Line Art Doodling — what a tangled web…

By Hope Wallace

A Line Art Initial class is coming to the Wassenberg Art Center in the form of a one-day class for ages 11-14 on July 16 as part of our summer art camp series. This kind of freeform doodling is an increasingly popular form of art which uses repetitive patterns and is suitable for any skill level.

Our class will be taught by Scott Kraemer of Bryan, one of the artists exhibiting in this year’s 55^th Annual June Art Exhibit. This is a great way to increase focus and creativity and can be very relaxing. It can also reduce the intimidation of preparing to work on a blank canvas.   From simple lines to intricate stream-of-consciousness drawings, the process combines these images into one larger, complex drawing. Students will create a letter, suitable for framing if desired, for their project.

In an age of keyboards and lightning-fast technology, stream of consciousness doodling is the perfect way to slow down the thought process and incorporate the use of hands.  It can be very beneficial to the drawing process, where potentially good ideas are often hurried over in this age of technology. Thoughts and feelings can be explored in a more thorough, less rushed manner.

If your young person would be interested in signing up for this fun way to expression please call the Wassenberg Art Center at 419.238.6837 to preregister. Class size is limited.  All materials will be provided. Class fee is $45 members and $55 non-members.

The Wassenberg Art Center is located at 643 S. Washington Street in Van Wert.  Contact us by phone at 419.238.6837 or by e-mail at wassenberg@embarqmail.com.  Visit the website at www.vanwert.com/wassenberg to learn abut more classes and activities.

De Lempicka was a wild and crazy gal

By Kay Sluterbeck

(Continued from last week:  At an early age, Polish-born Tamara de Lempicka decided she wanted to be rich and famous.  Her determination resulted in a career as a well-known portrait painter and socialite in Paris.  After going through one husband and numerous affairs, in 1928 she became the mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner.)

Throughout the next decade, de Lempicka continued both her heavy workload and wild social life.  She slept with anyone and everyone; drank gin fizzes with deposed royals, and threw huge parties where naked girls were hired to be human caviar dishes.  De Lempicka worked as hard on her publicity as she did on her art.  The Great Depression didn’t bother her; in the early 1930s she was painting the King of Spain and the Queen of Greece.  Museums began collecting her works.  Meanwhile, the Baron doled out money and asked nothing.

In 1933 she went to Chicago, where she worked with Georgia O’Keeffe, Santiago Martinez Delgado and Willem de Kooning.  That year she also married her lover, Baron Kuffner, whose wife had died the year before.  The Baron pulled de Lempicka out of her bohemian life and secured her place in high society again, with a title to boot.  De Lempicka, who foresaw the coming of WWII well before most of her contemporaries, repaid the Baron by convincing him to sell estates in Eastern Europe and move his money to Switzerland.  Her art also began to change with the times; along with her usual cold nudes and aristocrats she painted a few common people, refugees, and even a Christian saint or two.

De Lempicka was a colossal liar.  For years she pretended that her daughter was her sister so she could lie about her age.  Sometimes she denied that she had a child, claiming that her paintings were her children.  Her daughter Kizette was ignored, scolded, and slammed by her mother even into middle age.

In the winter of 1939, Tamara and the Baron started an “extended vacation” in the U.S.  They settled into a mansion in Beverly Hills, California, where she became known as “the baroness with a brush” and was a favorite artist of many Hollywood stars.  Like others of the time, she did war relief work.  In 1941, using her many connections, she managed to get Kizette out of Nazi-occupied Paris.

In 1943 the couple relocated to New York City, traveling to Europe frequently so the Baron could attend to Hungarian refugee work.  Although de Lempicka continued to live in style and socialized continuously, her popularity as a society painter diminished.  Her range of subject matter expanded to include still lifes and abstracts, and she eventually adopted a new style, using palette knives instead of brushes.  Unfortunately, her new work was not well-received in a 1962 exhibit.  De Lempicka decided never to show her work again, and retired from being an active professional artist.  However, she never stopped painting.  She stored her canvases, new and old, in a warehouse and an attic.

Baron Kuffner died in 1962, and de Lempicka sold most of her possessions and made three trips around the world by ship.  Eventually she moved to Houston, Texas, to live with Kizette and her family.  Kizette had married Harold Foxhall, chief geologist for the Dow Chemical company, and they had two daughters.

In 1966 the Musee des Arts Decoratifs held a commemorative exhibition in Paris which rekindled interest in Art Deco.  The exhibit inspired a young man named Alain Blondel to launch a major retrospective of Tamara de Lempicka’s work in Luxembourg.  There was to have been another exhibit in New York City, but de Lempicka made too many demands on how the show was to be presented, and the gallery curator walked away.  But gradually, as Art Deco and figurative painting returned to favor, she was rediscovered by the art world.

De Lempicka’s later years were unpleasant.  The longsuffering Kizette served as her business manager and social secretary, and suffered under her mother’s petulant and dominating attitude.  De Lempicka constantly complained that artists’ materials were inferior to those available in the “old days,” and said that people in the 1970s didn’t have enough “breeding” to properly appreciate her art.

In 1978 de Lempicka moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she surrounded herself with young people to avoid thinking about growing old.  She mourned her lost beauty, and was as cantankerous as ever right to the end.  In late 1979, Kizette’s husband died of cancer and Kizette moved to Mexico to care for her mother until de Lempicka died in her sleep on March 18, 1980.  As she had requested, her ashes were scattered on top of the volcano Popocatepetl.

At the time of de Lempicka’s death, the wheel of fashion had turned a full circle.  Before she died, a new generation enthusiastically discovered her art.  Today, her early Art Deco paintings are again being exhibited and purchased.  Books have been written about her, and two stage plays have been based on de Lempicka’s life.  Singer-songwriter Madonna is a huge fan and collector of de Lempicka’s work, and has featured de Lempicka’s artwork in some of her music videos and on the sets of movies.  Jack Nicholson and Barbra Striesand are among other famous collectors.

De Lempicka’s beautifully composed and controlled paintings, still popular today; show no reflection of her wild and unruly life.