“Astonishing” is the writer’s summation of a show that contrasts the Parthenon marbles with works by Rodin. Rodin repeatedly came to London to study these ancient sculptures – as well he might. “[Rodin’s] The Kiss – one of the most sensual and captivating masterpieces of modern times … And those old Greek goddesses blow it away … the greatest works of art on earth”
Do we understand beauty? Euclid thought it was a matter of harmonious proportion. David Hume said it existed only in the mind of the individual. Kant proposed that declaring something beautiful means “we believe we have a universal voice”. The writer agrees – perceived beauty “creates a temporary kind of community … a space under which our collective thoughts gather”.
Factories in Victorian England made poor products in terrible conditions. The arts and crafts movement advocated for handcrafted products made with natural materials. This aesthetic has been widely influential. Morris, a prime mover in the movement, also wanted a higher status given to the decorative arts. That remains a work in progress. Background on the movement is here.
These past few decades Julian Schnabel has been largely ignored. “Sometimes the personality can get in the way” admits his gallerist. Now, suddenly, some attention. Schnabel puts it down to being “a nonconformist … maybe you come in and out of view.” Or perhaps, says the curator, it is due to his art: “It’s not a renaissance. It’s a sign of power and … impact of the work.”
Short and scathing. The writer attacks from the first sentence – “Jasper Johns is the minor artist with the major reputation”. His complaint seems to be that Johns hasn’t had any good ideas lately. “One day, there may be a reckoning of a legacy that has derived only diminishing returns from initial mid-century investments.”
Big art fairs are lucrative only for large galleries that can cover high participation costs with substantial sales. Yet small galleries feel they cannot afford not to attend – “big fairs are now one of the definitions of success”. And larger galleries want them to attend – so they can identify the newer artists they will eventually poach.
Art tastes in early twentieth century America were sedate. So the 1913 Armory show, which included experimental European modernists, shocked. Its impact on American artists, the subject of a new show, was “new modes of thinking, and new forms of expression”. No one new style predominated, but rather “the beautiful chaos of innovation”. More images are here.
Another Monet show! The curator argues that buildings were important to how Monet constructed his paintings. At first simply emblems of modernity, they were later crucial in his glorious works about “atmospherics”. In these works buildings were used “as a strong, solid form which served as a screen on which light played”. A video on his London paintings (4 min) is here
By the 1920’s the age of the machine had clearly arrived. European art responded with cubism and constructivism and these ideas were transplanted by the “precisionists” to America. Theirs was not a uniquely American art movement but they did view mechanization with New World optimism – “reverential commemoration of the clarity and simplicity of industrial forms”
When he left Paris, Van Gogh was carrying hundreds of Japanese prints. For him Japan was “an unlikely dream masquerading as a happy possibility”. And, according to a show in Amsterdam, the art in these prints transformed his own art – Japanese adoration of colour, Japanese perspective, Japanese delicacy. “Japanese art turned Van Gogh into Van Gogh.”
Golub’s view was that history was full of “toxic masculinity … bad men doing bad things”. In response, he filled his paintings with violent images. Was Golub’s depiction of violence excessive? “[H]is critique of power and violence consisted of confronting slaughter by representing slaughter. Whether this amounts to a genuinely ethical response … is an open question.”
Myers is the classic overlooked artist. In 1974, produces the first of three self-published photography books. In the 1980’s, gives up photography. In 2012 gets his first solo show. “Myers’s photographs [capture] a past in which parsimonious resources are displayed with defiant dignity … a mark of pride in the narrow, the pinched, the insular.” A background essay on Myers is here.
In 1656 Rembrandt was close to bankruptcy. Perhaps as a way of generating cash, or simply promoting himself to collectors, he made a set of drawings copied from Mughal paintings then reaching Amsterdam. “[A] painter of one “golden age” paying homage to a “golden age” on the other side of the world” An excellent backgrounder on Mughal art is here.
Wood’s American Gothic is “the most universally recognized American painting”. Yet many find it inscrutable and Wood’s other works too. His “perversely sexualised landscapes, dream trees, dream fields, dream corn, dream ribbons of roadway … no hint of actual dirt or dust. One cannot imagine wind blowing there.” (The March 20 newsletter carried a different review of this show.)