By Sandra Schulman
Big names in classical art dominate this season as the dark drama of Rembrandt, the lyrical graphics of Mucha, and the dancers and racehorses of Degas grace the walls of the major museums. The growing art audience in Palm Beach brings these treasures to the Sunshine State.
Other exhibits spotlight the rise of the modern department store and the bracing street photography of Eduardo Chacon. Grand autos return to the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, while the art fairs land at the height of season bringing hundreds of antique and contemporary galleries to the spacious convention center.
Norton Museum of Art
A true rarity, more than 75 works from master painter Rembrandt and artists closely connected to him in Amsterdam, will be on display Oct. 25–March 29 in Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time.
The works are from The Leiden Collection, one of the world’s premier collections of 17th-century Dutch art. This will be the largest exhibition of privately held Dutch paintings ever exhibited in the United States. Highlights include a dozen gorgeous paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, one from the equally exalted Johannes Vermeer and several from Gerritt Dou and Gerard ter Borch, among others.
Organized thematically, the exhibition follows 17th-century life in the Netherlands. Commissioned portraits and character studies show the social ladder climbing and individual style of the era’s upper class. There are daily activities depicted where market vendors sell wares, soldiers play cards, youngsters are engrossed in books, while women write letters and play music. Religion and mythology play a large role, as the period’s spiritual and intellectual pursuits were high priority.
Rembrandt is at the exhibition’s heart, with artworks representing all the periods of his career. We love Rembrandt’s youthful selfie-portrait with his jaunty crooked cap, fur trimmed coat, and wispy moustache.
The exhibit coincides with the 400th anniversary of New Amsterdam’s founding on the island of present-day Manhattan. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated, 150-page catalogue exploring Dutch life in the 1600s with detailed entries on each work.
A second fall exhibit, Leslie Hewitt: Achromatic Scales, brings together recent work from three of her series: Riffs on Real Time, Chromatic Grounds, and Riffs on Real Time with Ground.
This installation directs personal, collective, and literary imagery as interchangeable elements in endless series of compositions. Riffs on Real Time found Hewitt spending a year developing and photographing sculptures from stacked layers of sourced photographs, archival books, old magazines, and vague documents. Anchored by solid backgrounds and photographed from above, the elements fall in line into a single frame. Paired with Chromatic Grounds, she finds color as a counterpoint to geometry and perceived order.
[1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach; www.norton.org, 561-832-5196]
Boca Raton Museum of Art
From Art Nouveau to psychedelic pop art, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) defined a genre whose influence carried on for decades. In Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line, his work is appraised and his impact on graphic art since the 1960s displayed. The development of Mucha’s style shows how his art was rediscovered and co-opted by later generations of artists, particularly for heady indulgences like rolling papers and liquor. Hs influence still shows up in American comics, Japanese animated manga, and vibrant fluid street murals. (November 19-March 1).
Street photos of people at work and play by South Florida photographer Eduardo Chacon are featured in Postcards from Nowhere, an intimate installation of 42 of his best images. A special exhibition, this will be combined with other iconic street photographers from the museum’s collection that have inspired Chacon’s work.
Chacon doesn’t crop, uses no auto-focus, and all manual settings. A street photographers’ rule, he maintains the integrity of the scene as he finds it, with fleeting human emotions. Human interactions like a bartender’s cocktail mid-pour to a family on a fishing trip, and even a couple embracing under the stars show timing and control. (Nov. 19-May 3).
[501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton (Mizner Park); bocamuseum.org, 561-392-2500]
Flagler Museum
Who doesn’t love shopping? Who maybe worked at a department store? An unusual exhibit opens the season at The Flagler Museum with May I Help You, Madame? The Making of the Modern Department Store.
Exploring the rise of the department store as an influential, transformative institution of modern urban life, the department store is traced back to its origins in 19th-century Paris when Le Bon Marché became a global phenomenon. The store created a new landscape where commerce, architecture, gender roles, and public space met. In the U.S., Lord & Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman and Wanamaker’s put together luxury, mass consumption, and spectacle for the new class of big city shoppers.
Both behind and in front of the counter, the “shopgirl” was a new working-class model who could use fashionable commerce in elegant surroundings to chart a path to economic independence. The big department stores set a standard for female consumers interested in the latest in fashion, home goods, beauty products in mass consumption. (Nov. 11-Jan. 18)
The Flagler Museum’s winter exhibition, Golden Hour: Charles Courtney Curran and the Romance of American Impressionism, follows American painter Curran’s journey from his Ohio roots to New York, Paris, and Cragsmoor, N.Y., where he spent four decades painting sunny gardens, snowcapped mountains, and a kind of fluttery grace of women in white dresses and bonnets. Taking a page from the Gilded Age of American Impressionism, Curran’s paintings offer an idyllic, upper-class vision of summer. The exhibit includes rarely seen works, early portraits, and period fashions. (February 9-May 24).
[1 Whitehall Way, Palm Beach; www.flaglermuseum.us, 561-655-2833]
Society of the Four Arts
Dancers, female nudes, jockeys, and racehorses are instantly identifiable as the work of revered artist Edgar Degas (1834–1917) the French Impressionist treasured for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings that capture the world of late 19th-century Paris. Edgar Degas, The Private Impressionist: Works on Paper by the Artist and His Circle centers on the complex personality of Degas and the artists he called friends. An eclectic artist, he painted diverse subjects and experimented with various techniques.
His observations of human nature came from a private place, observed as a spectator and sometime voyeur. The show has 24 drawings, 23 prints, eight photographs, one sculpture, and a letter written by Degas. Highlights include his self-portraits, his family and friends, and early drawings of antique sculpture and Old Master paintings. His most common subjects and portraits make up the main exhibit.
Displayed alongside Degas’ works are 47 pieces by his contemporaries Mary Cassatt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, and Eadweard Muybridge. Photomurals, illustrated timelines, video and music of the era, give visceral insight into his private world and his influence. The show is accompanied by a hardbound 126-page fully illustrated catalogue. (Nov. 15-Feb. 1).
Sinuous lines, seductive maidens, and glowing colors marked Art Nouveau, an international style of art, architecture, and decorative arts. The heyday was from 1890 to 1910, as asymmetrical lines, curvy forms, and over-embellished patterns took cues from the natural world. The Triumph of Nature: Art Nouveau from the Chrysler Museum of Art includes 120 Art Nouveau treasures — furniture, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, books, posters, prints, lamps, and glass. (Feb. 14-April 4).
[100 Four Arts Plaza, Palm Beach; fourarts.org, 561-655-7226]
Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
The innovative contemporary artist Mariko Kusumoto, is featured in Light as Air: The Buoyant Sculptures of Mariko Kusumoto, an exhibit that spotlights her devotion to traditional craft. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Kusumoto grew up in a 400-year-old temple in Japan, surrounded by the beauty of the landscape and the textures of the centuries-old temple. She went on to study painting and printmaking in Tokyo and San Francisco, switching to metal sculpture, and then tsumami zaiku, the ancient art of folding and pinching fabric. Seemingly underwater, the forms seem to be floating in a lush aquatic garden.
Kusumoto will create a unique, on-site installation that aims to meander and float into the gallery space. (Nov. 6-April 4)
[4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach; morikami.org, 561-495-0233]
Lighthouse ArtCenter
Flora stars in the art of Karen Tucker Kuykendall, whose exhibit Delicate Expressions looks deep into the pistils and stamens of Florida’s native plant life. With a deep-rooted connection to Florida’s landscape, Kuykendall’s work pits photorealism against her handmade collage elements. As a further exploration, the exhibition has floral jewelry artists. In November, Art in Bloom pairs South Florida’s top floral artists with works from Delicate Expressions for one-of-a-kind arrangements. (Sept. 11-Nov. 15).
The Art of Danial Ryan uses cats to unravels life’s pet-owning absurdities, anxieties, and furry beauty of modern existence. (Jan. 15-Feb. 21)
[373 Tequesta Drive, Tequesta; lighthousearts.org, 561-741-3101]
Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens
Artist Paul Gervais opens the season at the West Palm Beach-based Norton Sculpture Gardens with an exhibit called Imperiled: Florida’s Wildlife and Habitats. Now on view through Jan. 11, Gervais’s 30-plus paintings of familiar sights such as the Everglades and painted buntings is supported by the National Wildlife Refuge Association and calls the viewer’s attention to Florida’s unique, fragile biota.
The popular “Sculpture in Motion” event returns for the ninth consecutive year on Nov. 15. The one-day event slides in to park the history and design of one-of-a-kind, classic pre- and post-war automobiles. At the end of the day The Grand Tour Parade of Cars departs from the Sculpture Gardens, crosses the bridge and tours the island of Palm Beach. The event is paired from Nov. 15 to Dec. 31 with Auto Motion: Sculpture by Rene von Richtofen, works featuring model cars and found objects by the Austrian artist (and descendant of the legendary World War I flying ace, the Red Baron).
In January, the ceramics of Pablo Picasso are in the spotlight in an exhibit focusing on the artist’s work at the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris, France. Picasso: Clay, Line and Legacy also examines the artist’s work in textiles, and suggests that Vallauris needs to be seen as a key site of Picasso’s late renewal. (Jan. 14-March 8)
[Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, 253 Barcelona Road; ansg.org, 561-832-5238]Art fairs
The luxurious and sophisticated art showcase, the 21st Annual Palm Beach Show, returns Feb. 12-17 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center over Presidents’ Day Weekend. Offering art, furniture, jewelry and more items spanning every genre, periods and movements. The shows all-inclusive nature maintains a prominent presence in the Palm Beach market as one of the most prestigious cultural events of the season.
The accompanying prestigious Palm Beach Fine Craft Show returns to the Palm Beach County Convention Center during the same Presidents’ Day weekend as the Palm Beach Show from Feb. 13-15. The show features the nation’s top contemporary craft artists, offering their works in the expansive center’s second floor.
Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary follows March 19-22 also at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Presented by Art Miami, this ninth edition opens with an invitation-only VIP preview on March 19 and runs through March 22. International contemporary, modern, classical modern, post-war and pop eras are all represented at the fair. Billed as a “can’t miss” event for serious collectors, curators, museum directors and interior designers, this show has an intimate look at important works available for acquisition.