John Singer Sargent – Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra
Did anyone else not know that Sargent was a musician? And apparently, a gifted one? Or was it just me? Well, he was, and he frequently attended the orchestra conducted by Jules Etienne Pasdeloup. Pasdeloup was a champion of controversial modern composers for nearly three decades in the latter half of the nineteenth century and he rehearsed his orchestra at the Cirque d’Hiver, an ornate Second Empire indoor amphitheater. Some feel this is Sargent’s most abstract treatment of a subject and represents one of his boldest experiments with impressionism. This original work was first owned by Henry Bacon, and it may have been painted specifically for him.
Hurd said that his father, a lawyer with a shrewd eye for detail, asked on first seeing “Transients”, “Where are the Limeys going, son?” To which Hurd replied, “Limeys? They’re Okies.” His father said, “Then why are they driving on the wrong side of the road?” Hurd had forgotten to reverse his drawing – overlooking the fact that not to do so would put his subjects and their automobile on the wrong side of the road. He said his father, “then and there taught me a lesson in print making.”
We’ve got another Peter Hurd print today. I found this little gem in my favorite antique shop in Downtown Kalispell. Hurd painted this, one of this more well-known works, in 1954. Every time I see it, I am struck by how much my home state of Montana still looks exactly like this scene today. From the eternal sky to the cowboy boots, the fence building in this picture could have happened yesterday…down the road from my house. I’m sure all of the beautiful emptiness that currently surrounds me will not last forever, and I’m ok with that. I just try to remind myself to appreciate it while it lasts.
Peter McIntyre (1910-1995) was a New Zealand painter and author who became well known as a result of his official role as a war artist during WWII. I first became aware of his work when I stumbled across a battered copy of his book “Peter McIntyre’s West” published in 1970 in an antique store. His depictions of the “West” were so different from what I was used to seeing, filtered no doubt from his own experiences of living in a country with its own version wide open spaces, stunning landscapes, and terrible relations with its indigenous people. It’s always fascinating to see your home through a visitor’s lens, even better when the impressions are translated through masterful brushstrokes.
Peter Hurd (1904-1984) was married to Henriette Wyeth. Yes, THAT Henriette Wyeth. However, if he was at all intimidated by the prospect of being folded into such a preeminent artistic dynasty, it certainly does not show in his work. If anything, according to Andrew, who was twelve when his older sister and Peter were married, the awe ran in the other direction. In his introduction to “Peter Hurd – The Lithographs”, Andrew said, “He (Peter) could so easily have been a brother-in-law that turned away my youthful admiration, but he did not. I admired his horsemanship, his stories of faraway New Mexico, his dash, his vitality, in short, I made a pest of myself.”
This particular print is of a man Hurd saw on Main St. in Roswell NM who agreed to be his model. Hurd said he didn’t remember the man’s name, but he did remember he was a patient sitter, and he did not show the slightest interest in seeing the finished product.
With the exception of 2020, Western Art week has been held annually in the city of Great Falls since 1969. What started as an event built around the C.M. Russell Art Auction, which was founded by local television personality and civic booster Norma Ashby to benefit the C.M. Russell Museum, has grown into a wonderfully diverse gathering of some of the most influential and talented creators of Western art using any and all mediums.
It doesn’t hurt that as a city, Great Falls is uniquely suited for large scale event such as this. For one thing, it isn’t exactly a sprawling metropolis so you can pretty much get anywhere in town within fifteen minutes. Also, you won’t find yourself dealing with an abundance of traffic or fighting for parking spaces, even at the Montana Expo Park where the largest event was located. There are plenty of hotels for every budget, and some amazing restaurants. And the people are exceptionally friendly.
But back to the art.
It would be impossible to adequately convey how much talent and stunning artistry I observed in the space of two days. Truth be told, it was a little overwhelming. It might be easier to simply give you a tour with the art that I purchased.
The picture doesn’t do this piece justice. The artist is A. Nadine Pickthorn and she works with fused glass and high-powered engraving tools to engrave her images once the fusing process is complete. I tend to fall instantly and devastatingly in love with the art that end up buying for myself and that’s precisely what happened when I saw this little Chickadees feathers ruffling in the wind. This might be the most beautiful blue I’ve ever seen.
A few of the hotels around town served as overflow locations for the Show, and at the Holiday Inn I got to chat a bit with Donna Ridgeway who was just delightful. I absolutely loved her work and would have bought several pieces if I was a rich lady instead of a normal person. I chose this one because she explained she based it on the fact that when she was young, her horse and her dog were best friends…so, you know.
There were a few scratchboard artists who’s work almost broke my brain. Janice Bogy was one of them. Her animal portraits, some of which took several months to complete, were so detailed and realistic that the only reason I knew they were not photographs is because she told me so. She told that the moose portrait was based on a real encounter she had while walking in the woods with her dog one day.
Ariel Rodriguez was another obscenely talented scratchboard artist. I had trouble narrowing down which of her prints I wanted to buy because I wanted to buy them all.
There were some incredible Native American artists showing some really beautiful work and one of the most impressive was Lyle Omeasoo’s ledger art. I happen to be a little wild about ledger art, so it’s rather convenient that I live in close proximity to some of the best in the business.
I – LOVED – Sara Austin’s work. She uses colored pencils on wood and the result is incredible and so unique. She was also a lovely person and it was nice chatting with her.
And last but definitely not least, I probably spent a half hour talking to Rebecca Behrent about all kinds of things. She told me about her print making process, how long it took her to complete her largest painting, the downsides of the “Art World”, how she’s just now getting back to her art after suffering a loss several years ago. I really enjoyed talking with her and I really liked her work. I hope she sold all of it.
So, if you’re in the neighborhood next year, I wholeheartedly recommend dropping in at the Expo and checking out Western Art Week. My only disclaimer is that if you are a person who is easily irritated by wind, take that into consideration. They should have named it Great Wind instead of Great Falls. I can now fully understand why some of those early women who came to settle on the Great Plains eventually lost their minds and had to be carted off back East. Hey, maybe someone should create a piece of art about that.
Every year, the city of Great Falls is host to the largest Western art show on, well, the planet. Tomorrow I’m heading east over the Rocky Mountain Front to check it out for the first time.
Thoughts and impressions will be posted forthwith.
A few years ago, during one of my in-law’s weekend visits, I noticed my father-in-law staring at the print of Edward Hopper’s “Chair Car” that I’d finally framed.
“There’s just something a little – off – about it isn’t there?” He made this observation with a smile that was part puzzled amusement, part honest curiosity. He was not being critical – he likes Hopper as much as I do. He and I spent the next few minutes trying to work out exactly what it was – about this painting in particular, and the rest of his work in general – that was off.
Was it the way he used light (or the lack of it) that often seems to give his scenes an eerie coldness? What is it about so many of his paintings that makes you feel an almost overwhelming loneliness? What is it that creates that emptiness that echoes off New York city rooftops, whispers through movie theaters, and hovers silently in Cape Cod back yards?
Not to mention, the biggest mystery, what is it about all of this eerie loneliness that we like so much?
We didn’t come to any firm conclusions that day, but our conversation stayed with me. Every time I saw a piece of art and thought, “Huh…that’s a little weird. But I like it!”, I thought about Hopper’s “Chair Car”, or his “House by the Railroad”, which, for no obvious reason, is so instantly menacing it gives me the shivers.
The first time I saw Andrea Kowch’s work it was so arresting I actually felt something like panic – in a good way. I simultaneously wanted to see everything she had ever created and had absolutely no idea what I was looking at.
Andrea Kowch – High Tide
Andrea Kowch – Dream Chaser
I mean – what the HECK?? Her work is so delightfully weird and just the right amount of creepy. It’s as is if Andrew Wyeth and L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz) got together and had a little Goth baby – with a twist. But again, what is it about this weird offness that I like so much?
This past Winter I was listening to Bianca Bosker’s excellent book “Get the Picture” while running errands in town one day and had the thrilling experience of having a brain itch scratched in the best possible way when she explained why we like the weird stuff.
According to research from experimental psychologist Johan Wagemans, “Our perception of the world is only a prediction…shaped by our filters of expectation. And art…deliberately messes with those predictions. Artists create images that introduce incongruities…defy our expectations. Artists introduce unfamiliar experiences in an otherwise completely familiar setting…we’re drawn to artwork that subtly deviates from our predictions of the world.”
When I heard those words, I had to pull over on the not quite adequate shoulder, rewind, and listen to them again. That was it. Exactly. It explains why Hopper’s chair car looks more like some kind of Soviet bunker than East Coast public transportation, or why I find Andrew Wyeth’s work so bleak and comforting at the same time. It was such a thrilling moment I would have leaped out of the car and danced around a bit if not for the icy road and blind corner I was perched on.
Since then, it has been a new and wonderful process to appreciate the art that grabs me with that framework of understanding. Not everything I like is weird and creepy, but it’s nice to know that lusting after Andrea Kowch prints is not a sign of aberrant behavior. It’s just science.
When COVID started, I did not de-clutter my house and perfect the (surprisingly complicated) process of baking sourdough bread like most of the other grown-ups that I know. Instead, I reveled in the enforced isolation, repeatedly cycled through all my favorite TV shows while online window shopping, and realized that I was getting kind of – serious – about art.
I have always liked art. The walls of the many places I have lived since leaving the house I grew up in were never bare. Everywhere I went, if art was featured in any way, I noticed it. Whenever I went on vacation, if I bought a souvenir, it was usually a piece of art created by someone local. It wasn’t until mid-pandemic though, sitting on the couch one summer night, only vaguely paying attention to the “Republic of Doyle” episode I’d already seen 4 times, while also browsing Art.com, that I realized I was now beginning to deliberately look for a certain kind of art. And I was tired of the same old stuff.
At that point, I felt I did have, a somewhat respectable collection. A moody Andrew Wyeth print, a Maxfield Parrish print that I’d rescued from the bottom of dusty pile at an antique store, one of Charlie Russell’s less well known black and white sketches that I bought at the Russell Museum in Great Falls, MT. Most of what adorned my walls though, was “Couch Art” at its finest. Cheap, accessible, the vast majority bought on an insomniac’s impulse at 2am. I liked it, but it wasn’t meaningful in any appreciable way.
What I found myself thinking that summer evening, as the big box store of online art offered up images of ‘Starry Night”, “Woman with a Parasol”, and “The Kiss” – again – was, “There has got to be more than this.”
I don’t mean to give the impression that I dislike the works of Van Gogh, Monet, and Klimt. I LOVE Van Gogh, but “Starry Night” is not the only work he ever created. He did produce over 900 paintings in his remarkably short 10-year career.
For Instance, this one, aside from the politically incorrect title, is one of my favorites:
Vincent Van Gogh – Encampment of Gypsies With Caravans
What I started to discover, is that along with lesser-known works by well-known artists, there is an almost bottomless well of incredible art by lesser knownartists. Take the top image by French painter Maurice de Vlaminck who was a contemporary of Henri Matisse. They were principles in the “Fauve” movement, a group of artists who from 1904 to 1908 were known for their bold use of intense color. In 1905, during the Salon d’Automne exhibition, where Vlaminck and Matisse were featured, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles disparaged them as “fauves” (wild beasts), thus coining the movements name. I can’t even articulate how knowing that- just – delights me. And the painting above seems to be a perfect representation of that categorization.
Anyone Edward Hopper fans? Have you ever seen any of Charles Scheeler’s work?
Charles Scheeler – MacDougal Alley 1922
The point is, you don’t need to scratch the obvious, “everyone knows that!”, surface very hard to find some truly wonderful stuff. Although, full disclosure, I still enjoy the occasional impulse buy on Art.com at 2am. Unlike “Starry Night”, the “Pidgeon Reading ‘Pooping on People'” never gets old.
As someone who obsessively loves art, but absolutely cannot DO art, I’ve always been mystified by the (seeming) absurdity of the “Art World”. Which is why reading the wildly entertaining “Get the Picture” by Bianca Bosker was such an eye-opener. She pulls back the mineral spirit-soaked curtains and lays bare this surreal world as “one big melting pot of hypocrisies and contradictions”. Where “beautiful art = decorative”, and “decorative = dumb”, and “dumb = accessible” (affordable), and all these very undesirable qualities add up to (heaven help us) “Couch Art”.
This is a world where beauty is toxic, ugly is hip, and people in lingerie sitting on other people’s faces (literally) is the apex of Contemporary Performance Art. A world where a garbage bag of trash (an – actual – garbage bag of trash), a urinal freed from the confines of a men’s restroom and placed sideways on the floor, and paintings that include genitalia (so much genitalia) command the most respect, not to mention the highest price tags, in the elite world of collectors and gallerists.
Urinals and garbage bags aside, I should confess right out of the gate, I quite enjoy Couch Art. And not simply because I can’t afford anything in the next status bracket. If you know where to look, you can find some fabulous art that will not require your firstborn as collateral.
For instance, the image above is called “Under the Street Lamp” by Martin Lewis. Never heard of Martin Lewis? Neither had I until I came across this image by chance while searching for something entirely unrelated on eBay one evening and it took the wind right out of me. I immediately bought the print (for $18), Googled “Martin Lewis”, and experienced the special thrill of discovering something that felt like a long-lost secret.
Great art doesn’t have to be expensive or intimidating. It’s the Charles Burchfield print you rescue from the dusty pile of still life and ornately framed mountain meadow scenes in the back corner of an antique store. It’s discovering a new artist on Instagram and learning that twice a year they have a 36-hour print sale of selected paintings. Or it’s going to your city or town’s annual art festival’s and supporting local talent.
Although, if you are brave and want to attempt full body entry into the upside-down world of “Art,” you can always start by saving your garbage.
