Archives for January 2010

The post I wrote over the weekend, about my Wall Street Journal Masterpiece column describing Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Issus, prompted a few readers to write to me about other Altdorfer paintings. American museums (Cleveland, the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, among them) own only drawings, prints, woodcuts and etchings by Altdorfer — no paintings (a few examples of which below).

Then today, I read the Washington Post‘s article about a fantastic rumor that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, may be in possession of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The museum is said to be in the process of authenticating it.

Which reminded me of a tidbit I did not use in my Altdorfer article: according to Christopher Wood, the Yale professor whom I quoted on Altdorfer’s role as a founder of the Danube school, there may be an Altdorfer painting in the U.S. afterall. Here’s what he told me:

The National Gallery of Art in Washington owns a strange work very close to Altdorfer consisting of a panel of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve) with panels representing “The Reign of Bacchus.” It has never been properly explained. Actually the Fall of Man panel was once two panels, now glued together. Complicated. Anyway, scholars are bothered by it and prefer to attribute it to a follower or workshop associate, but I am open to the idea of Altdorfer as author.

I went straightaway to the NGA website, where I found this: 

Here’s how the NGA describes the work: “Workshop of Albrecht Altdorfer — German, 1480 or before – 1538. The Fall of Man [middle panel], c. 1535. oil on hardboard transferred from panel. middle panel: 39 x 31.5 cm (15 3/8 x 12 3/8 in.). Samuel H. Kress Collection
1952.5.31.b — Not on View.”

The NGA also attributes the left side panel — The Rule of Bacchus, c. 1535 — and the right side panel — The Rule of Mars, c. 1535 — to Altdorfer’s workshop. Their accession numbers are 1952.5.31.a and 1952.5.31.c, respectively (thus all from Kress).

I’m no expert, but I certainly wouldn’t rule out Wood’s opinion. The earlier end of that date estimate is troubling, though: Altdorfer was born around 1480 and died in 1538.

Here’s another interesting fact: In 1980, when London’s National Gallery acquired Christ Taking Leave of His Mother for an undisclosed price, UK newspapers speculated the number as $12 million, which would have made it the most expensive painting known to have changed hands at the time, according to Art + Auction. In today’s dollars, that sum would be about $31.5 million.

Finally, a few examples of Altdorfer’s paintings. 

[Read more…] about Altdorfer: A Mystery In The U.S., Pun Intended

Can a 15-year-old singer save jazz? A 15-year-old Canadian? (No disrespect intended; I’m just noting that jazz is an American art form.)

I would love to see it happen. As I’ve written before, jazz audiences are shrinking and aging: The median age of jazz consumers jumped from 29 in 1982 to 46 last year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.

So I was amazed when I heard a wonderful jazz voice coming from NBC Nightly News last week, which I had on in the background while I checked my email. I looked up to see Brian Williams interviewing a youngster named Nikki Yanofsky, interspersed with clips of her singing like Ella and Billie. Can her voice, and her enthusiasm for jazz, draw others of her generation?

NBC posted the interview online (here) as well as a much longer version (here). In them, Nikki says she wants — no, she will — sing other genres (like pop and R&B) as well, but that jazz is her first love.

Yanofsky debuted in Canada at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 2006, and she released an album there in 2007. But her first album in the U.S. will come this year, possibly in the first quarter. She has already performed at Carnegie Hall, in a Marvin Hamlisch program last February, and in another Hamlisch program at the Kennedy Center last May.

It’s a big task that I’ve given her; but listen to her voice and her interviews — you’ll see why I think she’s up to it. And she’s still just a kid. 

UPDATE, early Feb: The unofficial word is that Yanofsky has been asked to sing at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

UPDATE 2, 4/20/10: I’ve heard the album, spent time with Yanofsky at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola and written about her for New York magazine, which you can read about here.

 

 

Museums’ financial difficulties aren’t going away in the near future, and neither are deaccessioning controversies, and that’s why I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, which published it in Saturday’s paper as “The Art of the Deal.” (It was published on the web late on Jan. 1.)

Some people — directors, trustees, maybe even curators who fear they’ll lose their jobs in the next round of cutbacks — will want to solve their cash problems by selling art. As everyone interested in art must know by now, that practice is forbidden by museum rules.

So in the piece, I propose that museums establish an orderly process for considering it — before the next crisis hits.

My solution is this: museums that propose to sell art from their storerooms for purposes other than buying art should submit their cases to an independent arbitrator. And if they make a convincing case, they must also give other public collections two chances to buy the art — once, in a right of first refusal; a second time, after a public auction, when they all have an opportunity to match the winning public bid.

Yes, this is cumbersome — but it beats the messes we’ve had at museums ranging from Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum to the St. Augustine Historical Society to the Blanden Memorial Art Museum in Fort Dodge, Ia.

But maybe we are maturing: I expected to be flooded with complaints about violating sacred principles. Instead, all of the feedback I’ve received has been positive. One friend made a great addition to my solution, which proposed using neutral parties familiar with art, art law and nonprofit regulation. To her, that spelled lawyers, and she suggested that retired, disinterested museum professionals could also arbitrate.

Lest you think I’ve gone over to the dark side, however, let me post the final line of my piece:

…de-accessioning shouldn’t be impossible — just nearly so.

I hope that the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries and the American Association of Museums take up this subject in the very near future. If they don’t, I fear others will try to do it for them, as we have already seen in a few instances (the Brodsky bill in NYS, to name one). 

 

If ever a work of art merited comparison with epic poetry, “The Battle of Issus” is it. Albrecht Altdorfer’s depiction of the moment in 333 B.C. when Alexander the Great routed Darius III for supremacy in Asia Minor is vast in ambition, sweeping in scope, vivid in imagery, rich in symbols, and obviously heroic–the Iliad of painting, as literary critic Friedrich Schlegel suggested.

…

That’s how I started my article, “An Epic Poem In Paint,” that is published in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. It’s in the Masterpiece column, which is published every Saturday, and which I have praised here before. Coincidentally, my last Masterpiece for the Journal, published last July, described the Alexander sarcophagus in Turkey’s archaeological museum — one of whose sides also depicts the battle of Issus.

Altdorfer’s version, of course, is far more expansive — this image does not do it justice, as it’s a big picture, about 4 ft. by 5 ft.

Oddly, I barely noticed the painting the first time I saw it. It sits in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in the same gallery as Durer’s Self-Portrait, 1500, and I was so mesmerized by that work on my first visit to the Pinakothek that I didn’t remember the Altdorfer. I wrote about the Durer for the Journal (here), too. 

If you go to Munich, don’t do what I did — they are both masterpieces, as are so many other works there — so take a long look at both. There are no paintings by Altdorfer in the United States; some museums do own drawings, though nothing of this majesty.

Photo: Courtesy Alte Pinakothek