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Abstract
This article traces how Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner (1880–1958) studied, approached and criticised late medieval Italian sculpture and German Expressionism, from the turn of the twentieth century until the eve of World War II. It explores Valentiner's theoretical positions through a thorough analysis of his writings and biography, from his time as curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1908–1914), through his World War I years in Germany (1914–1923), and, finally, to his second period in the United States (1923–1935). For Valentiner, late medieval Italian sculpture and German Expressionism were linked by similar and comparable formal qualities. In his writings Valentiner created a bidirectional dialogue between past and present. He interpreted the stylistic characteristics of late medieval sculpture by referring to Expressionist formal simplifications; but he also elevated Expressionism as a pure modern form of art, by creating a “tradition” for it, and interpreting it as the final step of an artistic lineage that had begun in the late Middle Ages.
Acknowledgements
My gratitude goes to Barbara Pezzini, whom with her enthusiasm offered to me support, advice as well as criticism. This article would have been very different without her invaluable help. I would also like to thank Julia Snape for her revision of my text, and Shirin Fozi for letting me read her article before it was printed. Special thanks are also due to the two anonymous readers whose advice and critiques of an earlier version of this article helped me to strengthen and enrich it. During the preparation of this article, many friends offered their opinion, points of view, advice or simply their support; I would like to thank Patrizio Aiello, Roberto Bartalini, Irene Biolchini, Alice Collavin, Luca Giacomelli, Giovanni Giura, Camilla Parisi, Delia Volpe and Giulia Zaccariotto.
Notes
1 Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Tino di Camaino: A Sienese Sculptor of the Fourteenth Century (Paris: The Pegasus Press, 1935). Seventy-two years later Francesca Baldelli published a new monographic work about Tino, which established a continuing dialogue with the older book by Valentiner: Francesca Baldelli, Tino di Camaino (Morbio Inferiore: Selective Art Edizioni, 2007). Baldelli's book is a valuable tool, but her reconstruction of Tino needs some adjustments. In general, the catalogue entries at the end of the book are more reliable than the text and the footnotes. For other references on Tino di Camaino studies, see notes below.
2 For Valentiner's life and career, see Margaret Sterne, The Passionate Eye: The Life of William R. Valentiner (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1980).
3 A great part of the existing but scant literature about Valentiner will be discussed in the footnotes of these pages. It is significant that Valentiner is not included in the Dictionnaire des historiens d'art allemands 1750–1950, ed. Michel Espagne and Bénédicte Savoy (Paris: Éditions CNRS, 2010). For a more comprehensive study see Marco M. Mascolo, “Wilhelm R. Valentiner (1880–1958): Vicende di un connoisseur d'eccezione tra Europa e Stati Uniti” (PhD thesis, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2014).
4 These ideas found their best expression in a later article: William R. Valentiner, “The Front Plane Relief in Medieval Art,” The Art Quarterly 2 (Spring 1939): 155–77, esp. 172.
5 Roberto Longhi's writing has rightly attracted the attention of scholars and it would be impossible here to summarise the complex problems his work raises. But it is important to note that for Longhi, as it was to a certain extent for Valentiner, contemporary art offered the key to a better understanding of the art of the past. For an introduction to these themes, see Simone Facchinetti, “Longhi, Roberto,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 65 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005), 668–76 and David Tabbat, “The Eloquent Eye: Roberto Longhi and the Historical Criticism of Art,” Paragone Arte 47 (July–November 1996): 3–27.
6 Henk van Os, “The Black Death and Sienese Painting: A Problem of Interpretation,” Art History 4/3 (September 1981): 237–49; also Henk van Os, Studies in Early Tuscan Painting (London: Pindar Press, 1992), 58–74; Julian Gardner, “Painting in Florence and Siena after the Cold War,” in Medioevo: arte e storia, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan: Electa, 2007), 662–68. In a 1949 article Valentiner explicitly compares the Black Death of 1348 to World War II, interpreting the Plague (La Peste) as the key traumatic event to shape the stylistic tendencies of the second half of the fourteenth century. William R. Valentiner, “Orcagna and the Black Death,” The Art Quarterly 12 (Autumn–Spring 1949): 48–72 and 113–28, esp. 61–6.
7 Otto Gerhard Oexle, “The Middle Ages through Modern Eyes: A Historical Problem,” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9 (1999): 121–42 (124).
8 Dennis P. Weller, “The Passionate Eye of W.R. Valentiner: Shaping the Canon of Dutch Painting in America,” in Holland's Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals, ed. Esmée Quodbach (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 140–53; Marco M. Mascolo, “America's Rembrandt,” Studi di Memofonte 12 (July 2014): 144–69.
9 Panofsky's emigration and subsequent career in America is a topic many scholars have addressed. For instance, François–René Martin, “Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968),” Dictionnaire des historiens d'art allemands, 173–82. For Georg Swarzenski, see Kathryn McClintock, “Arts of the Middle Ages and the Swarzenskis,” in Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting 1800–1940, ed. Elizabeth Bradford Smith with Kathryn McClintock and R. Aaron Rottner (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 203–8; Shirin Fozi, “The Time is Opportune: the Swarzenskis and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” in Gothic Art in the Gilded Age, ed. Virginia Brilliant, Journal of the History of Collections (special issue) 27 (November 2015): 425–39.
10 On this topic see Kathryn Brush, The Shaping of Art History: Wilhelm Vöge, Adolph Goldschmidt and the Study of Medieval Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Kathryn Brush, “German Kunstwissenschaft and the Practice of Art History in America after World War I: Interrelationships, Exchanges, Contexts,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 26 (1999): 7–36.
11 For the first years Valentiner spent in Heidelberg and Leipzig see Sterne, Passionate Eye, 37–48. Thode had a great influence on Valentiner's decision to study history of art, as he recorded in his memoir: “When I was finally persuaded by the presence of Henry Thode … to take a course in a field in which I felt more at home, my change in attitude came not because of any obvious talent for that field but because of my intuitive conviction that this new study of the science of art was more lively intellectually than the general field of history as taught at that time”; see Sterne, Passionate Eye, 37. Valentiner's thesis was published in 1905: W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt und seine Umgebung (Strassbourg: Heitz, 1905). It received a positive review from Wilhelm von Bode, “W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt und seine Umgebung,” Kunstchronik. Wochenschrift für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe 16 (April 1904–5): 337–40.
12 Sterne, Passionate Eye, 71–2, 75. For the Berlin museums under Bode's direction, see especially Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Die berliner Museumsinsel im deutschen Kaiserreich: Zur Kulturpolitik der Museen in wilhelminischen Epoche (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1992), 11–27, 29–65; Alexis Joachimides, Die Museumsreformbewegung im Deutschland und die Enstehung der modernen Museum 1880–1940 (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2001), 53–97.
13 Sterne, Passionate Eye, 75.
14 Catherine B. Scallen, Rembrandt Reputation and the Practice of Connoisseurship (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004), 87–102; Mascolo, “America's Rembrandt,” 144–5.
15 For Morgan as President of The Metropolitan Museum, see Flaminia Gennari Santori, The Melancholy of Masterpieces: Old Master Paintings in America 1900–1914 (Milan: 5 Continents, 2003), 105–22. On the arrival of Valentiner at the Metropolitan, see also Marco M. Mascolo, “Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner (1880–1958): Connoisseurship, Collezionismo e Museografia,” in I conoscitori tedeschi tra Otto e Novecento, ed. Francesco Caglioti, Andrea De Marchi, and Alessandro Nova, forthcoming, 2016.
16 On Valentiner's appointment as director of the Department of Decorative Arts, see Thirty–eight Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1907), 19–20; Sterne, Passionate Eye, 86–99.
17 In Germany, many museums of decorative and applied arts were established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The oldest was the “Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin”, founded in 1879 (and renamed Kunstgewerbemuseum in 1879). A “Museum für Angewandte Kunst” was founded in Leipzig in 1874 and a similar institution was founded in Frankfurt in 1877. Valentiner spent a period in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin during his stay there; Sterne, Passionate Eye, 75–8.
18 About the period rooms in the American context, see the monographic issue “Period Rooms Architecture in American Art Museums,” Winterthur Portfolio 46 (Summer–Autumn 2012).
19 Edward Robinson, “The Hoentschel Collection,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 2 (June 1907): 93–9; William Rankin, “The Hoentschel Collection,” The Burlington Magazine 14 (October 1908): 61–2; Flaminia Gennari Santori, “Medieval Art for America: The Arrival of the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Journal of the History of Collections 22 (May 2010): 81–98; Jean Strouse, “J. Pierpont Morgan Financier and Collector,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (special issue) 57 (Winter 2000): 39–41. For the new wing of the museum (the “F” wing, as it was called), see Morrison H. Heckscher, “The Metropolitan Museum of Art: An Architectural History,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (special issue) 53 (Summer 1995): 39–53.
20 Beschreibung der Bildewerke der christlichen Epoche, 2 vols., ed. Wilhelm von Bode and H. von Tschudi (Berlin: Spemann, 1888); The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Catalogue of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance Sculpture, ed. Joseph Breck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1913). Starting from 1909, Valentiner began to write articles in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan to present works of art recently acquired by the museum. A comprehensive study about Valentiner as connoisseur of sculpture is still lacking. Best contributions are from Luciano Bellosi, “Previtali e la scultura,” and Giovanni Previtali, Alcune opere “fuori contesto”: Il caso di Marco Romano both in Giovanni Previtali, Studi sulla scultura gotica in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1991), xxi–xxxiii and 115–36. See also the observations by Francesco Aceto, “Una proposta per Tino di Camaino a Cava dei Tirreni,” in Medien der Macht: Kunst der Zeit des Anjous in Italien, ed. Tanja Michalsky (Berlin: Reimer, 2001), 275–94.
21 For example, the first medieval Italian sculpture to enter the collections of the museum was a column statue from Italy: see Italian Medieval Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum and the Cloisters, ed. Lisbeth Castelnuovo–Tedesco and Jack Soultanian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 93–6. A sculpture from the Blumenthal collection was attributed to Tino di Camaino by Valentiner [“Werke um Giovanni Pisano in Amerika,” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 31 (1919–20): 111–14] and, although it is not a work from that master, it is an original work, not a copy of the early twentieth century as indicated in the catalogue by Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Soultanian, 282–4. It is probably a work by the workshop of the sculptor Ciolo di Neri da Siena. About this artist, see Roberto Bartalini, “Nell'orbita di Giovanni Pisano: Ciolo di Neri,” in Scultura Gotica Senese 1260–1350, ed. Roberto Bartalini (Turin: Allemandi, 2011), 75–89.
22 It appears from the correspondence between Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and Wilhelm Bode that Valentiner hoped eventually to become director of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, after the sudden death of Alfred Lichtwark (1852–1914). In a letter from Wilhelm von Bode to Aby Warburg, dated February 2, 1914, Bode asked Warburg's opinion about Valentiner as successor of Alfred Lichtwark (Warburg Institute Archive; hereafter WIA, General Correspondence, 5844). The day after, Warburg answered positively to Bode (WIA/GC, 12027). But on February 14, Warburg wrote to Bode about his forthcoming trip to Florence, informing him that Gustav Pauli had been chosen as director (WIA/GC, 12032). Warburg and Valentiner knew each other at least from 1908, when Hugo von Tschudi gave some notes about Rembrandt written by Valentiner to Warburg (WIA/GC, 34959, H. von Tschudi to Warburg, September 12, 1908; WIA/GC, W.R. Valentiner to A. Warburg, June 13, 1908).
23 Sterne, Passionate Eye, 113–5. Marc, in a letter to his wife from Hagéville dated November 18, 1914, wrote how delightful it was to be in company of such a cultivated man as Valentiner: “Hab ich Dir eigentlich erzählt, daß ich jetzt viel mit Herrn Valentiner, dem Direktor vom Metropolitan–Museum, den ich als Kriegsfreiwilligen in München unter mir hatte – zusammen bin? Er ist seit einigen Wochen hier, als Schreiber bei der Abteilung. Er ist ein sehr feiner, hochgebildeter Menshc, dessen Verkehr mir eine große Wohltat ist,” F. Marc, Briefe, Schriften, Aufzeichnungen (Leipzig: Kiepenheuer, 1989), 115–17. On Köhler and its collection see S. Schmidt, “Bernard Koehler – ein Mäzen und Sammler August Mackers und der Künstlers des Blauen Reiter,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Verein für Kunstwissenschaft 42 (1988): 76–91. Köhler had 44 works by August Macke, 36 by Franz Marc, 19 by Paul Klee and 11 by Heinrich Campendonk (see the list of the works in his collection during the period 1907–1927: Schmidt, “Bernard Koehler,” 88–91).
24 Sterne, Passionate Eye, 125–30. See also W.R. Valentiner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1920). This little book was published the same year as an article in the journal Der Cicerone 12 (1920): 455–76. Adolf Behne was a key figure in these contexts. See Adolf Behne: Essays zu seiner Kunst– und Architektur–Kritik, ed. Magdalena Bushart (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000); Magdalena Bushart, “Adolf Behne (1845–1929),” Dictionnaire des historiens d'art allemands 1750–1950, 3–11.
25 About their friendship see Sterne, Passionate Eye, 117–21. About Rathenau in the years of the Revolution, see C. Schölzel, Walter Rathenau: Eine Biographie (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 213–81.
26 See Peter Paret, “Revolutionary Continuities,” in German Encounters with Modernism 1840–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 119–32, esp. 122–4.
27 Arbeitsrat für Kunst Berlin 1918–1921, ed. Manfred Schlösser (exh. cat., Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1980). For an overview of this period, see Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany 1918–1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
28 Eine neues künstlerisches Programm was published in the principal journal of the SPD party, Vorwärts, on December 11, 1918, and the following day in Die Freiheit, the journal of the Social Democratic Independent Party (USPD). The program was published also in art-historical journals, such as Kunstchronik und Kunstmarkt 30 (1918): 143. See also Schlösser, Arbeitsrat, 87. Among the signatories were Georg Swarzensky, Wilhelm Worringer, Hans Poelzig (1869–1936), Hugo Simon (1880–1950; then Minister of Finance), Käte Kollwitz (1867–1945) and the Princess Mechtilde Lichnowsky (1879–1958). Some of these materials are partially translated in English; see German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism, ed. Rose Carol Washton Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 191–209.
29 On the transition from the old Kulturministerium to the new Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung, see Kristina Kratz–Kessemeier, Kunst für die Republik: Die Kunstpolitik des preußischen Kulturministeriums 1918 bis 1932 (Berlin: Akademie, 2008), esp. chapter 2. On the artists during the Revolution see Paret, German Encounters, 60–143.
30 On the rise of the middle classes and the consequences this had on the artistic and cultural scene, the best contributions remain Paret, “The Berlin Secession,” in German Encounters with Modernism. For the social changes in German society, Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978) is still useful.
31 To place the wealth of ideas related to a New Middle Ages in a broader context see, among others, Oexle, “Middle Ages through Modern Eyes,” esp. 131–5.
32 For useful insights about the uses of the medieval past during the nineteenth and early twentieth century in Germany, see Peter Paret, Art as History: Episodes in the Culture and Politics of Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). For an overview of different aspects of this topic, see Arti e storia nel Medioevo, vol. 4, Il Medioevo al passato e al presente, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo and Giuseppe Sergi (Turin: Einaudi, 2004); among the different essays in this volume, for the German context see esp. Castelnuovo, “Il fantasma della cattedrale,” 3–29, esp. 6–12 and 26–9 and Mario Domenichelli, “Miti di una letteratura Medievale. Il Nord,” 293–325. For the concept of Bildung in Germany and its links to art history see for example Daniel Adler, “Painterly Politics: Wölfflin, Formalism and German Academic Culture, 1885–1915,” Art History 27 (June 2004): 431–56.
33 See for example W. Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik (Munich: R. Piper, 1911); W. Kandinsky and F. Marc, The Blaue Reiter Almanach, ed. Klaus Lankheit (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004) and Magdalena Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik und die expressionistische Kunst: Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie 1911–1925 (Munich: Schreiber, 1990).
34 Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik, 53–92.
35 Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus (Munich: Delphin, 1916).
36 See especially Eberhard Roters, “Prewar, Wartime and Postwar: Expressionism in Berlin from 1912 to the early 1920s,” German Expressionism 1915–1925: The Second Generation, ed. Stephanie Barron (exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum; Munich: Prestel, 1988), 39–55.
37 The continuity between the old system and the new epoch allowed artists of the new generation to present Expressionism in the light of an alleged break with that tradition. Nevertheless, they used exactly the same tools and followed the same paths of the old Wilhelminian artistic system. See Peter Paret, “Revolutionary Continuities,” in Paret, German Encounters with Modernism, 119–32.
38 See for example Bruno Taut, Ein Architektur–Programm (Flugschriften des Arbeitsrat für Kunst Berlin), (Arbeitsrat für Kunst, Berlin, 1918).
39 Ausstellung für unbekannte Architekten veranstaltet vom Arbeitsrat für Kunst im Graphische Kabinett J.B. Neumann, Kurfürstendamm, 232, April 1919. See also Schlösser, Arbeitsrat, 90, 91–7.
40 On the Club Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914 see Bernd Sösemann, “Politische Kommunikation im “Reichsbelagerungszustand.” Programm, Struktur und Wirkung des Klubs Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914,” Wege zur Kommunikationsgeschichte, ed. Manfred Bobrowsky and Wolfgang Langenbucher (Munich: Ölschläger, 1987), 630–49; Bernd Sösemann, “Jenseits von Partei und Parlament: Walter Rathenau ‘aufbauende Ideenpolitik’ in der Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914,” Die Extreme berühren sich: Walter Rathenau 1867–1922, ed. Hans Wilderotter (Berlin: Argon, 1993), 169–78. The club had among its affiliates the critic Hermann Bahr, the industrialist Robert Bosch (1861–1942), the painters Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Max Liebermann (1847–1935) and Max Slevogt (1868–1932), the musician Richard Strauss (1864–1949), the director Max Reinhardt (1873–1943), the writers Frank Wedekind (1864–1918) and Hugo von Hoffmanstal (1874–1929), and also Paul von Hindenburg's son, Oskar (1883–1960). Valentiner also met Walter Rathenau there (see note 25).
41 See the letter by Walter Gropius to Ludwig Meidner, dated March 6, 1919, and letter of the same date to Adolf Behne in Schlösser, Arbeitsrat, 117–18. For Gropius's speech see Schlösser, Arbeitsrat, 106–7.
42 Paul Fechter, Der Expressionismus (Munich: R. Piper, 1914). See Andreas Zeising in Gauklerfest unterm Galgen: Expressionismus zwischen “nordischer” Moderne und “entarteter” Kunst, ed. Uwe Fleckner, Maike Steinkamp, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 96–101.
43 On the controversy between Thode and Meier-Graefe the best contribution remains Peter Paret, The Berlin Secession: Modernism and its Enemies in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1980): 170–82. Useful observations are made in Thomas W. Gaehtgens, “Les rapports de l'historie de l'art et de l'art contemporain en Allemagne à l’époque de Wölfflin et de Meier-Graefe,” Revue de l'Art 88 (1990): 31–8. On Thode see Anna Maria Szylin, Henry Thode (1857–1920): Leben und Werk (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993) and on Meier-Graefe, see Kenworth Moffett, Meier-Graefe as Art Critic (Munich: Prestel, 1973).
44 Valentiner decided to came back to New York in the early 1920s because of the disastrous political situation in Germany. He spent a year there from October 1921 until 1922 and settled there permanently in 1923. He began to reconnect with Americans, particularly with Joseph Widener (1871–1943), son of P.A.B. Widener (1834–1915), to prepare a new edition of the catalogue of his collection. On Valentiner and his relationship with the Wideners see Esmée Quodbach, “‘The Last of the American Versailles’: The Widener Collection at Lynnewood Hall,” Simiolus 29 (2002): 42–96. The journal needs a thorough study: it was financed principally by Joseph Duveen. For a first approach, although from a biased point of view, see Ernest Samuels, with the collaboration of Jayne Newcomer Samuels, Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Legend (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987), 152–3.
45 W.R. Valentiner, “Studies in Italian Gothic Plastic Art: I. Tino di Camaino,” Art in America and Elsewhere 11 (October 1923): 275–306. For an up-to-date overview of Tino di Camaino, see Claudia Bardelloni, “L'attività toscana di Tino di Camaino” and Francesco Aceto, “Tino di Camaino a Napoli,” in Bartalini, Scultura Gotica Senese, 119–82 and 183–231.
46 Valentiner, “Studies in Italian Gothic Plastic Art. I,” 275.
47 Ibid., 275–6.
48 Ibid., 276.
49 Ibid., 276. For an interesting case (and to some extent similar episode, although chronologically later than Valentiner's) of Giovanni Pisano's fortune and reception see Giovanni Casini, “Henry Moore, Michael Ayrton and Giovanni Pisano: The Reception of Medieval Sculpture,” Sculpture Journal 23 (2014): 379–92.
50 Valentiner, “Studies in Italian Gothic Plastic Art. I,” 279.
51 On this theme see Oublier Rodin? La Sculpture à Paris 1905–1914, ed. Claire Chevillot (exh. cat., Paris: Musée d'Orsay; Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2009).
52 On the topic of the relation between Nicola and Giovanni Pisano see Max Seidel, Father and Son: Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, 2 vols. (Munich: Hirmer, 2012), esp. 347–52. Seidel demonstrates how deep Giovanni's debt was to his father, substantially reconsidering the thesis proposed by Erwin Panofsky of the “Gothic counterrevolution” enacted by the younger sculptor (see esp. 363–75). See also Roberto Bartalini, “Stile, iconografia, funzioni: A proposito di Padre e Figlio di Max Seidel,” Prospettiva 155–6 (July–December 2014): 167–72.
53 A Collection of Modern German Art introduced by W.R. Valentiner to be exhibited from October 1–20, 1923 at the Anderson Galleries, New York, ed. W.R. Valentiner (exh. cat.; New York: Anderson Galleries, 1923). There is no comprehensive study of this exhibition. For some useful insights, see Penny J. Bealle, “Obstacles and Advocates: Factors Influencing the Introduction of Modern Art from Germany to New York City, 1912–33: Major Promoters and Exhibitions” (PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1990), 104–50; Gregor Langfeld, Deutsche Kunst in New York. Varmittler – Kunstsammler – Austellungsmacher. 1904–1957 (Berlin: Reimer, 2011), 61–5; Mascolo, Wilhelm R. Valentiner, 106–19. The show featured 97 works by the Brücke painters including Heckel (1883–1970), Mueller (1874–1930), Nolde (1867–1956), Pechstein and Schmidt-Rottluff. Feininger (1871–1956) showed 47 works, and sculptors such as Garbe (1888–1945), Kolbe and Lehmbruck (1881–1919) were well represented.
54 The only other comparable exhibition was the one organised by Martin Birnbaum in 1912–1913, at the Berlin Photographic Company in New York (with works by Barlach [1870–1938], Beckmann [1884–1950], Feininger, Kandinsky [1866–1944], Kollwitz, Lehmbruck, Marc and Pechstein), but this was mainly devoted to graphic art: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Contemporary German Graphic Art, ed. M. Birnbaum (exh. cat.; New York: Berlin Photographic Company, 1912). The exhibition was also hosted at the Art Institute, Chicago; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Worcester Art Museum, St. Louis; and Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.
55 [Anonymous], “Valentiner sees German Renaissance: Expect the Expressionistic Movement to Bring About a Rebirth of the Human Soul – Talks of its Leaders,” American Art News 21 (November 1922): 1, 5. Valentiner presented German modern art as follows: “The new art may be broadly called Expressionism, which is almost the opposite of Impressionism and is little understood yet outside Germany. [ … ] It is … a new system of expressing in the graphic and plastic arts the hidden and never entirely apparent beauties of life” (1).
56 W.R. Valentiner, Georg Kolbe: Plastik und Zeichnung (Munich: Kurt Wolff, 1922). The book was part of a new series of art historical texts devoted both to the art of the past and of the present published by the editor Kurt Wolff. In those same years (from 1919 to 1922) Wolff published a review, Genius: Zeitschfrit für Alte und Werdende Kunst, founded by Carl Georg Heise and Hans Mardersteig. Valentiner published there an article about Rembrandt: W.R. Valentiner, “Ein Altersentwurf Rembrandts,” Genius: Zeitschrift für Werdende und Alte Kunst 1 (1920): 44–56. As one of the most important of the post-war years, this review requires further detailed investigation. For the unique study about the review, see Nicol Mocchi and Chiara Schieppati, “Genius: Zeitschrift für Alte und werdende Kunst,” L'uomo Nero: Materiali per una storia delle arti nella modernità 4/5 (December 2006): 89–130.
57 See the letter Valentiner wrote to Kolbe on November 20, 1921, telling the sculptor about Mrs. Widener's desire to acquire a Tänzer Nijinsky (), and mentioning that Mr. Widener had asked Valentiner, once he was back in Germany, to buy two small bronzes for his country house. Again, in 1925, Valentiner wrote to Kolbe about the interest the Rockefellers had in his sculptures. These letters are preserved in the Georg Kolbe Archive, GK.416 and GK.417, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin. About the so-called Nijinsky Dancer, a sculpture conceived in 1913, after the great success the Ballet russes had in Germany in 1911–1912, see Ursel Berger, “Der ‘Gott des Tanzes' in einem Berliner Bildhaueratelier: Zeichnungen und Plstiken von Georg Kolbe nach dem Modell des russischen Tänzers Vaslav Nijinsky,” Museumsjournal 1 (1990): 51–4 and Idem, Georg Kolbe, Leben und Werk: mit dem Katalog der Kolbe–Plastiken im Georg-Kolbe-Museum (Berlin: Mann, 1990), cat. no. 23.
58 Valentiner, Georg Kolbe, 7–11.
59 Ibid., 13: “der Wandel der Zeiten und des Volkes.”
60 Ibid., 29: “Loslösung des Körpers von der Materie, auf der die Befreiung der Irdischen durch die Geist.”
61 Ibid., 37. Valentiner and Kolbe's shared ideas about the relationship between drawing and sculpture warrant further dedicated study. See G. Kolbe, “Plastik und Zeichnung,” Genius: Zeitschrift für Alte und Werdende Kunst 1 (1921): 13–16.
62 W.R. Valentiner, “Studies in Italian Gothic Plastic Art. II. Agostino di Giovanni and Agnolo di Ventura,” Art in America 13 (December 1924): 3–18.
63 Valentiner, “Studies in Italian Gothic Plastic Art. II,” 4. Here, “picturesque” is not to be understood as the concept derived from the eighteenth century; Valentiner is referring to the German word malerisch, and the best translation is “painterly.” For the fortune and diffusion of the concept of malerisch in the German-speaking world, see A. Payne, “Portable Ruins: the Pergamon Altar, Heinrich Wölfflin and Art History at the Fin de Siècle,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 53/54 (Spring–Autumn 2008): 168–89; A. Payne, “On Sculptural Relief: Malerisch, the Autonomy of Artistic Media and the Beginning of Baroque Studies,” in Rethinking the Baroque, ed. H. Hills (London: Ashgate, 2011), 38–64. Lastly Alina Payne has summed up her studies on this theme in From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), esp. chapter 3, 112–56.
64 Valentiner, “Studies in Italian Gothic Plastic Art. II,” 7.
65 Ibid., 7–8.
66 See Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, “Beiträge zur sienesischer Reliefkunst des Trecento,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 12 (December 1966): 207–24; Roberto Bartalini, “La Madonna del convento delle cappuccine e le reazioni senesi alla scultura di Giovanni Pisano,” and “Spazio scolpito,” in Roberto Bartalini, Scultura Gotica in Toscana: Maestri, monumenti, cantieri del Due e Trecento (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2005), 66–87 and 271–89, respectively.
67 See esp. Max Seidel, “Studien zu Giovanni di Balduccio und Tino di Camaino: Die Rezeption des Spätwerks von Giovanni Pisano,” Städel–Jahrbuch 5 (1975): 37–84 and Idem, Father and Son.
68 Among the numerous studies on the topic by Kreytenberg, see Gert Kreytenberg, “Tino di Camaino e Simone Martini,” in Simone Martini, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence: Centro Di, 1988), 203–9; Idem, Die Werk von Tino di Camaino (Frankfurt am Main: Liebieghaus, 1997). For the works by Francesco Aceto, see note 20.
69 On the role of sculpture as a force for renewal in painting see Maria Grazia Messina, Le muse d'oltremare: Esotismo e primitivismo dell'arte contemporanea (Turin: Einaudi, 1993). On the problems posed by abstraction in painting see Georges Roque, Qu'est-ce que l'art abstrait? Une histoire de l'abstraction en peinture (1860–1960) (Paris: Gallimard, 2003).
70 Valentiner, Tino di Camaino.
71 Valentiner, A Collection of Modern German Art.
72 Martel Schwichtenberg was a good friend of Valentiner and his wife. She worked as a designer for the Bahlsen company, designing the famous packaging of the Leibniz cookies. In his book about Tino di Camaino, Valentiner described the drawing thus: “The outline drawings given here, sketched by a modern artist who was fascinated by the related feeling which he [sic] believed he [sic] had discovered … , bring out the decorative, architectonic character of the figures perhaps even better than the photographic reproductions” (Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, 33). A comprehensive study of Schwichtenberg is still lacking. See the brief profile by Gerard Wietek in German Expressionist Sculpture (ex. cat., Los Angeles–Washington–Cologne), ed. Stephanie Barron (Münich: Prestel, 1984), 188–91.
73 See for instance, H. Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (Munich: Bruckmann, 1915). For a first and useful approach to this landmark book, see the new English translation: Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Early Modern Art (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2015), and particularly important is Evonne Levy, “Wölfflin's Principles of Art History (1915–2015): A Prolegomenon for its Second Century,” in Wölfflin, Principles, 1–46.
74 Valentiner was director of the Detroit Institute of Arts from 1924 to 1940. On Valentiner's role in the creation of a collection of medieval sculpture at Detroit see Alan P. Darr, “A Valentiner Legacy,” Apollo 124 (December 1986): 476–85. For an overview of his years in Detroit, see Sterne, Passionate Eye, 150–77 and Jeffrey Abt, A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1882–2000 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 113–44.
75 Edsel (1843–1943) was Henry Ford's (1863–1947) son and Eleanor Lowthian Clay (1896–1976) was the niece of the merchant Joseph Lowthian Hudson, who provided the capital for the Hudson Motor Car Company.
76 See Horst Uhr, Masterpieces of German Expressionism at the Detroit Institute of Arts (New York: Hudson Hills, 1982). Robert Hudson Tannahil had an impressive collection, assembled with Valentiner's advice. It is important to note that the first work by Henri Matisse to enter in an American public collection was purchased thanks to Valentiner and Ralph H. Booth in 1922: it was La fenêtre (Intérieur aux myosotis), painted in 1916.
77 On the Rivera murals, see Sterne, Passionate Eye, 188–204; Abt, Museum on the Verge, 141–4; Servando Ortoll and Annette B. Ramírez de Arellano, “Diego Rivera, José María Sert y los Rockefellers: una historia con cúatro epilogos,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 10 (July 2004): 1–21; Graham W.J. Beal, “Mutual Admiration, Mutual Exploitation: Rivera, Ford and the Detroit Industry Murals,” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies (Spring–Summer 2010): 34–43.
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Marco M. Mascolo
MARCO M. MASCOLO studied at the University of Siena and at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, where he obtained his PhD in 2014 with a thesis about Wilhelm R. Valentiner, about which he is now preparing a book. Mascolo's current areas of research include the relationships between American and German museums between the two World Wars; American collections of Dutch Art; and private and public collections in America during the 1920s and ‘30s, especially in the field of Italian sculpture. His work is published in the journals Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Studi di Memofonte and Prospettiva.