ArtCurious News This Week: October 28, 2022
Happy Friday, listeners! It’s Jennifer, ArtCurious host, FINALLY back at you this week with our short-form Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and interesting news tidbits. This is ArtCurious News this Week, and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history. Today is Friday, October 28, 2022.
This week’s stories:
The Art Newspaper: Jo Bonger: the woman who made Van Gogh famous as one of the greatest artists of all time
New York Times: Damaged by an Explosion, the Canvas Emerged a Gentileschi
The Art Newspaper: Biggest ever Vermeer show gets bigger: Rijksmuseum announces further loans for blockbuster exhibition
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Episode Transcript
Hi there, everyone. It’s Jennifer, ArtCurious host, and see? I told you I’d eventually be back at you with our short-form Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and interesting news tidbits. And here I am, yay! Finally, right? Okay, let’s get to it. This is ArtCurious News this Week, and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history.
Today is Friday, October 28, 2022. And I had a number of interesting stories to choose from this week. I wanted to start with something very positive, something which I actually alluded to earlier this spring when I released our series called “Cherchez La Femme” here on the podcast, all about repurposing a misogynistic French phrase in favor of “finding the women” who are sometimes left out of the art history books. One of my favorite episodes from that season was about Jo Van Gogh-Bonger, the sister-in-law of Vincent van Gogh, who is truly the woman responsible for bringing that artist to the limelight, and why he’s so frequently considered one of the most popular artists year after year around the world. The news today is that the first biography of this incredible woman was released in Dutch two years by the author Hans Luijten (and forgive me, I do not speak Dutch). But happily, the English translation by Lynne Richards is now coming out next month in both the U.S. and the U.K. This book is titled Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman Who Made Vincent Famous, and I cannot wait to get my hands on this one. As you might remember from my own episode on Jo, she was married to her husband, Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, for less than two years before Vincent, and then Theo, died within six months of one another. This made Jo the heir to, among other things, Vincent’s legacy—a miniscule one at that point. But Jo knew that her husband had believed in his brother’s talent and his works of art, so as an homage to the brothers, she began tirelessly promoting Vincent’s works, and—crucially—his letters, as ways to understand those works more fully. It obviously paid off, but not without a bumpy road at times, and not without significant toil on Jo’s part. If you liked the episode I did on her, then you’ll know that this book is definitely for you. It’s going to be an awesome Christmas present for the Van Gogh fan in your life, too—so I’ve linked the book in the podcast description here, as well as on my blog, artcuriouspodcast.com, so that you can order yourself a copy. And let me know if you picked it up! I can’t wait to read it and would love to know if you enjoyed it. Yay for Jo!
For our next story, I’ve got another excellent piece of good news—an example of a happy ending from an otherwise not good situation. In summer 2020—you know, an altogether positive time in the world—an explosion at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, killing dozens and wounding hundreds more. It also felled buildings and reduced much of the surroundings to rubble. But when this happened, one particular painting in a nearby mansion was hit by shards of glass—and when people started looking closer at this painting, it made some eyebrows raise. Could this painting actually be something amazing?
The answer this week was finally revealed as yes. This painting, featuring the Grecian hero Hercules with his enslaver, the queen Omphale, who would eventually become his wife—was probably painted by none other than Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the most awesome artists, in my humble opinion, of the Italian Baroque era. You can hear all about her masterwork, Judith Beheading Holofernes, in episode #42 of our show. While it was announced a while back that this painting was probably a work by Gentileschi, it’s now been confirmed by several scholars. According to the New York Times, multiple Gentileschi experts, such as Sheila Barker, have seen the work either in person or in reproduction, and as Barker noted, quote, “I don’t know of anyone who has a dissenting opinion.” Unquote. Similarly, Davide Gasparotto, the senior curator of paintings at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, says, quote, “this painting is definitely by Artemisia. It’s a very powerful, convincing painting—one of her most ambitious in terms of size and the complexity of the figures.” Unquote. And it definitely fits in with Artemisia’s typical take on women as the strong protagonists of her paintings. In what the Times refers to as a unique twist, it is Omphale, not Hercules, who is the central heroic figure, which, I’ve gotta admit, I definitely love.
As you might guess, the painting is currently in a terrible state, with many lacerations and pitting sustained during the 2020 blast. And it could not stay at “home,” per se, in Lebanon while the mansion undergoes extensive repairs. The owner of the home and the painting, Roderick Sursock Cochrane, thus agreed to an extended loan of the work to the Getty Museum in exchange for repairs and cleaning of the painting from its stellar conservation team. If all goes to plan, the Getty hopes to exhibit the work in their galleries by early 2024. Showing this piece as an Artemisia Gentileschi will bring the number of known existing works by the artist to a total of 61.
I’ve got one more story to share with you today—and it’s made me want to get my suitcase pre-packed for a trip to the Netherlands, and you might want to join me. So please support me and the show by listening to a couple of ads, and we’ll be right back. Thanks for listening!
Welcome back to ArtCurious, and our News this Week. For our last story today, as I mentioned before the break, I’m pretty much just packing my bags now for a trip to the Netherlands next Spring. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is holding the biggest show in history of the works of the famed Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer next year, scheduled to be on view from February 10 through June 4, 2023. Here’s why this show is such a big deal. There are currently only about 35 works of art known to be in existence by this incredibly fascinating artist, made famous to many art newbies via the movie and the book, Girl with a Pearl Earring. Currently, the Rijksmuseum has confirmed that they will be showing—at least—28 of these 35(ish) confirmed works. The last time a large-scale Vermeer show was on view was at the Mauritshuis in the Hague in 1996, and that show—the largest during its time—featured 23 works. This, in essence, brings almost every known Vermeer work into the same building at the same time, which is an incredible feat, and a huge opportunity to learn all about the master’s experiences, techniques, subject matter, and so much more, all at once, and with your own eyes—and a rare one at that. It’s something that, as the Rijksmuseum’s director, Taco Dibbits, notes, “quote, “Seeing all the works together will be an experience even Vermeer never had.” Unquote. Also, can I just say, Taco Dibbits? Best name ever. Most of the six remaining works that won’t be on view, by the by, are due to their fragile condition, stipulations from the items bequest that noted restrictions on loaning the work, or, as is famously the case of the Isabella Stewart Gardner collection, the work has disappeared.
The Art Newspaper reports that the idea for this exhibition came up because of a very practical reason. The Frick Collection in New York, which houses three of Vermeer’s works, is normally unable to lend the works off of view, but the Frick is in the process of a building project, meaning its priceless works had to be removed from view. Thus, the Rijksmuseum stepped in with a solution: if you can’t show them, could we? And thus, history is being made. I have to say that I don’t currently have a trip planned to Amsterdam, but I think I might have to tack on an Amsterdam trip just because, hey. Vermeer. That’s rad. If you want to know more about Vermeer and Girl with a Pearl Earring, I’ve got you covered. That’s episode #87 of ArtCurious, available for your listening ears.
Alright, friends. Thanks for listening to this segment—our short-form news recaps—that will help round out our art historical knowledge here on ArtCurious. I had a LOT of stories to choose from, including –yes—some snippets about the ongoing Just Stop Oil protests that have been targeting artworks during their actions, but I did just talk about that on both Instagram and YouTube, so check those short-form videos for some of my thoughts there, but I’ll be sure to discuss more in the coming weeks. As always, if you liked this episode, please let me know. You can hit me up on Facebook or Instagram (I’m quicker to respond on Insta, FYI) or email me via the contact form on my website, artcuriouspodcast.com. There are a LOT of ways to connect with me and the show right now—you can travel with me on an upcoming trip to Italy in May 2023, you can watch my fun and wide-ranging YouTube channel, you can take my audio course, “Breaking Barriers: Women Artists of Renaissance Europe,” and you can help us for free by downloading to our episodes. And please tell your friends. Until our next episode, I wish you all well—and stay curious!
