Archives for March 2010

This week, the Prado welcomes one of the finest paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: John Singer Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, from 1882. It will hang next to Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece, Las Meninas, from 1656.

And that’s the beginning and the end of the exhibition (opening on Tuesday), just two works telling their stories. They have a connection, of course. Sargent was inspired by Velázquez’s compelling portrait — he visited the Prado frequently to study the painting. According to the MFA, Sargent made

a copy of the painting to help him analyze its composition, lighting, and the dynamics among the figures. Both paintings are centered on little girls who seem to know more than they are saying — five-year-old Infanta Margarita Teresa of Spain depicted by Velázquez, and four-year-old Julia Boit captured by Sargent.

The exhibit is the third in a Prado series called “The Invited Work,” which borrows one painting as a way to illuminate an aspect of its own collection. It’s an ingenious way, I think, to make museum-goers really look, to contrast, to compare. See for yourself, at left. 

Of course, it helps to invite masterpieces that complement your own collection, and the Prado is lucky that way. It has one of the finest collections in the world, with something like 1,300 paintings regularly on view.

The “Invited Work” series began last April, when the Prado borrowed a painting by Georges de la Tour from the Louvre called The Penitent Magdalene. It hung with two de la Tour works in the Prado’s collection, St. Jerome Reading A Letter (attributed to him only in 2005) and Blind Musician. I’ve pasted them here, too.

Last December, in between the de la Tours and the Sargent-Velazquez pairing, the Prado borrowed Company of Captain Reinier Reael, also known as The Meagre Company, by Frans Hals and Pieter Codde, from the Rijksmuseum (below). It was exhibited for three months in a gallery adjoining “Dutch painters at the Prado.”

One- or two-painting shows aren’t unique, or even unusual nowadays. There was Michelangelo’s first painting at the Metropolitan Museum just last year, to name just one.

But as museums try to cope with having less money to spend, the fact that the Prado has begun a series of them seems noteworthy to me. Maybe it can even be emulated in some quarters here.

Besides, it’s a great excuse for me to display all these wonderful paintings. 

As van Gogh, according to the Rijsmuseum, said of The Meagre Company, “Just to see that painting would make the journey to Amsterdam worthwhile.” 

So far, the Prado is three for three on its choices.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the museums

 

Well, this may be more history than “art” per se, depends on your definitions.

But I was tickled by the event the British pulled off yesterday: In a “line of light,” a mass of volunteers placed torches, at 250-meter intervals, along the 84-mile-long Hadrian’s wall. It’ll be the first time the “ancient frontier” has been illuninated at once since Hadrian decreed that it be built in 122 A.D.

The first torch was lit at Segedunum Roman Fort in Wallsend, North Tyneside, around 6 p.m. yesterday, and the lights proceeded west until the last beacon in the line was lit at Bowness-on-Solway, on Cumbria’s west coast, about an hour later, according to numerous news reports.

The Guardian called it “an 84-mile variation on Antony Gormley’s invitation to the people of the UK to occupy the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – a brief but spectacular moment of public art.”

That quote was published on Friday, when The Guardian summed up the story before the event, telling how

Thousands of would-be modern legionnaires used Facebook and Twitter to argue why they should be among those chosen to light the flares. Reasons included intimate details of trysts at particular spots, anniversaries and simple love of the dramatic landscape, especially where the wall marches along the escarpment of the Whin Sill.

Today’s Guardian has a fabulous slide show (here), including the picture above. Wish I’d seen it and I wish someone here would dream up an engaging equivalent. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Guardian

 

The National Portrait Gallery in London has a nifty mystery on its hands, which it is revealing in an exhibit that opens Saturday. A painting of Elizabeth I, which has been in storage since 1921, is going on view in Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I, along with three others of the virgin queen.

Here’s the mystery: The painting, made by an unknown artist in the 1580s or early 1590s, has degraded and now shows signs that the Queen is, or was, holding a coiled serpent. Why, what it signifies and why it was painted over “shortly after” it was orginally painted are all unclear. Here’s what the NPG says:

Paint analysis has shown that the snake was part of the original design, painted at the same time as the rest of the portrait, and Elizabeth’s fingers were originally clasped around the snake…At the final stage of painting a decision was made not to include this emblem, and the Queen was shown holding a small bunch of roses instead.

The work in question was also, strangely, painted over an unfinished portrait of an unWhnknown sitter, “a female head facing in the opposite direction and in a higher position than the queen. The eyes and nose of the first face can be seen where paint has been lost from Elizabeth’s forehead.”

But reusing panels was common then (and since then). Speculating on the serpent is more fun. The NPG says:

A serpent was sometimes used to represent wisdom, prudence and reasoned judgment – all fitting attributes for a Queen – but in the Christian tradition serpents have also been used to represent Satan and original sin. The removal of the snake may therefore have been due to the ambiguity of the emblem. The snake is mainly black, but has greenish blue scales and was almost certainly painted from imagination.

The NPG doesn’t mention the religious wars of the time, but it’s a good bet they played a role.

You can read more about the exhibit, which remains on view until Sept. 26, here. The scientific examinations, along with this and other exhibitions, are part of the NPG’s Making Art in Tudor Britain project led by Dr Tarnya Cooper. 

People love things like this — at least, that’s what I see whenever I visit exhibitions with a conservation or investigative component. And mysteries are worthy not only of exhibitions, but perhaps also of TV programs, like art crime TV? 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London, copyright as above

 

Here’s a biennial that, unlike the Whitney and others, doesn’t get much attention: Fotofest.

Maybe that’s because it takes place in Houston, and is spread out in more than 80 museums, galleries, corporate spaces, and other venues around town, not in one place — which may be confusing. There are, though, five “official” exhibitions organized by curators appointed by Fotofest.

Or maybe it’s because it celebrates only photography, in all of its manifestations.

In any case, Fotofest starts tomorrow and runs through April 25. As co-founder Wendy Watriss, whom I interviewed for the March issue of Town & Country (on newsstands now, but not on the web), told me, since its founding in 1983, Fotofest “has gotten more idea-focused, and that allowed the curating to be more sophisticated.”

 

The event includes a “portfolio review process” for photographers, which Watriss said was “just as important” as the exhibitions. This year, more than 500 photographers have registered: they’ll get four to five personal reviews a day from important people in the field. “It’s opinion they can’t get elsewhere,” Watriss said.

 

She is partial, of course, but Watriss claims that photographers including David Maisel, Elinor Carucci (above), Luis Gonzalez Palma, Atta Kim, Yao Lu, Debbie Fleming Caffery and Keith Carter have launched their careers at Fotofest. 

 

When we talked, Watriss agreed that Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth etc. from overseas are hotter than many American photographers right now. But who among Americans is most influential? 

 

Depends, she says: in the marketplace, Cindy Sherman (above). In influence, Alfredo Jarr. There’s more in T&C.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the artists

 

The heavy-duty cultural property fight between Peru and Yale just got a little lighter. Peru has withdrawn the fraud and conspiracy charges from the lawsuit it filed in 2008 that asks Yale to return Inca artifacts removed from Machu Picchu bu Hiram Bingham when he “discovered” and explored the site in 1911-1915. 

According to the Associated Press, Peru “recently filed papers in federal court dismissing six of 17 counts from its lawsuit.” The article continued:

The fraud allegations that were withdrawn accused Yale of intending to deceive Peru by promising to return the artifacts and conspiring with Bingham to retain the artifacts unlawfully by fraudulently assuring that Yale would return the artifacts when Peru demanded.

The new action could move the case toward an easier resolution. But Yale didn’t take the opportunity to make nice completely, as the article made clear:

“Peru has dropped all claims of Yale having intentionally done anything wrong,” said Jonathan Freiman, Yale’s attorney. “We’re glad that they have done so, but we think the rest of the case is equally misguided and should be withdrawn, as well.”

Yale and Peru have come close to a resolution before: in 2007, they had a deal to give Peru ownership of the disputed pieces, but allow joint custody and exhibition. Peru changed its mind, and backed out of that deal.

Which put everything back in court: negotiations are better, needless to say. 

Here’s a link to the AP article and here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal “Masterpiece” column I wrote about Machu Picchu in 2008.

UPDATE, 5/27/10: Read my post about Peru’s claim for the Paracas textiles here.