Old Masters Rock

If you have not already guessed, “Old Masters Rock” is a book about how to look at art with children.  This book may not be unique in its goals but it certainly has a different way of approaching the subject.

The cover of the book shows a few wonderful Old Masters and the name of the person who had the idea and selected the pictures and wrote the text: Maria-Christina Sayn-Wittgenstein Nottenbohm.  It takes 3 lines to cover all of the names she was born with plus the last, which is her husband’s.  So it is with German aristocracy. If you forced her she could even add a title!  To make things simple she prefers her nickname, Puppa and that is how I shall refer to her.  Presently she is a dealer in the field of Old Masters under the gallery name Sayn-Wittgenstein in New York.  To assure you how well thought of she is in the art world, Gary Tinterow former  chairman of the Met’s department of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum and now director of the Fine Art Museum, Houston, wrote the introduction

The entries in Old Masters Rock started with regular pieces, emailed to friends over a year ago. Even though Puppa has kindly said to me that I had inspired her to do this, the real inspiration was taking her son Gaspar to museums in this country and abroad and discussing the paintings with him.  Here they are recently at the Metropolitan Museum discussing John Constable’s, Salisbury Cathedral of 1825.

The book begins with some tips for parents and their children.  It comes down to asking questions.  My wife always asked our son and his older brother and sister what they thought a painting was about.  Puppa goes much further with lots of questions and answers about subject, technique and vision of the artist.  The contents are divided into themes, Animals, Families, Myth & Magic, News of the Day and a number more.  Some of the most famous old masters ever are included and a number of my favorites are there in full-page color illustrations.

We might as well start at the beginning with the section on animals and a Leonardo da Vinci, “Lady with an Ermine”, circa 1490.  I was lucky enough to see this picture on a junket to Poland with Basia Johnson right after the Berlin wall came down and there were, as the Polish people called it, “the changes”. Since it had not yet been hung in the galleries at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, the painting was quite literally brought out of the vault for us. I would take it over the Mona Lisa any day of the week!  To each of these full-page illustrations Puppa has added an equal sized page of text with facts about the artist and technique, and in this case ermine and women of history and mystery.   It is material that will intrigue children and adults alike.    As an example, regarding Leonardo, Puppa writes, “Leonardo was a wizard!  He was brilliant and loved science… and imagined…flying machines”.  She tells about the Ermine that, “are great at catching mice… Ermine fur is traditionally used for royal robes”.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Like most children of parents involved in the arts, I was dragged to auction houses, galleries and museums from the time I was born.  I don’t mind admitting that I was often bored out of my mind, but tell me that I was not allowed somewhere and I was dying to go. This was so with the Frick Collection in New York, which restricted admittance until the age of 10 and I believe still does.  Maybe it was a birthday present, I don’t remember, but I know shortly after my 10th birthday I was taken to the Frick and fell totally in love with a painting, “St. Francis in the Desert”, 1475-1478 by Giovanni Bellini, who I later learned was one of the most important artists of the early Renaissance in Venice.  This large picture, almost 4 by 5 feet, absorbed me like a large screen television might absorb a football fan today!  Puppa introduces this image by the name of the movie “Brother Sun and Sister Moon” that alone is more interesting to a child than St. Frances in the Desert.  Don’t remember St. Francis from my Jewish upbringing.  Puppa puts the latter in historical context and describes the scene, asking questions like whether you can guess what time of day it is or how St. Francis feels while he is saying his morning prayers.  These are all short paragraphs: even technique is explained in simple terms.  They can be read with your child and made into a game or you can just remember one or two when you take your child to the museum.

Copyright The Frick Collection

Another painting that mesmerized me when I was young was Albrecht Altdorfer’s “Battle of Alexander at Issus”.   The picture is in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.  Puppa calls it “Middle Earth”.  She compares it to classic movie scenes and explains the battle and uniforms.  At the same time everything that is pertinent art historically is also there, including where to find the signature, which explains that Altdorfer was from Regenspurg.  I am sure it was all the tiny soldiers on horseback brandishing weapons that so intrigued me and Puppa describes them so you won’t miss it in the illustration.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I will mention one more painting which Puppa titles “Construction Site”.  It is Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “Tower of Babel” of 1563. I won’t give the story away just the punch line!  Everyone ends up speaking a different language.  We had just such a construction site next door to our house in New York where the contactor got a pick-up crew that spoke Chinese, Spanish, a language from India and many others.  We could never learn anything from them because they could not communicate.  Here is the entry and illustration from the book.

If I have not enticed you to order the book, and encourage your local books store to carry it, then note that the book is already so popular an article appeared in the arts section of the Wall Street Journal earlier this year.  Puppa’s lecture tour for the book started in the Queen’s Gallery of Buckingham Palace, which, as lofty as that sounds, has temporary exhibitions from the royal collections, open to all for an entry fee.  You can find her lecture schedule on her Amazon author page HERE.

Main Point Books

My daughter, Cathy, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a combined major in English and Economics.  She then took her LSAT's for law school because she was not sure what she wanted to do after college.  She did well on the test but as Cathy put it,  "the essay on my law school  application 'why do you want to be a lawyer?' saved me”!

Instead Cathy got a job at a prestigious  public relations company, Hill & Knowlton.  Not satisfied with her well paying job and nice office, she went on for her MBA at Wharton Business school and got a job at Lever Brothers where she was given a cubical from which to market soap products.   Proving her father wrong yet again, she made back her tuition and lost salary within the year!

Like so many women of her generation she then left the labor force and went on to bear two sons, Joshua and Matthew.  As they reached junior high and high school she would pick up small jobs here and there using her business school skills and worked for her kids school in development.

Cathy loved to read from a very young age and always had her face in a book even in the bathtub!    When her boys were old enough to take care of themselves, it was only natural for her to follow her dream and open a book store.  Happily, throughout this process her husband, Jon, who is in the financial world, was there to support her and give her intelligent advice.

Photo by Dan Stiebel

Now her business degree came in handy.  The first question to answer was where to open the bookstore.  She lives in one of the towns outside Philadelphia and  wanted it to be within easy driving distance of home and find an area where she could depend on people interested in books.  She hit upon Bryn Mawr where there's are several colleges and the last book store, a Barnes & Noble, had closed 18 months before.  Her shop was lovely but modest, with little room for expansion.  We have been in a few times and It did have a wonderful selection of books.  In fact I was surprised to see that the Native American writer, Sherman Alexie had books in 3 different sections of her shop.   I have sent a few people from New York and even Santa Fe there who loved it and particularly Cathy's expert counsel on book selection, either for an individual or as a gift.

Photo by Matt Godfrey

Unfortunately, there is not enough going on in the area to bring the the foot traffic desired to Bryn Mawr's Lancaster Avenue.  When Cathy learned about a larger space in the nearby town of Wayne she went to see it.   There she found that the new space was larger and on a street with 4 restaurants and the movie theater emptied out a couple of doors down.  If you come in by train and walk into town you have to pass the new Main Point Books. This will all add up to far more foot traffic!  Her husband was also encouraging the expansion.  They both knew that if you don't grow you shrink. She went for it! 

Here is an interview Cathy gave about her book store and the opening of the new one:

In the extra space she is not going to put in the proverbial coffee bar but rather make more room for books and an expanded space for people to come and attend the more than 100 programs she has a year for book groups, children’s book readings and  authors signing their books and talking about them.

Main Point Books in Wayne is not quite ready yet.  It is scheduled to open on July 25 with the official celebration of its new home on Sunday, July 31 ... with a midnight launch party for the new Harry Potter Script, the play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”.

“The Improbability of Love” by Hannah Rothschild

Hannah Rothschild is the daughter of Lord Jacob Rothschild. And her first novel is an exciting satire on the art world called, “The Improbability of Love”.  She comes from the perfect world to write on this subject.

Allow me to digress, should you find yourself in England with a craving for French culture you need not cross the channel but visit Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschild residence that is now a museum, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, a one hour train trip from London.

I remember going there with my cousin Raphael Rosenberg who was working with Dorothy de Rothschild, known as Dolly, the widow of Baron James de Rothschild.  The land was originally farmland, which Baron Ferdinand purchased in 1874 to build the palace and gardens and was inherited by Baron James.  Raphael was assisting Dolly with an appraisal for the family and that is when I was allowed to come along.  I don’t remember the name of the curator who showed us around but he was known as the Colonel.  Waddesdon was turned over to the government as a trust house but Dolly supervised the opening of the ground floor slowly opening more and more of the palace until her death in 1988.  What a treat it was for me as a student to get up close and personal with the works of art with no crowds and no ropes holding us back.  Going back since has been wonderful but never quite the same!  In this short video you can see a few of the treasures from the house.

Waddesdon may now belong to the Nation, but it is administered by the Rothschild Charitable Trust overseen by Lord Jacob Rothschild.  You can see why the daughter of this philanthropist and art lover who continues to buy works of art for Waddesdon, and is herself on the board of the National Gallery in London, is perfectly equipped to write on the art world.

The novel includes a wonderful cast of characters.  At its heart is a young woman, Annie, whose aspiration is to become a great chef.  She buys a painting in a junk shop for an unrequited love and does not know what to do with it when she is stood up.  The hero of the piece is the painting itself, which is not shy to tell the highs and low points of its life.  It has lived in some of the great palaces of Europe but dwells on its owners such as Catherine the Great and Napoleon.  We learn that the painting is by Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) the artist that brought to the fore, the fête champêtre, scenes of elaborate garden parties with plenty of frolicking most popular at the French Court.

Antoine Watteau, Wallace Collection

The picture refers to itself as "Moi", me in French, its first language.  “Moi” being from pre-revolutionary France, French phrases slip in every once in a while.

Annie wants to get rid of the picture but her alcoholic mother who has moved in with her daughter believes there is merit in the work and therein lies the plot.  How do you authenticate a painting?  What role does the condition of the picture have and what is it worth?

Believing in “Moi” Annie's mother, Evie, wants to investigate further and stuffs the painting into a plastic shopping bag, to take it to the Wallace Collection.  “Moi” complains bitterly that this is just not on for such an important picture, though no one knows this for sure at this point in the plot.  At the Wallace Evie takes the picture out of the bag and starts comparing it to paintings on the walls.

Nicolas Lancret, Wallace Collection

The picture shares the title with the book, “The Improbability of Love”, though never spelled out the theme appears in a number of the relationships including between Annie and Jesse, an artist and tour guide she meets at the Wallace Collection.  Jesse tries to teach Annie how to learn more about her painting.  They visit his friend the conservator at the National Gallery and he tells her to visit the drawings room at the British Museum.  On her own she visits the expert art historian who declares the masterpiece a fake.  Every stop both advances the plot and teaches something about the art world.

Like any good novel on the art market there is a “Nazi War Loot” angle and, of course, the inevitable auction.  The exaggerated motives for all the high and mighty to bid at the auction are hilarious, such as the President of France who feels it is a matter of French pride to repatriate this lost masterpiece and the Prime Minister of England wants to buy it just to spite the French, the Russian Oligarch wants to impress his girl friend, and the old dowager wants to liquidate her late husband’s foundation for this one last great purchase.

In between we get a number of lessons from “Moi” as well, such as his fear of the restorer as they can so easily damage his surface. There is the esthete Barty who shows the expatriate Russian what he can do to demonstrate his love for his girl friend.  The irrepressible Barty also tells the director of the National Gallery who complains that he has no time to look at art because he has meetings with Union leaders and lunches and dinners with prospective donors that he  is not alone -- the great  Renaissance sculptor “Donatello couldn’t pick up a chisel without Cosimo de Medici bursting into his studio.”

The most hilarious part of the book is probably at the end when you hear how all the characters ended up.  My intention, however, with this Missive is to encourage those interested in the Old Master world to read or listen to “The Improbability of Love”.  So no more spoilers!

Treasure Hunting

We have an eccentric neighbor living down the street and you may have even heard of him due to his appearances on the Today show.  His name is Forest Fenn and he is a writer, an amateur archeologist and a dealer. His recent book called, “The Thrill of the Chase” is a memoir and within it lies an enticing tale with clues to a treasure he has assembled and hidden.

In some circles he is famous and in others infamous. To briefly touch on the latter, he was among those raided a few years ago by Federal agents.  They were looking for artifacts that were illegally being taken out of the ground and sold.  One problem with taking on Forest was that he did much of his digging on a site that was privately deeded to him and so he was never indicted.   Others said that he should not be digging at all and that should be left to trained archeologists or better yet the artifacts should be left in the ground for future generations to excavate with more advanced tools… whenever that might be!

Our first interaction with Forest was when we were asked to visit his home to evaluate a 16^th century painting and decide whether it was Spanish or South American.  Every inch of every wall in his home was coved with objects he had collected.  The painting, however, was quite small and was kept in this large walk-in vault.  This past week, years after we visited his home for the first and last time we found out one of the reasons for the vault, that was where he assembled his treasure.

Two renowned authors recently came together in a panel to question the less well known author Forest Fenn.  They packed  the room at Collected Works, Santa Fe’s private bookstore, one of the best anywhere, that  hosts lectures and panels on the arts and particularly welcomes authors.

Michael McGarrity, Douglas Preston, & Forest Fenn

All three panelists were Santa Feans. Few of you will not have heard of the author Douglas Preston who has written or co-written about twenty thrillers, covering all kinds of subjects from an Italian serial killer to one centered around the ancient Incas.  Many have been #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.  He is also a journalist and written for magazines such as “The New Yorker”, “The Smithsonian”, and “National Geographic”.

Another well known author is Michael McGarrity the author of a dozen crime novels many of them best sellers as well.  He was a deputy Santa Fe County sheriff and held other positions in law enforcement.  He was a case worker for the public defender’s office as well as a trained psychotherapist all before he turned to writing full time.

They were there to testify that they had actually seen the treasure chest in Forest’s vault (we had not) and Preston gave a vague description of its contents.  But they were also there to tease Forest and ask questions about the treasure and where it might be hidden. He was masterful at answering giving amusing responses without any information therein.   Watching his wife and family who happened to be sitting in my row I deduced that they were used to his tall tales and sense of adventure. It is, however, generally believed that the treasure actually exists. Forest has been interviewed about it for many venues beyond his recurring Today show appearances.  If you look on the internet you will find over 20 pages relating to Forest and his treasure.  There was recent press on a woman rescued after she got lost in the mountains searching for it.

We learned that in 1988 Forest was given a 20% chance of living another 2 years but as evidenced by this panel he is still with us.  He decided then that he would like to give something back in a rather novel way.  He bought a Renaissance bronze casket 10X10x 6 inches for which he paid $25,000 to fill with enticing treasures. For years he bought gold nuggets one being reported to be as large as an egg.  There is also jewelry and other precious items having been reported to be worth anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.  He hid it somewhere North of Santa Fe in the Rocky Mountains, and more he will not say.   He wrote a poem which appears in his book with clues to help lead to the treasure that he says may or may not be buried.

He told us he has received over 16,000 emails with 31 of the individuals claiming to have already found it, and giving a great deal of detail showing that they actually had not. He said somewhat facetiously that he had hidden the treasure for every redneck in Texas and he hoped it would be found by a redneck driving a truck with his 12 kids in the back.  In other words he hoped it would help a less fortunate family.   But what he was most serious about was that he hoped the hunt would inspire young folk to get out more and explore nature.  They should get their faces out of their computers and come out of their basements and their game machines and go into the great outdoors.

There were many questions and responses but in my opinion the best came from a young boy standing through the entire hour clutching an autographed copy of Forest’s book.  He wanted to know if a person’s life would be changed if they found the treasure.  Forest replied, “it is better to have enough money than a lot of money”.

Annie Leibovitz Takes a Sabbatical

The renowned photographer, Annie Leibovitz, came to Santa Fe in order to promote her new book and traveling exhibition, “Pilgrimage”. She termed it a “sabbatical” in the sense that she had become tired of the pressure of working for magazines such a Rolling Stone and wanted to do a project just for herself.

Between 2009 and 2011 she picked about a dozen places in the United States and England that had significance to her, either in a literary or historical sense.  The places were as diverse as Lincoln Memorial, Graceland, Sigmund Freud’s study and Virginia Woolf’s summer home in Surrey.  It was her first project done only with  a digital camera.

I have never been so aware of the differences between a reproduction and the original as I have been in the last couple of weeks.  We first heard her speak to a packed house at the Lensic Theater.  She showed slides mostly from her exhibition and while I found her talk very interesting I was not taken by the photography.  I attributed this to the fact that she had ventured into the world of still life, landscape and historic places instead of her amazing close-ups of the likes of John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Demi Moore.

When I saw the actual exhibition presented at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum I realized that the slides had missed the quality and immediacy of the work.   Then I bought the catalog and there was a third version of the images somewhere between the two former experiences.  I buy very few photography books these days because they all fall so far short of the originals but this one is so much better than most.  It seems to be laid out by the artist herself with historical information interspersed among double-page bleeds, the emphasis being on the latter.

What is fascinating is the fact that Leibovitz refers to herself as a historian and one sees that she is.  She has gone into depth with each of her subjects and when she explains the context one understands the images so much better.

She went to Sigmund Freud’s home in London where she photographed his famous couch and the carpet in front.  It is in many respects very reminiscent of Vermeer.   Even though there are no figures one can imagine the patient on the couch and Freud sitting on the other side of the camera.  Penelope pointed out that her focal point was, however, the opposite of Vermeer’s.  He painted his center point in perfect focus and his foreground some what out of focus as if he were using a longer focal length than Leibovitz.  In Leibovitz’s case her foreground carpet is in perfect focus with the couch being the slightest bit off. In a strange way it makes the image seem less photographic than Vermeer’s!

When she visited Virginia Woolf’s home the person who was supposed to show Leibovitz around was not yet there to let her in, so she photographed through a window, creating a atmospheric image of the home. In this series there was also a picture of a choppy river, and while the photo is most evocative I did not understand how it fit into the narrative.  One thing I enjoy is when the work of art speaks for itself but the story behind it gives one a whole different dimension.  In this case, Annie Leibovitz walked along the river that Virginia Woolf swam in every day and where she drowned in 1941.

In her somewhat informal talk she spoke about some of her heroes and I learned that many were mine as well.  Abraham Lincoln is an obvious choice for anyone, but less obvious is the folk singer Pete Seeger, who like Lincoln cleared some woods and build a log cabin in which to raise his family. When I was a teenager I frequented various folk music clubs in Greenwich Village and I learned that Leivowitz enjoyed listening while she worked to what her assistants referred to as Kumbaya music. I have been accused of similar preferences.