A Street Frames Blog

“Characters From The Collection” and USES (United South End Settlements) of Boston

April 20-October 6, 2013

The Museum of Fine Arts’ annual Community Arts Initiative Project works with kids from several of Boston after school programs, and is led by a different artist every year. The MFA’s Community Initiative gets kids engaged with the Museums collections and encourages fun interaction in a creative way.

This year artist Andrew Oesch asks kids,”What would it be like to live with works of art?” Children from the MFA’s eight partner community organizations,including kids from USES or United South End Settlements. USES mission is to build a strong community by improving the education and health to individuals and families in Boston’s historic South End/Lower Roxbury and to serve as a national model of successful neighborhood engagement.The MFA is a part of that enrichment through its Community Initiative Program this summer.Through drawings, writing, and performance exercises, the students explored objects in the galleries, using their own imaginative worlds as inspiration to create a ‘character’ of their own. (We at A Street know an 8 year old who wants you to find her character by the name of, “Lady Ska-ga”, who appears several times!)Students perform as their characters, with works of art coming to life!Oesch and the students used handmade puppets and costumes to explore flights of fantasy and encounters with distant cultures.

“Characters in the Collection” shows these creative narratives and reflections captured in collaged drawings and screen prints. The Artist Project introduces young people to the MFA’s collections and the art-making process, while helping them understand how art can be an important part of their lives.

More Information on USES

View Link for details on the Upcoming Gallery Talk led by artist Andrew Oesch at the MFA: “Exploring Fantasy and Reality in the Galleries” on Saturday June 15, 2013.

by A Street Frames

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: April 23,2013-June 30,2013

Michelangelo, Cleopatra (detail), no date. Black chalk. Florence, Casa Buonarrot

“Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Master Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti” features a rich and varied selection of 26 works from the master’s collection, preserved in the artist’s family home, the Casa Buonarroti, in Florence. The exhibition includes many of Michelangelo’s (1475–1564) great renowned drawings, which illustrate how he alternated between interpretations of the divine and the worldly, or profane, throughout his career.

His powers to evoke the sacred are fully displayed in his large drawing of the Virgin and Child—one of his most admired images. A worldlier image is the imaginary portrait of Cleopatra, a black chalk presentation drawing he made as a gift for his friend Tommaso de’ Cavalieri that is considered one of the Renaissance genius’s most poetic conceptions. The works selected for “Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane” will be divided between figure and architectural studies and include several major sheets never previously exhibited in the US.

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/michelangelo

by A Street Frames

Part II, “Framing the Past”/ Rembrandt, Queen Victoria, and the French Empire

“It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.” Edvard Munch

Continuing my historical research into the development of frame design and the framing industry, with my inspiration from the Frame Collection at the MFA, I find that Napoleon changed the path of the frame artisan. The modern concept of the “frame shop” comes to us in the 17th and 18th Century. Also the admiration for the “black Frame” is due to the Dutch influence and Trade Market. The 17th and 18th centuries shift the frame from elite to something for the average home,opening the “Ready Made” market and affordable materials for mass production. The Boston School of Frame makers take from the past and push these concepts in the 19th century. This is another interesting piece to the history of Picture Framing.

The 17th and 18th Century saw the epicenter of great art move North-East to the more restrained Protestant areas of the Netherlands and Belgium. With the growth of the portrait as an essential symbol of wealth, taste and social standing, saw the re-emergence of the elaborate gilded frame and the use of dark ebony. The Netherlands had developed two distinct styles of framing. The first reflected the conservative inclination of the Protestant majority. Less Baroque ornamentation and limiting the use of gilding, replacing it with ebony wood veneers, silver and tortoiseshell. These were materials more valuable then gold to the Dutch.

The black frame became a symbol of sophistication and wealth. The “ripple frame” used by the artist Rembrandt, has a combination of flat surfaces and “ripple”design used to reflect light off dark ebony and capture the viewers attention.

Dutch ‘ripple’ Frame
Jan be Bray (Dutch 1627-1697)
“Portrait of a Boy Holding a Basket of Fruit”
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The second Dutch style is well known as the “Trophy Frame” or “Auricular”. Auricular frame design is based on the works of silversmiths Paul van Viand and his brother Adam (1569-1627). Carved often with flowers and fruits that are used to reference the paintings subject matter, for example theses frames were loved by the artist Vermeer. Many design principles used by the Dutch lead to the design aesthetics embarrassed by the Boston School of Framers.

Auricular Frame Style
Flemish
Peter Candid (1548-1628)
“The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine”, 1590
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In the Late Georgian Period of England (1714-1830), the use of pictures as domestic decoration filtered down to the bourgeoisie. Prints, both as pure art and as political commentary and satire, were in great demand. Print publishing and selling, grew up as a whole new industry in London. Of course this new art medium needed framing in order to be properly displayed and enjoyed. Picture frame making became an offshoot of cabinet making, and simple, affordable wooden frames were developed to satisfy the new demand. To this day, the ‘Hogarth’ frame named after artist William Hogarth, (very dark wood with a simple gold line or two) is a staple of picture framers looking for a simple, traditional solution. The rustic simplicity of the “Hogarth” frame can be compared to the gilded “Carlo Maratta” Frame. Simple in design the gilded “Maratta” was economical to construct and could be purchased in ready-made sizes. Simple ornamentation such as ribbon, leaf and stick, and pearls were added. No complicated corner ornaments were used. Both frames were designed for the use of mass production. This changed the use of the picture frame from an elite luxury to everyman’s household item. The extension of wealth driven by the industrial revolution in Victorian England (1837-1901), meant more and more walls needing more and more decoration. Materials such as oak, bronze and brass were more economical. Painted finishes were now an affordable option to gilding and opened the frame market to independent craftsman and mass-produced frames. We see this mass-market development with the French Empire frame-makers under the rule of Napoleon.

Carlo Maratta Frame Style
Thomas Gainsborough
English (1727-1788)
John Eld of Seighford Hall, Stafford, 1755

The end of the French Revolution, brought the blended design style known as “French Empire” at the beginning of the 19th century. The Classical designs of Antiquity (for example designs from Pompeii and Egypt) were reflected in frames from this period. (See Blog: ‘Highlights from the Collection Part I)

French Empire Gallery/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Techniques developed by the Scottish-born architect Robert Adam in 1790, reintroduced composition ornamentation, which had been developed by the Italians two centuries before. Adam initially used this technique for interior architectural elements, but it soon spread into picture framing. Reverse moulds were carved in boxwood for use in casting composition ornaments. Casting of detailed “compo” ornaments, like bands or ribbons of Classical motifs (acanthus leaves), were applied to frames. Similar styles and production methods spread throughout Europe because the fine detailing needed to produce many of the decorations would have been extremely costly to hand carve.

Napoleon
(Original Empire Frame)
Only Work on Display at the Museum of Fine Arts, containing his Image.

“Compo” is basically a combination of water, rosin, linseed oil, hide glue and whiting. The end result is similar to pastry dough. The “compo” is rolled out, allowed to cook and cut into shapes. The end product is beautiful and delicate. The fragile nature of these designs, due to the drying and cracking of the linseed oil, means that very few frames have survived completely intact from the 19th century.

Example of French Empire Style with “Compo” (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Due to the lack of funds and the desire to distance himself from the monarchies of France’s past, Napoleon effectively brought the luxury market to an end. He abolished the gild system in 1791, and encouraged the mass production of frames by limiting the hand-carved frame market. Napoleon directed frame-makers to apply composition decorations to frames instead of hand-carving the ornamentation. With the dissemination of pattern books and mass-production methods, the Empire frame quickly spread across Europe.

Since Napoleon had to keep costs down and because of the great demand for Empire frames, mass production was the best solution. While a much smaller number of carvers were needed, gilders were still in demand. Napoleon had most of the frames in the Louvre replaced with Empire frames even though this stye clashed with many of the paintings. Catherine the Great of Russia would do as Napoleon did at the Hermitage during her rule.

The carving of luxurious frames flourished under Louis XIV, XV and XVI, but under Napoleon, carvers and and frame-makers suffered greatly. The status of frame-makers and wood carvers fell, along with that of other skilled craftsmen. The status of artists, however, had risen from one of mere artisan of the Renaissance, to one of creative force. Artists were even becoming rich and famous by the end of the Napoleonic-Era, but skilled craftsmen had no real place in a world of mass-produced frames.

Do not miss our next blog post, “Highlights from the Collection Part III: ‘Three Louis’/ The Gilded Age of Frame-makers’ by our A Street Frames’ picture frame history researcher.

by A Street Frames

Featuring Sasha Konitzky, CPF:
Manager 251 A Street Frames of Boston, PR and Social Media
Coordinator, Professional Picture Framer

Sasha is the latest addition to the design staff at A Street Frames, and currently manages 251 A Street located in Fort Point Channel, Boston. A graduate from the University of Maine with a BA in Art History, Minor in Studio Art, and a concentration in Museum Studies. Sasha has pursued a carrier in the art field since 1998. She has worked as an Assistant Museum Registrar for both the Hudson Museum of Archeology (dedicated to the study of World Cultures and the William P. Plamer III Collection one of the largest collections of Precolumbian Artifacts) and Bates College Museum of Art (home of the Marsden Hartley Estate and iconic works by Robert Indiana) along with specializing in exhibit design and collection management within both institutions. Sasha took a frame shop job after college graduation and realized she was a natural at design and building. A boatbuilders daughter, she has a love of working with her hands and has an eye for detail. She received her Certified Picture Framers Certificate through the Professional Picture Framers Association in 2005. A Picture Framer for almost 13 years, she is excited to be part of A Street Frames and its talented design staff.

What made you want to learn about picture framing?
“While I was working at the Hudson Museum I spent a lot of time designing exhibit cases and object mounts. I felt that becoming a picture framer would teach me so much about works on paper and the presentation of fine art. I wanted to expand my skills as a designer.”

What is the most unique “object” you have ever framed?
“That’s a great question! I think every framer will say “We have seen it all!” and the next day we are saying “That’s a new challenge!”. Truth is that everyday is different and you never know what will come through the showroom door. I have worked with Aztec Gold, a Stella from Guatemala, a piece of beam from the World Trade Center, a full box of laundry soap from the 1950′s, clown shoes, works by Rembrandt, Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts, a silk Japanese flag from WWII, Abraham Lincoln’s signature, so many wonderful things! I love that most about the job. Every object is respected and cared for, to be enjoyed by future generations.”

What skills did you take from being a Museum Registrar that you currently use as a picture framer?
“One of the biggest skills I use is material identification and Nomenclature. You need to identify the object and what it is made of first to best know how and what to use to frame it. Textiles, for example, have special framing needs and stability issues.They can be tricky and a challenge. Working with so many different objects over the years has helped, that and learning from some of the best framers in the industry.”

What was your focus of Study in Art History?
“You spend a lot of time studying the classics. I have a strong love for the Italian Baroque period. I also concentrated on iconography and allegorical painting. Thanks to Professor Dr. Owen Smith, (a student of the late and great John Cage and an expert in the Fluxus Art Movement) I’m strongest in Contemporary, Conceptual and Modern Art. I guess that makes me a 2nd Gen Cageian Student. My appreciation for Modern Art fits well with the current art scene in Boston.”

Do you have an art background?
“I do. I started with oil painting on canvas at age six. A bit young for damar varnish but I wanted to be like my mother who was an artist. I attended Haystack and my portfolio was excepted by Pratt in New York but decided to stay in-State. I first wanted to get into Theater Set design. I found that my love for history and archeology placed me in the museum studies field more then the theater. I still actively make art. I’m painting on scrap 8ply mat boards and not on canvas lately.”

Fun Question! What is your hobby away from framing?
(Laughing) “Competitive Ballroom Dancing! I still love the stage.”

by A Street Frames

Ancient Greek, Frieze (early Egg and Dart Motif)

Part I, Highlights From the Collection

“A picture without a frame is like a soul without a body” – Vincent Van Gogh

On March 7th, I attended a lecture at the MFA on the history of picture framing featuring pieces from the museum collection. This lecture inspired me to look into the historical development of frame design. Learning about the roots of design language, patronage, and frame commissions, I discovered the Boston School of Framers.

Through this and subsequent blogs I will discuss Boston’s long picture frame heritage and the shops that set the industry standards for innovative frame designs. I will cover the development of frame design from Antiquity, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo Classical, Victorian, to both 19^th and 20^th century Boston, bringing us to the current 21^st century Boston frame shop, A Street Frames. A Street Frames’ framers had many different backgrounds before entering the frame industry, but they all speak the same language of design and produce frames of the highest quality. This blog looks at the frame shops and craftsman of Boston that made art museums grand.

A picture frame performs both aesthetic and practical roles. It is the boundary of the composition; defining, complementing and separating the artwork from its more surroundings. The roots of the development of the modern picture frame can be traced back to Ancient Cultures of Antiquity. What we do know is that in the ancient classical architecture motifs are the foundation of frame design. A 2000-year-old language of reinterpreted friezes, architectural design and wall frescos of varying size and complexity or “framed borders” integral to the image and surroundings. Decorative borders appeared as early as 2000BC in Egyptian tomb paintings.

In classical Rome and Greece, fresco-painted or mosaic-tiled borders echoed the shapes of the walls or layout of a room’s interior, allowing the room itself to frame the image. These stylized motifs, such as the egg and dart and the Cauliculus leaf pattern are derivative from the ancient world. The French Empire Frame and Italian Cassetta. are most recognized for the new interpretation of classical ornaments.

In the European medieval period, artists began painting onto wooden panels and their decorated edges developed into a formal, movable picture frame. Art was very much an extension of religious worship, and the first separate frames imitated the architectural surroundings of the cathedrals and larger churches. The illusion of space through architectural designed frames. As these became more elaborate so did the frames of the art within.

At the MFA new commissioned Italian Renaissance frames were needed. The Tabernacle frame was researched and decidedly aged to hang with other original frames in the Italian gallery. Tabernacle frames are based in architectural “shrine-like” design. Theses frames are often elaborate and come in a verity of regional styles. Poplar, common to Italy was the wood of choice for many of these frames.

MFA, Boston (Italian Tabernacle Frame Reproduction)

MFA, Boston (Italian Neo-Classical Original Frame) Use of both Architectural design and Classical Motifs.

As the role of the artists began to change into a more secular trade, the art of frame-making likewise evolved. The painters began to see themselves as individualists and creators of art for its own sake. The 15th and 16th centuries, artists and their patrons needed frames to set their work apart from its surroundings, not least because a rich patron would want his investment in art to be obvious to his visitors. It would not have been unusual for a painter to create his own elaborately gilded or painted frames. We will see this later in the Boston School of Framers in the Late 19th and early 20th Century. Most notably with Whistler and his contemporaries in Boston.

Do not miss our next blog post, “Highlights from the Collection Part II: ‘Framing the Past’/ Rembrandt, Queen Victoria, and the French Empire” by our A Street Frames’ picture frame history researcher.

by A Street Frames

Photographic Works by William Eggleston
On View at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
February 26-July 28, 2013

William Eggleston assumes a neutral gaze and creates his art from commonplace subjects: a farmer’s muddy Ford truck, a red ceiling in a friend’s house, the contents of his own refrigerator. In his work, Eggleston photographs “democratically”–literally photographing the world around him. His large-format prints monumentalize everyday subjects, everything is equally important; every detail deserves attention. Eggleston almost single-handedly validated color photography as a legitimate artistic medium.

A native Southerner raised on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, Eggleston has created a singular portrait of his native South since the late 1960s. After discovering photography in the early 1960s, he abandoned a traditional education and instead learned from photographically illustrated books by Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank. Although he began his career making black-and-white images, he soon abandoned them to experiment with color technology to record experiences in more sensual and accurate terms at a time when color photography was largely confined to commercial advertising.

William Eggleston (American, born Memphis, Tennessee, 1939). Untitled (Louisiana), 1980, printed 1999. Dye-transfer print. 11 7/8 x 17 13/16 in. (30.2 x 45.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and Elizabeth S. and Robert J. Fisher Gift, 2012 (2012.302). © Eggleston Artistic Trust

William Eggleston, Untitled (Biloxi, Mississippi), 1974

Eggleston enjoyed a relatively successful career as a photographer despite or because of criticisms. His preference for color photography was slowly gaining acceptance, but it was only around 1973 that his color images truly took off. It was then that Eggleston turned his attention to the dye-transfer process.This printing process was mostly only being used for print ads on glossy magazine pages. When applied to his art photographs, another level of color was achieved.

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939) Untitled, 1970-2012 Dye transfer print Ed. 5/10 15 7/8″ x 19 7/8″ (sheet)

In 1976 with the support of John Szarkowski, the influential photography historian, critic, and curator, Eggleston mounted “Color Photographs” a now famous exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. William Eggleston’s Guide , in which Szarkowski called Eggleston’s photographs “perfect,” accompanied this groundbreaking one-person show that established his reputation as a pioneer of color photography. His subjects were mundane, everyday, often trivial, so that the real subject was seen to be color itself. These images helped establish Eggleston as one of the first non-commercial photographers working in color and inspired a new generation of photographers, as well as filmmakers.

Eggleston has published his work extensively. He continues to live and work in Memphis, and travels considerably for photographic projects.

by A Street Frames

“Talisman of the Ward”
The Album of Drawings by Edward Deeds
On View at Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY
January 10- February 9,2013

Talisman of the Ward: Album of Drawings by Edward Deeds is currently on view at Hirschl and Adler Modern this month. A Street Frames would like to thank Harris Diamant along with Hirschl and Adler Modern for the opportunity to frame such a unique body of work.

continue reading

by A Street Frames

The Peabody Essex Museum has called on ASF several times in the past few years, but preparing for the upcoming exhibit with works assembled from the “Herwitz collection of Modern and Contemporary Indian Painting” was by far the biggest project ASF has tackled with the Essex. The work is large, exuberant, and at times a little complicated to fit into suitable frames but the results were worth the effort! continue reading

by A Street Frames

A look back on an exciting year at A Street Frames, and the people who helped make it great!

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by A Street Frames

Currently on view at the Ricco Maresca Gallery in NYC, works by Henry Darger. most of Darger’s works on paper are double-sided and made up of several pieces of paper glued together at the edges, sometimes 10 feet or longer. A Street Frames has developed a system for hanging these large and fragile works so the viewer can see the entire image on both sides. We have also designed and manufactured a hanging system allowing the framed piece to be rotated to view the verso. Over the past 20 years we’ve been involved in framing dozens of Darger’s works for the Ricco Maresca Gallery and various private collectors.

This exhibition brings together highly celebrated landscapes by the self-taught artist Henry Darger (1892-1973). Darger’s sumptuous and detailed landscapes are extensively varied – from bucolic and peaceful to dark and foreboding. When Henry Darger’s work is viewed from this singular vantage, new aesthetic, conceptual, and technical discoveries surface from the vast depths of the artist’s complex and mysterious oeuvre.

A devout Roman Catholic, Henry Darger worked as a janitor in Catholic hospitals by day and gave expression to his private, imaginary world by night from his small rented room on Chicago’s north side. Over a 54 year period, he created his magnum opus, a more than 15,000-page illustrated saga, The Story of the Vivian Girls in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal or the Glandelinian War Storm or the Glandico-Abbienian Wars as Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, (commonly referred to as In the Realms of the Unreal).The 13 volume manuscript is reenacted in nearly 300 watercolors and collages depicting the “adventures” of the seven innocent Vivian Girls as they lead the rebellion against the evil, child-enslaving, adult Glandelinians.

Darger’s landscapes set the ambience for his tales of good versus evil; they are at once romantic, poetic, and often violent. Using tracings from the newspaper clippings and magazine illustrations he amassed, Darger would meticulously configure his compositions. He paid particular attention to visual space and perspective in his landscapes, utilizing a copy machine to size his figures relative to their placement within the picture plane. Some of his landscapes evoke images of war torn battlefields from the Civil War, which the artist reputedly studied. Blustering winds, sleeting rain, and turbulent clouds inhabit his paintings; (he kept a daily weather journal for 10 years). While other landscapes are more saccharin in feel featuring imaginary places with child-like names, set within Darger’s Catholic land of Angelina, such as Finger Mountain, Peppermint Place, Onion City and Mistletoe Station.

In violent battles against the evil Glandelinian Army, the seven innocent Vivian Girls brave tornadoes and blazing forests, are strangled by clouds in the sky, and even “disappear through the earth” in miraculous escapes. Henry Darger’s extraordinary talent as a colorist, his sensitivity to line, and rhythmic compositions combine to create a formal beauty that renders even brutal imagery, sublime.

Henry Darger is perhaps the most well known self-taught artist; his works are held in museum and private collections in the US and abroad. Darger has been the subject of numerous major museum exhibitions on an international level which include retrospectives at the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY, 1997, 2010, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago, IL, 2003, and The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2007, among others. In June 2012, Kiyoko Lerner donated 13 double-sided drawings by Henry Darger to MoMA, New York, NY. The gift is in honor of MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach, who curated “Disasters of War” in 2000 at P.S.1/MoMA, which presented works by Darger alongside those of Goya and Jake and Dinos Chapman. Copyright on Henry Darger retained by Kiyoko Lerner.

Link to Design Arts Daily:
http://www.ai-ap.com/publications/article/4934/henry-darger-at-ricco-maresca.htm

by A Street Frames