Art History News

"Gems of Impressionism" at the Museo Dell'Ara Pacis, Rome 23 October 2013 - 23 February 2014

Rome is the only European city to host for the first time an exhibition of the masterpieces of the Impressionist and Post Impressionist collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The next stops on the tour will be the Palace of the Legion of Honor of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (California), the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio (Texas), the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo (Japan) and the Seattle Art Museum (State of Washington).

Towards the end of the 19220s, the American banker, businessman, industrialist, Andrew W. Mellon, started what would become one of the most important art collections in the world, with the ambition to embrace the best of European art from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. After his death in 1937, his offspring (Paul and Ailsa) carried on his legacy, cultivating the same passion of his father, enriching what is now known as the Mellon Collection, which is kept as a result of a donation, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

French artists in general and the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in particular, have always had a great importance in the Mellon collection, not surprisingly it includes some of the most precious masterpieces of the period.

In the exhibition:

Flowers Beds at Holland by Vincent Van Gogh

Battle of Love by Paul Cezanne

Portrait of Claude Monet by Auguste Renoir

Orchard in Bloom by Camille Pissaro

Beach Scene at Trouville by Eugene Boudin

Claude Monet The Road Bridge at Argenteuil 1874

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Carmen Gaudin 1885

Auguste Renoir Madame Monet and her son 1874

Edgar Degas Self-portrait c. 1857

Berthe Morisot The Artists Sister At A Window 1869

Paul Gauguin Self-portrait dedicated to Carrière 1888 or 1889

Georges Seurat. Study for "La Grande Jatte", 1884-1885,

Edgar Degas. Horses in a Meadow,

Edgar Degas. Before the Race,1871-1872,

Édouard Manet. At the Races c. 1875,

Édouard Vuillard. Child Wearing A Red Scarf

Édouard Manet. Still life with Oysters 1862

Teylers Museum and the Musée du Louvre presented the first comprehensive exhibition on Claude Lorrain (1600 - 1682) ever held in the Netherlands from 29 September 2011 to 8 January 2012. This French landscape painter is one of the most important masters in the history of art. Popes, kings and the entire European upper class competed to acquire his paintings of enchanting harbour cities and idyllic park landscapes full of references to the Classics. Claude Lorrain was one of the most famous and popular artists in 17th century Europe.

Master of the golden light

Claude Lorrain was the first painter to give the sun a central role in his work. His golden Italian light was famous all over the world. Roaming the countryside near Rome both in the early morning and in the evening, he aimed to capture the light on paper and canvas. Great artists including William Turner and Jean-Baptiste Corot were inspired by his work. In England, landscaped gardens - including classical buildings - were created based on his paintings.

Unique collections of drawings

Teylers Museum owns a unique range of early Claude Lorrain drawings which were acquired back in 1790, a mere six years after the museum opened. These works of art are in excellent condition as they have rarely or never been exhibited before. The drawings from the Musée du Louvre are from a later stage and are the perfect complement to the Teylers Museum collection.

Important paintings on loan

Key paintings from museums in the United States and Europe will be shown alongside these collections of drawings. The National Galleries of Scotland have given special permission for Lorrain's largest and most ambitious painting -

Landscape with Apollo and the Muses (1652)

- to travel to Haarlem for the exhibition. All in all, 78 drawings, 13 paintings and four etchings will display his exceptional talent.

Samuel anointing David, 1643

Harbour with setting sun, 1639

Complete exhibit here

Two more examples:

Herdsman with two oxen and three goats, ca. 1646

Landscape with Jacob wrestling with the angel, 1672

The bold and extraordinary oeuvre of the American painter Philip Guston (1913–1980) was one of the most widely discussed of his time. He was the first to return figuration to postwar American painting, was innovative in his combination of “high art” with images from popular culture, and is today celebrated as the pioneer of postmodern, figurative painting. On the occasion of the artist’s 100th birthday, from November 6, 2013, to February 2, 2014, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting late works by Philip Guston as a milestone of American painting. With a selection of seventy paintings and drawings, the exhibition unites loans from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

The autodidact Guston gained a foothold in New York’s art scene in the 1950s and became one of the most important representatives of Abstract Expression around Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. An intense drawing phase began in the late 1960s, culminating in a painterly break with the “purity requirements” of abstraction: Guston introduced crude figures and fragments of figures into his works; they populated his pink, red, black, and blue canvases - smoking, drinking, often painting as well. Guston’s subjects include large heads, hairy legs, clumsy shoes, and all manner of architectural fragments such as walls, doors, and light bulbs reminiscent of 1920s comics, and they often come over as the precursors of “Bad Painting”.

The large-format works come down full force on the viewer. Despite their apparent formal weightiness, content-related openness, and blurred mystification, the paintings are based on profound sensitivity and the artist’s far-reaching content-related and painterly consistency. In 1970, the first exhibition of these paintings outfitted with an anarchistic sense of humor and the grotesque caused an art scandal in New York, as numerous critics took offense at his “betrayal” of abstract art. Yet the intensity and unsettling power of Guston’s late works exercise an enormous influence on many of today’s younger artists.

Max Hollein, director of the Schirn: “Radical, surprising, and challenging: eyed critically during his lifetime, Philip Guston’s late works are meanwhile regarded as the most well known and most important works in his oeuvre. Our exhibition seeks to provide fascinating insight into this important phase of the American painter for the first time. Guston’s late work is an outstanding phenomenon and has essentially influenced and impressed a subsequent generation of painters both in the United States as well as in Europe.”

“Guston has always been, and continues to be, an ‘artist’s artist.’ Despite his presence in large collections, his late works in particular are considered to be an insider’s tip. For the viewer, they are discoveries; elusive and touching at the same time,” states Dr. Ingrid Pfeiffer, the curator of the exhibition. “While at first glance they appear to be simply structured, Guston’s paintings are of outstanding quality and characterized by a sensitive reflection of himself and the events of his day.”

Philip Guston is born Philip Goldstein in Montreal, Canada, in 1913 as the son of Russian-Jewish parents. He grows up in Los Angeles and demonstrates a talent for painting at an early age. His artistic and personal defiance prompt him to leave art school. His entire life is characterized by his intense involvement with European art history. His role models include Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as Goya and Rembrandt. Guston travels to Italy in order to examine Renaissance and Baroque painters such as Giotto, Piero de la Francesca, and Tiepolo. He is also interested in Mexican muralists. This is associated with his strong political involvement, whereby he sympathizes with left-wing groups and artists. In 1936 he adopts the artist’s name Guston and moves to the East Coast, quickly gaining a foothold in New York’s 1950s art scene. He becomes one of the most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism along with fellow artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell.

For the critics, his later renunciation of this postwar art form, which was so decisive for America, is all the more serious. Guston plunges into an existential crisis in 1965 and concentrates on drawing for a good two years. It is not until the late 1960s that he increasingly paints, and figuration returns to his work. In 1970, the first exhibition of these new paintings meets with a lack of understanding even in his own environment, and it evokes hostile reactions among art critics. The potential of these sophisticated paintings is not acknowledged until the late 1970s. In 1980, shortly before his death, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art devotes a large-scale retrospective to Philip Guston. The last extensive presentation of Guston’s oeuvre in the German-speaking world took place in Bonn in 1999.

“I got sick of all that purity! I want to tell stories!”*

With around 650 large-format paintings and hundreds of drawings, Guston’s late work was overall his most productive phase. New ideas developed out of an altered world of motifs. On the one hand, Guston’s examination of in part bizarre, violent comics as a child began to surface, while his works were permeated by a wide range of allegories and heavily symbolic objects on the other: huge hands, for instance, whose fingers point down from the heavens like the Last Judgment; clocks that, like a memento mori, visualize the passing of time; light bulbs that symbolize the light of knowledge and the spontaneous idea; burning cigarettes as a symbol of the briefness of life, which burns up all the more quickly the more deeply one inhales the smoke; fragmentary limbs reminiscent of massacres and escalating violence. In his use of this allegorical pictorial language, Guston does not provide the viewer with a palpable interpretation; rather, the highly educated artist plays with the symbolic value of objects. With his apparently primitive choice of motifs and comic-book-like scenes, he creates distance, blends high and low, and disrupts the viewer’s expectations.

“My whole life is based on anxiety - where else does art come from, I ask you?”*

There has been much speculation over the reasons for Guston’s artistic orientation and his ultimate change in direction, for example his struggle with lifelong depression due to tragic experiences in his childhood or an identity crisis caused, among other things, by his name change in the mid-1930s. It seems certain that his entire life was marked by melancholy and black humor. Yet like numerous other artists, Guston had the energy and strength to productively integrate all of his doubts, fears, and conflicts into a large number of powerful paintings. This is demonstrated above all in the numerous self-portraits among Guston’s late works. They recall distorted Cyclops, sorrowful giants with oversized heads.

At the same time, the artist prefers to depict himself in a gloomy mood, eating, drinking, and smoking excessively or wearing a mask. This relentless handling of himself is underscored by the large formats of these works, which allow more space for self-analysis. This is also emphasized by the artist’s preferred use of cadmium red, to which he adds white to produce pink, deliberately turning it into a “non-color.”

He intensifies and counteracts the seriousness and the severity of the depicted scenes and heightens bizarre effects to the point of absurdity. Guston’s preferred color palette with black and red dramatically and effectively reinforces his strategy of content-related circumvention, rupturing, and surprise.

“I paint what I want to see.”*

Alienation, combinatorics, and metamorphosis - three basic principles of Surrealism that also appear time and again in Guston’s late works. The artist places unexpected objects in the pictures that lack context. The individual object changes constantly. Guston elicits irritation and uncertainty, yet he likewise creates surprising elements and ambiguity. He deliberately sets mental and psychological processes in motion in the viewer. The artist himself placed emphasis on the unconscious, which participates in the success of his work and forces itself into his paintings.

The exhibition developed by the Schirn Kunsthalle will subsequently be presented at the Falckenberg Collection part of the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (February 22–May 25, 2014) and at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk (June 4–September 7, 2014). *Quotes by Philip Guston. Cf. the introduction by Ingrid Pfeiffer in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition.

CATALOGUE: Philip Guston. Das große Spätwerk / Late Works. Edited by Ingrid Pfeiffer and Max Hollein. Foreword by Max Hollein, introduction by Ingrid Pfeiffer, essays by Harald Falckenberg and Rafael Rubinstein, including a text by Philip Guston. German / English edition, 156 pages, 137 illustrations, 26.5 x 28 cm (horizontal format), clothbound, designed by the Büro für Gestaltung, Christian Bredl, Frankfurt; STRZELECKIBOOKS, Cologne, ISBN 978-3-942680- 46-2.

Interesting article

Philip Guston The Line, 1978 Oil on canvas, 180.3 x 186.1 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston The Studio, 1969 Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 106.7 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1973 Oil on canvas 196.8 x 262.9 cm Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Philip Guston Aggressor, 1978 Oil on canvas, 122 x 152 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Guston City, 1969 Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 171.5 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Painter's Head, 1975 Oil on canvas, 185 x 205 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Aegean, 1978 Oil on canvas, 172.5 x 320 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Discipline, 1976 Oil on canvas, 203. 2 x 257.8 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Studio Bench, 1978 Oil on canvas, 172.7 x 203.2 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Yellow Light, 1975 Oil on canvas, 171.5 x 245.5 cm Private collection © The Estate of Philip Guston

Philip Guston Web, 1975 Oil on canvas 170,2 x 247 cm Gift of Edward R. Broida, 2005 The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

Philip Guston Talking, 1979 Oil on canvas 173 x 198.8 cm Gift of Edward R. Broida, 2005 © The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

Eykyn Maclean (NYC) presents Surrealism and the rue Blomet, the first exhibition to explore the rue Blomet, one of the founding centers of the Surrealist movement. Dates: November 1 – December 13, 2013. Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10 am – 5 pm.

Beginning in 1922, the adjacent studios at 45 rue Blomet, occupied by André Masson and Joan Miró, became a daily congregation spot for the leading figures of Surrealism – the artists Jean (Hans) Arp, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Juan Gris, Georges Malkine, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Yves Tanguy, and the writers and poets Antonin Artaud, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Ernest Hemingway, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Armand Salacrou, and Gertrude Stein. They gathered together to eat, drink, smoke, play cards, and most importantly, to discuss literature and ideas, to write, and to paint.

The exhibition will explore this period through a variety of media including painting, drawing, and sculpture, as well as documentary photographs, and first edition books. A film by Man Ray and Robert Desnos will be screened, and original tracks of Biguine music from the Bal Nègre dance hall, a favorite of the Surrealists and located just steps away at 33 rue Blomet, will add to this exciting, multimedia presentation.

A fully illustrated, hardcover catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition. Mary Ann Caws, a leading scholar of Surrealist literature and art, will write a new essay on the topic as well as provide translations of essays by Desnos and Leiris about their time on the rue Blomet, both of which will appear in English for the very first time.

Eykyn Maclean (pronounced EE-kin MA-klain), 23 East 67th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10065(212) 772 9425 is a private art gallery with locations in New York and London, specializing in museum caliber work by key Impressionist and 20th century European and American artists. Christopher Eykyn and Nicholas Maclean established Eykyn Maclean in New York in 2006, launching their exhibition program in 2010 with the critically acclaimed show In Giacometti’s Studio – An Intimate Portrait, which was followed by Matisse and the Model (2011). Eykyn Maclean opened their London gallery in Mayfair in February 2012 with Cy Twombly: Works from the Sonnabend Collection. Other exhibitions include Andy Warhol Flowers (New York, 2012), Interviews with Artists (London, 2012), Chuck Close Photo Maquettes (New York, 2013) and Van Gogh in Paris (London, 2013).

From an outstanding article in the NY Times: (image added)

The show also includes a painting by Dubuffet, who hung out with the group just before leaving the art world for more than a decade to manage his family’s wine business. Called

“Frayeur” (1924), or “Fright,” it depicts a screaming man and seems to presage the horrors of World War II and the fate that befell some Surrealists...

From Wall Street International:

Surrealism and the rue Blomet will include works from museums, institutions, and private collections, presenting a special opportunity to see works that are rarely exhibited publicly and others that have never before been exhibited in the United States. The exhibition will explore this period through a variety of media including painting, drawing, and sculpture, as well as documentary photographs, and first edition books. A film by Man Ray and Robert Desnos will be screened, and original tracks of Biguine music from the Bal Nègre dance hall, a favorite of the Surrealists and located just steps away at 33 rue Blomet, will add to this exciting, multimedia presentation.

Highlights include Miró’s exceptional painting

Le Cheval de cirque (1927)

from the artist’s famous series of ‘dream paintings’ in which images playfully emerge from the subconscious

and Masson’s Le tour de cartes (1923, Museum of Modern Art),

a painting which depicts his rue Blomet friends relaxing with a game of cards.

Masson’s 1925 watercolor Metamorphoses will be exhibited, as well as a group of the artist’s ‘automatic’ drawings from the 1920s. Jean Dubuffet’s painting Frayeur (1924, Fondation Dubuffet) will be shown in the United States for the very first time along with rarely seen paintings by Georges Malkine, and an inscribed first edition of The Night of Loveless Nights, a book of poetry by Desnos with illustrations by Malkine. Miró’s Statue (1926, Museum of Modern Art) will be on view, as well as his sculpture Oiseau lunaire (1946), a monumental version of which now marks the site of the artists’ former studios, and which Miró dedicated to this extraordinary group.

Barbara Klemm. Photographs 1968 – 2013 Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 16 November 2013 to 9 March 2014

Probably no other German female photographer has followed the events of the past few decades as closely with her camera as Barbara Klemm. Her photographs show events of historic significance, encapsulating key images, turning points, and whole epochs. Now, specially for the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the famous photographer has put together a grand retrospective of her work spanning five decades and comprising some 300 exhibits covering the whole range of her oeuvre since 1968: political events, student unrest, citizens’ initiatives, scenes from divided and re-united Germany, everyday situations, and the realities of life from all corners of the earth, as well as sensitive portraits of artists, writers, musicians and visitors to the museum.

A daughter of the painter Fritz Klemm, Barbara Klemm was born in Münster in 1939 and grew up in Karlsruhe, where she trained as a photographer. From 1959 to 2004 she worked for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ). In 1970 she became a staff photographer specializing in politics and the arts. Her first major political event was the negotiation of the treaties with the Eastern bloc between Brezhnev and Brandt. The photo with the unassuming caption “Leonid Brezhnev, Willy Brandt, Bonn, 1973” flashed round the world. Apparently unaware of being observed, Brezhnev and Brandt are seen engrossed in talks, surrounded by interpreters and advisers. The photographer’s camera is nowhere in evidence. Klemm has captured an intimate moment which more than any other symbolizes these treaties and the whole political trend of the 1970s. The picture is as remarkable for its immediacy and spontaneity as for its formal and balanced composition.

Klemm has a unique ability to combine the frame and content of a picture with such formal criteria as structure, composition and perspective. Her works generally bear neutral captions giving the name, place and date of the event, thus indicating her view of herself as a detached and disinterested observer.

From 1952 to 1999 there appeared the legendary rotogravure supplement of the FAZ, a magazine which came out every Saturday under the title “Bilder und Zeiten” (Pictures and Times), often with cover pictures by Barbara Klemm. The exhibition will feature about 70 of these supplements arranged by theme. They document a period of newspaper history.

Yet Barbara Klemm is not just one of the most significant press photographers of post-war Germany, but also one of the few representatives of her trade who turned photojournalism into an art in its own right. Her consistently black-and-white pictures are not meant to be ephemeral. They are shot with a feeling for the essence of things that makes them icons of our recent past. Nor is she interested in sensation – her work is more imbued with respect and discretion, with empathy and an unerring feel for the most expressive moment.

Barbara Klemm is curious, especially about people – whether in her press coverage, whose subjects we only do not recognize as portraits because we do not know the persons portrayed, or in the many portraits of artists to which she devoted herself in the 1980s. These are pictures made with detachment which at the same time allow the attitude, work and character of the artist to shimmer through. Barbara Klemm has photographed such renowned artists as Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Neo Rauch, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Thomas Bernhard, Herta Müller and Joseph Beuys. She photographed Beuys in the Landesmuseum Darmstadt and in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in 1982 while engaged in assembling his legendary work entitled “Hirschdenkmäler” (Stag Monuments) for the “Zeitgeist” exhibition. It is a moment of stillness and yet charged with energy that she has captured: the calm before the “lightning flash”. Recognizing such moments is the art of Barbara Klemm.

Catalogue:
Publisher: NIMBUS. Kunst und Bücher
Trade edition (German/English):
(ISBN 978-3-907142-93-6)

Mick Jagger, Frankfurt am Main, 1970
© Barbara Klemm

Andy Warhol, Frankfurt, 1981
© Barbara Klemm

Janis Joplin, Frankfurt am Main, 1969
© Barbara Klemm

Rudi Dutschke, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Offenbach,
1975
© Barbara Klemm

Kalkutta, Indien, 1982
© Barbara Klemm

The New York State Museum will open a new exhibition, Weather Event, featuring the work of artist Charles E. Burchfield and his colorful depictions of the weather south of Lake Erie on November 2, 2013.

On display in the West Gallery through February 23, 2014, the exhibition features over sixty works of art, including watercolors, sketches and Burchfield's journals. The exhibition was first organized by and presented at the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State.

"Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) was an artist, writer, designer, and naturalist whose character was defined by his observation of the here, the now and the hereafter," said Anthony Bannon PhD, Executive Director of Burchfield Penney Art Center. "This exhibition, drawn from the 26,000 objects in the Burchfield archive at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, observes the artist's contemplative transcription of weather, the cycles of environment and atmosphere - and what it all meant to him. We are delighted to have the opportunity to share his vision with the thought leaders of our state."

Burchfield's representations of weather, wind, skies and sounds are unique historical records of the environment near Lake Erie, where he lived for most of his life. Burchfield Penney Curator and Manager of Archives, Tullis Johnson, worked with climatologist and Buffalo State College professor Stephen Vermette, Ph.D., to present the dramatic and complex natural phenomenon chronicled in more than 50 years of Burchfield's writings, drawings and paintings.

Dr. Vermette also worked with students from Buffalo State College to recreate historical weather forecasts for the days that many of Burchfield's early watercolors where made. These forecasts are accessible in the exhibit through the use of smart phone technology.

Burchfield's early works were imaginative, stylized landscapes and rural scenes that often incorporated a personal language of symbols. After moving to Buffalo from Ohio, he became engrossed in the city's buildings, harbor, rail yards and surrounding countryside. From this period, his works show an appreciation for American life and a complex assessment of urban life in comparison to the countryside and small town of his youth.

Burchfield's artistic achievement was honored by the inauguration of the Charles Burchfield Center at Buffalo State College on December 9, 1966. He died on January 11, 1967. The museum, now called the Burchfield Penney Art Center, holds the world's largest collection of his work.

Fireflies and Lightning, 1964-65
Watercolor, graphite and white contÃ© crayon with masking tape on joined paper mounted on board
40 x 54 in. (101.6 x 137.2 cm) Purchase made possible with funds from M&T Bank, an anonymous donor, William P. and A. Laura Brosnahan, the Vogt Family Foundation and the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, 1998

Untitled (Haloed Moon), ca. 1916
Watercolor and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1/4 in.
Charles E. Burchfield Foundation Archives, Gift of the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation, 2006

Afterglow, July 8, 1916
Watercolor and graphite on paper
19 3/8 x 14 in. (49.2 x 35.6 cm)
Gift of Tony Sisti, 1979

Sunburst, 1929-31
Oil on canvas
35 1/2 x 47 1/2 in.
(Frame: 41 3/4 x 53 5/8 x 2 1/2 in.)
The Charles Rand Penney Collection of Work by Charles E. Burchfield, 1994

Landscape with Grey Clouds (Heat Lightning), ca. 1962
Watercolor, charcoal, and white chalk on joined paper
58 x 45 in.
DC Moore Gallery, New York

The State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department's Office of Cultural Education. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the Museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presents, October 19, 2013—February 2, 2014, Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde, the largest survey in twenty years devoted to the work of the Russian avant-garde pioneer Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935). The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam holds the largest collection of Malevich’s work outside of Russia, which was the subject of a large-scale exhibition at the museum in 1989. Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde is a tribute to the artist and his contemporaries, as well as the culmination of 2013 as the year celebrating Dutch–Russian relations in the Netherlands.

The exhibition is co-produced with Tate Modern, London, and the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundeskunsthalle), Bonn, where it will travel in 2014. Each venue explores Malevich’s rich career from distinctive vantage points, focusing on different aspects of the artist’s remarkable career, including the context in which he formed his unique language, the radicality of his artistic trajectory, and his later return to landscapes and figures. Seen in their totality, these exhibitions thus provide the unprecedented opportunity to reassess one of the defining figures of twentieth-century modernism.

Organized by Stedelijk Museum curators Geurt Imanse and Bart Rutten, the Stedelijk’s presentation of more than 500 works places Malevich within the context of his contemporaries.

Not only an artist, he was an influential teacher and a passionate advocate of the “new” art. The show is a tribute to the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century, with Malevich as its focal point. Although best known for his purely abstract work, he was inspired by diverse art movements of his day, including Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, and Cubism; his own visual language was also influenced by Russian icon painting and folk art. Through oil paintings, gouaches, drawings, and sculptures, the exhibition traces the rich variety of his oeuvre. All the phases in Malevich’s career will be on view, from his Impressionist period to his iconic Suprematist phase—his Black Square was its most radical consequence—to the lesser-known figurative works that followed.

Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde will unite the exceptional collections of Nikolai Khardzhiev (via the Khardzhiev Foundation under the stewardship of the Stedelijk) and Georges Costakis (housed by the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki) for the first time. Pioneering Russian collectors of the Russian avant-garde, Khardzhiev and Costakis assembled considerable holdings of works during a time when abstract art was forbidden in the Soviet Union.

Works on paper offer vital insights into Malevich’s artistic development. Recent research—in which the Stedelijk Museum played an important role—reveals that it is in
his drawings that we can follow his artistic quest in the best possible way. Never before have so many Malevich works on paper—mostly from the Khardzhiev Collection—been on public display together.

The exhibition celebrates a number of milestones. It was precisely one hundred years ago that the experimental Cubo-Futurist opera Victory over the Sun (1913) was performed, for which Malevich designed radical, non-realistic sets and costumes. The opera was a turning point in the artist’s career, marking his first experiments with total abstraction. Moreover, it has been ninety years since the first major exhibition of Russian nineteenth- and twentieth-century art—the first Russian Art Show, including work by Malevich—was on view at the Stedelijk Museum; the Stedelijk was the first museum to present Malevich’s Suprematism outside of Russia. In addition, Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde is the artistic culmination of 2013, a year celebrating Dutch–Russian relations.

Artists in the Exhibition

Marc Chagall, Ilia Chashnik, Boris Ender, Ksenia Ender, Maria Ender, Yurii Ender, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, Ivan Kyun, Mikhail Larionov, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Matyushin, Mikhail Menkov, Vera Pestel, Lyubov Popova, Ivan Puni, Alexander Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Nikolai Suetin, Vladimir Tatlin and Nadezhda Udaltsova.

Lenders to the Exhibition

A. N. Radishchev State Art Museum, Saratov; Annely Juda Fine Arts, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Collection V. A. Dudakov, Moskou; Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts; F. A. Kovalenko Regional Art Museum of Krasnodar; Foundation Beyeler, Basel; Ivanovo Regional Art Museum; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum; Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, Moscow; St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music; Samara State Museum of Fine Arts; Sepherot Foundation, Lichtenstein; State Museum of Contemporary Art—Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki; State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; Tate Modern, London; Tsarenkov Collection, London; Tula Museum of Fine Arts; V. i. Surikov Art Museum of Krasnoyarsk; Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and various private collectors.

Immages in the Exhibition

Kazimir Malevich, Kazimir Malevich, Self-Portrait, 1908-1910. Courtesy The State Tretyakov Gallery

Kazimir Malevich, Song of the Blue Clouds (Sketch for a Portrait of the Composer Roslavets), 1907-1908. Collection Stedelijk Museum Khardzhiev-Chaga.

Kazimir Malevich, Bathers seen from behind, 1908-1909. Collection Stedelijk Museum Khardzhiev-Chaga.

Kazimir Malevich, Bather, 1911. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich,The Woodcutter (recto) / Peasant Women in Church (verso), 1912. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, An Englishman in Moscow, 1914. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, Gallant Company in a Park, 1908. Collection Stedelijk Museum Khardziev-Chaga.

Kazimir Malevich, Yellow Plane in Dissolution, 1917-1918. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, Mystic Suprematism (red cross on black circle), 1920-1922. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism: Self-Portrait in Two Dimensions, 1915. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, Hieratic Suprematist Cross (large cross in black over red on white), 1920-1921. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, Construction in Dissolution (three arches on a diagonal element in white), 1917. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1929. Courtesy The State Tretyakov Gallery.

Kazimir Malevich, Girl with a Red Pole, 1932-1933. Collection The State Tretyakov Gallery.

Kazimir Malevich, Aviator in Victory over the Sun. 1913. Collection Stedelijk Museum Khardzhiev-Chaga.

Mikhail Larionov, Jewish Venus, sketch, 1912. Collection Stedelijk Museum Khardzhiev-Chaga

From October 18, 2013, to January 26, 2014, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents the first solo exhibition on Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) in Germany. The short-lived painter was one of the great masters of nineteenth-century French painting, and is considered a forerunner of French Romanticism.

Géricault’s pictures exude an almost ebullient force of life, which always stands with one foot next to the abyss. With roughly 130 loans from Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, Ghent, Brussels, London, New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere the wide-ranging Frankfurt exhibition focuses on two of the French artist’s core thematic complexes: the physical suffering of modern man, most impressively expressed in his pictures of severed heads and limbs linking life and death, and his psychic torments, masterfully illustrated in Géricault’s portraits of monomaniacs. In a focused overview these two groups of works are placed in the context of his oeuvre as well as in the art of his time, thus shedding new light on Géricault’s intellectual assumptions and his connection to the history of medicine and illustrating the reciprocal relationship between art and science.

Sixty-two works by Géricault are thus juxtaposed with works by Francisco de Goya, Eugène Delacroix, and Adolph Menzel.

The exhibition, curated by Gregor Wedekind, presents Géricault’s novel, observant vision of the fate of modern man, and gives an impression of the artist’s radical realism, which assures him a crucial position in the history of European art. Situated midway between the unsentimental perspective of science and the Romantic fondness for the unfathomable, Géricault’s profoundly human pictures call into question our traditional understanding of realism and Romanticism as mutually exclusive styles of his epoch.

Of particular note is the presentation in Frankfurt of four of Géricault’s five famous Monomaniacs. Such a presentation was possible only once before, in 1991 at the major Géricault retrospective in Paris’s Grand Palais. The missing fifth portrait, which cannot be loaned, is replaced by a painting created specifically for the present exhibition by the South African artist Marlene Dumas (born 1953), who currently lives in Amsterdam. In an impressive and surprising way, her work serves as a contemporary counterpoint to Géricault’s masterpieces.

In his brief lifetime Théodore Géricault, born in Rouen in 1791, produced an extensive oeuvre, one that includes a number of masterworks. Above all there is the

Raft of the Medusa from 1819 (never loaned by the Louvre),

in which the artist, in an empathetic dramatization, turned to an existential event that shows men exposed to their physical limitations. By turning the event into a history painting, Géricault added fuel to the political scandal surrounding the fact that the French government failed to rescue the castaways from the shipwrecked frigate Medusa. A tendency toward extremes characterized Géricault’s personal life as well. He became involved in a hopeless love relationship with his uncle’s wife, and his avid devotion to riding led to several falls from his horse, as a result of which he died in 1824, after extreme suffering, at the age of thirty-two.

The exhibition’s curator, Gregor Wedekind (Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz) adds: “The art of Théodore Géricault is characterized by struggle and strength. Its struggle had to do with his attempt to capture life. Its strength lies in its readiness to wager all on a single card. Juxtaposed with works by Goya, Delacroix, and Menzel, the artist’s works in this exhibition show his painstaking observation and determined exploration of the tragic fate of modern man. Out of these he produced his pictures of life and death, which in their radical realism occupy a key position in the history of European art.”

The exhibition, organized by the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Museum for Fine Arts, Ghent is divided into four subject areas: The first group of works, under the title “Battles,” brings together Géricault’s early depictions of warfare, especially his engagement with the fate of soldiers, shown here on the basis of important studies for the large-format paintings

The Charging Chasseur (1812)

and The Wounded Cuirassier (1814),

both in the Louvre, as well as

The Return from Russia (1818) in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

In addition to subjects related to war and battle there are also some of his few works devoted to relations between man and woman, including

Satyr and Nymph (1817, Princeton University Art Museum)

and Satyr and Bacchante (circa 1817/18, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen).

The artist formulates the sexual encounter between the sexes as a potentially or actually violent one in part in the guise of myth and in such a way that it is scarcely to be distinguished from a wrestling match. These motifs relating to battles are complemented by other works in this first section—above all the masterful lithographs from his London suite (1821, Bibliothèque Nationale de France)—that deal with such issues as class struggle, racial conflict, the life-and-death struggle between man and beast, etc.

The second section is devoted to Géricault’s study of “Bodies.” With it the painter perfected his ability to depict figures, of course, but more importantly he early on sought to enhance the expressive potential of the body, to translate the effects of an existential experience like shipwreck into body language. His pictures of anatomical fragments in still-life arrangements can be compared to traditional medical and painterly anatomical illustrations like those of Jacques-Fabien Gautier d’Agoty (1748), Jacques Gamelin (1779), or George Stubbs (1756–58, Royal Academy of Arts, London).

One sees the degree to which Géricault broke from traditional iconography and previous moralizing depictions and developed a highly independent approach, one informed by the greatly expanded anatomical knowledge of the human body in his day as well as the increasing influence on artists of medical lectures. The disgusting is by no means prettified, yet his art lends it force and beauty, thanks to which the viewer is led by death to a more intense feeling of melancholy. As in The Raft of the Medusa, in these body fragments the viewer is not confronted by the realism of the anatomy amphitheater but rather by a shifting of the disgusting and nauseating into the realm of aesthetics. Géricault’s approach has nothing to do with a fascination with morbidity; his intention was to do justice to contemporary experiences of reality.

The exhibition’s third section is titled “Heads” and presents such masterworks as a portrait study from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and

the Head of a White Horse (1816/17) from the Louvre.

In his studies of heads Géricault leaves behind the earlier tradition of the tête d’expression going back to Charles Le Brun, that is the lore surrounding the interpretation of facial expressions. Instead, he attempts to combine the achievments of anatomical researches in his time with a psychological penetration of the subject. In this he was surely influenced by the physiognomy of Johann Caspar Lavater as well as by phrenology, which suddenly became the rage all across Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its pseudo-scientific investigations into the relationship between one’s aptitudes and and the shape of one’s head culminated in the measurement and mapping of the skull—cranioscopy—and had a major influence on art. But Géricault was not inclined to such schematization. His interest in the living took into account the psychological as well as the social aspects of human existence. In his depictions of severed heads, finally, as clinical as they are unflinching, the artist maximized the violent aspect of death as dealt with in medicine as well as in its political or judicial uses and the horror in its effect on the viewer. What interested him here was precisely what could not be ascertained by medicine or accepted politically. Géricault painted pictures beyond pictures and portraits beyond portraits, in the sense that he tried to make visible spiritual states beyond systematic readings of the passions.

His most radical step in this direction is represented by his five portraits of the mentally ill, which are the focus of the fourth and last section of the exhibition titled “Crises.”

Four of his famous Monomaniacs have been brought together from the Museum for Fine Arts, Ghent, the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon, Paris’s Louvre, and the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts. These are supplemented by a contemporary work by Marlene Dumas (Monomania of Military Command, 2013). In their vacant expressions the portraits of monomanics illustrate the tipping point arrived at by modern man subjected to excessive anxiety. Géricault’s art can be seen in the context of a change in the treatment of psychic illnesses around the turn from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Instead of the physical restraint previously imposed on psychiatric patients, a more modern understanding of psychic disorders and therapies employed in their treatment brought about a wholly new perception of such patients and accordingly a change in their position in society. To illustrate the direct connection between Géricault’s art and this revolution in the history of ideas and of science, his pictures are juxtaposed with medical depictions of madness. In addition to drawings, illustrations, and individual paintings by other artists, one can also see here the first photographic representations of psychiatric patients produced by Hugh Welch Diamond and Henry Hering around the middle of the nineteenth century.

ARTIST LIST:

David d’Angers, Ernest Joseph Bailly, Jacques Raymond Brascassat, Jean- Baptiste Carpeaux, Charles-Émile Callande de Champmartin, Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet, Caius Gabriel Cibber, Léon Coignet, Alexandre Correard, Eugène Delacroix, Marlene Dumas, Johann Heinrich Füssli, Théodore Géricault, Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, Francisco de Goya, Henry Hering, William Hogarth, Charles Le Brun, Adolph Menzel, Heinrich Merz (after Wilhelm von Kaulbach), John Hamilton Mortimer, George Romney, Johann Gottfried Schadow, George Stubbs, Horace Vernet, James Ward, Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond, Antoine Wiertz.

CATALOG:

Géricault: Bilder auf Leben und Tod (Géricault: Images of Life and Death). Edited by Gregor Wedekind and Max Hollein, with a foreword by Max Hollein and Catherine de Zegher and texts by Gregor Wedekind, Bruno Chenique, Bruno Fornari, Claude Quétel, and Kristin Schrader. German and English editions, each 224 pages with circa 240 color illustrations, Hirmer Verlag,

Telfair Museums presents the landmark exhibition “Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain” October 18, 2013 through March 9, 2014 at the Jepson Center, located at 207 W. York St. on Telfair Square in Savannah, Ga.

Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain is the first museum exhibition dedicated to the Spanish paintings of Robert Henri (1865-1929), one of the most influential American artists of the early 20th century. A leading proponent of the urban realist style that characterized the art of the Ashcan School, Henri was widely celebrated as a painter and a teacher. As a leading figure in the Ashcan School, Henri played a pivotal role in the history of American art as one of the key organizers of the progressive 1908 exhibition of The Eight, a group of artists who protested the ultraconservative National Academy of Design. Throughout his career, Henri championed the realistic portrayal of contemporary life.

Born Robert Henry Cozad in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert Henri was raised in Nebraska and changed his name after his father became implicated in a manslaughter charge after a dispute with a rancher in Nebraska.

Spain and its people held a particular fascination for Henri, who was attracted to the nation’ssunny climate, ancient culture and spirited citizens. Henri traveled to Spain seven times between 1900 and 1926 and produced a substantial body of work inspired by that country’s citizens and culture. His portraits present a dazzling cross-section of Spanish society—famous dancers, dashing bullfighters, spirited gypsies, blind street singers and weathered old peasants—as he masterfully captures the spirit of unique individuals. Henri’s portraits reflect his admiration for the great Spanish masters Diego Velasquez and Francisco Goya, whose works he studied closely.

Henri’s Spanish canvases were well received during his lifetime; many quickly found homes in prominent museum collections around the country. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City purchased Henri’s Spanish Gypsy in 1914, its first acquisition by an Ashcan School artist, and has loaned it to the Telfair for Spanish Sojourns. Other American museums also have made major loans, culminating in a groundbreaking exhibition that presents more than forty of Henri’s Spanish works. Together, the paintings reveal Henri’s ongoing commitment to portraying the essence of Spanish tradition.

The exhibition has been in development for over five years and was inspired by one of the most beloved paintings in the Telfair’s collection. La Madrileñita, which typically hangs in the Telfair Academy, originally purchased directly from Robert Henri for the Telfair by Gari Melchers in 1919.

Spanish Sojourns will tour nationally, traveling to the San Diego Museum of Art and the Mississippi Museum of Art after its time in Savannah. The exhibition has been awarded major grants from prestigious institutions including the National Endowment for the Arts.

Spanish Sojourns is accompanied by a fully illustrated hardcover catalogue that presents new scholarship on Henri and places his work in the context of the other American artists, architects and writers who were inspired by Spain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spanish Sojourns is organized by Telfair Museums.

Images from the exhibition:

La Madrileñita, Robert Henri, 1910, oil on canvas

Robert Henri, Blind Singers, 1912. Oil on canvas, 33 ¼ x 41 ¼ in. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1966. 66.2434.

The Spanish Gypsy, 1912, Robert Henri, Metropolitan Museum, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1914 (14.80)

Robert Henri, Portrait of El Matador Felix Asiego, 1906. Oil on canvas. Robert Henri Estate, LeClair family collection.

Robert Henri, The Green Fan (Girl of Toledo, Spain). Oil on canvas, 1912. Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina.

Robert Henri, Gypsy Mother (Maria y Consuelo), 1906. Oil on canvas. Robert Henri Estate, LeClair family collection.

Marsden Hartley (1877- 1943) Maine Landscape, Autumn No. 13, 1909. Oil on board, 11 3/4 x 13 1/2 in. (29.8 x 34.3 cm) (Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co - owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges - Museum of American Art, )

Charles Duncan (1892-1952) Abstraction—Landscape, n.d. Oil on canvas, 29 x 39 in. (73.7 x 99.1 cm (Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co - owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges - Museum of American Art, )

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) Le chapeau épinglé (Pinning the Hat), 1898. Color lithograph with hand coloring, 24 x 19 1/4 in. (61 x 48.9 cm)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co - owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges - Museum of American Art

Arthur Garfield Dove (1880 - 1946), Swinging in the Park (There Were Colored People There), 1930.

"Radiator Building -- Night, New York," by Georgia O'Keeffe. (Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges - Museum of American Art, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas. Photography by Edward C. Robison III.)

"Painting No. 3" by Marsden Hartley. (Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges - Museum of American Art, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas. Photography by Edward C. Robison III.)

A temporary exhibition featuring 101 art works by American and European Modernists, as well as African art, opened Nov. 9 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The exhibition, titled The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, includes works from the collection of photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, and features the artists Stieglitz most favored, including O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin, alongside some of the early European Modernists who inspired them, including Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Artists’ Eye is on view at Crystal Bridges through Feb. 3, 2014.

This exhibition showcases the rise of American Modernism, a cause Stieglitz championed throughout his career as a fine-arts photographer, gallery owner and impresario. He began his career as one of the first gallery owners in the United States to exhibit European Modernists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Cézanne. Over time, however, Stieglitz became completely committed to supporting and encouraging artists he felt were creating a uniquely American style of Modernism. He supported artists by showing their work, purchasing artworks from them, and even occasionally providing money for food or supplies, or studio space in which they could produce their work.

Six artists comprised Stieglitz’s core circle: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Demuth, plus the photographer Paul Strand. Most of these artists, each with his or her own particular trademark style, are well represented in The Artists’ Eye with works that trace their artistic development over their careers. The exhibition also features several of Stieglitz’s own photographs, many of them familiar and iconic images demonstrating Stieglitz’s passion for a modern approach to fine-art photography.

In addition to works by artists of Stieglitz’s circle, there are several works by influential European artists Stieglitz exhibited in his galleries, as well as other American artists, including Wanda Gâg, Alfred Henry Maurer, Charles Sheeler, and Abraham Walkowitz. The exhibition also includes four works by 19th-century African artists. European modern art was highly influenced by the stylized forms and geometrical shapes of African art. Recognizing this, Stieglitz was among the first in the U.S. to mount an exhibition of African works as fine art, rather than as ethnographic objects.

“Visitors to this exhibition will have an opportunity to experience a critical time in the history of American art,” said Crystal Bridges Executive Director Rod Bigelow. “Each of these artists was making their own unique statement, and each helped to shape the course of American art for the future.”

History of the Collection

This collection of 101 artworks was donated to Fisk University by Stieglitz’s wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, after his death in 1946. She divided the collection and donated works to six different institutions: Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.; The Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Ill.; the National Gallery of Art, and the Library of Congress, Washington DC. The works in this collection are now co-owned by Crystal Bridges and Fisk University. The collection will travel between the two institutions every two years.

“By sharing this collection, Crystal Bridges and Fisk University are making these works accessible to a wide audience,” said Bigelow. “We are excited to be partnering on several educational programs in conjunction with the exhibition, including public lectures by Fisk University professionals and Stieglitz scholars. In January, Crystal Bridges is holding a special Scholars Symposium, offering the top scholars in the field of American modern art the opportunity to view the collection in its entirety and to share ideas and research into Stieglitz and his circle. We are excited about opening up this avenue for increased scholarship into the collection, and are looking forward to continuing to work with Fisk University to preserve and exhibit these works.”

The Artists’ Eye is sponsored at Crystal Bridges by Morgan Stanley; Blakeman’s Fine Jewelry; The William M. Fuller Foundation; Greenwood Gearhart Inc.; Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, P.L.L.C.; NWA Media/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Queen Anne Mansion Preservation Trust; and Demara Titzer.

Tickets to The Artists’ Eye are $5 for adults. Admission is sponsored for youth ages 18 and under. Museum members receive complimentary admission to all temporary exhibitions. In addition, admission is sponsored for Fisk University students, staff and alumni. Tickets may be purchased on line at crystalbridges.org, by telephone at 479-418-5700, or at the museum’s Guest Services desk.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is located in Bentonville, Ark.

The Surrealists: Works from the Collection, November 3, 2013–March 2, 2014, will provide a selection of exceptional works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art that represent one of the most influential art movements of the twentieth century. Surveying the period during which Surrealism flourished—from the mid-1920s to the late 1940s in Europe and the United States—this exhibition will begin by examining the movement’s Parisian origins and trace its development over time as its methods and goals were embraced by a broad international avant-garde. Reflecting a deep fascination with psychoanalysis and dreams as well as myth and fantasy, the work of the Surrealists explored the use of chance and spontaneity to access the unconscious, defined new ways of making art, and tested the boundaries of social acceptability.

The artists of the Surrealist movement experimented with a variety of approaches to obtain unexpected results by tapping into the subconscious mind. This is seen in

Animal Caught in a Trap (1929),

where André Masson used automatic drawing as a starting point for the development of an abstracted image.

Joan Miró broke with established forms of painting by experimenting with collage, assemblage, the unlikely juxtaposition of images, and simplified forms and bold colors, as in

Dog Barking at the Moon (1926).

Jean Arp used torn and scattered ink in a series of drawings, each called

Composition (1937),

to play with the idea of chance as the foundation for a new aesthetic approach.

During the 1930s, Surrealism emerged as major force on the international scene and developed a political voice in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Miró’s

Person in the Presence of Nature (1935)

suggests the mounting pressures within the artist’s home country,

while Salvador Dalí’s

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War),

painted a year later, foreshadowed the horror of the conflicts to come. These fantastical scenes were the result of attempts to access the unconscious through psychoanalysis and the study of dreams, while providing commentary on real world tragedies.

With Europeans taking refuge in the United States during World War II, the center of the Surrealist movement shifted to New York. Julien Levy was one of the many art dealers who introduced Surrealism to collectors and new audiences in this country. The work of many of the artists he represented will be included in this exhibition, including photographs by Man Ray and Lee Miller. Max Ernst, a pioneer of Surrealism, was one of many European exiles who made a new life for themselves here, eventually marrying fellow artist Dorothea Tanning. Her masterpiece

Birthday (1942)

is an iconic self-portrait in an empty room with doors leading into an infinite recession of space. A similar confounding of reason is reflected in Kay Sage’s defined dreamscapes, such as

Unicorns Came Down to the Sea (1948).

The Surrealists’ fascination with automatic drawing evolved to take new forms over time, as reflected in the evocative space and crystalline shapes of Matta’s painting

The Bachelors Twenty Years Later (1943),

the title of which refers to Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass.

The exhibition will end with works from the International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galérie Maeght, Paris (1947), the first major showing of Surrealism in Europe after World War II. This section includes the work of Enrico Donati, one of the movement’s younger artists. His sculpture The Evil Eye (1947) is a recent acquisition. Set in acrylic glass, the eye’s copper wire roots are visible beneath the platform that is backed by a monkey head visible only in a series of mirrors mimicking the waxing and waning moon.

This exhibition contains approximately one hundred works from the collection by over fifty artists. Important publications and documentary materials, including photographs of the Surrealists at work or leisure, exhibition catalogues, and the periodicals Minotaure, VVV, and View, are also included in the exhibition. Excerpts of the Surrealist manifestos will be broadcast in the gallery, offering visitors a multisensory experience of the movement, its ambitions, and its unique history.

The Courtauld Gallery, London, 30 January to 27 April 2014
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, 30 May to 7 September 2014

Organised as a collaboration between The Courtauld Gallery and The Morgan Library and Museum in New York, this exhibition explores aspects of Romantic landscape drawing in Britain and Germany from its origins in the 1760s to its final flowering in the 1840s. Bringing together twenty-six major drawings, watercolours and oil sketches from both collections by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Palmer, Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Lessing, it draws upon the complementary strengths of both collections: the Morgan’s exceptional group of German drawings and The Courtauld Gallery’s wide-ranging holdings of British works.

A Dialogue with Nature offers the opportunity to consider points of commonality as well as divergence between two distinctive schools. Together, these drawings exemplify Friedrich’s understanding of Romantic landscape draughtsmanship as ‘a dialogue with Nature’.

Friedrich claimed that ‘the artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself’. His words encapsulate two central elements of the Romantic conception of landscape: close observation of the natural world and the importance of the imagination. The display opens with a selection of drawings made in the late 18th century. The legacy of Claude Lorrain’s ideal vision is visible in Jakob Philipp Hackert’s magisterial view of ruins at Tivoli, near Rome, while cloud and tree studies by John Constable and Johann Georg von Dillis demonstrate the importance of drawing from life and the observation of natural phenomena.

The important visionary strand of Romanticism is brought to the fore in a group of works centred on Friedrich’s

Moonlit Landscape (below) and

The Jacobikirche as a Ruin

and Samuel Palmer’s

Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park.

These are exemplary of their creators’ intensely spiritual vision of nature as well as their strikingly different techniques, Friedrich’s painstakingly fine detail contrasting with the dynamic freedom of Palmer’s penwork.

The final grouping shows Romantic landscapes at their most expansive and painterly, featuring Joseph MW Turner’s

St Goarshausen and Katz Castle,

one of fifty watercolours inspired by his first visit to Germany in 1817, and Friedrich’s subtle wash drawing of a coastal meadow on the remote Baltic island of Rügen. The exhibition closes with three small-scale drawings revealing a more introspective and intimate facet of the Romantic approach to landscape:

Theodor Rehbenitz’s fantastical medievalising scene,

Palmer’s meditative Haunted Stream (below)and, lastly, Turner’s Cologne made as an illustration for The Life and Works of Lord Byron (1833), which underscores important links between literature and the visual arts.

A Dialogue with Nature is the first exhibition to be organised jointly by The Courtauld’s IMAF Centre for Drawings and The Morgan Library and Museum’s Drawings Institute. The accompanying publication will feature an essay by Matthew Hargraves, Yale Center for British Art, and Morgan-Courtauld Fellow, and individual catalogue entries for each work by Rachel Sloan, The Courtauld Gallery.

John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
A ruined fort near Salerno, c. 1782
Watercolour on paper, 251 x 368 cm
The Courtauld Gallery

Carl Philipp Fohr (1795-1818)
The Ruins of Hohenbaden, 1814-15
Watercolour on paper, 195 x 221 mm
The Morgan Library and Museum

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)
Moonlit landscape, c. 1808
Watercolour on paper, 232 x 365 mm
The Morgan Library and Museum

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)
The Haunted Stream, c. 1826
Brush and brown ink and brown ink wash on paper
92 x 123 mm
The Morgan Library and Museum

Karl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880)
Landscape with a cemetery and a church, 1837
Pen and ink on paper, 291 x 447 mm
The Morgan Library and Museum

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
On Lake Lucerne, looking towards Fluelen, 1841 (?)
Watercolour on paper, 223 x 283 mm
The Courtauld Gallery

The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT has announced the opening of ALEX KATZ: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art, a solo exhibition of works by one of America’s most honored living artists, on Sunday, December 8, 2013.

The exhibition, which remains on view through March 16, 2014, draws upon the Whitney’s extensive holdings of art by Alex Katz and includes the brilliantly-colored portraits of family and friends that are a hallmark of the artist’s career as well as early landscapes and collages.

Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout this country and internationally. His many credits include two honorary doctorate degrees, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum in New York, a Philip Morris Distinguished Artist Award from the American Academy in Berlin, and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art’s Annual Artist of the City Award.

Katz was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and grew up in the St. Albans section of Queens. His Russian-born parents shared a deep interest in the arts. At Cooper Union’s School of Art, Katz was trained in modern art theories and techniques, later earning a scholarship for summer study at Maine’s Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. He has said that his experience of painting plein air at Skowhegan gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.”

In New York during the 1950s, resisting the dominant abstractionism of the time, Katz associated with other figurative painters, among them Larry Rivers and Fairfield Porter. Toward the latter part of the decade, his work evolved towards greater realism. Katz became increasingly interested in portraiture with monochrome backgrounds, painting his friends and family and especially his wife and muse, Ada. Influenced by panoramic films and billboard advertising during the 1960s, Katz began creating large-scale paintings, often depicting dramatically cropped faces in a style that was to become his artistic signature. The power of Katz’s portraits, said Dana Miller, Curator, Permanent Collection, of the Whitney Museum of American Art, “…comes from their color and their scale.”

The Mattatuck Museum will offer several programs in conjunction with the exhibition including a film screening of Alex Katz: What About Style? on Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 5:30 p.m. This 56-minute video by filmmaker and art critic Heinz Peter Schwerfel captures Katz laboring over a 32-foot painting, The Black Brook. For details on this and other events, visit www.MattatuckMuseum.org/events.

This exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Excellent review of the shoe at its previous locale.

Images from the exhibition:

Alex Katz, b. 1927. The Green Cap, (1985). Wood block, Sheet (Irregular): 17 11/16 x 24 1/8in. (44.9 x 61.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Print Committee 87.17 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.

Alex Katz, b. 1927 Lincolnville Beach, 1956. Oil on canvas, 48 3/16 x 70 5/16in. (122.4 x 178.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 88.49 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.

Alex Katz, b. 1927 The Red Smile, 1963. Oil on canvas, 78 7/8 x 115in. (200.3 x 292.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 83.3 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Photograph by Bill Orcutt

Alex Katz, b. 1927 Eli, 1963. Oil on canvas, 73 5/8 x 95 5/16in. (187 x 242.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Fischbach 64.37 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins

Alex Katz (b 1927), “Swamp Maple II,” 1970, lithograph, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist and Brooke Alexander, Inc. Art ©Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Digital Image ©Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.

Alex Katz (b 1927), Day Lily II, (1969), Lithograph, 20 3/4 x 28 inches. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase 70.32. Art © Alex Katz/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

More images here

William Blake’s World: “A New Heaven Is Begun”—the subtitle a quote from Blake referring to the significance of his date of birth—was on view at the Morgan Library from September 11, 2009, to January 3, 2010. In the Morgan’s first exhibition devoted to Blake in two decades, former director Charles Ryskamp and curators Anna Lou Ashby and Cara Denison assembled many of Blake’s most spectacular watercolors, prints, and illuminated books of poetry to dramatically underscore his genius and enduring influence.

The show included more than 100 works. Among the many highlights were two major series of watercolors, rarely displayed in their entirety. The twenty-one watercolors for Blake’s seminal illustrations for the Book of Job (or illustrations with texts clarified here)—considered one of his greatest works and revealing his personal engagement with biblical texts—were created about 1805–10. Also on view were twelve drawings illustrating John Milton’s poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, executed about 1816–20. Both series were undertaken for Blake’s principal patron, Thomas Butts.

Visionary and nonconformist William Blake (1757–1827) is a singular figure in the history of Western art and literature: a poet, painter, and printmaker. Ambitiously creative, Blake had an abiding interest in theology and philosophy, which, during the age of revolution, inspired thoroughly original and personal investigations into the state of man and his soul. In his lifetime Blake was best known as an engraver; he was later recognized for his innovations across many other disciplines.

WILLIAM BLAKE

The son of a London haberdasher and a religious dissenter, Blake studied the Bible privately with his family. He was educated at home and well read as an adult. This intellectual curiosity was coupled with a keen perception of the political and social world, finding expression in his artistic independence as well as the complex mythology he constructed in response to the age of revolution in which he lived. This mythology centered around the figure of “Urizen,” an authoritarian, kinglike figure who represents rulers both sacred and profane, with whom other characters representing independence and artistic creativity must interact.

Blake was trained as an engraver. His skill was often applied to reproducing designs of his fellow students and teachers at the Royal Academy. Blake engraved his own works as well, and painted for Academy shows, wrote poetry, and engraved illustrations for books issued by the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. He was also active within the Soho/Covent Garden artistic community. Although Blake explored many artistic disciplines, he continued to work throughout his life in the medium for which he was trained, engraving.

As a result of a dream conversation with his dead brother Robert in 1787, Blake developed a new method of engraving relief plates. By using a special coating for copper plates, he was able to combine reverse script with illustrative details. With this inventive technique, he created

Songs of Innocence in 1789

and embarked on a major productive period that saw the creation of

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790),

Visions of the Daughter of Albion (1793)

Continental Prophecies:

America (1793),

Europe (1794),

and the Song of Los (1795).

While living in Lambeth in the 1790s––across the river but still within walking distance of the artistic and literary center of London––he created small runs of the illuminated books, which were printed on speculation or for a few patrons.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

In addition to the superlative watercolor series—

twenty-one illustrations to the Book of Job:

including:

William Blake (1757–1827)
Behemoth and Leviathan, ca. 1805–10
[Book of Job, no. 15]
Pen and black and gray ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over faint indications in pencil, on paper
10 1/16 x 7 3/4 inches (272 x 197 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1903; 2001.77

and twelve designs illustrating Milton’s L’Allegro

and Il Penseroso

—other important drawings were on display, including

Fire (ca. 1805),

which addresses the subject of war. The more fully expressed Continental Prophecies, a series of three illuminated books, further showcase Blake’s talents as a visual artist and his passionate interest in politics.

Blake supported himself with his engravings, and a selection of his prints— many of which are extremely rare impressions—documents this important aspect of his production. A magnificent example of Blake’s largest print, touched with watercolor by the artist, depicts

Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims.

With this work the artist hoped for commercial success, something he was unable to secure in his lifetime.

Among Blake’s crowning achievements as a visual artist and poet are his illuminated books, such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (ca. 1794). These works, which also showcase his exceptional technical skills, reflect medieval manuscript illumination and the interrelationship between word and image. Also on view was the only dated copy of Blake’s dramatic The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Shedding light on the artistic milieu surrounding Blake are a number of works by friends and contemporaries, including drawings by younger artists such as John Linnell (1792–1882) and members of a group that assembled around Blake and called themselves the Ancients. Also represented are works by painters such as Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) and Henry Fuseli (1741–1825).

DRAWINGS

William Blake (1757–1827), “Behemoth and Leviathan,” from Illustrations, for the Book of Job, (ca. 1805–1810), no. 15 in, the set of 21 drawings for his patron Thomas, Butts, Pen and black ink, gray wash, and watercolor,, over traces of graphite, Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1903; 2001.77

William Blake (1757–1827), “Mirth,” from John Milton’s L’Allegro, no. 1 in the set, of 6 drawings created for his patron Thomas Butts, Watercolor, over traces of black chalk, Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows with the, special support of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne and Mr., Paul Mellon, 1949; 1949.4:1

William Blake (1757–1827), Fire, ca. 1805, Pen and black and gray ink, gray wash, and, watercolor, over traces of graphite, Gift of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, 1971; 1971.18

William Blake (1757–1827), “Melancholy” from John Milton’s Il Penseroso,, no. 1 in the set of 6 drawings created for his, patron Thomas Butts, Watercolor, over traces of black chalk, Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, with the special support of Mrs. Landon K., Thorne and Mr. Paul Mellon, 1949; 1949.4:7

William Blake (1757–1827), “The Sun at His Eastern Gate” from John, Milton’s L’Allegro, no. 3 in the set of 6 drawings, created for his patron Thomas Butts, Watercolor, over traces of black chalk, Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows with, the special support of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, and Mr. Paul Mellon, 1949; 1949.4:3,

PRINTED BOOKS

William Blake (1757–1827), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Lambeth, 1790, Copy F, printed ca. 1794, plate 3, Gift of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, 1973; PML 63935,

Edward Young (1683–1765), The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts, London: Printed by R. Noble for R. Edwards, 1797, Copy K, Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by Blake and his wife., Gift of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, 1973; PML 63943

ENGRAVINGS

William Blake (1757–1827), Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of, Albion, [London]: Engraved by W. Blake …,, 1773, Engraving, second state, c. 1810–, 1820, Purchased as the gift of the Thorne, Family and Fellows Fund in memory, of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, 1976;, PML 77019.9

William Blake (1757–1827), Designs for Robert John Thornton’s, third edition of The Pastorals of Virgil, Four wood engravings printed from, one block, London: J. McGowan for Rivington, [and others], 1821, Purchased by Pierpont Morgan,, 1906; PML 9948.24,

William Blake (1757–1827), Illustrations of the Book of Job: Invented and engraved by, William Blake, 1825, London: Published … by

William Blake … [1826]., Plate 21, “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job, more than the beginning” State A, Gift of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, 1973: PML 63939,

On November 5, the “Rubens, van Dyck and the Flemish school of painting: Masterpieces from the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein” exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing was officially opened in the presence of various representatives from the Princely House of Liechtenstein. LGT Group is the main sponsor of the exhibition, which runs until February 15 and showcases 100 works of Flemish art from the 16th and 17th centuries.

The “Rubens, van Dyck and the Flemish school of painting: Masterpieces from the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein” exhibition marks the first time that an impressive selection of masterpieces from the Princely Collections of the House of Liechtenstein has gone on show in China. The exhibition contains Flemish paintings, prints and tapestries from the 16th and 17th centuries, including works by pioneers from the initial heyday of Flemish painting, such as Quentin Massys and Jan de Cock, as well as the Brueg(h)el family of artists. Also featured are paintings by the two main exponents of Flemish art, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthonis van Dyck, including 11 portraits by Van Dyck, such as

The Portrait of Maria de Tassis

and Portrait of a Genoese Nobleman.

The exhibition also draws a thread from them to their successors, tracing the development of painting in the southern Netherlands throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ruben's studies, oil painting and tapestry of Mars and Rhea Silvia are displayed side by side to show the process behind the masterpiece.

Peter Paul Rubens, Detail from "Mars and Rhea Silvia", c. 1616/17
© LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna

Rubens' portrait of his 5-year-old daughter, Portrait of Clara Serena Rubens, is another highlight of this exhibition, with the vivid details and touching expression of the child's face.

Peter Paul Rubens, "Portrait of Clara Serena Rubens"

Peter Paul Rubens, "Portrait of Ian Vermoelen"

Peter Paul Rubens, "The Conversion of St Paul"

Peeter Neeffs, the Younger (1620-1675), Detail from "Interior View of Antwerp Cathedral",
HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION, © LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vienna

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Detail from "The Numbering at Bethlehem", 1607
© LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Detail from "Landscape with young Tobias", 1598 *
© LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna

400 years of collecting

The Princely Collections are the result of over 400 years of continuous art collection by the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. They include masterpieces of European art and are regarded as one of the most significant private collections in the world today. The foundations for the Princely Collections were laid back in 1600 by Prince Karl I. Since then, the Princely House has demonstrated its expertise in strategically supplementing, carefully consolidating and expanding its collections over the generations. It continues to pursue an active acquisition policy to this day.

Fifth stop on the Asian tour

From November 5, 2013 to February 15, 2014, art lovers and enthusiasts have the chance to catch a glimpse of the impressive masterpieces from the Princely Collections on display at the National Museum of China. This is the fifth stop on the Collections’ tour through Asia - last year the works featured in a guest exhibition at the National Art Center in Tokyo, and this year they have already been on show at the National Museum of Singapore, the Museum of Art in Kochi and the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. The masterpieces will go on display again in March 2014, this time at the China Art Museum in Shanghai.

Turner and the Sea
National Maritime Museum
22 November-21 April 2014

p>Opening on 22 November 2013, Turner and the Sea at the National Maritime Museum is the first full-scale examination of J.M.W Turner’s lifelong fascination with the sea. Dramatic, contemplative, violent, beautiful, dangerous and sublime – the sea was the perfect subject to showcase Turner’s singular talents, and the 120 pieces on display include some of the most celebrated paintings of the artist’s long career.

The extraordinary quality of the works gathered together for Turner and the Sea confirms his status as the pre-eminent painter of water, and demonstrates his unique ability to represent the elemental power of the sea. The exhibition features items on loan from some of the world’s most prestigious artistic institutions including: The National Gallery, Tate, Yale Center for British Art, British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Royal Collection Trust, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon and National Gallery of Art, Washington.

From his transformative Royal Academy paintings of the late 1790s and early 1800s to the unfinished, experimental seascapes he produced towards the end of his life, more than half of Turner’s artistic output depicted maritime subjects. It should come as no surprise that a man who spent much of his life along the coastlines of Britain and Europe, who spent days fishing the river Thames, and who reportedly had himself lashed to the mast of a ship to better paint a storm at sea, captured this subject so often and with such evocative mastery. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of material Turner created in his quest to depict the sea is remarkable.

The Fighting ‘Temeraire’ (1839),

Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842),

Staffa, Fingal’s Cave (1832), ‘

Now for the Painter’ (1827),

Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight (1835),

Whalers (c.1845)

and Calais Pier (1803)

will all be shown, alongside works by other major British and European artists, including Willem van de Velde, Claude-Joseph Vernet, Thomas Gainsborough, Nicholas Pocock, John Constable and Richard Parkes Bonington. Turner and the Sea re-evaluates the compelling appeal of the sea for Turner and his contemporaries, and gives visitors the opportunity to see the ways in which he responded to the art of the past, while challenging his audiences with a new and exciting maritime vision.

Further highlights include: Turner’s largest painting and only royal commission,

The Battle of Trafalgar (1824),

one of the jewels in the National Maritime Museum’s fine art collection;

Fishermen at Sea,

the first oil painting Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy;

The Wreck of a Transport Ship (c.1810),

not seen in London since 1970s,

displayed alongside

The Shipwreck (1805)

and Calais Pier– (above)

the first time these three storm paintings have been shown together;

and The Wreck Buoy (1849),

Turner’s last exhibited marine painting.

Encompassing oils, watercolours, prints and sketches, the exhibition follows Turner’s progression from newly-elected Royal Academician to one of the country’s most celebrated artists. While his style changed considerably, his virtuoso showmanship remained a dazzling constant. Turner and the Sea examines the artist’s new and often unexpected response to the prestigious history of European marine painting, as well as the relish with which he competed with other artists of his generation, ultimately leaving them in his wake as he took his work in a new, uninhibited and innovative direction.

Having begun by responding to the artists of the 17th century at the start of his career, the works from the end of Turner’s life seem almost as if they could come from the 20th century. As he left behind the rules and conventions of maritime art, dividing critics and public alike, Turner created a unique vision of the overwhelming power of nature – the final stage in a lifelong engagement with the sea.

Turner and the Sea is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue authored by exhibition curators Christine Riding and Richard Johns. Published in November 2013, the catalogue will explore and celebrate Turner’s lifelong fascination with the sea, while also setting his work within the context of marine painting in the 19th century. Also entitled Turner and the Sea, the catalogue will be published by Thames and Hudson.

Baden – Baden< Germany: Emil Nolde. The Splendor of Colors was the name of the large-scale summer
exhibition that was mounted at the Museum Frieder Burda from June 15 to October 13,
2013. It is the first extensive presentation of Nolde’s works in southern Germany in many years.
It comprises about sixty oil paintings and twenty watercolors ranging from the beginning of his
artistic career to his late work. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Nolde
Foundation Seebüll and was curated by Manfred Reuther, the former director of the Nolde
Foundation.

Emil Nolde
Großer Mohn (rot, rot, rot) 1942
oil on canvas
73,5 x 89,5 cm
oil on canvas
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 2013

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) is one of the most important artists of Expressionism. The
comprehensive presentation features the principal themes of his creative work. Besides
landscapes, it includes figure paintings and portraits, religious motifs, as well as impressions
from his journey to the South Sea.

Emil Nolde
Streitgespräch "Ungemalte Bilder" 1938-1945
water color on paper
23,4 x 18 cm
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 2013

The lushly colored paintings reveal the complexity of Nolde’s lifeworld. What they all share is the
emotional power of color. Manfred Reuther: “From the beginning of his painterly work, Nolde’s
artistic development was the path to color as an ultimate means of expression, which he
increasingly mastered.” Nolde was convinced: “Colors were a joy to me, and I felt as if they loved
my hands.” His colorful paintings and watercolors testify to his affinity with nature and his search
for primal human states. Radiant red, dark blue, deep black, and intense lilac—these are some of
the expressive colors Emil Nolde used to paint romantic landscapes and dramatic seascapes.
“I love the music of colors.”

Emil Nolde
Hohe Sturzwelle 1948
oil on canvas
68,5 x 88,5 cm
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 2013

Manfred Reuther: “In Nolde’s artistic development, the phenomenon of color was not brought to
his attention from outside, was not prepared or guided by theoretical schools of thought; rather,
his distinct propensity for color was a natural, latent gift and qualitative inclination that he
possessed early on and which sought to evolve. Even as a child, the young Nolde was aware of
his inherent urge for pictorial composition and his special talent. He confided in the village
pastor that his secret desire was to become a painter. He recalls his first creative use of colors in
his autobiography: ‘In school, I painted over all of the pictures in my Bible story and even then
constantly lived in the joy of color.’

Emil Nolde
Am Weintisch 1911
oil on canvas
88,5 x 73,5 cm
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 201

In the difficult position of not having any appropriate materials, he found his own, attempting his
first paintings with elderberry or beet juice. His parents appear to have recognized their child’s
special longing, and he received the paint box he so eagerly desired for Christmas.”
Nolde dealt intensely with color studies during his years as a teacher at the Museum of Industrial
Art in St. Gallen. “I somewhat boldly sought to unite the most contradictory, the warmest and the
coldest—vermillion and indigo—on a white ground, and that was much too deliberate,” he reports.
“I tore up the sheet.” He began to experiment with colors in about 1903 by investigating the
effect of certain chemicals on wood and their chromatic changes. He was especially interested
in the relation between light and color.

Emil Nolde
Trollhois Garten, 1907
oil on canvas
73,5 x 88 cm
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll

For his painting, Nolde chose colors that occur in nature. By intensifying the color values he
observed in nature and placing them directly alongside one another in a painting, he succeeded
in heightening the expressiveness and brilliance of the color in such a way that its impact
extended far beyond impressions received in nature. “A color defines its neighboring color
through its radiance,” is how Nolde described his approach, “in the same way as in music a
sound attains its tonal effect from its neighboring sound.” He did not pursue a specific scheme
or a programmatic system; rather, in most cases the picture and its chromatic definition came
about during the painting process itself. Nolde is confident that “a painter does not need to know
much; it is fine if he can spontaneously paint as purposefully as he breathes, as we walks.” He
continues: “I therefore avoided any speculation in advance; a vague idea of color was sufficient,
the painting unfolded under the work performed by my hands.”

Emil Nolde
Tropensonne 1914
oil on canvas
71 x 104,5 cm
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll

Numerous Watercolors

In addition to his lushly colored oil paintings, Nolde’s numerous watercolors reflect his eagerness
to experiment. Manfred Reuther explains: “His painting with watercolors is characterized by
extraordinary diversity. The unique quality of watercolors accommodated his pursuit of
spontaneity and direct expression. He painted with a completely drenched, heavy brush in rapid,
fluid movements, attempting to switch off his inhibiting reason and primarily follow his instinct.
Pictures grew out of irregularities, spots, and dribbles. The painter sought to encounter and
achieve a union with the pictorial material with the directness of artisanry.”
The works on paper being presented in Baden-Baden include several from the Unpainted
Pictures series, watercolors that the artist completed in his studio in Seebüll “from his
imagination” during the period he was barred from painting.

Virgin Soil Remains His Home

Nolde traveled frequently and to distant places. He repeatedly visited Denmark, Switzerland, and
Italy for longer periods; toured Andalusia and Madrid in 1921; and in 1913–14 he traveled via
Moscow, Siberia, Korea, Japan, and China to the South Sea, where he participated in the
“medical-demographic German-New Guinea-Expedition” at the invitation of the “Imperial Colonial
Office.” Motifs from all of these worlds found entrance in his art. However, in his understanding
of himself as an artist, he remained connected with his home all his life. He believed the “primal
ground” of his artistry to be “deeply rooted in the soil of his immediate home. Even if my
knowledge and my longing for artistic growth and means of representation extend to the most
distant primeval regions, be it in reality, in my imagination, or in a dream—virgin soil remains my
home.”

Emil Nolde
Tänzerin und Harlekin 1920
oil on canvas (burlap)
85,5 x 100 cm
Nolde Foundation Seebüll
© Nolde Foundation Seebüll

Emil Nolde loved flowers, and everywhere he spent time he laid out a garden. Whether blue
larkspur, red cornflowers, lilac irises, or yellow sneezeweed plants: the artist found inspiration in
the colorful floral splendor, and it served as a motif for numerous paintings of flowers and
gardens. In conjunction with this large-scale showcase exhibition, the Baden-Baden Department
of Parks has laid out four large flowerbeds along Lichtentaler Allee.

Emil Nolde, Frühling im Zimmer, 1904, 88,5 x 73,5 cm, oil on canvas. Nolde Foundation Seebüll, © Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 2013.

“The chromaticity of each flowerbed reflects that in one of the flower paintings by Emil Nolde
being presented in the exhibition. All of the beds have a wooden frame, like a picture frame. We
adapted their dimensions to the paintings’ formats and multiplied them sixfold,” explains Markus
Brunsing, Director of the Baden-Baden Department of Parks, who developed the concept for the
flowerbeds. However, the paintings were not reproduced in flowers one-to-one; rather, the
atmospheres of color are expressed with blossoms, painting in the park with the colors of
blossoms.

More images

Sixty different varieties and kinds of annual summer flowers were planted. Because Nolde uses
vibrant colors, these beds contain flowers in radiant red, orange, yellow, and blue, including
snapdragons, bluetops, begonias, garden cosmos, bluebells, poppies, garden heliotropes, sage,
and larkspur. This is the first time that the thematic aspect of an exhibition is being rendered in
nature using plants.

The exhibition catalogue, which includes illustrations of all the works, was published by the
Snoeck Verlag (Cologne).
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Vienna: Emil Nolde - In Radiance and Colour , from Oct 25, 2013 until Feb 2, 2014 at the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria, shows major works from the collection of Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and other museums and private collections. They include landscapes, seascapes, portraits, Berlin scenes, religious pictures and fantasies, and high-quality series of watercolours and almost 50 sheets of Unpainted Pictures. The exhibition also features selected works by Austrian artists like Werner Berg, Herbert Boeckl, Oskar Kokoschka and Max Weiler, who took inspiration from Nolde’s colour explosions.

The show presents works from all of his creative periods, ranging from his early garden paintings informed by Impressionism, biblical subjects, and illustrations of legends to pastels painted in the South Seas, the Unpainted Pictures, which he conceived while he was forbidden to paint, and his famous late flower compositions. These works are complemented by a number of the artist’s prints, as well as selected works by such Austrian painters as Oskar Kokoschka and Herbert Boeckl, who drew their inspirations from Nolde’s art.

Around 1911/12, Nolde started developing his personal style. By way of the colourful Impressionism of his garden paintings made around 1907 and his religious subjects painted in 1910, exhibiting a new brilliance of colour and streaky brushwork, the artist arrived at a manner of painting that emphasized glowing, saturated colour fields and omitted detail. The large diversity of subject matter in his unmistakeable oeuvre includes grotesque fantastic creatures, ecstatic dancers, and scenes from Berlin nightlife, but also biblical subjects and Christian legends, as well as the landscape of his native Nordschleswig and atmospheric seascapes of the North and Baltic Seas. Nolde’s affinity with nature and his constant search for primitive authenticity prompted him to travel as far as New Guinea, where he hoped for inspiration removed from Western civilization.

Nolde’s direct approach to painting and his unique treatment of colour culminated in the immense Unpainted Pictures, painted in secreted because of the ban on painting imposed on him on 23 August 1941. Expelled from the Reichskunstkammer, he was forbidden from doing anything connected with the visual arts. This was a great shock for the painter, who like many other artists had originally welcomed the Nazi rise to power, hoping after the trauma of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles that it would give Germany direction and restore its belief in itself. Between 1938 and 1945 he painted over 1,300 small watercolours and gouaches with invented, mostly fantastic imagery, in his studio in Seebüll, of which almost 50 are being shown in the Lower Belvedere. In doing so, he created faces, figures and fantastic half-man, half-animal creatures from accidental splashes of paint. He also painted landscapes from memory, including blood-red seas or rocky shores dipped in lapis lazuli.

Emil Nolde: In Radiance and Colour: Catalogue of the Exhibition in Wien / Österreichische Galerie Belvedere

The story of 200+ years of history told in more than 80 artworks by Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe and others in the exhibition America: Painting a Nation on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales 8 November 2013 – 9 February 2014

America: Painting a Nation is the most expansive survey of American painting ever presented in Australia and is the Gallery’s major summer exhibition for 2013. It is part of the Sydney International Art Series which brings the world’s outstanding exhibitions to Australia, exclusive to Sydney, and has been made possible with the support of the NSW Government through Destination NSW. Over 80 works, ranging from 1750 to 1966, cover more than 200 years of American art, history and experience. The exhibition sets a course from New England to the Western frontier, from the Grand Canyon to the burlesque theatres of New York, from the aristocratic elegance of colonial society to the gritty realism of the modern metropolis. This exhibition will reveal the breadth of American history, the hardy morality of the frontier, the intimacy of family life, the intensity of the 20th-century city, the epic scale of its landscape and the diversity of its people. The works being presented – many by American masters – are the works Americans love and works that represent the stories they have grown up with.

Unknown
Portrait of a black sailor
(Paul Cuffe?) 1800
Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, purchased with funds
provided by Cecile Bartman M.2005.2

Thomas Sully
Portrait of Misses Mary and
Emily McEuen 1823
Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
purchased with funds provided by
Cecile Bartman M.2008.222

Edward Hicks
Penn’s Treaty with the Indians
1830–40
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
The Bayou Bend Collection, gift of
Alice C Simkins in memory of Alice
N Hanszen B.77.46

America: painting a nation features well-known names – Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe and James Whistler among them. But most are less familiar; the ‘household names’ of American art are rarely seen in Australia. The exhibition will introduce Copley, Peale and Sully, the great portraitists of the Revolutionary era; Church, Cole and Moran, masters of the sublime landscape; Homer and Remington, lyric poets of the frontier; Cassatt, Sargent and Hassam, celebrators of the 19th-century Gilded Age; Sloan, Shinn and Henri, humanist observers of the early 20th century city; Demuth, Marin and Davis, the voices of a uniquely American vision of dynamic modern life. Selected in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Terra Foundation, Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, America: painting a nation brings to Sydney both national and regional perspectives on American art.

Diversity is a key theme in the exhibition. The cultural diversity of a continent inhabited first by Native American Indians; colonised by the Spanish, French and English; and developing through mass migration into a cultural melting pot. The physical diversity of a landscape encompassing the dense forests of the northeast, the endless plains of the Midwest, the awe-inspiring geography of the Grand Canyon and the stillness of the desert. ‘This exhibition signals a significant direction for the AGNSW by building relationships with major American museums and further developing our visitors’ engagement with American art and culture. While we have a fair share of American culture in Australia, especially through the media, we need to be better connected with American history and American vision. What we see in this exhibition is how America came to be America. The artists reveal America’s foundation narratives: the Pilgrims, the Founding Fathers, the frontiersman, the migrant. They explore the ideas, places and people that made America exceptional but equally there are works that don’t shy away from the darker chapters of American history either. Some of the paintings are very challenging’, said Michael Brand.

Ernest Martin Hennings
Passing by 1924
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
gift of the Ranger Fund, National
Academy of Design 26.11
© Estate of Ernest Martin Hemmings/
Bridgeman Art Library

Charles Willson Peale
Portrait of John and Elizabeth Lloyd
Cadwalader and their daughter Anne 1772
Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased for the
Cadwalader Collection 1983-90-3

A measure of the wealth, ambition and unique cultural circumstances in pre- Revolutionary America. The Cadwaladers were art patrons in Philadelphia, then the fourth largest city in the British Empire and soon to be the site for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. This is a modern family; their wealth derives from business, their values are those of the Enlightenment, and their relations are casual. Peale reinvents the family portrait, setting aside the rigidity of English aristocratic conventions and revealing the informal spirit of an emerging American character.

Henry Inman
No-Tin (Wind), a Chippewa chief
1832–33
Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, gift of the 2008 Collectors
Committee M.2008.58

A portrait of a Native American leader reveals the moral and political complexities of American history. Bridging two worlds, No-Tin adapts imported clothing and feathers into formal regalia worn during territorial negotiations in Washington DC. One of a series of official portraits, coinciding with the federal government policy of forced removal and relocation, the image speaks of heritage, nobility and loss simultaneously.

Winslow Homer
A temperance meeting 1874
Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with the
John Howard McFadden Jr Fund 1956-118-1

The grand idea of frontier life as a hallmark of American character, condensed into a modest anecdote from everyday life. A folksy tale – boy meets girl over a shared drink of well water – expands into a gentle reflection on youth, rural labour and the Puritan legacy. A reminder that morality pervades American art: honest work, sound community values and a foundation of piety shape the 19th-century frontier.

Thomas Moran
Grand Canyon of the Colorado River
1892–1908
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
gift of Graeme Lorimer 1975-182-1

A hymn to the awe-inspiring scale of American space. Immersing the viewer in a space so deep that all sense of scale is lost, the painting pushes the idea of the sublime to an almost hallucinatory level. Moran’s huge landscape reveals why big is so important; wide-open spaces represent not only the might of the Creator but the seemingly boundless opportunities of the New World.

Georgia O’Keeffe
Horse’s skull with pink rose 1931
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the
Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation AC1994.159.1
© Museum Associates/LACMA

A remarkable example of art’s passage from personal experience to national symbolism. O’Keeffe abandons New York for the open spaces of New Mexico. In a horse’s skull, found in the desert, she finds a symbol of the frontier, history and mortality. In a moment |of improvisation, she adds a flower, adding a grace note of commemoration, fecundity and beauty to a symbol of death. A deliberate attempt to invent an American symbol, the painting also marks the artist’s embrace of a new life in the west.

Stuart Davis
Something on the eight ball 1953–54
Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with the
Adele Haas Turner and Beatrice Pastorius Turner
Memorial Fund 1954-30-1
© Stuart Davis. VAGA, licenced by Viscopy
Highlights

A distinctive characteristic of American abstract art is that it always stayed connected with the realities of American experience. Davis finds abstract values – colour, energy, vitality – in American street life. Neon lights, advertising hoardings, petrol stations and jazz music inspire a painting to appeal to the avant-garde and the hipster alike.

Book
America: painting a nation

A comprehensive full-colour book with over 90 images will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

From an interesting review (images added):

Among the showstoppers in Painting a Nation is Edward Hopper's House at Dusk, painted seven years before his best-known canvas, Nighthawks:

Edward Hopper
House at dusk 1935
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
John Barton Payne Fund
© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Jackson Pollock's 56.4cm x 56.4cm No 22 will show Australians familiar with Blue Poles that the abstract expressionist didn't restrict himself to huge canvases:

Jackson Pollock
No 22 1950
Philadelphia Museum of Art, The
Albert M Greenfield and Elizabeth
M Greenfield Collection 1974-78-41
© Pollock Krasner Foundation, ARS, licensed
by Viscopy

Mark Rothko's Gyrations on Four Planes reveals to those who are only superficially aware of the artist, who paints mainly plain planes, that he also sometimes painted, well, gyrations on planes:

Very interesting review with more images:

It is only four years since a show from the Metropolitan Museum, New York, called American Impressionism and Realism was seen at the Queensland Art Gallery. That exhibition was criticised for having too many minor pieces but it was a far more coherent proposition than the present event. By focusing on a particular period the QAG show allowed us a better glimpse of some key artists. Childe Hassam (1859-1935), for instance, who is arguably the leading American Impressionist, was represented by six paintings. At the AGNSW he has only one – a blue-tinted nocturne called

Rainy midnight (late 1890s).

This is an attractive picture but it gives no idea of the range of Hassam’s work.

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) the only American painter to have exhibited with the French Impressionists was represented by six works in the 2009 show, but only two in Sydney.

Mary Cassatt, 1881, A Woman and a Girl Driving

shows her debt to Degas, while

Mother about to wash her sleepy child (1880)

is said to be her first painting on the ‘mother and child’ theme. It certainly looks like a first attempt, being a clumsy bit of painting that distorts the proportions of the figures.

Artists in the exhibition:

Milton Avery
Cecilia Beaux
George Bellows
Thomas Hart Benton
Edward Biberman
Joseph H Boston
John George Brown
Mary Cassatt
Jefferson David Chalfant
William Merritt Chase
Frederic Edwin Church
Thomas Cole
John Singleton Copley
Jasper Francis Cropsey
Stuart Davis
Charles Demuth
Arthur Garfield Dove
Thomas Eakins
Robert Feke
Erastus Salisbury Field
Daniel Garber
Yun Gee
Sanford Robinson Gifford
Arshile Gorky
Adolph Gottlieb
William Michael Harnett
Marsden Hartley
Childe Hassam
Miki Hayakawa
Martin Johnson Heade
Ernest Martin Hennings
Robert Henri
Edward Hicks
Hans Hofmann
Winslow Homer
Edward Hopper
Henry Inman
Robert Irwin
William Smith Jewett
Eastman Johnson
William Keith
John Frederick Kensett
Lee Krasner
John Lewis Krimmel
Walter Kuhn
John La Farge
Fitz Henry Lane
Jacob Lawrence
Helen Lundeberg
John Marin
Reginald Marsh
Thomas Moran
Georgia O’Keeffe
Otis Oldfield
Charles Willson Peale
John Frederick Peto
Jackson Pollock
Maurice Prendergast
Frederic Remington
Severin Roesen
Mark Rothko
John Singer Sargent
Charles Sheeler
Everett Shinn
John Sloan
Allen Smith Jr
Robert Spencer
Thomas Sully
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Max Weber
William Wendt
James McNeill Whistler
Thomas Waterman Wood
NC Wyeth

The exhibition is organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art
and the Terra Foundation for American Art in collaboration with the
Art Gallery of New South Wales, and has been made possible through
support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Nearly 100 years after the First World War began, the artistic frenzy that swept Europe in the years leading up to the conflict comes alive at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918. Featuring over 60 works by 36 artists including Kandinsky, Picasso, Modigliani and Chagall, the exhibition explores several years of unprecedented social, political and technological change through painting and sculpture. Organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and supported by Lead Sponsor BMO Financial Group, the exhibition makes its only Canadian stop at the AGO from Nov. 30, 2013, to March 2, 2014.

“The artists of the ‘Great Upheaval’ were game-changers who created new forms of artistic expression in the face of turmoil and rapid innovation,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, director and CEO of the AGO. “This prominent collection from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation presents a rare opportunity for our visitors to immerse themselves in a time of bold experimentation and to experience the works of the century’s greatest artists.”

Curated by the Guggenheim’s Tracey Bashkoff, senior curator of collections and exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, associate curator of collections and provenance, The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918 features works by Umberto Boccioni, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Kazimir Malevich, Franz Marc and others. The diversity of works and the various artistic movements that defined this era — including Futurism, Cubism and Expressionism — illustrate nearly a decade of intense experimentation, exchange and networking.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

Picasso’s Accordionist from 1911, a startling Cubist masterpiece;

the vivid colours and spontaneity of Vasily Kandinsky’s Blue Mountain, 1908-09;

the daring simplicity of Piet Mondrian’s Summer, Dune in Zeeland, ca. 1910;

Franz Marc’s Yellow Cow from 1911 — an optimistic mascot for the philosopher-painters of the transnational Blue Rider group:

Yellow Cow; (Gelbe Kuh;

Henri Matisse’s severe portrait The Italian Woman, 1916;

The explicit voluptuousness of Amedeo Modigliani’s Nude from 1917; and

Kurt Schwitters’ meditation on war, Mountain Graveyard, 1919.

More images from the exhibition:

Robert Delaunay, Red Eiffel Tower (La tour rouge), 1911–12. Oil on canvas, 125 x 90.3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 46.1036. Robert Delaunay © L&M Services B.V. Amsterdam

Paul Cézanne, Still Life: Plate of Peaches, 1879-80. Oil on canvas, 59.7 x 73.3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.4

Gino Severini, Red Cross Train Passing a Village(Train de la Croix Rouge traversant un village), summer 1915 Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 116.2 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 44.944 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

After winning acclaim and record attendance on a four-year international and domestic tour, The Phillips Collection’s American art treasures will make a grand homecoming in February 2014 in a landmark exhibition titled Made in the USA.

The most comprehensive presentation of the museum’s American art collection undertaken in nearly 40 years, Made in the USA showcases more than 200 masterpieces—from romantic seascapes and jazzy city scenes to abstract canvases and boldly colored portraits—by more than 125 artists whose new visual language made American art an international sensation.

Organized chronologically as a thematic narrative about American art from the late 19th century through the postwar years, the exhibition aims to demonstrate how artists with fresh vision and independent spirit captured modern American life.

Highlights include

Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926. Oil on canvas, 29 x 34 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington. DC. Acquired 1926

Willem De Kooning, Asheville, 1948. Oil and enamel on cardboard 25 9/16 x 31 7/8 in. Acquired 1952. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC © 2013 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Arthur Dove, Red Sun, 1935. Oil on canvas, 20 1/4 x 28 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1935

Stefan Hirsch, New York, Lower Manhattan, 1921. Oil on canvas,
29 x 34 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1925

Winslow Homer, To the Rescue, 1886. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1926

Rockwell Kent, The Road Roller, 1909. Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 44 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1918

John Marin, Pertaining to Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, 1933. Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1937 © 2013 Estate of John Marin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Georgia O'Keeffe, Ranchos Church, No. II, NM, 1929. Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 36 1/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1930

Horace Pippin, Domino Players, 1943. Oil on composition board, 12 3/4 x 22 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1943

Allen Tucker, The Rise, not dated. Oil on canvas, 30 1/2 x 36 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1927

CATALOGUE

Made in the U.S.A: American Art from The Phillips Collection, 1850–1970

Edited by Susan Behrends Frank; with an essay by Eliza E. Rathbone

The Phillips Collection’s superb collection of American art, acquired over half a century, is presented here for the first time in a comprehensive overview, featuring 160 works from heroes of the late 19th century—such as William Merritt Chase, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer, who set the course for modern art in America—to abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko, whose efforts to create a new visual language following World War II brought a new global significance to American art. A perennial guide to this important collection, the book includes scholarly essays on Phillips and on the Rothko Room, introductions to key groups of works in the collection, more than one hundred biographies of the most influential artists represented, and a chronology of Phillip's acquisitions and interactions with American artists.

# ISBN-13: 9780300196153
# Publisher: Yale University Press
# Publication date: 1/28/2014

276 pages

From a review of the Madrid exhibit:

The itinerary of the exhibition is divided into ten thematic areas, detailed below, chronologically covering 100 years of American art, although necessarily some overlap in time. Thus we see Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism, forces of nature, abstraction (of special interest is work by Arthur Dove and Georgia O´Keffe) modern life and its corollary, the city (let yourself be amazed here by Edward Hopper, Pierre de Bois, John Sloan, and the aesthetic details of Charles Sheeler), Memory and identity (with several of the panels of the seminal series on African-American Migration by Jacob Lawrence), the Heritage of Cubism, ending with abstraction (best represented by an exquisite, small Rothko) culminating in abstract expressionism.

Images from Madrid:

Mark Rothko
Untitled
1968
60,5 x 47,6 cm
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and
Christopher Rothko / VEGAP / Madrid,
2010

Richard Diebenkorn
Girl with Plant
1960
203,2 x 176,5 cm
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn

Georgia O’Keeffe
Large Dark Red Leaves on White
1925
81,3 x 53,3 cm
© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum /
VEGAP / Madrid, 2010

Edward Hopper
Approaching a City
1946

Stuart Davis
Egg Beater No. 4
1928
© Stuart Davis, VEGAP, Madrid, 2010

ABOUT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

The Phillips Collection is one of the world’s most distinguished collections of impressionist and modern American and European art. Stressing the continuity between art of the past and present, it offers a strikingly original and experimental approach to modern art by combining works of different nationalities and periods in displays that change frequently. The setting is similarly unconventional, featuring small rooms, a domestic scale, and a personal atmosphere. Artists represented in the collection include Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Claude Monet, Honoré Daumier, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, Jacob Lawrence, and Richard Diebenkorn, among others. The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art, has an active collecting program and regularly organizes acclaimed special exhibitions, many of which travel internationally. The Intersections series features projects by contemporary artists, responding to art and spaces in the museum. The Phillips also produces award-winning education programs for K–12 teachers and students, as well as for adults. The museum’s Center for the Study of Modern Art explores new ways of thinking about art and the nature of creativity, through artist visits and lectures, and provides a forum for scholars through courses, postdoctoral fellowships, and internships. Since 1941, the museum has hosted Sunday Concerts in its wood-paneled Music Room. The Phillips Collection is a private, non-government museum, supported primarily by donations.

"Gems of Impressionism" at the Museo Dell'Ara Pacis, Rome

Claude Lorrain

PHILIP GUSTON. LATE WORKS

Surrealism and the rue Blomet

Barbara Klemm. Photographs 1968 – 2013

Weather Event, featuring the work of artist Charles E. Burchfield

Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde

GÉRICAULT. IMAGES OF LIFE AND DEATH

Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain

The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection

The Surrealists: Works from the Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art

A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany

Alex Katz Exhibition

William Blake’s World: “A New Heaven Is Begun”

Rubens, van Dyck and the Flemish school of painting: Masterpieces from the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein

Turner and the Sea

Emil Nolde Exhibitions – Baden Baden and Vienna

America: Painting a Nation

The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces From the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918

Made in the U.S.A.: American Art from The Phillips Collection, 1850-1970