Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Exhibitions

Is TEFAF New York A Success? UPDATED

That depends on how you measure success.

There was a lot of doubt and even some worry that TEFAF, the world’s best art fair, would not be able to make a go of it here in New York, or that if it did somehow do that, the main fair in Maastricht would suffer. After two years in New York–both spring for modern art and fall for Old Masters and 19th Century art, with antiquities showing up in both–the doubters seem to be quiet, at least on one level

The high quality of art on display at the Park Avenue Armory this week (and through Tuesday, in case you have not yet been and can go) is the reason. While some dealers who had booths last year were shut out for this edition–24 of the 90 participants are new–and they complained, visitors benefited because the art on view really was of a higher caliber. My favorite booth was Wildenstein’s–which offered several Bonnards, and only Bonnards. David Zwirner had an excellent booth, too, matching works by Josef Albers with a wall of Morandis.

Those two stood out in part because they had a narrow range of work that left a big impression–but I didn’t see a “bad” booth in the entire Park Avenue Armory and virtually every one had something fantastic.

So, for fair visitors, TEFAF New York Spring is a big win. Likewise, TEFAF New York Fall.

It’s unclear how much is being sold, however–though I did see several red dots on the VIP day and some more on Friday, when I returned.

UPDATE: A press release issues on 5/6 said sales in the first two days were “significant” across the fair and cited several examples, including a Guston painting that went for $5.5 million and a Basquiat for about $5 million.

It’s also unclear if TEFAF is breaking even or making a profit. Though TEFAF itself doesn’t shoot for profits, its partner here in New York, Artvest, does aim to make money. And they are trying–in addition to the prominent new dealers in the mix, there are more partners and sponsors, there’s a bigger cultural panel program this year in an attempt to draw visitors, and they introduced the TEFAF Art Market report with a new focus on art financing. (At the moment it has not been uploaded to the TEFAF website, so I can’t tell you what it said. UPDATE, 5/6–it is now posted, and I’ll look when I have a moment.)

As for TEFAF Maastricht, I didn’t notice any falloff in quality this year, and contrary to rumors, the fair is not leaving Maastricht–it recently signed a 10-year agreement with the city to stay.

For art-lovers here in New York and visitors who can attend here, TEFAF New York is a huge success.

I’m posting a few pictures–a Matisse from Acquavella, a Bonnard from Wildenstein, two Morandis at Zwirner. 

 

 

Egypt: Breaking New Ground–Underwater

Like Gold, Picasso and Impressionism, Egypt has generally been a sure-fire subject for art museums. But, you may think, you know the story–basically. An exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum will make you think again. Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds, a traveling show that has previously been shown at the British Museum, in Paris and in Zurich, delves into the underwater finds made by Franck Goddio, president of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, and his team over the last seven or so years. They discovered the lost cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopusin.

You can see it, from afar, on Monday, Apr. 30, at 10:30 Central Time on Facebook Live: That’s when Lisa Çakmak, SLAM’s associate curator of ancient art, will give a tour for the press, but I think everyone can tune in. Here’s the link to the museum’s Facebook page. And before that, you can watch this short video on YouTube.

I was lucky to be in St. Louis in mid-March, as the exhibition was almost completely installed but not yet open to the public, and I am very enthusiastic about this show. It includes about 250 artifacts from the “dig” plus some complementary ones from near the rediscovered underwater city. I met both Goddio and Çakmak, and I learned a lot about Egypt that I had not heard before. Or seen before–for example, the figure at left, a statue of Arsinoe that date to the Ptolemeic period. It’s far from what we conjure when we think about Egyptian sculpture.

Here are the basics from the press release:

Thonis-Heracleion…was built in the Nile delta. The city reached its zenith in the Late Period (664–332 BC), when it served as Egypt’s main Mediterranean port. By 800 AD, different natural catastrophies such as earthquake and soil liquefaction had caused both Thonis-Heracleion and the nearby community of Canopus to submerge, and ruins remained underwater for more than 1,000 years…

The French archeologist’s research has revealed that this area was important both as a center of trade and as a site of religious pilgrimage. The excavation also helped scholars understand the Mysteries of Osiris, an annual water procession along the canals between Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus commemorating one of Egypt’s most important myths—the murder and resurrection of the god Osiris.

Goddio was mesmerizing as he talked about the rebirth myth that he discovered documentation for, the activities of the priests who kept it all secret, the echoes and relationships of many of the works in the exhibit.

Photo: Christoph Gerigk

If you are near St. Louis, it’s worth a detour.

This was an expensive venture for SLAM–shipping costs alone had to be enormous. In fact, the museum found it less expensive to buy new cases and mounts than to ship the ones that had been used in Europe.

But it was, the museum said, the first substantial exhibit about Egypt in some 50 years. The region could very much benefit from this.

Costs and need may also be the reason the show has a long run–from March 25 through Sept. 9, nearly six months.

A challenge for any museum presenting an extensive, expensive show for that long is sustaining interest. Human nature, we all know, prompts people to go to something like this at the very beginning and the very end. Museums try hard to smooth out the crowds, making the experience a good one for all. Maybe that’s why Facebook Live tomorrow.

So far, I believe, only the Wall Street Journal and Hyperallergic have provided national coverage–here and here. Local coverage was mostly previews. The shrinking of serious arts coverage everywhere is a problem for many institutions, and there’s no sign that this particular situation will improve, sadly.

Photo Credits: Excavations Photo: Christoph Gerigk © Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation

Getting Picasso Right: You Think It’s Easy?

In London a few weeks back, I was fortunate to be there on the day of the press preview for Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy at the Tate Modern. You might think. at first, that doing a Picasso show is easy–few artists have better name recognition  and for a long time, Picasso was like gold, Impressionism and Egypt, a guaranteed box office success. Lately, though, he feels overexposed–not just at exhibitions but also at auction.

And this was the Tate Modern’s first ever solo Picasso exhibit; Frances Morris, the director, wanted to get it right. She and the curators surely did, along with their colleagues at the Musee Picasso in Paris, which co-organized the show.

1932 was a critical year for Picasso–his “year of wonders,” one in which he created some of his best works, made works for and organized (full control!) a major retrospective exhibition at the Galeries Georges Petit, in Paris, scheduled for June of 1932, and led a dichotomous personal life, bouncing between his wife Olga and his mistress Marie-Therese Walter. He revealed the existence of the latter in his paintings for the first time (five years into their affair) in 1932. He was 50.

What struck me as I moved through the many galleries was the vast, repeated and fast-paced creativity he exhibited. This is especially evident in the fourth gallery, “Early March.” There on the walls are three of his very best paintings–two were executed, or finished, on consecutive days. On Mar. 8, he painted Nude, Green Leaves and a Bust (top) and on Mar. 9, he made Nude in a Black Armchair (middle). That was a Wednesday: the following Monday, Mar. 14, he completed Girl Before a Mirror (third from top). Before long, Alfred Barr had it in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, a gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim.

In the same room are three other works he created along with them, all within 12 days: Still Life with Tulips; Still Life: Bust, Cups and Palette; and The Mirror. Of these six paintings, four are in private collections–so this is an extraordinary moment to see what Picasso could do, probably not to be experienced again any time soon!

He had accomplished as much, but not (for me) to such great effect, in January, when he painted Rest on Jan. 22; Sleep on Jan. 23 and The Dream on Jan. 24. That month, he focused on portraits of a woman–Marie-Therese, mostly–in an arm chair. She is, the curators said, imagined–because Picasso rarely painted from life, and the mood changes quite a bit, from sensuous to surrealist depictions.

Those three January works show, in the words of one of the curators, Achim Borchardt-Hume, Picasso’s relationships with women, whom he found “irritating, interesting and the perfect dream.”

It was an ambitious year, to say the least. And varied. One point, Borchardt-Hume said, is that he was mixing styles and saying, in doing that, this is my work and it’s still all relevant. At this point, art historians were categorizing his work into his blue, rose, cubist periods etc. Picasso didn’t like that.

As the year progressed, politics and economics were getting increasingly darker and so was Picasso’s mood. After the retrospective opened, Picasso worked more quickly on, mostly, smaller works–with one exception, Nude Woman in a Red Armchair, which the Tate purchased in 1953 (below). He made many drawings and beach scenes, but by the fall he was focused on the subject of the Crucifixion. Inspired by the Eisenheim altarpiece at Colmar, he made surrealist interpretations of the subject.

Picasso finished out the year with more dark subject matter, with more gray in his works and places where his color does not conform to his line.

It was an amazing year. The Tate Modern and the Musee Picasso have done very well with it, pulling together what Borchardt-Hume confirmed to me was the “vast majority” of the paintings Picasso made that year. An extraordinary number–about 40 works–came from 25 private lenders.

The exhibition contains much more than I have described here, including a lovely salon hang of family portraits that he created for his retrospective (below).

 

And here are a few links to reviews, each of which has different pictures you may want to see.

The Guardian, also The Guardian and The Evening Standard.

If you can get to London to see this exhibit, which runs until Sept. 9, I recommend it.

 

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