Re-framing Segantini
July 7 2022
Picture: via The Frame Blog
On the Frame Blog, Lynn Roberts has news of a not entirely successful re-framing of the Getty Museum's 1897 painting Spring in the Alps by Giovanni Segantini. The new frame is the plain white one, below. The trouble is, the gold frame (top) was designed by the artist himself. Lynn is not impressed:
This seems an astonishing misdirection of the spectator away from the artist’s work and intentions. Collectors in the past have often reframed the pieces they have bought or inherited as a way of imprinting their ownership on them, or marrying them with other works in their galleries, or as part of the redecoration and updating of an interior which has descended from an older generation [3], but a better, less subjective and more historically enlightened approach must be expected today of the world’s major museums.
