Giovanni Serodine (1600-1630) - Rome

Giovanni Serodine
Calling of the Sons of Zebedee
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo, Ascona, Switzerland

Giovanni Serodine
Christ among the Doctors
1625
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Serodine
St Margaret resuscitating a Youth
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

"Serodine's family originated in Ascona near Lake Maggiore, and moved to Rome, where his father is documented in 1595 and where the artist was probably born around 1600.  He produced his early works in conjunction with his brother Giovanni Battista, an expert stucco artist, an activity in which both were engaged.  Indeed, documents prove that the initial commissions Giovanni Serodine received were to collaborate in this decorative specialty for the church of the Conception in Spoleto, in 1624, together with mural paintings.  The earliest known easel painting can be dated to around 1625, The Calling of the Sons of Zebedee . . . executed in Rome and taken to Ascona by his father following Serodine's early death.  He was undoubtedly influenced by Bartolomeo Manfredi and Antiveduto Grammatica, also by Orazio Borgianni and Marcantonio Bassetti of Verona.  Serodine enjoyed a fine reputation in Rome and received a number of church commissions.   He also painted works on canvas for Duke Asdrubal Mattei, brother of Caravaggio's patron Ciriaco Mattei.  . . .  He painted a portrait of his father (now in Lugano) and used him as model for St. Joseph in a Holy Family (now in Ascona).  It is reckoned that his last work was the great Coronation of the Virgin, also executed in Rome and transported by his father to Ascona.  During his mature phase Serodine took contrasts of light and shadow even further than Caravaggio, though he remained faithful to the moral and human aspects of the latter's art."

– from curator's notes at Museo del Prado

Giovanni Serodine
Portrait of the Artist's Father
1628
oil on canvas
Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, Switzerland

Giovanni Serodine
Holy Family
ca. 1625-26
oil on canvas
Casa Serodine, Ascona, Switzerland

Giovanni Serodine
Head of a Bearded Man
ca. 1625-30
drawing, with watercolor
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giovanni Serodine
St Peter in Prison
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Cantonale Giovanni Züst, Rancate, Switzerland

Giovanni Serodine
Portrait of a Youth
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Serodine
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Giovanni Serodine
St Lawrence distributing Treasures of the Church to the Poor
ca. 1625-26
oil on canvas
Abbazia di Casamari, Veroli

Giovanni Serodine
The Tribute Money
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Giovanni Serodine
The Madonna presents the Banner of the Order of Mercedarians
to St Peter Nolasco
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Cantonale Giovanni Züst, Rancate, Switzerland

Giovanni Serodine
Doubting Thomas
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Giovanni Serodine
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1629-30
oil on canvas
Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo, Ascona, Switzerland

Between Wars

Paul Klee
May Picture
1925
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Red-Green & Violet-Yellow Rhythms
1920
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Tower in Orange & Green
1922
Metropolitan Museum

In the 1950s and 60s when I was a child and poking into art books at the public library, Paul Klee was the darling of publishers like Skira and Abrams. They produced the best commercial reproductions available at that time. Klee was regarded as the least threatening of "modern" artists and most accessible for the new middlebrow consumer of culture (and that was me!). Consequently, I was exposed to such a wealth of Klee whimsy at such an early age that in later life I never wanted to see another one of his pictures. That is why it surprises me to be attracted to this group from the Heinz Berggruen collection of Paul Klee at the Metropolitan Museum, donated in the 1980s. For one thing, the individual pictures are all unfamiliar (which is not too surprising, considering that Klee made more than 10,000 of them in the course of his career). The artist's darker side also seems more apparent in the Met collection, poised as he was between two European wars of mechanical annihilation.

Paul Klee
Black Columns in a Landscape
1919
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Falling Bird
1919
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
All Souls' Picture
1921
Metropoolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Yellow Harbor
1921
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
The Chair Animal
1922
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Still Life
1927
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Rough-cut Head
1935
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Comedians' Handbill
1938
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
The Hour Before One Night
1940
Metropolitan Museum

Barred from teaching by the Nazis and placed on their list of Degenerate Artists, Klee retreated to Switzerland in the early 1930s. He died there in 1940, the same year he painted the stark concluding picture above.

Mannequins

Earlier this year Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig (b. 1958) simultaneously furnished paintings and sculptural objects for installations at three distinct venues. Below, gallery views from MUDAM in Luxemburg and Nicolas Krupp in Basel. Above, the indoor Zobernig landscape created at Friedrich Petzel, New York.  

As far as New York goes, some people might have been surprised or dismayed to note the presence of several naked, matte-white, gender-specific, mildly embellished mannequins. Some might have wondered what kind of artist wanted to rely on the art-making potential of such bland objects?

Personally, I did not ask myself this question. The mannequins were what first attracted me. But my reasons were idiosyncratic and they related to my granddaughter. Just two weeks ago, on the day I last saw Mabel, we were making lunch together in the Spencer Alley kitchen when she brought up the subject of death.

"Grandpa, did you know everybody dies?"

"What?!?!"

"But even after you are dead, don't worry. I will keep a little mannequin of you in my heart."   

Shimabuku

Recent installations by Shimabuku at Kunsthal Bern. The artist lives and works in Berlin. He was born in Japan in 1969. Two years ago his Barcelona installations made a welcome topic on this same endless roll of things that have been noticed.

One Winter's Work

"The shapes are painted with Talens oil color. Graded green tones are mixed on the palette and layered directly on the canvas. These colored areas don’t touch, while the emerging line displays a carmine acrylic paint surface." 

"The starting layer of the largest work in the show is painted colorfully. Then all fields are covered with a silver tone. The Light Sky Blue painted background becomes lines." 

"White tones, black lines, permanent green The polyester canvas is mounted on a board. The permanent green is acrylic, the black lines and the white tones are painted in oil color. At the edge of the painting a stained wooden lath is nailed on." 

"Metallic Painting Executed in Lascaux Aluminium, Steel and Britannia Silver, the metallic shapes are outlined in black. The composition is applied on a white background which continues into the space of the gallery." 

Four pictures make up the entirety of Emil William Klein's show at Francesca Pia in Zurich. The pigment-and-process descriptions in quotes were written by the artist, who devoted the winter of 2013/14 to this work.  

Fauteuil Cognac

Janette Laverrière was born in 1909, the daughter of a Swiss architect. In the early 1930s she apprenticed with Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, legendary designer of luxurious modernist furniture. Ruhlmann pieces now sell for multiple millions.  

Laverrière began a late-in-life relationship with Silberkuppe Berlin to produce small editions of her own furniture designs. The Cognac Chair was her final project. The drawings were finished not long before her death at age 101 in 2011. The chair has now been manufactured – it is made of oak wood, pale blue leather, orange leather, and orange suede. 

All Heart

Large Vase

Black Basalt

Egyptian

Predynastic Period

4th millennium BC

This uncanny object was recently exhibited by Sycomore Ancient Art, Geneva.

Afterlife

Doth Charidas rest under thee?

If thou meanest the son of Arinmas of Cyrene, under me.

O Charidas, what of the world below?

Much darkness.

And what of the upward way?

A lie.

And Pluto?

A fable.

We are undone.

*               *               *

This dialogue-poem was written by Callimachus, active in Alexandria at the court of the Ptolemies during the 3rd century BC (along with his contemporary, Lycophron – who served as last month's Greek poet on this unstable screen). Translation by A.W. Mair from the Loeb Classical Library, 1921.

Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) made five versions of The Island of the Dead in the 1880s. It was extremely popular with the public of the day. Looking back from the middle of the 20th century, Clement Greenberg described this painting as "one of the most consummate expressions of all that was now disliked about the the latter half of the nineteenth century." 

Thomas Schütte

Two Swiss museums are presenting linked one-man shows for German artist Thomas Schütte (b. 1954). Sculpture predominates at Kunstmuseum Luzern.

Fondation Beyeler in Basel, by contrast, tends more toward room-size installations – dream decor, dream architecture.