Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand, New York World's Fair, 1964; gelatin silver print, Collection SFMOMA, gift of Dr. L.F. Peede, Jr. All images copyright The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. 

A retrospective of work by artist Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), a photographer of American life from the 1950s through the early 1980s, shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Garry Winogrand brings together the artist's more well-known images with newly printed photographs from his unexamined archive of late work. More than half of the photographs have never been exhibited. Considered one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, Winogrand photographed cities, people, car culture, and rodeos, among other subjects, in New York, Texas and California. 

Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, 1964; gelatin silver print; Collection SFMOMA, gift of Jeffrey Fraenkel. 

He let ambiguity into his images, a mysteriousness, didn't provide interpretation, and left viewers to form their own conclusions. Early on, some considered his pictures formally "shapeless" and "random", but critics later acknowledged him for certain characteristics: tilted horizons and an eye for the haphazard.

My prints are not those kind of pictures that people easily put on their walls, they're not that window onto a nice landscape or something. They aren't. 

Garry Winogrand, John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, 1968; gelatin silver print; collection of John and Lisa Pritzker. 

Winogrand began working as a photographer while studying painting at Columbia University, supplying photographs to general interest magazines.  His career was further shaped by the new culture of photography in the context of galleries and museums. He photographed the dislocation of urban life, the rise of the suburb and the skepticism of youth. He had a considerable amount of airport work, which developed over a long time frame, from 1958 to 1983. 

Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, 1964; gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. 

It's not how I do anything. Maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it's something else. I photograph to find out what things look like, photographed.

Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, ca. 1980-83; gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. 

The current exhibition provides a reevaluation of Winogrand's career arc, accomplishments and contribution to 20th century photography. On view through June 2 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street. 

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675, Delft), Girl with a Pearl Earring, ca. 1665, oil on canvas, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. All images courtesy of the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

The de Young Museum, San Francisco, is the first North American venue to present Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis, a selection of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. The museum hosts 35 paintings highlighting the artistic achievements of the Dutch Golden Age, spanning the 17th century, including Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and works by Rembrandt van Rijn. Sometimes called "the Dutch Mona Lisa," Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of only 36 known paintings by Vermeer and rarely travels outside the Netherlands. 

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669, Leiden), Portrait of Rembrandt with a Gorget, ca. 1629, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

During the Dutch Golden Age, a significant shift occurred in the technique of painting and in subject matter. Secular subjects replaced religious themes. Portraiture focused on ordinary people, had a more relaxed approach and lacked the formality of traditional portraiture. Similarly, genre scenes depicted everyday life in the Netherlands. 

Artists established a penchant for careful study and naturalistic rendering, in opposition to the idealized beauty of classicism. In the entrepreneurial culture of the Dutch Republic, they painted more often for the open market than for patrons and sought out works of art on the market as objects of study. Amsterdam supported a lively art and luxury goods market. 

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750, Amsterdam), Vase of Flowers, 1700, oil on canvas, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

Nearly all Dutch artists of the time (excluding Rembrandt's art, which had an exceptional range) specialized, some narrowly. A painter of still life might concentrate on a particular class of objects, as evident in the works of Rachel Ruysch, an artist who specialized in still life paintings of flowers, less three-dimensional and more decorative. She served as court painter to the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm in Dusseldorf. 

Willem Heda (1590-1680, Haarlem), Still Life with a Roemer and Watch, 1629, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

Willem Heda's still life composed of a fish, capers, lemon, bread roll, hazelnuts, wineglasses, silver tazza, and timepiece features neutral grey and brown hues. Monochrome still lifes flourished in Haarlem from the 1620s onward. Heda was one of the leading practitioners. He excelled at painting richly nuanced works describing a variety of textures and light reflections on shiny surfaces.

Types of paintings in the exhibition are strongly associated with Dutch art of the Golden Age: Landscape, genre, still life, portraiture, and history painting. A body of work original in approach and varied in subject matter. The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, which has not lent a large selection of works from its holdings in nearly thirty years, is undergoing an extensive renovation that makes this opportunity possible. On view through June 2 at the de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. 

Rembrandt's Century

Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669), The Landscape with the Three Trees, 1643, etching, drypoint and engraving, copyright Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 

Drawn from the collection of works on paper in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Rembrandt's Century features a wide range of artworks from the 17th century. At the time, printmaking was of particular cultural importance. "More than any other fine objects, prints circulated extensively throughout the 17th century art world, broadcasting artistic, political and scientific development far and wide," says curator James Ganz. 

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Shell (Conus Marmoreus), 1650, etching, drypoint and engraving, copyright Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 

The exhibition explores contributions Rembrandt, his predecessors and followers made to the print culture of the era, through portraiture, still life, natural history, scenes of daily life, and landscape. Engravings, etchings, ink drawings, and watercolors illustrate a range of printmaking and drawing techniques. 

On view through June 2 at the de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. 

Color, Line, Light

Eugène Delacroix, The Normandy Cliffs, 1849-1852, watercolor and graphite, Dyke Collection. 

At the National Gallery of Art, Color, Line, Light: French Drawings, Watercolors, and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac presents works that illustrate the development of modern draftsmanship during the 19th century in France, a creative period of diversity and inventiveness. 

The exhibition is organized chronologically into five stylistic movements that flourished during the 19th century: Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism, Impressionism, the Nabis and Symbolists, and Neo-Impressionism. The works encompass most types of drawings artists made--compositional sketches, figure studies and finished pieces, as well as a range of subjects--landscape, genre, portraits, and interiors. 

Romanticism in French art thrived during the first half of the 19th century, with Eugène Delacroix, above, as its leading practitioner. Color played an important role in drawings, with watercolor, pastel and colored papers used frequently to heighten the visual effect. Nature was a favorite subject. 

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, 1901, pastel, Dyke Collection. 

Many Impressionist painters were accomplished draftsmen. Although they drew in a variety of media, pastel allowed them the same degree of freedom as oils. Claude Monet's Waterloo Bridge (1901) shows how effectively and subtly he could express the qualities of light and color with pastels. 

Pierre Bonnard, The Promenade, c. 1893, pen and black ink with black wash and watercolor on paper applied to canvas, Dyke Collection. 

In the late 1880s, a group of French artists calling themselves the "Nabis," after the Hebrew word for prophet, sought to create a new kind of art that was no longer centered on the depiction of reality. Among the founding members of the Nabi brotherhood were Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Their aesthetic was influenced in part by the Symbolists, who transformed natural objects into dreamlike images.

Édouard Vuillard, The Dressmaker, 1891, pastel, Dyke Collection. 

Paul Signac, Eucalyptus Trees at Antibes, 1910, black ink with watercolor and gouache, Dyke Collection. 

Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac produced brilliantly colored canvases with individualistic results. Relocating to a small town in Provence, his subject matter became focused on the Mediterranean coast. 

Although the tradition of drawing in France was well established by the early 1800s, increasingly in the 19th century drawings became widely valued and exhibited. Their new status was officially recognized when they were given a separate category at the official Paris Salon exhibition. 

On view through May 26 at the National Gallery of Art, on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue N.W. 

Royal Treasures from the Louvre

Covered vase with handles, ca. 1630, with additions ca. 1680. Lapis lazuli, silver gilt. Attributed to François Roberday, Musée du Louvre, Département des Objets d'Art. Copyright RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY/Jean-Gilles Berizzi. 

An exhibition at San Francisco's Legion of Honor presents a collection of decorative arts from the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Offering views into the splendor of the French court, Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette includes objects owned by the French monarchy from the time of Louis XIV until the Revolution of 1789. 

One of the highlights of the exhibition is the grouping of Gemmes de la Couronne, Louis XIV's personal collection of hard-stone vases mounted in gold and gemstones. Made of amethyst, agate, amber, jade, lapis lazuli, and rock crystal, many of these objects were displayed in rooms specifically designed for them in the royal apartments at Versailles. 

Plate (assiette à guirlandes) decorated with green ribbons, 1757, Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory. Soft-paste porcelain. Musée du Louvre, Département des Objets d'Art, gift of Albert and Paul Pannier, 1918. Copyright RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY/Jean-Gilles Berizzi. 

By the time of Louis XV, porcelain had become a symbol of a country's prestige and the manufactory at Sévres, still producing porcelain today, was acquired by the king in the 1750s. Often presented to foreign rulers, these objects would play an important role in statecraft. "A large dinner service decorated with green ribbons would cement the alliance of France with its traditional enemy, Austria, an alliance that would eventually lead to a significant realignment of the great powers of Europe," says curator Martin Chapman. 

Coffee grinder, 1756-1757. Jean Ducrollay, goldsmith. Gold in three colors, steel and ivory. Musée du Louvre, Département des Objets d'Art. Copyright RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY/Daniel Arnaudet. 

"They lived in smaller rooms and the objects produced for them were finely and intensely decorated because they were so close to the viewer," says Chapman. Many of these objects were designed to be used by the owners themselves, such as the gold coffee grinder made for Madame de Pompadour. 

Louis XVI put parts of the royal collection on view to the public and acquired decorative art pieces for the foundation of a new museum in the Louvre, which opened in August of 1793. "The Louvre's Département des Objets d'Art was originally founded during the French Revolution with objects from the former royal collections," says Chapman. "We are fortunate today to be able to see some of these magnificent royal objects that have been recovered in this exhibition." 

On view through March 17 at the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco. 

Birds in the Art of Japan

Three Crows in Flight; Two Egrets at Rest, Shibata Zeshin (Japanese, 1807-1891), Meiji period (1868-1912), late 19th century, two-panel folding screen, colored lacquer and white pigment on gilt paper. Fishbein-Bender Collection, gift of T. Richard Fishbein and Estelle P. Bender, 2011. All images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Showcasing works in various media from medieval times to the present, the exhibition Birds in the Art of Japan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores how Japanese artists have depicted birds of various species--from crows, ravens and cranes to mynahs, egrets and magpies. Displays of paintings are juxtaposed with modern and contemporary textiles, ceramics, lacquerware, and bamboo art. 

For this folding screen painting, above, artist Shibata Zeshin balanced the two panels with contrasting scenes of three crows in flight and two egrets at rest, with the black and white forms counterbalancing each other. The white of the egrets was accomplished by cutting out the gold leaf layer to show the white paper beneath. 

Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons, Momoyama period (1573-1615), second half of the 16th century, one of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color and gold on gilt paper. 

Across the twelve panels of this pair of folding screens, a profusion of bird and flower motifs celebrates the cyclical progression of the seasons. The leftward movement of the design transitions from springtime flowers to snow-covered pine framing a pair of cranes. 

Japanese artists from the earliest times have depicted birds, often with literary, religious or auspicious connotations drawn from Chinese precedents. Screen and sliding door paintings with bird-and-flower themes, in both ink and color, were created for palaces and temple settings and have remained popular with artists of every school through the Edo period (1615-1868). 

Peacocks and Peonies, Tani Buncho (Japanese, 1763-1840), Edo period (1615-1868), 1820, hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, Charles Stewart Smith Collection, gift of Mrs. Charles Stewart Smith, Charles Stewart Smith Jr. and Howard Caswell Smith, in memory of Charles Stewart Smith, 1914. 

Depicted on a hanging scroll, this pair of peacocks with peonies, representing wealth and worldly power, may have been an official commission by a patron. The artist, Tani Buncho, had learned various Chinese painting styles when in the service of a statesman. Buncho borrowed the pictorial vocabulary of birds and flowers from Japanese painters who had studied the Chinese treatment of these subjects. 

An additional gallery in the exhibition displays an array of ukiyo-e woodblock prints and illustrated books. The Japanese art of ukiyo-e developed in the city of Edo, now Tokyo, during the Edo period and was utilized as a printmaking medium. Images were a collaborative effort of three individuals: an artist who designed and drew the artworks on paper, a carver who carved designs into a series of woodblocks and a printer who applied pigments to the woodblocks and printed them on crafted paper.

On view through July 28 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 

Matisse: In Search of True Painting

Interior in Yellow and Blue, 1946, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Copyright 2012 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

Interior in Venetian Red, 1946, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Copyright 2012 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

Throughout his career, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) repainted and reevaluated his work. He used his completed canvases as tools, repeating compositions in order to compare effects, gauge his progress, and, as he put it, "push further and deeper into true painting."

While this manner of working with pairs, trios and series is not unique to Matisse, his methodical progress from one painting to the next is striking. Matisse: In Search of True Painting presents this particular aspect of Matisse's painting process by showcasing 49 canvases. 

Matisse copied old master paintings, yet was also receptive to the contemporary pictures he encountered in galleries. He was particularly intrigued by the work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Paul Signac (1863-1935). Matisse borrowed stylistic elements from the two artists. 

His stylistic exploration sparked the creation of pairs in which neither painting is entirely indebted to another artist. Seen together, the pairs underscore issues that intrigued him: means of representation, the role of color, the idea of what constitutes a finished canvas. Painting in pairs on canvases of the same size offered Matisse alternate solutions to any given pictorial challenge. 

Large Red Interior, 1948, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Copyright 2012 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

Interior with an Egyptian Curtain, 1948, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Copyright 2012 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

The theme of the studio interior--a consistent motif in Matisse's oeuvre throughout his career--was addressed in Matisse's final painted series, created from 1944 to 1948. They were first shown at Pierre Matisse's  New York gallery, displayed unframed so that viewers would feel embraced and transported by the color. 

On view through March 17 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York.