Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Uncategorized

Five Questions For Leonard Lauder As The Met Reveals His Cubist Collection

So this week the art world and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s* members are getting a first look at the Leonard Lauder Cubist collection–assembled over the past 40 years. The masterpieces and seminal works he has purchased amount to the best private Cubist collection in existence, by design:  He always has a museum gift in mind as he collects. When I spoke with him in 2012, he said: “Many people collect to possess. I collect to preserve, and no sooner do I have a collection put together than I am looking for a home for it in a public institution.”

TerraceOftheHotelMistralThat belies reality, a little–he has told me that it’s long before he starts looking for a museum that he thinks about the coherence and importance of a collection he’s assembling. That quote came from a visit I made to him to discuss his postcard collection, much of which he gave to the MFA-Boston.  I wrote about it in a short piece for New Yorker.com, which relates–among other things–how he became a collector as a child.

More recently, but before he was giving interviews for the big Cubist reveal, I asked Lauder some questions via email. most of which I’ve  not seen asked or answered elsewhere. Here are his replies.

Which purchase/which painting convinced you to focus on Cubism, why and when was that? 

The picture that prompted me to focus on Cubism in a big way, and not just as part of a modernist collection, was Picasso’s Scallop Shell (Notre Avenir est dans l’air), which I acquired in 1980. But it is was a few years later, while attending a lecture by Kirk Varnedoe at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, that the importance of this picture for my future collecting really hit me. The slide of it was projected on the screen and Kirk discussed it at length and I learned things about it that inspired me to dig even deeper into Cubism. I had bought it from the Leigh and Mary Block Collection, when it had been partially dispersed and I realized that if I could obtain pictures of this quality I was going to keep them together. As it happens, not that many people were collecting cubism at that time: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism were driving the market.

What was your first purchase of a Cubist work? Does it remain in the collection, or was it sold? Has there been much selling, to refine the collection?

I bought two drawings by Fernand Léger in the early months of 1976: Drawing for the “Staircase”, 1913, and Study for the “Aviateur”, 1920. The first was a beautiful gouache and oil on paper, from his famous pre-war “Contrasts of Forms” series and the second, a watercolor in his postwar Purist period style that really grabbed me for its clean lines and precise design. (I have a few Legers from the early 1920s, and think of Purism as the last moment in the original heroic years of Cubism.)

I have sold very few of my Cubist works– I think I can count them on one hand, and only when I wanted to refine the collection, or in another case, because I was feeling financially pressed at the time.

You have two works from the historic first show of Cubism in 1908–when did you get them, and what are the stories behind their purchases? (E.g., were they hard to find, were many other collectors after them? Etc.)

The Terrace of the Hotel Mistral, 1907, was in a fine American private collection for years–the Werner and Margaret Josten collection. It was the dealer Stephen Mazoh who brought it to my attention in 1994. Since I was already known by then as a collector of Cubism, dealers often put me on the list to contact–maybe even the top of the list. This was not a picture that I had identified and chased as was often the case, but one that came to me. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: Braque’s last fauve, first proto-Cubist picture, and that it was in the famous show. Trees at L’Estaque, the second picture that I own that was in the historic Kahnweiler show and part of the breakthrough landscapes by Braque of “little cubes” (as the critics called them), came from the Douglas Cooper estate, the majority of which I had purchased in late 1986.

ScallopShellWhich work had the place of honor in your apartment–and why?

They are equally honored. But the one that takes up the largest wall area is Léger’s The Typographer, (1918-1919), simply because it is by far the largest in scale, a scale unusual for a Cubist picture.

What will hang in your apartment when the exhibition is up at the Met?

Before I started to collect Cubism, I had started to acquire works by German and Austrian modernists. I still have several painting and drawings from this earlier phase of my collecting and those will take pride of place while the works are on exhibition at the MMA. As you know, I have also bought fabulous modern posters over the years, from the first half of the twentieth century. I also intend to hang some works by my fiancé, Judy Ellis Glickman, who is an acclaimed photographer.

The exhibition, which opens on October 20, presents 81 works of art. You can bet they will be a treat to see.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum

*I consult to a foundation that support the Met

Mistake at DIA: A Pay-Raise Ruckus And A Solution

In the last two years or so, I’ve often praised the Detroit Institute of Arts for conducting itself in the right way–with respect to passing the millage and in how it has handled itself during the city’s bankruptcy. Now, though, it has made a major mistake–in terms of optics if not substance.

GargaroAnd it may cost the museum big, in terms of local support. Some local legislators are threatening to take action.

According to several reports, the board handed out big raises to the top two execs in 2012: Director Graham Beal received a 13% raise in total compensation to $514,000, including a $50,000 bonus, and COO Annmarie Erickson saw her pay rise 36% to $369,000, including the same bonus.

Both undoubtedly worked hard: 2012 was the year they campaigned hard to persuade voters in three Detroit counties to tax themselves a tiny bit, about $15 a year on every $150,000 of a home’s fair-market value, for 10 years and hand over what would amount to $23 million a year to the DIA for operations. In return, residents received free admission to the permanent collection galleries. As I wrote then, in an article for The Wall Street Journal,

In recent months Graham Beal has been working all but nonstop, speaking at community breakfasts and Rotary Club lunches, appearing at city council meetings, county hearings and fund-raising events, doing media interviews, conferring with political strategists. “I have not yet kissed any babies,” he says, with a slight chuckle that turns into a sigh.

So did he and Erickson deserve a raise? Probably–at least the bonus.

Detroit didn’t declare bankruptcy until July, 2013, but the  DIA board must have seen a crisis coming in some manifestation. Now, when pensioners and Detroit’s creditors are all taking haircuts, the action of trustees, no matter how well-meaning, looks off-key and out of line.

As the Detroit News reported:

Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak, said he spoke Friday with Gene Gargaro (pictured), chair of the DIA compensation committee, and asked him to either have the money returned or put measures in place to ensure this does not happen again.

If nothing happens, Woodward said, he would take steps to dissolve the Oakland County Arts Authority that collects the voter approved $11 million annually for the DIA.

“The DIA must act now to acknowledge the mistake, apologize and fix it,” Woodward said. “Otherwise, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to see that no further Oakland County monies go to it.”

Asked for comment Monday, Gargaro confirmed he spoke with Woodward on Friday and told The News: “I need time to consider what Dave and I discussed … when I have something meaningful, I will share it with you.”

Another lawmaker, Eileen Kowall, also said she’s talking to the DIA board of directors in hopes that they will reconsider.

Kowall, the Detroit Free Press reported, “…said she has gone to bat for the museum in the past, supporting legislation to ensure money from the millage goes to the DIA and not other uses. “I felt kind of blindsided I guess,’ she said. ‘I felt a little bit like a chump.’ ”

Optics matter in cases like this. It’s going to be sticky no matter what happens, but I think the DIA board should reconsider–and either make its case publicly or find another solution.

Way back when, you may remember, some rich board members of the Museum of Modern Art supplemented Glenn Lowry’s salary with their own funds. Mike Bloomberg did the same for some members of his mayoral staff. Perhaps that is what can happen here.

 

Mystery Solved: The Man Who Bought The Rothschild Prayerbook

Though I was hoping, last January, that the Getty Museum had purchased the marvelous Rothschild Prayerbook when it came up for auction at Christie’s, no press release ever emerged from Brentwood, so I had long since figured that it had disappeared into a private collection and wouldn’t be seen for some time. I was wrong.

RothschildPrayerbookThe 150-page prayerbook, you’ll recall, is a lavishly illuminated medieval Book of Hours, and at the time of its sale was considered to be the most important illuminated manuscript in private hands. It had been commissioned by a member of the Dutch imperial court, made in Ghent or Bruges around 1505-1510, and contains a Madonna and child by Gerard David, plus 67 full-page illuminations by Gerard Horenbout, Simon Bening and Alexander Bening, the top illuminators of their day. Baron Anselm von Rothschild (1803-74) bought it sometime in the 1800s, but the Nazis grabbed it from his heirs in 1938. Soon after Austria finally returned it to the family in 1998, the late Baroness Bettina de Rothschild consigned it to Christie’s. In 1999, it fetched almost triple its presale high estimate of about $4.7 million–setting a record of nearly $13.4 million. There were five bidders.

In January, I think, there was only one bidder, or maybe two, and the winner got it for $13.6 million. The hammer price was $12 million — exactly at the low estimate of $12 million to $18 million. Last month, he revealed himself–and far from hoarding it, he has put the prayerbook  on the road.

Trouble is, his road is in Australia. His name is Kerry Stokes, and he is chairman of Channel Seven there. He also has interests in other media, both electronic and print, plus property, mining, and construction equipment, according to Wikipedia. Based in Perth, he’s sending to Canberra and Melbourne, according to Australian reports.

Having paged through it myself, I know what he meant when he said “When I first saw it, I actually didn’t know if I should touch it and open it. I started to turn the pages and the hair on the back of my arm stood up. I’m a pretty tough nut, I guess, and I love art as one of the expressions that…probably appeals to the softer side a lot of people would deny I have. This is so unique I expect a lot of people will want to come and see it – we will have something else to offer that nobody else has and that’s the Rothschild Prayerbook.”

That’s from an account in the Daily Mail.

Stokes reportedly has a large art collection. In 2008, the Art Gallery of Western Australia presented an exhibit called PEEP: GLIMPSES OF THE LAST 4 DECADES FROM THE KERRY STOKES COLLECTION. It included Australian artists and others such as Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley, Alfred Jensen, Philip Pearlstein, and Walter de Maria. Then, last November through March, the AGWA presented A PRIVATE VIEW: MODERN MASTERS FROM THE KERRY STOKES COLLECTION, which included works by Monet, Courbet, Matisse and Magritte.

About the same time, he was said to be an “avid collector of rare illuminated manuscripts” and he lent twelve of them to the New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery in Western Australia, in show called Celebrating Word and Image 1250 – 1600. A slide show at the link shows they are nice, but cannot compare with his new prize, a true treasure.

Even if you do not travel to Australia to see this (and it is amazing, as I was allowed to page through it at Christie’s), Stokes wants to share it–I’ve heard unofficially that he is making a documentary about the prayerbook.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s 

ArtPrize: The People And the Jury Pick Same Winner

-1e78abae0ca8f699In a remarkable development, the Grand, No. 1 ArtPrize–the open, two-track competition in Grand Rapids–went to the same artist: Anila Quayyum Agha’s entry was chosen by both the public and a jury of art experts. Her piece, called Intersections, uses light to project Islamic imagery in shadows.  Or as she wrote:

…the geometrical patterning in Islamic sacred spaces, associated with certitude is explored in a way that reveals it fluidity. The viewer is invited to confront the contradictory nature of all intersections, while simultaneously exploring boundaries. My goal is to explore the binaries of public and private, light and shadow, and static and dynamic by relying on the purity and inner symmetry of geometric design, and the interpretation of the cast shadows. The form of the design and its layered, multidimensional variations will depend both on the space in which it is installed, the arrangement of the installation, and the various paths that individuals take while experiencing the space. The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference….

Alltold, ArtPrize winner this year were awarded $540,000. and Agha, who teaches drawing in Indianapolis, took home $300,000 of that. There’s asterisk, however, because the experts–Susan Sollins, Leonardo Drew, and Katharina Grosse–split their Juried Grand Prizem and gave half the $200,000 prize money to a piece called The Haircraft Project by Sonya Clark.

-7d3bf733b3cecf88When ArtPrize announced a change in this year’s contest, namely that the public prize and the expert prize would be equal in size, it also said “ArtPrize hopes to amplify and expand the conversation about the differences and similarities in the public’s and experts’ opinions.” I thought that was a good thing. I did not anticipate that the two would be decide the same, but that is far from a bad thing.

More than 41,000 individuals cast votes in this year’s contest.

The Grand Rapids Press has the story, with slides, and also a series of about 30 photos of Intersections, and it’s well worth a look. Interstingly, Michigan Gov., Republican Rick Snyder, who after months of suspense thankfully helped save the Detroit Institute of Arts during the ongoing Detroit bankruptcy case, showed up at the ArtPrize awards in Grand Rapids. Of course, he is in a race to continue as governor, and it was a good place to campaign. Still, there were probably other good places to campaign last week, when the prize was announced.

Here’s a list of all winners.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Press

 

 

 

 

A Participatory Exhibit I Can Applaud (I Think)

WPhillipsContrary to some belief out there, I’m not against all participatory, experiential activities in art museums. (I don’t believe museums should be as quiet as cathedrals, either, but that’s another post.) Here’s a participartory program that sounds, in advance, without my being there, like a good one.

It’s at the Freer-Sackler Galleries* in Washington: in conjunction with the opening on Saturday of Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips and “International Archaeology Day” on Oct. 18, the museum has scheduled a slew of special events running from Oct. 12-18.

For example, on the 18th, in a family-day activity, visitors can:

…discover what it’s like to work on an archaeological dig in the remote deserts of Arabia. At 1:15 pm, join docents in the exhibition to read original records and see treasures from an actual expedition in the 1950s. At 2 pm, families are invited to explore the exhibition and then participate in a hands-on learning project in the ImaginAsia classroom. At 3:15 pm, meet archaeologist Zaydoon Zaid, who has led expeditions in Yemen and was an advisor for Unearthing Arabia.

I love that they are looking at original handwritten notebooks, photographs,  and film clips from these excavations in Yemen, where Phillips (pictured at right) dug during a massive expedition in the 1950s.

Outside the museum–try envisioning this–the Freer-Sackler has created:

…Washington’s first interactive scratch-off billboards, featuring images of Yemeni sand dunes that can be “excavated” to reveal treasures and images from the exhibition…[thus giving]…Washington commuters a chance to play the archaeologist in everyday life. The advertisements will go up Oct. 13 in bus shelters at 11th and E streets N.W. and Seventh and H streets N.W. and will remain on view during the initial weeks of the exhibition. A limited edition of postcard-sized versions will be available at the Sackler for budding expedition leaders to take home as a complimentary memento.

Lion=TimnaThat’s an experiment–and I’m not sure it’ll work, but hey, why not? At least it is about the excavated artifacts.

Unearthing Arabia is showing some wonderful artifacts from the dig, of course. There will be “a pair of striding Hellenistic bronze lions surmounted by a boyish rider… known as the ‘Lions of Timna,’” (at left) as well as an alabaster head of a young woman whose eyebrows are made of lapis lazuli, a gold necklace, carved incense burners, funerary sculpture and so on.

In an email to the press, the Freer calls the exhibit “multisensory,” and so I asked what that meant. I learned from the press office that it meant they were going beyond traditional wall labels:

…we wanted to rely more on video and sound [to] recreate the dramatic mood of Wendell’s memoirs and some of the sights/sounds of the expedition. (Lots of video is very unusual for us, we’re normally highly object-based).  The walls in the galleries are used for large-scale, almost floor-to-ceiling projections that combine quotes, original video, soundtrack, animated lines from his field diaries and telegrams, and B&W and color photographs in a moving, shifting cinematic video.

On the programming side, our educational team will set up an occasional station with sand and sherds from the museum’s study collections,  so that visitors can use real archaeological tools and get their hands a little dirty.

Wendell’s dime-store novel, Sheba’s Buried City, is also part of the mix.

What makes this better than some so-called experiential or participatory exhibits? The art, it seems to me, is at the center here; the rest is designed to engage people with the art.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Freer-Sackler

* I consult to a foundation that supports the Freer-Sackler