Goya as Modernist in Milan
From lifeinitaly.com:
Goya e il mondo moderno / Goya And The Modern World
Palazzo Reale, Milan, 17 March — 27 June 2010
A visitor looks at engravings by Spanish master Francisco de Goya on March 16, 2010 at Palazzo Reale museum in Milan. (Photo: DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images)
Milan is paying tribute to the art of Spanish master Francisco Goya, with a wide-ranging exhibition of over 180 works exploring his impact on future generations. The event at Palazzo Reale brings together paintings, etchings and drawings from across Europe, mostly by Goya (1746-1828). But the show also looks at the Spaniard’s influence on key artists after his death, including works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Willem De Kooning, Oskar Kokoschka and Eugene Delacriox among others. Divided into six different sections, the exhibition explores three key themes in Goya’s output. . .
The rest of the exhibition summary can be found here»
Old Master Drawings in Grenoble
From the evene.fr site:
De chair et d’esprit: Les dessins italiens du musée de Grenoble (XVe — XVIIIe siècles)
Musée de Grenoble, 6 March – 30 May 2010
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754), "Bust of a Young Woman," Black chalk and charcoal, heightened with white gouache - 37.6 x 30.4 cm (Grenoble: Musée de Grenoble)
Le musée de Grenoble a entrepris d’étudier et de publier les 3500 dessins anciens (du XVe au XVIIIe siècle) conservés dans ses collections, en présentant chaque année, sur trois ans, une sélection des oeuvres les plus représentatives de ce fonds. Un fonds qui était demeuré jusqu’alors largement inexploité et pour l’essentiel inédit. En 2010, la première étape de cette démarche sera consacrée à l’Italie et permettra de découvrir près de 120 dessins issus des différents foyers artistiques de la péninsule. L’étude et la mise en valeur de ses collections sont parmi les missions premières d’un musée. A Grenoble, alors que la majeure partie des peintures et sculptures ont été publiées, les équipes travaillent depuis plusieurs années sur le fonds d’art graphique.
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A review of the exhibition by Didier Rykner from The Art Tribune is available in English here»
. . . . We were struck during our visit to this exhibition in Grenoble by the quality of the works which nonetheless remained totally unknown until now, even to specialists. Furthermore, we would like to commend the museum for its determination to explore and catalogue all of its collections, an undertaking begun many years ago and which its current director, Guy Tossato, continues to pursue. Next year, after the Italian drawings, the museum will highlight French drawings before the 19th century, then will present Northern European sheets. Let us hope that the entire collection will soon be published, a feat not yet achieved, to our knowledge, by any of the other provincial museums.
The accompanying catalogue is available through Michael Shamansky’s artbooks.com. Eric Pagliano, Catherine Monbeig Goguel, and Philippe Costamagna, De chair et d’esprit, dessins italiens du musée de Grenoble XVe –XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Somogy, 2010), ISBN: 9782757203057, $65.
Old Master Drawings at the Met
Press release from the Met:
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 12 May — 15 August 2010
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, "A Family Group," 1750s. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk. Sheet: 9 1/2 x 13 7/16 in. (24.1 x 34.2 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift of David M. Tobey (TR.331.50.2007).
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo presents 72 extraordinary works of the 16th through 18th centuries, from one of the preeminent collections of Italian Old Master drawings in private hands. It features masterpieces by gifted and historically important draftsmen—principally Italian masters but also artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps—among them Correggio, Parmigianino, Bernini, Poussin, Guercino, Canaletto, and Tiepolo. The drawings represent the principal centers of Italian art: Florence, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Parma, Venice, Genoa, and Milan. Their strikingly broad range of subject matter includes figure studies, historical and mythological narratives, landscapes, vedute, botanical drawings, motifs copied from or inspired by classical antiquity,
and designs for painted compositions.
Catalogue by Linda Wolk-Simon and Carmen Bambach, ISBN: 9780300155242, $50
The 16th-century Italian painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari has been credited with formulating the concept of Renaissance art in his celebrated Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550). He also invented the practice of systematically collecting Italian drawings in compiling his Libro dei disegni, a volume comprising examples by many of the artists whose biographies he authored. From Vasari’s time until the present, such works—intimate glimpses of an artist’s imagination and creative powers at work—have held a seductive allure and an intellectual appeal for collectors and connoisseurs alike. An Italian Journey offers a unique glimpse of the myriad riches of this exceptional collection, presented to the public for the first time.
Among the many treasures of the collection on view are a recently discovered, magnificent red chalk drawing of the head of Julius Caesar by Andrea del Sarto, the leading Florentine painter of the first decades of the 16th century; a luminous study by Correggio for the figure of Eve in his great masterpiece, the painted dome of the cathedral of Parma; a sprightly pen drawing by his younger contemporary Parmigianino—hailed in his day as the spirit of the divine Raphael reborn—for one of his most important painted portraits; brilliantly rendered colored studies by the Florentine artist Jacopo Ligozzi, one depicting, with poetry and scientific precision, a plant, and another an exotic Oriental theme; a powerful study of a recumbent nude man by the towering genius of Baroque Rome, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and of a fanciful ship by his contemporary, the sculptor Alessandro Algardi, made for the pope; a rich concentration of drawings by some of the leading Bolognese painters of the 17th century, notably Guercino (who is represented by three masterful studies), Guido Reni, and Domenichino; and fine examples by the great Venetian draftsmen of the 18th century, among them Canaletto, Guardi, Piranesi, and the greatest artistic luminary of the age, Giambattista Tiepolo. (more…)
Grangerized Books
Extending the Book: The Art of Extra-Illustration
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 28 January – 25 May 2010
Curated by Erin Blake (Folger Shakespeare Library) and Stuart Sillars (University of Bergen) with LuEllen DeHaven (Folger Shakespeare Library)
Texts are never static objects, but it is rare that readers’ interactions with them are as physically evident as they are in extra-illustrated books. The concept is simple: identify significant people, places, and things in a printed text, collect pictures of them, then insert the pictures as visual annotations to the text. Extra-illustration came to prominence after the 1769 publication of James Granger’s Biographical history of England. Granger’s un-illustrated book combined thumbnail biographies with lists of portraits, and readers began to supplement their copies with actual examples of the portraits. The practice spread to other texts, and the great era of extra-illustration, or “grangerizing,” began. At its most extreme, a single volume could grow to dozens.
Shakespeare proved especially attractive to grangerizers thanks to the variety of editions available and the many portraits of historical figures, fictitious characters, and well-known actors that could be added. Many extra-illustrators went beyond portraiture to include playbills, scenic views, and even entire books; others inserted manuscript letters, original watercolors, and rare engravings, thus preserving a treasure-trove of unique material. Finished volumes range from the skilled work of professional inlayers and binders hired by wealthy collectors to self-made books of inexpensive clippings pasted onto cheap inserts. Any book owner could be an extra-illustrator.
From the beginning, extra-illustrators had to defend their “exquisite handicraft” (in the words of an 1890 proponent) against accusations of “breaking up a good book to illustrate a worse one” (in the words of an 1892 critic). This exhibition examines the art and the practice of extra-illustration, from crudely altered books to beautiful new creations.
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The Folger’s exhibition site includes more information and an intriguing sampling of images»
Quilts in Milwaukee
Press release from the Milwaukee Art Museum:
American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection
Winterthur Museum, 10 March — 16 September 2007
Saint Louis Art Museum, 2 March — 26 May 2008
Milwaukee Art Museum, 22 May — 6 September 2010
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 9 October 2010 — 2 January 2011
Curated by Linda Eaton of Winterthur Museum
Appliqué counterpane, 1800–25. Cotton, 100 x 92 in. Courtesy, Winterthur, Museum purchase with funds provided by Mr. Samuel Pettit in memory of his wife, Sally Pettit.
One of the world’s finest collections of early American quilts will be on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum May 22 — September 6, 2010. Featuring rare surviving textiles of the late 1700s and early 1800s from Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, Delaware, American Quilts outlines America’s earliest cultural landscape in stunning detail. American Quilts features more than 40 exquisite quilts whose fabric, design, and stitching combine to provide an extraordinary visual experience. These works of art also present a wealth of new information about the lives of their makers and the world around them. Quilts make political statements, celebrate marriages, and document the early global textile trade. Close examination of these quilts show the frugal recycling of a pair of men’s wool breeches, or the special purchase of fashionable and expensive fabrics. The exhibition includes some of the finest and earliest American printed textiles, a quilted Indian palampore, and a kaleidoscopic sunburst quilt featuring over 6,700 pieces of printed cotton.
“At first, fabric itself was a status symbol reflecting wealth and worldliness,” said Mel Buchanan, assistant curator of 20th-century design. “But the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of an American textile industry enabled affordable fabrics to become more widely available. From this array of materials, more women could produce quilts that served as an important part of their personal, family, and community identity in a constantly changing world.”
American Quilts explores how quilts were made to commemorate life-changing events for individuals, families, or entire communities. The rare quilts on view were passed through generations and, in turn, have become beautiful repositories of history and memory that document women’s political, social, and cultural lives in the early American republic. (more…)
At the Getty: The Grand Manner on Paper
Press release from the Getty:
Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV
The Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, 18 May — 17 October 2010
Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707), after Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), "Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander from the Battles of Alexander," ca. 1675 Etching and engraving 26 9/16 x 35 5/16 in. Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2003.PR.42)
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Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV explores a little-known facet of late 17th-century reproductive engravings. The exhibition examines the prints’ rich vocabulary and illuminates the context in which they were made between the mid-1660s and the mid-1680s. While it focuses on the relationship between Charles Le Brun (French, 1619–90) and the printmakers who reproduced his compositions, the exhibition also interprets the prints and their inscriptions in light of Le Brun’s ambitions and struggles as a court painter, designer, and print publisher in the highly competitive atmosphere surrounding Louis XIV.
Catalogue by Louis Marchesano and Christian Michel (Getty Research Institute, 2010) ISBN: 978-0892369805, $50
The works in this exhibition and related catalog reproduce Le Brun’s narrative compositions in the Grand Manner, the genre in which a heroic protagonist engages in a morally significant action—a battle to be won, a victory to be celebrated, or a vice to be avoided. By disseminating these subjects in printed form, Le Brun presented to both collectors and artists his mastery of the most complex type of art. In turn, the quality and size of these prints allowed him to demonstrate the unprecedented authority over the fine arts in France.
The eleven large prints featured in Printing the Grand Manner were clearly intended to evoke the grandeur of Le Brun’s large-scale paintings and tapestry designs that illustrate events from the exemplary lives of ancient rulers such as Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great. A prodigious artist and designer, now best known for his work at Versailles, Le Brun was Louis XIV’s principal painter, leader of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and director of the huge royal manufactory at the Hôtel des Gobelins, the integrated workshops where hundreds of artists and craftsmen produced the fine objects that gave the age of Louis XIV its veneer of splendor and grandeur.
Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707), after Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), "Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander from the Battles of Alexander," detail, ca. 1675
“Le Brun used prints strategically to promote his agenda. Naturally, he wanted the best printmakers to reproduce his compositions and to disseminate them in the best possible light. As a painter and leader of the arts who experienced the power of prints in his own career, he was able to encourage the development of printmaking in France,” says Louis Marchesano, the Getty Research Institute’s curator of prints and drawings. “In retrospect, we know Le Brun’s own interventions in the field of prints paid off because the material and stylistic excellence of the large prints whet the appetites of collectors and critics well into the 19th-century.”
Le Brun was most successful at the height of his power in the 1670s, when he oversaw the publication of the Battles of Alexander, a suite of five images comprising his Persian and Indian campaigns. With his reputation and authority at stake, he convinced the Crown to spare no expense on the quality of the paper and the size of the impressions. Pulled from 15 copper plates, large printed sheets had to be assembled into a suite of five separate images. The Alexander suite was made by two of the best artists at Le Brun’s disposal, Gérard Edelinck and Gérard Audran. Showcasing Audran’s astonishing mixed etching and engraving technique, the four prints by him were judged to be the epitome of printmaking, in part because they appeared to improve upon Le Brun’s original paintings, a rather unusual judgment in favor of prints. (more…)
John Yenn’s Architectural Drawings
In the Library Print Room of the Royal Academy of Arts, there’s currently a lovely small exhibition on display of architectural drawings by John Yenn. The following text is excerpted from the handout and checklist that accompanies the show. The exhibition was selected by Nick Savage, Curator of Prints and Drawings and Head of the Collections. Neil Bingham researched and wrote all catalogue entries. On Tuesday, 1 June, at 3:30, the drawings will be the subject of a Royal Academy Curator’s Talk.
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John Yenn R.A.: Pioneer of the Architectural Exhibition Drawing
Royal Academy of Arts Library, London, 9 March — 9 July 2010
John Yenn RA, "Design for a Doric garden seat pavilion in Surrey: elevation," 1775 © Royal Academy of Arts, London; photographer M. Slingsby
The present exhibition of mostly theoretical, unexecuted architectural designs by John Yenn R.A. (1750-1821) is drawn entirely from the contents of ‘two boxes of watercolour drawings &c.’ presented to the Royal Academy by Mrs. Augusta Thackeray, the architect’s last surviving daughter, on 21 June 1865. On the first occasion that any of them had been exhibited since the eighteenth century (John Yenn, Draughtsman Extraordinary, RIBA Heinz Gallery, 3 September — 19 October 1973), the then Curator of the RIBA Drawings Collection, John Harris, hailed them as ‘supreme examples’ of the genre, ‘excelled by none in the whole history of British architectural rendering’, a revelation which at a stroke evleated their author ‘to the status of the finest draughtsman of the century’. Furthermore, the discovery in many of these ideal designs of a ‘rogue’ architectural imagination at play, mischievously undermining and subverting Palladian orthodoxy, revealed a previously unsuspected originality that seems, for whatever reason, to have evaporated when Yenn came to design real buildings.
Although it is tempting to let Yenn bask in the warmth of this praise, like so much in his career as an architect it is undeniable that everything that is distinctive about his drawings in terms of technique, presentation, and design content . . . is directly attributable to the advanced, continental-based training he had received in the office of his great mentor Sir William Chambers RA (1723-1796) . . . .
Quilts at the V&A
From the V&A’s website:
Quilts: 1700-2010
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 20 March — 4 July 2010
Bishops Court quilt, 1690-1700 (V&A no. T.201-1984)
The V&A will present its first ever exhibition of British quilts, with examples dating from 1700 to the present day — a unique opportunity to view the V&A’s unseen quilt collection as well as key national loans. The exhibition will show 65 beautifully crafted quilts, predominantly from the V&A’s own collection but also including a number of important loans and new works by contemporary artists, many of which have been commissioned especially for the show.
Earliest examples include a sumptuous silk and velvet bedcover, with an oral narrative that links it to King Charles II’s visit to an Exeter manor house in the late 17th century. Recent examples will include works by leading artists such as Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin and commissions for the exhibition by a number of contemporary artists including Sue Stockwell and Caren Garfen.
Catalogue by Sue Prichard, ISBN: 978-1851775958 ($60)
The curators have unravelled some of the complex personal narratives and broader historical events documented in the quilts. Examples by both named and unnamed makers will be shown with objects relating to their subject matter and makers including paintings and prints, as well as needlework tools and personal keepsakes. One example is a cot quilt made at Deal castle, displayed for the first time alongside the maker’s diary and portraits of the two grandchildren who slept under it.
There will also be bedcovers that commemorate the lives of prominent figures including Admiral Lord Nelson, Charles II and the Duke of Wellington and important events such as the coronation of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington’s battle at Vittoria. The exhibition will end with Tracey Emin’s To Meet My Past (2002), a confessional installation which follows the tradition of quilts used as vessels for personal and
collective memories. (more…)
‘Plein Air’ Exhibition in Valenciennes
From the exhibition’s website:
Dessins d’Italie, Le XVIIIe siècle: l’expérience du plein air
Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes, 17 March — 14 June 2010
Olivier Lemay, "View of the Villa Negroni"
L’Italie, terre d’inspiration incontestée depuis la Reniassance, où se mêlent et s’entrecroisent les vestiges d’un passé lointain et les traces des génies du Quattro- et du Cinquecento, fut, dans la seconde moitié du XVIII siècle, à l’origine d’une nouvelle revolution artistique. Celle-ci, en modifiant profondément la perception du paysage, bouleversa définitivement l’art moderne. De ce regard renouvelé sur la nature découla un langage pictural inédit, dégagé de toute préoccupation narrative, allégé de tous poncifs historiques. L’étude en plein air, soumise aux variations climatiques, incita les artistes à s’interroger d’abord sur des questions plastiques et chromatiques, à chercher des moyens dévoquer une sensation, une perception fugace, les variations infinies d’une nature qui change au fil des heures. . . (more…)
Exhibition and Conference on Louise Élisabeth of France
Fuochi di gioia e lacrime d’argento: An Exhibition Commemorating Louise Élisabeth of France
on the 250th Anniversary of Her Death
Palazzo Bossi Bocchi, Parma, 11 April — 16 May 2010
Louis-Michel Van Loo, "Louise Élisabeth, Duchess of Parma"
The oldest daughter of King Louis XV, Louise Élisabeth of France (1727-1759) was married in 1739 to Prince Philip of Spain (son of Philip V) at the age of 12 (she gave birth to her first child at 14). Following the War of the Austrian Succession, Philip and Élisabeth became Duke and Duchess of Parma. The exhibition includes a posthumous portrait of Élisabeth painted by Jean-Marc Nattier (now in a private collection), along with the more familiar portrait by Louis-Michel van Loo and a selection of prints and drawings from the Cariparma Foundation.
In addition to the exhibition, in September Parma will host an international conference dedicated to Louise Élisabeth and the first decade of Bourbon rule in Parma from 1749 to 1759. Organized by Professors Charles Mambriani (University of Parma) and Gianfranco Fiaccadori (University of Milan), the conference will explore the deep historical, artistic, and cultural ties between Parma and France.
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