art history – The Trops

Memento Mori

Antonio de Pereda, El Sueño Del Caballero (The Gentleman’s Dream), c. 1650

On the banner: Aeterne pungit, cito volat et occidit “Eternally it stings, swiftly it flies and it kills”

Memento Mori, the latin phrase meaning “reminder of death”, began to occur in medieval art as a visual manifestation of the ephemeral nature of life. While the concept can be traced back to the ancient, it became popular in art with the rise of christianity and its philosophy that life is fleeting, earthly desires are distraction and the salvation of the afterlife is eternal. Past the renaissance and as time went on, memento mori became more secular, and refers generally to the brevity of life and the importance of the present moment.

Typically symbolized by skeletons, candles, hourglasses, decaying objects like wilting flowers or rotting fruit, this imagery represents the passage of time and the certainty of death. These motifs can be noticed in anything across contemporary visual media, such as film or fashion, but were originally embodied in small objects like prayer beads or jewelry, as well as sculpture or painting. In the 16th century, Dutch painters began the production of Vanitas paintings; allegorical still lifes of a collection of symbolic objects indicating morality, often relating to piety and memento mori.

The memento mori challenges the viewer to look closely, to hold the image in their mind without immediately reacting to what may be an unsettling visual. To reflect on the art, the viewer’s own life and ultimate death.

Pieter Claesz, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, 1628, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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art history

“The Blue Period”

art history / Alexandra Kosloski

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901, The Phillips Collection

Pablo Picasso’s “Blue Period” refers to the paintings the artist made in his early twenties, following the suicide of his friend, the painter and poet Carles Casagames. The deep blue color palette, and austere subject matter that characterizes this period reflects the artist’s psychological unwellness. In the years of this period, from 1901-1904, the themes of poverty, death, loneliness and portraits of society’s outcasts were considered grotesque, and were very unpopular at the time.

Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903-1904, The Art Institute Chicago

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art history

How To Look At Art: Formal Elements

Editorial / Alexandra Kosloski

Utagawa Hiroshige, Autumn Moon on the Tama River, Japanese, ca. 1838, via The Met

Diving deeper into the art, Alexandra Kosloski uses design principles to unpack the language within visual compositions in the “How to Look at Art” series.

Continued from Part 1

Part 1

Moving past the basics of visual analysis, we can look into the work for the formal elements and the principles of design. The formal elements of art are basic terms we use to communicate visually; line, light, color, shape, pattern, space, and time.

Line

Linear marks made by artistic mediums like paint or pencil are actual lines. Implied lines are not made physically but still can make up the composition– dotted lines that don’t connect, the horizon in a landscape, the pointed hand on the outstretched arm of a figure.

Carmen Herrera, Untitled Estructura (Black), 1966/2016 © Carmen Herrera; Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Notice the vertical actual lines and jagged, horizontal implied line in Herrera’s work.

The direction of lines can indicate meaning. Viewers can draw from their own real world experience. Horizontal lines, like a sleeping body, could indicate rest, peace, or inactivity. Vertical lines may suggest aspirational reaching or standing at attention. Diagonal lines would suggest action, like all the diagonal lines of a runner. Curving lines may suggest movement, or the organic lines of nature. Line quality– if a line is thick or thin, or sketchy or bold– can also convey meaning.

Ogata Korin, Rough Waves, ca. 1704-9, Courtesy Met Museum

“Rough Waves” strives to capture the amorphous tide in ink.

Light and Value

Art may utilize natural and artificial light, like in sculpture or architecture. In 2D art, artists use value to represent shades of light and dark. Artists manipulate light to create form by mimicking shadows and plasticity in 3D objects. Value can also portray emotion. For example, high contrast visuals look dramatic.

Sante D’Orazio, White Beluga Whale at Coney Island Aquarium, 1975

The harsh contrast between light and dark brings intensity to the mood of the photo.

Color

Color consists of three properties. Hue– the state of a color, like red or blue; value– lightness or darkness within a hue; and intensity– the dullness or saturation of a hue. Color can be warm or cool, which affects the viewer’s experience. There is a lot to learn about color theory because color is so subjective. It interacts with its environment and the colors around it, and can be very complex. Color is also largely symbolic, like the colors of a nation’s flag, or red being the color of passion.

The interaction between the colors causes our eye to see them differently.

Texture and Pattern

Texture can be tactile or visual. A marble sculpture of a figure would be physically smooth to the touch, but visually, the artist might represent soft flesh or sinuous muscle. Texture and pattern are related, as pattern may be perceived as texture and vice versa. Pattern is an arrangement of repeated form, and they can be natural, like in leaves and flowers, or geometric, with mathematical shapes and lines.

Egyptian, Leaf Pendant, ca. 1390–1352 B.C., Courtesy Met Museum

The pattern is meant to mimic the appearance of a natural leaf and add texture.

Shapes

Regular shapes are often geometric and identifiable like triangles and squares. Irregular shapes are organic and spontaneous, like a patch of light or a mark made by a paintbrush.

James Turrell, Meeting, 1980-86/2016, at MoMA PS1, Copyright Hugh Pearman

The shapes create the space of the architecture around the viewer.

Space

Artists can portray space in 2D art by employing one of many illusory techniques, like by manipulating vale or scale. A complex technique is by taking advantage of perspective. There are a few methods of perspective, but generally, the artist considers the natural experience of a viewpoint and tries to mimic it– or, as popularized by the cubist movement– defy it.

Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-6, Courtesy Met Museum

The blue mountain seems far away, past the houses.

Time and Motion

Time and motion functions differently across mediums. As we view sculpture, we observe several viewpoints as we move through or around it. Painting and drawing can have an illusion of motion through mark making. Film, dance, and other performance depend on time and motion.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622-1625, Photo by Daniel Kelly

“Apollo and Daphne” seems to have a sequence of motion as the viewer moves around the sculpture.

Next, we activate the formal elements by understanding how they make up design principles.

Continue to Part 3

Part 3

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Editorial

An Interview with David Aaron Greenberg (Part 2)

Interview / Alexandra Kosloski

Photo by Daniel Wolfskehl

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist who uses multiple modes of expression. His work has been exhibited in various New York City galleries and is in the permanent collection at Stanford University. His critical writing has appeared in Parkett, The Fader, Art in America and Whitehot Magazine. Along with producer David Sisko, he co-founded Disco Pusher, a New York City songwriting and recording duo. Greenberg graduated from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in New Jersey and sometimes New York City.

In part 2 of their 3 part interview, David Aaron Greenberg talks about his memories with his idols and his current endeavors.

Continued from Part 1

Part 1

AK: Is being an artist how you thought it would be?

David Aaron Greenberg: That’s a wild question. Like, “I’m going to grow up someday and be an artist”?

AK: Yeah. Did you have that?

David Aaron Greenberg: I had a strange notion of being a rock star, which I was immediately disillusioned with when I started meeting actual rock stars, and realizing how difficult it is. And then I deliberately did not want to be a rock star.

I think the man who put it over the top for me was Joe Strummer, of all the rock stars I’ve met– and I’ve met Lou Reed, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Iggy Pop. Some of these people I had relationships and friendships with. I shared a manager with Iggy, this great guy, Art Collins. And then others like Lou Reed hated me. And I never did anything bad to him. In fact, I tried to be nice to him. Maybe that was my problem. I was talking to his wife, Laurie Anderson, who I adore. She’s so sweet. I used to do meditation practice with her. I don’t know why Lou just didn’t like me. I didn’t hold it against him. I still respected him as a songwriter.

David Aaron Greenberg & Daniel Carter Performance at Eroica Variations

Photo by David Sisko

But the last thing he said to me, I was talking to Laurie in Christie’s during the opening of Allen Ginsberg’s estate sale, and John Ashbery read a poem. It was like a poetry reading. And Allen’s older brother was there and I was talking to him. The cool thing about Allen and me is that his family was very accepting of me. So Eugene, his brother, said, “I feel like I’m at a garage sale right now”. It seemed like a garage sale, but it was at Christie’s. It was very weird. So anyway, I was talking to Laurie about how weird it was and how I just saw a T-shirt that actually was mine. I would do Allen’s laundry and our laundry would be mixed, and I just never took it. And there it was, behind glass. You could bid on it. And I’m like, “Oh, well, I guess I’m not getting that back”. I think I was telling Laurie, there’s my T-shirt, and Lou comes up and goes, “Yo, do you have a cigarette?” And I said, “I don’t smoke.” and he says, “What good are you?”. So that’s the last thing he ever said to me. “What good are you?” He never liked me from the beginning. Consistent, I must say.

The first time that he ever interacted with me was when Laurie was performing with Philip Glass and Allen. Lou sat next to me the whole night and didn’t talk to me, which is fine. We were watching the show. And then at the end I was starving. But Allen kept saying “There’s going to be a dinner afterwards, so save your appetite”. So we’re standing, getting a cab, and Lou’s standing there off to the side and they’re talking. So Allen comes to me, he’s like, “Here, take my harmonium in my bag. There’s miso soup and brown rice in the icebox.” Hello? What about dinner? He said “I’m giving Lou your ticket”. I’m like, okay. I said goodbye to Allen, we kissed. And then I went to say bye to Lou, and he just turned. And I was like, “Motherfucker, I worship you”. I learned how to play guitar by listening to Bob Dylan, and then I learned how to rock out by listening to Lou Reed. Lou was a dick, and I have friends of mine, some of them no longer with us who adored him. There must have been some good in him. I just didn’t happen to ever see it personally.

AK: That was a great story, mostly because I’m interested in knowing what Allen Ginsberg used to eat.

David Aaron Greenberg: Okay, so, this is how I know that Allen cared about me. He left a note– when I was out– that said, “There’s miso soup on the stove without seaweed”, because he knew I hated seaweed. He loved seaweed and I hated seaweed. He made it without, with me in mind. That’s an act of love.

AK: That is an act of love. Food is really a manifestation of love.

David Aaron Greenberg: Right? He underlined “without seaweed”.

AK: Looking at your work, I would guess that the body and the likeness of the body is not the objective. You have such an expressive style, I imagine that you’re trying to get some kind of essence or energy from them

David Aaron Greenberg: You said it better than I do. You just nailed me right there. Yeah. Exactly.

AK: So what are you working on lately?

David Aaron Greenberg

2023

Featured in Eroica Variations

David Aaron Greenberg: Recently I’m working on an interesting– conceptually, it’s interesting because it’s a portrait of Fulano Librizzi, and I’ve been drawing or painting Fulano Librizzi since he was a sonogram. I think the first portrait I did, I couldn’t really get to him until he was maybe four. And even then, he was highly suspect of me at age four. He had good instincts, he knew to keep his distance from me at four. I couldn’t handle him at four. I had to wait. When he was around eight, I think I got a good likeness of him. So, I’m working on a portrait of him called Fulano and Fam, with his mother and father behind him. But that’s taken me forever and ever. Because first of all, he keeps changing, he keeps getting taller. And it’s impossible to keep up with him at this point. I think I have to wait till the last growth spurt. He’ll be 20. Will you please stop growing and changing? So, it’s a conceptual thing.

AK: And you’re featured in The Trops exhibition, Eroica Variations. You have three or four paintings in the show?

David Aaron Greenberg: There’s four because there’s one in the bathroom. Everyone forgets the bathroom painting. The bathroom works really well. I would prefer if someone bought it, that they put it in the bathroom.

Continue to Part 3

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Interview

How To Buy Art

Editorial / Nemo Librizzi

Terracotta rim fragment of a kylix, 460-450 BCECourtesy of the Met Museum

“I seek not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.”

-Walt Whitman

This may be the smartest advice on art investment you will ever read, and yet there will be no proofs, charts or diagrams. It is extracted from a full life’s experience, itself built on my father’s life’s experience, the wisdom of which he shared readily with anyone who would listen, but especially with me. It’s about collecting art from a love of art and not in order to make money. And while I can’t promise you will make money this way, as that is not the stated intention, I also can’t see how you would fail. Yet in the end, perhaps the greatest rewards are entirely impractical, utterly ineffable, and most enriching. If energy of work and bright ideas are represented by money, the energy of inspired genius and all the best of the human spirit is represented by art, so to trade the former for the latter, we are always getting the best deal.

Maffet Ledger, 1874-81, Courtesy of the Met Museum

I hate to sound like a paradoxical fortune cookie so it’s best to draw from life experience examples. When I was a teenager I thought I was smart. So smart that I knew Picasso sucked, and that anybody who liked Picasso was stupid or brainwashed. Then my father was the middle man on a big Picasso deal and an important Picasso hung in our living room, replacing a particularly joyous Miro I loved seeing daily in passing. Now, this Picasso was so expensive that it was a special kind of ugly. That stripped down Madrid palette: black, white, gray and shitty ochre. Plus all the bells and whistles of distorted facial features. A travesty. I complained when it went up, passed it with a shudder and couldn’t wait for it to be sold, so we could reinstate the Miro, and probably fly to Europe for a celebration of the big sale as was our wont.

After a night of drinking I reclined on the sofa still swaddled in my blanket, eating a bowl of cereal and watching rap videos on MTV. I looked over at the horrible Picasso, back at Public Enemy… and then back at the Picasso. Something happened. A light went on. I can’t explain what occurred psychologically but probably something like a million brain synapses firing at once, and from that point on I could stand toe to toe with John Richardson and debate Picasso. And he was every bit as topical to date as my favorite rappers. I saw.

William Michael Harnett, The Artist’s Letter Rack , 1879, Courtesy of the Met Museum

I was a graffiti artist on the subway scene. Whenever the big guys in this underground movement had an exhibit above ground, Futura, Dondi, Rammellzee or Lee Quinones, everybody in the civilized world showed up. So as a card carrying member of this closed society, I thought of all the zillionaires and movie stars as mere hangers on. But then there came a wave of artists in their own right, very interesting ones, who brought a new kind of synergy to this popular avant garde. Luminaries like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Richard Hambleton, Martin Wong, and David Wojnarowicz. This new wave of innovation was not driven by marketing or PR but– to use Robert Faris Thompson’s specialty term– because it was “cool”.

When Fun Gallery showed Basquiat we all went to the opening. Hands down one of the coolest guys downtown. Neck and neck with Rammellzee. The paintings that still smelled of fresh oil stick were $1,200 or maybe just an even grand. And Dad and I were in that group of New Yorker insiders, with money to spend, yet none of us, nobody… bought one.

Strangely, nowadays collectors only want to buy a Basquiat. It’s seen as safe, as blue chip. A (cringe) status symbol. I even meet people who want to make a million dollars SO they can buy a Basquiat. To buy and live with a Basquiat absolutely has value today, such as if one bought a Picasso or DeKooning, the investment should appreciate, and the art will radiate its riches. But clearly the best time to buy was at that Fun Gallery show. When the work was new, the ideas were raw, the artist was alive, young and hungry, living dangerously and needed the sale. Again, nobody bought one.Basquiat, in the arc of his mayfly short life, enjoyed success. However, we continually fail to recognize and support young artists, specifically, and art as a whole when we are not there to applaud a genius on their debut on the world stage.

Excluding most of the artists present at the Fun Gallery opening, everyone in that room could have afforded a Basquiat or ten, would have helped the world to be a more beautiful place, and oh my– was there a dollar to be made. But even the rich never seem to be rich enough to invest in art where it counts, in that unpredictable liminal phase, where the work is exciting and not yet market proven.

Pere Oller, Mourner, ca. 1417 , Courtesy of the Met Museum

It takes a hero, like that great collector couple. I forget their names, but I watched the documentary- the husband drove a taxi for a living. They loved art and went to all the openings together. They would fall in love with a picture, say a Rauschenberg, and tell the gallery they would pay it off little by little, from paltry wages. In this humble way this enchanted couple cobbled together a world class collection and became fabulously wealthy, but most importantly, lived surrounded by the powerful magnetic field of their passions.

My father left a stint in the military to hang around the Abstract Expressionists, Beat Poets and Be-Bop musicians, and caught the tail end of all that. He was a teenager working in an art supply store when he met Warhol, who was then still in advertising. Andy asked Pops to take a freshly minted soup can for a walk up Madison Avenue to see what he could get for them. It’s mentioned in the diaries later that “Rick Librizzi [dad] sells my prints too cheap”. And dad was never all about the money, but later I think it did affect him when we sat at Christie’s watching works he sold at 30 or 50K skyrocket to Lotto jackpot figures. Either that or his seat was very uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, he rationalized it, recalling that was the year we rented the suite at the Negresco with the sea view like Matisse. After all, Pops was born dirt poor and believed you could never make every dollar, but had to get some life lived while you had the chance. Maybe I’m wandering off topic a bit, but staying rooted in experience is the best way to show, not tell, the many ways collecting art enhances our human experience. And to invest means not just our money, but our energy, power to believe, and generosity in humble open mindedness, so that even dressed in rags we know an angel when we see one.

When I lived with my dad it was only a matter of time before calls came in from museums requesting the loan of some painting he had paid, literally, fifty dollars for, so when I came of age, I made it a point to collect every notable talent at the moment they emerged from the woodshed. True, some artists materialize on the scene, to be lauded as the toast of the town for a season, only to be damned to obscurity afresh by autumn. And if intrinsic value is anything, qualitatively some of my favorite works come from fringe names that may be lost forever to time, like some anonymous Egyptian or Greek hand. But with every crop of promising talents there is generally one, sometimes two, or in a blessed vintage three who keep at it, and keep striking that sweet spot of relevance until they become household names. This is when your head and heart can agree that your time and energy was well spent. The rise of the one artist who establishes a market pays for the lot of investments, and perhaps your own celebratory tour of European capitals on payday.

Nesting Bowl, 460-450 BCE, Courtesy of the Met Museum

Along with the dilettante who brags about a sound investment in secondary market stock, is the novice Art Historian who can downplay Picasso’s importance, perhaps citing some of his horrible personality traits, chats to be enjoyed while waiting in line for a table at the latest celebrity chef eatery, drawn in by glowing reviews heard on a television program. An entire art-world whose stance is anti-innovation, or even anti-Art. Art as a luxury item. But to venture out as a pioneer on the still-cooling volcanic horizons of a new landscape forged by a visionary avant-garde, that is where real thrills are to be had, together with risks.

When Dad was collecting East Village artists and supporting the graffiti movement, Richard Hambleton rose from anonymity, painting his menacing shadow man figures on the abandoned streets to an “overnight” art stardom bypassing the entry level investment phase favored by my father. Dad would buy cheap and sell dear as a rule, but from a distance treasured what Hambleton had contributed to the tradition. Pollock had abandoned representation for the sake of the vital gesture, and then turned around abruptly to shock and offend the art public by returning to the figure. Critic and collector felt betrayed by the ex-abstractionist, and he by them. Hambleton, according to my father, came along to push this lost cause to a solution, applying the Ab-Ex dynamic to all-American classic subject matter.

Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne, Grimace, 1854, Courtesy of the Met Museum

Yet a decade later, Richard would approach my father in the park, humbly asking if he might be interested in buying an ass-kicking rodeo painting tied to the back of his old bicycle. By then Hambleton had tumbled from the ivory tower of bohemian royalty, and thus began a friendship that doubled as a symbiotic business partnership. Dad bought as many paintings as he had room for, and sold off the others to friends and collectors. And at some point my own friendship with Richard blossomed into a business alliance. I bought as many as I could hang on my walls, and visited his studio with fashion models, and pot dealers, and anyone I might encounter with means to acquire something beautiful, and with inherent value well beyond the asking price. Everyone who bought at this stage, and supported a distressed genius, was thrilled by this meaningful exchange, only some were later disgruntled when powerful agencies aligned with our family efforts restoring his market where it belonged– disgruntled that we had not effectively convinced them to invest in time.

Although I am no psychic, it did not surprise me to see Hambleton’s prices spike at the end of his life. And it was not a mere question of engineering, either. But when an artist is that authentic, that tied in with history, that unique and innovative, generally it’s merely a question of time before the trade catches up. In the annals there are of course cases like Picasso’s: a staunch purist who never resorted to charlatanism, who seized the reigns of a thriving career at a young age persevering for the next sixty years with nary a hiccup, persisting to this day as gold standard. Or Van Gogh’s, who suffered the torments of the damned in his lifetime without any respite in worldly success, who nevertheless has in time reached the hearts of zillions. And yes, the works have grown to be treasured as priceless. That a Van Gogh painting never was worthless, however unsaleable they may have been during his lifetime, therein lies the question and answer to absolute value in Art. First and foremost we must appraise an artwork for its potency in conveying human feeling. And when it succeeds at that, Art always generates a profit well beyond any financial return, even when it’s not resold.

Keisai Eisen,Winter Landscape, 460-450 BCE, Courtesy of the Met Museum

When I was a teenager Jean Michel Basquiat made me a great drawing, employing his key iconography, and I had it framed and lived with it for many years. When I became a father, I never saw bills come crashing in so quickly, so with regret I brought this sacred relic to an auction house. Whereupon they asked me for the paperwork. It had never occurred to me to have the damn thing pedigreed, and now was made to understand that the board was no longer considering certifications. I was met with disappointment, to find this precious item ripped of its price, but met my fiscal challenge in some other manner. And I continue to live with this spark of genius, that might have easily been traded in for a sack of rice, but continues to inspire and bring joy to my household instead… in that intangible way that poetry can always nourish us where bread fails.

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Editorial