Modern Kicks

midweek links

A few things that have crossed my monitor screen recently:

- Anaba has the latest on Christoph Büchel's appeal in the MASS MoCA case, including links to the parties briefs.  I spent too much time on that story last year (or was it the year before?  It's all sort of hazy), but for the bitter-enders out there, follow the link.

- Via Martin at the last link, The Deaccessioning Blog.  This one also falls under the category of topics I've had enough of for a while, so not much comment from me.  Except this: I don't disagree with the stated "ideological bent" of the site--"an artwork may be deaccessioned, so long as certain legal and ethical requirements are met"--although when it's put that broadly, I'm not sure how many people actually do disagree.  Still, the implication of this list has me scratching my head.  The cancellation of various temporary exhibitions at museums provides a reason to favor deaccessioning?  Really?  I loves me a big loan show as much as the next visitor, but the idea that temporary, short-term programming should be funded out of proceeds gained from selling permanent collection works--it's hard to see what else the post could be taken to mean--seems to me a bit short-sighted, to say the least.

- I don't really want to be so churlish, but this is just silly, and that's the best I can say about it.

- "Bless Stouffer's."  In keeping with my current reading, a visit with Janet Lewis a few years before her death.

- Arthur Danto on a new book about Robert Ryman.

- A bit old, but a New York Review of Books piece on James Cuno, antiquities, etc.

- Art in America talks to Art Basel's Marc Spiegler.

- Greg Cook posits a history of New England Lowbrow, starts gathering the evidence.

And that's it for now.

assuming responsibility for time

Snail Garden

This is the twilight hour of the morning
When the snails retreat over the wet grass
To their hidden world, when my dreams, retreating,
Leave me wondering what wisdom goes with them,
What hides in mouldering earth.

Softly they go, the snails,
Naked, unguarded, perceptive
Of the changing light, rejoicing
In their slow progress from leaf to stem,
From stem to deeper darkness.
Smoothness delights them.

What do they hear?  The air above them
Is full of the sharp cries of birds.
Do they see?  The lily bud,
Three feet above the soil on its leafy stalk,
Is known to them at midnight
As if it were a lighthouse.  Before sunrise
They have gnawed it half in two.
Toothless mouths, blind mouths
Have turned the leaf of the hollyhock to lace,
And cut the stem of the nasturtium
Neatly, just below the blossom.

The classic shell, cunningly arched, and strong
Against the hazards of the grassy world
Is nothing before the power of my intention.
The larks, also, have had their fun,
Crashing that coiled shell on stone,
Guiltless in their freedom.

But I have taken sides in the universe.
I have killed the snail that lay on the morning leaf,
Not grudging greatly the nourishment it took
Out of my abundance,
Chard, periwinkle, capucine,
Occasional lily bud,
But I have begun my day with death,
Death given, death to be received.
I have stepped into the dance;
I have greeted at daybreak
That necessary angel, that other.

--Janet Lewis

recent acquisitions

So Franklin was recently describing some of his recent purchases from library sales in Boston.  Some nice things, very nice, to be sure--but I think I have him beat.  It's not exactly a fair contest--I had inside access to the book sale I went to before it was open to the public, and I'm afraid I spent more money than he likely did--but I still can't help but brag about the following:

The Glory of Byzantium.  Wanted this one for a while--the catalog to the Met's magisterial exhibition of . . . more than ten years ago?  How did that happen?  This one was a steal, at any rate, at only $3.

Pieter Saenredam, The Utrecht Work.  I'm not sure I would have bought this, as good as it looks, except it was a like-new hardcover and Saenredam had been on my mind, having been looking at a painting by him just the day before.  Plus, I once spent a couple of pleasurable days in Utrecht, mostly in the churches he painted.

Art & Architecture of India: Buddhist-Hindu-Jain.  An old Pelican, out of date, I'm sure, and in an area I know next to nothing about, but hey, it's got some pictures and is in hardcover.  It was also very cheap (50 cents?), if I remember correctly.

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age.  The embarrassment of admitting I've never read this?  The embarrassment of buying it?  They had multiple copies, and it's probably entertaining.  Also very cheap.

Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750.  An old, unrevised edition, but worthwhile nevertheless.

Along the Ancient Silk Routes: Central Asia Art from the West Berlin State Museums.  Excited about this--very Black Narcissus.  Since I read Foreign Devils on the Silk Road a few months back, it seemed like a natural.

Watteau, 1684-1721.  National Gallery exhibition catalog, huge, not much more to be said.  Only misgiving is that the binding is a little weak--have to be careful with it.  Still, only $7.

Edouard Manet and the Execution of Maximilian.  Before MoMA got there, Brown's Bell Gallery did this fine exhibition.  Paid a little too much for this one, but I was happy to find it.

Henri Matisse: The Early Years in Nice, 1916-1930.  Really have no idea if this is any good, but it has a lot of really good color reproductions, and I realized that there was very little Matisse in my life or my book collection (only one book on him, and it's a tiny Elderfield essay.)  At $3, why not?

There's more, including the stack of periodicals I mentioned in comments below, but the centerpiece has to be this: Agnes Mongan and Paul J. Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art: A Critical Catalogue.  First edition, 1940, three huge fat volumes in very good condition (aside from the dust jackets, which are somewhat soiled, crinkled, with small tears, I'd say excellent condition.)  I'm so excited, I took a bad cellphone photograph of them on my bookshelf.  Damn, even in that bad photograph that doesn't do them justice, they look good.  These did cost a bit of money, but far less than half of what Powells is selling them for (and their price is cheap compared to what I've seen it go for elsewhere.)  Needless to say, I am very excited about this one.  Now I just need the time to look at them.

There's some other stuff, but the one that excites me most is not an art book: The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis.  I've been reading about her poetry for more than a decade, so it's a pleasure to finally read the work itself.  More on that, I hope, to come.  But if you'll excuse me now, I've got to spend some time on the couch in my office with a few good books.

things ain't what they used to be

I was amused by the below, found in an article published in The Art Quarterly vol. 19 (Autumn 1956) on Detroit's St. Jerome in His Study attributed to Jan Van Eyck. As an explanation as to why the theory of W. R. Valentiner that the painting was started by Van Eyck and finished by Petrus Christus did not receive wide acceptance, the author offers this explanation:

Dr. Valentiner's lecture was given as the third after-dinner talk at the meeting of the College Art Association in New York in 1932, in the usual clatter and confusion that follows a hotel banquet. 

That's exactly how conferences always work for me!  Any remaining readers are invited to share their own stories of how their vital contributions to field were lost amid the port and cigars.  In the meantime, cue the Duke and Johnny Hodges: