Laura Gilbert__ Art Unwashed

Major Development in Cariou v. Prince from Image-Licensing Giants Corbis and Getty

2012-02-03T15:30:00.000-05:00

In the closely watched copyright brawl between appropriation artist Richard Prince and photographer Patrick Cariou now playing out in the federal appellate court in Manhattan, trade associations representing photo-licensing giants Corbis and Getty Images and 7000 photographers have submitted a "friend of the court" brief in support of Cariou.

Read my latest story on the Cariou v. Prince case in The Art Newspaper, here.

Sacre Bleu! Featured Fragonard Fails at Christie's, as Do Memling and Arcimboldo

2012-01-25T16:02:00.000-05:00

Giambattista Tiepolo oil sketch, one of the few high points of Christie's Old Masters sale

How will the Christie's publicity machine spin this?

The morning Old Masters sale had few enough high points, though a sparkling Giambattista Tiepolo oil sketch sold for $5.2 million (the highest of the day's sales), about mid-estimate, and a splendid Thomas de Keyser portrait, selling for $1.25 million, left its $500,000 high estimate in the dust.

But the afternoon sale, which broke out the French works, was abysmal, with nearly half the works unsold -- among them the catalogue cover, Fragonard's "The Good Mother." It was expected to reach $5 to $7 million but the bidding died at $4.2 million.

Memling's "Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child" and a painting attributed to Arcimboldo were among the spectacular flops in the morning sale.

The Memling had an estimate of $6 to $8 million, but the $5.5 million high bid evidently didn't reach the reserve. The Arcimboldo may have been done in by doubts about its attribution (see the post immediately preceding).

Remember the Pieter Molijn that the Getty Museum restituted to the heirs of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker last March? For all the publicity then, no sale today.

Update: Well, the Christie's press release is out, and there's a bit of good news: The Thomas de Keyser was purchased by the National Gallery, so one of the loveliest paintings in the sale (see photo in preceding post) should before too long be on public view.

Photo and text Copyright 2012 Laura Gilbert

Christie's Old Masters Preview: The Ones to Watch

2012-01-21T19:36:00.000-05:00

Memling, Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child

A painting stolen for Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering, one of the few Memlings still in private hands, and a work that might or might not be by the strange Arcimboldo are among the offerings at Christie's Old Masters auction next week. The highlights:

Hans Memling, Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child. One of the few paintings by the great 15th-century Netherlandish artist remaining in private hands, this tiny devotional image (less than 7 inches in diameter) has an archaic gold ground but also the sweet delicacy one expects from Memling, and masterful detail.

Estimate: $6-$8 million (the highest in the sale), with a third-party guarantee.

Tiepolo, Arrival of Henry III

Giambattista Tiepolo, Arrival of Henry III at the Villa Contarini. This large, 28-by-42-inch oil sketch for the fresco decoration of the Villa Pisani has a provenance more interesting than the event depicted (the French king stopped there once). First recorded in the possession of a friend of Tiepolo, it was later owned by the Rothschild family, then seized by the Nazis for Hermann Goering. After the war, it was recovered by the Monuments Men, returned to France, and restituted to the Rothschilds.

Estimate: $4-$6 million, and perhaps worth every penny -- it's darn good-looking, with sophisticated color, and the fresco, according to the catalogue, is a wreck.

Fragonard, The Good Mother. Probably better known for his playful erotic scenes, the Rococo artist was also a master at landscape and genre painting, which this work shows off magnificently. It appears to be in pristine condition.

Estimate: $5-$7 million.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Anthropomorphic Portrait of a Man. It's a bit much to call this a "portrait" rather than, say, a "face." Is it also a bit much to call it an Arcimboldo?

It was sold in 1999 as "manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo" and flipped the next year at Sotheby's as autograph. Of the latter, connoisseur and dealer Richard Feigen wrote in the September 2008 Art Newspaper, "A painting attributed to the rare painter, Arcimboldo, was sold at Sotheby's, New York, for $1.5m. It has never been accepted as by Arcimboldo himself." Christie's catalogue calls the attribution "secure." What will the market think?

Estimate: $3-$5 million.

Gerrit Dou, Young Lady Playing a Clavichord. This painting is alone reason to welcome auctions -- for a few days there's a chance to see a major work that had been "whereabouts unknown for generations," says the catalogue. It turns out to have been owned by the same family for almost a century but apparently not exhibited (or cleaned) during that time.

Dou, a Dutch master of the small work, last year got a record $5-million-plus at Sotheby's. Estimate: $1-$2 million.

Thomas de Keyser, Portrait of a Gentleman. Judging from this 1627 portrait, de Keyser should be a household name despite the missing flecks of paint and the clouded areas at the bottom and the right. The face and ruff -- gorgeous. Estimate: $300,000-$500,000.

A couple of others to watch: a wonderful oil sketch, newly discovered, of The Assumption of the Virgin by the incomparable Rubens (left, estimate: $2-$3 million) and a 1756 double portrait of children by Francois Hubert Drouais (below, estimate: $1.2-$1.8 million). Then there's a passel of works by Pieter Breughel the Younger -- landscape and fables copied from his father's work.

Christie's at Rockefeller Center, viewing January 21-24, sale January 25.

Image of Dou, from Christie's catalogue.

Other photographs and text Copyright 2012 Laura Gilbert.

Italy Caves on Restitution, Defaults After U.S. Seizes Painting in Florida

2012-01-10T19:49:00.000-05:00

"Christ Bearing the Cross Dragged by a Rascal" by Girolamo de' Romano ("Romanino")

A federal court in Florida lastweek cleared the way for the heirs of a Jewish art collector to take possessionof a painting that, according to the U.S. government’s complaint, hadbeen illegally seized and auctioned by French Vichy authorities in concert withNazi occupiers in 1941.

The painting, “Christ Bearing the Cross Dragged by a Rascal”by 16^th-century artist Girolamo de’ Romano, was in the United States as part of a50-painting loan from Milan’s Pinacoteca diBrera to the Mary Brogan Museumof Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida.

Painting Seized at 11th Hour

On November 4, 2011, a mere two days before the painting wasscheduled to return to Milan,the U.S. Attorney’s Office began the federal court action. That same day, the painting was seized by U.S.Customs and Homeland Security officials amid a blast of media coverage.

Neither the Brera nor the Italian government, which owns the Brera, answered the U.S.government’s complaint, and on January 3 the court entered a default judgment againstthem.

According to papers filed with the court, the art collector,Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, had amassed a collection of more than 70 works,some of which his heirs have been attempting to recover. In 1999, a French court ordered the Louvre toreturn five paintings, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute ofChicago, and the Princeton University Art Museum have settled with the heirs, the paperssay.

Schiele's "Portrait of Wally"

The last high-profile painting that was seized by thegovernment off the walls of a museum – first by New York State and thenby the Feds -- was Egon Schiele’s “Portrait of Wally,” which was on loan toMoMA from the Leopold Museum in Vienna. It took 10 years to settle that case.

Seizure was permissible in both instances because MoMA andthe Brogan failed to get U.S. State Department certification granting theseworks immunity from seizure.

The Italian government and the heirs of Gentili di Giuseppehad been in negotiations for some time before the show that included “ChristBearing the Cross” was due to close, and in July the U.S. Attorney requestedthe Brogan to keep the painting beyond the show’s end date, until the ownershipdispute was resolved.

Reporting on the dispute in October, the New York Times stated that ChuchaBarber, the Brogan’s chief executive, hoped that the publicity might bring themuseum much needed donors.

No such luck. The museum will shutterits doors indefinitely on January 15 while it figures out how to become financiallyviable, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Princeton settled the heirs' claim to Pintoricchio's St. Bartholomew

Images: Top, Wikipedia; bottom, Princeton University Art Museum website

Text Copyright 2012 Laura Gilbert

They’re Back: Two Small Portraits by Hals Join the Big Boys

2012-01-06T17:26:00.000-05:00

Hals, Anna van der Aar, oil on wood, 1626

Two small, magnetic portraits by Frans Hals that have been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum since 1929 are at last on permanent display.

Hals, Petrus Scriverius

In the museum’s huge, 228-work “Age of Rembrandt” show in 2007, these roughly 9-by-6.5-inch paintings of Petrus Scriverius and his wife, Anna van der Aar, were unexpected standouts – unexpected because they are so darn beautiful yet were hardly ever on view.

At the time, I asked curator Walter Liedke when we might see them again, and he said, “The small works will be back.” When the Rembrandt show was taken down, though, and the Dutch galleries rehung, these two were nowhere to be seen.

Four years later, they were stars again, this time in Met’s Frans Hals show.

Again I asked Liedke about them, and he said they would soon be on permanent view in a freestanding display case in the Rembrandt-Hals gallery.

And now they are, holding their own among some of the most famous Dutch paintings in the Met’s collection, including Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.”

The Hals portraits newly installed

The two portraits are on one side of the case. On the other is a small night scene, "An Evening School," by Gerrit Dou.

Images: First and second from the Metropolitan Museum website.
Text and third photo Copyright 2012 Laura Gilbert

Taking Stock at Year-End: The Google Search

2012-01-02T18:48:00.005-05:00

Richard Prince (left) and Larry Gagosian

As some of you have no doubt noticed, thanks to you my articles published here and elsewhere frequently appear in the top five of Google search results, even months after they are published.

Today I performed some searches on Google (using Firefox) for rankings of news that I broke and exhibitions that I reviewed.

Cezanne loan nixed

Here are results -- as of this morning -- for some of my top-ranked articles, indicating what words I typed in, the number of results for that search, and who placed above or below me. I could include more stories but you get the idea, and my gratitude.

Search: Russian art loan embargo

Number of Search Results: 1,190,000

Rankings:

1. My New York Observer article on Chabad v. Russian Federation, the court case that triggered Russia’s embargo on loaning art to U.S. museums

2. Jerusalem Post

3. New York Times

4. New York Times

5. Los Angeles Times

Search: Richard Prince copyright lawsuit

Number of Search Results: 153,000

Rankings:

1. New York Times

2. My New York Observer article breaking the news of Prince’s strategy on appeal and what happened to his unsold, copyright-infringing paintings

3. New York Observer

4. New York Times

5. New York Times

Soutine portrait

Search: Soutine Bacon

Number of Search Results: 141,000

Rankings:

1. My review of the Soutine/Bacon show held in New York

2. New York Times

3. Huffington Post

Search: Metropolitan Museum cancels loans

Number of Search Results: 106,000

Rankings:

1. My Observer article breaking the news that the Met had canceled loans to Russia in response to Russia’s art embargo

2. New York Times (kindly and appropriately crediting my article with breaking the news)

Search: Picasso Marie Therese lamour fou

Number of Search Results: 17,300

Rankings:

1. My review of the "Picasso and Marie-Therese: L’amour fou" show at the Gagosian Gallery

2. Gagosian

3. Artnet

4. nymuseums

5. New York Magazine

On loan from Koons

Search: Jeff Koons Old Masters Metropolitan Museum

Number of Search Results: 39,400

Rankings:

1. New York Observer (kindly and appropriately referring to my article, which broke the story)

2. My story uncovering Koons’ secret loans of his Old Masters to the Met

3. Telegraph

Search: Poussin fails to sell

Number of Search Results: 3,560,000

Rankings:

1. My piece on Poussin’s “Ordination” flopping at Christie’s

2. BBC

3. Wall Street Journal

Search: Cervera Hebrew Bible Metropolitan Museum

Number of Search Results: 104,000

Rankings:

1. My piece on the opening of the Cervera Hebrew Bible display at the Met

2. My piece on pages of the Bible showing unicorns in the context of French and Islamic art

Search: Richard Prince Larry Gagosian copyright infringement

$2.43 million paid

Number of Results: 7,670

Rankings:

1. The Art Newspaper

2. My story (different from my Observer article mentioned above) exclusively revealing some of the buyers of Prince’s infringing paintings and how much they paid

Search: Rauschenberg Short Circuit

Number of Search Results: 8,660

Rankings:

1. New York Times

2. My piece analyzing Robert Rauschenberg’s “Short Circuit”

Search: Passion in Venice Man of Sorrows

Number of Search Results: 292,000

Rankings:

1. Museum of Biblical Art

2. Amazon

3. Wall Street Journal

4. New York Times

5. My review of the “Passion in Venice” show that examined the Man of Sorrows at New York’s Museum of Biblical Art

Images: Top from Artinfo, Cezanne and Soutine pulled from the internet, bottom image from court documents.

Restitution Fears, or Lost Opportunity? "Transition to Christianity" at the Onassis Cultural Center and the Absent "David Plates"

2011-12-23T15:50:00.007-05:00

Head of Aphrodite, with eyes gouged out and a cross carved into her forehead

Is it fear of a claim for restitution, or just a lost opportunity?

All nine parts of a seminal, 7th-century work -- a masterpiece of Byzantine art -- are now on view in New York, but for reasons unknown they are being displayed at two separate institutions.

The David Plates, a set of nine, various-sized silver plates – magisterially made with a sophisticated understanding of classical sculpture and an intricate attention to detail – cry out to be shown together, as they were some 1,400 years ago.

Detail, David and Goliath plate, at the Met

They depict scenes from the life of the biblical David, and were probably made for the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. They are commonly included in surveys of what used to be called the “Dark Ages.”

Six of the plates, including the largest (19.5 inches across) and most magnificent, are displayed in a nondescript corridor of the Metropolitan Museum. The other three are now on temporary loan from the Cyprus Museum, and can be seen through May 14 at the Onassis Cultural Center, where they are the culmination of its “Transition to Christianity” exhibit.

Marriage of David, at the Onassis Center

Scholars think the plates were originally displayed in the shape of a symbol that refers to Christ, with the medium and small plates placed around the large one. But for some as-yet-undisclosed reason, this configuration will not be recreated here.

Goodness knows when, if ever, all nine plates be in the same city again.

The plates were discovered in 1902 by laborers looking for building stone in the ruins of the Byzantine town of Lambousa, Cyprus. The Cypriot authorities confiscated three of them but, the story goes, the others were smuggled out of the country, sold to a Paris dealer, and bought by J.P. Morgan. Morgan’s heirs donated them to the Met in 1917.

Why aren’t all the pieces of what the Met describes as “exceptionally important” and "a masterwork of Byzantine art" being shown together? The Met loaned several other items to the Onassis Center show, but the plates didn’t make the 30-block trip south. The Onassis exhibit’s curator did not respond to inquiries, and no one at the Met was available for comment.

Six David Plates on view in a corridor at the Met

The word from an art history veteran is that Cyprus would like the Met’s plates returned to Cyprus, and it even made some fuss about it in the 1970s.

Derek Fincham, an expert in cultural heritage law, said that Cyprus “probably would not have success on a legal claim” – it would fail on statute of limitations grounds alone, he said -- but it might have an ethical claim to the plates “as an important piece of Cypriot heritage” that it could pursue as a public relations matter.

The Met might not want to loan the plates to the Onassis Center, Fincham suggested, because “the Met wouldn’t want people to make the connection.”

(How and when the plates got to Cyprus is unknown -- because of their high quality, it is thought that they were made in Constantinople -- and if Cyprus were to claim that the Met plates are part of its heritage, further evidence might be needed.)


Personification of April

The David Plates, in any event, could well be Exhibit A in any argument that “dark ages” is a misnomer for describing the 3rd through 7th centuries, and this is one of the themes of “Transition to Christianity.” It presents this period, under the rubic “late antiquity,” as a time of innovation and change from paganism to Christianity. The process took centuries, during which the two both coexisted and were in tension, and were sometimes at war.

The crucial figure, of course, was Constantine -- in 313 he established tolerance for Christianity with the Edict of Milan, and in 324-330 he moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople. Much activity in the visual arts followed the emperors to the East, and in this exhibition it is in the art from the East, mainly Greece, that we follow the cultural changes.

A direct effect of the emperors’ adoption of Christianity -- only one emperor after Constantine was not Christian – is shown in a display of gold coinage. An image of the emperor consistently appears on the front, but the mythological or historical scenes on the back gradually give way to a cross or an angel.

Mummy portrait, 1st century

Conflict between ideologies is made vivid with the Christianizing of classical sculpture: a first century head of Aphrodite has her eyes gouged out and a cross carved on her forehead, for example. Still, the beauty of this sculpture (the photo at the top doesn't do it justice) and a defaced portrait of a Roman boy is breathtaking.

The exhibition is particularly effective in demonstrating that even after Christianity became dominant, its imagery was deeply rooted in Greek and Roman art. Whether Christian or pagan, the motifs are often the same. Philosophers of classical art are models for Christian apostles. A man carrying a lamb, a standard motif in pagan bucolic scenes, is the basis of the Good Shepherd trope of Christianity. The forms of Egyptian mummy portraiture produced under Roman rule, facing front with overlarge eyes, reappear as an icon of Christ’s face.

Icon fragment

The three mummy portraits and the icon are highlights of the show – the former for their beauty and the latter for its rarity. Most icons on panel, like this one, were destroyed in the 8th-century iconoclastic movement against visual art.

“Transition to Christianity” is an engaging exhibit. It could have been historic had the David Plates been reunited.

“Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd-7th Century A.D.,” Onassis Cultural Center, 645 Fifth Ave. at 51st St., through May 14.

Addendum: Four days after my initial inquiry to the Met, asking why all nine David weren't being shown together, its vice president of communications, Elyse Topalian, chose to respond by email.

It stated: "The six David Plates in the Met's collection have long been scheduled to be highlights of the upcoming exhibition 'Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th-9th Century),' which will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum from March 14 through July 8, 2012. Because the exhibitions will overlap for two months, the works of art can't be on view together in a single location. But these exhibitions do provide a terrific opportunity to see the nine plates, all during one period of time, in New York City." (Emphasis is mine.)

This seemed to beg the question: Why couldn't there be a short-term loan between institutions during the two-and-a-half months before the Met show opens? That's what happened recently at the Bode Museum, which showed Leonardo's "Lady with an Ermine" (as part of the Renaissance portrait show now at the Met) for some weeks before sending it to London to hang in the National Gallery's Leonardo exhibition.

After the holidays, I asked the Onassis Cultural Center's director, Amalia Cosmetatou, if it had asked the Met to lend the plates to its "Transition to Christianity" exhibition. While not answering the question directly, she said the Met's David Plates were on permanent display there, and that "because of the two exhibits, perhaps it wouldn't have been possible anyway."

(They are on permanent display, except when the Met loans them out.)

But why not a short-term loan so we could see them as they were intended to be viewed?

Cosmetatou paused and then said, "That would have been a good idea."

Had the institutions tried to work something out so all the plates could be seen together?

"I don't know," she said, but promised to get back to me.

Perhaps there's no one to admonish here unless a request by one or the other institution was made and turned down. Could neither one have thought of it?

Photo of six David Plates at the Met, © 2011 Laura Gilbert

Other Photos: Head of Aphrodite and Personification of April, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Marriage of David, © Cyprus Museum; icon fragment, © Benaki Museum; detail of David and Goliath from Metropolitan Museum website; mummy portrait from Walters Art Museum website.

Text © 2011 Laura Gilbert.

"The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini" at the Metropolitan Museum

2011-12-20T15:36:00.006-05:00

Desiderio da Settignano portrait bust

Described by the Met as “a landmark exhibition,” this comprehensive exploration of 15th-century Italian portraiture -- 160 artworks from some 60 institutions and private collections -- sounded like a sure winner. And it is. It's magnificent, often in unexpected ways. It opens tomorrow.

Filippo Strozzi by Benedetto da Maiano

The Met and Berlin’s Bode Museum, the co-organizers, have used their combined heft to obtain substantial loans, from Donatello’s reliquary of St. Rossore, which, putting contemporary features on a long-dead saint, laid the groundwork for the Renaissance portrait bust, to one of the most famous 15th-century portraits, Domenico Ghirlandaio’s portrait of an old man and a boy.

Attr. to Uccello

A rarity for the museum-goer these days, there’s a lot to take in. It’s hard to believe anything could be more splendid than the array in the first gallery of three paintings of men in profile -- one by the revolutionary Massaccio (the only portrait solidly attributed to him), one attributed to Paolo Uccello, and one attributed to Domenico Veneziano -- until you enter the second gallery, with its lively marble portrait of a young woman by Desiderio da Settignano, and then walk on to encounter Verrocchio’s terracotta of the haughty Florentine bigwig Giuliano de’ Medici, a fierce, screaming face on his armor.

The curators have organized the show by both geography and subject – Florentine women and men shown separately, the powerful Medici family, court portraits, Venice.

The organization is brilliant. For painting it reveals -- in the century when Italy was discovering the autonomous portrait and exploring what creates identity – how limited and persistent portrait types were, and how difficult it was for artist or patron to conceive a change, let alone a transformation.

Mantegna, Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan

We see idealized portraits commemorating marriage, where all women are young and beautiful, and others commemorating the dead; and aggrandizing portraits of the already powerful -- even a cardinal is depicted as a Roman emperor, in a great painting by Andrea Mantegna. With few exceptions, it’s image projection at the expense of personality.

A new twist that worked might be seized upon. In mid-century, for example, Andrea Castagno hit upon what became a new formula – a man with a defiant expression who looks at the viewer, his face in three-quarters, dressed in red, and grasping his cloak. All around the Castagno are other paintings that in some way mimic it – the defiant expression, the three-quarter view, a red garment, a grasping hand.

Mino da Fiesole, bust of Niccolo di Strozzi, with Castagno painting

Sculpture, too, has its types and image projection – men with ennobled shoulders, for one – but displaying sculpture and painting together reveals the latter as almost invariably more animated (hard stone is no obstacle) and artistically leading the way. The contrast between the sculpture that seems to breathe and the paintings that seem stylized is vivid nearly everywhere you look.

Antonello da Messina

Judging from this show, it was mainly in Venice, which came to portraiture late, where personality was explored in painting. A beautiful example is the portrait of a young man by Antonello da Messina, a tiny 8-by-6 inches that makes a huge impression.

Some other highpoints in this exhibition filled with them: the jowly marble sculpture of Niccolo di Strozzi by Mino da Fiesole; the excellent terracotta portrait of Filippo Strozzi, wonderfully introspective, placed next to the more formal marble bust of him, both by Benedetto da Maiano; and a cast of the death mask of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

And for those interested in portrait medals, there are a mess of them by court artist Pisanello, a famous artist in his time who should perhaps be on more people's lips today.

Donatello reliquary bust

Cast of death mask of Lorenzo de' Medici

Verrocchio, armor detail

"The Renaissance Portrait," Metropolitan Museum, 5th Ave. and 82nd St., through March 18, 2012

Benedetto da Maiano and Antonello photos from Bode Museum website. Other photos and text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert.

In Case that Triggered Russia's Art Embargo, Chabad Tells Court It Is "In Direct Discussions" with Russia

2011-12-19T09:38:00.004-05:00

In the closely watched case that triggered Russia's embargo on lending art to U.S. museums, Chabad v. Russian Federation, Chabad has informed the federal court in Washington, D.C. that it is "in direct discussions" with the Russian government about the archive and library of religious books and manuscripts that gave rise to their dispute.

The disclosure was made late Friday in a request that the court temporarily stay until March 1, 2012 all proceedings and not rule on Chabad's pending motion for sanctions. Chabad had moved for sanctions in April because Russia had not complied with the court's default judgment ordering Russia to turn over the archive and the library to Chabad. (A discussion of the case and the embargo, which I reported and wrote and then sold to a New York publication, can be found here.)

Russia instituted its art embargo -- which has affected U.S. museums nationwide -- in August 2010, saying that it feared Chabad would seize its art to enforce the judgment. In its Friday filing Chabad states that it "will not seek to enforce the judgment against Defendants by requesting attachment of any Russian property in the United States or otherwise on or before March 1, 2012."

Two months ago, Chabad had requested a 60-day stay from the court "to facilitate Chabad's attempts to commence negotiation with the Russian Government," so with direct talks underway there has apparently been some movement.

Chabad has aggressively litigated in the U.S. courts for seven years. What precipitated its drastic change in strategy? And Russia had walked away from the litigation, claiming no U.S. court has jurisdiction over it. Why is it willing to talk with Chabad now?

Attempts to speak with Chabad's lawyers and the Russian Embassy have so far been unsuccessful.

Text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Unicorns and Winged Serpents in the Cervera Hebrew Bible: On View at the Met for Only Three More Days

2011-12-16T08:23:00.000-05:00

Cervera Hebrew Bible, details

On view for one week only – that’s both the difficulty and the pleasure that comes from the Met’s turning the pages of the Cervera Hebrew Bible. Visitors can take in two new pages beginning each Tuesday until January 16, when this 800-year-old Bible will be whisked back to Lisbon’s Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. (Read more about the exhibition here.)

This week it’s opened to brightly colored pages whose corners are decorated with unicorns, serpent-like creatures with human faces, and animals on their hind legs playing musical instruments.

French medallion

They seem to reflect a mix a traditions. The diamond and scalloped linear patterns seem almost Islamic, and the unicorn often symbolizes purity in Christian art.

The Met is showing these pages in the context of contemporaneous French medallions – the illuminator of the Cervera Bible was Joseph the Frenchman – that are made up of similar fanciful creatures.

This delight is on view only through Sunday.

Exclusive First Look at What the Met Museum Has Planned through June 2013

2011-12-06T10:32:00.002-05:00

Matisse, "The Blue Nude," to be shown in "The Steins Collect"

The Metropolitan Museum hasn’t released information about its upcoming shows beyond June 2012, so what follows is an exclusive first look at the best shows it has planned through June 2013.

In this age of austerity at museums, the Met is still able to put on international loan exhibitions, ranging from the tightly focused “Rembrandt and Degas,” with about 20 works, to the sprawling “Byzantium and Islam” that will show some 300 items.

Rembrandt self-portrait from the Rijksmuseum, to be shown in "Rembrandt and Degas"

And a glance at the breadth of the offerings shows why the Met is the best encyclopedic museum on the continent. On the way is its special exhibit of Egyptian work dating from as early as 6000 years ago in “The Dawn of Egyptian Art.”

It will also have an exhibit of art from the day before yesterday, with “Regarding Warhol: Fifty Artists, Fifty Years.”

A word about the last show: Except for its Art on the Roof series, the Met has been cautious when it comes to art of the last few decades, going mainly with solo shows of the tried-and-true who are octogenarian or nearly so -- think Jasper Johns or Richard Serra.

But with the Warhol group show, it looks like the Met will be anointing some contemporary artists – i.e., taking a risk – in addition to ensuring some good attendance figures and perhaps courting the moneyed financiers who go for Warhol big time.

The standouts:

Rembrandt and Degas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, February 23 to May 20, 2012. Highlights: Two early Rembrandt self-portraits on loan from Europe.

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, February 28 to June 3, 2012. About 100 works collected by expatriates Gertrude Stein and her brothers.

Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, March 14 to July 18, 2012. From museums around the world, some 300 objects from the 7^th century, showing the interactions among Christian, Islamic, and Jewish cultures, accompanied by a heavy-duty scholarly catalogue.

From Egypt, ca. 3450 B.C.

The Dawn of Egyptian Art, April 4 to August 5, 2012. 180 examples of very early Egyptian art, beginning in 4000 B.C.

Tomas Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City, April 24 to November 4, 2012. Interconnected room-sized modules by the young Argentine artist.

Regarding Warhol: Fifty Artists, Fifty Years, September 2012-January 2013. Warhol and his influence, thematically arranged. A Met rarity – a group show with contemporary art.

Bernini Models in Clay, October 2012 to January 2013. 50 models and several sculptures by the Roman Baroque master.

George Bellows (1882–1925), November 2012 to February 2013. A whopping 75 paintings, 30 drawings, and 25 lithographs by the American artist best known for his paintings of boxers.

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, February to May 2013. The Met again joins the fashion-is-art crowd, with period costumes and 75 paintings from the era that saw the rise of ready-to-wear clothing, department stores, and fashion magazines.

The Civil War and American Art, May to September 2013. The 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, will include a related show of Civil War photography.

Images: Matisse, Copyright Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society; Rembrandt pulled from the internet; Egyptian painted pottery from Metropolitan Museum website.

Museum Blockbuster-Show Sponsorships Go Begging While Billionaires Throw Down Hundreds of Millions on Trendy Schlock

2011-12-02T08:41:00.002-05:00

Painting by Antonella da Messina, to be shown in the Met's "Renaissance Portrait" exhibition

The Metropolitan Museum’s next sure thing is its “Renaissance Portrait” show, an international loan exhibition of about 160 works from some 50 institutions. When it opened at Berlin’s Bode Museum this summer, it had enthusiastic reviews in Europe and lines around the block.

But when the show opens in New York on December 21, it won’t have a single sponsor from the private sector.

No such support either for the famous trove of medieval ivory chessmen – seen by millions in a Harry Potter flick – that is currently on view at the Cloisters, the Met’s uptown jewel box. The chessmen, loaned from the British Museum, were the subject of a feature article in the Wall Street Journal, and the exhibit, called “The Game of Kings,” was a lead review in the New York Times.

Queen chess piece

The Met had sought a cool $1 million for exclusive name-brand sponsorship of “The Renaissance Portrait” and a bargain-basement $100,000 for “The Game of Kings,” amounts that are mere chump change for the kings of Wall Street who will giddily part with tens of millions for an inferior Warhol.

Support for both shows, though, is being provided entirely by foundations and philanthropies.

Sponsorships can be useful for buffing up a bad image. The corrupt Bank of America, for example, started getting involved in cultural support big time in 2008, when it was taking the lead in driving the economy over the cliff. “We get great public relations out of it,” Allen Blevins, director of the bank’s corporate art program, unabashedly told the Charlotte Observer in 2010.

Of course, some reputations are so noxious that even institutions hard-up for a handout will shun an affiliation. There’s been noise recently in London about kicking polluter BP out of the sponsorship business at the Tate, and some might argue that the bailed-out banks should also be beyond the pale – for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that money from them would be the same as taxpayer support.

Portrait attributed to Andrea d'Assisi

But there are still plenty of acceptable dirty names in the financial industry – various hedge funds, investment partnerships, money management firms, among them some whose principals are notorious for spending big bucks at auction on the latest lollipop art, under the mistaken impression that they are also purchasing social cachet.

Maybe they should consider in addition getting some cash flowing to the Met and supporting an exhibition of timeless art. That could be a friendship with benefits for art lovers outside the party circuit.

Images: Portraits from the Bode Museum website, chesspiece from the Metropolitan Museum website.

The Cervera Hebrew Bible at the Met: Not What You Learned in Sunday School

2011-11-21T15:28:00.002-05:00

Cervera Hebrew Bible (click to enlarge)

A beautiful medieval Hebrew Bible officially goes on display tomorrow at the Metropolitan Museum, and it just might get you re-thinking what you learned about Judaism’s rejection of figural imagery.

The Bible was written and illustrated in 1299-1300 in Cervera, Spain, and is on loan until January 16 from Lisbon’s Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. It’s the second in a series of Hebrew manuscripts that the Met is borrowing from public institutions around the world, a way of making up for the dearth of Jewish art in its own holdings. The pages will be turned once a week.

Signature page and grammatical compendium (click to enlarge)

Right now it’s opened to the end of the book. On the left the entire page is given over to the signature of the illuminator, Joseph Hazarfati, or Joseph the Frenchman -- remarkable, considering that the names of most illuminators are unknown. In Hebrew it says, “I, Joseph Hazarfati, illustrated and completed this book.” But look closely, and you see that the letters are actually composed of fanciful animals.

Signature page, detail: Hebrew letters as fanciful animals (click to enlarge)

On the right page is a grammatical compendium, with two six-pointed stars at the top and a couple of fierce lions at the bottom. Within the two stars are a lion and a castle, the symbols of the Kingdoms of Leon and Castile in Northern Spain, where, the curators suggest, the unknown patron may have lived. The scribe is identified as Samuel ben Abraham ibn Nathan.

Aaron, from a French church

There’s plenty to delight and surprise in this exhibit – the Bible is the centerpiece in a display of Christian Bibles and precious objects from the Met’s collection, and the whole is flanked by large limestone statues of Moses and Aaron that were once part of a New Testament scene on a church in France. All the objects date from roughly the same period and many shed light on the artistic traditions Joseph Hazarfati drew on.

The Second Commandment, of course, has an injunction against depicting “any likeness that is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth,” and it’s often taught that Judaism interpreted this prohibition literally -- despite visual evidence to the contrary. In the Cervera Bible, for example, there are pages with people, cities, animals, and even narrative stories like Jonah and the whale.

Some scholars think that the presence or absence of Jewish figural imagery, at least in the Middle Ages, is less a matter of belief than of artistic tradition, and the Met exhibit seems to adopt this view. In Southern Spain, one might expect a Hebrew Bible to be decorated with colorful patterns, reflecting the Islamic tradition there. But in Northern Spain, artists drew on French figural traditions, and the Met has surrounded the Cervera Bible with items from France.

The labels are terrific, pointing out similarities between Joseph Hazarfati and his Christian counterparts in representing knights and fantastic animals and their common decoration of margins. It might be argued -- though the labels don’t go this far -- that the idea that Judaism prohibits figural imagery is more recent than the Cervera Bible itself.

Papering the House for New York City Opera’s Season Opener?

2011-11-17T17:26:00.001-05:00

Rufus Wainwright, in City Opera's cheesy publicity photo

Whoever thought Rufus Wainwright could bring New York City Opera back from the dead seems to have placed a bad bet. Its first production of the season is tonight, but it's had trouble filling even a modest-sized theater for Wainwright’s “Who Are You New York?”

Last night Lincoln Center, City Opera’s home until it ignominiously pulled up stakes for a nomadic existence last spring – having been driven into the wilderness by gross financial mismanagement -- sent out an email blast offering tickets for the one-night-only performance at a whopping 50% off.

The performance is in the Rose Theater on the Lincoln Center campus, which seats only about 1100, or less than half the capacity of the theater City Opera used to perform in. To put this into perspective, the Rose is somewhat smaller than your average Broadway theater.

It’s mystifying that “Who Are You New York?” is a City Opera production -- it isn’t an opera at all but rather the title of a show that will include a song cycle for four voices and a performance by Wainwright himself, who’s best known as a songwriter and singer and not as a composer.

Maybe that’s part of City Opera’s problem – it doesn’t know who its audience is, only how to shrink it. The cheesy photographs it’s using to promote its productions can’t be helping.

The ostensible reason for the Wainwright one-off is to celebrate the U.S. premier of his first opera, “Prima Donna,” which City Opera will be presenting in Brooklyn in February.

What were they thinking? New York’s influential classical music critic, the Times’ Anthony Tommasini, pretty much panned the opera’s 2009 world premier in Manchester, writing, “As a longtime admirer of his music, I wish I could report that ‘Prima Donna’ fulfilled his ambitions for writing a fresh and personal new opera.”

And that’s gentle, considering that Bloomberg’s critic wrote that he had tears of joy in his eyes at the opera’s conclusion: “the joy sprang . . . from relief that it was over."

New York is still waiting for a compelling reason to support this company, which is barely on life support. Television station NY1 reported yesterday that City Opera turned down its musicians' offer to work for free in return for health benefits. Apparently, the company couldn't afford even that.

City Opera's publicity photo for Mozart's "Cosi fan tutti"

Restitution Follies: 217 Years On, Belgium Claims a Rubens Seized by Napoleon, Days After France Recaptures a Painting “Stolen” in 1818

2011-11-14T11:52:00.024-05:00

The latest player seeking restitution of art seized in long-ago wars is Belgium. It wants France to return a painting by Peter Paul Rubens that was part of Napoleon’s vast art plunder.

Rubens, "The Triumph of Judas Maccabee"

The painting, “The Triumph of Judas Maccabee,” was seized in the revolutionary wars in 1794, taken to Paris, and in 1804 sent to the Museum of Fine Arts in Nantes, when Napoleon distributed spoils of war to various provincial museums. On Wednesday, the Parliament of the Federation of Wallonia-Brussels unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Culture Minister to “undertake all useful steps” to negotiate with France for its restitution.

“The Triumph of Judas Maccabee” is half of a diptych commissioned from Rubens by the Cathedral of Tournai in the 1630s. Napoleon also stole the other half, but it made its way back to the cathedral in 1818. Belgium wants to reunite the two parts in their original setting.

The prime proponent of the resolution, Senator Richard Miller, stressed that Belgium is only asking for the restitution of this one painting – at least for now -- and not the thousands of artworks that were taken during the Napoleonic wars. "It would be foolish to think we could get everything back at once," he told the Agence France Presse. "Still, we could try to get them back one item at a time, each case based on cast-iron arguments."

The "Black Africa" Issue

Miller seems aware that Belgium’s demand on France could come back to bite it, but in his statement to Parliament, which is reprinted on his website, he nevertheless said it was not a matter of “our Museum Terveuren running the risk of having to return all that belonged to Black Africa.”

The Museum Terveuren is the Royal Museum for Central Africa, which was started, its website explains, in the late 19^th century when King “Leopold II fulfilled his dream: he obtained a colony for Belgium.” And obtained, apparently, untold numbers of artworks and artifacts besides.

Tournier, "Christ Carrying the Cross"

Chances of France giving up an altar-sized Rubens that is in a public museum?

Not good, if you consider that France itself had earlier in the week seized a painting by Nicolas Tournier, “Christ Carrying the Cross,” being shown by English gallery owner Mark Weiss at a Paris art fair.

It’s generally understood that Weiss at all times acted in good faith and without knowledge that he owned a painting that had vanished into thin air a couple of centuries before. The Augustins Museum’s chief curator -- who had organized a Tournier retrospective in 2001 -- had himself not recognized it even though he had seen photographs of the work before its display in Paris.

“Although it sounds incredible, I saw no connection to the museum painting. It was not until much later, after Weiss purchased it, following several messages from some of my colleagues, that I understood that this was the canvas that had disappeared from the museum after 1818,” he told La Tribune de l’Art.

"Inalienable" Art

Nevertheless, France claimed ownership. "This was the property of the French state that was deposited at the Augustins Museum in Toulouse and was stolen in 1818. It is a non-transferable work," the French Culture Ministry said.

“Works in French public collections are inalienable and imprescriptible . . . This means that an object which enters a museum cannot be taken away, in any way, forever in time,” La Tribune de l’Art explained, writing about the Tournier.

Presumably, the same principle would apply to the Rubens in the museum in Nantes.

For her part, Blandine Chavanne, director of the Nantes museum, said, “Be aware that UNESCO has made a decision in saying that all the works in museums acquired before 1970 were considered property of the museums,” the AFP reported.

The museum has regularly loaned out the Rubens, including in to the cathedral at Tournai, a policy it may want to revisit.

Images: Rubens taken from Musee des Beaux Arts, Nantes, website; Tournier pulled from the internet.

Text Copyright Laura Gilbert 2011

The Cariou v. Prince Appeal Is Looking Even More Important, as Google and Museums Submit Briefs to the Court

2011-11-09T10:36:00.000-05:00

Richard Prince, "It's All Over"

Cariou v. Prince is shaping up as the most significant copyright case in the visual arts in some time, as Google, nine major museums, and the Andy Warhol Foundation weighed in on the case with “friend of the court,” or amicus, briefs filed this month with the Court of Appeals.

The losers in the federal court – art star Richard Prince and mega-dealer Larry Gagosian and his gallery – are challenging whether the judge used the correct legal standard when she ruled that Prince infringed Patrick Cariou’s photographs when he used them, without Cariou’s permission, in a series of his own paintings called “Canal Zone.”


Cariou photo used in "It's All Over"

The U.S. District Court judge here in New York said that in order to be “fair use” and hence not infringing, the Prince paintings must “in some way comment on, relate to the historical context of, or critically refer back to” Cariou’s photos.

Prince’s work failed this test, the court found, in part because Prince had testified that he didn’t give a rat’s ass what Cariou’s work meant. (Background on the case can be found here.)

On appeal, Prince and the Gagosian defendants argue that the District Court was wrong and fair use does not require the new work to comment on the original. Google, the museums, and the Warhol Foundation all agree.

Google's Stake

Google has a lot at stake in fair-use cases. To cite just one reason, it wants to digitize – i.e., copy – millions of books. A suit between Google and the Authors Guild over whether this plan of Google’s violates writers’ copyright is currently pending in the District Court in New York, which will be required to follow any decision reached by the Court of Appeals in the Prince case.

Google, in its brief, says it couldn’t care less whether Prince’s work is “fair use or foul.” It just doesn’t want the Court of Appeals to say anything that would prejudice the copying it does in the digital realm, and it thinks any comment requirement could do just that.

The Warhol Foundation – now that’s an interesting situation. It’s a client of the same high-powered law firm, Boies Schiller, that also represents Prince, and Boies Schiller’s high legal fees – reportedly $7 million – helped put the foundation’s controversial Authentication Board out of business. The firm currently represents the foundation in an attempt to get its insurer to pay those giant fees.

Warhol and Copyright

The foundation’s brief, which was not written by Boies Schiller, essentially repeats the defendants’ arguments – no surprise there, given the law firm connection -- but it also throws in the First Amendment, arguing that the District Court decision is a hindrance to the expressive rights of artists and the public.

Andy Warhol, "16 Jackies"

What makes this brief especially rich is that Andy Warhol himself successfully negotiated copyright law without any apparent detriment to his expression. Early on he faced copyright suits over some of his most famous images, including his Flowers and his Jackie Kennedy. Warhol settled these suits and later changed his practice to ask permission from copyright owners. His Mickey Mouse even bears a shared copyright of both the Warhol Foundation and Disney.

Nine museums – including the Met, MoMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago, powerhouses of merchandising and guardians of copyright – along with the Association of Art Museum Directors, submitted a joint brief concentrating on the court’s finding the Gagosian defendants liable as infringers, because, among other reasons, they knew that Prince used the work of other artists but they didn’t investigate the legality of the “Canal Zone” series.

“If broadly applied, these liability standards could threaten non-profit art museums that hold or display works of Appropriation Art,” the brief argues. That “would place a severe burden on art museums and could deter them from displaying or acquiring an important body of art.”

Dan Brooks, Cariou’s attorney, said the museums’ argument is “a parade of horribles that don’t really apply to them.” As not-for-profits, museums are in a different category from commercial galleries. “Their display of paintings is going to be found to be fair use,” he said.

Symbiotic Relationship

When asked why, if their argument was so weak, he thought the museums had filed a brief in support of the defendants, Brooks said they had “a close connection with the gallery and some of its artists.” He pointed in particular to an email -- part of the evidence in the case -- in which a Gagosian staffer gives an instruction about the dinner after the opening of “Canal Zone”:

“Larry (Gagosian) would like the opening and dinner to be ‘kick ass’ so please invite celebrities/moma/gugg/whitney curators and other clients who will BUY his work.”

MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney all signed on to the brief.

Brooks described the relationship between the museums and the gallery as “symbiotic.”

Indeed, Gagosian is a power wheeler-dealer who has a hand in major museum acquisitions, and the museums and the gallery lend each other artworks for special exhibits. Last year’s Picasso and Marie-Therese show at Gagosian’s New York gallery, for example, had loans from MoMA, the Met, and the Guggenheim.

In their own brief, the defendants argue that if the Court of Appeals finds that fair use requires the new work to comment on the original, Prince’s works do so. A reasonable observer, they contend, can see that the “Canal Zone” paintings, with their drugged-up guitars players, are a “caricature” of Cariou’s placid portraits, even if Prince did not testify to that effect.

Brooks said this is “a new legal argument” about the meaning of Prince’s work. The defendants had said “this isn’t parody” in the District Court, and now they say it is – “it’s a post hoc rationalization,” he said.

Images: Prince and Cariou artworks taken from court documents. Cariou's photograph Copyright Patrick Cariou. Andy Warhol, "16 Jackies," taken from Walker Art Center website, Copyright 1999 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS.

Larry Gagosian Speaks – About Maguire and DiCaprio and What It Takes to Visit Richard Prince’s Studio

2011-11-01T17:03:00.001-04:00

It’s notoriously difficult to score an interview with close-mouthed mega-art dealer Larry Gagosian -- so difficult that when the Wall Street Journal published an article about him last April, the fact that he had actually spoken with the reporter was almost bigger news than what he said.

Larry Gagosian

But he was compelled to answer questions under oath in Cariou v. Prince, the closely watched case that last March found him, his gallery, and artist Richard Prince liable for infringing photographer Patrick Carriou’s copyright. That case is now on appeal, and this report is based in part on documents filed with the court on October 26, 2011.

Gagosian’s deposition, taken in October 2009, and documents that are part of the evidence have a couple of eyebrow-raising tales. He testified, for example, that Tobey Maguire and Maguire’s best buddy Leonardo DiCaprio were interested in Prince’s “Canal Zone” paintings – the series that would later be found infringing – and “my recollection is they were going to buy one jointly.”

“Is that unusual?” Cariou’s lawyer asked him.

“Extremely,” Gagosian replied.

The joint purchase was never consummated.

Gagosian also revealed that he only rarely has a written contract with his artists -- he doesn’t have one with Prince -- and that employees who close a sale get a commission that’s taken out of the gallery’s percentage of the buyer’s payment.

"Studio Visits Are a Major Seduction"

The real meat, though, is the inside look at the callous, sometimes contemptuous attitude of Gagosian and his staff toward the rich, famous, and beautiful who have made him so successful.

Several weeks before “Canal Zone” was due to open, one of his salesmen told Gagosian that he was meeting with a client who had already bought two paintings by Prince. (The “Canal Zone” works sold for as much as $2.43 million.)

“I'm trying to sell him more Prince . . .,” the email said. “Is there any way to visit Richard's studio in Rensselaerville the week of November 10? Studio visits are a major seduction for this guy.”

“Only if he buys another painting,” was Gagosian’s response.

There was a flurry of emails about the guest list for a dinner the night “Canal Zone” opened, including this emphatic instruction from one gallery staffer to 16 others: “Larry would like the opening and dinner to be ‘kick ass’ so please invite celebrities/moma/gugg/whitney curators and other clients who will BUY his work.”

Models "Look Good at a Dinner Table"

Gagosian himself had the final say over who was invited, and his personal assistant at a couple of points requested further information. “Before Larry approves this list he would like to know if you have sold any art to these people. If so, he would like to see proof,” reads one email.

The assistant later asked who a couple of invitees were, and received this reassuring answer: “Their parents are the wealthiest people in Holland, worth 5 billion.” “ok,” she emailed back.

Cariou’s attorney asked Gagosian why there were so many fashion models – the guest list included the likes of Elle Macpherson, Kate Moss, Christy Turlingon, and Lauren Hutton.

“They look good at a dinner table,” said Gagosian.

Q. And do you also want to include celebrities to generate some buzz for the show?

A. Yeah –

Memory Lapse

Memory lapses are not uncommon at a deposition, but they are sometimes -- although one can't say that's necessarily the case here -- a cover for avoiding an answer that could harm one’s case or reputation.

Gagosian couldn’t remember if he had given Prince – who at the had been showing with Gagosian for only a few years -- any payment to join his gallery. “I think not,” he testified. “But my memory’s not perfect.” Of course, Gagosian does pay Prince 60% of the sale price of his work, whereas the usual rate, at least at other galleries, is 40-50%.

Gagosian could not remember, either, whether he had ever been a party to a lawsuit, even though, among other cases he's been involved in, a few years previous he’d settled a highly publicized suit in which the IRS alleged that he and a couple of associates had set up a shell company to avoid taxes. The IRS sought $26 million in unpaid taxes and penalties. Gagosian and co-defendant Peter Brant – art collector and Gagosian client -- made the case go away by paying a reported $9.1 million.

“Have you ever been a party to a lawsuit before?” Cariou’s attorney asked.

A. I don't know.

Q. Okay. Have you ever been a plaintiff in a lawsuit?

A. I don't think so.

Q. Have you ever been a defendant in a lawsuit?

A. Not that I recall.

With some prodding, Gagosian remembered something, saying, “You know, I don't know if they were lawsuits actually. One was -- I'm just trying to remember if they were lawsuits or why I was -- I don't recall accurately.”

Maybe if you sell $1 billion of art a year – an estimate the Wall Street Journal quoted in April – you can afford to be oblivious to legal claims against you. Gagosian said, at any rate, that he’d seen neither the complaint nor the answer in Cariou v. Prince.

Image pulled from the internet.
Text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Richard Prince Testifies He Lied to the Press & He Bought the Rights to Use a Notorious Photograph of Brooke Shields

2011-10-31T08:02:00.006-04:00

Richard Prince

A couple of chinks in Richard Prince’s versions of truth are emerging from documents filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on October 26, in addition to his having been found liable last March for infringing photographer Patrick Cariou’s copyright.

If Prince’s sworn statements can be believed, he sometimes lied to the press, and the outlaw persona he’s peddling as an artist who just takes whatever image he wants can’t always be trusted.

In his October 2009 deposition in the case of Cariou v. Prince, which is currently on appeal, Prince was asked about various statements he had made to the press. Some of those statements, he testified, weren’t true, although he preferred to describe his lying as being “creative.”

"I Made That Up"

Here’s an example. The questioner is Cariou’s attorney, Dan Brooks. Hayes is Prince’s attorney, Steven Hayes. Bart is Hollis Gonerka Bart, the attorney for co-infringers Larry Gagosian and the Gagosian Gallery.

Q. Do you have your own airplane?

A. No.

Q. You’re taking flying lessons though, right?

A. No, I made that up.

Q. Okay. All right, you said –

A. I make – I say a lot of things –

Q. That aren’t true?

A. That aren’t – well, no. It’s more about – it depends upon the interviewer. I try to be creative, let’s put it that way.

Q. Okay. So when you said you were taking flying lessons in your own airplane, that was not true?

A. I was being creative.

Q. Which means it wasn’t true?

Mr. Hayes: Objection to the form of the question. It’s been asked and answered.

A. I would leave that up to the audience. I mean I don’t want to tell – I don’t want to say whether or not – I might – I might be flying, taking flying lessons. I don’t see the relevance of that.

Q. That’s fine. But you understand you’re under oath right now?

A. Oh.

Q. Do you understand that?

A. Yes.

. . .

Ms. Bart: He certainly was sworn in at the beginning to tell the truth –

Mr. Brooks: I understand.

Ms. Bart: -- and he agreed to do that.

Mr. Brooks: Hopefully that’s what we’ll get.

Prince was also asked about the accuracy of a December 2007 report by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times that “Mr. Prince has spoken of receiving threats, some legal and some more physical, from his unsuspecting lenders.”

Q. Now, is it true that you starting receiving legal threats at some point?

A. No, that’s probably something that I just made up.

Paying the Price

Prince has cultivated a reputation as an outlaw who takes whatever image he wants without asking anyone’s permission or paying any fees to the copyright owner. It turns out that reputation is not wholly accurate, at least according to his deposition testimony.

Prince's "Spiritual America"

One of his most notorious works – it was pulled from a 2009 exhibition at the Tate because it could possibly violate obscenity laws -- is his photograph of Garry Gross’s photo of a 10-year-old naked Brooke Shields in a steamy bathtub, made up like a woman in her sexual prime. It has been reported that he paid Gross a $2000 out-of-court settlement.

Prince, though, testified that he bought the rights to the image. Is what he termed a “concession” in fact the price he was willing to pay to show the work at the Whitney Museum here in New York?

Here’s the testimony:

Q. Did Garry Gross ever threaten to sue you?

A. No, he never did.

Q. Did you ever reach an out-of-court settlement with Garry Gross?

A. No.

Q. You’re positive?

A. I’m positive.

As far as I can tell, I’m positive. I actually – in 1992 I guess that’s what they’re talking about, your last quote here (from the Times article) – I mean Mr. Kennedy is talking about a 1992 discussion at the Whitney, and I believe at that time I bought the rights to the image for $2000.

Q. From Gary Gross?

A. Yes.

Q. Because he threatened to sue you?

A. No. I was told by the Whitney that I – in order to exhibit that image I made a concession, or they advised me that it would probably be best that – and I believe I sort of reached out to him at the time.

Because up until then, that image that I rephotographed from that pamphlet that he had produced in 1983, I made one copy, an 8 x 10, and I gave it away. And it wasn’t until 1992 that it came back into the limelight, and I think my attitude changed a bit and I was sort of willing to become more part of the process I suppose.

Prince produced the photograph in an edition of 10 with two artist proofs. One of the ten was sold at auction in 2003 for $372,500.

Images pulled from the internet.

Text Copyright Laura Gilbert 2011

In Richard Prince Copyright Case, Who Bought the Infringing Paintings and How Much Did They Pay? EXCLUSIVE

2011-10-28T11:36:00.010-04:00

Richard Prince, "Specially Round Midnight," purchased by Steven A. Cohen for $2.43 million

In this reporter’s ongoing investigation into Cariou v. Prince -- the court case that found appropriation artist Richard Prince, Larry Gagosian, and the Gagosian Gallery had all infringed photographer Patrick Cariou’s copyright – names and dollar amounts are becoming available.

The U.S. District Court – whose decision is being appealed, of course – has enjoined the buyers from displaying the works in public, and that order stands.

Copyright experts and even Prince’s own attorney think that injunction makes it all but impossible for these collectors to sell the paintings. Their current value is thus pretty close to zero.

According to documents filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on October 26, leading the list of purchasers of what the court termed “unlawful” paintings is none other than Steven A. Cohen, one of the biggest collectors of contemporary art and head of controversial hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors.

Steven A. Cohen

SAC, which has for years been publicly remored to have engaged in unlawful activity of its own, has provided investors with remarkably consistent and high above-market returns, even in down markets. The Feds suspect hanky-panky, and recent news reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere indicate that an investigation is ongoing.

For Prince’s work, Cohen apparently paid the most of any buyer, purchasing “Specially Round Midnight” for $2.43 million. Easy come, easy go?

Other buyers include Michael and Lise Evans, who bought “Mr. Jones” for $2 million, art dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, collector Adam Lindemann, and shipping magnate Philip Niarchos.

What follows is a list of works declared unlawful and sold through February 2009 and the prices paid:

“Specially Round Midnight,” $2.43 million

“Mr. Jones,” $2 million

“Escape Goat,” $2 million

“Canal Zone,” $1.2 million

“The Other Side of the Island,” $1.2 million

“Naked Confessions,” $450,000

“Untitled (Rasta)," $400,000

One buyer, whom I have not yet been able to identify, wanted to buy three paintings – “Back to the Garden,” “Cookie Crumbles,” and an untitled work. But he had cash flow problems, so he traded a Richard Serra sculpture for them. Gagosian Gallery, which is Prince’s dealer, got the sculpture, the buyer got the paintings, and Prince got money.

In addition, Prince traded four of his “Canal Zone” paintings for a work owned by Gagosian, “Dying and Dead Veteran” by Larry Rivers, estimated to be worth between $3 million and $4 million.

Stay tuned, as I’ll be breaking a lot more news over the next week.

Two images from Patrick Cariou's "Yes, Rasta" that Prince used in creating "Specially Round Midnight" (top)

Image of Cohen pulled from the internet. "Yes, Rasta" images Copyright Patrick Cariou.

In Case that Triggered Russian Embargo on Loans to U.S. Museums, Chabad Now Says It Wants to Negotiate; Russian Ship Refuses to Land in San Francisco, Citing Dispute

2011-10-25T09:08:00.025-04:00

This story of the latest developments in Chabad v. Russian Federation was up briefly and then purchased exclusively by the New York Observer (it was reported and written by me). Read it here.

Egypt's Newest Antiquities Chief Submits Resignation, Saying He Will Not "Be Regarded As A Stooge"

2011-09-25T09:24:00.009-04:00

After little more than a month in office, Mohamed Abdel Fatah submitted his resignation on Tuesday as Egypt’s antiquities chief – the formal title is Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities -- according to various reports from the Middle East.

Abdel Fatah, apparently the latest casualty in the scandal-ridden country which is in the midst of a revolution, cited as one reason the intensification of protests in Egypt – which has put “all archaeological work on hold.”

Profiteering?

He made the statement to the Egyptian newspaper Ahram, which published it approximately Friday, New York time. He said he was also outraged by his lack of authority to make any decisions without the approval of current Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

The recent protests in Egypt – which saw the breaching of the concrete wall around the Israeli Embassy -- have included protests in front of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (the SCA).

Mohamed Abdel Fatah

Egyptian demonstrators demanding salary raises and the appointment of new graduate archaeologists have blocked entrance to the SCA headquarters and caused the closure of several buildings.

People behind the protests are “profiteering from accelerating such protests to create chaos that stops archaeological work from proceeding properly,” Abdel Fatah claimed to Ahram.

At one point the Council reportedly called the military police to remove the demonstrators.

“Conditions have become chaotic, and I am afraid to say that the SCA is now completely paralyzed,” the Agence France Presse quoted Abdel Fatah as saying.

Stooge

“The load on me was unbearable,” he told the official Middle East News Agency. “I refuse to be regarded as a stooge. . . . I felt powerless and overwhelmed especially that I had been deprived of much of my authority.” As an example, he said he could not authorize the payment of $50 as compensation to an archaeologist whose leg had been amputated.

The SCA oversees the country’s ancient monuments and all archaeological work and plays a key role in Egypt’s tourist industry, which has declined dramatically since last February’s toppling of Hosni Mubarak and the continuing, often violent turmoil in Egypt.

Abdel Fatah was appointed in August to replace the famed wildman-hustler Zawi Hawass, who resigned soon after the Mubarak government fell amid allegations that he was too close to the Mubaraks. Hawass was later reappointed, and then ousted in July.

Zawi Hawass

Hawass was known for stifling discourse within Egypt while quite successfully promoting himself – with appearances on the Discovery cable-TV channel, for example, and taking credit for sensational and sometimes dubious discoveries, like unearthing the very chariot from which King Tut had taken a fatal tumble.

He was also remarkably persuasive in convincing institutions in other countries, including the Metropolitan Museum, to return antiquities to Egypt, causing some to question whether the Met had lost its marbles in addition to its antiquities.

Hawass is currently facing an official Egyptian investigation on corruption charges, as are so many others in the former dictatorship.

Will Abdel Fatah reappear as antiquities chief the way Hawass did? On Friday Ahram reported that the cabinet had refused Abdel Fatah’s resignation and had scheduled a meeting with him today.

Photo of protest from Egyptian Gazette. Other photos pulled from the internet.

Earliest Known Images of Jesus: Exclusive Dura-Europos Exhibit Installation Photos

2011-09-21T13:30:00.007-04:00

The earliest known images of Jesus, from the year 240, are going on view for the first time in New York on Friday. They're in an exhibition at the relatively obscure NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, which continually puts on small shows that turn accepted ideas of art and culture upside-down.

The exhibition is called "Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos." It presents 77 objects from an excavation in Syria that rewrote history.

You can read about it exclusively in today's New York Observer.

A sense of the images' scale can be seen in the photograph to the left, which shows them with exhibitions director Dr. Jennifer Chi.

At the top of this post is a photo of two of the wall paintings from the baptistery at Dura, showing the Healing of the Paralytic on the left and Jesus and Peter Walking on Water on the right. The baptistery wall paintings are "the earliest dated Christian art in existence," said co-curator Dr. Peter De Staebler.

I took the photographs as the show was being installed.

Here's a close-up of the Healing of the Paralytic:

The excavations at Dura also revealed a Jewish figural tradition that had been previously unknown, and thought to be nonexistent, until archaeologists rediscovered a large synagogue whose walls were covered with Bible scenes. The wall paintings are in Damascus, but the Institute is showing together for the first time ten ceiling tiles from the synagogue that are elaborately decorated with faces, astrological signs, fruit, and pine cones.

Here's a photograph of Capricorn from the synagogue, dated ca. 245.

Dura was a garrison town, and "Edge of Empires" displays some military artifacts. This detail is of a lion painted on a Roman shield that greets visitors as they enter the second gallery:

"Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europas," NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World," 15 East 84th Street, September 23, 2011 to January 8, 2012. Admission is free.

Text and images Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert.

Met’s $3 Million Splurge on Perino del Vaga Goes on Display September 27

2011-09-06T11:57:00.002-04:00

Last January the Metropolitan Museum set records at Sotheby’s two days in a row when it bought a drawing by Perino del Vaga (1501-1547) for more than $700,000 and a painting by the same artist for more than $2 million.

Two million dollars, by the way, is the amount of the Met’s expected shortfall for fiscal year 2011 -- a shortfall, the museum’s chief spokesperson told reporter Lee Rosenbaum in June, that in part led to the Met’s increasing its recommended admission from $20 to $25.

Both works are finally going on display beginning September 27 in a small show devoted to Perino that will include drawings from the Morgan Library and private New York collections in addition to the Met’s own stash.

Perino, hardly a household name, was a student of Raphael’s in Rome. There are only a handful of panel paintings attributed to him.

The Met’s painting, “The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist,” is a “newly discovered” work and has been described as atypical of the artist.

Apparently, though, the museum had a lot of company in accepting either the attribution or the painting’s intrinsic worth. Five buyers, one of which was reportedly the Louvre, bid it up from its $300,000 to $400,000 estimate.

The drawing is a study for a tapestry, the specialty of Met director Thomas Campbell.

It’ll be a homecoming of sorts for the guest curator, Linda Wolk-Simon, who was formerly a curator at the Met and is now head of prints and drawings at the Morgan.

Frankly, when I saw the painting at Sotheby’s auction preview I wasn’t too impressed -- it looked like a dingy old thing. Maybe we should be relieved that after cleaning and restoring it the Met did not announce it had discovered yet another Velazquez.

Photos: Top, pulled off the internet; bottom, from Sotheby's catalogue.

Renaissance Portraits, de Kooning, and Smarty-Pants Cattelan: The Shows New York Will Be Talking About

2011-09-01T19:48:00.002-04:00

The hot shows in New York as a cold winter approaches:

De Kooning: A Retrospective, MoMA, opening September 18

The biggest show of the fall, in more ways than one, is the seven-decade retrospective of Abstract Expressionist de Kooning. He didn’t have a clue about how to live – he spent a lot of time in alcoholic blackout -- but sure knew how to paint.

With more than 200 works – about four times as many as the last museum retrospective, at Washington's National Gallery in 1994 -- this is the first show to occupy MoMA’s entire 6^th-floor gallery space, all 17,000 square feet. It’s put together by peerless MoMA curator emeritus John Elderfield, and the museum is promising “the most comprehensive book on the artist yet.”

The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, Metropolitan Museum, opening December 21

People are now lining up to see “The Renaissance Portrait” at Berlin’s Bode Museum, and its opening a week ago received worldwide coverage. For good reason: The combined heft of the Bode and the Met has secured loans of 15^th-century Italian paintings and sculpture from more than 50 institutions.

Met curator Keith Christiansen -- who, by the way, got $1.2 million in compensation for fiscal year 2010 -- described to the AP the challenge of Renaissance artists’ “rediscovery” of portraiture: “The artists who painted independent portraits for the first time confronted the issues of what a portrait is about: Is it about commemoration, is it about celebration of beauty, is it about social position, rulership, identity?” The results are stunning, as is the curator's compensation.

According to Christiansen's office, the Leonardo "Lady with an Ermine," which is part of the Bode show, will not be coming to New York. It's traveling to London instead, for the Leonardo extravaganza there.

Ingres at the Morgan, opening September 9, and David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre opening September 23, Morgan Library

The seventeen drawings by Ingres, one of the greatest draftsmen and portraitists of all time, will include his large, jaw-dropping "Odalisque and Slave" (below) and numerous portrait drawings. The Morgan will also be presenting a whopping 80 drawings on loan from the Louvre by some of the best French artists of the late 18^th and 19th centuries.

After that, you can hop up to the Frick and see this staid institution gingerly enter the 20^th century with Picasso drawings from 1890-1921 (opening October 4). Even if you think you’ve seen all the Picasso you can stand, it should be worth the trip – the Frick’s small shows are so intelligently put together, they rarely let you down.

Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine, Metropolitan Museum, opening September 13

What we need in this age of political and economic absurdity is a big laugh at the expense of those responsible. The Met may deliver, or at least provide some comic relief, with this show of 164 works on paper – five centuries’ worth -- that mock fat cats, fashion, politics, art, eating and drinking, and powerful people who make life miserable for the rest of us. Included are works both by geniuses like Leonardo, Goya, Daumier, and Hogarth and by anonymous commentators who were just fed up. The one loan in this exhibit is a David Levine drawing of Claus Oldenberg’s head as a toilet, with everything else from the Met’s rich storehouse.

Art of Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia, Metropolitan Museum, opening November 1

After eight long years, the Met’s collection of Islamic art will finally be back on display. Fifteen new galleries with art from a vast geographic territory will be filled with splendor: ceramics, glass, tilework, textiles, gold jewelry, medieval Qur’ans, illustrated manuscripts from Iran (left), painted miniatures from India, art made for the Ottoman court. An extra fillip: Artisans from Fez have created a patio modeled on a late medieval Moroccan design, complete with a fountain.

Maurizio Cattelan: All, Guggenheim, opening November 4

Italy’s favorite smarty-pants gets a mid-career retrospective. Cattelan is probably best-known here for his effigy of Pope John Paul II being felled by a meteor and for his popularity among the vulgar rich -- his bust of Stephanie Seymour cradling her breasts, generally considered pretty mediocre, sold at auction last fall for $2.4 million. Will seeing 130 of his works explain his appeal or show him up as just annoying? New Yorkers will have a chance to evaluate the hullabaloo for themselves.

Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, Whitney Museum of American Art, opening November 10

The Whitney’s show offers an opportunity to reexamine one of the original appropriation artists – in 1981 Levine exhibited photographs she had taken of Walker Evans photographs – at a time when artists, photographers, lawyers, and commentators are hypersensitive to the word “copyright.” Her Evans photos, to which she holds the copyright, are among the works included.

Images, top to bottom: From MoMA website; from Bode Museum website (Benedetto de Maiano, portrait of Filippo Strozzi); from Morgan Library website; from Metropolitan Museum website (Anonymous, "Top and Tail"); from Metropolitan Museum website; bottom two, pulled from the internet.

Text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Art in the Crossfire: A Jewish Sect's Claims Lead to U.S-Russia Art Wars

2011-08-30T12:38:00.000-04:00

Not since the Cold War, it seems, have strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia spilled over into the public arena with such ferocity—only this time the war is over art and two collections of religious books.

The art wars were triggered by the private agenda of Chabad, a Jewish sect seeking religious books and manuscripts possessed by Russia. In 2004, Chabad brought suit as the successors to earlier owners of these pieces and claimed to be their rightful owner. Russia instituted an embargo on art loans to U.S. museums after Brooklyn-based Chabad obtained a default judgment in July 2010 from the District Court in Washington, D.C. Russia had walked out on the proceedings, claiming no U.S. court has jurisdiction over it.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art turned up the heat in this standoff another notch when it confirmed on August 11 its decision not to send 35 works by fashion designer Paul Poiret to the Moscow Kremlin Museum for an upcoming exhibition there. The Met’s chief spokesperson, Harold Holzer, said the museum was acting in response to Moscow’s recent cancellation of loans to the Met as part of Russia’s now year-long embargo.

Continue reading my story in The New York Observer, which brings to light Russia's history of fierce nationalism, especially when it comes to what it considers threats to its patrimony, which discussions of the case and the embargo have until now ignored.

Photo of Kremlin Museum by Alexander Bokovoy.

"Frans Hals" at the Met: Museum Rearranges Furniture, Renews Old Promise

2011-07-28T17:01:00.001-04:00

Does the Met’s Hals show -- almost entirely works from its own collection – tell us anything new?

No. The Met has pretty much just rearranged the furniture, taking down paintings already on permanent display and rehanging them in a special exhibition gallery.

But a private loan, Hals’ stunning yet small “Portrait of Samuel Ampzing” (above), is one of the best paintings in the exhibition and one that the Met should be begging for, borrowing for long-term display, or stealing. In 2007 it sold at Sotheby’s London for more than $9 million, a high price for an Old Master.

Show curator Walter Liedtke revealed to this reporter that two miniature Hals portraits on wood (below, of Petrus Scriverius and Anna van der Aar) – which were highlights of the Met’s massive “Age of Rembrandt” exhibit a few years ago – will be on permanent view once the Hals show ends. They’ll be in a pedestal display case in the Rembrandt-Hals gallery. (Actually, the Met made the same promise during the Rembrandt show, too.)

“Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum,” 5^th Avenue at 82^nd Street, through October 11.

Photos: Top, Sotheby's catalogue; others taken at preview.

Cariou v. Prince Update: Collectors Screwed, Appeal Stalled in Copyright Case That Has Art World on Edge

2011-07-24T16:50:00.001-04:00

How do you inform a collector that a work he bought from you for, oh, a million dollars or so is an illicit work, illegally created and now unsaleable? Well, if you’re the gallery that sold it, you yell for your lawyers.

That’s what Larry Gagosian and his gallery did when they sent letters to the buyers of appropriation artist Richard Prince’s “Canal Zone” paintings, which, the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in March, infringed -- some might say “stole” -- Patrick Cariou’s copyrighted photographs and are therefore not so different from contraband.

The letters (left) were sent to comply with the Court’s order in that case, but they didn’t exactly tell the collectors they had all but thrown their money away (unless the ruling is overturned on appeal, which could take years).

The letters stated that “in the opinion of the Court” – as though the federal courts are art critics instead of constitutionally delegated authority on the law of the land – the paintings were “not lawfully made under the Copyright Act of 1976” and they “cannot lawfully be displayed . . .in the public.”

Translation: the paintings are like pirates’ booty, have to be hidden from public view, and, even according to Prince’s own lawyer, most probably can’t be resold. According to the defendants’ documents, at a minimum 14 works were sold, and four sold for prices ranging from $400,000 to $2.43 million.

As for Prince himself, the Court’s smackdown doesn’t seem to have changed much, though it could cost him a big hunk of money. As far as his lawyer Josh Schiller of Boies Schiller knows, the decision hasn’t changed his practice of using other people’s images, nor has it caused “any of his works to be pulled” from any shows, the attorney told this reporter.

Indeed, Prince had two well-received exhibitions in Paris this spring and another in Hongkong. In August, he’ll be showing in the Hamptons.

Paintings Can’t Be Sold

For the “Canal Zone” buyers, though, it’s a different story. Their paintings can’t be sold, except conceivably on the black market. Schiller said “any kind of sale would include showing (the work) publicly” and that’s been forbidden by the Court.

Schiller didn’t say the “Canal Zone” paintings were now worthless – he described their worth as “undetermined” – but he did say that the decision had placed an “implied limit on their value.” He termed the decision’s effect on the collectors “an injustice.”

Larry Gagosian

A lawyer close to the Gagosian organization said that if the collectors were his clients, he would advise them not to put the paintings up for sale.

Copyright law expert David Wolf, who is not involved in the case and is former litigation counsel at Time Inc., said that any third party who knew about the Court decision and tried to sell the work – not just the owners but an auction house, for example -- “would run a pretty severe risk.”

Have any collectors asked for their money back? Schiller said he didn’t know.

So are Prince’s dealer and co-defendants Larry Gagosians and his Gagosian gallery offering buyers refunds? When asked, the gallery refused to comment.

Price Revelations

That’s not all the collectors have to worry about, as revealed to this reporter by the parties’ lawyers this week and gleaned from Cariou’s recent motion to dismiss a joint appeal to a higher court by Prince, Gagosian, and the gallery.

The people who shelled out the big bucks -- as recited in the Court’s decision, eight of the works sold for a total of $10.48 million, and seven were exchanged for art with an estimated value between $6 million and $8 million -- now also could be exposed to the disclosure of how much each paid and, perhaps, their names.

Gagosian Gallery, W. 24th St.

Private market sales are usually kept secret – the industry-wide practice is an old carny shell game of keeping everyone in the dark about an artist’s true prices -- and Gagosian has a strict policy of don’t tell.

But, in what could be some of the most remarkable revelations of art-market dealings in recent history, that could change when a public jury trial is held to determine the damages that photographer Cariou suffered.

Cariou’s lawyer Dan Brooks has been provided with the appropriate receipts for each painting sold, and the parties have stipulated that the prices “shall be admissible in evidence.” For now, the information is subject to a confidentiality agreement, but Brooks said they would be “fully aired” at the damages trial and “there won’t be any dispute” about the prices the works brought. At trial, the buyers’ names could also be revealed, said Brooks.

If we get to that trial.

Prince and the Gagosian defendants filed a notice of appeal before the damages trial could get started, and the District Court adjourned the trial pending the outcome of the appeal. So Cariou has moved to dismiss the appeal, arguing that it is improper until damages have been resolved – that’s a motion that will be decided who knows when, though it could be as early as August.

Prince’s Lawyer: Court Should Disregard My Client’s Testimony

Meantime, of course, settlement is always a possibility, though it was also a possibility that was ignored before the District Court dropped a ton of bricks on Prince’s and Gagosian’s heads.

If the appeal is permitted before the damages trial, Schiller plans to argue among other things that the District Court in effect should have rejected or at least discounted his own client’s testimony – since Prince proved to be his own worst enemy. The Court “would have benefited,” said Schiller, from considering “more objective factors,” which Schiller didn’t specify, and evidence of “how the public perceives his work.”

Prince

Prince, in his losing effort, had argued that his use of Cariou's photographs came within the "fair use" exemption of the copyright law, which allows limited borrowing of other people’s copyrighted work for news reporting, satire, and criticism, for instance.

But the District Court held that for "fair use" to apply, the new work must be "transformative" of the original. Prince's work was not transformative, the Court found, because it did not "in some way comment on, relate to the historical context of, or critically refer back" to Cariou's work.

Under this test, Prince helped sink his own case. He testified at deposition that he had no interest at all in what Cariou's photographs meant.

Focusing on Prince’s testimony is too “narrow” a view of the law, said Schiller, and it means “an artist has to lawyer up to get his perception across.”

(Well, one might rejoin, only if an artist is sued, and then he has to lawyer up anyway.)

It could be tough to overcome Prince’s testimony. “Whatever arguments they make, the Court will look at Prince’s testimony,” said copyright expert Wolf. “Anytime the party gives detailed testimony about what he’s doing it’s important.”

What Happened to the Unsold Paintings

The District Court had given Carriou the power to determine the fate of the unsold “Canal Zone” paintings. We now know what he decided.

It turns out that within days of the Court’s decision, defendants’ lawyers, “expressing concern that the infringing paintings might be destroyed” -- an option the Court explicitly permitted – asked Cariou to agree to store the works until the case is somehow resolved, according to papers filed by Cariou’s lawyer Brooks.

Cariou acquiesced, so there’ll be no conflagration, at least for awhile. The unsold paintings are now warehoused somewhere in Long Island City.

Schiller said he thought Prince was a “target” because he was “rich.” But rich also means he may well be able to afford endless, costly litigation – Boies Schiller reportedly racked up $7 million in fees defending the Andy Warhol Foundation in an authenticity lawsuit, with the fellow on the other side finally dropping his suit because he could no longer afford to litigate, he had said.

I asked Brooks if he was concerned that his client would be litigated to death. Brooks’ response: “No.”

The Whitney's "Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World": A Reputation in Free-Fall

2011-07-06T17:36:00.080-04:00

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) is not exactly a schlockmeister -- though some of his paintings do look like cheap hotel art – but the retrospective that opened last week at the Whitney might just send his reputation into free-fall.

This retrospective is the first in New York since 1944 and the first in the U.S. since the 60s, so it offers an opportunity to take stock of Feininger, an American who lived for 50 years in Germany, for the first time in a couple of generations.

He proves to be an artist without consequence.

Feininger was affiliated with avant-garde German Expressionists but inhabited his own small world of amusing illustration. He adopted a type of Cubism but stripped it of its ambiguities. He taught at the progressive Bauhaus with artist-rebels like Kandinsky and Klee, while his own paintings became formulaic.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some works to be seen here that give real pleasure.

Sometimes his art has a delightful whimsicality. Brought by his musician parents to Germany when he was 16, Feininger became a successful illustrator and cartoonist -- he even did comic strips from Germany for the Chicago Sunday Tribune (above, of 1906) – before turning to painting in 1907.

For a few years his oil paintings retain the lightheartedness and exaggeration of caricature – small heads and clownish shoes, rubbery bodies and fanciful streets – and they’re prettied up with bright colors (top, "Street Near Paris," 1909, and above,"Carnival in Arcueil," 1911). The Whitney, perhaps recognizing that Feininger’s early works are the ones with audience appeal, has given over nearly a third of the exhibit to them. But artistically significant? They’re essentially illustrations of unwritten fairy tales.

Choo-choo trains and bobbing boats appear early and later too, in small works on paper. Among the most charming works in this show are the wooden toy trains and buildings he began making commercially in 1913 – an endeavor cut short by the outbreak of war -- and then continued making on his own.

In the 1910s, Feininger encountered Cubism and began painting the works he is best known for – German architecture and seascapes. With translucent planes, the light-filled spaces and sky take on some of the solidity of architecture itself, depicted as though seen through a prism ("Pier," 1912, below).

For 40 years he painted these same subjects in this same style. The earliest of these works, from around 1912 to 1915, have the excitement of discovery, but they quickly decline to emotional emptiness and pictorial boredom.

With a few exceptions – some street scenes, for example -- Feininger has little to say about modern life, either in subject and emotion or by stylistic metaphor. In essence he’s a traditionalist.

His early works might use the bright colors of German Expressionism – he exhibited with the avant-garde Die Brucke – but with nothing of their furious experimentation or their exploration of the dark recesses of the psyche. Feininger complacently inhabits the 19^th century of the Brothers Grimm, complete with old-fashioned costumes.

His Cubist-inspired works likewise shun the contemporary – no everyday objects like newspaper and pipe for him. He looks back nostalgically to medieval architecture and the Romantic era's boat at sea. It’s the old-fashioned Germanic striving toward spirituality but with the emotional punch sucked out ("Galmeroda VIII," above).

His detachment from the trauma of World War I and its aftermath in Germany is creepy, especially when compared with the war-wounded drawn by George Grosz, the decadence of contemporary life depicted by Christian Schad, and the dark circuses of Max Beckmann.

Feininger continued using cheery colors, and when he attempted serious war themes, he failed. (He supported Germany against the allies, by the way.) His picture of an abandoned child with soldiers is flat poster-style decorative. The prostitute “Woman with Green Eyes” is a knockoff of fellow Die Brucke artist Alexei Jawlensky.

One might think that Feininger’s affiliation with the Bauhaus, which lasted into the 1930s, would open a new chapter. In 1919 founder and architect Walter Gropius commissioned him to design the cover of the Bauhaus manifesto. Feininger supplied a woodcut -- of a medieval cathedral (left).

And although there are a few paintings in the 1920s and 30s that seem to move toward abstraction and a new compositional rigor, what the Whitney displays is mostly the same old architecture and seascapes, but now in hotel room and greeting card territory like "Mouth of the Rega," below.

Feininger returned to America in 1937, the same year his work was declared degenerate by the Nazis. Then it’s more seascapes and cityscapes, but of Manhattan now. They’re darker, and many are night scenes (below). They’d make good New Yorker covers.

“Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World,” Whitney Museum of American Art, Madison Avenue at 75^th Street, through October 16

Photos: Top, from Whitney Museum website, Copyright Lyonel Feininger Family and Artists Rights Society; "Kin-Der Kids" and bottom, MoMA website; "Golmerada VIII," Metropolitan Museum website. All other photos, Laura Gilbert

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Two Closely Watched Art Restitution Cases

2011-06-27T10:11:00.004-04:00

The Supreme Court today announced that it would not hear two closely watched art restitution cases -- Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum and Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain.

Both cases concern foreign affairs. Von Saher put into focus the U.S. government’s power to make and resolve war, including the power to resolve war claims. Cassirer considered whether a foreign sovereign is immune from suit.

The Supreme Court had requested the views of the Department of Justice through the Solicitor General, who recommended that the Court not hear the cases and instead let the lower court decisions stand -- a recommendation the Court agreed with.

Who Owns the Art?

So what does it mean?

In Von Saher, the plaintiff -- the sole heir of Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who fled the Netherlands in 1940 -- is seeking two Lucas Cranach paintings (Adam and Eve, shown below hanging in the museum) seized by Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring. They now hang in the Norton Simon in Pasadena and, with today's Supreme Court action, are likely to remain there.

The briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in Von Saher make one thing clear: Holocaust restitution cases can be a lot more complicated than good versus evil, contrary to what their generally superficial treatment in the press would have you believe. For example, it's not clear that Goustrikker was even the lawful owner of the Cranachs -- at any rate, they had been returned by the Dutch government to another claimant in 1961.

The plaintiff in Cassirer* -- whose grandmother was forced to give up the painting in 1939, when she fled Germany -- is seeking a Pissarro in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid (below). Cassirer sued not just the museum but Spain as well, which owns the museum. After today, Cassirer can continue pursuing the Pissarro.

The briefs here indicate the U.S. government's continuing interest in smoothing things over with Spain. The State Department's interest in resolving the case diplomatically came out awhile ago in a document published by Wikileaks. Now the Justice Department has apparently extracted a promise from Cassirer to agree to Spain's dismissal from the case.

Von Saher v. Norton Simon

The issue in Von Saher was whether the California statute the plaintiff sued under was preempted by federal law. The statute, enacted in 2002, created a distinct cause of action, a sort of Holocaust recovery act, that extended the statute of limitations to recover Nazi-confiscated artwork from museums.

The Norton Simon moved to dismiss on the ground that in enacting the statute California was trying to redress wrongs that occurred during World War II, which intruded on power reserved to the federal government. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed: “the power to legislate restitution and reparation claims is one that has been exclusively reserved to the national government by the Constitution.”

As of today, that decision stands, but the plaintiff’s case hasn’t been thrown out of court entirely, at least not yet. The Ninth Circuit held that her claim might be timely under state common law to recover personal property, so she’ll have an opportunity to litigate whether she brought suit within three years after she “discovered or reasonably could have discovered her claim to the Cranachs.”

That might be an uphill battle. Van Saher (left, shown with other restituted art) claimed she only discovered the works in 2000, but they've been hanging in the Norton Simon since the 1970s. Neither the museum nor the works are exactly obscure.

The Norton Simon has gotten a lot of flak for not just handing the paintings over, so it bears noting that some thorny factual issues remain to be sorted out – such as, fundamentally, was Goudstikker the lawful owner?

The Cranachs and other Goudstikker paintings were recovered by the U.S. armed forces, and in 1946, pursuant to a policy of external restitution, they were returned to the Netherlands as the country of origin in the expectation that the Netherlands would return them to the lawful owner.

As stated in the Solicitor General’s brief, the Netherlands returned the Cranachs to another claimant:

“In 1961, George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, heir to the Stroganoff family, instituted a restitution proceeding in the Netherlands for the Cranachs and other paintings. Stroganoff asserted that the paintings had been seized from his family by the Soviet Union and unlawfully auctioned to Goudstikker. In July 1966, the Dutch government transferred the Cranachs and another painting to Stroganoff in settlement of his claim and in exchange for a monetary payment. Around 1971, Stroganoff sold the Cranachs to the Norton Simon Art Foundation.”

Plaintiff, for her part, asserts that the Cranachs were never part of the Stroganoff family collection and that Goudstikker bought them at auction legally.

Something else to consider -- isn't the judgment of the Dutch government entitled to substantial deference as a matter of international relations?

Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain

The Cassirer case questioned what kind of claims can be brought under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which makes foreign governments immune from suit unless the claim comes within a statutory exception to that act.

Cassirer asserted that his claim came within the “expropriation exception.” That exception permits the court to hear a case where “rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue.”

Defendants agreed that the Pissarro was taken by the Nazis in violation of international law and therefore “rights in property taken in violation of international law were in issue.”

But they argued that the claim did not come within the expropriation exception for two reasons. First, they argued that the FSIA permits jurisdiction only over a foreign state that itself has taken the property in violation of international law, but neither Spain nor the museum had done so. Second, they argued that before bringing suit under the FSIA, Cassirer had to exhaust his judicial remedies in Germany or Spain.

Analyzing the plain language of the statute, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

Cassirer can now proceed with his case – maybe. The Ninth Circuit indicated that the district court should consider whether, as a matter of comity between nations, it should require the plaintiff to exhaust his remedies overseas anyway, even though that is not required by the statute.

And if the case does proceed, it may be without Spain as a defendant. The Solicitor General informed the Supreme Court in its brief that Cassirer’s counsel “has informed this office” that Cassirer would not oppose a motion to dismiss Spain from the suit. “The fact that Spain may not ultimately be subject to the District Court’s jurisdiction -- and in any event that other foreign states should not be subject to the jurisdiction of United States courts based on the possession of expropriated property by their agencies and instrumentalities – significantly diminishes the potential impact on foreign relations of the decision below.”

*The plaintiff died during the litigation and his estate has been substituted as plaintiff, but for simplicity I refer to Cassirer rather than his estate.

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Museo del Barrio Layoffs: More Financial Trouble at New York Museums

2011-06-22T16:02:00.003-04:00

The financially ailing and rudderless El Museo del Barrio has laid off its press officer along with three others, is cutting vendor expenses, and is putting on fewer shows because of a financial crisis.

It confirmed the moves only today after refusing to respond to this reporter’s telephoning yesterday.

The information was presented by Susan Delvalle, director of external affairs and development, in a conference call that included Georgina Nichols, interim museum director and director of finance and administration.

Delvalle declined to state which positions had gotten the ax beyond its communications officer, Ines Aslan, but said that they included both full-time and part-time employees.

The layoffs, she added, are just one of “many steps” being taken to slash costs, including a reduction in summer programming for adults, lengthening exhibition time – i.e. putting on fewer shows -- and renegotiating or not renewing vendor contracts.

She said that no further layoffs were envisioned. The total cost reductions are reportedly in excess of $1 million.

El Museo del Barrio, which has a history of financial troubles – its funding was frozen by the city in the 1980s because of fiscal mismanagement -- has been looking for a director for more than a year to replace Julian Zugazagoitia, who announced in March 2010 that he was leaving and then decamped to the Nelson-Atkins later that year.

Asked whether the belt-tightening would make the search for someone to take the helm any more difficult, Nichols said, “I don’t believe so,” adding that “every” museum looking for a director was facing the same problem.

One might question her confidence after a look at El Museo’s most recent tax filing, which is for its fiscal year 2010. It shows an endowment of only $1.8 million, which isn’t going to throw off much income to use for operating expenses.

And of its $8 million in total assets, $4 million represents promised grants and contributions – i.e. receivables, not money in hand. Compare that to its expenses for fiscal 2010 – they were $8.3 million.

The New York Times just last week favorably reviewed the museum’s most recent show. El Museo is still talked about for its stunning and remarkable 2005 exhibition of large-format photographs of pioneering Mexican news photographer Agustin Victor Casasola.

Met Museum Caves to Hoax Revelations, Modifies Captions -- Slightly

2011-06-18T11:10:00.002-04:00

One-half of one cheer for the Met for realizing that it’s egregiously wrong to dishonestly describe what’s hanging on its walls.

An earlier post discussed two deliberate fakes in the Met’s “Thinking Outside the Box” exhibit.

One was identified as an “oil on canvas” painting by Jean Marc Nattier (left) -- in which a girl holds a box -- and the other as an “engraving.” But they’re fakes. Loosely speaking, they’re photo reproductions.

On Monday, a Met spokeswoman stated that the labels would be changed. A policy of honesty is better late than never. Now the new labels are up, and each states, in parentheses and in type no larger than the descriptions of the missing originals, that each of the works is a reproduction (below, click to enlarge).

The original works, which are owned by the Met, were part of the exhibit when it opened, the Met says. The painting was shipped off to the Getty for a show that opened there in April — even though, it should be noted, it was prominently featured, and still is, in the introductory wall text to the Met’s own show.

The engraving was taken down to minimize its exposure to light, the Met explained, and that is a longstanding policy I know about designed to protect certain artworks – though the removed works are typically replaced by other, substitute, originals.

So far, so good. At least there are reasons these specific originals are no longer on display, though dispatching the painting flies in the face of common sense, since it was apparently thought to be an organizing work in the original exhibition.

So why weren’t both replaced with other originals from the Met’s collection?

On a few days when we both were there, a colleague who is an investigative reporter with decades of experience talked to some visitors who had stopped to look at the “Nattier.” They told him they thought it was a painting, and while we were there, several visitors photographed the reproduction in the mistaken belief that it was the real thing.

With the fake engraving, it’s probably even more difficult for the casual visitor to distinguish the reproduction.

Why the museum is deliberately showing fakes in its galleries – this show is not the only one now running with misrepresented reproductions or undisclosed recreations, a historic change in policy — is a question the Met refuses to answer.

The “goal” of displaying the reproductions in “Thinking Outside the Box,” Met vice president Elyse Topalian told me, was to give these works a “presence” in the show. Huh?

She would neither explain her comment nor further discuss its implications for the institution’s integrity or exhibition policy. But carried to its logical conclusion, this type of thinking means there’s no need to persuade Russia to resume lending art to U.S. museums – it’s quite alright if works from the Hermitage have a “presence” here through reproductions.

For hypothetical consideration, shown here are a few paintings depicting boxes currently hanging in the permanent collection -- Sebastian Stoskopff's "Still Life" (above), Gabriel Metsu's "Musical Party" (left; note the trunk at the bottom left corner), and Gaspare Traversi's "Teasing a Sleeping Girl" (bottom). And with more than 1.5 million prints and drawings in the Met’s collection, the engraving now present as a reproduction can’t be the only appropriate work on paper for this show.

As for the slight changes the Met did make, the new labels don’t disclose that the “reproduction” of the painting is smaller than the actual work or that the proportions of the actual print are different from what’s reproduced.

One might wish the Nattier label didn’t still describe the textures represented – “luxury fabrics,” “crystal ewer,” “ormolu-mounted tortoiseshell caskets” – as “all painted with great care” when there’s no paint to look at.

It’s a new era at the Met, it would seem.

Hot Shows for a Hot Summer: Toulouse-Lautrec and Munch, Gericault and the Romantics

2011-06-16T17:10:00.000-04:00

Toulouse-Lautrec, "Seated Clowness," 1896

What we need — beyond world peace, prosperity, and lying museums that raise their admission prices first, then figure out they need to “cry poor” second — are free summer shows. A couple of galleries with the resources to put on world-class exhibits have come to the rescue — Tunick and Feigen. They’re ages old, and specialize in art of the last five centuries or so.

For drawings and prints, get yourself over to Tunick, where its current exhibition, “La Femme,” presents the woman in various roles — as aware of her own sexuality in Klimt, as almost defeated by life in Toulouse-Lautrec, as a domestic worker in Delacroix and Millet.

But really it’s an opportunity to see outstanding art by outstanding artists, better appreciated by looking at each piece individually rather than as part of a theme.

Picasso is represented by one of his most famous etchings, “Frugal Meal” (left) — the couple against the world from his Blue Period — in addition to “Satyr Unveiling a Nude Woman” from the 1936 Vollard Suite. The latter is a recurrent and always moving theme in Picasso’s work, woman as an unattainable object of desire.

Munch — that master of misery, sickness, and death — has two works as well. “Sick Child” (below) he considered his greatest print. It’s a lithograph of his 15-year-old sister on her deathbed, a tender profile resting on a pillow amid a tangle of black angry lines. “Moonlight” is a woodcut, cool, dark, abstractly beautiful.

Munch reworked each of these prints many times — “Sick Child” was something of an obsession, and he painted several versions the theme as well — changing color, lines, texture, or detail.

The Toulouse-Lautrec lithograph, “Seated Clowness” (top) is a beauty. It has everything that makes this artist appealing — bold pattern, bright colors, the underbelly of amusement in everyday life.

There are also four large Klimt drawings, a couple of which haven’t been seen for almost 100 years, an extremely rare Maurice Prendergast monotype, a couple of Whistlers, and a red chalk drawing by Watteau.

If you the appetite for a taste of Rembrandt — and who doesn’t — check out the five Rembrandt etchings in the Tunick library, the great “Three Crosses” among them. They’re not part of the special exhibit, and they’re a hearty meal in themselves.

“The Romantic Revolution” at Feigen, just three blocks away, is fun and quirky. It presents at once both the challenges of art in the decades before Impressionism — sometimes-difficult subject matter, a plethora of styles that seem to go nowhere — and the delights of discovery.

Works by Courbet and Constable are here, and three small studies by Gericault that are magnificent examples of how colorful, and emotionally intense, he could make the many shades of brown.

Shown below is his “Abandoned Cart," a bleak industrial landscape in condensed form — it’s only about 6 by 10 inches — that is thought to be a study for a painting in the Louvre.

Much of the art is by painters who are less well known, though they definitely have a place in art history. Chief among these is Henry Fuseli, a Swiss artist forced into exile for political reasons, who was an early explorer of the dark side of Romanticism.

His “Fairy Mab”(below) is one of 47 paintings based on John Milton’s life and works. Fuseli exhibited them in London in 1799 as a “Milton Gallery.”

Back then, the show was a commercial failure, but it’s been an obvious artistic success. The Met, in fact, has another work in this series — which it previously bought from Feigen.

“Mab,” from one of Milton’s poems, is the queen of the fairies who roamed pantries at night looking for a sweet pudding called junket — the predecessor of bankers who rummage around looking for tax dollars to swipe.

The crooked financiers are better at it than Mab was, presented here digging in, an almost demented child with a sugar high.

The Romantic landscape is represented at the show by a ho-hum Constable, a somewhat better Samuel Palmer, and several truly beautiful paintings by Richard Wilson ("Hounslow Heath" is below), who is considered the father of English landscape painting and an acknowledged influence on Constable and Turner.

There is much to see — a rare sculpture by Courbet, a woman’s head titled “Liberty” that was shipped in a box addressed to the wonderfully named Baron de Bastard, also on display; a couple of works by Ary Scheffer, a journeyman artist who on occasion painted with something approaching inspiration, and drawings by Girodet, including at least one that was lent to the Met’s retrospective a few years ago.

Well-researched and well-written handouts are available for each piece — wait, this is a Feigen show, not a Gagosian garage production that makes you guess what you’re looking at.

Your correspondent intended to review another show, at a gallery that shall be nameless. But the big-name works, which were new to me, couldn’t be found in online images, and the gallery boss forbade my own photography and refused to provide me any of his. The reason, he said, was that the sellers were “paranoid” about the art being seen on the internet.

The first thing that went through my mind was that the show could include forgeries or stolen art. Never mind. Instead of writing a review, I notified a stolen-art registry. Hot art for a hot summer? We’re barely in June.

“La Femme,” David Tunick, 11 East 66th St., through July 1; “The Romantic Revolution,” Richard L. Feigen, 34 East 69th St., through August 1

Photos: Courtesy David Tunick, Inc., and Richard L. Feigen & Co.

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Latest Met Hoax: Reproduction Mounted on Plastic Board Displayed as an Old Master "Oil on Canvas" Painting

2011-06-06T10:00:00.007-04:00

It takes grapefruits the size of Bernie Madoff to try to pull off a hoax of this magnitude, but the Metropolitan Museum, as it has previously, is again deceiving the public.

As part of a special exhibition, it's presenting at least two pieces of flimflammery.

One, crammed in with two decorated boxes in a wall/table display, is identified as "Madame Marsollier and Her Daughter" by the 18th-century French artist Jean Marc Nattier (top). It's labeled "oil on canvas" with the date 1749 (below left, click to enlarge).

The other, on the wall opposite, is identified as "Costume of a Luggage Maker" after Nicholas de Larmessin, a French printmaker who did a series depicting costumes of various professions. It's labeled "engraving" with the date c. 1690 (below right, click to enlarge).

But certainly the garbage the Met has on view is neither oil painting nor engraving.

Instead, they are photographic reproductions. The reproduction of the Nattier is mounted on what appears to be foam core, a lightweight plastic backing. (Note, at the bottom of this post, the torn lower left corner of the foam core, whose date I would guess is 2010 or 2011.)

The purported engraving appears to be some sort of cardboard no thicker than the label.

The Met, by the way, owns the originals of both.

This isn't the first time the Met has been caught putting one over on its visitors this year. Some of the Richard Serra drawings it's currently showing are not the originals but are instead recreations, a fact nowhere disclosed in the exhibition itself.

And about the Jeff Koon-loaned Christ that the label says is a painting by Quinten Massys, is it really a workshop production? The Met refused to respond to repeated inquiries, but it has never denied it either.

The trickery here didn't require any ferreting out. It's as plain as the nose on Met director Thomas Campbell's face. Is this the kind of hubris that led the Getty to forge signatures, tax appraisals, and provenances in its decades-long antiquities scandal, as recently reported in the book "Chasing Aphrodite"?

Fitting, isn't it, that the Nattier oil on canvas is now a highlight of the "Paris: Life and Luxury" show -- at the Getty. But where's the original engraving?

The name of the exhibition that includes the photographic reproduction is "Thinking Outside the Box." Indeed.

Campbell's office refused to comment and referred all questions to the Met vice president of communications. She hasn't called back in days.

June 13 Update: Today, seven days after my initial inquiry, Met vice president for communications Elyse Topalian informed me that the two reproductions discussed here will "certainly be getting new labels" and that the new labels are now "on order."

Metzger's "Historic Photographs" at the New Museum: At Age 85 Artists' Hero Finally Gets a U.S. Museum Show

2011-05-30T20:02:00.004-04:00

London-based Gustav Metzger — he’s influenced artists as farflung as Paul McCarthy and Santiago Sierra but may be best known here as the one whose work was mistaken for rubbish at the Tate — at age 85 is finally getting his first U.S. museum show.

It appears it’s just too late — or perhaps Metzger’s the victim of bad curatorial choices — judging from what the New Museum presents as “Historic Photographs.” It’s appropriation art – with photos taken by others — of the worst kind.

The exhibition is a series of installations featuring images of environmental degradation and traumatic 20th-century events — children fleeing napalm in Vietnam, a roundup of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, Israeli soldiers standing over Palestinians.

Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, first version 1995, recreated 2011. Photo taken 1943 with rubble added 2011

Metzger has blown up the photos, and sometimes obscured them and sometimes hidden them entirely. The intent, according to the artist, is to make us experience familiar images anew, even physically — to break through what he perceives as emotional “numbness” caused by media saturation.

The series, conceived in 1990, had its first two pieces shown in 1995. Its number has expanded over the years, as have its venues. The New Museum is showing twelve, the most complete display yet. As an environmental protest, neither Metzger nor his work flies, so whenever the series is shown it is rebuilt locally. Everything at the New Museum was made in New York.

The series has been banging around in one version or another for some time. The concept’s age shows, or maybe it’s just that the artist, once considered ahead of his time, has now fallen behind.

Radical Politics and Techniques

Way back when, Metzger was known for challenging the art world and the public with radical politics and techniques.

In 1959 he issued a manifesto calling for “auto-destructive” art — art that would have a short life because the work would contain the seeds of its own destruction or be destroyed by its creator. It would use industrial materials to create a public art for an industrial society.

Destruction became his theme as well as his technique for attacking capitalism, nuclear weapons, pollution, and dealers and collectors who, in his words, “manipulate modern art for profit.”

Gustav Metzger

It had its origins in his own experience as a child who grew up in Nazi Germany. He escaped to England as part of the Children’s Transport. His parents were killed. “Those twelve years (in Germany) totally dominate my life, and will do to the last moment of my life,” he told the Guardian in 2009. For a 1962 show he described himself as an “escaped Jew.”

On the London streets in the 1960s, he painted large sheets of nylon with hydrochloric acid, which destroyed his “canvas” while creating beautiful patterns on it. (See video here.) He wore a gas mask, suggesting nuclear catastrophe and Nazi gas chambers.

In 1966 he organized the Destruction in Art Symposium, drawing artists worldwide. Yoko Ono had audience members cut away her clothes until she was naked. An Australian artist slaughtered an animal. Metzger was charged by the police with putting on an “indecent exhibition.”

In the 60s he inspired Pete Townsend to smash his guitars on stage, experimented with scientific processes, and used liquid crystals to create light installations (photo here). He’s been credited with inventing the psychedelic light show.

“Disgusting Bastards”

He took on environmental destruction in the 1970s, before other artists were even thinking about it. For Project Stockholm, for example, conceived for a U.N. conference, Metzger proposed lining up 120 idling cars around a transparent cube that would collect their exhaust fumes. In the second part of the project, the cars would blow up the cube.

In 1974 he called for a three-year art strike, saying artists should spend their time studying rather than colluding with rich collectors and institutions. When artists didn’t join him, he is reported to have called them “disgusting bastards.”

Kill the Cars, first version 1966, recreated 2011. A beat-up car in front of a photo of a beat-up car accompanied by an audio intoning, "Kill the cars."

Metzger himself produced no art from 1977 to 1980 and pretty much disappeared. He moved to Frankfurt. He studied in the Netherlands.

In 1994 he returned to London and was recognized as something of an artist-hero by a new generation of artists and by influential curators, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, who in 2009 organized a 50-year retrospective of Metzger’s work at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

"Historic Photographs"

Since his return, Metzger has been working on, among other things, “Historic Photographs.”

The exhibit, with its photos of violence and trauma, presents themes Metzger’s obsessed with and also returns to his own childhood trauma.

Half the installations feature photos from Nazi Germany, beginning with the 12- by 20-foot photo of Jews arriving at Auschwitz that confronts you from about three feet away as the elevator doors open on the fourth floor. That photo rests on the floor, which for the photo’s width is covered with wood planks. To the left, at right angles to the photo, are vertical bars that appear to be aluminum (view looking left from elevator, below).

It’s a far cry from the brash experimentation of his earlier career.

The first problem is the literalism: wood planks = boxcars that took the Jews to the camps, the bars = the prison that was Auschwitz that also imprisons the viewer, a forced “you are there.”

Second, everything about this art is tired. Big works in small spaces to overwhelm the viewer have been around for a long time. Enlarging photos to make 20th-century horrors present are a commonplace at, for example, history museums.

And disembarking at Auschwitz as a you-are-there, inescapable event has been an installation at D.C.’s Holocaust Museum for, oh, about 20 years. There it’s Disneyfied — you walk through an actual boxcar seeing only a mural-sized photo at the end of it — but still, the concept is obvious, trite.

“I get it, I’ve seen it” infects this show. A pollution piece called “Kill the Cars” is an actual beat-up car, its windows smashed, in front of a photo of a beat-up car. A roundup in the Warsaw Ghetto is accompanied by a pile of broken bricks — the rubble of a destroyed ghetto (top).

With two installations, Metzger invites the viewer to become physically involved with the photos. One you can see only by walking behind a curtain that hangs in front of it, the other only by crawling under a heavy yellow blanket.

Try experiencing art when you’re boxing with a bunch of cloth — not possible and somewhat ridiculous.

Anschluss, first version 1996, recreated 2011. A viewer experiences a photo while boxing with a blanket.

Sometimes the photos here are hidden from view entirely, placed behind a piece of steel, for example. “The fundamental concern here has been to reveal by hiding,” Metzger told one of the curators.

That sounds nice, but I wonder how history can be revealed if the facts are hidden, or how we can experience photos anew if they aren’t there to be seen.

The photographs when visible are searing. They don’t benefit from Metzger’s help.

Kudos to the New Museum for introducing Metzger to a broader New York audience. Next time, let’s see work that lives up to his reputation, if there is any.

“Historic Photographs,” New Museum, 235 Bowery, through July 3.

Photo of Metzger from Wikipedia. Other photos: Laura Gilbert

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert.

U.S. and LACMA Seek Federal Court Help in Russian Embargo on Art Loans: Litigation as Diplomacy in Incendiary Chabad Case

2011-05-24T14:18:00.005-04:00

A federal court in Washington, D.C. hearing Chabad v. Russian Federation, the case that set off Russia’s embargo on lending art to U.S. museums, has apparently become the latest forum for some extraordinary diplomacy in the U.S.-Russia art wars.

The case puts into sharp relief how Russia's nationalism and protection of its sovereignty have been frequently underestimated in diplomatic and cultural matters over the centuries, which occasionally led to war. Chabad, for its part, is no stranger to making incendiary statements, including here.

Among other comments, Chabad's co-counsel in this case stated that it would use "any means permissible" to enforce the default judgment it holds against Russia. "If the Russians are concerned about the art they send to America, I am happy they are concerned. If they comply they won't have to be concerned," the lawyer said.

Chabad, a Jewish sect based in Brooklyn, is seeking to recover the "Schneerson Collection," an archive and library of religious books and manuscripts gathered by one of its leaders. Russia, after an adverse ruling from the D.C. Court of Appeals, abandoned the case, saying the U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over it.

Chabad obtained a default judgment in July 2010 that ordered Russia to turn over the collection. Russia fears that if it sends art to the U.S. it will be seized by Chabad to force Russia to comply with the judgment, and imposed its art embargo, according to a report by the Agence France Presse, in August.

The embargo has seen loans to the Met and National Gallery cancelled (a few are shown here) and others recalled.

Chabad is now seeking to enforce the judgment, and on April 4 made two motions that are currently before the court -- one requesting sanctions and one requesting permission to begin attachment proceedings.

Unexpected Maneuvering

In the last couple of weeks there has been some unexpected maneuvering by nonparties and Chabad alike.

The U.S. government is considering filing a statement with the court explaining “the U.S. position on the seizure of art loans,” one of Chabad attorneys, Seth Gerber of Bingham McCutchen, told this reporter.

The L.A. County Museum of Art has asked Chabad to stipulate that it will not seize any of the 38 art objects the museum still hopes Russia will lend for its “Gifts of the Sultan” exhibition opening June 5.

And Chabad has filed two sets of papers whose purpose is “for the reassurance of the Russian government” and museums, in addition to the court, Gerber said.

In the just-filed papers — one a letter from Chabad’s lawyers to the U.S. government and one the stipulation with LACMA — Chabad promises not to seize art that federal statutory law protects from seizure anyway. To quote the letter, “Our client intends fully to comply with the federal law.”

Federal law -- the federal Immunity from Seizure Act -- protects cultural objects on temporary loan to nonprofits like museums. Chabad’s lawyers have contended — to this reporter as recently as Sunday — that they will go after any of Russia's cultural assets that do not receive federal protection, such as those in the U.S. for commercial purposes.

Incendiary Comments?

Why would an organization feel compelled to state in court, twice, that it wouldn’t do something prohibited by law?

“The law has always been clear,” says Charles A. Goldstein, counsel to the Commission for Art Recovery and a specialist in art restitution: temporary loans to museums “can’t be seized.” Chabad’s filings, he said, are simply “a statement of the obvious.”

Chabad, Gerber said, thought it “prudent” to file the papers to “clarify” its position because of extensive “media coverage.” He acknowledged in particular certain incendiary statements by co-counsel Marshall Grossman and Nathan Lewin.

In February, for example, the New York Times reported that when asked whether he would consider seizing art, Grossman had said, “Chabad will exercise every remedy under law to enforce the judgment. No exceptions.”

And the Jewish Chronicle, in an article that also appears on Chabad's website, quoted Lewin as saying that Chabad would use "any means permissible" to force Russia to comply. "If the Russians are concerned about the art they send to America, I am happy they are concerned. If they comply they won't have to be concerned."

Questioned about the statements, Gerber was quick to say they were consistent with the latest court filings, emphasizing the words “under law” and "permissible." He also pointed out that they were made after the embargo had gone into effect.

Why had Chabad waited until now to clarify its position, given the media attention starting in February? “No museums had contacted" him, Gerber said.

But he knew that Russia had cancelled loans to the Met and the National Gallery? He “didn’t know” the cancellation were “because of the ban,” which hadn’t been confirmed until very recently, he said.

U.S. Government Concerns

It seems the court-filed assurances were more likely the result of Chabad’s attorneys' recent conversations with the U.S. government and LACMA.

On April 4, Chabad filed its motion requesting court approval to begin enforcement proceedings. Ten days later, the government filed a Notice of Potential Participation, citing unspecified “concerns” about the motion. The government stated that it required 30 days to evaluate the situation and requested the court not rule on the motion before then.

Chabad’s attorneys contacted the State and Justice Departments to find out what the problem was. On hearing the government’s concerns about Russia’s cancellation and recall of loans — according to Gerber, the government was considering filing a statement of “the U.S. position on the seizure of art loans” — the attorneys assured the government in a May 2 conference call that Chabad would not attempt to seize artworks that were protected from seizure by federal law.

They memorialized that assurance in the letter addressed to the government, and filed the letter on May 13.

On May 16, the government filed a Supplemental Notice, stating that there had been “certain recent developments,” including Chabad’s May 13 filing, and that it needed another 30 days to “evaluate the impact” of that submission.

LACMA then contacted Chabad — the only museum to have done so, Gerber said — and the stipulation was filed May 18.

Impact

Have Chabad’s assurances had any impact?

The Legal Times on May 17 quoted a Russian embassy spokesman saying that negotiations with the U.S. would begin “very soon.” If anything’s been scheduled, Gerber said, Chabad hasn’t “been asked to the table.” Attempts to obtain confirmation from the U.S. State and Justice Departments have been unsuccessful.

At LACMA, a staffer declined to comment beyond saying that the situation was “fluid” and the museum was “moderately hopeful.”

Phone calls to the Russian embassy and consulate for its perspective went unanswered.

As for Chabad’s assurances, they only cover art that comes within federal law — i.e., on temporary loan to nonprofit institutions. Any art that Russia sends to the U.S. for a “commercial purpose” is fair game, Gerber said.

Will the Mariinsky/Kirov Ballet cancel its trip to New York this July for fear that its sets and costumes will be seized? Are we witnessing the beginning of a broader breakdown in cultural exchange?

These two intransigent parties may well deserve each other, but the repercussions may be large indeed.

Images of cancelled art loans, top to bottom: A Gauguin at the Pushkin; a Cezanne and a Canaletto at the Hermitage.

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Superstar Koons' Sideline: Loaning Old Masters to the Met, Including the Dreadful. Meantime, 51 of His Own Holdings Appear Online

2011-05-16T12:07:00.001-04:00

Jeff Koons personally collects Old Masters, many of them recently purchased and some for record-breaking auction prices.

He's getting plenty of wall space for them from the Metropolitan Museum, which, as any serious collector knows, generally gooses up their value.

I found four of them there last week, including a sort of a dog of a painting that may be a workshop production instead of by the master on the label. All are identified as from an unnamed "private collection."

What's going on? Neither Koons nor the Met is talking.

The most recent Koons-owned loan, hung within the last few weeks with the "private collection" tag, is surely the most problematic. It's a bust-length Christ the Met labels as a Quinten Massys, the leading Antwerp painter of the early 16th century. (Enhanced camera technology makes the image I took, right, appear far superior to the actual painting.)

But is it a Massys? It's the most lifeless painting in the Met's superb Netherlandish galleries -- in truth, it's conspicuous because it's so not up to snuff there.

The museum, notably, has hung it a room away from the Massys works it actually owns -- fine or amazing paintings each.

Red Flags

The Christ was also represented as a Massys by Sotheby's in a 2008 auction, where it sold for $1.1 million and where Koons seems to have acquired it.

But Sotheby's presented it with big red flags. It had no provenance, a huge caution. And there's another version of the painting, signed, in the Prado -- are both by Massys?

Another warning appeared in the catalogue. To authenticate the painting, Sotheby's had sent a photograph (a common auction house practice) to the highly respected art history professor Larry Silver, who penned the 1984 Massys catalogue raisonne.

Based on the photo alone, Professor Silver, according to the Sotheby's catalogue, considered the work autograph but "does not rule out the possibility of some studio participation."

This reporter contacted Silver last week to ask if he had ever seen the painting in the flesh -- he had in fact finally just seen it at the Met -- and we spoke about its authenticity.

Silver told me that until Sotheby's sent him the photo, the work was "unknown" to him, a complete "surprise."

When asked whether there was studio work here, he replied that "No one cares about studio work anymore except auction houses and museums."

(Further inquiry into this assertion has been delayed.)

He explained that Massys was at the "end of his career" when this work was made and possibly "losing his manual dexterity" -- the painting is dated 1529, a year before the artist's death. So, Silver said, he believes there would be "increased participation" by the studio.

Was he suggesting it actually is a studio work? Silver told me it was an "extremely fine picture" and better than the Prado version, which itself had at one time been "considered studio."

Is it naive to expect a museum -- an educational institution, after all -- to be more forthcoming about attribution when it displays such a problematic work, even if, as in this case, the lender is a famous artist who is becoming a force in the Old Masters market and whose own works the Met may one day want to own?

Balloon Dog and Big Bull

As it happens, Koons' "anonymous" loans apparently began in 2008, the year the Met showcased his own "Balloon Dog" and other sculptures in its prestigious "Art on the Roof" series.

That June, the Met needed to find a place for Koons' egregiously large "Hercules and Achelous" -- an eight-foot-wide painting -- by Cornelis van Haarlem.

This flat brown mass of cartoonish bull was bought for $8.1 million, reportedly by Koons -- an auction record for any Dutch Mannerist painting and a price that induced gasps in the bidding room -- but who was he bidding against? The final players made bids by telephone.

Initially, the Met installed it in a gallery full of paintings by Rembrandt and Hals -- in a fit of insanity, perhaps. It now hovers like an oversize cruise ship amid a sea of Dutch "little masters" (see installation view, above).

Let's not skip over the fact, though, that one of Koons' loans is glorious -- a St. Catherine wood statue by the great German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (left). It had graced the Met as a loan before Koons bought it (for $6.3 million, a record for the artist), and now it's back on loan in the Medieval galleries.

Then there's Koons' loan of "Adam and Eve" by the talented 18th-century court painter Francois Lemoyne (below), a lovely oil on copper that Koons apparently picked up in 2009 for 1.3 million Euros, another record. It went on view a couple of months ago as a pendant to an Adam and Eve by Lemoyne's student Charles-Joseph Natoire.

Meantime, 51 works apparently now in Koons' collection can be seen online (at least as of 9:00 a.m. today) at a website that doesn't identify what it is or who owns the works shown, or who even owns the site: www.collectionnewyork.com.

This reporter believes it's a listing from Koons' collection.

Koons was photographed in his home with works posted there, including a Courbet, a Magritte, and a Dali. He is known to have loaned another Courbet on the site ("Femme Nue," which at $3.1 million also set a record), and has acknowledged owning still other posted works, including the listed Fragonard.

Those familiar with Koons' creations won't be surprised to find, in addition, a work depicting comics character Dagwood Bumstead having at Blondie.

Phone calls and an email to the Met for comment on Koons' ownership of the works on loan, and on the purported Massys, were not returned by post time. A phone call and an email to Koons and an email submitted to the collectionnewyork.com website yielded no response.

Photos: Laura Gilbert

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

"Soutine/Bacon" at Helly Nahmad: Are Commercial Galleries the New Museums?

2011-05-05T09:45:00.002-04:00

The "Soutine/Bacon" show is one of several presentations in New York that make you wonder, Do retail galleries do it better?

Like a good museum show, it's tightly focused. It pairs paintings by Francis Bacon (his "Lying Figure" is below) with those of Chaim Soutine ("Portrait of a Man," above), whom Bacon considered a "formative" influence -- a fresh context for both.

And its subjects are compelling: Two major painters with irresistible life stories -- Bacon the bad-boy homosexual, maybe the original Young British Artist way back when, and the peculiar Soutine, onetime Modigliani studio-mate notorious for his lack of personal hygeine.

It's curated by acknowledged experts -- Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow, who co-authored the Soutine catalogue raisonne. Tuchman used to head up the LA County Museum of Art, so he knows a thing or two about putting on a show.

It includes loans from a laundry list of major museums: the Albertina in Vienna, the Pompidou in Paris, the Tate, the Met, MoMA. Of the 32 works displayed, a whopping 13 usually hang in museums.

And the show is, I was told by a gallery spokesperson, "completely noncommercial." That is, nothing in it is for sale, at least for now* (note is at bottom).

On to the art. The pairing of Soutine and Bacon on the face of it makes perfect sense. There are obvious affinities: a shared debt to Rembrandt, figurative distortions, emotional intensity, and an obsessive, almost perverse attraction to animal slaughter.

Bacon was in Paris in the late 1920s and may even have seen Soutine's paintings of beef carcasses -- a persistent theme for Bacon, even indirectly; "we are meat," he said. These paintings by Soutine were legendary, if only because he worked from the real thing, causing neighbors to complain about the stench.

A side-by-side comparison, though, does Bacon no favors.

Seen here, Soutine's works are metaphorical, emotionally complex, sophisticated in composition, and lush in brushstroke and color, while Bacon's works tend to be literal, psychologically one-dimensional, and simply composed. Aside from Bacon's brushy figures, his work is flat and dry. This isn't to say that it doesn't have its own beauty, just that it's limited.

Soutine made everything anthropomorphic, including a fork stuck in a fish, and each painting embraces multiple psychological states. A single portrait might be both regal and shamed, a landscape playful and terrorized (above left). "Unflinching" describes even his still-lifes, which can be chronicles of pain (below).

He constructed his paintings with a convulsive sophistication, from the prime focus out to the edges. Then there are the meaty brushstrokes so favored by the Abstract Expressionists.

With Bacon (below), the emotional range is confined to rage, and it seems that he didn't always know how to enliven the canvas as a composition. So sometimes we get flat colors, sometimes architectural lines that are traps, or a curved floor tilted up, another no-exit.

The exceptions here are Bacon's landscapes from the 1950s, which have a bold, experimental feel that encompasses the whole canvas. Bacon's main interest, though, was the figure and flesh, which, compared with Soutine, too often fail to come alive.

Hats off to dealer Helly Nahmad. "Soutine/Bacon" is a beautiful and welcome show.

At a time when museums are putting together home-grown shows including works that in flusher times would stay in the basement, the power-dealer show with major-museum loans -- this spring alone they can be seen at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, L&M, and Pace in addition to Gagosian and Helly Nahmad -- may be a harbinger of a power shift.

For good or ill, it's too soon to say. The reality is that commercial galleries are in the business of moving inventory, and outside curators are not always disinterested.**

* The Gagosian Gallery makes the same claim about its current show, "Picasso and Marie-Therese," which also has museum loans and outside curators. It bears mentioning that "Maya with a Boat" in that show had earlier failed to sell at auction in New York. It's likely that at least some works in private hands from both these shows will hit the market again.

** A couple of years ago, the curators of "Soutine/Bacon" were involved in a lawsuit alleging that they had misled a seller about the market value of a Soutine.

"Soutine/Bacon," Helly Nahmad Gallery, Madison Avenue at 76th St., through June 18

Photos: Soutine, "Cagne with Tree" (Tate), Copyright ADAGP Paris and DACS London, and "The Ray" (Metropolitan Museum), Copyright Artists Rights Society. All others, courtesy Helly Nahmad.

Strange Bedfellows: PBS Culture Mafia, "Christian Right," and Former Met Kingpin at Upcoming Museum of Biblical Art Gala

2011-04-26T14:43:00.001-04:00

Not that there's anything wrong with lending your prestige to an entity that hasn't filed tax returns for the last two years, is controlled by the seemingly right-wing American Bible Society, and whose chair, Roberta Ahmanson, is half of an Evangelical power couple who continues to deny, sort of, that she advocates an official American theocracy.

That's what PBS luminary Bill Moyers (right) and former Met director Philippe de Montebello (below left) will be doing come May 2, when they'll preside as the honorary co-chairs of a fundraising bash for said entity, the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan.

Moyers, one sometimes forgets, has a master's of divinity degree, and he's hosted several television programs on religion. De Montebello, of course, headed up a museum that has boatloads of Christian biblical art.

Besides, they both have a professional relationship with the gala's honoree, William F. Baker (below right), former president and now president emeritus of WNET, New York's PBS television station, which hosts de Montebello's Sunday arts program and has aired various incarnations of Moyers' programs.

MoBIA is honoring Baker with its first Visionary Award for "his creative leadership in the world of art and religion." He produced the PBS film "The Face: Jesus in Art" and its follow-up, "Picturing Mary."

He's also one of MoBIA's founding and current trustees, a board membership conspicuously absent from his lengthy bio on WNET's website.

Some facts to chew on when these culture hotshots rustle up the bucks for MoBIA next week:

Although a separate organization, MoBIA is really an arm of the American Bible Society, whose mission, to quote its tax filings, is "to make the (Christian) Bible available to every person in a language and format each can understand and afford, so all people may experience its life-changing message." In those same filings, the American Bible Society identifies MoBIA as a "controlled entity," meaning that the Society either has the power to appoint the majority of MoBIA's trustees or the Society's own employees or trustees are a majority.

According to MoBIA's latest tax filing (for fiscal year ended June 30, 2008), the two organizations share a key employee, Peter F. Rathbun, the Society's general counsel and a founding trustee of MoBIA.

Rathbun's also president of the Christian Legal Society. Its first objective is "to proclaim Jesus as Lord through all that we do in the field of law and other disciplines."

The American Bible Society gives MoBIA substantial ongoing financing. According to MoBIA's most recent filing, the Society provided $1.3 million of MoBIA's $1.8 million in revenues. In its last filing (for fiscal year 2010), the Society's return lists $1.6 million in financial support and in-kind services.

And then there are Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, who have been dogged by their support -- now somewhat tempered -- for the reviled Christian Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony, who advocated the imposition of Christian law and the stoning to death of homosexuals.

Roberta Ahmanson is MoBIA's current chair.

The Ahmansons are also, as quoted in a recent Christianity Today feature, the self-described "single largest supporter" of the "Intelligent Design" movement, "and have been from the beginning."

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Ahmansons gave MoBIA $1.2 million in 2009 -- somewhat less than the $1.395 million they donated, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, through their company Fieldstead to the passage of California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8. MoBIA's website acknowledges their continuing support.

If you don't like the sound of this but still want to see MoBIA's art exhibits, some of which are very good indeed, admission is pay what you wish, perhaps because it gets funds from New York City via City Council grants and the Department of Cultural Affairs. DCA's website shows an award of $98,400 for fiscal 2011.

In the meantime, maybe Moyers or de Montebello can goose MoBIA into filing its 2009 and 2010 tax returns.

Photos have been pulled from the internet.

Gagosian's "Picasso and Marie-Therese: L'amour fou": An Olympian Takes a Tumble, Shows the Fool

2011-04-18T19:20:00.004-04:00

Sometimes when the gods come down from Olympus and meddle in human affairs, they come across as fools.

Consider that Picasso was 45 when, in 1927, he landed the 17-year-old Marie-Therese Walter, the subject of this show, as his mistress. It's already ridiculous.

So maybe it won't surprise that there's some silliness at Gagosian's "Picasso and Marie-Therese: L'amour fou" (which translates as "wild love").

Try reading Picasso's mash note, enlarged as a wall text exhibit, with a straight face: "I love you more than the taste of your mouth, more than your look, more than your hands, more than your whole body, more and more and more and more." He also writes his and his lover's initials on a simple paper cutout of a dove, like a schoolboy carving initials on a tree.

As a record of Picasso's decade of intoxication with his blond mistress, "L'amour fou" is telling."* As art, alas, not so much, even though with 81 works and 13 photos it's larger than some museum shows.

There are portraits galore, in fact too many -- Marie-Therese wearing a red beret (several of these), wearing a hat (likewise), with a garland in her hair (at least two), with a fur collar, with colorful buttons. Many are repetitive (compare the two above), and show a man obsessed with . . . well, it's hard to tell what he's obsessed with because Marie-Therese is usually a blank.

A few exceptions are here, of course (it's Picasso!). A 1935 portrait (top) with a lilac and green ground and bold black outlines, where the only thing that seems anatomically correct are the lips, is beautiful and meaty with great physical presence.

And in two portraits of their daughter -- born shortly before he took up with Dora Maar -- Picasso, painting in a childlike style, is again the rebellious innovator (above left).

Aside from the portraits, erotic imagery is abundant: a strong, large plaster bust where the nose is a phallus (left); small, 16-inch-high bronzes that are nothing but a small head and large breasts on a stick.

And then there are the voyeuristic paintings: the naked Marie-Therese as mounds of breasts and hips, on her back, in an armchair (below), embraced by another woman, or simply sprawled across the diagonal of the canvas; and the clothed, submissive Marie-Therese reading or sleeping or sketching with her sister.

These fantasies are easy to understand and easy on the eyes.

They have none of the iconographic or pictorial richness of, say, MoMA's great Marie-Therese painting, "Girl Before a Mirror," with its themes of Vanitas, sexual transformation, and psychological complexity. Nor do they have the aggressive sexual power and compositional virtuosity of the Marie -Therese painting recently installed at the Tate.

But Picasso is never without some genius, and on display here is a voracious inquisitiveness. The sheer variety of styles unleashed in a variety of media -- oil, ink, pencil, pastel, cut paper, crayon, etching, bronze -- is in itself stunning. There's even a plaster relief of his lover's profile that would make a fitting grotto decoration.

The best work here, though, is one where Marie-Therese does not appear as herself at all, but as a figure holding a candle before a fumbling, helpless man-bull in one of the greatest prints of the 20th century, the "Minotauromachy" (below).

Gagosian set the bar high in 2009 when the gallery reexamined works from Picasso's last decade, a show that made people gasp with the pleasure of discovering a Picasso in his 80s staring down death. The Times called it "one of the best shows to be seen in New York since the turn of the century," and I don't know anyone who disagreed.

By contrast, the Picasso of Marie-Therese is fairly well known, including most of the better works on display (some were shown by Acquavella Galleries in 2008, some have been lent by New York museums).

So we don't see much new in style or subject matter, we just see more, and a lot of that is second-rate.

*Picasso biographer and co-curator of "L'amour fou" John Richardson has described the circus that was Picasso's private life at this time.

According to him, Picasso, married, kept Marie-Therese a secret, and in 1936, shortly after the birth of their child, he took up with Dora Maar. The story goes, although who knows whether this isn't Picasso spinning his own legend, that the two women met at his studio unexpectedly -- while he was painting "Guernica," no less -- and demanded that he choose between them. Picasso, happy with the status quo, told them to fight it out between themselves. Thereupon, a catfight -- or was that just wishful thinking?

Picasso described the brawl to a subsequent mistress as "one of his choicest memories."

The artist continued to be involved with both women until Marie-Therese dropped out of the picture around 1940. She committed suicide in 1977. (Dora Maar, for her part, had what used to be called a nervous breakdown.)

Their granddaughter, an art historian, convinced family members to lend to "L'amour fou" and is one of its curators.

"Picasso and Marie-Therese: L'amour fou," Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, through June 25.

Photos: Top and plaster bust, from Gagosian website; the others were pulled off the internet. All images Copyright Artists Rights Society.

"Richard Serra Drawing": Artist Recreates Decades-Old Works for Met Retrospective; Refers to His Drawings as Just "Material"

2011-04-12T23:13:00.005-04:00

At the retrospective of Richard Serra's drawings, which opens at the Met tomorrow and is the first to cover 40 years of his work, you won't always be seeing the originals, though that's not clear from the display cards.

Also, some works face having portions chopped off when they go on tour.

Perhaps the most interesting surprise is that Serra, with the Met's acquiescence, has recreated for this show some drawings that he made more than 30 years ago. The show is arranged chronologically, and the recreations, made in 2011, are shown with works from the 70s, when Serra made the originals.

Why the recreations anyway? A Met curatorial staffer told this reporter that the first "iteration" of some drawings couldn't be loaned, or no longer existed, or were too damaged to be exhibited.

The damage, he said, was caused by stapling the original works to the walls -- that's how they were meant to be displayed and how the recreations are displayed at the Met -- and the stapling simply put too much stress on what are basically pieces of linen covered with a mass of paintstick.

The recreations seem brawny ("Diamond," above, is one of them), and the original works may have as well -- I asked the staffer if Serra anticipated the damage and he said, "Probably not."

No one is exactly running a hoax here, but no one is exactly explaining it to the person standing in front of the art either. You'll know which works are recreations only if you read the labels and then catch on that there are two dates, one reading 2011. In addition, two works (including "Blank," below) are labeled "exhibition copy."

And you can jettison the notion that all Serra drawings are treasured objects. Some were created as site-specific works, says Serra, and their dimensions are variable, depending on the dimensions of each site.

So "Taraval Beach" (right), which runs floor-to-ceiling and, by the way, already bears two dates, will most likely be trimmed when the show travels. The Met's ceilings are nearly 20 feet high and are higher than the future stops on this show's tour -- the Menil Collection and SFMOMA. Art by the yard, cut and chop?

I asked Serra himself on Monday about the integrity of altering his original drawing by cutting it. He just shrugged, stating, "It's (only) material."

These drawings, he said, are more about the work "as perception than as something precious," adding that he'd be "happy" as long as one version exists.

This attitude is so provocative -- is Serra more radical than we thought? -- why not bring it out in the open?

Photos: Laura Gilbert.

Eisenhower Speech to Metropolitan Museum on Soldiers' Lives vs Art in Wartime; Provocative 1946 Audio Found in Met's Archives

2011-04-03T14:09:00.008-04:00

A recording of a speech by soon-to-be U.S. President but then-General Dwight Eisenhower a year after World War II ended, addressing the conflict between soldiers' lives and saving cultural monuments, has been found in the Metropolitan Museum's archives.

In a unique commentary by perhaps the most famous general of the 20th century, Eisenhower's remarks on preserving life versus preserving European art would have confounded some New Yorkers -- according to several historians, you couldn't walk down a street in the city without finding a grieving family. There were more than a million American casualties in that war, with more than 400,000 soldiers dying.

In his speech Eisenhower stated that soldiers' attempts to preserve monuments sometimes went "beyond" the limits of "military prudence." His words still resonate today, when the U.S. is involved in military actions in the art-rich Middle East.

The discovery of the recording (the Met had published the speech shortly after it was given) was announced Friday by the Monuments Men Foundation, whose director, Robert Edsel, found it while doing research at the museum.

Eisenhower made his comments when the Met presented him with a lifetime fellowship in recognition of his efforts to preserve cultural monuments during World War II.

Eisenhower, in December 1943, had ordered that cultural monuments in Italy were to be respected "so far as war allows." In May 1944, just before the invasion of France, he warned that "it is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible." After the German surrender in May 1945 he directed that repositories be set up to process artworks and other objects recovered in Germany and Austria.

Much of Eisenhower's speech is taken up with the platitudes one would expect -- soldiers being exposed to different cultures, for example, and a return to cultural values in peacetime -- but it is notable for a couple of exceptionally provocative statements.

'Unbridgeable Gulf'

What must his audience have been thinking when he spoke of the soldier and the artist as opposites?

He referred to himself as a "representative of the science of destruction" and stated that the soldier's "necessary association with lethal weapons would seem to imply the existence of an unbridgeable gulf between his philosophy and that of the artist.

"Perhaps this is so." And again: "War is essentially destruction . . . and in this process much of the world's heritage in art has been inevitably damaged or lost."

Consider, then, Eisenhower's statement that soldiers "tried, within -- and sometimes beyond -- the limits of military prudence, to protect and preserve these products of man's creative instinct."

With the phrase "and sometimes beyond" the limits of military prudence, was he implying that preserving art sometimes took precedence over preserving American lives?

Eisenhower also paid tribute to the Army group now known as the "Monuments Men," a handpicked selection of men and women among the elite of museum directors, curators, and academics who tracked, preserved, and repatriated millions of artistic and cultural items stolen by the Nazis.

Reverse Looting?

An adviser to this group, who also lobbied for its formation, was then-Met director Francis Henry Taylor, who spoke at the award ceremony (in the top photo he is at the far right). James Rorimer, who succeeded Taylor in 1955, was one of the first Monuments Men and was instrumental in the recovery of art treasures.

Ironically, after the war, Taylor supported a proposal to take -- as spoils of war -- a couple hundred German-owned artworks and give them to the National Gallery in Washington, claiming, "The American people had earned the right in this war to such compensation if they chose to take it."

Twenty-five of the Monuments Men signed a "Wiesbaden Manifesto" objecting to this reverse looting, warning that "no historical grievance will rankle so long, or be the cause of so much justified bitterness, as the removal, for any reason, of a part of the heritage of any nation."

The works were taken anyway, ostensibly for their preservation, and exhibited at the National Gallery to record crowds -- nearly 1 million people in 40 days. They were later shipped back to West Germany. Some works were not reunited with their museums in East Germany until Germany's own reunification in 1990.

Eisenhower's speech can be heard here. A transcript can be read here.

Photos: Top, Eisenhower speaking at the Met, April 2, 1946, Copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art; middle, Eisenhower with recovered art at the Merkers salt mine, and bottom, future Met director James Rorimer supervising soldiers at a castle in Germany, National Archives.

Prince Adds More Hired Guns in Appropriation-Art Wars After Court Bashes Him & Gagosian For Piracy

2011-03-25T21:18:00.011-04:00

Appropriation artist Richard Prince (below right) has decided to appeal the smackdown he received last week in Federal Court.

The court ruled that he had infringed the copyright of photographer Patrick Cariou (below left) by using "at least" 41 photographs from Cariou's book "Yes, Rasta" in a series of paintings by Prince called "Canal Zone" that had been exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan.

Prince has now hired the big-gun law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner for the appeal, it was reported today by "The American Lawyer." An announcement is also on the firm's website.

Prince, in his losing effort, had argued to the court that his use of Cariou's photographs came within the "fair use" exemption of the copyright law, which allows limited borrowing for reporting, commentary, and the like.

But the Federal District Court in Manhattan held that for "fair use" to apply, the new work must be "transformative" of the original. Prince's work (one from "Canal Zone" is shown below) was not transformative, the court found, because it did not "in some way comment on, relate to the historical context of, or critically refer back" to Cariou's work.

Under this test, Prince helped sink his own case by testifying at deposition that he had no interest in the meaning of Cariou's photographs.

Court to Collectors: 'Hide 'em'

The decision seems to have caused a kind of panic among some in the art world, not least because the court ordered that unsold "Canal Zone" works be surrendered for "impounding, destruction, or other disposition, as Plaintiff determines," and that owners of the works from the series be informed that they cannot legally display the infringing paintings. (As recited in the decision, eight works sold for a total of $10.48 million and seven were exchanged for works of art valued between $6 million and $8 million.)

The apparent cherry on the sundae was the court's finding Gagosian also liable as both a direct and contributory infringer.

Boies Schiller is no stranger to high-profile cases. It was the losing firm in Bush v. Gore and is now involved in the attempt -- successful in the lower court but now on appeal -- to overturn California's Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage.

Boies is also hugely expensive -- check out a retainer agreement here, with its nonrefundable retention fee of $250,000. The firm racked up $7 million in fees defending the Andy Warhol Foundation in an authenticity lawsuit, and that case never even went to trial. (The plaintiff dropped his suit because he could no longer afford to litigate, he said.)

Photo of Patrick Cariou courtesy Vincent Prat. Photo of Richard Prince from Wikipedia (taken by Nathaniel Paluga).

Rarely Seen Medieval Manuscripts at the Met: Solomon's Temple Now, Passover Whimsy Next

2011-03-22T15:55:00.004-04:00

How did medieval scholars imagine Solomon's Temple? One concept is the elevation of the Temple shown right. It's one of six illustrated manuscript leaves, acquired this year by the Met, from one of the most important biblical commentaries of the late Middle Ages, Nicholas of Lyra's "Postilla Litteralis."

Unannounced, the Met has put two of them on display: the elevation and the curtains of the Tabernacle (below), described in Exodus as "violet and purple, and scarlet twice dyed."

They're big -- 16.5 x 9.75 inches -- and so beautiful in their simplicity that it's a shame the Met isn't exhibiting the other leaves as well. They show the floor plan of the Tabernacle, the "brazen sea" (a large basin in the Temple), Levite camps around the Tabernacle, and an initial "V" in a commentary on Nehemiah.

Nicholas (1290-1349) was on the theological faculty of the University of Paris. Like other medieval commentators -- the Bodleian Library has a nice array of illustrations here-- Nicholas made his own architectural drawings to illustrate his text. Whether the Met's new acquisitions follow his drawings, I can't say. They're dated 1360-80, not too long after his death.

The "Postilla" occupies an odd place in exegetical history, almost a bridge between medieval Jewish scholars and Reformation theologians. Nicholas argued that the literal meaning of the Bible was preeminent, and, though he wrote anti-Jewish tracts, he looked to earlier Jewish commentators like Rashi (1040-1105) to determine its meaning.

Yet, the "Postilla" also had a profound influence on 16th-century Reformers, so much so that it was said: "If Lyra had never played his harp, Luther would never have danced."

In other news on the medieval front, what's a great encyclopedic museum like the Met to do when it's left a group pretty much out of the encyclopedia? Well, for one thing, it can work out some loans.

A couple of years ago, the Met started partnering with the Jewish Theological Seminary up on 120th Street to exhibit, one at a time, some Jewish illuminated manuscripts from JTS's collection. One of these was included in the Met's magnificent 2009 exhibition "Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages."

In early April the Met is initiating a three-year-long series of loans of Jewish illuminated manuscripts from other American and European institutions. It's starting with the Washington Haggadah from the Library of Congress, dated 1478 and signed by the scribe and illuminator Joel Ben Simeon, who worked in Germany and Italy.

The Haggadah tells the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt and is read at the Passover seder, a joy-intended meal during which four glasses of wine are drunk. The Washington Haggadah is tempera and gold -- and, from what I've read, wine stains -- on parchment, a luxury item that was actually used.

The pages of the Haggadah will be turned each month, so there will be an opportunity to see several of its sometimes whimsical illustrations. One page, for example, shows a man roasting meat while blotto from drinking wine. During the seder, the door is opened for Elijah, a symbolic welcome to the Messiah. In the Washington Haggadah it's not just Elijah who approaches but his whole family, who jostle for position on a donkey (above).

Hebrew illuminated manuscripts generally do not have a style that distinguishes them from Christian illuminated manuscripts from the same region, but there's at least one difference. Hebrew text does not have capital letters, so instead of the initial capital letters that are decorated in Christian manuscripts, we find an entire word writ large.

The Washington Haggadah will be exhibited with contemporary works of medieval art in other media from April 5 through June 26.

Metropolitan Museum, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street.

Top two photos: Laura Gilbert.

"Glenn Ligon: America" at the Whitney

2011-03-10T13:31:00.004-05:00

Glenn Ligon is good, without doubt -- intelligent, subtle, probing, witty, sometimes billiant, and most emphatically not a trickster. We see a lot of that in "America," his just-opened midcareer retrospective at the Whitney, which gathers about 100 works.

But the show runs out of steam. Once we leave the 1990s, when Ligon -- who's black and gay -- was able to harness themes of racial and sexual identity like no one else, his work as seen here loses its urgency and a lot of its force.

The show is arranged chronologically beginning in 1985, when Ligon was both struggling to get the Jasper Johns monkey off his back and grappling with sexuality and the dilemma of race in American culture, themes that would henceforth permeate his art.

A room with 10 text-based works, with his signature stenciling with paintstick, follows (shown here, a detail from a work with text by Jean Genet, which Ligon changed to the first person). His own text, "I lost my voice I found my voice," is the equivalent of what's happening artistically. The pictorial rhythms are sensual, sophisticated, and assured.

But I'd guess we wouldn't be looking at these works now were it not for what followed. In 1993 Ligon made works for an installation at the Hirshhorn Musseum, "To Disembark," much of which is reassembled here. It's a meditation on the legacy of slavery in which Ligon plays the starring role. It's hilarious and tragic at the same time.

One portion is based on the broadsheets by which slave owners advertised for their runaway slaves. Each runaway is Ligon (above), in one described as "distinguished looking," in another "timid," in a third "a little hunky, though you might not notice it with his shirt untucked."

Another portion is based on the frontispieces of slave narratives using 18th and 19th century typographic conventions. Again, each is by and about Ligon. One reads: "Glenn Ligon, a colored man who at a tender age discovered his affection for the bodies of other men, and has endured scorn and tribulations ever since. Written by himself." Pitch perfect.

The other seminal piece is "Notes on the Margin of the Black Book" (above), which reproduces every page from Robert Mapplethorpe's "Black Book" -- black men, mostly naked -- interspersed with quotations from a cacophony of voices, including critics, academicians, politicians, patrons of gay bars, and some of the men who posed.

In this work, everyone comes across as an idiot, not least Mapplethorpe himself, who said, "Most of the blacks don't have health insurance and therefore can't afford AZT. They all died quickly, the blacks." It's stomach turning.

Beyond this, there's a series of large, beautiful self-portraits, mugshots mostly of the back of his head (below).

Then this show peters out. Ligon's attempts to engage Richard Pryor's confrontational "that nigger's crazy" sense of humor just seem ill-suited to an artist who teases out complex reflections. Repeating the jokes on brightly colored canvases doesn't translate, neutralize, or interpret them. It's an uneven matchup in which Pryor comes out ahead.

There's a room with smaller works that are interesting and personal -- a screenprint of a report card describing Ligon as antisocial and uncomfortable with his body, for example -- but hardly significant as artworks.

Another room has text works from the last decade based on a James Baldwin essay. These are lush and elegant but ossified, a return to the Johns aesthetic, this time with a sheen that makes them seem sterile (above left). Most disappointing, though, is the second-to-last room, in which Ligon as master appropriator uses the art of children he taught (right).

Perhaps his recent neon works will open a more engaging chapter. Ligon's splendid "Negro Sunshine" beaming out onto Madison Avenue (below) is the artist at his best, rediscovering a vocabulary -- here Gertrude Stein's -- and using it in a new way.

"Glenn Ligon: America," Whitney Museum of American Art, Madison Avenue at 75th Street, through June 5

Images: Third from bottom, "Mirror," 2002. Collection of Mellody Hobson. Copyright Glenn Ligon. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles; second from bottom "Sun (Version 2) #1," 2001. Collection of Eileen Harris Norton. Copyright Glenn Ligon. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles; all other photos by Laura Gilbert.

For the Love of Glitter: Is Damien Hirst's Diamond Dust Actually Crushed Glass?

2011-03-04T12:22:00.002-05:00

Damien Hirst has brought his retail shop "Other Criteria" to the Armory art fair, where he's offering, among other works, a print of his diamond-encrusted skull "For the Love of God" (right). He's done several print versions of it. This one is dated 2009. The wall label states that it's a silkscreen with glazes and "diamond dust," which is also how it's described on Other Criteria's website.

There actually is such a thing as diamond dust that comes from real diamonds, but this isn't it -- at least according to the nice salesman who was minding the store. He was sorry to tell me, he said, that it's actually crushed glass, adding that Hirst had tried to use the real thing here but it didn't work aesthetically.

Perhaps the Hirst factory used something like these crushed-glass Twinklets (left) available from a crafts store for about four bucks. The term "diamond dust" may be well known to low-end crafters looking for glitter. But what about the buyers who fork over $2,000 for a Hirst print based on a skull covered with actual diamonds? No one at Gagosian, Hirst's gallery, would speak to me by phone. They requested I send a query instead by email, which I have.

Hirst is as much known for his stupendous marketing as for his art. It's on full display here, and not just with the fairy dust. The print is an edition of 1,000, so at $2,000 per he's aiming for a cool $2 million. With about 700 sold, according to the salesman, he's well on his way.

Top photo: Laura Gilbert

News Flash: "Postmodernism" Defined! V&A Sends Philosophers Packing

2011-03-03T12:29:00.000-05:00

Philosophers, go home. "Postmodernism" has now been defined. It means "cheesy," and it ended around 1990.

That's the latest takeaway from the Victoria and Albert Museum's announcement about the details of its upcoming fall 2011 show, "Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990," which, with 260 objects, is a most ambitious grab at a heretofore most slippery concept.

Here's some of what it will include:

Grace Jones' maternity dress (above), Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner," David Byrnes' oversized suit, New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" video. Ouch!

Also works by Jeff "Mr. Kitsch" Koons and by Andy Warhol, whom some might think of as a Pop artist but who, I guess, is "postmodern" since his work most certainly postdates Modernism. Besides, Warhol's got that "wink-wink" aura.

The show is being billed as a blockbuster, and with baggy clothing from Comme des Garcons, how can they lose anything but their pants?

The curators, as reported by the Guardian, admit that a show about postmodernism, whose definition outside architecture has eluded even most of its so-called practitioners, might "seem strange or perhaps perverse, foolhardy even."

But they claim to have found a commonality: postmodernism "was an attack on what had come before, it was an attack on modernism." What, me worry?

Lest you think that language indicates the revival of the concept of an avant garde, think again. The show will include pop videos and album covers (left, Peter Saville's for New Order). A something-for-everyone approach to a something-for-everyone period.

The V&A's website says the show will argue that postmodernism died in the early 1990s "despite the use of the term 'postmodern' remaining in common parlance" -- a hint that the contradictions that have plagued postmodernism won't be resolved here?

It also promises to "chart a broad chronology in order to account for [postmodernism's] rise and demise." Good luck with that.

Look for Jenny Holzer and Philip Johnson to emerge as heroes, if there are any.

"Rembrandt and His School": Revelations at the Frick

2011-02-16T16:27:00.009-05:00

Rembrandt's art is always a revelation, and the works in "Rembrandt and His School," which opened yesterday and features some great drawings and prints in addition to up-close views of his paintings, are no exception.

In sheer numbers, this is a major exhibit. It showcases more than 60 works on paper -- 29 by Rembrandt (including an amazing series of self-portraits, one of which is shown right) and the rest by artists in his circle -- from the Fondation Custodia in Paris, which houses the collection of Dutch art historian Frederik Johannes Lugt.

Ten rarely displayed prints are up from the Frick's own collection. The show also offers, at long last, straight-on views of five paintings, including the newly cleaned "Self-Portrait" (top), all of which came into the Frick as Rembrandts but two of which are now attributed to others. You can finally stick your nose right up to "The Polish Rider," which for decades has been hung way too high to see.

Another rarity: Rembrandt's largest drawing, a landscape on loan from the Met that's displayed alongside a copy by one of his students.

So there's a lot to look at, even in the Rembrandt drawings alone, which contain many of his worlds. They span his career from the 1630s to the late 1650s (Rembrandt died in 1669, at 63). In subject matter, they include landscapes, domestic life, religious narrative, and copies of work by other artists. In style, they range from quick sketches to highly finished drawings.

And there's a lot to learn -- how economically he could express action and create narrative ("Elijah with the Angel," above); how he built up a work in light and dark ("Interior with Saskia in Bed," right); how in landscape he recorded topography while imbuing it with unified emotion.

Always his strokes seem unstudied, even when he corrects himself, tempting us to believe that there's no distance between line and feeling. Rembrandt, the magician.

Then there are the loaned prints, which include eight self-portraits from the 1630s through 1648 (at right is the latest). Rembrandt as courtier, as artist, as husband, by turns grimacing, somber, aggressive. Seeing seven of them arrayed one next to the other (the eighth greets us at the beginning of the exhibition) -- it's nothing short of astonishing.

Works by artists in Rembrandt's circle are displayed in the next room. Many of them were fine artists in their own right, including his students Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (his "Youth Smoking" is at left), and Govert Flinck, and his admirers such as Philips Koninck. The show here has the benefit of recent Rembrandt scholarship -- the works were selected by Peter Schatborn, a Rijksmuseum veteran, who catalogued them and reattributed some of the works on view -- but Rembrandt/not Rembrandt is a still a work in progress.

The Frick prints, exhibited separately, show Rembrandt as a complete master of portraiture, religious scenes, and landscape. He used light and shade for almost incomparable dramatic effect but with great variety. His inventiveness seems endless. To look at the Crucifixion where detail is obliterated by light and then look at a landscape where light sets off detail -- well, it's sort of like falling in love all over again. It's unbelievable that it can happen, but it does.

The Frick's Rembrandt paintings are ordinarily exhibited in a sort of Great Hall of Fame, interspersed among Turners, a Poussin, and other works without regard to art historical categories, and they hang high to clear the wainscoting. For this show they are exhibited together in an intimate, semi-circular space so that it's possible to take them in from one spot, and you view them pretty much straight on.

It's a magnificent sight. To the left, a masterful portrait of fur trader Nicolaes Ruts from 1631 (right), when Rembrandt was in his twenties, with detailed attention to the appearance of things -- satin, fur, skin. In the center, Rembrandt's late self-portrait (top) done up in rich 16th-century costume, with the suggestive brushstroke. To the right "The Polish Rider" (below), that odd case in Rembrandt's oeuvre -- a latish work with too much detail -- if it's indeed by him. The label acknowledges that some think the painting was "brought rapidly to completion by Rembrandt -- or another artist." No matter. Whoever did it, it's splendid.

"Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections," The Frick Collection, 5th Avenue and 70th Street. Through May 15.

Images: From the Frick website.

Museum of Biblical Art's "Passion in Venice": Great Art in Curatorial Purgatory

2011-02-14T14:30:00.011-05:00

A show that includes a disturbing Crivelli (above), a knockout Durer print (below right), and a powerful yet muted Veronese (below left) can't go all wrong. "Passion in Venice," which opened Friday at the American Bible Society's Broadway campus, skirts the amateurish, but what it lacks in coherence, it more than makes up for in the art.

A bit of background: "Passion in Venice" examines representations of the Man of Sorrows, an image concept that depicts Christ, wounds visible, after the Crucifixion. It originated in Byzantine art and appeared in Italy sometime after the Fourth Crusade went wrong with the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The image lacks a narrative basis, and initially depicted a half-length Christ at the sepulcher. In the West it developed both as a devotional image, showing instruments of the Passion, for example, or Christ accompanied by angels, and as a liturgical image, emphasizing Christ's wounds in reference to the Eucharist. It also underwent some particularly Western iconographic changes, such as incorporating St. Gregory's vision of Christ or St. Francis' identification with Christ.

Venice apparently had a special affection for the image, giving it a prominent place in altarpieces and incorporating it into civic imagery, which brings us to this show.

It's sort of a mess. With French, German, Spanish, Flemish, and Bohemian works interspersed, in addition to Italian works from places artistically distinct from Venice -- such as Florence and Naples -- the Venice part of "Passion in Venice" gets lost, and it's not really replaced by a consistent curatorial concept.

There's a grab bag aspect, too, to the inclusion of a video by Bill Viola, a printed score of Handel's "Messiah," and works that don't depict the Man of Sorrows at all, such as this Flemish "Face of Christ" (right).

Some of the labeling is just preachy. If MoBIA wants to be taken seriously as a museum rather than as an adjunct of the American Bible Society, it's got to dump explanations about "universal culpability" and a "universal everyman."

More professional display for the art would be nice, too -- Books of Hours, for example, are placed too far back in their cases to be seen -- as would a bit more curatorial rigor in making sense of why, for example, we're looking at a narrative event like the Lamentation (Alessandro Turchi's is at left).

But see "Passion in Venice" to see the art, which has been loaned from major institutions like the National Gallery of London, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and, here in New York, the Met and the Morgan. Although the show disappoints, the art doesn't.

"Passion in Venice: Crivelli to Tintoretto and Veronese," Museum of Biblical Art, Broadway and 61st Street. Through June 12.

"Cezanne's Card Players": Small Show, Big Punch

2011-02-09T06:56:00.001-05:00

When seen at London's Courtauld Gallery, this tightly focused show, which opens today at the Met, was a small one. Now the portion devoted to Cezanne is even smaller, because two portraits didn't make the trip across the pond.

The Met's version includes three of Cezanne's five "Card Players" -- an ambitious series that occupied him from about 1891 to 1896 -- twelve preparatory drawings and oil studies for the series, and five portraits thought to be of agricultural workers on his estate, some of whom also posed for the "Card Players."

That's it, twenty works. But it's enough.

The Met has set a visual trap that's spot-on. Before you even get to a single Cezanne, you're in a room where, from the depths of its collection, the Met has pulled out a couple of centuries' worth of prints and paintings of card players and smokers.

These works, some marvelous in themselves, show the rich traditions that Cezanne, a devoted student of the Louvre when he lived in Paris, was surely aware of. There's a print after Caravaggio's "Cardsharps," rollicking tavern scenes by Dutch and Flemish artists (Adriaen Brouwer's of around 1636 is above), caricatures by Daumier, and a couple of etchings by Manet -- a hint of the world we are about to enter.

Immediately before entering the room with the "Card Players," there hangs a small costume piece by Ernest Meissonier (left), one of the most successful French artists of his time. He died right around the time Cezanne began the "Card Players," but they may as well have been separated by centuries.

By turns moralizing, anecdotal, amusing, these works are everything that Cezanne was not, and set a framework for seeing his modernism afresh.

His "Card Players," genre scenes atypical for him, are considered major works -- the Musee d'Orsay version was the first Cezanne to enter the Louvre, in 1910, three years after his death -- and the gathering together of three of them, along with the preparatory works, gives the most comprehensive account to date of their construction. It appears that Cezanne posed each figure individually in the studio, rather than posing the figures together around a table, and then used the individual studies to make up the composition in the final works.

This theory is wonderfully consistent with the artifice in the finished compositions -- the tables much too small, the proportions of the figures totally out of whack, drapery that makes no sense except pictorially.

In an ironic twist, the examination of the work for this show has completely reversed the accepted chronology. It had been thought that the more highly finished paintings in the Met (immediately above) and the Musee d'Orsay were the last, but now these are seen as the first.

Ordinarily, this might not matter except as an art historical curiosity. But here it means that Cezanne's final thoughts on this subject are in the two "Card Players" that couldn't be included -- one is at the Barnes Foundation, which doesn't lend, and the other's in a private collection -- and that the three paintings that are at the Met are themselves studies for these much larger works, teasingly present as life-size black-and-white photos. If you aren't overwhelmed by the three modest-sized paintings you do see -- the largest is little more than two feet wide, the Barnes' is six feet -- this could be why.

It's the portraits that really pack a wallop. (The Courtauld's "Man with a Pipe" is above. The painting at the left is in a private collection.) The third room contains five, and they're wonderful -- weighty, self-possessed, serious, both dignified and awkward, above all present. The layers of short strokes that build up the composition in so many of Cezanne's works here find an analog in the layers of clothing -- the jacket over the vest over the shirt, collars within collars, each layer given a separate bulkiness. Here, too, are the emotional distance, the genius of leaving patches of canvas free of color altogether, the bold strokes of the brush.

"Cezanne's Card Players," Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5th Avenue and 82nd Street. Through May 8.

Images: Meissonier and bottom two portraits, Laura Gilbert. All others courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Federal Appeals Court Nixes Case by Heirs of Art Dealer Killed at Auschwitz, Citing No Jurisdiction Over Claim Against Germany

2011-02-05T19:23:00.035-05:00

The U.S. heirs of Jewish art dealer Walter Westfeld, led by his 84-year-old nephew, lost their bid to have Germany compensate them for art seized by the Nazis and sold at compulsory auction in 1939.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's dismissal of their claim for lack of jurisdiction. Plaintiffs didn't take the path that has succeeded for some victims of Nazi confiscation, who seek the restitution of seized artworks. Instead, they sought monetary damages, and that effort failed.

One of the plaintiffs' Tennessee lawyers -- the nephew, Fred Westfield (right), lives in Tennessee, is a retired Vanderbilt University professor, and himself fled Germany in 1939 as part of Britain's Kindertransport -- stated that plaintiffs are weighing their options. Although counsel didn't specify what those options might be, they could include a request for a rehearing by the entire 6th Circuit or an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Westfeld and His Art

For Germany, the victory on a jurisdictional issue avoids a trial on grim Holocaust facts. When reached by this reporter, counsel for the German government declined to comment.

For plaintiffs, who sought millions of dollars, the loss is huge. Westfeld's art holdings were substantial -- the 1939 auction catalogue lists some 500 paintings and tapestries, and it's alleged that aside from the catalogue listings Westfeld owned works by El Greco, van Dyck, and Rubens and that these works were also seized.

According to the plaintiffs, Westfeld had intended to bring the artworks to Nashville, where his brother lived, and sell them in the U.S. for his family's benefit.

Westfeld was arrested by the Nazis in 1938 and he was killed at Auschwitz, probably in 1943.

Sovereign Immunity

When the suit was filed in 2008, a spokesman for the German finance ministry told the Bloomberg News agency that "the big question here is sovereign immunity," and that proved to be the heirs' undoing. The 6th Circuit held that under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Germany was indeed immune from suit.

Under the FSIA, foreign nations can't be sued here unless the claim comes within a specific statutory exception to that Act. The plaintiffs failed to persuade the Court that their claim did.

In the ordinary case -- if any Nazi art seizure case can be called ordinary -- plaintiffs seek restitution of the confiscated artwork and bring suit under the "expropriation" exception to the FSIA, which permits jurisdiction where property is taken in violation of international law. But in these cases artworks are readily identified and located.

Here the plaintiffs were not seeking the return of any specific artworks but, rather, the value of the artworks. They argued that the Court had jurisdiction under the FSIA's "commercial activity" exception. That exception requires, first, that an act be committed outside the U.S. that is "in connection with a commercial activity of the state elsewhere" and, second, that "that act causes a direct effect in the United States."

The Court Decision

The 6th Circuit determined that even if the seizure and auction of Westfeld's art was "commercial activity" of a foreign state -- it declined to decide that issue -- that action did not cause a "direct effect" in the U.S. The Court found that though "the seizure undoubtedly prevented Westfeld from disposing of his collection," which "ultimately" affected his family in Nashville, the "direct effects" were in Germany, where Westfeld was. Germany itself had no obligation to do anything in the U.S. and any effects felt here were not an "immediate consequence."

"Germany's actions did not extend beyond its borders. . . . As appalling as the Nazis' actions were, the reverberations felt from them in Nashville were derivative of Germany's seizure and not direct effects."

Attorney Howard Spiegler of New York art-law powerhouse Herrick, Feinstein, told this reporter yesterday that the "commercial activities" exception is a "difficult place to hang your hat" in these cases.

He explained that that specific exception is most often invoked by U.S. companies suing a foreign government for breach of contract, not for Nazi property seizures. Spiegler also said that the 6th Circuit decision was "consistent" with other cases.

So why did Westfeld's heirs seek damages under this difficult exception and not the restitution of artworks under the expropriation exception, which plaintiffs' counsel when reached by phone yesterday acknowledged was the usual path?*

Complications

Plaintiffs' lawyers were understandably mum on the decision yesterday. Two of the three attorneys declined to return telephone messages. I asked the one lawyer who was willing to speak, but not for quoting, why plaintiffs didn't seek expropriation jurisdiction, and was told that it wasn't appropriate for the specifics of this case. That lawyer did tell me, though, that of the 500 some artworks Westfeld owned, only a handful had been located.

Perhaps that factored into their strategy, although I could not secure an answer.

"It would be really difficult to locate all the works of art, which may be scattered around the world," Bloomberg quoted a lawyer for the heirs as saying in 2008.

One of those handful that has been located (the double portrait by 17th-century Dutch artist Eglon van der Neer, shown above) is in the U.S., in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which helped Westfeld's nephew obtain a frayed copy of the 1939 auction catalogue.

Meanwhile, a German court recognized another heir. Westfeld had no children and never married but, as Bloomberg reported in 2008, he made a will naming Emilie Scheulen his heir, and in 1956 a Dusseldorf court declared her Westfeld's wife and heir. Apparently, in the 1950s the German government compensated her for the loss of Westfeld's art. Her heirs are now seeking restitution of specific paintings.

For their part, plaintiffs' papers refer to Scheulen as Westfeld's housekeeper, and Tennessee's probate court has declared the Nashville relatives his sole heirs.

* Proving jurisdiction under the expropriation exception is no cakewalk, either. Maria Altmann's case to recover her aunt's Klimt paintings from Austria went all the way up to the Supreme Court on a jurisdictional question.

Images: Fred Westfield photo from Tennessee Holocaust Commission website; Van der Neer painting from Boston Museum of Fine Arts website.

"Project Europa": Francis Alys, Jens Haaning, and Delusions of Political Art at Columbia

2011-01-24T14:41:00.003-05:00

Yes, art can shoot an arrow through the heart of the bourgeois West. And yes, art can reveal meaning unmediated by the typical, almost requisite measure of distrust. And most definitely, a ham-handed approach to political themes will stink out a show.

What's worthwhile in the just-opened "Project Europa" is that Jens Haaning does the first and Francis Alys does the second.

As for the rest -- well, this show, with 19 artists looking at Europe after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, proves once again that politics and art don't sit well together. But it's worth the trip to Columbia University's Wallach Art Gallery just to see the Haaning and Alys.

Haaning is represented by 10 photos of first-generation male immigrants in Denmark who are identified by Muslim-sounding first names (Aurangzeab above and Murat left). They're shown full-length, seated or standing, matter-of-factly posing for the camera but presented in the manner of fashion magazine shots. The styling information about their clothing and jewelry, with price in Danish kroner, is printed in the corners: "Socks by Adidas 79DKK at Sport Master. Underwear by L.O.G.G. 59 DKK at H&M," and so on.

It's totally disjunctive to see "The Other" identified by Western brand-name clothing and packaged like a fashion spread. A send-up of the trappings of power and style and at the same time a democratic equalizer.

Alys's "Nightwatch" is a video of a fox let loose one night in London's National Portrait Gallery and filmed by its surveillance cameras. Of course it's about government surveillance set amid a history of British power, but what struck me flat out was how, through the eyes of a disinterested camera, I felt such sympathy for that fox -- by turns bewildered, wandering, trotting, lost, looking for a place to sleep.

Maybe only in watching an animal can we tolerate emotions in contemporary art that might otherwise be considered too hopelessly naive to be taken even half-seriously.

The premise of "Project Europa" is that Europe has changed, and who could argue with that? The end of Communist Eastern Europe is huge.

But this show is impossibly inept. Not because it's overcurated, which any show of this ambition is apt to be, with loads of wall text and overbroad categories. And not because of its simplistic history -- implying that terrorism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance are new in Europe.

The show fails because most of the art is reactionary. As so often with art that skirts the political, there's a fetish for realism, as if that's the only medium for truth-telling.

Some of the work is pseudo-journalism with a frame, like the double channel video of war footage shot in Yugoslavia by Reuters and ITN but with an artist's name attached. Some is so literal as to be tedious -- overcrowded living conditions shown by painting crowded rectangles.

Some is just tired, as if anything new could be learned from a staged video of a car blown up with accelerant or from the same-old, same-old graffiti of Dan Perjovschi, the Romanian artist who was a dissident under Communism and whose site-specific work in the hallway before you enter the gallery proper is perhaps the greatest disappointment of this show.

Tacita Dean, on her way to the Venice Biennale, has six smallish, lackluster photos of the partially stripped East German parliament building. What I found most engaging here was that the photos were loaned by Baker Botts, the law firm of James Baker III, former Secretary of State to the first President Bush and still a big dog on the national scene. Now that's politics meeting art.

"Project Europa: Imagining the (Im)Possible," Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, Broadway and 116th Street. Through March 26.

Images: Second and third photos by Laura Gilbert. Others from Resnicow Schroeder.

Sotheby's Old Masters Sale: A Preview

2011-01-21T12:32:00.001-05:00

Next week's Old Masters sale in New York includes a Titian, a Rubens, and an unusual portrait of a man with a Hebrew tablet proclaiming the Torah. Here are some highlights to tickle your checkbook:

Until brief appearances this fall on a Sotheby's shopping tour, Titian's Sacra Conversazione, offered by a private collector, hadn't been publicly seen since 1978 and not seen in the U.S. since 1957 -- ironically, at the Cleveland Museum, which is dumping 32 Old Masters at this very sale.

Titian could do it all -- portraits, altarpieces, mythologies -- and his art was so highly valued in his lifetime that he kept kings waiting for his work. But be forewarned: He had a big workshop, and his hand here may be confined to the Madonna and Child.

Estimate: $15 to $20 million, the highest in the sale. Yet the last high for a Titian was $70 million in a 2004 private sale for a portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos paid by the Getty, which, though it may still be a buyer, is selling eight works here. Why's that?

Lucas Cranach the Younger's Portrait of a Lady is, judging from the catalogue photo, totally winning in character and costume, with a green and orange velvet dress and a black hat embroidered with pearls. It sold in 2007, at the height of the art market, for $3.6 million and is estimated to bring $3 to $4 million now, roughly the same price. This painting could prove an interesting price marker.

Very little is known about the Dutch painter Willem van der Vliet, but A Scholar in His Study, of 1627, sure makes me want to know more. Judging from the photo, this woman is planted like a column, and how sophisticated and sensual are the white blouse against yellow skirt against flesh. The meaning of this enigmatic painting of figures with masks has sparked a lot of theories; the Met's Walter Liedtke suggests that it's a warning against fraud. Estimate: $1.2 to $1.8 million.

Rubens' Martyrdom of St. Paul is one of his oil sketches, which rarely fail to impress for the artist's absolute mastery of his medium and his bravura efficiency in composition, color, and detail. It's a modello done near the end of Rubens' life (he died in 1640) for an altarpiece destroyed in 1695 when France invaded Brussels. Though small, only 15 x 9 inches, it should pack a big punch. Estimate: $1.5 to $2 million.

If you liked the Jan Gossart show that just closed at the Met, consider Adam and Eve by the Netherlandish Mannerist Joachim Wtewael of around 1610-15. In this moment of temptation, both clasp the apple. The work is oil on copper, which gives color a richness not possible with canvas or panel. The catalogue gives no exhibition history, states that the work has been in a private collection for the 20th century, and describes it as "previously unknown." Estimate: $800,000 to $1.2 million.

Perfect for stimulating after-dinner conversation in your living room, or anywhere, could be this work attributed to Antonio Campi. I mean, how many 16th-century portraits can you count where the sitter points to Hebrew words on a tablet? In the whole world, there may be one, and it's here. The words read "Torat Moshe Emet," meaning "the Torah of Moses is the truth." Estimate: $150,000 to $200,000.

Also up for grabs: a French papier-mache diorama and a door-knocker in the shape of a frog, the kind of things you might find at a flea market. Sadly, too, there are remains from the Fresno Museum of Art, which shuttered its doors during the current collapse of the economy. Cleveland, take note.

Sotheby's, York Avenue and 71st Street. Exhibition: January 22 through 26. Sale: January 27 and 28.

Cleveland Purges More Than 10% of Its Old Masters Paintings in Sell-Off at Sotheby's

2011-01-16T21:32:00.003-05:00

In what's being referred to as the "largest sell-off from its collections in more than half a century," the Cleveland Museum of Art is purging itself of 32 of its Old Masters paintings. They'll be on sale (including the landscape by 17th-century Dutch artist Philips Wouwermans, below) at Sotheby's January 27 and 28.

The thing is, Cleveland's Old Masters collection is none too large to begin with -- just something over 200 works. That means that its Old Masters paintings will be reduced by more than 10%. And Cleveland is pruning its holdings when it's in the middle of a renovation that will expand its gallery space by 30 percent.

The museum insisted to the Cleveland Plain Dealer that it's not about the money. Instead, it's spinning the sale as one about quality, pointing to two works acquired as Tiepolos being no longer accepted as autograph and a Bernardo Strozzi being so overcleaned as to be "a mere shadow of its former self."

Still, it admits that "the money is certainly helpful."

Indeed. According to its most recent annual report, its investments and charitable perpetual trusts have declined precipitously, from $821 million in June 2007 to $560 million in June 2009. In 2009, the museum eliminated 41 of its 300 staff positions and instituted rolling salary cutbacks.

Then there's the massive renovation project, begun in 2005 and not scheduled to be completed until 2016. It's projected to cost $350 million, with a third of that yet to be raised. "The renovation and expansion of the museum stands to play a leadership role in shaping the region's quality of life and economic rebirth," the website brags.

An economic rebirth in Cleveland, one of the country's most depressed areas in the chronically depressed state of Ohio? Dream on.

Build a museum, get rid of the art.

Art Authentication, a Vice Presidential Sideline?

2011-01-13T11:09:00.002-05:00

In the junkyard auction of "urban art" at Bonhams Tuesday, a Shepard Fairey "Change" poster for the Obama campaign signed by the artist sold for 4,560 pounds. Without the buyer's premium, that would be a little over $6,000. A nice price for a 5,000-copy print.

Except this one had a letter of authentication from Vice President Joe Biden's office. A cool sideline, vouching for autographed copies of the boss' campaign posters.

As the Bonham's catalogue noted, "This lot is accompanied by a letter from the Office of the Vice President Elect confirming that the work is from a signed edition of 200."

That office may not be wholly credible when it comes to art authentication. The catalogue also states that "this print is believed to be one of only 200 which were handsigned by the artist and given to members of Obama's campaign team." (Emphasis added.)

So how many posters were thus "authenticated"? Shortly after the Bonham's sale, a "Change" poster went up on eBay, this one also claiming to have a letter from the Office of the Vice President Elect. Asking price: $4,999.

It's tempting to speculate why the "Change" posters are being dumped -- another, number 153, was up for grabs at Swann's in November. Change we can no longer believe in? Maybe failed economic policies have required some poor souls to cash in for a few thou.

Image: From Bonhams' website.

Leonardo's Ghost

2011-01-05T13:19:00.006-05:00

If you haven't gotten any lately and you want to set your heart aflutter, go to the Met, walk up the grand staircase, hang a left into the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. gallery, walk to where the corridor narrows, and plant yourself in front of this photograph taken by Leon Gerard around 1857 (click to enlarge):

It's an image, an albumen silver print, of Leonardo's preparatory drawing of Christ for "The Last Supper." That is, it's what Leonardo's drawing (then and now in the Brera Museum in Milan) looked like a century-and-a-half ago.

At first glance you think, "What a wreck!" The paper is badly abraded and appears buckled, the contours of the drawing reinforced by other hands. But still, Leonardo's magic shines through, a testament, captured by a photograph, to what was. It's breath-taking (unlike the drawing in its present state, which, judging from reproductions, is ghastly).

Turn to the right and you'll see a deep-gray, light-protective curtain hanging on the wall. Lift the curtain and take in the lush detail of this dagguerotype taken by William Langenheim, one of Philadelphia's top dagguerotypists in the 1840s and 50s.

In the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. gallery itself are several just-opened mini-shows selected from the Met's vast collection of 15,000 drawings and 1.5 million prints.

A group of German landscapes is overwhelmed by a large, wondrous sepia landscape by the great romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (above) -- by large, I'd guess something like 2 feet by more than 3 feet. It's a small figure contemplating a vast nature, and shows Friedrich finding his trademark theme already in 1805-6, early in his career.

There are more than a dozen artist portraits and self-portraits. Outstanding among them -- no surprise here -- is a Rembrandt 1639 etching in which the artist is done up like a courtier (left).

But there's also this unexpected Matisse intaglio (right) where light seems to emanate from the artist's hands, and a Cezanne of 1880 with wonderful, assertive marks.

Jaw-droppers include Seurat's portrait of his artist-friend Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean (below left), a large Conte crayon drawing that was his first exhibited work, and a miniature by the Netherlandish artist Simon Benig (below right), tempera and gold leaf on parchment from 1558.

In how many ways can women be portrayed as threatening or be celebrated, objectified, or simply beside the point? The Met here gives us eight, in another mini-show, and it's an impressive list: by Degas, Gauguin, Munch, Klimt, Schiele, Otto Dix, de Kooning, and Sigmar Polke. The Dix 1920 "Syphilitic" (below) whose brain is being devoured by women who gave him the disease, next to the anger in the de Kooning, next to the dehumanized sex objects in the Polke -- it's not easy to take.

After your tour, sit down, take a breath, repeat. On your second go-through notice the lovely Maarten van Heemskerck from the 1530s of antique sculptures in Rome that shows this Netherlandish artist at his best, with strong fluid lines and unusual vantage points.

Photos: Gerard's Leonardo, Friedrich, Matisse, and Dix by Laura Gilbert. All other images are from the Met's website.

Cezanne Survives the 'Death of Modernism!' and Other Hot Upcoming Shows

2011-01-02T13:01:00.020-05:00

A preview of the shows that should generate heat during the cold winter months in New York.

Cezanne's Card Players, opening February 9, Metropolitan Museum

Small Show Has Huge Impact. That's the word from London, where "Cezanne's Card Players" is currently on view at the Courtauld Institute. It's been receiving ecstatic reviews, with one powerhouse in 19th-century studies saying it is "worth travelling the earth" to see Cezanne's still "astonishing" portraits hung side by side. The exhibition brings together for the first time three of the artist's five "Card Players," including the Met's (the Courtauld's is shown here), and related paintings, oil studies, and drawings.

Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century, opening April 5, Metropolitan Museum

Despite its unfortunate title, this show, organized around a theme rife with contemplation and longing, promises some great stuff -- i.e., works by Caspar David Friedrich and Adolf Menzel, two 19th-century painters inadequately represented in New York.

Menzel in particular deserves to be better known, and I hope this show will prove it. His concerns with capturing modern life and the effects of light and atmosphere arguably put him in the same camp as the Impressionists -- he lived from 1815 to 1905, so he was roughly their contemporary -- but he was very, very German, and the collections here are very, very French.

(Above, a sepia drawing by Friedrich in the collection of Vienna's Belvedere.)

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, opening April 13, Metropolitan Museum

The first retrospective of Serra's drawings, organized with SFMOMA and the Menil Collection, sounds like a whopper. Serra has worked in unusual media, including melted paintstick, and on a monumental scale -- floor to ceiling and as wide as 20 feet -- making this the type of exhibition where reproductions can never suffice. Some 40 years of work will be on view, including responses to the removal of his sculpture "Tilted Arc" (above) from Federal Plaza, sketchbooks, and films.

Picasso: Guitars 1912-14 (sculpture and other media), opening February 13, MoMA

Picasso, one of the few artists in all of Western art who can accurately be described as protean. MoMA will be presenting a small window on his work, just two years, but during that time he made sculpture as it had never been seen before. The bookends to this exhibition are a paper guitar of 1912 and a 1914 sheet metal guitar. The show will include 70 works from more than 30 public and private collections.

Rembrandt and His School: Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings, opening February 15, Frick Collection

The Frick is doggedly hanging on to its attribution of "The Polish Rider" (right) to Rembrandt in its display of five paintings from its collection. The new meat should be downstairs in the tiny special exhibition space, where it will be showing 66 works on paper and offering an opportunity to compare works attributed to Rembrandt with those attributed to his circle.

Glenn Ligon: America, opening March 10, Whitney Museum of American Art

This midcareer retrospective will look at 25 years of Ligon's art with approximately 100 works -- paintings, prints, photos, drawings, video, sculptural installations, and neon reliefs. The monograph accompanying the show sounds equally ambitious: as described by the Whitney, it will have "an essay by curator Scott Rothkopf considering the artist's entire career, a text exploring the themes of literature and democracy in Ligon's art by the distinguished curator and critic Okwui Enwezor, and contributions by Columbia University professor Saidiya Hartman, New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als, LACMA curator Franklin Sirmans, and LA MOCA curator Bennett Simpson." The show travels to the LA County Museum in the fall.

Will Ryman, The Roses, on display on Park Avenue's medians beginning January 25

For those who can't wait till spring, the Park Avenue medians from 57th to 67th Streets will display the sculptor's roses, some as high as 25 feet. (The rendering here is from the New York City Parks and Recreation Department's newsletter, "The Daily Plant.")

Gone Ice Fishing

2010-12-24T15:41:00.000-05:00

Posting will resume January 2011.

"Singular Visions": A Sometimes Magic Act at the Whitney

2010-12-19T19:05:00.000-05:00

If an artwork is buck-naked, alone in an otherwise empty room, divorced from visual context, will boredom or a love match be the result?

That's the challenge set by the just-opened "Singular Visions." The Whitney has set aside its entire fifth floor to show just 12 works from its collection, each in its own space, to permit, in the museum's words, "intimate and compelling encounters with a single work."

Intimate, yes. Compelling, sometimes. But when it works, it works very well.

With AA Bronson's "Felix, June 5, 1994" (above), the encounter is almost literally striking. Bronson's portrait of the AIDS-wasted Felix Partz a few hours after his death has been all over the internet -- this is the work the artist has requested be taken down from "Hide/Seek" at the National Portrait Gallery to protest the removal of David Wojnarowicz's video from that show. ("Felix" is an edition of three; the Whitney has an artist proof.) But the little thumbnail on the screen does nothing to prepare you for the experience of the actual artwork.

For one thing, it's huge, 7 by 14 feet, big as a billboard. For another, the surface is in fact treated like a billboard. The pixels are distinct, all blown up, flattening everything into pattern in a work already filled with patterns -- everything, that is, except the hands and face, which appear so compellingly, impossibly, alive. The title of the work appears on the lower right, like a date stamp, fixing this moment into history.

"Felix" is in a room so small that it's impossible to back up far enough to make the pixels resolve or to take in the work as a whole. It's a visual assault, and it's in accord with the artist's intent. As the museum quotes the artist: "I tend to exhibit it in quite small spaces so it completely fills your range of vision. . . . It totally takes over your senses and nothing else exists."

The Whitney performs magic with other of its artists as well. Georgia O'Keeffe's dreamy "Ladder to the Moon" (right) is in a jewel-box-like corner, bathed in subtle blue light. Ree Morton's exuberant "Signs of Love" is spread out over two brightly lit walls.

There's a lot of gloom and mortality in the show. Morton dead at 40. Eva Hesse, represented by a spiderwebby latex rope sculpture found hanging in her studio after her death, age 34. Paul Chang's digital animation with images of bodies falling from the sky, a post-9/11 meditation. Ed Kienholz's dead old crone in "The Wait," surrounded by useless relics.

Sometimes, though, the art doesn't sufficiently animate the space it's allotted, for even a second. Tom Wesselman's "Still Life Number36" just dies here. Instantly perceptible. Maybe there's an ideal vantage point for viewing Gary Simmons' boxing ring, but this isn't it.

(I would have liked to include more images, including details of "Felix," but the Whitney, unlike the Met, does not permit photography of works in its permanent collection, and the press office has so far been uncooperative. Those images that the museum has provided to the press are lousy; they dishonor the art.)

"Singular Visions," Whitney Museum of American Art, Madison Ave. at 75th Street. The installation will remain on view for a year, with periodic substitutions.

Top image, Copyright 1999 AA Bronson.

Painting 2010: It's Alive

2010-12-12T09:03:00.000-05:00

Anyone who hopes or fears that painting is dead would do well to visit "Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting" at the School of Visual Arts Gallery.

Yes, the title is murky -- forget it. Yes, the catalogue is turgid -- don't read it. Yes, the paintings are well worth seeing -- just go and look.

It's a strong show, with works by some artists affiliated with New York's top galleries -- among others, Lisa Yuskavage from David Zwirner, Josephine Halvorson from Sikkema Jenkins, Inka Essenhigh from 303. One of the treats of the show is seeing these painters under the same roof. Other artists are less well known, perhaps, but highly accomplished. This is good stuff, and includes both figurative and abstract art.

Halvorson is the real standout. Her work here (see the two works above) is lush, though it depicts the most simple and sometimes time-worn objects -- photo albums, wood boards, a cake pan. Her palette, mostly browns and grays, is quite rich. This is painting at its intimate best, tactile and personal. If anyone could resurrect still-life as a contemporary genre, it would be her.

Perhaps because the show was put together by an art historian, Isabel Taube, and a philosopher, Tom Huhn, the selections seem to draw on art history in the best sense, not as a clever quote but as traditions absorbed to strengthen the present. Alexi Worth's "Smoker and Mirror" (left), for example, seems to draw on Magritte, Essenhigh's whacky fantasies (below) on art nouveau, Halvorson on Chardin and Johns. Most seem to jump past Pop and consumerism to seek out a seriousness of purpose.

Of the 19 artists, who are represented by 50-some paintings, the majority are women. The show makes no note of this. Hallelujah, on both counts.

"Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting," School of Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26th St., 15th Floor. Through December 22.

Images, from top: Josephine Halvorson, "Cake Pan," "Two Primed Boards," courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; Alexi Worth, "Smoker and Mirror," courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York; Inka Essenhigh, "Green Goddess I," courtesy 303 Gallery, New York; Joe Fyfe, "Dargah," courtesy James Graham & Sons, New York.

Poussin's "Ordination" Fails to Sell: No Export Ban Needed in London

2010-12-07T17:31:00.006-05:00

Nicolas Poussin's "Ordination," one of his celebrated series of "Seven Sacraments," failed to sell tonight at Christie's in London. It was offered by the Duke of Rutland, whose ancestors had bought it in 1785 from the descendants of its original owner, Cassiano del Pozzo, who had commissioned it from the artist in the 1630s.

This can only be a major disappointment for Christie's. Way back in September it had announced the sale at an estimated 15 to 20 million pounds ($23.6 to $31.5 million). It produced a video about the work and took the painting to France on a get-to-know-you tour. The catalogue entry ran for pages and pages.

Bidding tonight began at 9 million pounds. The high bid was 13.5 million ($21.2 million) -- not enough.

Breathing a sigh of relief must be the National Gallery in London, where the painting had been on loan with four of its seven siblings (one perished in a fire in the 19th century, and the series' "Baptism" was sold in the 1930s to department store magnate Samuel H. Kress, who donated it to Washington's National Gallery). Had the painting sold, it was almost certain that the government would have imposed a temporary export ban to give the museum time to try to raise funds to buy it. This would have been extremely difficult given the National Gallery's commitment to raise millions of pounds to keep other works from leaving the country.

Ironically, the "Sacraments" had been under an export ban -- from Rome -- more than two centuries ago. When Robert Walpole (d. 1745) had tried to buy them, then-Pope Benedict XIV refused to issue an export license. A dealer finally succeeded in obtaining them for the ancestor of the current owner, but only by having copies of the series painted and then smuggling the originals out.

Bank of America, Overseas Art Czar

2010-12-06T15:11:00.014-05:00

Last week it became all that much clearer how enormous a debt Bank of America owes U.S. taxpayers. Not only was it bailed out with taxpayer money to the tune of $45 billion in 2008 -- we knew that before. But the newly released documents from the Federal Reserve show that during the worst of the financial crisis and through April 2009 BofA and its then-new acquisition Merrill Lynch took indirect taxpayer subsidies of more than $2 trillion in the form of short-term low-interest loans. It has not yet paid them all back.

At the same time, BofA has been awfully quiet in this country -- nondisclosure apparently as much of its procedure in this area as it is in its mortgage frauds -- about its funding of big, expensive-sounding projects overseas. As just one example, it's sponsoring an entire museum in Italy.

That's right. Although BofA didn't issue a press release in the U.S. that I could find, the Italian press has been busy reporting that the bank is the sponsor, with Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica, of the Museo del Novecento in Milan. It's a new museum for Italian 20th-century art, and it's opening this week.

BofA is also sponsoring two blockbuster shows in Europe this spring.

On March 3, the BofA-funded "Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World" is opening at the British Museum. It will showcase more than 200 objects from the National Museum of Afghanistan, the earliest dating from around 2000 B.C. It promises to bring in lots of visitors, both because of its dramatic story -- the artifacts had been feared destroyed after the Soviet invasion in 1978 and remained hidden until 2004 -- and because it includes lots of gold (a gold crown is at right). According to British Museum curator John Simpson, "They are some of the world's most beautiful and priceless objects."

On April 5, "Manet: The Man Who Invented Modernism," also sponsored by BofA, opens at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. It, too, is sure to be thronged. According to the museum's website (illustrated with the Manet painting below), it is the first exhibit devoted to Manet in France since 1983, i.e. the first in a generation, and it will include a reconstruction of his exhibition "La Vie moderne," organized in March 1880 at the start of Paris's annual Salon.

BofA recently announced -- in a press release issued from London -- its most recent grantees for its overseas art conservation program. It'll be giving money to institutions in Russia, Lebanon, South Africa, Ireland. Westminster Abbey will even get some refurbishing before the royal wedding.

BofA's contempt for U.S. taxpayers is stunning. It's not as though the arts here couldn't use some help. Some of the finest museums in the country have had to lay off staff because of the financial cataclysm brought on by BofA, Merrill, and its mortgage arm Countrywide: The Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Guggenheim.

The Metropolitan Museum, little more than a stone's throw from BofA's shiny new New York headquarters building, laid off 14 percent of its staff in 2009. The Fresno Metropolitan Museum in the bank's home state of California died in January.