D_magazine

DMA Organizes First “Mournersâ€

Tour

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 10:51am by Peter Simek Filed under Arts Forty “mourners,â€

15th century sculpted figures that were commissioned to adorn the tomb of John the

Fearless, the second Duke of Burgundy, will be leaving France for the first time and embarking on a U.S. tour next year, coming to Dallas on October 3, 2010, the Associated Press reports today. The Dallas Museum of Art is organizing the tour, and I’m sure the pedigree of our new European Art curator (who you can read about in the latest edition of the print product) doesn’t hurt that organizing effort.

While we wait for the figures to arrive, I thought it would be fun to look back at some of these pieces by Dallas artist Frances Bagley for some interesting century-spanning similarities. More shots of the medieval sculptures can be found here, and a full (detailed) release from DMA can be found after the jump.

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Co-Organized by the Dallas Museum of Art with the French Regional & American Museum Exchange (FRAME), Exhibition on View Beginning March 2010 Dallas, TX, November 6, 2009 – A group of nearly 40 of the greatest masterpieces of medieval sculpture, which have never before been seen in their entirety outside of France, will be presented in seven cities in the United States for the first and only time starting in 2010. Carved by Jean de La Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier between 1443 and 1470, the unique devotional figures, known as “mourners,†were commissioned for the elaborate tomb of the second Duke of Burgundy. Crafted with astonishing detail, the alabaster sculptures exemplify some of the most important artistic innovations of the late Middle Ages. The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy represents the first time that these figures will be seen together outside of France and provides an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate each sculpture as an individual work of art.

Co-organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, France, under the auspices of the French Regional & American Museum Exchange (FRAME), The Mourners will premiere on March 2, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before traveling to six additional museums throughout the United States. The exhibition will be on view at the Dallas Museum of Art from October 3, 2010 through January 2, 2011. “This singular exhibition exemplifies the DMA’s ongoing programming, which connects Dallas residents and visitors with extraordinary art and cultural treasures from around the globe,†said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “These are incredibly beautiful works that are as powerful and meaningful today as they were the day they were created.â€

“The loan and tour of the ‘mourners’ is a shining moment in the history of FRAME, a testament to shared friendship and shared knowledge,†added Richard R. Brettell, Director of FRAME in the United States.

The sculptures—each approximately 16 inches high—depict sorrowful figures expressing their grief or devotion to John the Fearless (1371–1419), the second Duke of Burgundy, who was both a powerful political figure and patron of the arts. The tomb, which is not traveling, comprises life-sized effigies of the duke and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, resting upon a slab of black marble, with a procession of mourners weaving through an ornate Gothic arcade beneath. Each individual figure has a different expression—some wring their hands or dry their tears, hide their faces in the folds of their robes, or appear lost in reverent contemplation. The motif echoes that of ancient sarcophagi, but these innovative tombs were the first to represent mourners as thoroughly dimensional, rather than in semi-relief. The presentation of the mourners passing through the arcades of a cloister was also a great innovation for the tombs of the era. “The renovation of our museum has created the opportunity for these exceptional works to travel together to the United States,†said Sophie Jugie, the Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. “This FRAME project allows the sculptures to be viewed and appreciated as discrete works of art.†During the 14th and 15th centuries, the Valois dukes of Burgundy were among the most powerful rulers in the Western world, presiding over vast territories in present-day France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands from their capital in Dijon. The significant artistic patronage of the dukes drew artists, musicians and writers to Dijon, which became a major center of creativity and artistic patronage.

This prolific creativity and innovation extended to the ducal court’s sculpture workshop, which produced some of the most significant art of the period. The tombs of the first two Burgundian dukes, John the Fearless and his father Philip the Bold, are among the best examples. Both tombs were originally commissioned for the family’s monastic complex outside of Dijon, the Charterhouse de Champmol, and were moved following the French Revolution to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, France, where they have remained since the early 19th century. The forthcoming exhibition tour will enable the mourners to remain on view during the museum’s renovation.

Exhibition Organization and Tour The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy was organized by the Musée des BeauxArts de Dijon and the Dallas Museum of Art, under the auspices of FRAME (the French Regional & American Museum Exchange). FRAME’s Directors are Richard R. Brettell, PhD (U.S.A.) and Jean-Hubert Martin, Conservateur Général du Patrimoine, Directeur de FRAME en France. The exhibition has been curated by Sophie Jugie, Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, with Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is supported by a leadership gift from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Florence Gould Foundation, the Eugene McDermott Foundation, Connie Goodyear Baron and Boucheron.

Major corporate support is provided by Bank of the West (Member BNP Paribas Group). This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The exhibition tour will include: • The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (March 2, 2010–May 23, 2010) • Saint Louis Art Museum (June 20, 2010–September 6, 2010) • Dallas Museum of Art (October 3, 2010–January 2, 2011) • Minneapolis Institute of Arts (January 23, 2011–April 17, 2011) • Los Angeles County Museum of Art (May 8, 2011–July 31, 2011) • Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (August 21, 2011–January 1, 2012) • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (January 20, 2012–April 15, 2012) Exhibition Catalogue The Mourners is accompanied by a richly illustrated 129-page catalogue by Sophie Jugie, Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, with prefaces by FRAME Founders Marie-Christine Labourdette and Elizabeth Rohatyn and Dijon Mayor François Rebsamen, and an introduction by Philippe de Montebello, Director Emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published by Yale University Press, the catalogue explores the social and political context in which the tombs were created and features detailed photographs and descriptions of each sculpture in the group.

An in-depth discussion of the architecture and aesthetics of the period reveals the innovative craftsmanship behind the ducal tombs and the mourners themselves. An examination of the tomb’s restoration reveals the museum’s efforts to care for the objects and address the unique—and widely varying—needs of each piece.

About FRAME The French Regional & American Museum Exchange (FRAME) is a formal collaboration of 12 museums in France and 12 museums in the United States which serves as a catalyst for cultural exchange between France and the United States. Founded in 1998, FRAME is dedicated to promoting French-American cooperation in the cultural arena concerning museums, their collections, and their professional staffs. It fosters partnerships, projects and exchanges of information, personnel, technology and resources. The projects range from a shared website to many joint exhibitions, educational resources and programs, and publications. They serve the cultural needs of each country and educate a constituency of great size, breadth and distribution. The museums of FRAME are all purposely drawn from regions outside the economic and governmental capitals of both countries, in order to draw attention to, and broadly share, the richness of cultural resources that characterize these institutions and regions. FRAME’s directors are Richard R. Brettell, PhD, in the United States and Jean-Hubert Martin, Conservateur Général du Patrimoine, in France.

About the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon Founded just before the French Revolution, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon is a superb combination of the prestigious architecture of a ducal residence, now the Palais des Etats de Bourgogne (Burgundy State Palace), and one of the richest collections in France. Thanks to the legacy of the dukes of Burgundy, some undisputed masterpieces from the end of the Middle Ages are displayed within its walls.

Its exhaustive collections, resulting from both the founding period of the French Revolution and the curiosity of collectors, lead to the most varied of discoveries, from Egyptian art to the 20th century.

Welcoming all art forms, the museum regularly organizes exhibitions, tours, conferences, workshops and shows for a dynamic and often unusual exploration of its collections.

The Art Shows You Need to See: FrontRow’s Fall Visual Arts Preview

By Peter Simek September 9th, 2010 2:07pm September is here, and with it the fall arts season gets under way. Keep checking back as we preview theater, dance, visual art, film, pop and classical music over the next week.

To preview the fall visual arts season, we’ve broken the highlights into a few categories: anticipated museum shows, the most intriguing historical art events, art celebrating the Mexican Centennial, exciting artistic collaborations, and a must-see art event.

Anticipated Museum Shows Over the past year, other area museums have enjoyed more press, conversation, and hype, but the Amon Carter Museum has quietly put together a string of impressive offerings, from retrospectives on American moderns and early abstract artists in the Americas to Edward Curtis portraits of Native Americans. This fall the museum offers a trio of exhibitions focusing on photography. If you visit the Amon between October 2 and November 11, you will be able to see work by Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans, as well as the ongoing Masterworks of American Photography exhibition.

Work by Alexander Calder While the Amon Carter has had a quiet, successful run, the Nasher Sculpture Center’s year of firsts – first exhibition of living artist (Plensa), first non-sculpture exhibit (Whiteread), first major retrospective on a regional artist (Magee) – has been a little lackluster. Perhaps the museum is saving the best for last. This December it will open an survey exhibition of work by the influential modern sculpture Alexander Calder, paring 30 sculptures by the late-master with work of a number contemporary artists, including Martin Boyce, Nathan Carter, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Aaron Curry, Kristi Lippire, Jason Meadows, and Jason Middlebrook. Also worth checking out will be the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s survey of Fort Worth artist Vernon Fisher’s work, collages, blackboard paintings and installations that fluctuate between and fuse aspects of Pop and Conceptual art.

Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light – Amon Carter Museum; May 29 – November 11.

Masterworks of American Photography – Amon Carter Museum; August 14 – January 23, 2011.

American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White – Amon Carter Museum; October 2 – January 2, 2011.

Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy – Nasher Sculpture Center; December 11, 2010 – March 6, 2011.

Vernon Fisher: K-Mart Conceptualism – Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; September 25 – January 2, 2011.

Historical Art Event

El Greco's Pentecost The new partnership between the Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum and the Prado is not just going to produce a handful of important loans between the two museums, but it poses the potential for an ongoing collaboration between the two museums that will further increase the stature and quality of our local Spanish art museum. This September, we get to see the first fruits of that collaboration, El Greco’s Pentecost. In addition to the exhibition, the Meadows has programmed an interesting array of lectures and events to complement the unprecedented loan. Most intriguing is the Spanish Muse exhibit, running concurrently with the El Greco exhibit, that will focus on contemporary artists who have been inspired by Spanish Art. El Greco’s masterwork isn’t the only piece of priceless art making its first trip across the Atlantic. In early October, the Dallas Museum of Art will open The Mourners, an exhibition of medieval tomb sculptures from the Burgundy court. Besides being important representations of a moment of sculptural progress in early Renaissance France, the fragile, alabaster carvings are breathtakingly beautiful and evocative.

El Greco’s Pentecost – Meadows Museum; September 12 – February 6, 2011.

Spanish Muse: A Contemporary Response – Meadows Museum; September 12 – December 12.

The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy – The Dallas Museum of Art; October 3 – January 2, 2011.

Art for the Mexican Centennial

'Views from Inside and Outside Mexico City; Mexico, ca. 1660; Collection of Rodrigo Rivero-Lake, Mexico City.

A number of local organizations and institutions are presenting exhibitions in celebration of the Mexican Centennial, and three in particular stick out. First is the Crow Collection’s interesting pairing of their museum’s focus – asian art – and Mexican artists in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. During this period, Mexico was a key trade crossroads between Spain and the Far East, and the Crow Collection is bringing together work by Mexican artists of this period who were influenced and inspired by Japanese painting technique and form.

Jump forward a few centuries, and you have Centraltrak’s exhibition of contemporary Mexican artist Ruben Nieto’s vibrant, comic-inspired paintings. Also focusing on contemporary Mexican art with a cultural twist, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary’s The Forgotten Ones/Los Olvidados explores the relationship between the growing popularity of the cult of death and lives of Mexican immigrants in the United States.

Black Current: Mexican Responses to Japanese Art, 17th -19th Centuries – Crow Collection of Asian Art; October 21 - January 02, 2011.

POW! La Revolucion: Paintings by Ruben Nieto – CentralTrak; September 11 – October 2.

The Forgotten Ones/Los Olvidados – McKinney Avenue Contemporary; September 18 – October 23.

Gallery Show For the First Timer Gallery hopping can be intimidating your first time out. Sure there’s the allure of interesting new art, casual conversations, and free wine, but where do you start? Dunn and Brown has to be one of the most intimidating. Set off McKinney Ave., you pass through a gate that feels like you are entering a

fortress. Then, you have to find the right door into the gallery (there are multiple), which actually leads you into a section of the gallery furthest from the main exhibition space. To get there, you have to wander past Dunn and Brown’s stacks, through workspaces, exchanging awkward glances with the proprietors. But when you finally get to the space, you are greeted with some of the city’s best art. In other words, if you can handle Dunn and Brown, visiting any other gallery is cake. And Dunn and Brown are kicking off the fall season with a great show featuring Houston-based artist Trent Doyle Hancock’s cartoonish, narrative drawings, similar to the artist’s work which adorns Cowboys Stadium.

Photographs Do Not Bend in the Design District is opening a show called iSHOW, which has tapped ten photographers, including local favorite Allison V. Smith and Dallas Video Festival founder Bart Weiss, to submit work shot with their iPhones.

Trent Doyle Hancock, Work While it is Day. . .For When Night Cometh No Man Can Work – Dunn and Brown Contemporary; September 10 – October 23. iSHOW – Photographs Do Not Bend; September 24 – October 9.

Must See Non-Traditional Art Event Last year’s art highlight came in the form of a transformed bank building that was the setting for a multiartist installation. Days after the show opened, the building was destroyed. This September many of the same artists involved in the bank show are reconvening for a similar off-beat installation called Sustenance. This time they are installing work in an abandoned building on Singleton Blvd. in West Dallas. Featuring artists like Frances Bagley, Linnea Glatt and Jim Cinquemani, Sedrick Huckaby, Tom Orr, Ludwig Schwarz, and Jeff Zilm, it is sure to be one of the season’s most important shows.

Sustenance – 337 Singleton; September 11 – October 3.

Best Collaborations Working with installations, films, and art events that fuse multiple disciplines – film, theater, dance and visual art, Eve Sussman and her artist collective, Rufus Corporation, are among the most intriguing, groundbreaking, and respected artists working in the world today. Now, thanks to a collaboration between Southern Methodist University’s art division, the Meadows Museum, and Forth Worth Contemporary Arts gallery at Texas Christian University, Sussman will be in North Texas this September for two exhibitions, a lecture, and a screening of her most recent experimental film.

Ever since the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas’ downtown ArtLab closed, the organization, which includes some of the city’s best galleries, has been in flux. This fall, they look to kick some energy into the scene with two new events: a picnic at the Valley House Gallery and a series of bus tours. The bus tours will offer art lovers the chance to visit three galleries, an artist’s studio, and a private collection – all in an afternoon with lunch. Besides offering a rare opportunity to see some unseen art collections and studios, hopefully this kind of inter-gallery collaboration can help broaden the audience for the city’s finest galleries.

Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation – Fort Worth Contemporary Arts; September 16 – October 31.

Art Bus Tours by CADD – Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas; October 9 and November 13.

Photo at top: Jean de La Huerta and Antoine le Moiturier, Mourner from the Tomb of Jean Sans Peur (John the Fearless), second Duke of Burgundy, No. 51, 1443-57. Alabaster. © Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. Photo François JAY.

Why We Can Be Grateful The Mourners Were Ripped From Their Tomb

By Lucia Simek Octobe

Entering the gallery at the Dallas Museum of Art that houses the Mourners exhibit, a collection of medieval tomb sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, is, thanks to the brilliant installation of the show, an experience not unlike entering an actual cathedral.

Stepping into the space from out of the bright main corridor of the museum requires a pause for eyes to adjust to the minimal light: the gallery walls have been painted a deep, rich indigo blue, with Gothic arch scrims accenting various walls. The chiaroscuro shift in light makes you hesitate a little, gather yourself. And then, a clip of an instant later, you see them. Out of the darkness glow the Mourners – diminutive white alabaster statues, in various postures of grief, set atop platforms all painted the same ponderous blue as the walls, and each figure spotlighted so perfectly it’s almost celestial. It is, as museum awe-inducing experiences go, a holy moment.

Taking the room in as a whole, it would seem that there are many of the same figures, or at least multiples of various types. But each figure is unique, and each is deftly carved into his own particular exhibition of grief: pondering the heavens, fingering a Rosary, gripping the leather strap around a Bible, wiping tears off a cheek. Many of the figures’ heads are entirely shrouded in the hood of their cloak. These are wonderfully doleful and haunting, and if you crouch down low enough you can often peek the carved face beneath the hood. The faces on the figures are as varied as there are many, illustrating the vast vocabulary of wordless sorrow and desperation.

The forty statues come from the tomb of the second duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, and were carved by Jean de la Huerta and Antoine le Moiturier between 1443 and 1456/7.

Originally, the Mourners were placed in a miniature carved gothic cloister that supported the tomb and the effigies of the duke and his wife above. Marauding revolutionaries attacked the tombs in 1793, extracting the Mourners from their placement under the tomb and carrying them off. Not until well into the nineteenth century were (nearly) all of the statues reunited.

Though I’d never advocate for the decimation of any sacred space, or the things therein, I can’t help but find myself a little grateful to those nobility-loathing Frenchmen that removed the Mourners from their ranks under the effigies. Their act of violence allowed for the discovery that is the marvel of these works of art. Even though the statues were only intended to be seen frontally, they are perfectly detailed on all sides; each can stand on its own as a three dimensional object. Alabaster is, of course, luminous in its own right, but the statues set here in the dark gallery, with a 360 ̊ view and light penetrating them judiciously from above, take on a particular life. The sculptors of these objects must have known that, recognizing it as they worked. Knowing the light quality that the statues could conduct, I imagine that placing them in the less-light cloister of the tomb felt something like a sacrifice or offering itself. It is no small gift to us that we can witness these masterpieces as the artists did at their making.