Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Art & Antiques

IN JUNGIAN psychology, art—or at least the greatest and most emotionally powerful art—is considered to emanate from the collective unconscious. The term refers to a deep layer of the human mind that is shared in common between all people, past and present. Whether or not one accepts that idea, it is undoubtedly true that certain images and symbols recur over and over again in art, in different cultures widely separated by time and space. That is the theme of an interesting exhibition at the art museum of Vanderbilt University in Nashville (see page 48). Taking their inspiration from a famous book of Carl Jung’s, Symbols of Transformation, the curators have brought together a wide range of works in various media to show how archetypal symbols operate, how artists both known…

THE PSYCHOLOGIST Carl Jung posited the existence of the collective unconscious, a deep layer of the psyche that is shared by all humanity across time. The dynamics of the collective unconscious, which he called archetypes, find narrative expression in myths and visual expression in symbols. While Jung, as a clinical physician, was primarily concerned with healing mental illness, his investigations broadened into considerations that are very relevant to the study of art and art history. In his book Symbols and Transformation, originally published in 1912, he documented how the same images turn up over and over again throughout history in myth, religion, folklore, dreams, and art. Taking this volume as a jumping-off point, the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery in Nashville, Tenn., has organized a very wide-ranging exhibition that looks…

INVITED TO PARTICIPATE in an exhibition of contemporary Italian design at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972, Superstudio submitted a proposal for abolishing household goods. Inspired in part by nomadism, the radical architecture group’s idea was presented amid 180 of the most stylishly avant-garde products of the previous decade, including Vico Magistretti’s Selene stacking chairs and the Arco floor lamp by Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni. In spite of the eye-catching competition, lavishly promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Trade, Superstudio’s visionary object-free installation was the talk of “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape.” The Superstudio environment was installed in a room with a gridded floor and mirrored walls that made the grid appear infinite. This Supersurface (as they dubbed it) was meant to extend over the whole planet,…

Other than Augustus, Hadrian left more images of himself than any other Roman emperor. To the citizens of the Roman Empire, who would have encountered statues of their leader in all of their public spaces, the depictions of Trajan’s successor must have been striking at first. Hadrian, who ruled from 117 A.D. through his death in 138, eschewed the choppy, forward-brushed bangs and smoothly shaven face of his predecessors. Instead, he was the first emperor to wear a beard and a profusion of curls tumbling over his forehead. Though he would be the only Roman leader with this hairstyle, almost all of the emperors up to the fourth century would wear a beard. The reasoning behind Hadrian’s facial hair is not known (the only ancient source—and an unreliable one at…

JOSIAH WEDGWOOD is impossible. His life story would beggar belief if the documents didn’t exist to back it up. Born the last of 11 to a family of potters in Staffordshire, England, in 1730, he showed early promise at working in clay. Smallpox left him with knee damage that made it hard for him to operate the foot-pedal of a potter’s wheel. (He ultimately had the lower leg amputated.) Undaunted, the young man focused on other aspects of the ceramics trade and utterly revolutionized it, transforming his region into a pottery powerhouse and spreading his name around the world. His experiments with chemistry led him to improve long-established ceramic techniques and led him to invent something new in 1773—Jasperware, which includes the white-on-pale-blue pieces that most people think of when…

THAT “JAMES TISSOT: Fashion & Faith” is the first-ever Tissot exhibition on the West Coast might come as a surprise. The French artist’s Self Portrait (circa 1865, oil on panel) and all its mysterious emo glamour has been a fixture of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s collection since 1961. The painting, which captures the artist around age 30, has begged for decades to be accompanied by its brethren, so that it might provide a more accurate impression of its enigmatic maker. And yet this new sweeping show, a co-production between the San Francisco museums and the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, Paris, is Self Portrait’s first Californian family reunion. “Fashion & Faith,” which opens at the Legion of Honor on October 12, features some 60 of Tissot’s paintings,…

What we know of Nubia, the region in today’s Sundanese Nile Valley that served as the seat of one of Africa’s earliest civilizations, comes largely from George A. Reisner. Following the conclusion of the Mahdist revolt, a condominium was established between the United Kingdom and Egypt in 1899, forming the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The agreement left the British in full control over the Sudan and gave Egypt local influence. Under these auspices, the Cairo-Khartoum railway was completed in January 1900, opening up the northern Sudan region to outsiders for the first time. This development led to the possibility of another: archeological excavation. Soon after, Reisner, a famed Egyptologist, got to work. In 1913, he and his team, sponsored by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, led the first…

JOSEPH RAPHAEL was one of California’s greatest plein air painters, bringing Impressionist technique to bear on the unique light and scenery of the West Coast, as well as of Western Europe, where he lived for many years. Raphael was born in Jackson, a small town in the mountains of central California, in 1869. He began his art studies with the Tonalist painter Arthur Frank Mathews, a major figure in the American Arts & Crafts movement, at the California School of Design in San Francisco. In 1902, Raphael went to Paris and continued his education at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens, one of the last masters of the Academic style. For a while Raphael was based in the Netherlands, emulating the style of the Dutch Golden Age, before changing over…

IN 1977, ROMARE Bearden (1911–88) allowed himself to be interviewed at length by the writer Calvin Tomkins for a profile in The New Yorker. The process of recollecting his life in detail gave Bearden the idea of doing something had hadn’t thought of doing before—making an autobiographical work of art, telling something of his own story in pictures. So from 1978–81, he occupied himself with the “Profile” project, a series of works using his signature collage technique that chronicle his youth and early adulthood in the 1920s and 1930s. Currently, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta is presenting “Something Over Something Else: Romare Bearden’s Profile Series,” an exhibition that brings together 30 works from the group (on view through January 5, 2020). Curated by Stephanie Heydt, the High’s Margaret…

AMONG THE printmaking techniques, etching has the reputation of being one of the easiest and most flexible. Elevated to greatness by Rembrandt, it gave artists who were primarily painters the ability to make prints without having to serve a long apprenticeship. One could say that it democratized printmaking, making it almost as simple and intuitive as drawing. Until now, most exhibitions and discussions about etching have centered on either the age of Rembrandt or on the so-called etching revival of the late 19th century, when artists like James Whistler took the medium to new heights of expressivity. But a show opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this month opens new avenues of investigation by looking in depth at the birth of etching and its first 70 or so years…

In the life and career of Wolfgang Paalen, three roles twine together inseparably and, in the end, fatally—the artist, the theorist, and the collector. A painter who allied himself with Surrealism in the 1930s and then quit the movement, Paalen was a prolific writer who published a journal of art and theory that proved to be influential with American abstract artists after World War II. He was also a passionate collector and scholar of Cycladic, Northwest Coast, and Pre-Columbian art, which he prized not only for aesthetic qualities but also as a source of inspiration. For Paalen, archaic artworks were signposts along the road of human achievement, pointing not only backward but ahead, toward a future of untrammeled creativity. A Paalen retrospective will be on view from October 4–January 19…