Word: morgans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...right, of course, as this biography, the first written with the blessings of Christie's heirs and estate, conclusively proves. Author Janet Morgan does a thorough job of getting the facts in the Christie case straight and on the record. But the story, even when demystified, seems almost as unbelievable as the guessing games it prompted...
There are some shows at which the critic can only stand and point, feeling superfluous. One of these is entering the last month of its run at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City: "Old Master Drawings from the Albertina." It has already been seen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and on May 26 its contents return to their ancestral roost in Vienna, unlikely ever to be seen again on this side of the Atlantic...
Intimate in scale and address, consisting of a mere 75 items (augmented by 14 of the Morgan Library's own drawings), this is not the kind of exhibition to bring hoarsely clamoring crowds to the gates of Ticketron. Nor can it, by itself, restore to us the sense of the masterpiece (and of the skills that underlie its production) that has been imperiled by post-Tut museum hype. But of those 75 loans at the Morgan, perhaps 40 really are masterpieces in their genre, and the rest are of unassailably high quality. It is rare to see such a concentrated...
Moreover, its timing is perfect. The American art audience is coming to realize what a vacuum has been created by the collapse of drawing instruction in the art schools. One has only to visit the Morgan--or a lesser but still excellent exhibition at the Drawing Center in Soho, of drawings by the Tiepolos, Canova, Pietro Longhi, Canaletto and others lent by the Museo Correr in Venice--to comprehend the general paucity of graphic skills today. The prospect that anyone in the foreseeable future will make drawings to rival these Albertina loans--even the sketchier ones, like Rembrandt's summing...
...very greatest drawings on the Morgan's walls is Rubens' portrait of his sister-in-law Susanna Fourment, a likeness breathed onto the paper with lyric, impalpable precision in three schematic chalks (white, black and sanguine), conveying the fullest sense of Rubens' appetite for character studies delicately balanced between intimacy and formality. Viewing such work, one realizes that there is no Rubens (or Durer, or Mantegna, or Watteau) of / the late 20th century; what we see here are emblems of a tradition that ended, except for footnotes, with Picasso...