American Spectrum: Paintings and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art

June 4, 2013, 11:44 am

≫ Next: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections

≪ Previous: Pierre Bonnard at The Museum of Modern Art

A rare opportunity to trace the development of American art across more than 200 years was offered in American Spectrum: Paintings and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art, on view March 4-May 27, 2001 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The collection of 62 works dating from 1733 to 1948 traveled to eight venues in the United States while the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts was closed for renovation and expansion. America's leading masters were represented in this show, including the painters Thomas Cole, John Singleton Copley, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Childe Hassam, and the sculptors Alexander Calder, Daniel Chester French, Elie Nadelman, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

From

John Smibert's Mrs. John Erving (c. 1733)

to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's The Red Mean: Self-Portrait (1992),

"American Spectrum: Paintings and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum" spanned over 250 years of American art. The seventy-five works selected for the exhibition represented many of America's most revered artists including painters Joseph Albers; Thomas Cole, NA; Winslow Homer, NA; Edward Hopper; George Inness, NA; Franz Kline; Robert Motherwell; Georgia O'Keeffe; John Singer Sargent, NA, and Gilbert Charles Stuart. Sculptors include Alexander Caider; Daniel Chester French, NA; Elie Nadelman; Louise Nevelson; and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, NA, among others.

The Smith collection began to take shape in 1879 when the college's first president L. Clarke Seelye decided he wanted students to have an art gallery where they could "be made directly familiar with the famous masterpieces." His early strategy was to acquire reproductive prints and casts of historic pieces, and to buy original contemporary art. Works in this exhibition that he bought directly from the artists include

Thomas Eakins's In Grandmother's Time

and Albert Pinkham Ryder's Perrette,

and possibly William Merritt Chase's Woman in Black.

Among them was Rockwell Kent's early work

Dublin Pond (1903),

a painting which the artist had recently submitted for the National Academy's Annual, purchased by the museum when the artist was only twenty-one, and the first works by the artist to be part of an institutional collection.

After Seelye firmly established the museum's American holdings, the collection continued to evolve into the 20th-century through equally astute acquisitions. Purchased in 1931,

Edith Mahon (1904)

was widely considered one of Thomas Eakins' finest portraits, and also constituted the first work by Eakins in any public art collection.

Notable bequests were also crucial in building the collection. They include

John Singleton Copley 's portrait of the Boston merchant, The Honorable John Erving, (c. 1772),

presented to the college by the judge's descendant and Smith Alumnus Alice Erving.

Gifts of modern and contemporary art include superb works by Arthur G. Dove, William Glackens, NA, Childe Hassam, NA, Willem de Kooning, Louise Nevelson, Joan Snyder, and Donald Sultan, and many others.

Albert Bierstadt, Echo Lake, Franconia Mountains, New Hampshire, 1861, oil on canvas, Smith College Museum of Art, Purchased with the assistance of funds given by Mrs. John Stewart Dalrymple (Bernice Barber, class of 1910), 1960.37)

Stories behind some of the works make them all the more intriguing.

Edward Hopper's Pretty Penny (1939) is a joyous, light-filled portrait of the house of the actress Helen Hayes.

Hopper was commissioned to do the painting, but was reluctant to accept at first because he considered it tradesman's work. He eventually relented, creating a work without the darkness and alienation so common in his paintings of American houses. Hayes, who received an honorary doctorate from Smith in 1940, gave the painting to the museum in 1964.

Edwin Romanzo Elmer, a painter who died unknown, is represented by two paintings in the exhibition,

Mourning Picture (1890)

and A Lady of Baptist Corner, Ashfield, Massachusetts (the Artist's Wife), (1892).

Mourning Picture is a family portrait of the artist, his wife, and their daughter, who had died not long before, and a pet sheep against the backdrop of a Victorian house. It was first shown in a post office in 1890 and then was not seen again until 1950 when the artist's niece showed it to Henry-Russell Hitchcock, then director of the Smith Museum. Hitchcock recognized its value at once. It became one of the most popular and most frequently reproduced paintings in the collection. In the portrait of his wife operating a machine he invented to make whip snaps (the braided end of horsewhips), Elmer shows his love of detail - from the design of the carpet to the play of light and shadow in the scene.

Other paintings in the exhibition gloriously document man's achievements in transportation and industry.

Winslow Homer's Shipyard at Gloucester (1871) captures a crew building a schooner so accurately that a historian has been able to determine the hull type and the details of the ship under construction.

Among the dozen sculptures in the exhibition were Elie Nadelman's elegantly designed Resting Stag (c. 1915) and Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Diana of the Tower (1899). Nadelman's deer, in gold-leafed veneer and a wood-veneered base, was created at the height of his career. Saint-Gaudens's bronze sculpture is one of a number of reductions the artist made of Diana, an 18-foot figure that sat atop a 330-foot-high tower at Madison Square Garden in New York at the turn of the century. The sculpture was created as weathervane. The Smith Museum's variant is 36 inches high and the only known kinetic version.

A 307-page catalogue, Masterworks of American Painting and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art, accompanied the exhibition. In the book, 79 of the museum's most important American works are illustrated in full color and discussed in comprehensive essays. An illustrated checklist with 85 additional works from the museum is included. Linda Muehling, associate curator of painting and sculpture at Smith Museum, is the editor and principal author.

Childe Hassam, White Island Light, Isles of Shoals, at Sundown, 1899, oil on canvas, Smith College Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold D. Hodgkinson (Laura White Cabot, class of 1922), 1965.4

American Spectrum: Paintings and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art was organized by the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.

The eight venues for this exhibition were: Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, February 5-April 23, 2000; National Academy of Design Museum, New York, June 21-September 10, 2000; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, October 28, 2000-January 7, 2001; the MFAH, March 4-May 28, 2001; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, June 29-September 30, 2001; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, October 28, 2001-January 13, 2002; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona, February 16-April 28, 2002; and Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York, June 23-September 15, 2002.

↧

Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections

June 4, 2013, 1:33 pm

≫ Next: The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock (Sloan, Bellows, Lewis, Gwathmey, Baskin, Bourgeois)

≪ Previous: American Spectrum: Paintings and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art

Throughout the 18th century, France was an artistic center whose influence reached far beyond its borders. In a culture that placed a high value on artistic inspiration and individuality, the appreciation of drawings — one of the most immediate and intimate of art forms — saw a vast expansion. Though drawings continued to play a utilitarian role in the artist's creative process, they were increasingly made as independent objects, with an eye toward display and delectation. On view February 2 through April 25, 1999 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections surveyed the many achievements of this widely-admired period of French art, when artists such as Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Robert, David, and Greuze, among others, created images of surpassing beauty and virtuosity.

More About the Exhibition

Culled from the holdings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Pierpont Morgan Library; The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution; and The Frick Collection, as well as 27 private collections in New York City, the exhibition brought together for the first time the highlights of a century of collecting. Ranging from Watteau and the early Rococo to the Neoclassicism of David and his followers, this selection of 100 outstanding drawings by 59 artists suggested the strong attraction Enlightenment France has held for New Yorkers past and present.

Organized chronologically and thematically, the exhibition began with the triumph of the trois crayons technique (red, black, and white chalk) in the hands of Antoine Watteau, whose

Seated Woman Turning Toward the Left, Holding a Fan (private collection)

and Four Studies of the Head of a Woman (private collection)

convey the vitality and refinement of the artist's paintings with an extraordinary economy of means.

By tracing the expansion and evolution of the Rococo style as it was interpreted and reinvigorated by younger artists, many of whom had studied at the Académie de France in Rome, the exhibition explores the wide array of artistic expression produced — from still lifes and portraits to narrative scenes and allegories. Artists also exploited the various available media — colored chalks, ink wash, watercolor, gouache, oil sketch, and pastel — to create drawings that exhibit a great range of finish.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry's lushly executed

Still-Life with Fish and Parrot (Cooper-Hewitt),

for instance, is a highly polished work, while

Les charmes de la vie champêtre (private collection), François Boucher's fresh and energetic study in black chalk, offers a glimpse of the first stage in the artist's process of refining a composition that he was to reinterpret in several paintings and tapestries.

The gradual displacement of the Rococo by the more spartan Neoclassical idiom, which accelerated during the political upheaval of the Revolution and its aftermath, is revealed at its apogee in works by Pierre Peyron, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Germain Drouais, Anne-Louis Girodet, and others.

Girodet's The Mourning of Pallas is a composition of exquisite refinement that distills the Neoclassical passion for the sculptural figures and heroic motifs of classical antiquity.

On the other hand,

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun's pastel Self-portrait (private collection), adopts aspects of the Neoclassical aesthetic, but is the work of a royalist sympathizer who fled France after the Revolution.

Other highlights of the exhibition included

Charles-Joseph Natoire's View of the Gardens of Arcueil (private collection), in which nature is reasserting its authority over the man-made world,

and Hubert Robert's Draftsman in the Oratory of Sant'Andrea, San Gregorio al Celio (Pierpont Morgan Library), a virtual snapshot of a moment in the life of an 18th-century artist.

Fragonard's A Gathering at Woods' Edge (Metropolitan Museum),

in which the figures are nearly overwhelmed by the exuberant foliage of the forest,

contrasted markedly with the detailed naturalism of Anne Vallayer-Coster's evocatively rendered

Study of Two Roses (Cooper-Hewitt).

Among the works in the exhibition by the much loved painter and draftsman

Jean-Baptiste Greuze were

The Angry Wife (Metropolitan Museum),

a harrowing vision of the artist's unhappy domestic life,

and the expressively drawn pastel

Portrait of Baptiste Aîné; (The Frick Collection),

a stellar example of the artist's late style.

Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections was organized by Perrin Stein, Assistant Curator in the Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints, with Mary Tavener Holmes, guest curator and a noted scholar of 18th-century French art.

Publication

The exhibition was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art with extensive entries for each work written by the curators. The 256-page publication features 110 colorplates and 129 black-and-white illustrations.

↧

The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock (Sloan, Bellows, Lewis, Gwathmey, Baskin, Bourgeois)

June 5, 2013, 11:19 am

≫ Next: Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art

≪ Previous: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections

The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock appeared at The British Museum 10 April – 7 September 2008.
Featuring 147 works by 74 artists, the exhibition included the work of John Sloan, Edward Hopper, Josef Albers, Louise Bourgeois, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

The exhibition encompassed the arrival of modernism following the landmark Armory Show of 1913, the rise of the skyscrapers as the symbol of modern progress and prosperity, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and the effect of the rise of Fascism in Europe on artists’ political consciousness and engagement and America’s entry into the Second World War. There were many striking images produced during this period, many of them have become iconic within America, but are still relatively unknown outside. The prints were carefully selected to show the various episodes in American printmaking between 1905 and 1960, as well as providing a visually stunning pictorial anthology.

The exhibition opened in 1905 with John Sloan’s etchings of everyday urban life, marking the genesis of a distinct modern American school, later dubbed the Ashcan School, which launched its first exhibition in New York exactly 100 years ago. The remarkable lithographs produced by George Bellows of prize fights, mental asylums and capital punishment will be displayed alongside remarkable colour woodcuts by women modernist artists such as Blanche Lazzell and Grace Martin Taylor. The inspiration of avant-garde ideas from Paris can be seen in the work of John Marin, Milton Avery, Jan Matulka and Stuart Davis, and the development of the machine-age Precisionist lithographs of Louis Lozowick and Charles Sheeler.

Highlights of the collection included highly evocative scenes of New York at night by Edward Hopper, Martin Lewis and other etchers working between the wars, many of whom had a background in magazine illustration. The urban imagery of these works was contrasted with the romanticized vision of the American Midwest in the work of Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, Grant Wood and Doris Lee.

Printmaking was encouraged during the Depression through the Federal Art Project which provided relief to unemployed artists under the US Government’s Works Progress Administration. This particularly helped to establish the screenprint as a new technique for artists, and saw the print reach a wider audience. Robert Gwathmey, Blanche Grambs and Dox Thrash were among the many artists of this period making socially conscious prints.

The political engagement of artists in the 1930s and the response to America’s entry into the Second World War after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 are vividly expressed by artists such as Hugh Mesibov, Joseph Vogel, Hugo Gellert and Benton Spruance, including his classic image

Riders of the Apocalypse.

The influx of émigrés from Europe including Josef Albers, who introduced Bauhaus principles to his students at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, and the artistic exchange that took place in Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York are two further episodes in the narrative. Pollock’s first all-over compositions were produced as engravings in Atelier 17 while Louise Bourgeois made her enigmatic series,

He Disappeared into Complete Silence, shown in its entirety, also at Atelier 17.

The exhibition concluded with abstract expressionism, the first major international art movement generated in the United States. As well as Pollock, other key artists included in the exhibition are Joan Mitchell, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Hans Burkhardt and Emerson Woelffer.

CATALOGUE

SELECTED IMAGES:

John Sloan. Roofs, Summer Night, 1906

George Bellows, A Stag at Sharkey’s, 1917

George Bellows, Dance in a Madhouse, 1917,

John Sloan, Hell Hole 1917

Edward Hopper, Night on El Train (1918)

Edward Hopper, Night in the Park (1921)

Edward Hopper, Evening Wind (1921)

Louis Lozowick, New York, c. 1925

Charles Sheeler, Delmonico building, 1926

Martin Lewis, Quarter to nine, Saturdays children, 1929

Martin Lewis, Spring night Greenwich Village 1930

Howard Cook, Times Square Sector (1930)

Martin Lewis, Little Penthouse, 1931

Reginald Marsh Breadline- No one has starved (1932)

James E Allen, The Connectors, 1934

Josef Albers, i, 1934

Jackson Pollock, Stacking Hay, 1935-36

Joseph Leboit, Tranquillity (1936)

Robert Gwathmey, The Hitchhiker; 1937

John Steuart Curry, John Brown 1939

Martin Lewis, Shadow Magic, 1939

Hugo Gellert, The Fifth Column 1943

Robert Gwathmey, Sharecroppers; 1944

Hans Burkhardt, After the Bomb, 1948

James McConnell, Combo 1951

Leonard Baskin, Man of Peace (1952)

Leonard Baskin, Hydrogen Man (1954)

Interesting Reviews:

1. http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/readArticle/555

2. http://www.creaturesofculture.com/2009/12/american-scene-prints-from-hopper-to.html

3. http://katielouisedixon.blogspot.com/2009/11/american-scene-prints-from-hopper-to.html

4.
http://metro.co.uk/2008/04/14/hopper-and-pollock-make-an-indelible-print-85934/

5. http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Art-American-Scene-Prints-Hopper-Pollock-8211-Djanogly-Art-Gallery/story-12191109-detail/story.html#axzz2VLRoSuLV

↧

Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art

June 6, 2013, 11:14 am

≫ Next: Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy

≪ Previous: The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock (Sloan, Bellows, Lewis, Gwathmey, Baskin, Bourgeois)

An exhibition of 58 masterworks of late 18th- to early 20th-century European painting and sculpture July 11–September 23, 2001 at Stanford University's Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts

The exhibition brings great names of art history—Degas, Cézanne, Corot, Manet, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Rodin, Seurat, and more—to the Bay Area for its only California showing.

Entitled Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art, the exhibition was drawn from one of the nation's foremost teaching collections. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, organized Corot to Picasso from the nearly 25,000 artworks collected by the college over its 126-year history.

Among the highlights of Corot to Picasso were

Gustave Courbet’s Preparation of the Dead Girl (c. 1850-55);

two landscapes by Claude Monet, including

La Seine à Bougival, painted in 1869 at the nascence of Impressionism,

Field of Poppies (1890)

and one of his Rouen Cathedral paintings, Cathedral at Rouen (La Cour d'Albane) (1892-94), unique in the cathedral series as it shows a view other than the façade;

Picasso’s blue-period

Figures by the Sea (1903); and his later

Table, Guitar and Bottle.

The exhibition, curated at Stanford by the Cantor Arts Center's Chief Curator Bernard Barryte, was particularly rich in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. In addition to the paintings by Monet and Seurat, there were canvases by Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Renoir, Henri Fantin-Latour, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin.

Other 19th-century artistic traditions include the Barbizon School, with landscapes by Jean François Millet, Thèodore Rousseau, Diaz de la Peña and Camille Corot. Paintings by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson and by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres show Neoclassicism's emphasis on line and sculptural quality. One canvas by Thèodore Chasseriau and another attributed to Eugène Delacroix demonstrate the sweep and dash of the romantic movement. Sculptures by Degas, Auguste Rodin, Constantin Meunier, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse round out the display of 19th-century masters.

Included the exhibit was a piece by Edgar Degas,

Rene de Gas,a portrait of Degas' brother completed in 1855.

In addition to the paintings by Picasso, innovations of the early 20th century were illustrated in works by Henri Rousseau, Pierre Bonnard, Wassily Kandinsky, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Vanessa Bell. The great German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was represented by the large, vibrantly-colored painting of

Dodo and her Brother (1908-20).

Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art traveled to the following venues:

• John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida (3/10/01-5/27/01)
•Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts Stanford University, Stanford, California (7/11/01- 9/30/01)
•Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (11/12/01-1/20/02)
• Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2/16/02-5/1/02)
•Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington (6/20/02-9/5/02)

↧

Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy

June 7, 2013, 8:20 am

≫ Next: Major Retrospective Of Marc Chagall

≪ Previous: Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art

Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy was the first full-scale exhibition devoted to Caravaggio's most gifted follower, Orazio Gentileschi, and to Orazio's celebrated daughter, Artemisia. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 14 through May 12, 2002, the exhibition featured approximately 50 works by Orazio and 35 by Artemisia, and was the first exhibition to treat these two remarkable artists in depth.

Fascinating figures in their own right, when looked at together these two related but strikingly independent artists define many of the key issues posed by the revolution in painting brought about in early 17th-century Rome by Caravaggio. Orazio was arguably the most inspired and individual of those artists who knew and were directly influenced by the great Lombard painter, while Artemisia used a Caravaggesque idiom to become the greatest female painter of the century.

The exhibition was organized by The Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici, Rome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Saint Louis Art Museum.

Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented on the exhibition: "The Metropolitan is delighted to present this first survey of works by Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia. Doubtless the experience of seeing the work of father and daughter together will encourage a deeper, more subtly shaded appreciation of the very different achievements of each. In addition, as the exhibition will be the largest assemblage of works by either artist yet presented, it will essentially offer a dual retrospective, providing both scholars and the public an opportunity to assess two distinguished and highly distinctive careers."

Today, much scholarly and popular attention has tended to focus on Artemisia. However, in the 17th century Orazio's fame eclipsed that of his daughter. Beyond Italy, he worked at the courts of Marie de' Medici in Paris and of Charles I in London. His paintings are characterized by their compact, tightly constructed compositions – surprisingly devoid of the dramatic urgency that lies at the core of Artemisia's paintings – and his brilliant use of color. He is often described as a poet of light – nowhere more so than in his sublime

Annunciation (1623; Galleria Sabauda, Turin).

Through a series of unprecedented loans – including the altarpieces from Ancona, Fabriano, Farnese, Rome, Turin, Milan, and Urbino, and several large canvases from collections in Paris and London, the exhibition presented a panorama of his career with his finest paintings.

Fueled by feminist studies, interest in Artemisia has increased enormously over the last quarter of a century. However, her reputation as an artist has often been overshadowed by the notorious public trial that followed her rape by an associate of her father's, the painter Agostino Tassi, when she was still a teenager. Rejecting the specialties of portraiture and still life – the genres deemed suitable to women artists – Artemisia sought to compete, and sometimes collaborate, with her male colleagues, undertaking mythological, allegorical, and Biblical themes. Far from shying from the often violent, erotically charged subjects often portrayed in Baroque art, she made them the focus of her activity, giving special prominence to stories involving a female protagonist or victim. In this, her work has often been seen as an extension of her own biography. At a time when marriage or the convent were the only respectable alternatives held out to a woman, Artemisia chose to live by her brush and succeeded.

Above: Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, Roman, 1593–1651/53). Esther before Ahasuerus. Oil on canvas; 82 in. x 8 ft. 11 3/4 in. (208.3 x 273.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll, 1969 (69.281).

Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy was organized by Judith Mann, Curator of European Art, Saint Louis Museum of Art, Keith Christiansen, Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Rossella Vodret of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Roma in Rome.

The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

Prior to the Metropolitan's presentation, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy was on view at the Museo del Palazzo di Venezia in Rome from October 15, 2001 through January 6, 2002. After New York, the exhibition traveled to the Saint Louis Art Museum, where it was on view from June 15 to September 15, 2002.

Interesting Review

Paintings mentioned in the above review:

Orazio Gentileschi:

The Lute Player

Danaë (Richard Feigen collection)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Orazio_Gentileschi_-_David_Contemplating_the_Head_of_Goliath_-_WGA08579.jpg/493px-Orazio_Gentileschi_-_David_Contemplating_the_Head_of_Goliath_-_WGA08579.jpg

David Contemplating the Head of Goliath

The Rest on the Flight Into Egypt

Artemisia Gentileschi:

Conversion of the Magdalene

Judith and Her Maidservant, Detroit Institute of Arts

earlier Judith and Her Maidservant from Florence

↧

Major Retrospective Of Marc Chagall

June 7, 2013, 12:56 pm

≫ Next: Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

≪ Previous: Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) was the sole venue outside Paris for a major retrospective of the work of painter Marc Chagall from July 26 through November 4, 2003. Marc Chagall included approximately 80 paintings and 40 works on paper, many never before seen in the United States, from all periods of the artist's career.

Organized jointly by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris and the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Nice, the exhibition was the first comprehensive look at this artist since 1985 and offered a unique opportunity to reevaluate a body of work that is universally renowned but often underestimated.

Jean-Michel Foray, Director of the Chagall Museum in Nice and the Fernand Léger Museum in Biot, France, organized the retrospective; overseeing the San Francisco presentation is Janet Bishop, SFMOMA curator of painting and sculpture.

A fully illustrated catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition. It features approximately 220 pages and color plates of all of the works in the exhibition. The essay is by curator Jean-Michel Foray.

The work of Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is distinguished by its surrealistic inventiveness, as well as by the artist's use of humor and fantasy that draws deeply on the resources of the unconscious. Strong and often bright colors infuse his canvases with a dreamlike, non-realistic simplicity, while the combination of fantasy, religion and nostalgia conveys a joyous quality. One of the key themes addressed in the exhibition was how Chagall's conception of himself as a messenger from a better and more holy world drew him away from the modernist movements of his time.

Over the course of his career, Chagall declined to join an avant-garde movement three times: In Paris in 1911 he refused to formally align himself with the Cubists; in Moscow in 1920 he refused to join the Suprematist group; and in Paris in 1924 he refused to participate in the Surrealist group. The artist's choice to distance himself from these classifications has often removed him from critical analysis and consideration; thus, this exhibition will provide substantial new scholarship on the artist and his work.

Chagall was born in Vitsyebsk, Russia, the eldest of nine children in a poor family of Hasidic Jews. He was educated in art in Saint Petersburg and, from 1910-14, in Paris. A childhood in Chagall's deeply religious household inspired the subject matter for his many paintings depicting Jewish life, folklore and Bible stories.

He returned to Russia in 1915 and after the Russian Revolution was director of the Art Academy in Vitsyebsk and art director of the Theatre Juif (Jewish Theater) in Moscow. Chagall painted several murals in the theater lobby and executed the settings for numerous productions, many of which were featured in this exhibition.

In 1923, he moved to France, where he spent the rest of his life, except for a period of residence in the United States from 1941 to 1948. He died in St. Paul de Vence, France, on March 28, 1985.

Marc Chagall included work from four major periods of the painter¡'s artistic activity, the Russian years (1910-23); the French years (1924-40); the American years (1941-47) and the Vence years (1948-83), as well as objects ranging from his set decorations for the Theater Juif in Moscow to never-before-seen portraits of his family.

The Russian Years (1910-23)

The first segment of this section featured Chagall’s early works, in which he attempted to find a balance between his vernacular, Russian-Jewish culture and the culture of modernity he discovered in Paris in 1911-12.

From The Jewish Chagall: Marc Chagall Retrospective At The San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (image added):

The Wedding (1910) is one of his most adventuresome early paintings. The bold use of primary colors to indicate sky, rooftops and figures integrates all seamlessly into the composition. The totality of the composition reflects the unity of his conception of a modern couple's marriage in a totally traditional setting. A milkman is seen joining the wedding procession of traditionally clad villagers as the couple is led down the street by a klezmer band. On the far right the couple is ushered into the epitome of middle class aspirations, a door labeled in Russian, "Small Store."

The second section addresses Chagall’s renunciation of the abstract avant-garde and examines the décor he created for the Jewish Theater in Moscow. Chagall’s exploration of these two differing aesthetic cultures, that of the Russian Jews and that of the Parisian avant-garde, results in the development of the artist's distinctive and highly personal style. This section illustrated the genesis of Chagall’s idea of the artist as a messenger, which continued to be a theme throughout his career. The exhibition featured many significant paintings from this period, including

Introduction to the Jewish Theater, 1920,

and Music, 1920,

both from the State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.

The French Years (1924-40)

This section of the exhibition is composed chiefly of works on paper and gouaches that have rarely been exhibited and show Chagall trying to understand and assimilate the culture of France, his new home. Featured works from this period included the paintings Angel with Palette, 1927–36, from the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and The Rooster, 1928, from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid and Chagall’s illustrations for the classical works of French literature, Les Fables de La Fontaine, and for the work of contemporary French poets. Also included were the artist's Holy Bible illustrations and a series of images drawn from the world of the circus. This section explored how Chagall balanced his open-mindedness to a new culture with the strong ties he felt to his Russian Jewish origins.

From The Jewish Chagall: Marc Chagall Retrospective At The San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (image added):

Time Is A River Without Banks (1930-39) climaxes Chagall's use of metaphor as he sums up a decade of tumultuous decline for the Jews of Eastern Europe. The images of a winged fish playing a fiddle atop a grandfather clock that floats over the river running through his hometown Vitebsk appear surreal and puzzling. And yet, the gravity with which they are depicted, hovering over lovers on the riverbank, commands our attention and invites us to speculate as to what it may mean.

The American Years (1941-47)

Chagall arrived in New York just as the Germans invaded Russia during World War II. This section explored how Chagall’s work developed a refined artistic tone as he returned to the idea of the "artist as messenger" he had begun to work with during the 1920s at the Theatre Juif.

From The Jewish Chagall: Marc Chagall Retrospective At The San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (image added):

Chagall's mastery of symbolic narrative is shown again in The Flayed Ox (1947). This painting was created in the immediate shadow of the Holocaust drawing upon his memories of his beloved grandfather the shochet... Here, however, the image is obsessed with the bloody flesh of the beast lapping its own blood. The shochet floats helplessly above the decimated shtetl, flames licking the background, as he envisions a legacy of blood and violence perpetrated upon the Jewish people.

The Vence Years (1948-83)

In 1948, Chagall moved to St. Paul de Vence in the south of France, where he spent the remainder of his life. Featured works from this period included his popular Mediterranean landscapes and his works dealing with themes and stories from the Bible. In addition, this section included a group of works on paper dealing with Biblical subjects that had never been exhibited as a whole.

From The Jewish Chagall: Marc Chagall Retrospective At The San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (image added):

In The Crossing of the Red Sea (1955) the Israelites are led by a graceful white angel crossing through the sea as they move towards the top of the canvas. They are pursued by a crimson mob of Egyptians while a chrome yellow Moses confidently guides the entire narrative. Moses is possessed by a sense of foreboding as he dominates the lower left, locked in a red/ yellow dialogue with the Egyptians while the Jews escape upward in a white and blue vision of the future. That future is intimated in the shadows above the horizon with images of King David and, surprisingly, Christianity looming ominously on either side of the angel. Chagall's Crossing is trapped between the liberation of the people, the fate of their beloved leader, and the triumphs and tragedies the future will hold.

↧

Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

June 8, 2013, 5:55 am

≫ Next: Van Gogh's Postman: The Portraits of Joseph Roulin

≪ Previous: Major Retrospective Of Marc Chagall

Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting was the first full-scale survey of the paintings of the influential German artist ever mounted in New York as well as the most comprehensive overview of the artist’s work yet seen in North America. The exhibition, February 14–May 21, 2002, among the largest MoMA has ever devoted to a contemporary artist, presented 188 canvases from every phase of Richter’s career, from 1962 to today. This exhibition demonstrated the artist's mastery of diverse genres, including gestural abstractions, landscapes, portraits, and other photo-based pictures, as well as the vitality of painting as a mode of expression.

Richter’s diverse body of work calls into question many widely held attitudes about the inherent importance of stylistic consistency, the “organic” evolution of individual artistic sensibility, the spontaneous nature of creativity, and the relationship of technological means and mass media imagery to traditional studio methods and formats. While many contemporary postmodernists have explored these issues by circumventing or dismissing painting as a viable artistic option, Richter has challenged painting to meet the demands posed by new forms of conceptual art.

Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting was organized by Robert Storr, Senior Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

Richter has long been a greatly respected figure in Europe, but, Storr states, “the fact remains that compared to American contemporaries of similar achievement—Jasper Johns and Robert Ryman, to name two—Richter is relatively unfamiliar to the general American public and still insufficiently known or understood by the dedicated audience of modern art.”

Two exhibitions of Richter's work had been shown in the United States: a twenty-two-painting overview at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1987 and an eighty-painting survey that opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in 1988 and then traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Over the years, Richter’s renown in America has grown, with his work featured in galleries, group or thematic shows at museums, and exhibitions devoted to a particular aspect of his work.

Richter has been enormously prolific and has worked in all mediums. Painting, however, has always been his primary concern, and with the exception of one early drawing and his sculptural portraits of himself and Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting iwas exclusively focused on paintings

Fifty years after Richter found his vocation and forty years after making his first distinctive mark, the accumulated evidence selectively presented in this exhibition vindicates his faith in an art form fewer and fewer of his closest supporters have believed in and much of the general public has taken for granted, at high cost to painting's ability to convey fresh meaning. In any event, it is a medium that has come to depend for its survival on Richter's severe scrutiny—and it has survived and thrived in large measure because of it.”

Born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany, Gerhard Richter grew up under the Third Reich and National Socialism. He left grammar school at the age of fifteen and enrolled in a trade school, where he studied accounting, stenography, and Russian. Around this time, Richter started to draw, and by the age of sixteen he knew he wanted to be an artist. Richter's first arts-related job was as a member of a team that made Communist banners for the government of the German Democratic Republic. He then applied to the Art Academy in Dresden, but was turned down on his first attempt; he was finally accepted in 1952. During his five-year stay at the Academy, Richter received traditional studio training under Heinz Lothmar, a minor Surrealist and dedicated Communist who supervised the mural painting department at the Academy. This department was known for granting students the greatest freedom to experiment, as mural painting was assumed to be a “decorative” form by otherwise strict enforcers of the Socialist Realist aesthetic. Richter became an accomplished mural painter and upon graduation executed several successful mural commissions. The steady income and success from these commissions enabled Richter to travel to the West.

In 1959, during his second trip west, Richter saw Documenta 2, one of a series of exhibitions designed to reintroduce Germany to international modernism and the avant-garde that had disappeared during the Nazi regime. This exhibition had a profound impact on Richter; most importantly he was exposed to the work of artists Jackson Pollock and Lucio Fontana, whom he credits as helping him open his eyes to modernism. Seeing their work was what Storr calls “the turning point of Richter’s artistic life.”

In 1961, shortly before the Berlin Wall was erected, Richter moved to West Germany and began a radically new phase of his career in the heady artistic milieu that developed around Cologne and Düsseldorf in the 1960s. He enrolled in the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf in 1961 and there discovered Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Neo-Dada, Fluxus, and a host of related avant-garde tendencies.

Richter's professor at the Academy was the Art Informel or gestural painter Karl-Otto Götz, whose influence is seen in the artist's work throughout his career. Joseph Beuys was appointed Professor of Monumental Sculpture the same year Richter started at the Academy, and while Richter initially avoided him, he appreciated him for his influence on art, and they became colleagues in 1971, when Richter joined the Academy faculty.

Richter also formed ties with other artists of his generation, notably Sigmar Polke and Blinky Palermo. Richter, Polke, and their friend Konrad Lueg identified themselves as German Pop artists, and briefly upheld a satirical variant of Pop they called Capitalist Realism. Richter and his friends viewed the commercial culture of the West from a different perspective than their American and British counterparts as a result of the economic and political situation in Germany in the immediate postwar era.

Beginning in 1962 with gray-scale paintings that melded newspaper iconography and family snapshots with an austere photo-based realism unlike anything done by the American Photo-Realists, Richter set his own course through the tangle of isms that thrived around him. Although Richter's subject matter, such as the amenities of modern living

(Toilet Paper [Klorolle], 1965),

superficially resembled that of Pop artists like Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein, the selection of other images such as aerial bombardment

(Mustang Squadron [Mustang-Staffel], 1964)

or a smiling Nazi soldier

(Uncle Rudi [Onkel Rudi], 1965)

hinted at a more brooding and historically informed sense of contemporary reality.

Formally, Richter eschewed the graphic, often cartoonish quality of New York Pop for a painterly treatment of his snapshot and magazine-clipping sources that resembles Photo-Realism but with opposite effects. Systematically reducing the information transcribed from the source image to an elusive, usually ashen blur, Richter heightened the viewer's sense of the unnaturalness of both original photographs and their painted renditions.

In the early 1970s, Richter went on to paint spare monochromes that evoked mainstream Minimalism but with a significantly different intent and feeling. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Richter’s brightly colored and boldly delineated canvases suggested but also diverged from the pyrotechnic Neo- Expressionist painting then in full flush. These gestural abstractions continued his methodical yet magisterial deconstruction and reconstruction of the language of painting. Meanwhile, throughout his career, Richter has cultivated a subtly romantic and seemingly antimodernist manner in the landscapes and the hauntingly beautiful “old master-like” portraits he has intermittently produced even as he has pushed abstraction to new levels of visual intensity.

In 1988, Richter completed a startling cycle of fifteen black-and-white paintings titled October 18, 1977:

based on press photographs of the Baader-Meinhof group—a band of German radicals turned terrorists who died in a Stuttgart prison on that date in tragic and highly controversial circumstances. This group of paintings marks a turning point in Richter’s career, which had previously been interpreted as detached and ironic.

The most recent work in this exhibition, from the 1990s to 2002, including the

Moritz series (2000–01)—which had not been widely seen in America—revealed a gentle, occasionally elegiac sensibility despite the abiding critical severity of Richter’s painterly identity.

In every aspect of his varied output, Richter has assumed a skeptical distance from vanguardists and conservatives alike regarding what painting should be, choosing instead to test the limits of what he as an artist can create out of the formal conventions and contradictory ideological legacy of the medium. The result, paradoxically, has been the most thorough dismantling of those conventions and at the same time one of the most convincing demonstrations of painting’s renewed vitality to be found in late 20th- and early 21st-century art. *

Travel:

After its showing at MoMA, the exhibition embarked on a national tour to The Art Institute of Chicago (June 22–September 15, 2002); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (October 11, 2002–January 14, 2003); and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (February 20–May 18, 2003).

Publication:

The exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive illustrated catalogue featuring an extensive critical essay by the curator, an interview with the artist, chronology, exhibition history, and bibliography. Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Paintings contains over 200 color and duotone reproductions and numerous gatefolds; 336 pages.

Comprehensive Website

Interesting Article

↧

Van Gogh's Postman: The Portraits of Joseph Roulin

June 8, 2013, 6:29 am

≫ Next: Surrealism: Desire Unbound

≪ Previous: Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

Vincent van Gogh's portraits of Joseph Roulin - the postman who helped and supported him during some of his darkest days - was the focus of a special exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art from February 1 to May 15, 2001.

This exhibition became possible when six of the works were included in the exhibition Van Gogh: Face to Face, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until January 14, 2001. With kind cooperation from the owners of the works and from the organizers of this exhibition, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MoMA's visitors were able to see this remarkable series of paintings and drawings reunited. (See images below)

Van Gogh's Postman contains five of the six paintings that the artist made of his friend and protector during 1888 and 1889. MoMA's own portrait of Roulin, which was acquired by the Museum in 1989, was juxtaposed with paintings borrowed from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands. Two of the extant drawings of Roulin, one from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the other from a private collection, were also included.

In the spring of 1888, Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-90) left Paris for the provincial town of Arles in the south of France. There he met Joseph Roulin (1841-1903), who became one of his closest companions. Roulin was not a door-to-door letter carrier, but a brigadier who sorted mail at the Arles railway station. The artist called Roulin "a man more interesting than most" and was fascinated by his distinguishing characteristics: a short-nosed physiognomy, reminiscent of Socrates; the flushed coloration of a heavy drinker; and vehemently populist politics. Intensely lonely, van Gogh was also struck by Roulin's role as a devoted father of a large family.

The works in the exhibition show the evolution of van Gogh's depiction of Roulin, from the first, more naturalistic portrayals of the postman made in mid-1888, to the intense stylization of the last portraits painted in the first months of 1889. Van Gogh painted Roulin for the first time in the summer of 1888. In this painting, owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the largest of the portraits van Gogh made, Roulin, in his blue, gold-trimmed postal uniform and cap, is seated at a table and set against a simple, light-blue background.

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo of his excitement about "the modern portrait" - a picture that renders character not by the imitation of the sitter's appearance but through the independent, vivid life of color. Pursuing this goal in the portraits he painted of Roulin, van Gogh was influenced by the artists Honoré Daumier (for his expressive and caricatural line) and Eugène Delacroix (for his use of color). Another, more immediate influence may have been Paul Gauguin, who worked with van Gogh in Arles in the fall of 1888. Gauguin urged less dependence on observation and more reliance on memory and intuition. This advice may have been especially telling in the case of van Gogh's later portraits of Roulin (including MoMA's), which were likely painted after the postman had left Arles for Marseilles.

Between the first portraits and the MoMA version, van Gogh's relationship with Roulin had deepened. Just before Christmas 1888, spurred by an argument with Gauguin, van Gogh experienced a psychotic episode in which he cut off part of his ear and handed it to a prostitute. Roulin tended to the artist that night, and oversaw his admission to a hospital the next day. The postman then watched over him during his hospitalization, and provided constant solace during the painter's efforts to recover his mental balance. As van Gogh struggled to get well, Roulin's friendship and support became increasingly important. Mr. Varnedoe states, "The strength of the MoMA portrait, its centered stability and immense, overbrimming energy, must embody these feelings."

After Roulin moved to Marseilles, van Gogh saw him only intermittently, but even these brief visits held tremendous importance to the artist. In April of 1889, van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that Roulin had redeemed all that had been so alienating and tragic in the artist's experience in the south of France. Van Gogh writes: "Roulin, though he is not quite old enough to be like a father to me, nevertheless has a silent gravity and a tenderness for me as an old soldier might have for a young one." The painter continues: "[Roulin is] a man who is neither embittered, nor sad, nor perfect, nor happy, nor always irreproachably just. But such a good soul and so wise and so full of feeling and so trustful. I tell you I have no right to complain of anything whatsoever in Arles when I think of some of the things I have seen there which I shall never be able to forget."

Van Gogh's Postman: The Portraits of Joseph Roulin Checklist

Postman Joseph Roulin. 1888
Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Robert Treat Paine, 2nd

Portrait of Postman Roulin. 1888
Oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford II

The Postman Joseph Roulin. 1888
Pen and ink on paper
Private Collection

The Postman Joseph Roulin. 1888
Pen (ink and chalk) on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. George Gard de Sylva
Collection

The Postman Joseph Roulin. 1888
Oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, Gift of the heirs of Georg Reinhart

The Postman Roulin. 1889
Oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

Portrait of Joseph Roulin. 1889
Oil on canvas
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A.M.
Burden, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenberg, gift of Nelson A.
Rockefeller, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, The Sidney and
Harriet Janis Collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Werner E. Josten, and
Loula D. Lasker Bequest (all by exchange)

↧

Surrealism: Desire Unbound

June 8, 2013, 7:29 am

≫ Next: Fragonard and the French Tradition

≪ Previous: Van Gogh's Postman: The Portraits of Joseph Roulin

One of the most extraordinary artistic and intellectual movements of the 20th century wase explored in Surrealism: Desire Unbound, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art February 6 through May 12, 2002. More than 300 works including paintings, sculpture, photographs, films, poems, manuscripts, and books will explore the first major artistic movement to address openly the topics of love, desire, and various aspects of sexuality.

The exhibition had been organized by Tate Modern, London. (Great exhibition website here)

Surrealism embraced not only art and literature, but also psychoanalysis, philosophy, and politics. The Surrealists aimed to liberate the human imagination through an aesthetic investigation of desire—the authentic voice, they believed, of the inner self and the impulse behind love. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), one of the movement's earliest precursors as well as one of its first proponents, initially reflected on how to express desire in art around 1912, and throughout his career he continued to make eroticism the central theme of his work. Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), whose interest in dreams and groupings of seemingly disparate objects (which would later become Surrealist hallmarks) is also regarded as a precursor of the movement. The focus on dreams and desire reflected, in part, a familiarity with the writing of Sigmund Freud, the influential founder of psychoanalysis and a theorist who identified the sexual instincts and their sublimation as factors central to the development of the individual and of civilization as a whole. The intensity of the Surrealists' commitment to a broad, uncensored vision of human nature helped sustain and define the movement from its birth in the 1920s to its demise in the late 1950s.

Such Surrealist luminaries as Man Ray (1890-1976), Max Ernst (1891-1976), Joan Miró (1893-1983), André Masson (1896-1987), René Magritte (1898-1967), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), and Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) will be represented, as well as artists not so widely known. The exhibition included works by several women artists—such as Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Dorothea Tanning (b. 1910), Leonora Carrington (b. 1917), and others—some of whom have been largely overlooked in previous surveys. Also featured were examples of Surrealist writings about love and desire in an illuminating selection of rare and original books, manuscripts, letters, and other documentary materials.

Among the highlights of Surrealism: Desire Unbound was The Invisible Object (Hands Holding the Void) (1934, cast ca. 1954-5, The Museum of Modern Art, New York). This beckoning sculpture by Alberto Giacometti captivated André Breton (1896-1966), the leader of the Paris-based Surrealism group, who saw it in Giacometti's studio and wrote about it extensively in his revolutionary texts. In Breton's evocation of the work, The Invisible Object encapsulates the dynamics of the Surrealist encounter—the desire to love and be loved, the potential prelude to amorous and erotic experience, the impulse to make contact and at the same time maintain distance.

The Robing of the Bride (1940, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice), by Max Ernst,

is a theatrical and rich narrative painting evocative of witch trials of the Middle Ages.

The universal, mystical symbolism in

Men Shall Know Nothing of This (1923, Tate, London),

Ernst's image of a copulating couple floating in mid-air, suggests inexplicable ritual and alchemistic design that both generates and suppresses eroticism.

The Rape (1934, The Menil Collection, Houston),

René Magritte's meticulously painted image of a woman's face depicted as a female body, also suggests ambiguous sexuality; it was seen as a key Surrealist work by Breton.

Always her own favorite subject, Frida Kahlo used her image in scenarios that were vibrantly symbolic and naïve, unfettered by either the realism of Mexican muralists or the formal concerns of modernism.

Her 1940 Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair(The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

is an angry and forlorn expression of retaliation against Diego Rivera, to whom she was married, divorced, and remarried. In this depiction, painted during a time of their separation, she has cut off the long hair he loved, and stripped herself of feminine adornments except for her earrings and shoes. The shorn hair multiplies and spreads across the landscape as if alive.

Following a love affair with Leonora Carrington and his subsequent marriage to Peggy Guggenheim (a collector of Surrealist works), Max Ernst met Dorothea Tanning in 1942. Surrealism: Desire Unbound included

a self-portrait

that Tanning had painted on the occasion of her 30th birthday, in which she portrayed herself standing at the nexus of a labyrinth of open and closed doors, bare-breasted yet semi-clothed. A winged creature resembling a griffin crouches at her bare feet. The painting suggests discovery and flight. Tanning and Ernst later married and lived together in Sedona, Arizona, and Paris, France.

The mingling of love and a demanding, sometimes aggressive sexuality is perhaps nowhere better or more disturbingly shown than in the work of Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), whose Surrealist photographs explore sensual pleasure and psychic anxiety through pictures of large, specially-constructed dolls. Darker aspects of desire are also evoked in works by Surrealist masters Joan Miró and Roland Penrose (1900-1984), among many others who remain remarkable not so much for their openness in sexual matters as for their refusal to allow love to be divorced from eroticism. In their portrayals of encounter, desire, and carnality, the Surrealists continue to facilitate ways of seeing the world anew.

At the Metropolitan, Surrealism: Desire Unbound was organized by William S. Lieberman, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Chairman of Modern Art, with the assistance of Anne L. Strauss, Assistant Curator.

The exhibition was previously on view in fall, 2001, at Tate Modern, London, where it was curated by Jennifer Mundy, Senior Curator, Collections Division, Tate, with consultants Dawn Ades and Vincent Gille.

The accompanying catalogue, Surrealism: Desire Unbound (2001, Tate Publishing Ltd) was edited by Mundy, and it includes her essay as well as essays by other scholars.

↧

Fragonard and the French Tradition

June 10, 2013, 6:44 am

≫ Next: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection

≪ Previous: Surrealism: Desire Unbound

Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s (1732–1806) brilliant accomplishments as a draftsman in the context of eighteenth-century French art were the subject of an exhibition, Fragonard and the French Tradition, at The Morgan Library & Museum. The show, which marked the two-hundredth anniversary of Fragonard’s death, was on view from October 13, 2006, through January 7, 2007.

Through a selection of approximately forty drawings, taken almost entirely from the Morgan’s collection, by the artist and his compatriots, Fragonard and the French Tradition chronicled how Fragonard emerged from the academic tradition of his mentors François Boucher (1703–1770) and Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700–1777) to establish himself as an artist with a distinct style. Fragonard emerged from their academic tradition with a vigorous approach of his own that helped set the tone of the rococo aesthetic in the last half of the 18th century. The play of water was an important theme in his work, from foamy fountains to flowing streams, and he loved to depict the frothy but intricate foliage that appears often in his scenery.

His expert command of the brush yielded some of the most masterful and painterly drawings of the century.

From the New York Times (images added:)

Orlando Leaves Paris in Disguise

Orlando Returns Bireno to Olimpia

Among the most celebrated of Fragonard’s works are his illustrations for Ludovico Ariosto’s 1516 love poem, “Orlando Furioso,” done in the revolutionary climate of the 1780’s. On display are six of these drawings, worked in an ebulliently sketchy manner to match the adventures of the Christian knight Orlando, who goes mad when he finds that his love, the Oriental enchantress Angelica, has married a poor infidel. His cousin Astolpho embarks on a journey to recover Orlando’s lost wits, which he finds on the moon, and Fragonard’s drawings, light, fluid and in some cases verging on abstraction, keep pace with the frenetic plot.

Images in the exhibition included:

1. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806
Interior of a Park: The Gardens of the Villa d’Este
Gouache on vellum
7 3/4 x 9 1/2 in. (197 x 242 mm)
Thaw Collection; 1997.85

2. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806
Landscape with Flocks and Trees
Brush and brown wash, over graphite
13 9/16 x 18 3/8 in. (344 x 466 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1907;
III, 114

3. Jean Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806
Portrait of a Neapolitan Girl, 1774
Brush and brown wash over traces of
black chalk
14 7/16 x 11 1/8 in. (367 x 282 mm)
Thaw Collection; 2001.60

4. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806
A Young Woman Seated in a Garden
Red chalk, with slight indications in
graphite
8 3/4 x 11 1/16 in. (222 x 281 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1907;
I, 289a

5. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806
The Sacrifice of Coresus
Black chalk, brush and brown wash
13 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. (347 x 465 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1909;
I, 288

6. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806
La Récompense
Black chalk, brush and gray wash; incised
with stylus
16 7/8 x 13 1/2 in. 429 x 342 mm
Purchased as the gift of the Fellows with the
special assistance of Walter Baker, Mme.
Renée de Becker, Francis Kettaneh, Mrs.
Paul Moore, John S. Newberry, Jr., Mr. and
Mrs. Carl Stern, Mrs. Herbert N. Straus, and
Forsyth Wickes; 1955.5

7. “A Gathering at Woods’ Edge” (1760),

More Fragonard:

A Young Woman Seated with a Dog and a Watering Can in a Garden

A Young Girl Reading

↧

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection

June 10, 2013, 9:15 am

≫ Next: A Passion for Paul Klee: The Djerassi Collection at SFMOMA

≪ Previous: Fragonard and the French Tradition

Approximately 80 paintings – including landmark works of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as well as masterpieces from the Golden Age of Danish painting – all from the Ordrupgaard Collection in Copenhagen, Denmark, were featured in this exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. On view June 18 through September 8, 2002, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection offered a dazzling survey of this remarkable collection, including works by Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Degas, Delacroix, Eckersberg, Gauguin, Købke, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley, among others. Assembled by the Danish insurance magnate Wilhelm Hansen (1868-1936) in the early decades of the 20th century, both the collection and the country house from which it derives its name were bequeathed to the Danish State upon the death of his wife, Henny, in 1951.

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection was organized chronologically with works by French and Danish artists exhibited separately.

Camille Corot's The Windmill (ca. 1835-40)

and Gustave Courbet's Deer Hunting in the Franche-Comte, The Ruse (1866)

were among the earliest French works included in the exhibition.

Eight works by Edgar Degas included several pastels, such as

Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper (ca. 1882)

and the pastel and gouache Study for "The Bellelli Family"(1859),

an early version of the famous canvas in the Musée d'Orsay.

From The City Review (read the whole piece, w/ images!):

"Woman with a Jug, Portrait of Mme. Manet Holding a Ewer," by Édouard Manet, oil on canvas, 61 by 54.5 centimeters, 1858-60

One of the greatest surprises of the Ordrupgaard collection is Édouard Manet's "Woman with a Jug, Portrait of Mme. Manet Holding a Ewer." This 1858-60 oil on canvas, which measures 61 by 54.5 centimeters, could easily be mistaken for a masterpiece by Pontormo, or perhaps Correggio, or even Raphael. Manet, of course, was deeply influenced by the Old Masters and his famous "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe," painted a few years after this work, recalls a landscape by Giorgione. In his subject matter here, Manet may have been recalling a painting by Titian.

Landscapes, river views, and scenes of urban life are especially well represented in the Ordrupgaard Collection. From

Alfred Sisley's Factory on the Banks of the Seine, Bougival (1873)

to Camille Pissarro's Rue Saint-Lazare, Paris (1897),

many corners of the French countryside and capital were on view in the exhibition.

The brilliant, dappled sunshine of an early Monet,

The Chailly Road through the Forest of Fontainebleau (1865),

contrasts in terms of technique and atmospheric mood with the artist's later painting,

Waterloo Bridge, Overcast (1903).

Paul Gauguin was represented by eight works spanning nearly his entire career and most of his voyages. They ranged from the tender depiction of his daughter in Paris,

The Little Dreamer, Study of the Artist's Daughter Aline, Rue Carcel (1881)

Adam and Eve (1902),

painted in the South Pacific just a year before the artist's death.

From The City Review (read the whole piece, w/ images!):

Your Turn Will Come, My Beauty. The Blue Tree Trunks, Arles," by Paul Gauguin, 92 by 73 centimeters, 1888

Perhaps the finest work in the 84 paintings exhibited from the Ordrupgaard collection is "Your Turn Will Come, My Beauty. The Blue Tree Trunks, Arles, 1888," a sensational landscape that Gauguin painted in 1888 during his stay in Arles with Vincent Van Gogh.

Gauguin's engaging, if slightly unsettling,

Portrait of a Young Girl Vaïte (Jeanne) Goupil (1896),

who was the daughter of a French merchant in Tahiti, is the only known portrait commission ever undertaken by the artist.

The paintings in the exhibition by Danish artists of the Golden Age will refleced a different sensibility and technical virtuosity from that of the Impressionists, though the Danes were just as interested in the depiction of sunlight and other atmospheric effects.

An early work by C.W. Eckersberg,

View of the Colonnade, St. Peter's Square, Rome (1813-16),

was painted during the artist's three years of study in Italy and underscores the allure that Rome, with its classical architecture and golden sunlight, held for Eckersberg and many other artists of the era.

Nineteenth-century Danish artists were no less enamored of the landscape than the French Impressionists, as will be seen in such works as Johan Thomas Lundbye's A Meadow Near Lake Arresø (1838) and Christen Købke's View of Dosseringen, Copenhagen, Study of Willow Scrub in the Foreground, (ca. 1837). Six paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi, including Young Woman Sewing, the Artist's Sister Anna Hammershøi (1887) and Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunlight, Interior of the Artist's Home (1900), reveal the impact that the "rediscovery" of Vermeer had on many late-19th-century artists.

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

At the Metropolitan, the exhibition was organized by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator of European Paintings, and Rebecca A. Rabinow, Assistant Research Curator in the Department of European Paintings.

Prior to the Metropolitan's presentation, the exhibition was on view at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Afterward, it traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

↧

A Passion for Paul Klee: The Djerassi Collection at SFMOMA

June 10, 2013, 11:11 am

≫ Next: Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist

≪ Previous: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection

A major exhibition of works by Paul Klee from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s (SFMOMA) distinguished Djerassi collection—so named for its benefactor, Dr. Carl Djerassi, who first placed his Klee holdings on extended loan to the Museum in 1984, followed in 1988 by promised and full gifts of 85 works from the collection—was on view at the Museum from March 1 through June 8, 2003.

A Passion for Paul Klee: The Djerassi Collection at SFMOMA marked the first time Dr. Djerassi’s complete holdings, the largest collection of work by Klee in the western United States and considered among the finest in the world, were seen in their entirety. Featuring 140 works that range from Klee’s years as a high school student until his death in 1940, the exhibition revealed a comprehensive look at the 20th-century avant-garde master. The collection is primarily composed of works on paper and is almost evenly divided in number between Klee’s prints (both etchings and lithographs) and drawings and his watercolors. A Passion for Paul Klee was organized by Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture; SFMOMA is the only venue.

“Dr. Djerassi’s very generous gifts and the extraordinary promise he made to SFMOMA of his entire Klee collection represent an invaluable public resource of rich and varied works by one of the most important artists of the 20th century,” said director Neal Benezra. “SFMOMA has benefited from Dr. Djerassi’s vision and support for nearly 20 years; we are honored to make his entire collection available to our audience for the first time.” Dr. Djerassi is a professor of organic chemistry at Stanford University whose accomplishments include the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive—the birth control pill—for which he was awarded the National Medal of Science and elected into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is a published author of works of both fiction and nonfiction.

Paul Klee (1879–1940), born in Münchenbuchsee, just north of Bern, Switzerland’s capital, grew up in a musical family and was himself a violinist. Ultimately he opted to study art and in 1900 trained with neoclassicist Franz von Stuck at the Munich Academy, where he first met painter Vasily Kandinsky. As was standard academic practice, his training included anatomy lessons and life drawing from the nude; he later toured Italy for seven months, where he was exposed to early Christian and Byzantine art. In 1906 he married pianist Lili Stumpf and settled in Munich, then an important center for avant-garde art; their only child, Felix, was born there the following year. Klee’s friendship with Kandinsky prompted him to join Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), an expressionist group pivotal to the development of abstract art. Later, at the invitation of founder Walter Gropius, Klee taught at the esteemed Bauhaus from 1920–31; in 1931 he accepted a position at the Dusseldorf Academy, but was soon dismissed by the Nazis, who included 17 of his works in their infamous exhibition of “degenerate art,” Entartete Kunst, in 1937. After a move to Switzerland in 1933, Klee developed the crippling collagen disease, scleroderma, marked by a pathological thickening and hardening of the skin; he died from its complications in 1940.

As seen in the exhibition A Passion for Paul Klee: The Djerassi Collection at SFMOMA, Klee worked in such a wide variety of styles that he defies simple categorization. The works on view demonstrate the breadth of his output, from portraits to abstractions, from landscapes to figurative works. Beginning with his classically based etchings of 1903–5, continuing through his impressionistic, expressionist and cubist endeavors in the first decades of the century and followed by his alternately highly structured and free-flowing works of later years, Klee’s oeuvre, in its own way, parallels the broad developments in 20th-century European art. The earliest work in the collection, Untitled, 1895, is an intimate pen-and-ink landscape on gold-edged paper. Other early works include etchings from his Inventions series, collectively known as Opus I, that reveal both his assimilation and rejection of his academic art training, rendered in what he termed his “sour” style: the works provide a biting commentary on contemporary existence.

A trip to Tunisia in 1914 inspired Klee to use color and marked the beginning of his fully mature style; the watercolor

Fata Morgana zur Zee (Fata Morgana on the Sea), 1918,

is composed of translucent areas of pink, violet and sea green, outlined in thin black ink.

Initiale (Initial), 1917, rendered in delicate pastel shades of blue, green, orange and violet, features a prominent letter “I,” recalling a medieval illuminated manuscript. (Revealing his satisfaction with the work, Klee himself inscribed it with the letter “S Kl,” denoting Sonderklasse, or “special class.”)

The hand-colored lithograph

Ein Genius serviert ein kleines Frühstück, Engel bringt das Gewünschte (A Spirit Serves a Small Breakfast, Angel Brings the Desired), 1920,

is based on a pen-and-ink drawing of the same name from 1915, but with the addition of a pale pink wash over the central portion as well as a deeply pigmented frame and symbol of a heart.

Selections from Klee’s work between 1921–31, known as the “Bauhaus Years,” included

Die Heilige vom innern Licht (The Saint of Inner Light), 1921; color lithograph;

Die erhabene Seite (The Sublime Aspect), 1923;

Pferd und Mann (Horse and Man), 1925;

and Heldenmutter (Hero Mother), 1927.

These works incorporate many of the constructivist tendencies and principles taught at the Bauhaus along with Klee’s personal intuition and poetic lyricism, creating fantastical works that stretch the limits of the imagination.

Selections from the 1930s emphasized Klee’s appreciation for the abstract form as a vehicle for creative expression. The latest work in the exhibition, an untitled composition dating from 1940, featured a landscape fashioned from rows of vividly colored rectangles on one side and an abstracted, wide-eyed angel on the other.

↧

Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist

June 10, 2013, 12:16 pm

≫ Next: Walker Evans & Company at The Museum of Modern Art

≪ Previous: A Passion for Paul Klee: The Djerassi Collection at SFMOMA

On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 9 through December 30, 2001, Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, was the first major retrospective of the artist's work in nearly 40 years. Best known for his luminous Mediterranean seascapes rendered in a myriad of "dots" – and later mosaic-like squares – of color, Signac adapted the "pointillist" technique of Georges Seurat with stunning visual impact. The exhibition featured 121 works, including some 70 oils and a rich selection of Signac's watercolors, drawings, and prints, providing an unprecedented overview of the artist's 50-year career.

Often viewed as "the second man of Neo-Impressionism," Paul Signac (1863-1935) has long been considered an artist of talent in the shadow of the more celebrated Seurat. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue placed the emphasis squarely on Signac's own personal accomplishments so that the unique character of his oeuvre, his artistic process, and the full range of his activities, relationships, and contributions were illuminated.

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Réunion des musées nationaux/Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Long overshadowed by his more celebrated contemporary Georges Seurat, Signac created an extraordinary body of work – most remarkable are his shimmering seascapes and luminous views of the French Riviera. In these works of vivid and pulsating color, Signac fully explored and expanded upon the innovations of Seurat's divisionist painting technique creating images with an intensity and expressive power that belong to him alone

Arranged chronologically, the selection of works traced Signac's development from an art based on observation and direct study of nature, through the rigor and optical precision of Neo-Impressionism to a more subjective art based on his own concepts of pictorial and social harmony. Essentially self-taught, Signac's first works, plein-air studies painted in the early 1880s in Paris and its neighboring suburbs, reveal the lessons he absorbed from Monet, Guillaumin, Caillebotte, and other Impressionists whose examples were his starting point.

By the end of the decade, Seurat's art was the crucial catalyst for the evolution of Signac's painting, providing a model for his technique, his manner of working and even, on occasion, the design of his compositions. Notwithstanding Signac's romantic bent, his more tactile brushstrokes and his stronger color contrasts, it was not until the 1890s – after the death of Seurat – that his work fully came into its own. Signac developed a bolder and looser technique, relying increasingly on the dramatic and architectonic play of color. His discovery of "the joy of watercolor" in 1892 – a medium in which, after Cézanne, he was to become the undisputed master in the 20th century – offered a vehicle for a freer and livelier means of expression, one well-suited to his restless, peripatetic lifestyle. In the best of his late works Signac combined the sensual legacy of his first pictures with the cool rationality of Neo-Impressionism to create images of extraordinary chromatic richness and feeling.

From an excellent review in FRANCE Magazine(some images, link added):

On view are many of the well-known oils he did before 1891. There is the super-modern

"Gas Tanks at Clichy" (1886),

in which an unsentimental view of the past blends with a fearless glimpse at the future; the ultra-decorous

"Dining Room" (1886-87),

a tour-de-force in which Signac characteristically lavishes attention on astonishingly subtle details of light and shadow;

the practically existentialist "Sunday" (1888-1890),

depicting a man and woman with their backs to each other in a stiflingly lovely salon;

and the slightly psychedelic, Japonism-influenced 1890-91

Portrait of Félix Fénéon, the artist’s close friend and first biographer.

These are works of extraordinary skill and thought. Then there are the exhilarating watercolors and propulsive oils done after Signac’s move to Saint-Tropez in 1892, when his personal 20th century seems to have begun. These works steal the show. Here the artist seems to be stretching beyond definition by the other artists and movements he espoused and sailing into his own waters with the heightened self-determination that would characterize so many of the subsequent century’s most radical artists. Look at the electric grandeur of

"The Port at Sunset, Saint-Tropez, Opus 236" (1892)

and the exuberant freedom of

"Still Life With Fruit and Vegetables" (1926),

both of which seem so jazzed that they might be a spin or two away from mid-century abstraction.

An avid yachtsman who settled in Saint-Tropez in 1892, Signac is celebrated for his "The Ports of France," glorious views of port towns along the French coast:

Port-en-Bessin. Le Catel, 1884

and his resplendent seascapes, e.g.

Stiff Northwest Breeze, Saint-Briac 1885.

Prominently featured in the exhibition, these sea and harbor scenes in oil and watercolor were joined by lesser known works, among them his early views of the industrialized suburbs of Paris, the vibrant watercolor still lifes of his maturity, and striking ink drawings he made at the end of his career. Signac's

Women at the Well (1892, Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

completed the survey.

The planning of the exhibition was greatly facilitated by the recently published catalogue raisonné of Signac's work by Françoise Cachin, which combines her insight as the artist's granddaughter and acumen as an art historian. Her assistant on this publication, Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, author of several articles and books devoted to Signac, contributed to the present catalogue and worked closely with the curators, Anne Distel, Chief Curator of the Musée d'Orsay, John Leighton, Director of the Van Gogh Museum, and Susan Alyson Stein, Associate Curator of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the selection of works for the exhibition.

A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue, with individual entries on the works included in the exhibition and six introductory essays, was published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. The first three essays focus on Signac's respective efforts as a painter, as a watercolorist and draftsman, and as a printmaker. The final essays discuss Signac's myriad relationships with other artists and his activities as a writer, spokesman for the Neo-Impressionist movement, exhibition organizer, political and social activist, yachtsman, and collector. The main body of the book, which provides in-depth entries and color plates for 182 works, is divided into four sections, each prefaced by an overview of the chronological period – Impressionism: 1883-1885; Neo-Impressionism, 1886-1891; Saint-Tropez, 1892-1906; and Ports and Travels: Signac in the Twentieth Century.

To complement the major exhibition Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented paintings, drawings, and watercolors – selected entirely from the Museum's own collections – by Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Hippolyte Petitjean and other artists who, like Paul Signac, exuberantly followed the groundbreaking techniques of optical painting introduced in the 1880s by Georges Seurat. On view at the Metropolitan from October 2 through December 30, 2001, Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac featured some 60 works by these artists as well as by the better-known Signac and Seurat.

Flourishing from 1886 to 1906, the artists who worked in this avant-garde style came to be called Neo-Impressionists. The term was coined by art critic Félix Fénéon in his review of the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition (1886) to describe the work of Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, and, remarkably, Camille Pissarro, pioneers of a daring new vision that deviated distinctly from the waning Impressionist school.

Neo-Impressionism extended its reach to Belgium as well, where an avant-garde group known as Les Vingts (Les XX) embraced Seurat's ideals following the 1887 exhibition in Brussels of his masterpiece Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte. Théo van Rysselberghe was a member of this highly visible Belgian circle, and the exhibition features several examples of his work. Even Henri Matisse briefly experimented with a Neo-Impressionist technique, prompted in part by the publication of Signac's manifesto From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism and by the invitation to paint with Signac at his Saint-Tropez residence. Matisse spent nearly a year in Signac's company.

Neo-Impressionists eschewed the random spontaneity of Impressionism. They sought to impose order on the visual experience of nature through codified, scientific principles. An optical theory known as mélange optique was formulated to describe the idea that separate, often contrasting colors would combine in the eye of the viewer to achieve the desired chromatic effect. The separation of color through individual strokes of pigment came to be known as "Divisionism" while the application of precise dots of paint came to be called "Pointillism." According to Neo-Impressionist theory, the application of paint in this fashion set up vibrations of colored light that produced an optical purity not achieved by the conventional mixing of pigments.

The rigid theoretical tenets of optical painting upheld by Neo-Impressionism's standard-bearer, George Seurat, gave way to a more fluid technique following his untimely death in 1891. In the luminous watercolors of Henri-Edmond Cross, for example, small, precise brush marks were replaced by long, mosaic-like strokes and clear, contrasting hues by a vibrant, saturated palette. While some artists like Henri Matisse merely flirted with Neo-Impressionism and others like Camille Pissarro renounced it entirely, Seurat's legacy extended well into the 20th century in the works of Cross and Signac. Poised between Impressionism in the 19th century and Fauvism and Cubism in the 20th, Neo-Impressionism brought with it a new awareness of the formal aspects of paintings and a theoretical language by which to paint.

Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac was organized by Dita Amory, Associate Curator, Robert Lehman Collection. Exhibition design is by Michael Langley, Exhibition Designer, with graphics by Sophia Geronimus, Graphic Designer; and lighting by Zack Zanolli, Lighting Designer.

↧

Walker Evans & Company at The Museum of Modern Art

June 10, 2013, 1:40 pm

≫ Next: MANTEGNA TO MATISSE: MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY

≪ Previous: Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist

One of the most challenging and fruitful innovations of modern art was the pursuit of ordinary photographic description as a vehicle of imaginative visual poetry. No single artist contributed more to this innovation than the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-75). Organized by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography, Walker Evans & Company reexamined Evans's achievement through its rich artistic legacy. The exhibition was on view at The Museum of Modern Art from March 16 through August 22, 2000.

In this wide-ranging exhibition, some 60 photographs by Evans were organized into eight groups, each devoted to a single dimension of his work. Each group is presented together with works by other artists-- mostly photographers, but also painters, sculptors, printmakers, and one architect--that anticipate, extend, or otherwise resonate with the given dimension of Evans's art. The exhibition thus employs tradition as a sounding board to amplify salient aspects of Evans's work and adopts his photography as a lens through which to explore the unfolding of artistic tradition.

Among the 70 artists represented in this exhibition of nearly 200 works were Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Harry Callahan, Stuart Davis, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, William Eggleston, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jan Groover, Andreas Gursky, Edward Hopper, Russell Lee, Roy Lichtenstein, Wright Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, August Sander, Michael Schmidt, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Thomas Struth, Robert Venturi, Andy Warhol, Edward Weston, and Marion Post Wolcott.

The Museum of Modern Art began to acquire Evans's photographs in the early 1930s, not long after he began to make them, and thereafter enjoyed a close relationship with the artist throughout his life. The Museum's first one-person photography exhibition, in 1933, was Walker Evans: Photographs of Nineteenth-Century Houses, organized by Lincoln Kirstein. Five years later, MoMA exhibited Walker Evans: American Photographs and published the landmark book by the same title, with an afterword by Kirstein. In 1966 the Museum mounted the first showing of Evans's subway portraits of 1938-41 in the exhibition Walker Evans: Subway Photographs, and in 1971 it presented Walker Evans, the first major retrospective of the artist's work, organized by John Szarkowski. In 1988 the Museum issued a fiftieth-anniversary edition of American Photographs, accompanied by a touring exhibition.

Evans produced his most important work in the 1930s, much of it for the government agency now best known as the Farm Security Administration. But he had formed his outlook and style before the hard times settled in, and he approached his FSA job as a subsidized freedom to continue his work. Although Evans's photographs are habitually celebrated as documents of the Great Depression, Walker Evans & Company aimed to show that his restless interrogation of American society ranged far beyond the troubles of the Depression and continued to reverberate long after the 1930s. A good deal of FSA photography was modeled on Evans's dry, factual style, but his richest creative influence began to unfold after World War II, when his example of skeptical engagement with the contemporary scene proved invaluable to a diverse roster of younger photographers, beginning with Frank, Friedlander, and Arbus. In the 1960s and later, as the leaders of the Pop Art movement and its successors reinvigorated American painting and sculpture by embracing the everyday world, they demonstrated that both Evans's vernacular iconography--car culture, billboards and advertising, the movies, junk--and his indivisible alloy of ironic detachment and open affection were not time-bound relics of the 1930s but essential resources of contemporary art. So, too, was his nimble approach to photography as transparent fact, potent symbol, and medium of recycled replication.

The eight groupings that comprised the exhibition may be summarized as follows:

- Evans modeled his seemingly impersonal style on the sober clarity of American vernacular photography, but his ambition to draw an indelible picture of contemporary civilization--of the conflicted present understood as a collective inheritance from the past--owed still more to the work of two European predecessors, August Sander and Eugène Atget, who had shown that photography could creatively map the structure of a society. Just as

Sander's Peasant Woman (1914)

represents the bedrock of German culture,

Evans's Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife (1936)

is not a Depression victim to be pitied but a powerful exemplar of American honesty and grit.

- Evans's outline of an authentic American tradition composed of indigenous architecture and artifacts is easily misconstrued as nostalgic, but he was drawn by the new as well as the old. His image of American history may be described as a study of the incomplete industrial present in the process of supplanting the unfinished agrarian past.

Evans elected the automobile as an icon of our times--an embodiment of the American paradox by which mass production brought a new chance of personal freedom and mobility. Cars were still quite new in 1930, and most modernists pictured them as shining avatars of progress. In

Evans's Joe's Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania (1936)

the cars form a landscape of waste and decay. His prescience in recognizing car culture as essential, symbolic material of modern America is seconded in the exhibition by such works as

Weston's Wrecked Car, Crescent Beach (1939),

Frank's Covered Car, Long Beach, California (1955-56), and Rauschenberg's First Landing Jump (1961).

- Although Evans's core aesthetic is rightly identified with the rectitude and precision of large-camera photography, he was among the first Americans to adopt the enthusiasm for small, handheld cameras that swept Europe in the 1920s. In fact, his earliest lasting pictures, such as

42nd Street (1929),

are small-camera studies of city characters--sharp observations of social types, which broaden his otherwise largely unpeopled image of American civilization. After World War II, the handcamera triumphed in America as advanced photographers pursued an increasingly complex image of the theater of the street. Nevertheless, many small-camera pictures of the period, such as

Arbus's Teenage Couple on Hudson Street, New York City (1963), are devoid of narrative incident. As in Evans's pictures, the main event is a static encounter between the photographer and one or more social beings, about whom we know nothing except what we see.

- While Evans photographed a variety of building exteriors--churches, banks, schools, and factories--most of his photographs of interiors were of homes. Pictures such as

Bed and Stove, Truro, Massachusetts (1931)

are marked by the same archaeological scrutiny that Evans regularly applied to the exterior. Despite the usual absence of the occupant, however, the interiors are dense with allusion to the passions and tribulations of individual lives. Eggleston's three photographs titled Memphis (c. 1972) and Gober's untitled sculpture of a bed (1988) distill private emotion with the same disinterested urgency,and so retrospectively open our eyes to a depth of feeling in the work of a photographer famous for his reserve.

- Evans often spoke of photography as a form of collecting, and in his pictures he collected signs of the times, past and present. Many of his subjects were quite literally signs, words and images that had been created to communicate. Cubism had introduced the shards of commercial culture into the realm of high art, and Minstrel Showbill (1936) and other Evans photographs readily recall Dadaist collage. The novelty of Evans's experiments in this vein lie partially in the fact that photography was often both the agent of transcribing the vernacular sign and, as subject matter, symbolically charged material in itself--for example, in

Penny Picture Display, Savannah (1936),

which is an homage to the unpretentious portraitist, a witty send-up of photography's talent for duplication, a taut modernist picture, and a pointed meditation on the contest between freedom and uniformity in American life. A diverse assembly of works by Frank, Friedlander, Gonzalez-Torres, Lichtenstein, Schmidt, Warhol, and Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé, among others, explores the persistent resonance of Evans's image world in art of the past halfcentury.

- Along with car culture and advertising, the movies play a prominent role in Evans's pictures of everyday culture--in

Torn Movie Poster (1930),

for example, or

Girl in Fulton Street, New York (1929),

whose subject emulates the flappers she has seen on the screen and in the magazines. Made by the few and consumed by the many, the commercial seductions of the movies are part of what we share and part of each of us--an enthralling American contradiction also engaged by Louis Faurer in an untitled photograph of 1938, by Hopper in New York Movie (1939), by Warhol in Gold Marilyn (1962), and by Sherman in Untitled Film Still #21 (1978).

- Before Evans there were already millions of architectural photographs in which the picture plane is parallel to the facade of the building. From this unexamined convention Evans abstracted a commanding, rigorous style. His photograph

Church of the Nazarene, Tennessee (1936)

suggests that he had learned from painters such as Piet Mondrian that the picture plane could constitute an ideal world unto itself. But Evans's frontal style was also a lucid vehicle of impersonal description. A photograph by Evans is both a bold pictorial invention and an uninflected worldly discovery--a fusion of opposites that is variously exploited in Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), the Becher's Anonymous Sculpture (1970), and Gursky's Times Square, New York (1997).

- Evans's Subway Portraits of 1938-41 invite us to reconsider the rest of his work from an angle that might not otherwise come to mind. Made in the New York city subway with a concealed camera, the pictures are acutely specific portraits, but their serial uniformity evokes census-like anonymity. Evans addresses the subjects' deepest inner secrets, only to assert that they are incommunicable. His talent for evoking the psychology of individuals amidst others but nonetheless alone, in a world not of their making but nonetheless theirs, is echoed in the exhibition in works by Callahan, Adams, diCorcia, and Judith Joy Ross.

PUBLICATION

Walker Evans & Company Exhibition catalogue by Peter Galassi. 399 illustrations, including 67 in color and 332 in duotone, 272 pages, 10 1/2 x 11 1/2".

↧

MANTEGNA TO MATISSE: MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY

June 11, 2013, 6:42 am

≫ Next: American ABC: Childhood in 19th-Century America

≪ Previous: Walker Evans & Company at The Museum of Modern Art

The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 June to 9 September 2012

The Frick Collection, New York, 2 October 2012 to 27 January 2013

This exhibition, MANTEGNA TO MATISSE: MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY, presented a magnificent selection of some sixty of its finest works. It offered a rare opportunity to consider the art of drawing in the hands of its greatest masters, including Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Cézanne and Matisse. The Courtauld last displayed a comparable selection of its masterpieces more than twenty years ago and this exhibition brought the collection to new audiences nationally and internationally.

The exhibition opened with a group of works dating from the 15th century, from both Northern and Southern Europe.

An exquisite and extremely rare early Netherlandish drawing of a seated female saint from around 1475-85 is rooted in late medieval workshop traditions (fig. 1 - see citations below).

It was also at this time that drawing assumed a new central role in nourishing individual creativity, exemplified by two rapid pen and ink sketches by Leonardo da Vinci.

These remarkably free and exploratory sketches show the artist experimenting with the dynamic twisting pose of a female figure for a painting of Mary Magdalene (fig. 2). For Renaissance artists such as Leonardo, drawing or disegno was the fundamental basis of all the arts: the expression not just of manual dexterity but of the artist’s mind and intellect.

These ideas about the nature of drawing achieved their full expression in the flowering of draughtsmanship in the 16th century. At the heart of this section of the exhibition was

Michelangelo’s magisterial The Dream (fig. 3). Created in 1533, this highly complex allegory was made by Michelangelo as a gift for a close friend and it was one of the earliest drawings to be produced as an independent work of art.

More typically, drawings were made in preparation for other works, including paintings, sculptures and prints.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s engaging scene of drunken peasants cavorting at a festival in the Flemish village of Hoboken was drawn in 1559 in preparation for a print (fig. 4). Whereas Michelangelo sought ideal divinely inspired beauty in the human figure, Bruegel here revels in the disorder of everyday life.

Despite the important preparatory function of drawing, many of the most appealing works in the exhibition were unplanned and resulted from artists reaching for their sketchbooks to capture a scene for their own pleasure –

Parmigianino’s Seated Woman Asleep is a wonderful example of such an informal study surviving from the early 16th century.

Drawn approximately 100 years later in around 1625,

Guercino’s Child Seen From Behind retains the remarkable freshness and immediacy of momentary observation (fig. 5). Guercino was a compulsive and brilliantly gifted draughtsman. Here the red chalk lends itself perfectly to the play of light on the soft flesh of the child sheltering in its mother’s lap.

No less appealing in its informality is Rembrandt’s spontaneous and affectionate sketch of his wife, Saskia, sitting in bed cradling one of her children (fig. 6).

The exhibition offered a striking contrast between this modest domestic image and Peter Paul Rubens’s contemporaneous depiction of his own wife, the beautiful young Helena Fourment (fig. 7). Celebrated as one of the great drawings of the 17th century, this unusually large work shows the richly dressed Helena – who was then about 17 – moving aside her veil to look directly at the viewer. Created with a dazzling combination of red, black and white chalks, this drawing was made as an independent work of art and was not intended for sale or public display. In its imposing presence, mesmerising skill and subtle characterisation, it is the equal of any painted portrait.

The central role of drawing in artistic training is underlined in a remarkable sheet by Charles Joseph Natoire from 1746. It shows the artist, seated in the left foreground, instructing students during a life class at the prestigious Académie royale in Paris (fig. 8).

Drawing after the life model and antique sculpture was considered essential in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the great champions of this academic tradition was Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The beautiful elongated forms of the reclining nude in his Study for the ‘Grand Odalisque’, 1813-14, represents the highest refinement of a precise yet expressive linear drawing style rooted in the academy (fig. 9).

Outside the academy, drawing could offer the artist a means of liberating creativity.

Goya’s Cantar y bailar (Singing and dancing), 1819-20, comes from one of the private drawing albums which the artist used to inhabit the world of his dreams and imagination.

Canaletto’s expansive and meticulously composed View from Somerset Gardens, looking towards London Bridge is one of several highlights of a section exploring the relationship between drawing and the landscape.

This group stretches back as early as Fra Bartolomeo’s Sweep of a river with fishermen drawn in around 1505-09, and also includes a particularly strong selection of landscapes from the golden age of the British watercolour.

The interest in landscape is nowhere more powerfully combined with the expressive possibilities of watercolour than in the work of J.M.W. Turner. His late Dawn after the Wreck of around 1841 was immortalised by the critic John Ruskin, who imagined the solitary dog shown howling on a deserted beach to be mourning its owner, lost at sea (fig. 10). For Ruskin, this was one of Turner’s ‘saddest and most tender works’.

The Courtauld collection included an outstanding selection of drawings and watercolours by the great French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists for whom the Gallery is most famous.

Apples, Bottle and Chairback is one of Cézanne’s finest late works in any technique (fig. 11). Here we see the artist pushing watercolour to its extreme through his extraordinary intuitive but masterful handling of successive layers of coloured washes over luminous white paper.

Another highlight of this group was the equally remarkable large crayon drawing by Cézanne’s younger contemporary, Georges Seurat. His standing female nude materialises in an almost unfathomable manner from an intricate web of curving crayon lines (fig. 12).

Gainsborough imagines Landscape with Cattle on a Road Running Through a Wooded Valley.

From the arts desk (images, links added):

Drawing here offers up its unique formal attributes in a succession of exemplary pieces. Movement and deftness is a recurring sensation in the details, in the tiny horse and cart in Van Gogh’s

A Tile Factory (1888) where the fleet gait of the horse and the broken, uneven line of the rider’s mid-air whiplash contrast with the typically thick and spiky hatchings that set the scene.

It’s remarkable what can be achieved with such limited means. Rembrandt’s fluid and dense curling lines confer weight in his figures’ clothing while light nib scratches adorn the lit faces of his

Two Men in Discussion, One in Oriental Dress (1641).

In Toulouse-Lautrec’s Au Lit (c.1896) a sparse jumble of lines map bed sheets and compact into a woman’s head gazing towards us. It feels intrusive to look back at her, such is drawings’ capacity for powerful immediacy.

As obvious as it would seem, it’s still surprising how much some of these drawings resemble their makers’ paintings. The spikey Van Gogh is a case in point, as is

Manet’s La Toilette (1860) with its frontally lit hard-edged realism...

The exhibition concluded with work by the two greatest artists of the 20th century, Picasso and Matisse, who reinvented the art of drawing for the modern age.

The Courtauld’s drawings collection is largely the result of a series of remarkable individual gifts. They include the drawings presented by Samuel Courtauld alongside his collection of French Impressionist paintings, the bequest by Sir Robert Witt of some 3,000 drawings in 1952, and Count Antoine Seilern’s Princes Gate bequest which, in 1978, brought many of the most famous individual drawings into the collection. Additionally, the works in the exhibition reveal rich and intriguing earlier collecting histories in which artist collectors such as Peter Lely in the 17th century and Thomas Lawrence and Joshua Reynolds in the 18th century feature alongside some of the great princely and connoisseurial collectors of Europe.

Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Courtauld Gallery was organised under the auspices of the IMAF Centre for Drawings which was established in 2010 to support the study, conservation and public enjoyment of The Courtauld’s collection.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition was prepared in collaboration with The Frick Collection and features twenty authors contributing entries on individual works in their specialist areas, often with new technical research undertaken at The Courtauld.

Interesting reviews

1.
http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/exhibitions/brian-sewell-on-mantegna-to-matisse-master-drawings-courtauld-gallery-7850656.html

2. http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting%20%26%20drawing/art389833

Citations

1. Workshop of Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440-82)
A seated female saint, c. 1475-85
Pen, point of the brush and grey ink,
heightened with white on green prepared paper, 230 x 189 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

2. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Studies for a Saint Mary Magdalene
c. 1480-82
Pen and brown ink, 139 x 79 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

3. Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564)
The Dream (Il Sogno), c. 1533
Black chalk, 398 x 280 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

4. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569)
Kermesse at Hoboken, 1559
Pen and brown ink, 265 x 394 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

5. Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (1591-1666)
Child seen from behind, c. 1625
Red chalk with stumping, 301 x 211 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

6. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69)
Saskia with one of her children, c. 1635
Red chalk, 141 x 106 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

7. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Portrait of Helena Fourment, c. 1630-31
Black and red chalk heightened with white, pen and ink
612 x 550 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

8. Charles Joseph Natoire (1700-1777)
Life class at the Académie royale, 1746
Watercolour, chalk (black) on paper
454 x 323 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

9. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Study for ‘La Grande Odalisque’, 1814
Graphite, 185 x 254 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

10. J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
Dawn after the wreck, c. 1841
Watercolour and gouache, 251 x 368 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

11. Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Apples, bottle and chairback, c. 1904-6
Graphite and watercolour, 462 x 604 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

12. Georges Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)
Female Nude, c. 1881
Conté crayon and pencil, 630 x 484 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London

↧

American ABC: Childhood in 19th-Century America

June 11, 2013, 11:33 am

≫ Next: Photographs: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

≪ Previous: MANTEGNA TO MATISSE: MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY

The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University presented American ABC: Childhood in 19th-Century America, one of the most comprehensive art exhibitions in recent decades to deal with American childhood, from February 1 through May 7, 2006. The exhibition, which featured paintings by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, George Catlin, Eastman Johnson, and other celebrated American artists, premiered at Stanford then traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., July 4-Sept. 17, 2006; and the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, Nov. 1, 2006-Jan. 7, 2007.

Presenting paintings, prints, photographs, and books selected from major museums, libraries, archives, and private collections throughout the United States, American ABC explored the connection between images of the American child and the democratic ideals of the young United States. The exhibition also included a wide variety of illustrated children’s books, such as Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, Noah Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book, McGuffey’s readers, and colorful ABC primers.

Over the course of the 19th century, the United States grew from an infant republic to a powerful nation with a prominent place in world affairs. American ABC demonstrates how portrayals of the nation’s youngest citizens took on an important symbolic role in the United States’ long journey towards maturity and will provide a window into the everyday life of the period--the world of families, children’s pastimes, and the routines of the schoolhouse.

The exhibition's companion book, published by Yale University Press, expands on the themes of the exhibition and presents new research on the social and economic significance of childhood in 19th-century America.

Thomas LeClear, "Interior with Portraits", circa 1865, oil on canvas, 25 7/8" x 40 1/2". Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Museum purchase made possible by the Pauline Edwards Bequest.

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Snap the Whip, 1872. Oil on canvas. 12 x 20 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Christian A. Zabriskie, 1950.

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), Elizabeth with a Dog, circa 1871. Oil on canvas, 13-3/4 x 17 inches. San Diego Museum of Art, California. Museum purchase and a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Edwin S. Larsen.

From Antiques and Fine Art:

Winslow Homer (1835-1910), The Watermelon Boys, circa 1876. Oil on canvas, 24-1/8 x 38-1/8 inches. Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York. Gift of Charles Savage Homer, Jr.

This work is one of several by Homer that explored the situation of African-American children in the postwar environment. This painting takes the subject of black children adapting to new circumstances one step further, showing a pair of black boys in an easy friendship with a white companion. The three youngsters feast on fruit, a theme that was ubiquitous in nineteenth-century representations of the country boy.

The watermelon had functioned as an emblem of blackness in the United States since the first half of the century, and it featured prominently in racist depictions that proliferated after the Civil War. Although the watermelon was an icon of racism, the inclusion of the white child in the group raised the work above the level of mere stereotype. The painting boldly introduced the concept of racial integration, an issue that was a minefield of controversy in the postbellum period. Setting the scene in the realm of childhood, however, disconnected it from prevalent fears about interracial marriages, the potential for black domination of the labor market, and other scenarios that played on white imaginations in the postwar period. The verdant scene is Eden-like, with the fruit they share symbolic of an impending fall from grace. Sitting next to a long fence that bisects the landscape, the white and black boys who are "going halves" on the watermelon will grow into manhood in a society divided along racial lines.

Grace Carpenter Hudson (1865-1937), Little Mendocino, 1892. Oil on canvas, 36 x 26 inches. California Historical Society, San Francisco.

Francis William Edmonds (1806-1863), The New Scholar, 1845. Oil on canvas, 27 x 34 inches. Manoongian Collection, Detroit, Michigan.

John George Brown, The Berry Boy (circa 1875)

George Catlin, Osceola Nick-a-no-chee, A Boy (1840)

William Bartoll, Boy with Dog, circa 1840-1850, oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches, Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan

Seymour Guy, Unconscious of Danger, 1865, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, private collection

Eastman Johnson, The Party Dress (The Finishing Touch), 1872, oil on composition board, 20 5/8 x 16 11/16 inches, The Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, Bequest of Mrs. Clara Hinton Gould

Cornelia S. Pering, Little Girl with Flowers (Emily Mae), 1871, oil on canvas, 46 1/2 x 37 inches, private collection

From Stanford Report (images added):

The exponential growth of American cities, which by mid-century were overcrowded with unskilled immigrants, gave rise to the images in the "Ragamuffins" section. Jacob Riis' photographs of ragged children sleeping over grates in the streets of New York in the latter part of the century shows the degradation of the urban poor.

Eastman Johnson, Ragamuffin, circa 1869, oil on canvas, 11 1/2 x 6 3/8 inches, private collection

The exhibit also offers sunnier depictions, like those of spunky "newsboys," who were conceived as poor "go-getters" on their way up.

Henry Inman's News Boy, 1841,

is leaning insouciantly on the stairs of the Astor Hotel, the most luxurious in New York. "There is this idea that even though he is a newsboy today, soon he will be walking up those stairs…"

The 19th-century belief in the transformative power of education is exemplified in

Eastman Johnson's Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln,

which depicts a young Lincoln, his face glowing, reading before a fire. The painting was created in 1868, following both Lincoln's death and the Civil War, which had claimed the lives of 600,000 Americans. "There was a terrible sense of the loss of innocence, of having made mistakes that were unforgivable, final, indelible." Just at this low ebb, "this image of young Abe surfaced as a reminder of the Founding Fathers' advice about 'correct nurture.'

Interesting review (in addition to the two cited above):

http://www.artblog.net/post/2006/11/abc/

↧

Photographs: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

June 12, 2013, 9:01 am

≫ Next: From Berlin to Broadway The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings

≪ Previous: American ABC: Childhood in 19th-Century America

"Photographs: A Decade of Collecting" featuring masterpieces of early French photography and groundbreaking modern photographs created since 1960 – both the earliest and most recent chapters in the history of the 160-year-old medium – was on display June 5 – September 2, 2001 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The French works included in the exhibition reveal the remarkable beauty and technical mastery that French photographers—many of them trained as painters— achieved a mere decade after the invention of the medium. Landscapes suffused with deep swathes of evocative shadow, psychologically revealing portraits, elegantly seductive studies of the nude, and Romantic representations of the nation's ancient and medieval past all demonstrate early photography's links to the painting and print traditions, as well as the ways in which the unique character and capacity of photography set its productions apart from all art that had come before. Together these works trace the rapid development of photography from the humble and intimate creations of gentlemen amateurs to ambitious artistic expressions of Second Empire grandeur.

Among the photographs included were (click on links for more information):

Gustave Le Gray's light-dappled Oak and Rocks, Forest of Fontainebleau (1849-56)

and serene twilight seascape Mediterranean with Mount Agde (1856-59);

Nadar's portraits of

the fiery left-wing politician Eugène Pelletan (1855-59)

and the affable composer Gioacchino Rossini (1856);

landscapes by Edouard Baldus, including the softly atmospheric

Entrance to the Port of Boulogne (1855);

views of medieval architecture in Normandy by Edmond Bacot, including

Saint Maclou, Rouen (1852-54);

and nude studies by Julien Vallou de Villeneuve from around 1853, which served as models for painter Gustave Courbet.

In the second gallery of the exhibition, "New Documentary" photographers such as Diane Arbus

and Garry Winogrand:

Los Angeles

included themselves in the stories they told—an elliptical mix of commentary and confessional characterized by a mordant wit and high irony. At the same time, young artists from outside the medium took up the camera to rewrite completely the rules of the game. Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and others redefined the conditions of painting in an era of mechanical reproduction, Vito Acconci and the Vienna Actionists expanded traditional notions of sculpture to include the body, while Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Robert Smithson took it into the wider arena of architecture and social space. For the first time, these twin poles of documentary and avant-garde photographic practices during the 1960s were examined together in depth.

The final section of the exhibition presented a stunning array of diverse photographic works from the 1970s to 2000 that loosely follow a number of overarching themes, from the cool cultural critique of "Pictures" generation artists such as Cindy Sherman,

Still from an Untitled Film

Louise Lawler, and Richard Prince to the lyrical meditations of Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Nan Goldin – artists for whom the personal and the political are inextricably bound. Recent German photography were also featured prominently, including a hallucinatory, large-scale experimental work from 1975 by Sigmar Polke,

two exquisite painted photographs by Gerhard Richter,

and a suite of magisterial cityscapes from the late 1980s by Thomas Struth.

Calle Tintoretto, Venice

Also included were photographs by Sophie Calle, Patrick Faigenbaum, Adam Fuss, Carrie Mae Weems, and others.

This section was accompanied by a selection of large-scale contemporary photographs that were installed in the first floor area adjacent to the entrance of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing. Entitled Places in the Mind: Modern Photographs from the Collection, the selection includes work by, among others, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Gabriel Orozco, Michal Rovner, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

Conservation of the works on view was directed by Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs. Exhibition design was by Michael Langley, Exhibition Designer, with graphics by Constance Norkin, Graphic Designer, and lighting by Zack Zanolli, Lighting Designer.

↧

From Berlin to Broadway The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings

June 12, 2013, 9:58 am

≫ Next: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints

≪ Previous: Photographs: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From Berlin to Broadway The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings,
an extraordinary collection of forty-three early-twentieth-century German
and Austrian drawings by some of the leaders of the German expressionist
movement and the Vienna Secession was on view at The Morgan
Library & Museum, April 20 through September 2, 2007.

The exhibition was drawn from a collection formed by Broadway lyricist Fred
Ebb (1928–2004) and includes drawings by Max Beckmann (1884–1950),
Egon Schiele (1890–1918), Otto Dix (1891–1969), George Grosz (1893–
1959), Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980), and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–
1938). In total, twenty-two artists from the period are represented in the Ebb
collection, which was shown in its entirety. (See checklist below)

Most of the drawings and watercolors date from 1910 to 1925, when
expressionism dominated the avant-garde in Germany and Austria.

The earliest work in the exhibition is a moving depiction of an old peasant
woman by Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907). Executed ca. 1899, it
continues to reflect the realist tendencies of the second half of the
nineteenth century.

A humorous drawing by Karl Hubbuch (1891–1979), entitled

The Film Star Spends Two Minutes in Her Parents’ Garden,

was also on view.

A particular strength of the Ebb collection is its large number of portraits,
including a powerful self-portrait of Erich Heckel (1883–1970) in his studio
(1912)

and another by Schiele (1910) in which the disembodied head of the
artist, with typically tormented features, seems to be floating in a dramatic,
spare composition. The largest number of works by a single artist in the Ebb
bequest is the eight drawings by Schiele, four of which are portraits. They
display the tense poses characteristic of the artist.

Other important figuralcompositions in the exhibition included the social and political satires of Grosz and

Dix, whose Pimp and Girl (1923)

is a vivid example of thecombination of violence and eroticism frequently found in his depictions of the seamier side of urban life.

Otto Dix: We Want Bread (1923)

Egon Schiele: Standing Boy with Hands on Chest (1910)

Egon Schiele: Portrait of a young man (Erich Lederer)(1913)

From a fascinating article on Kander and Ebb's "Cabaret":

From the German Expressionist collection of Cabaret's lyricist, Fred Ebb, Emil Nolde's watercolor depicting a Master of Ceremonies -

"Conferencier" ca. 1910-1911, one of Nolde's theater, masked balls, and cabaret works of art depicting actors, singers, dancers, and spectators. Nolde remarked: "I drew and drew, the light of the rooms, the superficial glamour, all the people, whether bad or good, whether half or fully ruined. I drew this 'other side' of life with its makeup, its sparkling, dirt, and its corruption." (Quoted from: From Berlin to Broadway: The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings, by Isabelle Dervaux, Forewords by Charles E. Pierce, Jr. and John Kander, New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, 2007, 72).

Great Must-Read Review:
http://www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com/gsinterview17.htm

More Commentary:

http://www.artezine.com/archive/14/bb.html

Organization

The exhibition was organized by Isabelle Dervaux, Curator of Modern and
Contemporary Drawings, The Morgan Library & Museum.
Catalogue In conjunction with the exhibition, the Morgan will publish a fully
illustrated catalogue that documents the entire bequest. This publication,
which also includes reminiscences of Fred Ebb by John Kander and an
introduction by Isabelle Dervaux, will be an important contribution to the
literature on German and Austrian expressionism.

Checklist

MAX BECKMANN (Leipzig 1884–1950 New York)
1. The Telephone, 1945
Pen and ink over traces of graphite pencil on laid paper
14 1/8 x 13 3/8 inches (359 x 340 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.123
2. Woman with Cigarette, 1946
Graphite pencil on wove paper
12 1/8 x 9 3/8inches (307 x 239 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.124

3. Nightclub in New York, 1947
Pen and ink and watercolor on laid paper
10 1/4 x 14 5/16 inches (260 x 363 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.122

OTTO DIX (Untermhaus, near Gera, 1891–1969 Singen)
4. We Want Bread!, 1923
India ink over traces of graphite pencil on wove paper
15 1/4 x 16 3/4 inches (387 x 426 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.125
5. Pimp and Girl, 1923
Brush and India ink and watercolor on tracing paper
20 1/4 x 15 inches (515 x 382 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.126
6. Reclining Woman, 1928
Watercolor and black chalk on wove rag paper
19 x 24 inches (484 x 610 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.127

LYONEL FEININGER
(New York 1871–1956 New York)
7. Railroad Workers II, 1915
Pen and ink, black chalk and watercolor on laid paper
9 3/8 x 12 1/4 inches (240 x 312 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.128

GEORGE GROSZ (Berlin 1893–1959 Berlin)
8. Cuckoo and Parrot: Costume Studies for “Methusalem”, 1922
Pen and ink and watercolor on wove paper
13 x 19 1/2 inches (331 x 495 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.130
9. Barberina, 1925
Watercolor on wove paper
25 1/2 x 37 1/4 inches (647 x 948 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.131
10. Musicians, 1932
Watercolor, gouache and oil paint on laid paper
26 1/4 x 19 inches (666 x 483 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.129

ERICH HECKEL (Döbeln, near Dresden 1883–1970 Radolfzell, on Lake Constance)
11. Seated Man (Self-Portrait), 1912
Oil over traces of graphite pencil on laid paper
23 3/8 x 17 7/8 inches (594 x 454 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.134
12. Half–Length Portrait of a Woman, 1913/14
Charcoal pencil on laid paper
22 5/8 x 15 1/4 inches (575 x 388 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.133
13. Kneeling Nude, 1914
Graphite pencil and gouache on wove paper
20 x 14 1/4 inches (510 x 360 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.132

KARL HOFER (Karlsruhe 1878–1955 Berlin)
14. Girl Resting, 1920s
Graphite pencil on wove paper
14 1/4 x 20 1/8 inches (363 x 511 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.135

KARL HUBBUCH (Karlsruhe1891–1979 Karlsruhe)
15. The Film Star Spends Two Minutes in her Parents’ Garden, ca.1932
Reed pen and India ink heightened with white on wove paper
25 1/4 x 20 7/8 inches (640 x 531 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.136

ALEXEI JAWLENSKY (Torzhok, Russia 1864–1941 Wiesbaden)
16. Savior’s Face with Open Eyes, 1923
Watercolor on wove paper
9 3/4 x 7 inches (250 x 177 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.137

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER (Aschaffenburg 1880–1938 Frauenkirch)
17. Interior with Two Women at a Table, ca. 1910/11
Graphite pencil and stumping on brown wove paper
13 3/8 x 17 1/8 inches (340 x 435 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.138
18. Figures on a Busy Street, 1914
India ink, watercolor, gouache, and reed pen on wove paper
12 3/8 x 16 1/2 inches (313 x 420 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.140
19. Street Scene in Switzerland, ca. 1918
Colored pencils on wove paper
8 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches (218 x 157 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.139

GUSTAV KLIMT (Baumgarten, near Vienna 1862–1918 Vienna)
20. Seated Nude, ca.1907
Blue pencil on Japan paper
22 x 14 1/2 inches (559 x 368 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.141
21. Seated Woman with Raised Skirt, ca. 1909–10
Graphite pencil on wove paper
22 1/8 x 14 5/8 inches (561 x 371 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.142

OSKAR KOKOSCHKA (Pöchlarn, Lower Austria, 1886–1980 Montreux)

22. Reclining Female Nude, ca. 1911–12
Black chalk and watercolor on wove paper
12 7/8 x 17 5/8 inches (328 x 448 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.143

ALFRED KUBIN
(Leitmeritz, northern Bohemia [now Litomerice, Czech Republic], 1877–1959 Schloss Zwickledt,
near Wernstein)
23. Rheumatics, 1927
Pen and ink on laid paper
15 3/8 x 12 1/2 inches (392 x 317 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.144

JEANNE MAMMEN
(Berlin 1890–1976 Berlin)
24. The Joy of Nature, ca. 1930
Graphite pencil and watercolor on wove paper
17 x 14 1/8 inches (432 x 358 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.145
25. Café Reimann, ca. 1931
Graphite pencil and watercolor on rag paper
18 x 14 1/4 inches (455 x 363 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.146

LUDWIG MEIDNER
(Bernstadt, Prussia [now Germany], 1884–1966 Darmstadt)
26. Self–Portrait, 1912
India ink applied by brush and reed pen on wove paper
17 3/8 x 13 3/8 inches (442 x 340 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.147

PAULA MODERSOHN–BECKER
(Dresden 1876–1907 Worpswede)
27. Half–Length Portrait of a Peasant Woman, ca.1899
Charcoal and colored chalks on wove paper
25 3/8 x 14 1/4 inches (644 x 361 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.148

OTTO MUELLER (Liebau, Silesia [now Libawka, Poland], 1874–1930 Breslau [now Wroclaw, Poland])
28. Landscape with Trees and Water, ca. 1923
Colored chalks and gouache on wove paper
27 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches (704 x 503 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.149
29. Standing Female Nude, ca. 1927
Blue crayon on wove paper
26 5/8 x 19 3/4 inches (675 x 503 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.150

EMIL NOLDE (Nolde 1867–1956 Seebüll)

30. Conferencier, ca. 1910–11
Brush with ink and watercolor on Japan paper
11 1/2 x 5 7/8 inches (292 x 150 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.151

MAX PECHSTEIN (Eckersbach, Zwickau, 1881–1955 Berlin)
31. Kneeling Woman, 1909
Gouache on wove paper
20 7/8 x 16 1/4 inches (530 x 414 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.152

CHRISTIAN ROHLFS (Niendorf, Holstein, 1849–1938 Hagen)
32. Conversation, 1914
Gouache and pen and ink on laid paper
8 1/2 x 10 5/8 inches (216 x 269 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.153
33. Portrait of a Man with a Dog, 1924
Watercolor and gouache on wove paper
20 3/8 x 12 3/4 inches (518 x 323 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.154

EGON SCHIELE (Tulln 1890–1918 Vienna)
34. Young Woman, Seated, 1908
Graphite pencil and colored pencil on wove paper
12 3/8 x 8 3/4 inches (315 x 224 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.155
35. Seated Woman with Clasped Hands, 1908
Graphite pencil on wove paper
15 3/4 x 11 7/8 inches (402 x 300 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.157
36. Portrait of the Artist’s Sister Gerti, 1909
Graphite pencil and colored crayon on wove paper
12 3/8 x 7 7/8 inches (313 x 201 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.156
37. Self–Portrait, 1910
Black chalk and watercolor on brown paper
17 1/4 x 12 inches (438 x 304 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.162
38. Standing Boy with Hands on Chest, 1910
Watercolor and black chalk on brown paper
17 5/8 x 12 1/2 inches (448 x 318 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.159
39. Frau Dr. H[orwitz], 1910
Colored pencil, gouache and watercolor on brown paper
17 1/2 x 12 inches (444 x 304 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.158
40. Portrait of a Young Man (Erich Lederer), 1913
Charcoal on wove paper
17 3/8 x 10 3/4 inches (441 x 272 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.161
41. Embrace, 1914
Graphite pencil on wove paper
19 1/8 x 12 3/4 inches (485 x 323 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.160

RUDOLF SCHLICHTER (Calw, Baden–Württemburg, 1890–1955 Munich)
42. Neapolitan Street, ca.1922
Graphite pencil and watercolor on wove paper
18 7/8 x 12 3/4 inches (480 x 324 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.163

KARL SCHMIDT–ROTTLUFF (Rottluff, near Chemnitz, 1884–1976 Berlin)
43. Seated Nude, ca. 1915
Watercolor on laid paper
19 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches (503 x 404 mm)
Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.164

↧

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints

June 12, 2013, 11:23 am

≫ Next: Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian

≪ Previous: From Berlin to Broadway The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings

Among the most innovative and influential artists of his age, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1527—1569), was a remarkable draftsman and designer of prints as well as a painter. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 25 through December 2, 2001, this landmark exhibition included 54 of the 61 extant drawings by Bruegel – a larger number than has ever been assembled for any previous exhibition. In addition, the exhibition will also include some 60 prints designed by him, and another 20 drawings by his contemporaries.

Renowned for his sketches of Alpine scenery and his allegorical depictions of human behavior, Bruegel's spirited drawings and prints, based in traditional imagery as well as a keen observation of nature, are beloved for their novel and highly independent perspectives. His graphic work has captivated both scholars and the public from the 16th century to this day and he remains among the most popular artists of any era.

The exhibition wasn organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

Among Bruegel's foremost artistic achievements is the naturalistic rendering of landscape in pen drawings and engravings, which capture vast expanses of mountains and valleys. Many of his landscapes were created during and just after the artist's journey to Italy in 1552-53. The expansive Alpine vistas that he witnessed during that trip left a lasting impression on his work.

Most of Bruegel's non-landscape drawings were created as designs for prints that were engraved by some of the leading printmakers of his day. These scenes of allegories and proverbs consist of humorous and pointed critiques of human nature, universal characterizations that are still relevant today. Tumultuous demon-filled scenes inspired by Hieronymus Bosch depict man's vices; faceless peasants working the earth illustrate the seasons. Bruegel's drawings and prints changed the way both contemporary and subsequent artists conceived of the land and its inhabitants.

From http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bruegel.htm (some images added):

Most of the drawings are in pen and brown ink with which a range of lines, curves, dots and hatchings are used, the seemingly simple strokes together rendering the subject matter with masterful economy and an uncanny sense of immediacy. A unique standout is a

"Wooded Landscape with a Distant View toward the Sea," in which the brown ink is complemented by brown wash, white gouache, and black chalk--all on blue paper, a startlingly different effect.

In the large selection of drawings as designs for prints are many surrealistic images, clearly influenced by Bosch. Indeed, Bruegel has been called the "second Bosch."

"Big Fish Eat Little Fish," a widely known image, is one of many that illustrate proverbs. Not only the fish are eating; the men are using knives to cut the fish open. Only the fish with wings, flying in the sky, seems to have escaped the cycle.

"The Ass at School" has a satirical slant, showing both the animal (reading a sheet of music) and the exposed buttocks of a student about to be whipped, just one of the unruly crowd of children. Just how much learning is going on? The inscription: "If you send a stupid ass to Paris, if it is an ass here, it will not be a horse there.

A series of prints covers the seven deadly sins and the virtues as well. The sins delve deeply into Bosch territory, with multiple figures, animals, and grotesques graphically illustrating each.

"Greed" is seated among bags of money. a huge purse, and a coffer, counting the wealth, in the midst of revelers, devilish figures, a frog prominently placed in front center.

"Pride" is a woman admiring herself in a mirror, a peacock in full display beside her.

"Anger" emerges from an army tent, sword in one hand, a torch in the other, together with armed soldiers attacking innocent and defenseless people.

On the virtuous side, "Justice" is as expected, blindfolded and holding her sword and scales, the punishment of wrongdoers illustrated on all sides.

"Temperance," on the other hand, surprises with a clock on her head and a bit in her mouth.

A perennial favorite is the drawing

"The Painter and the Connoisseur,"

in which the painter (perhaps a self-portrait?) seems interrupted by the potential buyer, who has his hand on his purse and examines the work in progress through his spectacles. It's a symbiotic relationship fraught with complications, that between art and commerce--one that hasn't changed noticeably since Breugel's drawing more than four centuries ago.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue to be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Prior to the Metropolitan's presentation, the exhibition will be on view at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, from May 24 to August 5, 2001.

↧

Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian

June 12, 2013, 1:22 pm

≫ Next: Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spectacles of Paris

≪ Previous: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints

Jan van Eyck, 'Margaret, the Artist’s Wife', 1439
Groeningemuseum, Bruges. KMSKA © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW

An exhibition at the National Gallery 15 October 2008 - 18 January 2009 explored the dramatic rise of portraiture in the Renaissance, through the great Masters of Northern and Southern Europe.

Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian featured masterpieces by, among others: Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Van Eyck, Holbein, Dürer, Lotto, Pontormo and Bellini. The exhibition provides a rare opportunity to explore Renaissance portraiture in exceptional depth, displaying over 70 paintings alongside important sculptures, drawings and medals.

The National Gallery houses one of the richest collections of Renaissance portraits in the world, and a selection of these works, including

Holbein’s The Ambassadors,

was shown alongside major loans from the UK, Europe and North America. Highlights included masterpieces of Habsburg court portraiture on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado, including

Titian’s majestic warrior portrait of the young Philip II and

Anthonis Mor’s 'The Court Jester Pejeron'.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, portraits played a vital role in every aspect of human life: childhood, politics, friendship, courtship, marriage, old age and death. The exhibition provides fresh insights into fundamental issues of likeness, memory and identity, while revealing a remarkable community of Renaissance personalities – from princes, envoys and merchants to clergymen, tradesmen and artists

(Dürer, 'Self Portrait', Kunsthalle Bremen).

During the Renaissance, it was widely believed that a person’s appearance mirrored their soul, with physical beauty indicating inner morality and virtue. Artists developed highly individual approaches to the representation of ideal beauty.

Palma Vecchio’s exquisite 'Portrait of a Young Woman' (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)

and Tullio Lombardo’s marble relief of 'A Young Couple as Bacchus and Ariadne' (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) introduce this key theme with dramatic effect.

Portraits enabled artists and their patrons to convey powerful messages about themselves and the world around them. The use of symbolism in portraiture played a vital function in Renaissance life, not least in marriage alliances and power politics.

The exhibition featuresd many intriguing compositions from

Holbein’s A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (National Gallery)

to Arcimboldo’s 'Emperor Rudolph II' as Vertumnus (Skokloster Castle, Sweden), on display in the UK for the first time.

The final room of the exhibition traced the development of the full-length court portrait and its crucial role in court propaganda. Highlights include the dramatic bronze statue of Philip II by Leone and Pompeo Leoni (Prado) and Anthonis Mor’s 'Portrait of Philip II in Armour' (El Escorial).

Renaissance Faces featured several captivating portraits of children, both as individuals and among family groups. Young princes were often shown with their fathers, partly to reinforce dynastic continuity, as in

Justus of Ghent’s portrait of 'Federico de Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his son, Guidobaldo' (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino).

Also on display was the remarkable painted bust by Guido Mazzoni of a 'Laughing Boy' (Royal Collection), now thought to be a portrait of the young Henry VIII.

Other works depict poignant details of family life such as

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s 'An Old Man and his Grandson' (Louvre).

Renaissance Faces revealed, more than ever before, the extraordinary degree of cross-cultural exchange active in Europe at this time. Van Eyck, Titian and Memling were in demand from North to South, and the influence of their work carried far beyond the courts of their patrons.

From the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid:

Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucrecia, made by Lorenzo Lotto was one of the 125 works of art included in the exhibit The Renaisance Portrait at The Museo del Prado in Madrid. Photo: EFE / Kote Rodrigo.

The broad time span covered by this exhibition (1400-1600) and its Europe-wide approach make it the first to provide an overview of Renaissance portraiture. It explores portraiture as a genre in its own right, focusing principally on painting but including medals, sculptures, drawings and engravings while leaving aside the donor portrait.

When did the autonomous portrait emerge? Around 1335 Simone Martini painted Petrarch’s beloved Laura, and the poet devoted the following sonnet to the portrait, describing the characteristics of the modern portrait: a likeness that is substitutive (evokes the absent person), moving (arouses emotions) and movable (transportable). It includes a reference to the mythical artist, Pygmalion, who made a sculpture that came to live.

“When Simon at my wish the proud design
Conceived, which in his hand the pencil placed,
Had he, while loveliness his picture graced,
But added speech and mind to charms divine;

What sighs he then had spared this breast of mine:
That bliss had given to higher bliss distaste:
For, when such meekness in her look was traced,
'Twould seem she soon to kindness might incline.

But, urging converse with the portray'd fair,
Methinks she deigns attention to my prayer,
Though wanting to reply the power of voice.

What praise thyself, Pygmalion, hast thou gain'd;
Forming that image, whence thou hast obtain'd
A thousand times what, once obtain'd, would me rejoice.”

The exhibition reveals two constant features in the evolution of the Renaissance portrait. The first is its “democratisation”, as although portraiture was initially reserved for the privileged classes, it eventually embraced the whole social spectrum. The second is an increase in size as a result of portraits becoming incorporated into the decoration of interiors. The earliest examples were designed to be viewed and stored away in chests, not to be hung on walls.

In demand from very heterogeneous sectors of society, portraits served diverse purposes and acquired a social, symbolic and even documentary dimension that gave rise to an extraordinary variety of types. The exhibition includes portraits of individuals proclaiming their intellectual pursuits, social aspirations and religious devotion; portraits designed to seduce, attack or convince; portraits as impressive images of power; and portraits that illusionistically project the sitter beyond the picture plane or distort the image.

The aim of the exhibition is to show that the Renaissance marked not only the beginning and maturation of portraiture but also a period of sophistication in which many of its formal and conceptual possibilities were explored and in some cases even exhausted.

Between the Netherlands and Italy. Origins and development of portraiture

The emergence of independent portraits is indissolubly linked to thirteenth-century developments in painting. It is therefore not surprising that Giotto (c. 1267-1337)—who, to use Giorgio Vasari’s well-known expression, “resuscitated” painting after centuries of decadence —is the first painter mentioned as executing independent portraits; or that the earliest known definition of portraiture originated from his circle, when Pietro d’Abano stated around 1310 that portraits should reflect both the appearance and the psychology of the sitter. Portraiture received decisive impetus at the French court of the Valois between 1360 and 1380, and the earliest surviving examples are from this period. The earliest portraits in the exhibition date from around 1400.

The exhibition begins by examining the factors that contributed to the emergence of modern portraiture: on the one hand, medieval tradition, represented by dynastic series, devotional images and the naturalism of Gothic art; and on the other, the rediscovery of Antiquity, illustrated by Roman sculptures and coins. We should not underestimate the importance of medals, which were a complement but also a substitute for painted portraits and led to profile portraits being held in high esteem in Quattrocento Italy.

The chosen works illustrate the typological and conceptual differences between the two main centres of portraiture of the time—Italy and the Netherlands—and the progressive influence Flemish models enjoyed in Southern Europe. During the fifteenth century Netherlandish portraits surpassed their Italian counterparts in prestige, a fact which explains their early presence in Italian collections and Italian and Spanish rulers’ practice of sending their painters to train in Flanders. It was not until the sixteenth century that a change of trend was witnessed as a result of the compositional and conceptual complexity attained by Italian portraiture, which was capable of exploring practically untrodden ground such as representing states of mind and developing sophisticated visual strategies to enhance the interaction between portrait and viewer.

Love, family, memory
“Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive. Even after many centuries they are recognised with great pleasure and with great admiration for the painter.”
Leon Bautista Alberti,De pictura, 1435, Book II. 25.

This statement by Alberti, one of the most frequently quoted tenets of the humanist theory of the arts, sums up perfectly the second section of the exhibition, as it stresses above the many purposes that Renaissance portraiture served its essential ability to make the absent present and elicit a variety of reactions from the viewer. Of all the genres of Renaissance painting, portraiture conveys the impression of a more reiterated, lively communication with the spectator, and the literature and documentation of the period refer to many situations in which portraits are objects of the affection of the love-smitten, a rejected lover’s spite, a friend’s consolation and a rival’s hatred. Precisely this empathic quality was mentioned by Leonardo to justify the superiority of painting over poetry: “If the poet says he that can inflame men with love, which is the central aim in all animal species, the painter has the power to do the same, and to an even greater degree, in that he can place in front of the lover the true likeness of that which is beloved, often making him kiss and speak to it. This would never happen with the same beauties put before him by the writer.” (Treatise on Painting, 28).

Alberti’s initial statement recalls the portrait’s ability to make a loved one or a friend present, but also the deceased. The memorial nature of portraiture dates back to its origins, and the ancient Roman custom of keeping images of ancestors in homes was frequently invoked and imitated during the Renaissance. Together with portraits of a deceased father or spouse, in royal and aristocratic environments these family likenesses gave rise to dynastic galleries that reconciled modern portraiture’s requirements of trueness to life with the notion of continuity and belonging to a group that were characteristic of Late Medieval iconic series, resulting in deliberately homogenous sets executed in accordance with the prevailing trends in portraiture at the time.

Friendship
“Your medal hangs on the right wall of my bedroom and your portrait on the left. Whether I am writing or walking around, I always have Willibald [Pirckheimer] in sight, so much so that I could not forget you even if I wished to”.
Letter from Erasmus to Willibald Pirckheimer, 5 February 1525

The Renaissance gave rise to a cult of friendship that was deeply influenced by the classical writings, mainly Cicero and his De amicitia (1st century BC). The Roman politician and writer stated that the memory of friendship makes the absent present and brings the dead to life—ideas taken up by Leon Battista Alberti when writing on painting in 1435—and although he did not specifically mention portraiture in this connection, Renaissance humanists soon became aware of its evocative powers. Portraiture allowed friendship to overcome distance and, in many cases, made it possible to visualise the physical appearance of those who were friends only through correspondence, as was the case with Erasmus and Pirckheimer, who never met personally.

Interests, occupations, devotions, status
“First of all it is necessary to consider the quality of those whose portrait is to be made, and accordingly show them with the attribute that identifies them, such as a laurel wreath in the case of an emperor [...]”
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura, et architettura, 1585

In addition to capturing the sitters’ physical features and arousing the empathy of the viewer, portraits also revealed their intellectual pursuits and social aspirations and proclaimed the models of moral or religious conduct they aspired to imitate. Portraits thus transcended their mimetic function and took on a symbolic dimension, surrounding the sitter with a wealth of sacred and profane iconography that became increasingly codified; Lomazzo himself, who is quoted at the beginning of this section, expanded at length on the most suitable attributes for each case. We thus find portraits of humanists who pose before remains of Antiquity, and portraits of women that proclaim their status as exemplary wives by depicting them in the guise of classical heroines such as Lucretia, who placed family honour before her own life, or by resorting to subtle biblical allusions that associate their virtue with spinning. Similarly, although the exhibition deliberately excludes donor portraiture, it does include portraits “a lo divino” in which the sitter is portrayed unmistakeably in the manner of the holy person who is the object of their particular devotion, whether Saint Jerome or the Virgin Mary herself. As a “living image” of the individual, the portrait was furthermore an ideal vehicle for reflecting on the fleetingness of time and the inevitability of death, often becoming a melancholic, eloquent vanitas.

Lastly, portraits possessed an important social dimension as they conveyed the person’s position in society. To show the sitter’s status, painters resorted to representative elements ranging from a coat of arms to particular clothing, or depicted him exercising his profession. A magnificent example of such a portrait is Moroni’s celebrated Tailor, which attests to the irresistible democratisation of the genre during the sixteenth century—a process that was not well regarded by everyone, as evidenced by Pietro Aretino in July 1554, when he complained that one of the great misfortunes of his day was that even tailors and butchers had their portraits painted.

Self-Portaiture
“One paints with the brain, not with the hands”
Michelangelo, Letter, October 1542

“This morning I have made a portrait of my face in the mirror, which is not convex”
Giorgio Vasari, Letter to Vincenzo Borghini, 20 September 1566

Portraiture provided painters with an ideal vehicle for communication: the self-portrait. No other work of art enabled the artist to convey his social aspirations and intellectual concerns with greater sincerity, express his artistic ambition or reflect his deepest feelings. Therefore, few pictures are more honest or experimental than some of the self-portraits included in the exhibition.

The invention of the self-portrait at the beginning of the Renaissance was linked to questions of status. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a person’s social position depended on his birth or occupation. An occupation was ranked socially in accordance with its closeness to, or distance from, physical labour. All learnable skills were classified as “liberal” (intellectual) or “mechanical” (manual or physical), the visual arts being among the latter. Renaissance artists strove to demonstrate that theirs was a liberal and not a mechanical activity and was worthy of the social recognition that was reserved for intellectual disciplines such as poetry and rhetoric. This explains their reluctance to depict themselves painting or surrounded by the tools of their trade and, on the contrary, their emphasis on portraying themselves in a dress and pose that denoted the nobility of their occupation and, circumstances permitting, the prosperity it brought them. Not until the end of the sixteenth century were artists confident enough in their social position to acknowledge that easel, palette and paintbrush were attributes of which to be proud.

Without mirrors there are no self-portraits, but artists rarely used them solely to see their reflected image. Mirrors enabled painters to speculate about the very essence of portraiture—its ability to capture reality—providing them with a host of formal and expressive possibilities ranging from distortion of the image to brilliant illusionistic tricks that demanded the viewer’s complicity. Indeed, Vasari stated of a self-portrait by Parmigianino using a convex mirror that it was made “to explore the subtleties of art”.

Making portraits
“I consider that the valiant draughtsman […] after being contented and at ease […] should sit on a chair facing the prince or illustrious person to be portrayed; and with his table or board in the middle, and soft lighting from the window and music, and his gaze where it should be (with the room free of people) and apply the first lines and strokes of his work with graver or charcoal.”
Francisco de Holanda,Do tirar polo natural, 1548.

Portraitists were the first specialist painters. Not all painters were qualified to paint portraits; indeed, outside Germany, Italy and the Netherlands portraitists were in extremely short supply and in countries like France, England and Spain they were recurrently imported during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, chiefly from the Netherlands.

This section traces the process of making a portrait: the artist’s relationship with the sitter; the recommended environmental conditions—mainly lighting—and even state of mind for posing; techniques for helping capture his physical features; and the execution of sketches and their transfer to canvas or wood. But the portrait did not always end with the painter’s final brushstroke. It was common for painters to keep “records” of portraits of certain prominent people and to make replicas of varying faithfulness that were commissioned by the sitters themselves or by third parties. Indeed, the making of portraits was not always a creative process and during the Renaissance even the most famous painters like Titian were commonly required to copy portraits by other artists, particularly of aristocrats and royalty.

These practices, but above all the fact that portraiture requires a specific referent (the sitter), explain why it was undervalued by critics like Vasari, who regarded it as a mechanical reproduction of reality (ritrarre) and, as such, inferior to imitare (representation of reality in accordance with an idea or its essence). Interestingly, Vasari himself refutes this pejorative view of portraiture in a drawing shown in this section. By portraying himself as Saint Luke painting the Virgin according her instructions, Vasari shows portraiture to be an activity inspired by divinity, likening it to the writing of the Gospel by Saint Luke himself.

The boundaries of portraiture
“He ordered Gentile Bellini to make a portrait of that minstrel and Mahomet himself made another. Gentile Bellini brought the one he had made to show Mahomet, and Mahomet also showed him his, and he said to Gentile Bellini: tell me what you think of this portrait which I have made and I must tell you what I think of the one you have painted [...] Gentile Bellini said to him [...]: It seems to me that you painted this madman just as he is. I could have painted it the same way, but because he has been many times in your presence, I showed him with the face of a good man, as anyone who had been in your presence would rightly be.”
Crónica de los turcos, c. 1535

What is and what is not a portrait? Can there be a portrait without physical likeness? The boundaries of portraiture are not always clear, and to illustrate this uncertain territory we have included, on the one hand, highly individualised images that are not portraits but characteristic representations of beauty or physical decline and, on the other, greatly stereotyped images such as those of a certain jesters, which are portraits.

The second question posed by this section is to what extent portraiture was capable of going beyond physical likeness and capturing the sitter’s inner self: his spirit. We are dealing with a poetic topos of Antiquity that was espoused by many Renaissance poets to point out the limitations of painting and enjoyed great prestige in portraits of intellectuals, which were generally accompanied by inscriptions stating that their true nature lay not in their physical appearance but in their writings.

The third question is the inability of painterly language to convey certain concepts and ideas, and how, in order to remedy this limitation, painters resorted to non-artistic codes of communication such as classical rhetoric, with its broad repertory of gestures, and physiognomy—the science of interpreting human character by studying the face—in order to represent the sitter appropriately.

Lastly, portraiture was conducive to experimentation and reflection on painting itself. We thus find fascinating examples of illusionistic play where the sitters are projected beyond the picture plane, portraits of portraits, and even counter-portraits such as anamorphoses, in which the image is distorted beyond recognition.

The diffusion of portraiture
"We found the clerics married and with many children and in all their homes, painted on double sized vat paper in the main rooms of their houses, Martin Luther, very reverend with his clergyman’s dress."
Libro de la vida y costumbres de don Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán

Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán reports on what he saw in Saxony after the battle of Mülhberg on 24 April 1547, in which the imperial troops defeated those of the Schmalkaldic League. Despite referring to “painted double sized vat paper”, he no doubt means the large woodcuts of Luther’s portrait made by Lucas Cranach’s workshop in 1546 after the German reformer’s death. Enríquez de Guzmán’s statement illustrates the extremely widespread dissemination of portraiture during the Renaissance. Not only did it become increasingly common for people from different walks to have their portraits made, but society grew accustomed to portraiture as an essential element of its visual culture.

The printing press played a fundamental role in this process. Independent woodcut portraits began to be made after paintings at the end of the fifteenth century and in the following decades printing made available to the public at large images of saints, rulers, captains and men versed in a broad variety of disciplines, initially in individual prints and subsequently compiled in books following the example of Andrea Fulvio’s Illustrium Imagenes (Rome, 1517). Portraiture thus acquired a new documentary dimension that explains the repeated references found in engravings to the trueness to life of the images they reproduced, often citing the source used. The finest example of the documentary value of portraiture is provided by Paulo Giovio’s Elogia virorum litteris illustrium..., the 1577 edition of which reproduced the first and most important collection of Renaissance portraits, that formed by Giovio in his Museum on the shores of Lake Como.

But in addition to satisfying the public’s curiosity, engraved portraits became inevitably linked to the use of printing for political and religious purposes during the Renaissance, particularly in the Germanic world under Emperor Maximilian I. Martin Luther was probably the person whose image was most widely disseminated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and who used it most skilfully to achieve his aims.

The court portrait
“Any Prince is comprised almost of two persons. One is the work of Nature, in that he is similar to all other men. The other, thanks to Fortune and divine favour, is the embodiment of governance and protection of the public good, for which reason we shall call it a public person”.
Fadrique Furió Ceriol, El Concejo y Consejeros del Príncipe, Antwerp, 1585.

In the Renaissance court portraiture took shape as an expression of the dual nature—real and ideal—of the ruler, the two persons of whom Furió Ceriol speaks. This made it necessary to reconcile the need for trueness to life, as required by the growing personalisation of power, with its symbolic and timeless dimension, giving rise to a tension between realism and idealism that was, and continues to be, inherent in court portraiture. Physical flaws were commonly downplayed in Renaissance portraits and authors of treatises borrowed a rhetorical device mentioned by Pliny and Quintilianus to justify these selective alterations: dissimulatio, according to which realism should be subordinated to decorum. The classical example was provided by Apelles, who portrayed the one-eyed King Antigonos in profile—the same Apelles whom Alexander the Great appointed as his exclusive portraitist. It is no coincidence that the Greek painter and Macedonian monarch were the mirror in which the most prominent Renaissance artists and rulers saw themselves reflected.

Although the court portrait lies at the very origin of the genre and many of the portraits shown in the first section of this exhibition are of rulers or members of their circles, it was not until the sixteenth century that the court portrait acquired very specific features. The progressive “democratisation” of portraiture forced painters and patrons to seek ways of setting court portraits apart from the ordinary kind, and new types of images such as full-length, seated and equestrian portraits emerged in response to this demand.

After decades of experimentation, the second half of the sixteenth century witnessed the progressive standardisation of court portraiture based on a model that remained in use, with slight variations, until the eighteenth century. This model took shape around 1550 with the portraits painted by Titian and Anthonis Mor for the Habsburgs, a magnificent and harmonious blend of reality and idealisation which became increasingly standardised and spread across the whole of Europe, crossing political and religious boundaries.

Organisation

'Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian' was organised jointly by the National Gallery, London, and the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, where an exhibition entitled 'The Renaissance Portrait' ran from 3 June to 7 September 2008. The lead curator in London was Susan Foister. The lead curator in Madrid was Miguel Falomir.

Publication

Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian

The exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue tracing the development of portrait painting in Northern and Southern Europe during the Renaissance. This fully illustrated book examines the different portrait styles, techniques and iconographies, the function of portraits, and the connections between painting, sculpture and portrait medals. Renowned experts analyse the role of portraiture and the notion of likeness in all aspects of human life, including propaganda, power, courtship, love, family, ambition and hierarchy. Essays and individual catalogue entries present new research on works by the greatest portraitists of the period.

Essays by Lorne Campbell and Luke Syson at the National Gallery, London; Jennifer Fletcher, until recently Senior Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute, London; Miguel Falomir at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. With contributions from Susan Foister, Elena Greer, Minna Moore Ede, Simona Di Nepi and Carol Plazzotta at the National Gallery, London; Philip Attwood; Duncan Bull; Molly Ann Faries; Sergio Guarino; Pilar Silva Maroto; Almudena Pérez de Tudela; Karen Serres.

Published by the National Gallery Company, London. Distributed by Yale University Press.

↧