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Bird Watchers, 1948
Egg tempera on gesso board
George Tooker (American, 1920 - 2011)
Although he was raised in a religious family, Tooker stopped going to church when he began attending art school. Nevertheless, the religious art of the past affected him deeply, as evident in Bird Watchers. "I wanted to paint a positive picture," he explained, "a religious picture without religious subject matter. I thought watching birds was a good subject which could get close to a religious picture, but I was not yet ready to make a painting with a religious subject." (1)The painting is based on quattrocento Italian prototypes, but the faces are, for the most part, modeled on Tooker himself, his friends, and his family. His sister posed for two figures-the woman on the bridge and the one in the red-cowled coat-and his mother is in the slate-blue coat and hat. (2)
The painting is most likely set in Manhattan's Central Park. Although the figures are clearly from the late 1940s, Tooker removed all excess detail from their clothing in order to emphasize their timeless simplicity. For instance, the topcoat of the main figure has no buttons or buttonholes and becomes a loose robe of indeterminate style.
The composition suggests the Crucifixion, with the figures of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, and the apostles and soldiers at the foot of the cross, which is represented by the tree to the right. The panel itself, with its arched top, refers to Renaissance altarpieces. Tooker often plays deep and shallow spaces against each other. The space in "Bird Watchers" opens deeply on the left and is brought up abruptly on the right, as in many works by the artist.
To begin the painting process, Tooker transfers the outlines of a drawing to the panel by tracing on a sheet of paper coated with red pigment mixed with water or alcohol. He then applies a medium-toned wash across the surface of the entire panel. As Tooker mixes and applies pigment six days a week to a painting created through this process,the image grows in density, richness, and depth. Such a painting may take two or more months of intense effort before it is finished. Tooker paints from back to front, from the most distant part of the image to the foreground. Like the majority of the works he produced after 1945, “Bird Watchers” is executed in egg-yolk tempera. He applied the paint to untempered pressed-wood board that had been covered with five or six coats of gesso, a fine white ground layer made of powdered chalk mixed with thin rabbit-skin glue.
Within the confines of the tempera medium, an artist must work with careful deliberation, precision, and forethought. Thus egg-tempera is just the right medium to showcase Tooker's contemplative sensiblities, which inspire works of art that are intellectually forceful as well as meticulously crafted. By masterfully exploiting the richness and density of that medium, which has played a pivotal role in the history of Western art, Tooker pays homage to the visual past. In so doing, he successfully draws upon traditional themes to enhance his unique contemporary vision.
George Tooker was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a municipal bond broker, and the family lived comfortably. Shortly after Tooker was born, the family moved to Bellport, Long Island. He began high school in Bellport, but his parents insisted that he receive a more solid education and sent him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for the last two years. While he did not particularly enjoy Phillips, he did manage to spend a great deal of time in the art studio making landscape drawings and watercolors.
After graduating in 1938, Tooker attended Harvard University, where he majored in English literature. At Harvard he began to sense the uses of art as a tool for social change and became an admirer of the Mexican muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose' Orozco.
After graduating from Harvard in 1942 and a brief stint in the Marines, he attended classes at the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with Reginald Marsh. He made many contacts in New York, including Paul Cadmus and Jared and Margaret French. Under Cadmus's influence, Tooker began to paint in the traditional Renaissance tempera technique that marks his mature works. In 1949 Tooker met the painter William Christopher, who remained his life partner until Chistopher's death in 1973.
Tooker's painting increasingly received recognition with his one-man shows in New York in 1951 and 1955 and the commission to design the sets for Gian Carlo Menotti's opera "The Saint of Bleecker Street" in 1954. His success continued through the 1960s; he was included in numerous exhibitions and taught at the Art Students League from 1965 to 1968.
Tooker now lives in Hartland, Vermont, and spends part of every winter in a studio on Long Island. After moving to Vermont he created a major painting for the Roman Catholic church in Windsor entitled “The Seven Sacraments”, which was dedicated in 1981.
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"Acknowledged as the first museum in the world dedicated solely to collecting American art, the NBMAA is renowned for its preeminent collection spanning three centuries of American history. The award-winning Chase Family Building, which opened in 2006 to critical and public acclaim, features 15 spacious galleries which showcase the permanent collection and upwards of 25 special exhibitions a year featuring American masters, emerging artists and private collections. Education and community outreach programs for all ages include docent-led school and adult tours, teacher services, studio classes and vacation programs, Art Happy Hour gallery talks, lectures, symposia, concerts, film, monthly First Friday jazz evenings, quarterly Museum After Dark parties for young professionals, and the annual Juneteenth celebration. Enjoy Café on the Park for a light lunch prepared by “Best Caterer in Connecticut” Jordan Caterers. Visit the Museum Shop for unique gifts. Drop by the “ArtLab” learning gallery with your little ones. Gems not to be missed include Thomas Hart Benton’s murals “The Arts of Life in America,” “The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, September 11, 2001” by Graydon Parrish,” and Dale Chihuly’s “Blue and Beyond Blue” spectacular chandelier. Called “a destination for art lovers everywhere,” “first-class,” “a full-size, transparent temple of art, mixing New York ambience with Yankee ingenuity and all-American beauty,” the NBMAA is not to be missed."
www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33847-d106105-Revi...
www.nbmaa.org/permanent-collection
The NBMAA collection represents the major artists and movements of American art. Today it numbers about 8,274 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photographs, including the Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection, which features important works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, and Maxfield Parrish.
Among collection highlights are colonial and federal portraits, with examples by John Smibert, John Trumbull, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and the Peale family. The Hudson River School features landscapes by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Martin Johnson Heade, John Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. Still life painters range from Raphaelle Peale, Severin Roesen, William Harnett, John Peto, John Haberle, and John La Farge. American genre painting is represented by John Quidor, William Sidney Mount, and Lilly Martin Spencer. Post-Civil War examples include works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, George de Forest Brush, and William Paxton, and 19 plasters and bronzes by Solon Borglum. American Impressionists include Mary Cassatt, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Willard Metcalf, and Childe Hassam, the last represented by eleven oils. Later Impressionist paintings include those by Ernest Lawson, Frederck Frieseke, Louis Ritman, Robert Miller, and Maurice Prendergast.
Other strengths of the twentieth-century collection include: sixty works by members of the Ash Can School; significant representation by early modernists such as Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber; important examples by the Precisionists Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Preston Dickinson, and Ralston Crawford; a broad spectrum of work by the Social Realists Ben Shahn, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Jack Levine; and ambitious examples of Regionalist painting by Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton, notably the latter’s celebrated five-panel mural, The Arts of Life in America (1932).
Works by the American Abstract Artist group (Stuart Davis, Ilya Bolotowsky, Esphyr Slobodkina, Balcomb Greene, and Milton Avery) give twentieth-century abstraction its place in the collection, as do later examples of Surrealism by artists Kay Sage and George Tooker; Abstract Expressionism (Lee Krasner, Giorgio Cavallon, Morris Graves, Robert Motherwell, Sam Francis, Cleve Gray), Pop and Op art (Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselman, Jim Dine), Conceptual (Christo, Sol LeWitt), and Photo-Realism (Robert Cottingham). Examples of twentieth-century sculpture include Harriet Frishmuth, Paul Manship, Isamu Noguchi, George Segal, and Stephen DeStaebler. We continue to acquire contemporary works by notable artists, in order to best represent the dynamic and evolving narrative of American art.
Him along with Fedor, are two of the only public viewable diving tigers. They dive down to get meat thrown by their trainers.
Odin is a white bengal tiger.
Juliet here with her giant protector friend and room mate: Gogo. He's our main defender against all intruders
Mr Sinatra starts spreading the news to the graduates.
Frank Sinatra tribute at the University of Surrey Graduation Ball 2005 with the UniS Big Band.
Best love Sayings & Quotes
QUOTATION – Image :
As the quote says – Description
Romantic Love Quotes and Love Message for him or for her.
Sharing is Love – Don’t forget to share this quote and share the love !
- #Love
quotesdaily.net/love/love-quotes-for-him-for-her-romantic...
The Red-tailed Hawk always flew by when I was under trees. I never got a clear close shot. But the ID was easy.
I saw two eagles on this tree a few weeks ago, www.flickr.com/photos/dougfelts/2178776435/, and happened to drive by and see this guy there again. Took the right lens this time!
Inspired by her older sister Adalie's silliness, Kylia (in pink) shows us her own version of Silly Girl.
Say a pray for him this thursday morning. He shows us where the difficulties are.
Faça uma oração para ele nesta manhã de quinta. Ele nos mostra onde estão as dificuldades.
Centro do Rio 17 05 07
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly - a. 1950-1964
James Hampton
Born Elloree, SC 1909-died Washington, DC 1964
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly is a complex work of art created by James Hampton over a period of fourteen years. Hampton made the array based on several religious visions that prompted him to prepare for Christ's return to earth. His reference to the "third heaven" is based on scriptures citing it as the "heaven of heavens" -- God's realm.
Little is known about James Hampton, despite the grandeur of his self-chosen title, "Director, Special Projects for the State of Eternity." He was born in 1909 in Elloree, South Carolina, a small community of predominantly African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers. His father, a gospel singer and self-ordained Baptist minister, left his wife and four children to pursue his itinerant calling.
In 1928, when he was nineteen, Hampton moved to Washington, D.C., to live with an older brother. Drafted into the Army in 1942, he served with a segregated unit that maintained airstrips in Saipan and Guam during World War II. Hampton returned to Washington in 1945, and began working a year later as a janitor for the General Services Administration until his death in 1964. Although he expressed interest in finding "a holy woman," to assist with his life’s work he never married and had few close friends.
Hampton was raised as a fundamentalist Baptist, but he disliked the concept of a denominational God and attended a variety of the city’s churches. As early as 1931, Hampton believed that he began receiving visions from God, and by 1945 it appears he had made one small, shrine-like object while stationed on Guam. This piece became part of his larger work, and is now placed in front of the center pulpit.
His work on The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly probably began in earnest around 1950, when he rented a garage in his northwest Washington neighborhood, which was also the city's center of African-American business, religious, and night life.
Although a humble man, Hampton often referred to himself as "St. James." He may have considered himself a prophet like John, the author of The Book of Revelation, the biblical writing that inspired Hampton's belief in the Second Coming of Christ and his desire to build The Throne as a monument to the return of Christ to earth.
Hampton worked almost every day on his project, often starting his work at midnight after completing his janitorial duties. He continued his efforts until he died in 1964. The Throne was discovered and brought to the public's attention after his death. It is most likely Hampton's monument to his faith was never completely finished.
Hampton created his masterpiece in a rented carriage house, transforming its drab interior into a resplendent world. He hand-crafted many of the elements from cardboard and plastic, but added structure with found objects from his neighborhood, such as old furniture and jelly jars, and discards like light bulbs from the federal office buildings in which he worked. Hampton selected shimmering metallic foils, purple paper (now faded to tan), and other materials to evoke spiritual awe and splendor. The Throne embodies a complex fusion of Christianity and African-American spiritual practices overlaying themes of deliverance and freedom; it is both astonishingly splendid and profoundly humble.
The Throne derives coherence from parallel rows of components arranged on two levels. A cushioned throne at the rear is a focal point for the highly symmetrical array. Objects on the right refer to the New Testament and Jesus; those on the left to the Old Testament and Moses. Hampton also left texts written in an arcane spiritual script that he may have understood as the word of God as received by him.
Praised as America's greatest work of visionary art, Hampton's Throne reveals one man's faith in God as well as his hope for salvation. Although Hampton did not live to initiate a public ministry, his commanding phrase -- "FEAR NOT" -- summarizes his project's powerful message.
The piece is comprised of about 180 elements (of which 60 or so are currently on view) that Hampton put together himself, often covering each piece with silver and gold foil. He lived and worked in Washington, DC as a janitor in a federal office building. Many parts of The Throne are made from everyday things that had been discarded including sections of tables and chairs, vases and light bulbs. At the center of the piece are the words, “Fear Not.”
James Hampton's The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly is one of the most important and beloved artworks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), and it is full of mysteries. Discover more as Leslie Umberger, SAAM's curator of folk and self-taught art, shares insights into Hampton's life as a self-taught artist of color creating in Washington, DC, during the Civil Rights movement, and the lasting importance of his efforts. The Throne, a monumental artwork with more than 180 components wrapped in gold and silver foil, came fully to light only after the artist's death. While Hampton’s views on his life’s work went undocumented, the splendor and magnitude of his project is evident to all who experience this powerful yet enigmatic artwork.
americanart.si.edu/videos/james-hamptons-throne-third-hea...
Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art at SAAM, puts the work into context: “Hampton's masterpiece has become an enduring icon at SAAM. It's very human scale, there are crowns that look like they would fit right on your head or maybe that Hampton had worn. It's glimmering and resplendent and really beautiful. And it's also just profoundly humble, this amazing artwork that's made out of almost entirely discarded things just carefully covered and adorned and put together with such care. It's a very moving piece.”
Hampton spent about fourteen years assembling The Throne, basing it on a series of visions he had. Eventually, the work took on a life of its own, and he rented a carriage house near his home where he could work and assemble it. I wonder what it was like to see his creation unfold, glittering when a source of light hit one of the foil pieces.
The presentation in SAAM's galleries includes a few elements that Hampton likely did not regard as part of the altar itself, but were found near it, and that reveal his working methods: a chalkboard showing some of Hampton's sketches or working plans and a small book he kept, written primarily in an invented or "asemic" script, meaning it is unreadable or lacking specific semantic content. Hampton referred to himself as "Director, special projects for the state of eternity" as well as "Saint James," an echo of Saint John who was divinely instructed to record his vision of the second coming in a secret script in a small book.
Hampton had a vision that he brought to life but, sadly, died before he could complete it, let alone see it acquired by SAAM in 1970. “It rapidly became an audience favorite,” Umberger adds, “and it has rarely been off view since then.”
americanart.si.edu/blog/throne-james-hampton
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SAAM’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists. Represented in the museum’s collection are pieces that draw on tradition — such as quilts — as well as artworks that reveal a more personal vision. The museum has reimagined its permanent collection galleries for art by untrained artists, which now display several dozen recent acquisitions and an expanded presentation of the beloved Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly by James Hampton.
americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/folk-art
Recently acquired works by Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua, Emery Blagdon, David Butler, Ulysses Davis, Ralph Fasanella, Clementine Hunter, Dan Miller, Joe Minter, Eddy Mumma, J.B. Murray, Achilles Rizzoli, Melvin Way, Charlie Willeto, Clarence and Grace Woolsey, Purvis Young, and Albert Zahn join visitor favorites by Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Martín Ramírez, and Jon Serl. A striking presence in the galleries is a display of more than sixty sculptures and paintings by Emery Blagdon that represents his constantly changing Healing Machine. It is the second-largest installation of his work on public view in the United States.
The new installation of the Throne includes Hampton’s personal journal, written primarily in an asemic, or unreadable script, and a chalkboard still showing some of Hampton’s sketched plans for the Throne. Both are on public view for the first time; the journal will be on display for a limited time.
he Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists. SAAM is one of the only major museums to clearly advocate for a diverse populist and uniquely American voice within the context of what is traditionally considered great art.
Themes
Artists who are deeply engaged with personal exploration often create works of profound complexity. Recurring themes include struggle and persistence, salvation and protection, and the reshaping of personal worlds through creative expression.
The Collection
SAAM was among the first major museums to champion and collect works by self-taught artists. This aspect of SAAM’s collection spans works that emanate from folk traditions, such as quilting and woodcarving, to highly innovative works of great personal vision. It began in 1970, after the astonishing Throne of The Third Heaven of The Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, made by James Hampton, came to light in a makeshift studio not far from the museum following the artist’s death. Several donors made it possible for this iconic work, understood as a seminal representation of African American cultural and artistic heritage, to become the cornerstone of a collection that aimed to tell an ever-expanding story of America through the art of its people.
Since it acquired Hampton’s “Throne,” the museum has been recognized internationally as a leader in championing the importance of works by artists who have no formal art training. In the early 1980s and 1990s, Chuck and Jan Rosenak donated many important works to the museum. SAAM’s largest single acquisition of works by self-taught artists came in 1986 with more than 500 works from the ground-breaking collection of Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr., which firmly established the museum’s ongoing commitment to this work. Important gifts from Bill Arnett, David L. Davies, the Kallir Family, Josh Feldstein, Margaret Parsons, Judy A. Saslow, Patricia S. Smith, Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan, and others followed. In 2016, Douglas O. Robson donated ninety-three works of art from the collection of his mother, Margaret Z. Robson.
Today, SAAM’s collection of folk and self-taught art features more than 400 artists and 1,300 works of art. The collection is one of the most visited and widely admired of its kind.
americanart.si.edu/art/highlights/folk
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