‘Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art from the Collection’ Haggerty Museum of Art

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Photo: Haggerty Museum of Art

‘Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art from the Collection’ Haggerty Museum of Art

‘Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art from the Collection’

A few days ago, I left the house to see a show that happened to be in one of the Upper Galleries at the Haggerty Museum at Marquette and ended up getting hooked by an exhibition in their main space that didn’t initially grab my attention. “Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art from the Collection,”curated by Kirk Nickel, running through May 12 of 2024, somehow seemed a little dry to me as a line of text. However, just a passing glimpse of the brooding, dark works of one Leonaert Bramer of Delft in a small gallery in front of the stairs sent me on a sustained detour that unpacked a bunch of unexpected Lowland goodies.

Decades of post-modern art made with post-industrial pigments along with contemporary tastes for white and yellow and mauve have apparently recalibrated the sensibilities I cultivated in college art history. There, I studied Northern Baroque art under the noted textbook author and professor Marilyn Stockstadt, of which the Northern Baroque was her specialty. With this as my jumping off point, I leaped into the Leipzig School, which reigned at the moment of my berth into the contemporary art world. And I haven’t looked back to Antwerp since. Until I turned the corner on those Leonaert Bramers at the Haggerty. Never have sooty blacks, red ochres, and glazed umbers looked so fresh. I’ve seen hundreds of Northern Renaissance and Baroque paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens in dozens of museums over the past two decades, of course, but such satisfied expectations don’t challenge context very well. It took a surprise encounter with Bramer’s 1637 bizarre painting, The Denial of Saint Peter, to appreciate the distance that separates their then and our now. Not merely time and place, but form, style, manner, content, point of view, etc. We’re in a moment of figuration and if someone pulled out that black-on-black scene of armor-clad men, conspiring on benches by firelight, I’d think they were a rare type of genius. The same holds true for Bramer’s paintings The Mocking of Christ and The Betrayal of Christ. By the standards of the loopy, navel-gazey, salmon-and-sage paintings of 2023, these paintings look as touched, tortured, and revealed as the subjects and stories within them.

The same strangeness holds true for other work in the show as well, though those Bramers are tough to match. There’s a crazy little Birth of John the Baptist painting by a follower of Lambert Lombard. Flaws from its own time, such as distorted perspective and crude modeling of the flesh, are perfectly acceptable by today’s standards. The odd, tonal colors and interlocking patterning of the subject matter are superb. Another notable inclusion is Landscape with Scenes of Christ’s Life from Holy Week of the Ascension. In an era of scientific change and technical advancement, the clumsy perspective in the piece might have detracted from the work; but in an age that’s abandoned such rules, the ominous and sporadically populated landscape looks as fresh as a daisy. Interestingly, the skillfully curated and textually supported exhibition focuses on how the Low Countries responded to the upheaval of the 16th and 17th centuries. They were making art across cultural and religious cleavage, as we are now. So it seems that social turmoil might be a great engine of creativity after all. If so we’re in a very fertile moment.

I think people tend to undervalue how much retroactive context orients their perceptions about society. Pink Floyd never seemed so fussy until pushed up against two minutes of the Ramones, and the 1980s seemed natural until the grungy slackness of the ‘90s retroactively starched and buttoned it up. Everything from neckties to baby names to exercise fads normalize and then de-normalize in this dialectical manner, but with enough time, volatile and fickle properties revert to the cultural mean, ready to be admired as if brand new. Every yin has its yang, everything old is new again, and there’s a time to every purpose under heaven.

Events

September 17– September 23, 2023

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Sunday, September 10, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights

Sunday, September 17, 2–3 p.m.

Schlitz Audubon Center

Art Club

Sunday, September 17, 2–3:30 p.m.

Charles A. Wustum Museum of Art

The Painter’s Studio

Monday, September 18, 1 a.m.–3 p.m.

Haggerty Museum of Art

Guided tour of "Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art from the Haggerty Museum of Art's Collection"

Tuesday, September 19, 11 a.m.

Jackson Park

Red Magic Art Festival

Wednesday, September 20, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Group Therapy (Men): Black Space at MAM

Wednesday, September 20, 5:30–7 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Gallery Talk: “A Very Strong Likeness of Her”

Thursday, September 21, 12–1 p.m.

Warehouse Art Museum

Artist Talk Series with Sonja Thompsen

Thursday, September 21, 4–5 p.m.

Jewish Museum, Milwaukee

Opening Reception, “Yes, The Personal is Political”

Thursday, September 21, 7–8:15 p.m.

Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN)

Doors Open, Milwaukee

Saturday, September 23, 8 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Story Time in the Galleries

Saturday, September 23, 10:30–11 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Saturday, September 23, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Doors Open Milwaukee

Saturday, September 23, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

David Barnett Gallery

Doors Open, Milwaukee

Saturday, September 23, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Events: September 10– September 16, 2023

Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center

• JCC Tapestry of the Arts Festival
• Sunday, September 10, 9 a.m.–12 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Sunday, September 10, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Sunday, September 10, 2–3 p.m.

Cedarburg Cultural Center

• Cedarburg Artists Guild Annual Juried Exhibition Reception
• Sunday, September 10, 1–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Group Therapy (LGBTQIA): Black Space at MAM
• Wednesday, September 13, 5:30–7 p.m.

Villa Terrace

• After Hours Tour of “Supernova”
• Thursday, September 14, 6–7 p.m.

Portrait Society Gallery

• Opening Reception, Tom Antell, “Empire”
• Friday, September 15, 5–7 p.m.

Alverno College Art and Cultures Gallery

• WOW! Women of Wisconsin biennial of 26 female artists
• Friday, September 15, 4:30–8 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Saturday, September 16, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Story Time in the Galleries
• Saturday, September 16, 10:30–11 a.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

• Home 2023: September Craft Market
• Saturday, September 16, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Racine Art Museum

• Party on The Pavement
• Saturday, September 16, 12-7 p.m.

Tory Foliard Gallery

• Opening Reception, Charles Munch, “Night and Day”
• Saturday, September 16, 1- 4 p.m.–Q&A session with the artist beginning at 2 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Saturday, September 16, 2–3 p.m.

Hawthorn Contemporary

• Opening Reception, Kyoung Ae Cho, “From My Garden”
• Saturday, September 16, 6–9 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Story Time in the Galleries
• Saturday, September 9, 10:30–11 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Saturday, September 9, 2–3 p.m.

MARN (Milwaukee Area Resource Network + Culture Hub)

• gener8tor Art x Sherman Phoenix Closing Reception
• Saturday, September 9, 6–8 p.m.