The EU Asks, “Is it art?”

Hosting a Dan Flavin retrospective, the Hayward Gallery in London says that the American artist, who died in 1996, created pioneering sculpture for half a century. Nonetheless, taking on the recurring question, “Is it art?”, the European Commission in Brussels has ruled that the work has "the characteristics of lighting fittings ... and is therefore to be classified ... as wall lighting fittings".

This is no angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate. For tax purposes, classifying the pieces as light fixtures means that any Flavin work imported into the European Union is subject to full VAT, which rose to 20% on January 1; classified as sculpture, the pieces would be subject to only 5% VAT.

Art critic Laura Cumming has said about Flavin’s art, "You wonder how it is possible that so much pleasure could emit from such a dismal source: the cold fluorescent tubes of strip lighting." But in its ruling, the Commission said: "It is not the installation that constitutes a ‘work of art' but the result of the operations (the light effect) carried out by it."

Hmmm… if the only things installed in a room are lights, and the only reason people go into the room is to look at the effect of those lights … ??? I wonder, is it "the result of the operations" or the purpose of the operations that constitutes a work of art ?

This is not the first time this has come up as a tax issue. The Guardian cites one famous precedent for the Commission's decision; “In 1926 the American collector and photographer Edward Steichen bought a bronze version of [Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s] tall slender Bird In Space, and attempted to import it to the US. Since it had neither head, feet, nor feathers, US customs refused to accept it as a zero-rated work of art, and instead classified it as ‘a manufacture of metal ... held dutiable at 40%’.”

After paying the $600 tax, Steichen and Brancusi took the matter to court – their legal fees paid by the millionaire collector Peggy Guggenheim. The decision was overturned, the judge ruling that "while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental". Steichen got his money back.

Take note, EC.

Michelangelo Behind A Sofa in Tonawanda?

Not long ago there was a flurry of excitement about a newly-discovered Caravaggio painting, a finding that was quickly debunked. All it took was a few days for that claim to die quietly.

Now – in Tonawanda, NY of all places – comes the news that a Pieta, thought by its owner to have been painted by Michelangelo, has been kept in a portfolio behind a family’s sofa for 25 years. The painting was stowed away for safe-keeping after being accidentally knocked off the wall while being dusted!

The painting seems to have a verifiable provenance, going back to Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo’s dear friend and sometime muse. Michelangelo would have been 70 years old when he painted the wood panel. It eventually found its way through marriage, via Croatia, to a German baroness who subsequently willed it to the current owner’s great-great-grandfather's sister-in-law.

In 2007, Italian art historian and restorer Antonio Forcellino began researching the painting. In an article published by the London Sunday Times two weeks ago, Forcellino said he was "breathless" when he saw it for the first time. "Only a genius could have painted this — the darkness which underscores the suffering, the Virgin who looks as if she's screaming and the figure of Christ after he has been deposed from the cross. ... It's definitely by Michelangelo, and I was lucky to find documents that prove it," said Forcellino. "The X-rays that have been done are the key". He has published a book about the painting which will be available in English next year.

Attribution acceptance in academic circles will take some time. After examining the painting, Michelangelo authority William E. Wallace, an art history professor at Washington University in St. Louis, expressed doubts, saying, "You can do scientific analysis of the paint and the surface and the panel and all that tells you is we're dealing with something old from the 16th century." Nonetheless, he did not rule out the possibility that it is the work of Michelangelo. And one way or the other, Wallace agrees that the painting's age and well-documented history make it deserving of display and scholarly debate about its origins.

A Caravaggio Experience in Rome, April 27-29, 2011

Last April I led what I called a Caravaggio Pilgrimage in Rome, specifically to see the blockbuster Caravaggio exhibition at the Scuderie. Although that magnificent show is now just a fond memory, Rome remains the city with the largest concentration of Caravaggio paintings anywhere in the world, by far.

The Eternal City continues to invite glorious total immersion for Caravaggio fans, and I'm planning a three-day Caravaggio Experience in Rome, April 27-29, 2011 for exactly that purpose!

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio arrived in Rome in the last decade of the 16th century, brimming with ambition. As it turned out, his youthful confidence was well founded, and his brilliant new painting style shook the art establishment to its roots.

Until his volatile temperament got the better of him, causing him to flee the city in 1606, there was constant demand for his work in Rome -- for easel paintings commissioned by private collectors as well as large canvases to decorate chapels in various churches.

As a result of that decade of patronage, Rome today is a Caravaggio-rich city. Twenty of his paintings are still on view, spotted around Rome -- many in the very chapels and palazzi for which they were originally painted more than 400 years ago. The city's collection spans his entire career, including two of his first known paintings and his last.

During the Caravaggio Experience in Rome our small group (not more than 6 participants) will explore Caravaggio’s Roman canvases, visiting nine sites -- four churches and five museum galleries -- in the historic center of the city. By the end of our three days together, we will have spent time with all 20 of the Caravaggio paintings that are to be seen in Rome.

To fully appreciate Caravaggio's work, an understanding of the world he lived in -- and the way he lived in it -- is essential. Therefore, on Day 1, before heading out on our site visits, we will discuss the social, political, religious and artistic realities of his day. I'm a great believer in context, and I've designed this SmArt Talk expressly to provide the background to enhance participants' appreciation of what we’ll see on our site visits.

1600 was a significant moment in time and Caravaggio was definitely a man of the moment. His importance in the history of art will be the unifying thread throughout our thee-day program.

Prints and pictures in books are better than nothing, but in truth, they are a feeble substitute for seeing the actual paintings. To one degree or another, the true colors and surface textures are lost in reproduction. And how surprising it can be to see the actual size of a painting, when we've become so familiar with the image in books or online.

I can talk about the tears in the Lute Player's eyes, the work-worn hands, the healthy glow of the infant's cheek, or the powdery bloom on the grapes in the still life, but one can only fully experience Caravaggio's astonishing naturalism and the stunning power of his compositions when standing before the actual paintings.

I'm already excited, just thinking about revisiting Caravaggio in his adopted city with a small group of like-minded people.

For more information about the Caravaggio Experience in Rome program, please contact me at MJM@JanesSmartArt.com

Virgin Eleousa

The Cleveland Museum of Art has recently acquired its first Byzantine icon: the Icon of the Mother of God and Infant Christ. It was painted in Crete, c. 1425-50, in tempera and gold on cypress-wood panel; 96 x 70 cm.

This type of icon is known as a Virgin Eleousa or Virgin of Tenderness, characterized by the touching cheeks of Mother and Child, in a composition that combines spiritual majesty with human sympathy. The icon signifies the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation: Christ born of human flesh and destined to die for the sake of humankind. The gaze of Mary, who cradles the Christ child, is filled with a sense of pathos, born of the knowledge of Christ’s future sacrifice.

Of course, for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the image can be appreciated as a representation of the human bond between mother and child, and the universal ideal of tender, protective motherly love.

This particular icon is rare in that it can be attributed to a specific icon painter, Angelos Akotantos (died c. 1450), who signed as many as 30 icons and to whom an additional 20 are reliably attributed. Active in the early-to-mid 15th century, Akotantos had a workshop in Candia, the capital of Crete. From here he supplied icons to Greek churches and monasteries on Crete, Patmos, Rhodes and elsewhere.

The large size of this icon may suggest its original placement on a templon in an Orthodox church. A templon (from Greek meaning "temple”) is a feature of Byzantine churches, similar to an alter rail or rood screen; a barrier separating the laity in the nave from the priests preparing the sacraments at the altar. The templon first appeared in Christian churches around the fifth century AD and eventually evolved into the modern iconostasis, (a wall of icons and religious paintings) still found in Orthodox churches today.

Icons of this importance rarely appear on the market, and this painting stands out as one of the most significant icons to enter an American museum collection in recent years.

Vanitas: Not Living in the Moment

In thinking about the vanitas genre of art, it occurs to me that that it’s all about not living in the moment.

Most of us have never been exposed to truly horrible death … unlike people who lived (and died) during the 14th century, when the Great Plague (aka the Black Death, the Great Mortality) killed roughly half the world’s population.
It’s estimated that in Mediterranean Europe the plague wiped out 75-80% of the population in just four years. After that, devastating plague epidemics popped up somewhere in virtually every generation until it made its final appearance in Europe in the 19th century.

Lack of sanitation, marauding armies, high infant mortality, famine, primitive (often barbaric) medical treatments, no FDA inspections of food, no OSHA regulation at the job site … it’s almost impossible for most of us, today, to understand the constant presence of death that was the reality of life for everyone until very recent times.

Not surprisingly, given the uncertainty of daily survival, one of the most widely circulated books printed with movable type before 1500 was a self-help book called Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying). Written within the context of the horrors of the Black Death, it provided protocols and procedures for how to "die well" according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages.

Prior to the Great Plague, the rituals and consolations of the death bed were generally attended to by a clergyman. But the priesthood had been especially hard hit by the epidemic, and it would take generations to rebuild. Ars moriendi was an innovative response by the Church to provide the guidance of a "virtual priest" to those who sought to die with propriety.

Gradually, the idea of preparing for one's own death became common practice, as a daily meditation, during bad times -- and good. We know, for example, that the 17th century sculptor, Gian-Lorenzo Bernini, was a devout practitioner of the art of dying well.

(Click to listen to a podcast on The Art of Dying … then click on the audio symbol in left-hand column).

As always, art reflected the times, and a type of sacred art - the memento mori – came into being, to emphasize the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures and achievements, and to focus meditation on the prospect of the afterlife. "Memento mori" is a Latin phrase which translates as "Remember your mortality" or "Remember you will die."

A subset of Memento mori, a vanitas painting is a still-life containing symbols of death, meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the vanity of ambition, and the ephemeral nature of earthly pleasures. In reminding the viewer of inevitable death, a vanitas painting serves as a veiled exhortation to repent.

Common vanitas symbols include human skulls, over-ripe fruit and decaying flowers, smoke, time-pieces, bubbles, musical instruments, and jewelry, gold and other riches.

All this is not to say, however, that we can’t just “be in the moment” and enjoy a so-called vanitas picture for its inherent beauty. I suspect that many artists took secret pleasure in the fact that the viewing experience evoked by a sensuous vanitas still life is in direct conflict with the moralistic message!

Using Art As A Drawing Card

The theft in March 2009 of a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) shone the light of international media attention on a site that had previously not been widely known outside Norway.

The picture, titled Let the Children Come To Me, is valued at $2M to $3M -- or perhaps more now, given its newfound notoriety.

The thieves were caught and the painting retrieved. It has undergone restoration and is now back safely in a church in Larvik, 105km southwest of Oslo. Church security has been improved.

Church officials are eager to capitalize on what is known in Norway as the “Munch effect”— referring to the increased interest in works by Edvard Munch after The Scream was stolen, for the second time, in 2004.

Charged with developing a strategy to ensure that the region can profit from the publicity of the robbery, a tourism manager in Larvik said, “I imagine that an additional 10,000 people may come to see the work annually, if we market it right.”

What do the Pantheon & St. Ivo Have in Common?

I've just discovered that Borromini reprised the Pantheon's ancient stepped-ring dome in his c.1650 charming Baroque design of St. Ivo.

It's not something one readily notices from street level.

But, when photographing the dome of the Pantheon from the roof of a building on the Piazza della Rotonda, I captured this image of Borromini's delightful, fanciful corkscrew cupola atop St. Ivo in the near distance.

Large-as-life ... stepped rings on the dome beneath the bell tower!

A Rapid Reversal of Fortune

In my posting one week ago, questioning the possible attribution of a Martyrdom of St. Lawrence to Caravaggio, I said I thought it would be a while before the experts pronounced their final verdict. While I was right to question the attribution, I was wrong about how long it would take for the experts to weight in ...

Yesterday, Antonio Paolucci, the head of the Vatican Museums and a former Italian Culture Minister, took back the claim -- announced just 8 days earlier-- that the Jesuit-owned Martyrdom of St. Lawrence might be the work of Caravaggio.

In a front-page article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Paolucci wrote, "The quality isn't there, whereas in a Caravaggio [the quality is] always high, even when ... he uses maximum carelessness and a minimum of his expressive resources."

In the article, entitled "A New Caravaggio? Not Really," Paolucci wrote that the work was not up to Caravaggio's standard, citing “inadequacy” of technique, and stylistic shortcomings. He called it a "modest" effort at best, and suggested that it was most likely (a student?) copy of an original painted by a Caravaggio-influenced artist.

Their hopes dashed, I imagine the Jesuits who own it are rather disappointed.

A Caravaggio? Or Caravaggio-esque?

Speaking of Caravaggio … and exciting art discoveries … Reuters reported on the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano’s announcement that a Martyrdom of St Lawrence has been found among the possessions of the Society of Jesuits in Rome, and their suggestion that it was painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

At first blush it appears to have many of Caravaggio’s stylistic hallmarks, but it has not yet been authenticated as his work.

"Certainly it's a stylistically impeccable, beautiful painting," the newspaper said in its Sunday edition, hedging its bets as it cautioned that further analyses, in-depth documentation, and stylistic examination are required before it can be attributed for certain to the Italian master.

The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence displays features typical of Caravaggio's style, including dramatic chiaroscuro and the unique perspective from which the subject is seen. Other similarities are seen in the saint's hand, the active pose of the body, virtuoso foreshortening and the emotive facial expression.

Maurizio Marini, a Caravaggio scholar, points out that St. Lawrence - a martyr burned to death during Roman persecutions in 258AD - is not known to have been a Caravaggio subject. Marini said the stylistic similarities are inconclusive and he expressed skepticism, saying that claims of new Caravaggios often surface but seldom hold up.

However, the author of the article, an art historian named Salviucci Insolera, cites the fact that Caravaggio’s circle of patrons included the powerful ... Jesuit ... Crescenzi family. But, hedging her bets, she added, "That the painting is at the very least a Caravaggio-esque work of the highest order is quite obvious."

Although it’s hard to tell by simply looking at a web-sourced image of a newspaper picture of the real thing, I question attribution to Caravaggio … based primarily on two things:

1. Caravaggio is known to have used the same sitters repeatedly, and this model appears to be one we’ve never seen before.


2. The facial expression seems to lack the vigor I expect of Caravaggio. He produced a series of what amounted to studies of extreme emotion – and if being cooked alive doesn’t engender extreme emotion, I don’t know what would – and this Lawrence simply doesn’t convince me that he’s feeling the heat.

That having been said, (I say, hedging my bets) could it be an early work, painted soon after his arrival in Rome, when he was still developing his skills and used any model who would sit for him for no pay? But then, at that point he didn’t yet have a connection to the Jesuits through the Crescenzi family. And he hadn't yet arrived at this degree of foreshortening or compositional complexity.

Così complicato! It’ll be a while before the experts pronounce, but I’ll let you know when I hear more.

Velazquez: Lost & Found

It happens surprisingly often, and, oh, the vicarious thrill I get when it does … when I hear that someone has discovered what might well be a lost painting by an Old Master!

Just imagine John Marciari’s excitement --- as a junior curator at the Yale University Art Gallery -- when it dawned on him that the unidentified painting languishing in storage looked suspiciously like it might be an early masterpiece by Diego Velazquez!

The Los Angeles Times reports on an article in the current issue of the Madrid quarterly Ars, in which Marciari makes the case that the canvas, which portrays The Education of the Virgin, is actually a 1617 altarpiece by the Spanish master. He believes the painting, which appears to have suffered water damage, was the altarpiece at the Carmelite Convent of St. Anne in Seville, which flooded in 1626.

A large canvas (> 5’ by 4’ ), The Education of the Virgin shows the young Mary learning to read at the knee of her mother, St. Anne, with her father, St. Joachim, looking on.

Marciari claims that the technical evidence of pigments, ground, and canvas are consistent with artistic practice in Seville in the early 17th century. He writes, “Further examination – of style and technique, of the painterly conceits, the manner of quotation, and other factors – leads to a unique origin: Diego Velázquez, born in Seville in 1599 and active there only until 1623, but even from the first moments of his career responsible for the revolutionary change in Spanish painting represented by the altarpiece.”

Marciari points to similarities between The Education of the Virgin and another early Velazquez work, The Luncheon (kept in Saint Petersburg Hermitage) “from the way that the figures emerge from the darkness, to the inconsistently cast shadows that set off brilliantly depicted still-life elements, to the long thick strokes of paint.” He cites comparable elements, such as St. Anne's ochre-colored draperies, in accepted Velázquez works.

The still-life at the left side of the canvas is similar to pottery bowls, plates and baskets present in other Velázquez’s paintings, as are the treatment of “deep, animated folds” in the garments of Saint Anne and the young virgin.

The quarterly journal says the Yale work "could be this master's most significant find for more than a century." Laurence Kanter, the Curator of early European art at the Yale Art Gallery calls the discovery all the more remarkable because museums today rarely have the chance to acquire a work by Velázquez. Kanter points out that Velázquez "has never been out of favor. From the beginning, he has been one of the great, canonical painters of the Western tradition, and because he worked for the kings of Spain, most of his work is still in that country."

Given to Yale in the 1920s by alumni brothers, it was previously listed as the work of an unknown 17th century Spanish painter. The painting is undergoing restoration and may be on display in the Yale Gallery as early as 2012.