New Work. New Blog.

One third of our lives 
are spent sleeping—
and dreams are laced 
through all our nights.
John Ransom Phillips, through the persona of civil war photographer Mathew Brady, invades the dreams of Illustrious Americans and brings along acquaintances such as Andy Warhol and Dick Cheney to pique, amuse, and disturb his readers. http://americandreambook.net

Alan Trachtenberg discusses John Ransom Phillips' paintings

Brave Hearts: Visions of Civil War Battlefields Friday, October 1, 2010 at 6pm

Yale historian Alan Trachtenberg discusses battlefields in the paintings of John Ransom Phillips and the photography of Mathew Brady.

He raises the question—Do paintings give us a truth deeper than the promise of photography?
A exhibition tour led by John Ransom Phillips will follow the lecture.

Albany Institute of History and Art 125 Washington Ave, Albany, NY 12210 518 463 4478 www.albanyinstitute.org

Currently on view: Ransoming Mathew Brady: Re-Imagining the Civil War Recent Paintings by John Ransom Phillips June 19–Oct 3, 2010

Abandoned Heart at Pea Ridge (March 7, 1862) John Ransom Phillips, 2007, oil on canvas; Gettysburg, Pa.

Dead Confederate soldier in Devil’s Den, 1863, Brady Studio

Abandoned Heart at Pea Ridge

Abandoned Heart at Pea Ridge (3-7-1862)

oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches


Part of the at exhibition at Albany Institute of Art, Ransoming Mathew Brady: Re-Imagining the Civil War.
This show runs through Oct. 3 2010 and includes over 25 works inspired by Mathew Brady and his Civil War photography.

Albany Institute of History & Art
125 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12210
Tel: 518.463.4478
E-mail: information@albanyinstitute.org

Saatchi Showdown - Parts and Smoke at Chickamauga

Parts and Smoke at Chickamauga 2007







Not only is this painting currently being shown at the Albany Institute of Art, it will be part of the Saatchi Showdown, 8/9/2010 - 8/16/2010

You can cast your ballot for this painting by going to:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=280336

This showdown is only active between 8/9/2010 - 8/16/2010

Shown at the Albany Institute show

Antietam in Smoke (Sept. 17 1862)
2007 Oil on canvas
46 x 62 inches





Part of the at exhibition at Albany Institute of Art, Ransoming Mathew Brady: Re-Imagining the Civil War.
This show runs through Oct. 3 2010 and includes over 25 works inspired by Mathew Brady and his Civil War photography.

Albany Institute of History & Art
125 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12210
Tel: 518.463.4478
E-mail: information@albanyinstitute.org

Notes From An Opening

Ransoming Mathew Brady


Opalka Gallery


June 9 2010



i went to the opalka exhibition with some anxiety, fearing that i
might not like the works which i am seeing for the first time, all
together in a collective space.

sometimes in previous exhibitions, i literally could not see the work. i would look away and then at the image and it would take time to see in new spaces what i had known in the familiarity of my studio.

then when there were people present, their energy would move me to see differently.

once in mexico city, during an exhibition of mine, i saw a couple embracing with a
prolonged passionate kiss. highly complimented,sensing that the work
they were standing in front of was responsible for this wonderful
arousal, i asked them precisely what ingredient in the work led them
to such a state of ecstasy.

they seemed bewildered and said they just like to kiss.

Venue and Description of Art

Often the way art is received has much to do with the venue and in which it is seen and the description that accompanies it. In May 2010 the Crescent Hotel in San Francisco put John Phillips’ oil painting The Family Bed on permanent exhibition in the main lobby.

John,

Well, first off, it has been a while. How have you been? I hope things for you have been good.

I wanted to let you know that the piece that I bought from you several years ago is now hanging in the lobby of our newest Hotel, Crescent San Francisco. I will send you pictures of how it looks. But needless to say, we love it and think it adds a lot to the space.

We would like to have a museum tag next to the piece. You of course remember it is Family Bed. Can you write something that we can have printed which would be placed next to it on the wall?

We did have one woman say that it shocked her, and appears degrading to women. Of course, we all know that art will elicit a variety of reactions from people, some good some not so good. I suppose if it didn't stir something, it wouldn't be art. But when you consider what to write, perhaps keep in mind that its a Hotel and we want to have people feel like its interesting but not necessarily controversial.

I look forward to catching up. Thanks.

Best,

Greg

-----------------------------

John was “hard pressed to give one because the work is about family intimacy” but thought they could use a few lines from the book “The Bed as Autobiography” where the painting appears.

-----

And They did

----

FAMILY BED, (2000. oil on canvas) takes the subject of one's bed as a realm where extraordinary things take place -- among them, our key human rites of passage. We take to our beds to be born and to grow, to hide and to dream, to lie alone and cling together, to come of age and make love, to create and to procreate, to ail and to heal, to rest and to die.

-----------------

Having seen what was chosen John thought the venue needed a description that was somewhat different.

-----------------------

Greg,

Since this is a hotel lobby, you might want to delete dying and
substitute "to rest and to sleep".
I want to make this work which, is very intimate, positive, hopeful and a public experience.

-----------------

And so it was changed.















FAMILY BED, (2000. oil on canvas)

Emily Dickinson - Fragments From The Dreambook

Emily Dickinson---Sleeping With God
Watercolor










Emily Dickinson---My Letter to the World
Watercolor










Emily Dickinson--- Emily on Fire
Watercolor

For more on John's journey with Emily in Egypt go to:

Egyptian Travelogue: Week 3
Egyptian Travelogue: Week 4

MARY TODD LINCOLN

Excerpts from the soon to be published Mathew Brady’s Dream Book. http://ransomingbrady-dream book.com

Mathew Brady invades the dreams of famous Americans he has photographed





Mathew Brady: Mrs. Lincoln, the president’s wife, used to visit my studio frequently. Ordering me around, she would search out the best lighting to enhance her importance. She was a vigorous custodian of her public image and censored what she deemed not worthy of who she believed herself to be.

She loved clothes and seemed to subscribe to the maxim that such matters were not disguises but revelations of true character.












mary lincoln's tear bed 70x90 oil 09


Mary Todd Lincoln:
Excerpt at the end of their joint dream.

I visit photographers, no not Mr. Brady who is interested in the surfaces of existence, but those who can access other dimensions. My senses hunger for connection, new circumferences, and Mr. Mumler of Boston provides me with new opportunities. In my visits there, I have to climb stairs to encounter my own self-image of woman-ness, fertile as the moon, giving life to males.

And when I reach the top of the stairs, I encounter a familiar smell, dusty and pungent which seems to be waiting for me. It pervades my sittings with Mr. Mumler and when I leave I take with me an image of an old lady in black, strong in her past fecundity, with two gentle hands on her shoulders, loving and peaceful. There are others, but this is my favorite and I leave the studio at 170 West Springfield Street, and I leave Boston and eventually I leave even America.

But before my departure, I push Mr. Brady out of my dream and he awakens full of fear and consternation.

I get out of my mother’s bed quietly but with some dispatch and move to the corner of my bedroom, where the moon’s light is blocked. I have never seen spirits, but I have seen other people’s dreams. In the old-wet collodion days, I recall taking a positive print from a negative and being surprised to encounter a ghostly figure floating above the sitter.

This spirit-like image was also evident, but less so, in the negative. I sense that what we have here is double exposure, an incompletely cleaned surface of the plate then transferred to the negative and in turn to the positive print. President Lincoln’s spirit is a chemical action registered between the image and the glass itself.

So I get back in bed happy I have explained the phenomenon, but then I see at the foot of my mother’s bed the President himself, gaunt, regal, and disheveled. But I am awake- this is no dream- so I study this specter and he makes no move to leave my darkened bedroom. Then he is joined by three small boys who look disappointed when they look where their father is looking. Had they expected their mother, whose presence I left long ago when I left her dream? Or are they confusing my energy with hers since I had invaded (not exactly with invitation) her nightmare? The wallpaper in my bedroom begins to wilt, and a strange unearthly smell descends into my bedroom. A window opens in the corner and all four Lincolns exit.

Mathew Brady’s Dream Book

Mathew Brady’s Dream Book is a soon to be published compilation of dreams by the renowned 19th century photographer, Mathew Brady. But rather than dreaming his own dreams, Brady enters, observes and records those of his contemporaries (e.g. Herman Melville, Mother Ann Lee, Sitting Bull, Mary Todd Lincoln, John Brown, PT Barnum, Walt Whitman, amongst others.)

Although the book uses historical characters, it is mainly a fictional work.

The anecdotal dreams weave together accurate historical detail with artistic insight to provide an uncanny perspective on our own present-day world.

The Dream Book attests to the historical figure, makes him even more vivid, more accessible, a living character in an elaborate fiction.

Peter Frank on Mathew Brady & John Phillips

In his latest series of paintings and drawings John Ransom Phillips trains his psychologically keen and historically informed eye on a figure at once central and peripheral to American art, the photographer Matthew Brady.

Reflecting on Brady’s notable but in some regard overrated role in the photographic documentation of the Civil War, as well as his prominence before and after as a New York-based portrait photographer whose clientele was top-heavy in the rich and famous, Phillips teases out the pathos, and the bathos, underlying Brady’s artistic achievement and social persona.

As well, Phillips casts Brady against the figure of Walt Whitman, contrasting the poet’s bold aesthetic and personal gesture against the photographer’s more conventional social role – a role that, nonetheless, Brady’s artistic achievement transcended.

Phillips proffers this dialectic as a quintessentially American problem in art: the bold or the safe? The challenging or the acceptable? Thoreau or Emerson? Ives or MacDowell? Ginsberg or Warhol

Peter Frank is the Art Critic and Senior Curator for Riverside Art Museum.
Walt Whitman Holding Mathew Brady, 2005, oil, 62 x 46"

Brady of Broadway

I was Brady of Broadway or, as everyone used to say, “the photographer of decision–makers.” (Today you would call them “players.”) I had a studio in lower Manhattan (and later in Washington City) centrally located. A special entrance for my clients to be photographed brought them to a spacious, light filled space (the skylight was tinted blue) and this assured the sitter of a more noble countenance. Creating a trend, I stripped the space of foolish and unnecessary details, only depending on a few classical references suggesting our young republic.

And the chair – oh, don’t forget the chair: A splendid Victorian seat in walnut with elegant curved lines and graceful proportions. They all sat in this chair, Lincoln, Grant, Walt Whitman, all players. I connected all these illustrious Americans together with this chair, which thankfully remains silent.

In the 1840’s, I hit on the idea of creating a photo catalogue of only the most distinguished Americans. I was not documenting, history but creating, shaping our national identity. Quickly, I became the master of the celebrity machine.

Some commentators have compared me with Andy Warhol. I am uncomfortable with this: yes, we both created factories for the making of art; we both assured the sitter of importance (fame?) through identification with the photographer; and, yes, both of us were uncomfortable with human feeling, nuance, and self-expression, resulting in the same work of art repeated over and over. And certainly we were both uncomfortable with unpleasantness.

Andy took the most horrific images of his age (the atomic bomb, prison executions, traffic accidents) and, by repeating them, removed their power to provoke any emotional reaction. He trivialized them. I admire that.

When I did go to photograph war, I purposely arrived late so the battlefield was free of bodies. General Reynolds was shot in a wheat field called McPherson Woods in 1863. I waited until the landscape had been returned to nature, clean and pristine with no hint of human altercation. I focused then on the quiet of the place, the sense of landscape, and placed myself in the foreground so that you knew I was here and that my perception was your perception.

But a comparison with Andy? No, I never needed a wig. My hair was always full and luxuriant (I was good-looking and earnest in expression). I did not attract a following of strange people, but only respectful employees (up to twenty-five, I think). They arranged the composition, posed the sitter, adjusted the lighting. Then at my direction my assistants inserted into the camera the sensitized glass plates on which the negative would be exposed.

What resulted was art itself – an act of theater, if you will. An invitation for spectators to create a reality that would fit their need of what a work of photographic art should look like. I collected images much as a merchant galvanizes his inventory, and I like to think, I poeticized peoples’ collective thoughts. I managed their reality and made life more real than real, (what reality really is). My badge was a straw hat and linen duster.
















Photography as Performance (5 moveable panels), 2006, oil on canvas, 70 ◊ 94 inches overall

Phillips Off to Egypt

Phillips and Companions Off to Egypt.

“i am going to egypt with mark twain and edgar poe, invading their dreams and exploring their half hidden perspectives from places not my own.

This journey will explore some of the spiritual mysteries surrounding Tutankhamun..

See Book of the Dead

Brady To Go To Harvard?

In Early February Mr. Eric Weinberger wrote:

Dear Mr. Phillips:

Thank you for the letter and for the handsome book that arrived in our office today. We are just not sure what you are asking for. Is it Matthew Brady whom you “would love to get [him] into Harvard,” and what exactly do you mean by that?

Sincerely,
Eric Weinberger
Office of the President
Harvard University
+++++++++++++++++++++
Mr Phillips Answered:

Dear Mr. Weinberger,

I did not intend to be cryptic when I wrote Ms. Faust that I hoped Mathew Brady could get into Harvard. Periodically, Brady would muse over how lovely it could have been had he attended your university.
Since he died in 1896, this clearly will not be possible, but then I got the idea of offering Harvard one of the paintings of Brady illustrated in our new book which I sent you.

It is not the same thing as his attendance, but hopefully a good idea. Let me know what president Faust thinks.

Sincerely,
John Phillips
+++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Mr. Phillips:

. . . Thanks for the clarification –

Sincerely,
Eric Weinberger

Sacred Calling

art is a sacred calling
my art elevated the mind
and served the spiritual
life of the Republic.

Brady of Broadway at the Olpalka Gallery

Brady Through a Glass Door, 2006,
oil on canvas, 70×40 inches

Brady of Broadway returns to his roots upstate to show at the well-designed Olpalka gallery in Albany, June 4-July 30, 2010. Still working out details but oils and watercolors will portray status and celebrity as staged by the 19th century photographer.

Advance copies have arrived!

Anticipating the release of John Ransom Phillips: Ransoming Brady in April. Several advance copies arrived while I was away in Egypt. Lovely to behold! It is gratifying to know that the studio's efforts created such a fine book. Couldn't have managed it without Nik, Caroline and Donna. and of course special thanks to Alan T.... looking forward to working together again soon...