This weeks free classes: from Irving Penn to Massaccio

Happy Sunday morning to everybody!

I hope this weekly hello finds you happy and enjoying a beautiful sunny, albeit hot and soupy, day.

I am doing a few programs this week that I’d like to share with you via zoom . They are all free and open to everyone.

The first one is tomorrow morning with Peninsula public library at 11 AM and will be focusing on important Jewish artists of the 20th century

Irving Penn Self portrait; Photo courtesy Irving Penn Foundation

. 

ZOOM: Jewish Artists in the Contemporary Art World

Join Prof Val Franco, for a look at some of the tremendous Jewish artists of the twentieth century. The history behind their lives and work, and a comparison of their various styles. We’ll be focusing on artists whose work has pushed the boundaries while also bringing important issues to the forefront of popular culture. 

Registration is not required.

Click the link below to join the Zoom Meeting:

Meeting ID: 721 207 3003

Passcode: PenPubLib

                                 🎨🖌️🎨

My second class this week is Tuesday night at 7 pm with the Crestwood Library – again via zoom, free and open to everyone. We’ll be doing slow looking, focusing on a few select masterpieces and discussing the works as a group. 

San Giovenale Triptych, Masaccio, 1422

Virtual -Tuesday, June 27, 2023. 7:00pm – 8:00pm

Event Details

Join Prof. Val Franco as we find a new way to view art. By taking our time and getting to the heart of a painting or sculpture, we can get in touch with what the artist was trying to share with us about the world around them and their subject. By looking at a few select masterpieces from Renaissance art and the Impressionist period, we’ll discuss all the elements that make an artwork great as well look at paintings in a slow, meaningful way.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://ypl-org.zoom.us/j/87381066479?pwd=UFhTL2FEMGFSQ282R0Y3ZzYwTGdiZz09

Meeting ID: 873 8106 6479
Passcode: 443085

Contact Info

Name:  Z BairdEmail: z@ypl.orgPresenter: Val Franco

🎨🖌️🎨
The third one of the week is our regular Wednesday night Art zoom, sponsored by me,ProfValFranco, for free at 7 pm on Wednesday. We’ll be looking at Renaissance artist Massaccio and discussing the important aspects of dimensional painting and how Masaccio’s practice changed painting forever.

Masaccio self portrait from Brancusi Chapel Fresco

The lecture is free and open to everyone everywhere, and starts at 7 pm. Zoom is my standard Art zoom : Topic: ProfValFranco’s Armchair Art

Zoom 
Meeting ID: 878 0879 9248
Passcode: 683628

🎨🖌️🎨

Finally, back by popular demand, we are doing our monthly museum visits in person! The next trip is Monday, July 10 in New York and you can send an email for further info if you are interested!

This week’s art & film posts will go up in a few days and will focus on the art collection of Catherine the Great & the incredible film Eadweard about the man behind the beginnings of the modern moving image!

Looking forward to seeing you this week.

Regards

ProfValFranco

From Billionaires, Scottish Dukes, Rothschilds, Dutch Masters & American Watercolorists: My Rembrandt & Jerry Pinkney

Hello All & a happy December to you! 

Thanks to all for a great discussion this past Friday on the intriguing documentary MY REMBRANDT. This film, with its incredible insider access to some of the most glorious Rembrandt paintings in the world, explores why people are so fascinated with the Dutch Golden Age painter, centuries after he created incredible, world-changing images. The inner machinations behind the joint Louvre-Rijksmuseum $160 million purchase of a pair of portraits from current Baron de Rothschild were especially fascinating. 

The life size portraits that Rothschild had on either side of his bed for years were created in 1634 and depict Amsterdam trader Marten Soolmans and his wife Oopjen Coppit. 

Notice the texture, palette, expression & emotion…when compared to Rembrandt’s portrait of her husband, she seems to have a bit more spirit and brightness in her image. Was Rembrandt a bit more taken by her personality, or does this reflect the difference in purpose of representation between the pair of portraits: the husband, serious, a force to be reckoned with in his contemporary society; the wife, embodying the hallmarks of a good Dutch wife of her class?

Consider this: If you owned a Rembrandt as part of your massive collection of centuries of art from the Old Masters through to the twentieth century, would you lend it (or any of your collection, for that matter) out to museums around the world, or would you keep them in your residence for your personal, private enjoyment?

The film explores this question in presenting various private collectors and public institutions, including American collector Thomas Scott Kaplan, who owns the largest privately held collections of Rembrandts (15) and Dutch masterworks ( 250) in the world; and Richard Scott, the Duke of Buccleuch, whose his 80,000 acres of ancestral lands in Scottland houses a massive collection of Old World masterpieces, including Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading from 1665.

Kaplan believes it is his responsibility to lend these masterworks out to public institutions so they can be enjoyed by the world at large, while The Duke, like other Uber wealthy collectors, keeps various works by the Old Masters in his private residence for his enjoyment only.

Portrait of Opjen Coppit, 1634 by Rembrandt courtesy of the Rijksmuseum 

It’s an interesting question to consider, and I’m quite sure, a much better one to actually have irl.

Next week we’ll discuss the work of Jerry Pinckney and his beautiful, striking important water colors on view at the Katonah Museum in New York.

Go, She Cried, from Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman, 1996, by Jerry Pinkney. Watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paper. 12 3/8 in. x 20 3/8 in.

We’ll also look at the work of the incredible Winslow Homer and his use of various media in creating his awe inspiring images of America and her various, glorious landscapes.

Nor’easter, Winslow Homer, 1895/1881 courtesy of the Met

Christmas Puppy Pajamas & the doc WE DON’T DESERVE DOGS

Hello all!

As an update to this post, I thought you’d like to see what Mei Mei & Sammi girl ( otherwise known as Lil Mouse & The Yapper and also Spinner & Scooter; and most affectionately, Thing 1 & Thing 2) are up to this Christmas. They’ve been modeling their matching family pajamas, as well as working on their smoldering looks for their upcoming calendar.

Meanwhile, so many of you really enjoyed our Saturday art walk in person at Pepsico Sculpture Gardens at the end of October and you have reached out to let me know how you’re looking forward to the art walk. Don’t worry – you are heard!

I am already working on our next in-person art walk happening in Katonah. And, as per usual, we are back in our virtual meeting room for weekly art history.

Now, let’s take a peek at this incredible documentary on dogs, their humans , and how lucky we are to have them in our lives.

Mei takes it all very seriously…

Originally I was working on teaching a class on the film Dog Years, but switched to the incredible documentary, Why We Don’t Deserve Dogs, for a variety of reasons. This film from 2020 is a remarkable look at the relationship between human beings and dogs.

It spans the globe from Chile to Scotland to Uganda and various countries in between. It is a quiet, contemplative look at the way dogs affect people, whether it be truffle hunters, former child soldiers, or shepherds. With their patience, constancy and unquestioning devotion, its no wonder dogs are loved and revered in so many parts of the world.

They have the power to redeem us, rescue us, entertain us, and most importantly, love us unconditionally.

Arab Blues & Imperial Blue Porcelain

Hi All! 

It’s been quite a week and I had a riveting art history class Wednesday night, covering a range of topics from £ 1.5 million kitchen vases to throwing the West Coast W in a variety of Renaissance portraits. We also made the leap from Henry Vlll’s Superman pose, hands on hip, with a wide legged stance, to a new vaudeville star and public enemy number two- Legs Akimbo.

As you know, I like to keep you posted on interesting events happening throughout the art world (openings, exhibitions, auctions of note, etc…) and this week’s tidbit centered around the sale of a rare glazed porcelain vase that was bought over four decades for a few hundred British pounds by a British surgeon.

The striking glazed porcelain object then went to the surgeon’s son, where it sat in his kitchen, until a friend of the current owner noticed it and thought there might be more to the piece’s history.

Photo courtesy Dreweatts Auctioneers

It was authenticated as a rare Chinese vase from the Qianlong imperial court of the 1700s. The vase, intricately decorated with silver and gold cranes and bats on a blue background, would have taken several firings to achieve the incredible visual impact it has, as the enameling techniques utilized various colors that needed to be fired separately at different temperatures to achieve perfection.

The auction house set the estimate at between £100,00 and £150,000 British pounds sterling so it was quite the surprise when after tremendous interest from US, Asian and British bidders the gavel went down at £1,200,000 ( for a total of around £1.5 million with the buyers premium.)

( Note: next art class focuses on the work of Cecilia Beaux, an American artist, born in 1855, who was known for her incredible portraits. Together, with me, ProfValFranco, we’ll explore her beautiful images. We’ll ask why she has fallen off the radar of the contemporary art world, even though she was heralded as one of the greatest portraits artists of her time. By the 1930s, her reputation was at its peak, with her work receiving accolades internationally. She was even lauded as “the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world.”)

Our amazing week continued with our Friday night film: Arab Blues, set in modern day Tunisia and dealing with issues of being heard, immigration, repatriation, corruption, misogyny, and stereotyping and female psychotherapists. 

Not everyone looks positively on a woman and a couch in this French language comedy that explores the role of women, and talk therapy, in Tunis. How do people open to the concept of therapy with a female practitioner in a male dominated society, that tends not to talk about its problems? Released eight years after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that introduced democracy, and two years before Kais Saeid took office as President, the film brings up issues of political freedom in conjunction with issues of women’s rights. Saeid, an alumni of the International Institute of Humanitarian law, set aside the 2014 constitution, dissolved the elected Parliament and just recently dismissed 57 judges in what is being called by observers a push for one-man rule.

The post-screening conversations brought up many varied observations and viewpoints, as well as discussions about societal and cultural norms.

Our next film, I’m Fine ( Thanks for Asking), follows a recently widowed mom as she tries to piece together enough money to get back into an apartment during the pandemic. Danny tries everything from braiding hair to delivering food on roller skates, but is it enough to get her and her young daughter out of a tent and into an apartment in the dry and dusty environs of Pacoima, California? At times humorous and heartbreaking, this film was shot during the constrictive times of the Covid lockdown. 

Thanks for joining me for weekly look at wonderful art and film lectures. Looking forward to seeing you this week as we explore more great art & film!

Regards, 

ProfValFranco

Film & Wine pairings- elderberries & Revolution – unexpected deliciousness for the 4th of July

twitter.com/ProfValFranco/status/1408573457009463306

Mexican milkshakes & the Loss of Lego fun..

So – there’s an Alamo draft house by me- its been here a year or so already. We’re still a bit behind the trend – Vermont ski town like manchester & waitsfield near Sugarbush (to name 2 great ones) have some great little theaters that have been serving food & drink for years & of course, the idea has already been in Los Angeles for years & years.

I hate the interruption of servers (however nice they r & however quiet they try to be) coming & going all throughout the movie- asking u questions, disrupting your attention, etc.

That said, I went to see the Lego movie last night specifically because I wanted to watch a silly fun movie while having a few drinks. Wouldn’t ya know- the servers never came back after they dropped off the first round & the movie was sooo flat- best lines in the trailer r actually most of the best lines.

It’s interesting to watch the effects & see how they stick to the concept that everything is built by Legos and there’s a cute little twist but it was a VERY long 90 minutes. Could have been like watching Pink Floyd laser show at the New York planetarium with a cocktail & everything is trippy & fun but sadly it was like watching the Pink Floyd laser show at the New York Planetarium without a cocktail- 5 minutes was enough – like watching paint dry. 😦