8/20/2007

Florine Stettheimer

81 comments:

Mark Barry said...

Livin' la vida loca... Some Deco-Dufy and a nice trust fund, oh oui!

milf-magic said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael Cross said...

I have nothing to wear to this party. And that guy on the stairs very likely wouldn't let me in anyway.

Nomi Lubin said...

Her color and graphic sense are amazing. I don't know how to put in proper links, but look at some of her work if you don't know it.

zipthwung said...

Erte fan art.

The title of this piece is "spring sale at bendels"

Anyone else into Neo-tudor? I love that stuff.

milf-magic said...

I would rather have one of those ugly early Rothko's than this. People look at my Miu Miu's and know I'm a fancy Nancy. I don't need this painting hanging in my salon to reiterate that fact. Guests in my townhouse need to recognize my depth and intellect through my collection - my style speaks for itself.

Nomi Lubin said...

Her work is a lot more idiosyncratic and ironic than this piece suggests.

CAP said...

Where is this showing, incidentally? Or are we skipping all that stuff now?

Dumbpainter said...

Does Stettheimer show at Zach Feuer Gallery?

Her work sat unadmired at the Met for how long?

Gotta love change.

Bring on the gals.

Idon'tbathe said...

I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more a real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of my own time

zipthwung said...

nomi you dont think this work is idiosyncratic and ironic? I'm on the fence. On the one hand I could look at it in the context it was made as a witty and self deprecating commentary on being a wealthy person in Manhattan.

On the other I could see it as part of the fetishism for the bankrupt fantasy of a previous and cannonized bohemia that, although historicly significant, has become and is now, is now, lost in a sea of (pop) cultural icons each as relevant and significant and a lot nicer to look at.

Like I said I could go either way.

anyone want to torpedo this?

Idon'tbathe said...

There is the heart and the mind, the Puritan idea is that the mind must be master. I think the heart should be master and the mind should be the tool and servant of the heart.

CAP said...

Looks like the kind of place that could do with a paparazzi.

Hmmm don't see any tots in strollers though...

anthony said...

Nomi I see what you mean after looking around on the nets.
Personally I like this sort of work when it gets tweaked way beyond an easy read. would it be wrong to put this in the general direction of Jockum Nordstrom?
I have a love/hate relationship with artists like this.

CAP said...

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Spring-Sale-at-Bendel-s-1921-Posters_i1584978_.htm

Anonymous said...

Me, I was in the wrestle between the Alfred and this free free freed Florine. The ref started pounding 1 - 2 - 3.
I knew time was up for good

no-where-man said...

Gino Severini. (Italian, 1883-1966). Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin.

So lets sink another drink
cause itll give me time to think
If I had the chance
Id ask the world to dance
And Ill be dancing with myself

Idon'tbathe said...

What costumes shall the poor girls wear
to all tomorrows parties
all tomorrows parties

Nomi Lubin said...

Zip, I can't find a large enough image of this one to say for sure, but the paintings I found on this page I think are exquisitely idiosyncratic: http://www.bluffton.edu/womenartists/WomenArtistsPw/stettheimer/stettheimer.html

-- especially "Sunday Afternoon in the Country," "Beauty Contest," and "Cathedrals of 5th Avenue."

Sven said...

OK nothing to do with this painting but just a complaint against a ton of reviews I've read;;\
Message to art critics:Gerald Murphy was a second rate artist and recognized it himself . can you stop lauding him now?
thank you

zipthwung said...

Has everything to do whith the whole bankrupt bohemia thing cookie.

Idiosyncratic. But I;ll take outisers like Ramirez, Darger et al over this. They are weirder, cooler and just plain awesomer.

Steppen Wolf said...

Painter,
Is Florine showing somewhere in NYC at this time?

zipthwung said...

Maybe at the Phillips?

HERE & NOW

Sunday, August 19, 2007; Page N02

ART

DON'T GO TO"American Impressionism: Paintings From the Phillips Collection" to see how well Americans caught on to what was up in Paris. Go to see all the fascinating ways in which they got it wrong. Better to be an interesting failure than a dull, derivative success, I say. American impressionists didn't follow the French in avoiding the sentimental and the evidently picturesque; they used impressionist techniques to resurface the well-worn subjects of Americana. Or they looked at the fractured, light-inspired surfaces of impressionism and took license from them to invent their own, almost arbitrary ways of painting, such as the spidery webs of paint favored by Ernest Lawson. Or, in the case of a true original such as Maurice Prendergast, they simply took up where impressionism left off, pushing the French tendency toward decoration as far as it could go. Because all this show's pictures are from one gallery's holdings, rather than cherry-picked from here and there, we're served a full range of talent -- and sometimes non-talent -- rather than a falsely cleaned-up view.

-- Blake Gopnik

anthony said...

Here's another question:
Are these paintings by a class outsider who imagines aristocratic goings on, or a re-read of the upper class by one of their own?
I like the the first scenario best.
I notice that the canopy/kiosk on "Cathedrals of Wall Street" painting has the words "Glory Hole" written atop...??

Anonymous said...

http://www.imagery-imagination.com/im-im/im-im.htm

Idon'tbathe said...

So what do you do ?
Oh yeah I wait tables too
No I haven't heard your band cuz you guys are pretty new
But if you dig on vegan food
Well come over to my work
I'll have em' cook you something that youll really love
cuz I like you
yeah I like you
And I'm feeling so Bohemian like you
Yeah I like you
Yeah I like you
And I feel wahoo woo
wohoo hoo hoo

no-where-man said...

There are a number - of "The Cathedrals" (i think) on the walk to the Modern section of the Met also:

New York City in American Modernism
September 04, 2007
Considers several depictions of New York City landmarks and its population in styles ranging from realism to abstraction. Artists discussed include Stuart Davis, Florine Stettheimer, and Edward Hopper.

11:00 a.m., Gallery Talk Stanchion, Great Hall
Images of New York
October 25, 2007
New York City’s uniqueness fascinated 19th- and 20th-century artists, as seen through discussion of works by (1871–1944) and others.

youth--less said...

Pretty, silly, fun, almost worthless. Compare her to Frida Kahlo, another woman painter working at the same time.

None said...
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zipthwung said...

This painting is from a time when people used to send their kids to France to get culture.

Some people claim the ersatz experience is nothing like the real thing. Like you have to actually see someone's underpants.

WHich is where warhol comes in. He said no, the ersatz is enough like the real thing that if you gave it a blindfolded taste test, the only differnece would be space, time, and branding. It doesn't matter if it tastes like ass or not, thats irrelevant.

Decadence may have been romantic back then, but to revive the old decadence now is to fiddle while rome freezes over.
See how I made it new? Im good like that.

No we need a new Decadence, a new Symbolism, and a new Aesthetics, one that cures the madness of the age while at the same time creating jobs for the supporting arts industry.

Speaking of branding, how bout the new bob dylan film, the new Phillip K. Dick DVD (Bladrerunner) and the attendant marketing and parasitic activity? Its so authentic. And so neccesesary.

But the hagiography of Florine should include her silly (and low brow!) fascination with aubrey beardsley and the fancy faberge egg world she inhabited.

Steppen Wolf said...

Zip,
Thank you.
Not too sure if I can get to see this, but like you have mentioned, this painting comes to us from a different time and era ("when people used to send their kids to France to get culture.").
Looks like this exhibition will run in Apr 08 at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.

Idon'tbathe said...

One man, all distinguished bearing, another fat and soft, with a ribald joke on his lip, one made of iron, and by his side a dandy.

The people of action in the world have fixed their interests in different ways at different times, at the same time people have taken different roads.

Nomi Lubin said...

anthony said...

Here's another question:
Are these paintings by a class outsider who imagines aristocratic goings on, or a re-read of the upper class by one of their own?
I like the the first scenario best.


Why? Cannot someone born into money and so-called privilege paint paintings about the life around them with insight and idiosyncrasy?

Such idiosyncrasy, in fact, that in some of these paintings it is not possible to determine the subject matter. They are quite personal paintings. Strange, fanciful, bizarre, and to my eye, beautiful.

youth--less said...

Well they can, but off with their heads anyway!

Happy Birthday JOE--

Joe Strummer was born as John Mellor in Ankara, Turkey on August 21, 1952. His mother, a crofter's daughter and one of nine children born and raised in the Scottish Highlands, was a nurse. His father was a British foreign-service diplomat who had been born in Lucknow, India. The family spent much time moving from place to place, and Strummer spent his childhood in places such as Cairo, Mexico City, and Bonn. At the age of 9, Strummer and his older brother David, 10, began boarding at the City of London Freemen's School in Surrey. Strummer rarely saw his parents during this time. He developed a love of rock music, listening to records by Little Richard and Eric Clapton as well as American folk-singer Woody Guthrie (Strummer would even go by the name "Woody" for a few years, until changing his name to "Joe Strummer" a year and a half before the Clash was formed). While Strummer and his brother often had conflicting values, David's suicide in July 1970 did not significantly change Joe's outlook on life. After finishing his time at Epsom College boarding school in 1970 Strummer moved on to London's Central School of Art & Design, where he briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a professional cartoonist.

Idon'tbathe said...

Leona Helmsley 1920 - 2007

Brooke Astor 1902 - 2007

zipthwung said...

Rochester!

I don't know if you've ever been presented with a work by an aquaintance out of the blue, maybe in upstate new york. You think they are putting you on. If you are stoned or habitually paranoid its torture - "what is their game?" You might ask yourself covering your smirk with a slug of Maker's Mark brand whiskey. Will they detect me before I can TERMINATE their little resistance cell? Find their leader and eliminate the menace before it can initiate a revival? Save postmodern art from an atavistic turn of the centry avant guardism?

But in reality - and I'll have to cross reference this with a more stable mind, this acquaintance is just someone engaging in the fantasy based on the fiction - of the bohemia - what closeuup kindly pointed out as "the bohemian fog" (the term originates in Bohemia, presumeably, a notoriously foggy region).

James Dean or Dorothy Parker. Pick your poison. I prefer The Marx Brothers, Karl and Freidrich.

But the question is - how are you going to Make Your Mark? What is your brand? Does your voice take years of work to develop or can you sort of Frankenstein it into existence? What is the use of RandD when intellectual property can be exported to a different context like software(ported)? Is it not wiser to make porting an art unto itself?

Bod Dylan made a career out of not being the attitude of the generation, his surgicly enhanced voice rasping out cover tunes and free verse.

Am I better than the rest? I could never be the guest. I aint a gonna make a mess. I am just trying to make some money, I must confess.
Are you angreeeee?

And no one is diluting bob's brand except maybe his generation, or himself, is what I'm t t talking about.

Are you living in a political world or a material world?

And most importantly, who is the fall guy in your vaudeville routine?

zipthwung said...

The Playful flapper here we see,
The fairest of the fair.
She's not what Grandma used to be, --
You might say, au contraire.
Her girlish ways may make a stir,
Her manners cause a scene,
But there is no more harm in her
Than in a submarine.

She nightly knocks for many a goal
The usual dancing men.
Her speed is great, but her control
Is something else again.
All spotlights focus on her pranks.
All tongues her prowess herald.
For which she well may render thanks
To God and Scott Fitzgerald.

Her golden rule is plain enough -
Just get them young and treat them
rough.

anthony said...

Nomi,
"Why? Cannot someone born into money and so-called privilege paint paintings about the life around them with insight and idiosyncrasy? "

Sure! I prefer the outsider-looking-in perspective because that's what I am, more or less.

I enjoy those who can see the field from within the field, too.

I want these paintings to look more Jules Verne-ish for some reason.

Idon'tbathe said...

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something-something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the begining of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain.

zipthwung said...

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Not too bad really.

Can you get a doctorate in Bob Dylan?

CAP said...

I assume Painter posted this to follow on from the Jensen, as a way of prompting discussion on other paths in figuration, a bit the way that Jensen sort of led to discussion of other paths in abstraction.

Again she’s not exactly an outsider, or naïve, but not comfortable on the inside either, for all her acquaintance with the avant-garde of her day . I’m thinking not so much about her subject matter as her drawing and composition.

It’s just not quite one thing or another, a little bit Erte as Zip noted, vaguely symbolist and decorative, but ultimately I find it clumsy and brittle rather than elegant, compromised and comfortable, essentially mediocre.

I think they work – when they work – (using Nomi’s Bluffton examples) as a sort of field of figures or an all-over composition, and what talents she has for color lie in tweaking this field.

In one of my more extravagent pieces of lateral thinking, I was reminded of English mid-20th century painter L S Lowry – a sort of working class counter-part.

http://www.btinternet.com/~anthony.seaton/lowry.html

Lowry is dull and grey, given to the rituals of the grim industrial life – but pictorially the thing is really the mass of figures arrayed as a field again. Lowry is the famous ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ guy. But the real difference is not that Lowry is male and working class and Stettheimer a swell dame, but Lowry can DRAW and Stettheimer can’t. And it’s not just with the details of each figure, but then in the sensitivity to combined spaces and volumes, the sense of proportion between gestures and details of costume.

Even in the bigger picture, I find Stettheimer falls short.

zipthwung said...

I hear the tourists thought the fog burned off San Fran in the seventies.

I havent read greil except in bits and pieces. I know peopel were cooing over Lipstick Traces in my podunk school.

Im going to read BD's Chronic first.

CAP said...

You can get a doctorate in anything if you pay enough.

Idon'tbathe said...

NO ONE should write on any artist or art movement unless they like the work of the artist or the effects of the movement, and has none of that propagandist spirit which boosts to the skies there idols and lays everything else in the dust.

youth--less said...

No we still got the fog, still bohemian fog too. it's our Brand innit? No fog on this day

Read Chronicles at the bookstore--its great lots of detail, makes him seem very understandable

New York City said...

"Find their leader and eliminate the menace before it can initiate a revival? Save postmodern art from an atavistic turn of the centry avant guardism?" -Zipthwung

I don't know if you've noticed, but postmodernism has been dead for quite some time.

As far as this painting is concerned, it's simply a mediocre regurgitation of Matisse (especially The Red Room and la joie de vivre ) - without his understanding of the formal elements of composition and a vacuum where the content should be.

Anonymous said...

Bathe, sure!
The image, perhaps the body of the work, fits well the idea of the 'everyday'. If we are able to draw experience, liking it, disliking it, then surely it does exist. And as it does it's up for grabs, and to say.
Actually I see, or did see a lot of this around the place. I'm happy to say it's thinning with, what, clientele getting braver these days...
though i hope this sort of thing hangs around. I mean it needs to, to remind us that to some this is the pinnacle of experience, art, with the wry little cleavage, a sense, a gap, almost forgot.

hey no rush I like fog, do you get that stuff in January... i'll be that way.

youth--less said...

Coming for Macworld? Jan. can be bleak--foggy and rainy, but 07 has been dry, so it may hold thru Jan. Can be cold, clear and sunny in Jan. Cold is relative of course;)

jpegCritic said...

Any interesing painting shows in SF No Rush?

jpegCritic said...

oh and what'd you think of the oropallo
prints at deyoung? (Though reports coming
to me aren't encouraging, I'm willing to hear
more opinions)

DarthFan said...
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DarthFan said...
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zipthwung said...

Coukldnt loginto the BD story concrete

President Bush will will invoke lessons from the Vietnam war on Wednesday to argue against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, according to the White House. "The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens," he will say in a speech. Bush will also argue that leaving Vietnam emboldened today's terrorists. full story

They do their best, they do what they can
They get them ready for Viet Nam

From old Hanoi to East Berlin
Commando - involved again

They do their best, they do what they can
They get them ready for Viet Nam

First rule is: The laws of Germany
Second rule is: Be nice to mommy
Third rule is: Don't talk to commies
Fourth rule is: Eat kosher salamis

Anonymous said...

no rush, I can live with that. Na. not the macworld... the other world...
... and zip what's the bd thing? Sorry I'm slow today, unbelievably hot;)

Idon'tbathe said...

Heh ho they love the way I do it
Heh ho theres really nothing to it

I got the moon I got the cheese
I got the whole dame nation on its knees
I got the rooster I got the crow
I got the ebb I got the flow

anthony said...

Upper:Stettheimer
Middle:Chris Johanson
Lower: Bill Traylor

I would love to see that show:
"I Find People Mysterious"

zipthwung said...

SOmeone posted a link to an article that began "Bob dylan is god"

I wish to read that article. Is Bob Dylan god? What are the supporting arguments. How does one support such a thesis?


Shoot em in the back now.

youth--less said...

Not going out of my way to see the oropallo. Best thing at the deyoung are the Oceanic and New Guinea collections. I could spend all day in there.

Idon'tbathe said...

It's all one long funeral song, but there's a certain imperection in the themes, an ideology of high abstraction, a lot of epic, bearded characters, exalted men who are not necessarily good.

zipthwung said...

I could use a
kritiki

CAP said...

Tell us more RS.

I must have missed the obit for PoMo, although deep down I think I suspected.
Then again I missed the launch party as well. I was probably still trying to draw a line under Surrealism or something.

So what are we up to now? Is Neo Modernism, or Free-Tradeism or Fundamentalism?
I’m sort of hoping it’s Terrorism, cos the tabs there are up and running and I think I can format that.

zipthwung said...

jack the box

zipthwung said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Idon'tbathe said...

In any case, I will say this :
I'm taking in information, synthesizing it and putting it out.

zipthwung said...

invisible man

invisible man
bake me a a cake as fast as you can
Eros and Thanatos
And a frying pan
Why I got toys in the attic
I cant understand

youth--less said...

jpeg critiki - im looking forward to this show--
http://www.basebasebase.com/future.html

only way were gonna see any german painting around here is if we diy?

jpegCritic said...

ha!
I get ya...
Great tip. Thanks!! Tho I won't
be there for the show, but
I'll make note of the gallery.
Perhaps one day I might return
to a painting-friendly-SF...
Courtesy of Leipzig.

Idon'tbathe said...

Will Stettheimer become another femenist icon? like O'keefe and Kahlo probably not. She is more accomplished than them but, her art is to complex and often too topical to be widley and easily appreciated.

zipthwung said...

OCCASIONALLY
A human being
Saw my light
Rushed in
Got singed
Got scared
Rushed out
Called fire
Or it happened
That he tried
To subdue it
Or it happened
He tried to extinguish it
Never did a friend
Enjoy it
The way it was
So I learned to
Turn it low
Turn it out
When I meet a stranger--
Out of courtesy
I turn on a soft
Pink light
Which is found modest
Even charming
It is a protection
Against wear
And tears
And when I am rid of
The Always-to-be-Stranger
I turn on my light
And become myself
(Crystal Flowers 42.)

zipthwung said...

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph

...one of these days you're going to have a visitation. You're going to be walking down the street and across the street you're going to look ans see God standing over there on the street corner motioning to you, saying, 'Come to me, come to me.' And you will know it's God, there will be no doubt in your mind—he has slitty little eyes like Buddha, and he's got a long nice beard and blood on his hands. He's got a big Charlton Heston jaw like Moses, he's stacked like Venus, and he has a great jeweled scimitar like Mohammed. And God will tell you to come to him and sing his praises. And he will promise that if you do, all of the muses that ever visited Shakespeare will fly in your ear and out of your mouth like golden pennies. It's the job of the writer in America to say, 'Fuck you God, fuck you and the Old Testament that you rode in on, fuck you.' The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

youth--less said...

you better be both--im in bed with the stranger every nite--happy to be polluted in that way--no boundaries

milf-magic said...

Argh! Enuff of this Stettheimer already! Chop chop painternyc! Next, please. How about a Cecily Brown or a Frank Stella? Something juicy. Or how 'bout a sculpture? I'm so freakin' bored!!!

youth--less said...

what do you do while the paint dries, milf?

zipthwung said...

I think its interesting that a lot of people make the cvonnection to this image and a New Yorker Magazine.

WHat is it about the New Yorker's urbane posturing as "THE NEW YORKER" that connects it to this particular painting? Is it a style? An attitude? A lifestyle? A lifestyle magazine?

"her art is to complex and often too topical to be widley and easily appreciated."

If you are urbane you will take that as ironic. If not, god help you.

zipthwung said...

to complex
too topical
not tropical enough.

Idon'tbathe said...

My way of expressing my ego is by painting; there are, of course, other means to this end, such as literature, philosophy, or music; but as a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes.

zipthwung said...

WALLY BARKER, Painter/Former Beckmann Student: He was a very fine academic person; he studied the traditions, especially Rembrandt. He was an excellent draftsman; his anatomy was perfect. He had a perfect understanding of human structure.

PAUL SOLMAN: Beckmann's canvases grew with his ambition. "The Titanic," painted in 1912, is as busy as turbulent, as theatrically tragic as the scene it depicts. But it was World War I that forged Beckmann's famed Expressionism. A medic on the front, the artist faced such brutality that he simply broke down. His post war work is radical, dark, and, above all, personally expressive, as in 1917's "Christ Saving an Adulteress From Stoning"-- a Christ who looks a looks like Max Beckmann.

WALLY BARKER: So Beckmann identifies with this. I mean, he's actually come out of a war very badly hurt, physically and mentally. You see this, this guy here with his blood all over his hands.

PAUL SOLMAN: Yes, yes, yes. That's right. He's got blood literally on his hands, the guy who's -- who's so superior to the adulteress.

WALLY BARKER: So what he's actually saying here is a plea for mercy, protecting someone.

zipthwung said...

I never liked Marc chagall
Not even as a little child.

When will Johnny get got his gun?
When can I shoot the zombies mum?
Rock em down
Sock em down
Robots sitting 'neath the Tum Tum
Tree

youth--less said...

I cant really see him too well, but that little doorman at the velvet rope looks a lot like Jerry Saltz.

Mark Barry said...

I repent. I just saw all four of these today at the Met and really enjoyed them alot, full of life and some good Ensor like painting.

Pauline Yun said...

delightful and whimsical. just what the world needs.