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| Mary Cassatt, Children Playing with a Cat, 1907-08. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
The recent dismissal of the director and education staff at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art have renewed debate about the new institution's mission. Meanwhile, a refresh of the Lucas website shows some collection objects that haven't been announced previously. They offer a few more clues as to the type of institution the Lucas is and aspires to be.
Most notable is a late painting by Mary Cassatt, Children Playing with a Cat. Measuring 32 by 39.5 inches, it was auctioned at Sotheby's in 2020 for $2,198,000. As the Sotheby's copy shows, it's been extensively exhibited and published.
Though Cassatt called Matisse's art "dreadful," scholars suspect that the high-key colors of her late paintings reflect the influence of the short-lived Fauvist movement, at its peak when Cassatt created Children Playing with a Cat. This appears to be the most significant Impressionist work in the Lucas collection, outclassing a watercolor by Cassatt's mentor Degas and a minor oil by Renoir.
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| Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Alchemist, about 1600 |
The Lucas also bought The Alchemist by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, son of the much more famous Pieter Brueghel the Elder. While all of the elder Brueghel's paintings are in museums, the son's work comes on the market with regularity and often sells for more than it seemingly should. U.S. museums rarely consider P.B. the Younger's paintings worth showing.
The Alchemist is based on a drawing that Brueghel the Elder did for a print.
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| Alfredo Ramos, Fruit Vendors, about 1937 |
Fruit Vendors, a fresco by Alfredo Ramos, joins the Lucas' collection of Mexican muralists, which also has a fresco by Diego Rivera.
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| Eduardo Cataño, Ataque a la gran Tenochtitlán, 1950 |
Eduardo Cataño (1910–1964) represents a different side of Mexican modernism. In the mid 1930s he designed the logo and label for Corona beer, still in use. He achieved greatest renown for the uniquely Mexican genre of calendar art featuring buff Aztec warriors rescuing swooning damsels.
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| Miguel Covarrubias, Hollywood's Malibu Beach, 1933 |
Still another Mexican artist, Miguel Covarrubias, created
Hollywood's Malibu Beach for a two-page spread in a 1933 issue of
Vanity Fair magazine. Caricatures of 49 stars of old Hollywood include Mae West, Joan Crawford, Samuel Goldwyn, Gary Cooper, Laurel and Hardy, Edward G. Robinson, Cecil B. Demille, Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hughes, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Clark Gable. The image is gouache and ink on paper, 20.5 in. wide.
Sotheby's auctioned it for $189,000 in 2021.
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| Kadir Nelson, Flight of the Clotilda, 2020 |
The Lucas has several paintings by L.A.-based Kadir Nelson, best known for
New Yorker magazine covers.
Flight of the Clotilda was created for a
National Geographic feature on
Clotilda, the last American slave ship. The composition bears comparison to another work in the Lucas collection,
an allegedly autograph(?!) study for Gericault's Raft of the Medusa.
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| Robert Crumb, Fritz the Cat cover art, 1969 |
The original ink cover art for
Fritz the Cat was called "one of the most famous and important single pieces by Crumb" when Heritage Auctions
sold it for a record $717,000 in 2017. The Lucas collection also includes Crumb's graphic-novel version of the
Book of Genesis, which was shown at the Hammer Museum (2009-10) and the Venice Biennale (2013).
My take: What Lucas calls "narrative" art mostly refers to popular art made for mass reproduction by mechanical or digital means. That includes magazine illustrations; comic book, comic strip, and animation art; movie concept art and props. This material reflects the times and cultures that produced it and sometimes rises to the level of genius. Yet it's not consistently recognized or collected by art museums.
There have been several attempts to establish museums of comics. Pitched as family-friendly attractions, they have failed to draw the anticipated crowds. Kids have little interest beyond current franchises that are familiar to them. They prefer an immersive theme-park experience to framed ink panels hung on a wall. Most adults have less intellectual/historical interest in comics than some suppose.
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| Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser, 1940. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
Lucas is betting that the
Star Wars star power will get people in the door. The Lucas Museum will also offer a grab bag of so-called fine art to draw art audiences. The collection's crown jewel is
a Frida Kahlo self-portrait that departed LMNA director Sandra Jackson-Dumont called "the 'Mona Lisa' of Mexico."
It is however the "high" art component that has muddled perceptions of the Lucas collection. Good to great works mingle with not-so-great ones. Some pieces, such as the Brueghel the Younger Alchemist, must have been bought for didactic purposes. (Notwithstanding that they've fired all the education people…) Alchemist tells a story, and every detail counts. It's possible to draw parallels to the world-building of contemporary graphic novels and films.
How does a museum mix the good, the bad, and the popular? I guess we'll find out next year.
Comments
The only other work that gives me pause is the Catano. The technical skill is indisputable, but the style - as with pre-Raphealite works - makes me uneasy.
However, when it comes to too much contemporary art, both the technical skills and creative angles are questionable. Which a lot the cultural world for decades has been accepting or quite easygoing about. So if the Lucas gives at least one of the two major factors greater consideration, that will be 50% better (or different) than same 'ol, same 'ol.
Which makes me think of why a lot of contemporary art museums need plenty of square footage to not give a reaction of "is that all there is?" Abstract or non-figurative works (eg, canvases of large fields of plain color) generally require less time to peruse than what the Lucas will be exhibiting.
The opposite extreme is the Louvre. It's crammed with so many older European works in such a huge volume of space, that after awhile it becomes almost unpleasant. Like being in a room with a person who's wearing way too much perfume.
Kadir Nelson's "Flight of the Clotilda," of 2020, is implausible. I grew up on a barrier island in the Atlantic. I've seen boats push off through waves like this. Nelson evidently hasn't. The figures would be brased, back muscles so tense they would break, to get through the wave gauntlet the boat faces.
If you're going to tell a story, at least tell it convincingly.
Use the curatorial model of the "mouse museum." ... Assuming that Lucas collected most of the things in his collection because they were instrumental to his creative process, all he has do to is highlight the connections through juxtaposition.
Take inspiration from Alex Da Corte's recent use of this model for an installation at the Louisiana Museum. Da Corte's museum included glass fruit, Happy Meal toys, artificial flowers, things which exemplified his personal interests and cultural experiences.
... There are also lessons to be learned from the Alfred Barnes "ensembles." The ensembles establish connections between paintings and artisanal objects. The connections themselves may only have existed in Barnes's imagination, but they are still valid because they motivated his own creative process, which was buying some truly special paintings.
The problem as I see it is that the acquisition of more respectable paintings may have complicated matters by introducing objects into the collection that had nothing to do with Lucas's creative process. Lucas will have to reverse-engineer those connections.
And, first and foremost, only the luckiest museums in this country boast the depth and breadth of picture quality as the Barnes Collection. Lucas could never replicate it, no matter how much money he had laying around.
I love Barnes's funky ensembles, although I know nothing of what they mean.
> aspect of the museum was
> tacked on to justify the project
My sense is that the mission statement of his museum was being affected by the former director (and others?), who possibly espoused cultural-political activism as much as, or more than, their interest in the art per se.
It's possible Lucas's museum was facing a variation of what happened in 2019 with the Marciano Art Foundation several miles east of LACMA. That's when staffers protested things like their wages or work hours. But not sure about financial details related to the Marciano museum. Or the Lucas too. However, a lot of cultural institutions are known to depend on the support of volunteers.
Honestly, where do they find these people?