Flying Fox

Light Structure – The Light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer
18 November 2011 – 26 February 2012
Museum Hessen Kassel

Seventy superb works from the Baroque age of painting will be displayed in the upcoming exhibition Light Structure: The Light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, in William Castle Museum in Kassel. The exhibition will address one of the most notable aspects of European painting: the translation of light in painting. Attempts on the part of painters to render the myriad effects of light with paint were paralleled by intense scientific research on light.

In cooperation with the Berlin research group Historical Light Structure (http://www.lichtgefuege.de/index.html) the exhibition examines the different aspects of light painting in the 17th century on the basis of paintings, graphics and optical devices, also in view of the contemporary scientific treatises. The starting point is the art of the 15th and 16 Century and the fundamental innovations of Caravaggio. North of the Alps have been taken including those of Utrecht artists like Gerard van Honthorst and developed.

Different areas of the exhibition are dedicated to the particular diversity and range of Dutch paintings of light, including day light, nocturnal landscapes, interior and portrait paintings. Vermeer’s Girl with a Glass of Wine will be one of the principal works of the exhibition.

museum website: http://www.museum-kassel.de/index_navi.php?parent=1707

Human Connections in the Age of Vermeer
by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.  and Danielle H.A.C. Lokin
Scala Publishers Ltd
2011

This book focuses on the many forms of communication that existed in seventeenth-century Dutch society between family members, lovers, and professional acquaintances, both present and absent. The forty-four carefully selected Dutch genre paintings include major works by many of the finest masters of the period, including Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu. Vermeer’s three masterpieces about love letters form the core of the exhibition as they are profound examples of the power of communication. Dutch artists of the seventeenth century portrayed the wide range of emotions elicited by the various forms of communication, not only in the manner in which they render gestures and facial expressions of personal interactions, but also in the ways in which they show men and women responding to the written word. The painters often introduced objects from daily life that had symbolic implications, among them musical instruments, to enrich the pictorial narratives of their scenes. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Communication: Visualizing the Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer  (2011-2012), which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the diplomatic exchanges between Japan and the Netherlands, this book connects the pictorial and the literary aspects of Dutch cultural traditions during the Golden Age.

The Fitzwilliman Museum offers  a series of free public lectures to accompany the exquisite exhibition that features four Vermeer paintings including the masterful Music Lesson (rarely on public display) and the Louvre Lacemaker.

All talks are on Friday, 13:15 – 14:00

28 October-2011
Love for sale in the 17rh century: Secrets of the oldest profession.
Colin Wiggins, The National Gallery

18 Novermber-2011
The Rediscovery of Vermeer and the reception of genre painting.
Dr Merideth Hale, History of Art Deprartment, University of Cambridge

drawn from the THE SACRAMENTO BEE.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/24/3725190/can-whitey-bulger-help-solve-biggest.html

With the arrest Wednesday of notorious Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, many in the art world are now asking: Could it provide a break in the greatest art heist in American history which included Vermeer’s Concert? Rumors have long swirled that Bulger, the head of the city’s powerful Irish-American mob at the time, may have played a role – or must have known who did. Some have speculated that he stashed the stolen masterpieces away to use as a “get-out-of-jail-free card”  if he was ever caught. Others think he sent the paintings to allies in the Irish Republican Army to use as a bargaining chip. The Gardner Museum had no comment Thursday on the arrest other than a Tweet saying, “Until a recovery is made, our work continues.” Many who have studied the case are similarly skeptical about Bulger’s direct involvement. Last year, investigators in the Gardner case said there was no evidence in the mountains of wiretaps and other records to link Bulger to the crime.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/06/what-does-whitey-bulger-know-about-the-1990-gardner-museum-art-heist.html

Other than the previously announced (see entry below for details) world premiere of Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter after its restoration, Lady Writing and the Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid will be a part of the exhibition Communication: Visualizing Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer in Japan. Here are the final dates.

Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto:   25 June – 16 Oct 2011
Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai:     27 Oct-2011 – 12 Dec 2011
The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo:    23 Dec – 14 March 2012

The Japanese exhibition, Communication: Visualizing Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer (curated by Arthur Wheelock) will feature three excellent Vermeers: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (Rijksmuseum), A Ladt Writing (National Gallery of Art)   and Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (National Gallery of Ireland)  plus over forty other paintings. All three Vermeer’s will travel to all three venues, Kyoto, Tokyo and Sendai.  There will also be an English edition catalogue (Human Connections in the Age of Vermeer) published by Scala in addition to the Japanese language catalogue.
first venue:
Kyoto Municipal Museum, Kyoto
June 25 – October 16, 2011

second venue:
Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo
December 23, 2001 – March 14, 2012

to be announced:
The Miyagi Museum of Art
34-1 Kawauchi-Motohasekura, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi

The National Gallery of Scotland has done a succinct feature on its Vermeer, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary complete with a video. Nice to see  the museums are awakening to the immense possibilities that the web offers for art history-related  applications although they still have quite a bit of sleep in their eyes. Here’s where to go:

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/in_focus/4:20388/20377/20377

The Young Vermeer in Context
5 March 2011, 2pm – 6:30pm
National Gallery of Scotland
The Mound
Edinburgh EH2 2EL
United Kingdom

information form the museum:

The young Vermeer presents a unique opportunity to compare directly the three earliest paintings by Johannes Vermeer. On occasion of this exhibition the National Gallery of Scotland is staging a study afternoon, bringing together a distinguished group of international experts. Focussing on Vermeer’s early career the talks will revisit his start as a history painter and shift to genre painting, his artistic and social environment, and the rediscovery of  “Young Vermeer” in the 19th century. The podium will offer the opportunity to get involved and discuss these important paintings with the experts and to discover more about the development of one of the world’s most celebrated artists.

speakers:

- Dr. Albert Blankert, Independent Scholar, The Hague
- Edwin Buijsen, Head of Collections, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague
- Dr. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Curator of Northern European Art, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

podium:
- Professor Christopher Brown, Director, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
- Professor Gregor J. M. Weber, Head of the Department of Fine Arts, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

moderation:

- Dr Tico Seifert Senior Curator of Northern
European Art, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

1.30 – 2pm, registration (HLT)
2 – 5pm,  study afternoon (HLT)
5 – 6.30pm, Wine reception and private view (NG)

Tickets: £12 (£10 concessions) are available from
the Information Desk at the National Gallery Complex,
or by calling 0131 624 6560, Monday

see museum flyer:
http://www.codart.nl/images/02526_NGS_
TheYoungVermeerInContext%20A5%20Flyer%28Final%29v4.pdf

Costume designer Pauline Loven of Wag Screen who made the short advert said: “We wanted to use easily recognisable paintings that we could reproduce and once we decided to use the Girl with a Pearl Earring we thought Samuel Pepys was the most interesting because if anyone would have been a fan of Twitter like Stephen Fry is it would have been Pepys.”

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers talked their way into the Gardner museum, bound two guards, and stole artwork valued at $500 million, including three Rembrandts,  Vermeer’s  Concert and five sketches by Degas.

The identity of the thieves and the whereabouts of the artwork remain a mystery. Two decades after a pair of thieves dressed as Boston police officers pulled off  the biggest art heist in history, the FBI is trying to stir up new leads with two billboards on Boston-area freeways that promise a $5 million reward.

The FBI has also resubmitted DNA samples for updated testing, the Associated Press reports.

The Gardner museum is offering the $5 million reward.

Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, said Clear Channel Outdoor  began running an FBI poster yesterday on two of its digital http://www.gardnermuseum.org/information/theft.asp for more information. The billboards are on I-93 in Stoneham and I-495 in Lawrence.

He said the FBI poster seeking information on the Gardner theft will probably remain on the billboards for at least four weeks. He estimated that 117,000 people pass by the Stoneham billboard and about 81,000 pass by the one in Lawrence daily.

The Rijksmuseum has just announced that as a part of an ambitious conservation program Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter will be thoroughly restored.

Other than Vermeer’s masterwork, other pieces will restored and ready for the 2013 reopening of the Rijksmuseum. They include Six burial figures from the T’ang Dynasty, a mahogany period room from 1748 called The Beuning room, and the Silver table ornament by Jamnitzer which is one of the absolute highlights of the museum’s collection of European silversmither.

from the Rijksmuseum website:

As it is flanked in the exhibition room by Vermeer’s two other masterpieces, The Milkmaid and The Little Street, it is even more noticeable that Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is in distinct need of restoration. The coat of varnish has turned yellow, the blue is worn, the uneven layer of paint is peppered with minor irregularities, the retouches have faded, etc. Precisely that which is so appealing in Vermeer’s paintings – i.e. the bright colours and the incidence of light – is now hidden behind an irregular yellowed layer of varnish.

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667)
4 September – 5 December, 2010

National Gallery of Ireland , Dublin
Curator: Dr. Adriaan E. Waiboer

from the museum website:

This exhibition will pay homage to the Dutch seventeenth-century artist, Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) and his exquisite scenes of daily life, which rank among the finest of the Dutch Golden Age. It will also highlight some of Metsu’s lesser known achievements in the fields of history painting, portraiture and still life. Metsu started his career in Leiden, where he painted biblical scenes on a large format. After his move to Amsterdam in the middle of the 1650s, he changed his specialisation to intimate scenes of daily life. As Metsu’s style became more meticulous in the 1660s, he focused increasingly on representing the pastimes of the upper class. He died at the age of thirty-seven, having painted a varied oeuvre of more than 130 paintings. Few of his colleagues were as versatile as Metsu and his handling of the brush was almost unrivalled. Moreover, his paintings display a unique approach to daily activities, marked by a psychological interest in the people he portrayed. An accompanying catalogue will be published to coincide with the exhibition.

other venues:

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (16 December 2010 – 20 March 2011)

Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (17 April – 24 July 2011)

John Michael Montias, the American economist, can be credited to have “completed” Vermeer’s portrait after analyzing every shred of evidence directly concerning the Delft master and any person who in one way or another came into contact with him. He worked with passion and discovered new, important documents which have lead to a serious revision of the artist’s life, art and dealings with his principle patron, Pieter van Ruijven. A Delft archivist raccounts that Montias was often the very first to enter and the last to leave the archive’s premises. The fascinating results of his study can be read in Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton University Press, 1989).

Very recently, the Frick Library has provided an invaluable internet interface with the database compiled Montias during his studies.

from the Frick website:

The Montias database, compiled by late Yale University Professor John Michael Montias, contains information from 1,280 inventories of goods (paintings, prints, sculpture, furniture, etc.) owned by people living in 17th century Amsterdam. Drawn from the Gemeentearchief (now known as the Stadsarchief), the actual dates of the inventories range from 1597-1681. Nearly half of the inventories were made by the Orphan Chamber for auction purposes, while almost as many were notarial death inventories for estate purposes. The remainder were bankruptcy inventories. The database includes detailed information on the 51,071 individual works of art listed in the inventories. Searches may be performed on specific artists, types of objects (painting, prints, drawings), subject matter etc. There is also extensive information on the owners, as well as on buyers and prices paid when the goods were actually in a sale. While not a complete record of all inventories in Amsterdam during this time period, the database contains a wealth of information that can elucidate patterns of buying, selling, inventorying and collecting art in Holland during the Dutch Golden Age.

Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery
March 9 – May 30, 2010
Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street, New York

For those particularly keen on Dutch painting, the London Dulwich Picture Gallery is lending the Frick a selection of some of the extraordinary works including two Dutch masterpieces which makes the Dulwich one of the major collections of 17th- and 18th century. This work has frequently been designated as a direct influence for Vermeer’s Lady Seated at the Virginals in both theme and composition.

Obviously, the other works included in the exhibition cannot be overlooked. They include Rembrandt van Rijn’s iconic  Girl at a Window, Van Dyck’s  Samson and Delilah, Canaletto’s Old Walton Bridge over the Thames, Watteau’s Les Plaisirs du Bal,  Murillo’s The Flower Girl, 1665–70; and Nicolas Poussin’s  The Nurture of Jupiter.

Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue written by Dr. Xavier F. Salomon that includes an essay on the origins of the collection at Dulwich as well as comprehensive entries on the nine works.

VERMEER, LAIRESSE AND COMPOSITION
lecture by Paul Taylor
4:00 pm – Friday, 5 March 2010
Auditorium of the National Library complex
5 Prins Willem Alexanderhof
The Hague

The Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) aims to spotlight art historians who have conducted pioneering research on Dutch art. The first lecture, entitled Vermeer, Lairesse and Composition, will be given by Dr Paul Taylor, deputy curator of the Photographic Collection at the Warburg Institute in London and a specialist in Dutch seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art and art theory. The text of the Hofstede de Groot Lecture will be published as the first volume in a new series of publications (Waanders Publishers).

Paul Taylor has distinguished himself with his investigation of several key Dutch painting concepts, such as houding, gloe and lakheid, on which he has published various scholarly articles: “The Concept of ‘Houding’ in Dutch Art Theory” (1992); “The Glow in Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Dutch Paintings” (1998); “Flatness in Dutch Art: Theory and Practice”(2008). By thoroughly analysing these terms, searching for comparable terms in Italian and French writings, and linking them with pictorial aspects of Dutch seventeenth-century painting and drawing, he has singled out in a remarkably original fashion several pictorial qualities that are characteristic of Dutch visual art in the Golden Age.

The Hofstede de Groot Lecture is named after the art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), whose extensive art-historical documentation forms the basis of the RKD collection.

The Hofstede de Groot Lecture will be followed by a reception.

date: Friday, 5 March 2010
time: 4:00 pm (you are welcome as of 3:30pm: tea and coffee will be served)
admission:    free of charge
location:  Auditorium of the National Library complex, 5 Prins Willem Alexanderhof, The Hague
official language:    English
registration (mandatory):  activiteiten@rkd.nl

Although I have not yet had the chance to see it, the Kunsthistorisches Museum catalogue of the Art of Painting exhibition is currently on sale at the museum online shop. Below is the URL and a little more information.

Vermeer: Die Malkunst

exhibition catalog 2010, 259 pg., numerous illustr.,
paperback in German
+ 73 S. English Translations of the Essays
Order number: 24770
24,8 x 28cm

price: EUR 29,90

bookshop link: <http://ecomm.khm.at/cgi-bin/khmmuseumsshop.storefront/4b66caaf002f47b22717c1aad84206de/Product/View/24770>

The museum also proposes a number of Vermeer Art of Painting spinoffs like scarfs, shoulder bags, coffee cups, jigsaw puzzles and magnets as well as the more conventional postcards and reproductions.

One of Dalí goals was to “rescue” modern painting.  His figurative mode and obsessive extolling of the Old Masters not only incited fellow Surrealists against him in the 1930s, but also later situated him in a diametric opposition to the avant-garde’s penchant towards abstraction.

Throughout art history, artists had incessantly attempted to grasp form and to reduce it to elementary geometrical volumes. Leonardo always tended to produce eggs Ingres preferred spheres, and Cézanne cubes and cylinders. Dalí claimed that all curved surfaces of the human body have the same geometric spot in common, the one found in this cone with the rounded tip curved toward heaven or toward the earth the rhinoceros horn. After this initial discovery, Dalí surveyed his own images and realized that all of them could be deconstructed to rhinoceros horns.

Dalí also discovered what he termed “latent rhinocerisation” in the works of the Great Masters.  The Lacemaker is a rhinoceros horn (or an assemblage of horns), and the rhinoceros’ actual horn is, in fact, a Lacemaker. The painting triumphs over the living rhinoceros because it is entirely comprised of these animated, spiritualized horns, whereas the rhinoceros wields only the single diminutive horn/Lacemaker on its nose.”

Dalí explained, “Up till now, The Lacemaker has always been considered a very peaceful, very calm painting, but for me, it is possessed by the most violent aesthetic power, to which only the recently discovered antiproton can be compared.”

A copy of  The Lacemaker had hung on the wall of his father’s study and had obsessed Dalí for a number of years. In 1955, he asked permission to enter the Louvre with his paints and canvas to execute a copy of Vermeer’s miniscule masterpiecer.

It is said that the mystery telephone bidder who paid a record $33m (£20m) for a Rembrandt at Christie’s in London is Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino owner.

Vermeer enthusiasts will remember that Wynn has distinguished himself through the years as a powerful art collector and acquired the tiny Young Woman Seated at a Virginal. It has been reported that Wynn later sold it (for unknown reasons) to a New York art collector for the same price he initially paid.

The Rembrandt in question is a Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, with His Arms Akimbo, painted in 1658. One New York dealer  balked at the purchase due to lack of technical clarity  in the face. “It was definitely a gamble,” he said. Let’s remember that gambling is Wynn’s specialty.

Although Wynn remains somewhat reticent about discussing his art dealings his high public profile is assured by his enormously successful casinos and resorts in the Las Vegas including the Golden Nugget, The Mirage, Treasure Island, Bellagio and Encore where  much of which hangs. His collection includes works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse, Turner and Picasso.

A hitherto unrecorded and unpublished painting by Cesar van Everdingen,  A Girl Holding a Balance of Plums, was recently sold at Sotheby’s for a tidy sum. Artdaily.com has it that the work was “subject of considerable bidding battle this evening. It saw interest from six potential buyers who competed strongly and whose determined bids took the price to 1,161,250 GBP, which was 16 times the pre-sale estimate of 50,000-70,000 GBP.” Luckily, the painting can be inspected with the zoom feature on Sotheby’s website accompanied by valuable background information.

To modern sensibility, bred on the precept that only the blunt and the rough can possibly signal sincerity, Cesar Van Everdingen’s elegant paint handling and sometimes aloof subject matter does not always excite non-specialists. And yet, his superlative technique and enviable sense of pictorial synthesis was held in high esteem in Vermeer’s time, higher than Vermeer’s. But what does Van Everdingen have to do with Vermeer?

Critics have long pointed to Van Everdingen’s hand for the large-scale, idiosyncratic Cupid that appears in three works by Vermeer, its boldest appearance being in the Lady Standing at the Virginal (it also starred in the  Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window but was later painted out by artist himself). However, Vermeer’s interest in Van Everdingen may have gone beyond citing his Cupid as a convenient iconographical prop. Walter Liedtke, in his recent complete catalogue of Vermeer, points out a stylistic kinship between the extraordinarily economical treatment of the head of the mistress in the Frick and Van Everdingen’s classicist  Still-Life with a Bust of Venus in the Mauritshuis.

To be sure, Van Everdingen’s  A Girl Holding a Balance of Plums is a big brash  picture. At first glance it is about as unVermeer-like as you can get. Yet her outrageous hat which projects a suggestive shadow just over her eyes and her seductively parted lips may not be lost on those who know Vermeer’s  Girl with a Flute.  Dutch painters produced countless numbers of such works who, like everyone in the Netherlands, were intoxicated by exotic whares that swelled Dutch ports  (Van Everdingen’s hat is from Brazil where Vermeer’s is obviously of Oriental extraction). If one wishes to push the case beyond the literal, the challenging rendering of the hat’s geometrical design could have stirred Vermeer attention, fascinated by the curious perspective of the decorative stripes on his own oriental hat.

Since art-history detective work is neither one of my talents nor ambitions, I gladly  leave further comparison to those more qualified.