12369 - 20170129 - San Jose Museum of Art explores nature and humanity in new exhibition "Indestructible Wonder" - San Jose, CA - 18.08.2016-29.01.2017

.

Diana Thater, Untitled (Butterfly Videowall #2), 2008. Five flat screen LCD monitors, Blu-Ray player, Blu-Ray disc, distribution amplifier, two fluorescent light fixtures, and Lee filters; Dimensions variable; Museum purchase with funds from the Acquisitions Committee and the Lipman Family Foundation

 

The San Jose Museum of Art explores the precarious relationship between nature and humanity in the exhibition Indestructible Wonder, on view August 18, 2016 – January 29, 2017. Drawn primarily from SJMA’s permanent collection, the exhibition includes works by artists who observe and reflect on the natural world as well as those who document humanity’s impact on the environment.

“Contemporary artists have long been moved by a primal reverence for nature and thus also prompted to raise questions about our rampant impact on the earth’s fragile ecosystems,” said Rory Padeken, associate curator at SJMA and curator of the exhibition.

Indestructible Wonder marks the debut of an important new work acquired by SJMA earlier this year: Untitled (Butterfly Videowall #2) (2008) by Diana Thater. Thater, whose work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this spring, is known for her video installations of natural phenomena and endangered species. For Untitled (Butterfly Videowall #2), Thater filmed monarch butterflies as they rested on the ground at El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Michoacán, Mexico, where millions of monarchs hibernate after their long migration from Canada. Due, in part, to the lack of foliage on the trees in which the butterflies normally take refuge, their only option was to gather together on the forest floor—an extremely vulnerable position. The footage of a single butterfly appears on five upturned monitors on the gallery floor. “Thater created a meditative experience through which to consider the lives of other creatures who share this planet,” said Padeken.

SJMA has commissioned Oakland artist Evan Holm to create a new work especially for the exhibition. WaterTable (2016) is a 24-foot long table made of manzanita branches and other materials. The table is filled with water, in which the stripped-down elements of an audiotape player are partially submerged. As the piece plays recorded instrumental music, the audiotape emerges from the surface of the water, runs the length of the table, and re-submerges in a continuous loop. Meanwhile, duckweed floats on the surface of the water in currents created by the turning spools.

Other highlights include: Sage (1993), Anne Appleby’s minimalist ode to the lifecycle of a sage plant; photographer Edward Burtynsky’s images of oil fields in Belridge, California; the multi-media installation Center of Gravity (2008) by Gail Wight; and photographs from the series “Midway” by Chris Jordan, which depict the effects of ocean-borne plastics on seabirds. Works by Lisa Adams, Chester Arnold, Ruth Asawa, Sandow Birk, Val Britton, Amy Kaufman, Mayme Kratz, Danae Mattes, Richard Misrach, Judy Pfaff Nathan Redwood, Sam Richardson, Alyson Shotz, Kathryn Spence, and Kristen Stolle will also be on view.

 

 

Website : San Jose Museum of Art

 

Source : Artdaily

 

 

12366 - 20170122 - Latin American art the focus of new exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art - Purchase, NY - 24.07.2016-22.01.2017

.

Leda Catunda, Almofandinhas II (Tiny Pillows II), 1989, mixed media on canvas, 43 x 31 inches. Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. Gift of Edith L. Calzadilla and family in memory of Luis P. Calzadilla, photo: Jim Frank. ©Leda Catunda.

 

Destination: Latin America, a provocative and informative new exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, “is a true journey through the art of twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American Art,” according to Patrice Giasson, the Alex Gordon Associate Curator of Art of the Americas at the Neuberger Museum of Art, who curated the exhibition with curatorial assistance from Marianelly Neumann and research assistance from Annabel Rhodeen and Carmelita Diaz. The show both illustrates the museum’s important collection of Latin American art and discusses the key historical and artistic movements that influenced that art.

Destination: Latin America, on view from July 24, 2016 through January 22, 2017, looks at work created by artists affiliated with the artistic revolution that emerged after the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920; sculpture and painting by key South American artists after World War II that explored color, form, space, and motion; work by Caribbean and South American artists inspired by African art, Surrealism, and Magical Realism; the challenges faced by artists living under the dictatorships of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s; and contemporary artists addressing globalization, violence, and social criticism.


This exhibition includes over seventy works by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Raúl Anguiano, Julio Antonio, Henry Bermudez, Leda Catunda, Carlos Cruz-Diez, José Luis Cuevas, Arturo Duclos, Lucio Fontana, Carlos Garaicoa, Florencio Gelabert, Alfred Jensen, Nicolás de Jesús, Wifredo Lam, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Teresa Margolles, María Martínez-Cañas, Roberto Matta, Almir Mavignier, José Clemente Orozco, Marta María Perez Bravo, Betsabeé Romero, Jesús Rafael Soto, Gerardo Suter, Rufino Tamayo, Luis Tomasello, and Eugenia Vargas.

Divided into five sections, the exhibition contains didactic materials throughout to guide and inform the visitor. The focus of the first section, the aftermath of the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920, shows how that country’s political revolution triggered changes in all modes of creation, including painting, photography, theater, and literature. The young artists of the Mexican mural movement, led in part by José Clemente Orozco, were central to this artistic revolution. As art took to the streets, native Mexicans, common people, workers, peasants, and children became the artists’ subjects. Mexican muralists gained international recognition, and for many, Mexico City became the “Paris of Latin America.” International artists engaged with Mexican artists, which had further impact, and several Mexican artists were invited to create works in the United States, Europe, and Russia.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Latin America’s interest in abstraction and a newfound enthusiasm for contemporary European artistic trends grew. The end of World War II opened new artistic frontiers for a generation of Latin American artists eager to move away from representational traditions. This advance was reinforced by economic prosperity, leading to the development and modernization of large cities and a boom in the construction industry. Adopted by Latin American artists living abroad, and by European artists traveling to South America, Geometric abstraction, Concrete art, and Kinetic and Optical art laid the groundwork for a new means of artistic expression. The impact of these movements on the art of Latin America remains visible today.

But it is impossible to speak of Latin American art without acknowledging the contributions of African-American culture and the influence of African art. In such countries as Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela, where the African-American presence predominates, African traditions and religious beliefs coexisted and intermingled with indigenous and Western practices, shaping a Creole identity.

From the 1960s into the 1980s, political turbulence had a tremendous impact on artistic life. During these years, most South American countries lived under the shadow of military regimes and dictatorships, and the violence and repression they spawned. It was the peak of the Cold War, and a campaign of political repression designed to eliminate left-wing activists was carried out (with the support of the United States). Artists came under suspicion of the authorities, civil war broke out, and all this turbulence had a tremendous impact on artistic life. To avoid persecution, artists practiced self-imposed censorship, and developed various strategies such as creating conceptual works that expressed their opposition to authority through allusion. These new art forms also challenged the conservative tendencies that dominated certain art schools. Censorship and fear prevented the kind of collaboration that usually occurs between artists. Yet, artistic output progressed, as many multimedia artists explored questions of identity and memory.

Many of the concerns that Latin American artists address today—identity, sexuality, political struggle, consumption, pollution, violence, police brutality, repression, and the onset of a deteriorating environment —appear in creative output worldwide, as we live in an era when individuals travel freely and live in multiple locations – often outside their native countries. According to Dr. Giasson, “Many Latin American artists prefer not to carry a national banner, but instead consider themselves actors engaged in a universal dialogue.”

 

 

Website : Neuberger Museum of Art

  

Source : Artdaily

 

12365 - 20170108 - J. Paul Getty Museum presents "Unruly Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau" - Los Angeles, CA -21.06.2016-08.01.2017

.

The Great Oaks of Bas-Bréau, 1864. Oil on canvas, 90.2 × 116.8 cm (35 1/2 × 46 in.) Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Agnes Cullen Arnold Endowment Fund, 72.87.

 

Unruly Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau presents a rich selection of paintings and drawings by one of the giants of nineteenth-century French art. Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) achieved international fame as a leader of the so-called “Barbizon School,” named after the village near the Forest of Fontainebleau where he spent much of his career. The exhibition, co-organized with the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, will be on view June 21 through September 11, 2016, at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center. It will subsequently travel to Copenhagen, where it will run from October 13, 2016, through January 8, 2017.

The exhibition will feature more than seventy works—both paintings and drawings—making it the largest show devoted to Rousseau since the 1967 retrospective at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, which marked the centenary of the artist’s death. More importantly, with some forty museums and private collectors from the United States, Canada, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands generously lending works, Unruly Nature will be the first comprehensive loan exhibition devoted to Rousseau in North America.

“The exhibition explores the full scope of Rousseau’s achievement, revealing how creative, diverse, and experimental the art of landscape could be in the decades just before Impressionism,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “His astonishing technical and stylistic variety, wondrously admired by contemporaries for matching the diversity of nature itself, continued to be celebrated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when his pictures were among the most admired and coveted in the world.”

Trained in the Neoclassical landscape tradition but swept up in the currents of Romantic naturalism inspired by 17th-century Dutch and more recent English art, Rousseau played an important role in landscape’s rapid rise to preeminence in French art in the decades after 1830. Traveling widely around France, he tackled an impressive range of motifs, from mountain and forest to field and plain, and tried his hand an unprecedented variety of seasonal, weather, and lighting effects, creating a body of work that vastly expanded the vocabulary of French landscape expression.

“Rousseau’s art has epic mood swings, from the most turbulent, heady, and impulsive to the most dispassionate, patient, and analytical,” notes Scott Allan, assistant curator in the Department of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. “This is dramatically apparent, for example, in his two contrasting views of Mont Blanc—one painted at the very beginning of his career and one at the very end,” Allan explains, referencing Mont Blanc Seen from La Faucille, Storm Effect (1835–36; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen) and View of Mont Blanc, Seen from La Faucille (1863–67; Minneapolis Institute of Art), both of which will appear in the exhibition.

Allan continues, “The show aims to represent the full extent of Rousseau’s art, striking a balance between paintings and drawings, smaller and larger pictures, finished and unfinished work, and the private and public sides of his multifaceted practice, which he conducted partly outdoors but mostly in the studio. Throughout, we’re paying special attention to Rousseau’s working procedures and techniques, and consequently stressing the consummate artifice of his landscapes.

” Edouard Kopp, Maida and George Abrams Associate Curator of Drawings, Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum and co-curator of the exhibition, further notes that “the exhibition will feature familiar pictures from well-known collections, but it will also include works that have not been seen in public in many decades and, in some cases, that have never before been exhibited.”

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Getty and the LA Philharmonic are collaborating on an evening concert at the Hollywood Bowl, scheduled for August 18. The ebullient and erudite Nicholas McGegan will conduct a concert program inspired by Rousseau’s own taste for composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber. An accompanying video will provide insight into the various musical and artistic crosscurrents in early- to mid-nineteenth-century France that shaped the sensibilities of Rousseau and his Romantic generation. The collaboration will continue in the Getty’s galleries with an audio tour featuring a musical playlist selected by maestro McGegan in addition to a second audio tour presenting commentary from curators Allan and Kopp on highlights of the exhibition.

 

 

Website : J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Source : Artdaily

 

12364 - 20170109 - A project by Leah Raintree reimagines Noguchi sculptures as distant celestial objects - Queens, NY - 10.08.2016-09.01.2017

.

 

Leah Raintree, Another Land: Sun at Noon, 2016. Color photograph, 24 x 36 in. Courtesy The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York.

On view August 10, 2016 – January 9, 2017 at The Noguchi Museum, Another Land: After Noguchi features ten photographs of Isamu Noguchi sculptures by artist Leah Raintree. Drawn from a series of images that Raintree has created in response to Noguchi’s work, the photographs reimagine the sculptures as distant objects in space. Raintree’s series, titled Another Land, takes as its point of departure a 1968 Noguchi sculpture of the same name, itself part of a series of granite “landscape tables” and ground sculptures that he produced from the late 1960s through the 70s, a period of heightened ecological awareness that was fueled in part by the first images of Earth from space. Referencing iconic space imagery in her work, Raintree engages a process of close observation that focuses on the interplay between light and matter, allowing the physical features of each sculpture—from line, to texture, to shape, to color—to dominate or recede in relation to their light source. The result is an artful interpretation of the notions of geological time that Noguchi suggested in his work, and Raintree expands to still more exponential lengths.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication containing an introduction by Noguchi Museum Director Jenny Dixon and texts by Senior Curator Dakin Hart and Jay Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, as well as an interview with the artist by Noguchi Museum Associate Curator Matt Kirsch.

Another Land: After Noguchi represents the Noguchi Museum’s ongoing engagement with contemporary artists, writers, musicians, and others as a means of illuminating the scope of Noguchi’s vision and his continuing impact on our culture. Production assistance for Another Land: After Noguchi was provided, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

New York City-based artist Leah Raintree has recently completed projects with High Line Art and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and she is a recipient of a 2015 Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship. Raintree’s work addresses our relationship to time, scale, and the environment through permeable, process-based interactions with sites and materials. These engage a longstanding drawing practice that couples with sculpture, photography, and performative action.

Website : Noguchi Museum

 

Source : Artdaily

 

12363 - 20170102 - Recent acquisitions of Dutch and Flemish drawings celebrated at the National Gallery of Art - Washington, DC - 03.07.2016-02.01.2017

.

Simon Bening, The Adoration of the Magi, mid-1520s. Tempera heightened with gold on vellum mounted to wood, overall: 16.8 x 22.9 cm (6 5/8 x 9 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Woodner Collection, Gift of Dian Woodner.

 

Over the last decade, the National Gallery of Art has acquired an exquisite selection of mid-15th-to early 20th-century Dutch and Flemish drawings. Some 20 works—many on view for the first time—cover a range of genres and incorporate a variety of media. Recent Acquisitions of Dutch and Flemish Drawings will be on view in the West Building from July 3, 2016 through January 2, 2017. Highlights include a page from a 15th-century manuscript (c. 1442) with illustrations by Barthélemy van Eyck (active c. 1435–1470); a vibrant, full-color miniature of The Adoration of the Magi (mid-1520s) by Simon Bening (1483/1484– 1561); a unique large portrait drawing by Michael Sweerts (1618–1664); and two rare compositional studies by Gerrit van Honthorst (1590–1656).

“Acquiring Dutch and Flemish drawings made prior to 1600 as well as 18th- and 19th-century drawings has been of particular focus over the past decade,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “We are thankful for the kind generosity of several donors and unique opportunities that has allowed this area of the Gallery’s collection to grow in both richness and depth.”

Recent Acquisitions of Dutch and Flemish Drawings encompasses landscapes, seascapes, portraits, still lifes, and history subjects that demonstrate the originality of Dutch and Flemish draftsmanship and its stylistic evolution. Key works by artists such as Maerten van Heemskerck (1498–1574), Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Abraham Bloemaert (1564–1651), and Jan van Huysum (1682–1749) will be exhibited. In addition to eight works made prior to 1600, six 18th- and 19th- century drawings will be on view, including major works by Gaspar van Wittel (1652/1653–1736) and Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891). The latest work in the exhibition is a powerful self-portrait from 1907 by Lodewijk Schelfhout (1881–1943).

The exhibition is organized by Margaret Morgan Grasselli, curator and head of old master drawings, National Gallery of Art.

 

 

Website : National Gallery of Art

 

Source : Artdaily

 

12362 - 20170101 - Exhibition presents unprecedented study of Elliott Erwitt's life and work - Austin, TX - 16.08.2016-01.01.2017

.

Elliott Erwitt (American, b. France 1928), New York, New York, 1953. Gelatin silver print, 26.5 x 40.6 cm (image). Harry Ransom Center Collection © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos.

The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin presents the exhibition “Elliott Erwitt: Home Around the World” from Aug. 15, 2016, to Jan. 1, 2017. Featuring more than 200 photographs, it is the first exhibition drawn from the extensive Elliott Erwitt Photography Collection, acquired by the Ransom Center in 2015. It is the most comprehensive examination of the internationally renowned photographer’s life and work to date.

Elliott Erwitt (American, b. France 1928) is best known for his portraits of cultural figures, whimsical pictures of dogs and humorous portrayals of everyday life. “Elliott Erwitt: Home Around the World” investigates Erwitt’s complex career in unprecedented depth and presents these celebrated works alongside rarely published or exhibited photographs.

Organized by Jessica S. McDonald, the Ransom Center’s Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography, the exhibition examines the development of Erwitt’s unique vision over 70 years. It explores the ways in which Erwitt’s migratory upbringing and itinerant lifestyle are intimately linked with his persistent photographic subjects—the lone figures and the dogs, the women and the children, the crowded beaches and the lonely streets.

“While highlighting many of Erwitt’s best-known photographs, the exhibition emphasizes threads that only emerge when the collection is considered as a whole,” says McDonald. “There are wonderful surprises in this exhibition, especially for those of us who thought we knew Erwitt’s work.”

In addition to its broad range of photographs, the exhibition presents more than 60 magazines, books and advertisements, as well as highlights of Erwitt’s work in motion pictures and a selection of his contact sheets.

“Elliott Erwitt: Home Around the World” is principally drawn from the Elliott Erwitt Photography Collection, donated to the Ransom Center in 2015 by Caryl and Israel Englander. The collection includes 47,500 vintage and modern black-and-white prints, as well as the corresponding negatives and contact sheets spanning the years 1946 to 2010. Photographs from the Ransom Center’s Magnum Photos Collection and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Records are also included in the exhibition.

“I hope that my checkered career will encourage some photographers to work in the same spirit that deals with the human condition—while not taking themselves too seriously,” said Elliott Erwitt. “It’s been a long journey but worth all the laughs and tears. And it is all here in ‘Home Around the World’ for anyone to examine.”

Accompanying the exhibition is the fully illustrated catalogue “Elliott Erwitt: Home Around the World,” edited by McDonald and co-published with Aperture. An illuminating biographical essay offers new research on the formation and trajectory of Erwitt’s career, while three focused essays address rarely studied aspects of Erwitt’s work, including his very early photographs, his engagement with social and political issues through photojournalism, and his work as a filmmaker.

“In documenting his own visual encounters with the world, Elliott Erwitt has made important contributions to a larger story about our shared experience,” notes Ransom Center Director Stephen Enniss. “The Erwitt collection captures collective events of great historical importance, as well as those quotidian moments that illuminate what it means to be human.”

 

Website : Harry Ransom Center
 

Source : Artdaily