New Acquisitions
Every autumn I go to Print Fair in New York, an amazing display of prints and drawings brought for sale by roughly 100 print dealers from around the world. It’s like being a kid in a candy store where you are allowed to open frames, use a magnifying glass, and sometimes even touch artworks to scrutinize every detail if you’re really serious about buying...
Avatars of the Gods
Exhibition curator Timothy Benson brings us some other striking interpretations of the Niebelunlied, including illustrations by Carl Otto Czeschka and the woodcuts of Franz Grohs, never before exhibited at LACMA. In a charming little book (LACMA’s copy once belonged to Kaiser Wilhelm II), Czeschka shows a young girl, Kriemhild, dreaming that her brothers, the eagles, will kill her lover, the falcon. Kriemhild is a major player in the original saga (whom Wagner would re-cast as Gutrune, just a nice girl looking for a husband)...
