One in so many Western works of art contains an image of a person we would call black. The phenomenon attracts relatively little attention in art history. The Menil Foundation went after it seriously, in a project now inherited by the Warburg Institute. An exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam offers a sanitized view of the black in Dutch and Flemish art. (more…)

Though it does not originate in the Kuiper Belt, the Beijing summer Olympics (8/8/08-8/24/08) is bearing down upon us like an outsized asteroid, bringing China out of feudal/communist distance into full twenty-first century relief. Sports, at this point, remain secondary:before we get to ping-pong, swimming, the shot-put and gymnastics, Americans have unprecedented amounts of trend-setting Chinese art and culture to ponder.

Time to take out your Xiangqui board! (more…)

In 1942, in fulfillment of an essay competition announced in 1936, the Teyler’s Second Society in Haarlem published the winning study on the spread of Dutch painting throughout the world: Horst Gerson, “Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts” (The diffusion and after-effect of Dutch 17th-century painting). Written in German-occupied Holland by a German immigrant of Jewish extraction, the “Ausbreitung” documents the Dutch artistic conquest of large parts of the world. The longest single section in the book are the 153 pages on “Das Deutsche Reich.”

Willem Schellinks, Baptism in Nantes, 1646 Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig Museum
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I would not go as far as my travel companion and say that I am sorry that I ever saw the exhibition. But it comes close. In December, at the Sackler Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we went to “Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity.” To shock and awe you unprepared, here is an impression of what greeted us.

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“Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR

Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with a link to the piece, is part of an invitation to an Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston workshop on April 23 where, for $50, attendees can listen to experts talk about ways that we can “create for Boston and Massachusetts what Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have successfully done” to encourage cultural tourism. The latest news out of Philadelphia is that Boston has its work cut out for it — Philly is surging ahead. (more…)

Israeli-Dutch Artist Joseph Semah’s Full Moon Project

Five years ago next month I ran into a buddy of mine at Café Luxembourg in Amsterdam. The Israeli-Dutch artist Joseph Semah and I had been through challenging times together. In 2001 he had challenged me to come up with an adjunct to his performance Full Moon II on Lucien den Arend’s Saenredam Island in the town of Barendrecht. The project was part of the program for Rotterdam as cultural capital of Europe. Semah and Felix Villanueva staged a performance on land, water and sky giving musical and physical form to the bond between the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem. While Semah chanted the Song of Songs on the shore, bridal couples swam, sunk and screwed their way to and on the island. Preceding which, on that memorable June 7th, I gave a rather personal lecture, for hundreds of Barendrechters, a town known for its strict Calvinism, on the kabbalistic meaning of the full moon. (more…)

A recent study in Editor & Publisher delivers the lowdown; with its circulation down about 20% in four years, The Boston Globe is in free fall. Two major investors in The New York Times, which owns the Globe, are “challenging the company’s investment decisions, including its commitment to the struggling newspaper industry beyond the flagship New York Times. Like many analysts, they see The Boston Globe and a group of 15 local papers as a drain on the company, which should, they argue, be focused on extracting the greatest possible advantage from the Times brand.” Bloomberg reports the taxman may be the paper’s savior: “The Times’ low tax basis on the Globe makes a sale unattractive because a large portion of proceeds would go to the government, she [NYT Chief Executive Janet Robinson] said.” (more…)

The Rijksmuseum has published the first volume in a series of scholarly catalogues of its collection of Dutch paintings of the 17th century. The two books, one of text and comparative illustrations, the other of color plates, are not only a model of collection catalogues, they are also an unguarded kaleidoscopic self-portrait of Dutch society in the early years of the Republic.

Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Volume 1
A pair of art catalogues worthy of the artists and the times they illuminate (more…)

Marcel Duchamp famously tweaked art for being inferior to chess, saying: “From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” Duchamp backed this opinion up by abandoning art for years to pursue what he believed to be the greater intellectual and aesthetic rewards of chess.

Duchamp playing chess sometime during the 1930s

In fact, the argument can be made that Duchamp resigned himself to becoming a legend of the art world only because he didn’t quite have the talent to become a legend of chess world. It is tempting, then, to wonder what Duchamp might have made of Diana Thater’s installation, “Here is a text about the world,” in which a chess fetish meets Chelsea art world convention. (David Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19th Street, Manhattan, January 10 - February 9).

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Is there or is there not such a thing as “the Dutchman?” My fellow immigrant Princess Maxima thinks there is not, but since she dared express that opinion in public last September, she has been subjected to an ongoing barrage of reprimands. Indeed, since the brief era of Pim Fortuyn, public discourse has been dominated by the love-it-or-leave it school of Dutchness. Anyone who does not know what the “it” is that should be loved, is a candidate for reschooling if not expulsion from the country.

Princess Maxima doesn’t think there is such a thing as “the Dutchman”

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