Last Call: Dora Maar Retrospective at Centre Pompidou through Monday, July 29

Dora Maar, Model Star, 1936 Silver Gelatin Print, Thérond Collection © Adagp, Paris, 2019, Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / A. Laurans / Dist. RMN-GP

Out of the shadows and into the limelight, Picasso’s primary model for the Weeping Woman, series, Dora Maar, finally gets her due as an artist in her own right, the star of her first solo retrospective exhibition at Centre Georges Pompidou, closing July 29, 2019.  Imagine Dora’s delight had she lived to receive such accolades in the heart of her hometown, Paris, where she was born 122 years ago.

Rogi André (Rozsa Klein), Dora Maar, vers 1937 Silver Gelatin Print, 29.9 x 39.4 cm Purchased in 1983, Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne, Centre de création industrielle © DR Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Georges Meguerditchian / Dist. RMN-GP

Composed of over 400 works in clusters of various media that generously display her artistic talents, this introduction to Dora Maar’s life and art presents a portrait of the modern early 20th-century female eager to make her mark professionally yet torn between her desire for success and a genuine, committed relationship. Often, she will fail at one or the other. For Dora Maar, the decisive moment for her career arrived when she allowed the Spanish master Pablo Picasso into her life. His attentions also brought his condescending opinion of photography, the art form in which she excelled. In this respect, the exhibition Dora Maar not only offers an opportunity to fully explore a relatively unknown body of work, but also asks an enduringly vital question for all aspiring artists, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation: can the influence of a romantic partner in the arts destroy one’s established or promising artistic career? In this particular case, your opinion of the work will determine your answer.

Read more about Dora Maar's life and work on Bonjour Paris

Best wishes for the weekend,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com 

It's Bastille Day! - Celebrating Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

Happy Bastille Day!

Bon Quatorze Juillet  (July 14th)

Bonne Fête!  Enjoy!

The New York Arts Exchange

Celebrating July 4th and Miljan Suknovic's painting "An Immigrant Story" at JFK - Terminal 1

Please join me in celebrating July 4, 2019 and the recent citizenship of one of our favorite artists Miljan Suknovic. In order to mark this happy occasion, Miljan decided to paint a work that expressed his joy. Then he decided to give this star-spangle-y painting to his new country. Today, you can see his work, An Immigrant Story, in person in JFK's Terminal 1.

Here is the text panel:

Congratulations, Miljan!  Read more about Miljan Suknovic on his website. 

Best wishes to everyone on this Independence Day 2019!

Beth 

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

www.nyarts-exchange.com  

Last Call: Picasso's Women at Gagosian through June 29, 2019

Dora Maar Heats Up New York and Paris in Picasso’s Women at Gagosian Madison Avenue and Centre Pompidou

By Beth Gersh-Nesic -

 

Jun 27, 2019

 

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Tête de femme, 1963 © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Patrick Goetlin, Courtesy Gagosian

According to the gallery notes for Gagosian’s current Picasso exhibition, the late great art historian Leo Steinberg claimed that the famous Spanish artist (and infamous Lothario) did not paint a woman “as she presents herself to the world, but how she feels inside.”

Dora Maar, Picasso’s mistress from 1935-1942, told her close friend, the writer James Lord: “All his portraits of me are lies. They’re all Picasso’s, not one is Dora Maar.” (James Lord, Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir, 1993, p. 123).

Buste de femme (Dora Maar), 1940. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Erich Koyama
Courtesy Gagosian

Whom do you want to believe: the male art historian or the artist’s mistress and model? I choose to believe Dora. The evidence is clear in the current exhibition Picasso’s Women: Fernande to Jacqueline, A Tribute to Sir John Richardson, on view in Gagosian’s 980 Madison Avenue gallery, New York, from May 3- June 29, 2019.  Comprised of 36 paintings, drawings and sculptures from mostly private collections, the exhibition came about through a “partnership with members of the Picasso family” to honor the memory of their close friend and colleague, British art historian Sir John Richardson, who passed away on March 12, 2019. Sir John’s magna opus A Life of Picasso, volumes 1-3 (the fourth will be published posthumously), based much of its contents on Picasso’s mistresses’ memoirs and oral accounts, which the gallery notes insist “attests to the central role and influence of many women in Picasso’s life.”

Le rêve (Marie-Thérèse), 1932. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library, Courtesy Gagosian

Richardson, Gagosian’s main curator for Picasso exhibitions, probably considered creating an exhibition about several Picasso women at one time or another during his long career (Richard died at 95 years old). Of the six shows he organized, two were dedicated to specific relationships: Marie-Thérèse Walther (begun in 1927 and lasting until the artist’s death in 1973; Marie-Thérèse committed suicide on October 20, 1977, five days before Picasso would have been 96) and Françoise Gilot (1943-53).  Read more on Bonjour Paris

Keep Cool!

Beth

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director, NY Arts Exchange, LLC

@BethNewYork on Twitter

"Posing Modernity" Expanded to "Le Modèle Noir" at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)

Study for a the woman in Slave Market in Cairo, ca. 1872

Oil on canvas, 48 × 38 cm

Private Collection

© Photo courtoisie Galerie Jean-François Heim – Bâle

Another French Revolution has taken Paris by storm in, of all places, the elegant Musée d’Orsay, a tourists’ favorite because of its enormous collection of great nineteenth-century masterpieces, from academic to avant-garde, from Thomas Couture’s lascivious Decadence of the Romans (1847) to Boleslas Biegas’s brooding proto-Cubist Sphinx (1902). The best known among “the Moderns” Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) shook the foundations of traditional French “received ideas” for art at the Salon of 1865 and continues to challenge our “received ideas” 154 years later, this time through the eyes of an American curator, Dr. Denise Murrell, the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Wallach Art Gallery on Columbia University’s new Manhattanville, situated near the Hudson River side of Harlem. 

Edouard Manet (1832-1883)

Olympia, 1863

First exhibited in the Salon de 1865

Oil on canvas, 130.5 X 191 cm

Paris, Musée d’Orsay, RF 644

Photo © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

Dr. Murrell’s doctoral dissertation on Manet’s model Laure became the exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today on view at the Wallach Art Gallery from October 24, 2018 through February 10, 2019.  Through her beautifully organized selections of art and documentation, she invited “the viewer to reconsider Olympia as a painting that is about two women, one black and one white, who are both essential to achieving a full understanding of this work. . . [because] our understanding of Western modern art cannot be complete without taking into account the vital role of the black female figure, from Laure of Manet to her legacy for successive generations of artists.” Posing Modernity grew from 140 objects to over 300 in the Musée d’Orsay’s Le Modèle Noire de Géricault à Matisse [The Black Model from Géricault to Matisse], including 73 paintings, 81 photographs, 17 sculptures, 60 prints and drawings, 1 photographic installation, and 70 auxiliary documentation (books, magazines, posters, letters, etc.) that populate several galleries.   The New York show started in the mid-19^th century and ended with post-modern art.  The Paris show starts in the late 18^th century and ends with Glenn Ligon’s Some Black French People/Des Parisiens Noirs (2019), a work especially created for the cavernous great hall in the middle of the Musée d’Orsay.

Read more on Bonjour Paris -https://bonjourparis.com 

Best wishes for the weekend,
Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director and owner
New York Arts Exchange LLC
and
staff writer, Bonjour Paris

Last Call for Frida in Brooklyn; Tolkien at the Morgan, through May 12

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Brooklyn Museum, through May 12th

The exciting exhibition of Frida Kahlo's art, fashion, personal possessions, and image in photos and film will close on Sunday, May 12th at 10 pm.  All advance-sale timed tickets are no longer available, but you can try to purchase a timed ticket through the Membership link on the Brooklyn Museum's website, provided you become a member.  Here is the info for new membership only 

I will be among those unfortunates who missed the show - but such is life.

Here are two reviews that offer views from afar:

Vivian Wang on Latin X

Stephanie Huber on Hyperallergic

Conversation with Smaug, a watercolour painted by Tolkien in 1937 as an illustration for the first American edition of The Hobbit. In this image, Bilbo Baggins, rendered invisible by a magic ring, converses with the fire-breathing dragon, Smaug.

Tolkien:Maker of Middle Earth at the Morgan Library also closes on Sunday, May 12th.  A brilliant show, I highly recommend going on Friday evening, when the Morgan is open until 9 pm.  The lines for this show will be painfully long over the weekend, I am sure.  (Don't forget to watch the video on the Morgan website, available with the link provided here.)

Augusta Savage, with Realization, 1938

For those of you who are seeking a less crowded museum visit for Mother's Day, may I suggest the New York Historical Society, which features two great shows:

Betye Saar, Keeping It Clean, through May 27

Augusta Savage, Renaissance Woman, through July 28

There are two choices for dining: Parliment café and Storico restaurant

Other exhibitions that may have substantial crowds:

Camp, the Costume Institute exhibition (through the summer), and The Tale of Genji (through June 17) at the Met Museum

Leonard Cohen at the Jewish Museum through September 8

Please consult our website's "Free or Pay-What-You-Wish" page for more ideas to celebrate Mom.

Happy Mother's Day to you and your families,

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

www.nyarts-exchange.com 

Best wishes for Passover and Easter; Last Call for Hilma af Klint

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Spring Bouquet, 1866

Wishing You a Joyous Passover 

and Easter Holiday

and

Hilma af Klint: Painting for the Future, 

Guggenheim Museum

Fifth Ave between 88th-89th Streets

Don't forget that the exhibition of works by Swedish visionary artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944)  closes on Tuesday, April 23rd.  Extra hours for viewing have been added by the Guggenheim:

April 19–23: Extended Holiday Hours

Museum, 10 am–8 pm
Guggenheim Store, 9:30–8:30 pm
Cafe 3, 10:30 am–7:30 pm

Please visit their website for details. 

Wishing you a blessed weekend,

Beth 

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com