The Modern Art Notes Podcast

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast spotlights “Photography and the American Civil War” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Opening today, the exhibition surveys photography of and related to the conflict, including battlefield daguerreotypes, post-battle scenes and intense pictures of the dead and wounded. The program’s lead guest is Jeff Rosenheim, the curator of the exhibition and the author of the excellent book that accompanies it. The exhibition will be on view through September 2. Over 50 of the pictures in the show are available online.

Rosenheim is the curator in charge of the Met’s photography department. His primary focus is American photography: He facilitated the Met’s acquisitions of the complete archives of photographers Walker Evans in 1994 and Diane Arbus in 2007. 

This picture: As it turned out, the Civil War was a spectacular mechanism for spreading the still relatively new medium of photography. Soldiers lined up to have their photographs taken in their uniforms so that their parents back home would have something to remember them by (especially in case…). This is an example of the type: A picture of an unknown Union infantryman wearing a light-colored overcoat with a short cape. 

How to listen: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. See images of art discussed on the program.

This is a detail from Edouard Manet’s Repose (1871), which is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in “Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity.” The exhibition ostensibly looks at how impressionist painters treated high Parisian fashion, but is really more interesting to think about as how artists began to pivot toward presenting daily life (of the mostly very wealthy) in their work.

This is the second major exhibition to feature Manet’s Repose int he last year. It was included in “Manet: Portraying Life,” the first exhibition devoted to Manet’s portraiture. The exhibition debuted last year at the Toledo Museum of Art (and is now at the Royal Academy in London). 

Episode No. 48 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast was all about Manet’s portraiture (and featured particular discussion of Repose and the woman in it: Berthe Morisot). Host Tyler Green’s guests on Episode No. 48 were exhibition co-curator Lawrence Nichols, the senior curator of European and American painting and sculpture before 1900 at Toledo, and Gary Tinterow, the former head of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and now the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. While at the Met, Tinterow was the curator of the 2002 exhibition “Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting.”

Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud or RSS. See more images of Manets discussed on the program.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast spotlights “Photography and the American Civil War” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Opening on Tuesday, April 2, the exhibition surveys photography of and related to the conflict, including battlefield daguerreotypes, post-battle scenes and intense pictures of the dead and wounded. The program’s lead guest is Jeff Rosenheim, the curator of the exhibition and the author of the excellent book that accompanies it. The exhibition will be on view through September 2.

Rosenheim is the curator in charge of the Met’s photography department. His primary focus is American photography: He facilitated the Met’s acquisitions of the complete archives of photographers Walker Evans in 1994 and Diane Arbus in 2007. 

This picture: This is a detail from the famous “Cooper Union portrait” of Abraham Lincoln. It was made in Matthew Brady’s New York studio the same day Lincoln made his equally famous speech at Cooper Union.

How to listen: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. See images of art discussed on the program.

Image: Matthew Brady, Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860 [the Cooper Union portrait]. Collection of the Library of Congress, Washington.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast spotlights “Photography and the American Civil War” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Opening on Tuesday, April 2, the exhibition surveys photography of and related to the conflict, including battlefield daguerreotypes, post-battle scenes and intense pictures of the dead and wounded. The program’s lead guest is Jeff Rosenheim, the curator of the exhibition and the author of the excellent book that accompanies it. The exhibition will be on view through September 2.

Rosenheim is the curator in charge of the Met’s photography department. His primary focus is American photography: He facilitated the Met’s acquisitions of the complete archives of photographers Walker Evans in 1994 and Diane Arbus in 2007. 

This picture: As it turned out, the Civil War was a spectacular mechanism for spreading the still relatively new medium of photography. Soldiers lined up to have their photographs taken in their uniforms so that their parents back home would have something to remember them by (especially in case…). This is an example of the type, a picture of a Union private in the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry (the Ellsworth Zouaves) that took Alexandria, Va. in the first days of the war and that later fought in the first battle at Bull Run, where it suffered extensive casualties. It’s a fine example of a portrait taken early in the war, before soldiers had been exposed to battle. We’ll see one of the later portraits this afternoon. Click on the image to enlarge it.

How to listen: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. See images of art discussed on the program.

Image: Unknown Artist, Union Private, 11th New York Infantry (Also Known as the 1st Fire Zouaves), May-June 1861. 1/6 plate ambrotype.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Britt Salvesen and artist Catherine Opie on the occasion of LACMA’s presentation of three Robert Mapplethorpe portfolios: The “X Portfolio,” which features sadomasochistic imagery; the “Y Portfolio” of floral still-lifes and the “Z Portfolio” of nude portraits African-American men.

This JPEG is a detail from Mapplethorpe’s Daniel, N.Y.C. (1980), which is in the “Z Portfolio.” It’s a striking example of the care Mapplethorpe took in lighting his X, Y and Z Portfolio subjects. Mapplethorpe’s attention to lighting — and what influenced it — is much-discussed on this week’s MAN Podcast.

LACMA installed the three Mapplethorpe portfolios — apparently the first time an American art museum has exhibited them since the late 1980s — in October, 2012. They’ll remain on view in the museum’s Ahmanson Building, in a gallery just inside the front door, through March 24. 

Listen to the program: Download the program or listen in your browser. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the show.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Britt Salvesen and artist Catherine Opie on the occasion of LACMA’s presentation of three Robert Mapplethorpe portfolios: The “X Portfolio,” which features sadomasochistic imagery; the “Y Portfolio” of floral still-lifes and the “Z Portfolio” of nude portraits African-American men.

LACMA installed the three portfolios — apparently the first time an American art museum has exhibited them since the late 1980s — in October, 2012. They’ll remain on view in the museum’s Ahmanson Building, in a gallery just inside the front door, through March 24. Salvesen, who organized the installation, hung the three portfolios in staggered horizontal rows on dark red walls. 

This picture isn’t in the LACMA show. In 2004 Opie curated a show from the Mapplethorpe Foundation holdings for the Marc Selwyn Gallery in Los Angeles. It’s a detail from Mapplethorpe’s 1984 portrait of painter Alice Neel. Opie and I discussed this work and the relationships between works in her 2004 show and the X, Y, and Z Portfolios on this week’s program.

Opie was the subject of a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2008. Her “Twelve Miles to the Horizon: Sunrises and Sunsets,” is on view at the Long Beach Museum of Art through March 24. She will debut a new series of work at Regen Projects in Los Angeles later this month. Opie is widely considered the foremost synthesizer of Mapplethorpe’s work: Not only has Opie also focused her lens on leather and SM communities as did Mapplethorpe, but she shares his interest in portraiture and composition. In 1999 Opie made a series of seven photographs titled the ‘O Portfolio,’ a response to Mapplethorpe’s ‘X Portfolio.’

Listen to the program: Download the program or listen in your browser. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the show.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast spotlights “Manet: Portraying Life,” a new exhibition of Edouard Manet’s portraits opening Sunday at the Toledo Museum of Art. It is the first exhibition devoted to Manet’s portraiture. Toledo organized the exhibition in association with the Royal Academy in London, where it will travel next.

This is a detail from Manet’s The Repose (Portrait of Berthe Morisot) (1870), in the collection of the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design. 

My guests on this week’s MAN Podcast are exhibition co-curator Lawrence Nichols, the senior curator of European and American painting and sculpture before 1900 at Toledo and Gary Tinterow, the former head of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and now the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. While at the Met, Tinterow was the curator of the 2002 exhibition “Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting.”

Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See more images of Manets discussed on the program.