Happy Fourth of July! I always have a lot of fun when I visit an - TopicsExpress



          

Happy Fourth of July! I always have a lot of fun when I visit an art museum and see paintings Ive never seen before. Today was very special that way. I grew up in the 1950s when kids of my generation memorized the stats on the backs of baseball cards. I was no exception. We each had our heroes. Ill still fight anyone who tries to tell me that Mickey Mantle was a better baseball player than Roger Maris. I loved Roger Maris. As I got older, this stat collecting shifted to another passion: art history. Today, I got to visit the New (its been around for years now) Getty Museum up in the northern hills that overlook Los Angeles. I had been to the Getty Villa Museum many times in the past. But today was my first time at this 2nd newer Getty art museum. I walked into a room full of Rembrandts, maybe 5 or 6, which is special in itself. On the walls of that room were other Dutch artists paintings from the same time period. I was drawn to one in particular by Jan Lievens, The Card Players Its an awkward piece as masterpieces go... the figure proportions and perspective is a little dicey. The technique is crude in places. When I first saw prints of this painting a few years ago, I was convinced it was probably a modern forgery. Before this image, I had only been familiar with Lievens later more accomplished works. It wasnt even officially attributed to Jan Lievens until relatively recently. Before that, it was thought this painting was done by a painter from Utrecht, Gerrit van Honthurst. In 1944, it was part of private art collection in the home of Ovide Ghislain, an art collector. Ovide was shot dead and his house was looted by Nazi troups who, strangely took everything but this painting. It was left hanging in the house for decades collecting dirt and grime. A few years ago, Mr. Ghislains grandson, who collects modern art, became curious about this dark old painting hanging high on one of his homes walls and had it examined more closely. Jan Six, an old master painting specialist from Sothebys was called to the house and he climbed a ladder to reach the painting for a closer look. After removing dirt and grime with his own spit, he discovered Jan Lievens initials in the upper left corner of the painting. It took a few more years of research and study before the painting was officially declared an original Jan Lievens. The painting I was convinced was a forgery was actually painted by a very young teenager, not even in his twenties yet. If you look closely at the painting, you will see a face of someone familiar holding a pipe and smiling. A very young Rembrandt, who was a friend and rival of Lievens. I looked at the info card hanging next to the painting. No mention of any of this is on that card. It mentioned that Lievens had recently returned from Italy where he had seen some work by Caravaggio and was emulating Caravaggios single light source technique with a candle that was hidden behind the foreground figure... I looked around the room and people were casually drifting past each painting moving to the next. The Rembrandts drew the most attention and seemed to suck the air out of the room a bit. And I suddenly realized, how different each persons experience in that room must be. Some of them might be into art history and odd factoids about paintings as I am. Others just see nicely rendered pictures. Who knows, maybe today people who know more about these paintings than I do walked in front of them. You wouldnt be able to tell. Im 61 years old and can keep my emotions bottled up...sometimes. I was given an armed escort in 1976 at the LA art museum after getting all exuberant while talking about a Rembrandt portrait and I just reached up and tapped it on its nose. Since that mortifying moment Ive learned to curb my enthusiasm in these great places. lol. I know there are taped tours you can buy. I know that museums have staff members who have awesome credentials and knowledge about the paintings. But in a perfect heaven like museum, there would be an old nut job like me standing next to every painting asking people to stop and take a second look, too eager to tell a story or two about the painting and its history. If I were to die and go to heaven, I would take that kind of job. My son came into the room near the end of my visit there and I tried to tell him about how each artist ground their own paints and how its impossible today to get the same miniature like details using standard art store tube paints, but I got a polite nod and a look that told me that hed rather be moving along. My son Andrew later told me that the museum guard did look surprised and alarmed when I started talking about how I once thought the painting to be a modern forgery. *impish grin Anyway, as usual. Im having the time of my life. :-)
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 05:05:12 +0000

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