Ancient Buildings, Modern Use, Part II

The Cathedral of Sircusa (Syracuse), Sicily is built within the colonnades of Greek temple to Athena from the early 5th century BC. Byzantine Christians converted the ruins of it into their Cathedral in the 7th century. The fluted columns are engaged in the outer side wall, along with triglyphs, metopes, etc. (the parts of the Doric Order in Greek architecture). The arched windows and crenelated top date from the Middle Ages. (It even had been a mosque at one time.) However, around the corner, the facade is thoroughly Baroque, built in 1700s! Old and new don't clash, though -- because they aren't seen simultaneously.


Behind the door of this
Cathedral's Baroque
facade, the simplicity of an
actual Doric temple
colonnades are hidden.

The medieval barrel vault
comfortably meets
the ancient Greek
colonnade to form
a side aisle.

The temple's floor plan easily adapts to the
7th century Basilican plan church. The
darkest components of this plan belong
to the original Doric Greek temple.

Ancient Buildings, Modern Use

The gigantic Temple of Olympian Zeus, Agrigento, was damaged by earthquakes before completion. This new statue, a flying bronze, echoes the temple's fallen state. The wing overlaps and seems to touch a huge Doric capital to the right of the middle.



I was recently in Sicily to view mainly the ancient Greek sites. My camera broke and thankfully Kelli Palmer is letting me share her pictures of Agrigento, a city known for the beauty of its golden limestone.

The Temple of Concord in Agrigento is one of the best preserved Greek temples standing today, probably due to the fact that it was used as a church in the Middle Ages. Right now contemporary sculpture is on display there and at the other temples in Agrigento. The combination of antique/modern -- though not always successful -- is particularly well done at this site because it does not detract from the ancient architecture while displaying the new work effectively. The sculptures seem to be made for this purpose.

A nude comfortably "bronzes"herself on the
porch of a 5th century BC Doric temple. It is
not known to whom the temple wasdedicated.

Bronze hands reach upward, perhaps

expressing aspirations appropriate to

either church or temple. The arches date from the middle ages. The medieval builders cut arches into the walls, changing the ancient temple's "cella"
into a church's nave.

The modern marble figure, draped in a fashion reminiscent of the Venus de Milo, is far more sensual than a cult statue to Demeter, Persephone, Aphrodite or even the Christian Mary would have been in a religious building. But it stands harmoniously in this room which had been converted into a church's nave in the 6th century. The relationship of a church's nave to its side aisles is similar to the relationship of an inner temple (the cella) to the outer colonnade.

Seattle's New Architecture

The Space Needle and Frank Gehry's Experience Music define Seattle, along with the Library. 

Seattle's new Library is a busy place. Completed in 2004, it is made up of steel diamond shapes, holding the glass--letting lots of light inside for this typically rainy city. It integrates all kinds of new technologies into the library's traditional function. Rem Koolhaas is the architect. Both Koolhaas and Frank Gehry rely on CAD-(computer-aided) design.

The main building of Olympic Sculpture Park, above and below, was finished in 2008 and has won architectural awards. It is by the husband and wife team of Weiss/Manfredi



Nearby is the Space Needle, but it seems to "deconstruct"
in front of Experience Music Building, designed by
Frank Gehry in the late 1990s.














Mass transit comes right inside to the front of the building.




The entry gives only a glimpse of the ever-changing colors
and shapes, in and out.

Torrents of Rain and Gusts of Wind

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gust of Wind, 1871-73, National Museum of Wales

It's disappointing that the Corcoran exhibition, From Turner to Cezanne, had to be taken down early as a precaution over environmental concerns......I was counting on going Friday, April 9, three days after it abruptly closed. What am I missing? A spectacular collection from the National Gallery of Wales, little-known paintings of well-known artists that are seldom seen in the US..................... Torrents of Rain and Gusts of Wind.....

Vincent Van Gogh, Rain, Auvers, 1890, from the National Museum of Wales

Vincent Van Gogh's suns, stars and flowers from sunny Provence express the intensity he experienced while living there. But in May, 1890, he moved north of Paris to Auvers-sur-Oise and painted Rain, Auvers in July. Van Gogh used such a heavy impasto of paint that this painting conveys a heavy impact of rain. Van Gogh had an uncommon ability to combine actual texture of the paint itself with the tangible, tactile sense of objects painted. I really wanted to see Rain, Auvers to experience the downpour. Exaggerated or not, Van Gogh has the power to create a reality that makes us feel its presence more keenly. But the rain in this painting, deliberate gashes to the canvas surface, warns of a downpour more powerful than rain, the artist's impending doom--he shot himself July 29th.

Even more than the Van Gogh, I was also looking forward to seeing paintings by Daumier and Millet, two mid-19th century French painters who are often overlooked, particularly in their gifts of great draftsmanship. Van Gogh seems to have admired them. One of Millet's paintings from this Davies Collection at the National Museum of Wales is The Gust of Wind, 1871-73. Millet conveys the full fury of a storm in the countryside. He captures the birds, leaves and branches with jagged, undulating brushstrokes. Along with the wind, his tree is uprooted and the birds, man (a shepherd whose sheep can barely be seen) and flock scatter in a fury, as the luminous colors of daylight poke through the background.

It is commonly understood that Van Gogh's paintings of The Sower were inspired by Millet's The Sower. No doubt Van Gogh knew many paintings by Millet and shared his appreciation for man's connection to the land. He adopted Millet's expressive lines, but thickened the contours and turned up the volume on color. Brandon, one of my students, was amazed to discover the wind that Van Gogh captured in The Olive Orchard, now on view in the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art. Certainly Millet was one of Van Gogh's most inspiring teachers, along with the Japanese artist Hiroshige, whose woodcuts gave Van Gogh the motif of diagonal cuts for rain.

In May and during most of the summer, this exhibition travels to Albuquerque Museum of Art in New Mexico. However, while the O'Keeffe exhibition remains at the Phillips until May 9th, its worth seeing the weather photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and comparing them to paintings about weather.
Ando Hiroshige, Rain Shower on Ohashi Bridge, 1857

woodcut, at the Library of Congress. The rain, treated like gashes in the wood, influenced the gashes in "Rain,Auvers"

Van Gogh, The Olive Orchard, 1889, Chester Dale Collection,National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

detail, The Gust
of Wind, shows
how Millet's lines influenced Van Gogh

O'Keeffe exhibition at the Phillips is a gem

Series 1, No. 3, 1918, is from the Milwaukee Art Museum

Once again the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, has put on a splendid exhibition of an early modern master, Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction. Although I've seen O'Keeffe exhibitions in the past, there is always something new to be seen in her work. Several compelling images that I had not seen before, especially from the Whitney Museum, a co-organizer of the exhibition, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, are in this show.

O'Keeffe's abstract imagery is inspired by diverse subjects, more often natural than manmade--flowers, bones, mountains, aerial views, and the diverse places she lived, Wisconsin, Lake George, NY and New Mexico. Less well known is the fact that she lived in Charlottesville, Va., and some of her colors could easily be reflections of sunsets over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even though a group of abstractions is inspired by music, one of the curators pointed out that Music, Pink and Blue, No. 2, resembles Natural Bridge, Va. The meaning of each single work is unique to the viewer; everyone who goes to visit the show is inclined to see something different and take their own inspiration from it.

The exhibition is enhanced by O'Keeffe's charcoal drawings and the weather photographs of Alfred Stieglitz. One thing I recognized anew is the quality of O'Keeffe's brushstrokes and how they reflect the particular form of each abstraction takes. Although photographs may provide a glimpse at her subtle blending of colors, it is only through seeing the exhibition that one can truly enjoy the wonder of O'Keeffe's vision. It will be at the Phillips until May 9th, and then moves to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.







Music, Pink and Blue, No. 2, from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Shrouded in Loss, Part II: Comparing Tomb Memorials

Before many monuments arrived on the national Mall in Washington, DC, the Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery was a major tourist attraction in the capital city. Because of its fame, I decided to visit it. I compared this monument to a tomb by Lorado Taft in Chicago, because I have always been quite moved by Taft's Solitude of the Soul at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Adams Memorial is a seated bronze figure with an androgynous face and deep, textured drapery. Augustus Saint-Gaudens completed it in 1891. Its green patina and mottled effect beautifully contrast with the speckled pink granite base and block designed by architect Sanford White. By comparison, Lorado Taft's sculpture, erected in 1909, is starker; it takes the memorial concept further into 20th century abstraction.

Henry Adams, a 19th century historian and novelist, commissioned the Adams Memorial after his wife, Clover Hooper Adams, committed suicide in 1885. An amateur photographer of some note, Clover had suffered from depression before swallowing potassium cyanide, a chemical used in developing her photographs. Saint-Gaudens planned and executed the sculpture over 5 years. He loosely based the statue on Clover's appearance, the iconic qualities of Buddhist statues and the grandeur of Michelangelo, particularly his Sibyls on the Sistine Ceiling, striving to capture an eternal presence in a figure that will never be alive to Adams, or us, again.

Saint-Gaudens entitled this work the The Mystery of the Hereafter and the Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but the public called it "Grief," a term Henry Adams never accepted. Adams, a grandson and great-grandson of US Presidents, was buried here when he died in 1918.

As I see it, the statue expressed Henry Adams' need to come to terms with his wife's death, an event about which he avoided speaking or writing. Yet the loss deeply affected him and whether there was guilt, regret or other unresolved feelings, he seems to have used the monument to make peace with those feelings. The intention was

to express a state of being which is neither joy nor anguish. The memorial avoids ideas about judgment and the hereafter, but evokes concepts of the divine feminine. Adams visited this grave statue often, but never met the state of peace the image portrays. (Yet the powerful female spirit appears to have influenced him long afterwards, as revealed in his books, The Education of Henry Adams and Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres.)

The bronze figure, its face and strong hands are powerfully reminiscent of Michelangelo. The drapery is very heavy, but the woman's face is not covered. She raises an arm and hand to intercept the veil, emphasizing that face. The eyes appear closed at first glance, but are actually open, looking downward. An earthly existence is vanishing but still present, as Henry Adams tried to keep her. And she is present to us in a timeless way, since the Saint Gaudens' statue tries to avoid the finality of loss so pervasive in the statues of Lorado Taft.

Eternal Silence is the appropriate name Lorado Taft gave the grave marker of Dexter Graves in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. A heavily draped bronze figure pulls his robe over his mouth, snuffing out his presence in the world. Note that a hand deliberately covers the mouth, in contrast to the Adams' figure whose hand opens the veil like a curtain to reveal a face. Here the individual portrait is completely irrelevant; he is representative of an eternal truth, the finality of a life. Eyes are closed and, like most of the face, they are blackened.

Taft prefers broad, bold simplified shapes in sculpture, as opposed to the Adams Memorial's more nuanced drapery folds. The bronze's patina is a light green, in contrast to the black face. A nose pops out under the hood--also green. It's spooky. No wonder many tales about ghosts have come from those who have visited the statue. For the record, Dexter Graves died in 1844, after he had come to Chicago from Ohio with 12 other founding families of the city in the 1830s. He built a hotel in Chicago and his son Henry commissioned the monument in 1907.

The statue and sky reflect behind into black granite, the

same material used in the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Taft simplified the outer garment, barely suggesting a large masculine physique underneath. The figure stands erect, his silencing complete.

Taft -- like Michelangelo and Rodin -- was committed to using the human figure to express the greatest truths as he saw it, even if his ideas were quite abstract.