If a publication in the United States were awarding the “exhibition of the year” title, I’d bet the contenders would include the de Kooning exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, the Alexander McQueen fashion show at the Metropolitan Museum, The Steins Collect at San Francisco MoMA, and … maybe Caravaggio at the Kimbell? The whole of “Pacific Standard Time” in LA?

Which makes the choice of Apollo Magazine in the U.K. all the more interesting. In its December issue, Apollo named Hans von Aachen: A Court Artist in Europe, which was shown in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen, at the Castle Museum in Prague and at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, as the best. And there is a certain rationale for shining the spotlight on this little-known artist — today — but someone who in his day, had a different reputation. As the story begins, “Hans von Aachen (1552-1615) was famous for being famous.”  Hans von Aachen, at right in a self-portait, c. 1574) is a man for our times:

The artist magnified his station by using a new machinery of fame. He disseminated his artistic inventions to an international audience by hiring the best engravers of the day to create superb prints after his paintings. An admired portraitist, Von Aachen also made likenesses of his patrons, associates, and friends so that, by having engravings produced of their effigy, they could trumpet their own renown, as well as that of their portraitist, whose name (included in the engravings) added lustre to theirs, just as theirs illuminated his, until the artist’s illustrious circle blazed in the light of fame. 

But there’s more to the artist (his Bacchus, Ceres and Amor is at left):

This master’s genre paintings, many of which include a roguish, smiling self-portrait, look forward to Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38), Rembrandt (1606-69) and Jan Steen (1626-79), while his more intimate masterpieces (for example, a portrait probably of his daughter; Fig. 2) are as moving and immediate as comparable works by Rubens.3 The trouble is, because his art varies so dramatically, because, while almost every-thing he left us is excellently made, the whole remains elusive, he has the reputation of a chameleon able to accommodate his manner to the eclectic tastes of his clientele. And for about 500 years now, from Vasari through to Clement Greenberg, eclecticism earns an artist little praise.

…Bringing together more than a hundred of the artist’s works and displaying the full range of his activities (paintings on canvas, panel, copper, slate, and alabaster; drawings for all purposes and from all phases of his career; prints by his principal engravers), the exhibition, ably curated by Thomas Fusenig, may have been Hans von Aachen’s unique moment in the sun, a once-in-a-lifetime summation of the versatility of a major master of his time…

…This memorable exhibition clarified the achievements of a pivotal and overlooked master, expanding his known oeuvre and bringing new scholarship to bear on his achievements. Through the creative use of the three exhibition venues, in Aachen, Prague and Vienna, the show brilliantly revived a forgotten geographical axis of European history. For this and more, the show richly deserves this journal’s annual exhibition award.

Given the Leonardo exhibit at the National Gallery, which is I’d hope likely to be included next year — because it didn’t even make the short list — among so many others, the choice seems eclectic. But it’s defensible. Here’s a link to the whole Apollo article.

 

 

From a press release.

With profound sadness, the family of Helen Frankenthaler announces the death of Ms. Frankenthaler on December 27, at age 83, following a lengthy illness. Frankenthaler, whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the 20th century.

The press release contains a summary of her career.

 

At left:

Helen Frankenthaler in her New York studio at 83rd Street and Third Avenue, 1964, with Interior Landscape, 1964 (collection of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), behind her on wall (detail). Photograph by Alexander Liberman. Alexander Liberman Photography Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. (2000.R.19). Copyright © J. Paul Getty Trust.

UPDATE: More photos of Frankenthaler at work are posted on the Ernst Haas Estate website — lovely!

UPDATE 2: Eric Gibson writes a marvelous appreciation for Frankenthaler in today’s Wall Street Journal.

 

 

While I was away, the Wall Street Journal published a short “Icon” article I wrote about Bernini’s Medusa, at left, which is on view at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It’s on loan from the Capitoline Museums in Rome, the second in a series, as I wrote.

It’s a beautiful piece, as you can see, but part of the story had to be left out because of the brevity required by Icon articles. For Medusa, Bernini was channeling his former lover, Costanza Bonarelli, who — as the article does say — Bernini had caught also having an affair with his own brother. He depicted her as Medusa, who had also been punished for having an affair (with Neptune), and the piece captures her just as her ahir is being transformed into writhing snakes.She is crying out with anguish.

The earlier, companion, piece (which was made for the Borghese family) is in the collection of the Bargello Museum in Florence — it’s a tender rendering of Bonarelli, circa 1636-38, and I’ve pasted it at right below.

As many art historians noted, Bernini loved to work in marble. According to Charles Scribner III, a Bernini scholar whom I quote in the WSJ piece, his son Domenico once said that Bernini manipulated marble as if it were “as malleable as dough or as pliable as pasta.”

Good quote even if it’s apochryphal. Bernini is also, of course, renowned for capturing a fleeting moment, though less so in his tender portrait of Bonarelli.

As I was doing research before filing the Medusa icon piece, I tried to find out how many Berninis reside in the United States. I did not come up with a definitive number, but I believe it’s only a handful. Obviously, many of his works are so large, so fragile or so untransportatable that the can not be moved here. But the Getty Museum had a portrait bust exhibition called Bernini and Baroque Portraiture in 2008. I wish I had seen it. For the most curious among you, there’s a slide of some works in that exhibit at that link.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (top). 

 

I’ll be away for a few days celebrating Christmas…I can think of no better image to leave for you than Fra Angelico’s Nativity.

Here’s another new(ish) trend in museums: not satisfied with mixing fine art and decorative art, some are reinstalling galleries to integrate art made in different geographic areas and cultures, too.

The Princeton University Art Museum is a prime example. James Steward, the director, said two years ago, when he was appointed, that he wanted to rearrange the collection to make it more accessible to more people. Now the reinstallation is complete. I hasten to add that I have not seen it, but I’ve gleaned this information from the Princeton article, in which Steward says:

For pragmatic reasons, we thought it would be interesting to create some new juxtapositions across collections, across cultures….Intellectually, it felt to us that this would bring our practice as a museum much more in line with what has been happening in the broader academy for the last 20 or more years: crossing disciplinary borders more regularly, looking to find the connection between and through disciplines, and to speak to points of cultural contact.

Thirteen galleries for European and American art were involved. Not surprisingly, one example of the juxtapositions has a Modigliani painting (right) placed near pulleys from 19th century West African looms (below). “…this is exactly the sort of African art that he was looking at and was interested in. And when you look at the treatment of the face — the way that the eyebrow is related to the nose, the elongation of the face and the chin, and the somewhat diamond-shaped mouth — all of those stylizations of the features really resonate with the African objects,” said Caroline Harris, curator for educational and academic programs at the museum, in the article.

The other example is also a little predictable:

…the 1888 painting, “Tarascon Diligence, “(Tarascon Stage Coach) by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh is displayed near two 1856-57 Japanese woodblock prints from the series “100 Views of Edo” by Ando Hiroshige. A nearby label explains that many avant-garde artists of the late 19th century abandoned traditional European painting practices and looked to non-Western art forms, such as Japanese prints, for innovative approaches to composition and color.

Steward’s goal is admirable, but the examples make one wonder if this idea can be sustained. It could old very quickly. But he will soon have more help to work on it. The article — PR, really, considering the source, also said that:

The museum recently received a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York to support an expansion of this effort, called “Activating the Collections.” The award will fund, in part, the establishment of a new position, a curatorial fellow for collections engagement, who will work with curators, faculty, students, guest scholars, artists and other experts across disciplines to develop and present compelling interpretative approaches and materials. 

Know any creative minds?

UPDATE: PAM posted a YouTube explanation of its display philosophy here.

(BTW, I’ve covered other recent installation innovations, like the “taste of” gallery, here.)

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Princeton University