Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Thursday 11 February: Freud, Hockney

January 26, 2016, 8:50 am

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Two of Lucian Freud’s most intimate portraits of his daughters will be united in Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Thursday 11 February in London, King Street.

Head of Esther (1982-83, estimate: £2,500,000 - 3,500,000)

 and Head of Ib (1983-84, estimate: £2,500,000 – 3,500,000)

contribute to the strong core of British artists offered at auction this February, alongside Francis Bacon, David Hockney and Peter Doig.

The two works have previously been included, individually and together, in all of Freud’s major retrospectives, including at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2012); Tate Britain, London (2002-3) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C (1988). Highlights of 20^th Century at Christie’s, a series of sales that take place from 2-12 February in London, the two are on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Centre, New York until 20 January 2016. 

Of the same size and similar date, these works were both executed in arguably Freud's greatest period at the beginning of the 1980s when he painted the much celebrated  

Large Interior, WII (After Watteau), (1981-83),  

Two Irishmen in W11 (1984-85),

and his famed self-portraits of 1981

and 1985.

Having recently turned 60, this was a moment of reflection for Freud; painting his children for the first time in over a decade, these works capture Freud’s deep affection for his grown-up daughters after many years of parental absence.  The early 1980s was also a time of professional triumph for Freud: in 1981 he was hailed as a father of ‘New Figuration’ after his work was included in the ground-breaking exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in 1983 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire in recognition of his contribution to British painting.

Painted when Esther and Isobel (Ib) were both in their early twenties, the two works stand among the artist’s most acclaimed small format portraits.  Almost the same age, Isobel (Ib, born in 1961 and daughter of Suzy Boyt) and Esther (born in 1963, the daughter of Bernardine Coverley and celebrated author of Hideous Kinky, which was made into a 1988 film starring Kate Winslet) are rendered with subtle strokes of impasto in rich, warm hues that convey the blossoming familiarity between father and daughters. Many of Freud’s sitters were unattributed but the portraits of his own children were almost always named. The paint itself, which the artist described as being the person, was worked to function in the same way as the flesh of the sitter. It became a tool not just of observation but of reconnection – a means of bringing himself closer to his daughters.

Esther Freud: ‘My father had charisma, he had the ability to make whoever he was with feel very special. With each person he was with he focused so much that they felt glowing. I was glowing. I felt I was important to him ... in those hours and hours I had so much of his attention. He would paint, tell me stories, sing me songs, give me food and take me for dinner. He makes you feel wonderful. I did feel very close to him’ (E. Freud, quoted in interview with A. Elkann).

Francis Outred, Chairman and Head of Post War and Contemporary Art, EMERI at Christie’s commented: ‘At Christie’s we have had the pleasure to present some of Freud’s greatest works yet never have we seen two small portraits of this quality; they are jewels that date from arguably the most important moment in his career and offer an insight into the relationship between a father and his daughters that is unmatched. The intimacy is reflected in the scale of the fourteen-by-twelve inch portraits recall the format of Francis Bacon’s celebrated portrait heads, however where Bacon attempted to capture the presence of his subject  in a single brushstroke, Freud carefully carves and caresses the paint with a piercing exactitude and intense precision.’

Also leading the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction are three works by David Hockney, including his vivid celebration of light and colour  

Beach Umbrella (1971, estimate: £1,000,000 – 1,500,000, pictured above).

Created during a highly productive period following the devastating end of the artist’s relationship with Peter Schlesinger, the work is also a powerful testament to the therapeutic power of paint. Its vibrant colours and rich, tactile surfaces demonstrate the solace Hockney found in the medium. Beach Umbrella was a highlight of Hockney’s landmark 1988 retrospective, which was shown to great acclaim at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Tate Modern in London.

Also offered for auction alongside Beach Umbrella are

Hockney’s Parade Curtain After Picasso (1980, estimate: £600,000 – 800,000), a jubilant tribute to his greatest artistic hero,

Parade, the curtain, tempera by Picasso. (the original)

and The Sea at Malibu (1988, estimate: £600,000 – 800,000, pictured above),

an example of his triumphant return to painting that year, and his continued reverence for Southern California where he had a studio in Malibu.

The Fitermans were champions of Pop Art in all its forms and whilst Hockney was a leading figure of the Brit Pop scene, in France Jean Dubuffet cultivated his own unique way of looking at the quotidian.

Dubuffet’s Veglione d’Ustensiles (1964, estimate: £1,000,000 – 1,500,000), painted in 1964 is a vibrant early example of Jean Dubuffet’s most revered series: ‘l’Hourloupe’, a celebration of the everyday.   Emblazoned against a black background, a swarming puzzle of red, white and blue segments form a teeming, interlocking mass of his now legendary visual language.

Completing this survey of international pop is Andy Warhol’s vibrant portrait of the artist Man Ray (1974, estimate: £200,000 – 300,000), a tribute by the Pop master to one of the leading figures of the Dada and Surrealist art movements. Rendered in Warhol’s distinctive Pop palette, Man Ray’s likeness is constructed out of a single screen of Warhol’s original photograph, which is then embellished by a series of expressive brushstrokes in tones of green and golden yellow.

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Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London on 10 February 2016, - Richter, Freud

January 27, 2016, 9:22 am

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 Sotheby’s London Contemporary Art Evening auction on 10 February2016 will be led by one of only a handful of truly spectacular examples of Gerhard Richter’s Abstrakte Bilderremaining in private hands–a monumental canvas from 1990, previously held in the private collection of the artist. Painted in 1990,  

Abstraktes Bild (725-4)remained in the artist’s private collection, away from the public eye, until 1996 when it was unveiled atan exhibition of his personal paintings atthe Carre d’Art in Nimes: “Gerhard Richter: 100 Pictures”. The work has not been exhibited publically since.Acquired by the current owner via Marian Goodman and Anthony d’Offay in 1996, Abstraktes Bildwill now be offered at auction for the very first time, with an estimate of £14-20 million (US$ 
21.1-30.1million).

On  10  February,  Sotheby’s  London  will  offer  for  sale  a  painting  that  not  only  marks  a  pivotal  moment  in  the  career  of  Lucian  Freud,  but  that  also  shines  a  spotlight  on  a  fascinating  but  little-­‐known  moment  in  the  artist’s  life.  While  much  has  been  written  about  many  of  Freud’s  amorous  liaisons,  barely  anything  is  known  about  his  intense,  and  ultimately  transformative,  relationship  with  Bernadine  Coverley.  The  two  met  when  she  was  just  16,  and  he was already  an  established  artist, 20  years  her  senior.  Although  their  time  together  was  relatively  brief,  it  was  to  prove  critical  -­‐marking  both  the  beginnings  of  a  life-­‐long  bond  and, for  Freud,  a  new  approach  to  painting.  

Pregnant  Girl embodies  this  new  approach.  Estimated  £7-­‐10m,  the  painting  will  be  a  highlight  of  Sotheby’s  Contemporary  Art  Evening  Auction  in  London  on  10  February  2016.Media 

 Oliver  Barker,  Sotheby’sSenior  International  Specialist,  Contemporary  Art:  “This  astonishingly  beautiful  painting  embodies  the  profound  bond  between  Lucian and the  mother  of  his  two  daughters. There  is  arguably  no  other  portrait  by  Freud  that  is  more  gripping,more  tender,and  more  laden  with  such  emotional  depth.”  

In Pregnant  Girl we  see  Freud  paint  his  lover  reclining  on  the  green  sofain  the  long  and  narrow  room  in  his  studio  in  Delamere  Terrace,  West  London.  The  sleeping  17-­‐year  old  -­‐head  titled  to  one  side,  eyes  shut,  dreaming-­‐does  not  confront  the  viewer,  or  the  artist;  rather  we  confront  her  at  an  intensely  private  moment.  In  creating  a  modern  ‘Madonna  and  Child’  or  ‘Sleeping  Venus’,  Freud  echoes  the  greats  of  art  history,  to  deliver  a  breathtaking  image  of  beauty,  desire,  femininity  and  fertility.

Coverley,  whose  Irish  Catholic  parents  ran  the  Black  Horse  pub  in  Brixton,  was  sent  to  a  convent  boarding  school  at  the  age  of  four.  Feeling  trapped  and  despondent  under  the  strict  governance of  the  convent,  she  twice  tried  to  run  away.  By  her  teens,  she  craved the liberation  and  excitement  of  bohemian  Soho  –an  intoxicating   underground   world   of   artists,   musicians   and   writers.  It   was   here,   in  a   Soho   pub   in  1959, where  Coverley  first  met  Freud, who  was  captivated  by  her  natural  beauty  and  free  spirit.  Much  has  been  written  about  Freud’s  famously  numerous  partners  -­‐when  he  first  met  Coverley,  he  had  already   been   twice   married   and   had   fathered   a   number   of   children–but little   is   known   about  their  relationship.  

Pregnant  Girl opens  a  window  onto  the  most  meaningful  moment  in  the  lives  of  both  lovers,  embodying  thesingular  tenderness  he  felt  for  Bernadine,soon  to  be  the  mother  of  his  daughters  Bella  and  Esther.  “It  must  have  been  a  very  happy  time  in  her  life,  being  pregnant  with  the  man  she  loved  and  him  wanting  her  to  be  there  and  paint  her”,  says  their  daughter  Bella,  “I  think  he  was  undoubtedly  the  love  of  her  life.”

After  separating  from  Freud,  Coverley  left  England  (and  its conservative views on unmarried   mothers) with  her  wo small  daughters  to  start  a  new  life  in  Morocco.  The  story   of   their   bohemian   lifestyle   in   Marrakesh   was  immortalised  in  Esther’s  novel  “Hideous  Kinky”,  and  later  turned   into   a hit  film   with   Coverley   played   by   Kate  Winslet.  Although   he   was   not   altogether   present   in   Bella   and  Esther’s  early  years,  Freud  was  extremely  close  with  his  two   daughters,  painting   both   of   them   several   times,  including  

Lucian Freud,  Baby  on  a  Green  Sofa,  1961  Copyright:  Image/Artwork:  ©  The  Lucian  Freud  Archive  /  Bridgeman  Images

Baby  on  a  Green  Sofa (1961),  a  painting  of  Bella  as  a  baby  resting  on  the  same  green  sofa  in  which  her  mother   was   portrayed.  Remarkably,   after   two  extraordinary  lives,  Freud  and  Coverley  died  within  just  four  days  of  each  other  in  July  2011.  

Jean Dubuffet –Metamorphoses of Landscape

February 2, 2016, 9:15 am

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The Fondation Beyeler is opening the year 2016 with the first retrospective of Jean Dubuffet’s multifaceted, imaginative oeuvre held in Switzerland in the 21stcentury. “Jean Dubuffet – Metamorphoses of Landscape”, which runs from 31 January to 8 May 2016, features over 100 works by the highly experimental French painter and sculptor, who provided the art world with fresh inspiration and impulses in the second half of the 20th century, thereby opening up decisive new paths and possibilities for art. 

Dubuffet succeeded in liberating himself from aesthetic standards and conventions, fundamentally revising art from an essentially“anti-cultural” perspective. Jean Dubuffet (born in Le Havre in 1901; died in Paris in 1985) is one of the defining artists of the second half of the 20th century. In 1942, at the age of forty-one, he gave up his occupation as a wine merchant and devoted himself exclusively to art. Inspired by the work of artistic outsiders as well as by the formal vocabulary and narrative style of children’s drawings, he cast off outdated traditions and virtually reinvented art. 

Dubuffet’s influence can still be felt today in contemporary art and street art, for example in the work of David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Ugo Rondinone.

The exhibition focuses on Dubuffet’s fascinating idea of landscape, which in his hands can transform itself into a body, a face or an object. Innovatively and at times humorously, Dubuffet seems to turn painting’s laws and genres upside down. Portraits, female nudes and still lifes turn into vibrant landscapes.In his works, Dubuffet experimented with new techniques and materials such as sand, butterfly wings, sponges and slag, using them to create a unique visual universe that was entirely his own. 

Crucial impulses for Dubuffet’s revolutionary approach to art came to him in Switzerland. Visiting a number of psychiatric clinics in Geneva and Bern in 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War, he made a close study of the profoundly expressive works produced by some of their patients. He later coined the term Art Brutto describe this kind of work. One of the exhibition’s chief goals is to document the continued relevance of Dubuffet’s wide-ranging oeuvre to the art of recent decades. Statements by various artists are therefore juxtaposed in the catalogue with works by Dubuffet, testifying to the importance of his ideas and practice for their art. Those represented include some figures who are already sure of a place in the history of art, such as David Hockney, Claes Oldenburg, Keith Haring, Mike Kelley and Georg Baselitz, but the catalogue also features statements specially written by Miquel Barceló and Ugo Rondinone that are being published for the first time.

Alongside important paintings and sculptures from all the major phases of the artist’s oeuvre, the exhibition is also showing Dubuffet’s spectacular Coucou Bazar, a multimedia work of art combining painting, sculpture, theatre, dance and music.

The exhibition features loans from leading international museums and major private collections. It is being generously supported by the Fondation Dubuffet in Paris. Lenders include the MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in Paris; the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; the Museum Ludwig in Cologne; the Kunsthaus Zürich and many others. Some of these works have never been seen in public; others are being shown to a wide audience for the first time in several decades. The latter include the painting Gardes du corps, a key work dating from 1943 that for more than forty years was thought lost and that attests in unique fashion to the groundbreaking aesthetic embodied in the fresh start on which Dubuffet embarked at that stage in his career.Due to the close collaboration with Ernst Beyeler, Jean Dubuffet is one of the best represented artists in the collection of the Fondation Beyeler.

Landscape runs like a defining leitmotif throughout Jean Dubuffet’s multifarious oeuvre. From his earliest phase right up to his late period he constantly developed it in unexpected but consistent ways. The retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler focuses on Dubuffet’s innovative concept of landscape, which also served him as a springboard for addressing many other subjects. Dubuffet has often been quoted to the effect that “Everything is landscape,” and landscape does indeed dominate his artistic practice and ideas: in both, anything can metamorphose into landscape at any time. It is this special capacity for metamorphosis, together with an intense delight in experimentation, that singles out the multi-faceted character of Dubuffet’s work. In his paintings,the shapes and textures of landscape can emerge even from bodies and faces. His art is governed by a unique interaction between nature and creatures that can even transform objects into landscape. With Dubuffet a landscape is not, therefore, a faithful depiction of actual appearances but their translation into mental images: landscape gives visible form to the immaterial world inhabited by the human mind. Instead of seeking beautiful idyllic landscapes, Dubuffet explores raw, naked earth, occasionally reaching down into its geological substructure. Sometimes he will fashion his landscapes and figures from actual natural elements, such as sand and gravel, making them the real material of his pictures. Natural landscape becomes a free and open field for artistic practice.

Figure, Landscape and Cities: The Marionnettes de la ville et de la campagne and the Mirobolus, Macadam & Cie

In 1942, at the age of forty-one, Jean Dubuffet gave up his occupation as a wine merchant and devoted himself exclusively to art.In seeking to create a new, authentic art outside cultural norms and aesthetic conventions, he took his cue initially from the formal vocabulary and narrative style of children’s drawings. The brightly colored figure paintings Gardes du corps(1943), from Marionnettes de la ville et de la campagne, Dubuffet’s first group of works, marks this decisive turning-point in his oeuvre. 

Even in his earliest works, Dubuffet addressed landscape in a highly distinctive way. Heralding a central feature of his output, it appears as an excerptlimited to sections of (sub)soil or overgrown land. Large areas are divided up by lines or hatching into pictorial elements that can be read as plots of land, paths and roads, or, vertically, as strata of soil reaching down into the depths of the earth.

The white cow in the middle of a green field in Bocal à vache,for instance, seems to have been absorbed by its enclosure; the cow is not just inthe field, but also under it. 

In Desnudus (1945), on the other hand, the fields and paths seem to be absorbed by a body, with the naked man transmuting into the bearer of a landscape inscribed in his figure.The body becomes landscape; landscape becomes the body. An interplay between outer shell and inner life also typifies Dubuffet’s early cityscapes, which focus on the façades of buildings, and their windows and doorways. By depicting the buildings and their tiers of stories from the front, Dubuffet discloses the “geology”–the inner life–of an imaginary urban landscape. He returns time and again to the close relationship between the ground and walls in later groups of works. 

In the first half of the 1940s Dubuffet relied on the traditional techniqueof oil painting on canvas, applying the color flatly, but in 1945,in the Hautes Pâtes of his group Mirobolus, Macadam & Cie, he began to employ a new material, a kind of paste that he applied thickly to the support and then modeled as in a relief. He intensified this focus on the material properties of paint by mixing sand, clay, tar, coal dust,and gravel into it. 

In his compellingly tactile Hautes Pâtes, Dubuffet creates material equivalents of texturesand structures found in soil and in landscape. Scratching and gouging into the thick layers of paint, he transfers his interest in penetrating the depths of landscape and the human body in direct physical terms to the material substance of his pictures. At the same time, he abandons the bright palette of his early paintings and replaces it by earthy colors. 

Faces into Landscape: The Plus beaux qu’ils croientPortraits and the Paysages grotesques 

In 1946 and 1947 Dubuffet creates a number of caricature-like portraits of friends and acquaintances, amongst them Monsieur Plume pièce botanique, which he subsumes under the ironic title Plus beaux qu’ils croient, hence relativizing their supposed ugliness in terms of aesthetic convention. For Dubuffet, every face and its structural characteristics may be perceived as a miniature landscape in which the eye can discover all manner of things. 

 focusing on new ways of depicting the human face in portraits, Dubuffet returns increasingly to landscape subjects, encouraged by several trips to the Sahara. In 1947-49, cold winters and coal shortages in Paris prompt the artist and his wife Lili to pay several visits to the warm desert regions of Algeria. These works, collectively titled Roses d’Allah, clowns du désert and produced both in France and Algeria, revolve around his experiences of the desert and the culture of its inhabitants.

The cycle Paysages grotesques began with the paintings inspired by Dubuffet’s final trip to the Sahara, in March and April 1949. In these works, too, the artist developed a new way of representing landscape,while also devising a novel type of figure.

Body Landscapes and Landscaped Bodies: The Corps de dames and the Paysages du mental

Of all subjects, Dubuffet chooses the female nude, which throughout the history of arthas been probably the most popular and highly regarded vehicle for depicting beauty, to exemplify his radical break with aesthetic norms and conventions by turning it into a landscape.In his series Corps de dames, landscape and body each has a literally fertilizing effect on the other, uncovering new and unfamiliar levels of meaning. Moreover, the unique female “body landscapes” also allude to ancient creation myths, extending both the visual tradition of the anthropomorphic landscape and the linguistic tradition of the body-as-landscape metaphor. With Paysages du mental, Dubuffet creates a further series of landscape pictures that begin in 1950 with Le Géologue and occupy the artist until 1952. As the word “mental” in the title of the series indicates, Dubuffet turns his attention away from geology here and instead explores the human mind. 

Landscape as Still Life and Object: The Tables and the Pâtes battues

In the Pâtes battues ,begun in 1953, Dubuffet devises a method of treating paint as matter that involves using a palette knife to apply a smooth, paste-like layer of paint to a ground that is still wet, partly revealing the layer underneath. Then, with the tip of the palette knife, he swiftly inscribes figures and markings into the creamy impasto. In terms of motif, this group of works is dominated by landscapes and tables which, because of their interaction, Dubuffet had already called Tables paysagées in the case of some earlier pictures. 

Landscape as Material: The Ailes de papillons and the Petites statues de la vie précaire

Dubuffet had hitherto used the means of painting to explore a variety of material equivalents to landscape structures, but in the brightly colored butterfly wings of the series of small-format collages made between 1953 and 1955 he uses remnants of living nature. Moreover, he employs the ancient symbol of rebirth represented by the pupation of the caterpillar and its transformation into a butterfly as a subtle way of reflecting on the interplay between death and creation in both nature and art. And since butterflies have traditionally stood for the human soul in the visual arts, the artist’s playful images may also be understood, at least in part, as variations on the Paysages du mental. 

With his first series of sculptures Petites statues de la vie précaire, on which he embarks in 1954, Dubuffet transfers his materials to work in three dimensions. Breaking with every convention of traditional sculpture, he prefers such materials as sponge, driftwood, volcanic rock, charcoal and slag to the familiar marble or bronze. These simple elements taken directly from nature appear to have been assembled almost by chance to form distinctive beings suggestive of earth spirits.

De-and Reconstructingthe Landscape: The Tableaux d’assemblages

His time at Vence in southern France prompts Dubuffet to embark on a new group of works in the mid-1950s, the Tableaux d’assemblages. In these he transfers the method used to produce the butterfly collages to the realm of painting. He cuts the canvases into pieces, and pins them together until their new order resonates with him. In dissecting nature, he reveals not only an anatomical and geological perception of landscape, but also a mythological view of its essence. An underlying search for the archaic and the primeval is indeed discernible in Dubuffet’s approach to landscape and accords fully with his ideas about art. 

A Celebration of the Soil: The Topographies and Texturologies and the Eléments botaniques and Matériologies

Beginning in the mid-1950s, Dubuffet focuses intensely on structures that evoke a wide range of landscapes. Avoiding monumental views of nature, he prefers completely prosaic ones. In the series entitled Topographies,he turns to his unique form of collage again to depict unremarkable landscapes that “celebrate the ground”. His canvases emulate boundless natural surfaces in the Texturologies, made through successive steps of spraying, scratching, sanding, scraping, and so on. His Matériologies move beyond organic substances to incorporate synthetic or artificial materials like silve rpaper and gold foil. 

The Urban Landscape: Paris Circus

The series Paris Circus,begun in 1961, represents a fresh start in Dubuffet’s oeuvre. It marks a rediscovery of bright color, intensified to an almost explosive degree, and a return to the cityscape as a subject.The artist’s pictures in the 1950s had focused chiefly on land as used for agricultural purposes, but now he turns his attention to the chaos of life in the streets of an imaginary city based on his personal view of Paris. In this strange cosmos, opposites such as inside and outside, near and far, high and low, wide and narrow, deep and flat collide with one another, subverting customary experiences of space and literally calling their foundations into question. 

The Creation of a Different Landscape: L’Hourloupe

Dubuffet produces his largest cycle of works over a period of twelve years, from 1962 to 1974, and coins the ambiguous neologism L’Hourloupe to describe it. This huge series, which comprises sculptural, architectural and theatrical installations as well as paintings and drawings, originated with doodles executed absent-mindedly in ballpoint pen while the artist was on the phone. From these scribbles he devised an intensely personal parallel world comprised of boldly outlined, organic-looking, amoebic shapes that interlock like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, distinguished from one another in color and internal hatching. 

In L’HourloupeDubuffet works for the first time as a true sculptor, a large number of works being produced in such synthetic materials as polystyrene, polyester and epoxy resin. Some of these works are on a monumental scale and many engage closely with a landscape or another immediate environment. Visiting these artificial landscapes is like setting foot in a painting. As a total work of art, the L’Hourloupe cycle culminates in the large-scale piece for the stage Coucou Bazar, a unique encounter between painting, sculpture, dance, language and music. On the stage, a number of single figures and other elements interact constantly, combining to generate a modular metamorphic landscape. 
  
Place and Non-place in the Late Work:The Théâtres de mémoire,the Mires and the Non-lieux

The last decade of Dubuffet’s career is exceptionally productive, with groups of works succeeding one another at regular intervals. 

One of the most important cycles is Théâtres de mémoire(1975-78), inspired by a text by Frances Yates. This series of large assemblages survey the artist’s previous oeuvre in the manner of a retrospective. The Mires and Non-lieux relate not to the outer, concrete world of landscape, but to the inner, abstract realm of the mind and psyche. Dubuffet interprets this non-lieux in terms of a non-event, a cessation of activity, thereby ultimately calling into question his work as anartist. 

The potential for transformation shown by landscape in Dubuffet’s work embodies a fundamental challenge to human dominance and cultural convention, and it does so within the framework of total freedom of artistic practice and thought. 

Hence, when looking back on his oeuvre a few years before his death, Dubuffet stressed the significance of landscape before stating:“I believe that in all my works I have been concerned to represent what makes up our thoughts–to represent not the objective world, but what it becomes in our thoughts.”

The exhibition’s curator is Dr. Raphaël Bouvier.

Images from the exhibition:

 Jean Dubuffet
Mêle moments, 1976
Acrylic and collage on paper mounted on canvas, 248.9 x 360.7 cm
Private Collection, Courtesy Pace Gallery
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: courtesy Pace Gallery

Jean Dubuffet
Paysage aux argus, 1955
Collage with butterfly wings, 20.5 x 28.5 cm
Collection Fondation Dubuffet, Paris
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Maximum print size:
21 x 30 cm

Jean Dubuffet
Bocal à vache, 1943
Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm
Private Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: P. Schälchli, Zurich
Maximum print size:
42 x 30 cm

Jean Dubuffet
Le voyageur égaré, 1950
Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Cantz Medienmanagement, Ostfildern

Jean Dubuffet
Lettre à M. Royer (désordre sur la table), 1953
Oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm
Acquavella Modern Art
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © Acquavella Modern Art

Jean Dubuffet
Fumeur au mur, 1945
Oil on canvas , 115.6 x 89 cm
Julie and Edward J. Minskoff
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich

Jean Dubuffet
Le commerce prospère, 1961
Oil on canvas, 165 x 220 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs Simon Guggenheim Fund
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © 2015. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence

Jean Dubuffet
Façades d'immeubles, 1946
Oil on canvas, 151 x 202 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Stephen Hahn Family Collection, 1995.30.3
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich

Jean Dubuffet
J'habite un riant pays, 1956
Oil on canvas (assemblage), 146 x 96 cm
Collection of Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © Acquavella Modern Art

Jean Dubuffet
Automobile à la route noire, 1963
Oil on canvas, 195 x 150 cm
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Peter Schibli, Basel

Jean Dubuffet
Corps de dame – Pièce de boucherie, 1950  
Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Peter Schibli, Basel

Jean Dubuffet
Gardes du corps, 1943
Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm
Private Collection, courtesy Saint Honoré Art Consulting, Paris and Blondeau & Cie, Geneva
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Saint Honoré Art Consulting, Paris and Blondeau & Cie, Geneva

Jean Dubuffet
Vache la belle fessue, 1954
Oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm
Collection of Samuel and Ronnie Heyman – Palm Beach, FL
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich

Jean Dubuffet
Coucou Bazar, 1972-1973
Installation view
Collection Fondation Dubuffet, Paris
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris/Luc Boegly

Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado

February 5, 2016, 12:34 pm

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CLARK BRINGS MASTERPIECES FROM SPAIN’S PRADO MUSEUM TO U.S. IN

SPLENDOR, MYTH, AND VISION: NUDES FROM THE PRADO 

Exclusively at the Clark June 11 – October 10, 2016

In summer 2016 the Clark Art Institute is the exclusive venue for Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado. The exhibition, co-organized by the Clark and the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, consists of twenty-eight Old Master paintings of the nude, twenty-four of which have never traveled to the United States. The exhibition examines the collecting of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings of the nude at the Spanish court, explores the histories of these works and their display in the Spanish Royal Collections, and reconsiders the significant role of the nude in European art. The exhibition will be on view June 11–October 10, 2016.The Prado’s collection of Old Master paintings, widely recognized as one of the most important in the world, is characterized by a significant concentration of mythological, allegorical, historical, and religious paintings depicting nudes. The works presented in Splendor, Myth, and Vision were selected from the Prado’s unparalleled holdings, not only for their relationship to the exhibition’s themes, but also for their individual histories and artistic merit.

The exhibition explores the Spanish monarchy’s collection and display of sensual paintings during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in major works by Titian (Italian, c. 1488– 1576), Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640), Jacopo Tintoretto (Italian, 1519–1594), Diego Velàzquez (Spanish, 1599–1660); Jusepe de Ribera (Spanish, c. 1591–1652), and Jan Brueghel the Elder (Flemish, 1568–1625) , among others. The exhibition places particular emphasis on two of the greatest art patrons of their time: Philip II (r. 1556–1598) and Philip IV (r. 1621–1665). The exhibition includes important portraits of these patrons—Philip II painted by Titian and his workshop in 1549–50, and Philip IV painted by Diego Velàzquez, c. 1653–55.

Most of the works of art in the exhibition—many of which depict eroticized, mythological, female nudes—were made for or collected by a succession of Spanish kings as articulationsof their secular and religious power, as reminders of virtue and vice, and as objects of private delight. A number of these paintings within the Spanish Royal Collections were secluded from public view in private, or reserved, rooms known as salas reservadas. When the Museo del Prado opened to the public in the nineteenth century, the tradition continued with many of the paintings of the nude being placed in a specially designated room. The museum’s sala reservada existed between 1827 and 1838.

The survival of paintings of the nude collected by the Spanish monarchy is a compelling story of the clash between public morals, private tastes, and the exercise of power. While Philip II and Philip IV celebrated depictions of the human form, Philip III (r. 1598–1621) was troubled by nudity and kept many works collected by his father out of sight, feeling that they were in conflict with his religiosity. Even more extreme, Charles III (r. 1759–1788) and Charles IV(r. 1788–1808) considered having the paintings destroyed to avoid the moral corruption of those who might view them. Subsequently, many of these works were placed in the Academy of San Fernando with the dual intention of limiting public access to the paintings and providing pedagogical tools to students. More than two centuries later, the nude continues to evoke powerful responses across the spectrum of emotion, from censorship to celebrated acceptance.

Philip II, Titian, and the Venetian Nude

Philip II was one of the most important patrons of the Venetian painter Titian, commissioning from him a number of portraits and mythological paintings that celebrated the nude. The most erotically charged of these paintings were kept away from public view in private chambers near the king’s quarters. Because of the high concentration of works by the artist, these and similar rooms later became known as the Bovedas de Titian (Titian Vaults).

Titian and Jacopo Tintoretto were two of the most important Venetian artists of the sixteenth century, both known for their sensual depictions of the female nude.  

Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Titian, c. 1550–1555), which was housed in the Titian Vaults, depicts a reclining Venus accompanied by a male musician. Titian made several versions of this composition, a subject that appealed to the sophisticated collectors of the time. The painting weaves together love, erotic desire, and the senses in an exploration of beauty and harmony.

Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (c. 1555) and 

Susannah and the Elders (c. 1555), both by Jacopo Tintoretto, were also displayed in the Titian Vaults. They are included in the exhibition as outstanding examples of the artist’s use of the nude figure in depicting biblical stories with an emphasis on the sensual and exotic.

Domenico Tintoretto’s Lady Revealing her Breast (c. 1580–90), a work that was housed in the sala reservada, is a mysterious painting depicting a courtesan. It has been suggested that the woman shown is Veronica Franco, the most celebrated Venetian courtesan of the second half of the sixteenth century. However, the identity of the sitter has never been confirmed. Unlike other images of courtesans, who generally look directly at the viewer, this painting depicts a profile. The bold presentation of the young woman’s breasts creates a contradiction that serves to enhance the painting’s sensuality.

Philip IV and Rubens

Philip IV built a number of new royal residences, including an opulent hunting lodge known as the Torre de la Parada. A major patron of Rubens, Philip IV commissioned him to paint more than sixty mythologies based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses for the lodge. These massive canvases were installed in one large room, creating a stunning visual effect. Rubens’s advanced age at the time of the commission made it impossible for him to execute all of the works himself, leading him to rely on members of his studio and various assistants to create many of the works based on his oil sketches. 
Two of the fourteen paintings executed by Rubens himself for the lodge are included in the exhibition: 

 Fortuna (1636) 

and Rape of Hippodamia or The Lapiths and the Centaurs (1636–38). 

Another of the Torre de la Parada paintings included in the exhibition, the  

Marriage of Peleus and Thetis (1636–38), was executed by Jacob Jordaens (Flemish, 1593–1678), an associate of Rubens.

Fortuna is a stunning full-length nude depicting the goddess of fortune balancing on a sphere set within a stormy landscape. The goddess represents the varied chances of life; she can bring happiness, but also misfortune. Fortuna epitomizes Rubens’s beautiful rendering of the fleshy, robust female figure, a style that became his hallmark.

Measuring nearly six by ten feet, Rape of Hippodamia has a frieze-like composition; the horizontal direction strengthens the painting’s sense of violence. The painting tells the story of the wedding banquet of the king of the Lapiths at which the centaurs attempt to kidnap the bride. A bloody battle ensues, resulting in the defeat of the centaurs. This myth illustrates the battle between civilization and bestiality and could have served as a source of contemplation for a monarch seeking to rule justly.

Rubens was a great admirer of Titian, finding inspiration in the Venetian’s vigorous brushwork and rich use of color. In 1628, when Rubens was in Spain on a diplomatic mission, Philip IV provided the painter with private access to the Titian paintings in his collections at the Alcázar Palace, many of them collected by Phillip II. Rubens painted a number of replicas of Titian’s works, including one of the greatest masterpieces presented in the exhibition: 

Rape of Europa (1628–29), painted at the height of Rubens’s artistic power and considered a bravura homage from one great artist to another. Purchased by Philip IV upon Rubens’s death in 1640, the painting depicts Europa being abducted by Zeus, who had taken the form of a white bull. It was this painting that firmly established Rubens’s reputation as the heir to Titian and, significantly, linked the collecting and patronage of Philip IV with that of his grandfather Philip II, who had acquired Titian’s Rape of Europa directly from the artist in 1562.

The history of this painting’s subsequent display is particularly interesting as it illustrates the changing attitude of various monarchs toward depictions of the nude form and an inconsistent approach to their display. For reasons unknown––and despite its nudity––the painting was not isolated from view during the eighteenth century, nor was it placed in the sala reservada in the Prado in the nineteenth century.

The Nude in the Landscape of the Spanish Netherlands

Splendor, Myth, and Vision presents a selection of cabinet pictures—small, finely executed paintings—that place the nude within the context of seventeeth-century Flemish landscape painting.  

Landscape with Psyche and Jupiter (1610) was originally painted by Paul Bril (Flemish, 1554–1626) as a landscape with the figure of St. Jerome. The painting later belonged to Rubens, who removed the figure of Jerome and added the figures of Psyche and Jupiter, thus changing the painting from a religious to a mythological scene.

Two versions of Abundance with the Four Elements by Jan Brueghel the Elder (Flemish, 1568–1625) are included in the exhibition. 

One (c. 1600–1625) was painted in collaboration with Hendrick van Balen (Flemish, c. 1574/75–1632); 

the other (1606) was painted with Hendrik de Clerck (Flemish, c. 1570–1630). 

Both cabinet pictures depict the plentitude and tranquility of the natural and human worlds.

The Male Nude – Hercules and Saint Sebastian

Although the predominant nude figure in paintings from this period was female, the male nude also plays an important role in the story of the monarchs’ collecting and patronage. In 1634, Philip IV commissioned Francisco de Zurbarán(Spanish, 1598–1664) to paint a series of ten paintings for the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace, a space of significant ceremonial and political function within the palace complex.

The Hercules series is arguably the most important group of male nudes in Spanish painting. Zurbarán used strong light and shadow to model the anatomy, articulating limbs in a highly contrasted manner to bring out the musculature. This approach was well suited to the powerful and heroic physique of Hercules, whose nude form became a metaphor for royal authority and power. Two paintings from the series,  

Hercules Defeats the King Geryon (1634–35) 

and Hercules and the Hydra (1634–35) are presented in the exhibition.

In the early seventeenth century religious painting found a new visual language that sometimes utilized the human body provocatively. Images of saints, created as inspiration to the faithful during the Counter-Reformation, were remarkable for their realistic depiction of the pain of martyrdom and the joy of religious ecstasy. Saint Sebastian, the martyr ordered killed by the Roman emperor Diocletian, was a frequent subject of such devotional pictures. Sebastian is usually shown bound to a tree and shot with arrows in what turned out to be a first failed attempt at killing him.

Three noted portrayals of Sebastian are included in the exhibition, allowing for a consideration of different approaches to the depiction of the saint in the Counter-Reformation and in the rendering of the male nude. 

Jusepe de Ribera’s version (1636) emphasizes the saint’s inner experience as he quietly accepts his death and prepares to give up his soul and enter Heaven. 

In contrast, Guido Reni’s (Italian, 1575–1642) earlier painting (c. 1617–19) displays a languid eroticism. At some point in its history, probably during the eighteenth century, the picture was considered too risqué, and the saint’s loincloth, which suggestively slips down his midriff, was extended upwards to hide more of his right thigh and lower abdomen. 

Juan Carreño’s (Spanish, 1614–1685) depiction of Sebastian’s suffering (1636) shows the influence of Venetian and Flemish painting on Spanish Baroque painters with its combination of rich color and carefully defined contours.

Like Reni, Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666) often drew inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and included the nude in religious paintings. 

Susannah and the Elders (1617) depicts the apocryphal Old Testament story of Susannah being propositioned by the town’s elders. When she refuses their advances, she is threatened with accusations of adultery. This masterpiece of composition and color is as much about voyeurism as it is about the tale of Susannah. Guercino shows the elders observing Susannah from their hiding place, capturing a moment of great physical and psychological tension. One of the old men leans into the viewer’s space, extending his hand to warn us to keep still, so as not to alert Susannah to our presence. Thus, Guercino makes the viewer a participant in this sinful indulgence.

The exhibition is the latest in a series of ongoing cultural exchanges between the Prado and the Clark. In 2010, the exhibition Pasión por Renoir, an exclusive presentation of the Clark’s suite of thirty-one canvases from its noted collection of works by the French Impressionist master, drew some 370,000 visitors, making it the fourth-highest attended exhibition in the Prado’s history. Javier Baron, the head of the Prado’s Nineteenth-Century Paintings Department and curator of Pasión por Renoir, subsequently completed a fellowship in the Clark’s Research and Academic Program (RAP) in 2011. In 2013, RAP welcomed Gabriele Finaldi, then the Prado’s Deputy Director for Collections and Research (and now the Director of the National Gallery, London) as a fellow.

Splendor, Myth, and Vision is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue (200 pages, $50) published by the Clark and distributed internationally by Yale University Press. Catalogue entries by Clark and Prado curators, among others, accompany an essay on the Spanish royal taste in collecting by Javier Portús, head of the Prado’s seventeenth-century Spanish painting department, and a contemporary response to understanding the nude in Renaissance and Baroque painting written by Jill Burke, senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Edinburgh.

ABOUT THE CLARK

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. For more information, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

ABOUT THE PRADO

The Prado Museum is Spain’s premier art museum, founded by King Ferdinand VII in 1819 which has a collection of paintings from the twelfth to the early twentieth century. It houses the largest and most important collection of Velázquez, Goya, and Rubens in the world. It includes several of the great masterpieces of European painting, including Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, El Greco’s Portrait of a Man with his Hand on his Chest, Velázquez’s Las Meninas, and Goya’s The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808. It also includes collections of ancient sculpture, decorative arts, and drawings, prints, and photographs, including the world’s largest and most important group of works on paper by Goya.

In 2007 the Prado opened its new extension, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rafael Moneo, which provides the Museum with new spaces for exhibitions, conservation, and storage. Information on the Prado’s collections and its exhibition program is offered in considerable detail on the Museum’s website (www.museodelprado.es), which includes valuable features such as the Online Gallery and a wide range of videos, in addition to various interactive functions on its PradoMedia channel.

David Hockney at Auction

February 7, 2016, 9:01 am

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Christie's 2016

Also leading the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction are three works by David Hockney, including his vivid celebration of light and colour  

Beach Umbrella (1971, estimate: £1,000,000 – 1,500,000, pictured above).

Created during a highly productive period following the devastating end of the artist’s relationship with Peter Schlesinger, the work is also a powerful testament to the therapeutic power of paint. Its vibrant colours and rich, tactile surfaces demonstrate the solace Hockney found in the medium. Beach Umbrella was a highlight of Hockney’s landmark 1988 retrospective, which was shown to great acclaim at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Tate Modern in London.

Also offered for auction alongside Beach Umbrella are

Hockney’s Parade Curtain After Picasso (1980, estimate: £600,000 – 800,000), a jubilant tribute to his greatest artistic hero,

Parade, the curtain, tempera by Picasso. (the original)

and The Sea at Malibu (1988, estimate: £600,000 – 800,000, pictured above),

an example of his triumphant return to painting that year, and his continued reverence for Southern California where he had a studio in Malibu.

Sotheby's 2015


Sotheby’s May auctions of Contemporary Art will feature two works by David Hockney, both collected by Samuel Goldwyn Jr.

In Fruit in a Chinese Bowl (estimate $800,000/1.2 million), the still life – one of the most traditional genres of painting – becomes the arena for Hockney to reinterpret the lessons of Art History, from Pointillism to Cubism, within his own instantly-recognizable stylistic vernacular.

The landscape Malibu House (estimate $600/800,000) embodies the playfulness and charm that distinguishes Hockney’s work, while also demonstrating his engagement with art history and the impact of Los Angeles on his development. This picture dates to 1988: the year of his triumphant return to painting and his retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

David Hockney

ARRANGED FELLED TREES

Estimate 1,500,000— 2,000,000

LOT SOLD. 3,397,000 GBP

David Hockney

GREEN TIDE

Estimate1,200,000— 1,800,000GBP

LOT SOLD. 2,165,000 GBP

David Hockney

FELLED TOTEM, SEPTEMBER 8TH 2009

Estimate 800,000— 1,200,000GBP

David Hockney

CHAIR WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN

Estimate 350,000— 450,000 USD

LOT SOLD. 700,000 USD

Christie's 2015

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Gregory in the Pool (Paper Pool 4)

PRICE REALIZED

£482,500

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Steps with Shadow

PRICE REALIZED

£818,500

Christie's 2014

David Hockney (b. 1937)

With Conversation

PRICE REALIZED

£1,650,500

(2007 -  PRICE REALIZED£602,400)

David Hockney (B. 1937)

Ravel's Garden 3

PRICE REALIZED

£578,500

Christie's 2013

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head from Thebes

PRICE REALIZED

£3,513,250

 

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Green Pool with Diving Board and Shadow

PRICE REALIZED

£881,250

Christie's 2010

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Hedgerow Near Kilham, October 2005

PRICE REALIZED

$662,500

Christie's 2009

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Beverly Hills Housewife

PRICE REALIZED

$7,922,500

David Hockney (b. 1937)

White Building and Clouds

PRICE REALIZED

$662,500

Christie's 2008

David Hockney (b. 1937)

A Table

PRICE REALIZED

£825,250

David Hockney (b. 1937)

Big Landscape (Medium)

PRICE REALIZED

£361,250

Sotheby's 2014

David Hockney

SELF PORTRAIT

Estimate 100,000— 150,000 GBP

LOT SOLD. 386,500 GBP
Sotheby's 2013

 

David Hockney 
Double East Yorkshire (1998) had been estimated to sell for $3.1 million to $4.6 million and went to another telephone bidder for $5.3 million.

Sotheby's 2012

David Hockney's ''Swimming Pool,'' painted in 1965, went for £2.5 million at Sotheby's in London, up from its 2007 price of £1.19 million.

Sotheby's 2011

David Hockney, Hotel L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime, 1968 (est. £1-1.5 million), 

 

Francis Picabia at Auction

February 11, 2016, 11:05 am

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Sotheby's 2016

Francis Picabia Ventilateur (circa1918) Estimate: £1,800,000-2,500,000

An exceptional example of Picabia’s rare and profoundly influential machinist compositions from his Dada period, in this work a ventilation machine is depicted as analogous with a potent female sexuality. The use of mechanical forms and the sensational associations they evoke were fundamental to the artist’s perception of art’s role in the modern, industrialised epoch.

Sotheby’s Surrealist Art Evening Sale 3rd February 2015

Francis Picabia
Lunaris
Oil, brush and ink and black crayon on panel 120 by 94.5cm; 471⁄4 by 371⁄4in.
Painted circa 1929
Est. £800,000 – 1.2 million 


Painted circa 1929, Lunaris is an exceptional example of Picabia's celebrated ‘Transparence’ paintings that Picabia executed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This series of works, which was a marked departure from the artist’s Dadist experiments of the previous decades, derived its name from the multiple layers of overlapping imagery that Picabia employed and is characterised by figurative images underpinned by a Classical beauty. 

The first owner of the present work was the influential French art dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879-1947) who greatly admired Picabia’s work and commissioned several paintings for his home. 

As the Museum of Modern Art, New York announced a major Picabia retrospective, scheduled for November 2016, the sale will present two other ‘Transparence’ paintings, including 

 
 Lunis, also from circa 1929, (est. £800,000- 1,200,000) 

and Espagnole et Agneau de l'Apocalypse, from circa 1927-1928 (est. £160,000-200,000).  

Christie’s London 2015: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale

Mid-Lent (Mi-Carême), painted in 1925, by Francis Picabia is one of the very few works from the artist’s important ‘Monsters’ series to remain in private hands (estimate: £1-1.5 million. It has been requested for inclusion in an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 2016 to April 2017. In the winter of 1924-5 Picabia began a series of paintings that deliberately ridiculed the rich socialites who celebrated carnival in Cannes during the winter season. Executed in the cheap brand of household enamel paint known as Ripolin, these paintings, famously dubbed by his friend and colleague Marcel Duchamp as the ‘Monsters’, were based on scenes from the masked balls of Cannes which were especially decadent and lavish at this time. The present canvas is one of the finest of this anti-art, anti-modernist and anti-classical series of paintings that epitomise Picabia’s unique and fiercely individualistic stance towards both life and art. His deliberately iconoclastic approach to painting and the carnival-like gaudiness of his technique were part of a radical and ground-breaking anti-modernist aesthetic that, though revolutionary and shocking in the 1920s, was to have a significant influence on many post-modernist approaches to painting in the 1970s and ‘80s, particularly upon the work of Sigmar Polke. Similarly, Picabia’s adoption of Ripolin and the free-flowing liberty this paint lent his work not only influenced Picasso, who used Ripolin from 1925 through to the end of his life, but can also can be seen to anticipate Jackson Pollock’s similar free-form use of the medium in the 1940s.

Christie's 2015

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Sans titre (Visage de femme)

PRICE REALIZED

$701,000

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Bord du loing à Moret, effet de soleil

PRICE REALIZED

€577,500

Christie's 2014

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Espagnole ou Femme à la mantille bleue

PRICE REALIZED

€373,500

Christie's 2013

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Jésus et le dauphin (Jesus and the Dolphin)

PRICE REALIZED

£457,250

Francis Picabia (1879-1973)

Janiria

PRICE REALIZED

£349,875

 
Christie's 2012

Francis Picabia (1878-1953)

Hera

PRICE REALIZED

£1,833,250

Christie's 2010

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Nerii   

PRICE REALIZED

£601,250

Christie's 2009

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Geminis

PRICE REALIZED

£385,250

Christie's 2008

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Mi

PRICE REALIZED

£1,364,500

Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Transparence (Deux têtes)

PRICE REALIZED

£246,500



Sotheby's 2015

Francis Picabia

LE PORT

LOT SOLD. 370,000 USD

Francis Picabia

PÉNICHES SUR LE LOING; EFFET DU MATIN

LOT SOLD. 514,000 USD

Francis Picabia

SOLEIL COUCHANT 

LOT SOLD. 175,000 USD

Sotheby's 2014

Francis Picabia

TRANSPARENCE (FEMME)

Estimate 180,000— 250,000 USD

Sotheby's 2013

Francis Picabia

LES PINS, EFFET DE SOLEIL À SAINT-HONORAT (CANNES)

LOT SOLD. 1,565,000 USD

Francis Picabia

IDA

Estimate250,000 — 350,000USD

Francis Picabia

COMPOSITION ABSTRAITE

Estimate

400,000— 600,000

USD

Van Gogh’s Bedrooms

February 11, 2016, 12:01 pm

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Van Gogh’s Bedrooms Features Thirty-six Paintings, Drawings, and Illustrated Letters by the Artist Accompanied by an Interactive Digital Experience

Vincent van Gogh’s painting of his bedroom in Arles is arguably the most famous chambre in the history of art. So important was this composition that Van Gogh made three distinct versions and considered it his finest painting. Now, for the first time in North America, all three versions of the painting will be together in an exhibition titled Van Gogh’s Bedrooms at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Opening on February 14, 2016, the exhibition is the first ever dedicated to the Bedroom paintings,
presenting an in-depth study of documentary, scientific, and physical evidence pertaining to all three versions. Beginning with Van Gogh’s early canvases of cottages and birds’ nests, the show explores the artist’s use of the motif of home as a haven, creative chamber, and physical reality. 

Enhancing the exploration of the artist’s artworks and his longing for a place of his own are several engaging interactive technologies designed in partnership with Bluecadet. 

A digitally enhanced reconstruction of his bedroom allows visitors the chance to experience the physical reality of the space that so inspired him, while other enriching digital components bring to light significant recent scientific research on the three Bedroom paintings. 

An illustrated exhibition catalog with a lead essay from Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture and David and Mary Winton Green Curator, will be published by the Art Institute of Chicago in partnership with Yale University Press. 

Vincent van Gogh. The Bedroom. 1889. The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.

Vincent van Gogh. Self–Portrait. 1887. The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection.

Vincent van Gogh. The Bedroom, 1889. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, sold to national museums under the Treaty of Peace with Japan, 1959.

Vincent van Gogh. The Bedroom, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).


Vincent van Gogh. Eugène Boch. 1888. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, legacy of Mr. Eugène Boch, 1941.


Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin’s Chair. 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

Vincent van Gogh. The Lover (Portrait of Lieutenant Milliet). Late September-early October 1888. KM 102.392. Kröller–Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands.

Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh's Chair, 1888. The National Gallery, London, Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1924.

Vincent van Gogh. A Pair of Boots. 1887. The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, BMA, 1950.302. Photography by: Mitro Hood.

Vincent van Gogh. Parisian Novels. 1887. Private Collection.


Vincent van Gogh. The Poet’s Garden. 1888. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection.


Vincent van Gogh. Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La Berceuse) 1889. The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.

Vincent van Gogh. Corridor in the Asylum. 1889. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1948.

Vincent van Gogh. Thatched–Roofed Cottages of Jorgus. 1890. Private Collection.




Vincent van Gogh. Self–Portrait. 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney.

Rhythm and Roots: Dance in American Art

February 12, 2016, 8:52 am

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Detroit Institute of Arts March 20-June 12, 2016

Denver Art Museum  July 10–Oct. 2, 2016
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas October 22, 2016-January 16, 2017

Rhythm and Roots: Dance in American Art will present how artists, dancers and choreographers helped form the artistic identity of dance in America. The exhibition will feature about 90 paintings, photographs, sculptures and costumes relating to American dance from 1830 to 1960.



Rhythm and Roots: Dance in American Art will showcase works by American artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, focused on addressing the first influences in American dance, how it evolved over time and how the distinct traditions of American dance came to be. The exhibition will also use objects to demonstrate the dialog between visual artists, dancers and choreographers. Multi-media features such as video, music and interactive spaces will bring to life the dynamic spectacle of motion and performance through art.

Rhythm and Roots: Dance in American Art introduces how dance evolves from the private sphere to the public stage, showcasing new American dances and dance in the club.

The exhibition brings together the greatest nineteenth-century American artists including John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt; spotlights the superstars of the Harlem Renaissance including Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, and James Van Der Zee and features the artists who shaped the aesthetics of modern dance including Isamu Noguchi, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol.  

The exhibition includes 19th-century paintings that portray dances from America’s diverse communities, from the sacred dances of indigenous North Americans to Irish jigs and Spanish flamencos; paintings that show class distinctions, from the refined quadrille to a sidewalk tarantella; pastoral fantasies of expressive dances performed outdoors; paintings from the turn of the 20th century featuring international female superstars; works by Harlem Renaissance artists who challenged negative stereotypes and sought to create and sustain a vibrant cultural identity; and modern objects that demonstrate a fluid dialogue between visual artists, dancers and choreographers.

- See more at: http://www.dia.org/calendar/exhibition.aspx?id=5396&iid=#sthash.76BMEUJM.dpuf

The exhibition explores the concept of the stage through artists’ historic fascination with and depiction of performers. Pieces featuring iconic American dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Katherine Dunham, Fred Astaire and Josephine Baker are included in the exhibition, as well as Spanish dancer Carmencita Dauset Moreno and Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova painted by American artists.

The exhibition brings together the greatest nineteenth-century American artists including John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt; spotlights the superstars of the Harlem Renaissance including Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, and James Van Der Zee and features the artists who shaped the aesthetics of modern dance including Isamu Noguchi, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol.  

The exhibition includes 19th-century paintings that portray dances from America’s diverse communities, from the sacred dances of indigenous North Americans to Irish jigs and Spanish flamencos; paintings that show class distinctions, from the refined quadrille to a sidewalk tarantella; pastoral fantasies of expressive dances performed outdoors; paintings from the turn of the 20th century featuring international female superstars; works by Harlem Renaissance artists who challenged negative stereotypes and sought to create and sustain a vibrant cultural identity; and modern objects that demonstrate a fluid dialogue between visual artists, dancers and choreographers.

- See more at: http://www.dia.org/calendar/exhibition.aspx?id=5396&iid=#sthash.76BMEUJM.dpuf

The exhibition concludes with the convergence of artistry between visual artists and dancers where individuals like Diego Rivera and Andy Warhol collaborated with dance companies such as the American Ballet.

“The relationship between two forms of creative expression, dance and art, and the boundless commotion of rhythm and movement is captured through this dance exhibition,” said Daneo. “The artists’ ability to capture fleeting moments through a painting or a sculpture and their fascination with this subject will show how dance as an art form was and still is a vital part of American life and a constant source of inspiration.”

Rhythm and Roots: Dance in American Art has been organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts.

La Carmencita

John Singer Sargent, 1890, oil on canvas. Paris, musée d'Orsay. RF7 46

The Harvest Dance

Joseph Henry Sharp, 1893-1894, oil on canvas. Cincinnati Art Museum, Museum Purchase, 1894.10

Capri Girl on a Rooftop

John Singer Sargent, 1878, oil on canvas. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

Ruth St. Denis in the Peacock Dance

Robert Cozad Henri, 1919, oil on canvas. Gift of the Sameric Corporation in memory of Eric Shapiro

Salome Dancer

Robert Cozad Henri, 1909, oil on canvas. Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Museum Purchase,1973.6

The Bear Dance

Willliam Holbrook Beard, ca. 1870, oil on linen. Courtesy of The New-York Historical Society, Gift of Enoch G. Megrue, 1942.108

Youth

Arthur Frank Mathews, ca. 1917, oil on canvas. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, Gift of Concours d'Antiques, the Art Guild. A66.196.24

The Green Ballet

Everett Shinn, 1943, oil on canvas. The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA ,Gift of the William A. Coulter Fund. 1958.35

Dance of the Haymakers

William Sidney Mount, 1845, oil on canvas mounted on wood. The Long Island Museum of American Art, History &Carriages. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward Melville, 1950

The Charleston

Frank Myers, 1926, oil on canvas. The Irvine Museum

Jitterbugs (II)

William H. Johnson, ca. 1941, oil on paperboard. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation. 1967.59.611

Carmencita

William Merritt Chase, 1890, oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Sir William Van Horne. 1906.06.969

Bull Dance

George Catlin Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony, 1832, oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.505

Study for ‘Negro Boy Dancing': The Banjo Player

Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins, 1877, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.16

The Jolly Flatboatmen

George Caleb Bingham, 1846, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Patrons' Permanent Fund. 2015.18.1

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Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950

February 15, 2016, 10:49 am

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Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950

October 25, 2016-January 8, 2017

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in partnership with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, will present a landmark exhibition that takes a new and long overdue look at an extraordinary moment in the history of Mexican art. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950 will explore the rich and fascinating story of a period of remarkable change. It will be the most comprehensive exhibition of Mexican modernism to be seen in the United States in more than seven decades and will feature an extraordinary range of images, from portable murals and large and small paintings to prints and photographs, books and broadsheets. In this country, Paint the Revolution, will be seen only in Philadelphia before traveling to Mexico City in 2017.

Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and CEO, Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “The contributions of Mexico during this period are central to the development of modern art, and yet its achievements have been largely understood through the work of a small group of great talents, among them Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, along with Frida Kahlo and Rufino Tamayo. In this exhibition, visitors will be introduced to these artists through the presentation of many of their finest works, but also, and more importantly, to the broader panorama of Mexican art during this period and the historical context in which the visual arts played an enormously important role. We are especially grateful for our partnership with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, without which it would not be possible to have organized an exhibition of such depth.”

Miguel Fernández Félix, Director of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, stated: “The exhibition will present this fascinating story in unprecedented detail and will benefit from the work of a young generation of scholars who have broken new ground in their research. Together with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has long been dedicated to the acquisition and display of modern Mexican art, we are pleased to expand the public’s understanding of this important era, including its broader connections to both Europe and the United States. Visitors will witness a spectacular range of work by artists who are well known in Mexico but who will become fresh discoveries for most Americans.”

Paint the Revolution spans four momentous decades. It will begin by surveying modern art in Mexico City during the revolutionary decade of the 1910s, clearly demonstrating that while many artists engaged with international avant-garde styles, such as Impressionism, Symbolism, and Cubism, they also infused their work with facets of ancient and modern Mexican culture. The exhibition will also explore the artistic experimentation and social idealism of the early post-Revolutionary period, when painters rallied to support the government’s program of national reconstruction and there was growing international recognition of Mexico’s cultural importance. It will also consider the principal avant-garde groups—such as the Stridentists and the Contemporaries—active in Mexico City during this period who pursued alternative directions in post-revolutionary culture, turning away from folkloric and historical subjects and focusing on themes of modern urban life.

In the 1920s and 1930s the development of a vibrant support network and a robust market for modern art in the United States drew Mexican artists northward. The exhibition will follow a number of Mexican painters during their American sojourns, highlighting images with both Mexican and U.S. themes, and focusing on works that dramatized the encounter between south and north, between Hispano- and Anglo-America. Paint the Revolution will conclude with the renewal of socially and politically oriented art in Mexico from the mid-1930s through the aftermath of the Second World War.

The exhibition takes its title from an essay called Paint the Revolution by the American novelist John Dos Passos who traveled to Mexico City in 1926-27 and witnessed the murals created by Diego Rivera that celebrate the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. In order to represent Mexican muralism and share with visitors masterpieces by Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, the exhibition will present in digital form three important murals created by these three artists—often called los tres grandes (the three great ones)—in Mexico and the United States.

This exhibition is curated by a team of specialists including Matthew Affron, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art; Mark A. Castro, Project Assistant Curator, European Painting, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Dafne Cruz Porchini, Postdoctoral Researcher, Colegio de México, Mexico City; and Renato González Mello, Director of the Institute for Aesthetic Investigation, National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Matthew Affron stated: “Paint the Revolution will touch on all aspects of modern art in Mexico. Though the mural painting tradition remains that country’s best-known contribution to modernism in the visual arts, it is part of a much broader story. Artists were innovating in every possible medium, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. Their work cut across all classifications, from the epic to the lyric. Visitors to the exhibition will find many surprises.”

Location

Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Itinerary

Paint the Revolution will travel to the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City,in 2017.

Publication

Paint the Revolution will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue, published in English and Spanish editions, which offers a comprehensive treatment of Mexican art during four decades that transformed the country’s cultural life and marked its emergence as a widely watched center for modern art. Published jointly by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (with the English version distributed by Yale University Press), this richly illustrated publication will present full-color reproductions of the works in the exhibition as well as fourteen essays that contain a wealth of new research, by Mexican and U.S. scholars, on mural and easel painting, printmaking, photography, film, and architecture; diverse artists’ groups; and the involvement of the Mexican state in culture during this rich period. It promises to become the text of record for this subject.

Images in the Exhibition:

 

Peasants, c. 1913. David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican, 1896 ‑ 1974. Pastel on paper, Museo Nacional de Arte, INBA

Sunrise Over the Mountains, c. 1916. Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), Mexican, 1875 ‑ 1964. Atl color on cardboard, Museo Regional de Guadalajara, INBA

Portrait of Martín Luis Guzmán, 1915. José Diego María Rivera, Mexican, 1886‑1957. Oil on canvas, Fundación Televisa Collection 

Liberation of the Peon, 1931. José Diego María Rivera, Mexican, 1886 ‑ 1957. Fresco, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Cameron Morris, 1943, © 2014 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Zapata, 1931. David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican, 1896 ‑ 1974. Lithograph, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund from the Carl and Laura Zigrosser Collection, 1976. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOMAAP, Mexico City

Proletarian Hand, 1932. Leopoldo Méndez, Mexican, 1902- 1969, Wood engraving, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Anne d'Harnoncourt in memory of Sarah Carr d'Harnoncourt, 2003

My Dress Hangs There ( Mi vestido cuelga ahi), 1933‑1938. Frida Kahlo, Mexican, 1907‑1954. Oil and collage on masonite, Colección FEMSA

George Gershwin in a Concert Hall, 1936. David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican, 1896–1974, Oil on canvas, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Mexico City, 1949. Juan O’Gorman, Mexican, 1905‑1982. Tempera on masonite, Acervo CONACULTA ‑ INBA, Museo de Arte Moderno

Mauritshuis Exhibition: In and Out of Storage

February 16, 2016, 8:41 am

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 The store rooms of the museum are off limits to the public. This might make you curious. What paintings are stored there? How did they end up there? Why aren’t they hanging in the museum? And do they really hold unknown treasures, as is often thought to be the case? 4 February - 8 May 2016 the exhibition In and Out of Storage answers these questions and, for the first time, acquaints visitors with this invisible part of the collection of the Mauritshuis.

Mauritshuis Collection

The collection of the Mauritshuis is not only coherent and manageable in size, but also quite visible. Of the approximately 850 pieces in the collection, some 250 are on permanent display in the Mauritshuis itself, another 150 are exhibited in the Prince William V Gallery, and an additional 150 are on long-term loan to museums in the Netherlands and abroad. Only 300 artworks – not many, in comparison with other collections – are kept in storage. Even so, it’s a pity that these store-room pieces are seldom if ever on view.

Exhibition: In and Out of Storage. Foto: Ivo Hoekstra

Behind the scenes

Visitors to the exhibition will gain access to the inner workings of the Mauritshuis, where storage - the repository for items in the collection that for various reasons cannot be displayed to the public – plays a key role. The paintings selected for this exhibition will illuminate this aspect of museum practice. A representative selection of twenty-five paintings will be presented in groups. The central question is always: why are those works not on display in the galleries?

Quality

The Mauritshuis has high standards with regard to the quality of the works exhibited, owing to the limited space in the museum and the fact that the collection contains so many first-rate pieces. Paintings that would be displayed without a second thought in other museums are forced to remain in storage, because there’s simply no room for them in the Mauritshuis. They are often used as spares, the so-called reserve bench; they make an appearance when an artwork in the permanent display is sent for conservation or given on loan to an exhibition. Some artists are so well represented in the collection that a choice must be made. A good example is the productive landscape painter Jan van Goyen, by whom the Mauritshuis owns no fewer than eight works, only one of which is currently considered good enough to hang in the museum. Five Van Goyens, including the work normally on display, are included in the exhibition, so that visitors may decide for themselves if they agree with the curator’s choice.

Some paintings never leave storage, because they are hardly worth seeing. In some cases, we don’t even know how they even came to be in the collection. Now and then a donation or bequest allows a work to slip in that the museum would really rather not have.

 

Anonymous (Northern Netherlands)
Old Man with Tankard and Pipe, c.1660-1670? Oil on panel
Gift of L. Nardus, Arnouville 1906
31 x 24.5 cm
Inv.nr. 701

An Old Man with Tankard and Pipe by an anonymous Dutch painter of the seventeenth century was donated in 1906 by the charismatic, but deceitful art dealer Leo Nardus, who probably intended, through this and other gifts, to build up a good relationship with the Mauritshuis. However, the panel cannot be said to enrich the collection.

Royal Mistake

Sometimes a celebrated purchase later reveals itself to be a ‘royal’ mistake. In 1821 King William I acquired a collection for the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis that included works by great masters such as Raphael, Titian and Velázquez. Unfortunately it turned out to be a collection of inferior works that would quickly be sold on. One of the few paintings that did remain in the Mauritshuis was a highly optimistic attribution to Raphael.

 

Anonymous (Italy)
Female Figure (A goddess?), c.1500-1550? Oil on leather (later mounted on canvas) Acquisition, 1821
67.5 x 51.3 cm
Inv.nr. 349

This Female Figure is now thought to be the work of an anonymous Italian artist and the painting has not left storage for many years. The artwork had initially been selected for this exhibition to illustrate a low point in our holdings, but it suddenly proved to be much more interesting than expected. In fact, technical research has shown – to the delight of specialists in this field – that it is one of the earliest surviving examples of a figure piece on gilt leather.

Misfits

The heart of the Mauritshuis’s collection consists of Dutch and Flemish paintings of the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Artworks that do not fit into this core area usually remain in storage, even if they are of high quality. This is the case, for example, with  

 

Bury, Friedrich
Amor Triumphant, in or before 1806
Oil on canvas
Gift of Queen Frederika Louise Wilhelmina, wife of King Willem I, before 1837
152 x 121 cm
Inv.nr. 272

Amor Triumphant by the German painter Friedrich Bury, a beautiful example of early nineteenth-century classicism. Also, It might come as a surprise to many visiting the exhibition that a piece by the famous American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is among the art from the store rooms. It is a portrait of Princess Beatrix, the former Dutch queen. In 1987, this silk-screen print was hung in the underground entrance lobby. The artwork was not only a modern way of complying with the practice of hanging a portrait of the ruling monarch in a government building, but also a reference to the royal provenance of many of the paintings in the museum’s collection. In 2000, a passageway was created in this place to facilitate the flow of visitors, with the result that the portrait ended up in storage – many years before the queen’s abdication.

Too Large

The Mauritshuis was built as a private residence, not as a museum. This explains the intimate character of the rooms, where there is little space for large works. Apart from a few exceptions, such as Paulus Potter’s The Bull, the collection therefore consists of paintings of modest dimensions.

Weenix, Jan
Dead Swan, c.1700-1719 Oil on canvas Acquisition, 1821
245.5 x 294 cm

In 1821, however, the museum acquired a monumental still life of a dead swan by Jan Weenix. At the time, it was praised by the seller as a worthy pendant to The Bull. In those days it was common to hang paintings close together, arranged according to size. But ideas about presentation have changed since then, and Weenix’s dead swan has not been on display for some time, owing to lack of space. The Mauritshuis is therefore looking for another museum that can accommodate this oversized canvas, since it has long been museum policy to give works on long-term loan to institutions with more suitable places to show them.

Too Many

Not only their format but also their number can influence the decision whether to hang artworks or keep them in storage. Between 1611 and 1624, the Hague painter Jan van Ravesteyn and his studio produced twenty-four portraits of officers in the army of the stadholder, Prince Maurits. The series was completed with a twenty-fifth portrait, executed by the otherwise unknown painter Fransise de Goltz. Since the seventeenth century, the series had hung in Honselaersdijk Palace, one of the stadholder’s country estates. The portraits ended up – but not all at the same time – at the Mauritshuis, where they initially lay gathering dust in the attic, until they were rediscovered in 1875. Because there were so many of them, they have never been exhibited as a series in the Mauritshuis. In the course of the twentieth century, a number of these portraits were given on long-term loan to other museums and government institutions. Of those remaining in the Mauritshuis, only two are normally on display. This is regrettable, since there are few surviving examples of such an extensive portrait series. For the first time since the eighteenth century, all of the officers have been called up for active duty in ‘Prince Maurits’s army’ – for the duration of the exhibition.

Exhibition: In and Out of Storage. Photo: Ivo Hoekstra

Poor condition

Behind the scenes at the museum, the store rooms are indispensable as a repository of paintings that cannot be shown to the public for various reasons: because they are totally lacking in quality, for example, or just not quite good enough, or unsuited to the collection, or too large or too numerous. Another reason for keeping paintings in storage: their poor or problematic condition, however the store room does not have to be a cul de sac. After restoration, for example, some paintings can be reinstated at in the permanent presentation.

An example of a painting in poor condition is the Portrait of a Man by the painter Karel Slabbaert of Zeeland. It hung in less than ideal conditions for many years in the then Dutch East Indies. Among other problems, the extreme climate caused the painting’s paint layer to crack dramatically. Any restoration of this panel would have had to be quite invasive, and anyway, there were other priorities, so we decided several years ago only to conserve and not to restore this painting – at least for the time being.

Front and Back

A masterly example of modern framing techniques has made it possible to put the colourful painting The Baptism of the Chamberlain of Queen Candace of Ethiopia on display once again. It is painted on a large panel consisting of six horizontal planks. The wood had warped over time and the panel, which no longer fitted its frame, had been standing on its side in storage for fifteen years. several years ago, our conservators put it into a new frame with the help of the Belgian panel expert Jean-Albert Glatigny. How they managed this can be seen at the exhibition, where both front and back of the panel are visible. Meanwhile we also learned more about the makers of the painting. It used to be attributed to the German artist Hans Rottenhammer, but it is probably a collaborative work by the Flemish painters Hendrik van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Younger, in which Van Balen painted the figures and Brueghel executed the landscape.

Surprises

 

Bol, Hans
Imaginary Landscape with St. John on Patmos,
1564
Watercolour on canvas
Acquisition with the support of Rembrandt Association and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, 1972

 

A trawl through the works in storage sometimes even offers up surprises for the curators, who are very familiar with the collection. Some paintings that were removed from public display and subsequently disappeared from view now appear to fit in beautifully with the permanent presentation. Imaginary Landscape with Saint John on Patmos, painted by the Flemish artist Hans Bol in 1564, is thought to be one of the earliest landscapes in large format. With the recent acquisition of a mountainous landscape by Paul Bril and a flower still life by Ludger tom Ring the Younger, the Mauritshuis now has more examples of sixteenth-century predecessors of such genres as landscape and still life, which were to become very popular in the seventeenth century. This led to the decision to frame this exceptional painting by Hans Bol after all, so after the exhibition it can be returned to the permanent display.

Velde, Esaias van de
Merry Company in a Park, 1614 Oil on panel
Acquisition, 1873
28.5 x 40 cm
Inv.nr. 199

Merry Company in a Park of 1614 by Esaias van de Velde, a painter active in Haarlem, is now also available for a place in the museum. Its yellowed layer of varnish had made it unfit for display, but its splendid colours and fluent brushwork are clearly visible again, since its recent restoration. During the restoration, research carried out on the materials and technique revealed that Esaias van de Velde had made quite a few changes while painting. For example, the old woman at left, behind the chair, was initially planned as an elegantly dressed young woman, and the standing woman in the yellow dress was first holding a bird rather than a fan.

Visitors’ Choice

The Mauritshuis has carefully selected fifty-two artworks for the exhibition, but one space will be left vacant when it opens its doors on 4 February. We are leaving the choice of painting to be taken from storage and displayed in the empty spot to our visiting public.  We will use social media outlets to ask: What would you choose? Which painting do you think deserves to be brought out of storage?

There will be three rounds of voting, each with a choice of six paintings. The first round will be open until 7 February. The painting that receives the most votes will be put on display in the exhibition space in mid-February. Voting will continue and the public will then be able to choose another work to be put on display.. In total there will be three public favourites on display for the duration of the exhibition (until 8 May). The painting with the most votes overall will take a spot in the Mauritshuis’s permanent exhibition. Voting can take place via www.mauritshuis.nl/visitors-choice or via the iPad in the exhibition.

Visitors’ Choice. Photo: Ivo Hoekstra

Master of the Salomon triptych,
Triptych with the Life Story of Solomon, in or after 1521
Oil on panel
Bequest of Jonkheer Jacob de Witte van Citters, The Hague, 1876
107.5 x 77 cm

 

Water Water Everywhere - Kraushaar Galleries: Demuth. Sloan, Avery, Glackens, Hopper

February 19, 2016, 8:03 am

≫ Next: Works by Maurice Utrillo, Eugéne Boudin, Jasper Francis Cropsey: Clars February 21st Sale

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Kraushaar Galleries

15 East 71st Street, #2B
New York, NY 10021

Friday, February 19 - Friday, April 15, 2016

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 Water Water Everywhere features a diverse group of American artists who found inspiration from their surroundings that, in these instances, include water.   

            The earliest works are from 1894.  Robert Henri sketched Breton women along the canal in Concarneau, France and John Sloan etched the Schuylkill River, in which he “went out and drew directly from nature on the waxed plate, then came back to the studio to do the biting.”

            The Massachusetts coastline is captured in 1915 by 

Charles Demuth’s fluid watercolor of beaches at Provincetown 

and by Sloan’s rugged Gloucester rocks, The Popples, 1917. 

The same locale is the subject for Milton Avery’s 1945 view of Roosting Seagulls in Lavender Sea.  

William Glackens’ The Headlands, Rockport, 1936 is a sophisticated and vibrant multi-figure composition.  

The rocks, boats  and islands in the Maine waters are transformed through the Modernist visions of John Marin, William Kienbusch, John Heliker and Karl Schrag.

            The urban waters of New York City are seen in drawings of the Central Park Lake by Edward Hopper 


and Gifford Beal.  

In 1934 Dorothy Dehner drew Governors’ Island and the Statue of Liberty from the Brooklyn Promenade and ten years later Joseph Stella also found inspiration in Brooklyn, looking towards another East River crossing, the Williamsburg Bridge. 

Carl Holty’s 1943 painting of the New York Harbor breaks down the subject in a Cubist-like fashion of cool blue and grey hues.

Works by Maurice Utrillo, Eugéne Boudin, Jasper Francis Cropsey: Clars February 21st Sale

February 19, 2016, 8:47 am

≫ Next: Swann Galleries 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, March 8: Homer, Whistler, Lewis, Haper, Wood, benton, Marsh

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The oil on canvas titled, “Eglise de Chatou” by Maurice Utrillo (French, 1883-1955)is a classic example of the artist’s work. Utrillo was known for painting Parisian street scenes, as well as the countryside encompassing the city as his subject matter. His unique style of using bold, rich colors with strong black contours have made his landscapes of buildings and streets most desirable among collectors. Accompanied by impeccable letters of authenticity, this painting will be offered at $60,000-90,000.

Another important French artist is seascape painter, Eugène Boudin (French, 1824-1898). Boudin became known for his marine scenes with figures and boats along the French shores and is considered one of the earlier French plein-air Impressionist painters. The oil on panel titled, “Beach Scene,” also estimated at $60,000-90,000, epitomizes Boudin’s delicate brush strokes and atmospheric style.

The artist Albert Marquet (French, 1875-1947) continued in the tradition of Impressionism after Boudin. Marquet often painted views of the Seine in Paris, as well as the harbors of Rouen, Le Havre and Marseilles. His scenes were depicted with a light palette of grey and black brushstrokes with subtle hints of color that conveyed a rainy or misty atmosphere often with reflections on the water. One such example that will be offered at Clars on February 21^st is his oil on canvas titled, “Boat Basin,” estimated at $30,000-50,000.

Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, 1823-1900) was one of the most respected painters of the Hudson River School, a 19th century American art movement led by a group of landscape artists whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism and the meticulous beauty of nature in the Northeastern United States. Cropsey was one of the elite first generation masters of this group with his richly colored canvases depicting the season he favored most as his subject matter – Autumn. The bucolic fall scene painting of birds in flight titled “Mallards on the River (1886),” will be offered for $40,000-60,000. Clars would also like to thank the generosity of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in New York for recently authenticating this painting.

Edward Moran’s (American, 1829-1901), ”A Shipwreck (1860),” is another important 19^th century American painting that will be offered for $20,000-40,000. Listed in the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), this dramatic seascape has both important museum as well as gallery provenance making this an ideal acquisition of the genre.

Always a favorite, Clars is once again pleased to offer four paintings by Wolf Kahn (American/German, b. 1927). The largest of the works is an oil on canvas titled, “Bullock Farm (1977),” an impressive and vibrant landscape by the artist which carries an estimate of $25,000-35,000.

An early painting titled, “Julie London with Orange,” by California photo-realist, Ralph Goings (American, b. 1928) will be offered at $20,000-40,000. A gift to the current owner from the artist, his bright and playful piece from the 1960s will surely attract admirers.

Swann Galleries 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, March 8: Homer, Whistler, Lewis, Haper, Wood, benton, Marsh

February 22, 2016, 10:07 am

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On Tuesday, March 8, Swann Galleries will offer 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, featuring works by recognizable European masters and prominent American printmakers.

            The sale is headlined by Winslow Homer’s serene Fly Fishing, Saranac Lake, 1889. Fly Fishing was made in the same year Homer abandoned etching, making it likely his last etching, as well as his most experimental. The print is estimated at $80,000 to $120,000. 

            Homer was inspired to create fine prints by James A. M. Whistler’s “Etching Revival,” and this sale features some of those Whistler works as well, including Nocturne: Palaces, etching and drypoint, 1879-80, a scarce etching that typifies the artist’s painterly technique of inking and wiping to make unique impressions. 

Whistler’s Quiet Canal, etching and drypoint, 1879-80, from his second set of Venice etchings, is also included. Nocturne: Palaces is estimated at $70,000 to $100,000, and Quiet Canal at $30,000 to $50,000.

             

Works by other American printmakers include Martin Lewis’s 1930 drypoint and sand-ground Shadow Dance ($30,000 to $50,000). The market for prints by Lewis has seen an upswing in recent years, and last November Swann set a record for the artist when a print sold for $72,500. 

Edward Hopper began making etchings and drypoints with the help of Lewis; Hopper’s Night Shadows, etching, 1921 is also in the sale ($25,000 to $35,000). 

Several pieces by Regionalist artist Grant Wood are in the sale, including Sultry Night, a 1939 lithograph, and the only nude to be represented by a regionalist artist ($15,000 to $20,000). 

Other Regionalists represented include Thomas Hart Benton, who captures motion and drama with The Race, lithograph, 1942 ($15,000 to $20,000), 

while the Social realists are represented by Reginald Marsh, whose Tattoo­–Shave–Haircut, etching, 1932, depicts a scene beneath the El on the Bowery ($20,000 to $30,000). 

            Featured prominent European artists include Henri Matisse’s La Danse, a color aquatint, 1935-1936, based on Matisse’s maquette for an early iteration of a mural commissioned by Albert C. Barnes in 1930 ($60,000 to $90,000).   

Pablo Picasso’s Buste au corsage à carreaux, a 1957 lithograph,

and Jeunesse, a lithograph from 1950, are estimated at $40,000 to $60,000 and $30,000 to $50,000. 

These and several other Picasso prints are featured alongside Picasso ceramics, including Bearded Man’s Wife, a partially glazed terre de faïence turned pitcher, 1953 ($20,000 to $30,000). 

Georges Seurat’s only known lithograph, Torse d’homme, vu de dos, is an intimate image likely made by transferring one of his crayon drawings onto a lithographic stone ($20,000 to $30,000). 

            Bright works from Joan Miró, including Le Matador, color etching, drypoint, aquatint and carborundum, 1969, add pops of color to the sale ($30,000 to $50,000). 

Color and line play delicately in Wassily Kandinsky’s Lithographie Blau, color lithograph, 1922, 

contrasting with the bold and whimsical use of color in Marc Chagall’s color lithograph, Mounting the Ebony Horse, 1948 (both $15,000 to $20,000 each). 

Salvador Dalí’s The Mythology, a complete set of 16 drypoints with aquatint, 1960-64, shows the artist’s unique eye applied to classical subject matter ($30,000 to $50,000). 

The auction will be held Tuesday, March 8, beginning at 10:30 a.m. The auction preview will be open to the public throughout Amory Week, with the exhibition open Thursday and Friday, March 3 & 4 from 10 am to 6 pm; Saturday, March 5 from noon to 5 pm; and Monday, March 7 from 10 am to 6 pm.; and by appointment.

An illustrated auction catalogue will be available for $40 from Swann Galleries, Inc., 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, or online at www.swanngalleries.com.

Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910

February 27, 2016, 7:15 am

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Large-scale exhibition at Van Gogh Museum in collaboration with Musée d’Orsay.

Easy Virtue will run from 19 February to 19 June 2016 at the Van Gogh Museum. The exhibition, organised in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, explores the depiction of prostitution in French art in the period 1850–1910. It is the first time that the subject has been highlighted at a major exhibition. The first showing at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris under the title Splendeurs et Misères attracted nearly 420,000 visitors.

Easy Virtue at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will now examine how the theme of prostitution was dealt with by a variety of artists. Over 100 paintings and works on paper by more than 40 different artists can be admired, including big names like Van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso. The exhibits include loans from international museums and private collections, the vast majority of which have never been shown before in the Netherlands. Interesting historical items also feature, such as a police record, pornographic photographs, a 19th-century ornamental bed and a whip belonging to a famous courtesan.

Prostitution was a favourite theme in visual art in the second half of the 19th century. Inspired by Baudelaire’s dictum that art should represent modern life, artists depicted prostitution as an aspect of contemporary urban life in Paris. They painted women soliciting on the boulevards, wealthy courtesans in their salons, and worn-down prostitutes in brothels. It was a topical theme, reflecting frequent social debates about the dangers of prostitution and the benefits and drawbacks of regulation.  
Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910 examines what it was that drew artists to this complex and sensitive subject between the Second Empire and the belle époque. The exhibition shows the world of Paris prostitutes as recorded by a variety of painters and draughtsmen: a world of contrasts, of luxury, make-up and glamour, but also of poverty, disease and misery.

Unique and for the first time in the Netherlands This is the first time that the theme of prostitution has been examined in such detail in an exhibition. Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910 comprises over 150 objects, including more than 100 paintings, works on paper, sculpture and decorative art. There are striking and famous masterpieces by big names like Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Kees van Dongen, František Kupka and Vincent van Gogh, as well as works by lesser-known artists such as Louis Anquetin, Henri Gervex, Jean Béraud, Félicien Rops and Auguste Chabaud. High-level visual art is complemented in Easy Virtue by photographs, books, magazine illustrations and intriguing and curious objects like pornographic photographs, a police record with photos of arrested prostitutes, a gilded and decorated ornamental bed, and the whip that belonged to the celebrated courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne.

Visitors to the exhibition will be transported from the dance-halls and cafés where women picked up their clients, to the closed world of the brothel and of prison, where illegal prostitutes and women suffering from venereal disease were incarcerated. Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910 has been designed by Clement & Sanôu – an Amsterdam duo known for their costume, lighting and set designs for opera, ballet and theatre, including the Dutch National Ballet’s recent Mata Hari.

Uncertainty and ambiguity

Easy Virtue is organised around four themed ‘chapters’. The exhibition begins with Uncertainty and ambiguity, which shows how painters visualised prostitution in the public space. Prostitution was legalised in France in the early 19th century. It was viewed as a necessary evil, which had to be controlled and hidden away as much as possible in order to protect public morals and to counter the spread of venereal disease. Street prostitution was only permitted in the evening (after l’heure du gaz when the gaslights were lit) and for prostitutes who were registered with the police. Many women also worked illegally, however. Prostitutes were not always readily distinguishable from ‘respectable’ women in the street or when out and about at night. Artists incorporated subtle references to this ambiguity in their paintings, using colours, poses, meaningful looks or the interaction between their figures.

The most important works in Uncertainty and ambiguity are:

• Woman on the Champs-Elysées at Night, 1890–91 by Louis Anquetin (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, acquired with the support of BankGiro Loterij and the Rembrandt Association), 

• Edgar Degas, Absinthe, 1875–6, oil on canvas, 36 ¼ × 27 in., Paris, Musée d’Orsay

• Moulin de la Galette, 1889 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (The Art Institute of Chicago),

• Study for ‘Flirt’ (The Englishman in the Moulin Rouge), 1892 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (The Metropolitan Museum, New York)

• Waiting, c. 1885 by Jean Béraud (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

The Splendour of the Courtesans

The chapter The Splendour of the Courtesans shows how courtesans were depicted in art. These expensive escorts and stars of haute prostitution often began their career on stage or as ‘ordinary’ prostitutes. Having risen to prominence by sharing the beds of rich men and politicians, they enjoyed a certain status and flaunted their social success by having their portraits made in paintings, sculptures and photographs, which they spread as widely as they could. The flamboyant courtesan was worshipped in the theatre, followed by the press and was even a trendsetter when it came to fashion.

One of the most famous courtesans was La Païva (1819–1884). Born Thérèse Lachmann into a poor Jewish family in Moscow, she moved to Paris, where she climbed the ladder to become the most successful courtesan of the 19th century. She was renowned for the extravagant parties and dinners she held for the Paris beau monde, which were regularly attended by politicians, noblemen and writers like Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola. Several pieces of furniture from her house can be seen at Easy Virtue. There is also a 19th-century gilded bed, decorated with a figure of Leda and the swan and little angels, which probably belonged to a courtesan or came from one of the many brothels in Paris.

The most important works in The Splendour of the Courtesans are:

• Charles Carolus-Duran, Portrait of Julia Tahl known as Mademoiselle Alice de Lancey, 1876, Oil on canvas, 60 × 83 in. (152.5 × 211 cm) Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris

• Rolla, 1878 by Henri Gervex (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) 

• The Thorny Path (The Courtesan’s Carriage or The Modern Courtesan), 1873 by Thomas Couture (Philadelphia Museum of Art).

At the Brothel: from Anticipation to Seduction

The next chapter in the exhibition is At the Brothel: from Anticipation to Seduction, which reveals the hidden world of the brothel – a rewarding subject for artists looking for modern material. It gave them the opportunity to experiment with a new and unconventional way of representing the female nude and to depict what went on behind those closed doors: the game of anticipation and seduction, but also the everyday lives of the prostitutes. Artists painted the endless waiting around for clients, but also intimate, domestic scenes with the women in conversation, eating their meals or washing and dressing, sometimes in the presence of a customer.

The most important works in At the brothel: anticipation and seduction are:

• In the Salon: the Couch, c. 1893 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand), 

• The Customer, 1878 by Jean-Louis Forain (Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis), 

• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Woman Pulling up her Stockings, 1893, oil on cardboard, 22 ¾ × 18 in., Paris, Musée d’Orsay 

• Study for Reclining Female Nude, 1887 by Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

Debauchery in Colour and Form

The final chapter of the exhibition, Debauchery in Colour and Form, focuses on the modern era from the turn of the 20th century to 1910. Prostitution had become an established avant-garde theme by that time. Rather than being hidden, it was now visualised explicitly, verging at times on the caricature. Artists were concerned less about the theme as such than with colour, form and expressiveness. This new generation of painters tended to present the prostitute as a solitary figure, no longer in the context of a brothel. Some saw the Paris prostitute as an attractive subject for colourful canvases showing sensual, loose women, while others took a very different approach, presenting her in a raw style as a prisoner in a world of darkness.

The most important works in this section are:

• In a Private Dining Room (At Le Rat mort), 1899 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (The Courtauld Gallery, London), 

 

• Women Kissing, 1906 by Jan Sluijters (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), 

• Nude with Red Stocking, 1901 by Pablo Picasso (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), 

• Melancholy Woman, 1902 by Pablo Picasso (The Detroit Institute of Arts), 

• František Kupka, Gallien’s Girl, 1909–10, oil on canvas, 42 ½ × 38 ¾ in., Prague, Národní Gallery. The Kupka image is NOT free of copyright

• André Derain, Woman in a Chemise or Dancer, 1906, oil on canvas, 39 ¼ × 32 in., Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst. The Derain image is NOT free of copyright

Prints-Prostitution-Privacy

In parallel with Easy Virtue, the Print Room in the Van Gogh Museum’s exhibition wing is showing a selection of 19th-century prints under the title Prints-Prostitution-Privacy. These intimate little artworks, whether autonomous or illustrations for erotic texts, seem to whisper a secret to the viewer. Women of easy virtue were depicted partially or entirely undressed, in poses and situations varying from suggestive to explicitly sexual. The prints, produced in limited editions, were intended for a closed circle of artists, publishers, dealers and collectors, who belonged to the decadent sub-culture within the Paris elite. They kept the separate prints in portfolios and viewed them in the privacy of their studies or in the gallery. Erotica was viewed as a natural expression of the ‘French spirit’, so long as it was artistically presented. In this way, works of a sensual nature could be kept out of sight of government censors and other moral crusaders.

New acquisition

The Prints-Prostitution-Privacy exhibit also features an exceptional new acquisition by the Van Gogh Museum:

La lecture après le bain, 1879–83, by Edgar Degas (1834–1917).

Degas made his erotic monotypes (one-off prints) of prostitutes primarily for himself. He covered a sheet of glass with black ink, which he then wiped and scratched away to conjure nudes out of the darkness. The dozens of ‘black’ prints he created were only discovered in his studio after his death. La lecture après le bain was purchased with the support of the BankGiro Loterij, the Mondriaan Fund and the Rembrandt Association.

Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by the richly illustrated book Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910 (also available in Dutch), Van Gogh Museum/Musée d’Orsay, 192 pages.

The catalogue Splendours and Miseries: Images of Prostitution in France, 1850–1910, Musée d’Orsay/Flammarion is also available, 308 pages.

Excellent reviews here

and here.

Klee & Kandinsky. NEIGHBORS, Friends, RIVALS

February 27, 2016, 8:35 am

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October 21, 2015 – January 24, 2016 AT KUnsTBAU

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky: two names that have come to stand almost as synonyms for classical modernism. They are associated with fundamental avant-garde movements such as the "Blue Rider" and the Bauhaus, and regarded as founding fathers and pacesetters of abstract art. History also records their relationship as one of the great friendships in twentieth-century art.

Klee and Kandinsky were indeed close, though never uncritical, friends for almost three decades. Central to the rapport between them was a focused engagement with each other’s art sustained by many shared aspirations as well as differences on personal and artistic levels. Both artists strove to spiritualize art and explore the intrinsic laws of its visual means. Yet Klee’s ironically refracted realism was alien to Kandinsky’s idealism, and his protean individualism clashed with his friend’s pursuit of the autonomous laws of abstract art.

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne, and will focus on the years between 1922 and 1931, when both taught at the Bauhaus, worked in a close exchange of artistic ideas, and even lived door to door in one of the "Master Houses" designed by Walter Gropius. Yet their works from the "Blue Rider" period as well as the late oeuvres of the two artists, who died in 1940 and 1944, likewise reflect the bonds of friendship between them.

A collaboration between the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich and the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

 

Wassily Kandinsky, In Blue, 1925
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf Acquired by a donation of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Photo: Walter Klein, Dusseldorf

 

 

Paul Klee, Architecture of the Plain, 1923
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen © bpk/Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, SMB, Berlin

Catalogue

 

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition (360 pp., more than 300 color ill.) edited by Michael Baumgartner, Annegret Hoberg and Christine Hopfengart has been published by Prestel Verlag in German and English.

From an outstanding review, with several more images:

Never before has such an outstanding selection of works from these two masters ever been united in one exhibition.

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky – they are considered to be the “founding fathers” of “classical modernism” and their artists’ friendship to be one of the most fascinating of the twentieth century. Their relationship was shaped by mutual inspiration and support, but also by rivalry and competition – a combination that spurred both of them on in their artistic work. The exhibition “Klee & Kandinsky” traces the eventful history of this artistic relationship over the long period from 1900 to 1940 for the very first time. It draws attention to parallels and similarities as well as differences and distinctions, with an emphasis on their personal and artistic dialogue at the time of the “Blue Rider” and the Bauhaus. The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, where it will be presented from 21 October 2015 to 24 January 2016.

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August Macke and Franz Marc. An Artist Friendship

February 27, 2016, 8:51 am

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Kunstbau January 28, 2015 - May 3, 2015

On occasion of the centennial of August Macke’s death, the Lenbachhaus, in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Bonn, presented the first exhibition to explore Macke’s friendship with Franz Marc and the exchange of artistic ideas between them. With around two hundred paintings, works on paper, objets d’art, and private documents, the show offered a vivid picture of the two artists’ lives and art between 1910 and 1914, illustrating how Macke and Marc inspired each other and highlighting the close and affectionate ties between them.

Macke first visited Marc in his studio in Munich on January 6, 1910. The two struck up a deeply felt friendship and began a creative dialogue that would enter the annals of twentieth-century art. Their close collaboration was short-lived: Macke died in 1914, only weeks after the outbreak of World War I; in 1916, the war took Marc’s life as well.

The exhibition was divided into chapters that portray the two artists’ creative evolution from 1910 on, document their early encounters in Sindelsdorf, Tegernsee, and Bonn, examine their debates over the theory of colors, and show them at work on the ‘Blue Rider.’

Documents from their shared travels and their visits to each other’s homes, the gifts they gave each other, and objets d’art from their possessions also illustrate the important roles their wives, Elisabeth Macke and Maria Marc, played in their friendship. In 1912, they met in Macke’s studio in Bonn to paint the mural Paradies as a testament to their mutual attachment.

The exhibition showed in detail how Macke and Marc absorbed the inspirations of Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and abstraction. Out of these influences, each crafted his own art, whose development the exhibition traces to the last pictures they created in 1914 before the catastrophe of the war put an all too early end to their lives and oeuvres.

Both artists were very young when they first met—August Macke had only just turned twenty-three and Franz Marc was about to turn thirty. Neither the contrast between their personalities—Macke was impulsive and outspoken, whereas Marc was often pensive and always very deliberate in his actions—nor their diverging views on art and the politics of culture ever cast a shadow on the bonds of affection between them. In his famous obituary for Macke, Marc highlights the loss his young friend’s death meant for art with great precision, but it is also, and first and foremost, a token of his profound grief.

The collections of the Lenbachhaus and the Kunstmuseum Bonn formed the basis for this comprehensive exhibition.

Macke spent the greater part of his life in Bonn; Marc was the only native son of Munich among the artists of the ‘Blue Rider,’ of whose oeuvres the Lenbachhaus holds the world’s most important collection. Numerous eminent works on loan from German and international museums and private collections helped round out the show.

 

 

 

 

Franz Marc, Der Tiger, 1912
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, München

 

 

 

August Macke, Promenade, 1913
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich

CATALOGUE 

 

An extensive catalogue featuring essays by renowned writers, 210 color plates, and numerous additional illustrations, will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. 360 pp., Hatje Cantz Verlag.

A collaboration between the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus München and the Kunstmuseum Bonn

The exhibition in Bonn: September 25, 2014 - January 4, 2015 

More images here.

SIGMAR POLKE. EARLY PRINTS

March 4, 2016, 8:13 am

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2 March to 22 May 2016

Presenting a focused selection of thirty works, the exhibition at the Städel Museum highlights Sigmar Polke’s (1941–2010) early prints. The artist ranks among the outstanding protagonists of the twentieth-century German art scene. For the works he printed from 1967 to 1979 he preferred offset or silkscreen printing, two rather unsophisticated techniques in terms of craftsmanship and trivial methods from the artistic point of view, to transport and spread seemingly random, irritating comments on art and society. Other works by Polke surprise us because of their unusual blend of different printing techniques and material features: they combine silkscreen printing with blind blocking and punching or feature haptic surface structures, for example. Having a work printed in offset always requires a professional printer. This is why Polke dedicated himself all the more to which motifs and materials he chose. In an era informed by the belief in growth and upheavals critical of society, Polke stuck to his messages grounded on observation, wit, and irony in his printed work.

The printed image, circulated by the mass media or photographically staged by the artist, remained an essential foundation of his work as an artist. The presentation in the Exhibition Gallery of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings shows a high-carat and concentrated selection of Polke’s early prints, fathoming the works’ special quality.

Born in the Lower Silesian town of Oels (now Oleśnica in Poland) in 1941, Sigmar Polke began an apprenticeship in a stained glass factory before he enrolled at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Polke already distanced himself from the prevailing tendency to abstraction in his paintings during his time as a student (1961–1967) under Gerhard Hoehme and Karl Otto Götz. He was not concerned with the unrepresentational painterly gesture but with exploring the then accessible pictorial worlds of West Germany’s burgeoning economic miracle as an artist. Together with his elder fellow students Konrad Fischer a.k.a. Konrad Lueg und Gerhard Richter, Polke staged the “Demonstration for Capitalist Realism” in a furniture store in Düsseldorf. While the art scene of Paris was pushed into the background through the increasing influence of American Pop art in the 1960s, Sigmar Polke made the consumer-oriented world of commodities and petty bourgeois post-war idyll of the Federal Republic of Germany manifest in magazines and advertising the foundation of his extraordinarily reflected and nonetheless ostensibly playful production.

The artist also drew on found pictorial material in his printed work. A monochrome advertisement provided the basis for his first print, Girlfriends I, (1967). Polke had already transferred this newspaper print into a painting in 1964/65. In the print the offset technique produces the screen structure imitated in the painting by manually adding dot by dot. The enlargement of the motif emphasizes the screen structure. The screen dots typical of Polke’s work also dominate his silkscreen print Weekend House, which was his contribution to the portfolio Graphics of Capitalist Realism published in 1967.

Apart from pictures culled from print media, Polke also used his own photographs for his prints such as that of a folding rule opened to form a star and taken with a Polaroid camera (Folding Rule Stars, 1970), experimentally treated negatives (Self-Portrait, 1971), visibly damaged enlargements (TV Picture [Soccer Player], 1971), or shots taken in New York City during a trip to the USA (New York Beggars, 1974). Contrary to woodcut, etching, or lithography, the off-set and silkscreen printing methods chosen by Polke are popular techniques in commercial art that allow much higher print runs. Seen against this background it is all the more surprising that the artist had a silkscreen print elaborately blind-blocked and punched for a series of school prints for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1972 and upvalued the individual sheets of the edition by overpainting them with glitter paint, transforming them into unique works.

1973 saw the production of several editions in collaboration with the "Griffelkunst-Vereinigung Hamburg", for which Polke chose high-quality bookbinding papers with a sometimes haptic surface structure as a carrier. The papers were combined with picture and text layers in the printing process. The results of these elaborate overlays ensure a certain unease on the part of the viewer and, in spite of all seemingly promising references, keep him guessing. Polke’s calculated treatment of pictures and text quotations from physics, biology, and mythology unfold a creative game pivoted on science and mystery in subjective trajectories.

Polke answered the question after the inspiration of all forms of artistic practice with the statement “. . . Higher Beings Ordain.” This self-ironic response provided the title for an edition of fourteen offset prints of only fifty copies each published by Edition René Block in 1968.

 The photo montage of Polke’s later print Mu nieltnam netorruprup (1975), whose scenes are dominated by a huge fly agaric, thematizes the quality of mind-altering substances. The show comes to an end with Polke’s Large Head from 1979, which was purchased by the Städelscher Museums-Verein for the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1989. It is a complex work on paper in which Polke interwove different motifs and techniques such as drawing, stencil printing, and silhouette.

Despite the closeness of its multiple approaches, Large Head testifies to the independent qualities of drawing, painting, and printed graphic work deliberately taken account of by the artist.

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Weekend House, from the portfolio "Graphics of Capitalist Realism", 1967

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Large Head, 1979

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Girlfriends I, 1967

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Measuring Stick Palm Tree, from "… Higher Beings Ordain", 1968

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Mu nieltnam netorruprup, 1975

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), "Artists Fight...", 1979

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Hands (The Mediation between Above and Below), 1973

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Obelisk (Hieroglyphs), 1973

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), School Print, 1972

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), New York Beggars, 1974

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

March 4, 2016, 11:03 am

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The Royal Academy of Arts is  presenting  Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, a major exhibition through 20 April 2016,  examining the role of gardens in the paintings of Claude Monet and his contemporaries. With Monet as the starting point, the exhibition will span the early 1860s to the 1920s, a period of tremendous social change and innovation in the arts, and will include Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Avant-Garde artists of the early twentieth century. It will bring together over 120 works, from public institutions and private collections across Europe and the USA, including 35 paintings by Monet alongside rarely seen masterpieces by Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Gustav Klimt and Wassily Kandinsky.

Arguably the most important painter of gardens in the history of art, Monet was also an avid horticulturist who cultivated gardens wherever he lived. As early as the 1860s, a symbiotic relationship developed between his activities as a horticulturist and his paintings of gardens, a relationship that can be traced from his early years in Sainte-Adresse to his final months at Giverny. ‘I perhaps owe it to flowers’, he wrote, ‘that I became a painter’. 

A rich selection of documentary materials including horticultural books and journals, as well as receipts for purchases of plants and excerpts from letters, are be included in the exhibition. 

Highlights of the exhibition include a magnificentselection of Monet’s water lily paintings including the great Agapanthus Triptych of 1916 -1919, (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Saint Louis Art Museum, St Louis) works that are closely related to the 

great panorama that he donated to the French State in 1922 and that are now permanently housed in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

It will be the first time this monumental triptych has been seen in the UK. 

This exhibition is among the first to consider Monet’s Grandes Décorations as a response to the traumatic events of World War I, and the first to juxtapose the large Water Lilies with garden paintings by other artists reacting to this period of suffering and loss. 

Other highlights include 

Monet’s Lady in the Garden, 1867 (The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg); 

Auguste Renoir’s Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873 (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford); 

Monet’s Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie verte, 1899 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris); 

Monet’s Le jardin de l'artiste à Giverny, 1900 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris); 

Monet’s Water Lilies, 1904 (Musée Malraux, Le Havre); 

Wassily Kandinsky’s Murnau The Garden II, 1910 (Merzbacher Kunststiftung) and 

Pierre Bonnard’s Resting in the Garden, 1914 (The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo). 

Works by artists such as Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, James-Jacques Tissot, John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla, Max Liebermann,Santiago Rusiňol, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, Emil Noldeand Edouard Vuillard will also feature.As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Symbolists, Fauves, and German Expressionists embraced more subjective approaches by imagining gardens as visionary utopias; many turned to painting gardens to explore abstract color theory and decorative design.In the early twentieth century, Monet emerges as a vanguard artist. 

The monumental canvases of his garden at Giverny anticipate major artistic movements that were to come such as American Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition will be arranged thematically, leading visitors through the evolution of the garden theme, from Impressionist visions of light and atmosphere to retreats for reverie and dreams, sites for bold experimentation, sanctuaries of refuge and healing, and, ultimately, signifiers of a world restored to order –a paradise regained. 

Framing the paintings in the context of broad artistic movements, as well as social and political events, will offer unprecedented paths for understanding the garden as a multifaceted, universal theme in modern art.

ORGANISATION

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse has been co-organised by the Royal Academy of Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition is curated by Ann Dumas, Curator, Royal Academy of Arts and Dr.William H. Robinson, Curator of Modern European Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

CATALOGUE

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Authors include Monty Don, horticulturalist and presenter; James Priest, Head Gardener at Monet’s garden at Giverny; William H. Robinson, Curator of Modern European Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art; Ann Dumas, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts; Heather Lemonedes, Curator of Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Clare P Willsdon, Professor of the History of Western Art at the University of Glasgow.

Good Review

In the Age of Giorgione

March 11, 2016, 8:16 am

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12 March–5 June 2016 

In March 2016, the Royal Academy of Arts will present In the Age of Giorgione, a focused survey of the Venetian Renaissance during the first decade of the sixteenth century. The exhibition will shed new light on this pivotal period,which laid the foundations for the Golden Age of Venetian painting. It will bring together around 50 works from public institutions and private collections across Europe and the United States, by celebrated artists such as Giorgione, Titian, Giovanni Bellini, Sebastiano del Piombo and Lorenzo Lotto, while offering an opportunity to rediscover other less well known artists such as Giovanni Cariani. 

The exhibition will also consider the influence of Albrecht Dürer who visited Venice in1505–6. By the beginning of the sixteenth century Giovanni Bellini had revolutionised Venetian painting, favouring a new naturalism, yet it was the next generation, most notably Giorgione and Titian,whobecame the protagonists ofa new style.Giorgione emerged duringthe first decade of the sixteenth century, greatlyinfluencing and rapidly transforming the stylistic evolution of Venetian art. 

These developments were advanced by the young Titian, who would soon become the leading artist in Venice. Little is known about Giorgione’s life, yet the elusive and poetic quality of his work was so powerful that, despite his early death in 1510, his legacy was profoundly felt in Venice and beyond.

Giorgione worked largely for a new type of patron,that of the cultured and sophisticated connoisseur. He proposed a new, more poetic type of portraiture
andcreated a serene bucolic world as a backdrop to both sacred and profane subjects. Today, there are only a few works that can be attributed to Giorgione with certainty. The exhibition will address the question of attribution, taking a closer look at many of the finest works from the period.

The most important artist to emerge from Giorgione’s shadow was Titian, who became the preeminent artist in Venice following Giorgione’s premature death. While Giovanni Bellini remained in high demand for the commission of altarpieces, it was Titian who developed Giorgione’s soft and sensuous use of color on a larger scale. 

Titian’s life-long artistic experiments led to a new era that has since become known as the century of Titian. The exhibition will include key works by Giorgione and the young Titian.

One of the highlights of the exhibition will be

Giorgione’s Portrait of a Man (The San Diego Museum of Art).

Known as the Terris Portrait, after the name of its former owner, the Scottish coal merchant Alexander Terris, it is one of only two known paintings bearing a contemporary inscription on the back of the panel identifying Giorgione as the artist. 

Displaying a technique similar to Leonardo da Vinci’s famed sfumato, in which areas of color are blended into one another without perceptible transitions, the portrait epitomizes what Giorgio Vasari praised as the ‘modern manner’.

Further highlights will include 

Giorgione’s Il Tramonto (The Sunset) (The National Gallery, London),

Titian’s Christ and the Adulteress (Glasgow Museums)

and Titian’s Jacopo Pesaro Being Presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp). 

Also on display will be works by Giovanni Bellini, Albrecht Dürer, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni Cariani, Giulio Campagnola and Tullio Lombardo, among others.

In the Age of Giorgionewill be arranged in four sections:Portraits, Landscapes, Devotional Works and Allegorical Portraits. 

These groupings will allow visitors toexplorethe idealised beauty, expressive force and sensuous use of colour that became the hallmarks of Venetian Renaissance painting,whilstrediscovering one of the most enigmatic and influential artistsof the period.

Organisation

The exhibition has been organized by the Royal Academy of Arts. 

Ithas been curated byArturo Galansino, former Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and newly appointed Director of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence
andSimone Facchinetti, Curator at the Museo Adriano Bernareggiin Bergamo, in collaboration with Per Rumberg, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Catalogue

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustratedcatalogue with contributions from Arturo Galansino, Director of the Palazzo Strozzi, FlorenceandSimone Facchinetti, Curator at the Museo Adriano Bernareggi, Bergamo.

Outstanding review, more images

Another good review with even more images

Maniera. Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence

March 11, 2016, 9:01 am

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The Städel Museum is presenting the large-scale exhibition“Maniera. Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence”. With the aid of some 120 prominent loans, the exhibition will acquaint the German public with a key chapter in the history of Italian art – Florentine Mannerism – in all its diversity for the first time.

Works by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, Rosso Fiorentino, Giorgio Vasari and others will be on view. Altogether fifty paintings as well as eighty-one drawings, sculptures and works in other media will offer an experience hitherto possible only in Florence – a broad survey of a stylistically formative epoch characterized by the art historiographer Giorgio Vasari with the colourful term “maniera”. Devoted to Florence as the first centre of European Mannerism, the large-scale special exhibition will cover the period from the return of the Medici to that city in 1512 and the early artistic forays by the new generation around Pontormo and Rosso to the 1568 publication of the second edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives, a work still influential today.

One of the most exquisite works in the Städel holdings –

Bronzino’s famous Portrait of a Lady in Red (Francesca Salviati?) (ca. 1533) – formed the point of departure. The project is being carried out with special support from the museums of Florence, above all the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Galleria Palatina, which are all contributing exceptional selections of works. Further key loans will come from such prominent institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Paris Louvre, the Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest and the Brera in Milan.

Owing in great part to Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the High Renaissance of the early sixteenth century is generally considered a zenith in the development of art in Italy. In altogether eight chapters with differing temporal and thematic emphases, the Städel Museum exhibition will now impressively demonstrate that a number of especially outstanding artistic accomplishments can be attributed to the following two generations of artists.

“The art of Mannerism in Florence has many facets: it is elegant, cultivated and artificial, but also capricious, extravagant and sometimes even bizarre. Sophisticated elegance and creative eccentricity characterize the painting of the ‘maniera’ as one of the most fascinating phenomena in Italian art”, notes Bastian Eclercy, the show’s curator. 

A Tour of the Exhibition

“Maniera” will spread out over both floors of the exhibition annex. To start with, it will focus on the most prominent exponents of a young generation of Florentine painters, Pontormo and Rosso. With the aid of variations on the Florentine pictorial theme of the “Madonna and Child with the Infant St John”, this section will show how Pontormo and Rosso emancipated themselves increasingly from the artistic ideals of the High Renaissance – here represented by Raphael –, deliberately playing with the stylistic rules then in effect.

With his Portrait of a Goldsmith (ca. 1518, Musée du Louvre, Paris), Pontormo also commended himself as an innovative portraitist of his time. What is more, his drawings of this phase are distinguished by a virtually unsurpassable dynamic, as is evident, for example, in his  

Three Studies of a Male Nude (ca. 1517, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille).

Between 1519 and 1525, for example in the  

Holy Family with the Infant St John

Rosso found his way to expressive new means of artistic expression, as will be evident in the following section of the show.

His fellow artist Pontormo developed his own very distinctive artistic fingerprint during this phase, strongly inspired by his study of art from north of the Alps, and translated prints by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden into a blend of Florentine and German styles. His famous  

Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1519–23, Galleria Palatina, Florence), which has never been outside Florence until now, is a case in point.

As the next section of the show will illustrate, the history of the Florentine art of those years – and that of the town itself – bear a close relationship to the events unfolding in the papal metropolis of Rome. Under the Medici Pope Clement VII, a number of young talents converged in that town, among them Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino, Polidoro da Caravaggio and Perino del Vaga. The pillage of the city by the mercenary troops of Charles V (Sacco di Roma) would bring this productive constellation to an end in 1527. Rosso had arrived in Rome in 1524 and initially produced frescoes and panel paintings. Soon, however, he shifted his artistic focus to printmaking, for example the Gods in Niches (1526) on view here, a series belonging to the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings.

The plundering of Rome also had consequences for Florence. The faction of the Medici’s opponents drove the family out of town and proclaimed the Republic. In the autumn of 1529, however, imperial troops laid siege to the city, ultimately forcing the Republic of Florence to surrender in 1530. This phase of political and societal upheaval was one of the most creative and productive periods in Florentine painting, as is evident in major works such as

Andrea del Sarto’s Sacrifice of Isaac (ca. 1529/30, Museo del Prado, Madrid)

 

or Bronzino’s St Sebastian (ca. 1528/29, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid).

The historic events taking place in Florence in those years are also mirrored in the four differing versions of the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (ca. 1522–30) by Pontormo, Bronzino and Perino del Vaga brought together in a single venue for the first time ever by this exhibition.

Next the show will take a look at Bronzino’s rise to become Florence’s leading portrait painter under its first duke, Alessandro de’ Medici. Here the highlight will be Bronzino’s brilliant Portrait of a Lady in Red (Francesca Salviati?) (ca. 1533) (above) from the Städel collection, a key work of Florentine portrait painting. As a monumental, prestigious likeness of a lady it embodies a new portrait type whose emergence this exhibition reconstructs for the first time, assembling a number of closely related likenesses of women around the Portrait of a Lady in Red.

The prelude to the second floor of the show will be devoted to the so-called “paragone” – the rivalry for pride of place between the media of painting and sculpture that was a topic of lively discussion in the Florentine art scene of the 1540s. Pontormo carried out his monumental painting of

Venus and Cupid (ca. 1533, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence), likewise on display here for the first time outside of Florence, after a design by Michelangelo.

By lending the bodies a sculptural quality, he was virtually offering his own artistic argument to the paragone debate. Yet the architecture of Florentine Mannerism likewise competes with sculpture:

the stairs of Michelangelo’s Staircase of the Biblioteca Laurenziana (1524–1529) take on sculptural forms. A monumental model of the entire staircase on a scale of 1:3 conveys an impression of the playful elegance of this architectural feat.

Bronzino’s appointment as court painter to the new Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1539 will be the theme of the second room in this part of the show. The artist painted the likenesses of the duke, his consort Eleonora di Toledo and their children, thus creating an entire portrait series. In the process, he shaped the genre of the courtly child’s portrait to a decisive degree, as exemplified by the

Portrait of Garzia de’ Medici (ca. 1550, Museo del Prado, Madrid).

At the same time, with his frescoes decorating Eleonora’s private chapel in the Palazzo Vecchio as well as his religious panel paintings, he set new standards for the art of the Florentine court. In 1546, Cosimo I founded a tapestry manufactory and commissioned Bronzino to design monumental pictorial tapestries celebrating his ducal sovereignty in complex allegories. The exhibition will feature the first of these works, the so-called Dovizia (1545, Galleria del Costume, Florence), along with several preparatory drawings.

Finally, the show will shine a spotlight on Giorgio Vasari. Known primarily as an art writer and architect, he will here be introduced as an important painter and draughtsman. From 1555/56 onward, in his capacity as court painter Vasari carried out a great number of fresco decorations in the Palazzo Vecchio, having first designed them in detailed drawings. He also executed a number of his most impressive panel paintings in this phase, for example the  

 

Toilet of Venus (ca. 1558, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart).

His magnum opus as a writer is the second edition of his Lives of the Artists published in 1568, the first comprehensive history of Italian art from Giotto to Vasari himself. In addition to the biographies of various Florentine Mannerists, the Lives of the Artists also contain the earliest theoretical reflections on the art of the “maniera”.

The concluding section of the exhibition will moreover present Pontormo’s diary from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. As one of the earliest extant artists’ diaries, it provides authentic insight into the Florentine master’s working process and everyday life.

More images from the exhibition:

Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), Study of Two Standing Women, ca. 1515

Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), St Jerome as Penitent, ca. 1528/29

Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), Portrait of a Lady in Green, ca. 1530–32

Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572) (and Jacopo Pontormo? (1494–1557)), Pygmalion and Galatea, ca. 1530

Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540), Madonna and Child with the Infant St John, ca. 1515

Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), Portrait of a Young Man in Black Costume (Cosimo I de’ Medici?), ca. 1536/37

Raphael (1483–1520), Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (The Esterházy Madonna), ca. 1508

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, ca. 1534

Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, c. 1529/30