Out of the Ashes: Art Stolen by Nazis Rediscovered

It’s a sad fact of human history that the leadership regime most obsessed with art belonged to that of the Nazis. From Adolf Hitler the frustrated painter to obsessive collectors such as Herman Goering and Joseph Goebbels (who knew enough to step aside when Hitler lusted after an object), the Nazi power circles thought about art and its effect on their country’s culture continually, more often to art’s detriment than to its benefit. Exhibit A of the detrimental effects of that cultural concern is that dark episode in modern art history—the infamous Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”) exhibition of 1937 that defined for Germans what was and what wasn’t acceptable art. Some of those “degenerate” works and the artists that made them escaped Nazi clutches, while much of that condemned art seemed lost to posterity in the same conflagration that consumed the Nazis themselves. A recent discovery, however, adds a small, but happy coda to the tragic symphony of the Nazis destructive love of art. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Out of the Ashes."

The New Normal: New York at Night

I still remember seeing the Tribute in Light from the New Jersey side of the Hudson. From a distance, the twin beams of light standing where the World Trade Center had before the events of September 11^th stood out among the sea of lights of the nighttime New York skyline. Today, that location still throbs like a phantom limb lost to the body of that cityscape. New York at Night features aerial photography by Jason Hawkes and text by New York Times journalist Christopher Gray to sing the body electrified of the surviving skyline. Hawkes breathtaking photos capture the pulse of the city at night, while Gray’s notes and captions guide you through the city like a close friend. Finally, after months of recovery, things “got back to normal,” Gray writes of his city, “the new normal, that is.” New York at Night proves that the new normal is as breathtaking as the old, maybe even more. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The New Normal."

[Many thanks to Merrell Publishers for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of New York at Night, photography by Jason Hawkes and text by Christopher Gray.]

Abstract Thoughts: “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction” at the Phillips Collection

"I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at,” Georgia O’Keeffe once said of her abstract works, “not copy it." Famous for her images of flowers, shells, animal bones, and other recognizable objects, O’Keeffe also ventured into the world of abstraction, often pushing the envelope of representation beyond the identifiable but still remaining tethered, however distantly, to the real world. Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction at the Phillips Collection explores just how undervalued O’Keeffe still is today as a groundbreaking figure in American abstract art. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Abstract Thoughts."

[Image: Georgia O’Keeffe, Music, Pink and Blue No. 2, 1918. Oil on canvas, 35 x 29 1/8 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Gift of Emily Fisher Landau in honor of Tom Armstrong, 91.90 (CR 258). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins]



[Many thanks to the Phillips Collection for providing me with the image above and for a review copy of the catalogue to the exhibition Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction, which runs through May 9, 2010.]

Shaking the Tree

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad.

—From “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles

The star of the PMA’s exhibition Cezanne and Beyond is, of course, Paul Cezanne, but Piet Mondrian certainly belongs in the same constellation. Born March 7, 1872, Mondrian is best known today for his mature works, such as 1942-1943’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie, with the classic Mondrian geometric style of blocks of solid color. Before he reached that destination, Mondrian travelled the path first set out by Cezanne in works such as The Red Tree (above, from 1909). The Red Tree mimics the vibrant color and strong gestures of Cezanne’s tree paintings. Matisse and Picasso most often battle for the crown of top Cezannist, but no less a critic than David Sylvester called Mondrian “Cezanne’s truest heir.” Watching the evolution of Mondrian’s trees parallel the evolution of his relationship to Cezanne provides a powerfully concise study in how great artists grow and branch out from other great artists.

Two years after The Red Tree, Mondrian paints The Gray Tree (above, from 1911). Here, Mondrian sucks out all the color from the painting and concentrates on gesture itself. Cezanne saw nature as a kind of chaos that the human eye needed to organize, breaking it down into his famous categories of “cylinder, sphere, and cone.” If The Red Tree can be called remotely realistic, The Gray Tree ventures even further from nature and into abstraction. The chaos of the natural order of branches begins to give way to an order imposed by Mondrian’s eye. Mondrian, however, shapes not a static order but one full of movement and energy, thus ordering nature without killing it. Just as Cezanne’s almost vibrating brush strokes retained the life force of a landscape, Mondrian’s snaking tree branches express the spirit of the tree as a representative of the living universe itself.

Three years after The Gray Tree, Mondrian paints Composition 8 (above, from 1914), which takes the organization of the tree to its limits, erasing the even the name of tree from the title yet still keeping the natural energy and spirit. In Composition 8, Mondrian comes to final terms with Cezanne’s idea of order and reduces the tree to pure expressive line. With the gestural half of Cezanne’s legacy under his belt, Mondrian was then freed to tackle Cezanne’s use of color. Mondrian almost literally fills in the spaces of Composition 8 with pure, emotional color and finally arrives at the colored grids now synonymous with his name. Given another lifetime, Cezanne may himself have arrived at Mondrian’s style. Mondrian, however, provided Cezanne with that “extra life” to take his ideas one step further. Cezanne and Beyond drew a sort of family tree of modern art rooted in Cezanne and his work. Few branches flowered as long, as beautifully, or as uniquely as that of Mondrian.