In the Kitchen of Art (2)
An Asynchronous Studio Book Club reading of In the Kitchen of Art: Selected Essays and Criticism, 2003-20 by Marco Grassi.
It is easier by far to write a negative review than a positive one. A negative review gives you a dramatic conflict to work with. In the case of Marco Grassi’s In the Kitchen of Art, at least as of the end of Part 2, he hardly has had reason to utter a complaint. The prose delivers drama anyway because Grassi fully comprehends the stakes of creating and displaying art.
This is particularly evident in “Miracle at the Met.” It opens with a line that seems amusing in light of the 240-page complaint about the Kunsthistorisches we recently enjoyed: “Ask most knowledgeable museum visitors and they would probably agree that the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna houses the world’s most satisfying and brilliantly conceived display of European Old Master paintings.” That’s more like it. It goes on to passages like this on page 102:
No one doubted that, sooner or later, the earlier European paintings would benefit from the same attentive care. Now we know that during these past several years a veritable reinvention of the department was in progress behind those annoying temporary partitions and closures. Born as an enlightened initiative of the former Director Philippe de Montebello, the project was brought to fruition in June thanks to the admirable energy and committment of a host of specialists, foremost among them the curators Keith Christiansen and Andrea Bayer. As “purloined” galleries finally returned to the fold, there was a consequent increase of about one-third in the space available. With this huge benefit, the curators were allowed to rethink the disposition of the entire collection, in some cases radically altering the previous disposition of schools and periods. Even more striking is how these changes have once again—and so emphatically—reaffirmed the centrality of European painting in our Western culture. The new galleries, preceded as they are by that impossibly broad staircase, now truly preside as the core of Hunt’s grand monument—at last a worthy parallel to Semper’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.
This copy is erudite, intimate, gentlemanly, and most importantly, gripping. As a fellow scribbling alongside him in The New Criterion I am impressed beyond expression. Seriously (pp. 107-8):
Works from what has become known as “the age of revolution 1780–1820,” have finally come together from different locations to surround the magnificent Portrait of Lavoisier and His Wife by Jacques-Louis David and the artist’s other pivotal, early Death of Socrates. Both paintings, executed just as the storm clouds were gathering, can be read with ominous sub-texts: the former because of the scientist’s tragic end during the Terror and the latter as a powerful indictment of tyranny. The artist was to become, himself, an important protagonist in the unfolding drama of the Revolution.
In a stunning feat of art-historical triangulation, the museum has recently righted the balance with the addition of two emblematic post-revolutionary works: a superb Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand by François, Baron Gérard and a fascinating piece of contemporary reportage by Louis-Léopold Boilly. They date from 1808–1810—years during which Napoleon’s Empire reached the meridian of its course—and both are gifts from Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, as was the Lavoisier portrait, donated in 1977. In the first of these recent acquisitions, Talleyrand sits for Gérard shortly after quarreling with the Emperor. It was a brief parenthesis in the minister’s influence which the ever-resourceful political chameleon overcame, eventually going on to serve the two French monarchies that followed Napoleon’s fall. Talleyrand seems not a bit humbled by his disfavor at the imperial court; he is comfortably seated—upright and defiant—magnificently turned out and with the smug, impenetrable expression we have come to know in many other likenesses, including the fine, later portrait by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, hanging nearby.
Yes, I am an art nerd. I am not ashamed.
The only example of critical bitchiness—to which I am highly prone—occurs at the end of Part 2, in “Who Owns the Past?” (p. 125).
This excellent anthology should be required reading for anyone engaged in a serious discourse on the disposition, protection, and exchange of artistic or cultural material. It would particularly benefit those journalists who, on the pages of the Times (both in New York and Los Angeles), habitually use such terms as “looting” and “plunder” in their accounts of the acquisition policies of their local museums. Consider, as a typical example, The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter’s mindless essay (March 29, 2006) wherein he glibly states: “the history of art is, in large part, a history of theft,” ending with: “So the Euphronios krater will be in Italy instead of New York. Do we really care?” Alas, Mr. Cotter, we do care, passionately!
The barb is deserved. Outside of his expertise in Asian art, Cotter is a silly critic, as impervious to the stakes of art as Grassi is attuned to them. “In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad,” says Darby in the Aphorisms. The same is true of critics.
I have added a few books to the Asynchronous Studio Book Club calendar. We finish this title next Friday. After a couple of weeks on Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style by Wilhelm Worringer, we’ll devote two more to The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn, a collection of his Harvard essays. Afterward, we’ll tackle The World of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Have no fear, this is not a 500-page monster like his Phenomenology of Perception. It’s seven lectures that the philosopher delivered to radio audiences in 1948. After that we’ll read Art Can Help by Robert Adams.
Not yet on the calendar is Frank Stella’s Working Space, collecting his Harvard lectures. Since Stella just passed away I’m inclined to spend time with it, and it will be interesting to contrast it with Shahn. It’s thirty bucks, though, so start saving your pennies. (To the best of my ability I try to keep ASBC titles priced in the teens.)
Your suggestions are welcome, and some already made have been recorded for future inclusion.
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Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is In the Kitchen of Art: Selected Essays and Criticism, 2003-20 by Marco Grassi. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.
Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.
Franklin, you are not an art nerd. You are an artist who is interested, as an artist certainly should be, in knowing as much as possible about the long historical continuum of art, since art is not contingent on when or where it was made but on how well--on how good its maker was as an artist. If you were not what you call an art nerd, I would have serious reservations about you as an artist.
And I wouldn't call Holland Cotter (who might as well be named Holland Tunnel) a silly critic. I see him as a would-be critic of art he's not fit to address publicly from a position of putative authority.