James Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts to Anna McNeill and George Washington Whistler.  He was described as insolent, with a tendency to fits, having spats of illness and being lazy.  The only thing that calmed him was drawing.  His mother, of the McNeill’s of Scotland who sided with Charles Stuart in 1746 and fled to North Carolina, was the subject of Whistler’s iconic portrait.  His father, George Washington Whistler, a West Point graduate and a highly respected railroad engineer, was responsible for several major railroad and canal innovations. He designed the first steam locomotive built in New England, and he was the first to add whistles. Among many supervisory positions with several American railroad and canal companies, he supervised laying the first passenger railway track in America for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.  

In 1843, Czar Nicholas I of Russia made George Whistler the supervising engineer for the St Petersburg to Moscow railroad. The family moved to St. Petersburg, where James took art lessons at the Imperial Academy of Arts.  The Whistler’s, all but George, went to London to visit family in1848. Whistler’s father and his uncle in London encouraged James’s talent.  In 1849, at the age of fifteen, James wrote to his father in Russia, “I hope, dear father, you will not object to my choice.”  He had decided art was his calling.  Unfortunately his father died of cholera in April 1849, before having time to answer his son’s letter.  

The family moved back to American.  His mother wanted James to pursue the ministry; instead he enrolled in West Point.  Not a success, he was expelled with too many demerits and later said, “If silicon had been a gas, I would have been a general.”  He lived briefly in Baltimore where he set up a studio, but left for Paris in1855.  Whistler chose a Bohemian lifestyle and met the major artists of the time, including those soon to be known as Impressionists.  He cultivated the persona and image of a dandy.  “Early in life I made the discovery that I was charming, and if one is delightful, one has to thrust the world away to keep from being bored to death.”  Degas said of Whistler, “If you were not a genius, you would be the most ridiculous man in Paris.”  As part of his unique persona Whistler signed his works with a butterfly, a device he designed to emulate the chop signatures of Japanese printmakers, whom he greatly admired.

Whistler apparently knew himself well.  He was acquainted with and admired the Impressionists, but went his own way.  He was very literate and wrote often about his life and his work. He was ostentatious, contentious and controversial, and this often got him into serious trouble.  From the beginning his art was criticized.  “Symphony in White No. 1 (1862) in the National Gallery of Art, was rejected from the official French Academy, but was included in the famous 1863 Salon de Refuse, where Manet’s “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe” was the great scandal.  Having been rejected again by the French critics and Academy, Whistler returned to London where he lived with his mother.  He moved between London and Paris for the remainder of his life.

He began painting his nocturnes in 1866.  Whistler thought of painting as ‘’Art for Art’s Sake,’’ a theory that was developing at the time.   Artists did not have to duplicate objects in nature but should express their personal and emotional response to it, much in the way music does. He was good friends with the composer Debussy and the poet, Mallarme.   He wrote, “Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music.  But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements that the results may be beautiful – as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony.”  The nocturnes were moonlight paintings, rarely attempted by any artists. His friend and patron, Frederick Leyland, suggested the term nocturne, and Whistler thanked him for it.  “It does poetically say all I want to say and no more than I wish.”

“Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Fire Wheel” (1875) was Whistler’s impression of the famous Cremone Garden’s during one of their nightly fireworks displays.  Cremone Garden was an extremely popular pleasure garden for fashionable people offering restaurants, entertainment, balloon ascents, dancing and an indoor bowling alley.  Patrons entered by taking a boat on the Thames to Cremone Pier or through the north gate on Kings’ Road.  The iron work gate was enriched with garnet and cut-glass drops, luster circles and gas jets.  The main pavilion was 360 feet in circumference and encrusted with gas jets and more than forty plate glass mirrors in black frames. The pagoda for the orchestra was adorned with seventeen gas lit chandeliers. Whistler lived and worked in Chelsea, and could look down from his balcony at this scene.

Whistler painted six nocturnes of Cremone Garden. The nightly fireworks display was held in the Gypsy Grotto. “The Fire Wheel”, was named after Saint Catherine.  It took him a long time to develop a technique for the nocturnes.  His paintings were meticulous, and he often viewed his work reflected in a mirror to check details.  He developed a specific oil solution for the nocturnes, thinning it with copal, turpentine and linseed oil, until it reached a thin state to paint quickly in transparent layers.  He called it a sauce.  He wiped the layers as needed and perfected a spatter and drip technique to create the sparkle of fireworks.  Whistler strove to create nuanced, intimate moments. Depicting a detailed reality was never his goal.  As he stated “If reality is the goal the king of artists would be the photographer.”  

“Nocturne in Black and Gold, Falling Rockets” (1875) was exhibited in 1877 at the Grosvernor Gallery, an alternative to the Royal Academy exhibitions.  The well respected art critic, John Ruskin, wrote a scathing review. The “gallerist ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture.  I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a port of paint in the public’s face.”

Fireworks indeed!  Whistler had a writ for libel served on Ruskin hoping to be awarded 1000 pounds and costs from the jury for the libel.  It took a year for the case to come to court at the Old Bailey, as a result of Ruskin having suffered bouts of mental illness.  The case was heard on November 25 and 26, 1878. Unfortunately the 24 by 18 inch painting was first hung upside down at the trial. Whistler was asked “Did it take much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold.  How soon did you knock it off?”  Whistler replied, “Oh, I ‘knocked it off’ possibly in a couple of days – one day to do the work and another to finish it…”  Next questions “The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?”  Whistler:  “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.”  Testimony was rendered on both sides of the issue; in the end, the court decided Whistler was correct, and Ruskin’s article was libelous.  However, in determining the value of the libel to Whistler’s reputation, the damages awarded to him was one farthing, and he was to pay his own court costs.  Ruskin’s friends paid his costs, but Whistler was ruined.  He even had to sell his house.  

Those who have visited Whistler’s “Peacock Room” at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C., may remember it was commissioned by the same earlier mentioned Frederick Leyland for his house in London.  It was the cause of another famous Whistler controversy.  Fortunately Whistler survived them both and continued his career.  In 1879, he was commissioned by the Fine Art Society of London to make a series of Venetian prints.  These and his later works were a success, and his earlier highly criticized work began to be appreciated and accepted.  In 1885, he delivered his famous Ten O’clock Lectures at Prince’s Hall in London and then at Oxford and Cambridge.  In 1890, he published Whistler vs Ruskin:  Art and Art Critics, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and in 1891, with the help of the poet Mallarme, the French government purchased “Whistler’s Mother”.  It was the first work by an American artist purchased by the French Government.

Today Whistler is considered a major artist responsible for helping to re-shape the art world and bringing it forward into the Twentieth Century.  Whistler’s cousin and friend, Ralph Curtis,  an American painting in Venice summed up Whistler in a most appropriate manner:  He “concedes nothing…his attitude of art, to himself, to the public, and to his rivals, past and living, never changed.  Applauded or booed, he ever remained with same high aesthetic ideals, and the same shrewd eye to business…ultra-exclusive aristocrat…few did he design to recognize as “brothers”.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

Juan Munoz grew up during the repressive regime of Francisco Franco [1939-1975].  Bored with school, Munoz was expelled; a tutor was hired for him and his brother.  Fortunately the tutor was a poet and an art critic who covered the usual curriculum, but also introduced Juan to the world of art.  He intended to study architecture in Madrid; however, in 1970, he ran away to London to escape the Franco regime and to study.  He stated “I traveled a lot and produced very little.  Much later in 1982 or ’83, when I returned to Spain, I stopped traveling and finally set up a studio.  That’s when I started making objects.”

His early works were of “dwarves, mannequins and ballerinas.”  This choice of subject matter reflects Munoz’s self-described sense of isolation and “displacement.”  He wrote that he “always felt outside of the main stream.”  As a Spanish artist, his choice of dwarves also reflected the seventeenth Century Spanish tradition to keep them as companions to royal children.  Portraits of dwarves were frequent.  The well known Spanish master, Velasquez, painted several.   Both artists portrayed dwarves with dignity and respect, not as pets.

Munoz received a Fulbright Scholarship (1981-82) through the North American Spanish Community to study painting at the Pratt Institute in New York.  While in New York City he was artist-in-residence at P.S.1, the New York public school noted for the arts. To earn additional money to support his wife and children, he worked as a waiter.  Returning to Spain in 1985, he began to include simple architectural settings for his sculpture figures.  

After a 1991 trip to Rome, to study ancient Roman and Baroque architecture, he frequently included architectural settings.  Many are distorted settings with bent chairs and benches, falling floors, chairs with his figures hanging from the wall, and in varying scales to create physiological tensions.  His human figures, mostly male, are slightly smaller than life-size, all gray in color and wear coats and jackets.  Most figures are smiling.  What are they smiling about?  Munoz arranged the figures in small and large groups, sometimes as many as 50.  Viewers are intended to walk among the figures and engage with them. There is always a conversation happening.  Munoz is a storyteller, setting up narrative situations.

“Last Conversation Piece” (1994-95) is so named because it was the last in a series of works called conversation pieces.  In it Munoz employs a second figure type. The arms and heads are close to reality but the body from waist down is distinctly non-human.  They resemble feather pillow or bean bags, but are cast bronze and very heavy.  Three figures are grouped together in a conversation which from one point of view looks friendly. One leans in to whisper in another’s ear while giving him a pat on the back.  With their big round bottoms they are hilarious and may remind one of Weeble Wobbles, Hasbro Playskool toys, children shaped like eggs but balanced in a way to always remained upright.  The figure on the left wants to become a part of the group.  Does he simply want to join his friends or does he feel left out, isolated?  He seems determined to get to the others, and we image him rolling across the lawn to join the group.  Will he make it? The other figure on the right looks on and may or may not feel excluded, and he seems in no great hurry.  Munoz often intended to show the “poignant isolation of the individual amongst a crowd.”

Munoz is a storyteller, setting the stage for numerous interpretations. When one walks onto the lawn and actually engages with the figures, new ideas emerge.  It becomes apparent that the three figures are not engaged in friendly conversation, but in disagreement.  One figure pulls on the other’s robe, and the other, who is patting his companion on the back, now looks surprised.  The two other figures have a different dynamic.  The attempted movement of the figure to the left now seems more urgent.  Is he trying to intervene and prevent future unpleasantness, and on which side is he? The figure on the right remains distant and is as enigma.

Munoz said he was “fascinated by the ‘’otherness’’ of the figure.”  He intended the “sense of ambiguity and enigma, in which the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred, creating an increasingly complex play of contradictions and paradoxes.”  He did not intend one interpretation for his pieces, but many.  

Munoz realized that his works contained both peace and violence.  “The violence had to do with my memory and with my fascination.  People who have experienced violence are activated by violence.”  Although he does not seem to speak about it directly, the violence he most likely referred to was his childhood in Franco’s Spain.  “For years I used to carry a switchblade in my pocket wherever I went.  I’d have my hand in my pocket and I would be touching this knife.  It was about an inner violence that I always had inside.  I eventually stopped carrying this knife because I realized that it was getting a little neurotic, and I shifted to a deck of cards.” 

The term conversation is defined as “talking together, informal or familiar talk, verbal exchange of ideas, information, etc.” At this particular time in America, conversations are important, particularly conversations which exchange thoughtful ideas and truthful information.  Today we are witness to both peaceful and violent conversations.  Munoz’s “Last Conversation Piece” causes us to think about our current situation and our current conversations.  We need to be thoughtful, we need find truth, and mostly we need to find reconciliation.  

Munoz died suddenly in 2001.  He was forty-six.  The London Guardian wrote that Munoz “was the most significant of the great generation of artists to achieve maturity in post-Franco Spain, and one of the most complex and individual artists working today.  Munoz has died at the height of his powers.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Typically, a movement associated with a highly emotional event will often give birth to motivating and creative campaigns for change. The intent, of course, is to transform the perception of an individual or a community. This certainly is the goal of one project that involves the entire Eastern Shore.

Unlike other projects of this magnitude, the planning and execution have come together within a relatively short time. It happened right after the racial injustice rally in Easton on May 30th. Like other calls for action, it started with a broad and general idea. Town of Denton Councilwoman and founder of Minary’s Dream Alliance, Inc., Doncella Wilson knew it was essential to keep the momentum going on and wanted a visible reminder that every community and every individual can be part of the solution for change. She envisioned a social action art exhibit of sorts, community assembled, something that would last well after the protest signs were put away.

Wilson asked for suggestions from Josepha Price, artist, activist, and owner of Half Moon Studio in Easton. The request reminded Price of something she had seen elsewhere: a multi-county tapestry weaving project. She recommended setting up a large loom. People would be encouraged to come and, using either provided fabric or ones they bought from home, write their thought, hopes, wishes, and worries and weave them into the tapestry. It would represent the healing that could start to happen if people could see their similarities.

Wilson contacted John Schratwieser, the Director of the Kent Cultural Alliance and Jennifer Hodge, with the Caroline County Arts Council (of which Wilson is also a Board Member). Both agreed to reach out to the Arts Councils on the Eastern Shore and invite them to take part in the “A Tapestry for Change” Art Project. All nine counties agreed.

Five looms, roughly 5’x8′, have been built. Each loom will either have a ‘permanent’ spot in the community or will be moved to various locations, including local non-profit’s, churches, and other events throughout the counties to allow the maximum number of people to participate.

Individual completed designs will be intertwined to create one large tapestry, which will be unveiled in a future ceremony. Says Price that it will feature pictures taken of those hearts and hands that contributed to the weaving. “Art,” she said, “has an important place in social justice and has an even greater impact when it isn’t just viewed, but created together.”

Wilson hopes the tapestry will be used as a teaching tool for schools. “It’s a starting point to build lessons around unity, interconnectedness, and cohesiveness in communities. It’s also a connection to our youth and our elders, no matter what race, to see what we can do when we come together.”

For Price, this project gives her the chance to fulfill a more profound yearning that neither her art nor her studio fully satisfied. “I have always felt that my talent is better served for a greater, common good. The art that I would love to do, which I never seem to find time for, is something that has a social or political statement, that makes you think about where you fit in within your community. It starts really small, but then, like this tapestry, fits into a giant blanket that we’re all part of.”

Additional information can be found on Facebook at the Eastern Shore Community Art Project

T0 participate in the Tapestry project and celebrate Juneteenth, come to:

Easton, 4:30 at the BAAM march.
Denton, 6-8 at the corner of Market and 3rd St. The event, will be held at the corner of Market and 3rd Street, will feature music and will be streamed live.
Cambridge, 2-4 Dorchester Center for the Arts.
Tomorrow, it will be available in Chestertown at 10 am in Fountain Park, where the Social Action Committee for Racial Justice and the Kent Cultural Alliance are sponsoring “It is Time for Change” rally. Elected officials, music and a spoken word performance are planned. A scheduled caravan rally to Annapolis has been postponed due to possible weather issues.

Attendees are asked to bring fabric for the tapestry and wear masks and maintain social distancing.

The Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival celebrates its 35th anniversary with five concerts. But they won’t be performed at the usual venues, such as the Academy Art Museum or Christ Church across the street in Easton. As you probably surmised from this year’s festival title, “Virtual Virtuosi,” the concerts can be enjoyed streaming online without masks or social distancing.

The first and last concerts in the festival series were performed and recorded before a live audience at Queens College in New York just before COVID-19 necessitated a shutdown of public events, sheltering in place, and all the rest. Others were performed in homes of the artists, a concept many of us have become familiar with by way of TV and Zoom. Most of the concerts feature the usual suspects festival patrons have come to know over the decades, including co-artistic directors Marcy Rosen, a cellist, and violinist Catherine Cho.

All concerts begin streaming at 5:30 p.m. and remain available for viewing for 24 hours afterward. 

The festival opener on June 4, streaming until about six on Friday, June 5, was recorded March 6 in Queens with Rosen accompanied by pianist Diane Walsh, performing sonatas by Beethoven and Chopin. The third movement of the Chopin piece, Rosen declared in opening remarks recorded for festival viewers, is “perfect.” We won’t argue with her assessment, which isn’t to say the Beethoven is not also a revelation as performed here. In fact, it was a revelation back in 1796 when he composed two sonatas for cello and piano, which were unprecedented as the cello had not yet been liberated as a lead instrument. His Opus 5 Adagio opens slowly, almost mournfully, before rising in intensity. It then settles into a melodic flow accented by piano teardrop notes in answer to dramatic cello flourishes.  

The next movement, suggests an emotional outburst with its, at times, frenetic pace. Walsh’s keyboard skills are evident without dominating. The Rondo, with its ferocious finish, is a test for the most accomplished cellists of this or any era. Rosen shows who’s master by taming the dense anxiety of these passages for the more hopeful final Allegro as if gliding with acceleration to a happy ending. 

Beethoven named his two cello/piano sonatas for the King of Prussia, an amateur cellist himself, in hopes of a reward. We think he deserved better than the gold snuff-box that was his prize—even counting the gold francs stuffed inside.

The Chopin sonata comes with a storyline implied, of course, in the music itself. But Rosen supplies a more biographical context in her remarks. The piece was written at the time of Frederic Chopin’s breakup with the woman known to her friends and intimates as Aurore. By her pen name, George Sand, she was better known as one of the leading romantic novelists of 19th century Europe. As women artists were so disdained at the time, she may not have even been published had she stuck to her birth name. 

We can’t be sure from Chopin’s Opus 65 sonata who dumped whom, but considering the turmoil, he expresses in the opening Allegro, we can guess he’s the one who felt bereft. The highly emotional Scherzo reflects a swirl of self-pity and impending resentment. The third movement Largo, Rosen’s favorite, bespeaks an emotional resurrection as if to say, hey, I’ll get over it. To Rosen, it’s “perfect’ in the sense that the cello is the perfect instrument for this expression, soulfully delivered along with Walsh’s almost whispery accompaniment. The finale plays like a rush of water under the bridge, signifying life goes on.

The concert on Sunday, June 7, from the homes of various artists, offers a program of Bach and Robert Schumann. 

Please go here to enjoy the concerts. A viewing tip. Some devices may require you to go directly to YouTube if the chesapeakemusic.org link doesn’t work. Just go to youtube.com and click on the Chesapeake Music logo.