Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Archives for January 2013

The Verdict On “Doubt,” The Opera — UPDATED

ows_135938788158566To followup on my recent Cultural Conversation with John Patrick Shanley: “Doubt” premiered at the Minneapolis Opera on Saturday night and the reviews are starting to come in. I’m not surprised that they are mostly positive. For one, who’s going to criticize Shanley’s writing, even if it’s a new form for him? The reviews I’ve read barely mention the new elements he had promised, and delivered on, let alone comment on whether they work well.

Mostly, the critics comment on the music and the singing.

Here’s the Minneapolis StarTribune review,

“…Cuomo’s music is of quiet power, most moving when most intimate; he knows how to insinuate what cannot be spoken. Though unmistakably American in sound, with echoes of Copland, Bernstein and John Adams, he avoids both pop cliché and music-theater razzmatazz. If Cuomo’s vocal lines sometimes seem awkward, his pacing is remarkably deft…Alive to Sister Aloysius’ steeliness, vulnerability and quirky humor, Christine Brewer [right, in the photo at left] makes her one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary opera. This is a great performance by a consummate singer; that it comes in the context of a new work makes it all the more extraordinary….”

20130124__130128ae-doubt1_400Here’s the St. Paul Pioneer Press review, which says in part:

“…Douglas Cuomo’s music serves to expand the emotional palette of Shanley’s words, layering levels of meaning onto exchanges and adding extra shadings to an already complex tale….It’s impressively sung and staged, its story’s ambiguity enhanced by Cuomo’s conflicted music. Yet the angular, often discomfiting character of that music might make it a tough listen for some….His melodies take many an unpredictable turn, single syllables sail in on a plethora of notes, and seemingly inconsequential phrases are repeated for evident emphasis, while others of relative importance are sung simultaneously and swept away in swells of sound…”

And here’s the AP review, published by Salon: “… The opera, with a libretto by Shanley and music by Douglas J. Cuomo, makes for a gripping 2 1/2 hours of theater. …The loudest applause deservedly went to Christine Brewer, the distinguished American soprano who may have found the role of a lifetime as Sister Aloysius…”

So the big winner seems to be Brewer. That’s Denyce Graves at right, playing the role of Mrs. Miller.

UPDATE, 1/30: The Wall Street Journal has weighed in; it, too, likes the singing and the “spare and clever set,” but doesn’t think the music rises to the libretto.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the StarTribune (top) and the Pioneer Press (bottom) 

 

A Short Message About Museums And Antiquities

Hugh Eakin has it exactly right in his long piece in today’s New York Times, headlined The Great Giveback. In it, he chronicles what has been happening at American museums regarding the antiquities in their collections. While some of those objects have clearly been obtained under suspicious circumstances — and have now been returned, as they should be – many do not have proven problems. Yet museums have fallen victim to what amounts to extortion some foreign governments — sometimes voluntarily.

Ka-NeferNeferMeanwhile, the looting that these cases were supposed to stop has gone on, possibly getting worse. And many of the stolen objects are being purchased by collectors in other countries that do not care about the looting.

I normally refrain from writing about these cases lest I be accused of conflict of interest because of my consulting work. However, I don’t believe that prohibits me from citing an excellent article. He is a reasonable voice on a topic that attracts extreme positions.

Or from making another point: far too many journalists have bought the line of the “country of origin” claimants and archaeologists without examining the circumstances, the dynamics and the politics at work. The same thing happened, on occasion, in Nazi looting cases. It was far easier to buy the arguments of, and be sympathetic to, the claimants than it was to report out “the best available version of the truth,” to quote that line about the purpose of journalism.

Not all of the claimants of antiquities or World War II loot deserved that bias toward the “underdog.” Some are taking advantage of a complicated situation.

Let me close with Eakin’s final paragraph, pitch-perfect:

Looting is a terrible scourge, and museums must be held to the highest ethical standards so they don’t unwittingly abet it. But they are supposed to be in the business of collecting and preserving art from every era, not giving it away. By failing to deal with the looting problem a decade ago, museums brought a crisis upon themselves. But in zealously responding to trophy hunting from abroad, museums are doing little to protect ancient heritage while making great art ever less available to their own patrons.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum via the NYT

 

While I’m Speaking of Old Masters, Here’s An Acquisition

The San Diego Museum of Art is well-known, deservedly, for its collection of  Spanish art — including work by such masters as El Greco, Zurbarán, Goya, and Sorolla. The other day, it announced an acquisition that complements those works: It’s a Spanish baroque sculpture, a polychromed wood piece by Pedro de Mena (1628–1688).

The museum calls Mena “among the greatest sculptors of the Spanish Baroque.” This work depicts San Diego de Alcalá and was created around 1665. Nice touch, buying a saint whose name is on the city!

SD-MenaJohn Marciari, Curator of European Art, said in the press release announcing the acquisition that “we have for several years sought a significant piece of Spanish Baroque sculpture to add to the collection. The San Diego is precisely the sort of work we had in mind. Pedro de Mena’s extraordinary realism is the counterpart to our still life by Sánchez Cotán, while the ecstatic expression of the saint reminds one of our great Saint Peter by El Greco.”

Luckily for the museum, it had received a $7.4 million bequest from the Estate of Donald W. Shira recently, and drew on those funds for this purchase. It did not disclose the price for the piece, which is more than two feet tall.

Roxana Velásquez, the museum’s director, made the most important point in the release, imho: “Since my arrival, one of my ambitions has been to build on the great collection of European art already in San Diego. The new work by Pedro de Mena strengthens our collection of Spanish art. Combined with the acquisition of the Portrait of Don Luis de Borbón by Anton Raphael Mengs that we acquired last year, we are expanding important holdings for San Diego.”

It’s important for directors to see their collections that way — creating distinguishing collection, not like everyone else’s — and equally important for them to articulate that to the world.

More details about the artist and the work here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the San Diego Art Museum

 

 

Le Brun Masterpiece Discovered At The Ritz

Here’s another one of those you-can’t-make-this-up stories, which I received in a press release this morning:

A previously unrecorded painting by Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), official painter to the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV, has been discovered hanging in the Coco Chanel Suite at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris by the London-based fine art consultant Joseph Friedman. Formerly Curator of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s residence in Paris, Friedman was advising the hotel on its current €200 million renovation project when he came across the work. The painting, thought to depict The Sacrifice of Polyxena, will go on public view in New York at Christie’s from 26 to 29 January 2013 before being auctioned by Christie’s in Paris on 15 April 2013 (estimate €300,000-500,000).

LeBrunThe Ritz should be embarrassed, but it’s clearly not. Less than two  hours after I received that, Christie’s sent out its own release, noting “Occasionally, the biggest surprises are hiding in plain sight.” Then:

…it was not found in a dusty attic, but on prominent display in the heart of Paris, in the most opulent and celebrated hotel in the world, the legendary Hôtel Ritz.  The Ritz archives have not revealed how the painting came to the hotel or when it was first installed in the fabled ‘Coco Chanel Suite’, but it is possible that it was already in the townhouse (built 1705) when it was acquired by César Ritz in 1898.

The Sacrifice of Polyxena was painted soon after Le Brun returned to Paris from three years in Rome, where he studied the paintings of Raphael and came under the influence of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). This work clearly shows Poussin’s influence.

Sue Bond’s press release, the first quoted above, has more — she represents Friedman. At left is how the painting looked in the Chanel suite and what it really looks like.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s

Columbia University’s Big Mistake? Or Misconceptions About Deaccessioning?

Writing on The Nation‘s website, Jon Wiener outlines the tale of how Columbia University stupidly sold a Rembrandt in 1974 that’s now worth multiples of the price it got. Right from the start, though, he generalizes, saying the story “has many lessons, starting with the folly of universities selling art to make money.”

But hold on a minute.

RembrantManArmsAkimboThe painting in question is Man with Arms Akimbo, from 1658. at left. Columbia sold it for “more than” $1 million to a private collector, which in today’s dollar’s, Wiener says, would be a little over $4 million. Yet it carried a price tag of $47 million at Maastricht last year, and dealer Otto Naumann is currently offering it at his gallery. Go here to see the painting in higher-res than this website, as well as its provenance.

The painting was given to Columbia by George Huntington Hartford II in 1958. Columbia sold it to “Harold Diamond, Inc., New York, from whom [it was] acquired by John Seward Johnson (1895 – 1983).” It passed “By inheritance to his third wife, Barbara (“Basia”) Piasecka Johnson (b. 1937),” who consigned it to Christie’s where it sold in December, 2009. “A private collector in the United States” bought it there — said by Wiener to be Steven Wynn, who paid $33 million for it. Naumann bought it from him.

At Columbia, the painting hung in the president’s office, which was in the administration building, which was occupied in 1968 by students protesting the Vietnam War (and called barbarians). They,  however, protected the painting. So Wiener writes:

A painting that should have been on display disappeared from public view for the next forty years—in exchange for which the university got $1 million. So who were the real barbarians?

Universities selling art made headlines in 2009, when Brandeis announced it would sell off the paintings in the university’s Rose Art Museum, including works by de Kooning, Warhol and Lichtenstein, to make money for the school. Outraged protests from the university community and the art world led the trustees to back away from the decision. Columbia’s 1975 sale provides an early example of the practice.

Later he says, as another lesson:

Also: selling old masters eventually makes the seller look foolish, because the prices always go up.

Actually, Wiener looks a bit foolish himself. Old Master prices, as you know, do not “always go up.”

He forgets, too, that Columbia doesn’t have an art museum — unlike Brandeis and his other generalized colleges. Perhaps that’s because it’s located in NYC, where art museums are plentiful and great and likely to outshine anything Columbia could have put together.

He forgets, too, where that painting was as a result — in the president’s office. Hardly on public view.

Did Columbia make a bad deal? Perhaps. But I’d have to see what other Rembrandts were selling for in 1974 — comparables are what counts, not current prices.

More important, as far as I can tell from his story, Columbia’s tale has little relevance to other colleges and universities, with art museums, and deaccessioning. Rather than shed light, Wiener has simply confused the issue. The issue needs light, not heat.