The Best of Ask Joan of Art: The Lincoln Memorial February 4, 2010

This post is part of an ongoing series here on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Begun in 1993, Ask Joan of Art is the longest running arts-based electronic reference service in the country. Behind Joan's shield and visor you will find Kathleen Adrian or one of her co-workers from the museum’s Research and Scholar's Center; these experts answer the public's questions about art. Earlier this year Kathleen began posting questions on Twitter and made the answers to these questions available on our Web site.

Statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial by Daniel Chester French, Dedicated May 30, 1922, 19 feet high. (See the entry from the Smithsonian's Inventory of American Sculpture.)

Question: What was the artistic process for creating the statue of Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial?

Answer: The following reply is excerpted from Wayne Craven's book Sculpture in America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968).

"The project of a suitable memorial to Lincoln for the national capital had been revived in 1911, and much debate and controversy ensued as to the most appropriate kind. Finally a site in Potomac Park was chosen, overlooking the river and on a direct line with the towering obelisk that honors Washington.... The Doric temple took form first, and the architect and the sculptor frequently stood before it discussing the sort of statue it should house. By 1918, after nearly three years of thought and work, [Daniel Chester] French had produced a seated figure, more grave and pensive than his standing Lincoln for the Nebraska capital....

"In February 1918 the sculptor and the architect stood and gazed at a plaster model that had been set in the temple in the position the marble version would later occupy. This first model, only 8 feet high, was dwarfed by the surrounding architecture. To obtain some idea of the proper scale, gigantic photographs from 14 to 18 feet high were made of the statue and put together on a wooden framework; one by one, each was erected on the site, and only the largest proved adequate. The statue would ultimately be set upon a pedestal 11 feet high, placing the head of Lincoln nearly 30 feet above the floor.

"The task of carving such a monumental figure was certainly too great for French to undertake himself, and he turned to the six Piccirilli brothers, noted marble carvers of New York City. Their enormous studio was described by W. M. Berger soon after they had begun work on French's Lincoln:

[It was] a vast workshop, where amid the apparent confusion of great masses of rough and uncut marble, fantastic shapes of plaster and clay (surrounded by scaffolding and ladders, forges and benches, and the indescribable litter of chips and broken stone), [one] may discern dimly through fine clouds of marble dust and smoke, crowds of workmen in blouses, unconventional overalls and paper caps, busily engaged with their humming pneumatic chisels, hammers, and measuring instruments in liberating from these crude blocks of stone the form of some graceful nymph, or, perhaps, the robust figure of one of our distinguished statesmen. It is in such a studio that the great statue of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French has been in the process of development during the past year. [Scribner's Magazine, Oct.1919, p.424]

"Twenty-eight blocks were required, and they were carved separately in the several studios of the Piccirilli complex, which extended over an entire city block. Gradually, the forms emerged, following French's 8-foot model in every detail by means of pointing machines. When all the extraneous parts had been removed 170 tons of Georgia marble remained. Not until they had all arrived at the memorial site in Washington were the finished pieces assembled, but they fit together perfectly.

"French had been traveling abroad when the statue was set up in its appointed place, and with great anxiety he made his way to Washington after his return. He knew that his first view of the statue in its final size and in marble would mark the climax of his long career."

For further information about the artist and this memorial sculpture, you might want to look for the following books: Margaret French Cresson's Journey Into Fame: The Life of Daniel Chester French, and Michael Richman's Daniel Chester French: American Sculptor.

For more in-depth information on this subject, please visit Ask Joan of Art!

• Lincoln Memorial, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Chester French, Sculpture, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

All Eyes on Haiti: Loïs Mailou Jones February 2, 2010

Loïs Mailou Jones's Eglise Saint Joseph

For almost a week now I have been trying to write about the devastating earthquake in Haiti from the point of view of art and culture, but it didn't seem right—or, at least, not the right time. With so many lives lost or destroyed, and with people still missing, what could I possibly say about paintings and sculpture that would be up to the task? But of course, paintings and sculptures come from painters and sculptors. What about the people who made the works of art? Where are their stories?

The New York Times recently published an article on artists in Haiti who were hurt or who lost their lives and their work in the earthquake. Institutions crumbled. One artist, Paul Jude Camelot, a student at the École Nationale des Arts, was shown with bandaged hands, weeping over one of his sculptures. "That's all I had left," he told the reporter from the Times. "We had so much despite the fact that we're so poor," said Axelle Liautaud, an art dealer from Port au Prince who was trying to save murals in the Holy Trinity Cathedral that were badly damaged.

I thought of the work of Loïs Mailou Jones—well represented in the collection of American Art—who taught at Howard University for nearly forty years, but who also had a long-standing relationship with Haiti, beginning in 1953, when she married Haitian artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel. When I look at her painting of Eglise Saint Joseph, I marvel at her technique, her use of color, the translation of a Cezanne land- and skyscape onto the shacks of Port-au-Prince circa 1954. You can see her influences, from training at the School of Fine Arts, Boston, to her time in Paris, to her African-inspired works—including the highly regarded Les Fetiches from 1938, also in the collection of American Art. But for now, I keep staring at the image of Eglise Saint Joseph. I enter that name into the Google search engine, then add the words Haiti and earthquake as I try to figure out if the church is still standing, as the world tallies its many losses.

• Haiti, Lois Mailou Jones, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Remembering Nam June Paik January 29, 2010

To celebrate the life of Nam June Paik, John G. Hanhardt, Senior Curator for Media Arts, Nam June Paik Media Arts Center, has written a remembrance of the artist on the fourth anniversary of his death.

Untitled, from the portfolio "The New York Collection for Stockholm" by Nam June Paik. View larger.

The Nam June Paik Archive, recently acquired by American Art, is a treasure trove containing all kinds of materials that deepen our understanding of this artist who, over forty years ago, imagined a future where video and new media would become global art movements. Today, on the fourth anniversary of Nam June’s death, I want to share with you a couple of paragraphs from a document I found in the Archive that relate to communication and how information and opinion is spread. His thoughts seem particularly prescient, as we see how the Internet carries ideas, opinions, and rumors around the world in an instant.

Rumor, that mysterious bird of the spirit, was the first radio that Homosapiens invented. There are no rules that determine why some rumors travel faster than others—just as there are no laws governing the world of advertising.

Rumors constitute a second operation of the metabolism, one in which novelty is a more critical element than truth. Everything hinges, quite simply, on a small surprise.

— Nam June Paik. "High Tech/High Art in the Oriental Tradition." Center for Advanced Visual Studies, M.I.T. 1987. Copyright Nam June Paik 1981. Translated from German by Katherine Scott, 1986.

• Nam June Paik, New Media, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In Conversation: Nicholas Bell on Karen LaMonte January 25, 2010

Karen LaMonte's Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery recently acquired Karen LaMonte’s Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery. LaMonte, a glass artist, went to Prague in 1998 on a Fulbright scholarship to learn how to cast large-scale works in one of the most famous glass studios in the world. The glass dress series, of which the new acquisition is a part, took about ten years to complete.

On February 26th, LaMonte will be presenting an illustrated lecture at American Art’s McEvoy Auditorium. She will also be here on the evening of February 27th for ARTrageous. Prior to that event, LaMonte and Nicholas Bell, curator at the Renwick, will engage in conversation about the artist’s work and process.

We spoke with Bell to ask about LaMonte’s work, which is both translucent and mysterious at the same time.

Eye Level: There seem to be a lot of contradictions in LaMonte’s work: the living body vs. the draped figure, absence and presence, clarity and opacity, erotic yet a bit icy at the same time, classical yet contemporary. Can you talk a little about that?

Nicholas Bell: This is something that really drew me to her work and helps her work cross "party lines." It doesn’t matter if you come from a craft or fine art background, LaMonte's work appeals to people across the board. In part, what you’ve touched on are the competing narratives in her work. There are several art historical influences evident in Dress. The pose and drapery are evident in the Elgin Marbles’ representation of Aphrodite, as well as many nineteenth-century odalisque paintings, which depict female slaves in harems. I’d say goddess of love vs. love slave is a pretty dramatic contradiction!

EL: I find the references to Greek and Roman drapery (with a nod to Madame Grès) to be fascinating. You can imagine the Venus de Milo dressed in one of these.

NB: Viewing this work is a remarkable experience. Your first impression is of looking at a solid mass, but when you catch it at particular angles, the body-shaped hollow pops out at you. It really makes you gasp. There’s an incredible presence for something that is not there, a woman who is conspicuously absent.

Karen's work draws attention to clothing as a cultural construct--an identifier that relays who you are and your place in the world. The history of the dress is fundamentally tied to what it means to be a woman. Yet Karen has stated that the subject of her work isn't so much feminism, but femininity.

EL: LaMonte also uses everyday items in the making of her work that are unexpected. These include irons, hairspray, sewing needles, and hair dryers. Her work seems to comment on everyday life, as well as those events that require us to wear special clothing.

NB: Again, Karen’s work overlaps with prominent themes in feminist art, such as the focus on various forms of labor. The items you describe are tools employed to create the illusion of perfection for others. It is entirely fitting that this absent body and its monumental dress are prepared via the same rituals. Karen is also in uncharted territory from a technical standpoint. When she expressed her creative vision at the glass studios in Prague, they said it would be impossible to achieve. She not only had to invent the process by which to create this work, she had to discover the tools.

EL: She has ended the cast-glass series, begun in 2000. It seems fitting that the Renwick has one of these sculptures. How does her work fit into the Renwick’s collection?

NB: We are so grateful to the James Renwick Alliance and to Colleen and John Kotelly for making this acquisition possible. Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery is an extraordinary example of craftsmanship—a technical marvel at the pinnacle of American glassmaking. Beyond the inventiveness of its creation, there is a complex narrative at work that allows the Dress to bridge a traditional divide between craft and fine art, where the former emphasizes process, and the latter, content. Because Karen works from live models, Dress is also one of the most intimate works in our collection. The reclining figure is both clothed and nude, inviting but forever distant. This push and pull makes it a compelling work of art.

EL: I read a quote where the artist said, “I think my work defies every definition, and I hope it raises this question in everyone’s mind. For example at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, the curator chose to put my work in the collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century painting and sculpture, not to works made specifically of glass. I am the person people really do not know what to call and I think that is good.” What would you call her?

NB: I call her brilliant. Art historical conversations too often focus on how styles, materials, and bodies of work can be isolated from one another. Sometimes it takes an individual like Karen LaMonte to illustrate that the artistic terrain is a little more interesting and a little more complicated. I think her work calls out for broader definitions of craft and fine art in this country.

EL: Thank you, Nicholas Bell.

• Karen LaMonte, Renwick, Glass, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Best of Ask Joan of Art: William H. Johnson January 19, 2010

This post is part of an ongoing series here on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Begun in 1993, Ask Joan of Art is the longest running arts-based electronic reference service in the country. Behind Joan's shield and visor you will find Kathleen Adrian or one of her co-workers from the museum’s Research and Scholar's Center; these experts answer the public's questions about art. Earlier this year Kathleen began posting questions on Twitter and made the answers to these questions available on our Web site.

William H. Johnson's Li'L Sis

Question: I’m interested in artwork by William H. Johnson that depicts children as a representation of issues and images from Johnson’s larger African American community.

Answer: There are a number of works by William H. Johnson in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum that depict African American children. You can view many of these works on the museum’s Web site.

You may also be interested in the following excerpts from Richard J. Powell’s book Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art in association with W. W. Norton & Company, 1991).

Johnson hoped that his family, friends, and the town of Florence [South Carolina] would inspire him, giving his art a little more of the 'peculiar rhythm' and 'directness of feeling' that some of his severest critics felt were wanting in his works. These expectations were alluded to in a letter to Dr. George E. Haynes, written by Johnson after one month in Florence. 'I am feeling around at something.' Johnson told Haynes, 'as I am surrounded by little Negro boys and girls, hoping to abstract something of their [—] and putting it on canvas.' Although it is tempting to guess at what Johnson was suggesting in the empty space that followed his epistolary desire to 'abstract something of' African American youth, the answer perhaps rests in his Florence portraits. Jim, a portrait of Johnson's sixteen-year-old brother, encapsulates much of what was left unsaid in Johnson's half-voiced objective to paint Florence's young, black citizens. A bifurcated background of black and ochre operates as a compositional anchor for the sitter, whose brown, russet and light green colors create a dreamy and lucid effect. The figure's head and shoulders are not so much depictions of flesh and fabric as they are painted gestures of both the sitter's and Johnson's shared moods of anticipation and anxiety. [pp.44–46]

Study for Playground Scene, a drawing originally intended as a mural story for the Federal Art Project, reveals another side of Johnson's homage to Harlem and urbanity: children's culture in the inner city. Johnson's outlined and geometric treatment of the children and their urban environment transforms this drawing into an animated scene of shifting circles, parallel bands and other linear configurations. Though incomplete, Playground Scene and other works by Johnson that examine urban child's play convey an almost conceptual sense of city children and their activities.

Although Johnson had long been an avid supporter of encouraging children in the visual arts, his tenure at the Harlem Community Art Center formalized this advocacy, as it regularly exposed him to the direct, colorful statements of those budding artists. Child artists, like the one shown kneeling and drawing in the lower left corner of Playground Scene, fueled Johnson's imagination and inspired him to continue pursuing a two-dimensional, non-illusionistic approach to painting. [pp.132–135]

The circa 1942–43 gouache, Lift Up Thy Voice and Sing is a strange mixture of African-American folklore and political commentary. The scene, showing eight black children singing under the direction of a chorale leader, with all of them standing in front of an inverted American flag, posed innumerable questions.... The answers to these questions can be found in Johnson's evolving attitudes toward the contrasts between the conditions of African-American life and those of the rest of society.... Johnson's use of the navy's distress sign was double-edged: it is a comment both on the desperate battlefront situation and on the signs of distress and dissatisfaction among blacks on the domestic front. That Johnson's black youth in this painting raise their voices and sing in the face of a crisis is, however, not so much absurd or satirical as a sign of hope, an affirmation of the human spirit. [p.178]

A great deal of information has been published about William H. Johnson and his works. You might be interested in taking a look at these sources: Free Within Ourselves: African American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art by Regenia A. Perry, William H. Johnson by Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, and William H. Johnson: Truth Be Told by Steve Turner and Victoria Dailey. In addition, Gwen Everett has written a children's book based on Johnson's painting and his other works: Li'L Sis and Uncle Willie, which is available from our online shop.

To get in-depth information on this subject or to ask your own art questions, please visit Ask Joan of Art!

• Ask Joan of Art, William H. Johnson, Children, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum