20th Century

When I’d ask why the painting was deadly / Nobody could pick up my sign / ‘Cept for the cook, she was always friendly / But she’d only ask, ‘What’s on your mind?’ / She’d say that especially when it was raining / I’d say ‘Oh, I don’t know’ / But then she’d press and I’d say, ‘You see that painting? / Do you think it’s been done by Van Gogh?

1 Introduction: Experts in the Interbellum

Part 1 Science, Authentication and Issues of Conservation 

2 "We Cannot Splash Light onto Our Palettes": The 1893 Munich Exhibition and Congress and Its Public Demand for Research on Painting Materials and Techniques

3 A. P. Laurie and the Scientific Appreciation of Art

4 Seeing Through the (Old) Masters: The Crisis of Connoisseurship and the Emergence of Radiographic Art Expertise  

5 Rome 1930, the International Conference on the Scientific Analysis of Artworks and Its Legacy in Italy

Part 2 Education and Professionalisation 

6 Mending, Sticking, and Repairing: Reconstructing Conservation Expertise in Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

7 Wissenschaft, Vocation, or Bildung?: Debating the Sites and Aims of German Art History at the End of the Nineteenth Century

8 Education in the Art and Conservation Field in German Countries

9 Experiments in a Teaching Museum: The Fogg’s "Laboratory for Art"

Part 3 Museums and Institutions 

10 Omnium Gatherum to a ‘Treasury of Art and Science’: The Development of Conservation Expertise at the Ashmolean Museum

11 The (In)visibility of the Paintings Restorers of the Rijksmuseum in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

12 Gemäldekunde. German Pioneers of the ‘Science of Painting’ 

13 Invention as Necessity: The Salvage of Italian Frescoes During World War II

14 Expertise, Multiple Actors, and Multiple Voices

From 22nd February until 26th June 2022, visitors to the Museo Picasso Málaga will have a unique opportunity to discover the links between Pablo Picasso and leading artists of the past. The MPM will be hosting Face to Face. Picasso and the Old Masters, an exhibition, jointly organized with Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, in which paintings by El Greco, Francisco Pacheco, Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbretchs, Bernardo Lorente Germán and Diego Bejarano will be hung alongside major works by Pablo Picasso. 

Face to Face. Picasso and the Old Masters presents paintings from the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla’s remarkable collection of Spanish and other European Masters opposite nine important works by Picasso belonging to the Fundación Almine y Bernard Picasso para el Arte (FABA).

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These pairings not only enable viewers to make specific comparisons between the work of Picasso and the Masters in order to understand how deeply Picasso’s art was rooted in Spanish traditions. The juxtapositions also allow us to discern how he transformed these traditions into the revolutionary art of the 20th century. 

The canvas was sold as soon as it was painted and, having been in the same private collection ever since, now comes to market for the first time. It has been exhibited only occasionally in the three and a half decades of its existence, notably in the landmark retrospective Lucian Freud Paintings, which toured the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Hayward Gallery in London and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1987-88.

Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts displays American 20th-century hand-drawn animation alongside French 18th-century art to reveal the surprising and enchanting connections between these two artistic movements. 

Drawing on the outstanding artworks of the Wallace Collection and spectacular international loans, the exhibition will highlight the exceptional talent and innovation of both Walt Disney Animation Studios artists and the creative pioneers of the French 18th century. Although separated by two centuries, the artists, craftspeople and animators all had the same ambition – to breathe life, character, and charm into the inanimate.

Moore was described as the "doyen of deaf artists" by the inventor Arthur James Wilson, himself a prominent figure in the deaf community of 19th and early 20th Century Britain. The artist was born into a family of artists and craftspeople based in London. All of his immediate family were also deaf, and they were part of the deaf community that centred largely around St Saviour's Church, Oxford Street (now relocated to Acton), the only purpose-built church for the deaf in London.

We used to live 20 minutes from each other in Berkshire, so for Christmas I bought him a pop-up fridge from Harrods. You pressed a button and there’d be steam and lights and a bottle of champagne. It cost me £600; a lot of money in the 70s. We swapped presents and he said: “Oh very nice, dear, thank you.” He gave me a Rembrandt painting! I’ve never felt so stingy.

In a large special exhibition, the Kunstmuseum illuminates the encounter of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) with the old master El Greco (1541– 1614), born Doménikos Theotokópoulos in Crete. Masterworks by both artists are juxtaposed in some forty pairings, tracing the course of one of the most fascinating dialogues in the history of art. Prestigious loans from across the globe are assembled around a core of Picasso masterworks from the museum’s own collection.

El Greco’s unmistakable painting style won him considerable fame in his day. Soon after his death, however, his work was largely forgotten. It was only around 1900 that an El Greco revival was launched, with Picasso serving on the front lines. His engagement with the Greek-Spanish master not only went far deeper than has previously been assumed but also lasted much longer. El Greco’s influence is just as palpable in Picasso’s works from the 1930s and 1940s as it is in the earlier Cubist paintings. Even at the end of his life, Picasso continued to reference El Greco. Not only does the show open up new perspectives on two towering artists of their times. It also offers fresh insight into their importance as a constellation for the development of avant-garde art in the twentieth century.

Martin said: “I had forgotten all about it and nearly fainted when I saw the picture in the paper, because I thought, I’m sure I have something similar. 

“It was also the signature at the bottom of the painting that made me think it could be genuine. So I had a closer look with my magnifying glass. It has been a really enjoyable few days thinking about this.”   

He was so excited he phoned his friend who told him he “didn’t know what to think, but he didn’t know anyone else who had discovered this” and suggested Martin went to a specialist. 

Martin added: “I might go to Bolton Museum just to see if it’s right or wrong, but that will be the end of it.”

Whatever your opinion of the exterior, the inside is an undeniably impressive space. 11 exhibition halls in all shapes and sizes sit one on top of the other, showcasing far more of Munch’s work than was ever possible before. Research and conservation facilities are open to the public, while studio space will host all manner of public performances and workshops. The 13th-floor restaurant is sure to be a hit for the views across the Oslofjord alone.

Bourached and Cann trained an algorithm to simulate how the original painting looked by analysing Picasso’s brush strokes in other paintings. 

“It’s very exciting to see a work that’s been locked up,” Cann told the Sunday Telegraph. “It’s quite eerie seeing the brushstrokes, colour and the way in which light reflects off the work. It’s a very beautiful piece. 

“I hope Picasso would be happy in knowing the treasure he’s hidden for future generations is finally being revealed, 48 years after his death and 118 years after the painting was concealed. I also hope the woman within the portrait would be happy in knowing that she hadn’t been erased from history and that her beauty was finally being revealed in the 21st century.”

During World War II, untold numbers of artworks and pieces of cultural property were stolen by Nazi forces. After the war, an estimated one million artworks and 2.5 million books were recovered. Many more were destroyed. This exhibition chronicles the layered stories of the objects that survived, exploring the circumstances of their theft, their post-war rescue, and their afterlives in museums and private collections. 

Afterlives includes objects looted from Jewish collections during the war, including works by such renowned artists as Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Camille Pissarro. The Jewish Museum has also commissioned four contemporary artists to create new works that address the resonance of the exhibition’s themes: Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guez, and Lisa Oppenheim. Treasured pieces of Judaica, including rare examples of Jewish ceremonial objects from destroyed synagogues, will also be on view, as well as rarely seen archival photographs and documents that connect the objects to history.