Category Archives: Fine Arts

Wow! LC Tiffany Makes It!!

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It’s easy to overlook the New-York Historical Society as a place to visit, with the massive Museum of Natural History looming over it, right across the street. Sometimes, though, the smaller museums produce just as much interest, without the exhaustion. I like the MNH, but it’s a lot to take in.

Founded in 1804, it was the first museum in New York City, but it’s not at all stuffy. Evidence for that is the current exhibition, “I’ll Have What She’s Having,” the story of Jewish Delis in New York. (The museum is missing a big fundraising opportunity by not selling pastrami sandwiches on the spot!) It tells how the delicatessens started with the Central and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Delis served foods that reminded them of home that was not only tasty, but affordable. As one of the longtime deli owners explained in a video, in the early days the customers were almost exclusively Jewish, but in succeeding generations, tastes widened. They didn’t visit delis as often, and at the same time the food became more widely popular. Now, he guesses, about 40 percent of his customers are non-Jews. There’s also a reel of clips from movies and sit-coms that have filmed in delis, including that unforgettable scene from When Harry Met Sally, filmed at Katz’s delicatessen.

The variety of exhibits, some small, some large appeals to a wide variety of interests. Like politics? You can see the working documents of Lyndon Johnson chronicler Robert A. Caro. Like fine art? There’s an exhibit of paintings of New York scenes, from Keith Haring to Norman Rockwell—including the theater curtain Picasso painted for Le Tricorne that originally graced the Four Seasons restaurant. Black history? You can see the stoneware of free Black potter Thomas W. Commeraw and an exhibit on Frederick Douglass’s vision for America. Decorative arts? An unexpected treat is a gallery of 100 Tiffany lamps. I didn’t expect to be so thrilled by this last exhibit, but the museum has done such a fine job of displaying these works that it’s truly magical.

Where: on Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets.
When: 11 am to 5 pm

Sargent and Spain

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Detroit’s Van Gogh exhibit (posted about it last Thursday) was only half of the Zoom presentation I gave to my women’s club. The other recent exhibit I talked about was Sargent and Spain at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. If the Detroit exhibit brought to light a $5 million art crime, there were questions of a milder variety raised in this exhibit as well.

Sargent made numerous trips to Spain in his lifetime. In the late 1800s, Spain must have seemed otherworldly to cosmopolitans like Sargent, who had homes in London and Paris. Modernization there was slow; the country was conservative, influenced by a reactionary church, and, in many ways, it was resistant to change. Visiting there must have felt like going back in time.

Yet, Sargent loved the people—especially the Gitano (or Roma) people and their dancers. He drew artistic inspiration from country’s landscape and architecture, especially its Moorish influences. In his earliest trips, he studied the Spanish masters at the Prado in Madrid. He was especially attracted to El Greco, Goya, and the Old Master Velázquez.

If you read my thriller, Architect of Courage, you’ll probably remember that a painting by Velázquez features in it. The painting above is the one I had in mind, “Las Meninas,” painted in 1656, with the painter in the frame at left. Of course, in my book, the painting turns out to be a fake. So has this one! Scholarship now says it was painted, not by Velázquez, but by one of his students.

See the figure in the background, who seems to be just leaving the room? It gives the painting a feeling of movement, of mystery. Sargent adapted this idea in his painting “Venetian Interior.” In both paintings, the background figure forces the two-dimensional canvas into a three-dimensional space.

Sargent had a near-brush with crime, too. You may be familiar with this enormous painting of a Gitano dancer—seven 7 feet 10 inches tall and 11 feet 5 inches wide (at the top of the post). It’s at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and I guess it was just too big to steal in the notorious 1990 robbery. Despite the painting’s many details, it has a sense of the unfinished that gives a sense of being in the moment, of the movement and passion of flamenco. The National Gallery went a little high-tech and produced this video mashup of many of Sargent’s flamenco paintings. Not a complete success, but lively.

The National Gallery exhibition also included numerous examples of Sargent’s accomplished watercolors. Here is a pair of pomegranates, popular fruit of Spain that, of course, gave Granada its name. On top, a watercolor; on the bottom, the same subject in oils. Very different, both beautiful.

Van Gogh Still Makes Headlines

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Over Christmas, we went to the blockbuster Van Gogh in America exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts—the DIA–focused on his works in the context of American art collecting. The DIA pulled out all the marketing stops, as the photo suggests. And it received an unexpected boost from reports of a $5 million art crime (more later).

The Detroit exhibit included 74 works from around the world, many of them rarely seen, because they are in private collections. But Why Detroit? Why now? The exhibit celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the museum’s purchase of this beautiful van Gogh self-portrait, painted in 1887. In January 1922, the DIA became the first public museum in America to purchase one of the artist’s works.

In fact, as the exhibit emphasized, it was museums and collectors in the middle of the country who initially were acquiring and exhibiting van Goghs, while the major museums on the coasts were still snubbing him. Not until 1941 was the first van Gogh painting purchased by a New York museum, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired “The Starry Night.”

A trio of art scholars from the van Gogh museum in the Netherlands described some of the myths surrounding the artist. For example, the myth that he sold only one painting in his lifetime—a “The Red Vineyard,” now in Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum. In fact, van Gogh sold several other paintings, their titles unknown and details lost. He also sold drawings, and he sometimes exchanged paintings for food or art materials. By the time of his death, his fame was growing in Europe. He was on the verge of a breakthrough.

Another possible myth is that he didn’t commit suicide, but was accidentally shot by some children and kept it a secret, so as not to implicate them. It is an attractive theory, but the van Gogh Museum experts don’t buy it. They believe he was simply worn out by his mental health problems.

Bringing his work to this country depended on many forward-thinking individuals, especially Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, widow of Vincent’s brother Theo, who worked tirelessly to gain attention for her late brother-in-law’s work. And many of his other collectors, purchasers, and advocates were forward-thinking women.

The painting below, which you’ve probably never seen in person, because it’s privately owned, is “The Novel Reader.” According to federal court documents, Brazilian art collector Gustavo Soter purchased the work for $3.7 million in 2017. Today’s value is an estimated $5 million. Soter transferred possession of the painting (but not the title to it) to a third party, who absconded. The owner learned the painting was in the DIA show and sued to recover it. A federal judge has ordered the museum not to move the painting until this dispute can be resolved. They’ve given it its own security guard.

Do you subscribe to the foreign television streaming service MHz? If so, you might enjoy the fun series, The Art of Crime, in which an uncultured Paris cop is teamed with a spacey researcher from the Louvre.

Broadway Babies

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Two plays in two days hardly competes (except in price) with our five plays in four days sojourns at Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Shaw Festival. Still, last weekend we were on the go!

The room in our hotel near Penn Station was technically larger than the bed, as long as you crabbed along sideways. We didn’t plan to spend much time there, so hardly cared, until the middle of the night when . . .

Our first stop was the Museum of Arts and Design at 1 Columbus Circle. In its exhibits on now–“Garmenting” and art jewelry–some of the jewelry could technically be worn. The garments, probably not (see the teepee dress). Afterwards we had some time to kill so sat a while in Central Park. After several big inhales there, it’s possible we were stoned.

Off to our first play: Tracy Letts’s The Minutes! If you’ve ever sat through a public officials’ meeting that’s struggling to stay on track, you’ll totally get the humor in the play’s first hour. A new member of the Big Cherry City Council is trying to find out what happened at a meeting he missed and why a fellow-councilman has mysteriously been removed. No one wants to tell him. Once they do, the last 15 minutes could be from another play altogether. On the whole, it was entertaining, well acted, and we were glad we saw it. (Tracy Letts is in it.)

Lovely dinner at Trattoria Trecolori on 47th Street, very crowded with the pre-theater seating, but quieted as curtain time approached. Husband Neil has a broken toe, so we couldn’t walk to the restaurant and decided to grab a pedicab. We’d never ridden in one. I think he’s at the bank now trying to negotiate a second mortgage. We chalked it up to a nice “experience,” which, on such a lovely warm evening, it was.

Sunday morning, we saw the special Winslow Homer exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Really, really wonderful. Lots to like, including Maine seascapes you could drown in. As you probably know, he’s considered a greater artist with watercolor than with oils. On one occasion, he produced a watercolor, and when the buyer was told the price, he said, “But it only took you an hour to paint it!” “An hour to paint, a lifetime to learn how.” (Now you know my full repertoire of artists’ quips.)

Next up, the matinee of The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. When the railway coach full of traveling salesmen appeared for the opening number, such an excited din arose, I thought I’d teleported to a high school football game somewhere in Texas. Then, when Hugh Jackman stood up at the rear of the train car, it was, wow, must be the championship game! Excellent singing, lively rendition of the score, choreography fresh and inventive, I liked the sets. The whole show is an exceedingly pleasant package.

During intermission, the drama continued in the long line for the men’s room. A belligerent man behind Neil complained loudly and incessantly, as if he were the only person who had to wait his turn. The usher tried to settle him down, but the man totally lost it. When Neil got back to our seats, he started to tell me about it, but I’d already heard the whole story from the two guys sitting behind us. Never a dull moment!

We topped all this off with a sushi dinner, made a 7:14 train. Arrived home, greeted by cats.

Managing the Message, 16th Century Style

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You think world leaders are using considerable creativity (at times through outrageous lying) to shape public opinion? Imagine the problems of emperors and kings before the 24/7 news cycle, before the Internet, before broadcast, before . . . before . . . before.

No, there weren’t websites and news analysts, and tell-all best-sellers. But that didn’t matter—hardly anyone could read anyway. That’s one reason Shakespeare was such a hit. He told it like it was in a form any rowdy theater-goer could relate to.

Last week, I took a zoom class with art expert and teacher Gene Wisniewski on how Elizabeth I used her portraits to get her political messages across. Today, we’d call them propaganda. She used the portraits to solidify her role as the head of state and the Church of England (after the rather tumultuous succession after Henry VIII) and as a leader on the world stage. Admittedly, she wasn’t in the breaking news business. It takes a while to produce a portrait, especially one where the subject is so elaborately garbed in gems and pearls.

A good example is the portrait above. Gene says to look at it left-to-right, like a cartoon panel. There in the left background is the Spanish Armada, sailing in splendor. Then there’s Elizabeth, dominating the middle, then the Armada on the right, blackened and sinking in defeat. Even subjects unable to read can get the message. Oh, and the hand on the globe. Not just anywhere, either, the Americas. There’s a message.

Gene took us through a succession of the paintings of the queen and what they were meant to convey. Below is was one of my favorites. Do you think Elizabeth wanted her subjects to know she had her eyes and ears on them?

A Notable True Crime Anniversary

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Dutch Room, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Photo: Sean Dungan

Shortly after midnight, thirty-one years ago today, two fully uniformed Boston policemen were let into the indifferently secured Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. But they weren’t cops; they were thieves. They tied up the two security guards and proceeded to wander the museum, stealing what appeared to be an almost random collection of paintings and art objects, retrieved the video footage from the security system, and departed.

Thirty-one years ago this morning, the daytime security guard located and released his colleagues, the museum staff were brokenhearted, the real Boston police arrived, trailed shortly thereafter by the FBI. While the haul was essentially priceless, it has been collectively valued at more than $500 million. It was the largest art crime and the largest property theft in U.S. history, and it remains unsolved. Netflix is taking it on now; details below.

The museum offered a huge reward—now $10 million. No takers, not in over three decades. From the first, FBI agents theorized the theft was the work of low-level organized crime figures. When the statute of limitations on the theft ran out, the FBI confidently predicted some mug would finally come forward with information. Crickets. Then they said fugitive mobman Whitey Bulger, might hold the key. Whitey was finally nabbed in California in 2011. He died in 2018, without a chirp. They engaged another New England mobster for help, but he died last fall, apparently without providing any. In fact, for thirty-one years, the FBI has periodically predicted an imminent resolution to this spectacular crime, and each time, nothing.

My short story “Above Suspicion” was published in 2018 in the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (Issue 26). It suggests an entirely different scenario. My thieves are two Massachusetts General Hospital surgical residents, recruited by a European fence. The docs are impoverished by years of medical training, and, on reflection, happy to have a substantial nest-egg to start their practices. Here’s how it answers the key questions the crime has raised.

1.How did the thieves talk their way into the museum against institutional policy? Do you know any surgeons? If they can’t convey a sense of authority, no one can.
2.Who hired/organized them? A man from Europe, a fence unknown to U.S. authorities or mobsters.
3.Since stealing art is child’s play compared to getting rid of it afterward, what happened to it? They stole items “to order.” The fence pre-sold them to people who aren’t fastidious about provenance.
4.Why did they overlook several more valuable works? Again, the buyers made their choices.
5.Why has no word leaked out? The European believed two doctors, unlike low-level mobsters, would never reveal his crime in a drunken confession or to a stoolie cellmate.
6.Why, with all the valuable art on display, did they steal two low-value Degas sketches? Those works were for them, one apiece, as a reminder.

Fictionalizing a real-life event has constraints. While I could make up the characters and the means for getting the works out of the country (sewn into the upholstery of a couple of showy vintage Cadillacs), I kept the core details of the crime completely true-to-life, fitting my fiction into a box of facts. Each time another FBI prediction falls flat, my theory remains standing. (smile)

I’m eager to see what Netflix does with this story. A four-part docuseries, This is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, is coming April 7.

My reading (Amazon has a three-book deal on these books):

The Gardner Heist by reporter Ulrich Boser, Order on Amazon
Priceless by FBI Art Crime Team founder, Robert K. Wittman – Amazon link
Stealing Rembrandts by Gardner Museum security director Anthony M. Amore and reporter Tom Mashberg. Amazon link

The Art of Violence

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The Art of Violence, SJ Rozan

By SJ Rozan – Here’s the latest in SJ Rozan’s popular series featuring private investigators and romantic partners Bill Smith and Lydia Chin. Former client Sam Tabor has recently been released from the Green Haven Correctional Facility, where he was serving time for the stabbing death of a young woman during a party where someone put PCP in the punch. Mentally unstable in the best of times, the drug had a powerful effect on him, and the woman’s death devastated him.

The reclusive Sam has been an artist his whole life, but kept his work private until one of his Green Haven therapists made him into a cause célèbre. The cynical Manhattan art community latched onto him and his work, “full of blood and destruction.” It ginned up a successful campaign for Sam’s early release. Now he’s a reluctant art-world phenomenon.

As he says to Bill, ‘A jury might have bought the idea I was temporarily out of my mind, but the point, like you say, the point is, I really am out of my mind.’

Since Sam returned to Manhattan, two young women bearing a remarkable resemblance to the earlier victim have been murdered. Sam can’t remember a thing about either evening—the drinking and blackouts don’t help—and he’s afraid he killed them. To stop the murders, Sam wants Bill to prove he’s the killer, so he can be taken off the streets. He’s tried turning himself in to the police, but they aren’t interested. An NYPD detective, under pressure to arrest Sam, thinks he’s a “freaking lunatic,” but doesn’t fit the serial killer profile. Meanwhile, several people in Sam’s life have reasons to want him in the frame for these new murders.

An especially appealing aspect of this story is the sympathetic touch with which Rozan portrays Sam and his confusion. He’s the antithesis of the self-justifying (“she deserved it”), self-glorifying killers typical of this genre. In a way, he’s like the patient in the psychological thriller Primary Obsessions, whose violent thoughts are just that, thoughts, not deeds. In Sam’s case, the dark thoughts are manifested in his art. Even so, as evidence mounts, the NYPD spotlight turns inevitably toward him, and it would be easy for Sam to talk his way right back into prison. Bill and Lydia need to move fast to stop that.

Seeing a Play Twice: The In-Between

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This fall I’m taking a five-week ZOOM course on “How to Watch a Play,” led by Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Washington, D.C.’s Theater J. Prior to the first class, everyone watched online a 2018 production of the Tony-award-winning play Red by John Logan. I’d seen it a few years ago and didn’t remember it all that well.

This London version had Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko (born in 1903; committed suicide in 1970) and Alfred Enoch as his assistant, Ken. In the script, Ken arrives to help Rothko with the task of creating nearly 40 enormous canvases to hang in Manhattan’s then-new Seagram Building. He stretches canvas, he mixes paint. Red paint. The paintings are undeniably red, in varying shades, and it’s a tribute to both artist and playwright that audience members can go from “my kid could do that” to “I get it” in about 90 minutes.

A filmed play has plusses and minuses. Closeups are an advantage. Actors and directors manage stage elements so that you’re looking in the right place at the right time; with the camera, the decision where to look is made for you. What’s lost is the sense of community a live audience provides. (Adam cited a 2017 study that found audience members’ hearts begin to beat in sync.)

Adam distinguishes between a play and a production. The play is the script. Everything that brings it to life (actors, sets, costumes, lighting, music) is the production. And, when it comes to production, he says, “Everything’s a choice.”

When you see different productions of the same play, those choices become apparent. One version may be immensely enjoyable, another a big disappointment. A few years ago, Princeton’s McCarter Theatre produced an intimate version of My Fair Lady with no orchestra, just two pianos. A delightful choice. We’ve seen six or seven productions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum—from Broadway to community theater—and enjoyed each one. Great choices.

Then, the disasters: Romeo and Juliet in a tiny theater where the set design included a traditional second-floor balcony and, when Juliet was up there, the audience could see her only from the knees down; a particularly awful Hamlet (referred to at our house as “the nude Hamlet”); and A Christmas Carol with Tiny Tim played by an adult. Cue eyeroll. Yet, whatever their choices, a production team doesn’t totally control your reactions. External factors intrude. Say you eat a bad dinner before the show, or an actor reminds you of someone you loathe (or love!), or the set calls to mind your terrifying Aunt Gertrude’s living room. Between my first and second viewing of Red, as it happens, I visited Houston and saw the Rothko Chapel, hung all around with his large, dark, ominous paintings. Because of that experience, when Rothko says, “There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend. . . One day the black will swallow the red,” I took so much more from that line. To me, that’s exactly what happened with Rothko, both literally and metaphorically.

How the West Was Lost: Travel Tips

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A recent trip to Scottsdale prompted a return visit to Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, at 2d Street and Marshall Way—a fine place to spend a couple of hours. There’s a permanent exhibit of Western “stuff,” ranging from saddles to signage to six-shooters, plus special exhibitions.

On view until August 2020 are more than 300 works from the man called “the West’s greatest artist,” Maynard Dixon. Born in 1875, he lived during the time the frontier American West began to disappear.

When he was a child, the wars between Indians and European settlers still raged, Texas cowboys herded cattle north long distances to railheads, and “civilization” was as flimsy as the frontier town stage sets in Blazing Saddles. Dixon not only painted hundreds of notable landscapes and portraits, he was a prolific illustrator, producing cover art for magazines and illustrating popular novels.

Artists gave Easterners their first glimpses of the beautiful and dramatic West, but they were less appreciated on their home ground. Said Dixon,
“In those days in Arizona being an artist was something you just had to endure—or be smart enough to explain why. . . . If you were not working for the railroad, considering real estate or scouting for a mining company, what the hell were you? The drawings I made were no excuse and I was regarded as a wandering lunatic.”

Also at the museum, we had the chance to see a one-man show, “Wyatt Earp: A Life on the Frontier,” in which one of Earp’s descendants gave the true “not-what-you-learned-from-Hollywood” story. It was a lot of fun (tickets best ordered beforehand, though I don’t believe the website makes that clear). While this program may not regularly repeat, the museum offers frequent special events, noted on its website.

By coincidence, on this trip I was reading David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which puts a tragic twist on the story of the “conquest” of the West. In the 1870s, the Osage tribe had been driven into an unpropitious area—“broken, rocky, sterile, and utterly unfit for cultivation,” according to a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent. The Osage bought the land, located in what became northeast Oklahoma, thinking it so undesirable they would not be evicted again. Maynard Dixon’s works even evoke this suffering.

But the new reservation held a surprise. Oil. For a time in the 1920s, tribe members accumulated dollars in the millions, becoming the wealthiest people per capita in the world. Then the murders began.

It’s a riveting yet almost forgotten real-life tale of greed, corruption, and betrayal that reads like a novel. There’s even a bit part for J. Edgar Hoover, who intuited that solving this case would catapult his little agency—and himself—to national prominence.

Alas, we cannot look back at those days and think the exploitation of our beautiful West ended there. We are still losing it.

Or maybe this post should be titled “Small Museums: Part 2.” (Part 1 here.)

Small Museums, Big Pleasures: South Bend, Youngstown, Cincinnati

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It’s easy to love The Met, the Smithsonian, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, the Getty, and the nation’s many other Major Museums. But really? Are you always up for eight or nine hours of that? You don’t have to visit one of these demanding (time, energy, and $$) enterprises to have a rewarding museum experience. Smaller, more manageable, typically less crowded museums throughout the country have impressive offerings. Here are east-of-the-Mississippi examples from recent travels.

Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana

OK, granted, you may have to have a thing about cars to fully appreciate the Studebaker National Museum. Old cars, that is (Studebaker stopped manufacturing its vehicles in the 1960s). But an appreciation of history can serve every bit as well. Before it manufactured automobiles, Studebaker produced prize-winning wagons and carriages. On display is the carriage that President and Mrs. Lincoln used for their ill-fated trip to Ford’s Theater. And the carriage used by Indiana native son, President Benjamin Harrison.

There are early “station wagons,” carriages designed especially for traveling to and from the train station (luggage outside). Among the farm wagons is a miniature version for children, with a sign reading “Propulsion provided by goat, large dog, or younger sibling.” Aww.

America’s Packard Museum, located in a restored Packard dealership in Dayton, Ohio, is equally impressive, carwise, BTW.

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

I remembered that the Butler Institute has Winslow Homer’s famous “Snap the Whip,” but I hadn’t recalled that its collection, devoted to works by American artists, includes so many other notable works, as a recent visit revealed. Some of the paintings from the Hudson River School and other mid-19th century artists are truly spectacular. There are some fun contemporary works as well, including a large painting of a dramatic scene from To Have and Have Not.

Butler—one of the few museums of its caliber that does not charge an admission fee and relies solely on community contributions—has an “Adopt-a-Painting” program in which donors can contribute to the restoration of specific works of art. That’s an exciting possibility, which may intrigue some of the museum’s 100,000 annual visitors. Maybe other museums have programs like this, but they have escaped my notice.

Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio

We visited the Taft Museum of Art in 2016 and liked it, but what caught my eye recently was the announcement of an upcoming exhibition (February 8-May 3, 2020) of the works of N.C. Wyeth. The passionate early 20th century works of the patriarch, N.C., appeal to me more than those of his son Andrew and grandson Jamie. I’m drawn to their swashbuckling energy and storytelling power. The exhibit will include his illustrations for Treasure Island, The Last of the Mohicans (Hawkeye, pictured), and The Boys’ King Arthur, as well as standalone works of equal vivacity.

Alas, I won’t be in Cincinnati during the run of this show, but I hope you will be and that you’ll see it and tell me what you liked best.