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A Short Shout-Out To The Queen, Sort Of — UPDATED

Now on view in the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, is an exhibition called Castiglione: Lost Genius. It merits a little shout-out because it was co-curated by Timothy Standring of the Denver Art Museum. Standring, whom I’ve known for years, also curated the exhibition Becoming van Gogh, in Denver, which I wrote about here (as well as for the Wall Street Journal). That was a feat of persistence, as the Denver museum had no van Goghs.

He’s been working on Castiglione for years (not a complaint, Timothy, just noting your persistence…), and to have it shown at the Queen’s Gallery is neat. So I am thrilled.

Here’s the description of the new show:

One of the great artists of the Baroque, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-64) was perhaps the most innovative and technically brilliant Italian draftsman of his time. He practised as a painter, but won fame for his drawings and prints.

Castiglione worked in oils on paper to produce large, vibrant compositions, and combined drawing and printmaking to invent the technique of monotype.

Despite leading a violent and turbulent life, he produced works of grace and rare beauty, which were highly esteemed for a century after his death. But Castiglione unaccountably fell from fame in the modern era. The Royal Collection holds the finest surviving group of the artistâ€™s works.

The Royal Collection website has all (I think) of the drawings in the show — not in a particularly new or fresh way, it’s true, but they can all be easily copied, as the presumed self-portrait etching at left shows I also like that it discloses the acquirer — this one was obtained by George III.

The catalogue ~~will be out soon~~Â is now out!

UPDATE: The exhibition, which remains on view until next Mar. 16, will travel to the Denver Art Museum in 2015 and then to the Kimbell art Museum in Fort Worth.

And here’s a review from The Telegraph and its article on this scandalous murderer.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Queen’s Gallery

Ed Winkleman Has A Little List

When, about ten days ago, I briefly blogged here about ArtReview’s annual Power 100 list, a couple of readers took issue. They didn’t like the very concept of the list and blamed me for it. Others thought it said something about money and power, and a third commenter thought it was fun. I thought it was harmless.

Nonetheless, there’s a reason these lists persist: readers like them. As the art dealer Edward Winkleman said recently, after he posted “The Top 10 Most Useless Art World Lists,” that very post turned out to be one of his very popular posts.

The ArtReview list didn’t come close to being the most useless, in his eyes. That would be the GalleristNY’s monthly review of ArtForum’s advertisements. GalleristNY also came under fire for its list of Â ‘The 50 Most Powerful Women in the New York Art World.” But ArtInfo, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Barry”s Blog, and other outlets also produce useless lists in Winkleman’s view.

He is right on some counts. Many of these lists are silly, though some people take them seriously. Some are better researched and more fact-based than others. But I still don’t understand why people get so worked up about it.

Believe me, the lists peddled in other areas are often even sillier. Early this year, I was down at the NYU journalism school, where I had been helping some students get internships. One student had an internship at a well-known business website where, among his assignments, he’d been asked to make a list of “the ten ugliest fish.” How’d you do that, I asked. “I googled ‘ugly fish,’ ” he replied, and used his own judgment.

I think the lists on Winkleman’s list are probably better researched than that. I hope.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of ARTnews

More Nazi Loot? A Secret Is Revealed In Munich

If you can’t crooks on the crime, you can often get them on tax charges — and that appears to be what has happened in Munich. According to an exclusive story in the German magazine Focus, an estimated 1 billion euros worth of art, some 1,500 paintings by “dozens of classic modern masters” including Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and NoldeÂ have been seized from a Munich apartment. They had been confiscated during the Third Reich and have been missing ever since.

If you read German, go right to Focus. (FocusÂ also has a video on the story, also in German.)

If you don’t, some British news outlets have picked up the story. The BBC has a summary,Â including the following excerpt:

The magazine said the artworks were found by chance in early 2011, when the tax authorities investigated Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of an art dealer in Munich.Â He was suspected of tax evasion, and investigators obtained a search warrant for his home in Munich.

There, they found the cache of some 1,500 artworks which had vanished from sight during the Nazi era.The younger Mr Gurlitt had kept the works in darkened rooms and sold the occasional painting when he needed money, Focus reports….

…There are international warrants out for at least 200 of the works, Focus reports. The collection is being held in a secure warehouse in Munich for the time being.

One of the pieces is said to be a portrait of a woman by Matisse which belonged to the grandfather of French TV presenter Anne Sinclair.

According to the Daily Mail, which has a larger story, the trove was found in an “Aladdin’s Cave behind a wall of tins of beans and fruit in the decrepit flat [above] of loner Cornelius Gurlit in the Munich suburb of Schwabing.” Â And:

…Dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt had acquired the paintings and sketches in the 1930s and 40s for a pittance from terrified Jews and reported them all to be destroyed at the war’s end during the ferocious bombing of Dresden.

Nothing was known about the collection until September 2010, almost 100 years later, when customs carried out a routine check on a train from Switzerland.

Stopping his sole surviving son – who had never worked and who had no visible means of income – they discovered he had an envelope containing 9,000 euros in cash, and a stash of empty envelopes.

…He appeared nervous and the officials issued a search warrant for his Â£600-a-month rented flat.Â It was entered in the spring of 2011 and the paintings discovered.

Since then, art historians have been looking for the owners.

Finally, thisÂ case may solve some of the mysteries left over from the war.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Daily MailÂ

In Defense of The Detroit Institute: A Poignant Piece

The Sunday Review section of today’s New York Times had a wonderfully written, heartfelt piece by Susan Jacoby about the importance of art in our lives — and why the people of Detroit, poor or rich, deserve to have the great art that resides in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

It’s built around the Gates of Paradise (panel at right), and it’s so well done that I don’t want to quote it. Just read it, please. Maybe send it to Kevyn Orr and Michigan governor Rick Snyder.

Choose Your Tools To Explore Gothic Ivories

You never know what will catch fire. A couple of years ago, the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum had a little sensation on its hands when it displayed a set of the Lewis chessmen. Attendance soared.

It was, probably, the little figures not the ivory they were made of that drew interest, but I thought of them when I learned recently about a project at the Courtauld Institute in London — in a task begun in 2008, it’s cataloging all known ivory sculptures made made in Western Europe ca. 1200-ca. 1530, as well as neo-Gothic pieces, and the other day it added 700 pieces to the online database. This created a mini-storm of interest.

Plus, some Scandinavian institutions recently joined the project, which already has a long list of collaborators. And the BritishÂ Library just addedÂ two 14th century manuscripts embedded with ivory, one at right.

The project has its own website called Gothic Ivories, which went live in 2010; here are the people involved.

If this sounds like a throwback, compared to yesterday’s post on MoMA’s new Audio+, in a way it’s not. Gothic Ivories has interesting exploratory tools, too, though different ones — e.g., one that lets users compare four images at once, on the same screen. Registered users can also store their images, engage in forums, save their searches, etc. Casual visitors can view someÂ sets of images created by other users,Â etc.

Above, at left, is one of the items in the database, known as theÂ KremsmÃ¼nster diptych. Go to that page, and you’ll find much more information.

The site has a news section where it posts notice of exhibitions and publications.

There are many of these fascinating sites — when searched to see what had been written about the ivories, I found something comparing the site to the British Library’s Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

I also found a whole raft of sites about the Middle Ages, far too many to single out any here.

Happy browsing the the ivories.

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