Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Art & Antiques

FOR ITS third edition, the Chicago Antiques + Art + Design Show will bring 75 leading national and international dealers to the Windy City. Kicking off on May 16 with an opening night party hosted by The Woman’s Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and chaired by Bahamas-based interior designer Amanda Lindroth and landscape designer Fernando Wong, the fair opens to the public on May 17 and runs through May 19 at the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago. The show’s exhibitors will present an eclectic array of jewelry, antique furniture, and decorative and fine arts dating from the 17th through 20th centuries. One of the show’s many highlights comes from M.S. Rau Antiques of New Orleans: a Swiss Silver and Enamel Fuseé Singing Bird Box (circa 1860). Charles Bruguier, one of…

“Emily Abstracted,” a series by William T. Hillman, is on view at New York gallery Affirmation Arts through June 1. For this body of work, Hillman, who initially trained as a painter, leaves the canvas behind in favor of the camera. However, these long exposure photographs, which capture a dancer in midmotion, have a painterly quality. Hillman dressed the dancer in a variety of colored fabrics that mimic the bold, gestural strokes of a brush when photographed. The artist fabricated steel frames, in various shapes—squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles—serving as compositional elements and cues for the dancer’s movements. The resultant images flirt strongly with abstraction but remain grounded in their examination of the figure and its form and motion. In their suspension of time, they poetically capture the fleeting, illusory…

WHEN GILBERT Vicario arrived at the Phoenix Art Museum three years ago, one of the first things he did was walk through the institution’s galleries. Vicario, who was previously on staff at the Des Moines Art Center, had become the Selig Family chief curator at the Arizona museum and wanted to familiarize himself with the collection he would be working with. It was in the American galleries that he made a discovery. Hung between works by Georgia O’Keeffe and Florine Stettheimer was a painting by Agnes Pelton, an obscure American modernist painter who was completely unknown to him. “She immediately got my attention,” says Vicario. “I thought, ‘Wow, who is this person?’” Vicario’s meet-cute with the Pelton painting would become the first step in the long process of organizing “Agnes…

THE SAN DIEGO Museum of Art has a long tradition of collecting and championing the art of Spain. When it opened to the public in 1926, its founding trustees articulated a Hispanophile vision that harmonized both with San Diego’s position at the far Western edge of the former Spanish Empire in North America and with the lively interest in Spanish art among elite American collectors in the early 20th century. Monumental statues of Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán, three of the greatest masters of classic Spanish painting, greet visitors at the museum’s entrance, and the exterior decoration of the building is patterned after that of the University of Salamanca in Spain. The very first work of art to enter the museum’s collection, in 1925, was by a Spanish artist, Joaquín Sorolla,…

A spate of recent exhibitions and books has been shedding much-needed light on the work of women Surrealists, giving them the serious attention they have always deserved but rarely received in full measure. Obviously we are living in an era of record-straightening as far as women artists in general are concerned, but in the case of Surrealism this process of re-examination is particularly welcome. That’s mainly because the contribution of women to this school of art was so important, but it is also because Surrealist women worked all too often in the dark shadows cast by Surrealist men. To some extent, that overshadowing was due to the way in which the role of the feminine was understood within Surrealism. For many a male Surrealist, women were muses rather than creators,…

The sarpech, or turban ornament, like the gem-set and enameled one seen here, was a mark of distinction. Under the Mughal Empire, only the emperor and his inner circle were permitted to wear a royal turban ornament. During Emperor Akbar’s reign (1556–1605), royal ornaments took the form of a kalgi, a gold or jeweled stem that held a heron feather. Over time, a jeweled brooch largely replaced the feather but would mimic the plume’s characteristic droop. Known as a jigha, this sort of ornament was often punctuated, as with the present example, with a hanging pendant. By the 19th century, when the pictured sarpech was made, some turban ornaments were big enough to cover half of a turban. The ornaments of that era, which became increasingly bejeweled and ornate, had…

Frieze New York colonizes Randall’s Island Park from May 1–5. The show, which brings leading galleries from over 25 countries to the small island off Manhattan, eschews a traditional fair format, creating a more immersive atmosphere that holds up a mirror to the global art world. As such, the fair has a plethora of special sections this year. One of them, Diálogos, organized by Patrick Charpenel of the El Museo del Barrio and curator Susanna V. Tempik, focuses on Latino and Latin American art. Daniel Birnbaum, director of Acute Art, is curating a section devoted to Virtual Reality artwork, and Javier Téllez is curating an exhibition of self-taught artists in conjunction with the Outsider Art Fair. Meanwhile, the inaugural Frieze Sculpture, to be held yearly henceforth, brings a public art…

“NEW GLASS NOW,” an exhibition opening on May 12 at the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) in Corning, N.Y., is a global celebration of contemporary glass art. The show, which runs through January 5, 2020, will feature work by a diverse group of 100 glass artists representing 31 nationalities and working in 25 countries with an age range of 23 through 84. CMoG has not organized a survey of contemporary work on this scale in the decades since the influential “New Glass: A Worldwide Survey” in 1979. That show and its precursor “Glass 1959” were instrumental in defining and perpetuating contemporary glass and the Studio Glass Movement in particular. With a similar aim, “New Glass Now” and its gamut of large-scale installations, delicate miniatures, and unique experiments in everything from…

BRUNK AUCTIONS, which is based in Asheville, N.C., will hold its Premier Auction on May 16–18. The sale showcases strong American and Southern art, jewelry, and silver and features nearly 1,700 lots. One highlight is a Lalique serpent amber glass vase, model number 896. Made by the French glassmaker in 1924, the vase comes on the block from a private Memphis collection and is estimated at $15,000–20,000. A rare George Hendel coin silver tea service is estimated at $30,000–50,000. The service was made in Carlisle, Pa., circa 1800 and bears Hendel’s marks. It is one of only two examples known; the other is in the collection of the Cumberland County Historical Society. Also crafted in Pennsylvania—the Lancaster/Chester area—is a circa-1770 Chippendale walnut dressing table. Hewn of highly figured walnut with…

ON MAY 11, David Richard Gallery opens “Elliott Lloyd: Color Wave, Paintings from 1973 to 1977” and “Lester Rapaport: Convergence” at its exhibition space in New York’s East Harlem neighborhood. Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Lloyd studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and arrived in New York in 1961. Throughout the ’60s, Lloyd rigorously planned the palette and composition of his paintings, which he achieved through pouring diluted pigment onto unprimed canvas. In the early ’70s, however, Lloyd pivoted to a looser, more spontaneous practice. Wanting to free his work from the wall’s inevitable interaction with stretched canvas, he began painting off the stretcher, allowing an increased autonomy of gesture and shape and size of canvas. This is where “Color Wave” begins, with the artist creating…

WHEN ANDREAS Bechtler established the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art to share his family’s collection of mid-century modern art with his Charlotte, N.C., community, he created an institution that boasts an impressive, highly varied, and personal selection of works by some of the 20th century’s greatest creators. Among these are a collection of rather unusual artworks: tapestries by highly significant artists who are generally not associated with textiles, including Alexander Calder, Diego Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, Le Corbusier, and Pablo Picasso. This fascinating collection of pieces is what inspired the Bechtler Museum to mount the exhibition “Nomadic Murals: Tapestries of the Modern Era.” John Boyer, the president and CEO of the Bechtler Museum, says, “We have eight spectacular pieces in our collection, and we thought it would be helpful…

DURING THE night of August 13, 1943, Allied bombers struck the Palazzo Archinto in Milan, Italy, destroying its interior and much of its exterior. Among the casualties was a series of five mythological and allegorical frescoes painted on the ceilings by Giambattista Tiepolo, one of the greatest painters of 18th-century Italy. It had been one his greatest commissions. The palazzo was rebuilt and restored in the 1960s, but nothing could be done about the frescoes; all that remained of Tiepolo’s work was a tiny fragment showing a pair of hands holding a scroll. As it happens, an inscription on the scroll gives the date, 1731. The destruction of art by war is a theme that certainly resonates in our own time, as cultural treasures and entire sites fall victim to…

THE THIRD edition of TEFAF New York Spring comes to the Park Avenue Armory on May 3–7. The show is the American offshoot of The European Fine Art Fair, which is held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and as such, features many of Europe’s leading dealers. However, its emphasis on modern and contemporary art and design fosters a finely-furnished meeting ground between the New York art world and the European market. This year, 90 dealers will be setting up shop, with 12 new participants, including Luxembourg & Dayan of New York, Sprüth Magers of Berlin, Galerie Kamel Mennour of Paris, and The Mayor Gallery of London. New York dealer Fergus McCaffrey’s booth will sport one of the fair’s many highlights, Sakuhin (1965), a signed and dated oil and acrylic on canvas…

FREEMAN’S AUCTION will hold its American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists sale on June 9. The Philadelphia-based auction house will feature works that showcase Pennsylvania’s rich history as a center for American painting. Cecilia Beaux, a Philadelphia-born artist and one of the most renowned American portraitists of the 19th century, won the Mary Smith Prize at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts several times. She won her second with Ethel Page as Undine (1885, oil on canvas), which comes to the block at Freeman’s with an estimate of $60,000–80,000. The portrait depicts Beaux’s long-time friend, Ethel Page, the wife of James Large and descendant of Roger Williams, the founder and first governor of Rhode Island. Beaux’s first portrait of Page is in the collection of the National Museum of Women in…

“LES RECLUS,” AN exhibition of Philippe Charles Jacquet’s richly detailed dreamscapes, is on view at Manhattan’s Hugo Galerie through May 19. The French artist’s paintings take inspiration from the fecund estuaries and coasts of Brittany but are in fact imagined, idealized landscapes with painstaking compositions informed by Jacquet’s training in architecture. La piscine (oil on board), features a pool of glassy, mirror-like water—a signature of Jacquet’s. The pool, surrounded by a seemingly infinite, arid stretch of land, is attached to a rustic stone house that slices through an impending twilight. Three boys occupy the landscape, with one perched on a rowboat. A similar rowboat appears in Lassier passer l’orage (oil on board), carrying a boy along marshy waters toward a grasslined shore. A thick rim of trees lines the horizon, which…

ANDREW JONES Auctions will hold its Design for Home and Garden sale on May 19. The Los Angeles-based auction house will feature a wide range of design, fine furniture, fine art, jewelry, silver, ceramics, decorative arts, carpets, and accessories dating from the 17th century through today. The Circus, a watercolor and pencil work by the esteemed Mexican artist Francisco Toledo, is a highlight of the sale and is estimated at $18,000–22,000. Still Life with Roses, an oil painting by French artist Achille Laugé, comes to the sale from an important private collection with an estimate of $7,000–9,000. From the estate of the celebrated actor Peter Falk comes a lovely pink Pâte de verre Hibiscus vase by the French crystal studio Daum. It is estimated at $700–900. A striking Ceccotti Collezioni…

MAINE’S REPUTATION as a bastion of independence, ruggedness, and natural beauty has drawn thinkers and artists since the 1800s. E.B. White, prominent New York intellectual and author of Charlotte’s Web, among other masterpieces, spent many years living on a saltwater farm there. Elizabeth Hardwick, founder of the New York Review of Books, had a summer home in the state. And painters Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, and John Singer Sargent—as well as many prominent American landscape artists—spent time living and working in Maine. Now, the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Me., is celebrating the works of another group of artists for whom this state had an irresistible attraction: the collection of New York-based avant-garde artists including Red Grooms, Lois Dodd, Mimi Gross, and Rackstraw Downes who flocked to Maine during the…

When the World’s Fair in St. Louis closed its doors on December 1, 1904, after a seven-month run, an estimated 20 million people had visited the expansive presentation in the newly designed Forest Park. Dubbed the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the fair commemorated the land deal the United States had made with France 100 years earlier, giving the burgeoning country 827,000 square miles west of the Mississippi. The event was a picture of “Manifest Destiny,” with 1,500 newly erected buildings dotting a 1,200-acre area, and the spirit of patriotism wafted through the air like the scent of roasting hot dogs—which were widely popularized at the event. (Contrary to popular belief, they did not debut there, though both French’s mustard and the ice cream cone did.) Amid the fair’s various amusements and…