Posts Tagged ‘Matisse’

Service of a Night of Contrasts: Art in 1905 vs AI in 2023

Thursday, November 16th, 2023

30 minutes well spent listening to the Met Museum virtual tour of the Fauvism show.

On a recent night I was watching the virtual premiere of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s tour of the exhibition “Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism.” At precisely the same time a friend attended a workshop about artificial intelligence—AI.

The years in question: 1905 and 2023.

I recommend that you spare 30 minutes to check out the museum tour conducted by Dita Amory, Robert Lehman Curator in Charge at the Met, and Ann Dumas, Consulting Curator of European Art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. They tell us that in just over two months, in Collioure, a French fishing village, the artists “changed the course of French painting,” introducing modernism.

According to the notes accompanying the YouTube video, “With this new direction in painting, Matisse and Derain manipulated color in radical ways—nature took on hues responding to the artists’ sensations rather than reality. At the Salon d’Automne in 1905, when Matisse and Derain unveiled their controversial canvases, a prominent French journalist labeled them ‘les Fauves,’ or wild beasts.”

From the AI workshop, my friend shared an interesting AI-powered tool, Angry Email Translator, that will turn a nasty email into a polite, professional one. The workshop leader quoted Daniel Pink: “AI won’t replace humans. Humans using AI will replace humans not using AI.” His warning: “Be vigilant about the dangers” and advice: “Pay close attention and learn new skills.”

This morning, Dr. Arthur Caplan, Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU shared some examples on WOR 710 radio. Take a radiology scan. With AI, the scan can be compared to hundreds of others. The experience of the radiologist can’t be nearly as extensive in identifying something that looks dangerous versus no problem. In addition, Caplan said, AI never needs to go to sleep and never gets tired which can happen to someone staring at scans all day.

Astronomer Carl Sagan said in 1979: “We live in an extraordinary age.” We still do. Isn’t it remarkable that we are alive to have access to such diverse, fascinating information?

Fifth Avenue in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 2023

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Service of Putting Your Money Where Your Talent Is: What Books Do Authors Read & Pictures Painters Collect?

Monday, August 15th, 2016

Books

Authors are always asked to name writers they admire and books they’ve loved and all are brimming with lists. Lisa C. Hickman, Ph.D is no exception. When I asked her by email she responded in minutes, “That’s a tough question, I admire so many. I recently finished Rick Moody’s Hotels of North America which was super smart and funny.  I also liked his novel The Ice Storm. But that’s all I’ve read by him.”

Author Lisa Hickman

Author Lisa Hickman

Hickman wrote William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers (McFarland); edited Remembering: Joan Williams’ Uncollected Pieces (Open Road Media) and authored the narrative nonfiction book, Stranger to the Truth, (IndieAuthor LLC), a recounting of a Memphis matricide case.

She continued: “I’ve read a significant number by contemporary authors such as Jim Harrison, Valerie Martin, T. C. Boyle, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Oscar Hijuelos and Per Petterson, to name just a few.  In the southern literature genre–the subjects of my first book—in addition to William Faulkner and Joan Williams are Larry Brown, Cormac McCarthy, Lewis Nordan and William Gay.   

“I think Andre Dubus III’s novel, The Garden of Last Days, about the terrorists who orchestrated 9/11 was a marvel, yet it didn’t get the traction it deserved.  An author with a lot of wit and talent—often overlooked–is Stanley Elkin.  I’m also a big Judith Rossner fan! And so it goes…”

In The Christian Science Monitor Danny Heitman reported that David McCullough likes to read what the subjects of his books did. In 2011 the Pulitzer Prize and National book Award-winning author told Heitman that John Adams carried a copy of Don Quixote and as he had not read it, he added it to his list. Among McCullough’s favorites are “historians Barbara Tuchman, Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote,” wrote Heitman, and he “is also a big fan of William Trevor, the Irish author and playwright, as well as mystery writer Ruth Rendell.” Quoting McCullough: “I love Anthony Trollope, I’m a Trollope nut. I also like [Canadian novelist] Robertson Davies. I love  Charles Dickens’ ‘American Notes.’”

Pictures

Authors aren’t the only ones to collect the work of colleagues. Mary Tompkins Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about pictures by famous artists chosen for a London exhibition because other famous artists had bought them, which, she reported, happens a lot. [I never thought about it before but imagine it’s a superb subject for a museum exhibition!]

Lewis identified some of the artists and the paintings that will be on view at the National Gallery through September 4: 

  • Lucian Freud bought “Italian Woman” by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Paul Cézanne’s “Afternoon in Naples”
  • Henri Matisse owned “Three Bathers” also by Cézanne and a picture of a Tahitian by Paul Gauguin
  • Lewis wrote “Degas, whose buying habits bordered on addiction, briefly considered establishing a museum of his own.” Degas owned works by Gauguin, Manet and Cezanne, to name a few. Today Jasper Johns owns one of the Cézanne pictures that Degas had also bought—“Bather with Outstretched Arm.” 

“Countless artists have collected the work of their peers or masters of the past. As the exhibition shows, their motivations for doing so—which can include emulation, kindred pictorial ambitions, rivalry, prestige of ownership, or even investment—offer intriguing insights into their own artistic makeup,” she wrote.

Do you have a job, vocation, or hobby that inspires you to collect or read the work of others? Have you read books that your favorite authors say have inspired them? Do you enjoy identifying influences of other artists in some of the paintings you love most?

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