on his style and his decision to become a writer.  Many of the tropes that were invented or perfected by Rohmer have become today’s clichés, and the debt the thriller genre owes him is immeasurable.

Part of the great fun to be had by reading Rohmer is his fevered emotional pitch, the heavily scented style of his prose, and the sheer momentum of his narrative.  There are two other key ingredients of Rohmer’s charm.  First, nearly everything a reader comes across in his novels – no matter how outlandish – is usually real.  If Rohmer says there’s an 18 inch poisonous centipede, rest assured, there is one.  Another key is Rohmer’s commitment to his story and his characters – this man believed.  There is never a hint of irony, never less than his 100% commitment as an artist.  He may not have been writing literature, but he wrote it as if he was.

He was also a master of description.  Here, for example, is there first time the world knew of Fu Manchu:  Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.

My affection for Rohmer came flooding back to me during a recent reading of his sublimely lurid The Quest of the Sacred Slipper, first published serially in Short Stories Magazine and collected into novel form in 1919.  Sacred Slipper is available for free from the invaluable manybooks.net and Project Gutenberg.  Seekers after vintage shivers need go no further.

How to describe The Quest of the Sacred Slipper?  Pure purple romance.  It starts with our narrator, a newspaper man named Cavanagh, inheriting responsibility for a Muslim holy relic, the Slipper of the Prophet (once worn by Allah himself) after the man who uncovered it, Prof. Deeping, is murdered.  Two factions are after it – a league of Muslim assassins called the Hashishin, and a celebrated American cracksman named Earl Dexter (also called The Stetson Man for his taste in hats).  The Hashishin are led by the murderous Hassan of Aleppo, and leave a trail of severed hands and dead men as they and Dexter pursue the slipper, with Cavanagh and Scotland Yard’s Inspector Bristol always one step behind.

All of this is delivered in a delirious, ornate, heavily scented style; as if Oscar Wilde and Ian Fleming collaborated on a thriller while drinking too much absinthe.

Of course, many readers will snort at the Hashishin – ritualistic Muslim murderers who smoke hashish before committing their crimes.  But remember, it’s Sax Rohmer we’re writing of here, so it’s no surprise that the Hashishin actually existed after a fashion, and that the word “assassin” actually derives from the same root.  And for Rohmer to have anticipated murderous Muslim fanatics roaming London fully 90 years before it actually happened adds additional irony to the notion that he was a mere pulpy romance writer.  (I often think of Leslie Charteris, creator of Simon Templar/The Saint, who wrote that World War II showed that writers of “Yellow Peril” fiction for the 20 years previous might have been onto something.)

Here’s a taste of some of the incensed delights to be found in the Golden Slipper:

All that I knew of the weird group of fanatics – survivals of a dim and evil past – who must now be watching this cottage as bloodlustful devotees watch a shrine violated, burst upon my mind.  I peopled the still blackness with lurking assassins, armed with the murderous knowledge of by-gone centuries, armed with invisible weapons which stuck down from afar, supernaturally.

Or: Many relics have curious histories, and the experienced archaeologist becomes callous to that uncanniness which seems to attach to some gruesome curios. But the slipper of the Prophet was different.  No mere ghostly menace threatened its holders; an avenging scimitar followed those who came in contact with it; gruesome tragedies, mutilations, murders, had marked its progress throughout.

No one would argue that Sax Rohmer was a great writer, or that his novels enter the elevated realms of high art.  But he did do something no thriller writer was ever able to pull off – he wrote trash that could be savored by aesthetes.