Innholdsfortegnelse for Sep/Oct 2015 i Fine Art Connoisseur

...you would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and unique figure and still keep it living and real.— Edouard Manet, writing to Antonin Proust, 1880…

She was lithe, naked, and posed provocatively with a parasol resting on her shoulder. The model for Whistler’s pastel drawing was likely Carmen Rossi, whom he adorned with a red headdress that falls conspicuously just above the aureole of her breast. “When Whistler first exhibited this drawing in London in 1884, it received a lot of criticism for its brazen nudity, from both professional critics and members of the public,” says Zachary Wirsum of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, which is auctioning Parasol, Red Note at its September 25 sale of American and European fine art. The American-born Whistler, who had long worked in London as a portraitist and thus was accustomed to modifying his compositions, later reworked this drawing, draping Rossi in a diaphanous gown. “But that addition of the sheer…

As a young black man working on tobacco farms around the North Florida town of Quincy to help pay his family’s bills, Dean Mitchell (b. 1957) could imagine becoming an artist only with the boldest optimism. Raised by his grandmother since he was 11 months old, his father absent, his mother distant, Mitchell lived in a world where the odds of making it in the competitive field of fine art were very long indeed. Even the family members who raised him, though loving and supportive, saw the situation through a pragmatic lens: “Black people don’t really pay money for pictures,” they told him. “That’s white people stuff.” “But I am a man who likes a challenge,” Mitchell winks, and through his providential combination of innate talent and relentless effort, he…

SPAIN’S FINEST PRIVATE COLLECTION TREASURES FROM THE HOUSE OF ALBA: 500 YEARS OF ART AND COLLECTING Meadows Museum 5900 Bishop Boulevard, Dallas, TX 75205 214.768.2516, meadowsmuseumdallas.org  September 11, 2015–January 3, 2016 To celebrate its 50th anniversary and its status as a leading center for Spanish art, Dallas’s Meadows Museum will soon present more than 100 works from one of Europe’s greatest private collections. The Casa de Alba is the most illustrious household in Spain, with close ties to the monarchy dating back to the 15th century. Members of the family have intermarried with, among others, Britain’s royal Stuart dynasty, the descendants of Christopher Columbus, the French emperor Napoleon III, and even the Churchills. Along the way, they have acquired and inherited an extraordinary number of objects, now carefully…

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) is regularly cited as an “American icon,” admired internationally for the more than 1,000 artworks she created, primarily paintings and drawings. She is rightly hailed for her deft draftsmanship, innovative compositions, bold coloring, and — most crucially — sensitivity to the existence of compelling abstract forms within nature. No one who has seen one of O’Keeffe’s large, tightly cropped, unexpectedly sensual flower paintings can ever regard a bloom the same way again. As with Leonardo, Vermeer, Monet, Warhol, and perhaps a dozen other masters, the chief disadvantage to O’Keeffe’s iconic status is that even the most sophisticated observers gradually stop appreciating why her art was groundbreaking in the first place. These icons’ images are so visible in our society — so widely reproduced through posters, coffee mugs,…

Whether it’s your intention or not, you are making a financial investment every time you buy a work of art for your collection. Even if you have acquired art for enjoyment only, it’s likely that what you own will grow in value over time. As you continue collecting, it’s wise to consider the longer term. Over the years, I’ve witnessed too many mistakes resulting in unrecoverable losses, tax assessments on heirs that could have been avoided, and massive collections with no remaining “street value.” One collector I know invested $1 million in paintings by a “hot” artist who is now forgotten, which is a shame because my acquaintance could really use that money. (Laurence C. Zale and I have co-authored a report, The 7 Most Serious Financial Mistakes Made by…

The fashion designer Anna Sui appears to have rewritten the tragic tale of the Lady of Shalott. Her version of the lovely young woman from King Arthur’s time — doomed to an unrequited love so powerful it led to death — was seen walking a New York runway last year, looking full of life. There she was, her flowing red hair secured with a jeweled headband, wearing a gown composed of a patchwork of motifs, similar to the tapestry the Lady wove. In this medieval story revived by the 19th-century poet Alfred Tennyson and then by the English painter John William Waterhouse, the woman drifts in a rowboat toward the city of Camelot she will never reach, pining for handsome Sir Lancelot. “I designed a daring Pre-Raphaelite collection of clothes…

Many paintings and drawings depict fabrics, be they the clothes that portrait sitters wear, the curtains that hang behind still life arrangements, or the flags that flutter over sunlit terraces. Yet only rarely do we viewers slow down long enough to focus on the fabrics themselves, primarily because they are usually props deployed to something else’s advantage. This past summer, however, we specifically sought out terrific examples of fabric for fabric’s sake, and we are pleased to share a sampling of them here. Some are intrinsically worth depicting: they may be beautifully patterned, artfully arranged, or sumptuously lit. Others — especially clothing — function as signifiers of identity, seasonality, or even their wearer’s absence. Whatever these artists’ intentions, everyone at Fine Art Connoisseur salutes them for their focus on fabric,…

Everyone knows that Texas thinks big, which is one reason why its visual arts venues have been multiplying over the past decade. Outsiders rightly pay attention to Dallas and Houston, but not nearly enough to San Antonio, Austin, and the lively Hill Country towns located between them. This article seeks to correct that imbalance, highlighting what makes these places so worth visiting. SAN ANTONIO San Antonio is unique among American cities, built up since the 18th century by a fascinating mix of Spanish-, English-, and German-speaking immigrants, as well as the indigenous Native population. The city’s leaders are keenly interested in how cultural activities can bring these diverse communities together and attract tourists at the same time. Thus the city’s Department for Culture & Creative Development is unusually dynamic, staging…

Consider how hard art museum professionals work to conceive and organize their temporary exhibitions and installations of art and design, and also how much money their institutions spend to mount and tour them. Now ask yourself: how are the best of these projects honored, after the lights have dimmed and the loaned artworks have headed home? Oddly, in a world teeming with award ceremonies for seemingly every possible artistic activity, there is no program that recognizes such exhibitions. Fortunately, the Miami-based communications professional Judy Holm noted this oversight and set about creating the Global Fine Art Awards (GFAA). In Miami this coming November 30 — just before that city’s buzzy art fairs are unveiled — the 2015 GFAA winners will be announced and toasted during a red-carpet gala. In 2014,…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Denver October 2–31 The painter Andrea T. Kemp will exhibit her most recent works in a solo show at Saks Galleries this season. Paintings, she says, “are not only layers of oil, pigment, and medium, but also layers of who the artist is at the time the art is created.” INFORMATION: 3019 E. 2nd Avenue, Denver, CO 80206, 303.333.4144, denverartgalleries.co New York City October 1–31 Bertrand Delacroix Gallery will soon present the exhibition Works on Paper, which features new watercolor paintings by five New York-based artists who all attended the Art Students League: Elizabeth Allison, Chizuru Morii Kaplan, Mitsu Haraguchi, Kathryn Keller Larkins, and Norbert Ways-berg. Their subjects range from architecture and nudes to unspoiled nature. INFORMATION: 535 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001, 212.627.4444, bdgny.com…