Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artists

Do Good Exhibitions Come In Threes?

Do good things come in threes — including exhibitions? Maybe these museums are aiming to create a festival atmosphere, or maybe it’s just coincidence… whichever, having three shows on one theme can be a good way to appeal to audiences. Let me highlight three examples, from places that don’t get enough national attention:

1) Since January 28, the El Paso Museum of Art has been showing three exhibitions under the title Magnificent Mexico:  20th Century Modern Masterworks. With 91 works borrowed from collections in Mexico City, these shows include Diego Rivera (his El Arquiteco is shown at right), Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo and 47 other artists. In a large museum, that may be one show. But the El Paso museum was founded only in 1959, has just over 5,000 works of art in its permanent collection and attracts about 100,000 visitors a year. I know much bigger museums that get less, although — in fairness — it can draw on a 2.6 million-plus metropolitan population, is the only accredited museum in a 250-mile radius, and is just blocks from the U.S.-Mexican border.

The threes shows –  Magnitud Mexicana: Visions of Art; Dibujos Divinos: 20th Century Drawings from the National Museum of Art – MUNAL, México, and Diego Rivera and the Cubist Vision from the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, México – amount to the largest-ever showing of Mexican art in El Paso. Read a local report here.

BTW, last June, the El Paso Museum won an award for Cross-border cooperation and innovation that had nothing to do with this exhibit. Clearly, the museum is doing something right.

2) The Nevada Museum of Art opened three exhibitions on February 11 that showcase the design legacy of the Tiffany Family, including something new to me: a rare collection of Tiffany & Co.s’ decorative firearms. Yup, you heard that right.

Apparently, Tiffany & Co. did a lot gun designing, and — shame on me for not knowing — there’s a display of them owned in the Robert M. Lee Gallery of American arms at the Metropolitan Museum.* The Robert M. Lee Collection has now lent three revolvers, four pistols, one rifle, and one presentation sword to the Nevada Museum. Nearby, the museum is showing In the Company of Angels: Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows,  made by Tiffany Studios at the beginning of the 20th century and named for the angels in the Book of Revelation from the Bible. Originally installed in a Cincinnati church that was demolished in 1964, the windows had been crated, stored and forgotten until their rediscovery in 2001. Finally, there’s Out of the Forest: Art Nouveau Lamps by Tiffany. 

3) Also on Feb. 11, the Mint Museum in Charlotte opened three exhibitions on surrealism in what it calls “largest and most significant examination of Surrealism and Surrealist-inspired art ever presented in the Southeast.” These three go deep, rather than broad, examining the work of four artists extensively: Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy; Seeing the World Within: Charles Seliger in the 1940s; and Gordon Onslow Ford: Voyager and Visionary.

With the exception of Tanguy, these artists are underexposed and it’s great to see that remedied. The first two shows are also traveling.

As I always say when I haven’t see exhibitions personally, I reserve final judgment until and if I do. But from afar, I’m happy to spread the word about these shows.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the respective museums

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met

The Met Celebrates Lincoln’s Birthday With A Big Purchase

Just in time for Lincoln’s birthday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art* has aquired its first major image of the president — a rare and beautiful piece with a distinguished provenance to boot.

The bronze piece by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is one of only 16 known casts of the image, Abraham Lincoln, the Man (Standing Lincoln). Measuring 40 1/2 inches tall, it’s an authorized reduction of the large bronze monument that Saint-Gaudens created for Lincoln Park in Chicago between 1884 and 1887. It dates to 1911, the Met believes.

According to the Met, Saint Gaudens (1848-1907) planned and authorized the limited number of castings, and the terms of his estate alloed Tiffany Studios and Gorham Manufacturing Co. to make them under the supervision of his own mold makers, founders, and studio assistants.  His widow later sold the castings for museum, library, and domestic display. The Met’s says its version was likely one of the first two statuettes to be completed.

Here’s the provenance story:

The magnificently preserved cast was originally in the collection of Clara Stone Hay, the widow of President Abraham Lincoln’s onetime assistant private secretary, John M. Hay, who went on to co-author a 10-volume biography of Lincoln for the Century Company in the 1880s, and later served as U. S. Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay, who called Lincoln “The Tycoon,” kept a diary during his years on the staff of the White House (where he also lived from 1861 to 1865), considered by scholars as the most important source of first-hand recollections of the Lincoln Administration. During the “Great Secession Winter” of 1860-1861, and on through the Civil War, Hay also wrote pseudonymous newspaper articles supporting the President-elect, later the President—a common practice of the day.

The Met bought it from a private collector whose family has owned it since 1943.

This acquisition happens at a great moment, as the Met has recently reopened its renovated and reinstalled American paintings galleries — where this piece will go, in the gallery devoted to the Civil War and its aftermath. It joins more than 50 other works in the collection by Saint-Gaudens, but it’s the only major representation of Lincoln in the collection. Unlike George Washington, who’s represented in several major pieces.

For Lincoln fans, I will cite more from the Met, because the press release is not yet on the website and I can’t link to it.

The original bronze was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago on October 22, 1887, in a setting designed by Stanford White. The statue was officially unveiled by Abraham Lincoln II, the President’s 14-year-old grandson and namesake, who would live only another three years. The dedicatory address was offered by Leonard Swett, a leading Illinois attorney who had ridden the judicial circuit with then-lawyer Abraham Lincoln for 11 years. Swett proclaimed that the statue revealed more of the man he knew than any sculpture he had ever beheld.

A replica was later created for Parliament Square in the shadows of Westminster Abbey, and presented to the British people in 1914 by the American National Committee for the Celebration of the Centenary of the Treaty of Ghent. An entirely different statue was originally designed for the prestigious site, but Lincoln’s son, Robert T. Lincoln (a close friend of John Hay’s), intervened and urged that the Saint-Gaudens sculpture be cast for London instead.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

 

 

PST’s Performance Art Festival Now Available On Videos — UPDATED

I haven’t yet managed to get myself to Los Angeles and environs for Pacific Standard Time, so I was pleased to receive an email offering a chance, via videos, to see some of the happenings that took place a few days ago, during the “Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival.” There is now a YouTube channel for these events.

Here’s the link. 

As of this writing, 14 videos have been uploaded, documenting the 11-day romp, which included contemporary re-enactments of some iconic works. Among them are John White’s restaging of his 1971 performance piece “Preparation F,” featuring players from the Pomona College football team exploring issues of masculinity and gender; Judy Chicago’s “A Butterfly for Pomona,” a new pyrotechnic performance on the Pomona College football field inspired by one of her earlier works;  and James Turrell’s recreation of his 1971 “Burning Bridges,” a performance utilizing highway flares, plus pieces by Suzanne Lacy, Robert Wilhite and others.

I’m not much of a video-on-the-computer watcher, but these are short — just a few minutes each — and sometimes entertaining. So far, I like Judy Chicago’s “A Butterfly for Pomona” and Lita Alburquerque’s “Spine of the Earth” best (at right). But the most popular one, so far, is Chicago’s “Sublime Environments” (top left).

More may be added — the press reps say. It’s not clear yet.  UPDATE: Four more videos were just added, including “Three Weeks in January” by Suzanne Lacy and “The Ball of Artists at the Greystone Mansion.”

I can hear groans — is this art? With Performa now an expected part of the visual arts scene, I don’t see how one can deny that it is, however ephemeral.

But I will give the last word to Lucas Samaras, who was part of the happenings scene that begain in 1959 in New York. As he recently told The New York Times:

It was a short period, and it was terrific. It was like you had a tribe, a group of entertainers going from village to village with a tambourine. But then you get to a point where you say, “I’m not getting enough out of this.” Everything has a beginning, middle and end, even if you don’t want it to.

Photo Credits: Courtesy Arrested Development (top) and USC Annenberg School (bottom) 

 

 

 

The van Gogh Exhibit: Where’s The App? A Lost Opportunity

A comment, from MarkCC in Austin, on The New York Times website, following Roberta Smith’s review of van Gogh Up Close at the Philadelphia Art Museum:

Fabulous! Where’s the app? I probably won’t make it to Philly to see the exhibition but if it was an app it would be the next best thing. I could see the paintings on my flat screen, I could zoom in on them almost as close as I want. I’d even be willing to pay an “admission” price.

You see a lot of uninformed and sometimes stupid comments on the web, following many articles and reviews, and this occasion was no exception. Take a look at the comments for yourself.

But MarkCC — from more than 1,400 miles away, afterall — has a point. PaulCommetX also chimed in with this:

How sad it is that painting and sculpture are still in the dark ages when it comes to the internet. We should be able to “rent” art on iTunes or Amazon – the works displayed on large HD flat screens in great detail. It’s ironic that we can enjoy music in the most technologically advanced way but the visual arts are closed to us except for mousy little pictures that do no justice to the original works.

I looked on the Philadelphia Museum website to see what is available. There’s a good range of programs, and a place for discussion of the exhibit, but that’s about it.

I’m going to get to Philadelphia to see this exhibit, but I wish Mark CC could access the catalogue, or something, with an app. I went to Amazon to see if the catalogue is available on Kindle — nope.  How about the Barnes and Noble Nook? Nope.

I know museums are stretched, but here’s a case where reaching out to the public via technology could really have been worth it.

 

 

Now Cezanne Is The Most Valuable Painter: Record Price For The Cardplayers

Cezanne, it once was said, never sells well at auction. I’m not sure if that’s still true, but he sure sells well privately. Yesterday came the news that The Card Players, one of five he painted, sold for more than $250 million to the royal family of Qatar.

The Card Players

As my friend Alexandra Peers reports for Vanity Fair: “The deal, in a single stroke, sets the sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art and upends the modern art market… it more than doubles the current auction record for a work of art. And this is no epic van Gogh landscape or Vermeer portrait, but an angular, moody representation of two Aix-en-Provence peasants in a card game. But, for its $250 million, Qatar gets more than a post-Impressionist masterpiece; it wins entry into an exclusive club…”

The picture came from the collection of the late Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos, and as Alexandra reports, “was listed by ARTnews magazine as one of the world’s top artworks still in private hands” about five years ago.

For perspective:

The most paid for a painting at auction is the $106 million, paid last year at Christie’s for a lush portrait of Picasso’s curvy mistress Marie-Thérèse. Privately, works by Picasso, Pollock, Klimt, and de Kooning have changed hands in the $125 million-to-$150 million range, traded to and from by Ronald Lauder, Wynn, David Geffen, and the like. But no price has come close to this one.

There’s more intrique and detail in the article, which I recommend, involving Bill Acquavella and Larry Gagosian, who wanted to buy it, Pissarro’s grandson, and speculation about what happens next from Qatar. Here’s the link.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Vanity Fair