Van Gogh, Monet, Degas: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

October 16, 2017, 2:08 pm

≫ Next: A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art

≪ Previous: Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art

$

0

0

The Frick Art & Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 17–July 8, 2018

Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, January 26–May 5, 2019

Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma, June 22­­­­–September 22, 2019

Van Gogh, Monet, Degas: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is an exhibition featuring more than 70 masterpieces collected by Pittsburgh - born collector and philanthropist, Paul Mellon (1907 – 1999), beginning in spring 2018 .

The Frick will be the first of a select group of museums to present this touring exhibition, which includes three works by Vincent Van Gogh (1853 – 1890): 



The Laundry Boat on the Seine at Asnières (1887); 



Daisies, Arles (1888); 

 


and The Wheat Field behind St. Paul’s Hospital, St. Rémy (1889). 

• Claude Monet Field of Poppies, Giverny 

• Claude Monet - Irises by the Pond, 1917 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

 
Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) is represented by four works in the show, including a large, late work capturing the dazzling irises in his garden at Giverny, 

 

• Edgar Degas French, 1834 – 1917 At the Milliner ca. 1882 – 1885  Oil on canvasCollection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 2001.27

and 10 works by Degas (1834 – 1917) are featured — including the artist’s most famous sculpture, The Little Dancer . 

Covering more than 150 years of French art, the exhibition includes a beautiful and intimate group of Impressionist paintings by Édouard Manet (1882 – 1883), Pierre August Renoir (1841 – 1919), Henri de Toulouse - Lautrec ( 1864 – 1901), Alfred Sisley (1839 – 1899), and Camille Pissarro (1830 – 1903), as well as iconic works by Romantic masters Théodore Géricault (1791 – 1824) and Eugène Delacroix ( 1798 – 1863 ) and the Post - Impressionist and modernist work of Henri Matisse ( 1869 – 1954), Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) and Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947 . 


In addition to the aforementioned artists, nearly all of the great names associated with French art of the 19th - and early 20th-century are represented in this exhibition, including Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906), Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877), 


Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903), Berthe Morisot (1841 – 1895 ), and 

•  Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891) Houses and Garden, ca. 1882, oil on canvas. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

Georges Seurat (1859 – 1891), among many others. 

While the permanent display at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is presented chronologically, the traveling exhibition is designed for visitors to experience the works through eight themes, including Views of Paris, Flowers, Water, and Interiors.

The exhibition will open with Cyphers of Modernity, which introduces two of its most characteristic paintings: 



Berthe Morisot’s Young Woman Watering a Shrub, 

 

and Théodore Géricault’s Mounted Jockey;  

these paintings are emblematic of the collection in their commitment to modernism, as well as their subject matter, which appealed to Mrs. Mellon’s love of gardening and Mr. Mellon’s passion for horses and horse racing.

Paul Mellon began to collect 19^th-century French art in the 1940s with his second wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon. The exhibition reproduces the invigorating experience of the Mellons’ collection, in which each work resonates with and gains greater strength from its lovingly created context.

---

A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art

October 17, 2017, 8:33 am

≫ Next: Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from The Horvitz Collection

≪ Previous: Van Gogh, Monet, Degas: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

$

0

0

A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art

• National Sporting Library and Museum, Middleburg, Virginia, April 7–July 22, 2018
• Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, January 26–May 5, 2019
• The Frick Art & Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June 15–September 8, 2019

A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art includes representative masterpieces of the genre, including works by George Stubbs, Sir Francis Grant, John Frederick Herring, Benjamin Marshall, and George Morland. Mr. Mellon donated this collection to VMFA, and the British Sporting Art galleries were dedicated in 1985. The collection includes 84 works, including six by Stubbs, who is recognized as the greatest of all British Sporting painters.

While the collection is presented in a chronological sequence at VMFA, the traveling exhibition will display the works in thematic sections that will give a cohesive narrative to the collection, while also underscoring the importance of sporting art and tradition to British society and history as a whole. The themes are In Pursuit; In Motion; Animal, Man, Country; and The World Upside Down.

 

Henry Alken. English, 1785-1851. Scraps, 1823. Pencil over red chalk. The Paul Mellon Collection, 85.849.

 

 

 

 

Henry Heath. English, active ca. 1850. Caricature of a Shooting Subject: 1st September, Evening. Pen, ink and watercolor touched with gouache. The Paul Mellon Collection, 85.977.3.

Edwin Landseer. English, 1802–1873. Two Greyhounds: One Standing, One Lying Down. Pen and brown ink. The Paul Mellon Collection, 85.1018.

 

 

Thomas Miles Richardson, Jr. English, 1813-1890. Study of a Horse and Cart. Pencil and watercolor with gouache and bodycolor on grey wove paper. The Paul Mellon Collection, 85.1035

Read more at https://vmfa.museum/exhibitions/exhibitions/scraps-british-sporting-drawings-paul-mellon-collection/#vDHH0pPXRsBBjMAF.99

 
“
A Sporting Vision proposes a fresh look at British Sporting Art,” said Dr. Michael R. Taylor, VMFA’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education. “The exhibition places these paintings within wider social and artistic contexts, including the scientific and industrial revolutions taking place in Great Britain and elsewhere in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, as well as the transformation of the British countryside, and the evolutionary history of the horse and other animals. Our hope is that visitors to the traveling exhibition will see these images of sporting life in a new way.”

Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from The Horvitz Collection

October 17, 2017, 1:49 pm

≫ Next: Masters of American Photography

≪ Previous: A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art

$

0

0

The Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida 

 Oct. 6 to Dec. 31, 2017


Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment is an exhibition of more than 150 drawings, pastels, paintings and sculptures addressing some of the most important and defining question of women’s lives in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Ranging from spirited, improvisational sketches and figural studies to highly finished drawings of exquisite beauty, the works included in the exhibition are by many of the most prominent artists of the time. They include Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, as well as lesser-known artists both male and female, such as Anne Vallayer-Coster, Gabrielle Capet, François-André Vincent and Philibert-Louis Debucourt.

Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment is organized into sections that address cultural attitudes and conditions that shaped how women were defined in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These sections include “The Fair Sex: Conceptions and Paradigms of Woman;” “Women in Training;” “What’s Love Got To Do With It?;” “Married with Children;” “Dressing the Part;” “Aging Gracefully;” “Pleasurable Pursuits;” “Private Pleasures” and “Work: Leaving it to the Professionals.”

“Becoming a Woman will offer opportunities to consider how its themes compare to some of the most pressing social issues of our own time and how things may or may not have changed,” said Melissa Hyde, guest curator of the exhibition. “Although the circumstances and the specifics have changed, pay equity, reproductive rights, violence against women and work-family balance are but a few of the many women’s issues covered in the exhibition that still remain today.”

The exhibition will offer fresh perspectives on a subject that still has direct relevance to our times, but that has not been the focus of a significant exhibition for decades. Through its conceptual framework, thematic organization and its emphasis on historical context, the exhibition will provide viewers opportunities to consider what issues pertaining to women’s lives seem to have changed or persisted through time and across space. Although the circumstances and the specifics have changed, many issues remain with us today and can still provoke contentious debates. Pay equity, reproductive rights, gender-discrimination, violence against women, work-family balance, the ‘plight’ of the alpha-female, and the devaluation of the stay-at-home mom, are but a few of the women’s issues that are still hotly contested in the media, in cultural production of all kinds, in politics, and in public and private life. 

Becoming a Woman is curated by Melissa Hyde, Professor of Art History and Research Foundation Professor, University of Florida, and the late Mary D. Sheriff, W.R. Kenan J. Distinguished Professor of Art History, University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill, and is organized by Alvin L. Clark, Jr, Curator, The Horvitz Collection and The J.E. Horvitz Research Curator, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg.

Antoine Vestier, Allegory of the Arts, 1788,  Oil on canvas

Jacques-Antoine-Marie Lemoine, Woman Standing in a Garden, 1783, Black chalk and brush with gray wash on off-white laid paper

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Conversation in a Park, Oil on canvas

François Boucher, Young Travelers, black chalk on cream antique laid paper, framing line in black ink, laid down on a decorated mount, 295 x 188 mm

Jacques-Louis David, Andromache Mourning the Death of Hector, pen with black ink and brush with gray wash over traces of black chalk on cream antique laid paper, 293 x 248 mm

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Chestnut Vendor, brush with gray and brown wash on cream antique laid paper, 385 x 460 mm

 

Item Number: 146886
Title: Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from The Horvitz Collection
Author: Hyde, Melissa ; Mary D. Sheriff ; Alvin L. Clark, Jr
Price: $38.95
ISBN: 9780991262526

Masters of American Photography

October 18, 2017, 11:35 am

≫ Next: Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann Galleries on Thursday, November 2

≪ Previous: Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from The Horvitz Collection

$

0

0

Vero Beach Museum of Art  September 16, 2017 - January 14, 2018 Masters of American Photography Masters of American Photography features some of the great iconic images of the 20th century by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, and other master photographers. Spanning nine decades of creative achievement, this exhibition, organized by the Reading Public Museum, represents a brief history of photography as art, addressing themes such as portraiture, landscape, still life, and cultural history. Included are classic images such as Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,1936, Edition #36/300, Published by Aperture under the auspices of the Dorothea Lange Collection at the Oakland Museum, 12 x 9 ¼ inches, Collection Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection [LC-USF34-9058-C]
Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother - Nipomo, California, Marion Post Wolcott’s Winter Visitors from Nearby Trailer Park, Picnicking Beside Car on Beach, Near Sarasota, Florida,  and Ansel Adams’ Monolith, the Face of Halfdome, Yosemite National Park, California. The tonal beauty and subtle surfaces of these traditional photographic prints, developed in the darkroom, set this exhibition apart.   Karl Struss, Shadows, New York, 1909, platinum print, 1-7/8 x 3-1/2 inches, 2007.9.17 “Many of these are vintage prints, made by the photographer very close to the time the negative was made, or late prints made by the photographer or assistant years later,” comments Rachael Arauz, Ph.D., independent curator for the exhibition. Masters of American Photography is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.

Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann Galleries on Thursday, November 2

October 19, 2017, 10:52 am

≫ Next: Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art+ Da Vinci November 15,2017

≪ Previous: Masters of American Photography

$

0

0

An outstanding auction of Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann Galleries on Thursday, November 2 offers seven lots with an estimate at or above $100,000, more than any from the house’s Prints & Drawings department in nearly ten years. Rare and museum-quality prints from the fifteenth- to twentieth centuries act as an overview of the evolution of Western printmaking, and chronicle the dramatic changes of the latter half of the millennium. 

 

A powerful section of works by American artists in the first half of the twentieth century is led by Edward Hopper’s scarce and haunting etching, The Lonely House, 1923, with an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000. 

Gritty, iconic views of working-class Manhattan by Hopper’s mentor Martin Lewis, including  

 

 Snow on the El, 1931, 



and Relics (Speakeasy Corner), 1928 

(each with a value of $40,000 to $60,000), are complemented by works executed during his Depression-era stay in the suburbs with friend and fellow artist Armin Landeck. Regionalists Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood and Paul Landacre are well-represented with pastoral scenes evoking the anxiety of encroaching technology.

A run of works by Pablo Picasso includes myriad media from all periods of his decades-long career. 




The aquatint and etching Faune dévoilant une femme, 1934, is valued at $80,000 to $120,000, 



while La Grande Corrida, aven Femme Torero, an etching of the same year, is expected to sell between  $70,000 and $100,000.

         

  Seminal works from the dawn of printmaking in Europe include such iconic works as Israel van Meckenem’s engraving, The Dance of the Daughters of Herodias, circa 1480, with an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. 

A run of scarce and powerful works by the master of engraving Albrecht Dürer is led by  

 

The Nemesis, circa 1501-02, estimated at $80,000 to $120,000. 



Additional early prints by the visionary include Coat-of-Arms with a Skull, 1503, 



and The Sea Monster, before 1500 ($50,000 to $80,000 and $40,000 to $60,000, respectively). 



An after-print of Heironymus Bosch’s engraving The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1561, replete with distended frogs and damned souls, is valued at $40,000 to $60,000. Works by Pieter Bruegel, Hans Baldung Grien, 

 

Augustin Hirschvogel and Lucas van Leyden—the latter’s 1510 engraving Ecce Homo is valued at $40,000 to $60,000—will also be available.

Etchings covering a variety of subjects by Rembrandt van Rijn, with portraits, nudes and landscapes, are led by the 1633 etching Self Portrait in a Cap and Scarf with the Face Dark: Bust, at $30,000 to $50,000.

Francisco José de Goya is well-represented in the sale with lithographs and portfolios, including the limited first edition ofLos Caprichos, circa 1799, complete with 80 etchings with aquatint, condemning the foibles of the aristocracy and clergy, which carries an estimate of $70,000 to $100,000. 

Also from the eighteenth century come two works by the master of English faunal portraits, 



George Stubbs: the 1788 mezzotint A Sleeping Cheetah, and an engraving with stippling, etching


 and roulette from the same year, A Horse Frightened by a Lion, each with an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000.

             
Nineteenth-century works include James Ensor’s hand-colored etching, La Vengeance de Hop-Frog, 1898, a macabre scene probably based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which Hop-Frog the jester hangs tarred, flaming noblemen on a chandelier. Ensor’s prints are often extensively hand-colored with watercolor and gouache, making each a unique work of art; this one has an estimate of $60,000 to $90,000. 



Another work by Goya, Picador Caught by a Bull, 1825, was likely an experimental lithograph for 




Los Toros de Burdeos ($80,000 to $120,000). 

Also available are works by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and

 

 Odilon Redon, whose 1892 lithograph Arbre is expected to sell between $50,000 and $80,000.

A strong selection of works by German Expressionists is led by 

 

the 1912 woodcut Prophet, by Emil Nolde,



and Edvard Munch’s 1902 etching Puberty, 

each with a value of $30,000 to $50,000. 



A rare woodcut by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Frau im Stuhl, 1913, carries an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. 



Across the border in Austria, Egon Schiele created the drypoint Kümmernis in 1914; in this sale, it is valued at $12,000 to $18,000.

Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art+ Da Vinci November 15,2017

October 26, 2017, 9:39 am

≫ Next: Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction 16 November in New York.

≪ Previous: Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann Galleries on Thursday, November 2

$

0

0

Christie’s  will present for sale this fall the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 21^st century: Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Painted by one of history’s greatest and most renowned artists, Salvator Mundi is one of fewer than 20 known paintings by Leonardo, and the only one in private hands. When it re-emerged in 2005, this exquisite work, depicting Jesus Christ as the savior of the world, became the first discovery of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci since 1909.  Christie’s will have the great privilege of presenting Salvator Mundi in upcoming exhibitions in Hong Kong, San Francisco, London and New York, marking the first opportunities for the public in Asia and the Americas to see this exceptional and iconic work of art. The painting will be offered in Christie’s Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on November 15, 2017 in Rockefeller Plaza. The estimate is in the region of $100 million US.

Dating from around 1500, the haunting oil on panel painting depicts a half-length figure of Christ as Savior of the World, facing frontally and dressed in flowing robes of lapis and crimson. He holds a crystal orb in his left hand as he raises his right hand in benediction.  Leonardo’s painting of Salvator Mundi was long believed to have existed but was generally presumed to have been destroyed until it was rediscovered in 2005.

Loic Gouzer, Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, New York, remarked: “Salvator Mundi is a painting of the most iconic figure in the world by the most important artist of all time. The opportunity to bring this masterpiece to the market is an honor that comes around once in a lifetime. Despite being created approximately 500 years ago, the work of Leonardo is just as influential to the art that is being created today as it was in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. We felt that offering this painting within the context of our Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale is a testament to the enduring relevance of this picture.”

Gouzer continued,“Salvator Mundi was painted in the same timeframe as the Mona Lisa, and they bear a patent compositional likeness.Leonardo was an unparalleled creative force, and a master of the enigmatic. Standing in front of his paintings, it becomes impossible for one’s mind to fully unravel or comprehend the mystery radiating from them – both the Mona Lisa and Salvator Mundi are perfect examples of this. No one will ever be able to fully grasp the wonder of Leonardo’s paintings, just as no one will ever be able to fully know the origins of the universe.” 

PROVENANCE AND RE-DISCOVERY
The painting was first recorded in the Royal collection of King Charles I (1600-1649), and thought to have hung in the private chambers of Henrietta Maria – the wife of King Charles I – in her palace in Greenwich, and was later in the collection of Charles II. Salvator Mundi is next recorded in a 1763 sale by Charles Herbert Sheffield, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Buckingham, who put it into auction following the sale of what is now Buckingham Palace to the king.

It then disappeared until 1900 when it was acquired by Sir Charles Robinson as a work by Leonardo’s follower, Bernardino Luini, for the Cook Collection, Doughty House, Richmond.  By this time, its authorship by Leonardo, origins and illustrious royal history had been forgotten, and Christ’s face and hair were overpainted. In the dispersal of the Cook Collection, it was ultimately consigned to a sale at Sotheby’s in 1958 where it sold for £45. It disappeared once again for nearly 50 years, emerging in 2005 when it was purchased from an American estate at a small regional auction house. Its rediscovery was followed by six years of painstaking research and inquiry to document its authenticity with the world’s leading authorities on the works and career of da Vinci.

In 2011, the dramatic public unveiling of Salvator Mundi (‘Savior of the World’) in the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan at The National Gallery, London, caused a worldwide media sensation.

Alan Wintermute, Senior Specialist, Old Master Paintings at Christie’s commented: “The Salvator Mundi is the Holy Grail of old master paintings. Long-known to have existed, and long-sought after, it seemed just a tantalizingly unobtainable dream until now.  To see a fully finished, late masterpiece by Leonardo, made at the peak of his genius, appear for sale in 2017 is as close as I’ve come to an Art World Miracle.  It has been more than a century since the last such painting turned up and this opportunity will not come again in our lifetime.  I can hardly convey how exciting it is for those of us directly involved in its sale.  The word ‘masterpiece’ barely begins to convey the rarity, importance and sublime beauty of Leonardo’s painting.’

Francois de Poortere, Head of Old Master Paintings, added: “It is an honor to be entrusted with the sale of this mystical masterpiece. After centuries of hiding, da Vinci’s Christ as Salvator Mundi stirred unmatched sensation in the art world when it was unveiled on the walls of London’s National Gallery in 2011. We look forward to creating a similar sensation at Christie’s sites worldwide over the next month, as we share what many call the ‘Male Mona Lisa'– with our global community of collectors, art historians and the public.”

Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale at Christie’s New York

Christie’s has been entrusted with The Defining Gesture: Modern Masters from a Remarkable Private Collection, which will be sold in a single owner section beginning with the November Evening Sales in New York. Comprising works by many of the 20th Century’s leading artists, the collection encompasses the most comprehensive representation of Abstract Expressionism to be offered at auction in half a decade. Among the highlights, are foremost examples by Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky, Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso among others. In total, the collection is expected to exceed $60 million. Highlights will be on view in Hong Kong and London on September 28 and September 30 respectively.

Sara Friedlander, Head of Department, Post-War and Contemporary Art: remarked“We have not seen acomprehensive collection of American Abstract Expressionism come to market since 2012 and are particularly excited about a collection formed so thoughtfully with an eye toward the revolutionary spirit of art in the 20th century. The collection is led by Franz Kline’s Light Mechanic, an unequivocal masterpiece by one of the most emblematic artists of the Abstract Expressionist Movements. Additionally, we are particularly excited to offer examples by William Baziotes, Louise Nevelson and Milton Avery, artists historically not featured in the context of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale.”

The sale will feature works from the private collection of Heinz and Ruthe Eppler. As the couple began to purchase works of art in the 1980s, they formed a friendship with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Chief Curator of Modern Art, Edward B. Henning. The couple thoughtfully assembled the collection with Henning’s wise counsel.

Henning became a trusted advisor, relating his enthusiasm or hesitation on potential acquisitions. The couple,  for their part, was inquisitive and deliberate in their purchases. What motivated them was the thrill of finding works of visual and intellectual resonance. Henning offered the collectors friendship and guidance throughout the 1980s. Of Robert Motherwell’s Je t’aime No. III with Loaf of Bread– pictured left, he noted, “My feeling is that it is very important as well as being beautiful.” He lauded the collectors for having chosen a “superb” painting by William Baziotes – pictured right. Henning went to great lengths to commend the art historical significance of Abstract Expressionists. Upon hearing that the couple had purchased Kline’s LightMechanic – pictured page 1, right, in 1985 – a work Henning had suggested some two years earlier—the curator wrote to express his congratulations. “You now have an excellent, representative collection of American Abstract Expressionist art,” he enthused, “and that is the most important art of the twentieth century and the most important of all American art.”

Franz Kline, Light Mechanic, 1960. Oil on canvas. 92 x 67⅝ in (233.6 x 171.7 cm). Estimate on request. This work is offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 15 November at Christie’s in New York © 2017 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The collectors’ connection with Henning is indicative of their personal, heartfelt approach toward art — one that culminated in an inspired collection of works extending across the twentieth century.
Leading the collection is Franz Kline’s Light Mechanic, 1960 – , a consummate canvas by the artist, whose paintings have come to be regarded as the embodiment of Abstract Expressionism. His broad sweeps of dramatic black-and-white gesture combine to produce enigmatic forms that evoke the energy and aggressive dynamism of the New York City. At nearly eight feet tall, Light Mechanic belongs to a group of monumental canvases that Kline painted between 1950 and the early 1960s. Deliberate imperfections, irregularities and imbalances within its composition give life to the architectural geometry of the intersecting forms. The striking beauty and intense excitement of this canvas strike a sense of awe within the viewer. In both its physical size and artistic scope Light Mechanic captures the masculine energy that epitomized Abstract Expressionism.

Willem de Kooning, Composition I, 1955. Oil on paper laid down on board. 23 x 22¾ in (58.4 x 57.7 cm). Estimate: $4,000,000-6,000,000. This work is offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 15 November at Christie’s in New York

William de Kooning’s Composition I, 1955 –  is an incredibly important transitional work for the artist. Already heralded, along with Jackson Pollock, as one of the leaders of the Abstract Expressionist movement, de Kooning did not merely re-create his successes, but continued to push himself to innovate, transform, and adapt his artistic practice throughout his lifetime. Composition I serves as a snapshot into the artist’s constant striving for a new vision - in it de Kooning is mid-process in navigating from his bold, frenetic Woman paintings to a style that more closely resembles the genre of landscape. The fleshy pinks interplay with sinewy, supple blues and delicate yellows, create a dynamic painting that is at once wholly abstract and yet curiously representational. Its sublimity is echoed in the masterwork from this period, Easter Monday, which de Kooning began in 1955 and completed in 1956. Easter Monday now hangs in permanent place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, steps away from Jackson Pollock’s masterpiece Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950.


Lee Krasner’s Shattered Light from 1954 is a milestone in the development of both painting and collage. Vibrant energy pulses throughout as colorful shreds of paper and quick strokes of oil paint push and pull the composition, creating a spatial tension so skillful that it could have only come from Kasner’s hand. Nature was a primary subject matter for Krasner throughout the course of her career, beginning as early as her student days, and Shattered Light maintains that proclivity. With this canvas, paint and collage coalesce to produce poetic naturalistic forms that recall the feeling of sweeping wind barreling through the air.

 

Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Calderoulette, circa 1941. Standing mobile — brass, wire and nylon thread. 20¾ x 27 x 17 in (52.7 x 68.5 x 43 cm). Estimate: $3,200,000-3,800,000. This work is offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 15 November at Christie's in New York © 2017 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder’s Calderoulette, executed 1940-1945 is a stunning example of of magical and imaginative creations that distinguished the artist’s oeuvre. Calderoulette’s composition is formed by what appears to be an open water lily, below a floating butterfly, a small buzzing insect, and a large dragonfly. As is often the case with Calder’s work, there is more to Calderoulette than initially meets the eye. As the name suggests, Calder’s open lily flower also mimics the design of a roulette wheel. In each of the open flower petals Calder has placed a numerical digit, which invites the viewer to join Calder in playing a round of nature based roulette, guessing which petal an insect will land on first. Encompassing many of the qualities that make Calder’s work so iconic and desirable, Cadleroulette is a delightful standing mobile that combines the magical suspension of the artist’s mobiles with the stability and balance of the later stabiles.

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), Composition I, 1943. Ink, wax crayon and graphite on paper. Estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000. 19 x 24⅞ in (48.2 x 63.1 cm). This work is offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 15 November at Christie’s in New York

 On November 15, Christie’s will offer Andy Warhol's Sixty Last Suppers, 1986 (estimate: in the region of $50 million)

Andy Warhol, Sixty Last Suppers, 1986.

 

as a highlight of its Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art. Sixty Last Suppers is an outstanding example from the artist’s great final painting series. Executed just a year before Warhol’s death in February 1987, this monumental canvas poignantly illustrates the themes of religion and loss that were so instrumental to his work. This canvas is being offered for its first time at auction.

Alex Rotter, Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, New York, remarked: “Christie’s Sixty Last Suppers is the unequivocal masterpiece from Warhol’s late period. Standing in front of this momentous canvas, the viewer is fully immersed by Leonardo’s vision, but seen through the eyes of Andy Warhol. Many paintings are described as a tour-de-force, this is Warhol’s.”

The idea for a group of works based on Leonardo’s Renaissance masterpiece was proposed to Warhol in 1984 by Milan-based gallerist Alexander Iolas. Warhol leapt at the idea of putting his own stamp on one of the best-known images in the world, and produced an exhaustive series of variations — some freehand, some showing outlines, some, as in this example, using a photostat of the oil painting as the source image for a silkscreen. In all, Warhol would make over 100 different renditions of the Last Supper, 22 of which were displayed in 1986 in a space opposite the Santa Maria delle Grazie church, home of Leonardo’s original. Viewed by an estimated 30,000 people, the works took Milan by storm.

At the same time, and underscoring the Pop process of manufacture, the doubled image was a reminder that Warhol’s works were not originals in the traditional sense. This interrogation of originality versus reproduction had come up again and again in his art. The ‘Dollar Bills’ were not dollar bills. The ‘Brillo Boxes’ were not Brillo boxes, exactly. By  1986, of course, Leonardo’s Last Supper had become not only part of the art historical canon, but part of popular culture.

As a deeply religious man, the image of The Last Supper had featured prominently in the background of Warhol’s life: his mother’s Bible featured a reproduction of the image; another copy apparently hung in the family’s kitchen. It is perhaps no coincidence that in creating this particular Last Supper variation, Warhol worked from a print of an old oil copy of the Renaissance painting — a source already removed from the original, and already a proto-Pop artefact.

In the early 1980s, religious iconography would feature more prominently in Warhol’s art as he began to confront his mortality. Sixty Last Suppers marked the culmination of a process of acceptance: the final image of communion and forgiveness. To some critics, Warhol’s artistic appropriation of the iconography of advertising and pop culture represented the substitution, in the modern age, of capitalism for religion. But in Sixty Last Suppers, Warhol both celebrated Christianity and injected new life into religious art, charging it with contemporary currency.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction 16 November in New York.

October 26, 2017, 10:35 am

≫ Next: Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art on 14 November 201.

≪ Previous: Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art+ Da Vinci November 15,2017

$

0

0

 


Roy Lichtenstein’s Female Head will be featured in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 16 November in New York.

Acquired from Leo Castelli Gallery in November 1977, just months after it was painted, the bold , vibrantly colored and beautiful painting will carry a pre -sale estimate of $10/15 million when it makes its auction debut this November. 

Grégoire Billault, H ead of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art department in New York, noted: “To stand in front of this pain ting is to understand and appreciate Roy Lichtenstein’s enduring engagement with beguiling blondes , as well as his brilliance as one of the trailblazers of Pop Art . Vividly combining his favorite subject with his distinctive visual lexicon, Female Head is a magnum opus of the artist that will have universal appeal to collectors today .” 

While female figures served as heroines of Lichtenstein’s Pop narrative in the 1960s , a decade later his signature blonde s take on more enigmatic roles. Executed in 1977, Female Head is one of the very finest examples of Roy Lichtenstein’s works from his so -called Surrealist period and is evocative of the artist’s genius and creativity. By dislocating and disconnecting the facial features of three portraits – two mirrored faces are joined by a third silhouette, which also functions as a brushstroke-like coif of yellow hair – the artist engages the complex worlds of Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop with unparalleled energy and imagination. 

Female Head radiates with a seductive allure, executed in an intricate configuration of his favored primary-color palette, Ben-Day dots, and modernist line. Exhibited in a number of the artist’s most important exhibitions, including the 1993 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Female Head is exemplary of Lichtenstein’s contribution to 20 th century art history. 

Masterworks from this period of Lichtenstein’s body of work are held in renowned institutions around the world , including the Guggenheim Museum, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In addition to its stylistic context, this large-scale painting is impressive for its inclusion of the full arsenal of the artist’s iconography and technique drawn from the language of graphic and commercial art. 

One of his most complex meditations on ‘art about art’, Female Head is a visual tour of Roy Lichtenstein’s oeuvre ; from the signature blonde to the female figure, the Ben -Day dots to the brushstroke, and finally the mirror to the picture frame, all of his trademarks are present in this  work. Marvelously engaging with the history of the fractured female form – paying homage to masters like Picasso, Magritte and Dali – Lichtenstein here weaves Surrealist archetypes with his own distinctive pioneering style, resulting in an image that is undeniably one of the most seductive paintings from the 1970s. Appearing at auction for the first time, Female Head comes from the collection of Elizabeth R. Rea and the late Michael M. Rea , passionate collectors and proponents of the arts in all forms. 



Sotheby’s New York  Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 16  November will feature Alberto Burri’s revolutionaryNero Plastica L.A. Hailing from the artist’s sought-after  Nero Plastica series and highlighted at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum ’s  acclaimed  2016  retrospective,  Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, this monumental work  is one of  the most important plastic reliefs to appear at auction. 

Grégoire Billault, Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s New York, noted:  “None of us who saw the  Burri retrospective at the Guggen heim last year could fail to be moved by the explosive energy of  Nero Plastica L.A. The perfect undulating rhythm of its monumental surface stands as one of the  boldest expressions of 1960s abstraction that is as striking today as it was when it was unveiled to  the world nearly 55 years ago.” 

A surgeon by training whovolunteered for the military and was captured by Allied troops during World War II,  Alberto Burri ’s 1946 return to Italy precipitated a momentous change. Faced with the horrors of war – buildings charred and destroyed beyond recognition, thousands of homeless and starving people  – he turned to painting and sculpture, cultivating a passion he discovered while imprisoned into a full profession.

Burri began experimenting with the unpredictability and devastation of fire and plastic in 1957, fully  conceptualizing the theme in 1960 with his Nero Plastica series. For the next five years, he focusedhis creative energy up on the manipulation of surface, the sensuality of texture and the balance ofcomposition in a way that challe ged preconceptions of painting, and thrilled art enthusiasts around the world.  Rarity and scale enhance the coveted status of Nero Plastica. 

The sale of the present work,  Nero Plastica L.A., not only marks its auction debut, but also the unveiling of the largest work from the series ever to come to market. There exist only six other examples of comparably large -scale examples of  Nero Plastica  with all but one either in or promised to renowned international museums  – Galleria Nazionale d’Arte, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini collezione Burri, Collezione dei Premi  Marzotto  and the Museum of Modern Art – making the  offering of  Nero Plastica L.A.  this November  an  undeniably rare and extraordinary opportunity for collectors.   

Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art on 14 November 201.

October 26, 2017, 10:40 am

≫ Next: Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November

≪ Previous: Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction 16 November in New York.

$

0

0

Marc Chagall’s lyrical masterpiece,  Les  Amoureux   will highlight Sotheby’s  that  New York Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art  on 14 November 2017. A stunning  image  of the artist’s two great loves – his  childhood  sweetheart and muse, Bella Rosenfeld, and his  adoptive  home  of  France  –  Les Amoureux encapsulates the best  characteristics of Chagall’s oeuvre . The work has remained in  the same family collection for nearly 90 years, having been  purchased from legendary Pari ian gallery Bernheim -Jeune  in  October of 1928  – the year it was painted. 

The enchanting oil on canvas is estimated to sell for $12/18  million during the  November Evening S ale. Simon Shaw, Co -Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department , remarked:  “ It is  an honor to offer this exquisite  painting by Marc Chagall , perhaps his greatest work of the  1920s . Les Amoureux  captures  at a critical moment one of the most celebrated love stories in art  history – the romance between the  artist and Bella  is palpable, and their  happiness is at its  very heart . In addition to the  painting’s  importance  with in Chagall’s career, it is truly exceptional to offer a  work of this caliber that was acquired so soon after its creation, and which has remained in the same  collection since. We have seen a compelling demand for important works by  the artist in recent  yea rs, an d we look forward to presenting Les Amoureux this fall .”  Sotheby’s set the current auction record for any work by Marc Chagall in May 1990, when  we  sold  his 1923 painting  Anniversaire for  $14 .9 million . Similar  in subject matter to the present work ,  Anniversaire depicts the  starry -eyed lovers sharing a kiss while, q uite literally, floating on air .   

LES AMOUREUX 

The present  work fully evokes the devotion and tenderness so  present in Marc and Bella’s relationship. Entwined together in  the night sky, surrounded by verdant, flowering bushes and a  bird soaring through the clouds, the lovers  lay engulfed in a  dream -like space, with  Bella’s dress and skirt saturated with  colors of the French fl ag.  Chagall’s love for his first wife and most  celebrated muse is  difficult to overstate. Upon meeting Bella for the first time, the  artist wrote of his certainty: 

“Her silence is mine. Her eyes,  mine. I feel she has known me always, my childhood, my  present life, my future; as if she is watching over me, divini ng my innermost being....Her pale  coloring, her eyes...They are my eyes, my soul.” * 

The artist met Bella Rosenfeld in Vitebsk in 1909 and the couple became engaged within a year, shortly before Chagall’s first trip to Paris in the  summer of 1910. During the a rtist’s first four years abroad, he and Bella would correspond  frequently and his homesickness for Russia became  enmeshed  with  his desire for his distant  fiancée.  Following Chagall’s return to Russia and his marriage to Bella, paintings depicting the couple  dominated the artist’s work. In 1916 -17,  he created four oils of the two embracing on abstracted  backgrounds. It was in these years that the couple in flight – a trope that would become one of  Chag all’s prime pictorial devices in later years – became firmly established. 

Just as Bella inspired many of the works in his oeuvre, France also became  a prominent source of  inspiration for the artist. Chagall arrived in Paris at the young  age of 23; within his first two days, the  artist visited the Salon des Indépendants, where he observed works by André Derain, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Robert Delaunay, who would later become Chagall’s mentor.   

During this time, the artist lodged in La Ruche , the legendary block of studios in Montparnasse  known for its lively bohemian atmosphere and diverse array of inhabitants, next door to Amedeo Modigliani  and Chaim Soutine. It was in this milieu of spontaneity and rich cultural exchange that Chagall began his first period of painting in Paris. Chagall returned to his beloved city with Bella , and  their first and only child, Ida ,in September of 1923 and remain ed there until 1941, when World War II forced them to flee to the US. 

With his great  loves with him in France, Chagall was able to fully enjoy his adopted  home country. All of the portraits of him and Bella together during  their time in Russia were now imbued with a new -found peace and  tenderness in this new stage of their life together.  These years in France were particularly fruitful for Chagall , marking a period of comm ercial and  critical success, happiness and security . Having returned to the C ity of Light after a nine -year hiatus,  the artist found a new equilibrium of mind, a peaceful atmosphere and an audience . Young  Surrealists welcomed  him back to Paris , and in turn  Chagall was pleasantly surprised to find that  they  supported  a changing attitude towards the sort of dream -like  poetry painti ng he pioneered  many years before. Despite their flattery, Chagall declined the group ’s invitation to join the  4 movement, though his influence can be seen throughout their work , from ambiguous space to  collections of objects. The moon and sky of the present work , for example, evoke René Magritte’s  composition s of later years.   

*This quote was reproduced in J. Baal- Teshuva, ed,  Chagall, A Retrospective , New York, 1995, pp.58 -59 #  

 

Also, Georgia O’Keeffe's Yellow Sweet Peas (1925) has a pre-sale estimate of $2.5/3.5 million

---

Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November

October 26, 2017, 10:59 am

≫ Next: Sotheby’s American Art on 13 November 2017 .

≪ Previous: Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art on 14 November 201.

$

0

0

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Femme accroupie (Jacqueline), Painted on 8 October 1954

Oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 44 7/8 in. | Estimate: $20-30 million

© 2017 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Christie’s will offer Pablo Picasso’s Femme accroupie (Jacqueline), painted on October 8, 1954 as a central highlight of its Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November in New York. Marking its first time at auction, Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) comes from a private collection, and is estimated to sell for $20-30 million. 

Christie’s Global President, Jussi Pylkkanen, remarked,“Jacqueline was a beautiful woman and one of Picasso’s most elegant muses. This painting of Jacqueline hung in Picasso’s private collection for many years and has rarely been seen in public since 1954. It is a museum quality painting on the grand scale which will capture the imagination of the global art market when it is offered at Christie’s New York this November.”

The brilliant primary colors in Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) illustrate a sunny day in the South of France during early autumn, 1954. Picasso and Jacqueline Roque, his ultimate paramour and eventual second wife, had begun living together in the Midi and would soon return to Paris to reside in the artist’s studio. The present painting is one of three large-easel-format canvases that Picasso painted on October 8th, in a flourish of portraits that celebrate the artist’s new mistress, declaring her newly established pride of place in the artist’s life and work. 

In each of the three October paintings, Jacqueline is seated on the floor; in a compact, crouching pose, clasping her knees. From an open window behind her, golden light fills the room. The space is likely a corner of Picasso’s studio on the rue du Fournas in Vallauris, in a building that had previously housed a perfume factory, the scents from which still graced the air. 

Jessica Fertig, Senior Vice President, Head of Evening Sale, Christie’s New York, continued, “We are thrilled to be bringing to market for the first time this powerful portrait of Picasso’s great love Jacqueline. Picasso delighted in capturing Jacqueline’s beautiful features, here rendered with a wonderfully thick impasto. Picasso embarked on his late, great period, which his biographer John Richardson succinctly defined and characterized as “l’époque Jacqueline“—It is Jacqueline's image that dominates Picasso's work from 1954 until his death, longer than any of the women who preceded her.”

The color forms in Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) reflect Picasso’s admiration for Matisse’s distinctive cut outs. Less than a month after completing the present portrait, Matisse, who was the only living artist whom Picasso recognized as his peer, passed away. 

 


A month after that Picasso commenced work on his painted variations, which would finally number fifteen in all, on Delacroix’s two versions of Les femmes d’Alger. The series was ostensibly his tribute to the Delacroix-inspired odalisques of Matisse, to honor the memory of his longtime rival, but also an admired friend. The Femmes d’Alger paintings are also a declaration of affection for Jacqueline. 


 

 An homage to Delacroix had been on Picasso’s mind for more than a decade, and the advent of Jacqueline, just as importantly as the idea of a tribute to Matisse, induced Picasso to undertake his own series of odalisques. Picasso had become intrigued at Jacqueline's resemblance to the odalisque crouching at lower right in the Louvre version of Delacroix’s harem scene, whose face is seen in left profile. 





Pablo Picasso’s Portrait de Femme Buste de femme au chapeau (Dora Maar) 

Painted on 28 May 1943 With its severely simplified, jagged composition, Portrait de Femme is an emblematic portrait of one of the artist’s most influential muses, Dora Maar. However, breaking from the wartime tension that often defines Picasso’s portraits of Maar, this canvas also encompasses a measure of humor and delight in her likeness. The large and striking hat worn by the subject, is a definitive element of Picasso’s portraits of Maar. She regularly sported whimsical hats, and Picasso often utilized them as a symbolic externalization of her inner moods, as well as a counterbalance to the severity with which he presented her features. This work will be included in the Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale on November 13. 

 

Property from an Important Private Collection. René Magritte (1898-1967), L’empire des lumières, Painted in Brussels, 1949. Oil on canvas, 19.1/8 x 23.1/8 in. Estimate: $14-18 million

On November 13, Christie’s will offer René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières, 1949 (estimate: $14-18 million) as a highlight of the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale. The present canvas is celebrated as one of the artist’s most iconic works and is the very first example that Magritte completed from his landmark L’empire des lumières series. A theme that he would spend the subsequent fifteen years exploring. Coming from a private collection, L’empire des lumières, was first-owned by Nelson A. Rockefeller. It was acquired by Rockefeller in 1950, then chairman and president of Chase National Bank, while also serving in similar roles at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This marks the first time that this canvas has ever been offered at auction. L’empire des lumières, 1949 will be on public view at Christie’s Hong Kong from 28 September – 3 October.

Sharon Kim, International Director of Impressionist & Modern Art at Christie’s, comments, “Christie’s is honored to have the opportunity to bring this important work to auction for the first time when the global market is currently exhibiting a strong demand for surrealist masterpieces. This a landmark work in Magritte’s oeuvre—the first complete canvas in the artist’s iconic series L’empire des lumières—making this an extremely exciting opportunity for buyers.” 

The iconic series, that was launched with this picture, is centered around a concept which explores the harmony and tension between day-and-night, a theme at the very heart of Surrealism. Additional paintings from this series were acquired by many of the greatest private collectors of the 20^th-century, including Jean and Dominique de Menil, Peggy Guggenheim, composer Richard Rodgers, and Harry Torczyner, one of Magritte’s most dedicated collectors. They also can be seen in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

Each successive picture displays the key elements seen in the present, original L’empire des lumières—a nocturnal street scene in a placid, well-maintained quarter of town. This quiet view was similar to Magritte’s own rue de Esseghem in Brussels, with eerily shuttered houses, windows faintly lit from within and a single lamppost, shining forth like a beacon. The hour is late, and most of the occupants are presumably asleep. Only the onlooker is witness to the bizarre vision above—a night sky with neither moon nor stars, lacking the least hint of darkness. For as far as one can see, a blue sunlit sky with lazily drifting white clouds fills the ether expanse. In the characteristic, straightly descriptive manner in which Magritte painted this scene, all is as natural—but in myriad connotations, also as paradoxical—as night and day.

The beauty and revelation of L’empire des lumières—perhaps what contributed to its enduring status—is that Magritte reconciles the traditionally opposing elements of earth and sky, night and day, darkness and light to the underlying harmony found in these contrasts. “After I had painted L’empire des lumières,” Magritte explained to a friend in 1966, “I got the idea that night and day exist together, that they are one. This is reasonable, or at the very least it’s in keeping with our knowledge: in the world night always exists at the same time as day. (Just as sadness always exists in some people at the same time as happiness in others.) But such ideas are not poetic. What is poetic is the visible image of the picture” (quoted S. Whitfield, Magritte, exh. cat., The South Bank Centre, London, 1992, no. 111). 

PROPERTY FROM THE ANNA-MARIA AND STEPHEN KELLEN FOUNDATION

Fernand Léger, Contraste de formes, oil on burlap, Painted in 1913

On November 13, 2017, Christie’s will present Fernand Léger’s Contraste de formes, 1913, the most important canvas by the artist offered at auction in several decades (estimate on request). This exquisite picture comes from Property from the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, and proceeds from the sale of this work will go towards the foundation’s philanthropic mission.

Originally acquired from Léger at the end of 1913 by his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Contraste de formes was bought in 1956 from Galerie Rosengart in Lucerne by Ludmilla and Hans Arnhold, an international banker and art collector. Mr. Arnhold later bequeathed the painting to their daughter and son-in law, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen. Mr. Kellen was the esteemed and longtime CEO of the highly respected investment banking firm, Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, Inc. (now First Eagle Holdings, Inc.), and with his wife were both passionate collectors and distinguished philanthropists.

The Kellens were deeply captivated by Léger and his work, often visiting the Musée National Fernand-Léger in Biot, France, with their children and eventually their grandchildren. Contraste de formes was a cherished highlight of the Kellens’ collection and it enriched their New York home for over 40 years. November 13 will mark the painting’s first time at auction.


Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, remarked: “This is pure painting seen in its most exciting form, bursting with visual and intellectual ideas. The Kellen Foundation’s Contraste de formes, among the greatest Léger’s still in private hands, has a startling intensity. Executed just months before the First World War, Contraste de formes with its groundbreaking abstract conception and its thrillingly preserved physical state, is without question a major work of Modern Art. Standing at the threshold of 20^th century art, this picture marks a departure from the purely figurative, leading the way for abstract art.” 

Painted in 1913, Contraste de formes belongs to a series of paintings that changed forever the way we look at art. Across the course of just a few months, in a sequence of some fourteen canvases, Léger advanced beyond Cubism into a visual language that abandoned the representational concerns of his contemporaries, Picasso and Braque. Instead Léger made abstract shapes and colors, hinged on a network of forceful lines his only subject. The work of Léger during 1912-1914 is the story of the push towards pure or non-representational painting in France and the subsequent return to the subject in the months preceding the mobilization for war. The Contrastes de formes have long been considered cornerstones of important collections of modern art and thus nearly all examples from the series are today housed in major institutions.

In his Contrastes de formes series, Léger utilized simple geometric volumes composed of cylinders and planar elements which he rendered into multiple elements by means of line and color. He fabricated a tumbling surface in which shapes simultaneously appear to project out of the picture plane or recede into it suggesting volume. All the component lines, forms and colors are actively engaged as they play off each other to create a jolting, rhythmic composition. At first glance these surfaces display a helter-skelter appearance; however, there is a visual logic based on the simple aspect of his chosen component forms. In the second Académie Wassilief lecture, prepared as Léger was bringing this series of paintings to a close, he wrote, “Composition takes precedence over all else; to obtain their maximum expressiveness lines, forms, and colors must be employed with the utmost logic. It is the logical spirit that will achieve the greatest result.”

Marina Kellen French, daughter of Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen and a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vividly remembered The New York Times art critic Roberta Smith’s review of the 2014 Met exhibition “Reimagining Modernism: 1900-1950.” “Just beyond the Picasso head in the “Avant-Garde” section hangs a fabulous early Léger…” wrote Roberta Smith, “filled with curving planes of red and blue girded by black lines and patches of rough white. A truly fabulous picture.”



Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), Laboureur dans un champ, St Remy 1889. Estimate on Request.

 On mornings between 9 May 1889 and 16 May 1890, Van Gogh rose from bed and gazed through his window; the world outside appeared to him much like it does in this painting. Each morning the spectacle of the ascending sun would exhilarate and inspire him. The artist began this painting of a ploughman tilling the plot of land through his window in late August 1889 and completed it on 2 September. This was a significant development for Van Gogh, who had not handled his brushes since being removed from his studio by the doctors at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole following a devastating psychological episode.

An attack of this magnitude had last occurred in Arles on 23 December 1888, following a violent argument with Paul Gauguin in the small “Yellow House” they had shared for the previous two months. The argument led him to sever the larger part of his upper left ear.

The artist referred to Laboureur dans un champ in his letter to his brother Theo dated on or around 2 September: “Yesterday I started working again a little—a thing I see from my window—a field of yellow stubble which is being ploughed, the opposition of the purplish ploughed earth with the strips of yellow stubble, background of hills. Work distracts me infinitely better than anything else, and if I could once again really throw myself into it with all my energy that might possibly be the best remedy.” The image of the horse and ploughman is repeated in only one other Saint-Rémy painting, a related version but with variant motifs, which Vincent painted later in September.



Joan Miró (1893-1983), Peinture (from collage), 4 April 1933. Estimate: $18-25 million.

 The present work comes from the series of eighteen large paintings completed in 1933, marking Miró’s commitment to resume oil painting on canvas following the period 1928-1931, when the artist had chosen to explore alternative means of expression including collage and assemblages. The present Peinture and its companion canvases are the direct outcome of this contest between painting and anti-painting, in which Miró revealed some of the most tantalizingly enigmatic, yet succinct plastic forms he had yet conceived.Between 26 January and 11 February 1933, Miró fabricated the eighteen preliminary collages as the studies for the final canvases, at the rate of about one per day. Apart from dating each sheet on the reverse, Miró added nothing to the collages in his own hand. Realizing there would be insufficient room to store the completed canvases, Miró decided to paint the large works one at a time, pausing to unstretch and roll the completed canvas, and then reuse the stretchers for the next Peinture. Each picture would take several days, a week, or sometimes even fortnight to complete. Within each of these pictures, mysterious biomorphic shapes drift weightlessly within a seemingly boundless, yet cavernous inner space. These finished paintings are among the largest Miró had done to date; only a few earlier works surpass them in height or width.



Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Les régates de Nice, 1921. Estimate: $12-18 million.

Les régates de Nice, 1921, by Henri Matisse (estimate: $12-18 million)was painted only a few years into the artist’s life-long love affair with the city of Nice on the Cȏte d’Azur, this work was likely completed during the early spring of 1921. Les régates de Nice, portrays two young women at ease, in an airy, luminous interior, with a large French window opening to blue skies and the sea in the distance—classic hallmarks of Matisse’s art during the early 1920s. The standing figure is Henriette Darricarrère, the best known of Matisse’s models, and the second seated figure on the balcony is in fact Marguerite Matisse, the artist’s 26-year-old daughter, who had been staying with her father in Nice since late 1920.

In contrast to the often-gray atmosphere of the north, the artist delighted in the Mediterranean light during the winter. He moreover recognized that in this light, the way in which he organized his new pictures required a new synthesis of conception. The window, as the conveyor of light, became the crucial motif in the exploratory process Matisse commenced in early 1918. Matisse viewed the interior in Les régates de Nice as if from a ladder-like height, resulting in a perspective that flattens the deep space, which extends from the interior foreground to the far marine horizon. Throughout this vast distance, Matisse employs cinematic deep focus: every pictorial element, regardless of placement, is accorded the same degree of clarity.



Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Portrait de Madame Malpel, 1908. Estimate: $7-10 million.

Elegant and dramatically lit, evoking an haut bourgeois aura of opulent refinement, Kees van Dongen’s 1908 Portrait de Madame Malpel (estimate: $7-10 million) presaged a new line in the artist’s work, one which would increasingly define his career in coming decades—formal portraiture. Until this time his models were nearly all paid demi-mondaines—Van Dongen painted singers and dancers who performed in the cabarets and dance halls of Montmartre. Mme Malpel, however, was of far more elevated social standing; she was the wife of Charles Malpel, a lawyer from Montauban who became an art dealer and impresario in Toulouse, seeking to develop the city into an arts center for southwestern France.

Van Dongen presented Mme Malpel à l’espagnole, attired in a lace shawl and colorfully embroidered dress, her décolletage bordered with strands of sequins. In availing himself of espagnolisme in this portrait, Van Dongen was tapping into a potent and evocative theme with a distinguished pedigree in French painting. For the past century, artists of the School of Paris had been strongly attracted to the flesh-and-blood realism, the deeply sonorous color tonalities, and the sharp contrasts of light and shade that were the hallmarks of Spanish painting during its Siglo de Oro, and resonated as well in the much-admired art of Francisco Goya. Van Dongen's Madame Malpel thrusts upward against a fiery, volcanic background—the effect is stunning, Fauve, and superbly sophisticated.

 
Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Untitled, 1969. Estimate: $10-15 million.

Highlighting the selection of Post-War and Contemporary Art, which will be sold on November 15, is Mark Rothko’s masterful painting of 1969, Untitled(estimate: $10-15 million) – pictured on page 1. Painted in 1969, the work belongs to a celebrated series of paintings that Rothko created in the last year of his life. Having suffered an aortic aneurism in 1968, Rothko was advised by his physicians to limit himself to small-scale works on paper no larger than 40 inches. Rather than diminish the artist’s creativity, the series had the opposite effect. By late 1969 Rothko was painting on large-scale sheets of paper in a wide variety of media, producing some of his most significant work. Untitled envelops the viewer in its expansive field of luxurious color, gesturally applied in wide swathes of the brush that actively display the physical workings of the artist’s hand. In one of his most profound color pairings, Rothko creates a lavish, unmodulated field of highly saturated red alongside its counterpart, a luminous field of golden yellow.

 

Also 

 

Bonnard, French Window with Dog (Est $4-6m)

Christie’s has announced that Property from the Collection of Stanford Z. Rothschild, Jr. will be offered across a series of sales in November and December, including the Impressionist and Modern Art sale. Stanford Z. Rothschild, Jr. was an investor, philanthropist and collector who helped champion civic leadership in his Maryland community. Enthralled with artists and the creative process, Stan assembled a striking collection of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by artists whose work was both intellectually rigorous and historically provocative. He was especially drawn to El Greco, Claude Monet, Robert Delaunay, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Russian artists of the twentieth century. In his lifetime, Stan amassed one of the largest, privately owned collections of Russian avant-garde art in the United States. Certain works in the collection are being sold by the Rothschild Art Foundation, a charitable organization founded by Stanford Z. Rothschild, Jr. Overall, the collection includes 51 works and is expected to exceed $30 million.  

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Le Rio de la Salute,
oil on canvas, 32 x 25 in. Painted in 1908. Estimate: $7,000,000-10,000,000 

 

ROBERT DELAUNAY (1885-1941)
La Tour Eiffel,
oil on canvas
31 x 25 in. Painted in Paris, 1928 Estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000 

Highlights from the collection in the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on November 13 include two outstanding works by Claude Monet, Le Rio de la Salute ($7,000,000-10,000,000) painted in 1908; La Pointe du Petit Ailly ($6,000,000-8,000,000) painted in 1897; and a vibrant depiction of the Eiffel tower by Robert Delaunay, La Tour Eiffel ($2,500,000-3,500,000). 

ODILON REDON (1840-1916)
Figure portant une tête ailée (La chute d’lcare)
pastel on paper laid down on board 19 1⁄2 X 18 in.
Executed circa 1876 Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000

 
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
La Pointe du Petit Ailly
oil on canvas
29 x 36 in.
Painted in 1897 Estimate: $6,000,000-8,000,000

GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963)  



Guitare et journal: STAL (recto);  



Femme à la mandoline (verso)
11 x 16 in.
Executed in 1913
Estimate: $900,000-1,200,000

Sotheby’s American Art on 13 November 2017 .

October 27, 2017, 7:07 am

≫ Next: Picasso/Lautrec

≪ Previous: Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November

$

0

0

 

Sotheby’s has unveiled the full offerings of our New York auction of American Art on 13 November 2017 . Led by two masterworks by Norman Rockwell, sold to benefit the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the sale of 84 works of art represents the diversity of the American Art category, including strong examples of illustration, impressionist, modern and western art spanning the 19 th and 20 th centuries . The New York exhibition will be open to the public for 10 days, beginning 3 November.

NORMAN ROCKWELL

Shuffleton’s Barbershop © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved.

The undisputed highlight of the November auction is Norman Rockwell’s Shuffleton’s Barbershop , one of the artist’s masterpieces, being sold to benefit the Berkshire Museum (below , estimate $20 /30 million). Painted in 1950 – at the height of Rockwell’s career and just one year prior to



Saying Grace, which holds the current auction record for the artist set at Sotheby’s in 2013 – the work is a visual testament to the full extent of Rockwell’s artistic abilities and incomparable imagination. Rockwell’s ambitious composition positions the viewer as the witness to the action taking place beyond the cracked plate -glass window of the storefront. His dramatic treatment of light – the golde n light that bathes the trio of musicians contrasts vividly with the shadows that blanket the rest of the closed- up shop – immediately captivates. Further engaging is the variety of naturalistic details Rockwell includes to emphasize the authenticity and immediacy of the scene. When considered together, however, these minute elements – a World War II remembrance poster; a December 1949 issue of Walt Disney Comics and Stories ; a fishing rod a nd creel; the scroll of a cello – adopt a much more potent meaning. At its core, Shuffleton’s Barbershop is the culmination of Rockwell’s investigation into the power of observation and the process of making art. Thus as he presents a subtle and unexpected marriage of high and popular culture, Rockwell asserts the idea that art can be found in the most unexpected of places or inde ed, that an illustrator can be a true artist.



Also selling to benefit from the Berkshire Museum is Blacksmith’s Boy – Heel and Toe (Shaftsbury Blacksmith Shop) by Norman Rockwell ( above , estimate $7/10 million). Monumental in size – measuring 70 1/4 inches across – the painting was commissioned for a story that appeared in a 1940 edition of The Saturday Evening Post about a horseshoe-forging contest, which included the following lines: “I’ll never forget that last hour. And never, I imagine, will any of those who watched. Both men were lost to everything now but the swing from the forge to the anvil, the heels to be turned and the toes to be welded.” The excitement of the narrative, articulated from the point of view of the local blacksmith’s son, is brilliantly portrayed by the two men who captivate the growing crowd with this demonstration of their strength and skill . Working from a series of photographs, which he exactingly orchestrated down to the last detail, Rockwell depicts a total of 23 figures in the composition , including a self - portrait and two different representation s of one of his favorite models, Harvey McKee, the undersheriff of the town of Arlington, Vermont.

Sotheby’s sale of American Art features 7 works by this beloved American artist  with estimates starting at $80,000

Half the artworks consigned by the Berkshire Museum in a Nov. 13 Sotheby's sale have been withdrawn, reports Berkshire Eagle. Seven works remain in the sale, including two Norman Rockwell paintings that the artist's family has filed a lawsuit to oppose the museum's deaccessioning of the works.

Removed from the Nov. 13 auction: Albert Bierstadt, "Giant Redwood Trees of California"; Ralph Albert Blakelock, "Rocky Mountains"; Frederick Edwin Church, "Valley of Santa Isabel, New Granada"; George Inness, "Mountain Landscape — The Painter at Work"; Thomas Moran, "The Last Arrow"; Charles Wilson Peale, "Portrait of General David Forman"; and Rembrandt Peale, "George Washington."

Berkshire Museum, in Pittsfield, Mass., announced in July that it would sell 40 artworks from its collections to generate about $50 million, to help fund a New Vision plan to refocus the museum on science and history. Sales at Sotheby's are set to start in November and extend to March 2018. The artworks removed from the Nov. 13 sale could appear at a later date.


MODERN MASTERS: MILTON AVERY & GEORGIA O’KEEFFE



This season’s offerings of American modernism are led by Milton Avery’s Sunset Sea. Executed in 1960, and having been owned by only one private collector , Sunset Sea embodies the innovative consideration of color for which the artist is acclaimed today (estimate $2/3 million). The seascape, inspired by the landscape of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Avery spent several summers, strikes a balance between pre-war realism and post-war abstraction; fields of shimmering , subtly modulated color stretch across the canvas, drawing comparisons with the works by renowned contemporary Color Field artists including Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb.

The November sale features two works by Georgia O’Keeffe, an icon of American modernism  Shell and Blue and White Abstraction evoke her lifelong fascination with the natural world. The first, painted in 1937, exemplifies the artist’s mastery of form and color (,estimate $700/1,000,000). Her keen understanding of tones of white and her thoughtful experimentation with orientation shine through in this stunning depiction of a subject that attracted her attention from a young age.

The second,Blue and White Abstraction, searches the expansive New Mexico sky and captures a bird in flight (estimate $500/700,000). O’Keeffe reduces the subject to its most essential lines and shapes, compelling the viewer to consider the abstract qualities inherently present in the natural world.

AN AMERICAN IN GIVERNY: FREDERICK CARL FRIESEKE




An American who lived in France for most of his career, Frederick Carl Frieseke’s work often featured his favorite model: his wife Sadie. In Gray Day on the River, painted by 1908, she and her companion float serenely on a boat, surrounded by the verdant landscape of Giverny (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). Exhibited across the United States, including Massachusetts, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, this striking example of American Impressionism will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being completed by the artist’s grandson, Nicholas Kilmer.

EXPLORING THE WEST WITH ALBERT BIERSTADT

Albert Bierstadt’s IndiansCrossing the Columbia River brings the American West of the 19 th century to life this November (estimate $1.5/2. 5 million). Belonging to a distinguished American collection for over 40 years since its acquisition in the 1970s, the work offers a romanticized vision of the Oregon landscape ; Mount Hood, the imposing peak in the background, majestically rises above the radiant Columbia River where a group of Indians row across the water towards shore. Embodying tranquility and serenity, the sublime landscape attests to the national desire for renewal and peace following the Civil War.

Picasso/Lautrec

October 27, 2017, 7:46 am

≫ Next: Dali & Schiaparelli

≪ Previous: Sotheby’s American Art on 13 November 2017 .

$

0

0

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

17 October 2017 to 21 January 2018

The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza presents Picasso/Lautrec, the first monographic exhibition devoted to comparing these two great masters of modern art. Although their artistic link has been repeatedly established by literature and contemporary critics, this is the first time their works have been displayed alongside each other in an exhibition.The show also examines this fascinating relationship from new viewpoints, as it does not merely explore the cliché of the young Picasso as an admirer of Lautrec in Barcelona and his early years in Paris, but traces the latter’s lingering influence throughout the Spanish artist’s lengthy career, including his final period.

Curated by Professor Francisco Calvo Serraller, head of the department of Art History at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, and Paloma Alarcó, chief curator of Modern Painting at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Picasso/Lautrec brings together more than a hundred works from some sixty public and private collections from all over the world, grouped around the themes that interested both artists: caricature portraits; nightlife in cafés, cabarets and theatres; the harsh reality of marginal individuals; the spectacle of the circus; and the erotic universe of brothels. 

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Albi, 1864‒Château Malromé, Saint-André-du-Bois, 1901) and Pablo Picasso (Málaga, 1881‒Mougins, 1973) never met. By the time Picasso visited Paris for the first time in October 1900, Lautrec was seriously ill and died prematurely the following year. Even so, Lautrec’s radical oeuvre and his conception of modernity made a very powerful impact on the young  Picasso. Through him, Picasso discovered the many facets of modern society, which influenced his approach to art. 

Lautrec’s artistic career lasted barely fifteen years, whereas Picasso’s spanned more than seven decades. Both were brilliant artists from childhood, were attracted by Paris during their youth and rejected the academic teachings imposed on them, and both borrowed successively from very similar historical sources, such as the French artists Ingres and Degas as well as El Greco. But above all, their mastery of drawing was one of the key factors that gave meaning to both artists’ oeuvre. 

Both Lautrec and Picasso drew compulsively throughout their lives, had a special fondness for line and caricature, and filled hundreds of notebooks with extraordinarily skilled drawings from a very early age. It can be said that both men thought and expressed themselves in drawing and that any new work was preceded by endless testing and experimentation on
paper. 


Divided into five sections based on the themes that linked the two artists’ worlds symbolically and formally – Bohemians, Underworld, Wanderers, Elles and Hidden Eros –Picasso/Lautrec also provides an insight into the evolution of contemporary art. 

BOHEMIANS

Lautrec soon became aware of the extraordinary ability of caricature to probe his sitters’ personality. He made many caricatures of himself and exploited his unusual appearance. In 1893, he portrayed himself on the reverse of the poster Jane Avril on the Japanese Divan, drawing – or reading the newspapers according to some interpretations – with his characteristic hat. Picasso also used caricature to experiment with his own image in 

 

Picasso in a Top Hat  (1901), where the prostitutes in the background emulate the nocturnal settings of Lautrec’s works. The same is true of the portrait painted that year of the writer Gustave Coquiot caricaturised as a libertine watching a cabaret performance; and of the female portraits he showed in his first exhibition held in Paris in 1901 – 



Woman with a Plumed Hat, 



Woman with a Cape

• Picasso. Bust of Smiling Woman, 1901, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

and Bust of Smiling Woman–painted in the same characteristic style and pointillist technique used by the French artist in works such as 

• Jane Avril, c. 1891‒92, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts 

Jane Avril (c. 1891‒92). 

UNDERWORLD

Lautrec was one of the first artists to break away from the old hierarchies and blaze a trail towards a new artistic language that incorporated aspects of mass culture. The prolific French artist left an unrivalled repertoire of images of a marginal and bohemian environment in his paintings and colourful commercial posters. 

Woman in a Café (1886) is a moving example of his masterful depictions of solitary women in cafés; 

 

Lautrec At the Café: The Customer and the Anaemic Cashier, 1898 Kunsthaus Zürich

others such as At the Café: The Customer and theAnaemic Cashier (1898) and 

• Herni de Toulouse-Lautrec, In a Private Dining Room (At the Rat Mort), c. 1899. The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London /

In a Private Dining Room (at the Rat Mort)(c. 1899) are caustic portrayals of bar scenes of Lautrec.

Lautrec also painted the famous stars of the night shows, the singers Aristide Bruant and Yvette Guilbert, and the cabaret artists La Goulue and Jane Avril; the latter was a great friend of Lautrec’s, whose image became firmly established thanks to the painter’s posters. 

Like Lautrec, Picasso developed an insatiable curiosity for the excesses of Parisian nightlife. 



In The Moulin Rouge (1901), he exaggerates the silhouettes, heightening the figures’ caricature-like appearance and his satirical vision of sexual relations in the private rooms in cafés. He takes a similar approach in 

• Pablo Picasso.The Wait (Margot), Paris, spring 1901. Museu Picasso, Barcelona

The Wait (Margot), a depiction of a courtesan or pierreuse sitting in a café executed with loose, expressive brushstrokes and bright colours that exaggerate her makeup, and 

Picasso.The Diners, Paris, 1901. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

The Diners, both dated 1901. 

WANDERERS

The world of the circus, inhabited by riders, clowns, tumblers and acrobats, was powerfully present in the imagination of Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec. Their fascination with the playful and spontaneous side of the circus and its visual magic was accompanied by an identification with the harlequin and the clown, marginal beings with whom both artists found similarities with the figure of the artist in modern society. Lautrec was particularly interested in equestrian acts and, while recovering from his health problems and alcoholism in Neuilly hospital in 1899, he made numerous drawings on this subject from memory, such as



 At the Circus: Classical Dressage. The Bow 

 

Lautrec.At the Circus: Entering the Ring, 1899. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 and At the Circus: Entering the Ring. 

Beginning in 1902, Picasso shifted towards a more melancholic and dramatic approach, and his harlequins and tumblers personified the outcasts of Parisian nightlife. 


 

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
printed by Eugène Delâtre (French, 1864-1938)

The Frugal Meal, from The Saltimbanques, September 1904

© 2017 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Frugal Meal (1904), one of his first forays into engraving, is a good example of the tragic vein that characterises this period. This alienation is also found in 

 

Poor Man’s Meal (1903‒4) 



and The Milk Bottle (1905). 



Works such as Woman from Majorca (1905), a female acrobat portrayed as the sorceress Circe, Ulysses’s mistress, and 

Picasso.Seated Harlequin, Paris, 1905. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen 

Seated Harlequin, dating from the same year, attest to the evident survival of Lautrec’s influence during Picasso’s rose period. 

ELLES

Prostitution was another subject in which Picasso displayed close affinities with Lautrec. However, the French artist’s empathetic approach is far removed from Picasso’s erotic and sometimes pornographic gaze. During the year he lived with prostitutes in the maison close on the Rue des Moulins, Lautrec portrayed them at their toilette, dressing, pampering each other, playing cards or simply sitting on a chair.  

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Desnudo de pelirroja agachada, 1897. (Femme rousse nue accroupie). Óleo sobre cartón, 46,4 x 60 cm. San Diego Museum of Art. Donación de la Baldwin M. Baldwin Foundation, 1987




 

Dali & Schiaparelli

October 27, 2017, 8:32 am

≫ Next: Beyond Impressionism – Paris, Fin de Siècle: Signac, Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec and Their Contemporaries.

≪ Previous: Picasso/Lautrec

$

0

0

Dali & Schiaparelli opened at The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, Wednesday, October 18, 2017. Running through January 14, 2018 Dali & Schiaparelli is the first exhibition dedicated to the creative relationship and masterpieces of Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali. The exhibit, presented in collaboration by The Dali Museum and Schiaparelli Paris, explores how each artist’s innovative approach both delighted and shocked the worlds of fashion and art. Sensuality and a daring beauty were trademarks of their collaborations. Dali & Schiaparelli will feature Haute Couture gowns and accessories, jewelry, paintings, drawings, objects and photos, as well as new designs by Maison Schiaparelli design director Bertrand Guyon.

Elsa Schiaparelli, regarded as the most prominent figure in fashion between the two World Wars, explored bold Surrealistic themes in her designs. She was heavily influenced by artists, particularly Dali, with whom she often collaborated. Schiaparelli’s designs were like Dali’s paintings in that they combined Renaissance precision with wild imagination and dreamlike visions. Many of Schiaparelli’s devotees were the glitterati of the time, notables like The Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, heiress Millicent Rogers and actresses Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. Dali, celebrated as the best-known and most prolific Surrealist, was equally comfortable with celebrity – his own and others’ – and also acknowledged influences beyond his particular artistic milieu, citing politics, religion and science as impacting his aesthetic.

“We are honored to present this exhibition which highlights not only the bold collaborations of Salvador Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli, but conveys their kindred spirits and individual styles,” said Dr. Hank Hine, Dali Museum Executive Director and curator of this exhibit. Dali & Schiaparelli provides a look into their friendship and partnership – one of the first and most innovative in art and fashion. Visitors can expect to be both captivated and seduced by the groundbreaking works of this duo.”
Beyond the exhibition in the galleries, The Dali appreciates this celebration of fashion and art is an opportunity to recognize the relevance of style as a function of the universal need for personal expression, influencing self-perception as well as the impressions we make on others. A variety of corresponding events and programs will accompany the exhibition, including the popular monthly Coffee with a Curator lecture series; Artflix, the Museum’s themed movie series; activities for families in The Dali’s, free first-floor Stavros Education Room and more. Also in conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum has introduced specialty programming including:

• “Fashion Design at The Dali” for aspiring high school fashion design students: thedali.org/fashion
• An online educational program and fashion design contest featuring a grand prize trip to St. Petersburg, FL: thedali.org/challenge
• A unique partnership with Dress for Success of Tampa Bay to raise awareness of, and drive accessory donations for, women working toward thriving in work and life: thedali.org/success.

The Dali & Schiaparelli exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with essays by Dilys Blum, Curator of Costume and Textiles for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dali Museum Curator of Exhibitions William Jeffett, Dali Museum Director Hank Hine, Director of Vogue Runway, Nicole Phelps, and exhibition consultant John William Barger III. Four variations of the catalog – including a deluxe boxed edition with a photogravure – are all available at The Dali Museum Store along with a wide variety of Dali- and Schiaparelli- inspired merchandise.

The exhibition is organized by The Dali, St. Petersburg, FL in collaboration with Schiaparelli Paris with loans from the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum; the Collection of Mark Walsh & Leslie Chin, Luxury Vintage; and other private collections.


Related article

Woman’s Dinner Dress. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mme Elsa Schiaparelli, 1969-232-52.	Aphrodisiac Telephone (Lobster Telephone). Salvador Dali, 1938. Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali (Artists Rights Society), 2017 / In the USA ©Salvador Dali Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2017.	Schiaparelli telephone dial powder compact, c. 1935 Courtesy of © Schiaparelli archives.	Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali, circa 1949. Image Rights of Salvador Dali reserved. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, 2017.
Anthropomorphic Cabinet. Salvador Dali, 1936. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017.	Illustration of the Bureau-Drawer Suit, Schiaparelli Haute Couture, Fall/Winter 1936-1937. © Schiaparelli.	Woman’s Evening Dress and Veil, (Tear Dress), Summer 1938. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mme Elsa Schiaparelli, 1969-232-45a,b.	Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, 1936, Oil on canvas. Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali (Artists Rights Society), 2017 / In the USA ©Salvador Dali Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2017.
Woman’s Evening Coat, Fall 1937 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mme Elsa Schiaparelli, 1969-232-7.	Tristan and Isolde, 1953 4.2 cm x 4.5 cm x 1 cm ©Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, (Artist Rights Society), 2017 / Collection of the Salvador Dali Museum, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, 2017.	Evening Dress (Skeleton Dress), 1938 Collection of the Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017; Courtesy of © Schiaparelli archives.	Study of figures for Skeleton Dress, 1938. Ink on paper. Collection of the Schiaparelli archives, Paris; © Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali (Artists Rights Society), 2017.

“Le Roy Soleil” magazine advertisement. ©Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017/ Collection of the Salvador Dali Museum, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, 2017.	“Le Roy Soleil” perfume bottle by Schiaparelli, 1946. ©Salvador Dali. Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017; Courtesy of © Schiaparelli archives	Schiaparelli Haute Couture, Spring/Summer 2017	Schiaparelli Haute Couture, Fall/Winter 2016-17

ABOUT THE DALI

The Dali Museum, located in the heart of beautiful downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, is home to an unparalleled collection of Salvador Dali art, featuring more than 2,000 works comprising nearly 100 oil paintings; over 100 watercolors and drawings; and 1,300 prints, photographs, sculptures and objets d’art.

The building is itself a work of art, featuring 1,062 triangular-shaped glass panels – the only structure of its kind in North America. Nicknamed The Enigma, it provides an unprecedented view of St. Petersburg’s picturesque waterfront. The Museum has attracted the world’s attention, and among the other distinguished awards it has received, it was listed by AOL Travel News as “one of the top buildings to see in your lifetime.”

The Dali Museum is located at One Dali Boulevard, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701. For additional information contact 727-823-3767 or visit TheDali.org.

ABOUT SCHIAPARELLI

Schiaparelli is a French couture house located 21 Place Vendome in Paris, the very place where Elsa Schiaparelli had left it in 1954 when she decided to close it to write her autobiography Shocking Life.
Elsa Schiaparelli was the first designer to give a theme to her collections. She pioneered the fusion of art and fashion by collaborating with her artist friends such as Dali and Cocteau. She invented shocking pink, the zipper in Haute Couture, trompe l’oeil garments, culottes and the newspaper print. Throughout her entire life, she has been an independent strong woman and a daring creative force pushing boundaries, building bridges between worlds that were previously not linked and anticipating more than once what would become mainstream culture.

Today Schiaparelli’s unique spirit of Haute Couture merging art, innovation, craftsmanship, quality and audacity enters a new chapter of its story. Created in 1927 by Elsa Schiaparelli, the house of Schiaparelli celebrates its 90th anniversary this year.

Beyond Impressionism – Paris, Fin de Siècle: Signac, Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec and Their Contemporaries.

October 27, 2017, 8:51 am

≫ Next: Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter

≪ Previous: Dali & Schiaparelli

$

0

0

Columbus Museum of Art 
October 21, 2017 – January 21, 2018
 

In partnership with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, Columbus Museum of Art presents Beyond Impressionism – Paris, Fin de Siècle:  Signac, Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec and Their Contemporaries. CMA is the only U.S. venue for this extraordinary exhibition. Featuring approximately 100 paintings, drawings, prints, and works on paper, the exhibition explores the Parisian art scene, focusing on the most important French avant-garde artists of the late 19th century, including Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Félix Vallotton, Odilon Redon, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Parisian fin de siècle was a time of political upheaval and intense cultural transformation. Mirroring the many facets of an anxious, unsettled era, this period saw the emergence of a broad spectrum of new artistic movements. Despite the diversity of styles, their subject matter remained largely that of their still-active Impressionist predecessors: landscapes, the modern city, and leisure-time activities, though the avant gardes added introspective scenes and fantastical visions to the repertoire.


Muchmore information and more images: https://parisfindesiecle.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/works




Nymphéas by Claude Monet, (1914), Private Collection



Briqueterie Delafolie à Eragny by Camille Pissarro, (1888), Private Collection



Pégase by Odilon Redon, circa 1895-1900, Private Collection



Avril Les Anémones by Maurice Denis, (1891), Private Collection



 Signac, Saint Tropez Fontaine des Lices



Maximilien Luce View of London

Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter

October 27, 2017, 11:44 am

≫ Next: Sotheby's IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART 14 November 2017 Updated

≪ Previous: Beyond Impressionism – Paris, Fin de Siècle: Signac, Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec and Their Contemporaries.

$

0

0

Gagosian Paris
October 19 - December 22, 2017  

Gagosian is presenting  “Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter,” the first exhibition dedicated to the artist’s diverse portrayals of his eldest daughter, Maya.

Pablo Picasso, Portrait de Maya de profil, 1943, graphite, chalk, and pastel on vellum paper from spiral notebook, 14 5/8 × 12 1/4 inches (37 × 31 cm) © Succession Picasso 201

María de la Concepción, known as Maya, was born on September 5, 1935. During the first ten years of her life she was a constant subject in her father’s drawings and paintings, who observed with fascination and tenderness her physical and mental development. Her mother, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was the artist’s most iconic model. After meeting in 1927 at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Picasso and Marie-Thérèse began a long-lasting love affair, resulting in Picasso’s first daughter Maya.

Following Maya’s birth, Picasso chronicled intimate details of their private life together en famille, exploring the archetypal theme of maternity. Maya’s portraits reflect the great joy that she brought into the artist's life, even in the looming shadow of World War II. Out of all of Picasso’s children Maya was most frequently depicted—a muse in the image of her mother.

This exhibition presents major works from the 1930s to the 1950s, including a collection of intimate portraits of Maya and Marie-Thérèse, sculptures and little paper cuts-out fashioned especially for his daughter. Like many of his favorite portraits of family members, most of the pieces remained in Picasso's personal collection until his death in 1973.

Alongside the artist’s works, a selection of archival material—unpublished photographs, films, letters, and poems—will explore the relationship between father and daughter, while providing an invaluable testimony of this new-found happiness.

This collection of works and archival documents retraces the childhood and youth of Maya, spanning her birth to her coming of age. In the first months after Maya was born, Picasso captured moments of intimacy between a young mother and her daughter  (Marie-Thérèse allaitant Maya, 1935; Maya à dix mois avec Marie-Thérèse, 1936), secretly living in an apartment rented for them by Picasso at 44 rue de La Boétie, only steps away from his own at number 23.

Numerous drawings of Maya, lovingly composed, present realistic portraits in a classic style, similar to those of Marie-Thérèse realized by the artist during this time (Maya à l’âge de troismois, 1935). His paintings of Maya stray from this academic style, reflecting rather a complex artistic analysis by the artist culminating in a Cubism that can only be qualified as "psychological".

In a vibrant series of portraits realized in 1938, Picasso reveals the energy and curiosity that animated his young daughter. We see Maya embracing her doll against her cheek





(Maya à la poupée et aucheval, 1938) in a posture that recalls the Virgin and Child,

 or in the midst of playing with a boat



(Maya au tablier rouge, 1938; 





La fille de l'artisteà deux ans et demi avec un bateau (Maya), 1938).


At the beginning of the 1950s, Maya’s doll-faced visage transformed into the delicate profile of a young woman in a series of pencil drawings (Maya, profil gauche, 1951).


The relationship between father and daughter is one formed by a unique bond, as can be seen through Maya’s active role during Henri-Georges Clouzot’s filming of Le Mystère Picasso in 1955 at the Victorine Studios in Nice (photographs by Edward Quinn).

Maya’s daughter, art historian Diana Widmaier Picasso, has curated the show. She is a Picasso sculpture expert and has organized several exhibitions including “Picasso’s Picassos: A Selection from the Collection of Maya Ruiz-Picasso” (Gagosian, New York, 2016), “Picasso.mania” (Grand Palais, Paris, 2015) and “Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou” (Gagosian, New York, 2011). In 2005, she wrote a book about Picasso’s erotic works called Picasso:“Art Can Only Be Erotic” (Munich, Prestel).

A fully illustrated catalogue, with an essay by Elizabeth Cowling, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Edimburgh, will be produced for the exhibition.

Related article

Also from 1938:

Sotheby's IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART 14 November 2017 Updated

November 1, 2017, 8:05 am

≫ Next: Sotheby’s American Art on 13 November 2017 Updated

≪ Previous: Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter

$

0

0

IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE 

Auction 14 November 2017 

Works from the Mellon Family Collection are led by 

 

Claude Monet’s Champ d’iris à Giverny, painted in 1887 during a period of respite from the artist’s extensive travels in Holland, Brittany and, finally, his newly- established permanent studio at Giverny (estimate $3/5 million) . The idyllic , pastoral subject matter of this work encapsulates the central focus of Monet’s oeuvre toward the end of the 19 th century, when he divorced himself from painting urban scenes of Paris and devoted himself fully to his beloved countryside in Giverny. 

The present work was acquired by the Mellons in 1953 and has remained in the family’s collection since . 

Jeanne dite Cocotte, et Ludovic Rodolphe Pissarro sur un tapis is one of the remarkable compositions in which Camille Pissarro turns his at ention to his own family as the subject for his art (estimate $800,000/1.2 million) . The canvas depicts two of the artist’s youngest children – Rodo and Cocotte – and was later inherited by his older son Georges Henri Manzana Pissarro, himself an artist. Acquired by the Mellons in 1963, the painting hasn’t been seen in public since 1966 . In 1969, a study for the present work came up for auction at Sotheby’s in London and was purchased by the Mellons. That watercolor and gouache was later included in Sotheby’s 2014 sale of Mrs. Mellon’s Collection, selling for $185,000. 

The tranquil seaside scene depicted in Le Phare (Antibes) from 1954 exemplifies Nicolas de Staël’s fusion of abstraction with the figurative landscape ( estimate $800,000/1.2 million). The work reflects the artist at the pinnacle of his output, when he abandoned the palette knife for the paint brush and relied solely on color to create the illusion of space, light and form . Held in the Mellon Family Collection since 1970, the painting is a superb example of the artist’s unique ability to capture the profound intimacy of lived experience within a limited vernacular of purified geometric forms.

Marc Chagall’s lyrical masterpiece,  Les  Amoureux   will highlight Sotheby’s  that  New York Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art  on 14 November 2017. A stunning  image  of the artist’s two great loves – his  childhood  sweetheart and muse, Bella Rosenfeld, and his  adoptive  home  of  France  –  Les Amoureux encapsulates the best  characteristics of Chagall’s oeuvre . The work has remained in  the same family collection for nearly 90 years, having been  purchased from legendary Pari ian gallery Bernheim -Jeune  in  October of 1928  – the year it was painted. 

The enchanting oil on canvas is estimated to sell for $12/18  million during the  November Evening S ale. Simon Shaw, Co -Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department , remarked:  “ It is  an honor to offer this exquisite  painting by Marc Chagall , perhaps his greatest work of the  1920s . Les Amoureux  captures  at a critical moment one of the most celebrated love stories in art  history – the romance between the  artist and Bella  is palpable, and their  happiness is at its  very heart . In addition to the  painting’s  importance  with in Chagall’s career, it is truly exceptional to offer a  work of this caliber that was acquired so soon after its creation, and which has remained in the same  collection since. We have seen a compelling demand for important works by  the artist in recent  yea rs, an d we look forward to presenting Les Amoureux this fall .”  Sotheby’s set the current auction record for any work by Marc Chagall in May 1990, when  we  sold  his 1923 painting  Anniversaire for  $14 .9 million . Similar  in subject matter to the present work ,  Anniversaire depicts the  starry -eyed lovers sharing a kiss while, q uite literally, floating on air .   

LES AMOUREUX 

The present  work fully evokes the devotion and tenderness so  present in Marc and Bella’s relationship. Entwined together in  the night sky, surrounded by verdant, flowering bushes and a  bird soaring through the clouds, the lovers  lay engulfed in a  dream -like space, with  Bella’s dress and skirt saturated with  colors of the French fl ag.  Chagall’s love for his first wife and most  celebrated muse is  difficult to overstate. Upon meeting Bella for the first time, the  artist wrote of his certainty: 

“Her silence is mine. Her eyes,  mine. I feel she has known me always, my childhood, my  present life, my future; as if she is watching over me, divini ng my innermost being....Her pale  coloring, her eyes...They are my eyes, my soul.” * 

The artist met Bella Rosenfeld in Vitebsk in 1909 and the couple became engaged within a year, shortly before Chagall’s first trip to Paris in the  summer of 1910. During the a rtist’s first four years abroad, he and Bella would correspond  frequently and his homesickness for Russia became  enmeshed  with  his desire for his distant  fiancée.  Following Chagall’s return to Russia and his marriage to Bella, paintings depicting the couple  dominated the artist’s work. In 1916 -17,  he created four oils of the two embracing on abstracted  backgrounds. It was in these years that the couple in flight – a trope that would become one of  Chag all’s prime pictorial devices in later years – became firmly established. 

Just as Bella inspired many of the works in his oeuvre, France also became  a prominent source of  inspiration for the artist. Chagall arrived in Paris at the young  age of 23; within his first two days, the  artist visited the Salon des Indépendants, where he observed works by André Derain, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Robert Delaunay, who would later become Chagall’s mentor.   

During this time, the artist lodged in La Ruche , the legendary block of studios in Montparnasse  known for its lively bohemian atmosphere and diverse array of inhabitants, next door to Amedeo Modigliani  and Chaim Soutine. It was in this milieu of spontaneity and rich cultural exchange that Chagall began his first period of painting in Paris. Chagall returned to his beloved city with Bella , and  their first and only child, Ida ,in September of 1923 and remain ed there until 1941, when World War II forced them to flee to the US. 

With his great  loves with him in France, Chagall was able to fully enjoy his adopted  home country. All of the portraits of him and Bella together during  their time in Russia were now imbued with a new -found peace and  tenderness in this new stage of their life together.  These years in France were particularly fruitful for Chagall , marking a period of comm ercial and  critical success, happiness and security . Having returned to the C ity of Light after a nine -year hiatus,  the artist found a new equilibrium of mind, a peaceful atmosphere and an audience . Young  Surrealists welcomed  him back to Paris , and in turn  Chagall was pleasantly surprised to find that  they  supported  a changing attitude towards the sort of dream -like  poetry painti ng he pioneered  many years before. Despite their flattery, Chagall declined the group ’s invitation to join the  4 movement, though his influence can be seen throughout their work , from ambiguous space to  collections of objects. The moon and sky of the present work , for example, evoke René Magritte’s  composition s of later years.   

*This quote was reproduced in J. Baal- Teshuva, ed,  Chagall, A Retrospective , New York, 1995, pp.58 -59 #  

Sotheby’s will present Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme au chapeau as a highlight of their Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on 14 November 2017. Characterized by its vibrant color palette, sharp angularity and bold form, the portrait is a salient example of the Madonna-and-Magdalene dichotomy that manifested in Picasso’s work while he was simultaneously involved with two of his greatest muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. This tumultuous time in the artist’s life in turn yielded one of the most groundbreaking and creative periods of his oeuvre. The daring oil painting is being sold to benefit charitable organizations including the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and carries a pre-sale estimate of $18/25 million.

The present work illustrates a particularly turbulent time in the Picasso’s life – his mother died in January 1939, during a period of intense political upheaval throughout Europe and particularly in the artist’s native Spain. However, this period also provided the impetus for some of Picasso’s most revolutionary stylistic techniques.

Unable to travel to Spain and living in a country facing increasing pressure from Nazi Germany, Picasso maintained relationships with both Marie-Thérèse and Maar. Both of the women, markedly different in their temperament and physical appearance, populated Picasso’s life and his paintings, and the present work is a strong manifestation of their shared influence throughout his oeuvre. While many attributes of Buste de femme au chapeau point to Marie-Thérèse − the blonde sweep of hair and bright-yet-soft tonalities of the palette − whispers of Maar are also reflected.

In contrast with his depictions of a more passive Marie-Thérèse, the present painting is one of Picasso’s most animated, tactile and sculptural renderings of the young woman. Her figure is punctuated with incisions into the thick paint, adding dimension to her features. Maar’s presence appears vis-a-vis the artist's focus on Marie-Thérèse's hat. While the accessory may have been important to the sitter at the time, its significance in this painting is elucidated in retrospect. Maar was immortalized in Picasso's portraits as the wearer of stylish hats, and what may have been an flamboyant personal item to Marie-Thérèse at the time, becomes a symbolic indicator of her status as the saintly new mother of Picasso's daughter, and the antithesis of her new rival.

 


Also, Georgia O’Keeffe's Yellow Sweet Peas (1925) has a pre-sale estimate of $2.5/3.5 million

---

Sotheby’s American Art on 13 November 2017 Updated

November 1, 2017, 8:14 am

≫ Next: EGON SCHIELE Leopold Museum collection

≪ Previous: Sotheby's IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART 14 November 2017 Updated

$

0

0

 

Sotheby’s has unveiled the full offerings of our New York auction of American Art on 13 November 2017. Led by two masterworks by Norman Rockwell, sold to benefit the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the sale of 84 works of art represents the diversity of the American Art category, including strong examples of illustration, impressionist, modern and western art spanning the 19 th and 20 th centuries . The New York exhibition will be open to the public for 10 days, beginning 3 November.

NORMAN ROCKWELL

Shuffleton’s Barbershop © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved.

The undisputed highlight of the November auction is Norman Rockwell’s Shuffleton’s Barbershop , one of the artist’s masterpieces, being sold to benefit the Berkshire Museum (below , estimate $20 /30 million). Painted in 1950 – at the height of Rockwell’s career and just one year prior to



Saying Grace, which holds the current auction record for the artist set at Sotheby’s in 2013 – the work is a visual testament to the full extent of Rockwell’s artistic abilities and incomparable imagination. Rockwell’s ambitious composition positions the viewer as the witness to the action taking place beyond the cracked plate -glass window of the storefront. His dramatic treatment of light – the golde n light that bathes the trio of musicians contrasts vividly with the shadows that blanket the rest of the closed- up shop – immediately captivates. 

Further engaging is the variety of naturalistic details Rockwell includes to emphasize the authenticity and immediacy of the scene. When considered together, however, these minute elements – a World War II remembrance poster; a December 1949 issue of Walt Disney Comics and Stories ; a fishing rod a nd creel; the scroll of a cello – adopt a much more potent meaning. 

At its core, Shuffleton’s Barbershop is the culmination of Rockwell’s investigation into the power of observation and the process of making art. Thus as he presents a subtle and unexpected marriage of high and popular culture, Rockwell asserts the idea that art can be found in the most unexpected of places or inde ed, that an illustrator can be a true artist.



Also selling to benefit from the Berkshire Museum is Blacksmith’s Boy – Heel and Toe (Shaftsbury Blacksmith Shop) by Norman Rockwell ( above , estimate $7/10 million). Monumental in size – measuring 70 1/4 inches across – the painting was commissioned for a story that appeared in a 1940 edition of The Saturday Evening Post about a horseshoe-forging contest, which included the following lines: “I’ll never forget that last hour. And never, I imagine, will any of those who watched. Both men were lost to everything now but the swing from the forge to the anvil, the heels to be turned and the toes to be welded.” The excitement of the narrative, articulated from the point of view of the local blacksmith’s son, is brilliantly portrayed by the two men who captivate the growing crowd with this demonstration of their strength and skill . Working from a series of photographs, which he exactingly orchestrated down to the last detail, Rockwell depicts a total of 23 figures in the composition , including a self - portrait and two different representation s of one of his favorite models, Harvey McKee, the undersheriff of the town of Arlington, Vermont.

Sotheby’s sale of American Art features 7 works by this beloved American artist  with estimates starting at $80,000

Half the artworks consigned by the Berkshire Museum in a Nov. 13 Sotheby's sale have been withdrawn, reports Berkshire Eagle. Seven works remain in the sale, including two Norman Rockwell paintings that the artist's family has filed a lawsuit to oppose the museum's deaccessioning of the works.

Removed from the Nov. 13 auction: Albert Bierstadt, "Giant Redwood Trees of California"; Ralph Albert Blakelock, "Rocky Mountains"; Frederick Edwin Church, "Valley of Santa Isabel, New Granada"; George Inness, "Mountain Landscape — The Painter at Work"; Thomas Moran, "The Last Arrow"; Charles Wilson Peale, "Portrait of General David Forman"; and Rembrandt Peale, "George Washington."

Berkshire Museum, in Pittsfield, Mass., announced in July that it would sell 40 artworks from its collections to generate about $50 million, to help fund a New Vision plan to refocus the museum on science and history. Sales at Sotheby's are set to start in November and extend to March 2018. The artworks removed from the Nov. 13 sale could appear at a later date.


MODERN MASTERS: MILTON AVERY & GEORGIA O’KEEFFE



This season’s offerings of American modernism are led by Milton Avery’s Sunset Sea. Executed in 1960, and having been owned by only one private collector , Sunset Sea embodies the innovative consideration of color for which the artist is acclaimed today (estimate $2/3 million). The seascape, inspired by the landscape of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Avery spent several summers, strikes a balance between pre-war realism and post-war abstraction; fields of shimmering , subtly modulated color stretch across the canvas, drawing comparisons with the works by renowned contemporary Color Field artists including Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb.

The November sale features two works by Georgia O’Keeffe, an icon of American modernism  Shell and Blue and White Abstraction evoke her lifelong fascination with the natural world. The first, painted in 1937, exemplifies the artist’s mastery of form and color (,estimate $700/1,000,000). Her keen understanding of tones of white and her thoughtful experimentation with orientation shine through in this stunning depiction of a subject that attracted her attention from a young age.

The second,Blue and White Abstraction, searches the expansive New Mexico sky and captures a bird in flight (estimate $500/700,000). O’Keeffe reduces the subject to its most essential lines and shapes, compelling the viewer to consider the abstract qualities inherently present in the natural world.

AN AMERICAN IN GIVERNY: FREDERICK CARL FRIESEKE




An American who lived in France for most of his career, Frederick Carl Frieseke’s work often featured his favorite model: his wife Sadie. In Gray Day on the River, painted by 1908, she and her companion float serenely on a boat, surrounded by the verdant landscape of Giverny (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). Exhibited across the United States, including Massachusetts, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, this striking example of American Impressionism will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being completed by the artist’s grandson, Nicholas Kilmer.

EXPLORING THE WEST WITH ALBERT BIERSTADT

Albert Bierstadt’s Indians Crossing the Columbia River brings the American West of the 19 th century to life this November (estimate $1.5/2. 5 million). Belonging to a distinguished American collection for over 40 years since its acquisition in the 1970s, the work offers a romanticized vision of the Oregon landscape ; Mount Hood, the imposing peak in the background, majestically rises above the radiant Columbia River where a group of Indians row across the water towards shore. Embodying tranquility and serenity, the sublime landscape attests to the national desire for renewal and peace following the Civil War.

 

Executed circa1879, the double -sided drawing 

 

 

 

 

 

Rest and Two Men Scythingepitomizes Winslow Homer’s quiet depictions of rural life, demonstrating the personal connection he felt with the pastoral countryside and its inhabitants (estimate $150/250,000). The two renderings explore  the beauty of the American landscape and the inno cence of youth—themes that appear frequently in Homer’s work. In the post -Civil War period, the scyther became an especially poignant motif that sought to evoke hope for rebirth and a desire to return to the country’s agrarian roots.

EGON SCHIELE Leopold Museum collection

November 1, 2017, 12:50 pm

≫ Next: Robert Frank at the Albertina

≪ Previous: Sotheby’s American Art on 13 November 2017 Updated

$

0

0

Comprising more than 40 paintings and over 180 works on paper, the Leopold Museum houses the largest and most eminent collection of works by the Expressionist Egon Schiele (Tulln 1890-1918 Vienna). The collection was compiled by the ophthalmologist Prof. Dr. Rudolf Leopold (1925-2010) over several decades.

THE REDISCOVERY OF SCHIELE BY RUDOLF LEOPOLD

When Schiele died in 1918 aged only 28 from the Spanish Flu, he was regarded by many as the most important Austrian artist of his time. During the decades following his untimely death, however, he was increasingly forgotten and was posthumously labeled a “degenerate artist” by the National Socialists. In the early 1950s, the young medical and art history student Rudolf Leopold saw the works of Egon Schiele for the first time. He recognized that in their quality, expressiveness and technical mastery Schiele’s works were comparable to those of the Old Masters.

EGON SCHIELE. THE LEOPOLD COLLECTION

Over the years, the collection grew to be the most eminent compilation of Schiele’s works in the world, comprising 41 paintings and 188 works on paper. While Rudolf Leopold was particularly enthusiastic about the artist’s early Expressionist phase, which today is undisputedly considered to be Schiele’s most important artistic period, the collection includes paintings and drawings from all periods of the artist’s oeuvre. 

Paintings including 

“Seated Male Nude” (a selfportrait, also known as Yellow Nude) of 1910, 

 

“The Hermits” of 1912 (probably depicting Egon Schiele with Gustav Klimt), 



the 1912 “Selfportrait with Physalis” 



and its counterpart “Portrait of Wally Neuzil” 



as well as “Cardinal and Nun” (Caress), also of 1912, 

are among the artist’s most widely known works. 

Along with his selfportraits, portraits and allegories, his cityscapes, especially those depicting Krumau, constitute another emphasis in Schiele’s oeuvre. 

The Leopold Collection features extraordinary landscapes, including 



“Houses by the Sea” 



and the 1915 views of Krumau “Crescent of Houses” 



and “House Wall on the River”. 

A hundred years after their creation, these paintings have lost none of their fascination and topicality. 



The 1915 canvas “Levitation” (The Blind II), created during World War I, is not only one of the artist’s most expressive paintings but also the largest extant work by Schiele.

Egon Schiele, Liegende Frau, 1917 © Leopold Museum, Wien, Inv. 626

Egon Schiele, Two Squatting Women, 1918 (unfinished) © Leopold Museum, Vienna

 

Robert Frank at the Albertina

November 2, 2017, 11:39 am

≫ Next: Rembrandt: Lightening the Darkness

≪ Previous: EGON SCHIELE Leopold Museum collection

$

0

0

Albertina 

25 October 2017 – 21 January  2018

Robert Frank, one of the most influential photographers  of the 20th century’s postwar years, revolutionized classic reportage and street photography. Over a period spanning six decades,  this Swiss - American artist created photographs, experimental montages, books, and films. 

The Albertina is showing selected works and series that trace Robert Frank’s development: from his early photojournalistic images created on trips through Europe to the pioneering work group  The Americans and on to his later, more introspective projects, over 100 works will serve to illuminate central aspects of his oeuvre, which has never before seen  presentation in Austria. Dynamism and Contrasts Born in Zurich in 1924 to a German - Jewish family, Robert Frank was granted Swiss citizenship only just before the end of the Second World War. He began his training as a photographer in 1941and received thorough schooling in the profession’s tools and techniques. 

The motifs of his initial documentary pictures, which were devoted to national identity as symbolized by parades and flags, proved to be ones that he would return to later in his career. Upon his emigration from Switzerland to the USA in 1947, the artist established an expressive pictorial language that broke with that era’s photographic conventions, which were defined in terms  of refined composition and perfect tonal values. At the suggestion of Alexey Brodovitch, art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Frank began using a 35 mm Leica that enabled him to adopt an  intuitive and spontaneous way of working. The result was a new pictorial language  char acterized by strong contrasts, dynamism, and blurry images. 

He went on to produce work groups such as  People You Don’t See (1951), in which he devoted himself to the everyday lives  of six individuals from his Manhattan apartment complex. A reportage on London (1951 – 1953)  characterizes this metropolis by way of the contrast between wealthy bankers and people  from the lower classes, and Great Britain was also the setting of his series on the hard daily  life of Welsh miner Ben James (1953). 

By way of contrast, Frank’s photographs from Paris  (1949 – 1952) feature a more lyrical tone. Thanks to his intuitive approach to photography, Frank’s works lend expression to a decidedly subjective gaze featuring a personal take on what he experienced and saw. 

The Americans 

Robert Frank’s artist book  The Americans , comprised of photos shot between 1955 and 1957,  made photographic history: captured on a series of road trips through the United States, these images expose the postwar “American way of life” in grim black and white, revealing a  reality of pervasive racism, violence, and consumerism. Due to these photos’ failure to uphold America’s self - image at the time, he at first only managed to have this book published in  Europe. Frank’s coming of age as an artist went hand - in - hand with that of jazz, beat literature, and the improvisatory style of abstract expressionism — and his own expressivity is of a raw, improvised, and spontaneous character. Jack Kerouac extolls Frank’s gaze in the foreword to the book’s US edition with the following words: “The humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and American-ness of these pictures!” 

It was these qualities that underpinned Robert Frank’s success in creating one of the most influential photographic works of the postwar period, one that effected a sustained renewal of street photography. Announced by Frank as the “visual study of a civilization,”  The Americans contained motifs that, in the midst of the  Cold War, had not yet been deemed worthy of depiction. He was interested in everyday  phenomena of leisure and pop culture, but also documented isolation, the plights of  minorities, and racism: 

 

Robert Frank

Trolley – New Orleans, 1956

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Eigentum der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern

the photograph Trolley, New Orleans was taken just a few weeks before the African - American activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama to a white passenger. It was among 27,000 negatives from 767 rolls of film that Frank chose his best pictures. The  contact sheets and working prints from this project make clear how systematically he  proceeded in creating his images, and they also allow one to reconstruct the processes by which he shot and selected them. Around half of his eighty final works can be seen in the  present exhibition. 

Touching Montages 

With his 1958 photo series  From the Bus, which contains photos of passers - by casually taken  from a moving bus, Frank set off in a new, more experimental direction. And eventually, in no small part due to his dissatisfaction with the limited possibilities of individual pictures, he  abandoned photography and turned to film. There, Frank  often used his own photographs in  order to examine his memories and past, producing several autobiographical filmic essays. Upon his return to photography at the beginning of the 1970s, the form and content of his  works changed yet again: autobiographical  themes such as the tragic loss of his children are  visualized via multi - image montages and sequences that frequently also contain texts. In  these, Frank succeeded in poetically amalgamating different media and their influences upon  one another. 

The Austrian Film Museum will be presenting a comprehensive retrospective of Robert  Frank’s filmic oeuvre in cooperation with the Albertina from 10 to 27 November. 

Wall Texts 

Robert Frank 

Robert Frank (b. November 9, 1924, Zurich, Switzerland) ranks among the most influential  photographers of the postwar years. The photographs, artist books, and films he created over  a period of six decades were conceived in reference to one another. This exhibition presents an overview of the artist’s most important phases as a photographer,  which in addition to photojournalistic works and reportages also comprise conceptual series  and experimental photomontages. The focus is on the period between the1940s and the 1980s, during which time Frank revolutionized conventional reportage and street photography. 

After a profound training as a photographer, the artist emigrated from  Switzerland to the United States in 1947 There he established an expressive pictorial language  that broke away from conventional photography, which defined its elf by elaborate  compositions and perfect tonal values. In what was an intuitive photographic practice, he  lent expression to a decidedly subjective vision emphasizing his personal experiences of what  he had seen. Frank’s pioneering group of works entitled The Americans,  published as an artist  book in 1958/59, marks a climax of this development. 

Shortly afterwards Frank abandoned  photography in favor of film and only came to revisit the photographic medium from 1972 on. In Frank’s films and books, his photo graphs have undergone recontextualization. In their  combination of photography, text, and graphic design, his photo books exhibit progressive  pictorial solutions placed on an equal footing with his photographic prints. In his films, Frank  frequently used h is own photographs to explore his memories and past. Juxtapositions of the  various media reveal their mutual interdependence.  If not indicated otherwise, all photographs are gelatin silver prints.  

Contact Prints from Switzerland 

Starting in 1941, Robert Frank learned the technique of photography in the studios of several  Swiss photographers. Under the influence of Michael Wolgensinger, a commercial and  reportage photographer, he made his first documentary studies on Switzerland. F rank  photographed then - popular themes, such as landscapes, sporting events, festivities taking  place on national holidays, and the local population in traditional costumes. These pictures  are to be seen in the context of the country’s so - called “spiritual  national defense,” an ideology that had been promoted by the Swiss government since the mid - 1930s and was meant to strengthen patriotism and the people’s opposition against National Socialism  through a revival of national values. Pictures of parades and fl ags addressing issues of  national identity and such stylistic devices as a low camera angle already anticipated later  works.  Coming from a Jewish family, Frank only became a naturalized Swiss citizen a few days before  the end of the war (his father, who  was from Germany, was stateless due to the “Reich  Citizenship Law” of 1935). Both his family’s experience and fears related to the threatening  closeness of Nazi Germany and Switzerland’s intellectual and cultural narrow - mindedness  led to his emigration to  the United States in 1947.  

Black White and Things 

After moving to New York, Robert Frank worked as an assistant photographer to Alexey  Brodovitch, the art director of  Harper’s Bazaar,  for several months. Upon the latter’s  recommendation, Frank began  using a 35mm - Leica, which facilitated an intuitive and spontaneous approach to photography. This resulted in a new pictorial language marked by stark contrasts, dynamism, and blurry images. In New York and during his travels through Europe, Frank shot pictures intended for publication in magazines. Influenced by the works of Henri Cartier - Bresson and André  Kertész, he took lyrical photographs of flowers, park chairs, and pedestrians in Paris between 1949 and 1952. Whereas having still captured the French metropolis in the form of individual  impressions, Frank conceived comprehensive narratives when in England. In London he focused on wealthy bankers (1951 – 53) staged in nuanced grays and elegant compositions.



By contrast, at around the same time he also produced a series of pictures showing the Welsh pitman Ben James (1953). Contrary to the ambition of conventional reportage photography to deliver special moments and social messages, his photographs, thanks to their  expressivity, convey the immediate experienc e of the miner’s harsh working life.  Due to the formal radicalness of his pictures, most magazines refused to publish them. Frank selected some of them for his artist book Black White and Things which was designed by the Swiss commercial artist Werner Zryd. The linear and narrative structure of photo books  common at the time was neglected in favor of associatively composed chapters and  subjective sequences of images. 

People You Don’t See 

Robert Frank conceived the series  People You Don’t See in 1951 for a competition organized  by Life magazine. In these pictures, Frank described the daily routine of six individuals living  and working in his Manhattan neighborhood. He modeled the pictures on popular photo - essays telling thematically clear - cut stories, wit h an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.  That the photographs were complemented by explanatory captions was untypical of Frank.  Due to its narrative layout,  People You Don’t See is one of Frank’s classic series. However,  what is unusual in the context of picture reportage is how he concentrated on the realities of  everyday life, which can also be encountered in other works by Frank.  

The Guggenheim - Trips 

Disappointed that magazines had declined his reportages, Robert Frank applied for two  Guggenheim scholarships upon the recommendation of the photographer Walker Evans.  They allowed him to undertake three extensive journeys across the United States from which  his hitherto most ambitious and radical project emerged. Announced by Frank as a “visual  study of civilization,” it exposed characteristic aspects of US society during the Cold War in  terms of patriotism, racism, religion, politics, consumerism, and leisure culture. If the artist  had explored social patterns with a subjective gaze in earlier works, he now sharpened his approach: he took to spontaneously photographing ordinary motifs of high symbolic content,  frequently without looking through the viewfinder of his 35 - mm camera , and reversed their  meaning through his grim imagery. 

Such patriotic motifs as flags are described as trivial;  politicians are characterized as egomaniacal and narcissistic; the inhabitants appear lonely and isolated. Frank’s style developed in line with  contemporary US - American art. Similarly, intuition and  improvisation were central devices in Beat literature and Abstract Expressionism. Moreover,  in the 1930s and 1940s the photographers of the Federal Security Administration (FSA) had  already captured ma rginal groups of society in momentary pictures to formulate a visual  critique of American society.  

Les Américains/The Americans 

In 1958, Robert Frank released eighty - three photographs from his Guggenheim trips as a book  that first appeared with the French publisher Robert Delpire. In allusion to Henri Cartier - Bresson’s publication  Les Européens, Delpire chose the title  Les Américains. The following  year the English edition  The Americans was published by Grove Press. Both titles are  considered incunabula of the artistic photo book genre.  Robert Frank defined the format and layout, with a single photograph appearing on every  right - hand page. He divided the book into four parts, each of which addressed themes of his personal view of America. As had already been the case with his book  Black White and Things,  the layout broke with the conventional, narrative form of a book, as the artist grouped the  pictures according to thematic, formal, conceptual, and language - based criteria. In the  French version, the photos were combined with texts criticizing America by such authors as William Faulkner, Simone de Beauvoir, and Walt Whitman against Frank’s will, which placed the pictures in a socio - documentary context. The American edition, on the other hand, was  solely accompanied by an introductory text by Beat poet Jack Kerouac.  Upon its appearance, The Americans met with fervent criticism. Frank’s perspective of the  United States as a Swiss and thus as an outsider conflicted with the country’s self - portrayal  and self - perception. In contemporary reviews, the photographs were described as  documents of maliciousness and hopelessness, and Frank was identified as a morose man  hating America. At the same time, the publication was greatly praised amongst professional  circles and has received wide and lasting response since the 1960s.  

Contact Sheets and Work Prints 

The  harvest of Robert Frank’s photographic travels through the United States took up 767 rolls of film. Relying on contact sheets, the artist examined the 27,000 negatives these  rolls contained and picked one thousand pictures, which he developed as small - form at work  prints. These were narrowed down further to a selection of just under one hundred final prints. The contact sheets and work prints allow us to reconstruct the genesis of The Americans and shed light on Frank’s working method. While the photographer sometimes achieved a satisfactory result with the first push on the camera button, he occasionally captured the same motif a number of times before he chose one of the pictures. The lack of definition and faulty exposure of many negatives leave no doubt  bout Frank’s intuitive approach. The unceasing repetition of individual motifs evidences how methodically the artist  proceeded in some cases. Before setting out, Frank had already defined such highly symbolic motifs as flags, cowboys, motorbikes, parades,  and politicians, which he continued to  photograph after the end of his travels to complete their range. 

 

On Independence Day, the  Fourth of July, he returned to Jay in the north of the state of New York, for example, to  photograph a transparent flag. 

Coney Island and  From the Bus 


Afraid of repeating himself and dissatisfied with the limited possibilities of the single image,  Frank abandoned photography and turned his attention to film after the publication of The Americans. 

Coney Island and  From the Bus are two of his last groups of works before he  began to pursue a career as a filmmaker.  Coney Island captures the leisure and entertainment  neighborhood in the eponymous borough of Brooklyn in New York City on Independence Day, the Fourth of July. Frank’s gloomy photographs emphasize the bleakness of the place and aspects of human solitude instead of rendering the joyful festivities and the patriotic attitude traditionally displayed on the national holiday. His focus on the predominantly Afro - American population reflects the artist’s disillusionment with racism, which he had been  confronted with repeatedly when travelling the United States. Whereas Coney Island seamlessly follows in the vein of the pictorial language that characterizes  The Americans,  the serial conception of From the Bus clearlyanticipates Frank’s  turn toward film. The series pictures passing people casually shot from a New York City bus.  The representation of unspectacular moments, “unartistic” compositions, and photographing  along a prede fined route already prefigure the conceptual photography of the 1960s. 

Conversations in Vermont  

After feature films like the beatnik piece  Pull My Daisy (1959), Robert Frank shot a series of autobiographical essay films. In these films he often used his own photos to deal with his  personal memories, family history, or attitude toward his work as an artist. In  Conversations  in Vermont (1969), we find Frank filming pictures from his cycles  London, Paris,  and  The  Americans  as he seeks to fathom his role as a father and artist. Visiting his children, Andrea  and Pablo, in the state of Vermont, he confronted them with his iconic photographs. Andrea and Pablo reacted evasively and were hardly interested in the pictures and their father’s past. This meeting led Frank to admit that he had pursued his career as an artist without showing  consideration for his family. 

Home Improvements   

The video  Home Improvements ( 1985) is one of Robert Frank’s autobiographical works in  which he deals with his life in a diary - like manner. The melancholy piece revolves around  Frank’s worries over his wife June Leaf and his son Pablo, who were in the hospital at the time.  At some point, the film refers to photographs showing mainly Pablo and pictures from the  series  The Americans.  He used these photographs to inquire into his past and the public  perception of his work as an artist. For example, we see Frank filming a friend brutally drilling several holes through a batch of older prints. This act is to be read as a comment on a fierce  litigation he conducted against a group of gallery owners in the early 1980s. He had sold the  rights to his photographs to them in 1977 in order to fund h is films. When the gallery owners started turning the pictures to account against Frank’s intentions, he put up a struggle  against the loss of control over his oeuvre and its commercialization going hand in hand with  it. Though he finally succeeded, he found himself unable to trust in the art market from that  time on. 

The Return to Photography: Experimental Photo Montages/The Late Work 

In the early 1970s, Robert Frank began to take photographs again. Single pictures gave way  to experimental montages in which he combined pictures with words and sentence  fragments. Now using a Polaroid instant camera, Frank exposed several negatives on the same paper or mounted photos next to one another. He also inscribed and scratched the negatives and prints. Both the photographer’s subjective comments and the montage technique were owed to the influence of his filmmaking. Pictures of his immediate  surroundings lend expression to the artist’s world of inner emotions. 

Through landscape impressions of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, where Frank has lived since the 1970s,   

 

Pour la Fille 



and  For Andrea1954 – 1974 visualize the artist’s emotions about the early death  of his daughter, who died in a plane crash in 1974. His work also reflects the great strain under which the artist suffered due to his son Pablo’s progressing physical and mental illness and  his death in 1994. 

As he had done in his films, Frank, intent on venting his critical attitude toward his artistic  past, incorporated pictures he had taken for The Americans in his new works. One example is the photograph of a priest on the banks of the Mississippi River, which had been published in  The Americans.  Collaborating with the Rolling Stones in the early 1970s, he used it for 

 

the montage on the back cover for the group’s album Exile on Main Street.  In the case of the photo work of the same name, for which Frank again fell back on the picture of the priest, he duplicated the photograph and combined it with a line from the song “Sweet Virginia,” to be found on the Rolling Stones’ album. 

The work testifies to the use of older motifs in different  contexts so typical of the artist’s late work. 

The  Lines of My Hand 



Robert Frank’s book  The Lines of My Hand came out in 1972. Originally published by Yugensha in Japan, its American edition was put out by Lustrum Press. The volume assembles pictures from all periods of the photographer’s production under subjective aspects. Like the photographs and films of that time, the personal arrangement of the pictures and their  combination with diary - like texts serve as vehicles for the artist’s introspective self - reflection. The confrontation with his old pictures during his work on the book triggered a  new return to photography.  

 

Robert Frank

Rodeo – New York City, 1955

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, Bundesamt für Kultur (BAK), Bern

Robert Frank

Drugstore – Detroit, 1955

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft


 

Robert Frank

San Francisco, 1956

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft

Preview

Click to Download

Robert Frank

Los Angeles, 1955/56

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft

Preview

Click to Download

Robert Frank

14th Street White Tower – New York City, 1948

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Schenkung des Künstlers

Robert Frank

Car Accident – U.S. 66 between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, 1956

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft

Preview

Click to Download

 

Robert Frank

Rodeo – Detroit, 1955

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft

 

Robert Frank

Funeral – St. Helena, South Carolina, 1955

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft

Robert Frank

Cafeteria – San Francisco, 1956

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft

Robert Frank

Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1962

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Schenkung des Künstlers

Robert Frank

Paris, 1949

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, The Albertina Museum, Vienna – Dauerleihgabe der Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft


Robert Frank

London, 1951

Gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Nachlass Arnold Kübler

Rembrandt: Lightening the Darkness

November 3, 2017, 9:01 am

≫ Next: Masters of Venice: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo from the Anthony J. Moravec Collection

≪ Previous: Robert Frank at the Albertina

$

0

0

Norwich Castle

21 October 2017 – 7 January 2018

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) is one of the most revered artists of the European tradition. Rembrandt: Lightening the Darkness focuses specifically on one of the less well-known aspects of Rembrandt’s output, namely his fascination with print-making.

During his lifetime, Rembrandt was as famed for his etchings as for his paintings. In Britain, for example, he was far better known as a printmaker producing evocative Dutch landscapes, biblical scenes and sensitive portraits, including many introspective self-portraits.

Rembrandt produced 290 etchings during his life and in his hand the etching became a true works of art in its own right. To this day he is widely considered to be the most accomplished etcher of all time.

Rembrandt: Lightening the Darkness showcases Norwich Castle’s extraordinary collection of 93 prints and 1 drawing by Rembrandt alongside select loans from the British Museum, National Galleries of Scotland, National Gallery, and Royal Collection.

Rembrandt’s preoccupation with light and shade can be seen throughout his work. In his monochrome prints he achieved results which were as expressive and varied as in his oil paintings.
This exhibition reveals how Rembrandt achieved unsurpassed effects of light and darkness purely through the combination of black lines and the white space around them.

Self Portrait 1634
Rembrandt
Etching
© Norfolk Museums Service

"This is the first time Norwich Castle’s extraordinary collection of etchings by Rembrandt has been exhibited as a group for more than thirty years. The exhibition demonstrates how Rembrandt’s handling of light and darkness, expressed purely through the medium of black lines and the white space around them, was unsurpassed."

Male Figure 1646
Rembrandt
Etching

Reclining Nude 1658
Rembrandt
Etching
© Norfolk Museums Service

The Three Trees 1643
Rembrandt
Etching

 

Virgin And Child 1654
Rembrandt
Etching

Masters of Venice: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo from the Anthony J. Moravec Collection

November 3, 2017, 9:28 am

≫ Next: Eye on Nature: Andrew Wyeth and John Ruskin

≪ Previous: Rembrandt: Lightening the Darkness

$

0

0

Crocker Art Museum 
October 29, 2017 – February 4, 2018

This fall, the Crocker Art Museum brings to Sacramento an exhibition of master drawings by two of 18^th-century Italy’s most famous draftsmen, the father and son Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo. Masters of Venice: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo from the Anthony J. Moravec Collectionoffers an engaging experience of luminous compositions, as the Tiepolos’ splendid drawings — and the works of other Venetian artists — provide a unique view into the distinctive art of Italy’s lagoon city.

On view from October 29, 2017 – February 4, 2018, Masters of Venice provides new insight into two of the city's most important artists. Eighteenth-century Venice was not only home to a lively community of artists and the finest publishing and printmaking industry in Europe, but its unique architecture and traditions also made it a cultural destination for artists, aristocrats, and royalty. Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770) and his son Domenico (1727–1804) were the most renowned Venetian artists during this period, with patrons across Italy and Europe.

In 2010, Indiana businessman and philanthropist Anthony J. Moravec donated a collection of drawings by the Tiepolos to Indiana University’s Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art in Bloomington, expanding its Tiepolo holding to make it the third largest in the nation.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a group of 12 drawings from Domenico Tiepolo’s New Testament cycle, from what is believed to be the largest such cycle produced by a single artist. These large, ink and wash drawings are not studies for other works, but rather unique designs that showcased the artist’s deep understanding of the religious subject matter and his careful observation of the world around him. While most of the events from the New Testament are familiar, others are more rarely depicted, yet even in the most iconic scenes, Domenico brings out the humanity of the story.
“Domenico Tiepolo was an extraordinary storyteller,” says Crocker Art Museum Curator William Breazeale. “His talent for bringing together faith and inventive composition is apparent throughout his religious drawings.”

While Domenico’s New Testament series shows scenes of devout prayer, swooping angels, the penitent faithful, and a menacing Satan, the artist also ventures into lively mythological drawings of centaurs, and his most famous series, scenes of Punchinello. Drawn from the characters in the popular theater, the commedia dell’arte, the series shows Punchinello as an everyman, dancing and stumbling through life’s celebrations and tragedies.

Although the collector of these works focused largely on Domenico’s work, it is not surprising that he also acquired excellent examples by the artist’s father, Giambattista Tiepolo. One of the most productive 18th-century artists, Giambattista — assisted by Domenico — frescoed enormous palaces, in addition to producing narrative paintings, etchings, and a large number of drawings. Giambattista Tiepolo was particularly talented at capturing gleaming contrasts of light in all his works, using washes to define textures in his scenes as well as his famous caricatures.

“Perhaps because of the unusual light in the lagoon city — with its bright reflections and deep shadows — he created shimmering, glowing drawings with abundant warm brown washes,” says Breazeale. “In the Flight into Egypt, for example, he depicts the Holy Family leading a braying donkey past a grove of barren trees, and creates a remarkable experience of light and shade as he defines the landscape and figures with varying patches of wash.”

Along with the drawings by the Tiepolos, Masters of Venice includes drawings by their predecessors and contemporaries, including Ubaldo Gandolfi and Giuseppe Bernardino Bison. A selection of 12 Venetian drawings from the Crocker's permanent collection accompanies the exhibition, expanding our view of the city's rich artistic tradition.

This exhibition is organized by The Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University.

 

It is accompanied by a full-color catalogue by Adelheid Gealt, director and curator of Western art emerita at the Eskenazi Museum of Art, with contributions by the late George Knox, an authority on Venetian art. The catalogue includes works by the Tiepolos that are published for the first time.



Giambattista Tiepolo,  The Flight into Egypt , 1735-40. Pen and brown ink,  brush and brown wash over traces of black chalk on cream laid paper, 41 .1  x 29.8 cm (16 3/16 x 11 11/16 inches). Eskenazi Museum o f Art, The  Anthony Moravec Collection of Old Master Drawings 2010.134  

 

Domenico Tiepolo,  Jesus in the Garden of Gesthemane: The Second Prayer ,  n.d. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown washes on cream laid p aper, 48.2 x  38.0 cm (19 x 15 inches). Eskenazi Museum of Art, The Ant hony Moravec  Collection of Old Master Drawings 2010.118   

 

Domenico Tiepolo,  A Centaur Playing with Punchinellos , n.d. Pen and brown  ink, brush and brown washes over traces of black chalk on cream laid  paper,  35.9 x 47.5 cm (14 1/8 x 18 11/16 inches). Eskenazi Museum of Art, The  Anthony Moravec Collection of Old Master Drawings 2010.129   



Jacopo Palma il Giovane,  Study for Saint John the Baptist Preaching , circa 1620. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown washes on cream laid pap er, 29.5  x 25.7 cm (14 15/16 x 13 1/2 inches. Eskenazi Museum of  Art, The Anthony Moravec Collection of Old Master Drawings 2010.128  



Domenico Tiepolo, Anna meets Joachim at the Golden Gate , n.d. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown washes over black chalk, 19 1/15 x  14 7/8 in., Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, The Anthony Moravec Collection  of Old Master Drawings, 2010.111    

Press images/captions list: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gmo0ebu3au96rj1/AABBNYX...