Aristotle With The Bust of Homer - A Memoriam to Walter Liedtke

Rembrandt van Rijn
Aristotle With The Bust of Homer
56 1/2" x 53 3/4" oil on canvas 1653
Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

With the sad news that Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Walter Liedtke was killed in this week's horrible rail crash in New York, posting his powerfully narrated web episode of 82nd & 5th: "The Choice", for me, helps keep this wonderful man's passion for Rembrandt alive. Below is the  Metropolitan Museum of Art's label text for Aristotle With The Bust of Homer:

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) rests his hand reflectively on a bust of Homer, the blind epic poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey. A medallion representing Alexander the Great, whom Aristotle tutored, hangs from the heavy gold chain. The philosopher contemplates material rewards as opposed to spiritual values, with the play of light and shadow on his features suggesting the motions of his mind. Painted for the great Sicilian collector Antonio Ruffo, the picture also refers to Aristotle's comparison of touch and sight as a means of acquiring knowledge.

The Observer posted a link to Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas P. Campbell's statement on  Instagram, with an image of Rembrandt’s Aristotle With The Bust of Homer that was featured in an episode of the museum’s web series “82nd and Fifth,” narrated by Liedtke:

"Walter Liedtke, killed last night in the train crash at Valhalla. Walter was one of the preeminent scholars of Dutch and Flemish painting, whose contribution to the field lives on in a range of scholarly and popular publications. Here, a still from Rembrandt’s “Aristotle with the Bust of Homer” about which Walter memorably spoke in his recent “82nd and Fifth” webisode."

Walter Liedtke, Curator, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A Memory Museum

by Gregg Chadwick

Holland  Cotter has a wonderful new piece in the New York Times entitled A Memory Museum. 

Cotter writes," I’m also a curator of my memory, which carries traces of art encounters from over the years. A few of those encounters — with certain objects, books, buildings — have altered the atmosphere, changed how I see and joined a permanent collection that I regularly revisit."

He then challenges us to describe experiences with art that has changed our lives and to post them in the comment section in his article. I find this to be an enlightening question:
Which works of art have changed the way you look at the world? 

I answered Mr. Cotter with the following:

The place of memory in the arts is so revealing. One of my first experiences with an artwork happened in Amsterdam when I was a six year old and the experience changed me forever. My father had finished his tour in Vietnam as a USMC JAG and we reunited as a family in Europe. During that trip we visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. There I found myself slack jawed in front of Rembrandt’s iconic group portrait "The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers Guild."  I recognized it as the same image on the Dutch Masters’ cigar box, my father’s go-to brand. The connection was phenomenal; I was hooked and I knew that someday I would become an artist. 

Last Week Casino Owner Stephen Wynn Paid $33.2 Million for a Rembrandt

photo courtesy Christie’s
Rembrandt
Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo
421⁄4" x 341⁄4" oil on canvas 1658

Carol Vogel in the New York Times reports that the mystery buyer of Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo at Christie's last week was casino mogul Stephen Wynn. The $33.2 million is a record for a Rembrandt at auction. The painting has an interesting recent provenance and after its donation by George Huntington Hartford II hung in the President's office at Columbia University in New York for ten years from 1958 to 1968.

My hope is that Stephen Wynn will put the painting on public display in the near future. After closing his private gallery at the Wynn hotel, Las Vegas lost an intimate collection of important paintings. I enjoyed the Wynn collection immensely and as a non-gambler I was intrigued with the mix of great art within the glowing and at times tawdry Vegas of American pop culture.


photo courtesy Reuters

On a related note, currently at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles is an interesting exhibit: Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference which runs from December 8, 2009–February 28, 2010. Rembrandt's mark-making is extraordinary and the collection of his drawings from around the globe is not to be missed. My detailed thoughts will be posted next week.


Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago
Rembrandt
Seated Female Nude
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash; corrected with white gouache about 1660
The Art Institute of Chicago, the Clarence Buckingham Collection

More at:
Rembrandt Drawings at the Getty
Wynn Pays Record Price for Rembrandt Portrait