Another New Year

One year ago, I decided to close this blog and consolidate food, travel, and other blogging into my food blog. I completed almost 350 posts on many subjects, including trips that we made in almost every month of the year. You can continue to read this blog in the coming year:

maefood.blogspot.com/

After the 2016 election in November, I began to feel a desperate need for heroes in American life -- and yes, I agree with Brecht who said: "Unhappy is the land that needs a hero." So in addition to my food blog, I returned to my hero blog where I have, in the past catalogued secular Jewish heroes. You can read it here:

hero-or-antihero.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile, I'm still an occasional Mona Lisa collector. Enjoy New Year's Eve 2017 as Mona Lisa celebrates... and recovers. Images from a blog post I did long ago:

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

Grayling Street Art

Dogma Catmantoo

In the window of the pet store Dogma-Catmantoo -- a poster from the Cat's Gallery of Art.

Santa Fe: Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

In Santa Fe this afternoon we saw a fantastic exhibit of work by artist David Bradley at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. As the poster above suggests, Bradley's work is both playful and very serious. He concentrates on the experience of American Indians, culturally and in many other ways. 

Bradley's paintings in the exhibit constantly refer to the work of earlier artists -- as above, Mona Lisa appears in many of his paintings, including in one instance framed on a wall behind a portrait of his wife. In the exhibit were also works creatively appropriating or parodying specific paintings by Botero, Magritte, Rousseau, and others. He also depicts corporate logos such as the McDonald's arches or the Walmart sign.

Bradley amusingly places recognizable little portraits within larger paintings. For example, in a work depicting the Indian Market in Santa Fe you can find Mona Lisa eating a cookie as well as Picasso, Elvis, John Wayne, Georgia O'Keeffe, a Civil War general, and many more that I can't remember. Bill and Hillary Clinton were eating at a diner in one painting. Tonto and the Lone Ranger are frequently present, adding whimsy to quite serious works about America and its culture. The famous figures from American Gothic were present from time to time. The curator of the exhibition we were attending and the current head of the museum made an appearance at an Indian feast.

To quote the museum write up, which deals only with the artist's serious side:

"David Bradley (b. 1954), Minnesota Chippewa, creates narrative artworks which tell stories and histories not often heard by non-Native people nor understood from a Native American perspective. Saturated with a powerful Native voice and evocative visual descriptions of Indian experience, Bradley’s artworks depict historical, social, and political truths, personal narrative, and cultural critique. In Bradley’s narratives of Indian Country, Native people take center stage in world art and history. Through his artwork he challenges stereotypes about Native American people, places, and events we think we understand, revealing the indigenous experiences at the core of what it means to be American. As Bradley has said, 'I try to use my art to spotlight the Indian worldview and sociopolitical realities. To expose social injustice is to begin to overcome it.'

I'll be returning to Bradley's work in the future, when I have time to learn more about him. Meanwhile, I can't say too strongly how much I admire his choices of subject matter. The Santa Fe museum is one of my favorite places to learn about American Indian art.

This morning, before we went to the museum, we had a beautiful bird walk at the Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary in Santa Fe. I'll be writing about our outdoor adventures as we continue to search for new and interesting birds.

Smokers in Art: With Update

Sapeck (Eugène Bataille):
Mona Lisa with a Pipe, 1883

I hate smoking. But I'm quite fascinated by smokers as they appear in artworks. A few days ago, I did a post on smokers in art for my food blog -- since some people have viewed smoking as a kind of consumption, analog to eating. I'm aware of a lot more smokers in art than I included there, though, so I'm expanding the post to include more pictures along with those in my earlier post.

Of course the first artwork I want to add is one of the numerous parodies of Mona Lisa smoking (though recently, she seems to have given up tobacco for other substances).

I chose the very early Mona Lisa parody at left. It was made before the theft in 1911 inspired a rage of interpretations, and long before Marcel Duchamp's famous "L.H.O.O.Q." Its creator was "proto-performance artist Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), who was known to travel the streets with his head painted blue." Evidently there were surrealist types in Paris well before the Dada movement! (source)

But to return to the topic of smoking in more serious art: during the Dutch Golden Age many painters of homey scenes included smokers. Around 150 years after America -- source of tobacco -- began supplying novel products for the European market, smoking seems to have been very well-established:

Adriaen Brouwer: The Smoker, 1630-1638
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adriaen Brouwer: Smokers, ca. 1636
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gerrit Dou: Self-Portrait, c. 1640.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 

Gerrit Dou: Man Smoking a Pipe, c. 1650.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adriaen Van Ostade: from Travelers at Rest
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adriaen Van Ostade: The Smoker, c. 1647.

Adriaen Van Ostade: Smoker at a Window,
c. 1667. Detroit Institute of Arts

Dirck Hals: Gentlemen Smoking and Playing Backgammon, c. 1687

Vincent van Gogh painted several smokers:

An early Picasso in the Barnes collection surprised me with the cigarette in her hand:

Picasso: Woman with Cigarette, 1903

Throughout his career, Picasso continued to include smokers in a large number of his works. Many photos of Picasso show him with a cigarette. Here's one from over 60 years later:

Picasso: The Smoker, 1964

Cezanne painted a few smokers as well. Two pipe smokers are included in his famous card players, and his 1897 portrait of Henry Gasquet includes a cigarette:

Finally, also at the Barnes, this wonderful picture -- I believe the man in the lower left is smoking as he waits for his child to finish his music lesson. I couldn't stop looking at this painting.

Henri Matisse: The Music Lesson

Lucien Freud: Boy Smoking, 1950-51
Tate Gallery, London

As I said on my food blog -- I dislike the smell, the activity, and the risks involved with smoking. I'm very happy that it's no longer allowed in most public interior spaces, and it's becoming less and less common in outdoor public spaces. It's been years since anyone even gave a single thought to smoking inside my house, or inside most homes. That said, smoking was once a common activity, shared and enjoyed by a large part of the population (though some paid dearly for having done so). And it's thus well-represented in art.

Update, December 6, 2014. From the book Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures by Marcy Norton -- an exceptional early Spanish painting of smokers:

ANÓNIMO MADRILEÑO
(atribuido a Antonio de Puga)
La taberna, ca. 1660-1670
Museo de Pontrevedra, Pontevedra, Spain
(source)

... and one of many paintings with smokers by David Tenniers the younger (1640):

"The Smoker" by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1863)
Detroit Institute of Arts.

Barnes Foundation Gift Shop

We loved the art collection at the Barnes Foundation today, but Mona Lisa always deserves a special shout-out! Here are the gift shop items I noticed:

Mona and Cats

My new Mona Lisa Piggy Bank, a hand-made ceramic from Peru,
purchased at Peaceable Kingdom in downtown Ann Arbor.

I'm so delighted with my beautiful new Mona Lisa piggybank that I am interrupting my series of pictures from my trip to Holland to include her.

However, I'm now going to continue this post with several photos of cats that I took while walking around the picturesque streets of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities.

Amsterdam, a beautiful day, many people were
sitting on the stoops of their houses.

Cat on a canal barge. 

Another cat. 

Window cats.

Cat about to cross a street in The Hague.

These cats are dedicated to my blogger friend and cat lover, Jeanie of the Marmelade Gypsy.

Sketching in Public

Illustration from today's "Ethicist" column in the New York Times.

The ethical question: is it ok for someone to sketch strangers while riding the subway? Long story short: Chuck the Ethicist says it's ok. See: "Sketched Out on the Subway"

The other question: what does Mona Lisa have to do with this? The usual answer: nothing at all, she just makes a nice image when your illustrator lacks imagination.

All Sold Out!

Souvenirs

Not Mona Lisa: this is a Costa Rican Last Supper.

Original Last Supper -- Wikipedia

Our last bus stop on the way to the airport: a souvenir stand alongside the road, with vast quantities of wood carvings, weavings, pottery, and everyday tchotchkes.

I'm always fascinated by Leonardo parodies like the one above which featured prominently in the souvenir stand. The ewer and towel in the foreground are not present in the original, shown at right. The Central-American embroidery on the tablecloth is more prominent than the faint embroidery in the original. Most interesting: the length of the table is very condensed here, compared to the original, and the dramatic vanishing point effect is completely lost.

A Costa Rican slang expression: "Mae" means something like "Dude"
Who knew? "Pura Vida" is the national slogan. Like "Pure Michigan," I guess.

I bought a very nice woven bag for carrying miscellaneous stuff, and instantly used it as an extra carry-on bag for the plane trip home. I only collect Mona Lisa items, so I didn't buy the Last Supper, just took the photo. And I didn't buy the "Mae" license plate either.

This was also the first place where we had free wireless internet since leaving Miami a week earlier: a record for no-internet living.