My Kid Could Paint That

Dead Onion and Birds

Amedeo Modigliani, Jean Cocteau, 1916

By MARK LUCE

Some of you of a certain middle-age may remember when Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett back in 1993. Conventional wisdom wondered what a beauty like Roberts could possibly be doing with a beast like Lovett; ever the contrarian, I wondered what woman was remotely cool enough to be with the wryest songwriter on the planet. Lovett was a personal musical hero, a man whose lyrics mined the sardonic and ironic as much as the Byronic. For all the tracks such as "I Married Her Just Because She Looks Like You," he'd have a heartfelt ballad like"Nobody Loves Me Like My Baby" perfect for that staple of 1990s romance - the mix-tape.

When the students said they wanted to write about Art History Hotties, I balked. Too many innuendos, too much room for run-away puns, the pictures would be too risque. The students, though, were relentless, and in the end my inner mischief trumped whatever sense of public decorum I supposedly still possess. As I read through their responses, I found myself repeatedly snickering and being reminded that Modigiani's portrait of Cocteau looked a smidge like Lyle. And then I recalled my favorite Lovett lines. In "Here I Am," old Lyle speaks the following:

"Given that true intellectual and emotional compatibility
Are at the very least difficult
If not impossible to come by
We could always opt for the more temporal gratification
Of sheer physical attraction.
That wouldn't make you a shallow person
Would it?"

Rothko in Antwerp

Barstow Art History Students, South Wall, 2005-2014

By MARK LUCE

Over the years, often on lazy Friday afternoons, students in Art History willfully destroy pretty books. Lest ye think vandals run the asylum, please understand that the classroom’s south wall has become one giant collage culled from all sorts of art textbooks, catalogs and books.

On the first day of this year, though, I asked the students to put their hand on one picture that they were intrigued by. Surprisingly, they obeyed.

Next, I told them to take everything down except the works they were touching. We don’t want to take it down, their hang-dog eyes said, we like how it looks.

I explained, in my strongest teacher voice, that what was on the wall was not art, but only mechanical reproductions of art. They had learned from Magritte that ceci nes pas une pipe; by extension I was only asking them to take down pulped paper stained with ink. Art was not involved in this calculus. Stop looking at me, and get to work already.

How disingenuous. Of course art remains thoroughly involved in said calculus. The students cringed at destroying “art,” and their discomfort encouraged me. I wanted them to build a wall for themselves and to discover new works as they decorated. I wanted them to see that pictures scissored out of books and pasted on drywall with double-sided tape serve as their own kind of museum. Further, good museums change their exhibitions regularly.

The works the students chose to keep form the first round of blog posts for this semester. I am thrilled to introduce you to this year’s class of Renaissance Art History. We have nearly a dozen new writers and a couple of seasoned seniors.  I hope you enjoy their passion, insight and energetic writing as much as I do. 

El Greco, The Purification of the Temple, 1600

Goodtime Jesus
By James Tate

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

Antonio Canova, Detail of Venus Victrix, 1505-1508

Detail of Venus Victrix

The work, life size, stuns with its smooth lines, unbelievable detail and charged sensuality.

Her back bows gently, the drapery folds are extraordinary.

And her head seems to me among the most beautiful I can think of in sculpture. She’s as stunning as she is strong. No-nonsense Venus, the “that’s right I’ve won and I shall wear what I want” Venus.
Pauline, of course, loved the sculpture, for it captured her at the height of her allure and beauty. Camillo was appalled, and quickly had taken to Turin where Pierson Dixson tells us, “it was rarely allowed to be seen.” For her part, though, Pauline reveled in the scandal. She told those that asked about posing nude for the sculptor that “Oh, Canova is not a real man,” or else, “Every veil must fall before Canova.” If she was feeling particularly impish, she would claim, “There was a good fire in the room, so I didn’t take cold.”

Now shall we take cold either, since we have built a small fire in the room with these two subversive women and the stories behind their art.

Antonio Canova, Venus Victrix, 1505-1508

By MARK LUCE

There was another woman who cut a swath through Europe. She was outspoken, vain, and once told her first husband she would come back to Paris only if he gave her “100,000 francs.” She was also a serial philanderer, taking men as quickly as Napoleon took territories. After the death of her first husband, and about the time her older brother Napoleon was taking over France, Pauline Bonaparte married Camillo Borghese, a powerful Roman noble who could help Napoleon further his reach.

Only the headstrong Pauline grew to dislike what she saw as the restrictive conventions of life as a Roman princess. So she did what she did best. She acted out, making Roman jaws drop with her promiscuity, bad-mouthing her sister-in-law Josephine, quarreling with her mother-in-law and spending money, oh so much money on the latest fashions. She quickly grew estranged from Camillo, who seemed uninterested in Pauline in any way, and they lived apart from one another. Even Napoleon, her own brother, said this, “Tell her from me she is no longer beautiful, and she will be still less so in a few years, it is important to be good and esteemed.”

In the midst of this social maelstrom, she did what any self-centered, gorgeous but aging Princess would do. She decided to stay beautiful forever by commissioning the greatest living sculptor to portray her as a life-size Venus… nude and reclining. And she got her husband to pay for it.

Antonio Canova can be considered the greatest sculptor since Bernini, his works certainly define the neoclassical style that dominates the late 18th and early 19th century. [A small aside – Barstow graduate Elyse Nelson, 2005 – is currently working on a PhD at New York University in Art History. Her dissertation is on Canova.] He had commissions upon commissions, and tried to tell Pauline that he was too busy. However, to hear Pauline’s attendant tell it, Canova was so struck by Pauline’s beauty, he started within a month. However, when Canova hinted that Pauline should be portrayed as Diana, the virgin huntress, Pauline retorted “Nobody would believe in my chastity.”

A quick myth break – grumpy goddess of strife and discord and all things chaotic Eris was miffed that she didn’t get an invite to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (their son is Achilles). Instead of playing nice, Eris crashed the wedding and tossed out a golden apple that said “The Fairest,” or something to that effect. Venus, Juno and Diana all laid claim on the fruit. They wanted Zeus to judge who was the fairest. Zeus, for once, refused to interfere and appointed Paris, a mere mortal, as the judge. He deemed Venus the hottest, thus she got the apple.

Editor's Note: This week's posts are an adaptation of a lecture given in January. Enjoy.

Agnolo Bronzino, Guidobaldo il della Rovere, 1531

Titian, never one to let an opportunity for profit pass (and perhaps on the hint of Aretino) decided to do something rather naughty. He had Angela model for a portrait, the one we now call Venus of Urbino. Titian, perhaps letting his bawdiness get the best of him, thought Ippolito would get a kick out of this souvenier of Ippolito’s presumably enjoyable evening.

Only Ippolito never came to pick up the painting. And thus it sat in the studio for more than five years, until Guidobaldo il della Rovere, the young Duke of Camerino, saw it while sitting for a portrait.

On March 9, 1538 he told his agent in Venice to pick up the portrait and a picture of a nude woman. But there was a catch, Guidobaldo was a bit cash poor, and worried that Titian might sell the work. So he asked his mom for some money – seriously- she agreed and Guidobaldo received the painting before he took over the dukeship of Urbino in October of 1538.

Titian, Detail - Venus of Urbino, 1538

Oh, and another thing, Guidobaldo was married (for political and economic reasons, of course) to Guilia Varano in 1534. He was 20. She was 10. So, could it be possible that this unconventional Venus, the one who stares directly at us and seemingly invites us to sit on her daybed, actually be more an instructional gift from Guidobaldo to his young bride? This, my sweet, is how we do things her. This is how we how we pose artistically. Don’t worry, the servants will get your dresses.

We will never know quite for sure what Guidobaldo wanted with the portrait – whether what Mark Twain deemed high-class smut, or as the matrimonial embodiment of the most beautiful goddess. We do know, however, that our Venus of Urbino cuts a rather broad swath through the next 400 years of Western painting.
Editor's Note: This week's posts are an adaptation of a lecture given in January. Enjoy.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538

By MARK LUCE

Titian had been painting certain kinds of women since he was an apprentice with Venetian master Giorgione, who also painted certain kinds of women. Only most of Titian’s commissions were for women with names like Mary, Virgin Mary, Madonna, Mary Magdalen, or simply Mary. While Titian was not only a shrewd businessman, but also an incredibly talented painter - one who felt at home painting the Annunciation, the mythic Danae, or even portraits of high-society Venetians, Popes and Kings. While Titian’s brushwork and colors can be incredibly bold, it wasn’t until the early 1530s, that he painted what would become, posthumously, his most brazen work.

In polite company we call her Venus, as it’s okay to look at people without clothes if they are mythic and nude. No less a humorist than Mark Twain had a chuckle at such attitudes when in Tramp Abroad he wrote, "There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought -I am well aware of that. I am not railing at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort. Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is a trifle too strong for any place but a public art gallery.While Twain has a chuckle at the expense of museums, on some level he’s right. For you see Titian’s Venus of Urbino, well, she’s certainly an unconventional woman.

Kandinsky, Black Lines, 1913

Kandinsky, Several Circles, 1926

Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Richard Bennett Llyod, 1775-76

“It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily’s beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of comments had imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban for a judgment on Miranda?" – Edith Wharton, House of Mirth

Back in the day in Gotham, the well-heeled would embark on a party/event season that took them through drawing rooms where tuxedos and diaphanous gowns would mingle… and steal kisses…and gossip…and make ethically-challenged decisions. Usually, there was someone who stood aloof – a social scribe of sorts, pen at the judgmental ready.

The youngsters may wonder if I speak of Gossip Girl, with lonely boy Dan Humphrey as the misfit who will extract his literary revenge by chronicling the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite. 
 Instead, dear youth, I speak of the original G.G. – Edith Wharton. Reading Wharton’s House of Mirth delivers a dastardly kind of pleasure as she shish-ka-bobs pretension with an almost untoward relish. But she knows that which she criticizes.

Ms. Wharton grew up in a household that has been apocryphally credited the inspiration for the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses.” She was unhappily married to Teddy Wharton, a Boston man of class and leisure who was significantly older. She and Teddy were often ill, nervous and didn’t much sleep in the same room. However, it took Edith 23 years to get out.

In Reynolds portrait, Mrs. Llyod carves her husband’s name into the tree. We could speak to how Wharton does similar things to the rich and powerful, wielding her sharp pen to slice into the New York social scene of her yourth.

But we could also look at how Reynolds places Mrs. Llyod. The 18th-century graffiti artist leans slightly forward with an unmistakably anticipatory look on her pale face. Also unmistakable, the focus on the midsection and those oh-so-naughty bare feet. Reynolds has beaten Sargent to the Madam X punch by a full century.

Lily Bart enacts this painting in the tableaux vivant scene captured above that gets Lawerence Selden all huffy towards those who mention Lily's foxiness. He sees Lily as Miranda in the forest. We don’t. Lily’s a hottie, but also indecisive, rash, and materialistic. She cuts a teasing, provocative path through high society, only to have her fickleness and desperation lead to social and emotional ruin. Clearly, a total loser Dan Humphrey moment; only this one’s delivered with an aplomb that can only be Wharton.

Editor’s Note: I would like to introduce you to a new class of art history students. For the next couple of weeks they will be bringing you passages of literature tied to paintings. I hope you will enjoy their insight and passion as much as I do.

In Pangloss’s best of all possible worlds, such finite numbers would be unnecessary. Yet year after year, scores and critiques get scribbled in Pentel EnerGel black (sometimes red) and something feels not right about it.

The students who write this little postage stamp of art on the interwebs have learned in this past year the joys of self-expression. Certainly, they want to perform well in the class, but I hold out hope that having the courage to make their ever-evolving writing available in a public forum helps them understand that content, vision and voice matter – not grades.

Every year, teachers say goodbye to seniors in various ways – the handshake or hug, the silly words in a yearbook, sometimes even a token of appreciation, such as a mix cd or a favorite novel. For this particular group that’s moving on, I proffer a painting.

Parents can be quick to give teachers credit for the accomplishments of their children. Such praise can be as flattering as it can be humbling. However, what neither parents nor students may understand – these kids give us energy, provide us with inspiration, push us to be better. Any success that I have enjoyed as an art history teacher stems directly from the passion and exuberance of the youths who take the class, the ones who drink from that intoxicating elixir we call learning.

The seniors that have now left have delivered insight, handed out laughs, and done phenomenal work that regularly belies their youth. For them, I am thankful.

And for them, I give Cézanne. He was a grumpy old cuss, all locked away from the bustle of Paris in Provence. Fellow Impressionists dogged him, critics lampooned him. His marriage a shambles, his friendship with novelist Emile Zola a victim of what Cézanne saw as a character assassination in Zola’s novel L'Oeuvre. Commercially, he was pretty much a disaster. So he went all Thomas Pynchon and J.D. Salinger. But the further he turned inward, at least to me, the greater his paintings became. And as he aged, Cezanne’s influence spiked.

Pages and pages have been written about how 20th century art starts with Cézanne. Picasso famously claimed of Cézanne, “He was like the father of us all.” Picasso’s rival, Matisse, said, “Cézanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.” I have made similar claims to students over the years, complete with a litany of formal aspects, theory and, frankly, reductive analysis – much like that numerical value we place on the craft of students.

But the true beauty of Cézanne emerges when standing in front of it. Teaching possesses a similar effect. We watch students blossom intellectually, and they will surprise and inspire us – if we let them.

Several years ago I stood in front of this painting and was moved to tears. I think of these seniors and do the same.

Uncle Jimmy Green and Student, Daniel Chester French, 1924

Robert Demeritt, longtime teacher of History and Chinese at the Barstow School, passed yesterday in his sleep. And our hurt can be tempered by doing what Bob always did: investigate, contemplate, write, and share.

Alberto Giacometti, Palace at 4 a.m., 1932

Francisco Goya, The Hanged Monk, c. 1810-1812

By MARK LUCE

The work The Hanged Monk by Francisco Goya has a troubling history that goes beyond the brutality it depicts. Variously attributed to dates between 1810 and 1812, the painting was inherited (along with a significant portion of Goya’s paintings and prints) by Goya’s son, Xavier, after the death of Goya’s wife Josefa in 1812. The group of related paintings given over to Xavier was marked with an X9, visible in the bottom left of the work.