Enfilade

Now on view at Ca’ Rezzonico:

Geminiano Cozzi and His Porcelain / Geminiano Cozzi e le Sue Porcellane
Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Venice, 9 March – 12 July 2016

Curated by Marcella Ansaldi and Alberto Craievich

Porcelain is perhaps the material that best embodies the spirit and aesthetic of the eighteenth century: glossy and light, it naturally lends itself to the creation of objects characterised by elegant, flowing lines. For long kept a secret by Chinese manufacturers, it was re-created in Europe in the second decade of the eighteenth century at the Saxon court of Augustus the Strong and from there gradually spread across the continent, despite desperate attempts to hide the formula. During the eighteenth century, the Venetian Republic was the only state to have no less than four porcelain factories, all of them opened by private initiative. One of these was that of Geminiano Cozzi (1728–1798), born in Modena but Venetian by choice. It is to his extraordinary activity as an entrepreneur ante litteram that the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is now dedicating the first ever retrospective, 250 years after the privilege granted to him by the Republic in 1765 (and which marks the real birth of the Cozzi manufacture).

It is no coincidence that the exhibition should be presented in the pòrtego on the first floor of Ca’ Rezzonico, the Museo del Settecento Veneziano, a venue that in terms of its form and history is the best-suited to celebrating one of the most fascinating aspects of eighteenth-century art. Curated by Marcella Ansaldi and Alberto Craievich, the exhibition features over six hundred pieces from Italian and foreign museums, including the few items to have a firm date and the many still in private collections and hitherto difficult of access to the public and to scholars, a circumstance that has not helped the fortune critique of Cozzi: only today is his work as artist and manufacture being being its due recognition within the European scene. Unfolding in a development that is both chronological and thematic, the exhibition shows the evolution of Cozzi’s manufacture and of the types of decoration and various items, highlighting on the one hand one of the most fascinating art-historical events of the eighteenth century, and on the other by presenting an overview of a manufacturing activity of the period that includes items of surprising modernity.

The development of the art of porcelain in the eighteenth century in the Venetian Republic was undertaken by figures who were controversial, stubborn and fascinating. One of these was the Giovanni Vezzi, goldsmith and merchant, who in 1720 started his own production in Venice. Another was Nathaniel Friederich Hewelcke, a Saxon merchant who emigrated in 1757 from Meissen because of the closure of the factory during the Seven Years War; he requested and obtained a twenty-year privilege to manufacture “Saxon porcelain of any and all types” in Venice. And aside from the aforementioned Geminiano Cozzi, we might also mention Giovanni Battista Antonibon, who in 1762 started production in Nove (VI) thirty years after obtaining the privilege from the Serenissima’ “Savi della Mercanzia” for the production of high-quality majolica quality for twenty years without having to pay taxes (1732). Their destiny, however, despite the qualitatively extraordinary work, was not so lucky: after a few years, Vezzi and Hewelcke were obliged to abandon their businesses because of debts, and only Antonibon in Nove and Cozzi in Venice were able to establish long-lasting businesses, despite encountering difficulties on the way.

Marcella Ansaldi and Alberto Craievich, Geminiano Cozzi e le Sue Porcellane (Crocetta del Montello: Antiga Edizioni, 2016), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-8897784890, $72.

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Press release (2 May 2016) from the Asian Art Museum:

Emperors’ Treasures: Chinese Art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 17 June — 18 September 2016
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 23 October 2016 — 22 January 2017

Curated by Jay Xu and Li He

The centerpiece of the Asian Art Museum’s 50th anniversary year, Emperors’ Treasures: Chinese Art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, presents nearly 150 imperial masterworks, many of which are making their North American debut. Visitors will discover a trove of exquisite paintings, ceramics, jades and more from one of the world’s greatest collections of Chinese art. The exhibition offers audiences a chance to behold the prized possessions of eight emperors and an empress, passed from dynasty to dynasty and once sheltered in Beijing’s Forbidden City. A glimpse into the artistic life inside an imperial palace, the exhibition showcases how family collections were refined over generations, showcasing rare pieces created by emperors themselves in private moments of inspiration.

Leng Mei, Illustrations of Farming and Weaving, ca. 1696; Qing dynasty (1644–1911), reign of Emperor Kangxi (1662–1722). Album leaves, colors on silk (Taipei: National Palace Museum)

“This is the absolute ‘best of the best’ of Chinese imperial art,” says Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum. “By exploring how artistic taste was cultivated and evaluated—which created standards of beauty and elegance across Chinese culture—the exhibition reflects the museum’s mission of connecting audiences today with the great arts and traditions of Asia.”

The meticulously crafted public identities and carefully guarded private lives of each ruler will be told in a story narrated by the artworks of their eras, from the dignified Song to the bold yet subtle Yuan, from the celebrated brilliance of the Ming to the last days of the dazzling Qing dynasty.

While the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is renowned among Chinese art enthusiasts, historically its collection has not been widely accessible to the American public. Displays have traveled to the U.S. only a handful of times: in the 1960s and again in 1995–1996 for an exhibition presented by both The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Asian Art Museum—an exhibition that Xu also participated in organizing during his time as a junior research fellow there. “It’s exactly 20 years later,” Xu notes. “However, there are many works that haven’t been seen outside Asia before. In terms of the objects and time periods, it’s a fresh perspective for American audiences since the imperial court surrounded itself with the most important, avant-garde works of its time.”

Imperial Workshop, Beijing, Hibiscus-shaped bowl; Qing dynasty, reign of Emperor Yongzheng (1723–1735). Agate (Taipei: National Palace Museum)

Organized around the lives of nine rulers—eight emperors and one empress who reigned from the early 12th through the early 20th centuries—the exhibition will explore how taste and connoisseurship as both personal virtues and statements of political power evolved over 800 years. By examining the distinct contributions of each subject, the rich styles and the variety of craftsmanship they prized, the exhibition outlines how Chinese art developed and flourished under Han Chinese, Mongol and later Manchu regimes. Through this exceptional selection of objects, Emperors’ Treasures presents a unique occasion for audiences to connect with powerful historical figures through their most cherished belongings, relating to them on an intimate, human scale that only art can express.

Emperors’ Treasures unfolds chronologically, allowing audiences to gauge how imperial tastes evolved from within China or due to external pressures, looking backward to ancient examples or blazing forward with new ideas. The exhibition flows through four galleries on the museum’s first floor.

Vase with revolving core and eight-trigram design, ca. 1744. Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, Qing dynasty, reign of Emperor Qianlong (1736–1795). Porcelain with golden glaze, multicolor decoration, and appliquéd sculpture. (Taipei: National Palace Museum)

Opening in the large Osher Gallery, audiences are introduced to the Song emperors (960–1279), celebrated for leading a renaissance in Chinese art more than 800 years ago. Here, visitors will discover the masterful landscapes and calligraphy of Emperor Huizong, recognized for his distinctive, influential ‘slender-gold’ script. Alongside these elegant works are the robust art pieces and an imposing portrait demanded by the mighty Yuan-dynasty (1271–1368) ruler Kublai Khan. Also in this gallery are legendary Ming porcelains (1368–1644), the pinnacle of ceramic art in China. Highlights include a rare cloisonné vessel; one of only two surviving blue-and-white Ming vases depicting West Asian entertainers; and the ‘holy grail’ of Chinese porcelains—a wine cup with a cock and hen design like the example recently sold at Sotheby’s for more than $36 million.

The adjacent Hambrecht Gallery features an overview of illustrious Qing-dynasty accomplishments (1644–1911). During this period, a dozen imperial workshops across the Chinese Empire were opened to fulfill the Forbidden City’s relentless appetite for lacquers, enamels and carved jade, like the paper-thin hibiscus-shaped bowl from the early 1700s, sculpted from a single piece of glowing, nut-brown agate.

Next door is the Lee Gallery, which paints an intimate portrait of the 18th-century Qianlong Emperor, known as the ‘Old Man of Ten Perfections’ and admired as the most prolific poet-monarch in Chinese history. Through a selection of paintings, carvings and other treasures, audiences will see how a single ruler caused a seismic shift in the creative output of China. While many of the masterworks remain quietly breathtaking in their elegance, others certainly call out to the interests of today. The White Falcon hanging scroll by Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione introduces visitors to an intriguing European figure who spent decades in the Qing court, serving under Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong. Having his Chinese name as Lang Shining, Castiglione’s collaboration on court portraits and paintings underscores a tradition of East-West cultural exchange that continues in the current globalized art arena.

Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione, Italian, 1688–1766), White Falcon; Qing dynasty, reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736–1795). Hanging scroll, colors on silk (Taipei: National Palace Museum)

The exhibition concludes in the museum’s Resource Room with a focus on the Empress Dowager Cixi, a Manchu concubine who rose to become the long-ruling power behind the final Qing emperors. Cixi recruited female artists to her ‘Studio of Great Elegance’, where, under her personal direction, the coterie combined traditional symbols and patterns with botanical study, setting a foundation for modern Chinese aesthetics.

An icon of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, the celebrated Qing-dynasty ‘Meat-shaped stone’ will also be traveling to the U.S. for the first time. The stone—a hunk of jasper carved and dyed to resemble a portion of braised pork belly fresh from the pot—exemplifies how the enduring appeal of traditional Chinese cooking has long inspired devotion. When on view in Japan in 2014, the stone was seen by an average of 6,000 people a day and generated a mini-boom in dongpo rou, the classic dish it closely resembles. In honor of the stone’s unusual appeal, a special edition of the Asian Art Museum’s popular Thursday evening programs will feature innovative new dishes inspired by the Meat-shaped stone and prepared by four local chefs. Their dishes—from street carts to haute cuisine—will be presented to the public on July 7. Additionally, from June 17 to July 18, more than a dozen San Francisco chefs, both up-and-coming and established, will feature versions of the mouthwatering, slow-simmered ‘priceless pork belly’ in their restaurants. Another take on the delicious dish developed by Melinda Quirino, chef at the museum’s own Cafe Asia, will be available for visitors to enjoy throughout the exhibition’s run.

Meat-shaped stone; Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Jasper, golden stand (Taipei: National Palace Museum)

“Emperors’ Treasures is about looking forward and starting the museum’s next 50 years on the right note,” says Xu. “We not only share and present exceptional works of art, but we help people understand their context, significance and relevance.”

Emperors’ Treasures was made possible by a generous grant from Presenting Sponsor, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. “This important support from The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation enables the Asian Art Museum to curate and present Emperors’ Treasures, which will expose a global audience to the beauty and depth of Chinese art and culture,” said Xu.

Ted Lipman, CEO of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, noted: “This exhibition marks the third collaboration between the Asian Art Museum and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. A key mission of the Foundation is to promote Chinese culture and the arts to Western audiences to increase understanding and appreciation of this ancient legacy. Nowhere does the 5,000 years of Chinese history manifest itself more beautifully and comprehensively than the exquisite imperial collection, which has been lovingly conserved and displayed at the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Through support for this significant exhibition, the Foundation seeks to provide visitors with an unprecedented opportunity to witness China’s vibrant cultural heritage first-hand.”

Emperors’ Treasures: Chinese Art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei is co-organized by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The exhibition is curated by Asian Art Museum Director Jay Xu and Li He, associate curator of Chinese art.

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Jay Xu and He Li, eds., Emperors’ Treasures: Chinese Art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, 2016), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0939117734, $50.

Emperors’ Treasures features artworks from the renowned National Palace Museum, Taipei. It encompasses paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics, lacquer ware, jades, and textiles exemplifying the finest craftsmanship and imperial taste. The exhibition catalog explores the identities of eight Chinese rulers—seven emperors and one empress—who reigned from the early 12th through early 20th centuries. They are portrayed in a story line that highlights artworks of their eras, from the dignified Song to the coarse yet subtle Yuan, and from the brilliant Ming until the final, dazzling Qing period. Emperors’ Treasures examines each ruler’s distinct contribution to the arts and how each developed his or her aesthetic and connoisseurship.

With contributions by Fung Ming-chu, Jay Xu, Ho Chuan-hsin, Alfreda Murck, Tianlong Jiao, Li He, and curators from the National Palace Museum and the Asian Art Museum.

Jay Xu is Executive Director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He is the first Chinese American director at a major US art museum and the first Asian American museum director elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Li He is associate curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and a visiting research fellow at the Palace Museum, Beijing. She is the author of Chinese Ceramics: A New Comprehensive History from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

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Looking ahead to the fall . . . press release from the National Maritime Museum:

Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 3 November 2016 — 17 April 2016

From humble origins, Emma Hamilton rose to national and international fame as a model, performer, and interpreter of neo-classical fashion. Within the public mind, however, she typically continues to occupy a passive and supporting role and is often remembered simply as the mistress of Britain’s greatest naval hero, Admiral Lord Nelson. This landmark exhibition recovers Emma from myth and misrepresentation and reveals her to be an active and influential historical actor in her own right: one of the greatest female lives of her era.

Born into poverty in 1765, Emma’s talent and beauty brought her fame while still in her teens as muse to the great portrait artist George Romney. In her twenties she achieved still greater artistic prominence in Naples, the epicentre of the fashionable Grand Tour. Here, as the confidante of Queen Maria Carolina, she also came to wield considerable political power. Emma embarked on a passionate affair with Admiral Lord Nelson but risked her security and social status in the process. Her fortunes never recovered from the tragedy of his death at Trafalgar, and—following a period in debtor’s prison—she died in self-imposed exile in Calais in 1815.

The exhibition carries visitors through the arc of this remarkable story, revealing Emma’s driving ambition and her brilliance as a performer and placing in sharp relief the social conventions ranged against her. In an age when people tended to remain fixed in the social categories in which they began their lives, she crossed boundaries of all kinds, broke through barriers, and ultimately paid a heavy price.

Emma’s story will be told through over 200 objects from public and private lenders around a core from the Museum’s own collections. Emma’s compelling story will be explored through exceptional fine art, antiquities that inspired Emma’s famous ‘attitudes’, costumes that show her impact on contemporary fashions, prints and caricatures that carried her image to a mass audience, her personal letters and those of Nelson and William Hamilton, and finally the uniform coat that Nelson wore at Trafalgar, retained by Emma until destitution forced her to part with it.

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From Thames & Hudson:

Quintin Colville and Kate Williams, with contributions by Vic Gatrell, Hannah Greig, Jason Kelly, Margarette Lincoln, Christine Riding, and Gillian Russell, Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity (London: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0500252208, £30 / $50.

Emma Hamilton (1765–1815) is widely known as a temptress who ensnared the naval hero Horatio Nelson and paid the price by dying in poverty in Calais. But this epic love affair, and the judgments surrounding it, have obscured a spectacular life story. This book, published to coincide with a major exhibition on Hamilton at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, explores her remarkable life and recovers Emma from myth and misrepresentation. Distinguished contributors provide a fresh evaluation of her artistic undertakings, cultural achievements, and legacy, as well as of the momentous years of her association with Nelson and the unravelling of her fortunes after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Illustrated with paintings, prints, and drawings capturing the beauty that propelled her to celebrity status, Emma Hamilton tells the story of an extraordinary woman who broke through barriers of class and privilege to win her own unique place in British history.

Quintin Colville is Curator of Naval History at the National Maritime Museum. He edited Nelson, Navy & Nation and is the author of The British Sailor of the First World War.
Kate Williams is Professor of History at the University of Reading. Her biography England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton was published in 2006.

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Note (added 28 October 2016) — The original version of this posting used an earlier working title, Seduction and Celebrity: The Spectacular Life of Emma Hamilton. Other changes have been made to reflect updated information.

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Now on view at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille:

Marseille au XVIIIe siècle: Les années de l’Académie, 1753–1793
Le Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, 17 June — 16 October 2016

Pour la première fois le panorama artistique d’une période majeure de l’histoire de Marseille, le XVIIIe siècle, va être présenté au musée des Beaux-arts. Cent cinquante œuvres, peintures, sculptures et dessins, provenant des riches collections patrimoniales de la ville, musées, bibliothèque, archives, mais également des musées français et européens seront réunies pour retracer une histoire des arts dans une ville que le commerce a, de tout temps, ouvert aux influences extérieures.

Cette évocation débute pourtant par une tragédie, celle de l’épidémie de Peste dont les grandes toiles de Michel Serre, restaurées pour l’occasion, nous ont gardé l’exceptionnel souvenir. La ville saura se relever du désastre et au milieu du siècle, deux grands peintres, Dandré-Bardon et Joseph Vernet viendront redonner un nouveau souffle au milieu local.

En créant en 1753, l’académie de peinture et de sculpture de Marseille, Dandré-Bardon va faire de cette institution un extraordinaire vivier de jeunes artistes, y attirant également ceux qui sont en route vers l’Italie. Joseph Vernet, dont l’Europe entière s’arrache les marines, venant sur place peindre pour Louis XV le port de Marseille,  va susciter de nombreux émules comme Lacroix de Marseille, Volaire ou Henry d’Arles, et faire des marines un genre particulièrement prisé des collectionneurs marseillais.

Du baroque au néo-classicisme, Marseillais ou non, installés à demeure ou simplement de passage, artistes et amateurs d’arts, ont fait de Marseille un des importants foyers artistiques de la France du XVIIIe siècle.

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From Somogy:

Luc Georget and Gérard Fabre, eds., Marseille au XVIIIe siècle: Les années de l’Académie, 1753–1793 (Paris: Somogy, 2016), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-2757210581, 39€.

Cet ouvrage rend compte de la vie artistique à Marseille au Siècle des lumières. L’Académie de peinture et de sculpture  de Marseille, créée en 1753, est au cœur de ce récit. La naissance de cette institution concrétisait les efforts de ces hommes, artistes et amateurs d’art, qui voulaient doter leur ville d’un établissement capable de former peintres, sculpteurs et architectes. Ils rêvaient de faire de cette institution un soutien pour les jeunes artistes, un lieu d’accueil et de rencontre pour ceux qui étaient de passage et, par le réseau de relations qu’ils entretinrent avec le reste de l’Europe, un instrument du rayonnement de leur ville. Au cours de ses quarante années d’existence, l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture a formé des élèves qui connurent de grands succès, bien au-delà de Marseille, et des dessinateurs qui offrirent aux productions de ses manufactures un niveau inégalé. Fermée en 1793, comme toutes les académies en France, elle devait donner naissance, une fois la tourmente apaisée, à deux des plus importantes institutions culturelles du XIXe siècle : l’école des beaux-arts et le musée.

Sous la direction de Luc Georget, Conservateur en chef du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille et Gérard Fabre, assistant de conservation au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille – Avec la collaboration de Régis Bertrand, Marie-Claude Homet, Emilie Beck Saiello, Olivier Bonfait, Laëtitia Pierre, Markus Castor, Sylvain Bédard, Emilie Roffidal, Christine Germain-Donnat, Yves di Domenico, Alexandre Maral, et Claude Badet.

S O M M A I R E

• Luc Georget, Avant-propos
• Régis Bertrand, Le « glorieux » XVIIIe siècle marseillais: Marseille de la Régence à la Révolution
• Marie-Claude Homet, L’héritage baroque: Michel Serre
• Émilie Beck Saiello, De l’aristocratie du négoce aux cercles de l’Académie: Les réseaux marseillais de Joseph Vernet
• Olivier Bonfait, École de dessin, académie, académies: L’« Académie de Peinture, &c. de Marseille » dans l’espace des Lumières
• Gérard Fabre, De l’École académique de dessin à l’Académie de peinture, sculpture et architecture civile et navale de Marseille, 1753–1793
• Laëtitia Pierre et Markus Castor, Faire œuvre de pédagogie: Le directorat de Michel-François Dandré-Bardon à l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture de Marseille, 1749–1783
• Sylvain Bédard, Modèles parisiens: Un lot de figures académiques pour Marseille
• Luc Georget, Une académicienne: Françoise Duparc
• Émilie Roffidal, L’union des arts et du commerce
• Christine Germain-Donnat, La faïence de Marseille
• Yves di Domencio, Le cycle de l’Histoire de Tobie de Pierre Parrocel
• Alexandre Maral, Les sculpteurs de l’Académie de Marseille
• Luc Georget, L’architecture à l’Académie: Les morceaux de réception
• Luc Georget, Une commande singulière: Le Saint Roch intercède la Vierge pour la guérison des pestiférés de David
• Claude Badet, Marseille et la création artistique pendant la Révolution

Liste des œuvres exposées
Bibliographie
Index des noms de personnes

Left: Royal Meissen manufactory, a pair of four-sided bottles with stoppers, ca. 1724, Collection of Henry H. Arnhold; photo by Michael Bodycomb. Right: Arlene Shechet, Three Hundred Years, 2012, © Arlene Shechet, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; photo by Alan Wiener.

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Now on view at The Frick:

Porcelain, No Simple Matter: Arlene Shechet and the Arnhold Collection
The Frick Collection, New York, 24 May 2016 — 2 April 2017

Curated by Charlotte Vignon

The Frick will present a year-long exhibition exploring the complex history of making, collecting, and displaying porcelain. Included are 130 pieces produced by the renowned Royal Meissen manufactory, which led the ceramic industry in Europe, both scientifically and artistically, during the early to mid-eighteenth century. Most of the works date from 1720 to 1745 and were selected by New York−based sculptor Arlene Shechet from the promised gift of Henry H. Arnhold. Twelve works in the exhibition are Shechet’s own sculptures—exuberant porcelain she made during a series of residencies at the Meissen manufactory in 2012 and 2013. Designed by Shechet, the exhibition avoids the typical chronological or thematic order of most porcelain installations in favor of a personal and imaginative approach that creates an intriguing dialogue between the historical and the contemporary, from then to now. With nature as the dominant theme, the exhibition will be presented in the Frick’s Portico Gallery, which overlooks the museum’s historic Fifth Avenue Garden.

Porcelain, No Simple Matter: Arlene Shechet and the Arnhold Collection is organized by Charlotte Vignon, Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection. Major support for the exhibition is generously provided by Chuck and Deborah Royce, Melinda and Paul Sullivan, Margot and Jerry Bogert, and Monika McLennan. A fully illustrated booklet featuring installation views and a conversation with Arnhold, Shechet, and Vignon will be available in July.

Additional information and images are available from Meghan Dailey’s piece: “Contemporary Ceramics, Up Against 18th-Century Pieces — Literally,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine (24 May 2016).

Francisco de Goya, Blind Man’s Bluff (La Gallina Ciega), 1788, canvas, 269 x 350 cm
(Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado)

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Press release for the exhibition now on view in Vienna:

Celebration! 125 Years, Anniversary Exhibition / Feste Feiern: 125 Jahre – Jubiläumsausstellung
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, 8 March — 11 September 2016

Curated by Gudrun Swoboda

In 2016 the Kunsthistorisches Museum is celebrating a jubilee: 125 years ago, on October 17, 1891, Emperor Franz Joseph formally opened the new main museum on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. To celebrate this anniversary in style we are showing an important exhibition on ‘the art of celebration’ showcasing precious artworks from all the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. International loans like Francisco de Goya’s La gallina ciega from the Prado in Madrid or the magnificent Yashmak designed by Shaun Leane for one of Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows from the V&A in London will enrich this magnificent show, which presents 125 groups of objects in three galleries.

The show focuses on celebrations and their history, and looks at different aspects of European festivities from the Renaissance to the French Revolution—at court (especially that of the Habsburgs) in towns and cities, and in the country. Court banquets and their opulent dishes, dancing and music form the centre of the show (Gallery VIII). The adjacent galleries look at sumptuous outdoor parties organized to celebrate coronations, weddings or birthdays but also during Carnival, popular festivals or on market days (Gallery IX), and at courtly tournaments (Gallery I).

Festivities always represent a state of exception during which every-day laws are temporarily suspended—through role-playing games and disguises that flout historical, cultural and gender differences. But what can we display of these ephemeral, long gone festivities? By turning the question on its head we arrive at a preliminary answer: we can display what remains of the day: show-pieces, props and pictorial records of these events.

For millennia something was presented or displayed during many of these celebrations, be they ecclesiastical or secular. Court festivities offered the host the opportunity to display precious show-pieces removed for this purpose from his treasury or Kunstkammer. The large two-handled rock crystal vase is such a show-piece; in 1764 it was removed from the Imperial Treasury in Vienna and transported to Frankfurt for the coronation of Joseph II. After the event these prestigious artefacts were returned to their respective depositories, only to reappear again at the next important festivity. Not a show-piece sensu stricto but nonetheless an important prop is the seventeen-metres-long tablecloth presented here to the public for the first time; Emperor Charles V commissioned it in 1527 for the banquets of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Another extraordinary prop for princely drinking parties is the 16th-century ‘trick chair’ that shackled guests until they had downed the content of a ‘welcome-glass’.

Fantastic parade armour worn at Renaissance tournaments documents exceptional creativity and imagination, and these artefacts are among the most fascinating props used as elegant disguises by the elite. Courtly festivities demanded both opulence and splendour but also extravagance—including technical extravagance. A particularly sophisticated construction that documents the innovative potential and the creative energies employed to plan and produce surprising show-effects is the mechanical breast-piece comprising springs and levers that Emperor Maximilian I commissioned for courtly tournaments. A direct hit on the shield of one’s opponent activated the mechanism, catapulting the pieces of the disintegrating shield high into the air. Hosts worked hard to surprise and enchant their guests, and the creative achievements of the court artists especially employed to plan and organize these festivities reflected back on their patrons.

Fragile sculptures made of molten sugar functioned as ephemeral table décor at banquets, and they, too, illustrate the sophistication of such costly festive creations. Contemporary Tuscan artisans have produced a number of sugar statuettes especially for this exhibition, an attempt to recreate the splendour of these centrepieces known as trionfi di tavola. But festive infrastructure also required invisible props like the 17th-century rocket-pole that bears witness to the magnificence of ephemeral baroque fireworks displays. In addition to opulent treasures and curious extravagances the exhibition includes depictions of real and imaginary festivities: from coronations to Bruegel’s boisterous peasant celebrations to the fanciful fêtes galantes of Watteau and his followers—dreamy scenes set in Arcadian parklands in which fashionable ladies and gentlemen give themselves up to dance, games and gallant conversation.

Public festivals offered a counter-draft to the strictly regulated hierarchical court festivities—especially during Carnival, a looking-glass world when the existing social order was temporarily turned upside down through exuberant partying, the donning of disguises and role reversal—one way of defusing the tensions that accumulate in every hierarchic society. A number of musical examples document that various elements of public festivals have enriched and inspired court celebrations. A perfect example of this rich interdependency is the painting of Blind Man’s Bluff by the Spanish court painter Francisco de Goya, who recorded public festivals and their entertainments in many of his compositions. Occasionally elements of a public festival are even turned into a court ceremony, and are thus constrained and controlled. One example is the Cuccagna Napoletana, which evolved out of carnival processions in Naples. The rising number of increasingly serious accidents during celebrations originally organized by the craftsmen’s guild led the ruler to assume control. Royal troops guarded a land-of- Cockayne-like structure set up in front of the royal palace until the king standing on a balcony gave the sign that gave it up for plunder, and it was stormed by the populace.

The artefacts assembled for this exhibition bear witness to the exceptional splendour and opulence of some of these festivities but they also hint at their rigid as well as fragile order. They also show that the history of celebrations includes some that never actually happened. The exhibition offers insights into the history of celebrations—mainly, but not exclusively, during the early Modern Era. Our aim is to show that throughout history festivities were always also displays, and although the installation is ‘festive’ it aims also to remind visitors of what separates us from earlier festivities: it is, of course, obvious that modern museum visitors differ greatly from the protagonists and spectators of historical feasts—but how does a modern audience see itself? The exhibition poses this question in the form of a magnificent baroque mirror: it is, in a way, a precursor of our modern selfies, and functioned in much the same way. But perhaps it can also turn into an instrument of (humorous) self reflection, for which there is more than enough cause 125 years after the formal opening of the magnificent museum building on the Ringstrasse.

The exhibition was curated by Gudrun Swoboda, curator for Baroque Painting in the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Most of the artefacts on show come from the rich holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and some of them have never, or only very rarely, been on display. In addition, the show includes loans from a number of national and international museums such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Historisches Museum Frankfurt, the MAK—Austrian Museum for Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, the Albertina, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, the Hofmobiliendepot and the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Tiroler Landesmuseum. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, who have also lent a number of important works.

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The full-length German catalogue is available from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, along with an abridged English version. A 27-page booklet with a checklist of the 126 items included in the exhibition and a brief description for each object is available to download as a PDF file here.

Sabine Haag and Gudrun Swoboda, eds., Feste Feiern (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2016), 320 pages, 35€.

Opening in June at The Morgan Library:

City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics  
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 17 June — 11 September 2016

Rome exists not only as an intensely physical place, but also as a romantic idea onto which artists, poets, and writers project their own imaginations and longings. City of the Soul examines the evolving image of Rome in art and literature with a display of books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and drawings.

This groundbreaking exhibition considers the ever-evolving identities of Rome during a pivotal period in the city’s history, 1770–1870, when it was transformed from a papal state to the capital of a unified, modern nation. Venerable monuments were demolished to make way for government ministries and arteries of commerce. Building projects and improvements in archaeological techniques revealed long forgotten remnants of the ancient metropolis. A tourist’s itinerary could include magnificent ruins, ecclesiastical edifices, scenic vistas, picturesque locales, fountains, gardens, and side trips to the surrounding countryside.

The exhibition juxtaposes a century of artistic impressions of Rome through a superb selection of prints and drawings by recognized masters such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), and Edward Lear (1812–1888) along with lesser known artists whose work deserves greater attention.

The invention of photography also influenced the image of the city. Photographers consciously played on the compositions of Piranesi and earlier masters of the veduta tradition, while at the same time exploiting the expressive potential of this new medium. As the meditative, measured pace of the Grand Tour gave way to the demands of organized tourism, they supplied their new clientele with nostalgia as well as novelty in their views of the Eternal City.

John Pinto, City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2016), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0875981710, $50.

Rome, described by Byron as the ‘City of the Soul’, has always inspired fervid imaginings and visionary renderings of itself and its past. It has existed not only as an intensely physical place but also as a romantic idea onto which artists and writers projected their own imaginations and longings. City of the Soul illuminates how the spirit of Romanticism (the term itself invokes Rome)—its passion, imagination, individuality, transcendence, nonconformity—thrived in the artistic community of Rome in the century between 1770 and 1870.

The expansive artistic response to Rome during that period reflected the timeless yet changing city, when visitors experienced the transition from the Grand Tour to the onset of mass tourism and history witnessed Rome’s dramatic transformation from papal enclave to the capital of a newly unified Italy. Rome in the Romantic era attracted extraordinary writers and visual artists, and, as it had for centuries, facilitated vibrant artistic exchange among them. The records of these encounters—in the form of letters and diary entries, poems, novels, prints, drawings, watercolors, oil sketches, and the exciting new medium of photography—collectively constitute the portrait of a very particular place, a city that touched the very soul.

John A. Pinto taught for twenty-five years at Princeton University in the Department of Art and Archaeology. His research interests focus on the architecture of eighteenth-century Rome and on the relationship between the architecture of classical antiquity and that of the Renaissance. He currently resides in New York City.

Press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition now on view at ROM:

A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Prints
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 7 May — 27 November 2016
Japan Society, New York, 10 March — 11 June 2017

Curated by Asato Ikeda

Suzuki Harunobu, Mitate-e of a Poem by Saigyō Hōshi. 1767/68 (Ontario: ROM, Sir Edmund Walker Collection 926.18.113)

The ground-breaking A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Prints opened at the Royal Ontario Museum on Saturday, May 7, 2016. Featuring stunning woodblock prints, samurai armor, a kimono, screen paintings, lacquerwork, and illustrated books, the exhibition explores issues of gender and tells a pivotal story of sexuality in Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868).

A Third Gender is the first North American display on wakashu. Four hundred years ago in Japan, a complex social structure existed in which gender involved more than a person’s biological sex. Age, position in the sexual hierarchy, and appearance were also considered. Fundamental to this structure were youths termed wakashu. Neither ‘adult man’ nor ‘woman’—each a separate gender—wakashu were objects of desire for both, playing distinct social and sexual roles. Constituting a third gender, they are visually represented in these Edo period woodblock prints.

The exhibition features approximately 60 woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), visually representing wakashu. Many never before displayed, they are from the ROM’s Japanese art collection—the largest in Canada. Produced since the 8th century in Japan, woodblock prints, created collaboratively by a designer, engraver, printer, and publisher, became popular in the 17th century. The exhibition’s prints were created in early 18th to mid-19th centuries by major ukiyo-e masters including Okumura Masanobu, Suzuki Harunobu, and Kitagawa Utamaro.

A Third Gender is curated by Dr. Asato Ikeda, Assistant Professor of Art History at Fordham University, New York and the ROM’s 2014–16 Bishop White Postdoctoral Fellow of Japanese Art and Culture. In Ikeda’s words, “A Third Gender invites ROM visitors to think differently about gender and sexuality and we anticipate the exhibition will be of interest to a diverse audience.”

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From Brill:

Joshua Mostow, Asato Ikeda, and Ryoko Matsuba, A Third Gender: Beautiful Youth in Japanese Edo-period Prints, 1600–1868 (Leiden: Hotei, 2016), 215 pages, ISBN 978-0888545145, $50.

For the first time outside Japan, A Third Gender examines the fascination with wakashu in Edo-period culture and their visual representation in art, demonstrating how they destabilize the conventionally held model of gender binarism. The volume will reproduce, in color, over a hundred works, mostly woodblock prints and illustrated books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced by a number of designers ranging from such well-known artists as Okumura Masanobu, Suzuki Harunobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, and Utagawa Kunisada, to lesser known artists such as Shigemasa, Eishi, and Eiri. A Third Gender is based on the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, which houses the largest collection of Japanese art in Canada, including more than 2500 woodblock prints.

Joshua S. Mostow is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Asato Ikeda is Assistant Professor of Art History at Fordham University, New York and the ROM’s 2014–16 Bishop White Postdoctoral Fellow of Japanese Art and Culture.

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P R O G R A M  S E R I E S

Elements of Sake
3 May 2016
Join Michael Tremblay for an introduction and guided tasting of sake, designed to demystify and engage. This special evening will explore the basics of sake, its production and history, and the culture that created it.

Japanese Visual Culture: Gender and Sexual Diversity
12 May 2016
Asato Ikeda, the curator of A Third Gender, will examine the role of male youths in Edo-period Japan and how this gender and sexuality system can be understood from a contemporary North American perspective.

It’s Complicated: Gender Ambiguity in Early-Mondern Japan
7 June 2016
Explore the roles of gender, sexuality, and erotic art in Japanese culture with internationally renowned scholar Joshua Mostow. Please note this lecture will contain explicit images and discussions of a sexual nature, and is not recommended for those under the age of 18.

Lost in Translation? Gender and Sexuality Across Time and Cultures
21 June 2016
How do we understand representations of sexuality, including same sex sexuality, across different historical and cultural moments without imposing contemporary norms? Join our panel as they explore concepts surrounding our exhibition A Third Gender.

The Art of Japan
16 October 2016
Experience the fundamentals of Japanese art in this in-depth workshop lead by ROM Educator George Hewson. This full day workshop includes a guided visit of the exhibition A Third Gender and lunch.

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Note (added 14 March 2017) — The original posting did not include the Japan Society as a venue.

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William Hogarth, A Harlot’s Progress, Plate 6, 1732, 364 × 440 mm
(Copenhagen: SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark)

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Press release (22 February 2016) from the National Gallery of Denmark:

William Hogarth: A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories
William Hogarth: En skøges liv og andre historier
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 14 April — 7 August 2016

Curated by Vibeke Vibolt Knudsen

A young country girl arrives in London in search of work. Instead she ends up a prostitute, and her life spirals steadily downwards, bringing stints in prison and venereal disease. With the exhibition William Hogarth: A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories, the SMK turns back time to visit eighteenth-century city life in London. The exhibition presents work by the British artist and satirist William Hogarth (1697–1764), who invented a new kind of narrative picture series that served up satirical and moral points with acerbic wit. His style of social critique was unique for the time, focusing on many highly topical subjects: Prostitution, poverty, violence, drunkenness, deceit, self-aggrandisement and desire.

Three series hold a particularly prominent position in Hogarth’s oeuvre: A Harlot’s Progress (1732), A Rake’s Progress (1735), and Marriage à-la-mode (1745). Each series describes a main protagonist who strives to climb the rungs of the class ladder, but loses their way in debauchery, heading directly for self-destruction and death.

In his autobiographical notes Hogarth states that his pictures are scenes from a play and his subjects are actors strutting soundlessly on the stage. His stories became highly successful, attracting a large audience that included the lower echelons of society as well as the elite. Hogarth insisted that a picture must capture the viewer’s attention by entertaining and pleasing the eye, thereby allowing the serious aspects of its subject to gradually sink in as the narrative progresses towards its tragic climax.

Hogarth’s art is closely linked to London and city life. Around the year 1700 the city had swelled to a population of 600,000, making it the largest city in Europe. He made daily records of the chaotic urban crowds, of all the many and varied forms of life unfolding in the city’s streets and houses; he had a particularly keen eye for the contrasts between different social strata and how they met and clashed.

William Hogarth: A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories is an exhibition of works from The Royal Collection of Graphic Arts, which is one of the oldest collections of prints and drawings in the world. Housing more than 240,000 works, the collection has roots that date back to the sixteenth century. In 1843 the collection was opened to the public, and in 1896 it was relocated to the new National Gallery of Denmark alongside The Royal Collection of Paintings and The Royal Cast Collection.

The catalogue is available from Arnold Busck:

Vibeke Vibolt Knudsen, William Hogarth: En skøges liv og andre historier (Odder: Narayana Press, 2016), 96 pages, ISBN 978-8792023971, 128KR.

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