Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artworks

The Broad Museum Answers Back

Several days ago, I asked here if any other art museums in the U.S. were spending as much money buying art as the Crystal Bridges Museum. I had added up the announced purchases over the past year or so by Crystal Bridges and it came to more than $150 million.

Robert-Longo-Untitled-Fer-010I could think of only the Broad, which hasn’t opened yet, as a contender. This morning, I received an email from the Broad announcing “more than 50 new artworks added to the Broad collection in anticipation of the September 20 opening.”

But I still think CB is spending more. That’s because:

Most of the additions to the 2,000-work Broad collection built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad are artworks that were acquired within a year of the artist producing them, reflecting the museum’s commitment to build a dynamic collection of the most comprehensive and current contemporary art.

Interestingly, though, the names at the top of the release are all well-known. They include Julie Mehretu, Takashi Murakami (with “the largest painting in the Broad collection”), John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool and Damien Hirst, a 1954 combine by Robert Rauschenberg and three sculptures by Cy Twombly. Less-known Goshka Macuga and Ella Kruglyanskaya were also cited.

In its 50,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Broad will install for its inaugural show about 250 works from the 2,050 or so it owns.

Some of the new highlights:

  • Mehretu’s Invisible Sun (algorithm 8, fable form), 2015, an ink-and-acrylic-on-canvas piece “currently on view at the Art Basel art fair in Switzerland.”
  • Robert Longo’s Untitled (Ferguson Police, August 13, 2014), a charcoal drawing of the Ferguson, Mo. police line last year, after the shooting death of Michael Brown; pictured above.
  • Murakami’s 82-foot-long and 10-foot-high In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow.
  • Macuga’s Death of Marxism, Women of all Lands Unite, Suit for Tichý 4 and Suit for Tichý 5.
  • Kruglyanskaya’s Girl on a Hot Day, 2015.
  • Hirst’s Fear, 2002 (thousands of dead flies thickly encrusted in resin)
  • Wool’s Untitled, 2015, the 20th work by Wool added to the collection
  • John Currin’s Maenads, 2015
  • Ruscha’s BLISS BUCKET, 2010; JET BABY, 2011; PERIODS, 2013; WALL ROCKET, 2013; and HISTORY KIDS, 2013 (five lithographs)
  • Koons’s Hulk (Organ)
  • Baldessari’s Pictures & Scripts: Honey – what words come to mind?, 2015; Horizontal Men, 1984; plus a full set of screenprints from his 2012 Eight Soups series (bringing the collection’s Baldessari holdings to 40 works spanning nearly 50 years).
  • Twombly’s three sculptures brings the collection’s holdings in work by Twombly to 22.

More pictures are here.

Photo Credit: Petzel Gallery via The Guardian

Crystal Bridges Makes A Few Announcments

d4913730xWhen it come to art purchases, there could  be a “Crystal Bridges” watch–it seems to me that the museum in Bentonville built largely with Alice Walton’s and the Walton Family Foundation’s money is spending more money buying art than another other U.S. museum currently open to the public.

For a short item in tomorrow’s New York Times that is now online (and is a better, longer version than what will be in the print version), I disclose five more big purchases: two sculptures (including Quarantania, at left) and two paintings by Louise Bourgeois purchased through Cheim & Read (worth about $35- to $40 million, all told) and the Jasper Johns’ “Flag” that sold at Sotheby’s last fall for $36 million.

Going back to previous announcements, I totaled up the museum’s purchases over the last several months as costing about $150 million; I also mention a few other, undisclosed purchases that the museum has made, and I identify Alice Walton as the buyer of a big Rothko and a Bourgeois for her personal collection–so far. They may go to the museum, someday.

So, Eli Broad may be spending more–I don’t know–but his museum in Los Angeles doesn’t open until the fall. It may be, too, that Mitchell Rales, who owns Glenstone (currently closed), Peter Brandt, whose space in Connecticut is open by appointment, or another big art buyer is stashing things away in their private museums. But public? If another public museum is buying more art than CB, I’d like to know. (Not acquiring–i.e., by gift–buying.)

Read the item here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s 

 

Crystal Bridges Reshuffles PostWar Galleries With 2014 Acquisitions

The postwar and contemporary art galleries at the Crystal Bridges Museum have always been the weakest part of the collection, but steadily the museum has been filling out the collection. Sixteen acquisitions in this category, all made in 2014, were announced on Friday–I broke the news Thursday evening in a small item in The New York Times (scroll down; it’s the last of four items)–valued at about $20 million.

Sobel-HiroshimaThe works include Robert Rauschenberg’s The Tower and three paintings and two works on paper by Helen Frankenthaler, including Seven Types of Ambiguity from 1957. The full list is below.

Just as interesting, the museum is reinstalling those galleries, a project led by curator Chad Alligood, who co-curated the museum’s big State of the Art exhibition. State of the Art was so big that it took over some of the museum’s postwar gallery space–and led to the addition of walls in those galleries. The deinstallation of that show provided the opportunity to weave in several of the new works and rearrange some of the others.

Based on my conversation with Alligood, it’s not an installation that would be done at any other U.S. museum, imho. Aa can be seen elsewhere at Crystal Bridges, it continues, at moments, to link a piece of art with American history. So the first art one sees coming round the corner, out of the American Modernists gallery, on a large wall in the center once occupied by a Joan Mitchell, will be Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter alongside Janet Sobel’s Hiroshima (at left). Once inside, you’ll have to do almost an about-face to see Rothko’s No. 210/No. 211 (Orange).

Frankenthaler’s painting, which demonstrates the bridge she created between Abstract Expressionism and color field painting, will hang between Adolph Gottlieb’s Trinity and a red-white-and-blue Kenneth Noland painting.

Rauschenberg’s The Tower will hang near a painting by him and near a John Chamberlain and another new piece, Nancy Grossman’s Car Horn–all three of which use everyday materials, at the time unconventional in art, that refer to America’s rampant consumerism at the time.

At the same time, Alligood says that the Donald Judd will stand where it has in the past, and so will the Neil Welliver–among others. When I asked what was going into storage to make room for the new works, Alligood said “very little.” The new installation takes advantage of the new walls and is hung more densely that the previous hang. It incorporates 71 works all, told.
Here’s the list of the rest of the new postwar/contemporary acquisitions:

  • Frankenthaler’s Untitled (1951) and Pink Bird Figure II (1961), plus two of her works on paper, The Bullfight (1958) and Untitled (1980);
  • Ruth Asawa’s Untitled, (ca. 1958);
  • Allan D’Arcangelo’s My Uncle Whiskey’s Bad Habit (1962);
  • Vija Celmins’s Untitled (Ham Hock) (1964),
  • Alma Thomas’s Lunar Rendezvous—Circle of Flowers (1969),
  • Roni Horn’s When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes No. 859: A Doubt If It Be Us (1993),
  • Mark Tansey’s Landscape (1994)
  • Charles LeDray’s Rainbow (2012-2014)

Plus, two gifts:

  • Brice Marden’s For Carl Andre (1966) from an anonymous donor
  • Nancy Graves’s Fayum-Re (1982), gift of Agnes Gund.

Notice anything else? I did, and the museum confirmed it: Alice Walton, the museum’s benefactor, continues to be interested in redressing the prejudice against women artists prevalent in the art market and museum world. More than half of these works are by women, and the press release emphasizes the Frankenthaler purchase, even though the Rauschenberg on its own undoubtedly cost more. It was, as I said in the Times, once owned by famed collectors Victor and Sally Ganz but failed to sell when put up for sale at Christie’s in 2011, with an estimate of $12 million to $18 million.

Here’s what I like about this news and the installation: By aligning the art with history, the installation tells a story that’s a bit different from other museums and, possibly, more tailored, more accessible to people who live in areas without many rich museums–like Arkansas. I say this sight unseen, of course, and reserve the right to change my mind if I get there and find the execution wanting.

Here’s what I don’t like: Crystal Bridges seems to be on something of a name-check exercise–one Marden, one Pollock, one Thiebaud, one Mitchell, one Rauschenberg plus a minor painting, etc. There are exceptions–five Frankenthalers, for example. But there’s little depth in any of the myriad strains of postwar art. Granted, Crystal Bridges is young and its collection came together quickly. But I do wonder if there is a strategy beyond checking names off the list of must-haves.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Crystal Bridges

Buyer of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi Identified–UPDATED

Along with, supposedly, the final price tag. He is Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev and he is said to have bought the painting for $127 million.

SalvatorMundiWhen I last left this subject, in November, 2013, I said that the painting has been sold to a private collector in Europe.  In March, 2014, the New York Times picked up the sale and put the price tag at around $75- to $80 million.

Now a lawsuit filed in Monaco says that Rybolovlev bought the work in May 2103, through Swiss dealer and free-port king Yves Bouvier. Rybolovlev is suing Bouvier, according to an article in Le Temps, for fraud. 

The story is, of course, in French, and my French, even with help from online translating pages, is rudimentary. However, it seems to say that Rybolovlev saw the NYT figure and decided that the price he actually paid was less and that Bouvier actually pocketed the $50 million or so difference in addition to the $1.27 million commission he paid.

The purchase apparently came at a time when Rybolovlev, in the midst of a nasty divorce, was spending as much cash as he could to keep it away from his ex-wife, Elena.

What a mess. But if we stay tuned to the lawsuit proceedings, we may pick up some things about the art world.

UPDATE, 3/13: The Financial Times has an article this morning saying that a Singapore court has frozen the assets of Bouvier:

The temporary court order forbids Yves Bouvier, the head of Switzerland-based Natural Le Coultre, from divesting his personal assets, including any shares in companies that he owns up to the value of $500m.

The court has also demanded that Mr Bouvier hand over a multimillion-dollar Mark Rothko painting, No. 6 (violet, vert et rouge), now at the centre of a bitter dispute between the businessman and one of his clients.

On Wednesday, Swiss police conducted two raids at Geneva free port, searching the offices of Natural Le Coultre and Gallerie Nelombos, owned by a business associate of Mr Bouvier, Jean-Marc Peretti, which deals in post-Impressionist and modern art.

…Mr Bouvier, who lives in Singapore, was arrested at the end of February on suspicion of price fixing and money laundering, allegations he vigorously denies. He was released three days after his arrest on €10m bail.

A statement from Mr Bouvier’s lawyers said at the time that he would demonstrate the “fantasy and non-existence” of the “alleged damages”. His lawyers told the Financial Times that Mr Bouvier carried out the transactions with Mr Rybolovlev’s trust on a commercial basis, as a dealer, rather than as an agent.

 

The Story Behind LACMA’s Saudi Partnership

Press releases often provoke more questions than they answer. That was certainly the case when one from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art issued one on Jan. 6 about its new collaboration with Saudi Aramco’s King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture. It said that LACMA and the Center:

damascusroom3are pleased to announce that the Center will exhibit more than 130 highlights of Islamic art from LACMA’s renowned collection on the occasion of the Center’s opening. The installation will include works of art from an area extending from southern Spain to northern India along with a never-before shown 18th-century period room from Damascus, recently acquired by LACMA.

“This is a landmark project for the museum,” said LACMA CEO…Michael Govan.

While the release mentioned “a significant partnership” with the Center “to restore and conserve the room,” details were scarce. What was the Center, which has no permanent collection at the moment–it won’t open until next year–giving in return?

I agree with LACMA’s goal to have its collection seen more broadly around the world–as long as the works of art are safe (see some listed in the press release). But was LACMA emptying its galleries of “masterpieces” and for what? Was this a “rental” deal?

A conversation with Islamic Art curator Linda Komaroff on Friday, just a day before she was head to Saudi Arabia, cleared up many questions. The answer, I think, is no.

The partnership arose after LACMA hosted a visiting curator from the Center in 2013, just when it was assessing whether to  buy a large, largely complete, lavishly decorated reception room that had been rescued from demolition (for highway construction) by Lebanese dealers in 1978. They held onto it for decades, moving it to London, and it was offered to LACMA by dealer Robert Haber.

Dated 1766–67, the room measures 15 x 20 feet (“comparable in size to the one at the Met”) and was where the head of the family would have entertained honored guests. “She fell in love with the room,” Komaroff said, referring to the Saudi visitor–and the idea of a two-pronged partnership arose. The room (detail at right) was expensive and needed extensive restoration, plus the armature to hold the many pieces in place. The Center would pay for a large part of that in return for having the chance to show it and those 130 other objects from LACMA’s 1,700-item Islamic collection.

Komaroff says the room’s bright colors (the room was unvarnished) are mostly still there, though covered with dust. Here’s her description from a 2012 blog post:

As is typical, the room has colorful inlaid marble floors; painted and carved wood walls, doors and storage niches; a spectacular stone arch that serves to divide the upper and lower sections of the room, which are separated by a single high step; and an intricately inlaid stone wall fountain with a carved and painted limestone hood…

Komaroff won’t say how much it all costs, but she did say that the conservation costs were about equivalent to the purchase price, and that the whole effort was “a multi-million-dollar project.” LACMA has no acquistions fund, so she had to raise a lot of money for it, beyond what the Saudi oil company contributed.

She describes the current conservation efforts in another post, here.

The Saudis are also paying normal exhibition/loan fees for the 130-object exhibit; after the staff work, including research, required for sending the show, Komaroff says, “it’s a wash”–LACMA doesn’t make a profit on this deal. “That’s not why we’re doing it,” she added.

Lending the room next year “is okay because we don’t have a place to show it yet,” Komaroff said–it requires high ceilings; even LACMA’s Resnick pavilion, which has the highest ceiling of all its buildings, stretched only to 20 feet high.  But the expansion Govan is contemplating should have room for it.

Komaroff compare the loan to “sending the art of the Roman empire to Rome”–a coup of sorts and something of a compliment to the collection. Saudis, she added, don’t learn visual art that goes with their history. They’ve not been exposed to much visual art.

The Center (more about which tomorrow) is also partnering with a couple of European museums.

Clearly, given the recent destruction of cultural heritage in Syria, this is a worthy effort.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of LACMA