The World Has Lost a Great Painter: Andrew Wyeth

The world lost a brilliant light in the art world today. Perhaps best known for his painting "Christina's World", a painting of a young woman named Christina Olson. The moving portrait shows a windblown field and Christina in the foreground. The inspiration for the painting purportedly had an undiagnosed muscular deterioration in her lower limbs which kept her from walking. Christina often dragged herself across the ground to pick flowers from her garden, which supposedly inspired the painting.

Wyeth was widely celebrated in and outside the art world. Awarded the Presidential Freedom Award by President John F. Kennedy, he was critically acclaimed since his first one-man show in 1937. His work portrayed America and the simple lives of the people he saw in every day life and the land they called home. Some of his most moving work, in my opinion, was of his neighbor 'Helga' a pale redhead who modeled for him for several years. The work is simply stunning.

I was privileged to see a show of his work several years ago, and while upon entering as a novice admirer of his work, I most certainly left a fan and admirer.

Wyeth, 91 passed away in his sleep on Thursday night at his home near Philadelphia.

Sleep well and be at peace. Thank you for the gifts you leave behind.

You Know Who You Are..

I love Post Secret. It reminds me that there are millions of us on the planet, and at one time or the other we generally experience the same kinds of feelings. This could have been my secret -even though its not all that secret.

Got a Carrivagio in Your Closet?

So you're cleaning out the box room one day and you stumble across a box of pictures you haven't seen in a while, a couple old yearbooks, some pants you thought you might be able to fit into again some day, maybe even your old prom dress. But, more likely than not, you're not going to stumble upon a painting that you've thought was a fake all these centuries, and which turns out to be a lost Carrivagio.

Queen Elizabeth did.

She has one of the world's greatest art collections, hundreds of Leonardo drawings, almost 30 Canalettos and paintings by Tintoretto, Vermeer, Holbein and Dürer. In 2006, the Queen acquired her first Caravaggio, worth £50 million or more if she could ever sell it.

The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, owned by the Royal Family for almost 400 years, has lain unloved and seldom seen in a storeroom at Hampton Court for decades. Misattributed as a copy of a Caravaggio by an unknown hand, it was valued in thousands rather than millions.

The painting was bought by Charles I in 1637 and after being sold with most of the Royal Collection during the Commonwealth, it was re-acquired by Charles II.

Years of grime, varnishing and zealous over-painting to cover up damage convinced generations of art historians that it was of little merit. It was recently valued at "a few tens of thousands of pounds", mainly because Charles I's stamp was on the back.

The Queen cannot sell the work as she holds the Royal Collection in trust for the nation. But one expert said yesterday that the work, once accepted as genuine, could be worth £50 million or more.

The painting is taken from the scene in St Mark's Gospel where Christ, with Peter and Andrew while they are fishing at the Sea of Galilee, says to them: "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men." Unusually, Christ is shown without a beard. The Royal Collection has dated it to between 1603 and 1606 when Caravaggio worked in Rome.

A notorious brawler, he fled in 1606 after killing a young man in a fight. He went to Naples and Malta but never returned to the Holy City, dying of a fever in 1610.

A copyist would have almost certainly drawn an outline of the picture he was copying on the canvas but cleaning, X-ray and infra-red investigation of the work revealed none. What they did show were incisions, made for the artist's guidance with the handle of a paintbrush, in the first layer of paint. This was a well-known feature of Caravaggio's technique. The removal of over-painting revealed brushwork that was stylistically consistent with other Caravaggio pictures.

The Queen's thoughts on the discovery are not known.

I Can't Justify the Cost of the Replica at the Metropolitan, but..

a girl can dream.

I'd be perfectly satisfied with one of the replica's that are available at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but if I was in the market for a wonderful piece of art, there's one soon to be available at Sotheby's. British millionaire Sir John Madejski is sending his Tiny Dancer to the auction block at Sotheby's Impressionist art auction on February 3.

The bronze sculpture from Degas, Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, is one of Degas's most famous and popular works. The bronze cast is one of only a few remaining in private hands. It is estimated at £9 – 12 million.

Sir John Madejski is one of Britain's leading arts philanthropists and the sculpture was on display at the Royal Academy in London since 2004 when he bought this statue for £5 million at Sotheby's in London. Another version sold in 1999 for $12.4 million which is highest price paid for a Degas sculpture.

So, if you were wondering what to get me for my birthday - this would certainly be appreciated.

Saying Goodbye to a True Lady

I know its been a couple of weeks since her passing, but I couldn't not (incorrect grammar I know) mention the passing of the unbelievable Eartha Kitt.

I was priveledged to see her perform last year on her 80th birthday tour. It was nearly two hours of non-stop pedal to the floor entertainment. I went with a friend, and the whole time we both kept saying "she can't REALLY be 80 years old". I mean FLAWLESS.

The director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra told a story to introduce her. As he met her the afternoon of the performance for rehersal he asked if she had time to visit around town since her arrival. She glibly replied that she'd just gotten in as she'd been performing the night before at the Caryle, as she had performed consistantly for years.

Kitt was best known for her role as Batwoman, but it was far from her top achievement. She had a difficult and impoverished childhood in the country hills of South Carolina. Kitt worked hard to get to the top, but when she was a child, she had to fight prejudice within the African-American community because of her light skin color.

Eartha Kitt's career took a huge turn in 1968 after she was invited to a celebrity luncheon at the White House by Lady Bird Johnson, who asked Kitt about urban poverty. Kitt replied: "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam." The first lady reportedly burst into tears. She was investigated by the FBI and CIA. For years afterward, she was completely blackballed and performed almost exclusively overseas.

Unafraid of controversy, Kitt performed in South Africa in 1974. Heavily criticized, she responded by pointing out that she had managed to get two schools built there for black children. She had raised the money by selling autographs at department stores. Traveling around the country and performing in an integrated show, Kitt felt she did a little to weaken the apartheid system and raise awareness among South Africans of all colors.

In 1978 she was nominated for a Tony award for her starring performance in another Broadway show, Timbuktu. It was her first major performance in the U.S. in ten years. When the show opened in Washington, D.C., Kitt was invited to the White House, where President Carter met her, saying, "Welcome home, Eartha." The show was a success and ran for two and a half years.

She lived an amazing, powerful life and was an amazing, powerful woman. She will be greatly missed.

Read the Book: 5 Favorites of 2008

I'm a big fan of music blogs. Lord knows there are plenty of them. I like to stroll around the Internet during the business day from blog to blog listening to new music and discovering bands that I might not otherwise have ever encountered. Some of my absolute favorites of last year were found this way - My Brightest Diamond, Firewater, Mystery Jets..okay. I'll stop before I get on a roll.

I wonder if there are people who go book wandering as well? I don't really do it much, but maybe its because new authors and books are so totally in my face because I well- put my face there. In the spirit of the new year, here is a tiny smattering of the books I read in 2008 that, if you missed, you should pick up. They're well worth the read.

The Boy Detective Fails
Joe Meno
I picked this up on one of my trips out West. It's no Nabokov, but it's a wonderful little book and well worth the read.

From Publishers Weekly
Playing such mysteries as "The Case of the Brown Bunny" against the mysteries of mortality and mankind's capacity for evil, the latest from Meno (Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir) presents former child sleuth Billy Argo at 30, having just finished a 10-year stint in a mental hospital, where he was confined after his teenage sister Caroline's suicide. Unhappy, painfully shy and doped up on anti anxiety drugs, Billy arrives in New York City and is admitted to a psych halfway house. Haunted by the mystery of his sister's death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible. He soon finds allies in two bright and unpopular children who live across the street, and clues to relevant past cases from lifelong arch-enemy Professor Von Golum (who happens to live across the hall). Not all the plot strands pan out, and the effect is more impressionistic than narrative (various codes strewn throughout have their own digressive pleasures). But the story of Billy's search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up.


Dangerous Laughter: 13 Stories
Steven Millhauser
Maybe its not right for me to write about this one, as I wrote an entire blog entry about it earlier in the year. I love Millhauser-and if you don't- you should. He's brilliant and engaging and always makes me smile. Just read it.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Jeff Turrentine
One reason why Steven Millhauser is consistently so much fun to read -- whether he's writing novels, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler, or the short stories he clearly loves even more -- is that he has never forgotten what it was like to be an 11-year-old boy, fueled by curiosity and wonder, trying to make the banal world around him fit his comic-book image of how things should be. But for all of their boyish enthusiasms and fantastic, even gothic, trappings, Millhauser's novels and stories deal with decidedly complex themes. Among his favorites: the price of obsession, the folly of hubris and the inevitable collapse of best-laid plans under the weight of their designers' passion.

Now, with Dangerous Laughter, he has given us a collection of stories that explore these ideas with the mixture of dark suspense and good humor implied by the title. Everything one has come to want and expect in Millhauser's fiction is here -- spooky attics, fantastic inventions, artists driven mad, and ambitious enterprises that become overattenuated and impossible to sustain. The result is almost a Steven Millhauser primer, a much needed fix for fans who've been waiting since The King in the Tree (2003) and a perfect introduction for those unacquainted with his writing.

Nothing to Be Frightened Of
Julian Barnes
I enjoy Julian Barnes - most of the time -yes, there are moments when I've not so much loved a book of his. This one, I liked. Arthur & George-not so much. Anywhoo. If you have any qualms about your mortality, aging or death, read this book. It will comfort you. It will unsettle you, and overall you will be glad that you were let into the musings of this man.

From Publishers Weekly
In this virtuosic memoir, Barnes (Arthur & George) makes little mention of his personal or professional life, allowing his audience very limited ingress into his philosophical musings on mortality. But like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole, readers will find themselves granted access to an unexpectedly large world, populated with Barnes's daily companions and his chosen ancestors (most of them dead, and quite a few of them French, like Jules Renard, Flaubert, Zola). This is not 'my autobiography,' Barnes emphasizes in this hilariously unsentimental portrait of his family and childhood. Part of what I'm doing—which may seem unnecessary—is trying to work out how dead they are. And in this exploration of what remains, the author sifts through unreliable memory to summon up how his ancestors—real and assumed—contemplated death and grappled with the perils and pleasures of pit-gazing. If Barnes's self-professed amateur philosophical rambling feels occasionally self-indulgent, his vivid description delights.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
Jennifer 8 Lee
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I was privileged to attend a "One Pot" Meal in the Capital Hill, Seattle loft of a local chef. The balance of the event was perfect for me, literature, entertainment, wine and food. Perfect. Jennifer 8 Lee, whom bless her heart, had to rush to the airport to return to NYC directly after dinner, taught me enough things in a half hour that I didn't know about Chinese food that I was simply (okay a little drunk) astonished. The entire evening would have been a success were it not for the ass across the table who tried to woo everyone with his coolness factor of being the dude to discover "Iron & Wine" for Subpop. Who gives a flip. Am I digressing? I am. Trust me. You'll never think of Chinese food the same way again- and in a good way. Read it- read it- read it.

From The Washington Post
Christine Y. Chen )"[Lee] embeds her subject's history in an entertaining personal narrative, eschewing cookie-cutter interviews and dry lists of facts and figures . . . she has a breezy, likable literary demeanor that makes the first-person material engaging. Thanks to Lee's journalistic chops, the text moves along energetically even in its more expository sections . . . Tasty morsels delivered quickly and reliably.

The Ladies of the Corridor
Dorothy Parker & Anton d'Usseau
If you've spent even five minutes perusing my blog you know that I love Dorothy Parker. So, when I had the opportunity to snap up a long lost play you can imagine how long it took me to click on the Paypal option. The introduction by Marion Meade, one of Parker's best biographers, it was my favorite treat to myself all year. I can understand why this play might not rock the stages of Broadway- now, or when it was let loose in the 60s. But it peels back a time that absolutely was, a type of women who absolutely existed, and still do even if we don't want to admit it in the depths of our feminist (and you may find you are one once you read this play) hearts.