As I was leaving the  Metropolitan Museum this evening - noticed there was another show at the museum I had not seen Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s - decided to go back into the museum and spent the next 90 minutes fixated on a GREAT SHOW that was also Unique.

 

Otto Dix - Portrait of Anita Berber -1925 (left) and Portrait of The Art Dealer Alfred Flechtheim - 1926 (right).

In fact, New York City is full of great shows just now …. more great shows in one city at one time than ever.  This is going to be a long post ….. and if it gets too long, I’ll do a second post.

I was not aware that German Art in the 1920’s had a movement called “Verism”.  According to the show notes online…

“Although often romanticized as the backdrop for erotic cabaret shows and sexual licentiousness, German cities of the 1920s were actually in the throes of rampant unemployment, hyperinflation, and social panic. After the initial patriotic fervor for—followed by the crippling devastation of— World War I, a group of artists known as the Verists questioned their own involvement in the atrocities and focused on the country’s quickly changing social landscape and uncertain political future.”

I can imagine what it must have been like to live in Germany in the 1920’s - World War I was over, millions of German Solders were killed, but just as many came back injured - many lived on the streets - the economic and political climate was a mess and a  deep disillusionment and pessimism set in.  Yet, at this very moment, some of the greatest German Artists lived and thrived - and painted what they saw and felt - and that’s what this show is all about.  I’ll probably need to buy a catalog of this show as it made a very strong impression on me.

You can see some of the German Portraits here.

The show really could have been called….Otto Dix and his contemporaries - 1920 -1933.   Otto Dix’s work took up half the show ….and what a range of work….I bet the better part of Dix’s work from the 1920’s was sitting in a couple of rooms of the Metropolitan Museum.

One thing about all these artists …. Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Christian Schad and Rudolf Schlichter - they all could draw … very well …and in Otto Dix’s case - as well as Albrecht Durer.  It’s clear where the heritage came from… all the artists here are fantastic but Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and George Grosz are the only ones really know in the United States - and Beckmann is more well known because he had a following and several well known artists admire his work.   The other thing about these words are …they are very morbid.  

Verism appears to be a way to categorize people as a certain “type” and then paint them as a representation of the type of person the artist thinks they are… at least this is what I got out of the explanation given at the show.

Otto Dix - 1921 - Portrait of Dr. Hans Koch

The portraits are a representation of an “archtype” if you will, more than a specific portrait of person.  In this case, Dr. Koch’s features are distinct - but it’s his ”persona” or “archtype” that is being painted.  It’s more or less the same with the rest of the show.

There’s also a lot of drawings in the show - all of them are GREAT!

 

The collection of German Art assembled here is probably the most extensive of any I have seen and most likely, the largest body of German Art outside Germany.  And this is the very first show of “Verist” art.

You can see the rest of the show - you have till February 19th 2007 - I’ll go back to see it at least a couple of times in the next 3 months.

There’s so much more to talk about - and the rest of the artists …but I’m exhausted from seeing 4 shows in one day …I’ll try to write up American Artists in Paris 1860 - 1900 tomorrow.

Time for bed.

I saw 4 shows at the Metropolitan today - Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall—An Artist’s Country Estate was one of them.

    

Stained Glass Window and Imported Door Entrance to Tiffany’s uptown apartment, designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany

I Never was really into Tiffany Stained Glass Windows, Tiffany Stained Glass Lamps, etc; it’s all around me and I see it in antique stores, in museum stores and it’s beautiful, but I’ve never really embraced Tiffany - and maybe I should, because Louis Comfort Tiffany was something else…. not just rich, but incredibly talented in a lot of different ways - and he did artwork in several media, and was proficient in several media and even his houses ….were designed as works of Art.

Not only were his houses “Art” but they were designed to produce “Art” and that includes pottery - meaning his house had a Kiln …..on Madison Avenue and 72nd Street…that’s right ….. his house was the equivalent of a modern Theme Restaurant …except it was just for him and his family.

A lot of times wealth is wasted on people that act like they don’t deserve it …. I got the impression from this exhibition that Louis Comfort Tiffany was wealthy and knew just what to do with it …. make his life into Art - and everything he touched - into Artwork.  According to the Times Article:

“Tiffany was born in 1848, the industrious son of a wealthy founder of the luxury-goods business soon known as Tiffany & Company. He set out to be a painter, touring Europe and the Mediterranean and becoming especially smitten with Orientalism. But he had more facility than originality, as the paintings and watercolors here attest. “  (Correct - as a painter he’d be but a footnote in Art History had he not done his decorative work - the work he’s really known for).

There’s probably more Artwork in the New York Times review of the Tiffany show than what I can produce.

“…..Reassembled here for the first time since Laurelton Hall burned to the ground in 1957, the Daffodil Terrace adds a fitting Temple of Dendur splendor to a strange and lovely exhibition. It has been organized by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Met’s curator of American decorative arts, and presents a series of beautiful objects in search of a ghost.

The Daffodil Terrace once connected the dining room and the gardens at Laurelton Hall, the grand estate that Tiffany built for himself from 1902 to 1905 on 580 extensively landscaped acres overlooking Long Island Sound. It is displayed here in an enormous gallery, along with the stained-glass windows whose trailing wisteria vines brought the garden into the dining room, and the imposing white marble mantel whose three glass mosaic clocks let diners keep track of the time, the day and the month. “

Laurelton Hall would have been a place I’d love to visit - it’s so comfortable - and the living interiors - well …… Louis Comfort Tiffany was ahead of this time.

OK……. his paintings, while technically good, don’t interest me … it’s the pottery and stained glass that is uniquely his.  

The Louis Comfort Tiffany show at the Met runs till May 20th, 2007 - a good 6 months - plenty of time to see it.

It’s not a show that I, personally, would have gone out of my way to see - since I was at the Met today … I spent maybe 20 minutes with Tiffany.

 

I uploaded 24 of my pictures to ArtFaceOff.com after I heard about the site from TechCrunch.  Did not seem to be many FaceOffs for painting category. Weird. Turns out it’s headquartered in Portland, OR, where one of my clients, Alan Mascord, an architect, is headquartered. 

Here’s what TechCrunch has to say .. which sounds like they think ArtFaceOff is a little off in what they’re trying to do.

“ArtFaceOff is a new site that lets artists upload pictures of their art along with descriptive tags, and compete in a face-off with other artists. Winners move on to the next level of competition, and the eventual winner receives a $1,000 prize.

It’s odd to compare one piece of art to another and decide which is “better.” People who know about art and try to explain it to me always say art is about how it makes you feel, not if it’s better or worse than other art. But the site certainly gives new artists a place to show their stuff and interact with users, so it can’t be all bad. Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The company, founded by Steven W. Ochs, is located in Portland, Oregon, “in a tiny gallery on the fringes of the Pearl Arts District.”

I’m not sure; the idea has merit - but - as a grassroots effort from an outsider gallery it does not have much legitimacy and there needs to be some kind of audit process in place, and a Web Analyst, someone like me, looking at the data - does not see like they have that audit process in place. 

As TechCrunch says……art is more about feeling than a competition.  Still, the idea has merit…but it’s all in how it’s executed. People need to believe they are legit, not a small gallery in Portland running this thing to get on the map.  Right now, they have to establish they are more than this- a small gallery trying to get a spotlight on them.

Maybe if I ever get to Portland, I’ll visit ArtFaceOff.com, in person, to see what got them started in this democratic competition to let the people decide what art is better.  

I think this thing runs all year (2007) and they’ll keep showing different paintings next to each other and the one with the highest vote will win at the end of the year…at least, that’s what I think it means. 

I took a gamble and had about 36 pictures to upload, but it only let me upload the first 24 (I got most of the one’s that I wanted uploaded), but not all of them.  Here’s a description from the site:

“Art Face Off is a new online home for the global art community. Everyday we have more and more people join our movement – possibly the most important movement in the art world of the information age – the development of a democratic world art community, flourishing and energized by the vigor of healthy competition.

As a global art community, we vote to choose the next great artists of our times. Our Face Off competitions are designed to promote all artists and encourage everyone to participate. We are different.

Our headquarters are located in Portland, Oregon, in a tiny gallery on the fringes of the Pearl Arts District. Steven W. Ochs, the gallery owner and instigator of the movement, began his quest to build Art Face Off in 2004. The website, finally launched on September 1, 2006, continues to grow rapidly as our volunteers and employees labor at the monumental task of getting the word out to every artist in the world.

Really?   Do they really think they will chose “great artists” this way?  Sounds Naive to me.

Well, I put my paintings in the hat, so if you go to this site, and when they get around to it, to show Marshall Sponder’s paintings - vote for me.  The only thing…I can’t control how often they’ll juxtapose my work against someone else’s or what rule engine they are using.

“Each Face Off spotlights two highly rated artists every five days. Thus, previously unheard of artists will gain instant notoriety as their work is exposed to thousands of art lovers across the world. Every artist who enters into the Art Face Off competition faces the possibility of becoming a world famous art icon.”

So I would go after someone big, like the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan, the Whitney Museum….someone….some Art Institution to cosponsor this thing - give it the “stamp” of approval in the world of Art.  Even a Corporation, like IBM, HP, Cisco…someone - outside to the gallery running it.

How are the artists rated?

“Each artist who posts an online portfolio on ArtFaceOff.com enters their work in one of our eight media categories: Photography, Painting, Printmaking, Craft, 3 Dimensional, Digital, Drawing, and Mixed Media.

Their work is rated on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is beginning level amateur art and 10 is a masterpiece, by site visitors in a weighted rating system.

The ratings are weighted as follows:
Art curators’ ratings comprise 40% of the weight.
Artists’ ratings account for a slightly smaller 30% of the weight.
Logged in users’ ratings carry a small 20% of the weight.
Non-logged in users’ rating’s account for 10% of the weight.”

Nice idea - not sure about the weighting they chose.

OK, I will lay a challenge to ArtFaceOff.com. 

As a Web Analyst I am considered one of the best - let me see your Analytics and your search algo, so I can better understand how valid your search analysis of artists joining this effort is. 

I may be able to help ArtFaceOff.com better understand where there traffic is coming from, and at the end of the year, or in periodically, I’ll post to their blog, if they allow it, and have a blog (or make one for me) about the user demographics of people voting in the competition.

Why?  Because people are going to want to see the stats for this competition at the end of the day….to give it Legitimacy….people will ask for it - they will want to know how many people voted and why…and it’s a lot of data - I have had a lot of success taking data and making “Art” out it.