The Final Freud
September 21 2011
Picture: David Dawson/Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Gallery
Lucien Freud's final, unfinished work, will be included in the new exhibition of the artist's work at the National Portrait Gallery (9th Feb-27th May 2012). The subject is Freud's assistant, David Dawson, with Dawson's whippet, Eli.
Goya X-ray revelation
September 20 2011
Picture: Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum has discovered a partially completed portrait beneath its portrait of Don Ramon Satue. Full details here.
Through a lens, darkly...
September 20 2011
Picture: Daily Mirror, Jan Mikulka, 'Jakub', (detail).
Further to my harumph about paintings of photographs, such as the above from the NPG's BP Portrait Award, a reader writes:
Re photographic portraits - I have not seen the portrait in question, but on the principle I heartily concur. It does, however, give rise to an interesting question which does not go away when we look at distortions in paintings from other eras. It can be difficult to determine where masterly virtuosity, taking advantage of available technology, gives way to a technical dependence on technological competence. There’s a fascinatingly fine line somewhere down the road to The Arnolfini Wedding.
Museum swap-shop
September 20 2011
Picture: MFA Boston
Would you swap Monet's The Fort of Antibes (above), plus seven other works, for Gustave Caillebotte's Man at His Bath (below)? The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston plans to sell eight pictures worth up to $24 million to fund their new naked acquisition.
Alan Wirzbicki in the Boston Globe disagrees with the scheme:
Call me a philistine, but somehow this just doesn’t strike me as an astute trade. Why not? Well, let me count the ways.
This painting, “Man at His Bath,” is not an eye-catching celebration of the human form, a la Michelangelo’s "David." Rather, it’s an everyday view of… well, mostly of an everyday butt. Which is basically what George Shackelford, chairman of the museum’s Art of Europe Department, said in Monday’s Globe.
“This guy is no Arcadian bather,” he noted. “It’s perfectly mundane — and expressly so.” One would think that self-evidently accurate appraisal would lead to this equally obvious notion: It’s probably not worth selling scenes by Monet, Gauguin, Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir to acquire that perfectly mundane scene. Look, I’m not saying I wouldn’t trade one of those Jean Baptiste Camille Corot’s more-milky-March-sky-over-the-river scenes, but that’s about as far this guy would go. And I expect most museum-goers would agree with me.
Before and after
September 20 2011
Picture: Tate
The Tate has unveiled their newly restored painting by John Martin, The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. For more on the story, see here.
They don't buy art in Scotland
September 19 2011
Picture: Sorcha Dallas
A contemporary art gallery in Glasgow, Sorcha Dallas, is closing - and the owner says it is because nobody in Scotland buys art. From Scotland on Sunday:
Dallas said: "The gallery is closing because it seems running a contemporary commercial gallery is unsustainable within Scotland.
"This is due to no local collector base and little public support meaning heavy personal financial investment from the start in order to establish international markets and networks.
"The small amount of support I normally get was withdrawn this year by Creative Scotland and this, coupled with the dire present economic situation, makes continuing untenable."
Can anybody tell me why a commercial contemporary art gallery, in the midst of a contemporary art boom, should be awarded any public money? And if public money is available for commercial art dealers, then can I have some, please?
Have you heard of William Dobson?
September 19 2011
Picture: Tate, 'Portrait of the Artist's Wife' by William Dobson.
It's the fashion these days, when making a historical TV programme or writing a book, to say that your subject is 'forgotten' or 'secret', allowing you to 'reveal' or 'uncover' their hidden story. Waldemar Januszczak is doing just this to William Dobson (1611-46).
Dobson has been rebranded as 'The Lost Genius of British Art' for Waldemar's new programme on BBC4 (Thursday 22nd Sept, 9pm). But I suspect most of you will know something about William Dobson, or at least have heard of him. Dobson was the first truly great English artist. If he's forgotten, it's because most people don't know much about British art. So hats off to Waldemar and the BBC for commissioning the programme. Waldemar has even set up a Dobson website, where you can see where his pictures now hang.
Waldemar wrote a peculiar but engaging article about Dobson in the Sunday Times recently, in which he speculated on Dobson's artistic origins: [more below]
Some say Dobson was actually van Dyck’s pupil. If he was, then, gadzooks, how different they were. Where van Dyck, who was from Flanders, was always guilty of outrageous flattery, Dobson, who was from London, couldn’t do it. When someone sat for van Dyck, they invariably ended up looking thinner, taller, more elegant than they were. Van Dyck was, as you know, perhaps the greatest improver-upon-nature that royal portraiture has ever seen. Look, for instance, at what he did to Charles I’s queen, the much-hated French Catholic Henrietta Maria. According to the Venetian ambassador, Henrietta was small and mousy, with front teeth that stuck out “like the guns on a ship”. But when van Dyck painted her, he turned her into one of the most delicate beauties of the age. Witness those exquisite portraits of her that now hang in Windsor Castle, which you must know so well. What beautiful lies they tell.
Dobson did the opposite. When he painted you, he put a stone on you. Or even two. When he painted his own wife in that busty portrait of her in Tate Britain, he turned her into a proudly thrusting Barbara Windsor. She is the first buxom wench in British art, and I’d buy cockles from her any day.
Such reasoning is of course subjective. Personally, I find the evidence actually on Dobson's canvasses, the application of paint, the technique of the drapery, the glazey flesh tones, to be quite convincing evidence that Dobson was, if not a formal pupil of Van Dyck, more than heavily influenced by him, and probably in some way instructed by him. There is little evidence on Dobson's life, but we know that he received encouragement from Van Dyck - indeed he could not have gained his position at court without it.
Incidentally, I've not come across the Venetian Ambassador's quote on Henrietta Maria. the one I know is from Prince Rupert's sister, Sophia, who said that the Queen had teeth 'protruding from her mouth like guns from a fort''.
The world's most expensive fake?
September 19 2011
Picture: People's Daily
The above picture sold in June last year for $11.25 million in Beijing as a work by Chinese artist Xu Beihong (1895-1953). It had been authenticated by his son, above. However, a group of students has now come forward to say that it was painted by a classmate, in 1983.
Given the stratospheric prices for Chinese art at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if the market is riddled with similar fakes. But the most interesting fact seems to be that in China, the auction house faces no liability should it sell a fake:
Zhao Li, director of Chinese Modern & Contemporary Art Document Research Center, told the Global Times that mistakes can be made when identifying and evaluating art works, but that the crucial problem was the lack of an official authority to certify the authenticity of any artwork.
"There is no strict and standardized assessment mechanism for art appraisal in China. Once a work is discovered to be fake, there is no regulation to stipulate which party should shoulder the responsibility and face punishment," Zhao said.
According to the country's Auction Law, auctioneers are not allowed to promise the authenticity or the quality of the products, which is believed to exempt auction companies from taking the blame.
Caveat emptor...
Desmond Fitzgerald, Knight of Glin 1937-2011
September 19 2011
The leading Irish art historian, Desmond Fitzgerald, has died. He was a great connoisseur, published widely, and was President of the Irish Georgian Society. He was the 29th and last Knight of Glin, one of only three hereditary titles recognised by Irish governments. The Telegraph has his obituary, and a brief family history, here.
Photo painting voted NPG favourite
September 19 2011
Picture: Daily Mirror
Jan Mikulka's portrait Jakub (detail, above) has won the Visitor's Choice Award at the National Portrait Gallery's BP Portrait Award. I'm not surprised the portrait proved popular - I remember hearing admiring noises from people when I went to the exhibition: 'ooh, it's just like a photograph...' they would say. Sure enough, that's what the newspaper's have said too: 'oil painting so life-like it looks like a photo'.
Regular readers will know my dim view of photographs rendered in paint. Here, the artist has even copied the distortion caused by the lens, and the short focus from the wide aperture. Wouldn't it be better if the headline said: 'oil painting so life-like it looks like a human'? Or are we now so conditioned to looking at the world through a lens, be it on our phones or on the web, that we expect even art to be a mere mechanical photo-like reproduction?
Strong Indian art sales
September 16 2011
Picture: Christie's via Bloomberg
More high prices for anything painted east of the Suez this week. The above painting by Maqbool Fida Husain, Yatra, sold for $932,500 in New York, beating its high estimate of $500,000 by some way. Details at Bloomberg here.
New book on forger Van Meegeren published
September 16 2011
The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Holland has published a new book on the master forger Han Van Meegeren. In the 1930s and 40s he fooled leading museums and collectors (including Goering) into thinking his fakes were by Vermeer, and other Dutch Golden Age painters. Above is a little film by the museum on Van Meegeren, which is worth a click.
The book's final chapter describes how Van Meegeren managed to fool so many experts. But the thing is - he is still fooling experts. Some of you may remember that I recently helped uncover another Van Meegeren fake, in the Courtauld Institute. They, and others, believed it was in fact a genuine 17th Century work...
Dealer charged with selling forged Monets, Van Goghs...
September 16 2011
Picture: LA Times
A US art dealer has been charged with defrauding a collector out of millions of dollars by selling him fakes. The police allege Matthew Taylor (above) operated a cunning forgery operation:
Taylor allegedly sold the collector more than 100 paintings -- including works that he falsely claimed were by artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko -- for a total of more than $2 million, according to prosecutors.
The indictment charges that Taylor altered paintings from unknown artists to make them appear to be the products of famous artists, and then sold the bogus artwork to the victim at higher prices than their actual worth.
Taylor allegedly put forged signatures on the paintings and painted over or concealed names of the actual artists. The indictment also alleges that Taylor attached labels that falsely represented that the artworks were once part of prestigious collections at famous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim Museum.
It's much safer to buy an Old Master...
$25,000 Reward
September 16 2011
Picture: Art Market Monitor
For the above Renoir, Madeleine Leaning on her Elbow with Flowers in her Hair, 1918, stolen from a private collection in Texas on 8th September.
Love art, and have too much time on your hands?
September 16 2011
Picture: Digi-6
Then photoshop your cat into famous Old Masters.
Portrait painting - the future?
September 15 2011
Picture: theinspiration.com
Here's a novel approach to portraiture - paint the actual person, then photograph them. I suppose it's better than painting a photograph - which is what most people seem to do these days.
More examples, by the artist Alexa Meade, here.
Take a virtual tour of the National Gallery
September 15 2011
Picture: National Gallery, London
This is cool, a virtual tour of 18 rooms at the National Gallery. You can zoom in on the pictures (a bit) and bring up information about each one.
I wish the Gallery was always that empty (at least when I go).
Stupid thing to do if you're bored at work: select room 36 on the floorplan (the rotunda) and spin around really fast, up and down.
The Top 10 Scariest Paintings?
September 15 2011
Picture: National Museum, Stockholm
Listverse has a run down of ghoulish pictures. Gericault's Severed Heads, above, is no.6.
'Achtung, Spitfeuer!'
September 15 2011
Picture: Imperial War Museum
Did you know that today is 'Battle of Britain Day'? It marks the end of Hitler's attempt to destroy the Royal Air Force in 1940, as a precursor to invasion.
Above is Paul Nash's Battle of Britain, one of the more important works of art from the Second World War. The picture is one of favourite war pictures, and fits perfectly the description given by Kenneth Clarke, when describing the purpose of keeping an artistic record between 1939-45:
What did it look like? they will ask in 1981, and no amount of description or documentation will answer them. Nor will big, formal compositions like the battle pictures which hang in palaces; and even photographs, which tell us so much, will leave out the colour and peculiar feeling of events in these extraordinary years. Only the artist with his heightened powers of perception can recognise which elements in a scene can be pickled for posterity in the magical essence of style.
The single picture exhibition
September 15 2011
In these straitened times, museums are increasingly mounting single picture exhibitions. And why not? If you're a charging museum, borrowing one blockbuster masterpiece is a good way of drawing in the crowds - and extra revenue. Judith H. Dobrzynski examines the phenomenon in The Art Newspaper:
Creative use of smaller budgets for exhibitions is one driving force behind this trend. The directors we spoke to said that loan fees, design, insurance and transport costs for a single work are minuscule compared to a big thematic or an in-depth show for a single artist. Marketing tends to be the main expense, leaving museums in control of spending as much or as little as their budget allows.
Directors cite other virtues of single-work shows: they encourage people to really look, rather than move on after a few seconds to the next thing on the gallery walls. “We use them to teach how to experience a great work of art and see why it is a masterpiece,” said Brian Ferriso, the director of the Portland Art Museum. In 2009, when Ferriso arranged to bring Raphael’s La Velata, 1514-15, to Oregon from the Palatine Gallery, “people sat for ten to 20 minutes looking, and often they’d come back after going through our Renaissance galleries,” he said. Last year Portland borrowed Thomas Moran’s vast canvas Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, 1990, from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
