Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, China. His father ran a book store. Cai was able to read widely, including books that would be forbidden under Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1967). Then Cai had to help his father burn books. He received a BFA (1985) in set design from the Shanghai Drama Institute. He began making gunpowder drawings in1984. Why gunpowder? Quanzhou was located across the straits that separated mainland China from Taiwan. Cai recalled, “I grew up with gunpowder. They (Chinese Nationalist) were always bombing us and we them. It was a part of my life.” Fireworks also were and are a part of every Chinese festival. 

 

Primeval Fireball (1991) (exhibition in Tokyo) includes several gunpowder drawings from The Projects for Projects series exhibit. Each piece is titled and falls into Cai’s category of Projects for Extraterrestrials. Cai perfected the technique of spreading paper on the floor, sprinkling gunpowder as desired, placing a second sheet of paper on top to control the fire, and igniting it. Over time, he developed great control over the process and added colored gunpowder that was used in fireworks. 

“Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters” (1993) is No. 10, and it is the first large work from Cai’s Project for Extraterrestrials. Charges were placed across 6.2 miles of the Gobi Desert at the western end of the Great Wall. Small charges were placed 1.86 miles apart, and larger charges .62 miles apart. At dusk on February 27, 1993, the first charge was ignited and the remaining fired in sequence over a period of fifteen minutes. Forty thousand residents and tourists witnessed the performance.

“Transient Rainbow” (2002), a performance on the East River on June 29, 2002, in New York City was sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. One thousand, three-inch, multi-colored peony fireworks were fitted with computer chips. They were set off at 9:30 PM. The “Transient Rainbow” lasted 15 seconds.

“Footprints of History” (2008) was Cai’s spectacular firework display over the Bird Cage Stadium at the Beijing Olympics. Twenty-nine footsteps were set off in sequence. They extended 9 ½ miles from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic Stadium and lasted 63 seconds.

In 2009 the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited of Cai’s gunpowder drawings to honor Anne d’Harnoncourt, the director of the museum who died unexpectedly in June 2008. The exhibition opened on December 11, 2009, with “Fallen Blossoms” (2009) (60’ x 85’), an explosion in front of the façade of the Museum. It was intended as a gift to the City and was witnessed by a large audience. The blossom was made of fuses placed on a metal net attached to a scaffold. The title was taken from a Chinese proverb that references the great loss experienced when a life is cut short. Anne d’Harnonocourt was sixty-four years old when she died.

Cai has received many awards and honors, among them the Praemium Imperiale (2012) that recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts, a category not covered by the Nobel Prize. He also received the first United States Department of State Medal of Arts for commitment to international cultural exchange. Although Cai lives in New York City, his works are commissioned internationally. His works deal with such human issues as climate change, the pandemic, increased national conflicts, and materialism. 

“Remembrance” (2014) is the fireworks component of a larger Cai exhibition titled The Ninth Wave, held at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. It is China’s first contemporary art museum, opened in 2012. The $64 million cost of the Museum, was paid for the by Shanghai government. The Power Station is located on the Huangpu River, and “Remembrance” was performed from a long barge.

“Black Wave” (2023) is the first phase of When the Sky Blossoms with Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) (2023). It was performed on Yotsukura Beach in Iwaki City, Japan, to recognize and remember the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami that took place there in 2011. The first sequence titled “Black Wave” was to recall and remember the pain of the past.

“Memorial Monument” (2023), the second phase, recognizes the loss suffered during the earthquake and tsunami, the COVID pandemic, and wars. 

“When the Sky Blossoms with Sakura” (2023) was the third phase of the performance that filled the sky with beautiful pink blossoms. The cherry blossom is the unofficial flower of Japan, and the Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual event in Japan. Cherry blossoms are symbols of spring and renewal of life; the festival it is a time for family and friends, for joy, and for renewed vitality. Cherry blossoms last only two weeks. Their arrival is time for great joy and reflection.

The entire performance lasted thirty minutes. Forty thousand choreographed fireworks were launched from the water. The display was 1312 feet wide and 427 feet high. On the day of the event, June 26, 2023, Cai commented on the significance of the work: “Thank you to the beautiful sea and sky of Yotsukura, and the rare cooperation and companionship of the sound of the wind and waves in this worrisome June…Mankind today is facing various challenges such as coexisting with the pandemic, economic decline, deglobalization, and increased national and cultural conflicts. Through the sakura in the sky, I was expressing the story of the friendship between the people of Iwaki and me, which transcends politics and history, and I hope that the artwork will inspire the world with faith and hope.”

Cai lived in Iwaki, Japan from 1986 to 1994, and he had many friends. His first major performance in Japan in 1994 was in this Iwaki location. The Sakura blooming in the sky echoes the initiative in 2015 by Cai and his friends, who called themselves “10,000” (the many or infinite), to create the Project to Plant Ten Thousand Cherry Blossom Trees.  

“From gunpowder, from its very essence, you can see so much of the power of the universe—how we came to be. You can express these grand ideas about the cosmos. But at the same time, we live in the world where explosions Kill people, and then you have this other immediate context for the work.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. 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.

 

 

America’s Kentucky Derby on May 6, Preakness on May 25, and Belmont Stakes on June10 have been run for the year 2023. England’s Royal Ascot was run from June 20 through June 24. One other world class European horse race in 2023, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, will run during the first week of October at Longchamps race course in Paris. Longchamps, Paris’s most prestigious course, was built in 1857 on top of the ruins of an abbey that was destroyed during the French Revolution. Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie attended the first race at Longchamps on Sunday, April 27, 1857. 

Both artists Manet and Degas painted the races at Longchamps, concentrating on the horses and the track. The Italian artist Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) was more interested in the crowds of people who attended races. In “The Races at Longchamps from the Grandstand” (1883) (39”x48’’) De Nittis devoted two-thirds of the canvas to a view of the race from the top of the grandstand down to the track. He created several diagonals in the composition: people seated in the grandstand, people standing on the ground by the rails, a stretch of dirt track with horses working out, and the crowd behind the rail on the opposite side of the track. The diagonals are enclosed by the dark roof over the grandstand. 

Gentlemen in top hats and dark suits escort women wearing black dresses and a variety of black hats. Here and there he injects a dash of orange and red, picking up the color of the horses, and the orange fall foliage in the distance. De Nittis uses a light-yellow color to shine light on the manicured ground where some yellow chairs have been provided for the crowd. The track and the crowd standing beyond the rail are composed of a combination of yellows and orange-browns. Pops of white appear in shirt collars, pale skin, jockey silks, two tents, a white tower, and a few houses in the distance. White clouds complete the color palette. 

De Nittis was born in Barletta, a port city on the Adriatic on the west coast of Italy. He began art lessons at an early age in Naples, where he was admitted to the Realis Institution de Bella Art. He was expelled in1863 because he had opinions and spoke his mind. He said, “I became my own sole master.” He moved to Paris in 1868 where he became friends with Manet and Degas. 

Degas invited De Nittis to show his work with the Impressionists in their first exhibition in 1874. He was the only Italian artist invited. De Nittis is frequently listed with the Impressionists. However, he employed only some of the Impressionists’ style while maintaining a strong traditional realist style. De Nittis’s “In the Shade of the Trees on the Racecourse” (1874) illustrates these two styles. Like the Impressionists he was a plein-air painter. While Impressionists decided to use only the colors of the rainbow, De Nittis continued to employ black, and he did not use the colors of the rainbow to create shadows. The elegant top hat and suit are highlighted with grays, as is the shadow on the white collar. The lady’s lovely blue and white striped dress does not contain any orange or yellow to create highlights; the traditional white and gray are used. However, the dapples of sunlight visible through the trees and the leaves, are mere splotches of paint.

 Like the Impressionists, De Nittis painted outdoors and used a shorter brush stroke to paint objects in the distance. Most like the Impressionists, De Nittis was interested in painting scenes of modern life: racetracks, strollers on boulevards or boating on rivers, and the bourgeois middle-class enjoying life’s pleasures. This painting is also called “The Flirtation,” a delightful scene of people enjoying a sunny day, prancing horses, and fashionably dressed ladies strolling under parasols. De Nittis’s paintings were in great demand. His work sold well, causing some criticism by both French and Italian artists who called his work commercial and superficial.  

 

“Return from the Races” (1875) (23’’x45’’) (Philadelphia Museum of Art) depicts the bourgeoise sitting at outdoor tables and chairs, under the shade of leafy trees on a sunny afternoon. Horse-drawn carriages pass by on the way home from the race. Continuing to employ many black and white images, De Nittis included a wider palette of yellow, pink, tan, bright green, and light greens. The bark and fall foliage of the trees, more loosely and colorfully painted, stand out against a light blue sky with puffy white clouds. The shadows at the bottom of the clouds are an Impressionistic light purple. The more distant group of people is suggested by dabs and dots of paint. This work is part realism and part Impressionism.

“Lady Walking her Dog” (1878), also titled “The Return from the Races,” singles out one of the fashionably dressed ladies De Nittis often depicted. She is beautiful and self-assured. Her outfit consists of a black hat that smartly but suggestively veils her face. The collar of her coat flares out in in three tiers, and her sheer black scarf is tied in a bow. Five pairs of shiny black buttons close her belted coat. Light gray leather gloves complete her outfit. This is a fashion statement. Also making a statement is the large golden-brown mastiff that she holds by the collar with her right hand, and the small whip she holds in her left hand. The people and the city in the background to the left and right of her head, serve only to highlight her face, not calling attention to themselves. This De Nittis painting was exhibited at the 1878 World Expo in Paris.

De Nittis was immensely popular and sociable in his time. Among the several exhibitions he participated in was the 1876 Universal Exposition, where he exhibited 20 paintings and won a gold medal. That year he also was made a member of the French Legion of Honor. He frequently traveled between Paris and London where he continued to chronicle the middle-class in front of the two cities’ signature sights. He and his wife Leontine held one of Paris’s most lively salons at their home. The walls were covered with paintings by Corot, Degas, Manet, Monet, and Japanese woodcuts. Guests included such famous writers as Alexander Dumas, Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, Emil Zola, Edmond Goncourt, who wrote the Dictionary of Art History, and luminaries such as Princess Matilda Bonaparte. Meals were cooked by De Nittis, who was proud both of his art and his cooking. 

De Nittis died in Paris at age 38 from a stroke. A major retrospective of his work was held at The Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris in 1886. His work was featured at the Venice Biennale in 1901, 1914, and 1928. The Italian government issued the De Nittis postage stamp (1984) featuring the third section of his triptych “Le Course al Bois De Boulogne” (Longchamps) as a part of the Italian art series. The Impressionist artists such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas remain well-known, but De Nittis’s name has fallen by the wayside. The exhibition Small wonder: the forgotten art of Giuseppe de Nittis in New York in 1995 brought attention to his work.

The exhibition titled An Italian Impressionist in Paris: Giuseppe de Nittis, from November to February 2023, at The Phillips collection in Washington, D.C., continues to bring him well-deserved recognition.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. 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.

Keith Allen Haring (1958-1990) was born in Reading and raised in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He was the son of an engineer and amateur cartoonist. Growing up with Disney cartoons and Dr. Seuss, Haring loved cartoons and began drawing them at an early age. After graduating from high school, he began to study commercial art, but he decided it was not for him. He moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1978 to attend the School of Visual Arts. The New York art scene was flourishing. He joined this thriving art community and became friends with artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

His first drawings were on the matte black spaces between advertisements in the New York City subway stations. He said they were “a perfect place to draw.” From 1980 to 1985, using white chalk, he made over 5000 drawings. He developed several personal iconic images. A significant icon was “Radiant Baby.” Four babies crawl across the bottom of the drawing, and in the center of the heart-shaped head of an androgenous dancing figure is a “radiant baby.” The baby radiates lines of positive energy. For Haring, the baby was “the purest and most positive experience of human existence.” 

The radiant heart and dancing figure were influenced by the booming New York club scene, particularly Danceteria (1979-1986), where performers such as Madonna, Billy Idol, and Cyndi Lauper got their start. Positive energy lines radiate from everything and represent freedom, spontaneity, and joy. Haring stated, “I am becoming much more aware of movement. The importance of movement is intensified when a painting becomes a performance. The performance (the act of painting) becomes as important as the resulting painting.” His subway art was a performance of sorts because people often stopped and asked him questions: “I was always totally amazed that the people I would meet while I was doing them were really, really concerned with what they meant. The first thing anyone asked me, no matter how old, no matter who they were, was what does it mean?” Haring almost never titled his work.

By 1982, Haring’s hundreds of subway drawings were a major attraction, and he began to make a series of posters to support various messages. For Haring, “Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people.” Tony Shafrazi, a major art gallery owner in Soho, gave Haring a solo exhibition in 1982.  “Keith Haring Drawings, Tony Shafrazi Gallery” was the cover design for the exhibition in Soho. Four crawling babies occupy the center of the poster and are accompanied by a cross in a circle, referencing the various Jesus movements of the 1970’s and 80’s, like the Campus Crusade for Christ and American cult leader Jim Jones whose followers committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.

In the lower section of the drawing, barking dogs, are another of Haring’s iconic images. Dogs are generally thought of as “man’s best friend” and are trusted companions. In Haring’s world, discrimination, racism, drugs, AIDS (1981), and Three-Mile Island (1979) became causes for his social activism. Barking dogs were meant to act as warnings to viewers to stop and think of abuses of power present in society. At the top of the drawing, two robust figures lift a radiating third figure into the air. Caution and hope are depicted in the same work. 

In 1982, Haring became the first of twelve artists to show his work on the computer-animated billboard in Times Square, New York. 

The United Nations commissioned Haring to design an image to commemorate International Youth Year. His poster of the same name (1985) (11”x 8.5” lithograph) (edition of 1000) contains a brilliant blue figure radiating energy and holding up a globe, another Haring iconic image to represent world peace and unity. This frequently employed image represented his belief in the need for collaboration and positivity in a world faced with numerous global issues. 

“Free South Africa” (1985) (32”x40” lithograph) addresses one of the many critical issues Haring supported with his art. He distributed more than 20,000 posters in New York City in1986 to awaken consciousness about apartheid. In his journal he wrote, “Control is evil. All stories of white men’s ‘expansion’ and ‘colonization’ and ‘domination’ are filled with horrific details of the abuse of power and the misuse of people.” 

“Crack is Wack” (1986) was Haring’s first major outdoor mural. After trying to help his friend Benny get off crack cocaine, and Benny’s subsequent death, Haring painted this large mural on the wall of an abandoned handball court in Harlem. The large mural features the skull, ribcage, and arms and legs of a skeleton holding on to a burning zero-dollar bill. The crack pipe and the raging and dying figures deliver a strong anti-drug message.

Haring was arrested and faced jail and a fine when The Washington Post, The New York Post, and local people wrote to support the anti-crack image. As a result, Haring was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and paid a $100 fine. The mural was vandalized and had to be painted over. However, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation offered Haring eight sights for repainting the mural. He chose the original location. 

Haring voluntarily created from 1982 until 1989 over 50 public works of art many for hospitals, day care centers, and schools. He opened in Soho in1986 Pop Shop, a boutique to sell posters, prints, t-shirts, buttons, magnets, and more. Pop Shop made his art accessible to everyone. Haring said, “I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price. My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art.” 

As a gay man, he tackled the AIDS epidemic that started in 1981. “Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death” (1989) is one of many images Haring developed to awaken America to the AIDS crisis. The figures stamp their feet and cover their eyes, ears, and mouth, representing the three monkeys See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil. The images first appeared in a carving on a Japanese temple during the Muromachi period (1336-1573), and it has been in common use world-wide. Haring’s other AIDS related images depict loving couples and promote safe sex.

Haring formed the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989 to perpetuate his “artistic and philanthropic legacy through the preservation and circulation of his artwork and archives by providing grants to children in need and those affected by HIV/AIDS.” (Keith Haring Foundation web-site)

“The Last Rainforest” (1989) (detail) was one of Haring’s last three paintings. Haring traveled to Brazil frequently with Kenny Scharf and his Brazilian wife. His interest in saving the rainforest was intense. He planned an exhibition of 100 paintings to help create awareness of this environmental disaster. “The Last Rainforest” (72”x 96”) is a dense painting containing multiple colliding figures. Haring iconic images are included with burning, impaled, or roasting figures. Monsters, serpents, smoking guns, and stabbing knives, are woven together with branches of trees. 

“The Last Rainforest” (detail) illustrates the density and intensity of the entire painting. In the chaos, there is one peaceful detail: Radiant Baby. This time, the baby sits in the lotus position of the meditating Buddha. Radiant Baby evolved in Haring’s work, coming to represent a warning about nuclear proliferation and the meltdown of nuclear reactors such as those of Three-Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). Haring’s warnings were significant in all his work. In this instance Radiant Baby can be interpreted as Haring, knowing he has only a little time left, and has found peace in the chaos of the world. He painted only three of the 100 canvases, working on them as he was dying.

 

“Tuttomondo” (1989) (translation “All the World”) (591 square feet) was painted on the wall of the Church of Sant’ Antonio Abate in Pisa, Italy. In New York, Haring met graduate student Piergiorgio Castellani, who asked Haring to come to Pisa to paint the mural. The mural was painted in one week in mid-June 1989. Its theme is peace and harmony. The mural contains 30 Haring iconic figures, including red and yellow flying angels and dancing and loving people. In the center are a blue figure with a television for a head, another of Haring’s iconic figures, a red mother with a blue baby, and a red barking dog. At the top, a blue dolphin, another iconic figure, rides on the back of a purple figure. The popular image links humans with nature. Blue scissors cut in half the red serpent of evil. Haring stands at the base of the wall.

Haring describes the week-long experience:  “Every day there would be more and more people.” Haring later recalled, “When I put my last stroke on the wall, it all seems incredibly Felliniesque. It all seems utterly unreal–beyond anything I had ever experienced before.” This was Haring’s last wall mural. 

Keith Haring died from complications of AIDS on February 16, 1990. His memorial service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was attended by over 1000 people.  

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. 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.

“I don’t think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.  It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.” (Keith Haring)