The Swiss Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel presents from September 19, 2021 until January 2, 2022 the exhibition Close-Up (English edition catalogue: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de), dedicated to nine women artists occupying prominent positions within the history of modern art from 1870 to the present day.
The list includes Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman and Elizabeth Peyton. In addition, in a section entitled Prologue: Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian diarist, painter and sculptur who lived from 1858 until 1884 is presented — and she is by far not the weakest in this presentation.
I would argue that women artists who have emerged in earlier periods include the still life painter Rachel Ruysch, who was and remains among the best in history, the Caravaggist Artemisia Gentileschi as well as the founding women artists of the Royal Academy Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, to name just a few. However, they were small minority in a sea of male artists.
The Close-Up curators assert: “It was at the beginning of this period [around 1870], with sweeping changes in the social position of women, that women in Europe and America first became able to work as professional artists on a broad basis.”
Sam Keller and Theodora Vischer write that Close-Up is not devoted to individual artistic personalities, with their singular biographies. The focus is rather on the specific gaze that each of these artists bring to bear on the world, with a personal vision that finds expression in portraits and self-portraits. Those works allow to understand how these nine female artists’ view of their subject evolved between 1870 and the present, and to appreciate what that evolution reflects and what makes it significant.
In her 8-page introduction entitled “More Than One History”, Theodora Vischer stresses that Close-Up brings together a number of different histories that coincide and occasionally overlap, yet each of these stories follows its specific course and has its own individual dynamic. She writes of two main narrative threads.
At first, these nine artists appear to form a heterogeneous group with no direct connection. But, Theodora Vischer underlines, they are all exponents of figurative painting (or photography). They are united by the depiction of the human figure. They are all known and celebrated. Therefore, the second thread of the exhibition is the theme of the portrait and its tranformation over the years.
Art is (also) a matter of taste. Therefore, we may disagree. Marie Bashkirtseff (Amazon USA; Amazon France) is best-known for her diaries, but her two works Self-Portrait with Palette (ca. 1883) and The Académie Julian (1881) exhibited at Fondation Beyeler demonstrate that she was a talented painter who maybe could have made it had she just lived longer. Today, most of her surviving works can be found in Nice where, in 1995, the Musée des Beaux-Arts dedicated a substantial exhibition to her oeuvre.
For me, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth Peyton and Alice Neel — despite a great (and mean?) 1970 portrait of Andy Warhol exhibited in Riehen — are minor artists, which does not mean that they are not significant.
Last, but not least through her association with Diego Rivera — (for me) himself a man overrated as an artist —, Frida Kahlo has her importance rather as a political activist, member of the Mexican Communist Party and someone with a tragic life largely in physical pain than as an artist. Nevertheless, she found her own way of expressing herself, inspired many other artists, including filmmakers.
I’m undecided about Marlene Dumas. Read the catalogue entry about her by the catalogue’s editor Theodora Vischer. The works by the French Berthe Morisot, a founding member of the Impressionist circle, are much better than I had them in mind. Theodora Visher writes that only one work by Berthe Morisot found its way into a museum during her lifetime — in 1894, a year before her death.
The American painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt, who also exhibited with the Impressionists, offers quality too. Lotte Laserstein is, above all, a great, distinctive representative of the art of the Weimar Republic. Simply fantastic are the chromogenic color prints by Cindy Sherman. Especially on one large wall with nine photographs, the lower row with six works catches you immediately. Peter Geimer has written the relevant catalogue essay entitled “Self-Portraits without a Self. On Cindy Sherman’s Role Pictures”. She said about her photographs: “I’m trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than of me.” Peter Geimer describes her as a medium using her body to illuminate changing roles and types, but without shedding light on herself.
Despite the fact that, in my opinion, half of the women represented in Riehen are minor artists, Close-Up is a valuable exhibition presenting plenty of masterpieces and offering a new look at the evolution of the portrait from 1870 to the present. The catalogue offers 215 illustrations, a dozen essays as well as some 80 pages of chronologies of all the artists.
In addition, Fondation Beyeler’s permanent collection (English catalogue: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk), assembled by the late and great Swiss art dealer, collector and Art Basel co-founder Ernst Beyeler (1921-2010), can be admired in a new hanging. Outstanding are works by Balthus, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Claude Monet and others. Previous exhibitions focused for instance on Paul Gauguin and The Young Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods.
Furthermore, once in Riehen, don’t forget to visit Galerie Henze & Ketterer & Triebold, famous notably for hosting the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive. In short, Riehen is always worth a journey.
Edited by Theodora Vischer: Close-Up. Fondation Beyeler, Hatje Cantz, 2021, 341 pages with 215 illustrations, 24.5 x 30.5 cm. Order the richly illustrated English edition exhibition catalogue from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations in this Close-Up exhibition and book review are not put between quotation marks.
Exhibition and catalogue review of Close-Up added on September 24, 2021 at 19:13 German time.
