Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Art & Antiques

THE DELAWARE Antiques Show, presented by Winterthur, returns for its 56th annual edition from November 8–10 at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington, Del. This year the event, famous for its devotion to American antiques, gives a special place to the antiques of Ireland, under the guidance of expert Robert O’Byrne, honorary chair of the show, author of multiple books, and publisher of the award winning blog The Irish Aesthete. On Friday the 8th O’Byrne will deliver the keynote speech titled “The Irishness of the Irish Country House: A Private Tour,” which will explicate the evolution of such houses via a virtual tour of the countryside. The special exhibition this year will be “Irresistibly Irish: Decorative Arts from the Winterthur Collection.” Works on view include a carved golden…

“LESLIE DILL: Voice” opens at Atrium Gallery in St. Louis, Mo., on November 8. The show, which runs through January 18, features both two- and three-dimensional works by the artist, who is known for incorporating paper, cloth, and other media into her evocative pieces. The show’s title references the presence of words in the artist’s output. Language and literature are paramount in Dill’s practice, and the influence of writers including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, and Franz Kafka loom large in her work. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Unusual Light (2018), a sculptural construction made of fabric, thread, and balsa wood, depicts a male figure in a suit of clothes. In lieu of Hester Prynne’s singular “A”, the figure’s clothing is covered in words. A mix of gothic lettering and other fonts…

They’re status symbols. They tell time and act as calendars. They play music and games. They’re useful, entertaining, and at times distracting. They store information. They employ the latest technology. They have parts made of precious metals. They took years for designers and engineers to craft. They seem easy to break. They’re certainly not iPhones and shame on you if that was your first thought (but the similarities are striking, no?). They’re the dazzling artistic and technological treasures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition “Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe.” The show, which opens on November 25 and runs through March 1, exhibits a plethora of exquisite and entertaining objects collected by the royal families of Europe between 1550 and 1750. It provides a glimpse…

IN SEPTEMBER, THE Tang Dynasty (618–907) parcel-gilt silver bowl seen here set the world auction record for a Chinese silver work of art. The bowl was the top lot at Christie’s New York’s Masterpieces of Early Chinese Gold and Silver sale as well as the top lot of the auction house’s series of Asian Art Week sales. The live auctions in the series generated $41,641,250 in total, setting 11 world auction records along the way. The bowl, a feat of repoussé handiwork, takes the form of an open lotus blossom. With its three rows of overlapping lotus petals, it evokes a Buddhist symbol of purity—a fully blooming lotus flower emerging from turbid water. The bowl would have begun as a lump of silver that was hammered over a matrix or…

The French Romantic-era historian Jules Michelet wrote that Louis XV style was a return to a feeling of life. Indeed, during the 59-year reign of Louis XV, who as a ruler is not thought of with so much delight, fine interiors and their furnishings were designed with pleasure in mind. Rooms became smaller and more intimate, furniture more specialized and less rigid, able to be moved and rearranged readily. Armchairs and couches were designed with the sitter’s body in mind, with special versions created for different types of repose and even different seasons. Cabinetmakers created pieces with smooth lines and graceful curves and used rare woods for inlay work, evoking an overall feeling of exoticism. Adrien Faizelot-Delorme, the scion of a cabinetmaking dynasty, embodied the Louis XV style. Delorme became…

THE AMERICAN Art Fair is in a unique position. Focusing solely on American 19th- and 20th-century art, it’s the only show of its kind. Thus, in addition to its 400 or so landscapes, portraits, still lifes, studies, and sculptures, the fair, which returns for its 11th edition this month, also provides a sweeping view of the evolution of American art and its market. The fair will open New York’s American Art Week, running November 16–19 at Bohemian National Hall on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Seventeen top specialists will participate in this year’s edition, including Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., Forum Gallery, and Questroyal Fine Art, LLC. Meanwhile, leading curators and scholars will give lectures on subjects such as William Glackens, Winslow Homer, and Hyman Bloom. Speaking of Bloom, New York…

Mary Abbott, one of the last living members of the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and ’50s, died on August 23 in Southampton, N.Y. She was 98. A distant relative of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Abbott was born into a well-to-do family in New York City. In her youth she was an “It Girl” and graced the cover of fashion magazines before an introduction to the sculptor David Hare flung her headlong into the art world. She became close with Willem de Kooning, and through Hare’s experimental Subjects of the Artist school, she studied and socialized with the likes of Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. One of the few women artists in Ab-Ex, Abbott developed a bold style characterized by vibrant color and expressive…

EVERY PIECE OF furniture Judy Kensley McKie produces starts with an illustration. Evocative works in their own right, these drawings shed light on the figurative quality of McKie’s playful yet bold furniture. A leading figure in the American studio furniture movement, McKie infuses inspiration from modernism, indigenous cultures, and contemporary art into her three-dimensional pieces. She works in carved and painted wood, cast bronze, marble, stone, and resin. Often depicting totemic animal forms, McKei’s pieces register as sculptural before they reveal their functionality. “Judy Kensley McKie” opens at Boston’s Gallery NAGA on November 2. The show, which runs through December 14, features works like Monkey Table, a 2018 piece of cast bronze and glass that McKie made in an edition of 12. Two seated monkeys hold the table’s top, their…

WORKS BY Andrew Wyeth and Rembrandt van Rijn, as well as a selection of Russian and Continental decorative objects spanning the 17th through 20th centuries will be on offer at Leland Little Auctions of Hillsborough, N.C., on December 6. All the lots in the single-owner sale will be offered without reserve. The catalogue will be posted on the auction house’s website on November 20. Among the 13 Wyeth paintings on the block will be the tempera Breakup (offered with bronze life casts of the artist’s hands) and the watercolor study In the Orchard. Several of the Wyeth paintings have been exhibited in museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The sale will feature Rembrandt’s etching Christ Before Pilate and Bearded Man…

November brings a bounty of classic to contemporary art at Bonhams, on both coasts. On November 12, the auction house will host an Impressionist and Modern Art sale at its New York location. Of note are two works on paper by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, from the Franco-Japanese artist’s second Paris period, beginning in the 1950s. Both are portraits of young girls, one alone and one holding a cat, wearing 19th-century-style clothes. Jeune fille (1967) is estimated at $20,000–30,000, while Jeune fille et chat (1959) is expected to bring $25,000–35,000. Also on November 12 in New York, 19th-century European Paintings will be on offer, highlighted by Pennsylvania-born expat Daniel Ridgway Knight’s pensive Peasant Girl, signed and dated “Paris 1887.” In the tradition of Millet, the painting comes from a private collection…

THE SALON ART + Design, a unique fair dedicated to the intersection and synergy of fine and decorative arts, returns to the Park Avenue Armory in New York for its eighth edition, November 14–18. It hosts 56 dealers from 13 countries, many exhibiting in immersive, specially designed booths. The Salon, conceived by Jill Bokor and produced by Sanford L. Smith + Associates, spans Bauhaus to mid-century modern to contemporary design, adding blue-chip 20th-century art into the curated, eclectic mix. French designer Mathieu Lehanneur, a first-time participant, intends to expand his New York presence following the show. He will be creating a special installation to presents his ideas about the union of design and technology. Among Lehanneur’s projects are a proposal for the replacement for the spire on Notre Dame cathedral…

THE AFFINITY of modern art with city life and, industrialism and the mechanical will be the subject of an exhibition at Helicline Fine Art, a New York gallery. “Modernism: Industrial, Urban, Abstract” opens on November 1 and runs through February 9 at the dealer’s Midtown space. Helicline, which specializes in modernism, American Scene, Social Realism, regional art, and abstraction, takes its name from the spiral ramp that linked the iconic Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. “The works in this new exhibition, mostly American, offer a look at the pre-and-post WPA era in our country by both well known artists and several who created works below the radar and are still being discovered. The nobility of women and men working, people at leisure, everyday scenes…

THE WORK OF Frederick Hart can be seen on the façade of the National Cathedral and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, both in Washington, D.C. Now his sculptural oeuvre has a museum of its own, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. The Frederick Hart Studio Museum, the largest permanent collection of the artist’s work, recently opened its door to the public. In late 2018, Belmont received a gift of over 250 works from Lindy Lain Hart, the late artist’s wife, and Bob Chase, publisher and president of the Frederick Hart Foundation. With the assistance of architects ESA and R.C. Mathews, Belmont has recreated Hart’s studio, and in the space visitors will see not only finished works such as a full-size bronze of his Christ Rising but also objects that document the…

LARI PITTMAN IS having a retrospective, and it’s about time. The Los Angeles-based artist has been incredibly productive ever since he started exhibiting in the early ’80s, constantly innovating, always refusing to turn past successes into formulae. In 1996, he had a mid-career survey at LACMA, and now, over two decades later, the Hammer is mounting “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence” (through January 5, 2020, and then at the Kistefos Museet in Jevnaker, Norway, from May 24–October 5), the most comprehensive exhibition of his work ever and the first show the Hammer has done in which all of its exhibition spaces are given over to the work of one living artist. Over 80 paintings and 50 works on paper are on view, from the Hammer’s own collection as well on…