Current & Coming |
Poetry and painting
December 31, 2009 | Among this year's best surprises is the moving exhibition Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era, which opened during the summer at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, and remains on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, through January 24, 2010. Taking its title from a Whitman poem, the exhibition explores the American writer's poetry and prose to gain a deeper understanding of the transformation in the mood, the point of view, and the character of art produced in this country between 1861 and 1867.
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Current & Coming |
Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz and the timeless allure of wallpaper
December 7, 2009 | The new book by art historian and vintage wallpaper expert Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz, Wallpaper: A History of Style and Trends (Flammarion, 2009), offers a visually stunning and comprehensive survey of decorative wall coverings. Chronicling wallpaper's evolution—from guild organization in the 
16th century through its refinement in 18th-century France; the technical advancement of the panoramique; trade and interpretation in the United States; and transformation into modern and then contemporary art—Thibaut-Pomerantz cites major exhibitions and provides detailed historical analysis across many countries, providing an invaluable resource on her subject.
The volume is generously illustrated with examples from premier manufacturers Dufour, Zuber, and Réveillon, along with limited-edition papers by contemporary artists such as Calder, Warhol, Miró, and Matisse. Examples of wallpapers in situ are particularly arresting, and some highlights include: a view of the Porcelain Room at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna covered in the 18th-century blue Chinoiseries, the scenic wallpaper reissued from Zuber that Jacqueline Kennedy hung in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, and a tromp l'oeil paper depicting shelves of books designed by Deborah Bowness for Christian Lacroix's decoration of the Hôtel du Petit Moulin in Paris.
Current & Coming |
American paintings at auction
November 30, 2009 | On the horizon are the fall sales of American paintings, drawings, and sculpture at Christie's and Sotheby's in New York. Among the highlights to be offered at Christie's, on December 2, is Andrew Wyeth's 1960 Above the Narrows, a painting the New York Times art critic Roberta Smith once referred to as "bleak" and "inexplicably barren," featuring a young boy in shorts and shirt in a desolate landscape. While important examples of Wyeth's tempera paintings on panel or paper can bring auction prices in the millions, this picture's estimate of $3 to $5 million suggests Christie's is banking on a continued boost in interest due to the artist's death earlier this year. 
On December 3, Sotheby's is offering Wyeth's 1968 watercolor Bikini, depicting his frequent subject Siri Erickson posing seminude at the back door of her shed (the same door that appears in Erickson's Barn and Maine Door). In a 1976 interview with Thomas Hoving then the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wyeth described his pictures of Siri as representing "an invigorating, zestful, powerful phenomenon." Being sold from the estate of the artist and collector Arthur Byron Phillips, the work has an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
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Current & Coming |
Multiple modernisms on exhibit in New York
November 23, 2009 | Early twentieth—century modernism-particularly that of Austria and Germany—seems to be all over New York this fall, with two exhibitions at the Guggenheim—Kandinsky, and Gabriel Munter and Vasily Kandisnky 1902-14: A life in Photographs—one at the Museum of Modern Art—Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, and yet another at the Neue Galerie: From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the Serge Sebarsky Collection, which displays paintings and works on paper by seminal modernists including Kokoschka, Beckmann, and Kirchner. The works on view at the Neue Galerie are taken exclusively from the collection of the museum's founder, Serge Sabarsky, who, Austrian himself, became a leading advocate and collector of Austrian and German art in the United States in the mid-twentieth century-a time when modernism was perceived as a uniquely French phenomenon.
Current & Coming |
Elbert Hubbard: An American Original
November 23, 2009 | Premiering tonight on PBS (check here for local listings), Elbert Hubbard: An American Original offers a sweeping profile of the arts and crafts visionary and founder of East Aur
ora, New York's Roycroft community. Charting the controversial and often contradictory course of Hubbard's personal and professional lives, this documentary film by Paul Lamont includes wonderful archival footage as well as interviews with Hubbard's great-grandson, author Lauren Belfer, and present day Roycroft craftsmen, among many others. With over 500 craftsmen at its peak, the Roycroft community of artisans was the earliest and most successful of its kind in the United States—making Hubbard one of the most influential figures in the craft revival movement of the twentieth century. Don't miss it!
For more on Roycroft, take a look at an earlier feature in Inspired by Antiques.» More
Sitzmaschine, model #670, Designed by Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), Manufactured by J.& J. Kohn, Austria, ca. 1905.Bent beech wood, steel; height 39
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