Meditation by the Sea

I just got back from a trip to Boston to see the new American wing at the Museum of Fine Arts. The museum is a far cry from my graduate school days of the early 1990s. The new wing is huge, inviting, and loaded with the museum's formidable collection of American art from prehistory through the present.

Of course, I took particular note of the folk art collection, which was always a strong component of the museum's offerings since their main benefactor, the collector Maxim Karolik (a Russian immigrant who married into the wealthy Codman family of Boston) was a major enthusiast of the works of American self-taught artists. I was delighted to find out that the folk art pieces appear in a number of galleries throughout the new wing, and are also featured in one large gallery on the second floor. While perusing that space, I reacquainted myself with a singular, enigmatic piece that has captivated critics and the public for decades: the unassuming little painting called "Meditation by the Sea."

It'a a wonderful little painting, with all of the bold patterning of forms that make folk art so much fun. But it has more than that. It has an air of mystery and tension that is inescapable. Who is the figure in the foreground? Why is he at this beach? Most important, what is he thinking as he contemplates the sea before him?

The accompanying label offered two tidbits. One, that this painting was based on a print of the beach at Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard, that appeared in Harper's Magazine in the early 1860s. And two, that perhaps the tension and anxiety some see in the picture has something to do with the Civil War going on at the time.

Both ideas are tenuous. I'm reproducing the print here to make my point that there is no conclusive way to say it is the inspiration for the painting. At least not to my eye. This lack of visual connection throws into question, obviously, the latter contention that the mood is related to the Civil War. I'm not sure we know when this picture was painted.

None of this matters, of course, when considering this work as an American masterpiece. It is, unquestionably. It's just a pity we don't know what that little guy is thinking. In the meantime, we can fill in the blanks with our own imaginations, and admire the liveliness of the unidentified artist's brush strokes, which delight the eye, and the composition, which invites us to take a walk on that beach and lose ourselves for a moment or two.

Cat in a Box

Sometimes you get tired of all the folk paintings of kids and their pets. This piece is a welcome relief from that monotony, at least for me. We've had it in the Fenimore Art Museum collection since 1992, when it was bequeathed to us from a donor in California. It's an 11" square painted "box," actually stretched canvas, painted to look like an actual cat in a carrying case. The artist painted leather straps along the front side to allow the feline to look out and, presumably, to breathe. This artist obviously had a love of animals had a sense of humor.

We think the painter was Florence Elizabeth Atkins, who was born in Louisiana in 1876 and spent most of her working years in San Francisco, where she moved just a few years after the great earthquake of 1906. Atkins never married, and died in San Francisco in 1946. Aside from working as a clerk for Western-Union Telegraph Company, she was known for her painted and sculpted animals, particularly her bird studies, and her work was included in prestigious venues such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Atkins did study art formally in California and in Europe, so strictly speaking she is not really a folk artist. But there is something about pieces like this that have a homespun and offbeat quality about them that appeals to me. This is a piece meant more for a middle-class parlor than a formal art gallery in a mansion.

What also appeals to me is that Ms. Atkins is truly a lost and under-appreciated artist. It is very difficult to find information about her on the internet, and their are no images of her work to be readily found anywhere. Maybe this post will help get the ball rolling. In the meantime, it is hard to look at this painting without smiling. Especially when you think of this kitty sitting in Florence's studio looking out longingly at all those bird studies.

Noseprints

Here's another one of those folk artists whose work is so recognizable that there is no debate over attribution when an unsigned piece shows up on the market. Zedekiah Belknap is well known in folk art circles but not so much among the general art-viewing public. He worked mainly in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont between 1807 and the late 1840s as an itinerant portrait painter.

Belknap may not have originally intend to paint portraits for a living. In his youth, he actually entered divinity school at Dartmouth College in the hopes of becoming a minister. He graduated in 1807, and did preach for a few years, although he was never ordained. He began to paint portraits the same year he graduated from Dartmouth.

He didn't have much luck in his married life. Belknap married Sophia Sherman in Waterville, Maine in 1812, but she terminated the marriage shortly after. It seems that Belknap's relatives frightened her. Many of them were afflicted with a hereditary hip disease that left them limping.

Over the course of his forty-one year painting career, Belknap is known to have painted at least 170 portraits. They all have one thing in common, at least to my eye. Yes, it's the noses. All of Belknap's sitters, male and female, young and old, have the same bulbous nose outlined in a thick, reddish line of paint. The Fenimore Art Museum's "Two Children with a basket of Fruit," painted about 1830, is a great example of his work. I particularly like how the rounded forms of the fruit in the basket echo the two very prominent noses in this portrait. Those noses are better than any signature.

Belknap's bad luck continued throughout his lifetime. In 1857 he entered a Poor Farm near Weathersfield, Vermont and died there the following year. His delightful paintings form a legacy that belies the difficulties he endured in his 76-year life. It's both a pleasure and a relief that we never have to argue over whether any of them are really his.

Watts Towers - A New Partnership

The year I was born, the now-world-famous Watts Towers in Los Angeles nearly died. It was 1959, and the city of Los Angeles was worried, or at least claimed to be. The Towers, built over the course of many years by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia in the Watts section of LA, were neglected and in disrepair after Rodia left town. The complex of seventeen major structures built of concrete, rebar, ceramic, shells,  and glass -- the tallest of which stretched 100 feet into the sky -- appeared vulnerable to collapse, especially in the event of a tremor or earthquake.

So in 1959, the city of Los Angeles ordered the Towers demolished.

Fortunately, a group of concerned citizens formed a committee to save the Towers. One of their members was N. J. (Bud) Goldstone, and aerospace engineer (below). He devised a stress test to prove the Towers were safe. After being subjected to tremendous pressure, the Towers did not budge. So they were spared.

But they still needed work, and have continually required care and restoration ever since. In recent times this has proven difficult, as the city's budget became stretched by the severe recession. In 2011 the city had only $150,000 to offer, down from its annual allocation of $300,000.

The time was ripe for another champion of this folk art masterpiece to step forward. Michael Govan had admired the Towers ever since his grad school days at the University of California at San Diego. In his current role as Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) he approached the city about a partnership to help preserve the Towers. Since most private foundations do not grant money to governments, LACMA became the agent for the city, and recently obtained a $500,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation to do the conservation work along with programming for the Watts Towers Art Center and Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center.

So now a major urban fine art museum will become the primary caretaker of a folk art wonder that it doesn't even own. That's a long way from the wrecking ball prospects of a half century ago.