Christopher Walken Destroys Banksy
December 7 2021
Video: BBC
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apologies for missing this rather amusing story last month. The BBC's new tv drama / comedy The Outlaws made the headlines for showing Hollywood actor Christopher Walken destroying a genuine Banksy mural. Walken's character, who was serving community service in the show, painted over and destroyed a graffiti rat painted by the world-famous artist. As it turns out, Banksy seems to have created the mural especially for the series. I wonder if anyone has been searching for set location to chip the painting off the wall and remove the overpaint!
Treating Frescos with Light?
December 6 2021
Picture: finestresullarte.info
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news from Italy that scholars from the University of Bologna and the Spanish firm CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) have invented and patented a new technique to treat painted frescos. The technique involved coating frescos with a certain solution that is then subjected to light of a specific wavelength that helps dissolve calcium carbonate crystals. Such crystals are said to be one of the main causes for frescos to deteriorate. This method, it seems, can be used in a very precise way and is equally rather cost effective too.
The image pictured purports to show frescos treated using this very technique.
Drawing of Velázquez's Funeral (?) up for Sale
December 6 2021
Picture: abalartesubastas.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Spanish Press (spotted via. @Boro_RR) have shared news of a curious drawing of Diego Velázquez's funeral that is coming up for sale at auction in Spain. The work on paper was created by Antonio González Velázquez (1723-1793), no relation, 112 years after Diego Velázquez's death in 1660. It is not clear whether the drawing is a copy of some source, since lost, or is just a work of pure imagination. The bidding for the 'unique' drawing will start at €25,000.
New Release: Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print
December 6 2021
Picture: Lund Humphries
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Lund Humphries will be releasing Amy Golahny's latest book later this month entitled Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print: His Master Etching.
According to the book's blurb:
Always recognised as a master print from the moment of its appearance around 1649, the Hundred Guilder Print is one of Rembrandt's most compositionally complex and visually beautiful works.
This book gives a full overview of the fascinating story surrounding this print, from its genesis and market value to attitudes towards it in the present day. Focusing on the tradition of printmaking as well as the reception of the print in Rembrandt's time, Golahny explores the ways the artist made visual references to the work of such masters as Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, while uniquely combining aspects of Christ's ministry.
CFP: Fat Bodies in the Early Modern World
December 6 2021
Picture: @hrfletcher_
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's an interesting summer conference which is taking shape for Summer 2022. A group of scholars from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester and the Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, are putting together a conference on Fat Bodies in the Early Modern World. A call for papers has been published with lots of possibilities for art historians too it seems.
According to the CFP:
In the emerging field of Fat Studies, historical overviews about the perception and representation of fat and dieting tend to focus on the 19th and 21st centuries. An early exception was Elena Levy-Navarro’s The Culture of Obesity in Early and Late Modernity (2008) which sought to situate the beginnings of ‘modern’ fat hatred in the early modern period. Inspired by Mikhail Bakthin and Norbert Elias, Levy-Navarro argued that the premodern period was a ‘time before fat’, as she suggested it was only with the development of a ‘civilized elite’ that the individualized, self-contained body could be ‘violated by fat flesh’.
More recent studies, however, such as Georges Vigarello’s Les métamorphoses du gras. Histoire de l’obésité du Moyen Âge au XXe siècle (2010) or Christopher E. Forth’s Fat. A Cultural History of the Stuff of life (2019) have demonstrated that the slim silhouette could already be an ideal for European elites in the Medieval period and that the fat body could be viewed as socially inferior from Roman Antiquity onwards. Moreover, scholars such as Michael Stolberg and Maria-Carla Gadebusch Bondio, have shown how physicians’ advice manuals containing instructions on how to avoid fatness were printed as early as the 1480s, and that the treatment of obesity became part of the university medical curriculum in the later sixteenth century.
Abstracts should be submitted by 15th January 2022.
Anna Dorothea Therbusch Exhibition in Berlin
December 6 2021
Picture: smb.museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Berlin's Gemäldegalerie have just this weekend opened a new exhibition dedicated to the artist Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721-1782).
According to the exhibition's blurb:
Three hundred years ago, on 23 July 1721, Anna Dorothea Therbusch was born in Berlin, who would go on to become one of the most important women artists of the 18th century. To mark the tercentenary of her birth, in autumn of 2021 the Gemäldegalerie is honouring this extraordinary artist and forerunner of women’s emancipation with a focussed special exhibition featuring key works from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s own collections.
To mark this tercentenary, in autumn 2021, the Gemäldegalerie is gathering together almost the entire collection of Therbusch works in the holdings of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in a focussed special exhibition centred around this major work. Complemented by key works from contemporaries, the show provides a comprehensive overview of the oeuvre and professional milieu of Anna Dorothea Therbusch, and of the age in which she lived.
The show will run until 10th April 2022.
San Diego Museum Acquires Ribera
December 4 2021
Picture: San Diego Museum of Art
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reader has been in touch with news (via. @sandiegomuseumofart) that the San Diego Museum of Art have recently acquired Jusepe de Ribera's Susanna and the Elders (pictured). The museum have published a short podcast on the picture which is free to listen here.
Andrew Graham-Dixon at Sotheby's
December 4 2021
Video: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's have teamed up with the television art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon once more to give a preview of their upcoming Old Master Paintings sale. The video ends with a discussion of Botticelli's The Man of Sorrows which is coming up for sale in New York next year.
Rubens and His Global Enterprise
December 3 2021
Video: Getty Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's a video I'll be trying to catch up with later (after I go and view some of the London OMP sales this afternoon). The Getty Museum have published this online lecture by curator Stephanie Schrader on Peter Paul Rubens and His Global Enterprise.
According to the blurb:
The 17th-century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens worked in Antwerp, a bustling center of global trade where various cultures came into contact. To understand how this impacted his work, curator Stephanie Schrader investigates two of his drawings in the Getty Museum’s collection: Man in Korean Costume and Head Study for Balthazar. Both artworks provide important examples of the various misunderstandings that arose when Rubens depicted people of African and Korean descent. By viewing these works from religious, mercantile, and political perspectives, Schrader provides a nuanced examination of appropriation and cultural translation.
Italy's BPER Banca Exhibits its Giuseppe Zola Landscapes
December 3 2021
Picture: BPER Banca
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
An Italian bank based in Modena, BPER Banca, are exhibiting their privately owned collection of landscapes by Giuseppe Zola (Brescia, 1672 - 1743). The bank owns no fewer than 24 works by the artist and owns a private collection of over 1,000 works dating from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries.
The exhibition will be on display between 10th December 2021 - 13th March 2022.
Prado Acquires Francesco Francia's Saint Francis
December 3 2021
Picture: Prado
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News via. the Spanish arsmagazine.com that the Prado Museum in Madrid have acquired Francesco Francia's painting of Saint Francis of Assisi for the sum of €70,000. The picture is said to be the Bolognese artist's only picture in a Spanish public collection and was purchased from a Private Collection in Spain.
'Largest Ever' Vermeer Show for 2023
December 3 2021
Picture: The Rijksmuseum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have announced that they will be organising the 'largest ever' exhibition on Vermeer in Spring 2023.
The show will include loans from around the world, including the Girl with a Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague), The Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), Woman writing with maid (The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman with the scales (The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.). Paintings which have not been exhibited in the Netherlands in recent times will also be loaned, including the recently restored Dresden picture. A project focusing on Vermeer's materials and practises is also currently underway.
Not Giovanni, but Giannino Arnolfino (?)
December 1 2021
Picture: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (International Network for Curators of Dutch and Flemish Art) have drawn attention to the new edition of Simiolous: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art which features an article on the male sitter of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait in the National Gallery, London. The article, by Jan Verheyen, claims that the painting actually depicts Gianinno Arnolfini and not his uncle Giovanni.
I'm yet to get my hands on a copy of the article, but I'd be interested to hear from any readers who have!
Burlington Magazine - Photography
December 1 2021
Picture: Private Collection via. The Burlington Magazine
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
December's edition of the The Burlington Magazine focuses on the art of Photography. As usual, there are many interesting pieces to be found, including articles on on the museum photographer Isabel Agnes Cowper, Maria Ponti Pasolini’s photographic archive, Nicéphore Niépce and the industry of photographic replication and Ilse Bing at Glyndebourne.
In fact, this month's edition contains my debut article for the magazine (please forgive the shameless plug). The article focuses on a photograph which fell out of a book whilst I was scouring through a private library. It turned out to be an unrecorded photograph of Ellen Terry by the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (pictured). Furthermore, it shows Terry in her wedding dress which was designed by William Holman Hunt. The photograph is, I believe, connected to George Frederic Watt's 1864 painting of Terry known as Choosing (NPG), which shows her in the same dress, necklace and profile pose. Find yourself a copy to read more.
London Art Week - Winter 2021
December 1 2021
Picture: londonartweek.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
London Art Week Winter 2021 will be running from 3rd - 10th December this year.
As usual, there are many interesting free online events that are worth looking out for. In particular, LAW will be hosting a free online Symposium on Jewish Dealers and the European Art Market c.1850 - 1930. The talks organised include In conversation: Belonging and Betrayal - How Jews Made the Art World Modern; Portrait of a Family: Sargent's Wertheimers and The Jewish Contribution to Art Dealing in London.
New Release: François Boucher and the Art of Collecting
December 1 2021
Picture: Routledge
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's an interesting new release that I missed last month. Routledge have recently published a book entitled François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France by Jessica Priebe from the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Australia.
According to the blurb:
While earlier studies have focused predominantly on artist François Boucher’s artistic style and identity, this book presents the first full-length interdisciplinary study of Boucher’s prolific collection of around 13,500 objects including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, porcelain, shells, minerals, and other imported curios.
It discusses the types of objects he collected, the networks through which he acquired them, and their spectacular display in his custom-designed studio at the Louvre, where he lived and worked for nearly two decades. This book explores the role his collection played in the development of his art, his studio, his friendships, and the burgeoning market for luxury goods in mid-eighteenth-century France. In doing so, it sheds new light on the relationship between Boucher’s artistic and collecting practices, which attracted both praise and criticism from period observers.
Restored 'Red Boy' on Display
December 1 2021
Picture: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery in London have finally redisplayed Thomas Lawrence's Charles William Lambton known as The Red Boy, a painting they had acquired earlier this summer for £9.3m. The painting has undergone conservation in the past few months and the transformation looks rather impressive indeed. The work is on display in Room 35.
2022 Donatello Exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi
November 30 2021
Picture: Palazzo Strozzi
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello in Florence will be presenting a large exhibition on Donatello in March 2022. Donatello, The Renaissance will also travel in a smaller incarnation to Berlin's Gemäldegalerie and the Victoria Albert Museum in London in 2023.
According to the museum's website:
Starting from 19 March 2022, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello will be hosting Donatello, The Renaissance. This historic, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition sets out to reconstruct the outstanding career of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of any age, juxtaposing his work with masterpieces by other Italian Renaissance masters such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo.
Curated by Francesco Caglioti and devised as a single exhibition in two venues, Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, the exhibition is designed to celebrate Donatello in dialogue with institutions of Florence and indeed the whole of Italy, in addition to crucial international cooperation, in an effort to expand the debate on this master both in time and in space, in terms of materials, techniques and genres, in order finally to do justice to the artist’s universal dimension.
Here's the write-up from The Art Newspaper.
The Gentleman of Voet in Genoa
November 30 2021
Picture: Palazzo Reale Genoa
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Genoa's Palazzo Reale have just opened a new exhibition dedicated to male portraits by Jacob Ferdinand Voet (c.1639-1689). This small exhibition will focus on several portraits in the collection including those of Giovanni Luca Durazzo alongside others loaned from various collections.
The exhibition will run until 27th February 2022.
Budapest Museum of Fine Arts Acquisitions
November 30 2021
Picture: Szépművészeti Múzeum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (International Network of Curators of Dutch and Flemish Art) have published a short piece on new acquisitions made by the Szépművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Fine Arts) in Budapest, Hungary. The article, penned by Júlia Tátrai, Head of the Department of Old Master Paintings at the museum, focuses on the acquisition of works by Jacob Van Loo (pictured), Gerard van Honthorst and Ferdinand Bol.
