Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Van Gogh Liked Pink, And Other Revelations

If you went to Van Gogh Up Close at the Philadelphia Museum of Art earlier this year, you saw a painting many thought was one of the stars of the show: Undergrowth with Two Figures from the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum, a bequest of Mary E. Johnston accessioned in 1967.

But back in Cincinnati, Per Knutas, the former paintings conservator at the Cincinnati museum, had questions about it. When the painting (original view at left) was cleaned, he had discovered tiny traces of bright pink in the areas under the frame. On the rest of the painting, they were white. Did van Gogh use pink? For which flowers?

Knutas called on Dr. Gregory D. Smith, the Senior Conservation Scientist at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, who agreed to examine the painting in hopes of identifying the mysterious paint colorant van Gogh used.  Dr. Jeffrey Fieberg, a visiting researcher and Associate Professor of Chemistry at Centre College in Danville, KY, was there to help.

Now they know. The IMA Lab researchers have now determined that bright pink pigment was the original color of many of the painting’s flowers. They had “rapidly faded to white due to the properties of a dye that van Gogh often used at the end of his career,” the press release says.

Van Gogh was known to use a bright Geranium Lake organic dye, whose brilliance is short-lived when exposed to light. And the researchers knew of a letter written by van Gogh to his brother, Theo, while he was painting the work that described it this way: “. . . undergrowth, lilac trunks of poplars, and underneath them some flower-dotted grass, pink, yellow, white and various greens.”

Here’s how they did it:

Smith utilized a small broken paint chip found lodged in the varnish to analyze the dye by Raman microspectroscopy—a process that collects a characteristic spectral fingerprint from the dye by measuring changes in laser light scattered by the molecules. Comparison of the spectrum to a digital library of thousands of materials identified the dye as eosin, which gives Geranium Lake its vibrant color. After identifying the ink, Smith and Fieberg painstakingly mapped out its location by elemental spectroscopy in the 387 dobs of white paint used by van Gogh to represent the flowers. The team used Adobe Photoshop to record all the spots in which the dyestuff was detected, creating a virtual restoration of the aged painting [bottom].

The release has more details on this painting and on one by de Chirico, and I’ve pasted the current version and the reimagined versions here — even at this size, you can see some pink in the lower one.

But here’s a possible fly in the ointment. Yesterday, the Daily Mail in London printed a story positing that van Gogh was colorblind. That’s according to a Japanese vision expert named Kazunori Asada. If you go to the article, you’ll see various pictures through normal eyes and  how they look to people who are colorblind. At the bottom are several van Gogh paintings seen the same way.

I wonder what Asada would think of the original painting.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Museum of Art

Go See Art In Brooklyn!

I have a high threshold for judging the merit of crowd-curated exhibits. Many, to me, just seem like pandering. But here’s one with a twist that may let it pass the test.

Over the weekend of September 8-9, between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., people in the New York area are being invited to meet artists in Brooklyn in their studios. They can watch them work as they paint, sculpt, weave, photograph, make prints, and so on.

This open studio event, called “GO See Art IN Brooklyn,” is being sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum.  Those who take advantage of the opportunity will be able to check in via text messages, something called the “GO” mobile app, or the GO mobile website.

After checking in, people will be able to to nominate three artists from their visits for inclusion in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. According to a press release, “the ten artists with the most nominations will receive studio visits from Brooklyn Museum curators. Two or more nominated artists will be chosen by the curators to have their work displayed as part of a Brooklyn Museum group exhibition opening at TARGET FIRST SATURDAY on December 1, 2012.” The show continues through Feb. 24.

The artists are listed here, though you have to be patient, because they are not listed in any particular way but appear “at random.” You can, however, access them by neighborhood or see their locations on a map.

The Brooklyn Museum put out a press release with more details back in July.

Obviously, getting people into artists’ studios is good for the visual arts and for artists, which Brooklyn has a lot of. But curators have the last word. That makes all the difference, to me, in terms of validating the exercise.

 

 

Loans From Van Otterloos Lead To Thoughts About Real Collectors

True collectors never stop buying and they go their own way, following what they love, not necessarily what’s fashionable. Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, whose collection of Dutch Golden Age Old Master paintings was on tour during 2011-12, provide an example once again.

Last spring, they made news when they bought Rubens’s Crucifixion at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair (see it here). At the time, Eijk told me that the painting was too dramatic for their home, and belonged in a museum.

Though they mainly live in Massachusetts and Florida, he said they would probably lend it to the Currier Museum in Manchester, N.H. for tax reasons.

And that’s what happened. The Currier confirmed shortly thereafter that the van Otterloos would lend The Crucifixion, as well as The Apulian Shepherd by Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) and The Cardplayers by Jan Steen (c. 1625–1679) in connection with an exhibition opening Sept. 29 at the Currier titled Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt (through January 6, 2013).

The other day, the Currier emailed me with news that five, not three, van Otterloo painting would be on loan. Two floral still-life paintings, one by Jacob van Walscapelle (about 1679) and the other by Jan van Huysum (about 1730), will also be there.

None of these works were on that international tour, and none has been exhibited previously in the U.S. 

This isn’t a separate exhibition, either. The van Otterloos’ works will hang alongside the Currier’s Old Master paintings collection, which includes works by Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Molenaer and Balthasar van der Ast.

I’m showing four of them here (The Crucifixion can be seen at the link above). From top to bottom, they are the paintings by Wtewael, van Walscapelle, van Huysum and Steen.

 While we’re on the subject of collectors, I was talking the other day with a a major collector in a completely different field, a man whose name for the moment must remain undisclosed. He brought up the subject of what it takes to be a real collector, “not the so-called collectors. There are not many real collectors in the world.”  

What does it take to be a real collector — not an investor or a speculator, not someone looking to build social capital?

The collector in question cited five necessary criteria. “To be a collector,” he said, “you must collect, conserve, research, publish and exhibit” your treasures.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Currier Museum

 

 

 

 

 

The Saginaw Experience: Hubris, Which Is Not So Uncommon — UPDATED

“Closing is not an option. It is not even under consideration,” Sharril L. McNally, the president of the board of trustees of the Saginaw (Mi.) Art Museum, told the Ann Arbor News (posted on MLive) the other day. And today, the board is set to vote on what to do instead.

Like those of many another museum, the tale in northern Michigan seems to be about over-expansion. In 2003 and 2004, the museum completed and opened two expansions with a cost of $7.45 million to its historic mansion home (left). To help finance trustees’ vision, they took out a $450,000 mortgage. And the increased space added to operating costs, with energy bills alone now exceeding $100,000. According to the ANN:

For the past two weeks, the museum at 1126 N. Michigan — its home since 1948, in the mansion that once belonged to lumber baron Clark Lombard Ring — has opened only for Macy’s Free Fridays and has placed coming exhibitions on hold.

Exhibitions have already been largely based on a permanent collection that contains “2,500 works spanning 4,500 years,” but visitorship did not increase enough to cover costs (it never does) and the museum could not land enough grants to cover costs either. “Among its most memorable works are Saginaw native E. Irving Couse’s depictions of the American Indians in the Old West,” the article said.

Now McNally says the museum may have to relocate to cheaper quarters.

As I write this, the article has 22 comments from readers (plus one from the writer of the article, Sue White), and all of them could by summed up by one: “Very sad indeed. If it wasn’t for that 8 million dollar eyesore expansion 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have this issue…I liked the museum the way it was. That expansion was like taking a classic ’67 Corvette and putting on 22 inch spinning rims and bolting a giant nascar spoiler on the back….whoever the architect was, should refund the museum it’s money, with an apology letter.” Some outright blame the trustees for hubris.

Just like so many other over-reaching expansions in the past 10 to 15 years.

A while back the American Association of Museum used too track museum closings, but it stopped  — the task was too hard to assure accuracy. So I have no definitive information on the topic. Most of those in deep trouble appear to be small museums, but they often took their cue for expansion from the larger museums. It’s amazing to me that so few closings, or moves to smaller quarters, have been made during this long period of economic stagnation.

UPDATE, 8/24: Yesterday’s board meeting seemed to go as promised — the board is assessing a move from the mansion it has occupied since 1948 to one of three locations, all undisclosed, that would be cheaper to operate. There may also be some deaccessioning, according to the Saginaw News, quoting McNally:

As with any large house, it’s amazing to see what you’ve accumulated through the years.This will also give us the chance to take a good look at what we have and what we might trade as we refurbish and enhance our collection. That’s every museum’s goal.

And the mansion?

 The building is ours and we will attempt to sell it. If that’s not possible, we will do everything we can to preserve it. It’s a jewel in Saginaw.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Ann Arbor News

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Window On The Future Of The Clyfford Still Museum

The exhibition I feature here doesn’t open until Sept. 14, but this is the summer doldrums, and hey there’s not much else going, despite some promises to the contrary. (I would be happy to be contradicted on that reference.)

So let’s look at the Clyfford Still Museum, in Denver, which opened last November. As I wrote in October, 2011, in an article for the Wall Street Journal about the museum,

Creating a constituency for a one-artist museum can be tricky even when, like Georgia O’Keeffe or Andy Warhol, that artist is widely known (and loved) and has a local base (Santa Fe, N.M., and Pittsburgh, respectively). Still, a loner who was born in North Dakota in 1904 and died in Maryland in 1980, with several stops in between, had decreed that his life’s work should go to any city that would erect a museum solely for his works—and nothing else, ever.

And that turned out to be Denver. So how is Dean Sobel, the museum’s director, going to pull off Vincent/Clyfford — “a focused exhibition exploring connections between Vincent Van Gogh and Clyfford Still—in particular those found during the initial decades of the latter’s career,” according to the press release?

Reproductions and “interpretive material.” The exhibition itself will feature about 20 of Still’s paintings and works on paper, all executed between the late 1920s and the 1930s. They expose, we’re told, “direct parallels with Van Gogh’s preferred subject matter—including vignettes of agrarian labor, moody landscapes treated as soul-scapes, and dark interior scenes—as well as his use of the grotesque to accentuate the plight of human beings living on the edge.”

Still apparently identified with van Gogh because of his bare-bones childhood on farms in Canada, where he did manual labor, like the peasants van Gogh depicted. “Cycles of growth, decay, and rebirth in their work are evoked in their through recurrent symbols such as corn, the sun, and the sower,” the museum says. “Still’s paintings also echo Van Gogh’s in their rich color palette and heavily troweled painterly surfaces.”

I credit Sobel and adjunct curator David Anfam for coming up with the theme. They have discovered a very good, direct pairing of a 1936 painting by Still with van Gogh’s Two Peasants Digging, from 1889, illustrated on the press release, which I encourage you to view.

I asked for more and received PH-418, from 1936, above left, which is paired with Van Gogh’s marvelous Night Cafe, 1888, from the Yale  University Art Gallery, at right. Interesting.

The museum is also pairing Still’s now-famous  Self-Portrait from 1940 (which you will find on this webpage) with van Gogh’s Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin, 1888, from the Harvard University Art Museums, bottom left.

Based on this information — one never knows until one sees an exhibition — I give the Still museum credit for trying and being enterprising. It’s a good theme.

But I think Still made a huge, egotistical mistake — preventing comparisons of works by other artists side-by-side doesn’t make him look better, it makes him look afraid. Wouldn’t this have been far more interesting if the van Gogh works were actually present, instead of there in reproductions?

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum (top); ©  the Yale University Art Gallery (middle); © the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Art Museums (bottom).