men & women for all seasons: 1903 (the calendars)

the wiener werkstatte began just as the important journal,
ver sacrum, ended. while it had published calendars before, the participants outdid themselves, going out in glory, with their calendar for 1903, which also happens to be the only one nearly completely traceable today.

i will admit how i've cheated at the end,
but in the meantime, a little info.

Between 1897 and 1932, the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) served as magnets for Austria’s avant garde. Unlike modernists in other European countries, these Austrians shared no concrete stylistic program, but rather were united by their belief in the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork): a completely coordinated visual environment.

Although the Gesamtkunstwerk’s proponents anticipated many aspects of modern design, their underlying ideology was essentially conservative. The architect Josef Hoffmann and the designer Koloman Moser, collaborators at the Secession and co-founders of the Wiener Werkstätte, wanted to recapture the aesthetic values of the preindustrial era, to make whole a world that seemed to be fragmenting. Vienna’s artists and artisans were engaged in a communal project aspiring to offer nothing less than spiritual redemption.

The totalizing tendencies of the Secession were manifested both in its evangelical mission and in its attempt to achieve a synthesis of multiple art forms. Not only painters, but also architects and designers were admitted to the organization. “We recognize no difference between high art and low art,” the Secessionists declared in Ver Sacrum. “All art is good.” A pronounced interest in the applied arts was expressed in the type of work shown at the Secession as well as in the care lavished on customized installations.

The Secession’s most ambitious and successful Gesamtkunstwerk was its 1902 exhibition devoted to Ludwig van Beethoven. This multi-media presentation included interior design, sculpture, graphics, painting and music, but the best remembered contribution was probably Klimt’s raised frieze, which encapsulated the reigning artistic philosophy with unparalleled concision. Quoting Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” (the poem set to music in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) in the mural’s final, redemptive panel, Klimt proclaimed his solidarity with the poet and the composer as emissaries of aesthetic deliverance.

The philosophy of the Gesamtkunstwerk was unabashedly elitist: the self-anointed would lead, all others must follow. And though the Secession ostensibly comprised a community of like-minded individuals, its members were not particularly inclined to democratic compromise. In 1905, friction between the Secession’s more traditional easel painters and the Gesamtkunstwerk devotees caused the latter group (including Klimt, Hoffmann and Moser) to walk out en masse.

The Wiener Werkstätte, established in 1903, now became the sole institution uniting Austria’s more advanced artists. While painters such as Klimt and, a bit later, the Expressionists Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were drawn into its orbit, the Werkstätte was first and foremost a design collective. As a result, the organization’s interpretation of the Gesamtkunstwerk was less introspective, more practical and expansive than had been the case at the Secession.

In 1932, after several brushes with bankruptcy, the Wiener Werkstätte closed its doors for good. Despite its ultimate demise, however, the Werkstätte left a powerful legacy. In addition to anticipating the meshing of form, function and construction intrinsic to modern design, the Gesamtkunstwerk concept has done much to shape the way we relate to objects. The creation of a cohesive “look”—from Donna Karan separates to Ralph Lauren home furnishings—has by now become a given of the upscale lifestyle to which many Americans aspire. Global capitalism and a highly evolved advertising industry provide our contemporary design moguls with a breadth and reach that Hoffmann, in his wildest dreams, could never have anticipated.

The premium charged for design and marketing, above and beyond the raw cost of manufacture, has become enormous today, when both discount sneakers and $150 Nikes are produced in the same Filipino sweatshops. To be sure, this is not the preindustrial Eden imagined by the Wiener Werkstätte’s founders, and present-day design sensibilities are more eclectic, less philosophically charged, than the early twentieth-century Gesamtkunstwerk. Yet objects continue to provide comfort in times of uncertainty, and the attempt to find comprehensive solutions remains seductive, even though we should know that such schemes never really work. 1

Ver Sacrum was a magazine publishing the works of most important artists of Viennese Secession between 1898 and 1903. The prints published in this short-lived but extremely important periodical are very valuable - names like Gustav Klimt, Emil Orlik, Koloman Moser or Alphonse Mucha are among those who published here. Some of the artists became famous in part thanks to the magazine. 2

Ver Sacrum was the major publication of the Vienna Secession movement, a group of artists who banded together in Vienna at the turn of the century to challenge what they saw as the conservative, academic bent of the city's art establishment. Their membership included the artists named above as well as Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, and others.

Ver Sacrum was published from 1898 to 1903, running essays on art theory as well as original artwork by the members and other artists whose work influenced them. In conjunction with the magazine, a yearly calendar was published, this being the last of them. In printed, illustrated wrappers which show some toning, else fine. 3

now i fess up. the december just above is actually just november with the first part changed. wrong number of days and all. it's got the correct image, but i could not find the month form itself. and the image for june is by the correct artist, but is not the original from the calendar. that, i couldn't find either, and finding work by this artist at all was difficult because she was russian, and there are about 4,683 spelling variations for her name.

but again, i don't know of anywhere you will find even this much of the completed calendar.

and mr van hoytema: we'll return next.
i've completed several more months!

lion-cachet & dijsselhof & nieuwenhuis, oh my! (the calendars)

three additional dutch artists included wonderful calendars in their bodies of work, and in research- ing van hoytema i've come across them frequently.

The striking impressionist group portrait by Isaac Israels is not only a demon- stration of his dexterity as an artist, but also illustrates the friend- ship that existed between, and is characteristic of, the artists of the Eighties Movement in Amsterdam.

This movement determined the artistic climate in the last decades of the 19th Century. In the present lot, three (decorative) artists are portrayed who worked in the area of the applied arts and were important representatives of the 'Nieuwe Kunst' group, which developed in the Netherlands under the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Depicted are, from left to right, Carel Adolph Lion Cachet (1864-1945), Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof (1866-1924) and Theodoor Willem Nieuwenhuis (1866-1951).

These three men would become emblematic of the applied arts department of the firm Van Wisselingh & Co., which founded a furniture and crafts workshop in Amsterdam in 1898. Israels' portrait of his three friends and contemporaries was painted in 1894 when they were around thirty years old and thus predates their commercial success with Van Wisselingh & Co.

Israels, who moved to Amsterdam in 1887, soon befriended his peers like the artists and designers that are portrayed in the present lot. From 1888 until 1904 he lived in the house on the 1e Parkstraat 438, which would later become Oosterpark 82 and is currently known as the 'Witsenhuis'. This house was bustling with artists and writers; George Hendrik Breitner (1857- 1923) had his studio there from 1887 until 1891, Israels' friend, the writer Frans Erens (1847-1935), lived there regularly and Willem Witsen (1860-1923) bought the house in 1891.

Lion Cachet sometimes worked in Israels' studio, and in the year the present lot was painted, he and Israels painted en plein air on the island Marken in order to portray its inhabitants dressed in their local costumes.

Dijsselhof lived on the ground floor of the house at the beginning of the 1890's, when he had just achieved his first successes with his paintings of aquarium fish. Just before Witsen married Marie Schorr in 1907, the front room on the first floor was adorned with wallpaper which was decorated with dragonflies and flowers designed by Theo Nieuwenhuis which can still be admired in the 'Witsenkamer' today.

Isaac Israels was, next to Witsen, a key-figure as friend and host in this lively house on the 1e Oosterparkstraat which was so popular amongst artists. (see: Jessica Voeten, Het Witsenhuis, Amsterdam 2003, passim).

It is very likely that Israels painted the portrait of his three friends in his studio by the Oosterpark, which they regularly visited. Some careful planning can be detected in the composition: behind Lion Cachet and Dijsselhof we can see a section of the 'Delftsche Slaolie' lithograph which was designed by Nieuwenhuis in 1893.

The compo- sition of the group portrait, a cropped close-up, can be related to the then developing and popular art of photo- graphy. Breitner, Witsen and Israels were active photographers, and both Witsen and Israels used photographs as study material for their paintings.

A photograph by Witsen or Israels that could have formed the basis of the present lot has not yet been found. This being the case, we may assume that Israels painted this spirited work from life. Nieuwenhuis' role in the creation of the present lot is not confined to his poster for 'Delftsche Slaolie' in the background and his portrayal in the picture.

He also made a carved frame for the panel with decorations burnt into it and monograms above the portraits of the three sitters. Unfortunately, the location of the original frame is presently un- known, but the knowledge that it was made for this painting adds to the value of the work as an extraordinary docu- ment of four 'Tachtigers' which so clearly reflects the creative spirit of the era.

We are grateful to Drs Wiepke Loos for writing the catalogue entry. 1

the end of time (the calendars)

imagine the republican response to part of
obama's recovery plans included not only the arts,
but also an eagle with the body of a palette.

but this we had. it ended coincidentally, with this work. clearly an example of a travelled japonisme, we still see the simplified shapes, but the outlines have disappeared.


At its height in 1936, the Federal Arts Project employed 5,300 visual artists and related professionals [and included] several major endeavors: a murals project executed more than 2,500 murals in hospitals, schools and other public places; an easel painting division produced nearly 108,000 paintings; a sculpture division produced some 18,000 pieces; a graphic arts workshop; a photography project served mainly to document the Works Progress Administration; a scenic design division provided models of historic stage sets and architectural models for planning and educational use; a poster division; and a stained glass division centered in New York.

The Federal Art Project also compiled a 22,000-plate Index of American Design, dispatching artists to record a wide variety of American designs in furnishings and artifacts from the colonial period on. The Arts Service Division provided illustrations and the like to the WPA's writers, musicians and theaters. The Exhibitions Division organized public showings of all WPA artists and students.

Hundreds of teachers were employed by the Art Teaching Division in settlement houses and community centers; in the New York City area alone, an estimated 50,000 children and adults participated in classes each week. The FAP also set up and staffed 100 arts centers in 22 states; these included galleries, classrooms and community workshops and served an estimated eight million people. These local centers also received some $825,000 in local support; some survive to this day.

Many artists who have since become famous were part of FAP. Philip Guston, Moses Soyer, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Jacob Laurence, Ivan Albright, Marsden Hartley, Philip Evergood, Mark Tobey -- these were just a few of the painters for whom the FAP provided a living and the chance to find "a new orientation and a new hope and purpose based on a new sense of social responsibility."

Interviews and photographs of former slaves were compiled by the WPA between 1936 and 1938. Factors led to radical writers finding both a voice and an audience in 1930s America, creating, among other things, the "Living Newspapers" associated with the Federal Theatre Project. Federal arts programs provided work for unemployed musicians, dancers, actors, painters, photographers, sculptors, and various other artists and educators as part of the New Deal.

the wpa's projects explored race, gender, class, and the axis of politics and art. projects brought murals to post offices, it created the indian arts and crafts board in 1935 to preserve and promote native american culture, and theater projects dealt with issues of black and white experience from new perspectives.

[eventually] The New Deal cultural programs were marred by censorship. When WPA chief Harry Hopkins announced the formation of the Federal Theatre at the National Theater Conference in 1935, he referred to a theme that would figure importantly in the development and demise of the FTP and other components of Federal One:

I am asked whether a theater subsidized by the government can be kept free of censorship, and I say, yes, it is going to be kept free from censorship. What we want is a free, adult, uncensored theater.

Despite Hopkins' pledge, the first act of censorship took place six months later. The first Living Newspaper, Ethiopia, portrayed Haile Selassie and Mussolini in the wake of the Italian invasion. When the New York FTP unit tried to get a recording of President Roosevelt's speech on Ethiopia to use in the production, the White House became alarmed at the content of the piece and banned the impersonation of any foreign ruler on the Federal Theatre stage.

State and local WPA officials were the most frequent transgressors of Harry Hopkins' stated intention. When the New York City WPA director was looking to purge his program of radical artists, he spotted trouble in a four-panel mural at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Airport: he had three panels torn down and burned after he saw a figure who looked like Lenin and a plane with a red star that looked Soviet. The artist was fired, though he brought in his source photos to prove that the Lenin look-a-like was really an early parachutist and the plane a U.S. model.

Illinois's WPA administrator shut down Paul Green's Hymn to the Rising Sun, the second production of the Chicago Negro Company, while the opening night crowd was milling around in the lobby. He sputtered that the play, was "of such a moral character that I can't even discuss it with a member of the press." The play dealt with the use of chain-gang labor in the South; its moral character didn't prevent it from opening later in New York, to rave reviews.

The chilling effect of continuing [investigative] hearings, headlines about "red artists," and the rumblings of World War II brought a reorganization of Federal One in June 1939, signalling its final decline. Finally, the War put an end to all federally-subsidized artwork save that related directly to the war effort. The WPA was formally ended by
a presidential proclamation in 1942. 1

(see also Online WPA Exhibits, New Deal Arts,
and, of course, The Calendar.

a man for all seasons: 1905

what an adventure this is turning out to be!

first, from jalf flach, i received a bunch of months i (coincidentally) didn't have before and couldn't find! because they're numbered differently from the ones i had, i couldn't match up months by end/start dates, so i asked him if he knew the years for the ones he sent. he responded that for many years after hoytema's death, the calendars were continually re-printed, not always keeping the same months' images together as they had first appeared!

so please let me explicitly ask: if anyone out there has images from these calendars, i would love to hear from you. thanks.

coincidence as well, synchronicity. laura at her cool animalarium blog, being perhaps the only other person on the planet who owns the book that inspired me to start on this, did a post on it.

and, being italian, as is the book, was in the process of translating bits of it, which she will allow me to post here!

"The book from which these images are taken is Theodoor van Hoytema – Calendari by Ezio Godoli. it was published in 1989 by Cantini Editore, a Florentine publisher who in the 1980s–90s produced some really nice and well documented illustrated books about art, illustration, fashion and ephemera. Unfortunately, as far as I know Cantini is no longer active but some of these out of print books can be found at bargain prices in used bookstores around the city and on the web." 1

more from the book: "As an adolescent Theo van Hoytema loved animals, and was fascinated by illustrated books on entomology and natural history. Having noticed this, in 1888 his uncle A.P.M. van Oordt, a publisher and typographer, commissioned him to draw some illustrations for scientific publications on zoology. To accomplish the job, Theo went to study and sketch the animals at Leiden's Museum of Zoology and perfected his lithographic technique. This experience marked the beginning of his career as a serious artist, and in a few years' time, he became internationally known as one of the most original interpreters of the Nieuwe Kunst, the Dutch version of Art Nouveau." 1

laura has also offered to do more translation, and, as she did for her post on her blog (and you'll see some here), to provide us with scans!

a bit on my process. these images are collected from 1001 places; some i've had for years. others i've adapted from illustrations in the book. while laura can scan them beautifully, my photos of the pages really do not turn out very well. some that i find are abbreviated, showing only the main image, thus leaving out the madly delightful critters in the frames.

and now further truth -- sometimes i even have the images with the clever frames, but use a main image only because one i've downloaded and the other i'd have to photograph and then spend an amazing amount of time trying to make it look halfway decent.

i will continue to search for better images, to work with my photos, and to welcome any scans, and will replace old images for new in an ongoing way, if i can improve on them. the calendars are still being reprinted and sold, so more images might be out there somewhere.

the flip side is that if the close-up images are good enough, then they're lovely to have all in themselves, and i likely will run both, when i can.

so thanks for visiting here; only 15 years remaining!

a man for all seasons: 1909

THE MUSIC IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE

John 14:2
Only a music of its own could come
from this dwelling place, formed
as the composition must be by the hallways
of larch and the black columns of lodgepole
pine lending as multiple corridors in all
directions through overlapping shadows
and into the chambers of others.

Entering this open sunroom with walls
of glass, three deer splash through the marshy
grasses, pause as one to look back
at the composers. those scribes who listen
to the measures of their passing.


Themes of osprey, loon, raven in flight,
a skein of ducks reflect off the mirrored
ceilings that ring with depth like bottomless
lakes, like the tolling bells steel-blue skies.

The stitching of the tapestries hanging
the wall: of the highest room is so exact
that the distant valleys in the scene depicted
become sensuous valleys. The threaded notes
of the rivers are heard as rivers, and the finely
sewn mountains are mountains that disappear
into the distance as departure and return,
a repeating transition in the score.

In the expanse of forests and fields
comprising this structure, what is not seen
is known by the steady beat and undertow
of its presence -- black bear, lion, root, glacier path
and its incantation, the dormant, the conceivable.

Those who are sequestered here
in this house write the music of themselves
conforming to the stone, the seed, the spacious
generation of these living mansions.

Pattiann Rogers

1909 is unique among the years in hoytema's calendars. it's all ducks. we've seen his ducks before. heck -- i love ducks. but what were ducks to him, as a human?


can we read a real quiet between the lines?, or is that silence? thoughtfulness? reflection, yes. sometimes. and repetition, so the whole year becomes like a song, with phrases which repeat, themes that are revisited, so identity becomes confused in its interchangeability.

or is there a sadness we see? we know that hoytema's last decade was not an easy one, illness and divorce, perhaps a touch of madness.
are ducks sad? pensive?

a new friend wally, who has offered to do dutch translations at some point, fills in some details from yesterday's post (a much better translation of which is here):

"The name of that first book Hoytema produced is How the Birds got a King. In brief the birds decided that the one who could fly the highest would be king. The golden eagle flew higher than all others but when he was at his maximum height and exhausted the wren who had been hiding on his back flew up beyond the eagles reach -- and hence was named the king. The dutch name for the wren is winterkoning, literally winter king. You can see the little bird on the back of the eagle on the cover of the book.

Hoytema had an uncanny ability to show the character and attitudes of birds in his images. From the elegance of the vain white herons, the squinting thoughtful owls and the nonchalance of his shrugging crows. They speak through him to become timeless.

There is one other artist who does a similar job and that is Jan Mankes. He is truly unknown outside the Netherlands. Poke around the website that shows almost all his works. Check out all the birds...."