Dallas Museum of Art September 9, 2018, through January 6, 2019
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) is set to premiere Cult of the Machine: Precisionism and American Art, the first large-scale exhibition in over 20 years to survey this characteristically American style of early twentieth-century Modernism. Organized by FAMSF and on view at the de Young, the exhibition addresses the aesthetic and intellectual concerns that fueled the development of this artistic style during the 1920s and 1930s.
More than 100 Precisionist masterworks by seminal artists such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth are displayed alongside prints by photographers such as Imogen Cunningham and Paul Strand; clips from films such as Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times; and extraordinary decorative arts and industrial objects from the period—including a vintage Cord Phaeton automobile—to reflect the widespread embrace of a machine-age aesthetic by artists, designers, and the public alike.
Cult of the Machineconsiders how the style reflects the economic and social changes wrought by industrialization and technological progress during the Machine Age in America. Visitors are encouraged to draw connections to our own technological moment, one in which optimism and dreams about what technological progress can achieve are tempered with anxiety or suspicion about its potential dangers and misuses.
Charles Sheeler, "Rolling Power," 1939. Oil on canvas, 15 x 30 in. The Smith College Museum of Art, SC 1940:18
“This project will resonate here in the heart of the Bay Area, at the epicenter of the emerging tech industries of Silicon Valley,” says Max Hollein, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums. “We, like our visitors, often reflect on how our daily lives are impacted by new technologies—much as the Precisionists did almost a century ago. Aesthetically, these works are masterpieces, but perhaps they represent something more. Like all great works of art, they transcend their historical moment and give us insights about both our present and our future.”
The majority of Precisionist works were created during the tumultuous period between the World Wars, decades when the country’s new technologies and industries were met with multiple and contradictory responses in the arts, literature, and popular culture. As today, there was a general excitement in the United States about technology’s capacity to engender opportunity and improve the conditions of daily life, yet these attitudes coexisted with fears that it would supplant human labor and deaden the natural rhythms of life. Precisionist artists reflected such contradictions and complexities in their work, capturing a sense of the beauty and the coldness, the sublimity and the strangeness of the mechanistic societies in which they lived.
“The responses to industrialization in these works are particularly fascinating and relevant to contemporary audiences who find themselves in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution,” says Emma Acker, associate curator of American art for the Fine Arts Museums. “They hold up a mirror to our own complicated responses to the legacies of industrialization and technological progress as we continue to navigate our relationships with the ever-multiplying devices that surround us and shape our daily existence.”
Precisionism emerged in America in the teens and flourished during the 1920s and 1930s. The style combined realist imagery with abstracted forms and married the influence of avant-garde European art styles such as Purism, Cubism, and Futurism with American subject matter. Artists associated with the style typically produced highly structured, geometric compositions with smooth surfaces and lucid forms to create a streamlined, “machined” aesthetic, with themes ranging from the urban and industrial to the pastoral.
Masterpieces of machine age Modernism are on loan from more than 50 institutions from across the United States, including the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museums, National Gallery of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Walker Art Center and many others.
Cult of the Machine is curated by Emma Acker, associate curator of American Art for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Catalogue
Characterized by highly structured, geometric compositions with smooth surfaces, linear qualities, and lucid forms, Precisionism fully emerged after World War I and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. This insightful publication, featuring more than 100 masterworks by artists such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth, sheds new light on the Precisionist aesthetic and the intellectual concerns, excitement, tensions, and ambivalences about industrialization that helped develop this important strand of early American modernism.
Essays explore the origins of the style—which reconciled realism with abstraction and adapted European art movements like Purism, Cubism, and Futurism to American subject matter—as well as its relationship to photography, and the ways in which it reflected the economic and social changes brought about by industrialization and technology in the post–World War I world. In addition to making a meaningful contribution to the resurging interest in Modernism and its revisionist narratives, this book offers copious connections between the past and our present day, poised on the verge of a fourth industrial revolution.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art April 24–July 22, 2018
The vitality and inventiveness of artists in 18th-century New Spain (Mexico) is the focus of the exhibition Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici, opening April 24 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through some 112 works of art (primarily paintings), many of which are unpublished and newly restored, the exhibition will survey the most important artists and stylistic developments of the period and highlight the emergence of new pictorial genres and subjects. Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790 is the first major exhibition devoted to this neglected topic.
During the first century after the conquest of Mexico, artists from Europe—mainly immigrants from Spain—met the growing demand for images of all types, both religious and secular. Some of these artists established family workshops in Mexico that endured for generations. By the middle of the 17th century, artists born and trained in Mexico, responding to the mounting needs of both individual and institutional patrons, had risen to prominence and developed pictorial styles that reflected the changing cultural climate. The 18th century ushered in a period of artistic splendor, as local schools of painting were consolidated, new iconographies were invented, and artists began to organize themselves into academies. Attesting to the artists' extraordinary versatility, painters whose monumental works cover the walls of chapels, sacristies, choirs, and university halls were often the same ones who produced portraits, casta paintings (depictions of racially mixed families), folding screens, and intimate devotional images. The volume of work produced by the four generations of Mexican painters that spanned the 18th century is nearly unmatched elsewhere in the vast Hispanic world.
The growing professional self-awareness of artists during the period led many educated painters not only to sign their works to emphasize their authorship but also to make explicit reference to Mexico as their place of origin through the Latin phrase pinxit Mexici (painted in Mexico). This expression eloquently encapsulates the painters' pride in their own tradition and their connection to larger, transatlantic trends.
Exhibition Overview
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790 unfolds in seven major chronological and thematic sections:
Great Masters introduces the works of leading painters around whom others congregated, emphasizing intergenerational ties and the steady coalescence of a local tradition. It highlights the role of Juan Rodríguez Juárez in stimulating a stylistic change and spurring the establishment of an independent painting academy around 1722. Through an academic approach based on copying and drawing—aided by the arrival of prints and paintings from Europe—these artists and their contemporaries perfected their compositional skills, refined their depiction of space and architecture, and paid increasing attention to the anatomical correctness of figures.
Master Storytellers and the Art of Expression considers the resurgence of narrative painting in 18th-century Mexico in response to a growing demand for images that could convey complex sacred stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints. Often conceived as series, these works decorated the interiors of churches, convents, colleges, and other public spaces. An emphasis on domestic interiors and everyday details served to establish a connection with the viewer and humanize sacred content.
Noble Pursuits and the Academy explores the efforts of artists throughout the period to reform the practice of painting and challenge entrenched social and professional hierarchies. Asserting that painting was a noble rather than a mechanical art, painters wrote and referenced art treatises, equated their task with that of the supreme creator, and refashioned their own image through self-portraits and other works that showed their mastery of geometry, mathematics, and architecture.
Paintings of the Land assembles a compelling group of depictions of local peoples, traditions, and places. The expression "paintings of the land" (pinturas de la tierra) is used in contemporaneous writings to describe works unique to Mexico—either made there or representing local subjects. These include vedute (cityscapes or vistas), casta paintings that show racially mixed families, folding screens with fêtes galantes (amorous figures in rustic settings), and depictions of Indian weddings, all of which are punctuated with colorful local elements. These works brilliantly exemplify how Mexican paintings of this time fulfilled artistic, political, and documentary purposes simultaneously.
The Power of Portraiture associates the upsurge in portraiture with the economic growth of the viceroyalty, as members of different social groups—particularly within urban contexts—commissioned artists to paint their likenesses. In a hierarchical society such as New Spain, which placed a premium on nobility of birth, piety, wealth, titles, and merits, portraiture had the capacity to convey both individual and collective likenesses. Portraits enabled people to fashion and refashion their identities and project them onto society and to memorialize families and document institutions, both religious and secular.
The Allegorical World looks at a fascinating, highly inventive type of painting often commissioned by religious orders to convey abstract theological concepts or instruct in matters of faith. These images became particularly popular in part because allegory can express many things simultaneously. Allegorical paintings can be broadly divided into four categories: guides to inner spirituality, teaching or mnemonic aids, symbols that promoted local devotions, and commentaries that extolled (or criticized) figures of power. Some allegories were conceived as large-scale paintings for the adornment of architectural spaces, while many smaller ones were intended to awaken individual devotion in private oratories or monastic cells.
Imagining the Sacred features a selection of painted replicas of miracle-working cult images. These paintings, which represent dressed sculptures, belong to a long tradition in which many of the best artists of the day participated. Often depicted in the setting where they were venerated, the sacred images are seen on altars adorned with curtains, candles, vases, and flowers. Individual devotion was commonly aided by smaller images, often painted on copper with great skill and precision. The technical refinement and exquisite detail of such works stimulated both aesthetic and religious contemplation.
This final section of the exhibition will include seven paintings from The Met collection, all of them acquired since 2014.
Credits, Catalogue, and Programs
The exhibition is curated by Ilona Katzew (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), with guest co-curators Jaime Cuadriello (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City), Paula Mues Orts (Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía, Mexico City), and Luisa Elena Alcalá (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). At The Met, the exhibition is organized by Ronda Kasl, Curator, The American Wing.
This stunning volume represents the first serious effort to reposition the history of 18th-century Mexican painting, a highly vibrant period marked by major stylistic changes and the invention of new iconographies. Exquisitely illustrated with newly commissioned photography of never-before-published artworks, the book provides a broad view of the connections of Mexican painting with transatlantic artistic trends and emphasizes its own internal developments and remarkable pictorial output. During this time painters were increasingly asked to create mural-size paintings to cover the walls of sacristies, choirs, staircases, cloisters, and university halls among others. Significantly, the same artists also produced portraits, casta paintings (depictions of racial mixing), folding screens, and finely rendered devotional images, attesting to their extraordinary versatility. Authored by leading experts in the field, the book’s essays address the tradition and innovation of Mexican painting, the mobility of pictures within and outside the viceroyalty, the political role of images, and the emphasis on ornamentation. Rounding out this volume are over 130 catalogue entries that offer new and authoritative interpretations.
Edited by Dr. Katzew, with contributions by Dr. Alcalá, Dr. Cuadriello, Dr. Mues Orts, and Dr. Kasl.
This fascinating and authoritative look at how geometry changed the world of art forever. Geometry & Art follows the artists of the Renaissance, whose search for perspective and visual depth led them to the study of geometry. Influencing the work of artists such as Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesco, and Leonardo da Vinci, this incredible artistic breakthrough quickly spread to Germany, where a passion for polyhedral- based geometrical designs flourished as a district new art in the mid-16th century.
Masolino at the Brancacci Chapel, The Healing of Tabitha, 1420s
A period of enormous political and cultural change, the Renaissance empowered artists to draw upon a blossoming revival of classical art, philosophy, and culture. At the same time, a wealth of new ideas and concepts were flowing into Europe from the Islamic Middle East. And it was this flood of revolutionary new thought that would lead to the syntheses of mathematics, geometry, and art that characterizes the painting, sculpture, and visual language of the Renaissance.
DURER SELF-PORTRAIT1500
This compelling volume uses engaging text, compelling historical accounts, and 250 beautiful illustrations to immerse readers in the fundamental Renaissance forms which, although conceived over five hundred years ago, still have the capacity to awe and inspire us with their beauty.
The 19th-century painter Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is one of the most beloved figures in American art, perhaps most associated with the pastoral beauty of rural America and his dramatic Maine seascapes. The new exhibition Coming Away: Winslow Homer and England, opened March 1 and on view through May 20, 2018 at the Milwaukee Art Museum, explores how English artists and Homer’s nearly two-year stay in the seaside village of Cullercoats, England, impacted the style and subjects of the artist’s work for the rest of his career.
Winslow Homer, Prout's Neck, Surf on Rocks, 1895, transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite, Museum Purchase, 1911.20, Image courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum
Fifty works by Winslow Homer are featured in the exhibition, including a selection of some of his most famous early scenes of independent farmers and outdoorsmen, as well as women at leisure and mischievous country children at play. Displayed alongside the art that Homer developed while in Cullercoats and the dramatic seascapes that marked his career after he returned to the United States, the exhibition demonstrates the great shift in Homer’s painting that his time in England inspired.
THE COTTON PICKERS
Coming Away demonstrates how new influences impacted Homer’s artistic development during and after his stay in England, and how this time exacerbated the tensions he felt between the traditional nature of his subject matter and the modernity of his aesthetic vision. By the 1870s, Homer (1836-1910) had already established himself as a successful artist in the United States, receiving widespread acclaim for his paintings, watercolors, and prints. In March 1881, the artist travelled to England, most likely spurred by the growing interest in British art in the United States as well as the success of his work there (his 1876 painting The Cotton Pickers, - on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and on view in the exhibition – was a highlight of the 1878 summer exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts).
While in England, Homer engaged with the work of the country’s masters, including Joseph Mallord William Turner and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, as well as with paintings by regional artists from the coastal village of Cullercoats, where he established a studio. He also purchased two cameras at this time, suggesting his interest in contemporary forms of picture making. The exhibition brings together many of Homer’s most beloved and famous works, such as the
Musée d’Orsay’s Summer Night; as well as many of the artist’s late seascapes that so deeply influenced American modernists. Also included are paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, George Henry Boughton, Jules Adolphe Breton and Joseph Mallord William Turner—works that show the range of international influences that Homer embraced—alongside English photographs, which Homer consumed and became fascinated with during his stay abroad.
Winslow Homer, The Life Line, 1884, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The George W. Elkins Collection, 1924, John G. Johnson Collection, Cat. 1004, Philadelphia Museum of Art
“During his lifetime as now, critics celebrated Homer’s work for its honesty and truth to nature, what many believed were quintessentially American qualities, but this exhibition complicates our understanding of Homer as the archetypal American artist,” commented co-curator Brandon Ruud, the Abert Family Curator of American Art, Milwaukee Art Museum.
Core to the exhibition, co-organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Worcester Art Museum, are two pivotal paintings in Homer’s career:
Winslow Homer, Hark! The Lark, 1882, Oil on canvas, Layton Art Collection Inc., Gift of Frederick Layton, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, L99. Image courtesy of Milwaukee Art Museum/Photography by John R. Glemblin.
Hark! The Lark, which is part of the Layton Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum,
WINSLOW HOMERThe Gale, 1883-93 Oil on canvas Museum purchase 1916.48
and The Gale, in the permanent collection at the Worcester Art Museum.
Hark! was the major canvas to emerge from Homer’s stay in Cullercoats, a painting he chose to represent him at the Royal Academy before he left England, and one that later in life he described as “the most important picture I ever painted, and the very best one.”
Homer began his composition for The Gale while in Cullercoats and spent the next decade of his life perfecting the painting as he wrestled with his aesthetic vision and artistic legacy, a testament to his craftsmanship and England’s lasting influences.
As early as 1873, Homer began studying color theory and watercolor practice. Throughout the 1870s and especially during his stay in Cullercoats, Homer favored English paints and papers and often experimented with English techniques, such as blotting away color to reveal white paper underneath. Coming Away is a rare opportunity to see many of the artist’s watercolors from this period exhibited together, presenting the progression of his watercolor technique over time.
Notable watercolors in the exhibition include Forebodings (1880),
Winslow Homer, The Mussel Gatherers, 1881-81, transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite, Baltimore Museum of Art, Gift of Alvin and Fanny B. Thalheimer, 1956.226, Image courtesy of The Baltimore Museum of Art/Photography by Mitro Hood.
The Mussel Gatherers (1881-82),
Winslow Homer. English Coastal Scene, 1883. Watercolor and graphite on paper 37.9 x 54.6 cm (14 7/8 x 21 1/2 inches) Gift of Minnie E. Kelley in memory of Sydney Clarke 75.058
and English Coastal Scene (1883).
“These two important works that bookend Homer’s Cullercoats period provide the perfect opportunity to explore the artist anew and show just how pivotal England was to the artist’s development,” said Elizabeth Athens, co-curator from the Worcester Art Museum, presently at the National Gallery of Art. First shown to the public from November 11, 2017 to February 4, 2018 at the Worcester Art Museum, the exhibition was warmly received by East Coast audiences.
The accompanying hardcover catalogue Coming Away: Winslow Homer and England is co-published by Yale University Press, the Worcester Art Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum. This beautifully designed and produced publication explores Homer’s time in England and how it influenced his art, as he attempted to reconcile his affinity for traditional subject matter with his increasingly modern aesthetic vision. The eighteen months Homer spent in England in 1881 and 1882—studying the work of masters such as J. M. W. Turner and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and exploring the landscape of coastal villages—irrevocably shaped his creative identity. Coming Away complicates our understanding of his work and convincingly argues that it has more cosmopolitan underpinnings than previously thought.
Author: Elizabeth Athens & Brandon Ruud & Martha Tedeschi
The exhibition Coming Away: Winslow Homer and England is co-organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and Worcester Art Museum.
More Images:
Winslow Homer Rocky Coast (Maine Coast), c. 1882–1900 Oil on canvas; 14 x 27 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund. Endowed in memory of Leontine Terry Hatch by J.T.S. and D.C.S., 1945.1
Bowdoin College Museum of Art (245 Maine Street, Brunswick, Maine) through October 1
Spanning a century from the introduction of electric light to the dawn of the Space Age, this first major survey of American night scenes by artists such as Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, and Joseph Cornell proposes the central importance of nocturnal images in the development of modern art.
Retooling their palette and reconsidering their techniques, artists cherished the night as a time of heightened alertness and active imagination. Mysterious and provocative, the darkness was experienced as liberating, both on an aesthetic and personal level—allowing artists to become invisible, turn inward, and express personal truths in unique and poetic ways.
Night Vision expands the conversation on American art and the rise of modernism, as it demonstrates how the theme of the night inspired artists who sought to leave behind established styles and traditions to better reflect the broader societal and technological shifts as well as a new understanding of the value of art as personal expression.
This gorgeously illustrated book investigates how leading American artists of diverse aesthetic convictions responded in a range of media—including paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs—to the unique challenges of picturing the night.
Speed Art Museum Louisville, Kentucky February 17 – May 13, 2018
Clark Art Institute Williamstown, Massachusetts June 6–September 3, 2018 The groundbreaking exhibition Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism broadly surveys a key chapter in art history in which an international group of female artists overcame gender-based restrictions to make remarkable creative strides. Featuring more than eighty paintings by thirty-seven artists from thirteen countries, drawn from prominent collections across the United States and abroad, this exhibition presents renowned artists such as Berthe Morisot (French), Mary Cassatt (American), and Rosa Bonheur (French) alongside lesser-known yet equally important peers including Anna Ancher (Danish), Lilla Cabot Perry (American), and Paula Modersohn-Becker (German). During the mid-nineteenth century, Paris was the epicenter of the art world, luring artists from around the globe to its academies, museums, salons, and galleries. Scores of women artists traveled to the French capital to develop their art and further their careers, yet despite the city’s cosmopolitan character, gender norms remained strikingly conservative. Only later in the century did French women gain such fundamental rights as receiving a secondary education (1879), opening a bank account (1881), and obtaining legal guardianship of their children (1907). Women were not allowed to attend the École des Beaux-Arts – the country’s most important art academy – until 1897. Barred from this prestigious institution, and largely unable to participate in the Salon system, women pursued alternative venues by attending private academies, exhibiting independently, and forming their own organizations, such as the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs in 1881. Moral and social stigmas also hindered women’s full participation in the period’s artistic circles. Taboos against females being seen in public without a chaperone limited their access to certain spaces and narrowed the range of subjects they could represent. History painting, the foremost genre of the Academy, relied on accurate depictions of nude or draped figures, but as most women artists had scant opportunities to study from nude models, many instead gravitated toward avant-garde movements. Such work often emphasized genre scenes, the models for which could be found in the domestic sphere. Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism expands our understanding of this rich art historical period and demonstrates the formative role women artists played in the major currents of European modernism, including Realism, Impressionism, and Symbolism. The forward-thinking women represented in this exhibition not only created powerful paintings but also generated a momentum that has led toward a more egalitarian art world.
Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism is organized by the American Federation of Arts. Guest curator Laurence Madeline, Chief Curator for French National Heritage, was aided by Suzanne Ramljak, AFA Curator, and Jeremiah William McCarthy, AFA Associate Curator. Presentation of the exhibition at the Speed Art Museum is coordinated by Erika Holmquist-Wall, Chief Curator at the Speed Art Museum.
Featuring thirty-six artists from eleven different countries, this beautifully illustrated book explores the strength of these women’s creative achievements, through paintings by acclaimed Impressionists such as Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, and extraordinary lesser-known artists such as Marie Bashkirtseff, Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Hanna Pauli. It examines their work against the sociopolitical background of the period, when women were mostly barred from formal artistic education but cleverly navigated the city’s network of ateliers, salons, and galleries. Essays consider the powerfully influential work of women Impressionists, representations of the female artist in portraiture, the unique experiences of Nordic women artists, and the significant presence of women artists throughout the history of the Paris Salon. By addressing the long-undervalued contributions of women to the art of the later 19th century, Women Artists in Paris pays tribute to pioneers who not only created remarkable paintings but also generated momentum toward a more egalitarian art world.
Images
Marie Bashkirtseff’s ‘In the Studio’ (1881) Photo: Dnipropetrovsk/Bridgeman Images; American Federation of Arts
Mary Cassatt’s ‘Children Playing on the Beach’ (1884) Photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; American Federation of Arts
Marie Bracquemond (French, 1840-1916). On the Terrace at Sèvres (Sur la terrasse à Sèvres), 1880. Oil on canvas; 34-5/8x 45-1/4in.Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Berthe Morisot (French, 1841-1895). "The Sisters," 1869. Oil on canvas; 20-1/2x 32 in.National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Gift of Mrs. Charles S. Carstairs, 1952.9.2. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.
Living, Building, Thinking: art and expressionism uses the German Expressionist collection from the McMaster Museum of Art to explore the development of Expressionism in art from the early nineteenth century to the present day.
The term Expressionism is invariably associated with the period of art and social activism in Germany between 1905 and 1937, encompassing visual art, literature, philosophy, theatre, film, photography and architecture. In the context of an expanded view on the subject, Expressionism offers a rich and thought - provoking perspective on the relationships between artists and societies and the ever - changing responses and visual expressions that circulate through shared hopes and aspirations for social awareness and change.
Living, Building, Thinking is comprised of more than ninety works in all mediums, including examples of European art from the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries by William Blake, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch. Also highlighted are striking works from the German Expressionist and Weimar period, as well as mid - to - late twentieth century European paintings by artists like Jörg Immendorf, Ans lem Kiefer and Sigmar Polke. Canadian contemporary works by artists such as Barbara Astman, Natalka Husar, Nancy Johnson, Gary Pearson, Leopold Plotek and Tony Scherman demonstrate the lasting legacies of Expressionism.
The Vancouver Art Gallery March 3 to May 21, 2018 Representing one of the most important donations ever made to a university gallery in Canada, A Cultivating Journey presents five centuries of magnificent art from the McMaster Museum of Art’s Levy Collection and Bequest from Herman Herzog Levy. This exhibition reflects the remarkable acumen of Levy as a collector and explores new scholarship and perspectives on the objects and the collector himself, demonstrating the continuing impact of one man ’s passion for art. Works by renowned artists such as Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh reflect Levy’s personal taste and interests, which favoured Impressionist and Post - Impressionist landscapes, portraits and still lifes. He followed his donation of artwo rks with a substantial financial bequest specifically for art purchases, through which 219 acquisitions were made. The Levy Bequest made it possible to expand different aspects of the museum's collection and add historical, modern and contemporary works, including those by a range of French, British, Japanese, G erman and Netherlandish artists . Levy ’s collecting interests were broad as reflected in the group of Hiroshige prints, which are offset against masters such as Durer, van Leyden and drawings by Edgar Degas, Walter Sickert and other modernists.
Camille Pissarro, Pommiers en Fleur , 1870, oil on canvas, Gift of Gift of H. Herman Levy, McMaster Museum of Art
Workshop of Adriaen Brouwer The Drinker/The Bitter Draught c. 1635–38 oil on oak panel on oak cradle Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art Maximum
George Romney The Anatomy Lesson , c. 1775–76 oil on canvas Levy Bequest Purchase, 1994 McMaster Museum of Art
Émile Bernard Nature morte à la tasse et à la coupe de fruits [Still Life with Cup and Bowl of Fruit], 1887 oil on canvas Levy Bequest Purchase, 1993 McMaster Museum of Art
Chaïm Soutine Paysage à Céret , c. 1919 oil on canvas Levy Bequest Purchase, 1995 McMaster Museum of Art
Mary Beale Portrait of Charles Beale , c. 1660 oil on paper, later mounted to canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Sir Thomas Lawrence Portrait of William Esdaile , 1829–30 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Walter Richard Sickert Blue Corset , 1906 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Chaim Soutine Portrait of the Painter Richard X , c. 1916–1 7 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Gustave Courbet Environs d’Ornans [Landscape at Ornans], 18 74 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Vincent Van Gogh Untitled, Still Life: Ginger Pot and Onions, 1885 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art Maximum
Gustave Caillebotte Voiliers au mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil [Sailboats at Anchor on the Seine at Argenteuil], 1883 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Claude Monet Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil , 1903 oil on canvas Gift of Herman H. Levy McMaster Museum of Art
Joseph Mallord William Turner Boston in Lincolnshire , c. 1833 watercolour on paper Levy Bequest Purchase, 1992 McMaster Museum of Art
Among the most surprising aspects of Rembrandt’s prodigious output are twenty-three surviving drawings closely based on portraits made by artists working in Mughal India. These drawings mark a striking diversion for this quintessentially Dutch “Golden Age” artist, the only time he made a careful and extensive study of art from a dramatically different culture.
Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India explores for the first time the artist’s Mughal drawings, exhibiting them alongside the Mughal miniature paintings that inspired them to assess the impact of Indian art and culture on Rembrandt’s artistic interests and working process as a draftsman.
“Rembrandt may be one of the most famous painters in European art history, but there are still remarkable discoveries to be made about his work,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “This exhibition is a case in point, demonstrating how Rembrandt turned to the art of India to produce some of his most exotic and intriguing images. This vivid example of cultural exchange reminds us how artists on different continents take inspiration from one another, a reality that of course continues to this very day.”
The exhibition pairs twenty of Rembrandt’s surviving drawings depicting Mughal emperors, princes, and courtiers with Indian paintings and drawings of similar compositions, which had been brought to Amsterdam from the Dutch trading post in Surat. Rembrandt’s portraits reveal how his contact with Mughal art inspired him to draw in a newly refined and precise style.
“The critical eye and attentive curiosity Rembrandt turned towards Mughal portrait conventions still captivates viewers today. At this late stage in his career, around 1656-1661, this meticulous rendering is exceptional,” says Stephanie Schrader, Curator of Drawings and organizer of the exhibition.
Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India also examines how global trade and cultural exchange impacted artists working for Mughal emperors in India, who were in turn inspired by Dutch and Flemish printed images of European rules and scenes of daily life. Among the treasures found in a Dutch East India ship, which sank en route to China in 1597, was a package that contained four hundred prints by and after Dutch and Flemish artists.
This astounding quantity suggests that Dutch merchants thought that art would help them gain access to the Asian market in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These prints were particularly interesting to Mughal court artists, who were already accustomed to working with single-tone drawings and calligraphy.
Rather than copy the European compositions exactly, Mughal artists adapted them to their own artistic purposes, as seen in Keshav Das’s Roman Hero(about 1590-95), based on prints by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius. The use of these prints illuminates the range of images that found a positive reception in India long before Rembrandt made his creative copies.
The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1627-1658) was well known for his patronage of the arts — most notably the building of the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan’s rule of Mughal India spanned the years that Rembrandt worked in Leiden and Amsterdam. In his eight drawings of Shah Jahan, more than he made of any other Mughal ruler, Rembrandt carefully studied the trappings of imperial magnificence, as seen in A Mughal Nobleman on Horseback (Shah Jahan) (about 1656-61). The poetic claim that Shah Jahan was “Royal Rider of the Piebald Steed of the World” was not lost on Rembrandt.
Rembrandt’s drawings after Mughal compositions constitute the largest group, by far, of his copies after other works of art. Moreover, they are his only surviving drawings on expensive Asian paper, which suggests the high value the artist himself placed on them. Shah Jahan and Dara Shikoh (about 1656-60) is quite different from the typically known “late Rembrandt” style of drawing. His careful attention to details of clothing, jewelry, turbans, and footwear pays tribute to Mughal artists’ exceptional artifice.
On almost every level, Rembrandt and the Indian court painters operated in completely different worlds. Yet such differences did not prevent these innovative artists from appropriating foreign imagery to reflect upon and enrich their own more familiar artistic practice and culture.
Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India is curated by Stephanie Schrader, curator in the Department of Drawings.
Catalogue
An exploration of twenty -three of Rembrandt’s most unusual drawings, all inspired by the majesty of the Mughal Empire and its art.
The history of artistic exchange between cultures is always fascinating, which is never more true than wh en looking at the seventeenth century when there was a rich interchange between the Netherlands and the Mughal Empire.
Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India edited by Stephanie Schrader (Getty Publications, $39.95, hardcover) examines the impact of Indian art and culture on Rembrandt (1606– 1669) in the late 1650s. By pairing Rembrandt’s twenty -two extant drawings of Shah Jahan, Jahangir, Dara Shikoh, and other Mughal courtiers with Mughal paintings of similar compositions, the book critiques the prevailing notion that Rembrandt “brought life” to the static Mughal art.
Written by scholars of both Dutch and Indian art, the essays in this volume instead demonstrate how Rembrandt’s contact with Mughal painting inspired him to draw in an entirely new, refined style on Asian paper—an approach that was shaped by the Dutch trade in Asia and prompted by the curiosity of a foreign culture.
Seen in this light, Rembrandt’s engagement with India enriches our understanding of collecting in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the Dutch global economy, and Rembrandt’s artistic self-fashioning. A close examination of the Mughal imperial workshop provides new insights into how Indian paintings came to Europe as well as how Dutch prints were incorporated into Mughal compositions. This volume is published to accompany the exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center , March 13 to June 24, 2018.
Publication Information:
Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India
Edited by Stephanie Schrader
Stephanie Schrader is curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She is editor of Looking East: Rubens’s Encounter with Asia (Getty Publications, 2013) .
J. Paul Getty Museum
160 pages, 8 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches 130 color illustrations
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Shah Jahan and Dara Shikoh, 1654-1656, pen and brown ink and brown wash, heighted with white bodycolor on Japanese paper. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Emperor Timur Enthroned, 1654-56, pen and wash in Indian ink on Japanese paper. Musée du Louvre, Paris
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Emperor Jahangir Receiving an Officer, 1654-56, pen, bistre, and wash on Japanese paper. The British Museum, London
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Shah Jahan, 1654-56, pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash on Japanese paper. Cleveland Museum of Art
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, A Mughal Nobleman on Horseback, 1654-56, pen and brown ink with brown and grey wash, touched with red and yellow chalk and white heightening on Japanese paper. The British Museum, London
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Shah Jahan, Standing with a Flower and a Sword, 1654-56, pen and brown ink with brown wash on Japanese paper. The Frick Collection, New York
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669) Title/Date: Jahangir, about 1656 Culture: Dutch Medium: Brown ink Dimensions: Unframed: 18.3 × 12 cm (7 3/16 × 4 3/4 in.) Accession No. EX.2018.3.36 Repro Credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669) Title/Date: Shah Jahan and His Son, about 1656 Culture: Dutch Medium: Brown ink Dimensions: Unframed: 6.9 × 7.1 cm (2 11/16 × 2 13/16 in.) Accession No. EX.2018.3.38 Repro Credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669) Title/Date: Shah Jahan, Standing with a Flower and Sword, late 1650 - 1660s Culture: Dutch Medium: Pen and brown ink, brown wash Dimensions: Unframed: 17.8 × 10.1 cm (7 × 4 in.) Framed: 39.5 × 31 × 3 cm (15 9/16 × 12 3/16 × 1 3/16 in.) Accession No. EX.2018.3.21 Object Credit: Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669) Title/Date: An Indian Archer, about 1656 Culture: Dutch Medium: Brown ink, brown and grey-brown wash Dimensions: Unframed: 18.8 × 13.1 cm (7 3/8 × 5 3/16 in.) Accession No. EX.2018.3.35 Repro Credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669) Title/Date: The Emperor Akbar and his son Selim in Apotheosis, about 1656 Culture: Dutch Medium: Pen and brown ink, brown wash, corrected with white bodycolour Dimensions: Unframed: 21.2 × 17.4 cm (8 3/8 × 6 7/8 in.) Framed: 54.1 × 40.1 × 2.4 cm (21 5/16 × 15 13/16 × 15/16 in.) Accession No. EX.2018.3.39 Object Credit: Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs Collection) Repro Credit: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (former collection Koenigs). Photo: Studio Tromp, Rotterdam
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 03/23/18–06/24/18 Beginning on 23 March, the Van Gogh Museum will present Van Gogh & Japan– a major international exhibition on the influence of Japanese art on the work of Vincent van Gogh. The show, which comprises around 60 paintings and drawings by Van Gogh and a rich selection of Japanese prints, highlights Vincent’s all-embracing admiration for this art and how fundamentally his work changed in response to it.
Famous paintings and drawings by Van Gogh from collections all over the world have been brought to Amsterdam for Van Gogh & Japan, including the
This is the first time that an exhibition on such a scale has been organized on this theme.
“All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art.” –Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh’s (1853–1890) encounter with Japanese ukiyo-e prints during his time in Paris was decisive for the direction that his art would take in the years to come. He enthusiastically assembled a collection of the prints with the idea of dealing in them, and soon was captivated by their colorful and cheerful imagery and style, which began to exert a dramatic influence on his own work. Gradually this enchanted world became his main artistic reference point. From then on, he positioned himself as an artist in the Japanese tradition in order to gain a reputation with the avant-garde of the day.
This gorgeous publication offers a detailed reassessment of the impact Japanese printmaking had on Van Gogh’s creative output. Featuring essays by the world’s leading Van Gogh experts, this book details the ways in which the artist constructed his understanding of a Japanese aesthetic and his utopian ideal of a so-called primitive society, and incorporated these into his own vision and practice. The size, nature, and importance of Van Gogh’s own collection of Japanese prints are also explored. Lavish illustrations include oil paintings and drawings by Van Gogh as well as a selection of the Japanese works that so captured his imagination.
Authors:
Louis van Tilborgh is a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum and professor of art history at the University of Amsterdam. Cornelia Homburg is an independent art historian and curator. Nienke Bakker is curator of paintings at the Van Gogh Museum. Tsukasa Kodera is professor of art history at Osaka University.
Museo de Arte de Ponce March 17 through August 6, 2018
This spring, The Frick Collection is pleased to collaborate with Puerto Rico's Museo de Arte de Ponce on an upcoming exhibition. Starting March 17 and running through August 6, 2018, Museo de Arte de Ponce presents Pequeños tesoros de la Frick Collection (Small Treasures from The Frick Collection). The intimate show of ten works, mostly on paper, includes an engraving, a watercolor, four drawings and four oil sketches. They cover four centuries of artistic production, from Albrecht Dürer's 1514 engraving, Melencolia I, (below)
to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's 1843 oil sketch, The Arch of Constantine and the Forum, Rome.
Additional artists represented in the show include Claude Lorrain, John Constable,Francisco Goya, and Eugène Delacroix.
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Melencolia I, 1514, Engraving, printed in black ink on cream-colored antique laid paper, 9 1/2 x 7 7/16 inches, The Frick Collection, New York
The San Diego Museum of Art announced last month the acquisition of two outstanding paintings, Nymph of the Spring (ca. 1540) by Lucas Cranach the Younger and Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet (1892) by John Singer Sargent.
Both works fill important gaps in the Museum’s holdings, with the Sargent strengthening the already expansive collection of portraits, and the Cranach being the most important Northern Renaissance painting in the collection.
Nymph of the Spring is currently on display in Genre and Myth, and Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet is on view in the American Art galleries.
“Nymph of the Spring” (ca. 1537-1540) by Lucas Cranach the Younger
(San Diego Museum of Art)
Nymph of the Spring by Lucas Cranach the Younger is an exceptionally well-preserved painting of a nude lying in a landscape, softly gazing at the viewer. The son of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), a well-known German Renaissance artist, Lucas the Younger (1515–1586) followed in his father’s footsteps and the two became the greatest artistic proponents of the Reformation. Together, the family ran one of the most influential art workshops of that time, which Lucas the Younger took charge of about a decade before his father died. Nymph of the Spring was painted during this time, when father and son often worked together, and it appears likely that the elder Cranach contributed some of the more delicate features of the female figure.
Extensive technical analysis of the paint layer and underlying support were carried out at the Balboa Art Conservation Center under the supervision of Dr. Michael Brown, Associate Curator of European Art at The San Diego Museum of Art. Evidence from these examinations supports the authenticity of the work and clearly indicates the excellence of its condition. This painting’s remarkable state of preservation has allowed its immediate display for the enjoyment of visitors to the Museum. Nymph of the Spring was purchased from London-based owners with funds provided by Toni Bloomberg; Gene and Taffin Ray; an anonymous donor; Kevin Rowe & Irene Vlitos Rowe, and the Museum’s Acquisition Fund.
“During the time of the Reformation, Cranach’s mythological scenes like this one were especially popular with his sophisticated patrons, when Humanism and the Italian Renaissance were beginning to reach Northern Europe through artists like Cranach,” said Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director of The San Diego Museum of Art. “Very seldom does a work of such exceptional quality become available, which makes this a very rare opportunity for the Museum to welcome this renowned artist into our permanent collection. We hope this masterpiece, which is now the Museum’s most important Northern Renaissance work, will resonate with and inspire viewers for many years to come.”
Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet (ca. 1892) by John Singer Sargent
San Diego Museum of Art
One of The San Diego Museum of Art’s great strengths is an outstanding collection of portraits. To these masterpieces, the Museum has added John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet, which now hangs alongside portraits by Thomas Eakins and Robert Henri in the American Art galleries. This very personal portrait – the sitter was named after Sargent – captures the young child, caught in a playful, relaxed pose. It is exemplary of Sargent’s skill and flair, and is the first painting by Sargent, the most fashionable portrait painter of his day, to enter the Museum’s collection.
Portraits like this made Sargent one of the first artists to represent children with their own personal qualities rather than more formally as small-scale adults. In his day Sargent was known primarily for his beautiful landscapes and stunning portraits. The artist’s unparalleled mastery of color contrasts and impressionist brushwork made him the most sought-after portraitist of his generation.
“Summer is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating,” wrote British critic and artist John Ruskin. Nearly one hundred years later, Brandywine Valley artist Andrew Wyeth advised artists to simply, “hold a mirror up to nature. Don’t overdo it, don’t underdo it.” Even though Ruskin came of age during the Industrial Revolution, and Wyeth after the World Wars, the two artists shared a life-long obsession with the close observation of nature. The exhibition Eye on Nature: Andrew Wyeth and John Ruskin, on view March 10 – May 27, 2018, explores how both artists portrayed nature and the environment during tumultuous eras in human history.
Eye on Nature, organized by Margaretta S. Frederick, the Annette Woolard-Provine Curator of the Bancroft Collection at the Delaware Art Museum, presents approximately 30 rare watercolors by John Ruskin between 1838 and 1883, the largest number of Ruskin drawings seen in the United States for 25 years. The exhibition will also include 28 watercolors and dry brush by Andrew Wyeth between 1940 and 2008. Eye on Nature will be accompanied by a full range of public programs, including tours, lectures, and family and school programs.
This major exhibition will shed new light on both artists’ longstanding legacies. Both worked through periods of great upheaval and doubt: Ruskin during the Industrial Revolution and Wyeth during the Great Depression, World War II, and Cold War. Despite living during times of turmoil, both Ruskin and Wyeth devoted their lives to the pursuit of capturing the world around them, including studies of rocks, plants, and trees. Ruskin was after what he referred to as the “pure transcript” of nature whereas Wyeth looked to elevate his interpretation of nature through imagination.
“If we look at the history of art we can’t help but notice the recurrence of certain themes, interests, styles that link the work of the artists of one period or nationality with another,” explains Frederick. “Sometimes these links are not terribly clear. By taking two artists who worked at such vastly different times and places and looking at their work together, viewers will walk away with a deeper understanding how each artist turned to nature as subject matter to better understand our world.”
Artwork by John Ruskin is on loan from the Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University). Works by Andrew Wyeth are from the Museum’s permanent collection as well as from private collections. This will be the largest loan ever from the Ruskin Library collection to the U.S., and the largest number of Ruskin drawings seen in the U.S. for 25 years. Several of the Wyeth drawings have never been exhibited before.
According to Frederick, both artists sought in nature some universal truth. For Ruskin, the act of drawing brought him closer to understanding a thing, while the drawing itself was of little importance. Most of his drawings are unfinished, for once he had captured the essence of an thing or place he had no desire to carry on with unnecessary compositional repetitions and refinements. For Wyeth, the untimely death of his father introduced elements of loneliness and psychological tension to his realist rural imagery. “It’s a moment that I’m after,” he once said. “I must put my foot in a bit of truth; and then I can fly free.”
“Both artists were inspired by and curious about, even obsessed with, understanding the world around them. Understanding was achieved through capturing it on paper,” says Frederick. “For Wyeth, the drawing of these things represented a process of discovery. And similarly, Ruskin believes that to draw it, was to know it.”
To view large images and caption information, click below.
Mountain Rock and Alpine Rose, 1844 (or 1849). John Ruskin (1819 – 1900). Pencil, ink, chalk, watercolor and gouache, 11 3/4
Mountain Rock and Alpine Rose, 1844 (or 1849). John Ruskin (1819 – 1900). Pencil, ink, chalk, watercolor and gouache, 11 3/4 x 16 1/4 inches. Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University) (RF 1395).
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Aiguille Charmoz, Chamonix, 1849. John Ruskin (1819 – 1900). Pencil, ink and watercolor, 11 13/16 x 15 3/4 inches. Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University) (RF 892)
Trees in a Lane, perhaps at Ambleside, 1847. John Ruskin (1819 – 1900). Pencil, black and brown ink, and ink wash, 17 5/8 x 22 5/8 inches. Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University) (RF 1559).
Ravine at Maglans, c. 1849. John Ruskin (1819 – 1900). Pencil, black and brown ink and gouache, 11 x 8 3/8 inches. Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University) (RF 946).
About John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Born as an only child into an upper middle class and ambitious family, Ruskin was encouraged to draw. Throughout his life, he was rarely without a paper and pen, recording the world around him in a manner that bordered on obsessive, noting the importance of seeing and observing as paramount to understanding the world in which he lived.
John Ruskin was the leading art critic of the Victorian period. He published over 250 works on art and literary criticism, politics, and social reform. His multi-volumeModern Painters (1843-60) changed the direction of British art, championing the work of J.M. W. Turner and arguing for ‘truth to nature’ as the principal towards which all art must aspire. He was particularly influential to the young Pre-Raphaelites, whom he championed in the face of negative critical review.
He advocated for the importance of art-and beauty in the working class life, equating beauty with morality. He taught drawing (assisted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) at the Working Men’s College beginning in the mid-1850s. In 1869, he became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. In 1871, he purchased Brantwood in the English Lake District, where he lived primarily from 1872 until his death.
About Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)
American painter Andrew Wyeth was the son of the illustrator N.C. Wyeth. He was raised in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he maintained a home and studio throughout his life. He was educated at home receiving artistic training from his father. From N.C., he learned the importance of observing a subject from all aspects, even those that were not visible. At age 20, Wyeth had his first solo show at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. The entire inventory of watercolors sold out.
In 1945, N.C. Wyeth was killed when his car was struck by a train at a railway crossing in Chadds Ford, PA. This event, as well as the onset of World War II, introduced a darker side in Andrew Wyeth’s subject matter that alludes to the brevity of life expressed through a deeply personal symbolism. Elements of loneliness, spiritual malaise, and psychological tension lie beneath a surface veneer of realist rural imagery. He wrote of his need to “get inside of reality”, a process that was so intense it may well have served as a form of emotional therapy.
In the late 1930s, Wyeth began painting in tempera as it forced him to slow down and study a subject in depth before committing to the painstaking layering that the medium required. Wyeth worked from preliminary sketches–often in watercolor, examples of which will be included in the exhibition–to finished composition gradually paring down the image in
The Kunsthaus Zürich showcases 56 works of representational painting spanning the years 1890 to 1965. Common to all of them is an objectivity that is also visionary: emerging on the cusp of modernity, it runs through Böcklin and Vallotton, the ‘ naïve artists ’ and painters of New Objectivity, to the Surrealism of Dalí and Magritte.
This new exhibition at the Kunsthaus revisits a form that, like abstraction, was crucial to Classical Modernism: representational art.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN PAINTING
By the mid -19th century, as modern painting begins to take shape, the focus of attention is already shifting from conte nt towards artistic means. Édouard Manet attaches great importance to ‘ peinture’ – the painterly – while Paul Cézanne‘ s ‘taches ’, or patches of colour, aim not to depict the real world but instead to confer reality upon the image itself. This central idea is carried through into the Cubism that Cézanne anticipates. Collection curator Philippe Büttner has assembled works by some twenty artists who adopted an entirely different approach: at once objective and visionary. For these painters the communicative force of ‘ peinture’ is not what matters; rather, they set out to create visual spaces that remain illusionistic . Even so, Arnold Böcklin – the earliest artist represented in the exhibition – is concerned not with realism but with the primacy of imagination. The landscape and scenery of his 1880 work ‘ The Awakening of Spring ’ are, on the face of it, easy to understand and yet dreamlike and visionary, evoking with painterly precision the alternative reality of the mythical.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE S
In his first major work ‘ La malade ’, painted in Paris in 1892, Félix Vallotton bypasses Impressionism and draws instead on the narrative Dutch interior painting of the 17th century to create a work of meticulously rendered, precise detail. Yet in the psychological dis tances perceptible between his figures, he proposes a suggestively new take on this seemingly traditional painting technique. Later, as a landscape painter, he will turn his cool gaze towards the phantasmagoric hyper -presence of natural phenomena.
Vallotton was also partly responsible for discovering the ‘ naïve’ Henri Rousseau, praising his jungle painting enthusiastically in an 1891 article. Rousseau paints every leaf with precise contours, accumulating individual, neatly catalogued elements and collaging them into a world of hypnotic strangeness. What impresses here is not ‘peinture’ but the increasingly autonomous formal rhythms and scenic patterns marking the transition from the familiar to the unknown. For all its superficial descriptiveness, painting t hus becomes a novel alternative to the realistic depiction of the world.
NAÏVE ART IN THE MODERNIST CANON
The history of naïve art – represented in the exhibition by key works from Henri Rousseau, Camille Bombois, Henri Bauchant and others – was retold a t length in Kunsthaus exhibitions of 1937 and 1975. Their induction into the modernist canon came about largely thanks to the German collector and dealer Wilhelm Uhde (1874 – 1947), who owned one of the Rousseaus in the Kunsthaus collection. New Objectivity also features in the exhibition, exemplifying the return to representation and rejection of the avant -garde after the brutal caesura of the First World War.
And yet – as Niklaus Stoecklin and Adolf Dietrich demonstrate – supposed objectivity often nurtures an estrangement fed by the almost hypnotic concentration of seeing. This is particularly striking in Dietrich, who magically confers an enhanced presence on his simple, rural motifs.
THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS WORLDS: SURREALISM
The Dadaists and Surrealists offered a very distinct response to the First World War. In their eyes, society and politics had been thoroughly compromised by the conflict; and the Surrealists therefore sought to express worlds of the unconscious. Eschewing convention and repression, they set out to find the uncategorized essence of humanity as it manifested itself in dreams and unfettered creativity.
Some Surrealists, such as Joan Miró, relied heavily on the development of the painterly; others created dreamlike images founded on a carefully constructed legibility: with the precision of an Old Master, Salvador Dalí shone a light into hitherto unmapped recesses of the unconscious, while René Magritte deployed what was, ostensibly, an entirely representational technique but, through a bravura exercise in the avoidance of meaning, took the peaceful coexistence of form and content to absurd lengths in order to re- energize it.
RARELY SEEN, REMARKABLY ALLURING
From Böcklin to Dalí, from Vallotton to Dietrich, from the precise passion of a Rousseau creating worlds not seen before to Magritte ‘s marmoreal birds: all share a visionary objectivity revealed in a selection of works covering a broad spectrum of both motifs and forms. The exhibition includes 56 paintings of human beings, animal s, landscapes and plants from the Kunsthaus collection. Over half of them, especially works by Camille Bombois, André Bauchant , Adolf Dietrich and Niklaus Stoecklin, have not been exhibited for many years. All exert a remarkable allure, be it through wonderful self -portraits, hyper -realistic depictions of nature, or dazzlingly colourful backgrounds that envelop the figures in surreal fashion. They allow us to explore the enormous potential of a modernism that is – or purports to be – representational: a movement that rehabilitates and fundamentally reinvents the essence of things after its temporary banishment by the avant-garde.
An accompanying publication (96 pages, 54 colour illustrations, in German language) with a text by Philippe Büttner contextualizes the reception of representational art within the history of the Kunsthaus collection.
Félix Vallotton High Alps, Glaciers and Snowy Summits, 1919 Oil on canvas, 73 x 100 cm Kunsthaus Zürich, The Gottfried Keller Foundation, Federal Office of Culture, Berne, 1978
In the spring of 2018, Culturespaces and the Musée Jacquemart-André will be holding a major retrospective devoted to Mary Cassatt (1844–1926). Considered during her lifetime as the greatest American artist, Cassatt lived in France for more than sixty years. She was the only American painter to have exhibited her work with the Impressionists in Paris.
The female representative of Impressionism
The exhibition focuses on the only American female artist in the Impressionist movement; she was spotted by Degas in the 1874 Salon, and subsequently exhibited her works alongside those of the group. This monographic exhibition will enable visitors to rediscover Mary Cassatt through fifty major works, comprising oils, pastels, drawings, and engravings, which, complemented by various documentary sources, will convey her modernist approach — that of an American woman in Paris.
A franco-american approach to painting
Born into a wealthy family of American bankers with French origins, Mary Cassatt spent a few years in France during her childhood, continuing her studies at the Pennsylvania Fine Arts Academy, and eventually settled in Paris. Therefore, she lived on both continents. This cultural duality is evident in the distinctive style of the artist, who succeeded in making her mark in the male world of French art and reconciling these two worlds.
The originality of her vision
Just like Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt excelled in the art of portraiture, to which she adopted an experimental approach. Influenced by the Impressionist movement and its painters who liked to depict daily life, Mary Cassatt’s favourite theme was portraying the members of her family, whom she represented in their intimate environment. Her unique vision and modernist interpretation of a traditional theme such as the mother and child earned her international recognition. Through this subject, the general public will discover many familiar aspects of French Impressionism and Postimpressionism, along with new elements that underscore Mary Cassatt’s decidedly American identity.
A prestigious selection
The exhibition will bring together a selection of exceptional works loaned from major American museums, such as Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Terra Foundation in Chicago; works will also be loaned by prestigious institutions in France — the Musée d’Orsay, the Petit Palais, INHA, and the BnF (French National Library) — and in Europe, such as the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and the Bührle Foundation in Zurich. There will also be many works from private collections. Rarely exhibited, these masterpieces will be brought together in the exhibition for the first time.
Mary Cassatt,
Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son, Robert Kelso Cassatt,
1884, oil on canvas, W1959-1-1, Courtesy of the Philadelphia
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston February 25 through May 28, 2018
Marking the centenary of the deaths of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), presents a special exhibition of drawings on loan from the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Klimt and Schiele: Drawn, on view from February 25 through May 28, 2018 in the Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery, examines the separate, yet parallel experiences of the acclaimed Austrian modernists, as well as the compelling ways in which their work relates—particularly in their provocative depictions of the human body.
Organized thematically, the selection of 60 works on paper extends from the artists’ early draftsmanship to explore how each shifted away from traditional training to more incisive and unconventional explorations of humanity over the course of their careers. The MFA is one of three museums—and the only U.S. venue—hosting exhibitions of the Albertina’s rarely loaned drawings by Klimt and Schiele in 2018, joining the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, and Royal Academy of Arts, London, to mark the 100th anniversary of the artists’ deaths.
Klimt and Schiele: Drawn is accompanied by an illustrated volume, Klimt and Schiele: Drawings, produced by MFA Publications.
The 60 important drawings exquisitely reproduced in this large-format volume reach from each artist’s early academic studies to more incisive and unconventional explorations of nature, psychology, sexuality and spirituality. Striking and provocative even today, these works led both artists into controversy (and even a brief imprisonment for Schiele) during their creators’ lifetimes.
Klimt advised, “Whoever wants to know something about me as an artist ought to look carefully at my pictures and try to recognize in them what I am and what I want.” This album of unforgettable drawings from the collection of the Albertina Museum, Vienna, provides a direct connection to the minds of two master draftsmen exploring the limits of representation, as well as the shock of recognition at seeing our own inner selves caught on paper.
About the Author
Katie Hanson is Assistant Curator, Paintings, Art of Europe, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“Part of the satisfaction of being with Klimt’s and Schiele’s drawings is that they get under your skin—they’re hard to forget once you’ve seen them,” said Katie Hanson, Assistant Curator, Paintings, Art of Europe. “You feel the presence of these artists through the freshness and immediacy of their draftsmanship, the energy of which is still palpable even after a hundred years.”
Nearly 30 years apart in age, Klimt and Schiele shared a mutual respect and admiration for each other’s talent, although the work they produced is decidedly different in appearance and effect. Klimt’s drawings are often delicate, while Schiele’s are regularly bold. Klimt often used his as preparatory designs for paintings, while Schiele considered his own as finished, independent pictures and routinely sold them. Despite these departures, their works are also related. With frank naturalism and unsettling emotion, both Klimt and Schiele challenged conventions and expectations in portraits, nudes and allegories.
Beginnings
The exhibition opens with early works that exemplify the artistic training completed by both Klimt and Schiele. After a two-year introductory course at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts), which he began at age 14, Klimt received a scholarship to continue at the Fachschule für Zeichnen und Malerei (Technical School for Drawing and Painting), where he remained until 1883. This training led him to important commissions to decorate buildings around Vienna.
Three studies for the ceiling decoration Shakespeare’s Theater in the Burgtheater (1886–87) demonstrate Klimt’s deft handling of the differentiation of textures—the softness of hair, the firmness of flesh over bone and the stiffness or rumpled ease of fabric. Meanwhile, Schiele’s precocious talent made him the youngest member of his class at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) when he began his coursework in 1906, at age 16.
In Portrait of a Bearded Man (1907), the teenaged artist gave discrete attention to the flowing beard, slightly bristlier mustache and carefully combed hair. These examples of their early draftsmanship showcase the beautiful shading and modeling that are hallmarks of academic training.
Inner Life Made Visible
Soon enough, both artists shifted away from academically grounded works. Their drawings began to describe a sense of tension or energy in addition to visible features. Their treatments of the human body became less conventional and less conservative, permitting them to examine the inner workings and urges of humanity.
Klimt’s Portrait of a Bald Old Man (Study for Love) (1895) (above right) is unsettling—the white illuminates the elderly man’s head and provides an eerie glow to his unfocused eyes, contributing to the haunting impression of the figure. This drawing and Portrait of a Child (Study for Love) (1895), (above left) depicting a little girl, served as studies for an allegorical painting on the theme of love—now in the collection of the Wien Museum in Vienna—in which Klimt explores the duration and range of experiences a lasting love might include.
Klimt provided something of an example to Schiele, who saw the older artist defying conventions. While Klimt was not interested in self-portraits, preferring above all to paint women, Schiele saw all bodies, including his own, as subject to appraisal.
His convulsive self-portraits, such as Nude Self-Portrait (1910), show a young man grappling with himself. The drawing bristles with energy, depicting his dark hair standing on end as if electrified. With one eye open and the other closed, full pouty lips and furrowed brow, the facial expression is dramatic but illegible. The skin is tinged purple and blue, covering an emaciated body—far thinner than Schiele’s actual physique—that juts at a dramatic angle into the sheet. It is surrounded by a thick white band that evokes the inner glow—the radiant energy of living beings that so fascinated Schiele.
Schiele also applied this approach to portrayals of local working-class children. Six of these drawings are displayed in the exhibition, including
Left: Egon Schiele – The Pacer, 1914 / Right: Egon Schiele – Two Crouching Girls, 1911
Two Crouching Girls (1911), in which the subjects appear at first glance to perch like dolls propped into position. On closer inspection, however, the unnatural, unhealthy color of the flesh—particularly in the icy tone of the blonde girl’s skin—and the outsized hands contradict the initial charm and make them more unsettling.
Nudes
Klimt and Schiele’s shared interests in human experience and inner urges are perhaps most evident in their depictions of nudes. Despite the twinge of voyeuristic unease that they may stir, the compositions are hard to look away from. The bodies are unidealized, making them seem all the more real, and often it is hard to tell what they are doing at first glance. Without the aid of a title, it takes persistent effort to identify what is depicted in
and, even helped by the title, the looping lines by the figure’s face in
Reclining Half Nude with Arms Entwined behind Her Head (1916–17) do not readily coalesce into something recognizable. Both women lounge seemingly in midair, unmoored from furnishings.
Schiele, too, experimented with such unexpected omissions—The Pacer (1914) (above), for example, looks down at her tensely curled hand as if it holds something, but there is nothing there.
The Stuff of Scandal
Despite their successes and supporters, Klimt and Schiele were no strangers to controversy. Klimt’s innovative approach to embodying ideas caused a scandal when he was asked to create large-scale works. In 1894, he and his early collaborator Franz Matsch were selected to design ceiling paintings for the University of Vienna. Klimt showed his works, depicting philosophy, medicine and jurisprudence, in process in 1900, 1901 and 1903 with the Vienna Secession, a group of artists who broke away from the state-sponsored academy to exhibit independently. Although the paintings were lost in a fire during World War II, related drawings such as
Two Studies of a Skeleton (Studies for the Transfer Sketch for Medicine) (about 1900), Gustav Klimt. Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
and Two Studies of a Skeleton (Studies for the Transfer Sketch for Medicine) (about 1900) convey the immediacy and unexpected naturalism that some of Klimt’s contemporaries found so shocking.
Another firestorm of controversy broke out over Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, part of the Secession’s 1902 exhibition, which celebrated the composer.
Standing Female Nude (Study for the Beethoven Frieze: “The Three Gorgons”) (1901), Gustav Klimt. Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gustav Klimt,Embracing Couple,1901.
(Study for ‘This Kiss to the Entire World; Beethoven Frieze’).
Black chalk. 45 x 30.8 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.
The frankly depicted, unidealized nude bodies that embody unseemly feelings such as sexual desire earned the artist accusations of pornographic obscenity.
Schiele, too, made art and lived a life that flouted polite expectations. In 1912, a local adolescent who wished to run away from home sought help from the artist and his girlfriend. Although the child returned home unharmed, her parents accused Schiele of kidnapping, rape and immorality—charges that could have meant up to 20 years in prison. The artist was arrested on April 13 and a trial was held on April 30. The first two charges were ultimately dropped as unfounded, but the third held, as the police investigation turned up drawings in Schiele’s studio that were deemed indecent for minors to see. The artist spent just over three weeks in jail, before and after his court appearance, and three drawings made during this time in prison—dated April 19, 23 and 24—are on view in the exhibition. Combining poetic and dramatic titles with bold compositions, these drawings record Schiele’s mounting despair.
Schiele found evocative, emotional resonances all around him—not only in the bodies and faces of people, but also in nature. Two drawings by the artist
—Red Chrysanthemum (1910)
and Yellow Chrysanthemum (1910)—show flowers of the same species in two stages. The robust red example, colored with broad strokes, opens to its maximum fullness, while the frail yellow flower comes undone, with drooping leaves and the spindly petals of a blossom past its prime. The same autumnal melancholy also pervades Schiele’s depiction of
Old Houses in Český Krumlov (1914), Egon Schiele. Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Old Houses in Český Krumlov (1914) in the Czech Republic—the birthplace of his mother and where the artist lived briefly in the summer of 1911, while seeking distance from city life in Vienna.
Portraits
Portraiture provided both Klimt and Schiele with a way to make money and connections—as well as a meeting place for their artistic visions and the individual character of their sitters. Klimt maintained a lucrative portrait practice among avant-garde patrons and collectors in and around Vienna.
Two studies for
a portrait of his supporter Eugenia Primavesi (1912 and 1913) show little detail in the figure’s face, yet convey a strong sense of her character. Her raised chin, seen in both drawings, confirms her commanding presence.
Klimt’s only commissioned portrait of a child, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additionally, three studies for a portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl—one of his last paintings, left unfinished—provide a glimpse into the artist’s process. The sitter’s garment seems to writhe with energy in each drawing, while her pose and demeanor shift as Klimt searches for the definitive portrayal.
Klimt came to Schiele’s aid following his imprisonment in 1912, which left the younger artist devastated and financially ruined. An introduction to Klimt’s patrons August and Serena Lederer led to Schiele’s friendship with their son Erich, who would become one of the leading collectors of his work.
The artist’s portrayal of the teenaged Eric Lederer with Red Collar (1913), seated in a jaunty pose, suggests the awkwardness of his youth. Additional portrait drawings by Schiele on view depict others close to the artist, including
his mother Edith
The Artist’s Mother, Sleeping (1911), Egon Schiele. Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Portrait of the Artist’s Sister-in-law Adele Harms (1917), Egon Schiele. Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
and sister-in-law Adele Harms.
The skin of both women is rendered with blotchy discoloration—it appears flushed, bruised and even seemingly decaying. Often seen in his self-portraits, the effect makes the drawings more complicated to look at and the reactions they induce more visceral.
Egon Schiele,The Cello Player,1910.
Black chalk, watercolour on packing paper. 44.7 x 31.2 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.
Gustav Klimt,Preliminary Drawing for 'Allegory of Sculpture',1889.
Graphite, blue pencil, heightened with gold. 44 x 30 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.
Egon Schiele,Standing Female Nude from the Waist Down with Green Garment,1913.
Pencil, watercolour, gouache on primed Japan paper. 48 x 31.5 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.
Egon Schiele,Seated Female Nude, Elbows Resting on Right Knee (detail),1914.
Pencil, gouache on Japan paper. 48 x 32 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.
d manufacture, sell, or transport intoxicating beverages from 1920 until 1933. Spirited: Prohibition in America, a new exhibition opening at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum explores this tumultuous time in American history, when flappers and suffragists, bootleggers and temperance lobbyists, and legends, such as Al Capone and Carry Nation, took sides in this battle against the bottle.
Organized by the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA, in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance, Kansas City, MO, Spirited: Prohibition in America explores the era of Prohibition, when America went “dry.” Visitors will learn about the complex issues that led America to adopt Prohibition through the 18th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919 until its repeal through the 21st Amendment in 1933. Through the exhibition, visitors will learn about the amendment process, the changing role of liquor in American culture, Prohibition’s impact on the roaring ‘20s, and the role of women, and how current liquor laws vary from state to state.
In 1830, the average American consumed 90 bottles—or about four shots a day—of 80-proof liquor each year. Saloons gained notoriety as the most destructive force in American culture, where men would drink away their families’ money. Following extensive campaigning and lobbying by the Anti-Saloon League, along with groups representing women’s suffrage and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, on January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, and beginning January 17, 1920, Americans could no longer manufacture, sell, or transport intoxicating beverages. However, the Volstead act, the law enforcing the amendment, made exceptions for sacramental, medicinal, and industrial purposes as well as allowing families to “preserve fruit” through fermentation.
In the years following, the country was split between “wets” and “drys,” speakeasies flourished, legal authorities gave chase to gangsters, and many created inventive ways to circumvent the law. Governmental agencies, including the Prohibition Bureau and the Justice Department, charged with enforcing the Volstead act were ill equipped to deal with the flood of illegal booze. Along with rampant law breaking, Prohibition brought unexpected cultural and societal shifts from the development of mixed-gendered speakeasies to the growth of organized crime syndicated into national enterprises.
The exhibition draws on the histories told from both sides of this divisive issue that riled passions and created volatile situations. In the end after a decade of wide-spread corruption, wavering public opinion, and the need to generate revenue from an alcohol tax, the 18th Amendment became the first ever repealed. With the passing of the 21st Amendment, Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933 to a very different America. Today, Prohibition’s legacy can be traced through state laws regulating alcohol, created to avoid the excesses before Prohibition and the corruption and lawlessness experienced during the roaring ‘20s.
Prohibition, Detroit, 1919. Courtesy Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
Spirited: Prohibition in America brings visitors back to this period of flappers and suffragists, bootleggers and temperance lobbyists, and real-life legends, such as Al Capone and Carry Nation. Adapted from the National Constitution Center’s flagship exhibition, Spirited explores the history of Prohibition, from the dawn of the temperance movement to the unprecedented repeal of a constitutional amendment in 1933. What made the country go “dry” and how did America change during this period in history? Visitors to Spirited will learn about the amendment process, the role of liquor in American culture, the cultural revolution of the roaring ’20s, and how liquor laws vary from state to state today . The morality and illegalization of liquor split American opinion and created a subculture of rampant criminality. Organized crime grew from localized enterprises to a national network for manufacturing, distribution, and sales of alcohol. The issue catalyzed a number of federal regulations and the passing of the Volstead Act, but little resources were provided for enforcement. Spirited draws on histories told from both sides of the law. Through strong visual and interactive elements, the exhibition demonstrates how America went from a nation drowning in liquor in the 1800s, to campaigns of temperance, and the upswing and downfall of outlawing prohibition.
The exhibition surveys the inventive and ingenious ways lawmakers and the American public responded to Prohibition. Legal provisions for sacramental wine, medicinal alcohol, and the preservation of fruit and the efforts of breweries to stay in business led to popularization of products such as “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine,” “near beer,” and Coca-Cola. Visitors will learn how transportation networks and clever disguises were used to run liquor from state to state, how speakeasies gave way to the popularization of jazz, and the Charleston dance craze.
Spirited features semi-immersive environments that encompass the sights, sounds, and experiences of this fascinating period in American history..
The 5,000 square foot exhibit features over 100 rare artifacts including:
A 1929 Buick Marquette. One of the bootleggers’ key innovations was the “Whiskey Six,” six-cylinder cars, such as the Buick Marquette on display, that bootleggers would modify extensively to accommodate illegal cargo and evade authorities.
A hatchet used by the famous saloon buster, Carry Nation.
A telephone used Roy Olmstead to operate his bootlegging empire. Olmstead, after leaving the Seattle police force, became the most successful bootlegger in the Pacific Northwest. He was also the plaintiff in Olmstead v. United States, one of the most important Fourth Amendment cases to arise during Prohibition.
Original ratification copies of the 18th and 21st Amendments.
Al Capone’s guilty verdict, which convicted the crime boss of not paying taxes on money earned from his illegal operations.
A Prohibition Bureau Badge issued by the Department of Justice.
Prohibition agent Eliot Ness’ signed oath of office from 1926 in which he swore to “support and defend the Constitution.”
Flapper dresses, cocktail couture, and other women’s and men’s fashion accessories from the 1920s.
Original home manufacturing items used for making moonshine, homebrewed beer, and other illegal and highly potent liquor.
Art Gallery of South Australia, SA 16 July – 30 September 2018
The National Gallery of Australia’s touring exhibition, Diane Arbus: American Portraits.
Diane Arbus, Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C., 1967 1967. Gelatin silver photograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1980.
The photographs of Diane Arbus (1923–71) are among the most widely recognised in the history of photography. Her images stand as powerful allegories of post-war America, and once seen are rarely forgotten. Works such as
Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967
and Child with toy hand grenade, in Central Park, New York City have been described as two of ‘the most celebrated images in the history of the medium’.
Featuring 35 of Arbus’s most iconic and confrontational images from 1961–71, this exhibition examines the last decade of Arbus’s life and the period in which her style is in full flight. Her work has polarised viewers who question whether she exploited or empowered her subjects, who were often drawn from society’s margins.
Diane Arbus, Mae West on bed 1965. Gelatin silver photograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1981.
Diane Arbus. Patriotic young man with a flag, N.Y.C. 1967 gelatin silver photograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1980.
Diane Arbus. Woman with a beehive hairdo 1965, gelatin silver photograph, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra . Purchased 1981.
Arbus’s photographs will be exhibited alongside a selection of works by other leading American photographers.
Castello di Rivoli is presenting an important group of Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings from the Francesco Federico Cerruti Collection for the very first time. The exhibition will feature eight early paintings by the Metaphysical artist, which until now have remained hidden in Villa Cerruti in Rivoli, the home built by the Turin industrialist in the 1960s exclusively to house his private collection.
In keeping with the spirit that characterizes the Cerruti Collection and its encyclopaedic vision, which ranges from medieval paintings with gold leaf backgrounds to contemporary art, the exhibition at Castello di Rivoli proposes a brand new journey through time, establishing a link between the works of de Chirico and key pieces of contemporary art in the museum’s permanent collection. “The exhibition narrative,” writes Marcella Beccaria, “presents visitors with a dizzying thematic blend of similarities, references and contradictions, but also surprising links, which cast new light on the meaning of de Chirico’s art and on his rich cultural heritage.”
Giorgio de Chirico, La partenza degli argonauti.
Set within the baroque castle, where the past continuously renews its encounter with the present, the exhibition comprises a series of dialogs between paintings by de Chirico and the works of contemporary artists such as Giulio Paolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Maurizio Cattelan. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev states: “In de Chirico, the rediscovery of classical mythology does not unfold as it did in the Renaissance in order to reconstruct a story of the past, but instead to escape history, the same history that has led us from the Renaissance to that dangerous and uncontrollable modern acceleration that has continued right up to the present day. De Chirico is Nietzschean, anti-modern and against historicism. By renewing the concept of circular time, the artist looks back to mythology and the pervasiveness of the concept of metamorphosis that characterizes it.”
Giorgio de Chirico, Composizione metafisica (Muse metafisiche), 1918. Collezione Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte. Long-term loan. Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino.
