Blog Posts by Subject: Painting

Those who use the resources of the Art & Architecture Collection come in splendid variety: old and young, sophisticated and naive, happily curious and relentlessly searching. We love it, for where else could you be asked "just what is that building in back of that Madonna" followed by a search for more of Grandmama's old Limoge china (oh, those porcelain marks - so confusing!).

It is 8th Street, but from Third Avenue to Avenue A it is called St. Marks Place and is named for St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, which is not even on 8th Street, or St. Marks Place, but at the intersection of 10th Street, Second Avenue, and Stuyvesant Street. The land there has been a site of Christian worship since 1660. The history of St. Marks Place doesn’t go back that far, but a surprising amount of history has happened on these four blocks.

Hudson Park is hosting "Paris and Provence," art by West Village painter Elliott Gilbert, in its Reference Room Gallery through the end of February.

The work includes 15 canvases of Provence and some lesser-known areas of Paris, including Parc Monceau, a favorite place of Monet. One more view after the break.

Who are these people?
The work of Adela Smith Lintelmann (1902 - 1996) is currently on display in the Hudson Park Reference Room Gallery.

Adela Smith Lintelmann's art career spanned nearly seventy years and she was a role model for both artists and feminists. In her native British Columbia, she established herself as a mathematician and then, on attending a lecture by an established Canadian artist, she was inspired to paint. With her characteristic adventurous spirit and armed with only her degree, a teaching certificate and a course in typing, she left Vancouver for New York and the Art Students League. To support her dream she worked her way up at the 

Did you enjoy following the adventures of our Design by the Book artists as they found inspiration at NYPL? Do you want to dig in to the Library's collections too, to find materials to fuel your own creativity? If so, then check out my User's Guide to NYPL for DIY Designers and Artisans--it will get you up to speed on the treasures and the quirks of the entire Library system. And with it in hand you can start your own hunt for inspiring stuff.

The first World War was truly traumatic for France, and its great designers were among the first to attempt to rally the nation’s arts in the war’s aftermath. The luxury goods trade had all but disappeared during these years. One of these designers, Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975), closed her couture house at the onset of the war in 1914 and went to Rome for the duration.

Upon her return, she pressed forward with the revolutionary, often avant-garde direction of her clothes-making. She had apprenticed with lingerie makers, spurring a life-long fascination with the interplay of body and fabric. She introduced the bias cut for whole garments, in which the fabric was cut 

Dawdling away at the reference desk the other day, I put the word “pantsuit” into the Library Catalog, wondering what would come up. Well guess what? One item showed up and it was on Hillary Clinton!

Yet over the course of an online perusal of Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign for Democratic Party presidential nominee, I found the word “pantsuit” over and over again, often in a negative context. This brought me back to wondering about the original reception of feminine trousers, especially when made into a formal pant suit or pantsuit.

Even more daunting was the realization that I had actually grown up in the period when women finally won 

One of Calvin Tompkins' Bachelors has shuffled off stage left. As the New York Times obituary makes clear, Rauschenberg's impact on the Visual and Performing Arts is pretty much incalculable.

I can't remember when I didn't know of Rauschenberg's work, having probably been exposed to a few pieces in my teens on a weekend getaway to the Art Institute of Chicago, but one of my favorite experiences that encompasses Rauschenberg and his cadre of New York pals was seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform at Lincoln Center in 1999. There in one place--literally and figuratively--were Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, 

If you like Japanese anime and manga you should see the new © Murakami exhibition (April 5-July 13, 2008) at the Brooklyn Museum. This is the first major retrospective on the works of Japanese artist/designer Takashi Murakami, who is known as the Warhol of Japan. It focuses on his work from 1991-2000, “when the artist began exploring his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity." From "© MURAKAMI: Brooklyn Museum Photo Gallery”

Francis Bacon had a studio showroom in South Kensington that was reproduced in a 1930 issue of The Studio. He was one of three designers profiled for “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” and his interior is sparsely geometric and modern, not the lavish French Art Deco style, but much more Breuerv and Bauhaus. I asked Mark Stevens for some clarification about the motives behind Bacon’s visual leanings. 

PAB: Does it make sense to you that he artistically gravitated toward the more austere modernistic aspect of the period?

MS: I think his desire was to find what was most radical or “advanced” in the 

Bacon (1909-1992) is known for being a self-taught “force” in modern figurative painting. His subjects often provoke unease in viewers for their gritty, fleshy looks at the human figure laid bare psychologically. Therefore, I was greatly intrigued when I learned that Bacon could be counted among those fine artists (like Raoul Dufy) who had early stints as designers during the Art Deco years. 

I turned to Cullman Center scholar Mark Stevens, who is currently at work, with Annalyn Swan, on a definitive Bacon biography, to give me some insight into what effect those years might have had on Bacon.

PAB: Bacon spent most of 1927 in Paris, 

The Library is home to the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Every year, a new group comes in with fascinating projects, and work extensively with the Research Library’s collections. This year, we were privileged to have well-known art critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Stevens as a fellow. Mark, who has written about Willem De Kooning, is working on a biography of the famous twentieth century English painter Francis Bacon. 

During my research into the Art Deco years, I ran across the fact that Bacon was a furniture and rug designer from 1929 to 1933, and had been influenced by travel to Berlin (1926) and Paris (1927). He lived and breathed the 

In New York Magazine, there is an interesting article written by Jerry Saltz that asks, Where Are All the Women? at the MoMA. The author states that the:

MoMA is our fountain of youth, our Garden of Eden, our Promised Land. But all these things will not last much longer if this institution continues excluding women from the display of its permanent collection of painting and sculpture from 1879 to 1969, which lives on the fourth and fifth floors. Everything about this museum rides on the vibrancy and diversity depicted there, and MoMA is allowing that life to drain out. It is slowly turning the history of modernism into a procession of dead presidents and greatest hits, in 

The lovely image above, of insects in different life stages, came from the hand of Maria Sibylla Merian, an early German naturalist who exemplifies the diy approach to observation, documentation, and dissemination of new knowledge in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. Individuals at this time sought to document the worlds that were slipping away as quickly as they were being “discovered,” and the talented Maria Sibylla Merian was one of these self-taught scholars.

This is our initial Blog entry, we are the Art Collection at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and would just like to say HELLO. We are intending to provide a blog/ongoing conversation concerning the Art scene in New York, as well as info about interesting books, exhibits, events, buildings, openings, closings, etc…

At this time, we would like to provide a little plug for an upcoming exhibition of Heidi Yockey, wife of Philip, Head of the Celeste Bartos Education Center at the Humanities. It is being held at the Brooklyn Artists Gym, 168 - 7th Street, Brooklyn, New York (http://www.brooklynartistsgym.com/), from November 3rd – 8th. The opening reception