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Monday, July 2, 2012
Jay Bolotin’s The Jackleg Testament
Jay Bolotin. American, 1949–. Jack and Eve on Stage, still from The Jackleg Testament Part I : Jack & Eve. 2004-2005. Woodcut motion picture. Smith College Museum of Art. Purchased with the Carol Ramsay Chandler Fund and with the fund in honor of Charles Chetham. Photograph courtesy of the artist.
I vividly remember the first time I laid eyes on Jay Bolotin’s The Jackleg Testament Part I: The Story of Jack and Eve at the 2008 Editions and Artist’s Book Fair in New York. At a special early opening event for collectors and curators, I, like everyone else, was making a beeline for the coffee and muffins which were stationed at the end of a long row of booths. While walking, I noticed many people in front of me stop halfway down the aisle, turn to the right, and stand, transfixed and open-mouthed. I soon joined them in the same posture. What we were all looking at was fairly astonishing; the booth of the Carl Solway Gallery which was densely hung with vigorous black-and-white woodcuts. At the center of the installation hung a video monitor, where the figures in the woodcuts, now in color, cavorted, singing an operatic score. What on earth WAS this thing? The first woodcut movie, I was told. Jay Bolotin, the majordomo behind the production, not only designed and cut the woodcuts and assembled the movie; he also wrote the music and libretto for the 62-minute opera, and was one of the featured singers. While I was initially astonished by this idea, I quickly learned that for Jay Bolotin, such immersive, complex, and sprawling projects are more the rule rather than the exception. As an artist Bolotin wears many hats; he is a singer, songwriter, writer, printmaker, sculptor, theater collaborator, installation artist, etc. All these roles are necessary to achieve his true vocation: that of a compelling and consummate storyteller.
This amazing marriage of the earliest means of printed communication (woodcut) with the latest (digital media) seemed a natural for an educational institution, and we quickly snapped up a copy of the portfolio (which includes 40 woodcuts and a copy of the opera on disc) for the SCMA collection.
Jay Bolotin. American, 1949–. Jack’s Entrance into Eden from The Jackleg Testament Part I : Jack & Eve. 2005-2007. Woodcut. Smith College Museum of Art. Purchased with the Carol Ramsay Chandler Fund and with the fund in honor of Charles Chetham. Photograph by Petegorsky/Gipe.
We are pleased to finally be able to share this work with SCMA visitors, as Jay Bolotin: The Jackleg Testament opens on June 29 (and runs through September 9). Featured in the exhibition are the woodcuts from the portfolio, a viewing theater where the opera will be running continuously during open hours, and a special sneak preview of Bolotin’s progress on Part II of The Jackleg Testament (which he sees as a trilogy of linked films). Part II includes drawings (annotated with text written on the wall by the artist), new prints (woodcut and relief etching) and a video showing tests for the animations that will make up the next film.
Bolotin will return to Northampton on Friday July 13 to give an illustrated lecture on his work as part of SCMA’s Free Second Fridays Program. The Museum will be open from 4-8, and the lecture will take place in Stoddard Hall at 7 pm. This is a program not to be missed!
Jay Bolotin. American, 1949–. Nobodaddy from The Jackleg Testament Part I : Jack & Eve. 2005-2007. Woodcut. Smith College Museum of Art. Purchased with the Carol Ramsay Chandler Fund and with the fund in honor of Charles Chetham. Photograph by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Jay Bolotin. American, 1949–. Puppet Show with Ostrich Vision 2010. Graphite on illustration board. Collection of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. Photograph by Tony Walsh.
Jay Bolotin. American, 1949–. The Puppeteer in his labyrinth, test sequence from the film The Jackleg Testament Part II: The Book of Only Enoch. 2012. Lent by the artist, courtesy of Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio. Photograph courtesy of the artist.
Jay Bolotin and Aprile Gallant speaking to SCMA members in the installation of Jay Bolotin: The Jackleg Testament. June 28, 2012. Photograph by Louise Kohrman.
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Friday, June 15, 2012
Robetta’s Adoration of the Magi
Guest blogger Julie Warchol was a participant in the 2011 Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies and is currently a curatorial volunteer in the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
The Adoration of the Magi , a recently acquired engraving by Cristofano di Michele (1462 – after 1534), simply known as Robetta, offers an intriguing and enlightening view of artistic influences and the painter-engraver relationship at the turn of the 16th-century. Robetta was born in Florence in 1462, the son of a hosier, or stocking maker. Like many men of his time, he worked in his father’s trade until 1498 when, at the age of 36, he decided to instead pursue a career as a goldsmith and artist. This kind of career change was quite unusual, as most Renaissance artists and craftsmen started apprenticing in their early teens for a lifelong career. While relatively little is known about his life, except for his public records and a brief mention in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists , we do know that he produced only about three dozen engravings, including his masterpiece The Adoration of the Magi .
Cristofano di Michele, called Robetta. Italian, 1462 – after 1534. The Adoration of the Magi . 16th century. Engraving printed in black on beige, medium weight, moderately textured paper. Purchased with the Elizabeth Halsey Dock, class of 1933, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927.
The Adoration of the Magi was a popular subject for Italian artists because it allowed the artist to showcase their ability to create an elaborate composition filled with animals, sumptuously clothed figures, and often a vast landscape. While Robetta does all of these things somewhat successfully, a closer examination of the print reveals the unabashedly referential nature of his work. The composition and many of the figures are directly borrowed from Filippino Lippi’s Adoration of the Magi (1496) , now in the Uffizi Gallery, in a manner which raises questions about the relationship between the painter, Filippino, and the engraver, Robetta. Rather than creating an exact copy of the entire painting, Robetta’s print contains several mirror-image imitations of Filippino’s figures — particularly the kneeling Kings and the long-haired figure on the right, thought to be a portrait Lorenzo de Medici, the young cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, from whom a crown is being removed (see details below). Other figures in the foreground are reminiscent of those in Filippino’s painting, but with slight variations of clothing, expressions, and gestures. Both works exhibit a centralized composition surrounding the Holy Family, yet Robetta creates a more unified arrangement by eliminating several figures seen in Filippino’s Adoration , including two members of the Medici family which appear in the left foreground of the painting. Although the painted Adoration was completed for the Convent of San Donato agli Scopeti at least five to ten years before Robetta’s print, scholars believe that these deliberate and discriminatory quotations of Filippino’s work point to the fact that Robetta worked from Filippino’s preparatory drawings rather than the finished painting. Whether Robetta worked in Filippino’s studio or acquired his drawings independently is unknown, but this shared relationship between painter and engraver was certainly not uncommon.
Detail from The Adoration of the Magi . Photograph by Julie Warchol.
Detail from The Adoration of the Magi . Photograph by Julie Warchol.
Detail from The Adoration of the Magi . Photograph by Julie Warchol. This figure is thought to be a portrait of Lorenzo de Medici, the cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Robetta was an artist with diverse influences; he not only culled figures from many of Filippino’s paintings throughout his career, but also integrated elements of Northern printmaking, which was beginning to impact Italian artists at this time. In his Adoration , Robetta references Albrecht Dürer in his landscape of rolling hills and bulbous tree forms. A more subtle allusion is the small hat at the bottom of the print, directly above Robetta’s signature (see detail below), which is a direct quotation from Martin Schongauer’s engraving of the same subject . Although Robetta’s work is often deemed stylistically amateurish and naïve because of the late start to his artistic career, the true value of his engravings lie in how they illuminate the popular tastes at the beginning of the 16th-century, and offer modern viewers insight into the liberties of quotation taken by Renaissance artists.
Detail from The Adoration of the Magi . Photograph by Julie Warchol.
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Monday, June 4, 2012
Death in Art
The art of dying well
In our youth-obsessed Western society death has become taboo, hidden away in sterile funeral homes and shiny caskets. Death, a friend only to the old and the sick, not to be talked about, not to be seen. Death throughout history was never a welcome visitor. However, in times of war, famine, or disease, when death was personal, undiscriminating, and close, visual representations of death in many forms were more commonplace. A long life was for the few and fortunate, and so the emphasis was placed on the one thing inevitable in a poor soul’s life: death.
Käthe Kollwitz. German (1867 - 1945). Tod (Death); Plate II from the series Ein Weberaufstand (A Weavers' Rebellion), 1897. Lithograph on yellow-brown chine collé mounted on thick white wove paper. Purchased. SC 1958:44
Memento Mori
The Ars Moriendi was an originally Rhenish (German) “manual” on the art of dying well. The Cunningham Center owns an illustrated page from this intriguing piece of human history. The work highlights the medieval culture of death, which sprung up in Northern Europe around the time of the black Plague. The page in question is a 15th-century woodcut mounted on an oak panel. The book originally contained six chapters, which addressed the various elements of a good Christian death, from what to feel, how to behave, and which prayers to choose. The work was very popular at the time, widely distributed and translated in many languages. It clearly fulfilled a practical need in dire times.
Unknown. Rhenish. The Temptation by Avarice, Plate IX from Ars moriendi. 1460-1470. Woodcut printed in grey-brown ink on paper mounted to oak board. Purchased with the Elizabeth Halsey Dock, class of 1933, Fund. SC 2005:20.
The virtuous dead
While the Ars Moriendi was written for the literate few, the illiterate would find their comfort in the churches. Catholic churches were filled with examples of “good deaths” all centered around the crucified Christ. Venerable martyrs would cover the walls, often depicted in their moment of (mostly gruesome) death or portrayed with the actual instruments of their demise by their side. Unlike saints whose lives would serve as examples, the martyr found his or her glory solely in their moment of death.
Cherubino Alberti. Italian (1553 - 1615). Martyrdom of Santa Cristina de Bilsena,
by January 1605. Engraving printed in black on medium-thick moderately textured cream-colored paper. Purchased with the Elizabeth Halsey Dock, class of 1933, Fund. SC 2011:30-2Death and the Maiden
In the 16th and 17th centuries the image of death remained present in art. However, death took on many new guises. German artists like Hans Baldung Grien (whose work is displayed below) turned death into a “seducer” and lover of young maidens. The virginal pallid white female is “kissed” or actually bitten by death. In Dutch there is an old saying that something has suffered from “de tand des tijds” (the tooth of time). Here death’s “kiss” could be a kiss of aging or a kiss of death. A beautiful contemporary print from our collection titled “Death and the Maiden” clearly finds its inspiration in this age-old theme.
Jiri Anderle. Czech (1936 - ). Death and the Maiden, 1983. Soft-ground etching and drypoint printed in black and red on paper. Gift of Andrew Carron and Cathy McDonnell Carron, class of 1979. SC 2007:53-1
Hans Baldung. German, 1485 - 1545. Death and the Maiden , 1518/20. Oil on panel. Kunstmuseum Basel.
The Vanitas
Vanity and death were also a favorite pairing. In this Hans Thoma print from 1912 this old theme is repeated. Death holds up a mirror to the young woman reminding her of her own mortality. In turn the young fancy man in his plumed hat in this 16th century engraving by Lucas van Leyden reminds the viewer of his own mortality by pointing at the skull kept under his cloak. There is some debate among scholars regarding the true meaning of these vanitas portraits. I believe that since Christian virtues of modesty were highly praised in Protestant Dutch society the wealthy had to account somehow for their wealth by advertising their humility. While the Protestant Church believed one was already predestined to go either to heaven or hell at birth, it did not stop people from demonstrating their virtues and modesty to convince others that they were among the elect. The vanitas portrait could therefore be regarded as a sort of 16th/17th century afterlife insurance.
Lucas van Leyden. Early Netherlandish (1494 - 1533). Young Man with Skull, n.d. Engraving on paper. Gift of the estate of Mrs. Charles Lincoln Taylor (Margaret Rand Goldthwait, class of 1921). SC 1994:20-16.
Hans Thoma. German (1839 - 1924). Reminder, 1912. Drypoint on ivory wove paper. Gift of Lessing J. Rosenwald. SC 1951:41
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Thursday, May 17, 2012
The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
Guest blogger Julie Warchol was a participant in the 2011 Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies and is currently a curatorial volunteer in the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. West Street between Jay and Duane Streets from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan . 1967; printed 2007. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
In 1966-1967, several decades before the World Trade Center attacks, sixty acres of Lower Manhattan were systematically demolished and few, except Danny Lyon, seemed to notice or care. A Brooklyn native and young documentary photographer, Lyon had just returned to New York City after spending two years photographing and riding with outlaw motorcyclists for a series called The Bikeriders . He settled into a loft apartment at the corner of Beekman and Williams Streets, on the outskirts of a neighborhood that was to be destroyed. This portion of Manhattan contained some of New York’s oldest streets which were constructed in the 19th-century. In their prime, they had been bustling centers of mercantile activity, but were in an apparent state of decline by the 1960s. Many of these Lower Manhattan buildings, which were deemed architecturally insignificant, were razed in order to construct Battery Park City and the World Trade Center as well as other new buildings which have come to characterize the city. In the midst of this rapid leveling, Danny Lyon took to the streets with his large format camera to document the buildings in their final days, the looters and few remaining occupants, and the eventually demolition itself.
The views of New York City presented in these photographs are jarring; the desolate brick buildings and cobble-stone streets seldom contain people, cars, or any other signs of life. Simultaneously dilapidated and majestic, they stand as symbols of a past century that were sacrificed for the creation of more modern structures – a classic American strategy of development. Recognizing the symbolic importance of these neighborhoods and their fate, Lyon takes a subjective, and therefore novel, approach to his documentary photographs. Publishing journal excerpts alongside the photographs in his book The Destruction of Lower Manhattan , Lyon maps the progression of his work and encourages the viewer’s sympathy. By the end of the project, Lyon had shifted his focus from the ill-fated buildings to the demolition workers themselves, those unsung heroes who take great pride in their work. In these photographs, Lyon finds somber beauty not only in the architectural remnants of 19th-century New York, but also in their destruction.
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“I came to see the buildings as fossils of a time past. These buildings were used during the Civil War. The men were all dead, but the buildings were still here, left behind as the city grew around them. Skyscrapers emerged from the rock of Manhattan like mountains growing out from the earth. And here and there near their base, caught between them on their old narrow streets, were the houses of the dead, the new buildings of their own time awaiting demolition. In their last days and months they were kept company by bums and pigeons.
For a hundred years they have stood in the darkness and the day. In the morning the sun has shined on their one side, and in the evening on another. Now, in the end, they are visited by demolition men. Slavs, Italians, Negroes from the South, American workers of 1967 drinking pop-top soda on their beams at lunch time, risking their lives for $5.50 an hour, pulling apart brick by brick and beam by beam, the work of other American workers who once stood on the same walls and held the same bricks, then new, so long ago.” – Danny Lyon, The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. Washington Street. View North from Chambers Street
from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
. 1967; printed 2007. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. Eddie Grant and Cleveland Sims. Washington Street maintenance men for the New York City Department of Urban Renewal
from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
. 1967; printed 2007. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. 185 West Street at Chambers
from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
. 1967; printed 2007. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. Dropping a wall
from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
. 1967; printed 2007. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. Housewrecker
from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
. 1967; printed 2007. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.Comments
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
Picasso and the Minotaur
Pablo Picasso. Spanish, 1881 – 1973. Minotaure Aveugle Guide par une Fillette dans la Nuit
, 1934. Acquatint, scraper, drypoint and burin printed in black on Montual paper. Gift of Susan S. Small (Susan Spencer, class of 1948). This print is based on the Greek myth of the minotaur, which can be read in Ovid’s Metamorphoses . Like much of Metamorphoses, it is a tale of creativity and suffering. The story takes place on the island of Crete, where lives the minotaur, the monstrous child of a human and a bull. He is enclosed in a labyrinth constructed by the canny Daedalus, and each year he is appeased by a sacrifice of seven boys and seven girls from Athens. The Athenians are not terribly pleased with this arrangement, so they send Theseus to kill the minotaur. Ariadne, the woman who loves Theseus, gives him a gift before he leaves that saves his life: a golden thread that he can tie to a rock at the entrance of the labyrinth to guide him back out. Theseus kills the minotaur and returns to Athens victorious. But the story ends in tragedy: Theseus, in his jubilation, forgets to change the black sails of mourning to the white sails of victory, and when his father Egeus sees the boat from a high cliff approaching the city, he throws himself into the ocean out of grief.
Ovid’s tale is complex to begin with – all those layers of art and artistry, wildness and captivity, love and suffering. Picasso reflects the many facets of the story in his composition, but he also alters them in significant ways. There is the minotaur in the foreground, who here is blind, his unseeing eyes lifted powerfully towards the starry sky. There is a young girl holding a dove, occupying the brightest area of the composition, perhaps an Ariadne figure. We can see a man in a boat half-shrouded in his sail, reminding us of Theseus, Egeus, and the sad final notes of the tale.
In this work, Greek mythology collides with Picasso’s own personal mythology of artistic creation. The minotaur is a motif in Picasso’s oeuvre, symbolizing the tortured artist. Picasso’s minotaur is fierce and virile, yet also sympathetic and even fragile. He is blind, which suggests that he is a visionary who transcends literal sight, but he also relies on the innocent girl who guides him.
Minotaure Aveugle Guide par une Fillette dans la Nuit is from Picasso’s Vollard suite, a series of 100 prints all made after themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses . The series is named for Ambroise Vollard, the foremost French print dealer and publisher at the time.
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Friday, May 4, 2012
Observations From Deep Storage: The Art of Surprise
Guest blogger Jim Gipe is the founder of the Florence-based digital photo studio Pivot Media
If you don’t already know this, the Smith College Museum of Art has been digitizing its art collection since 1998. I am part of a team that, in the last 14 years, has systemically photographed, cataloged, uploaded, and linked nearly 50,000 digital files of artwork and exhibitions.
Specifically, though, I am a DigiGuy. This is the affectionate name given my colleague, Stephen Petegorsky, and me by the Museum’s staff. When we arrive for our quarterly photo sessions you can often here a squawk over the security radios; “The DigiGuys are here” they announce, as we are led by staff, down stairs and through locked doors leading to “Deep Storage.”
It was here, deep in the basement of Tryon Hall, that I was first surprised by art. The date was June 10th, 2005, and we were in Phase II of the digitization timeline—direct digital capture using a Sinar four shot camera. Stephen was making the photographs and I was color correcting the digital files to match the original artwork. That day, the artwork was coming from the print room, stored in archival boxes and rolled in on a cart. I navigated my mouse to the next set of camera files and turned to open the grey box on top of the cart. As I lifted the lid, my first thought was “WOW”, followed by “Oh my!” I was looking at Ace of Spades by Salvador Dali. This was possibly the most phallic image I had ever seen in my life, and I’d seen roughly 14,000 pieces of art by this point. This image takes the word “perspective” to a new level that is neither flush nor straight. The piece is from the series, Playing Card Suite (1970), which is Dali’s depiction of the royalty from a common deck of playing cards. But, as you can see, there is nothing common about these aristocrats.
Salvador Dali. Spanish, 1904–1989. Playing Card Suite: Ace of Spades
, 1970. Lithograph printed in color on paper. Gift of Reese Palley and Marilyn Arnold Palley. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Playing Card Suite: Queen of Spades
, 1970. Lithograph printed in color on paper. Gift of Reese Palley and Marilyn Arnold Palley. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Playing Card Suite: King of Diamonds
, 1970. Lithograph printed in color on paper. Gift of Reese Palley and Marilyn Arnold Palley. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Playing Card Suite: Jack of Diamonds
, 1970. Lithograph printed in color on paper. Gift of Reese Palley and Marilyn Arnold Palley. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.Comments
Jim Gipe
Deep Storage
This is so cool. How amazing it would be to own a deck of cards by Dali? Thanks for sharing,
BJ Larson
Deputy Director
NEMAKim Hicks
Dali playing cards
Thanks for giving us access to these little gems from deep storage--I'd love to see the originals on display, someday.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
TASS Window #850
In 1941 a group of Soviet writers and artists founded the TASS News Agency to create large-scale war-themed propaganda posters called “TASS Windows.” Over the next four years, the studio would create over 1,240 designs executed as multi-paneled stenciled screenprints. These posters were hung in windows across the Soviet Union, bringing fresh (and slanted) news and views of the Eastern front during World War II. Many of these posters were also sent to the US and Great Britain by the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), which was designed to build support for the war, but they were little studied (with few resources in English) until the exhibition Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941-1945 mounted by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. This exhibition presented new scholarship in English on this fascinating aspect of Soviet poster production. TASS posters were designed to be eye-catching and memorable, using humorous caricatures, painterly hand-cut stencils, and saturated colors.
Pyshki i Shiski (Pastry and Bruises) TASS Window #850 was designed by three artists known collectively as “Kukryniksy” (Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov).
This poster was purchased for the SCMA collection in the wake of the exhibition Godless Communists: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda which focused on a little-known group of Soviet anti-religious posters which entered the collection in 1968. The exhibition also expanded our understanding of how propaganda posters can provide an unusually rich field for interdisciplinary investigation.
The image in Pyshki I Shiski is a graphic rendering of a section of a speech delivered by Josef Stalin on November 6, 1943, in which he proclaimed:
“Entering the war, the members of Hitler's bloc counted on a rapid victory. They divided the spoils in advance: who would get the pies and pastries, and who gets the bumps and bruises. Understandably, the bruises and the bumps were intended for their enemies, and the pies and pastries for themselves.
[Inscribed on the pastries in the picture are: "The Caucasus; Africa; Transylvania, the Kuban'; Moscow"]
But now it is clear that Germany and her lackeys will not get the pies and pastries; instead, they will have to divide the bumps and the bruises among themselves.”
Kukryniksy (Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov). Pyshki i Shiski (Pastry and Bruises)
, 1943. Screenprint in color on paper. Purchased with the Elizabeth Halsey Dock, class of 1933, FundComments
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Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Rembrandt's The Three Crosses
Drypoint prints are made by using an etching needle—a metal tool with a fine tip—to create incisions directly on a copper plate. When you etch the lines into the plate, the needle pulls up a fine burr of copper around the lines. Because of the burr, a drypoint line holds more ink than an etched or engraved line. It prints darkly and thickly, creating velvety black textures, deep shadows, and dramatic tonal variation.
Drypoint lines are more fragile than etching or engraving lines. They produce fewer impressions, because the burr wears down easily. This explains why Rembrandt’s marvelous drypoint print The Three Crosses exists in five states. The states are different versions of the same print; each state represents changes made to the copper plate because the burr had worn down and the plate needed to be touched up. Print lovers are obsessed with the little alterations you can find between different states of the same print. What distinguishes The Three Crosses is that the differences between the third and fourth states are dramatic. Rembrandt completely re-invents the print, not just compositionally, but tonally: the meaning changes.
Take a look at our fourth state of The Three Crosses :
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn. Dutch, 1606-1669. The Three Crosses,
1660. Drypoint and burin in black on cream laid paper. Gift of the Studio Club and Friends. Now compare it to this image of the third state .
In the fourth state, Rembrandt introduces new figures—two mounted soldiers to the left of the cross—and re-draws the group at the right, including St. John and Mary. The figure of the centurion changes, too. In early states, he kneels before Christ; in late states he is mounted on a horse. The second thief on the cross is obscured because Rembrandt has etched over the right side of the plate, creating a deep ominous shadow over the scene. The velveteen depth and intensity of those black lines comes from the amazing use of drypoint.
The story the print depicts is the crucifixion of Christ alongside two thieves (in the print, Christ is in the center, with one thief on each side). The crucifixion is ultimately a tale of redemption: Christ’s sacrifice brings about the salvation of humankind. But the fourth state is so dark and bleak, it casts doubt upon the redemption narrative. The looming shadow that threatens to engulf the whole scene, the rearing horse, the obscurity of the figures, and the emphasis on Christ’s suffering transforms The Three Crosses from an image of pathos and sacrifice to one of darkness, doubt and chaos.
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Shared Inspiration: About the Collectors
This blog post was written in conjunction with the exhibition Shared Inspiration: The David R. and Muriel Kohn Pokross Collection , on view at the Smith College Museum of Art through July 29.
David R. Pokross (1906 – 2003)
David Ralph Pokross was a lawyer, mentor, community leader, art collector, avid tennis player, and family man. He was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, and was the first graduate of his high school to enter Harvard College, from which he graduated magna cum laude , majoring in French literature, in 1927. He went on to earn a degree from the Harvard Law School in 1930, having financed his entire education on his own.
In 1939, David was named a partner at the prominent Boston firm, Peabody, Brown, Rowley & Storey (now Nixon Peabody), where he practiced law for 70 years, including chairing the firm's Executive Committee. He was regarded by many as a “lawyer's lawyer,” whose colleagues sought out for advice. Although he practiced labor law, securities, corporate law, estate planning, and litigation, he was particularly known for his public utility work, also serving as a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of Northeast Utilities, and for his role as lawyer to the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Beloved as a mentor to younger lawyers, he served as counsel to the firm until six months before his death.
David’s lifelong philanthropic work revealed his deeply-rooted commitment to social justice. A community leader of unbounded energy, he devoted countless hours to numerous non-profit and charitable organizations in Boston. He held leadership positions in many organizations including serving as president of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, director of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, board member of The Boston Foundation (where he established a special fund for children in need), overseer of The Boston Symphony Orchestra, president of the American Jewish Historical Society, and trustee of the Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School. David also served as the chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare at Brandeis University where a chair in law and social policy was endowed in his name. Among numerous honors that he received, David was the first recipient of The Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay.
Self-taught in his artistic interests, David carefully studied works of art and artists before making a purchase, and sought the advice of professionals in the art world. He and Muriel were avid travelers, and they connected with the art world wherever they went. In his memoir, David described how they discovered new artists:
"We walk around a museum, and then I will ask if a director or an assistant director is available. I would say, ‘I don’t own any art of local painters. If you will name five (and I always said five) young painters who have been recognized in your museum but who have not become top artists, I would like to look at their art and perhaps buy some of it.’
I never had a negative response from a director, and so we would receive recommendations."
Over years of traveling and collecting, David and Muriel developed friendships with museum directors and curators, such as Carl Belz, formerly director of Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, and the artists they patronized, among them William T. Wiley, Gregory Gillespie, William Beckman, Joseph Floch and Barnet Rubenstein. According to their daughter, Joan, “My parents would have been delighted that the heart of their collection now resides in the Smith College Museum of Art as The Pokross Collection.”
Muriel Kohn Pokross (1913 – 2011)
Muriel Kohn Pokross, social worker, community leader and art collector, who was also devoted to her family, was born in Boston. She was educated at the Girl’s Latin School and Smith College, where she graduated in 1934 with a degree in French Literature. Reflecting on her years at Smith, Muriel cited her junior year in France as her most valuable college experience. “A whole world opened up,” she recalled.
After raising three children—Joan P. Curhan, William R. Pokross, and David R. Pokross, Jr.—Muriel returned to her academic pursuits. She received a master’s degree in Education at Boston University, with a major in rehabilitation counseling. Muriel went on to spend the next 25 years as a social worker with the Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing, aiding hearing-impaired children and adults, and teaching nurses, teachers, parents and caregivers how to communicate with the hearing-impaired. She was instrumental in persuading Channel 2, Boston’s public TV station, to caption their programming for the hearing-impaired, an unprecedented practice for public television at the time.
The Pokross home was always open to their many friends, whom Muriel entertained with her lively conversation and home-cooked meals. According to Muriel, “We particularly enjoyed and helped many European doctors (especially psychoanalysts), lawyers and teachers, whom David helped bring to the U.S., to settle in and begin new lives after immigrating to Boston in the late 1930's and early 1940s.” In the late 1930’s, David had prepared affidavits to help Jews from Vienna to escape the Nazis. Among the people he helped to immigrate to the United States was the artist Joseph Floch, from whom David and Muriel purchased a number of works, including a portrait painted of Muriel.
Muriel was an active community leader, serving as a volunteer, committee member and trustee for charitable organizations and non-profit agencies in the Boston area. These included the Board of Overseers of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, and the Dean's Leadership Council and Nutrition Round Table at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Muriel also held leadership roles at Smith College, serving as the Chair of Planned Giving and Alumnae Representative for the class of 1934 for almost twenty years. She remained active in the Belmont Smith Club throughout the years, serving as President in 1950. On the occasion of her 80th birthday, her family established the Muriel Kohn Pokross 1934 Kew Garden Travel/Internship Fund at the Botanic Garden of Smith College in her honor. This fund sends two students each year for ten weeks of botanical research with scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England.
Muriel and David’s marriage, lasting 67 years until David’s death in 2003, was a truly loving partnership. In addition to three children, they had four grandchildren: Jenifer Curhan Panner, Jared Curhan, and Benjamin and Samuel Pokross; as well as seven great grandchildren: Samuel, Elizabeth, Harry, David, and William Panner, and Hannah and Joshua Curhan.
Muriel Kohn Pokross at her 75th Smith College reunion.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Shared Inspiration
This month saw the opening of Shared Inspiration: The David R. and Muriel Pokross Collection . Shared Inspiration celebrates a generous gift from the family of Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934, and David R. Pokross. Comprised of paintings, drawings and prints by major artists of the post-World War II period, The Pokross Collection is a marvelous and exciting addition to SCMA’s collection.
After receiving the gift this winter, my colleagues and I spent months studying, researching and enthusing about these new objects, and looking for the correspondences between them. Several works in the collection—a drawing and a painting by William T. Wiley, drawings by David Park and Richard Diebenkorn—were by California artists. This concentration allowed me to learn about the contemporary art that came out of California in the 1960s and 1970s: the Bay Area Figurative Movement, of which Diebenkorn and Park were founding members (our new David Park drawing is a beautiful example of the work that came out of this movement), and the California Funk Art Movement, of which William T. Wiley was a member.
In this installation shot, you can see our Richard Diebenkorn (Untitled #25 , 1981) on the far left paired with an Elizabeth Murray drawing.
The gift also includes four works by the Pioneer Valley artist Gregory Gillespie. Gillespie is known as a Pioneer Valley Realist, but it was a designation he rejected, and when you look at the works in the Pokross Collection, you can see why: they run the gamut from the real to the strange to the absurd. Here are two paintings from the collection:
Gregory Joseph Gillespie. American, 1936 – 2000. Greg and Peg , 1991. Oil on wood. Gift of The Pokross Art Collection, donated in accordance with the wishes of Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 by her children, Joan Pokross Curhan, class of 1959, William R. Pokross and David R. Pokross Jr. in loving memory of their parents, Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 and David R. Pokross. SC 2012:1-8. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Gregory Joseph Gillespie. American, 1936 – 2000. Trees and Figures (Surviving the Flood) , 1980/81. Oil and collage on board. Gift of The Pokross Art Collection, donated in accordance with the wishes of Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 by her children, Joan Pokross Curhan, class of 1959, William R. Pokross and David R. Pokross Jr. in loving memory of their parents, Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 and David R. Pokross. SC 2012:1-9. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Tune in next week to read more about the collectors, David R. and Muriel Pokross.
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