Carstian Luyckx. Spectacular artist largely unknown today

 

These spectacular pieces were painted by the Antwerp animal and still life painter Carstian Luyckx, also known as the Monogrammist KL. Though scarcely known to the general public today, this versatile artist was successful and held in high regard in seventeenth-century Antwerp.2 In 1639/40 Luyckx was apprenticed to Philips de Marlier, a specialist in flower still lifes who had relocated to Antwerp after a stay in Portugal. Three years later Luyckx transferred to the studio of Frans Francken III, who worked in other genres besides flower still lifes and could therefore train the young man in a wider range of skills. Luyckx travelled to Lyon in 1644 at 21 years of age, returning a year later to marry. In 1645 he finally enrolled in the St Luke’s Guild in Antwerp, acquiring the right to work as an independent master.

That his career immediately soared may be concluded from a document from 1646 in Antwerp’s city archives, stating that Luyckx even worked for the king of Spain. In 1648 the artist remarried, and it is known that a son was born into this second marriage, in 1653.3 We find no mention of Luyckx in the archives after 1653, however, and our only source of information is his oeuvre. French signatures on later works suggest that Luyckx was also more active in southern regions, possibly even in France, but no conclusive evidence has been advanced to corroborate this as yet.

It is difficult to acquire a good overview of Luyckx’s oeuvre, since the artist dated only two of his paintings, both of which were produced in 1650. This means that any chronology of his work must be inferred from the stylistic features of his known oeuvre. For instance, there is a discernible development towards a harder, more drawing-like style of painting. Fowl attacked by a fox, which was probably painted in the 1660s, is a splendid example of this late, more personal style of the experienced artist. The drawing-like quality of his painting style stands out clearly in the detailed plumage of the chickens and the fox’s red fur, each hair of which is painted individually. Although this style is fairly characteristic of Luyckx, it also reveals the clear influence of others, most notably the Antwerp artist Jan Fyt, who also painted fowl with near-pointillist precision.  Fyt had trained with the famous animal and still life painter Frans Snijders, whose oeuvre also influenced Luyckx. Another source of inspiration would have been Jan Davidsz. de Heem (see cat. no. 25), who spent much of his life in Antwerp.

Fowl attacked by a fox occupies a unique position in Luyckx’s known oeuvre, since Luyckx presented himself mainly as a painter of still lifes, including flower, fruit, hunting, fish and vanitas pieces. Other works featuring poultry have been attributed to Luyckx, but these generally focus on fowl that have been shot in a landscape, frequently guarded by a hunting-dog. Luyckx also often included dogs and cats in his numerous still lifes with fruit and the spoils of hunting, something he had in common with Fyt and Snijders. Yet for all the presence of live animals, these images are relatively static in contrast to the drama and dynamism of Fowl attacked by a fox: besides witnessing the fox’s capture of a chicken, the viewer also sees the startled reaction of the rooster closest to the predator. The other fowl appear not yet to have registered the looming menace; even the chicken that has been bitten gazes at the viewer more in surprise than in the throes of death. This lively scene, combined with the directness of Luyckx’s style, produces a truly spectacular image, which is therefore one of his most attractive works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carstian_Luyckx

Mark Rothko. Abstract artist, revolutionary painter

 

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia (today Daugavpils, Latvia), on September 25, 1903.  His family emigrated to the US when he was 10. Rothko eventually attended Yale and ended up in NY City where he joined other artists in one of the most innovative and creative periods in American art. He became one of the most important artists of his generation. During a career that spanned five decades, he created an new and passionate form of abstract painting. 

Mark Rothko's impact on American Abstract Expressionist movement is tremendous. Mark Rothko today has his place as one of the most important painters of post-World War II modernism. His radical refusal to copy nature reduced painting to large, vibrant fields of color. His works were a seminar influence on the development of monochrome painting. Remarkable is their spatial depth and meditative power, which engage the viewer in a dialog with the work. To Rothko, the trademark "mature" paintings, the ones that became synonymous with his name, went beyond pure abstraction. Rothko, for whom "tragic experience is the only source book for art," tried to make his paintings into experiences of tragedy and ecstasy, as the basic conditions of existence. The aim of his life's work was to express the essence of the universal human drama.

In the late 20's he met the painter Milton Avery who had a profound influence on Rothko, particularly in the application of paint and color.  Rothko's work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained: "It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing."

 He largely abandoned conventional titles in 1947, sometimes resorting to numbers or colors in order to distinguish one work from another. The artist also now resisted explaining the meaning of his work. "Silence is so accurate," he said, fearing that words would only paralyze the viewer's mind and imagination.

Physically ill and suffering from depression, Rothko committed suicide on February 25, 1970. At the time of his death, he was widely recognized in Europe and America for his crucial role in the development of nonrepresentational art. His vibrant, disembodied veils of color asserted the power of nonobjective painting to convey strong emotional or spiritual content. With an unwavering commitment to a singular artistic vision, Rothko celebrated the near-mythic power art holds over the creative imagination.

Rothko Chapel, Houston,

https://www.nga.gov/features/mark-rothko.html

https://www.mark-rothko.org/

Alma Thomas. African American artist of color and joy

 

Born in Columbus, Ga., Ms. Thomas (1891-1978) attended Howard University and, in 1924, became its first student to earn a degree in fine art. After graduation she began teaching at Shaw Junior High School in Washington, continuing there until retiring in 1960. Only then, at 69, was she able to devote herself full time to painting. During the ensuing 18 years — despite acute arthritis — she produced the body of work for which she would be justly celebrated, a stream of vividly colorful paintings made of loosely applied patches configured in irregular grids and concentric circles.

In 1972, at the age of 80, she became the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. One of her incandescent, concentric circle paintings, “Resurrection” (1966), hangs in the White House.  

Asked once by an interviewer if she saw herself as a black artist, Ms. Thomas replied: “No, I do not. I am an American.” But the tradition she participated in overrode national borders. She was a euphoric Modernist, a believer in the infinite possibilities of human progress.

“I was born at the end of the 19th century, horse and buggy days, and experienced the phenomenal changes of the 20th-century machine and space age,” Ms. Thomas wrote about her work, which incorporated inspirations from Kandinsky to color television and from the flowers in her garden to the Apollo moon landings.

The earliest works, “Yellow and Blue” (1959) and “Untitled” (1960), reveal Ms. Thomas as an adept practitioner of Abstract Expressionism with a fine feel for color and atmosphere and a suave painterly touch. Around 1964, she briefly flirted with political subject matter through two semiabstract pictures of crowds of demonstrators holding up signs, both called “Sketch for March on Washington” (circa 1964). These early works give little indication of the optical punch and material immediacy that would mark her mature works.

Ms. Thomas’s painting “Stars and Their Display” (1972). Credit Alma Thomas, Private Collection, Highland Park, Ill.

Alma Woodsey Thomas, Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses, 1969; Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © Estate of Alma Woodsey Thomas; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

Ms. Thomas made her late works by brushing on one small block of color at a time until she had filled the canvas or most of it with her irregular patterns, as in “Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses” (1969), in which vertical sequences of patches in deep blue, yellow, red and orange create a syncopating rhythm. 

Unlike the many artists who have viewed modernity through jaded eyes, Ms. Thomas was excited by humanity’s efforts to constantly outdo itself. She wrote: Today not only can our great scientists send astronauts to and from the moon to photograph its surface and bring back samples of rocks and other materials, but through the medium of color television all can actually see and experience the thrill of these adventures. These phenomena set my creativity in motion.”

She didn’t dwell on the dark side. “I’ve never bothered painting the ugly things in life… no,” she once said. “I wanted something beautiful that you could sit down and look at.” She was being unduly modest. In her paintings, she reached wide to embrace the physical and the transcendental, the terrestrial and the cosmic. Her kind of unfettered optimism and generosity of spirit was an invigorating antidote to the anxious negativity pervading the world of art today.

https://americanart.si.edu/artist/alma-thomas-4778

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/air-space-museum/2020/06/17/art-alma-w-thomas-colorful-response/

Arthur Rackham. Leading artist during the Golden Age of British book illustration

 

Born in Lambeth, London on September 19, 1867, Arthur Rackham was a prolific artist from a young age. He is recognized as one of the leading figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work is noted for its robust pen and ink drawings, which were combined with the use of watercolor, a technique he developed due to his background as a journalistic illustrator. He was widely regarded as one of the leading illustrators from the 'Golden Age' of British book illustration which roughly encompassed the years from 1890 until the end of the First World War. During that period, there was a strong market for high quality illustrated books which typically were given as Christmas gifts. Many of Rackham's books were produced in a de luxe limited edition, often vellum bound and usually signed, as well as a smaller, less ornately bound quarto 'trade' edition. This was sometimes followed by a more modestly presented octavo edition in subsequent years for particularly popular books. The onset of the war in 1914 curtailed the market for such quality books, and the public's taste for fantasy and fairies also declined in the 1920s.

Rackham’s entrance into book illustration began with a guidebook of Canada and the United States entitled To the Other Side (1893), and later on, The Ingoldsby Legends (1898) and Tales from Shakespeare (1899) which were considered his two most successful illustrated books at the time. Both of these works were re-issued less than a decade later as deluxe editions (with additional illustrations by Rackham) due to his success at the turn of the century. The year 1900 marked the breakthrough of Rackham’s success as a book illustrator with the publication of his illustrated The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. This book featured ninety-nine black-and-white drawings with a color frontispiece. Two new editions were issued within ten years of the original, with new and edited illustrations by Rackham in each. The most notable of these editions is considered to be the one released in 1909. Rackham continued to succeed in his illustrations of fairy tales and fantasy stories, attributing the success to his intimate familiarity with the texts. Largely influenced by Aubrey Beardsley, George Cruikshank, Randolph Caldecott, and Richard Doyle during the beginning and height of his career, Rackham’s style remained unique and set him apart from contemporaries and competitors.

The Wind in the Willows was Rackham’s last completed illustrated work before he died on September 6, 1939. It was published in 1940 by George Macy’s company, the Limited Editions Club, in New York City. An obituary in London newspaper The Times described him as “one of the most eminent book illustrators of his day” with “ a special place in the hearts of children.

https://www.wikiart.org/en/arthur-rackham/all-works#!#filterName:all-paintings-chronologically,resultType:masonry

https://artpassions.net/

Ben Shahn, 1898 - 1969/ Artist & advocate for social justice

Ben Shahn, 1898 - 1969, A Lithographer, painter, Muralist, photographer, graphic artist, & an advocate for social justice.

Ben Shahn, "Men are men before they are lawyers or physicians or , 1955, brush and ink on paper mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Container Corporation of America, 1984.124.264

Picture a secular Jewish socialist on fire for justice for the poor, the working class, and the immigrant.

The man in question was Ben Shahn, the 20th-century American painter, muralist, photographer and graphic artist and a leader of the social realism art movement.  Born in Lithuania, emigrated to the United States as a child, was apprenticed to a lithographer after high school. 

He studied at New York University and City College, and very briefly at the National Academy of Design. 

Shahn was shaped by his early religious education and informed by his experiences and observations of “the social and political events and history of Jews in America,” His work is about Jewish ethics, not prayer or ritual, said art historian Diana L. Linden, author of “Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene.”

Shahn's first major success came with the 1932 exhibition of his series The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti. Look to Shahn’s series of 23 paintings detailing the controversial trial and ultimate execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They were two radical Italian immigrants of the 1920s, convicted of murder on scanty (and now missing) evidence.

Shahn once said that he paints two things, "what I love and what I abhor," and during the Depression years his scenes of children playing in concrete urban parks, and of miners and construction workers engaged in their trades, reflect his admiration for the working American and his abhorrence of injustice and oppression. Throughout the 1930s Shahn worked for various government programs, and when the United States entered World War II, he joined the Graphic Arts Division of the Office of War Information, although only two of the many posters he designed were published. In the 1940s, Shahn turned to what he called personal realism." His late work is often symbolic, allegorical, or religious and reflects his belief that "if we are to have values, a spiritual life, a culture, these things must find their imagery and their interpretation through the arts."

Shahn’s life work was infused with the political passions of his time. He expressed them by retelling the Hebrew Bible’s stories of slavery, exile and freedom in images of garment workers, cotton pickers, labor organizers, immigrants and refugees.

Ben Shahn, You Have Not Converted a Man Because You Have Silenced Him, 1968, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Source unknown, 1997.37

While never a Communist or an avowed atheist, Shahn was close to many who were, including his second wife, the artist Bernarda Bryson. Yet he also was fiercely devoted to the First Amendment, with its vaunted four freedoms.

“(It) held special significance for Shahn, as it did for many American Jews who aspired in the United States to achieve civil liberties denied them by European nations,” Linden writes.

He observed the rise of Hitler from a distance with horror, deploying his art to battle the “fervent resistance to open immigration” that kept desperate Jews from a safe haven in the United States, she writes. The doors to freedom were shuttered by Americans’ fear of “unemployment, nativism and anti-Semitism” 

Born September 12, 1898, Kaunas, Russia [now in Lithuania]—died March 14, 1969, New York, New York, U.S.

My Little Pony rides again

 My Little Pony rides again at the National Gallery 

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

It has been a while since Rakewell has had to grapple with the phenomenon of My Little Pony. So it came as something of a surprise to your somewhat, let’s face it, curmudgeonly correspondent when they found themselves not entirely hating the trailer for the upcoming film on Netflix (to be released on 24 September). My Little Pony: A New Generation seems to have a sense of humour about itself, with ‘We’ll need glitter, lots of glitter,’ being a sinew-stiffening call to arms. The plot revolves around the fact that unicorns are losing their magic, prompting ‘an earth pony’ (debatable description) and a unicorn to recover it from the villainous winged equine inhabitants of Pegasus City – and who doesn’t like a quest narrative?

But what has really caught your correspondent’s wandering attention is an invitation to something called ‘the Mane Event’ at the National Gallery in London on 20th September. Equestrian paintings across the collection will be ‘magically transformed into My Little Pony augmented art’, giving us the chance to ‘explore pastures new in a cutting-edge AR experience brought to thespian horse-whisperers to talk us through some masterpieces of equestrian art.

It’s neither little, nor a pony, but surely Whistlejacket has to be the first stop?

The handsome white horses depicted by Rosa Bonheur in this version of her most famous painting are Percherons, but this is no time for equine pedantry.

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/my-little-pony-national-gallery-london/