Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artworks

The Things You Find Behind Doors, Like A Velazquez

In recent days, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has rehung a painting called Kitchen Maid (c. 1620) with a new label, “attributed to Velazquez.” The work used to hang in its decorative arts mansion, Rienzi, partially blocked by a door! At that point, it was labeled “in the style of Diego Velázquez.” It was donated to the museum by Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III in 1955, and later when then donated their home–Rienzi–it remained behind the door.

The change was, of course, precipitated by a lot of work, as I outlined in an article for The Art Newspaper.  It was published several days ago, but I’ve been far away, in Ethiopia, on a vacation and am just catching up now.

Here’s an excerpt from my article:

This reattribution—giving the museum its first painting by the Spanish master—is the result of new conservation and research by the institution’s chief paintings conservator, Zahira Bomford, a Velázquez specialist who thought that the face in particular “had a beautiful quality” and might be by the artist. When she removed layers of wax, resin and repainting that marred the painting and completed various technical studies, she and others at the museum became convinced that her hunch was true.

…The Houston painting seems to be a cropped version or a fragment of Kitchen Scene (1618-22) by Velázquez, owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, and also shares components with his Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus(around 1617-18) at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Bomford says that the head and upper torso coincide in the Houston and Chicago paintings, for example, and that some pieces of crockery match those in the Dublin painting. Some elements in these works also appear in other paintings—for instance, the crockery is seen in his Two Young Men Eating at a Humble Table (1622) at Apsley House in London.

Equally important, Bomford’s work lends credence to the recent theory that Velazquez “used “manual copying aids”, or cartoons, to create many of his works. But that was not the case, she concludes, “in the generation of his most sublime images”, such as Las Meninas (1656).” She elaborates on that in an article recently published in the Colnaghi Studies Journal.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of MFAH

 

Art Reviews–Or Observations–That Go Beyond

People regularly complain that art criticism displays an off-putting insider-y tone, complete with jargon–but that’s not what I am about to talk about here. I’m going to mention a few display touches and the like that I notice, when they are good, at exhibitions that I review but rarely–for space reasons–have the opportunity to write about.

The most recent case was at the Toledo Museum of Art, which I visited to see Frans Hals Portraits: A Family Reunion. My review of that exhibit, which reunites three paintings (one purchase by the Toledo museum in 2011, at left) that were split from one canvas by the end of the 18th century, was published in the Oct. 22 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Here are a key paragraphs explaining the show.

Then the discoveries, presented here for the first time, began. Belgian conservators—cleaning their painting for this exhibition—discovered the presence of about half of a girl on the far right of their canvas who had been painted over. Adding to the excitement, her lace collar matched a fragment visible in “Head of a Boy,” cementing his presence as part of this family portrait. Cleaning also revealed two hems on the left of the Belgian work that complete the dresses of two girls on the right of the Toledo painting—leaving no doubt that these paintings were all once part of a whole [see first picture below].

…Hung here so that each work occupies the same place it would have in the intact work, the paintings show the great portraitist at his best. Rather than depict the sitters looking at the viewer—only three of the 14 figures stare out, one being the obviously proud patriarch—Hals creates a lively scene of merry faces, twinkling eyes, and dynamic hand gestures that signal family interactions….he deploys a more controlled style of brushwork than the thick, bold strokes that made many of his portraits famous, but it’s never stilted.

…The three fragments account for 12 children, but what of the other two, both girls? They must have occupied the lost, lower-right corner. In Toledo, a freestanding panel illustrates an educated possibility: a sitting girl with a youngster on her lap [see bottom picture].

Other artworks by Hals and a few others, plus a few Dutch decorative art objects, form the core of this exhibition.

However, Toledo has also given visitors two other galleries that “wrap” the core–one interrogating the meaning of family with other family-related artworks from the museum’s permanent collection and the other other, a family activity room inviting visitors to reflect on the meaning of family. Both were superfluous for me, but maybe I’m not the target audience.

Further, they didn’t really detract from the core because of those touches I referenced above. Here are some of them:

  • The Hals and the other Dutch art was installed in galleries painted a deep red (the beating heart!), picking up small touches in some of Hals’s paintings; while the “wraps” were installed in white galleries.
  • As visitors come around a corner from the first “wrap” gallery, they get a glimpse–but just a glimpse– of the reconstructed painting at the center.
  • Other, equally appropriate sight lines in the core exhibit.
  • There are no didactics on the wall where the reconstructed painting (that is–the three paintings, aligned as one work) hangs.
  • A nice long bench sits before the reconstructed painting–for contemplation–with nothing between you and the art.
  • The didactics–which explain much of what I have excerpted from y review–are mounted on a long, freestanding panel behind the bench. There you’ll find information covering these topics: bringing the pieces back together; possible explanations for why it was cut apart; the secrets new research revealed; the Van Campen family; a proposed reconstruction.

Occasionally, I do get a chance to mention such things–as I did in July, with my review of Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting From the Museums of Madrid at the San Antonio Museum of Art–briefly. Then, I wrote “the curators accomplished a lot with 43 paintings, which are hung with great care for sightlines, echoes and engaging juxtapositions.”

Did everyone notice these (and there were probably others) niceties? It’s doubtful–but I believe that museum-goers appreciate them intuitively. And we appreciate them.

I hope you will read my review to learn about the fascinating origin story for the Toledo exhibit.

Photo Credits: Top and bottom, Toledo Museum of Art; middle, me

 

This May Be the Best Monument to Caesar Augustus

Reputedly, the last public words of Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) were “Behold, I found Rome of clay, and leave her to you of marble.” Augustus also left us a magnificent, exquisitely carved cameo whose double-narrative all but deifies him. It is the Gemma Augustea in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which I visited last spring.

Since it is an unequivocal masterpiece, The Wall Street Journal let me write about it for its Masterpiece column. Headlined A Man Among Gods, my piece was published in the  Sept. 22 edition..

The Gemma has three things going for it, any one of which might catapult it into the realm of masterpieces. First, Augustus, who was a great patron of the arts, probably commissioned it and just as probably owned it. Its later provenance–in the hands of Rudolph II, for example, is equally impressive. Second, it is one of the finest cameos ever created–with sharply delineated details (feathers, muscles and toenails) and diaphanous garments, among other features–in low relief on a piece of onyx no thicker than 1/2 inch. It was possibly made by the renowned Greek master carver Dioskourides, who was active late first century B.C. and had created Augustus’s personal seal, or (more likely, given its date of 9-12 A.D.) by one of his sons or extremely good disciples. The characters and story of the piece is by no means a simple one, either. And third, it is (as I wrote) “surely the finest and almost the largest cameo that survives from antiquity.” The Louvre owns one a bit larger–the Grand Camee de France–but the quality does not compare.

Detail

Here’s how the Gemma’s story is told in two frieze-like registers, from my column:

In the upper level, Roma, the goddess of Rome, sits at the center on her throne in a relaxed pose, her eyes meeting those of Augustus, enthroned just to the right. Their knees almost touch. Augustus, his chiseled face in profile and his muscled body naked from the waist up, holds in his right hand a lituus, a crooked wand used by augurs for divination. Behind him is Oikoumene, a goddess who personified the civilized world, about to place a military wreath known as a corona civica on his head. Below his throne is an eagle, symbol of Jupiter, touched by the hem of Augustus’ garment. Further to the right are Tellus Italiae, a goddess personifying Italy in all its fecundity, who holds a cornucopia, and Oceanus, god of the sea. …

Thickness of the onyx

The left half of the upper register carries a different but equally potent message. Near the edge is Tiberius, the stepson Augustus adopted as his heir. Holding a staff, he has arrived in a chariot with none other than winged Victory, but is now alighting, as if encouraged by her to move on to the next military challenge. To the right is Germanicus, the nephew Tiberius adopted as his heir at the behest of Augustus, in military dress. Here Augustus is setting forth his plans for a dynasty that will wage war to expand the Roman realm and extend the prosperity he engineered.

The lower register displays a moment of triumphalism whose meaning may be keyed to the date of the Gemma’s making (A.D. 9-12): In the year 9, the Roman army conquered the Pannonians with Tiberius as general. The cameo, on the left, depicts Roman soldiers raising a victory monument over their enemies, one clearly stripped of his armor and with hands tied behind his back. On the right, it shows the enemy being yanked into captivity by a pair that may be Mercury and Diana, a sign that the gods sided with the Romans. And this is all happening—literally—at the feet of Augustus and Roma. (The Roman army also suffered a defeat at the hands of Germanic tribes in A.D. 9, and an alternative interpretation holds that the lower register presents a counter-narrative to that setback. Either way, it’s propaganda.)

The Gemma Augustea sits in a dark room at the museum, mounted in its own vitrine and hanging on a little gold loop extending from the top of its backing (added much later). It outshines everything else in the gallery, though the other ancient cameos are museum-quality, too. So it seems that Augustus, who after all was the founder and great expansionist of the Roman Empire, the architect of the Pax Romana, the creator of a golden economic age, the instigator of grand civic structures, managed to make his mark with this artifact, too.

If you cannot access my piece at the WSJ, you may see it on my archive website.

A Little Masterpiece in Central Asia

There are many reasons to visit Uzbekistan, which I did last fall. As usual, I brought back a Masterpiece column for The Wall Street Journal. It describes and explains the Samanid Mausoleum in Bukhara. The little structure not only survived the 13th Century marauder Ghengis Khan but also many earthquakes and other natural shifts: now it is the earliest example of a Samanid tomb to survive and is on the UNESCO world heritage list.

It’s quite important, aside from its beautiful brickwork, because it shows the engineering and architectural breakthroughs that were occurring in the 9th and 10th centuries in Central Asia. As I explained:

This was the age of Al-Khwārizmī (c. 780-c. 850) and Al-Farabi (c. 870-c. 950), renowned Islamic mathematicians whose work helped to beget the first major school of mathematicians in the Islamic world. Their algebraic and geometric advances found practical applications in the work of contemporary engineers and architects.

Here, they used that knowledge to gradually transition from the cube space into the dome above. First, atop the cube sits an octagonal structure with arched squinches angled across each corner. From there, the structure grows upward with ever more sides until it becomes a circle.

More enchantingly,

Brick squinches, here decorated with windows and patterns mimicking those below, are not unique to the Samanid mausoleum. But this form, with its fractured spaces, would later evolve into the often gloriously gilded or brightly painted, three-dimensional honeycomb building corners that are known as muqarnas. Sometimes called “stalactite vaults,” muqarnasembellish many palaces, madrassas and mausoleums in the Muslim world and do seem to be unique to Islamic architecture.

A Final Resting Place, Both Beguiling and Beautiful ran in Saturday’s WSJ. If you cannot read it there, because of the paywall, you can find it on my website.

TEFAF Maastricht: Changing, But the Same

The world’s best art fair–Tefaf Maastricht. whose 275 participating galleries show the art of seven millennia, all told–got underway last Thursday, as usual.

Fair organizers are keen to point out what’s different this year: for example, a smaller by-invitation-only crowd on its annual day of free-flowing food and drink, and another by-invitation only access day on Friday, with the public let in only beginning on Saturday. That seemed to work well, though it forced dealers to make an A list of their collectors for Thursday and a B List for Friday, who didn’t get any oysters, champagne or even orange juice. The upside was clear, though: less crowding led to actual conversations between dealer and client and possibly more sales.

Then there was a slight change in the fair’s booth layout, with not every great space occupied by the same dealer every year, and the presence of some new, younger dealers on the main floor, such as Benappi Fine Art and Lullo & Pampoulides, a two-year-old Old Master gallery that showed in Tefaf’s Showcase section in 2017.

In the Modern section, two big new dealers include Emmanuel Perrotin and Massimo De Carlo, who if not young are young in spirit and offer very contemporary works.

I don’t go to Maastricht every year–this was my first visit in five or six years–so it was difficult for me to ascertain whether the presence of Tefaf in New York since 2016 was affecting attendance by Americans. The dealers were not unanimous about that–one told me that American attendance was off by 80 percent, while others claimed it had not been affected at all. My guess–it’s down, but not too badly. I do believe that fewer U.S. museums escorted groups of their patrons, though some, like the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston, were there. A few regulars have, I hate to say, clearly aged out and can’t make the trip anymore.

On the other hand: I did see many American curators and I know some purchases were made by them–undisclosed at this point.

Another change: while the quality was as usual very good, no one painting, or two, became the talk of the fair. None jumped out. I’d seen some pictures/objects at Tefaf New York either in 2016 or 2017, too, so not everything was as “fresh to market” as dealers like to claim. One of my favorite drawings at the fair, a Canaletto, had been sold recently at Sotheby’s but hung here with a much higher price.

The object that was creating a stir was at Parisian dealer J. Kugel’s stand–a 17th Century German baroque clock that stands 26 inches tall and includes representations of the Four Seasons, Minerva, Death as well as the planets, which rotate every twelve hours. But Americans could only look at, not buy, the $9.2 million piece—it’s carved from ivory, which cannot be imported into the U.S. (It’s not really my taste, though I do appreciate the artistry involved.)

That’s posted below, and here are a few pieces that caught my eye. Top to bottom: A Pilgrim as a memento mori, attributed to Baltasar Permoser, c. 1685; The Holy Family, oil on copper, Jacobo Zucchi; Coronation of the Doge, Canaletto.

With these being just a tiny sliver of what’s at Maastricht, you can see why it remains the best art fair.