A Profusion of Picasso

If you like Picasso and live in New York, you are very lucky. Everyone seems to be putting on a Picasso show lately, the Met and MoMA dipping into their permanent collections to do so.

Currently on are two shows devoted exclusively to Picasso's prints. The Marlborough Gallery is showing Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints From 1905-1968, featuring a parade of Picasso's wives and mistresses. The exhibition runs until May 1st at the gallery's location on 57th St. here in New York.

The Museum of Modern Art presents Picasso: Themes and Variations, an exhibit featuring works from the museum's permanent prints collection. The MoMA show has a wider scope, and presents prints dealing with many of Picasso's most famous themes. Check out the New York Times review of these shows here.

Later this month, the Met gets in on the Picasso action when it opens Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which presents everything by Picasso in the museums permanent collection, including everything from paintings to ceramics. This exhibition marks the first time all of these objects have been seen together; the Met's large number of Picasso holdings helps to illustrate his prolific artistic career while also providing an expansive look at his thematic interests, evolving techniques, and what the Met calls his "multi-sided genius."

Putting up Picasso shows seems like a no-brainer, especially for these museums that have access to huge numbers of Picasso works in their permanent collection. A marquee name and relatively straightforward content now at the beginning of summer (and the tourist season in New York) should make for extremely well-attended shows. Get your Picasso fix while you can!

Update: Holland Cotter of the New York Times calls the Met's Picasso collection "stodgy and almost bizarrely lopsided," mostly due to the Met's reluctance to acquire new art. Check out his review here.

New Exhibition: Demons and Devotion

I'm sure you all have your calendars marked already for the opening on Friday, January 22nd of Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves at the Morgan Library. This Dutch masterpiece, circa 1440, and its iconic Hell-mouth (which I've been seeing a lot lately) miniature is long overdue for an exhibition.

The Morgan's show will display the pages, which were cut out of the original manuscript in the 1850s, glued back together and sold as two separate books to two separate collectors, unbound. At the end of the exhibition in May, the Morgan's conservation staff will decide how to rebind the pages in a looser fashion for preservation and storage. The show will display 93 of the 157 illuminations, though a facsimile version will be available to view as well. (You can get your own, for the low low price of $15,000.) You can check out a digital facsimile for free on the Morgan's website, here.

The show will also include a selection of 18 additional manuscripts from Flanders, all contemporary to the Catherine of Cleves Hours. For a peek at some of the stylistic points the exhibition will cover, click here.

As usual, the Morgan has a series of lectures and gallery talks associated with the exhibit, all of which look extremely interesting. I'm hoping to catch "The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: What Makes a Dutch Masterpiece," a lecture by Dr. James Marrow on February 24th. A complete calendar of lectures and gallery talks can be found here .

The Lost World of Old Europe

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, a relatively new department at New York University, has a really fascinating exhibition up at the moment of artifacts recovered from the Danube Valley. This "Old Europe" civilization of about 4,000 BC flourished before Egyptians even figured out what a pyramid was, but hasn't been given nearly any scholarly attention so far. This was actually the first time I'd ever even heard of such a civilization.

I haven't been to see the exhibition yet, but the ISAW has a brilliant online exhibition page that serves as a great introduction. It begins with some "burning questions" about the role of women and the practice of destroying their own homes while also introducing a few of the artifacts. There's also a preview of the exhibition catalog, as well as an object checklist that lists everything in the show. I'm particularly interested in the female clay figurines and the animal statuettes. More thoughts to come once I get in to see the show. If you've already been, what did you think?

The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley 5000-3500 BC runs through April 25th. Details and opening hours can be found here.

Met tidbits

This made the front page of the NYT online edition this morning: The Metropolitan Museum's "Portrait of a Man" that had been displayed as by the workshop of Velazquez has been reattributed to the master himself, after a recent conservation.

Keith Christiansen, chairman of European paintings and the country's leading Velazquez scholar, Jonathan Brown, are in agreement about the attribution, which basically comes down to a few individual brushstrokes on the man's collar (art history at it's finest!). Debate continues over whether or not this work may be a self-portrait.

In other Met news, the museum announced that it will show fewer exhibitions of major loans, and will instead focus on changing the presentation of the permanent collection, which I think is what we're seeing now with these small, single-painting shows. I've got my money on a "Portrait of a Man" show in the upcoming months!

Art Links

-A new show of paintings by modernist Belgian artist James Ensor in the creatively titled James Ensor at MoMA.

-A show of objects from the National Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan at the Met, which was previously at the National Gallery in Washington. Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul is on through September.

-Sotheby's has done pretty well in the last few days, with solid modern and contemporary sales, with Picasso and Giacometti selling well at the modern sale and contemporary standbys Warhol and Calder selling well yesterday, though American art is not doing well at either house.

-LACMA, in a somewhat surprising but still totally predictable move, sold off their old master paintings at Sotheby's. I guess they didn't get the memo about older art being a consistently good investment.

-The new Acropolis Museum in Athens is awesome, which has sparked debate over who really owns the Elgin marbles, currently housed at the British Museum in London.

And now for some bad news

The art world is still suffering, bad news this week includes:

-A disappointing Impressionist and modern art sale at Christie's London, which just barely cleared the $60 million low estimate. As Souren Melikian says: The hard lesson for auction houses is that scraping the barrel to fill a catalog no longer does the trick. To do well, you need real art and there is not much left of it.

-Contemporary art galleries in Chelsea (and pretty much all galleries in New York) are in trouble this summer, and there have already been several notable closings. The notoriously slow summer season combined with a huge recession in art buying make it survival of the fittest (and best-marketed).

-More and more exhibitions are being cut from museum schedules due to financial concerns, and in most cases, a lack of funding.

-The Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum announced last week that both major institutions will cut more staff. The Guggenheim will cut 25 positions, or about 8% of their full time staff, while the Met laid off 74 employees and offered 95 other employees retirement packages.


But let's end on a good note!

-Most of the documents, many dating back to the Middle Ages, have been recovered from the rubble of the Cologne Archives, which collapsed back in March. The catch is that everything has to be sorted and re-cataloged, and 15% of the materials are still missing.

-Art Basel did surprisingly well, partially due to lowered prices and partially owing to the fact that most rich art collectors are still rich.

New Exhibition: It’s About Time: 244 Years at the Morris-Jumel Mansion

Sometimes, when you think about New York, you forget the long and tumultuous history the city has. The history of a city is usually evident in its buildings, though buildings get torn down and built back up again in New York so often that a lot of that history gets erased. Not so at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights.

The 244-year old house was George Washington's headquarters during the doomed defense of New York in 1776 at the beginning of the Revolutionary War (I just learned all this from the excellent tome Gotham: A History of New York to 1898). The mansion now functions as a museum with fully restored interior and antique furnishings, and is part of The Historic House Trust of New York City.

The new show at the mansion, It's About Time: 244 Years at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, curated by education director Carol Ward, juxtaposes historical photographs from the house's history with work by modern photographers. The show provides a unique peek into New York's living, but often forgotten, past. Check out the write-up and excellent slide show in Times' CityRoom blog today.

For more information on The Historic House Trust, other historic houses in and around New York City, and the ongoing efforts to preserve and protect them, go here.

Tim Burton at MoMA

In what is possibly the coolest retrospective ever planned, Tim Burton will be featured at MoMA beginning November 22nd, later this year.

The show will feature, among other things, drawings, costumes, and puppets, mostly from his various film projects. It will also include "artifacts" from Burton's college film projects, early career, and unrealized projects. Best of all, the exhibition will be accompanied by a film series.

For other happenings at MoMA, check out this weirdly difficult to understand exhibition calendar.

Met News

-The Met has secured a loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam of Vermeer's Milkmaid for their fall show of Dutch art that will feature all 5 of the Vermeers from the Met's permanent collection, as well as other 17th century Dutch works.

-A very unique show on medieval drawings entitled Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages opens next week, June 2nd. I've been looking forward to this for months, so stay tuned for a review.

-Things to see now include the opening of the new American wing period rooms, and Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion at the Costume Institute if you just can't get enough of Kate Moss.

New Exhibition: Pen to Press, Paint to Print

Yesterday I went to see a lovely little show at C.G. Boerner Gallery here in New York (23 E. 73rd St, between Madison and 5th Avenues) by visiting gallerist Sandra Hindman, of Les Enluminures.

Les Enluminures, which is based in Paris, are known for their medieval manuscript, in particular their richly illuminated Books of Hours. This exhibit, entitled Pen to Press, Paint to Print explores the transitional period of the late 15th through the 16th century when books went from being copied and decorated by hand to printed on the newly invented presses of Gutenberg. This topic unfortunately has not been given much attention, but this exhibit presents a fantastic selection of prayer books, Books of Hours, individual printed leaves produced by nuns, coffers (boxes) decorated with medieval prints on the inside, and 16th century woodblocks used to created printed Books of Hours.

One of the most interesting changes is the switch from books strictly in Latin to those written in a combination of Latin and the vernacular of the area for which the book was printed. For example, in Latin with Middle Dutch or High German additions.

Pen to Press, Paint to Print is open only until May 9th, but is open on Saturdays, 10am-6pm, so be sure to check it out. The exhibit is also accompanied by an illustrated, full-color catalogue of all the items presented in the show, with lots of unique and helpful (if you study Books of Hours!) information.

Art Links

-A new exhibition at the Met, Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400-1600, is a synthesis of beauty, unfamiliarity, and intimacy in what Holland Cotter says "could be the new norm" for the Met's exhibitions in the coming months/years.

The Asian art wing at the Met is consistently one of the least-crowded in the entire museum, so I'm glad there's an interesting exhibition to draw some attention to it.

-Dirt on Delight: Impulses that Form Clay is on at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The show argues for ceramics as a serious art form that combines elements of sculpture and painting, and questions the so-called "art-craft" divide.

-Old master paintings are still a better investment than buying contemporary art. "Old Masters are better than buying gold nuggets if you’re looking for something that will retain value,” where contemporary prices have fluctuated wildly in the last few months.

Art Links

-The controversial issue of the two Chinese bronze sculptures in the YSL sale has been further complicated by the Chinese buyer, Cai Mingchao, who won the two lots, but is now refusing to pay for them, insisting that they should be returned to China without charge.

-The Metropolitan Opera has put its Chagall murals up as part of the collateral on an existing loan, despite the large murals being "New York treasures."

-Evolutionary science, naturalism, and art are the focus of a new exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art. Just one example of the great niche shows that university art museums are so good at. Endless Forms is on through May 3rd.

-The Museum of Modern Art will unveil a total reconstruction of their official website on Friday. It sounds pretty cool, check back here Friday for my official review.

-Jeff Koons has been commissioned by LACMA to create a 25-million dollar sculpture of a life-size train dangling from a crane. I will withhold my judgment.

-Royalty checks become the focus for some art detective work.

Exhibition Round-Up

A quick list of everything I want to see that's on right now:

-At the Met, Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, even though French bronzes aren't exactly the most show-stopping of artworks.

-This looks awesome: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice at the MFA in Boston. Who doesn't love a good Renaissance rivalry?

-The slightly space-age sounding Cezanne and Beyond as well as Henri Matisse and Modern Art on the French Riviera at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

-The early works of Guercino at the Istituto Italiana di Cultura right here on the Upper East Side.

-At the Frick Collection, Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum.

-At the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Wall Stories: Children's Wallpaper and Books.

-And finally, at the Museum of the City of New York, Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity.

Art Links

-A new show at the Guggenheim, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, deals with American artists' dialogue with Asian aesthetics. The show is on now through April 19th.

-The YSL sale at Christie's this week performed up to expectations, and just might be the thing to save the art world from the scary, scary recession.

-An interesting new exhibition about Nazi propaganda, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, is opening at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The review of the show in the New York Times is a great introduction to the show, which will be on view through 2011.

-Not even the Met is impervious to the recession, announcing today the closure of 15 of its satellite shops. The Met will also institute a hiring freeze and start looking into the possibility of a "head-count reduction."

-An interesting look into the financial side of the art world in this article about Art Capital, in today's NYT.

-Iraq's refurbished National Museum re-opens with a fresh coat of paint, though with many of its treasures still lost to the looting that occurred with 2003's American invasion.

Medieval art à la carte: Digital Gutenberg Bible

More manuscript-related news from the Morgan:

The Morgan announced today that it will take steps to create a digital version of one of its three Gutenberg Bibles. The Gutenberg Bible's 1,026 pages will be a welcome addition to the Morgan's already impressive collection of completely digitized manuscripts, available for free via their library search engine.

I really have to applaud the Morgan's efforts at digitization of their collections. Not only is the collection of manuscripts an invaluable resource, but taking steps to digitize the manuscripts and make them available online in their entirety shows the people at the Morgan really get it. There's nothing like seeing a several-hundred-year-old manuscript in person, but this helps make manuscripts easily available to a much wider audience. Let's hope other libraries follow their lead!

For those of you who are interested, La Bibliothèque nationale de France also has digital copies of many of their manuscripts, but if you don't speak French, their online catalog, Mandragore, is a bit hard to navigate.

More information on the digitization of the Gutenberg Bible from the NY Times.

Medieval art à la carte: "Protecting the Word"

Medieval art à la carte is a column of sorts I occasionally write for my dear friend Jenn's medieval blog Per Omnia Saecula. They're re-posted here in case you're interested!

Today's exhibit focus is on the Morgan Library in New York, and their show "Protecting the Word: Bookbindings of the Morgan," on now through March 29th. Though the show includes the Morgan's entire collection of bookbindings, including nineteenth and twentieth century examples as well as an English Restoration-era Roger Bartlett mosaic binding, the real superstars are the medieval jeweled covers of the Lindau Gospels.

According to the Morgan's website, the Lindau Gospels were acquired in 1901, and are today one of the most famous examples of Carolingian manuscripts in the world. The inside of the manuscript is gorgeous, decorated in brilliant jewel tones and gold-leafed letters (almost all of the Morgan's manuscripts are digitized on their website, you can go page through it if you'd like!).

The covers, though, are the showstoppers. It is unknown if the covers were intended specifically for the Lindau Gospel manuscript, and it is thought that the lower cover is somewhat earlier and from a different workshop than the upper cover. The use of champlevé enamel technique and more delicate, insular-style knotwork seem to indicate a different style and different region than the upper cover, though still a quite spectacular display of technique.

The upper cover is attributed to the court school of Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne, and who notably and actively tried to cultivate his grandfather's authority through artistic means. Charles the Bald is known for having used such forms as the equestrian statue, Roman and classical spolia, and richly detailed metalwork to reference both classical power and the esteem of Charlemagne's reign. This cover is an especially striking example of the skill of Carolingian metalworkers, whose repouseé work was unparalleled in the 9th century medieval world. It is encrusted with semiprecious stones and features a Crucifixion scene with several mourners, all excuted in gold repouseé.

The Lindau Gospels and their covers are part of the Morgan's permanent collection and are usually on display somewhere in the library, but if you're in or near New York, this show is a must-see. (more information on the Morgan's website, here)