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Thursday, August 1, 2013
James Turrell: Deep Sky
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolio Deep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-1.
James Turrell’s installations – sky drawings, light projections, and “skyspaces” – are artworks made for both nature lovers and stargazers. A key member of Southern California’s Light and Space movement, Turrell began his artistic career in sunny Los Angeles in the 1960s and continues to explore the experiential qualities of light to this day. Turrell’s work is currently on view in several major museums throughout the country this summer – the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolioDeep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-2.
Influenced by his studies in perceptual psychology as well as his Quaker faith, Turrell illuminates light’s natural and supernatural qualities. His work consists of light projections in interior spaces, architectural manipulations such as cutting a hole in a structure’s ceiling to allow natural light to seep into a room, or even a naked-eye observatory created out of an extinct volcano in the Arizona desert (as in Roden Crater, begun 1977). However, not all of his work is so ethereal or monumental. In the SCMA collection, his first print portfolio Deep Sky (1985) translates the experience of light into two dimensions, bringing a new level of tangibility to his work.
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolio Deep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-3.
The seven prints in Deep Sky seem to undulate between renderings of natural landscapes and abstractions of pure light and shadow. While the first print in the portfolio (top) resembles the silhouette of a volcano below a vast night sky dotted with stars, each of the subsequent five prints takes a sharp turn toward the abstract. Turrell gives us suspended shapes which evoke rays of light cutting through complete darkness, combined in ways which defy concrete understanding. Perhaps these images are loosely related to the volcanic site of Roden Crater and its light-filled spaces which Turrell was still in the process of creating in 1985. What ultimately ties the images together is the subtle presence of tiny stars in each print. These images simultaneously resemble scientific renderings of such abstract visual phenomena in Turrell’s gallery pieces as well as evoke the awe-inspiring experience of observing the night sky in a vast, open landscape.
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolio Deep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-4.
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolio Deep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-5.
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolio Deep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-6.
The final print in the Deep Sky portfolio (below) is an almost equally ambiguous image of what appears to be some sort of land surface set against that same dark sky with a bright white orb shape in the bottom right corner. It is unclear whether this image is meant to be the same desert environment viewers may associate with Turrell’s Roden Crater or whether this is some imaginary celestial body. This elusiveness is exactly what makes Turrell’s Deep Sky prints so intriguing and captivating.
James Turrell. American, born 1943. Untitled from the portfolio Deep Sky, 1985. Aquatint printed in black on BFK Rives paper. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1985:17-7.
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Thursday, July 11, 2013
Fred Sandback
Frederick Lane Sandback. American, 1943–2003. For Matthias Ignaz,
1983. Lithograph printed in color on white wove paper. Gift of Carol Ann Osuchowski Selle, class of 1954. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1992:39-3.“I’m full of thoughts (more or less). My work isn’t.
It’s not a demonstration of an idea either. It’s an actuality.”
– Fred Sandback
Minimalist artist Fred Sandback is known for his ephemeral sculptures made from acrylic yarn. The taut yarn strings – often stretching from floor to ceiling, ceiling to wall, or wall to floor – create delicate and playful forms that change the way a viewer sees, perceives, and moves about the space. Sandback’s yarn constructions are essentially drawings in space – free-floating lines which have jumped beyond the confines of paper.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Sandback translated his spatial ideas from three to two dimensions using the visual and technical capabilities unique to printmaking. Apparent iterations of his sculptures, Sandback’s prints present floating lines which interact with the whole sheet of paper similarly to how his yarn lines interact with the space of an entire room. This can be seen in Sandback’s 1983 lithograph For Matthias Ignaz (made in honor of his then-newborn son), in which the artist printed the blue-green negative space right to the paper’s edge, leaving only the subtle white lines unprinted and exposed. This print confuses and challenges our notions of two-dimensional foreground and background. Here, both elements are of equal importance: the “space” of the paper’s colored expanse and the lithographic line.
While the large scale of Sanback’s yarn sculptures subtly alter or interrupt the viewers’ space, the comparatively miniscule size (11 by 9 inches) of For Matthias Ignaz creates an incredibly intimate relationship between the work and the viewer. Drawn into the paper’s peculiar blue-green “space,” close looking reveals that the lithographic lines are not entirely crisp – in fact, their fuzzy character curiously alludes to the tactile quality of his three-dimensional yarn lines.
Detail of Sandback’s For Matthias Ignaz showing lithographic line.
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Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Walton Ford and a Trip to Wingate Studios
Guest blogger Emma Casey is a Smith College student, class of 2015, majoring in Spanish. She is the 2013-2015 STRIDE Scholar in the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
This past spring, my advanced printmaking class took a field trip to Peter Pettengill’s professional intaglio workshop and publisher, Wingate Studio in southwestern New Hampshire (pictured above). Pettengill, Wingate’s founder and master printmaker, was trained at Crown Point Press in San Francisco from 1979 through 1985, at which point he opened Wingate. He gave us a tour of his studio and showed us works by various artists made prints at Wingate over the past few years.
The work of contemporary American artist Walton Ford drew my attention. Ford works in the style of 19th century naturalist artists, namely ornithologist John James Audubon, to create naturalistic illustrations, paintings, and prints of avifauna (birds). From afar, Ford’s works appear strictly observational, but upon closer scrutiny, many levels of narrative and socio-historical critique become evident. Each avifauna subject is depicted life-sized, and is often accompanied by text. Ford’s backgrounds have a sketchy, less defined quality, and stain-like splotches appear on the borders in a faux antique style.
Walton Ford. American, born 1960. Condemned,
2004-2007. Etching and aquatint printed in color on paper. Gift of Walton Ford through the Smith College Print Workshop. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2007:6The ambition of his prints is remarkable. The hours involved in etching six tightly-registered copper intaglio plates for each print shows in the precision and skill of his works. Ford’s beautifully executed prints and watercolors critique human actions and history. Drawing from colonialism, industrialization and environmentalism, Ford questions the effects of these phenomena on the animal world through both serious and joking imagery.
Ford’s Condemned, a print in the SCMA collection, depicts an extinct Carolina Parakeet. By the 1880s, the birds’ numbers suffered at the hands of farmers who considered them an agricultural pest. Flocks plagued orchards, destroying fruit in search of seeds. The American Ornithologists Union declared the Parakeet extinct in 1939. Ford has memorialized the small bird, including its scientific name. Condemned incorporates a quote from the American serial killer Carl Panzram (1891-1930), who wrote to capital punishment protesters while on death row in 1929, “I wish that you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it.” Ford appropriates this quote, which is prominently scrawled above the Carolina Parakeet. It is ambiguous whether these words are the voice of a farmer or one of the birds; as each is ruining the other’s life, but with different consequences of varying severity.
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
Vija Celmins: Always on the Surface
Vija Celmins. American, born 1939. Untitled [Waves],
1970. Lithograph printed in two grays on Rives BFK paper. Purchased. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1976:8-1.Since the 1960s, Vija Celmins has been depicting the sprawling surfaces of the ocean, moon, desert floor, and night sky in remarkable detail. Her earliest works include a series of seemingly identical ocean surface images, including her 1970 lithograph Untitled [Waves]. This work is also one of Celmins’ earliest attempts at printmaking and has been called “one of the finest and scarcest American prints of the 1970s.”
In Untitled [Waves], Celmins renders the water with no visible depth, horizon lines, or other perspectival elements. While this is not a typical picturesque image of the ocean, the careful rendering is utterly captivating. Its mesmerizing hyperrealism draws the viewer into this shallow space and allows the eye to wander indefinitely. Despite Celmins’ obsessive repetition of the same ocean surface image in many different works from this period, she attests that for her water has no personal or symbolic significance: “It really went into a kind of rigorous building, and letting the material be the material. Letting the image be more and more like an armature. In some of these, the image is almost nothing.”
By Celmins’ own assertion, her work is first and foremost an exploration of the process of creating images and the physical properties of the medium with which she is working. In her ocean series, the works seem almost identical at first glance but are actually subtly individualized. For each work, Celmins uses just one drawing implement for the whole image; a soft 3B pencil, a hard 8H pencil, or a lithographic crayon (as in Untitled [Waves] ) create different tonal qualities and marks in each of her works.
Detail of Untitled [Waves].
Drawing from a photograph of an ocean surface rather than by direct observation, Celmins distances herself from her original object of study. Working exclusively from her own photographs, an amorphous substance like water is distilled into sculptural forms of life and shadow, both allowing her to focus on the tonal possibilities of the medium and rendering the works devoid of symbolism, narrative, and specific context. By negating specificity in her images, Celmins explores the physical process of making a drawing or print. Celmins states: “I don’t think of the ‘ocean image’ as an image or something I’m interested in. I think of it as a way of identifying a piece of work that I can always return to… to work on…to perfect… to make ‘real’…” She uses water not as a subject in its own right but merely as a means of exploring the physical creative process – as a form to describe from a cool, unaffected distance.
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Thursday, June 13, 2013
Curiouser and Curiouser
Guest blogger Janna Singer-Baefsky is a Smith College student, class of 2015, with a major in Art History and concentration in Museum Studies. She is a Student Assistant in the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
“ …when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it… ” - Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ( 1865).
Joe McHugh. American, 20th Century. The White Rabbit in Wonderland,
ca. before 1968. Lithograph printed in color on paper. Purchased. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2011:38-83.The story of Alice in Wonderland began as a tale to pass the time on a long boat ride one lazy summer afternoon in 1862. English author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, pen-name Lewis Carroll, recounted the adventure to Oxford University Vice-Chancellor Henry Liddell’s three daughters – one of whom, Alice, insisted he write it down for her. In late November 1864, he handed her the finished copy as an early Christmas present and by 1865 it had been published. The book, an international best-seller among adults and children alike has imagery, symbolism, and quotations that pervade every aspect of popular culture.
Readers of all ages developed theories to explain and understand the nonsensical conversations, whimsical scenery, and Alice’s perpetual dreamlike state. One likens her journey to an acid trip, and no piece of art better captures this idea than Joe McHugh’s psychedelic poster The White Rabbit in Wonderland, on view until September 15, 2013 in Summer of Love: Psychedelic Posters from SCMA. Printed before 1968, during a peak year in the use of mind-expanding narcotics, the poster features contrasting neon colors layered over one another and photographs of iconic Alice in Wonderland imagery. One does not need any drugs to feel the full effect of his hallucinogenic style.
Detail of Joe McHugh's The White Rabbit in Wonderland.
The photographs depict some of the most recognizable imagery from the story – the bottle labeled “DRINK ME,” the mushroom Alice eats to change size, a deck of cards scattered over a checkerboard floor, and a white rabbit. The rabbit (which looks suspiciously like my own…) stands on its hind feet in the center against an open black square suggesting the rabbit hole itself or the door that Alice falls through when she cries a flood of tears. The photographs alone form a collage of familiar iconography and there is little that is psychedelic about them. It is the overlapping neon colors and shapes that begin on the rabbit’s face and spiral out that create the hypnotic scene. The longer you stare, the more details become apparent. At the top, undulating green letters become clear and separate from the squiggly background shapes. The words form KEEP YOUR HEAD, perhaps as a tribute to the Queen of Hearts or the classic song by Jefferson Airplane, and arch over the central scene. The cork of the DRINK ME bottle is actually a mushroom. The turtle-like shape on the far left is a knight, who perhaps escaped from the chess board at the bottom.
Detail of Joe McHugh's The White Rabbit in Wonderland.
At first glance, the poster is overwhelmingly full of colors and images. As the eyes adjust to the brilliant shades of hot pink, lime green, orange, blue, purple, and red a narrative becomes clear. The rabbit is what prompts Alice’s adventure and similarly, his central placement pulls us in. The iconic pictures surrounding him in a circular fashion takes us on a journey throughout Wonderland and eventually spiral back into that endless black square. Like Alice, it is easy to become lost for several hours in a work this detailed and complex. The longer you stare at such an intricately kaleidoscopic piece you could begin to think you’ve gone mad. But, as Lewis Carroll himself once wrote: “I’ll tell you a secret. The best people are.”
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Thursday, June 6, 2013
Thomas Cornell's French Revolutionary Portraits
Guest blogger Jennifer Guerin is a Smith College student, class of 2014, majoring in American Studies and History with focuses in Public History and Social Movements. She is a Student Assistant in the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
Thomas Cornell. American, 1937-2012. Danton
from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendô
me,
1964. Etching printed in black on paper. Gift of Elizabeth and John Scott. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2008:62-10.The SCMA’s Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs has in its collection a set of etchings that artist Thomas Cornell completed for the Northampton-based Gehenna Press, run by Leonard Baskin, in 1964. The book for which they were produced, The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendôme, is a French text from 1797 translated by John Anthony Scott, a professor of History at Amherst College. The works were donated to SCMA by Scott and his daughter, Elizabeth.
François-Noel Babeuf took the name Gracchus as a reference to Roman tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi, famous for advocating land redistribution. As his choice of name suggests, Babeuf was the leader of a radical left wing faction of French revolutionaries who believed in policies such as division of lands, progressive taxation, and free and equal public education. These revolutionaries opposed the Directory and the government established by the Constitution of 1795, wanting instead to return to the more democratic-minded Constitution of 1793, and they attempted to foment a rebellion. Babeuf’s defense was given over the span of three days, and though it did not prevent his execution, it is particularly interesting because it does not attempt to deny the accusations, but instead argues that their action could not be considered conspiracy because they operated under the principle that opposition intended to remove an unjust government is always legitimate. Additionally, it is worth noting that Gehenna Press’s choice to publish a text which praised a socialist figure was a fairly radical move in Cold War America. Cornell’s twenty-one illustrations represent the major players in the trial, as well as other important figures of the Revolution. During his professional career, much of Cornell’s work focused on social justice issues, and these etchings are the predecessors of that work.
Thomas Cornell. American, 1937-2012. Marat
from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendô
me,
1964. Etching printed in black on paper. Gift of Elizabeth and John Scott. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2008:62-17.In creating these French Revolutionary portraits, Cornell referred to previous representations of the individuals but did not hesitate to reinvent the images. For instance, his portrait of Jean-Paul Marat works to present an alternative to the idealized images of Marat, most notably Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting The Death of Marat . While in David’s painting, Marat’s physical deformities and debilitating skin condition are only hinted at by his bandaged head and the bathtub he sits in, Cornell’s Marat is clearly deformed and appears grotesque. In his portrait of Diderot, Cornell’s transformation goes in the other direction— the Diderot shown in portraits becomes an idealized figured seemingly modeled after a Roman emperor. This allows the portrait of Diderot to represent not only the inspiration that the revolutionaries drew from Enlightenment figures, but also the huge influence of Greek and Roman history.
Thomas Cornell. American, 1937-2012. Diderot
from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendô
me,
1964. Etching printed in black on paper. Gift of Elizabeth and John Scott. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2008:62-11.Finally, Cornell’s images of Danton and Robespierre, two of the most controversial figures of the Revolution, depart from the conventional, neoclassical portrait to show two very human and conflicted figures. While Robespierre is nearly always show wearing a powdered wig, which was mocked by opponents as too aristocratic, Cornell’s image eliminates the wig, thereby making him appear more vulnerable and closer to the common people. In the portrait of Danton, Cornell’s use of light surrounds Danton with a sense of power and emotion, and his facial expression suggests an intense personal conflict.
Thomas Cornell. American, 1937-2012. Robespierre
from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendô
me,
1964. Etching printed in black on paper. Gift of Elizabeth and John Scott. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2008:62-4.Thomas Cornell (1937-2012), professor and artist, devoted much of the early years of his artistic career to drawing and etching, though he is generally well known for his paintings. Following his undergraduate work at Amherst College (B.A. 1959) and graduate work at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1959-1960), Cornell explored the field of bookmaking, completing illustrations for Apiary, the Smith College student press, as well as Gehenna Press. He also founded his own publishing house in 1964, Tragos Press, through which he produced a number of publications relating to the Civil War, abolition, and the Civil Rights Movement. In 1962, Cornell was hired to establish a visual arts program at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and he would continue to teach there until he retired in June of 2012, shortly before he passed away in December.
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Thursday, May 30, 2013
Degas Doppelgängers: SCMA Lithographs From Same Series as Gardner Heist Drawings
Guest blogger Maggie Kean is a Smith College student, class of 2014, majoring in Art History with a concentration in Museum Studies. She is the Student Assistant to Maggie Lind, the Associate Educator for Academic Programs.
Edgar Degas; printed by Aglais Bouvenne. French, Degas 1834-1917. Program for the Soirée Artistique des Anciens Élèves du Lycée de Nantes,
1884. Transfer lithograph printed in black on wove paper. Gift of Selma Erving, class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1972:50-20.French Impressionist Edgar Degas is regarded as one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth-century, producing an inspiring body of work thematically divergent from that of his predecessors, which earned him a posthumous reputation as the darling of the movement. A prolific draughtsman as well as painter, Degas’s vast output of drawings dynamically rendering his iconic dancers, bathing nudes, and jockeys are as distinctive as his paintings. Yet while many conceive Degas as the master of tulle and soft, luminescent flesh—daubed onto canvas in rich jewel-tones or lustily marked out with pastels—few realize that Degas was also a closet printmaker of great mastery.
Though his printmaking record indicates that his pursuit of the medium was patchy, extant works span Degas’s career from his nascent aspirations to history painting in the 1850s through to his late and most expressive works of the 1890s. His prints ranged in medium from etchings and lithographs pulled by professional printers to monotypes that he executed himself. A largely underappreciated and thus neglected form of printmaking, Degas is recognized for pioneering the monotype medium, which conflates painting with printmaking through the painterly application of ink directly onto a plate that is then pressed onto paper. While his printed subject matter did not vary much from his standard repertoire of women and horses, the works themselves reveal Degas’s virtuosity in a breadth of mastery unknown even at the time—only a handful of such prints were ever displayed during his lifetime.
Edgar Degas. French, 1834-1917. Study for a Program for an Artistic Evening (Projet de Programme),
1884. Soft-ground etching and drypoint on off-white wove paper. Gift of Abraham Kamberg. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1962:8-2.The SCMA has two such prints in the works on paper collection at the Cunningham Center—a set of lithographs from 1884 entitled Program for the Soirée Artistique des Anciens Élèves du Lycée de Nantes (Program for the Evening for Former Art Students of Nantes Secondary School). One of the former students of the Lycée was a friend of Degas and asked him to create the program – a process that yielded four black chalk drawings, four etchings, and the final lithographs. Two of the drawings, which are a clear precedent to our lithographs, are among the works stolen in the famous heist of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. With the recent efforts of the FBI to again publicize the crime and recover the works, we thought we’d highlight the parallel works in our collection in solidarity with the Gardner (To view the Gardner drawings and more information on the theft, please visit the FBI website: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/march/reward-offered-for-return-of-stolen-gardner-museum-artwork/image/hi-res ).
The Program was directed toward a broad audience, and as such, the visual language Degas utilizes is straightforward in its reference to the entertainment promised for the Soirée, with some marginal imagery symbolic of the town of Nantes. The print was clearly thrown together quickly, a somewhat compositionally ambiguous and sketchy image; in 1891, when the École des Beaux-Arts displayed one of the lithographs in an exhibition surveying contemporary lithography without Degas’s permission, he was outraged that his body of printed work should be represented by such a poor example.
Nevertheless, the Program and his opinion of it offer a glimpse into the ways in which Degas’s work reached the general public. His major works were typically displayed at the Salon for an audience comprised primarily of the bourgeoisie, artists, and academics. A colloquial document such as Program not only enjoyed a wider viewership, but also illuminates how Degas consciously adjusted the quality of his work based on the audience he created it for.
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Thursday, May 23, 2013
Munio Makuuchi
Munio Takahashi Makuuchi. American, 1934-2000. On Boy’s Day I 'I.D.' with Rocky Mountain Salmon../...So where’s the Salmon?
1985. Drypoint and etching printed in black on paper. Purchased with the Elizabeth Halsey Dock, class of 1933, Fund. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2007:9Artist/poet Munio Makuuchi (born Howard Munio Takahashi) was a third-generation Japanese-American born in Seattle. From 1941 to 1945, he and his family were confined in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in southern Idaho. This pivotal childhood experience became the basis for a lifetime of visual and poetic works. After their release from the camp, the artist and his family settled permanently in Idaho. Makuuchi studied art education, printmaking, and painting, and taught both in the U.S. and Africa. He retired from teaching and returned to Seattle in the mid-1980s.
Like all of Makuuchi’s visual works, On Boy’s Day relates directly to his life history. The twin images of Mount Rainier and Mount Fuji are visible in the background of this print, alluding to his dual Japanese/American identity. The central image of the print is a school of leaping fish bisected by a bamboo pole bearing a flag. The pole and flag are part of the rituals celebrating the Japanese festival “Boy’s Day” (Tango-no-sekku), in which paper carp (one per male child) are flown in celebration of the healthy growth of sons. The carp, a symbol of resilience and determination, is seen as an embodiment of male virtues. Makuuchi replaces the traditional carp with an image of salmon, a fish native to the Northwest coast, which he felt had more resonance with his past.
In the poem referred to in the title of this print, Makuuchi mourns what he saw as the cultural assimilation of many Asian Americans during the post-War period.
I.
Steelheads/Steelhearts
On boy's day I I.D.
with slant/Sockeyes of
Steelheads/hearts of the
Rocky Mountains rather
than flying paper Carp...II.
Slant/Sockeyes
They tagged and released us
after four years
in a USA reeducation camp.....
They tried to drum out the drums of the Afro/Americans.....
And the Latino still speak
and eat Spanish
500 years later.....
We went 1000 miles
up inland Rocky Mountains
with special long enduring
genes and chromosomes
only to be watered down
Only a few are reaching
the headwaters
anymore
When it comes to our kind soul vittles -
“No you can't take that away from me!"Munio Makuuchi
This work is on view in Collecting Art of Asia until May 26, 2013.
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
Smith Tours: Diego Rivera and the Value of Art
Guest blogger Maurine Collins Miller is a Smith College student, class of 2013, majoring in Art History and minoring in Spanish. She is a Student Museum Educator at the Smith College Museum of Art.
Diego Rivera. Mexican, 1868-1956. Yalalag Caminando con un Niño (Woman from Yalalag walking with a boy),
1948. Gouache on paper. Bequest of Anita V. Davis. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2009:3.Designing and giving a tour at the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) is both exciting and unpredictable. So when I was presented with a group of sixth graders who had been studying Mexican culture, I decided to focus the tour around the SCMA’s Diego Rivera works. Rivera is generally interesting to kids since he is such a famous artist with a very aesthetically approachable style. For this particular tour, the Museum’s collection spanned beyond the paintings typically associated with Rivera; the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs is home to an impressive collection of works on paper by the Mexican artist. With some advanced planning, we were able to view a selection of these prints and drawings depicting a variety of daily life scenes and portraits. With a reasonable amount of knowledge on Rivera, I felt confident that I could answer almost any question and build off of what the kids already knew. As a tour guide, however, you can never fully prepare for what the kids will ask about the pieces.
Diego Rivera. Mexican, 1868-1956. Reading Lesson,
1932. Lithograph printed in black on Rives wove paper. Gift of Selma Erving, class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1972:50-95.Much to my surprise, the students were more interested in the monetary value of Rivera’s work than what they looked like. Why and how art is valued is fascinating -- I don’t blame them for inquiring as to the value of the pieces. Unfortunately, I was prepared to talk about culture and why Rivera might have made some stylistic choices. I formulated an explanation “on the fly” to direct the discussion away from the monetary issue: when artworks are acquired by or donated to a museum, the purpose is not to put a price tag on them. Since museums build their collections based on what they’d like to show and conserve forever, accessioning works into a collection almost negates any monetary value. Their “worth” is not about money.
Diego Rivera. Mexican, 1868-1956. Flower Festival,
1931. Lithograph printed in black on cream laid paper. Gift of Elizabeth Langmuir (Elizabeth Cross, class of 1931), transferred from the Rare Book Room. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1980:39-19.Sixth graders, however, are persistent. Thus, when they continued asking me about how much all of the Diego Rivera works on paper are collectively worth, “even if I was just guessing,” I explained that value is more than a monetary concept. Value also means how a work enhances a collection and, particularly in a teaching museum like SCMA, can be compared with other pieces for educational purposes. Value and price are not mutually exclusive.
I was eventually able to re-route the discussion back to Mexican culture, and the students finally settled into appreciating how amazing the SCMA and the Cunningham Center are. After all, how special is being in a room with only fifteen people and ten impressive works on paper—not behind glass or framed-- from such a phenomenal artist? Now that is a valuable experience.
Diego Rivera. Mexican, 1868-1956. Boy with Dog,
1932. Lithograph printed in black on Rives wove paper. Gift of Selma Erving, class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1972:50-96.Comments
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Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Daumier's Bathers
Guest blogger Petru Bester is a Smith College student, class of 2015, majoring in Art History and minoring in Anthropology. She is a Student Assistant in the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
Honoré Victorin Daumier.
French, 1808 – 1879. Les Baigneurs, No. 21, Parole d'honneur Mme Frenouillet...
published 1841. Lithograph printed in black on paper. Gift of Mary A. Gordon, class of 1960. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1963:105-21Honoré Victorin Daumier, a French caricaturist, began producing prints in 1830 and created over 4,000 lithographs before his death in 1879. Within this plethora of lithographs Daumier produced a series entitled Les Baigneurs, which provides humorous commentary on bourgeois bathers in the nineteenth-century. Before private restrooms were commonplace, various members of society would convene in large bath houses where one could exercise, soak, and relax with friends. Daumier’s political and social satires explore various contemporary issues through both comical and aesthetically interesting images. His characters are exaggerated and often stand in stark contrast to one another.
Les Baigneurs, No. 21, depicts two women about to enjoy the luxuries of their bath house. The figure on the left, tall and lanky, prepares to toast to the short and stocky figure on the right. Daumier magnifies the differences between the two women in their contrasting facial features. The tall figure’s linear physique is reflected in her long pointed nose which protrudes from her angular face which sits precariously on a pencil-like neck. The short figure’s round body is echoed in her equally round face with a rounded nose and full lips.
Detail of Daumier's Les Baigneurs.
The inviting pool appears on their left and a bucket resting on the wooden counter behind them holds various bottles of libations. (Although Daumier’s objective is to stimulate thought about social change, I can’t help but feel envious of the bathers and can only hope my summer involves friends, a pool, and a cold beverage!) Daumier frames the image in text with both a title above and a caption below. The text verifies his intentions by poking fun at the two self-indulging women: one says to the other, “Seeing us (swim) one would swear we were two fish… a carp and an eel.”
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