Behind the Scenes Minis: Morisot and Rosenwald

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy Vee Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. This week on the show, we talked about Barrett Morrisso, whose work I really fell in love with in France, and here is a little story about that that we didn't get into it all. Uh So, when we took that trip to France, we had a lot of time that was scheduled with like group outings and walking tours and things like that, and then we also had free time, uh that was up to us um and so early in the trip was when we went to the muse Marmattan Money and I saw the paintings that they had on display by Barrett morris which there were multiple of, but by far not the entire collection that they have there in their own collection. Later on in a trip, we went to the Music do or Say and as I was walking around the music door Say, there was a big sign on the wall that said Bert morris So. And I was so excited. I was like, I just saw I just really fell in love with Bert morris So is art. I'm so excited. I'm gonna go see this, and I kept just having this you can't get there from here situation. I was stymied every time I tried, and then I learned it was a temporary exhibition that was literally opening something like six days after we left Paris, and I was so sad about it. Um One of the sources for this podcast, though, was the exhibition catalog from that exhibition, which traveled I think to three cities. One of them was Dallas. It was at the Dallas Museum of Art. We did not narrowly miss it the time that we went to Dallas, it was like three years afterwards. That would have been super frustrating had that been the case. I just love looking at her work. A lot of it I just find to be like really comforting and peaceful, which is interesting because as a person, most of the accounts I found of her were that she was like very reserved and very precise about how she wanted to do things, but also discreet about it. And this may have been one of the things that caused her to butt heads with Mary Sat a bit, because Mary Sat also had very strong ideas, but she would be very very blunt about it. And Barrett Morissa was more like having very strong ideas but also being kind of discreet and delicate, and how she talked about it. So I think that may have been what seems to have led to them maybe having some kind of a falling out that I wish I had more to tail about because I'm nosy. Do you have a favorite piece of hers? Um, So there's one that is of her sister watering plants out on a terrace that's really lovely. One of the ones that I saw at the museum Marmatan Monet that I really liked is of Julie and another child and they're playing in a large bowl that I think has a fish in it. There's like a little splotch of color that suggests to me a fish that's swimming around in the bowl. Um, And it just it sort of captures the two of them in this moment of just being entranced by what's happening in the in the bowl, and also maybe they're about to knock it over. Are you you're generally a fan of the Impressionist correct, Yes, very much, thanks, I really um. I like a lot of Many's portraits of her. Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't mention most of those really at all, is aside from saying that he painted her like fourteen times. Yeah, within the Impressionist movement, those tend to be a little darker than a lot of the others, which is probably why I'm like, I love that, UM. Many of them are just very very pretty though. Yeah. The painting that we that I have chosen for our social media promotion of the episode is her self portrait UM, which is very brown in its color palette, whereas a lot of her other painting is a lot more on the like blue and white and green end of the spectrum. UM, but it has that very unfinished quality to it where you look at it and you're like, did you paint the edges at the campus right? Which apparently was something that Edward Money felt the need to correct. Correct It was not. It was not incorrect in the first place, just his aesthetic a little different, same grouping I um. I recently was very entranced, and I even mentioned it on on Twitter. I think that I just happened to stumble across a painting I love of his, which is a bar at the fully Berger, and it's one of those things where if you just look at that painting in terms of portraiture and then hers. You can see where he would have been like no, no, no, no no, yeah, more like this show more detail, um, and she would have been more defined like there's you know. Yeah, she's felt absolutely sick about him quote retouching her painting that she was submitting to the seen all. She did not like that at all. I would not like that either. It's a pretty conceited move to be like, oh, I'll fix this before we turn it in. Yeah. Apparently her mom found the whole situation hilarious and she did not find it funny at all. One of the cool things about there being more interest and more more exhibitions of her work UM in the more more recent years is that actually I was able to find two different catalogs from two different exhibitions two go through as part of the research for this episode, which was pleasantly surprising to me because there, I mean, there are plenty of artists who can find tons and tons and tons of exhibition catalogs from, but not not as much with Bert MORRISO. So getting to flip through two books of art really lovely. Not a bad way to spend some time mm hmm. Super delicious We got to have Andrew Feiler on the show this week, which took a while to arrange, um, but I'm thankful we did. Between his schedule and mine, it got a little dicey, and I ended up booking him on a day that I was out of town because I'm a ding dong, But we got it all worked out, uh, and he was just marvelous. And now he's off running around because as a consequence of this work, he has booked everywhere to give talks and and talk about his his road trip around America, but documenting these schools. It's funny, you know when he talks about particularly the I mean I mentioned at the end of the episode that when we talked about John Lewis, I mean I got completely choked up because how could you not and and his story I think is quite moving in having that discussion with John Lewis and taking his picture, um, but even him just talking about how important it became to include portraits in this book as well as just images of the schools and the states. They are now, some of them, as we said, still living, working, breathing spaces, some of them literally piles of rubble. But I I love that you know, he ran into so many people that had connections to them and wanted to share their stories and wanted to be part of this project, and I'm so grateful that he incorporated their portraits into it. Yeah, it is a good reminder that history. We are all writing history all the time, no matter whether you are a child sitting in a classroom or the philanthropist that funds that school, like, you're all part of that story. Um. And so it's it's to me very cool. And I love some of those pictures that are portraits because you just get a different flavor and an insight into some of these people that is so beautiful and fun. Um, I love it. I love it. Okay, I tell you a John Lewis story. It's not about this episode, what it is about the show. When the third volume of John Lewis's graphic novel March came out, I tried to get him onto the show to talk about it. Uh. As In I started trying to contact people to basically be like, is John Lewis doing publicity for this book? We'd love to have him on the show. And uh, basically having not tried harder is one of my biggest regrets. About my whatever eight years, but I've been on this podcast. Yeah, because it wasn't like I just asked somebody and gave up that. I think had I known some of the things I know now about trying to get guests onto the show, I might have made different decisions. And uh, I don't know. It's one of my true regrets that that did not end up working. Yeah, that's understandable. Um. I always tell people I'm I don't get starstruck, and the times I have, there have been very few. And I can name two off the top of my head. And one was meeting Charlie Bolden when he was the administrator of NASA. Totally cried. And two was like literally I met John Lewis at the airport during a protest and he reached out and shook my hand and I just burst into tears, like a complete mess, and I was just like cant he was. So we didn't we spent seconds together total, like he was. There were a lot of people that wanted to talk with him, but it was U You just realize you're holding the hand of history and it's a little bit much. That was a lot to take in, uh um, and was just as lovely as one would ever hope in that situation, and to his extraordinary credit and skill, and it's not surprising, but it still took me by surprise. In a situation like that where they were just throngs of people and everyone wants to talk to him. I think he made everyone feel like they had a connection with him for at least a second or two, which is difficult to do in crowd situations, and shows extraordinary grace. I've heard similar descriptions from other people who had similar experiences. Just a lovely human and we are poorer for not having him with us anymore. But boy his I feel like his legacy continues, and it is part of this legacy that that Andrew wanted to document, you know. He he mentions in that interview that you know, he had all the history parts covered, but he didn't have really inexperiential writing about what it was like to go to these schools and just you know, sit in the schoolhouse, many of them so tiny, and just you know that be your um, you know, your primary education, and and how that shapes a person um And it was just lovely. I was so glad I got to talk to Andrew and I was glad that he kind of continued that discussion that we had a little bit of with Jeremy Katz from the Breman Center about how in many ways Atlanta's Black community and Jewish community have always been so closely linked, um and really kind of dependent on each other in a lot of ways. UM, and really you know, had a um a sort of kinship born out of their positions on the social ladder at that point. So I was glad that that he got to kind of book in that, uh in this interview as well. So again, boy do I love that book. Um. His use of light is just really extraordinary. It's the same kind of thing that I respond to you in paintings, UM, in the way that he uses light to frame and alter a scene. And so of course I'm like, yeah, I page through this all day long. I'll be great. I also love that he accidentally found himself writing about history, because he didn't know he was going to want to write a story for every picture until he was actually in it and then was like, oh, I guess I am researching and writing. Now that's a whole different uh. And also I just wanted to have him on because, as I always try to do UM and you know you do as well. We try to have people on that have history careers that maybe aren't history careers. People always think about UM and that it is not always about teaching, but sometimes about discovering and and sharing art and showing things in new ways. So super duper lucky. I am hoping to get down to the exhibit before it goes to its next position on tour, because it's I I suspect it is rather mind blowing to see those photographs at huge scale in a beautiful setting like that. So if you're in Atlanta, maybe I'll run into you. I'll be the one in the corner crying. It'll be great. I hope your weekend the head is delightful. If you are not having time off, I hope it is still as delightful as can be, and that you managed to find some some moments of peace and perhaps even happiness in there. Uh. And we will be right back here tomorrow with a classic and then we'll see you again on Monday when new content. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.