Archives for August 2011

East or West? Which culture started art’s love affair with nature? How many curators does it take to provide the answers?

A soon-to-open exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art doesn’t quite ask those questions, partly because some of answer is very clear, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

It was the East, of course. Landscapes East/Landscapes West: Representing Nature from Mount Fugi to Canyon de Chelly opens on Aug. 27 with this premise:

…The widely differing forms and styles of these images [by artists in different times and places] reflect not merely the diverse scenery artists encountered, but also their artistic materials, cultural attitudes to nature, and individual creativity.

…By the end of the 10th century, landscape had become the backbone of Chinese painting, a role it continues to play today. Interest in landscape arose later in the West, where it was first used as a background for figures, often in Biblical settings. In 17th century Europe, however, landscape painting emerged as a distinct genre, and by the 19th, it came to rival figure painting in importance. During the middle of the 19th century photography, especially in America, embraced landscape as a central theme. … 

Great subject. If you can’t get to Kansas City, you can explore it on the N-A website, where a brief summary shows the exhibition broken down into “ways of seeing,” “humans and nature,” “a sense of place,” and “artists’ practices.” Or just jump to the image captions, and look at the sample artworks all at once. I couldn’t comment on the show, other than its subject, from afar, based on such a small sample of images.

Rather, I have another reason to highlight this exhibition: It’s the result of a collaboration among six curatorial departments at the N-A. They weren’t named in the press release, but as the show includes paintings, drawing, prints and photographs, from Asia, America and Europe, from the 15th Century through now, you can guess.

This is the direction museums are evolving: breaking down silos and devising exhibitions that may have a closer connection to real life and broader appeal.

It goes without saying that that would be a good thing, so I hope this exhibition lives up to its billing.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum

 

Another stamp is coming soon that honors an artist, and that is always good news! (Read about stamps honoring AbEx artists here and industrial designers here.)

On Aug. 24, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a 44-cent “Forever” stamp depicting Edward Hopper’s The Long Leg, a sailboat he painted around 1930 near Long Point Light, Provincetown, MA. 

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens owns the painting, and the stamp will be unveiled there on the 24th, though it is being issued officially on the same day on Cape Cod, according to the USPS press release. This is the 10th stamp in Postal Service’s American Treasures stamp series, which was started in 2001. Last year’s choice was Homer’s Boys in a Pasture.

It will print only 60 million of the Hopper stamp, so don’t delay if you’d like to buy some. I couldn’t get Homer stamps during the last few months.

I’ve had artists’ stamps on my mind a bit since I mentioned that Lyonel Feininger has a stamp in Germany, but not here. A little later, when writing about Johannes Sveinsson Kjarval, whose picture is on Iceland’s 2000 krona bank note, I stumbled upon a very interesting website. Called Paper Exhibition, and maintained by a collector of money, it shows who’s on various bank notes around the world, by category — including one for artists (not just visual artists).

Because of the Euro, most are now gone, but there’s a 1975 20,000 Italian lire note showing Titian,  a 1970 10,000 lire note of Michelangelo (at left). Belgium honored James Ensor in 1995 with a 500 franc note, the Netherlands showed Frans Hals on a 1968 10 gulden note, and Italy struck again in 2000 with a 100,000 lire note showing Caravaggio.

Wouldn’t it be great to have them back (but, no, I’m not advocating the breakup of the Eurozone, just a return of artists on money)?

Paper Money, btw, also shows money honoring writers, scientists, and other categories of the accomplished.

I don’t want to see artists on U.S. money — do you? But I do like the stamps, and anything like that (shopping bags?) that gets great images into the public’s view.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the USPS (top) and Paper Exhibition (bottom)

 

Hard to believe, perhaps (given my two previous posts), but I have been holding back on one aspect of my trip to Iceland because I wrote an article about it — just published in Newsweek International. It’s about Harpa, the new the Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Center.

Harpa (pictured below) has its grand opening on Saturday. Along with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, performers include Chinese acrobats, a wide selection of pop, jazz and classical artists, and outdoor events on the plaza. In the fall, Gustavo Dudamel will conduct, Bjork will sing, Larry King will attempt to be funny (he has a new comedy routine), and many others are booked into one of four halls in Harpa. They range in size from 195 seats to 1,600 seats.

But I am guessing that RCA readers are more interested in the visual aspects, and would like to know that the facade was designed by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. As I wrote for Newsweek:

…it’s made of more than 10,000 glass windows that reference the columnar basalt common in Iceland’s terrain. The south façade is [Eliasson’s installation], a double wall of glass pieces that catches the sunlight and acts like a prism, creating colorful blocks of light on Harpa’s floor and walls. The interior is intentionally spare, suggesting to visitors that they look out at the surrounding sea, mountains, and city–an especially pleasant activity from the multitiered bar descending along the south façade [pictured, top].

That lighting effect is hard to photograph, but it’s real. I’ve seen it. As for the architecture, well, you might like to know that Harpa recently was awarded a World Architecture prize. The building sits across a highway from Reykjavik’s center, which is older and quainter in style, and thus it does not fight the city’s character. Overall, I liked it.

Harpa was partially open when I was there, but it was offering some evening concerts, and I sampled one — two singers accompanied by a pianits — in the smallest concert hall. The acoustics seemed fine to me. I will look forward to hearing what the critics say.

Photo Credits: © Judith H. Dobrzynski

 

Don’t believe that Facebook is a complete waste of time. I often learn things there, and yesterday I found a request by a friend that read: “Does anyone know of a good guide to characters from the New Testament, one that would be helpful for heathens viewing Italian art?”

He is not alone, as The Art Newspaper said in December 2009. Writing about the new medieval and Renaissance galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Anna Somers Cocks noted that, judging by a survey the museum took of art college students (who had some pretty uninformed views all-around):

…the real wastelands of ignorance were revealed when it came to the stories, theology and liturgy of Christianity, and since 80% of these collections are religious in one way or another, the V&A realised that it had a challenge ahead if it wanted the art to be understood and appreciated.

So I was very curious when someone immediately replied on Facebook with this link, to a site called “Christian Iconography” created and maintained by Augusta State University in Augusta, Ga. I decided to try it out, and — after an initial glitch — was pleasantly surprised.

The glitch first: when you type in a term to search, say, Saint Sebastian, the results are a blue page with white boxes and unreadable yellow letters. Do not be deterred. Just mouse over the space that looks like a top line, above the yellow, and a headline appears in blue. “Saint Sebastian Iconography” was the first box — click and you get a wonderful summary with illustrations. Another box is labled “Holbein – The Martyrdom of St. Stephen,” but that’s a typo. The painting shows St. Sebastian, arrows and all. I tried again with St. Cecilia, getting a general page plus other, like the link to the St. Cecilia altarpiece in the Uffizi. “Lamb” brings you St. Agnes, St. John the Baptist, Lamb of God, and more.

It’s not perfect. I plugged in “saint with a book” and got several responses but none were St. Jerome. Nobody’s perfect, I guess.  You can also browse a list of names, and at the bottom of the home page, links to other sites about Christian images. Who knew?

But back to the museum dilemma, because not everyone will go through the same trouble to learn as my Facebook friend.

For that, based in The Art Newspaper’s account, I commend the V&A. I haven’t been to London in a while, so I haven’t see their Medieval and Renaissance galleries. But Cocks describes the process and the results at the V&A, and says they are “in no way do these galleries dumb down.”

I’m going to believe her, until I hear evidence otherwise.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Augusta State University

 

 

Today’s New York Times has an article by Neal Gabler that contains a few provocative statements and one stunning remark relevant to the art world. (The piece itself has more than one shocker, imho, but I like to stay away from politics, religion and the like on this blog.)

Headlined “The Elusive Big Idea,” Gabler posits that we’re living in an “increasingly post-idea world” because we don’t care about big ideas any more. That’s debatable on many levels, but I’m going straight to the sentence on art:

An artist friend of mine recently lamented that he felt the art world was adrift because there were no longer great critics like Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg to provide theories of art that could fructify the art and energize it.

Whoa, I say. That’s an astonishing statement, partially true because there is no one, or two, critics who hold such sway as they did. But, I’d argue that 1) the art world is a much larger, more global, more varied place today, with more media qualifying as art, than it was then, and no critic could have such power today; and 2) who’d want two men to hold such power over what’s good, what’s bad, what’s retro, and what’s the future? Didn’t they curtail the rise of many wonderful artists that didn’t do AbEx? Wouldn’t that be just like a return to the academy, so strongly rejected in the 19th century?

Besides, why should the critics articulate the theories of art? Isn’t that a prerogative of artists? Would you want a return to those bad old days, with powerful arbiters?

Gabler made two more points, not about meant to be about art, but which could be:

The post-idea world has been a long time coming, and many factors have contributed to it. There is the retreat in universities from the real world, and an encouragement of and reward for the narrowest specialization rather than for daring — for tending potted plants rather than planting forests.

This is a complaint I hear regularly about students of art history, the people who go on to teach, write, curate and lead art institutions. I don’t know how that can be changed, but perhaps the powers-that-be in art scholarship will read Gabler’s article, recognize the syndrome and think about changing it.

And, Gabler wrote:

There is the eclipse of the public intellectual in the general media by the pundit who substitutes outrageousness for thoughtfulness…

Are artists guilty of the same thing? Are they encouraged along that line by critics, gallerists, and curators? It’s no secret that outrageousness gets attention. Think of the Chapman Brothers, Maurizio Cattalan, Takashi Murakami, on and on… Would you include them among today’s more thoughtful artists?

All worth thinking about.