Saturday, November 19, 2022

Modigliani Up Close

Barnes Foundation

October 16, 2022–January 29, 2023

This fall, in celebration of its centennial, the Barnes Foundation will present Modigliani Up Close, a major loan exhibition that shares new insights into Amedeo Modigliani’s working methods and materials. On view in the Roberts Gallery from October 16, 2022, through January 29, 2023, Modigliani Up Close is curated by an international team of art historians and conservators: Barbara Buckley, Senior Director of Conservation and Chief Conservator of Paintings at the Barnes; Simonetta Fraquelli, independent curator and Consulting Curator for the Barnes; Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes; and Annette King, Paintings Conservator at Tate, London.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) is among the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. While many exhibitions have endeavored to reunite his paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Modigliani Up Close offers a unique opportunity to examine their production and explore how Modigliani constructed and composed his signature works. Featuring new scholarship that builds on research that began in 2017 with the major Modigliani retrospective at Tate Modern, this single-venue exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are the culmination of years of research by conservators and curators across Europe and the Americas. Modigliani Up Close furthers understanding of Modigliani’s approach to his art, refines a chronology of his paintings and sculptures, and helps to establish the locations and circumstances of where he worked.

“We are pleased to present this major exhibition that offers a detailed investigation of Modigliani’s unique style,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “Stemming from a multiyear, global research effort, the show has brought the international art community together to create a collaborative vision of the artist’s practice, leaving a lasting legacy for future Modigliani scholarship. The Barnes collection is home to 16 works by the artist, one of the largest and most important groups of the artist’s works in the world, and the project provided a unique opportunity to fully explore their significance. We see once more how Dr. Barnes broke new ground in the history of collecting modern art.”

Featuring nearly 50 works from major collections, and organized into thematic sections, the exhibition presents paintings and sculptures alongside new findings that have resulted from the technical research of collaborating conservators, conservation scientists, and curators. Using analytical techniques, including X-radiography, infrared reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), conservators and conservation scientists reveal previously unknown aspects of Modigliani’s work. Visitors will feel closer to Modigliani as an artist, seeing his work through the eyes of the experts, catching glimpses of the artist’s hand hidden beneath the surfaces of his work.

“Thanks to the work of conservators and curators from museums around the globe, Modigliani Up Close offers an unrivaled opportunity to understand how the artist made his iconic paintings and sculptures,” says Nancy Ireson. “The exhibition is a perfect demonstration of how, in addition to producing innovative research, the Barnes Foundation brings together colleagues in the field to share their findings and thoughts.”

This exhibition holds a special significance at the Barnes, as Dr. Albert C. Barnes was one of Modigliani’s earliest collectors in the United States and helped shape the artist’s critical reception in this country. In addition to works on paper, there are 12 significant paintings and one carved stone sculpture by Modigliani in the Barnes collection. With 12 paintings each, the Barnes and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, have the largest collections of Modigliani paintings in the world.

To learn more about works in Modigliani Up Close, visitors can use Barnes Focus, a mobile guide that works on any smartphone with a web browser. Previously only accessible for works in the Barnes collection, Modigliani Up Close marks the first occasion Barnes Focus can be used to explore loaned works in an exhibition. To use it, visitors simply open the guide by navigating to barnesfoc.us on a mobile browser and focus on a work of art; the guide will recognize the work and deliver information about it. Barnes Focus also leverages the Google Translate API, so you can automatically translate the guide into a variety of languages.

CATALOGUE

The fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, Modigliani Up Close, is published by the Barnes Foundation in association with Yale University Press and edited by Barbara Buckley, Simonetta Fraquelli, Nancy Ireson, and Annette King. The catalogue, featuring 360 images, offers a focused exploration of how Modigliani constructed and composed his signature works and sheds light on Dr. Barnes’s role in the trajectory of Modigliani’s career. The Barnes collection is home to one of the most important groups of Modigliani works in the world and the catalogue brings these works together with some 50 other important examples from public and private collections around the world.

Organized into thematic groupings, the works are interpreted through the lens of new research carried out by renowned conservators, including Barbara Buckley and Annette King. In addition to scholarly contributions by the curatorial team, the book includes essays by Cindy Kang, Associate Curator at the Barnes, and art historian Alessandro De Stefani, and scholarly entries co-written by the project’s collaborating conservators, curators, and conservation scientists from participating institutions such as Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; Art Institute of Chicago; the Barnes Foundation; Collezione Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte; Dallas Museum of Art; Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Kunstmuseum Bern; LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, d’Art Contemporain et d’Art Brut, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen; Musée National Picasso–Paris; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, Israel; Saint Louis Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Images

Amedeo Modigliani. Young Woman in Blue (Giovane Donna in Azzurro), 1919, Oil on canvas. The Barnes Foundation, BF268.

Amedeo Modigliani. The Pretty Housewife (La Jolie ménagère), 1915. The Barnes Foundation, BF327.

Amedeo Modigliani. Reclining Nude from the Back (Nu couché de dos), 1917, Oil on canvas. The Barnes Foundation, BF576.

Amedeo Modigliani. Nude with Coral Necklace, 1917.
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. Gift of Joseph and Enid Bissett 1955.59

Amedeo Modigliani. Portrait of Manuel Humbert, 1916. Collection of Bruce and Robbi Toll

Amedeo Modigliani. Young Woman in a Yellow Dress (Renée Modot), 1918. Collezione Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte, on long-term loan to the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Image Credit

Cerruti Foundation for Art, on long term loan to Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin

Amedeo Modigliani. Jeanne Hébuterne with Yellow Sweater, 1918–19. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, by gift, 37.533

Photo credit: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY

Amedeo Modigliani. Nude with a Hat (recto), 1908. Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, Israel. Hecht Museum, Haifa

Photograph © Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, Photo: Shay Levy

Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of Maud Abrantes (verso), 1908. Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum, University of Haifa

Photograph © Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, Photo: Shay Levy

Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne, 1919. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nate B. Spingold, 1956 (56.184.2)

Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource

Amedeo Modigliani. Jean- Baptiste Alexandre with a Crucifix, 1909. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Gift of Blaise and Philippe Alexandre, 1988.11.1 / Image © C. Lancien, C. Loisel /Réunion des Musées Métropolitains Rouen Normandie

Amedeo Modigliani. Black Hair (Young Dark-Haired Girl), 1918. Musée National Picasso–Paris. Gift of Pablo
Picasso, 1978

Amedeo Modigliani. Self Portrait, 1919. Museu de Arte Contemporanea da Universidade de São Paulo, Gift of Yolanda Penteado and Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho
1963.2.16 / MAC USP Collection [Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP Collection, São Paulo, Brazil

MAC USP Collection [Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP Collection, São Paulo, Brazil]

Amedeo Modigliani. The Young Apprentice, 1918-19.
Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection RF 1963-7

Amedeo Modigliani. Blue Eyes (Portrait of Madame Jeanne Hébuterne), 1917. Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1967- 30- 59

Amedeo Modigliani. Portrait of Roger Dutilleul, 1919. Collection of Bruce and Robbi Toll

Details of hand and finger showing partly overpainted wedding band
Amedeo Modigliani. Portrait of the Red-Headed Woman (Portrait de la femme rousse), 1918. BF206

Image © The Barnes Foundation

Friday, November 18, 2022

Castaway Modernism - Basel’s Acquisitions of “Degenerate” Art

Kunstmuseum Basel

October 22, 2022–February 19, 2023,

https://kumu.picturepark.com/s/HN2WJ8Uh

The Kunstmuseum Basel’s classic modernism division boasts one of the most prestigious collections of its kind. Yet the work of assembling it was begun at a comparatively late date. In the summer of 1939, the Kunstmuseum acquired twenty-one outstanding works of German and French modernism. Denounced as “degenerate,” they had been forcibly removed from German museums in 1937 in pursuance of Nazi cultural policy, then categorized as “internationally salable” and sold through the art market. The exhibition Castaway Modernism at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau sheds light on the various aspects of this turning point in the history of the Basel collection. It interweaves the widely told and popular story of how these treasures were saved with a closer look at the contemporary debates within society over a business transaction with a dictatorial regime. The works purchased in 1939 are shown in their historic context, appearing side by side with other major works of German Expressionism from museums and private collections all over the world.

Another key section of the presentation investigates the fates of works that feature in the history of the Basel acquisitions yet are now considered destroyed or missing. The Kunstmuseum Basel directly purchased more objects from the stockpile confiscated from German museums than any other institution. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Liège was the only other museum to acquire a significant set of artifacts formerly held by German museums, buying nine works. The purchases reflected a seminal decision to build a modern collection and mark the moment the Kunstmuseum Basel opened its doors to the art of the time.

Historical background:

Germany Since the turn of the century, many German museums had spent considerable sums on collections of modern art, buying works of Expressionism, the New Objectivity, Cubism, and Dadaism as well as French modernism. The National Socialists, who had seized power in 1933, branded such art with the derogatory label “degenerate.” In the summer of 1937, the Nazi authorities seized more than 21,000 works of “degenerate” art from German museums. Works by Jewish artists and works with Jewish or political subjects were among the primary targets of the campaign. Many of the confiscated works were displayed in the exhibition Degenerate Art held in Munich in 1937.

Out of the vast stockpile, around 780 paintings and sculptures and 3,500 works on paper were declared “internationally salable”—which is to say, they were seen as suitable for sale abroad to raise funds in foreign currencies. These works were moved to a storage site in the north of Berlin. 125 works were selected for an auction to be held by Theodor Fischer in Lucerne in late June 1939. Four art dealers, among them Karl Buchholz and Hildebrand Gurlitt, were brought on board to find international buyers for the remaining art. Much of the “unsalable” stockpile was burned in Berlin on March 20, 1939.

Basel around 1939

In 1936, the Kunstmuseum Basel had inaugurated its new home on St. Alban-Graben— today’s Hauptbau. The relocation into the spacious building revealed how little the collection of modern paintings had to offer: the works of Old Masters Konrad Witz and Hans Holbein the Younger constituted the core of the holdings. Otto Fischer, the museum’s director at the time, had sought to rectify this imbalance, but several attempts to buy modern art had been rebuffed.

Taking the helm of the museum in 1939, Georg Schmidt, like his predecessor, wanted to build a modern collection. As a journalist, he had observed and criticized the persecution of modern art in Germany since 1933. His ambition was to buy as many of the confiscated works as possible—at the upcoming auction in Lucerne, but also directly from the warehouse in Berlin, which he visited in late May 1939 at the invitation of the dealers Buchholz and Gurlitt, who had been tasked with “liquidating” the art. Buchholz and Schmidt drew up a selection of works that was sent to Basel for inspection.

The Fischer auction in Lucerne

The auction Modern Masters from German Museums was held at Galerie Theodor Fischer, Lucerne, on June 30, 1939. The Kunstmuseum’s board of trustees applied to the Canton of Basel-City for a special fund in the amount of CHF 100,000 for acquisitions of art formerly held by German museums. The question of whether buying art from a dictatorial regime was a defensible decision—especially at a time when everything suggested that war was imminent—was controversial. On the evening before the auction, however, the canton allocated CHF 50,000. At the auction, the Kunstmuseum purchased eight works: Paul Klee’s Villa R, a still life by Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix’s Portrait of the Artist’s Parents I, Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait as a Half-Length Nude with Amber Necklace II, and Franz Marc’s Two Cats, Blue and Yellow, as well as André Derain’s Still Life with Calvary, a work on paper by Marc Chagall, and his large painting The Pinch of Snuff (Rabbi). These works now rank among the highlights in the museum’s classic modernism galleries.

Even before the auction, Marc’s Animal Destinies was the first work removed from a German museum to be bought directly from Berlin. Two weeks after the Lucerne auction, the works sent from Berlin for inspection were set up in the Kunstmuseum’s skylight hall. The museum purchased an additional twelve of them, including Max Beckmann’s The Nizza in Frankfurt am Main, Lovis Corinth’s Ecce Homo, two paintings by Modersohn-Becker, and Oskar Kokoschka’s Bride of the Wind, a masterwork of Expressionism. Due to budgetary constraints, the museum was unable to buy all works at the auction and from the selection sent to Basel that Schmidt would have liked to acquire.

The exhibition Castaway Modernism is the first to reunite the works of “degenerate” art that entered the museum’s collection at the time with those that Basel did not purchase, among them Pablo Picasso’s The Soler Family, James Ensor’s Death and Masks, and Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Seated Girl. Three of the works that traveled to Basel for inspection in 1939 or that Schmidt had requested are now believed to have been destroyed: Oskar Schlemmer’s Three Women and Otto Dix’s The Widow and Trench. Represented by black-and-white projections, these works are included in the exhibition as well.

The “forgotten generation”

The great majority of the 21,000 confiscated artifacts were works by artists in the early stages of their careers. Many of these objects were destroyed in 1938 because the Nazis did not see any possible use for them. The names of the creators faded into obscurity. The exhibition Castaway Modernism dedicates a separate gallery to this “forgotten generation.” Marg Moll’s Dancer is an especially striking illustration of the vagaries of the history of loss bound up with the persecution of “degenerate art”: until recently, the work, which was displayed in the exhibition Degenerate Art, was thought to have been destroyed. In 2010, it was recovered during the construction of a new subway line from the rubble left by the bombing of Berlin. Films in the exhibition Silent films with a running time of around three minutes based on historic photographs and documents play in a loop in each gallery and serve as an introduction to the exhibits. The films were developed and produced by teamstratenwerth.

The scholarly catalogue reconstructs the events, beginning with the confiscations from German museums, and embeds them in their historical context. Essays on the auction in Lucerne, on Georg Schmidt’s strategy, and on the place of the acquisitions in the history of the Basel collection bring specifically Swiss aspects into focus. With essays by Claudia Blank, Gregory Desauvage, Uwe Fleckner, Meike Hoffmann, Georg Kreis, Eva Reifert, Tessa Rosebrock, Ines Rotermund-Reynard, Sandra Sykora, Christoph Zuschlag. Eds. Eva Reifert, Tessa Rosebrock, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 296 pages, 200 illustrations, ISBN 978-3-7757-5221-3

Images

The Basel Acquisitions 1939 (Selection)

Pablo Picasso, The family Soler, 1903. Oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège, © Succession Picasso / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich.

Franz Marc

Animal Destinies (The Trees Showed Their Rings, the Animals Their Veins), 1913

Oil on canvas, 194.7 x 263.5 cm

Kunstmuseum Basel Photo: Jonas Hänggi

Oskar Kokoschka

The Bride of the Wind, 1913

Oil on canvas, 180.4 x 220.2 cm

Kunstmuseum Basel

Photo: Jonas Hänggi

Kunstmuseum Basel

Photo: Jonas Hänggi

Marc Chagall

The Pinch of Snuff (Rabbi), 1923-1926

Oil on canvas, 116.7 x 89.2 cm

Kunstmuseum Basel

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Self-Portrait as a Half-Length Nude with Amber Necklace II, 1906

Oil on canvas, 61.1 x 50 cm

Kunstmuseum Basel Photo: Martin P. Bühler

Works sold as "internationally marketable"

Paul Gauguin

The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa, 1902

Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège

James Ensor

Death and Masks, 1897

Oil on canvas, 78,5 x 100 cm

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège

Max Beckmann

Descent from the Cross, 1917

Oil on canvas, 151 x 129 cm

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Peasants Eating Lunch (Peasant Meal),

1920

Oil on canvas, 133 x 166 cm

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Peasants Eating Lunch (Peasant Meal),

1920

Oil on canvas, 133 x 166 cm

Ulmberg Collection

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

WILLIAM GROPPER: WORKS FROM HIS ESTATE

WILLIAM GROPPER: WORKS FROM HIS ESTATE is the new exhibition from Helicline Fine Art beginning today. Approximately three dozen paintings, drawings, cartoons and sculptures created by the great American artist between the 1930s–1970s are available for acquisition at HeliclineFineArt.com.

The exhibition features a range of subject matters created over several decades. Featured are several of the renowned Senator paintings, images of women and men working, industrial scenes, ballet, New York City scenes, social commentary and Gropper’s political works depicting demonstrations, WWII, and more. Two unique bronzes are included.