A view of the Frick Collection’s Fragonard Room as seen from the Living Hall, which was briefly closed this month for its first serious refurbishing in nearly a century.  Photos: Michael Falco for The New York Times

Roberta Smith writes:  "Time doesn’t quite stand still at New York’s beloved Frick Collection, but you could call the pace of change there glacial without fear of correction. Paintings have been moved around. A carpet has been taken up. There’s a new piece of maiolica in the Enamels Room. And the museum’s three Vermeers, at left, are being shown together for the first time in a decade.

For more than 90 years, most of the paintings in the grand living room, or Living Hall never left their perches. But last year it could no longer be denied that the 90-year-old carpet was worn out. Replacing it would require removing all the furniture, which led Joseph Galbo, the Frick’s conservator, to suggest also removing the paintings so that both the floors and the wood-paneled walls could be waxed. Photos: Michael Falco for The New York Times

The Living Hall at the Frick Museum. Photos: Michael Falco for The New York Times

And so for the last two weeks and through this weekend, the Living Hall’s masterpieces have been hanging in the Oval Room, free and clear of furniture, closer to eye level and bathed in natural light. In Frick time, the chance to see the stripped-down room is not likely to happen again until the new carpet wears out.

The Frick's Oval Room. Photos: Michael Falco for The New York Times

The paintings formerly of the Living Hall, which were made within 50 years of one another, present an almost classic opposition of tight and loose surfaces. The gleaming meticulous oil-on-panel surfaces of the Holbeins and the St. Francis play off the soft but commanding brushiness of the El Greco and the Titians.

Two paintings by Hans Holbein hang side-by-side in the Oval Room.  Photos: Michael Falco for The New York Times

“St. Francis in the Desert” is arguably Bellini’s greatest painting, a familiar staple of Art History 101. Seeing this painting in the Oval Room reveals details you may have missed: the rabbit nestled in a hole in the wall, just beneath St. Francis’s left hand; the spindly tree just behind him, whose spindly branches form a delicate cross at what appears to be the composition’s exact center.

Photo: Frick Collection

In contrast, El Greco’s tall, peak-like rendition of “St. Jerome” is an Everest of brushy, stroke-by-stroke fabulousness: his pink Cardinal’s robes, white red-trimmed cuffs, elongated hands planted lightly on an open Bible, pointing to a passage in an open Bible. Everything seems subtly alive, with the face being the most fluid point. St. Jerome’s look is quizzical, his lips are slightly parted. He could be on the verge of delivering a stern bit of wisdom or about to think out loud.

Photo: Frick Collection

Another aspect of these paintings that, to my embarrassment, did not occur to me until they changed rooms is that they are all portraits of men, some of them great men, the kind of men that Frick would have wanted to be associated with. Each portrait represents, in its very form and execution, a manly attribute that Frick would probably have liked to think he possessed: the noble devotion of St. Francis, the benign erudition of St. Jerome, the resolution of Holbein’s More.

"Sir Thomas More" by Hans Holbein  Photo: Frick Collection

By next Wednesday afternoon, the Frick says, both the Living Hall’s furniture and its paintings will be back in their usual places and life will go on. But there are other longer-lasting changes that are worth noting, such as the new lighting in the Fragonard Room. Photos: Michael Falco for The New York Times

The Frick has acquired its first work of maiolica, a large, radiant charger depicting “The Judgment of Paris” that is a gift from Dianne Modestini in memory of her husband, Mario Modestini. At the moment it can be seen in the small Enamels Room, holding its own against the gleaming dark greens and blues of the Limoges enamels that Frick bought from the estate of J. P. Morgan.

Photo: Frick Collection

And then there are the three Vermeers, hanging side by side for the first time in a decade. The large luminous “Mistress and Maid” outshines two smaller, mousier works — “Officer and Laughing Girl” and “Girl Interrupted at Her Music.” Both show a man and a young woman in an interior, and suggest that Vermeer was at his best when he painted women.

“Mistress and Maid” (circa 1666-7) by Vermeer  Photo: Frick Collection

Still, not all change is welcome. I for one would like to see Ingre’s 1845 “Comtesse d’Haussonville” taken from its cramped quarters in the North Hall and returned to its rightful, regal place at the center of the east wall of the East Gallery There it was featured, essentially, as the last work in what remains an astounding march through European painting. The countess’s quietly imperious gaze could engage the eye almost from the Enamels Room, through the wide doorways of the Oval Room and the long West Gallery. It would be great to see her there today, a presence nearly equal to six men.

Photo: Frick Collection

Lire l'article "Change Arrives on Tiptoes at the Frick Mansion " de Roberta Smith http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/arts/design/29fric.html?_r=1&oref=slogin