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| Todd Gray, Atlantic (Tiepolo), 2022. Lent by Brickson Diamond |
In recent years many museums have rewritten their labels to call out the colonialist exploiters among their portrait subjects. Even
Pinkie has been
outed as an enslaver princess. The trend has already sparked an anti-woke backlash among conservative critics, with
Calvin Po complaining that recent reinstalls of the Tate and National Portrait Gallery "have reduced British history to a scrapheap of shame."
A new LACMA exhibition is part of this reassessment but with a twist. "The World Made Wondrous: The Dutch Collector's Cabinet and the Politics of Possession" explores the dark side of beautiful things: still lifes, landscape paintings, and natural history specimens. Drawing mainly from the collections of LACMA and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, it demonstrates how 17th-century values still shape our notion of what is rare or precious enough to display in a museum. Diva Zumaya curated.
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| Willem Claesz. Heda, Tobacco Still Life, 1637. LACMA, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Carter collection |
You can make a game out of the exhibition: What's problematic in this picture? Willem Claesz. Heda's Tobacco Still Life is generally discussed as an example of Dutch monochrome painting. In the show's audio guide, Amherst historian Edward D. Melillo describes it as "a kind of catalogue of horrors." Both the tobacco and the silver would have been the product of slave labor. Tobacco monoculture is destructive to the environment, and that continues to the present day. Melillo doesn't even even get around to talking about what the stuff does to your lungs.
There is an eternal question about what Dutch still lifes mean. Were they warnings against overindulgence or simple displays of of virtuosity? "The World Made Wondrous" doesn't wade into that pool. It's unlikely that Claesz. Heda or the Tobacco Still Life's original owners would have made the connections Melillo does. I doubt the Carters of 20th-century L.A. did. The power of still life—of art—is that allows different interpretations for different ages. These readings aren't mutually exclusive.
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Conus marmoreus. NHMLA
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Rembrandt owned a Marble Cone (
Conus marmoreus) and made it the subject of
his only etched still life. It features in a great painted still life by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, now at LACMA. Exotic seashells were collected by slaves in Dutch colonies. Imported by the notorious Dutch East India Company, seashells experienced a tulipmania-like market bubble, leading to forgeries of particularly rare specimens. In Africa cowry shells were literally traded for human lives.
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| Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge, 1619. LACMA, Carter collection |
With LACMA's permanent collection off view, the show provides a pretext for showing many of its greatest Dutch paintings. Most of the Carter collection is on view, as are the museum's three Rembrandts.
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| Ole Worm, Worm's Museum, or a History of Rare Things, 1655. Getty Research Institute |
This is also one of the museum's most kid-friendly shows. There's an alligator hanging from the ceiling, antlers on the wall, and really big crab. A private collector has supplied a mini-bug zoo (all dead). The installation loosely evokes the ordered chaos of 17th-century curiosity cabinets such as Ole Worm's.
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| Insects, a centipede, and a spider from a private collection |
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| Installation view with German Display Cabinet, about 1630 |
A collector's cabinet can be a room or simply a piece of furniture for displaying small objects. The most accomplished example of the latter is German, about 1630. It's a loan from the Getty, as are two intriguing Dutch-colonial armchairs in ebony and ebonized wood. They combine Hindu and Christian motifs. The Getty bought them, part of
a set of 12, but they have hardly ever been on view.
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| Rubens, The Crowning of Roxana, "17th century." LACMA, Varya and Hans Cohn collection |
Another exhibition rarity is a Rubens oil sketch, The Crowning of Roxana. Varya and Hans Cohn gave it to LACMA in 1992 (along with a number of curiosity cabinet objects also on display). Given that the Rubens sketch hasn't been shown, I've guessed that there are questions about its condition or attribution. Here's your chance to take a look.
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| Hendrik de Keyser, Bust of a Crying Child, about 1615. LACMA |
The museum's one great Dutch Baroque sculpture, Hendrik de Keyser's Bust of a Crying Child, exemplifies the sort of innovative oddities made for collectors.
"The World Made Wondrous" is in the Resnick Pavilion through March 3, 2024.
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| Seahorse, Germany about 1590–1600. LACMA, Cohn collection |
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| Coconut Crab. NHMLA |
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| Hans Ducher II or III, Sundial: Diptych, about 1567–80. Adler Planetarium, Chicago |
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| Sithabile Mlotshwa's A Phoenix of the Dutch Republic (2023) and Abraham van Beyeren's Banquet Still Life (1667) |
Sithabile Mlotshwa's photocollage A Phoenix of the Dutch Republic sources still-life elements from a 17th-century painting by Abraham van Beyeren. |
| Jean de Court, Platter with Scene of Destruction of the Hosts of Pharaoh, about 1560s. LACMA |
This platter is enamel on copper, a rare metal in 16th-century Europe. In the 1600s the Dutch East India Company began importing copper from Japan, encouraging the metal's use for etchings and as a painting support.
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| Joris Hoefnagel and Georg Boskay, Model Book of Calligraphy, written 1561–62 and illuminated 1591–96. Shown is Gesner's Tulip, Ichneumon Fly, Kidney Bean, and Scarlet Runner Bean. Getty Museum |
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| Parrot. NHMLA |
Comments
Pace Mr. Po. That comment reveals he's experiencing London Syndrome.
Read the room, sir. Or rather, the world. We are done with the whitewashing, the apologists.
Moreover, in his piece in The Spectator, he says, "I am from Hong Kong, born as a subject of the _last_ major colony of the British Empire, minority-ethnic, descended from Chinese refugees, now living here in exile." [emphasis mine]
I say, "Crack a book, sir."
In The Last Panthers (Sundance Channel), a Serb, who took his doctorate in London, said of the English: "Bland food, bland people, but very slippery. They once ruled the world. Beware of them."
So, why is IRELAND the last f+#cks under the bloody English boot? The colonizers' grip has been ongoing for, what, only 8 centuries now. And we have never once acquiesced in our servitude to the English crown.
Not only were we their first colony enslaved, but, lamentably, by all indications, we will also be their final colony enslaved as well.
> guessed that there are questions about its condition
> or attribution.
Makes me think of a large painting donated several years ago by the Ahmanson Foundation. I forget who the work was attributed to, but it originally was labeled as from a famous artist. I recall a critic (or appraiser) saying if it were authentic, then the character depicted was given by the painter the largest belly button ever. Or something like that.
As for imperialism, the British in the 1800s forced China and its emperor to accept trade in opium. In effect, it was like an early version of a Mexican narco gang governing an entire country (in reality, corruption does run roughshod over Mexico) and demanding it be given carte blanche in addicting peoples of other lands.
In 2023, China is reportedly the source of a lot of Fentanyl now turning various US cities into zombie zones. Currently, more so in America than in Europe. But it's sort of a case of turn around is fair play.
Not too surprising, however, whether Queen Victoria's England, Andres Obrador's Mexico, Joe Biden's US or Xi Jinping's China. A lack of ethics and dislike of integrity coupled with a lot of greed (guzzied up in the politics of one's choice) have always been a common trait of the human race. From all places, all periods, all civilizations.
> Google: Why did the British turn to the opium trade?
> Because of [a] trade imbalance, Britain increasingly
> had to use silver to pay for its expanding purchases of
> Chinese goods. In the late 1700s, Britain tried to
> alter this balance by replacing cotton with opium,
> also grown in India.
^ A case of what goes around, comes around.
> Makes me think of a large painting donated several years ago by the Ahmanson Foundation.
You're thinking of Andromeda Chained to the Rock, bought as a van Dyck. LACMA curator J. Patrice Marandel faulted it for having "the biggest belly button in the history of belly buttons."
See L.A. Times piece: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-may-04-et-vandyck4-story.html
The Ahmanson Foundation bought Andromeda in 1985 for over $1 million. By 1998 a couple of van Dyck scholars had rejected it, and LACMA took it off view. It's now listed as "(Imitator of) Sir Anthony van Dyck."
https://collections.lacma.org/node/731566
Not all that unlikely.
The painting would have indulged the owner's taste for finer things.
It also would have indulged the original owner's pride in being Dutch. At the time, the mark of Dutchness was global power through trade.
As to the horrible part, paintings of this kind could only do so much. They don't show "the horror, the horror," but they still would have left their original owner with a sense of unease. There is always the suggestion in these paintings that for some reason the party can come to an abrupt end.
--- J. Garcin
Yea, that's the one! I did a quick Google search to find it, but nothing came up fast enough. I think I even keyed in "Van Dyck," but I'm not totally sure. I just recall Marandel's description from several years ago and LOL.
I know he also criticized today's LACMA for undermining the years he put into improving its European collection. Even without the Zumthor-Govan blob, however, the cultural-political mindset of LACMA (other institutions too) is increasingly, "old bad, new good, Western-world boring, DEI-ESG exciting."
But the "Dark Side" exhibit (in the Piano-Resnick building) makes the need to bring out the museum's non-contemporary/non-modern artworks (the Piano-Broad building) and non-Japanese too (the Goff-Price building) even more obvious.
I sure hope that issues with budgets, reduced space and power politics don't further undermine the Geffen-Zumthor building. As for a concrete framework, the Kimball museum has lived with that (Louis Kahn's highly regarded design) since 1972. But I believe its display walls are covered with travertine, similar to the facade of the walls in the atrium of the old Ahmanson building. I don't know if wall-to-wall concrete as a background for various periods of art will work as well. Although hanging objects on either concrete or travertine walls presumably is trickier than in a Pereira/Hardy-Holzman-type format.
And now Sotheby's apparently is OK with it as well, given that the old Whitney will become Sotheby's US HQ in short order.
> at the old Whitney on Madison.
That's another well-known museum (Marcel Bruer) with a concrete shell. Although the outer wall was concrete, many of the inner walls were sheetrock:
https://youtu.be/R3BdwORmF4Y?si=sNtkZP27B5zCVNvM
This rendering of the Zumthor implies many of its major interior walls will be concrete. I assume some spaces, however, will be moveable and made of drywall. But I'm not sure. Moreover, all the floor-to-ceiling windows will have limited versatility (eg, light being bad for certain artworks) and also eat up a lot of space. I hope some of them eventually are covered with panels of sheetrock. But a culture of TikTok and selfies may discourage that.
https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ad04281/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5000x3333+0+0/resize/1200x800!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa3%2F6d%2Fc0919d9c4e2cab70ebafdb12bd17%2F3.jpg
Still, when I visit, or even pass by, I feel like I'M made of concrete. That's the power of this Brutalist icon.
*
Separately, re LACMA's stunning Limoges platter by Jean de Court, with the Scene of Destruction of the Hosts of Pharaoh: I knew I had seen it before, but not really.
There's a virtually identical platter at the Met (ex Lehman Collection). But its enamel decoration is riotously polychrome. Thing is, I can't access the Met's website. It's coming up since yesterday "500: INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR."
I never realized how frequently I use the site. I feel like I've lost a hand. It's a scene of destruction all right!
As for Govan saying he doesn't like a museum (or at least LACMA) to have more than one floor (ignoring the fact that most museums have at least 2 levels), the Whitney/Piano building has 8 levels---which admittedly is the opposite extreme. Its floors are also wood, whereas I think the Zumthor is going to be polished concrete, probably similar to what's in the Broad. Such a format is okay for hip-trendy galleries of contemporary art, but the deconstructionist look isn't necessarily fantastic for general-category museums.
The Getty has parquet-wood floors in its main campus, sleek (and probably pricey) stone floors in its villa. Louis Kahn's concrete-shell Kimbell in Ft Worth has a ground surface that's a combination of both.
The Met's website is finally back on-line (apocalypse dry-run, apparently, not the real thing). And I'm able to see not only the beautiful obverse (in awesome polychrome enamel) but also the REVERSE, which is fully enameled as well, albeit in the grisaille palette as seen on the LACMA example. In classical Attic Greek vase painting (5th c. BCE), when a pot had both red- as well as black-figure painting, it was referred to as "bilingual."
Bilingual decoration is what we find on the Met's ex coll. Lehman enamel platter.
See the several photos in the Met's on-line entry (Accession Number: 1975.1.1232):
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459246
I'm flummoxed by the date ranges given by LACMA and the Met for the artist's active period. LACMA notes its platter is c. 1560s. But the dates its platter as "probably early 17th century." Could these by different artists? A dynasty, perhaps?
Are there any examples of Limoges polychrome-enameled platters securely dated from the 16th century?
Is the reverse of LACMA's platter fully decorated, as the Met's is? If yes, it would be educational to include a photo of it, for edification's sake.
I noted something a bit incongruous about the LACMA platter: at the bottom-center of the rim is an oval reserve that is a blank (white-enameled?) space. It stands out because every other square millimeter of the surface is lousy with busy decoration. Could the white be covering a repair?
There is a Jean de Court enamel signed and dated 1555 (according to the National Gallery of Art website). He signed his enamels I.C. and was known as Master IC before historians made the connection to Jean de Court, royal painter to Charles IX and Mary Queen of Scots. It appears his family/studio continued producing copies of his enamel compositions (with the I.C. monogram) decades after his death.