Archives for November 2011

Tonight all eyes will be on the sale of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, which needs to score as well, or better, as Christie’s did last night: $247.6 million in sales, with 90% of the lots sold.

People will also be watching to see who bids on the four paintings being sold by the city of Denver and the Clyfford Still Museum — one of the last chances to buy his works — and for  how much. Just as Christie’s front-end loaded its sales last night with works from the collection of Peter Norton, building excitement in the room, so Sotheby’s has scheduled the Still paintings for lots 11 through 14 of a 76-lot sale.

If the four achieve their top estimates, they’ll yield $71.5 million — the painting at left’s upper estimate is $25 million.

But it’s hard to tell what the museum will get, because it negotiated a $25 million guarantee from Sotheby’s. That means it has to split the upside with the auction house if the total goes higher, but I don’t know the percentage split. I’m not sure I would have done that, but we’ll see tonight.

(See more about those Still works here, on YouTube, a preview by Anthony Grant.)

Meanwhile, back at Christie’s, the deaccessioning continues on November 22, at its The Gilded Age: 500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe. I’ve already mentioned that the Cleveland Museum of Art announced that it will be selling 24 sculptures in the sale, but that’s not the half of it.

That sale will offer art works from “more than a dozen of America‟s most-respected museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Harvard Art Museums; the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the North Carolina Museum of Art; Louisville‟s Speed Art Museum; and Hartford‟s Wadsworth Atheneum,” Christie’s was pleased to say.

The Huntington, for example, is selling 26 items, including “an assembled George II carved pine room, circa 1730 and later….This impressive room was acquired by Florence M. Quinn on behalf of the Huntington in order to display the collection of English furniture she donated to the museum, and was on public view from 1944-2005. Estimate: $40,000 to $60,000. 

The MIA is also selling a room — “a Louis XVI pale-green and parcel-gilt paneled room circa 1780 and later … Like so many period rooms acquired in the early 20th century, it creates a striking, harmonious whole with its elegant à l’antique plaster lunettes of Bacchic festivities and crisply carved details. Estimate: $50,000 to $100,000.

The Speed is deaccessioning nearly 50 items, including “a splendid commode, circa 1700, with rich marquetry ornamentation of flower-filled vases, rinceaux scrolling foliage and bearded
grotesques, in the fashion of the Louis XIV period for “painting in wood” through marquetry. Estimate: $40,000-60,000. And, “a pair of monumental (12-ft. tall) south European gilded wooden Solomonic columns from the late 17th/early 18th century, ornately covered with training grapevines.” Estimate: $10,000-20,000.

The Corcoran is selling 20 pieces of Italian Renaissance maiolica, given by U.S. Senator William Andrews Clark, Sr. upon his death in 1925, part of 120 pieces and the rest of the contents of his Fifth Ave. mansion, which contained “more than 100 rooms filled with paintings, sculpture, tapestries and other European works of art.” Each has a separate estimate, with one flask pegged at $40,000 to $60,000.

Those are just examples; who knows what else is for sale from these deaccessions, without perusing the catalogues? There are 403 lots. Helpfully, Christie’s has gathered them together in the catalogue and listed each museum in its table of contents.

My point, as always, is not that nothing should be deaccessioned, but that items to be sold should be announced by the museum in advance.

 

 

Wood, as an art medium, seems to have an identity problem — though I’m not sure why. Think back to Renaissance and Gothic periods, and plenty of superb sculptures were made of wood. Among the best artists, one of my favorites, is Tilman Riemenschneider.

But, later this week, on Nov. 11, what was once known as the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia — surely a name that relegated the output of artists there to craft, not art — becomes the Center for Art in Wood. “Ducks Unlimited” — by which I mean a great, short, symbolic name — it is not.

Well, it is earnest. And the center — which is also moving to a new location, at 141 N. 3rd Street in Philadelphia — has a worthy mission, namely “leading the growth, awareness, appreciation and promotion of artists and their creation and design of art in wood and wood in combination with other materials.” When we hear “wood” we shouldn’t just think of bowls and chairs.

The center begins its new life with a 25th anniversary exhibition of objects selected from its collection of more than 1,000 art works, dating from the 1970’s to today. All have been acquired or are promised gifts. Exhibition curator Gerard Brown, a faculty member at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, arranged the pieces in chapters: Conversations, What is it? (e.g.,What is a bowl?), Materiality, Color and Function, Tool Time, and Sculpture. Among the “star” artists whose work is on view are David Ellsworth (his Lunar Sphere, from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, above), Mark Lindquist, Jack Larimore, Michelle Holzapfel, Garry Knox Bennett and Wendy Murayama.

All that is according to the press release, not on line. (Memo to the center’s powers that be: please include press releases and press contacts on your website. UPDATE: Now some press releases are posted.)

This little history, from the release, also strikes me as condescending toward wood, in general: 

While woodturning on lathes was popular and important in industry, school “shop” classes and home workshops for generations, the idea of using the simple lathe as an artist’s tool is relatively recent. What could it possibly make? The well-known artist David Ellsworth notes that, unlike other fields – such as ceramics, fiber, glass and metal – woodturning did not have an academic or art(ful) base.

It is often said that the foundations for the Center and the idea of seeing turned wood as
a serious art form began with a series of symposia organized by Albert LeCoff, his twin
brother Alan LeCoff, and Palmer Sharpless from 1976 to 1980 at the George School in Newtown, PA….   

There’s no need for such inferiority. This summer, to cite just one example, the MIA displayed Conversations in With Wood: Selections from the Waterbury Collection, and MIA, among other museums, is collecting in this area. (See several lovely examples at that link.)

So welcome to the art world, Center for Art in Wood. Just take the high road, and people will follow.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

 

Walter Pach — art historian, critic, art advisor, champion of modern art, organizer of the landmark 1913 Armory Show — was also an artist.

What kind of art did this man, who advised legendary collectors like Walter Arensberg and John Quinn and put Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase on view — make?

On Friday, for the first time in more than 60 years, you’ll be able to see, and it may be a surprise.

Francis Naumann has turned his 57th St. gallery, in New York, over to The Paintings of Walter Pach, in conjunction with the recent publication of Walter Pach (1883-1958): The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America — the first biography of Pach, published by Penn State Press. It was written by independent scholar and curator Laurette E. McCarthy, who also curated the exhibition and wrote the accompanying catalogue, The Paintings of Walter Pach.

The exhibit, forty-four paintings and watercolors, proceeds chronologically from his student work to work he made in his final years. Here, according to the Naumann website, is how his work evolved:

Pach’s earliest mature works were painted in the bravura style of Impressionism, displaying…the influence of his teachers, William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. While living and working in Italy in the summers of 1907, 1910 and 1912, Pach heeded the advice of Leo Stein…–who believed that anyone interested in modern art should explore its sources in the paintings of the Italian Renaissance…In 1912 he deliberately simplified his imagery and heightened his color palette, yet these changes were incidental when compared to those that took place in his work after the Armory Show. For approximately five years, Pach embraced the most advanced manifestations of the new art coming out of Europe–especially Fauvism and Cubism–and painted among the most vibrant and daringly experimental pictures of his career, excelling especially in his use of watercolor. After 1920, he reverted to a figurative style…

Why would this champion of modernism do that? The description says his work retained some aspects of modernism, but still…

The three works I’ve pasted here date from 1912, 1914 and 1922, top to bottom.  

So Pach, to me, was no great artist. But it’s hard to fathom what was going on in his head — urging people toward modernism, but taking a step backward in his own work.

Guess we’ll have to read the biography to find out. Or maybe readers have theories.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Gallery

 

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, took a big step into the future last night: at a fundraising gala, director Dan L. Monroe (below) announced the “launch” of a $650 million fundraising campaign. That’s a bit of a mischaracterization, though, because the money-raising has been going on since 2006 — that was the “quiet period,” as fundraisers say, and the PEM has already received or received pledges for $550 million of that total.

This is big news, with a very admirable component: $350 million of the total — more than half — will go into the museum’s endowment.

As we have seen at other museum expansions, too much emphasis has been placed on raising money for buildings, and not enough for sustaining the museum. Kudos to Monroe and PEM trustees for getting it right. Once that full $350 million has been added to the current $280 million endowment (by 2016), PEM’s endowment will total $630 million. That’s hefty.

And there’s more: $100 million of the new funds will go to “support creative new installations of the collection, several infrastructure improvements to existing facilities and other advancement initiatives,” according to the press release. PEM’s collection current exceeds 1.8 million objects.

That leaves $200 million for expanding PEM’s buildings. Galleries will grow by 75,000 sq. ft, with 60,000 for the permanent collection (if I’ve done the arithmetic properly) and 15,000 for changing exhibition galleries. The museum is also adding a new restaurant and a roof garden (love that!), plus public program and education space. It will also improve its “collections storage, exhibition processing and conservation functions.”

Rick Mather Architects, of London, has been hired to do the job. Mather is known for its work on the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts here in the U.S.

PEM announced no names of donors — and no naming gifts — but spokeswoman April Swieconek tells me ” that sort of thing will come later.”  

When the press release goes out tomorrow, I’ll link to it.

UPDATE: Here’s the promised link.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of PEM

 

 

Just for Friday fun: you’ve read about the brilliant BBC radio series and book, A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum (here’s a link to a recent New York Times article). In it, MacGregor explains how these items, from a two-million-year-old African stone chopping tool to a credit card, reveal social and political history. That Aztec serpent at right is one of them.

We won’t hear the series here — sorry to say — but the book was published in the U.S. this week.

Which brought MacGregor to The Colbert Report on Monday night. It’s a short segment, and well worth the 4 or 5 minutes it takes. MacGregor, ever earnest, nonetheless fares well with the ever kidding Colbert, who starts out with a probing questions about museums in general. MacGregor’s answer was beautiful. 

Here’s the link.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the British Museum