William Turner: A Painter Of Light

Just last month I wrote about The Frick Collection, and spoke about the wonderful range of great art and artists that are represented in this small, but important museum.

Taking place at the Frick, from now through until mid-May 2017, is a special exhibition titled “Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages Through Time,” at which three monumental paintings by Turner will be on show, along with thirty or so other works encompassing oil, watercolours, and prints. The three major paintings at the centre of the exhibition are Harbor of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile, Cologne; The Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening, and The Harbor of Brest: The Quayside and Château, which is on loan from Tate Britain. The three port scenes are being shown together for the first time.

From Wikipedia we learn that Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was an English Romanticist landscape painter who was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an importance that rivalled the painting of historic themes which was a very common practice when he was working as an artist. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting, and is commonly referred to as "the painter of light”.

Many of Turner’s greatest paintings are characterised by his unique pallet, which used newly invented pigments such as chrome yellow, and chrome orange. These gave his most famous works a golden hue that captured the light from the sun at its most evocative point, either early in the morning or later in the evening.

Although Henry Clay Frick bought Harbor of Dieppe and Arrival of a Packet-Boat, more than a century ago, the first American to buy a Turner painting was the New Yorker, James Lenox, a private collector. In 1845, Lenox bought—sight-unseen—the 1832 atmospheric seascape Staffa, Fingal's Cave. On receiving the painting Lenox was baffled, and "greatly disappointed" by what he called the painting's "indistinctness". When his views were relayed back to William Turner, Turner is said to have replied, "You should tell Mr Lenox that indistinctness is my forte.”

In April 2006, Christie's New York auctioned Giudecca, La Donna Della Salute and San Giorgio, a view of Venice exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841, for US$35.8 million, setting a new record for a Turner work.

If you can’t make to the exhibition itself, here is a short video produced by the Frick which takes a closer look at the three paintings, and some of the other works that form that exhibition.

“Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages Through Time”

At The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th St.

On now through May 14, 2017

Online: www.frick.org 

More about Turner at Wikipedia… 

My 52-Book-Year #1: Apex Hides The Hurt

Apex Hides The Hurt, by Colson Whitehead, was the first book I read at the beginning of January to kick off my 52-Book-Year Challenge. For a book that spends a lot of time talking about the importance of names, it was clearly a deliberate choice to feature a central character who remains nameless throughout the book. The man, referred to throughout only as 'he', is a nomenclature specialist. That is, a person whose skill in the advertising and market world is the naming of product names.

Apex, an adhesive gauze in the style of Band-Aids is our anonymous heroes career-crowning glory, and the product 'hides the hurt' in more ways than one. In fact, it is so good at hiding the hurt, that he loses a toe because the product masks an injury that festers and putrefies beneath the product's secure covering (sorry, did I just give away an important plot point? Not entirely, but never mind). Luckily, this is only part of the story Whitehead carefully unravels.

The main plot centres around our anonymous main character and his contract to help the council of the small town of Winthrop resolve an internal fight to decide on a new name. The three main choices being New Prospera, favored by a local software magnate; or to keep the existing name, Winthrop, favoured by a descendant of the town’s namesake; or to revert to the original name of the town, Freedom, since the town was originally founded by free blacks.

Written into his contract before our specialist agreed to take on the contract, was a clause that stipulated the town elders must accept whatever name he decides on. By the end of the book he decides to name the town… — oh, okay then, I won’t give that away. Before making this decision our protagonist must learn the history of the town, and that of its leading citizens, while getting to know the contesting forces, and forging alliances where he can. The book is filled with wry humor, and much insight into the world of the nomenclature specialist.

I was particularly taken with this sentence referring to the Hotel Winthrop where our consultant stays while working on the problem at hand; Whitehead observes—or is it our consultant—that, "It was a good place to make a bad decision, and in particular, a bad decision that would affect a great many people."

On its release, the book garnered mixed, but generally positive reviews with the New York Times placing it among its list of the 100 Most Notable Books of the Year. The Library Journal praised the book, noting that Whitehead does Shakespeare one better by posing the question, “What's in a name, and how does our identity relate to our own sense of who we are?” The San Francisco Chronicle gave the novel a mixed review, commenting, "It's pure joy to read writing like this, but watching Whitehead sketch out a minor character's essence with one stroke, while breathtaking, makes one wish the same treatment was afforded the people who ostensibly inhabit the novel's complex ideas." 

Finally, Jennifer Reese, writing for Entertainment Weekly, called the book "a blurry satire of American commercialism", adding, "it may not mark the apex of Colson Whitehead's career, but it brims with the author's spiky humor and intelligence." Ignoring the obvious pun in her comment, Jennifer was right about the book not being the high point in Whitehead’s career. That was to come ten years later when The Underground Railroad, his latest book, was published in 2016.

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Thanks to Wikipedia for providing some background information about Colson Whitehead, and for the various newspaper and magazine reviews quoted in this article.

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Readers interested in reading Apex Hides The Hurt, or The Underground Railroad may choose to do so by purchasing either the print or eBook versions via the links below. By doing so you will be supporting my blog at the same time. Thanks in anticipation.

Click here to purchase Apex Hides The Hurt…

Click here to purchase The Underground Railway…

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

Tree form (detail).
Click here to see the full work... 

During my stay in Melbourne in January, I paid a visit (as I always do), to the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia (the initials stand for National Gallery of Victoria).

This is one of the great Australian galleries, and its proximity to Federation Square and the heart of downtown Melbourne ensures that there is a constant stream of local and international visitors strolling the centre's wonderful galleries and excellent exhibitions. Entry to the general collection is free, while special exhibitions require paid entry.

The Ian Potter Centre is home to some of the most iconic works of Australian art from many of the country's most celebrated artists. Here you will find Russell Drysdale, Albert Tucker, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts and many others.

Collins St, 5p.m. (detail).
Click here to see the full work...

"In the early 1950s John Brack adopted Melbourne's urban environment as his subject, recording the shops, bars and workplaces of the city with an ironic edge. In Collins St, 5pm, Brack's depicts Melbourne's financial hub at the end of the working day, it's uniformly dressed office workers streaming homeward. By personalising each figure Brack points to the enduring presence of the individual."

"Shearing the rams, (see image below) by Tom Roberts, is a response to the nationalistic sentiment that developed in Australia during the late 19th century. It reflects the emergence of a national identity defined through heroic rural activity and the economic importance of the wool industry.

The painting is based on a number of preliminary sketches that Roberts completed on the spot at Brocklesby Station, Corowa, New South Wales, in the late spring of 1888. He returned during the following two spring periods (shearing season) to work on the painting."

Jarlu Jukarrpa (detail).
Click here to see the full work...

Paddy Japaljarri Stewart was an Australian Aboriginal artist from Yuendumu, in the Northern Territory. Wikipedia provides this introduction to Mr. Stewart:

Paddy Japaljarri Stewart (circa 1940–2013) was an Australian Aboriginal artist from Mungapunju, south of Yuendumu. He was chairman of the Warlukurlangu Artists Committee. Stewart was one of the artists who contributed to the Honey Ant Dreaming mural on the Papunya school wall in 1971 - the very genesis of the modern Aboriginal art movement.

In 2004 Stuart Macintyre wrote in a A concise history of Australia that Paddy Japaljarri Stewart "...evokes the continuity of dreaming from Grandfather and father to son and grandson, down the generations and across the passages of time..."

Lost (detail).
Click here to see the full work...

"The theme of the lost child in the bush had a long literary and artistic tradition in Australia and was still topical during the 1880s. Lost was the first of Frederick McCubbin's 'national' pictures: paintings of Australian subjects which culminated in 1904 with The pioneer."

There is much to see and enjoy here, and the Ian Potter Centre is one place I make sure I visit over and over again whenever I am in Melbourne. Don’t miss it.

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Location:
Federation Square: Cnr Russell and Flinders Streets
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 
Ph: +61 3 8620 2222
Online at Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia... 

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Shearing the rams (detail).
Click here to see the full work...

Note: unless otherwise noted, text in italics indicates content adapted from the information cards placed alongside each of the above works of art in the Ian Potter Centre.