A LIFE TOO SHORT: GEORGE BELLOWS by Joan K. Yanni

A LIFE TOO SHORT: GEORGE BELLOWS

by Joan K. Yanni

A strikingly beautiful portrait, installed during the summer in the 20th-century gallery, demands that we stop and look.  It is Anne in White by George Bellows, on long-term loan from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.  A lovely, golden-haired young girl in a white dress sits on a rocking chair and gazes pensively out of the picture.  A large black hat dangles from her left hand, and she holds a colorful round fan on her lap.  To her left is a dark drapery, punctuated by swatches of color; to her right a view of the Catskills can be seen through the window. The arresting portrait is a fascinating complement to Bellows’s Evening Group, from the MAG collection, which hangs across from it.

Evening Group (47.13) pictures the Bellows family enjoying their rented summer house on Monhegan Island, halfway up the Maine coast. The artist’s wife Emma sits on a chair on top of a hill with their daughter Anne (the girl in the portrait) sitting on the grass at her feet. The artist walks up the hill towards them, a cat in his arms.  To the right of the painting are two unidentified children, probably neighbors.  At the bottom of the hill, behind the house, wash is hanging out to dry. Is that a woman putting the clothes on the line?  It is hard to tell.  Boats, two in full sail, and a canoe can be seen in the harbor.  The composition forms an equilateral triangle, with the higher sail at the tip, Anne and her mother at the bottom left angle, and the other children at the right. Bellows is at the center of the triangle. The sun is stetting, and the sails stand out against the water and sky. (In addition to the painting, MAG owns Study for Evening Group (93.23), a pencil, charcoal and black crayon drawing.

Both these paintings are a contrast to the works for which the artist is best known to the public.  Bellows (1882-1925) was a prolific painter and lithographer.  He was a member of the Ashcan School.  Although not one of The Eight, he did show his work at the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910. He was known for his scenes of the New York City streets—crowded sidewalks, ragged children, and, particularly, pictures of prizefights, such as Both Members of the Club, Stag at Sharkey’s, and Dempsey and Firpo.  (Prize fights were illegal in NYC, but were permitted in private clubs, such as Sharkey’s.) In each of these he captures the savagery and drama of the fight ring.

George Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of an architect and building contractor.  He said that he grew up among Methodists and Republicans, but his mind was always open to new ideas in religion and politics as well as art.  He seemed to have in innate talent for both drawing and athletics.  At first athletics seemed to win out, for he left the university to play semi-professional baseball.  Then he sold a few drawings and decided to pursue art.

In 1904 he entered the New York School of Art, where William Merritt Chase was the director.  Robert Henri was his teacher, and Henri and Bellows began what was to be a lifelong friendship. By 1905 Bellows had opened his own studio.

By 1908 both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum had purchased one of  Bellows’s paintings; a year later, at 27, he was the youngest member ever elected to the National Academy of Design. He was one of the organizers as well as an exhibitor in the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced the new “radical” European art to America. Bellows was fascinated by this art and found it stimulating, but he continued to paint in his own way.

In 1910 he married Emma Louise Story and moved into a brownstone house at 146 East 19th Street, which remained his home until his death.  Here his two daughters were born and most of his work was done in a studio in the house.  Wherever he was, he painted.  He and his family spent summers in Maine, in Woodstock, NY, in California and Santa Fe, returning again and again to Woodstock. He captured it all in paint.

In 1916 Bellows began to make lithographs.  He chose this medium rather than etching because it gave him the sweep and spontaneity of drawing, which he loved.  When Bolton Brown (See May 1993 article.) became his printer, his lithographs assumed new tone and depth.  Brown could reproduce in print after print the exact values of the originals.  Brown’s control over the finished print gave Bellows new freedom to refine and enrich the values in his drawings.  (MAG own seven Bellows lithographs, including Stag at Sharkey’s and Dempsey and Firpo, which was printed by Brown.)

Bellows was always a precise draughtsman, and careful composition can be seen in his work.  His pictures were built on a geometrical framework, which he had learned from a course in “Dynamic Symmetry” taught by Jay Hambridge.  He was always willing to experiment.  He used a palette knife as well as a brush to get the effect he wanted.  In his drawings he used crayon along with pencil and ink wash.

Though many artists of his day sought success by traveling to Europe, Bellows never went abroad.  Often regarded as the most American of artists, he represented the American temperament of the day—restless, vigorous, adventurous,  spontaneous.  He found his subjects in American scenes and subjects.

He particularly liked Woodstock, in the Catskills.  He build a home here, and between 1920 and 1924 was working for nearly six months out of the year in his Woodstock studio.  Anne in White was painted during the first summer that the family lived here.  Both the critics and the public consistently admired his work.  He was only 43 when he died in New York of a ruptured appendix.

The Gallery is planning an exhibit of the later works of Bellows, scheduled to open in April 2003.  Leaving for the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock will include Anne in White, Evening Group, and Autumn Brook, a Bellows painting recently acquired by the Gallery.

Sources: Eggers, George W., George Bellows, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 1931; catalog for George Bellows, Paintings, Drawings, Lithographs, Gallery of Modern Art, New York City, 1966; Encyclopedia of American Art, E. P Dutton, NY  1981; curatorial files.

CORNELL’S BOXES by Joan K. Yanni

CORNELL’S BOXES

by Joan K. Yanni

Is it a game played with sliding balls? A shadow box with personal memorabilia? A mysterious reference to the universe?  Joseph Cornell’s The Admiral’s Game (98.77) looks simple at first glance, but with further examination gets  and  enigmatic.

The Gallery’s The Admiral’s Game is a glass-covered box 12” high, 18” wide, and 4” deep.  It contains two parallel metal rods about one-third of the way from the top with two white balls resembling ping pong balls resting on them.  A smaller red ball lies on the floor of the box. These elements are set against a background of a large compass rose surrounded by what looks like the night sky. But what does it all mean? Each viewer will have his own answer.

A textbook on American Art calls Cornell a unique and mysterious sculptor who created box constructions “which deserve to be placed in the highest level of contemporary American creation.”  Such an artist deserves  study.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was born in Nyack, New York, and moved to Queens in 1921 where he was employed by a textile firm. He lived there with his mother and invalid brother for the rest of his life.  He had no formal art training, but he explored the city’s museums, theatres, second hand shops and bookstores and began collecting old books, engravings, and objects from past eras that interested him.

He was always fascinated by astronomy. As a child he wondered about the patterns in the night sky.  As an adult he was an avid stargazer who read histories of astronomy and constellation mythology, subscribed to Scientific American, visited the Hayden Planetarium and was a subscriber to the planetarium’s Sky Reporter. In the bookstores he frequented, he sought out antique maps and early astronomy texts with illustrations. He stored all of his discoveries in shoeboxes in his basement, carefully labeling them so that, even though they were crammed full with continuing purchases, he could find what he wanted. Most of these found their way into his shadow boxes.

In 1931, while browsing around the city, he saw examples of Surrealistic art at the newly opened Julien Levy Gallery, and was captivated by it.  He became a frequent visitor to the gallery, where he met other artists and probably encountered Max Ernst’s book of juxtaposed engravings, La Femme 100 Têtes.  Ernst’s unrelated images taken from books of old engravings inspired Cornell to begin making collages from the materials he had been collecting.  Some of his collages were included by Levy in his Surrealism exhibit in January, 1932, the first show of Surrealism in New York.  Levy gave Cornell his first one-man show in November of the same year. It included the first of his shadow boxes—found boxes, round or rectangular, containing engravings and objects. One of the boxes in the show, Jouet surréaliste, contained small toys with the addition of collage elements, suggesting a relationship between art and play. This idea continues in his later works. During the next few years Cornell continued to create his boxes and even learned woodworking techniques from a neighbor so he could build his own containers.

One of Cornell’s early hand-made box assemblages, Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) was included in the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism, organized by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., at MOMA in 1936.  The work uses the elements of much of Cornell’s work: a series of compartments containing objects and engraved images: four cylindrical weights, an egg in a wine glass, a clay pipe, a cast of a child’s head, and a map of the moon. All are unified by visual associations: the pipe can be used for making soap bubbles, a relationship to childhood, hence the child’s head.  Round bubbles relate to the lunar map and the circular forms of the egg, the moon, and even the head.

Around 1934 Cornell found a job designing textiles for a textile studio in New York and worked there until 1940. During this time he became interested in filmmaking.  He made his first film in 1939, Rose Hobart, a drastically edited version of an early film called East of Borneo, in which the actress Rose Hobart had starred.  He cut the film, rearranging parts, breaking up transitions from one scene to another, and destroying the narrative sequence. Thus he created a startling new work from the placid, run-of-the-mill original. The film was shown at the Levy Gallery.

Such unexpected combinations found throughout Cornell’s work are also found in Surrealist art, but Cornell did not want to be considered part of the Surrealist movement. He was not interested in psychology, the subconscious or erotic themes. His art was unique and independent.

In 1940 Cornell left his job in tapestry design and devoted himself fully to his art, though he undertook some freelance work illustrating and designing layouts for magazines such as Vogue and House and Garden. He began to produce thematic series, further soap bubble sets and a pharmacy series. Birds, particularly cockatoos, owls and parrots, recurred in his works

In the 1950s Cornell resumed filmmaking, this time using a cameraman rather than found footage, but he continued to make his boxes. In the mid 60s, because of declining health and grief caused by the deaths of his brother and mother, he produced few boxes, though he continued to make collages. A special room at the Metropolitan was devoted to his work in 1970. Because he had an ongoing affection for children, the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture organized an exhibit of his work in late 1972 dedicated to the children of lower Manhattan. He died in December 1972. Though his work is unique, Cornell influenced artists such as Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Sources: Brown, Milton et al, American Art, Prentice Hall, Inc, 1979; Godine, David R. 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976; Encyclopedia of American Art. E.P.Dutton, 1981; The Grove Encyclopedia of Art, 1998; Whitney Museum, Joseph Cornell: Cosmic Travels, 1995; curatorial files.

ART IS BLOOMING IN THE LOCKHART GALLERY by Libby Clay

ART IS BLOOMING IN THE LOCKHART GALLERY

by Libby Clay

We have had hints of the coming spring, in the yellowing of the willows, the peeping through of crocuses and scilla and in the honking of V-formation geese.  For reinforcement, spend a few minutes in the Lockhart Gallery, where spring, and even summer, has already arrived.  Thanks to the sponsorship of The Council, we have a beautiful garden that we don’t even have to tend. Pick yourself a bouquet.

The kimono-clad woman in Spring (76.22), painted by Charles Webster Hawthorne, greets us as we enter, and offers us freshly picked daffodils and narcissus.  Perhaps this painting reminded George Eastman of his own garden, for it is from his collection.

If you prefer, let yourself enter the woodland setting of M. Wendy Gwirtzman’s Spring.  Stand back a bit and let the rhythms of the tulips and the rocks soothe you.  The fir tree in the left background invites you to go deeper into the woods to savor the solitude.

Do you smell roses?  It must be coming from Jeanne Lindsay’s Rose Garden next door.  You are suddenly immersed in roses, with thorns so benign that you can gather an armful of fragrance without being pricked.  Both Jeanne and Wendy are dear friends of the Gallery, and the sharing of their talents has helped many a would-be artist create their own gardens.

By the way, species of roses have been in cultivation for  than 3000 years in gardens in China, Persia, Egypt and the Greek Islands.  They have been used as food, medicine, decoration and perfume.  Queen Elizabeth I took the Tudor rose as her personal emblem and the Empress Josephine had 250 varieties at Malmaison.  Ninety percent of our cultivated roses are of foreign origin, and even the so-called wild roses are escapees from early gardens.

The iris garden is located at the back of the gallery.  Lowell Nesbitt’s lithograph, Iris (75.259), is startlingly realistic, and is from his series of over 400 flower subjects.  Nesbitt, born in Balti, is known as a photo realist, and he intends the viewer to see a monumental flower with an impersonal eye.

To the left is Elmer Macrae’s Purple Iris (77.144), a lovely watercolor painted in 1916.  His iris spring sunward with great energy.  In Greek mythology, Iris was the messenger of the gods, appearing to mortals in the form of a rainbow.

Macrae studied with John Twachtman at the Art Students League and later succeeded him as leader of the artists’ colony centered at the Holley House in Cos Cob, Connecticut.  Cos Cob became one of the leading centers of American Impressionism. Ironically, MacRae was later one of the principal organizers of the 1913 Armory show, which diverted attention from the Impressionists to  modern art movements.Karl Schrag, master printmaker and painter, explores the mysterious quality of nature with his Iris, Pale Sea and Sky (71.49) in gouache on paper.  His velvety iris have been plucked and confined to a vase, while the sea rolls free in the background.  We are invited to daydream about vacation days to come.

Iris, also known as “flags,” were favorites of American colonists.  Thomas Jefferson once requested that his sister send him some by mule from Monticello to his Lynchburg residence.

Flowers are also represented here in two media unusual for the Gallery.  One, a lacy valentine, shows meticulous work with scissors and glue, as well as a keen eye for design.  The faint fold-marks hint that someone once received (and kept) this special gift.  Next to it hangs a “painting” done in needlework. A background of black flannel is a perfect stage for the profusion of flowers executed in both needlepoint and crewel embroidery.  Look closely at the number of tiny French knots that form the centers of the blooms, and imagine the number of hours it must have taken to create this.

Agnes Jeffrey’s Flowers in a Vase (87.40), from circa 1850, was also featured in the 1994 “Art in Bloom.” It shows an old-fashioned bouquet gracefully arranged in a cornucopia-shaped pressed glass vase, and is in the tradition of botanical illustration.  Miss Jeffrey, born in Edinburgh, first studied there and in London, and by the 1830s had developed a remarkable proficiency.  In 1838 she sailed for America and, via the Erie Canal, joined her brother in Canandaigua.  She made her living teaching art in Canandaigua and later Rochester.  One of her pupils was the great benefactress of the Memorial Art Gallery, Emily Sibley Watson.

Helen Wolcott Hooker was another Rochester flower painter.  She would have had no trouble finding inspiration for her Basket of Flowers (44.74), for her father, Henry E. Hooker, operated a nursery in Rochester.  She may have executed some of the sketches for the catalog furnished by the nursery.

At one time, the Hooker land extended along East Avenue from Goodman to Oxford Street, all the way back to what is now Monroe Avenue.  Imagine 40,000 roses blooming on East Avenue! Henry Hooker laid out and planted numerous streets on his property, notably Brighton Street, which he lined with cut-leafed birch trees.  He also planted the famous magnolias on Oxford Street.

Marie Via collected the quotations which enhance the walls of this exhibition. One, from Ralph Waldo Emerson, seems particularly apt. “The earth laughs in flowers.”  Enjoy the Lockhart!

Sources: Material was liberally borrowed, with permission, from wall signage by Marie Via and Libby Clay for the May 1994 “Art in Bloom.” Information about individual flowers was supplied by Joan Baden, also in 1994.

THE MULTI-TALENTED NOGUCHI by Joan K. Yanni

THE MULTI-TALENTED NOGUCHI

by Joan K. Yanni

We have new information about MAG's elegant Calligraphics (60.2) by Isamu Noguchi.  We now know that the characters in the piece have a meaning: they signify "Japan.”

The work consists of a brass rod with two separate cast iron forms bound to it with fiber rope and mounted on a wood base.  It was formerly thought that the two forms were simply design elements inspired by the artist's study in China and his fascination with ancient Chinese symbolic script.

Last fall, however, two visitors from Japan who were visiting the Gallery told docent Thea Tweet that the symbols were not Chinese but Japanese, and signified "Japan."  Exhibition assistant Chiyo Ueyama, who was born in Japan and speaks the language, agreed that the visitors were right.  The top character (ni) means "the sun," and the lower one (hon) is "the origin," which can be interpreted as "the rising." The rising sun is the symbol of Japan.  Noguchi's cast iron forms suggest abstract versions of those characters.

Japanese-American Isamu Noguchi's life was a mix of Eastern and Western influences. He was born in Los Angeles in 1904 to American writer Leonie Gilmour and Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. Isamu spent his early years in Japan before being sent to the United States to become a student at the Interlaken School in Indiana. Soon after his arrival in Indiana, Interlaken was closed, but the school’s founder, Dr. Edward Rumley, found him a place to live until he graduated from high school.  Rumley also arranged an apprenticeship with Gutson Borglum, designer of the sculptures at Mt. Rush.  Borglum was less than encouraging about Noguchi’s artistic talent, so Isamu enrolled in pre-med studies at Columbia University.

He began his classes at Columbia in 1922, and soon after, his mother moved to New York.  She encouraged him to take an evening sculpture class at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School.  The head of the school was impressed with Noguchi's talent, and after three months gave him his first exhibition. Noguchi left Columbia to devote himself to sculpture. In 1927 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for travel to Paris and the Far East.

His first work had been figurative, but an exhibition of the work of Brancusi changed his focus.  In Paris he met Brancusi and worked as his assistant for a few months, then set up a studio in Montparnasse, where he began to create sculpture in stone and wood.

He returned to New York in 1929 and had his first one-man exhibit of his Paris abstractions at the Eugene Schoen Gallery.  No works were sold, so he began to support himself by making portrait heads. By the early '30s be had enough money to travel back to the Far East where he studied Chinese brush drawing, Japanese pottery making, and the art of Zen gardens.  His interests were unlimited.  Noguchi became a friend of architect/engineer R. Buckminster Fuller, and, encouraged by Fuller, he began to design public areas combining art and architectural space.

His first fountain was built for the Ford Building at the 1939 World's Fair, and the same year he won the national commission to decorate the Associated Press building in Rockefeller City with a huge─10-ton─relief of stainless steel.  Major recognition came in 1946 when be was invited to show in MOMA's exhibit of Fourteen Americans. His boundless and eclectic energy kept him in the forefront of the art and design world.

Despite New York colleagues who disapproved of any mixture of art and commercial projects, Noguchi wanted to assimilate art into everyday life. He designed furniture and lamps and completed numerous public commissions.  Especially popular were his round paper lamps, which he called "illuminated sculpture."He designed numerous playground spaces for New York City, but Robert Moses, then City Parks Commissioner, vetoed all.  In the '40s he began to produce set designs for modern dancer Martha Graham, then for Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine, an involvement with the theater that lasted into the’60s. He paved the way for the many inter-art collaborations that took place later in the century.

His first plaza was realized in 1961 for the First National City Bank in Fort Worth, TX. His garden for the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University (1960-64) blended sculptures of a pyramid, circle and cube in a white marble garden space. Though placed on the stark, hard surface of the marble, his forms remain sensuous and poetic.

Between 1973 and '78 he designed the Philip A. Hart Plaza in Detroit, a large civic plaza that remains one of his most impressive works. Terraced downward towards the river, it centers on a gigantic, twisted steel pylon and a circular fountain that combines a play of lights and water jets—a remarkable combination of sculpture, architecture, and landscaping.

Other Noguchi environmental constructions include a sunken garden for the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, NYC (1964), and his first playground, created in Japan at "Children's Land' near Tokyo (1966). While designing sculptural gardens and public plazas, he continued making independent sculptures, such as the 24-foot high Red Cube (1968), standing in front of what used to be the Marine Midland Building in NYC, and the towering, 101-foot Bolt of Lighting, Memorial to Ben Franklin in Philadelphia, which was designed in the '30s but not installed until 1984. In 1968 he had his first American retrospective at the Whitney Museum.

Among his best-known international works are the gardens for UNESCO in Paris (1958), the Billy Rose Art Garden in Jerusalem (1965), and two peace bridges in Hiroshima (1952).  Closer to home is the Storm King Art Center of Mountainville, NY (1977). On view here is Momo Taro, the gigantic stone representation of the peach boy legend (Momotaro). (See article on  December 1987-January 1988)

Perhaps Noguchi's greatest personal satisfaction was the opening of part of his studio on Long Island City (Queens) NY in 1985 as The Noguchi Garden Museum. The museum contains  than 250 stone, wood and clay pieces as well as dance sets and documentation of his gardens and playgrounds. (The building will be closed until the spring of 2003 for renovation, but changing exhibitions of Noguchi's works can be seen in a temporary space at 36-01 43 rd Avenue, Long Island City.) Noguchi has worked in every medium—stone, marble and wood. All his works blend Oriental respect for materials with the spare sophistication of Western art.

Noguchi's energy and creativity continued into the '80s, with an airport sculpture and a master plan for a 400-acre park, both in Japan. He received the National Medal of Arts m Washington, DC in 1987. Still working, he died in New York City in 1988 at the age of 84.

Editor’s note: It is rud that when Calligraphics arrived at MAG in 1960, some eager unpackers began removing the rope fiber that bound the characters to the brass rod. Luckily some curators stopped the action.

Sources: Curatorial files; Bruce Altshuler, Isamu Noguchi, Abbeville Press, NY, 1994; Grove Dictionary of Art, 1994; Brown et al, American Art, Harry N. Abrams, 1979.

JACOB LAWRENCE, VISUAL HISTORIAN by Joan K. Yanni

JACOB LAWRENCE, VISUAL HISTORIAN

by Joan K. Yanni

The month of February, Black History Month, is an appropriate time to highlight Jacob Lawrence, whom director Grant Holcomb calls “the visual historian of the African American Experience.”

Lawrence, who died in 2000 at the age of 82, visited MAG in 1991with his wife, Gwen, also a painter, for the opening of the exhibit, Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of Narrative Paintings. He was in Rochester again in 1994 to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Rochester. To honor the event, his 22 serigraph (silk screen) prints picturing The Legend of John Brown were on view in the Lockhart Gallery.

MAG owns 26 works by Lawrence, including two paintings and the 22 prints in the John Brown series. Both paintings, Summer Street Scene in Harlem (91.5), painted in 1948, and Gamblers (74.1), a 1954 work, are on view in the 20th century American gallery. Both are painted in tempera on board. The works are very different, one teeming with life and color, the other somber and foreboding.

Summer Street Scene presents a crowded Harlem street.  One can almost hear the shouts and laughter of the children as they climb over a homemade go-cart. One boy is at the wheel and five others are hanging on the top and side of the car. They are in front of a cart from which ices are sold, with a man hunched over the top of the cart digging in the shaved ice to loosen it. A yellow-orange towel hangs over his arm, and bottles of orange, red and green syrup (orange, strawberry, cherry and lime?) with paper cups stacked on their necks, wait to be poured over the ice.  The large, white wheel of the cart can be seen at the right of the painting.

Though the picture is flat, with most of the activity in the front picture plane, the background is filled with passers-by. Can you see the man with the crutch, the boy licking his cone, men in straw hats, and the window of a house? All are presented in bright blocks of color: oranges, reds, blues, greens. The vivid hues make the heat of the day seem to radiate from the canvas. The painting is filled with dynamic color and rhythmic shapes.

The mood of Gamblers is far different. It is painted in grays, blacks and browns, relieved only by the blue-green shawl of the central woman, the bright playing cards, and small red or white flowers in the buttonholes of the tall standing figures. The setting is ominous, threatening. Five figures—four men and a woman—sit hunched over a table, playing cards. Four giant, menacing figures stand over them, as if monitoring the activity.

The scene looks like a stage setting, with a screen behind the figures. The figures are flat, lacking dimension. Light comes from behind or above the backdrop, creating a pattern of triangular shapes, light and dark. The zigzag shapes are repeated in the alternating of seated and standing figures. A vine reaching from the figure on the far left to the far right unifies the composition. What is at stake in the card game? The work is unsettling, mysterious.

Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City in 1917. His parents separated in 1924 and his mother eventually moved the family to Harlem. Despite the Depression and meager family income, Lawrence had access to an after-school program that provided him with an opportunity to meet black artist Charles Alston and later Augusta Savage. He honed his craft in Harlem workshops and studios. In 1936 he won a scholarship to the American Artists School in New York City. He later taught painting at Pratt Institute, NYC, from 1958 to 1965, and from 1970 taught at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Lawrence was always interested in patterns and color. The patterns in fire escapes and nearby buildings fascinated him when he was a child. Later, like the Ashcan painters before him, he found stimulation in an environment that many would consider bleak and depressing. In 1942, when he was 25, he broke the art world’s color barrier when he became the first African American to be represented by a Manhattan gallery.

Most of his work concerns black culture and experience. In 1937 he began painting biographical panels commemorating important episodes in African-American history, including his portraits of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. In these panels he was able to capture the spirit of each of his subjects by choosing a theme or idea and developing it through specific scenes or incidents. He went on in 1941-42 to paint the 60 panels of The Migration Series, describing the mass migration of African Americans to urban centers in the North. He worked in tempera, watercolor or gouache. His figures are stylized, forming strong, flat patterns. Their naïve figuration enhances their visual and emotional impact.

In his narrative paintings, he is said to have painted one color at a time. Artist Romare Bearden and art historian Harry Henderson observed that he might be working on thirty paintings in his studio, with only the blue finished in each. He would then put in all the greens, then reds, and so on. When he completed the last color in the last panel, the series would be complete.

Though narrative paintings went out of vogue in the ‘40s with the coming of abstract expressionism, Lawrence never changed his style. His unique, simplified forms derive from a variety of traditions, including Cubism and Expressionism. An exhibit of his work, Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence opened at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, last year and will be traveling to museums across the country until 2003. It will be at the Detroit Institute of Arts from February 24 to May 19, 2002. A 6-foot x 36-foot mosaic mural of his New York in Transit was unveiled at the Times Square station in NYC in October.

Source: Curatorial files; “Real Life, True Color: The Art of Jacob Lawrence,” Crisis, July-August 2001.

TYCHE THE PROTECTRESS by Sydney Greaves

TYCHE THE PROTECTRESS

by Sydney Greaves

Although she survives as only a rather beaten fragment, the beautiful marble head of Tyche of Antioch (49.73) still has a great deal to say to us.  She has been dated to the 1st-4th century AD, and so is most likely a Roman copy.  The original Greek statue may have dated from the 4th century BC, as Tyche’s calm, placid features have been compared with the works of great Late Classical sculptor Praxiteles, creator of the famous Apollo Belvedere in Rome.

The copying of Greek works by Ancient Rome warrants a brief mention here.  Many (but not all!) of the most famous sculptures of ancient Greece are known to us today only through Roman copies, often identified by descriptions left by ancient writers.  The Romans had a great admiration for all things Greek.  Augustus bragged that he had found Rome a city of brick and left her a city of marble, like Athens.  Rome stripped Athens and the other great city-states of Greece of their marble statuary and brought them back to an admiring Roman citizenry.  If Romans could not have authentic Greek statuary, they paid artisans to copy known works.  In fact, our modern notion of the pure white marble statuary of Ancient Greece comes actually from the Romans, who preferred their marble au natural, as opposed to the Greek penchant for painting statues in vibrant, sometimes shocking color.  Much Greek statuary was actually bronze, which the Romans translated into marble, with sometimes awkward additions of struts and other structures to support the significant weight of marble.

Tyche (TIE-kee) in Greek translates to fortune, destiny, or chance, different from our idea of fate, perceived as outcome that is already determined and unable to be changed by us.  The Greek idea is  akin to luck, good or bad, but hopefully good; hence the sculpted “lady luck” that we see here. The ancient Greeks personified Tyche as a minor goddess, certainly not one of the Olympian Twelve.* She is described by Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century AD, as revered particularly in Smyrna as early as the mid-6th century BC.

Her attributes at this time included the polos hat (a cylindrical grain measuring cup) and a cornucopia, or horn of Amalthia, proving her associations with plentiful food and bountiful harvests.  Most often she appeared on coins minted by individual cities, simultaneously acting as a demonstration of that city’s prosperity and a “good luck charm” to assure that same prosperity. By the 4th century BC, Tyche’s attributes expanded to include a sheaf of grain (prosperity), a palm frond (victory), a ship’s rudder (control of destiny), and an orb or wheel (instability or unpredictability), and the mural crown (city walls) as seen on our fragment.

Tyche’s importance increased during the Hellenistic period, the period to which this statue fragment dates, when she  became  revered  as a  special  patron  of  cities. This   is significant because of the Greeks’ active colonization at this time  in  new  areas  of the known world, opened  up  by  the conquests of Alexander the Great. Alexander, recognizing the importance of holding this empire together, founded numerous cities (often called Alexandria), populating them with Greek soldier/citizens and their Greek cultural practices.  This served to unify the empire through hellenization; hence, the Hellenistic Period. Like the cities of mainland Greece, these new cities desired the protection and common religious focus of a patron god or goddess (like Athena in Athens or Zeus in Olympia).  Tyche came to fill that role for these colonies, and indeed came to act as a personification not only of good fortune and destiny, but also of the city itself.

Perhaps the most famous of all the images of Tyche is that created for the city of Antioch, a Greek city founded in modern Syria around 300 BC by Seleukos, a Syrian contemporary of Alexander the Great.  Seleukos rose through the ranks under Alexander’s father, Philip of Macedon, and then under Alexander himself, who appointed him governor of Babylon.  Following Alexander’s death, Seleukos expanded his influence, founded his own cities, and commissioned the “well known” Eutychides of Sicyon (a pupil of Lyssipos, a renowned sculptor of the second half of the 4th century BC) to sculpt a statue of Tyche to stand in the city of Antioch as patron goddess.  This famous image came to set the standard for city patron goddess statues: mural crown, sheaf of wheat, seated on the mountain (Mount Silpion, above Antioch) with the river (Orontes) at her feet.  The over-life-size bronze statue sat in majesty under a four-pillared canopy at the city center, with a large altar for sacrifices.  This famous statue, now lost, has been described by numerous writers, and copied by artists in smaller scale.  The most well known image of Tyche of Antioch, now in the Vatican, is identified as a small (3 feet high) marble Roman copy of the original.

Although a minor goddess, Tyche’s rise in prominence signaled many of the world changes brought about by the influence of the Olympian gods in the face of increased power and significance of the individual, the chaos of warfare, sudden reversals of fortune, and the multicultural aspect of cities and colonies. All these gave Tyche, in her role as the spirit of the city, a new life and significance.  This idea is most perfectly expressed in modern times by our own Statue of Liberty: a symbol recognized all over the world for freedom and justice, and personifying the good fortune and patriotic spirit of the citizens of the United States.

*The major gods that resided on Mt. Olympus: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hades, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Dionysus.

Source; Ferguson, John, Religions of Roman Empire; Gardner, P., New Chapters in Greek Art.