Huffington v. Gasman

When I learned that The New Yorker had published a profile of Arianna Huffington, I immediately searched it for references to artist and Picasso expert Lydia Gasman, who was one of my favorite professors during my madcap college days.

Sure enough, there it was:

Lydia Gasman, now an emeritus art history professor at the University of Virginia, says that Huffington’s Picasso biography included themes similar to those in her unpublished four-volume Ph.D. thesis. “What she did was steal twenty years of my work,” Gasman told Maureen Orth in 1994. Gasman did not file suit. (Huffington denied both allegations.)

I first encountered Gasman when I accidentally walked into one of her modern art history lectures. Won over by her enthusiasm, I signed on to her class and went on to complete a total of three of her courses by the time of my graduation. I guess I was also a kind of "recruiter" for her classes, as I urged many of my friends to take them too.

Gasman, who has a kind of legendary status among Picasso cognoscenti, was such an engaging lecturer that I've long wondered when I'd be able to see her giving a presentation in New York City. But I've never seen her slotted for such a talk. It's our loss.

CLARK VS. CLARK AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART!

There's still time to see squabbling brothers Sterling Clark and Stephen Clark battle it out in Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Sunday, August 19, 2007.

I can't remember a more interesting ticket since Matisse/Picasso, back in '03. The Clark brothers, inheritors of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, spent long stretches of time estranged from each other while amassing significant art collections including works by Degas, Homer, Renoir, and Seurat, among others. The Met exhibit offers selections from both collections.

During a recent visit my companion Louvre and I kept track of the bout using the official point system traditionally used by art referees. As we progressed through the exhibit, we agreed that Sterling was scoring higher but we couldn't quite rule out Peter Arno collector Stephen—not when he packed surprise punches such as this Thomas Eakins portrait of Professor Henry A. Rowland, its frame festooned with arithmetical scrawlings.






























Set aside about an hour to enjoy this exhibit and read about the Clark family, which left New York City with The Dakota, Williamstown with the famous Clark Institute, and Cooperstown with the Baseball Hall of Fame!

I do have one quibble: The exhibit includes a magazine caricature of a Clark art party...but the museum neglected to provide a key to the people in the picture!


Art Credit
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
Professor Henry A. Rowland, 1897
Oil on canvas; 80 1/4 x 54 in. (203.8 x 137.2 cm)
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Gift of Stephen C. Clark, Esq. (1931.5)