Joseph Mallord William Turner, "The Fifth Plague of Egypt," 1800. Gift in memory of Evan F. Lilly; 55.24.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) labeled J. M. W. Turner’s The Fifth Plague of Egypt (1800; IMA) “a total failure” in his magnum opus Modern Painters (1843-1860). Ruskin, who is often remembered as Turner’s greatest champion, delivered this harsh criticism on the grounds that the painting’s “awkward resemblances to Claude [Lorraine] testify the want of [Turner’s] usual forceful originality.” Modern Painters, a five volume polemic, held that Turner’s chief works shed the influence of the Old Masters, particularly Claude (ca. 1604-1682), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), and Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), whose visual formulas and adherence to naturalism held sway well into the nineteenth-century. Ruskin dismissed the artist’s early landscapes as derivative and, as a result, unconvincing. He continued his literary assault on the composition, stating: “…the pyramids look like brick-kilns, and the fire running along the ground bears a brotherly resemblance to the burning of manure.” Ruskin’s knowledge of the motif likely derived from the mezzotint after The Fifth Plague of Egypt, which was included in the Liber Studiorum (“Book of Studies,” published in 1808), and not the original painting. Nevertheless, the sentiments expressed in Modern Painters reflect Ruskin’s bias.

Ruskin’s opinion did not represent the general consensus among contemporary viewers.  The debut of The Fifth Plague of Egypt at the Royal Academy’s 1800 exhibition was met with the approval of art critics, who applauded the painting’s ability to elicit an intense emotional response from its audience. The aesthetic treatise A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), penned anonymously by the British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797), informed the public’s taste for landscape painting. Burke argued that scenes of terror produced a stronger visceral reaction than the pleasure derived from beauty. Here, Turner uses monumental scale, a swirling vortex of clouds, and chiaroscuro to dramatic effect in his depiction of the seventh plague’s destructive hail and fire. (The public overlooked Turner’s mistitling of the subject.) Jerrold Ziff’s article “Turner and Poussin” (1963) discussed the resemblance between The Fifth Plague of Egypt and Poussin’s similarly tempestuous Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (1650-51; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt), and he proposed that a version of this earlier composition may have served as a model for Turner’s work. In addition, Barry Venning (Turner; 2003) aptly observes that the painting’s debt to Poussin and Richard Wilson (ca. 1713-1782) would have been commonly understood. Contrary to Ruskin’s supposition, Claude was a less obvious source for this particular work because his landscapes typically convey tranquility. The success of a painting in an academic context hinged on its fulfillment of established criteria and not, as Ruskin would later advocate, on the originality of its execution.

Artistic considerations aside, The Fifth Plague of Egypt was cast in a somewhat unusual role as the subject of a Super Bowl bet. That fortuitous intervention of the power of American football transported this famous painting to Louisiana in late March 2010. Claude’s Ideal View of Tivoli (1644) hung alongside The Fifth Plague of Egypt at the New Orleans Museum of Art for three months. The short-term loan was the result of a wager proposed by arts blogger Tyler Green and encouraged by then directors Maxwell L. Anderson of the IMA and E. John Bullard of NOMA. Juxtaposing the two paintings offered viewers complementary aesthetic models of landscape painting – the Sublime (the Turner) and the Beautiful (the Claude) – as initially discussed by Greek literary critic Longinus (1^st century CE) and expanded upon by Burke in the eighteenth-century. Modern audiences were, thus, better equipped to appreciate the qualities noted by attendees of The Fifth Plague of Egypt’s 1800 exhibition.

This pairing also rebutted Ruskin’s critique by elucidating Turner’s reasons for emulating seventeenth-century landscapes. Turner was determined to elevate the category of landscape painting in the hierarchy of genres, which he achieved by reinterpreting the Old Masters and imbuing his own works with greater historical or literary detail. As a stipulation in Turner’s will, London’s National Gallery received the gift of his paintings Dido Building Carthage; or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (1815) and Sun Rising through Vapour (1807) on the condition that they hang in perpetuity next to Claude’s Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca (1648) and Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648), which are also historical landscapes. In my opinion, the outcome of the Super Bowl XLIV wager – a comparison of NOMA’s Ideal View of Tivoli, a pure landscape painting, and the IMA’s biblical Fifth Plague of Egypt – improves on Turner’s original plan.

Filed under: Art, The Collection

The African Queen (1951). United Artists/Photofest ©United Artists.

The African Queen (1951) is an interesting anomaly in film history.  An American director, with American stars, in a British film.  Director John Huston was under suspicion from the House Un-American Activities committee in the early 1950s, and as a result he moved to Ireland.  He set up a British film company and made several features before he returned to the US in the early 1960s.

This caused The African Queen to be in precarious position for many years.  The original negatives, in the old Technicolor three-strip format, were in storage in England.  It is quite expensive to reprint three-strip negatives on modern film, and that expense is compounded by the location of the materials.  There are only a few labs in the world that can reprint three-strip negatives today, and they are all located in the U.S.  The British owners usually would license the film to a particular distributor only for a limited time, which made it even less likely that new prints could be made.  Studio executives are hesitant to spend $100,000 reprinting a film that they are only leasing.

The last film prints of The African Queen were made in the United States for a reissue in 1967.  These prints were literally beaten to death through multiple screenings in drive-ins and grindhouses.  Projectionists routinely broke the film and spliced it back together carelessly, sometimes losing many frames in the process.  By the 1990s, there were only a few projectable prints left.  By 2000, the rights shifted to another studio, and those old prints were abandoned.

At this point, I have to step out of character.  Normally, I can report as an impartial observer, but as a film historian and collector, I personally became part of this story.  Since I have a reputation for being able to find difficult-to-obtain prints, I would frequently receive calls from repertory theaters asking for a copy of  The African Queen.  I didn’t have one–no one did–but I kept looking.

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Filed under: Film, The Toby

It’s hard to believe that it has been almost four years since Indianapolis was selected to host the 46^th Super Bowl. For most of us, the Super Bowl has some sort of yearly tradition tied to it. We get together with friends, indulge ourselves, laugh at a few commercials and watch a football game. It’s one day, maybe two with a lingering hangover, and one event.

For a host city, the Super Bowl is much more than this.

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Filed under: Current Events, Local

Paul Gauguin, "Still Life with Profile of Laval," (1886). Samuel Josefowitz Collection of the School of Pont-Aven, through the generosity of Lilly Endowment Inc., the Josefowitz Family, Mr. and Mrs. James M. Cornelius, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard J. Betley, Lori and Dan Efroymson, and other Friends of the Museum. 1998.167

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) presented a painting to his friend and colleague Charles Laval (1862-1894) in 1887. The work, Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886), reinvigorates the longstanding European tradition of painters exchanging Freundschaftsbilder – pictures that demonstrate friendship and, often, artistic allegiance. Yet, in the article “Japan as Primitivistic Utopia: Van Gogh’s Japonisme Portraits” (1984), Tsukasa Kōdera credited van Gogh (1853-1890) with resuscitating this practice in 1888, a year after Gauguin’s gift to Laval. Van Gogh imagined Japanese artists living and working in a fraternal community, which he sought to emulate. He envisioned developing a similar artists’ cooperative in Arles, his new home and a place he called the “atelier du Midi.” Kōdera cites correspondence between Gauguin and the Dutch artist (specifically, a letter [now lost] dated September 1888) as evidence that van Gogh proposed a portrait exchange to foster the Gemeinschaft (sense of community) between himself and fellow artists Gauguin, Laval, and Émile Bernard (1868-1941). However, Van Gogh’s role as progenitor of the modern Freundschaftsbild is debatable. His inspiration to exchange portraits was derived from a false impression that Japanese artists participated in the same activity. According to Kōdera, Self-Portrait: Les Misérables (1888; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) represents Gauguin’s first contribution to the genre. Van Gogh reciprocated the gesture with his Self-Portrait as Bonze (1888; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, Cambridge, MA).

Paul Gauguin, "Self-Portrait with Portrait of Bernard (Self-Portrait: Les Misérables)," 1888. Oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Vincent van Gogh, "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (Self-Portrait as Bonze)," 1888. Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 48.3 cm. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.

These portraits, which are rendered in new artistic idioms, announce the painters’ collective denial of naturalism and simultaneous entrée into the international Symbolist movement. Interestingly, Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886), which predates van Gogh’s request to swap portraits and Gauguin’s rejection of Impressionism, has not yet been discussed in these terms.

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Filed under: Art, The Collection

Well, by now it is hardly a secret that the Pantone Color of the Year is Tango Tangerine.

courtesy of Pantone.

It is a deep shade of orange but here’s a more detailed description.

Yes, tango and tangerine all in one color.

The tango – filled with sensuality, barely repressed animal sexuality and total control of staccato yet fluid movement.

Tangerine – filled with aromatic oils, sticky sweet yet tart juice, and so round and firm in the hand.

What a combination!

I’m a big fan of orange and the many shades of orange. Here are a few things I found about my house last night.

This does not include clothing, my yoga mat, or my fabulous piece of carry-on luggage.

In my designs, orange has played a role for years. I was unaware of people’s resistance to orange when I started using it. A good many have come around to my point of view. In truth, it goes with about any other color. You do have to watch with lavender (BIG mistake as a rule). And you must choose your pinks carefully. But a hot pink with a hot orange is, well…… HOT. And the right magenta with the right orange is true paradise.

We have several perennials to choose from for orange. So many new Echinaceas I lose track at times.

‘Tiki Torch’ from Terra Nova has been a favorite since I grew it a few years back. I know they have newer ones but the color on this one is so good.

Photo(s) courtesy of Terra Nova® Nurseries, Inc.

Of course their ‘Tangerine Dream’ looks good too.

Photo(s) courtesy of Terra Nova® Nurseries, Inc.

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Filed under: Horticulture, Uncategorized