Enfilade

Soon to be on view at the Petit Château at Sceaux:

L’Œil du Maître: Esquisses d’Alexandre-François Desportes (1661–1743)
des collections de la Cité de la Céramique
Musée du Domaine Départemental de Sceaux, 20 March — 28 June 2015

Curated by Dominique Brême

Du 20 mars au 28 juin, le musée du Domaine départemental de Sceaux vous propose une exposition au Petit-Château sur le peintre des chasses de Louis XIV et de Louis XV et de leur meute royale : Alexandre-François Desportes, représentant brillant du ‘grand goût français’. Les animaux, les paysages et l’art de vivre sont les trois thématiques abordées dans cette exposition au travers de soixante esquisses et dessins, établissant un lien entre l’artiste, associé à la décoration des grandes résidences royales et princières, et le domaine de Sceaux.

Cours d’histoire de l’art : L’âge d’or de la nature morte française, par Dominique Brême, directeur du Domaine départemental de Sceaux et commissaire de l’exposition.
Mercredi 8 avril : Genèse et expansion de la nature morte en Europe
Mercredi 15 avril : Le modèle des Écoles du Nord
Mercredi 6 mai : La nature morte en France au XVIIe siècle
Mercredi 13 mai : Alexandre-François Desportes
Mercredi 3 juin : Nicolas de Largillierre et Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Mercredi 10 juin : Jean-Siméon Chardin

Now on view at the Boston Athenaeum:

American Neoclassic Sculpture at the Boston Athenæum
Boston Athenæum, 26 February — 16 May 2015

Curated by David Dearinger

American Neoclassic Sculpture at the Boston Athenæum, on view at the Boston Athenæum February 26 through May 16, 2015, reveals a collection that is among the oldest and most significant of its kind in the United States, one that helped establish an ‘American taste’ in the visual arts. The exhibition includes more than thirty work: sculptures by the three ‘founders’ of American Neoclassicism—Horatio Greenough (Boston’s first professional sculptor), Thomas Crawford, and Hiram Powers—along with works by their followers, works by such European Neoclassicists as Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thovaldsen, and marble copies of ancient works including the Venus de Medici and the Apollo Belvedere.

Featured works include Horatio Greenough’s Elizabeth Perkins Cabot (1832–33), Venus Victrix (1837–40), and The Judgment of Paris (1837–40); Thomas Crawford’s Adam and Eve (1855); Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Ganymede and the Eagle (ca. 1830–50); and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s George Washington (ca. 1786). A series of sculpted portraits of Daniel Webster by John Frazee, Hiram Powers, Thomas Ball, and Shobal Vail Clevenger explores the range of treatments, from real to ideal, used in Neoclassic portraiture.

Organized by David Dearinger, the Boston Athenæum’s Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, American Neoclassic Sculpture is the first time these important works have been shown together. The show presents sculptures, many acquired directly from the artists themselves, that helped establish Neoclassicism as the first ‘national style’ of the young United States. Neoclassic taste, based on the work of ancient Greek and Roman artists, dominated the West starting in the 1750s, after sensational archaeological discoveries at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and elsewhere revealed the styles the ancient Romans favored in vivid detail. It was the latest in a series of classical revivals since the fifth-century fall of Rome. In the young United States, the idealized design language of the classical world seemed the perfect translation of the heady notions of the American Revolution, including the democracy of ancient Greece and the civic virtues of Republican Rome. The proliferation of ancient forms in the United States—columns, capitals, acanthus leaves, imposing pediments, togas (even on George Washington), drapery, idealized faces, and perfect torsos—infused the freshly-minted American republic with the grandeur and gloss of historic destiny.

Almost as soon as it was founded in 1807, the Boston Athenæum began to acquire art along with books and periodicals— slowly at first and then, starting in the 1820s, with increasing vigor. At the same time, the Athenæum and some of its members became major patrons and promoters of American Neoclassic sculptors. “Boston was a particular hotbed of activity,” Dr. Dearinger says of this period. “The city had patrons who were enthusiastic about classical literature and American history. So neoclassical sculpture fit right in. Boston was considered a great place for sculpture. Sculptors came up from New York and New Jersey to meet potential Boston collectors. There was nothing like it anywhere else at the time. “Leading Massachusetts politicians like Charles Sumner and Edward Everett were major patrons, not out of self-interest but as promoters of native-born sculptors and their work,” Dearinger continues. “They supported American sculptors in every way they could, for patriotic reasons, because they felt culture was important to a democratic society and because the work embodied democratic ideals.”

Meanwhile,the Boston Athenæum was commissioning pieces and buying directly from the artists, helping to get things started. Until the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opened in 1876, the Boston Athenæum served as the city’s only public art museum. The Athenæum featured works by American sculptors in its annual art exhibitions and, by the time of the Civil War, had established a reputation as a leading and reliable supporter of American sculpture. By 1860, the Athenæum owned one of the largest publicly-accessible collections of sculpture in the country. Among those early Athenæum acquisitions were sculptures: free-standing or in relief, made of plaster or marble. They included fine, full-size copies of approved ancient pieces such as the Venus de Medici and the Apollo Belvedere, as well as idealized figures and busts of important historical personages, modeled or carved by leading modern European neoclassicists. Special connections in Europe also helped the Athenæum acquire plaster casts of important ancient works made directly from the originals in European museums and private hands.

With the maturation of sculpture in America beginning in the 1820s, the work of native Neoclassic sculptors began to be represented in the Athenæum’s collection. Eventually, this included important works by the three ‘founders’ of American Neoclassic sculpture, Horatio Greenough (1805–1852), Thomas Crawford (1814–1857), and Hiram Powers (1805–1873), as well as examples by their followers, many of them born in or around Boston: Richard S. Greenough (1819–1904), Thomas R. Gould (1818–1881), Harriet Hosmer (1830–1908), Chauncey B. Ives (1810–1894), and William Wetmore Story (1819–1895). By then, many American sculptors had moved to Italy to live and work in Florence or Rome, where the cost of living was lower and Puritan standards of behavior did not need to be observed. The change also brought the Americans closer to their classical models and to good sources of the best white marble, which was not available in the United States. Connections to Boston, however, remained as strong as ever. “New Englanders in general were better represented on the Grand Tour than other Americans,” Dr. Dearinger says. “In the 1820s, 40s, and 50s, many of these intrepid seekers of culture were publishing travel books. Chapters in them describe visits to American studios in Italy, places which became, eventually, mandatory European tour stops.” Many works were purchased by American collectors right out of those studios. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Marble Faun, written after long sojourns in Florence and Rome, and Henry James’s Roderick Hudson, both describe the lives of American sculptors in Italy.

The installation of American Neoclassic Sculpture includes sections summarizing the ancient roots of Neoclassicism, early European interpretations of it, the rise of Neoclassicism in America, the tension between the classical and the real in portraiture and in images of children, the Neoclassicist’s preference for themes from literature and religion, and the special role that Boston—and the Boston Athenæum—played in the patronage of American sculptors during the first half of the nineteenth century. The installation design also reflects early nineteenth-century ideas of how best to display Neoclassic work. “Deep, deep red or deep, deep blue were considered the best wall colors for setting off white marble works,” Dearinger says. “Sculptors were sometimes involved in designing the settings for their own works in their patrons’ homes and they really cared about it. We know of projects where the artist worked out the light source, chose the deep red fabric rugs, even selected the color of the benches.” The dark blue gallery walls and dramatic lighting of the Athenæum’s installation is designed to suggest those early environments. “If there is an overall theme of this exhibition, it is the fine line between the real and the ideal,” Dearinger concludes. “How does artist address both? In portraiture, a bust must look something like the person portrayed, so how does the artist judge where to stop along the boundary between reality and flattery?. The exhibition also explores how conservative protestant Americans were able to straddle the gap between their Puritan backgrounds and the seductive, sensuous tastes of the ancients.”

Joseph Michael Gandy, John Soane’s Designs for Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, in variously Norman, Gothic and Neoclassical Manners (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum)

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Press release for the exhibition:

Building a Dialogue: The Architect and the Client
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 17 February — 9 May 2015

Sir John Soane’s Museum presents Building a Dialogue: The Architect and the Client, an exhibition exploring the delicate, complex, and sometimes difficult relationship between clients and architects, charting the development of the architectural profession from Elizabethan to Victorian times. Analysing exemplary projects by Sir John Soane and the work of and influence on the profession by some of the most illustrious British architectural pioneers—Sir Christopher Wren (1622–1723), William Chambers (1723–96), Robert Adam (1728–92) and his brother James Adam (1732–94)—Building a Dialogue will look at the intrinsic dynamics of architectural commissions in an unprecedented display of rare pieces from the Museum collection.

John Soane, Elevation of the façade of No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, ca. 1812 (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum)

The commissioning process for Soane’s buildings—including Dulwich Picture Gallery and Holy Trinity Church and Wren’s Royal Naval Hospital—will be presented through a unique body of work, which includes never before seen drawings, private and public documents, letters, correspondence, and models, in one of the most comprehensive surveys of the architecture profession ever displayed at Sir John Soane’s Museum. A key area of interest is the client’s role within the process. Client typologies will be examined through a series of historical case studies, focusing on different types of commissions: the private client, the public client, the State as a client, and (unusually) a posthumous client commission.

One of the exhibition’s highlights, a recently discovered drawing of the façade of the Museum, will be displayed for the first time. Conservators found the drawing in 2014 hidden behind a painting within a frame in the Museum. Soane produced very few drawings of his home at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, as typically these were part of the presentation process to the client; this newly discovered drawing is thus a rare and precious depiction of the architect’s own vision for the building.

Sir John Soane’s work at Dulwich Picture Gallery forms one of the exhibition case studies. The project and its construction presents a unique client-architect relationship, as Soane designed the gallery to the posthumous specifications of his friend Sir Francis Bourgeois. Bourgois stipulated in his will (following his death in 1811) that Soane be given the commission to design and execute the Picture Gallery.

Leonard Knyff, Perspective presentation drawing of a design for an enlarged hospital with a central domed hall and chapel range, 1695, pen and ink (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum)

Problematic client relationships will also be explored through projects such as Soane’s Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone and Wren’s Royal Naval Hospital. Both these state-sponsored projects were characterised by radical changes to the architect’s initial vision brought about by the strong opinions of the patrons. In particular Wren’s initial concept of the Royal Naval Hospital envisaged demolishing Inigo Jones’s Queen’s House, something vetoed in the strongest manner possible by the King. Wren’s initial vision will be illustrated by drawings by Hawskmoor and Knyff, which have previously not been shown to the public. In the instance of Soane’s initial designs for Holy Trinity Church—one of three churches Soane undertook as part of a broader campaign of church building instigated by the Church Commissioners to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon in 1815—Soane’s classical vision was vetoed by both the parish and the Commissioners on grounds of cost and of style. Soane was forced to produce Norman and Gothic alternatives, both styles with which he was uncomfortable. On display will be Joseph Michael Gandy’s drawing showing the perspectives of eight designs for churches, including the various designs for Holy Trinity.

Robert Adam’s Admiralty Screen, 1760s (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum)

Early forms of ‘marketing’ will shape an important section of the display. In the early modern period architects transmitted ideas to prospective clients and to other architects through ‘pattern books’. The Thorpe Album is an exceptionally rare and important example of a late Elizabethan/early Jacobean architectural manuscript, which is central to our understanding of British architecture and how architectural ideas are transmitted in this early period. By the 18th century, however, recognisably modern ways of ‘marketing’ architectural projects and practices can be seen. The Adam brothers were pioneers in this field. They deployed cheap popular prints such as that of the Admiralty Screen in Whitehall to reach a broad audience of the general public while also producing ‘deluxe’ publications outlining their approach to design and architecture. The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, published in 1778 by the Adam office, was intended to appeal to both prospective patrons and also to the architectural profession per se. The idea of persuading the general public as well as patrons is something that contemporary architects utilise as a strategy.

Another channel of communication with the public and with potential clients was given by the Royal Academy Annual Exhibition where architectural drawings were shown alongside paintings and watercolours. In order to make his architectural drawings stand out amongst the displays, Sir William Chambers highlighted them with distinctive blue borders. However, his drawings were still small in scale in comparison to the oil paintings and watercolours included in the Exhibition. Soane radically changed the way in which architecture was represented in the Annual Exhibition by utilising scale and heightened atmospheric effects in his office drawings. Utilising the visionary talent of his draughtsman Joseph Michael Gandy, Soane presented architectural projects such as his unexecuted plans for rebuilding Downing Street and Whitehall in an extremely theatrical, dramatic manner, ensuring that his architectural drawings would have as much impact as the oil paintings and watercolours displayed alongside them.

Abraham Thomas, Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum says: “Architectural drawings have a profound ability to record and articulate the various design discussions that occur within an office or between an architect and a client. I’m delighted that this exhibition not only draws upon gems from the Museum’s collection of over 30,000 architectural drawings but also reminds us that Sir John Soane’s home was the site of a busy architectural practice, embedded in the heart of the building, where such conversations happened every day. The exhibition also makes a connection between historical and contemporary contexts, by exploring the multi-faceted ways in which architects, especially Soane himself, have always engaged with, and re-defined, the notion of a ‘client’—showing us how design ideas have continued to express themselves through the drawing process, from Soane’s time through to the present day.”

Kasteel d’Ursel at Hingene (Bornem), Belgium.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons, 4 May 2009.

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Press release for the exhibition:

Sweet 18: Contemporary Art, Fashion, and Design Inspired by the 18th Century
Kasteel d’Ursel, Hingene, Belgium, 1 May — 5 July 2015

Curated by Luisa Bernal, Dieter Van Den Storm, Wim Mertens, Tamara Berghmans, and Hélène Bremer

This spring the former summer residence of the aristocratic d’Ursel family will be the setting for the exhibition Sweet 18, presenting the 18th century through the eyes of fifty contemporary designers, artists, and fashion designers—from Erwin Olaf and Wim Delvoye to Walter van Beirendonck and Philippe Starck.

Jessica Harrison, Painted Lady (10), found ceramic, enamel paint, 22 x 17 x 13cm, 2014.

We all have somewhere in our minds the same images of the 18th century: wigs and hooped petticoats, towering hairstyles and elegant furniture, fine porcelain on lavishly decked tables, sensual portraits and frivolous paintings. The 18th century was the time of the Enlightenment and of the flowering of the arts and sciences. But it also created a playful, artificial world for aristocrats wanting to escape reality and immerse themselves in fantasy. A charmed world of pleasure, abundance, and voluptuousness, of pastel tints and curlicues, a world that inspires many an artist to this day. Spreading themselves over all three floors of the castle, these artists will show you the 18th century as you have never seen it before.

Sweet 18 has been brought together by the following team of curators: Luisa Bernal (art), Dieter Van Den Storm (design), Wim Mertens (fashion), Tamara Berghmans (photography) and Hélène Bremer (art).

Ode to Marie Antoinette

Whether it be for her extravagant lifestyle, influential fashion sense or her tragic death, French Queen Marie-Antoinette still speaks to our imagination. Director Sofia Coppola’s film spear- headed the revival. For pop stars like Madonna and Beyoncé, she is also a powerful icon. German illustrator Olaf Hajek gives his own take on her in the Black Antoinette series while top Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf offers up a gory portrait of the queen: beheaded.

Exuberant Fashion

Walter Van Beirendonck. Foto: Ronald Stoops

The extravagant wardrobe of Marie-Antoinette is the springboard for many a contemporary fashion designer: from the minimalism of Japanese Yohji Yamamoto and eccentricity of German Bernhard Willhelm to French fashion houses Nina Ricci and Thierry Mugler. American artist Yasemen Hussein recreates one of her wigs in metal, and English milliner Stephen Jones is inspired by her to create his evocative hats. The outsized dresses, tight corsets, and tailored jackets of Belgian designers Walter Van Beirendonck and Olivier Theyskens also sample the 18th century.

Transparent Plastic en Burnt Wood

Dutch designer Hella Jongerius immersed herself in the archives of the German porcelain manufactory Nymphenberg to come up with plates which combine hand-painted patterns and little sculptured animals, all done in 18th-century style. Designer Maarten Baas literally set fire to a number of antique chairs before reworking them in lacquer. His Smoke Chair has become a classic. Even more famous is French star designer Philippe Starck’s Ghost Chair, which references a Louis XV chair in a pared-down, transparent design. Spanish designer Jaime Hayon’s lounge chair and an outlandish seat by British designer Nina Saunders also find a home in the exhibition. One absolute high point is L’ornement jamais by Swiss designer Philippe Cramer, an outstanding piece of pine furniture executed in 18th-century style and partially dipped in liquid gold.

Deformed Status Symbols

The fine china of Meissen, Sèvres, and Wedgwood remains to this day an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The sculptural groups of American artist Chris Antemann may look like replicas but reveal themselves on closer inspection to be rather wicked tableaux, full of forbidden fruit. British artist Jessica Harrison makes superficially sweet female figurines that are actually hideously mutilated, with their deformed heads and coloured tattoos. With War and Pieces, Dutch ceramicist Bouke de Vries offers a modern interpretation of the extravagant banquets that were thrown the night before a battle. British artist Amy Hughes’s Trésor découvert suggests treasure that has been lying buried for centuries under that same battlefield, treasure that has lost its gleam but has a story of the past and its rediscovery to tell.

Fêtes Galantes

In Stavronikita Project Austrian photographer Andreas Franke recreates 18th-century festivities. By situating them in the unusual setting of a sunken ship he emphasises the beauty that underlies decadence and decline. The tableaux of Canadian artist Ray Caesar border on the surreal, while the work of English painter Patrick Hughes plays games with the laws of perspective.

Pastoral Scenes

Richard Saja

Nothing is more typical of the 18th-century domestic interior than ‘toile de Jouy’, cotton wall- coverings depicting scenes of rural life. American artist Richard Saja pimps its little cowherds into clowns or punks, while the French Collectif Ensaders transforms them into figures of fantasy and Virginie Broquet gives them an erotic spin. Scottish design studio Timourous Beasties substitutes its idyllic villages with views of the London skyline, while French artist Joël Ducorroy reduces it to its bare essentials. American Beth Katleman brings toile de Jouy wallpaper to life in a vast 3D construction, introducing flea market finds into her installation to accentuate the strangeness of the effect.

Lavish Finery

British artist Jo Taylor translates the extravagant stucco ornament of the grand 18th-century house into three-dimensional porcelain objects. American Molly Hatch’s porcelain plates, when set together, form a landscape painting covering an entire wall. Taking as her inspiration the bizarre wigs of the French court, English artist Kathy Dalwood turns
casts of utilitarian objects into plaster portrait busts.

Made in Belgium

Belgian artists easily hold their own amongst all these international heavyweights. Isabelle Copet lays a gigantic lace collar in the pool behind the castle. In the park Michaël Aerts places an inverted statue of Louis XIV on a pedestal made of flight cases and builds a seven metre high obelisk from the same black cases. Two twisted sculptures by Wim Delvoye overlook the entrance hall. Zaza contributes a print. In the mirrored room Bart Ramakers has filmed a richly imaginative ballet on the theme of romantic love. Painter Jan Devliegher exhibits gigantic porcelain plates and Nick Ervinck has printed two stunningly designed vases in 3D. A design for a bedroom by architect Koen Deprez combines classic panelling and Fragonard paintings with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Pieter Theuns (BOX) has composed music inspired by Mozart for the exhibition.

Kasteel d’Ursel

For nearly four centuries Kasteel van Hingene was the favourite summer residence of the aristocratic d’Ursel family. Every summer the Duke would travel with family and servants to his magnificent country house. Now it is the property of the Province of Antwerp, which is restoring it to its former glory. In 2014 Kasteel d’Ursel won the ‘Flemish Heritage Award’.

The exhibition begins on the first floor and leads you through the noble family’s former bedchambers. The service stairs bring you directly to the second floor where once the servants and the children of the family were accommodated. The circuit ends in the hall of mirrors and the reception rooms of the ground floor. The restored castle, with its characteristic Chinese interior decoration, is the perfect setting for this contemporary look at the 18th century.

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From Danson House:

Vivienne Westwood: Cut from the Past
Danson House, Bexleyheath, Kent, 1 April — 31 October 2015

The 18th century is the high point of art and culture. —Dame Vivienne Westwood

The impact of 18th-century art and design on the work of distinguished British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood is celebrated in a new exhibition at Danson House this spring. Vivienne Westwood: Cut from the Past brings together for the first time a number of her ground-breaking designs, and explores the collections that proved to be her turning point both critically and commercially.

Danson House, a splendidly restored Georgian villa, provides a tailor-made backdrop to the exhibition which highlights Westwood’s seminal work of the 1990s which was influenced by the 18th century. Designs and outfits on show make particular reference to the Rococo paintings of French artists Watteau and Boucher. Westwood’s passion for 18th-century design is also reflected in some earlier pieces from the ‘Cut, Slash and Pull’ and ‘Mini Crini’ collections, and the Malcom McLaren and Vivienne Westwood ‘Seditionaries’ Collection.

Caroline Worthington, Chief Executive, Bexley Heritage Trust  said,  “We are delighted to be working together with the Victoria & Albert Museum for the first time to bring cutting edge design back to Danson House for the 2015 season—just as the original owners, the Boyd family, did in the 18th century.”

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Danson House boasts a suite of rooms created for Sir John Boyd, a man besotted with his young bride. Enjoy this superb example of 18th-century architecture with its classical proportions, elegant interiors and rich symbolism celebrating love and marriage. Designed as a retreat from the hustle and bustle of central London, Danson House was completed in 1766. Sir John Boyd was a sugar merchant and vice-chairman of the British East India Company. Together with the notable architect Sir Robert Taylor, Boyd created this homage to the Golden Age of Antiquity, filling it with art and sculpture from his travels on the Continent. Today his home gives us a fascinating insight into fashionable
Georgian life.

From The Met:

Elaborate Embroidery: Fabrics for Menswear before 1815
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2 February — 19 July 2015

This installation features lengths of fabric for an unmade man’s suit and waistcoat, as well as a selection of embroidery samples for fashionable menswear made between about 1760 and 1815. During this period, France was the undisputed epicenter of the European fashionable world, and professional embroidery workshops there produced a dizzying array of colorful designs from which a man could choose. The installation features a copy of L’Art du Brodeur (The Art of the Embroiderer), which was published in Paris in 1770. This book contains detailed descriptions about subjects such as preparing fabric to be embroidered and the variety of threads used in a workshop, as well as illustrations of designs for men’s suits.

Seen together, the fabrics and the book provide a glimpse into the world of vividly colored and highly decorative fashion that was a key component of an upper-class European man’s life in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.