Getty Adds a Thorvaldsen Portrait
 |
| Bertel Thorvaldsen, Rosa Taddei, 1826. Getty Museum |
The Getty Museum has acquired a portrait bust by Danish Neoclassical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. A marble likeness of Italian actor and poet Rosa Taddei, it was shown at TEFAF 2020 by Galleria Carlo Virgilio, Rome. Measuring just under 20 in. high, the Getty bust is the only version in stone. A preparatory plaster is in the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.
Rosa Taddei (1799–1869) was what we now might call a spoken word artist. She drew audience suggestions out of a hat and improvised original poems on the spot. Taddei and Thorvaldsen knew each other, and it's said that Taddei once embarrassed the sculptor with her fulsome praise during a performance. The icy reserve of Thorvaldsen's portrait belies the subject's reported abilities as a tragic actor.
Thorvaldsen's only rival in early 19th-century Rome was Antonio Canova. They were like Matisse and Picasso, leapfrogging each other's innovations. Yet within a century, both sculptors' work had fallen out of favor. To some Modernist critics, Neoclassicism was just short of kitsch—a sentimental imitation of another age's art.
That made no difference to William Randolph Hearst, who adored Thorvaldsen when almost no one else did (the 1930s). Hearst bought two statues of Venus, by Thorvaldsen and Canova, and displayed them together in his San Simeon castle. Hearst Castle also has four large mythological reliefs by Thorvaldsen.
Meanwhile Thorvaldsen was gaining a kitsch-adjacent following outside the art world. In 1939 Forest Lawn commissioned an 11-ft-high replica of Thorvaldsen's Christus for its Glendale cemetery. It was installed in 1947 and followed by three more copies for other Forest Lawn sites. In the 1950s, the Mormon Elders determined that Christus was the most beautiful likeness of Jesus. They commissioned a replica for Salt Lake City and then for Mormon temples around the globe, including the one in West Los Angeles.
It wasn't until the late 20th century that Thorvaldsen's critical reputation began to recover. Art historian Robert Rosenblum argued that Neoclassicism should not be judged by 20th century values. The great Neoclassicists were a crucial foundation of Modern art, not its antithesis. A joint Canova-Thorvaldsen exhibition in Milan (2019) embodied this reassessment.
Like Turner, Thorvaldsen bequeathed most of his art to his home nation. Only a few of Thorvaldsen's original works are in U.S. art museums. There are two portrait busts at the Philadelphia Museum and three (of sisters) at the National Gallery of Art. The Met, Chrysler, and Minneapolis have mythological subjects.
At the Getty, the portrait joins an international selection of Neoclassical sculpture as well as Danish paintings by Christen Købke and Vilhelm Hammershøi. Rosa Taddei will debut alongside Joshua Reynold's Mai in a special presentation that runs Sep. 15, 2026, to Mar. 14, 2027. That installation will include other painted and sculpted portraits of the period.
Comments
The Met's Rape of Dejanira by Thorvaldsen is mesmerizing.
I don't follow: Why is "Mai" to be grouped as you describe?
> Neoclassicism was just short
> of kitsch
People's judgment is so affected by peer pressure, groupthink and ongoing cultural and political trends, that opinions are like a Rorschach test. Or the human fingerprint: No two are alike.
And, okay, beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder. But at a certain point, bad is bad, kitsch is kitsch, and too much gray concrete is too much gray concrete.
This person reminds me of someone I was taking with a few weeks ago.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MJK2KWCgtc4/maxresdefault.jpg
He thought that graffiti all over LA was interesting and not necessarily a negative thing: Stretch that POV far enough, the same thing can be applied to the sight of city's many homeless encampments too.
I wonder which one is better.
Heather King, Angelusnews .com:
Frankly, I was prepared to hate the place. It’s going to be like one of those overpriced restaurants where the insufferable celebrity chef is more important than the food, I figured. It’s going to be a dumbed-down hodgepodge.
Instead, from first to last, I was utterly enchanted.
It’s not exactly a maze, but it’s almost impossible not to become disoriented. Who cares, though? There’s a surprise around every corner: “Textiles of the Andes,” “Luxury Arts of the Great Mughals,” “Stonework from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean Coast.”
There’s no way I would have been able to take in that range of eras and geography on any given single visit to the old museum. At the same time, no gallery felt overwhelming: the idea seems to have been quality over quantity. The objects — almost 3,000 from the museum’s collection of more than 150,000 — have been chosen with care and thought, beautifully and intelligently arranged.
In my excitement, at one point I waylaid a guard. “I love the new gallery!” I blurted. “What is with all the people who are complaining about it?.... Take what you like and leave the rest, as they say. I’ll take it all. [End quote]
Like the Rashomon effect, everyone sees the exact same thing differently.
If most people had King's reaction, I wouldn't feel like I was talking about the Emperor's New Clothes. I'm already the only one who dislikes all the blank wall and floor spaces of the Geffen. Almost no one else seems bothered by that. So if the "emperor" at least had a decent haircut, I'd conclude his new clothing that mimicked nudity would be fine.
I also realized the Pereira/HHP 1965-1986 buildings weren't fitting for an art museum in even, say, Las Vegas. Maybe even in Fresno or Barstow.
In the next few weeks, reactions and opinions about the Lucas Museum will be posted.
I'm guessing that Ma Yansong's design work will be less controversial than Peter Zumthor's. The Lucas building (and grounds) will probably receive more positive than negative feedback. But the exhibits, at least for so-called connoisseurs of art, will cause reactions similar to what such types have when going to the Pageant of the Masters or art galleries in Laguna Beach.
Okay, Wednesday's entry is about an object bought by the Getty. But the Thorvaldsen and his work can't be commented upon as much by me compared with a review I saw today about LACMA's Geffen---posted to a non-art, religious-based web page too.
Similarly, the comments from a user (who's posted here before or is totally new?) doesn't pertain to the subject of this particular blog entry either.
And to me Thorvaldsen's Rosa sculpture is too esoteric. If the Getty had instead acquired a work from Houdon, Bernini or Michelangelo, a response to that detouring to the subject of Zumthor/Geffen and Yansong/Lucas would be like dropping a turd in the punch bowl.