Vermeer Blockbuster

If you read a blog known as Missives from the art World I am going to assume that you are acquainted with the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). What might surprise you is that he was not a famous artist in his life time nor a celebrity afterwards. With so little remaining production an air of mystery enhances the artist’s mystique and contributes to the blockbuster character of the current exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The term blockbuster exhibition came into common usage when the flamboyant Thomas P.F. Hoving was Director of the Metropolitan Museum (1967-1977) and oversaw exhibitions that attracted tens of thousands of visitors. It is most apt to use that rubric to describe this Vermeer exhibition. The day after the exhibition was announced 200,000 tickets were sold and the next day the website crashed. Soon, however, all 450,000 available tickets were sold and it was announced that no more were to be had.

A museum is lucky to have a single Vermeer but the Rijksmuseum boasts four in their permanent collection. For the show they were able to assemble 28 of the 35 paintings agreed to be by the artist’s own hand. This was a colossal feat considering how closely every owner guards such rare treasures. In 1996 the National Gallery in Washington D.C. did a similar exhibition, but they could only assemble 21 out of the 35 paintings.

I totally understand why people want to go to such a show but what usually happens in an exhibition of works of small scale there are 10 people waiting to see each one and you have to move on. I would rather see these paintings in situ.

Aside from hope for revenue after all the expenses that go into such an exhibition, as well as notoriety for the museum (as if the Rijksmuseum needed any more) the real reason is to give art historians or as they like to be known, scholars, a chance to compare these masterpieces next to each other. Also each work will probably go through intense analysis by conservators before it travels so more will be learned about the artist’s technique and methodology.

Sometimes these investigations can become exciting detective stories with interesting conclusions both positive and once in a while negative. Many of the revelations go beyond the individual work to deepen our understanding for the artist

New technological advances allow conservators to see below the surface of the paint. Regarding the “Milk Maid” belonging to the Rijksmuseum they learned that contrary to the previous belief that Vermeer painted very slowly with meticulous precision the artist did an initial sketch in thick black paint that he then developed for his finished work. Also, a jug holder and fire basket behind the sitter were painted over by the artist himself.

Inevitably, a major exhibition results in every participating institution re-examining works in their collection to see if they missed something. The following headline appeared in Artnet News, “An Art Expert Has Made a Startling Claim: the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Vermeer Copy May Actually Be the Real Thing” “Lady with Guitar” has been in the collection of the museum since 1933, but has never been on view. So, I wondered why it looked so familiar to me. The reason is that I have seen the painting that has been considered the “original” in Kenwood House in London. The only obvious difference, aside from the condition, between the two paintings is that the sitter has a different hairstyle. The scholar, Arie Wallert, former scientific specialist at the Rijksmuseum believes, on the basis of the pigments, that the Philadelphia picture is authentic. He does not dispute the legitimacy of the Kenwood House version but believes the extremely poor condition of the Philadelphia Museum’s is why it has not been previously accepted.

Kenwood House

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Benjamin Binstock who wrote a book in 2008 claiming Vermeer’s daughter Maria had painted seven of the works attributed to her father. The assertion was dismissed by most scholars but it fascinated Lawrence Wechsler, who at the time was director at the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. A few weeks ago Wechsler wrote a long article in the “Atlantic” discussing Binstock’s assertions including that. “The Girl in a Red Hat” (circa 1669) at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. may actually be a self-portrait by Maria. One of the reasons that Binstock’s theories had been dismissed is that all assistants to members of the painters’ guild at the time in Holland were required to be registered and there are no records of Vermeer ever having had an apprentice. However, an artist’s family members were exempt from registration, making the attribution to Vermeer’s daughter plausible. Then last year the National Gallery decided to reclassify “Girl with a Flute” as not by Vermeer but rather by a student which Binstock had already indicated.

Attributions are not easy and often change over time. A monographic exhibition may provide the inflection point. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/03/vermeer-rijksmuseum-amsterdam-exhibit-girl-pearl-earring/673406/

The Art of Words

Words change their meaning over time. We were watching a TV show the other night and my wife asked me rhetorically, “why do they keep saying fuck and fucking all the time, it has lost all its impact.” I believe that is exactly why. If you look the word fuck up on Google there are serious and amusing articles on the subject but as the word is used in movies and books all the time it comes into common language. Only network news bleeps it even if it is something an interviewee or politician use it, i.e. censorship. But some are still seriously offended by the word even though as is pointed out on a website called Gymglish, that “In Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street alone, the expletive is dropped over 500 times over a 180-minute running time. In Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the word is said around 400 times.”

I find etymology fascinating, how words come into being and how they change their meaning. A blog website called “Day Translation” gives examples of how expressions come into the vernacular, they are often coined from another source such as a book title. “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller became an often-used phrase to describe a circumstance … there is no escape in sight because the conditions are reciprocally conflicting” “Names of authors become descriptive words as well, such as “Kafkaesque” and “Orwellian” from Franz Kafka and George Orwell, respectively.”

Words change their meaning as well. You may not have thought about it lately but if somebody tweeted it meant they were making the sound of a bird and today it indicates how much money Elon Musk is losing every day! Obviously, words don’t change their meaning overnight, and we can still speak about a bird tweeting and then it is a question of context unless you teach your bird to peck on the keys of your keyboard! In the future one or the other meaning may fade away and another take its place!!

As early as the late 14th century, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary the word gay meant full of joy, merry, lighthearted and carefree. It came from the French gai and similar words in several other European languages and had similar joyous meanings and is still used in that way today. The surname Gay can be found in Scotland as early as the 16th century and in the 19th century the name appears often in a number of countries. By the end of the 19th century, it began to bear the concept of promiscuity, a brothel was known as a gay house. The use of the word describing homosexual first appears in psychological writings in the 1940’s. I could go on, but my point is obvious a single word can have different meanings both in the time and the way it was used.

To end on a familiar note, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word Missive is simply defined as a letter, as in one to mail. As synonyms I even see in the dictionary a “billet-doux” (love note) as well as “junk mail” which we can all identify with. I decided to use the word Missive 14 years ago when I wanted to distinguish my weekly emails from the word blog.

The word is derived from the Latin word “missus”, meaning "to send." An example is the expression, “firing off a missive”. Simply put it is a written communication which is exactly what I do every week.

Politics and Art

Art is often used to try and influence politics but how do politics affect art institutions?

In 2017, before the former President’s inauguration the New York Times published an article by Graham Bowley titled “Museums Chart a Response to Political Upheaval” reported that “artists, critics and others asked American Museums, galleries and other institutions to close their doors in protest”. The question presented was, “Should a museum change with the events around it or should it stand true, like an immovable rock, as political storms come and go?”

Each institution, of course, reacted differently. It seems that most did not close but many took a different tact using their collections to make a statement. A publication called “Museums + Heritage Advisor” reported that at the Museum of Modern Art hung works by artists from seven Arab countries labelled with the following statement: “This work is by an artist from a Nation whose citizens are being denied entrance to the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on January 27, 2017. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum’s collection installed throughout the fifth-floor galleries to affirm the ideas of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum as they are to the United States”.Here is a work by Parviz Tanavoli (1937-) an Iranian sculptor and painter, which was in that MoMA exhibition.

Photo by Angela Weiss

Is it necessary to remind you who was President at the time and that the paintings were by artists from majority-Muslim Nations?

I can understand that a museum should try to keep up with the times. For a while now museums have been reacting to the politics of the moment by acknowledging the fact that there are artists representing minorities in this country that should be shown on an equal footing as the white majority. Hence, we have the opportunity to evaluate work that is new to us. From September,2022 through December 2023 the National Gallery in Washington D.C. has an exhibition, “Called to Create: Black Artists from the American South” Here is a work by Lonnie Holley, “From the Beginning to the end of the Beginning” (1985). 

My attention was once again drawn to the impact of international politics on art with the invasion of the Ukraine. A March 19, 2023 article in “The Guardian” titled, “As the Met reclassifies Russian art as Ukrainian, not everyone is convinced”. For instance, The National Gallery, London changing the title of their pastel by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), as a part of a series known as “Russian Dancers”, to “Ukrainian Dancers”, and the Metropolitan Museum renamed their pastel “Dancer in Ukrainian Dress”. The Met went further reidentifying one of the few Russian artists, I am acquainted with, Ilya Repin (1844-1930). His nationality has been changed from Russian to Ukrainian as he was born in what became an independent country only in 1991. How will future generations cope with that? Will the artist’s identity depend on the outcome of the war? Here is a portrait by Illia Repin (1884) of the artist Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin in the Met.

We have also heard that some venues around the country have banned Russian artists from performing. Most prominent was the Metropolitan Opera who pulled Russian Anna Netrebko their reigning diva, and long a Putin supporter, from a scheduled Turandot and replaced her with a Ukrainian soprano. Netrebko’s Met contract was cancelled and other houses including La Scala dropped her.

We saw the lengths organizations are going to in order to avoid the issue of international politics recently played out here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At our Lensic Performing Arts Center we saw a fabulous performance of Swan Lake. The only information that was given was that the company was called “The World Ballet”. My wife, a former, ballet dancer, said only the Russians dance the classic Petipa works to such perfection. From snippets of information gathered online she put together the fact that this was indeed a pick-up troupe from Russia, making one-night stands in smaller towns around the U.S. The troupe recently returned to Santa Fe to dance Cinderella. Again, there was no printed program, but one was available online that disclosed the dancers’ Russian training, while in a newspaper interview the organizers made the point that not all the performers were Russian born. Here is a sample of troupe’s performance in Swan Lake.

Allow me to ask you to think about whether an artistic institution should change its direction because the politics or the moment might dictate it? I believe we would all answer that question slightly differently.

 

Patrick Hughes: A Three-Dimensional Artist

My British cousin, Karen Demuth, introduced us to the work of Patrick Hughes (1939- ) years ago when she worked at the Flowers Gallery in London. If we had been collectors of contemporary art, we would have bought one of his paintings and, though I am very much against collecting as an investment, this would have been a good candidate. In 2014 the gallery produced a 240-page monograph on Hughes “A Newer Perspective”. When I see one of his paintings, even in reproduction, I still feel that I am not just an onlooker but a participant, walking down the alleyways of his vision. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Time has passed and Karen has left Flowers and is now Hughes’ agent, managing his sales and exhibition program in coordingation with museums and galleries.

I am writing about him now because he will have an exhibition from April 1 to May 30 in the venerable New Orleans gallery, M.S. Rau, founded in 1912. They are calling it, “The Witty World of Patrick Hughes”. If you are not able to be in New Orleans the show will be available at msrau.com.

Hughes has works in a number of public collections including the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work has also been seen in exhibitions around the world.

Here is an image of a painting belonging to the Birmingham Museum ...

Credit: Birmingham Museums Trust

What makes Patrick Hughes distinctive is the optical technique by which he envelops you in the scene he depicts. Inspired by his childhood experience staring up at the underside of the basement stairs as he hid from the World War II bombing raids, he developed what he calls “Reverspectives”. These are “three-dimensional works painted on projecting panels that give different readings of a scene as the viewer moves.

Hughes has been credited with “inventing” reverse perspective. With reverse perspective objects farther away from the viewing plane are drawn as larger, and closer objects are drawn as smaller, in contrast to the more conventional linear perspective for which closer objects appear larger.

I find the painting titled “Catalogues 2021” most enticing. It evokes the experience of actually being part of the library as opposed to wandering down its rows of shelves.

The full effect is impossible to see in a photograph, but you can get the idea from the video of a Hughes’ painting where you seem to move through the Barnes Collection.

Linear perspective is certainly not new. Brendan Flynn, curator of Fine Art, Birmingham (England) Museum & Art Gallery writes, “Hughes is developing a line of enquiry which has preoccupied generations of European artists. The architect Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was one of the first artists to make interactive artwork that demonstrated the principle of perspective. By example here is a painting by Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) View of a Corridor (1662).

Dyrham Park, National Trust

The Flynn article continues, “His discovery and development of reverse perspective gave Hughes an even more potent mechanism for loosening the grip of experience on the viewer’s imagination. It relies on the fact that the human brain and eye are adapted during early childhood to apprehend space in terms of linear perspective – converging parallel lines imply recession and distant objects appear smaller.”

Viewing a Hughes painting is a truly interactive experience that can be disorienting at first as the artist makes you forget what you know of your own world as he allows you to get lost in his.

The Pink Panther Gang

Who doesn’t like a good heist story, particularly one named after the Peter Sellers 1970’s movie series “The Pink Panther”. The gang was named after a real life robbery of the London jewelers Graff in 2003. The robbers hid a gem in a jar of cold cream, a scenario straight out of the 1975 movie “The Return of the Pink Panther”. In under 40 seconds this video explains precisely how the 2003 heist was perpetrated. Video appears right under the title ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daring-pink-panther-heists-rake-in-500-million/

What caught my attention was the recent headline in Artnet News: “Dutch Police Are Closing In on the So-Called ‘Pink Panther Gang’ Behind the Astonishing Daytime Diamond Heist at TEFAF Maastricht.” TEFAF stands for The European Fine Arts Fair that started in Maastricht the Netherlands and remains there with an offshoot with more modern and contemporary art in New York. This year’s fair in Maastricht closed yesterday, and included 270 of the best art galleries around the world ...

https://www.tefaf.com/fairs/tefaf-maastricht

Last year, when TEFAF reopened after a two-year Covid hiatus, four well-dressed visitors at the booth of a Bond street jeweler, Symbolic & Chase, used a sledgehammer to smash a case and make off with the exhibited jewelry. They got away with 10 pieces, the most valuable, a 114-carat diamond necklace purported to be worth $29 million. Two suspects were arrested shortly thereafter but two got away.

The Pink Panthers are believed to be responsible for at least 370 heists. Estimates have put the groups' takings at around US$500 million. These are most likely retail figures. There are estimated to be 300-400 men and women (the published numbers vary up to 800) in the gang from former Yugoslavian states such as Serbia and Montenegro. They are further believed to be remnants of the Bosnian War who have made use of their militaristic skills.

In 2016 the Magazine Town and Country published a story saying, “Early Monday morning, five armed men disguised as police officers broke into Kim Kardashian's hotel room in Paris, held her at gunpoint, and stole over $11 million of jewelry. Few criminals have the wherewithal to pull off a heist like that and leave no trail, so it's already rumored that the infamous Pink Panthers were behind that robbery as well.”

Why are these thieves so successful? They differentiate themselves from other organized crime groups with the organization of their operations. Attractive women in expensive clothes and jewelry scout out the possibilities. Never more than five execute any strike. They try to avoid violence by striking suddenly and with impact like the example shown in the video above where they rammed two Audis into the jewelry shop in a Dubai mall. They act swiftly and with precision. They are not rummaging around but know what they have come for, get it and get out.

Over the years Interpol (The International Criminal Police Organization) has made inroads and captured a number of members of the Pink Panthers and learned of their structure and modus operandi. Interestingly enough the gang itself only receives a portion of the takings, estimated at 40%. Diamond buyers make most of the money by selling the jewels in Antwerp, Belgium where the majority of the black-market deals are made.

Keeping the large organization decentralized helps to hide the gang’s order of command and the identity of the leadership is still unknown.

Attacking Public Libraries & Librarians!

In May of last year in a Missive about Banned Book Clubs I wrote, “Happily, individual libraries and librarians are at the forefront of keeping freedom to read what you wish alive and encouraging young people to learn history and societies priorities through reading. The Brooklyn Public Library is offering free digital library cards to young people ages 13 to 21 across in the U.S.”

I spoke too soon. On March 4th of this year Hannah Allam of The Washington Post published very frightening article, she writes “… a parent-led movement in a handful of schools to ban books about race and sexuality has evolved into an organized nationwide campaign that library advocates say represent the greatest threat to intellectual freedom since the McCarthy era.”

That is Senator Joseph McCarthy, who, together with his allies, in the late 1940’s and through the 1950’s saw communists everywhere and suspected anyone with leftward leanings. They were blacklisted if not thrown in jail. Pete Seeger the well known folk singer was one of the victims of McCarthy’s congressional hearings. As a result Seeger was banned from television and radio during the 1950’s and 60’s.

Do read his amazing story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger

It is always the same, those who do not learn history are bound to repeat it.

According to the American Library Association (ALA) their members face “an unprecedented threat of censorship, fueled by a blend of hard-right politics and Christian nationalism… Librarians who reject book banning have been threatened, harassed, sued, fired and labeled “groomers” and “pedophiles” by social media”.

It gets even worse as politicians are pushing for laws to criminalize teachers and librarians. No wonder these underpaid people who work for a more educated public are quitting because on top of everything else they are being terrorized.

Last year Pen America celebrated its 100th anniversary. From their website, “PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.” Pen acknowledges 1,641 book titles blacklisted and writes that there are more. The subject matter covers a very wide range, not just sex issues such as LGBTQ+ and racism, but also books about rights and activism and even books with characters and stories that reflect minorities, such as Jewish, Muslim and other faiths and traditions.

The two most banned books on one list are The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey . With Sherman Alexie the controversy stems from his discussion of alcohol, poverty, bullying, violence, and sexuality. I am reading another book by Alexie right now where those subjects are included as part of the life of a Native American on the Spokane Reservation in the state of Washington. What are we protecting people from? The Truth!

The banned Captain Underpants series won a Kids' Choice Award on April 4, 2006. It includes 12 books, two activity books, and 15 spin-offs that, as of 2014, the series had been translated into more than 20 languages, with more than 80 million books sold worldwide. Are we to protect elementary schoolers from the stories of two misbehaving 4th grade boys who invent a superhero in underwear that has engaged so many in reading?

The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, upon hearing that her most famous book, “The Handmaid’s Tale” was being banned encouraged those that banned it. She said the more the book is banned the more copies she will sell. The censors, however, are going after bookstores as well.

Self-censorship is the next step. Puffin Books, the publishers of Roald Dahl’s classic dark children’s books, are now issuing sanitized versions eliminating descriptions like fat, ugly, bald and crazy.

Are ‘they’ going to censor Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” next? You don’t think so? From Hamlet, “That’s a fair thought, to lie between maids’ legs”. Hopefully ‘they’ have not read it yet.

A Show I Missed: “Wit, Humor, Satire”

If I listed all the exhibitions that I wanted to see that I missed, I could fill a few volumes, for example the Vermeer show that opens this month at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The one I am about to write about I have no excuse for missing since it was only an hour away at the Albuquerque Museum, but so it goes. I salved my wounds by acquiring the 218- page catalog which clearly came out after the exhibition opened.

The Museum Director, Andrew Connors, reports that one of the visitors wrote in the museum’s comment book, “This exhibition isn’t very funny”. How often have you thought that someone has no sense of humor? We all literally have a different sense of humor. What one individual might perceive as comical satire, another may take as an attack on their beliefs. Just between husband and wife we find we are not always laughing at what the other finds funny.

The Albuquerque exhibition draws exclusively on the Museum’s permanent collection which is limiting, but it turns out that there was more than enough material. It must have been an enjoyable process for the curators looking at the collection and picking and choosing. Just as with my Missives, once I start with what I think is a limited subject I find that there is so much more that I had not thought of in the first place.

The Museum’s chief curator Josie Lopez, quotes the American humorist James Thurber, “The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is people everywhere, not of the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.” Fro myself I prefer works that that do not require an explanation, but like, with everything else, in order to properly understand the subject, context is needed. Obviously, that is truer of satire than any other form.

I will highlight just a few of the more that 100 works in the exhibition.

Jewelry is one of the art forms of Native American culture. An unknown Zuni artist chose this medium to blend Native and Anglo cultures in a necklace of silver beads and with Disney characters in traditional Zuni inlay, including Micky and Minnie converging at the bottom. I can see it being viewed differently if it is worn by another Native American, who may see it as satire, or by an Anglo taking it just as amusement.

Patrick McGrath Muñiz, an artist I have mentioned several times over the years and devoted a Missive to his work (https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2013/12/patrick-mcgrath-muniz.html) titles his painting, “The Disneyfication of a Hero”. This 2010 work measures 38 x 52 inches so it is difficult to see all the detail in the image below. The classical hero Hercules is surrounded with images from the history of various cultures including Muñiz’ native Puerto Rico. There are references to violence and threats such as the censorship of books, (on the right is the 16th century Spanish prelate who burned Mayan scriptures). These disturbing images are mitigated by Disney characters scattered throughout the painting.

A drawing by Julio Fernandez Larraz satirizes President Lynden Baines Johnson speaking ata Meeting of the National Alliance of Businessmen in 1968, thanking them and encouraging them to hire more workers in order to get more people working and stimulate the economy. The President mentioned Henry Ford ll several times, praising him as a leader of the group. Larrraz responded with this caricature of a two-headed figure of Johnson with his foot in an old car and holding a screwdriver and Ford with his foot in one of his new models holding a pencil … the two united for a single purpose.

I once owned a print of the 1974 photograph by Judy Dater included in the exhibiton. It is an image that always made me smile. The revered photographer Imogen Cunningham, at the age of 90, is shown coming across the model Twinka Thiebaud in the woods. Imogen looks surprised and Twinka seems embarrassed by this famous photographer seeing her for the first time in her state of undress. Dater thought of the image as a take off on Thomas Hart Benton’s 1938 voyeuristic “Perephone” in the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Are any of these images Wit, Humor or Satire? It all depends on you the viewer, not necessarily the artist.