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New York Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marco Grassi, Who Brought Old Paintings Back to Life, Dies at 90
Marco Grassi, a connoisseur of old masters who brought a restorer's hand to art criticism and a critic's eye to restoration, died on March 30 in Manhattan. He was 90. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Cristina, who is an artist. As a third-generation scion of Florentine art restorers and dealers, Mr. Grassi, a rare freelance restorer, was the product of a world that was itself rarefied: the art of late medieval and early Renaissance Tuscany, and those who lived among it. Like his grandfather, he had trained as a conservator at the centuries-old Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Moving between Europe and America, he was as comfortable in the gilded salons of the world's richest private collectors as he was at his workbench. In his sunlit restoration studio, first in downtown Manhattan, then on the Upper East Side, Mr. Grassi was in intimate touch with the paintings of long-dead masters, including Ugolino da Siena, Luca di Tommè, Giovanni di Paolo, Domenico Beccafumi and others. They gave him sustenance. He, in turn, gave them renewed life. Mr. Grassi, who often wore a tweed suit underneath his blue apron, moved in 'that murky backstage frequented by scholars, technicians and craftsmen where the pulleys, gears, curtains and props of the art world are manipulated,' he wrote in 'In the Kitchen of Art: Selected Essays and Criticism, 2003–20' (2021), an anthology of his writings for The New Criterion magazine. For more than 20 years he worked in Switzerland as the personal conservator for Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a billionaire industrialist, 'vacuous and ephemeral' though 'passionate,' in Mr. Grassi's trenchant assessment. The baron had perhaps the greatest private art collection in the world (which is now the basis of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid), and Mr. Grassi had the free run of it. In the beginning of the 1970s, he set up in New York City, where he became one of the world's most sought-after restorer of old masters. He established a studio at Broadway and Houston, and later a gallery. 'He was among the most admired private restorers of Italian painting, in particular of the 14th and 15th century,' Keith Christiansen, the former chairman of the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said in an email. To his criticism for The New Criterion, Mr. Grassi brought this tactile sense, his editor, Roger Kimball, recalled in an interview. 'You felt that his encounters with the art was hands-on,' he said. 'You felt there was a deep interaction, having to do with the senses.' Mr. Grassi's analysis of the famous 'Madonna and Child' by Duccio di Buoninsegna, a 13th- and early 14th-century work acquired by the Met in 2004 for more than $45 million, the museum's largest purchase at the time, displays this visual sensitivity. 'Although tiny, it has none of the annoying 'look-at-me-with-a-magnifier' precision of a miniature,' Mr. Grassi wrote of the painting in one of his essays. 'The artist places the Virgin at a slight angle to the viewer, behind a fictive parapet. The Madonna 'gazes away from the child into the distance while he playfully grasps at her veil,' he wrote, adding: 'With these subtle changes, Duccio consciously developed an image of sublime tenderness and poignant humanity.' For centuries the paintings of this early period were held in lesser esteem, compared with the masterworks of the Renaissance. Mr. Grassi was their great champion, an epoch in painting 'generally called the primitive period, but which is not primitive at all,' he remarked in an interview with the fine art firm Disegno. Marco Ralph Grassi was born on July 7, 1934, in Florence, Italy, to Arturo, an art dealer, and Cornelia(Lemky) Grassi, an American from Indianapolis. Mr. Grassi recalled in his book that his parents entertained the liberating American generals in his boyhood home as the war ended, including Mark Clark. These contacts helped the family gain passage to New York in 1945. Mr. Grassi attended the Delbarton School, a Catholic boys boarding school in New Jersey, and graduated from Princeton with a B.A. in art history in 1956. Homesick for Italy, he returned to Florence in 1959 and began an apprenticeship at the Uffizi's restoration workshop, then undertook four years of training at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome, and at the Swiss Institute for Art Research in Zurich. He set up his own restoration studio in a Florentine palazzo in 1962, but the business struggled, until one day in 1964 when Baron Thyssen turned up and asked the young restorer to authenticate 'an almost comical late-19th-century imitation of a Florentine Renaissance sculpture.' Mr. Grassi spotted the fake immediately, and his decades-long partnership with the free-spending, high-living baron was born: Mr. Grassi was hired as the nonresident conservator for the baron's collection. For years thereafter he 'had the pleasure of strolling at will, often entirely alone and undisturbed, through Thyssen's incomparable anthology of European art,' he wrote. This was when Mr. Grassi's essential training took place. 'He was from a generation where you just took a painting and started working on it,' his son Matteo, also an art dealer, said in an interview. 'He was used to being with Thyssen. They would have lunch and he would say, 'I want to work on that one.'' He was working for the baron in Lugano, Switzerland, in November 1966 when the Arno River leaped its banks and a torrent of mud and filthy water overwhelmed Florence's treasures. Mr. Grassi got in his car and drove 12 hours. 'We and other 'first-aid' intervention squads were dispatched as the need arose — and Santa Croce,' the great basilica and repository of masterworks, which flooded in the disaster, 'was immediately identified as the highest of priorities,' he wrote. The water had risen 20 feet around the church. Mr. Grassi was put to work helping to restore Giorgio Vasari's immense 'Last Supper,' which had been 'totally immersed for more than 12 hours,' Paula Deitz wrote in The New York Times. It was a process that took five decades to complete, but which he helped begin by ''papering' the surface to protect the color layer,' using small squares of mulberry paper with an adhesive. Mr. Grassi and his family moved to New York in 1971 to escape Italy's darkening political climate, and there his connection with Baron Thyssen and a booming art market were a great help in gaining clients, his son said. Apart from his wife, whom he married in 1969, and his son, Mr. Grassi is survived by a daughter, Irene; a brother, Luigi; and four grandchildren. 'He knew how to work the paintings,' Ms. Grassi said in an interview. 'He knew what the artist was doing. He was in front of something he understood.'
The National
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui opens a door to musical heritage of Atlas Mountains in Madrid show
Known for lending an experimental contemporary edge to traditional music from the ancient Arab world, Lebanese composer and artist Tarek Atoui takes visitors on a musical journey through the Atlas Mountains and beyond in his latest exhibition at Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (TBA21). On show until May 18, At-Tariq is the result of a three-year long research project that took Atoui along the ancient pilgrimage and trade routes that traverse North Africa, immersing himself in the musical and artisanal traditions of the Arab world and the Tamazgha. The show's title, At-Tariq, translates as 'The Nightcomer' or 'The Morning Star', and acts as the binding thread of the entire project. It refers to a visitor who comes at night seeking knowledge, refuge and companionship along a journey, be it a personal quest, nomadic wanderings or rest stops along the way. A verse in the Quran tells of always offering hospitality to At-Tariq – a notion that permeates the region's cultures and transcends boundaries. Atoui's project acts as an unconventional archive for the many ways the region opens its doors to travellers, offering comfort, food and entertainment to their guests. 'The Nightcomer is the person asking for hospitality, but also the knowledge seeker, the foreigner, in the sense of the one who comes with a real interest about a culture, about a place, and who sometimes is not coming to stay, but is the person passing through and pursuing a larger journey,' Atoui tells The National. 'It's a way of dealing with the world that I, unfortunately, think is missing nowadays, but there is so much richness to gain out of hospitality, in opening your door to The Nightcomer. 'In our modernity, maybe we should start looking at migrants, immigration and all this discourse currently present in our media, as something that is deriving from the story of The Nightcomer and its symbolism,' he adds. 'As The Nightcomer is how I'm moving through the Arab world, starting with Morocco and the Atlas. 'I go in an unannounced way, knocking on traditional musicians' doors and asking them for recordings, speaking to them and learning about these traditions from the perspective of those who play this music today. I learn what it means for them, how they play and build the instruments around them, and the whole ecosystem that surrounds this music, from crafts and industries to daily life routines.' Curated by Daniela Zyman, the exhibition transforms TBA21's gallery space into a sprawling majlis that invites guests to discover the varied sounds, textures and crafts of this diverse culture, viewing heritage through a contemporary lens. The majlis is made up of handcrafted rugs, pillows, pots, musical instruments and objects created specifically for the show by artisans Atoui encountered on his travels, almost a chronology of the craft cultures of the expedition. Around the seating areas are five kinetic sound stations, a series of objects that produce atmospheric sounds – such as water dripping from pots into a clay basin, glass beads clanking, textiles brushing drums or a fossilised tooth scraping against stone. Hidden speakers have been placed inside clay vases or huge animal-hide drums, distributing the sound evenly, and cables have been disguised by long strands of beads that snake across the floor. 'We have encounters not only with musicians, but also with crafts and craftspeople. The pottery that's in that show were made at the bottom of the Atlas outside of a town called Zagora, close to the Algerian border, in a landscape that is very dry and very hot,' Atoui says. 'These pots were made naturally by a potter who has no electricity, who has to go 14 kilometres to get the water, and make this out of local soil. They came out rough, but with a very special acoustic to them. 'The carpets were made in Taznakht, all the way up in the mountains, by a community of women who weave collectively,' he adds. 'The colouring of these carpets came from a very old method that is now almost gone, which is colouring with saffron. Saffron is an expensive product nowadays, but it is massively planted in the region of the Atlas. These women collected old rotten saffron that is not edible any more and used it to colour these carpets, giving this very special yellow that is hard to obtain otherwise.' The sounds created using these objects act as a baseline to the main hour-and-a-half long composition Atoui has composed for the space. This was created with musicians he collaborated with on the road, as well as New York composer and percussionist Susie Ibarra, Cairo violinist, musician and producer Nancy Mounir, and experimental Berlin artist Ziur. The resulting soundscape, developed during a residency in Cordoba, layers traditional rhythms and voices from Amazigh – also known as Berber – culture with contemporary electroacoustic and instrumental elements. The kinetic sound stations only produce sound when triggered by the Amazigh voices in the main composition, as a subtle call and response. Much of this musical heritage is passed down informally through oral and visual learning, leaning heavily on improvisation, without traditional forms and formats. Atoui brought together a host of musicians from different backgrounds, to help take on the challenge of condensing something intangible into a more fixed format that could be understood by an everyday listener. Without the distraction of watching the music performed, as is usual, Atoui's dimly-lit majlis offers a meditative quality where the entire focus is on the sonic, lulling the body into the rhythms the longer guests sit and listen. Throughout the exhibition's run, performances, workshops and activations of the space are planned, such as a recent performance by Atoui and an ensemble from Ouarzazate and Zagora, staged as part of the programme of ARCOMadrid art fair. Such performances allow a rare opportunity to experience the music first hand. A side room before entering the main show offers drums and other instruments for people to come and try out; an 'Exploratorium' that will also conduct workshops, offering a tactile, participatory element. The TBA21 show is the first chapter of a project that Atoui intends to expand on in the years to come, staging new iterations in other countries and adding to the exhibition to include new encounters. 'It's a journey that follows the roads of the Tuareg people and the roads of pilgrimage that traverse the Sahara, rather than the Mediterranean. From the Atlas, traversing the southern roads, through Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, all the way to the south of Saudi Arabia and up to Makkah,' Atoui says. 'I will be looking at these different traditions in every country, also finding similarities and connections, because the Amazigh are spread in all these areas, but also the Sufis, Khazars, Alawis, and Kabyles, all connected through nomadism and music traditions. 'Every time we go somewhere, a new section from a different country is going to be added, and the main composition will evolve over time, to include new chapters.'
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Editorial: Finally, the Supreme Court can help a California family get back art stolen by Nazis
The magnificent Impressionist painting of a rainy Paris streetscape that hung on a wall in Lilly Cassirer's home in Germany in 1939 was the price she paid to a Nazi art dealer in exchange for exit papers from the country. It was nothing close to a fair transaction. She was a Jewish woman relinquishing valuable artwork in exchange for safe passage. Eventually her descendants discovered that the Camille Pissarro painting that Cassirer had owned, 'Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie,' was hanging on the wall of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. Cassirer's family has spent two decades in and out of courts unsuccessfully trying to get the painting that all agree was stolen from her by the Nazis. It's a travesty that this family is still fighting for the return of this painting. Now they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the legal saga. What makes this time different? A new California law, Assembly Bill 2867, which passed in August and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. The new statute requires courts to use California law when hearing cases filed by California residents or their families to recover stolen art or other significant artifacts held by museums. The Supreme Court is finally in a position to course-correct the lower courts on this matter, and it should do so. Until that bill passed, when a California plaintiff sued a foreign entity such as the Spanish museum to recover stolen artwork, the court would decide whether to use the law of the state or the law of the defendant's country. California law holds that a thief never has a legal right to stolen property, and whoever gets the property later never has a legal right to it either. But under Spanish law, after a certain amount of time passes, the holder of stolen property is legally allowed to keep it. A federal district court hearing the Cassirer case used Spanish law and ruled that the Spanish museum could keep the painting. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — twice — ruled that the lower court was correct in deciding that the Spanish museum could keep the painting. The Cassirer family is arguing that based on the new California statute, the 9th Circuit's decision is now 'irreconcilable with current California law.' The family is asking the Supreme Court to throw out that decision and return the case to the 9th Circuit, which in turn should follow the new statute, overturn the lower court's decision and finally order the painting returned to the family. We hope that's exactly what happens. That outcome would be not only fair but also in keeping with broader norms: The Legislature specifically wrote the new law "to align California law with federal laws, policies, and international agreements, which prohibit pillage and seizure of works of art and cultural property, and call for restitution of seized property." In the past even some jurists were anguished over their decisions. Judge Consuelo Callahan on the 9th Circuit concurred with the decision upholding the museum's right to the painting even as she said that appellate judges sometimes must 'concur in a result at odds with our moral compass. For me, this is such a situation.' U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, in his lower court ruling for the Spanish museum, lamented that he couldn't force the museum to 'comply with its moral commitments' as laid out in powerful but nonbinding international agreements (signed by dozens of countries, including Spain) that state there is a moral duty to return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners or their heirs. Now the California law opens the door for judges to make legal decisions that align with moral ones. But the Spanish government, which owns the museum, doesn't have to wait for those decisions. It should do the right thing and return this painting to its rightful owners. That would be the swiftest way for long-awaited justice to be done. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
