Vigée Le Brun Woman Artist in Revolutionary France at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vigée Le Brun  Woman Artist in Revolutionary France

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

February 15 – May 15, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The Metropolitan Museum's splendid exhibition of the art of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun bears the title Woman Artist in Revolutionary France. This appraisal of the French eighteenth century painter is entirely appropriate. It is also open to interpretation. 

Vigée Le Brun's life was defined by the French Revolution. She created sensitive portraits of Marie Antoinette that are supremely accomplished works of art. Her family portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children, shown for the first time ever in the United States, is a work of almost mythic stature.

Anne Lloyd, Detail of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun's Marie Antoinette and Her Children, 1787 

It is important to consider that Vigée Le Brun's portraits of Marie Antoinette were also propaganda ripostes designed to refute the vilification of the French queen as "Madame Déficit." However much we are impressed with these magnificent works today, Vigée Le Brun's evocations of royalty failed to stem the coming tide of revolution.

Vigée Le Brun, however, only witnessed the dramatic opening chapter of the French Revolution. The artist, an ardent supporter of the French royal government, fled France as soon as it appeared that the Ancien Régime was in serious danger. 

As a refugee artist, Vigée Le Brun took her signature style to the courts of Europe. An immediate success wherever she traveled, she recreated the same feeling of beauty and informality in her portraits of the nobles and aristocrats of Russia, Austria and Italy. 

The magnificent portrait, Countess Varvara Nikolayevna Golovina, was painted during Vigée Le Brun's sojourn in Russia, 1795-1801. It has all the hallmarks of her mature style, including the expert handling of a shaft of light in the background which figures in a number of other works on display in the Metropolitan Museum exhibit. 

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Countess Varvara Nikolayevna Golovina, Ca. 1797-1800

Beyond masterful technical details, Countess Golovina also exudes the charismatic individualism of the Romantic "rebellion" against the structure and formalities of early eighteenth century life and art. Vigée Le Brun's art, despite her political affinities, was part of the French Revolution's revolt against the eighteenth century. Bastille Day unleashed an upheaval of global proportions, enabling Vigée Le Brun to be called a Woman Artist in a Revolutionary World.

To be a woman artist in the eighteenth century was in itself a revolutionary act. It took a direct order of Louis XVI in 1783, however, to gain admission for Vigée Le Brun into the Académie Royale. With patronage like that, Vigée Le Brun might well have remained oblivious of the poitical storm clouds gathering over France in the 1780's - as were many of France's elite. Yet Vigée Le Brun's personal "radar" started detecting trouble only a short time after her entry into the Académie. 

Writing about her life in extreme old age, Vigée Le Brun recounted many ominous incidents well before the fall of the Bastille in July 1789. It did not take much to convince her   to flee - and she would not be dissuaded. A friend and fellow artist, Rosalie Filleul, to whom she had confided her decision to escape, urged her to reconsider:

" You are wrong to leave. I will stay, because I believe in the happiness which the Revolution will bring us." 

Mme Filleul was later arrested and beheaded by the "national razor," the dreaded guillotine in July 1794. Vigée Le Brun kept her head on her shoulders, living until 1842.

For a dozen years after 1789, Vigée Le Brun traveled to Italy, Austria, Germany, Russia and Great Britain. She supported herself and her daughter by painting portraits of European royalty and aristocrats. As she charmed her way into the glittering courts of Europe, the armies of the French Republic stormed across the continent as if in hot pursuit of Marie Antoinette's favorite artist. 

It was never as personal at that, of course. But Vigée Le Brun stood for everything that the "Citizens," as the French revolutionaries called themselves, condemned. Instead of Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité, Vigée Le Brun's art espoused Beauté, Noblesse, Fidélité. 

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of Vigée Le Brun  Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, showing The Marquise de Pezay and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Two Sons, 1787

Vigée Le Brun lived these ideals as well as depicting them on canvas and wooden panels. A handsome, charming young woman, she found a place for herself in Marie Antoinette's court circle as if she were born for the role. 

The ladies-in-waiting at the French court rose - and fell - in the French queen's favor by their ability to carry themselves with poise and natural-seeming beauty. The alluring Yolande de Polignac ousted the rather plain Princesse de Lamballe as Marie Antoinette's favorite in 1774. 

Vigée Le Brun painted a number of portraits of the Duchesse de Polignac and it is not difficult to account for her rapid rise in Marie Antoinette's inner circle.

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, The Duchesse de Polignac in a Straw Hat, 1782

It is worthy of note that Princesse de Lamballe overlooked the slight and remained loyal to Marie Antoinette. She too was painted by Vigée Le Brun but this portrait is not in the Metropolitan exhibit. Perhaps, it is just as well. When a Revolutionary tribunal in 1792 demanded that Princesse de Lamballe condemn the French monarchy, she refused and was handed over to the mob. She was promptly hacked to pieces. Her severed head was placed on a pike and paraded around the streets of Paris.

Such gruesome events were unimaginable when Vigée Le Brun first came to Versailles in 1778. She  succeeded so  quickly and brilliantly from a social standpoint that it is easy to overlook the exceptional level of artistic accomplishment that she displayed from the moment she arrived at the French court. 

Vigée Le Brun's father was an artist specializing in pastel drawing, which enjoyed something of golden age during the eighteenth century. He imparted much of his knowledge to his gifted daughter but he died when she was just gaining maturity, at age twelve. Vigée Le Brun received no support from her step-father, whom she detested, and within a few years was working on her own.

It is encouraging to note that the young, virtually self-taught Vigée Le Brun was not entirely without support among the male establishment of the French art world. One of the greatest French artists of the pre-Revolutionary period, Joseph Vernet, recognized her talent and encouraged her to continue her efforts. Vigée Le Brun responded with a  supremely accomplished portrait of Vernet, executed when she was only twenty-three.

Anne Lloyd, Detail of Joseph Vernet, 1778 

The portrait of Vernet proved that Vigée Le Brun could paint more than pretty faces. Yet, her talent and dedication could not entirely compensate for the obstacles which she faced as a woman artist. Without access to formal training, which denied her life classes, Vigée Le Brun's range was somewhat restricted. She tended to depict her subjects sitting down or from the waste-up. Vigée Le Brun put the literary adage of "write what you know" into her artistic practice.

Vigée Le Brun "knew" heads, hands and torsos to perfection. She was a master at depicting the "feel" of fabrics. She expertly modeled the clothing of her subjects, whether it was the tightly-fitting court costume or the loose-fitting chemise that Marie Antoinette so loved to wear at her rustic retreat, the Petit Trianon.

An excellent example of Vigée Le Brun's consummate handling of figure and garb is her portrait, Baronne de Crussol Florensac. This work was exhibited at the 1785 Salon. It depicts the music-loving protagonist in an unconventional posture, wheeling around to greet the viewer. 

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Baronne de Crussol Florensac, 1785

The arching back of Baronne de Crussol Florensac shows the upward reach of the seams of her red garment contrasted with the horizontal stretch of the fabric, as she turns to greet us. It is an easily missed detail, but a crucial one for it shows that there is a living, moving body inhabiting those elegant garments.

In the 1785 Salon, Vigée Le Brun also exhibited her portrait of Charles Alexandre, vicomte de Calonne. It was a vivid demonstration of her ability to create an indelible image of a male, as opposed to a female, figure. Like most of Vigée Le Brun's protagonists, Calonne engages viewers directly with a pair of sparkling, if bemused, eyes. His hands are superbly articulated, another trademark of Vigée Le Brun.

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, 1784.

In one of Calonne's hands, we see a note addressed to the King of France. Calonne was the royal finance minister, an unenviable post in the bankrupt France of 1785. 

Anne Lloyd, Detail of Charles Alexandre de Calonne, 1784

The association of Vigée Le Brun with Monsieur Déficit as Calonne was called, as well as with Madame Déficit (Marie Antoinette) goes a long way to explain her seemingly rash decision to leave France soon after the outbreak of the Revolution and well before "the Terror."

During the escalating crisis of the 1780's, France was swept with a flood of salacious and libelous gossip about the French royal family and the court circle. Just as Marie Antoinette was the target of vicious calumny detailing lesbian affairs with the Duchesse de Polignac, so Vigée Le Brun was slandered for having a sexual affair with Calonne during the time that he sat for his portrait. No one among France's elite was exempt from vilification. 

France's Age of Revolution was the first event in world history where women played a major role en masse on the central stage of the drama. Not merely as an "incidental" heroine like Joan of Arc or as mute, long-suffering victims of male aggression - French women were among the prime movers of the Revolution.

French women were also among the most prominent victims of "the Terror."

Madame Roland,  Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Corday, the Sixteen Carmelite nuns of Compiègne and, of course, Marie Antoinette met their deaths under the blade of "Madame Guillotine."

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun survived and so too did Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803).  Labille-Guiard was a gifted painter, inducted into the Académie Royale in 1783 at the same  time as Vigée Le Brun. Given the vicious invective of the 1780's, it was inevitable that the two women artists - there were only four women in the Académie Royale - came to be viewed as "bitter" rivals. There is no documentary evidence of bitterness between them. 

Labille-Guiard was the favored artist of the royal aunts of Louis XVI, Madame Adélaïde de France and Madame Victoire de France. These formidable ladies were no friends of Marie Antoinette. Vigée Le Brun later painted them while in exile in Italy. Both pictures are displayed in the Metropolitan exhibit, close - ironically - to a portrait of Marie Antoinette. It is unlikely that either Vigée Le Brun or Labille-Guiard were part of the warring camps at Versailles.

More significant is the fact that Labille-Guiard stayed in France after Vigée Le Brun's escape. But the price of her survival during the Terror was to burn a number of her paintings on the orders of the French Revolutionary government.

This points out the unpleasant reality of being a Woman Artist in Revolutionary France as the title of the Metropolitan exhibit proclaims.

Once the French Revolution was secured, the participation of women was no longer needed and their legal status reverted to second-class "citizeness." It did not matter that Olympe de Gouges was a passionate Republican and an enlightened abolitionist. Her head suffered the same fate as did that of the courageous Royalist, Princesse de Lamballe.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of Vigée Le Brun  Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, showing Marie Antoinette and Her Children,1787 

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard saved her life by denying her art. Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun preserved her life and her artistic independence by fleeing from her country. When she eventually returned to France, under the rule of Napoleon, male hegemony in art, as in politics, was complete. Only one major commission was awarded her, a portrait of Napoleon's sister, Caroline, wife of Marshal Murat. Save for an occasional portrait later in life, Vigée Le Brun's career was virtually over.

Only with the rise of Impressionism, when avant-garde art cut its ties with the establishment, were women artists truly able to assert themselves. Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Suzanne Valedon and others were able to make a place for themselves in the world of art without regard for quotas on the number of female artists in the Académie or other arbitrary barriers.

That Morisot and Cassatt did so was due in part because they could walk in the footsteps of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, and Anne Lloyd, copyright, 2016.

Introductory Image: 

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French,1755–1842) Self-portrait,1790. oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in. (100 x 81 cm) Galleria degli Uffizi, Corridoio Vasariano, Florence (1905)

Anne Lloyd (2016), Detail of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun's Marie Antoinette and Her Children, 

Oil on canvas, 1787, Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon (MV 4520)

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French,1755–1842) Countess Varvara Nikolayevna Golovina, Ca. 1797-1800. Oil on canvas, 32 7/8 x 26 1/4 in. (83.5 x 66.7 cm) The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (80.1)

Anne Lloyd (2016), Gallery View of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun's The Marquise de Pezay and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Two Sons, 1787 Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French,1755–1842) The Duchesse de Polignac in a Straw Hat, 1782. Oil on canvas, 36 3/8 x 28 7/8 in. (92.2 x 73.3 cm) Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon (MV 8971)

Anne Lloyd (2016), Detail of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun's Joseph Vernet, 1778 Oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris (3054)

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French,1755–1842) Baronne de Crussol Florensac, 1785. Oil on wood, 44 3/4 x 33 1/8 in. (113.8 x 84 cm) Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (Ro 307)

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French,1755–1842) Charles Alexandre de Calonne, 1784. Oil on canvas, 61 ¼ x 51 ¼ in. (155.5 x 130.3 cm) Royal Collection Trust / H. M. Queen Elizabeth II (RCIN 406988)

Anne Lloyd (2016), Detail of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun's Charles Alexandre de Calonne, 

1784.

Anne Lloyd (2016), Gallery View of Vigée Le Brun  Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, showing Marie Antoinette and Her Children,1787. 

Art Eyewitness Book Review: Art Since 1989 by Kelly Grovier

Art Since 1989

By Kelly Grovier

Thames & Hudson / 224 pages / $21.95

               

Reviewed by Ed Voves

This year, one of my New Year's resolutions is to pay more attention to contemporary art and to achieve a greater degree of insight and empathy for the Artists of Today.

To be honest, that was on my list of New Year's resolutions for 2015 and also for 2014.
Thanks to the latest volume in Thames and Hudson's World of Art series, Art Since 1989, I have a good chance of keeping my resolution in 2016. 

Art Since 1989 is not merely a worthy addition to this invaluable series. Written by Kelly Grovier, Art Since 1989 is one of the most intelligent and thoughtful books I have read in recent years. Brilliantly correlating political events and social trends with developments in the visual arts, this wide-ranging survey is rooted in the real world. Even as it probes visionary art theories, it keeps the reader's feet firmly planted on the ground.

Grovier is a notable poet and a perceptive scholar of the Romantic era of the late 1700's and early 1800's - also a tradition-shattering  period much like today.

The span of art history covered by Grovier's book begins in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. This momentous event were symbolized by the spectacular,Wrapped Reichstag, planned by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1971 to protest the division of Berlin by the Cold War. By the time permission was granted to place a vast, temporary curtain of aluminum-coated polypropylene fabric over the German parliament building in 1995, Germany was finally united.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, 1995

The Christo "wrap" was a mighty work, a human-constructed butterfly's chrysalis symbolizing reunification and harmony. But Wrapped Reichstag, as an appealing work of art, easily understood by people around the world, is the exception to the rule of contemporary art.

Grovier starts out by making an especially cogent point on the truly "shock of the new" aspect of contemporary art. We now live in an era which lacks a coherent ideology or a galvanizing "movement." There is in the art world of today no "overiding style, technique or attitude governing artistic practice..."

The art of the discredited Marxist regimes, Socialist Realism, is defunct. Hip "do your own thing" art is now a Madison Ave branding technique. Left-wing and right-wing have fallen, burying the central canons of art beneath the debris.

Art's revolutionary role has paradoxically taken a hit as well. Grovier writes, "Without an orthodoxy to resist, there can of course be no avant-garde - no overthrowing of an old order by a new one." 

The long reign of King "Ism" is over! Long live ...?

Antony Gormley, Horizon Field, 2010-2012

In a way, we are like the intriguing cast-iron figures of Antony Gormley's landscape installation, Horizon Field, watching to see who will pick up the scepter of King "Ism."

Grovier refrains from nominating any artists or art movements to fill the vacant throne. There is a note of irony here because Art Since 1989 recalls an earlier book by Grovier. This book documents selected works of contemporary art which Grovier contends are likely to stand the test of time. Also published by Thames & Hudson, 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age is a lavishly illustrated, big format volume with lively discussions of Grovier's chosen masterpieces. 

I was impressed with a number of Grovier's choices - notably Subodh Gupta's apocalyptic sculpture, Line of Control. Yet, Grovier's commentary on the "end of Art History," in terms similar to that noted above, argued against the idea that works of art made for a consumer society could outlive their creators' fifteen minutes of fame. 
   
Art Since 1989, by contrast, succeeds in addressing any lingering doubts about the enduring value of contemporary art. Not only is it filled with challenging insights, but Grovier's new book imparts a sense of coherence and relevance to the study of present-day art that seemed lacking in 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age. 

Grovier brilliantly makes the case that contemporary art legitimately addresses great themes of humanity and of our natural environment. He begins each of his chapters with cogent analysis of a major political event or scientific discovery, like the Hubble Space Telescope which was launched into orbit in 1990. Grovier then traces the effect of these developments on the creative achievements of contemporary artists.

In terms of political and social impact, the Feminist Movement and the global resurgence of Islam are among the most influential developments of recent times. These two dynamic forces came into prominence in the 1970's. Their cultural impact took a while to be felt as a generation of artists first absorbed and then reacted, pro or con, to the messages they impart.

In the case of Shirin Neshat, a talented Iranian-American photographer and film maker (b. 1957), that involved asserting herself in relation to both feminism and Islam. Neshat's family belonged to the Westernizing elite of Iran under the Shah. She was sent to study in the U.S, as feminism opened new creative venues for women and then as the radical form of Islam preached by the Ayatollah Khomeini suppressed many of the gains women had made in Iranian society since the Second World War.

Neshat eventually left Iran in 1975 to live in the U.S. Rebellious Silence, 1994, is perhaps Neshat's most famous photograph but it is a deeply ambivalent work. The Islamic veil, forced upon the female population of Iran by the male religious elite, is abhorrent to many in the West. Yet, the veil has actually been embraced by many Muslim women as a means of liberating them from being treated a sex-objects in a world where the degradation of women shows no sign of weakening. 

Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, 1994

Likewise, the rifle may - or may not - symbolize the political subjugation of women. Given the position of the gun barrel, it is hard to say if the woman is embracing the weapon or have it thrust in her face. 

The words of a poem on the theme of martyrdom, written by a woman poet (Tahereh Saffarzadeh) and superimposed on Neshat's face, are hard to gauge as well. They may express Neshat's empathy with the fortitude of the people of Iran during the horrendous war with Iraq, 1980-1988, when nearly a million Iranians were killed by bombs and weapons supplied by the Western powers to  the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein.

What does Neshat say about Rebellious Silence?

"From the beginning I made a decision that this work was not going to be about me or my opinions on the subject," Neshat declared, "and that my position was going to be no position." 

Far from being an evasive "cop-out" or a skillful repackaging of moral relativism, Neshat is encouraging, indeed forcing, the viewer, to directly engage with the content of her picture.

Neshat's reply, courageous and self-denying, establishes one of the central facets of contemporary art. The viewer, the gallery goer, is going to have to decide the meaning of the painting or the sculpture, the installation or the multi-media presentation - for themselves.

Given the deliberately challenging - and occasionally offensive - nature of much of contemporary art, it is not surprising that many people react negatively to the art scene of today. Grovier writes: 

So dubious are many sectors of society of the integrity of the very enterprise of making contemporary art that the achievement of artists is either condescendingly diminished ('my five-year-old could have done that') or dismissed altogether as an embarrassingly failed attempt even to operate within the unruly rules of the genre: 'yes, but is it art?'

Grovier goes on to note that many contemporary artists deal with this social 
stigmatization by emphasizing "the connections between scientific and aesthetic inquiry."
In some cases, this involves audacious initiatives using "cutting-edge" technology to express emotional and spiritual values. Doug Aitken's Mirror, installed on the facade of the Seattle Art Museum in 2013, uses a  computerized LED screen to show constantly changing images "synchronized to the changing tempo of the city itself."                           

Grovier also examines how contemporary artists are exploring the interfaces between art and other creative disciplines, literature and music. Two works by outstanding painters, Cy Twombly (1928-2011) and Christopher Le Brun (b.1951) show the process of  cultural "cross-pollination" at work.

Christopher Le Brun, Walton, 2013

Le Brun, in his painting entitled Walton, evokes the 1954 opera, Troilus and Cressida, by Sir William Walton. Le Brun, who was elected as President of the Royal Academy in 2011, started this work by painting Walton's name and those of his protagonists on to the canvas. Layer upon layer of searing red paint were then applied, until the names were nearly obliterated. 

"Nearly" is the operative word here. Somehow, the names of Walton and the two doomed lovers from ancient Troy manage to emerge from the sea of red. Culture, the creative expression of humankind, makes its presence felt, swimming to the surface like a survivor of a shipwreck. 

Toward the end of his long career, Cy Twombly exhibited a quintet of wall-sized paintings of roses which lead the viewer's gaze to scrawled quotations from Rainier Maria Rilke's 1949 poem cycle, The Roses. 

Cy Twombly, Rose (IV), 2008

These awesome works of representation art, so at odds with much of Twombly's Abstractionism are simply dazzling. When Twombly's Rose paintings were first shown at the Gagosian Gallery, the walls vibrated with vivid color. Blooms of deep crimson resonated in the cavernous gallery along with gold, purple and midnight blue.   
        
Image and word were united in Twombly's Rose paintings with an epic scope worthy of the great masters of the past. These are truly the work of a great master of the present age.

These sensational paintings are proof that John Keats' theory of "negative capability" is still worthy of consideration in the twenty-first century. Contemporary artists like Twombly, Le Brun, Doug Aitken and Shirin Neshat are indeed "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." 

Looking at Twombly's Rose IV and the great works of art discussed in Art Since 1989 shows us that the basic truth of Keats' theories on creative achievement still holds true:

The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of Thames & Hudson 

Introductory Image: Art Since 1989, 2015 (cover) Image credit: Thames & Hudson 

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, 1971–95. 100,000 square meters (1,076,000 square feet) of polypropylene fabric and 15,600 meters (51,181 feet) of rope. Photo Wolfgang Volz. © Christo 1995

Antony Gormley, Horizon Field, August 2010–April 2012.100 cast-iron elements, each 189 x 53 x 29 cm (74 ⅜ x 20 ⅞ x 11 ⅜ in), spread over an area of 150 square kilometers (detail). Installation view, the High Alps, Vorlarlberg, Austria. Presented by Kunsthaus Bregenz. Photograph by Makus Tretter. Antony Gormley and Kunsthaus Bregenz

100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age, 2013 (cover) Image credit: Thames & Hudson 

Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, from the series Women of Allah, 1994. Black-and-white, resin coated print with ink,  Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photo Cynthia Preston. © Shirin Neshat


Christopher Le Brun, Walton, 2013. Oil on canvas, 240 x 170 cm (94 ½ x 66 ⅞ in).             Courtesy of the artist.

Cy Twombly, Rose (IV), 2008.Acrylic on wood panel, 252 x 740 cm (99 3/16 x 291 5/16 in)Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photo Mike Bruce. © Cy Twombly Foundation

Made in the Americas:The New World Discovers Asia at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

                                                                                             

Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia

Museum of Fine Arts Boston
August 18, 2015–February 15, 2016

Winterthur Museum

 March 26, 2016–January 8, 2017

Reviewed by Ed Voves                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia is an innovative exhibition at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. This exhibit is both colorful in presentation and fascinating in its content, but "unconventional" is an even more descriptive assessment.

Made in the Americas examines the visual arts and artisan crafts of the colonial era in the New World. The overarching theme, however, differs from the accustomed way of showing how European culture was transplanted to the recently discovered lands of the Americas. 

The second part of the exhibit title - The New World Discovers Asia - supplies a key interpretive insight. The Boston art display examines the influence of long-distance trading by Western seafarers with Asia. The luxury goods brought back aboard their storm-lashed ships helped transform the way of life in the Spanish dominions of Mexico and Peru and the thirteen British colonies destined to form the United States in 1776.

Asian imports were embraced by the ruling elites of Europe's colonies in the Americas. One of the earliest works of art on view is a Chinese porcelain plate which appears as the introductory image of this review. In an amazing amalgam of Europe's feudal heraldry and Oriental aesthetics, the plate bears the coat of arms of the viceroy of Peru, García Hurtado de Mendoza (1535-1609). 

Such precious objects also exerted a powerful influence by the peoples they ruled. The social transformation occurred in ways that were not initially apparent.

John Singleton Copley's portrait of Nicholas Boylston (1716-1771) shows exactly the sort of "merchant prince" who profited by the trade with Asia. Boylston’s import company, Green and Boylston, played a key role in clothing wealthy Bostonians with the rich textiles which he himself wore when painted by Copley. Boylston's firm also specialized in importing tea to the increasingly self-reliant British colonies.

John Singleton Copley, Nicholas Boylston, 1769 

Politically conservative, Boylston refused to support the boycott of British goods during the tense years before the American Revolution. He was denounced by Patriot leader, Samuel Adams, as one of the "enemies of their country." Boylston's death in 1771 spared him from witnessing the destruction of his refined, gentlemanly way of life when Paul Revere called the Minutemen of Massachusetts to arms against the British in 1775.

The growing appetite for Asia's furniture and furnishings, spices and ceramics, fed the New World's desire for more.  As demand rose, so too did the desire to have these goods at prices that people less affluent than Boylston could afford.

Unknown Artist, Portable Writing Desk, c. 1684

The populations of the British and Spanish colonies took matters into their own hands. They started marking versions of these exotic Asian imports for themselves. And once they succeeded in achieving a growing measure of economic self-sufficiency, the next step was to grasp after political independence.

The majority of the art treasures on view in the Boston exhibit exemplify this "can-do" American spirit. To maintain the Oriental allure of products made in the Americas, however, touches of faux Asian design known as chinoiserie were added. Motifs "in the Chinese taste" appeared on every imaginable object from fabrics and wall-paper to Queen Anne-style cabinets.

John Pimm, Japanned High Chest, 1730-1739

The great Boston furniture maker, John Pimm, created an exquisite high chest, during the 1730's, from black walnut and soft maple. It was then "japanned" with coats of a special varnish to make the surface look like Asian lacquer had been applied to it, with gilded Oriental figures to complete the illusion.

Unknown Artists (Mexico), Desk and Bookcase, Mid-18th Century

Another standout piece from the exhibition, a spectacular desk and bookcase from the mid-1700's which opens up to reveal a mythic realm in red and gold, was "Americas-made." It was created by Mexican craftsmen, rather than Chinese, as one would initially suspect.

This Asian influence of Asia on the creative energies of colonial America came about as a result of one of the most fantastic maritime ventures of world history. These were the voyages of ships known as the Manila Galleons. 

The story begins with the epic expedition by a Spanish ship, the San Pedro, in 1565. That year, an Augustinian monk named Fray Andrés de Urdaneta (1498-1568) guided the San Pedro on a perilous voyage to discover a trade route from the Spanish colony of the Philippines to Mexico. 

Urdaneta was a Basque sailor who had taken holy orders after surviving a disastrous earlier expedition. When King Philip II recalled Urdaneta to duty, the Basque sailor-monk put his experience to great use. 
                                                                  
The San Pedro sailed from Cebu Island in the Philippines on June 1, 1565, carrying a cargo of precious cinnamon. Urdaneta, on board as navigator, boldly sailed into the uncharted waters of the North Pacific rather than set the vessel's course by the Equator to reach South America. Urdaneta followed a hunch that there were favorable trade winds in the North Pacific, just as there were in the North Atlantic. Urdaneta was correct and though most of the crew died on the 6,000 mile voyage across the Pacific, the San Pedro made landfall near Acapulco on October 8, 1565.

For nearly 250 years, the Manila galleons followed "Urdaneta's route" bringing spices, textiles and the coveted blue and white glazed porcelain that would be known as "China" in the West. To pay for these high-profile goods, the Manila galleons brought tons of silver to Asia, nearly a third of the vast haul mined by the Spanish during the colonial era in Mexico and modern-day Bolivia. This cargo went into the coffers of the Ming and Manchu emperors of China and the Samurai rulers of Japan. The bartered Asian goods were then transported by the Manila galleons to Acapulco for reshipment to Spain.

Two centuries and a half centuries later, the annual oceanic trek was still going strong. Then, in 1815, the frigate San Fernando de Magallanes sailed into Acapulco to find that Mexico had rebelled against the Spanish crown. The age of the Manila Galleon came to an abrupt end.

Gallery view showing the byōbu, Southern Barbarians Come to Trade, c. 1600

In the long years between the two voyages, the Asian imports brought back by the Manila galleons created a cultural ripple effect that reached many distant shores. 

One of the first - and most remarkable - displays in the Boston exhibit directly evokes the Manila Galleon trade. Huge folding screens - byōbu ­- were brought from Japan to Mexico. Byōbu was transliterated as biombo in Spanish. The folding screens became so identified with the Hispanic­-speaking world that in Germany they were known as Spanische wand or Spanish walls.

Not only were biombos supremely practical in creating private space but they offered ample scope for a wide range of decorative schemes. Many were painted with New World genre scenes, Native-American weddings or feast day celebrations.

Unknown Artist, Biombo with Scenes of the Conquest of Mexico, Late 17th century 

The biombo on view in the Boston exhibit, however, depicts various episodes of the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes in 1519. It is a vast cinemascope affair, densely packed with dramatic incident. Appearing on the reverse side is a panorama of the rebuilt Mexico City at peace under the benign rule of the Spanish viceroys.

Like the 1950's movie epics, the biombo reveals more of the way that the story of Cortes was viewed when it was created in the 1600's than about the actual events a century and a half before. A scene showing armored-clad Spanish conquistadores plunging to their doom in the lake surrounding Mexico City evokes the human-cost of this horrific siege. But otherwise there is little indication of the staggering death toll that marked the overthrow of the Aztec Empire.

This romanticized view of the conquest of Mexico was no doubt influenced by the way that the Japanese Kano artists utilized the sweeping expanse of the byōbu screen to rework scenes from Japan's mythology or history. 

Set against a golden backdrop, the byōbu on view in the MFA exhibit is a magnificent example of these cherished works. This byōbu depicts the moment when European seafarers - Nanbanjin or "southern barbarians" - first reached Japan in the 1540's. It is a marvelous work of art, a true masterpiece, but it never was intended to represent the actual event, fraught with suspicion and duplicity. 

Another work of art related to the Manila Galleon trade testifies to the interaction of Asian and American craftsmen and the burgeoning self-expression among these "colonials."

Ivory carving ranked high among the accomplishments of artists in the Philippines. Stunning pieces of this delicate work were exported to Spain's colonies in the Americas. Often, the heads and hands of small figures were carved in ivory in the Philippines and then combined with wooden bodies carved in the New World. 

Unknown Artists (Philippines and Ecuador), Nativity Set, 18th Century

This heart-warming Nativity set from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York is a beautiful example of this collaborative effort.

There are so many incredible works of art in Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia that it is bewildering to study them in a single museum visit. It is a pleasure to note that when the exhibit concludes in Boston, it will be revived at the Winterthur Museum, near Wilmington, Delaware. The exhibit will be on view at Winterthur from March 26, 2016 to January 8, 2017.

For a final reflection, I have chosen an object to appreciate that outwardly is of little significance. Yet, it has a symbolical importance for the age of the Manila galleons and chinoiserie - and for the era that came afterward. 

This is a blue-and-white tea bowl of the kind made at Puebla in Mexico and ceramic workshops throughout Europe. This reproduction of the real thing from China was made by a South Carolina potter, John Bartlam, and decorated in the finest chinoiserie style.

John Bartlam, Tea Bowl, 1765-1770

Bartlam's tea bowl was created around the time that tea importer Nicholas Boylston was denounced by Samuel Adams. One can only wonder what American colonials poured into Bartlam's china cups and bowls after the Boston Tea Party. Did they drink Oswego Tea, an all-American substitute?

Oswego Tea was an herbal concoction brewed by Native Americans and then made popular by a Philadelphia Quaker botanist with a similar sounding name to the South Carolina potter, John Bartram. While traveling in western New York as part of a delegation to meet with the chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1743, Bartram observed the Iroquois brewing a drink from the leaves of the Monarda didyma (Bee Balm) plant which he called Oswego Tea. 

Thousands of Bartram's fellow colonials borrowed his recipe in 1773. This was the year that the American colonies rejected King George III's tax on tea and dumped the East India Company's shipment from China into Boston Harbor. Oswego Tea became the beverage of choice of American sons and daughters of Liberty.

This exquisite little tea bowl, then, is a fitting symbol of the social transformation that enabled people in the Americas to adapt well-traveled objects from Asia to suit their rising communities. In the process, the people in the American colonies created a self-reliant, democratic way of life.

Chinoiserie tea bowls and representative democracy were by-products of the cultural transformation so brilliantly explored in The New World Discovers Asia at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. These too were "made in the Americas." 

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 
Images courtesy of the  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Introductory Image:                                                                                               Unknown Artist, Plate with the arms of García Hurtado de Mendoza y Manrique and Teresa de Castro y de la Cueva, 1588-1593. Porcelain with underglaze blue decoration. Diameter - 8 inches. Thomas Lurie Collection. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

John Singleton Copley (American, 1735-1815),  Nicholas Boylston, about 1769. Oil on canvas:  127.32 x 101.6 cm (50 1/8 x 40 in.) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of David P. Kimball, #23.504 Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

Unknown Artist, Portable Writing Desk, c.1684. Wood, varniz de pasto, silver fittings. On loan from The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John Pimm (American, died 1773) Japanned High Chest, 1730-1739. Soft maple, black walnut, white pine, mahogany, brass: 218.44 cm x 104.14 cm x 62.23 cm. (86 in. x 41 in. x 24.5 in.) Winterthur Museum, Gift of Henry Francis du Pont. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Unknown Artists from Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico. Desk and Bookcase, mid-18th century. Inlaid and incised woods and painted bone, maque, and gold and polychrome paint: 87 in. x 41 in. x 261/2 in. Ann and Gordon Getty Collection, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, photograph. Gallery view showing the byōbu, Southern Barbarians Come to Trade, attributed to Kano Naizen (Japanese, 1570–1616) c. 1600. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Unknown Artist, Biombo with Scenes of the Conquest of Mexico / View of the City of Mexico, Late 17th.  Folding screen with ten oil-on-canvas panels, overall: 210 x 560 cm, (82 11/16 x 220 1/2 in.) Vera da Costa Autrey Collection, Mexico City. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Unknown Artists (Possibly Philippines and Ecuador), Nativity Set, 18th century or later. Wood, polychromed and gilded; ivory touched up with polychromy. Dimensions: Figure of Mary  - H. 7 3/4 in. (19.7 cm.); Figure of Infant Jesus -  L. 2 3/4 in. (7 cm); Figure of Joseph - H. 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art,  Gift of Loretta Hines Howard, 1964. #s: 64.164.172, 64.164.174, 64.164.173 Photograph © Metropolitan Museum of  Art, NYC

John Bartlam (American, 1735/36-1781) Tea Bowl, 1765 - 1770 . Soft-paste porcelain, diameter 3 1/8 inches. Anonymous loan. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston