Where in the world is Beth Gersh-Nesic? One year later . . . .

Copy of Victorious Youth, Fano, Italy, overlooking the Adriatic Sea.

Photo: Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, June 8, 2011

One year ago Shelley Esaak posted the question "Where in the World is Beth Gersh-Nesic?" on her About.com: Art History website.   Where was I indeed?   In Fano, Italy, on a press junket that met with President Gian Mario Spacca, right in front of a copy of Atlete di Fano (Victorious Youth),* pictured above.  Here is the story:

One Hot Body – The Getty’s Victorious Youth (aka Atleta di Fano)

In 1977, the Getty Museum bought Victorious Youth for $3.95 million. Now Italy wants it back. An assortment of international journalists were invited to the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan on June 7, 2011 to listen to President Gian Mario Spacca, the governor of the Marche Region, plead his case for the return of the statue to Fano, located on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, in the heart of the Marche.  On May 3, 2012  the Italy courts ordered the return of this ancient sculpture - pronto. http://chasingaphrodite.com/2012/05/04/the-gettys-bronze-italian-court-upholds-order-to-seize-a-getty-masterpiece/

Unknown                                                   The sculpture before it was cleaned
Greek, 300 - 100 B.C.
Bronze
59 5/8 x 27 9/16 x 11 in.
77.AB.30

Here’s  the backstory . . . .

Last Call - Steins Collect at the Met, closing June 3

The Steins in the courtyard of 27 rue de Fleurus, ca. 1905, 

From left, Leo Stein, Allan Stein, Gertrude Stein, Theresa Ehrman, Sarah Stein, Michael Stein

Bancroft Library, Berkeley

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde,  February  28-June 3, 2012, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The poet/critic  André Salmon wrote in his memoir L’air de la Butte (1945): “When we went to poor Rousseau’s home, we dressed as carefully as when we were invited to visit the high society couturier and arts patron Paul Poiret. We dressed even better than when we went to see the Steins, the brother and sister millionaires who came from San Francisco, posed as transatlantic bohemians and lived near the Luxembourg Gardens. On those evenings on the rue de Fleurus, in a study adorned by [Picasso’s] excellent Saltimbanque Period canvases and in a boudoir studded, like stars, with little Renoirs, an ordinary suit from the wardrobe would do.”* 

According to John Richardson, in his second volume of Picasso’s biography,  Gertrude Stein was as capable of following a conversation in French as the artists were capable of following her writings in English – that is, not very well.

Last Call - Yorgo Alexopoulos: Transmigrations, through April 5

If you are like me this week, you have no time to stroll through Chelsea for unexpected wonders.  You have to cook and clean and great ready for the holidays - or maybe not.  Maybe you are going to be a guest.  Congratulations - you are in luck.  Now hurry, please, to Cristin Tierney's gallery for the last day of "Yorgo Alexopoulos: Transmigrations," a wondrous video installation packed with images from photos, drawings, paintings and video on 24 flat-screen monitors.  Inspired by Jennifer Bartlett's Rhapsody, a 987-enamel plate installation from 1976 (perhaps one of her best known works), Alexopoulos brings a new dynamic to the grid aesthetic.  Here his quick succession of images plunge us into worlds that touch on nature, fantasy and the beyond - a sort of digital meets spiritual.  We float, we fly, we soar through innumerable realms of visual splendor.

Last Call: Mark Podwal's Haggadah Paintings at Forum Gallery

Mark Podwal: Sharing the Journey, Forum Gallery, February 14 through March 7.

Alan S. Yoffie, Sharing the Journey: The Haggadah for the Contemporary Family,

CCAR Press (a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis), 2012.

With the Lenten season upon us and the Feast of Esther (Purim) almost here (March 7 and 8), can Paschal celebrations for 2012 be little more than one month away?  Yes.  The first night of Passover falls on Good Friday, April 6 (one week later for Orthodox Christians).  Within these four short weeks, vigorous preparations for festival meals take place. Jews completely clean their homes, ridding every crack and crevice of hametz (daily cakes and bread).  Then books (haggadot) that guide the Passover service at the table come out of storage, receive a good dusting and finally end up distributed at each place setting before the guests arrive. 

The haggadah helps the participants fulfill the necessary rituals before and after the Passover meal, which in its entirety is called the seder (the order).  Based on the Greek symposium, either a leader or each member of the dinner party reads from the haggadah while everyone else follows the text.  Some families prefer a set of one edition of the haggadah that everyone follows and some families prefer collecting different haggadot, which tend to liven up the conversation around the table or cause mass confusion.

Patricia Cronin's Memorial to a Marriage in DC exhibition "Bodies and Soul"

                              

Patricia Cronin, Memorial to a Marriage, 2002 in bronze and marble.

Patricia Cronin: Bodies and Soul, Conner Gallery, Washington, DC , Febuary 4 - March 10

In July, this blog celebrated the marriage of New York artists Patricia Cronin and Deborah Kass, whose long-time commitment inspired Cronin's sculpture Memorial to a Marriage, 2002, permanantly installed in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  The marble mortuary sculpture was accomplish in death that which seemed - in 2002 -  impossible in life.

Now the exhibition of the bronze version of this sculpture, on view at Conner Gallery in Washington, DC, celebrates the transition of this artwork from depicting a dream to immortalizing reality.