Month: November 2021

Stow Wengenroth in New York City: week 5, Thursday

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More and more, I think Stow Wengeroth is my favorite print artist. I haven’t found one of his prints yet that I don’t like, and most I love. He is best known for New England scenes, which comprise the bulk of his oeuvre, but he has a number of striking New York scenes as well, which remind me of Martin Lewis. (In fact, I first learned of Wengenroth, early in my print enthusiasm, when trying to track down a Martin Lewis print I really liked, only to discover it was mislabeled and was actually by Wengenroth. This is today’s print.) Wengenroth was born in Brooklyn, trained in New York, and lived in New York City on and off over most of his lifetime.

Today’s print is of a nocturnal street scene with city skyline in the background, and like all of his work, it is remarkably detailed and evocative. This print takes my breath away as much as any of his classical New England lighthouse scenes. When I look at this scene, I hear Earle Hagen’s Harlem Nocturne in my head–not sure if the scene itself evokes that resonance, or merely the name, or perhaps a combination of the two. (Tangential trivia: Hagen wrote the song as a tribute to Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, for the Ray Noble Orchestra. The link is to the original recording by Noble’s orchestra. I didn’t recognize Hagen’s name, but was fascinated to discover he wrote numerous TV theme songs, including two of my all-time faves–the Andy Griffith Show and the Dick van Dyke Show.)

New York Nocturne (1945)

Hale Woodruff, Blind Musician: Week 5, Wednesday

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Hale Woodruff was an African-American artist, much of whose work was about conveying the African-American experience. I featured one of his prints, “By Parties Unknown” on day 3 of week 1–a disturbing but important aspect of the black experience in the US. The topic of today’s print is a happier one–jazz music as an expression of African-American culture. I find this print of an accordion player resonates for me. We don’t see an audience–perhaps for this musician, an audience is not why he plays.

Blind Musician (1935)

Western-inflected Japanese prints: week 5, Tuesday

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Some artists of the shin-hanga period (revival of uikiyo-e traditional woodblock prints in the late 19th and early 20th century) studied Western painting, and the work of those artists is very interesting. Today’s print is by Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), who petitioned the Japanese printmaker Kaburagi to become his apprentice, and was told to go study Western style painting. After a couple of years of that training, he returned to Kaburagi and was accepted and trained in the tradition of ukiyo-e. His name Hasui was given him by his master Kaburagi, and means “water gushing from a spring”.

The print actually feels more like a Japanese-inflected Western picture, but no matter how you describe it, it is lovely. It actually reminds me of the Stow Wengenroth print Cool Forest, featured last week.

Nikko Kaido (1930) [Road from Edo (Tokyo) to Nikko]

Escher was a printmaker! Week 5, day 3 (Monday)

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Many people are familiar with the work of MC Escher, who created fantastic (as in fantasy) pictures including impossible objects, tessellations, reflections, Mobius strips, and more. Many of these are of intellectual interest, but some are artistically interesting or attractive as well. I did not realize till recently that Escher’s works were not drawings but prints! He worked with several print media, but lithographs were the most common, with woodcuts second. In the early part of his career, he did fairly prosaic prints of buildings, places and people. It was starting in his 30s that the more interesting stuff began to emerge.

I plan on sharing some of Escher’s more visually interesting and attractive works here, starting today with a mezzotint of a dewdrop on a leaf.

Dewdrop (1948)

Another Hirschfeld caricature drawing: Week 5, day 2

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While Hirschfeld is most famous for his drawings of Broadway shows, he did not confine himself to the theater. Movies, music, and other celebrities were also often featured. Today’s piece is a Hirschfeld drawing of Eugene Ormandy, perhaps the longest serving conductor of a major orchestra in the US. Ormandy’s tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra was more than 40 years. He was a big personality, and remarkably by today’s standard, no scandalous abuse of power has been revealed more than 30 years after his death. I think Hirschfeld’s rendition of him is beautiful in and of itself, whether you know anything about him or not. It was drawn for a magazine cover, and even though I think the cover clutter distracts, the colors and proportions look better in context, so I show it both isolated and on the magazine cover.

Eugene Ormandy, by Al Hirschfeld

The drawing in context

Contemporary printmaker Karen Whitman: week 5, day 1

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I’ve already established that I tend to enjoy monochrome (esp black and white) prints more than color, in general. I’m also discovering that many of the printmakers I like are from and/or do a lot of scenes of New York City. Having lived in the city myself for 7 years, I really enjoy these. Am I discovering so many of them because NYC has a lively arts scene and therefore lots of printmakers gravitate there? Is it a popular subject because these prints sell well? Many of the NYC prints that have caught my eye are really pretty pictures, but don’t grab me in my gut. It’s hard to articulate, but it feels like I’m getting some sense of artistic depth. I’m not necessarily talking about meaning here–I’m just talking about a different kind of artistic value, which is likely very personal.

Today, I looked at the works of five modern or contemporary NYC print artists, and four of them produced very attractive pieces which pleased my eye but didn’t produce a visceral reaction. Karen Whitman is the fifth. I can’t say her pieces feel profoundly meaningful per se, but they do evoke a much deeper feeling than the other four artists. Whitman is still alive and working, has worked as a circus performer, and creates music as well as visual art. Her medium is relief block prints, both linocuts (as in this piece) and woodcuts. Her works are modestly priced as these things go, and I encourage you to look at more of her work

Birdwatcher

Peter Rabbit harshened? Grandville: week 4/Friday

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A couple of weeks back, I posted a print by Grandville–a lithograph, hand colored after printing, of a satire on the bourgeois of France in the early 19th century. This was one of a large series he did of human figures with the heads of animals, many of which are charming, some of which are grotesque. I think there are enough interesting ones to continue post them here from time to time.

Today’s print might be compared to Peter Rabbit, with Farmer McGregor promoted to Colonel. . Enjoy!

A Frasconi print I really love: Week 4, Thursday

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I wrote a long post a couple of weeks ago about the artist Antonio Frasconi, with a print that I didn’t really love but featured because I love his social justice thrust. Today, I want to share another print by the same artist, which I do love both for its visual appeal and for its subject. It’s a woodcut portrait of Walt Whitman, who died years before Frasconi was born, but whom the young Uruguayan read passionately. The depth of Frasconi’s affinity for Whitman can be judged by the fact that he made at least 8 separate portrait prints of Whitman that I can locate, most of them included in a book of Whitman’s writings Frasconi assembled titled A Whitman Portrait (1960). I haven’t read a lot of Whitman, but I have been struck deeply by what I have read, in particular this passage from Leaves of Grass, his signature work.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem….

Here’s the print of Whitman that I like best, which is from the page opposite the title page of the book:

Painting vs print: Martin Lewis, week 4/Wednesday

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Martin Lewis, the mid-20th century artist who started me off on this new journey of learning. He is most famous for his prints, but like most visual artists he dabbled in other media. In general, I like his prints more than his paintings, but today’s offering includes an oil painting that I like very much. To make it even more interesting, he later did a print of almost exactly the same scene, so we can compare the two. The two pictures portray the same area from opposite viewpoints; it’s possible to pinpoint it as the same due to a very unusually shaped rock formation (Maybe the remnants of an old building? Hard to say for sure)

In general, it feels difficult comparing a piece in color to one in black and white, but given that I really love the black and white prints, maybe it’s more of a fair comparison. The scene is a look down on the railroad yards in wintertime, in Weehawken, NJ, which is directly across the Hudson River from midtown (roughly 30th-60th St.). I love prints and I love Lewis’ prints, but in this case I think I like the painting even better. Any thoughts|?

Above the yards, Weehawken (1918), etching with aquatint

Railroad yards, Winter, Weehawken (1917), oil painting

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