Art Now and Then
“Art Now and Then” does not mean art occasionally. It means art NOW as opposed to art THEN. It means art in 2020 as compared to art many years ago. sometimes many, many, MANY years ago. It is an attempt to make that art relevant now, letting artists back then speak to us now in the hope that we may better understand them, and in so doing, better understand ourselves and the art produced today.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Monday, February 23, 2015
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| The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1838, J.M. W. Turner. |
My wife, our son, and I took our first ocean voyage (a short hop from Miami to the Bahamas) in 1988 on one of the first NCL cruise ships, the Sunward II (which is still in service under a different name, by the way). It was only four or five days but it was enough to ruin every other vacation we ever took again on dry land. The ship was only six or seven hundred feet long and had a huge rising sun emblazoned on the side. Since then, I’ve all but lost track of how many cruises we’ve been on (ten, I think); and the ships have gotten progressively larger, more ornate, more comfortable, and, surprisingly, less expensive (per person, per day). Last spring we spent a night on one of the most historic ships in history, the HMS Queen Mary. It didn’t go anywhere; it’s permanently moored in Long Beach, California, but for a lover of the sea, it was quite an exciting experience. In just a few weeks we will be boarding the largest cruise ship in the world, the Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas for a twelve-day transatlantic jaunt from Ft. Lauderdale to Barcelona. I hope to sometime along the way collect a print of a painting of the ship to add to my collection.
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| The Allure of the Seas, 2011, Frank Camarda |
Artists have been depicting ships almost since ancient man discovered that wood floats, and that, crafting it in the right size and shape, it can carry considerable cargo. as God explained to Noah. Although Noah’s vessel has been glamorized in paint more than a few times, it probably looked little like anything we’d recognize as a ship today–more like a crude barge. No one is quite sure when Noah “set sail” but petroglyphs depicting sailing vessels date from about 12,000 BCE. The Greeks painted ships from Odysseus on their pottery as far back as 480-70 BCE. In fact, ships and art have been closely tied ever since that time (as evidenced by Park West Gallery’s art auctions on cruise ships today). All one has to do is study the thousands of images artists have set to canvas over the centuries to very accurately trace the development of both the art and science of ships from wind powered to nuclear.
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| Christ on the Sea of Galilee, 1854, Eugène Delacroix |
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| Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee, 1633, Rembrandt van Rijn |
Quite apart from Noah, artists painting biblical scenes have long been fascinated by the gospel accounts of the sudden storms and fishing boats laden with Christ and the apostles (it stretches the definition considerably to call them ships). Both Rembrandt (right) and the French artist, Eugene Delacroix (above) depicted this scene. It’s interesting to compare them, especially in that they came more than two-hundred years apart. Besides the Bible, artist have also turned to history for their inspiration as they chronicled the gradual conversion from wind to steam such as in what may be the most famous “ship painting” of all time, J.M.W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up (top) dating from 1838. Others have looked within their own imaginations in their depictions of man’s affinity for the seas, as seen in the work of Russian artist (now living in Hawaii), Vladimir Kush and his Surrealist Butterfly Ship (below).
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| Butterfly Ship, Vladimir Kush |
Some of the best marine art came from the Netherlands during the Dutch “Golden Age” when that nation had more ships afloat than the rest of Europe combined. Fully ten percent of their male population were sailors. Judging from the number of marine paintings produced during that period, another ten percent must have been artists. The Seven Provinces (below), by Cornelis de Vries, boasting up to eighty cannons, saw action in four major battles over a period of more than thirty years.
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| The Seven Provinces, Cornelis de Vries |
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| A broadside extolling the speed of the most advanced sailing ships ever built. |
Speed and economy of scale have always given ships an advantage in hauling cargo from place to place. Sometimes they’ve been the only means. As the 19th century wore on, paintings of ships saw them grow larger and faster, switching from sails to steam and from wood to steel. Shortly before the Civil War, the clipper ships came of age, moving cargo and passengers from east to west, up to three times faster and cheaper than freight wagons could transverse the vast American continent. Fitz Hugh Lane’s 1853 Salem Harbor (below) appears tranquil, even lazy looking, as compared to the boastful broadside advertisement for the famed clipper ship, Hornet (left), promising to make the trip from New York to San Francisco in a breakneck 105 days, even though having to sail around the treacherous tip of South America. A similar trek cross-country before the railroads might take up to a year (with good weather and good luck).
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| Salem Harbor, 1853, Fitz Hugh Lane |
Ships, have, of course, long been weapons of war. Some of the most dramatic paintings of ships ever produced have depicted their desperate sea battles, from Europe’s seemingly unending spitball fights during the 17th and 18th-centuries to one of the more serious cannon parties as painted by Edouard Manet in his 1864 The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama (below, left), depicting one of the most important sea battles of the American Civil War.
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| Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama, 1864, Edouard Manet |
During the 20th-century, steel had already replaced wood. Steam, diesel, and nuclear power have long ago replaced sails, and even the big guns of ships like the German Bismarck (below) have given way to guided missiles and aircraft carriers. In addition to a nearly constant growth in size, ships have adapted their architecture to the job at hand, not only militarily, but as to their commercial purpose as well, from ice-breaking cargo ships to massive tankers and even more gargantuan container ships, now the largest (and ugliest) vessels afloat. Artists seldom paint them. At no time was this development more rapid than in the pre-jetliner era of the first half of the 20th-century when countries raced recklessly against time to proclaim the fastest transatlantic crossings.
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| The German Battleship, Bismarck |
This schoolboy mentality came to a sudden, tragic end on April 15, 1912, when the “unsinkable” Titanic, the largest, fastest ship of its time. sank. Reckless was no longer “wreckless.” Ships grew up. They became safer. Designers became wiser. Standards became stricter. Steamship companies became more realistic. Yet, both the companies and their ships continued to grow larger. The Queen Mary set sail on her maiden voyage on May 27, 1936, the biggest, most luxurious ship ever built. also the safest, in that it’s now almost eighty years old.
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| Sea Trials of RMS Titanic, April 2, 1912, Karl Beutel |
Although my wife and I have sailed on nearly a dozen different ships (two of which are no longer in existence) during the past twenty-five years, I’ve painted only one. She was christened the S.S. France in May of 1960, the longest ship ever built at the time. Time, however was her downfall. She was too much too late, arriving at a time when Boeing 707s were cutting transatlantic travel from a week or more to eight hours or (a little) more. Yet, she saw service for thirteen years before being mothballed for the next six years. Then, in May of 1980, the S.S. France was rechristened the S.S. Norway. Our second cruise came some fourteen years later, as we celebrated New Year’s Eve, 1994-95, aboard the lavishly refurbished vessel; what was then the most magnificent ship afloat. I fell in love with her and painted her (below) as a segment of a larger painting recalling our cruise. Sadly, following an engine room explosion in May, 2003, which killed eight crew members, the ship was taken out of service. She was sent to India for scrapping in 2008. A few years ago, I put together a video tribute to the ship which can be seen at the bottom.
The bewitching allure of Hockney’s swimming pools
When the British artist David Hockney arrived in LA in 1963, he fell in love. The city – and its swimming pools – would become his greatest subject, writes Alastair Sooke.
One day in January 1964, when he was still only 26 years old, David Hockney, the Wunderkind of post-war British painting, found himself sitting on a beach in California. It was 24C (76F) and he couldn’t believe his luck. Revelling in the sun and sand, he decided to send a postcard to his friend and dealer, John Kasmin, in chilly, grey-skied Britain.
“Arrived in the promised land 2 days ago,” he wrote on the back of a card that reproduced the slogan “Greetings from California ‘Playground of the Nation’”, as well as enticing images of fresh oranges and a Pacific beach swarming with bronzed sun-worshippers. “The world’s most beautiful city is here – LA… You must come.”
The darkness of Hockney’s earlier works were replaced with sunny optimism in LA (Credit: David Hockney / Richard Schmidt)
“California, for Hockney, was everything that England wasn’t,” explains Andrew Wilson, co-curator of Tate Britain’s new retrospective of the artist’s work. The most extensive overview of Hockney’s career to date, it will then travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “California was a place of fantasy for him,” Wilson continues, “and he found a way to live it. He still loves the high-keyed colours, the light, the sensuousness and sexiness of California.”
By 1964, Hockney had been in love with Los Angeles – or, rather, the intoxicating idea of it – for a long time. Growing up in Bradford in Yorkshire, the fourth of five children in what he called “a radical working-class family”, he was bewitched by the flickering spell of cinema, which offered escape from his humdrum surroundings. And the ‘Dream Factory’ of Hollywood was, of course, the centre of America’s film industry.
Hockney recognised that LA was uncharted territory that he could conquer as a painter
Moreover, as a gay man, Hockney was a fan of the cult magazine Physique Pictorial, which was also produced in Los Angeles. As a student at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), he used this beefcake magazine as a source for paintings – and he continued to plunder it for imagery throughout the 1960s. Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (1963), for instance, which Hockney painted before he’d visited the city, was based on a picture from the magazine.
Hockney based his Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (1963) on a picture from the gay magazine Physique Pictorial (Credit: David Hockney)
So, when, in 1963, a year after he had graduated from the RCA with a gold medal, Hockney’s first solo exhibition at Kasmin’s gallery sold out, he decided to spend some of his earnings on a trip to the US. And top of his list of destinations was the ‘promised land’ of California – in particular, LA.
“I instinctively knew I was going to like it,” he recalled later. “And as I flew over San Bernardino and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I have ever been in arriving in any city.”
Making a splash
Almost immediately, Hockney – who, arguably, has done more than any artist to fashion LA’s visual identity – sensed an opportunity: he recognised that the city was uncharted territory that he could conquer as a painter.
“There were no paintings of Los Angeles,” he once explained. “People then didn’t even know what it looked like. And when I was there, they were still finishing up some of the freeways. I remember seeing, within the first week, a ramp of freeway going into the air, and I suddenly thought: ‘My God, this place needs its Piranesi [the 18th-Century Italian artist who executed countless views of Rome]; Los Angeles could have a Piranesi, so here I am!”
Hockney’s most famous paintings of Los Angeles, such as A Bigger Splash, depict a commonplace aspect of the city: private swimming pools (Credit: David Hockney)
Of course, Hockney’s most famous paintings of Los Angeles don’t depict freeways at all, but rather another commonplace aspect of the city, which became his greatest subject: private swimming pools.
To a young artist who had grown up in Britain during World War Two, experiencing deprivation and the austerities of rationing, LA’s swimming pools must have seemed almost impossibly luxurious and exotic. “The swimming pool,” says Wilson, “quickly became his sign for California.”
The first pool painting that Hockney made was California Art Collector (1964). Inspired by visits to the chic homes of collectors on the West Coast, it depicts a fashionable woman in her garden, beside an ancient carving and a sculpture by William Turnbull. Above her is a canopy that Hockney modelled upon a structure in Piero della Francesca’s Nativity (1470-75), in the National Gallery in London.
At first glance, the canopy looks like a piece of glass-walled modern architecture – and this, I suspect, was deliberate: Hockney surely wanted to tweak Francis Bacon’s notoriously doom-laden pictures, with their screaming figures imprisoned in glass boxes. Darkness and angst is, here, dispelled by sparkling Californian sunshine – rendered, by Hockney, in vivid, fresh acrylics. Optimism has replaced despair.
Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966) is one of a series of swimming pool paintings Hockney made as a visitor to LA in the mid ‘60s (Credit: David Hockney / Richard Schmidt)
And, there, in the background, as if promising to lead us up to heaven, a fantastical rainbow arches in the direction of a distant swimming pool, overshadowed by palm trees. Hockney based it upon an advertisement for swimming pools that he had spotted in the Los Angeles Times.
Before long, of course, swimming pools had ventured from a corner of Hockney’s vision to occupy centre stage. After returning to the UK later that year, he completed Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool, from a drawing. In 1965, he was back in LA, and as he spent more time there, during the second half of the ‘60s (eventually, in 1978, he decided to make the city his permanent home), so swimming pools began to feature more prominently in his work, in paintings such as Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966), Sunbather (1966), and, most famously of all, A Bigger Splash (1967) – the last of a sequence of three paintings on the same theme.
Swimming pools represent hedonism, sexual freedom, and joie de vivre
While Hockney’s most iconic pool paintings date from the ‘60s and early ‘70s – Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), for instance, was painted in 1972 – Wilson points out that, in fact, he never left the subject entirely behind. A series of semi-abstract paper-pulp paintings, known as the Paper Pools, dates from the late Seventies. Tate’s exhibition, meanwhile, features Gregory Swimming, Los Angeles, March 31st 1982, one of Hockney’s composite photographic works, consisting of 120 Polaroids arranged in a rectangular grid.
One of the last rooms of Tate’s exhibition contains pictures by Hockney of his garden in LA, painted in recent years (Credit: David Hockney / Richard Schmidt)
Moreover, the last room of the show contains recent paintings by Hockney of his garden in LA. “And,” says Wilson, “one of the main features of his garden is the swimming pool. So, you could say that painting swimming pools spans the whole of his career, since his arrival in LA in ’64.”
Hidden depths?
One of the most striking things about Hockney’s pool paintings is the way in which, consistently, they stand apart from the dominant tradition, in other art forms, of depicting Los Angeles in a sinister fashion (think of, say, Raymond Chandler’s literary noir, or Roman Polanski’s 1974 thriller, Chinatown). Swimming pools, in Hockney’s world, represent hedonism, sexual freedom, and straightforward joie de vivre.
“To Hockney, LA wasn’t a seedy, gritty, dark, noir-ish place,” says Wilson. “It was a world of plenty that was absolutely ‘other’ to the world he knew in London or Bradford. When he wrote that postcard to Kasmin, about the ‘promised land’, he wasn’t being ironic.”
Bathers were an important subject for 19th and 20th Century artists, from Renoir and Seurat (whose Bathers at Asnières is shown here) to Cezanne and Matisse (Credit: Alamy)
Of course, in the ‘60s, painting swimming pools also allowed Hockney to depict beautiful, semi-naked young men. Arguably, these pool paintings should be understood as an extension of his early work, which he once characterised as “homosexual propaganda” (homosexuality remained illegal in Britain until 1967).
After all, as any fan of modern art will know, bathers were an important subject for 19th and 20th Century artists, from Renoir and Seurat to Cezanne and Matisse. Hockney, in his pool paintings, offered a queer take on this canonical (and heterosexual) tradition.
“The pool paintings are very much about desire,” Wilson says. “And Hockney has a strong awareness of art history, certainly back to Cezanne; back, even, to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. So, queering that kind of subject matter is what these paintings are about.”
Hockney offeres a queer take on the canonical (and heterosexual) artistic tradition of depicting bathers (Credit: David Hockney/ Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter)
In addition, the pool pictures provided Hockney with a forum in which he could explore technical, formalist concerns – and even engage in dialogue with contemporary abstraction.
“The paintings,” Wilson explains, “are about how you represent the immaterial: water and light, transparency, different kinds of liquidities. And they are interested in the conventions of picture-making. The way Hockney paints water in his swimming pools employs abstract strategies, like [those in] paintings by Bernard Cohen, Jean Dubuffet, or Helen Frankenthaler. He uses [abstract] techniques to paint something as impossible to fix as light on water or the passage of bodies underwater.”
Wilson is adamant that anyone who dismisses Hockney’s pool paintings as superficial is making a mistake. “There is a feeling: how can Hockney be a ‘serious’ artist, when all he paints are swimming pools? I don’t agree with that at all. In the same way, you could say that large swathes of Matisse’s output are superficial.” (Matisse, incidentally, created his own important pool picture: a late paper cut-out called The Swimming Pool (1952), depicting a frieze of frolicking female swimmers, which took form on the walls of his dining room in Nice.)
Wilson pauses. “Actually, I think Hockney is making incredibly profound paintings. Yes, he is painting LA, a land of surfaces. But he’s interested in surfaces being penetrated – light penetrating glass, penetrating water – and he’s fascinated with how you picture that in an emotional and feeling way. These aren’t cold-hearted paintings, by any stretch of the imagination. They’re about humanity. And that’s why they connect with people.”
Alastair Sooke is art critic and columnist of the Daily Telegraph.
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