Art History Today

What a Relief!

The punning title refers to (a) the aesthetic disaster of a neoclassical relief based on Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego at Shugborough Hall; (b) the relief that an article on it mentioned by Tony Green is free of Da Vinci Code hermeneutics.

Alas, no image can escape being contaminated by Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, which itself was spawned by Henry Lincoln's "factual" bestseller, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked by students if Poussin was a freemason, a templar, or member of some hermetic cabal. I take it all in my stride, even smiling sweetly when one of my students offers to lend me the illustrated Da Vinci Code, complete with a reproduction of Poussin's Louvre Self- Portrait! More seriously, I have had cases when Dan Brown has nudged Panofsky, Warburg et al off the art history map completely. There was the memorable case of a student who wrote an essay on Leonardo's Last Supper putting only Dan Brown in the bibliography. I couldn't believe that- thank god it's a rare occurrence. Of course, there's the argument that using the Dan Brown phenomenon to get students interested in difficult paintings is better than them ignoring them; but that's obviously open to abuse. Worse, it leads to intellectual laziness, a schematic art history by the esoteric numbers. Whilst I won't throw Damisch or Marin directly at them, I expect them to have read Panofsky at the very least!

We occasionally get the lunatic fringe in Poussin scholarship: the odd book or article which veers dangerously close to Lincoln and Brown. Surfing through the websites on the Shugborough Grail Mystery, I'm reminded of a Poussin book a few years back that made similar symbolic cross-correlations to prove a fanciful theory. Lincoln and his heirs have done a lot of damage. No wonder that Blunt shut the door on Lincoln and co when they door-stepped him while researching the Holy Grail film.

I made the mistake- horrible admission- of trying to read the Da Vinci Code once. I got about a quarter of the way in before propelling the book across the room. I then proceeded to pour critical scorn on Mr Brown's knowledge of art, his egregious writing style and general inability to sustain an interesting narrative. I made the mistake of watching the film, but judged it a case of Jason Bourne meets Panofsky, or a less systematic iconographer/decoder. I think the best comment ever made about Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code was made by Umberto Eco, who wrote the mother of all conspiracy theory books- Foucault's Pendulum. Hardly surprising that the author who wrote a book simultaneously generating and debunking conspiracy theories had this to say of the DVC.

"I was obliged to read it. The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault's Pendulum. I invented him. He shares my character's fascinations- the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect that Dan Brown might not even exist."

That's an interesting idea. Dan Brown as the name of a covert organization dedicated to the dissemination of historical cults through the mass media, fringe scholarship, the publishing world, and now god help us- the heritage industry.

As for the 'Shepherds Monument' with an eight word inscription below it, you can read about the theories here and here. I have no comment, but with the Holy Grail connection being played up on the web, I wouldn't be surprised to see some author or pseudo-scholar connect this manufactured piece of esoterica with the Holy Grail/Templar conspiracy and follow in Lincoln and Brown's footsteps.

Going, Going…

It may soon be gone.

Turner's last Roman masterpiece, 'Modern Rome-Campo Vaccino', could be another causality of the squeeze on museums. It will go under the hammer on July 7th, at Sotheby's. It's appropriate that it will be sold there; one of the descendants of the family that own it is the deputy chairman of Sotheby's English division.  

Sotheby's expect the Turner to fetch up to £18 million, which the Rosebery family need "to divide family assets to secure the future of landed estates." See the one below for instance! That's what a Sotheby's spokesman says in today's Evening Standard. Meanwhile the future of old masters in this country looks pretty grim as reported in the same paper. If the Turner is sold, a hold will be put on an export licence pending hopeful purchase of the work, but will it be saved?



The Turner, which is on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland, is a victim of the huge deficit run up by that gallery with the purchase of Titian's Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon from the Duke of Sutherland for £100 million. I saw the former yesterday in London prior to its American tour.

I also saw the 'Raphael' Madonna of the Pinks, which the Evening Standard cite as an example of a masterpiece saved from going abroad, incidentally also previously owned by the Duke of Sutherland. I'm sorry but I can't get excited about this purchase because with this 'Raphael' we're probably dealing with a 17th century copy, not an autograph work saved for the nation. I really wish that it had gone to the Getty, and that an original could have been bought with the money instead.  

I'm not sure that the Turner will be saved. Apart from the harsh climate for museums, there are massive holdings of the artist in the U.K. Would another one be missed? I hope it stays here, but time will tell.

Svetlana Alpers Symposium

There's an interesting symposium on Svetlana Alpers coming up on the 7th May at the University of Amsterdam.

The University of Amsterdam hosts a symposium dedicated to the work of Svetlana Alpers (Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley). Her books on early modern painting are not easy to categorize within traditional strands of scholarship but share a progressive approach to their subjects. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (1983) turned attention away from iconography to questions about the look and nature of Dutch painting. Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (1988) analyzed the master's work in terms of his performance on the market. More recently, Alpers has expanded her view to Italian art in Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence (1994, with Michael Baxandall), to Spanish art in The Vexations of Art: Velazquez and Others (2005), and she has now turned to the making and discussing of art today.

Svetlana Alpers will participate in a multidisciplinary assembly of visual artist and researchers who have affinity with her thinking. She will discuss a selection of works from the Renaissance to the present. Her guests are the artist Jan Andriesse, historian Rudolf Dekker, artist Jan Dibbets, painter Marlene Dumas, art historian Rudi Fuchs, film maker Maarten de Kroon, and cultural historian Lotte van de Pol.

I was lucky to see Professor Alpers at the distinguished art historians' event at CAA in Los Angeles last February. She hosted a session/game in which art historians responded to her choice of art. I'm sure that this will be an equally stimulating event, and Amsterdam is a great place to visit. I spoke at the university in a symposium on Hubert Damisch last May. It's a great venue.

The Ephemeral Museum re-visited

When I heard about the NG of Scotland's project of touring Titian's canonical mythology- Diana and Actaeon, in America, I immediately thought of the late Francis Haskell's book The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition, published at the start of the decade. That was the name Haskell gave to permanent collections temporarily depleted by loans to exhibitions. In a memorable foreword, Haskell described a world shrunk by travel; the author envisaged airlines crowded with planes carrying precious artistic cargoes of Titians, Velasquezes, Poussins and others. The serious point about the increase in shows and the concomitant risk to art was made with humour and eloquence.

Almost a decade later I wonder what Haskell would be saying about the new trend, initiated by the Louvre in 2007, of lending paintings for a year or more to museums like the High and others? Haskell was voicing his concern about the increased traffic in art at a time when museums were not feeling the pinch as much as they are today. I mean, back in 2001, would you ever have thought that the Getty, the Getty, mark you, would cut their acquisition budget? I still couldn't believe that when I read it. A sign of the times!

Today, the ephemeral museum is much more of a reality. If a masterpiece- or several works of art- can reside in museums on the other side of the world for 6 months or more, then its home collection cannot be regarded as permanent, not on your life. I don't want to launch into a tirade about lending art outside the U.K. I'm glad that the folks who'll visit the museums will get the chance to appreciate the beauty and genius of these pictures; but several things should be borne in mind as they go off on their merry way.

1. As the Art Newspaper gently intimates: it's surprising that the Titians are leaving so soon after they came into public ownership. According to the article, the scheme was hatched in 2008 during the campaign to save the Titians, so this global tour must have been on the cards for a long time. I also agree with the M.P. Ian Davidson who says "it's bizarre when such a large amount of public and lottery money was raised to keep the painting in Britain."

2. The 'Diana and Actaeon' isn't in perfect condition. As the NG of Scotland says in the catalogue for 'The Age of Titian' exhibition of Venetian art in Scottish collections of 2005, there is craquelure in the section by Actaeon's hand; it's visible to the naked eye, even in reproductions. I know it's been restored, but the problems of restoration aside, taking it in and out of crates can't be good for the picture's health.

3. This sets a dangerous precedent for U.K. museums. After this more cash-strapped museums are inevitably going to follow this extended loan period arrangement. I know the NG of Scotland is forced to this cause of action because of the huge debt built up during the Titian campaign, but there are risks in touring old master art on this scale. I'm sure Francis Haskell would have agreed.

All of these thoughts will be passing through my mind when I look at the Titians in the NG London, in a few weeks time. I shall drink them in before they start their long trek north and west, an itinerary comprising Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dundee, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Houston, Cardiff etc.

Faking It

I've just finished reading a book that cleverly interweaves fiction and art history within an 18th century setting. I'm talking about Barbara Ewing's novel The Fraud.  

Without spoiling the plot too much, the story revolves around a Bristol painter who goes to Italy and assumes the persona of a Florentine artist: Filipo di Vecellio, an in-joke. Returning to Bristol, he rescues his sister Grace from poverty, and sets her up as a housekeeper in his fashionable town house in Pall Mall. Here's the catch. Grace must renounce her former life and identity and pretend to be his sister Francesca. The main thread running through the novel is that Grace/Francesca is actually the better painter, a fact that her brother cannot come to terms with. So fact is coated over with layers of deception. Filipo paints portraits for illustrious clients by day; Francesca paints at night in her room.  

Ewing is excellent at evoking the sink or swim world of Hogarth's London; the painter makes a cameo appearance earlier in the story. Also present are Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, the former presiding over the 'on the line' RA exhibitions; the latter offering sympathy and advice to the embroiled Grace/Francesca. Our heroine also learns about chiaroscuro from Mr. Joseph Wright of Derby; this provides Ewing with a excellent metaphor- the woman paints from a darkness within her.

The novel also falls into the art crime genre too: at an advanced stage of the narrative, we're given an object lesson in faking a Rembrandt and aging it to fool the academicians.

Ultimately, fakery on the artistic and social level is difficult to sustain. Exposure becomes the only solution for Grace; but Filipo, despite the unraveling of his life's story, decides to go on living a lie.

Most art history in novel format doesn't succeed, but I think this does. Ewing's research is thorough and she blends art fact with art fiction adroitly. Add a dash of art crime and you've got all the ingredients for a great book. Recommended.