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| La Forêt Enchantée (The Enchanted Forest) |
The Georgia Museum of Art currently
owns the five paintings by Bernard Smol (French, 1897–1969), all currently on
display in museum’s Martha Thompson Dinos Gallery. As the museum’s curator of
European art, I have proposed removing four of them from our collection. The
paintings do not align with the collection goals as defined in the museum’s
mission statement and acquisition policy, the paintings have not generated any
scholarly interest or interest from the public in more than 50 years, and they
have not been exhibited during this time.
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| Les Pleureuses (The Mourners) |
About
the artist
“His
is a world of color and dreams, of design and poetry, of music and the daily
round of the circus and magic, of dance and religion.” George Huisman, Directeur Général Honoraire des Beaux-Arts,
Paris, 1958
Smol
worked in a late post-impressionistic idiom, creating encaustic paintings with
vibrant colors. Encaustic is a technique of painting with hot beeswax mixed
with pigments that creates a translucent but textured surface. The jewel-like
quality of Smol’s paintings often drew comparisons to stained-glass windows by critics of his
day. His typical subject matter included romantic landscapes and interiors populated with
harlequins, dancers, bohemian poets
and mystical
figures
that give the viewer a sense of experiencing a dream. Still relatively unknown
in the United States, Smol exhibited widely in Europe in the mid-20th century.
The artist came to the attention of the Georgia Museum of Art's founding director, Alfred H. Holbrook, during a 1958 exhibition at
Chase Gallery in New York, after which Holbrook visited Smol’s studio in Paris.
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| Le Prophète Job (The Prophet Job) |
Deaccessioning
Deaccessioning is the
legal and permanent removal of an object from the museum's collection in
accordance with policies and procedures defined by the Board of Regents, the
University of Georgia, the laws of the State of Georgia and the United States and the standards of the American
Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors. The museum received authorization
from the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to deaccession objects starting in 2011, after a
process involving formal vote and input from staff members, outside experts,
the Board of Advisors, and the university’s provost. Whenever possible,
works chosen for deaccessioning are sold at public auction. Proceeds are
reserved in a designated account to be used only for the acquisition of new
objects into the collection and never for operations or other expenditures. If
the work to be deaccessioned was a donation to the museum, the donor or donor’s
heirs are informed, whenever possible, and the credit for the gift is applied
to any new acquisition made with funds from the donated work’s sale.
Deaccessioning is a
carefully and necessarily lengthy
process. At this point, the Georgia Museum of Art has yet to deaccession a
single object from its collection
of more than 10,000 objects in the museum’s 55-year history, although other
objects are currently under consideration. I am recommending the deaccessioning
of all but one of the paintings by Smol in our collection, all on display in this exhibition. During
the course of the exhibition,
other members of the museum’s collections committee and I will pursue subsequent steps in the deaccessioning process,
making all documents and information available as part of the exhibition.
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| Le Village Inondé (The Inundated Village) |
What
do you think?
We
would also like your input going forward. Which paintings or paintings would
you keep? Which would you deaccession? Come visit in person to vote or tell us
what you think in the comment section here.
–Lynn
Boland, Pierre Daura Curator of European Art
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| La Robe de la Mariée (The Wedding Dress) |
Excerpt
from May 20, 2013,
memorandum from Lynn Boland to GMOA Collections Committee:
Bernard
Smol (French, 1897–1969) was an accomplished artist and should remain
represented in the museum’s collection;
however, the evolution of our collection and collection plan for European art
over the last 50 years makes it unnecessary to have five large paintings by
Smol from the same period and in the same style. These paintings are highly
unlikely to be requested for loan or for inclusion in any of the museum's exhibitions or
other programming in the foreseeable future, with the exception of the upcoming
exhibition “Deaccessioning Bernard Smol,”
May 25 to July 7, 2013. These paintings have not been exhibited at the museum since 1959, they have
not been on view elsewhere since two traveled to Middle Georgia College shortly
thereafter, and there
is no indication that information about them has been requested at any time
since or
that they have been viewed by anyone other than museum staff during this time.
There is no indication that Smol has been included in any publication since 1959,
further demonstrating a universal lack of scholarly interest in the artist and
his works. They were considered for inclusion in the 2011 permanent collection
reinstallation as part of the European display in the H. Randolph Holder
Gallery but deemed
of insufficient quality or art historical
significance to merit indefinite display, especially given their large size compared to other paintings in the
museum’s collection. Their size
also makes them
a burden on the museum’s already taxed storage facilities. I recommend that the
following paintings, all museum purchases rather than gifts, be deaccessioned and, through public auction, made available to other
institutions or individuals better able to display and appreciate them:
La Forêt Enchantée (The Enchanted Forest),
n.d.
Encaustic
on canvas
34
1/2 x 50 3/4 inches
Georgia
Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum Patrons Fund purchase, 1959
GMOA 1959.683
Les Pleureuses
(The Mourners), n.d.
Encaustic
on canvas
31
1/2 x 39
Georgia
Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum Patrons Fund purchase, 1959
GMOA 1959.684
Le Prophète Job
(The Prophet Job), n.d.
Encaustic
on canvas
31
1/2 x 39
Georgia
Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum Patrons Fund purchase, 1959
GMOA 1959.685
Le Village Inondé
(The Inundated Village), n.d.
Encaustic
on canvas
34
1/2 x 50 1/2
Georgia
Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum Patrons Fund purchase, 1959
GMOA 1959.686
I propose keeping one painting to represent Smol in the GMOA
collection:
La Robe de la Mariée (The Wedding Dress), n.d.
Encaustic
on canvas
31
1/8 x 36 1/8
Georgia
Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Gift of the artist and Chase Gallery, New
York
GMOA 1959.651
La Robe de la Mariée was a gift of the artist and the
Chase Gallery as well the personal favorite of the museum’s founder, Alfred H.
Holbrook, according to a March 25, 1959,
letter from Holbrook to Smol. La Robe de la Mariée is
also the only painting of the five exhibited in Chase Gallery’s 1958 exhibition
featuring Smol, which Holbrook visited. Three of the four paintings proposed for deaccession have no
exhibition history other than the 1959 exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, and Les Pleureuses (The Mourners) appeared only in the exhibition organized by the museum that
traveled to Middle Georgia College.
I think these works are best as a set. Initially I wasn't drawn to them as small jpegs but looking again and then considering their size and medium I hunk they could be very impressive together. I would warn against the self fulfilling prophesy approach that they aren't exhibited etc. that is just reinforcing what may be narrow taste. Where's the curatorial bravery? I now wantn to know more about this artist and his circle and influences. Too many artists are consigned to the bin because of prevailing tastes.
ReplyDeleteThe news of deaccessioning anything from GMOA was surprising because its administration has declaimed frequently and negatively about that process. I must confess I have no problem with deaccessioning, but I would prefer it to begin with American works rather than with European. The "backyard" art at the rear of the Swanson Gallery would be a good example. Thank you for putting the Smol paintings on exhibit so that we may make informed decisions.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, commenter from 4:55, but the administration isn't opposed to _responsible_ deaccessioning, just to the many examples of irresponsible monetization of collections.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Bernard Smol has almost vanished from the history of art. And yet: that makes the GMA a leading repository of Smol's work. My inclination is to vote against any deaccessioning. Smol's work, much like the better-known Bernard Buffet, very much represents a period taste, and represented what I am sure the GMA felt was the best and most progressive art available in 1959. I, for one, am very grateful to have been introduced to Smol's work. I don't like it at all, but I am fascinated that he was working in encaustic in the exact years that Jasper Johns adopted that medium. It certainly makes Johns' choice of encaustic seem less esoteric when we know that a belated School of Paris wannabe was using that as his trademark medium.
ReplyDeleteNow, if you are going to dump four of these pictures, and I expect that you will, I think that La Foret Enchantee is by far the best of the group for teaching purposes. It is easy to see how Smol rooted his work in well-worn traditions of French landscape painting, but also how the vivid color of encaustic, and the unusually sharp facture that it creates, places his work in the broader taste for expressionist treatment seen in Rouault and Soutine from before the 1939-45 war, and the tachisme of people like Nicolas de Stael after it. And then there's the link to Johns I've mentioned. It seems unlikely that these pictures will sell for much at auction, anyway. Will the public be informed about the amount of revenue generated? And what about purchases made from those funds? How far will the GMA take crowd-sourcing curatorship?