Model in Andrew Wyeth's Painting had Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease

Published Online: Monday, May 16, 2016

Ruth Hickman, MD

The iconic painting, “Christina’s World,” hangs in the Modern Museum of Art in New York. The 1948 work by Andrew Wyeth shows a young woman in a field. She looks toward a bleak farmhouse in the distance, her legs bent at an odd angle beneath her as she props herself up on emaciated arms. The painting helped launch Wyeth’s commercial career and made the model, Christina Olson, famous in the world of modern art. Speaking May 6th at the 23rd annual Historical Clinicopathological Conference at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, a medical expert has declared that Wyeth’s model probably had the rare neurological condition, Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT). The Conference focuses on examining diagnoses of historical figures like Lenin, Darwin, and Lincoln. Dr Marc Patterson, a professor of neurology, pediatrics, and medical genetics at the Mayo Clinic, gave the talk.

Anna Christina Olson

Wyeth’s friend and neighbor, Anna Christina Olson, was the model for the figure’s lower body in “Christina’s World.” (Wyeth used his wife, Betsy, as his model for the torso.) Olson lived on the farm pictured in the painting in Cushing, Maine. She had a muscular disorder and regularly crawled across the farm without a wheelchair. Wyeth first met her in 1939. He studied and painted her several times during her difficult life until she died in 1968 at the age of 74. Although Olson never received a formal medical diagnosis, many people speculated that she might have had polio. 

The diagnosis: CMT

Dr Patterson reviewed what was known about Olson’s medical history and studied all of Wyeth’s paintings of her, including “Christina’s World.” Speaking at the Conference, Dr Patterson explained that an early onset form of CMT disease was the most likely diagnosis. Unlike polio, which usually causes symptoms relatively rapidly but then doesn’t worsen, Olson had gradual onset of symptoms. Her disease first affected her feet, causing her to walk on the outer sides of her feet. Though she fell frequently, she could walk without aid until her 20s, around the time her hands began showing signs of weakness as well. In her 50s she was burned while sleeping near a stove, pointing to difficulties with pain sensation. She was also born several years before the major polio outbreaks, making polio unlikely. Dr Patterson also noted that the combination of motor and sensory problems make muscular dystrophy unlikely. In a press release, Dr Patterson said, “This was a fascinating case. This painting has long been a favorite of mine, and the question of Christina’s ailment was an intriguing medical mystery. I think her case best fits the profile of [CMT].” Dr Patterson was given the diagnostic challenge by the founder and organizer of the conference, Dr Philip Mackowiak, a History of Medicine Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Calling the work “an amazing piece of detective work,” he said, “It brings home the fact that medicine has learned enormous amounts in the past few decades.”

About Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease

Named for the three doctors who first described it, CMT refers to a closely related group of disorders that affect the peripheral nerves. This leads to weakness of the foot, lower leg, and hands, as well as decreased sensations, pain, and muscle atrophy. The symptoms generally worsen gradually, leading to worsening disability. Like Christina, most patients have a normal life expectancy. Though rare, considered as a group CMT is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, affecting about 1 in 2,500 people in the US. There are more than 80 different kinds of CMT, each caused by a different mutation that affects the nerves. Even if Christina Olson been correctly diagnosed during her lifetime, her condition could not have been reversed. Then, as now, there is no cure for CMT, but physical therapy and other supportive treatments can help individuals deal with symptoms.

For more information about CMT, visit www.hnf-cure.org/

A Trove of Art History, at Your Fingertips

A relatively recent start-up that takes the best of old school art historical research and marries it to the latest in app technology

By Jennifer Landes | July 30, 2013

 

Bridget Goodbody takes her work home to Amagansett, above, and New York City, as well as on the road for research and techie conferences in order to build intensive but fun interactive iPad apps about art and artists. Morgan McGivern

 

Sometimes it can be hard to tell when a project or company has reached a tipping point. So often things can appear just on the brink of a breakthrough and then fall just short of the last leap.

This is not the case with Art Intelligence, a relatively recent start-up that takes the best of old school art historical research and marries it to the latest in app technology to create a seamless narrative devoted to some of the more inventive and cross-cultural artists of the past few decades.

Bridget Goodbody, a Columbia University-trained art historian and former professor, art critic, and manager of Julian Schnabel’s studio, is the founder and curator of Art Intelligence, which has released two apps for iPad, one on Patricia Piccinini and one on Keith Haring, just launched this summer, with two more in the works on Cai Guo-Qiang and Cindy Sherman.

The part-time Amagansett resident has left the classroom behind for a new kind of teaching, one that crosses generational and technological divides to deliver a dynamic and fluid timeline of history focused not just on the artists in the app, but on their milieu, bringing to bear on their work’s meaning the world and cultural events happening at the time of its creation as well as key moments in the artist’s life.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the classroom and as an art critic. When looking at an artwork you need to tell the viewer what it is, but everybody wants to know something different,” she said recently. “It’s not necessarily clear what it is that people are getting from a work of art, but they want it to be meaningful to them.” An app can allow for a personalized experience that can grow and deepen with continued use.

She said she worked with developers to design apps for the casual consumer, who can purchase them in the Apple App Store, as well as for educators who want to incorporate them into the classroom to study art and history and even as a way into scientific concerns. As an educational app in iTunesU, the company can offer discounts to high schools and universities. She said Apple has been very supportive of her efforts because they help raise the standard of what can be done with the format and how its visual and interactive components can be utilized in different ways, such as answering visual questions visually.

“People want an understanding of art. I think a lot of them are baffled by art experiences — ‘What am I supposed to think about it? How am I supposed to think about it?’ — There’s this hunger to ‘get it’ in so many ways.”

The Haring app, for example, incorporates a monograph’s worth of research but in ways that are purely interactive and not didactic. For more information on a particular painting, click on it. Up comes the title, date, medium, and some descriptive context. Then click above it for the historical events that were shaping the artist’s life and point of view at the time. Click below it on the timelime of the artist’s life to see what Haring was doing at the moment he was conceiving and realizing the work.

There is no omniscient narrator prating on about why this or that is important. All of the information presented is important, or at least pertinent. Its actual import comes from the particular interest of the viewers and where their exploration of it takes them on any given day.

The artists she has chosen have been eclectic, but they are tied to each other in that they transcend many genres and cross over into other concerns, be they science or science fiction, human rights, politics, music, popular culture, symbolism, or whatever else comes to mind. She credits her undergraduate work in anthropology for a more global and rounded approach to the artists she has chosen so far.

Ms. Piccinini, an Australian artist, is fascinated by the natural versus the manufactured as it is realized in biotechnology and consumer culture. Her invented cross-species mutations are very popular with science fiction enthusiasts as well as art audiences. “She gets people to think about the relationships between animals and humans. Artists are good at bringing different things together,” Ms. Goodbody said.

Haring, famously, had the whole ’70s and ’80s art and music scene as his backdrop. It is hard to imagine him out of the context of the Village People, Madonna, and Boy George, Danceteria, Mudd Club, and the Palladium. If he wasn’t in the clubs, his art was, and it was everywhere else as well: public murals and his Pop Shop store’s clothing and accessories. He was also an ardent member of the anti-apartheid movement and a voluble spokesman for gay rights and the understanding of AIDS, the disease that took his life.

Cindy Sherman, the latest to approve an app, is a perfect platform to examine the image of women, from the earliest manifestations of her “Untitled Film Series” to her recent “Society Portraits” series. In her long career, she has explored the essence of clowns, classical narrative painting, the fashion world, the semiotic power of mannequins, and other digressions of interest. Her active digestion of cultural norms and historic and current depictions of women can be placed in multiple contexts, shaped by endless events of recent history and should be a natural and dynamic subject for this format.

Ms. Goodbody won’t say which other artists she is working on getting, but she admits she has quite a long list. “The platform can work for a lot of different kinds of artists and even movements such as Abstract Expressionism.” Her work with the artists she has so far is keeping her rather busy these days. Although Ms. Sherman only recently signed, Ms. Goodbody has been in the stacks and reading rooms at Columbia University already, gathering the research that predates the 1990s, which seems to be a cutoff point for a lot of digitization.

She has taken it upon herself to familiarize herself with at least the basics of the technology she is working in so that she can better discuss her needs with developers and make suggestions and describe formats she is reasonably certain can be achieved. She has also been active at various tech conferences and Apple’s own worldwide developer conference, which had 5,000 tickets that sold out in a minute (she credits her old concert-going days to making sure she was able to get one). “I’m the art historian among all of the engineers. It’s great to be around the makers, building and experimenting. . . . They’re really down to earth and interesting.”

What she has learned is that building an app is like constructing a building, and technology needs those with broader insights to help it reach its greatest potential. “You can make it do a certain thing, but will people like to live in it? Will they move around in it? Will it answer their needs? These are all humanities-based questions.”

From the East Hamptom Star

Mosaic Tile Bird Bath using recycled DVD's

A few years ago, we bought a bird bath on clearance at the end of the season. We brought it home, set it up, and within a week, it had fallen over and broken into several pieces. And that could have been the end of the story, except that Hubby decided to glue it back together a couple of weeks ago. He’s a good guy like that.

There were still some pretty big cracks to patch up though.

So in anticipation of all the birds that would be flocking to our birdbath this year, I got out my secret weapon: J-B WaterWeld.

It’s specifically designed to “repair and seal in underwater and wet conditions,” not to mention that it’s drinking water safe, which makes it the perfect repair for a birdbath because it won’t harm the birds.
It comes in the form of a tube of clay. Just cut some off and kneed it together really well, mixing the two compounds so they form a strong epoxy. And no Hubby, that is not one of our kitchen knives. It just looks like it. ;)

Smooth it over the crack, and let it dry for 60 minutes. I probably used way more than I needed to here, but you get the idea.

Next, I sanded it down with my orbital sander to make it nice and smooth. At this point, our birdbath is water-tight again. Yay!

But it wasn’t exactly the look I was going for. Let’s face it, the only way this birdbath was ever going to look good again was if I completely covered it. So when I ran across this Mosaic Gazing Flower Pot by Dannielle at The DIY Show, I knew exactly how I would do it.

Isn’t that pretty? So I went through my stuff and came across some computer backups that I had made on DVD about 10 years ago. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t going to need that stuff again, right?

As I began cutting them apart, I realized that DVDs have two layers, not one.

I decided to pull the layers apart, because they were coming apart anyway.

UPDATE: Because I had so many questions about this part, I posted a quick tutorial showing step by step how I separated the layers, which you can read about here.
For this project, I used the silver part only, and set aside the clear part for another day. (CDs only have one layer, and using them will result in a more subdued color.) I cut each DVD half into 6 or 7 “pie” slices, leaving a little attached at the center to keep them from popping all over the place.

Then I tore each pie slice from the center ring,

and cut the edges off. I didn’t show it, but I made one more cut to the piece shown below, sort of half way across, tilted at an angle.

The side you want showing on your finished project is the part that was inside the two layers of the DVD…that really shiny silvery rainbow stuff. I’m such a sucker for all those colors, they make me want to swoon.

I realized quickly that that beautiful shiny stuff will wash right off if you don’t protect it with something. So I used Krylon Crystal Clear Gloss to spray the individual pieces. It’s non-yellowing and good for indoor and outdoor projects. (This step isn’t necessary if you’re using CDs.) I’m not sure how well it will hold up to constant submersion, but I have a plan to deal with that later. And in case you’re tempted to spray the DVDs before cutting them, I think it’s better to wait so you can get all the edges covered too. Just spray them several times from different angles to be sure.

Next, I started gluing the pieces to the edge of my birdbath. They look really purple-y here, but don’t worry.

I used Liquid Nails Clear Seal. I didn’t worry about getting the pieces completely covered on the bottom, I just dabbed a bit under each piece. Not that I know any better, just that I didn’t think I could do it any other way without making a gigantic, sticky mess. I was trying not to get glue all over the pretty shiny side.
With the rim of the birdbath covered, it was starting to look so much better already.

I covered the edges too, to give it a finished look.

Here’s what it looked like, about 20 DVDs later, when I was done gluing the pieces on. I think I took about a hundred pictures of it like this, because it’s so striking, and looks different from every angle.

As much as I loved it though, I was afraid the bathing birds would get their little feet stuck in between the cut DVDs. And I didn’t know how well the pieces would wear without some grout in between.

I did a lot of research before I chose a grout. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know if what I used will last or not, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I used Mapei Keracolor S Sanded Grout with Polymer in white, with Grout Boost mixed in, both available at Lowe’s.
This was the scariest part for me, because I’ve never done anything with grout before. Nor mosaics for that matter. I just knew I was going to ruin those beautiful rainbow colors as soon as I started spreading the grout over it. And no, Hubby, that is NOT our kitchen spatula. It just looks like it. ;)

But low and behold, the results were exactly what I was hoping for.

It has a much different look from before, with the white grout in between.

And once again, I snapped about a hundred pictures.

I can’t get over how the colors change with the angle and the light.

Here it is atop its pedestal in a little bed of hostas and impatiens.

It has three weeks to wait until I can put it outside for good, according to the instructions on the package of grout.

And that’s fine with me. It gives me some time to do a little more research on whether I should cover it with another layer of protection, and what that layer would be. If you have experience in this type of thing, I would LOVE to hear from you!

Also, I need to decide what to do about the underside of the basin, as well as the pedestal.

Do you think I should do it like the top? Leave it as is? Paint it a solid color? I’m open to suggestions.
http://www.meandmydiy.com/2013/05/mosaic-tile-birdbath-using-recycled-dvds.html

Ten-year old painter: A "mini-Monet" in the UK

As the latest darling of the art world — a selection of his works sold for £400,000 in the past two weeks alone — you might expect Kieron Williamson to be celebrating his success with a whirl of celebrity parties and champagne. Instead, when he isn’t painting, Kieron is at primary school or, now it’s the school holidays, playing with his friends. For the artist known as Mini Monet due to his incredible watercolour and oil paintings is just ten years old. His pictures, sought after by collectors all over the world, fetch up to £35,000 each. Twelve days ago, his earnings surpassed an extraordinary £1.5 million after 23 paintings sold for £242,000 in just 20 minutes in a phone and internet auction.
Meeting Mini Monet is a disconcerting experience. Small and softly spoken, Kieron looks not a day older than his years. His studio is in his parents’ house, next door to the kitchen. Scattered about the room are discarded canvases, paints and, on an easel, his latest work — a delicate pastel of a bluebell wood. Yet how can a child be capable of producing such beautiful, impeccably executed artworks? Could this be merely a clever scam to fool the art world, with a professional artist hidden away in the house, painting away night and day and passing off his work as Kieron’s? Or does Kieron’s dad do them for him? Certainly not. Kieron’s preternatural talent is real, and his proud father Keith, 47, and mother Michelle, 40, are as confounded by it as everyone else.
While Kieron is relaxed and at ease with his genius, it’s a different story for his parents. They appear as tortured as they are thrilled with their prodigious son. ‘I know it sounds good, but we really feel the pressure,’ says Keith, an art dealer. ‘When I sell a painting I know what I’ve paid for it and I know what mark-up I need to put on it. But how can I put a value on my son’s paintings? It’s very difficult. Michelle adds: People say “Oh, their son has a company and his parents are directors”, with the inference that we’re making some sort of business out of him. But we have to be directors: he can’t manage his money because he’s still a child.
‘The money doesn’t mean much to us. Keith and I have never had much money. It doesn’t bother us.’ Indeed, they live in a modest barn conversion in North Walsham, Norfolk. They are ordinary parents with an extraordinary child.Aside from the £800-a-month salary Michelle draws as a director of the business, Kieron’s earnings are put aside for him. ‘At least four times a year, we talk about not doing any more exhibitions or selling any more paintings, but the thing is Kieron enjoys having the exhibitions and selling his work. He likes the idea of people enjoying his pictures.’

 

Preternatural talent: Kieron's pictures, sought after by collectors all over the world, fetch up to £35,000 each. Twelve days ago, his total earnings surpassed an extraordinary £1.5¿million after 23 paintings sold for £242,000

 

And the money has enabled Kieron to acquire a remarkable art collection of his own. Hanging in the living room of the family home are 25 paintings by the eminent Norfolk painter Edward Seago, a favourite of the Queen Mother, with a combined value of £300,000. Though Kieron may have been dubbed a Mini Monet, it is Seago who is his inspiration. Well, Mini Seago doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it? Kieron’s most recent acquisition was a painting by L. S. Lowry. How much was that?  ‘Er, about 30-something thousand, I think,’ he replies casually from the sofa.

Remarkable: The boy first started showing an interest in art from the age of five, during a holiday with his parents in Cornwall

He gave up toys when he discovered art and has no interest in computer games. He even owns a house in Ludham, Norfolk, in which he plans to build a studio when he is older. Kieron is clearly no ordinary child, but there is no clue as to where his remarkable talent comes from. Keith and Michelle are not remotely artistic, though they are keen collectors, and from the age of 12 months Kieron showed an interest in their pictures. ‘He would gesture at the pictures on the wall and would always notice when they’d been moved around,’ says Keith. As a toddler, Kieron, who has a nine-year-old sister, Billie-Jo, liked colouring in pictures of dinosaurs. He was neat and precise, but otherwise unremarkable. In 2007, his father, then a builder, ruptured his Achilles tendon and was told by doctors he would not be able to continue work. Boldly, he decided to have a go at art dealing, selling pictures he bought at auction.
In 2008, the family went on holiday to Cornwall and it was there that five-year-old Kieron first expressed a desire to ‘draw what he saw’.
‘He asked us to buy him a drawing pad,’ says Michelle. ‘He painted a bay we had visited, with the sky, sea and boats on the water. For the rest of the holiday he painted. ‘The pictures were childlike, but with more detail than you expect from a child that age. ‘We assumed that when we got back home he would return to his toys, but it continued. ‘He filled every spare moment of the day painting, and insisted on using artist quality materials.’ In the following months, his parents began to realise that Kieron’s talent was unusual. Baffled and quite at a loss to answer his questions about style and technique, they sought help from local galleries, who helped him to join local watercolour and oil painting classes. Unsurprisingly, he held his own alongside the adults.

 

A little parental encouragement: Kieron's parents spoke to local galleries, who helped him to join local watercolour and oil painting classes. In 2009 he held his first exhibition at a local gallery in Holt, aged only six

 

‘I just wanted to paint,’ says Kieron simply, with an appealing mix of shyness and self-assurance. He knows he is gifted but he isn’t one to boast. In 2009, one year after the trip to Cornwall, Kieron held his first exhibition at a local gallery in Holt. He was just six. Michelle and Keith are acutely sensitive to perceptions that they are ‘pushy’ parents who engineered that exhibition and the others that were to follow. They say they simply thought it would be a nice idea to put up a few of Kieron’s pictures in one of the art galleries for a local festival. When a local newspaper wrote about his wonderful pictures, a TV crew turned up at the door. Word spread — and suddenly there was a rush. All 19 were sold for between £200 and £1,500, earning Kieron £14,000. ‘It hadn’t even occurred to us that people would want to buy Kieron’s paintings,’ says Michelle. ‘It was unbelievable.’

Keith adds: ‘While the exhibition was on, a woman came into the gallery and asked to see Kieron’s paintings. She said she had worked in all the big galleries in London.
‘She took hold of one of Kieron’s pictures and became very emotional. She said: “He’s an Old Master returned.” It was very affecting.’ Mini Monet was born.

Kieron at work on the Norfolk broads: He gave up toys when he discovered art and has no interest in computer games. He even owns a house in Ludham, Norfolk, in which he plans to build a studio when he is older

Kieron paints landscapes, seascapes, fishing scenes, city scenes. He particularly likes rustic scenes, and laments that scenes of old barns and suchlike executed by Edward Seago are so hard to come across. Indeed, there is something about Kieron that seems to belong to another, gentler world. At his second exhibition at another local gallery later in 2009, 16 of his pictures sold for £17,000 in just 14 minutes at a phone auction. ‘We really had no idea what would happen — whether the first auction was a one-off and that no one would buy the pictures second time round,’ says Michelle. ‘Things went a bit crazy.’ Keith says that as Kieron’s painting made quantum leap after quantum leap, there was never any pressure on him to paint. ‘Kieron paints when he wants to. The only pressure he gets from us is to do his homework. ‘He will paint for weeks and then stop for weeks. As far as we’re concerned, during those dry periods, if he doesn’t pick up a paintbrush ever again, that’s absolutely fine. Kieron dictates the pace.’And it is hard to keep up. To date, Kieron has created more than 1,000 paintings. In his studio, he talks me through the process.
‘I usually paint in the mornings,’ he says. ‘It takes between two-and-a-half hours and four hours to do one picture. There’s no plan as such as to what I’ll paint next. I take a photograph and work from that. ‘I like to draw faces with character. Sometimes I’ll get bored or unhappy with a painting and I won’t finish it. I wasn’t happy with the trees on this one (he gestures at the picture of the bluebell wood), but I think I’ve got it right now.’

Moody: Kieron paints landscapes, seascapes, fishing scenes, city scenes. He particularly likes rustic scenes, and laments that scenes of old barns and suchlike executed by Edward Seago are so hard to come across

Kieron's father says that as his son's painting improved in quantum leaps, there was never any pressure on him to paint. 'Kieron paints when he wants to. The only pressure he gets from us is to do his homework,' he said

By 2010, aged seven, Kieron’s reputation had spread worldwide. In July 2010, an exhibition of 33 oils, watercolours and pastels sold within half an hour for £150,000. Collectors phoned in bids from Tokyo, Canada and Germany. Then, in November 2011, Kieron made £106,260 when a dozen paintings sold in ten minutes and 50 seconds. Last July, he sold 24 paintings for £250,000. ‘We were very worried about the responsibility placed on Kieron’s shoulders as this so-called Mini Monet,’ says Michelle. 'Keith and I were very stressed. ‘Keith was getting palpitations from the stress of it all.  ‘For us it was an ethical dilemma, but Kieron wanted it — he was very clear about that.’ To ensure Kieron, who turns 11 next month, has no pressure placed on him, his parents stipulate that he won’t take commissions; nor will an exhibition be organised until Kieron has actually produced the paintings to fill it.
‘There is no timeline, nothing to work to,’ says Keith. ‘If he paints he paints; if he doesn’t he doesn’t.’

'I usually paint in the mornings': To date, Kieron has created more than 1,000 paintings

Sought after: Michelle says Kieron¿s earnings have been a mixed blessing for the family

 

At the sale 12 days ago, which made Kieron £242,000, the pictures sold for between £2,450 for a small watercolour to £30,000 for a winter snow scene near his home in Norfolk. And just last Friday, another 12 went under the hammer, taking that figure of £242,000 up to £400,000. Michelle says Kieron’s earnings have been a mixed blessing for the family. ‘For some reason, people treat you differently when they see you apparently earning big sums. ‘Though we’ve had some incredible support along the way, we’ve also lost friends. People stop calling you. They perceive you differently. But we haven’t changed. ‘It’s Kieron’s money, not mine or Keith’s. We live modestly. But sometimes when we’re out and about and people recognise Kieron, I feel as if I’ve got two heads. We’ve lost our anonymity.‘And the pressure does get to you. We have to make decisions, about Kieron’s finances for example, that no one understands. ‘We haven’t yet got the work/life balance right. We haven’t been on holiday since 2010 because it’s been so relentless.’

The artist at work in his studio: Kieron works in a room in his parents' house, next door to the kitchen

At home, Michelle explains, she and Keith try to create a normal environment for Kieron. ‘That’s when we’re happiest,’ she says. ‘When we’re at home and there’s no attention on Kieron and we can just be ourselves. ‘Billie-Jo idolises Kieron and teases him — she calls him The Golden Child. She is artistic as well, but she is more “normal”, if you like.’ Kieron’s parents’ most recent ethical dilemma has been a decision on his schooling. Last week was his final week at primary school. In September, instead of going on to secondary school, his parents have decided he will be home-schooled. ‘We’ve had criticism about that, with people saying: “Give the boy a childhood,” ’ says Keith. ‘But we’re worried that Kieron will be singled out, picked on, treated differently.

‘I want to carry on painting. I don’t think I’ll go to university, but if I do it will be to study architecture. I also want to be a writer’    Kieron on his future

‘And home schooling will give him the flexibility to carry on painting, which is what he wants to do. He’ll join the local football team — he’ll have friends.‘And if it doesn’t work, then we’ll send him to school.’ And how does Mini Monet see his future working out? ‘I want to carry on painting. I don’t think I’ll go to university, but if I do it will be to study architecture. I also want to be a writer.’ Next month, the family are going on a much-needed holiday, returning to Cornwall, to the place where it all began for Kieron. He says he is looking forward to painting the coves and the fishing scenes. ‘Something happened there, but I don’t know quite what,’ says Michelle. ‘I’m hoping we’ll find out — and perhaps then we’ll be able to make sense of it all.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2378435/Why-Mini-Monet-Kieron-Williamsons-parents-say-genius-burden.html#ixzz2avhSSECJ

American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe

At the MoMA from 17 Aug 2013 to 26 Jan 2014

The standard narrative of Modern art’s development begins in France, around 1860, and proceeds from Manet to Monet to Cézanne. Picasso is next in line, followed perhaps by Mondrian, whose abstraction is often understood as the culmination of Cubism. As far as American art is concerned, the story does not usually begin until 1913, with the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York, which is seen as bringing Modernism to the US. Even then, America’s role in the evolution of Modernism is generally considered a secondary phenomenon, with American artists lagging behind their European counterparts until the mid-century emergence of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Changing Landscape Although this story is broadly true, it is sweeping. That is the argument of the exhibition “American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, organised by the curators Esther Adler and Kathy Curry. The show looks at American art in various media from 1915 to 1950, charting the changing visual and intellectual interpretations of modern life through the work of artists such as Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis and Charles Sheeler.

“There is a perception that Modern art lived in Europe until New York became the centre of Abstract Expressionism,” Adler says. “But MoMA had a tremendous history of promoting and exhibiting early American Modernism. In some ways, the exhibition is a way to recapture that past.” In Adler’s catalogue essay for the exhibition (which is supported by the MoMA Annual Exhibition Fund), she explains how the museum’s founding director, Alfred Barr, far from relegating American art to the European sidelines, firmly believed in its independent status.

Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad, 1925
 

“Many of us feel today that there is a great virtue in being an ‘American’ painter as opposed to one whose work shows foreign influences,” Barr wrote in a 1933 essay on Edward Hopper. Adler says the artistic and cultural environment of the time was one of “trying to define an authentic national culture”, adding that “there was a great need for American curators and critics to separate this work as being American and only American, as being distant from Europe”. Although nationalism may seem today to be politically suspect, it is to be recalled that America is still a young country with a relatively short cultural history to draw on. The enduring legacy of this art is its contribution to that ever-expanding story.

Earliest copy of Mona Lisa found in Prado

Experts say the painting was completed at the same time as Leonardo’s original

The Art Newspaper

By Martin Bailey. Conservation, Issue 232, February 2012
Published online: 01 February 2012

A detail of the nearly-conserved Prado copy of the Mona Lisa (Photo: © Museum Nacional del Prado)

A copy of the Mona Lisa has been discovered in the Prado which was painted in Leonardo’s studio—created side by side with the original that now hangs in the Louvre. This sensational find will transform our understanding of the world’s most famous picture.

See also:

•The National Gallery’s blockbuster exhibition could mark a turning point for Leonardo scholars

Conservators at the Prado in Madrid recently made an astonishing discovery, hidden beneath black overpaint. What was assumed to be a replica of the Mona Lisa made after Leonardo’s death had actually been painted by one of his key pupils, working alongside the master. The picture is more than just a studio copy—it changed as Leonardo developed his original composition.

The final traces of overpaint are now being removed by Prado conservators, revealing the fine details of the delicate Tuscan landscape, which mirrors the background of Leonardo’s masterpiece. Darkened varnish is also being painstakingly stripped away from the face of the Mona Lisa, giving a much more vivid impression of her enticing eyes and enigmatic smile.

In the Louvre’s original, which will not be cleaned in the foreseeable future, Lisa’s face is obscured by old, cracked varnish, making her appear almost middle aged. In the Prado copy we see her as she would have looked at the time—as a radiant young woman in her early 20s.

Leonardo da Vinci, and particularly his masterpiece the Mona Lisa, attracts endless sensationalist theories. However, the discovery of the contemporary copy has been accepted by the two key authorities, the Prado and the Louvre.

Uncovering the truth

Until recently, curators at the Prado had no idea of the significance of their copy of the Mona Lisa. There are dozens of surviving replicas from the 16th and 17th centuries. The Madrid version was believed by some specialist to have been painted fairly early, but the absence of the landscape background meant that it aroused little interest (there is no substantive entry on it in the Prado’s collection catalogues).

Although the portrait is finely painted, the dull, black background had a deadening visual effect on the image of the young woman. The sitter is generally believed to represent Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the Florentine cloth merchant Francesco del Giocondo.

The Prado’s painting was until recently assumed to be on oak (rarely used in Italy at the time) and therefore a work by a northern European artist. José Ruiz Manero, the author of a study of Italian art in Spanish collections, concluded that the picture was Flemish.

Last year, the panel was examined and found to be walnut, which was used in Italy (as is poplar, used for the original of the Mona Lisa). In size, it is close to that of the original: the Louvre’s painting is 77cm x 53cm and the Prado’s copy 76cm x 57cm.

In a paper presented two weeks ago at a technical conference at London’s National Gallery, coinciding with its exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” (until 5 February), conservators revealed that they had discovered that the black background was a later addition. This conference was not covered in the media (for a report, see our February print edition).

A striking photograph was presented at the conference, showing the picture’s condition after 90% of the black overpaint had been removed, leaving just a small section in the upper right. Visually, the landscape transforms the work, bringing the picture to life.

There was an even greater surprise: infrared reflectography images of the Prado replica were compared with those obtained in 2004 from the original of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. This process enables conservators to peer beneath the surface of the paint, to see underdrawing and changes which evolved in the composition.

The underdrawing of the Madrid replica was similar to that of the Mona Lisa before it was finished. This suggests that the original and the copy were begun at the same time and painted next to each other, as the work evolved.

Identifying the painter

It is quite possible that Leonardo’s assistant met Lisa and may even have been present when she sat for the master. Although no drawings survive, Leonardo probably began by sketching her face and pose. She may also have come to the studio when finishing touches were being applied to the face in the painting.

The Prado's technical specialist Ana González Mozo describes the Madrid replica as “a high quality work”, and in the paper she presented at the London conference, she provided evidence that the picture was done in Leonardo’s studio. The precise date of the original is uncertain, although the Louvre states it was between 1503 and 1506.

Bruno Mottin, the head conservator at the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, believes that the most likely painter of the Prado copy was one of Leonardo’s two favourite pupils.

Mottin proposes that it was either Andrea Salai, who originally joined Leonardo’s studio in 1490 and probably became his lover, or Francesco Melzi, who joined around 1506. If the Prado replica is eventually attributed to Melzi, it suggests a late date for the original.

What the copy reveals

The Madrid copy of the Mona Lisa is important for what it tells us about Leonardo’s studio practice. The production of a second version, painted alongside the original, is intriguing. It adds credence to Martin Kemp’s theory that Leonardo may also have had a hand in both versions of The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, 1501-07, one owned by the Duke of Buccleuch and the other by a New York private owner (formerly in the Lansdowne collection).

But what is most exciting about the Prado replica is what it reveals about Leonardo’s original. In the Madrid copy there are areas that are better preserved than in the Louvre painting. The replica gives us more detail of the spindles of the chair, the frill on the edge of the fabric on Lisa’s chest and the semi-transparent veil around her left shoulder, arm and elbow.

The Prado's curator Miguel Falomir believes the replica can probably be identified as a portrait listed in the 1666 inventory of Madrid’s Alcazar Palace, although it remains unclear when it first reached the Spanish royal collection.

Coming into the light

Falomir suspects the black overpaint was probably added in the mid-18th century. The reason for this addition is obscure, since the background landscape remained in good condition and Leonardo’s original painting was already very highly regarded. The overpaint may have been added to integrate the copy into an interior with other portraits set against dark backgrounds.

During the past few months, this black covering has been painstakingly stripped away at the Madrid conservation studio, with the final area of dark overpaint due to be removed in the next few days. Later varnish has also been taken away from the rest of the picture, most importantly the face.

The fully conserved replica is expected to be unveiled at the Prado in Madrid in mid-February. It is then due to be loaned to the Louvre in Paris, as a late addition to its exhibition on “Leonardo’s Last Masterpiece: The Sainte Anne” (29 March-25 June). There it will be seen in the same galleries as the original, giving specialists and visitors the first chance to compare the two works. After 500 years, the two versions of the Mona Lisa from Leonardo’s studio will be reunited again.

To see a comparison of the two works side by side, see our online picture gallery

Fra Angelico: Haloes and holiness

A rare chance to see the works of a 15th-century master
Dec 17th 2011 PARIS

A WORLD apart from the roaring traffic on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris lies the Musée Jacquemart-André, a discreet but vast mansion replete with Italian Renaissance treasures. There, nearly 25 exquisite, carefully lit paintings by Fra Angelico (mostly from Italian museums and churches), bulked out with a similar number of works by his early Renaissance contemporaries, have been beguiling visitors at a rare exhibition outside the friar’s native Tuscany.

The celestial array of apostles, prophets and saints with their intricate golden haloes, combined with contrasting lapis lazuli and vermilion, is still vibrant after six centuries. Fra Angelico’s Madonnas, painted with graceful, sinuous lines, rub shoulders with illuminated manuscripts, Paolo Uccello’s Adam and Eve, as well as his youthful St George on his white horse as he spears a green dragon. One of the friar’s early paintings, “Thebaid” (named after a refuge in upper Egypt for Christians fleeing Roman persecution), from 1410, depicts a landscape filled with monks, whether in conversation, gardening or at play with a bear, while hermits peek out of their caves.
Fra Angelico was first described as a Dominican friar in about 1423 and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His religious gravity has long overshadowed his gifts as an artistic innovator. That is a shame. His paintings embody all the delicate grace and intense colours of the “international gothic” style learned from his fellow-monk and master, Lorenzo Monaco. Yet he also absorbed the daring new techniques that were emerging at the time, illustrated here by the work of Masaccio and Uccello with their grasp of three- dimensional form and the rules of perspective. Fra Angelico’s 1428 “Madonna of Humility” (pictured above), one of four Madonnas on display, shows her as a solid, motherly presence, with her son playing with her diaphanous veil, and imbued with a serene, mystical quality that is peculiar to all Fra Angelico’s work.

In one clear example, Monaco’s “St Nicholas Saving the Sailors” has a flat, almost abstract feel, with the saint rescuing sailors who are perched on a sea symbolised by greenish curls. Fra Angelico’s figures, by contrast, have a sculptural dignity, moving in light-filled space. The sunlit landscape in “Beheading of St Cosmas and St Damian” illustrates Fra Angelico’s mastery of perspective. Three haloed, decapitated saints sprawl on the grass. As the fourth man kneels, awaiting his fate, tall dark cypresses, white city walls and the Tuscan hills behind him recede into the distance. In another painting, “Episodes from the Life of St Nicholas: Birth, Vocation and Gift to Three Poor Young Girls”, Fra Angelico places his figures in full Renaissance costume surrounded by different-coloured cubes, walls and pillars.


Fra Angelico’s best-known work is his series of frescoes at San Marco in Florence, the Dominican convent from which he ventured forth under the aegis of his patron and friend, Cosimo de’ Medici. They are shown here on video, which requires a leap of imagination for the viewer. Yet this rich exhibition, the first of its kind in France, is still a remarkable coup given that curators fear lending fragile tempera paintings on wood. In return, the Jacquemart-André will be obliged to lend its own Renaissance masterpieces for an exhibition in Italy. But it is hard not to conclude that the Parisians have had the better deal: the paintings on display reveal all the subtle sophistication of Fra Angelico’s art, lively survivors of a spiritual age on the brink of discovery.


“Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light” is at the Musée Jacquemart-André ( http://www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com/fr/home) in Paris until January 16th

Cents and sensibility: Artist Amanda Edwards' creative kitchen floor is all about small change and big ideas

By Ray Routhier (rrouthier@mainetoday.com), Staff Writer
Portland Press Herald

FALMOUTH - When Amanda Edwards told her 8-year-old son that someone wanted to take a picture of their kitchen floor, he was surprised.

Mosaic artist Amanda Edwards used pennies to create a one-of-a-kind floor for the kitchen of her Falmouth home. The space also includes a mosaic of cut stained glass over her kitchen counter, a colored tile mosaic on the island, and a backsplash covered with pebbles, sea glass and shells her children have collected.

Edwards’ stainless-steel refrigerator reflects the rich coppery patina of the pennies she used to create her kitchen floor. “When the sun hits it just right, this floor just glows,” says Edwards.

Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

"I told him that it was unusual -- not everyone uses pennies to cover their kitchen floor," said Edwards, 36. "He said, 'Do most people use quarters?' " Being a mosaic artist, Edwards is constantly doing home improvements that involve covering things up with little pieces of something else. She's got a mosaic of cut stained glass over her kitchen counter, and a pastoral nature scene of colored tile on her kitchen island. So her family wasn't very surprised a year and a half ago when she decided to cover the faux-brick linoleum in their 1970s ranch house with pennies. But to anyone else who sees the finished floor -- with an estimated 31,000 pennies, all face up and with Abraham Lincoln facing the same direction -- the work is stunning.

At first glance, the floor seems like it's merely a covering of some sort with a coppery, shiny dot pattern. But once you get a little closer and see the individual pennies -- with a seemingly endless variety of copper shades -- it's hard to stop looking. "When the sun hits it just right, this floor just glows," said Edwards. The penny floor idea came to Edwards while she was trying to find a way to warm up the color of her living room walls. One of her ideas was to cover one wall with copper sheeting. But when she priced it, she found that buying copper in sheets was too expensive for her budget.

"I joked that it would be cheaper to just cover the whole wall in pennies," said Edwards. "But then I thought, maybe I could use pennies. The wall might be too hard, but I started thinking about what else I could cover in pennies." Once she settled on pennies, she began to work the way she would on other mosaics. First, she got her material -- her pennies. She went to the bank -- almost daily at some points -- to get hundreds of them. She wanted clean pennies, as clean as possible. So some days, when she went to get a sack of pennies, she brought other pennies back with her to be exchanged. "I'd go in and tell them the pennies were too dirty and I wanted cleaner ones," said Edwards. "They looked at me kind of funny, so at some point I had to tell them what I was doing."

Edwards bought some wax remover at Home Depot to get the linoleum as smooth as possible. Then she got gallons of Weldbond glue, the same stuff she uses for tile or glass mosaics. She sat on the floor, dabbed a little glue on the tails side of the pennies, and stuck them to the floor. Once she had an area covered with pennies, Edwards would cover it with a brownish grout. Then she'd wipe the grout in a circular motion until it was no longer covering the pennies, but merely sitting in the spaces between them. The grout forms a nice dark background to the pennies. Once she finished covering the whole floor with pennies (and a few dimes here and there), she used a couple coats of polyurethane to protect it. The polyurethane makes the floor easy to clean, Edwards says, as easy as any non-wax floor. It also makes the floor smooth to walk on. Walking in socks on the floor, it's almost impossible to feel individual coins. It does, however, feel a little cold, as one might expect. "In the summer, it's nice and cool, cooler than tile," said Edwards, standing on the floor in bare feet in early April.

One challenge Edwards had was keeping all the heads facing the same direction -- something she didn't have to do, but thought would make for a better overall look. The 10- by 11-foot kitchen is open to the living and dining areas, and is shaped roughly like a triangle. Plus, there's an island in the middle. So she had to start putting down pennies at one end and work her way around to make sure no two coins would be heading in different directions. She did it in sections, closing down portions of the kitchen for a few days at a time. It took her about a year and a half to complete. After it was done, Edwards and her family -- husband Matthew and children Julian, 8, and Priya, 5 -- wanted to know how many pennies were used. They sent the kitchen's measurements to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and asked for an estimate. The answer they got was 31,140.

While covering a kitchen floor with pennies is not for everyone, Edwards does have at least one home-decor mosaic idea that is easy and would have appeal for many families. The backsplash behind her kitchen counters -- a long piece of board about 5 or 6 inches high -- is covered with pebbles, sea glass, shells and other things her children have collected on trips to the beach. She installed the board, got some more Weldbond glue, and began sticking up the found treasures. Many families have buckets of shells and sea glass in the backyard. "This way, I can look at that sand dollar right there and remember that Julian got that with his grandma," said Edwards. "It's a way my children can contribute to make the kitchen ours."

To learn more about Edwards and see her work, go to mandolinmosaics.com.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com

Vann Nath, a Cambodian who painted to stay alive, died on September 5th, aged 65

From the Economist

WHEN he was 52, with a hand that still trembled, Vann Nath produced a painting of a young man lying under a blossoming tree. He was playing a pipe while, in the background, cattle grazed by green palms in some bucolic corner of Cambodia. It was meant to be a self-portrait, he said, a beautiful memory from his childhood. He wanted only to paint idyllic landscapes now, in the style of temple murals or the French Impressionists who had first inspired him to take up art.
That was because, in 1978-79, he had been made to paint quite different pictures. In those months he was interned in S-21 prison, a former French lycée in Phnom Penh which had been converted into a torture-compound for alleged enemies of the Khmer Rouge regime. Perhaps 14,000 people were sent to S-21 for a daily routine of electrocution, water-boarding and flagellation before being carted off for execution—a shovel or spade to the head—at the nearby “killing fields”. Mr Vann Nath was one of only six or seven prisoners to make it out alive.
He never expected to. Like almost all the others, he had no idea why he had been sent there. He was not an intellectual; his family was poor and provincial, and he just a painter in a small business making signs and billboards. In 1975, obedient to the Khmers Rouges, he had joined a peasant commune and worked hard there. When he first saw the wasted prisoners in S-21, he thought it was all over for him. But after withering away for a month, fed so sparely on rice gruel that he felt an urge to consume the flesh of the dead, he was asked to paint portraits of the regime’s leader, Pol Pot.
At first he thought he could not do it. The shocks and beatings meant that he could barely stand. Besides, he had no idea what Pol Pot looked like, and only a black-and-white photograph to copy. All the time he painted, day and night, the screams of the tortured echoed from other rooms. He hoped, with every brush-stroke, that his jailers would like his work and let him live. He focused by thinking how much he would like to kill the man he drew.
Nonetheless, he carried out the task to the satisfaction of Duch, the prison commandant, the one—and still only—former cadre now being held to account for his role in the revolution. For his flattering portraits, giving Pol Pot a fresh-faced girl’s rosy cheeks, Mr Vann Nath’s name in the prison ledger was tagged “Keep for use”. But for that “keeping”, he often said, he would be dead.
When a Vietnamese invasion swept the Khmers Rouges from power, in January 1979, his portrait-painting ended. But in 1980-81 an even more harrowing spell of art began. The fleeing warders of S-21 left behind troves of documents outlining the prison’s work, but it was Mr Vann Nath, painting his memories in sombre oils, who showed most vividly what had happened there. Blindfolded men, women and children trucked into the compound in the middle of the night. Men carried, trussed like pigs, on bamboo poles. Babies torn from their mothers’ arms—to be smashed against walls, he learned later. Prisoners prodded, whipped and steered by stone-faced cadres into holding cells to be crammed side by side, like decaying logs. For many years after the Khmers Rouges fell from power, the upper echelons of the regime denied S-21’s existence. Mr Vann Nath caught its reality in furtive glances, as he moved from cell to workshop.
He painted by stilling his mind, in a process both painful and therapeutic. But painting still made no sense of what he had seen. It seemed to him that Cambodia could not cleanse itself of such an evil, and that his works were not good enough to do such horror justice. He only hoped the souls of those who had died would get some ease from them.
When S-21 was turned into a museum of the national self-genocide he had witnessed, some of his pictures hung on the walls. One day, for the first time since 1979, he saw one of his former jailers there, a “tiger” he had dreaded. Having puffed a few cigarettes to steel himself—for he was always a man of poise, despite his tormented past—he approached him affably and guided him by the shoulder to his paintings hanging there. “Is this accurate?” he asked. It was, the jailer conceded.
The international media, whose questions about S-21 he patiently answered time after time, called him Cambodia’s Goya. He brushed it off. His principal fear was that young Cambodians would not learn about—or, worse still, would not believe—what he had witnessed. He painted, he said, so that Cambodia would never turn on itself so monstrously again.
Silent witness
Two years ago Mr Vann Nath took the stand as a witness against Duch, his former master, who is now appealing a 35-year jail sentence handed down by a UN-backed war-crimes court in Cambodia. A second trial, of four senior leaders of the regime, is not expected to start until next year. The defendants say they are too ill to stand trial. They are attended, however, by a world-class team of doctors; Mr Vann Nath, who suffered years of kidney disease, struggled to afford even basic care. His testimony will be missing from subsequent proceedings. His paintings, however, speak for him.

Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew

See this link for a discussion of the painting.