Over the Edge with Martin Kotler December 1, 2009

This Stanford White tabernacle-style frame was designed specifically for Abbott Thayer's Angel.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but doesn't the frame have an equally interesting story to tell? Martin Kotler, frames conservator at American Art, led an enthusiastic group through Frames 101 the other day in the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon. Looking at art in museums, we sometimes (or at least I do) overlook the frame. Now, after Kotler's talk, I may be wondering, "What was the painting inside that elaborate Stanford White frame?"

Stanford White seems to take pride of place in the pantheon of American frame designers. He was known chiefly as a partner in the fabled late nineteenth-century architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, known for its Beaux-Arts architecture. White also designed picture frames, examples of which are at the Renwick and American Art. Based on Renaissance motifs and classical ornamentation such as Greek wave design, chevrons, twisted rope, and ribbons, they seem to have been a perfect match for the Gilded Age. Interestingly, at the time of White's murder in 1906 (a scandal for another blog post!), he owed $825,000—a huge sum, then or now. "Most likely some of that money was owed his framers," Kotler told us, adding that although White designed the frames, others were hired to execute the design.

Kotler spoke about another framer, a contemporary of White, Gregory Kirchner, in near-reverential tones. He compared his few, but exquisite works to the paintings of Vermeer. "We have six. There are nine known, all hand carved, and all mind blowers." Kirchner's Renaissance Revival frames can be found on Albert Pinkham Ryder's Jonah and Pastoral Study at American Art.

Looking around the Renwick's Grand Salon, we can see that when artists moved into the twentieth century, the frames reflected the artwork as well as the times. The painter Romaine Brooks, for example, wanted a "modernist frame" for Ida Rubinstein and found it in a steely-looking metal leaf over oak. Further into the century (and out of the Renwick's Grand Salon, I'm afraid), with the advent of abstract expressionism, the artists often left their works unframed or framed simply with lattice.

To better understand the vast resources of American Art, Kotler is beginning the museum's first survey of frames in its collection. It should prove to reveal an important part of the story of painting in this country.

• Picture Frames, Art Conservation, Stanford White, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Thanksgiving, 1969 by Werner Drewes November 24, 2009

Thanksgiving, 1969 by Werner Drewes

Forty years ago, German-born American artist Werner Drewes created this colorful woodcut in honor of what may be the most typically American holiday. I like it for its vivid lines, burst of energy, and full-blown spectrum, especially the use of the color purple. In the woodcut, a sunflower, a stalk of corn, and a turkey share a pas-de-trois on the same stage. They exist as independent objects as well as part of the same pageant. The painting never veers into the sentimental, which often happens when the palette meets the Pilgrim. Here, in the absence of people, nature rules the roost.

Werner Drewes lived a fascinating life that spanned from the Bauhaus to Brooklyn. Born in Germany in 1899, he studied with Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, and Oskar Schlemmer at the influential Bauhaus school in Weimar from 1920--1921. He came to the U.S. shortly after that, then returned to Germany, before immigrating here in 1930. At that point, life for abstract artists in Germany was next to impossible: Hitler would close the Bauhaus three years later.

In his adopted country, Drewes became an influential member of the New York art world. He taught at the Brooklyn Museum under the auspices of the WPA Federal Art Project from 1934--1936, the year he became a U.S. citizen. In addition, Drewes was on the staff of Columbia University from 1937--1940 before accepting a teaching position at the University of Washington, St. Louis, in 1946, retiring almost twenty years later. A year before his death in 1985, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held a retrospective of Drewes's works that focused on his printmaking.

I can only imagine all the things Werner Drewes must have been thankful for.

• Werner Drewes, Thanksgiving, Woodcut, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Remembering Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009) November 20, 2009

When I heard that artist Jeanne-Claude had died, I went back to the blog post I wrote last year about her visit to American Art with her other half, Christo. Together, as husband and wife and as artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been reinventing the contemporary art landscape for more than fifty years with their installations such as wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris, and of course, Running Fence, their monumental project in Northern California from the 1970s. Christo and Jeanne-Claude had come to the museum to announce that American Art recently acquired the major group of drawings, photos, and documentation from Running Fence that the artists had retained. In April 2010, American Art will feature an exhibition, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence that revisits the original, groundbreaking exhibition.

During their presentation Jeanne-Claude said, “On planet earth there is no forever….Everything is more or less temporary.” When asked to comment on her fifty-year working relationship with her husband she said, “We’re just beginning.”

I remember the weather was rainy and gloomy and when I left American Art, I stood on the grand steps and watched Christo and Jeanne-Claude walk ahead. Then I did something I probably shouldn’t have done: I aimed my cell phone at them and captured them walking in the rain. Her deep red hair seemed to be the only color on an otherwise dark and gray afternoon.

• Jeanne-Claude, Christo, Running Fence, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Luce en Español/Luce in Spanish November 17, 2009

Recently, American Art staff member Tierney Sneeringer was very excited to conduct her first Spanish tour, welcoming the "Friends of the Canal Museum" to the Luce Foundation Center. To schedule a Spanish tour with Tierney, e-mail AmericanArtLuce@si.edu.

Tierney Sneeringer, una empleada del Smithsonian American Art Museum, estaba muy entusiasmada cuando hizo recientemente su primera gira en español, recibiendo al grupo "Friends of the Canal Museum" (Amigos del Museo Canal) en el Luce Foundation Center. Para pedir cita para una gira en español, mande un e-mail a AmericanArtLuce@si.edu.

• Luce Foundation Center, Spanish, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Roy DeCarava, 1919–2009 November 12, 2009

Roy DeCarava's Lingerie, New York

Roy DeCarava, an American master, died October 27, 2009, a few weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday. Born in Harlem in 1919, and coming to adulthood during the Harlem Renaissance, DeCarava became a photographer of the street and the people who inhabited that day-to-day world. He was good friends with the poet Langston Hughes, and together they collaborated on a book titled The Sweet Flypaper of Life. Unlike the prints of other photographers who kept their distance, DeCarava's are marked by a warmth that connects the viewer to the subject. They often feel like jazz without sound.

"Roy DeCarava stands as one of the most important American photographers of the twentieth century in part because he took the form of social documentary photography and made it subjective and lyrical," Merry A. Foresta told me as director of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative. "As one of the first African American photographers of the modern era, DeCarava depicted black life with an intimacy and sweetness that was unprecedented," she added.

There are nearly a dozen examples of DeCarava's work in American Art's collection. Couple Dancing, New York (1956) portrays a sensual moment, barely lit, private, yet the viewer is allowed to watch. In Lingerie, New York (1950) young children hang out on the stairs and fire escape of what appears to be a shuttered brownstone, the site of the shop La Blanche Lingerie. We are immediately drawn to the boy in tie and suspenders balancing on the window ledge, as if it were the most natural thing in the world--caught perhaps in that sticky, sweet flypaper known as life.

Related post on DeCarava from the Smithsonian's Photography Initiative blog, The Bigger Picture.

• Roy DeCarava, Photography, Social Documentary, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum