Is 19th Century American art coming into its own overseas?

That’s the question that jumped into my head when I learned that the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid will soon be exhibiting a comprehensive show of the landscapes of Asher B. Durand. This would never have happened 20 years ago.

Though I’ve been to Madrid a handful of times, I’ve never been to the Fundacion, which was founded in 1955 and has been located in its current building, with galleries, since 1975. Sounds like a miss on my part, based on a look at its website, which lists many exhibitions that sound worthwhile.  

The Durand exhibition, which will run from Oct. 1 through Jan. 9, 2011, is said to be “the first in Spain and Europe ever devoted to this 19th-century painter and founder of the American landscape painting school, what would soon become known as the Hudson River School.”

It’s not hard to believe that; as I have complained before, much of the world show little to no interest in American art before the Abstract Expressionists.

Durand last had a moment in the sun in the U.S. in 2007, when the Brooklyn Museum presented Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape, a retrospective of about 60 works; some 35 years separated it from the previous Durand exhibition. It was organized by Linda S. Ferber, of the New-York Historical Society.  

Around the same time, the NYHS mounted its own show, The World of Asher B. Durand: The Artist in Antebellum New York, and the National Academy Museum displayed Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Dean of American Landscape.

The Historical Society owns more than 400 works by Durand. Ferber is organizing the Madrid exhibition, too, drawing most of the loans from the Society’s collection. (And Ferber, btw, just won the Henry Allen Moe Prize for Catalogs of Distinction in the Arts for her book, The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision.)

Durand had another moment in public consciousness, of course, when in 2005 Alice Walton bought his Kindred Spirits from the New York Public Library for her Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas.

Like others, I was disappointed to see the work leave New York, but I was happy that it will end up in Arkansas. From afar, Walton seems to be putting a first-class collection, and that part of the country needs more great art.

Europe has plenty of great art, but little from 19th Century America — so kudos to the Fundacion Juan March for recognizing Durand.

He’s far from our best painter, but he is an important artist nonetheless.

Photo Credits: Courtesy New-York Historical Society (top); Crystal Bridges Museum (bottom).

Three, as they say, is a trend — and we’ve got more than three recent examples of celebrity art exhibits, a distressing phenomenon. Especially, as in some cases, where galleries or companies are intertwined in the organization.

Let me say at the outset that I believe that some people are “twice talented”: Some people do achieve notable success in one area only to be recognized for their talent in another area, too — scientists, say, who can really play the piano at a professional level.

So it may be that Dennis Hopper, Leonard Nimoy and Jessica Lange are great photographers, and perhaps Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and Bob Dylan really can paint. But I doubt that any of their work would be shown in museums, as they have been, are, or will soon be, if they weren’t celebrities already.

Hopper’s show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has been well-covered in the media — thanks also to the mini-celebrity status of museum director Jeffery Deitch. It’s supposedly curated by Julian Schnabel, but my sources say that at least two dealers — Tony Shrafrazi and Fred Hoffman — also had a hand in the organization.

Nimoy got his own lift recently when The New York Times featured him big-time in an article about his Secret Selves show at MASS MoCA:

…it is Mr. Nimoy’s first solo show at a major museum…Joseph C. Thompson, the director of Mass MoCA, writes, a little loftily, that despite a “haunting overabundance of id,” the photographs remind him of “caryatids — columns that cross-dress as figural sculpture.”

More important, the article continues: “…most [of the subjects] were rounded up by Richard Michelson, who owns a local gallery and is Mr. Nimoy’s primary dealer.” An example of Nimoy’s photos is at right.  

Last fall, the National Gallery of Denmark said it would display about 100 of Dylan’s works, including 30 large-scale acylic paintings, this coming fall, according to Reuters. Interestingly, the article said, “Bob Dylan’s visual artistic practice has only been discussed by art historians to a limited extent so critical examination and interpretation are called for,” [Kasper] Monrad said in a statement released by Dylan’s Columbia Records label.” The record label made the announcement? Monrad is the Gallery’s chief curator.

Dylan’s works, btw, were first shown in 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz museum in Chemnitz, Germany. They went on view last year at a commercial gallery in London. That’s his Man on A Bridge above left.

On to the Rolling Stone: Beginning Sept. 21, the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio will show 30 paintings and 22 drawings by the English rock ‘n’ roll musician Ronni Wood. Some of the paintings, according to The Independent, portray Mick Jagger and Keith Richards performing onstage. In one, “Beggars Banquet,” he shows “the rockers’ notorious wild parties, showing them in a Bacchanalian state of revelry.”

Butler director Dr. Louis Zona said: “Wood is a most accomplished painter whose work demonstrates a wonderful knowledge of the medium, outstanding technical abilities and an extraordinarily creative mind.”

A sample of that super talent, which looks akin to a painting of Elvis on velvet, is at left.

Lange, of course, had a show at the George Eastman House last year (see here), and seems slightly less egregious.

Who out there would argue that these artists are more deserving of shows that the many more fine, unshown, and unknown talents practicing art? 

Where are museum and curatorial standards?

Photo credits: Courtesy of Columbia Records (top); of MASS MoCA (middle); of Ronni Wood (bottom).

Naturally, I went downtown to the Museum of Jewish Heritage yesterday for the ceremony inaugurating the display there of Portrait of Wally, the Schiele painting that has been locked in a warehouse, its ownership the subject of dispute since 1998. (As I’ve mentioned here and here, it was my 1997 article in The New York Times, which chonicled Rudolph Leopold’s “zealous” collecting and how he came to own it, that essentially launched the cases that the heirs of Lea Bondi Jaray (photo, below) won last week.)

A lot of people spoke yesterday, giving credit to some of the many people who played a part in this drama, and talking about justice being done, finally. 

Some also talked about the impact of this case, which is true — the furor it sparked in Austria, where Wally was stolen, led to many more investigations and pressured the government there and in other European countries to change their laws and to return many stolen art works to their rightful owners.

But Andre Bondi, who talked on behalf of the family, spoke most eloquently, making those points and more. As I’ve noted, his father Henry, Lea Bondi’s nephew and one of my early sources (but not for the first story), died some years ago.

After noting that this case had revived many awful memories, Andre told a story about his father. The initial subpoena by the Manhattan D.A. keeping the painting here had been thrown out, and the family thought the cause was lost — only to learn that a seizure warrant had been issued, hours before it was shipped. 

Henry received the news sitting in a wheelchair in his driveway, and he marveled at what the U.S. government — in many manifestations — was doing to get the painting back. No Austrian agency had ever done anything, Henry Bondi had said. “He shook his head in wonderment and disbelief that justice was finally being done,” Andre recounted.  

Andre cried when he said those words, and so did many of us in the audience. This case does indeed say something good about America.

When I went upstairs to look at Wally, the first time I’d seen her since she hung on the walls at MoMA in 1997, she was smaller than I remembered: she had, of course, grown in my mind because she has come to loom so large in the annals of justice. And also, perhaps because, as another speaker had said earlier, she “has seen so much.”

But she looked beautiful. (You may see her at either of the links above.)  

Before leaving, I spoke with Andre, who had been kind enough to cite my contribution in this case in his speech, and I gave him a hug. 

Wally remains on view at MJH through Aug. 18. Here is a link to the label, with the wording about the case that, I gather, will also be posted at the Leopold Museum when she returns to Vienna, to be near Schiele’s matching self-portrait.

Photo Credit: Museum of Jewish Heritage

 

Eight years ago, about the same time that Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy was showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as in Rome and at the Saint Louis Art Museum, two filmmakers were inspired to take on Artemisia in a documentary.

A Woman Like That, made by Ellen Weissbrod and Melissa Powell, is now complete, and being marketed. Let me say right here that I haven’t seen it, partly because it has had only one showing, at the Berkshire International Film Festival on June 5th and 6th. But I have viewed the trailer they’ve now posted on the website in an effort aimed at getting the 93-minute film shown, in the near term, at museums, universities, festivals and other institutions. Consumer DVDs are a year-plus away.

Artemisia’s merits as a painter are sometimes debated (that’s a self-portrait, as a lute player, at right), but I am among the many who think she was at least as good as many other male painters of her era (who, in contrast, don’t seem to be doubted). Her name is known in part because of her steamy life story, which includes a rape by a friend of her father’s and a resulting public trial.  

The film, judging by the website, seems to take on that notion, noting that her achievements as a painter are greater for the difficulty she had being an artist. I’m not so sympathetic to that argument — either she is great or she isn’t.

Artemesia has been the subject of films and novels, but A Woman Like That asserts that it’s different because Weissbrod

merges her own coming of middle-age story with her pursuit of the truths behind the legends of 17th century female painter’s…dramatic art and life. This unconventional but heartfelt hunt upends typical artist biographies and delivers instead a funny, engaging and all together different kind of documentary…a freewheeling tribute to an artist whose own bold life and inspiring message leaps across centuries to speak to us all.

Hmmm. I’m not sure what to make of that without seeing it. But I found the website for the film intriguing — certainly enough to help get the word out. If museums and other art centers want to include film programs among their offerings — and many do — A Woman Like That would seem to fit the bill. 

Sarah Cole, Susie M. Barstow, Eliza Greatorex, Harriet Cany Peale, Jane Stuart, Evelina Mount. Recognize any of those names?

I thought not.

They and a half-dozen or so additional artists are the subject of an exhibit at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site called “Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School,” which sets as its goal the rewriting of that period of American art history.

I wrote the story for Smithsonian, so I won’t repeat it all here. But here are some key passages:

…These women ventured…into the wilderness, painting the glorious scenery that inspired America’s first art movement.

…Often they were the sisters, daughters and wives of better-known male artists. Harriet Cany Peale, at first a student of Rembrandt Peale, became his second wife. Sarah Cole was Thomas Cole’s sister; her daughter Emily Cole is also in the exhibit. Jane Stuart called Gilbert Stuart “father.” Evelina Mount was niece to William Sidney Mount, while Julia Hart Beers was the sister of two artists, William Hart and James Hart. Others–Barstow, Eliza Greatorex and Josephine Walters, among them–had no relatives in the art world.

…[their] work…reflects the same romantic sensibility, respect for balance, luminosity and love of picturesque landscapes as those of artists like Cole, Asher B. Durand and Frederic Church.

The exhibition’s curators, Nancy J. Siegel and Jennifer C. Krieger, are looking for additional works — and additional female artists — of the period, in hopes of researching and organizing a much larger show for larger museums down the road. Already, a few new names have come to light: Emma Roseloe Sparks Prentice, Margaretta Angelica Peale and Rachel Ramsey Wiles (mother of Irving Wiles).

Photo Credits: Kaaterskill Clove, by Harriet Cany Peale, 1858 (top), Summer Landscape, by Julie Hart Beers, (bottom), 1869; Both from private collections, courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art