The Influence of the Flat Landscape of the Netherlands on Piet Mondrian's Abstractions

Tableau 1,1921.

Some artists are experimental innovators, who work by trial and error revising their style. They are uncertain about their goals and their mature style appears gradually and usually later in their life. Other artists are conceptual innovators who have precise goals and frequently have radical innovations that break with existing conventions. Their great works usually come early in their careers before thoughts and habits are firmly entrenched. Cézanne was an experimental innovator, while Picasso was a conceptual innovator producing great works early in his career.

Piet Mondrian was a very methodical experimental innovator who made serial abstract changes over decades. Representational art was progressively simplified down to geometric forms and primary colors.

The selected works below show how the flat landscape of the Netherlands was abstracted over time to have a profound influence on his well known grid pattern.

At Work on the Land, 1898. 

Summer Night, 1906.

View from the dunes with beach and piers, 1909.

Dune-II 1909.

Dune Landscape, 1909.

Dune V, 1909.

Dune in Zealand, 1910.

Dune IV, 1910.

Trees were also abstracted into a grid but this was a few years later.

Red Tree,1908.

Grey Tree, 1911.

Flowering Apple Tree, 1912.

Green Color Combinations in Kehinde Wiley's Paintings

Green is very common background color in Wiley's paintings. He frequently uses a bright yellow green with yellow and yellow orange accents in the background patterns. These three adjacent colors on the color wheel form an analogous color scheme.

His backgrounds are often floral patterns and he uses the below analogous combination that is frequently found in nature.

Analogous colors are usually calming. It is how he adds the complimentary colors that gives his signature bravura look. The subject might be wearing red against the green background. If the subject is wearing bright green there will be more blues purples and reds in the background.  

He uses variations of reds such as ochres, siennas, and umbers for the skin tones. There is no black skin like in a Kerry James Marshall painting. These colors are on the opposite side of the color wheel from the background colors. The figure often appears as if it pops from the background. Using backlighting intensifies this effect.

The Obama Presidential Portrait is where he stepped away from his wild contrasts.

The few purple and red flowers are small and widely spaced. The flowers were selected for their meaning in Obama's life. Purple African lily for his father's African heritage, white jasmine for his Hawaiian birthplace, multicolored chrysanthemum for the city of Chicago, and rose buds for love. 

Many had their doubts as to whether Kehinde Wiley could make a dignified Presidential Portrait. Most Republicans still do.

The Battle for Literacy and Soviet Avant-garde Posters

One of my favorite Soviet Avant-garde posters is a poster for the Leningrad State Publishing House. Alexander Rodchenko made this iconic photomontage in 1924. It is one of many propaganda posters to eliminate illiteracy. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, male illiteracy was estimated at 60%, and female was close to 90%. The rates were even higher in rural areas. To Lenin literacy was a major priority. "Without literacy, there can be no politics, there can only be rumors, gossip and prejudice." One of Lenin's early programs was Likbez – an acronym for "likvidatsiya bezgramotnosti",  "elimination of illiteracy."

The three Cyrillic letters Л Е Н on the black background correspond to the Latin letters LEN for Leningrad. Г И З on the red is GIZ, the initials for gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo -State Publishing House. Russians love to use acronyms or names formed from abbreviations. The publishing house was known as LENGIZ. It was a designer's dream for Rodchenko that the red and black could symmetrically divide the the two syllable acronym. The woman has her hand against her mouth and is shouting the words "books in all branches of knowledge." Over the black background in the shape of a megaphone is the word книги (KNIGI or books). The woman is Lilya Brik, the wealthy Jewish mistress of futurist poet, playwright, and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. She also was the wife of the writer and literary critic Osip Brik. Mayakovsy later moved in with the Briks. Rodchenko frequently collaborated with Mayakovsky on designs for the literary and art magazine LEF. Almost everyone in the Russian and Soviet Avant-garde knew each other, Many of them, and even Matisse, did portraits of Lilya and her sister. 

In the poster, Lilya is wearing a head scarf emblematic of the proletariat and peasantry. In the early years after the Revolution, literacy classes were hindered by a distrust between the peasant students and the teachers with a petty bourgeois background. In the lower right corner are Alexander Rodchenko's initials in Cyrillic– PA..  Being an advertising and propaganda poster, it had no name, but now it is often called Books. 

Rotate the poster 90 degrees and an old-fashioned lock appears that can be unlocked through literacy.

Russian and Soviet Avant-garde posters used heavy and bold futuristic fonts, not the thin, squiggly, curved and whiplash fonts of Art Nouveau. The fonts had simplicity and were sans-serif. The colors of the posters were bold and pure with rarely any different shades. Red and black was a common color combination.

Here are some post Revolutionary and early Soviet posters about fighting illiteracy:

Knowledge Will Break the Chains of Slavery
Alexei Alexandrovich Radakov, 1920.

                                                                                                                                                                           

If you will not read books, you will soon forget the grammar.1925.





















Literacy is the road to Communism, 1920, in Russian and Yiddish.

The illiterate person is a blind man: Everywhere pitfalls and misfortunes await him.
Alexei Alexandrovich Radakov, 1920.

 Night of the Books, Varvara Stepanova, 1920.
(Stepanova was married to Rodchenko)

Peasant woman, consolidate the unity of workers and peasants,1925.






















In 2014 David Redon combined famous musicians and performers with vintage advertisements. He used Beyoncé in his parody of the Rodchenko poster.

It's an interesting parody, but the early Soviet feel is lost with his red and pink combination.









To see more of Redon's vintage advertisements go to:

https://www.designboom.com/art/david-redon-remix-vintage-american-ads-pop-icons-04-04-2014/

Restoring another Image for Eberly

Eberly had this image which was taken on a Blackberry with a 2MP camera. She wanted to have me fix it up.

I wanted to hold back on overcorrecting the image so it would still retain an Impressionist feel.

Kehinde Wiley and Matisse's Decorative Style

It is not difficult to recognize a Kehinde Wiley portrait with its arabesque, often floral pattern that comes out of the background and goes in front of the subject.

Matisse in his Harmony in Red (called Red Room or Krasnaya Komnata by The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia) has a floral pattern as wallpaper that becomes also the table cloth. 

The flower arrangement in the pattern also becomes the still life flowers on the table. In Prince Albert, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria from the series Jamaica, 2013, Wiley has the tattoo design on the male subject as part of the background pattern.

Matisse's decorative phase was temporary and often derided by critics. Wiley with the exception of some of his stained glass works, doesn't appear to be giving up this style. The recent Obama portrait will probably bring more demand for his patterned portraits.

Young adults and children are fans of Kehinde Wiley. When The World Stage: Jamaica, came to London in 2013 there was a Tate Talk, Q&Artist: Kehinde Wiley Curated by and aimed at 15–25 year-olds. On school tours the students are more involved with a Kehinde Wiley than they are with the OLD MASTERS.

Can Aunt Jemima be Rehabilitated?

There is no question that earlier representations were racist and offensive. However she has provided the source for some famous art works during her rehabilitation. In 1963, Jeff Donaldson, later one of the founders of the AfriCOBRA art movement, revealed his confrontational interpretation in a battle – Aunt Jemima and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

This arguably is the first work where we have an empowered Aunt Jemima instead of an overweight mammy archetype.

In 1972 Betye Saar gave Aunt Jemima a rifle and a hand grenade in her famous assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.

In 1998 Renée Cox had her become a super hero figure in her collage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.

In 2014 Kara Walker morphed the mammy stereotype into a powerful sphinx in her installation A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, at the defunct Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn.

There are no weapons or battles. The monumental size and historical meaning of a sphinx gives her power. The thumb of her left hand is in the figa sign which in some cultures is an obscene gesture and in many countries is a sign of refusal.

The Quaker Oats Company is still using the same image that was on the 1998 package in Renée Cox's collage. If Aunt Jemima is going to stay with us, she could use an updated image.

Restoring an old Photo

Eberly asked me if I would restore an old torn photograph of her grandfather testing the Grumman G-164 Ag Cat. The Ag Cat was the first agricultural aircraft designed and produced by a major U.S. company.

Poor Positioning of Lights in Art Museums

When permitted, I usually take a non flash photograph of each painting and the information signage. It is surprising the number of "hot spots" there are on irreplaceable works of art.

The in camera light meter, although it is a reflectance meter, can give an estimate of how much additional light is falling on a specific part of the painting. If there is an area  in the painting with same color, the readings will be more accurate. Zooming in for a reading with the camera set for single segment spot metering will give even more accuracy.  The painting on the left recorded  almost 4 times as much light on the upper part of the portrait within the portrait compared to the lower half. The portrait on the right has dark background in both the hot spot and properly illuminated background. The meter readings is 3 times as much light in the hot spot. A more accurate assessment would require an incident-light meter. Exhibition rooms with high ceilings make it easier to protect the upper part of large vertically oriented paintings. Most of the following examples are not as severe as the above two portraits.

 

                                  

                                       

Restoring a Faded Photo

My friend Eberly asked if I could restore a photo of her and her sister from 1961 that had faded over the years. There also were some creases in parts of the image. I wanted to make the bluebonnets look a rich blue but naturalistic.

There wasn't much color to work with. Levels was the main tool that I used.