Exhibition | On Stage! Costume Designs
From the press release for the exhibition:
On Stage! Costume Designs from the Edmond de Rothschild Collection
Louvre, Paris, 28 October 2021 – 31 January 2022
Curated by Jérôme de La Gorce, Mickaël Bouffard, and Victoria Fernández Masaguer
The Edmond de Rothschild Collection boasts 1,644 sumptuous costume designs for balls, ballets, masquerades, and operas given in France from the reign of François I to that of Louis XIV. Acquired in the late 19th century by Baron de Rothschild, they constitute an extraordinary resource for understanding the world of spectacle during the Ancien Régime. The exhibition showcases a hundred of the finest pieces from this unique corpus.
Cette exposition réunit une sélection d’une centaine de feuilles provenant de l’un des plus importants fonds de dessins d’habits de spectacle, celui des volumes de Costumes de fêtes, de ballets et de théâtre au temps de Louis XIV offerts par le baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845–1934) au musée du Louvre. Leur richesse permet de dévoiler la diversité d’invention des artistes qui habillèrent les divertissements montés à la Cour de France et de Lorraine du milieu du XVIe siècle à l’aube du XVIIIe siècle : le Primatice, Jacques Bellange, Daniel Rabel, Henri Gissey et Jean Berain notamment. Les véritables ouvrages textiles ayant disparu pour la plupart, ces dessins sont des sources inestimables pour l’histoire du costume, de la danse, de la musique et des spectacles en France durant cette période.
Divisée en quatre sections, cette exposition consacre une première salle à l’atelier du dessinateur de costumes qui entend explorer la transmission de modèles entre les différentes générations d’artistes et les spécificités techniques propres à ce type de dessin. Le parcours propose ensuite de suivre les principaux genres spectaculaires représentés dans ces recueils, qui correspondent aux intérêts de l’un des plus grands collectionneurs de dessins de fêtes et divertissements de la fin du XVIIe et du début du XVIIIe siècle, Claude Pioche, sieur Du Rondray (1660/1665–1733), à qui une partie des feuilles assemblées dans ces volumes aurait appartenu :
Les divertissements équestres : les costumes des cavaliers et des chevaux deviennent l’un des attraits majeurs de ces compétitions destinées tant à prouver la valeur que la galanterie des concurrents dans la lice. Par leur magnificence et l’émerveillement qu’ils suscitent, ils contribuent à l’affirmation du pouvoir.
Les bals, ballets et mascarades : dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, un caractère à la fois bizarre et poétique guide les artistes qui produisent des « habits de masques » pour les bals et mascarades. Au temps de Louis XIII, le sérieux et le grotesque se mêlent aux influences mythologiques, exotiques et bucoliques, codes que le ballet de Cour et la comédie-ballet se réapproprient au cours du XVIIe siècle.
Les tragédies en musique : ce nouveau genre musical français réunit une multitude de chanteurs, danseurs, musiciens et acrobates qu’il est nécessaire d’habiller harmonieusement. C’est le défi que relève le créateur des Menus Plaisirs Jean Berain, en faisant preuve d’une invention sans pareil dans la variation des coupes, des couleurs et des ornements.
Grâce à une campagne de restauration conduite par l’atelier de restauration du département des Arts graphiques du musée du Louvre, l’ensemble du corpus de dessins de costumes, soit 1644 feuilles, a été restauré et remonté dans des papiers de conservation neutre.
Commissaires de l’exposition
• Mickaël Bouffard, chargé de recherche, Centre d’Étude de la Langue et des Littératures Françaises (CELLF)
• Jérôme de La Gorce, directeur de recherche émérite, CNRS
• Victoria Fernández Masaguer, chargée d’études documentaires, département des Arts graphiques, musée du Louvre
Jérôme de La Gorce, Mickaël Bouffard, et Victoria Fernández Masaguer, En scène! Dessins de costumes de la collection Edmond de Rothschild (Paris: Louvre éditions / Lienart, 2021), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-2359063240, 29€.
Exhibition | The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming
Trunk, made perhaps in Boston or London, 1670; wood, seal skin, iron (Salem: Peabody Essex Museum, Gift of George Rea Curwen, 1898, 3970; photograph by Kathy Tarantola ). The trunk belonged to Jonathan Corwin (1640–1718), one of the magistrates involved in the 1692 trials; Corwin resided at the building in Salem now known as the Witch House (the only surviving structure with direct ties to the trials).
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From the press release (24 August 2021) for the exhibition:
The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 18 September 2021 — 20 March 2022
Curated by Lydia Gordon, Dan Lipcan, and Paula Richter
This fall, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents a new exhibition about the tragic events and lasting legacy of the 1692 witch trials. The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming dives into the circumstances that fueled the crisis while recognizing the individuals who rose to defend those unjustly accused. The exhibition features authentic 17th-century court documents and objects as well as two compelling contemporary responses made by artists with direct ancestral links to the trials. Fashion by Alexander McQueen and photography by Frances F. Denny revive the impact of Salem’s historical trauma and provide a new perspective on a centuries-old story.
“More than 300 years after the Salem witch trials, the personal tragedies and grave injustices that occurred still provoke reflection as we continue to reckon with the experiences of those involved,” said Dan Lipcan, the Ann C. Pingree Director of PEM’s Phillips Library and one of the exhibition co-curators. “Thanks to these artists’ mining of Salem’s painful history, we are able to put these events into context with our lives today and imagine how we might courageously mold our communities moving forward while continually advocating for justice and tolerance.”
PEM holds the world’s largest collection of Salem witch trials materials, including more than 500 original documents on deposit from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Selections of these documents along with furnishings and personal objects help tell the tragic and true story of those accused, including a trunk that once belonged to Jonathan Corwin, the magistrate who resided at the 17th-century building in Salem that is today known as the Witch House.
The exhibition opens with the power dynamics, fear and community tensions that plagued Salem in the summer of 1692. The extraordinary crisis involved more than 400 people and led to the deaths of 25 innocent people between June 1692 and March 1693. The panic grew from a society threatened by war and a malfunctioning judicial system in a geographical and cultural setting rife with religious conflict and intolerance.
The fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s Fall/Winter 2007 collection, In Memory of Elizabeth How, 1692, was based on his Salem research into his ancestor Elizabeth How, one of the first women to be condemned and hanged as a witch in July 1692. More than three centuries after How’s death, McQueen and Sarah Burton, now the creative director for the House of McQueen, visited Salem. Selections from the resulting intensely personal and autobiographical collection will be on view, including the form-fitting velvet press sample runway dress from PEM’s collection, with a starburst hand-sewn in iridescent gunmetal-gray bugle beads that radiates down the neckline and across the chest and shoulders. Set in context, nearby authentic documents help tell How’s story, from the initial complaint filed May 28, 1692 to the warrant for her arrest, her examination in court, testimony, indictment, pardon, and final restitution to her family in 1712.
“Alexander McQueen’s theatrical fashion show, featuring his powerful designs, reclaimed How’s power and memory from the false accusation that led to her unjust execution,” said exhibition co-curator, Paula Richter. “His visit to key sites in Salem and research into his ancestestry left a lasting impact on him. The resulting designs include symbols of witchcraft, paganism, magic and religious persecution.”
Frances F. Denny, Karen, (Brooklyn, New York), 2016, from Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America series, archival pigment print, 26 × 20 inches (Courtesy of the artist and ClampArt, New York, NY).
From a woman in hospital scrubs to a local Salem shop owner, photographer Frances F. Denny’s series Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America reclaims the meaning of the word ‘witch’ from its historical use as a tool to silence and control women. As a descendent of both accusers and the accused, Denny set out on a journey to discover modern-day witches. She encountered healers, artists and tarot readers, a vast spectrum of identities and spiritual practices. The exhibition features 13 portraits and accompanying personal essays, each revealing a fascinating glimpse into the contemporary spiritual movement.
“Frances Denny’s portraits not only claim agency for those who identify as witches, but they also diversify our perception of what a witch is,” said Lydia Gordon, PEM’s Associate Curator and exhibition co-curator. “What do witches even look like? These powerful portraits do not festishize, but rather reveal multidimensional, self-possessed individuals. They invite careful study and consideration and remind us that identity is most truthful when it is self defined.”
The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming is organized by the Peabody Essex Museum. Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation, Jennifer and Andrew Borggaard, James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Kate and Ford O’Neil, and Henry and Callie Brauer provided generous support. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.
Part of the Salem Witch Memorial, designed by Maggie Smith and James Cutler, dedicated 5 August 1992 (Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM).
Exhibition | Gilded Figures: Wood and Clay Made Flesh
Pedro de Mena, Bust of Saint Acisclus, ca. 1680, polychrome and gilded wood
(New York: Hispanic Society Museum & Library)
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Now on view at HSM&L:
Gilded Figures: Wood and Clay Made Flesh
The Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York, 15 October 2021 — 9 January 2022
Gilded Figures: Wood and Clay Made Flesh offers a rare glimpse of a major art form from the early modern Hispanic World: polychrome sculpture. Building on the legacy which Archer M. Huntington left the museum, the institution has added to its holdings of this material so that today the HSM&L boasts the finest collection of these works outside Spain. Until recently, this vivid sculpture went largely unnoticed, but now it elicits enthusiastic responses. Even so, this exhibition is the first event in New York to feature this art form in the last two decades. The over twenty wood and terracotta sculptures exhibited not only attest to the high level of artistic production, but they also highlight the role of women artists and show how the stylistic conventions of Spain were adapted in the New World.
Luisa Roldán, The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, 1692–1706, painted terracotta (New York: Hispanic Society Museum & Library).
Gilded Figures begins with late Gothic and early Renaissance works by the finest sculptors from Castile. Among these, a superb monumental relief of the Resurrection attributed to Gil de Siloe reveals the dazzling talent of those artists. How decisively Italian models shaped the work of following generations appears in the sixteenth-century reliquary busts by Juan de Juni. The Baroque period witnessed an impressive flowering in which figures like Pedro de Mena achieved effects of stunning naturalism as seen in his St. Acisclus. The exhibition also draws attention to the role of women artists with works by Luisa Roldán and Andrea de Mena, the first of whom achieved spectacular success in her lifetime rising to the position of Royal Sculptor (escultora de cámara).
The last section of the exhibition focuses on sculpture from Latin America, with works characterized by an impressive range of scale and emotion. A monumental sixteenth-century relief of Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moorslayer) from Mexico reveals how Spanish models were transplanted and adapted to the needs of the Catholic church as it embarked on a campaign to convert the indigenous people. In addition to Mexico, Ecuador witnessed a flourishing of polychromed sculpture in which sculptors in Quito produced masterpieces. Painted with a vivid attention to detail, statues like the Virgin of Quito or St. Michael show the powerful effects these talented artists achieved. The exhibition concludes with perhaps the most dramatic display from this school: Caspicara’s Four Fates of Man. In these figures, the sculptor depicts a range of emotions with consummate skill and a delicate touch as part of a theological lesson to inspire people to persevere in their faith.
P R O G R A M M I N G
Wednesday, November 17, 6.00pm
Orland Hernandez-Ying (Curatorial Research Fellow), Gilded Figures: 18th-Century Sculpture in the Real Audience de Quito
A presentation of the iconographic innovations of three particular sculptures from Ecuador covering issues of the indigenous predilection for angelic representations in art and santo-making techniques (carving, painting, gilding, encarnados, etc.) and the ordenanzas. The examples demonstrate how the extraordinary aesthetic quality of pious sculpture in the Real Audience de Quito was admired overseas during the colonial period with works shipped to other American colonies as well as to Spain. Reservations are required; please contact events@hispanicscoiety.org, indicating the number of guests and the name of the event.
Saturday, November 20 and Saturday, December 4, 3.00pm
Gilded Figures: Somatic Walk
Join Nicolás Dumit Estévez, Hispanic Society Artist Research Fellow, who will guide visitors through an embodied exploration of emotions germinated from the sculptures in the exhibition, as well as those arising during our current times. We will investigate individually and as a group how the awareness and articulation of emotions can lead to the process of healing and balance. Reservations are required; please contact events@hispanicscoiety.org, indicating the number of guests and the name of the event.
Tuesday, December 14, 6.00pm
Gilded Figures: Roundtable Discussion
• Jerrilynn Dodds (Harlequin Adair Dammann Chair in History of Art, Sarah Lawrence College)
• Hélène Fontoira Marzin (Head of Conservation, Hispanic Society Museum & Library)
• Edward J. Sullivan (Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University)
• Amanda Wunder (Associate Professor, City University of New York, Lehman College, Department of History; and CUNY Graduate Center for Art History, History, and Global Early Modern Studies)
• Moderated by Patrick Lenaghan (Curator of Prints, Photographs, and Sculptures, Hispanic Society Museum & Library)
Join us for this lively, informal conversation about the unique field of polychrome sculpture. ‘Outside’ perspectives and reactions will illicit new understanding of these painted sculptures made of wood and clay. Reservations are required; please contact events@hispanicscoiety.org, indicating the number of guests and the name of the event.
At Sotheby’s | In an Indian Garden: Company School Paintings
From the press release (via Art Daily) for the sale:
In an Indian Garden: The Carlton Rochell Collection of Company School Paintings
Sotheby’s, London, 27 October 2021
Lot 3: A Lesser Adjutant Stork (Leptoptilos Javanicus) in a Landscape, Company School, Lucknow, ca. 1775–85 (est. £60,000–80,000). The painting was included in The Wallace Collection’s 2020 exhibition Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company.
In October Sotheby’s will hold the first auction dedicated solely to Company School paintings, the work of Indian master artists who were commissioned by East India Company officials in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ranging in their subject matter from individual animal and human studies to complex architectural panoramas, the remarkable corpus of paintings encapsulates on paper the rich fauna, flora, and architecture of the Indian subcontinent. The 29 works in the auction are being offered by the American collector and art dealer Carlton C. Rochell, Jr., who spent the first 18 years of his career at Sotheby’s, where he founded the Indian and Southeast Asian Art Department in 1988. He was on the Board of Directors and served as Managing Director of Sotheby’s Asia. In 2002, Rochell opened his own gallery in New York.
In 2019 and 2020, The Wallace Collection presented Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, curated by renowned writer and historian William Dalrymple. The ground-breaking exhibition brought to the fore the names of some of the finest Indian painters working on paper during the late Mughal period, introducing the public to the names of these truly great artists. Many of those same names—Shaykh Zayn al-Din, Ram Das, Bhawani Das, and Ghulam Ali Khan—are represented in this sale, with seven of the works having been loaned to The Wallace Collection exhibition. Most of the others have never been on public view and are emerging for the first time in decades.
“I first began to collect these lesser-known masterpieces over two decades ago simply for my personal enjoyment, my imagination having been captured by their ‘East meets West’ aesthetic. When they were painted, these works were the principal way in which India could be revealed to those in Great Britain, who otherwise could only hear stories about this sumptuous land. The meticulous ‘miniature’ style was scaled up to depict birds, animals, and botanical studies with remarkable lifelike detail, with the results rivalling any Western artists who recorded natural history and travel. Many years on, as they are beginning to take their rightful place in world art, these pieces can now inspire a new generation of collectors who, I hope, will cherish them as I have.” —Carlton C. Rochell, Jr.
“This remarkable collection contains quite simply some of the great masterpieces of Indian painting, brought together by a collector with an incredibly fine eye. This is a unique opportunity to purchase some of the greatest masterpieces of a genre that is only now beginning to receive its full credit.” —William Dalrymple, Writer, Historian, and Curator of Forgotten Masters
“These delightful paintings reflect a fascination and passion for India’s culture and history, from Lucknow to Calcutta to Delhi and Agra, and showcase a remarkable hybrid style merging Mughal and European elements. Both the patronage and the painters provide a great deal of interest to viewers, no more so than now, when this genre of painting is finally receiving the full attention it deserves. These works are the product of true collaboration—not grand portraits of the patrons themselves, but tableaux of everyday human activity, as well as meticulous studies of nature and vernacular architecture.” —Benedict Carter, Sotheby’s Head of Sale
In An Indian Garden features many works from the most renowned series of Company School paintings, including albums commissioned by Sir Elijah and Lady Impey, the Fraser brothers, Viscount Valentia, and Major General Claude Martin. The most famous is that of the Impey family, who created an enchanting menagerie of animals in their gardens in Calcutta and hired local artists to paint the surrounds, with more than half of their over 300-strong collection depicting birds. The Impey Collection was sold at auction in London in 1810, with several pieces held in international institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—with a similar dramatic image of the Great Indian Fruit Bat—and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Perhaps the person who sparked the fashion for such commissions was merchant, soldier, architect, hot air balloonist, and collector Major General Claude Martin, and the sale offers a Lesser Adjutant Stork from his collection, which survives as a masterpiece of the genre. More recently, these works have passed through such hands as those of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who for many years owned the arresting study of a Stork Eating a Snail; renowned South Asian paintings collector Edwin Binney 3rd; leading scholar and curator Stuart Cary Welch; and former United States Ambassador to Morocco, The Hon. Joseph Verner Reed, Jr.
Prior to the stand-alone auction in London on 27 October, highlights of In an Indian Garden went on view in Sotheby’s galleries in New York (17–20 September), Hong Kong (7–11 October), and London (22–26 October).
Exhibition | La Surprise: Watteau in Los Angeles
Opening next month at the The Getty:
La Surprise: Watteau in Los Angeles
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 23 November 2021 — 20 February 2022
Graceful scenes of courtship, music and dance, strolling lovers and theatrical characters: this is the imaginary world conjured by the greatest French painter and draftsman of the 18th century, Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Los Angeles is home to an extraordinary group of Watteau’s works. This focused exhibition, marking the 300th anniversary of the artist’s death, brings together a dozen of them from public and private collections and celebrates the Getty’s recent acquisition of an exquisite example: the painting La Surprise. The picture belongs to what was a new genre of painting invented by the artist himself—the fête galante. These works do not so much tell a story as set a mood: one of playful, wistful, nostalgic reverie. Esteemed by collectors in Watteau’s day as a work that showed the artist at the height of his skill and success, La Surprise vanished from public view in 1848, reemerging only in 2007. The Getty Museum acquired the painting in 2017.
Emily Beeny, Davide Gasparotto, and Richard Rand, Watteau at Work: La Surprise (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2021), 88 pages, ISBN: 978-1606067352, $25.
La Surprise by Antoine Watteau has never before been the subject of a dedicated publication. Marking the three hundredth anniversary of Watteau’s death, this book considers the painting within the context of the artist’s oeuvre and discusses the surprising history of collecting works by the artist in Los Angeles.
Emily A. Beeny, former associate curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, is curator in charge of European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Davide Gasparotto is senior curator of paintings and chair, curatorial affairs, at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Richard Rand is associate director for collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
C O N T E N T S
Timothy Potts, Director’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Richard Rand, Jean Antoine Watteau, Three Hundred Years Later
Davide Gasparotto, Rediscovering a Masterpiece: Watteau’s La Surprise
Emily Beeny, Quelle Surprise! Watteau in Los Angeles
Plates
Works in the Exhibition
References
Index
New Book | Nicolas Party: Pastel
The catalogue for the exhibition is now available:
Nicolas Party, ed., Pastel (New York: The FLAG Art Foundation, 2021), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-1949172522, $50. Contributions by Nicolas Party and Dodie Kazanjian; conversation with artists Louis Fratino, Loie Hollowell, Billy Sullivan, Robin F. Williams, moderated by FLAG Founder Glenn Fuhrman; essay by Melissa Hyde, “‘Dust From a Butterfly’s Wing’: The Gentle Art of Pastel, A Short History.”
In 2019, Nicolas Party transformed The FLAG Art Foundation in New York into a rose-colored stage set for a suite of soft pastel, Rococo-inspired murals that serve as a foil to, and occasional backdrop for, a selection of pastels from the 18th century to the present. Pastel commemorates the exhibition, its celebration of the pastel medium, and the range of contemporary artists who are giving new energy to this uniquely fragile medium. Artists in the exhibition included Rosalba Carriera, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Louis Fratino, Marsden Hartley, Loie Hollowell, Julian Martin, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Billy Sullivan, Wayne Thiebaud, and Robin F. Williams.
Nicolas Party (b. 1980, Lausanne, Switzerland) is an artist living and working in Brussels and New York. He earned a BA in Fine Art at the Lausanne School of Art in 2004 and an MA at The Glasgow School of Art in 2009. More information is available here.
Exhibition | Writing History: Voltaire and the Kings
Jean César Macret, Réception de Voltaire aux Champs Elisées par Henri Quatre.
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Now on view at the Château de Voltaire:
Ecrire l’histoire: Voltaire et les rois
Château de Voltaire à Ferney, 16 septembre 2021 — 5 janvier 2022
Organized by Andrew Brown and François Jacob
On a parlé, de manière facétieuse, du « roi Voltaire » : sans être roi, Voltaire (1694–1778) n’en a pas moins fréquenté de nombreuses têtes couronnées. On le rencontre à la cour, que ce soit celle de Louis XV ou de Frédéric II de Prusse. Il entretient avec nombre de monarques une importante correspondance. Désireux de se faire apprécier par les souverains, attendant beaucoup d’eux, il met sa plume au service de leur gloire et de leur postérité : n’est-il pas l’auteur de La Henriade ? Ne le considère-t-on pas, avec l’Histoire de Charles XII et Le Siècle de Louis XIV, comme un des fondateurs de l’historiographie moderne ? Ses ouvrages, tout autant que ses amis influents, lui permettent d’être promu « Historiographe de France » en 1744–45 et d’entrer à l’Académie française en 1746.
Château de Voltaire is located in Ferney-Voltaire (Ain) in France, close to the Swiss border and Geneva. It was Voltaire’s home between 1761 and 1778. Acquired by the French State in 1999, it came under the care of the Centre des monuments nationaux in 2007. After a series of restoration projects, including a three-year closure, the house reopened in May 2018 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, 2018).
L’exposition Écrire l’histoire : Voltaire et les rois propose de redécouvrir les relations que Voltaire entretint, tout au long du Siècle des Lumières, avec les cours européennes. Familier des princes, le philosophe utilise en effet sa plume pour servir les monarchies et sa propre renommée dans toutes les cours éclairées. À celle des rois de France, qu’il fréquenta avec les péripéties que l’on connait, sous le Régent, Louis XV et Louis XVI, il connut toutes les situations d’un courtisan, l’intérêt, l’affection, les grandes dignités, la prison, l’exil. Mais Voltaire ne se contente pas d’être conteur, poète ou philosophe : il entretient avec les souverains des relations parfois mouvementées, voire passionnelles. C’est ainsi que si Frédéric II le nomme d’abord Chambellan en récompense de son art et de ses conseils, il rompt ensuite brutalement avec lui.
Le Siècle de Louis XIV, l’Histoire de Charles XII ou l’Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations connurent des succès d’édition durables : Voltaire fut rapidement considéré comme un des principaux historiens de l’Ancien Régime, celui grâce à qui on a pu repenser l’écriture de l’histoire. Certaines de ses œuvres furent copiées, ou imitées par des opposants : il n’est que de songer à La Beaumelle et à ses Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon.
L’exposition débutera dans le circuit de visite ordinaire du château, les appartements de Voltaire et de sa nièce, Madame Denis, où sont conservés des portraits royaux ayant appartenu à Voltaire : Catherine II, Frédéric II, Marie-Thérèse. Elle se poursuivra dans les salles d’exposition du rez-de-jardin pour évoquer Stanislas, le Sultan et bien d’autres.
Exposition présentée par le Centre des monuments nationaux, en partenariat avec les Associations voltairiennes de Ferney-Voltaire.
Exhibition | Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya
From the NGA:
Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 24 October 2021 — 21 February 2022
Curated by Rena Hoisington
A new printmaking technique—aquatint—swept through 18th-century Europe, yielding an extraordinary range of works, from images of erupting volcanoes, amorous couples, and mysterious tombs, to Russian exotica, biting caricatures, and moonlit vistas. The first American exhibition to survey the medium’s development in France, England, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain, Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya presents some 100 early and exceptional impressions, many of which have recently been acquired by the National Gallery of Art. By supplementing the line work of etching, aquatint offered an exciting method for multiplying ink-and-wash drawings that render tone in subtle ways.
Aquatint flourished outside the official circles of European art academies in the hands of three kinds of artists—professional printmakers, amateurs (art lovers), and peintre-graveurs (painter-printmakers). Each played a distinctive and significant role in publicizing, disseminating, and advancing the aquatint medium. Professional printmakers combined it with other intaglio printmaking techniques to reproduce highly prized drawings by old master and contemporary artists. Amateurs, an elite group of like-minded collectors, embraced drawing, etching, and aquatint to not only expand their art-historical and connoisseurial knowledge, but also cultivate relationships with artists. Peintre-graveurs revisited, re-created, and circulated their designs through aquatint to build their reputations and broaden their audiences, dramatically expanding the formal vocabulary and expressive potential of the medium.
Rena Hoisington, Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-0691229799, $60.
Supported by the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust and written by Rena M. Hoisington, curator and head of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art, a book illustrated with rare works from the National Gallery’s collection of early aquatints accompanies the exhibition. It provides an engaging narrative about the medium’s flourishing as a cross-cultural and cosmopolitan phenomenon that contributed to the rise of art publishing, connoisseurship, leisure travel, and drawing instruction as well as the spread of neoclassicism.
Exhibition | Goya
Francisco de Goya, Still Life with Golden Bream (Besugos), 1808–12, oil on canvas, 45 × 63 cm
(The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 94.245)
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Press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition:
Goya
Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 10 October 2021 — 23 January 2022
Curated by Martin Schwander and developed by Isabela Mora and Sam Keller
275 years after his birth, the Fondation Beyeler presents one of the most significant exhibitions ever devoted to Francisco de Goya—one of modern art’s major trailblazers. For the first time, rarely displayed paintings from Spanish private collections will be shown alongside key works from distinguished European and American museums and private collections. The exhibition brings together around 70 paintings and more than 100 masterful drawings and prints. Today, as during the artist’s lifetime, Goya’s works present viewers with a unique sensory and intellectual experience. For the past two centuries, his complex and ambiguous oeuvre has acted as a beacon and a landmark for many artists. The exhibition is organised by the Fondation Beyeler in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) occupies a paradoxical position in European art history as one of the last great court painters and a forerunner of the figure of the modern artist. In order to convey the uniqueness of Goya’s work, which spans a period ranging from Late Rococo to Romanticism, and do justice to the formal and thematic wealth of his painted, drawn, and printed oeuvre, the exhibition presents the full spectrum of genres and recurring motifs. Arranged chronologically, it features large-scale stately paintings as well as sketchbook pages, focussing on Goya’s late work.
The exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler presents both the established court painter and the inventor of enigmatic and disturbing pictorial worlds, his religious and his secular images, his depictions of Christ and of witches, portraits and history paintings, still lifes and genre scenes. Next to paintings commissioned by the royal family, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, the show features works created by Goya within a self-conquered space of artistic freedom, among them cabinet paintings often intended only for highly private display. With rebellious resolve, Goya was one of the first artists in the history of European art to push back against the rules and dogmas that constrained artistic creation, instead making a stand for artists’ impulse and inventiveness (‘capricho’ and ‘invención’). Highlights of the exhibition include the portrait of the Duchess of Alba (1795) and the iconic Clothed Maja (La maja vestida, 1800–07), as well as the rarely displayed Maja and Celestina on a Balcony and Majas on a Balcony (1808–12), the latter two on loan from European private collections.
Francisco Goya y Lucientes, María Amalia de Aguirre y Acedo, marquesa de Montehermoso, 1810, oil on canvas, 170 × 103 cm (Private Collection).
The exhibition will further feature small-format genre scenes, held for the most part in Spanish private collections and hitherto only rarely shown outside Spain. In these paintings—as in his drawings and prints—Goya gave free rein to his innermost inspiration. For the first time since their only display to date at the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Fondation Beyeler will thus show the full series of eight remaining history and genre pictures from the Madrid collection of the Marqués de la Romana. They will be joined by the four celebrated, rarely loaned panels with genre scenes from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.
In his genre scenes and history paintings, Goya depicts events from everyday life in Spain around 1800—socially, politically, and religiously troubled times. Recurring settings include markets and bullrings, prisons and ecclesiastical institutions, lunatic asylums, and the courts of the Inquisition. Depictions of witches are another key motif, used by Goya to expose the superstition of his time. Next to a group of etchings from The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra, 1811–14), the exhibition will also feature a selection of prints from the 1799 Caprichos series, among them the celebrated plate no. 43, programmatically titled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, which displays Goya’s resigned and melancholy realisation that neither reason nor irony and sarcasm can fight off irrationality. Goya’s enigmatic and unfathomable pictorial worlds have been held in high regard ever since the age of early 19th-century French Romanticism. Among modern artists, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, Francis Bacon and the Surrealists viewed Goya as a kindred spirit. And he remains a major reference for many contemporary artists, among them Marlene Dumas and Philippe Parreno.
Commissioned by the Fondation Beyeler, renowned French artist Philippe Parreno (b. 1964) has created a film based on Goya’s iconic Black Paintings series (Pinturas negras, 1819–24), which will premiere at the exhibition. The 14 murals were originally painted in Goya’s residence on the outskirts of Madrid and were most likely not intended for public viewing. Now in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the paintings are so fragile that they cannot leave the museum.
For the first time, seldom seen paintings from Spanish private collections, some of which have not changed hands since the artist’s lifetime, are shown alongside key works from the most prestigious European and American museums and private collections. Works will be on loan from major museums such as the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano and the Fundación Casa de Alba, all in Madrid, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence, the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, the Sammlung Oskar Reinhart ‘Am Römerholz’ in Winterthur, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Martin Schwander, ed., with text by Andreas Beyer, Helmut C. Jacobs, Ioana Jimborean, José Manuel Matilla, Gudrun Maurer, Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Colm Tóibín, Bodo Vischer, Francisco de Goya (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2021), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-3775746571 (English edition), $90. Also available in German.
Exhibition | Native New York
From the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian:
Native New York
National Museum of the American Indian, New York, opening 25 October 2021
Native New York journeys through city and state to explore the question “What makes New York a Native place?” The exhibition encompasses twelve places in present-day New York, introducing visitors to the Native nations that call the region home. Stretching from Long Island through New York City and on toward Niagara Falls, it covers pre–Revolutionary War exchanges through contemporary events. From Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) ironworkers who helped build Manhattan’s iconic skyscrapers to Lenape (Delaware) teens visiting their ancestral home, stories of Native New Yorkers provide an expanded understanding of the region’s history and reveal that New York is—and always has been—a Native place.
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