Date: Fri 09-Jul-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: MARYG

Quick Words:

Baselitz-acquisition-CMA

Full Text:

Major German Painting Acquired by CMA

CLEVELAND, OHIO -- Kate M. Sellers, acting director of the Cleveland Museum of

Art (CMA), announced June 9 that the museum's most recent acquisitions include

the painting "View Out the Window" (1982) by contemporary German master Georg

Baselitz. Acquisitions also include several important gifts of art from

friends of the CMA in memory of director Robert P. Bergman, who died last

month. A vessel that Bergman had particularly wished to add to the museum's

renowned medieval collection has also been acquired.

"Bob Bergman loved introducing the museum's public to unfamiliar works of art

from all cultures through CMA's acquisitions process. It is with a mixture of

pride and sadness and deep gratitude to our donors that we present these

latest acquisitions," said Sellers.

The Baselitz painting adds another of the leading post-war German artists to a

collection in which Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter are already represented

by major paintings. It is a classic topsy-turvy Baselitz image, over eight

feet high, of a haunting, upside-down man's face next to a window view of a

bare black and red tree.

Tom E. Hinson, CMA's curator of contemporary art and photography, described

Baselitz as the successor to Willem de Kooning in his "desire to move the

physicality of abstract painting toward a new kind of figuration." Elaborating

on "View Out the Window," Hinson said, "Its great visual and visceral

qualities come from the strength of the facial expression, the intense palette

dominated by acid yellows, the persona of the inverted figure, and the

painting's rich surface."

The tiny medieval flask that captured Bergman's imagination before his illness

is an "ampulla" from early Byzantine Palestine (about 600 ad). Only two other

ampullae are known to be in the United States. Ampullae were made for

Christian pilgrims to carry oils, sanctified by contact with sacred relics, on

their journeys home from the Holy Land. Like other rare examples made of lead,

this includes two of the earliest images relating to the life of Christ -- a

crucifixion scene on one side and ascension on the other.

CMA chief curator Diane De Grazi recalled Bergman's conversations with her

about this work of art. "Bob couldn't put this piece out of his mind once he

saw it. He seemed to suspect it was his own scholarly bent toward life in

Byzantine Europe, and his interest in art intended for ordinary people, more

than the aesthetic value of the rather primitive relief sculptures on this

piece, that attracted him. Its potency as a religious object also held him.

After his death, none of the curators or trustees involved in the acquisitions

process could imagine letting it go to some other collection."

It will particularly complement CMA's famous tapestry "Icon of the Virgin"

(Byzantine, Sixth Century), which Bergman often cited as a personal favorite

among the museum's holdings.

Significant works of art donated in Bergman's memory include three gifts of

Asian art: an Eighth Century Japanese stoneware jug with oblong body; a

"spirit house," table, and chair that are the central elements of a memorial

altar used in a Korean Confucian home of the Eighteenth Century; and a

Seventeenth Century Korean folding screen, "Buddhist Deities."

The other donations are modern American works: the large color etching "Curved

Plane/Figure I" (1994) by Robert Mangold, and a 1950s copper enamel punch bowl

and ladle by long-time Cleveland artists Doric Hall and Kalman Kubinyi.

In addition to these timely gifts, CMA has just received the first 16 leaves

of an entire collection of about 80 medieval illuminated manuscripts promised

to the museum by retired Vassar College faculty member Jeanne Miles Blackburn.

In this first group are several "historiated" initial letters on vellum,

including an "S" from a Fifteenth Century choral book whose illustrations,

within the double curves of the letter, tell the story of the birth of the

Virgin Mary.

Stephen N. Fliegel, assistant curator of medieval art, is planning an

exhibition of the whole collection for this coming winter. Describing CMA's

existing collection as one of the finest collections of medieval manuscript

pages in the country, Fliegal said, "Jeanne's collecting priorities have been

similar to CMA's -- she has sought single-page masterpieces in tempera, ink,

and gold leaf. I'm delighted that she has made Cleveland the permanent home

for her treasures."

CMA also accepted the offer of five works in glass and one ceramic -- all by

living artists -- from Francine and Benson Pilloff, whose extensive collection

and whose support were critical to the major 1997 exhibition "Glass Today:

American Studio Glass from Cleveland Collections." Most are large-scale works,

including William Morris's mold-blown glass "Standing Stone," nearly four feet

tall, which was included in the 1997 exhibition.

In addition to the donated screen and altar furnishings, the CMA Korean

collection has also grown by three other works: a Seventeenth Century glazed

white porcelain wine flask, the only example known in the West with underglaze

painting, in this case a lively decoration of bamboo and plum blossom motifs;

an Eighteenth Century panel painting, "Portrait of an Official," meant for

solemn Confucian rites expressing gratitude to one's predecessors in

government; and a Fifteenth to Sixteenth Century hanging scroll, "Grapes," a

favored still-life subject for Korean painters.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, well-known for beautifully expressive drawings of heads,

created the red-chalk study of "Caracalla" -- which has just joined CMA's

collection -- for his once-controversial salon painting, "Septimius Severus

Reproaching Caracalla," now in the Louvre (Paris), one of the most important

French paintings of the Eighteenth Century.

Greuze portrayed Septimius' conspiratorial son Caracalla with head downturned

in anger and shame. As curator of drawings, chief curator De Grazia is

responsible for this acquisition as well as "End of the Harvest," a late

Nineteenth Century drawing by new-Impressionist artist Charles Angrand. De

Grazia described this picture of haystacks as "a hazy, ethereal, black-chalk

drawing, beautiful as a composition -- an important addition because it is a

masterpiece by a less well-known artist."

CMA has one other drawing by Greuze, a moralizing family scene of an

unwed-mother-to-be called "The Guilty and Repentant Daughter." "End of the

Harvest" is CMA's first work by Angrand. A woodcut by the Old Master Lucas

Cranach the Elder, court painter to Freidrich the Wise, Elector of Saxony,

depicts "Saint George and the Dragon," (circa 1512). This rare, early

impression was printed before any breaks in the woodblock had developed. In

remarkably fresh condition, it has never been bleached or pressed, so the

paper is still embossed from the block and each fine line is sharp and clear.

Major photographs ranging over the roughly 150-year history of the medium

joined the collection also. A sumptuously colored, monumental two-part

Cibachrome print by Sarah Charlesworth is the enigmatic "Buddha of

Immeasurable Light" (1987, printed 1999). It combines an image of a Japanese

Buddha sculpture with a circular ceiling opening revealing a patch of blue

sky. A set of 33 vintage gelatin silver prints by James VanDerZee chronicles

life among his Harlem neighbors and clients in a variety of studio and

location shots.

CMA is located at 11150 East Boulevard. Telephone, 216/421-7340.