Archives for October 2011

Amazing: just when you think nothing is secret any more, something comes along that is.

In 1997, I wrote a Page One article for the New York Times headlined: “Anonymous Gifts for Art, So Women Creating It Aren’t.”

It was about a foundation called Anonymous Was a Woman, which was started by a philanthropist to help redress the discrimination in the art world against women, and also to help make up for the elimination of National Endowment for the Arts grants to individual artists. 

Reporting the article, I learned that the founder of the AWAW foundation was a woman “who insists on her privacy,” and I respected that. (Ok, I asked around then, and I have my theories now, but I never got a definitive answer and I’ve never disclosed my guess.) 

She is still a secret officially, too. And today, the foundation announced this year’s winners of the $25,000 prize, which goes to:

…women artists over 45 years of age and at a critical juncture in their lives or careers, to continue to grow and pursue their work. The Award is given in recognition of an artist’s accomplishments, artistic growth and the quality of her work. It is not need-based.

They are (descriptions theirs):

• Eleanor Antin, Artist
• Linda Besemer, Painter
• Dara Birnbaum, Visual Artist
• Andrea Bowers, Artist
• Ann Hamilton, Artist / Installation
• Yoko Inoue, Visual Artist
• Jungjin Lee, Artist / Photographer
• Mary Miss, Artist
• Sheila Pepe, Artist (her Mind the Gap, at the Brooklyn Museum, 2005, is at right)
• Judith Shea, Sculptor (her Crawl, 1983, at MoMA, is above) 

This year’s awards brings the total number of winners to 161. Like MacArthur grants, they are notified “out of the blue” – someone else (critics, curators, previous winners) nominates them, without their knowledge, and those nominations are assessed by judges who also are supposed to remain unknown.

It’s sad that we still need grants like these to level the playing field, but it seems that we do, as Jerry Saltz has written about the lack of women artists in MoMA’s collection suggests. That’s just one initiative that’s taken place in the last year or two.

 

Give Sotheby’s credit for salesmanship: today, announcing the sale of a painting by Rufino Tamayo, which is being deaccessioned by the Museum of Modern Art, the auction house called Watermelon Slices “a major work…depicting one of his signature themes.”

Estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million, it will be in the Nov. 16 auction of Latin American Art. Carmen Melian, the Latin American expert at Sotheby’s, said “This is one of the most important Tamayo watermelon paintings to appear on the market for several years. Collectors are sure to gravitate towards a work of this iconic subject matter from an important period that also boasts such distinguished provenance.”

Oh, yes, and Tamayo painted the work the same year he participated in the Venice Biennale. And, according to Reuters, “Sotheby’s said the work held a personal significance for the artist because as a young man he helped his aunt sell the fruit at a Mexico City market stand.”

And what does MoMA, which acquired the work in 1953, just three years after it was painted, have to say? Is it just a little bit embarassed by all that?

MoMA says nothing, on the record. But the party line is that MoMA is always reevalutating its collection, deaccessioning things to raise funds for purchases that will expand the scope and breadth of its holdings — and has done so since its founding.

MoMA’s Tamayo holdings include four paintings — Woman, 1938; Animals, 1941; Woman with Pineapple, 1941;and Girl Attacked by a Strange Bird, 1947 (at right), plus nearly 80 of his prints and illustrated books.

I am not against all deaccessioning, as regular readers know. And this is nowhere near Tamayo’s best work, even if one uses the auction market as the evaluator. In May, 2008, Christie’s sold his 1945 painting Trovador for $7.2 million. 

But I do wonder what, if anything, in particular prompted this sale. What does MoMA want to buy? 

Or was the department really just house-cleaning?

It is the deaccessioning sales like those of the Albright-Knox a few years ago, which traded in ancient works for funds to buy contemporary ones, that most trouble me.

Some museums — the good ones — keep money raised by deaccessions within the department that is selling works.

Therefore, to cite one recent example, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston plans to use money raised from its coming sales of eight European paintings, estimated at $16.6 to $24.3 million, to buy a work by Caillebotte.

I imagine, given its new wing for contemporary art, which houses a small collection full of gaps, that the MFA might have wanted to use those millions to take advantage of the rare opportunity coming up on Nov. 9 — the sale of four works by Clyfford Still. This is probably the last chance for any museum to buy a painting by the AbEx painter (since he left all of the rest, some 94% of his output, intact for the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver).

Now I’m sure the will of George Shackelford, MFA’s about-to-depart curator of European paintings, had a lot to do with this. He’s had his eye on that Caillebotte for a long time, a source at the MFA told me.

But it’s also good policy, preventing — to a certain extent — sales meant to accommodate changing fashions.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Sotheby’s (top) and MoMA (bottom) 

 

Today, a new biography of Vincent van Gogh lands in bookstores (officially), and it is bound to cause discussion and debate — not to mention bring more attention to this beloved painter.

Van Gogh: A Life, written by Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, takes apart the story that van Gogh committed suicide, and instead pins his death on a couple of boys van Gogh befriended, sort of, in his loneliness –even though they relentlessly mocked him. It wasn’t intentional — just accidental.

Naifeh and Smith, years ago, wrote Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, which was also controversial in the art world, but won the 1991 Pulitzer for biography. 

The van Gogh bio weighs in at 976 pages, which I haven’t yet read, but their prodigious research was outlined on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes. Morley Safer was given two segments, instead of the usual one, to talk with the authors about their theory, their methods, their evidence and their remaining questions. They admit that their theory has loose ends, but fewer than the suicide story.

I came away from 60 Minutes thinking they are on to something that, unfortunately, is unlikely to be proven.

The van Museum, which cooperated with the authors (hat tip to Reuters) gave them access to previously unstudied materials and posted a statement on its website saying, in part:

The authors studied all the available documents relating to Van Gogh, as well as the relevant literature and archives. They also frequently consulted with Van Gogh specialists around the world. As a leading centre of expertise, the Van Gogh Museum made a major contribution to this project. Furthermore, two of its staff members provided comments on the first draft of the manuscript.

The publication of this biography represents a major contribution to our understanding of Vincent van Gogh’s life and work, with intriguing new perspectives. 

Leo Jansen, a curator at the Van Gogh Museum, comments, ‘…There have always been unresolved issues surrounding Van Gogh’s suicide, including such fundamental issues as the place of the incident and why Van Gogh decided to commit suicide just then. What is more, the gun was never found. Naifeh and Smith re-evaluate the known facts and present the hypothesis that two boys were involved in a mysterious incident that led to the fatal shot. This is an intriguing interpretation, but plenty of questions remain unanswered…”

60 Minutes hasn’t always been great in its coverage of art, but I comment not only the substance but the production of these two segments. They are lavishly illustrated by van Gogh’s paintings, including the lovely one above, of Adeline Ravoux, the daughter of the owner of Auberge Ravoux, where he died (it’s in a private collection).

Here are the links to Part One and Part Two. Yes, you have to suffer through commericials, but — for me at least — it was worth it. 

 

 

Heaven knows, many museums are struggling with their identities nowadays. Some don’t even know what they are or want to be, it sometimes seems to me.

I got to thinking about this again when I read an article about the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, which is about to adopt a new logo as part of a rebranding effort.

So let’s just look at the two.

Can you tell which one says that the museum is more artsy, less corporate? More bold, more open, less authoritative?

Yes, you can, actually. The museum told The Oregonian that the logo on the right above was more appropriate for its recent past, when it was raising money in capital campaigns and engaged in mounting big, blockbuster exhibitions.

Ziba, which developed the new logo, on the left, thinks its creation resembles an Ellsworth Kelly abstract work, and is more contemporary than the old one. You can read more about why it thinks that way, as well as the process Ziba used here in The Oregonian and in the press release here.

But if the commenters to the article are any guide, PAM has its work cut out. They are, at the moment, almost all negative. “Is the Portland Art Museum – PREGNANT?” one asked. Others questioned the spending of $50,000 for this, which — while much less than full price — isn’t “pro bono” as mentioned in the article.

What this mostly says to me is that people don’t like change, no matter what they say. So museums — or any institutions, for that matter — need to be really clear about their reasons for changing. And motives. A change from the past isn’t enough; there ought to be a positive reason, too.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum

 

A postscript to my recent post on Gerhard Richter: one of his candle paintings set a record for the artist at Christie’s evening sale of contemporary art in London on Friday.

Kerze (Candle), from 1982, fetched £10,457,250, or just over $16.4 million. The pre-sale estimate was £6,000,000 – £9,000,000

 — which shows once again that aggressive estimates often discourage, rather than encourage, buyers.

After the sale on Friday, Josh Baer, who publishes BaerFaxt, wrote: “Did anyone but me notice that the Richter candle painting which sold for $16.5 million (usd) had been on offer this winter for $15 million … by a Danish gallery via the VIP Art Fair (online)??”

Good spotting.

I’ve always likes Richter’s Candles, and but never knew how many he painted until I read Judd Tully’s report of the sale on ArtInfo. Tully cites Francis Outred, the head of postwar and contemporary art for Christie’s in Europe saying there are 27 in the series “with three destroyed, seven in museums, and the rest held privately.” Of those, 12 are single-candle canvases like the just-sold painting. 

Tully quoted the previous record for Richter as  £7,972,500 ($15,843,600), set when another Candle, from 1983, was sold at Sotheby’s London in February 2008.

Some remarked that the Richter retrospective, Panorama, on view at the Tate Modern had affected the price — it includes another single-candle painting that is supposedly inferior to this one. But I don’t know — Richter is revered, and this was a great example of a series that he said, according to the Tate, that “when making them he ‘experienced feelings to do with contemplation, remembering, silence and death.’ ”

A universal theme.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s