Renee Farrington leads a virtual tour of some of the most meaningful artworks in history.
Session Theme: “Places” from California to New York to Europe and beyond.
This picture of one person’s Gallery one person’s little private Gallery I think epitomizes what we think of as masterpieces and that is kind of stuffy stuff stuff sort of highbrow Art and I wanted to say to those of you who haven’t been around with me before this class was designed to counteract that
Idea of highbrow art what we do is to try to make connections with individual paintings and I give you some connections that I’ve made I’m not a hard historian or former curator or an artist I’m just an art lover and have taken a few classes
In it and gone to quite a few museums looking at it but I hope that what happens is you just sit back and enjoy the show each time we have a different theme today our theme is the art of place on the left you have the a painting of
The place that all of us humans share Earth and then it says painted by Hieronymus Bosch about fifteen hundred he was he worked on this painting from 1490 to 1510. and it is the picture of earth that is on the doors to his magnificent triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights and on
This he’s showing the Earth and looking down to all those places that we’ve carved places that we call our own places that we want to go to of course the map on the right is how we are today the red one this is my place this is my
Community this is my hometown these are places I want to travel to so we’re going to look at real places imaginary places and really how we look at Place through ART foreign places a place in Chad about 8 000 years ago I love this recently actually discovered prehistoric painting because
It has people in it it has action and so much of the paintings we’re looking at is this is how we were this is how we are at our place so here this might have been designed to help boys go through the right of the ritual of learning how
To hunt it might be religious help us with our hunt or it might be storytelling this is how we hunt Peter bruegel did exactly the same thing these are Hunters when I use the term netherlandish this is what Hieronymus brosh was this is what Peter bruegel was netherlandish
Is a term for what were the Netherlands when they were under Spain it was a combination it means low lands and it is a combination of the lowlands Belgium what we call the Netherlands now or the Holland part of the Netherlands and Luxembourg the the low countries
This is a magnificent paying it is so beautifully composed with the the dark against the white bruggle chronicled all these years of the types of things that he was doing then what he saw so we have a beautiful picture of what it was like in the 16th century
Quentin meds is also a Chronicle that he was also netherlandish painter he would be called an early genre painter here we have a picture of people as if they were actually in their home which is what genre painting is and they are money lenders look at the woman
She’s supposed to be looking at her Bible but she has her eye on the prize over there they’re deciding how much they’re going to give the person who’s brought in his his goodies I have a detail of it here to show you the man who brought in his goodies he’s
In this convex mirror that you can see in the front of the picture so it is storytelling in place but it’s moralistic it’s actually has many Clues as to the the contrast between these money lenders and people who aren’t greedy which is sort of symbolized in
The pearls in the up in the lower left hand corner which are about purity as opposed to Greed the golden edge of Dutch Penny was the 17th century and perhaps the greatest master of this golden age uh well along with others of course Rembrandt had a place is Johannes Vermeer with this marvelous
Panorama that he did of the city of delt the picture at the top is a current photograph notice how he catches the the beautiful light that is bringing those Shadows into the water here the same as in the photograph above also you can see how the people are sort
Of diminished it’s place here that he wants us to understand then we get closer in delft which was his hometown the place where he was married where he had 15 children 11 of whom survived running around just a corner just like this and as we look at these paintings from all different eras
That I kind of mixed together let’s think about them sort of out of their what we think of as Dutch costumes and just think of how it might be today as a matter of fact you can see a picture of the way it is today with the
Car in front but we’re seeing now the beginning of genre painting which means painting about how we are how we live thank you Ruby was a master of genre painting and what you see here is two pictures among many that he well he only did 36 but and
He died rather early but many that show the incredible light if you’ve seen the um picture the girls of Pearl Earring you you see how they opened up the windows and brought the light in he look at the shadow effect in the back on the wall there’s callers who’ve been trying to
Discover some of his methods because his manipulation of light is so beautiful although this is realistic it is working as a painting not as a photograph the feeling of peace and Tranquility that he brings out is amazing I think it’s sort of epitomized in that drop of milk
That tiny drop of milk that has the light on it that is sort of flowing down think about that sort of a stream and we’ll get back to that stream later on foreign did a an incredible piece of genre painting genre painting really came to the fore IGN when the Netherlands broke off
From what what had been the Netherlands under Spain became Holland as we called it that’s part of the Netherlands now and the people were getting wealthier trade was magnificent people were the economy was great and people wanted to show off their homes and they wanted to have paintings in their homes that
Showed homes well this one is an incredible piece of trump lie Trump lie in French means fool the eye let’s look at a video that um explains what’s going on in this painting it is eight and a half feet tall by five and a half feet wide so it’s life-sized oh
I think there’s something quite magical about this picture and it’s a picture that I love now you can usually see this picture from some distance through a doorway and you have this remarkable sense that you could move forward and just for a moment is there a corridor
That you can walk into and then you realize you’re looking at the surface of a painted picture plane there are lots and lots of clues that you can begin to interpret to work out what is going on there is the lovely little young dog he’s not afraid of us but he wonders who
We are and as you walk further into the room you see this tapped with a back arched a little bit anxious but the real action is happening in the room Beyond where you see three figures two men and a woman and the men are in some sort of conversation possibly a negotiation
About marriage but at the window there is a young man possibly just about to knock is he another lover is he just the gardener saying something more mundane we don’t know and that’s the lovely thing I think about who stratton’s work is it creates this narrative for you to
Begin to ask questions just the whole top half is focused on a parakeet or a parrot in a bird cage and his door is open he’s free so something rather lovely going on about the relationship between what’s happening here at the front and what is going on in the far
Room that a young woman is having a contractual Arrangement made about her future and she is perhaps no longer free there’s a letter just dropped on the stairs there what can it possibly say well you bend down and you have a close look it says Samuel van hoekstratton
1662 it’s the artist claiming the authorship of this painting now who Stratton was an absolute Master of the art of perspective and he’s really interested in deception he’s playing with us as viewers and I think this is one of his masterpieces you can see this picture still here at Durham Park where
It’s still amazing visit today a couple things that I think that are really important I love what she said playing I really think that so much art is playing I think it’s playing with the material in order to express what we want to communicate here here we have a
Village Festival which is showing this is a once again a genre painter by the way the genre word can be confusing because we use it to mean type for example a novel is a type of literature it’s a genre of literature as is a horror fiction Etc but genre is a
Genre of painting it is just has its own meaning which means just showing us the way we are and if we contrast it with the religious painting that came before that and the formality that came before that I think we can understand how it’s just life
In place and this is a wonderful feeling of a Village Festival we can see the dancing and of course we have that fabulous sky in the background and here is another Village Festival these are folk art paintings done in jinsan jinshan in China near Shanghai and I found out about these from my
Friend Alan who is in this class who collects them she was living in Shanghai she has some in her house and I think they are incredible and I think they’re such a wonderful compliment connection to the Village Festival that we just saw the idea here is of course to give the gate
To the festival it does it with the colors it does it in you might call it a primitive way you might call it a folk art way I don’t think we have to attach names to it because what we have here are just wonderful renderings of The Way
We Were by the way when we look at the engineers that we just saw we look at this let’s think of our own festivals something like uh first night and think about the buildings that are around the celebration of first night on Pacific Avenue think of the costumes
That are there and then we just sort of translate that here into China before into the Netherlands here are two more celebrations of place the one on the left Grandma Moses who didn’t start paying until she was 78 would have qualified for Ollie and here we have again what is called folk art
She is painting from memory a lot of our places are in our memory also in our imagination on the right Maria primanchenko was sort of the art hero or art heroine of Ukraine and she also painted The Village scenes as she saw them and as she knew them
When we say the word Ukraine of course it’s charged and with good reason here you see on the left a small Museum that had many of her paintings that was uh set on fire during the Russian invasion and a man actually ran in to save the paintings it says a
Lot about humanity and it says a lot about Humanity’s connection to Art this is uh her as she was growing older she died I think it was in 78 and speaking of Ukraine we’re going to see in all three of our classes different banksies Banksy is a street
Artist Banksy is taking this to a different level a different way he now he’s still to most of us Incognito we don’t know who the man action Banksy man or woman banksia actually is some do and we’re pretty sure he’s a Brit he does his stencils in his Studio at home he
Goes out under cover of night and places them on walls this is just so touching where we see a burnout home with the air conditioning unit and then his artwork of the moment in her curls and bathroom trying to take care of the fires around your home so poignant and
So impressive thinking this is now done in place and it’s part of place here are two more that he did in Ukraine the bully hitting the looks like a young adult maybe an adolescent the oppressor and the oppressed and then Triumph of Victory the young girl waving the banner
Mark Chagall will bring us back to looking at a different side of Russia as we talk about this war that’s going on this children’s book I use them I love these books dreamer for the Village from the village talks about how Mark Chagall is so filled with memories of place of
His village I chose one today that chose fire that went on he lived through the bozebec revolution he lived through the pilgrims and had to leave Russia because his family was Jewish so I’ve just reminded us of the fire in the Ukraine and this fire in the Russian village here are
On the left his most famous this is called I Am The Village he shows himself as the green man he shows himself communicating with the animals of his village and like in many of his paintings he shows a topsy-turvy world that he remembers from his time in the
Village on the right on the top is another one that I chose a little bit different in style from the ones that sort of border on the Cubist style the one on the left I chose it to show the similarity between it and the uh tremonchenko below two countries now Russia and Ukraine
Very similar art we’re going to go now to France and I have I’m doing what I do often those of you who have been the class before which is not give the name of the artist because that you might find it fun to to guess but this artist
Took a place the rural cathedral in France and he painted more than 30 views of this place showing us that place changes in the seasons the time of day also it changes in our point of view of how we look at it and feel about it if we live in it or
If we’re actually visiting it as tourists by paying it in different lights the sculptures on the the facade of the cathedral take on different detail well that painter was Claude Monet his most famous work is Impression Sunrise which gave the name impressionism as a pejorative term
To a whole movement of art that changed the course of art of course there have been many movements we’ve had many movements and there was always this big change it was when the the critics said that’s not a painting that’s not a landscape that’s an impression of the landscape
Today I’ve shown this painting before not only should we look at this wonderful rendering of an overall Harbor and it’s by the way in France but also look at the background what is that background we see smokestacks we see cranes what we’re seeing is perhaps what is bringing
Out that mistiness it might be a type of smog as a matter of fact I’ve read a couple of Articles recently where our Scholars are saying that Monet and Turner in in England who love that Misty look really kind of waited for those days they liked that mist but they’re
Also talking about industrialization this is the the end of the 19th century industrialization was going at a rapid speed and speeding up here we see it at the gaussan laga gas and Lazar where the uh steam engines are producing that look Camille pasaro is an artist who was
Older than most of the Impressionists he was kind of their father figure his style you’ll notice is not as impressionistic it is more detailed you can contrast it with other impressionist works and certainly post-impressionist works that we’ll be looking at today but he too is showing the industrialization now this one
I I thought about not telling you who the artist was because um some of you might guess you can guess by the foreground the way the weeds here are rendered but the rest of it is looks more like Pizarro than Vincent van Gogh but he too is showing us the industrialization that
Was coming forth at the end this is called the fantasy Act of the end of the century it has a a whole feeling that we’re going to be talking more about as we get into Paris this is gay Pari it is the beautiful epic La Bella book not for everybody as
We’re going to be seen in a minute but Paris now among the people who could afford it were was a beautiful gay place the way the artist portrayed it and here this is the model Suzanne balado and she’s dancing for I wonder if you know
Who the artist is we’ll show him in the next slide but she is also she we’re going to see her next week turned out to be an outstanding artist herself that artist is Piero Goose Renoir and this is one of his masterpieces there’s so much that’s going on here between
People I mean there’s a guy in a top hat in the background and the foreground you guys had a guy in his undershirt looking off in the distance why you can Google all these people they were friends of renoirs I happen to know that the fellow in the straw hat in the
Front is another impressionist Kai but there are stories here look to the right of guy but look at the two hands they’re starting to touch what is the story that’s going on well a person who told all these stories in her fictional biographical fiction book is shown in
The book right here Susan Vreeland I really recommend this book Robert Delaney is an artist that you may have run into in Diane Levinson’s class about the Armory show he showed several pieces then the Armory show in New York he came from Paris to show his work it was groundbreaking work it was
Criticized up and down that was just uh because it was different and this is definitely different this is cubistic we’re seeing Paris on the left we see the buildings including the Louvre on the right we see buildings including the Eiffel Tower in the middle we have some
Lovely naked ladies such as the ones we’re going to be looking at next week when we look at the history of how women have been betrayed in art foreign of a cycle of 15 paintings that Elena did showing the Eiffel Tower it’s pretty standard on the left although it’s
Exaggerated and it just all works together in composition as do all three look at the one in the middle it’s kind of a melting Eiffel Tower and the one on the right is positively dancing I think it’s dancing some kind of a jitterbug they’re absolutely delightful wonderful example of a painter of many
That I’m showing all the time who can work in so many different styles who can play with art and play with Place showing it in different ways then go made his placed aural in the south of France after moving from the art colony in Paris he wanted to
Establish an art gallery an art colony in the south of France in the town of and he lived in the little yellow house with the green shutters on the corner you can see in a photograph that it’s captured on the top there in the bottom
The way it is today so place is not just geographical it changes with what goes on foreign we go to more specific places Van Gogh’s room and I’m sorry about my caption here I’ve got Van Gogh’s chair in the wrong place in the caption Van Gogh’s chair which you can see in his
Room is on the right he’s just left it for a few minutes he left his pipe and his Tobacco on it he’s sort of like putting a placeholder saying this is my place the one in the middle is gogan’s chair then go painted it after Gogan left after several bad arguments between Goga
And Van Gogh who lived together in the yellow house as a matter of fact one of those arguments scholars believe led to the incident with the ear where he either cut off his whole whole ear or just mutilated it look at the candle on there look at the light in the back
Which is also a candle this is a little Trope a little meme that we learn from still life that if you see a candle is talking about life burning down and then the light going out Van Gogh is giving a tribute to his friend that he’s lost by showing his place outside
He showed us the square which you can visit on the left and the cafe which you see on the the right which is still there you can you can visit the cafe it is now called The Cafe Van Gogh if you have to if you want to be you know Von Hall
So anyway I want you to look at the beautiful light on the cafe but this is done in 1888. in 1889 his guy will get even more dramatic than the one that he’s doing here you may wonder why I’m switching to a contemporary architect Frank Gary I think he’s best known for his
Artistic type of architecture particularly in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in Spain he manipulates space like no artist had done well I think Audi comes close Gowdy is pretty you know artistic both the way but what you see on the right is a building an art center that he did in
Aural in France Frank Gary designed it after starry night and I think that we can see in this here I can anyway as the building is lined up I I can see a starry night I can see an imaginative view of the sky so place is not only done in art of the
Painter but it can be done in the art of the architect okay let’s come over to our continent New York and I’m playing the game again I’ve got a couple of hints as to who the artist is who did the paintings on either side look at the one on the lip the first
Thing we think I think we see is that weird blue shape and then we realized it’s what we call negative space in art and it’s showing the sky as seen through the skyscrapers of New York I love the way the Moon that lights up those clouds so beautifully is
Echoed in the street light and then down below in the stoplight look on the right we’ve seen views like that we’ve seen them in in many skylines that lie at night and this is how the artists portrayed the radiator building through the lighted welding Windows this
Place is creating its own space with the windows and you were right if you thought that was Georgia O’Keeffe I put one of her flowers back there this is on the left is her Brooklyn Bridge on the right is a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge where the artist Alfred stieglitz
Showed that same was had that same fascination with the wires that make up the bridge here’s a picture of stieglitz and George O’Keefe they were married they met when she went to his Art Gallery he was both a great photographer and an art dealer and she wanted him to carry her
Pictures he’s 23 years older than she they did marry he stayed mostly in New York and of course she came out to Santa Fe Joseph Stella also showed us the bridge here we’re getting more abstracted I’m going to be talking a little bit more about abstraction today because I think
We can see so often how it came about how an artist for example in the deloney the Eiffel Tower on the one on the left you can make out those guidewires of the bridge and down at the bottom you see a little skyline of New
York the one on the right is even more deconstructed you have sort of an echo in the middle of the same shape that we have in the left painting is the same shape that O’Keefe and stieglitz had in their work here’s the Manhattan Bridge speaking of bridges less famous this
Artist said I’m going to show you New York but I’m not going to show you all of the the things that that we consider to be the big landmarks that people have to see I’ll show you the Lesser known so when he did a bridge which is shown in a
Photograph on the left he did the Manhattan Bridge look at how solitary empty of people it is a little hint as to who the artist is and it is Edward Hopper he was going to show us New York as he saw it his most famous painting is of a cafe
On a strange little corner in New York on the left you see some photographs where Scholars have gone around New York and found places that might have been the place where it was actually helped Hopper do his rendering so the flat iron building and then down below
Is a flower shop and they’ve actually put the painting of The Nighthawks behind so here we have The Nighthawks nighttime in New York Hopper will show us paintings all over town this one has the cigar store sign up above and he’s saying this is a place
These are stories of New York let’s look at a video now about Hopper’s relationship with New York foreign Hopper described New York as the city that I know best and like most he lived here for nearly six decades a period that spans his entire mature career Hopper captured places that are actually
Many cases very minor places these are not the empire state buildings or the Chrysler buildings they’re street corners that could be anywhere and everywhere Everett Hopper’s New York is an exhibition that looks at the work of this iconic artist through the lens of New York when you walk into the museum and you
See the Edward Hopper show and you just glance out the windows many of the paintings were made just blocks from here the exciting challenge for us has been how we share Hopper’s work in a way that adds new life to our understanding of this person people see these iconic copper paintings
And they take them in and they are great representations of an imagined America but I think the show helps you to look more deeply into them and understand not only how he made them how he thought about them how he moved around the city what he thought about the changes going on
Around him and what essential fiber at the heart of New York continued to capture his imagination and keep him looking again and again at the city around him we feel this is a great opportunity for The Rebirth of New York City to look at New York through Edward Hopper’s eyes
And then to see what is there but what is not and what will be I hope that visitors walk out of this exhibition with a newfound awareness of or curiosity for the city around them and perhaps an openness to those Hopper moments that can surprise and delayed in
The most unexpected ways in the most ordinary places foreign I forgot to mention that this was uh the video was about this Blockbuster exhibition they had at the Whitney here are those two just very ordinary places Hopper must have had a little sense of humor using Ex-Lax
Um those of us of a certain age know what x fact is maybe not everybody knows what Xbox is looking over listen I can’t tell um anyway look at the way that in a very ordinary seeming composition he showed us the Circle Theater on the right if you squint
You will see just little sections of color they really aren’t defined as place as much that’s what I’m talking about just sort of leading toward things that are more abstract on the left we see his early Sunday morning there are no people the personality the characters of the
Place I think are really the fire hydrant and the barber pole let’s remember back to whose corner in delft let you try to remember who who did that painting and what we see here is exactly the same thing the brick facade the Stillness we do have people in the one on the right
But they are even though we usually apply genre to the Dutch golden age but these are genre paintings this is how we lived this is the place where we lived and they change Romero Bearden did exactly what we were just talking about and he showed us his part of New York
Which is Harlem in exactly the same way that Vermeer did by the way Vermeer is the artist who did the corner of delft and this is the view of delft we have that Panorama we have the way that we might see a place as we’re driving into it of course in New York
You certainly wouldn’t have that whole Panorama any place but as we see it from a distance and then we think what is behind the facades what kind of a place what kind of things are going on here well the art that Romero Bearden did in Harlem he shows us what went on he
Created scenes that are Behind the Walls these are collaged on absolute masterpieces life in Harlan in that particular place of New York he is showing us his world a contrast to the um area in the lower part of Manhattan in Greenwich Village where Hopper lived here’s one up close and personal I have
To be honest but I think it’s kind of a sign of our connections with art my first view of this painting told me I was looking at a gang that I was looking at a gang war it’s my conditioning from our history unfortunately sometimes in Salinas sometimes thinking that these
Are all black people if you look carefully it’s not at all it’s not at all something like that these people are collage on are going about their way I have a feeling that my connection might be one that Romero Bearden might have wanted he called the picture the dove there is
A dove of peace that is right above the middle window there it is not about a war it’s about peace foreign before we leave New York I have to show you one of my favorite pictures as a matter of fact I paid a couple of
Dollars to be able to to print this in in my book because I think it’s terrific and I printed it and I use the these this as an idea of how we were in college about place I mean Our Little World at UCSB was the only world if
Things that went on outside there were just sort of an afterthought and this is he’s showing the view of the world from New York City 9th Avenue yeah that’s my hometown I really know that in detail by the time we get to the Hudson River things aren’t quite so clear and then
The entire rest of the United States a couple of rocks couple of States we here in California are kind of like a rust colored line beyond the Pacific Ocean you have countries you got your China you got your Russia but it’s just our myopic view of place so we’ll say
Goodbye to New York right now and go on to California we’re going to give it a little bit more time than sales Thunder did in his cartoon the um postcards the fruit labels the magazines the movies from California make us almost a cliche each one of
Which is shown in a letter of the of our state that image that is shown big here which I had had sort of small on the PowerPoint is a picture of a uh the um the Pan-American Unity mural that is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
And it is still there you can get in free going through those glass doors in the back it is showing the development of Mexico as a place and the United States is a place in the middle there is a joining of the two the Pan-American Unity throughout you see the city of San
Francisco you see California because this was done for an exposition there on the left is another painting by Diego Rivera that shows the allegory of California you can see that it is a mural and the stairway is down at the bottom there she is holding the fruits the vegetables
Of our agriculture you can see the plain for our aviation in the back you can see some of the oil Derricks do you know the artist Sando Burke I didn’t before I saw the movie in Smog and Thunder and I saw it in a class movie class here at Ollie
What it is is a story of the great war between Northern California and Southern California you may not have heard of this Great War because Sando Burke made it up and the movie is made up of his paintings you see here some of the scenes so let’s
Look at a trailer for this movie I was near the AM PM when I heard the order to fall back so I grabbed four cases of Slim Jims from the liquor store and traded one for some Miller Lite we saw them coming through the haze as soon
As the don’t walk signs started flashing my rifle was hot from firing it didn’t even slow them down let the bastards burn War that’s right war in California California was teetering on the edge of Doom animosity between Los Angeles and San Francisco had grown out of control
Then in early May General one Gomez De Los Angeles LED his Sovereign troops in a surprise attack against the Bay Area once the Battle of San Francisco began there was no turning back in Smog and thunder tells this story through the humble words of the soldiers and civilians who lived through it the
Slaughter has been terrible the result of Ridiculousness until we have good themes good plots good directing this fight on the Great War of the californias was the ultimate Calamity in a state strewn with calamities when this Powder Keg ignited the state was quickly consumed by this horrible conflagration Yes it is available on DVD I just you probably heard me laughing out loud and I’ve seen this so many times one thing that I wanted to point out is we are talking about place a couple of places and taking all of the the metaphors the memes the cliches about both places and
We put them in there but another thing is look at the style that Sando Burke paints these in he’s using a very classical style let’s look at the next couple the depending on the right looks like it was done by the Hudson River School it’s very classical sandal Burke
I think is an amazing artist so all of these are shown in um in the movie also if you go to the DeRosa Center in Napa Valley you can see some of the original paintings from the movie The DeRosa Center is a repository of Northern California paintings and speaking of Northern California
Let’s look at that since I’m from Southern California that enemy territory Diego Rivera is back he did this building of a city at what was the San Francisco art institute now it’s I think it’s the San Francisco College of Art I think don’t think I have the name quite right it’s
Sort of a mural of a mural you can see two three versions of uh Diego working on the mural there again it is the building of San Francisco foreign and I hope that you’ve had a chance to go to Coit Tower to see the murals that
Are there that show San Francisco in the depression many of the WPA artists the ones who were hired by the Roosevelt administration during the Depression to in order to give these Starving Artists some work were actually trained by Diego Rivera and his picture is is in one but there’s
City Lights Bookstore there’s just the everyday these are genre scenes of San Francisco Ansel Adams has documented our great stay particularly Yosemite Northern California area there are those who are say you know you really should just show the photograph the way it is it should manipulate it well I’m not sure that’s true
Photography is an art it is hard you can manipulate and Ansel Adams did I think that he worked on this incredible vision of the Mist going through the canyon absolutely fantastic rendering of Yosemite on the left is another view from Ansel Adams in the painted in the middle you
Have a painting that was done in the very beginning of the very end of the 19th century and it is part of the Hudson River School the Hudson River School there’s something on the screen okay it’s off the Hudson River School was made up of artists who some of them
Came from other countries like their stock came from Germany who showed in a very romantic dramatic way the Grandeur of the United States landscape look at if you can down in the foreground you see people that are even teeny tinier than the people that you saw in vermeer’s view of
Delft because here the story that’s being told is the Grandeur of the United States that’s the place that they chose to paint through the nature of the place here is another painting by Sando Burke on the left very traditional he’s done this painting as a an homage to a Hudson River
Painting called the beach of Beverly that was done in the 19th century there is a trick I mean you saw what sandal Burke did within Smog and Thunder there’s a trick in this painting I’m not telling you the title because that trick is in the title
So examine it see what you see what do you see on the horizon what do you see in the foreground see how the trees sort of frame the picture well this is a digression alert that I’m going to be going a little bit away from Northern California to talk about
Something that’s very special the title of that painting is fog over San Quentin State Prison San Quentin California and I’ve enlarged the detail that you can see behind that rock on the horizon is a view of San Quentin prisoner and I’m going to be talking about the art of Prisons
Sandalburg did a series called prisonation where he showed us views very classically shown you can work in many different styles for example the one on the right is the closest one to us Salinas Valley State Prison it’s just over there it’s part of our landscape it’s part of our place
The place that is really not that important to many of us but now we’re going to talk about the people who are inside that place who are doing art this is a very recent newspaper from San Quentin often in these newspapers they talk about the art the particular
Incarcerated person this is right before Cinco de Mayo and this this art is done in homage to Selena who passed away at a very young age notice the skeletons on the right we know skeletons from The Day of the Dead we also know them from Still Life paintings and other paintings where the
Artist is use them as what’s called a Memento Mori a Memento that we will all die that is what he has in that picture the first artist I heard about who was an incarcerated artist I heard about from Bill Brigham who I believe is in this class
Who introduced me to the art of the incarcerated bill is a sociologist he has worked very closely with incarcerated artists and I was absolutely fascinated I said this says so much about the art of place because what is in common with all of these artists is that they found a way
To express their inner feelings their inner emotions through their art the first piece that bill saw was at an exhibit in Santa Cruz and he saw this wonderful drawing of a baby who’s putting together his or her own life by putting the puzzle piece in place
The many of the lives of all the lives of the incarcerated artists certainly took a turn that they couldn’t have imagined the first picture that bill showed to me was this marvelous painting by Ruben J Gonzalez and it shows this beautiful colors of an overall pattern the pattern of the
Plants matching the pattern within the parents and what I learned was that he did not have pains what he had were magazines and he scraped the pigment off the magazines and combined them with water perhaps hair gel perhaps liquid soap to make his paints and I read many stories bill has
Given me a lot of information I’m sorry I can’t put it all in today about what artists went through to express what was inside them as they did their artwork in prison foreign ful documentary I really recommend it called Art and Crimes by crimes Jesse crimes began his art in prison once he
Got out he was able to show it as you can see on the cover here and I’ll give you some details about that but his this particular artwork he did on bed sheets and would smuggle them out bit by a bit until it was shown on the outside
Of prison one of his main themes in this documentary is we are not just incarcerated or formally incarcerated artists we are artists and I know that bill works very closely with one of these Federal organizations that have been built up around the art of the incarcerated
Once he got out he could show this mural on the top you see The Garden of Earthly Delights which is opening up those doors I showed you of Earth that Bosch did at the uh the end of the 16 said the end of the 15th century down below you see the
Whole mural you can see it with the person here that um so you can see the size that Jesse did based on that and the theme Here is this Freedom this freedom of movement and dance and joy that one can have on the outside that they certainly didn’t have inside prison
Another artist that’s in that documentary is Russell Craig here on the left is his self-portrait that’s done on bed sheets he is also part of a fellowship that’s dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated artists and this I think is absolutely magnificent it is entitled three is a crowd death of Maurice
I’ve talked with Bill both of us have to just guess we couldn’t find anything about it we’re guessing that what um perhaps Russell Craig did was to show the death of a person that perhaps was put into sale with two others making it through as a crowd and that there was
Either a murderer or perhaps a suicide if you look carefully you can see that the background some of it is done from torn uh purses you see locks you see zippers you see different ways that um sort of symbolize being locked up this is based on the death of Mara who was a
Revolute French Revolutionary hero that was done by Jacques Louis David in the end of the 18th century Gustav Dore in London showed the monotony the tight tight feeling of the prisoners who are going round and round without any ability to change the way that their life is created
And in the last year of his life maybe while he was in ceremy when uh he was in what we call it he committed himself to an insane asylum for his bouts of mental illness by the way he has written he couldn’t paint when he was mentally ill he wasn’t doing this
Magnificent painting when he was mentally ill but he had many bouts that were combined with alcoholism probably syphilis and other things but here you see the same story this isn’t copying Dory is giving homage to his painting but it’s the same situation the people the top hats looking on
It has been going to imagines it and he puts himself in the center his face his red hair his face a little John just looking out toward us the art of place right now you can go to the Santa Cruz art and history museum and see the writing on the wall which is
A display that I show you in the right on the bottom um of the art that is inside the little prison the little jail that you find in Davenport so we’re going to be leaving at Northern California now after that digression which I think it says so much about
Place and about art to our area our Central Coast looks like there’s something coming down the road from Santa Cruz there in that picture I’m so proud when I see an art festival that’s devoted to Plein Air which is painting that’s done out in the open
About our area and see all the painting that’s been done in our area live that I lived in a in this town that is so known for its beauty that has been put into art as I go from Las Palmas out to Ryan Ranch for Ali sometimes I see people on
The side of the road painting on Highway 68 and it gives me a feeling of Pride about my place well let’s get further closer to our place and that is the cover of our Ali catalog where Lester veronda who was from Salinas did This Magnificent painting remember the water and impression
Sunrise here you can see the water and what I love is one detail about this painting on the cover see the people in the brightly colored clothes in the in the AFT section of the boat in the back their colors are reflected in the water
So the sun just happens to hit them at that time and is therefore reflected in the water in the mind of the artist this is by Rhonda it’s called Barranca a Barranca is a deep Gully I imagine it was quite filled with water recently one
Look at the style of this I think it’s about to give us I love those colors those pinks going into rust the Moss greens the darker Moss greens but look how he’s using the paint sections of paint to carve out the mountains and to carve out that Gully that is a method
That the artists learned from Cezanne who was a post impressions here’s the work of Cezanne completely blew everybody away with this style and you can see how it went right into cubism Pablo Picasso called Cezanne the father of us all he did 36 paintings and 45 watercolors of the
Mountain near his home in Exxon Pro laws most notice how he carves it out into geometrical shapes this is the background of cubism we saw it in delone earlier we’ll see it again se1 was Chinese American whose painting is on the back cover of our Ollie catalog
This is the painting up close it’s marvelous notice the style here we have a style where it’s almost abstract we don’t have faces on the people this is very close to the movement which came out of Northern California worldwide movement that we can actually lay some claim to called the Bay Area
Figurative movement so I’ve shown you a picture by Elmer Bischoff on the right which is also figures at the beach you can see the broad brush Strokes that they use to render the place the place of the beach Warren Shang was born in 1957 in Monterey County born and raised
You’ll notice his style I talked about going toward abstraction it takes courage to be a contemporary artist and to do something in such a realistic Style so you see two self-portraits he did here the one on the right is almost photonaturalistic showing him at his easel these are such eloquent
Pictures about the area particularly where I live I live right across from the fields right near the Salinas River and see these scenes often when I go up and down River Road this is for these pictures are from a show that was in 2019 called voice of
The fields these people are so often invisible these are genre scenes of how these people are living in our time in our place look at this approaching storm magnificent pain and I think he he is really a terrific painter that sky is terrific and then again how
The Sun just hits in certain places on the right I’m matching it with a photograph I saw from The New York Times that shows people who are picking crops in Salinas on the left you see diggers in our fields and it was inspired by Miley foreign who was
Just a precursor to the impression as he worked at the same time he didn’t work in an impressionist style but he used regular people just like the people that you see an impression in his paintings these are called The Gleaners these are the peasants not picking fields of of
Their crops but of the detritus that is left after the crops were picked yeah and here is then goes oh oh I said it I was gonna make you guess I think he would have guessed from this painting that this is Van Gogh showing also The Gleaners going
Crazy this is the last year of his life by the way Van Gogh only worked for 10 years he started in 1880 and he worked until his death at 1890 at a very young age 36 37. during that time he produced 900 paintings that would be one every 36 hours he
Reinvented painting his face and so many of them are great masterpieces and here he is showing his idea this is during the time that he was incarcerated or in insane asylum and went to live with his psychiatrist Innovation was where he passed away these are the red fields of oral
So many times our memories of places are just through color just through if you think right now back yo a place where you had a picnic late lately or a place that you visited perhaps you went to the the bloom the great Bloom that’s going on right now maybe it’s just the colors
That’s what Van Gogh is showing is this moral is Red by the way in this painting you can see how thickly then go put this it’s like frosting on a cake he was in love with paint same way as wrong Rembrandt and the pain is actually cracking on that sun up there
Here is on the left a painting by one Dutchman and on the right the same subject done by another Dutchman 300 years apart can you figure out who this is on the left it’s quite restrained for what he normally does what I’d like you to look
At are the layers the files the stripes that he puts all these horizontals the horizontals from the waving wheat to the fence to the crops to how the the outline of the fields to the mountains if we’re going to bring up those layers and Stripes later on
On the right we have a painting done in the 16th century that also layers us back showing us the same thing Harvest Harvesters on the left we have Van Gogh on the right we have broikel okay it’s time for Southern California my hometown The Stereotype of my hometown La La Land
Is certainly in the picture on the left and then on the right something else I got permission to quote in my book is from Saul Bellow in Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected is if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly
Screwed down had slid into Southern California well Southern California is my place hockney showed us Southern California the Santa Monica Hills in the front you see them straight on in the middle you see Mulholland Drive from a bird’s eye view in the back you actually see the
Map all in one picture let’s show the the video of about hockney’s view of California more of a shadow Los Angeles is almost the first place I’ve ever draw there were no paintings of Los Angeles people then didn’t even know what he looked like David Hawk needs a splash is undoubtedly one of the most iconic images of the 20th century he almost single-handedly to find an idea or an image of what California looks like to us today David Hawkins was born in Bradford in Yorkshire in 1937 he moved down to London at the end of the
1950s to study art at the Royal College London was post-war era and dreary and America was a promised land for him especially Los Angeles when I went to Los Angeles it was really three times better than I thought it would be La really represented a place of Greater freedom for David Hockley he
Saw it as a Bohemian land of liberalism or Freedom as a gay man he felt more comfortable there and the lifestyle was almost a dream come true for him as long as I got here within one week of coming here I’d never driven before I’ve got a driving license bought a car
I got a studio and I thought this is the place and I thought it’s so sexy all these incredible Boys Everybody wore a white socks then It’s Always Sunny hockney was really Struck By the Light the color the sunny atmosphere of California in California you see bright yellow and orange I use
Bright yellow and orange if you look through my opinions of the past it’s always blue or green it drags you in color was suddenly discovering it all its possibilities the paintings that hockney made in 1966 are the works that really made his name as an artist he took inspiration
Principally from a manual on how to maintain swimming pools and it became the starting point for a series of three paintings that he would call the little splash the second the splash and the third a bigger Splash which is in the collection of Tate Britain painting of the splash for instance so
Now what I quite liked about doing it was uh the perversity of painting something that lasts for one second but it took me seven days work to paint the splash itself if you look carefully it’s painted in single lines with a small brush I could make the water look very
Fluid and wet by putting paint on acrylic paint it was very very diluted and you put a detergent in it so when you paint on the canvas the canvas sucks it up like blotting paper it’s the one painting that if you showed it to somebody put it
In front of them they’d be oh that’s David hockney that’s how iconic it is in the same way that Monet’s water lilies Van Gogh sunflowers and monk series of Screams are so Associated those artists hockney’s series of splashes are the celebrated images of his career
Here are two paintings one of them is in a style you’ll see is one of his many cells he’s still working he’s 85 um and um comes up with a new idea every minute on the left is a rendering of his Studio on the right that’s hockney in one of his chairs this
Was a picture in architectural digest when they went through his Studio so he epitomized La La Land There is the splash there is the couple well one I’m assuming that there are a couple that that maybe maybe the story here is one came home and found the other in the
Pool anyway there’s lots of stories you could tell but there’s a Santa Monica Mountains in the background of both of them and of course the iconic uh palm tree that you see reflected in the windows on the left that’s smaller land on the left terribly different type of
Banning Hawking did this he did many paintings of the people that he knew if you Google this painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy Percy’s the cat it’s also another name for a male part in Britain um you’ll find out that it’s really based on fact I’ve chosen this as
Another picture that you can write about for riding with the masterpieces that will have in Fall it’s based on the uh Arnold Feeney Portrait by John Garnett of the 15th century foreign corn showed us Southern California as an abstract expressionist sometimes when we have a memory of a
Place all we see is a color or we might just have just a flashing view of it in a totally abstract way demon corn who also documented Northern California in paint is shown as his feeling about this area of Southern California near the beach at Venice okay here’s a digression I know that
Renee Curry is here in class and I mentioned several times during tackling the tough ones that I would refer to the last book that we read I’m afraid I can’t recommend the book unless you get house calls from Renee to help you through it it’s difficult because the author Gerald mernin
Invented an entire new way of expressing in literature exactly like the artists we’ve talked about the collection of short stories we read is called stream system the stream system is a system of how the streams go from the middle of the snow out to the ocean the book is written almost that
Way there’s certain little themes that go throughout the most important theme that is repeated that’s as if it’s carrying down that stream is Place Gerald mernin said the most important element of fiction is place he never left his home state in Australia here’s a picture of his particular area in Victoria it’s
Traditionally painted look at how it has those layers that I often talk about going back through the Horizon different layer upon layer here is another rendering in the upper left hand corner of his same area down below you will see one of the final the last pages said that it was his last
Picture but it’s in a weed field which is where Van Gogh either was killed or took his own life people would not don’t always agree on that but look at how it is also done in these layers throughout the book Merlin keeps on reflecting on just the images the visit
These sort of visions that he has look at how it’s reflected in this scoreboard that I saw it has his same last name name but it’s not related it’s on a soccer scoreboard it’s how we see places reflected they flash through our minds that’s how he writes the book
Interestingly in his book The Planes which is also about place it shows a TV screen see that layering that I’m talking about and then on the right another cover of the same book is like a Rothco painting that is beyond abstract expressionism is called color field where you have an impression just of
Colors totally abstract Ed Rocher also documented Southern California in sort of a mid-century modern type of a style this hard-edged exaggerated perspective way here we have his Standard Station and I’ve contrasted it with hoppers here’s his burning gas station a little drama there and here’s his burning Los Angeles
County Museum on fire he said look it’s not a political painting but if you think of it as sort of a contrast talking about people protesting against an authority figure he says as an artist go ahead he did the Hollywood sign in many many iterations the place that defines La La Land yeah
Okay here comes my last personal digression for this class I also use the back of the Hollywood sign on top of a hill from my book it is not on the top of the hill it’s on the side of the Hill as you see down here in this Photograph
Called a view of Burbank 1924 and Burbank is just those fields what you see is the sign on the right you see Tinseltown where I lived in and I talk about in my book I could see those plagued lights going back and forth I thought everything that’s great happens in Hollywood
When he dedicated the Hollywood Studios area of Disney World Michael Eisner at that time said that the world that we’ve entered was created by the Walt Disney Company at the end he said we welcome you to a Hollywood That Never Was and always will be on the top is
Grumman’s Chinese as it is today underneath that is gums Chinese at um Disney World last place Casablanca what do you see just close your eyes and picture Casablanca okay did you visit this see the skyline with the biggest mosque in Africa seventh biggest in the world the wall art the
Mural of the old ladies who has the whole history of Morocco on her back or how about this restaurant in a post-impressionistic style on the right we’ll have a lot of feeling feeling that a lot of people pictured the film Casablanca and perhaps the restaurant Rick’s Cafe
On the right you see my dearest friend who’s like my daughter Gretchen and I at Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca in Morocco so goodbye for now from A reproduction of a place that never existed until it was created on a Warner Brothers set in my home place Burbank