Edward Hopper, Railroad Sunset

Edward Hopper, Railroad Sunset, 1929

29.25 x 48 in.

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is a well known painter of Americana.  His most famous painting is undoubtedly Nighthawks (1942), which is emblematic of much of Hopper's career.  Although he also painted many landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes, Hopper is principally associated with his realist images of contemporary American everyday life.  Hopper strove to portray a wide range of the American experience, such as a rural gas station, a domestic scene, a couple at home in New York, a modern office, yet whether the piece presents an idealized outdoor scene, a small business at work, or a sensitive portrait within the stylish city, there is always a vein of loneliness in Hopper's work.  The figures are alienated from each other, their surroundings, the artist, and the viewer.  Hopper depicts the progress of America, and all the things that should make people happy, yet they remain alone and uncertain.  Railroad Sunset features no figures, but contains these themes nonetheless.  Here we see this lone tower standing within a beautiful landscape with a magnificent sunset behind it.  Hopper is questioning the status of this construction, which intervenes on the view, but does it detract from it?  To my mind, the inclusion of a manmade element lends a profound thoughtfulness to the scene, for this isn't even anyone stationed at this tower to watch the sunset.  Hopper's skill is quite evident in this piece, as he successfully expresses the luminosity of this sky.  If you look closely, you can see that the sky and, to a lesser degree, the hills are rendered with looser brushwork than the tower, underscoring the disparity between the elements, but also communicating that we are seeing the distant landscape elements through the haze of the brilliant sun.  While the loneliness that pervades Hopper's figure painting is still present here, there is also a sense of acceptance and peace in the face of this spectacular view.

Giorgio Bonola, Miracle of Marco Spagnolo

Giorgio Bonola, Miracle of Marco Spagnolo, c1695

I'm feeling rather nauseated tonight with some sort of virus, so I chose this painting.  Giorgio Bonola (1657-1700) was an Italian Baroque painter who spent most of his life in Milan.  This piece is in the Milan Cathedral as part of a cycle honoring the life and miracles of St. Charles Borromeo.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Concert in the Egg

Hieronymus Bosch, The Concert in the Egg, c1475/c1561

This is not the actual painting by Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), but a copy of a lost work by an unknown follower.  This conclusion was reached by an analysis of the music in the open book, which contains notes written by Netherlandish composer Thomas Crecquillon in 1549.  We do have a drawing of the scene by Bosch, and some scholars believe the copy is of the drawing and that Bosch never rendered the scene in a full painting.  Whatever the true origins of the piece, and whether or not the details are from Bosch's own mind, the painting is quite representative of Bosch's distinctive style.  Bosch was, and is, extremely unusual within the canon of Renaissance painters.  His work is well known for its use of fantastic imagery, bizarre settings and situations, and grotesque occurrences.  Bosch's most famous piece is his monumental triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights.  The Concert in the Egg, though less well known, exhibits many of the same traits to a lesser degree, except perhaps t he religious philosophy that many have seen in the triptych.  Here, the group of musicians form the yolk of the egg, which apparently symbolizes their foolishness.  The monk with his back to us is attempting to lead the group, pointing to the score, but the others seem to have little interest in following him.  He is so engaged in his pointless task, either because of dedication or self-importance, that he does not notice his purse being stolen by the small man who stands with the donkey-headed lute player.  Much of the bizarre imagery in this piece is likely connected to popular Dutch expressions of the sixteenth century, the significance of which, like Bosch's original painting, have been lost to time.  Incorporating popular expressions and proverbs into paintings was a favorite practice of Netherlandish art of the time (in fact Pieter Brueghel the Elder devoted an entire painting to it) that Bosch used in other works.  Some of the features are a fish that a hand is reaching for but is also being eyed by a cat (lower left corner), a basket that contains a cooked bird but which live ones are now perched on (upper right), one man with a water bird on his head, another with an owl, and another with a building mid-construction. The lower right corner shows small people, both human and less-so, around a table and working, while the left side appears to show a town on fire.  All of these details are fascinating and the meticulous work of the unknown painter is very effective in bringing them to life.

Ian Fairweather, On the Lake

Ian Fairweather, On the Lake, 1964

26.5x38 in.

Ian Fairweather (1891-1974) is considered one of the greatest Australian painters.  His initial artistic impulse was borne out of his time in a German prisoner of war camp during World War I, where he was permitted to study drawing and Japanese.  After the war, he received formal art training and also studied Asian cultures.  Upon completing his studies, Fairweather traveled significantly, from Canada, Bali, Shanghai, and China, before settling in Australia.  Fairweather's art is the result of his many varied experiences, a combination of his reaction to war and his love of Asian culture and spirituality,  Buddhism in particular, as seen in his best known painting, 1961's Monastery.  On The Lake is one of thirteen large canvases that Fairweather created to accompany his own translation of the Chinese tales of Chi-Tien, a thirteenth century Buddhist monk known for his mischief and his constant drunkenness.  The publishing company would only print the book with illustrations, never expecting the 73-year-old Fairweather to produce such an extensive collection of large canvases.  Another piece from the series is Chi-tien stands on his head  Fairweather is considered an abstract artist, but the clearly defined boat in this piece somewhat blurs that designation and forces the viewer to think about the literal implications of this lake.  Certainly the blue coloration can suggest water, but the abstraction and disjunction of the surface elicits deeper resonances.  Perhaps this is a psychological lake, one that must be traversed to achieve peace or understanding.  Fairweather commented that he felt about painting the way other people felt about religion, and it is not hard to see him exploring the deep questions and truths about existence in his beautiful works.

M.C. Escher, Birds

M.C. Escher, Birds, 1926

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was an influential Dutch graphic artist, whose explorations of complex and impossible spaces and tessellations have become indelible fixtures of contemporary culture.  Although his work has largely been relegated to pop-culture cliche and math classes, Escher demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the brain, visual stimuli, spatial relations, the role of images in culture, and both modernism and postmodernism.  His most famous works are Drawing Hands (1948), depictions of impossible architecture like Relativity (1953), and tessellations of birds and fish like Sky and Water I (1938).  Birds is a rather different piece; it is not actually a tessellation, nor does it contain any impossible spaces or surreal use of gravity. Instead, this is a fairly straightforward depiction of several birds in flight.  Nevertheless, it gestures toward the work that would follow, with the repeated patterns on the central bird's plumage and the relationship of the smaller birds to the large one, each fitting into the negative space that the central bird creates.  Although perhaps not as innovative as Escher's famous style, this is a beautiful and fascinating work of art that suggests a link between his extremely modern works and the graphic art of traditional cultures.

Ben Shahn, The Red Stairway

Ben Shahn, The Red Stairway, 1944

16 x 24 in.

Ben Shahn (1898-1969) was a Jewish-American painter of the Social Realist style, also known for his left-wing politics.  Shahn was born in the Pale, in what is now Lithuania, but his family emigrated to the United States in 1906 and settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Among Shahn's most common themes is an exploration of the indomitable spirit of humanity.  The Red Stairway depicts a crippled man with only one leg as he climbs a very steep staircase.  He climbs away from rubble and devastation, but if he follows the stairs back down on the other side, he will only find the same destruction.  Nevertheless he keeps climbing, keeps moving forward, striving to reach a better place.  He doesn't see the destruction on the other side of the stairs, and because of that his fate remains uncertain.  As he overcomes his handicap, this man's final destination has not been decided.  This painting is considered a reaction to the destruction of World War II, when senseless violence wrought so much destruction.  Nevertheless, humanity has no choice but to keep moving forward.  Shahn wrote that this painting was about "both the hope and fate of man," and also spoke people's inability to communicate.  The disconnect between the man climbing the stairs and the figure on the right is palpable; they may be able to help each other but there is a gulf between them.  The painting is done in tempera, which accounts for the sense of flatness in the canvas. This gives the piece an interesting sense of space, wherein the other side of the staircase is both so far away and just in front of us.  Shahn created a painting that is deliberately ambiguous, reflecting the extreme uncertainty that pervaded the world as World War II swept Europe and the Pacific.

Alfred Sisley, Still Life: Heron with Spread Wings

Alfred Sisley, Still Life: Heron with Spread Wings, 1867

39.37x31.89 in.

Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) was a core member of the Impressionist group.  Born in Paris to British parents, Sisley spent most of his life in France but maintained a strong connection to Britain. Known mostly for his work in landscape, which displays quite a range, Sisley was the most devoted to en plein air painting of the Impressionists and rarely explored figure painting.  Among his most noted works are paintings of the Thames and depictions of the Moret commune, which also exhibit a stylistic range.  This painting of a dead heron is rare still life of Sisley's, but utilizes the same ideals that he brought to his landscape painting.  Among his chief interests were the way light hits different surfaces, depicting the everyday, and exploring the relationship of subjective experience to reality.  We can see all of these elements at work in this piece.  The use of light is quite pronounced, illuminating the body of the heron while the background remains in shadow; the heron's wings also stretch into the shadow, emphasizing the breadth of the bird's wingspan and alluding to its majestic flying ability, now extinguished.  Lying with the heron are two other birds, presumably killed in the same hunting trip.  The painting is a fascinating exploration of emotions surrounding death, for this bird, most likely killed for sport, is arranged to show the gruesomeness of such a kill.  The lifelessness of these birds is foregrounded, with the heron's feet strung up.  Sisley's painting is about the unnaturalness of the scene, despite its normalcy.