Post-Dissertation Defense

On February 22, I posted about having finished the defense draft of my dissertation, with all its statistics. I'm pleased to announce that I had my actual defense yesterday, and I passed. (My friends and I did some imbibing last night to celebrate.) So, yes, you may now address me as "Dr. bklynbiblio"....uhm, I mean Dr. Ferrari. Well, actually, I'm not officially done yet. After a 2-hour discussion with my 4 readers, I have a number of changes and additions I need to work on in the dissertation, but fortunately there's nothing major. I hope to actually deposit the final draft in the next couple of weeks, and then it's graduation! It does seem strange that it was almost exactly 3 years ago that I took Oral Exams (see my Before and After posts), and here we are at the final stage. Upon hearing the news on Facebook of the outcome of my defense, my friend & colleague Carolyn Conroy wasted no time updating the "About Us" page of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive, adding my new title. Family members seem rather tickled by the idea that we finally have a doctor in the family. People keep asking me if I will use the "Dr" as part of my name, but I doubt it. American society sees "Dr" as a medical practitioner and to use it would give a false sense of who I am (in other words, I can't write out prescriptions). In the academic world, it's commonly used, but even then I have always preferred calling someone "Prof." In the UK, "Dr" is a noteworthy title for academics actually distinct from "Prof," higher in status than some professors in fact, so I can understand why it is used more frequently there. For me, I think Roberto C. Ferrari, Ph.D. looks rather chic and says exactly what I want it to say. And if you're wondering about the image above, it's Cupid Pursuing Psyche, a marble bas-relief from ca. 1840 by John Gibson (image: Royal Academy of Arts). Although I don't discuss this particular work in my dissertation, I thought it was a lovely example of his work to exemplify his achievements in sculpture.

Reviews: Other Oz Stories

Last weekend was St. Patrick's Day, and even though I did nothing Irish (well, I did imbibe a few cocktails), I had a rather "green"-faced weekend. On the Saturday night, I got together with my friends JM and DC to see Oz the Great and Powerful. Now, I should explain that going to the movies in NYC is a bit of an investment: $15 to be exact, for one person. So I'm rather cheap and get very selective about what movies I will see in the theater. This was one that I thought would be fun and worth seeing on the big screen. It's now been the #1 at the box office for a few weeks now, and you can see it in digital projection, IMAX, and 3D formats (which of course cost even more). We stuck with basic digital projection. And it was fine. I mean, even the movie was fine. In other words, it wasn't as great as I thought it would be. Maybe I had high expectations. It wasn't bad though. The first half was a bit hokey; the second half had more action and kept you going. James Franco is adorable as the fallible con-artist Oz who inadvertently falls into Oz during a tornado and winds up leading a rebellion. (Side note on Franco: I love-envy-hate him now that he's an actor-writer-artist-activist-model-filmmaker-anythinghislittleheartdesiresperformer). Rachel Weisz is one of my favorite actresses. Michelle Williams is quirky as Glinda. Mila Kunis...how is it possible that someone that sexy has such a whiny voice that every time I see her I cannot help but envision her cartoon role of Meg from Family Guy? In any case, the movie's overall story is fine, special effects and computer animation a bit over-the-top, but enjoyable nonetheless. It's an alternative, prequel to the Dorothy Gale story, and you see where the story is going based on how this movie ends. Disney's website for the movie is actually pretty sleek, with a neat 3D effect that is quite cool.

The surprise of the weekend, however, was that on Sunday I (finally!) got to see Wicked on Broadway. I was meeting my friend BC and one of his friends, who were visiting from TX, and I had no idea they were getting tickets for a matinee. I literally got out of the subway and met up with them having just bought the tickets from someone outside the box office, with less than 2 minutes to spare before the show started. (And since they got the tickets last-minute, they paid almost nothing, and they wound up treating me, which was a delightful surprise.) Now, I realize this show has been around for a while and traveling, so I'm probably one of the last gay men to see it. Regardless, I loved it! (Like that's a surprise.) I had read Gregory Maguire's book Wicked years ago, and I did not like it. The musical version is exactly what his novel should have been, a revision of the story of the witches of Oz, but one that entertained you, not bored you. Elphaba, the green-skinned witch, is a social outcast, and anyone who has ever felt different and struggled with fitting in (can you say gay?) knows first-hand why her story is so moving. For me, what makes it even more moving is her fight to help the animals who are being forced to suppress their ability to talk through rather cruel tortures. There's friendship, love and romance, magic, and comedy (Galinda--"The 'a' is silent!"--is hilarious). I now can see how and why Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba were such a fabulous team in the original Broadway production. In the version I saw, the same roles were performed by Alli Mauzey and Willemijn Verkaik, and they both did admirable jobs. And then there's the musical numbers...

The score is performed throughout the show, and it pushes the storyline along very quickly as a result, making it easy to enjoy. In that sense, it's perfect for modern audiences who are used to non-stop Internet gadgets and televisions with 10,000 channel options to flick through. It's not an easy musical score, however. There are dissonant harmonies and difficult passages for singing at times. I could definitely hear the influence of Stephen Sondheim on Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics). Everyone would agree that the most powerful and moving song of the show is "Defying Gravity," the song in which Elphaba makes the final decision to become "wicked," for a good cause, and in the process learns to fly (hence the scene shot seen here). "Defying Gravity" takes on the double meaning of fighting for your dreams, so it's also a powerful song for those who believe in fighting for a cause and standing up for what you believe in. The song ends Act I, which I have to confess confused me because it's so powerful I thought the show was over. As a result, Act II seems a bit of a let-down, but that's of course the act in which everything "Dorothy Gale"-related happens, leading up to some surprising plot twists toward the end, so it's definitely worth staying around for Act II. My other favorite song was in that act as well. This was "For Good," a ballad on friendship between Elphaba and Glinda. I confess it made me cry. It has one of the most beautifully simple lines: "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good." (To a couple of my dearest friends--you know who you are--I send that sentiment out to you.) Yes, without a doubt, I would definitely see Wicked again.

MWA: 1 to 10

Ever since I last posted about the defense draft of my dissertation, I've been more busy than I expected, mostly with positive things, but some unexpected negative things too. C'est la vie! In any case, I'm hoping to get back to bklynbiblio and post a few new things, and I thought I would start with something different about the Monthly Work of Art. I first started this feature a year ago, in which each month I posted an image of a work of art by an artist and wrote about it or quoted from others who have written about it. I thought I would give a brief recap of the first 10 MWAs, especially since I realized that I've forgotten some of what I've posted over the past year. In parentheses after each work is the number of page views each has gotten to date. The title of each work is hyperlinked to the original post where you can read more about the art object. Enjoy, and stay tuned for future MWAs!

I. Paul Cézanne, Tulips in a Vase, 1888-90 (94 views)
II. The Good Shepherd, late 3rd century (320 views)
III. Meera Thompson, Capriccio, 2012 (62 views)
IV. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de' Benci, ca. 1474-78 (45 views)
V. Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907 (52 views)
VI. Charles Demuth, After Sir Christopher Wren, 1920 (26 views)
VII. Isamu Noguchi, Core (Cored Sculpture), 1978 (51 views)
VIII. Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, from Los Caprichos, 1797-98 (83 views)
IX. Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, 1937 (37 views)
X. Lorenzo Lotto, The Nativity, 1523 (21 views)

Defense Draft of the Doctoral Dissertation

As I've mentioned, I haven't been blogging because I've been a bit inundated with the looming deadline to complete the defense draft of my doctoral dissertation. Amazingly, it looks like I've done it. I worked from 5am until 10:30pm tonight running through the entire thing one last time, and then printing everything out. Ready for the stats?...(drum roll)...3 years, 316 pages (including 26-page bibliography), 745 footnotes, and 126 images. Whew! And now it's 33 days until Dissertation Defense Day. Ah, yes, and in case you're wondering, here's the title: Beyond Polychromy: John Gibson, the Roman School of Sculpture, and the Modern Classical Body.

CAA 2013 Recap

The annual College Art Association conference is still taking place this week. However, I'm thoroughly engrossed in finishing up my dissertation, so I just went today and heard a number of papers, some quite interesting. (Click here for the recap from Los Angeles last year.) The painting you see here is a portrait of the Countess of Charolais (1695-1758) dressed as a Franciscan friar, painted by the Rococo artist Charles-Joseph Natoire (image: Wikimedia Commons). This was the subject of a paper given by Melissa Percival (Univ Exeter) that I thought made some fascinating points. The Countess was notorious in 18th-century France for her romantic liaisons, but refused to marry, so she was seen as a rebel bucking tradition. This is just one of a number of portraits that depict her wearing a friar's monk, called in French "en Cordelier," referring to the knotted cord associated with the friars. What makes this portrait different from others showing her dressed as a friar is that this one plays out a balance of masculine and feminine traits, as if suggesting her more sexually aggressive sensibilities and anti-traditional attitudes. The knot itself is suggestive of the bonds of sexual union, and the way she holds it suggests a phallic symbol, reinforced by the phallic spoon in the cup of cocoa. These are all Percival's thoughts on the portrait. What made her talk more interesting was that she suggested it would be too easy to assume transgender roles were at play here. Dressing up in costumes was normal for 18th-century French aristocrats, and priest/nun costumes were quite popular. Percival suggests then that we shouldn't leap to conclusions about cross-gender appropriation just because she's dressed as a friar in these numerous paintings; rather, it is this particular painting that is unique of them all, in that it has symbols that say more about her sexual interests, and as such was likely meant for private consumption than public display. In looking up more about the Countess, I couldn't help but chuckle to find out that she was buried in a convent for Carmelite nuns.

Percival's paper was part of an open panel session on French Art, 1715-1789. Judy Sund (Queens/Graduate Center--one of my favorite ex-professors) gave a great paper entitled "The Chinese Elephant: Unpacking an Improbable Pachyderm," in which she explored the image of the white elephant seen in Chinoiserie designs from the late 17th- and early 18th-century. She argued that there was a greater absorption of Siamese/Thai culture than previously understood or thought, in the general misconstruing of what "China" actually meant at that time. Ultimately she argued for the broader sensibility of exoticism as a world of fantastic recreations rather than reality. My colleague David Pullins (Harvard), whom I met in 2011 at the Artist's Studio in Britain workshop (see my blog posts here, here, here, and here), gave a well-researched paper on the 18th-century French printmaker Gabriel Huquier (1695-1772). I didn't hear the other papers on the panel, but it was chaired by Colin Bailey (Frick Collection), whose own paper on Fragonard's Progress of Love series at the Frick I wrote about in the 2011 CAA recap.

My friend and fellow GCer Jennifer Favorite gave a paper entitled "Creative Time in the Age of Bush: The Public Art Institution as Agent of Political Response" in a panel session on Art and "The War on Terror": Ten Years On. The room was packed with people at this panel session, so I really had a difficult time hearing her paper, which I regret, although I don't think I know any of the artists whose works she showed (maybe too contemporary for me!). The other panel session I went to was For and Against Homoeroticism: Artists, Authors, and the Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name, which was co-chaired by my friend Jongwoo Jeremy Kim (Univ Louisville) and colleague Christopher Reed (Penn State)--whom you may recall I worked with back in 2010 in Montreal at the British Queer History conference. My colleague and friend Richard Kaye (Hunter/GC) gave a paper on 20th-century interpretations of St. Sebastian imagery, and I really liked what he covered with regard to Frida Kahlo and the idea of how women artists appropriate this male homoerotic icon. Andrew Stephenson (Univ East London) spoke about "beach" culture and gay poses in the paintings of Christopher Wood (in Cornwall) and David Hockney (in southern California). The paper by Michael Yonan (Univ Missouri-Columbia), entitled "Outing Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, or Ernst Kris's Creative Homophobia" was an interesting presentation about a mid-20th-century psychoanalytic art paper about the late 18th-century sculptor's physiognomic busts and how they supposedly represented the sculptor's suppressed homosexuality. Messerschmidt really was an amazing sculptor, as you can tell from the bust you see here (fondly titled Afflicted with Constipation; image: Neue Galerie). The 2010-11 exhibition on him was superb! Yonan's paper was less about Messerschmidt, however, and more about Kris, with Yonan arguing that the art historian, from Vienna, had to prove himself to the Freudians working in post-WWII American academia, so he purposely modeled his scholarship on Sigmund Freud's essay on Leonardo da Vinci, in which Freud psychoanalyzed Leonardo as a latent homosexual. I wish Yonan had gone a little further with all of this, including exploring how it differed from Kris's other writings, but perhaps all will be revealed in a future publication. That's all the papers I heard today, but I also did some socializing and networking, which is really what these conferences are all about.

MWA XII: Gibson's Cupid

For the 12th Monthly Work of Art, I thought I would share a sculpture that ties in well with Valentine's Day, but more importantly also relates to my doctoral dissertation: Cupid Disguised as a Shepherd Boy by John Gibson (1790-1866). This statue was Gibson's most popular subject, with at least 9 known repetitions commissioned in marble by patrons who visited his studio in Rome. All of the versions measure about 51½ in. (131 cm) in height. In our modernist art world, we have a tendency to think of works of art as one-of-a-kind objects, with importance placed on the "first" painting or sculpture, and later copies considered less valuable than the original. For centuries, however, it was just the opposite. Reproduction was key to an artist's success. It was normal for an artist to create a subject and then make replicas of it for patrons as requested. This is one of the reasons why most artists had large studios: apprentices and studio assistants assisted in the reproduction of paintings and sculptures for patrons. Once we understand this was normal procedure for the marketing of art in the past, it's rather intriguing to realize that Gibson's statue, having been reproduced 9 times, was not only one of his most popular subjects, but in fact one of the most popular statues ever made during the 19th century. (And this doesn't include plaster versions that were on display in his Roman studio and at the Hall of Modern Sculpture at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham Park in London.)

Gibson first began modeling the subject around 1830, and it was his belief that it was an original interpretation in sculpture, although modeled on ancient Greco-Roman representations of the god of love. He was directly inspired by Torquato Tasso's pastoral comedy Aminta (1573), in which Cupid appears disguised as a shepherd so that he may use his arrows to play with the hearts of the nymph Silvia and the youth Aminta without anyone recognizing him. The figure merges classical idealism with 19th-century taste for sentimental subjects, although aspects of theatricality are evident as the figure wears a costume to hide his identity. Dressed in a shepherd’s hat and cloak, the tips of his wings slightly visible below the mantle, Cupid’s mischievous nature is masked by a seemingly kind gesture. He hides behind him in his left hand what Gibson described as his “heart-piercing dart,” but reaches out with his right hand “to inspire confidence,” assuming “that air of modesty and timidity to conceal the more his cunning designs.” Some repetitions of the statue have Cupid holding a rose, but others such as the ones shown here have him reaching out with an empty hand.


The 2 earliest versions of the statue were commissioned in the mid-1830s by Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister, and the baronet Sir John Johnstone of Hackness Hall in Yorkshire, and both of those statues are now in private collections. The statue you see here on the left was commissioned in 1836 by the American artist and writer Thomas Gold Appleton, who later donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The image in color you see at the top of this post was commissioned from Gibson by the Russian Crown Prince (later Czar Alexander II) when he visited Rome in January 1839. That version is now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Another version commissioned in the early 1840s is currently in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, but the remaining versions are untraced.

UPDATED 2 DECEMBER 2015: New research about this sculpture and its repetitions has now been published in the Journal of Art Historiography. To learn more about this sculpture and Gibson as a designer, click here.

MWA XI: West's Wolfe

Better late than never with our Monthly Work of Art! Since I started teaching another semester of 19th-century European art this past Monday, I thought I'd share Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe, 1770, approx. 5 x 7 ft., in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Although historians of American art likes to claim West for themselves, I'm among those who think of him as a British artist. He was born in the British colony of Pennsylvania in 1738, eventually traveled to Rome for some artistic training, but made his career in London, where he died in 1820. He was elected the 2nd President of the Royal Academy of Arts after Sir Joshua Reynolds died. I always start this lecture class off with a discussion of history painting, i.e. large-scale narrative subjects showing heroic acts and events that taught viewers a moral lesson (or as Robert Rosenblum dubbed it, an exemplum virtutis). History painting was considered the highest achievement in the hierarchy of painting styles from the Renaissance through at least the mid- to late 1800s. West's painting depicts the end of the Seven Years' War between England and France, which was fought on Canadian soil. General Wolfe was mortally wounded in 1759, and on his death bed he was brought word that they had beat the French. Wolfe was proclaimed a national hero in Britain, and numerous artists depicted him in art apotheosizing him as an allegorical figure from the past. West broke with tradition and chose to represent the scene with Wolfe and his soldiers wearing contemporary military clothing, which was unheard of at the time. Reynolds and others blasted West for this radical move, but when the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1771 it was a sensational success with the people. Prints were made of it, and it secured West's reputation.

Although he broke new ground by depicting a contemporary war scene with a journalistic eye for detail, in fact the entire scene was made up. None of the portraits of the famous soldiers who surround West in the painting were there when he died, nor was a Native American present either. More importantly, though, West still conveyed the ideology of the exemplum virtutis by turning the death of Wolfe into a "Lamentation of the Dead Christ" scene, a recurring image in hundreds of Renaissance and Baroque paintings that viewers would have recognized immediately. (If you count the soldiers, you will discover there are 12 "Apostles" surrounding the Dying Christ-like Wolfe.) West also exoticized the scene by drawing on his American background in depicting a Native American in the foreground of the painting. But even this was an imaginary moment, for West modeled this figure on the famous Belvedere Torso, seen here, an ancient Hellenistic sculptural fragment that was famous among artists and frequently copied by them when they visited the Vatican Museums. By drawing on these visual tropes from art history, West was able to craft an important history painting using traditional methods, yet he simultaneously revitalized the art of history painting itself by offering viewers a modern twist on an old classic style.

400 Posts and Happy 2013!

bklynbiblio has reached its 400th post! We made it to 300 back in May 2011, so it has taken a while to get to this one, but I think you'll agree that this is still quite a milestone. It also conveniently times well with our annual New Year's Day post, so what better way to kick off 2013 and celebrate 400 posts then with a lovely champagne toast!

Each new year I modify the look of bklynbiblio, but I'm leaving it alone this time as I actually like the look. And now for some statistics. Blogger software has been keeping stats since our little blog was launched in August 2008, so here are a few I thought you might find of interest. We have had 42,301 page views, which works out to be about 830 page views per month. Almost half of those views have come from US Internet addresses, with the UK, Germany, Canada, and Russia (!) next on the list. 76% have been Windows users, with Mac users only at 14%. Here's my favorite part--the most frequently visited posts--and the top 2 and #5 remain the same! (#1 certainly isn't much of a surprise, but what is going on with #3?)
#1. Male Enhancement [July 5, 2010; 1391 views]
#2. Review: Yinka Shonibare MBE [Sep 6, 2009; 881 views]
#3. Happy 3rd Birthday! [Aug 29, 2011; 420 views]
#4. Is It Baroque, and Do We Fix It? [Aug 7, 2011; 368 views]
#5. 50 UK Days: Week 2.5 [Oct 28, 2010; 317 views]
Among #s 6-10 are my posts on Downton Abbey and my review of the Cindy Sherman exhibition.

My thanks as always to all of my readers for your continued support and encouragement. Here's to the next 100 posts!

MWA X: Lotto's Nativity

What better way to celebrate the holidays then with another beautiful Monthly Work of Art. This is The Nativity (image: NGA) by the Venetian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto (ca. 1480-ca. 1557). This oil on panel work is dated to 1523. Lotto is seen by some art historians as a proto-Mannerist, and this is evident in the way that he contorts the bodies, especially that of the Christ child. The shimmering blue/pink of Mary's garments and her elongated body are other signs of early Mannerism at work. You'll notice, however, something strange in the picture, and I don't mean the naked flying babies at the top. In the upper left there's a crucifix. Its presence is clearly anachronistic (Jesus was just born in the picture), but it serves to foreshadow for the viewer his eventual death and the establishment of the Christian faith. My memories of growing up in the Catholic Church were that they always put more weight on his death and resurrection. Personally, I preferred the stories of his birth. So in that spirit I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Biography Clinic at the Leon Levy Center

A few days ago I received word that my application was accepted and I had been granted a seat in the first "biography clinic" sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. According to the write-up, the clinic will cover "the nuts and bolts of life writing, from conception through completion." This 2-day workshop takes place next month and is geared toward those writing or planning to write their first biographies. In my application I spoke about my work on the sculptor John Gibson (1790-1866), the subject of my doctoral dissertation, and that upon completion my project will be the first survey of his life and work, which I hope to publish afterwards as a book. The carte-de-visite you see here of Gibson was taken by the photographer Frederic Jones in London about 1860 and shows Gibson as the gentleman-bohemian artist that he liked to suggest he was (image: NPG). Among the scheduled speakers for the workshop will be a publisher and agent, as well as a number of established biographers, so I'm definitely looking forward to attending this workshop and very grateful to the Leon Levy Center for accepting my application.

Random Musings 13

It's been a while since I posted one of these "Random Musings," briefly bringing in a hodge-podge of stories. This week there were a few things worth noting. The first has to do with the destruction...excuse me, "renovation"...of the New York Public Library's main research building. bklynbiblio followers may recall that I (and others!) have had a few things to say about this plan here and here. This week the NYPL released the official reconstruction plans, with swanky drawings (image above) and an eye-catching video on their website, to demonstrate how incredible the renovation will be to the public at large. The biggest attraction is that everyone will have wonderful views of Bryant Park. The worst part about the release of these plans is that it's going to have exactly the effect they want: suddenly now even I'm finding myself instinctively rethinking my criticism. That doesn't mean I support the changes; rather, it means the advertising about the changes is designed to make you think it's for the greater good and to make you forget all the negative things about the historic building and its collections. This is Mad Men in action, 2012 style. Even though this week noted preservationist Ada Louise Huxtable published an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal about the destruction of this building, this is one of those moments where it's obvious now that it's irrelevant what people think. The NYPL is moving forward with their plans.

Elsewhere in NYC depressing news, the MTA has announced that starting in March they're raising prices again for the subways and buses. My 30-day unlimited pass is going up to $112 and a regular one-way pass will now be $2.50. This is the 4th increase in 5 years. Word has it that FEMA is supposedly going to pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars of repairs and operational costs the MTA suffered as a result of Hurricane Sandy, so apparently this increase was just a regularly scheduled one. I have to admit that following the hurricane I was among those who were impressed by how quickly the MTA got mass transit back up and running, so I can't completely knock them these days. The fact that the MTA chairman Joseph J. Lhota is suddenly so popular for that must be the reason why he's resigning...and apparently running for Mayor next year.

On a more positive side of things, New York magazine has published their 8th annual "Reasons to Love NY," which is always a delightful reminder of why NYC is so great. Among the highlights this year: our governor (Andrew Cuomo) isn't afraid to talk about global warming; our mayor (Michael Bloomberg) isn't afraid to talk gun control; Donald Trump finally became the joke we always knew he was; you can get anything in a bodega; and we screw in public (my favorite of them all!). You can read all these and more here.

In the art world, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, made news recently after conservation work on a 17th-century French painting suddenly revealed that the nude woman you see on the left was actually a mythological subject, with images of the god Zeus/Jupiter and a putto/Cupid. The over-painting probably had been done in the 19th century. It's always amazing to me how art can surprise us still sometimes. Here's an article about it from The Art Newspaper.

And last but not least, Archaeology magazine has issued their annual "Top 10 Discoveries" for 2012. They had previously discounted the whole Mayan-end-of-the-world story, so that wasn't on the list. Two of the more interesting that did make the list, however, are the discovery of the remains of "Frankenstein"-like creatures made of body parts from different people all laid to rest in a ritualistic grave in Scotland, and a 2000-year-old bag filled with coins and jewelry in Israel that was probably hidden by a woman during an uprising with the Romans. The best, however, has to be the image you see here. It's a 37,000-year-old stone engraving found in France depicting, of all things, a vulva. There's not much one can say after that, is there?

Auction Sales of 2012

Every once and a while, I like to track on bklynbiblio information about auction sales for works of art when I think something significant or monumental has happened. 2012 has turned out to be a rather startling year, with a number of paintings being sold at auction at incredible prices, some breaking records. The November sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's brought in $375 million, followed almost immediately by Christie's similar sale with a record of nearly $500 million in sales. These are simply staggering amounts of money for works of art. Two pictures by the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko sold at auction this year for more than $87 million and $75 million each. But my favorite Ab Ex painter, Franz Kline (1910-1962), reached a record high for his work with Untitled, 1957 (pictured above), which sold at Christie's New York in November for $40.4 million. (bklynbiblio readers may recall my having written about Kline when it was his 100th birthday. I love how his thick, exuberant application of monochromatic paints allude to Chinese/Japanese calligraphy.) Of course, the biggest sale of the year, however, was one of Edvard Munch's versions of The Scream, 1895, which sold at Sotheby's in May for $119.9 million, making it currently the most money ever paid for a work of art at auction (note that it's not an oil painting, but rather pastel on board). You can see this interesting slideshow with images from the Huffington Post with the 20 most expensive works sold at auction this year, ranging from the $119.9 million to a paltry $23 million for an abstract painting by Wassily Kandinsky. It's at least somewhat reassuring to know that not everything in the top 20 was "modern"; works by John Constable and Raphael made it on the list too.

There's a decent Wikipedia entry on the "List of Most Expensive Paintings" that is worth consulting, as it combines both auction sales with private sales. As expensive as these aforementioned auction prices are, it's astounding to realize that this year's Munch still only ranks as #8 in the hierarchy, the most expensive painting ever sold being a version of Paul Cézanne's Card Players, 1892-93, for $259 million. What is perhaps most disturbing about this list, however, is that of the top 17 highest-ranking sale prices, 10 of them have all taken place just since the year 2006! This is extraordinary when you realize that we've supposedly been suffering through tough economic times these past few years. Clearly the so-called global 1% haven't been impacted and can easily inflate the art market.

And just when you think you've heard it all, this very week Christie's sold the painting you see here at its Victorian sale for a shocking record price of almost $1 million. The picture, The White Owl, 1856, by William James Webbe, was discovered in someone's attic, cleaned, and sold at auction for about 9 times more than the estimated price. Now, when compared to the sales mentioned above, this is really nothing. But for a Victorian picture, it's astounding. The picture is being called a Pre-Raphaelite work for its stark, photographic realism, but it's not officially a Pre-Raphaelite painting. I mean, I think it's fair to say that I'm relatively familiar with Victorian art, certainly the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, and I've never even heard of this guy! What gets me even more is...who the heck has $1 million to buy a picture of an owl? I think it shows that although one can talk all about these sales and declare them records of sale prices, in the long run they say more about the competitive streak among bidders who vie for these works, rather than the intrinsic value of the works themselves. It seems fair to say that most art collectors today clearly are more interested in art as a commodity and want to flip it to make a profit. Sadly, aesthetics and the work's value solely as a work of art no longer seem to be worth anything.

Aida at the Met

I felt quite privileged on Wednesday night to go to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. I was the guest of a friend (who for his own political reasons wishes to remain unidentified), who had been given amazing Grand Tier tickets for free. We went to see Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, which had its premiere in Cairo on December 24, 1871. The opera was fantastic. I had seen Aida in the past on television, but this was the first time I had seen it live. Although I'm not an active opera buff, I do enjoy going when I can, and Italian operas are of course the best (yes, I'm biased). I've seen live both Tosca (my favorite libretto) and La Traviata (possibly my favorite musical score) a number of times. Aida is the story of the pseudonymous Ethiopian princess enslaved to the Egyptian princess Amneris, both of whom are in love with the Egyptian general Radamès, although he is in love only with Aida. Of course there love is doomed and there's a tragic ending. For our performance, Aida was performed by soprano Liudmyla Monasyrska, and she did a truly magnificent job. She sang beautifully, and I was entranced by two of her arias. The other performers were quite good, although none of them stood out for me as well as the soprano. The orchestra was aptly conducted by Fabio Luisi, but I found the tuba player a bit too loud at times, to the point that he overpowered the singers. The famous triumphal march scene was spectacular, however, and the ballet sequences well choreographed. I realized that the triumphal march was scored by Verdi so that it could be repeated again and again to accommodate the size of the actual parade on stage. In some performances, an entire retinue of animals including elephants and giraffes have been included, extending the musical sequence a great deal, but in this performance they kept it to a minimum. It's a shame actually because it is such beautiful music, and believe me when I tell you that you know this music and love it as well. (Here's a YouTube video of the scene as performed in the past at the Met Opera.) I did find it strange to realize afterwards that all the main singers in the performance were from former Soviet countries (Ukraine, Russia, Georgia), which I think says much about the globalism of the arts in the new millennium.

On a personal note, it was interesting to go back to the Met Opera the other night (image at right was the view from our seats!), because I had not been to that theater since my very first live opera experience...30 years ago! Zio PL had gotten free tickets, and since Zia FL couldn't go, he took me. I remember my parents driving me into the City where we met him at Lincoln Center. We saw Rigoletto from one of the tiers...and I actually sat next to Mia Farrow and Woody Allen (they left during intermission). It was an amazing experience overall, but one I could hardly share with classmates the next day as they all thought it was weird that I would even want to go to an opera. In retrospect, it was definitely one of those rewarding experiences that I have cherished my whole life. I just hope it's not another 30 years before I go back there again!

12/12/12 at 12:12 PM

This is the last time in most of our lifetimes that we will ever encounter a series of recurring digits on the calendar and clock such as this exact moment. (The next one won't be until 1:01 AM on 01/01/2101!) So what are/were you doing at exactly that moment? Comment on my blog post, my Facebook page, Twitter site, or just email me, and I will record everyone's action for posterity. Assuming of course the world doesn't end, as some die-hard fatalists are predicting.

UPDATES:
No sooner did I post this, then Tweet/Facebook it, I went back to preparing for my Asian art class and completely forgot about it! At 12:12 PM, I was engrossed in watching a video about the contemporary Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao, whose exhibition at the Asia Society is absolutely superb. You can see the Comments section for a few responses as to what you were doing as 12:12 PM, but here are others that were texted and emailed to me. You're action have been immortalized!
DPG: “Sitting at my desk in my office with country music wafting thru my walls, not my choice, thanks to the good ole boys in the shop. Wishing I were somewhere else, NYC would be my pick at this moment or most moments for that matter.”
AA: “I was in a meeting with an advertiser and didn’t even realize the milestone had passed.”
DC: “Buying a bag of chips and a can of soda.  Dirty chips cracked pepper and sea salt, San Pellegrino pompelmo (my favorite).”
GM: “I was reading New York magazine and listening to NPR. Even though I should be working.” (Earlier he had threatened to flash an old lady!)
MB: “Having lunch with Owen, I am assuming because I didn’t look at the clock.”
DL: "I was wishing it was Monday. I'm off of work on Monday!!! My co-worker was grieving. His mother passed away today at 12:12 exactly."
KB: "I was cooking pasta for lunch. And thinking about a budget for a grant application."
RM: "I was mentoring my 8-year-old girl."

Downton Abbey: 25 Days and Counting

According to the official countdown on the PBS website (as of when I'm writing this post), it's 25 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes until the premiere of season 3 of Downton Abbey. I can't wait! Once Christmas and New Year's are over, there's always a bit of a let-down as the worst of cold winter starts to kick in with no other major even to look forward to. So it's a great relief that one can look forward to this amazing television show, about which I've blogged before. Some of the actors have been in NYC promoting the upcoming season and they were on the Today show this morning. The new season already has aired in the UK, but it begins in the US on January 6. Shirley MacLaine joins the cast this season as Martha Levinson, Lady Cora's American mother, a perfect foil for the Dowager Countess, Lady Violet (Maggie Smith). After the wonderful post-World War I Christmas-themed finale (where a long-anticipated marriage proposal finally took place), rumor has it the wedding will go forward but not without a few bumps in the road, including word that the family fortune has gone up in smoke. And will poor Mr. Bates the valet finally be released from prison so he and Anna, the head maid, can be together as we all so desperately want them to be? Let's face it: the show is  basically a big romantic soap opera. But it's SO good! What makes the show superb is the writing, carried out so adeptly by a fantastic crew of actors and gilded with amazing costumes and sets. If you haven't seen seasons 1 or 2 of this show yet, you can stream all the episodes on Netflix and I'm sure lots of other places, but I already own the DVD sets for seasons 1 and 2 and will be adding season 3 to my list as well. You will be hooked like everyone else.

Review: The Development of the Art Market in England

In the most recent issue of the UK-based Art Libraries Journal (vol. 38, no. 1, 2013), you will find my review of the book The Development of the Art Market in England: Money as Muse, 1730-1900 by Thomas M. Bayer and John R. Page (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011). Because of limitations with the number of words, however, I had to edit down my review. This is normal practice, so there certainly were no concerns about that. Below is the full version as I initially wrote it, going into a little more depth about the individual chapters and other areas. I've added images as well as they relate to various components of the book. The first image below is William Hogarth's 3rd print from the series A Rake's Progress, 1735; the second below is William Powell Frith's The Derby Day, 1856-58, one of the most commercially successful paintings of the 19th century (both from Tate Britain). The image you see here, James Durden's A Country Auction, has nothing to do with the book, but I thought it provided a nice visual summary about the book.

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Art history today is arguably more pluralistic and wide-ranging in its methodologies than ever before. Therefore, it is surprising that in the introduction to Thomas M. Bayer and John R. Page’s book The Development of the Art Market in England they perceive a ‘persistent prejudice that commoditization is inherently damaging to the aesthetic merit and quality of art products’.(1) For traditional connoisseurs who focus on an art object’s uniqueness and the artist’s inherent genius, this may be true. But few in the field of art history and criticism today would challenge Bayer and Page’s hypothesis, that art is a commodity, and key to its economic value is the role of the art dealer as the middleman between artist as producer and collector as consumer. Indeed, Bayer and Page’s text is an important, if occasionally faulty, contribution to art history. Their work is especially valuable to those who study British art, as it helps advance serious scholarship in a discipline often considered sub-standard to the study of French and Italian art.

Bayer and Page focus on England from about 1700 to 1900 because it was during this time that Britain experienced an increasing economic growth due to the industrial revolution and worldwide colonization. Moreover, because Britain was free from civil wars and outside incursions at this time—events that decimated large parts of the European continent—the country was able to maintain a level of economic stability and thus generate a steady market for the sale of art. The authors contend that the old idea that art follows wealth is no longer valid, that in fact these two principles worked reciprocally, supporting and nurturing one another, with the art dealer the fulcrum in this exchange. They focus almost exclusively on paintings, and their primary research comes from the extant records of dealers such as Agnew’s and Arthur Tooth. To this they extracted quantitative data from the scholarship of Algernon Graves and George Redford, as well as Christie’s auction catalogs, to create a statistical and econometric analysis of how and what types of paintings sold in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.(2)

This book then is about production, commodity, and consumption, and thus favors business, finance, and economics over art history. It is part of Pickering & Chatto’s ‘Financial History’ series. This is not to say that the art history student cannot glean something from it, for indeed the authors have much to offer those who wish to learn more about how the London-based art world evolved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When it comes to Bayer and Page’s actual research, however, with their numerous tables and charts, the art historian accustomed to images and interpretations of works of art will be disappointed. Yet, in reading closely a text which argues that art dealers and the commoditization of paintings directed taste and stylistic developments in England, the art historian will find him/herself with a refreshing take on how the art world developed over this time period.


The first chapter is a discussion of the art market in seventeenth-century Netherlands and serves as the model for the commoditization of art. By 1700 this market shifted to London, then the largest and richest city in Europe. The early art market dealt exclusively with Old Masters, and it was only later in the century that an increase in the sale of contemporary native English artists overtook that of Old Masters, a paradigm shift that would swing back and forth for art dealers over the course of the two centuries. The next three chapters focus on the different ways native art established itself in England: instructional and theoretical manuals on painting published in London by authors such as Jonathan Richardson, William Hogarth, and Joshua Reynolds; the first art schools and commercial galleries such as Vauxhall Gardens, ultimately culminating in the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1768; and the role of art criticism and auction houses in establishing ideas about taste.

Chapter five is one of the more interesting. From their original research, the authors determined that during the eighteenth century art dealers used auctions exclusively to sell paintings, but this practice changed drastically from the 1830s on, when art dealers became the largest consumers of paintings at auction, in order to resell the pictures at inflated costs. The primary reason for this shift was the power of the reproductive print. The success of the print market in England began with Hogarth and helped nurture support for contemporary native English painters. Through the sale of prints after paintings, the public had the opportunity to own a piece of the painting, while the actual picture could be owned by one person or reinvested in the art market. Chapters six, seven, nine, and ten focus on the Victorian art market’s taste for native English painters. Whereas art dealers in the eighteenth century were less stable in their businesses, during the Victorian period many (Agnew’s, Colnaghi, Gambart, Tooth, etc.) rose to power as stakeholders in the production and sale of art. These art dealers asserted their power when they purchased from artists not only their pictures but their copyright, enabling the dealers to ensure future success through reproductive prints and traveling exhibitions. The last of these chapters discusses how the art market began to fail at the end of the Victorian period with the introduction of new international styles (e.g. Impressionism), the failure of touring pictures due to new cinematic experiences, and the development of cheap photographic reproductions which obviated the once successful market for high-quality prints.

The strength of the authors’ work is most evident when they provide specific case studies. For instance, chapter eight focuses on the auction house Christie’s and its sale practices over the centuries. Other close studies include discussion of dealers (e.g. Arthur Tooth & Sons, pp. 113-17), commercial enterprises (e.g. Grosvenor Gallery, pp. 191-201), and successful painters (e.g. William Powell Frith, pp. 154-58).(3) Their work on the Victorian period itself is substantial and thus more useful than that of the eighteenth century. This is partly because more archival material survives from that period, but also because the book is taken from Bayer’s 2001 doctoral dissertation on the Victorian art market.(4) Bayer is an interdisciplinary art historian with related studies in history and economics, and Page is a certified public accountant and professor of accounting at Tulane. As specialists in the world of financial history, they certainly seem qualified to write on this topic.

Unfortunately, a surprising number of grammatical and spelling errors appear frequently in the text, suggesting poor proofreading at times, and over-editing with the appearance of double words and incorrect phrasing.  These errors continue onto the website (http://artmarket.tulane.edu) designed to complement the text with images that are not in the book.  The painter John Singleton Copley, for instance, appears frequently on the website as Copely.  The quality of the images on the website, arranged by chapter, are low resolution files and often poor in quality, so they serve little use.  For a book priced at £60 ($99), the authors could have arranged for black-and-white images in the text of just a few of the most frequently discussed paintings.  More appropriately, they should have published prints after these paintings, since that is such a critical part of their thesis.

The website includes a promising link at the bottom that reads ‘Is the Art Market Like the Stock Market?’  It opens to a series of hyperlinks that relate to PowerPoint slides, but not a single link works, making the entire site worthless.  The closest one comes to thoughts on their analogy to the stock market is when the authors, in the book, propose that ‘painters are firms which produce products …, dealers are specialists and brokers, critics are analysts and the auction house is the stock exchange’.(5) Although thought provoking, missing from this analogy is the collector as consumer/investor.  Bayer and Page have authored a text that offers a close analysis of the painting market, and spend ample time discussing the art dealer, artist, and auction house, but in ignoring the collector, they have omitted a vital part of this stock market analogy.  For those interested in the collector, particularly during the Victorian period, Dianne Sachko Macleod’s superb work Art and the Victorian Middle Class offers an interesting parallel by focusing on how certain industrialists operated as private collectors.(6)

Despite these criticisms, Bayer and Page’s text contributes to the literature in art history and financial history, and also could be consulted by researchers working on an array of related subjects, from British socio-economic history to marketing strategies over time. Although the publisher’s website suggests the text is intended for the general reader, it is for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics. The scholarly apparatus seems ample and well-documented, with thirty-four pages of endnotes, a bibliography of archival, primary, and secondary sources, and a full index. The book itself has a sturdy hard cover and sewn binding that holds up well to regular use, and seems to be an appropriate purchase for college and university libraries, particularly with school programs in international studies, art history, and business/finance/marketing. Bayer and Page have not have written a perfect book on the history of the art market in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, and scholars inevitably will have more questions than answers based on their research. However, they have opened the door to an understudied area, upon which future scholars will be able contribute and thus expand, as it were, a new market on the commoditization of art.

NOTES
1. Bayer and Page, 7.
2. Algernon Graves, Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century, 3 vols (London, 1918-21); George Redford, Art Sales: A History of Sales of Pictures & Other Works of Art (London, 1888).
3. The section on Tooth was previously published as a longer essay by the authors, ‘Arthur Tooth: A London Art Dealer in the Spotlight, 1870-71’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 9, no. 1 (Spring 2010), http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/spring10/arthur-tooth.
4. Thomas M. Bayer, ‘Money as Muse: The Origin and Development of the Art Market in Victorian England, a Process of Commodification’, Diss. Tulane University, 2001.
5. Bayer and Page, 143.
6. Dianne Sachko Macleod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).