—This is not exactly a new subject of inquiry but fascinating nonetheless—how the physical infirmities of great artists have affected their art. In Simulations of Ailing Artists’ Eyes Yield New Insights on Style, Guy Gugliotta writes in the NY Times that “an ophthalmologist at Stanford, Michael F. Marmor, described in the Archives of Ophthalmology creating computer simulations of Monet’s world as his lenses yellowed, blurring vision and turning patterns of color and light into muddy, unfocused, yellow-green inkblots.”
Of course, we already knew about that from the wall text at the great “Monet in the 20th Century” show in 1998 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. And the final gallery of the current “Renoir Landscapes” show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art includes a surprisingly satisfying painting that he miraculously managed to produce in old age, when his hands were crippled by arthritis. The article should have (but doesn’t) taken us up to recent times—the great work created in adversity by Willem de Kooning and Chuck Close.
—NAGPRA in Action: The spirit of Sitting Bull and the letter of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (for which changes have recently been proposed) impelled the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to find the descendants of the legendary Sioux chief who defeated Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. They will get their ancestor’s lock of hair and leggings that were taken by a U.S. Army doctor and donated to the museum. Associated Press has the story.
—My native borough has a new museum (which I haven’t seen yet). It’s Fordham University’s Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, with works from the collection of financier William Walsh. And already someone is raining on the new Bronx museum’s parade.
Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times reports:
Richard Hodges, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, said that Fordham’s new museum was problematic. “It’s a slightly imprudent act on the part of the university, because a lot of it is not provenanced,” he said. “The message that it sends is there is nothing wrong with looting and buying illegal objects. Fordham needs to be very careful about this.”
But Mr. Walsh said he acquired every piece at public auctions—not through a private dealer—and therefore hopes that the provenance of his artifacts is clean and accounted for. “I’ve always focused on keeping the auction house between myself and the seller,” he said.
Told of Mr. Hodges’s comments, Ms. [Jennifer] Udell [Fordham’s curator of university art] said she hoped that anyone who had a claim to or concerns about any of the pieces would come forward.
—The NY Times devotes a whole issue of its Sunday style magazine, T, to insidiously conflating art and fashion in a way that makes my skin crawl. Go here, if you really must.
—Speaking of art and fashion, if you insist on having your Art Basel Miami Beach blog fix, here‘s the Wall Street Journal‘s art-market blog: “Kelly Crow and Lauren Schuker will be reporting on the sales and the scene.”
Here and here are Lindsay Pollock‘s first dispatches for Bloomberg.
And here‘s CultureGrrl‘s kindred spirit, Marion Maneker, providing a curmudgeonly take, “Heading South,” for Portfolio.
Maneker begins:
Miami’s sixth annual art bacchanal begins. But what’s it good for? Not for buying art.
Maneker ends:
Events like Miami Basel have become so important to dealers that artists are intentionally creating works that will stand out in this supercharged atmosphere. Collectors call this wall power–big paintings with strong colors and simple effects that register better at a distance and are easier to understand in the 10 minutes the dealer gives you to decide. But connoisseurs tend to see it as second-rate stuff not worth owning for the long run.
I KNEW there was a reason why I’m not going!
UPDATE: I neglected to mention NY Magazine‘s personality fixated Basel Blog, as an e-mail from the magazine has just reminded me. How could I?
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's cultural commentary
an ArtsJournal blog