Coming up next on Art rocks, Louisiana's story set in stone.

The architects chose not just to build a monumental building.

They decided they wanted to build a monument.

Finding fine art by water and clever Cuban caricatures.

All that, this time on art rocks.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPB.

Offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art history, music, and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum culture cultivated art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us for Art rocks with me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

Lots of us know that Louisiana State Capitol is the tallest state capitol building in the country.

Less well known is that it also might be the most embellished with sculptures, reliefs and assorted other adornments.

For that, we have Huey Long to thank, as well as a large cast of dedicated artists and architects.

So let's hear that story.

The architects were able to hire about 40 artists and artisans who all were working at the exact same time.

Such a building could never, ever be built today, especially with such opulence and such attention to detail.

They were able to hire the artists that, at that point in time, were considered to be the best in the nation.

They had the highest reputations for their day.

When you approach the state capitol, the first thing you notice is its great height and the towering doorframe.

But you also encounter a wide expanse of stone steps.

There are 49 steps.

Each one is carved with the name of the States in the nation.

In order of their acceptance into the Union.

On each side of the steps, there are several blocky piers, and those piers are decorated around the top with reliefs of pelicans or state bird, and the lotus flower, which is indigenous to Louisiana but has long been a symbol from Egyptian times of immortality.

As you progress a little further up the steps, you encounter two piers upon which there are freestanding sculptures.

These are the only freestanding sculptures in the building.

They were made by Laredo Taft, who at that point was being called the Dean of American Sculpture.

He had studied in France at the cul de Beaux-Arts, which was very well renowned, and was towards the end of his career.

But he accepted the commission, and these are fine examples of his allegorical style of sculpture.

On one side are the Patriots, and on the other side are the pilgrims.

Each has a large central figure flanked by a group of smaller figures.

The pilgrims has a large woman standing in the middle who exemplifies the spirit of adventure.

On the other side are the Patriots, with an imposing soldier and armor standing in the middle, who's resting upon a large shield, and whose standing upon the coffin of a fallen hero.

He is accompanied by mourners and an elderly couple.

Perhaps they are the parents of the fallen soldier.

As you move up the stairs towards the grand 50ft doorway, there are two friezes on either side by Adolph Wineman.

Wyman's relief on the left is titled The Government based on Law, order and Justice Fostering the Higher aspirations of her people.

The procession begins with Zeus or Jupiter like figure, who represents governmental authority, and there are two figures closest to him that represent the peaceful enforcement of order.

The procession following behind them are supposed to be the higher aspirations.

So you have education, then science.

Who's trampling the demon of ignorance and superstition and then religion.

And lastly, you have art, who has a laurel wreath on her head and is playing a harp.

On the other side, the title is The Spirit of Liberty and Peace, furthering the material welfare of the people.

And this time there's a large woman at the front of the procession.

She's holding a torch and an olive branch, and she represents Liberty.

She's accompanied by a youth holding the horn of plenty, who is the genius of abundance.

And then there's a procession in which you have agriculture carrying the sheaf of grain, lumbering, then pottery, then weaving.

And the ancient messenger of the gods at the end is to represent commerce like Taft.

Adolph Wineman was a very highly respected sculptor.

Among his credits he had studied under Augustus and Go Down, who was one of the finest leaders of the Beaux Arts school of architecture.

Beaux Arts School of Architecture was in Paris, and the leading school that formulated the Beaux Arts style of architecture that had the rounded curves and that everybody was doing at that time.

Wineman was also well known for having to relieve some of US Supreme Court building and the United States Archive they released at the top of the portal are to represent communication and craftsmanship.

For instance, there's a person with the telegraph machine, whereas the ones on the sides are to represent industry.

We have emblems of men sawing logs to represent the logging industry, picking cotton to represent the cotton industry, cutting cane to represent the cane industry, and so forth.

Above the portal is our state bird, the pelican.

And the pelican is piercing its breast to feed its young with its own blood, as a symbol of the great nurturing capacity that the state has over its people.

And flanking it are two large eagles to represent the federal government's nurturing of the nation.

The state motto is also included, which states Union justice, confidence.

Directly above the portal.

Also by Lowery are six figures to represent the various governments that have had authority over the state.

On each of the ends is a Native American, and then there's a female figure holding a small model of the Cabildo to represent Spain.

The figure holding the cotton branch represents a confederacy.

The United States is represented by a female figure holding an olive branch and arrows, and a male figure with the Fleur.

De Lee represents France on the base of the building, near what was originally the Balcon.

To the governor's office are for reliefs by Fred Tory to celebrate Louisiana's commerce with its overseas partners.

The Capitol building has two wings on each side, one to house the house and the other for the Senate.

Around the top level of that base, above the windows and in between the pilasters, which are rectangular columns, are 22 portrait reliefs to represent what the architects considered at that time to be the most significant men to have made contributions to Louisiana's history.

On the fifth floor surrounding the base is a very elaborate frieze detailing the entire history of Louisiana.

From its early exploration and colonization.

Through its various wars, its successes, and its failures, all the way through to World War One.

They include scenes such as those related to Lasalle's explorations.

Colonization Spanish rule.

The Louisiana Purchase, our relations with the Native Americans.

The arrival of the Acadians, and even the Battle of New Orleans.

Of particular note is the scene depicting the casket girls in French.

It would have been cassettes.

They were so named because of their small suitcases.

They were young women who came from France to Louisiana in search of husbands, and were taken in by the Ursuline nuns who ran an orphanage.

If you look closely, even one of them shows Huey Long with the architects aside, a model of the new state capitol in progress.

The friezes was designed by Ulric Ella Housen, who was a German American sculptor who had done a number of commissions in the past with Lee Lowry.

He's perhaps best known for the 70 sculptures he completed for the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel.

Moving up the tower, the next 16 floors are bare of decoration.

While the architects considered the base of the Capitol to be a celebration of our history and all of our progress made thus far, moving up the tower, we began to see the symbolism dedicated to our future, looking towards the aspirations and the progress still to be made.

We encounter from floor 21 through floor 25.

These colossal figures that represent in the architect's mind the spirits of a free and enlightened people.

They have cherubs below them, and they have reliefs above and below that exemplify both the wild flora and fauna of Louisiana, such as raccoon eyes, cat tails, crawfish, as well as those that were cultivated, such as sugar and cotton.

Directly above them are friezes that include pelicans and magnolias between the colossal spirits and the temple above, also designed by Lee Lowry, is the 26th floor.

The 26th floor has been kept bare to represent education, to represent the taking and of knowledge and experience from the spirits in order to symbolically enter the temple, which is at the top.

The temple is decorated with celestial imagery such as moons and stars and clouds.

There are urns to hold the symbolic ashes of the material world and large eagles, not just representing our nation, but to represent the obtaining of even higher aspirations.

They're ready to take flight up into the sky.

There are four portals are openings on each corner of the globe which are designed not to be entered, but to disseminate out the knowledge and experience of the Louisiana people.

To spread our goodwill far and wide.

Atop the temple is a lantern, also designed by Lowry, a large lantern that, in the minds of the architects, is to represent the light of hope, of faith and of knowledge.

If art is what you're after, here are just a few of the many exhibitions taking place nearby in the weeks to come.

For more on these exhibitions and others, consider Country Roads Magazine available in print, online or by e-newsletter.

To see or to share any episode of Art rocks again, visit lpb.org/art rocks.

There's also an archive of all our Louisiana segments at LP's YouTube page.

To the southeast, we go down to coastal Florida, where in Fort Lauderdale there's an art fair unlike any other.

For four days, attendees take part in a curated progressive art opening.

Traveling along the Intracoastal Waterway to visit waterfront homes filled with artworks so all aboard!

My name is Evan Snow.

I'm one of the co-founders and managing partners of Art Fort Lauderdale.

The art fair on the water.

I'm Andrew Martineau, co-founder of our full order and also the curatorial director for this fair.

We never had a signature for the art fair in Fort Lauderdale or even in Broward County.

So we decided to create a revolutionary art fair taking place exclusively inside luxury waterfront homes made only accessible via boat.

You're really on a curated experience.

We're really like kind of looking at like how people experience work within an environment of a group of people that you're with for the entire journey.

We really kind of like calm the whole experience down as opposed to being very hectic.

One of the really unique things is having the art in the homes versus a traditional tent or convention center, even for a savvy art patron.

Most people get art fatigue going to these art fairs, so within this environment, we're able to actually place work in a place where it will eventually live and where people would kind of like see it every day.

We've kind of placed the pieces, you know, in the bathroom above the bathtub or in the bedroom above the bed head.

We are a primarily independent, artist driven art fair.

It's so tough for an independent artist not represented by a gallery to exhibit in a major fair.

The barrier to entry is so high it's thousands of dollars, and if you're even represented by a gallery.

So we made it inclusive.

So artists of any level emerging, established, local, national, international or otherwise can exhibit on our county's largest platform.

One of the main focal points of the art fair is each home is a different exhibit.

As we start selecting the works for the fair, we kind of match the works with the homes that we're going to be in.

So this home that we're in right now is more of a modest, contemporary home recently built, and we wanted to have a lot of bright light and bright light and bright colors kind of coming through.

And a lot of the work kind of represents a lot of that.

A lot of work's also very modern, contemporary pieces.

So we have three homes this year serving as our exhibit locations, two of which are independent artists exhibitions for artists not represented by a gallery.

We also are very excited to have added a Bahamas house exhibition benefiting the Grand Bahamas Children's House, which was unfortunately damaged by Hurricane Dorian with a portion of proceeds so that they can help rebuild and actually resume their art programs, which unfortunately, they had to put on pause as a result of the hurricane.

I'm Jennifer Nayak and welcoming you to Bahamas House.

I am a collector and I'm a curator, and I'm an arts and culture writer.

I know these artists personally, and I was devastated to find out that so many of my favorite galleries that I like to go to were closing.

So the artwork in this room is Laurie to show she's a grand Bahamian based artist.

She uses a lot of layering effect with her colors and she paints a lot of day in the life scenes.

So these are actual moments.

So this is an example of the junk in new pieces that were sent over from Grand Bahama.

One thing that's interesting about the Bahamas is that all of the materials for the artists use are shipped in, so you have to use the most basic things.

And when you look and see how they used this artist used recycled lawn material.

I think this might even be like a child's chair.

They use staples, masking tape, glue and paint.

And if you feel the weight of this, it is about 20 pounds.

25 pounds.

Imagine dancing through the streets wearing this on your head.

These are handed down generation from generation, year after year because the artistry is so good.

But also the engineering.

Caroline Anderson's work is really probably my most poignant and my most important and expressive from my post-hurricane pieces that were given to me.

These talk about the destruction and the experience of going through the hurricane.

This is what Hurricane Dorian looked like to her.

The social interaction, I think, is super important to get more people, being able to appreciate work.

You get time to reflect and think about the work you just saw on your boat journey as you go from home to home.

It's a really true discovery experience where you're going to find artists that you might not have found anyplace else.

The installation Cuban Caricature and Culture The Art of Mass Agua features the modernist works of caricaturist and publisher Conrado Walter Mas Agua.

So off we go to Miami's Florida International University to see the show and learn about how this graphic artist celebrity caricatures helped shape the visual culture of his native Cuba.

My name is Francis Luca, and I'm the chief librarian here at the Wilsonian Florida International University.

I'm the curator of this installation that's looking at Conrado Walter Mossadegh, a Cuban publisher, art director, illustrator and caricaturist.

He was born in Cuba in 1889.

He actually left and fled with his family when the Spaniards invaded during one of the independence wars.

And so he grew up kind of bi culturally and then multi-cultural.

And so I think for that reason, he was influenced not only by the artwork in Cuba, but what was happening in the modernist movement all around the world.

He actually introduced the modernist esthetic to Cuba with a lot of Art Deco design covers for his magazines, social was one of his most important magazines, and that one aimed at an elite audience.

So this was designed to get the who's who of Cuba interested in modernism.

He had an entire section in social magazine called Masa Girls, which is a play on his name.

Sounds like massacre.

Massacre.

And what he was doing with that was showcasing this new woman that had suddenly appeared first on the American scene.

And then he helped import into Cuba.

He loved beautiful young women.

He was a little bit of a matinee star in that way.

But he wasn't so thrilled about there being so outspoken and liberated that, I think, was a little bit threatening to him as well.

So you sort of see that little bit of ambivalence in these kinds of portraits.

He was also very famous for his caricatures.

In fact, that's how he's mostly known today.

And he did over the span of a lifetime, tens of thousands of caricatures.

And he did them in a very modernist style.

He said the best caricatures are done on the sly with a furtive hand, where you're just sketching them, and they don't even know that you're sketching them.

Some of his caricatures got him in a little bit of trouble.

He was not shy of expressing his disdain for certain Cuban presidents.

You look at Machado sitting in the chair, not so handsome and then you look at the portrait that's being done and it says, oh, he's young and handsome.

That's a completely different individual.

My Sagir spent a lot of time working for the tourism industry in Cuba, which began in 1919.

Since this exhibit focuses exclusively on the work of Conrado my Seguir, I wanted to sort of show him in the context of some of the other contemporary, caricature us from Latin America.

And so it's called caricatures.

Once Castro's revolutionaries seized power, Mossadegh continued to live in Cuba, though in relative obscurity, until his death in 1965.

Here is someone who was the cultural ambassador for all of these visitors, especially from the United States and all of a sudden, there are no visitors from the United States after 1959.

He ends up working in the, the Cuban National Archives, just spending out his remaining days there.

To me, the most important thing about this exhibition is the fact that we can showcase this artist who was well known, well renowned in his period, but has sort of been eclipsed because of more than 50 years of strained relations between Cuba and the United States and his artwork is reflective of this earlier period, this period of warm relations and cordial relations.

And that is that for this edition of, rocks.

But that's okay, because you can always watch episodes of the show at lpb.org/art rocks.

And meanwhile, Country Roads magazine makes another fine resource for discovering thought provoking coverage of events, the arts, people and places all around the state.

So until next week, I've been James Fox Smith and thanks to you for watching.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPB.

Offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music, and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture cultivated Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.