Archives of American Art Blog

Calling all art sleuths!

This photograph of a tea party in an artist’s studio has long remained a mystery at the Archives of American Art. Can you help us identify the woman between Holty and Miró, and the two men on the far right? Do you know whose studio this could be?

Carl Holty (left) and Joan Miró (center), with others at a tea party in an artist’s studio, 1947. Photographer unknown. Carl Holty papers, circa 1860s-1972. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Here are the clues:

• American painter Carl Holty (1900-1973) is on the far left.
• Spanish painter Joan Miró (1893-1983) is in the center.
• In 1947, Miró borrowed Holty’s studio in New York while he worked on a mural for a restaurant in Cincinnati.
• The Museum of Modern Art exhibited Miró’s mural before it traveled to its final destination in Ohio.
• Nothing is written on the back of the photograph that indicates the guests’ identities.

Leave a comment or tweet us at @ArchivesAmerArt if you know something about this photo!

Artists as Critics

Growing up as the child of a professional musician, it was not uncommon to hear grumblings across the breakfast table over critical missteps in the morning paper’s concert reviews. This is not an uncommon sentiment amongst artists either.

Rubber baby pants, 19--. Emily Genauer papers, ca. 1930-1995. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

John Ruskin, ca. 1879 / Elliott and Fry, photographer. Charles Scribner’s Sons Art Reference Dept. records, 1839-1962. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In his review of James McNeill Whistler’s 1877 show at the Grosvenor Gallery, and in response to his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket in particular,the art critic John Ruskin famously declared,

“I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

Whistler’s response was to sue Ruskin for libel, and though he won his settlement, it was only a farthing.

The painter Clyfford Still was never shy about his distaste for art critics or anyone else he felt misunderstood his work. Writing to Betty Parsons about some of his paintings in her gallery inventory he stressed,

“...allow no one to write about them. NO ONE. My contempt for the intelligence of the scribblers I have read is so complete that I cannot tolerate their imbecilities, particularly when they attempt to deal with my canvases.”

His response to the New York Herald Tribune’s art critic Emily Genauer’s columns was equally as blunt, though pithier: he sent a pair of rubber baby pants with a note that read, "Hoping this will aid in concealing your Sunday affliction. With the compliments of Clyfford Still." One can only imagine that Whistler would have approved.

More on artists and critics at the Archives of American Art:

No Day Without A Line: Whistler in the Archives of American Art

The Critic Sees: A Century of Art Criticism From the Archives of American Art

Elizabeth Botten works in the Reference Services Department at the Archives of American Art.

Arman + Yves Klein = BFF

Oral history reel box identifying the 22 April 1968 interview with Arman.

For the last year, I have been volunteering for the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian.  Since my mother tongue is French, I was entrusted to transcribe and translate interviews conducted with French artists in New York in the 1960s.  

My first task was to identify who the interviewed artists were in order to correct an old labeling error.  This lead me to do a great deal of research into the people, the places and the vocabulary of the period.  In the course of this research I deciphered which recordings belongs to the artists Bernar Venet or to Arman, and enjoyed learning about their art and their times through their own words.  The interview with Arman, in particular, lead me on an hour-long journey through wartime and post-WWII southern France, and through the defining artistic movements of the second half of the 50s and 60s.  

Fast forward to just last week, when I visited the Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers exhibit at the Hirshhorn.  I knew from listening to Arman that Yves Klein was his childhood friend, his travel buddy and his judo partner.  As I walked through the Yves Klein exhibit, I was delighted to see in pictures the faces of the people Arman had talked about.  I saw pieces of art, and read texts that referred to experience he had described in his interview.  And at the very end of the exhibit stood the sculpture of a man, tinted in Klein's characteristic deep blue—it was Arman, life-size, naked, greeting all the visitors with a knowing grin.  As I looked at his statue, I felt very thankful to him.  It took me a few months to transcribe and translate his interview, but he taught me so much in the process.  I was able to experience the Yves Klein exhibit with a new comprehension of his times and his art.

Read the full oral history interview with Arman conducted 22 April 1968, by Sevim Fesci, and view images of Yves Klein and his work on the Archives of American Art's website.

See Klein's Relief Portrait of Arman (1962) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden through September 12, 2010.

Guest blogger Gaston Lacombe is a Smithsonian Behind-the-Scenes volunteer for the Archives of American Art and a photographer based in Washington, D.C.

Beards of Note - William Morris Hunt

William Morris Hunt, ca 1860. Macbeth Gallery records, 1838-1968. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

William Morris Hunt, ca. 1866. James Wallace Black, photographer. Miscellaneous photograph collection. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

William Morris Hunt should be considered one of Boston’s most important painters, becoming one of the most prolific creators of landscapes and portraits in the 19th century. He also traveled in Boston’s most prominent intellectual circles.

Unfortunately, Hunt suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1879 at the age of 55. Hunt looks much older than 55 in both of these images and (I think) his state of mind is clearly reflected, as well.

The image on the above left is a photograph of Hunt’s 1866 self portrait, found at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.

The photograph below shows Hunt in a painter’s smock with his palette and brushes at his studio in Boston, his beard a bit shorter and whiter in 1879, shortly before his death.

Jennifer Snyder works with oral history interviews at the Archives American Art. When not sending interviews out for digitization, she is writing about extraordinary examples of facial hair for this blog.