The Art of the Greeting Card

I wonder how many of your grandparents got a greeting card or phone call last Sunday, September 7. I didn’t know it was Grandparents Day until it flashed across my screen on that day. It always seemed to me that it was the card companies that came up with some of these holidays, but in this case, it was a West Virginia housewife, concerned with the loneliness of the elderly. In 1970, she started the campaign, which resulted in President Jimmy Carter signing a Joint Resolution of Congress designating the first Sunday after Labor Day as a national holiday. So if you want to keep up, that is two cards in one week. Yes, there are Labor Day cards too.

This got me thinking about greeting cards. In all honesty, I send most of my greeting cards by email with e-cards. There is a better chance they will arrive on the right day, and even if I am willing to go to three stores, which I have done, searching for an appropriate card, I usually do not succeed. I end up with one that says “Thinking of you” or one for a different occasion that I adapt! However, if I go on one of the greeting card apps, I usually luck out.

In an article in the Michigan Daily by Kaya Ginsky under the title “The Unconventional Art in Greeting Cards” the author confesses “Greeting cards line my shelves and walls like artwork: a dog with a toilet joke from my sister, scoops of my favorite ice cream flavors falling from the sky from my parents, eight reasons my grandmother loves me (written by a copywriter), a joyful Yom Kippur message from a well-meaning Christian relative, a “drink up, it’s ur bday” from my hometown friends.”… art?

In our home, we leave them up on our dining table for a week and then store them so that when we are gone, our children can enjoy throwing them all out!

In the 19th century, artistic cards, first celebrating Valentine’s Day and later Christmas, were produced for sale.

ca. 1885

It was only in 1932 that Disney and Hallmark came together and corporatized the cards that we find in many varieties in pharmacies today. I don’t know if there are any stores left solely devoted to greeting cards, though there used to be. Still there are a few people who do publish their own photographs or designs on cards that can be found in specialty shops. No matter the talent of the maker, what is most appreciated is the extraordinary effort put into a hand-made card sent for a specific occasion.

Can a greeting card actually be considered a work of art? Certainly not if it is simply a reproduction of a known work. It might be, however, if it is an original artistic expression that goes beyond the occasion. The originals of cards sent to his friends by the renowned printmaker Gustave Baumann (1881-1971) have become valuable collector’s items.

Of course, a work of art created for you by a child or grandchild, no matter how young, may not be worthy of framing and putting up on your wall, but it is a treasure.

                        

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945: Master Works from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

It is most unusual to see an exhibition of older European Art in New Mexico, but a fabulous one has come to the Albuquerque Museum of Art. Two and a half years ago, Andrew Connors, Director of the Museum, got wind of the formation of the show and went to Germany to lobby for it.

Noting the dates that the show covers, you can see that it begins shortly before WW I and goes through the end of WW II. Though one cannot ignore the poignancy of the politics, the sheer quality of the art in the show is extraordinary. The works all come from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Berlin. Compared with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has 200,000 works of art, Berlin’s collection of 4,000 works is not large. However, judging by the 72 works they sent to Albuquerque, the collection is superb.

The exhibition opened at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and after the show closes in Albuquerque on January 4, 2026, it will go on to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I do recommend the catalog, which gives a fuller understanding of the period covered in the art, along with the background of each artist, accompanied by illustrations of remarkably high quality.

The exhibition here is installed in a totally comprehensible manner so that you can follow the periods and styles of the art. It gives emphasis to the politics while demonstrating the artistic achievements with some of the biggest names of the period.

In the Albuquerque venue, the show opens with a 1914 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) view of Berlin’s Belle-Alliance-Platz, later known as the Mehringplatz. At the center of the composition is the column that commemorates the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. By 1945, by the end of the bombing, only the column with the Goddess of Victory at the top remained.

In 1914, Kurt Gunther (1893-1955) painted the “Radio Enthusiast”. The sitter is wearing headphones to pick up foreign transmissions, as regular broadcasts only started in Germany 9 years later. The portrait brought back the image of a friend from my teenage years who was a ham radio operator, maybe minus the cigar. Gunther was a forerunner of the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity movement that became the dominant style in reaction to German Expressionism and World War I, when everyone was sobering up to the realities of politics and the world.

In the section titled “Politics and War” is the George Grosz (1893-1959) “Pillars of Society” from 1926. I will leave it to you to find all the symbols of the coming Third Reich, such as the Swastika tie pin of the earless figure in the front with sword in hand.

The climax of the exhibition, as presented in Albuquerque, is a striking installation of two sculptures and a triptych.

The bronze on the left is by Georg Kolbe (1877-1947), called “Descending Man” (1939-40) and stands 7 feet high (without the pedestal). Commissioned by the City of Frankfurt am Main for a ring of statues in the city. It was in tribute to Hitler’s favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. I am fairly sure that he had Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” in mind. It was, of course, included in the 1940 edition of “The Great German Art Exhibition”. That took place every year from 1937 to 1944 to present the ideal of the Third Reich in contrast to the 1937 exhibition of “Degenerate Art”.

In the foreground is the bronze “Fallen Man” (1914-1916) by Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919) (see installation photo above). It was the artist’s response to the devastation of war, and soon after its creation, he committed suicide. In 1937, all his works were declared degenerate art and confiscated from German museum collections. It is in perfect contrast to Kolbe’s work and a foreshadowing of what was to come. 

The work with the greatest impact of the show occupies the center of the installation, a painting by Horst Strempel (1904-1975) appropriately titled “Night Over Germany” (1945-1946). This stunning triptych with a predella repeats the tradition of an altarpiece.

With Germany totally defeated, Strempel dealt with its shame of the preceding decade plus. The catalog entry states, “In the central panel, the artist processed his own experience of the concentration camps’ barbarism. The left wing depicts civilians’ fear during the nights of bombing; the right shows the terror of a hidden Jewish family. Only the lower panel, showing the resistance in the underground, hints at a vague hope of liberation.” Standing before it today, one shares the experience of its first public exhibition in 1947 when observers agreed it was a masterpiece “whose accusation stirs, whose silence speaks”.

New Words

Before reading a book called “Made in America” (by Bill Bryson, published in 1994), I never gave much thought to words being added to the dictionary. Of course, I realized that we were suddenly using words we had not grown up with. Some are obvious, like “Laptop” as in a portable computer, a word that had that meaning in the early 1980s but was used generally only when they became ubiquitous, maybe 20 years later. Many more that I had thought were always in my vocabulary, I learned were actually coined long after I was born.

Bryson investigates words through the lens of U.S. history. He writes about names of objects that we thought were the original word, but had actually been changed several times before the final name was settled on. For example, the word “automobile”, concocted from Greek and Latin, had become the popular term for car by 1899, even before there were decent roads to drive them on. Some of the names it was known by before were Machine, Road Engine, Self Motor, Locomotive Car, Motor Buggy, Horseless Carriage, and even a Stink Carriage, and there were more!

1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen

It got me thinking about the quantity of words that have come into our vocabulary in the 21st century. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has roughly half a million entries, adding approximately 1,000 words or changes, or additions of meanings per year. The online OED is revised quarterly. Assuming these figures are accurate, there have been 25,000 new words or meanings added since the beginning of this century. To me, that is absolutely mind-boggling.

According to the OED, the word “texting “was first used in the 1950s. The form “to text” began being used in the 1990s and became mainstream as of 2010, possibly as a result of the first iPhone, having was introduced in 2007.

There are words we often understand in context, though we may not have encountered them before, such as “twitterati”; however, I have seen retweet quite often. These were clearly introduced when the Twitter app came into existence in 2006. The name is derived from how we describe birds communicating, short and sweet.

Technology has given us so many additional ways to communicate. A series of oral or video posts on a similar subject has come to be known as Podcasts.

Advertising, of course, has a long history of expanding our vocabulary with terms like “manscaping”, indicating grooming the male body, that way glorifying the use of the razor! How about “binge-watch”? I consider a show that Netflix informs me is worthy of binge-watching, as something so good I will want to watch more than one episode at a time.

Lastly, consider the term “viral”. It is what every advertiser or individual making internet “posts” wants -- to have their message repeated all over the internet.

Come to think of it, I could wish that for my Missives as well.😊

Splitting The Art

As I read an article by Tim Brinkhof written earlier this year about reuniting paintings with their lost parts, I started to think more about “The Strange Life of Objects,” as Maurice Rheims, French auctioneer, art historian, and novelist, called his book.

Medieval manuscripts have had their pages torn out of their bindings for centuries, but starting in the 19th century, and more so in the 20th, the illuminations were cut out to sell them separately. One such example is a large, illuminated prayer book by Jean Bourdichon from 1498 of the “Hours of Louis XII”. Sometime after 1700, it was in England that it was split up. Parts are today in the British Library, the V&A in London, the Free Library in Philadelphia, and the Louvre. In 2003, the Getty acquired 3 more pages, and 20 years later, the missing half of one of those pages is illustrated here.

Diptychs and triptychs were painted on separate panels, so they were easily separated and dispersed. One way or the other, these panels arrive in different places, but they are occasionally lent to a museum that holds the central panel for a special exhibition. The central panel of “The Entombment,” recently discovered and identified as by the Dutch artist Marten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), was acquired by the Worcester Art Museum and exhibited with its side panels on loan from the Selldorff family’s private collection. 

In an article by Richard Whiddington, we learn about Giorgio Vasari’s commission in 1541-42 of 9 panels for the ceiling coffers of the Palazzo Corner-Spinelli in Venice, where they remained for 200 years. Then, starting in the 18th century, it began to be broken up. Most of the panels had been sold by the middle of the 19th Century, ending up in various European collections. Starting in 1980, Venice made a concerted effort to reassemble all the panels, and after more than 40 years, including search and restoration, they are now installed in a reconstructed ceiling in Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia with two spaces left for the still missing elements.

And one more…After the death of Edouard Manet, one of his four versions of “The Execution of Maximilian" was cut into pieces and dispersed by his family. Degas, a friend of Manet's, was incensed at this desecration of the work and went about acquiring as many fragments as he could locate and rejoined them. In 1917, the National Gallery in London acquired the painting and took it apart again, showing the pieces individually for 80 years before stitching them together once more, still missing the parts that Degas had not been able to find.

To end with another book title, Thomas P.F. Hoving’s “The Chase, the Capture, Collecting at the Metropolitan”, Museum that is. Published in 1975, it detailed how the museum curators and the director pursued works for the collection. That is a whole different subject, but I was reminded of it by the exciting and continuous efforts to reunite what has been violated in the past and is part of the strange life of objects.

The Art of the Manhole Cover

When we are young, we walk down a street looking ahead, but when we get old, we tend to look down and watch our step. As I was stepping down off a curb in Santa Fe the other day, I noticed a manhole cover I had probably passed 100 times before, but this time I really looked at it.

I took a photo as it seemed an interesting design. Wondering what the symbols were, I began to do some research. Incredibly, I was not the first person to take notice of a manhole cover! 😊 There was even an exhibition in 1996 on the subject in the public courtyard of the Wadsworth Atheneum. It was in counterpoint to the exhibition inside about Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt 45. As a statement on gun violence, artist Bradley McCallum melted down 11,194 guns confiscated by Connecticut police, creating the commemorative manhole covers that were installed in the city streets of Hartford after the exhibition.

The earliest manhole covers were stone or wood slabs used to cover trenches that carried sewage away from cities. They date from 3500 BCE. With the industrial revolution in the mid 19th century when more complicated water, sewer and gas systems were installed they were updated and often marked with what system was down below.

Getting back to “my” manhole cover, I found that the design was based on the seal for the city of Santa Fe, with symbols from the coats of arms of Spain and Mexico, plus the 13 stars for the United States. 

Further down the rabbit hole I went! The official seal of Santa Fe has three dates on it, none of which is the one when New Mexico became a State in 1912. The dates represent the sequence in which the three countries have held sovereignty over Santa Fe. 1610 marks the formal establishment of the city as the Capital of the Spanish “Kingdom of New Mexico”. In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain, and the Santa Fe Trail was opened. 1846 was the year during the Mexican-American War when General Stephen Watts Kearny led the Army of the West into Santa Fe and declared it part of the United States. The date on “my” manhole cover, however, is 1998, clearly the date it was made!

Manhole covers have been called “The Art of the Streets”. Diana Stuart wrote a book called “Designs Underfoot: The Art of Manhole Covers in New York City”.

She laments the fact that these bits of urban architecture are being lost to urban renewal. There is one way to preserve these objects, and that is by collecting them, and people have done so, but maybe not in city apartments, as they are rather heavy. Most are made of cast iron and weigh between 100 and 250 pounds, depending on their size!

Most manhole covers are monochromatic, and you have to be looking for them to notice their design. You certainly can’t see them when you are driving over them. In Japan, however, manhole covers are created as colorful works of art. This actually makes people want to look down, that is, if they have the time. The vast majority of municipalities have their own manhole covers as a point of pride and creative art. As an example, here is one from Shizuoka City commemorating, among other things, the World Cultural Heritage site of Mt. Fuji and Miho Matsubara Beach.

By all means, when walking, look straight ahead and take in the sights and view the skies as well, but don’t forget, every once in a while, to look down and see what treasures of urban architecture you might find.

No Ifs Ands Or Buts

If you have had it with the news and politics, please don’t read this one!

"Eines Tages kommt die Stunde der Vergeltung!" ("One day the hour of retribution will come.") So said Joseph Goebbels, June 5, 1943. Goebbels was the chief propagandist for the Nazi party and was designated by Hitler to follow him as Chancellor. On March 4, 2023, Donald Trump said, "I am your retribution."

The United States has been given by our founders a Constitution, establishing a structure to ensure checks and balances with three branches of government. It can, however, be easily destroyed in just a few days when all knuckle under to a dictator and it becomes none for all and all for one.

A Washington insider said to me, “Everyone in D.C. is fearful”. I can certainly understand that. If someone gives a truthful report that the administration does not like, they get fired. If a Congressperson from the same party disagrees, they get “primaried”. Then, some followers threaten and intimidate individuals and even use violence against them. The current environment encourages it from the top.

I am so tired of hearing from the pundits that we are headed towards an autocracy or that Trump wants to be king. Charles IV of Great Britain is a King: Donald J. Trump is a dictator, as he promised to be on day one. People hold out hope for the Midterms, but if MAGA has its way, the vote will be counted just as it is in Hungary or Russia. As I am writing this, 51 Democratic legislators who left the state of Texas to block irregular redistricting are threatened with arrest by their governor, and the FBI has been sent out to find them!

Interesting, how easy it is to intimidate powerful law firms or even tech companies to knuckle under. There seems to be no limit to greed. Securing increasing profits has become the overriding goal.

When your universities give in to blackmail by a corrupt government, that seems to be the last straw. But no ... I just read the headline in the New York Times, “Judges Openly Doubt Government as Justice Dept. Misleads and Dodges Orders”. When the judges lose trust in the Justice Department, our system falls apart. The ultimate cudgel is when the Supreme Court (the court of last resort) seems to side with the administration nine times out of ten, and two of those Justices have been shown to have been corrupted. What is left?

Remember the Nazi exhibition of "Entartete Kunst", Degenerate Art? Well, some art has been taken off the wall, such as at the National Portrait Gallery, and shows have been cancelled all over, etc. Restrictions are also being applied to the performing arts, as not all shows are welcome at the Kennedy Center. The building may even have its name changed to please the President. Through the ages, art has often been used as a tool of protest, and the administration is working to snuff that out.

History is being edited to remove unflattering facts. In science, the validity of vaccinations and even climate change is being denied.

As we know, methods were used to encourage voluntary emigration from Germany, and then there were camps for the undesirables. Not to mention people being disappeared. We are witnessing just such measures here.

“Lebensraum,” i.e. "living space," was a core Nazi ideology. As Trump fulfills his desire to rule this country as a dictator, he floats the possibility of taking over other countries such as Canada and Greenland. He enjoys changing the identity of parts he does not “own,” e.g. the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal. Most Americans and the vast majority of Europeans wish to stop another dictator from moving towards world domination by taking over Ukraine. We can see the pattern closer to home.

I think we can stop using terms of “Falling into”, “Risking”, or Headed Toward Autocracy … we have already arrived there! 

Folk Music Still Has Lessons For Us

I grew up in a period of upheaval, maybe not as destructive to our democracy as now, but the issues were still very serious. World War II, the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassinations of the leader of that movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., a beloved President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and his brother, Robert Kennedy, who was then Attorney General and a candidate for President.

Coinciding with those events were related songs, and many of the lyrics are still relevant today. The authors are noted after the verse.

If only it were true:

I learned our government must be strong;

It’s always right and never wrong!

Our leaders are the finest men

And we elect them again and again

And that’s what I learned in school today,

That’s what I learned in school. (Tom Paxton)

Please:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin' (Bob Dylan 1964)

Now, what do we have:

Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a prisoner whose face has gone pale
And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why
And there but for fortune, may go you or I (Phi Ochs)

Hard to forget:

As through this world I’ve wandered

I’ve seen lots of funny men

Some will rob you with a six-gun

Some with a fountain pen. (Woody Guthrie)

Today we have ICE:

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are filed in their creosote dumps
They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border
To take all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Roselita
Adios mes amigos, Jesus e Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees. (Woody Guthrie)

In Hope:


I've seen my brothers working,
Throughout this mighty land,
l prayed we'd get together,
And together make a stand. (Les Rice)