The Joslyn

Six busy months went by in a flash of teaching, painting, arts festivals and so on. And no museum visits.

But a month or so ago I had business in Omaha and time enough after its conclusion to visit the Joslyn Art Museum, set on a hill not far from downtown Omaha. The museum opened in the 1930s, a gift to the city from Sarah Joslyn in memory of her husband George, who had been the wealthiest man in Nebraska through a number of business interests, particularly what was known as pre-printed news--basically news features provided to small town newspapers with limited reportorial resources. The museum was originally going to be a concert hall, and does include a large auditorium, but galleries were included to house two Omaha art collections, Art Institute of Omaha and Friends of Art. Other donations and major purchases followed and make up the current collection.

The building itself is a beautiful example of Art Deco architecture, with soaring spaces and a lot of

Joslyn Entrance (photo: Eric Gunther)

light. The galleries containing the majority of works I was interested in seeing--European painting mostly--are to the left of the entryway. Time being limited I spent more time there than in the remainder. The collection has works by a number of well-known artists, including Rembrandt, El Greco, Veronese, Bouguereau, Monet, and Renoir. They also have American works from Eakins, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Thomas Hart Benton, and Jackson Pollock. It's certainly an impressive (and not inclusive) list of artists that the museum owns. Although small, the Joslyn is first-class, especially for a regional institution. It's well worth the visit if you happen to be in Omaha.

In no particular order, here are a few of my favorites from the collections.

Rembrandt von Rijn, "Dirk van Os," ca 1658

One painting that I definitely wanted to see was the portrait "Dirk van Os," ca 1658, by Rembrandt. The museum had acquired it as a Rembrandt work in the 1940s only to see it deattributed to the School of Rembrandt, which dramatically reduced interest. It went to storage, where it remained. But a few years ago after restoration and removal of ancient varnish it has been declared by Rembrandt after all. In keeping with the wealth and prominence of the sitter, the painting itself is rather large. When I saw it the frame was rather ornate, with faded gilding, but the painting has been recently reframed in the Dutch 17th century manner with a beautiful restrained result. In this late masterpiece, Rembrandt shows the viewer his mastery of every phase of portraiture, from skin tones to composition. To my eyes some of the painting has either been damaged or not so well painted, particularly the hands. But it's entirely possible that what I saw was restored damage. Certainly the features and expression are entirely believeable as being by the master's hand, as are the clothing and cane. The face has that inner glow that so many of his late works possess, which also convinced me that this is a genuine Rembrandt.

Another wonderful painting that I found was "Giorgio Cornaro with a Falcon" by Tiziano Vecelli

Titian, "Giorgio Cornaro with a Falcon," 1537

(Titian), painted in 1537. The great Venetian was a master of portraiture as well as figurative or historical works, landscapes and more. I hadn't known there was an example of his work in the Joslyn, but stumbled onto it, to my real delight. Titian's long career and unmatched mastery made him influential well beyond his own lifetime. Later artists--Rembrandt, Velazquez, many more--were clearly schooled in his works. Like many artists, his work began with a somewhat tight style, highly polished in multiple glazed layers and featuring beautiful colors. His reds in particular gained enormous admiration. But like so many others his late years featured softer edges and more muted color. This work, dating from his middle age, was recently restored at the Getty Foundation and shows Titian's beautiful skin tones and superb draftsmanship. According to the museum, this portrait was commissioned on Cornaro's reaching his majority and election to the Great Council of Venice. He was apparently an avid falconer. If there had been more time, I would have loved to spend more time studying this one closely, and I'll come back again for that, no doubt.

Plaster version of "The Little Dancer"

Another surprise was finding yet another "Little Dancer" sculpture. There seems to be hardly a museum in the world that doesn't own one of these. Yet the odd thing about the bronzes out there is that they weren't made in Degas' lifetime. The original was tinted wax, more closely resembling flesh, and of course the little dancer wasn't the prettiest of girls, unlike the more classically beautiful girls and women in traditional sculpture of the day. The bronzes were indeed copied from the original wax sculpture you can say they were by Edgar Degas, I suppose. This one is plaster, but looks identical to the bronzes and the museums says it was possibly a prototype for those. The bronzes were cast under the authority of the estate, but to be more clear maybe they ought to be designated as being "from a cast of the original," perhaps.

William Bouguereau, "Le Printemps," 1886

Although for some William Bouguereau is too academic and too polished--rather like classical marble sculpture--but I enjoy seeing his work. The Joslyn has a lovely work by the great French painter entitled "Le Printemps" which displays all of the features that make Bouguereau's work what it always is: a beautiful nude. One of this painter's great skills was the rendering of flesh tones, and that mastery is clearly evident in this allegorical painting depicting springtime as a beautiful young woman surrounded by cupids and displayed in an attractive landscape. This is a fairly big painting, nearly life size, which provides the viewer with an opportunity to see Bouguereau's mastery of anatomy and drawing. Each of the cupids is in a completely different position that each place very different demands on the artist. The effect seems clearly intentional to me--perhaps he was showing off a bit. One of the great things about Bouguereau is how much he gives the viewer to see, which is why I enjoy his work. Nonetheless, he has been scorned by many as too formal and even too cold, while other people have resented the nudity. But artists know talent when they see it. Claude Monet, who was a contemporary was once asked who was France's greatest painter and he answered promptly, "William Bouguereau."

The collection also rich in American painters, including Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Hart Benton, Albert Bierstadt, Robert Henri, and Grant Wood. We'll conclude this post with a few Americans.

One group of American painters I've particularly liked are the Ashcan School, an unorganized group of painters who showed rough scenes of eveyday life in New York about a century ago. Unlike the more elevated subject matter of academic art, and even impressionism, Ashcan art showed dingy streets and the sooty reality of their world. They mostly knew one another but weren't actually a formal movement or a school in reality. Among them were Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, George Bellows, and George Luks. Robert Henri is well known for his teaching and books, but Sloan and Bellows in particular were exemplars of the style. Bellows is also well known for his boxing images like "Stag at Sharkey's" a wonderful painting in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Joslyn has a fine city sunset by John Sloan that I had never seen before. It is a prime example of the Ashcan style, entitled alternatively Sunset, West Twenty-third Street (23rd Street, Roofs, Sunset), dated 1906.

John Sloan, "Sunset, West Twenty-third Street," 1906

Although this one isn't large, it is arresting with New York buildings silhoutted against a vivid sky of orange-red clouds. I was particularly captured by the confident brushy color of the clouds. Sloan's strokes are broad, confident, and bold and the colors are still fairly bright after more than a century. It's a bit strange to think that this sort of scene was new and pretty unknown to most people in America in those days. Everyone was used to rural landscapes, and pastoral views. These kinds of city scenes with their angular looks and grubby ambience were probably jarring to many in those days. 

Grant Wood, "Stone City, Iowa," 1930

It seems only fitting to end this post with an Iowa painter. The Joslyn owns "Stone City Iowa"  painted in 1930 by Grant Wood. Wood's "American Gothic" was painted that same year and is perhaps the most famous and most parodied work by an American. To me and to most others, Wood has a style that is completely his own and completely in tune with the 1930s and with Art Deco: graceful stylized shapes, simplified but beautiful compound and repetitive curves, and meticulous composition. In this painting he shows all of those and more. We see Stone City down in the valley on the other side of the river, as a few buildings and a giant empty quarry beyond. The red buildings at the bottom of the hill draw the eye to the bright blue of the river and to the lighter yellow uphill on the other side. The perspective draws the eye out into a distant horizon. That treatment alone shows a subtle and telling mind at work. We're in the dark half of the landscape, looking down at a town gone bust. According to the museum's account Wood later made it the site of a summer artist colony. Stone City was not far from Anamosa Iowa, Wood's hometown.

This was my first visit to the Joslyn Art Museum but it definitely won't be the last. If you're in Omaha you should take the time to see the collection. They have much more there than the works mentioned above. There is a Jackson Pollock, donated by Peggy Guggenheim, and there are more contemporary works, even two quite attractive giant blown glass works by Dale Chihuly, the famous American glassmaker whose factory produces works he designs. Without question there will be a next time and more time.

The Des Moines Art Center

There are quite a few regional and city museums that deserve mention, and the Des Moines Art Center is definitely one. The Art Center is not only a wonderful small museum, it's also a hub of education and cultural offerings for the city. Furthermore, the buildings themselves comprise a sort of 20th century architectural history. The first was designed by Eliel Saarinen, the next addition by I.M. Pei, and the final by Richard Meier. Each is distinctive and aesthetically striking, and the entire assemblage is situated in a verdant city park. Moreover, the Art Center also owns the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park collection in downtown Des Moines, the subject of another post, perhaps, some day.

According to the Art Center website the Art Center has it's roots in the Des Moines Fine Arts Association, an organization that began with quarters in the old downtown Des Moines Library in 1916. The separate museum was the result of a bequest from James D. Edmundson in 1933. Edmundson left over half a million dollars in trust to be held for 10 years so that the assets might recover from the Depression. In 1943, the bequest had gained considerable value and Des Moines accordingly developed a modern museum of art.

Saarinen Wing, Main Entrance (photo: Rich Sanders)

The Saarinen wing was first section of the building completed in 1948, the Pei wing in 1968 and the Meier wing in 1985.

Pei Courtyard (photo: Rich Sanders)

Meier Wing from Northwest (photo: Paul Crosby)

There is quite a lot more to the Des Moines Art Center than architecture, though. The museum, while small by big city standards, has a formidable collection of contemporary paintings and sculpture. There are masterworks by George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Francis Bacon, John Currin to name a few. Sculpture by artists as diverse as Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, George Segal, and Robert Arneson (again, to name only a few) is a wonderful feature as well. And we haven't discussed the sculpture park downtown at all.
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Here are a few of my personal favorites in the main collection.

John Singer Sargent: "Portraits de M.E.P et de Mlle L. P.," 1881

This double portrait of the Pailleron children by John Singer Sargent is perhaps my favorite piece in the entire museum. Although I've often said that if you have to explain a painting the artist failed, the story behind this work enhances it for me. According to several sources, the little girl, whose name was Marie-Louise, wrote as an adult about the process of the portrait. Perhaps she exaggerated, or not, but she claimed to have endured more than eighty sittings as well as considerable arguments with Sargent about clothes, hair, and other things. She and Sargent didn't like one another much as a consequence of the collision of two strong personalities. When it was finished, again according to her, the artist and children were so joyful they jumped up, ran around the studio giggling and throwing things out the windows. Even a cursory look at the little girl gives us a real view into her mood and personality. The boy (Edouard) simply looks bored.

Edward Hopper: "Automat," 1927

Another favorite is "Automat," by Edward Hopper. This painting has been enormously popular over the decades since it's creation. The Art Center has loaned it countless times to other institutions, and it's been on the cover of quite a few magazines too.
Again, especially for younger people, a bit of explanation and analysis may be useful. The Automat chain were cafeteria-like restaurants that featured no waiters and generally no waiting for food. A bank of small windowed doors displayed various items from slices of pie to soup and entree items. So in a sense the Automat was an isolating yet urban experience back then. The woman here is well-dressed but alone. She's only taken off one glove (it's obviously winter), and she's chosen a seat near the heater but in the window. The narrative here, as in much of Hopper's work, is vague and prompts a lot of questions. Is she waiting for someone? Is she lonely? Why is she alone at all? For me this picture is endlessly engaging as I try to figure it out and of course, never will. The other thing I enjoy about this work is the composition, particularly the implication of deep space Hopper gives us by showing the reflection of more than half a dozen ceiling lamps. Hopper did that kind of spatial sleight of hand in quite a number of his works. For me, the painting evokes loneliness and isolation and a curious sort of branching, invented narrative. Is she having a quick cup of coffee before facing something (or someone)? Is she alone in life, or only temporarily? Is she waiting for someone? The best art, for me, makes me wonder.

Robert Arneson: "Klown," 1978, ceramic sculpture

Another favorite of mine in the Art Center collection is a piece named "Klown," by Robert Arneson. Arneson was a long-time art teacher at several levels, all the while developing his own oeuvre of ceramic pieces that qualify as sculpture. In many, including this one, the features are a self-portrait. His work is notable for its ironic humor as well as more serious content. In Klown he may be satirizing himself as ridiculous since he wasn't taken seriously as an artist, at least in the beginning. After all, ceramics was and is widely seen as a craft, its practitioners makers of items for use. Nonetheless, you can see Arneson’s skills clearly in this piece. There are multiple, carefully-planned glazes, significant representational skill, considerable intellectual insight, and a puckish sense of the ridiculous on clear display. I love seeing this one every time. 

Francis Bacon: "Study After Velazquez' Pope Innocent X", 1953

This painting, by the famous British artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992), is formally titled "Study after Velazquez' Portrait of Pope Innocent X," but most people call this one and others in the series The Screaming Pope. This is oil on raw linen, done in Bacon's slashing and spare style. This particular work is very well-known, probably the most famous of the lot, and even has it's own Wikipedia page. This is a fairly large work, probably nearly six feet in height, as are a number of very similar iterations in widely scattered places. Bacon obsessed for years, according to many, over the Velazquez portrait of Pope Innocent X, which was said to be so lifelike that the subject himself couldn't stand to see it. Bacon apparently never did, but instead worked from photographs of the other very famous work. The Velazquez painting is in Rome, in the collection of the Pamphilij family but open to public view. In the meantime, I'm happy Des Moines has the Screaming Pope. There are any number of interesting sites and articles to be found, but the Phaidon article on Bacon's screaming popes is worth a look.

Now for a piece I've tried to like (likewise the artist's other work) without success. The picture is

Philip Guston: "Friend--to MF," 1978

"Friend--to MF" by Philip Guston (1913-1980), painted in 1978. It's said to be a portrait of Morton Feldman, a friend of Guston. The Art Center entry about this piece says the oversize ear is a nod to Feldman's career as a composer. This piece is huge at something like five and half feet tall by over seven feet long. And it's just awful. Although Feldman was said to be a big man and did smoke, this image obviously isn't a likeness. Nor is it, strictly representational, even. Guston was an Abstract Expressionist who went into more representational work in late years. But he had no hand for it, in my opinion, if this work is any indication. Certainly the only reaction I've been able to muster when I see it is bewilderment. It doesn't evoke any emotional response, nor does it have anything in the way of technical elan to recommend it. Instead it is clumsy, uncertain, and a vast failure for me anyway. Guston, of course, was respected and collected artist of the last century, considered a true master by many. 

George Bellows: "Aunt Fanny," oil on canvas, 1920

Finally, I need to mention George Bellows' tender portrait of his aunt. Many are more familiar with his boxing pictures, but Bellows painted portraits, cityscapes, and landscapes too. Among his masculine and brawny works, this portrait "Aunt Fanny," seems a bit out of character. Bellows was clearly a great painter, though, whatever the motif, and this portrait is a great example. In the sitter's face, expression, and hands, he rivals Hals, in my opinion. It is also a truly insightful rendering of old age, and simply a wondeful painting. 

The museum, though small, is a real gem. The Art Center has a wide-ranging collection of  other, mostly 20th century artists (including Iowa native Grant Wood), as well as the usual suspects in contemporary art museums large and small: Picasso, Oldenburg, Rothko, Motherwell, Roy Lichtenstein, and George Segal among others. The majority of the works held by the Art Center are top-notch, but of course there is the occasional clinker and oddball. For example, the museum has a Goya and a rather drab Monet, two rather unusual paintings to find among the modernists and contemporaries.The museum has an extensive collection of prints, many of which are on display from time to time, as well as a number of sculptures at the museum itself. (Also in the sculpture park downtown, which will have to be the subject of another post some day.) And as is the case in most museums, the Art Center often hosts interesting traveling exhibitions or interesting museum-curated shows. 

If you're in central Iowa and have a couple of hours, the Des Moines Art Center is a great way to spend them. And it's free.

The Dali

Not long ago we traveled to the Tampa area to visit family and I had the chance to see the Salvador Dali Museum again. The Dali, as it is now named, came to St. Petersburg as the gift of a couple who collected the artists work for decades, amassing the largest collection of his work outside Spain.

The Dali, St. Petersburg, Florida

The collection came to Florida in 1982, the gift of Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, who had been collecting the artist's works since the 1940s. The museum was originally opened by the Morses in Beechwood, Ohio, but within a decade they decided to move the collection to larger space. After searching, they found a disused marine warehouse in St. Petersburg, on the waterfront. Over the years I had visited that museum building, several times, often wondering that the paintings and other works were being held on the ground floor, literally only a few feet above the Tampa Bay water level.
Happily, the new building, which opened in 2011 houses the collection well above any potential flood surge.

The more secure museum opened in early 2011 and cost upwards of $30 million. Unlike the old structure, which I remember as a big, green box, this structure features a large glass skylight and wall of thick glass. The entryway is 75 feet tall and encompasses a spiral staircase of concrete that seems to reach for the sky from the inside. The concrete walls also very thick, to resist hurricane-force winds. Besides being more secure, this iteration of the museum is larger and allows both exhibitions of various works by Salvador Dali but also traveling exhibitions.

The permanent collection of the museum comprises hundred of works on paper--drawings, etching, etc.--as well as about a hundred original paintings by Dali. Perhaps his most famous work, which introduced his melting watches, is"The Persistence of Memory" (1931) which alas is not in this collection but in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The museum does own a small later work that's an echo of it titled "The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory," painted a couple decades later. This little painting contains not only his signature watches but an arrangement of solids hovering over a plain very like that in the earlier painting. But now there are bullets, dead fish, and fragmentation of some of the objects, Dali's reaction to the reality of the atomic bomb, world war, and its inhumanity.

"The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory," 1954

Several of the works in The Dali do echo that very famous work. Further, several of the painter's enormous later works that were influenced (according to Dali) by mathematics and nuclear physics are here. These are heroic in size--the figures themselves lifesize or bigger. His "Hallucinogenic Toreador" and "Portrait of My Dead Brother" are two of my particular favorites.

Although he left the surrealist group and movement around the time of World War II, he continued to paint images with surreal content, like "Nature morte vivante,"or Still Life Moving Fast, a deliciously paradoxical title. Everything in the painting seems to have been thrown into Brownian motion, water flying upward out of a floating or falling decanter, a butcher knife floating above the table, fruit flying in from the uppe right corner. And importantly, Dali's technical virtuosity is on  luminous display.

"Nature mort vivante (Still Life Moving Fast)" 1956

It was his flawless draftsmanship and technical chops that got Dali noticed in the first place, and his skills only improved with age. One of Dali's favorite things was

"The Hallucinogenic Toreador" 1970

painting hidden images and puzzles, so his "Hallucinogenic Toreador" (which is huge at about 13x10 feet) at first seems something of a mish-mash of various symbols and images that Dali painted for much of his career. There are two recognizable Venus de Milo images and at least four distorted echoing figures, plus flies, his wife Gala, and a dying bull. But it takes a bit of time until you actually see the toreador, who nose is formed by the left breast of the central Venus, his right eye is suggested by her head, and his tie forms her green drape. There is a squadron of flies over the venus figures in a kind of arcd of light that forms the bullfighter's hat. And so on. This one is one of my favorites. Like many of his works, you might think that this man was at worst insane and a best a provocateur. Actually though, Dali was both.

Although primarily a painter, Dali did many other artistic works, including designing stage sets, furniture (the Mae West sofa), display windows in a New York department store, and even a surrealist telephone with the handset replaced by a lobster. He experimented with holography, and film as well. An early collaboration with Luis Bunuel resulted in the famous surrealist film "Un Chien Andalou," which opens with a woman's eyeball being sliced by a razor. The Dali holds a few of these items--the lobster phone, a hologram, and so on. But it's almost completely devoted to painting.

Dali began painting in youth, and as so many was a realist painter of figures, landscapes and the like. He was inspired by the works of Spanish masters like Velazquez but also by other past masters like Raphael and Vermeer. But although those influences persisted throughout his life, his subject matter became decidedly odd, and he joined the surrealist movement in 1929, and it was the surrealist works that drew attention, especially "The Persistence of Memory," mentioned above, which is probably his most famous work. He loved to paint double images, as in the painting of the bullfighter, throughout his career, too.

"The Slave Market With the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire" (1940)

One my favorite small double-image works is his "Slave Market With the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire," (1940). In this work, Dali has given us a group of figures in the center while to the left, Gala leans on a red velvet tablecloth, gazing at a sculpted bust of the French philosopher Voltaire. Although the photo in this post makes the bust of the philosopher obvious, it isn't so easily noticed in person. There is a couple dressed in old-fashioned clothing with large white collars who are in a slave market, and it's their figures that give the illusion of a sculpted bust. The head of the bust is formed by the arch in the ruined wall. The figures’ heads are his eye and the dark part of their clothes provides the shadows of the lower face. Dali wrote somewhere that he thought Voltaire was perhaps too rational--not an unusual thought in one so unusal as Dali! To him, rational thought enslaved the mind, making it ordinary. 

"Portrait of My Dead Brother," 1963

One of my other favorites is Dali's "Portrait of My Dead Brother," dating from the 1960s. Oddly (and similar to Vincent van Gogh), the painter was the second Salvador Dali. He was named for an older brother (born in 1901) who died less than a year before Dali himself was born in 1904. Both boys were named after their father. Dali was told about his older brother while still a child, and the event seems to have obsessed him. In the painting to the right, he has provided a portrait of a man in his twenties or thirties, the image formed by dots of dark and light cherries falling from the sky. Dali said that every day he "assassinated" the memory of his dead brother. This picture, like the other huge late works, is quite large at about 6'x6'.

In sum, The Dali is a wonderful, small museum, particularly if you're a fan of the great, talented, and maddeningly odd Salvador Dali. Since it's relatively small, you can easily set aside an afternoon to spend at the museum if you visit St. Petersburg. It's well worth your time.

On the left, Dali’s wife Gala leans on a red velvet tablecloth, gazing at a sculpted bust of the French philosopher Voltaire. Before her very eyes (and ours), Voltaire’s face dissolves into a group of figures. Looking closely, one can see a couple dressed in old-fashioned clothing with large white collars. They are merchants standing in a slave market, and their figures create the illusion of a sculpture of Voltaire’s head and shoulders.
The outline of Voltaire’s head is formed by the arch-like opening in the ruined wall. The merchants’ heads form his eyes; their white collars form his upper cheeks and nose; the dark part of their clothing forms the shadows cast by his nose and cheeks; and the white ruffled sleeves of the figure on the right form Voltaire’s chin.
According to Dali, “Voltaire possessed a peculiar kind of thought that was the most refined, most rational, most sterile, and misguided not only in France but in the entire world.” He felt that Voltaire’s philosophy of rational thought enslaved the mind to the ordinary and stripped life of its mysteries.
- See more at: http://thedali.org/exhibit/slave-market-disappearing-bust-voltaire/#sthash.lW1lxarm.dpuf

Founded with the works collected by Reynolds and Eleanor Morse - See more at: http://thedali.org/about-the-museum/history/#sthash.EdgtR4QE.dpuf

Founded with the works collected by Reynolds and Eleanor Morse - See more at: http://thedali.org/about-the-museum/history/#sthash.EdgtR4QE.dpuf

Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

During a trip to eastern Europe in 2013, I had the opportunity to visit the famous Viennese Kunsthistoriches Museum (KHM). And what a visit it was. The museum is on the Ringstrasse, a grand encirclement of the center of Vienna that has been a feature since the 19th century.

This museum was founded on the Ringstrasse in the late 1860s. The Ringstrasse replaced the old city walls of Vienna, demolished by order of the Emperor, and replaced with grand and stately government and private buildings, spacious park-like grounds, wide sidewalks and the boulevard itself, as it does today. I only had a single afternoon while we were in the city on vacation, but I took myself to the Kunsthistoriches Museum alone, knowing very little about it Most times, when visiting a city I've at least read a bit about it or have a small store of information about the city and its museums but I blush to admit that I arrived there with only a rudimentary knowledge of the KHM. It faces the Natural History Museum, which has an identical facade, and was intended to house the Habsburg art collection, accumulated over the centuries of the dynasty.

The entry level isn't so grand as say, the Metropolitan or the Louvre, but once inside the building all I could say was "Wow." The central staircase takes you up to the main galleries, but the columns, the ceilings, and a riot of marble and color were almost overwhelming. You ascend the central staircase, thence up one or the other flanking stairs to the galleries. Also at that level is the cafe, about which more later on.

View on the landing Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The landing itself is dominated by a sculpture of Theseus Slaying the Centaur, by Canova, the 18th century neoclassicist. It's an enormous piece, heroic in both scale and subject, executed beautifully and smoothly in white marble.

Antonio Canova, "Theseus Slaying the Centaur" 1819

At any rate, I hadn't much time for Theseus, since my time was relatively limited and I was mostly interested in whatever northern European masterworks were likely to be in the collection. To say I was rewarded is something of an understatement. The museum collection includes works by van Eyck, Durer, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Breughel, and Caravaggio, to name only ones that I can remember without my journal. The Habsburg Dynasty held sway over much of Europe in its day, after all.

I climbed the imposing stairs and in gallery after gallery, found familiar paintings here and there, and more importantly I had the chance to see pieces that were completely new to me. There are a lot of works by Rubens plus the other artists mentioned above. In particular "The Fur," from the 1630s, a portrait of his second wife Helene Fourment emerging from the bath is a picture I've liked for years but hadn't known was in Vienna. This is a very personal work by Rubens and displays his enormous talent and his faultless eye. Unlike a lot of his huge studio works (not my cup of tea, mostly), this is one that I truly enjoy. And I had no idea it was in this museum.

"The Fut" 1638 by Peter Paul Rubens

Also in the collection is "The Tower of Babel" of about 1560 by Pieter Breughel the Elder. This is another that I've known about seemingly my whole life. It has been published many many times by everybody from news organizations to religious books. It's such a sweeping and fanciful vision of the Biblical story that I've simply always liked to examine it minutely. And again, I had no idea of its whereabouts until this museum visit. The KHM has a delightful collection of Netherlandish, Flemish and other Northern European painters. There are seveeral other Breughels including one of hunters in snow that's a real delight.

Pieter Breughel the Elder "Tower of Babel," ca 1560

On the Flemish side are other masterworks by Rubens as well as van Dyck and Jordaens. One particularly interesting exhibit showed a couple of Rubens' big studio canvases alongside the small, signature sketch done by Rubens' hand to guide the completion of the enormous finished piece by his studio assistants. While many truly enjoy those works by Rubens and his assistants, I'm always much more attracted to those that come from his hand alone.

Perhaps the most important work I saw (and didn't expect) was "The Art of Painting," by Johannes Vermeer. As was the case with other works in this delectable museum, I have seen the image many times--a painter and his model, the painter seen from behind in a sumptuous studio--but didn't know that it has been in the KHM since the end of World War II.

Johannes Vermeer, "The Art of Painting," 1665-1668

Unlike quite a lot of other European art, "The Art of Painting" was not stolen but actually purchased by Hitler himself in 1940. It was recovered after the war by the U.S. Army and repatriated to Austria, where it had been in the collection of nobles since the 18th century before being sold to the German Fuhrer,. This particular painting by Vermeer is one of his finest works (also the largest) and apparently one that he kept in his studio throughout his life. It was sold when Vermeer's estate was liquidated. Some time in the 17th or 18th century a fake signature of Pieter de Hooch was added (he was famous then and almost no one had heard of Vermeer), but it was this painting that sparked reassessment and rediscovery of Vermeer and his work. It was spotted by a German expert in Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century for a Vermeer. A decade or two ago it was found to be in bad shape but has since been restored brilliantly. It is a marvel, like so much of Vermeer's oeuvre, especially in his treatment of the light flooding in from the upper left windows.The painter has just begun his work on a mid-value gray support. He is blocking in colors and seems to have drawn his image onto the support with something white (chalk?). Maybe he's emulating his own technique? In any event, the treatment of light and the dazzle of highlights make this a real favorite of mine. And believe it or not, the museum was so quiet, so uncrowded, that I had it and the entire gallery to myself for long delightful minutes at a time.

Despite being large, imposing, and full of masterworks, the KHM seemed nearly empty during the several hours I spent there. As I mentioned above, the European galleries were quiet and uncrowded. Unlike, say the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which are consistently mobbed, the KHM provided the opportunity to contemplate the work without being shoved, bumped, included in twenty selfies, or simply moved along by the bustling. It brought back fond memories of the early seventies and eighties.

 After spending a great deal of time in the Northern European section, and taking any number of execrable photographs, my feet were tired and my eyes and mind overworked. At that point I took myself to the cafe for a bit of refreshment. Unlike cafes in some metropolitan museums, particularly in the United States, which have all of the charm of a factory lunchroom, the cafe at the KHM is frankly elegant. It resides below the dome in an expansive area in a daylight-flooded space surrounded by beautifully executed decorations and fine marble. Exceptionally civilized.

Cafe at the KHM

To my surprise, the KHM also has a substantial holding of works by one of my favorite painters, Diego Velazquez. In fact, there is a room containing perhaps ten or so. At first I wondered why the works of a Spanish master are in Vienna, but the answer is obvious once you remember that the monarchy which was served by Velazquez was a branch of the Habsburgs, whose collection is the foundation of the KHM. In fact, these were depictions of various members of the royal family of Felipe IV, the monarch served by the Spanish master. My favorite of the group is the "Infanta Margarita Teresa in Blue Gown" of 1659. The bravura brushwork that characterizes Velazquez' best work is most evident in his treatment of the sumptuous gown worn by the Spanish princess. This single work ranks, in my opinion anyway, with the very best from his brush.

Diego Velazquez, "Infanta in a Blue Gown," 1659

I could write considerably more about this great museum, but time prevents that. Instead, let me suggest that you visit the museum yourself. At least take an Internet stroll through the online collection. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is well worth your time.

Conservation of The Art of Painting
Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

The New Whitney

Although I haven't posted a museum visit for quite some time, I'd be remiss by not writing something about the newest major museum building in New York City, the Whitney, since I had a chance to visit in December of last year. The new Whitney Museum building opened last spring in lower Manhattan after decades on Madison Avenue. In years past I had visited the former building at E. 75th and Madison, a brutalist edifice designed by the Hungarian-born architect Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). Although many like or even admire the building, it has never been a favorite of mine, nor has most of the museum's collection, nor for that matter it's general direction as a museum of "American art," however that may be defined. The collection has always seemed skewed toward modernism, especially newer trends in abstraction as well as installation and conceptual art. Although it's a topic for another blog, for me the direction of contemporary artistic output is unsatisfying.

Whitney Museum at 75th & Madison Avenue

Nevertheless, given that the new building has generated enormous publicity and because it's at the end of that delightful new park, the Highline, we decided to take a look. Renzo Piano is mostly a favorite architect, as well. It was a really lucky decision because we visited on an unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon.

To get to the Whitney, now in lower Manhattan on Gansevoort Street near the Hudson River, we took the A train south to 14th Street then walked west and ascended to the Highline Park and thence to the new building. This approach to the structure gave us a great view of the jumble of older buildings surrounding it plus other new ones that have begun to dot the old meatpacking district. There are still packers in the area, one of which sets cheek-by-jowl next to the museum itself. It's hard to appreciate the structure of the new Whitney without a few photos, so here are a couple.

The Whitney from Highline Park (see the meatpacker's truck, R?)

Looking south from Highline Park you can see the Whitney building with it's step-wise terraces arrayed on the east side. These terraces open from the interior galleries where enormous windows welcome the view of lower Manhattan into the museum. The terraces serve as sculpture courts and also provide visitors photo opportunities galore (mandatory in museums these days, it seems). On the west side, windows provide vistas of the Hudson River and New Jersey.

West side of the new Whitney building

The building is nine stories tall, glowing white and grey among its older red and buff brethren. From the west many have noted how it resembles the superstructure of a ship, which is fitting given that it overlooks the piers lining the Hudson. Besides it's new and open look, compared with the severely enclosed Breuer building, the new Whitney is larger and so allows more of the permanent collection to be displayed. One of the things I disliked about the old Whitney was the feeling of crowding that seemed inevitable.

The new structure designed by Renzo Piano, the famous Italian, has nine stories and 20,000 square feet, and sports one space on Floor Five that goes clean through, east to west, without columns, making it the single largest unobstructed space in the city. The entire Whitney building is spacious and airy, more like a European airport terminal than an art museum, especially on the ground floor. The galleries are all on higher floors. When you look at the building, only a block or so from the Hudson, and remember the flooding that Manhattan endured not so long ago, it's easy to see why it looks like it's on stilts. The most important contents are high above any future inundation.

No ponderous stairways to the promised land of art; no massive central assistance desk or massive neoclassical columns or arches to be found. All is modern, sleek, shiny or some shade of gray. There is a glass-walled restaurant on the east end and a gift shop--sporting a few pricey tchochke originals by Jeff Koons, among others--occupying the southwest corner of the lobby space but looking as if it could be broken down and moved at a moment's notice. Come to think of it, that's a bit of what the interior of the entire place is like, and I'm told it's intentional to provide as much flexibility as possible.

As for the current exhibition, we took the elevator to Floor Eight, where a retrospective of Archibald Motley was on display. Motley is known as part of the Harlem Renaissance, although he was actually a lifelong Chicagoan. Nonetheless, the exhibition of Motley's work, from his beginnings in classical oil painting through his years as a painter of the jazz age black experience was surprising, engaging, and thought-provoking. It was a pleasure to see the work and become acquainted with a very talented artist. Motley's work is well worth the time. He should be better known.

[Update: the painting below, "Gettin' Religion," and one of my favorites in this retrospective, has been acquired by the Whitney, according to the New York Times Jan 11, 2016 edition.]

Archibald Motley. "Gettin' Religion," 1948

At the time of our visit Floor Seven was devoted to the permanent collection. Clearly, this floor will probably be used to show a rotating sampler of the museum's collection. They did have several by Edward Hopper out, including "Early Sunday Morning" (a particular favorite of mine), "Seven A.M." which has always seemed singularly bleak to me, and "Railroad Sunset," dating from 1930 1948 and 1929 respectively. Also notable on this floor was the well-known "Dempsey and Firpo" by George Bellows, showing Jack Dempsey being knocked out of the boxing ring. Bellows was one of the Ashcan School of the early 20th century, and a particular favorite too. And to my surprise and delight there were also two works by Thomas Hart Benton, neither of which I'd seen before. The first was a scene from "Streetcar Named Desire," showing the principal setting and characters of the famous Tennessee Williams play/movie, including Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, among others. This one seems to predate the movie. The second Benton was "The Lord is My Shepherd," depicting an elderly couple at their kitchen table. Benton, in his own way, distorted figures and space rather like El Greco, at least so it has always seemed to me. In any event, both of these paintings were delightful to examine. Mixed in on Floor Seven was a whole lot of other, truly forgettable work punctuated here and there by memorable things. My favorite by Charles Demuth, an early 20th century painter, is his quasi-cubist imagining of a Pennsylvania grain elevator, "My Egypt," was on display. There was a lovely sculpted head by Elizabeth Catlett (1948), and an amusing painting by Paul Cadmus called "Floozies and Sailors," but for me much of the rest of the floor, and for that matter the museum itself is a blur and not very memorable. Alas.

Floor Six is devoted to the Thea Westrich Wagner and Ethan Wagner Collection. We saw it but I honestly don't remember much about individual pieces. The museum website has this to say: The current exhibition includes pieces ".....by, among many others, Diane Arbus, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and...will also include recent work by artists such as Liz Deschenes, Sam Lewitt..." More than 500 works comprise the gift that will enter the Whitney’s permanent collection. Perhaps there are others in the collection that are more memorable.

Floor Five is the huge unobstructed space mentioned above but in this iteration it's been configured to hold what the museum calls "the most comprehensive American retrospective to date" of Frank Stella's work. Stella began as a painter and often says that his three dimensional works are paintings, too. Much of his work leaves me utterly cold, particularly his early black paintings, but a few newer works speak volumes. "Eskimo Curlew,"

"Eskimo Curlew," 1976

a three-dimensional work that he calls a painting is one of the pieces that I enjoyed. It has French curve-like shapes contrasting over rectangular ones, each painted a different color. On the other hand, Stella's early works don't have much to say to me at all. And when someone has to explain to me why a piece is worthwhile or what it says, it has missed the mark in communicating, seems to me. His newer works are massive, sculptural, and often amazing to look at, but I've no clue what they're about, if anything, or what they are saying. Alas, they too don't speak much. We made short work of the retrospective and headed downstairs.
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This new incarnation of the Whitney Museum of American Art is more welcoming and more fun than the old building was. For one thing, Renzo Piano brings in considerably more light plus superlative glimpses of the surrounding city. In a very real way, this building is consonant with the current American culture. Most museums are enclosed, the world shut out in favor of the art on display, and the old Whitney always seemed like that to me. Here, the world and contemporary "American art" mingle, are part and parcel of the same world. The art isn't shut away from the world nor the world from the art. The new digs are also considerably more flexible and add to the museum experience if only because the increase in size makes it possible to put more on display. I like the airy new place much more than the old fortress.

By now we were famished but the museum restaurants on Floor Eight and on the ground floor were both full. We fled the museum and walked a few blocks north to the Chelsea Market, where we managed a sumptuous and rewarding lunch before hitting the subway back to our hotel. It was a successful and rewarding visit to a newly-interesting museum.

Here is a multimedia piece from the New York Times regarding the new Whitney:
The New Whitney