sandr037

This image (filtered for contrast and color) caught my eye a few days ago. Eakins’ painting The Gross Clinic came to mind, as did other group portraits. But…. It was nothing so important artistically, Or historically for that matter… It was simply a photo of soldiers carrying a body on a stretcher in China after a landslide (WSJ Jan 12/13).   Funny how a photograph of an activity which happens hundreds of times a day around the world became imprinted on my mind.   It is essentially an unrecognizable light spot on a dark background.   Nothing that important, but to my eye and brain it was something worth spending some time with. Portraits are the most obvious examples of the light spot grabbing your attention.   I have always liked Titian’s The Young Englishman , in part because it resembles a friend from my younger days, but also because of the scattered light spots.   It happens that Titian’s style of portrait painting became the standard for the next 400 yea...

In my post on Goodhue last week, the vast majority of the drawings were vignettes, that is, drawings that trailed off before reaching the edge of the paper or border. In Wikipedia “vignette” is defined as ‘a word that originally meant "something that may be written on a vine-leaf"’.    The Compact Oxford English Dictionary* (2nd edition, 1989) agrees with the vine derivation, but traces it back to the French Vinet, “A running or trailing ornament or design in imitation of the branches, leaves or tendrils of the vine, employed in architectural   or decorative work.”    The specific definition in the Oxford English is “…any embellishment, illustration or picture uninclosed in a border, or having the edges shading off into the surrounding paper, …”. Vignettes have been around as long as humans have drawn on flat surfaces.   Paleolithic man did not worry about borders and edges when painting on the cave walls of Lascaux, and doodles have been found in the marg...

“The best architects have been artists first.” There are times in your life when the artistic and the personal seem to intersect in one person.   Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue is that intersection for me.   His drawings were “love at first sight” for me although they were intimidating.   Youth tends to search for roll models, putting much importance in superficial similarities, and I am no Goodhue.   But there were parallels between our lives which made me feel closer to Goodhue than to any other architect I studied. Goodhue was a Connecticut Yankee, although he had nothing in common with Mark Twain’s character in King Arthur’s Court.   His family roots were deep in 17 th century New England, as are mine.   He had a Revolutionary War hero in the family; ditto there.   And, he was a self taught artist who also loved history.   How could I not love the guy.    However, unlike myself, Goodhue was poor, not formally educated, and grew up in a q...