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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Swedish painter Hilma af Klint & Lasse Hallstrom’s new feature…

so much going on in the art & film worlds this week so I thought I’d share one of my favorite artists and the film that’s bringing her to life for many who don’t know her.

This week’s news of note: Many of you have taken art history class with me in the past and might remember a series I did on the life & work of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint.

While we know and appreciate her today for the numerous large scale, often symmetrical, color filled abstracts and geometric works she painted, many of which she said were inspired directly by spiritual forces, this aspect of her creative life was relatively unknown to the general public during her lifetime.

Her work was years ahead of Kandinsky’s abstracts, yet she kept them hidden from the public, because they were so vastly different than her floral illustration work. Because she felt the abstracts would not be well received by a public that was not ready yet, she stipulated that nothing could be shown to the public for DECADES after her death…a sad delay that resulted in her being overlooked for her incredibly galvanizing, ground breaking work.

She began working on The Ten Largest in October 1907 after a vision inspired her to create beautiful images that explained the stages of life. Curiously, October seemed to be play a role in her life and its creative flow, as she was born and died in October ( 1862-1944) and created her first massive series of large scale works a month after having a vision about the process.

Hilma af Klint, part of series The Ten Largest. Begun October 1907

Still from 2022 feature Hilma, courtesy Nordic Entertainment Group

Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom has brought her story to the screen and the reviews at festivals are quite positive with tour de force Lena Olin as Hilma.

If your looking for a rapid paced, quick fire action film, this will not be for you…but if you’re looking for a finely crafted film that makes a connection to a tremendously, talented female artist who was overlooked and disrespected during her lifetime, then this film has your name, well actually Hilma’s name, all over it.

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

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

What I learned this morning…

Almost every morning before I start my day I do a little exploration on line…it’s a few minutes spent following random connections between subjects & it tickles & enlightens me much more than reading violent or cranky threads on Facebook, so I find it an enjoyable almost addicting, pursuit. I’ve gone from strings of royalty to Greek philosophers, into screamo while passing through Dadaism, so I thought I should share the morning routes my mind virtually explores…

Today, a trailer on the film Northfork ( I thought it would be a pleasant doc on Long Island wineries, but it’s actually a film on the coercion and shenanigans involved in imminent domain relocation of hold-out families during the construction of a massive dam project in 1955 nNrthfork, Montana. 

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

In actuality, the Glacier View Dam, which was initially proposed at the North Fork site of the Flathead River along the Western border of Montana’s Glacier National Park, faced fierce opposition from various conservation groups and as well as the National Park Service. The massive 416-foot tall dam, would have flooded in over 10,000 acres of parkland, and was never built. 

Proposed Dam, Courtesy U.S.Army Corps of Engineers

It stands ( symbolically, not literally…) as an example of the importance of environment conservancy, and is an interesting contrast to China’s completed Three Gorges dam. The largest hydroelectric dam in the world, it was officially built to stall the periodic flooding of the Yangtze River, but it’s main raison d’etre is to fuel China’s massive need for electric power. It has wreaked incredible havoc with the lives of millions of displaced people as well as destroying incredible natural environments and habitats.

China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, image courtesy of France24

For an in-depth look at this 21st Century industrial megalith and the destruction of traditional farming life in rural areas of China that it has caused, consider watching Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang’s wonderful, gut-wrenching documentary, Up the Yangtze.

From Up the Yangtze, courtesy EyeSteelFilm 2007

After the trailer for Northfork, a doc on the incomparable Josephine Baker jumped on.  Josephine Baker: The First Black Superstar, a BBC Wales/ForgetAboutIt Films co-production, explores the incredible life of this maverick at a time of suppression in the U.S. of both women and African-Americans. (Note to self: learn more about Josephine Baker, and explore why there hasn’t been a biopic on her life since the 1991 Josephine Baker Story, starring Lynn Whitfield…) 

Josephine Baker, courtesy BBC

After researching a bit into the socio-political climate in the States and Europe when Baker made her move across the Atlantic, I had to jump into the Jazz Age and then jump back into Dada…which led to a deeper exploration of Magritte’s eponymous painting, The Treachery of Images … ( art is always at the root of everything, somehow…) 

Rene Magritte, 1928-29, La Trahison des Images, courtesy of LACMA

The whole concept of representation versus reality ( this is nota pipe…) led to canadian Robert Gentleman’s development of the free software R, as well as being one of the brilliant brains behind the free software Bioconductor that analyzes data on genomes that results from specific kinds of molecular biology experiments. 

Courtesy Bioconductor.org

R, by the way, is a free, open source language and environment ( or system) that is rooted in GNU/Linux ( Linux is the original free open source software ) and is used for graphics and statistical computing. 

And you have to love an entity/organization/concept that leads off in its Help section with this advice: “Before asking others for help, it’s generally a good idea for you to try to help yourself” 

Wow! Talk about encouraging true independence! I’m at once extremely intimidated, and utterly enamored with R and the concepts behind Gnu/Linux and free, open-source computing. 

Courtesy r-project.org, 2016 c 

So far, my morning’s mental wandering made my wish that I had paid more attention back in the day to my required undergrad class on introductory computer programming. Dr. Hsu very patiently tried to guide us through binary basics, zeros and ones, and I still feel that had I paid more attention to really understanding the concepts of preliminary coding, my life today would be very different. 

Note to self: add “learn basic coding” to my bucket list.

…and that’s how my morning started off.

In search of a little nosh? Israeli Cuisine might be just the thing… the film, that is…

I might argue that good food, wine, and the arts are the cornerstones of society. This documentary, follows Michael Solomonov ( of Phillie’s eponymous Israeli restaurant Zahav), as he explores the contributions of various cultures in Israel and how they have come together to create a diverse, delicious culinary tradition that is almost impossible to define but mouthwatering to explore.

In a country comparable to the size of New Jersey, he zips from coast to desert to mountains, through orchards & kitchens, from farms to foraging expeditions, all in the effort to define a cohesive, unified food culture in a relatively young country that has an ancient lineage.

Courtesy of Menemsha films

This duality of existence is well mirrored in its relationship to food. As Jews from all over the world come to Israel, done to settle permanently, some temporarily, they bring with them the food and tastes of their homelands. They isolate these recipes, while at the same time merging it with middle eastern culinary traditions, tastes, spices and produce. Over time, the results have lead ( and, it can be argued- are still leading to) foods that are follow traditional recipes while becoming dishes unique to the palate of Israel. 

From country to country, family to family, recipes for staples like hummus, couscous and za’atar vary, as do the political and cultural significance that accompany each dish and spice. 

Solomonov shies away from issues like kosher food ( there’s lots of delicious but traif foods in this doc), and the politics of the Middle East as exemplified by culinary appropriation of hummus and couscous, as well as the legislation against foraging for za’atar ( wild hyssop, a wildly popular spice in both Palestinian and overall Middle Eastern tradition). But you can only cover so much in ninety minutes, and the film, to its credit, doesn’t pretend to dig into the the psychology behind generations-old political strife as it is exemplars in gastronomy.

Courtesy of Menemsha Films

While certain industries in Israel, like wine, may be non-starters, or possibly late-bloomers, other foods, tied into the tradition of farm to table, and freshly harvested produce, allow for an incredible explosion of taste and delight for the consumer, whether they are shopping in markets or eating in local restaurants.

It does explore the melting pot of various cultures that people from all over the world create as they settle in Israel, mix and even marry. Jewish, Christian and Muslim, European, East European, Middle Eastern -all merging… at least their food.

As the film ends everyone interviewed reminds us of the countries they come from and the food culture that they bring with them as their contribution to a new Israel, their contribution to the creation of a unique and expansive Israeli cuisine. It’s a pleasant way to remind us of the importance the next generation may play in bringing the world together, one bite at a time.

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

twitter.com/ProfValFranco/status/1408573457009463306

Of Dogs and Men:Skyfall & Amores Perros

Since things have finally gotten back to (almost) normal since Hurricane Sandy, I can fill you in on the great art and films that I’ve been both seeing and teaching the past several weeks. 

First of all, two days before Hurricane Sandy hit, I had a great class over at The David M. Kendall Art Gardens at Pepsico’s world headquarters in Purchase, NY. With several Henry Moore works, Snelson’s tensegrity piece Mozart II, Segal’s Four People on Bench  and a few Wynnes ( the angular metalic Girl with Dolphin and Girl on a Horse are tied for my favorites with his massive, voluptuous stone Grizzly Bear), there is always something somewhere in the garden in an organic setting to delight you.  The frog pond complete with water lilies  and frogs ( both static and living), the  Giacometti outside the conference room window, and Victor Salmones’  haunting work, The Search ,  hidden in the outer reaches of the property all factor in as my favorite works there.

Last month included screenings of wonderful Italian director Giacomo Campiotti’s bittersweet film, Come Due Cocodrille,about the ultimate in sibling rivalry, and  the Mexican tour de force Amores Perros, one of a trilogy by director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.  I’ll talk more about these films in a future post because they are so gripping in the ways that they comment on family, society and relationships.

                                                             

Finally, saw a screening of  Skyfall –not the most believable plot but it served its purpose in changing up the cast of characters ( if I tell you more you’ll have to kill me – for ruining the plot).      All the fun Bond elements – great opening credit sequence, fun chase scenes, interesting questions of loyalty and duty,  as well as an unexpected nod to the question of age and relevancy…but really, the best part of this  Bond was his chest…and by that I mean, Daniel Craig shirtless.  This film was chock full of eye candy for the women that go to see Bond in all his glory – Daniel Craig shirtless can never get old (see earlier comment on age and relevance issues).  Thank you Sam Mendes for utilizing all aspects of your lead actor’s talent. Keep working out, Mr. Bond.  Age is just a number, and yours seems to get better as it gets bigger.   more later…