In BFA Charles Giuliano has written about the Sargent watercolor show at the MFA. This piece, about a 1999 show, first appeared on Addison Parks "Artdeal"

"Boit Sisters"

To the painting enthusiast, professional or amateur, who admires the techniques of realism, the matching of flesh tone, the verisimilitude of satin, the glisten of a moist eye,  JSS provides a sumptuous visual feast. Painting in the stylistic tradition of Velasquez with its direct evocation of human presence, he shares in the bravura brushwork, the love of chiaroscuro, surface and texture that typifies Velasquez's painting. Most importantly he shares an affinity for similar subject matter: both painted the rich and famous of their day. Ultimately it is the sociology of Sargent's work that intrigues this viewer. In the comprehensive exhibit of Sargent's work at the Boston MFA I imagined that I was viewing stills from PBS's Masterpiece Theater or a Merchant Ivory production, that year in and year out satisfy some insatiable appetite in the American viewer to peer into the lives of upper class Europeans of the Belle Époque. It's all there: the arrogant gaze of the powerful, the smug gestures of people, who seem to pursue a life of perpetual leisure, and the languorous gazes of desiring and desirable young women. Self- sufficiency radiates from their gazes and signs of wealth from the elegance of their clothing and surroundings.The medium by which you displayed status was how you carried yourself and what you wore. It was immediate, to the point and incontrovertible. Sargent's cast of characters act out powerfully these moments of self- display.

The rich and famous that JSS painted were on the top of the social heap as was the court of King Philip that Velasquez painted. Whereas the courtiers of King Philip were in no doubt about their standing in the universe, the people of Sargent's world are actors, playing at being a king or assuming the airs of a corrupt and decadent European cardinal (in the case of the gynecologist dressed in scarlet) and know they have to act their part well if the public is to be convinced. A kind of aestheticism pervades their poses. They can at times appear to be pretentious. Something you would never say of Philip the 1st. He doesn't have to pretend. The huge fortunes of the Gilded Age have raised these select few to the top but in the boom and bust economy of that era their position in the world is no divine right. Sargent's paintings are a kind of documentary of the Transatlantic Bourgeoisie of the late 19th century(he stopped doing portraits in 1907), but the work has something of the puff piece: he has no desire to deflate their self -image as Goya was able to do to the Spanish Royalty. He gives them what they wanted. This acceptance of the values of the subject seems to have a regressive effect on his stylistic development. Sargent does not grow as an artist, either technically or spiritually. He never surpassed The "Boit Sisters" in any way. Technically, there is everything that you'd find in his later work and something that the later work doesn't have, a certain success at making the viewer conscious that the image is an illusion. This effect is in part due to several factors: a majority of the image looming out from obscurity, its references to Las Meninas, which is itself a profound meditation on seeing and reality, and a simplicity of the mark making. 

I keep thinking of Alice Neel's models whose clothes hang on their bodies. They slouch, and drape themselves across the sparse furniture. Some sitters are fatigued, others angst ridden.... and all very mortal. Sargent is taking his social models from the past, as did so many artists of that period, but this posing is just a mask, a cover up that allows them to hide their mortality. It was the Pre-Raphaelites archaism that ruled the day in England. Although, on the one hand, Sargent's sitters are very real, because of Sargent's technical abilities, on the other hand they are a cast of characters derived from Shakespeare's lords and ladies.

The mural of soldiers blinded by mustard gas in the World War is an unlikely statement from an artist for whom the indulgence of observing pleasurable scenery was the core of his visual language. In this mural he did confront the horror of it all and the result is an image that for me is emblematic of the end of an era. Painted in muted tones, the soldiers are also rendered undifferentiated by their bandages, which mask their faces and uniforms. The landscape is war torn and desolate. Gone is the world of wit and play, of garden parties or sunlit Italian vacations. The subtleties of moods or the assumption of theatrical poses is effaced by the horror of mass annihilation. The 20th century is there with all its uniformity and scouring of individual particularities.

I have pursued the critical tack that Sargent and his sitter are out of touch with reality. The mass warfare of WW1 and the revolution of the working classes would wipe the smugness from the faces of the rich and stylistically, the art of the 20th century would show the traces of effort, labor and science. However, the agonic posing and strutting,  the exquisiteness of the sentiment of exquisite moments of that Bourgeoisie cannot be duplicated today, and, as that world recedes further back in time, an art that describes it so perfectly cannot be dismissed. No matter how much one might find that his work suffers from a kind of false-consciousness, I cannot help but feel a pang of regret that this world, which Sargent renders so palpably,  is forever gone...

"Gassed"

Charles Giuliano on Sargent in Berkshire Fine Arts

Boston art, The Marathon Bombings, Robert Lowell and other things that got me thinking

But so it goes for the narrators of the art world.The ones who create the still space, the gallery, where art survives.The gallerists decide: they tell the story of  who is in and who is out and as one gallery director recently told me, who will have the chance to move up the feeding chain to New York and greatness. They can start someone on the race to the top, to glory, but how does it happen that one makes it, another doesn't. The reality is that the world is a very messy place. Good citizens worship at the alter of predictability.They go year in and year out to the Marathon or the July Fourth fireworks. It provides a socially acceptable venue for a little contained uncertainty. But one day some brothers from a part of the world most good Boston citizens have never heard of kill and blow off the legs of some of the spectators of the Marathon and almost end forever the fairytale of Boston, the Hub of the universe, the Athens of America. Before the perpetrators are caught our President comes to the city full of bromides and crass boosterism to pretend that we are going to bounce back, if only we tap into the enthusiasm we apply to our world championship teams. We love our routine: every year the Red Sox will start their race to the World Series and the Marathon will proclaim  the notion and primacy of bodily strength and perseverance, good Yankee self-reliance and discipline.And out of the blue really angry and delirious and, god forbid, undisciplined boys, who looked so all American with their love of sports and drugs, stain the  image of the fantasm that is Boston. But don't worry: words and more words can be poured on the fire and everything will be all right .Before the victims are buried the President and the mayor describe the city as the sports mad parody of itself and proclaim it is "Boston Strong".

At the beginning of one of my favorite novels  "Voyage au But de la Nuit" by Celine we find Bardamu at Place Clichy musing about the the nature of the universe with his friend Arthur Ganate. Ganate makes the claim that the passers-by are not on their way to accomplish anything of any worth; they are just walking about from morning 'til  evening. The proof is that , when it is cold or raining, they are fewer in number and are probably in the cafes drinking their cafes-creme or their beers. If they were truly working they would be out in all weather. So it is with the art scene. The galleries, the content providers, need only content, the empty the better;  maybe just inert content.They are just circulating like the "gens de Paris".And the artists figure this out early on. Just play the game, just show up as Woody Allen suggested. Look earnest and wear the art of the day like some hip T-Shirt. Just be sure to not be anxious or worried about the messy state of things or if you dare just do so with a certain amount of ice in our veins or as the French say: sang froid.

I recall a visit years ago to a Boston gallery.The work on display was some overly tense and fastidiously wrought sculpture by Christopher Wilmarth. The press about him talked of exquisite poetry and magic, where all I saw was someone suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder. I think he deserves all the accolades he has received but I can't help myself:  It made me nervous. The use of glass made me think that  the hidden and the dark where light cannot penetrate  had been wiped clean. How that happened I don't know? Medication, enlightenment, pure rationality? In the gallery were a couple, who appeared  to be collectors .They were being told the story of Wilmarth by the gallery director.I don't know if the story included his suicide at the age of 44. Their clothing had the same fastidiousness and precision of the sculpture. Excellent cloth,well pressed shirts. It extended to the man's nicely trimmed moustache. From the quality of the cloth I could discern that they could afford to be collectors of art. I imagined them both lawyers finessing contracts day in and day out, cool, calm and collected.They were the sort of people that were destined to buy a Wilmarth. They were people for whom the dark and hidden was not to be considered at all in their well-oiled lives.

This past year, a friend and I had some fantasies about showing in a certain Boston gallery. The gallerist even came by our show leaving positive remarks in the guest book. All looked up and up. But the initial enthusiasm never translated into anything concrete. My gallery mate pointed out the ingenues the gallery would show and we would scratch our heads in disbelief. What he showed was so dry and predictable. My gallery mate's emotions run deep and reach back into history, with oracular depth. The void hovers around his work and almost devours it. The paintings were the artist's soul turned inside out. But we forgot to consider the clients of these gallerists,  Boston's rich and monied class, the ones who made it playing the stock market or in real estate, All is calculation and ratiocination.Nothing messy or scary, or, if it is, make sure you keep it at the level of a hint or a sleight of hand.The numbing redundancy of affectless work.

Occasionally, Boston looks at its soul and sees sorrow and loss and does not cover it over with bombast and rhetoric. So it was with Robert Lowell 50 years ago.

At the beginning of the Sixties Boston was reduced to a parking lot with the onslaught of urban renewal. The tax base was no longer there to support the city so the Federal Government came in with cash to knock down the 19th century and to replace it with anonymous buildings reminiscent of Soviet bloc architecture. The high tech boom was years away and the Boston I remember was not a pretty place. Robert Lowell, influenced by the "Swan" of Baudelaire, who himself bemoaned the Haussmannian demolition of Paris, wrote probably his greatest poem about New England and Boston  and by extension Modernity: "For The Union Dead". So much of America can easily absorb modernity since there was little before it to resist it. Boston already had three centuries of history and much of that architecture still remains. The clash of the new and old was obvious and it was easy to side with the nobility of the past. The overarching metaphor of the poem is the transfer of the reptilian and ichthyan kingdom from the contained Aquarium to our modern world. It is not a pretty picture. But then again maybe the Boston Intelligentsia  has been engaged in a concerted battle against the "dark downward vegetating kingdom" that Lowell secretly longs for. Judging from what passes for art in Boston, they have won.

FOR THE UNION DEAD by Robert Lowell, 1960

Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam.

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles,
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steam shovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking lots luxuriate like civic
sand piles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin-colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse, shaking

over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

The monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its colonel is as lean
as a compass needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die—
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small-town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year—
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets,
and muse through their sideburns.

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
showed Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, "the Rock of Ages,"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

Porfirio DiDonna: "A Painters Journey" at the Danforth Museum

I wish I could remember his name. He was a talented student at AIB. The last I heard from him he was in Brooklyn making his way as an artist. Since I never had meaningful conversations with other faculty, he became my sounding board for discussions on the contemporary scene. He was at the stage in his life, where he wasn’t worried about finding his academic niche so that art was an open book. For the faculty it was a closed book. They had solidified their styles and now wanted to solidify their academic status. Teaching was pure theatre for them, holding forth in crits and making sure discussions didn’t venture too far from the script.

I recall at one point this student and I became intrigued by the work of Jake Berthot. He showed regularly at Nielsen and had a certain presence in the art magazines. Students who moved on to graduate school often had him as a visiting artist. His work was painterly and slightly mystical in its mood. Unlike much contemporary art it had an affect that was appealing to me. It didn’t have a conceptual issue to belabor. At the time, probably the early Nineties, he was painting colorful lozenge shapes floating in a darker ground. The edges were not sharp and the centrally placed lozenges looming out of the dark ground created a sense of the painting being a search and discovery.

One Winter the student learned of a major show of  Berthot's work at Dartmouth. We decided to make the trek up there to get a good sense once and for all what he was about. I can’t remember much about our reactions to the painting in  the show except that after viewing it we went to a local tavern, the sort you find on Ivy league campuses that have a pedigree to them, downstairs and dark with lots of wood paneling, names of former students carved in the tables and a good selection of draft beer. It was warm and cozy, a respite from the cold winter air. Enjoying a good draft beer, I found myself humming spontaneously: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”. Was it the mood of the Tavern? Or was this the sum total of the mood of Berthot's paintings? Did they radiate an atmosphere that didn’t go much beyond a popular ballad?

Low-grade spirituality. Reminded me of what I wrote about another Nielsen artist, a protégé of John Walker, who now shows at Alpha. Her expressionist paintings of beaches at slack tide conveyed  the low-tide languor we experience when we visit beaches off season. If Berthot makes me hum “The Christmas Song” then her work got me humming  “Ebb Tide”. I called her Johnny Walker Lite.

DiDonna

Hartley

Last night I went to a member’s opening at the Danforth Museum of another Nielsen artist,  Porfirio DiDonna, which purports to revive interest in an artist, whom they presume should have more recogniton than he is currently accorded.  He died in his mid- forties in 1986. Before his death he was able to develop a distinct style that also embodies the sort of yearning that I observed in Berthot’s work. According to the literature accompanying the show, he was a devout Catholic on a path to inner spiritual truth. His early work is put together out of minute dots that follow grids and are reminiscent of Agnes Martin. Each mark could be seen as the gesture of a believer denoting each Hail Mary with a flick of the rosary beads. There is a sense of marking time. The body of work that is ostensibly the most Catholic is put together with patterns and bands of warm colors that resemble at times chalices, or at other times elaborate priestly garb.  The marks that add up to these images/symbols remain independent as gestures of color on their own. Often they are S shapes, where the S gives a kind of thrust or purpose to the lines, a dance or flickering of the candle flame if you will. It is as though he deconstructed the images of the church in the way Hartley deconstructed the images from the life of his German soldier lover to create a pattern of love and relationship. In fact, from a grammatical point of view, DiDonna’s work seems deeply informed by Hartley. It is more gestural and the parts have an inner thrust to them that is reminiscent of deKooning or Pollock but in the end, if Agnes Martin

Berthot

informs his early work, Hartley is all over the last work.

It is unfortunate that we will never know where DiDonna would have gone with his quest to know something beyond his physical self. Unfortunate, as well, in that the  gestalt of his last works seems earnest, yet, a lot like Berthot’s, rests on the level of inchoate emotions. There is too much feeling and not enough knowing. Or maybe ”not knowing”. I think that if there is a God his transcendence is so far beyond our physical reality or any cognitive act that we can perform, that if we were to get close to it, it would char our souls to a crisp. Spiritual guides often warn adepts of pursuing a search for God, as it is fraught with danger and numerous cul de sacs.http://hyperallergic.com/97175/beer-with-a-painter-jake-berthot/

This show captures a creative climax, where everything holds together.There is the  spiritual glow conveyed by the  colors and his  gestures do take Hartley to a different linguistic space. But as a friend and artist said after reading Baker’s exegesis on DiDonna and recalling his work:

“About the shape of knowing:  I never understand why mysticism always takes the shape of monotonous centrality, soft edges, elegant curves, glowing light and color etc. etc. I like to think I'm reaching toward a kind of mysticism but through urgency, agitation, and explosiveness with an underlay of stillness.  It’s more how I sense the universe to be.”

Solid work, thoughtfully wrought, full of sincerity but I think in the end it leaves this viewer unconvinced of its greatness.  Maybe this was the first basic level to be uncovered in his spiritual journey.Greatness lay ahead of him, possibly.

Review of a recent show of his work at Elizabeth Harris.

A reprise from Charles Giuliano's Beer and Burger series of discussions with Boston Artists.In our case it was over beer and pizza at Santarpio's in Eastie

An interview from 8 years ago.

http://berkshirefinearts.com/09-17-2013_artist-martin-mugar-beer-and-burgers.htm

Berkshire Fine Arts just published a review by its publisher,Charles Giuliano, of Chawky Frenn's "100 Boston Artists" that came out this past Summer

Giuliano knows the Boston Scene as well as anyone and his words on this book should be taken seriously

You can buy the book on Amazon

I have been searching for a topic and the WSJ provided it:Martin Mugar as part of the scenery

Study: Saltwater boating brings billions to region

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Associated Press

BOSTON — Recreational saltwater boating contributed $3.5 billion to the Northeast's economy last year and supported the equivalent of 27,000 jobs, according to a new study on the reach of a historical but underanalyzed industry.

The findings highlight the economic power of the 374,000 recreational boaters along the region's coast as local ocean development appears poised to accelerate. Aquaculture pens, wind farms and offshore utility lines are examples of the existing or proposed ocean uses, and boaters want a voice about such projects in waters they share.

Since the survey ties significant jobs and economic growth to boating, that can expand the industry's influence, said Grant Westerson, head of the Connecticut Marine Trades Association in Essex, Conn.

"If we can show that boating returns to the state a lot more money than it had anticipated, then they'll listen to us a little more," he said.

Local harbors are filled with vessels from sloops to cigarette boats, and boats have been critical to the Northeast's commerce and leisure since they carried the first settlers to shore. Despite the historical foothold, there's little data about recreational saltwater boaters, such as the routes they take to get where they're going and how much they spend when they get there.

That data gap became a potential liability as various interests sought a voice in implementing President Barack Obama's national ocean policy, which aims to create a balanced approach to ocean use.

About 12,000 randomly selected boaters participated in the survey, conducted between May and October 2012 by the nonprofit ocean research group SeaPlan, the Northeast Regional Ocean Council, state coastal planners, private industry and the First Coast Guard District.

The survey estimated local boaters made 907,000 marine recreational boating trips in 2012, contributing $3.5 billion total to the economies of the coastal Northeast states surveyed, from Maine to New York. That's roughly equal to the domestic seafood industry's economic impact in 2012 dollars in those six states, according to federal statistics from 2009, adjusted for inflation.

Boaters spent an average of about $1,150 on boating trips last year (including about $200 at restaurants) and more than $7,000 just visiting, docking and maintaining their vessel.

The study indicates boating supported 27,000 jobs across several sectors, with leisure and hospitality (7,700) and trade, transportation and utilities (6,700) the top two.

Andy Lipsky, SeaPlan's director of policy, noted the study may significantly understate boating's impact since it leaves out boat sales and boats registered in inland counties.

"It's not perfect," he said of the study. "But it's a good start."

The survey required boaters to record their travels on an online map. The map showed boating activity at 4,600 spots, along with the routes people took to get there. That means developers planning an offshore project along the coast, for instance, can see if the area is heavily traveled by boaters now and avoid potential conflicts, Lipsky said.

"(The survey) helps boaters see themselves and use that information to advocate for their interests, but it also provides important data information for other ocean users, so they can make better decisions," he said.

Fishing — mainly for striped bass — was the dominant activity for boaters in every state except Maine, where wildlife viewing and relaxing was more popular.

The study's demographic data showed more than 90 percent of boaters are male and average 59.4 years old. Nearly 57 percent of boaters make more than $100,000 annually. About 22 percent make $75,000 or less.

The survey indicates most boaters were generally confident they can co-exist with various ocean uses. For instance, 58 percent thought it was "somewhat to very likely" that they could still enjoy boating near offshore wind turbines, which are hundreds of feet tall.

Artist Martin Mugar, 64, of Durham, N.H., who took the survey, began boating at summer camp as a kid and now owns a 25-foot sailboat.

He said boating has a unique culture that participants enjoy but is also part of the region's draw. When tourists headed to the Isle of Shoals pass by, "I'm part of the scenery," he said with a chuckle.

The survey shows boating's broader benefits, Mugar said, and it can only help boaters to be "perceived as being assets, and not just people out there having a good time — which we are."

—Copyright 2013 Associated Press