The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) brings a successful year of acquiring art to a close by adding several key works to its collection, including Edgar Degas’ “Mlle Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs,” Paul Klee’s “Ghost Rider Late in the Evening” and a Seventeenth Century man’s robe from Tibet.
“This museum has made many fine additions to its collection during 2007,” CMA director Timothy Rub said. “This spring, we acquired a rare Indian temple sculpture depicting Shiva as Brahma, this summer a superb collection of surrealist photography and this fall exceptional works of art from Africa and Meso America. And as the museum wraps up a busy and prosperous 2007, we welcome several additional works that will strengthen our holdings in several different areas.”
Edgar Degas (French, 1834‱917) was among the most talented draftsman and printmakers of his generation. In the late 1870s, he became captivated †as did many Parisians †by the café-concert, a popular outdoor entertainment that featured dance and music performed by popular entertainers of the day. He depicted these performances in a number of important etchings, lithographs and monotypes. “Mlle Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs,” lithograph, 1877‷8, which portrays the star of the establishment Emelie Bécat, is among the most fully realized of these compositions. It is a rarity as well; only 15 impressions are known to exist.
The Klee watercolor bolsters CMA’s early modern European collection. Paul Klee (German, 1879‱940) was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, teacher and writer who is considered one of the most significant figures in the history of Modern art. Some of his most magical images made while teaching at the Bauhaus were achieved with a spraying technique he devised, of which “Ghost Rider Late in the Evening,” watercolor and gouache, 1929, is a marvelous example.
The finest examples of Tibetan men’s robes, called chubas, are hallmarks of fine tailoring and the innovative use of materials. The CMA’s newly acquired chuba, a symbol of high status created for an aristocrat or a high-ranking Buddhist monk, is made with an luxurious Chinese silk originally woven for the imperial court in Beijing and sent to Tibet in trade or as a gift. Splendidly large phoenixes fashioned in gold thread adorn the front and back of the robe and are complemented by two smaller but equally resplendent phoenixes below.
Also entering the collection is a Wari container in the form of a sacrificer (Peru, 600‱000 AD). Made of a hard wood with traces of red pigment, the sacrificer leers with a toothy grin as it thrusts a blade into the throat of its human victim displaying the peak ritual action of passage from quick to dead, releasing vitality in the service of cosmic forces.
Wood containers carved as sacrificers were sent out to provinces far from the Wari capital in the Peruvian sierra. It is usually assumed the containers held the powdered lime (made from burned seashells) that was chewed with coca leaves, an important social and ritual activity in the Andes. It could also be that the containers were meant for psychotropic snuffs that might have been an integral part of Wari religious observance.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is at 11150 East Boulevard. For more information, www.ClevelandArt.org or 888-262-0033.
