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Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845 by George Caleb Bingham, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bingham studied art in the US and in Europe, he lived in Missouri where his family had moved when he was a child. Bingham eventually took up a life in politics. Some experts differ as to the animal with the collar in the front of the boat. Some say it is a cat and some a bear cub.
Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife, 1889 by John Singer Sargent, The Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Rather than the more formal portraits for which he is better known, in this piece we see a portrait by Sargent, but in a casual setting.
Roycroft Campus, East Aurora NY
Much like Byrdcliffe, Roycroft was started as a self-contained Utopian community where its founder Elbert Hubbard envisioned a society of artists and crafts people living and working in harmony. It is a lovely place to visit and the Roycroft Inn is an Arts and Crafts lover’s paradise.
Pewabic Pottery in the Guardian Building, Detroit
Detail from Pewabic Pottery tile decoration from the Guardian Building, 1928, Detroit MI.
Mary Chase Perry Stratton and her partner Horace Caulkins founded the Pewabic Pottery based on the Arts & Crafts style and ideal sweeping the country. The building they built in 1907 they moved to the building that still houses an active pottery, museum and store.
Pewabic Pottery Tiles the Guardian Building, Detroit.
I received this fantastic book as a gift and had to re-post the Guardian Building. Anyone who is into architecture will love it and Detroiters need to see it to appreciate gems in that city (before they disappear).
Gloria, 1884 by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Originally an entry for a Christmas Card contest - it is a perfect image for the season.
Gift Rapt by Charley Harper Mid 20th century artist and illustrator
Charley Harper's work can be found in everything from posters, calendars, and books of all kinds. He felt an affinity toward nature and animals and both figured prominently in his work.
Stockbridge at Christmas by Norman Rockwell, Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont.
Rockwell is known for his images of holidays and Americana, this is one of his rarer landscapes.
Portrait of Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess of d'Abernon by John Singer Sargent, 1904, The Birmingham Museum of Art, AL
Another beautiful portrait by Sargent.
The Blue Gown, 1917 by Frederick Carl Frieseke, The Detroit Institute of Arts.
An American Impressionist painter who studied with the Europeans. Frieseke's work is full of color and light. What are your thoughts? I think she is all ready for a date that did not show.
Love of Winter, 1914 by George Wesley Bellows, The Art Institute of Chicago.
A member of the Ashcan School and student of Robert Henri, Bellows began studying art at Ohio State.
Flag, 1954-55 by Jasper Johns, The Museum of Modern Art, New York /VAGA.
Johns representative artwork was a contrast to the work of the Abstract Expressionists before him. His re-worked images of everyday objects led the way for Pop Art.
House of Dread, Newfoundland, 1915 by Rockwell Kent, Plattsburgh State University of New York.
"Upon a bleak and lofty cliff's edge, land's end, stands a house; against its corner and facing seawards leans a man, naked even as the land, and sea, and house; his head is bowed as though in utter dejection; and from an upper window leans a weeping woman. It is our cliff, our sea, our house stripped bare and stark, its loneliness intensified. It is ourselves in Newfoundland, our hidden but prevailing misery revealed." p. 290,
Its Me O Lord by Rockwell Kent
Fruits and Vegetables, 1938 by Grant Wood.
Another publication from Associated American Artists. Wood hired his sister Nan and her husband to hand-tint the flower and fruits watercolors.
Wild Flowers, 1938 by Grant Wood, Assorted collections.
During the Depression many artists were not able to make a living so two New York Art Dealers commissioned working artists such as Wood to do a series of lithographs that they sold in the back of magazines for $5-$10 each. Today some of them go for around $10,000.
The colored images were done in watercolor by Wood’s sister Nan who was also the model for the daughter in American Gothic.
If only I could travel back in time....
Roden Crater by James Turrell, under construction.
Kanye West has brought a lot of attention to light and space artist James Turrell whom he worked with and filmed Jesus is King at Turrell’s Roden Crater in Arizona. Roden Crater is expected to open to the public in 2024.
Artist/architect Paolo Soleri studied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West and with the famous architect himself, although Soleri's designs took on a more amorphic and almost insect-like look about them. The photos were taken by me at a retrospective of the artist at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018.
Soleri and his students started making bronze bells as a source of income and an artistic outlet. The bells can still be purchased at Cosanti.
Architectural model for Arcosanti, Mayer, AZ
In Preparation, She Cached A Guidebook Near the River of Oblivion, 2008 by Holly Lane, Forum Gallery, Inc.
A working artist whose fantastic artwork is fit into her intricate hand-made frames. Her frame style is so rich and detailed, while her paintings have a distinctly surreal look. Lane was born in Cleveland and went to school in California.
Thanksgiving, 1935 by Doris Lee, Art Institute of Chicago.
The hardest part is getting it all hot and on the table at the same time.
Looking forward to celebrating with family today.
Thanksgiving by John Currin, 2003, The Tate Collection, London.
John Currin's artwork brings to mind the naturally lit rooms of Vermeer and the realistic, beautiful, yet often grotesque figures of Odd Nerdrum. What I see here are three women, obviously related, preparing a huge turkey for Thanksgiving, but the turkey is really the star. It is impossibly fat and huge, I have a hard time believing they will be able to fit it into an oven.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Freedom From Want, 1943 by Norman Rockwell,Saturday Evening PostCover
One of the Four Freedoms series inspired by a speech by Franklin Roosevelt:
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression
-- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
-- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments
to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression
against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941
