Category Archives: Art News

Manet’s Civil Wars, part III: The Birth of Impressionism

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A silence of death reigned over these ruins…No clatter of vehicles, no shouts of the children, not even the song of a bird…An incredible sadness invaded our souls.

— Théophile Gautier

Manet looks at Civil War

In 1872, rubble and debris could be seen all over Paris. Only a year after the disastrous Franco-Prussian war and subsequent civil war, the economy was a wreck. The city would remain a vast construction site for the rest of the decade.

Ruins of the Tuileries Palace, 1871

Because the recent events were so emotionally devastating, most French artists avoided those awful days as subject matter.  But not Édouard Manet.

Manet, Civil War (Scene from the Commune of Paris) , 1871.

Inspired by Goya’s suite of etchings, The Disasters of War (from the early 1800s), Manet documented the suffering of the Parisians during their Terrible Year. His lithograph, Civil War (Scene from the Commune of Paris) was based on sketches he made in the grim aftermath of a battle against federal forces in late May 1871. We can see at the center a dead, heroic Communard behind a stone barricade. In the lower right corner are the legs of a civilian victim.

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Manet’s Civil Wars, part II: The Siege of Paris

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“…every war is worse than expected.” – Paul Fussell

During the Franco-Prussian war everyone in Paris, whether painter, poet, or plumber, was swept up by history. Even after the abdication of Napoleon III and the birth of the new Republic that Édouard Manet and his fellow Impressionists had long dreamt of, the armies of the “Government of Defense” continued to suffer defeat after humiliating defeat across French territory. By the autumn of 1870, there seemed little hope of stopping Prussian forces in their relentless drive towards Paris.

The Siege

As bad news continued to flood in, many Parisians – if they had the means – fled from the city. Monet, who had a military exemption purchased by his father, headed north — crossing the Channel to London. There he was joined by Camille and their son where a small artists community of exiles was forming. Pissarro (who was technically a Danish citizen) came with his family, then Sisley, Daubigny, and their art dealer Durand-Ruel. Cezanne headed in the opposite direction — home to the south of France — to avoid being drafted.

1870 Paris: Manet (left) in Bazille’s studio/Bazille in uniform

Manet and Degas, however, stayed to defend their city. Partisans of the new French Republic like so many of their friends, they enlisted in the National Guard. Renoir joined the cavalry. Rodin was drafted but later dismissed because he was too nearsighted. Gauguin served in the French navy in a group that captured four German ships. Frédéric Bazille, a close friend of Monet and Renoir, was killed leading an assault on the Prussians 65 miles south of Paris. Corot, in his 70s, refused to leave his studio and donated huge sums to the poor of Paris. Courbet, Gustave Moreau, Fantin-Latour, and Daumier also remained. Berthe Morisot, who could have spent the war far from the fighting with her sister in Normandy, insisted on staying with her parents in the city’s affluent neighborhood of Passy.

As the Prussians drew closer, the battered, retreating French armies, along with farmers from the countryside, poured into Paris. The population of the capital grew rapidly – just as the new Republican government was struggling to figure out how to feed a city about to be cut off from the outside world.

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Manet’s Civil Wars

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In June 1864, the painter Édouard Manet was trying to recover from the brutality of the critics’ response to his Salon entries that January. This had followed on the heels of being treated as a laughingstock the year before when he exhibited a painting that became infamous in Paris, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), at the Salon des Refusés (the Salon of the Refused). Despite his desire to be accepted by the academic community, Manet found himself described as a radical artist, ignorant of the basic tenets of art. Somewhat bewildered, he was searching for a subject that could revive his reputation and ensure his admission into the next Salon.

Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur L’herbe, 1863

What was the Salon?

In today’s art scene with its myriad pathways for exhibiting, the importance and power of the Salon is hard to comprehend. Begun in the early 1800s to show off the work of academic prize winners in the Louvre’s Salon de Carré (hence its name), by the 1860s it had become essentially the only exhibition in Paris that mattered. If you were a young artist, you had to be accepted to the annual Salon to receive any kind of notice. An academic jury consisting of members of the Ecole de Beaux-Arts and prizewinning artists from previous Salons served as either your gateway to a future in art or your roadblock. The judges expected paintings with historical, uplifting subject matter or scenes from mythology. All submissions were expected to be “skilled,” in other words, have a polished, finished appearance.

Édouard Dantan, A Corner of the Salon

Unfortunately, acceptance to an annual Salon was only the first step. Where and how your work was hung in its many rooms also mattered.  In the 19th century, artworks were displayed in rows stacked up along the walls. A small painting hung high near a doorway would never attract notice, while a work placed at eye level in a grand room could mean a great deal to an artist’s reputation.

The Battle

While preparing for the annual family vacation along the Normandy coast of France, Manet read in the Paris newspapers about an exciting naval battle of American ships that had just taken place off the harbor of Cherbourg. In one of the most important sea battles of the American Civil War, the Union’s USS Kearsage, which had crossed the Atlantic on a mission to sink one ship — the Confederate navy’s CSS Alabama — finally caught it.

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When Clement Greenberg met Norman Rockwell

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After World War II, the center of the art universe shifted and New York City replaced Paris as the home of the avant-garde. In Manhattan’s downtown bars and studios, passions ran high. Arguments about art and ideas often turned into celebrated drunken brawls. Amidst the turbulent turf wars, one art critic reigned supreme – Clement Greenberg. His discovery of Jackson Pollock led to the rise of Abstract Expressionism as the dominant art form in the post-war art world. His opinions were followed intensely, even feared, by artists, dealers, and collectors.

Mercedes Matter, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Frank O’Hara, and Elaine de Kooning at Cedar Tavern, NYC, 1960. [Photo: Arthur Swoger]

Yet, despite the New York School’s position as the foremost movement in Modern Art, if you asked most Americans in the 1950s to name their favorite artist, they would probably have said Norman Rockwell, the beloved illustrator of covers for the Saturday Evening Post. For decades, the Post had been the most popular magazine of its time. Self-proclaimed as “America’s Magazine,” its covers depicted an ideal small-town America, not unlike the New England towns where Rockwell spent most of his adult life. In fact, his models were often his neighbors. His covers were regularly turned into posters and found their way onto the walls of homes across the country.

Norman Rockwell, “The Discovery,” Saturday Evening Post, December 29, 1956

This frustrated Clement Greenberg, who was justifiably proud of the emergence of New York as the global center of art. In his best-known essay, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” he struggled to understand how such a strange state of affairs was possible and why the citizens of his country were not embracing their great cultural victory. At the end of its very first sentence, he almost calls out Rockwell by name:

“One and the same civilization produces simultaneously two such different things as a poem by T. S. Eliot and a Tin Pan Alley song, or a painting by Braque and a Saturday Evening Post cover.”

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Kokoschka’s Alma Mahler doll

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A strange, life-size doll is at the center of one of the Modern era’s most bizarre episodes. Its inspiration was the sudden end of an intense love affair between the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka and the fascinating Alma Mahler.

Born in 1879, Alma Maria Schindler grew up surrounded by the best of Viennese society. Her father was a noted painter; Crown Prince Rudolf was one of his patrons. While she would become a composer and a writer, it is her love affairs with some of the most important artists, architects, and composers of the 20th century that have kept her celebrity alive since her death in 1964. Continue reading →

Florence News: New Botticelli rooms open in Uffizi

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The long awaited new Botticelli rooms at the Uffizi opened in mid-October after being closed for fifteen months. The heavy dark planked ceiling is gone and the Early Renaissance master’s works are now spread across three rooms with white walls and brighter lighting. While most paintings are still covered in glass, it is less obtrusive. Glare has been minimized.The most famous works, the Birth of Venus and Primavera, are given generous space and recessed into gallery walls.

In the new layout, all Botticelli’s works have been restored and given more space. There is a fresh feeling like a newly constructed home compared to the old dark and crowded spaces. While you can’t actually smell the new paint, you can still see the marks of the suction cups used to place the glass in front of the Birth of Venus.

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A Director’s tour of Florence’s new Duomo Museum

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The opening of the Museo del Duomo in 2015. Photo: Andrea Paoletti

The opening of the Museo del Duomo in 2015. Photo: Andrea Paoletti

The reviews for Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo highly anticipated reopening in 2015 after an expansion and extensive renovation were enthusiastic. The Florentines were thrilled about finally having a truly 21st century museum in their city center. But when I made my first visit that November, my reaction was very different. I was stunned by the many unaesthetic choices made by its designers, left cold by its grand gestures, and particularly disturbed about how it had intentionally eliminated the possibility of intimate contact with so many of its iconic works – like Donatello’s Magdalene – something that was a hallmark of the old museum. This past summer I returned again, hoping that my initial reaction was simply shock at seeing big changes in an old favorite museum. Yet the second visit only reinforced my disappointment and frustration.

This Fall, however, I had an extraordinary opportunity to understand the philosophy behind the changes to the Museo dell’Opera by joining a tour given to Museum Studies students. The leader of the tour was none other than its Director, Monsignor Timothy Verdon, who, I came to learn, was behind all of the design decisions for the new museum. If anyone could convince me of the wisdom of these changes – this was the man.

Monsignor Timothy Verdon

Monsignor Timothy Verdon

Timothy Verdon has had an extraordinary career. While originally from New Jersey, he has lived and worked in Florence for more than half a century. An expert on sacred art, with a PhD in Art History from Yale University, he has curated important exhibits and written many books on the subject. Today, besides being Director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, he teaches at Stanford University’s Florence campus and is the Canon of the Florence Cathedral complex, which includes the Baptistry, Giotto’s Campanile (or Bell Tower), and the Duomo.

Our group met the Director in the lobby, which remains at the old entrance to the Museum. Msgr. Verdon greeted us with a sweet and friendly smile, acknowledging his enthusiastic introduction by a faculty member with endearing modesty. He began the tour by explaining the goals of the renovation.  His words revealed the central role he had played in developing its new vision. “My vision” was to re-connect the museum with the historical sites of the Cathedral piazza. He pointed out that the Duomo museum is unlike a typical museum, since almost all of its art is from one place – the buildings of the Piazza del Duomo — the same place where it is shown. Thus, unlike almost any other major world museum, it provides a unique opportunity to talk about the place itself and to have what Verdon called a ‘narrative.’

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Update on the Missing Botticelli

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Botticelli St Augustine restored bannerIt was a stormy afternoon (not night), when I nervously entered Florence’s Ognissanti Church to check if Botticelli’s St. Augustine had finally returned. My last meeting had run late and I was out of breath. Tomorrow my flight was leaving at sunrise, so this would be my last chance. I walked at top speed nearly the whole way, because it was close to closing time. There was no time to take more than a few irresistible last looks at the city (Santa Maria Novella, the Arno).  Luckily, a thunderstorm had just ended, thinning the crowds of tourists, but the stone pavement was slippery in spots along the way.

For the past three years, I had made this pilgrimage, only to experience disappointment. Ognissanti, one of the important neighborhood parish churches of Florence, has quite a few treasures, like its beautifully restored, spectacular 15 foot tall crucifix by Giotto. It is also the final resting place of Sandro Botticelli, his tomb near the feet of his unrequited love, Simonetta Vespucci, the model for The Birth of Venus and other masterpieces. Visitors from around the world leave love notes addressed to the artist there.

But one of my favorite Botticelli frescoes, St. Augustine in his Study (1480), has been missing for years, its place taken by a mounted, fading color photocopy. Just across the aisle hangs a fresco designed to be the other half of a pair — Domenico Ghirlandaio’s St. Jerome in his Study (1480).  St. Jerome appears to be looking across at St. Augustine. Leaning his head in his hand, he seemed to, while trying to be philosophical, share my frustration looking across at the poor copy.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study (1480)

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study,  1480

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Vigée Le Brun’s unfortunate marriage

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Lebrun,_Self-portraitThe odds were stacked against Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, yet she became one of the most successful court portrait painters in France during the reign of Louis XVI. Many troubles would come her way during her life. But the worst may not have been the French Revolution, it may have been her husband.

Born in Paris in 1755, Élisabeth Vigée demonstrated great artistic promise as as a young girl. Her father, a pastel artist himself, told her, “You will be a painter, my child, if ever there was one.” Still, her application to train at the painter’s guild was denied because she was a female (even though her father was a member). Forced to learn at home, she set herself on a course that mirrored academic training by copying plaster casts and engravings. While her father helped with lessons, her mother took her to exhibitions and acted as her chaperon when the young Élisabeth visited homes to work on portraits.

By the age of 19, she already had a successful career. Too successful — she attracted the attention of the local authorities, who closed her studio down because she was not a member of the artist’s guild. To make matters worse, after her father’s untimely death when she was 12, her mother had married a wealthy jeweler who collected the young artist’s fees and was not eager to share them with her.

Young Self-Portrait

Young Self-Portrait, c. 1782?

Vigée managed to gain admission to the painter’s guild after they unsuspectingly exhibited her paintings at their annual exhibition in 1774. By then, the daughter (whom her mother once thought homely) had become a beautiful young woman who attracted not only commissions but the attentions of many important people, including Jean Baptiste Pierre Lebrun, the most successful art dealer in Paris. Le Brun was one of the first dealers to sell artworks as investments and was an innovator in making art a much more international trade.

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), Self-Portrait, Salon of 1795

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), Self-Portrait, Salon of 1795

According to Vigée, Le Brun invited her often to his mansion, which was filled with art. “I was enchanted at an opportunity of first hand acquaintance with…works of the great masters. M. Lebrun was so obliging as to lend me, for the purposes of copying some of his handsomest and most valuable paintings.”

To her surprise, in 1776, Le Brun asked her to marry him. Already a favorite portrait artist of Paris’s aristocratic women, she wondered if it was wise to give up the name by which she had become well known. But her home-life was becoming miserable. Her stepfather had retired, was becoming increasingly ill-tempered, and was hoarding her earnings.

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The Monk and the Missing Botticelli: A Florence Story

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botticelli closeup

One of the treasures of the Ognissanti Church in Florence has been missing for years. Ognissanti, known for being the burial place of Sandro Botticelli and Amerigo Vespucci, and for its huge and recently restored Giotto crucifix, is a pilgrimage site for art lovers and romantics. In 1480, the Vespucci family commissioned a pair of frescos that face each other across the main nave:on the left, Saint Jerome at his desk, painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio; on the right, Saint Augustine in his study by Botticelli.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study, 1480.

Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in his Study

Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in his Study, 1480.

Sadly, the Botticelli  is no longer there. In its place is a photograph of the fresco. For years now, whenever I visit Florence, I go to Ognissanti hoping to see the original fresco has returned, only to be disappointed. The print at this point is fading badly, its colors turning a pale blue like an old family Kodachrome.

While I always assumed the fresco was only temporarily removed for restoration, about a month ago I decided to investigate. On a cold February morning, I approached a monk who was huddled in a corner near the entrance, wrapped in his robes, a stocking cap under his hood. I recognized him from my previous visits as the guardian of the church. He appears to be Asian, possibly from the Philippines. Even though we have never talked, I had a fond feeling for him because I believed he was responsible for the lovely recorded religious music that fills the church.

I asked in my weak Italian, “the Botticelli fresco, is it being restored?” The question seemed to rouse him. Over the next ten minutes, I would get an earful from the monk in a mix of Italian and English.

“In restauro? (restoration?) That’s what they said. Two years ago! But it is not being restored at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is on tour of Japan to earn money for the state.”

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