The Burlington Magazine, March 2013
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 155 (March 2013)
E D I T O R I A L
• “Mind Your Language,” p. 151. The incorrect and exaggerated use of language in the art press.
. . . A recent article in the Guardian [Andy Beckett, “A User’s Guide to Artspeak,” The Guardian (27 January 2013)] reported on a private initiative by two Americans, an artist and a critic/sociologist, who have investigated the language of contemporary art description, culled from wall labels and gallery press releases from 1999 onwards [David Levine and Alix Rule, “International Art English,” Triple Canopy 16 (July 2012)]. Their survey is analytic rather than satiric, and they trace the origins of what they call ‘International Art English’ to much French post- structuralist theory. They make excellent, deadpan fun of the commercial gallery press release which now goes well beyond its earlier professional constituency to reach a broad emailed audience. At the Burlington, where we receive thousands of such releases each year from many countries, we can testify to the universality of this artspeak obscurantism. But even in the more comprehensible releases, for exhibitions or books, the clichés mount up: the works are ‘brand new’; the exhibits are ‘iconic’; the paintings are ‘vibrant’ (and also, of course, ‘masterful’); the artist is never less than ‘award winning’; and the new book (invariably a ‘comprehensive overview’) is ‘groundbreaking’, ‘lavishly illustrated’ and ‘thought-provoking’. These all accumulate into a prose of deadly conformity. . . Keep reading here»
A R T I C L E S
• Perrin Stein, “Greuze’s L’Accordée de Village: A Rediscovered Première Pensée,” pp. 162-66. The rediscovery of a watercolour study (c.1761) of Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s L’Accordée de Village.
R E V I E W S
• Antony Griffiths, Review of Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400–2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes (London: Archetype Books, 2012), p. 177.
This monument book is the result of twenty-five years’ work on the part of the author who has produced a text far ahead of anything yet written on this aspect of printmaking. . . His conclusions have an authority that immediately makes this a standard work, and it can confidently be recommended to any reader. . .
• Claudia Nordhoff, Review of the exhibition Johann Christian Reinhart (1761–1847): Ein deutscher Landschaftsmaler in Rom,” pp. 199-200.
London Art Week 2013
Press release (January 2013) . . .
London Art Week
London, 28 June — 5 July 2013
London Art Week is an exciting joint venture that unites Master Paintings Week and Master Drawings and Sculpture Week (formerly Master Drawings London). The new collaboration will provide a coherent platform, sharing advertising and creating a new online portal through which the individual websites can be accessed. London Art Week will also produce a map with the locations of all the participants making it easier for collectors to navigate the week. More than 50 specialist dealers across the fine art disciplines and the major London auction houses will take part in this new initiative.
“We welcome this initiative which strongly underlines the unique and unrivalled connoisseurship and expertise to be found in the art trade in London,” comments Johnny Van Haeften, co-founder of Master Paintings Week. “The old cliché of the fusty gallery is totally out of date and we want people to discover just how accessible we are and what treasures we hold.”
The strength of the format of London Art Week lies in its simplicity. By joining together to hold a series of coordinated exhibitions in galleries throughout the West End at the same time that the auction houses hold their major sales, specialist dealers in these disciplines are giving collectors, both private and institutional, the opportunity to view the full range of works available on the market. During the first weekend, all the participants’ doors will be open giving visitors the opportunity to look at works of art at their leisure.
London Art Week will serve to promote specialist dealers and their works in all three disciplines, while encouraging collectors and enthusiasts to visit exhibitions in the galleries. By displaying the objects in intimate gallery settings located in Mayfair and St James’s, the event will encourage the building of relationships between clients and dealers.
Exhibition | Colors of Seduction: Tiepolo and Veronese
This is, unfortunately, the last weekend for the exhibition, though it is slated to be reviewed by The Burlington.
I Colori della Seduzione: Giambattista Tiepolo & Paolo Veronese
Castello di Udine, 17 November 2012 — 1 April 2013
Curated by William Barcham, Linda Borean, and Caterina Furlan
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Un’occasione unica per vedere riunite, dopo quasi duecento anni, le due tele che compongono il Mosè salvato dalle acque di Giambattista Tiepolo. L’opera, tagliata negli anni ’20 dell’800, viene proposta nella sua composizione originaria, riaccostando il Mosè della Scottish National Gallery di Edimburgo con l’Alabardiere della collezione Agnelli di Torino, così come documentato da una copia coeva attribuita a Giandomenico Tiepolo della Staatsgalerie di Stoccarda. Le due parti della tela, che hanno avuto destini conservativi diversi, presentano oggi colori leggermente diversi.
Un sistema di illuminotecnica all’avanguardia renderà possibile vedere l’opera sia come è realmente, che secondo una colorazione uniforme. Ideale risulta l’accostamento al Mosè salvato dalle acque di Paolo Veronese del Musée des Beaux Arts di Digione, per rilevare le assonanze e la personale soluzione adottata da Tiepolo. Il confronto diretto tra le due opere vuole riportare l’attenzione sullo speciale rapporto intessuto da Tiepolo con uno dei più importanti esponenti della tradizione pittorica veneziana del Cinquecento. Tiepolo trovò infatti nell’arte di Veronese lo stimolo al superamento della “maniera scura” e il punto di partenza per la maturazione di un linguaggio che lo avrebbe trasformato in uno dei grandi protagonisti della pittura europea del Settecento.
A partire dagli affreschi del Palazzo arcivescovile di Udine, una sorta di prologo e punto di partenza della mostra, Tiepolo intraprende un percorso di ‘emulazione’ di Veronese. Il critico Francesco Algarotti definì l’amico Tiepolo ‘l’emulo di Paolo’. Guardare a Veronese significò per Tiepolo rivisitarne l’interpretazione di temi religiosi o di storia antica, mediante scenografiche impostazioni di natura teatrale, prospettive architettoniche e opulenza decorativa, ed appropriarsi di una tavolozza squillante di colori puri e ombre colorate.
La mostra è articolata in quattro sezioni nelle quali Tiepolo e Veronese vengono messi a confronto nella trattazione di alcuni temi religiosi, mitologici e della storia antica: il Mosè salvato dalle acque, il Ratto d’Europa, le Cene e i Banchetti e l’Adorazione dei Magi.
Il complesso terreno di confronto tra i due artisti è messo in luce anche dai bozzetti e dai disegni, che illustrano le varie modalità con cui Tiepolo ha riletto l’eredità figurativa di Veronese nei vari momenti del processo creativo. Oltre alle tele, la mostra vanta infatti un gruppo straordinario di fogli di Tiepolo e Veronese, prestati da musei nazionali e internazionali di primo piano (Galleria degli Uffizi, Victoria and Albert Museum di Londra, Ashmolean Museum di Oxford, Département des Arts Graphiques del Louvre, Schlossmuseum di Weimar e Städel Museum di Francoforte). Un dialogo visivo che vede, ad esempio, il disegno d’insieme approntato da Tiepolo per il Banchetto di Antonio e Cleopatra esposto insieme ai pensieri di Veronese sul tema dei banchetti, rappresentati dallo studio preparatorio per le Nozze di Cana e al modello a olio della National Gallery di Londra.
Call for Papers | Modern British History since 1750
From the Modern British History Network:
Conference on Modern British History: Society, Culture, Politics and Religion since 1750
University of Edinburgh, 10-11 June 2013
Proposals due by 6 May 2013
Following the success of the conferences held at Strathclyde (2007-2009), at St Andrews in 2010, at Dundee in 2011, and at Stirling in 2012, the Modern British History Network will host a seventh major Conference on Modern British History at New College, University of Edinburgh, on 10-11 June 2013. The event is particularly aimed at members of the Scottish universities and the northern English universities although all historians are very welcome. Previous conferences have attracted delegates from across the UK and from overseas.
Proposals for papers or registration to attend the event are now invited from researchers working on all aspects of modern British history. The conference aims to represent work covering the whole period since the late eighteenth century with topics in social, cultural, political and religious history. Proposals should be submitted by 6 May 2013 to Dr Juliette Pattinson (juliette.pattinson@strath.ac.uk). Over two days there will be three main papers from senior academics and short papers by other academics and postgraduates, who are equally welcome to speak. (more…)
Exhibition | Fans of History: Daily Life and Major Events
From Visit Paris Culture Guide (with thanks to Pierre-Henri Biger for noting it so early!) . . .
Feuilles d’histoires: Vie quotidienne et grands évènements
à travers l’éventail en France au XVIIIe siècle
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 14 November 2013 — 9 April 2014
Curated by José de Los Llanos and Georgina Letourmy-Bordier
L’éventail est à la fois familier et méconnu. Accessoire de mode et objet d’art, il allie le savoir-faire d’artisans à la création artistique. Soumis à la fugacité des modes, il se renouvelle sans cesse. Importé d’Asie à la Renaissance, au milieu des cargaisons d’épices et de soies, l’éventail est adopté en France sous le règne de Louis XIV. Une corporation spécifique, celle des éventaillistes, assure la domination des artisans français.
Au cours du XVIIIe siècle, Paris devient la capitale de l’éventail. Le choix des décors suit alors la production des peintres à la mode et participe à la diffusion de l’art français en Europe, tout en montrant une singulière diversité. Avec soixante-dix œuvres empruntées à des collections publiques et privées, cette exposition, hommage à l’excellence du savoir-faire des éventaillistes français, essentiellement parisiens, montrera aussi l’extraordinaire inventivité dont témoignent ces objets fragiles et discrets.
New Title | Houghton Revisited: The Walpole Masterpieces
The catalogue for the Houghton Revisited exhibition should be available soon. From Artbooks.com:
Thierry Morel, Larissa Dukelskaya, John Harris, and Andrew Moore, Houghton Revisited: The Walpole Masterpieces from Catherine the Great’s Hermitage (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2013), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1907533501, £40 / $85.
In 1779 the family of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, sold his remarkable art collection to Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. More than two centuries later, these masterpieces, rarely seen outside Russia since that time, are returning to Houghton Hall, the great house built by Walpole. This handsome book illustrates these superlative works hanging once again in William Kents magnificent interiors. Thierry Morel uncovers the wonders of Walpole’s collection, which includes paintings by Van Dyck, Poussin, Rubens and Rembrandt, and traces its journey to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, to which most of the works now belong. Other essays explore Walpole’s artistic tastes and collecting habits, and his beautiful house, one of the finest Palladian buildings in England.
Call for Papers | CAA in Chicago 2014
The following represents a selection of panels that might be of interest for scholars of the eighteenth century, though readers are encouraged to consult the full Call for Papers. HECAA members are asked to pay special attention to the session organized by Kevin Chua ‘After the Secular: Art and Religion in the Eighteenth Century’ and the ‘New Scholars Session,’ chaired by Kristel Smentek. Proposals for minor sessions (90-minute panels) typically have a slightly later due date; so stay tuned. -CH
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102nd Annual Conference of the College Art Association
Chicago, 12-15 February 2014
Proposals due by 13 May 2013 (extended from 6 May 2013)
The 2014 Call for Participation for the 101st Annual Conference, taking place February 12–15 in Chicago, describes many of next year’s programs sessions. CAA and the session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper or presentation. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals and describes the seven Open Forms sessions.
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Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
After the Secular: Art and Religion in the Eighteenth Century
Kevin Chua, Texas Tech University, kevin.chua@ttu.edu
Religious art of the eighteenth century has long been framed within a narrative of secularization. It was thought that, with modernization, societies would move away from religious values to embrace secular ones. Yet scholars such as Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, and Hent de Vries have questioned this dominant narrative. Not only has secularization been shown to be not the end point of modernization, it has proven to be, perhaps, the last progress narrative that we need to unbind. This panel seeks papers on religious art, visual culture, and architecture that trouble the old secularization narrative, and come to grips with the paradoxical efflorescence of religion in the eighteenth century. Papers might address the contradictory place of art between the flourishing of marginal religions and the public sphere, engage the various “returns” of religion in and for art, and rethink the supposedly unidirectional shift from “religious” to “secular” worlds in aesthetic media.
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Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
New Scholars Session
Kristel Smentek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, smentek@mit.edu
The Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) invite paper proposals from advanced doctoral students and recent PhDs that present innovative approaches to the interpretation of the art, architecture, and material culture of the global eighteenth century. Presenters selected for this session are expected to become members of HECAA before the conference.
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Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival
Thanks to Emma Barker for noting this upcoming festival with events taking place across London:
Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival
London, 8-21 April 2013
Christ Church, Spitalfields, London
2013 is the year of two significant anniversaries in the intertwined history of the Spitalfields district in London and the silk weaving industry created by Huguenots (French Protestant refugees who fled Catholic France from the 16th century). It is the 250th anniversary of the death of Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690-1763), an outstanding English textile designer who played an important part in the story of the Spitalfields silk weavers. It is also the 415th anniversary of the signing of the Edict of Nantes, on 13th April 1598. This decree by Henry IV of France served as a guarantee to the Protestant Huguenots that their rights to worship would be respected. However, it was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685 with the result that large numbers of French protestants fled to England to escape persecution. Over twenty thousand settled in Spitalfields where there was already an established weaving community.
Come and spend the day in Spitalfield, take a walk and browse around the Market, call in at Christ Church Spitalfields, the finest Baroque church in the country; visit Dennis Severs’ House, drop into the Town House
for coffee and delicious cakes. There is so much to see
and do — you will not be disappointed.
Silk panel, 1748-50 Spitalfields silk (The Museum of London)
Programme of Events
Supported by the Huguenot Society and the Spitalfields Trust
Between 8th and 21st April 2013, a series of activities to commemorate these two anniversaries will take place at different venues in Spitalfields. The celebratory programme will include
Daily Walks – The Immigrants’ Story, Historic Spitalfields, The Silk Weavers of Spitalfields
Talks by experts at the Bishopsgate Institute, Guildhall Library, V&A Museum, London Metropolitan Archives & The Natural History Museum
• Thanksgiving Service on Thursday 11th April at Christ Church, Spitalfields
• Extended opening hours for Dennis Severs’ House
• At Home With Anna Maria: a fundraising soirée on 16th April in Fournier Street with Clare Browne, curator of European textiles at the V&A and Dan Cruickshank
• Tours of Sandys Row Synagogue and Bisopsgate Institute
• The Big Weave: Saturday 13th April, which is an arts & crafts fair in Spitalfields Market. Stitches in Time will be hosting weaving workshops
Exhibition | French Paintings from the Wadsworth Atheneum
It’s interesting to see how this exhibition has been retitled in various venues: from Old Masters to Impressionists, to Old Masters to Monet, to Court to Café. The exhibition appeared in a fuller version at the Wadsworth Atheneum itself as Medieval to Monet: French Paintings, where it was accompanied by a full catalogue. -CH
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Press release (4 December 2012) from the Mississippi Museum of Art:
Old Masters to to Monet: Three Centuries of French Painting from the Wadsworth Atheneum
The Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA, 13 December 2011 — 29 April 2012
Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, 18 May — 16 September 20122
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 19 October 2012 — 27 January 2013 [expanded version of the exhibition]
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, 23 March — 8 September 2013
Denver Art Museum, 27 October 2013 — 9 February 2014
Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, The Duchesse de Polignac Wearing a Straw Hat, 1782 (Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)
The Mississippi Museum of Art is pleased to present Old Masters to Monet: Three Centuries of French Painting from the Wadsworth Atheneum, on view from March 23 through September 8, 2013. It is the thirteenth presentation in The Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series. Established in 1989 to honor the memory of Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin, one of the Museum’s most dedicated patrons and volunteers, the Hearin series showcases exhibitions of world-class art, attracting visitors to Jackson from across Mississippi, the Southeast, and beyond.
Old Masters to Monet features fifty masterpieces from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. The outstanding artworks provide a history of French painting, ranging from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries and into the beginning of the twentieth century and include religious and mythological subjects, portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and genre scenes.
The Wadsworth Atheneum is America’s oldest public art museum, founded in 1843, and has never presented a full-scale survey of its distinguished collection of French paintings. To honor the recent publication of its
collection catalogue, the Atheneum has launched a tour of fifty of these outstanding masterpieces. “The Mississippi Museum of Art is honored to be one of the select venues to host this important exhibition,” said Betsy Bradley, director of the Mississippi Museum of Art. “In keeping with our mission of engaging Mississippians in the visual arts, this exhibition provides a rare opportunity for our visitors to come face to face with some of the most historically valued French paintings held in any museum collection.”
The exhibition begins with the great seventeenth-century masters, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Simon Vouet, and Jacques Stella, all of whom spent time in Rome and whose work embodies Italianate ideas of beauty, classical sculpture, and ideal landscape. Poussin’s enormous Crucifixion, painted in 1646 for President Jacques-Auguste de Thou, and Lorrain’s Landscape with St. George and the Dragon, commissioned by Cardinal Fausto Poli in 1641, are among the most important French paintings residing in the United States.
The eighteenth-century works present a remarkably rich tapestry of life in France during the rococo age. There are several scenes and portraits of aristocrats, including the Portrait of the Duchesse de Polignac by the era’s leading painter of women, Madame Vigée-Lebrun. Genre scenes rendered during this period exhibit a decidedly risqué bent as well as humorous aspects of life, both of which are evident in paintings on view by Jean Baptiste Greuze, François Boucher, and Louis Leopold Boilly. A more serious approach is evidenced in Still Life by Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin and in the charming family pictures by Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié and Nöel Hallé. The change in style brought about by the French Revolution is evident in the impressive composition designed by Jacques Louis David, and the creation of a new aristocracy is presented by the two brilliant paintings by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. (more…)
Exhibition | Drawing Room: An Intimate Look at French Drawings
This fall, the Denver Art Museum will present Passport to Paris, a trio of exhibitions addressing France. Along with works from the Wadsworth Atheneum, the museum will show Nature as Muse: French Impressionist Landscapes and the following drawing exhibition:
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Drawing Room: An Intimate Look at French Drawings from the Esmond Bradley Martin Collection
Denver Art Museum, 27 October 2013 — 9 February 2014
Antoine Watteau, Standing Woman Holding a Fan, ca. 1719. Red and black chalk with graphite, on paper.
Collection of Dr. Esmond Bradley Martin.
Inspired by the drawings cabinets of gentlemen and connoisseurs, this exhibition will offer a space where visitors can get close to artworks whose intimate nature invites contemplation and close-up viewing. Comprised of approximately 39 works-on-paper, the exhibition includes a range of techniques from rapid sketches to finished pastels. The artworks represent exquisite examples of draughtsmanship by some of the most celebrated French masters and allow an in-depth look into the creative process of artists.
The entire exhibition is drawn from the private collection of Dr. Esmond Bradley Martin. Artists featured include François Boucher, Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley.
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