Oct 14 Tue MET LAUDER CUBIST EXHIBITION PREVIEW
Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection
http://email.metmuseum.org/a/tBUPAKnB8zUEEB888mMAAAdYA9Q/cubism3
Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 14
10:00 a.m.-noon
Remarks at 11:00
Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection,a major exhibition of the
Pablo Picasso–traces the invention and development of Cubism
using iconic examples from the Leonard A. Lauder
Collection, which has unparalleled holdings in this foundational
modernist movement. The exhibition will mark the first time that the
Collection, which Mr. Lauder pledged to the Museum in April 2013, is
shown in its entirety. It features 81 paintings, works on paper, and
Picasso.
Remarks at 11:00 with Met Director Thomas P. Campbell, Leonard
A. Lauder, and exhibition curators Rebecca Rabinow and Emily Braun
For additional information, images, or interview requests related to this
exhibition, contact:
Alexandra Kozlakowski
Communications Department
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, NY, NY
Tel 212-570-3951
alexandra.kozlakowski@metmuseum.org or communications@metmuseum.org
Before he became obsessed with Picasso and Braque, there were Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Back in elementary school, Leonard A. Lauder, the 81-year-old philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon, used to go to the movies at the Museum of Modern Art several times a week. Sometimes he would hang out in the galleries, too, soaking up the art. “I didn’t discover Cubism then,” he said. “But just by looking, you learn what’s good.”
Decades later, in 1976, on one of his regular visits to Sotheby’s, Mr. Lauder happened upon a Cubist drawing by Léger that he ended up buying. “Then I found another,” he said. Soon he became completely immersed in everything Cubist, attending lectures and visiting museum collections here and abroad. And for nearly 40 years, he has diligently amassed what is considered one of the world’s greatest collections of Cubist art, rivaling those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Now worth more than $1 billion, it includes 81 paintings, drawings and sculptures by just four artists: Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris. Last year, he promised the collection to the Met, making it one of the largest gifts in the museum’s history. Starting Oct. 20, it will be exhibited there as a whole for the first time in a show organized by Emily Braun, an art historian and Mr. Lauder’s curator for 27 years, and Rebecca Rabinow, a curator in the Met’s department of modern and contemporary art.
Chronicling the evolution of Cubism, which began in the early years of the 20th century (the term appeared in a review of a 1908 exhibition at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s Paris gallery), the show illustrates how these artists radically took apart traditional perspective, blended high and low culture and reimagined conventional compositions.
Mr. Lauder said that “nobody wanted” Cubist art for the first 20 years he collected it, so it was still affordable. He recalled standing in Christie’s one afternoon when it was selling some Cubist paintings, and a group of collectors came in and walked right by them. “They weren’t interested,” he said.
Early on, he knew that one day he would donate the collection to a museum. “Before buying something, the question I always ask myself is this: If it were going to a museum, would it make the cut?” he said on a recent afternoon in the wood-paneled library of his New York apartment, where several Cubist paintings still hung, the last of the collection yet to be packed off for the Met. “By which I meant: Would it stay on display, like van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ ” at MoMA or the ‘Winged Victory’ at the Louvre? If the answer is yes, then that’s what I buy.”
As he strove to “tell the story of Cubism” through a comprehensive collection, he experienced many adventures and years of waiting and of rejection — sometimes more than a decade — to pry a key work from a collector. “It’s not the possession of the picture, it is the search and the hunt,” Mr. Lauder said.
Continue reading the main story
The exhibition will also reveal some of the surprising images he saw while examining the back of a work, like an abandoned portrait of a woman on the flip side of Gris’s “Houses in Paris, Place Ravignan.”
“This isn’t the end,” Mr. Lauder said emphatically, growing animated as he discussed many of his favorite works. “I’ve bought three things for the Met since the deal was signed. And I intend to keep on adding to it. My ambition is to double the size. It won’t be so easy. Or cheap.” (New York Times)
Read Morehttp://email.metmuseum.org/a/tBUPAKnB8zUEEB888mMAAAdYA9Q/cubism3
Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 14
10:00 a.m.-noon
Remarks at 11:00
Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection,a major exhibition of the
Pablo Picasso–traces the invention and development of Cubism
using iconic examples from the Leonard A. Lauder
Collection, which has unparalleled holdings in this foundational
modernist movement. The exhibition will mark the first time that the
Collection, which Mr. Lauder pledged to the Museum in April 2013, is
shown in its entirety. It features 81 paintings, works on paper, and
Picasso.
Remarks at 11:00 with Met Director Thomas P. Campbell, Leonard
A. Lauder, and exhibition curators Rebecca Rabinow and Emily Braun
For additional information, images, or interview requests related to this
exhibition, contact:
Alexandra Kozlakowski
Communications Department
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, NY, NY
Tel 212-570-3951
alexandra.kozlakowski@metmuseum.org or communications@metmuseum.org
Before he became obsessed with Picasso and Braque, there were Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Back in elementary school, Leonard A. Lauder, the 81-year-old philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon, used to go to the movies at the Museum of Modern Art several times a week. Sometimes he would hang out in the galleries, too, soaking up the art. “I didn’t discover Cubism then,” he said. “But just by looking, you learn what’s good.”
Decades later, in 1976, on one of his regular visits to Sotheby’s, Mr. Lauder happened upon a Cubist drawing by Léger that he ended up buying. “Then I found another,” he said. Soon he became completely immersed in everything Cubist, attending lectures and visiting museum collections here and abroad. And for nearly 40 years, he has diligently amassed what is considered one of the world’s greatest collections of Cubist art, rivaling those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Now worth more than $1 billion, it includes 81 paintings, drawings and sculptures by just four artists: Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris. Last year, he promised the collection to the Met, making it one of the largest gifts in the museum’s history. Starting Oct. 20, it will be exhibited there as a whole for the first time in a show organized by Emily Braun, an art historian and Mr. Lauder’s curator for 27 years, and Rebecca Rabinow, a curator in the Met’s department of modern and contemporary art.
Chronicling the evolution of Cubism, which began in the early years of the 20th century (the term appeared in a review of a 1908 exhibition at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s Paris gallery), the show illustrates how these artists radically took apart traditional perspective, blended high and low culture and reimagined conventional compositions.
Mr. Lauder said that “nobody wanted” Cubist art for the first 20 years he collected it, so it was still affordable. He recalled standing in Christie’s one afternoon when it was selling some Cubist paintings, and a group of collectors came in and walked right by them. “They weren’t interested,” he said.
Early on, he knew that one day he would donate the collection to a museum. “Before buying something, the question I always ask myself is this: If it were going to a museum, would it make the cut?” he said on a recent afternoon in the wood-paneled library of his New York apartment, where several Cubist paintings still hung, the last of the collection yet to be packed off for the Met. “By which I meant: Would it stay on display, like van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ ” at MoMA or the ‘Winged Victory’ at the Louvre? If the answer is yes, then that’s what I buy.”
As he strove to “tell the story of Cubism” through a comprehensive collection, he experienced many adventures and years of waiting and of rejection — sometimes more than a decade — to pry a key work from a collector. “It’s not the possession of the picture, it is the search and the hunt,” Mr. Lauder said.
Continue reading the main story
The exhibition will also reveal some of the surprising images he saw while examining the back of a work, like an abandoned portrait of a woman on the flip side of Gris’s “Houses in Paris, Place Ravignan.”
“This isn’t the end,” Mr. Lauder said emphatically, growing animated as he discussed many of his favorite works. “I’ve bought three things for the Met since the deal was signed. And I intend to keep on adding to it. My ambition is to double the size. It won’t be so easy. Or cheap.” (New York Times)
