Christie’s (November 23, 2023) – Immerse yourself in a dreamlike vision of Canaletto’s Venice where the floating city of the 1700s appears strikingly unchanged centuries later. Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto (1697-1768), was born and died in Venice.
Did Canaletto paint these paired views of Venice for the Countess of Essex?
Home for most of his life, the city was also the artistic subject that dominated his career. Canaletto helped establish the veduta — or topographical view — as one of the chief genres of Venetian painting in the 18th century, as well as a prime export. A pair of vedute by Canaletto, unknown to scholars until now, will lead the Old Masters Part I sale at Christie’s in London on 7 December 2023, as part of Classic Week.
Coming from a private collection, these masterpieces were painted around 1734, when Canaletto was at the peak of his powers, almost certainly for an English patron.
Apollo Magazine (November 23, 2023) – Political satire is by its nature ephemeral: it reacts to events and personalities and moves quickly on. Yet James Gillray’s (1756–1815) excoriating attacks on William Pitt, Charles James Fox, George III, the Prince Regent and a whole cavalcade of Georgian public figures retain their sting more than two centuries after he dreamed them up. In his sumptuously illustrated study of Gillray, Tim Clayton explains why.
Gillray was, shows Clayton, as much an artist as a caricaturist – his fertile wit and invention were equalled by his facility with an etching needle. His images reveal a man of learning, liberal with allusions in his prints to Shakespeare, Milton and the classics, who developed a style that combined the literary and the visual. His seven years at the Royal Academy, meanwhile, helped shape him into one of the most accomplished draughtsmen of the early 19th century.
Although Clayton takes Gillray from his early training as a letter engraver through his time as a travelling player and into his pomp and then the madness that blighted his later years, this is not a biography in the traditional sense. There are few documentary sources relating directly to Gillray, so Clayton skilfully reveals his man through examining the ‘business of satire’. He looks at Gillray’s often overlapping professional and personal relationships, at the intricacies of Georgian print culture, and the ebbs and flows of politics.
ART VISION TV / C&B JOURNAL (November 22, 2023) – Artcurial’s Old Master & 19th Century Art department will be holding its prestige sale on 22nd November, featuring The Sacrifice to the Minotaur, a masterpiece by the 18th century painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (November 17, 2023) – Bringing a new perspective on the beloved Renaissance artist, “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” reveals the central role that drawing played in Sandro Botticelli’s art and practice. This short documentary takes viewers through the streets of Florence, where the artist lived and worked, to the Uffizi galleries, home of Botticelli’s most striking masterpieces.
The story is told by Furio Rinaldi, curator of drawings and prints at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Jonathan K. Nelson, art historian at Syracuse University in Florence, and Cecilia Frosinini, art historian at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. These voices speak in chorus to give us an original narrative that illuminates Botticelli’s life, process, and legacy.
Botticelli Drawings is the first exhibition ever dedicated to the drawings of Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445 – 1510). Exploring the foundational role drawing played in Botticelli’s work, the exhibition traces his artistic journey, from studying under maestro Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406 – 1469) to leading his own workshop in Florence. Featuring rarely seen and newly attributed works, the exhibition provides insight into the design practice of an artist whose name is synonymous with the Italian Renaissance.
Botticelli’s drawings offer an intimate look into the making of some of his most memorable masterpieces, including Adoration of the Magi (c. 1500), which will be reunited with its preparatory drawing, surviving only in fragments. From Botticelli’s earliest recorded drawings through expressive designs for his final painting, the works on display reveal the artist’s experimental drawing techniques, quest for ideal beauty, and command of the line.
Botticelli Drawings is on view from November 19, 2023 – February 11, 2024.
Sotheby’s (November 13, 2023) – This month, we’re taking a tour of the world’s most exciting and innovative museum exhibitions with Tim Marlow, CEO and Director of the Design Museum, London.
Africa & Byzantium Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 19 November 2023 – 3 March 2024 Bringing together the art and culture of Byzantium and Africa, this ambitious New York exhibition looks in a new way at their importance to the development of the premodern world.
Africa & Byzantium comprises over 200 objects, from frescoes and mosaics to jewelry and manuscripts borrowed from many of the great collections, spanning over ten centuries of complex cultural exchange and influence.
Modigliani: Modern Gazes Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 24 November 2023 – 17 March 2024 Modigliani: Modern Gazes focuses on the 20th-century Italian artist’s portraits of modern women From bohemian Paris who stare unapologetically at the viewer, defiant and – as the director of the Staatsgalerie, Christiane Lange puts it – “emancipated”.
Works by German-speaking contemporaries Paula Modersohn-Becker, Jeanne Mammen, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Wilhelm Lehmbruck also feature, in a show that places Modigliani in the wider cultural context of the young European avant-garde.
Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC 19 November 2023 – 31 March 2024 Rothko exhibitions have always focused on his canvases but the artist drew no distinction between them and his paintings on paper – some of which were up to seven feet tall.
Forming the basis of Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper, a ground-breaking show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, many of the watercolors, acrylics and oil paintings on paper have never been seen before.
Botticelli Drawings 19 November 2023 – 11 February 2024 Legion of Honor, San Francisco Although his reputation dwindled until the Pre-Raphaelites rediscovered his work in the 19th century, Sandro Botticelli is now one of the most revered of the Renaissance masters.
There has, however, never been a significant exhibition of his drawings so Botticelli Drawings – an admirable and important project – will give us the chance to trace his artistic journey in a more intimate way than ever before.
An Atlas of Es Devlin Cooper Hewitt, New York 18 November 2023 – 11 August 2024 Devlin is a polymath and then some, with a wide ranging practice that incorporates stage design from La Scala in Milan to the Super Bowl. She is utterly compelling but hard to classify, which is why it is appropriate that Devlin herself will install her 30 year archive.
An Atlas of Es Devlin – featuring over 300 sketches, paintings, cutouts, and maquettes – will also stage a replica of her London studio along with giant film installations, a library programme including collective readings and the chance to participate in a cumulative artwork.
CBS Sunday Morning (November 12, 2023) – The largest exhibition ever of works by Ed Ruscha, one of the most celebrated American artists of the postwar era, is now on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Ruscha, now 85, talks with correspondent David Pogue about collecting much of his life’s work into one retrospective; the cryptic nature of many of his paintings; and his use of unusual materials (like chocolate and axle grease).
“I don’t have any Seine River like Monet,” Ed Ruscha once said. “I’ve just got US 66 between Oklahoma and Los Angeles.” ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN will feature over 200 works—in mediums including painting, drawing, prints, photography, artist’s books, film, and installation—that make use of everything from gunpowder to chocolate. Exploring Ruscha’s landmark contributions to postwar American art as well as lesser-known aspects of his more than six-decade career, the exhibition will offer new perspectives on a body of work that has influenced generations of artists, architects, designers, and writers.
In 1956, Ruscha left his hometown of Oklahoma City and drove along interstate highway 66 to study commercial art in Los Angeles, where he drew inspiration from the city’s architecture, colloquial speech, and popular culture. Ruscha has recorded and transformed familiar subjects—whether roadside gasoline stations or the 20th Century Fox logo—often revisiting motifs, sites, or words years later. Tracing shifts in the artist’s means and methods over time, ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN underscores the continuous reinvention that has defined his work.
Gagosian Quarterly (Winter 2023) – The new issue features Annie Cohen-Solal who writes about the exhibition A Foreigner Called Picasso, at Gagosian, New York, detailing the genesis of the project, her commitment to the figure of the outsider, and Picasso’s enduring relevance to matters geopolitical and sociological. Connecting the dots among the Surrealist milieu, including Picasso, a conversation on the underrecognized photographer Lee Miller sets the stage for a New York show about her work, friendships, and collaborations with fellow artists.
Cocurator of the exhibition A Foreigner Called Picasso, at Gagosian, New York, Annie Cohen-Solal writes about the genesis of the project, her commitment to the figure of the outsider, and Picasso’s enduring relevance to matters geopolitical and sociological.
By Annie Cohen-Solal
I have been interested in the issue of immigration ever since I entered the art world. I began my career as an intellectual historian: I was a scholar of Jean-Paul Sartre and wrote his first biography. It was quite unexpected that I would fall into the orbit of the art world, let alone so fast, but two days after I arrived in New York City, in 1989—I had just been nominated cultural counselor to the French Embassy in the United States—I met Leo Castelli at a dinner. Out of the blue, Leo told me, “You don’t look like your predecessors.” (I was the first woman in the position.) “You’ll take New York city by storm and I’ll teach you American art. Come to the gallery tomorrow, I have a show with Roy [Lichtenstein]. Come for the opening and stay for the dinner.”
The American Surrealist photographer Lee Miller is the subject of the exhibition Seeing Is Believing at Gagosian, New York. Here we present a conversation on the stewardship of Miller’s legacy, her photography and writing from the frontlines of war to the pages of Vogue, and the intertwined lives of her friends, lovers, and the many artists she knew.
Hauser & Wirth – Art Gallery (November 11, 2023) = Gerhard Richter, born in 1932, is one of the most important and celebrated artists of our time. His works can be found in international collections and have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in Europe and the United States. Richter first vacationed in the Swiss Alpine village Sils, located in the Upper Engadin region, in 1989, a location he has regularly visited during both summer and winter holidays for over 25 years.
Curated by Dieter Schwarz and presented across three venues in the Upper Engadin—Nietzsche-Haus, the Segantini Museum and Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz—this momentous exhibition is the first to explore Gerhard Richter’s deep connection with the Engadin’s alpine landscape. More than seventy works from museums and private collections—including paintings, overpainted photographs, drawings and objects—are testament to the artist’s fascination with the Upper Engadin. Opening 16 December 2023, ‘Engadin’ will be on view through 13 April 2024.
The work connecting the three exhibition venues is a steel sphere that Richter had produced as an edition, on view at each site. He first presented it at Nietzsche-Haus in 1992, in an exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Each unique sphere bears the name of a mountain in the Upper Engadin. The matte, subtly reflective, almost surreal sphere delicately reflects all that surrounds it. It symbolizes the sublime yet inhospitable manifestations of nature, which are especially conspicuous in the mountains.
On view at the Segantini Museum and Hauser & Wirth are paintings that Richter created from photographs taken during his hikes in the Upper Engadin. These works mark a new chapter in his landscape painting—a genre that had always appealed to him for its supposed untimeliness. Richter’s Engadin landscapes are exemplary of the ambiguity in his painting, oscillating between a seductive transfiguration of nature and a reflection of its alienness. Particularly noteworthy is the painting ‘Wasserfall (Waterfall)’ (1997) from Kunst Museum Winterthur, a work that clearly traces Richter’s engagement with 19th-century painting, from romanticism to realism. The artist later overpainted some of the Engadin motifs, including depictions of Piz Materdell and Lake Sils, transforming them into abstract paintings with a melancholic atmosphere that responds to impressions of the landscape.
Royal Collection Trust (November 8, 2023) – Today, November 8, 2023, marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Around 235 copies of the First Folio survive today, including a copy in the Royal Library.
Watch our film to learn more about it. The First Folio is the first printed collection of William Shakespeare’s plays. It was produced in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and contains 36 of Shakespeare’s works. Without this book we may not have had texts of 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest.
Find out more about the First, Second and Third Folios in the Royal Library and which kings owed them. Find out what Charles I wrote in the Second Folio shortly before his execution…
Louisiana Channel (November 7, 2023) – Japanese artist Mariko Mori shares a look into her studio and home as well as her own artistic practice. Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo, Japan, but has lived for several years in both New York and London. Her mother was an art historian, and the young Mori was introduced to art through her.
“It seems to me that a lot of our conceptual ideas are already carried out in the past. And we’re at a point to inherit those ideas to the future.”
“When I was nine years old, I was looking through her collection of postcards of all the Western art,” Mori remembers: “Somehow I found Jackson Pollock’s no. 13 painting. And I was so thrilled. I didn’t know what abstract painting was, but I really felt freedom.” Today, Mariko Mori works in various mediums, from photography and sculpture to installation and architecture. Her studio – and home – was the first architectural project she did. The house is located at Okinawa, a tropical island south of Japan.
Inspired by the surrounding nature Mori wanted “the house to be an extension of that. A part of nature.” The untraditional shape of the house is eye-catching: “Originally, I was thinking of just building an architecture building, but it became more like a sculpture or form,” she says and continues: “The shape tried to accommodate the wind coming from the north.” This explains why the building is smaller in one part and bigger in another.
Mariko Mori is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her photographs and videos of her hybridized future self, often presented in various guises and featuring traditional Japanese motifs. Her work often explores themes of technology, spirituality and transcendence.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
Apollo Magazine (November 23, 2023) – Political satire is by its nature ephemeral: it reacts to events and personalities and moves quickly on. Yet James Gillray’s (1756–1815) excoriating attacks on William Pitt, Charles James Fox, George III, the Prince Regent and a whole cavalcade of Georgian public figures retain their sting more than two centuries after he dreamed them up. In his sumptuously illustrated study of Gillray, Tim Clayton explains why.
Fine Arts Museums of San Franc
Sotheby’s
Hauser & Wirth – Art Gallery
Boomers Daily 