Peter
Paul Rubens was among the most influential artists in 17th-century
Europe. Despite a childhood marred by a scandal that landed his father in
prison, Rubens rose to become not only a prominent court painter in the Spanish
Netherlands but also a lauded diplomat who worked across Western Europe. With
countless biographies written about the artist and exhibitions of his work
continuing into the present day, the legacy of this Flemish Baroque artist is
hard to overstate.
In this episode, Getty curator Anne Woollett discusses the life of Rubens through 17th-century biographies by three authors: Giovanni Baglione, Joachim von Sandrart, and Roger de Piles.
Reflections: Stephanie Schrader on Cornelius Saftleven
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We’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These short recordings feature stories related to our daily lives.
This week, Getty drawings curator Stephanie Schrader considers the upside-down world of An Enchanted Cellar with Animals, made by Cornelis Saftleven around 1655 to 1670. To learn more about this artwork, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/160/
Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.
Transcript:
JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next few weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and entertaining.
STEPHANIE SCHRADER: Hi my name is Stephanie Schrader and I’m
curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. I’m recording this podcast
from a closet, during my 8th or 9th week from working at home because of the COVID-19
pandemic. And like many people with children who are working from home, I’m
hiding in here to avoid my daughter as she takes her online chemistry class in
the other room.
Normally, I look after the Dutch and Flemish drawings in our
collection, and especially now, I’m feel very fortunate that I can escape the
world of 17th century Dutch art and culture. 17th-century Dutch artists excelled
at making images that poke fun at human foolishness. And there’s one drawing in
our collection that I keep coming back to, which is speaking to me much more
vividly than it did before. It is a drawing by Cornelius Saftleven, who is
known for his animal satires and his images of hell.
This particular drawing shows a cellar full of animals doing
all different human-like activities. It is an enchanting scene with lots of
color that accentuates the animals’ curious behavior. There are chickens
standing on wooden fences as baked bread cools above them and rats warming their
feet by the fire and a chained monkey who is looking out, sort of jeering at
the viewer as overturned kitchen utensils are scattered on the floor in front
of hims. And overhead there’s a swirl of bats, who suddenly feel more menacing
as I think about the likely origins of COVID-19. The animals have taken over
here in this vaulted cellar.
But one aspect of this drawing that really stands out to me
now is a monkey who’s pretending to be a conductor and trying to wrangle a
group of owls into singing from a book that has been propped open on the floor.
These distracted owls are not interested in learning how to sing and certainly not
interested in learning from this very eager and enthusiastic monkey. As I
repeatedly remind my daughter to stay focused on her studies and to get off her
phone, I really relate to this foolish monkey trying to encourage these owls to
sing.
In my moments of frustration, though, I am grateful for this
drawing. Saftleven reminds us to laugh at the absurd, and God knows there’s
enough absurd out there. He urges us to be critical consumers of images, to
question our actions, and to remain attentive to the world we live in,
especially now, when it’s upside down.
CUNO: To view the drawing An Enchanted Cellar with Animals, made by Cornelis Saftleven around
1655 to 1670, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection
As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These brief recordings feature stories related to our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet. Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.
This week features manuscripts curator Beth Morrison discussing Simon Bening’s portrait of the author of the Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing, made about 1530.
JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty
Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual
circumstances, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty Research
Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about
right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next few
weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on
the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and
entertaining.
BETH MORRISON: Hi, my name is Beth Morrison and I’m head of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. As for everyone else, it’s been a little bit of a transition to working at home and my life seems dominated by endless zoom meetings. But one of the things I really look forward to is the unexpected appearance of people’s pets. They sort of nose in from the side, or jump up on people’s laps, and it reminds me very much of an illumination that I’m working on right now.
I’m writing an article about a manuscript that is devoted to the life of a medieval knight names Jacques de Lalaing. And the frontispiece is by an artist named Simon Bening, who was one of the greatest artists of the sixteenth century. And he chooses an author portrait at the beginning of the manuscript which is a picture of the author hard at work at his text, and he’s got a desk, he’s got light at his back so he can see more clearly, he’s writing with his quill pen and he’s got books nearby him in case he needs to check something. And one of the great, charming details is that his pet dog has wandered in to curl up in the sun and take a nap. It’s a fluffy brown and white dog, quite distinctive, and very cute.
And it reminds me so much of my own working methodology nowadays. I put my desk at a good place in my house so the sun is at my back so I can see clearly. And my dog comes in, plops down, and decides to take a nap whenever she can because she thinks shelter at home is the greatest thing ever invented; she gets to spend all day with me.
So as I’ve been studying this illumination more and more,
I’ve been comparing it to other works by Simon Bening. And I realized that this
dog appears multiple times in his works. At the beginning of the 1530s, it’s a
little puppy. And then by the end of the decade it’s a full-grown dog. And it
kind of made me realize I bet this is Simon Benning’s own dog. And he used the
dog as a model whenever he needed to add a sort of everyday touch to his
illuminations.
It seems to me that pets are such an important part of our
lives, especially now in times of crisis. They provide comfort, they provide
inspiration, and just like this artist and this author in the middle ages, I
like to have my dog near me. It makes me realize that people in the middle ages
are pretty much just like ourselves in terms of how they approach their lives.
CUNO: To view this author portrait by Simon Bening made
around 1530, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on
getty.edu/art/collection/.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is one of the most admired painters of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Known for his powerful, dramatically lit compositions, Caravaggio depicted violence and the human form with a degree of realism unprecedented at the time. He was among the most famous painters in Rome—but not only because of his skill as an artist. Caravaggio was also notorious for his wild life and shocking temper. After being sentenced to death for murder, he fled Rome and died in exile at age 38 . Three biographies written in the decades after his death constitute nearly all that is known about the enigmatic artist.
In this episode, Getty curator and expert on Italian painting Davide Gasparatto discusses Caravaggio and the role these early biographies, by Giulio Mancini, Giovanni Baglione, and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, played in defining Caravaggio’s legacy.
As we all
adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances caused by
the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty
Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking
about right now. These brief recordings feature stories related to our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a
scholar’s feet. Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.
This week
features photography curator Mazie Harris discussing Walker Evans’s Washington Street, New York City / Wash
Day (ca. 1930).
JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J.
Paul Getty Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and
unusual circumstances, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty
Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking
about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next
few weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from
laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking,
illuminating, and entertaining.
MAZIE HARRIS: My name is Mazie Harris. I’m one of the
photography curators here at the Getty, and working at home these days I feel
like all I do is laundry and dishes non-stop. So I find myself appreciating all
the more this photograph by Walker Evans.
It looks like the photographer walked between two buildings
and glanced up to see these crisscrossed lines of laundry hanging out to dry. There’s
such delight in this sort of, it’s just like an everyday occurrence. And, I
don’t know, looking at laundry dry seems like it would be just devastatingly
boring and yet Evans makes it look like a lively musical score. The fabrics
bellow in the wind, the sweet string of socks swaying against each other in the
bottom left corner. It evokes full lives and loving labor. It’s all here
illuminated and abstracted against a blank sky.
Photographers have such an incredible ability to make the
mundane visually interesting. Photographs remind us to look, look, look, to
look carefully. To be observant. And I’m grateful to be reminded of that as I
pull yet another load of laundry from the washer or endlessly plunk dishes into
the drainer by the sink. This photograph reminds me to try to find beauty in
even the most banal places.
CUNO: To view this photograph by Walker Evans, titled Washington Street, New York City /
Wash Day and made around 1930, click the link in this episode’s
description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection/.
Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Its Impact on Museums, Part 2
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The
onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and confusing, with breaking news and information
about the virus changing seemingly by the hour. Around the world, art museums,
as community gathering sites, have had to face difficult decisions. In this
two-part series, six museum directors discuss the pandemic and its
repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations
address wide-ranging topics, from the resources that museum directors are
drawing on to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.
This episode features Matthew Teitelbaum of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ann Philbin of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Timothy Potts of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Its Impact on Museums, Part 1
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RSS Feed
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The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and confusing, with breaking news and information about the virus changing seemingly by the hour. Around the world, art museums, as community gathering sites, have had to face difficult decisions. In this two-part series, six US museum directors discuss the pandemic and its repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations address wide-ranging topics, from the logistical challenges of when to close and how to reopen to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.
This episode features Max Hollein of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Kaywin Feldman of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and James Rondeau of the Art Institute of Chicago.
