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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Anselm Kiefer Talks About Beauty In Art

I’d wager that most people don’t think of “beauty” when they think of the art of Anselm Kiefer. So when Janne Siren, the director of the Alrbight-Knox Art Gallery, and I met last week, I was surprised by the catalogue he gave me for the Kiefer exhibition that, alas, closed there on Sunday. It was titled Beyond Landscape, and here’s part of its description:

Anselm Kiefer: Beyond Landscape explores the interplay of history, identity, and landscape in the work of one of the most important artists of our time. Several major works by Kiefer (German, born 1945) form the core of the exhibition. These include the Albright-Knox’s newly acquired der Morgenthau Plan (The Morgenthau Plan), 2012, a monumental panorama inundated with wildflowers that proliferate in the landscape surrounding the artist’s studio complex in Barjac, France…

The Morgenthau Plan is indeed a beautiful piece (see below); it was on view at Gagosian in 2013. I cite it here because in the Beyond Landscape catalogue, in an interview Siren conducted with Kiefer in Croissy, France, Kiefer tells how that work came about:

I had these wonderful photographs of Barjac, of flowers, fields of poppies, all kinds of flowers, like those you find in Monet’s paintings. I liked these photographs very much.

Then here, in Croissy [near Paris, where he also has a studio], I started to paint the flowers because I wasn’t there, in Southern France, anymore. And I thought, “Ugh, flowers! What can I do with this? This is nonsense–flowers!” And I realized I needed to combine them with a negative or cynical element, and I said to myself, “Oh, I can make a Morgenthau series. And in this series Germany will be covered with beautiful flowers, will be wonderful, because as a result of the Morgenthau Plan there will be no more industry, no more highways, just flowers.” This was a cynical idea. And sometimes artists have cynical ideas–well, they feel guilty. So I felt guilty for doing these nice things, for painting pretty flowers. And then I saw how other people reacted to the paintings–they liked them so much, and I thought, “Oh!”

So Kiefer felt he could paint beauty if it were not about beauty–the Morgenthau Plan, bruited in 1944 by Henry Morgenthau, exerted revenge on Germany; it was squelched by FDR but used by Hitler as propaganda. (It’s posted online in this PDF.)

TheMorgenthauPlan

The Albright-Knox placed wall texts explaining the “cynicism” behind the work, and Siren, in the catalogue, then says “And yet I see people experiencing beauty in front of your work, and, quite frankly, I think it is okay….because for many years in Europe the art establishment regarded the very notion of beauty as something distasteful or something to be shunned….”

Not just Europe, I would add, but in the U.S. too–and it’s not over. In fact, his comments above prove that–he reacted with horror to his beautiful work because it lacked negativity.

Kiefer had a response, though:

I think beauty is first. And then comes the counterpoint. I always say that Matisse was the most desperate person. He did these wonderful paintings, just fantastic. He was not doing well at the end of his life. He was ill. He was not a pleasant man. And he was not photogenic like Picasso. But he did works that are more beautiful than those of Picasso. Beauty needs a foundation. Beauty needs a foundation.

To a certain extent, he’s right. And to a certain extent, that’s sad.

Additionally, it’s something to think about at a moment when MoMA is about to open an exhibit of Matisse cut-outs, the, yes, beautiful works he made at the end of his life.

As for Kiefer, he has a big show at White Cube in London this fall and both The Telegraph and the Financial Times have done interviews that touch further on his views of beauty.

And apropos of my recent post on the Albright-Knox’s need for expansion, the museum is buying The Morgenthau Plan (2012).  It’s a big work–more than 9 ft by more than 18 ft.  Where’s it going to go?

Photo Credit: Courtesy the Gagosian Gallery, photograph by Charles Duprat, via the Albright-Knox.

 

Clyfford Still Museum Revisited

PH-613, 1942Life is constricted, to some extent, for all single-artist museums–and more than most at the Clyfford Still Museum. As decreed by the artist, it can never exhibit works by any other artist and it can’t have a restaurant or auditorium, among other things. Yet almost about three years ago, in November, 2011, it opened in Denver.

When I received a press release a while back announcing its tenth special exhibition, opening this coming Friday–The War Begins: Clyfford Still’s Paths to Abstraction–I thought it was time to check in and see how it is doing. The answer is pretty well, thanks.

As I report for an article published yesterday on The Art Newspaper website:

…the museum has received 38,562 visitors in 2014—already close to the 40,000 the museum originally projected for an entire year and likely to surpass last year’s total of 42,685. In 2012, its first full year, the museum attracted 61,204 visitors.

More impressive, to me, are those 10 shows, all but one curated by director Dean Sobel, consulting curator David Anfam, or the two of them together. The lone exception was organized by the chief conservator,  James Squires. They include, aside from two inaugural survey exhibitions:

…“Vincent/Clyfford”, featuring paintings and works on paper created during Still’s early years, when his subjects and palette echoed van Gogh’s (timed to coincide with the Denver Art Museum’s “Becoming van Gogh”; “Memory, Myth & Magic”, which exhibited Still’s works that allude to ancient cultures, artistic traditions and his memories; “The Art of Conservation: Understanding Clyfford Still”, which explained Still’s materials and working methods plus the ways conservators are striving to preserve his works; and “1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated”, which mimicked one of the few museum exhibitions of his work in his lifetime.

More details at the above link, including some of Sobel’s plans for next year. He has plenty to work, as about half of the 825 paintings the museum owns haven’t yet been unrolled since their shipment from art storage in Maryland. And very few people are familiar with Still’s drawings–many didn’t even know they existed–which number about 2,350.

PH-620, 1942The exhibit opening Friday, the museum said in a press release, “highlights the previously unknown dialogue between Still’s work in war industries and his early breakthrough into abstraction.” I’ve provided two paintings from it here (both from 1942), and here’s the museum’s web description.

In fact, because Still’s work remains largely unknown, Sobel has had to change tactics for his special shows: He had learned that he shouldn’t clear out all nine of the museum’s galleries, but rather that special shows are best implanted in the chronology the museum presents. Visitors want to learn Still’s narrative.

The permanent collection narrative changes anyway: in a rotation that starts this month, 53 works on paper will be hung, 40 of which have never been exhibited publicly.

If there has been a disappointment, Sobel says, it’s the lack of national critical review, except perhaps for its opening. Granted, not many critics are traveling beyond the coasts  very often, but it would be great if they weighed in on these special exhibits. As for the museum world, Sobel said, “a lot of my colleagues have only been visiting recently.”

His neighbor, director Christoph Heinrich of the Denver Art Museum, says the Still museum is “part of the conversation here in town,” and not least because of the special exhibits. But also, he said, because “it’s an incredibly in-depth look at the work of one really influential artist. Every artist knew him, but the public didn’t because he exerted so much control.”

Photo Credits: © City and County of Denver

Metropolitan Museum Rescues Egyptian Antiquities

TreasureHeregehLast week, as Bonhams in London was preparing to auction a lot of second millennium B.C. Egyptian antiquities consigned by the St. Louis Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Metropolitan Museum of Art* stepped in. Bonhams withdrew the lot, estimated at £80,000 – 120,000 (US$ 130,000 – 190,000), and the Met purchased the Treasure of Harageh items (one pictured at left).

There’s no word on what the Met paid.

I tell the whole tale, tipped off by an item by the Associated Press, in an item on Art-Antiques-Design. That’s a website based in the U.K. for which I began writing twice-monthly items back in July.

Among the topics covered on that site, in addition to the Met rescue, are dealer opportunities at the Crystal Bridges State of the Art exhibition, a new auction site called Bidquare and deaccessioning ethics for dealers.

I don’t plan to call your attention to everything I write for AAD, though, so I hope you will go there on your own from time to time.

Meanwhile, the site Looting Matters has published an item on another item withdrawn from Bonhams Oct. 2 sale–a Roman marble herm whose collecting history seems amiss.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Bonhams

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met.

Albright-Knox: Making The Case For Expansion

LegerWalkingFlowerMore than one museum has gotten into big trouble by expanding. But I’d bet the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has a better case than most of them. And last week, the museum said it plans to go ahead with a major expansion.

A little background first: I met Janne Siren, who was hired to replace Louis Grachos as the gallery’s director in January, 2013, on a visit he made to New York last week. I had last visited the museum about three years ago–though I wish I had not missed several of its recent exhibitions. And that streak seems to be continuing. Today was the last day for what looked like an excellent Anselm Kiefer exhibit, and I would very much like to get to Buffalo to see the coming Helen Frankenthaler show, which opens on Nov. 9 (Siren also showed me slides from the contemporaneous Paul Feeley retrospective, whose work I had not been familiar with).

So after a while in the doldrums, the AKG seems to have its exhibition program in gear. (Siren also showed me some recent acquisitions–have a look.)

But Siren reminded me how little of the AKG’s permanent collection is on view–and of the difficulties caused by the building’s design. The AKAG, Siren told me, is the sixth-oldest art museum in the United States. It predates the Met. Having started during the Civil War–and still officially known as Buffalo Fine Arts Academy–it has always focused on contemporary art and is renowned for the paintings acquired by A. Conger Goodyear, an early director, and Seymour H. Knox, Jr., a benefactor responsible for the AKAG’s renowned collection of Modern art (Leger’s Walking Flower and Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, both shown here, came from Knox.

Siren told me that only about 2% to 3% of the museum’s permanent collection, which consists of about 6,740 works of art, can be shown at any one time in its 19,000 sq. fett of exhibition space. At the museum’s annual meeting, last week, where the AKAG said it was going forward with an expansion, the Academy’s chair, Thomas R. Hyde, said, “Campus development is no longer an option; it is a necessity. We are, in many ways, a middleweight museum with a heavyweight collection,” according to The Buffalo News. 

Siren reminded me of another problem: when the AKAG was last expanded, in 1962, it mainly built an auditorium. The long halls around it are used to show art, but they are not idea. Furthermore, many contemporary art works today don’t fit through the museum’s doors.

Here is the museum’s full statement on the expansion.

ConvergenceBack in 2012, under Grachos, the Albright-Knox had hired Snohetta to develop a master plan for growth.

But the question is money. The AKAG made not insubstantial cutbacks during the 2008-09 recession. The Buffalo unemployment rate is a little less than the national average, but average wages are also lower. The city is said to be experiencing something of an economic rival, but as the News said last January, “In a region that has heard more than its share of grand plans over the past quarter century that ended up going nowhere – from a factory outlet mega-mall in Niagara Falls to Bass Pro and the Pataki administration’s plan to create a bioinformatics hub here – seeing is believing.”

That article went on to say that there is now an economic plan, with state investment funds behind it, and “challenges aside, the change is astounding by Buffalo standards, where for the past 60 years, economic growth has pretty much been something that happens someplace else.”

I really hope that message has affected potential donors, inspiring them to open their wallets. If real money is in place, the AKAG collection really does deserve more space.

Photo Credits: © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris (top); © 2010 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (bottom),  both courtesy of the AKG

Another Corcoran Outrage: The Archives

If you thought everything about the future of the Corcoran Art Gallery was parsed and settled, much to the dismay of its students, faculty, curators and various formers in all three categories, think again. There’s another outrage.

Grieving Canova lion by David MordiniThe Corcoran’s archives, which relate its entire 145-year history, are slated to be broken up.

Any archivist will tell you that, more important than the possibly wonderful individual items, it’s the whole of an archive that matters most to the historical record.

Indeed, the Corcoran archives contain “all institutional records, meeting notes, photographs, exhibition files, gallery publications and catalogues, architectural records, press clippings and scrapbooks, the journal of the gallery’s first curator William MacLeod, 1876-1886, records of the Washington Gallery of Modern Art 1962-1968, and records for art works,” according to Linda Crocker Simmons, curator emerita of the Corcoran. She established these archives in 1980 with the assistance of grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Though the issue of the archives was discussed during the breakup of the Corcoran, it hasn’t had much, if any, public exposure until I raised it yesterday with Carolyn Campbell, a former PR and Events Director of the Corcoran. “Excellent question,” she wrote me back, and told me of the breakup plan.

Known as “art related materials” in the agreement, the pact says that any papers related to art works would go with those works as they are distributed. to the National Gallery of Art or beyond, to other museums. The remainder of the items, it said, would be the turned over to an executive group of some of the new, non-profit Corcoran’s board and trustees of the NGA.

Here is the court pact.

Simmons and Campbell add, rightly:

Taken as a whole the records provide a unique picture of how private museums have operated from the 19th century to modern times. Because of the growing interest in American art history and cultural history, the Corcoran Archives was begun as a service to humanities scholars and other interested parties. Ironically, a filmmaker making a documentary on the history of Washington, DC’s art scene recently asked on the “In Memory of the Corcoran” Facebook page where they could find some documentation – since there are no more Archives, she and others like her no longer have it as a resource.

I heard another rumor, unsubstantiated at the moment, that the archives were being weeded out. By whom? Don’t know. Still, in probable good news, Marisa Bourgoin, who was the last Corcoran Archivist and now works at the Archives of American Art, is consulting on the division and distribution of records.

Simmons and Campbell believe that at the very least be digitally copied before being broken up. That could  be expensive. Perhaps they should stay together, given to the Archives of American Art, with the papers related to individual works of art copied for the new owners. (Or, Campbell suggests, to the George Washington University Gelman Library).

Photo Credit: A grieving Canova lion, outside the Corcoran, by David MordiniÂ