Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893-1967) brought American art to a new level. His work did not fit into any existing category but was a style of modern art not seen before. He was born in Ashtabula, Ohio, but after his father died in 1898, his mother and he moved to Salem, Ohio. While a junior in high school, he was determined to make a record of all the flowering plants in the area. Constantly sketching and painting, he kept a journal of his thoughts and ideas. He said he was “gathering the material for a lifetime.” He was valedictorian at his high school class graduation in 1911. His interest in art was well established by that time. After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Art in1916, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the National Academy of Design in New York City. He left the Academy one day after attending a life drawing class, and he returned to Ohio.

Burchfield drew upon recollections of life in eastern Ohio: “There gradually evolved the idea of recreating impressions of that period, the appearance of houses, the feelings of woods and fields, memories of seasonal impressions….” “Song of the Katydid on an August Morning” (1917) (18’’x22’’) (watercolor, gouache, colored chalk, pastels) is one of the 400 watercolors and drawings Burchfield would complete over the next few years.  He later called this period his “Golden Years.” An accomplished artist, Burchfield was equally at ease with traditional landscape, still-life, and portrait subjects, but landscape was his principal choice. His sensitivity to the sounds of nature, the poetry he heard and felt, the colors that sprung to life in his mind, and the emotions he felt, shaped his uniquely personal style. 

Writing in his journals and on the backs of his paintings, he offers the viewer insight into his work. “Song of the Katydid on an August Morning” depicts, in his words, “a stagnant August morning during the drought season, as the pitiless sun mounts into the mid-morning sky, and the insect chorus commences, the katydids and locusts predominating. Their monotonous, mechanical, brassy rhythms soon pervade the whole air, combining with the heat waves of the sun, and saturating trees and houses, and sky.” 

 

“Cricket Chorus in the Arbor” (1917) (22’’x17.5’’) (watercolor, brush and ink, wax crayon) is typical of Burchfield’s work. He was primarily a watercolorist, but he added other media for effect.  He described his choice of watercolor in his journals: “I like to be able to advance and retreat just like a man writing a book. I doubt that very few of them ever sit down and leave a paragraph as it first comes into their head. They work over it, delete things and add things. Well, I feel that I like to do that just as they do. Or as a composer does. I mean you start a picture and I don’t know how it is going to turn out. I think I know what I want to do but, when I put it down it’s not right and it’s got to be changed. I have to find out where the idea wants to go.” 

Burchfield knew and recognized the sounds of various insects and developed a type of artistic shorthand to define those sounds: “I noticed the brilliant yellow sunlight at noon–following a clear morning–a solitary katydid, at times, while at noon the cicadas charm me. Crickets are notorious for chirping nonstop in the evenings.” 

Burchfield painted the same subject over and over, each time changing the image to create another interpretation of that same subject. He described “The Insect Chorus” (1917) (20’’x16’’) (opaque and transparent watercolor, graphite, and crayon): “It is late Sunday afternoon in August. A child stands alone in the garden listening to the metallic sounds of insects. They are all his world, so, to his mind, all things become saturated with their presence–crickets lurk in the depths of the grass, the shadows of the trees conceal fantastic creatures, and the boy looks with fear at the black interior of the arbor, not knowing what terrible thing might be there.” Burchfield said ‘‘terrible things that might be there’’ perhaps because of the recent discovery that mosquitoes transmitted yellow fever and malaria. 

The trees and ferns are drooping as a result of the sweltering heat; their colors are dull green and beige, and their black trunks and branches are distorted. The rounded arbor is a sickly yellow-green, and the entrance to the arbor is a black hole. The V-shapes are the jumping crickets. Burchfield wrote that the crickets’ chirping is a ”high shrill pin-point cricket chorus.” 

Burchfield served in the US Army’s camouflage unit, using his painting skills to hide tanks and artificial hills. He was honorably discharged in 1919. He designed wall paper at M.H. Birge & Sons from 1921 until 1928.  He married in 1922, had five children, and lived in West Seneca, New York until his death in 1967. Life Magazine named him one of America’s 10 greatest painters in 1926. Beginning in 1929, he was represented by the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York City.  Commissions, sales, and teaching positions in several universities supported his family from 1928 onward.  Election in 1954 to the National Academy of Design in New York was among the many acknowledgements he received during his career.

 

He wrote about “Wild Geese and Poplars” (1956) (39’’x26.5’’) (watercolor) in his journal on October 18,1956: “About mid-morning a flight of wild-geese going straight south–As they passed by the poplar trees an extra hard puff of wind scattered leaves over the sky–The sight and sound of wild geese affects me in a way that is hard to understand–My heart begins to pound, and breathing is difficult–It is an elemental event.” Popular trees lined one side of his garden. He worked on the sky for most of the day, but he recognized that the “wild geese cannot be put in without disturbing the sky–which is more important?” He made at least two versions of the subject. The subject would seem to be a simple one, but with only a few strokes of his brush, Burchfield captured the essence of this moment in time.

The Charles E. Burchfield Center at Buffalo State College was opened in his honor in1966.  His paintings can be found in over 109 museums in the United States and Europe. Burchfield’s watercolors are his distinctive response to nature through all seasons of the year: “Often I say to myself, ‘This is the best time of the year.’ I say it every day the year thru. And it is true. Every season is the best. I cannot conceive of a true lover of nature despising winter but liking summer or vice versa.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

If you were born in the month of August, your flower is the gladiola. It symbolizes strength of character, victory, and pride. It was named after the gladius, the sword used by Roman legions and gladiators, because of the flower’s tall stalk and the pointed petals. The gladius had a sharp pointed blade, 30 to 33 inches long, double-sided and two inches wide, and two pounds in weight. It was excellent for the close hand-to-hand combat. 

“Bouquet of Gladiolas, Lilies, and Daisies” (1878) (32.5’’ x 24.5’’) is by Claude Monet. He moved with his wife and son to Vetheuil, a small village 37 miles from Paris because he could not afford to live in Paris. His flower paintings appealed to a wider audience. From 1878 until 1881, his reputation grew and his commercial success increased with the backing of Parisian art dealer George Petit, who brought Monet’s work to the attention of the Parisian art market. 

The red and white gladiolas are placed with an unruly bunch of daisies to create a casual bouquet. Two white lilies center the composition. The white oriental vase and the colorful patched cloth on the table add to the rich color palette of the canvas. Monet’s choice of soft blue for the wall behind the vase and bouquet has a calming effect. Complementing the colors and shapes of the flowers and greenery, the round vase has two handles and two visible feet, and it is decorated simply with the colors in the painting.

“Vase with Red Gladiolas’’ (1886) (26’’x16’’) is by Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh had the opportunity in 1886 to see the fifth Exposition Internationale of works by the Impressionists. His first impression was the works were “careless, ugly, badly painted,” but by the autumn of 1886, he wrote, “I have much admired certain Impressionist pictures–Degas, nude figures–Claude Monet, landscapes.” Although the two never met, Monet’s landscape “Tulip Fields” (1886), in the Exposition, is considered to have been a strong influence on Van Gogh’s work. The intense color of the tulips, painted with a thick impasto, were very different from Van Gogh’s then current style that followed Dutch painting, with its realism and earth tones. 

The colors, including those of the red gladiolas, are potent, and the brush work is vigorous. Van Gogh’s red gladiolas, symbols of the intense passion and strength of the gladiator, are powerful. In the rich green background, the two complementary colors red and green, have been used to best advantage. The green and white pattern of the vase, the pop of white flowers, the brick wall, and the rich wood tones of the table, would become the style that made Van Gogh famous.

 

 

If you were born between August 22 and September 21, your Native American Totem Animal is the bear. The bear is the guardian of the West. Bears are symbols of strength, vitality, courage, and health, to name a few. Bears are considered the ultimate protectors, and many tribes always carry the bear symbol to keep the powerful spirit of the bear with them. One example is the Zuni Bear Totem (3.35’’x 1.5’’), a fetish carved by Bernard Homer, Jr., grandson of a famous Zuni fetish carver and follower of a long tradition of carvers. 

The bear carries a medicine bundle with turquoise, coral, a mussel shell arrow head. The bear has inlaid coral eyes. Turquoise, a popular stone with Native Americans and with ancient cultures around the world, brings good luck. Its bright blue color is the color of a clear sky. Coral has a long history as a symbol of the ocean. To native Americans it represents the lifeblood of Earth Mother. Coral and turquoise represent the unity of the earth and water. A valued food source, mussels live in both fresh and salt water. Mussels were a part of the sacred water world. The arrowhead represents courage and determination, important human characteristics for a successful hunt.

The bear has been a symbol in ancient cultures such as China, India, and Greece. The constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, also known as the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper or the Big Bear and the Little Bear, combined are the largest constellation in the northern sky. In the Greek myth of Callisto,

Zeus, married to Hera, had a roving eye and seduced many beautiful women. When Hera discovered his relationship with the nymph Callisto, she changed Callisto into a bear made to roamed the earth and hunted for 15 years.  Johann Wilhelm Baur’s etching “Callisto Hunted by Arcas” (1639) (Metamorphosis,1639) depicts the conclusion of the myth. By chance, Callisto’s son Arcas came upon her in the forest, and not recognizing her, drew his sword to kill the bear. Zeus, seeing this from above, swept down as a whirlwind and set them in the sky as the constellations Ursa Major and Minor. Callisto could watch over her son forever.

One of a bear’s most important strengths was its nurturing and protective nature. The Chippewa, Creek, Algonquian, Huron, Hopi, Cheyenne, and others tell several versions of the bear’s nurturing and supernatural healing powers. The tales tell of the bear’s mysterious power to heal itself and to teach others how to heal. Bears are considered spirit guides, and they are closely related to tribal shamans and figure in long-practiced rituals. 

 

The cartoon by political cartoonist Clifford Berryman was first seen in the Washington Post on November 16, 1902. He was inspired by newspaper stories about President Theodore Roosevelt, a well-known big game hunter. While on a bear hunt, he could not find a bear to shoot. Some of the men with him found a young black bear and tied it up for the kill. Roosevelt refused to shoot it, to do so was unsportsmanlike. Berryman’s cartoon caught the attention of Morris Michtom, a toymaker. With the President’s approval, he started selling “Teddy Bears.” Roosevelt created the United States Forest Service, five National Parks, and conserved over 230 million acres of land.

The story of bears continued in the London Evening News in 1925, as a children’s Christmas story with writer A.A. Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepherd. Milne bought a teddy bear for his son Christopher Robin Milne for Christmas from Herod’s Department Store in London. Christopher named his bear Winnie after a Canadian black bear he saw at the London Zoo. The Canadian black bear was a gift from Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, who purchased the cub while in Canada on his way to England during the First World War. He named the bear ‘Winnie” after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg. Winnie, a female bear, was a popular attraction. Pooh was the name of Christoper’s friend’s swan. Winnie the Pooh was drawn by Ernest Howard Shepherd, an illustrator at Punch Magazine. His drawing was inspired by his son’s teddy bear named Growler. The book Winnie-the-Pooh was first published in 1926.

The book A Bear Called Paddington first appeared on October 13, 1958. The book was written by British author Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum. Bond was inspired by a solitary teddy bear on a shelf in a bookstore near Paddington Station on Christmas Eve1956. He bought it for his wife. The inspiration for the story came during his observation of Jewish refugee children and London children who were sent to the country for safety during World War II. The children wore signs saying “Please look after this child.” Bond wrote the first story in ten days. Peggy Fortnum was commissioned to make black and white drawings for the book.

Peggy Fortnum, born in north London in1919, always wanted to be an artist, and she enrolled in art school in 1939. However, she could not stay out of the War after witnessing the bombing of London in 1940. She was a member of ATS, the women’s branch of the British Army. After a long recovery from a war injury, she returned to art school and went on to became an art teacher, painter, textile designer, and book illustrator. To be as accurate as possible, she went to the London Zoo and sketched and photographed Malayan black bears. “At the beginning, I wasn’t sure of the anatomy,” she wrote. “I wasn’t sure what to do with his paws…It takes an age to get it right.” Bond said of Fortnum, “She thought very highly of Paddington, as I did of her. It was a happy combination.”

In 1942, a Japanese submarine attacked a southern California oil field next to the Los Padres National Forest. The War Advertising Council created a campaign to warn of the dangers of forest fires. On August 9, 1944, Smokey the Bear became the mascot of the U.S. Forest Service. He was drawn by the then popular animal illustrator Albert Staehle, and named after Smokey Joe Ryan, a famous New York City Fire Chief. After a discussion about Smokey’s image needing to be family and child friendly, officials selected the image of gentle bear holding a can of water and putting out a fire. Staehle designed the next two Smokey posters. During his career he drew 25 Saturday Evening Post covers, illustrated for the American Weekly, and created popular animal logos for products. Billboards using his popular animal images could be seen all over America.

Just one more bear story. In the spring of 1950, a fire in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico left a badly burned bear cub clinging to a tree. Firefighters found him and named him Smokey. Smokey was given a home at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and he became a popular resident and a national symbol of conservation and fire safety. When he died in 1976, his remains were taken back to Capitan, New Mexico, and buried in the State Historical Park.  

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

  

 

If you were born in the month of July, your flower is the larkspur. It is the symbol of positivity, dedication, a beautiful spirit, loving bonds, delight, and joy. The painting “Larkspur” (1888) by Henri Fantin-Latour is unusual in that it is a depiction of a vase entirely of larkspur. Fantin-Latour, a French flower painter, was extremely popular with English Victorian art lovers, who gave a symbolic meaning for every flower. The larkspur was introduced to England from Italy in the mid-1500’s, and it became immediately popular.  The flowers bloom on a stalk that is one to three feet tall. Most often the larkspur is used in mixed bouquets to add height. The airy blue-gray foliage is fern-like.

Fantin-Latour has painted the larkspur in three of its four colors. White larkspur represents a happy nature and purity. Purple represents first love, but pink represents a contrary and fickle disposition. As beautifully painted as it was, Fantin-Latour’s bouquet seems to send a conflicting message to a young lady.

The English sprinkled larkspur in the bath as a protection against ghosts, magic, lightning, and to ward off other evils. It was planted around stables in Transylvania to keep witches away. The larkspur’s protective qualities are drawn from various stories and myths. In Greece, after the death of Achilles, the great hero of the Trojan War, his armor was awarded to Ulysses, another hero. Ajax, a third significant hero, was so distressed at not receiving the armor, he committed suicide by throwing himself on his sword. The larkspur flower bloomed where Ajax’s blood dropped onto the ground. In medieval Italy, the larkspur flower first bloomed when three knights slew a fierce dragon, and the flowers sprung up where the knights wiped their bloody swords on the grass. The English name larkspur developed in medieval England. The pointed petals and the pointed center were likened to the claws of the meadowlark, and the spurs of medieval knights. A knight had to “win one’s spurs.” Larkspur, when eaten, is poisonous to humans and animals.

 

#2 “White Rose and Larkspur No.1” (1927) by Georgia O’Keeffe

Whatever meaning the larkspur or rose may have had in Victorian times, Georgia O’Keeffe was not concerned about its meaning in her paintings. She began a series of large flower paintings in 1927. “White Rose and Larkspur No. 1” (1927) was from a series of five with white roses; two of them with Larkspur.

O’Keeffe’s interest was two-fold: to examine the flower closely and to create different compositions with the same objects. “White Rose and Larkspur No. 1” contrasts dark versus light. The five petals of the flower are pointed and its center can be seen. Using the limited palette of blues and whites, O’Keeffe created a striking image.: “So, I said to myself…I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.  I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” At one time she said she hated flowers, but they were great models as they did not move. Nevertheless, she is well-known for her large and gorgeous paintings of flowers. O’Keeffe said, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment, I want to give that world to someone else.”

“Black Hollyhock, Blue Larkspur” (1930) was painted while O’Keeffe was in Taos, New Mexico, a visit she made every summer from 1929 until her husband Alfred Stieglitz died in 1949.  She moved to New Mexico permanently in 1949. O’Keeffe said: “When I was at Mabel’s [Dodge Luhan] at Taos…there was an alfalfa field like a large green saucer. On one side of the field was a path lined with flowers…One day walking down the path I picked a large blackish red hollyhock and some bright dark blue larkspur that immediately went into a painting, and then another painting.” 

The blue larkspur is a symbol of dignity and grace. Raised as a Catholic, O’Keeffe may well have known that blue flowers were symbols of the Virgin Mary.  In art, Mary always is dressed in blue. O’Keeffe carefully details the five petals of each flower and the pistil in the center. The Bible tells of Christ having received five wounds on the cross. In Christian iconography, the larkspur is a reference to Mary’s tears. An American Pawnee tribe story tells of “Dream Woman,” who cut a hole in the sky so she could look down. Pieces of the blue sky fell to the earth and became larkspur.

 

If you were born between July 22 and August 21, your Native American totem animal is the salmon. It is the symbol of determination, strength, perseverance, wisdom, prosperity, and renewal.  Salmon have been a major food source for Native Americans for thousands of years. The fish is revered and celebrated in rituals. Its symbolic characteristics are related to its observable life cycle. Returning each year to spawn in the same location involves swimming a long distance upstream to return home.

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is most famous for his panoramic landscape paintings of the American west. “Salmon Fishing on the Cascapedia River” depicts two buckskinned fishermen steadying a dugout canoe while a third fisherman casts his line far into the lake. He has caught a salmon; its silvery body arches out of the river as it tries to escape the fisherman’s hook. Bierstadt’s landscape includes the peaceful river, autumn leafed birch trees, a forest beyond the lake, and tall mountains in the distance. The clear air and quiet peace of untouched nature is relaxing and reassuring. The Cascapedia River was and is still known as the home of some of the largest Atlantic Salmon on the Gaspe Bay coast of Quebec, Canada.

April White (b.1972) a Haida artist of the Raven Clan was born in Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia in Canada. Her Haida name is SGaana Jaad (Killer Whale Woman). She earned a BSc in geology from the University of British Columbia and became a field geologist in the North American West. While making maps, she began to paint landscape scenes in watercolor. She is self-taught but has a natural talent. “Realm of the Supernatural” displays her skill with watercolor. The top half of the panoramic waterscape depicts a small forested island set in the calm lake. As the lake flows forward, the water becomes supernatural and a fish, decorated in the “formline” style of Haida art, appears.

In the mid-1980’s, White made painting her vocation. She continued to paint realistic landscapes, but she also created paintings that were “formline” to honor her heritage. Formline is two dimensional, compact, and highly organized art. It consists of flowing lines and striking color. The three standard Haida colors are black, red, and green. The fish shape is well defined with attention to facial features, fins, and flippers. Within the fish or other animal, a face with large eyes is often a prominent part of the design. In this piece, the fish includes the image of a woman’s face, her long black hair swirling upward in simple arches. White said, “Haida women are very prominent in Haida stories and myths—understandable given our matrilineal society. So, it was very important for me to develop a representation of the water realm that reflects not only myself being a woman, but as a Haida.”

White’s “Salmon Tale” (2015) (acrylic) was the winner of the 2015 competition sponsored by the Pacific Salmon Foundation to design the Recreational Fisheries Conservation Stamp. The stamp competition began in 1989, and sportfishermen are required to buy it to support salmon fishing in British Columbia as well as other conservation efforts. Since 1989, $7.75 million have been raised to support more than 2,000 community conservation projects. 

White relates the Haida story depicted in “Salmon Tale.”  A young daughter of a powerful chief woke up crying from her dream. She saw a shining, leaping fish unlike any known fish. The village Shaman said, “We have many fish in our Inlet, but none like that. Raven, who lives among the Cedars might know.” Raven traveled far, and when he saw a leaping salmon, he caught it. The salmon was the son of the Salmon Chief. Many salmon tried to catch Raven and Salmon, but Raven returned home with Salmon and placed it before the young girl. The Shaman told the people, “Many salmon will try to rescue this young Salmon. You must weave a huge net to catch all the fish.” When the run of salmon arrived, the people caught enough to feed the village, but spared many. The salmon searched the forest streams and decided to spawn in the shallow beneath a Ts’uu-Cedar Tree. The salmon came back year after year and spawned and the humans honored them. The humans developed a ritual for preparing them to eat, and they placed the fish skeletons back into the water, believing that the Spirit of Salmon would rise again each year and regenerate. 

The salmon in “Salmon Tale” is depicted in the traditional Haida manner: a profile view, mouth open, a large eye, fin and flippers. Inside the salmon, the Raven’s profile head, open mouth, large eye, and feather patterns of both wings depicts the connection and refers to the tale of how Raven brought Salmon to Humans.

In 2016, the Royal Canadian Mint chose White to design a collection of coins for a collector’s series titled Mythical Realm of the Haida, composed of supernatural figures from the realms of water, earth, and sky. The first is a Haida image of Whale with a female head inside. White’s Haida name SGaana Jaad, Killer Whale Woman, was the inspiration. The second coin features Eagle, with a male dancer cloaked in feathers inside, and the third, Black Bear with a child on its lap.  White has also written and illustrated several books. 

“From inspiration through to artistic expression…it’s as if I am experiencing innate memories that connect me deeply to my cultural past. It’s as if my brain is really doing the seeing, not my eyes. The feeling of this cerebral vision is supernatural…magical.” (April White)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, China. His father ran a book store. Cai was able to read widely, including books that would be forbidden under Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1967). Then Cai had to help his father burn books. He received a BFA (1985) in set design from the Shanghai Drama Institute. He began making gunpowder drawings in1984. Why gunpowder? Quanzhou was located across the straits that separated mainland China from Taiwan. Cai recalled, “I grew up with gunpowder. They (Chinese Nationalist) were always bombing us and we them. It was a part of my life.” Fireworks also were and are a part of every Chinese festival. 

 

Primeval Fireball (1991) (exhibition in Tokyo) includes several gunpowder drawings from The Projects for Projects series exhibit. Each piece is titled and falls into Cai’s category of Projects for Extraterrestrials. Cai perfected the technique of spreading paper on the floor, sprinkling gunpowder as desired, placing a second sheet of paper on top to control the fire, and igniting it. Over time, he developed great control over the process and added colored gunpowder that was used in fireworks. 

“Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters” (1993) is No. 10, and it is the first large work from Cai’s Project for Extraterrestrials. Charges were placed across 6.2 miles of the Gobi Desert at the western end of the Great Wall. Small charges were placed 1.86 miles apart, and larger charges .62 miles apart. At dusk on February 27, 1993, the first charge was ignited and the remaining fired in sequence over a period of fifteen minutes. Forty thousand residents and tourists witnessed the performance.

“Transient Rainbow” (2002), a performance on the East River on June 29, 2002, in New York City was sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. One thousand, three-inch, multi-colored peony fireworks were fitted with computer chips. They were set off at 9:30 PM. The “Transient Rainbow” lasted 15 seconds.

“Footprints of History” (2008) was Cai’s spectacular firework display over the Bird Cage Stadium at the Beijing Olympics. Twenty-nine footsteps were set off in sequence. They extended 9 ½ miles from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic Stadium and lasted 63 seconds.

In 2009 the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited of Cai’s gunpowder drawings to honor Anne d’Harnoncourt, the director of the museum who died unexpectedly in June 2008. The exhibition opened on December 11, 2009, with “Fallen Blossoms” (2009) (60’ x 85’), an explosion in front of the façade of the Museum. It was intended as a gift to the City and was witnessed by a large audience. The blossom was made of fuses placed on a metal net attached to a scaffold. The title was taken from a Chinese proverb that references the great loss experienced when a life is cut short. Anne d’Harnonocourt was sixty-four years old when she died.

Cai has received many awards and honors, among them the Praemium Imperiale (2012) that recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts, a category not covered by the Nobel Prize. He also received the first United States Department of State Medal of Arts for commitment to international cultural exchange. Although Cai lives in New York City, his works are commissioned internationally. His works deal with such human issues as climate change, the pandemic, increased national conflicts, and materialism. 

“Remembrance” (2014) is the fireworks component of a larger Cai exhibition titled The Ninth Wave, held at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. It is China’s first contemporary art museum, opened in 2012. The $64 million cost of the Museum, was paid for the by Shanghai government. The Power Station is located on the Huangpu River, and “Remembrance” was performed from a long barge.

“Black Wave” (2023) is the first phase of When the Sky Blossoms with Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) (2023). It was performed on Yotsukura Beach in Iwaki City, Japan, to recognize and remember the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami that took place there in 2011. The first sequence titled “Black Wave” was to recall and remember the pain of the past.

“Memorial Monument” (2023), the second phase, recognizes the loss suffered during the earthquake and tsunami, the COVID pandemic, and wars. 

“When the Sky Blossoms with Sakura” (2023) was the third phase of the performance that filled the sky with beautiful pink blossoms. The cherry blossom is the unofficial flower of Japan, and the Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual event in Japan. Cherry blossoms are symbols of spring and renewal of life; the festival it is a time for family and friends, for joy, and for renewed vitality. Cherry blossoms last only two weeks. Their arrival is time for great joy and reflection.

The entire performance lasted thirty minutes. Forty thousand choreographed fireworks were launched from the water. The display was 1312 feet wide and 427 feet high. On the day of the event, June 26, 2023, Cai commented on the significance of the work: “Thank you to the beautiful sea and sky of Yotsukura, and the rare cooperation and companionship of the sound of the wind and waves in this worrisome June…Mankind today is facing various challenges such as coexisting with the pandemic, economic decline, deglobalization, and increased national and cultural conflicts. Through the sakura in the sky, I was expressing the story of the friendship between the people of Iwaki and me, which transcends politics and history, and I hope that the artwork will inspire the world with faith and hope.”

Cai lived in Iwaki, Japan from 1986 to 1994, and he had many friends. His first major performance in Japan in 1994 was in this Iwaki location. The Sakura blooming in the sky echoes the initiative in 2015 by Cai and his friends, who called themselves “10,000” (the many or infinite), to create the Project to Plant Ten Thousand Cherry Blossom Trees.  

“From gunpowder, from its very essence, you can see so much of the power of the universe—how we came to be. You can express these grand ideas about the cosmos. But at the same time, we live in the world where explosions Kill people, and then you have this other immediate context for the work.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

 

America’s Kentucky Derby on May 6, Preakness on May 25, and Belmont Stakes on June10 have been run for the year 2023. England’s Royal Ascot was run from June 20 through June 24. One other world class European horse race in 2023, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, will run during the first week of October at Longchamps race course in Paris. Longchamps, Paris’s most prestigious course, was built in 1857 on top of the ruins of an abbey that was destroyed during the French Revolution. Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie attended the first race at Longchamps on Sunday, April 27, 1857. 

Both artists Manet and Degas painted the races at Longchamps, concentrating on the horses and the track. The Italian artist Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) was more interested in the crowds of people who attended races. In “The Races at Longchamps from the Grandstand” (1883) (39”x48’’) De Nittis devoted two-thirds of the canvas to a view of the race from the top of the grandstand down to the track. He created several diagonals in the composition: people seated in the grandstand, people standing on the ground by the rails, a stretch of dirt track with horses working out, and the crowd behind the rail on the opposite side of the track. The diagonals are enclosed by the dark roof over the grandstand. 

Gentlemen in top hats and dark suits escort women wearing black dresses and a variety of black hats. Here and there he injects a dash of orange and red, picking up the color of the horses, and the orange fall foliage in the distance. De Nittis uses a light-yellow color to shine light on the manicured ground where some yellow chairs have been provided for the crowd. The track and the crowd standing beyond the rail are composed of a combination of yellows and orange-browns. Pops of white appear in shirt collars, pale skin, jockey silks, two tents, a white tower, and a few houses in the distance. White clouds complete the color palette. 

De Nittis was born in Barletta, a port city on the Adriatic on the west coast of Italy. He began art lessons at an early age in Naples, where he was admitted to the Realis Institution de Bella Art. He was expelled in1863 because he had opinions and spoke his mind. He said, “I became my own sole master.” He moved to Paris in 1868 where he became friends with Manet and Degas. 

Degas invited De Nittis to show his work with the Impressionists in their first exhibition in 1874. He was the only Italian artist invited. De Nittis is frequently listed with the Impressionists. However, he employed only some of the Impressionists’ style while maintaining a strong traditional realist style. De Nittis’s “In the Shade of the Trees on the Racecourse” (1874) illustrates these two styles. Like the Impressionists he was a plein-air painter. While Impressionists decided to use only the colors of the rainbow, De Nittis continued to employ black, and he did not use the colors of the rainbow to create shadows. The elegant top hat and suit are highlighted with grays, as is the shadow on the white collar. The lady’s lovely blue and white striped dress does not contain any orange or yellow to create highlights; the traditional white and gray are used. However, the dapples of sunlight visible through the trees and the leaves, are mere splotches of paint.

 Like the Impressionists, De Nittis painted outdoors and used a shorter brush stroke to paint objects in the distance. Most like the Impressionists, De Nittis was interested in painting scenes of modern life: racetracks, strollers on boulevards or boating on rivers, and the bourgeois middle-class enjoying life’s pleasures. This painting is also called “The Flirtation,” a delightful scene of people enjoying a sunny day, prancing horses, and fashionably dressed ladies strolling under parasols. De Nittis’s paintings were in great demand. His work sold well, causing some criticism by both French and Italian artists who called his work commercial and superficial.  

 

“Return from the Races” (1875) (23’’x45’’) (Philadelphia Museum of Art) depicts the bourgeoise sitting at outdoor tables and chairs, under the shade of leafy trees on a sunny afternoon. Horse-drawn carriages pass by on the way home from the race. Continuing to employ many black and white images, De Nittis included a wider palette of yellow, pink, tan, bright green, and light greens. The bark and fall foliage of the trees, more loosely and colorfully painted, stand out against a light blue sky with puffy white clouds. The shadows at the bottom of the clouds are an Impressionistic light purple. The more distant group of people is suggested by dabs and dots of paint. This work is part realism and part Impressionism.

“Lady Walking her Dog” (1878), also titled “The Return from the Races,” singles out one of the fashionably dressed ladies De Nittis often depicted. She is beautiful and self-assured. Her outfit consists of a black hat that smartly but suggestively veils her face. The collar of her coat flares out in in three tiers, and her sheer black scarf is tied in a bow. Five pairs of shiny black buttons close her belted coat. Light gray leather gloves complete her outfit. This is a fashion statement. Also making a statement is the large golden-brown mastiff that she holds by the collar with her right hand, and the small whip she holds in her left hand. The people and the city in the background to the left and right of her head, serve only to highlight her face, not calling attention to themselves. This De Nittis painting was exhibited at the 1878 World Expo in Paris.

De Nittis was immensely popular and sociable in his time. Among the several exhibitions he participated in was the 1876 Universal Exposition, where he exhibited 20 paintings and won a gold medal. That year he also was made a member of the French Legion of Honor. He frequently traveled between Paris and London where he continued to chronicle the middle-class in front of the two cities’ signature sights. He and his wife Leontine held one of Paris’s most lively salons at their home. The walls were covered with paintings by Corot, Degas, Manet, Monet, and Japanese woodcuts. Guests included such famous writers as Alexander Dumas, Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, Emil Zola, Edmond Goncourt, who wrote the Dictionary of Art History, and luminaries such as Princess Matilda Bonaparte. Meals were cooked by De Nittis, who was proud both of his art and his cooking. 

De Nittis died in Paris at age 38 from a stroke. A major retrospective of his work was held at The Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris in 1886. His work was featured at the Venice Biennale in 1901, 1914, and 1928. The Italian government issued the De Nittis postage stamp (1984) featuring the third section of his triptych “Le Course al Bois De Boulogne” (Longchamps) as a part of the Italian art series. The Impressionist artists such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas remain well-known, but De Nittis’s name has fallen by the wayside. The exhibition Small wonder: the forgotten art of Giuseppe de Nittis in New York in 1995 brought attention to his work.

The exhibition titled An Italian Impressionist in Paris: Giuseppe de Nittis, from November to February 2023, at The Phillips collection in Washington, D.C., continues to bring him well-deserved recognition.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Keith Allen Haring (1958-1990) was born in Reading and raised in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He was the son of an engineer and amateur cartoonist. Growing up with Disney cartoons and Dr. Seuss, Haring loved cartoons and began drawing them at an early age. After graduating from high school, he began to study commercial art, but he decided it was not for him. He moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1978 to attend the School of Visual Arts. The New York art scene was flourishing. He joined this thriving art community and became friends with artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

His first drawings were on the matte black spaces between advertisements in the New York City subway stations. He said they were “a perfect place to draw.” From 1980 to 1985, using white chalk, he made over 5000 drawings. He developed several personal iconic images. A significant icon was “Radiant Baby.” Four babies crawl across the bottom of the drawing, and in the center of the heart-shaped head of an androgenous dancing figure is a “radiant baby.” The baby radiates lines of positive energy. For Haring, the baby was “the purest and most positive experience of human existence.” 

The radiant heart and dancing figure were influenced by the booming New York club scene, particularly Danceteria (1979-1986), where performers such as Madonna, Billy Idol, and Cyndi Lauper got their start. Positive energy lines radiate from everything and represent freedom, spontaneity, and joy. Haring stated, “I am becoming much more aware of movement. The importance of movement is intensified when a painting becomes a performance. The performance (the act of painting) becomes as important as the resulting painting.” His subway art was a performance of sorts because people often stopped and asked him questions: “I was always totally amazed that the people I would meet while I was doing them were really, really concerned with what they meant. The first thing anyone asked me, no matter how old, no matter who they were, was what does it mean?” Haring almost never titled his work.

By 1982, Haring’s hundreds of subway drawings were a major attraction, and he began to make a series of posters to support various messages. For Haring, “Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people.” Tony Shafrazi, a major art gallery owner in Soho, gave Haring a solo exhibition in 1982.  “Keith Haring Drawings, Tony Shafrazi Gallery” was the cover design for the exhibition in Soho. Four crawling babies occupy the center of the poster and are accompanied by a cross in a circle, referencing the various Jesus movements of the 1970’s and 80’s, like the Campus Crusade for Christ and American cult leader Jim Jones whose followers committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.

In the lower section of the drawing, barking dogs, are another of Haring’s iconic images. Dogs are generally thought of as “man’s best friend” and are trusted companions. In Haring’s world, discrimination, racism, drugs, AIDS (1981), and Three-Mile Island (1979) became causes for his social activism. Barking dogs were meant to act as warnings to viewers to stop and think of abuses of power present in society. At the top of the drawing, two robust figures lift a radiating third figure into the air. Caution and hope are depicted in the same work. 

In 1982, Haring became the first of twelve artists to show his work on the computer-animated billboard in Times Square, New York. 

The United Nations commissioned Haring to design an image to commemorate International Youth Year. His poster of the same name (1985) (11”x 8.5” lithograph) (edition of 1000) contains a brilliant blue figure radiating energy and holding up a globe, another Haring iconic image to represent world peace and unity. This frequently employed image represented his belief in the need for collaboration and positivity in a world faced with numerous global issues. 

“Free South Africa” (1985) (32”x40” lithograph) addresses one of the many critical issues Haring supported with his art. He distributed more than 20,000 posters in New York City in1986 to awaken consciousness about apartheid. In his journal he wrote, “Control is evil. All stories of white men’s ‘expansion’ and ‘colonization’ and ‘domination’ are filled with horrific details of the abuse of power and the misuse of people.” 

“Crack is Wack” (1986) was Haring’s first major outdoor mural. After trying to help his friend Benny get off crack cocaine, and Benny’s subsequent death, Haring painted this large mural on the wall of an abandoned handball court in Harlem. The large mural features the skull, ribcage, and arms and legs of a skeleton holding on to a burning zero-dollar bill. The crack pipe and the raging and dying figures deliver a strong anti-drug message.

Haring was arrested and faced jail and a fine when The Washington Post, The New York Post, and local people wrote to support the anti-crack image. As a result, Haring was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and paid a $100 fine. The mural was vandalized and had to be painted over. However, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation offered Haring eight sights for repainting the mural. He chose the original location. 

Haring voluntarily created from 1982 until 1989 over 50 public works of art many for hospitals, day care centers, and schools. He opened in Soho in1986 Pop Shop, a boutique to sell posters, prints, t-shirts, buttons, magnets, and more. Pop Shop made his art accessible to everyone. Haring said, “I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price. My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art.” 

As a gay man, he tackled the AIDS epidemic that started in 1981. “Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death” (1989) is one of many images Haring developed to awaken America to the AIDS crisis. The figures stamp their feet and cover their eyes, ears, and mouth, representing the three monkeys See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil. The images first appeared in a carving on a Japanese temple during the Muromachi period (1336-1573), and it has been in common use world-wide. Haring’s other AIDS related images depict loving couples and promote safe sex.

Haring formed the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989 to perpetuate his “artistic and philanthropic legacy through the preservation and circulation of his artwork and archives by providing grants to children in need and those affected by HIV/AIDS.” (Keith Haring Foundation web-site)

“The Last Rainforest” (1989) (detail) was one of Haring’s last three paintings. Haring traveled to Brazil frequently with Kenny Scharf and his Brazilian wife. His interest in saving the rainforest was intense. He planned an exhibition of 100 paintings to help create awareness of this environmental disaster. “The Last Rainforest” (72”x 96”) is a dense painting containing multiple colliding figures. Haring iconic images are included with burning, impaled, or roasting figures. Monsters, serpents, smoking guns, and stabbing knives, are woven together with branches of trees. 

“The Last Rainforest” (detail) illustrates the density and intensity of the entire painting. In the chaos, there is one peaceful detail: Radiant Baby. This time, the baby sits in the lotus position of the meditating Buddha. Radiant Baby evolved in Haring’s work, coming to represent a warning about nuclear proliferation and the meltdown of nuclear reactors such as those of Three-Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). Haring’s warnings were significant in all his work. In this instance Radiant Baby can be interpreted as Haring, knowing he has only a little time left, and has found peace in the chaos of the world. He painted only three of the 100 canvases, working on them as he was dying.

 

“Tuttomondo” (1989) (translation “All the World”) (591 square feet) was painted on the wall of the Church of Sant’ Antonio Abate in Pisa, Italy. In New York, Haring met graduate student Piergiorgio Castellani, who asked Haring to come to Pisa to paint the mural. The mural was painted in one week in mid-June 1989. Its theme is peace and harmony. The mural contains 30 Haring iconic figures, including red and yellow flying angels and dancing and loving people. In the center are a blue figure with a television for a head, another of Haring’s iconic figures, a red mother with a blue baby, and a red barking dog. At the top, a blue dolphin, another iconic figure, rides on the back of a purple figure. The popular image links humans with nature. Blue scissors cut in half the red serpent of evil. Haring stands at the base of the wall.

Haring describes the week-long experience:  “Every day there would be more and more people.” Haring later recalled, “When I put my last stroke on the wall, it all seems incredibly Felliniesque. It all seems utterly unreal–beyond anything I had ever experienced before.” This was Haring’s last wall mural. 

Keith Haring died from complications of AIDS on February 16, 1990. His memorial service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was attended by over 1000 people.  

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

“I don’t think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.  It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.” (Keith Haring)