Neo David

Japanese Art

Mark Rothko

Art Students

Isabella Gardner

New video shows possible dry run for Gardner Museum art heist

It has been twenty five years since the biggest art theft in history was pulled off at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office released a newly discovered video taken the night before the heist, and is asking the public to help identify one of the two individuals captured in the footage. 

The six-minute video,  shows an unidentified man enter the museum at 12:49 a.m. on March 17, 1990. At almost exactly the same time on March 18, thieves dressed as Boston Police officers entered the same door, handcuffed two museum guards, and left with 13 pieces of art now valued at over $500 million, according to law enforcement officials. The museum has since offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the return of the stolen art. 

The empty frame from which thieves cut Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee remains on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Some of the artworks stolen from the Gardner Museum in 1990 were The Storm on the sea of Galilee by Rembrandt and The Concert painted by Vermeer. 

Who was Isabella Gardner?

Over three decades, Isabella Stewart Gardner traveled the world and worked with important art patrons and advisors Bernard Berenson and Okakura Kakuzo to amass a remarkable collection of master and decorative arts. In 1903, she completed the construction of Fenway Court in Boston to house her collection and provide a vital place for Americans to access and enjoy important works of art. Isabella Gardner installed her collection of works in a way to evoke intimate responses to the art, mixing paintings, furniture, textiles, and objects from different cultures and periods among well-known European paintings and sculpture.

She spent a year carefully installing her collection according to her personal aesthetic. The eclectic gallery installations from different periods and cultures combine to create a rich, complex and unique narrative.  The museum was opened in 1903 with a grand opening celebration featuring a performance by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a menu that included champagne and doughnuts.

Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1888

John Singer Sargent, American, 1856-1925

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's preeminent collection contains more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts, rare books and decorative arts. The galleries house works by some of the most recognized artists in the world, including Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Manet, Degas, Whistler and Sargent. The spirit of the architecture, the personal character of the arrangements and the artistic display of the enchanting courtyard in full bloom all create an atmosphere that distinguishes the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as an intimate and culturally-rich treasure.

Isabella Stewart Gardner amassed the bulk of her collection in a remarkably short period of time. Like many wealthy Americans, the Gardners bought paintings and objects to decorate their home. In the 1880s, Isabella Stewart Gardner attended lectures on art history and readings of Dante given by Charles Eliot Norton at Harvard College. This sparked a passion for Dante, and Isabella Gardner began to buy rare editions by the writer. She became a serious collector of Dutch and Italian pictures in the 1890s. Beginning in 1894, Bernard Berenson, then a young art historian, started to recommend Italian paintings for acquisition. He was just as new at this as Gardner was, but within two years he had guided her towards a collection that included Botticelli's Lucretia, Titian's Europa, Vermeer's The Concert, and Rembrandt's Self-Portrait. Berenson acted as a conduit for paintings that Colnaghi, a London dealer, had for sale; however, Isabella Gardner made her own decisions about what to buy. In 1896, Berenson facilitated the purchase of Titian's Europa, still heralded as the "most important work of art in Boston," by Boston-area museum directors (The Boston Globe, July 27, 2002).

Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice, 1894

Anders Zorn, Swedish, 1860-1920

Isabella Stewart Gardner disliked the cold, mausoleum-like spaces of most American museums of the period. As a result, she designed Fenway Court around a central courtyard filled with flowers. Light enters the galleries from the courtyard and from exterior windows, creating an atmospheric setting for works of art. Love of art, not knowledge about the history of art, was her aim. Her friends noted that the entire Museum was a work of art in itself. Individual objects became part of a rich, complex and intensely personal setting.

The Museum also provides personal glimpses into the sensibilities and personality of Isabella Stewart Gardner, poignant testaments to her personal tragedies and triumphs. The loss of her only child at the age of two is suggested in the Spanish Chapel, opposite John Singer Sargent's El Jaleo (1882), a painting that celebrates the excitement of life. Titian's Europa (1561-1562) hangs above a piece of pale green silk, which had been cut from one of Isabella Stewart Gardner's gowns designed by Charles Frederic Worth. Throughout the collection, similar stories, intimate portrayals, and discoveries abound.

Ten portraits of Isabella Stewart Gardner herself are interspersed throughout the collection, including John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner(1888), Anders Zorn's Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice (1894), and James McNeill Whistler's The Little Note in Yellow and Gold (1886). The sense of vitality and artistic flair that she found in Venice - and by which she lived her life - is eloquently captured in Zorn's Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice, 1894. Painted in the Palazzo Barbaro, the portrait captures the moment when Isabella Stewart Gardner, watching fireworks from a balcony, stood in the doorway, arms outstretched and invited her guests to join her to watch the display. Today, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's historic collection remains as Gardner created it, a collection of intimate effect and ongoing inspiration for visual, musical and horticultural innovation and scholarly thinking.

Andy Warhol

Lina Bo Bardi

— I never wanted to be young.
What I wanted was to have a History

In 1951 Bo Bardi designed the "Casa de Vidro" (“Glass House”) to live with her husband 

 Drawings 

After the Flood

http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/16/after-the-flood

What to do..

What is the essence of this art?

Bullfighting, as Mr. Hemingway says, "a decadent art in every way," is an art, indeed, "if it were permanent it could be one of the major arts." It does not seem absurd to Mr. Hemingway to compare it with sculpture and painting, or to set Joselito and Belmonte side by side with Velazquez and Goya, Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Shakespeare and Marlow. Even such refined elements as the line of the matador's body at the critical instant or the "composition" of bull and man enter into the intelligent "aficionado's" enjoyment. Bull-fighting is thus presented as an art heightened by the presence of death and, if the spectator can project himself into the matador's place, in the terror of death. For even the best matadors have their moments of fear - even their days and seasons of fear.

About DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON By Ernest Hemingway

Wall painting in Knossos Palace

Some try to link Spanish bullfighting to the Roman circus and even further back to Minoan bull-leaping but this is probably stretching it a bit. What I think it really boiled down to was battle and horses. In the not so distant past the aristocracy liked to fight and always from back of a horse. If rider and steed were not a quick and nimble combination the chances were they both died on the battlefield. 

Spanish Corrida represented in Cantigas de Santa María by Alfonso X el Sabio

To practice, Spanish nobles clubbed together (the clubs still exist today, in Sevilla or Ronda, for example) to organise competitions amongst themselves, usually in their town’s main square. There was nothing unusual in this; competitions like these have been around for as long as people have ridden horses. It’s just that at some point bulls were thrown into the mix, which definitely was a departure. A loose, and slightly grumpy, bull was an excellent way to test horse and rider under pressure. The horse had to remain surefooted and his noble rider calm as they showed off their bravery and skill by riding circles around the bull, inches away from its horns. A safety net was provided: Servants were on standby on the sides to distract the bull when things got too hot – or went wrong. No doubt the servants waved around their hats or capes to catch the bull’s attention when necessary.

Benavente, Zamora circa 1500

Sometime in the early 1700s King Felipe V banned nobles from fighting bulls. Apparently Felipe disapproved and thought it set a bad example to the masses. The Pope agreed. It is more likely too many of Felipe’s nobles were getting killed. It was at the time of this ban that the men on the ground started to become the main attraction. Waving around their cape developed eventually into a system of stylized passes, each with its own name, like the “veronica“; traditions were born and bullfighting gained a life of its own. In time, however fighting bulls from the back of a horse did return, which means there are two broad forms of bullfighting in Spain. The “corrida de toros“, where the bull is fought by a men on their feet and the “corrida de rejones” where it is done from a horse. The majority of bullfights, by far, are “corridas de toros”. There are also minor variations to both forms, but generally they follow the same format. 

Tauromaquia by Goya

Some say bullfighting is a sport. Others say it is an art form. In Spain the bullfights are reported in the culture section of the newspapers – next to the book reviews. However there is scoreboard in bullfighting – the “escalafon” – where the number of ears and tails a bullfighter has been awarded through the season are chalked up, so you could say it is a kind of sport. But is it art? Bullfighting certainly has aspects of an art form. The stylized passes with the cape can be expressed in a certain way, a bit like expressing something through dance. Some people find the passes beautiful to look at and ballet-like. Others simply see a self-important ponce prancing about in tight pants. The bullfight certainly carries a lot of cultural baggage, like the “pasodobles” you will hear played at bullfights. There is plainly a cross pollination between Flamenco culture and bullfighting culture. In the south of Spain especially, the connection with the spring fairs – the Ferias is obvious. When one thinks of Spanish culture, it’s hard not to include bullfighting in that mental picture

Tauromaquia. Picasso, 1957

Tauromachie, Picasso video. 

What Orson Welles had to say on the matter: “What is the essence of this art? That the man carry himself with grace and that he move the bull slowly and with a certain majesty. That is, he must allow the inherent quality of the bull to manifest itself.” 

The theatre Kenneth Tynan wrote of the “slow, sad fury of a perfect bullfight,” comparing it to Othello in its dark majesty and gravity.

Quote by Federico García Lorca: "El toreo es probablemente la riqueza poética y vital de España, increíblemente desaprovechada por los escritores y artistas, debido principalmente a una falsa educación pedagógica que nos han dado y que hemos sido los hombres de mi generación los primeros en rechazar. Creo que los toros es la fiesta más culta que hay en el mundo"

The Corrida of the 1st of May by Jean Cocteau, the most poetic book related to the Tauromaquia. Picasso, Manolete, Lorca, l'esprit flamenco et le fleuve gitan, autant de composantes du génie espagnol que Cocteau, touriste visionnaire prompt à découvrir la vérité poétique des paysages et des peuples, brasse comme les gemmes d'un éblouissant kaléidoscope.

Extraits:
"La haine est absente d'une corrida, n'y règnent que la peur et l'amour"
"Dans la corrida, il n'y a ni lutte ni duel entre l'homme et la bête mais la formation d'un couple isolé"
"On remarquera en outre, avec quelle curieuse volupté le couple de la bête et l'homme s'enroule, se frôle et se caresse"
"C'est que le grand mystère de la Fiesta consiste justement en ce paradoxe d'adversaires qui tour à tour se féminisent et reprennent les prérogatives de la virilité"
"Cérémonie qui cherche, soit par la corne, soit par l'estocade, à imiter cette pénétration par laquelle nos solitudes cherchent à s'illusionner et à obtenir, à l'aide d'un acte dévié de tout but procréateur, une sorte de triomphe fugace de victoire sur le chiffre deux, signe de mort"
"Le torero est un homme qui marche, à priori, vers le suicide"
"Le taureau, inclinant gracieusement son cou puissant, son front large et frisé d'Antinoüs, regardait la foule et enfonçait sa corne droite dans le ventre du matador à la renverse."
"Assise en train de nous attendre tous, immobile à faire peur, trône cet insecte androgyne aux ailes blanches: la mort."
"La bête s'orne donc d'un bouquet de roses trémières et d'un manteau de sang, comme si elle affichait son orgueil au moment d'accepter la mort de la main d'un être si faible qu'elle le pourrait vaincre par une dernière petite charge."

Miquel Barceló. Lanzarote series, Tauromaquia 1999-2000

Artists, Musicians , Poets, Writers, Politicians... 

Goya, Dalí, Manet, Picasso, José Picón , Jacinto Benavente, Bizet, Serafín , Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Joaquín Álvarez Quintero, Zuloaga, Sorolla, Ramón Casas, Marí Cassatt, Fortuny, Rugendas Lachler, Fernando Boter, Aranda... Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti , Miguel de Cervantes, Tierno Galván, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez , Camilo José Cela, Tirso de Molina, Miguel Hernández, Valle-Inclán, Manuel & Antonio Machado, Francisco Quevedo, Pérez de Ayala, Jovellanos, Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway, Peter Viertel, Jean Cau, Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno, Carlomagno, Alfonso X el Sabio, Carlos I de Inglaterra, Miguel Mihura , El Emperador Carlos I, Carlos Arniches, Calderón de la Barca, Fray Luis de León, Alfonso Sastre, Góngora, Benito Pérez Galdós, Jaime de Armiñán, Cossio, Fernando de Rojas, Ginés Pérez de Hita, Vicente Espinel, Juan Enriquez de Zúñiga, Fernán Caballero, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, Duque de Rivas, Ruben Darío, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Gerardo Diego, José Bergamín, Dámaso Alonso, José María Pemán, Jorge Luis Borge , Carlos Velo, Pablo Neruda, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, José Bergamín, Blasco Ibañez,  Jean Cocteau .... 

Modern Art....

Frida

The Game Art

The Art Game: Artists' Trump Cards by James Cahill and Mikkel Sommer.

Piet Mondrian or Andy Warhol - Damien Hirst or Banksy- whose artworks have been the most influential? The most shocking? The most expensive? 

These playing cards allow art lovers of all ages to play their favourite artists against each other to discover who rules the art world.