Archives for August 2010

Is 19th Century American art coming into its own overseas?

That’s the question that jumped into my head when I learned that the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid will soon be exhibiting a comprehensive show of the landscapes of Asher B. Durand. This would never have happened 20 years ago.

Though I’ve been to Madrid a handful of times, I’ve never been to the Fundacion, which was founded in 1955 and has been located in its current building, with galleries, since 1975. Sounds like a miss on my part, based on a look at its website, which lists many exhibitions that sound worthwhile.  

The Durand exhibition, which will run from Oct. 1 through Jan. 9, 2011, is said to be “the first in Spain and Europe ever devoted to this 19th-century painter and founder of the American landscape painting school, what would soon become known as the Hudson River School.”

It’s not hard to believe that; as I have complained before, much of the world show little to no interest in American art before the Abstract Expressionists.

Durand last had a moment in the sun in the U.S. in 2007, when the Brooklyn Museum presented Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape, a retrospective of about 60 works; some 35 years separated it from the previous Durand exhibition. It was organized by Linda S. Ferber, of the New-York Historical Society.  

Around the same time, the NYHS mounted its own show, The World of Asher B. Durand: The Artist in Antebellum New York, and the National Academy Museum displayed Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Dean of American Landscape.

The Historical Society owns more than 400 works by Durand. Ferber is organizing the Madrid exhibition, too, drawing most of the loans from the Society’s collection. (And Ferber, btw, just won the Henry Allen Moe Prize for Catalogs of Distinction in the Arts for her book, The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision.)

Durand had another moment in public consciousness, of course, when in 2005 Alice Walton bought his Kindred Spirits from the New York Public Library for her Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas.

Like others, I was disappointed to see the work leave New York, but I was happy that it will end up in Arkansas. From afar, Walton seems to be putting a first-class collection, and that part of the country needs more great art.

Europe has plenty of great art, but little from 19th Century America — so kudos to the Fundacion Juan March for recognizing Durand.

He’s far from our best painter, but he is an important artist nonetheless.

Photo Credits: Courtesy New-York Historical Society (top); Crystal Bridges Museum (bottom).

Three, as they say, is a trend — and we’ve got more than three recent examples of celebrity art exhibits, a distressing phenomenon. Especially, as in some cases, where galleries or companies are intertwined in the organization.

Let me say at the outset that I believe that some people are “twice talented”: Some people do achieve notable success in one area only to be recognized for their talent in another area, too — scientists, say, who can really play the piano at a professional level.

So it may be that Dennis Hopper, Leonard Nimoy and Jessica Lange are great photographers, and perhaps Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and Bob Dylan really can paint. But I doubt that any of their work would be shown in museums, as they have been, are, or will soon be, if they weren’t celebrities already.

Hopper’s show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has been well-covered in the media — thanks also to the mini-celebrity status of museum director Jeffery Deitch. It’s supposedly curated by Julian Schnabel, but my sources say that at least two dealers — Tony Shrafrazi and Fred Hoffman — also had a hand in the organization.

Nimoy got his own lift recently when The New York Times featured him big-time in an article about his Secret Selves show at MASS MoCA:

…it is Mr. Nimoy’s first solo show at a major museum…Joseph C. Thompson, the director of Mass MoCA, writes, a little loftily, that despite a “haunting overabundance of id,” the photographs remind him of “caryatids — columns that cross-dress as figural sculpture.”

More important, the article continues: “…most [of the subjects] were rounded up by Richard Michelson, who owns a local gallery and is Mr. Nimoy’s primary dealer.” An example of Nimoy’s photos is at right.  

Last fall, the National Gallery of Denmark said it would display about 100 of Dylan’s works, including 30 large-scale acylic paintings, this coming fall, according to Reuters. Interestingly, the article said, “Bob Dylan’s visual artistic practice has only been discussed by art historians to a limited extent so critical examination and interpretation are called for,” [Kasper] Monrad said in a statement released by Dylan’s Columbia Records label.” The record label made the announcement? Monrad is the Gallery’s chief curator.

Dylan’s works, btw, were first shown in 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz museum in Chemnitz, Germany. They went on view last year at a commercial gallery in London. That’s his Man on A Bridge above left.

On to the Rolling Stone: Beginning Sept. 21, the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio will show 30 paintings and 22 drawings by the English rock ‘n’ roll musician Ronni Wood. Some of the paintings, according to The Independent, portray Mick Jagger and Keith Richards performing onstage. In one, “Beggars Banquet,” he shows “the rockers’ notorious wild parties, showing them in a Bacchanalian state of revelry.”

Butler director Dr. Louis Zona said: “Wood is a most accomplished painter whose work demonstrates a wonderful knowledge of the medium, outstanding technical abilities and an extraordinarily creative mind.”

A sample of that super talent, which looks akin to a painting of Elvis on velvet, is at left.

Lange, of course, had a show at the George Eastman House last year (see here), and seems slightly less egregious.

Who out there would argue that these artists are more deserving of shows that the many more fine, unshown, and unknown talents practicing art? 

Where are museum and curatorial standards?

Photo credits: Courtesy of Columbia Records (top); of MASS MoCA (middle); of Ronni Wood (bottom).