Whenever I hear the name John Marin, an odd fact comes back to me: in 1948, Look magazine named him America’s No. 1 artist, based on a poll of curators and artists.

It’s a puzzlement: I appreciate and, in fact, like his work, but he never struck me as the best of American modernists, let alone the broader universe of artists. Nowadays, his work often gets a shrug. From his day, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Stuart Davis — to name just three — outshine him. The last big exhibition of his work may have been in 1990, when the National Gallery of Art mounted Selections and Transformations: The Art of John Marin.

But now comes a documentary: John Marin: “Let the Paint be Paint!” Made by independent filmmakers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton, it debuts on Dec. 11 at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, followed by a national tour next year.

Maglaras also made Cleophas and His Own, a film of the poem Marsden Hartley wrote about his experiences in Nova Scotia with a family named Mason. That’s when he and his wife, Templeton, formed 217 Films, which he self-finances. The films are, his PR rep says, labors of love. The duo went on to film Visible Silence: Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet, and now the work about Marin, which was shot at his summer home on Cape Split in Addison, Maine. The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram has more about the story of the film here.

The filmmakers are writing a blog about their work here. And they’ve posted clips on YouTube, the first one being here.

Filmmakers about visual artists have a tough task: if it’s about the artist’s life, instead of his/her art, it often doesn’t do the job of helping people to appreciate the work. On the other hand, if it’s a film of visual closeups of paintings, plus narration and still photographs, it tends to be of interest only to people already interested in the subject. 

Judging from the YouTube clips, “Let the Paint be Paint!” follows the latter formula. But I’m hoping it helps me, and others, understand why Marin was No. 1 in 1948.

Photo: Courtesy the Estate of John Marin

 

This is a new one for me: The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

After I wrote about the George Eastman House’s new wiki (here), Notes on Photographs, a reader contacted me about TCLF’s new “wiki-styled” database of America’s “designed landscapes” searchable by “landscape name, locale, designer, type, and style.” Its goal is to be “a reference for students and teachers of design and history, enthusiasts, and professionals, provoking interest, informing stewardship decisions, and enriching our understanding of our designed landscape history.”

Launched on Nov. 5, it’s called “What’s Out There” in hopes that people will send in submissions, which will be vetted before being posted. It now includes 75 landscape types, 14 landscape styles, 380 landscape architects and designers, and more than 650 sites nationally, but it needs your input — and seems to be a worthy cause.

TCLF is pretty new itself, having been formed only in 1998. Read more about it here. Among its worthy programs is Landslide, which focuses attention on landscapes at risk, including Olana, Frederick Edwin Church’s Moorish palace on the Hudson (above).

For the skeptics out there who wonder why I’m evening mention this — those who say landscape design isn’t art, even applied art — the TCLF is partnering with the Eastman House and Garden Design magazine on a photography show, on view at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh: Marvels of Modernism runs through Jan. 3.

It’s all culture to me.

Photo: Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation/Steve Turner 

Many museum exhibitions affect individuals; some go further, exerting influence on the collective opinion, or even beyond. 

 

Exactly 100 years ago last night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed the doors on one that went further. Part of a statewide celebration, the Hudson-Fulton exhibition marked the 300^th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the river that bears his name and the centennial of Robert Fulton’s steamship. During its 10-week run, nearly 300,000 people thronged the museum’s galleries — 8,000 on opening night alone, which was presided over by J.P. Morgan, the Met’s president (left), and a 40-piece orchestra.

 

The show had two sides, and both had impact.

 

The “Hudson” part displayed 143 paintings by masters like Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch painters from Hudson’s era, all drawn from the collections of Morgan, Benjamin Altman, Henry Clay Frick and other American business titans or their widows. These Gilded Age industrial buccaneers had spent vast sums on art-buying sprees in Europe, much to the disdain of its more-cultured citizens, who deemed them unworthy of their purchases. (Indeed, one or two turned out to be fakes.)

 

But after seeing the Hudson-Fulton show and visiting several private collections here, an eminent European art scholar named Ludwig Justi (right), Director of the Berlin National Gallery, was moved to dissent. Back home in Germany, Justi told a reporter from The New York Times, “I desire to be quoted in the strongest possible language as a convert from the belief that art collecting in America is the fad of millionaire ignoramuses. I must henceforth beg to disagree cordially with some of my European confreres who think that the denuding of European art collections for the benefit of America and Americans is to cast pearls before swine.”

 

Great quote, huh? The Times printed it on Jan. 23, 1910, helping to start the passage of Americans from vacuous money-grubbers to sophisticated art collectors and appreciators in European eyes.

 

The Hudson-Fulton’s other side altered the course of American museums. This half displayed “industrial arts” made by colonial Americans up until Fulton’s 1815 death, plus paintings by Americans born before 1800 — including this 1806 portrait of Fulton by Benjamin West. They were also borrowed from collectors.

 

If the Dutch side was a shoo-in, this one was a gamble (picture of one gallery, below). American furniture, silver, ceramics and other decorative arts were then viewed as utilitarian, aesthetically inferior to European goods. The American paintings were mostly portraits, considered to be family heirlooms and not yet collected by museums.

 

Reviews were mixed, but the crowds appreciated what the critics didn’t. The show’s popularity reinforced the resolve of three people — Robert W. de Forest, secretary of the Met board; his wife, Emily Johnston de Forest, a daughter of the railroad baron who was the Met’s first president; and Henry W. Kent, a Massachusetts-born curator who was de Forest’s assistant — intent on rewriting that assessment of early American art.

[Read more…] about Can Museum Exhibits Spark Change? A Look At Hudson-Fulton

The art world has a budding star, an 18-year-old named Lauren Mincher.

Mincher is the winner of the Saatchi Gallery-Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for Schools, 2009, which I wrote about here earlier this month. Open to students around the world, more than 22,000 entered, and the British newspaper announced the winner and two runners-up in yesterday’s edition.

Mincher portrayed her grandfather in her entry, at right; runner-up Ghan Chansuwan, 18, made a photographic self portrait called Identity, and third-place finisher Katie Lewis, 17, painted a work that brings the style of Francis Bacon to mind. (Go to my earlier post — link is above — to get to their work easily.)

In all cases, the artists and their schools will receive a prize. Critics and artists judged the contest.

All 20 works that made the short list of finalists in the competition will be featured in an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London from Dec 3 to Dec 14. Charles Saatchi told the Telegraph, “I love seeing the gallery full of schoolchildren enjoying the art. The rooms we have for the schools to display their pupils’ work are very popular with the public and I’m thrilled with the selection made by the team of judges.”

I love seeing young people participating in the art world; as I wrote a few weeks ago, this breeds art enthusiasts. I’d love to see a competition like this based in the U.S.

Photo: Lauren Mincher, Courtesy Sunday Telegraph

  

Provacateur artist Ai WeiWei is the subject of the Saturday profile in today’s New York Times. You have read to the end to get to the money paragraph:

Lately, there are indeed signs that the government is reaching its limit. His blogs on Chinese Web sites, about issues political and otherwise, have been shut down. Someone has installed two video cameras outside his studio. The police are said to be scrutinizing his finances, an ominous development in a state where other political critics have been prosecuted for what appear to be concocted fiscal misdeeds.

The Times interview doesn’t add much to the body of knowledge about Ai and his positions. He’s been outspoken, and is readily available to the press, in person, on the phone and in email interviews. And the art press has paid attention. But today’s story may raise the temperature in China, which in the past, at least, has cared about what the Times says (and other Western media, too).

China has on occasion blocked access to the paper’s website, and I’d be curious to know if today’s article is available there.  

Ai, one of whose “Bowl of Pearls” is above, is given the last word:

I came to art because I wanted to escape the other regulations of the society. The whole society is so political. But the irony is that my art becomes more and more political.

Here’s the link.