Beautiful Tarnished Lines

(National Arts Club, NYC)

by Robert Edward Bullock

Drawing is the most immediate and direct of the visual arts. Held in the hand, a pencil or charcoal is a natural extension of the arm and therefor the mind. When Michelangelo said that drawing is the mother of all the arts he spoke as a draftsman of the human form and as an architect.

The National Arts Club, on the south side of Gramercy Park in Manhattan, has on display an exhibit of silverpoint drawings by more than 36 contemporary artists exploring the expressive range of this centuries-old medium. A variant of what is generally called "metal-point", silverpoint is, quite literally, drawing with a piece of silver wire on a prepared surface. The silver leaves behind lines, just as a graphite pencil does, but these lines tarnish to a beautiful, mellow effect. 

The medium itself dates back to at least the 15th-century but fell out of favor as other drawing materials were developed. Its visual quality, however, cannot be matched, as its range encompasses the evanescent traces of Jeffrey Lewis' "Bowl & House", to the shadowy depths of "Self-Portrait, Sick" by Evan Kitson.

The traditional, quiet, blue gray of the prepared surface in "Shell", further heightened by white chalk, emphasizes the beauty of silverpoint and is evocative of the sense of tradition associated with the medium. Here, the portrait of an adolescent is framed by the remains of a conch shell in a strange overlapping of human and nature, individual and archetype, youth and deterioration. In it, August Mosca captures something of the enigma of creating something new from traditional materials.

^ "Shell" by August Mosca, ca. 1980s

Color is used to great effect also in other works. Jeannine Cook's "Tillandsia Recurvate", highlighted with white on pale blue paper, uses a horizontal format to allow its serpentine plant forms to twist and curl about as flower buds trail upward. In "Natalia Sleeping", by Juliette Aristides, a soft peach orange surface envelopes the sleeping figure, whose features are softly highlighted with white.

^ "Tillandsia Recurvate" by Jeannine Cook, 2007  

Silverpoint's potential for incredible subtlety of line and tone is particularly suited to portraiture, a theme that runs through many of the works. "Innocence" by Sherry Camhy pushes the medium's range of lights and darks almost to its limits, the subject's life-like dimensions enhanced by both its size and the direct eye contact of the subject.

^ "Innocence" (detail) by Sherry Camhy, 2008

From Koo Schadler's Renaissance-inspired "Abigail in Black Hat", to the soulful gaze of Costa Vavagiakis' "Maria XXI", from Burton Silverman's "Model Resting" (from 1949, it is the earliest work in the exhibit), to Ephraim Rubenstein's "Maddie Asleep", with its sense of quiet and peace, both the individual and a momentary sense of time are captured in the tarnished lines of precious metal.

^ "Maddie Asleep" by Ephraim Rubenstein, 1990

Two works, not hung next to each other, nevertheless kept playing off each other in my mind. "Purple Hyacinth for Hendrix", a relatively small work by Margaret Krug, creates a very poetic sense of space as two small flowers, their stalks rising from the lower right quarter, almost seem to pause, overwhelmed in the light that floods around them. In contrast to this effect, the energetic, almost tense, musculature of Lea Wight's "Hand Study" fills the earth-toned picture plane. In it, two views of the human hand express the individual as well as any face ever could.

^ "Purple Hyacinth for Hendrix" by Margaret Krug, 2010

^ "Hand Study" by Lea Wight, 2013

But what makes an artist pick up a pencil or a stylus and draw, anyway? The mind is always searching curiously whatever is in front of it. Drawing is an attempt to understand how something is constructed, whether that be the human hand, the human face, a shell, or a flower. To draw, as Ruskin said, is to see, and "to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one."

^ "Maria XXI" by Costa Vavagiakis, 2007

"The Silverpoint Exhibition" is on view through December 21 at The National Arts Club, located at 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003. nationalartsclub.org 212-475-3424.

Technical information on silverpoint drawing can found in Bullock Online's March 2012 blog entry, "drawing and practice".

More information about Robert Edward Bullock's work can be found at BullockOnline.com

Simplicity and Imagination

(New York Academy of Art)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | November 14, 2013

In nature, it is said that every action is balanced by an opposite and equal reaction. The art world is not bound to this law of physics but nonetheless displays a similar pattern in how modern art movements react to each other.

Turning away from her Abstract Expressionist training in the late 1960s, Martha Erlebacher went on to become a master of representational painting and brought to it a freshness and humor that is really pretty wonderful. In over 30 works, ranging from imaginative still life compositions to metaphor-loaded representations of the human form, the New York Academy of Art's current retrospective explores and celebrates the career of this renowned and talented painter who passed away earlier this year.

The dozen or so still-life compositions on display are amazing in their simplicity and imagination.

(read the full review at The New York Sun.)

Danish Surprise

(Scandinavian House, New York City)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | November 9, 2013

The metamorphoses that swept European painting in the 19th century were dramatic, often abrupt, and stylistically further apart than their dates would suggest. In "Danish Painting from the Golden Age to the Modern Breakthrough," on display at Scandinavia House in Manhattan, 37 masterworks from the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the early 20th century offer up beautiful works along with some surprises.

Two works at the start hint at the breadth and the continuity of the works exhibited. J. Th. Lundbye's "Landscape Near Lake Arresø," 1838, is a 19th-century idyll, the freshness and simplicity of its warm green and pearl gray-blue palette lending a charming sense of air and light to the scene. In fluid daubs, shadows among the stands of trees indicate the direction of the light as a low rise in the land leads to the gauzy distant tones, little clouds jutting across the sky to the horizon.

(read the full review at The New York Sun.)

Perfection of Forms

(Museum of Biblical Arts and The Dahesh Museum of Art)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | October 18, 2013

For several centuries, the Academic tradition of representational art achieved the seemingly contradictory goals of both the imitation of nature and the perfection of forms. "Sacred Visions," which opened Friday at the Museum of Biblical Art, brings together over 30 works by Gustave Doré, Jean-Léon Gérôme and their contemporaries, from The Dahesh Museum of Art and will go far to rekindle the public's interest in, and understanding of, their achievements in the 19th and early 20th century.

The Bible stories were primary subject matter in the formal academies such as the École des Beaux-Art in Paris and, combined with the Academic study and mastery of human anatomy, made for powerful and expressive works.

(read the full review at The New York Sun.)

Modern Art Turns 100

(The New York Historical Society)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | October 12, 2013

In 1913, The International Exhibition of Modern Art landed at New York's 69th Regiment Armory and caused such a scene that we are still talking about it a century later. In "The Armory Show at 100," which opened Friday, The New-York Historical Society assesses the impact on American culture when modern art arrived full-force and roaring, whether we were ready for it or not.

The Armory Show, as it came to be known, displayed American paintings by William Glackens, George Bellows, Robert Henri and others alongside those of European artists such as Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh. Depending on one's view, the exhibition was either a symbol of progress or regression, simultaneously derided and celebrated as it traveled to Chicago and Boston.

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

Venetian Urgency and Grace

(The Morgan Library & Museum) 

by Robert Edward Bullock, Special to the Sun

Venice catches our attention with a strange, opulent theatricality, like brightly colored banners fluttering in the afternoon sun. In Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings, which opened on Friday September 27, The Morgan Library and Museum looks at the role of drawing in the city which became an epicenter of international arts patronage as its political power attenuated and died. 

Over 100 works from The Morgan's vast collection provide a sweeping assessment of the achievements of this period with names that are practically synonymous with Venice --- Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, Canaletto, the Guardis, along with Piranessi, Gaspar Diziani, Francesco Tironi, and others. 

The exhibit opens with Sebastiano Ricci's "Two Angels", a modest-size drawing in ink and wash over charcoal, strangely beautiful for the sculptural form the figures possess, intensely present yet otherworldly. From Pietro Longhi's poetic "Pastoral Landscape" to the bucolic nostalgia of Marco Ricci's "A Roman Capriccio", the exhibit spans scenes of daily life and fanciful compositions, preparatory studies for commissioned works and independent finished pieces.

Of the nine works by Giovanni Battista Piazetta (1682-1754), "Portrait of a Girl with a Pear" and "Young Woman with a Tambourine" stand out for their meticulous description .....

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

                                   ^ Marco Ricci, 1676-1729, "A Roman Capriccio" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

^ Giovanni Battista Piazetta, 1682-1754, "Young Woman with a Tambourine" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

                             ^ Francesco Guardi, 1712-1793, "View of Levico in the Valsugana" (The Morgan Library)

                                     ^ Canaletto, 1697-1786, "Architectural Capriccio" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

       ^ Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo, 1696-1770, "Psyche Transported to Olympus" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

^ Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo, 1696-1770, "Virgin and Child Seated on a Globe"

                                                           (The Morgan Library & Museum)

^ Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1726?-1804, "The Holy Family Arrives at the Robber's Farm"

                                                          (The Morgan Library & Museum)

                                 ^ Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1726?-1804, "The Last Illness of Punchinello"

                                                                  (The Morgan Library & Museum)

A Definite Swagger

(New-York Historical Society)

by Robert Edward Bullock, Special to the Sun

In the period between the American Civil War and the outbreak of World War I the United States became a rich and powerful nation. "Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America", opening Friday at The New-York Historical Society, examines the intense rejuvenation of portraiture in America during this pivotal point in more than sixty works in oil and watercolor, and two small bronzes.

The half-century that followed Reconstruction saw the nation wearied by carnage and destruction transform into an economic powerhouse, its national identity defined during a period of intense entrepreneurialism. Personal fortunes of "new money" came with prestige in the competitive environment of high society and fed a demand for portraiture which helped to both secure and advertise power, wealth, and virtue. Competition for commissions came from both sides of the Atlantic, with talents such as Sargent, Beckwith, Bouguereau, Rembrandt Peal, and Gilbert Stuart all answering the call.

The exhibit ranges from the modern sensibility and dash of Anders Zorn's "Samuel Untermyer" (1901) to the sweet charm and intimacy of Lilly Martin Spencer's "Robert Green Ingersoll with His Grandchildren" (1898), to the assured authority and measured gaze of "The Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter" (1887) by Eastman Johnson .....

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

^ Théobald Chartran, "James Hazen Hyde", 1901  (New-York Historical Society)

^ Eastman Johnson, "The Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter", 1887 (New-York Historical Society)

^ Fernand Paillet, "Mrs Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte", 1892 (NewYork Historical Society)