This week: the French decorative art that inspired Walt Disney, Henri Matisse’s collaboration over 40 years with the Baltimore art collector Etta Cone, and Josef Albers’s prints.
Gallery view of Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Photo: Paul Lachenauer; Courtesy of The Met. © Disney
The Art Newspaper’s deputy digital editor, Aimee Dawson speaks to Wolf Burchard, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, which opens today and travels next year to the Wallace Collection, London.
Henri Matisse's Large Reclining Nude (1935) The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone o fBaltimore, Maryland. BMA 1950.258 © Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York
As the Baltimore Museum of Art opens its new Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, with around 2,500 sq ft. of space dedicated to the research and display of the art of Henri Matisse, on 12 December, Ben Luke discusses the French artist’s special relationship with the Baltimore-based collector Etta Cone, which is the foundation of the museum’s huge collection of Matisse’s works in all media.
Josef Albers's Seclusion (1942) Courtesy Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © 2021 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London.
And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the gallerist Alan Cristea talks about Josef Albers’s Graphic Tectonic lithographs, and their relationship to his wider printmaking activity and his celebrated Homage to the Square series, as a show of Albers’s early- and mid-career prints opens at Cristea Roberts in London.
• Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 December-6 March 2022; Wallace Collection, London, 6 April-16 October 2022. Listen to our podcast episode from 5 November where the Work of the Week was The Swing by Fragonard,
• The Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies opens on 12 December. A Modern Influence: Henri Matisse, Etta Cone, and Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, until 2 January 2022.
• Josef Albers: Discovery and Invention, The Early Graphic Works, Cristea Roberts, London 10 December-22 January (gallery closed 20 December-3 January). Anni and Josef Albers: Art and Life, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM), Paris, until 9 January.
The Week in Art podcast byThe Art Newspaper is available every Friday on our website and all the usual places where you find podcasts. This podcast is sponsored by Christie's.