Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Art & Antiques

JUST AS THE “Italian primitives” (artists of the 14th and early 15th centuries) inspired the Pre-Raphaelites and the “primitive” (or tribal) art of Africa and Oceania inspired Picasso and other European modernists, “American primitives” (also known as “folk art”) had an important influence on the American avant-garde. In the 1920s and ’30s, American “naive” painters of the 17th–19th centuries, previously obscure to say the least, became the rage among collectors, curators, and artists. In 1931, the far-seeing curator Holger Cahill wrote that when he viewed a major collection of “American primitives,” he realized that American modernists had “inadvertently found in these creations a means to dignify their own use of simplified forms, arbitrary perspective, and unmixed color by suggesting that such methods were rooted in an earlier American tradition.” Whether…

Lone Wolfe JACK WOLFE preferred to stay outside the lines. Stylistically, though often associated with the Boston Expressionists, the painter melded a penchant for rich, penetrating color with elements of Cubism, Ab-Ex, and hard-edge abstraction. Socially, he strayed from the typical New York art world confines after his initial success within that milieu and instead forged his own path. The result was a significant, challenging body of work and the space—both mental and physical—to keep adding to it. CK Contemporary is now the exclusive representative of Wolfe’s estate. On October 16, the San Francisco-based gallery will open the first major retrospective of the artist’s work since his death in 2007. Gallery-goers and collectors will be treated to works like Arctic (1971), a diamondshaped acrylic on canvas that features passages of…

BIRDS, HISTORICAL costumes, portraiture, classical music, Aztec architecture—these were among the subjects that fascinated Scott and Stuart Gentling and that formed the subject matter of their paintings. Twin brothers born in 1942, the Gentlings spent their entire careers in Fort Worth, Texas, where they grew up, carving out an extraordinary fiefdom for themselves through their multiple identities as artists, collectors, and cultural promoters. While their paintings sold well, earning them the money they needed to indulge their often eccentric passions, they never acquired a national reputation. By their own choice, they remained regional and were satisfied to swim as big fish in a relatively small pond. Writing to the art dealer Gerald Peters in 1994, Stuart Gentling explained the brothers’ position: “We have avoided offers from New York galleries because…

WHEN HEAD of a Bear achieved a price of nearly nine million pounds at Christie’s Exceptional Sale in early July, it set a world auction record for a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. In doing so, it supplanted Horse and Rider, a circa-1480 silverpoint on prepared paper study that held the record for almost exactly 10 years (it sold at Christies on July 9, 2001 for £8,143,750, or $11.5 million). Head of a Bear is a rare bird; the masterful life study is one of only eight known drawings by Leonardo in private hands outside of the British Royal Collection and the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth. According to Stijn Alsteens, the international head of department, Old Master Drawings, at Christie’s, it might be one of the last works on paper…

In 1925, the French-American Roger Sudreau bought a piano. It was the Louis XV “Auto Pleyel” self-playing grand piano pictured here, a technically advanced instrument that runs on a pedal pump and electricity. In 1925, it was Pleyel’s most sophisticated mechanism, offering considerable personal control of dynamics and tempi. The piano is opulently decorated in Gesso Chinoiserie by the French artist Leo Huillard (it is signed, as well) in gorgeous hues of red, green, and gold. Without even playing one of the 65 musical scrolls it was sold with, the striking instrument commands attention. Sudreau paid 49,500 francs for the instrument. This was a considerable price, but nothing out of the ordinary for Sudreau—he and his brother Max inherited 13 million francs each from their father, Henri Sudreau, when they…

FROM SEPTEMBER 9 through October 14, Ippodo Gallery in New York will be featuring “Synthesis II,” an exhibition of works by the Japanese photographer Kenji Wakasugi. A sequel to the 2016 “Synthesis,” the artist’s first show at the gallery, this exhibition comprises two very different bodies of work—photographs of Japanese sliding-screen doors (fusuma) and a series of portraits of Madonna made in 1985, during her visit to Japan to promote her album Like a Virgin. The Madonna images, shot during a 45-minute session with the singer, are also being published by Ippodo in the limited-edition photobook ADORE. The fusuma images use manipulation techniques to substitute black-and-white images by Wakasugi for the classical compositions with which the sliding screens were painted. The resulting photographs portray the screens within their architectural settings,…

IN 1923, THE Worcester Art Museum held a special showing of Mrs. Freake and Baby Mary (circa 1674). The linear Elizabethanstyle portrait wasn’t by anyone well known. In fact, it wasn’t by anyone known at all—the painter, who is thought to have been active in the Boston area between 1670 and 1674, is anonymous. Still, the painting garnered a surprising amount of critical attention. Raymond Henniker-Heaton, an English art historian and curator at the Worcester museum, said the work wasn’t a “mere primitive effort.” Instead, he noted, “Our artist’s lack of training was an art gain, and resulted in the balance of his work leaning towards the esthetic rather than the technical.” The work was important, he said, “not because the artist was a painter by instinct, without academic technical…

The art of Genoa has been a well-kept secret. Many of the greatest works are in palazzi and villas, in the form of frescoes created for private enjoyment. Most of the scholarship about Genoese art has been carried out by local academics without worldwide reach, and there have been few exhibitions outside Genoa itself. So outsiders can’t exactly be blamed for failing to appreciate the fact that from around 1600 to 1750, this port city on Italy’s west coast was one of the creative powerhouses of the Italian Baroque, ranking with the far larger cities of Rome, Naples, and Bologna. Not since 1992 has there been a comprehensive museum exhibition dedicated to Genoese Baroque art, and in the U.S., never. However, American viewers are about to get an unprecedented opportunity…

WHEN ABY Warburg was 13 years old, he made a bargain with his brother Max. He offered his younger sibling the family bank if Max agreed to provide Aby with all the books he wanted. From Max’s 12-year-old perspective, it appeared to be the deal of a lifetime: In the late 19th century, M.M. Warburg & Co. was one of the richest private banking firms in Hamburg. But Max vastly underestimated Aby’s bibliomania. By the time Aby died in 1929, he had built one of the city’s foremost private libraries, comprising 60,000 rare volumes on subjects ranging from ancient astrology to Renaissance painting. Transported to England when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and bequeathed to the University of London, the library of the Warburg Institute remains a major…