Caravaggio and beyond: exhibitions in US, Europe, Australia

There are rich pickings this holiday season for arts aficionados, whether travelling abroad or staying put.

A visitor views a work at the Hieronymus Bosch exhibition in Berlin’s Gemaldegalerie. Picture: David von Becker.

This has been an eventful year for Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, starting around Easter with the flurry of excitement about a picture found in an attic that was claimed to be an original Caravaggio but was quite obviously a copy by another hand of the famous Judith Beheading Holofernes. Then the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid showed Caravaggio and the Painters of the North from June to September. And now two important exhibitions in London and New York focus on his legacy.

Beyond Caravaggio, at The National Gallery in London, shows works by Caravaggio and his followers in Italy and the northern countries, drawn mainly from public and private collections in England, Scotland and Ireland, augmented with a few American loans. The show includes some masterpieces by Caravaggio and other important figures, but is particularly interesting as an opportunity to see many pictures from smaller or private collections, and to realise yet again how certain themes that Caravaggio dealt with once or twice, such as card cheats or gypsies, became the stock in trade of later imitators.

Meanwhile, and with a rather unfortunate coincidence of title, the Metropolitan Museum in New York has Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio. Valentin (1591-1632) was Caravaggio’s most interesting direct follower, although he did not arrive in Rome until after the latter’s death, with a distinctive sensibility, a poetic depth that went far beyond most of his contemporaries, as well as higher ambitions: although initially a master of genre subjects such as tavern scenes, he also aspired to the seriousness of history painting.

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Orazio Gentileschi from Beyond Caravaggio at London’s National Gallery.

In the 1620s, indeed, Valentin de Boulogne and another young Frenchman, Nicolas Poussin, were regarded as the two most promising emerging artists in Rome; but while Poussin went on to become a giant, Valentin’s career was cut short by his untimely death in 1632. And while Poussin remained a hero to modernists like Cezanne, and some other contemporaries such as Georges de La Tour, with his idiosyncratic blend of naturalism and abstract form, were rediscovered in the context of the new realism of the 1930s, Valentin was relatively overlooked. This exhibition, with a scholarly catalogue of the highest quality, marks the belated rehabilitation of a great painter as well as a deepening of our knowledge of one of the most important periods in art history.

The Met also has important exhibitions devoted to an 18th-century French artist with Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant, and to a 20th-century German artist with Max Beckmann in New York. Perhaps most intriguingly, though, the museum takes us back to a much earlier time and a place charged with symbolic meaning for so many peoples and faiths in Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven.

Among other international exhibitions of art-historical significance are Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt at the National Gallery in Washington, which will be followed at the same museum by Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence — a comprehensive exhibition of the distinctive Florentine style of polychromatic ceramic sculpture. The Staedel in Frankfurt is showing Watteau: The Draughtsman and The Battle of the Sexes: Franz von Stuck to Frida Kahlo.

In Paris the Grand Palais has a trio of exhibitions devoted to the avant-garde in Mexico, Henri Fantin-Latour and Herge, the creator of Tintin. The most remarkable exhibition in Paris, however, is probably Icons of Modern Art at the new Fondation Louis Vuitton. This exhibition brings together important works from the last decades of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century that were assembled by Sergei Shchukin, a wealthy collector and art lover; the collection was confiscated during the Russian Revolution and later broken up under Stalin, so the works are being seen together for the first time in well over half a century.

Another collection that suffered from the disapproval and censorship of a revolutionary regime is that of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran; works of modern and contemporary art acquired in the time of the Shah were largely deemed unsuitable for exhibition after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but attitudes have grown more liberal in recent years, and now more than 60 of the more important pieces will be shown in an exhibition at the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin.

The Gemaldegalerie, in partnership with the Kupferstichkabinett, also has an exhibition on Hieronymus Bosch and His Pictorial World in the 16th and 17th Centuries to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of this apparently eccentric but highly sophisticated painter best known for his visionary, intricate and proto-surreal compositions such as The Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado, with its disquieting depiction of the earthly paradise and even more disturbing evocations of sinful humanity and its subsequent grisly punishment in hell.

A view of the Valentin de Boulogne exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Picture: AFP.

An even more dramatic story of the impact of war and revolution on art collecting and museums is told in an exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome: Il Museo universale marks the 200th anniversary of the return of hundreds of paintings and sculptures looted from churches, convents and palaces by the French army in the time of Napoleon. The return to Italy of so many masterpieces that had been rendered homeless by the suppression of monasteries led to the creation of some of the most important museums in Italy today, including the Brera in Milan and the Accademia in Venice.

Back in London, meanwhile, the Tate has a survey of the art of Paul Nash, while the British Museum has South Africa: The Art of a Nation and an exhibition of French Portrait Drawings from Clouet to Courbet. For something completely different, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has an exhibition devoted to the beautiful and ultimately tragic Emma Hamilton, best known as the mistress of Lord Nelson. And the National Gallery has an exhibition on the artists of the Heidelberg School: Australia’s Impressionists, although the show’s apparent premise that our painters can be understood as a variant on French impressionism is clearly misleading.

Here in Australia, there are significant exhibitions in most of our big cities over the summer period, some of which have been reviewed already, while the others will be covered over the next month or two.

In Canberra, the National Gallery’s Versailles opens this weekend and runs until Easter. The gallery also has a long-running exhibition on Artists of the Great War. The National Museum’s History of the World in 100 Objects, from the British Museum, reviewed here some weeks ago, continues until the end of January.

The AGNSW has Nude, an interesting if somewhat uneven loan exhibition from the Tate that will be discussed in a couple of weeks, as well as a survey of oriental calligraphic traditions, which was the subject of a recent column. The Museum of Contemporary Art is showing Tatsuo Miyajima: Connect with Everything and the State Library has Planting Dreams, an exhibition devoted to the art of the garden that is the subject of next week’s column.

The National Gallery of Victoria has a number of substantial exhibitions, including its main summer show devoted to David Hockney, who, according to the press release, is “Britain’s greatest living painter”; there is a lot to be said for longevity in the art business. They also have a retrospective of John Olsen, for whom an equivalent claim is made in Australia. Meanwhile Bruce Armstrong’s evocative sculptures will continue to occupy landings and stairwells at the NGV Australia until the end of January.

British artist David Hockney’s exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Picture: Aaron Francis

Later in the year, the NGV will host what looks like an impressive exhibition of work by Vincent van Gogh, who has also been the subject of controversy recently, as readers may have noticed: a sketchbook has turned up, and even been published by a reputable French publisher, though many experts consider it a forgery. I haven’t seen the originals, but the few examples that have been reproduced online look ­suspicious, and the authenticity of the sketchbook is rejected by the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

(One of the problems for forgers of van Gogh is that we know so much about the last few years in which he painted his most famous works: day-by-day reports to his brother Theo, often accompanied by thumbnail sketches of the work done that day, leave few dark spots to be filled by speculation and extrapolation. Anything claimed to be a lost sketchbook would have to fit like a key into the pattern of known paintings and sketches, and yet too neat a fit would look contrived.)

Elsewhere in Melbourne, the Australian centre for the Moving Image is showing Thenabouts, a survey of the film work of Philippe Parreno — a kind of cinematic retrospective that will be controlled live by a studio technician, producing ever-new variations. And the Heide Museum has an exhibition devoted to Georgia O’Keeffe, Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith, which will later come to the Art Gallery of NSW.

In Brisbane, No 1 Neighbour, reviewed here last week, is a survey of recent art in Papua New Guinea, from the last decade of Australian rule to the present. In Perth, Travellers and Traders at the Maritime Museum in Fremantle is a fascinating exhibition about the Dutch connection with Western Australia and, more broadly, the trading networks the Dutch established between Europe and East Asia during their heyday in the 17th century.

Finally, Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art has an exhibition I have not had a chance to see yet, in which four scientists have been invited to act as curators and to ponder On the Origins of Art. The idea is not as surprising as it may seem, for the instinct to make art, to produce significant symbols and to create patterns, decorating functional objects with ornamentation, seems as old as humanity itself. In that sense the origin of art is inseparable from that of the mind and the imagination in their fully human forms.

WHAT TO SEE AND WHERE THIS SUMMER

INTERNATIONAL

Beyond Caravaggio

National Gallery, London, to January 15

Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio

Metropolitan Museum, New York, to January 16

Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant

Metropolitan Museum to January 8

Max Beckmann in New York

Metropolitan Museum to February 20

Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every
People Under Heaven

Metropolitan Museum to January 8

Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt

National Gallery, Washington, DC, to January 2

Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence

National Gallery, February 5 to June 4

Watteau: The Draughtsman

Staedel Museum, Frankfurt, to January 15

The Battle of the Sexes:
Franz von Stuck to Frida Kahlo

Staedel Museum to March 19

Herge

Grand Palais, Paris, to January 15

Fantin-Latour

Grand Palais to February 19

Mexique 1900-1950

Grand Palais to January 23

Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin collection

Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, to February 20

The Tehran Collection

Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, January to March

Hieronymus Bosch and His Pictorial World in the 16th and 17th centuries

Gemaeldegalerie, to February 19

Il Museo universale

Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, December 16 to March 12

Paul Nash

Tate Britain, London, to March 5

South Africa: The Art of a Nation

British Museum, London, to February 26

French portrait drawings
from Clouet to Courbet

British Museum, to January 29

Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, to April 17

Australia’s Impressionists

National Gallery, London, to March 26

NATIONAL

Canberra

Versailles: Treasures from the Palace

National Gallery of Australia to April 17

Artists of the Great War

National Gallery of Australia to June

History of the World in 100 Objects

National Museum of Australia to January 29

Sydney

Nude

Art Gallery of NSW to February 5

Beyond Words: Calligraphic Traditions of Asia

Art Gallery of NSW to April 17

Planting Dreams

State Library of NSW to January 15

Melbourne

David Hockney: Current

National Gallery of Victoria to March 13

Bruce Armstrong

National Gallery of Victoria to January 29

John Olsen: The You Beaut Country

National Gallery of Victoria to February 12

Thenabouts (Philippe Parreno)

ACMI to March 13

O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith

Heide Museum of Modern Art to February 19 (later AGNSW)

Brisbane

No 1 Neighbour: Art of Papua New Guinea

Queensland Art Gallery to January 29

Perth

Travellers and Traders in the
Indian Ocean World

Maritime Museum, Fremantle, to April 23

Hobart

On the Origins of Art

MONA to April 17