Mary Fairchild MacMonnies’ “Garden in Giverny” has gone out on loan for a three venue traveling exhibition.
The first object from the Swope Collection on loan for the 2010 exhibition season!
“Garden in Giverny” will travel with the exhibition “Impressionists in the Garden” to the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Art Museum, then to the Tampa Museum of Art , and finally to the Taft Museum of Art before returning home to the Swope.
It is common to think of visiting an art museum as a solitary activity. And it can be conducive to quiet contemplation. However, as I found out a couple of days ago, viewing art with a group can focus your attention on things you might overlook on your own. For this months American Art 101 we looked at Etaples, France, 1911, by William E. Scott. Brian pointed out the peculiar vantage point of the painting. The boat, which dominates the scene, is seen from the back end looking in toward the village of Etaples. The boat appears to be beached at low tide. That would put the artist either in the water or on very wet sand at low tide. I really had not thought about that, the foreground is so sensuous with its flowing paint strokes that I must confess I had not noticed the boat was beached. I have seen many paintings of cities from across a body of water and numerous paintings of boats from the side, but this view point is unusual. Another thing I had not paid that much attention to was the difference between the foreground, (which had always caught my eye) made with broad bravura brush strokes and the background with its relatively finely blended clouds (which until now had evaded my attention.) So next time you visit bring someone along and try looking together.
Two days ago, when I was talking, or rather trying to talk, to a group of theater students, words just leaked out of my ears before they could reach my tongue. Talking and writing is hard work. At least for me. That reminds me of what Terre Haute sculptor, Janet Scudder, said about the job of modeling for artists. In her 1925 autobiography, Modeling My Life, talking about the late 1890s in Paris she said “And so far as the profession of posing being an easy one, any one who believes that should try sitting in one position without moving for an hour; he will soon come to the conclusion that he would rather do hard work–especially when he considers the small price paid to models, who, in those days, received only five or six francs for a sitting of four hours.”
I often get the question- “What is your favorite work in the collection?” or people ask me to make a value judgment on a work. It is awkward and I usually come up with a lame and boring answer like “I love all my children equally.” It would be disingenuous to say I am never drawn to or repulsed by a work of art. However, in general, and here at work, I just do not think in terms of like and dislike good and bad. I am more likely to be thinking “how does this fit visually, thematically and historically with other works?” Now that being said, I will admit to a revolving fascination with various aspects of various works. For instance lately I have found myself staring at the muted brown mustard and other colors in the Moses Soyer painting Studio Interior with Figure. I can’t really say it is a favorite but something in those colors and their application keeps drawing me back.
From the Tribune Star Readers’ Forum: Nov. 2, 2009
Swope director helps students discover art
Recently, the sixth-grade art classes at West Vigo Middle School traveled to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a field trip to discover art. This trip was special, as Brian Whisenhunt, director of the Swope Art Museum joined our group to help launch a “junior docent” program.
Our sixth graders were first treated to a tour of “Sacred Spain,” led by the IMA docents. History and art from the 1700s became alive, as we saw fabulous paintings depicting religious events and golden artifacts, including a crown dripping with hundreds of emeralds.
There’s a great exhibit up at the Milwaukee Art Museum now through January 3 2010, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade. This is the first US museum show to look exclusively at the later works of Warhol, an era often overshadowed by the Marilyns, Maos and soup cans of his earlier career. This period marks a departure from the mass-production of the Factory for Warhol and a re-engagement hand-painting which he had retired from some 20 years earlier (”Painting was just a phase I went through,” he said in 1966). Warhol returned to painting during these years partly due to the influence of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat and this show features some excellent collaborations between the two artists, including a favorite of mine, Arm And Hammer II.
Warhol produced more work during this period than any other time in his life and this show captures the wide range of his experimentations. It features his forays into abstraction, combinations of painting and screen-printing, numerous self-portraits, and engagements with religious iconography including the monumental Last Supper pieces, the final series of Warhol’s career.
From Saturday until Wednesday, I was in the Twin Cities at the Association of Midwest Museum annual conference held in St. Paul, MN. I met a lot of people, got several new ideas from other institutions and had a wonderful time exploring the various museums around the area. Some highlights:
Visitors to the Swope admiring Thomas Hart Benton’s painting Threshing Wheat may be surprised to learn that the realist Benton was an influential mentor to abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. An article in the Smithsonian describes their relationship a bit and brings up some interesting points about Pollock’s work.
The author of the article, Henry Adams, suggests that Pollock hid his name in the momentous 1943 work, Mural. Whether Mural is in fact based around Pollock’s name remains up for debate (I’m not sure I buy it myself), but the inherent structure and harmony Adams is honing in on does neatly illustrate a feature that many people, particularly those who are not fans of modern art, often overlook when considering Pollock’s work: it is, like Benton’s, highly structured and very carefully composed. Pollock himself said as much, “When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.”
Pollock has said that Benton gave him something to rebel against, but he also acknowledged Benton’s importance and role in the art world. As Adams states, “[Pollock] once told a friend that he wanted Mural to be comparable to a Benton work, though he didn’t have the technical ability to make a great realistic mural and needed to do something different.”
Recently, a painting at the Met has been reattributed to Velazquez. The painting, a portrait of a man in his 30s appropriately known as “Portrait of a Man”, initially entered the museum as a Velazquez in 1949, and some 30 years later it was demoted when experts declared that it was the work of a follower rather than the master. Thanks to a recent conservation effort, however, layers of yellowed varnish and rather poor previous conservation efforts have been removed, allowing the fine brushwork of Velazquez to show through, leading to the reattribution.
This little saga reminded me of an excellent book I just finished by Edward Dolnick titled The Forger’s Spell. This book tells the tale of Han van Meegeren, a Dutch artist and forger who, during the 1930s and 40s, managed to fool some of the greatest Vermeer experts of his day, as well as Hermann Goering and Adolf Hitler. His Vermeer forgeries look obvious and clumsy to us today, but at the time they were considered among the greatest masterpieces in the world. There were a handful of experts at the time who saw through his ruse, but most of the world was taken in. The story of how and why they were duped is fascinating enough, but I think the best parts of the book are when Dolnick goes further with chapters about more recent forgers. He also quotes Whistler at one point, who stated he could tell a genuine Velazquez because “I always swoon when I see a Velazquez.” Wonder what he would have made of this portrait?
Connoisseurs can no doubt recognize true masterworks on sight (similarly, I’ve seen wine connoisseurs correctly identify a bottle with a few quick sniffs from the glass), so it would be pointless and unfair to dismiss these experts as mere fools - much better to ask just how they were fooled. As Dolnick points out, as with any con, the real trick is to get the mark to want to believe. Dolnick recounts the story John Myatt, an art forger convicted in 1999. Myatt forged Van Goghs, Picassos, Cezannes, Chagalls, Giacomettis, Matisses…some 200 in all. Only 80 have been uncovered and, presumably, the remaining 120 are still hanging in private, perhaps public, collections. Interestingly, often rather simple scientific tests could confirm whether or not the paintings are authentic (tests of the paints used, the canvas and supports, and even the dirt in the cracks of the picture surface can all expose a fake). But, honestly, what would a collector have to gain from learning his prized Rembrandt is only twenty years old? Furthermore, there is simply no scientific test to determine if a painting is indeed by the hand of the master. And, as van Meegeren himself noted, “Yesterday this picture was worth millions of guilders, and experts and art lovers would come from all over the world and pay money to see it. Today, it is worth nothing, and nobody would cross the street to see it for free. But the picture has not changed. What has?” More pointedly, just what is it we appreciate in a work of art?
Ismael Muhammad Nieves (Ish) is the guest curator for “Heartland Graffiti: writers from the Midwest” on view at the Swope October 2, 2009-January 2, 2010. This is an interview conducted by Swope Curator Lisa Petrulis. The exhibition opens as part of October’s first Friday events and Ish will be on hand to talk about the exhibition at 8:00pm Friday October 2.
You are one of the busiest people I know. You have a full time job as an engineer, you have a family with teenagers, you’re an active marathoner, and still you have time to create graffiti art, to organize shows and to participate in panel discussions… (feel free to elaborate on, correct or add to what I just wrote)
• My full time job is: Operations Supervisor for a Power Plant. Basically, I supervise the operations team with the day-2-day activities of operating a coal fired power plant.
