Tyler Green's New Book: Emerson's Nature And The Artists

We'll understand the US better if we better understand how American artists extended their ideologies in their pictures.

(We'll understand even more if we understand that Ralph Waldo Emerson told them how.) https://t.co/FyT8eeVJUx

— Tyler Green (@TylerGreenBooks) October 6, 2021

From the Publisher: Illustrated by classic American paintings and photographs, and accompanied with a prescient new appraisal, this stunning publication on Emerson’s seminal 1836 essay is at once a meditation on the ways artists influence each other and a timely cri de coeur to cherish and preserve America’s landscape.

Get your copy here:  https://amzn.to/3leSiTC or here https://www.indiebound.org/book/9783791378695

Thoughts on Michelangelo in Our Time of Crisis

by Gregg Chadwick

Frequent readers know that I enjoy the wit and erudition of Tyler Green. His Modern Art Notes Podcast is always worth a listen. The latest episode, embedded above, features art historian William E. Wallace and curator Julian Brooks.

Wallace discusses his latest book - “Michelangelo, God’s Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece.” Wallace's new book is available on Bookshop. 

 Tyler writes :"The book offers a rich and lively biographical examination of the last two decades of Michelangelo’s life, a period when he became the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other buildings, even as he continued to sculpt and draw." 

Michelangelo

The Florentine Pietà

 1547-55

Wallace's discussion of Michelangelo's late Pietàs is exceptionally interesting. These are two of my favorite sculptural works by Michelangelo because of their incomplete nature. 

Michelangelo 
Two Views of the Rondanini Pietà 
1564
Castello Sforzesco, Milano
photos by Gregg Chadwick

I have spent hours in the company of Michelangelo's two late pietàs in Florence and Milan. 

There is an intently spiritual nature to these sculptures. The marble seems to flicker like candlelight. Form seems to melt with time. My painting La Vita Trasparente (The Transparent Life) was inspired by my visits to the Castello Sforzesco which houses Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà. Watching a couple stroll through the garden along the castle wall reminded me of the hope that new love brings. Life flickers with light and hope in these moments. Now, as the Covid-19 crisis rages through Northern Italy and the world, I am brought back to the time that I painted La Vita Trasparente. I think of my friends in Milan, Verona, and Trento. Many are health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic. Today, it seems that the curve may be breaking in Italy. I hope this is a positive shift. I send my thoughts to all of you caught up in this struggle. Take care my friends. 

Gregg Chadwick
La Vita Trasparente (The Transparent Life) 
48"x38" oil on linen 2014
Private Collection, New York

In the second half of this podcast Tyler Green chats with Julian Brooks who co-curated with Emily J. Peters, the exhibition “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master” at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Brooks explains to us how Michelangelo used his drawings. Brooks discusses Michelangelo's studies for his unfinished and now lost Battle of Cascina, with detail and excitement. I wrote about Michelangelo's drawings after viewing the monumental 2017 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My thoughts then - 

These drawings are sumptuously beautiful, and set the stage for the rest of Michelangelo's artistic life. Michelangelo's touch is all over these works. The use of chalk in many of the drawings, rather than pen and ink, opens up a sensuous physicality that feels more like flesh than stone.

A map of desire seems to be drawn across the back of many of Michelangelo's figures. In the gallery I think of the poetry and art to come - Cavafy, Isherwood, Bachardy, Bacon, and Hockney.

Sadly, the Getty is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is scheduled to be at the Getty through June 7. The catalog is available on Bookshop. 

The Modern Art Notes Podcast by Tyler Green featuring artist Julie Mehretu

This week's The Modern Art Notes Podcast by Tyler Green features artist Julie Mehretu and curator Jane Aspinwall. Tyler's podcast is timed with the new Julie Mehretu mid-career survey that opens at LACMA on November 3, 2019.
More info from LACMA here: https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/julie-mehretu

From LACMA:

Co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, Julie Mehretu is a mid-career survey that will unite nearly 40 works on paper with 35 paintings dating from 1996 to the present by Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). The first-ever comprehensive retrospective of Mehretu’s career, it covers over two decades of her examination of history, colonialism, capitalism, geopolitics, war, global uprising, diaspora, and displacement through the artistic strategies of abstraction, architecture, landscape, movement, and, most recently, figuration. Mehretu’s play with scale, as evident in her intimate drawings and large canvases and complex techniques in printmaking, will be explored in depth. Mehretu received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and, among many awards and honors, is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” (2005) and a U.S. State Department National Medal of Arts (2015).

November 3, 2019–March 22, 2020 (BCAM, Level 1)

Tyler writes,  "After closing at LACMA on March 22, 2020, “Mehretu” will travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the High Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center. The exhibition was curated by LACMA’s Christine Y. Kim and the Whitney’s Rujeko Hockley. The handsome exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel. Amazon offers it for $65.

An exhibition of six new Mehretu aquatints opens at Los Angeles’s Gemini G.E.L. on November 1. It will remain on view through January 10, 2020."

Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Lari Pittman

Wonderful podcast by Tyler Green featuring artist Lari Pittman.
The Hammer Museum at UCLA is featuring the exhibition “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence,” a retrospective of Pittman’s nearly forty-year career. 

Tyler writes:

The exhibition reveals Pittman’s engagements with America’s history and with issues and subjects that have been core to our history and identity, including landscape, violence, citizenship, belonging and more. The exhibition was curated by Hammer chief curator Connie Butler. It is on view through January 5, 2020. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel. Amazon offers it for $51.

The Art World's Day for Detroit

by Gregg Chadwick
Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes, along with art blogs and art sites across the globe will be concentrating today on the plight of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Tyler Green writes, "In an effort to spotlight the collections at the Detroit Institute of Arts that would be lost if the threatened sale of art in collections at the DIA are sold, all day long  Modern Art Notes and many other sites will be spotlight art at the DIA. "

Sakyamuni
 Chinese Sculptor
late 13th/early 14th Century
wood with lacquer,gilding,and traces of color
11 3/4" x 88 1/8" x 6 1/2"
Detroit Institute of Arts

I heartily agree with Tyler that the more we can put a spotlight on the Detroit Institute of Arts rich collection, the more concerned - art lovers, historians, and the general public will be about the peril that the collection faces. 

Vilhelm Hammershoi
Interior With A Lady
21 5/8" x 20 7/8" oil on canvas 1901
Detroit Institute of Arts

Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times writes, "The premise is simple and elegant: Use the Internet to:

 a) spread the word to a diverse, international art audience about what could be lost if any sale goes forward;

 b) suggest that readers expand the process by posting their own links and images to social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram; 

and c) generate support for the Detroit Institute of Arts by asking readers to click through and buy a museum membership (an individual membership starts at $65)."

Diego Velázquez
A Man
20 1/4" x 15 3/4" oil on canvas 1623/1630
Detroit Institute of Arts

How can we help support the DIA? As Tyler Green suggests: "Share artwork on MAN and at other sites with your friends. If you live in Michigan, tell your elected officials that the future of Detroit is important to you and that you don’t support a fire sale of the city’s future."

 Best of all: Join us in becoming a member of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The Detroit Institute of Arts  is a vital part of the city of Detroit and a conduit for the greater community, including the more prosperous suburbs, to interact. I love the DIA's   (@DIADetroit ) twitter profile description: 

Detroit Institute of Arts. Home to 1st VanGogh in US Museum, Rivera's Detroit Industry murals, & city's best mac-n-cheese. Let yourself go!

Remember, all day long, roughly every hour, many sites plan to post a new image from the museum's staggering art collection, which is among the half-dozen best in the United States. Please get involved - tweet, post, write and create today for Detroit.

To read more about A Day for Detroit, check out these stories in the Detroit Free Press , the Detroit News , and the Los Angeles Times. 

Here's a list of sites that have signed on to the project:

• Modern Art Notes
• MANPodcast.com
• Art F City
• Bad at Sports
• Artinfo’s In the Air
• Ed Winkleman
• Mary Louise Schumacher
• Greg Allen
• Two Coats of Paint
• The Art Blog
• Hyperallergic LABS
• Eyeteeth
• Art Practical
• Daily Serving
• Paper Monument
• Italy’s Secret Places
• ArtSmartTalk
• Chad Edward
• The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research
• WBUR’s The Artery
• Speed of Life 

On Twitter: @KnightLAT @greggchadwick @TylerGreenDC M.L. Schumacher ‏@artcity 

Hashtags: #DayDetroit #Detroit

The Indianapolis Turner vs the New Orleans Lorrain

Joseph Mallord William Turner ( April 23, 1775-December 19, 1851)
The Fifth Plague of Egypt
48" x 72" oil on canvas 1800
Indianapolis Museum of Art
photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Spurred on by fellow artblogger, Tyler Green, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art are putting their paintings on the line over next weekend's Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts.
I'm calling an improbable New Orleans victory over the Colts. In which case the Indianapolis Museum of Art will lend Turner's vibrant and mysterious The Fifth Plague of Egypt to the New Orleans Museum of Art.
If the favored Colts win, the New Orleans Museum of Art will lend Claude Lorrain's Ideal View of Tivoli to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Check out Tyler's blog for the ultimate in museum director trash talk and mannered New Orleans (and Indianapolis) grace as well.

New Orleans Museum of Art director E. John Bullard summed up the good spirited rivalry to Tyler:

"Max is a gracious opponent. Thanks for accepting the wager of a Claude from New Orleans for a Turner from Indianapolis. But this is definitely the Saints year. They are the Dream Team and in New Orleans we know that dreams come true. Geaux Saints!!!"

Ars longa, football brevis?



Claude Lorrain (1600-1682)
Ideal View of Tivoli
117 x 147 cm oil on canvas 1644
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
photo courtesy the New Orleans Museum of Art