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HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON-PHOTOGRAPHER EXTRAORDINAIRE

In an effort to explain the art world we have tried to single out for the reader interesting artists throughout history. We have a small photograph done by Henri Cartier-Bresson which shows a fat French family picnicking at a race track. It is not one of his greatest works, but it forces us to look and to understand this family in a way that no other artist could have done. Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. He came from an affluent French family; Cartier-Bresson was headstrong and determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, thus he determined that he was meant to be an artist. It was also natural then for him as a young man to be a communist as well as a surrealist and to busy himself in brothels. Gertrude Stein viewed his paintings and advised him to join the family business. In 1931 he began taking pictures in Africa where he acquired black waterfever and a Leica camera. He then gave himself over to his surrealist spirit recording odd events in the city streets of Marseilles. Cartier-Bresson says that he suddenly realized that “photography could reach eternity through the moment”. What really makes him a genius is that he approached photography recording timeless truth and immediacy which thrilled both the eye and the mind.

In 1937 he joined the staff of a communist daily newspaper and he was sent to cover the coronation of King George VI. His photographs did not record the pomp of the event; instead he turned his lens to the attending crowds.

He had joined the French army in 1939 and, captured by the Germans, he spent three years in prison camps before he escaped. During this time he proceeded to take magnificent portraits of the leading avant garde intellectuals of France in a new way. These silent duels with consenting adult persons generated the most beautiful and moving portraits in photographic history. After the war he made a film about the expatriation of liberated prisoners and displaced persons in Europe. One still from this film shows a female collaborator being denounced by a woman she had betrayed. It was a photograph that aroused ferocious anger in all who saw it, and it was this single photograph that brought him to New York where he became a co-founder of Magnum, a photographic agency headed by Robert Capa, a famous American photographer.

Cartier-Bresson began to photograph in a unique new way. He blackened the shiny portions of his camera and carried it around under his coat so that he simply photographed his subjects surreptitiously. It was his eye that determined what the viewer would see when the photographs were printed. However his lens was focused on the crowds rather than on the pomp. He was still a communist when LIFE magazine published his shots or workers, students, and soldiers involved in Mao’s Great Leap Forward in 1959. Cartier-Bresson from that time on travelled the world that brought him to China, to India, Russia, Mongolia, Indonesia, the middle east and Japan.

Then in 1975 he put down his Leica after a 45 year career behind the camera and never thought of himself as the founding father of photojournalism nor did he take any more photographs. “It doesn’t interest me.” he said.

And the question for us is just what makes him great? What allowed him to photograph with such perfection? What he photographed was of less importance than where he placed himself to photograph it. His shutter click climaxed an artful scurry for the perfect point of view. Cartier-Bresson took photographs that aligned him with the head, the eye, and the heart of his subjects. He understood people, children, old ladies and what moments are significant in human beings. He was able to do this because he was intelligent, educated, and possessed of an understanding of history. Moreover he had an innate sense of what was going on in the world and he was there when great earth shaking things happened. It is still thrilling today to “meet up with his work.”

There is a new book I simply have to own. It is written by Robert Hughes, an art critic who uses words so magnificently and so wittily that he is famous for his long career of passionate opinions. The new book is entitled ROME-A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History. Hughes is not the stuff of classical art history scholars, but he is capable of prodigious energies and enthusiasms and he is a past master of the well turned phrase. He is not only eloquent; he is also courageous and forthright in his opinions. And so this essay must of necessity take direct quotes of Hughes’ personal history writing in order to give full meaning to the excitement I feel as I turn the pages.

Robert Studley Forrest Hughes was born, raised and educated in Australia. Law was the family business through three generations but it did not excite him. He has been described as knowledgeable, sensible, passionate, lucid, unpretentious and most importantly, witty. He concentrated on the visual arts and architecture. His books on Barcelona and Goya as well as on Australia have delighted his audience . He has been the art critic for TIME as well as a documentary film maker and he has lived in the USA for most of his adult life.

What astounds many of his critics is that he finds new observations to make about Rome, a city that has been observed, discussed, praised, and vilified for over 2000 years. The reader sits and nods in recognition of the validity of his complaints about Rome’s traffic or the thousands of tourists pouring into and out of the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. He cites Caravaggio’s portrayal of beautiful young Italian boys and describes them with “hair like black ice cream”. Another entry about the Cathars, a heretical sect in southern France whose members were massacred in the Albigensian Crusade, is commented upon thus, “One might have thought that such mild people presented about as much threat to society as a gaggle of vegans–whose spiritual ancestors, in a sense, they were.” There is a description of a mural depicting gory martyrdom as “a kind of Sistine Chapel for sentimental sadists.” Hughes even has a snide understatement about the cruelty of Nero toward the citizens of Rome and even his own family, “Even without the accusations of arson, Nero’s treatment of others, including his own family, was to, put it mildly, defective.”

This is a complicated narrative of the mythological founding of Rome which Hughes takes the reader through and it explains the rise and fall of Rome as well as well as shepherding the reader throgh the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque. Particularly fascinating is the passage on Bernini’s Baroque Apollo and Daphne. Apollo, the god of light and unmarried men, is desirous of a carnal relationship with Daphne, a chaste nymph. In the tempestuous battle between chastity and sexual desire Daphne begs to be saved. “Nobody had tried to illustrate in sculpture things in transition, to convey what was incomplete or in the very process of change. Yet we do see the change from girl to tree happening before our eyes; the bark enveloping and encasing her lithe body; softness giving way to ligneous toughness; movement turning into rootedness. Moreover, the sculpture seems to defy what we know is the chief property of stone: its brittleness.” In another critical estimate Hughes depicts the death of Germanicus with the man’s face turned away so that his expression is not revealed; he says this is “Poussin’s way to suggest that this death is not a private issue but one of history itself”.

When Hughes takes Rome into the modern era he makes comparisons between Mussolini and Hitler that are difficult to absorb “what you saw with Mussolini was what you got. The Italians admired his courage, which was not in doubt. He was clearly not in politics for personal gain; he cared nothing for money or domestic comfort….He had no middle-class background; he was wholeheartedly patriotic and genuinely male.” Then to bring the book up to the present day he complains about Italians wasting their time on soccer and overloading on bad television.

Why, you may ask, am I so enamored of the book and Hughes? To which I must respond that he and I have two important things in common–the glory and the grandeur of Rome through the ages. and a love and abiding respect for Italy. If you have been to Rome, if you want to go to Rome, even if you are not going to Rome it is a fascinating wonderful joy to read.

Get ready for another miraculous discovery in the field of art. The Metropolitan Museum of New York is in the process of identifying a work which they acquired in 1970 as a work by Michelangelo. That does not mean that the identity of the painter has been firmly established. And in this case it provides a clear timeline for determining the authorship of all “found art”. Here is a painting that has resided in the museum for over 40 years attributed to Francesco Granacci, who just happened to be a good friend of Michelangelo. Now comes Everett Fahy, one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of the Italian Renaissance, and declares that SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST BEARING WITNESS is not a Granacci but is absolutely the work of Michelangelo. Fahy says, “I’m acutely aware that Michelangelo attracts a lot of crazy ideas, and people are going to say this is another absurd idea…….I’m expecting that they’re going to throw brickbats.”

Fahy has just recently retired as chairman of the Met’s department of European paintings. His successor is Keith Christiansen who has gone on record saying, “I think Everett has put forward the strongest argument that can be made for it.” Now Mr. Christiansen, does this mean you agree yes or disagree no? To which he smiles and says “I don’t do yes or no.” Fahy has shown the work to authorities in the field beginning with the late Edmund P. Pillsbury who was completely convinced that the work was by Michelangelo. Fahy says that it is to be expected that others will disagree, but “the people who really have good eyes in this field that he has shown the painting all agreed with me.” He has written a 65 page article about the painting which he has titled “An Overlooked Michelangelo?” He used the question mark because it wold be more diplomatic and not offend people who might still be dubious about the bona fide painter of the work. Christiansen, in turn, states that the attribution will not be changing because he thinks a public institution should reflect a consensus view of the outstanding scholars of the period. But he estimates the it will take a whole generation to definitely approve of the authorship of Michelangelo. He continued,”It’s terrific that Everett has the courage to put himself out, but he’s going to be raked over the coals.”

The Met bought the painting at Sotheby’s London together with a companion work attributed to Granacci; both works concern the life of the Baptist. It is interesting that the Met paid $50,000 more for the Granacci which is still a Granacci than they did for the possible Michelangelo. (The possible Michelangelo will herein after be identified as simply the second panel.) Fahy feels that the the second panel is so superior to the companion panel and he believes that Michelangelo painted it in 1506, only two years before he began work on the Sistine ceiling. Michelangelo was five years younger than Granacci who played a formative role in the younger man’s early life. They were extremely close and Granacci looked after his friend’s personal affairs when Michelangelo was out of town.

Fahy feels that the second panel is so superior to the companion panel. The Granacci painting depicts seven scenes from the story of St. John the Baptist set in a classical pavillion with a grayed blue river in the background. It is an oil, tempera, and gold on walnut panel and is dated circa 1510. The second panel contains a single episode in a stony setting and is executed only in oil and gold on wood. It would seem that the pairing of the two panels as companion pieces might be doubtful. Both panels were attributed to Ghirlandaio. The first recorded owner was Samuel Woodburn who was described as the most eminent dealer in works of art in England. At some point the works entered the collection of the earl of Ashburnham. The attribution of scenes from the life of John the Baptist was recognized as a work by Granacci and this is universally accepted today. It is evident to the naked eye that the two panels were by different artists because the handling of the paint, the design of the figures, and the rendering of the landscapes are completely different. Three different artists have been the proposed painter of this second panel. One of the three proposals suggest that the panel was painted by an assistant to Granacci using Michelangelo’s drawings. Fahy finds striking analogies between Michelangelo’s full frontal nude drawings and the painting. He finds nude male figures in the middle ground of the Doni Tondo who have the same poses as some of the figures on the second panel. We know that Michelangelo was in Florence most of the year in 1506 after completing the tomb of Julius II in Rome. His most important patron was Giovanni (or John) and he was intimately involved with Michelangelo, who had been stuck up to that time in Carrara or Bologna doing the portrait of Julius or working on the tomb. The style of the panel coincides with the work of Michelangelo in this period.

A sculpture now on view in the Met is one attributed to Michelangelo. It had been housed in he lobby of a town House on 5th Avenue as a decorative object. My tenuous connection with Michelangelo attributions is that I wen to undergraduate school with Professor Irving Lavin who made the first discovery of the sculpture in 1996. Lavin is convinced that it is a Michelangelo sculpture and so is Fahy . Both Fahy and James Draper, curator of European Sculpture at the Met, are convinced it is a work by Michelangelo. However other scholars disagree. Now 15 years later there is still no change in attribution. Fahy is a brilliant art historian in my book. As a young man he was often called the Baby BB (Bernard Berenson the legendary historian of the Italian Renaissance). LastLavin year he opted for early retirement because the Met has been facing the problem of having to fire young staff to cut operating expenses. In so doing he probably protected the jobs of at least 3 or 4 younger historians. My tenuous connection with Michelangelo attributions is that I went to undergraduate school with Professor Irving Lavin who is now retired from NYU Institute of Fine Art but made the first discovery of the sculpture in 1996. This sculpture is still under investigation for a Michelangelo attribution. It will be interesting to see what transpires as the Renaissance scholars begin their further investigations. Until that time Fahy has the inside track on the second panel. The truth of the matter is that by the time the final decision is made most of the participants in the judgment may well have expired, but if the second panel does meet with the approval of the scholars it will be a feather in the cap or the Met and Everett Fahy. The world of masterpiece accreditation is a maze and the decision to verify a work is tedious and confounding. It just takes a lot of time to be able to remove the question mark. The concept that Rome was not built in a day applies to any changes to attributions for any and all works of art of the High Renaissance. But when and if this second panel is accepted it will increase the value and quality of the Met holdings geometrically. So on with the testing and critiquing of the Granacci that may be a Michelangelo.

It was a really hot day in New York, so hot that our art tour group was already irritable and hoping that somewhere along the line of artists’ studios we were visiting there would be an air conditioned respite. When we stood outside James Rosenquist’s studio we had already been to 3 other places, none of which seemed promising for cool air. Rosenquist opened the door and was startled to see 24 people. One of the jokesters in our group explained that we were the mothers’ march against polio. Rosenquist’s confusion disappeared immediately. He opened the door and greeted us as if we were long lost relatives. This eager bunch of art lovers fell for him hook, line and sinker.

James Rosenquist grew up in a house that had no electricity. He was 14 when he won a scholarship to study art four days at the Minneapolis School of Art. He recognized that he was involved in “serious business” because he was given an eraser that cost 25 cents and sheets of paper that cost 35 cents each. There were no books on art available to him; he was much more familiar with illustrations from adventure and girlie magazines. There was no room in his mind for abstraction in art. He painted things as real as he could. As an adult he painted billboards of Hollywood stars with faces 20 feet high, noses 10 feet tall and eyes 3 feet wide. As a member of Local 230, the sign painting union, he painted Kirk Douglas as a Viking and Elizabeth Taylor in a swimsuit while working on a scaffold 22 stories above Times Square. He also painted signs for Seagram’s Canadian Club and Hebrew National Salami. He would make the salami look mouthwatering. Everything he painted was real. He was a brilliant sign painter and everybody liked him. Today he has been everywhere, knows just about everybody. He has had shows at the Guggenheim and the Whitney and countless major museums around the world. A painting of his appears on the cover of a telephone book in Dubai. And still everybody likes him but they also thrill to his work.

It is the work that Rosenquist does that celebrates him most of all. He has painted soups, salads, spaghetti, beer, movie stars, groceries, cars, airplanes, and space. His own observations of his work are fascinating. “I really work hard to create some kind of meaning out of the things I use…..They suggest meanings but they resist drawing conclusions…..The work has an intrinsic meaning for me, but remains open to multiple interpretations. I want to encourage the possibility of exploring meanings beyond those I put there……I count on the viewer bringing something to the work.” And this is really the purpose of a great painting –it is necessary for the viewer to be a part of the exploration and the understanding of the work.

Rosenquist has never been fond of the term Pop Art, but over 50 years of being described as a pop artist he is resigned to it. He says that he is still unsure of what the term means. “What united us (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Wesselman) was dread of the drip, the splash, the schmear,” combined with an ironic attitude toward the banalities of American consumer culture. It was born out of rejection of abstraction and its anarchic angers. But it was also a comment on the boring middle class acceptance of mediocrity. By depicting the household appliances and the movie stars and the foods Rosenquist was understanding the daily needs of Americans as well as revealing their dependence on the trite everyday household they lived in. It was then the work of the viewer to add their own meanings to the art, to be a part of the exploration of the work of art. To viewers who say that his imagery is enigmatic, Rosenquist replies that there is a story behind the pictures. “Nothing is arbitrary in my paintings. If you ask me why there are tubes of lipstick there or why is that dog climbing the stairs I can tell you exactly what got me off the chair to paint it.”

Rosenquist has had his ups and downs in life as have most painters. There were long periods when he could not sell anything. He suffered a terrible automobile accident. A forest fire destroyed his house, office, studio and 62 acres of magnificent vegetation. Today he lives in New York; and Florida and he has befriended ordinary people whom he understands and respects. “People ask me why I paint. I don’t know why except that when I don’t paint I get cranky. Maybe I paint to prove to myself that I had an idea.” It is his decency and his downright niceness, his wonderful sense of humor and his honesty that endears him to all who meet him. He feels strongly about civil rights and moral issues. His paintings protest against “stupid wars, stupid laws, ruthless politicians and greedy entrepreneurs.”

Rosenquist is a remarkable man in that fame has not dimmed his greatness as an artist. And he still abides by his honest definition of his art, “All art is about feeling. Critics may talk about cool abstractionists and hot expressionists, but hot or cold, abstract or representational, it’s all about eliciting emotion, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.” We would have to journey far to get a better picture of Rosenquist’s art and the artist himself.

According to the Belvedere Gallery Adele had bequeathed the Klimt paintings to the gallery.  It was not until the late 1990s that the ugly twisted saga of Vienna’s acquisition of the Klimts began to unfold.  In 1998 Austria joined other countries in signing an agreement  to examine the provenance of its museum collections.  The effort was finally going to be made to return stolen works to their owners.  Federal archives were opened to the public.   And so once confidential records now revealed how the Bloch-Bauer Klimts became the property of the Belvedere. The paintings had been stolen not once but three times–first by the Nazis and then twice by the Austrians.  A series of articles exposed the scandal and crucial evidence  came out about Adele’s will.  Belvedere officials had insisted that Adele had bequeathed the works to the gallery.  Maria Altmann’s lawyer had asked to see the will of Adele but was repeatedly fobbed off with excuses that it was mislaid.  Ignoring the injustices suffered by Holocaust survivors was an accepted form of procedure.  By barring the export of works of national heritage, the Austrian government was able to blackmail many refugees living abroad into surrendering valuable property.  Claimants could get export permits for works of art only by letting the state retain its choice of many of their most valuable items.  The lawyer and his clients  had to “donate” the Klimts to the Belvedere before they could begin to reclaim minor remnants of Ferdinand’s collection.  The government made threats and false assertions that the gallery had a right to the pictures under Adele’s will.   But actually Adele’s will was not legally binding; she was leaving all her property to her husband and she only requested that he might leave the Klimts to the gallery after his death.  The works had been commissioned and paid or by Ferdinand and were really his property.   Actually he probably would want the gallery to have the works in 1925, but he most certainly did not want the portraits to go to Austria after the Anschluss.  There is no doubt that he wanted his relatives to inherit the works.  The confiscation of all his property and his exile by the Nazis and Austria had left him virtually penniless.

The paper trail of all seven Klimts shows that they passed through the hands of a Nazi lawyer appointed by the Gestapo to liquidate Ferdinand’s property.  In 1941 the Fuehrer gave the portrait to the Belvedere with a note signed “Heil Hitler”.  The lawyer dispensed the Klimts to various museums in Vienna.  Adele’s golden portrait was Aryanised; its new title was Woman of Gold.  Maria Altmann was most upset when she found out that the director of the Belvedere knew even during the Nazi era an incontestable declaration of gift in favor of the state was never obtained from Ferdinand.  The new director of the Belvedere wrote to the former director “the situation is growing into a sea snake…I hope you can get me out of this not undangerous situation.”  Even during the Nazi era an incontestable declaration of a gift in favor of the state was never obtained from Ferdinand.  And so when Maria and her lawyer put the claim to Austria they felt that it was an unanswerable claim both legally and morally; yet the claim was turned down.  Austria’s culture minister stated publicly that the Klimts were not stolen.  Maria’s anger made the decision for her that they would now take the case through the US courts.  It took seven years for her lawyer to finally win the case of Altmann vs the Republic of Austria.  The Austrian government case was rejected by the courts.  Altman’s victory was a bad day for Austria.  They had gone to astonishing lengths to prevent the return of the Bloch-Bauer Klimts, which they had treated as their own national patrimony.  It was a bitter blow to their pride and heritage.

Shortly after the decision there was controversy again when Maria sold Adele to Ronald Lauder for $135,000,000.00.  Comments were made that this decision made her a money greedy person.  She has said that the painting has no place in a private home and Lauder has placed it in the Neue Gallerie for the world to see.  The art critic of the New York Times accused her of “cashing in” and thus “transforming” a story about justice and redemption after the Holocaust into yet another tale of the crazy and intoxicating art market. He argued they should give the works away to a public institution. Lauder says that Adele is “our Mona Lisa”.  When he was ambassador to Austria he was involved in the case on the behalf of Maria Altmann. There is still anger and resentment in Austria over the loss of this great portion of their cultural possessions.  To some Adele represents the need for a more reform and efficient means of handing over these works; to others it exemplifies the need to close the door on this chapter and suspend the process of restitution altogether.  During Hitler’s reign more than 650,000 art works were looted or confiscated from their Jewish owners, but most of these were not valuable.  They were mainly sentimental and symbolic.  But today Adele reigns in a museum that we would like to think would have been her choice of final residence.