Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Art & Antiques

SOME OF THE most vital work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art happens on its roof—and not just on its rooftop exhibition space. Michael Dominick, the institution’s senior associate buildings manager for infrastructure, explained in a 2019 blog post on the Met’s website that “it takes a five-person roof shop to maintain our thirteen-acre campus of ninety-nine roofs.” This team is constantly clearing gutters and drains, re-caulking skylights, and replacing broken 70-year-old corrugated skylight glass, among other duties, says Dominick. Maintaining the Met’s skylights is of vital importance, as the natural light that filters into the galleries dramatically affects the viewing experience. The skylights above the European Paintings galleries, a corrugated, wire-glass system built as early as 1939 and remodeled as late as 1952, has been maintained quite well. Nevertheless,…

The term “Op Art” was invented by a critic, not an artist, and the movement to which it was applied—if movement it was—came and went within a span of about five years in the mid- to late 1960s. But the work of Richard Anuszkiewicz, who was hailed as one of Op’s two greatest practitioners, lives on, a unique contribution to abstract art and to our understanding of the way color affects the human eye, mind, and spirit. Anuszkiewicz’s paintings and prints are instantly recognizable for their bold contrasts between complementary colors, their geometrically rigorous organization, and their intricate use of fine lines. To 21st-century eyes, they look as if they could have been made with computer software, but in fact they are hand-made, every inch of the way. Acrylic paint…

THE TERM “the New Woman” was coined in the late 19th century and during the early 20th came to describe an increasing number of women who broke out of traditional strictures and into roles dominated by men. Getting higher education, having careers, leading adventurous lives, dressing as they pleased, advocating for women’s rights, making art—these are some of the important ways in which the New Women expressed themselves and fulfilled their ambitions. As far as art is concerned, photography was perfect for the New Woman. Being a relatively new medium, it set up fewer barriers to entry than painting and sculpture, which were tightly controlled by men via the academies. Photographers were largely self-taught, and as long as one had the means to buy equipment, experimentation in this emerging art—which…

MAKING GLASS ART is usually a collaborative process, due to its technical demands, but the Covid-19 pandemic forced John Kiley to go it alone. The last time time he blew glass was in early March in the hot shop at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash., with his good friend and collaborative partner Dante Marioni. Kiley’s wife is an immunologist, and at the time, when the “novel coronavirus” was still novel, friends would ask, “What do you guys think is going to happen here?” “She said everything is about to change,” says Kiley. “Now here we are!” Left to his own devices in the studio, a lesser—or perhaps just less driven—artist might have decided to rest, or maybe contemplate creative directions to take when the lockdown was over. But…

THE PEABODY ESSEX Museum (PEM) in Salem, Mass., has a long history with the art of India. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Salem merchant ships sailed back and forth from India, and Salem merchant families amassed collections of India’s art and artifacts, which in due time were donated to the museum (then known as the Essex Institute). Much later, PEM’s holdings were significantly increased by a 2001 gift from Chester and Davida Herwitz, a couple from Worcester, Mass., who first visited India in 1961 and over the next four decades collected contemporary Indian art, in the process befriending many of the artists. The Herwitz collection is considered to be the most significant collection of Indian art outside India. Through October 1, PEM is featuring “South Asian Art,” an exhibition…

THE GERMAN-American painter Wolf Kahn knew Evening Encampment (1974) was one of his best works. When the landscape sold at Bonhams New York this past November, a letter from the artist that said so was included in the sale. Kahn’s assessment was reinforced by the market when Evening Encampment went for over $160,000—the world auction record for the late artist. Aaron Anderson, Bonhams’ American Art specialist, says, “Evening Encampment is a superb example of Kahn’s mastery of style and his ability to portray the atmospheric conditions of the landscape around him with vibrant intensity. We were saddened to learn of the artist’s passing earlier this year and were honored to have the opportunity to offer such a significant work by him. The sale results demonstrate that Kahn’s legacy thrives and…

The 1937 Bugatti Type 57S seen here is one of only 42 produced. It was ordered new from the prominent London dealership Jack Barclay by Robert Ropner, a member of a prominent British family known for its shipping line and participation in conservative politics. Ropner’s specifications made it the fastest car of its day; he had famed coachbuilders Corsica of London build a sleek, custom four-seater sports Grand Routier body around a potent 3.3-litre engine. The sweet ride was even nicknamed “Dulcie” in light of its British registration number “DUL 351.” The car’s second owner was Rodney Clarke, the founder of the post-war British Connaught Grand Prix racing team. The team’s garage in Send, Surrey, specialized in European sports-racing cars like Bugatti, and the 57S would have brought a Grand…

AFTER THE demise of the French Academies and long before the advent of today’s “Classical Realism,” ancient Greek and Roman art exerted an important influence on modernism. One need only think of Picasso’s Minotaurs and other reinterpretations of myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, de Chirico’s eerie Roman ruins, and Rodin’s muscular sculptures. In the period between the World Wars, ancient art had a particularly strong influence on a popularized version of modernism, Art Deco. The Yale professor Jay Hambidge claimed to have rediscovered the secrets of Classical proportion embodied in Greek vases, and his theory of Dynamic Symmetry proved very persuasive to American Deco designers, artists, and illustrators. During the 1920s it seemed as if the U.S. had entered a second Neoclassical era, embracing architecture, sculpture, and the graphic arts—only this…

PAUL CÉZANNE, in his own quiet way, sparked the revolution that is modern art. One fruit still life and rural landscape at a time, by simplifying form and compressing space he cleared the way for Cubism, which in turn led to pretty much everything that came afterward, whether figurative or abstract. But while he was both timeless and ahead of his time, Cézanne was also embedded in his own era and owed a great deal to his contemporaries and predecessors. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is currently presenting an exhibition, “Cézanne: In and Out of Time,” that explores precisely this idea, by pairing 12 Cézannes (five from the MFA’s collection and seven loaned from private collections) with eight works by artists from his time and before—Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro,…