New Acquisitions | Pair of 18th-Century Silver Sculptures at Mia
Now on view at Mia:
The Archangels Saint Michael and Saint Raphael: A Pair of 18th-Century Silver Sculptures
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 14 November 2015 — 3 January 2016
Giuseppe Sanmartino, Saint Raphael with Tobias, his Dog, and the Fish, c. 1780, 27 inches high; The Archangel Saint Michael in Triumph, c. 1780, 33 inches high, silver, gilt bronze (Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2015.24.1,2)
A pair of two silver statues by Neapolitan artist Giuseppe Sanmartino (1720–93), donated to the museum by long-time trustees Al and Mary Agnes McQuinn, marks one of the most important additions to Mia’s silver collection. Executed with amazing detail, the statues testify to a devotion to the two Archangels, an act that goes back to the Early Christian period and continues to flourish in Southern Italy (as well as in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches) to the present day. Throughout Christianity, Saint Michael and Saint Raphael are venerated for their healing powers. The exhibition celebrates the acquisition of these unique masterpieces, without peer in any American museum collection, and whose only comparables remain in Italian churches.
Exhibition | The Jane Austen Reading Room
Now on view at Mia:
Living Rooms: The Jane Austen Reading Room
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 21 November 2015 — 26 June 2016
This installation situates Jane Austen in a unique period room setting. Taking up two of Mia’s well-loved English interiors—the Queen Anne room and the Georgian Drawing room—this display will discuss Austen’s habits as a reader and writer, recreate scenes from her novel Emma (celebrating its 200th birthday in 2015), and invite museum visitors to read works that Austen read, wrote, or inspired. This project is part of Living Rooms, an initiative to present Mia’s historic interiors and decorative arts collections in new ways.
Exhibition | Italian Dreams: Watteau and French Landscape Painting
From the website for Valenciennes:
Réveries Italiennes: Watteau et les paysagistes français au XVIIIe siècle
Italian Dreams: Watteau and French Landscape Painting in the Eighteenth Century
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, 25 September — 17 January 2016
Curated by Martin Eidelberg
La Ville de Valenciennes a la chance d’avoir vu naître l’un des artistes français les plus illustres : Jean Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). La réouverture de son musée des Beaux-Arts, qui conserve un ensemble d’œuvres du peintre, est couronnée par le don exceptionnel d’une œuvre tout récemment redécouverte d’Antoine Watteau, La Chute d’eau, rare paysage du peintre des fêtes galantes inspiré des cascades de Tivoli près de Rome, qui témoigne de la fascination de l’artiste pour l’Italie, pays où il n’eut pourtant jamais l’occasion de se rendre !
L’exposition Rêveries italiennes, propose ainsi de souligner les emprunts que le maître fit tout au long de sa carrière au modèle italien, soit à travers l’exemple des peintres vénitiens du XVIe siècle qui constituèrent pour l’artiste une source importante d’inspiration, soit à travers le filtre des œuvres réalisées à Rome par ses contemporains. Autour d’un ensemble de peintures et de dessins d’Antoine Watteau, des œuvres des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles montreront comment ce peintre des songes puisa dans la culture artistique européenne pour créer des œuvres qui ouvriront la voie à une nouvelle école de paysage, née au siècle des Lumières, autour de Natoire, Boucher, Fragonard et Hubert Robert. À partir des rêveries italiennes de Watteau, l’exposition valenciennoise souhaite ainsi éclairer sous un jour nouveau la fécondité d’un modèle artistique qui, bien au-delà d’une iconographie séduisante, mena à l’éclosion du Romantisme.
L’exposition s’intègre dans la programmation liée à l’élection de la cité voisine belge de Mons comme capitale européenne de la culture pour l’année 2015. Elle bénéficie également du soutien exceptionnel du Musée du Louvre, qui a accordé pour l’occasion un prêt conséquent d’œuvres et a proposé, dans le cadre de la programmation du Louvre Lens, une exposition venant en écho à l’initiative valenciennoise, consacrée à Antoine Watteau et la fête galante, Dansez, embrassez qui vous voudrez. Fêtes et plaisirs d’amour au siècle de Mme de Pompadour, du 5 décembre 2015 au 29 février 2016.
Commissariat scientifique
Martin Eidelberg, Professeur émérite d’Histoire de l’Art, Rutgers University
Commissariat général
• Emmanuelle Delapierre, anciennement conservatrice du musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes, actuelle conservatrice du musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
• Vincent Hadot, directeur du musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes
• Virginie Frelin-Cartigny, Attachée de conservation du Patrimoine, musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes
Martin Eidelberg, Réveries Italiennes: Watteau et les paysagistes français au XVIIIe siècle (Heule: Snoeck, 2015), 163 pages, ISBN: 978-9461612397, 29€ / $55.
More information is available at Culture.Fr, and the press release is available as a PDF file here»
Exhibition | Dance, Kiss Whom You Wish
François Boucher, Les Charmes de la vie champêtre, ca. 1735–40
(Paris: Musée du Louvre)
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From the exhibition press materials, via Claudine Colin Communications:
Dansez, embrassez qui vous voudrez: Fêtes et plaisirs d’amour au siècle de la Pompadour
Dance, Kiss Who You Wish: Parties and Pleasures in the Time of Madame de Pompadour
Musée du Louvre-Lens, 5 December 2015 — 29 February 2016
Curated by Xavier Salmon
Rustic decor, elegant young people and refined leisure pursuits: the 2015–16 winter exhibition at the Louvre-Lens celebrates the genre of the fête galante and the pastoral. Popularised in the first half of the 18th century, first by Antoine Watteau, then by François Boucher, these themes achieved great success until the French Revolution. First adopted by painters, they spread quickly to other disciplines—in particular the decorative arts—and became widespread throughout Europe. Thanks to exceptional loans from the Louvre Museum and around twenty prestigious institutions, this exhibition is able to bring together 220 works.
The bucolic design of the exhibition combines paintings, graphic arts, furniture, ceramics, tapestries, and stage costumes. From the roots to the latest developments, the exhibition traces the fortunes of a delicate, seductive genre, which enchanted Europe in the Age of Enlightenment. A tribute to French taste and the joy of living!
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From ArtBooks.com:
Xavier Salmon, Dansez, embrassez qui vous voudrez: Fêtes et plaisirs d’amour au siècle de Madame de Pompadour (Milan: Silvana, 2015), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-8836631544, $75.
Cet ouvrage rend hommage au genre de la Fête galante, popularisé par Antoine Watteau (1687–1721) et qui connut en France et en Europe un succès non démenti tout au long du Siècle des Lumières. Répondant à une soif de liberté et à un assouplissement des moeurs pendant la Régence, ce thème clamait la joie de vivre, les délices de l’amour, l’alchimie des sentiments et le besoin de paraître. Dans le sillage de Watteau, le genre de la Fête galante fut adopté par son élève Jean-Baptiste Pater ainsi que par ses suiveurs Nicolas Lancret, Bonaventure de Bar ou Pierre-Antoine Quillard. D’autres maîtres en proposèrent à leur tour des variations, pastorales chez François Boucher, mélancoliques chez Jean-Honoré Fragonard ou délicatement sentimentales chez Louis-Joseph Watteau de Lille. Le thème fournit aussi un exceptionnel répertoire de sujets aux manufactures de porcelaine, notamment celles de Sèvres. De Meissen à Venise, il connut en Europe un succès non démenti. Peintres, tel Dietrich, Troost ou Gainsborough, sculpteurs, comme Ferdinand Tietz ou Giovanni Bonazza déclinèrent à l’envi tant en peinture, en dessin, qu’en sculpture, ces sujets aimables qui célébraient les sentiments partagés. Les Arts appliqués s’emparèrent aussi de la thématique et s’attachèrent à la multiplier, en rendant hommage à la fois au goût français et au bonheur de vivre.
Save Ashgate Publishing
I know many of you are already aware of the bad news regarding the planned closures of Ashgate’s Burlington and UK offices. The online petition now includes 3,700+ signatures (and counting). –CH
Save Ashgate Publishing
Petition to Rachel Lynch, Managing Director, Ashgate Publishing & Managing Director, Humanities & Social Science Books, Taylor & Francis Group Jeremy North
Ashgate Publishing Company was purchased by Informa (Taylor & Francis Publishing) in 2015. On November 24th, 2015, the North American office of the press in Burlington, Vermont will close and Ashgate’s US staff members, including Erika Gaffney, Ann Donahue, Margaret Michniewicz, Alyssa Berthiaume, Kathy Bond Borie, Seth Hibbert, Stephanie Peake, Martha McKenna, Lea Durfee, Suzanne Sprague, and Emilly Ferro will cease to be representatives of Ashgate.
According to an e-mail sent to series editors, plans are still being discussed for Ashgate’s publishing business in the UK. However, information has since emerged that the UK office is scheduled to close in December.
Independent academic presses like Ashgate have offered a safe haven for scholars working in certain subfields as University presses closed entire publishing specializations and fired editorial staff in response to campus austerity measures. Academic presses are more than profit margins, income from the backlist, utility bills, payroll, and marketing campaigns. Ashgate flourished through the bonds formed between editors and authors, the care and attention of copy editors, and above all, the good will of authors and readers. We the undersigned authors, readers, and reviewers of Ashgate books write to voice our appreciation for the accomplishments of Ashgate’s North American office. We urge Taylor & Francis to reverse course immediately and restore Ashgate’s US and UK offices.
Exhibition | Palladian Design: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected
Chiswick House by Lord Burlington, 1729
(London: RIBA Collections)
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Press release (23 July 2015) for the exhibition now on view at RIBA:
Palladian Design: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected
Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 9 September 2015 — 9 January 2016
The Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio is the only architect who has given his name to a style, one that is still in use around the world after nearly 500 years. From the US Capitol to a 21st-century Somerset cowshed, Palladian Design: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected introduces Palladio’s design principles and explores how they have been interpreted, copied and re-imagined across time and continents from his death in 1580 right up to the present day.
Focusing on his legacy, RIBA’s exhibition explores how architects such as Inigo Jones and Lord Burlington turned Palladianism into a national style. The style was adopted in the design of houses, churches, and public buildings around the world from New Delhi to Leningrad. Palladianism became so widespread that it seeped into people’s unconscious references and desires: elements were found popping-up in American Negro Churches and terraced housing and homes in the UK. The 20th century saw a revival of traditional Palladian mansions while the 21st century has seen his design principles being utilised in a more abstract way. The exhibition asks many questions about what makes a building ‘Palladian’. Does a building have to look classical to be Palladian? Is it the design principles or the social and political connotations of tradition, power, and establishment that have led to the enduring popularity of the style? The exhibition is structured chronologically around three themes: revolution, evolution, and the contemporary. It includes 50 original works, including drawings, models, and busts.
The first part of the exhibition introduces Palladio and outlines his unique system of architecture. It charts the development of Anglo-Palladianism from 17th-century England, through to the transformation of Palladianism into a national style by the mid-18th century. It also explores the role of books in spreading Palladio’s ideas—both his own Four Books of Architecture and later publications that spread Palladian style beyond Britain. Highlights include Palladio’s A Design for a Palace (1540s) and projects for low-cost housing in Venice (1550s), original drawings by Inigo Jones include a preliminary design for the Queen’s House at Greenwich (1616), Colen Campbell’s original pen and wash design for Mereworth Castle, Kent (1723), and an original drawing of Lord Burlington’s Chiswick House (1729).
The second part of the exhibition follows Palladio’s legacy worldwide in a series of themes that explore how others have either followed his guidelines to the letter or employed them more creatively. It looks at how Palladian design has been adopted for commercial viability and in the service of politics and religion—both in western countries and in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Away from the centres of power, people turned their hand to Palladian self-builds with anonymous builders using pattern books to fuse Palladian elements with local vernacular traditions. Highlights include the original 1721 model of St Martin-in-the-Fields church by James Gibbs, a perspective of Catherine the Great’s Pella Palace near St Petersburg by Ivan Starov (c.1786), a watercolour perspective of Stormont in Belfast by Sir Arnold Thornely (1927), and Palladio’s original designs for the Villa Valmarana (c.1560) and the Palazzo Antonini (c.1560).
The last section of the exhibition follows the story of 20th- and 21st-century Palladianism. Despite the rise of modernism, Palladianism survived in Britain and America as a domestic style both for landed families and the newly rich who commissioned grand classical homes to evoke a sense of history and confer status. Highlights include a linocut perspective of Kings Walden Bury, Essex by Raymond Erith and Quinlan Terry (1971) and photographs and models of houses built since the 1960s. The exhibition goes on to explore post-modern Palladianism, where the style has been referenced historically, playfully or ironically. Key exhibits include works by Swedish architect Erik Asplund and Belgian architect Charles Vandenhove alongside other new buildings on the continent and in Canada. The exhibition ends by examining contemporary abstract Palladianism—buildings that contain no visual references to classical architecture but follow Palladian design principles in terms of proportion or planning. It asks whether a building has to look like a Palladian building in order to be one? It will include a newly commissioned film comparing Palladio’s Villa Caldogno with Brick House (2005) by Caruso St John and looks at a selection of contemporary buildings, ranging from a model of an underground house in Mongolia by OFFICE Architects to offices in Switzerland by Peter Märkli.
The exhibition coincides with the 300th anniversary of the publication of two books key to the spread of Palladianism worldwide: Giacomo Leoni’s first full translation into English of Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’ Architettura and Colen Campbell’s survey of English architecture Vitruvius Britannicus, both published in 1715. These books paved the way for a flood of cheaper pattern books that enabled anyone, from Russian royalty to a American carpenters, to create Palladian designs.
The RIBA Collections contain over 350 drawings and sketches by Andrea Palladio, the world’s largest assemblage of his drawings—85% of all those in existence. The exhibition is designed by Caruso St John Architects. The design takes its inspiration from the interior of Palladio’s villas and the way that his Four Books of Architecture have been used by generations of architects. The palette will reference Villa Caldogno’s frescos. Palladian Design is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, The Headley Trust, and the American Friends of the British Architectural Library.
The Burlington Magazine, November 2015
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 157 (November 2015)
Interior of the Church of Santiago de Surco, Lima, Peru, attributed by Gauvin Alexander Bailey to Johann Rehr and Santiago Rosales, before 1759–1773.
A R T I C L E S
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey, “The Fantastical Rococo Altarpieces of Santiago de Surco, Peru,” pp. 769–75.
R E V I E W S
• Simon Swynfen Jervis, Review of Giuseppe Beretti and Alvar González-Palacios, Giuseppe Maggiolini: Catalogo ragionato dei disegni (In Limine, 2014) and Michael Sulzbacher, Peter Atzig, Sabine Schneider, and Karsten Hommel, Friedrich Gottlob Hoffmann (Grassi Museum, 2014), pp. 790–91.
• David Bindman, Review of William Pressly, James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (Cork University Press, 2014), pp. 791–92.
• Richard Green, Review of Christopher Wright, The Schorr Collection of Old Master and Nineteenth-Century Paintings (The Schorr Collection, 2014), pp. 792–93.
• David Pullins, Review of Carolyn Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (Yale University Press, 2013), p. 795.
Exhibition | Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749)
Opening next week at Galerie Canesso:
Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749), The Mature Years of a Nonconformist Painter
Galerie Canesso, Paris, 25 November 2015 — 31 January 2016
Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, 25 February — 5 June 2016
Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749), les années de la maturité est une exposition centrée sur les plus belles œuvres de la production tardive de ce peintre anticonformiste. L’exposition a le privilège de bénéficier d’un partenariat exceptionnel avec les Musei de Strada Nuova de la ville de Gênes, lieu de naissance de l’artiste. Elle débute à la Galerie Canesso à Paris (du 25 novembre 2015 au 31 janvier 2016) pour faire ensuite étape au Palazzo Bianco de Gênes (du 25 février 2016 au 5 juin 2016).
Artiste à l’œuvre originale et extravagante, Magnasco a été découvert au début du XXe siècle et il est considéré, à certains égards, comme l’un des précurseurs de Goya (1746–1828), des Expressionnistes et l’un des pères du fantastique et du macabre. La fascination de l’artiste pour les atmosphères sombres, la dissolution des formes et un propos moral sévère met en évidence sa dissidence par rapport à la culture figurative contemporaine. Néanmoins, son œuvre riche et variée ne peut se définir par ces seuls caractères. Les réalisations de l’artiste impressionnent, tant du point de vue du langage pictural extrêmement personnel, que de celui des sujets qu’il est le seul à aborder en Europe entre les XVIIe et les XVIIIe siècles. Ses compositions parcourues de petites figures en mouvement nous portent vers l’art de Guardi (1712–1793) et des Vénitiens du Settecento. L’exposition présentera une vingtaine de tableaux, certains à découvrir pour la première fois en France.
Exhibition | Revolution under a King: French Prints, 1789–92
From UCL:
Revolution under a King: French Prints, 1789–92
UCL Art Museum, London, 11 January — 10 June 2016
Curated by David Bindman and Richard Taws
We are pleased to announce that in January 2016 we’ll be opening the exhibition Revolution under a King: French Prints, 1789–92, featuring a selection of prints from the early, highly volatile years of the French Revolution, curated by Professor David Bindman and Dr Richard Taws, in collaboration between UCL Art Museum and UCL History of Art. It is well known that a chain of key historical events characterised the French Revolution, making it effectively the biggest political media event of its time. These events were communicated extensively throughout Europe in print culture and the combination of image and text, employed extensively in newspapers and graphic works, made for powerful satire and caricature.
It is, however, not always realised that the pivotal moment, the Fall of the Bastille, was in fact followed by three years in which the king of France still nominally presided over the dissolution of the old feudal order. It is this period that is the focus of the exhibition, tracing the early years of the Revolution from the ‘June Days’ of 1789, through the Fall of the Bastille, to the eventual deposition of the Louis XVI in 1792. The exhibition will consist of vivid coloured prints of major events from the period, and a selection of medals, including one made from ‘chains of servitude’ supposedly found in the ruins of the Bastille.
New Book | Piranesi’s Lost Words
From Penn State UP:
Heather Hyde Minor, Piranesi’s Lost Words (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-0271065496, $80.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was one of the most important artists eighteenth-century Europe produced. But Piranesi was more than an artist; he was an engraver and printmaker, architect, antiquities dealer, archaeologist, draftsman, publisher, bookseller, and author. In Piranesi’s Lost Words, Heather Hyde Minor considers Piranesi the author and publisher, focusing on his major publications from 1756 to his death in 1778. Piranesi designed and manufactured twelve beautiful, large-format books combining visual and verbal content over the course of his lifetime. While the images from these books have been widely studied, they are usually considered in isolation from the texts in which they originally appeared. This study reunites Piranesi’s texts and images, interpreting them in conjunction as composite art. Minor shows how this composite art demonstrates Piranesi’s gift for interpreting the classical world and its remains—and how his books offer a critique of both the Enlightenment project of creating an epistemology of the classical past and how eighteenth-century scholars explicated this past. Piranesi’s books, Minor argues, were integral to the emergence of the modern discipline of art history. Using new, previously unpublished archival material, Piranesi’s Lost Words refines our understanding of Piranesi’s works and the eighteenth-century context in which they were created.
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