Tuesday, August 02, 2022

Cherries Jubilee for Two (L'Affaire Cerises Jubilé)

 by Gregg Chadwick


My brother Kent called me last night while he was dining with our parents because he had a question for me. “Do you remember the name of the French restaurant in La Jolla where they would not serve me Cherries Jubilee for dessert  because I was underage?”

We laughed and chatted for a while and all I could come up with was Chez something. Fortified by a double espresso this morning I began to think about that meal and the wonderful times we have had as a family dining out, traveling, and learning about art, history, culture, and food. 
My first thought was to check in our collection of matchboxes from our travels over the years. I vaguely remembered a picture of the Eiffel tower on the matchbox and maybe the menu. It was the early 1970’s so likely there was a hand drawn feel to the menu and signage. I was studying French in Junior High and my brother was learning it in High School so we had few problems with the menu that night. We had visited Paris with my parents when we were younger, so we had an appreciation for French cuisine. Around that time I was painting my first oil paintings with a definite nod to Cezanne, Monet, and Renoir. 



Gregg Chadwick
Pink Chair
30”x20”oil on canvas 1972 
(The artist was 12 years old)

It was Kent’s birthday and the meal was great fun. I started with an order of escargots. That I do remember. The waiter asked if we would like some as it was a house speciality. The look on his face when I said, sure I would like an order of snails was priceless. “Bon choix” he said. 
They were delicious with just the right amount of garlic. It was fun using the two pronged fork to pull the snails from the shell. 


Eugéne Manet
Sketches of Snails, Flowering Plant
1864/68
Watercolor over graphite pencil on cream laid paper; 198 × 126 mm
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Robert Allerton, 1923.1057


I would often order fish as a main course so I most likely had the sand dabs. How do I know? Well, I discovered a menu for sale online while taking up my gorgeous and brilliant professor wife’s suggestion that I search for French Restaurants in La Jolla during the 1970s. First I found an article in the La Jolla Light with reminiscences from food writer Leslie James - "I can still taste the buttery, garlicky escargots at Chez Françoise.”  This looked promising, Chez Françoise could have been my brother’s birthday restaurant. The chef at that time was Pierre Lustrat. 



Chef Pierre Lustrat


An article in the San Diego Reader describes that "when La Jolla's Chez Françoise needed a chef, Pierre Lustrat jumped at the chance, taking charge of the kitchen from 1972 until 1975. While he executed the menu to everyone’s satisfaction, he longed to buy the place and to prepare his own dishes, in his own way, with the skill and imagination that his years of training had brought him.

When he finally claimed the restaurant as his own, he renamed it L’Escargot (the snail), redecorated it, and — most important — revamped the menu.

'When people first came here, they ordered escargot always the same way — with garlic and butter. Well, I thought up four or five ways to serve them, including en croute (in pastry dough).’”



After reading about Pierre Lustrat’s life as a chef, I pulled up images from the Chez Françoise menu from the 1970s. Pink paper. Hand drawn text with a quote from Chef Pierre - “ La bonne cuisine a besoin du temps et patience. Si vous l’avez, vous pourrez savourer un bon repas.” 
In English - "Fine cuisine requires time and patience. If you have it, you can then enjoy a good meal.” Our family had time and patience that evening as we dined. My Dad would have ordered the onion soup for his main course and Kent had the special which he remembers as Beef Wellington. Interestingly, Beef Wellington (named after the Napoleonic Era English Duke of Wellington who enjoyed the dish two or thee times a week if stories are to be believed) or Filet de Bœuf en Croute, is still served in French restaurants around the globe despite the Duke of Wellington’s devastating defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. At dinner that night because my father was a career military officer and the rest of us were history buffs, we would have discussed Napoleon’s final battle while referencing our memories of the battle charts laid out in my dad’s A Military History & Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars by Vincent Esposito and John Elting at home in his library. The National Army Museum in the UK describes the final moments of the battle:

"Defeat of the Imperial Guard
At about 7pm, in a last bid for victory, Napoleon released his finest troops, the Imperial Guard. They marched up the ridge between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, but had chosen to attack where Wellington was strongest. Under a withering fire from British guardsmen and light infantry, the Imperial Guard halted, wavered, and finally broke.
Their defeat sent the rest of the French into panic and eventually retreat. This continued all night, with the French harried by the Prussian cavalry. Napoleon lost nearly 40,000 men killed, wounded or captured. The Allies suffered 22,000 casualties.
Napoleon was defeated. He spoke of fighting on, but was forced to abdicate when the Allies entered Paris on 7 July. He spent the rest of his life in exile on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic.”

My Dad and Mom had visited the battlefield at Waterloo when they lived in Paris during their Julia Child years after the Korean War. I was taking a photography class at La Paz Junior High in Mission Viejo at the time of our outing to the French restaurant in La Jolla and I was actively printing my Dad’s old negatives including the monument at Waterloo. I can still smell the photo chemicals and see the glow of the red safe light  in my memory. 







The Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, 1815
‘My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.’
Duke of Wellington, 1815
Lithograph after 'Wellington at Waterloo' by Robert Alexander Hillingford, 1815 
National Army Museum, Study collection



Manet’s Still Life With Brioche
photo by Gregg Chadwick


As the night moved on that evening in La Jolla we talked about the future. Kent would soon finish High School and leave for college. Where? 
He wasn't sure yet. The mystery of our lives had just begun with many new chapters to fill. Our main courses were finished. The plates would be cleared. And then the menus reappeared like magic for a discussion about dessert. My Mom would have Mousse au Chocolat and my Dad would have his traditional Crème Caramel." "Brulèe please” my Dad would ask and then add - “Almost burnt.” “D’accord”, said the waiter. Perhaps, I had a lemon tart. I don’t remember because I soon was going to watch my brother’s birthday triumph reach a culinary Waterloo. "I will have the Cerises Jubilé, s'il vous plait”, said Kent. “Non. Monsieur - you will not” said the waiter firmly. We were all perplexed. Were they out of cherries? 




No, the dish was made in a traditional style at the table with flaming brandy. And my brother was too young to drink. But the alcohol burns off someone protested. No monsieur, you are still too young for some things the waiter seemed to say. We all were young then. The news of Watergate was just breaking and the Vietnam War was ending. I was reading film director Jean Renoir’s biography of his artist father Paul Renoir at that time and my Dad would ask me why I enjoyed the paintings of Renoir so much. The answer was easy - though I didn’t know it yet. Renoir’s joy of being alive appealed to me. 
Renoir often painted the simple pleasures of modern life in a way that spoke to me. In paint Renoir captured the beauty of sharing a meal with family and friends. Soon we would move back to the East Coast and I would stand in front of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. 
Kent would be off to college at UC Davis.

L'Affaire Cerises Jubilé would remain in our memories. Today looking at the old menu from Chez Françoise I found under Desserts proof that this was my brother’s birthday restaurant: And there it was - Cerises Jubilees (pour deux) - Cherries Jubilee for two 
Next time we visit with Kent and his wife Cathy at my parent’s house, we need to make things right for Kent. We will light the brandy on fire and make Cherries Jubilee in style.  


Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC
photo by Gregg Chadwick









JULIA CHILD’S CHERRIES JUBILEE

Here are Julia Child‘s directions for Cherries Jubilee:

Drain the cherries (save the juice), and toss in a bowl with the lemon rind, sugar, cinnamon, and kirsch or cognac; let steep until needed.

[At serving time]

Blend a tablespoon of arrowroot or cornstarch in a bowl with the cherry marinating juices, then beat in a few tablespoons of canned cherry juice. Pour into chafing-dish pan and stir over heat until thickened, adding more cherry juice if needed. Before entering dining room, stir in cherries and heat thoroughly. To flame, set over chafing-dish flame, sprinkle with 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, and add ½ cup (125 ml) cognac. Heat, then set afire with a lighted match. Spoon up the flaming mixture until blaze dies down; serve over vanilla ice cream.” [1]

Sunday, July 31, 2022

Paint & Pitchfork: Illustrating Blackness | The New Yorker Documentary


Must Watch - Paint & Pitchfork: Illustrating Blackness | The New Yorker Documentary

In a documentary by Christine Turner, the painters behind the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama share their thoughts on the portrayal of Black bodies on canvas.

Shirley Ngozi Nwangwa in the New Yorker describes the genesis of the film:
"When the filmmaker Christine Turner got a call from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (lacma) asking whether she’d be willing to make a film about the painters Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, she didn’t hesitate to say yes. She’d followed the work of both artists for several years, once even going to see Sherald’s work in New York while nine months pregnant. And she knew that the only way to showcase Wiley and Sherald in all their glory, she told me, was to “give them the same reverence, dignity, and respect” that they grant their own sitters. The final product, “Paint & Pitchfork,” explores the unfinished legacies of two Black cultural icons, and how in painting themselves, their subjects, and their people into the art-historical record they attempt to rectify the social and cultural absence of, as Wiley says, in the film 'people who happen to look like me.'"




Thursday, July 21, 2022

07/21/22 Select Committee Hearing

Congrats Steph!

Saturday, July 02, 2022

LBJ signed monumental Civil Rights Act, today 1964



Gregg Chadwick
UCLA School of Nursing Dean Hassenplug Meets President Johnson, 1964
36”x36” oil on linen 2019
UCLA School of Nursing Collection

 

Friday, July 01, 2022

"Something In The Night" - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 7/5/2012


From the City of Lights - Paris 


Gregg Chadwick
Pigalle - City of Lights
48"x36"oil on linen 2015
Kavich Reynolds Productions Collection, Los Angeles, California 


Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Remembering Stonewall




"The Battle of #Stonewall - 1969" 
by Sandow Birk 1999 Oil on Canvas, 96" x 120"
Collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️
http://sandowbirk.com/stonewall 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️



Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07]


"Car-dependent suburbia is subsidized by productive urban places. That's why American cities are broke. But how bad is it, and who is subsidizing who? Watch the rest of the Strong Towns series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... Urban3 is a consulting company that helps cities better understand the economic impact of development. They have worked with many American cities to better understand and visualize the costs of development, and uncover which properties are productive, and which are not. Some municipalities have been willing to share that information, and it has provided a fascinating glimpse into the financial problems caused by sprawling car-centric suburban development. https://www.urbanthree.com/ This video explores some of the cities analyzed by Urban3, and provides some lessons that cities should learn about how to build Strong Towns." Watch this video ad-free on Nebula here: https://nebula.app/videos/notjustbike...

06/28/22 Select Committee Hearing

Monday, June 27, 2022

Olivia Rodrigo - F*** You (feat. Lily Allen) (Glastonbury 2022)


At Glastonbury Olivia Rodrigo brought Lily Allen onstage and spoke out against Friday's horrendous US Supreme Court ruling:

"I'm devastated and terrified that so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this. I wanted to dedicate this next song to the five members of the Supreme Court who have showed us that at the end of the day, they truly don't give a s*** about freedom."

Rodrigo then went on to name the five justices who ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, with Chief Justice John Roberts filing a concurring opinion. 

"This song goes out to the justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh," Olivia Rodrigo said as the crowd roared. "We hate you."






Monday, June 06, 2022

Coldplay & Bruce Springsteen (Dancing In The Dark) - MetLife Stadium 6/5

Thursday, June 02, 2022

Darkness on the Edge of Town - 44 Years Down the Road

 by Gregg Chadwick

44 years ago today, Bruce Springsteen's fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town was released. The wide open romanticism of Born to Run was missing from this new album. Instead we were greeted with a powerful mix of Steinbeck, Hopper, Woody Guthrie, and Springsteen's unleashed guitar. Bruce's new guitar sound was both lyrical and powerful. I put that sound into my artistic toolbox and pull it out when I need to. In the opening track Badlands, Springsteen howls that "It ain't no sin to be glad your alive." I've held on to that line as a call to action ever since. 


Gregg Chadwick
Love In Vain (Castro - San Francisco)
16"x20"oil on linen 2016

I had just finished my freshman year at UCLA and  this was my first summer on the Monterey Bay in central California. The pace of life was so much slower than Los Angeles or Washington DC and I found time for study and reflection in the hours after my temp job finished. I would go for a run through Point Lobos after work to clear my head and then would sit with East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath until the sun went down. I would paint late into the night trying to get these new inspirations onto canvas. I had a lot to learn but I was dogged and I let my failures lead me onto new paths. 


Gregg Chadwick
This Machine Kills Fascists - Woody Guthrie
14"x11"oil on linen 2012
Peter Himmelman Collection, Los Angeles


The highways around Monterey were wide open in the late 1970's. Like a character in a Springsteen song I would drive to find out where I was going. Images that still need to be painted flooded in:

Early morning light on farm workers in the fields outside Salinas.
The crumbling docks of Cannery Row seemingly melting in the sea air.
Rows of US soldiers waiting their turn on the target line at Fort Ord.
The seaside chimera of Santa Cruz glowing in the morning fog.



Gregg Chadwick
The Opal's Rim (Point Lobos)
72"x48"oil on linen 1997
Private Collection, Los Angeles


On July 1, 1978, I took Highway 101 up from the Monterey Bay to Berkeley. I met my brother and his future wife Cathy at the edge of the UC campus and we wandered until we found the Berkeley Community Theater. Throughout my high school years in the suburbs of DC, my older brother Kent was studying at UC Davis and I cherished the moments we had together. Each time we reunited seemed like an epiphany. We talked and argued about life, art, politics, poetry, spirituality and music. We had seen a few concerts together on the east coast starting with a J Geils gig in Asbury Park. But neither one of us had seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play live. Until that night in Berkeley. 





The concert was a revelation, almost a rock n' roll revival. But there was also an undercurrent of pain and empathy like the Darkness album itself. Springsteen's 1978 guitar improvisation opening to Prove It All Night got us all out of our seats. 


Two songs stood out for me that night. The first was Springsteen's haunting, solo piano version of The Promise which became a sound that I tried to get into my paintings from that day forward. 


The second was Bruce and the E Street Band's electrifying version of Because the Night


I knew that Springsteen had penned Because the Night and then given the not quite finished work to Patti Smith to complete and record. I took that song on as my romantic talisman. Somewhere down the line I knew I would find a partner who would feel the passion from those haunting lines and that searing music just as I did. My wife, MarySue, and I found each other in 2003 and  our friend, the singer/songwriter Kelly Colbert performed a scorchingly hot version of Because the Night at our wedding on 7/7/07.


MarySue and Gregg at Their Wedding  7/7/07
photo by Sabine Pearlman



My artistic landscape was growing in the Summer of 1978 and Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town provided a soundtrack for the film of my life. And most importantly Darkness inspired me to find the stories that I wanted to tell in my art and life. 



Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Happy Birthday Walt Whitman

 by Gregg Chadwick


Gregg Chadwick
The Wound-Dresser
(Walt Whitman, Washington D.C., US Civil War, 1865)

30” X 24” oil on linen 2011

"The eyes transcend the medium."-R.B. Morris (Poet, Musician, Songwriter)   



Walt Whitman's poetry is a continual source of inspiration for me. Whitman's life story is also deeply moving. In December 1862 Walt Whitman saw the name of his brother George, a Union soldier in the 51st New York Infantry, listed among the wounded from the battle of Fredericksburg. Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the Washington D.C. area to search the hospitals and encampments for his brother. During this time Walt Whitman gave witness to the wounds of warfare by listening gently to the injured soldiers as they told their tales of battle.  Whitman often spent time with soldiers recovering from their injuries in the Patent Office Building (now home to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum), which had been converted into a hospital for much of the Civil War. Walt Whitman's experiences in Washington deeply affected his life and work and informed the core of his writing. 

Robert Roper's Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War is an indispensible account of Whitman's time in Washington during the war.  Roper's book examines the Civil War through the experiences of Walt Whitman and provides new findings on the care of wounded soldiers both on the battlefield and in large hospitals in the capital and its environs. Roper also focuses on Whitman's emotional relationships with the  wounded troops he nursed. Walt Whitman journeyed from New York to find his wounded brother George and in the process Walt became a brother to thousands of wounded comrades. Whitman's volunteer work as a nurse during the Civil War is a story that needs to be told in all mediums.



Video by Kenneth Chadwick


The Wound Dresser
by Walt Whitman


An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,
(Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,
But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;)
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass’d heroes (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,
Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls,
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust,
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge,
Enter the captur’d works—yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade,
Pass and are gone they fade—I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys
(Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content).

But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors (while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart).

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.

I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The crush’d head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away),
The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine,
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard
(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly).

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side-falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,
But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,
And the yellow-blue countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.

I am faithful, I do not give out,
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame).

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips).


Below is a rich description from Walt Whitman's Diaries that captures his experience as a nurse:

"DURING those three years in hospital, camp or field, I made over six hundred visits or tours, and went, as I estimate, counting all, among from eighty thousand to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick, as sustainer of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need. These visits varied from an hour or two, to all day or night; for with dear or critical cases I generally watch’d all night. Sometimes I took up my quarters in the hospital, and slept or watch’d there several nights in succession. Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights) and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I comprehended all, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none. It arous’d and brought out and decided undream’d-of depths of emotion. It has given me my most fervent views of the true ensemble and extent of the States. While I was with wounded and sick in thousands of cases from the New England States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all the Western States, I was with more or less from all the States, North and South, without exception. I was with many from the border States, especially from Maryland and Virginia, and found, during those lurid years 1862–63, far more Union southerners, especially Tennesseans, than is supposed. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded, and gave them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as any. I was among the army teamsters considerably, and, indeed, always found myself drawn to them. Among the black soldiers, wounded or sick, and in the contraband camps, I also took my way whenever in their neighborhood, and did what I could for them."


More on Walt Whitman during the Civil War at:
Whitman's Drum Taps and
Washington's Civil War Hospitals



More on RB Morris at:
RB Morris.com

Note: Post is a lightly updated version of my May 31, 2012 essay on Walt Whitman. 


Monday, May 30, 2022

On Memorial Day The Past Is Present | Carrie Mae Weems and the 54th Regiment


In honor of #MemorialDay, artist Carrie Mae Weems () and Carl J. Cruz, descendant of the first Black soldier to win the Medal of Honor, reflect on the connections between The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and ongoing struggles today.

Battle Of The Brush: Walter Sickert Vs John Singer Sargent With Waldemar Januszczak


In this video Waldemar Januszczak presents this battle between two of the early 20th Century's best-loved painter, Walter Sickert & John Singer Sargent. The film focuses on some of the most beautiful and alarming paintings ever made in the UK; evokes the long-lost atmosphere of Edwardian London; and above all, shows that these two immigrants were waging a war over nothing less than the future soul of British art.

Thursday, May 26, 2022

Jimmy Kimmel on Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas


Jimmy responds to the tragic school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and talks about 89% of Americans wanting background checks, our cowardly leaders listening to the NRA instead of the people they actually represent, firearms becoming the #1 leading cause of death for American children and teens, Ted Cruz speaking at an NRA event this weekend, the 27 school shootings so far this year in America, and making sure that lawmakers do something about common-sense gun laws. If you can, please support Everytown in their fight against gun violence. https://www.everytown.org/



 

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

"Ohio" as performed by the Kent State University Chorale


In remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the events of May 4, 1970, and the release of the song, "Ohio:, the Kent State University Chorale performs a very special acapella version of "Ohio." this version was requested by, and approved by Neil Young.

Monday, May 09, 2022

Happy Birthday Robert Johnson

Friday, May 06, 2022

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents Virtual Opening


From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Join Stephanie Herdrich, Associate Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, and Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge—both of the American Wing—for a virtual tour of "Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents." This ambitious survey reconsiders Homer’s work through the lens of conflict, a theme that crosses his prolific career. A persistent fascination with struggle permeates his art—from emblematic images of the Civil War and Reconstruction that examine the effects of the conflict on the landscape, soldiers, and formerly enslaved to dramatic scenes of rescue and hunting as well as monumental seascapes and dazzling tropical works painted throughout the Atlantic world. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Homer’s iconic "The Gulf Stream" (The Met), a painting that reveals his lifelong engagement with charged subjects of race and the environment. Featuring 88 oils and watercolors, "Crosscurrents" represents the largest critical overview of Homer’s art and life in more than a quarter of a century. The exhibition is made possible by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. Corporate sponsorship is provided by Bank of America. Additional support is provided by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, White & Case LLP, the Enterprise Holdings Endowment, and Ann M. Spruill and Daniel H. Cantwell. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. It is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Gallery, London. The catalogue is made possible by the William Cullen Bryant Fellows of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additional support is provided by the Wyeth Foundation

Sunday, May 01, 2022

Invest in art AND health at the 43rd annual Venice Family Clinic Art Walk & Auction!

 



🚨 Bidding Time!🚨 There are just hours left to bid on 200+ artworks and support @VeniceFamClinic s mission to provide vital health care services to people in need. Don't Delay—the auction closes at 6 p.m. today! ⏰
Place your bid now: http://artsy.net/veniceartwalk.