Tiepolo in Motion at the Kimbell
Director Philip Haas (Angels & Insects, Blood Oranges, and Up at the Villa) partnered with the Kimbell for the current series of installations. From the Kimbell’s website:
Butchers, Dragons, Gods, & Skeletons: Film Installations by Philip Haas Inspired by the Works in the Collection
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 18 July – 25 October 2009
"Butchers, Dragons, Gods & Skeletons: Film Installations by Philip Haas" with an essay by A. S. Byatt, $24.95
Commissioned by the Kimbell, Philip Haas’s film installations interpret and elaborate upon selected works in the Museum’s permanent collection:
- Douris, Red-Figure Cup Showing the Death of Pentheus (exterior) and a Maenad (interior), ca. 480 BCE
- Arhat Taming the Dragon, Yuan dynasty, early fourteenth century
- Annibale Carracci, The Butcher’s Shop, 1580s
- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Apollo and the Continents, ca. 1739
- James Ensor, Skeletons Warming Themselves, 1889.
Though based on deep research into the original artists and cultures, Haas’s films are poetic and sensuous in approach rather than factual like a documentary. Between seven and twenty minutes in length and running continuously, they are projected on screens of various unconventional formats and configurations. All are accompanied by original music, and several appear in elaborate architectural and sculptural sets, further immersing the viewer in the experience. The installations complement a full display of the Kimbell’s permanent collection, each occupying a space near the work to which it relates.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Apollo and the Continents is probably a sketch for a large fresco ceiling at the Palazzo Clerici in Milan; the ceiling was commissioned by Antonio Giorgio Clerici to celebrate his impending marriage. In the most elaborate and technically challenging of his installations, Haas combines filmed images projected on both walls and ceiling with real architectural elements, responding in his own terms to the spectacular, playful illusionism of a Tiepolo ceiling: “My intention has been to create the film installation as if it were designed and directed by Tiepolo himself, translating painterly trompe-l’oeil into cinematic visual effect.” On one of the walls we see Tiepolo with a young assistant in the studio. Occasionally he looks across to other walls, where models are posing for him.
The models are played by the actresses Anna Walton — as a reclining Venus — and Rachael Stirling. Above, we see classical figure groups come to life as Tiepolo has visions, piece by piece, of a grand ceiling decoration in splendidly theatrical style. It is an assembly of the divinely beautiful, the strong, and the statuesque: Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Hebe, Juno, Ceres, river gods, and a host of numerous personages from classical myth and allegory. Finally Apollo the sun god appears, hovering in the center of the whole, breathtaking ensemble that has come together over our heads. Meanwhile Tiepolo has been working on a portrait of a betrothed couple. The climax of the piece is an apotheosis in which, through the power of the artist’s imagination, the couple become classical figures themselves and ascend into the heavens.
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The Butcher’s Shop appeared at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 2008.
A six-minute video clip with Malcolm Warner and Philip Haas summarizing the project is available via YouTube (posted by WRR101FM). It supplies a useful sense of the project, though it, unfortunately, doesn’t address the Tiepolo installation.
N.B. — One of the models for Apollo and the Continents, the actor Rachael Stirling — perhaps best known for her role in Tipping the Velvet — holds, incidentally, a B.A. in art history from the University of Edinburgh. Proof of the utility of the major for undergraduates? Comments are especially welcome from anyone who’s seen the installation at the Kimbell.
Delany Exhibition Is Here!
The highly anticipated Delany show opened earlier this week. Mark Laird (Harvard University) kicked things off on Wednesday with a talk on Delany as “A Lady of Singular Ingenuity.” Alicia Weisberg-Roberts will speak on October 7 (see below for programming details). The following description is drawn from the press release from the Yale Center for British Art:
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Mary Delany: Mrs. Delany and Her Circle
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 24 September 2009 — 3 January 2010
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 19 February — 1 May 2010
Curated by Alicia Weisberg-Roberts and Mark Laird
Mark Laird and Alicia Weisberg-Roberts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 416 pages, ISBN-10: 030014279X
At the age of seventy-two, Mary Delany, née Mary Granville (1700–1788), a botanical artist, woman of fashion, and commentator on life and society in eighteenth-century England and Ireland, embarked on a series of one thousand botanical collages, or “paper mosaics.” These were the crowning achievement of a life defined by creative accomplishment. The delicate hand-cut floral designs, made by a method of Mrs. Delany’s own invention, rival the finest botanical works of her time.
An ambitious exhibition, Mrs. Delany and her Circle, at the Yale Center for British Art, is the first to survey the full range of Mary Delany’s creative endeavors, revealing the complexity of her engagement with natural science, art, and design. Her prolific craft activities served to cement bonds of friendship and allowed her to negotiate the interlinked artistic, aristocratic, and scientific networks that defined her social world. A range of approximately 130 objects, including drawings, collages, embroidered textiles, shells, botanical specimens, and manuscripts related to her interest in landscape gardening, will reflect the variety of her activities. The exhibition will also feature a floral display inspired by Mrs. Delany’s designs, as well as a site-specific installation by London-based artist Jane Wildgoose.
Mrs. Delany’s tools from needlework pocket-book, given by Queen Charlotte to Mrs. Delany, 1781, satin, colored silks, and enamelled gold (The Royal Collection)
While Mrs. Delany is best known for her botanical collages, she created bold new garden designs, decorated her home and garden with shell decoupage, fashioned paper silhouettes, and was an accomplished embroiderer who produced elaborate designs for dresses and furnishings. The exhibition will reunite a significant number of Mrs. Delany’s textiles. Among her most extraordinary designs was a court dress embroidered with a cascade of naturalistic flowers on black satin, ca. 1739–40. This garment was disassembled and preserved by Mrs. Delany’s heirs and represents a marriage of art and nature that vividly foreshadows her later accomplishments. Pieces of the dress, reunited here for the first time, will be accompanied by didactic material that allows visitors to understand the garment as a whole and explains the equally interesting story of its survival. Also on view will be embroideries by Mrs. Delany and her circle that demonstrate the importance of the art of the needle to eighteenth-century female society.
Mary Delany, Pancratium maritinum, 1778, collage of colored papers, with bodycolor and watercolor on black ink background, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, © Trustees of the British Museum
The exhibition will show thirty of Mrs. Delany’s “paper mosaics,” generously lent by the British Museum, which houses nearly one thousand of her works. Unlike most botanical illustrations, these collages were created from hundreds of tiny pieces of cut paper. Horace Walpole called them “precision and truth unparalleled,” and Sir Joshua Reynolds admired their “perfection and outline, delicacy of cutting, accuracy of shading and perspective, and harmony and brilliance of color” (Ruth Hayden, Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers, London: British Museum Press 2000).
Through comparison with the works of her contemporaries the exhibition will explore the context of Mrs. Delany’s striking collages and the relationship between her close attention to the natural world and the visual culture of natural history. Mrs. Delany and her Circle will feature works by professional botanical artists, including Georg Dionysius Ehret and Barbara Regina Dietzsch, as well as amateur botanical artists such as Mary Capel Forbes. Also on view will be objects representing the wider world of eighteenth-century collecting and classifying, ranging from mineralogy to conchology. Through drawings, maps, and topographical paintings, the exhibition will evoke the design and experience of gardens Mrs. Delany knew well, including those at Kew and Bulstrode, the remarkable estate of Margaret Cavendish Holles Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland (1715–1785), with whom Mrs. Delany lived and worked. The Duchess was one of the most important collectors of naturalia of the eighteenth century. Their friendship was one of the defining relationships of Mary Delany’s life.
Mrs. Delany and her Circle has been organized by the Yale Center for British Art and Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (where it will be on display from 18 February — 1 May 2010). The curators are Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, Assistant Curator of 18th- and 19th-Century Art, Walters Art Museum, and Mark Laird, Senior Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design. Elisabeth Fairman, Senior Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Center, has served as the organizing curator for Jane Wildgoose’s installation, Promiscuous Assemblage. New Haven is the only North American venue for the exhibition.
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Tuesday, September 29, 12:30 pm
Mary Delany: A Woman Begins Her Life’s Work at the Age of 72
A thirty-minute gallery talk led by Molly Peacock, poet and non-fiction author.
Wednesday, September 30, 5:30 pm
Musical Tastes in Eighteenth-Century London as Seen by Mrs. Mary Delany, Horace Walpole, and Their Friends
Lecture and performance by Nicholas McGegan, renowned baroque music specialist and conductor.
Tuesday, October 6, 12:30 pm
Mrs. Delany’s Flowers: Entrance
A thirty-minute gallery talk led by Jason Siebenmorgen, landscape architect
Wednesday, October 7, 5:30 pm
‘She who bless’d the friend and grac’d the page’: Friendship and Self-fashioning in Mrs. Delany’s Circle
Lecture by Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, Assistant Curator of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- Century Art, The Walters Art Museum
Painted Saints from New Mexico
From ArtDaily.org, 4 July 2009:
A Century of Retablos: The Janis and Dennis Lyon Collection of New Mexican Santos, 1780–1880
Josyln Art Museum, Omaha, NE, 5 July 5 — 4 October 2009
Catalogue by Charles Carrillo and Thomas Steele (Hudson Hills, 2007), $60, ISBN:978-1555952730
A rich tradition of religious painting flourished in New Mexico during the Spanish colonial period prior to 1912. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, self-taught painters in New Mexican villages established workshops to produce devotional images called retablos. These colorful narrative panels consisted of images of Christian saints painted on wood, earning for their creators the title of santeros — or saint makers. These small paintings were sold to devout believers who displayed them in home altars to honor their patron saints. Virtually hundreds of saints were represented, each invoked to remedy a different situation.
The exhibition A Century of Retablos: The Janis and Dennis Lyon Collection of New Mexican Santos, 1780–1880 at the Joslyn Art Museum, July 5 through October 4, introduces retablos to museum audiences and teaches about the methods of creating these beautiful panel paintings.
A Century of Retablos is organized by the Phoenix Art Museum. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue have been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts through its ‘American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius’ program.
A Century of Retablos features 93 wooden panels, all created during the colonial period, from one of the finest private collections of retablos in the world (click here for an exhibition checklist). The Janis and Dennis Lyon collection encompasses the breadth and depth of the retablo tradition. This exhibition provides the first opportunity for the Lyon collection of retablos to be available for public viewing.
This exhibition is groundbreaking in its approach. Previously unconsidered questions and the biographies of various santeros are explored, as well as the relationships among artists, workshops, and patrons. The research by Charles Carrillo, Ph.D., and Father Thomas Steele, S. J., is the basis of this effort. Carrillo is an accomplished anthropologist who is well respected in his field and has been widely published over the past 20 years. He is also a leading contemporary santero. Father Steele is a highly regarded author and social historian who studies Hispanic life in early New Mexico. Together, their research sheds new light on the social history and artistic significance of colonial retablos, examining not only the physical and aesthetic nature of the decorative panels, but also the ways these objects were used in churches and as private devotional objects. (more…)
Assessing the Glow of ‘Blake’ and ‘Brilliant Women’
Recent pieces from CAA.reviews address exhibition publications on William Blake at the Petit Palais in Paris and bluestockings at the National Portrait Gallery in London:
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Catherine de Bourgoing, ed., William Blake: Le Génie visionnaire du romantisme anglais, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Petit Palais and Musée de la Vie Romantique, 2009), 256 pages, €39 (9782759600779)
Exhibition schedule: Petit Palais and Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris, April 2–June 28, 2009
Meredith Davis writes that
This overdue exhibition was expansive and thorough, if not inspirational; it was beautifully installed in the Petit Palais’s well-appointed special exhibition rooms, but the roughly thematic groupings were at times opaque or barely articulated. Arguably, Blake is as much a poet as a visual artist, and with a museum show such as this, one inevitably favors the visual dimension of his art over the literary. Typically problematic in this sense are his “Illuminated Books.” Among his most important works, these hand-printed manuscripts are miniscule in some cases; many, including his Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789–94), were certainly not meant to be presented as individual framed sheets of paper, but rather as objects to be cradled in one’s hands or lap, like a book of hours or diary. . . .
Despite such inherent difficulties, the exhibition succeeded in creating several intimate spaces and in offering a comprehensive presentation of Blake’s range. Blake’s long absence from France was remedied, and French audiences did get a broad view of Blake’s world. However, it is not certain that they came away from the exhibition with anything like a clear vision of his art (to the extent that such a thing is possible). The exhibition did not begin with an introductory wall text as one typically finds in a similar exhibition in the United States. Instead viewers were launched straight into a series of modestly scaled rooms, arranged around major works, themes, or historical benchmarks. In some ways the exhibition seemed to take a cue from Blake himself. . . .
Michael Phillips’s excellent catalogue essay, “William Blake Graveur Visionnaire,” provides some much-needed and detailed information on Blake’s printing processes. Phillips offers a lucid discussion of Blake’s technical innovations in printmaking, as well as discusses the symbolic significance the medium took on for Blake, pointing out how the artist drew parallels, for example, between the corrosive action of the acid on the plate (in etching) and a similar corrosion of the soul. The catalogue’s overall format mirrors the exhibition itself in its avoidance of linear narrative, choosing again a thematic and multi-vocal presentation of the artist. It does not provide a roadmap to the exhibition in any sense, but is a stand-alone volume with high ambitions. There are, in all, a total of thirty essays in the volume, some of them as short as five hundred words, all of them in French. While some essays are informative, others seem to end abruptly, or to focus on esoteric topics. Nonetheless, this approach clearly demonstrates the many dimensions of Blake’s work, as well as the range of current approaches to it.
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Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Pelz, Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 160 pages; 84 color illustrations; 64 b/w illustrations, cloth $50 (9780300141030)
Exhibition schedule: National Portrait Gallery, London, March 13–June 15, 2008
Wendy Wassyng Roworth writes that
Brilliant Women is not a catalogue; however, all the works in the exhibition are splendidly illustrated, many in high-quality color or as full-page reproductions. Portraits of the bluestockings, their associates, and followers, along with engravings, drawings, caricatures, and Wedgwood plaques provide an abundance of visual material not usually available in studies of literary figures. Intended primarily for general readers and exhibition visitors, Brilliant Women does not break major new ground but offers an excellent overview of the bluestocking phenomenon. However, the authors’ focus on visual representations of learned women in portraits, book illustrations, and other pictorial forms and their analyses of how and why bluestockings were depicted by both admirers and critics makes this study useful for scholars of eighteenth-century art, literature, and history. This consideration of visual imagery contributes to a larger understanding of the vital role women played in the eighteenth-century republic of letters through their images as well as their works in ways that textual accounts alone cannot achieve. Whether disparaged and mocked in caricature, elevated as allegorical personifications, or portrayed as graceful ladies in fashionable dress, these images call attention to the complex identities of intellectually ambitious women.
Vienna Porcelain at the Met: Exhibition and Symposium
Press release from the Met:
Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718–44
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 22 September 2009 – 21 March 2010
Vase, ca. 1730, Austrian; Vienna, du Paquier period, hard-paste porcelain, 6 x 8 inches (NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art); inscription reads (in translation): "China, you will not have called your arts unknown any longer; in Europe, you will triumph through the skill of Vienna."
The Du Paquier ceramic manufactory, founded by Claudius Innocentius du Paquier in Vienna in 1718, was only the second factory in Europe able to make true porcelain in the manner of the Chinese. This small porcelain enterprise developed a highly distinctive style that remained Baroque in inspiration throughout the history of the factory, which was taken over by the State in 1744. Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718–44 charts the history of the development of the Du Paquier factory, setting its production within the historic and cultural context of Vienna in the first half of the eighteenth century. The exhibition features more than 100 works, half drawn from the Metropolitan Museum’s superb collection, and half from the premier private collection of this material.
With the increase in trade with China in the seventeenth century, Westerners developed a passion for Chinese and Japanese porcelain. The demand grew so great that Europeans began experiments to replicate the Chinese hard-paste porcelain, or “white gold,” and create their own production. Germany was the first to produce true porcelain in 1708, leading to the founding of the Meissen factory in 1710. Soon after, Claudius Innocentius du Paquier enlisted a worker from the Meissen factory to help him produce porcelain in Vienna. Although it shared a number of forms with Meissen porcelain, the Vienna factory distinguished itself by developing its own distinctive and whimsical style of painted decoration. Du Paquier produced a range of tablewares, decorative vases, and small-scale sculpture that found great popularity with the Hapsburg court and Austrian nobility.
The works will be installed according to the functions they served – drinking vessels, wares for dining, decorative vases – in the refined life of the eighteenth-century Viennese aristocracy for which they were created. The exhibition includes the recreation in the gallery of an extravagant table that was set for the Holy Roman Empress. In addition to the porcelain, elaborate table decorations and pyramids of fruit sculpted from sugar, specially made for the exhibition, will adorn the table.
Another of the many highlights in the exhibition is a tulip vase from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection. Depicting a scene of a man (thought to be du Paquier) seated at a tea table with a display of porcelain on a buffet, it includes an inscription around the scene that reads: “China, you will not have called your arts unknown any longer; in Europe, you will triumph through the skill of Vienna.” Calling attention to Vienna’s great success in making porcelain, the vase is a very unusual, yet highly significant, piece from the Du Paquier manufactory, documenting its place in the history of porcelain production.
Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718–44 is organized at the Metropolitan Museum by Jeffrey Munger, Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and co-curator Meredith Chilton, an independent ceramic historian.
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Du Paquier Symposium: Friday, 25 September 2009
Morning Session, 10:00am – 12:30pm
- ‘Welcome’ – Ian Wardropper, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- ‘Opening Remarks’ – Jeffrey Munger, Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- ‘Fired by Passion: Vienna Baroque Porcelain of Claudius Innocentius du Paquier’ – Meredith Chilton, Ceramic Historian, Lac-Brome, Quebec
- ‘The Triumph of Baroque Vienna’ – Johann Kräftner, Director, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna
- ‘Roses and Dragons: The Fascinating Story of the Du Paquier Manufactory and Its Baroque Porcelain’ – Meredith Chilton, Ceramic Historian, Lac-Brome, Quebec
- ‘Du Paquier’s Porcelain: Artistic Expression and Technological Mastery, A Scientific Evaluation of the Materials’ – Francesca Casadio, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Conservation Scientist, Art Institute of Chicago
Afternoon Session, 2:00 – 4:45pm
- ‘The World of Refinement: Du Paquier Porcelain in Everyday Court Life’ – Claudia Lehner-Jobst, Independent Art Historian and Curator, Vienna
- ‘Gifts, Diplomacy, and Foreign Trade: Du Paquier Porcelain Abroad’ – Ghenete Zelleke, Samuel and M. Patricia Grober Curator of European Decorative Arts, Art Institute of Chicago
- ‘Dressed Up in Porcelain: The Du Paquier Porcelain Room in the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna’ – Samuel Wittwer, Director, Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg
- Discussion Panel – Jeffrey Munger, Moderator, Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Katharina Hantschmann, Curator, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich and Ernst Schneider Bequest at Lustheim Castle; Sebastian Kuhn, Senior Specialist, Bonhams, London; Johanna Lessmann, Ceramic Historian, Hamburg; Melinda and Paul Sullivan, collectors
The symposium is free with museum admission. For more details, see the Met’s website.
N.B. It would be lovely to have a report on the proceedings from a HECAA member. Any takers?
Settecento Enlightenment
From the Polo Museale Fiorentino website:
Marco Ricci, "Riunione musicale," before 1708 (Florence: Galleria dell'Accademia)
Splendour and Reason: Art in Eighteenth-Century Florence
(Il fasto e la ragione: Arte del Settecento a Firenze)
Uffizi, Florence, 30 May — 30 September 2009
Francesco Carradori, "Bacchus and Ariadne," 1776 (Florence: Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina)
With the extinction of the Medici dynasty in 1743, Florence did not lose its prestige as capital of culture and the arts, thanks to the government of the Lorraines, who gave the city the international profile required by Enlightenment policies. This exhibition is the first overall panorama of the principal artistic events of the eighteenth century in Florence. We are speaking of 120 paintings, sculptures, art objects and furnishings of the great, public and private commissions, works from the entire century, which in a spectacular vein record the changes in taste from the late Baroque period to Neoclassicism.
The show starts with the commissions made by Cosimo III and the Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, which opened the city to “foreign” artists like Sebastiano Ricci and Giuseppe Maria Crespi. They favoured sculpture (with personalities like Giovan Battista Foggini and Massimiliano Soldani Benzi), and developed the manufacture of tapestries and semiprecious stones. In this context, the families of the Florentine aristocracy performed a very conspicuous role: the Gerinis for the diffusion of the veduta, the Ginoris for the famed manufactory of porcelain of Doccia, the Corsinis for their constant relations with pontifical Rome. All these episodes contributed to defining the image of a vital and modern city, crossroads of many experiences and a workshop of original artistic productions.
Pompeo Batoni, "The Education of Achilles," 1746 (Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi)
With the extinction of the Medicis, Peter Leopold of Lorraine brought the European version of Rococo and Neoclassicism to Tuscany, along with the reformist spirit that accompanied the theories of the Enlightenment even in the figurative arts. A new elite of patrons thus took shape in Florence, also made up of its foreign residents (the Englishman Horace Mann, for example). It was also thanks to them that Florence became a mandatory lap of the grand tour. The Tuscan artists received advantages, especially the modern painters of vedutas (landscapes) (including the naturalised Englishman Thomas Patch and Giuseppe Zocchi). Foreign visitors preferred the repertory of gallantries and vedutas translated into semiprecious stones by the renovated Opificio dei Siriès. The Grand Duke proved to be a protector of the arts. He reformed the by-laws of the Academy where prominent artists like Pietro Pedroni, Innocenzo Spinazzi, and Francesco Carradori worked. He stimulated the worksites of the grand-ducal residences – first and foremost, the Pitti Palace and the Villa at Poggio Imperiale – and spurred the study of antiquity,
transferring the spectacular group sculpture of the Niobe from Rome to Florence.
Catalogue edited by Carlo Sisi and Riccardo Spinelli, 352 pages, ISBN 9788809743755
In this climate of civic and cultural fervour, the Frenchmen François-Xavier Fabre, Bénigne Gagnereaux, Louis Gauffier and Jean-Baptiste Desmarais came to Florence, driven from Pontifical Rome after the murder of the diplomat Nicolas de Basseville. With them came the international version of neoclassicism, thus contributing to the “reform” of the portrait, the veduta, and the historical painting, on the eve of the instatement of the Napoleonic court (1799).
The exhibition is curated by Carlo Sisi and Riccardo Spinelli. The catalogue is available through Michael Shamansky, at artbooks.com.
[All images are taken from the exhibition website; click here for more information]
Built by Numbers
This exhibition just closed at Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science; it opens at the YCBA in February. The following description comes from the latter’s website:
Compass & Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500-1750
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, 16 June — 6 September 2009
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 18 February — 30 May 2010
The spread of Renaissance culture in England coincided with the birth of architecture as a profession. Identified as a branch of practical mathematics, architecture became the most artistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the arts. During this time, new concepts of design based on geometry changed how architects worked and what they built, as well as the intellectual status and social standing of their discipline.
Catalogue edited by Anthony Gerbino and Stephen Johnston (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)
Compass & Rule examines the role of mathematics in architectural design and building technology, highlighting the dramatic transformation of English architecture between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The exhibition brings together some of the finest architectural and scientific material from the early modern period, including drawings of St. Paul’s Cathedral, an astrolabe commissioned for Queen Elizabeth I, and architectural drawings by King George III. Also on view will be nearly one hundred drawings, paintings, printed books and manuscripts, maps, and other unique mathematical instruments that illustrate the changing role of both the architect and the profession 1500 to 1750.
An illustrated catalogue edited by exhibition curators Anthony Gerbino, architectural historian and Senior Research Fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford, and Stephen Johnston, Assistant Keeper at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford, will accompany the exhibition.
Court Paintings from India
From the British Museum’s website:
Gardens and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur
British Museum, London, 28 May – 11 October 2009
Death of Vali; Rama and Lakshmana wait out of the monsoon (detail). Illustration from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (1532–1623) Jodhpur, c. 1775 © Mehrangarh Museum Trust
The exhibition features a loan of 56 paintings from India, none of which have been displayed before in Europe. It is a fantastic opportunity to experience the unique art tradition that flourished in the royal courts between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. During this period, the region of Jodhpur, in modern-day Rajasthan, produced a distinctive and inventive painting style. Paintings produced for the private enjoyment of the Maharaja and his court brought together traditional Rajasthani styles and combined them with styles developed in the imperial court of the Mughals.
Krishna frolics with the Gopi girls (detail), folio 2 from the Krishna Lila, Jodhpur, c. 1765 © Mehrangarh Museum Trust
The paintings included in the exhibition range from a handful of miniatures to monumental artworks depicting the palaces, wives and families of the Jodhpur rulers. Later works depict epic narratives and demonstrate the devotion of Maharaja Man Singh to an esoteric yogic tradition. Jodhpur artists rose to the challenge of creating images for metaphysical concepts and yoga narratives which had never previously been the focus of the region’s court art.
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Maharaja Bakhat Singh at the Jharokha window of the Bakhat Singh Mahal (detail). Attributed here to 'Artist 2', Nagaur, 1737 (Samvat 1794) © Mehrangarh Museum Trust
Writing for the Times of London, Rachel Campbell-Johnston describes the exhibition as offering “Nirvana hanging on a wall,” while The Observer’s critic, Laura Cumming, found it to be “the most intoxicating show of the year so far” (at least as of late May). Echoing the refrain earlier this month, Christopher Webb in the Financial Times calls the show “magical and exciting.” He was particularly impressed by the condition of the works: “they are as vividly fresh as if they had been painted months ago rather than hundreds of years; kept closeted in the Mehrangarh fort, they suffered no damage from exposure to light. This freshness helps us to feel the humanity of the life of this palace – a musical instrument, the ties on a jacket, the patterns on a bed cover, the shape of an oar, the way a turban looks when it falls off – the level of detail is extraordinary.” Finally, Kathryn Hadley provides a summary for History Today.
[The exhibition first appeared at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington from October 11, 2008 to January 4, 2009; click here for an audio guide.]
Thomas Wright’s Menagerie & Gervase Jackson-Stops
Thomas Wright, The Menagerie, Horton Park, Northamptonshire, 1750s (Photo: Bruno de Hamel, "Architectural Digest: Chateaux and Villas," 1982)
Earlier in the week, An Aesthete’s Lament included a posting on The Menagerie, the Grade II listed building acquired by Gervase Jackson-Stops (1947-95) in the 1970s. After a three-year studentship at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Jackson-Stops joined the National Trust, first as a research assistant and then (starting in 1975) as an architectural advisor. It’s difficult to overstate his importance for the organization. As noted in numerous obituaries — including those from the Society of Antiquaries of London, The Independent, and Architectural History (available through JStor) — he played important roles in the Trust’s acquisition of Canons Ashby House, Kedleston Hall, and Fountains Abbey. His commitments to restoration were evinced not only at Stowe but also at his personal labor of love, The Menagerie.
Horton Hall, destroyed 1936
This mid-eighteenth-century banqueting house, by Thomas Wright (1711-86), at Horton Park, Northamptonshire is actually just one of just thirteen listed buildings attached to the property (the main house, Horton Hall, was destroyed in the 1930s). The Horton Park Conservation Group (HPCG) was founded in 2008 to campaign for the ongoing conservation of the park and these structures. The park is likely to receive increased attention over the next two years as Wright’s three-hundredth birthday approaches.
The Menagerie appears in Paige Rense, Architectural Digest: Chateaux and Villas (Knapp, 1982); Timothy Mowl and Claire Hickman, Historic Gardens of England: Northamptonshire (History Press, 2008), and Chippy Irvine, The English Room (Bullfinch Press, 2001). For details regarding visits, see The Menagerie website.
Finally, no evocation of Jackson-Stops is complete without mention of his role in organizing the seminal Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1985-86). For his work on the show, he received the Presidential Award for Design in 1986 and was made an Officer of the British Empire (O.B.E.) — all before turning 40! A full list of publications, including dozens of contributions for Country Life, can be found at the end of the obituary compiled by Oliver Garnett and Tim Knox for Architectural History 39 (1996): 222-35.
[The photograph of The Menagerie comes from An Aesthete’s Lament; the print of Horton Hall comes from the website of the Horton Park Conservation Group. Thanks to both.]
Marguerite Gérard in Paris
From Hôtels Paris Rive Gauche:
Marguerite Gérard: Artiste en 1789 dans l’atelier de Fragonard
Cognacq-Jay Museum, Paris, 10 September – 6 December 2009
This exhibition concentrates on the astonishing, little-known work of Marguerite Gérard (1761-1837), who was the sister-in-law of the great painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). Having moved to Paris in the mid-1770s — living in Fragonard’s apartment in the Louvre — she became the painter’s student and subsequent collaborator.
Becoming a recognised female painter in the society of the era was not simple at all. Knowing this, Marguerite made some clever marketing moves, taking advantage of the wobbling Old Regime to carve a niche for herself in this newly-formed society. Soon, her portraits, often donated to her models, carried her name far and wide, helping to make her well known and sought after.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Marguerite Gérard, "The Stolen Kiss," (St. Petersburg, Hermitage)
The exhibition has sixty portraits and drawings borrowed from all over Europe and the United States. As well as the work of Marguerite Gerard and Fragonard, including one seminal collaborative effort, the exhibition will also show contemporary portraits which explain the artist’s sources and the success of the fashion of intimist portraits that took hold at the beginning of the nineteenth century, ending with the arrival of photography. A catalogue will also be published to accompany the exhibition.
The exhibiton Marguerite Gérard: artiste en 1789 dans l’atelier de Fragonard runs from 10th September to 6th December 2009 at the Musée Cognacq-Jay.
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