Denver Art Museum’s van Gogh exhibit focuses on how artist developed his signature style

DENVER — Before Vincent van Gogh painted “Sunflowers” or “The Starry Night,” he worked as a teacher and hoped to become a minister. After he was told he didn’t have the skills to be a preacher, he turned to art.

The story of how one of the most popular postimpressionist painters developed his signature style is told in an exhibit that the Denver Art Museum assembled using more than 70 van Gogh works from dozens of museums and collections around the world. The exhibit also includes artists who influenced him and from fellow postimpressionists.

“Becoming Van Gogh” opens Sunday and runs through Jan. 20 at the Denver Art Museum.
“We’re showing an earlier part of his career, his mentors,” said Timothy Standring, the Denver Art Museum painting and sculpture curator who curated the exhibition with Louis van Tilborgh of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
“We’re showing his self-taught moments when he learned how to draw. We’re showing all those phases that people don’t really know about. It’s not just ‘Sunflowers’ and ‘Starry Night.’ It’s a richer, complicated story, and everybody’s going to be thrilled when they leave this exhibition and say, ‘I know this guy much more.’”

The exhibit doesn’t include those two paintings or any versions of “The Bedroom” but does have three of van Gogh’s self-portraits as well as paintings from the last year of his life. It also includes lesser-known early works, from before the Dutch painter joined his brother Theo in Paris.

“We’re telling another component about his career,” Standring said. “I mean, imagine if we had Hemingway and we only had ‘A Movable Feast,’ and we didn’t have ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’”

The museum doesn’t disclose its budget for exhibits, but it decided if it was going to show van Gogh, it was going to go big. General admission prices to the exhibit are even more than tickets earlier this year for “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective,” which also was a U.S. exclusive for Denver.

Standring said he worked about seven years to put together the show. He estimates that work included traveling about 100,000 miles a year for close to four years to see the loaned pieces — and persuade institutions to lend them to better tell van Gogh’s history.

“Well, I can sell sand in the desert and icicles on the North Pole,” Standring quipped. “No, it was the merits of the story that encouraged people to take the risk to loan their works of art to come to Colorado.”
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If You Go...
BECOMING VAN GOGH: At the Denver Art Museum through Jan. 20, 100 W. 14th Ave. Pkwy., Denver, http://www.denverartmuseum.org/ or 720-865-5000. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on Thursdays. Adults, $25; ages 6-18, $13; seniors, $22; college students, $20; children 5 and under, free.

Christie’s sale of Egypt art piece poised to generate $4.5m

Dubai: A rare masterpiece by the father of modern Egyptian art Mahmoud Saeed is expected to break another record at Christie’s Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art sale that takes place on Monday and Tuesday at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel in Dubai.

Titled Pecheurs a Rashid and depicting a busy river scene showing fishermen unloading their catch on the banks of the river Nile, the art piece carries a pre-sale price tag of between $400,000 (Dh1.46 million) and $600,000.

Egypt’s iconic painter (1897-1964) is known for his works depicting images of dervishes, dancers, nudes and aristocrats. He made headlines in 2010 when one of his masterpieces, The Whirling Dervishes (1929), fetched $2.54 million, a far cry from the pre-sale estimate of $400,000.

Hala Khayat, specialist in Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art, said the artist’s Pecheurs a Rashid is “undeniably the most representative of Saeed’s art because of the beauty of the Egyptian character captured through the artist’s harmonious composition.”

Part 1 of the auction that takes place tonight also showcases another rare painting by Saeed, titled El Zar, with a pre-sale estimate of $150,000 to $200,000, as well as three works by Iranian Farhad Moshiri.

Part 2 of the sale, which kicks off tomorrow, will feature over 100 lots spanning the work of modern and young artists, with lower price points from around $2,000.

Michael Jeha, managing director at Christie’s Middle East, said the sales are expected to generate around $4.5 million and attract not only regular collectors and investors, but first-time buyers as well.

“We have works across the two sales with estimates from as low as $2,000 up to $600,000. With such a range of values, the sales attract a diverse group of buyers. We will see many established collectors who regularly attend the sales but, as in past sale seasons, hope to see and meet a new group of art enthusiasts many of whom have come to look for the first time,” Jeha told Gulf News.

Christie’s is also offering a free public viewing of the art works from Sunday to Wednesday this week. “The viewing is open to everyone and we would encourage anyone interested to come down and enjoy. It really is a mini pop-up museum, for a few day only,” Jeha added.

Art and artists in development: not all exposure is good exposure

Venues and festivals that nurture emerging work must offer artists protection as well as a platform, says Jo Crowley

Exposure is one thing for Mark Wallinger's Diana at the National, quite another for new and emerging artists' work.

 

During the last week of the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe I sat in a respected venue, watching a promising ensemble of emerging artists presenting their new show. The artists were clearly talented and highly skilled. The audience was typical of Edinburgh – peers, punters, critics and programmers, united in their support and curious to see what this talented young company had to offer. Myriad venues, festivals and funders of national and international standing had supported the show.

Expectation was high. However, there was a problem – the show wasn't finished.

Now don't get me wrong. I have repeatedly seen the benefits of developing artistic work in dialogue with audiences. Letting evolving work breathe through work-in-progress and scratch performances can be enormously beneficial to some artists with regards to the quality of the artistic work they create and, ultimately, to the final experience offered to audiences. But is Edinburgh, the biggest arts festival in the world, the largest performance showcase on earth, really the right context to present developing work?

In this instance, the show in question needed substantial dramaturgical attention and technical development. Reading the small print on the programme, you could deduce the show was still in development. However, this was not communicated on venue, company or fringe publicity. I witnessed a series of venue and festival programmers bemused as to why they were watching an unfinished piece, questioning why this hadn't been communicated and, perhaps most disturbingly, rejecting future programming of the show on the basis of a work-in-progress showing.

This prompted me to consider the potential repercussions of exposing developing work too early or in the wrong context. If this emerging work is being supported by established organisations, why is it being exposed so publicly in the wrong context? How supportive are these organisations actually being of the artists, ensembles and companies involved?

Venues, festivals and platforms that support emerging and developing work need to have a thorough and informed awareness that exposing work at the wrong time, in the wrong context, or to the wrong audience can cripple a project and have major repercussions on an artist's future work, as well as inhibiting their ability to grow audiences, attract funding and develop future touring and programming.

Supporting emerging talent and collaboration, particularly in the current climate, must be about more than just providing money, space and resources. Surely it must also encompass a fundamental commitment to nurturing, and to having informed and honest dialogues about appropriate contexts and platforms for presenting evolving work? And surely to be most productive these dialogues should involve a series of perspectives – with contributions from peers and audiences.

If we can ensure this, then perhaps we might just find a way in which emerging artists can grow and survive even in these challenging times. Most importantly, we'll see the work of visionary emerging artists being realised, and the best possible future experiences for audiences achieved.

Hobart art museum helps it make the Lonely Planet's top 10 cities

Attraction ... MONA on the banks of the River Derwent. 

HOBART has been christened a funky cultural hub by travel bible Lonely Planet, which has named the city one of the 10 best in the world to visit in 2013.

The Tasmanian capital's $180 million Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) has proved a beacon for international attention and is largely the reason for the listing in seventh place, Lonely Planet's Chris Zeiher said.

''Particularly for international travellers, [the question] is what's the big-hitter thing to come and actually see,'' Mr Zeiher said.

''So for people to be able to experience that massive thing in the first instance, they can then obviously experience all the things that Hobart has to offer.''

They include the high-end dining experiences of restaurants like Garagistes, whose Katrina Birchmeier was recently named Australia's best young restaurateur of 2012. Hobart's summer festivals including MONA FOMA, curated by Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie, and its convict-era attractions were also highlighted in the publisher's Best in Travel guide.

With Hobart the only Australian city to make the Lonely Planet list - and one of only three in the southern hemisphere - the attention is expected to give a huge boost to the state's struggling tourism sector.

The high Australian dollar has hit tourism hard, while the cost of air and sea access has been a constant controversy in Tasmania.

More flights from Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin, and the return of Tiger Airways next month, are expected to affect prices.

The Lonely Planet announcement comes just days after MONA's owner, the gambling millionaire David Walsh, settled a dispute with the Australian Tax Office that he claimed could have threatened the museum's future.

MONA announced a new winter festival, Dark MOFO, and Mr Walsh is hoping to build a $25 million hotel near the museum in Hobart's north.

''Everyone acknowledges the fantastic change that MONA has brought, not only to the tourism industry in Tasmania but the way Tasmanians feel about themselves,'' the state Tourism Minister, Scott Bacon, said.

Mr Zeiher said Hobart was emulating the success of destinations like the Spanish city of Bilbao, which has reinvented itself since the construction of a Guggenheim art museum.

He said the listing of New Zealand's capital, Wellington, in 2010 had helped it to attract conference business as well as tourists.

Art history

Katie Hartauer, community relations director at La Salle-Peru Township High School, looks through a portion of the school’s art collection. Following a recent remodeling project at the school, an aesthetics committee was created to catalogue the collection that has long gone undocumented.

The Middle Ages antiphonary, an illuminated manuscript, and a 15th century oil painting, both displayed in McCormack Memorial Library, are some of the best known pieces of L-P’s art collection. Both were donations from some of the school’s early benefactors, the Matthiessen and Blow families.

The recent discovery that the 1929 pipe organ at La Salle-Peru Township High School is a national musical treasure has garnered considerable attention, but it’s far from the only treasure on the L-P campus.

In the wake of a recent remodeling of the school’s administrative hallway, during which pieces of art that have been hanging on the school’s walls for decades were taken down, superintendent Steve Wrobleski has formed an aesthetics committee to catalogue the school’s complete art collection and consider which items should be displayed in the future.

About a dozen L-P staffers along with Kelly Klobucher, executive director of the Hegeler Carus Mansion, make up the aesthetics committee.

“I think we’re all historical enthusiasts,” said Emily Carney, a guidance counselor at the school.

The committee has developed several small projects, including creating a catalogue of the school’s art collection, photographing the collection, creating student galleries and potentially developing an art book and virtual tour for the school’s website.

“All in celebration of our history,” said Katie Hartauer, L-P’s community relations director.

Wrobleski said it’s important to gain a solid understanding of what the school owns so the collection can be better maintained in the future.

Additionally, as an L-P alumnus, Wrobleski said he realizes how easy it is for these beautiful pieces of culture to become background objects in the lives of the students who inhabit the building each year.

“We want to make sure our kids have an appreciation of what we have here and particularly how we obtained them,” he said.

Carney said new staff members spend a small portion of their orientation process wandering through the school in search of some of the school’s historical and artistic oddities and landmarks, such as the three-legged horse in the Canterbury Tales mural along the wall outside the library.

“I became more appreciative, actually, when I became a faculty member,” said Carney, who graduated from L-P not so long ago.

Much of the collection, particularly the “wow stuff,” was donated during the 1920s by the Matthiessen and Blow families, Hartauer said.

For example, the school’s Aeolian organ was donated by the Matthiessen family in 1929 for a cost of $50,000. Today, that would be on par with a $660,000 donation, Wrobleski said. Similarly, the $600,000 cost of building the auditorium, which was gifted by the Matthiessen and Blow families, would equal a $7.9 million donation today, he said.

“It really is remarkable when you look at the local industrialists who really were philanthropists,” Wrobleski said.

Earlier this semester the aesthetics committee explored the school, from the basement tunnels to the top of the clock tower, searching for any artworks that were stored away in odd spots in the past, such as a large painting of an ancient solider found stored face to a wall in downstairs copy room.

“I’ve been here 18 years. I never even knew that was down there,” Hartauer said.

Similarly, the large tapestries of Deer Park and Starved Rock that hang encased in plastic in the old cafeteria were found decades ago rolled up in one of the school’s crannies with no sign of their origins.

“Through the years it was mostly the custodians who would find stuff. Find stuff, store stuff,” she said.

While some of those works have been identified over the years, there are a considerable number of paintings, print reproductions, student creations and other pieces that have piled up without any note of where they came from or who created them.

“It’s hard because it’s so many years ago. Obviously none of us were here or knew of it,” Hartauer said.

Visitors to L-P’s McCormack Memorial Library or the library’s page on the school website can find brief descriptions of some of the school’s collection in the “Catalog of Art Treasures,” a small pamphlet that librarian Dave Kelty believes probably was created decades ago.

The library has long been home to some of the school’s most obvious treasures. Along with various small sculptures and busts, the library contains numerous pieces of art brought to the Illinois Valley from Europe by the Matthiessens and Blows, including original oil on canvas paintings by Baroque artist Francesco Solimena and 19th century French painter Emile Renouf – both less famous than some of their artistic contemporaries but still respected.

“I think Dr. (Craig) Carter once said it was deemed ‘priceless,’” Kelty said of the library collection and referring to the school’s former superintendent.

One of Kelty’s favorite items to discuss with students is the antiphonary, an illuminated manuscript from the Middle Ages.

“Just look how far we’ve come,” he said. “I’ve actually seen this sitting here — before they invented the printing press, you know, and everything had to be hand written — and then you see a kid sitting over here with a Kindle.”

Hartauer said the committee also is hoping to connect with talented people who may be able to assist in preserving or restoring some of the collection.

“It’s not a committee that’s going to be done anytime soon, but I think there are a lot of near things we can do,” Hartauer said.

National Geographic to auction photos, art at Christie's New York

This 1908 photo made by an unidentified photographer and provided by National Geographic via Christie’s Auction House, is a portrait of Arctic explorer Adm. Robert E. Peary in Cape Sheridan, Canada.

NEW YORK (AP) — National Geographic Society has chronicled scientific expeditions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife and world cultures for more than 100 years, amassing a collection of 11.5 million photos and original illustrations.

A small selection of that massive archive — 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present — will be sold at Christie's in December at an auction expected to bring about $3 million, the first time any of the institution's collection has been sold.

Among the items are some of National Geographic's most indelible photographs, including that of an Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a portrait of Admiral Robert Peary at his 1908 expedition to the North Pole, a roaring lion in South Africa and the face of a Papua New Guinea aborigine.

Paintings and illustrations include N.C. Wyeth's historical scene of sword-fighting pirates, Charles Bittinger's view of Earth as seen from the moon, and Charles Knight's depictions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
They are being auctioned "to celebrate our legacy .... and to give people a chance to buy a little part of this great institution's history," said Maura Mulvihill, senior vice president of National Geographic's image and video archives.
"We think of ourselves as the unsung fathers of modern photojournalism," she added. "I don't think people are aware of what a massive instructive archive this is."

Huli Tribesman, in Papua New Guinea, in 1998.

Proceeds from the Dec. 6 auction, just weeks before National Geographic's 125th anniversary, will go for the promotion and preservation of the archive and "the nurturing of young photographers, artists and explorers ... who are the future of the organization," Mulvihill said.
 
National Geographic sponsors and funds scientific research and exploration through its official journal, National Geographic Magazine, which reaches 8.8 million people worldwide in 36 countries and in 27 languages. The society reaches millions more through its National Geographic Channel, books and other sources.
 
While National Geographic is known today for its photography, early magazines were filled with artwork.
Among the fine art being offered is an oil painting by Tom Lovell of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Civil War surrender at Appomattox. It's expected to fetch $20,000 to $30,000.

A 1969 illustration entitled, “A Blue Globe Hanging in Space—The Earth As Seen From The Moon,” by Charles Bittinger is shown. The picture is among a small selection of the National Geographic Society's most indelible images that will be sold at Christie’s next month at an auction expected to bring about $3 million.

"The Duel On The Beach," a painting of two pirates by the American artist N.C. Wyeth, is estimated to sell for $800,000 to $1.2 million. Another Wyeth, "James Wolfe at Quebec," was commissioned to accompany a 1949 article on the general taking Quebec from the French general the Marquis de Montcalm. It has a pre-sale estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.

Steve McCurry's photograph of the Afghan girl carries an $8,000 to $12,000 pre-sale estimate. McCurry has made a special print of the image for the sale, and part of the proceeds from it will be donated to the Afghan Girls' Fund.

There's also Edward Curtis' 40-volume photo portfolio and book, "The North American Indian," believed to have been owned by Alexander Graham Bell. It's estimated at $700,000 to $900,000.

The sale also contains some images that have never been published, including a selection from Herbert Ponting, who produced some of the most enduring images of the Antarctic.

Art Thieves Struggle to Convert Monet, Picasso Into Hard Cash

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The plan may be flawless, the booty priceless and the robbery perfectly executed. Yet art thieves seldom consider how they will get rich from their stolen masterpieces, art-crime experts said.

Seven paintings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Lucian Freud were stolen from the Kunsthal museum in the Dutch city of Rotterdam on Oct. 15. The combined value may be as much as $130 million, yet as long as they are stolen goods, the paintings are effectively valueless, said Olivia Tait, manager of European clients at the Art Loss Register, an online database of lost art.

“On the face of it, art theft seems like an easy way to get money -- after all, you can’t get $5 million by robbing a bank,” Tait said by telephone from London. “Criminals don’t think about the fact that they can’t resell artworks after. Then they realize that they can’t take the paintings across borders because they are listed in all the police databases.”

The Rotterdam burglary ranks among the most spectacular art heists of the last decades. Comparable incidents are the 2010 theft of five paintings -- also including works by Picasso and Matisse -- from the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the 1990 burglary from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston of art worth an estimated $500 million.

Hidden, Abandoned

In neither case has the lost art been retrieved. Once thieves wake up to the difficulty of converting stolen masterpieces into hard cash, they often hide or abandon the paintings, which may not resurface for decades -- if ever.

“Forty percent of stolen artworks return within seven years,” said Ton Cremers, who was head of security at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum for 14 years and has since advised more than 450 museums on security as an independent consultant. “If they don’t return in 10 years, the chances are very small that they will be recovered.”

Sometimes paintings are even destroyed or damaged by the criminals who took them, said Lynda Albertson, chief executive of the Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art. The thief who stole Picasso’s “Pigeon With Green Peas” from the Musee d’Art Moderne in 2010 “threw it in a trash container shortly after the theft and the container was emptied before it could be retrieved,” Albertson said.

Even with the difficulty of selling famous stolen masterpieces, Picasso’s works are the victims of theft more often than any other artist’s, according to the Art Loss Register, which lists more than 1,000 missing Picassos.

Pinching Picassos

“Everyone knows who he is, even people with only a couple of years of high-school education,” Cremers said. “These are not specialists in art. It is only in the movies that you get specialist thieves. In real life, it is just ordinary criminals who also steal cars and sell drugs.”

Occasionally “works get traded on the black market, bartered for weapons for example,” Tait said. “But in our 20- year history, we’ve never come across the Hollywood scenario where a passionate art collector commissions thieves to steal specific works of art.”

The paintings stolen from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal were Picasso’s “Tete d’Arlequin;” Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge, London” and “Charing Cross Bridge, London;” Freud’s “Woman with Eyes Closed;” Matisse’s “la Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune;” Gauguin’s “Femme devant une fenetre ouverte, dite la Fiancee,” and Meyer de Haan’s “Autoportrait.”

Dutch Collection

They belong to a private collection called the Triton Foundation, started by the Dutch businessman Willem Cordia, who died in 2011, according to Dutch news agency ANP. The collection consists of about 250 paintings, drawings and sculptures from the period 1860 to 1970.

About 150 works were on show in an exhibition called “Avant-Gardes.” The Kunsthal has no permanent collection and is reliant on loans to put on shows.

“What happened is every museum director’s nightmare,” Emily Ansenk, the director of the Kunsthal, said in a statement on the website. “This incident came like a bombshell to the entire art world.”

Police said the theft took place at about 3 a.m. local time and they are now scrutinizing video footage and talking to possible witnesses. Officers arrived at the Kunsthal just five minutes after the alarm was raised. Local press reported that there were tire tracks on the museum’s lawn after the burglary.

Ansenk described the building’s security as “state-of-the- art,” and in accordance with insurer’s requirements. No one has disclosed how the thieves entered the museum.

Night Guards

Many museums don’t have security guards on duty overnight, Albertson said.

“Having staff at night doesn’t necessarily eliminate the risk,” she said in e-mailed answers to questions. In the Paris heist, “the three night guards at that museum all reported that they saw nothing.”

Cremers raised doubts about the suitability of the Kunsthal for art of the caliber of the current show. The building, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, “is like a box, and there are no barriers for thieves,” he said.

“They should have arranged special security before the exhibition,” Cremers said. “They should have built a special vault inside. They will have problems with future loans.”

Cremers said it’s possible the thieves will attempt to demand a ransom from the Triton Foundation for the paintings. Albertson at ARCA cited the recent example of bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive officer of DoubleLine Capital LP, who last month recovered $10 million in art stolen from his home in Santa Monica, California. That was after he offered $1.7 million in rewards.

“The thief or thieves in this Dutch case could see the heirs to the Triton Foundation as a lucrative target,” Albertson said.

Tait said such demands are rarely met.

“Insurance companies discourage it,” she said. “And if you pay some kind of ransom, you identify yourself as someone who is prepared to go along with such demands and open yourself to future attempts.”

Muse highlights include Scott Reyburn on the art market, Jason Harper on cars and Rich Jaroslovsky on technology.