Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

A Strange Comment On The Richter Market

As we move into week two of the bellwether spring auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, a remark made by Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, keeps rolling around in my head.

First the set-up: Speaking of buyers in the market this season in an article headlined “Sure Bets” in The New York Times on Apr. 29, he said, “tastes are conservative but they want quality, technical virtuosity, beauty and color.”

Then, in a sidebar to that article examining a few choice lots, Gorvy said about Gerard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (798-3), which is on offer at Christie’s tomorrow night and estimated at $14 million to $18 million, “It’s eye candy for the emerging buyer.” (It’s shown at left.)

I found that an odd, especially since Robert Manley, a contemporary art specialist at Christie’s called the painting “one of the most valuable Richters to come to market” in a Christie’s press release. Manley also said it was “one of two unqualified masterworks” by Richter in the sale, the other being a figurative work called Seestüeck (Leicht bewölkt), which is one of a small series of seascapes painted in the late 1960’s, “most of which are in museum collections, including the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Bockmann Collection, Berlin and the Kunsthalle Hamburg.” 

Christie’s is actually selling six Richters this week, and says “This major comprehensive grouping includes works from the  60’s to the 90’s and is estimate to realize more than $40 million.” It headlined the press release “A Landmark Event in the Richter Market.”

Across town, meanwhile, Sotheby’s is offering four Richters, with combined presale estimates of $17.8 million to $24 million. And by the way, last year alone works by Richter brought $200 million at auction, among the highest of Western artists.

Seems a little high for eye candy, don’t you think? I’m puzzled by Gorvy’s comment, which shows disrespect for both the painter and his potential buyers.

 

On Eve Of New Barnes’s Opening, Full Coverage In The Hometown Newspaper

The Philadelphia Inquirer threw a lot of resources at the Barnes Foundation this weekend, providing a preview as the new building in the city moves toward its opening on May 19 — I counted seven articles and six slide shows online, though I have not seen the physical paper. UPDATE: Turns out there are more than seven articles — at least 10 — now online and in print (which I have not seen).

The paper is pretty positive about the new Barnes, which makes sense; opponents of the move from Merion to the city feel the paper and the city’s power elite who made the move a reality have always been aligned. They want to make Philadelphia an art destination, and as fine as the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection is, the city wasn’t a destination for art-lovers unless the museum mounted a blockbuster (which it did regularly).

Now, when you combine the two nearby collections, the city truly does have an impressive cluster of 19th Century French works. Here’s the tally according to the Inquirer:

Add the Barnes’ 181 Renoirs to the Art Museum’s 16 and that is the largest collection in the world. The Barnes’ 69 Cezannes plus the museum’s 16 amounts to more than there are in all of France. The Barnes owns 46 Picassos; the museum, 23. The Barnes has 59 Matisses, the museum, 15. The Barnes owns 18 Rousseaus, the museum, 10. Each institution boasts seven van Goghs.

In one Inquirer article, about the city’s “Museum Mile,” Philadelphia Museum curator Joseph Rishel says the cluster will become a pilgrimage site for art-lovers. On the other hand, Witold Rybczynski, architect, author, and University of Pennsylvania professor, says “I don’t think it’s a great idea to have three museums lined up in a row or three stadiums next to each other – there’s no synergy in that” and “No one spends two hours in a museum, then goes down the street to spend two hours in another.” I think they are both right, with a qualifier on Rybczynski’s “no one.” Most people don’t go from museum to museum, but traveling art pilgrims do. The question is how many they are — and whether they care about the legitimacy of the move.

Critic Edward Sozanski called the change this way: “The metamorphosis doesn’t diminish the art, but it does significantly alter the context in which visitors encounter it…” and “It’s not an absolutely precise re-creation, although the changes for the most part enhance the viewing experience.” (One wonders, as he repeated himself, if he was trying to convince himself.)

One change he mentions is better lighting. Here’s another:

Matisse fans and art historians will be delighted to discover that the masterpiece The Joy of Life no longer languishes on a landing in a stairwell. It’s now ensconced in a small room on the second floor that in Merion was where the trustees met.

The Joy of Life, a key step in the development of modern art, is now directly juxtaposed with Matisse’s mural The Dance, which fills three lunettes in the first-floor central gallery. My memory could be playing tricks, but the mural seems to be slightly easier to see in the museum than it was in Merion, even if it does involve architectural sleight-of-hand.

Sozanski also notes that the Barnes, now a real museum, has guest amenities, like a place to buy a sandwich.

Architecture critic Inge Saffron wrote two pieces, including a straight review, and she’s not crazy about the new Barnes:

…no less urgent, is the issue of how the new ensemble fits into its new home in the city. The answer is that it doesn’t.

In a nutshell, everything wrong with the new Barnes stems from a desire to compensate for the problems of the past. Hence the huge, unnecessary parking lot. It not only blocks the view of the Barnes’ elegant entrance facade, but it also weakens the emerging hub at 20th and Callowhill Streets. The bus drop-off is comically over-scaled – like the driveway at a Merion mansion – and cursed with a canopy so tacky one can imagine it presiding over a highway gas station. Add a grotesquely large, all-too-visible loading dock, and what you get is a site that has all the aesthetic coherence of a suburban supermarket.

Saffron’s other piece describes the architectural process, which she feels sacrificed the building for the art.
There’s also a history piece, a profile of Barnes the man and a profile of the collection (the latter two also by Sozanski).
Friends of the Barnes Foundation have not yet reacted on their website.
The photo above is from 2011, before the building was completed — sorry.

Brooklyn Makes A Purchase With Deaccessioning Money: Fair Trade?

Yup, you may think the Brooklyn Museum is in such dire straights that it’s not buying art — but think again. Today it announced a purchase thanks to a deaccession.

The purchase first: it is a wonder, a mother-of-pearl-inlaid Mexican folding screen, shown at left, commissioned about 1700 by the viceroy of New Spain, that combines Asian, European, and American artistic traditions. The six-panel screen, painted in oil and tempera, is in laid with mother-of-pearl. Known as a biombo enconchado, these folding screens are rare, and at the time of purchase by the Brooklyn, was the only surviving one in private hands. Here’s a description from the press release, edited for brevity:

These panels constitute half of a twelve-panel screen, created after Asian models by artists working in the circle of the celebrated González family in Mexico City, where it was displayed in the …viceregal palace. The other half of the screen is in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Virreinato in Tepotzotlán, Mexico. The complete screen was commissioned by José Sarmiento de Valladares y Aines, the count of Moctezuma y Tula, during his reign as viceroy of New Spain from 1696 to 1701….Sarmiento declared his allegiance to the Habsburg dynasty in the New World by having the front of his monumental folding screen painted with a major Habsburg victory over the Ottoman Empire, a scene from the Great Turkish War (1683-87). He requested a hunting scene …for the back…which would have served as a backdrop for the women’s sitting room in the palace. Both sides of the screen are framed with a mother-of-pearl encrusted floral decorative border inspired by Japanese lacquerware created for the export market.

In 1701 …Sarmiento…was recalled to Spain…his prized biombo enconchado in tow. The screen was later divided into two in Europe, and one half found its way to the United States by 1965, when it was recorded in a private collection in San Francisco; it entered the Museo Nacional del Virreinato by 1970. The Brooklyn Museum’s half of the screen was in England…for generations, in the collection of Cockfield Hall, until the family sold…the screen…in 1996.

The screen, which won’t go on view until September 2013, was acquired with funds raised by the deaccession of Vasily Vereshchagin’s 1897 Crucifixion by the Romans (pictured at that link). Sold at auction last November, the painting fetched nearly $2.7 million, more than expected, and now the Brooklyn has used the funds for the Mexican screen. The museum did not disclose the screen’s price, but it was presumably less than that total.

Fair trade?

My feeling — at least we know how the deaccessioning money was spent, or think we do (money is fungible).

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

 

Flash From Sotheby’s: “Record” For Munch – UPDATED

Major problems with my computer tonight: I tried to watch the Sotheby’s sale online, but it went in and out, and I missed the key lot — #20. Munch’s Scream.

But now I know that it fetched $119.9. million. Crazy, and I still prefer to think that it’s not a record, because the $82.5 million fetched by Dr. Gachet in 1990 tranlates to $144.8 million today.

Sotheby’s says in a release: “ A group of seven bidders jumped into the competition early, but it was a prolonged battle between two highly determined phone bidders that carried the final selling price to its historic level, after more than 12 minutes.”

The winning bidder was on the phone, and we have no indication so far what nationality.

More interesting results: The 1942 Picasso portrait of Dora Maar, once owned by Teddy Forstman, fetched $29.2 million despite a report that it had a tear, just beneath the neck — repaired, but still. Here’s the story in Vanity Fair.

Brancusi’s Promethee, a beautiful gilded  bronze piece, at right, soared above its $6 to $8 million estimate and brought $12.68 million, including the buyer’s premium.  

The sale ran out of steam near the end of the sale, after 9 p.m., when several lots were passed.

UPDATE: Still, here’s what Sotheby’s said, to sum up the sale: “The Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale totaled a remarkable $330,568,550 / £203,765,332 /€250,936,357, Sotheby’s highest-ever total for a sale of Impressionist & Modern Art worldwide**, and the second-highest total for a Sotheby’s auction in any category***.”

 

Back Your Bags For Manet in Toledo — Next Fall

The Toledo Museum of Art will be the place to be — ok, a place to be — next fall: it just announced a major exhibition for Manet, which it’s calling “Manet: Portraying Life.” Co-organized by Lawrence W. Nichols, senior curator for European and American painting before 1900, the exhibit will move from Toledo to the Royal Academy in London next January. It will include some 40 paintings, plus photographs, from around the world.

The anchor — or catalyst, if you prefer — is Toledo’s own marvelous Manet, Antonin Proust, at left, from 1880.  Here’s what Nichols had to say when I asked about the show’s origins:

Manet as a portraitist has never been isolated as an exhibition topic, and with our collection having one of his finer examples, I determined some six years ago to make this show come to pass – here.  Our partnership with the Royal Academy of Arts came about when I learned that my colleague, MaryAnne Stevens, was giving thought to preparing a Manet exhibition for London, which has never had a retrospective of the artist.  I was able to direct them to this aspect of his career.  Our aim: to explore the twofold character of Manet’s work in the genre of portraiture – posed portraits like our own canvas, as well as portraits of individuals engaged in the activities of everyday life.

Manet has never had a retrospective in London? How did that happen?

But I digress. Nichols says the show will include many of Manet’s best-known and loved works, including The Railway from the National Gallery of Art, Washington; Emile Zola from the  Orsay, Paris, and the “rarely lent gem” from RISD in Providence, Le Repos (Berthe Morisot), at right, to name a few, plus “a number of less well known works including Mme Brunet, which was just acquired by the Getty Museum, and The Bicycle (Leon Koella Leenhoff) from a private collection in Paris (which must be rarely seen, because I couldn’t find an image of it online). Here’s the press release.

I thought it was great, and possibly unusual, that Toledo is collaborating with the RA, and asked about it. “The TMA has generously lent to the RA, London, for decades, but to the best of my knowledge we have never collaborated with them on an exhibition,” wrote Nichols. My feeling is that, too often, museums collaborate with the same old partners and they need to mix it up a bit more.

This is an expensive exhibition for Toledo, but the museum has lined up sponsors and is obviously hoping for a popular success — which it should get. 

The Museum points out that 2012 is its hundredth year in its current building, and is kind of celebrating with the Manet show and three other portrait shows — one of paintings by Toledoan Leslie Adams; another called Made in Hollywood, portraits from the studios’ glory days from the 1920s to the 1960s, and a third featuring “more than 700 [!] photographs soon to be shot of citizens of this city,” Nichols said. It’s all called “Portrait Season at the Museum,” a way of focusing on people.

The Toledo museum has an avid local fan base, and this show, which opens on Oct. 7,  should only make them more appreciative.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Toledo Museum of Art (top)