Category: Exhibitions
The Empire Strikes Back
June 16 2011
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
In The Times and on the BBC’s Today programme yesterday morning was news of one of the recent Van Dyck discoveries included in our exhibition ‘Finding Van Dyck’. The story was later picked up in a rather muddled piece by Channel 4 news.
The picture, Study of the Head of a Woman (above), was bought at the Chatsworth ‘Attic Sale’ handled by Sotheby’s. It was catalogued as ‘Circle of Rubens’. Briefly, here’s just three reasons why I think the study is by Van Dyck.
- The same head appears in two larger compositions by Van Dyck, both painted in about 1630; Achilles Among the Daughters of Lycomedes (Schonborn Collection), and Adoration of the Shepherds (Church of Our Lady, Dendermonde).
- In the Achilles painting, the woman’s head is used in the lower centre, and has been rotated slightly for the figure looking up at Achilles. In the Adoration picture, the study has been inverted, and used for the shepherdess looking down at Christ. (I would illustrate both, but don't yet have permission to reproduce them online).
- In both of the above pictures, the heads follow the study closely, even down to details such as the highlight on the top lip, and the shadows in the cheek.
We are left, therefore, with two plausible options – either it is a copy after the Achilles or Adoration pictures. Or it was made by Van Dyck in preparation for those pictures.
We can immediately rule out option 1, that it is a copy. Not only is it too impulsive, animated and well painted to be by a copyist (or even a studio assistant), it is also at a different angle and with different hair, thus ruling out the possibility that it was painted after either of the larger works.
In response to inquiries from the BBC and Channel 4, Sotheby’s issued the following statement:
Sotheby’s carefully considered the painting when cataloguing it for sale, and reject the recent attribution to Van Dyck. Six out of seven of the world’s leading specialists in this field whom Sotheby’s has consulted also categorically reject the attribution to Van Dyck (the only one supporting the Van Dyck attribution being the same specialist Philip Mould consulted). The overwhelming weight of scholarly opinion – consistent with Sotheby’s original cataloguing – is that the painting is by an anonymous Flemish artist working in the 17th century, ultimately inspired by Peter Paul Rubens.
But here’s three curious things: [more below]
Triptych re-united at last
June 15 2011
Picture: Telegraph
An epic triptych by Jan van Belkamp showing Lady Anne Clifford and her family has gone on display at Abbot Hall in Kendal, Cumbria.
The Lakeland Trust bought the picture in 1981. But until now the central section has been in store because they couldn't get it through the door. Eventually, somebody worked out that they could get it through a window, so the three sections are now hanging together. More details here.
'What is Vorticism?'
June 15 2011
Picture: Tate Britain/EPA. Detail of Wyndham Lewis' 'Workshop'.
A new exhibition of Vorticist paintings has gone on display at Tate Britain. More details here.
The show was featured on the Today programme by the BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz. Evan Davis began by asking Gompertz, 'what is Vorticism?', and got this fantastically baffling (to the average listener) response:
Vorticism was a London-based modern art movement started in 1914 and it was in effect a British version of Italian Futurism with a splash of Parisian Cubism added to bring out a distinctive flavour. [cue guffaw from John Humphrys]
BP Portrait Award
June 15 2011
Wim Heldens has won this year's BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Here's an interview with the artist by Channel 4's Matthew Cain.
Don't panic
June 14 2011
The pictures are hung, the catalogue is printed, and the champagne has arrived. But the lights have gone out.
What to do? Our exhibition opening is tonight. Candles are hardly an option...
[fixed it in the end, dodgy fuse]
Top of the Pops c.1630
June 14 2011
How cool is this? My colleague Sara has found the perfect CD for our Van Dyck exhibition. Details here if you want to buy it.
'I'm not sure what art is'
June 13 2011
Picture: Alan Cristea Gallery
I've always been a great admirer of Julian Opie's work. He is one of relatively few contemporary artists to embrace art history, and yet not be defined by it. Over the last few years I have been lucky enough to get to know him a little.
There's a good interview with him in The Guardian, in which he talks about art in his typically honest approach. The discussion moves to Opie's interest in silhouettes, which are part of his new exhibition at the Alan Cristea Gallery (closes 9th July):
We move to some silhouettes he made of himself. Before photography, silhouette profiles, cut from black card, were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance. "It's a purportedly obsolete and vulgar art form. It surprises me that I care about it. I used to have a stricter idea of what art was. Now I feel much less sure. I'm not really sure what art is."
Its refreshing to see a contemporary artist discussing art in normal English and with candour. I recently had to read Damien Hirst's musings in On the Way to Work, but parts of it I simply couldn't understand. In fact, I challenge anyone to read that book, and not get a headache.
How to pack a picture
June 13 2011
This is The Holy Family, on loan to our exhibition Finding Van Dyck from Manchester Art Gallery. I have never seen a more expertly wrapped and crated painting.
In the photo here is Tony Gregg, our indispensable framing expert, while out of shot is Hannah Williamson, a curator from Manchester, who was there to supervise the installation. And thank goodness she was, for there are few things more nerve-wracking than hanging a valuable publicly-owned painting...
Van Dyck found
June 11 2011
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
Breaking news! I'll post more on this later, but here is a piece appearing in tomorrow's Observer on a few discoveries a certain blogger has been involved with...
Sewell on the RA's Summer Exhibition
June 10 2011
As ever, Brian Sewell's review is worth a read. He begins:
Last week, on entering the Royal Academy's courtyard to see its annual Summer Exhibition, I chanced upon a column of Academicians, their doxies, catamites and hangers-on (no 11,000 virgins there) embarking on their yearly pilgrimage to St James's Piccadilly, there to pray for a pox on hostile critics.
It was once a charming and colourful ritual but now even dour members of a Bible Readers' Union might make a gayer occasion of it, for the sense that these pilgrims still think of themselves as smocked Augustus Johns with their polka-dot Dorelias of a century ago has entirely gone. The fedoras were far fewer, the motley drab, and in this shabby crocodile not one woman shone with artifice and no man played the aesthete exquisite.
Sewell goes onto to highlight some of the works he likes, and indeed there are many fine ones. But the wider point, surely, is that the RA is in danger of losing its relevance when it comes to contemporary art.
What is the RA for? Most people, I suspect, think of it as one of the best places in the world for mounting authoritative exhibitions, such as the current one of Watteau's drawings. In my view, the RA's exhibitions of what we might call historic art are unsurpassable. Arguably, it should build on this role and project itself as a guardian of all things art historical in Britain.
But as some of the second-rate offerings in the Summer Exhibition show, it struggles to fulfil its original purpose of promoting the arts in Britain, first by training artists and secondly by exhibiting the best contemporary works.
Instead, its offerings feel like the massed collection of a few humdrum regional art fairs, uncertain of their own meaning, and openly bewildered by their lack of skill. For an institution which was once headed by Reynolds and is decorated by Kauffman, one has to feel that the decline in standards is worrying.
The last exhibit...
June 9 2011
... for our exhibition 'Finding Van Dyck' has just arrived. We open next Wednesday, 15th June.
Every time we do an exhibition I somehow manage to forget just how much work is involved in organising the loans. In this case, I'm enormously grateful to the staff at Manchester Art Gallery for their help.
Now, before we can hang the painting, I need to go and find my light meter. There are strict museum standards for light levels, usually 250 lux max. For comparison, the average office is lit at between 320-500 lux.
Caravaggio in Canada
June 8 2011
Picture: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
If you're in Ottowa over the summer, the National Gallery of Canada's new exhibition Caravaggio and his Followers looks to be worth a visit (17th June - 11th Sept). And if you're in Ottowa on 18th June, then why not go to the day long symposium. Details here.
New acquisition at NPG
June 7 2011
Picture: National Portrait Gallery, London
The NPG in London has acquired this very fine pastel by Daniel Gardner, The Three Witches from Macbeth. The picture shows Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth, Viscountess Melbourne and Anne Seymour Damer, the sculptor. It was acquired through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. Says the NPG's catalogue entry:
This unusual group portrait depicts three of the most notorious women of the late 18th century. They were intimate friends sharing a common passion for Whig politics and the arts. Whereas Lady Melbourne had been friends with Anne Seymour Damer since the early 1770s, the friendship with Georgiana was fairly recent and this pastel may in part be related to Melbourne’s desire to publicize their friendship. While all three women are described as having enjoyed attending private theatricals and tableaux vivants, Gardner’s choice of the cauldron scene from Macbeth can also be related to their shared and shadowy political machinations as leading members of the Devonshire House circle. The composition has no parallel in Gardner’s oeuvre and it is assumed that either Damer or Melbourne suggested the design.
I find the last suggestion a little odd - Gardner was a pretty good artist, and his compositions are varied enough. I don't think it would have been beyond his powers to come up with the grouping himself. He need only have read Shakespeare's stage direction for the scene (act IV, scene 1), which states - 'A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder. Enter three Witches.'
Today's announcement was twinned with news of an exciting exhibition at the NPG this autumn; The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons runs from 20th October 2011 to 8th January 2012. More here.
Art History Futures - 'She paints like Picasso'
June 6 2011
Meet Aelita Andre, who has her first solo show in New York. Aelita is four.
Says Angela Di Bello, director of the Agora Gallery:
'She's special in that she really knows what she's doing... if you look at her paintings you'll see that they're balanced... it's one painting after another, she's very very consistent in her work, so she's already developed a style that is hers. What's interesting about her work is that it's abstract impressionism but it's also surrealist in the way she includes objects in her works, and how she includes objects.'
Dubbed 'the youngest professional painter on the planet', Aelita's paintings are priced at up to $9,900 each. Of 24 paintings in the exhibition, 9 were sold by the end of opening night.
Only in New York?
RA Summer Exhibition App
June 3 2011
Picture: Royal Academy
The RA's Summer Exhibition opens to the public on 7th June. For a preview, there's a snazzy app to download, with videos, images etc.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
June 1 2011
The SNPG will re-open soon after an £18m refit. Tim Cornwell in The Scotsman has a preview:
About 15 years ago the portrait gallery tottered on the brink of closure, until plans to transfer key artworks for a new Scottish gallery caused wholesale revolt in Edinburgh. Yesterday, director James Holloway could stand on its showcase top floor and declare its new galleries among the best in Scotland, if not the UK.
"What we have got on this floor are fabulous spaces for showing art," he said. The gallery, he suggested, represented "Scotland's family objects. It's Scotland's DNA. It's thrilling that we are going to be back, and firing on all cylinders."
...
Exhibitions in main gallery spaces will run for about four years, drawing on the portrait gallery's existing collections with some loans. The small galleries will change 18 months or two years, while the photography gallery will stage three exhibitions every year, exploring "what in many ways is Scotland's greatest art form," said Mr Holloway.
I wonder what Ramsay, Raeburn et al would say about photography being Scotland's 'greatest art form'.
What are museums for?
May 31 2011
In the Art Newspaper, Maurice Davies tries to find the answer in three new books on museums and collections. They are:
- Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: the Crisis of Cultural Authority, Tiffany Jenkins, Routledge, 174 pp, $95 (hb)
- Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition, James Simpson, Oxford University Press, 204 pp, £25 (hb)
- The Best Art You’ve Never Seen: 101 Hidden Treasures from Around the World, Julian Spalding, Rough Guides, 288 pp, £14, $22.99 (pb)
On the joys of being an art dealer
May 27 2011
The recession may continue to throw up challenges for art dealers - some say that this year’s European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht was pretty gloomy - but there is still plenty of fun to be had 'in the trade'.
For me, the most exciting part of art dealing is that you never know where the fickle of finger of fate might point you, be it the pictures you encounter, or the people you meet.
Every week I look at hundreds of paintings for sale around the world, and though much of it is little better than the stuff you find on the railings outside Hyde Park, probably at least one will be worth buying. [More below]
Steve Bell exhibition
May 26 2011
The Cartoon Museum in London has a new exhibition devoted to Steve Bell, best known for his biting cartoons in the Guardian. The video above is well worth a click, as is this piece recording the thoughts of a few politicians who have been drawn by Bell.
Says John Prescott:
Every politician likes to think they aren't going to be dumped on, but cartoons don't play to the normal rules. And the images do influence people's attitudes. The character Steve Bell turned me into was a bulldog. I couldn't see if I had any balls or not, but the suggestion is I hadn't. And I had no teeth. That was his judgment on me politically, I assume.
Such cartoons are not always considered 'proper art', but in my view they undoubtedly are. Few mediums capture the spirit of an age better than political cartoons, and probably Steve Bell is the best practitioner of the genre of his generation. It helps that he's also a very good artist.
Here is Bell's own take on the retrospective.
