Happy Holidays Piero's Nativity is back

 

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                          The moving, magnificent Nativity by Piero della Francesca is back.

After three years lost to public view during its restoration it now is in room 17a at the National Gallery in London.   It will be reunited with Piero's Baptism "in good time."  And let's hope that when, eventually, the Sainsbury Wing reopens after a new entrance hall is fashioned, the Baptism and Nativity will be together once again as they should be in the special room created just for Piero. After all hope is not always disappointed. This is a restoration that does not destroy the painting but makes it easier to contemplate.

And big thanks Hannah Rothschild and the Rothschild Foundation for making it possible. 

Milton Avery at the Royal Academy --what a surprise; what a treat

 Cheery colors, flat surfaces, simplified shapes....in those years when I often walked in and around Washington Square Park in the Village I often had a look at paintings by Milton Avery. The gallery that showed them was on a corner and down some steps; its windows were not far above street level. You had to look down on them to see them. And so I did, in both senses of the word.   Very pleasant, I'd think. Very not much else.  Boy was I wrong. I walked through the current exhibition devoted to him at the Royal Academy in London and was wowed over and over again.

                                                                 Self-Portrait 1941

   So a few facts about him and then a series of pictures:

Avery was born in New York State in 1885 and died in 1965. His grave is in the Woodstock, NY artists Cemetery. (I confess that I lived in Woodstock and didn't know it had one! Although it sure had plenty of artists--actually or in name only.) I learn from the RA catalogue that he was represented over the years by a number of prestigious, uptown galleries: Valentine Gallery, Paul Rosenberg&Co, Durand-Ruel, Grace Borgenicht.

A painter who was "on the scene" in the Village, Provincetown and Woodstock but also Key West which I associate more with Tennessee Williams and Hemingway than with painters..we see Avery at the start transfixed by the Impressionists. And then he is on the move going his own way. It was a trip that took him so far into the pleasures of color that by the end it was Avery who was influencing the Abstract Expressionists and Color Field painters.  It is said that he was "a man of few words" and maybe that is why he wasn't better known in his time. Well that is for another kind of writer to write about. My message is short and sweet:

Go to this show if you can: Enjoy it; be surprised; look, learn a thing or two and be wowed.  

                                                       \Setting Sun    1918

Chariot Race   1933

[A wild, wildcard]

Seated Girl 1944

                                                  

                                                 

                                                           March in  Brown 1954
.                                         

                                               Boathouse by the Sea   1959

The Burrell renewed but not improved

The Burrell Collection, closed in 2016 for expansion and renovations, is now open again.  I just visited Glasgow and headed for it, my favorite place in the city.   

First the good news:  

Art and nature remain companions; sometimes tender sometimes harsh; there's a lot of weather in Scotland. 

This Ming Luohan who has been sitting cross legged since he was carved in China in 1484 and who has done likewise at the Burrell since its opening in 1983, remains the centerpiece of the much loved glass- walled highlights gallery were the backdrop for the works on view is grass, wild flowers and trees.

More space has been opened up above and below the main floor. Almost twice as many art works are on view. The velvet rope is gone; we can walk into the recreation of a grand room in Hutton Castle the home of Sir William Burrell (1861-1958) and housed his collection of some  9,000 works from ancient art to the late 19th century; from Chine to Europe. 

  The shop is imaginatively stocked; downstairs and with a tall glass wall of its own, was busy.  (Near the entrance there is space for thsoe who just want tea, coffee, scones. The upstairs galleries focus on materials and craft: lace making, stone carving and such. Newly accessible below, is a special exhibition space and the collection store. 

  Even this is the good news only relatively. For example: In the recreation of a room at Hutton Castle, we find jerky films pretending to be candid glimpses of Sir William at home. Phooey. And that is only the beginning of the "reimagining" of the Burrell. Its transformation from an art museum to a building that is intended to be a heart warming, fun day out.

The art is there to tell its own story. 

If only it were left alone to do so.

 Instead the collection has been rehung according to themes; themes suitable for kiddies. One room is Animals; another Gardens, a third is called Flowers. In Flowers, for example, anything with one or a bunch is put together whatever the period, material, conception. And to make it still more attractive--and muddled-on one large flower filled wall a looped video provided an unending cascade of falling petals. So pretty...so maddening.

 

How did we get here?  A place where this great museum and too many others are now run people who have no feeling for, who act as if they are afraid of it and what harm it might do.  So I end with this image of a chess piece from Sir William's collection. 

    Off With Their Heads!!!!   But honestly, it's only a lump of bone.