Known as 'proletariat art collectors', Herb and Dorothy Vogel amassed an incredible collection of conceptual and minimalist art on a very small budget. The couple's incredible eye for emerging artists allowed them form a collection of 4,782 works, which they managed to fit inside their tiny one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. The couple married in 1962 and began collecting art soon after. Their love of art and collecting contemporary works continued throughout their marriage, until Herb's death in 2012.
Unlike many collectors of prominent contemporary artists, the couple had only modest salaries to fund their love of artwork. Herb worked as a mail sorter for the United States Postal Service and Dorothy worked as a librarian. The couple found ways to get deals on work by emerging artists (many of whom later became their friends). Their collection includes work by notable minimalist artists such as Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Lawrence Weiner. With the limited budget the couple had, they choose to not purchase works as an investment, but selected pieces based on what they both liked, what was small enough to take home in a taxi and to display in their apartment.
Their life and collection was captured in the 2008 documentary "Herb and Dorothy". The documentary recounts the Vogel's courtship, life together, and their art collection. In addition to being passionate art connoisseurs, they are also ADORABLE. I dare anyone to watch this documentary without getting a little teary-eyed. The couple never had children, but housed a lovely menagerie of animals which make appearances throughout the documentary (also adorable). Despite the large amount of work that is crammed inside their apartment, each piece resonates a different story. One particularly notable story is about a collage piece they received by the artist Christo in exchange for taking care of his cat.
As the couple aged, it became harder to take care of their collection. In 1992, their entire collection was donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Herb and Dorothy wanted to share their incredible collection and love of art with the public. As the National Gallery has free admission and does not sell donated works, their collection would stay together and could be accessible to a large audience.
"Herb and Dorothy" has been made available online through TVO.
Please watch and enjoy the wonderful story this couple has to share.
I came across this video a couple of years ago and loved it. It is a short documentary film about a Associated Press foreign correspondent and a young university student who move and rebuild an old farmhouse in Japan in 1967.
I find it interesting for a number of reasons: I think it is really well done in terms of a documentary, I think its moving and I think it demonstrates a lot in terms of heritage.
My post this fine Museum Monday is inspired by the social media buzz I have encountered this past week regarding an exciting new exhibition that opened March 13 at New York's Neue Galerie: Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937. According to the Neue Galerie's website, "This
will be the first major U.S. museum exhibition devoted to the infamous
display of modern art by the Nazis since the 1991 presentation at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art."
Neue Galerie museum for Austrian and German art,
New York City, New York
Entartete Kunst, or, "Degenerate Art," was originally a 1937 propagandist exhibition organized by Adolf Ziegler (a German painter favoured by Hitler) and the Nazi party at the Archaeological Institute in Munich. This exhibition featured art which Hitler deemed "Jewish," "Bolshevist,"or just plain un-German, and thus unworthy of any sort of appreciation by the art world or the German public. This primarily referred to all modern and/or abstract art, which was blossoming in Germany at the time.
Any Expressionist, Impressionist, Surrealist, Dadaist works, along with anything related to or inspired by these genres and movements was not only considered degenerate, but was also confiscated by Hitler from public art institutions and usually sold off at auctions (with all proceeds of course going to the benefit of the Nazi party). Entartete Kunst would go on to become one of the most famous exhibitions in history, with a total of about 3 million visitors. It also traveled throughout Germany and Austria for four years after its opening.
The works and, consequently, the artists featured in the 1937 exhibit were meant to be laughed at, despised, ridiculed, and ultimately dismissed by the public. 112 artists - both Jewish and non-Jewish, even some who were members of the Nazi party themselves - had been singled out as "degenerate." Such artists included Kandinsky, Picasso, Chagall, Kokoschka, and many, many others. These artists were dismissed from their jobs, banned from exhibiting or selling their works, and often forbidden outright to produce art all together. Below are examples of works featured in the exhibition:
To encourage an attitude of disgust toward these works from the public, Entartete Kunst artworks were very strategically organized. Or perhaps, unorganized is a better way to put it. Paintings were hung crooked, without frames, upside down, sculptures were crammed into tight spaces, blocking walkways to create a claustrophobic feeling in the gallery, and there was graffiti plastered all over any exposed walls behind the artworks with ridiculing messages about the works. One element I find particularly interesting about this exhibit is that the prices the state museum paid for the degenerate artworks were also exhibited beside them - "The point being to demonstrate how the Jewish art world bilked German taxpayers at a time of widespread suffering."
Check out this footage from the opening of Entartete Kunst in 1937 below (start at about 2:24 for inside the actual exhibit):
Entartete Kunst was also conveniently located across the street from Hitler's highly prized national Haus der Kunst ("House of Art"), which also opened in 1937. In this museum, Hitler displayed works which he selected as representative of "proper" German culture. This generally included Classical masterpieces highlighting perfection of the human form, works that glorified the military, as well as values such as obedience and loyalty.
Hitler favoured anything which portrayed man and nature exactly "as it was" in reality, or rather, how he believed it should be in an ideal reality. Of course, Hitler had a very specific reason for choosing the particular locations of the Haus der Kunst and the Entartete Kunst exhibit. He wanted to blatantly juxtapose the "good" and the "evil" of the art world so that there was no mistaking where peoples' artistic values -and thus, larger sociocultural values- should lie.
Curator Olaf Peters is the man in charge of the 2013 revisiting of Entartete Kunst in New York's Neue Galerie. The overarching idea Peters hopes to address with his Degenerate Art exhibition is what exactly was degenerate art? According to a recent article about the new exhibit, "Peters has reunited a bouquet of rarely seen painting and sculpture from
the 1937 traveling exhibition, intermingling them with postcards,
photos of the original installations, and films. He has also judiciously
included the kind of kitsch that the Nazis favoured."
It will be interesting to see how people react to Peters' juxtaposition of Nazi ideal art with the Nazi degenerate art in the same exhibition. Perhaps a throw back to Hitler's juxtaposition of the national Haus der Kunst with the original Entartete Kunst exhibit? I think that by showing these two "types" of works together, Peters creates a really provoking context for interpretation.
Finally, I would just like to conclude by saying that I retrieved most of the background information regarding the original Entartete Kunst exhibition from the documentary below, created in 1993 by David Grubin. If you have the time, I highly recommend checking it out. Fascinating stuff.
One of the moments in the documentary I found most striking, and perhaps a little emotional, was during an interview with a German gentleman who was an art student in Munich in 1937. He describes how he and many of his colleagues rushed out to see Entartete Kunst, as they knew that this was likely the last time they would ever get to study and appreciate the modernist artworks they loved before the works were auctioned off or brutally destroyed by the Nazis. I wonder how many others of the exhibition's 3 million visitors had similar motivations?
This weekend, I came across an article in Vanity Fair about a recent documentary called Tim's Vermeer. The documentary was created by the magician duo Penn & Teller and tells the story of their friend Tim Jenison. Jenison is a San Antonio Texas native who became obsessed with discovering exactly how Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer was able to paint the photo-realistic images he is so famous for, hundreds of years before the invention of the photograph. In the documentary, Jenison is confident he has solved the mystery behind Vermeer's artistic"genius" and decides to test his findings by using this new information to reproduce a Vermeer painting himself, by hand. Specifically, Vermeer's The Music Lesson (above). The kicker is, Jenison is an engineer who has made his fortune creating video production software and hardware, and has never painted in his life.
It may come as no surprise that prior to Jenison, art historians have addressed the mystery of Vermeer's exceptional ability to portray such lifelike images in his paintings, suggesting that it is very possible that Vermeer used optic devices (i.e. lenses, camera obscura) to help him see from perspectives and capture light and colour in ways the naked eye alone cannot comprehend. Two of the foremost advocates for this controversial position (both of whom are featured in the film) are London architecture professor Philip Steadman (in his book Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces) and prominent artist David Hockney (in his book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of Old Masters).
Without giving too much away, Jenison becomes inspired by the controversial work of Steadman and Hockney and manages to rig up an optical device that functions, in what he believes, to be a similar fashion to the kind of optic device Vermeer may have used. Jenison then decides to completely reconstruct the scene from The Music Lesson -- and we're talking completely here, in the sense of reconstructing the scene with painstaking historical and mathematical accuracy, from making window glass by hand to building a harpsichord -- and ultimately, when this is finished, he sits down to paint his own Vermeer using the optic device he created (which consisted of technologies/materials that would have been plausible to use in the 17th century).
Conveniently enough, I discovered that Tim's Vermeer is actually currently playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Thus, I had the fabulous opportunity to actually catch this film, along with a few Musings cohorts, before posting! I highly
recommend you check this film out. It is fascinating, unbelievable, and
actually quite funny all at the same time. You can't help but love
Jenison and feel for him during the painstaking process he undergoes in
order to recreate the physical scene from The Music Lesson and then actually paint it. Before I wrap this post up, there are a few things I'd like to throw out on the table for possible discussion...
One of the main issues that members of the art community have with the suggestion that Vermeer used optic devices while painting is that this is somehow "cheating." What are your thoughts on this matter? Is using technology to enhance art or inspire new artistic processes (which is what Vermeer likely did with his lenses, and I'm sure he wasn't the only one to do so) cheating?
As Jenison proves, these devices certainly do not make the painting process any easier or less time consuming. So, can we still consider this cheating? Personally, seeing Jenison go through Vermeer's painting process himself makes me appreciate Vermeer's work even more. Does the discovery of these methods now render Vermeer paintings meaningless or valueless, now that we know it may not have been pure "genius" that allowed him to paint this way, but the use of man-made tools? Does this make you appreciate the works of the Old Masters like Vermeer any less? Can science and art/creativity exist on the same plane and perhaps even inspire each other?
I could go on posing a million questions to you based on what I encountered watching this film, but I think I'll leave the floor open from here. Please go check this film out if you have the time. Or even just spend a few minutes perusing the related YouTube videos. You won't regret it. Even if you don't buy into what Jenison is doing, I think you will still be transfixed or, at the very least, entertained.
