Tag Archives: art

Andy Warhol exhibit at Brooklyn Museum

This Andy Warhol show at the Brooklyn Museum focuses on the impact that religion had on the artist over his long career. As the exhibition reveals, Warhol was a Byzantine Catholic, which is more ritualistic than the flavor of Catholicism I grew up with!

Andy Warhol exhibit at Brooklyn Museum

 

As the images show, religious themes were prevalent in Warhol’s work. He even met the pope!

Leonardo

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest painters of all time. His “greatest hits” include the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and Vitruvian Man, that instantly recognizable drawing of a naked man standing with outstretched arms inside a square inside a circle. But he was much more than just a painter. He pioneered the study of human anatomy. Throughout his life he dissected corpses and completed accurate, illustrative drawings. Leonardo was also an engineer who designed everything from large water projects to weapons. He studied mathematics and was able to depict numerical concepts in visual form. He invented and played various musical instruments. He also designed elaborate theatrical spectacles, which we can only imagine today based on existing written descriptions.

Leonardo book review Walter Isaacson

Leonardo was born in 1452 in the small town of Vinci, Italy, which was near Florence, which was a center of the arts at the time. He was born out of wedlock. His father was a notary, which was an important profession at the time. Being born to parents who were not married was not a source of public shame then, but because Leonardo was of illegitimate birth he was not able to follow in his father’s career path. But this might have been more a blessing than a curse for a gifted youngster who exhibited much talent as an artist. As a teen-ager Leonardo went to Florence and became an apprentice in the studio of Verrocchio, who was an established artist. At the time, art was more of a team effort, where paintings were commissioned and painted by an artist assisted by numerous apprentices. Eventually Leonardo was able to branch out on his own and received support from various patrons, including the wealthy Medici family, and the politically powerful Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. In addition to Florence, Leonardo also lived and worked in Milan, Venice and Rome. He spent the final part of his life in France, where he was part of the court of King Francis I, who put him up in a nice house. Leonardo died in 1519, and one account says that he was being cradled in the king’s arms as he passed away, although that story might be more legend than fact.

Leonardo’s most defining characteristic, which he had throughout his life, was intense curiosity about the world and everything in it. Throughout his life he kept notebooks, pages and pages of notebooks, in which he documented what he learned, sketched out his drawings and even wrote down shopping and to-do lists.

This is all according to “Leonardo Da Vinci,” the 500-page illustrated biography by Walter Isaacson that was published in 2017. This was a pleasure to read. This is the third biography I have read by Isaacson, who is a historian and former editor of Time magazine. I previously read his excellent books on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. He also wrote biographies of Steve Jobs and Henry Kissinger that I have not read.

Here are a few more notes about Leonardo:

  • He had his own peculiar style of writing, in mirror text from right to left. All of his notebooks are written in this manner.
  • Leonardo is thought of as an old, bearded man with thick eyebrows and deep wrinkles, but when he was young he was handsome and muscular.
  • He dressed in a flamboyant manner.
  • He had a younger male lover, whom he depicted in many of his drawings.
  • According to the author, Leonardo was not troubled in the least with his sexual orientation.
  • Later in life Leonardo developed a strong relationship with another younger male companion, who was probably more of a secretary.
  • Sigmund Freud wrote a major psychological study of Leonardo that Isaacson dismisses as bunk.
  • Many of Leonardo’s works were abandoned, lost to the ravages of time or were unrealized, including a massive monument of a horse, which was to be erected in Milan. Today a version of that monument, known as The American Horse, can be seen at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
  • Leonardo crossed paths with another artistic genius, Michelangelo. But while Michelangelo focused on distinct lines in his paintings, Leonardo focused on the shadows. Leonardo’s technique is known as “sfumato,” or smoke, as exhibited most prominently in the Mona Lisa.
  • Leonardo had the Mona Lisa with him until the end of his life, and he probably considered it unfinished.
  • In 2017, the same year this biography was published, the artist’s recently discovered “Salvator Mundi” painting of Christ holding an orb was sold at auction for $450 million!

As I mentioned, this was a fascinating book to read. But it is also a wonderful book to simply hold and look at. For anyone interested in getting a copy I would recommend purchasing the hardcover, which includes beautifully reproduced color images of his paintings and major drawings. Sometimes I spent just as much time looking at the various paintings and drawings as reading about them.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

 

Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci

 

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci

 

Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo Da Vinci, now housed in Czartoryski Museum, Poland.

 

The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci

Warhol retrospective at the Whitney

Last Monday (vacation day from work) I went to the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Whitney, and it was really fantastic. I took an hour-long guided tour.

Click any of the pictures below to make them bigger:

The title of the exhibit is “Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again.” Many of the works are large, colorful and vibrant — ranging from the famous Campbell’s Soup cans to images of Marilyn, Elvis and Jackie Kennedy. There’s also a ginormous portrait of Chairman Mao, large skulls, various self-portraits, and a whole room of flower paintings on walls covered in cow wallpaper. There are various film and video installations, including a film of Warhol himself eating a fast food hamburger. Sadly for me, the “Sticky Fingers” and “Love You Live” album covers Warhol designed for the Rolling Stones are not part of the exhibit.

The artist’s sexual orientation features prominently in many of the works on display. At the very beginning of her talk, the leader of the guided tour said that Warhol was gay, and she went on to point out the gay themes in many of the images, beginning with some early drawings of several of Warhol’s male friends playing with jewelry. Also included in the show are several portraits of New York City’s underground drag and trans community, including Marsha P. Johnson, who was a veteran of the Stonewall uprising.

Warhol got his start doing commercial illustrations for newspaper advertisements, and among these early works are various paintings of women’s shoes. Warhol dedicated the shoe paintings to various celebrities, both male and female, including Mae West and Truman Capote. Another is dedicated to the trans pioneer Christine Jorgensen, the U.S. Army veteran who traveled to Denmark in the 1950s for gender confirmation surgery.

Later in Warhol’s career, the AIDS crisis was of immense concern to New Yorkers (and gay New Yorkers in particular), and a theme of activism vs. Catholicism is evoked in one of Warhol’s last works, The Last Supper, which features a camouflage pattern over the religious iconography.

This all takes place on the fourth and fifth floors of the Whitney. On the first floor, there is a whole room of nothing but Warhol’s celebrity portraits — which include Liza Minnelli (my favorite), Mick Jagger, the Shah of Iran, Deborah Harry, Truman Capote, Halston, and just about everyone else you can think of who was famous back then.

The show runs through the end of March. If you live in New York City or are visiting, it’s not to be missed. I will definitely go back myself to see this again.

The National Portrait Gallery

After returning from my two-day mini vacation to visit Monticello, Highland and Montpelier and before taking the train back to New York, I had time for a visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. D.C. I had never been before, and I was most interested in seeing the new portraits of President Obama by Kehinde Wiley and Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald.

I found myself wanting to take pictures of all the presidential portraits, but I had to constrain myself. Some, such as those of Obama, Clinton and Kennedy, are nontraditional, while many others are classic portraits. Interestingly, Nixon’s is by Norman Rockwell and is very small. Out of all the portraits, though, I was particularly moved those of the Obamas. Michelle’s portrait is in a different section of the museum.

Also in a different section was “Unseen: Our Past in a New Light,” a selection of “deconstructed portraits” by Titus Kaphar, who offers a completely shocking yet instantly understandable take on our country’s founding fathers. In one, an enslaved woman peeks out from behind a curtain that is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson. On another wall, two of George Washington’s slaves are seen in fancy clothes with their faces obscured.

The American Presidents exhibit at the National Portrait gallery in Washington, D.C.
Kehinde Wiley portrait of Barack Obama in the National Portrait gallery in Washington, D.C.
Amy Sherald portrait of Michelle Obama
Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington
Chester Harding portrait of James Madison
John Vanderlyn portrait of James Monroe
‘Behind the Myth of Benevolence’ by Titus Kaphar
‘Billy Lee: Portrait in Tar’ and ‘Ona Judge: Portrait in tar’ by Titus Kaphar