At first glance, these richly colored paintings with lavishly decorative surfaces seem to be exultations of the glorious French sunshine and its effect on the artist’s gardens and rooms.  Pierre Bonnard, The Late Interiors, now at the Met, focuses mainly on the interior views Bonnard painted at his home at Le Cannet, near Cannes, from the mid 1920s through his death in 1947.  A walk through this exhibition will remind one what the color orange is, what yellow really looks like, how vibrant white can be, and how violet can erupt from the surface of a painting.  The canvases vibrate with the power of these colors and the compositions they comprise.

Then without realizing it one begins to notice that she has missed something at first look.  Look carefully, for in one painting there is a small, black dachshund peering into the painting from the perimeter on the left.  In another, a woman bends to the floor to greet her cat, her barely-visible figure blending seamlessly into the room behind her.  Somehow the extreme light illuminates the scene in an exaggerated way, and the space is sometimes skewed and disproportionate.  And then you will have discovered the true Bonnard at work.  Always mysterious and full of surprisesthe works exist on both the pleasurable, aesthetic level and on the more complex and unsettling one.  His pictures are not just pretty surfaces or decorative accents for the wall, and must be considered alongside more complex psychological pictures of the French Modernist era.  His work provides a revolving door of figures entering and exiting, often caught in awkward poses or exaggerated angles or perspectives, the paintings provide an interesting look at what life must have been like for the painter and his wife/muse wife Marthe.  While on the one hand the couple and their staff or visitors went about their daily rituals of setting the table, dining, arranging flowers or bathing, the scenes also suggest a more complicated existence. 

This exhibition runs at the Metropoitan Museum of Art in the Robert Lehman wing from now through April 19th.

This seems to be the season of Alexander Calder in NYC.  If you have not already done so you should really go see the Whitney’s current exhibition, Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933 as it is only on view through February 15th.  The show incorporates Calder’s famed Circus as well as a film of the artist acting out the circus performance and transforming the figures to make them kinetic.  Other incredible works in the show include Calder’s wire portraits of those in his circle in Paris and dynamic, larger pieces from the 1930s.  Be sure to be there at the right time to see them move!

The Met is showing Calder Jewelry, a natural progression from the mechanical engineer-turned-illustrator-turned artist’s wire sculptures.  The pieces are extraordinary for their grandeur and their freedom from existing forms yet maintain a historical note of ancient Greek, Egyptian and African cultures in their use of jewelry.

A number of local galleries also have Calder works on display this month.

Times are tough for many, from corporations to small businesses and individuals, but things seem especially bleak at Brandeis University where even the art collection is to be brought down. On Monday, the Waltham, Massachusetts University announced a unanimous decision by its trustees to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its art collection in order to raise money, likely for its endowment or other fiscal needs. The University’s endowment, formerly reported to be approximately $700 million, has reportedly taken a big hit in recent months and is now significantly smaller, but there has been no report of its current amount. The decision to close the museum and sell its assets was based, according to University President Jehuda Reinharz, on a need to continue the main mission of the university, education. The Museum will close in late summer 2009 after which it will be used as an exhibition and teaching facility rather than as a museum. Since 1961, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis has been the repository for American art, its collection largely growing with gifts of artwork from donors or of funds earmarked for artwork acquisitions. Today, the collection consists of approximately 8,000 art objects of some of the 20th century’s great artists including Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Phillip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein. Such works have frequently been exhibited as part of international art exhibitions in addition to the exhibitions held at the Rose Museum. Experts value the collection at approximately $350 to $400 million according to the New York Times, though it is not clear what effect the current economic strains and recent lackluster art sales would have on such values. If it proceeds, the University will likely work with a prominent auction house to sell the art collection and will then re-invest the funds from the sales into the school.

While it is understandable that in the midst of a financial crisis, and in cash strapped times, one might turn to a very valuable asset sitting in front of oneself and try to turn it into liquidity. However, when that asset is artwork the process gets more complicated and more controversial. Factor in the bequests of donors over time and their intentions in donating the work to the repository of an art museum and things get even messier. Monday’s decision has sparked strong controversy in the art community, causing many to exclaim that the museum is squandering its cultural heritage and putting dollars and cents ahead of more valuable concepts such as cultural patrimony and the educational value of the art collection. Immediately, many were heard to say, “They can’t do that!” So the pressing question becomes, “Can they do that?”

The New York Times reported today that the Massachusetts attorney general’s office will be investigating Brandeis’ decision to close the museum and sell the collection. The attorney general’s office will be acting in its capacity to review certain actions of non-profit institutions as delineated in the Massachusetts General Laws. This investigation will include reviewing wills and contracts between donors and the institution to determine whether this intended closure and sale will run afoul of any donation contracts. This process will likely take some time and cause delay in bringing the artwork to the auction block or to the private market.

The decision at issue runs against the current in the art museum world which strongly opposes deaccessioning artwork to benefit operating budgets and endowments. Opponents to such sales say that institutions (such as college are museums) depend upon donations which will dry up if donors see their intentions disregarded down the road and their prized artwork sold to raise cash. They also argue that such sales undermine the public trust, the mission of all museums to build timeless repositories of knowledge and culture as cultural teaching tools for the public.

Other eductional institutions such as Fisk University and Randolph College have been at the center of such controversies in recent years as they, too, attempted to sell valuable works from their museum collections in order to raise money for the schools’ budgets. Fisk, in dire financial straits, proposed to sell some of the valuable artwork bequeathed to it by Georgia O’Keeffe to Alice Walton of Arkansas for her soon-to-be American art museum. The matter has been tied up in litigation since 2005. As it stands now, a court ruled that the sale would run contrary to the terms of the donation and thus the court blocked the proposed sale of the artwork of American painters Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley. This decision is currently on appeal and the matter unresolved. At Randolph, a Rufino Tamayo painting was sold (among other proposed sales).  Representatives of Randolph have contacted me to state that the funds were put towards the college’s endowment.

Museum associations such as the American Association of Museums (AAM), the College Art Association (CAA) and the Association of College and University Museum and Art Galleries (ACUMG) promulgate codes of ethics and best practices standards designed to guide institutions in acting on behalf of the public good (the public trust) and to benefit and protect one another. Ethics codes, such as that of the AAM, state what funds from deaccessioned artwork may be used for – and it isn’t for operating budgets or endowments. The AAM Ethics Code, for example, states that such proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned artwork may be used for other acquisitions or direct care of the collection. Brandeis and the Rose Art Museum will face sharp and well-deserved scrutiny from the public, the museum community and the world as they attempt to breach public trust and widely-accepted museum ethics codes in order to raise cash for other purposes at the expense of their art collection.

Florine Stettheimer’s Cathedrals, a series of Depression-era paintings depicting the excesses of New York social, political and economic life, on view in the American Modern section of the Met are perfectly suited to our times. Three of the Cathedrals are on view, each serving as a portrait of excess and consumption. These three large, chaotic, Art Deco inspired canvases, (and the fourth, the unfinished, Cathedrals of Art, 1942-44) each contain a self portrait of the artist herself, perhaps with a family member and always in costume as if to proclaim everyone’s participation in the world depicted. The scenes are examined and portrayed with humor and wit, yet point to the darker side of life.

The Cathedrals of Wall Street, 1939, depicts a central pediment comprised of the titans of early 20th century Wall Street and Washington in decadent golden paint, above a parade of patriotic American flags and a marching band trumpeting the success of the banks and financial institutions. The red, white and blue composition, laden with the imagery of America and of Wall Street, was painted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration. It seems to act as a reminder today, in light of our recent inauguration, that the worlds of finance and politics have been intertwined. And lest we forget the less fortunate, Stettheimer placed a group of Salvation Army workers on the left foreground, raised off the ground on a red platform, sing God Bless America.

The Cathedrals of Broadway is a glittering, explosion of color which illustrates the escape New Yorkers turned to during the Great Depression- Broadway theater and sporting events. Banners proclaim the names of theaters, a sports announcer holds a baseball as if ready for the start of a game and patrons line up at the ticket booth in this scene of all-over entertainment. Painted in 1929, it is impossible to view this scene of pleasure and happiness without the veil of the political and social reality of the day – especially as the date itself appears on a large red banner on the left side of the canvas. Seeing this glittering side of New York in spite of economic turmoil resonates today to be sure.

The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue, 1931-32, proclaims the extreme excess of New York in a swirl of luxury store names, a fine car with a dollar sign across its grill and champagne on ice – all hovering around a wedding party at the center of the picture. Above the wedding couple and their guests, two religious figure seem to bless the raucous activity all around them.

Excess, escapism and economic turmoil – what an interesting time to see these paintings.

Click here to see the images for yourself.