Enfilade

Now on view at Ambras Castle in Austria:

Looking Allowed? Diversity from the 16th to the 18th Century
Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck, 20 June — 6 October 2024

Johann Gottfried Haid after Johann Nepomuk Steiner, Portrait of Angelo Soliman (Mmadi Make), ca. 1750. Born in West Africa, Soliman was enslaved and shipped to Europe before eventually advancing in Austrian society as a successful Freemason and member of court.

Diversity has always existed. In the Renaissance—as humans increasingly took centre stage—it was not only the ideal that was of interest, but also humans’ inexhaustible diversity. The exhibition Looking Allowed? Human Diversity from the 16th to the 18th Century considers diversity in the past from today’s perspective, taking as its point of reference the Ambras collections of Archduke Ferdinand II. Here the whole world was illustrated, as was common in chambers of art and wonders.

Why did the Portrait of a Disabled Man find its way into the Ambras Chamber of Art and Wonders? Who is behind the ‘hair family’? And why do portraits of ‘court giants’ and ‘court dwarves’ move us? Such paintings run the risk of being dismissed as mere curiosities. This exhibition, by contrast, tells the stories of these people who did not fit period norms, taking as its theme the questions of whether, and if so, how encounters with them took place. It invites visitors to reflect on their own perceptions, confronting us with the question: ‘is it permissible to look?’

Current viewpoints are brought into the exhibition through audio and video contributions. Adapted font sizes and objects placed on different levels are aimed at reducing barriers and making it possible for a variety of visitors to experience the exhibition. Furthermore, the installation of a lift in the upper castle offers easy access for the first time to the special exhibition rooms located on the second floor.

Thomas Kuster, Christian Mürner, and Veronika Sandbichler, eds., Schauen erlaubt: Vielfalt Mensch vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Walther König, 2024), 192 pages, ISBN: ‎978-3753306506, €19. With contributions by Volker Schönwiese, Katharina Seidl, Susanne Hehenberger, Eva Seemann, Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov, and Rudi Risatti.

With statements, six essays, and over 70 catalog entries, the volume engages human diversity and the tensions between self-empowerment, acceptance, and discrimination.

Now on view the Fesch Museum:

Bologne au siècle des Lumières: Art et science, entre réalité et théâtre
Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio, Corsica, 29 June — 30 September 2024

Attributed to Giacomo Boni, The Triumph of David, oil on canvas (Ajaccio, Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 852.1.967).

Cette nouvelle exposition sur la peinture, la sculpture et les objets de curiosité, faite en collaboration avec la Pinacoteca Nazionale, les Musei Civici et la fondation de la Cassa di Risparmio de Bologne (CARISBO), s’inscrit dans le prolongement des précédentes expositions du musée d’Ajaccio portant sur l’art italien des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Si le XVIIe siècle bolonais, celui des Carracci, de Reni et de Guercino, est bien connu en France, l’exposition permettra au public de découvrir une période moins familière de ce centre artistique.

Le XVIIIe siècle bolonais s’ouvre avec la fondation de l’Istituto delle Scienze et de l’Accademia Clementina, nés de la volonté du général Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, avec le soutien d’intellectuels inspirés des Lumières et l’approbation du Sénat. Les deux institutions bénéficient de la protection du pape Clément XI, le souverain qui a fait rentrer la ville dans le giron des États de l’Église.

Tandis que l’Istituto delle Scienze, réglé sur les dernières avancées scientifiques européennes, se propose de rendre son prestige à la cité, siège de la plus ancienne université, l’Accademia Clementina vise à retrouver les fastes du siècle d’or de la peinture célébré par la Felsina pittrice de Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1678) et lié aux noms des Carracci, de Reni et de Guercino. Le siècle naissant voit s’achever les carrières de peintres tels que le néo-carracesque Domenico Maria Viani, Benedetto Gennari, neveu de Guercino, rentré à Bologne après un long séjour en Angleterre, Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole, dernier interprète des finesses de Guido Reni, et Carlo Cignani, prince à vie de l’Accademia Clementina, représentant d’un classicisme teinté de souvenirs corrégiens.

Dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, l’opposition entre les deux champions de la peinture, Donato Creti et Giuseppe Maria Crespi, est radicale et irréductible. Les recherches du premier aboutissent à un classicisme élégant et raffiné, lumineux et incorruptible, alors que le second affiche au contraire un naturalisme agressif et prosaïque aux accents ironiques, d’un caractère presque populaire. Dans le même temps, la culture littéraire de l’Arcadia inspire, avec Marcantonio Franceschini, peintre européen cher aux princes de Liechtenstein, un purisme qui évolue vers un barocchetto atténué, habile et léger, apprécié des milieux aristocratiques et de l’autorité religieuse. Si les solennels tableaux d’autels répondent aux exigences du décorum et de la commande officielle, les grandes peintures destinées aux palais visent à célébrer, avec des allégories et l’évocation des gloires antiques, les familles sénatoriales, soutiens de l’autorité pontificale dans le gouvernement de la ville.

La ville pullule de petites comme de grandes collections. Ce sont non seulement les palais de l’aristocratie, mais aussi les habitations de la bourgeoisie ou des artisans qui se couvrent de peintures, disposées sous les fresques où se déploie la virtuosité perspective des peintres de quadratura.

Trompe-l’œil, dilatations spatiales et illusions théâtrales allant jusqu’à l’invraisemblable rendent les scénographes bolonais célèbres dans les théâtres européens, grâce aux succès de la famille Bibiena, dans le sillage des expériences passées d’Angelo Michele Colonna et d’Agostino Mitelli, appelés, au-delà des cours italiennes, jusqu’en Espagne et en France. Autour de l’Accademia Filarmonica, fréquentée entre autres par des personnalités telles que le chanteur Carlo Broschi, dit Farinelli, le compositeur Johan Christian Bach, le musicologue Charles Burney—à laquelle se sont joints des chanteurs, des compositeurs et des instrumentistes, sous l’œil attentif du célèbre père Giambattista Martini, qui fut le maître du Mozart lorsque celui-ci avait quatorze ans—se développe une intense activité mêlant architecture, peinture, musique et poésie, tandis qu’est inauguré en 1763 le Teatro Comunale avec le Triomphe de Clelia de Christoph Willibald Gluck, sur des textes de Métastase.

Une peinture légère opère la mutation de la solide tradition du XVIIe siècle vers le rocaille. Ses interprètes sont Francesco Monti, Giuseppe Marchesi dit Sanson, Vittorio Maria Bigari, Giuseppe Varotti et Nicola Bertuzzi, rejoints, en parfaite harmonie, par les sculpteurs et modeleurs Giovan Battista Bolognini, Francesco Jannsens, Angelo Piò et son fils Domenico, qui, à partir de l’exemple de Giuseppe Maria Mazza, donnent aux figures de stuc et de terre cuite un élégant mouvement tout en courbes et une grâce pleine de séduction.

Le succès de l’Accademia Clementina, dû au zèle de son secrétaire Gianpietro Zanotti, amène le remplacement progressif de la formation traditionnelle au sein des ateliers par des enseignements codifiés, l’institution officielle de prix dans les différentes branches artistiques et l’ouverture de l’Accademia del nudo. Dans ce contexte vont émerger les deux principales personnalités de la seconde moitié du siècle, les frères Ubaldo et Gaetano Gandolfi, chez qui la tradition s’est régénérée au contact fructueux de la culture picturale vénitienne, freinant l’avancée du néoclassicisme.

En 1796, à l’arrivée des troupes napoléoniennes, Gaetano Gandolfi pourra assister à l’effondrement de l’Ancien Régime, et aux bouleversements socio-politiques qui vont en découler : le renversement du pouvoir pontifical, la suppression des ordres religieux et des confréries laïques avec la confiscation de leurs biens. En remplacement de l’Accademia Clementina, la création de l’Accademia di Belle Arti, accompagnée de la naissance de la moderne Pinacoteca, inaugure cette nouvelle ère.

Bologne au siècle des Lumières: Art et science, entre réalité et théâtre (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2024), 368 pages, ISBN: ‎978-8836658527, €33.

Guillaume Lethière, Woman Leaning on a Portfolio, detail, ca. 1799, oil on canvas
(Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, 1954.21)

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Now on view at The Clark:

Guillaume Lethière
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 15 June — 14 October 2024
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 13 November 2024 — 17 February 2024

Curated by Esther Bell, Olivier Meslay, Sophie Kerwin, and Marie-Pierre Salé

The first monographic exhibition ever presented on the artist

Born in Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe, Guillaume Lethière (1760–1832) was a key figure in French painting during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The son of a white plantation owner and an enslaved woman of mixed race, Lethière moved to France with his father at age fourteen. He trained as an artist and successfully navigated the tumult of the French Revolution and its aftermath to achieve the highest levels of recognition in his time.

A favorite artist of Napoleon’s brother Lucien Bonaparte, Lethière served as director of the Académie de France in Rome, as a member of the Institut de France, and as a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. A well-respected teacher, he operated a robust studio that rivaled those of his most successful contemporaries. Despite his remarkable accomplishments and considerable body of work, Lethiere is not well known today. The exhibition, organized in partnership with the Musée du Louvre and featuring some one hundred paintings, prints, and drawings, celebrates Lethière’s extraordinary career and sheds new light on the presence and reception of Caribbean artists in France during his lifetime.

Guillaume Lethière is co-organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and curated by Esther Bell, deputy director and Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Chief Curator; and Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director; with the assistance of Sophie Kerwin, curatorial assistant, at the Clark; and by Marie-Pierre Salé, chief curator in the Department of Drawings at the Louvre.

For more information, see the exhibition press release»

Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay, eds., Guillaume Lethière (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-0300275780, $65. With contributions by Alain Chevalier, Natasha Coleman, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Frederic Lacaille, Anne Lafont, Christelle Lozere, Sophie Kerwin, Mehdi Korchane, C.C. McKee, Marie-Isabelle Pinet, Frederic Regent, Marie-Pierre Sale, Aaron Wile, and Richard Wrigley.

Now on view at the Museum of the French Revolution (near Grenoble):

Comment m’habillerai-je? Se vêtir sous la Révolution française, 1789–1804
Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille, 28 June — 10 November 2024

Découvrez une mode en pleine (r)évolution!

Dans la société française de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, marquée par la culture des apparences, dans quelle mesure la rupture que constitue la Révolution française se reflète-t-elle dans la manière de se vêtir ?
L’exposition se propose de répondre à cette question. Véritable marqueur social sous l’Ancien Régime, le vêtement se transforme sous la Révolution française pour devenir le symbole d’une prise de position politique. Face au nouveau contexte politique et social et au nouvel élan de liberté, il devient par la suite un véritable objet de luxe et de mode. L’exposition présentera ces transformations à l’aide de textes, d’objets, d’iconographie et surtout d’estampes, medium de diffusion par excellence des modes, des symboles politiques et des idées.

Dans le cadre de la saison culturelle Des habits et nous, portée par le Département de l’Isère. Une exposition conçue et organisée par le Musée de la Révolution française et la Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Comment m’habillerai-je ? Se vêtir sous la Révolution française, 1789–1804 (Gent: Snoeck Publishers, 2024), 160 pages, ISBN: ‎978-9461619136, €30.

From the press release for the upcoming BGC exhibition (note the new dates) . . . 

Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 10 September — 16 November 2025

Curated by Tamara Préaud, Soazig Guilmin, Charlotte Vignon, and Susan Weber

Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today presents the history of the Sèvres Manufactory and its production of extraordinary sculptural objects in various ceramic pastes. Organized by Sèvres, Manufacture et Musée nationaux, and Bard Graduate Center (BGC), the exhibition is the first outside of France to highlight the production of sculpture made at the famed porcelain manufactory.

Etienne-Maurice Falconet, L’Amour menaçant (Threatening Love), 1758/61, Manufacture de Sèvres, soft-paste porcelain biscuit (Manufacture et Musée nationaux, Sèvres, MNC 27724.1).

From extravagant Rococo to restrained Neoclassical, from romantic, neo-Gothic inventions to the elegant curves of the Art Nouveau or the geometries of the Art Deco, and in partnership with artists associated with Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop art, Sèvres has continually pushed the boundaries of ceramic production, creating objects that are neither functional nor decorative but rather art that it simply calls ‘sculpture’. One of the main characteristics of the manufactory, from its origins in the disused premises of the Château de Vincennes until the present day, is the unsurpassed variety of its production. The exhibition considers the term ‘sculpture’ in its broadest sense and features three-dimensional vases, centerpieces for a dining table, clocks, inkstands, and rare cups and saucers alongside more expected objects such as busts, figures, and medallions. This approach presents the history of the Sèvres Manufactory through a lesser-known part of its production while highlighting the significant roles of artists, designers, and architects, whose designs represent a microcosm of larger developments in art and culture.

The exhibition reveals the roles of chemical and technological advances as well as artistic innovations in the manufactory’s success, and it presents approximately two hundred works from the collection of Sèvres, Manufacture et Musée nationaux, in ceramic, soft- and hard-paste porcelain, faïence, and stoneware. Other objects highlight the long process of making a sculpture at Sèvres, from initial design to its final painted decoration. These items—sketched, drawn, or engraved sources as well as terra-cotta models and plaster molds—represent the institution’s rich, diverse, and mostly unknown archives.

Situating sculpture produced at the Sèvres Manufactory in the larger context of French history from 1740 through the twenty-first century, the exhibition tells the story of Sèvres’s relationship to French political power. As a royal, imperial, and then a national manufactory, Sèvres was regularly called upon to produce elaborate porcelain dinner, tea, and coffee services, as well as vases and other objects to be used as diplomatic gifts or to adorn the residences of the French elite.

The exhibition is organized chronologically and occupies all four floors of the Bard Graduate Center Gallery. It reflects the manufactory’s history of collaborations with innovative artists and architects to create new forms and designs aligned with the fashions of their time. Featured works from eighteenth-century artists and designers include those of Jean-Claude Duplessis and Louis-Simon Boizot, among others. Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, and Auguste Rodin represent important collaborations of the nineteenth century. Jean Arp, Louise Bourgeois, and Ettore Sottsass are among the artists whose work demonstrates the manufactory’s artistic output in the twentieth century; and creations by Yayoi Kusama, Johan Creten, Jim Dine, Kristin McKirdy, and Betty Woodman reflect Sèvres’s ongoing commitment to working with the most important living artists of the day.

Bard Graduate Center will schedule a number of public events associated with the exhibition. A symposium for scholars and curators is expected to feature Judith Cernogora and Viviane Mesqui, Conservatrices de musée, Sèvres; Tamara Préaud, former archivist of the Sèvres Manufactory; and Linda Roth, Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

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Three Centuries of Innovation at Sèvres: A Research Symposium
Friday, 20 September 2024, 1:30–5:30pm

1.00  Introduction by exhibition curator Charlotte Vignon

2.00  Session A
• Tamara Préaud (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres) — Dynasties of Sculptors at Sèvres
• Viviane Mesqui (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres) — Re-editions Serving Heritage at the Sèvres Manufactory: Sèvres Beehive Vases from 1769 to 2024

3.15  Coffee break

3.45  Session B
• Linda Roth (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum) — Taxile Doat: Sculptor, Decorator, and Studio Potter at Sèvres
• Soazig Guilmin (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres) — The Art of Light and Sculpture: A Legacy of the Sèvres Manufactory
• Judith Cernogora (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres) — Luxury and Extravagance: Contemporary Furniture in Sèvres Porcelain

5.15  Concluding remarks

Registration information is available here»

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Tamara Préaud, Sevres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 Until Today (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 600 pages, ISBN: 978-0300278750, $85.

The accompanying catalogue is the first large-scale, English-language publication to explore the production of sculpture created by the famed French manufactory from its eighteenth-century origins to the present. Published by Bard Graduate Center and distributed by Yale University Press, this richly illustrated volume is primarily written by Tamara Préaud, who held the position of archivist at the Sèvres Manufactory for more than forty years and today is considered one of the most important historians of the manufactory. Additional texts were written by Guilhem Scherf, curator of sculpture at the Louvre Museum; Soazig Guilmin, head of the registrar’s department and art historian at the Sèvres Museum; Judith Cernogora, curator of contemporary art at the Sèvres Museum; and Florence Rionnet, curator at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Quimper, Brittany. The volume is edited by Susan Weber and Charlotte Vignon.

c o n t e n t s

Unless otherwise noted, all text by Tamara Préaud

Introduction
•  French Sculpture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Historical Context and Stylistic References — Guilhem Scherf
•  Sculpture in France from the Belle Époque to Pop Art — Florence Rionnet

Part I | General Considerations
1  Materials and Production — Tamara Preaud with Soazig Guilmin
2  Salaries and Prices
3  Imitations, Copies, Overmoldings, and Marks

Part II | History
4  The Eighteenth Century
5  The Directorship of Alexandre Brongniart
6  The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, 1848–91
7  The Twentieth Century
8  Two Decades of Contemporary Art at Sèvres, 2000–20 — Judith Cernogora
9  Sales and Deliveries after 1941 — Soazig Guilmin

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Note (added 9 September 2024) — The posting was updated to include information on the symposium.

Note (added 6 September 2025) — The posting was updated with the exhibition’s new dates. It was originally slated to be on view from 21 September 2024 to 5 January 2025 but closed early due to building maintenance issues.