Bob Schieffer's art at the Katzen

This one Mr. Schieffer titled Our Very Best and wrote: "We've lived through a difficult period, but we must never forget that Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt dealt with far worse during their presidencies."

The artist from CBS and "60 Minutes" and more was there, of course, with his curator, Michael Beschloss, presidential historian, and a packed gallery at American University's Katzen Arts Center.

I can't call it an elbow to elbow crowd; it was more like cheek-to-cheek. You guess.

From left, Michael Beschloss, the curator; Jack Rasmussen, the director of  American University's Katzen Arts Center; and Bob Schieffer/photo by Patricia Leslie, AP 6, 2024

Bob Schieffer, Paradise Lost, 2023 (detail).  The label says:  "The horrible fire that swept Maui was the perfect example of the new threat that extreme weather now poses."

Bob Schieffer, Honest Abe ... "I drew this picture in 1983 and I included it because I always feel better when I think about Honest Abe."

For 87 years old (! where does time go?), Bob Schieffer paints well, mixing mostly non-fiction subjects in a collage fashion in large-sized works. His colors are bold and brassy; his style is mostly realism with some impressionism (Election Night, 2020 and the celebration in Lafayette Park, my favorite). His portraits of celebrities (a startled Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, John Lewis, Amanda Gorman, John McCain, George Floyd) are unadorned. 

Every time I look at his art, I find myself with growing admiration for his talent for it's obvious that he didn't first pick up a paint brush when he retired, but years ago when his grandmother taught him. 

Bob Schieffer, The Bump, 2020:  "After Biden won, hundreds of celebrants poured into Lafayette Park to let the world know." 

Bob Schieffer, The Face of Evil, 2022: "This was the easiest painting to name. I have no idea who first painted it, only that is appeared on hundreds of signs carried by Ukrainians fighting the Russian invaders."

Schieffer has modeled many of his works on notable scenes and photographs, such as his Napalm Girl, a sad token of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning photograph, "The Terror of War," by Huynh Cong "Nick" Út.  Growing up during the Vietnam War, I hate to be reminded.

Bob Schieffer with Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson with a Schieffer painting:  Cassidy Hutchinson: Profile in Courage. Ms. Hutchinson testified before the January 6 Committee about Trump's actions on January 6 and, on another day, she helped a White House valet clean catsup off a wall where someone had thrown it. Who in the White House eats catsup and has temper tantrums?/Photo by Patricia Leslie, April 6, 2024 

Bob Schieffer with Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson at the exhibition opening/Photo by Patricia Leslie, April 6, 2024 

There's a painting of Maggie Haberman smiling.  Maggie Haberman smiles? Since when did she smile? She's spent so much time with Trump, she's become schooled in the Trump Center for Facial Expressions:  "Never smile." (He's also pictured scowling in front of St. John's Church.)

Bob Schieffer, Journalism 101  featuring Maggie Haberman

Bob Schieffer, The Unforced Error:  Leaving the Graveyard of Empire, 2021 (detail). Schieffer writes:  "Unlike the American experience in VIetnam, Biden envisioned a dignified end to America's longest war. Instead it was a debacle."

Bob Schieffer, The Irony of War, 2022-2023 (detail) with the label: "Russian and American astronauts returned to Earth after working together for a year in space, something no longer possible back home."

A large crowd turned out for the opening of Bob Schieffer's art exhibition at the Katzen Arts Center, American University/Photo by Patricia Leslie, April 6, 2024 

It was cheek to cheek for the opening of Bob Schieffer's art exhibition at the Katzen Arts Center, American University/ Photo by Patricia Leslie, April 6, 2024 

Celebrities at the event included Gloria Borger, Judy Woodruff, Al Hunt, Gloria Bohan, Christine O'Dwyer, Mary Gotschall and Bruce Guthrie.

Most of the women wore Washington Safety Black with the exception of Norah O'Donnell in a matching rose pink jacket and pants, and Cassidy Hutchinson in a spring garden dress.

Jake Tapper reportedly showed up in a Phillies jersey after a game between the Nationals and Philadelphia who won.  

Mr. Schieffer laughed (and the crowd laughed with him) about all the talk about presidential candidates being old:  He would love to be 80 again!  

In the artist's statement posted on the wall, he wrote that his interest in an exhibition started in early 2020: "What I soon understood was that Covid was just the beginning. One crisis after another settled over a society already reeling from the pandemic."  

The title of the show, Looking for the Light, originated with Amanda Gorman's poem delivered at President Biden's inauguration. Schieffer: "I found hope in a dark and dangerous time."

On April 20 from 2 - 3 p.m., Mr. Schieffer and Jack Rasmussen, the AU museum director, will give a talk (with perhaps Curator Beschloss on hand; the website is unclear).  Go here to sign up at Eventbrite. Signed catalogues will be available.

WHAT: Looking for the Light

WHEN:  Through May 19, 2024, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday 

WHERE:   Katzen Arts Center at American University, 4400 Mass. Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016-8031

ADMISSION:  Free!

PARKING:  Garage parking is free on weekends and after 5 p.m., weekdays. Paid parking is available, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m., weekdays.

patricialesli@gmail.com

National Gallery's curator talks Philip Guston

Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating (detail), 1973, collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 

Close your eyes and visualize for a moment stubby fingers and heads, cigarette butts, an eyeball here, some shoes over there, a lightbulb, flabby, cartoonish fleshly colored characters and parts and what or who comes to mind?

Just the strange world of Philip Guston (1913-1980) whose 225 art works are set to leave the National Gallery of Art on August 27 after a five-months' stay.

Martial Memory, 1941, oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan T

Philip Guston, Martial Memory, 1941, Saint Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan Trust.

HauMartial M emory, 1941, oil on canvas, Sainrt Resource, 

Philip Guston, Passage, 1957–1958, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Bequest of Caroline Wiess Law.

The NGA calls him "one of America's greatest modern painters....[and] one of America's most influential modern artists" and has devoted 17,640 square feet of exhibition space on two floors in its East Building for Philip Guston Now.

The arrangements are laid out chronologically following  Guston's style changes, according to Harry Cooper, the Gallery's senior curator and head of the department of modern and contemporary art, who organized the Washington presentation.

"I wanted to tell Guston’s story and show his development as clearly as possible," Cooper emailed.

The Guston show has already run at the Museums of Fine Art in Houston and Boston and when it leaves Washington, will travel to the Tate Modern, London, for its last venue.

Each of the four places approached their presentation of the exhibition differently, Cooper noted.

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1964, National Gallery of Art, Gift of Musa Guston Mayer.

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1968, oil on panel, private collection.

Interest in Guston has grown since the four museums postponed the show scheduled for 2020 because of Guston's Ku Klux Klan works and the clash with culture and turmoil sweeping the U.S. then, largely as a result of the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd the same year.

Some 2,600 artists protested the postponement. The National Gallery has segregated the KKK drawings in a different gallery with signs warning visitors about their content.

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1968, brush and ink, private collection.

Philip Guston, Head II, 1969, charcoal on paper mounted to paperboard, National Gallery of Art, gift of Edward R. Broida.

Philip Guston, The Studio, 1969, promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whether this is a self-portrait like the wall copy says, Mr. Cooper wrote: "I might prefer to call it a self-image because it is obviously not a likeness."

Guston's daughter, Musa Guston Mayer (who has the same first name as her mother and Guston's wife), attended the National Gallery's opening and proclaimed it "a gorgeous exhibition; a beautiful show," complimenting Cooper and the NGA staff.

Mayer was "thrilled" the show would hang for "a significant period of time which would not have happened without the postponement." Mayer is also the president and founder of the Guston Foundation which has promised the Gallery her father's complete Richard Nixon drawings which followed his watershed exhibition in 1970 at the Marlborough Gallery in New York.

There his art announced publicly that Guston was eschewing abstract expressionism for cartoonish figures and anti-heroes which Cooper attributes to "pure courage and conviction and  personal/aesthetic necessity."

(And rather than "abstract impressionism," Mr. Cooper wrote that it is "a term that some critics used to describe Philip Guston’s style of a softer abstract expressionism. I find it misleading because he had no interest in most of the Impressionists.")

Only one of Guston's pieces sold at the Marlborough.  (Not to miss: 12 of the original Marlborough 33 works in the separate gallery.)

Harry Cooper addresses the press at the National Gallery of Art, Mar. 2, 2023 with Guston's Dawn, right, and Caught, left, in the background with colors counter to the originals/By Patricia Leslie

Philip Guston, Painter’s Table, 1973, National Gallery of Art, Gift (Partial and Promised) of Ambassador and Mrs. Donald Blinken in memory of Maurice H. Blinken and in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art.

Philip Guston,The Ladder (detail), 1978, National  Gallery of Art, Gift of Edward R. Broida. That's Guston's wife's head surfacing on the horizon.

Cooper and Mayer both described Guston's art as "darkening" over time. Said Mayer about her father's change from color to dark colors: "I think it had to do with the darkening times."

Guston had been traumatized by current events, including the Vietnam War; he felt he could not ignore what was happening around him and began a shift from complete abstraction.

In 1968, the year of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, Guston started painting hooded figures like members of the Ku Klux Klan which he called "self-portraits … I perceive myself as being behind the hood … The idea of evil fascinated me … I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan." 

He is quoted in the catalog and on a Gallery wall:

“So when the 60s came along I was feeling split. Schizophrenic. The [Vietnam] war, what was happening to [in] America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into [a] frustrated fury about everything – and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue."

The Marlborough criticism sent Guston packing to Italy for eight months when, upon returning to the U.S. and inspired by his friend, Philip Roth's novel, Our Gang, the artist began work on his Richard Nixon series.

They are 73 drawings which satirize the president and his henchmen, Henry Kissinger, John Mitchell, and Spiro Agnew, all completed in one year, 1971. The National Gallery has the entirety of the set on the walls on the main East Building floor.

When you go, enter the gallery on your right and circle, ending on the left with "Nixon cookie," "Spiro's Sponge Cake," and "Kissinger Pot Pie." (Those are not to miss!)

Guston planned to make the drawings into a book but held back. Finally, 21 years after his death, they came out in an exhibition and release of Philip Guston's Poor Richard by Deborah Bricker Balken, the University of Chicago Press. (A new edition, Poor Richard by Philip Guston with afterword by Mr. Cooper, is available.**)

Philip Guston, Poor Richard entrance, National Gallery of Art. In the center is Guston's San Clemente, Nixon's escape place after he resigned in 1974. It's the only painting  Guston made of the former president. See below/By Patricia Leslie

Philip Guston, San Clemente, 1975, Glenstone Museum. The wall label notes that Nixon has some pencils in his pocket, possibly a signal from the artist who may have sympathized with a celebrity under fire whose leg is bandaged from ill effects of phlebitis and Washington's attacks. 

Philip Guston, Poor Richard (no. 52), 1971, ink , the Guston Foundation, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art by Musa Guston Mayer. Guston's tatoos on Nixon's arms were prescient,  about 50 years ahead of the tatoo craze.

Philip Guston, Poor Richard (no. 46), 1971, ink , the Guston Foundation, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art by Musa Guston Mayer. Nixon in black face, patronizing black Americans with Spiro Agnew on left, and Henry Kissinger (or is that John Mitchell?), center. Notice hanging objects.

Philip Guston, Poor Richard (no. 37), 1971, ink , the Guston Foundation, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art by Musa Guston Mayer. In center left near the bottom are small letters with the words "Key Biscayne  Aug. 1971". Sink or swim?  Looks like Nixon and Kissinger are sinking, caught by the throes of the monster above, themselves?

At Poor Richard by Philip Guston, National Gallery of Art, Washington/By Patricia Leslie

Musa Guston Mayer welcomes guests to the Guston exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Mar. 2, 2023/By Patricia Leslie

Guston was born in Canada in 1913 where his parents had fled in 1905 to escape persecution in Ukraine.

When Philip was 10, the family moved to Los Angeles where, unable to find work, Guston's father committed suicide by hanging in the same year as the family's move. Whether Philip's mother or Philip himself found his father is debated.  According to the catalog's chronology, a few years later found Philip withdrawing to a closet with a single light bulb to read and to draw when family members came calling.   

Nine years later his brother died in a car accident.

When asked whether his father's death affected Guston's art, Cooper replied:

"Deeply. Look at the essay I wrote for the catalogue of the 2000 Yale-Harvard show, which was reprinted in the journal October. [Not easily accessible.] Most basically, I think his interest in hanging things (light bulbs, pull cords on shades) refers back to this trauma."

Once you are made aware of these objects and their connections to Guston's past, they seem to appear in almost every piece of his art.

Although several references, including label copy at the exhibition, say Guston was self-taught, Dr. Cooper said Guston "is not self-taught. He went to an arts high school (where he was friends with Jackson Pollock) and then went to Otis College of Art and Design for a few months."


Wikipedia says that at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School, he and Pollock protested the school's emphasis on sports vs. art and both were expelled, however, the catalog says only Pollock was caught and expelled but later graduated. Guston's graduation is not listed in the catalog.

Encouraged by Pollack to move east, Mr. Guston relocated to New York in 1936 where he quickly found work for the Federal Art Project as a muralist. Later, he joined abstract expressionists to create art representing the unconscious rather than reality or "inner" concepts rather than "outer" concepts.

Forty institutions and private collectors loaned art for the show, but the National Gallery has up 30 more than any of the other showplaces, including Guston's last works, single images made in 1980, the year he died. 

In an auditorium at the exhibition, an enthralling documentary, Philip Guston: A Life Lived (58 minutes, 1981), by Michael Blackwood runs continuously and features long interviews with Guston. In it the artist says art flowed from him; he was a mere vessel of transmittal.

The highest price ever paid for a Guston work was $25.8 million at Christie’s in 2013 for the abstract painting To Fellini (1958). His Smoking II (1973) sold for $7.65 million at Phillips in New York in 2019, neither of which appears in the show.


The Terra Foundation for American Art is a major sponsor of the international exhibition.

Out of respect for Black History Month in February, the Gallery postponed the opening of the exhibition until March of this year.

*The catalog, Philip Guston Now ($65), sold in the gift shops, is hardcover with 280 pages, most in color, a comprehensive chronology of Guston's life, and the lead essay by Harry Cooper.

**Also see Poor Richard by Philip Guston, $21, paperback, 73 drawings which Amazon calls " a monument of contemporary satirical art and virtuoso drawing."

What: Philip Guston Now

When: Through August 27, 2023. The National Gallery hours are 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily.

Where: East Building Concourse and Ground Floor, National Gallery of Art, 6th and Constitution, Washington

How much: Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: (202) 737-4215

Accessibility information: (202) 842-6905


patricialesli@gmail.com

See Hillwood's Russian glories and gardens

The entrance to Determined Women at the dacha at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens/by Patricia Leslie

The Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens is a respite of soothing and enchanting glorious springtime colors where guests may wander lush grounds, and walk green pathways to admire endless flower gardens.

A sense of peace and serenity prevails; time is unhurried.

One pathway leads to a small Russian dacha*, built about 1969 and the setting of an exhibition of 100 pieces from the collection of Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973) who lived and died at Hillwood and made it what it is today: luxurious galleries and a museum of incredible works of art.

The Grand Duchesses, the four daughters of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia, 1916, two years before they were murdered.

 Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, 1906, whose daughters are pictured above.

Left:  Star of the Order of Saint Anna, 19th cent. St. Petersburg, silver, diamonds and enamel. Translated from the front:  To those who love justice, piety, and faith. In the center is the Russian imperial eagle.

Right:  Badge of the Order of Saint Anna, 19th cent. Russia, gold, diamonds, enamel/by Patricia Leslie

Ms. Post's inheritance as the only child of her parents no doubt made possible her philanthropic efforts and marshaled her business smarts (she founded General Foods with her second husband**).

At age 27 she was the richest woman in the U.S.

Her father had founded the Post cereal company.

Georgii Musikiiskii (miniaturist), after Johann Gottfried Tannauer, Abraham Heydrich (watchmaker), 1725, watch with miniature portrait of Catherine I, Peter the Great's second wife, gold, silver, diamonds, enamel, copper, St. Petersburg. The ceiling lights at the exhibition are reflected on the watch/by Patricia Leslie

Back of the watch above/By Patricia Leslie

Her admiration of influential women and their designs, works, and artistry form the basis of the exhibition, Determined Women: Collectors, Artists, and Designers at Hillwood which begins in the 1700s and continues to present day. (A curator has added recent pieces about, for example, Stacey Abrams.)

For any cultural and history Russophile like me, the dacha brimming with priceless, historical pieces is another magnificent "find" in Washington, D.C.

After Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun, Portrait of Marie Antoinette and Children, after 1787, at Versailles with the jewel cabinet of Marie Antoinette on the right.

Christina Sanders Robinson (1796-1854), Portrait of Nicholas I, 1840, Russia. His grandmother was Catherine the Great.

Two evening dresses of Ms. Post, the one on the left by Thum (1865-1954), 1920-1925, and the one on the right, by Hattie Carnegie (1886-1956), 1935-1940/by Patricia Leslie

Embroidery by Aunte Mollie Post, Marjorie Merriweather Post's baby bonnet, n.d./by Patricia Leslie

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, designer, altar cloth, c. 1899, Russia/by Patricia Leslie

 

 Needlework by Caroline Lathrop Post, 1854/by Patricia Leslie

Joseph E. Davies was Ms. Post's third husband who took her to Moscow when he was U.S. ambassador to Russia, 1937-1938. Those years coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and Joseph Stalin's sale of Russian imperial and pre-revolutionary works, money he needed for his industrial agenda.

Carpe diem!

And Ms. Post did! Now, outside of Russia, her Russian collection is considered the best in the world. (What would Mr. Putin exchange for it? Or, some of it?)

Many more Russian artifacts are on display in the mansion.

From left: Maid of Honor Cypher Pin, 1796-1801.  The cypher states for Empress Maria Feodorovna, wife of Emperor Paul I.  These pins were worn on the left side of the breast by Maids of Honor to the Empress. Gold, diamonds, Russia.

Center: Another Maid of Honor Cypher Pin, 1907. Attributed to the firm of Karl Karlovich Hahn.  The pin consists of the ciphers in Russian letters of the last two Empresses, Maria Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna. It was given in 1907 to Irene Rimsky-Korsakoff (1883-1972) (Madame Mishtowt of D.C.). The ciphers are topped by the imperial cleft crown of Russia, all set in diamonds with gold and silver, St. Petersburg

Right: Attributed to Carl C. Blank, Lady of Honor Insignia with miniature portraits of Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, 1912. Gold, diamonds, silver, silver gilt, glass, St. Petersburg/by Patricia Leslie

Three busts of Empress Catherine II. 

From left, by Felix Chopin (1813-1892), made in Russia, c. 1867. 

In the center is a marble by an unknown sculptor, made in Russia, after 1771. 

On the right, by August Spiess, designer (1817-1904), the Imperial Porcelain Factory, St. Petersburg, after 1872 after a model by Jacques-Dominique Rachette (1744-1809) based on a marble original by Fedot Ivanovich Shubin (1740-1805)/by Patricia Leslie

Mather Brown (1761-1831), King Louis XVI Saying Farewell to his Family, 1793, U.S.A.

A pathway at Hillwood/by Patricia Leslie

At Hillwood/by Patricia Leslie

Determined Women at Hillwood/by Patricia Leslie

Despite its small size, the exhibition packs two rooms with photographs, paintings, sculpture, jewelry, embroidery and more, a "must see" for Russian cultural aficionados.

But you don't have to love Russian history, culture, and people to want to come since it's more than all things Russian. Artists and designers from other nations, especially France, are represented, along  with dress designers of her own whom Ms. Post admired.  And, I am guessing it was a relative who made Ms. Post's baby bonnet.

Pictures, descriptions and locations of all the objects in the exhibition may be found here. 

After she and Mr. Davies divorced in 1955, Ms. Post established Hillwood where she is buried on the grounds. (She reclaimed her maiden name after her fourth and last marriage.)

Of note: Ms. Post built and owned Mar-A-Lago in Florida, another of her "notable" five homes before Donald Trump, the present owner, bought it in 1985 for about $10 million. She had willed it to the National Park Service which deemed it too expensive to maintain. Forbes places the current value around $160 million.

The Hillwood exhibition accompanies a new publication, The Houses and Collections of Marjorie Merriweather Post ($60, hardcover; $30, paperback).

*A dacha is a small Russian country house or villa. In 2017, approximately 60 million Russians or more than 40 percent of the population of 145 million, were estimated to own one.

**Ms. Post's husbands were, in order:

Edward Bennett Close (married 1905; divorced 1919)

Edward Francis Hutton (m. 1920; d. 1935)

Joseph E. Davies (m. 1935; d. 1955)

Herbert A. May (m. 1958; d. 1964)

What: Determined Women: Collectors, Artists, and Designers at Hillwood

When: Now through Sunday, June 18, 2023, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Where: Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, 4155 Linnean Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008

Admission: Suggested donations are $18 (adults), $15 (seniors), $10 (college students), $5 (child, ages 6 -18) and free for members and those under age 6. $3 discounts are available for adults and seniors who make reservations online for weekdays, and $1 off, for weekends. For busy times (Mother's Day, anyone?), reservations are highly recommended.

Directions via bus, rail, car

Parking: Free and on-site

For more information: 202-686-5807

Café onsite

patricialesli@gmail.com