Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Hopper, Wowing Them In France, Also Goes 24 Hours

American art seems more and more welcome and appreciated in Europe, and around the world, nowadays. It has been a long time coming for art made before Abstract Expressionism.

arton2926-1d48eOne more bit of evidence: the Edward Hopper exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, which has brought together 164 of his 128 paintings, watercolors, engravings and illustrations. According to Next-Liberation, “Edward Hopper is a hit. So much so that, to cope with demand, the Paris retrospective was extended for six days, until February 3, with three days of continuous opening last weekend.” It’s drawing about 6,800 visitors a day – some 580,000 as of the date of the article.

The Grand Palais is projecting a final count of 700,000. Had that daily rate been achieved in the last rankings of The Art Newspaper, the Hopper show would have placed as the 9th most popular show of 2011. By gross attendance, its rank would have been higher.

These numbers far exceed those attained for the Hopper exhibit at the Tate in London in 2004. The number of tickets sold for that exhibit was about 420,000. (In a side note, Sheena Wagstaff, who curated that show, is now the contemporary art curator at the Met.)

Meanwhile, the review posted on CultureKiosque by Patricia Boccadoro called it a “magnificent exhibition” and said:

What is certainly true is that Hopper reshaped painting in the United States, his works not only inspiring film directors fromHitchcockto Wim Wenders, but also being reproduced in posters, post cards, and book covers, thus contributing greatly to a certain image of America still present in Europe today.

On the other hand, his work depresses her. She ends the review:

… He seems to take no pleasure in life, painting being merely an intellectual exercise, full of silent, stoic people, with no trace of joy or laughter. There’s sunlight, but no scent of sunshine, people, but none of the warmth of humanity.The admiration one feels upon leaving this exhibition is perhaps less for the genius of this artist whose works are scarcely uplifting, and more for the excellence and scope of the presentation, the first of its kind in France. Indeed, almost 130 of Hopper’s works have been brought together by the Grand Palais and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid in partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a remarkable achievement.

No matter. As long as people look…

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Grand Palais

 

Manet’s Star Rises In London

The Manet portraiture exhibition, which ended recently at the Toledo Museum of Art, has opened in London at the Royal Academy. It’s getting the attention it deserves.

luncheon-in-the-studio-1868For a start, on Jan. 20, The Telegraph reported that “Advance bookings for the show are among the highest in the Academy’s recent history, exceeding sales for its blockbuster Van Gogh exhibition in 2010. Several of the timed slots to see the show have already sold out.”

As a result, the RA is opening on five Sunday evenings from 6:30 to 10 p.m. for an “enhanced” visitor experience with the show. It normally closes at 6 on Sundays, but for  £30 — double the normal £15 adult ticket for Manet — visitors can see the exhibit with a “limited number” of others. Plus, they get a drink, a gallery guide and an audio guide. More details here.

That’s an interesting tact — and I favor it, despite comments from critics who say it’s not democratic. Piffle — variable pricing, I’ve argued (see one 2009 article here) — should come to museums. As I mentioned there, the Metropolitan Museum has charged $50 for access to special exhibits on some Mondays, when it’s normally closed, and in 2006 the Neue Galerie tried to charge $50 on Wednesdays, when the museum is normally open (free) only to members, to see the then newly-acquired Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.  Criticism changed the Galerie’s plan, needlessly. I don’t see this as elitist — no one blinks about skyboxes — I see it as experimental and practical.

Second, the Manet is getting some raves. The Independent named it “exhibition of the week.”  Richard Dorment in The Telegraph gave it five stars, though he failed to mention Toledo’s role in the organization and scholarship. The Telegraph has devoted much other space to the exhibition, including this one headlined Did Manet Have a Secret Son?

But there were some pans, or at least mixed reviews. The Guardian said it excelled as a biographical show but pointed out that it included some weak pastels. Brian Sewell in the Evening Standard wrote this (and much more — I encourage you to read the whole thing):

…the Royal Academy honours this singular painter with an exhibition, Manet: Portraying Life, in which 54 examples demonstrate his mischief, his obstinacy, his perception, his borrowings and subversions, his achievements and his failures. Divided into five themes and restricted to portraits and portrayal, it is a little too thin to serve him as well as it should and could, and for newcomers to this Outsider (neither Salonard nor Impressionist) it may not be easy to grasp his progress either to Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe or from it to The Bar at the Folies-Bergère, the alpha and omega of his major paintings — though in this exhibition the Déjeuner is the much smaller and later version from the Courtauld Gallery and The Bar is omitted from it. It must be said too that at least a dozen paintings and pastels…are bad enough to convince the newcomer that Manet does not merit his reputation as a master….

Well, maybe Sewell is right or maybe he was having a bad day.

On another front, close readers of the comments on RCA already had a preview of this: The Manet exhibition has been selected as the subject of an “event film” that will be shown on cinema screens worldwide, just as Leonardo Live was a year ago. Manet: Portraying Live will premiere at the movies on Apr. 11 in the UK and in about 30 other countries, including the U.S. This time, the producers were not forced to produce a live broadcast, which created silly moments in Leonardo. I expect that this time the result will be much better.

Stay tuned for more details here in the coming weeks.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Neue Pinakothek, Munich

A New Model Of Museum Financing

MonroeI will have more to say on the subject in a subsequent post, but for now I would just like to link to an article I have written that will be published in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. It’s a Cultural Conversation with Dan L. Monroe, the executive director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.

In it, Monroe outlines his thinking behind the museum’s current $650 million fundraising campaign, the bulk of which will go to PEM’s endowment. He has challenged the conventional wisdom that it’s too hard to raise big money for endowments.

Ok, his thinking may not work for all museums, but my article is definitely worth a read for anyone who cares about the financial stability of museums.

More coming, but not tonight…

 

 

The Verdict On “Doubt,” The Opera — UPDATED

ows_135938788158566To followup on my recent Cultural Conversation with John Patrick Shanley: “Doubt” premiered at the Minneapolis Opera on Saturday night and the reviews are starting to come in. I’m not surprised that they are mostly positive. For one, who’s going to criticize Shanley’s writing, even if it’s a new form for him? The reviews I’ve read barely mention the new elements he had promised, and delivered on, let alone comment on whether they work well.

Mostly, the critics comment on the music and the singing.

Here’s the Minneapolis StarTribune review,

“…Cuomo’s music is of quiet power, most moving when most intimate; he knows how to insinuate what cannot be spoken. Though unmistakably American in sound, with echoes of Copland, Bernstein and John Adams, he avoids both pop cliché and music-theater razzmatazz. If Cuomo’s vocal lines sometimes seem awkward, his pacing is remarkably deft…Alive to Sister Aloysius’ steeliness, vulnerability and quirky humor, Christine Brewer [right, in the photo at left] makes her one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary opera. This is a great performance by a consummate singer; that it comes in the context of a new work makes it all the more extraordinary….”

20130124__130128ae-doubt1_400Here’s the St. Paul Pioneer Press review, which says in part:

“…Douglas Cuomo’s music serves to expand the emotional palette of Shanley’s words, layering levels of meaning onto exchanges and adding extra shadings to an already complex tale….It’s impressively sung and staged, its story’s ambiguity enhanced by Cuomo’s conflicted music. Yet the angular, often discomfiting character of that music might make it a tough listen for some….His melodies take many an unpredictable turn, single syllables sail in on a plethora of notes, and seemingly inconsequential phrases are repeated for evident emphasis, while others of relative importance are sung simultaneously and swept away in swells of sound…”

And here’s the AP review, published by Salon: “… The opera, with a libretto by Shanley and music by Douglas J. Cuomo, makes for a gripping 2 1/2 hours of theater. …The loudest applause deservedly went to Christine Brewer, the distinguished American soprano who may have found the role of a lifetime as Sister Aloysius…”

So the big winner seems to be Brewer. That’s Denyce Graves at right, playing the role of Mrs. Miller.

UPDATE, 1/30: The Wall Street Journal has weighed in; it, too, likes the singing and the “spare and clever set,” but doesn’t think the music rises to the libretto.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the StarTribune (top) and the Pioneer Press (bottom) 

 

A Short Message About Museums And Antiquities

Hugh Eakin has it exactly right in his long piece in today’s New York Times, headlined The Great Giveback. In it, he chronicles what has been happening at American museums regarding the antiquities in their collections. While some of those objects have clearly been obtained under suspicious circumstances — and have now been returned, as they should be – many do not have proven problems. Yet museums have fallen victim to what amounts to extortion some foreign governments — sometimes voluntarily.

Ka-NeferNeferMeanwhile, the looting that these cases were supposed to stop has gone on, possibly getting worse. And many of the stolen objects are being purchased by collectors in other countries that do not care about the looting.

I normally refrain from writing about these cases lest I be accused of conflict of interest because of my consulting work. However, I don’t believe that prohibits me from citing an excellent article. He is a reasonable voice on a topic that attracts extreme positions.

Or from making another point: far too many journalists have bought the line of the “country of origin” claimants and archaeologists without examining the circumstances, the dynamics and the politics at work. The same thing happened, on occasion, in Nazi looting cases. It was far easier to buy the arguments of, and be sympathetic to, the claimants than it was to report out “the best available version of the truth,” to quote that line about the purpose of journalism.

Not all of the claimants of antiquities or World War II loot deserved that bias toward the “underdog.” Some are taking advantage of a complicated situation.

Let me close with Eakin’s final paragraph, pitch-perfect:

Looting is a terrible scourge, and museums must be held to the highest ethical standards so they don’t unwittingly abet it. But they are supposed to be in the business of collecting and preserving art from every era, not giving it away. By failing to deal with the looting problem a decade ago, museums brought a crisis upon themselves. But in zealously responding to trophy hunting from abroad, museums are doing little to protect ancient heritage while making great art ever less available to their own patrons.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum via the NYT