In a world where audacity and infamy are given accolades, one can hardly be surprised when mere brilliance and virtuosity garner relative obscurity.  That’s why it’s understandable if the name April Gornik doesn’t ring a bell.  Gornick is not a well-known artist.   Although she enjoys a very successful career, I don’t think Gornik has the renown she deserves for her exquisite landscape paintings.

No, I think Gornik’s obscurity has to do with the landscape as her subject matter.  A landscape doesn’t need much explanation.  We don’t need interviews with the artist in order to evaluate our response to a landscape.  We don’t need art critics to tell us what we are seeing and why the work is or isn’t an important artistic statement.   There’s no question of the artist’s intentions, no challenge to cultural taboos, no shock value, no controversy, no sex, no violence, no merde hitting the canvas.

We can simply appreciate a thoroughly traditional painting genre, handled in this case with great skill by an artist with definitely a modern sensibility.  We can  enjoy the light and drama of nature and its interpretation into paint which Gornik does so well.  For this is work about seeing  and painting, not in-your-face headline grabbing.

Moving Sky, 2005, Oil on linen, 24 x 32 inches

I suggest you seek out April Gornik’s paintings for yourself, take a friend with you, and then pass along the good news.  The  news that great painting is alive and well, relevant, and waiting to be discovered through April Gornik’s work, once we have finished reading the headlines about all the scamps.  Know that a reproduction of Gornik’s work, as with most art, is hardly a substitute for the viewing real thing (Light Before Heat is 11 feet long!).  While a great deal of contemporary art can be read about and then argued about as a concept, this work needs to be experienced.

Perhaps April Gornik doesn’t want or need to make noise or headlines to feel successful.  She may be proud of the fact that her work stands on its own without being confrontational and controversial.  It may be enough for her to be masterful and elegant.

Kathleen Benton

Lightning and Water, 1981, Oil on canvas, 50 x 102 inches

Light Before Heat, 1983, Oil on canvas, 66 x 132 inches

Light and Trees, 1996, Oil on linen, 82 x 55 inches

Storm in the Desert, 2002, Oil on linen, 70 x 115 inches

Field and Storm, 2004, Oil on linen, 74 x 95 inches

Sun, Storm, Cloud, 2004, Oil on linen, 72 x 96 inches

Mirror Lake, China, 2004, Oil on Linen, 78 x 104 inches

Dune Sky, 2007, Oil on linen, 70 x 81 inches

Red Desert, 2008, Oil on linen, 68 x 72 inches

The Rains, 2009, Oil on linen, 76 x 79 inches

All paintings by April Gornik (American, b. 1953)

April Gornik Photograph, 2005

Photograph of April Gornik and Eric Fischl, 2008

Eric Fischl photograph of April Gornik in studio

For more information and images of April Gornick’s paintings visit her website:  April Gornik

© 2009 All rights reserved You Can Hire an Artist

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It was through this ability to learn about things I wasn’t even looking for that my subject matter for this post, female artists from the Renaissance and Baroque Periods, was inspired.   I’m sure the art and history of  of these artists have been documented for many years. So it was quite a revelation when recently I came upon some web sites devoted to women artists that I had never known.  The artists included at these web sites were not mentioned in any of the art history classes I attended.  I’ll admit that until two weeks ago I had never been aware of any of the artists that I am featuring in this post.

Suddenly I feel a bit cheated by my educators.  I have to wonder why none of these artists were mentioned in my classes.  Although I do not consider myself a scholar I’ve had a bit more that the average education in art history.  Many of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque period classes that I attended were on the graduate level.  So I think I could reasonably expect that such in-depth studies might include the fact that women were making names for themselves right alongside men.  I now realize that my entire education was edited by historians and professors who were themselves not aware of or chose to ignore the participation and achievements of so many female artists.

What I’ve discovered is that the documented contributions of women artists date back for centuries. But  I knew nothing of the work, education, and success that these women artist attained.  I thought Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot were our early heroines, because those two ladies were the first female artists I recall being mentioned in my classes.  It seems I’ve missed out on about eight hundred years worth of artistic achievements made by women.

Unfortunately I cannot  highlight every one of those woman in a single post.  And of those I do feature here, I do not feel qualified to discuss their work and activity in great detail since I’ve still so much to learn.   At least, if I didn’t know of these women before, because of the Internet I do now and can explore their work further.  So with this introduction let us reflect on the difficulties they must have endured and the frustrations they must have felt.

 Their lives could not have been easy.  (How did these ladies paint in those clothes? Judith Leyster’s collar would make a convenient palette.) Here were women who most likely had their roles assigned to them by society, yet they were able to develop their creativity and reputations as well.  They were educated, attended universities, and were employed in activites and positions usually reserved for men.  And it seems they did it all while remaining fashionably in vogue and in the vanguard so that we might now have the many choices we can take for granted today.

Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details. Click again to return to page.)

Sonfonisba Anguissola (Italian, 1532-1625), Self-portrait at the Easel, 1556, Oil on canvas, Muzeum-Zamek, Lańcut, Poland

Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1652), Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638-39, Oil on canvas, 38 x 29 inches), The Royal Collection © 2008, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Clara Peeters (Flemish, 1594?-c1657), Self-Portrait with Still Life, Oil on panel, 14 x 19 inches, London, Hallsborough Gallery

Judith Leyster (Dutch, 1609-1660), Self-Portrait, c. 1632-1633, Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 25 5/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA

Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian. (I can find no information on this painting.  Please contact me if you can help.)

Maria Sibyllan Merian (German,1647-1717),  Branch of guava tree with leafcutter ants, army ants, pink-toed tarantulas, huntsman spiders, and ruby topaz hummingbird, c.1701-05, Watercolour on vellum, 39 x 32.3 cm, The Royal Collection © 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.   The 95 watercolours contained in Metamorphosis in the Royal Collection were bought in 1755 by George III, when Prince of Wales.

Adélaïde Labille Guiard (French, 1749–1803), Self Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785, Oil on canvas, 83 x 59 1/2 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842), Self -portrait, 1790, Oil on canvas, 39.37  x 31.89 inches, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

If you would like to find more information on women artists, here’s a list at wendy.com to get you started.

For this week’s elegant modern specimen I’ve been screening candidates and shaking my head all week; I must admit we are a shoddy lot.   Then it occurred to me that I do know a good example and have a personal anecdote to go with him!  It just so happens that Ross Bleckner was  my teacher.  Long ago and far away, the time spent in his class is a pleasant memory for me.  For it was while listening to Ross talk about the New York art scene that I determined I would go there and see it for myself.  Three months later I visited New York for the first time.  One year later I moved to Manhattan to study art at NYU.  New York turned out to be the place I would come to call home.

Ross Bleckner’s art has been exhibited and recognized for quite some time.  He was one of the first artists to be represented by Mary Boone Gallery.  He was just beginning to make a bit of a name for himself when he was given the position of “Visiting Artist”  for a quarter at The Ohio State University during my junior year.  (If he ever reads this I’m sure he will wince at the memory.  Ross did not especially like Columbus, Ohio and made an effort to return to New York City every weekend. –  Who could blame him?  The Mudd Club was just opening in his Tribeca building.)

I was enrolled in his painting class and every Friday he would appear in the large classroom painting studio to have a critique of our work.  He would come dressed in the uniform t-shirt and jeans.  But there was something different about his clothes.  His t-shirt was always a spotless white, like it had just been bought.  His blue jeans looked pressed as if from having been dry-cleaned.  But what facinated me most were his shoes. Of polished soft black leather with thin leather soles, I now realize they were probably fine Italian-made loafers, but I only knew then that they were different and beautiful.  They were probably the most expensive shoes I’d ever laid eyes on (having come from Ohio farm country).  They seemed very classy and somewhat incongruous with the paint-splattered cement floor of the studio.  I would stare at his shoes while he talked and moved about the room.

To get to the classroom studios students must go down a hall of faculty studio doors.  I would pass Ross’s studio door and on a few occasions it would be open.  I could see him working inside, holding a wide brush and saucepan filled with black wax.  Now he would not seem so spiffy, having changed to a black or gray t-shirt and dingy white painter’s pants, dotted with paint.  So, I realized, he dressed for our class down the hall!

Nowadays you can easily find pictures of Ross Bleckner dressed to the nines as an active socialite.  He is often photographed for gallery and museum exhibit openings, but he has also become a frequent fixture at social and charity events.  Bleckner’s work as a gay activist and for AIDS-related causes has been ongoing.  He was president of ACRIA (AIDS Community Research Initiative of America) for a decade.   This year he was honored as the first visual artist to be appointed a

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking.  His  mission was one of art therapy for former child soldiers and abducted girls from Gulu, Uganda.  So not only does Ross Bleckner set an example for all artists by dressing well, he is a model for service, using his work and celebrity status for worthy causes.

I’ve always thought Ross Bleckner’s painting was elegant.  Early on his work  was very dark, geometric, and abstract.  He worked the surfaces with concoctions of oil, wax, and pigment to find different levels both visually and physically.  That preoccupation has continued even into his more well-known work.  The paint is now hung onto and worked around the objects and icons for which he has become famous,  those symbols as elegantly dressed as the man himself.

Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details.  Click again to return to page.)

To see more of Ross Bleckner’s work visit his website: www.rbleckner.com.

Sara Krulwich, Ross Bleckner in his studio in Chelsea, 2009, Photograph, The New York Times

Jonathan Becker, Ross Bleckner in his Sagaponack studio, Photograph © 2009 Jonathan Becker

It has occurred to me that by considering artists born prior to the 1920s  (as I’ve done so far) the subjects  for Elegantly Dressed Wednesdays will look elegant simply because people did not appear in public as casually dressed as we do today.  It is a great deal of fun to look back, but  not much of a challenge to always be digging up the elegant past.  I promise in future to find some elegantly dressed contemporary models to feature. 

Duchamp did not spend his entire career making art.  While in his thirties Duchamp decided to become a chess player.  The reason he gave was:

 “Chess creates such beautiful problems”. 

I don’t think there’s a big shift from art to chess.  Compostion is quite similar to chess.  One asks, “ What’s going on here?” and “If I do this what will happen?”  Duchamp is quoted as understanding the similarities in life:  

“If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him – as if anyone could – but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.” 

Duchamp’s innovative art - paintings, collages, ready-mades, sculptures and performances - were all completed early on in his life.   If considered in progression, one can see the shift from visual thought to the intellectual game-playing  that would herald Duchamp’s absorption into chess. 

Despite having given up making artwork, Duchamp continued to associate with artists and collectors often influencing and advising them.  The photo of Duchamp playing chess with a nude Eve Babitz (to be featured tomorrow in my first Half-Naked Thursday post), was the idea of Julian Wasser, the photographer.  It was taken at the Pasadena Art Museum where a retrospective of Duchamps’ work was exhibited in 1963.  It was not a performance piece nor was the event open to public scrutiny.  But the photo was very much à la Duchamp in staging, similar to Rrose Selavy or his “Wanted” poster.    

Duchamp’s final artwork, Etant donnés, was worked on for twenty years in secret, long after even his closest friends had thought he had abandoned the creation of art.  It was completed in 1966, two years before his death.

Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details.  Click again to return to page.)

For an additional consideration on the life and work of Marcel Duchamp don’t miss this post:  Half-Naked Thursday: Eve Babitz with Marcel Duchamp

Image titles and credits:

Marcel Duchamp at wall-mounted chess board, Photograph  (I have followed all search results and found no credit for this photograph.) 

Marcel Duchamp aboard the Paris, February 26, 1927, Photograph (Likewise I have found no credits for this photo.)

Eliot Elisofon (American, 1911-1973) Duchamp descending a staircase, 1952, Photograph, © Time, Inc.

Marcel Duchamp (American, born France, 1887-1968), Wanted: $ 2000 Reward, 1923, Lithograph, 1961 (replica of 1923 original), Frances Beatty and Allen Adler, © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris / Succession Marcel Duchamp

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976) and Marcel Duchamp (American, born France, 1887-1968), Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp), 1921, Gelatin silver print, hand-retouched by Duchamp in black ink and pencil, 5 7/8 x 3 7/8 in., Philadelphia Museum of Art   

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976), Photograph for Marcel Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bond (No. 12), 1924, Photograph 

Marcel Duchamp (American, born France, 1887-1968), Monte Carlo Bond (No. 12), Cut-and-paste gelatin silver print on lithograph with letterpress, 12¼ x 7½ in., Museum of Modern Art

Julian Wasser (American), Marcel Duchamp with his Ready-made, 1963, gelatin silver print, 19.8 x 15.9 in.

Marcel Duchamp (American, 1887-1968),  Etant donné (exterior view), 1946-1966, installed at the Philadelphia Musuem of Art.

Salvador Dali is known around the world for his surrealistic art, but he is probably equally as well known for his larger-than-life style.  Not only for the super mustache, which grew in length  and animation as he aged, but for his dapper dress and shocking antics.  Most photos show him mugging for the camera with high drama and flair.  Dali lived and played to the extreme.  His activity was well documented, and it is most likely that he had arranged for the self-promotion.  A self-proclaimed genius, all aspects of Dali’s activity seemed geared towards creating fame for himself and he succeeded.    As a result, during his lifetime his celebrity perhaps upstaged his art work.   Or maybe they were one in the same for him.

Dali often chose accessories for added effect.  Often over the top, still he managed to maintain an aura of elegance.  But perhaps that is easily done with a full head of hair and a tie; pets and walking sticks may be secondary.  No sloppy tee shirts here.

When I began research for this article my idea of Dali was more as a celebrity and show-off, whose life and  bizarre subject matter were the attraction rather than his abilities as a artist.  I soon realized however what limited knowledge I had of his work.  And the more I learned the more impressed I became. 

Dali was a prolific artist who throughout his career remained true to his surrealist title.  He was able to express himself in many different ways – drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, performance art, and jewels.   The unconventional and sometimes scandalous nature of his subject matter with its nightmarish atmosphere was a part of  the surrealist cutting edge at the time.  But just like fashion, cutting edge art soon looks dated and then we must judge the work for its historical importance, intellectual, and artistic merits.  I was not a big fan of Dali, but I had always realized his importance in the scope of art history.  It is in having viewed his drawings and paintings afresh that I have found a new respect for Salvador Dali. 

Dali’s imagination had no bounds or censor.  Perhaps that was his ticket to success in a world that has become difficult to shock.   He certainly worked hard at it and enjoyed his life.  No matter what I think, Dali had his fame, fortune, and has his place in art history.  He was one of a kind.

-Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details.  Click again to return to page.)

Salvador Dali, photograph.  Still looking for credits…possibly Carl Van Vetchen?

Martha Holmes (American, 1923-2006), Salvador Dali and Wife Gala in a Garden, 1945, Photograph, 17.8 x 14.4 inches, Life Magazine

Roger Higgins, Salvador Dali with Ocelot and Cane, 1965, Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection

Philippe Halsman (Latvian, 1906-1979), from “Dali’s Moustache”, 1954, Photograph

André Caillet Fils, Paris (French, active 1930s), Gala wearing the shoe-hat created by Elsa Schiaparelli from a Salvador  Dali design, 1938, gelatin silver photograph, 23.0 x 28.6 cm, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, © Salvador Dali, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989),  The Broken Bridge and the Dream, 1945, Oil on canvas, 26¼ x 34 3/16, Salvador Dali Museum, Florida

Salvador Dali,  Ascension, 1958, Oil on canvas, 115 x 123 cm., Private collection
 

© 2009 All rights reserved You Can Hire an Artist