Rubies for lunch

Cartier c.1930  est £30,000-40,000

An aunt of mine took me to lunch where she told me that she was going to buy me a ruby ring, my birthstone, but then she found out how expensive that would be. I don't think anybody pays attention to birthstones any more. Maybe the market in colored gems is so strong, it isn't necessary or maybe it is even counterproductive. After all why restrict desire to only one of 12 gems stones? Still I have a soft spot for these once upon a time emblems of July. And at a Bonham's lunch for people who write about jewels, (Almost everyone else writes about fashion; I the lone representative of those who not only love the beauty and craftsmanship but believe jewels are or certainly can be works of art.) I saw some honeys--all of them early twentieth century delights.. Along with colored diamonds (and just plain white ones), emeralds and sapphires the price of rubies keeps heading higher. These are jewels for people with plenty of what's called disposable income. It is the color of the ones I illustrate here that is so sensational...Burmese red that is more like purple-pink. Pigeon blood rubies these are not. They will have to wait for another time.

1905 necklace estimate £30,000-50,000

 The necklace above with beautiful matched rubies, is remarkably delicate in feeling, especially the drops which seem to be dangling down with only the faintest support. And now for the ring my aunt might have bought for me all those years ago --it would have been a lot cheaper, too, even adjusted for changes in money value. It, and all the above, is being offered at auction in London on December 4. 

Art Deco (1930) £50,000--£80,000.

 

Art and PW on the move

Late Rembrandt at the National Gallery, London. Just go. The paintings are bruising and comforting; beautiful and moving. Any more from me, even I would think is waffle. Go early, they say, when it is least crowded. I
go late.

.

                           

Just published my Economist story about the new Aga Khan Museum for the arts of Islam:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/11/aga-khan-museum   will take you to it.

:

While at economist.com type Lauder in the search box you will find my recent story about the Metropolitan Museum of Art's big show of Cubist paintings that Leonard Lauder has promised to give the museum. Not as off-- putting as you might think and I certainly expected.

Still a star after 3500 years

Go ahead, ask me "What it is the most beautiful, poetic and desirable object among the 50 works of gold on view in The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace?" Because I want to pipe up with my answer: It is a cup, not teeny, but small enough to rest in your palm--or mine as I began to imagine it as soon as I saw it. A powerful, mellow even modern design but made circa 1700 b.c. Still a star after 3500 years. Don't think this show (on until February 29), lacks more immediately eye- catching pieces. In fact I didn't notice the Rillaton Cup right away. For one thing it is at the far end of the large, long gallery. For another there was a hard to decipher object up close--maybe it was a comb but maybe it was an instrument for making music. 

Above: The Rillaton Cup    

Neither turned out to be right. It is a flat beaten crown with a plume that stands straight up--like stylized feathers. It is also exceedingly rare. The piece was dug up in Ecuador in 1854 and given by the country's president to Queen Victoria. Until recently it was assumed to be Inca but recent research suggests it was made well before the Inca's conquered south Ecuador in the 16th century. Bold but not something to hold attention or anyway mine. My eyes wandered. They were caught by a tiger. 

Pre-Inca Crown

This gold cat (below) was made in India in the 18th century from sheets of gold placed over a wood base. It was then etched and punched with designs that suggest fur but also battle scars. The latter were altogether appropriate..

Tiger head from Tipu Sultan's throne

Smaller, jewelled, images of tiger heads decorated the throne. (One is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in a show of jewels owned by the Emir of Qatar.) This big guy was the throne's centerpiece.
   Tipu Sultan who ruled the kingdom of Mysore was opposed to the British presence in the subcontinent. He played the French against them as he tried to extend his realm. During the Fourth Battle of Mysore, British troops broke through their defences. It is believed he could have escaped but chose not to. "One day of life as a Tiger is far better than thousand years of living as a Jackal," is his alleged comment when that was proposed. He was killed. 
  This tiger, with its fierce yet thoughtful and magnificently decorated face survives. Part of the throne on which sat an ambitious, warrior Sultan who lived to die as a tiger became war booty and entered the English Royal Collection where it is proudly displayed today.  His tongue sticks out and moves--the better to make people approaching the Sultan feel more nervous. Today, alas, it makes it look more like a clever, luxurious toy. And then I saw the cup. Here is its story:

  

In 1837, men working at Rillaton on windy, bleak Bodmin Moor in Cornwall helped themselves to some stones piled up in an ancient burial mound. They uncovered a ceramic vessel inside which was this Bronze Age treasure. The land belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall--the Crown. The treasure belonged to the King and off it went to the palace.  Lucky us--it is on long term loan to the British Museum where all can see it when this show ends.                                                                                                             

Art and Soul at the National Gallery

Vote No: Keep Freud's Auerbachs in London

A great show; an Arts Council blunder.


Never mind all the guff about how collections tell us a lot about the collectors who have made them. Usually they do not. Often a collection doesn't even add to our appreciation or understanding of the individual works that make it up. But exceptionally, when a collector has a good eye and is in sympathy with what he is acquiring, the results can be powerful and illuminating. And so it is with the 40 works by Frank Auerbach owned by Lucian Freud at the time of his death in 2011. The paintings and drawings (and birthday cards) are temporarily on view at Tate Britain. Go see it if you possibly can. It is the best Auerbach retrospective London has known. You will have to hurry. The show closes November 9, After that Freud's Auerbachs are to be broken up; the collection dispersed. What a mistake!

Rebuilding the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square
1962

Freud (b.1922) and Auerbach (b.1931), both child-refugees from Nazi Germany, grew up to ambitious artists not lacking in competitiveness. They spent their working lives in London. Even such a vast metropolis can be too small for some artists to share but these two men became close friends.

They exchanged paintings but Freud also bought Auerbachs. He built a collection of works dating from the 1950s through to 2007. Following Freud's death, this collection was accepted by the Arts Council which administers the in lieu scheme. As a result, the death duties owed by Freud's heirs have been substantially reduced and museums around the country will be given works by Auerbach works. If Freud's was a so-so collection the idea would be fine. But it is revelatory; a delight. The Arts Council has made a huge mistake. 

Yes, it ticks the box "We are not elitist" and no, it does not tick the box, "London gets all the goodies," So the Arts Council has been politically correct. It has also been artistically blind .   

  
  The Tate already owns (or has on loan) 77 works by Auerbach. Why not chose 40 of these and distribute those around the country and KEEP FREUD'S AUERBACHS TOGETHER AT TATE BRITAIN IN LONDON. Public appreciation or Auerbach's on- going achievements will soar and Freud will be lauded for his not always appreciated generosity of spirit and his good eye. Visitor numbers to Tate Britain will rise. Go for it Arts Council. Admit you got it wrong and make it right.

  

Dead or Alive, England's greatest artist

Don't miss Late Turner: Painting Set Free at Tate Britain if you can get to London.  I felt like crying from start to finish and not from grief but from the wonder of what a great artist can do--and did  In case this does not translate well:

James Mallord William Turner, baptised in St. Paul's, in Covent Garden, died in 1851. He was 76 and had never lost his Cockney accent. There is nothing rough and tumble; nothing- in- your- face "Don't mistake me for a refined man"  about these works of his last 10 years on earth. They are the most thrilling, poetic, sometimes disturbing, pictures created by an Englishman. Before --or since.
    Some artists--DeKooning more recently and Picasso before him-- lose power in their last years. Not Turner. His late pictures could not seem more fresh nor more daring. So many are seemingly abstract or very nearly yet always the oils and watercolours seem to have been observed with exquisite attention to detail. The water shown in the painting of a storm at sea at the top of this post has the lush density and soft sheen of sheared fur. You look and understand that water alive; it can cause mayhem even death or be transporting to ride upon or gaze at.  There visions of pastoral paradise, too.  If ever there was a case where less is more, JMW Turner makes it exquistely.

Taught to know nothing

A multicolored blank tablet

 

When I was a school girl grammar was out. In my art student days, teachers gave critiques and otherwise kept out of the way. For decades before and after, art students were taught to be ignoramuses--at least about technique. I say "taught" because if something this basic is not on the curriculum, it is natural to assume it should not be; that it is not necessary.  At university, I took art history because I thought it would be an easy A. It turned out to mean hours shut in a dark room looking at slides. This was followed by the requirement to memorize names, dates, genres and categories; a nightmare. No wonder so many art historian/curators are unimaginative and uninspired; so many of their exhibitions corral paintings into the only categories they had been told existed or "adventurously" mix up the categories, a.k.a. juxtapose. (This is not entirely fair, but almost.) So much for background.

  

 If the world of visual artists--and we who look at their work--can be divided into those for whom line is central and the others for whom color is the heart of the matter, I have always been in the color camp.   Matisse is my man; I love much of Picasso but when I look at his paintings I often feel that they were conceived in black, white and shades of gray and then colored up.  . 

  

 Yet for all my passion for color, I never got beyond its ABCs—the stuff about how yellow and blue make green and what the various complements are. You can learn a lot, nearly everything, by listening and looking, experimenting and practicing. I could have educated myself about color as I tried teach myself about so many others things but somehow I was skittish; scared. It embarrasses me to have been so long ignorant of artists’ techniques; at the same time it is probably one of the most normal things about me.

Then I was sent the book [the subject of my previous post] which has been published to coincide with “Making Colour,” the National Gallery’s current exhibition (on view until September 7). I read and reread it. When the show opened, I was there to look and learn from Degas and all his reds and all the others whose colors light up those subterranean exhibition rooms.  

 

“Making Colour” is a revelation. It also teeters on the brink of fun. What would have pushed it over that edge? A workshop annex off to one side where I could have sat down with pigments mixed with different mediums—oil, gouache, tempera, water color, glazes and a variety of painting surfaces on which to dab them and see the results. A kindergarten for grown ups.  What could be more basic, more enjoyable and more eye opening? I'm ready. Where can I sign up?.