BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

Joan Miró. Still Life with Old Shoe. Paris, January 24-May 29, 1937 By Alexandra A Jopp Art had an important role in Communist revolutionary activity in Europe between the wars through the method of “socialist realism,” in which the French Communist Party tried to “dictate form as well as content to those artists who were Party members.” (Lewis 61) The approach was formulated in 1932 by Stalinist apparatchiks in the Soviet Union and covered all spheres of artistic activity – literature, drama, cinema, painting, sculpture, music and architecture. Helena Lewis affirms the main principles of socialist realism: “it was to be a historically truthful and concrete depiction of reality with a thematic emphasis on the coming of the revolution.” It was also important, according to the method, for artists to make their works consistent with the themes of socialist ideological reforms and the education of workers in the socialist spirit. As British art critic Herbert Read said, “Socialist re...

Artist Thomas Eakins 1889 Type Oil on canvas Dimensions 214 cm × 300 cm (84⅜ in × 118⅛ in)           Location John Morgan Building at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania By Alexandra A Jopp & Ronald Hawkins For the art historian who embraces semiotics, meaning is ever-changing. Aspects of works of art become wild cards whose interpretations vary across cultures and eras, so that, “An image means one thing in one context, something else in another.” (Hatt 208) In its strictest form, semiotics holds that all verbal “signs” (words) and, less obviously and more controversially, all visual “signs” (images) are arbitrary conventions, names and pictures that we connect to concepts for no other reason than that we, as a society, decided to do so. While this is the orthodox method (as defined by Ferdinand de Saussure), the reform school of semiotics (offered by Charles Sanders Peirce) takes a more realist app...

Le café La Fleur (55 rue des Alexiens 1000 Bruxelles) March 1953. From left to right: Marcel Mariën, Camille Goemans, Gérard Van Bruaene, Irène Hamoir,  Georgette Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens, Louis Scutenaire, René Magritte and Paul Colinet. By Alexandra A Jopp The “other” has performed many functions throughout human history. It has variously been a source of fear, fascination, inspiration, exoticism, disgust and many things in between. One consistent theme emerges, though: how one defines the other (whatever it may be in a given situation) often goes a long way toward defining oneself. This self-identification through proxy was never more true – or more intentional – than in the Surrealists’ conception of otherness and their investigation of it through ethnography. Surrealists went beyond mere curiosity about the exotic features of other cultures that typified movements such as Orientalism. In a world based on modern, rational thought that Surrealists found to be lack...

By Alexandra A Jopp Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon is best remembered as the director of fine arts under Napoleon and a central figure in the establishment of the Louvre. Born in 1747 to a family of landed gentry, Denon pursued artistic training as an engraver. Following early attempts at literature and printmaking, Denon accompanied Napoleon’s army during the Egyptian campaign of 1798, and shortly thereafter, was appointed the first director of the Louvre, known in the early 19th century as the Musée Napoléon. Denon’s goal was to make Louvre “the world’s most beautiful institution,” and many people would argue that he achieved this ambition. Some of Europe’s most glorious works of art arrived in Paris during Denon’s tenure, and they went straight to the Louvre. Napoleon, despite having very little appreciation for art, considered the museum to be “an important symbol of national glory that would bring attention and splendor to his reign.” (p. 90.) The objects acquired by Denon ...

Though best remembered as Edward Weston’s model, Tina Modotti was a fine 20th century photographer and activist who fought on behalf of Mexican peasants in the 1930s. She was a woman who "chose to identify herself with the arts, with the poor, and with the solidarity of the revolution." By Alexandra Jopp In Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life , Mildred Constantine describes Modotti as: “Tina Modotti was many things: a gifted photographer, passionate companion of artists and revolutionaries. Fighter for the cause of humanity, "Maria" (her nom de gnerre) who succored the children and wounded in Spain, the tempestuous beauty of unabashed sensuality. Who was she? Dead, she is a legend poeticized and victimized by conjecture, anecdotes and, where fact is lacking, imaginative embellishments.” Looking for clues in Modotti’s early life, that might have led to her artistic development, the art critics cite her youthful identification with the class struggle. Following h...

   Hudson River School painter famous for landscapes of the American West By Alexandra Jopp An Arizona Sunset Near the Grand Canyon (1898). Thomas Moran was one of the best-known and most influential painters of the Hudson River School working in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. His iconic watercolors and oil paintings of the American West not only made him one of the country’s preeminent landscape artists, but also helped to convince members of Congress to establish the United States’ first national park at Yellowstone in 1872. While he was best known for these works, his subjects also included literary, marine, European and Mexican themes, among others. Thomas Moran Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, 1859. Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872. Golden Gate Thomas Moran No date. Glorious Venice, 1888 Private collection. Moran was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England, on February 12, 18...

Exhibition – Enola Gay: Hiroshima as Tragedy By Alexandra A. Jopp Doves fly around the Atomic Bomb Dome at the Peace Memorial Park after their release during the memorial ceremony in Hiroshima, on August 6. The western Japanese city marked its 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing. AFP/ Getty Images / Kazuhiro Nogi Every year on August 6, the world observes the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Early on that morning in1945, a B-29 Superfortress bomber known as the Enola Gay, under the command of Col. Paul Tibbets, dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The explosion killed as many as 70,000 people in an instant and left tens of thousands more with injuries and illnesses that would later claim their lives. At that moment, a new era – a nuclear era – began. Every August 6 reminds us that memory cannot be morally neutral. The story of the Enola Gay is the story of Hiroshima’s tragedy. It is the story of the destruction wreaked by nuclear wea...