tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/picasso-16961/articles
Picasso – The Conversation
2021-11-01T12:24:55Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/170691
2021-11-01T12:24:55Z
2021-11-01T12:24:55Z
How AI is hijacking art history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429399/original/file-20211029-17-ql1b8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C76%2C1096%2C1067&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Art historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists' techniques.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/The_Holy_Family_with_the_Infant_Saint_John_the_Baptist_MET_Perino_X-ray.jpg">Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People tend to rejoice in the disclosure of a secret. </p>
<p>Or, at the very least, media outlets have come to realize that news of “mysteries solved” and “hidden treasures revealed” generate traffic and clicks. </p>
<p>So I’m never surprised when I see AI-assisted revelations about famous masters’ works of art go viral. </p>
<p>Over the past year alone, I’ve come across articles highlighting how artificial intelligence <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/06/modigliani-lost-lover-beatrice-hastings">recovered a “secret” painting</a> of a “lost lover” of Italian painter Modigliani, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/hidden-picasso-nude-scli-intl-gbr/index.html">“brought to life” a “hidden Picasso nude”</a>, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/klimt-painting-restore-artificial-intelligence-color-faculty-paintings-180978843/">“resurrected” Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s destroyed works</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57588270">“restored” portions of Rembrandt’s 1642 painting “The Night Watch.”</a> <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190830150738.htm">The list goes on</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.umass.edu/arthistory/member/sonja-drimmer">As an art historian</a>, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the coverage and circulation of these projects.</p>
<p>They have not, in actuality, revealed one secret or solved a single mystery. </p>
<p>What they have done is generate feel-good stories about AI.</p>
<h2>Are we actually learning anything new?</h2>
<p>Take the reports about the Modigliani and Picasso paintings. </p>
<p>These were projects executed by the same company, <a href="https://www.oxia-palus.com/">Oxia Palus</a>, which was founded not by art historians but by doctoral students in machine learning.</p>
<p>In both cases, Oxia Palus relied upon traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence and infrared imaging that had already been <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Picasso_in_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art">carried out and published</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/28/modigliani-portrait-comes-to-light-beneath-artists-later-picture">years prior</a> – work that had revealed preliminary paintings beneath the visible layer on the artists’ canvases. </p>
<p>The company edited these X-rays and <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.05677">reconstituted them as new works of art</a> by applying a technique called “<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06576.pdf">neural style transfer</a>.” This is a sophisticated-sounding term for a program that breaks works of art down into extremely small units, extrapolates a style from them and then promises to recreate images of other content in that same style.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1447741842401939458"}"></div></p>
<p>Essentially, Oxia Palus stitches new works out of what the machine can learn from the existing X-ray images and other paintings by the same artist. </p>
<p>But outside of flexing the prowess of AI, is there any value – artistically, historically – to what the company is doing?</p>
<p>These recreations don’t teach us anything we didn’t know about the artists and their methods. </p>
<p>Artists paint over their works all the time. It’s so common that art historians and conservators have a word for it: <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/pentimento">pentimento</a>. None of these earlier compositions was an Easter egg deposited in the painting for later researchers to discover. The original X-ray images were certainly valuable in that they <a href="https://www.academia.edu/40255609/The_Getty_Conservation_Institute_From_Connoisseurship_to_Technical_Art_History_The_Evolution_of_the_Interdisciplinary_Study_of_Art">offered insights into artists’ working methods</a>.</p>
<p>But to me, what these programs are doing isn’t exactly newsworthy from the perspective of art history.</p>
<h2>The humanities on life support</h2>
<p>So when I do see these reproductions attracting media attention, it strikes me as soft diplomacy for AI, showcasing a “cultured” application of the technology at a time when skepticism of its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/13/what-are-deepfakes-and-how-can-you-spot-them">deceptions</a>, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479837243/algorithms-of-oppression/">biases</a> and <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Race+After+Technology:+Abolitionist+Tools+for+the+New+Jim+Code-p-9781509526437">abuses</a> is on the rise.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1401526342513049603"}"></div></p>
<p>When AI gets attention for recovering lost works of art, it makes the technology sound a lot less scary than when it garners headlines <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deepfake-artificial-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-10-10/">for creating deep fakes that falsify politicians’ speech</a> or <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/the-rise-of-ai-surveillance-coronavirus-data-collection-tracking-facial-recognition-monitoring/">for using facial recognition for authoritarian surveillance</a>. </p>
<p>These studies and projects also seem to promote the idea that computer scientists are more adept at historical research than art historians. </p>
<p>For years, university humanities departments <a href="https://carrollnews.org/3680/campus/art-history-department-to-be-eliminated-tenured-faculty-receive-termination-notices/">have been gradually squeezed of funding</a>, with more money funneled into the sciences. With their claims to objectivity and empirically provable results, the sciences tend to command greater respect from funding bodies and the public, which offers an incentive to scholars in the humanities to adopt computational methods. </p>
<p>Art historian Claire Bishop <a href="https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dah/article/view/49915">criticized this development</a>, noting that when computer science becomes integrated in the humanities, “[t]heoretical problems are steamrollered flat by the weight of data,” which generates deeply simplistic results. </p>
<p>At their core, art historians study the ways in which art can offer insights into how people once saw the world. They explore how works of art shaped the worlds in which they were made and would go on to influence future generations. </p>
<p>A computer algorithm cannot perform these functions.</p>
<p>However, some scholars and institutions have allowed themselves to be subsumed by the sciences, adopting their methods and partnering with them in sponsored projects. </p>
<p>Literary critic Barbara Herrnstein Smith <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r2bq2.9?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">has warned about ceding too much ground to the sciences</a>. In her view, the sciences and the humanities are not the polar opposites they are often publicly portrayed to be. But this portrayal has been to the benefit of the sciences, prized for their supposed clarity and utility over the humanities’ alleged obscurity and uselessness. At the same time, she <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3622212">has suggested</a> that hybrid fields of study that fuse the arts with the sciences may lead to breakthroughs that wouldn’t have been possible had each existed as a siloed discipline. </p>
<p>I’m skeptical. Not because I doubt the utility of expanding and diversifying our toolbox; to be sure, some <a href="http://www.mappingsenufo.org/">scholars working in the digital humanities</a> have taken up computational methods with subtlety and historical awareness to add nuance to or overturn entrenched narratives.</p>
<p>But my lingering suspicion emerges from an awareness of how public support for the sciences and disparagement of the humanities means that, in the endeavor to gain funding and acceptance, the humanities will lose what makes them vital. The field’s sensitivity to historical particularity and cultural difference makes the application of the same code to widely diverse artifacts utterly illogical. </p>
<p>How absurd to think that black-and-white photographs from 100 years ago would produce colors in the same way that digital photographs do now. And yet, this is exactly what <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/639395/the-limits-of-colorization-of-historical-images-by-ai/">AI-assisted colorization</a> does. </p>
<p>That particular example might sound like a small qualm, sure. But this effort to “<a href="https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/colorizer">bring events back to life</a>” routinely mistakes representations for reality. Adding color does not show things as they were but recreates what is already a recreation – a photograph – in our own image, now with computer science’s seal of approval.</p>
<h2>Art as a toy in the sandbox of scientists</h2>
<p>Near the conclusion of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw7416">a recent paper</a> devoted to the use of AI to disentangle X-ray images of Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s “<a href="https://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/past/panelpaintings/panel_paintings_ghent.html">Ghent Altarpiece</a>,” the mathematicians and engineers who authored it refer to their method as relying upon “choosing ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (borrowing Voltaire’s words) by taking the first output of two separate runs, differing only in the ordering of the inputs.” </p>
<p>Perhaps if they had familiarized themselves with the humanities more they would know how satirically those words were meant when Voltaire <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/20877">used them to mock a philosopher</a> who believed that rampant suffering and injustice were all part of God’s plan – that the world as it was represented the best we could hope for.</p>
<p>Maybe this “gotcha” is cheap. But it illustrates the problem of art and history becoming toys in the sandboxes of scientists with no training in the humanities.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>If nothing else, my hope is that journalists and critics who report on these developments will cast a more skeptical eye on them and alter their framing. </p>
<p>In my view, rather than lionizing these studies as heroic achievements, those responsible for conveying their results to the public should see them as opportunities to question what the computational sciences are doing when they appropriate the study of art. And they should ask whether any of this is for the good of anyone or anything but AI, its most zealous proponents and those who profit from it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sonja Drimmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Breathless headlines of artificial intelligence discovering or restoring lost works of art ignore the fact that these machines rarely, if ever, reveal one secret or solve a single mystery.
Sonja Drimmer, Associate Professor of Medieval Art, UMass Amherst
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104921
2018-10-15T19:02:39Z
2018-10-15T19:02:39Z
Modern Art from The Hermitage showcases the French gems of two great merchant collectors
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240541/original/file-20181015-109236-1kj1uj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Signac, 'Leaving the Port of Marseille' 1906/7 oil on canvas, 46 x 55.2 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 6524.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Vladimir Terebenin.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first corner of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ summer blockbuster <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/hermitage/">Masters of Modern Art from the Hermitage</a> is dominated by three giant black and white archival photographs, but visitors’ eyes are drawn to the intense colours of a single painting, Christian Cornelius Krohn’s 1915 portrait of the collector, Sergey Shchukin. </p>
<p>Unlike many of the great works in the Hermitage, which are very much a tribute to the collecting passion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/masterpieces-from-the-hermitage-puts-the-great-in-catherine-the-great-review-45435">Catherine the Great</a>,
most of the early 20th century paintings are a result of the collecting passion of two families – the Shchukins and the Morozovs.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christian Cornelius Krohn (Xan Krohn) ‘Portrait of Sergey Shchukin 1915, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Inv GE 9090.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Estate of Christian Krohn/BONO.Copyright Agency, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last year, much of Sergey Shchukin’s remarkable collection of early works by Picasso, Matisse and their circle, was shown in Paris. According to <a href="http://www.artnews.com/2017/02/21/an-embarrassment-of-riches-the-shchukin-collection-at-fondation-louis-vuitton-in-paris-overflows-with-modernist-masterpieces-and-offers-dark-parallels-to-our-plutocratic-present/">The Art Newspaper</a>, French audiences packed the galleries as these were “some of the best paintings their culture has produced”. In Sydney, works from Shchukin’s collection mingle with paintings from the collection of the Morozovs, as well as other paintings “liberated” from their wealthy owners after the 1917 Revolution. </p>
<p>One of the photographs shows Shchukin’s Picasso room, where the walls are crowded with finely painted melancholy studies from the artist’s Blue Period, a few very early Cubist works – and two readily identifiable paintings from this exhibition. </p>
<p>Woman With a Fan and Farm Woman were both painted in 1908, when the artist was on the cusp of turning from Cézanne-inspired solid forms to Cubism. Woman With a Fan was loosely based on a study of his mistress, Fernande Olivier, while Farm Woman was based on Marie-Louise Putman, the owner of a house where Picasso was staying. Yet both have been rendered anonymous, reduced to pure geometry.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, ‘Table in a café (Bottle of Pernod)’ 1912 oil on canvas, 46 x 33 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 8920.
© Pablo Picasso/Succession Pablo Picasso/Copyright Agency 2018</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Mololkovets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the Shchukins and the Morozovs travelled to Paris for trade and pleasure they were following a path well trod by generations of Russians. Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia had turned to France for both intellectual and aesthetic nourishment. In music and dance this had long ceased to be one way traffic as Tchaikovsky melded elements from both Western and Russian traditions, while Russian Ballet took a French tradition and made it its own.</p>
<p>It is curious, but not surprising that the two great collectors of modern art were textile merchants. Their trade gave them an eye for fresh relationships between colour, line and texture. </p>
<p>By the end of the 19th century the Morozovs were one of the richest families in Russia. Ivan and Mikhail Morozov were passionate collectors of Bonnard, Sisley, Signac, Pissarro and Cézanne. The family was sympathetic to the aims of the Bolshevik Revolution (their grandfather had been a serf) and Ivan planned to eventually give his collection to the state.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Cézanne, ‘Fruit’ 1879/80, oil on canvas, 46.2 x 55.3 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Inv GE 9026</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Pavel Demidov and Konstantin Sinyavsky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the state took it first. In 1923 his house and collection had become the State Museum of Modern Western Art, which eventually became the repository for looted art from other collections. By 1932, Stalin’s doctrinaire hegemony decreed that modern Western art was decadent and it vanished from public view until after his death. The preservation of Russia’s great collections in the face of totalitarian opposition is a tribute to the bravery of generations of dedicated museum professional staff.</p>
<h2>Befriending Matisse</h2>
<p>Sergey Shchukin, who first visited Paris in the 1890s, was a very early patron of that young radical, Henri Matisse. The earliest Matisse in this exhibition, The Luxembourg Gardens, circa 1901, takes a subject which is almost a cliché of French Impressionism, and makes it into a Fauve celebration of pure, intense colour. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse ‘The Luxembourg Gardens’ c1901, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Inv GE 9041.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a truly remarkable painting. Shchukin bought it from Matisse’s dealer, Galerie Druet, in 1907. A year later he bought the luminous Woman on a Terrace of 1906, a work of such stunning simplicity that it is worth seeing the exhibition for this alone. But Shchukin did not stop with collecting Matisse’s early masterpieces and befriending the artist. In 1911 Matisse visited Russia, as Shchukin’s guest.</p>
<p>The portrait of Shchukin hangs next to an entrancing, but frustrating, photograph of the Pink Drawing Room in his mansion. The elaborate 18th century Roccoco room is covered in a crowd of masterpieces by Matisse - but the photograph is in black and white, with no sense of colour. From historic records we know that in order to prepare the room for his art, the artist arranged for the ceiling to be painted pink. The walls were given pale green wallpaper, the carpet was cherry red. Matisse then curated his personal selection of some of the paintings Shchukin had bought, including A Game of Bowls of 1908.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse ‘Game of bowls’ 1908, oil on canvas, 115 x 147 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 9154.
© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 2018, Vladimir Terebenin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I can understand why this work, along with Nymph and Satyr, painted the following year, hangs at the entrance to the central court in the Sydney exhibition. Their fluidity of form and line, along with their limited palette, connect them to Matisse’s two great Dance and Music paintings.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Gauguin,‘The month of Mary (Te avae no Maria)’ 1899, oil on canvas, 96 x 74.5 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 6515.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Mololkovets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The opportunity to see this art up close and personal, to get a sense of how Matisse interacted with the culture of the man who so admired him, is rare indeed. </p>
<p>The Dance and Music paintings are not in the Sydney show. However, visitors can see Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke’s five channel, multi-media installation that recreates the relationship between Shchukin, Matisse, radical Russian artists and two of the great paintings of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Shchukin was passionate about sharing the art he had bought. In 1907 he opened his house to visitors every Sunday. When the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the old order in 1917, he fled to France and his art was seized on the orders of Lenin.</p>
<p>The last work in the exhibition, Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, owes nothing and everything to the activities of the merchant collectors of modern art. In its stark denial of any resemblance to reality, it eliminates any consideration of possible decoration and challenges the very idea of what art may be. </p>
<p>The first version of Black Square was exhibited in St Petersburg in 1915 in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0,10_Exhibition">The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0.10</a>. It therefore overlaps between the era of the merchant collectors and the creation of a new world.</p>
<p>If there had been no Revolution, no state confiscation of this great collection, would it have remained intact, or would it have been fragmented by the relentless art market? </p>
<p>The actions of the first Bolshevik revolutionaries, followed by the ethical scholarship and fortitude of generations of curators, enable us today to have a small window into the minds of these great experimental collectors and the art that they loved.</p>
<p><em>Masters of Modern Art from the Hermitage is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until March 3.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has received funding from the Australian Research Council for a Linkage Project grant in partnership with the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia and Museums Australia. This grant enabled the research for Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening Our Eyes, written in partnership with Catherine De Lorenzo, Alison Inglis and Catherine Speck. The publication of this book by Thames and Hudson Australia was enabled by a grant from the Gordon Darling Foundation.</span></em></p>
In the early 20th century, two families of collectors brought the best of modern French art to Russia. Many of their paintings - including works by Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne - can now be seen in Sydney.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76238
2017-04-26T11:33:34Z
2017-04-26T11:33:34Z
80 years on from the Guernica bombing and Spain is still struggling to honour historical memory
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166636/original/file-20170425-27254-1lgamaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/guernica-after-series-bombings-by-nationalists-249574147?src=MCREZ4fHHQkb2lVmH45Yqg-1-11">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The morning of April 26, 1937 dawned like any other in Guernica, northern Spain. It was market day, and as the sun rose, 10,000 locals, refugees and peasants came to gather in the traditional Basque town’s centre.</p>
<p>But this was not the typical day of trading that they may have expected. The country was in the midst of civil war and by 4.30pm chaos had descended.</p>
<p>For more than three hours, in support of the insurgent Francoist cause, the Nazi Condor Legion and fascist Italian Legionary Air Force dropped 31 tons of munitions onto Guernica. The aerial bombing made <a href="http://www.museodelapaz.org/es/docu_bombardeo.php">ruins of 85.22% of the buildings</a>. And, though the <a href="http://www.euskonews.com/0621zbk/ebooks62103eu.html">figure is now disputed</a>, the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1R304lcSa4kC&pg=PA359&lpg=PA359&dq=889+wounded+guernica&source=bl&ots=9u9AaZJwb3&sig=zGcY0kCbNY_2Q7sjKJGQ_w2VotM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw2_63zb_TAhVlDMAKHbyZCM4Q6AEIKjAB">Basque government said</a> it killed 1,654 people and wounded a further 889.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ruins of Guernica, shortly after the bombing in 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/spanish-civil-war-1936-1939-destruction-238061041?src=MCREZ4fHHQkb2lVmH45Yqg-1-16">Everrett Historical/www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1936, a failed coup by a group of fascist military generals against the legitimate Spanish Republican government had triggered what would become a bloody three-year civil war in Spain, leading to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34844939">36 years of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco</a>. By the time of the attack, Guernica was host to Republican civilian refugees, and a provisional war hospital had been set up. But neither made it a key military target – so why the bombing? </p>
<h2>Guernica, the symbol</h2>
<p>The town was not a major centre like Madrid or Barcelona. But after a <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/clm/Guadalajara-batalla-clave-Guerra-Civil_0_625387729.html">defeat in Guadalajara</a> while trying to take Madrid, the insurgent Francoists learnt the importance of modest but symbolically powerful victories. Since the nearby city of Bilbao was still resisting their attacks, these fascists saw in Guernica a guaranteed victory.</p>
<p>In similar fashion, Nazi Germany never perceived Spain as a strategic ally, and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674728851">was not particularly interested in the Spanish war</a>. Instead, it used it as <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/es/article.php?ModuleId=10008214">a field in which to experiment with new strategies</a> before World War II. The Nazis justified the Guernica attack as one of strategic importance in the support of the francoist advance on Bilbao. But the truth is that as the bombing came to an end, the Rentería Bridge, the strategic main access route to the town, <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/norte/euskadi/ataque-concentrado-gran-exito_0_635886764.html">remained untouched</a>.</p>
<p>For the Francoists, Guernica was a symbol of Basque resistance and a plurinational Spain threatening their project of a totalitarian regime. As General Emilio Mola, in charge of the insurgent military campaign in the north, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9115701/The-Spanish-Holocaust-by-Paul-Preston-review.html">would say</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For each party involved in the attack, Guernica was symbolic. But what they couldn’t expect was that it would come to represent far more than just what happened on 26 April, 1937.</p>
<h2>Guernica memorialised</h2>
<p>The Paris World Fair, due to open in May 1937, was the perfect pretext for the legitimate Republican government to tell the world of the horrors of the undemocratic fascist uprising in Spain, and the growing power of fascism in Europe. Spanish authorities commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a mural portraying the situation. He accepted, but warned he might not be able to fulfil the assignment. </p>
<p>His canvas was blank until the bombing of Guernica. Then, in little more than a month, the piece – a striking depiction of the fascist attack on the town – was ready.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guernica, by Pablo Picasso.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/guernica-spain-october-10-2015-tiled-337184516?src=QIqluh3eS2F8DXNN3P2Oow-1-1">tichr/www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was more than just a symbol of the horrors of war in Spain: from World War II until the present day, Picasso’s Guernica has become a reminder of the atrocities of all global wars, which has made it an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alejandro-escalona/75-years-of-picassos-guernica-_b_1538776.html">inconvenient masterpiece</a> for those trying to ignore the past or justify it, when it has no justification.</p>
<h2>Forgetting history</h2>
<p>To commemorate the painting’s 80th year, Spain’s national museum of 20th century art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, has organised a <a href="http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/pity-and-terror-picasso">temporary exhibition</a>, which quickly garnered criticism from the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory for <a href="http://www.elespanol.com/cultura/arte/20170403/205729766_0.html">its lack of historical context</a>. </p>
<p>It presents a thorough evolution of Picasso’s personal aesthetic, but in a shockingly ahistorical fashion. The word “Francoism” does not appear once, and there seems to be a reluctance to use terms such as “civil war” or “fascism”. It is said that the Condor Legion bombed the town but the role Franco and the insurgents played remains unexplained. <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/cultura/Reina-Sofia-doloroso-Picasso-Guernica_0_629237797.html">Exhibition curators stated</a> that “the political context is not as present as one would expect but many have already done so and this is not going to disappear”. </p>
<p>However, this lack of contextual memory may lead to an unhistorical interpretation of the world. Spain is still struggling to apply <a href="http://leymemoria.mjusticia.gob.es/cs/Satellite/LeyMemoria/es/memoria-historica-522007">legislation on historical memory</a> passed in 2007, aimed at recognising the rights of the victims of the civil war and Franco’s dictatorship. </p>
<p>The law enables families to apply to restore the honour of anyone convicted of a political crime during Franco’s rule. It also requires that symbols including plaques, street names and statues, honouring Franco and his regime are removed. However, a UN report has found that this rule has been <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/29/un-tells-spanish-government-it-must-atone-francos-crimes-265603.html">deprived of funding</a> since 2012, and in some places ignored altogether. </p>
<p>Spain turning its back on history is already <a href="https://theconversation.com/spains-freedom-of-speech-repression-is-no-joke-75889">having dreadful consequences</a>, giving clear proof of <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/contrapoder/Carrero-Blanco-franquismo-sociologico_6_628597138.html">how alive “sociological Francoism” is</a> – even now that Spain is a democratic state, Francoist social practices are still around. It is not a crime to be a Franco apologist but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/mar/05/dictators-fridges-artist-franco-eugenio-merino">mocking Franco</a> <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/television/2017/04/06/58e613a5268e3ec8348b462a.html">or the fascist symbols</a> can be. The real terrorism, the policy of terror that the Franco regime practised, is still unpunished, and Francoism is continuing to victimise people in present-day Spain.</p>
<p>80 years on from the Guernica bombing, Spain should be using this anniversary to remember its past and honour the victims of war. Now both painting and town should more than ever stand for the fundamental importance of human rights, and against repression. The symbolic value of these places of memory cannot be ignored any longer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Federico López-Terra received a PhD scholarship (2008-2011) from the Spanish National Research Council. </span></em></p>
Spain has specific laws on protecting historical memory, and yet some would rather forget about them altogether.
Federico López-Terra, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68324
2016-11-07T00:22:29Z
2016-11-07T00:22:29Z
Review: The naked nude from the Tate
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144743/original/image-20161106-27947-1tgrxwo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Louise Bourgeois's
Arched figure 1993: powerful and unforgettable.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation Purchase 2016 © The Easton Foundation.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One senses that summer is around the corner when Australia’s major public art galleries unveil their summer blockbuster exhibitions – Versailles at the National Gallery in Canberra, David Hockney at the National Gallery of Victoria and Nude from the Tate at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. They all promise to be big, glitzy designer exhibitions and with a huge popular appeal.</p>
<p>Sydney’s Nude is the first cab off the rank. It seems to tick all the right boxes: nudity sounds sexy and spicy, while the Tate is high in the cultural capital stakes. </p>
<p>It is not a tightly curated exhibition that argues a thesis, but more of a popular summer show built around the themes of the nude, naked and undressed with all their many connotations within cultural history. It is also a show that sparkles with a number of famous names, including Picasso, Matisse, Turner and Rodin.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse.
Draped nude, 1936</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse. image © Tate, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition has been co-curated and co-created between London (by Emma Chambers curator of modern British art at the Tate) and Sydney (by Justin Paton head of international art at the AGNSW). Although most of it is drawn from the holdings of the Tate, there is a sprinkling of pieces from the Sydney gallery and the Lewis Collection.</p>
<p>The hero image for the show is the bulky marble The Kiss made by Rigaud, who worked in Auguste Rodin’s atelier, and carved the marble block based on the original carved by Rodin himself for the Musée du Luxembourg. The master may have had a hand in finishing this copy. The literary source was Dante’s Inferno, where the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, while reading the Arthurian legend of Lancelot, got carried away when they reached the spot of Lancelot’s first embrace of Queen Guinevere.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Auguste Rodin The kiss, 1901–04: made by Rigaud, it has grown a little tired through over exposure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tate, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Francesca’s husband, not being the literary kind, simply killed them in an act of domestic violence. The observant viewer who is able to remove his or her gaze long enough from the amorous couple, will notice the book in Paolo’s left hand. A little like Rodin’s Thinker, The Kiss is a grand image of erotic love that has grown a little tired through over exposure and it is difficult to imagine the excitement and controversy that the work caused when it was first acquired by the Tate in 1953.</p>
<p>For me, a much more powerful and timely piece of sculpture is Louise Bourgeois’s bronze Arched figure (1993). This is a new acquisition by the AGNSW, with this copy cast in 2010, the year of the artist’s death. The figure in an arched form was one of the obsessive images in Bourgeois’s oeuvre and grew out her interest in physical, emotional and psychological dimensions of fear and pain. </p>
<p>The arch of hysteria, as she termed it, is a clinical state where the muscles contract and the body is cast into a form of paralysis brought on by an extreme emotional state. The mattress suggests a domestic situation, while the substitution of the female model with a male nude subverts the assumption that hysteria is a female condition. This sculpture and her accompanying blood red drawings are powerful and unforgettable.</p>
<p>One of the other great highlights in the exhibition is the all-time showstopper in painting, Stanley Spencer’s Double nude portrait: the artist and his second wife (1937). It is a painting that you never forget and I remember being mesmerised by it on first encounter in the mid 70s in London. It is just such a virtuoso piece of painting and of psychological observation. It is painfully explicit, clinically observed eroticism, but contains wit and a hint of pathos.</p>
<p>Many would know that Spencer’s second marriage was never consummated and the situation is summed up with the uncooked leg of mutton, otherwise inexplicably presented in the foreground. It is a remarkable treatment of the human flesh by one of the quirkiest and most significant artists that Britain ever produced.</p>
<p>At the opposite emotional end of the spectrum is the wall of Pierre Bonnards, one of the supreme masters of painting the female flesh and one of the most influential artists for the development of the course of modern Australian art. The knockout piece is Bonnard’s The bath (1925). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre Bonnard The bath, 1925: a tragic, loving painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate: Presented by Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill through the Contemporary Art Society 1930 © Estate of Pierre Bonnard. image © Tate, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are a number of approaches to the viewing of this painting, like the brutal geometry in truncating the bath and the body, the play with light and water and the strange colour and light on the flesh. The historical circumstances are somewhat depressing, as it is a painting of the artist’s muse and by that time wife, Marthe, who at that stage was in her fifties and was suffering from tuberculosis, where a popular treatment in those days was many hours of water therapy. It is this tragic, loving painting on a considerable scale that celebrates beauty and redemption.</p>
<p>The exhibition thematically meanders through the historical nude, the private nude, the modern nude, real and surreal bodies, paint as flesh, the erotic nude, body politics and the vulnerable nude, but for all of its trumpeting of risk and daring, it remains essentially a rather puritanical summer exercise without someone like Robert Mapplethorpe rocking the boat. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Picasso’s Nude woman in a red armchair, 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso image © Tate, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are at least a dozen memorable pieces, including the Hockney homoerotic etchings (1966), Sickert’s Seated nude: the black hat (c.1900), Picasso’s Nude in a red armchair (1932), Matisse’s Draped nude (1932) and de Chirico’s The uncertainty of the poet (1913), but there are many predictable Christmas stocking fillers. Also, there are the selfie magnets, such as Ron Mueck’s Wild man (2005).</p>
<p>This show may not set the Sydney Harbour on fire, but it is an enjoyable summer excursion with more than simply eye candy as the reward.</p>
<p><em>Nude: Art from the Tate Collection is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until the 5 February 2017</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sasha Grishin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Art Gallery of NSW’s summer blockbuster sparkles with famous names, including Picasso, Matisse, Turner and Rodin. But for all of its trumpeting of risk and daring, it remains essentially a rather puritanical exercise.
Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65011
2016-09-07T19:20:07Z
2016-09-07T19:20:07Z
Under the influence of … Dumile Feni’s ‘African Guernica’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136886/original/image-20160907-16611-16gemxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dumile Feni's 'African Guernica' - charcoal on paper.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>In our regular series, “Under the influence”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art in their field. Here, artist/academic Sharlene Khan explains why she finds South African artist Dumile Feni’s “African Guernica” (ca 1967) hugely influential.</em></p>
<h2>My relationship with the work</h2>
<p>Standing in front of South African visual artist <a href="http://www.revisions.co.za/biographies/dumile-feni/#.V8_3Qfl97IU">Dumile Feni</a>’s “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/dumile-feni-biography-sophia-reuss">African Guernica</a>” when I was 19 years old at the University of Fort Hare Gallery in 1996 felt like something between hero-worship and a pilgrimage. At high school, Feni was one of my “favourite” artists, in the way one speaks of favourites in one’s youth. </p>
<p>I loved seemingly tortured “expressionistic” artists like <a href="http://www.artble.com/artists/honore_daumier">Honoré Daumier</a>, <a href="http://www.artble.com/artists/vincent_van_gogh">Vincent Van Gogh</a>, <a href="http://www.franciscogoya.com/">Francisco Goya</a>, <a href="http://honolulumuseum.org/art/exhibitions/15899-k_kollwitz/">Käthe Kollwitz</a>, <a href="http://www.revisions.co.za/biographies/cyprian-shilakoe/#.V8_7sPl97IU">Cyprien Shilakoe</a> and Feni. They seemed to understand the depth of human suffering. Their commentary undercut politics to question the very soul of human beings. </p>
<p>“African Guernica” – often spoken in relation to Spaniard Pablo Picasso’s equally haunting work <a href="http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp">commentary</a> on the plight of war in his country – surpassed this for me.</p>
<h2>Why it is/was influential</h2>
<p>In recent years, the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern">Tate Modern Gallery</a> in London has a room with the two massive pieces of Leon Golub’s <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/golub-vietnam-ii-t13702">“Vietnam II”</a> (1973) and Dia al-Azzawi’s <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/al-azzawi-sabra-and-shatila-massacre-t14116">“Sabra and Shatila Massacre”</a> (1983). Both pieces, like Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937), deal with the trauma and devastation of conflict and war in very different contexts. Golub’s concerns the American invasion of Vietnam and Azzawi’s the murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in Lebanon. </p>
<p>Looking at these works, I often thought about how Feni’s work was part of the dialogue of political unrest and human suffering on display. But while Golub, Azzawi and Picasso’s works all communicate feelings of chaos, conflict and trauma, Feni’s work has always stood out for the feeling of insanity that he visualises metaphorically.</p>
<p>In Feni’s painting we see a scene dominated by various animal and pseudo-human figures. A double-headed cow turns its back on us while it suckles a child at its teats. A grotesque naked squealing human figure, head a-kilter, seems to be splitting from itself with a third leg. Two groping figures seem to see each other and are alarmed. Another strange-armed figure is seated at a table as if awaiting a meal, while he seems to be begging at the same time. Yet another of these figures seems to be the harbinger of doom – perhaps one of the four biblical horsemen except his steed seems to be more of a comical cow. </p>
<p>Other animals (cows, ducks, cat, fowl) roam the landscape. These figures are stark white against a darkened background which contains repetitions of this maddened scene (as well as wandering figures). It is a visualisation perhaps of the seven deadly biblical sins, except there is no god to judge or save. Can this abyss be likened to our unconscious, the residual in which we seem to be a chaotic folk, a scene in which rational actions are furthered into the insane? </p>
<p>Human beings make art. We reason. We have evolved beyond the basic needs of survival. But in Feni’s “African Guernica” we see exactly the tensions of an artist commenting on the insanity of reason which results in the oppression of one human being by another. </p>
<p>It was done in 1967 when the world was contesting race, gender, sexuality and neo-colonialisms. One assumes that Feni is commenting on colonial racism that by this time has become institutionalised as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-and-reactions-it">apartheid</a> in South Africa. European colonial-modernist racist propaganda functioned on the rationalisation that certain groups of human beings were lower down the evolutionary chain. It operated on the “fact” of these groups’ proximity to animals, that could therefore be regarded as animals, as devoid of human thinking and feeling. </p>
<h2>Almost-but-not-right</h2>
<p>Primitives were almost-but-not quite, almost-but-not-white, almost-but-not-right. Postcolonial theorist <a href="https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/mimicry.html">Homi K Bhabha</a> reminds us that the slippage of this “almost-but-not-quiteness” was not merely justification that allowed the denigration and economic exploitation of certain bodies. But that it was a desire, an imagination that allowed a distinction between a higher order and the lower order, gave a group of people’s its idea of itself through a “not-quiteness” of the Other. </p>
<p>This was a cultural supremacy that could enslave men and women and treat them as animals. It could create complex systems of colonial order across the globe in order to claim and access natural resources, including bodies. This supremacy could systematically control, segregate and annihilate millions of people. </p>
<p>It is not just the heinousness of the act of war and the resultant trauma that is atrocious for Feni living in a legislated system of human degradation. It is also the very mindsets and societal values that lead to a warped society where we no longer can separate human from animals. A society where animals may seem more humane than the folks they are meant to serve.</p>
<p>The stark whitened figures which are visually disjunctive with their background should read as “positive” images – white against black. And yet one wonders if they are rather voids, an outline of a thing that has become distorted in its “thing-ness”? </p>
<p>And what to say of the darkened figures in the abyss? Are they the colonised man that repeats at a distance actions which are not his own as psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon eulogises in “<a href="http://abahlali.org/files/__Black_Skin__White_Masks__Pluto_Classics_.pdf">Black Skin, White Masks</a>”?</p>
<h2>Why it is still relevant</h2>
<p>In a darkened Rhodes University Theatre in July 2016 a <a href="https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/events/animal-farm/">new staging</a> of “<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011h.html">Animal Farm</a>” directed by Neil Coppen, features a cast of six young black South African women (Mpume Mthombeni, Tshego Khutoane, MoMo Matsunyane, Mandisa Nduana, Khutjo Bakunzi-Green and Zesuliwe Hadebe). <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml">George Orwell</a>’s 1945 story has become a classic, prophetic of the manner in which communist ideals devolve into capitalistic nightmares. The cast is utterly brilliant in their multiple roles – in the manner in which their bodies enact the animal characters and slide into present day critiques of democratic capitalistic governing models, in particular but certainly not limited to South Africa. </p>
<p>Several times during the play Feni’s “African Guernica” comes to mind as exploitation and human abasement, first as tragedy, then, in its repetition, turns to farce. Great for comedy, for theatre, for visual art metaphors, much less funny in reality.</p>
<p>The power of Feni’s “African Guernica” is not simply that he blatantly recognised the insanity of white colonial racist rule. Nor is it that he recognised how everyone in a warped system loses their “humanity”. It is also not only that he visualised local conditions of human oppression, nor that, even like Orwell’s text, it seems prophetic of days to come.</p>
<p>But rather, it is like the Goyas, Daumiers, Orwells and many other insightful creative intellectuals throughout time and in various societies, sensing the power and chaos that lurks in all of us to rationalise our ways as the next oppressors, the next supremacists, harbingers of truths, civilisation and order, even when madness unfolds before our very eyes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharlene Khan receives funding from National Research Foundation, National Arts Council. </span></em></p>
‘African Guernica’ is an incredibly powerful work of art in many ways, importantly filling that space between the visible and the visible.
Sharlene Khan, Senior Lecturer of Art History and Visual Culture, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48370
2016-01-19T08:47:40Z
2016-01-19T08:47:40Z
Picasso the…sculptor? Disputed purchase brings attention to lesser-known aspect of his art
<p>A legal battle <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/arts/design/picasso-sculpture-subject-of-lawsuit-by-major-art-world-players.html?ref=international">has erupted</a> between art dealer Larry Gagosian and the royal family of Qatar, with each side claiming to have purchased a Picasso statue from Picasso’s daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso. </p>
<p>The piece, a bust of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, is currently being exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Beyond the astronomical (disputed) sale price – upwards of US$106 million – it’s also significant news because it’s relatively rare for attention to be lavished upon one of Picasso’s sculptures. </p>
<p>In fact, his sculptures remain a mystery to many. The prolific Pablo Picasso is probably best-known as a painter, although his drawings, ceramics, engravings and lithograhs are also often highlighted in museums, exhibitions and auctions. </p>
<p>What hasn’t been very well-publicized is the substantial contribution to modern art that Picasso made as a sculptor. In fact, <em>Picasso Sculpture</em>, an ongoing exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, is the first time in nearly 20 years that a museum is directing attention squarely on the artist’s sculptures.</p>
<p>While nearly all his early experience, training and prodigious energy went into painting, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/21/another-dimension">some have even argued</a> that Picasso was more naturally a sculptor.</p>
<h2>Cataloguing Picasso’s sculptures</h2>
<p>Admittedly, Picasso’s sculptures make up a small fraction of the estimated 50,000 works the artist produced in his lifetime.</p>
<p>There’s still debate over how many Picasso produced. The famous Picasso biographer Roland Penrose included 284 entries in his extensive exhibition of Picasso sculptures, and Picasso scholar Werner Spies identified 664 items in his <em>catalogue raisonné.</em> Meanwhile, the <a href="https://picasso.shsu.edu">Online Picasso Project</a> contains 796 sculptures. </p>
<p>But when looking at the output of an artist, it’s not merely a question of quantity; it’s also a question of quality. It’s telling that when Dominique Bozo, the curator of Paris’s Musée Picasso, selected a list of the works to be donated to the museum, he chose around 150 sculptures (to accompany 200 paintings). </p>
<p>Given the paucity of Picasso sculptures, it’s not surprising that they’re rarely sold (and thus lose out on the media buzz generated by each Picasso auction). Of the 116 unique artworks by Picasso auctioned at Christie’s in 2014, only nine were sculptures; of the 201 sold at at Sotheby’s, only 21 were sculptures. </p>
<p>Yet in most cases, the sculptures sold well above their estimated values.</p>
<h2>A personal fondness for his sculptures</h2>
<p>One reason Picasso’s sculptures remain a mystery to many is that the artist was averse to selling them. </p>
<p>According to Trinity College professor <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/picasso-sculpture-review-a-masters-genius-in-3-d-at-the-museum-of-modern-art-1442269278">Michael Fitzgerald</a>, “trained as a painter, [Picasso] rarely hesitated to sell his paintings.” On the other hand, “He developed a deep fondness for his sculptures, and treasured them as if they were members of his family.” </p>
<p>In fact, Picasso didn’t agree to a full-scale exhibition of his sculptures until 1966, when he participated in the large Paris retrospective <em>Hommage à Picasso</em>, which would go on to travel to London and New York in 1967. </p>
<p>Only then did the public fully realize that Picasso had been creating – and experimenting – in this medium. </p>
<p>“This is the moment Picasso agrees for the first time to let his sculptures depart from his studio <em>en masse</em>,” Anne Umland, curator of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/08655a10bdd9423bb52c2c4a30025169/moma-1st-us-exhibition-picasso-sculptures-50-years">explained</a> at the time. “It’s the first time the public has the chance to see the scope and range of his sculptures.”</p>
<h2>Rarely publicized</h2>
<p>Because Picasso wasn’t willing to exhibit his sculptures until later in his life, they often went undocumented in the (purported) comprehensive publications of his work. </p>
<p>For example, the classic two-volume <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Picasso-Works-1890-1936-Volumes-Slip/dp/B000J0MWJS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452462616&sr=8-1&keywords=Carsten-Peter+Warncke+and+Ingo+F.+Walther">Picasso</a> by Carsten-Peter Warncke and Ingo F. Walther contains 1,226 illustrations, but has only 66 sculptures among them. Meanwhile, the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Picasso-Brigitte-Leal/dp/0810939401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452462666&sr=8-1&keywords=Ultimate+Picasso">Ultimate Picasso</a> by Brigitte Léal, Christine Piot and Marie-Laure Bernadac depicts 1,187 works of art – with only 73 sculptures. </p>
<p>Even John Richardson’s detailed Picasso biographies mention the sculptures only in passing. </p>
<p>The current MoMA exhibit aside, Picasso’s sculptures make a limited appearance in most contemporary exhibitions. The 2012-2013 exhibition Picasso: Black and White at the Guggenheim Museum and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts displayed 118 artworks, with only 12 sculptures. In 2013’s traveling exhibition of the <em>Musée Picasso</em>, a mere 28 sculptures appeared among the 139 works shown.</p>
<h2>A wildly experimental sculptor</h2>
<p>While Picasso had been formally trained as a painter (and earned most of his income from selling paintings), sculpture was a medium where the artist could experiment freely and break established rules – without fear of damaging his reputation or hurting his bottom line.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/08655a10bdd9423bb52c2c4a30025169/moma-1st-us-exhibition-picasso-sculptures-50-years">Ann Temkin</a>, chief curator of painting and sculpture at the MoMA, because Picasso was an amateur sculptor, he was able to be “extremely free in thinking about what is a sculpture.” </p>
<p>His cubist sculptures of 1912–1913 were particularly innovative. As The Guardian’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/11/picasso-sculpture-moma-review">Jason Farago</a> put it, they were a “thunderclap,” with the artist upending what, at the time, was the traditional method of sculpture: chiseling away at a block of material to achieve a new form. </p>
<p>Instead, by fusing pieces of cardboard, Picasso “built” his <em>Guitare</em> (1912). Constructing objects from sheets of common materials like cardboard, metal or wood, the artist was able to connect his art to the everyday world, blurring the boundaries between art and life.</p>
<p>For art historian Yve-Alain Bois, the role played by this sculpture lies precisely in its full exploration of the nonrepresentational value of sculpture. In other words, he was able to use arbitrary objects and materials to create pictorial signifiers. As the artist <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/picasso-sculpture-review-a-masters-genius-in-3-d-at-the-museum-of-modern-art-1442269278">once declared</a>, he wanted to “trick the mind” – not simply fool the eye. </p>
<p>In the 1950s, Picasso would return to <a href="https://vimeo.com/72307091">planar sculptures</a>. These would also start with paper or cardboard models that the artist would cut out and fold. He would then have them transferred to sheet metal, which he then would either paint or leave unpainted, with the rusted surface of the metal exposed. </p>
<p>The play of folds, hollow spaces and polychromatic tones serves to suggest relief. Folding and cutting allowed Picasso to superimpose different points of view and still retain the frontal view; meanwhile, depth is suggested by the contrast between filled and empty spaces. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108262/original/image-20160115-7375-1qs0b6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Picasso’s sculptures on display at the MoMA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Philip Greenberg for The New York Times</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Judging by the critics’ glowing reception of the current New York exhibition (which runs until February 7), we may start to see Picasso’s sculptures getting the attention they truly deserve. </p>
<p>Of course, two exorbitantly wealthy collectors wrangling over possession of a Picasso sculpture certainly won’t decrease their value, and perhaps Picasso’s sculptures will go the route of his revolutionary paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Including works like <a href="http://faisceau.a.f.f.unblog.fr/files/2010/04/oldman.jpg"><em>Le vieil homme assis</em></a>, they were widely panned when they were first exhibited at Avignon’s Palais des Papes in 1973. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, these would go on to have a profound influence on later generations of artists. Today, they’re some of the most sought-after Picassos in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Enrique Mallen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Could Picasso’s sculptures become the most sought-after pieces of the artist’s oeuvre?
Enrique Mallen, Professor of Linguistics and Art History, Sam Houston State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43157
2015-07-30T10:24:06Z
2015-07-30T10:24:06Z
Which paintings were the most creative of their time? An algorithm may hold the answers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90205/original/image-20150729-30858-1m4oo3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Picasso's The Young Ladies of Avignon (1907) scored extremely high when entered into the creativity algorithm.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/563354141">Wally Gobetz/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From Picasso’s The Young Ladies of Avignon to Munch’s The Scream, what was it about these paintings that arrested people’s attention upon viewing them, that cemented them in the canon of art history as iconic works? </p>
<p>In many cases, it’s because the artist incorporated a technique, form or style that had never been used before. They exhibited a creative and innovative flair that would go on to be mimicked by artists for years to come.</p>
<p>Throughout human history, experts have often highlighted these artistic innovations, using them to judge a painting’s relative worth. But can a painting’s level of creativity be quantified by Artificial Intelligence (AI)? </p>
<p>At Rutgers’ Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, my colleagues and I proposed a novel algorithm that assessed the creativity of any given painting, while taking into account the painting’s context within the scope of art history. </p>
<p>In the end, we found that, when introduced with a large collection of works, the algorithm can successfully highlight paintings that art historians consider masterpieces of the medium.</p>
<p>The results show that humans are no longer the only judges of creativity. Computers can perform the same task – and may even be more objective.</p>
<h2>How is creativity defined?</h2>
<p>Of course, the algorithm depended on addressing a central question: how do you define – and measure – creativity?</p>
<p>There is a historically long and ongoing debate about how to define creativity. We can describe a person (a poet or a CEO), a product (a sculpture or a novel) or an idea as being “creative.” </p>
<p>In our work, we focused on the creativity of products. In doing so, we used the most common definition for creativity, which emphasizes the originality of the product, along with its lasting influence. </p>
<p>These criteria resonate with Kant’s <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/">definition</a> of artistic genius, which emphasizes two conditions: being original and “exemplary.” </p>
<p>They’re also consistent with contemporary definitions, such as Margaret A Boden’s <a href="http://www.willamette.edu/%7Egorr/classes/ids101/links/nutshell.pdf">widely accepted notion</a> of Historical Creativity (H-Creativity) and Personal/Psychological Creativity (P-Creativity). The former assesses the novelty and utility of the work with respect to scope of human history, while the latter evaluates the novelty of ideas with respect to its creator. </p>
<h2>Building the algorithm</h2>
<p>Using computer vision, we built a network of paintings from the 15th to 20th centuries. Using this web (or network) of paintings, we were able to make inferences about the originality and influence of each individual work. </p>
<p>Through a series of mathematical transformations, we showed that the problem quantifying creativity could be reduced to a variant of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality">network centrality problems</a> – a class of algorithms that are widely used in the analysis of social interaction, epidemic analysis and web searches. For example, when you search the web using Google, Google uses an algorithm of this type to navigate the vast network of pages to identify the individual pages that are most relevant to your search.</p>
<p>Any algorithm’s output depends on its input and parameter settings. In our case, the input was what the algorithm saw in the paintings: color, texture, use of perspective and subject matter. Our parameter setting was the definition of creativity: originality and lasting influence.</p>
<p>The algorithm made its conclusions without any encoded knowledge about art or art history, and made its assessments of paintings strictly by using visual analysis and considering their dates.</p>
<h2>Innovation identified</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90208/original/image-20150729-30858-7lvfaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edvard Munch would be delighted to learn that the algorithm gave The Scream a high score.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edvard_Munch_-_The_Scream_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When we ran an analysis of 1,700 paintings, there were several notable findings. For example, the algorithm scored the creativity of Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) much higher than its late 19th-century counterparts. This, of course, makes sense: it’s been deemed one of the most outstanding Expressionist paintings, and is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/the-scream-sets-1199-million-record-why-were-drawn-to-its-tortured-psychology/2012/05/03/gIQA99zuyT_blog.html">one of the most-reproduced paintings</a> of the 20th century. </p>
<p>The algorithm also gave Picasso’s Ladies of Avignon (1907) the highest creativity score of all the paintings it analyzed between 1904 and 1911. This is in line with the thinking of art historians, who have <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?id=d5wXeMFxA2IC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">indicated</a> that the painting’s flat picture plane and its application of Primitivism made it a highly innovative work of art – a direct precursor to Picasso’s Cubist style. </p>
<p>The algorithm pointed to several of Kazimir Malevich’s first Suprematism paintings that appeared in 1915 (such as <a href="http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Kasimir_Malevich/red.jpeg">Red Square</a>) as highly creative as well. Its style was an outlier in a period then-dominated by Cubism. For the period between 1916 and 1945, the majority of the top-scoring paintings were by Piet Mondrian and Georgia O'Keeffe. </p>
<p>Of course, the algorithm didn’t always coincide with the general consensus among art historians. </p>
<p>For example, the algorithm gave a much higher score to Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Last Supper (1476) than to Leonardo da Vinci’s eponymous masterpiece, which appeared about 20 years later. The algorithm favored da Vinci’s St John the Baptist (1515) over his other religious paintings that it analyzed. Interestingly, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa didn’t score high by the algorithm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89997/original/image-20150728-13261-cdcfhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A graph highlighting certain paintings deemed most creative by the algorithm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Withstanding the test of time</h2>
<p>Given the aforementioned departures from the consensus of art historians (notably, the algorithm’s evaluation of da Vinci’s works), how do we know that the algorithm generally worked?</p>
<p>As a test, we conducted what we called “time machine experiments,” in which we changed the date of an artwork to some point in the past or in the future, and recomputed their creativity scores. </p>
<p>We found that paintings from the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubism movements saw significant gains in their creativity scores when moved back to around AD 1600. In contrast, Neoclassical paintings did not gain much when moved back to 1600, which is understandable, because Neoclassicism is considered a revival of the Renaissance. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, paintings from Renaissance and Baroque styles experienced losses in their creativity scores when moved forward to AD 1900. </p>
<p>We don’t want our research to be perceived as a potential replacement for art historians, nor do we hold the opinion that computers are a better determinant of a work’s value than a set of human eyes.</p>
<p>Rather, we’re motivated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The ultimate goal of research in AI is to make machines that have perceptual, cognitive and intellectual abilities similar to those of humans. </p>
<p>We believe that judging creativity is a challenging task that combines these three abilities, and our results are an important breakthrough: proof that a machine can perceive, visually analyze and consider paintings much like humans can.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ahmed Elgammal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Humans are no longer the only judges of creativity. Computers can perform the same task – and may even be more objective.
Ahmed Elgammal, Professor of Computer Vision, Rutgers University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41709
2015-05-14T16:03:27Z
2015-05-14T16:03:27Z
The world’s most expensive painting is too sexually explicit for Fox news
<p>If Pablo Picasso were still with us he’d be doubly proud – one of his pieces has sold for the highest price ever achieved for a painting: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32700575">US$179m for his Women of Algiers</a>. Not only that, but he would no doubt take pride his work prompted an art critic to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/fox-news-station-blurs-out-breasts-on-recordbreaking-pablo-picasso-artwork-20150514-gh19o5.html">label Fox news</a> as “sexually sick” after they blurred out the breasts in the cubist masterpiece in their coverage of the sale.</p>
<p>It seems only appropriate that this apparently controversial painting is the one that smashed the records. It fetched $30m more than the previous record holder, achieved when Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for $142.4m in 2013.</p>
<p>So does the painting itself deserve all this attention? </p>
<p>Women of Algiers (version 0) is undoubtedly a seminal painting in a number of different ways and so is probably worthy of the top price for art. Aside from the fact that Picasso is the towering figure of 20th-century art the painting is from an important point in the artist’s life and creative output. It has been widely shown in major exhibitions including the Picasso Retrospective in New York in 1980 and the great Late Picasso show at Tate Britain in 1988. This has made it highly visible and desirable for collectors. </p>
<p>It’s also unusual that such a well-known work comes to the auction room at all – and, as such, it was almost bound to break all previous auction records. But of course, whether it is worth such an astronomical sum of money is open to debate.</p>
<h2>A seminal work</h2>
<p>The painting is the last – and arguably the best – in a large series of paintings working from the same subject, made over a short time in early 1955. The painting is an interpretation of one of Delacroix’s paintings, also called Women of Algiers – Delacroix was one of Picasso’s great Masters and an artist to whom he returned again and again throughout his career. The series is also a homage to Matisse, who had recently died.</p>
<p>In this final painting, all of the compositional changes and alterations that Picasso has been working through in the series come to a point of culmination. The painting features four female figures referencing two women in Picasso’s life. There’s Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s most recent partner, and Francoise Gilot, Picasso’s former lover. It is a secluded interior, calm and refined. The space is infused with eroticism, accentuated by the sharpened edges of the limbs, torsos and body parts, the almost upturned gestures and positioning. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81676/original/image-20150514-28641-1i2raqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eugène Delacroix, The Women of Algiers, 1834.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Picasso worked incessantly in series. The absorbed forms, dissolved and recomposed motifs are therefore characteristic of the artist, hinting at his search for new pictorial structure and dynamic. </p>
<p>Jacqueline Roque, who had recently entered Picasso’s life, is represented in sensual erotic form. She strikingly resembles the central figure of the Delacroix painting of 1834 (Louvre, Paris). Francoise, on the other hand, stands in the doorway drifting into the background. On the day before this painting was made Picasso’s first wife Olga (mother of Paulo) had died in Cannes.</p>
<p>This detail, as well as the historical context of Delacroix’s painting – which was made shortly after the French conquest of Algeria and during the autumn of 1954 when Algeria’s uprising for independence began – mean that the work contains all the ingredients for a major painting in the history of art. </p>
<p>It is certainly one of the best of the transcriptions – a reworking of a previous subject painting or theme – that Picasso made. In this context it is one of the major works of Picasso’s later career, partly because it self-consciously places itself in the history of art, pointing towards his recently deceased friend Matisse and both artists’ identification with the continuation and tradition of painting. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-EqHzae5Bbk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Public eyes</h2>
<p>The question now remains as to whether or not the painting will be seen in public again. The fact that the buyer is anonymous suggests it probably won’t. The sale is therefore a real loss to the art visiting public. The painting will probably disappear from public view to be kept exclusively in a private gallery to be seen by few – or perhaps even sit in a vault somewhere, to be seen by no one and serve no purpose but accrue further value. The painting may not available for loan for decades to come.</p>
<p>As the art visiting public, we can do very little to stop this from happening to more and more works of art. We just need to hope that the art currently held in national public galleries is maintained. As the value of art rockets it will get harder and harder for governments and galleries to ensure that strategies for acquiring works for the public are in place and used effectively.</p>
<p>Recently, a collection of 40 paintings by Frank Auerbach belonging to his friend the painter Lucien Freud who died in 2011 were <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/02/galleries-across-uk-get-frank-auerbach-works-from-lucian-freuds-collection">distributed</a> to about 20 galleries including Cardiff, Aberdeen and Belfast in lieu of a £16m inheritance tax bill. The collection includes some important works and it’s encouraging that these have not entered the auction rooms and will remain for public gaze. This shows that there are ways for governments to act on the public’s behalf and secure, whenever possible, quality artworks to add to our national collections of art. </p>
<p>For now, for those of us fortunate to have seen Women of Algiers (Version O) first hand, the painting will remain a residual image in our memory until, I hope, sometime in the future it resurfaces via the auction houses once again. Until then, make sure you look at an uncensored image – in all its glory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Smith receives funding from the Arts Council of Wales and Wales Arts International</span></em></p>
Now that the painting is probably to disappear from public view, hopefully we won’t remember it in pixellated format.
Andrew Smith, Subject Leader for Fine Art, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.