The Städel Museum in Frankfurt presented the exhibition Raphael. Drawings from November 7, 2012 to February 3, 2013. The show comprised forty-eight drawings by the master of Italian High Renaissance art, nine sheets from the Städel’s own holdings as well as thirty-seven loans from internationally renowned collections like that of Queen Elizabeth II, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, or the Uffizi in Florence.

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483–1520 Rome) ranks among the great protagonists of Italian High Renaissance art, and his works had a decisive influence on European art throughout the following centuries. The admiration he compelled was almost religious both during his lifetime and in later times. Besides his paintings and frescoes, Raphael produced a large number of drawings, which he used as a daily means for exploring ideas, developing compositions, and communicating his thoughts to the assistants in his studio. These valuable manifestations of creativity, which offer the unique opportunity of “watching the artist think,” were the subject of the Städel’s comprehensive exhibition. It was the first show presenting Raphael as a draftsman in Germany.

The Städel Museum holds the largest and artistically most significant collection of Raphael’s drawings in Germany. This wealth is grounded in the history of the institution. The German art historian Johann David Passavant, “Inspektor” (curator) of the Städel collection from 1840 to 1861, focused his admiration for Raphael, which had taken hold of him as a Nazarene painter quite early on, on the scholarly research of his great model’s life and work and wrote the first theoretically based Raphael monograph (1839) which is still a landmark today. Thanks to his highly developed expertise, he succeeded in gradually acquiring an important group of drawings by the artist’s own hand for the Städel Museum around the middle of the nineteenth century. Because of their extraordinary quality, these works constitute the core of the Städel’s collection of Italian drawings. The sheets date from all periods of Raphael’s production, offer a survey of the entire range of his activities as a draftsman, and, comprising two studio drawings, also convey an idea of the routine in his large atelier. These holdings are brought together with precious loans from public and private international collections in the exhibition.

The exhibition, which also rings in a reassessment of the Städel’s collection of Italian Renaissance drawings, was committed to a general objective besides that of presenting a number of outstanding masterpieces. Following different perspectives, it visualized how Raphael developed his perfect, compelling structures of pictorial narration, which made him the great point of reference for European history painting. The show unfolded the genesis and maturing of Raphael’s masterly art of narration in four thematic groups.

The first shed light on the artist’s different ways of presenting the Madonna and Child, the second on the visualization of concepts or abstract ideas, particularly in the frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Palace of the Vatican (such as philosophy or poetry). While the following section of the exhibition presented Raphael’s drawings for history and historical paintings and features his designs for the tapestries in the Sistine Chapel as a highlight in this field, the last chapter was dedicated to the artist’s comprehensive decoration of the Chigi Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome.

The exhibition started with two drawings from the Städel Museum’s holdings:

an early work showing the Virgin and Child and

Raphael’s silverpoint study of the child’s head for the painting Madonna del Granduca.

Several other sheets from the collection of the Duke of Devonshire (Chatsworth) shed light on how Raphael endowed the relationship between mother and child with life under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and other contemporary artists and forge a bridge to the complex solutions he arrived at in the Sistine Madonna and other late presentations of the subject.

The second part of the exhibition in the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings focuses on the issue of how Raphael succeeded in visualizing abstract ideas in a fluently woven sequence of figures in rich clarity – quite in contrast to his master Perugino’s still static solutions. The first work of this group is the cartoon for the so-called



Vision of a Knight from the British Museum, a high-caliber work by the young Raphael.

This masterpiece is followed by drawings from the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology (Oxford), the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and other sources.

The exhibition then focuses on Raphael’s designs for the wall frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, a representative room belonging to the papal apartments in the Palace of the Vatican – a project whose realization saw Raphael rise to become one of the leading Italian Renaissance artists. Numerous sheets convey the slow maturing process of the famous fresco dealing with theology, the Disputa, and the development of the other wall paintings in the room (The School of Athens on philosophy, the fresco on poetry, and The Cardinal Virtues).

The third section of the exhibition was mainly concerned with the pictorial means Raphael relied on for a consistent narrative dynamics. Next to some early examples like

The Siege of Perugia from the Louvre in Paris,

were more fully developed solutions like the study for the famous copperplate engraving showing



The Massacre of the Innocents (Royal Collection, Windsor).

Raphael’s designs for The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila in the Stanza di Eliodoro in the Vatican, for which the Städel holds a rare study, and his drawings for the tapestries in the Sistine Chapel, among them a work from Jean Bonna’s private collection (Geneva), were the highlights here. The chapter is rounded off by some late works like the Frankfurt design for a caryatid in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican.

The subject of the fourth section of the exhibition is the ambitious and comprehensive, yet never completed decoration of the Capella Chigi in the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. It comprises Raphael’s famous Prophets and Sybils, a projected altar painting depicting The Resurrection of Christ, and two bronze reliefs. Taking the Frankfurt silverpoint drawing of the Doubting Thomas for a bronze relief in the chapel as a starting point, this part of the presentation assembles a large number of Raphael’s studies for the decoration of the chapel from the British Museum (London), the Uffizi (Florence), the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), and the Devonshire Collection (Chatsworth).

More than almost any other artist, Raffaelo Sanzio, who was born in Urbino in 1483, shaped the development of art in the Western world. Along with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Albrecht Dürer, he is one of the great essential artists of the modern age. Besides working as a painter in Florence and at the papal court in Rome, Raphael was also the architect of St. Peter’s and “Prefect” over the antiquities of Rome. His drawings and paintings rank among the most precious masterpieces in the major museums of the world. His frescoes in Rome attract thousands of visitors every year.

More images from the exhibition:




Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Sketch for the lower left section of the Disputa, c. 1508/1509, Black chalk (charcoal?), pen and brown ink, over stylus, outlines pricked for transfer, on beige paper, 282 x 416 mm, Department of Prints and Drawings, Städell Museum, Frankfurt am Main.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Study for the Figure of Diogenes in the School of Athens, c. 1508 / 1509, Silverpoint on pinkish pale-violet prepared, beige paper, 245 x 284 mm, Department of Prints and Drawings, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Study for a Nude Soldier in a Resurrection, c. 1510-1514, Black chalk (charcoal?) on yellowish paper, stylus lines and pointing; 293 x 327 mm, The British Museum, London, Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John (Study for the Madonna of the Meadow), c. 1505 / 1506, Brush and pale brown wash heightened with lead white, over stylus on cream-coloured paper, 219 mm x 180 mm, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology, Oxford, © Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Study of a Horseman, c. 1511 / 1512, Silverpoint and white heightening on beige, grey prepared paper, 198 x 144 mm, Department of Prints and Drawings, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), The Virgin and Child with Saint Elizabeth (?) and Two Other Saints, c. 1511 / 1513, Silverpoint heightened with lead white on light brown-grey prepared, beige paper, 210 x 146 mm, The Royal Collection, © Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2012.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, c. 1502 / 1504, Black chalk (charcoal ?), pen and brown ink over stylus on beige, grey stained paper, 213 x 145 mm, Department of Prints and Drawings, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.



Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Study of a seated sibyl, c. 1510-1514, Red chalk over stylus, on beige paper, 261 x 165 mm, The British Museum, London, Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum.




Raffael (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520), Studies for the Virgin and Child, c. 1508, Pen and brown ink over black chalk (charcoal ?) on cream-coloured paper, 230 x 313 mm, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Photo: Jean-Michel Lapelerie, © Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

The Cornell Fine Arts Museum (CFAM) on the campus of Rollins College, Winter Park FL, offers the exhibition Matisse as Printmaker: Works from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, this show is drawn from the extraordinary collection of Matisse prints that once belonged to the artist’s son Pierre, the eminent dealer of modern art. Matisse as Printmaker includes 63 etchings, monotypes, aquatints, lithographs, linocuts, and two-color prints—examples of every printmaking medium used by the artist. With its rich variety of media and subject matter, this exhibition sheds new light on an under-studied aspect of Matisse’s oeuvre and underscores the importance of printmaking for the artist. CFAM is delighted to be included in the extension of the national tour for this critically acclaimed exhibition, which the Washington Times said “refreshes the typical view of Matisse.” Matisse as Printmaker will be on view from January 4–March 16, 2014.

About the Exhibition

Recognized foremost as a painter and sculptor, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was also deeply engaged throughout his career in exploring other mediums and the unique possibilities they offered for creative expression. Matisse saw printmaking as an extension of drawing, which was integral to the whole of his art. As Guest Curator Jay Fisher writes in the exhibition’s catalogue, “Printmaking was Matisse’s primary means of demonstrating to his audience his working process, the character of his vision, and the way his drawing transformed what he observed.” Matisse’s involvement with printmaking was both intense and innovative as he moved from one technique to the next, adopting new approaches to reflect the evolution of his artistic ideas. Almost all of his prints involve serial imagery, such as the development of a reclining figure, the integration of models within interiors, the study of facial expressions and features, and the transformation of a subject from a direct representation to something more abstract. Printmaking captured the phases of Matisse's artistic process—a process that resulted in a refined image of his subject.

For Matisse, printmaking was also a practical means of disseminating his art among the many avid collectors of his work. Despite their relatively wide distribution, Matisse’s prints are remarkable for the aura of intimacy and immediacy they communicate. The ease with which the prints could be produced enabled Matisse to work freely and spontaneously, often creating casual portraits of family members and friends in his studio, where he had installed his own printing press. Apart from his book illustrations, Matisse was mostly faithful to the tradition of black-and-white prints; but in his last years he made two prints in color, both of which are included in the exhibition. Moving from one medium to another, Matisse made prints fairly consistently from 1900 until his death in 1954. During the course of his career, he produced more than 800 images, often in editions of 25 or 50. This great profusion of images expanded the reach of his art and has helped cement his position as one of the preeminent artists of the twentieth century.

Although Matisse was deeply engaged in the practice of printmaking, most of the exhibitions and research on the artist’s work to date have focused on his paintings and sculpture. With its diverse selection of works from different periods in Matisse’s career, Matisse as Printmaker: Works from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation provides a comprehensive examination of the artist’s relationship with the printmaking medium and the role it played in the evolution of his visual ideas. The exhibition offers a persuasive argument that Matisse’s prints merit appreciation and consideration not only in relation to his painting but in their own right.

The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.

Nice review

Images, Captions and Exhibition Credit Lines




1. Henri Matisse Engraving, 1900–03
Drypoint
Image: 5 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.
Sheet: 9 13/16 x 12 15/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation
(1303 - 105083)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



2. The Large Woodcut, 1906
Woodcut
Image: 18 11/16 x 14 15/16 in.
Sheet: 22 5/8 x 18 1/8 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1733 - 110001)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts




3. The Large Nude, 1906
Crayon, brush and tusche lithograph with scraping
Image: 11 1/4 x 9 15/16 in.
Sheet: 17 3/4 x 13 15/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1714 - 109001)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



4. Head Turned Upside Down, 1906
Crayon transfer lithograph
Image: 11 x 10 13/16 in.
Sheet: 17 5/8 x 10 15/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1485 - 101005)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts




5. Seated Nude, Viewed from Behind, 1913
Crayon transfer lithograph
Image: 16 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.
Sheet: 19 3/5 x 13 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1491 - 101011)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



6. Self-portrait, 1923
Crayon lithograph
Image: 12 13/16 x 10 1/16 in.
Sheet: 20 1/2 x 15 5/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1736 - 110007)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts




7. Young Girl Leaning on Her Elbows in front of
Flowered Screen, 1923
Crayon lithograph with scraping
Image: 7 3/16 x 10 5/16 in.
Sheet: 11 3/8 x 14 1/4 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation
(1732 - 109020)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



8. Arabesque, 1924
Crayon transfer lithograph
Image: 19 x 12 5/8 in.
Sheet: 24 1/2 x 18 1/8 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1728 - 109016)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



9. Large Odalisque with Bayadère Culottes, 1925
Crayon transfer lithograph with scraping
Image: 21 5/16 x 17 3/8 in.
Sheet: 29 1/2 x 22 1/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1727 - 109014)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



10. Reclining Nude with Bowl of Fruit, 1926
Crayon transfer lithograph
Image: 17 1/4 x 21 3/8 in.
Sheet: 18 1/8 x 22 1/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation
(1284 - 101075)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



11. Face of Young Woman and Bowl with
Three Fish, 1929
Etching
Image: 3 5/8 x 4 15/16 in.
Sheet: 11 x 14 15/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation
(1554 - 105046)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts




12. Crouching Oriental, Veil on Her Head, 1929
Drypoint
Image: 6 1/8 x 4 13/16 in.
Sheet: 14 15/16 x 11 1/4 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1548 - 105039)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts




13. Upside Down Nude with Brazier, 1929
Crayon transfer lithograph
Image: 21 15/16 x 18 1/8 in.
Sheet: 26 x 19 15/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1299 - 102007)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



14. The Persian, 1929
Crayon lithograph with scraping
Image: 17 5/8 x 11 7/16 in.
Sheet: 24 13/16 x 17 1/2 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1245 - 101015)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



15. Head of a Woman, Mascaron, 1938
Color linoleum cut
Image: 7 9/16 x 6 13/16 in.
Sheet: 15 3/4 x 11 13/16 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1460 - 107016)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



16. Nadia with a Serious Expression, 1948
Lift-ground aquatint
Image: 13 9/16 x 10 15/16 in.
Sheet: 22 1/4 x 14 3/4 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1411 - 104005)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



17. Marie-José in a Yellow Dress (III), 1950
Color lift-ground aquatint (black with four colors)
Image: 21 1/8 x 16 7/16 in.
Sheet: 29 15/16 x 22 1/4 in.
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1454 - 104051)
© 2013 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts



18. Nu au bracelet 1940 linocut 24.1 cm x 17.8 cm



19. Repos du modèle 1922 lithogragh 22.3 x 30 cm

In the early 1500s, Rome’s majesty was a distant memory: its marble temples and palaces had been ransacked; its population was a fraction of what it had been in antiquity. Yet, over the course of the next hundred years, the Eternal City would experience an amazing rebirth, as a series of popes rebuilt and revitalized Rome and its population doubled. At the center of this metamorphosis was an unprecedented influx of artistic talent and creative exchange.

It is this remarkable period in art history that was the subject of the exhibition Rome After Raphael at The Morgan Library & Museum. Featuring more than eighty works selected almost exclusively from the Morgan’s exceptional collection of Italian drawings, the exhibition brought to light the intense artistic activity in Rome from the Renaissance to the beginning of the Baroque period, approximately from 1500 to 1600. The show is on view from January 22 through May 9, 2010. The exhibition was the first in New York to focus solely on Roman Renaissance and Mannerist drawings, beginning with Raphael and ending with the dawn of a new era, the Baroque, as seen in the art of Annibale Carracci. It included striking examples by Raphael and Michelangelo as well as works by artists associated with the dominant stylistic traditions established by these two iconic figures.

Among the prominent artists represented were: Baldassare Peruzzi, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Parmigianino, Daniele da Volterra, Francesco Salviati, Pirro Ligorio, Pellegrino Tibaldi, Taddeo Zuccaro, Girolamo Muziano, Cesare Nebbia, Federico Zuccaro, Raffaellino da Reggio, and Giuseppe Cesari, called Il Cavaliere d’Arpino.

The exhibition also featured Giulio Clovio’s sumptuous Farnese hours, one of the greatest illuminated manuscripts, as well as the Codex Mellon—an architectural treatise on key Roman sites and projects, including Raphael’s design for St. Peter’s—and a magnificent gilt binding of the period. Also on view was a Raphael workshop painting from the Morgan depicting the Holy Family, which has recently undergone a technical examination.

It was during the reign of Pope Julius II, elected in 1503, that Rome embarked on a century-long program of renewal and restoration. By the time Pope Clement VIII died in 1605, the overarching political and artistic ambitions of popes, cardinals, and foreign dignitaries had given rise to one of the richest periods in art history, transforming Rome into the unrivaled cultural capital of Europe. Numerous drawings in the exhibition were related to Roman projects and commissions, including elaborate schemes for fresco decorations for city palaces, rural villas, and funerary chapels as well as altarpieces, tapestry designs, and views of recently discovered antiquities.

The exhibition also opened a window into the artistic sensibility and lavish patronage of the period, from Julius II—patron of both Michelangelo and Raphael and arguably the most culturally sophisticated of the popes—to his successor Leo X and the “Gran Cardinale” Alessandro Farnese and his nephew Odoardo. Cardinal Ippolito d’Este and the Medici also generated luxurious commissions as they competed to create their own legacies in chapels, palaces, and villas.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

Through their sheer quality and novelty, the works of Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican established a tradition that resonated throughout the history of Western art. The exhibition brings to the fore the central artistic dialectic of the century: the rivalry between the legacies of Raphael, whose work epitomizes elegant restraint and clear narrative style, and that of Michelangelo, characterized by high drama and muscular nudes.

Raphael

Arriving in Rome in 1508, Raphael found success as court artist to popes Julius II della Rovere and Leo X de’ Medici. The Morgan’s holdings by the artist trace his development from his early pre- Roman period, represented by the fresco design



Cardinal Piccolomini Presents Eleanor of Portugal to Her Betrothed, Emperor Frederick III

and the cartoon related to the predella panel depicting



Christ’s Agony in the Garden,

to his metalpoint drawing




Male Figure Symbolizing an Earthquake—a study of ca. 1515

for one of the tapestries Raphael designed for the Sistine Chapel.

Raphael’s Followers

Heavily employed by a succession of popes and secular patrons, Raphael developed a large workshop that included artists such as Polidoro da Caravaggio, Perino del Vaga, and Giulio Romano, all magnificently represented in the Morgan’s collection of drawings. After Raphael’s premature death in 1520, these artists developed their own highly successful careers.

Polidoro was one of the city’s most prolific facade decorators, an aspect of his career uniquely illustrated by the Morgan’s study of a



Prisoner Brought Before a Judge,

a scene once painted on a Roman house.

Perino’s independent career included a commission from Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for the design of rock-crystal plaques, which today still comprise part of the treasury of St. Peter’s Basilica. The Morgan’s two extraordinary designs for this commission,

Christ Healing the Lame at the Pool of Bethesda



Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,

were on view in the exhibition.

One of Raphael’s most successful pupils (and later court artist to the Gonzaga in Mantua), Giulio Romano was represented by an early lunette design and by the vigorous



St. Jerome and St. Augustine.

The show also included the Codex Mellon, one of the earliest and most important volumes of Renaissance antiquarian drawings relating to contemporary architectural projects. Probably drafted ca. 1513 by an architect from the circle of the great Renaissance master Donato Bramante, the sketchbook records plans for the new basilica of St. Peter’s as well as those relating to Bramante’s Palazzo Caprini, also known as Raphael’s house.

Michelangelo

One of the great figures of the Renaissance whose fame has rarely been eclipsed, Michelangelo was among the forces that shaped the style usually called Mannerism. He had been summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II in 1508 to design the pope’s tomb for St. Peter’s, was also employed on the decoration of the Sistine ceiling and altar wall, and worked for the papacy in Rome for the last thirty years of his long and fruitful career. The Morgan’s



Annunciation to the Virgin of ca. 1547

and a series of four sketches of



David Slaying Goliath

superbly demonstrate the artist’s consummate skill as a designer of dramatic compositions and draftsman of the human anatomy.

Michelangelo’s Followers

Unlike Raphael, Michelangelo did not keep a large workshop, although he did have a number of associates, artist friends, and followers.

Among them was Daniele da Volterra, whose



Kneeling Figure of ca. 1550

—a study for a fresco in the church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti—is a rare example of his delicate, precise drawing style.

A drawing attributed to Giulio Clovio, that is a reprise of Michelangelo’s renowned composition

The Dream of Human Life (Il Sogno) of the early 1530s

reflects the fame and influence of the great master’s highly refined and innovative presentation drawings.

The show also included the



Farnese Hours,

once the most famous illuminated manuscript, lavishly illustrated by Clovio for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.

Pellegrino Tibaldi’s heavily draped



Seated Barbarian Prisoners,

a further superb example of the enduring influence of Michelangelo’s figure style and draftsmanship, was also on display.

Parmigianino

Supremely gifted as a painter and draftsman, Parmigianino came to Rome in 1524 seeking papal patronage but fled, as did so many of his contemporaries, when the troops of Charles V invaded the city in 1527 during the Sack of Rome. A group of five drawings from this short period were shown, including a stunning



red chalk design for a print of the philosopher Diogenes,

a lyrical Girl Seated on the Ground

that illustrates the artist’s penchant for domestic scenes,



and a moving, pen-and-ink Pietà

freely inspired by Michelangelo’s famous marble group in St. Peter’s.

Antiquity

As the city was being rebuilt and reconceived under the direction of the popes, archaeological finds were commonplace, triggering a sixteenth-century fashion for antiquity that spread throughout Europe. Marble sculptures representing river gods, excavated during the 1510s and immediately put on display at the Vatican Palace, are recorded in Enea Vico’s two spectacular, scrupulously detailed drawings of the early 1540s. Rome’s illustrious antiquarian past informed much artistic production as illustrated by the jewellike album on precious vellum titled The Ruins of Rome. This amusing juxtaposition of somewhat fanciful reconstructions of ancient monuments with their ruined 1570s appearance is an intriguing document of the Renaissance mind-set, bringing to life the vivid interest in reconstructing the antique.

Late Mannerism and the Counter-Reformation

The last third of the sixteenth century saw the predominance of a highly decorative and technically masterful style generally known as Late Mannerism. This is exceptionally well represented in the Morgan collection, with outstanding examples by Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro and their followers Girolamo Muziano, Jacopo Bertoia, and Cesare Nebbia. The weightless grace of their style can be seen in Taddeo’s



St. John the Baptist Preaching and



The Foundation of Orbetello,

the latter a study for decoration of the Palazzo Farnese. Among the myriad themes that define the period are the need of the Roman Catholic Church to defend its authority against the rising threat of Protestantism. The Renaissance popes’ lavish spending had led them to encourage the sale of indulgences—two are documented in the exhibition—a practice heavily criticized by Martin Luther. Eventually, the Catholic Church recognized the need for reforms and convened the Council of Trent, resulting in a movement known as the Counter-Reformation, the consequences of which became apparent in artistic production toward the end of the sixteenth century. Palestrina’s mass for Pope Marcellus, the published score and recording of which are featured in the exhibition, places counter-reformatory emphasis on an easily comprehensible declamatory text.

Annibale Carracci and the Beginning of the Baroque

Several artists of the last decade of the sixteenth century facilitated the artistic reforms brought about by Annibale Carracci, his brother Agostino, and his cousin Ludovico. Giuseppe Cesari, called Il Cavaliere d’Arpino, is represented by the lively figure study of a



Child Walking, Looking Over Its Shoulder and

the striking Portrait of a Lady,

both from the late 1580s.

Both he and Cristofano Roncalli restricted the purely decorative Mannerist aspects of their work and reassessed High Renaissance models.

Annibale Carracci himself paved the way for the Baroque, achieving a synthesis of Raphael’s elegance and Michelangelo’s drama and vigorous muscularity. Harkening back to Raphael, Annibale revived the practice of studying from the live model, as is amply obvious in his luminous



Flying Putto of the late 1590s,

which exhibits an astonishing command of the figure rendered in space. In addition, a new emphasis on an idealized yet naturalistic depiction of landscape is apparent in his magnificent



Eroded Riverbank with Trees and Roots.

Rome After Raphael was organized by Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Charles W. Engelhard Curator and Department Head of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum.

More images:



Raffaellino da Reggio (1550–1578)
The Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph




Polidoro da Caravaggio (ca. 1495– ca. 1543)
Christ on the Mount of Olives



Enea Vico (1523–1567)
River God Nile after the Antique (Tiber), early 1540s



Cesare Nebbia (ca. 1536-1614), St. Paul on Malta, Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, 7-1/2 x 15-3/8", The Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum; 2009.221, Photography: Graham Haber, 2009.



Circle of Baldassare Peruzzi, Moses Striking Water From the Rock, 1520-40, Pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white gouache or tempera, on brown prepared paper 10-1/4 x 15-11/16", Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1910; IV, 19.



Jacopo Bertoia (1544-ca. 1573), Joseph in Prison Interpreting the Dreams of Pharaoh’s Butler and Baker (Genesis 40:1-23), Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, over black chalk; squared in pen and brown ink, 9-11/16 x 8-11/16", Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1910; III, 141A Photography: Graham Haber, 2009.



Pirro Ligorio (ca. 1510-1583), Page from Life of Hippolytus, 'Hippolytus Racing His Horses', Pen and brown ink, with brown and gray wash, over black chalk, 12-3/4 x 8-3/4", Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; 2006.22, folio 8, Photography by Schecter Lee


Federico Zuccaro (1542 or 43–1609)
Head and Shoulders of Two Young Boys and Separate Studies
of a Right and Left Arm

Florence! at the Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn
22 November 2013 – 9 March 2014


Florence has an extraordinarily rich cultural heritage. Over the centuries, philosophers, writers, architects, engineers, painters and sculptors have embellished the city on the Arno with countless masterpieces. Florence is the city of Dante and Boccaccio, of Donatello and Sandro Botticelli, of Amerigo Vespucci and Macchiavelli and the home of the Medici.

Florence! at the Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the city to be shown in Germany. It takes a closer look at the Tuscan capital and its ‘wonderful Florentine spirit’ (Jacob Burckhardt) that have fascinated visitors for centuries. Florence! presents a portrait of the city and traces its changing roles: from the financial and mercantile powerhouse of the Middle Ages, to the hub of art and science in the fifteenth and sixteenth century and its significance as an intellectual and cosmopolitan centre in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.

The exhibition showcases the city immortalised by the great artists and scientists of the Renaissance. At the same time, it sheds light on a less well-known, but no less fascinating Florence: a dynamic, ever-changing urban space, home to priceless collections of rare objects from all over the world, cradle of new artistic techniques, a city whose present is forged from the ferment of myth and tradition. Florence! focuses not only on the city’s legendary cultural achievements but also on economic, political and religious developments. A selection of outstanding paintings, sculptures, drawings, textiles, written documents and decorative objects draws a picture of Florence as a laboratory of art and science. These masterpieces present the built, the painted and the written city. Everchanging, Florence is a work of art in its own right.

Subdivided into five main sections, the exhibition takes visitors on a chronological journey through Florence and its history. Each section begins with an introduction to the urban space of the period under examination. Maps and topographical views conjure an image of the city at specific points in time. The growth, development and transformation of Florence through the centuries form the central theme of the exhibition. The exhibition opens with Domenico di Michelino’s idealised view of Florence that unites the city with a portrait of one of its most illustrious sons, the poet Dante Alighieri. Dante and the reception of his work through the centuries constitute a recurring motif throughout the exhibition.

A selection of exquisite drawings, displayed in a cabinet of their own, pays homage to the Florentine culture of draughtsmanship and disegno. Florence! is complemented by a virtual reconstruction of the architectural history of the Florentine cathedral, with special emphasis on the construction of the vast dome, and by a film about ‘Florence, the City of Stone’. Presenting some 350 outstanding objects, the exhibition draws on loans from 45 institutions in and around Florence and from another 25 museums and galleries in Europe and the USA.

An exhibition of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in cooperation with the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz Max-Planck-Institut.

More on the exhibition

The Medieval City

In the early twelfth century Florence attained political autonomy. Having conquered the surrounding territory, the city won access to markets and trade routes. Banking and the textile industry were the cornerstones of the burgeoning Florentine economy in the thirteenth century. Trade connected medieval Florence with other commercial hubs as far away as Asia, and Florentine traders were active in all the big markets. Merchants, bankers and artisans were organised in guilds, and from 1282 the city was governed by the Priorate, a body of representatives of the most powerful of the guilds.

Around 1300 Florence probably had almost 100,000 inhabitants. It was one of the largest cities in Europe and a leading economic power. But the Florentine Republic was forever torn by internal political strife. In the early thirteenth century the tensions between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively, erupted into open conflict. Later, clashes flared up between the wealthy, influential professionals (popolo grasso) and the craftsmen and labourers who were barred from forming guilds (popolo minuto). The fourteenth century was punctuated by some of the worst crises in the history of the city – natural disasters, the collapse of banks, wars, political defeats and the devastating plague epidemic of 1348 – but it was also a period of great innovation in painting and literature. Giotto created a new pictorial language and the poets Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio laid the foundation for a new vernacular literature.

The Renaissance City

At the end of the fourteenth century political stability and prosperity returned to Florence. The conquest of Pisa and its seaport in 1406 gave Florence access to the sea and allowed Florentine trade to reach new heights. It was against this background that the city emerged as the cradle of the innovations that define the Renaissance. Building on the foundations of the study of classical literature and philosophy, Florentine Humanism formulated new ethical and political ideals. This coincided with the artistic re-invention and re-articulation of pictorial space, primarily through the invention of single-point perspective (1410), and with the rediscovery of portraiture, monumental bronzes and the close observation of nature. The most important works of art of the period were the result of co-operations between outstanding artists and prosperous connoisseur patrons, religious orders, families or guilds.

Although fifteenth-century Florence was nominally still a republic, governed by a body of Lord Priors chosen from among its eligible citizens, by 1434 the Medici effectively controlled the government and, with it, the fate of the city. As wealthy patrons of art and science, they were instrumental in shaping the way Florence perceived itself and the way it was perceived from outside. The Renaissance was also a period of political, social and religious tension which found expression in the Pazzi conspiracy (1478) and in the rule and eventual execution of the Dominican friar Savonarola (1494–98).

Florence and the Tradition of Disegno

In the Renaissance drawings were not only seen as the foundation of all artistic endeavour – as a medium of studies and preparatory sketches – they were also appreciated as works of art in their own right and attracted a growing market of connoisseur collectors. In the mid-sixteenth century Florence emerged as the centre of the theoretical debate about the concept of disegno. In Italian the term does not only mean drawing, it also encompasses ‘the animating principle of all creative processes’ (Vasari).

In 1563 Cosimo I founded the first academy, the Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, which brought together painters, sculptors and architects. This was an important step in Cosimo I’s art politics. In addition to representational purposes, the academy served to protect artists, to safeguard the quality of their training and to establish norms of artistic practice. Giorgio Vasari, the first director of the academy, promoted the primacy of disegno as the guiding and unifying principle of the three artistic disciplines of painting, sculpture and architecture. Disegno became the basis of the nascent canon of the fine arts. Drawings and prints were collected together and laid the foundation for the formation of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, one of the world’s most important collections of works on paper.

The Medici: The Grand Duchy

By the beginning of the sixteenth century the era of the Florentine Republic had definitely come to an end. In 1530 Emperor Charles V installed Alessandro de’ Medici as the first Duke of Florence. He was succeeded in 1537 by the eighteenyear- old Cosimo, a scion of the cadet branch of the Medici family. Cosimo I is widely regarded as the creator of the Tuscan state. He succeeded in safeguarding the independence of Florence, in conquering the Republic of Siena and, with it, southern Tuscany, and, finally, in being created Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569. He established himself as an absolutist ruler, retaining the principal offices of the state, while the real power lay with the duke and his privy council, the Pratica secreta. The history of the city was rewritten in a dynastic and monarchist key. Under Cosimo and his sons, Francesco and Ferdinand, Florence became a true princely residence. The city was famous for its lavish celebrations, the rich Medicean collections of objects from all over the world and Galleria dei Lavori, founded in 1588, the first workshop to work exclusively for the court. Politically and economically, however, Florence suffered a gradual but inexorable decline. In the seventeenth century the Medici could no longer stem the downward spiral. Beset with internal political problems, the Grand Duchy suffered severe famines and plague epidemics.

Towards a Modern State

With the death of Gian Gastone de’ Medici in 1737 the male line of the Medici became extinct, and Tuscany passed to Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine and later Emperor Francis I. Under the House of Habsburg-Lorraine the backward Tuscan grand duchy of the Medici was modernised and transformed into a model state in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Grand Duke Peter Leopold (1765– 1790) pursued enlightened reform policies of exceptional ambition and reach. Instead of commissioning spectacular buildings and works of art, he sought to improve the living conditions of his Tuscan subjects. Among his most important reforms were the modernisation of the administration, the development of a better network of roads, the curtailment of the Inquisition and of the censorship of the Church, the dissolution of the old guild structures and – unprecedented at the time – the abolition of torture and capital punishment in 1786. Schools, hospitals, libraries and theatres were built in Florence and other cities in Tuscany. Peter Leopold’s art policies were equally innovative and unfailingly dictated by a concern for functionality and usefulness. The Uffizi were reorganised and opened to the public. A few years later the Florentine Science museums were founded. Florence became a destination for tourists on educational journeys and an international city with a flourishing salon culture.

Between Myth and Modernity

In the nineteenth century Florence was an international city and a destination for tourists on educational journeys. Particularly during the period of the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian unification, Florence was celebrated as the intellectual centre of Italy. In 1865, when Tuscany was incorporated into the newly established Kingdom of Italy, Florence briefly became the national capital.

The episode resulted in radical changes to the urban fabric, among them the construction of new ring roads and residential quarters, but also the ruthless demolition of the medieval city centre. At the same time, the modernisation went in hand with an enormous enthusiasm for all things medieval. And it is in painting that the near-mythical Middle Ages and modernity, the two facets of the city, are most clearly reflected. While traditional academic painters celebrated the idealised era of the city republic, the Macchiaioli gave rise to the only truly revolutionary artistic movement to have emerged in Novecento Italy.

In the late nineteenth century Florence was a city of international collectors and art dealers, who founded new museums, but also contributed to the large-scale exodus of Florentine art and the formation of first-rate collections outside Italy. Florence was home to an international set of artists, writers and scholars. Inspired by their enthusiasm for Renaissance art and culture, they created an image of Florence that continues to influence the way we see the city today
.
Catalogue

FLORENZ!
Format: 24,5 x 28 cm, Hardcover
Pages: 384 with 450 colour illustrations
Trade edition: Hirmer
ISBN: 978-3-7774-2089-9 (German)
Texts by H. Baader, C. Barteleit, A. Giusti, Ph. Helas, W.-D. Löhr, V. Reinhardt,
J. Renn, B. Roeck, E. Spalletti, C. Tauber, T. Verdon and G. Wolf

Images and Credits:



Domenico di Michelino The Allegory of the Divine Comedy, 1465 Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence © Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore Archivio storico e fototeca, Firenze

THE MEDIEVAL CITY



Andrea Pisano and collaborators Weaving 1334–36 Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence © Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore Archivio storico e fototeca, Firenze

THE RENAISSANCE CITY



Sandro Botticelli Minerva and the Centaur End of 1480ies Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence© 2013. Foto Scala, Florence – courtesy of Ministero Beni e Attività Culturali



Donatello Head from the Cantoria 1433–38, Bronze Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence © Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore Archivio storico e fototeca, Firenze



Masaccio (Tommaso di ser Giovanni di Mone Cassai) San Giovenale Triptych 1422_Museo Masaccio d’Arte Sacra,_Cascia di Reggello_



Michelangelo Buonarroti, Studies for a monumental wall tomb 1525/26 The British Museum, London © The Trustees of the British Museum



Michelangelo Buonarroti The Medici tombs in the New Sacristy 1520/21 Black chalk on paper The British Museum, London © The Trustees of the British Museum



Domenico Ghirlandaio and workshop Saint Peter Martyr 1490-98 Fondazione Magnani Rocca Mamiano_di Traversetolo (Parma)_© 2013. Foto Scala, Florence



Filippino Lippi Tobias and the Angel 1475/80 Oil and tempera (?) on wood © Washington, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection



Filippino Lippi Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Angels (“Tondo Corsini”) ca. 1481–1482 Collection Ente Cassa di Risparmio, Florence

THE MEDICI: THE GRAND DUCHY



Agnolo Bronzino Eleonora von Toledo um 1543 Národni Gallerí, Prag © National Gallery in Prague 2013



Benvenuto Cellini Perseus with Medusa’s Head c. 1553 Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence © 2013. Foto Scala, Florence – _courtesy of Ministero Beni e Attività Culturali



Benvenuto Cellini Design for the seal of the Accademia del Disegno 1562/64_Black chalk, ink and wash on paper © London, British Museum



Giovanni Antonio de‘ RossiCameo showing the family of Cosimo I.1558–1562_Florence, Museo degli Argenti_© S.S.P.S.A.E. e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze – Gabinetto Fotografico

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Retrospective

23 April to 25 July 2010 Städel Museum, Exhibition House

Also see Kirchner and the Berlin Street and

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), founding member of the artist association “Brücke” (Bridge) and one of the most significant artists of Expressionism, had a lasting influence on the art of classic Modernism. The oeuvre of the painter, commercial artist and sculptor is being honored by the Städel Museum with the first comprehensive retrospective in Germany for 30 years, featuring over 180 works. “I am amazed at the power of my paintings in the Städel,” Kirchner wrote in his diary on 21 December 1925. Kirchner had close relations to both the Städel and Frankfurt. Not only was the Frankfurt Galerie Schames the venue in 1916 for one of the first Kirchner exhibitions, the Städel was also one of the first museums to buy paintings by Kirchner as early as 1919.

Drawing on its very own Kirchner collection which, with numerous major works, numbers amongst the most significant worldwide, and thanks to high-quality international loans the exhibition was able to present works from all the artist’s periods. Alongside masterworks from the Brücke era with its nudes, the works from his years in Berlin with the famous street scenes, the paintings shaped by World War I that reflect Kirchner’s existential fears, and the Davos works depicting subjects from the Swiss mountains, the less well known work from the artist’s early and late period is also presented. For the first time the works that attracted such controversy executed during his late period in the “new style”, which startle the viewer with their uncompromising twodimensionality and a high degree of abstraction will be on view in Frankfurt together with his major works. The retrospective in the Städel Museum enables a new perspective of the startling modernity of Kirchner, whose excessive lifestyle was reflected in his art in an incomparable manner.

The chronologically arranged exhibition started with a group of important self-portraits providing an overview of the artist’s various stages of life. Born 1880 in Aschaffenburg, in 1938 the artist took his own life in Frauenkirch-Wildboden near Davos. The very large scope of styles evident in his work in itself suggests that Kirchner was much more than “only” an Expressionist.

The next section of the exhibition was devoted to Kirchner’s early work, which shows him to be trying to find himself as an artist. He selects elements from Impressionism, Symbolism and Fauvism. Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch are important points of reference. While in Kirchner’s painting



“Fehmarn Houses” from 1908

there is evidence of a post- Impressionist style influenced by van Gogh, he later became acquainted with works by Matisse in 1909, in many paintings the prevailing element is the innovative force of the emphasized two-dimensional. The influence of the French master is also clearly manifested in the painting



“Reclining Woman in White Chemise” from 1909

from the Städel collection, which was presented to the public for the first time in this exhibition. As it is on the rear side of the painting “Nude Female at the Window” from the year 1922/23 it was previously considered to be of little importance. It is one of the particular features of Kirchner’s work that he paints on both sides of the canvas. “I, too, have to make some economies now, and material has become very expensive. But thank God, a canvas has two sides,” the artist wrote in 1919. Owing to the fact that Kirchner did not “restore” as he called it, or re-work the rear side, something that frequently occurred, “Reclining Woman in White Chemise” is one of the few large-format early works preserved in its original state. The fact that it is signed also indicates that it can be seen as a finished work.

The third part of the exhibition focuses on Kirchner’s Expressionist works from his Dresden years. During this period Kirchner became a leading figure in the artist group “Brücke” established 1905 in Dresden, which succeeded within a few years in joining the league of the international avant-garde and exert a lasting influence on the image of Expressionism in Germany with its sensual-impulsive painting that has continued until today. In the conservative-academic art business of Germany under Wilhelm II not only the expressive colors and compositions with distorted perspectives had a provocative effect, but also the unconventional, anti-bourgeois style of living and working favored by the artist group, which was committed to the ideal of a sensual harmony of life and artistic activity. They met up in their studios to work free of social constraints and shared these studios in the same way that they shared their models, who were frequently also their respective partners.

A highlight of this creative phase is the painting



“Standing Nude with Hat” (Städel Museum)

for which, according to Kirchner, he was inspired by the painting



“Venus” by Lucas Cranach the Elder (also in the Städel).

In the tableau Kirchner presents his then girlfriend Dodo naked – and yet self-confident and chic. Alongside Dodo the portrayals of the eight year old Fränzi and the somewhat older Marcella, two of the children who regularly visited Kirchner’s studio, also played an outstanding role. This exhibition also featured portraits and nudes of the two girls, some originally from the Brücke Museum Berlin and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. These portrayals form a link to the circus and varieté subjects, which stand out for their exotic quality and lively display of color.

For the first time since 1980s the large-format main work



“Girl Circus Rider” from Saint Louis Art Museum

was shown in Europe again in the Frankfurt retrospective.

The topic of dance as an element of movement, as it is presented, say, in



“Varieté” (Städel Museum)

interested Kirchner throughout his lifetime and also features in his late work.

The move from Dresden to Berlin in 1911 meant a break for Kirchner: The new surroundings not only influenced the subjects in his work but also their style. He expressed the nervousness of the pulsating city with angular, pointed shapes, over-long bodies and bilious, wan colors. The relationships between the sexes are charged. Latent aggressive encounters between whores and clients replace the peaceful mood of the Dresden nudes. Kirchner transferred this clash in his street scenes to the public domain. Today, these paintings are still widely considered as the culmination of his oeuvre.

A highlight of the Berlin years shown in the exhibition – alongside a room featuring street scenes - nudes such as



“The Toilette; Woman before the Mirror” (Centre Pompidou, Paris)



or the work “Two Yellow Nudes with Bouquet of Flowers” (Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur) –



(left)



(center)



(right)

was the monumental triptych “Women Bathing” measuring ca. 196 x 350 cm.

This was the first time since Kirchner’s death that the triptych could be secured for an exhibition and shown together with loans from private collectors, the Kirchner Museum Davos and the National Gallery Washington. Kirchner himself describes it as one of his strongest works.

The artistically fertile era of the Berlin years experienced a deep cut through the outbreak of World War I. Kirchner responded to the awful reality of war with dread and inner conflict. He featured his own experiences and the existential fear he felt during his military service in paintings such as



“Artillerymen in the Shower” (Guggenheim Museum, New York)

or in the series of wood engravings on









“Pictures for Chamisso’s Peter Schlemih” (Städel Museum),

one of the most important prints of the 20th century.

Following emotional and physical collapses Kirchner recuperated in a sanatorium in Königsstein im Taunus. Works such as



“West Harbor, Frankfurt” (Städel Museum) or



“Taunus Road“ (private collection)

were produced in this period.

Kirchner would also find important sponsors of his work in Frankfurt: Not only his gallery owner Ludwig Schames, but also some of his most important collectors lived here. They included the chemist Carl Hagemann, whose collection of contemporary art was one of the most comprehensive at the time. The Städel largely owes the Kirchner works it owns to this collection, which was made over to the Museum after World War II by Hagemann’s heirs as a gift or permanent loan.

Broken by his experiences of the war Kirchner went to Davos in 1917 to recuperate and remained there until his death in 1938. Originally intended as a place of temporary retreat the Swiss Alps rapidly became an important source of artistic inspiration. The artistic challenge was no longer posed by the pulsating city but the majestic landscape of the mountains and the peasant life he experienced there.

The final section of the exhibition explores Kirchner’s “new style” developed from the mid-1920s. A completely transformed color palette of pink, brown and lilac tones made demands on the observer’s aesthetic perception. What is remarkable is that as in his early work the artist was inspired primarily by French art. The curved forms and geometrically abstract figures frequently recall Picasso. Kirchner’s renewed change of style, which he himself always regarded as an advancement met with little understanding amongst his supporters. Even today critics and public occasionally respond with irritation at this “post-Expressionist” work phase.

Kirchner experienced the most vehement attack on his art in 1937, as a result of the National Socialists banning what they considered to be “degenerate art”: more than 600 works by Kirchner were removed from German museums. The Städel also lost all of its Kirchner works at the time. Since the mid-1930s the artist’s physical condition had deteriorated once again. Kirchner was again consuming substantial amounts of tranquilizers, also because of his increasing depressions. In March 1938 when the German army marched into Austria and stood just 20 kilometers away from Davos as the crow flies, Kirchner destroyed part of his works – presumably out of fear they might fall into the hands of the Nazis in the event of them occupying Switzerland. On the morning of June 15, 1938 Kirchner put an end to his life close to his home by shooting himself twice in the heart.

Catalogue:

The exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz Verlag and edited by Felix Krämer, which primarily presents more recent positions of research on Kirchner. It features essays by Felix Krämer, Thomas Röske, Karin Schick and Hanna Strzoda and articles by Javier Arnaldo, Nicole Brandmüller, Melanie Damm, Chantal Eschenfelder, Nina Jaenisch, Daniel Koep, Bettina Lange, Sandra Oppmann, Beate Ritter and Nerina Santorius. German and English edition.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Biography

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a torn, extremely contradictory character, radically and relentlessly demanding of himself. He was an artist, who frequently reinvented himself and who controlled his public image painstakingly. The self-portraits, which predominantly date back to the years of World War I and his time in Davos are an important tool for the construction of his image. While the wartime works show a physically and psychologically weak person, the Swiss works reflect a gradual improvement in his health.

Equally those portraits showing him together with his partner Erna Schilling point towards a change: Initially Erna was his model and muse, in later years, however, she is increasingly recognisable as partner and “companion”. The notion of “twofold entity” is manifest in the increasing similarity of the representation of Erna and Kirchner. In everyday-life, however, there was little sense of equality: Erna had to fully submit to Kirchner and his art.

The early years

In June 1905 while they were registered as students of architecture, Kirchner and his fellow students Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff founded the artists’ group Brücke. Driven by their ambition to renew art against “the established older forces”, in their programme they called for the younger generation “to paint immediate and unadulterated”: New painting no longer sought naturalism in the representation of things. It was important to artistically capture the essence of a theme. Members of the international avant-garde, such as Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch and Henri Matisse, served as inspiration for the Brücke-members in the early stages. Their models also contributed to their style.

Kirchner and his artist colleagues turned against the study of traditional poses performed by professional models, commonly used in the academies. Instead they held sessions at their workshops, where they sketched the natural and unrestrained movements of their partners. Kirchner’s Dresden lover Doris Große was a favourite at this time and after their relationship had finished, the artist continued to consider her an ideal female figure.

The Expressionist in Dresden

Born into a respectable middle-class family, Kirchner was fascinated by the music hall and circus scene. He repeatedly focussed on the movement of danceand artistic performances, much like the play with sensuality and eroticism. Kirchner crafted furniture for his workshop – life and work place at the same time – with which he created an alternative place for free life and sexuality. The art and culture of native peoples in Africa served as ideals. A group of young girls was among the models in Dresden. Fränzi, who met the Brücke when she was eight years old, and Marcella are often portrayed. Nude representations as allegories of an uncivilised world were of particular interest. The artists used the inexperience and innocence of the children, which was the nearest approximation of their idea of unspoilt nature. The girls accompanied the artists on their excursions to the Moritzburg Ponds near Dresden. Here they studied nudes en plein air. The closeness of the artists in life and work at the time was reflected in a common Brücke-style.

The Expressionist in Berlin

Full of expectations Kirchner moved to Berlin in the autumn of 1911. When success was not immediate – the MUIM-Institute, which he and Pechstein had founded only attracted two students – Kirchner deplored the capital as “terribly common”. The dissolution of the Brücke in 1913 further taints his view of his new city.

The pulsating atmosphere of the metropolis nevertheless inspired Kirchner to new subjects and also brought with it a stylistic change. He uses steep perspective, agitated hatching and the glaring colours of city illuminations to capture the clandestine contact of punter and cocotte in Berlin’s streets and squares.

The harmony between the sexes, as portrayed in Dresden, is being replaced by latent aggression. The ideal of beauty is now strongly influenced by the dancer Erna Schilling, whom Kirchner met in 1912. She would be his partner until his death. Together with her, he left behind the hectic of the capital in summer for Fehmarn island, where they sojourned in a paradisiacal parallel world.

War and Breakdown

Once World War I had broken out, Kirchner voluntarily enlisted. He started his basic training in Halle in 1915. This experience is reflected in several of his works. Unsuitable for service, Kirchner suffered a physical and psychological break down after only two months. Repeated sojourns at Dr. Kohnstamm Sanatorium in Königstein followed. From the Taunus Kirchner also travelled to nearby Frankfurt, where he visited his gallerist Ludwig Schames. Other sanatoria he sought cure at were in Berlin and Kreuzlingen.

In spite of his illness Kirchner was highly productive. Landscapes, scenes of life at the sanatorium and intensive portraits of himself and others date from this period. His immense fear of being drafted again – temporarily Kirchner even refused to eat in order to remain unfit for service – ceased only when the war was over.

In the Mountains. First years in Davos

In 1918 Kirchner retired to the Swiss village of Davos, where he would lead a simple and secluded life until his suicide in 1938. Davos would become his second home. Soon Erna would follow him there. The quietude of the Alps resulted in new themes: landscapes and scenes of life of the mountain farmers replaced the glittering demimonde of Berlin. Kirchner’s style became calmer and increasingly flat. Violets, pinks and greens now determined the palette. While he had retired to the remote mountains, Kirchner and his art remained ever present in Germany.

Kirchner kept abreast with the art scene through the press, exchanged letters with art collectors and penned praising reviews of his work under pseudonym. 1925/26 Kirchner returned to Germany for the first time. He visited Frankfurt, Chemnitz, Dresden and Berlin. Many works were inspired by this trip.

The “New Style“

By 1925 the “new Style” marks Kirchner’s gradual departure from his expressive-figurative period. His art is becoming increasingly abstract. The pictorial compositions evolve out of colour-planes, which are frequently outlined by a contour. Kirchner’s play with simplified overlapping shapes seems at odds with his simultaneous attention to detail. This infuses his works with a curious tension.

The artist considered his change of style as the logical development of his oeuvre, a notion which he supported by theory. He further explained, he was seeking no less than the “connection of contemporary German art with the international (sense of) style”. The formal proximity of the “new Style” to the art of key figures of the international avantgarde, first and foremost Pablo Picasso, is striking. In spite of his pursuit of abstraction, Kirchner never excluded figurative elements, which he considered to be the link and thereby the key to the understanding of his art.

Venues


Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, September 28, 2012–January 20, 2013

Denver Art Museum, February 10–April 28, 2013

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, May 17–September 8, 2013

Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ September 27, 2013–March 3, 2014

The exhibition, organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, brought to light a relatively unknown aspect of O’Keeffe’s art and thinking—her deep respect for the diverse and distinctive cultures of northern New Mexico. The exhibition featured 53 O’Keeffe works including 15 rarely seen pictures of different Hopi katsina tihu, along with examples of these types of figures. Chronicling her artwork created in New Mexico, the exhibition explores O’Keeffe’s paintings of New Mexico’s Hispanic and Native American architecture, cultural objects and her New Mexico landscapes.



Georgia O’Keeffe, Ram's Head, Blue Morning Glory, 1938. Oil on canvas; 20 x 30 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Gift of The Burnett Foundation. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) began spending part of the year living and working in New Mexico in 1929, a pattern she rarely altered until 1949. She then made northern New Mexico her permanent home three years after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), the celebrated photographer and one of America’s first advocates of modern art. In addition to the astonishingly beautiful New Mexico landscapes O’Keeffe painted, she was also inspired to paint some of the area’s churches, crosses and folk art as well as Native American subjects, such as architecture and katsinam tithu, commonly referred to as kachina or katsina dolls.



Georgia O'Keeffe, "Paul's Kachina," 1931, oil on board, 8 x 8 in., Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum



Georgia O'Keeffe, “Church Steeple,” 1930, oil on canvas. 30 x 16 in. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Katsinam, plural for katsina, primarily refers to the supernatural beings that are believed to visit Hopi villagers during half of the year. Katsinam have the power to bring rain, exercise control over the weather, help in many of the everyday activities of the villagers, punish offenders of ceremonial or social laws and, in general, to function as messengers between the spiritual domain and mortals. The figures are used to teach children about the different Hopi katsinam. O’Keeffe was privy to viewing many cultural ceremonies and was inspired by the beautifully detailed figurines.




"Kachina" (1934), oil on canvas, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

While the New Mexico landscape remained a prominent part of O’Keeffe’s life and art, very little has been known or written about her involvement with Native American and Hispanic art and culture. However, almost immediately upon her arrival in New Mexico, she responded to the area’s cultural richness. Between 1931 and 1945, for example, O'Keeffe created numerous drawings, watercolors and paintings of katsinam tithu. Because she retained and seldom exhibited most of these paintings, they remain generally unknown to the public.

At various intervals between 1931 and 1945, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) completed seventeen drawings and paintings of katsina tithu (“kachina dolls”), the painted-wood representations of spirit beings carved by Native American artists—especially Hopi and Zuni—that have long played an important role in Pueblo and Hopi ceremonialism. O’Keeffe never explained how or why she became interested in these Native American carvings. Because she gave generic titles to her paintings of them except those works depicting Kokopelli, she may not have been aware of their specific names, meaning, or functions. But the artist always took inspiration from her immediate environment, whether working abstractly or representationally, often seeking subjects that conveyed her feelings for or experiences of specific places; her depictions of Native American spirit beings were no exception. As she later pointed out, “My pictures are my statement of a personal experience.”




Georgia O’Keeffe, Rust Red Hills, 1930. Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, Indiana; Sloan Fund Purchase, 62.02. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Catalogue

Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico
Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land
By Barbara Buhler Lynes and Carolyn Kastner
Published in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition of fifty-three works by the artist, features fifteen drawings and paintings of katsina subjects made between 1931 and 1941 and thirty-eight additional works made between 1929 and 1953 that resulted from her deep exploration of the distinctive architecture and cultural objects of northern New Mexico’s Hispanic and Native American communities. Also included are numerous landscape paintings, a subject O’Keeffe addressed most consistently during her career. The book features contributions by noted art historian W. Jackson Rushing III, Hopi weaver Ramona Sakiestewa, Hopi artist Dan Namingha, and Hopi tribal leader and author Alph H. Secakuku. Rushing discusses O’Keeffe and other modernist painters, including Emil Bistram, Fred Kabotie, and Gustave Baumann, in their approach to Native subjects; Sakiestewa writes about O’Keeffe’s katsina paintings and the influence the artist had on her own designs; Secakuku explicates katsinam ceremonalism; and Namingha is interviewed about katsina imagery in his work.

Barbara Buhler Lynes is former curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. She has published widely on Georgia O’Keeffe and American modernism and is considered the leading expert on O’Keeffe’s art and life. Carolyn Kastner is associate curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Her research, publications, and curatorial projects focus on the diversity of American modernism.


Paperbound with Flaps: $34.95 ISBN 978-0-89013-547-1


From a review of the Montclair show (some images added):

For all their ethnographic importance, O’Keeffe showed little beyond visual interest in these striking figures. If anything, her attitude is playful. She zeroes in on features that are cute or endearing, such as the one she titled



"Blue-Headed Indian Doll."

She even painted a fake one (it wears long white pants and has a feather stuck artlessly into its head), though her title,



"A Man From the Desert,"

suggests she knew....

The landscapes are the heart of this show. Her background as an abstract painter and precisionist shows in the ease with which she simplified and reduced the landscape. The relative bareness of desert topography suited these goals perfectly. She makes you feel – rather than simply see – the swell and roll of the land, the way these strange red hills stretch out their claws and others undulate like animals under a blanket.



Chama River, Ghost Ranch,' 1937

She wraps the Chama River into its twisting valley like a stretch of blue roadway with zooming straightaways and banking curves. Even a composition as simple as



"Hill, New Mexico"

feels thrilling because of the seeming force with which it erupts from the ground.

From a NY Times review of the Montclair show (some images added):

In “Ranchos Church No. 1” (1929),




"Ranchos Church No. 1" (1929), oil on canvas. Collection of the Norton Museum of Art, 2013 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

you can see O’Keeffe teasing the line between abstraction and representation, but softening the outlines from her Precisionist canvases.

By the next summer, O’Keeffe’s gaze had moved up to the hills, which she began to paint in oil...




“The Mountain, New Mexico” (1931)

contains links to European modernism: those familiar with Cézanne’s and Braque’s paintings of L’Estaque, just outside Marseille in southern France, will see a distinct echo.

“Back of Marie’s No. 4” (1931)



Georgia O'Keeffe: Back of Marie’s No. 4, 1931, oil on canvas, 16 x 30 inches; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

is another stratified composition, with a strip of green at the bottom, while

“Hill, New Mexico” (1935), (above)

with its bright, almost Pop colors, looks surprisingly contemporary.

An exhibition at the Museum Frieder Burda from 2 July 2010 to 14 November 2010

Under the title “Miró. The Colours of Poetry“, the museum showed around 100 works by the Catalan artist who so strongly influenced art of the 20th century. The pictures cover six decades of Miró’s work. Various famous private collectors and museums from all over the world have sent their paintings to Baden-Baden, among them the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Foundation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland, the Museums of fine arts in Basel and Bern, the Phillips Collection in Washington and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. A large number of works owned by the Miró family itself are shown as well, this being a rare occasion. Also, the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca has lent first-class works to Baden-Baden. More than 30 international lenders are involved in this Miró exhibition.




Joan Miró: Femme espagnole
1972
oil on canvas
162,5 x 131 cm
Private Collection
© Successió Miró / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010
Photo: Joan Ramon Bonet

The colorful paintings represent the main part of the exhibition, completed by paper works, ceramic works and sculptures. The exhibition was curated by Jean-Louis Prat, who was a close friend of Miró’s and organized exhibitions for him during his lifetime.




Joan Miró: Goutte d'eau sur la neige rose
1968
oil on canvas
195,5 x 130,5 cm
Private Collection
© Successió Miró / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010
Photo: Joan Ramon Bon

Miró style was not abstract or figurative, he used a very poetic language in his paintings,“, Jean- Louis Prat explained. Some among Miró‘s contemporary artists, he says, banned colour from their paintings, for Miró, though, colour always retained great importance. Thus red, green, yellow and blue are dominant in his paintings to be seen at the exhibition, illuminated by natural light in the Richard Meier building. Miró admired nature, he was fascinated and inspired by everyday objects and their beauty.



Joan Miró: Silence
1968
oil on canvas
173,4 x 242,9 cm
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’Art moderne / Centre de création industrielle
Donation 1982
© Successió Miró / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010
Photo: bpk / CNAC-MNAM / Jean-François Tomasian

Freedom, sense of humor, ease, but also violations of esthetic rules are typical of the works of the painter, draftsman, ceramic artist and sculptor, born in 1893 in Barcelona. He always avoided standstill or living in the past. The exhibition includes rare smaller works from Miró’s early creative years. They help understand his development as an artist, evolving from figured presentation to symbolic picture subjects and ever recurring symbols. These mysterious symbols and colour stains on canvas, which resemble a music score but seem to emerge from a kind of dream world, are typical of Miró’s paintings. They reappear in his ceramic works and sculptures, contrasting his pictures.

More shows and many, many more images here.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806), Blind-Man’s Buff.
about 1750–55. Oil on canvas, 46 in. x 36 in. (116.8 cm x 91.4 cm.)
Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward
Drummond Libbey, 1954.43



Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806), The See-Saw.
about 1750–55. Oil on canvas, 47 in. x 37 in. (120 x 94.5 cm.) Thyssen-
Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, 1956.13

The original wardrobe malfunction might have originated more than 250 years ago, at the hands of a 20-something Frenchman named Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

Fragonard was only beginning to discover his niche as a portrayer of thinly veiled eroticism when he painted an errant body part peeking out from his subject’s frilly 18th-century dress. The resulting work of art, Blind Man’s Buff, and its companion, The See-Saw, comprised a pair of paintings that must have delighted his patron with symbolic depictions of seduction.

The two works will be reunited for the first time in 25 years in a special focus exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art titled Love and Play: A Pair of Paintings by Fragonard, on view Jan. 24 – May 4, 2014.

Blind Man’s Buff, part of the Museum’s collection, and The See-Saw, on loan from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, will be displayed alongside two engraved copies of the paintings, a terracotta sculpture by Clodion and a small selection of French decorative arts of the period.

“They’re risqué, they’re provocative—and the artist intended these canvases to be seen together,” said Lawrence W. Nichols, William Hutton senior curator of European and American painting and sculpture before 1900. “So to reunite these two very important paintings by one of the most significant French artists of the 18th century is quite an exciting opportunity.”

Painted in Paris in the first years of the 1750s, they were likely commissioned by Baron Baillet de Saint-Julien and subsequently passed through the hands of private 18th-century collectors, a Parisian comte and a Rothschild. When they came onto the open market in 1954, they were finally separated.

The companion works were later brought together in temporary exhibitions held in London in 1968 and both Paris and New York in 1987 and 1988.

Fragonard (1732–1806) was one of the premier artists of the 18th-century Rococo era of French painting, along with Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and François Boucher (all represented in the Museum’s galleries). The son of a glove maker, Fragonard was born in Grasse in the south of France and came to Paris with his family as a young boy. His talent was recognized early on and, following an initial apprenticeship with Chardin at 18, he entered the studio of Boucher. Boucher’s art, both in subject matter and style, became a great influence on the younger artist.

Fragonard’s depictions of love and courtship, which in those times could have been deemed explicit, were well-received by his clientele, who were members of the French aristocracy and the royal court. Blind Man’s Buff and The See-Saw, executed with his characteristically fluid and effortless handling of paint, epitomized the hedonistic themes that attracted his patrons.

“His art really embodied the court’s penchant for indulgence, but it wasn’t intended to be controversial,” Nichols said. “There was a sexual symbolism that would have been obvious to 18th-century viewers.”

Though the paintings will appear as companion works as Fragonard intended, there will be one unalterable change: the canvases are now smaller than when they were originally painted.

“Though both are extremely well-preserved works of art, we do know that they have been cut down,” Nichols said. “We’re going to examine the original format of the paintings and help the viewer reconstruct how they were first meant to appear.”

A comprehensive special exhibition presented by Frankfurt’s Städel Museum from 20 February to 26 May 2013 highlighted the art of Neoclassicism and the impulses it provided for Romanticism. Developed in collaboration with the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, the show Beauty and Revolution assembled about one hundred works of the period from 1770 to 1820 by such artists as Anton Raphael Mengs, Thomas Banks, Antonio Canova, Jacques-Louis David, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Johann Gottfried Schadow, and Jean-August-Dominique Ingres. The major survey, whose range also comprises a number of impressive examples of “Romantic Neoclassicism,” will be the first in Germany to convey an idea of the variety of the different and sometimes even contradictory facets of this style.

Based on significant sculptures, paintings, and prints from collections in many countries, the exhibition will explore the decisive influence of classical antiquity on the artists of the era. Struggling for a socially relevant art, the artists directed their attention to the aesthetics of Greek and Roman art as well as to their virtues and moral standards conveyed by history and mythology. It will become evident how the viewer could be addressed in many different ways. Two famous marble sculptures of the Greek goddess Hebe, for example, will be confronted with each other in Frankfurt for the first time: a variant by Antonio Canova (1796, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg) and another by Bertel Thorvaldsen (designed in 1806, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen). The two masterpieces have again and again been compared and judged, yet never exhibited together since their creation.

The various aspects of Neoclassicism will be explored along three lines in the Städel’s exhibition. Disregarding a few exceptions, the selection of numerous loans focuses on the production of art in the city of Rome that was considered the first address for studying the ancient world by many artists, writers, and theorists around 1800 and became a center of the art world of that time.

The second emphasis of the show is on representations of historical and mythological scenes. In search of a model for moral standards of behavior, the artists fathomed the core of what features as human in the ancient world’s myths, which they read as poetry without religious implications.



Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Oath of the Horatii,

for example – of which an oil sketch from the holdings of the Louvre in Paris will be presented in the exhibition – upholds a timelessly valid moral code, yet also relates to current political events.



Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Patroclus, 1780. Oil on canvas, 122 x 170 cm. Cherbourg-Octeville , Musée d'art Thomas-Henry © Daniel Sohier

The show exemplifies how contemporary motifs increasingly found their way into the range of themes dealt with by Neoclassicist art. The third chapter explores an issue connected with this development, namely how feelings and passions were depicted in Neoclassicist works of art. Artists like Canova or David rendered emotions and pathos in a way unfamiliar to their contemporaries, a way which manifested itself mainly in their figures’ body language.

Contrary to the Baroque era, it was not the representation of affectations that artists were primarily concerned with any longer, but internalized emotions in which the viewer was to immerse himself. The artists also clearly detached themselves from the pathos of the ancient world in this way: Canova’s sculpture Theseus and the Minotaur (1783, Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova, Possagno), for example, primarily deals with the aspect of reflection after Theseus’s victory and the hero’s moral consciousness.

Extending across the Städel’s entire Exhibition House, the generously conceived special exhibition begins with the imposing confrontation of the two famous representations of the goddess Hebe by Antonio Canova (1800–1805) und Bertel Thorvaldsen (1815–1823) on the ground floor. The difference between Canova’s cupbearer hurrying near on a cloud and involved in what is going on and Thorvaldsen’s introverted musing female illustrates the whole stylistic range of Neoclassicist art at the very beginning. Picking up the thread of this confrontation, the presentation in the large ground floor hall impressively visualizes the turbulent development of Neoclassicism until about 1870. The tour starts with a selection of plaster cast and bronze reproductions of antique sculptures dating from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; these reproductions particularly illustrate the canon of classical antiquity emphasized by the archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768).

Artists staying in Rome initially incorporated these famous reproductions into their works as directly as possible. In those years, the return to the ancient world frequently implied a criticism of contemporary systems of rule, especially of the courtly and ecclesiastical formal language of the Baroque age. Anton Raphael Mengs’s appropriation of classical antiquity was of such an extreme degree that the artist was even able to deceive Winckelmann who described Mengs’s fresco Jupiter Kissing Ganymede (1758–1759, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome) as an original of classical antiquity in one of his writings.

The following section comprises the rebellious works of a group of artists who also lived in Rome for some time, yet felt not inclined to follow Winckelmann’s credo of “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” – though they too thoroughly studied the antique models. They aimed at capturing the viewer’s attention by dramatizing their subjects, even if this meant putting up with exaggeration and distortion. The English sculptor Thomas Banks (1735–1805) – see his



The Falling Titan (1786, Royal Academy of Arts, London) – was one this group’s artists as was the Swiss-born Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), whose



Achilles Sacrificing his Hair on the Funeral Pyre of Patroclus (1800–1805)

from the Kunsthaus in Zurich is included in the exhibition.

The shown works by Antonio Canova (1757–1822) and Jacques-Louis David (1748– 1825) and his pupils then ushered in a definitely calmer approach to the motifs rendered. They are characterized by formal austerity and a deliberately pointed dramatic composition. However, both the sculptor Canova and the painter David relied on completely new pictorial and iconographic means for drawing on antique subjects and attitudes – means that were to inform subsequent generations of artists all over Europe.

The presentation on the second floor of the Exhibition House highlights how the new iconography developed not least in response to the political context of the time and particularly the French Revolution. Jacques-Louis David immortalized the dead Marat as the revolution’s first martyr, for example: the exhibition comprises a version by David and his workshop (Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles) as well as by Joseph Roques (1793, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse).

The works in the following room strikingly illustrate that the young art also held a revolutionary potential in terms of form: the sophisticatedly simplified scenes visualized by the sculptor John Flaxman (1755–1826) in his drawings and engravings, for example, are based on an astounding abstraction. Their reduction to mere contours was to create a furore all over Europe.

The adjacent room sheds light on the slow, yet far-reaching change in the artists’ attitude toward the ancient world that occurred around 1800. The unreachability of its ideal made itself felt with increasing weight. This implied a growing abandonment of its norms on the part of the artists, whereas the viewer was granted more leeway for interpretation. The protagonist’s internalization also came to play a more important role in what was going on in the picture. Consequently, masterpieces such as



Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Ganymede (1819–1821, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen)

are categorized as works of „Romantic Neoclassicism” today.

The various tendencies brought forth by Neoclassicism within the first decades after 1800 become increasingly clear in the last room of the exhibition. In spite of all discrepancies between the various artists’ decisions, they shared a common denominator in looking for new ways to leave Neoclassicism behind. The idea of the ancient world was regarded with increasing detachment, unconventionally transformed, and largely ignored by more and more nineteenth-century artists. All in all, the exhibition unfolds the age of Neoclassicism as a surprisingly manifold and lively stylistic epoch whose unconditional desire for renewal and improvement became a breeding ground for Romanticism in its return to classical antiquity.

More images here:



http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2013/02/20/26460463.html

Michelangelo's Dream
February 18-May 16, 2010
Looking at Michelangelo
February 18-May 16, 2010


The Courtauld Gallery
Somerset House
Strand
London

"Drawings the like of which have never been seen…"

— Giorgio Vasari, 1568



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), The Dream of Human Life, c. 1533, Black chalk, 39.4 x 27.7 cm, The Courtauld Gallery, London.

Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Dream (Il Sogno), described as one of the finest of all Renaissance drawings and amongst Courtauld Gallery’s greatest treasures, was executed in c. 1533 when Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was at the height of his career, it exemplifies his unrivalled skill as a draughtsman and his extraordinary powers of invention. Michelangelo’s Dream examines this celebrated work in the context of an exceptional group of closely related drawings by Michelangelo, as well as original letters and poems by the artist and works by his contemporaries.

The Dream is one of Michelangelo’s "presentation drawings", a magnificent and famous group of highly refined compositions which the artist gave to his closest friends. These beautiful and complex works transformed drawing into an independent art form and are amongst Michelangelo’s very finest creations in any medium. The Dream was probably made for a young Roman nobleman called Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, who was celebrated for his outstanding beauty, gracious manners and intellect. Michelangelo had first met him in Rome in the winter of 1532 and had instantly fallen in love. The Dream is likely to have been part of the superb group of drawings which Michelangelo gave to Cavalieri during the first years of their close friendship. This group forms the heart of the exhibition and includes The Punishment of Tityus, The Fall of Phaeton, A Bacchanal of Children, and The Rape of Ganymede.



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), A Bacchanal of Children, c. 1533, Red chalk, 27.1 x 38.5 cm, Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), The Fall of Phaeton, 1533, Black chalk, 41.1 x 23.4 cm, Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), The Punishment of Tityus, 1532, Black chalk, 19 x 33 cm, Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.



Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Rape of Ganymede, circa 1533 Black chalk, 19 x 33 cm Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge

In his Life of Michelangelo (1568) the biographer and artist Giorgio Vasari praised these exceptional works as "drawings the like of which have never been seen"— and they are still regarded as amongst the greatest single series of drawings ever made.

Michelangelo’s drawings for Cavalieri have not been seen together for over 20 years and this is the first time that The Dream is shown as part of this group. Also, The Fall of Phaeton is reunited with two earlier versions of this composition. Both carry inscriptions in Michelangelo’s hand, one requesting Cavalieri’s approval of the preliminary design.

The exhibition starts with the earliest surviving letter from Michelangelo to Cavalieri, dated January 1, 1533, in which the artist expresses delight that Cavalieri had accepted the gift of some drawings. Cavalieri is thought to have been no older than 17 at the time and, according to Vasari, Michelangelo’s gifts were intended to teach him how to draw. The mythological stories such as Phaeton falling to earth with the chariot of the sun, the abduction of Ganymede — the most beautiful of mortals — and the punishment of the lustful giant Tityus may also have been intended to offer moral guidance. The drawings certainly also served as expressions of Michelangelo’s love for Cavalieri.

Michelangelo’s ardour is eloquently described in the poems that the artist composed for Cavalieri, mainly in the early phase of their friendship. Five handwritten sonnets are included in the exhibition; most shown for the first time. While adhering to conventions of love poetry, these sonnets record Michelangelo’s adoration of the young man whose sublime beauty he regarded as a reflection of God’s eternal beauty on earth. The poetic imagery of dreaming, transcendence and the struggle between the carnal and the spiritual realms offers insight into the meaning and function of the presentation drawings, and The Dream in particular.

The presentation drawings created an immediate sensation at the court of Pope Clement VII in Rome. In an early letter to Michelangelo, included in the exhibition, Cavalieri wrote that they had been admired by "the Pope, Cardinal de Medici and everyone", adding apologetically that the Cardinal had already taken away Ganymede to have a replica made in crystal. The Dream too became famous amongst Renaissance collectors and artists soon after its completion and was copied numerous times. However, its precise meaning has remained elusive. Rather than illustrate a text, the drawing engages with contemporary (neo-Platonic) ideas about the ascent of the soul to the divine, aided by beauty. The composition shows an idealised nude youth reclining against a globe. Masks fill the open plinth on which he is seated. The swirling dreamlike mass of figures surrounding the young man have traditionally been linked with the vices. They enact scenes of gluttony, lust, avarice, wrath, sloth and envy, with a large phallus adding to the carnal imagery. A winged spirit — possibly a personification of beauty and chaste love — approaches the youth with a trumpet, awakening him from the illusions and deceits of the earthly realm to a new spiritual life. A single precise meaning for this complex allegory seems unlikely as the presentation drawings were clearly intended for careful scrutiny and prolonged learned discussion and enjoyment.

A further highlight of the exhibition is a superb group of drawings by Michelangelo of Christ’s resurrection, which concentrate on the heroic nude figure of the reborn Christ leaping free of the tomb and the bondage of life on earth. These drawings offer close thematic and formal comparisons with The Dream. This group includes the glorious Risen Christ— widely celebrated as one of the most magnificent and potent figures in Michelangelo’s art.

The exhibition further investigates the meaning of The Dream in the context of closely related works by Michelangelo’s contemporaries which address themes of rebirth, dreaming and the nature of Man. This section of the exhibition includes Albrecht Dürer’s enigmatic drawing of a bound youth and Giorgio Vasari’s free interpretation of The Dream. The final section of the exhibition focuses on copies of The Dream and illustrates how Michelangelo’s contemporaries and later admirers responded to the puzzling subject matter and the extraordinary technical virtuosity of Michelangelo’s great work.

The friendship between Cavalieri and Michelangelo endured for 30 years. Cavalieri was present at the artist’s death in 1564 and subsequently helped to realise some of his architectural schemes. He so valued the drawings given to him by Michelangelo that Vasari was to say: "… in truth he rightly treasures them as relics."

The exhibition has been developed with the support of major international collections including The Royal Collection, Windsor; The British Museum, London; Casa Buonarotti, Florence; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome; The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth; the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne; Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich; Das Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge MA, and the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

Bringing together a focused selection of some of the artist’s very finest drawings, Michelangelo’s Dream promises to be one of the most enthralling exhibitions of 2010.

A display of rare Italian 16th century drawings and prints from The Courtauld Gallery’s outstanding permanent collection complements the exhibition Michelangelo’s Dream. Highlights of this rich group are three autograph drawings by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), ranging from his early period in Florence to his very last years in Rome and covering both religious and pagan subjects.

Whilst the vigorously drawn early pen and ink study of



Christ before Pilate

shows Michelangelo’s extraordinary powers as a narrator of dramatic scenes, his Christ on the Cross gives insight into the profound spirituality of the almost 90-year-old master.



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Christ on the Cross, 16th century, Black chalk on paper, 27.5 cm x 23.4 cm, The Courtauld Gallery, London, from Looking at Michelangelo.

This haunting black chalk drawing is one of a group of highly personal late works showing the Crucifixion and it powerfully communicates Michelangelo’s profound reflection on Christ’s death.

Michelangelo never had an organised workshop, preferring to work alone with just a few pupils and assistants. Nevertheless, his work was immensely influential in his own lifetime. The display explores how contemporary artists responded to Michelangelo’s creations. Two drawings by the famous Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-1594) provide an example of an artist studying Michelangelo through direct copying, whereas Jacopo Pontormo’s (1494-1557) great study of a seated youth shows the inspirational influence of Michelangelo in the development of an exceptional new work.

The display also includes a remarkable large composite print of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. Made up of ten separate numbered sheets of paper, the print is reassembled and displayed here for the first time.



Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), Allegory of a Dream, c. 1541-45, Pen and brown ink, heightened with white, on blue paper, 19.2 x 39.4 cm, The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), The Fall of Phaeton (inscribed by Michelangelo), 1533, Black chalk, 31.1 x 21.6 cm, The British Museum, London.



Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564), The Risen Christ, c. 1532, Black chalk, 37 x 22 cm, Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

26 January to 6 May 2013 The Holburne Museum
Great Pulteney Street
Bath

One of the most important groups of Jacobean portraits in the country forms the centrepiece of this exceptional exhibition. Nine sumptuous full-length portraits by William Larkin, painted around 1613-18, will be displayed alongside rare survivals of dress from the period with live interpretation, to reveal the heights of the art and fashion of four hundred years ago.



Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, William Larkin, oil on canvas
© English Heritage

The portraits depict members of an extended family, relatives of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Suffolk. They may have been made to mark a marriage between the Cecil and Howard families, two of the most powerful Jacobean courtly families during an unsettled period of intrigue and social change. Behind the extraordinary finery on display stands a cast of ruthless, scheming characters jostling for power and position in the turbulent Court of James I.



Elizabeth Carey © English Heritage

The most striking features of the portraits are the breath-taking costumes, recorded by the artist in painstaking detail to reflect the huge wealth and status of the sitters. Some extraordinary fashion statements are also captured including shoe laces threaded through the ear of the 4th Earl of Dorset and the startling décolletage revealed by Lady Isabel Rich. The paintings record not only the richness of the fabrics and fashions in exquisite detail but also current ideas of beauty, such as elaborately dressed hair and skin so pale and translucent as to reveal the blue veins beneath.



Diana Cecil © English Heritage

To help bring the portraits alive, they were accompanied by a gorgeous selection of early seventeenth-century clothing and accessories. These include a ravishing embroidered bodice, exceptionally rare fans, shoes, beautiful punto in aria lace (literally ‘stitches in the air'), remarkable gloves embroidered in silks and trimmed with fabulously expensive gold and silver, and elaborate men's shirts of fine blackwork embroidery and cutwork.

This was a time when both men and women dressed to impress and when men's clothes were often even more extravagant than those of their wives.



Visitors will be able to see the extraordinary handiwork that went into shirts, lace, shoes, an exquisite floral bodice, embroidered gloves, and a fan. They will be able to enjoy trying on replica costumes made especially for the exhibition and listening to a live musical programme within the gallery.

Lenders include English Heritage, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum, the Worshipful Company of Glovers and Bath's Fashion Museum.

Stripes, rhombuses, chequers or hearts are the shapes William N. Copley uses to humorously depict the battle of sexes. He cryptically sets his figures in an environment of lush decoration. From 18 February 2012 to 10 June 2012 the Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden Germany, presented a comprehensive retrospective of the American artist (1919 to 1996). More than 80 works by the artist are shown. From the mid 40ies on, as a gallery owner, artist, author and editor, Copley acted as an important mediator between surrealists and the pop art movement and certainly was one of the most unconventional celebrities of the arts scene.

In the tradition of dada, surrealism and American pop art, William N. Copley ironically deals with the erotic game between man and woman in all its facets. When asked whether he had a theory on his style, he answered in a 1968 interview: “No, it just seems as if I were doomed to explore the tragedy of man and woman. That probably is chaplinesque.





William N. Copley
Kiss me
1965
oil on canvas
99 x 81 cm
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012




William N. Copley
Nuit puerto ricain
1978
acrylic and leather on canvas
168 x 140 cm
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012





William N. Copley
West
1974
160 x 276 cm
acrylic on canvas
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

”Just as the solo exhibitions Polke, Richter and Baselitz, previously shown at the Museum Frieder Burda, this special exhibition is based on the works from the collection Frieder Burda. Frieder Burda started collecting works by Copley at a very early stage and now owns a considerable number of works that are shown together for the first time. The exhibition is completed by international loans and works from the estate of the artist some of which are publicly exhibited for the first time.

Copley’s life was not a straight line: his parents passed away early, Copley himself was found on the threshold of a New York hospice in 1919. Two years later, he was adopted by Ira and Edith Copley, wealthy news paper publishers from Illinois. Between 1932 and 1936, Copley was at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, then two years at Yale University. In 1940 he joined the US Army, went to Italy and Africa as a soldier, returned home as a reporter and grew fond of surrealism. In 1947 he taught himself to paint. First, simply to enhance his writing skills, as he wanted to become an author.

A poet should work visually, Copley thought, and a painter poetically. He had deleted the melodious vowels from his name and from then on made the unutterable CPLY his brand and signed his pictures with it.

In Los Angeles he founded a gallery to promote surrealist artists, but failed financially. Copley bought some of his works himself and thus laid the foundations for his art collection which later became one of the most important surrealist collections with works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, René Magritte and Yves Tanguy.

The dashing free spirit Copley traveled frequently: from 1951 in Paris, he rated Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and René Magritte among his friends before he returned to the US ten years later and became part of the New York arts scene. He maintained relations with Christo, Roy Lichtenstein and later also with Andy Warhol.

Götz Adriani was the curator of this comprehensive retrospective that paints a new picture of the artist’s various facets, especially through a series of aquarelles never before publicly exhibited.

Adriani describes Copley as follows: “A minimalist with baroque features who remained faithful not only to his peculiar subjects, but also to his cunningly steered artlessness during all his artist life. Mostly, he stuck to clear-cut picture punch-lines and a rather graphical approach. He achieved a remarkable variety in composition and color with his combination of contentual standards and highly abstract abbreviations.”




William Colpey, Marilyn, 1965, Oil on canvas, 89 x 117 cm, private collection



William Copley, Untitled (Car), 1970, acrylic on canvas, 147,5 x 114,5 cm, Museum Frieder Burda

Copley spent the last ten years of his life rather isolated. He used the living room of his house for painting and sailed around in a boat. In 1996 he died at the age of 77 from a stroke. What remains is his work: a keen and entertaining picture of the attraction between men and women.



A comprehensive catalog in german and englisch was published with texts by Götz Adriani, Georg Baselitz, William Copley, Billy Copley, Judith Irrgang, Andy Warhol and others. Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg - Berlin. 256 pages 180 colour images. ISBN 978-3-9811606-4-2




William N. Copley
My Motherland Can Fuck Your Fatherland, 1975
acrylic on linen
44 7/8 x 57 3/4 inches
114 x 146.7 cm
PK 15706




William N. Copley
Untitled, 1982
acrylic on linen
25 x 42 1/2 inches
63.5 x 108 cm
PK 15096


More images here

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) presents Judy Chicago: Circa ’75, on view January 17–April 13, 2014. The exhibition features 13 paintings, drawings, sculptures and mixed media works by innovative feminist artist Judy Chicago (b. 1939). Throughout her career, Chicago has been creating art with the intention of influencing and changing societal norms. Her iconic body of work from the 1970s, including preparatory art for



The Dinner Party, (The Dinner Party: mixed media: ceramic, porcelain, and textile; permanent installation at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art)

demonstrates her firm belief in the power of art to highlight women’s creativity and overcome traditional gender inequalities. This exhibition honors Chicago’s commitment to feminist ideals on the occasion of her 75th birthday.

“Judy Chicago has been a friend and ally to the National Museum of Women in the Arts since its opening in 1987,” said NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling. “Given Chicago’s commitment to honoring women, it is fitting that she be fêted at the sole museum in the world devoted to the creative contributions of women.”

Born Judy Cohen in Chicago, this pioneering feminist artist jettisoned her birth and married surnames in 1970, legally adopting the neutral “Chicago.” This act of independence ushered in a decade of artistic innovation and exploration. This exhibition examines a selection of her art that paralleled and influenced the U.S. feminist movement of the 1970s.



Judy Chicago, Pasadena Lifesavers Red #5 (detail), 1970; Gift of Elyse and Stanley Grinstein

On view in Judy Chicago: Circa ’75 is a work from the “Pasadena Lifesavers” series of paintings from 1969–70, marking Chicago’s break with the often emotionally disconnected aesthetic of Minimalism. Seeking to convey what it was like to be a woman through abstracted forms, Chicago perfected the use of spray paint (usually associated with the masculine realm of auto-body work) on canvas, a medium that allowed her to create shapes that appear to turn, dissolve, pulse and vibrate, evoking emotional and physical sensations.

During this decade, Chicago also developed vivid, abstract “central core” imagery—constructing pictorial space from the center of the composition—seeking to create a new abstract visual vocabulary that she felt more adequately expressed a woman’s point of view. Along with this new imagery, Chicago wanted to reclaim forgotten women from the annals of history, literally making them visible through art.

Driven by her realization that “too much of women’s cultural production has been lost,” Chicago began researching women in history—artists as well as writers, scientists, women’s rights advocates and others. “My work is all about overcoming erasure and ensuring that women’s achievements become a permanent part of our cultural history,” said Chicago.

This mission would find its ultimate manifestation in The Dinner Party, completed in 1979. She created a series of artworks recognizing “Great Ladies” of the past, which culminated in the iconic installation, which is now housed permanently at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. “Great Ladies” works on view in Circa ’75 include preparatory drawings



(Emily Dickinson



and Virginia Woolf) (1976)



and a test plate (Virginia Woolf) made for The Dinner Party. (1978)



Virginia Woolf place setting from The Dinner Party


ABOUT NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Founded in 1981 and opened in 1987, NMWA is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing and literary arts. The museum’s collection features 4,500 works from the 16th century to the present created by more than 1,000 artists, including Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Alma Thomas, Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, Chakaia Booker and Nan Goldin, along with special collections of 18th-century silver tableware and botanical prints. NMWA is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., in a landmark building near the White House. It is open Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday, noon–5 p.m. For information, call 202-783-5000 or visit www.nmwa.org.

The Holburne Museum
Great Pulteney Street
Bath, England
25 January 2014 - 5 May 2014.

Joseph Wright ‘of Derby' (1734-1797) lived and worked in Bath between November 1775 and June 1777. This brief and little-known episode in Wright's life marked a crossroads in his career, yet it has never been explored in detail. ‘Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond' will place Wright in the context of the many artists, musicians, writers, business people and scientists living and working in the Georgian spa and present for the first time a comprehensive view of his life and work during those eighteen months. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will also go ‘beyond' to examine the effect of his time in Bath and his travels in Italy on Wright's later work.



Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples c. 1776-80
Oil on canvas, 122 x 176.4 cm © Tate, London 2013

"I have taken the Liberty to give this Letter of Introduction to my Friend Mr. Wright of Derby, Who since his Return from Italy is come to Bath, & Designs to settle there."
Erasmus Darwin, 22 November 1775

Wright came to Bath to paint portraits, hoping to build on the success of Thomas Gainsborough who had recently left for London. The exhibition will include the three remaining portraits that the artist certainly made in Bath, including his painting of the elderly Rev. Thomas Wilson with the young daughter of Catharine Macaulay, the radical historian:



Joseph Wright, The Rev. Dr. Thomas Wilson and his adopted Daughter Miss Catherine Sophia Macaulay, 1776 (Chawton House Library)

Whilst in Bath Wright worked up landscape studies he had made in Italy, producing spectacular views of Vesuvius in Eruption and the dazzling firework displays of Rome, the highlight of a visit to the artist's studio in Brock Street. It was whilst in Bath that he first began to explore subjects from sentimental contemporary literature, which in turn have a strong impact on his portrait composition, and the exhibition will include some of his most beautiful depictions of figures alone in the landscape.

The Derby Museum, which holds the world's largest and finest collection of Wright's work, gave generous loans to this exhibition which will include



The Indian Widow,



The Alchymist

and some beautiful drawings.

Other lenders include the National Gallery, Musée du Louvre, Tate, the British Museum, the Walker Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum.



© Self-portrait Wearing a Feathered Hat. C.1770 Derby Museum

This exhibition will travel to Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

Nice review

National Tour

Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. (February 27, 2009 – January 3, 2010)

Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (January 30, 2010 – April 25, 2010)

Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Fort Wayne, Indiana (May 21, 2010 – August 22, 2010)

Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham, Washington (September 16, 2010 – January 9, 2011)

The Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Florida (February 11, 2011 – May 1, 2011)

Oklahoma City Museum of Art in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (May 26, 2011 – August 21, 2011)

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery, Alabama (September 24, 2011 – January 15, 2012)

Muskegon Museum of Art in Muskegon, Michigan (February 16, 2012 – May 6, 2012)

Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, Minnesota (June 2, 2012 – September 22, 2012)

New York State Museum in Albany, New York (October 19, 2012 – January 20, 2013)

Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin (February 16, 2013 – April 28, 2013)

Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa (September 28, 2013 – January 5, 2014)

Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine (Jan. 30, 2014 – May 11, 2014)



In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration created the Public Works of Art Project—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America's spirit. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, were encouraged to depict "the American Scene." The Public Works of Art Project not only paid artists to embellish public buildings, but also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism.

1934: A New Deal for Artists was organized to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Project by drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum's unparalleled collection of vibrant artworks created for the program. The paintings in this exhibition are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. George Gurney, curator emeritus, organized the exhibition with Ann Prentice Wagner, who is now the curator of drawings at the Arkansas Art Center.

The program was administered under the Treasury Department by art professionals in 16 different regions of the country. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program were encouraged to depict “the American Scene,” but they were allowed to interpret this idea freely. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism. These artworks, which were displayed in schools, libraries, post offices, museums and government buildings, vividly capture the realities and ideals of Depression-era America. “Artists were honored to be paid by the Public Works of Art Project for paintings that would be publicly displayed,” said Gurney. “The program also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country.”


About the Public Works of Art Project

The United States was in crisis as 1934 approached. The national economy had fallen into an extended depression after the stock market crash of October 1929. Thousands of banks failed, wiping out the life savings of millions of families. Farmers battled drought, erosion and declining food prices. Businesses struggled or collapsed. A quarter of the work force was unemployed, while an equal number worked reduced hours. More and more people were homeless and hungry. Nearly 10,000 unemployed artists faced destitution. The nation looked expectantly to President Roosevelt, who was inaugurated in March 1933.

The new administration swiftly initiated a wide-ranging series of economic recovery programs called the New Deal. The President realized that Americans needed not only employment but also the inspiration art could provide. The Advisory Committee to the Treasury on Fine Arts organized the Public Works of Art Project Dec. 8, 1933. Within days, 16 regional committees were recruiting artists who eagerly set to work in all parts of the country. During the project’s brief existence, from December 1933 to June 1934, the Public Works of Art Project hired 3,749 artists who created 15,663 paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, drawings and craft objects at a cost of $1,312,000.

In April 1934, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., exhibited more than 500 works created as part of the Public Works of Art Project. Selected paintings from the Corcoran exhibition later traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and other cities across the country. President Roosevelt, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and government officials who attended the exhibition in Washington acclaimed the art enthusiastically. The Roosevelts selected 32 paintings for display at the White House, including Sheets’ “Tenement Flats” (1933-34) and Strong’s “Golden Gate Bridge” (1934) (see each below). The success of the Public Works of Art Project paved the way for later New Deal art programs, including the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project.

Nearly 150 paintings from the Public Works of Art Project were transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum during the 1960s, along with a large number of artworks from subsequent programs that extended into the 1940s, especially the well-known Works Progress Administration program.

The exhibition is arranged into eight sections: “American People,” “City Life,” “Labor,” “Industry,” “Leisure,” “The City,” “The Country” and “Nature.” Works from 13 of the 16 regions established by the Advisory Committee to the Treasury on Fine Arts are represented in the exhibition.

The Public Works of Art Project employed artists from across the country including Ilya Bolotowsky, Lily Furedi and Max Arthur Cohn in New York City; Harry Gottlieb and Douglass Crockwell in upstate New York; Herman Maril in Maryland; Gale Stockwell in Missouri; E. Dewey Albinson in Minnesota; E. Martin Hennings in New Mexico; and Millard Sheets in California.

Several artists chose to depict American ingenuity.

(Note - all artworks - full credits below)



Ray Strong’s panoramic “Golden Gate Bridge” (1934)

pays homage to the engineering feats required to build the iconic San Francisco structure.



“Old Pennsylvania Farm in Winter” (1934) by Arthur E. Cederquist

features a prominent row of poles providing telephone service and possibly electricity, a rare modern amenity in rural America.

Stadium lighting was still rare when Morris Kantor painted



“Baseball at Night” (1934),

which depicts a game at the Clarkstown Country Club’s Sports Centre in West Nyack, N.Y.

Ross Dickinson paints the confrontation between man and nature in his painting of southern California,



“Valley Farms” (1934).

He contrasts the verdant green, irrigated valley with the dry, reddish-brown hills, recalling the appeal of fertile California for many Midwestern farmers escaping the hopelessness of the Dust Bowl.

The program was open to artists who were denied other opportunities, such as African Americans and Asian Americans.

African American artists like Earle Richardson, who painted



“Employment of Negroes in Agriculture” (1934),

were welcomed, but only about 10 such artists were employed by the project. Richardson, who was a native New Yorker, chose to set his painting of quietly dignified workers in the South to make a broad statement about race.

In the Seattle area, where Kenjiro Nomura lived, many Japanese Americans made a living as farmers, but they were subject to laws that prevented foreigners from owning land and other prejudices. Nomura’s painting



“The Farm” (1934)

depicts a darker view of rural life with threatening clouds on the horizon.


From a Washington Post review: (images added)

So why, if these paintings were supposed to make us feel better, are so many of them so depressing?

For one thing, I doubt whether it is -- or ever was -- the purpose of art to make people feel better. Some art certainly does that. And a bit of it is on view here.



Agnes Tait's "Skating in Central Park"

is one such picture, depicting an almost Currier-and-Ives-style scene of outdoor recreation.

Ray Strong's "Golden Gate Bridge" (above)is another, in the way it celebrates the can-do spirit of those who designed and built the engineering marvel despite setbacks. (A storm on Halloween 1933 had washed away a trestle.)

Escapism is a popular theme. See



Paul Kirtland Mays's "Jungle,"

which is anything but American, or



Julia Eckel's jolly "Radio Broadcast,"

which drew attention to the popular diversion of live radio theater.



Erle Loran's chilly "Minnesota Highway" looks to a blue horizon.

But a far more common temper is that found in Kenjiro Nomura's "The Farm" (above)



or Robert A. Darrah Miller's "Farm,"

both of which feature barns sitting empty and dark, devoid of people and animals...

It's there in such obvious pictures as



"(Underpass-New York),"

a painting-over-photograph by an unidentified artist that is among the show's most starkly lovely images.

But it's also there in such pieces as



Paul Kelpe's "Machinery (Abstract #2),"

the show's only nod to abstraction, and a formal study of now-stilled gears. Other street scenes show darkening shadows and emptying sidewalks. Even pictures that are populated, such as



Saul Berman's "Riverfront,"

depicting New York shipyards, show workers engaged in little besides the busywork of shoveling snow.

From an excellent article on the show:

PWAP artists captured a variety of daily routines characteristic of where they lived. In



Subway

Lily Furedi (1901–1969) created a sympathetic view of her fellow New Yorkers taking their daily ride below the streets of Manhattan. She focused particularly on a musician who has fallen asleep in his formal working clothes, holding his violin case. The artist would have identified with a musician because her father, Samuel Furedi, was a professional cellist. Such depictions of urban New York abound in PWAP works, since there were far more artists working in the New York region than in any other.

Artist E. Martin Hennings (1886–1956) chose to celebrate the West, painting images of Native American life and the Southwestern landscape. Though much of his early life was spent in Chicago, he moved permanently to New Mexico in 1921 at the age of thirty five, becoming a member of the Taos Society of Artists three years later. Hennings felt a deep love for Taos in particular. In his painting



Homeward Bound

he painted two Native Americans from Taos Pueblo, the man wrapped in a traditional white blanket while the woman wears a colorful shawl. Hennings linked the two figures to their home landscape by likening them to the tall native sunflowers that stand behind them, silhouetted against the sky with their long stalks gracefully intertwined. This serene painting with its figures in traditional garb calmly going home speaks to Hennings' admiration of the area and its people, and to the endurance of Native American traditions, even in the face of the worst challenges.

From a Smithsonian Magazine article:

But the exhibition also underscores a salient fact: when a quarter of the nation is unemployed, three-quarters have a job, and life for many of them went on as it had in the past. They just didn't have as much money. In



Harry Gottlieb's Filling the Ice House,

painted in upstate New York, men wielding pikes skid blocks of ice along wooden chutes. A town gathers to watch a game in Morris Kantor's Baseball at Night (above). A dance band plays in an East Harlem street while a religious procession marches solemnly past and vendors hawk pizzas in



Daniel Celentano's Festival.

Drying clothes flap in the breeze and women stand and chat in the Los Angeles slums in



Tenement Flats by Millard Sheets;

one of the better-known artists in the show, Sheets later created the giant mural of Christ on a Notre Dame library that is visible from the football stadium and nicknamed "Touchdown Jesus."

If there is a political subtext to these paintings, the viewer has to supply it. One can mentally juxtapose



Jacob Getlar Smith's careworn Snow Shovellers

—unemployed men trudging off to make a few cents clearing park paths—

with the yachtsmen on Long Island Sound in



Gerald Sargent Foster's Racing,

but it's unlikely that Foster, described as "an avid yachtsman" on the gallery label, intended any kind of ironic commentary with his painting of rich men at play. As always, New Yorkers of every class except the destitute and the very wealthy sat side by side in the subway, the subject of a painting by Lily Furedi; (above) the tuxedoed man dozing in his seat turns out, on closer inspection, to be a musician on his way to or from a job, while a young white woman across the aisle sneaks a glance at the newspaper held by the black man sitting next to her.

Publication



A catalog, fully illustrated in color and co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and D Giles Ltd. in London, features an essay by Roger Kennedy, historian and director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; individual entries for each artwork by Wagner; and an introduction by the museum’s director Broun.




Artworks in the exhibition: Credits and additional images

Section 1: American People



1. Ivan Albright
The Farmer's Kitchen, about 1934
Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 1/8 inches (91.5 x 76.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



2. Robert Brackman
Somewhere in America, 1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 25 1/8 inches (76.5 x 63.9 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



3. Kenneth M. Adams
Juan Duran, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 30 1/8 inches (102.0 x 76.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


4. J. Theodore Johnson
Chicago Interior, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 28 x 34 inches (71.2 x 86.4 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


5. E. Martin Hennings
Homeward Bound, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 36 1/4 inches (76.8 x 92.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


Section 2: City Life


6. Lily Furedi
Subway, 1934
Oil on canvas, 39 x 48 1/4 inches (99.1 x 122.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service


7. Carl Gustaf Nelson
Central Park, about 1934
Oil on canvas, 31 7/8 x 44 inches (81.0 x 111.8 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


8. Millard Sheets
Tenement Flats, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches (102.1 x 127.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service


9. Daniel Celentano
Festival, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, 48 1/8 x 60 1/8 inches (122.3 x 152.8 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



10. Ilya Bolotowsky
In the Barber Shop, 1934
Oil on canvas, 23 7/8 x 30 1/8 inches (60.6 x 76.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


Section 2: Leisure


11. Gerald Sargent Foster
Racing, 1934
Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 34 1/8 inches (56.2 x 86.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service


12. Agnes Tait
Skating in Central Park, 1934
Oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


13. Julia Eckel
Radio Broadcast, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 55 5/8 inches (102.0 x 141.2 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


14. Morris Kantor
Baseball at Night, 1934
Oil on linen, 37 x 47 1/4 inches (94.0 x 120.0 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Mrs. Morris Kantor


15. Attributed to Martha Levy
Winter Scene, 1934
Oil on fiberboard, 21 1/2 x 27 3/8 inches (54.6 x 69.5 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


Section 3: Labor



16. Earle Richardson
Employment of Negroes in Agriculture, 1934
Oil on canvas, 48 x 32 1/8 inches (121.8 x 81.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


17. Jacob Getlar Smith
Snow Shovellers, 1934
Oil on canvas, 29 7/8 x 40 1/8 inches (76.0 x 101.9 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


18. Harry Gottlieb
Filling the Ice House, 1934
Oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



19. Douglass Crockwell
Paper Workers, 1934
Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 48 1/4 inches (91.7 x 122.4 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor




20. Pino Janni
Waterfront Scene, 1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 53 3/4 inches (101.8 x 136.6 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



21. Tyrone Comfort
Gold Is Where You Find It, 1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 50 1/8 inches (101.9 x 127.3 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service




22. Harry W. Scheuch
Workers on the Cathedral of Learning, 1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 26 1/8 inches (76.5 x 66.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


23. Harry W. Scheuch
Finishing the Cathedral of Learning, 1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (102.3 x 76.9 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


Section 4: Industry
24. Arnold Ness Klagstad
Archer Daniels Midland Elevator, 1933-1943
Oil on canvas, 22 1/4 x 28 1/8 inches (56.6 x 71.4 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


25. Raymond White Skolfield
Natural Power, 1934
Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 36 1/8 inches (86.8 x 91.8 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


26. Ray Strong
Golden Gate Bridge, 1934
Oil on canvas, 44 1/8 x 71 3/4 inches (112.0 x 182.3 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service



27. E. Dewey Albinson
Northern Minnesota Mine, 1934
Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 1/8 inches (101.6 x 127.2 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


28. Austin Mecklem
Engine House and Bunkers, 1934
Oil on canvas, 38 x 50 1/4 inches (96.5 x 127.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


29. Max Arthur Cohn
Coal Tower, 1934
Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 28 inches (56.2 x 71.2 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


30. Carl Redin
At Madrid Coal Mine, New Mexico, 1934
Oil on canvas, 30 x 38 inches (76.2 x 96.5 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


31. William Arthur Cooper
Lumber Industry, 1934
Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 29 7/8 inches (61.3 x 75.9 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


32. Karl Fortess
Island Dock Yard, about 1934
Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 48 1/8 inches (81.8 x 122.2 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


33. Paul Kelpe
Machinery (Abstract #2), 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 38 1/4 x 26 3/8 inches (97.0 x 67.0 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


34. Joe Jones
Street Scene, 1933
Oil on canvas, 25 1/8 x 35 7/8 inches (63.7 x 91.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


Section 5: The City



35. Thomas James Delbridge
Lower Manhattan, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 26 1/8 x 30 1/4 inches (66.3 x 76.9 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


36. Unidentified
(Underpass--New York), 1933-1934
Oil on photograph on canvas mounted on paperboard,
19 7/8 x 23 7/8 inches (50.6 x 60.8 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the
Internal Revenue Service through the General Services Administration



37. Charles L. Goeller
Third Avenue, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 1/8 inches (91.4 x 76.4 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



38. Beulah R. Bettersworth
Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, 1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 24 1/4 inches (76.5 x 61.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service



39. Herman Maril
Sketch of Old Baltimore Waterfront, 1934
Oil on fiberboard, 18 1/8 x 14 1/8 inches (46.0 x 36.0 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


40. John Cunning
Manhattan Skyline, about 1934
Oil on canvas, 32 1/8 x 48 1/8 inches (81.5 x 122.2 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


41. Saul Berman
River Front, 1934
Oil on canvas, 16 x 24 inches (40.7 x 61.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


42. Robert A. Darrah Miller
Farm, about 1934
Oil on canvas, 22 x 28 1/8 inches (55.9 x 71.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


43. Paul Benjamin
Cross Road--Still Life, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 28 1/4 x 26 1/4 inches (71.6 x 66.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service


44. Arthur E. Cederquist
Old Pennsylvania Farm in Winter, 1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches (76.5 x 102.0 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


45. O. Louis Guglielmi
Martyr Hill, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 22 x 32 inches (55.9 x 81.4 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


46. Erle Loran
Minnesota Highway, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 36 inches (76.5 x 91.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


Section 6: The Country


47. Kenjiro Nomura
The Farm, 1934
Oil on canvas, 38 1/4 x 46 1/8 inches (97.2 x 117.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



48. Gale Stockwell
Parkville, Main Street, 1933
Oil on canvas, 28 1/4 x 35 3/8 inches (71.8 x 90.0 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Section 7: Nature


49. Paul Kirtland Mays
Jungle, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 42 1/4 x 75 1/2 inches (107.3 x 191.7cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service



50. Alice Dinneen
Black Panther, 1934
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 24 1/8 inches (76.5 x 61.4 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


51. Ila McAfee Turner
Mountain Lions, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 42 inches (91.9 x 106.8 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


52. Winthrop Duthie Turney
Selection from Birds and Animals of the United States, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 32 x 36 1/8 inches (81.3 x 91.6 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the General Services Administration


53. Leo Breslau
Plowing, 1934
Oil on wood: plywood, 29 7/8 x 35 7/8 inches (75.8 x 91.2 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


54. Paul Kauvar Smith
The Sky Pond, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 42 x 50 1/8 inches (106.8 x 127.4 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor



55. Charles Reiffel
Road in the Cuyamacas, about 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 50 3/8 inches (101.9 x 128.0 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor


56. Ross Dickinson
Valley Farms, 1934
Oil on canvas, 39 7/8 x 50 1/8 inches (101.4 x 127.3 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

“African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond” presents a selection of works by 43 black artists who lived through the tremendous changes of the 20th century. In paintings, sculpture, prints and photographs, the featured artists embrace themes both universal and specific to the African American experience, including the exploration of identity, the struggle for equality, the power of music and the beauties and hardships of life in rural and urban America.

“African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond” was on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from April 27 through Sept. 3, 2013. The exhibition was organized by Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator of painting and sculpture at the museum. It will travel to additional venues through 2014 following its presentation in Washington, D.C.

“This exhibition allows us to understand profound change through the eyes of artists,” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “These works by African American artists are vital to understanding the complex American experience.”

The 100 works on view are drawn entirely from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s rich collection of African American art, the largest and finest in the United States. More than half of the works featured are being exhibited by the museum for the first time, including paintings by Benny Andrews, Loïs Mailou Jones and Jacob Lawrence, as well as photographs by Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks and Marilyn Nance. Ten of the artworks were acquired within the past five years. More than half of the objects in the exhibition are photographs from the museum’s permanent collection. Individual object labels connect the artworks with the artistic and social factors that shaped their creation.

The 20th century was a time of great change in America. Many of the social, political and cultural movements that came to define the era, such as the jazz age, the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement, were rooted in African American communities. Black artists explored their identity in this quickly changing world through a variety of media and in styles as varied as postmodernism, documentary realism, expressionism and abstraction.

“Visitors will be struck not only by the power of these artworks, but also by the variety of the pieces on display,” said Mecklenburg. “So many new movements and styles grew out of the tumult of the 20th century, and these works reflect that diversity.”

In paintings, prints and sculpture, artists such as William H. Johnson and Andrews speak to the dignity and resilience of those who work the land. Romare Bearden recasts Christian themes in terms of the black experience. Jones, Sargent Johnson and Melvin Edwards address African heritage, while Alma Thomas explores the beauty of the natural world through color and abstract forms.

Studio portraits by James VanDerZee document the rise of the black middle class in the 1920s, while powerful black-and-white photographs by DeCarava, Nance, Parks, Robert McNeill, Roland Freeman and Tony Gleaton chronicle everyday life from the 1930s through the final decades of the 20th century.

“Each of the artists included in this exhibition made a compelling contribution to the artistic landscape of 20th century America, and we are delighted to feature their work in the museum’s galleries,” said Mecklenburg.

Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog, with an essay written by distinguished scholar Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University. The book also includes entries about each artist by Mecklenburg; Theresa Slowik, chief of publications at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and Battle. The catalog was co-published by the museum with Skira Rizzoli in New York.

National Tour

The exhibition will travel through 2014 to additional cities in the United States following its presentation in Washington, D.C. Confirmed venues include

Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. (Sept. 28 – Jan. 6, 2013)

Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Fla. (Feb. 1, 2013 – April 28, 2013)

Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. (June 1, 2013 – Sept. 2, 2013)

the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Feb. 14, 2014 – May 25, 2014)

and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Calif. (June 28, 2014 – Sept. 21, 2014).


Also see: African American Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Workss included in the exhibition:



1. Benny Andrews, Portrait of Black Madonna, 1987 , oil and collage on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Andrews Humphrey Family Foundation, © Estate of Benny Andrews/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



2. John Biggers, Shotgun, Third Ward #1, 1966, tempera and oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Anacostia Museum, Smithsonian Institution



3. Frederick Brown, John Henry, 1979, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Gerald L. Pearson, © 1979 Frederick J. Brown



4. Allan Rohan Crite, School's Out, 1936, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from The Museum of Modern Art

5. Roy DeCarava, Lingerie, New York, 1950/printed 1981, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Henry L. Milmore, © 1981 Roy DeCarava

6. Beauford Delaney, Can Fire in the Park, 1946, Smithsonian American Art Museum

7. Thornton Dial, Sr., Top of the Line (Steel), 1992, mixed media: enamel, unbraided canvas roping, and metal, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift from the collection of Ron and June Shelp

8. Melvin Edwards, Tambo, 1993, welded steel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program © 1993 Melvin Edwards

9. Roland L. Freeman, Dancing at Jazz Alley. Chicago, Illinois, June 1974, from the series, Southern Roads/ City Pavements, 1974/ Printed 1982, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of George H. Dalsheimer, © 1974 Roland L. Freeman

10. Sam Gilliam, The Petition, 1990, mixed media, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the James F. Dicke Family, © 1990 Sam Gilliam

11. Felrath Hines, Red Stripe with Green Background, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum © 1986 Dorothy C Fisher

12. Earlie Hudnall, Jr., Hip Hop, 1993, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum © 1993 Earlie Hudnall, Jr.

13. Richard Hunt, “The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism, is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it out to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.” -Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance, 1852. From the series Great Ideas,1975, chromed and welded steel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Container Corporation of America

14. Malvin Gray Johnson, Self-Portrait, 1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation

15. Sargent Johnson, Mask, 1930-1935, copper on wood base, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of International Business Machines Corporation



16. William H. Johnson, Sowing, 1940, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation



17. Loïs Mailou Jones, Moon Masque, 1971, oil and collage, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist



18. Jacob Lawrence, Bar and Grill, 1941, gouache, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design



19. Norman Lewis, Evening Rendezvous, 1962, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase

20. Robert McNeill, New Car (South Richmond, Virginia), from the project The Negro in Virginia, 1938, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, © 1938 Robert McNeill

21. Robert McNeill, Make A Wish (Bronx Slave Market, 170th Street, New York), 1938, gelatin silver, Smithsonian American Art Museum, © 1938 Robert McNeill



22. Keith Morrison, Zombie Jamboree, 1988, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Catherine Walden Myer Fund and the Director’s Discretionary Fund

23. Marilyn Nance, Baptism, 1986, gelatin silver print, Smitsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, © 1986 Marilyn Nance

24. Gordon Parks, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, © 1950 Gordon Parks

25. James A. Porter, Still Life with Peonies, 1949, oil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program

26. John Scott, Thornbush Blues Totem, 1990, painted steel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase



27. Charles Searles, Celebration, 1975, acrylic, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, Art-in-Architecture Program

28. Renée Stout, The Colonel’s Cabinet, 1991-1994, mixed media: carpet, chair, painting, and cabinet with found and handmade objects, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, © 1994 Renée Stout

29. Alma Thomas, Light Blue Nursery, 1968, acrylic, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Artist

Venues

New York State Museum, Albany May 21 - July 11, 1999

Asheville Art Museum Asheville, NC through Oct. 31 1999

Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach CA through January 23, 2000

Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, November 9, 2000 - January 14, 2001



The dramatic loneliness of an Edward Hopper cityscape and the frantic pace of a John Sloan street corner were among the realistic images displayed as part of In the City: Urban Views 1900-1940 Masterpieces from the Whitney Museum of Art.

The turbulence of World War I and the Great Depression fueled American artists as they depicted city life in the first 40 years of this century.

Many of the works in the latest exhibition of the series featured the Ashcan School led by Robert Henri. As their figurehead, Henri, encouraged these artists - including Sloan, Everett Shinn and George Luks - to paint urban life as they saw it and to break with the sentimental idealism of academic art.

These artists were the first in this country to draw their inspiration from modern city life in all its manifestations, not only the fashionable but the seamy side as well. Many got their start as newspaper artists, who would make hurried sketches on deadline to accompany a story in the next day's paper. They would be dispatched to a fire or riot scene, where they would take notes -- mentally and on paper -- hurry back to the newsroom and complete an illustration.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney built her collection by supporting these artists who responded to and recorded urban life. In 1914 she established the Whitney Studio, her first art gallery that soon became an important gathering place for artists. Hopper, Reginald Marsh and Sloan had their first solo exhibitions there. In 1931, Mrs. Whitney opened the Whitney Museum of American Art to exhibit work by living artists. Her founding collection of 700 works served as the focus of the Whitney Museum in the 1930s and 1940s.



From a review of the Asheville show: (images, links added)

The third room displays grim, Depression-era scenes of unemployment lines and political unrest -- most strikingly,



Isaac Soyer's "Employment Agency,"

and



Glenn Coleman's "Election Night Bonfire."

The fourth gallery looks ahead to a world more familiar to us in subsequent decades, charting both the city's changing physical environment and the move away from what had been, up till then, mostly realist art.




Louis Guglielmi's stark, surrealist-inspired "Terror in Brooklyn"

and the bold graphics and stylized figures of



Jacob Lawrence's "Tombstones"

herald fundamental aesthetic change.

At the same time, the exhibit traces the metamorphosis of several individual artists' styles, particularly Edward Hopper: Six very different Hopper works are featured, including



"Soir Bleu" (1914),

a startling depiction -- influenced by the time Hopper spent in France -- of a group of Parisians drinking at an outdoor cafe. There's a vaguely sinister feel to the piece, reinforced by the solemn clown smoking a cigarette near the composition's center. The work's flatness, both in style and tone, creates a kind of "dead" sensation that belies its brilliant blue background. One of Hopper's favorite pieces, "Soir Bleu" was soundly trounced by critics at its first New York showing in 1915; he never exhibited it again before donating it to the Whitney.

That same flatness also looks ahead to Hopper's more famous later work -- such as the haunted landscape of



"Apartment Houses, Harlem River" (1930),

a vaguely eerie study, done in muted blues, greens and grays, of a row of almost identical apartment buildings along the river. The muted lights that appear in a few windows are the only evidence of human life....



Everett Shinn's "Under the Elevated" (believed to be circa 1912)

is a prime example of the Ashcan School approach to art. The work depicts a gloomy winter street scene: Dark, run-down shops (like the Smoke & Chew) and flophouses (Rover's Hotel) provide a backdrop for a dark mass of almost faceless people, painted mostly in shades of black, huddled in one corner. Muted street lamps provide the only light, and the cold is almost palpable.



John Sloan's "Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street" (1928)

presents a vastly different picture, in keeping with the spirit of the time. Instead of darkness, we're met with the blazing lights of the el at the top of the canvas. Below, brightly lit shops replace the gloomy buildings of "Under the Elevated," and the raucous Jazz Age sensibility is captured in groups of flappers and elegantly dressed men and women cavorting on the street.



Reginald Marsh's "Why Not Use the 'L'" (1930)

captures the miserable tone of life after the stock-market crash of 1929, but with wry humor and irony. Beneath a sign advertising the joys of riding the "open-air elevated" sit three figures -- dead-tired, numb and desperate -- clearly not enjoying the ride. A newspaper casually tossed on the floor screams the headline, "Does the sex urge explain Judge Crater's strange disappearance?"



And Francis Criss'"Sixth Avenue El" (1937)

also anticipates the move toward abstraction. Here, both the el and the city beneath it dissolve in a geometric hodgepodge of flat shapes, marked by deeply textured paint in plain primary and secondary colors..

{Editor: see more outstanding El images here}




Mabel Dwight's "Aquarium" and



"The Clinch, Movie Theatre" (both 1928)

depict leisure pursuits available to the masses.

Quiet studies of women in repose, such as



Thomas Dewing's formal, portrait-like "Lady in a Green Dress" and



Edward Hopper's "Summer Interior"

-- a beautiful work done in acid greens and rusts, featuring a partially nude woman lounging on the floor of her simple but comfortably appointed room -- capture the sedentary pastimes of the upper classes...

Reginald Marsh.. gives us



"Ten Cents a Dance" (1933) and

"Minsky's Chorus" (1935).

"Ten Cents" is a voluptuous group portrait: Women dressed in form-fitting, jewel-toned dresses stare with fixed smirks at an invisible audience; a whiff of something sexual permeates the piece...



"Minsky's Chorus" is a lush, sensual, slightly sullied study of burlesque dancers. A gaggle of scantily clad women fill a stage -- their seductive gyrations almost tangible. The scene is awash in slightly faded golds, punctuated by the bright-red garters and feather headpieces of the dancers. Two leering men lounge in one corner, while musicians in the pit fill the foreground.

Excellent article on the exhibition

More images from the exhibition:



Maurice Prendergast, Central Park, 1901,1901, watercolor on paper, 15 1/16 x 22 1/8 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum;



Robert Henri, Blackwell's Island, East River, 1900, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum;



William Glackens,Parade, Washington Square, 1912, oil on canvas, 26 31 inches, Collection
of Whitney Museum



John Sloan, Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1914, oil on canvas, 26 x 32 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum



Everett Shinn, Girl Dancing, 1905, watercolor and conte crayon on cardboard, 5 3/4 x 7 13/16 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum



Abraham Walkowitz, Cityscape, c. 1915, oil on canvas, 25 x 18 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum



Stuart Davis, The Back Room, oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 37 1/2 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum



Guy Pene Du Bois, Café Monnot, c. 1928-29, oil on canvas, 22 x 18 1/2 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum



Raphael Soyer, Office Girls, 1936, oil on canvas, 26 x 24 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum



Philip Evergood, Through the Mill, 1940, oil on canvas, 36 x 52 inches, Collection of Whitney Museum

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site will host the exhibition Master Mentor Master:Thomas Cole & Frederic Church from April 30 to Nov. 2, 2014. This newly organized exhibition tells the story of one of the most influential teacher-student relationships in the history of American art – that between the founder of the Hudson River School of painting, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and his student and successor, Frederic Church (1826-1900).

Master Mentor Master: Thomas Cole & Frederic Church will be the first exhibition to explore this seminal moment in American art through the lens of the evolving relationship between Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. Their student-teacher arrangement grew into a life-long friendship between the two families, and later, the two historic sites that bridge the east and west sides of the Hudson River. Church, who became one of the most celebrated artists of the 19th century and later built Olana, was first introduced to the Hudson River Valley as an 18–year-old when he came to live and study with Cole at the property known as Cedar Grove in Catskill, New York, from 1844 to 1846. Church’s paintings from this two-year period show the artist learning from Cole while developing his own emerging style and unparalleled mastery of landscape painting.

A selection of very early works made by Church during his time as a student of Cole’s will be on view, including views of the landscapes that surround Cedar Grove and Olana. The Thomas Cole National Historic Site has also worked closely with curators and staff at the Olana State Historic Site on this special exhibition, and will present a unique selection of rarely shown oils on paper and sketches from the Olana collection.

Accompanying the show will be an exhibition catalogue about the Cole-Church relationship, illustrated in full color, which will include the artworks in the show plus many additional paintings and drawings. Also included will be stories that bring the student-teacher relationship to life and an essay by Dr. Wilmerding about this formative two year period that first brought Church to the Hudson Valley.

John Wilmerding is the Sarofim Professor of American Art, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He has been a visiting curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and served as Senior Curator and Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where he was former chairman of the board of trustees. He is currently a trustee of the Guggenheim Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. President Obama appointed him to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House.

Master Mentor Master: Thomas Cole & Frederic Church is the 11th annual presentation of 19th century landscape paintings at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, an exhibition program that explores the influence of Thomas Cole on American culture through a generation of artists known as the Hudson River School. Exhibitions and related programs enable visitors to see first-hand some of the magnificent examples of the style of painting that Cole is credited with launching, and to experience the paintings in a residential setting as they would have been experienced in the period in which they were made.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site preserves and interprets the home and studios of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of painting, the nation's first art movement. Cole's profound influence on America's cultural landscape inspires us to engage broad audiences through educational programs that are relevant today. The Thomas Cole Historic Site is an independent non-profit organization and an affiliate of the National Park Service.

Directions: The Thomas Cole Historic Site is located in the scenic Hudson River Valley, at 218 Spring Street in Catskill, New York. Located near the western entrance to the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, with easy access from the New York State Thruway exit 21 or Amtrak train service in Hudson, detailed directions and more information can be found at www.thomascole.org.



Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636, 1846, oil on canvas, Frederic Edwin Church. Courtesy of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut



Frederic E. Church, Scene on Catskill Creek, 1847, oil on canvas, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD



Frederic E. Church, Sunrise, 1847, oil on paper. Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY OL.1978.11



Frederic E. Church, Morning, Looking East over the Hudson Valley from Catskill Mountains, 1848, Oil on canvas, Albany Institute of History and Art (Albany, New York, United States)

The Smithsonian American Art Museum organized the nationally traveling exhibition “Modern Masters from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.”


Venues

Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum; Florida International University, Miami.
November 29, 2008- March 1, 2009

Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
June 14-September 6, 2009

Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio.
October 10-January 2, 2010

Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia.
November 13- February 5, 2011

Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee.
March 19 -June 19, 2011

Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
October 7- January 1, 2012


The exhibition featured 43 key paintings and sculptures by 31 of the most celebrated artists who came to maturity in the 1950s. “Modern Masters” examines the complex and varied nature of American abstract art in the mid-20th century through three broadly conceived themes that span two decades of creative genius—“Significant Gestures,” “Optics and Order” and “New Images of Man.”

“The exhibition introduces the richness and complexity of American art in the years following World War II. We are thrilled that the deep holdings of the Smithsonian American Art Museum allow us to share important works by leading abstract painters and sculptors with audiences throughout the country.” said Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum who organized the exhibition.

The decades following World War II were stimulating times for American art. While some vanguard artists began to paint or sculpt in the 1930s as beneficiaries of WPA-era government support, other immigrant artists fled to the United States as Nazi power grew in Germany. A few artists were highly educated; others left school at an early age to pursue their art. Working in New York, California, the South and abroad, these artists blended knowledge gleaned from the old masters and modernists Picasso and Matisse with philosophy and ancient mythology to create abstract compositions that addressed current social concerns and personal history. Some mixed hardware-store paint with expensive artist colors and bits of paper torn from magazines, linking their work with contemporary life.

Aided in their efforts by a group of young dealers, prominent critics and influential editors, abstract artists gained credibility. Abstraction was no longer dismissed as irrelevant or incomprehensible, but instead became a widely discussed national style. Weekly magazines such as Life, Time and Newsweek brought images of contemporary abstraction to households throughout the country while New York museums toured exhibitions to the capitals of Europe. Galleries discovered new markets in the country’s growing middle-class, and newspapers celebrated American culture as an equal partner with technology in catapulting the United States to preeminence on the world stage.

By the late 1950s, Sam Francis, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline and other painters and sculptors who embraced abstraction early in the decade enjoyed success, celebrity and international acclaim.

“Significant Gestures” explores the autographic mark, executed in sweeping strokes of brilliant color that became the expressive vehicle for Francis, Hofmann and Kline as well as Michael Goldberg and Joan Mitchell. These artists and others, affected by World War II, became known as abstract expressionists. For each artist, the natural world, recent discoveries in physics and the built environment provided motifs for powerful canvases of color and light.

“Optics and Order” examines the artists who investigated ideas such as the exploration of mathematical proportion and carefully balanced color. This section, which highlights Josef Albers, also features Ad Reinhardt, who developed visual vocabularies that used rectilinear shapes to meld intellectual idea with emotional content, and artworks by like-minded artists Ilya Bolotowsky, Louise Nevelson and Esteban Vicente. A sculpture by Anne Truitt, whose majestic columns transform childhood memories of Maryland’s Eastern Shore into totemic structures, is included in this section as well.

“New Images of Man” includes works by Romare Bearden, Jim Dine, David Driskell, Grace Hartigan, Nathan Oliveira, Larry Rivers and several others, each of whom searched their surroundings and personal lives for vignettes emblematic of larger, universal concerns. Issues such as tragedy, interpersonal communication and racial relations guided the creation of these artists’ pieces.

Catalogue



Modern Masters: American Abstraction at Midcentury, the fully illustrated catalog copublished by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and D Giles Limited (London), is written by Mecklenburg with contributions by Tiffany Farrell. The book features an essay and biographical information on the 31 artists whose work is included in the exhibition.

From a review: (images added)

At Dayton Art Institute, I gladly reacquainted myself with Reinhardt’s austere, sublime black squares touched slightly by blue or plum in



“Abstract Painting No. 4” (1961)

and wanted to say, “It’s been too long” to Gottlieb’s magisterial



“Three Discs” (1960)....

New to me was the earliest work in the show, Reinhardt’s bright and jazzy — who knew? —



untitled, high-colored abstraction of 1940.

It came into the collection after I was back in Ohio, as did Hans Hofmann’s “Fermented Soil” (1965),



Hans Hofmann; Fermented Soil, 1965; Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc.

perhaps my favorite piece in the exhibition, with its rough surface, strong color and complicated interactions.

The exhibition is helpfully organized into three sections. “Significant Gestures” includes that master of the gesture, Kline, and others. “Optics and Order” highlights several artists, including Albers, all of whom endlessly explore the effect of colors on each other. A late-ish (1978) contribution to this field by Ilya Bolotowsky,



“Tondo Variation in Red,”

looks fresh as if made yesterday, although the same artist’s “Architectural Variations” (1949) seems oddly dated.

Cincinnati’s Jim Dine turns up in the final section, “New Images of Man,” which recognizes that figural art never really went away.



Dine’s “The Valiant Red Car”

is close to billboard size and rewards attention.

Nearby is one of my surprises of the show,



Nathan Oliveira’s “Nineteen Twenty-Nine” (1961),

an arresting portrait of his mother perfectly hung, almost by itself, with perfect lighting to bring out the textured surface.

Images from the Exhibition



Franz Kline, Untitled, 1961, acrylic, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Vincent Melzac Collection through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program



Hartigan Modern Cycle 1980

Becoming Van Gogh, an in-depth exploration of Vincent van Gogh’s unconventional path to becoming one of the world’s most recognizable artists, was presented at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) from October 21, 2012 through January 20, 2013.




Vincent van Gogh, Vue de l Asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy

The exhibition examined critical steps in the largely self-taught artist’s evolution through more than 70 paintings and drawings by Van Gogh, along with works by artists to whom he responded. Organized by the DAM and curated by Timothy J. Standring, Gates Foundation Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the DAM, and Louis van Tilborgh, Senior Researcher of Paintings at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, Becoming Van Gogh brings together loans from more than 60 public and private collections throughout Europe and North America to tell the story of a number of key formative periods throughout the artist’s career.




Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Summer 1887. Oil on canvas. The Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

By focusing on the various stages of Van Gogh’s artistic development, Becoming Van Gogh illustrates the artist’s initial foray into mastering draftsmanship, understanding the limitations and challenges of materials and techniques, learning to incorporate color theory and folding a myriad of influences, including the work of other artists, into his artistic vocabulary. No other exhibition has focused so intensely on Van Gogh’s personal growth and progression as he developed his own personal style.



Vincent van Gogh, “Canal with Women Washing”

Becoming Van Gogh took visitors on a journey through the artist’s stylistic development via his dramatic paintings and drawings. Divided into three main sections, the exhibition began with a focus on how Van Gogh imbued his early works with energy and verve as he strove to master drawing with graphite, ink and washes; how he began to understand color with watercolor paintings; and how he began to test his skill with oils on canvas. Van Gogh turned all of his creative energies towards mastering the tools that would enable him to render the visual world as he saw it by learning as much as he could about the formal elements of art, color theory, painting techniques, compositional methods and more.



Vincent van Gogh, A Pair of Boots, 1887. Oil on canvas; 12-7/8 x 16-1/4 in. The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland. Photography by: Mitro Hood.

By the time he arrived in Paris—which constituted the largest section of the exhibition—visitors will see Van Gogh’s further maturation as an artist. His Parisian period, from 1886 to 1888, represents a crucial phase of his professional career, when his focus shifted from social subject matter to works driven largely by aesthetic and artistic concerns. This, the heart of the exhibition, is the period when he strove to attain a considerable degree of artistic self-confidence by responding to the stylistic and ideological shifts underway in the Parisian art world at the time.



Vincent van Gogh, Grass and Butterflies, 1887

During this eventful two-year period, Impressionism hosted its eighth (and last) official group exhibition, Seurat startled the world at the Salon des Indépendants with his divisionism in Un Dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, Signac and Pissarro followed his example with a softened variant known as pointillism, Bernard launched a salvo of synthetism and Toulouse-Lautrec recorded the bohemian culture of Montmartre.



Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Sheaves, 1888. Oil on canvas. Honolulu Academy of Arts, gift of Mrs. Richard A. Cooke and Family in memory of Richard A. Cooke.

Acutely aware of these avant-garde trends and working closely with artists such as Émile Bernard and Paul Signac, Van Gogh both experimented with and eventually transformed these styles into something wholly personal and unique. During this time Van Gogh personally met and interacted with many of these artists, all of whom are represented by significant works in the exhibition.

From a nice background article about the show: (images added)

It took three visits to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin to secure a loan of



"Road Workers," a drawing van Gogh completed in 1882, (also known as Torn-Up Street with Diggers)

and three more to Oslo to obtain



the 1888 drawing "View of Arles from Montmajour" (also known as View of Arles from a Hill)

from Norway's museum of art.

The Art Institute of Chicago turned down seven loan requests before agreeing to send the 1887 oil painting



"Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples."

From an excellent review of the show (including images):

Vincent van Gogh, Head of Gordina de Groot, 1885. Oil on canvas; 16-1/8 x 13-3/4 inches (41 x 34.5 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of Eykyn Maclean

The show begins with a side of Van Gogh that may seem foreign to most of us. For one thing, the vibrant colors most commonly associated with the artist are largely absent from the works. Instead, the viewer is greeted with muted tones of blue, gray and black. Sketching images of peasant workers and ordinary objects such as tattered shoes, the pieces provide a seemingly rustic air.




Vincent van Gogh, Autumn Landscape, 1885. Oil on canvas laid down on panel; 25-1/4 x 34-1/4 inches (64 x 87 cm). © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Moving into the next space, the works maintain the same muted palette that characterizes the artist’s earliest pieces. However, it is here that Van Gogh begins to experiment with color. Abandoning drawing for painting, the artist focuses his effort on mastering color and color theory. This is particularly evident in his piece “Autumn Landscape.” In this work, the color of the sky is made all the more intense when contrasted with the yellow leaves of the trees (this is of particular consideration given the fact that Van Gogh learned that the impression a color makes is determined not only by the color itself but also by the colors around it.)




Vincent van Gogh, Vase with gladioli and China asters, 1886. Oil on canvas; 18-1/2 x 15-1/3 inches (47 x 39 cm). Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

However, it isn’t until his Parisian period (1886-1888) that the Van Gogh we are most accustomed to begins to take shape. Vibrant hues of red, yellow, green and blue (among other bold colors) occupy the majority of the works. Focusing on still life (i.e. vases of flowers, fruit,) Van Gogh starts to experiment with thicker paints and quick, short brushstrokes, creating texture that virtually pops off of the canvas.