The Persian Jacket by Grace Hartigan

Museum of Modern Art Director Alfred Barr visited the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on the last day of Grace Hartigan’s show in 1953. Barr lavished praise on Hartigan’s work titled, The Persian Jacket, and brought the painting back to MoMA on approval. Hartigan’s friend, the poet Frank O’Hara, was watching from his perch at the front desk at MoMA. O'Hara called Hartigan and gave her a blow-by-blow account of the awkward entrance of the massive canvas through the front door.

The next day, Barr called to say that there was a problem with the upper left-hand corner of the painting—Grace had failed to maintain the flatness of the surface. At his suggestion, she came to the museum the following Monday with her paints and spent about 30 minutes fixing the blend of colors in that spot.

Hartigan said in her journal:  

"I went up there this afternoon. Persian Jacket looked good, more full and arrogant than I remembered. I agreed about the area—it always was a difficult one to solve, partly because it is the most open area, and the one which in traditional painting would be the background.  The area bends in, so it doesn't sit right—and I'm going up on Monday with my paints to work on it a little. This was at Barr's suggestion—I thought it a bit unconventional, but we both remembered the incident of Delacroix touching up the Massacre of Scio two days before it was shown."

It took two months for the sale to go through—Barr secured a patron to buy the painting for $400 and donate it to the museum. The recognition was a great triumph for Hartigan.

The Persian Jacket | 1952
Oil on Canvas | 57 1/2 in. x 48 in.
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Sources:  

Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter by Cathy Curtis

The Journals of Grace Hartigan, 1951-1955

Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion

Many of Marc Chagall’s paintings could be described as lively, romantic, humorous, imaginative, and filled with brilliant colors, but his White Crucifixion (seen below) is largely drained of color. Chagall painted it in 1938 while living in Paris, in response to the horrifying events of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” an anti-Jewish pogrom of official decree by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany (including Austria and Sudetenland) from the 9th until the 10th of November 1938.

This painting represents a critical turning point for Chagall: it was the first of an important series of compositions that feature the image of Christ as a Jewish martyr and dramatically call attention to the persecution and suffering of European Jews in the 1930s.

In White Crucifixion, his first and largest work on the subject, Chagall stressed the Jewish identity of Jesus in several ways: he replaced his traditional loincloth with a prayer shawl, his crown of thorns with a headcloth, and the mourning angels that customarily surround him with three biblical patriarchs and a matriarch, clad in traditional Jewish garments.

At either side of the cross, Chagall illustrated the devastation of an officially encouraged organized persecution: On the left, a village is pillaged and burned, forcing refugees to flee by boat and the three bearded figures below them—one of whom clutches the Torah—to escape on foot. On the right, a synagogue and its Torah ark go up in flames, while below a mother comforts her child. By linking the martyred Jesus with the persecuted Jews and the Crucifixion with contemporary events, Chagall’s painting passionately identifies the Nazis with Christ’s tormentors and warns of the moral implications of their actions.

White Crucifixion | 1938
Oil on Canvas | 60 7/8 in. x 55 1/16 in.
The Art Institute of Chicago

Source:  The Art Institute of Chicago

For the Love of Knox Martin

Celebrating today, the birth of master artist, poet, art historian, teacher, mentor, World War II veteran, Knox Martin.  From the Fischbach Gallery papers (1963-1977) at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

More blog posts about Knox Martin here:

Knox Martin's Homage to Jan de Heem

Martin Celebrates His Father and Aviation History in Colombia
Beauty Inside and Out
Homage to Matisse

Meeting Knox Martin

Knox Martin Tells Me a Story About Robert Rauschenberg

Holidays at The White House 2015

The holiday season at the White House is celebrated with an array of annual traditions, glittering holiday décor, fresh pine, and sugary treats. This year’s holiday theme, A Timeless Tradition, reflects long-held, cherished customs across America, and commemorates extraordinary moments that shaped the country during the past two centuries. The 2015 White House Holiday Tour Book is brimming with beautiful illustrations by art students at Duke Ellington School for the Arts, in Washington, DC.

Highlights include:

• The holiday décor was executed by 89 volunteers from around the country. Sixty-two trees and over 70,000 ornaments were used in this year's extravagant mix.

• Three of the rooms feature creations by fashion designers Carolina Herrera, Duro Olowu, and Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. In a nod to the Obama Administration's new china pattern with a Kailua Blue stripe, Herrera integrated this stunning blue water color off the coast of the President's home state of Hawaii for package ribbons and other accents in the China Room.

• In the Blue Room, a grand oval space overlooking the South Lawn and Washington Monument, is the official White House Christmas tree. Dedicated to our nation's service members, veterans, and their families, it is ornamented with holiday messages of hope for our troops and patriotic symbols of red, white, and blue.

• At approximately 500 pounds, this year's White House Gingerbread House contains more than 250 pounds of gingerbread dough, 150 pounds of dark chocolate, 25 pounds of gum paste, 25 pounds of pulled and sculpted sugar work, and 25 pounds of icing—a White House pastry chef tradition since the 1970s.

• A long-standing holiday custom—the White House crèche—has graced the East Room for more than 45 years, spanning nine administrations. The nativity scene made of terra cotta and intricately carved wood was fashioned in Naples, Italy in the eighteenth century.

I was like an excited, little kid experiencing the holiday magic, completely mesmerized by bright, shiny things! I'm still in awe being surrounded by all the history of the executive mansion. It was fascinating hearing Secret Service officers in each room engaged in conversations about the decorations, furnishings, and even the art. Below are a few photos from my recent afternoon at The White House.

Eight Thousand Snowflakes Grace
a White House Corridor

The Library with Five Literary-Themed Trees

The China Room with Kailua Blue Accents

The East Room and The White House Crèche

The Red Room with Real Cranberry Trees and
Magnolia and Berry Garland on Fireplace Mantel

The State Dining Room with
Thousands of Gumballs and Dozens of Nutrackers

A Festive White House Fireplace Mantel with Mirror 

The Glittering Cross Hall

Source | Office of the First Lady,  The White House
Photos | Cary Knox

Holidays at the Thorne Miniature Rooms

The beloved decorating tradition is back at the Art Institute of Chicago—and continues to ramp up the festivities—with a Twelfth Night–themed room joining in the fun.

Several other rooms once again get their seasonal trimmings. Among the most elaborate is the English Drawing Room of the Victorian Period, the only room with a Christmas tree. Now a ubiquitous feature of the season, the Christmas tree ortannenbaum, was only brought to England from Germany in 1840 with the marriage of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. The Thorne Room tree and accoutrements are based on a famous engraving of the royal couple and their children surrounding a trimmed and toy-bedecked tree, an image that would forever popularize this holiday fixture. Other ornamented rooms include:

• The English Great Hall of the Tudor period with a wassailing bowl, yule log, and an essential part of the costuming for that period’s singing-dancing revelers—a mummer’s mask

• The Virginia Entrance Hall with mistletoe, wreath, and garland

• The French Provincial Bedroom with shoes, or sabots, lined up before the fireplace, a crèche, and puzzle

• The modern-era California Hallway with an Otto Natzler mid-century menorah and box with a dreidel

• The New Orleans, New Mexico, and the Pennsylvania Dutch (German) rooms filled with regional treats of the season

• The 1930s French Library with a tiny taste of Art Deco holiday glamour

• The traditional Chinese interior filled with shadow puppets and instruments that would have been used to celebrate the Chinese New Year as well as other festive occasions

The 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s. 

Painstakingly constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, these fascinating models were conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne of Chicago and constructed between 1932 and 1940 by master craftsmen according to her specifications.

See the holiday display in the Thorne Miniature Rooms through January 10, 2016 at the Art Institute of Chicago.