Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artworks

Now At The Frick: A Show, At Last, For Piero

For a founder of the Italian Renaissance, it’s amazing that the exhibition opening tomorrow at the Frick Collection is “the first monographic exhibition in the United States on the artist.”

StAugustineThe artist is Piero della Francesca, born circa 1411 and dead the year Columbus set sail for America. Even more amazing perhaps is that the exhibit fits comfortably in the Frick’s small oval gallery — it’s just 7 works, and if memory serves four are from the Frick itself. Yet it’s an occasion, worth a visit by any serious art lover.  

Along one wall are four panels from the Sant’Agostino altarpiece; on the opposite wall is the Frick’s St. John the Evangelist and — surprise — a panel of St. Augustine borrowed from Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga that has never been seen in the U.S. before.

It’s stunning. I’m posting a photo I took with my iPhone, but it doesn’t do the work justice. His staff, for example, is made of clear crystal, to perfect effect.

Clark_2000The Clark Art Institute then graciously lent its Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels, Piero’s only intact altarpiece in this country. It’s a good thing that the Frick’s semi-circular marble step beneath the work keeps people from getting too close — for they surely would. I’ve posted it here, too, at right — a much better image taken from the Frick itself.

I was at the opening reception for this exhibition tonight, and it was thrilling to see it. More details here, in the press release.  

As I’d remarked to a few others there, several years ago I was at a conference at the Clark when the late Anne D’Harnoncourt started talking about the altarpiece nearby. She referred to the artist as “Piero” and then stopped herself, in mid-sentence, and said she hoped we could call him just “Piero” now — he was THE Piero. Everyone agreed, and for the rest of the meeting that’s what everyone said.

My hope for this exhibition is that it makes the public know who is meant when they hear the name Piero, the artist.

Photo credits: Courtesy of the Frick (bottom)

 

An Imaginary, But Ferocious, Masterpiece

I’ve already told you that I visited the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy on my trip to London last fall, and loved it.

Chimera of ArezzoI didn’t mention at the time that one of my favorites, among many, was the Etruscan Chimera of Arezzo — because I was hoping to write about it for the Masterpiece column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. And now I have. In tomorrow’s paper, you’ll see it under the headline The Imaginary Turned Nearly Real. The Chimera is frightening on many levels, an impossible fusion of three animals that is more than 2,400 years old.

It was, according to the Bronze catalogue, “an omen of disaster” in mythology, but eventually slayed by the hero Bellerophon. Later — in an aside I did not have room to say in my WSJ piece — that story (which I do tell) turns into the legend of St. George slaying the dragon.

And here’s another tidbit. According to The Guardian:

It was seeing a picture of the Chimera of Arezzo – the mythological lion and goat creature with a serpent’s tail – on the spine of a book that first got the six-year-old David Ekserdjian excited about bronze. The scholar and curator’s interest eventually resulted in what will be a landmark exhibition bringing together 150 works which span some 6,000 years.

So we can appreciate this sculpture for a couple of reasons.

Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY, via the WSJ

 

Miscellaneous Art: One Man’s View Of What An Intellectual Should Know

I like to look at books like An Intellectual’s Visual Miscellany, by Daniel P. Murphy, Ph.D., which is subtitled An Illustrated Guide to Masterworks of Art, History, Literature and Science, because they are often accidental entry into the arts (or, in this case, those other disciplines). People might pick them up, see something, learn about it, and discover a deep like for something they never knew they had. Or at least enough interest to go look at, in person,what they’ve seen in a book. Besides, they can be fun.

VisualMiscellanyThis one, by Murphy, the director of the Center for Free Inquiry at Hanover College, was published last November by Adams Media, but it was just sent to me for review last month.

My headline view: it’s inconsistent, both in choices and in the information it provides, and unfortunately the visual arts don’t seem to be Murphy’s strength.

His book’s chapters cover Painting and Sculpture, Architecture, Wonders, Music and Composers, Writing and the Book, History, Literature, Philosophy and Religion, Science and Mathematics, and Lifestyle. Each is split into subdivisions, like “The Heritage of Alexander” and “Medieval Painting” in visual arts, and “Musical Geniuses” and “Modern Music” in that category. In Modern Music, the reader gets “People of Note” (Claude Debussy, John Cage, Pierre Boulez, etc.), whereas in “Musical Geniuses,” the reader gets a “List of Works” (Armida by Salieri, Fidelio by Beethoven). Idiosyncratic? A bit.

But let’s just look at the visual arts. Some of the pictures are in black and white. And in, say, those Alexander pages, Murphy offers up the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Dying Gaul — good choices — but doesn’t tell readers where to find them. Or when they were made.

Who, and what, is in “The Northern Renaissance and Beyond”? Holbein’s Portrait of Henry VIII AND his Portrait of Catherine Parr. Why not The Ambassadors? Or the Darmstadt Madonna — for a little variety as well as because they are better works than Parr. For Durer, we get The Rhinoceros, not Melancholia or Knight, Death and the Devil, or (my favorite) his self-portrait, 1500.

And so it goes, to quote Vonnegut.

There’s  nothing wrong with idiosyncratic choices — the author is entitled to his views, whether or not they are yours or mine.

But here the book itself doesn’t live up to its promise. Aside from the black-and-white problem, many of the images are too small to provide a taste of what a work a work looks like (I know rights are expensive, but this is advertised as “illustrated.”)  And why do we get a list of works, with their locales, for “Rococo in France,” but not for “Ninteenth Century European Art”?

If the intent of this book was to send readers to their computers to look things up, it might be deemed a success. For me, that’s a bit too frustratingly incomplete to keep reading, no matter the author’s choices.

 

 

More Evidence Of Market Insanity

Botticelli-MadonnaI just can’t help myself. The juxtaposition of two auction sales is simply too tempting.

In tomorrow’s New York Times, Steve Wynn announces that he’s the one who bought Tulips, by Jeff Koons, last November for $33.6 million, a record for a piece by Koons at auction. He had to admit it at some point, because he put it on view in the Wynn Theater rotunda in Las Vegas  a few days ago, and eventually he’ll move it to a hotel-casino he’s building in Macao.

The paper also mentions another record — this one set this week — for a Botticelli. On Wednesday, Christie’s sold that painting, of a Madonna and child once owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., for $10.4 million, his highest auction price. 

I’m pasting them both here. You decide.

KoonsTulips

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