Doors of Paris & Madrid

 In Europe, you are very aware of the architecture, sometimes even the smallest aspects of it.  A few years ago in Paris, I noticed unique doorknobs and door hardware.  I took a few photos, and I'm featuring the ones I liked best in today's blog.  Most were on houses and businesses right on the sidewalks, not on famous landmarks.  In future travels I'll be looking for others.

The first photo is a doorknob taken by my daughter on a recent visit to Madrid.  Liking doorknobs must run in the family.

                                photo--Clarice Moran


                                                          This photo and those that follow--JoAnne Young

This fellow seems a bit unwelcoming.

                                                         

This nice, golden brass curve appears on

the door of a business.

A variation on the plain wooden doorknob

This handsome lion is a door knocker

Influence of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

               "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"(1984) by Gottfried Helnwein is a parody of Edward Hopper's most popular painting, "Nighthawks"(1942).

                   Characters in "Boulevard" are (l to r) James Dean, Humphrey Bogart,
                   Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley

 I wrote an article in 2011, "Living with Nighthawks"  which discussed both "Nighthawks and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."
Since writing that article, several new parodies of both paintings have surfaced. Since "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is itself a parody of "Nighthawks," what you have are many parodies of a parody.  One of the most popular influences of "Boulevard" is the punk rock group, Green Day's 2006 Grammy winning song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" on their album American Idiot. The song was the Video of the Year from the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards.  It is a lovely song and hardly falls into the category of "punk."  Have a listen.

A line from the song, "I walk this empty street/On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams/where the city sleeps." The broken dreams in the real lives of the four characters in the Heinwein painting are well know. All rose to mega-star status and then their lives and dreams were dashed:  Presley died after extended use of alcohol and drugs; Monroe died of a possible drug overdose;  Bogart abused alcohol;  Dean died in an auto accident while only in his 20's.  In the original "Nighthawks" painting the four figures seem equally isolated and alone sitting in a cafe in the middle of the night. "'Nighthawks':  The Parodies" is an entire website devoted to old and new theater and art about that painting. See the website.

Helnwein painted separate portraits (which you can see at emovieposter.com ) of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart  from "Boulevard."  I can't show them here because of copyright permissions.

For me, the extreme influence of both Hopper and Helnwein' paintings is unusual. I can think of few other modern paintings having such influence.  Sure the Renaissance painting "Mona Lisa" has had influence and parody, but possibly not in its own time.  Edward Hopper remains one of my favorite artists, but sadly, his day has ended. Hopper died in 1967 after a very successful life as an artist.  Helnwein currently lives in a castle near Dublin, Ireland with his wife and four children.  

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Cinderella, blue ponchos, and Artpark in upstate New York

Overview of Niagara Falls, American side with a bit of Canadian falls around
the corner.  Niagara is only 5 miles from Lewiston, home of Artpark.

      I couldn't resist the opportunity to see my granddaughter Katie, a theater arts major, play Cinderella's stepsister and to visit an area of the USA I'd never seen.  So, my husband and my daughter and family met in the tiny town of Lewiston in Upstate New York at Artpark.  This venue hosts world renowned performers in concerts and musicals every week, June to September.  Some of this summer's performers:  Foreigner, Sheryl Crow, Sting, and Bob Dylan.  

    Katie's performance was in Rogers & Hammerstein's "Cinderella" complete with a 21 piece orchestra, fabulous costumes and sets borrowed from the New York City Opera.  We saw the play twice and loved it both times. For us, of course, Katie made it grand.  She graduates next June from Elon and I'm looking forward to traveling anywhere to see her perform.

It was frowned upon  to take photos from the audience, so I do not have many

of the play.  I did take this no flash photo.  It is the scene where Cinderella 

crashes the ball and meets the prince.   

The two stepsisters complain about Cinderella.  Katie is in the pink gown.

This photo is from "The Sentinel," a Lewiston area newspaper.  See other

photos of the play from "The Sentinel" on their website under PICS(takes a 

few minutes to load the site).

While we were in the area, we visited Niagara Falls and the Eire Canal, which none of us had seen.  

Here we are all dressed up in the blue ponchos given to us by the boat,

"Maid of the Mist" before we head out to get as close to the falls as possible.

That small square object in the stream leading from the falls is "Maid of 

the Mist," the boat we were in to see an up close look at Horseshoe Falls,

the Canadian side of Niagara.  It was fabulous and  very wet even with

those blue ponchos.

This is the boat.  All that blue looked hilarious to me.  From a distance it

looked like a boatload of Smurfs.

This is one of the locks of the Erie Canal.  I had to remember

the song I learned in the 5th grade, "I've got a mule her name

is Sal, 15 miles on the Erie Canal."  In the early days, mules

pulled the boats from the little road to the side of the canal.

The actors in "Cinderella" were provided a lovely room complete

with fireplace in this hotel overlooking the Niagara River. Katie

couldn't believe she was paid to stay in a lovely room and sing and

dance all day, an actor's dream.

While we were there, Center Street in Lewiston was closed to traffic for an 

exhibit and sale of arts wares.

     Overall, it was a great trip.  The only downside was the depressed condition of the town of Niagara and Erie.  All of their industry and jobs have been moved abroad.  That will be a discussion for another blog entry.  

   

   

Stack rocks; create a sculpture, aka cairn

                                         
                                               My name for this fellow is "Rock Man."  


        Walking near the beach one morning, I saw a house with a corner of the front yard landscaped with many stacks of rocks.   Some looked like small people, others abstract sculptures.  Through an internet search, I discovered such balanced rock stacks are called "cairns," (pronounced karen) and creating them goes back to ancient history. 
        What do such stacked rocks mean?  Possibly the ones I saw in a front yard are mostly for decoration and interest.  In distant history, they may have been part of worship rituals or a wish for good fortune.  On hiking trails and in the mountains, they have been used to mark direction.  They've also been stacked on graves.  Stacking stones is a marker of many cultures and religions.  They can be found all over the world on almost every continent.
        You can find an abundance of cairns in Scotland.  Our word "cairn" derives from  Scottish Gaelic.  "Rock Man" in the photo above is a common type of cairn.  In German a cairn is called a "steinmann" (stone man).  In the Italian alps they're called "ometto" or small man.  
       Some people create the cairn and then add silicone glue to keep the rocks from falling.  The purist tries to stack them without adhesive.  You can even buy them.  If you do an internet search for "cairn,"  you will find several sites that sell them or the stones for making one.  They're even available on ebay.  One good site for photos and detailed info about cairns is Wikipedia, and there are many others.
       More photos from the yard near my house follow:

                                               Since the yard where I saw my first cairns
                                               is at the beach, I suspect this one can be
                                               called "Surfer Man."

                                            This cairn could serve as a table.

Cairn as abstract sculpture

Another abstract sculpture, not part of the other

groupings.

The Whimsy of Parrish's "Daybreak," "Dinkey-Bird, "Air Castles"

"Daybreak"

  
      "Daybreak" painted by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) was the most popular art print of the 20th Century.  It was painted in 1922 for the express purpose of use as a prototype for art prints.  It has been the most reproduced art image in history.  In the few years after the 18"x30" oil painting on board was reproduced for prints, it is said that one of every four American homes had a copy on its wall.  It has outsold prints of da Vinci's "The Last Supper" and Andy Warhol's "Campbell Soup Cans.
        I am lucky enough to have spotted a copy years ago at an antique show.  Mine is shown in the photo at the top of this page.  It is one of the early 18"x30" copies in a vintage frame from the period.  A Parrish frame is usually a gold color with an inner border of dark blue, also known as "Parrish blue."  The blue on my frame has darkened, but it is easy to see that it was blue at one time.

detail from vintage frame














   I have enjoyed its whimsy for  more than twenty years.  It set me on a quest for information about Maxfield Parrish and a search for more of his prints.  I always look for bargains in such purchases.  I bought "Daybreak" at bargain price and have since acquired prints of "The Dinkey-Bird" (1904) and "Air Castles" (1905).  

                                                                    "The Dinkey-Bird"

"Air Castles"

  

     You have to be a bit of a Romantic to enjoy Parrish. His images are so imaginative and unusual.  There have been several surges of public interest in him since his death.  One was in the 1970's.  His prints suddenly started appearing mostly as posters.  I suspect they went on the walls of college dorm rooms.  

    Parrish's original painting of "Daybreak" sold for $7.5 million at a Christie's auction in 2006.  The buyer was Mel Gibson's wife, Robyn.  She sold it at another Christie's auction in 2010 for $5.2 million.  Those are the largest prices for any Parrish work.  "Daybreak" has always been privately owned, but went on loan to the National Museum of American Illustration in 2006.  That was its most recent public showing. 

      Parrish the man is himself a study in whimsy.  He had no formal training in art.  His father painted as a hobby and encouraged his son to paint as well.  He did travel to Europe to view the art of the Masters in museums and other places.  He was married with two children, but kept a mistress, Susan Lewin,  in his own house for 40 years until she was in her 70's.  She lived in a maid's room that had a secret passageway to Parrish's studio.  

     Mrs. Parrish knew about the relationship and tolerated it, but the children did not know until they were adults.  In a plan for the painting, Susan is a third figure in "Daybreak" next to the right column, but evidently Parrish changed his mind and did not include her.  The leaning figure in the painting is his ten year old daughter Jean Parrish.  The reclining figure is her friend Kitty Owen, who was the granddaughter of William Jennings Bryan.  

     His subjects are often nude, but never sexy nude.  Instead, some of them appear almost androgynous.  Is Dinkey-Bird male or female?
      Parrish was once asked, "What does "Daybreak" mean?"  His answer was that it speaks for itself.  He had nothing to add.  In that case, one person seems to be waking another as the sun comes up in the background.  What do you think? Sometimes an artist does not see all the possible meanings in his work.

      Many parodies and imitations of "Daybreak" have appeared.  For example, in 1995, Michael Jackson created a music video, "You Are Not Alone."  He used photos of himself and his then wife Lisa Marie Presley posing like "Daybreak."  A 1986 Nestle tv commercial for Alpine White featured a scene imitating "Daybreak."

Here is a Sesame Street parody:

The Moody Blues album "The Present" features a stylized version of the painting:

Resources:

Gilbert, Alma.  Maxfield Parrish The Masterworks, Berkeley, CA.  Ten Speed Press, 1992.

Ludwig, Coy.  Maxfield Parrish. Watson--Guptill Publications, New York, 1973.

PRWEB

   

       

Living with "Nighthawks"

"Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper on a poster.

(click on all  photos to enlarge)

        Every day for the past 25 years, except when traveling, I've seen "Nighthawks" perched on the wall over my desk.  Since I use my computer several times every day, I see it more than once, yet I've never tired of it.  My copy is a framed Art Institute of Chicago poster featuring the Edward Hopper painting.  "Nighthawks" has lived at the Art Institute since a few months after its completion in 1942.  The Institute bought it for $3000.  Today, its value is priceless. It is Hooper's most popular and famous painting.  
         I can't say why its appeal has been so lasting for me.  It's stark, plain lines, colors, mood,
I'm not sure.  The emptiness and loneliness of modern life is a theme in many of Hopper's works.  He did say once referring to "Nighthawks," "unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city."
       Through the years, I've also come across several parodies of the painting.  The most well-known is Gottfried Helnwein's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," featuring Hollywood icons Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Elvis Presley as replacement  figures in the original.  I have a large copy of that one too.  It hangs in a small foyer next to my dining room.  I've had it since my husband and I purchased it in New Orleans in 1989.  I've never tired of it either.  

                                             Helnwein's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
                                                           (click on photo to enlarge)
     Hopper scholar Gail Levin says that Helnwein is comparing the tragic lives of the four actors with the bleak mood of "Nighthawks."  Many other paintings, literature, film, music and
even television have used "Nighthawks" as inspiration.  The blog "Nighthawks Forever", created in 2005, provides links to the continuously growing number of parodies and homages to the painting.  
    I also have a "New Yorker" cover from 2000, that features figures in the same diner on New Year's Eve.

                                                       "Nighthawks" on New Year's Eve


     This parody adds a clock on the wall showing a few minutes until midnight.  A few years ago, I found a Christmas card depicting the diner scene.  Naturally, that was my card to send out that year.

                                                        Santa as nighthawk   

     Two explanations have been offered as reasons for the name of the painting.  Nighthawks
is a description of people who like to stay up late as the bird the nighthawk does.  This seems the most logical explanation to me.  The characters are up after the streets are empty and the diner almost empty.  Another reason given for the title is that the man sitting with the woman has a very hawklike nose.  That explanation doesn't cut it for me.  It gives no meaning to the other characters.  
    The diner itself is a copy of one that was in Greenwich Village in New York near Hopper's own neighborhood.  That restaurant has since been demolished.  A replica of the diner has been used as a set in several movies, most notably "Pennies from Heaven" (1981), "The End of Violence" (1997), and several others.  In the 2009 film "Night at the Museum:  Battle of the Smithsonian,"  "Nighthawks" is one of the artworks brought to life.  Check "Nighthawks" for descriptions of its use in almost all the arts.
     I'm always looking for other examples and parodies.