The Supreme Court announced this morning that visitors will no longer access the building by ascending the 44 marble steps steps and passing under the words “Equal Justice Under Law” to enter the great central hall through the massive bronze doors depicting the history of the development of justice and law in the western world from ancient Greece to 19th Century America.

A Court press release stated: “The new entrance, which will serve as the primary means for public entry, was designed in light of findings and recommendations from two independent security studies conducted in 2001 and 2009.  The entrance provides a secure, reinforced area to screen for weapons, explosives, and chemical and biological hazards.”

Justice Breyer issued a Statement —in which Justice Ginsburg concurred— regretting the surrender of symbolism to security.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

MONDAY, May 3, 2010

Present: Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Sotomayor.

Statement Concerning the Supreme Court’s Front Entrance Memorandum of Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins.

I write with regret to note the closing of the Court’s front entrance. The Supreme Court building is currently undergoing extensive construction, and the Court has decided that, after this construction is completed, visitors to the Court—including the parties whose cases we decide, the attorneys who argue those cases, and the members of the public who come to listen and to observe their government in action— will have to enter through a side door. While I recognize the reasons for this change, on balance I do not believe they justify it. I think the change is unfortunate, and I write in the hope that the public will one day in the future be able to enter the Court’s Great Hall after passing under the famous words “Equal Justice Under Law.”

Cass Gilbert faced a difficult problem when he was commissioned to design the Court’s present home. The Court was to be built on a small, irregularly-shaped plot of land adjacent to both the Capitol and the Library of Congress, two powerful and prominent architectural competitors. How was Gilbert to create a distinctive, yet fitting, home for the Court in these circumstances?

Gilbert’s solution was to design an entrance that, in the words of architect and lawyer Paul Byard, “the processional progress toward justice reenacted daily in [the Court’s] premises.” Starting at the Court’s western plaza, Gilbert’s plan leads visitors along a carefully choreographed, climbing path that ultimately ends at the courtroom itself.  The Court’s forty-four marble steps, the James Earle Fraser sculptures Contemplation of Justice and Authority of Law, the Western portico with its eight pairs of columns standing high above the removed wings of the building, the Great Hall—each of these elements does its part to encourage contemplation of the Court’s central purpose, the administration of justice to all who seek it.

But the significance of the Court’s front entrance extends beyond its design and function. Writers and artists regularly use the steps to represent the ideal that anyone in this country may obtain meaningful justice through application to this Court. And the steps appear in countless photographs commemorating famous arguments or other moments of historical importance. In short, time has proven the success of Gilbert’s vision: To many members of the public, this Court’s main entrance and front steps are not only a means to, but also a metaphor for, access to the Court itself.

This is why, even though visitors will remain able to leave via the front entrance, I find dispiriting the Court’s decision to refuse to permit the public to enter. I certainly recognize the concerns identified in the two security studies that led to this recent decision (which reaffirmed a decision made several years ago). But potential security threats will exist regardless of which entrance we use. And, in making this decision, it is important not to undervalue the symbolic and historic importance of allowing visitors to enter the Court after walking up Gilbert’s famed front steps.

To my knowledge, and I have spoken to numerous jurists and architects worldwide, no other Supreme Court in the world—including those, such as Israel’s, that face security concerns equal to or greater than ours—has closed its main entrance to the public. And the main entrances to numerous other prominent public buildings in America remain open. I thus remain hopeful that, sometime in the future, technological advances, a Congressional appropriation, or the dissipation of the current security risks will enable us to restore the Supreme Court’s main entrance as a symbol of dignified openness and meaningful access to equal justice under law.

In one of the panels of the Supreme Court’s bronze doors, Chief Justice John Marshall and Associate Justice Joseph Story discuss the 1803 Marbury v. Madison opinion in front of the Capitol.

As many TNN readers know, Martin acquired his earliest showbiz experience in Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm near Garden Grove, the town in which he spent his teenage years, toward the end of Richard Nixon’s Vice Presidency. And RN figured in Martin’s struggling years as a standup; he mentions than when he played college campuses as an unknown in the early 1970s, he had only to mention the President’s name to be guaranteed a laugh. (In fact, the predictability of this response was one thing that led him to remove all political material from his act. Coincidentally or not, his career took off soon after.)

But I didn’t know that one of President Nixon’s decisions, toward the end of his Administration, led to one of the most celebrated episodes of Steve Martin’s comic career. It’s especially timely now, as the exhibition of the relics of Egypt’s King Tutankhamun finishes its run at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum and gets ready to go to Discovery Channel’s Times Square showplace in New York.

It was in 1974 that President Nixon decided that the United States should respond to the successful display of Egyptian art in the Soviet Union with a truly memorable exhibit to tour the United States. After bringing up the idea during his visit to Egypt’s President Anwar al-Sadat a few weeks before his resignation, he urged Secretary of State Kissinger to work on bringing such an exhibit to these shores. Dr. Kissinger got in touch with the late Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the process was begun which, a couple of years later, resulted in the spectacularly successful first visit of King Tut and his relics to the United States – a visit which inspired Steve Martin to write that immortal tune which was introduced to the world on Saturday Night Live.

More than thirty years after he last came for a visit, the boy king is generating some more memories to last a lifetime for countless Americans, continuing a process that started with President Nixon’s proposal for a tour to generate income to help Egyptian museums on that summer day so long ago.

Loaned art in the Residence
• Josef Albers – Homage to the Square: Elected II – Hirshhorn Museum
• Josef Albers – Homage to the Square: Midday – Hirshhorn Museum
• Josef Albers – Study for Homage to the Square: Nacre – Hirshhorn Museum
• George Catlin – A Crow Chief at His Toilette – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Camanchees Lancing a Buffalo Bull – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Mired Buffalo and Wolves – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Cheyenne Village – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Grizzly Bears Attacking Buffalo – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Game of the Arrow-Mandan – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – A Foot War Party in Council-Mandan – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Ball-Play Dance-Choctaw – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Buffalo Chase, with Accidents – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – Catlin and Indian Attacking Buffalo – National Gallery of Art
• George Catlin – K’nisteneux Indians Attacking Two Grizzly Bears – National Gallery of Art
• Edward Corbett – Washington, D.C. November 1963 III – National Gallery of Art
• Edgar Degas – Dancer Putting on Stocking – Hirshhorn Museum
• Edgar Degas – The Bow – Hirshhorn Museum
• Richard Diebenkorn – Berkeley, No. 52 – National Gallery of Art
• Nicolas De Stael – Nice – Hirshhorn Museum
• Sam Francis – White Line – National Gallery of Art
• Winslow Homer – Sunset – National Gallery of Art
• Jasper Johns – Numerals, 0 through 9 – National Gallery of Art
• William H. Johnson – Legend – Smithsonian American Art Museum
• William H. Johnson – Children Dance – Smithsonian American Art Museum
• William H. Johnson – Flower to Teacher – Smithsonian American Art Museum
• William H. Johnson – folk Family – Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Glenn Ligon – Black Like Me #2 – Hirshhorn Museum
• Giorgio Morandi – Still Life – National Gallery of Art
• Giorgio Morandi – Still Life – National Gallery of Art
• Louise Nevelson – Model for “Sky Covenant” – National Gallery of Art
• Susan Rothenberg – Butterfly – National Gallery of Art
• Mark Rothko – Red Band – National Gallery of Art
• Edward Ruscha – I think I’ll . . . – National Gallery of Art
• Alma Thomas – Sky Light – Hirshhorn Museum
• Leon Polk Smith – Stretch of Black III – National Gallery of Art
• Unknown Artist – Chief Jumper of the Seminoles – National Gallery of Art

Loaned art in the West Wing
• Frank O. Salisbury – President Harry S. Truman – Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri – Cabinet Room
• Lucy M. Lewis (Acoma Pueblo) – Vase – National Museum of the American Indian – Oval Office
• Jeri Redcorn (Caddo) – Bottle: Intertwining Scrolls – National Museum of the American Indian – Oval Office
• Steve S. (Iroquois) – Jar – National Museum of the American Indian – Oval Office
• Maria Poveka Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo) – Jar – National Museum of the American Indian – Oval Office
• Samuel F. B. Morse – Telegraph Register patent model – National Museum of American History – Oval Office
• John A. Peer – Gear Cutter patent model – National Museum of American History – Oval Office
• Fletcher Felter – Propeller Blade patent model – National Museum of American History – Oval Office

Loaned art in the East Wing
• Alma Thomas – Watusi (Hard Edge) – Hirshhorn Museum – East Wing

In today’s  Washington Post, art critic Blake Gopnik quotes White House curator William Allman’s observation that the Obamas’ choices express “probably more interest in truly modern art” than the previous administration.  The redoubtable Gopnik —whose article is accompanied by a slide show— then examines the selections for deeper meaning:

Working with curators at the White House and at the local museums that made loans, the First Couple selected some works whose politics are explicit, and mild. They seem to redress past imbalances in the nation’s sense of its own art. There are works by African Americans (seven paintings from three artists, out of a total of 47) and by Native Americans (four artists contributed three modern ceramics and one abstract painting). There are also 12 paintings depicting Native Americans, by the 19th-century ethnographic artist George Catlin.

But there are still only six works by women, vs. 41 by men. And there are no works at all by Latinos. (A work by the deceased Cuban American artist Félix González-Torres would have filled the gap perfectly, and added a nod to the country’s gay culture. The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum has one that could have been borrowed.)

Alma Thomas’ 1973 abstract Sky Light hangs in the private residence…….

.….as does William H. Johnson’s 1944 painting Folk Family.

The First Lady chose Alma Thomas’ 1963 Watusi (Hard Edge) for the East Wing.

Mrs. Obama chose several works by George Catlin for the private residence — among them Buffalo Chase, with Accidents (1861/1869).

Frank O. Salisbury’s 1946 portrait of Harry S Truman now hangs in the Cabinet Room in the West Wing.

Josef Albers’ 1961 Homage to the Square: Elected II was one of three Albers works borrowed from the Hirshhorn collection for the private residence:

So far no wags seem to have singled out one of the First Lady’s most interesting choices — Ed Ruscha’s 1983 painting  ”I Think I’ll….” — which indicates a refined taste or a sense of humor or both.   There’s no indication where this giant 5′5″ x 6′3″ canvas hangs in the private residence:

]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2009/10/07/annals-of-the-obama-administration-34/feed/ 0 http://thenewnixon.org/2009/09/28/sing-for-your-supper/ http://thenewnixon.org/2009/09/28/sing-for-your-supper/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:57:44 +0000 Frank Gannon http://thenewnixon.org/?p=19801 The Washington Times ran a strong editorial yesterday —”Unanswered questions for the NEA“— on a story  that is sufficiently confusing to have resulted in its being relegated to B-sections and the blogosphere.

The Times‘ editors manage to make both its outline and its significance clear:

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman and the White House finally responded to a controversial effort by political appointees of both the White House and the NEA to “leverage” government funding of the arts into cultural support for the administration’s legislative agenda.

This is the short version of the Obama administration’s position: Nothing bad happened. The rogue employee who didn’t do anything bad has been relieved of his duties (and has now resigned). In an effort to make sure that the same “nothing bad” never happens again, the administration has distributed a memo and provided some new training on how not to do “nothing bad.”

The facts are simple and public. During the transition, President Obama’s top arts adviser made it clear that his ambition was for the arts to become an integral part of the West Wing. After the inauguration, meetings of artists and political activists at the White House explicitly discussed how to keep the arts community in campaign mode to back Mr. Obama’s legislative agenda. An NEA grants official, Mario Garcia Durham, was at one such meeting for which the attendee list is public.

As those meetings occurred, Yosi Sergant, a key cog in the Obama campaign’s outreach to artists, was transferred from a position at the White House to a position as the communications director of the NEA. When the grant spigots opened at the NEA, more than $2 million went directly into the coffers of arts organizations (and their members) attending these meetings and publicly backing elements of the administration agenda.

Does that prove laws have been broken? Of course not. The worst appearances can be completely innocent. However, the administration’s assertions that Mr. Sergant acted alone (“unilaterally and without … approval or authorization” in Mr. Landesman’s words) and that the administration’s efforts were “completely unrelated” to grant-making are at odds with the facts. The public deserves more than bland reassurances.

A full investigation by both Congress and the NEA inspector general is the only way to bring this story to a close. Answers to these questions would be only a start:

c What was an NEA grants official doing at a White House political meeting? What other grants officials have been meeting with White House political officials?

c So far we know about a handful of conference calls last month and White House meetings last spring. Is this the full extent of the coordination between the White House political staff and the NEA?

c Has the grant-making process been compromised by politics? How were the brand-new stimulus grants insulated from politics? Were any of the safeguards circumvented?

c On the same day that Americans for the Arts, a lobbying organization that also runs a partisan Democratic political action committee, endorsed the key elements of the Obama health care plan, the president of the group met with Mr. Landesman, the new NEA chief. What happened at that meeting?

c Why was activist Yosi Sergant transferred from the White House to the NEA? Who made the decision?

From Day One of this story, Mr. Sergant’s statements, the NEA’s official statements and Mr. Landesman’s statements have been riddled with falsehoods and bluster. There’s no reason to take anything the NEA has said so far at face value.

An excellent obituary by Adam Bernstein in today’s Washington Post limns his life and describes his influence:

Mr. Fuchs was adept at balancing art and commerce. He met the needs of mass-circulation magazines accustomed to Norman Rockwell-style realism, but he injected a fresh vitality and impressionism that became hugely popular and transformed the illustration field. He even experimented with bold designs based on the abstract expressionism movement popularized by painters Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Norman Rockwell’s 1943 painting “Freedom From Want” —from his Four Freedoms series painted for the Saturday Evening Post based on FDR’s 1941 Message to Congress— is still the idealized iconic version of that American holiday.  (In the same way that his “Freedom of Speech” was, at least until its recent brush with reality, the ideal of what town hall meetings would look like.)

Fuchs’ illustration for a story in the December 1962 issue of  McCall’s magazine paid homage to Rockwell’s vision while updating it and adding some homely touches of reality.

This late-50s ad —one of his many illustrations for Coca-Cola— is full of rich details of the carefree and glamorous middle class lifestyle few attained and most coveted.  Today it looks charmingly innocent; back in the day it was the epitome of hip:

The WaPo obit deconstructed the creative elements of a Fuchs illustration for a McCall’s short story:

One vivid example, commissioned by McCall’s magazine in the late 1950s, was a portrait of two young couples relaxing in a small room after dinner. One man is lying on the ground, his head nestled on a woman’s lap and smoking a cigarette as she strokes his hair.

While the image has the control and realism of Rockwell, it also has several more dynamic features taken from avant-garde techniques: the vigorous brush strokes; the tilted horizon that heightens a sense of drama; a lampshade in the foreground that appears slightly distorted; and, most strikingly, the placement of the couples in the distance instead of being the center of the picture.

By the age of 30, Fuchs had been named Artist of the Year by the Artist’s Guild of New York — the first of many honors that included being one of the youngest inductees into the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame, whose company included Rockwell, N. C. Wyeth, Winslow Homer, and John James Audubon.

Men With Hats: A Fuchs illustration for a late ’50s Seagram’s ad.

Don Draper Please Call Home: a Fuchs Seagram’s ad that could be a story board for Mad Men.

In an interesting obit on his blog Illustration Art, David Apatoff describes the next phase of Fuchs’ career:

So Fuchs was feeling pretty cocky by the time Sports Illustrated called him in the early 1960s to ask him to illustrate an article. Fuchs met with the legendary art director of Sports Illustrated, Richard Gangel. A tough minded visionary, Gangel gave Fuchs an assignment, but as Fuchs was leaving, added– “Oh– and I don’t want that shit you do for McCalls.”

Fuchs could have walked off in a huff. It would have been easy for him to continue working for other clients in the successful style he had already developed. Instead, he rose to Gangel’s challenge and became even bolder and more innovative.

The result was the introduction of an impressionist immediacy that quickly became the gold standard for sports illustration.

Bernie Fuchs painted Sandy Koufax for the cover of SI’s 1964 Baseball Issue.

A Fuchs illustration of a golf match in the rain.

Bernstein quotes illustrator-educator Murray Tinkelman about Fuchs’ long run as the beau ideal of illustration art:

He became the most emulated and imitated illustrator in the field through the 1980s . . . when the vogue turned to more decorative, whimsical, punkier illustrations that were influenced by underground cartoons like those of Robert Crumb.

Fuchs continued to draw and paint into this century.  A retrospective including his later work can be seen here.

Bernie Fuchs’ drawings were used as the cover art for Frank Sinatra’s 1967 LP The World We Knew.

Arthur S. Mole —1889-1983— was an English commercial photographer  who took a series of  striking and innovative “living photographs” of American soldiers during and after World War One.  Working with his American colleague John D. Thomas, Mole organized and arranged thousands of soldiers into configurations that, seen from the ground or directly above, would look like a shapeless crowd. But through the lens of his 11 x 14 camera from atop the specially constructed 80 foot tower , they formed meaningful —indeed iconic— images.  The photographs were commissioned by the US government both to raise troop morale and raise money by selling copies to the public.

The Mole-Thomas oeuvre was recently the subject of an exhibition at (and vintage silver gelatin prints are currently available from) the Hammer Gallery in Chicago.  The originals, of course, are both beautiful and meaningful; but excellent copies of most of the images can be obtained from the Library of Congress.

Gallery owner Carl Hammer says, ”I see modern photographers with all the technology we have these days trying to do the same as these two guys did almost 100 years ago, and I still think they did it best and they did it first.  It really is very clever how they managed to get so many soldiers in the shots, they realised using the same amount of soldiers for each row they would lose the image in the background.  It must have been incredible for the soldiers to be part of these photos and to be part of this slice of history.”

Working from his base outside Chicago, in Zion, Illinois, Mole traveled to military bases and approached his photographs with the detail and precision of a military campaign.

Mole was a master of perspective.  His “living picture” of the Statue of Liberty was taken in 1918 at Camp Dodge in Des Moines, Iowa.  It required 18,000 men —12,000 in the torch at the top, and only 17 in the base at the bottom. The men at the tip of the torch are half a mile away from the men at the base.  Mole used flags to indicate placements in advance and to communicate with the troops in real time.  The temperature reached 105 degrees, and many men, wearing wool uniforms, fainted.

The “living Uncle Sam” was a post-war work, involving 19,000 officers and men at Camp Lee, Virginia, on 13 January 1919.

Arthur Mole’s collaborator was photographer John D. Thomas.  Their US Shield, was taken at Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1918.

One hundred officers and 9,000 enlisted men formed the Marine Corps emblem at Parris Island.  It would take Mole and Thomas a week to work out the shot, but only half an hour to march the men into position.

The 1917 Liberty Bell —including the famous crack— required 25,000 men from Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Arthur S. Mole.

At the time, the picture merited comment from less than a dozen bloggers, several dozen more comments at the magazine’s site, and that was it.  It was one of many visual lampoons of an unpopular President, and as such, was worth a chuckle or two from those who viewed it, and then forgotten.

But in recent weeks a similar image of another Chief Executive has provoked a different reaction.  As early as April, posters and stickers began showing up on the walls of buildings here and there in Los Angeles – and, more recently, in other American cities. The image portrayed on them is that of President Obama, his face made up in the especially ominous shade of clown white used by Ledger in The Dark Knight, with a ghoulish red smear around his mouth a la the Joker.  Beneath the picture, one word in lower-case letters: “socialism.”

This poster, of course, brings to mind the celebrated “HOPE” images produced by artist Shepard Fairey (in turn, based on an Associated Press photo) which helped Obama reach the Oval Office last year.  And Fairey himself, fresh from an assignment producing another semi-iconic Obama portrait for Rolling Stone’s cover, was quick to inform the Los Angeles Times that although he didn’t think that the President was a Socialist, he personally thought the creater of the “socialism” poster (who remains unknown, as of this writing) had a right to his or her opinion. (As it happens, the earliest online image depicting Obama and captioned by “Socialist,” in the spring of 2008, was a direct steal of the Fairey/AP image.)

But others are not quite as sanguine.  Rich Lieberman of the San Francisco Chronicle contends that the “socialism” image is “creepy, unfunny, and sinister” and “a piece of garbage” to boot.  At the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott devoted an article to pondering what boundary of taste the image had crossed.  Both Lieberman and Kennicott have duly noted that Obama’s predecessor had been portrayed in the same fashion.  But they both argue that to give the current officeholder such treatment has something wrong about it – perhaps, if not quite racist (Lieberman remarks that the anonymous artist is “probably white,” but is clearly unwilling to affirm that he or she isn’t), then using “urban” imagery in a discriminatory fashion (as Kennicott maintains in a somewhat tortured argument, both in his article and in a lengthy online discussion at the Post’s site).

The latter discussion is rather interesting, not least because one of the commenters remarks that the poster, especially since it originates from LA, may well be meant as a  parody of anti-Obama sentiment instead of the real thing.  This spurs Kennicott to mention Andy Warhol.  But, surprisingly, neither he nor anyone else in the discussion notes that the poster (as opposed to the image it features, of which more in a moment) may well have been inspired by one that Warhol made.

That would be Vote McGovern, a silkscreen created by the famed Pop artist in 1972 as a limited-edition production, proceeds to be donated to Sen. George McGovern’s campaign for the White House.  In it, the face of President Nixon was recolored (in a ghoulish green) and retouched to make him look like Dracula.  McGovern supporters (and Warhol collectors) bought up the entire run of the series.  The next year, Warhol was audited by the Internal Revenue Service.  He always expressed uncertainty about whether this event was related to his silkscreen (though he often was audited during the next three presidencies, nonetheless) but the audit did have one fortunate consequence for students of twentieth-century American history: it made Warhol decide to make an hour-long tape every day, in which, as well as itemizing his personal and business expenses, he gossiped in uninhibited fashion about his wealthy, famous, and just plain bizarre friends and acquaintances. And thus, in 1989, two years after the artist’s death, the American reading public was treated to The Andy Warhol Diaries.

But the use of an altered photograph of a politician did not start with Warhol. Back in early 1963, Richard Hamilton, the British pioneer of Pop Art, was a ban-the-bomb activist, unhappy because Hugh Gaitskell, the head of the UK Labor Party, did not support unilateral nuclear disarmament.  So Hamilton put a Phantom-of-the-Opera mask on a photo on the MP and titled it Portrait of Hugh Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland, though it’s not certain whether this was the inspiration for Warhol a decade later.  And, of course, caricaturists as far back as James Gillray in George III’s time have done brutal pictures of political leaders; this is the tradition to which Friedman’s Bush-as-Joker belongs.

But one thing that Lieberman and Kennicott evidently did not know when they wrote about the “socialism” poster was that its unidentified maker derived (or stole, if you want to put it that way) the Obama-as-Joker picture from a Flickr image posted last January, not by a tattooed neo-Nazi from the Rockies or some other likely candidate, but by Firas Khateeb, a twenty-year-old Palestinian-American engineering student (and Muslim) in Chicago who Photoshopped a 2008 Time cover of the then-candidate. 

Khateeb’s picture did not have the word “socialism” and, contrary to a couple of earlier blogposts which state that he created the image to express his disappointment that Obama was joking about pursuing a leftward agenda, he now states on Flickr that the altered Time cover (and presumably the “socialism” poster) does not express his political views in any way.  Apparently he just thought it would be a bit of a goof to make the President up to look like Heath Ledger.  But that jeux d’esprit has stirred up quite a fuss, not least because, in a rather direct way, it speaks for the disquiet so many Americans feel when their President announces schemes as vast, vague, and downright nebulous as rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by creating a gigantic “bad bank.”

Therefore, the chances seem good that we’ll be seeing more “viral” images like the Joker-in-Chief one emerging, no matter what the pundits think.

As a policeman held up traffic, photographer Iain Macmillan climbed a stepladder and shot several frames for each direction.  At one point, Paul, who had been wearing sandals, kicked them off and walked barefoot.  The shoot lasted about fifteen minutes.

Apple Corps’ creative director John Kosh insisted that the photograph would be sufficient and that the cover required no printed copy —the Beatles were, after all, probably the best known people in the world.  So Macmillan’s shot was printed unadorned in what quickly became an cover (and which, before very long, became the subject of extensive, and ultimately tedious, interpretation and speculation).  The album’s title (visible only on the spine and back cover) was Abbey Road.

Above: the iconic front cover of the Beatles’ 1969 (and last) album, Abbey Road.  Below: the less familiar back cover.

Here’s the first part of the medley of several songs —opening with  ”You Never Give Me Your Money”— that concluded Abbey Road.  The second part (opening with the gorgeous “Golden Slumbers”) is here.

His amazing shot of  a snow leopard in a snow storm won 2008’s award for Best Wildlife Photograph.

Winter’s biography begins with some attention-getting details: “I’ve been stalked by jaguars in Brazil, charged by an 11-foot grizzly in Siberia, trapped in quicksand in the world’s largest tiger reserve in Myanmar and slept in a tent for six weeks at 0 below zero tracking snow leopards.  I have flown over erupting volcanoes and visited isolated villages whee residents had never before seen a blond foreigner —- or a camera.”

Inspired, like many, by the romance and adventure of Peter Matthiessen’s practical and mystical 1978 classic, Winter had answered an editor’s memo asking for “dream assignments” by requesting the rarely seen —and even more rarely photographed— snow leopard.

In addition to his photographic skills, Winter turned out to be an engaging and enthusiastic lecturer.  Unfortunately an equipment glitch (“it worked this afternoon”) prevented the audience from seeing a short Nat Geo film he made about the snow leopard expedition.

But TNN readers can see it  here.

Blog size and resolution can’t begin to do justice to Steve Winter’s striking photographs.  Check out the snow leopard gallery at National Geographic’s website.  And Winter’s own website introduces his wider body of work.

Barack Obama: The Freshman — an exhibition of Lisa Jack’s 1980 photo portraits of Occidental College freshman Barry Obama opens tomorrow night at LA’s  M+B Gallery

The Daily Beast sets the story up very nicely:

The fact that Lisa Jack, who photographed Barack Obama during his freshman year at Occidental College, chose to hold onto the photos during the brutal presidential campaign restores a little of one’s faith in humanity. But now that Obama is safe from any faux-outrage over the portraits—in which he oozes a pre-calculated cool complete with cigarette in hand—the photos are on exhibit in Los Angeles. Jack remembers meeting the young Obama in 1980, and being impressed with his confidence. He “was a cool dude,” she said. And even then Obama had an instinct for the image he wanted to project. He came to the photo shoot with a stylish bomber jacket, cigarettes, and banded hat. Jack first published some of the photos in Time in December, choosing that magazine over tabloids that likely would have paid handsomely. “I could have made a boatload of money, probably, but I wanted to do it right,” Jack said.

The Once And Future Photographer: Lisa Jack returns to the campus of Occidental College where she photographed freshman Barry Obama in 1980. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho, LATimes.)

The LA Times today has a story by Mike Boehm about the fortuitous —and, the way things seem to be going these days, serendipitous— career of Lisa Jack, who forsook her first love for the sake of paying the bills.

Jack, now a psychology professor and therapist, can thank Obama for putting her back on her road not taken. She says a lack of money forced her to pass up graduate studies in photography; instead she went into banking, then branched into psychology. While earning a doctorate from USC, Jack did an internship in Minneapolis and stayed on there, launching a private practice and teaching at Augsburg College. After her unexpected debut show opens, she’s eager to test her eye again with other photo projects.

“I’m the 49-year-old woman who wanted to be a photographer but didn’t follow through. I’m the Susan Boyle of the photography world.”

Her life and Obama’s intersected at the Cooler, a campus snack shop. The young woman from Rye, N.Y., loved her psychology courses but cared enough about photography to find mentors on the faculty who tutored her in independent study courses. With a blanket thrown over the couch she recalls as “a plaid horrible thing,” the living room of the apartment she shared in a nondescript quadruplex near the campus in Eagle Rock became Jack’s makeshift photo studio. Students from her circle of friends and acquaintances would pose for portraits that she would hand in as her weekly assignments.

That day a friend was telling her about a student named Barry she ought to photograph “because he’s so cute.” Moments later, the man himself walked in. He agreed to the shoot.

  A friend recommended that aspiring photographer Lisa Jack photograph fellow Occidental student Barry Obama “because he’s so cute.”

Gizmodo, the gadget blog that is to technology as Gawker is to New York media and gossip and Wonkette is to Washington politics and gossip, provides the colorful backstory of the cover of the new New Yorker:

Artist Jorge Colombo took about an hour to fingerpaint an intricate Times Square scene on his iPhone using Brushes, a $4.99 iPhone drawing app. Now, it’s the June 1st cover for The New Yorker.

I’m guessing the editors of the magazine saw some kind of weighty symbolism in such a stunt, but landing a New Yorker cover is the kind of honor that would define an entire career for many illustrators. That’s not to say this kind of thing isn’t impressive—it really, really is—but I can’t help imagining some dusty, 93-year-old editor at the top floor of the Conde Nast building seeing his first iPhone in the hands of an intern, losing his monocle over this amazing new tech-nol-o-gee, and impulsively ordering something, anything to do with this MAGICKAL DEE-VICE to be put on the cover, now.

Here’s a time-lapse video of the artist at work on another of his iPhone Brushes app New York fingerpaintings:

Jorge Colombo was born in Lisbon in 1963; he moved to the USA in 1989; after living in Chicago and San Francisco, he has been settled in New York since 1998.  He has an interesting website (with a link for the purchase of some very affordable limited edition prints of some of his New York fingerpaintings).

He drew this cover on his iPhone in about an hour while standing outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.  As the magazine reports: 

“I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” says Colombo, who first published his drawings in The New Yorker in 1994. Colombo has been drawing since he was seven, but he discovered an advantage of digital drawing on a nighttime drive to Vermont. “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” (When the sun is up, it’s a bit harder, “because of the glare on the phone,” he says.) It also allows him to draw without being noticed; most pedestrians assume he’s checking his e-mail.

Another of Jorge Colombo’s iPhone Brushes app fingerpaintings — a busy corner of the concourse at Grand Central Station.

The nineteen year old Ohio artist —he was sixteen when he created “Animator vs. Animation” — lists animation, drawing, sculpture, music, painting, breakdancing, and photography among his interests.

A tip o’the cap to Jonny McFarlane for this link.

Frank Gehry —he of the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Disney Music Hall in LA, and the Experience Music Project in Seattle (not to mention the armchairs made of cardboard packing crates)— has been selected to design the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Congress created the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission ten years ago.  In 2005 it approved the Commission’s requested site: a very prominent and attractive four acre space in the shadow of the Capitol on Independence Avenue, across from the Air and Space Museum.

Frank Gehry, of Gehry Partners in Santa Monica, was chosen from a final short list of four firms that also included: Ron Krueck of Krueck & Sexton, Rob Rogers and Jonathan Marvel of Rogers Marvel Architects, and Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture.

Mr. Gehry, known for his highly personalized and intuitive approach and his famously fluid lines,  is an interesting and adventurous choice for the nation’s official monument to a war hero and thirty-fourth POTUS.  His most recent public building was the Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Hyde Park — which he said was inspired by butterflies.  His life and work and creative processes were the subject of an excellent documentary —Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)— directed by his friend Sydney Pollack.  The Gehry oeuvre extends from private homes to his own line of jewelry at Tiffany & Co.

There’s more information about the Memorial and other Eisenhoweriana (including news of a new electronic edition of his complete presidential papers by the Johns Hopkins University Press) at the Eisenhower Memorial Commission’s informative homepage.

The site for the Eisenhower Memorial is in the heart of historic and monumental Washington.

This year’s Cottesloe show ended last week, but here are a few highlights.
  

Lifesavers by Denis Pepper and Brooke Seligman was one of the sixty-two sculptures featured in this year’s Cottesloe’s sculptures by the sea.

Gordon Mitchell’s Crab in the Works is a commentary on the relative concept of time versus time at the beach.  Although it can’t be appreciate at this scale or this angle, the mechanism includes various day/date, phases of the moon, and other high end timepiece bells and whistles.  Nor can the crab climbing over and in at “9 o’clock” be seen or savored.

John Hutchinson’s Line in the Sand added wordplay to the visual fun.  But not everyone was amused.

Unplugged, by Robin Yakinthou is about what it’s about which doesn’t require much interpretation.

If your curiosity has been piqued –and/or or your hit-the-beach button has been pushed— here’s a Cottesloe 2009 slideshow.

Having dissed the journalistic establishment by blowing off the Gridiron Dinner and ignoring the major print poobahs at Tuesday night’s press conference, it appears that the President is now flipping off all the creative folks who supported him so ardently, and whose hopes for him and what his administration would mean for the arts were so high.

The President recently made three arts-critical appointments of individuals whose resumes are light on arts cred but heavy on political clout.  The fact that these “stealth” appointments were made without any announcement —much less any fanfare— from the  White House delayed the unfavorable reaction that is just now beginning to register.   

So far nobody has pulled out the old “most unlikely appointment since Caligula appointed his horse a Consul” chestnut, but that’s only a matter of time now that Judith H. Dobrzynski has sounded the alarm in her “Blogs & Stories” piece on today’s Daily Beast.  

Her headline sums the situation up neatly: “The arts world is fuming over Obama’s underqualified “arts czar,” and a humanities appointee who lacks a college degree.”  

While the head arts honchos have yet to be appointed, Ms. Dobrzynski reports on the three lower-level but critical appointments of the people who will actually be making things happen.  She calls them “strange at best and, at worst, deflating.  None has much arts expertise; what they do have are political connections.  Bernard, appointed to a key post at the academically minded NEH, never graduated from college, though he claims a bachelor’s degree on his résumé.

Ms. Dobrzynski notes —and dismisses— the predictable defense:

Obama’s defenders say these people don’t need expertise in the arts and humanities, that it’s enough that they’re close to Obama. 

Liaisons to the White House are always political posts. They are involved with all interactions with the White House (and Congress) on things like the budget, agency priorities, and the other political appointments. They work best when the appointments are not highly politicized.

These three appointments seem to be far more politics-as-usual than was expected of the Obama administration. A White House spokesman declined to comment on that directly, but said, “President Obama recognizes that support for creative expression is an important part of who we are as a nation, and he’s committed to ensuring that the arts community has an open line to the White House.”

But, for now, at least, the high-flying arts hopes are falling back to earth. 

The new “arts czar” —who will oversee NEA and NEH for the White House— is a classically politically-charged Chicago lawyer named Kareem Dale.

Take Dale’s stealth appointment as “arts czar.” While the White House has confirmed the appointment to news outlets, no formal announcement has been forthcoming. The only official word on him from the White House came in mid-February, when Dale—who is partially blind—was made special assistant to the president for disability policy. He is currently holding both positions.

Dale—who has both law and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign—is no slouch, but he has limited experience in the arts: He worked as a volunteer on Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, then as a paid staffer (becoming the campaign’s disability-vote director). He was president of the board of Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theatre, where he helped raise $15 million to finance a new building. His father, who owns R.J. Dale Advertising and Public Relations, preceded him on the board, as chairman. Both the father—Robert J., but known as Bob—and son are members of Chicago’s vibrant African-American network and longtime Obama donors.

At NEH the new Director of White House and Congressional Affairs is Geoffrey Bernard.  Dobrzynski calls this appointment an “even stranger fit” than art czar Dale.

Co-founder of B & G Associates in Los Angeles, a political fund-raising and strategic-planning firm, he raised millions of dollars for the Obama campaign with his partner, Rufus Gifford, the “G” in B & G.

Gifford was recently named finance director of the Democratic National Committee; Bernard was a superdelegate to the Democratic Convention. The pair cuts a wide path through L.A., and on March 10, the Washington Post named them “leading candidates for Washington’s new same-sex power couple.”

B & G’s website says Bernard worked in real estate and cable television before getting into politics. He also did campaign work for President Clinton, who rewarded him with an appointment to the presidential advisory committee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and is involved with social-justice organizations. As for connections to the humanities? Zip.

The website also says that “Jeremy holds a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in New York.” But a Hunter spokeswoman, Meredith Helpern, said “He did not graduate from Hunter,” though he did attend. She declined to provide any further information.

At the NEH, Noel Milan, the acting director of public affairs, said, “the documents we have contain no reference to an earned degree. It says he attended Hunter College.” Milan said Bernard did not want to comment.

The third hinky arts appointment is Anita Decker as NEA’s Director of White House and Congressional Affairs (the same position Bernard holds at NEH.) 

She has even less ostensible expertise in the arts, according to published reports. A graduate of the University of Arizona, Decker is from… Chicago!—and has spent her life in Illinois politics. She headed Obama’s downstate office.

The benefactress’ will stipulated that nothing be changed — so the empty frames are still there waiting to be reunited with their erstwhile occupants.

Ulrich Boser has written a new book that describes the bold caper and claims to break some new ground regarding the culprits.

Still among the missing:  Jan Vermeer’s Lady Writing A Letter With Her Maid (circa 1670)

It’s an ill wind that blows absolutely no good — and the Gardner robbery at least inspired a terrific poem by William Carpenter.  It would be going too far to say that the rhyme balances the crime (if for no other reason than that the poem is in free verse).  But when the paintings finally find their way home, it may be looked back on as a case of win/win.

GIRL WRITING A LETTER 

A thief drives to the museum in his black van. The night
watchman says Sorry, closed, you have to come back tomorrow.
The thief sticks the point of his knife in the guard's ear.
I haven't got all evening, he says, I need some art.
Art is for pleasure, the guard says, not possession, you can't
something, and then the duct tape is going across his mouth.
Don't worry, the thief says, we're both on the same side.
He finds the Dutch Masters and goes right for a Vermeer:
"Girl Writing a Letter." The thief knows what he's doing.
He has a Ph.D. He slices the canvas on one edge from
the shelf holding the salad bowls right down to the
square of sunlight on the black and white checked floor.
The girl doesn't hear this, she's too absorbed in writing
her letter, she doesn't notice him until too late. He's
in the picture. He's already seated at the harpsichord.
He's playing the G Minor Sonata by Domenico Scarlatti,
which once made her heart beat till it passed the harpsichord
and raced ahead and waited for the music to catch up.
She's worked on this letter for three hundred and twenty years.
Now a man's here, and though he's dressed in some weird clothes,
he's playing the harpsichord for her, for her alone, there's no one
else alive in the museum. The man she was writing to is dead --
time to stop thinking about him -- the artist who painted her is dead.
She should be dead herself, only she has an ear for music
and a heart that's running up the staircase of the Gardner Museum
with a man she's only known for a few minutes, but it's
true, it feels like her whole life. So when the thief
hands her the knife and says you slice the paintings out
of their frames, you roll them up, she does it; when he says
you put another strip of duct tape over the guard's mouth
so he'll stop talking about aesthetics, she tapes him, and when
the thief puts her behind the wheel and says, drive, baby,
the night is ours, it is the Girl Writing a Letter who steers
the black van on to the westbound ramp for Storrow Drive
and then to the Mass Pike, it's the Girl Writing a Letter who
drives eighty miles an hour headed west into a country
that's not even discovered yet, with a known criminal, a van
full of old masters and nowhere to go but down, but for the
Girl Writing a Letter these things don't matter, she's got a beer
in her free hand, she's on the road, she's real and she's in love.

Poet and novelist William Carpenter: "The thief sticks the point of his knife in the guard's ear.
I haven't got all evening, he says, I need some art."

(“L’Amerique Septentrionale Divisee En Ses Principales Parties …”  This map of North America, from Pierre Mortier’s Atlas Nouveau, was printed in either Amsterdam or Paris in 1692.  It depicts California as an island and and represents six, rather than five, Great Lakes. It can be yours for ₤3,600.)

If, like me, you’re pretty sure that you were a cartographer in an earlier life and continue to be fascinated by antique maps, here’s a treat to begin your week.  Jonathan Potter’s spectacular collection of rare antique maps —the work of forty years— is all for sale (along with the New Bond Street map dealership he established when his hobby reached a critical mass).

You can see some of them here.  Check out the colorful and imaginative depictions of Iceland.

]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2009/03/15/as-others-see-us-2/feed/ 0 http://thenewnixon.org/2009/03/14/equal-time-for-democratic-poker-party/ http://thenewnixon.org/2009/03/14/equal-time-for-democratic-poker-party/#comments Sun, 15 Mar 2009 04:54:34 +0000 David Emig http://thenewnixon.org/?p=9924  

Both the Republican Poker Party “Grand Ol’ Gang” and Democratic Poker Party “True Blues” are reproductions from paintings by Andy Thomas.  Mr. Thomas does Civil War, Oil Well and Western Prints.  There is a local art gallery in town, “The Galloping Goose” that has both framed for $895 each.

 The reproductions of both are available with a simple Google search for various prices.  The original of “True Blues” is still available, though the original “Grand Ol’ Gang” has been sold. 

Personally, I would like the set.

Mr. Putin’s latest (only?) canvas knocked down 37 million rubles (that’s $1.14 million in formerly real money) at a charity auction Sunday night in Leningrad.  Not surprisingly, that was the highest price realized by any of the thirty celebrity daubs on offer.  The proceeds will benefit two hospitals and a church that is being restored in Mr. Putin’s home town.

Putin’s pastel painting: a wintry night sky is seen through the frosty window of a peasant dwelling, framed by traditional lace curtains embroidered with beads and stitching.  The alphabet letter being illustred is “u” (in the upper right hand corner), and the word underneath is “uzor,” which means “pattern.”word underneath is “pattern”   Mr. Putin’s signature, instead of being modestly placed in some corner, is boldly inscribed  across the valence.   

Apparently Mr. Putin dropped by the art gallery where some of the paintings were being exhibited on 26 December.  As one report describes it, “after drinking some mulled wine, he agreed to reveal his previously hidden artistic talents by contributing a painting of his own.”

All the paintings have a Ukrainian theme — each illustrates a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet by depicting scenes from Ukraine-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Night Before Christmas.”  Unlike Clement Moore’s heartwarming and beloved American poem of the same name, Gogol’s tale involves the chaos caused in a small blizzard-beset Ukrainian village when the devil steals the moon on Christmas Eve.   

Come to think of it, Mr. Putin’s painting may not be that much of a stretch; and his inspiration may be close to home.  Perhaps before he started hitting the mulled wine he had been checking on the results of his plans to freeze out Ukraine by cutting off its gas supplies during one of the coldest winters in Eastern European history.  How much of a coincidence is it that the letter his painting illustrates is “u” — and the word at the bottom is “uzor,” which means “pattern.”  It  doesn’t require a Roy Lichtenstein to connect those dots.  

Some are already questioning the authenticity of the work: ”A leader who demands that the world play by our rules could hardly have painted such a picture,” said one painter, who asked to remain anonymous for his own security. “It looks as if it was painted by a sentimental woman. It is too sweet; you can feel it in the brushwork and the palette. The core theme is feminine too.”  

Indeed, Mr. Putin’s acknowledged collaborator is Petersburg artist Nadezhda Anfalova.  (Alternate accounts range from crediting her as an adviser  to claiming that she “finished” the painting, and that either way she is “the source of the painting’s comparatively sophisticated ideas.”)

Regardless of such quibbles, the critics are impressed.  The Telegraph’s Richard Dorment enthuses:

I like the way the yellow window frame and white curtain fill the blue canvas, so that we find ourselves looking through four panes of glass in the centre at a night sky filled with snow and stars.

Notice the confidence with which those curtains are drawn – how with each long stroke Putin never loses contact with the canvas until the of his loaded brush is dry. There isn’t a wasted or unnecessary brushstroke and nothing childish or naïve about this picture.

Putin gives us all the information we need but nothing more. Look how he uses six quick strokes of bright red paint to suggest the decorative border of the curtain at the right, but only a dab or two of red to convey the same information at the left, or how he lets us see the curtain rail at the left, but doesn’t bother to show the one on the right.

This is an artist who has been struck by something most of us wouldn’t look at twice. With remarkable economy he contrasts the warmth, light, and gaiety of the interior with the cold and darkness beyond.

And Jonathan Jones in the Guardian (a rare instance in which the Telegraph and the Guardian have found something on which they can agree) all but gushes:

Putin…appears to know and like Russia’s native heritage of modernism. Gentle, unthreatening and slight his painting may be, but it is not naive. It is, rather, faux-naive in the way it pays homage to St Petersburg’s avant garde a century ago, when artists such as Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova were adopting Russian rustic styles.

Putin’s picture pastiches Larionov. There is even a conceptual touch in his writing the word for “pattern” on the picture. In short, this is stylish and witty for an amateur painting, showing surprising knowledge of art. 

 

“Congratulations President Obama,” the website proclaims.  ”The fun is over.”

Mad’s February edition —the magazine’s 498th issue— leads with a cover by Mark Fredrickson that is full of amusing, and telling, details.  

Click here to see some excerpts from the issue.  

There’s an exposure of what participants and observers were really thinking during President Obama’s swearing-in (e.g., Chief Justice Roberts: “I can’t wait to start crushing this liberal bastard’s progressive agenda with a 5-4 Supreme Court decision,”; Oprah Winfrey: “Look at him — the second most powerful African-American in the country.).  

And there’s a purported diary of the new President’s first hundred minutes in office, with illustrations by Drew Friedman, who was responsible for The New Yorker’s Inauguration Commemorative cover.  Among the “diary” entries: “03: Remove stupid flag pin from lapel…:07: Schedule weekly brunch with Bill Ayers…:08: Submit Keith Olbermann’s name for Presidential Medal of Freedom…:14-16: Watch trailer for new Star Trek movie….:35: Decline Barney Frank’s invitation to Sex and the City marathon….:48: Screw with Secret Service agents by shouting out, “Hey, it’s almost prayer time, which way is Mecca?!”)  

If you’re surprised to learn that Mad is still publishing, you will be less surprised to learn that, starting with the 500th issue in April, it will change from monthly to quarterly publication.  Editor John Ficarra explined that  “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of Mad is funny. So we decided to just publish those.”   It will appear less frequently but each issue will be bumped up from the current 48 to 56 pages.