Exhibition | Kakiemon and 400 Years of Porcelain
Press release for the exhibition now on view at The British Museum:
Made in Japan: Kakiemon and 400 Years of Porcelain
The British Museum, London, 23 June — 21 August 2016
Japanese Porcelain
Founded by Korean potters . . .
Inspired by Chinese styles . . .
Encouraged by Dutch traders . . .
The Kakiemon style has absorbed foreign influence while incorporating distinctive Japanese elements.
Boy on a Go Board, Kakiemon kiln, Arita, Japan, ca. 1670–80, nigoshide porcelain (London: The British Museum)
This Asahi Shimbun Display Made in Japan: Kakiemon and 400 Years of Porcelain celebrates fifteen generations of porcelain production in Arita by showcasing work by one of the most famous potting dynasties. 2016 is the 400th anniversary of the birth of porcelain in the town of Arita in Saga Prefecture, and the show will feature, among other examples, a new work decorated with acorn branches by Sakaida Kakiemon XV (b. 1968) representing his coming of age as an artist that he created specifically for the British Museum. Featured in the display is an original film made by the British Museum at the Kakiemon kiln, which allows viewers to see and feel through the actions of the potters how Kakiemon porcelain is actually created.
The Kakiemon (pronounced ‘ka-ki-e-mon’) kiln is still modeled on the traditional Japanese early modern workshop system. Succession is based on the principle of iemoto or ‘head of the household’, the oldest son inheriting and sustaining the brand and workshop. The current head of the kiln is Kakiemon XV. He recently received the title following the death of his greatly admired father Kakiemon XIV in 2013.
Historically, the Kakiemon workshop produced some of the most exquisite porcelain for export to Europe and the Middle East, notably in the later 1600s. In 1647 Sakaida Kizaemon was credited with introducing the overglaze enameling technique to the Arita porcelain kilns, making advanced porcelain production possible and starting the potting dynasty. He was thought to have learnt the secrets to overglaze enameling on porcelain from a Chinese specialist in adjacent Nagasaki. This success earned him the name Sakaida Kakiemon I—which derived from kaki or ‘persimmon’ after the orangey-red colour of the most important overglaze enamel. Japan was a late starter to porcelain production compared to China and Korea, but it quickly made up for lost time. Japan benefitted from domestic turbulence in China and was able to start exporting to Europe and elsewhere through the Dutch East India Company.
The classic Kakiemon style, lasting from 1670 to 1700, is defined by its refined yet sparse decoration executed with bright overglaze enamels in a palette of orange-red, green, blue and yellow. Some of the most exquisite porcelain is on view in this display such as Boy on a Go Board, ca. 1670–80. This figurine was specifically created with a distinctive creamy-white porcelain body called nigoshide, the formula for which was developed by the Kakiemon kiln. The contrast in colours and tones emphasises the brightly coloured enamels. A 3D model of this figurine can be viewed online.
Kakiemon grew in international popularity in the late 17th century, and became particularly valued in England during the reign of Queen Mary II (1686–1694), who was passionate about the Kakiemon style. Classic Kakiemon style in Japan ceased production in the 18th century; but its popularity continued, and the style was reproduced in China and in Europe, examples of which can be seen in this display. There was a revival in the mid-20th century of traditional Kakiemon style due to the ingenuity of Kakiemon XII and Kakiemon XIII. They rediscovered the forgotten techniques and created a renaissance for the nigoshide creamy white porcelain used earlier with Boy Sitting on a Go Board. Kakiemon XIII was awarded the high honour from the Japanese government as a ‘Living National Treasure’ for his revitalisation of classic Kakiemon style. His son, Kakiemon XIV continued the legacy of his father while also developing the Kakiemon brand through inspired naturalistic designs. Kakiemon XV is now poised to take the revitalised Kakiemon legacy forward.
The Asahi Shimbun Displays are a series of regularly changing displays which look at objects in new or different ways. Sometimes the display highlights a well-known item; sometimes it surprises the audience with extraordinary items from times and cultures that may not be very familiar. This is also an opportunity for the Museum to learn how it can improve its larger exhibitions and permanent gallery displays. These displays have been made possible by the generous sponsorship of The Asahi Shimbun Company, who are long-standing supporters of the British Museum. With a circulation of about 7 million for the morning edition alone, The Asahi Shimbun is the most prestigious newspaper in Japan. The company also publishes magazines and books, and provides a substantial information service on the internet. The Asahi Shimbun Company has a century-long tradition of staging exhibitions in Japan of art, culture, and history from around the world.
Exhibition | Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment
Opening in September at the Louvre:
Bouchardon: A Sublime Idea of Beauty / Une idée du beau
Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 14 September — 5 December 2016
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 10 January — 2 April 2017
Curated by Anne-Lise Desmas, Edouard Kopp, Guilhem Scherf, and Juliette Trey
Edme Bouchardon, Femme nue de dos, bras gauche le long du corps (RMN-Grand Palais/Louvre / Michel Urtado)
The Musée du Louvre and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles pay tribute to Edme Bouchardon (1698–1762), a renowned French sculptor and draftsman, who was considered an exceptional artist in his own time. The son of an architect-sculptor, he trained at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris before spending a productive period at the French Academy in Rome (1723–32). Learning of Bouchardon’s great reputation, the director of the King’s Buildings summoned him back to France, where he quickly received a studio and lodgings at the Louvre. Accepted into the Academy in 1735, he thus became Sculptor to the King.
Listed in the Encyclopédie—Diderot and d’Alembert’s encyclopedic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and trades—as the continuator of Puget and Girardon, Bouchardon was regarded by his contemporaries as the advocate of artistic renewal, “the greatest sculptor and the best draftsman of his century” (Cochin).
While many studies have shed new light on our understanding of Neoclassicism, this exhibition—the first major monograph on Bouchardon’s oeuvre—will be an opportunity to comprehend the sculptor’s style, a perfect balance between classical influence and life-like rendering.
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Juliette Trey, avec la participation d’Hélène Grollemund, Inventaire général des dessins du musée du Louvre. Ecole française. Edme Bouchardon (1698–1762): Catalogue raisonné (Paris: Mare & Martin / Musée du Louvre, 2016), 720 pages, ISBN: 979-1092054651, 110€.
Le musée du Louvre conserve un fonds très important de dessins (1038 feuilles) attribués à Edme Bouchardon dont le catalogue sommaire a été publié par Jean Guiffrey et Pierre Marcel en 1907 et 1908 (Inventaire général des dessins du musée du Louvre et de Versailles, Ecole française, vol. I et II). La dernière étude monographique sur l’artiste date de 1910 (Alphonse Roserot, Edme Bouchardon, Paris, Librairie centrale des beaux-arts).
L’inventaire des dessins de Bouchardon est organisé de manière chronologique, présentant les feuilles dans l’ordre de leur réalisation, et thématique. Il est divisé en trois parties, correspondant aux trois étapes essentielles de la carrière de Bouchardon : Rome (1723–1732), qui compte essentiellement des copies d’antiques, de peintures et de sculptures, exécutées par l’artiste lors de son séjour à l’Académie de France ; Paris (1733–1748), qui rassemble les dessins pour les sculptures qui firent la gloire de Bouchardon, notamment l’Amour taillant son arc dans la massue d’Hercule et la fontaine de Grenelle ; la statue équestre de Louis XV (1748–1762), chantier colossal qui occupa toute la fin de la carrière du sculpteur et pour lequel le fonds du Louvre s’élève à près de 440 dessins. Chaque partie puis chaque thème sont introduits par un court texte de présentation. La plupart des notices sont également commentées avec l’identification du modèle copié ou de la sculpture préparée, présentant les oeuvres en rapport, les estampes gravées d’après le dessin. L’étude matérielle des dessins a fait l’objet d’une grande attention, avec un relevé systématique des filigranes, permettant une étude chronologique nouvelle et fine des dessins.
Enfin, l’ouvrage est complété par une présentation générale de l’artiste, une chronologie, un index, auxquels s’ajoute un chapitre dédié aux dessins rejetés pour lesquels de nouvelles attributions sont parfois proposées.
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From ArtBooks.com:
Guilhem Scherf, et al., Edme Bouchardon (1698–1762): Sculpteur et Dessinateur du Roi (Paris: Somogy, 2016), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-2757210697, $80.
From ArtBooks.com:
Anne-Lise Desmas, Edouard Kopp, Guilhem Scherf, and Juliette Trey, Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2017), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-1606065068, $80.
One of the most imaginative and fascinating artists of eighteenth-century France, Edme Bouchardon was instrumental in the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism and in the artistic rediscovery of classical antiquity. Much celebrated in his time, Bouchardon created some of the most iconic images of the age of Louis XV. His oeuvre demonstrates a remarkable variety of themes (from copies after the antique to subjects of history and mythology, portraiture, anatomical studies, ornament, fountains and tombs), media (drawings, sculptures, medals, prints), and techniques (chalk, plaster, wax, terracotta, marble, bronze).
With five essays by experts on Bouchardon’s sculpture and graphic arts, more than 140 catalogue entries, and a detailed chronology, this book aims to demonstrate the originality of Bouchardon’s art within the cultural and social context of the period, while suggesting the subtle relationship between, as well as the relative autonomy of, the artist’s two careers as a sculptor and a draftsman. This lavishly illustrated publication represents an unprecedented and thorough survey on this major and unique artist from the Age of Enlightenment, offering indepth scholarship based on unpublished material.
Anne-Lise Desmas is curator and head of the Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Édouard Kopp is the Maida and George Abrams Associate Curator of Drawings at the Harvard Art Museums. Guilhem Scherf is chief curator in the Department of Sculpture at the Louvre. Juliette Trey is curator in the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre.
Exhibition | Stubbs and the Wild
George Stubbs, Horse Frightened by a Lion, 1770
(National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery)
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Press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition on view at The Holburne Museum:
Stubbs and the Wild
The Holburne Museum, Bath, 25 June — 2 October 2016
Curated by Amina Wright
The Holburne Museum presents Stubbs and the Wild, an exhibition of animal portraits, grand fantasies, and exquisite prints and drawings by renowned British wildlife painter George Stubbs (1724–1806), on show from 25 June to 2 October 2016. Stubbs and the Wild delves into the many-sided eighteenth-century world of George Stubbs through his realistic animal studies and sublime fantasy pieces, focusing on the artist’s famous depictions of wild animals in paint and print that encapsulated the uneasy relationship between the domestic and the exotic in polite Georgian society.
George Stubbs, Two Leopards, ca. 1776, oil on oak panel, 90.5 × 137.4 cm (Private Collection)
Throughout his life George Stubbs was fascinated by how animals are built and studied their anatomy tirelessly. It was this interest that led him beyond horses and dogs to other animals at a time when exotic new wildlife was arriving in London from Britain’s expanding colonies. Moose, leopards, lemurs, antelope and even the remains of a kangaroo were brought home as valuable curiosities and their owners encouraged Stubbs to study the animals and record them for posterity. Although many of them were intended primarily as zoological studies, Stubbs’s paintings of wild creatures are also portraits that capture the behaviour and character of living beings. His most successful essays in the sublime explore the wild, not as a source of curiosity but as a distant, untamed land where nature is merciless and well-fed predators rule. His images of a horse attacked and then devoured by a lion—with variations in different media and reproductions in print—became Stubbs’s signature work.
Alongside paintings, the exhibition will present some of the astonishing works that Stubbs made in other media, using wild animals as his subject. As a printmaker, he was one of the most outstanding etchers of his day, despite being apparently self-taught. He also developed the art of painting in enamels on ceramic, producing jewel-like works of extraordinary clarity and durability.
George Stubbs, The Rev. Robert Carter Thelwall and his Family (Bath: The Holburne Museum)
“The starting point for this exhibition,” explained Amina Wright, Senior Curator at the Holburne Museum and curator of the exhibition, “is the Holburne’s own Stubbs portrait, The Rev. Robert Carter Thelwall and his Family, a polite Georgian conversation piece of a family on a country estate with their horses. This elegant type of portraiture is typical of Stubbs, but this exhibition will explore another side of the artist. By bringing together Stubbs’s anatomical studies and extraordinary images of wild animals, Stubbs and the Wild will present the artist as an indefatigable explorer of the natural world and a bold technical innovator. It will also introduce some of the animal celebrities of eighteenth-century England, from the sweet and fluffy to the majestically terrifying.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a free audio guide featuring responses to Stubbs’s work by animal experts and artists. Visitors will be able to hear a horse whisperer explaining what’s going on in the minds of Stubbs’s horses and an equine vet explaining the artist’s importance to anatomy. Artist Daphne Wright will explain why monkeys are so fascinating, while wildlife photographer and presenter Simon King will share his many years’ experience of observing big cats. Biographer Wendy Moore introduces the lonely moose who made friends with London’s leading scientists, and a deer manager discusses the life cycle of these beautiful native mammals. Stubbs and the Wild is part of a series of special events and exhibitions to celebrate 100 years since the re-establishment of the Holburne Museum in Sydney Gardens.
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Stubbs and the Wild Study Afternoon
The Holburne Museum, Bath, 29 July 2016, 1:00–4:30
George Stubbs, A Lion and Lioness, 1778, enamel on Wedgwood ceramic 43.1 × 61.6 cm (London: The Daniel Katz Gallery)
Amina Wright, ‘Introduction’
An introduction to the artist and his animals.
Gaye Blake-Roberts, ‘Wedgwood and Stubbs’
In 1775, George Stubbs contacted Josiah Wedgwood to see if he could produce large ceramic tablets on which to paint animals. Over the next few years a fruitful working relationship grew up between these two extraordinary innovators and indefatigable experimenters. Gaye Blake-Roberts, curator at the Wedgwood Museum, explores his unique alliance between potter and painter.
Tim Clayton, ‘George Stubbs and the Print’
George Stubbs was acutely conscious of the importance of prints in communicating his ideas, as the permanent record of his painted images and as the vehicle for his international reputation. Tim Clayton describes why Stubbs taught himself printmaking and traces his subsequent fascination with the medium. He is the author of George Stubbs: The Complete Engraved Works and The English Print, 1688–1802.
The cost of the study afternoon (£30/£12 students) includes admission to the exhibition Stubbs and the Wild.
Exhibition | Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck
Press release (20 May 2016) from The National Gallery:
Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck
The National Gallery, London, 23 June — 4 September 2016
Curated by Anne Robbins
Works of art are models you are to imitate, and at the same time rivals you are to combat. –Sir Joshua Reynolds
Spanning over five hundred years of art history, Painters’ Paintings presents more than eighty works, which were once in the possession of great painters: pictures that artists were given or chose to acquire, works they lived with and were inspired by. This is an exceptional opportunity to glimpse inside the private world of these painters and to understand the motivations of artists as collectors of paintings.
The inspiration for this exhibition is a painter’s painting: Corot’s Italian Woman, left to the nation by Lucian Freud following his death in 2011. Freud had bought the Italian Woman ten years earlier, no doubt drawn to its solid brushwork and intense physical presence. A major work in its own right, the painting demands to be considered in the light of Freud’s achievements, as a painter who tackled the representation of the human figure with vigour comparable to Corot’s. In his will, Freud stated that he wanted to leave the painting to the nation as a thank you for welcoming his family so warmly when they arrived in the UK as refugees fleeing the Nazis. He also stipulated that the painting’s new home should be the National Gallery, where it could be enjoyed by future generations.
Anne Robbins, curator of Painters’ Paintings says: “Since its acquisition the painting’s notable provenance has attracted considerable attention; in fact, the picture is often appraised in the light of Freud’s own achievements, almost eclipsing the intrinsic merits of Corot’s canvas. It made us start considering questions such as which paintings do artists choose to hang on their own walls? How do the works of art they have in their homes and studios influence their personal creative journeys? What can we learn about painters from their collection of paintings? Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck is the result.”
Thomas Gainsborough, Girl with Pigs, 1781–82 (The Castle Howard Collection). Owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The National Gallery holds a number of important paintings which, like the Corot, once belonged to celebrated painters: Van Dyck’s Titian; Reynolds’s Rembrandt, and Matisse’s Degas among many others. Painters’ Paintings is organised as a series of case studies each devoted to a particular painter-collector: Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck. Painters’ Paintings explores the motivations of these artists—as patrons, rivals, speculators—to collect paintings. The exhibition looks at the significance of these works of art for the painters who owned them—as tokens of friendship, status symbols, models to emulate, cherished possessions, financial investments or sources of inspiration.
Works from these artists’ collections are juxtaposed with a number of their own paintings, highlighting the connections between their own creative production and the art they lived with. These pairings and confrontations shed new light on both the paintings and the creative process of the painters who owned them, creating a dynamic and original dialogue between possession and painterly creation.
Half the works in the exhibition are loans from public and private collections, from New York and Philadelphia, to Copenhagen and Paris. A number of them have not been seen in public for several decades.
Dr. Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery says: “Artists by definition live with their own pictures, but what motivates them to possess works by other painters, be they contemporaries—friends or rivals—or older masters? The exhibition looks for the answers in the collecting of Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)
As the inaugural President of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was one of the most significant figures of the British art world in the 18th century; for him, collecting was a life-long passion, which he likened to “a great game.” Reynolds had a vast collection of drawings, paintings, and prints that informed both his teachings and supported his ideas about what constituted great art: style of Van Dyck (The Horses of Achilles, 1635–45, The National Gallery, London), Giovanni Bellini (The Agony in the Garden, about 1465, The National Gallery, London), after Michelangelo (Leda and the Swan, after 1530, The National Gallery, London), Poussin (The Adoration of the Shepherds, about 1633–34, The National Gallery, London), and Rembrandt (The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, about 1634–35, The British Museum, London).
Gainsborough’s Girl with Pigs (1781–82, Castle Howard Collection), bought by Reynolds in 1782, also illustrates Reynolds’s interest for the work of his contemporaries, demonstrating the breadth of his taste, but also its changeability—soon after, Reynolds tried to exchange his Gainsborough for a Titian.
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830)
Lawrence was the leading British portraitist of the early 19th century. He was largely self-taught and hugely influenced by Sir Joshua Reynolds, following in his footsteps to become President of the Royal Academy. Like Degas, Lawrence was a voracious, obsessional collector, using the proceeds of the sale of his society portraits to amass an incomparable collection of Old Master drawings. An inventory upon his death listed some 4,300 drawings, including Carracci’s immense A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?) (about 1599, The National Gallery, London) and a number of paintings including Raphael’s Allegory (about 1504, The National Gallery, London) and Reni’s Coronation of the Virgin, (about 1607, The National Gallery, London).
This section of the exhibition places Lawrence’s collecting within his social world. The paintings he acquired established his reputation as a great connoisseur, and his advice was much sought by influential friends such as John Julius Angerstein and Sir George Beaumont, whose collections came to form the nucleus of the National Gallery holdings. Beyond his acquisitive zeal, the prodigiously gifted Lawrence also sought to gain information about his favoured artists’ methods. An exceptional loan from a private collection, his portrait of the Baring Brothers (Lawrence, Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, John Baring and Charles Wall, 1806–07) demonstrates his absorption of the tradition of Renaissance male portrait, here injected with Lawrence’s trademark dash and virtuosity.
The full press release is available here»
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From Yale UP:
Anne Robbins, Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-1857096118, £15.
In this intriguing book, Anne Robbins explores the little-known history of artists collecting paintings. Focusing on the collections of Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck, she assesses the ways painters benefited from owning someone else’s work, their motivations for collecting, and how the history of a painting’s ownership influences our own view of both the artist and the work. Robbins investigates paintings as the sources of creative inspiration and their use in teaching theories of art. She also examines how painters acquired the paintings they desired, whether through auction, dealerships, gift or exchange, and how they cared for the works: storing them, displaying them, and, in some cases, flaunting them for self-promotion. Robbins ultimately argues that the acts of acquiring art and of art making evolve in tandem—with rich connections between works owned and works painted.
Anne Robbins is associate curator of Post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, London.
Exhibition | In the Library: Growth and Development of the Salon Livret
Explication des peintures, sculptures, et autres ouvrages, de messieurs de l’Académie royale (Paris, 1767). Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art Library, David K. E. Bruce Fund.
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Press release (31 May 2016) from the NGA:
In the Library: Growth and Development of the Salon Livret
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 20 June — 16 September 2016
Curated by Yuri Long
Documenting the history of the Paris Salon from its emergence in the late 17th century through its decline during the early 20th century, In the Library: Growth and Development of the Salon Livret presents over 60 examples of literature related to the Paris Salon drawn from nearly 250 years of exhibitions. On view in the East Building Study Center, the exhibition includes a variety of publications that document the rise and fall of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and its exhibition, which came to be known as the Salon.
Beginning as a checklist for the works on view, the livret (‘little book’ or catalog) was first published for the Salon of 1673. Appearing then as little more than a pamphlet in decorative wrappers, the livret developed over time into a full catalog. During the latter half of the 19th century livrets included not only additional entries but also supplemental information about the juries, the artists, and the rules of the organization. And throughout the 19th century, new printing technologies—from lithography to photography—allowed for the inclusion of increasingly more faithful reproductions of exhibited works in the livrets.
Developments beyond the academy can also be seen in the growing amount of literature surrounding Salon exhibitions. Art criticism, a new type of writing in the 18th century, evolved alongside the official exhibition livrets as authors began writing commentaries about the Salon. Later, the political upheavals of and following the French Revolution affected the administration of the Salon, whose own controversies, such as the dissatisfaction of member artists, persisted through the 19th century. By the early 20th century, independent exhibitions, each with its own published catalog, had become more frequent and contributed to the declining influence and importance of the official Salon.
Coinciding with the exhibition, the National Gallery of Art Library will publish Documenting the Salon: Paris Salon Catalogs, 1673–1945, compiled and edited by librarian John Hagood. As a bibliography, it lists the publications in the library by and about the organizations that hosted Salons in Paris. Two essays analyze the form and function of Paris Salons and Salon publishing in the ancien régime and in the 19th century. Written by Yuriko Jackall, assistant curator, department of French paintings, and Kimberly A. Jones, associate curator, department of French paintings, they reveal the history and taste of collecting as well as how the Paris Salon grew from a forum for elite, privileged artists and viewers into a more inclusive event. Documenting the Salon is made possible by a grant from The Florence Gould Foundation and will be distributed to museums, libraries, and art research organizations in the US around the world.
Organized by the National Gallery of Art and curated by Yuri Long, rare book librarian, the exhibition is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The National Gallery of Art Library contains more than 400,000 books and periodicals, including more than 15,000 volumes in the rare book collection, with an emphasis on Western art from the Middle Ages to the present. The National Gallery of Art Library was founded in 1941, the year the Gallery opened to the public. In 1979, with the move to a seven-story facility in the Gallery’s new East Building and the establishment of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the library broadened its purpose and the scope of its collection. Its goal has been to establish a major national art research center, serving the Gallery’s curatorial, educational, and conservation staff, CASVA members, interns, visiting scholars, and researchers in the Washington art community.
Exhibition | The Shogun’s World: Japanese Maps
On view at AIC:
The Shogun’s World: Japanese Maps from the 18th and 19th Centuries
Art Institute of Chicago, 25 June — 6 November 2016
Revised Complete Map of Japanese Roads and Lands, 1840. Japan (MacLean Collection)
Maps are practical tools for understanding the world we inhabit, but they are not only visual representations of a particular place and time; their presentations can be strikingly beautiful as well. Japanese mapmaking is particularly distinct, even within the broader context of East Asia’s unique traditions. A multi-directional view, the use of map designs on ceramic plates, and the integration of Western practices like the compass rose, bird’s eye view, and latitude are all part of Japan’s approach to cartography in the 18th and 19th centuries.
A first for the Art Institute’s Japanese print gallery, this exhibition of maps showcases the beauty of Japanese printmaking. The maps on view feature the world, the Japanese archipelago, and major cities, including Osaka, Yokohama, Edo, Nagasaki, and Kyoto. Highlights include works from trustee Barry MacLean’s comprehensive collection, such as a Buddhist map of the world that translates spiritual forces into physical locations. A blue and white “map plate,” also from the MacLean Collection, features a relief map of Japan divided into provinces, with additional land masses and mythical locations such as “the land of women” circling the edge of the plate. An 1861 aerial view of Yokohama from the Art Institute’s collection is made up of six standard-sized prints presented as one image, with important buildings and sections of the foreign settlement labeled for ease of use. In every map presented, Japan is the focus. Sometimes the geography is of lands that are concrete and known, and sometimes it is a gateway to the realm of the imagination.
Exhibition | Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts
Press release (14 June 2016) from The Met:
Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue, New York, 14 June — 12 September 2016
Curated by Navina Haidar and Courtney Stewart
Detail of The Village Beauty. Probably painted by the artist Fattu (active ca. 1770–1820). Illustrated folio from the dispersed ‘Kangra Bihari’ Sat Sai (Seven Hundred Verses). Punjab Hills, kingdom of Kangra, ca. 1785. Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper; narrow yellow and white borders with black inner rules; dark blue spandrels decorated with gold arabesque; painting 18.7 x 13.2 cm, page 20.6 x 14.9 cm. Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015 (SK.082).
Compelling episodes from the epic and poetic literature of the Indian subcontinent dominate the nearly 100 masterful paintings—most a 2015 promised gift by Steven M. Kossak from his family’s Kronos Collections—on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Created mainly between the 16th and the early 19th century for the royal courts of Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills in northern India, the works on view in the exhibition Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections are meant to move the soul and delight the eye. Suffused with the powerful imagery of the myths of the past, Indian painting expressed a new way of seeking the divine through bhakti, or personal devotion. The collection was assembled over nearly four decades by Mr. Kossak, formerly a curator in The Met’s Department of Asian Art.
“We are delighted to present this exhibition of Steve Kossak’s generous promised gift,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Met. “These distinguished paintings constitute one of the premier collections of this material in private hands, and their eventual addition to The Met collection will transform the Museum’s holdings of Rajput painting. It is a significant addition to Steve’s legacy at The Met after serving for two decades as a curator.”
The exhibition is organized into three major sections: Early Rajput and Rajasthan, early Pahari (Punjab Hills), and later Pahari. Within each room, the paintings will be shown in relation to the literary traditions of Indian Hinduism. Rajput court painting was mainly intended for royal delectation, to amplify through the artistic fantasy manifest in the pictures, well-known religious, quasi-religious, and secular texts and subjects. The power and magic of the images transcends the subjects they portray.
Under the patronage of their Rajput rulers, many of the principalities of north India developed and nurtured a distinctive painting style. This galaxy of stylistic expression is amply demonstrated in the exhibition through compelling examples of the Early Rajput Style; the later schools of Bikaner, Bundi, Kishangarh, Kota, and Mewar; as well as many of the small courts of the Punjab Hills: Bahu, Bahsoli, Bislalpur, Chamba, Guler, Kangra, Mandi, Mankot, and Nurpur.
Painted on paper in opaque watercolor and ink, they are often heightened with gold and silver. Whites are often raised to simulate pearls and reflective beetle-wing casings stand in for emeralds. Many of the paintings have never before been exhibited publicly.
Concurrent with the exhibition is a small, thematically related display, Poetry and Devotion in Indian Painting: Two Decades of Collecting (June 15–December 4, 2016) in the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for the Arts of South and Southeast Asia, Indian Painting Gallery, Gallery #251. Recognizing the contributions of Mr. Kossak to the Department of Asian Art, where he was a curator from 1986 to 2006, it features 22 of the dozens of Rajput and Pahari paintings that were acquired during his tenure, including a large intricately painted and printed cloth pichwai (temple hanging).
The exhibition was organized by Navina Haidar, Curator, and Courtney Stewart, Senior Research Assistant, of The Met’s Department of Islamic Art. Exhibition design is by Daniel Kershaw, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are by Constance Norkin, Graphic Design Manager; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Museum’s Design Department.
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The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:
Terence McInerney, with essays by Steven Kossak and Navina Najat Haidar, Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1588395900, $50.
This splendidly illustrated publication features over 90 important paintings from the predominantly Hindu Rajput tradition of Indian painting, and are highlights from the Kronos Collection, one of the finest holdings of Indian art. These remarkable works—most of them published and illustrated here for the first time—were painted between the 16th and 18th centuries for the Indian royal courts in Rajastan and the Punjab Hills. Many of the paintings are characterized by their brilliant colors and vivid depictions of scenes from Hindu epics, mystical legends, and courtly life. Along with an informative entry for every work and a personal essay by expert and collector Steven M. Kossak, the book contains an extensive essay by Terence McInerney that outlines the history of Indian painting, with a special emphasis on the Rajput courts, and provides an overview of the subject with fresh insights and interpretations.
Terence McInerney is an independent scholar, dealer, and author of numerous articles on Indian painting. Steven M. Kossak is a former curator in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a distinguished collector.
Exhibition | The Recovery of Antiquity
Press release for the exhibition closing this weekend at the MMFA:
The Recovery of Antiquity: From the Renaissance to Neoclassicism in France and Italy
Le retour à l’antique: de la Renaissance au néoclassicisme, en France et en Italie
Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 12 January — 26 June 2016
Jean‑Baptiste Lallemand (1716–1803), Classical Ruins, gouache on paper mounted on cardboard. 61.1 × 44.6 cm (MMFA, Lady Davis Bequest)
In connection with the exhibition Pompeii (on view until September 5), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents The Recovery of Antiquity, revealing the keen interest of artists from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century for antiquities. This selection of graphic works from the Museum’s collection features over fifty prints and drawings, including several new acquisitions. It features works by French masters like François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Anne-Louis Girodet, as well as several Italian artists. Some of these works are being exhibited for the first time.
The discoveries in Rome at the turn of the sixteenth century of the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoön—the latter praised as a masterpiece by Pliny the Elder in the first century—occurred precisely when that city was emerging from its medieval conditions and becoming once again the international centre of art, culture, and political influence in Europe, with artists like Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo transforming and re-envisioning Rome at the forefront of a Christian humanism deeply rooted in its Imperial Roman artistic heritage. The rediscovery at this same period of Nero’s great villa at the heart of the city, the Domus Aurea, with some of its frescoed interior spaces intact, seemed to confirm this mission.
Charles Michel-Ange Challe (1718–1778), Interior View of an Ancient Temple with the Figure of a Goddess, ca. 1742–49 (MMFA, gift of Dr. Sean B. Murphy)
A distinct aesthetic appreciation of Greek art dates back to the latter fifteenth century, when the Venetian Empire encompassed the Greek peninsula and islands, as well as Crete and Cyprus. Collectors, especially Venetians, prized the more generalized and less veristic character of classical and Hellenistic Greek art. It reached an apogee in the mid-eighteenth century in Rome, when Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the celebrated aesthete and historian in Rome, elevated the artistic accomplishments of the Greeks above those of the Romans, creating animated controversy among other aestheticians and the artistic community. In counterpoint, Piranesi’s prints recorded in dramatic and inspiring terms the legacy of Roman Antiquity. It was precisely at this same moment, in 1748, that excavations were revealing to an enthralled public the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried in the cataclysm of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Two generations later, influenced by these archaeological discoveries, Napoleon adopted Roman imperial emblemata and styles to advance his own political and imperial ambitions.
From the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi after designs by Raphael to the spectacular eighteenth-century etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi exalting the still-visible remains of ancient Rome to the early nineteenth-century illustrations after designs by Anne- Louis Girodet for works written by ancient authors, we can see the constant reinterpretation and changing visions of different generations regarding their own interface with Antiquity.
Exhibition | Bountiful Invention: Drawings by Oppenord and Meissonnier
Press release (27 May 2016) for the exhibition now on view at Waddesdon:
Bountiful Invention: Drawings by Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672–1742) )
and Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695–1750)
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, 8 June — 23 October 2016
Curated by Juliet Carey
Gilles-Marie Oppenord, Design for a headpiece or title-page, with the Arms of the Marquis de Torcy, ca. 1725 (Waddesdon: Rothschild Collection / National Trust; photo: Mike Fear)
An exhibition exploring the work of two of the most innovative draughtsmen and designers of the 18th century, including spectacular presentation sheets, as well as drawings for workshop use; designs for interiors, fountains and grottoes, both real and fantastical; and an important group of designs for churches and ritual objects.
Born during the reign of Louis XIV, at a time of unprecedented interest in drawing and extraordinary artistic innovation, Oppenord and Meissonnier are two of the greatest names associated the development of the distinctively French style that reached its peak in the reign of Louis XV, now known as Rococo.
This exhibition of 45 drawings, mostly from Waddesdon’s own collections acquired in Paris in the 19th century by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845–34), is complemented by two loans: a spectacular Meissonnier design for a projected church for the Order of the Holy Ghost from the V&A and a red chalk Oppenord from the Courtauld Gallery. The majority of these drawings have never previously been shown.
Gilles-Marie Oppenord, Design for a Garden Fountain, ca. 1720–30; black ink on paper; 439 x 291mm (Waddesdon: Rothschild Collection / National Trust; photo: Mike Fear)
The drawings on display include experimental studies and highly finished presentation sheets, drawings for workshop use, others for student instruction, and copies made as part of the process of translating a design into print. There are designs for personal accessories such as gold boxes, furniture and interiors, for real and fantastical palaces, fountains and grottoes as well as an important group of ecclesiastical works. Many would go on to be realised in a variety of materials by builders, masons, carpenters, plasterers, goldsmiths, instrument makers, and other craftsmen; others exist only on paper. This exhibition demonstrates the breadth and variety of Oppenord’s and Meissonnier’s creativity and skill, both valued by collectors and connoisseurs even during the artists’ lifetimes. Prints of their drawings spread their ideas throughout Europe and further afield and were copied by other artists and designers long after their designs went out of fashion in France.
Exhibition | Geminiano Cozzi and His Porcelain
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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