Taking Stock at Year-End: The Google Search

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. 

Image of Koons loan and text Copyright 2011-2012 Laura Gilbert

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

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.

 Text and photos Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

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

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.

Top two images Copyright Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.  Bottom images and text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert.