Archive for September, 2006
“Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” by Gustav Klimt, 1907.
Today I visited the Neue Galerie in New York to view the stunning painting “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” by Gustav Klimt (1907). Klimt is most familiar as the artist behind “The Kiss” (a seemingly ubiquitous college dorm-room poster; also painted in 1907). I never loved “The Kiss” (the woman’s head is in a most uncomfortable position!) but “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” is among the few paintings I would pay $15 simply to stand and stare at. It’s worth it, not only because of the impressive size of the piece (55.5 inches square) but also because Klimt used metallic gold and silver, raised texture, and embossed symbols which can only be appreciated on the original painting. I have never seen a reproduction of this painting that did it justice.
The key to the painting is the contrast between the subject’s gently rendered face and hands, and the ornate geometric patterns framing her. During his “Golden” period, Klimt was inspired by Byzantine iconography and mosaics portraying religious figures or temporal rulers, such as the Empress Theodora, in rich fields of patterned gold and silver. Klimt’s use of small squares and metal leaf directly evoke Byzantine mosaics. But the Egyptian eyes of Horus layered on the dress, the Celtic-style spirals behind Adele’s head, and the amazing organic texture of the background take the piece beyond any specific tradition.
There are four other Klimts in the show, including a second, much later portrait of Adele, but I think “Adele I” blows the others out of the water. Almost 100 years after its creation, it still feels completely modern to me.
In person, I observed several things about the portrait that I have been unable to detect in reproductions. Adele is actually standing before a sort of armchair or fat-armed throne, upholstered in gold swirls. Just above the halo of patterns behind her, at the extreme top of the painting, is a tiny rectangle of green paint which is often cut off in careless reproductions. The green perfectly matches a larger green field at the lower left. In person, the green glows against the gold, setting up a unity with blue-green undertones in Adele’s skin, and contrasting with the rose color of her mouth. The green also establishes a continuous background behind Adele and her throne/halo: Adele is in a real room, with a chair and a green wall behind it–not just floating in a lustrous firmament. She is not a divinity after all, but a woman.
As I moved from side to side, I was able to appreciate the metallic nature of Klimt’s materials, especially the raised embossing he used on the symbols of Adele’s dress. Abstract “A” and “B” shapes clearly recur throughout her flowing sleeves, representing her initials. There are more “B” shapes than “A” shapes, and they vary in execution. At least two are in silver. I was reminded of the Unicorn Tapestries’ mysterious AE initials. In the case of those tapestries, residing just uptown at the Cloisters, we no longer know who the initials were meant to commemorate.
The Neue Galerie also has several sketches by Klimt, including several preparatory sketches for the portrait of Adele, which was commissioned by her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. In the sketches Klimt barely hints at her face, but fully outlines her sensuous, striking lips, which are slightly parted in the final portrait. A photograph of Adele at the Neue Galerie suggests that whatever stylistic liberties Klimt took with her setting and garments, he painted her face most realistically.
The story of how “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” arrived at the Neue Galerie is convoluted and fascinating. The paintings, along with most of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer’s possessions, were seized by the Nazis in 1938. Bloch-Bauer’s niece, Maria Altmann, struggled for years to have the paintings returned to the family. The paintings resided in Austria for many years; my friend Sylvia saw them there in Vienna three years ago. However, a recent series of legal decisions required them to be returned to Altmann (now 90) and the other family heirs. Adele I was subsequently sold to Ronald Lauder on behalf of the Neue Galerie, at a reported price of $135 million.
Is the painting worth $135 million? Van Goghs and Matisses have sold for much less; the previous record was held by a Picasso that sold in 2004 for $104 million. I have no idea if a Klimt is worth more than a Picasso, but I think seeing this Klimt in person was definitely worth $15.
September 29th, 2006
A yellowjacket wasp. I believe this is Dolichovespula arenaria, the common aerial yellowjacket, which is found throughout the US, particularly on the coasts. This specimen very thoughtfully died on my front steps a few weeks ago, when it started getting cold at night.
Rendered in transparent watercolor on Aquarius II paper.
September 26th, 2006
Artists are opinionated. I know a very good artist who can’t stand Van Gogh, and I almost got smacked last weekend for admitting I prefer Dali to Matisse. (I prefer almost anyone to Matisse, except Thomas Kinkade). Anyway, we have all encountered artworks that we don’t really get. That’s why this description by Peter Schjeldahl, writing in the New Yorker, struck a chord:
Art itself–its structures and its uses–could seem a sufficient field of meaning, back when people still liked to believe that art’s development expressed an intrinsic, progressive logic. That was called modernism, and it is enshrined in the catechismal hanging of MOMA’s permanent collection, from Cezanne to Pollock. (The style parade obscures the fact that Cezanne and Pollock had real subjects, replete with philosophy and feeling, that emerged through and go beyond art). As a lingering habit of the curatorial mind, modernist presumption shores up some otherwise defenseless work in “Out of Time.” . . . All of them amount to aesthetic demonstration projects that have no conceivable significance outside a gallery or museum–a dedicated art space–which they inhabit with the tender dependency of creatures in a petting zoo.
Schjeldahl is describing some installations in a current MOMA exhibit, but this description could equally apply to many art installations I have encountered.
Last weekend, I visited the Contemporary Crafts Museum in Portland, Oregon, which is hosting an installation by fiber artist Susan Taber Avila. According to the museum’s printed description,
Avila will immerse viewers in a fantastical forest of legs and beaded shoes, exploring the shoe as a fetish object in a society obsessed with image.
My Matisse-loving friend Alicia and I entered a small white room containing about twenty oversized textile shoes, each rooting a net hose which stretched, trunk-like, to the ceiling. The netting was studded with small leaf-like scraps of textile and natural prints were used to construct the shoes. It was the promised shoe forest. It was certainly creative. But we just didn’t really get it. We understood the point; we could probably have written a decent essay about giant shoes as fetish objects. But instead we just sat on the bench the gallery had provided for contemplating the artwork. I finally asked Alicia, “What do you do with something like this when the show is over?” But is that even a fair question?
I do appreciate shoes - that same day, I bought a pair of black leather knee-high boots. William Morris would approve: they are both beautiful and useful. But as Schjeldahl points out, art installations exist in artificial space and time. Like a zoo, the gallery invites certain expectations. Someone who is pleased and surprised to encounter a common garter snake in their yard may be quite disgruntled when the exotic boa sleeping in the Snake House won’t constrict on cue.
I’m not sure what I expected Avila’s shoes to do, but they didn’t do it. It wasn’t that the display wasn’t creative or interesting. It was simply hard for me to see it as having a life outside the gallery. Compared with actual trees, or a street-scuffed leather boot, or the loop of birdsong piped into the room, the shoe forest seemed so sheltered, delicate, contrived.
At home, I put my new boots in the entryway. I have not yet tired of looking at them.
Image: “Open-Toed” by Susan Taber Avila, 2006.
September 25th, 2006
Animal welfare: See things from their perspective - 23 September 2006 - New Scientist
This New Scientist article suggests that a tendency to anthropomorphize animals’ emotions sometimes prevents us from making the best decisions about their care. Specifically, cats’ stoicism (to use an anthropomorphic term!) may prompt vets to provide them with less analgesia during or after surgery.
Following up on this, I was shocked to find a 2006 article suggesting that as recently as 2001, some Canadian vets still didn’t use any preoperative or postoperative analgesia for dogs or cats (although they did use operative anesthesia - it’d be pretty hard to hold the animal still otherwise). I guess I thought everyone understood by now that animals - or at least mammals like dogs and cats - do feel pain! (A second paper by the same group investigated the factors which influence analgesic use by vets.)
Fortunately, the use of painkillers by Canadian vets has increased since a previous survey in 1994:
The Canadian study was conducted in 1994 (S. Dohoo, personal communication 2001). It was a randomized national survey with a high response rate (76%) and showed that approximately 50% of veterinarians did not use analgesics in the postoperative management of dogs and cats. The chief reasons cited for nonuse were the veterinarians’ perception of the amount of pain felt postoperatively and their concerns about the risk of adverse reactions to opioid analgesics, then the only analgesics available.
Notably, the 2001 study suggests that a substantial number of cats still don’t receive painkillers after onychectomy (declawing - about 20%) or ovariohysterectomy (spaying - about 50%). The numbers are similar for spayed dogs. Having seen my own cat trying pathetically to walk after her spaying, I know she must have been in substantial pain. But I was told it was just the effects of anaesthesia, and I was happy to believe it. She couldn’t tell me otherwise.
September 21st, 2006
Jennifer Howard: The Uses of Fantasy
I’ve been seeing the paperback version of Susannah Clarke’s very long, very hefty Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell everywhere. It shares the unwieldy girth of all very long novels in small paperback incarnations: almost half as thick as it is wide, it can’t possibly lie flat or read easily once you get to the middle chapters. But as shameless escapism, the more of it the better (Cryptonomicon is another example).
Last year, when I read JS&MN, I was both amused and annoyed by it. It’s a pastiche of literary styles and mannered comedy that should be instantly recognizeable to a reader of Dickens and Austen. It’s clever. It’s well written. But as a “fantasy novel,” it didn’t quite feel right: not grand enough. Not serious enough.
Then I read this perceptive review by Jennifer Howard, from the Boston Review. She pretty much summarizes my own feelings about the book, putting it in the context of other recent fantasy offerings like Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. She says it lacks “the epic sense of Good and Evil, of things larger than ourselves, that makes the best fantasy so powerful and so necessary.”
Still, I wonder if it’s fair to reprimand a book like Clarke’s for failing to induce catharsis. I’d like to think Clarke is poking fun at the grand seriousness of the modern fantasy genre, its unending supply of earnest Everyman heroes and epic quests, by deliberately failing to meet our genre-driven expectations. Perhaps fantasy should take itself less seriously, at least some of the time. Humor is another way of reminding us that there are things larger than ourselves.
September 13th, 2006
What Muppet are you?
You Are Miss Piggy
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A total princess and diva, you’re totally in charge - even if people don’t know it.You want to be loved, adored, and worshiped. And you won’t settle for anything less.You’re going to be a total star, and you won’t let any of the “little people” get in your way.
Just remember, piggy, never eat more than you can lift!
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September 5th, 2006