Artist of the Month: Jan Matejko

-By William O�Connor

Stanczyk 1863

The late nineteenth century was one of the most transformative periods in western civilization. The industrial revolution had evolved many countries from small rural confederations of territories into urban, industrialized nation-states with economies, governments, armies and often empires. The growing competition between these nations was fierce, in what we would now recognize today as a corporate branding war. This new brand identification was known as Nationalism and every nation from Britain to France and America was busily building the origin stories of their nations and defining what their nation stood for building brand loyalty. One of the most important designers of these nationalist stories was the artist. In a time before film or broad literacy the artist was an indispensable promoter of the national identity, bringing to life the heroes of a nations past. In the developing nation of Poland, a country struggling under the governance of Imperial Russia, with England and France dominating as world super powers, Nationalist Art was an important propaganda tool for self promotion. One of the most famous of these Polish history painters was Jan Matejko (1838-1893).



Born in Krakow Matejko studied at the Krakow School of Fine Arts and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where he honed his skills and began his work on Polish history paintings. In 1865 a Polish uprising against Russia was formative in Matejko�s work pushing his politics more earnestly towards patriotic Polish subjects. By the 1870�s Matejko�s works were routinely being displayed in the Paris Salon Exhibitions and winning awards garnering him and his homeland international acclaim. These colossal and opulent paintings became the hallmark of Matejko�s career, seemingly attempting to outdo himself in detail and embellished pageantry in each canvas. Before the age of cinema these paintings were the precursors to today�s CGI summer blockbusters using casts of hundreds and thousands in frozen, posed tableaus, replete with set design and costumes. His portraits however showcase all of his prodigious talents as a painter with more restraint. In 1872 Matejko became director for the Prague Academy of Fine Arts where his teachings and style became influential for an entire generation of Polish painters.



After Matekjo�s death in 1893 the international taste for large, academic, nationalist, historical paintings had drastically faded. New modern painters dominated the galleries and salons of Paris for the early part of the twentieth century. During WWII many of the Matejko�s works were seen as too political for the occupying Nazi forces of Poland and some were destroyed. After the war, The People�s Republic of Poland saw Soviet domination behind the Iron Curtain limiting the west�s study and appreciation for Matejko�s work, coupled with the rise of Mid-Century Modernism allowed the international community to all but forget Matejko�s work. Poland extricated itself from the Warsaw Pact in 1990 opening up markets and travel to the west along with visitors to the Museum collections in Prague and Krakow. Along with the artists that emigrated around the world came forgotten Polish art including Jan Matejko.



Personally, I fondly remember a student that I had in the late nineties who had emigrated from Poland to the United States. She was a talented painter and we developed a friendship even after our class was over. When I was moving away she gifted me with a book of Polish painting that she had brought with her from Poland. I had never heard of any of the artists in that book and that was my first introduction to Matejko. I still have that book and I keep it as a prized possession.





Video Slide Gallery of Jan Matejko:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKSv107btgY

Gallery of Matejko's paintings:

The Battle of Grunwald 1878

The Battle of Raclawice 1888

Constitution May 3, 1791.  1891

The Hanging of the Zygmunt Bell 1873

The Maid of Orleans 1886

Self Portrait 1891

Artist of the Month: Edward Hopper

-By William O'Connor

�Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, 

and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.�

-E. Hopper

The Night Hawks 1942

As a student I was moved by the adage that a great illustration should always depict the moment just before or just after an event, but never the event itself. Never was this principle more expertly exercised than by the American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967).



Born in the outskirts of New York City during the Victorian period Hopper grew up in a traditional middle-class family with modest aspirations of working as an architect. Studying illustration in New York Hopper�s working class sensibilities allowed for his early success as a commercial artist with the newspapers and magazines in the burgeoning industrial publishing industry. After a few trips to Paris to study the Impressionists Hopper attempted a fine art career, but success eluded him.



In 1913 the New York armory show polarized the American art community into two camps. The abstract and the realists. By the 20�s with the influence of the American Ashcan School and films, combined with his innate sense of storytelling and composition from his years as an illustrator, Hopper�s work begins to shine. Capturing time into a single frozen frame, he stops the story, lingering on isolated moments of solitude. Holding the sun in its path with streaks of light that exactly depict the time of day, the eye of the viewer focuses on the room or the street where the action has just occurred, where the characters wait for someone to enter or exit the picture. In Hopper�s paintings the viewer becomes the voyeur, gazing through the frame of the canvas, through frames within the frames, watching the silent secret world of other people, and we wait, as they wait, for the scene to unfold. Hopper�s paintings are masterpieces of imagination and tension, allowing the viewer to fill-in the expectations of the tableau; to imagine what will happen next and to project their own fears, doubts and uncertainty into the paintings.



By the end of WWII Hopper had established himself as a leading American artist, but tastes in art were changing again. Post-War America (and especially New York) was quickly becoming a new Bohemia with iconoclastic artists like Kerouac, Ginsberg, Coltrane, Pollock and others. Modern New York was a modern city and this was being reflected in its art. The Museum of Modern Art and other venues shunned American realists like Hopper and the ashcan school in preference for more abstract paintings. In 1953 Hopper joined as group of realist painters to form �Realist� magazine in order to promote traditional painting, but Hopper never had much enthusiasm, he was always a simple man who simply ignored the artists and artwork he did not like. By the 1960�s Hopper�s work had become less prolific and he rarely worked until his death in 1967 in Manhattan, less than twenty miles from where he was born.



The legacy of Hopper is intriguing, and I find myself trying to separate the work, from the memes and cultural icons that his work has inspired. For some critics his work is simplistic and provincial, while others can now draw a direct influence of Hopper to the works of postmodern artists like Deibenkorn and Hockney. For many his work is an inspiration, telling the quintessential story of American dreams, often bleached by the sun, lost in the labyrinth of the city or obscured in dark shadows, but always waiting and watching for the next scene to start.



Watch the Documentary:

Edward Hopper and the Blank Canvas:

A Gallery of Edward Hopper�s paintings:

Early Sunday Morning 1930 

Room in New York

Automat 1927

Gas 1940

New York Movie 1930

NightWindows 1928