Art Extra ...

By J D Larson

You might have heard of the legendary painter Vincent Van Gogh. He’s famous as the iconic artist, a genius unappreciated in his lifetime, a man tortured by mental illness who ultimately took his own life in 1890. He shows up on the evening news from time to time when one of his paintings sells for freakishly large amounts of money (one sold for $82 million more than 20 years ago). During his brilliant and bitter lifetime, he put down his paint brush only once to try his hand at the process called etching. An etching is like a drawing except instead of drawing lines on paper, an artist applies lines to a copper plate. These lines are then etched into the plate, filled with ink and printed on paper. The end result is a deep, rich image with a striking visual effect.

From the one and only Van Gogh etching plate, only about 60 prints were made. That’s fascinating, and so is this: the Des Moines Art Center now owns one. It is “Portrait of Doctor Gachet: L’Homme a la Pipe” and serves as the launchpad for a robust exhibition called “The Psychology of Portraiture” on display at the museum now through Feb. 6.

Assembling a show with the Van Gogh etching as the focal point was the task given to curator Laura Burkhalter. Considering a theme, she was inspired by a simple fact: the Van Gogh print was a portrait of someone the artist knew personally. Expanding on this idea, Burkhalter searched the museum’s permanent collection for other portraits where a relationship existed between artists and their subject. It’s a simple but compelling idea and a perfect context for displaying a wide range of work.

The exhibition is near the entrance in the modest space of the Blank One Gallery, which is about the size of a residential apartment. Entering this intimate space, what grabs you first is a bronze sculpture with a striking green patina titled “First Portrait of Isobel” from 1932. This was sculpted by Jacob Epstein, and the young Isobel was an artist and muse whose beauty infatuated Epstein. She is shown in a resigned pose, shoulders relaxed, slouching a little, her thoughts adrift, perhaps downright bored but alluring. Her figure is not so much a depiction of form (as if she were an anonymous figure model) but really shows the absence of inhibition that exists between people who know each other; she is no more uncomfortable with her undraped figure in the presence of her swain than if she were alone. The green patina of the bronze surface is amplified powerfully by the green wall behind her. The harmony of the green color shared by the sculpture and the wall actually provides a fantastic stage for the entire show.

There is the portrait by George Bellows of his Aunt Fanny, an oil painting with a kind of gravitas that belies its depiction of a very old and very fragile human being. His beautiful, old aunt is contrasted by a young mother and child by Mary Cassatt, a perfectly executed pastel from 1900. Pastel chalk is difficult to control, and aside from admiring Cassatt’s mastery of using it to render form, also take in the bottom third of the composition and the splendiferous abstraction that appears when you force your eye to stop concentrating on the face of the mother and child.

This exhibition is a tour de force for works on paper: the dreamy, wavy melancholy of the Van Gogh etching, the superb depiction of the grouchy titan of modern art, Paul Cezanne, as done by his mentor Camille Pissarro. There is the magnificent whisper of a pencil drawing by Gwen John, the mysterious but elegant 1959 color photograph by Harry Callahan showing his young daughter sunlit in front of a dark pathway. There is a Japanese woodblock print, and a soft ground etching by Käthe Kollwitz, with its ambrosial quality enhanced by its tiny size.

Because works on paper account for the strength of this show, that should give you added motivation to see it. Works on paper are delicate, more so than paintings, sculptures and so on. Because of this fact, the Art Center displays them sparingly and some of these jewels might be locked away in storage vaults for quite some time after they come down. Don’t miss this opportunity to see them up close before they return to their dark hibernation. CV

J D Larson is an artist who has written numerous times for Cityview. He is a buyer and seller of old coins and banknotes for Christopher’s Rare Coins. Contact: jdl.artwork@gmail.com.