Kraken Kronicles: Brief Focus on Art

Monday, February 09, 2009

Brief Focus on Art

Let's take an interlude from the Porkopulous Disaster since it is so depressing and do a little art appreciation......

One of my favorite artists is John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

He was born in Florence, to American parents and traveled extensively throughout Europe. His parents never settled back in America, not stepping foot in the States himself until right before his 21st birthday to retain his citizenship. He was schooled as a French artist, heavily influenced by the Impressionist movement, the Spanish Master Velazquez, the Dutch Master Frans Hals, and his teacher Carolus-Duran .

Portait of Miss Eliza Wedgewood, 1905

To describe Sargent is to say that he painted. It was his life and yet he had a deep appreciation for music and all art forms and went out of his way to promote other artists -- for this selflessness he was greatly loved. Extremely bright, extremely gifted, an intense hard worker, he was the last great generalist. It is hard to put a label on him for he could master so many different painting styles. He was an Impressionist, a Classical Portraitist, a Landscape Artist, a Water Colorist, a Muralist of public art, and even started sculpting at the last of his life. He was all of these things and yet he was none of them in total.

Madame X (1884). Considered by Sargent to be one of his best. Created such a scandal, he left Paris and moved to London. When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness of her pose and the pail pasty color of her skin.

He is often passed by, not studied, or dismissed because he was never a radical artist or trend-setter. He always worked within the wide, rich textured pallet of known and established styles. Yet his brilliance was in fusing these elements together and for this he has never fully gotten credit.

His output was prodigious. Working dawn til dusk in some cases -- even on vacations, and sometimes seven days a week. Between 1877 (when his work really started taking off) and 1925, he did over 900 oils and more than 2,000 watercolors along with countless charcoal sketch-portraits and endless pencil drawings.

Street in Venice (1882)

He painted two United States presidents, the aristocracy of Europe, the new and emerging tycoons and barons of business -- Rockefeller, Sears, Vanderbilt; and he painted gypsies, tramps, and street children with the same gusto and passion. He hiked through the Rocky Mountains with a canvas tent under pouring rain to paint the beauty of waterfalls, and painted near the front lines during World War I to capture the horrors of war. He painted the back alleys of Venice, sleeping gondoliers, fishing boats and the dusty side streets of Spain. He painted opulent interiors and vacant Moorish Ruins. He painted the artists of his time -- performers, poets, dancers, musicians, and writers -- Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James. He painted the great generals of the Great War, and the Bedouin nomads in their camps. He painted grand allegorical murals, and his friends as they slept.