March 2-May 15, 2005

First Exhibition in the U.S. Devoted to Rare Rubens Oil Sketches

Berkeley, CA, January 23, 2005-The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is pleased to announce the exhibition Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, on view from March 2 through May 15, 2005. Rubens's oil sketches are the most significant, direct record we have of the artist's creative process, made entirely by the hand of the master.

Drawn by the Brush is the first exhibition ever in the United States-and the first anywhere for more than fifty years-to present a comprehensive survey of Rubens's oil sketches that includes works from collections abroad. The exhibition brings together approximately thirty–five oil sketches, some rarely on public view, carefully selected from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad to present a wide range of the artist's achievements.

"The oil sketches are an intimate glimpse of the artist's original spark of inspiration," says Lucinda Barnes, Associate Director for Art, Film, and Programs. "It is thrilling for us at BAM/PFA to see this long–dreamed–of project come to such exquisite fruition. This is an extraordinary and rare opportunity indeed for Bay Area audiences to experience firsthand the full scope of Rubens's painterly, intellectual, and imaginative range. The oil sketches are the most direct record of Rubens's talents. I think one of the great surprises to visitors will be how clear it is that Rubens was also an artist deeply engaged in the character, spirit, and social fabric of his time."

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was one of the most gifted, versatile and influential painters in history. Eulogized at his death as the most learned artist who ever lived, he had a seemingly infinite capacity for inventive subjects and designs, a vast repertoire of figural poses and a sparkling palette. Rubens was also blessed with legendary personal charm, early revealing a gift for diplomacy and keen business acumen. He was the confidant of kings and princes who besieged him with commissions from across Europe, through which he earned honor and amassed a sizable personal fortune. At the pinnacle of success in his field, he was a man with exceptionally broad talents and interests; he served as diplomat, entrepreneur, and artist to European royalty. To an exceptional degree, Rubens's life and work illustrate the ways in which the "art world" of seventeenth–century Europe intersected with the arenas of politics, theology, and commerce.

The exhibition surveys the development of Rubens's use of the oil sketch and offers examples from most of the large decorative programs on which he worked. The sketches vary in their degree of finish, from a few fluid strokes on a small panel to larger, more carefully refined works used as presentation pieces for a potential patron. Yet all are united by their function as preparatory works for other, final works of art, not necessarily in the same medium. Some were to be translated into prints, sculpture or tapestry designs for weavers, while other sketches were executed from live models and kept on hand in the studio as a visual resource to be consulted in completing larger compositions.

Among the works in the exhibition, and a primary motivation for the project, are important paintings in the collections of two of the organizing museums, BAM/PFA and the Cincinnati Art Museum. "We are particularly excited to see BAM/PFA's famous Rubens oil sketch, The Road to Calvary, in the context of the artist's extensive career," says Barnes. The painting was acquired in 1966 by BAM/PFA's founding director, Peter Selz, who identified it as a signature work defining the progressive aspirations of the new university art museum's collection. At the time the museum acquired this dramatic oil sketch, Svetlana Alpers, the renowned specialist in seventeenth-century art history and UC Berkeley professor emerita described the painting as "one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most technically interesting of Rubens's late oil sketches." Also featured in the exhibition are works borrowed from major museum collections that include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery in London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and other lenders.

Drawn by the Brush was co–organized by University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences, Greenwich, Connecticut, and the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. The exhibition premieres at the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science (October 2, 2004-January 30, 2005). Following its showing at BAM/PFA, the exhibition travels to the Cincinnati Art Museum (June-September 2005).

Exhibition Website
An innovative, interactive website devoted exclusively to the exhibition is live now and linked to the institutional websites of each of the venues-www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/rubens.

Public Programs
Guided tours of the exhibition will be presented by UC Berkeley graduate students from the departments of History and History of Art. On Saturday, May 14 at 1:30 p.m., there will be a sign–language interpreted tour (interpretation by Patricia Lessard).

Panel Discussion
Picturing Pain in Rubens's Time and Our Own
Sunday March 6, 3-5:30 p.m.
Museum theater
A panel of artists and art historians will consider the purpose of images of physical suffering in the art of Rubens and in that of contemporary artists who have explored and depicted the body in pain, especially through performance art and photography. Searching out the commonalities and distinctions between the artistic role of such imagery in the Counter Reformation and in our own time, speakers will explore its meanings, and the uses to which it has been put, from one era to the other.

Panelists:
Stephan Jost, Director, Mills College Art Museum
Catherine Opie, Artist and Associate Professor of Art, UCLA
Tina Takemoto, Associate Professor of Visual Studies, California College of the Arts
Marjorie Wieseman, Curator, Cincinnati Art Museum and co–curator of the Rubens exhibition
Moderator: Beth Dungan, Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley's Center for Medicine, the Humanities, and Law

Conversation
The Road to Calvary by Peter Paul Rubens
Alejandro Garcia–Rivera, Associate Professor at the Jesuit School of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union, and David Steadman, art historian
Wednesday, March 16, 12 noon
Gallery 2
The Berkeley Art Museum's own Rubens-a monumental oil sketch of The Road to Calvary (1632) will be the subject of discussion between Garcia–Rivera and Steadman. Their dialogue promises to illuminate both the theological content and art historical importance of this masterpiece of the museum's collection, described by Alpers as "one of the most beautiful, as well as one of the most technically interesting of Rubens' late oil sketches."

Lecture
Svetlana Alpers, Professor Emerita, Art History, UC Berkeley
Painting Out of Conflict: Velazquez, Rubens, and the Dutch in Time of War
Sunday, April 3, 3 p.m
Museum Theater
The distinguished and influential art historian Svetlana Alpers will deliver a major slide–illustrated lecture that looks at the art of Rubens and his contemporaries in the context of war. She asks, "How have artists dealt with war? Has art served to encourage conflict? Should artists be blamed if they don't deal with war?" Alpers will discuss striking instances when art was offered as an alternative to strife.

Concert
Sunday, May 1, 3 p.m.
Gallery B
The UC Chamber Chorus will perform music composed during the Counter Reformation in Italy.

Publication
A fully illustrated, 280–page catalogue, distributed by Yale University Press, discusses Rubens's stylistic development, his major commissions and projects, his predecessors, techniques and materials, as well as the historical appreciation of the sketches. The catalogue will be available in the Museum Store for $45. Buy the catalogue from our online store: Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens