A Bittersweet Meditation: Cocktail Talk with Firefly’s Jon Harris

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Rothko Room_Red

(Left) Rothko Room at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Photo: Max Hirshfeld (Right) Mark Rothko, Orange and Red on Red, 1957. Oil on canvas, 68 7/8 x 66 3/8 in. Acquired 1960, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Behind the bar at Firefly in Dupont Circle, Jon Harris is to liquor what Mark Rothko was to paint: a true artist. In celebration of the opening of Made in the USA: American Masters from The Phillips Collection, 1850–1970, Jon Harris has created a one of a kind cocktail for the March 6 Phillips After 5, Mad Museum: The American 60s. His cocktail, the Bittersweet Meditation, is inspired by the post-war Abstract Expressionists and more specifically Mark Rothko’s bold use of color and the tranquil space of the collection’s Rothko Room. We talked with Jon a little about his cocktail, the inspiration, and the connection between cocktails and art.

Cocktail_jon harris

Photo: Stephanie Breijo

Tell us a little about the Bittersweet Meditation cocktail, what is it made with?
It’s made with bourbon, campari, lime, ginger beer, and angostura bitters. Simply pour the bourbon, campari, lime, and ginger beer over ice in a tall glass and dash the top with angostura bitters.

What is the inspiration behind the cocktail?
I was trying to do some color blocking, which is a Rothko thing. The drink has deep hues of red cascading from top to the bottom due to the bitters being dashed on top.

Do you have any thoughts on the connection between art and cocktails?
Drinking cocktails is a precursor to understanding a lot of art. Many artists were/are inebriated regularly in some way. Get on the same level. But otherwise, a thing that a lot of people forget is that drinks (and food, for that matter) are visual arts. You look at it before you smell it and taste it, so it better look good. So you may look to the visual arts to learn how to use color to create moods and effects. You think constantly about how to present things—which type of glass makes the drink look best.

Also, I think about broad strokes and fine strokes a lot, which is derived from painting. Broad stroke drinks use heavy concentrations of several (fairly intense) liquors, whereas fine strokes involves featuring one liquor and small amounts (dashes and spoonfuls) of others to accentuate it. An example of the former would be the negroni, which is equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and campari, all duking it out in one glass. A fine stroke example would be the old fashioned, which features whisky with a simple dash of bitters, a spritz of lemon peel, and a bit of simple syrup to accentuate the whisky.

Jon Harris will join Firefly Chef Todd Wiss for a special cocktail and plate pairing at this Thursday’s Mad Men-themed Phillips After 5.

Made in the USA: E Pluribus Unum

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Charles Sheeler, Skyscrapers, 1922. Oil on canvas, 20 x 13 in. Acquired 1926. The Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Made in the USA, which opens tomorrow, shines a light on the strength of American artists in The Phillips Collection. 80% of our collection is by American artists. At the time of Duncan Phillips’s death in 1966, there were about 2,000 works in the collection; 1,400 were American. Many of them were by living artists and quite a few were at the beginning of their careers. The last time the museum devoted this much space to American art was in 1976, in honor of the country’s bicentennial. Through this survey of fifty years of Duncan Phillips’s collecting, we hope to illustrate how he defined the modern spirit of American Art.

Happy Birthday Honoré Daumier

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Honoré Daumier was born this day, 26 February, in 1808. Here is a look at a technical study undertaken by painting conservator Elizabeth Steele in 1999 of his small oil painting on a wooden panel, The Strongman, ca. 1865.

Honoré Daumier, "The Strongman", c. 1865, oil on wood panel, 10-5/8" x 13-7/8", Acquired 1928

Honoré Daumier, The Strongman, ca. 1865. Oil on wood panel, 10 5/8 x 13 7/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1928

The x-radiograph of "The Strongman" attests to Daumier's frequent custom of reworking a composition. A completely different figure wearing a striped jacket and a bicorne (two-cornered hat) lies beneath the man on the far right. In an earlier state, the curtain in the center of the painting was draped lower across the doorway. The bright white in the left half of the x-radiograph indicates the density of the paint in this area and reflects the number of times these passages were reworked. The heads of some of the figures in the background appear to have been shifted and the clown may have originally looked back towards the strongman instead of out at the viewer. By contrast, the dark torso of the strongman indicates little to no reworking of the painting's main character.

The x-radiograph of The Strongman attests to Daumier’s frequent custom of reworking a composition. A completely different figure wearing a striped jacket and a bicorne (two-cornered hat) lies beneath the man on the far right. In an earlier state, the curtain in the center of the painting was draped lower across the doorway. The bright white in the left half of the x-radiograph indicates the density of the paint in this area and reflects the number of times these passages were reworked. The heads of some of the figures in the background appear to have been shifted and the clown may have originally looked back towards the strongman instead of out at the viewer. By contrast, the dark torso of the strongman indicates little to no reworking of the painting’s main character.

The painting's strongly textured and deeply cracked surface reflects Daumier's practice of painting one layer on top of the next without allowing for the underlying paint applications to fully dry. A microscopic paint cross-section taken from the upper left reveals no less than eight distinct layers in this heavily-reworked picture. The bottom layer is the white ground (1), followed by a thin red (2), a white (3), a dark brown (4), a thin light brown (5), a thicker red (6), another dark brown (7), and finally an ochre-colored layer at the top. In addition, beeswax was discovered in some passages. The beeswax may have served as an isolating layer between paint applications when chanbes to the composition were being made. This unorthodox technique of using a non-drying wax, a material readily available in Daumier's studio for printmaking, may also account for the wrinkled appearance of the paint film.

The painting’s strongly textured and deeply cracked surface reflects Daumier’s practice of painting one layer on top of the next without allowing for the underlying paint applications to fully dry. A microscopic paint cross-section taken from the upper left reveals no less than eight distinct layers in this heavily-reworked picture. The bottom layer is the white ground (1), followed by a thin red (2), a white (3), a dark brown (4), a thin light brown (5), a thicker red (6), another dark brown (7), and finally an ochre-colored layer at the top (8). In addition, beeswax was discovered in some passages. The beeswax may have served as an isolating layer between paint applications when changes to the composition were being made. This unorthodox technique of using a non-drying wax, a material readily available in Daumier’s studio for printmaking, may also account for the wrinkled appearance of the paint film.