Pure Judgment
After five years, I hope you’ll indulge me as I ask a small favor that has nothing to do with HECAA or the eighteenth century. A former student and now friend of mine has recently launched a blog, and I would be grateful if you have a look. Pure Judgment—related to the eighteenth century only in owing its title to Kant—reports on juried awards in a variety of cultural fields, with an emphasis on the arts. The site’s editor, Anna Hanchett, was good enough to put up with me in a handful of classes, including January term trips to Venice and London. She’s currently working as an assistant to a particularly fine bookbinder (and in this capacity does handle an enviable share of eighteenth-century material culture). –CH
Here’s the link and more information:
In contrast to the thousands of blogs built around highlighting an individual’s tastes, preferences, and recommendations, Pure Judgment reports on juried standards of excellence. Covering a wide range of cultural production—including literature, the visual arts, music, fashion, film and food—the site aims to inform readers of people whose work has been recognized by experts within a given field as outstanding. Among the award-winners recently highlighted are David Titlow (Taylor Wessing Prize), Uxua Casa Hotel (Smith Hotel Award), Richard Flanagan (Man Booker Prize), Paper Airplanes (CinefestOz Film Award), and Iris Van Herpen (Andam Prize).
While other sites report on particular areas of cultural production, Pure Judgment is exceptional for its expansive scope . . . because you shouldn’t have to know about a particular award to care about the category or the winner. Pure Judgment aims to broaden the horizon for all of us.
Exhibition | Marks of Genius: Drawings from the MIA
Edme Bouchardon, Design for a Token: Marine, 1744,
ca. 1743, red chalk (Minneapolis Institute of Arts)
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Press release (7 May 2014) from the MIA:
Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 13 July — 21 September 2014
Grand Rapids Art Museum, 26 October 2014 — 18 January 2015
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, TBA
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, TBA
Curated by Rachel McGarry
Louis Lafitte, Young Woman in Classical Dress, Study for the Month of Thermidor, ca. 1804–05, black chalk, partially incised (Minneapolis Institute of Arts).
This summer, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) showcases an exemplary selection of its rarely seen, superb drawings collection in Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings from the Minneapolis institute of Arts. This special exhibition marks the first time this selection of drawings, which spans over 500 years, will be seen together by the public. Featured artist include celebrated masters such as Ludovico Carracci, Guercino, Thomas Gainsborough, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, René Magritte, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Marks of Genius opens at the MIA and will then travel to the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. A fully illustrated catalogue.
“Due to their sensitivity to light, drawings are exhibited for only short periods of time and are otherwise kept in dark storage,” says exhibition curator Rachel McGarry. While works from the museum’s large paper collection—over 40,000 prints and drawings—can be seen by appointment in the Herschel V. Jones Print Study, Marks of Genius is a rare opportunity for the public to see the cream of this collection.
Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié, Standing Male Nude, 1760s–80s, red chalk (Minneapolis Institute of Arts)
Marks of Genius is exhibited at an apropos time. The MIA’s ‘treasury’ of drawings, which includes over 2,600 works, has increased by 20 percent since 2009. Several of these recent additions will be on view for the first time in this show. The exhibition brings to life the immediacy of drawings and explores its multiple roles as a means of study, observation, problem solving, a record of the artist’s imagination, and a medium for creating finished works of art.
The thematic display highlights these different aspects of drawing:
• Spark of Creation features ‘first draft’ sketches and inventions. This portion of the exhibition, showcasing the immediacy of the artistic process, features works such as Giuseppe Bazzani’s Pan and Syrinx, c. 1760, and George Romney’s Study for ‘The Lapland Witch,’ completed c. 1775–77.
• From Life is a section which features various observational studies drawn from nature throughout history. Notable works include Käthe Kollwitz’s c. 1903 Two Studies of a Woman’s Head and Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Amaryllis lutea. c. 1800-06.
Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Amaryllis lutea, ca. 1800–06, watercolor and graphite on vellum (Minneapolis Institute of Arts)
• Portrait Drawings presents works such as Lovis Corinth’s Self-Portrait completed in 1908 and Egon Schiele’s Standing Girl, c. 1910.
• Figural Abstraction a section which documents artists’ studies of human forms and expression. Works featured in this section include Guercino’s Hercules, (1641–42) and Ernst Kircher’s Seated Woman in the Studio, completed in 1909.
• Storytelling presents drawings with a narrative theme, such as Arthur Rackham’s Little Red Riding Hood, 1909, and Ludovico Carracci’s Judith Beheading Holoferenes, c. 1581–85.
• Other themes include Sense of Place with Emil Nolde’s Heavy Seas at Sunset, c. 1930–35, and Appropriation with Roy Lichtenstein’s 1962 Bratatat!
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From the MIA@Artbook:
Rachel McGarry and Thomas Rassieur, Master Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2014), 300 pages, ISBN: 978-0989371841, $60.
This lavishly illustrated book presents one hundred significant drawings from the 15th to the 21st century, including new discoveries and works by both celebrated masters and others who deserve to be better known. Among the artists represented are Annibale and Ludovico Carracci, Guido Reni, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Pierre-Paul Prud hon, Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Lovis Corinth, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, Egon Schiele, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Grant Wood, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Edward Ruscha.
Catalogue entries for each drawing include complete documentation, provenance, and bibliography. The text provides important new scholarship and attributions; examines a variety of themes, such as connoisseurship, patronage, materials and techniques, watermarks, and collectors’ stamps; and discusses how a work fits into the artist’s oeuvre or represents larger developments in artistic movements or trends in artistic production
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