15 Minutes

One of the great surprises of my new position at Columbia is that there is such a vast array of works in the Art Properties collection that I'm often surprised what I may be working on. Take, for instance, the photography of Andy Warhol (1928-1987). I certainly would never claim to be a specialist on Warhol's work, but I can certainly recognize aspects of glamour, celebrity, and fame that his photographs conjure up for viewers. His famous phrase "In the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes" clearly continues to resonate in our fame-obsessed world today, from reality TV to Twitter and YouTube. His Polaroids and black-and-white prints are visual evidence of his own attempt not only to apotheosize the mundane and unknown, but exploit the famous for their glam as sham.

On April 4, 2014, Columbia University will hold a 1-day exhibition (curated by me!) of photographs by Warhol and host a public program of talks about Warhol's legacy and the cult of fame, fashion, portraiture, and so on. Our keynote speaker is the Swiss-born contemporary artist Urs Fischer, and there will be a round-table discussion by Warhol specialists: Neil Printz, Blake Gopnik, Larissa Harris, and Tom Kalin. As for the exhibition of his photographs, why only 1 day? It's in the spirit of his "15 minutes" of fame ideology...present for the moment, gone before you know it. This program is a joint venture between my department, the School of the Arts, the Wallach Art Gallery, the Art History & Archaeology Dept., and sponsored by the Brant Foundation Art Study Center. For more information and to RSVP, go to  http://library.columbia.edu/locations/avery/art-properties/WarholatColumbia.html. And follow news at the collection, exhibition, and program on Twitter and other social networks, #WarholColumbia.

Image Credit: Andy Warhol, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Princess Caroline of Monaco, 1983, Polacolor ER, Art Properties, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2008.6.18).

Review: Modernity of Ancient Sculpture

This book review that I wrote last year, transcribed below, was scheduled to be published in the final 2013 issue of Art Libraries Journal (vol. 38, no. 4), but for some reason I still haven't seen a copy of the journal issue (print copy lost in the mail? electronic not released yet?). In any case, word has it that it was actually published in that issue, so I thought I would share what I submitted here as well.

***************************************

The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture: Greek Sculpture and Modern Art from Winckelmann to Picasso by Elizabeth Prettejohn (London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012).

Reviewed by Roberto C. Ferrari, Columbia University

The long-standing ‘march-to-modernism’ approach seen in art history textbooks has begun to break down due to new approaches and interpretations that appreciate the art of the past for its own value and contribution to its own time period. Postmodernist discourse began to disrupt this ideology decades ago, but there has been a persistent block among modernists that in order to be ‘modern’ one had to overthrow the dominant art form of the past: classicism. That is, to be avant-garde one had to be anti-academic/anti-classical. In art museums, only very recently have exhibitions begun to challenge this notion. Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy,and Germany, 1918-1936 at the Guggenheim (2010-11), and Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico,Léger, and Picabia in the Presence of the Antique at the Getty (2011-12), are just two examples of such shows that offered refreshing views of twentieth-century art as embracing classicism as part of modernism. Elizabeth Prettejohn’s latest book The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture: Greek Sculpture and Modern Art from Winckelmann to Picasso thus is timely in its publication. She cites these catalogs in her text, but she expands upon them in other ways, ultimately proposing that modernism and classicism are inextricably linked.

Focusing on the period 1750-1950, Prettejohn argues that the histories of antiquity and modernism not only were written parallel to one another during this period of time, but they also share methodologies and artistry. The basis for her study is ancient Greek sculpture, specifically its changing perception and appreciation over time: Roman copies (misidentified by Johann Joachim Winckelmann as Greek works); the Elgin Marbles; the Venus de’ Milo; Praxiteles’ Dionysus with the Infant Bacchus; and Archaic-style works pre-dating all of these. She discusses the discovery of these works and their reception by critics and artists. Readers expecting a iconographic analysis of the Apollo Belvedere and Aphrodite of Knidos repurposed in modern art, however, may be disappointed in this book. Unlike the aforementioned exhibition catalogs, Prettejohn’s primary interest is reception theory, not iconology. She does bring in examples of ways artists visually repurposed ancient sculptural imagery in their art, but her underlying interest is exploring why artists were aware of these classical works at a specific time and how their consideration of these works defined modern taste in art. Prettejohn argues that reception theory is critical to understanding the intersection between ancient and modern art, and in fact encourages the reader to see ancient sculptures themselves as modern because they first appeared (i.e. were excavated) during the formation of modernity.

As a specialist in nineteenth-century art, particularly of Britain (having published books and essays on Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement artists and critics), Prettejohn in this text seems most comfortable when writing about figures such as Frederic Leighton and Walter Pater, discussing how they saw and interpreted antiquity. For example, her comparative discussion of Rodin’s Age of Bronze, 1877-80, Adolf von Hildebrand’s Standing Youth, 1881-84, and Leighton’s Sluggard, 1886, is fascinating. She argues that they are modern reinterpretations of then-discovered works by Praxiteles, Polykleitos, and Lysippos. She shows that the physical characteristics of each modern work, from contrapposto to muscular attenuation, mirror the different styles from ancient art that classicists have described as evolutionary in their naturalistic development over two centuries. Then, in an interesting twist, she notes how these modern works were all made in a short period of time, leaving the reader to speculate whether the ancient works themselves should be seen as evolutionary. After all, little evidence survives to correctly attribute works to these ancient sculptors or to the dates assumed for their creation.

Arranged into an introduction and three lengthy essays, the book resembles in format the author’s earlier Beauty and Art, which surveyed art and aesthetics of the same period in time. In the introduction of Modernity, Prettejohn proposes her argument about the linking of antiquity and modernism to one another and their simultaneous interactive developments. Rightfully so, she begins her discussion with Winckelmann, demonstrating how his reception of ancient sculpture through texts and surviving examples inspired ekphrasis-like writing, teaching others how to appreciate ancient and modern art, and establishing the idea of an art historical canon. Her first chapter discusses the Elgin Marbles as the nineteenth-century’s first awareness of actual Greek marble statues, and discusses their critical reception by scholars such as G.W.F. Hegel. The chapter continues with the discovery of the Venus de’ Milo (image: left) about this time, which gives Prettejohn the opportunity to explore ways this statue has been analyzed and received by classicists, artists, and scholars over time. Chapter two focuses on the Romantic idea of the individual artist as it related to antiquity. With the discovery of more ancient statues during the 1800s, the historical placement of specific ancient sculptors and their works were secured. But here Prettejohn exposes the weaknesses in these attributions, often with biased nationalistic tendencies, and instead emphasizes the importance of the afterlife of these works rather than their inherent ancient histories. ‘Modernism’, the subject of chapter three, will appeal to scholars of twentieth-century art for its emphasis on ancient sculptures from the Archaic period and the parallel interest in primitivism seen in the work of Picasso, Modigliani, and others. Prettejohn focuses on the importance of carving over modeling as a modern ideology, but traces its connections with the rising interest in the stiff, geometric figures from ancient Greece that were carved directly from blocks of marble by unidentified artists’ hands. Prettejohn ends the chapter and book with an examination of works by Picasso that do not specifically draw on any one particular ancient statue but, in a democratized, modernist appreciation of antiquity, shows how Picasso ignored the classical canon but used multiple aspects of antiquity for inspiration.

Prettejohn’s book is part of the ‘New Directions in Classics’ series based at the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition at the University of Bristol, where the author previously worked. The intent of this series is to move beyond traditional views of Greco-Roman culture and offer new methodological approaches and interpretations about antiquity. One might assume, then, that the intended reader for this text would be classical scholars. Indeed, much of Prettejohn’s text relates to archaeological discoveries and the scholarship that helped establish a framework for the study of classical sculpture itself. But the student and scholar of modern art will find the text useful as well, for Prettejohn frames ideas about nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern art as it was influenced by these discoveries from antiquity.

This text is appropriate for academic and museum libraries with researchers interested in expanding beyond traditional approaches to ancient and modern art, and is perhaps most useful for postgraduates, professors, and museum curators. It is not overpriced for an art book (£57.50 hardcover, £18.99 paperback), although all 51 illustrations are reproduced in black-and-white. This is not uncommon for sculpture books. Because Prettejohn’s focus is on methodology and not the aesthetic appreciation of these objects, black-and-white images do make sense, especially that they help keep the price of the book lower. Ultimately, the future success of this book rests in how it is received by scholars, mirroring Prettejohn’s own emphasis on reception theory for ancient sculptures. In reading it I found myself inspired by ways in which her ideas could be incorporated into art history seminars and used as the basis for small art exhibitions. Her numerous ideas about rethinking and merging antiquity and modernism certainly invite responses, and frequently the text reads like a dialogue with half the conversation waiting to be spoken. It will be fascinating to see how in fact her text may influence ideas about how aspects of antiquity and modernism are retaught or rethought. Indeed, if scholars are open to rethinking the development of the history of art itself, then this book will have accomplished its mission.

MWA: 11 to 20

When I first started the Monthly Work of Art feature on bklynbiblio, I thought these posts would give the blog a nice art historical flair. I've frequently write my own original thoughts or interpretations about these works of art, but sometimes I've relied on the writings of other art historians to provide their thoughts as well. I've been pleasantly surprised by the responses I've received since I started this, and the number of page views on some of the works of art has been startling. For instance, in looking back at MWA: 1 to 10, imagine my surprise to discover that The Good Shepherd statue now has 473 page views. Cézanne's Tulips in a Vase is second at 119 and Noguchi's Core is right behind at 109. Here's a run-down of MWA 11 to 20 (and note that #13 is already beating these other two). The titles are hyperlinked to the posts so you can read more, and in parentheses are the current page views.

XI. Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770 (18 views)
XII. John Gibson, Cupid Disguised as a Shepherd Boy, ca.1830 (43 views)
XIII. Edouard Manet, Repose, ca.1870-71 (125 views)
XIV. Charles Wellington Furse, Diana of the Uplands, 1903-04 (41 views)
XV. Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Young Woman, probably Maria Trip, 1639 (55 views)
XVI. Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment, and Their Son Frans, ca.1635 (56 views)
XVII. William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853 (34 views)
XVIII. Caravaggio, Medusa, late 1590s (36 views)
XIX. Jean-François Millet, Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys, 1872-73 (26 views)
XX. Gerard David, The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard, ca.1510-15 (19 views)

Solomon's Vision

On Monday, February 10, 2014, Bonhams Los Angeles sold at auction a rare book that anyone who is a follower of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) and the Pre-Raphaelites would have loved to own…including me. However, it was clearly above my income bracket, as it sold for the amazing price of $17,500! The good news about this is that I know who the winning buyer was, and I’m delighted to hear this person was successful in the bid, for this treasure of a book will go to a good home and be available for scholars in the near future. The seller had been in touch with my fellow Solomaniac Carolyn Conroy and me about this book for a few months already, so we were very eager to know how things would progress with this sale.

The image you see here is the cover of the book, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, written by Solomon and published by F. S. Ellis for him in 1871 (i.e. self-published with Ellis). There were a small number of these beautifully-bound copies of his prose-poem published at the time, mostly for him to give away to his friends, so they are already unique on the market. (A search in WorldCat shows that only 16 libraries in the US, Canada, and the UK have copies.) What makes this particular copy even more special is that it was the one owned by the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). Inside, it is inscribed in the author’s handwriting: “With S. Solomon’s affectionate regards / to his friend, A. C. Swinburne / March 1871.” As a personal copy given by the author to his friend, it’s a lovely complement to another copy that once belonged to the painter Edward Burne-Jones, which is now at the University of Rochester.

Solomon and Swinburne were for many years a “dynamic duo” in 1860s Pre-Raphaelitism. They probably met through Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones around 1862, and the two young men quickly took a liking to one another, Solomon (photo right) a Jewish youth with unkempt hair, a beard, and sad eyes, Swinburne a slender fop with a bush of red hair (photo below). One of the most audacious anecdotes ever told about them is that Rossetti came home one day to discover Swinburne chasing Solomon down the stairs, and both of them were naked. All that said, it is doubtful they were ever lovers. Biographers tend to see Swinburne as an auto-erotic who indulged in flagellation and birching. But combined with Solomon’s homosexuality, history saw fit to mix the two as sexual deviants of the Victorian era. Solomon is credited these days with being one of the first artists to depict the ancient Greek poetess Sappho as a lesbian (see, for instance, the Tate's Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene), and this imagery was clearly part of the working association he had with Swinburne, who wrote poetry about Sappho in a similar way. Solomon also illustrated Swinburne’s birching tales, such as Lesbia Brandon, drawings one can see in the collections of the British Library. With their friendship blooming, Solomon spent the 1860s painting provocative male figures and exhibited them at the Royal Academy and the Dudley Gallery, while Swinburne scandalized readers with the first edition of his Poems and Ballads (1866) with odes written for and about sado-masochistic women.

A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep is seen today as an early example of gay literature, and indeed it was republished in its entirety most recently in Chris White’s edited anthology Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 1999). Expressing the physical and emotional angst of different types of love, Solomon’s text has come to be seen as a paean to same-sex passion at a time when one could not express this kind of love in society. At the time of its publication, however, his prose-poem was seen by reviewers as an artist’s statement for his highly symbolic, personalized imagery that drew on ancient mysticism—ephebic gods of love, angels, and love-struck youths—figures that populated his paintings such as Love in Autumn and Sacramentum Amoris and often left viewers confused as to what they meant. Discouraging reviews of the prose-poem appeared in the Athenaeum and the Jewish Chronicle, but John Addington Symonds (later a champion for same-sex passion) wrote a laudatory review in the Academy. Swinburne also wrote a review (at Solomon’s request) and it appeared in the first issue of the Dark Blue. Sadly, Solomon was less than pleased with Swinburne’s review, concerned that it gave the wrong impression of Solomon’s symbolic meaning. In retrospect it seems safe to speculate from some of their letters that this may have been the beginning of the rupture in their friendship.

After Solomon’s arrest in 1873 for homosexual crimes, Swinburne was among his former friends who outright rejected and distanced himself from Solomon, probably fearing for his own public reputation. Years afterward, when he was desperate for money, Solomon reportedly tried to sell off some of Swinburne’s more salacious letters, for which the now-reformed and alcohol-temperate Swinburne never forgave him. Swinburne’s letters to Solomon have never been found and probably were destroyed at some point. However, many of Solomon’s letters to Swinburne do still exist and were published in a few books, most recently Terry Meyers’s edited Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Pickering & Chatto, 2005). The letters reveal hints of their secret adventures, occasionally written in coded language. More boldly in 1871, just two months after the publication of Vision, Solomon wrote letters to Swinburne about the trial of the famous cross-dressers Thomas Ernest “Stella” Boulton and FrederickWilliam “Fanny” Parke. The friendship of Solomon and Swinburne lasted less than a decade, but it produced a fruitful, creative relationship that clearly benefited both of them in art and literature. This particular copy of Vision that has just been sold is rather special then. It records a moment in time at the apex of their relationship when this talented duo respected one another and were close, actively learning from one another. After this moment, things changed, and this book and its inscription now forever commemorate a relationship where each was able to say, for a short period of time, “affectionate regards” to a friend.

UPDATE 3/2/14: I can now announce with some excitement who won the auction for this rare copy of Solomon's 1871 prose-poem, dedicated to Swinburne. The book now resides in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library. Mark Samuels Lasner has spent much of his life amassing one of the best private collections of Victorian literature, manuscripts, and drawings. He has been incredibly generous in providing access to works in his collection for researchers (myself included), and he has exhibited his collection widely to encourage further scholarship. His long-term plan of making the collection accessible through the University of Delaware Library means scholars worldwide will be able to have access to these rare and excellent items for ages to come. I can't think of a better home for this special copy of Solomon's little book.

Review: The Hare with Amber Eyes

I just finished reading a superb book some of you may know: The Hare with Amber Eyes by the ceramics artist Edmund de Waal. It was highly recommended by a former student of mine who was of retired age, and I'm so glad she recommended it. The book is the story of the author's family's ownership of 264 netsuke, including the work you see here, a beautiful ivory hare with eyes inlaid with amber buffalo horn. For those who don't know what netsuke are, they are finely carved and polished Japanese figurines and sculptural objects no bigger than the size of your hand. Often carved in ivory or boxwood, they were originally made as toggles to hold the string that attached a purse/satchel to the Japanese kimono and obi. (You can download for free the Met Museum's excellent collection catalogue of netsuke here.) By the late 1800s, they had become collector's items not only in the West through the influence of japonisme but also in Japan as a form of its cultural past. De Waal's story recounts how his ancestors first acquired the netsuke from a dealer in Paris in the 1870s, and then continues the story of the netsuke as they passed on to relatives in Vienna during the World Wars, then post-War Tokyo, and modern-day London. But the story is not just about these netsuke. It's a cultural biography of his Jewish ancestors, the Ephrussi family from Russia, how they made their fortune and settled throughout Europe, and how they engaged with the art and literature of their day. It's not all high life society, however. The author also tells with pathos the trials his family endured in a world of anti-Semitism and Nazism, and how his family lost everything because of Hitler and the persecution of Jews at the time.

This book is one of those rare stories that beautifully links art and culture with personal experience. De Waal asks questions such as how people from the past felt about life and art, and how they felt to hold these beautifully carved netsuke generation after generation, hand-to-hand, a symbol of a family saga that reaches backward to the unknown makers of these figures, and forward to the author's own children. His personal experience as a craftsman and artist make his telling of the story even more poignant. To quote de Waal: "How things are made, how they are handled and what happens to them has been central to my life for over thirty years. ... How objects embody memory--or more particularly, whether objects can hold memories--is a real question for me. This book is my journey to the places in which this collection lived. It is my secret history of touch." To learn more about Edmund de Waal, his writing, and his exquisite minimalist ceramics and installation pieces, go to his website at http://www.edmunddewaal.com/.

Public Sculpture III: The Blog

Back in October, I had written that I was launching at work some new information about the public sculpture collection at Columbia. At that time I wasn't sure what format it would take (webpages, blog, etc.), but we finally settled on the blog format for its interactive capabilities and easy updating/navigating. With that, I'm pleased to announce that today we officially launched the Public Outdoor Sculpture at Columbia blog. I've already posted a few items, and more will be added over time, so check in when you can. The purpose of the blog is to document historical & current information & photographs about these outdoor artworks throughout the schools and campuses of Columbia. There are sculptures by major figures such as Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore, and lesser-known artists such as Charles Keck and Gertrude Schweitzer. The work you see here, by the British sculptor Moore, is but one example: Three-Way Piece: Points, 1967, bronze (image: Art Properties, Avery Library, Columbia).

Almost all of the 20+ public sculptures at Columbia were gifts over time, and the earliest work dates from its installation in 1903, so there is certainly plenty to write about over time. With the blog format, I'm hopeful that people will submit their own photographs of the public sculptures and thus make the blog a more dynamic environment in which to better appreciate these important works of art. Indeed, the interactive sensibility of a blog reinforces the "public" nature of these sculptures as works for the community to appreciate. I've designed a Google map that shows where all the sculptures are at the Morningside campus and Barnard College. It is embedded here for your information, but you can also visit it on the web by going to https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?mid=zzO_yMmGSiro.kPBAqqcLVfUA and utilizing it on your smart phone to walk around campus.

Portal 4

Portal 4: Vizzola Ticino (10 July 2005)

(For other works in my Portal series, click here.)

On scenes of solitary windows as a motif:
"No figures are present to lend thematic interest to the scene. Properly speaking, these pictures cannot be considered as genre paintings at all ... . The pure window-view is a romantic innovation--neither landscape, nor interior, but a curious combination of both. It brings the confinement of an interior into the most immediate contrast with an immensity of space outside, outdoors, a space which need not be a landscape, but can be a view of houses or of the empty sky. It often places the beholder so close to the window that little more than an enclosing frame of darkness remains of the interior, but this is sufficient to maintain the suggestion of a separation between him and the world outside. He is actually put in the position of the 'figure at the window.' The situation closely resembles a favorite theme in [Romanticism]: the poet at the window surveys a distant landscape and is troubled by a desire to escape from his narrow existence into the world spread out before him. ... The window is like a threshold and at the same time a barrier. Through it, nature, the world, the active life beckon, but the artist remains imprisoned, not unpleasantly, in domestic snugness. The window image thus illustrates perfectly the themes of frustrated longing, of lust for travel or escape which run through [Romanticism]."

-- from Lorenz Eitner, "The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism," The Art Bulletin (December 1955), pp. 285-86.

Chinese Bronzes & Korean Ceramics

Whenever people ask me about my job and I tell them I'm the Curator of Art Properties at Columbia University, they inevitably ask me the most obvious question: "What do you do?", or the derivative, "What does that mean?" However, I enjoy most this question-phrased-as-a-statement that requires more thought: "Tell me what a typical day is like for you." The trouble with responding to that is there is no such thing as a "typical day" for me. Sometimes I'm dealing with loans (external exhibitions or on-campus displays). Other days I teach a class about a selection of artwork chosen by a professor. I sometimes meet with potential donors and then process their donations through a variety of channels. I'm frequently in meetings (a LOT of meetings) and dealing with email (a LOT of email) on more things than I can bother relaying. I try to do as much research on art objects in the collection for a variety of projects as I can. Preservation of art objects is also a regular concern. With a universal art collection such as ours, in 1 week I have been known to deal with a public monumental sculpture from 1967, a Dutch portrait from 1626, Polaroids by Andy Warhol, and ancient Chinese bronzes. One of the greatest parts of this job, however, is working directly with the objects themselves, and when I have time to be creative, arranging an installation of these objects can just turn out to make my day a laborious, but fun-filled one.

Today was just one of those days. This semester my department is working with Prof. Robert Harrist and 9 PhD students for a seminar entitled "Chinese Art at Columbia." I was the impetus behind this in that I first presented to him last semester the idea of having students study objects in the collection, especially the works from China on display in our gallery in Low Library. The installation in this room quite literally had not been touched in over 40 years, which means no one had ever done research on them since they were donated by Arthur M. Sackler (yes, that Sackler!) from the 1960s and 1970s. This graduate seminar has begun, and the students are doing their first assignment already, researching and writing about some of our bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynasties (ca.1650-ca.250 BCE). Today, my staff and I moved about 100 objects out of the main gallery space, put most of them in storage, and then reinstalled the Shang and Zhou bronzes in display cases near the seminar room so the students have easier access to them. The photograph you see at the bottom is the new display we set up for the Shang dynasty ritual bronzes. We then did a temporary installation in the original gallery space, putting in 9 cases a selection of Korean ceramics that are also from the Sackler donation. The photograph above is what 3 of those display cases now look like. When the seminar is over, the research by the students will help us reenvision a new installation in the gallery for the Chinese art, with proper signage to educate people about the works, and make them all look better and more up-to-date with modern backdrops.

I confess that I'm extremely proud with how it all worked out today. The installation of the bronzes and ceramics in the cases all came out even better than I had hoped. It was a full day of work to get it all accomplished, and LGS and LV (my staff) did a wonderful job packing and moving everything back and forth between buildings, but it was definitely worth it. We're Art Properties. And we rock!

Animals & Goddesses: Anna Hyatt Huntington

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University has hosted, since the late 1980s, an array of rotating exhibitions, many often directly linked to curriculum programs at the university. The latest is no exception. Entitled Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936, the exhibition is a retrospective of this woman sculptor (1876-1973) who, during at least the first half of the 20th century, was one of New York City's most popular artists. The exhibition was curated by Prof. Anne Higonnet and her seminar students. I had a sneak peak during the installation, and the show is going to be fantastic. Huntington's favored medium was bronze, and she was clearly a student of close observation when it came to animals. Her sculptures are quite amazing in their realism. The work you see here is Cranes Rising, 1934, a gift from the artist to Columbia (photo: Mark Ostrander), which my department (Art Properties) agreed to include in the exhibition. (I must give my art handler LGS credit for working hard on cleaning and waxing the sculpture, and I encouraged everyone involved with the exhibition to consider using this piece as a focal point as it was a Columbia-owned work and properly should be given due credit in a Columbia exhibition.)

In the piece you see here, notice how Huntington shows a flock of cranes first at rest in the marshes, then moving upward in a coil, with the top crane soaring into the sky. It's fascinating how she expressed the sweeping movement in time with such a naturalistic effect, yet still managed to kept the work within a quadrilateral space, reducing the potential "baroque" effect of affected motion and exaggerated theatricality. Her interest in animals clearly hearkens back to the Romantic sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye (1796-1875), who established a career for himself as an animalier, specializing in animals in action--usually in their most violent forms. Barye also produced high-quality reduced bronzes commercially, enabling the middle classes to own fine works of art for their homes, although his practice was highly criticized by the Academy as a form of "selling out." Huntington also sculpted works depicting strong female saints like Joan of Arc and goddesses like Diana, suggesting an affinity for masculinity not only in her choice of subjects but also in the very art of bronze-making itself. Many of her sculptures are large public monuments: the Joan of Arc equestrian statue is less than 10 blocks away from my apartment near Riverside Park! Like Harriet Hosmer, Emma Stebbins, and other great women sculptors of the past, Huntington is arguably a feminist sculptor who takes pride in demonstrating what a woman can do as an artist. The exhibition opens this week and runs until March 15. News about it is already buzzing: an article in The New York Times (scroll down on the page); and The Magazine Antiques has an article written by Higonnet giving a summary of her life and work. 

Return to Downton Abbey

According to the PBS countdown, season 4 of that amazing miniseries Downton Abbey begins in just 1 day, 23 hours, and 48 minutes (as of when I'm writing this). I've been raving about this show for the past few years now. But I confess that for some reason I'm just a little less excited this time than I was the last 3 seasons. Is it because of poor Matthew's demise? Is it because I'm uncertain who Lady Mary will turn to for solace? Will something devastating ruin Anna and Mr. Bates's romantic bliss? Will the Dowager Countess not have as many witty lines this season? Or is it that I'm simply concerned that the show is getting too big for its own Edwardian britches and turning into a sappy soap opera? I shall leave you to decide the answer to that question. So far I've been fortunate that I've only heard a few little secrets about the current season (my UK friends have been respectfully quiet not to ruin it for me, thank you very much), and I'm not sure how I feel about what I know. The show has now entered the 1920s, so we're expecting jazz, booze, and more upstairs/downstairs shenanigans, a reminder of the differences between the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-poor who cannot seem to live without one another. I do admit I am looking forward most to seeing Maggie Smith on the screen again as the Dowager Countess. She really does make this show everything it is. And suave actor Julian Ovenden is joining the cast, which should steam things up a bit. I'm definitely geared up for it. Bring it on, Downton! I await your premiere...just as soon as the maid brings me my tea and biscuits.

MWA XXI: Bruegel's Hunters

As I'm writing this, the NYC area is getting slammed in a far-reaching snowstorm (called Hercules? since when do we name snowstorms?). We may get up to a foot of snow by lunchtime tomorrow. Even my job has closed down and given us a snow day off! So what better say to celebrate winter and snow (and our Monthly Work of Art) then with one of the greatest winter-themed paintings ever: The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569; image: Web Gallery of Art). The Flemish-born painter is known for his so-called "peasant" scenes, with their emphases on the working and lower classes toiling at labor or simply playing and drinking. He painted religious and allegorical scenes as well, but his "peasant" genre paintings made him famous during an age when Catholicism was heavily embattled by the rise of Protestantism in the Germanic/Nordic countries, ultimately eliminating opportunities for Christian iconography from the oeuvre of many artists. This painting was one of a series depicting the seasons/months of the year. It was commissioned by the wealthy Antwerp-based merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. Of the six that were commissioned, only five exist today, with this painting representing winter or December/January. Another famous work in Bruegel's series is The Harvesters in the collection at the Met Museum (a painting that Director Thomas Campbell has professed to be one of his most favorite paintings in the collection; see a video about the painting by clicking here). This series of paintings also spawned one of the most erudite and hilarious novels I've ever read, Headlong by Michael Frayn, in which the narrator (a philosophy professor on sabbatical) discovers the missing sixth Bruegel painting and goes on a mission to acquire (i.e. steal) it at any cost.

The Hunters in the Snow is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, a city that is on my list of places I would love to visit. Until I see it live I must rely on reproductions. What fascinates me in this painting is the level of detail and the sweep of perspective that draws you into it. It's as if you can see every feather on the birds and and count how much snow has fallen on the mountains in the background. When you see the painting, you approach it from the left. It is as if you are one of the men returning from their hunt. The trees draw you into the painting as they grow smaller and smaller, and the slope of the landscape pulls you further in as you begin the descent down the hill to the lake and further into the village. You can almost hear the cawing of the blackbirds in the grey, barren sky. The desolation of the season unfolds before you. But the further you travel into the painting, you are at its heart, and you see that it isn't about death but life. Just looking at the number of people figure skating on the frozen lake cannot help but make you grin. These people understand that in the dreariness that is winter and the starkness that is life, there is always a way to find joy. These skaters take in every moment of it. Winter suddenly doesn't seem as cold and stark as it did once before.

Happy 2014!

I kicked off the new year today by visiting the New-York Historical Society, as I suggested I would do in my last post. Their big exhibition has been The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution, a celebration of the international modern art show that arguably revolutionized the history of American art itself with the introduction of Cubism and Fauvism to American audiences. The exhibition gave a survey appreciation of the 1913 show by bringing back many of the most famous works that were on exhibit, but I was actually surprised the show wasn't very large. It was an interesting study of the history and impact of the 1913 Armory show, and I did learn a few new things, but the show didn't impress me as I had expected. In contrast, Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America was much more appealing. Highlighting exquisite grand-manner portraits of wealthy Americans painted from about 1880 to 1920, when the Astors and Vanderbilts ruled New York City's social scene, this exhibition offered interesting ways to consider these portraits as symbols of feminine beauty and masculine virility. One of the stand-out portraits was the one you see here of James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959) painted by the French artist Theobald Cartran (1849-1907). The portrait dates from 1901 when he was 25 years of age, and both his proud, peacock-like stance and hand gestures connect the portrait to a 16th-century work by Bronzino at the Met Museum. Hyde was the chief owner of his father's company, Equitable Life Assurance Society, and soon after this painting was completed he was unjustly accused of a scandalous bungling of the company's assets. He spent the rest of his years as an expatriate living in Paris...as if that were such a tragedy. (Image source: New-York Historical Society)

bklynbiblio readers know I start off the new year with a blog post; last year's coincided with my 400th post! It's been a quiet holiday season for me this year, giving me time to write and catch up on a few things. I've even redesigned the look of bklynbiblio, since I had not changed it in a couple of years. If you're reading this by email and/or through an RSS feeder, go to http://bklynbiblio.blogspot.com to see the new look. I've also activated the mobile version with a slightly different template, so it will read better on iPhones, iPads, etc. And so...here's to another year of blogging, and working toward my 500th post. Happy 2014!

Art Exhibitions of 2013

What better way to end the year then by catching an art exhibition! JM and I fought the crowds at MoMA this afternoon so we could catch Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, about the pivotal years in the Belgian Surrealist's career. The work you see here is entitled The False Mirror, 1928 (image: MoMA) and gives a quick sense of how Magritte's images and titles are plays on one another (the eye is a reflection of the soul? what one sees? of anything?). Alas, his images have become so ubiquitous in reproductive form that upon seeing an outpouring of his paintings such as in this exhibition they become almost tedious and disappointing. Frankly, the curators could have done a better job engaging the viewer with the works (i.e. shouldn't we be addressing the misogyny and violence toward women in his paintings?). We also popped in to see Isa Genzken Retrospective, which turned out to be another prime example of the art style I classify as "Self-Indulgent Crap." Some of her large-scale minimalist sculptures in concrete and wood were interesting, but the rest of it was just mind-numbingly awful. I can't believe this is the same artist who produced the boldly delicate Rose II as part of the New Museum's Facade Sculpture program.

Readers of bklynbiblio know that I visit a number of art exhibitions, but only some stand out for me as the best of the year, and a smaller number ever make it onto this blog. (I attempted to start a "best of" in 2010 but couldn't keep up with it; hopefully we will in the future.) In writing about my top favorite exhibitions, you probably won't be surprised to see that most largely reflect art of the past. But living in NYC I have become more and more attuned to "modern/contemporary art," so I'm always happy when I discover some new artist or great exhibition that can excite me about art post-WWI or post-1980. All that said, it should come as no surprise that my favorite exhibition of the year was clearly Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900, which I saw at the National Gallery of Art, but which had opened in London the previous year at the Tate. Although I was readily familiar with most of the works in the show, it was great to see so many of them from different museums and private collections brought together again for an exhibition that documented the accomplishments of these talented artists who sought to be modern through inspiration from the past. The image you see here is the book jacket for the exhibition catalogue. (See more of my thoughts on the show here.) My second favorite exhibition this year--and I hesitate to call it that, as it is more of an installation and performance--was Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet. Held at the Cloisters, this sound-based piece captured the spirit of its medieval origins not only with the musical composition but with the architectural space, a medieval chapel. They were made for one another. Listening to all of the recorded voices individually as they surrounded you made you feel as if the entire recorded motet was a living, singing sculpture, albeit one that existed in space and time and not in person. You had to close your eyes to experience it best, and it came close to a transcendental art experience.

My third favorite exhibition of the year was Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity at the Met. The idea that the Impressionists and their contemporaries were inspired by current trends in fashion and the rise of bourgeois industry were first explored in art history nearly 20 years ago. But the bringing together of important French paintings from the 1860s and 1870s and juxtaposing them with fashion from the day--including some of the same gowns or accessories depicted in the paintings--made for a fabulous exhibition. The mannequins wearing the clothes helped make the paintings come to life. In addition to seeing great paintings by Manet, Monet, and Morisot, lesser-known brilliant artists like Tissot were given their due acknowledgment as well. This was definitely an exhibition worth seeing. (Image: installation view of Gallery 3: The White Dress, Met Museum).

Among my other favorite exhibitions of the year were Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument and Edward Burtynsky: Water, excellent photography shows curated by my friend & colleague Russell Lord in New Orleans. The Parks show played with a journalistic story and opened your mind to understanding so much more about how photographs are manipulated and reframed to tell a story. In contrast, the Burtynsky large-scale photographs of water-themed images were simply mind-blowing and beautiful. (Read more of my thoughts on these shows here.) At Brooklyn Museum, the exhibitions on to El Anatsui's monumental sculptural detritus installations and Sargent's jewel-like watercolors turned out to be a counterpoint in beauty (see more of my thoughts here). And Edwardian Opulence at the Yale Center for British Art was an extravagant, jam-packed plethora of art and cultural artifacts from the post-Queen Victoria period (see more of my thoughts here). Honorable mentions for this year also go out to: David d'Angers: Making the Modern Monument at the Frick, a small but informative exploration into the life and career of this 19th-century French sculptor; Beauty and Revolution: Neoclassicism, 1770-1820 at the Staedel Museum, Frankfurt, a show of important classical paintings and sculptures, Canova and Thorvaldsen taking center stage (part of my Zurich/Frankfurt tour this year); NYC 1993 at the New Museum, on art of a century ago; and monographic shows on the ever-queer Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt at MoMA P.S.1 and Eleanor Antin at the Wallach Gallery at Columbia. 

As always, there were great shows I missed, which I shall regret, including The Boxer: An Ancient Masterpiece at the Met and the Rain Room at MoMA. But fortunately there is still time to see a few shows that have opened and are ongoing for a few weeks or months more, especially The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution at the New-York Historical Society. Hm...I may even go to see that on New Year's Day!

Auction Sales of 2013

Considering today is Christmas Eve, it seems rather appropriate to blog about the work you see here: A Christmas Carol, 1867, oil on panel [image: Sotheby's]. The painting is by the Pre-Raphaelite/Aesthetic artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). The picture reveals many of Rossetti's interests at this time, from the beautiful woman in a bower to the connections of the visual with music as a timeless, experiential art form. But the reason why I'm showcasing this Victorian picture is because the painting was sold at Sotheby's London on December 4 and earned a record-high sale for Rossetti, coming in with the hammer price of £4,562,500 ($7,475,200). This actually beat the sale for a Rossetti color charcoal drawing of Proserpine that had just been a record high for him a few weeks earlier at £3.3m ($5.3m). Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic art continues to rise in popularity...an ongoing testament to the recent Oxford conference following up on the successful exhibition held at Tate Britain, that I saw in Washington, D.C., and then went on to Moscow and Tokyo.

That said, auction prices for Victorian art still pale in comparison to the market for post-WWII art, which continues to skyrocket, with more and more sales coming in at the $100+ million mark. As I noted in last year's post on auction sales of 2012, 10 of the highest-priced auction and private sales have all taken place since 2006. We can now extend that to point out that the top 17 spots for the most paid for art in auction/private sales have all taken place over the past 10 years! According to a recent article in Businessweek, "the top 10 auction lots of 2013 raised $752.2m, a 27 percent increase from 2012 and an 82 percent jump from 2011." Trends in the art-buying auction world are showing that the "tres nouveaux riches" are from China, Russia, and the Middle East. (Not coincidentally these are the same groups who are also buying up high-end real estate all over Manhattan, leaving the Everyman little chance of ever being able to own property in NYC.) Art, more than ever before, is a commodity, something to be flipped and sold at a profit. Museums cannot even compete in this new art market. Jed Perl, art critic for the New Republic, has written an interesting editorial about this, noting how the super-rich are ruining for the rest of us the ability to appreciate art.

Three major auction records were broken this year for post-War art. Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, sold on November 12 at Christie's New York for $142,405,000 hammer price (see my blog post about this here), making it currently the highest amount ever paid at auction. Andy Warhol's Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 1963, silkscreen ink and silver spray paint on canvas [image: Sotheby's], broke Warhol's record when it sold on November 13 at Sotheby's New York for $105,445,000. Finally, Jeff Koons's Balloon Dog (Orange) stainless steel sculpture, 1994-2000, sold at the same Christie's sale as the Bacon for $58,405,000, giving Koons the record for the most money paid at auction for a living artist's work.

Keeping track of the most money paid for works of art can be tricky, as most resources combine auction and private sales. One example is theartwolf.com, and another is this Wikipedia entry. Both focus on paintings and they also account for inflation and current value (which is both helpful and distracting, as it alters the ranking of "most valuable"). Extracting data from these and other sources, I've put together my own Top 5 Auction Sales of Works of Art. I have no doubt it will change each year, but this is how things stand as of today.

1. Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, oil on canvas in three parts, sold Nov. 2013, Christie's New York, $142.4m.
2. Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1895, pastel on board, sold May 2012, Sotheby's New York, $119.9m.
3. Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 1932, oil on canvas, sold May 2010, Christie's New York, $106.5m.
4. Andy Warhol, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 1963, silkscreen ink and silver spray paint on canvas, sold Nov. 2013, Christie's New York, $105.4m.
5. Pablo Picasso, Garçon a la pipe, 1905, oil on canvas, sold May 2004, Sotheby's New York, $104.1m.

MWA XX: David's Nativity

Although I've never had the opportunity to study in-depth "Northern Renaissance art" (i.e. paintings by Netherlandish painters such as Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling), like others I find them to be some of the most beautiful paintings in the history of art. The crisp linearity and precision of draftsmanship is complemented by rich jewel-like colors, making so many of these paintings among the most precious in European art. Many of the works are altarpieces and Catholic in nature, as they pre-date the spread of the Protestant Reformation and thus the removal of Christian imagery (idolatry as it was called) in favor of the Word (Bible) alone. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a number of these works, largely because they were collected by Gilded Age industrialists at a time when a number of these early painters were barely known. Gerard David (ca. 1455-1523), born in the Netherlands and active in the now-Belgian city of Bruges, was but one of these highly-respected and talented painters of their day.

His scenes, such as this work from the Met, The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard, ca. 1510-15, focus on traditional Christian imagery, but often reveal the secrets of his own interest in landscape painting. Just look in this detail over the shoulder of Joseph and you can see the shepherds peering through the window with an exquisite landscape stretching into the distance. The birth of Christ is the subject of the triptych, but the angels positioned beside the open window together echo the connections between God and nature. It's a powerful image, with many layers of meaning. According to the curators, "despite the joyful moment depicted, the figures all wear somber expressions, foreshadowing Christ's eventual suffering and sacrifice." The saints on the two end panels are Jerome and Leonard, but the donors kneeling before them remain unidentified, reminding us how much more we have to learn about the history and reception of these gems in Western painting. Gerard David himself was lost to history and only rediscovered in the mid-1800s. For more about his extensive life and work, see the Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

And to all my bklynbiblio readers, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Lucy in Color?

I Love Lucy was ALWAYS a big deal in my family when I was growing up. The story of an immigrant musician who marries a crazy redhead who comes up with the most ridiculous shenanigans? This was basically the story of my mother and father's marriage. Not coincidentally, my red-headed mother in particular loved the show. By the time I ever watched the show with her, it was in reruns during the '70s, but it was originally on in the '50s and remains one of the funniest comedies in the history of television. Watching an episode today is as hilarious now as it was then. There is a timelessness to their stories because, as absurd as the plots are, they somehow still seem feasible. Plus, Lucy, Ricky, Ethel, and Fred were likable people you could imagine having as your neighbors (or your family, for that matter), especially if you were New Yorkers! I Love Lucy today remains charming in part because it's in black-and-white, giving it a nostalgic sensibility that makes you think of days gone by. But CBS is now apparently experimenting with that nostalgia. This coming Friday, December 20th, they are playing 2 Christmas episodes of the sitcom-colorized them. The purist in me is horrified by this, of course. When Ted Turner in the 1990s started colorizing old movies, the technology was so bad it ruined the films. And yet, looking at the sneak peek reel on YouTube, there's something about it that makes it look like a Mad Men-like historic recreation of a 1950s sitcom, filmed for the first time now. Lucy's red hair is too orangey-red, so it's not perfect, but the high-quality of the coloration does some reinvigorate it. Plus, it still seems funny though, so I'm looking forward to watching this on Friday night. The YouTube clip is below, or click here to view it.