Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2025 i Art & Antiques

IN A CITY filled with white-box galleries showing cutting-edge art (which is a good thing), the Schoelkopf Gallery stands out in New York City as a welcoming venue for American art over a couple of centuries. Its namesake director talks to Art & Antiques about the scope of his gallery, his move from the Upper East Side to an especially vibrant gallery-intensive neighborhood of Tribeca, and why what he does continues to inspire him. You cite the year 1875 as the beginning date for the art that you show in your gallery. Why 1875? The date is slightly arbitrary and has changed over the years. We used to say that we offered the best American art from the days of the Colonies to today, and that is probably more accurate.…

Everyone spoke the same language in the Roman Empire, especially at its height in the the 2nd century. Even though the Empire stretched across all of Europe, into Asia and throughout North Africa, everyone living under Roman rule was able to speak and read one language: that of sculpture. While people in the Western realm of the Empire spoke Latin and those in the Eastern region Greek, most people of the time were illiterate, unable to write or read. And, so, sculpture became the way for the emperors of the Empire to communicate with their subjects, as well as for cities and towns to convey messages to the local populace. Everywhere a person would go in many parts of the empire, they would be confronted with a visual language. Sculptures of…

If ever there was a rarefied tabletop object of desire that glowed, sparkled, and enchanted—all while providing soft lighting under an umbrella-inspired dome composed of jewel-like pieces of leaded glass—it is the “Wisteria” lamp by Tiffany Studios New York. The exquisite yet functional objet d’art, which was made in the first years of the 20th century in New York City by the namesake studio operated by Louis Comfort Tiffany (son of Charles Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Company, the internationally known jewelry establishment), is regarded as one of the most sought-after light fixtures ever created by Tiffany. Its desirabililty is due in large part to the degree to which the lamp’s production was a labor-intensive process. With glass-and-lead wisteria blossoms, in addition to beautifully entangled verdant leaves, cascading from the crown…

“Sargent and Paris,” organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, examines how the City of Light was fertile soil for meteoritic rise, with a deep dive into his masterpiece, Madame XJohn Singer Sargent’s Long before smartphone selfies and the use of social media to catapult one’s status to attract—or become—an influencer, social climbers in late 19th-century Paris turned to the event of the year: The Salon. This see-and-be-seen event, where the upper echelon of Parisians mingled with rising and accomplished artists, could make—or break—careers and reputations. Such was the milieu that 18-year-old John Singer Sargent, an American born in Italy, entered upon moving to Paris in 1874, seeking to hone his technique and achieve acclaim and patronage. The ensuing decade for Sargent was an immersion…

Virile Modernism “GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE: Painting Men,” a new exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, sheds new light on the artist’s oeuvre, examining his focus on male subjects and correlations with contemporary ideas on masculinity and virility. A collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the show remains on view through May 25, 2025. Caillebotte has long presented problems in terms of how to label his work. He exhibited in five of the eight Impressionist exhibitions. However, while he depicted scenes of everyday life and often embraced a lighter color palette, his lack of fleeting urgency favored by his peers and his often photo-realistic renderings led to widespread critical dismay. This tension is easily seen in what is arguably his best-known canvas, Paris Street; Rainy…

DURING ITS “DIGITAL art day” sale in November, Sotheby’s made record-breaking news with the first-ever sale of an artwork made by a humanoid robot—and the robot-created portrait sold for over $1 million. AI God– Portrait of Alan Turing, produced by Ai-Da Robot (Aidan Meller), is a mixed-media-on-canvas likeness of the celebrated mathematician, cryptologist, and computer genius widely considered to be the “father” of modern computing. The story of Turing’s remarkable life was featured in The Imitation Game, a 2014 motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and based on the 1983 biography of Turing by Andrew Hodges. Created by Aidan Meller, an art dealer and gallery owner based in England, the robot (who identifies as “female”) draws and paints with a robotic arm, cameras in her eyes, and the all-important benefit of…