Travels through Europe and our Cultural Patrimony

As an artist, one must consider taking pilgrimages during his/her lifetime. On these travels we find the fantastic and consider new ways of looking at art and the world around us. On my recent trip to Europe I had the good fortune to visit three cities recognized for their contributions to the arts, Venice, Antwerp and Paris. Each has a distinctive beauty all its own. One revelation I’ve made during this trip is that a specific province’s atmospheric light has a powerful effect on the artist’s creative conscience. Hendrik Willem Van Loon makes reference to this idea in his book, “The Arts”, a must read for any artist who wishes to know more about the history of the arts from a superb storyteller.

In reference to the Low Countries, it was he who said “that strange light that sweeps across a sky washed clean by everlasting rainstorms, has a clarity and harsh brightness which turns even the most ordinary articles of daily usage – a tin plate, a brass pail, a tile floor, a dead herring, a can of beer-into mysterious objects that lose their commonplace character and begin to vibrate with all the colors of the rainbow”. It was also he who said, “Then again, it may be the thin layer of moisture, which even on the hottest days in summer clings closely to pots and pans and man and beast and makes rheumatism one of the natural ailments of this dampish land.”

The quality of air that filters light through the low lying regions of northern Europe played a powerful role during the Baroque period to inspire artists to paint with richly colorful palettes. Rubens is a prime example. Looking at his paintings in the natural light streaming through the lofty cathedral windows of Antwerp, his colors swim with a fire seldom seen within the confines of a museum setting where electric light has replaced the original skylights intended to illuminate the paintings.

The floating city of Venice, mirroring the sky upon its canals, freed artist’s from gravity and sent them transcending to the heavens. This double effect of the sky permeates every crevice of the city and certainly influenced the Venetian artists. Varonese posed his elegant figures on high, giving the viewer a humbling perspective from below, while years later Tiepolo sent his figures sprawling into his billowing skies altogether. This soft quality of light can be studied in Titian and Tintoretto’s masterful use of color and soft edges to fuse solid forms with breathing space. . . call it chiaroscuro. As one artist recently pointed out to me during our exchange of emails, “Chiaroscuro translates into clear/obscure, not today's light/dark. There is a big fundamental perceptive, artistic, and humanist difference there.”




In France, I experienced days of crystal blue skies and sharp cast shadows reminiscent of the dramatic effects within Poussin and David’s heroic paintings. However, there are high-pressure days of billowing clouds and whisking winds that send the imagination flying toward the works of Watteau and Boucher. Paris has such a dramatic range of light that it is easy to see how French artists throughout the centuries embraced every stylistic nuance spanning Delacroix’s dark tragedies to Fragonard’s airy luminescence.
Later on, the French impressionists began to make their own mark by observing this play of light in Persian gardens, Cathedral facades, and French countryside motifs.

Going back to the beauty of these regions and the art that resides within them I must clarify what I consider beauty to be . . . as I am the eye of the beholder. What are beauty's distinguishing qualities? Three, say philosophers; wholeness, harmony, and radiance. To quote Alex Eliot in Sight and Insight, "Masterpieces must have something more besides; call it significance. Beauty is a source not only of visual joy but of intellectual joy as well. This joy is not to be equated with mere pleasure; it is more like an awakening. . ." Beauty is also a form of solace. Another wise observer, Joseph Brodsky, stated in Watermarks (his reflections on Venice), “the eye is looking for safety. That explains the eye’s appetite for beauty, as well as beauty’s own existence. For beauty is solace, since beauty is safe. It doesn’t threaten you with murder or make you sick.” Given these attributes of beauty; wholeness, harmony, radiance, significance and solace I would like to highlight some of the beautiful masterpieces I experience on my travels.



I was awakened by the richness of color and dynamic compositions of Rubens triptych's in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. Within these paintings I also found solace in the figures and compassionate gestures in the central panels, The Raising of the Cross and The Descent. The Church of San Sebastiano, off the beaten track in Venice, is impressive for it's own internal harmony. Varonese’s resting place is decorated with his paintings and adorned with imaginative trompe l'oiel to bring together this wholeness. The unmistakable feeling of tension and release reside on these walls. Titian's entombment and Michaelangelo's slaves in the Louvre reflect the same gut feeling on a very personal level. Michelangelo reveals this notion in every stage of his work. The tense figures struggle to release themselves from their unfinished state. Titian creates a hammock of tension supporting the limp body of Christ in the Venetian room at the Louvre. This painting, hanging on the backside of the Mona Lisa, is another perfect example of a well cared for work of art that hasn't suffered from over cleaning. What I have found in great art is the ability to create both significance and solace in one fair swoop, the tension and release of wholeness, harmony, and radiance.



Now that I am back in New York, I am fortunate to find more treasure troves of art in a context outside of their original surroundings. The Guggenheim has a Spanish exhibition where one can see incredible works by Velasquez, Murillo, Goya, and Rebira. The Frick Collection is currently housing some fantastic European paintings from the Cleveland Museum of Art and a Tiepolo exhibition of drawings. The Met is hosting a show of American’s in Paris. While I have found great pleasure in seeing paintings that still reside in their intended environments, here in New York we have the privilege to view works that travel to us. However, there must be a limit to the amount of works released to the hostile conditions of international travel, commonly instigated by the new trend among museums to assemble “blockbuster” exhibitions. That said, if you are not able to journey across the globe to feast your eyes on the world’s fruits then at least make your way to these traveling exhibitions.

Finally I would like to touch a bit on architecture. Within these great city walls of Antwerp, Paris, and Venice one can become lost in the spiritual and intellectual influences of the past. It is a shame that some of these sanctuaries are being replaced with modern developments that not only destroys the architecture that has come down to us but replaces the past with our contemporary taste for clean edges and glaring glass walls. You may even notice this phenomenon occuring on the very pictures that fill the interiors of these threatened abodes. This modern aesthetic reduces beauty and symmetry to the most rudimentary of levels, the bottom dollar. Mark Twain said it best when he declared that, “[I am living] in the noonday glory of the Great Civilization, a witness of its guant power, sordid splendor and mean ambition. . . Wonderful in scientific marvels. . . in material inflation which it calls progress. . . it is a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and response of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry. . . with money fever.”


Below I have attached some links to websites that bring these issues to light with graffic illustrations of architecture that is currently being destroyed in the name of money fever. Please feel free to sign these petitions to voice your concerns against these deprevations of our cultural heritage.


Recent destructions in architecture, see:
http://www.latribunedelart.com/Patrimoine/Patrimoine_2006/Nouveaux_Vandales_601.htm

For the proposed high-rise desecration of St Petersburg townscape, see:
http://www.intbau.org/news.htm

For a petition against the proposed tower in St Petersburg, see:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/petersburg/

And finally please link to http://www.metropolian.org/ if you would like to learn more about the looming threats of modern development in St. Petersburg.

Frank Mason Website Debut

We are pleased to announce the debut of the first comprehensive website on Frank Mason’s prolific body of work featuring over 350 paintings and drawings spanning 65 years of his artistic career. This website has opened Frank’s studio to the world, including works from private collections, museums and recent paintings fresh off the easel. Other features include current exhibitions and an open forum to discuss current events in the art world (this blog).

You can find this website at www.frankmason.org or www.frankmason.info.

I would like to thank Michael Koch, our web designer, for dedicating a good portion of his time in recent months toward the completion of this site. As you can see by the specialized categories and vast number of works included in this site, Michael has had the sight, insight, and patience to accomplish quite a feat. We hope this website is user friendly and provides a comprehensive look into Frank Mason's prolific career.


Frank's Work on View:


"Arts and Letters: Paintings by Frank Mason"
Salmagundi Club (library on 2nd floor)
47 5th Ave. on the corner of 12th St.
New York, NY
December 4th thru January 5th - weekdays 1pm-5pm
www.salmagundi.org

If you are impressed with Frank's work on the website then it is only natural to want to see his paintings in person (or in the flesh). In conjunction with the website launching we have organized a show to make this possible for anyone in the New York area. The Salmagundi Club will be hosting an exhibition in the club library featuring portraits, still lives, and landscapes by Frank Mason during the month of December. The central theme for this exhibition will concentrate on the world of literature. The Salmagundi Club is located at 47 5th Avenue on the corner of 12th Street. The library is open weekdays from 1pm to 5pm.


"Grand Prior Portrait"
Art Students League
215 W. 57th St. between 7th Ave. and Broadway
New York, NY
December 15th thru January 15th - all hours in the League window
www.theartstudentsleague.org

In addition to the Salmagundi exhibition, Frank Mason’s portrait of "His Excellency Fra Roggero Caccia Dominioni, Grand Prior of Lombardy and Venice for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta" will be on view in the window of the Art Student’s League at 215 West 57th Street between 7th Avenue and Broadway from December 15th through January 15th. The portrait will be on display 24 hours a day. This will be the last time to view this painting before it travels to Venice, Italy to reside in the 11th century Church of San Giovanni di Malta.

The Art World at Large:

Below I have also included a hyperlink to a recent article published in the New York Times on new restoration practices that I found somewhat disconcerting. As you may know, restoration practices are constantly endorsing scientific specializations to rediscover works of art. This new brand of scholarship often threatens the integrity of the works of art by making assumptions about the paintings under examination in order to justify cleanings. Prying under layers of untouched varnish to bring out the new aesthetic inquiries can be harmful and irreversible for the work of art in question. You can find out more about these controversial issues at www.artwatchinternational.org.



November 5, 2006
ART
What Lies Beneath: Old Masters Under the Microscope
By MILES UNGER

http://select.nytimes.com

As you might find from the opening words of the article, Unger compares works of art to "flesh and blood" that are subject to decay. It is the restorer's job to examine a painting (think of a cadaver during an autopsy) and "is called in to reverse the process". Going so far as to say the results are often times "jarring as anything wrought by the most overzealous plastic surgeon" may give you some idea how overzealous restoration can disturb a work of art.

Emerson once said that a painting is something between a thought and a thing provoking the idea that a work of art is not just an ordinary inanimate object. I tend to think of a painting as a living, breathing thing that should be handled with great care, kept responsibly in a controlled atmosphere, and allowed to age gracefully. The State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia and a few other museums respect their paintings in this way and while some might find that these paintings look "old and dirty" I look upon these works as products of the past, not polished wallflowers hung to suit our modern day aesthetics.

Many modern day curators and directors of museums (once called "keepers" in the U.K) give precedence to the unified look of the museum. Unger refers to this as the "illusion of perfection that is the museum's usual stock in trade". He even goes on to say that these "scientific revelations tend to strip away some of the aura of the certifiable masterpiece". These collections' paintings look as though they all come from the same era, not in content or style, but in their sense of freshness, as though they could have been painted yesterday. Some restorers love to announce how they have resurrected the artist's former glory by removing old dirt (protective varnish). There is nothing better for me then to view a painting that still retains a subtle, unifying patina that indicates the age of the work (like the nose of a fine wine) and suggests its fragile grace. Unger believes that "the loss of dignity" that results from stripping away this patina "is more than made up for by rediscovering an animating pulse in what can too often seem like lifeless remains."

If you are able to pick up the December issue of Architectual Digest there is an interesting interview with Eugene V. Thaw entitled “True or False?” by Steven M. L. Anderson concerning current theories on art authentications. My favorite quote in this interview was a reference to the renowned German art historian Max J. Friedlander who said “It is an error to collect a forgery” but that “it is a sin to stamp a genuine piece with the seal of falsehood.”

You will find that within the art world there lie many contradictions. Museums and Institutions rely heavily upon science and technology to justify damaging restorations and their own scholarly intuitions but then flout the possibility of using these same objective scientific tools when assessing the authenticity of works of art. God forbid these practices catch them on the backside by challenging their own subjective expertise and connoisseurship.

That is all for now.

Frick Exhibition from the Cleveland Museum of Art

For New York residence this is a show not to be missed. Hosted by the Frick Collection until the end of January this one-stop exhibition features such greats as Hals, Velázquez, Poussin, Andrea del Sarto, Carracci and Caravaggio. This traveling exhibition from the Cleveland Museum of Art is appropriate for the blog since Frank is originally from Cleveland. Spending much of his time in the museum in his youth, these paintings were some of the very first masterpieces to inspire his direction as an artist. Below is a write up on the show in last Sunday's New York Times by Roberta Smith.


November 10, 2006
ART REVIEW | 'MASTERPIECES OF EUROPEAN PAINTING'
Old Masters Say, Can We Talk?
By ROBERTA SMITH

http://www.nytimes.com

“Masterpieces of European Painting From the Cleveland Museum of Art” is at the Frick Collection, (212) 288-0700, through Jan. 28.

Let's Get Started

I know what you’re thinking. Frank Mason and blog spot should never be in the same sentence or in this case, address bar. A few months ago I would have agreed. However, there are a few factors at hand that have allowed me to reevaluate my non-conformist attitude. So first, let’s keep this very informal.

My first attempt at keeping Frank Mason’s students and friends in touch was through a forum I put together with our incredibly talented and dedicated web designer, Michael Koch. The Studio 7 chat room we designed for the website never grew wings. I have a feeling this was due to a combination of things. For one, there was no format for dialog. Blogs make this easy. Second, we can now include articles or links easily. I am not always able to keep up on relevant news and current exhibitions. Most importantly, I have a sneaking suspicion more associates of Frank blog than one would expect.

I’m not going to write daily or even weekly blog entries because this is not my forte. In fact, I would be doing this blog an injustice if I did. Instead, I want this blog to serve a variety of purposes. In addition to keeping everybody up to date on activities and news concerning Frank, I encourage you to write about anything you think might be relevant to the site or our collective artistic endeavors. This includes recent articles on the art establishment, must see exhibitions, and great spots to paint. I will start with my own examples:

Update on Frank: Starting mid-December New Yorkers and visitors to the city can see Frank’s portrait of “His Excellency Fra Roggero Caccia Dominioni, Grand Prior of Lombardy and Venice for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta” which was commissioned in April. Frank started the portrait in Venice and allowed us to film the beginning of the painting for the documentary. During the course of the summer Frank completed the portrait in his Vermont studio. This is definitely one of Frank’s finest works and will be in the Art Students League window on 57th Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue from December 17th through the New Year.

Art Exhibition: Constable’s Landscapes National Gallery Washington, D.C. through Dec. 31

Restoration: It looks like our good friends at the Louvre are prepping our lady for a cleaning. If you’re not familiar with these controversial cleanings please link to
www.artwatchinternational.org

New Look at ‘Mona Lisa’ Yields Some New Secrets

By IAN AUSTEN
Published: September 27, 2006


http://select.nytimes.com

This article talks about the new secrets revealed in examining the Mona Lisa under the objective lens of scientific examination, although some subjective scholarship has resulted in so doing. Underneath layers of paint, x-rays have found that the original attire donned by Mona Lisa would suggest that she was pregnant! Of course, there is nothing knew about these revelations, as it has long been talked about among Leonardo Di Vinci experts.

What’s alarming is other assessments made in the article. Some wording suggests that our lady is due for a cleaning in order to pry further into the meaning of these discoveries. Stating that “while the Mona Lisa may be old and dirty, it is not, as had long been thought, particularly fragile” suggests a cleaning, in deed. If it’s a tough painting then it can withstand the poking and prodding of scientists and the cleaning swaths of restorers. I hope they all keep in mind that Leonardo was a master of layering transparent veils of paint to achieve his hypnotic effects. With a little scrub here and a little scrub there, they might end up with a smile that no longer reads as mysteriously alluring. With one wrong move Mona Lisa’s pregnancy glow could turn into a prenatal cramp.

The articles most transparent suggestion comes from a quote by David Rosand, a Renaissance art historian at Columbia University, who declares that “this is a painting that has never been cleaned, that is remarkably dirty,”. “This is exactly what one would expect.”

I would expect nothing less from Leonardo. A painting that has come down to us after 500 years of existing on this planet, surviving wars, weather, and time, and still ring in more visitors each year than any other painting of it’s kind. The question we must ask ourselves is. . . Is this a painting we should be cleaning if it has given us such consistent pleasure over so many years? Perhaps the resulting scrub would meet other unexpected results.

So if we really break down this article we find that Leonardo changed his mind about his composition, as well he should if, as Vasari suggests, he worked on our gal over the course of 4 years. An artist should be allowed the freedom to make the final edits before presenting their masterpiece to the world. Revealing earlier decisions an artist might have made through scientific tools might helps us to understand a brilliant mind, but I don’t think that it necessarily helps the work itself. Would Shakespeare have wanted us to replace one of his famous sonnets with a rough draft? Let’s also remember that while Shakespeare and other literary giants can be criticized and picked apart, their work will always remain in tact. This cannot be said about a painting. There is only one Mona Lisa and to clean her up will almost certainly mean changing her appearance (perhaps even her clothes). She will have to live out the rest of her days newly reinterpreted for the enjoyment of the modern century with no pristine manuscript kept to refer back to when the next generation of aesthetically minded people want to change her again.

Let’s link arms to create an informative blog that helps connect artists with similar interests and promotes a healthy atmosphere for discussion on current events in the art world.