Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Judith H. Dobrzynski

Misunderstood and Maligned

Poor Grant Wood. Seventy-years after his death, his work is widely known–thanks to American Gothic–but equally widely misunderstood, under-appreciated and, recalling the old insult to George W. Bush,misunderestimated. Wanda Corn tried to set the record straight in 1983, but if her excellent exhibition convinced some people–and I think it did–the effect didn’t last. That’s because, I believe, that Wood can’t shake the satirization of American Gothic.

So now comes Barbara Haskell, who with Sarah Humphreville has organized an even larger exploration of Wood’s oeuvre at the Whitney Museum of American Art, an exhibition called Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables. I reviewed it for The Wall Street Journal in a piece published last Thursday, and I can only hope that this time minds will be changed for the long run. He is, as I wrote, “far more complicated than his reputation as the sentimental bard of an idealized rural life and an evangelist for a pure strain of American art allows.” And:

Rather, she asserts, Wood regularly infused his meticulously planned paintings with anxiety, alienation or, at least, ambiguity. As for his call for a distinctly American art, that was more a matter of subject than style. Wood himself emulated European artists in creating his works—but they were always about American people, scenes, values and identity.

Haskell gives plenty of evidence–about 120 works, including early decorative objects, early Impressionist works, drawings, book covers and paintings that span his entire career. But she also concedes that Wood created art that can be read straightforwardly, too–his silver works, murals, those illustrations and so on. They are simply visual delights. Many portraits have only a hint of melancholy, while some other paintings are laden with significant details that can be read as signs or messages.

That’s another plus for him, btw–his work can be read on many levels.

The 2010 biography of Wood by R. Tripp Evans, sees many signs of homosexuality in his works–which not something Haskell dealt much with, per se. She acknowledges that Wood’s art was influenced by his sexual repressed, closeted self, though. I don’t believe that Wood ever never acknowledged that he was gay–so her approach strikes me as reasonable. Read what you want! In Spring Turning, for example, Corn saw breasts; Haskell see buttocks, and so do I. But I do not see in the portrait of his sister, who is holding a chick and piece of fruit, a sign of anal sex, as some have.

Many things struck me as I examined this show–some I mention in the review and some only here. One thing was very, very clear, however–technically, Wood is a great painter. That’s not damning him with faint praise (read my review, please), but it is acknowledging something that has not often been mentioned about him.

You know what American Gothic looks like, so I am posting here three other paintings that I really like. From the top: Appraisal, Plaid Sweater and Young Corn. See many more at the Whitney.

 

 

Take Another Trip! The Paston Treasure Beckons

I’ll bet most, if not all, of you have never heard of a large painting called The Paston Treasure, c. 1663. Neither had I, until I saw a little picture of this 8 feet by 5.4 feet work. As I guess then, it’s a real gem, a unique painting in more than one way. It’s now on view at the Yale Center for British Art–and worth the trip if you are anywhere nearby.

The painting–detail at left (and elsewhere) and pasted just below–probably by an unknown Dutch itinerant painter, anchors an excellent exhibition. But I chose to write about the painting itself in The Wall Street Journal‘s Masterpiece column, what was published last Saturday (I know, I know–but I’ve been really busy). The headline and deck were A Painting Framed in Mystery: ‘The Paston Treasure’ flaunts a family’s wealth while meditating on death.

First, here’s the “nut graf(s)”:

It looks like an overstuffed jumble, replete with vessels, timepieces, musical instruments, animals, fruits, flowers and more, gathered from the West Indies, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Africa and the Americas, as well as Europe. But all these possessions—which would have been on display at the Pastons’ seat, Oxnead Hall, or kept in a locked cabinet of curiosities known as the “best closet”—represent a “microcosm of the known world.”

…The painting is a unique combination of still life, ostentatious banquet painting, allegory of the senses and continents, portraiture, animal painting and—most of all—the vanitas genre. Beneath the bounty is a message: That drooping flower, the ripe fruit, the candle stub convey the fragility of life and inevitability of death. Other objects allude to the fleeting nature of fortune,…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can read the rest online–how it is a microcosm of the then-known world, in many ways–but there is more to say about this painting and its owners than 800 or so words can contain. A few more bits:

  • The Pastons are famous for another reason. Between 1440 and 1509, they wrote hundreds of letters, which survive as one of the largest personal archives of the 15th century now held by the British Library.
  • The exhibit includes five objects that are in the painting–a pair of silver-gilt flagons, a Strombus shell cup, two nautilus cups and a c. 1660s perfume flask that was made of mother-of pearl sections imported from India that were joined together by silver-gilt cagework, embellished with chains, given a stopper adorned by a gilt shell–all done in London.
  • Those flagons, now in the collection of the Met, were once owned by William Randolph Hearst.
  • One thing I had no room to mention: the Paston treasure includes some stock images, like that lobster, along with real objects owned by the Pastons. This has led art historians to suggest that the unknown artist, now called the Master of the Paston Treasure, may be the artist who created a painting in the show titled Monkeys and Parrots, which was discovered in the research phase of this exhibition in a New York collection. That painting has been attributed to Carstian Luyckx or his circle. But there is, apparently, nothing to suggest that Luyckx was ever near Oxnead, in Norwich, where the Treasure was painted (there is documentation for that). More mystery!
  • Parts of the paintings are faded–that lobster was red–and this may have been exacerbated by the Pastons themselves. Sir Robert was something of an alchemist, as was his daughter Margaret–also explored in the exhibit–and some pigments were developed to family specifications. They have not fared well.
  • The Pastons’ wealth declined and their treasures were sold off within two generations of this painting’s date–that’s why the objects are now so widely dispersed.

There is so much more to explore in this paintings and this exhibition, which won’t come around again. When it closes on May 27, the painting goes back to Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery and the objects return to their current owners. That’s why I say, go.

 

Photo credits: Courtesy of the YCBA

Magnificent Gesu Exhibit: Ask and You Shall Receive

As great projects often do, the amazing exhibition on view at the Fairfield University Art Museum began with an impossible dream. Seeking ideas for a show to mark the university’s 75th anniversary this year, museum director Linda Wolk-Simon convened an exhibition committee, among show members was Xavier Salomon, chief curator at the Frick Collection. Salomon suggested that she ask to borrow Bernini’s great marble bust of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino—which normally resides in the Gesu, the Jesuit’s mother church, in Rome.

The Fairfield museum is located in Bellarmine Hall, after all, and he is the university’s patron saint.

Wolk-Simon thought, they’ll say no—but why not? The bust, created in 1621-24, had never before left Rome. Bernini (1598-1680) was quite young when he carved it.

She was right. The church say no–the first time. She also asked to borrow other things, too, and eventually the church came around and granted four of her requests–and then the rector inquired why she had not requested his favorite item, the bejeweled silver-and-gilt-bronze Cartegloria of Saint Ignatius made by Johann Adolf Gaap in 1699 (detail, right).

And that’s how the museum came to host an international loan exhibition, Art of the Gesù: Bernini and his Age, of nearly 60 objects from museums including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Met, the Princeton University Art Museum, and many more. It opened on Feb. 2 and runs until May 19.

I’ll get back to the show in a minute. But perhaps even more important will be the catalogue for “The Holy Name–Art of the Gesu: Bernini and HIs Age.” It will be a 600-page monster with essays by many scholars and a foreward by Philippe de Montebello, the Director Emeritus of the Met who served as honorary chair of the exhibition committee. For the exhibit’s press release, he said, “If I were still Director of the Metropolitan, I would be jealous of Fairfield doing this show. It’s simply incredible–it brings to the Fairfield University Art Museum some of the greatest artists working in 17th century Rome.”

For me, it also fulfills another purpose. The Gesu, with its rather plain exterior (click on the link in my first paragraph to see both exterior and interior photographs), sits in a crowded part of Rome; it is easy to overlook. Yet inside, it’s stunning. The ceiling of the apse is a fresco–Glory of the Mystical Lamb–painted by Giovanni Battista Gaulli. And that’s just the start. The curious can find much more about it online.

From the church, Fairfield was able to borrow Gaulli’s final painted wooden model for the apse fresco, plus a gilt bronze statue of Saint Teresa of Avila by Ciro Ferri, the bust, the cartegloria and another true treasure–a silk chasuble embroidered with gold, silver and silk threads, c. 1575-1589 (detail, left), worn by the church’s great benefactor, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. .

The Bellarmine-Bernini bust, which normally hangs high in the church but here can be seen at eye level, is gathering most of the attention in the art world. On Instagram, Luke Syson, chairman of the Met’s European Sculpture and Decorative Arts department, wrote, in part:

Today I witnessed an object I’d previously categorized as a work of baroque art–a very great one but nonetheless the rather remote portrait of a long-dead individual with a history of religious learning and obduracy–spiritually recharged to become the animate patron saint of this Jesuit university. It’s partly that the sculpture is normally an ingredient of the minestrone of Counter-reformation glory that is the Gesù, placed high up, impressive but rather invisible, just one of Rome’s many treasures. At Fairfield, it’s not just that one can see him properly for the first time, though that’s absolutely marvelous. It’s also, and more importantly, that he could only have traveled there–the Jesuit authorities would never have supported a loan to somewhere else and requests to borrow the piece by larger, grander, older museums have always been turned down. They were right. Here he’s turned into the living Saint Robert Bellarmine rather than the long-dead seventeenth-century cleric known for having put a spoke in Galileo’s scientific wheel….

Bernini makes him embody a combination of deep thought and profound belief. His fingers scintillate in prayer. The fierce muscles above his eyebrows express his brain power. It’s an extraordinary piece of characterization. Bernini did something amazing but, fascinatingly and most unexpectedly, it’s only at Fairfield that the Saint has come truly alive for me.

I can’t end this without posting a painting–so here, below, is Gaulli’s The Vision of St. Ignatius at La Storta (c. 1685-90)–Ignatius being a founder of the Jesuits.

So–go if you can. Visit the Gesu next time you are in Rome. Meantime, enjoy the photos I took while there.

 

See It Now–Michel Sittow, Extraordinary Painter

Hats off to Estonia, which in celebrating the 100th anniversary of its proclamation as an independent republic in 1918, following the dissolution of the Russian Empire, decided to honor its genius painter–Michel Sittow (c. 1469-1525)–with his first monographic exhibition.

And we Americans are lucky for that, because the National Gallery of Art happens to own two of his best paintings–so it became the natural partner for an exhibition that opened yesterday. I reviewed it for The Wall Street Journal, in a piece published today and headlined A Renaissance Artist Cloaked in Mystery.

Sittow’s works are few and far between–so you are forgiven if you do not know him or his works. Although he had many royal patrons, including Isabella of Castile, Margaret of Austria and Christian II of Denmark, many of his works have disappeared. As I wrote:

Sittow apparently never signed his paintings. In records, he is listed under various names and confused with others with the same given name. His works were copied. Over the years experts had attributed some of them to Jan Gossart, Hans Holbein the younger or others, and he was largely forgotten until the early 20th century. Despite attempts to catalog Sittow’s works, no one knows the extent of his surviving paintings: a 2011 catalogue raisonné lists 111 works as by Sittow but confirms him as the artist in only 13 cases.

In the U.S., aside from the two in Washington–one a gift of Paul Mellon and the other purchased with Mellon money–the only other accepted works are in the Detroit Institute of Arts (here and, here, on Pinterest–not on the DIA website). The Metropolitan Museum once listed a monk’s portrait as by him but now calls it “French, 1500.”  The Getty catalogue lists this work, Portrait of a Man with A Pink, as by Sittow, but it’s not on view, is in poor condition and, to my knowledge, is not accepted by at least some others as a Sittow.

So, the NGA/Estonia exhibit brings together a dozen of Sittow’s works, plus a few by his workshop and others (his probably teacher, Memling, and some contemporaries).

For me, the unquestionable star of the show is the NGA’s gift from Mellon–Portrait of Diego de Guevara (?) (c. 1515/1518) [above, right], which is part of a diptych whose other half is a Madonna and Child [at left]. I could not outdo, and therefore quoted, the catalogue description:

A Spanish courtier and ambassador (who once owned Van Eyck’s masterpiece, the “Arnolfini Portrait”), De Guevara looks adoringly at the infant Jesus in a way best described by the exhibition catalog—“with a pensiveness bordering on melancholy that in its humanity is without parallel in early Netherlandish art.”

I love that he owned the Van Eyck! At some point, he gave it away to Margaret of Austria, ruler of the Netherlands. And now it resides in the National Gallery, London.

Go and see this at the NGA if you can, because it’s unlikely to happen again in our lifetimes.

 

 

Ken Burns, Collector, Gets An Exhibition

There’s nothing like a celebrity, even a person behind the camera instead of in front of it, to attract attention–sometimes even deservedly so. I think that is the case for an exhibition opening Friday, Jan. 19, at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.  “Uncovered: The Ken Burns Collection” will display 28 quilts to the public for the first time, drawn from his collection of about 75.

I interviewed Burns for the “Show Us Your Wall” feature that runs in the Weekend section of The New York Times on Fridays. In the resulting piece, headlined Don’t Tell Ken Burns Quilts Are Quaint and set to run in tomorrow’s paper, he explains how he collects and why, along with commenting on his favorite quilt and another very striking one (see them at the Times link).

For the Study Center, he also said this:

As a collector, I’m looking for something that reflects my country back at me. Quilts rearrange my molecules when I look at them. There’s an enormous satisfaction in having them close by. I’m not a materialist. There are too many things in the world, and we know that the best things in life aren’t things. Yet there are a few things that remind me of the bigger picture.

We live in a rational world. One and one always equals two. That’s okay, but we actually want—in our faith, in our families, in our friendships, in our love, in our art—for one and one to equal three.

And quilts do that for me.

That’s a pretty difficult task he has set for articles of vernacular art, but in some ways the second paragraph might apply more broadly to all art. We want art to move us in a new direction, provide missing perspective, help us see things differently. Don’t we?

The Quilt Study Center is well-known among Americana experts, quilt fans and people in its region. Burns brings it to the attention of a greater audience, and I was happy to help do that. There’s more art in the U.S. than just that on the coasts, a narrow stripe down the Midwest and a few places in Texas.