Previous Posts: May 2014

"For hundreds of years there was this very strong control over the canon and [the male-dominated establishment] didn't want women written into it," says Kevans, when we meet in her small, portrait-lined studio in north-east London. Her project was partly inspired by the realisation that she, too, could be erased from our collective cultural archive. "As a contemporary artist, there are still concerns. I do think, what if that happened to me?"  [...]

So why does Kevans think Anguissola, Meurent and the rest have been written out of art history? She lays much of the blame on the mainly male academics who compiled what we think of as the artistic canon. "There hasn't been enough research into female artists and attributing their work properly. So when historians see a fabulous painting they tend to attribute it to a well-known man."

Moreover, critics living at the same time as these women not only ignored female artists, but treated them with a combination of condescension and distrust. "Critics just didn't take women seriously," says Kevans. "Because a lot of women were married to other artists, people assumed they were helped by their husbands. But, actually, those women were artists before they were married; indeed, that's how they met their husbands."

In February, after the museum had agreed to buy a rare 17th-century portrait by Le Brun, which had been in private hands in England since the late 18th century, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest in England, issued a three-month export ban on the painting, “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and Family,” to give British institutions time to match the $12.3 million price the Met had agreed to pay for it.

Arguing that it should stay in Britain, Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery in London, wrote in a statement to the Export Reviewing Committee: “There are only a handful of paintings by Le Brun in British collections. All represent religious, historical or mythological subjects, and most are much influenced by Poussin’s style. None is a portrait.”

Luckily for the Met, no British institution tried to buy the painting, which is now being prepared for its journey to New York. “It’s a landmark in the history of French painting,” said Keith Christiansen, the chairman of the Met’s European paintings department.

This is the second time in recent months that the Trustees of the National Gallery have not moved to acquire major works subject to export licence deferral: and where, in both cases, the artist is not represented in their permanent collection .   First there was the Coello - which the Gallery made a bid for some years ago - and now this magnificent Le Brun.

And they could have bought both for less than the price of the Bellows. That painting, however fine, simply does not fit within the corpus on display - however hard they try - and falls outside their collecting range (by the time it was executed, Kandinsky was producing some of the first, truly abstract works). Indeed, it would have found a more appropriate home at Tate.

What the hell is going on?

Your reader comments that the export of an important Le brun is the second recent occasion when the National Gallery failed to try to save a significan old master of a type poorly represented in British collections. I personally think the Bellows they bought is a fine painting, and if they could find ways to get another half a dozen 19th and early 20th century American works of similar quality (no easy task, but well chosen individual acquisitions are the way to get there) it would be a very real achievement. The harsh reality is that our museums and galleries have continually to make hard choices as collections build hundreds of years ago are sold off, almost always to foreign buyers. This has been happening for a century, and will stop only when there is nothing left to sell.

Isn't the real question why there are now so few Britsh collectors of note? That is why we see museums putting their collective finger in a dyke rather than the UK being part of an ebb and flow of great art. We have more millionaires and billionaires than ever before. More British people than ever before are visiting our great museums. Where have all the collectors gone? Are our bankers all philistines, or does modern British society somehow treat collectors less well than other countries?

However regrettable its departure, one cannot gainsay the information provided on the Met’s website. And it’s not even on display yet.

Far, far better than anything the National Gallery has available. Perhaps they didn’t deserve it.

What makes the Lempertz picture an odd candidate for being by RHL is that it is on canvas, while all history paintings by Rembrandt and Lievens from their Leiden period are on panel. The figure at the left derives from Rembrandt's painting in Lyon from 1625, which was discovered by Horst Gerson in 1962.

Have to be pedanty with reader above - Lievens Raising of Lazarus is most def on canvas...

This Lempertz painting relates to some sketches in the British Museum attributed to Nicholas Maes which are also thought studies for the National Gallery's Christ blessing the Children by Maes (all of which were formerly attributed to Rembrandt).

There are some sketches attributed to Hoogstraten at the RKD and other sketches (read the British Museum curator notes) that relate more to the Lempertz picture.

A very fine Claes Moeyaert, see comparison [below]... Moeyaert was also a partner of Uylenburgh, RHL's dealer and friend. Background figures show other familiar faces. A daring purchase...

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum’s world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum’s website for non-commercial use—including in scholarly publications in any media—without permission from the Museum and without a fee. The number of available images will increase as new digital files are added on a regular basis. 

In making the announcement, Mr. Campbell said: “Through this new, open-access policy, we join a growing number of museums that provide free access to images of art in the public domain. I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection.”  

The Metropolitan Museum’s initiative—called Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC)—provides access to images of art in its collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions; these images are now available for scholarly use in any media. Works that are covered by the new policy are identified on the Museum’s website (http://www.metmuseum.org/collections) with the acronym OASC. (Certain works are not available through the initiative for one or more of the following reasons: the work is still under copyright, or the copyright status is unclear; privacy or publicity issues; the work is owned by a person or an institution other than the Metropolitan Museum; restrictions by the artist, donor, or lender; or lack of a digital image of suitable quality.)

OASC was developed as a resource for students, educators, researchers, curators, academic publishers, non-commercial documentary filmmakers, and others involved in scholarly or cultural work. Prior to the establishment of OASC, the Metropolitan Museum provided images upon request, for a fee, and authorization was subject to terms and conditions. 

I was prepared for a hunt, but nevertheless the near invisibility of women's art was shocking: I was forced into storage facilities and basements. The Advancing Women Artists Foundation estimates that 1,500 works by women are currently stored in Florence's various deposits, most of which have not been on public view for centuries. To the question "Are all of these works of a high artistic standard?" Jane Fortune, head of the foundation, answers: "We'll never know unless they are seen."

Public galleries seem tacitly to endorse the conservative view, exemplified by Brian Sewell's assertion that "only men are capable of aesthetic greatness". But painters and sculptors were artisans working within family-based workshops, just like tailors, locksmiths, goldsmiths and cabinetmakers. Art was a trade. Few paintings were the product of a single hand – only the face and hands might be the work of the "master". The male artist's brand was a fiction. Marietta Tintoretto worked alongside her father in Venice, Barbara Longhi beside her brother in Ravenna, their labour a vital constituent of the family economy, but unrecognised outside the workshop.

A deep belief in the impossibility of female genius is at work. Many of Leyster's sunny canvases celebrating the social life of the Dutch golden age were so skilful they were attributed to Frans Hals, despite her signature.

In fact, as you can see throughout my Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, pastel was a field offering women far greater opportunity than most areas of the arts. There were a number of reasons for this. From a purely practical point of view, pastel portraiture is an essentially solo activity requiring no large studio with an army of assistants to manage the large canvases used in history painting. It could be practised without lengthy training in life drawing (all but impossible under the prudish restrictions imposed in the eighteenth century).

Some 17% of known pastellists (i.e. those recorded in my Dictionary) were female overall, but this figure also varies considerably among different cohorts. Women made up less than 10% of the “significant” artists (chose with a surviving œuvre in at least double digits), while accounting for 45% of amateurs. They represented half the recorded Spanish artists but only an eighth of the Dutch and just over a fifth of the English and French schools. There are of course inevitable biases in such data, which reflect varying cultural traditions, for example, in relation to the admission and recording of honorary members in academies.

After two consecutive nights of sky’s-the-limit bidding, Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art started out on a high, but quickly fell back to earth, with picky buyers passing up paintings and sculptures by major figures like Rothko, de Kooning and Takashi Murakami.

It has been a tough time for Sotheby’s. On the cusp of the spring auction season, Sotheby’s and Daniel S. Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager, declared a truce in one of the most bitter corporate fights in recent memory. After a long proxy battle, the auction house agreed to give Mr. Loeb and two allies the board seats they had been seeking and to allow his firm, Third Point, to increase its stake to 15 percent.

Officials at Christie’s, Sotheby’s archrival, are said to have used Sotheby’s troubles in the competition to win art to sell this season. If they did, it worked.

The York Avenue auction house had a hard act to follow. On Monday and Tuesday, Christie’s held contemporary art auctions that topped expectations, selling nearly $745 million worth in less than three hours on Tuesday alone. But despite having eight more works than the Christie’s auction, Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday only managed less than half as much, totaling $364.3 million, just above its low $336.7 million estimate. Of the 79 works up for sale, 12 did not sell.

As you know, there's another version in Sheffield.  So is the price difference between Sotheby's portrait and that now in Yorkshire, accepted in lieu in 2004-205 settling £315,000 0f tax, the difference between the original and a replica?

"We've got an economic model which is slightly contradictory [...] Prices seem to set the value. Overpaying is almost the best thing you can do, because you start to define your own market."

The simple geometry of this structure is brought alive by the presence of Newman's active brushwork throughout the inky-black left side. The oil paint that creates this passage, and the 'zip' to its right, has also been allowed to bleed out from under the tape that formerly masked them off, causing craggy edges and an irregular thickness of line that adds to the painting's sense of brooding vitality. The remainder of the canvas is untouched save for the application of a transparent size. The balance of proportions together with the imposing scale of Black Fire I imbue it with a classical stateliness, while the subtle differences between line and texture in each of the vertical elements lends it a sense of energy. This extremely restricted mode of painting was part of Newman's test to himself to create "the living quality of color without the use of color;" that is, a tonal relationship between the black oil paint and exposed canvas that would cause the ground to appear as if it possessed its own sense of light (B. Newman, quoted in "A Conversation: Barnett Newman and Thomas B. Hess," 1966, in J.P. O'Neill (ed.), Barnett Newman: Selected Writing and Interviews, Los Angeles, 1992, p. 277). Black Fire I is certainly a triumphant realization of this aim as the contrast of the raw canvas against the receding depths of black pigment cause it to emanate a glorious soft, flaxen glow that appears to intensify in brightness between the compressed central band. 

For any American history of art undergraduate or post-graduate who takes a survey course in 20C art, Barnett Newman is right up there with Jackson Pollock (and features as such in the Museum of Modern Art, for example).  In other words, a leading figure in the heroic age of abstract painting as defined and created in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.  This is a very American-oriented perspective on the history of art, of course.  His reputation has lasted this long--your trousers may be in jeopardy.

Am in despair that you claim not to have heard of Newman, but also think you are safe from future trouser-eating.

I have heard of Barnett Newman from when I was about 17 on foundation. As your reader says, he’s pretty big in US centric art history terms. You’re going to need the Rennie’s I’m afraid.

What a Barnett Newman or Jeff Koons will be worth in forty years has mostly to do with what is in fashion then and who is buying.  Currently its a runaway train and some of the smart money has jumped off it recently. 

Van Gogh peaked in constant dollar terms about twenty years ago based on Wikipedia  art record data.  The new museums and their contributors are filling collections with contemporary art.  And there is a lot of liquidity around supporting this.  If the liquidity goes or the fashion changes then there go the self defining values.  

Do you prefer your trousers served sweet or savory.

I'd bet on Francis Bacon keeping value over Koons.

I have no opinion on the edibility of your trousers, but don't let the art-guff put you off abstract art such as Barnett Newman's: his work is vastly superior to Jeff Koons's, in my view at least, and art guff is spouted about even about great representative art, possibly even from time to time about van Dyck's!  Although more by academics concerned with "heuristics" and "contextualizing" and "agency" than by dealers including auctioneers, I expect.

Sounds like you missed the Barnett Newman Exhibition at the Tate Modern.  It was in their main exhibition rooms. (2002-3)

What – seriously – would he make of Tate Modern?

At the old Tate, the one that is now Tate Britain, his paintings had their own room until the end of the 1990s, as quiet as a chapel. You can still contemplate them mystically at Tate Modern, but never as purely. Like everything else they must fit into this museum's nervously unpredictable displays and banal "juxtapositions" of past and present.

The mood of this museum is the antithesis of everything Rothko stood for. It's noisy, riotous, and pop-cultural. Teens in the toilets, art lovers crying in the corner. Interactive art was being stressed at the museum at the time the Rothko was attacked. Did the idiotic vandal, who claims to be an artist, somehow gain courage from that?

Really? Surely you're winding us up? Even I've heard of Newman, and I take great pride in my ignorance of modern art. I seem to recall Robert Hughes speaking highly of Vir Heroicus Sublimis in The Shock of the New (though I might be misremembering). I even quite like Newman. Well worth it, if you move the decimal point five or six places.

I think he will continue to be valued as one of the iconic representatives of an iconic movement. But your bet hinges as much on the fate of the super-rich as on the critical fate of Newman. I just read Sotheby's review of the season 1959-60, when a decent Rembrandt sold for the equivalent of £780k.

Thomas Piketty's much-discussed book Capital speculates that without political action the richest of the rich will continue to move further ahead of everyone else, which would imply further forward march of top prices. I'm not convinced by Piketty, but if the richest get richer you might be eating those trousers!

I saw a mention of your blog and thought I'd have a read, but on seeing the Barnett Newman discussion, I'm quite shocked – enough so to feel I should stand up for him.

In response to another commenter, I would have thought Newman would be well know to anyone who had studied Art History, whether in the US or the UK or elsewhere (I was at Edinburgh around the same time you were studying). I sympathise with those who don't find him particularly interesting but you can't claim he doesn't have a place in modern art history. It seems to me very misleading to suggest that he's an unknown, rather like writing off Mark Rothko or Agnes Martin, so I'm hoping to redress the balance a little in your polling.

99.9% of people couldn't begin to reproduce a Van Dyck and even many seemingly simple 20thc abstracts would be impossible to copy perfectly. 

But give any vaguely sane adult a brush and two pots of paint (beige and black) and they would be able to accurately reproduce the Newman maybe half an hour at the most.

Is there any point even saying this and isn't that the point - it is just MAD!!!!

Oh dear.  Predictably, I hadn't heard of him, but Mrs W is absolutely SHOCKED that you hadn't.

If I may have a second comment.  We have two discussions here. One regarding Barnett Newman and one discussing art prices.  At the intersection of these Newman achieves remarkable prices based on his name, his position in current art,  two very affluent bidders, and price expectations rather than any refinement of style.  Prices in general depend on the ability and desire of buyers.  If you are buying a Jeff Koons to put in your casino [Steve Wynn bought Koons' Popeye at auction yesterday for $28m] it has an advertising value which is greater if you paid more for it.  

The 1960 Rembrandt price mentioned is consistent with current Rembrandt prices if US inflation is applied and well above current prices if UK inflation is applied especially as compared with other prime assets like London or NYC residential property.

[...] actually I think you are not likely to have to eat your trousers but I am fascinated that Tate Modern's  retrospective of the paintings, sculpture and works on paper of Barnett Newman's works never crossed your radar screen because it made as much of an impression on me as the exhibitions there of Warhol or Lucien Freud and is therefore one of my all time favourite Tate Modern exhibitions; unlike for example the over-hyped Matisse cut-outs. Looking back I am surprised to see that the exhibition was as long ago as 2002.

Not sure where your correspondent is getting his/her data, but £40k in 1960 = $112k USD at exchange rates then prevalent. That's equivalent to $871k applying US inflation rates.

I'd say the 1960 Rembrandt must be worth comfortably seven figures in sterling today. Best comparison is probably the Otterloo portrait (same period/size/format), which I think went for about £20m. The Norton Simon one isn't as attractive, but I can't believe it would make less than half that today. 

Incidentally the comparison with other trophy assets is precisely my point - that today wealth is more unequally distributed and the very rich have more liquid wealth that they're willing to spend on trophy assets, so scarce things that they desire are worth relatively more.

Isn't it funny how misunderstood  and neglected Duchamp was/is especially in the US.

His cynical and witty observations of a declining interest in what Andre Malraux called : La Promesse de Bonheur of the pictorial arts, were succinctly expressed in his en  prevision du bras casse, the snow shovel whose objet trouve title was translated correctly as 'In Advance of a  Broken Arm', i.e. an ABC for new pathways towards future  artforms. 

Instead  this was taken as full license to Anything Goes as Cole Porter wrote,  because artists mistakenly adopted  his wry comment that their  authority determined what is art and what it is not. The elitist character  of much of what is produced today is in direct opposition to Duchamp's  intentions and by its deliberate exclusivity hopes to obtain  significance.

Concerns have been raised about the preservation of one of the world's finest art collections after it emerged that a cash-strapped museum in Rome had resorted to opening its windows to reduce humidity.

Home to masterpieces by Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael and Rubens, Rome's Borghese Gallery has been without air conditioning in one section for two months due to a funding slowdown, just as Rome sweats through a hot spring.

While most of the world's most prized art is increasingly housed in climate-controlled rooms to shut out humidity and pollution, guards at the gallery are opening windows to try to lower the temperature.

"We have been in the grip of this emergency for two months," the museum's director, Anna Coliva, told Italian daily La Repubblica. She said the air conditioningwas worn out after years of scant maintenance, with requests over the past few years for a new system falling on deaf ears.

Built in the 17th century by Cardinal Scipione Borghese to house his burgeoning art collection, the Borghese Gallery boasts such works as Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, as well as sculptures by Bernini and Canova.

Custom built for the cardinal's collection, the frescoes on the ceilings of the building echo the themes of the works of art beneath them.

Opening windows might bring in cool air now, but with summer approaching, the race is on to get the air conditioning working again. In the meantime, the paintings risk exposure to humidity and pollution from Rome's heavy traffic.

Rome is glorious despite the infuriating closures, queues, exhaustion and heat. Your advice is sound- but I recommend a totally different policy: GO IN JANUARY. I strolled straight into any museum or gallery I chose- and never saw a queue.  At the Vatican the people were so spread out that it was easy to see, to linger and to go back. The café was half empty and as the dusk crept through the corridors and the lights went on, it became so quiet that I was afraid I had been locked in. Reaching the main door with half an hour before closing time, I set off around again. As the last entries had already hurried off towards the Sistine Chapel, I had endless vast classical galleries, dimly lit, entirely to myself.  Cold but sublime.

And in Italy a small gratuity will encourage museum guards to open a closed gallery or two.

Regarding the Villa Borghese collection, It is important to recall that most of these works sat in uncontrolled climatic conditions for three centuries. Now the buildings are leaking and crumbling around them especially in southern Italy..    

I am truly delighted that you share my opinion of the Sistine Chapel which was produced while on endorphins from painful working conditions. Buonaroti was a great sculptor. Visit St pietro in Vincoli in Rome to see his Moses.

If you pay 2 or 3 hundred euros, you can have a quasi- private viewing in the evening with only about 6 other people.

Spanish tax inspectors checking the contents of a safety deposit box discovered a painting believed to be by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh that went missing almost 40 years ago, a tax office source said on Saturday.

Confirming a report by Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the source said the painting was entitled "Cypress, Sky and Country" in English translation from Spanish and dated 1889. The pastoral work had last been on view in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in the Austrian capital Vienna, the source told Reuters.

He said an investigation was under way into how the painting wound up in the safety deposit box and whether it disappeared as a result of a robbery.

Art experts told the tax office that the painting, bearing three seals of authenticity and measuring 35 by 32 centimeters 13.7 by 12.5 inches), is most likely genuine although this must still be confirmed by Spain's Culture Ministry. The value of the painting has not yet been assessed.

The Spanish newspaper said the canvas has three wax seals. One of the Rijksmuseum (04/08/1944), one of the Museum der Schöne Künste in Berlin (undated) and the last of the Kunsthistorisches Institut der Universität Wien (04/10/1974).

According to the person investigated by the Tax Office, the work is in Spain since 2010 and he is a mere depositary, painting belonging to a foreign millionaire.

If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday… encapsulates the gritty and underbelly-esq side of Contemporary Art. Tough, controversial, and beautiful, this sale will bring together established names along with a  new generation of artists. Built around a mood and an atmosphere, Loïc Gouzer sought to convey the darker side of what art can be. “There’s very often some kind of flashy and instant gratification factor to art, and then there’s the other side; almost like matter and anti-matter. There’s a constant tension in art between happiness and sadness, life and death – this sale was about trying to explore this ‘anti’ part of art creation. It’s like music in the 1960s – you had the Beatles and the Rolling Stones , the Marilyn and the Electric Chair – this sale explores the legacy of the Electric Chair. ”

“We all have memories of a song or a melody that was so strong and perfect that it became ingrained in our minds and somehow formed the backdrop of our youth. The same can be said about art, and with this auction I have sought to bring together these special works that have left a lasting  imprint on the visual hard drive of our generation. Jeff Koons’s Equilibrium series, Richard Prince’s Cowboys, Andy Warhol’s Electric Chairs, and Dan Colen’s Candle paintings all have this wow-factor that made them immediate modern day icons.  If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday… will be a rare opportunity to see these radical works activating each other,” declared Loïc Gouzer , International Senior Specialist. 

“The selection of works conveys Loïc Gouzer’s decisive vision of Contemporary Art today and his instinct for great objects. Tight and very edited, If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday… will provide a great platform to appreciate these defining works of Contemporary Art. Everything in this sale is of the highest caliber and it will probably be the last chance to acquire some of these more recent masterpieces before they too move on to the $20 million + price bracket. ” added Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art.

You gave them good advice, I went to the first preview tonight and I recommend it, Ms Turner seems to be growling a bit, but the subject matter is very interesting, and Ian Mcdiarmid was excellent.

Have you seen the documentary on this subject?