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In my recent article about the Whistler painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I admitted to being no expert in art appreciation. I now realize that was a needless confession.
Apparently, the amateur aesthete can abandon artistic authenticity.
Continue reading “How To View Art”
PURPLE AND ROSE: THE LANGE LEIZEN OF THE SIX MARKS.
J. M. Whistler, 1864.
I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently to see James McNeill Whistler’s 1864 work “Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks”
The painting depicts Whistler’s model (and of course, partner) Joanna Hiffernan in a classic Whistler composition, here given an oriental setting in the sitting-room of his studio. The details in the picture display some of Whistler’s personal collection and reveal his burgeoning interest in East Asian art.
Being no expert on the artistic merits of the painting itself, I thought I would concentrate instead on the terminology of its title, littérateur that I might be.
And as Wildean that I am, I was drawn immediately to the reference to “Six Marks” because the expression The Six-Mark Tea-Pot is the caption to a well-known cartoon satirizing the aesthetic movement, and I was anxious to decipher its coupling with the “Lange Leizen” of the low-country.
Continue reading “Six Marks”