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    Drawings Newly Attributed to Sandro Botticelli Get the Spotlight in San Francisco

    The great Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is best known for painted works such as Primavera (c. 1477–82) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485–86), which hang in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, but a new show at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, celebrates the artist’s drawings. “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” is the first-ever exhibition dedicated to his works in the medium.
    The exhibition includes more than 60 artworks from 42 institutions, with 27 drawings on display. They come from institutions like the Uffizi as well as Paris’s Louvre Museum and the National Gallery in London. Many of these works rarely travel, and they temporarily turn the Bay Area into a remarkable showcase for the Renaissance master’s output.
    Botticelli—born Alessandro Filipepi in 1445—ran his own large workshop in Florence after studying under the master Fra Filippo Lippi from around the age of 15. After his training, Botticelli developed a style which harked back to the artistic ideals of classical antiquity, and he is known for his individualized portraits. His group portraits often included real contemporary figures and self-portraits, the most famous of which can be seen in his The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1475).
    In a short documentary produced by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Furio Rinaldi, the exhibition’s curator, explains the appeal of drawings as a route to a more intimate understanding of the Old Masters: “Most of these Old Masters are perceived as very remote and unapproachable, but through their drawings we can have a much more direct and fresh understanding on how they were thinking, how they were designing, how they were articulating their memorable compositions.”
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    The exhibition examines the role preparatory drawing played in Botticelli’s practice, and pairs completed works with the initial drawings for them. His world-renowned Adoration of the Magi hangs alongside fragments of preparatory drawings on linen.
    The exhibition also features works recently attributed to the Italian Renaissance master. These include preparatory drawings for The Cestello Annunciation (1489), from the Uffizi Gallery; Adoration of the Magi from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (c. 1468–70), from the Louvre Museum. The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist is hung next to the newly attributed drawing.
    Rinaldi has said that the new attributions “will help lay the groundwork for a fuller understanding of Botticelli’s artistic output and the field of Italian Renaissance art at large.”
    “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” is on view at the Legion of Honor, 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, through February 11, 2024. See more works from the show below.
    Sandro Botticelli, La Bella Simonetta (ca. 1485). Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum.
    Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
    Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
    Sandro Botticelli, Fragment of Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1500). Photo courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge / Art Resource, NY.
    Sandro Botticelli, The Devout Jews at Pentecost (ca. 1505). Photo by Wolfgang Fuhrmannek, courtesy of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
    Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation (ca. 1490–95). Courtesy Glasgow Museums.
    Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (Madonna of the Rose Garden) (ca. 1468). © RMN-Grand Palais. Photo Tony Querrec.
    Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Drew Altizer, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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    Witness the Power of Nicole Eisenman’s Observational Eye

    Nicole Eisenman’s first major retrospective in the U.K., at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, contains over 100 works spanning some 30 years, although its impressive scope feels even wider, stretching across the history of art. Take a painting like Coping (2008), which is filled with individual vignettes in a manner reminiscent of Breughel, or Fishing (2000), where the symmetrical composition and arrangement of figures calls to mind a High Renaissance altarpiece. Elsewhere, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011) has the same painterly, expressionistic approach to everyday modern life that was popularized by artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
    The Brooklyn-based French-American painter and sculptor is adverse to giving interviews or offering any kind of oversimplifying explanations for these scenes, which can often be monumental in size and littered with references. What comes through clearly enough in the work, however, is her boldly biting yet always humorous critiques of contemporary socio-political issues including identity, war, economic downturn, and technology.
    Throughout the show are scenes that celebrate lesbian life and love in downtown bars, parks, pools and domestic settings, but even a moment of intimacy shared in a work like Morning Studio (2016) contains a darker undercurrent. Eisenman uses a prominent computer screen to draw attention to the ways in which the prevalence of technology interferes with our everyday lives. She may often quote the past, but Eisenman’s keen observational eye always pulls these references back into the present.
    Sculptural heads highly typical of Eisenman’s practice appear throughout the show, often appearing in large assortments of jumbled objects. Site-specific murals made by the artist between 1992 and 2003, but since destroyed, have also been revived for the first time thanks to a new animation film produced in collaboration with fellow artist Ryan McNamara.
    “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” runs through January 14, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
    Nicole Eisenman, Beer Garden with Ulrike and Celeste (2009). Photo: Bryan Conley, courtesy Hall Art Foundation.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
    Nicole Eisenman, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011). Photo: Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
    Nicole Eisenman, Econ Prof (2019). Photo courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
    Nicole Eisenmann, Morning Studio (2016). Photo courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
    Nicole Eisenman, Fishing (2000). Photo: Bryan Conley, courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
    Nicole Eisenman, Coping (2008). Photo courtesy Whitechapel Gallery.
    Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.

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    A Long-Delayed Retrospective of Philip Guston’s Acerbic Paintings Finally Opens in London

    This blockbuster show has finally arrived to London several years later than planned. It was first pushed back by the pandemic but, after the #BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, its curators scrambled to ensure that Philip Guston’s unsettling hooded caricatures of the Ku Klux Klan were handled with due sensitivity.
    Driving around town in groups with blank expressions and comically large cigars, these characters are rendered both ridiculous and, crucially, commonplace; just normal people taking part in everyday activities. The images are unambiguously critical of racism in the U.S., so the decision to postpone the show was dogged by controversy. One of its curators, Mark Godfrey, labelled the move “patronizing” on Instagram and was swiftly suspended from Tate Modern before taking voluntary redundancy in 2021.
    Now that the show is finally installed, our attention can shift back onto the art itself. What really stands out across some 100 works, is the considerable breadth of Guston’s practice. Born in 1913, the artist spent his 20s and 30s responding to European influences and borrowed from the Old Masters and then-contemporary Surrealists with equal gusto. By the early 1950s, he was swept up in New York’s passion for Abstract Expressionism. These impressive canvases establish his pink-infused palette, but they are most notable for how they allowed Guston—always a figurative painter at heart—to entirely reinvent his style from scratch, starting with simple, monochromatic line drawings.
    Only in the final suite of galleries do the painterly cartoons, replete with repeated motifs such as cigars, shoes, ladders, beds, and hands, finally emerge. Though they would push him into relative obscurity, these strangely unique canvases grew in size and ambition and are filled with clues about Guston’s own experiences and outlook. Born to Jewish parents who fled persecution in present-day Ukraine, Guston changed his name from Goldstein in 1935, amid rising antisemitism, and by the latter decades of his life was overcome with fears about latent evil in society. By humanizing its perpetrators, he hoped to turn the lens back on the establishment, everyday people, and himself.
    “Philip Guston” is at Tate Modern, London until February 25, 2024. Check out more images from the exhibition below.
    Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
    Philip Guston, Bombardment (1937). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.
    Philip Guston, Passage (1957-58). Photo: Will Michels, © MFAH.
    Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
    Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
    Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
    Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.
    Philip Guston, Couple in Bed (1977). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.
    Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
    Philip Guston, The Line (1978). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.

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    See Inside the Revelatory Retrospective for Filipino American Artist Pacita Abad

    In 1970, 24-year-old Pacita Abad left her home in the Philippines, fleeing political persecution after leading a student protest against the Marcos regime. She was planning to study law in Spain. Instead, she wound up in San Francisco, an intended one-day visit with an aunt changing the course of her life.
    In the years that followed, Abad became a talented artist. She developed a vibrant and luminous style that was entirely her own. Her signature trapunto paintings were richly colorful and embellished quilted canvases inspired by textile traditions from around the world. Until her premature death from lung cancer in 2004, Abad worked prolifically, creating some 5,000 works over a 32-year period.
    Now, roughly 40 of those pieces, which engage with issues of race, immigration, and feminism, are finally getting their moment in the sun. Abad’s long-overdue first career retrospective, organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
    “The exuberance of her work is one of the first things that people notice. They see the colors, the patterns, and how wild so much of the work is. It’s the exact opposite of Minimalism,” Nancy Lim, SFMOMA’s associate curator of painting and sculpture, said in a video interview. “The material and visual seductions of her work are undeniable.”
    Pacita Abad, If My Friends Could See Me Now (1991). Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim. Photo by Don Ross, courtesy of the artist’s estate.
    The exhibition, which will travel to MoMA PS1 in New York and Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario next year, is poised to be a well-deserved breakthrough moment for Abad. Despite an extensive exhibition history, the artist remains a fairly obscure figure in 20th century art history. (Her auction record, set in June 2022, is just ₱9,344,000, or $176,063, according to the Artnet Price Database.)
    Personally, I had seen a handful of the artist’s work at art fairs, courtesy of New York’s Tina Kim Gallery, but still found the show to be a revelation when I encountered it at the Walker over the summer.
    Each room was painted a different vibrant color, in keeping with the way the artist and her second husband, Jack Garrity (who now manages her estate), decorated their homes around the world. Starting with a year-long trip across Asia in 1973, the two spent time in some 60 countries thanks to his career as a World Bank economist.
    Pacita Abad, European Mask (1990). Collection of the Tate Modern, London, purchased with funds provided by the Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee 2019. Photo by At Maculangan/Pioneer Studios, courtesy of the artist’s Estate and Tate Modern.
    The works, many of them monumental, invite close examination with their profusion of different materials. Despite little formal art training, Abad effortlessly mixed oil and acrylic paints with a wide variety of adornments, from plastic buttons, beads, and rhinestones to cowrie shells, fringe, and mirrors, working on padded canvas.
    “Pacita immersed herself in artisan communities wherever she was traveling, studying material culture wherever she went,” Lim said. “It was through textiles that she learned about abstraction, about color, about patterning, about all of these things that she ended up incorporating into her aesthetic sensibility.”
    Her influences included Burmese and Indian embroidery, Indonesian batik, Nigerian tie-dye, and Korean ink brush painting, as well as indigenous mask traditions from across the globe.
    Portrait of Pacita Abad at work in her Manila studio in 1984. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate.
    But her itineracy also prevented her from establishing roots in any one community, which helps in part to explain her relative obscurity. (And that’s to say nothing of the racism and sexism Abad faced in dismissals of her work as ethnic, feminine, or decorative—all too common for a woman embracing traditions of craft.)
    “She was kind of everywhere and nowhere at once,” Lim said. But when exhibition curator Victoria Sung, now the senior curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, first approached SFMOMA about the traveling show, the museum jumped at the chance to put Abad in the spotlight.
    “Pacita’s creative origins are in San Francisco. Her family has often described San Francisco as her spiritual and artistic home, because this is where she first got the idea to become an artist,” Lim said.
    It was a brief first marriage to local artist George Kleiman that introduced Abad to the city’s artistic milieu. And the city’s activist movements, such as the Black Power Movement, expanded Abad’s political awareness. (Her parents were both politicians, and their many children were actively involved in their campaigns.)
    Pacita Abad, My fear of night diving (1985). Collection of the Lopez Museum and Library, Manila, Philippines. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate and Lopez Museum and Library.
    Abad’s later work would respond to such world events as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Haitian refugee crisis, and Mexican migrants’ detention at the U.S. border. Other pieces appear less obviously tied to politics, like her “Underwater Wilderness” series featuring gorgeous aquatic scenes of coral reefs, which contains references to Spain’s colonization of the Philippines. This range complicated the reception of Abad’s work.
    “People would not understand why some works would seem very political, and then suddenly she appeared to be making a left turn to create other bodies of work that are apolitical,” Lim said. “Pacita was a slightly mysterious and confusing figure for a lot of people.”
    Nearly 20 years after her death, however, the artist’s appeal is now instantly apparent in Abad’s must-see retrospective. As she put it herself, when asked in 1991 to summarize her contribution to American art, “Color! I have given it color!”
    See more from the show below.
    “Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
    “Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
    “Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
    “Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
    “Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
    “Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
    “Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
    “Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
    “Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo by Eric Mueller, courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
    Pacita Abad, (1998). Collection of the collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2022. Photo by Max McClure, courtesy of the artist’s estate and Spike Island, Bristol.
    Pacita Abad, 100 Years of Freedom: Batanesto Jolo (1998). Photo by Chunkyo In, courtesy of the artist’s estate.
    Pacita Abad, Marcos and His Cronies (1985–95). Collection of the Singapore Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate and the Singapore Art Museum.
    Pacita Abad, Flight to Freedom (1980). Collection of the National Gallery Singapore. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate and the National Gallery Singapore.
    Pacita Abad, Spring Is Coming (2001). Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate.
    Pacita Abad, Anilao at its Best (1986). Photo by At Maculangan/Pioneer Studios, courtesy of the artist’s estate and MCAD Manila.
    “Pacita Abad” was on view at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, Minneapolis, April 15–September 3, 2023; and is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, California, October 21, 2023–January 28, 2024. It will travel to MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens, New York, April 4–September 2, 2024; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 12, 2024–January 19, 2025.
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    Revered and Feared: The British Museum Explores 5,000 Years of Feminine Power

    Goddesses, saints, demons: ‘Revered and Feared. Feminine Power in Art and Belief’ is a collaborative exhibition created by Madrid’s ‘La Caixa’ Foundation and London’s British Museum, bringing together 166 historical objects to highlight spiritual perceptions of femininity around the globe.
    Objects on display date from prehistory through to the 21st century, and follow five themes: “Creation and Nature,” “Passion and Desire,” “Magic and Malice,” “Justice and Defence,” and “Compassion and Salvation.” Contemporary artists involved in the show include Marina Abramović and Zanele Muholi. The objects—which span over 5,000 years—call into question our beliefs about gender expression, examine women’s multifaceted roles in society and folklore, and celebrate ancient customs and traditions. 
    Its curators have called it “the first exhibition of its kind.”
    The show has been co-curated by Belinda Crerar, of the British Museum, and Risa Martínez, an independent curator and advisor for the selection of the contemporary artworks included in the show.
    In an interview for the Fundación “La Caixa”, Crerar explained that the exhibition explores “all the different ways that female identity has been framed throughout history and around the world” and that it is “particularly relevant today in light of recent gender equality movements, to be reflecting on our own cultural pre-conceptions when it comes to gender identity and female empowerment”.
    Highlights in the show include a bust of the Roman goddess Minerva, a Buddhist figure of Bodhisattva Guanyin, a Taraka dance mask from West Bengal, and a statuette of the river deity Oshun from the Yoruba culture of Nigeria.
    ‘Revered and Feared. Feminine Power in Art and Belief’ is on view at CaixaForum, Madrid, through January 14, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.
    Zanele Muholi, Somnyama IV, Oslo (2015). Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
    Painted Terracotta, Italy (c. 500 B.C.E.) © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
    Egyptian Amulet, (1069–664 BC) © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
    Queen of the Night, Iraq (c. 1750 B.C.E.) © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
    Workshop of Sri Kajal Datta, Dance Mask of Taraka (1994). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
    White Tara, Tibet (1700–1900). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
    Porcelain, China (c. 1700-22). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
    Silver Medal of Queen Anne, UK (1707). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
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    Anish Kapoor Bends the Boundaries of Truth in an Expansive Show at Palazzo Strozzi

    Renaissance architecture and Anish Kapoor’s iconic sculptures may seem to have little in common. But the team at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy, sees an uncanny connection between the two and has decided to bring them together.
    The result is an expansive solo show titled “Untrue Unreal.” It features a vast range of works from across Kapoor’s oeuvre, including those monumental in scale. The show transforms the historic site into a space of contemplation, by inviting audiences to immerse themselves in a realm where the perception of truth becomes an illusion.
    “Kapoor has engaged in a direct dialogue with the Renaissance architecture. The result is entirely original, almost a kind of dialectical juxtaposition, where symmetry, harmony, and rigor are called into question, and the boundaries between material and immaterial dissolve,” Arturo Galansino, general director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and curator of the exhibition, noted in a statement.
    “Amidst the rational geometries of Palazzo Strozzi, Kapoor invites us in this exhibition to lose and rediscover ourselves, prompting us to question what is untrue or unreal.”
    The exhibition shines a spotlight on the internationally acclaimed artist’s ongoing experimentation with materiality, space, form, and color, between the galleries at the Piano Nobile and the Renaissance courtyard. Among the highlights include To Reflect an Intimate Part of the Red (1981), a signature piece from the earlier stage of Kapoor’s career; Non-Object Black (2015), which challenges viewers’s perception through the use of Vantablack, a material that absorbs more than 99.9 percent of visible light; and Void Pavilion VII (2023), a newly architecturally scaled work conceived for the site’s Renaissance courtyard.
    Below are the images of the exhibition. “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal” runs through February 4, 2024.
    Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu (2007). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
    Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu (2007). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
    Anish Kapoor, Void Pavilion VII (2023). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
    Anish Kapoor, Angel (1990). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
    Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
    Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
    Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
    Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
    Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
    Anish Kapoor, Gathering Clouds (2014)
    Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
    Anish Kapoor, To Reflect an Intimate Part of the Red (1981)

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    Years After Receiving a Gift of J.E.H. MacDonald Sketches, a Vancouver Museum Learns They’re Fakes

    In January 2015, the Vancouver Art Gallery was gifted 10 painted sketches by James Edward Hervey MacDonald, a modern landscape artist and founding member of the renowned Group of Seven. Supposed studies for larger paintings, the works were deemed long lost and forgotten, with the museum’s curator Ian Thom hailing their rediscovery at that time as lending “considerable insight into the transformation of [the artist’s] style.”  
    Eight years on, the pieces have gone on view at the museum, but with one significant caveat—they’re no longer attributed to MacDonald.
    “J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden” brings together the 10 paintings alongside the detailed findings that led the institution to reattribute them. It’s an effort, said Anthony Kiendl, CEO and executive director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, to unpack a “fascinating story” that has seen the undoing of a high-profile gift. 
    Unknown artist, Sketch after Falls, Montreal River. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    The paperboard sketches were a gift from Ephry and Melvin Merkur, who had inherited them from their father Max Merkur, a Toronto-based art collector. According to the museum, the works were buried by MacDonald and his son Thoreau in the backyard of the family’s property for safekeeping in 1931. These boxes were then excavated in 1974, whereupon they were snapped up by Merkur. 
    But in the wake of the donation, questions were raised, most prominently by the Globe and Mail, about the authenticity of the works. Among their doubts, experts pointed out the anachronistic paint types used in the works and more egregiously, misspellings in the artist’s signature. The cloud surrounding the paintings led the museum to shelf a planned exhibition, and recruit art historians, handwriting experts, and the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) to untangle the matter. 
    Unknown artist, Sketch after Leaves in the Brook. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    The CCI undertook scientific research and visual analysis of the paintings, supported by art history specialists who offered qualitative assessments. Their study found pigments that did not exist in MacDonald’s lifetime, as well as the use of boards that were unlike those the artist typically drew on. A handful of the purported sketches, too, were found to resemble the completed works in such a way that experts suggest they were created after, rather than for, the final compositions. 
    Based on these findings, the museum is now attributing the 10 pieces to an unknown artist. 
    “This investigation exemplifies how scientific examination can play an important role in the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage The CCI’s findings were crucial to the conclusive outcome of the investigation, which has led to the revised attribution of these 10 painted sketches,” said Kate Helwig, a conservation scientist at the CCI. 
    Unknown artist, Sketch after The Wild River. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    Still, “A Tangled Garden” will feature an installation of oil sketches by J.E.H. MacDonald, as well as those of his Group of Seven peers. Active from 1920 through ’33, the cadre of artists were celebrated for their modern, almost romantic, approach to landscape painting. Defying the staid formalism of 19th-century naturalism, they produced deeply energetic and expressive canvases, exemplified by Tom Thomson’s The West Wind (1916–17), Lawren Harris’s Lake and Mountains (1928), and MacDonald’s Falls, Montreal River (1920).  
    While the new attribution might be humbling, particularly following the highs of the 2015 rediscovery, the museum sees moving forward with an exhibition of faked works as critical to its mission. Kiendl, for one, touts the project as reflective of “our commitment to research, artistic inquiry, and sharing new knowledge with our communities.”
    “The gallery seeks to foster an environment of critical inquiry and transparency,” he added, “in which our audiences participate in the discourse surrounding the meaning of these artworks.” 
    “J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden” is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, Canada, through May 12, 2024. 

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    See the Surreal Future Elmgreen & Dragset Imagine for Obsolete Libraries in Their Prague Show

    The Scandinavian artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset are back with another playfully conceptual sculptural installation, this time converting Prague’s Kunsthalle into a public library with a few surprise twists.
    The celebration of books pays tribute to the Czech capital’s illustrious literary past, while also drawing attention to the contemporary communal structures that allow us to access these works but are too often threatened by funding cuts and digitization. Always subverting the viewer’s expectations, the surreal installation contains everyday facilities that don’t quite work, like one disintegrating staircase that leads to an unknowable room marked “Filozofie” (Philosophy).
    Within this uncannily familiar yet dysfunctional setting, the pair have revived a long-running, international performance series known as the “Diaries.” Taking place every Wednesday and weekend throughout the show’s run, Prague Diaries (2023) sees five young men sit at a long table and fill their journals with private musings as museum visitors mill around, free to satisfy their curiosity by sneaking a peek over the diarist’s shoulder.
    “We approached this exhibition by asking ourselves: ‘What happens to libraries and the printed matter within them if digital technologies were to make them obsolete?’,” said Elmgreen & Dragset in a statement. “In the process, we have investigated how artists historically have reimagined and reworked the idea of what a book can be.”
    To do this, the pair selected works from the Kunsthalle’s collection to feature throughout the installation, whether tucked into a book shelf, stuck to the wall, or nestled among the stacks. These include Giorgio de Chirico’s Forbidden Toys (1916), a painting that abstracts books into anonymous geometrical shapes, and other historical works by artists like Kurt Schwitters and Endre Nemes. Contemporary sculptural pieces that explore the formal qualities of the physical tome in an increasingly online era are provided by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, Spanish performance artist Dora Garcia and the collective Slavs and Tartars.
    The Kunsthalle Praha is a new art space in Prague and Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” runs through April 22, 2024. Check out more images of the exhibition below.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Giorgo de Chirico, Les jouets défendus (Forbidden Toys (1916). Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Praha.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, The Guardian (2023) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Elmgreen & Dragset, Prague Diareis (2023), a performance as part of “READ” at Kunsthalle Prague. Photo: © Jan Malý.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, Fruit of Knowledge (2011) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Slavs and Tatars, Kitab Kebab (Lviv and Wrocław) (2021). Photo: Alicja Kielan, courtesy of Slavs and Tatars.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, Other Lovers (2018) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Endre Nemes, Melancholy (1941). Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Praha.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Elmgreen & Dragset, Fruit of Knowledge (2011). Photo by: Elmar Vestner, courtesy The Aegidius Collection.
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