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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Sol LeWitt: Lines Both Large and Small
Sol LeWitt. American, 1928 – 2007. Circles,
Plate 14 from the New York Collection for Stockholm,
1973. Lithograph printed in black and gray on white moderately thick, slightly textured paper. Gift of Robert Rauschenberg. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1976:56-14This spring we have two wonderful examples of Sol LeWitt’s elegant geometric compositions on view at Smith College. At SCMA, the current Cunningham Corridor installation Less is More: The Minimal Print (on view until May 5, 2013) contains a small LeWitt print from titled Circles (1973), while Burton Hall, home of the Smith College Mathematics department, houses LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #139 (Grid and arcs from the midpoints of four sides) (1972). Each represents important and complementary characteristics of his work: simple and complex, small and large, printed and drawn.
Sol LeWitt, who coined the term “Conceptual Art,” created many prints, drawings, and “structures” (his term for sculpture) which are more dependent on ideas and logic than visual qualities or expression. LeWitt envisioned his role in the creative process to be akin to that of a musical composer or an architect, as his work is often based on written plans that are physically executed by others. He built a seemingly infinite number of compositions using a basic vocabulary of lines, arcs, and grids. When these simple geometric components are combined, they transcend their rudimentary nature to become complex abstract patterns. Anonymous in character and detached from emotion or feeling, LeWitt’s work is nonetheless alluring and graceful.
As LeWitt began making his famous wall drawings in 1968, his work became increasingly ephemeral and collaborative. Beginning in 1970, printmaking provided LeWitt with the means of producing more permanent and reproducible images, while allowing him to relinquish control of the final appearance of the work through his collaboration with master printers. Like many of his prints, Circles (1973) was produced by a master printer from an original LeWitt drawing. With its black and gray lines, which resemble pen ink and pencil marks, this lithograph retains the impression of the drawing. The concentric circles and converging lines are not as exact and precise as they first appear. Contrary to the mechanical processes available to printmaking, LeWitt embraced subtle hand-produced imperfections such as the wavering lines in Circles.
Detail of Sol LeWitt’s Circles
(1973) showing hand-drawn imperfections which translated into the print.In January 2013, Wall Drawing #139 (Grid and arcs from the midpoints of four sides), an important early LeWitt wall drawing executed in black pencil, was installed on the third floor of Burton Hall. Integral to LeWitt’s artistic philosophy, his wall drawings are designed to be executed by anyone following his simple plans. Characteristic of LeWitt’s early work, its understated pencil-drawn style is similar to Circles but its grand scale and complex composition of overlapping lines and arcs makes its abstraction more apparent. As in its previous installation in the Museum in 2008, Wall Drawing #139 was executed by Roland Lusk of LeWitt’s New York studio with the assistance of three Smith College students: Clara Bauman ’13, Mingjia Chen ’15, and Clara Rosebrock ’16. This impressive drawing was installed in just two weeks using simple tools such as pencils, rulers, compasses, levels, and plumb lines.
Lusk and students draw the initial grid of Wall Drawing #139
in Burton Hall, January 2013. Photography by Julie Warchol.
Clara Rosebrock cleans the lines and smudges on Wall Drawing #139
,
January 2013. Photography by Julie Warchol.
Mingjia Chen evens out the darkness of the lines in Wall Drawing #139
using masking tape, January 2013. Photography by Julie Warchol.
Detail of Wall Drawing #139 (Grid and arcs from the midpoints of four sides
).
Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 200:27Click here to view a video of the 2008 installation of Wall Drawing #139 and here to read more about the 2013 installation at Burton Hall.
Join us on Thursday, February 28 at 4PM in Burton Hall in front of the LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #139 (Grid and arcs from the midpoints of four sides) to hear different perspectives on the current installation!
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Thursday, February 14, 2013
A Taste of Summer
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.
Joel Meyerowitz. American, born 1938. Empire State, Windmill,
1978. Vintage chromogenic contact print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. SC 2012:84-49As the spring semester kicks into high gear, one thought is pulsing through every student’s mind: summer. As some scramble to finish applications for summer internships, jobs, and school, others are counting down the days until graduation or the first day of pure freedom. However, the piles of crusty brown salt-packed ice coated with a fresh dusting of clean, white snow are a constant reminder that summer is a long way away.
I had not caught the summer bug yet, until one afternoon at work. I came across a newly acquisitioned Joel Meyerowitz photograph. His piece, Empire State, Windmill, captures the very essence of the season and suddenly I was just as restless for some fun in the sun as my friends. It is not so much the main focus of the image itself – the windmill – that grabbed my attention, but instead what surrounds it: the wilting sunflowers, the clear blue sky, and the shadows from the trees.
Photographed in 1978, the image has now aged, coating the picture in a vintage hue which emphasizes the hazy atmosphere. The windmill blades sit frozen in the stagnant, hot summer air. Perhaps the streets are empty because the kids are in their last few days of classes, rushing through finals so they can play in the sprinklers, or maybe it is just too darn hot to move. Whatever the reason, we’ve all been there – that scorching summer day that starts at eight in the morning and carries through till the late evening.
That is beauty of Meyerowitz’s photograph. He captures a fixed scene from his time that is still tangible thirty-five years later. It does not just look like summer, it feels like summer. Staring at this work I can almost feel the sun on my face and a gentle warm breeze. And so as I sit in my scarf and sweater, awaiting the next snow storm but dreaming of bright summer day, I am comforted by the fact that it is never too cold for ice cream.
Comments
Julie Warchol
Joel Meyerowitz
Hi Liz. Thank you for your comment. Work by Joel Meyerowitz will be on view at the Smith College Museum of Art this summer, from 7/12/2013 - 10/13/2013 in an exhibition called "Eye on the Street: Trends in 1960s and 1970s Photography." We hope you can check it out!
Liz
photo
Thank you, Janna, for this taste of summer - and for the introduction to Joel Meyerowitz. I want to see more of his photographs and will look him up now.
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Thursday, February 7, 2013
Munakata Shiko
“My works are my honest thoughts carved into wood. My ‘art in wood’ comes into being spontaneously in spite of me, just as joy, astonishment, and sadness often do bubble up.”
Munakata Shiko
One of the many pleasures of having a collection of 16,000+ works on paper at my fingertips is the chance to delve deeper into the work of artists with whose work I am only minimally familiar. Such is the case with the work of Munakata Shiko (1903-1975), one of the most recognized and collected artists of sosaku-hanga, Japan’s so-called “creative print movement.” During the early 20th century Japanese printmakers actively sought to break with the tradition of ukiyo-e printing in which cutter of the block was simply replicating the vision of the designer of an image. The sosaku-hanga artists wished to follow the European tradition of the peintres-graveurs (painter/printmakers) who were able to fully realize their vision by fully participating in all aspects of making a print.
My rediscovery of Munakata is related to research for a series of exhibitions highlighting SCMA’s Asian collections. Entitled Collecting the Art of Asia, this project, which is on view until May 26, 2013, features four installations of works from east, south, and central Asia arranged over three floors. The exhibitions are designed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of SCMA’s first acquisitions of Asian art, which were gifts from the famed collector Charles Freer in 1913.
The installation I worked on focuses on prints made between 1950 and the present day, which allows SCMA to showcase our expanding holdings in this area. A key component in our quest to build a strong collection of Asian art has been recent gifts of contemporary Chinese and Japanese prints. It has been fascinating to uncover the historical underpinnings of contemporary printmaking in Asia which emerged during the internationalization of print culture during the 1950s.
Born to a family of blacksmiths in Aomori, Munakata first learned about European art from local painters, and he was particularly enamored of Vincent van Gogh’s work. After becoming disillusioned with oil painting early in his career, Munakata found a way to combine his interest in Japanese tradition and modern Western art through printmaking. Although he devoted himself to woodcuts beginning in 1928, Munakata did not develop an international reputation for his prints until the 1950s, winning top prizes at print exhibitions in Lugarno (1952), São Paulo (1955), and Venice (1956).
Severely nearsighted from his childhood, Munakata kept his face very close to the block as he cut, sometimes following his drawing, but often creating the image spontaneously during the cutting process. He was equally idiosyncratic in his printing, titling, numbering, and dating of works, frequently reworking and printing blocks many years after they were first cut.
This is undoubtedly the case with this impression of Sand Nest, a work first created in 1938 as part of a series of thirty-one woodcuts illustrating the Nō play Uto No Hangasaku (Birds of Sorrow) . Most of the blocks in this series were destroyed in an air raid during World War II, but this block is clearly registered as having been printed in 1957.
Munakata Shiko. Japanese, 1903-1975. Sand Nest,
1938 (printed in 1957). Gift of Priscilla Van der Poel, class of 1928. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1977:32-195Another work by Munakata in the exhibition is one image from his series of views of the Tōkaidō. The Tōkaidō was the route that linked Tokyo and Kyoto, which were, at the time, the two largest cities in Japan. This subject was most famously treated by Hiroshige, who issued two volumes of 53 ukiyo-e prints of the Tōkaidō, in 1834. This series documented the 53 “stations” along the route which were marked by inns where travelers could rest or refresh their horses.
Hiroshige. Japanese, 1797-1858. Yoshiwara, Station 15
from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō(Kyoka
edition), late 1830s. Woodcut printed in color on paper. Bequest of Henry L. Seaver. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1976:54-436 (15)Hiroshige’s image is both illustrative and narrative in style, making use of the perspective of the winding road toward the distant Mount Fuji, using soft and modulated applications of water-based ink to provide naturalistic coloring.
Munakata Shiko. Japanese, 1903-1975. Yoshiwara
from Munakata’s Tōkaidō Road,
1963-64. Woodcut printed in black with hand coloring on thin cream-colored Asian paper. Gift of the estate of Mrs. Sigmund W. Kunstadter (Maxine Weil, class of 1924). Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1978:56-25Munakata’s version of the same scene, by contrast, is flat and expressive, using bright patches of color applied both to the back and the front of the image to enliven the surface of the print. In creating this series, Munakata made a number of trips along the Tōkaidō, seeking to record a modern version of this famed historic subject in quick ink sketches. These he translated into woodblocks in his studio, adding color.
Learn more about the Collecting Art of Asia exhibition and SCMA's growing collection of Asian art in our online catalogue.
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Monday, January 28, 2013
Student Picks: Conceal/Reveal – The Exquisite Art of Masking and Costuming
Student Picks is a SCMA program in which Smith students organize their own one-day art show using our collection of works on paper. This month’s student curator and guest blogger Camille Kulig ’13 discusses her show “Conceal/Reveal: The Exquisite Art of Masking and Costuming” which will be on view this Friday February 1 from 12-4 PM in the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
Paul Cordes. American, 1893 - ?. Portrait of Gene Loring of the Ballet Caravan,
c. 1937. Gelatin silver print mounted on paperboard. Gift of Paul Cordes. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1938:8-10People have long exploited the power of costuming and masking as a means to both reveal and conceal parts of their identities. Masking and costuming have provided an outlet in which changing and altering appearances is made possible, questioning how we see ourselves and in turn, how others see us.
In the literal sense, masks have been used throughout time in a variety of contexts as a way to transform the appearance of a person often for the sake of a performance, as seen in featured works, Barnum and Bailey and Portrait of Gene Loring of the Ballet Caravan. This idea of transformation is one that has made the art of masking and costuming in the figurative sense a great source of agency and fascination. In the 1970’s performance artist and photographer Martha Wilson harnessed the power of costume in her Portfolio of Models series, in which she takes on the personas of six female stereotypes through the device of dress and masking. A decade later Cindy Sherman, as seen in her work Untitled #95, further utilized the power of costuming and masking to challenge the viewer’s perception of reality, artifice and the performance of femininity through her staged vignettes in which artist stands in as actor. In Cuban artist Eduardo Hernandez Santo’s, series El Muro (The Wall) he captures the underworld of drag and the integral role make-up and dress play in transforming the body, making the question “Que Trajo la Metamorfosis?”—“What Brought on the Change?” particularly fitting. In masking the exactitude of knowing one’s identity is brought into question, or as Goya so aptly summed up with the title of his 1799 work Nadiese Conoce — “Nobody Knows Anybody.”
Ironically, the artifice masking enables, grants people access to their truest selves. Through the guise of costuming and masking, people are allowed freedom otherwise inaccessible. In this way, masking and costuming paradoxically and simultaneously conceal and reveal.
Martha Wilson. American, born 1947. The Goddess
from A Portfolio of Models,
1974; printed 2008. Gelatin silver print with typewritten text. Purchased with the Dorothy C. Miller, class of 1935, Fund. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2011:27-2
Cindy Sherman. American, born 1954. Untitled #95
from Centerfolds
series, 1981. C-print. Gift of the Honorable Ann Brown (Ann Winkelman, class of 1959) and Donald Brown. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2000:20
Eduardo Hernandez Santos. Cuban, born 1966. El Muro (The Wall)
,
2005; printed 2008. Gelatin silver print with applied presstype. Purchased with funds from the Dorius-Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2010:48-6b.
Eduardo Hernandez Santos. Cuban, born 1966. El Muro (The Wall)
,
2005; printed 2008. Gelatin silver print with applied presstype. Purchased with funds from the Dorius-Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2010:48-6a.
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes. Spanish, 1746 – 1828. Nadie se conoce (Nobody knows anybody)
,
Plate 6 from Los Caprichos
,1799. Etching and burnished aquatint printed in black on laid paper. Purchased with the gift of Albert H. Gordon. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1964:34-6Comments
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Japanese Stencils
Unknown. Japanese, 19th century. Stencil,
n.d. Cut washi paper with silk threads. Gift of Mrs. Howard M. Morse. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1966:76-2These 19th century Japanese stencils in our collection prove that, contrary to what one might expect, the tools used to create an artwork can be just as beautiful and impressive as the finished works themselves. Unlike in Western traditions, stencil-making (or katagami ) was a renowned art form in Japan. Stencils were most often used for the decoration of kimonos and other textiles.
After Japan’s 200-year long period of cultural isolation ended in the mid-19th century, Westerners were fascinated by the arts of Japan, most notably ukiyo-e woodblock prints. However, tourists were also interested in Japanese textile stencils as art objects themselves for their high level of technical mastery and aesthetics. Artist Blanche Ostertag wrote in 1899 for Brush and Pencil magazine: “What possibilities of color arrangements are suggested by some of these designs! Cotton dresses would be an endless joy were they adorned with any of these stencils, and our silk fabrics, both for household and personal adornment, might become doubly attractive.” The appeal of Japanese stencils lay in the sophisticated integration of the organic with the geometric, using images of birds, flowers, and vegetation as the basis for their designs. In the stencil below, the rhythmic arrangement of flowers and outlines of birds arranged on diagonal axes set against a background of vertical lines creates a sense of stylized motion.
Unknown. Japanese, 19th century. Stencil,
n.d. Cut washi paper with silk threads. Gift of Mrs. Howard M. Morse. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1966:76-1This high regard for the art of Japanese stencil-making historically coincided with the Arts and Crafts movement which was a late-19th century design reform movement in Europe and America. Such artists responded to increased industrial production by creating hand-made furniture, wall-paper, and ceramics. British Arts and Crafts wall-paper designer George R. Rigby (who made stencils himself) remarked in 1900 that “Japanese stencilling is, to my mind, the only thoroughly successful and considerable use of the craft.”
The process by which the stencils are created is remarkable and is the primary reason why 19th-century Westerners and Japanese alike regarded these objects as artworks themselves. An artist would draw and cut a design by hand, using anywhere from two to six sheets of extremely thin washi paper for one stencil. The sheets were then adhered together with a brown glue made from persimmon, which makes the stencil waterproof and durable. The sheets are often glued with a matrix of raw silk threads between the layers for further reinforcement. Without these threads, the complex designs which often employ lines no thicker than a pencil mark, would not withstand more than one printing. Luckily, the silk threads are so thin, in fact, that they do not show up in the printing. This painstaking process is made even more complicated by creating a brand new stencil each time a different color is to be printed.
Detail of 19th century Japanese stencil showing threads.Comments
David Dempsey
Thank you
These are some of my favorite pieces in the whole collection. Thank you for sharing them.
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Thursday, January 10, 2013
Performed Invisibility: Ana Mendieta’s 'Siluetas'
The obsessive act of reasserting my ties with the earth is an objectification of my existence.
– Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta. American, born Cuba, 1948 – 1985. Untitled
from the Silueta
series in Mexico, negative 1973, printed posthumously from Ana Mendieta’s original slides in 1991. C-print on Kodak Professional paper. Purchased with the Janice Carlson Oresman, class of 1955, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2001:22-7I have always been enchanted by the work of late Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta, and the more I get to know her work, the more mysterious, unsettling, and wonderful it seems. Perhaps her most famous series, the Siluetas were sculptural performances (which she called “earth-body works”) in which Mendieta would imprint or outline her silhouette into or onto natural elements, such as sand, earth, snow, trees, grass, ice, or rocks. These works are now known only through the hundreds of documentary photographs taken by the artist. Her performances of the 1970s showcase the inherent contradictions which make her work so captivating; they are simultaneously performative and static, expressive and stoic, beautiful and haunting, autobiographic and universal.
Ana Mendieta was born in Cuba in 1948 and came to the United States in 1961, living in exile in the Midwestern United States for much of her life. First receiving a graduate degree in painting from the University of Iowa, Mendieta subsequently earned a second MFA through their famous Intermedia department, where she learned to create her own fusion of the emerging media which were to define the art of the 1970s – performance, land art, and photography. While she did not physically return to Cuba until her visit eighteen years later, her work was always inspired by the heritage of her lost homeland and the feeling of being uprooted or, in her words, “cast out of the womb.” The subtle act of imposing her body on the earth is an effort to physically and spiritually reconnect with history and nature.
Ana Mendieta. American, born Cuba, 1948 – 1985. Untitled
from the Silueta
series in Mexico, negative August 1974, printed posthumously from Ana Mendieta’s original slides in 1991. C-print on Kodak Professional paper. Purchased with the Janice Carlson Oresman, class of 1955, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2001:22-3Mendieta traveled to Mexico every summer between 1973 and 1980, where she made hundreds of Siluetas, either in private or in the presence of a very intimate audience. The works are imbued with symbolism drawn from indigenous religions, such as Santeria – a Cuban hybrid of Catholicism, West African, and Caribbean spiritual beliefs, archetypal nature imagery, and Mexican funerary decorations. Mendieta believed she had more in common with indigenous artists than with her contemporaries, proclaiming “[My work] has very little to do with most earth art. I’m not interested in the formal qualities of my materials, but their emotional and sensual ones.”
The true power of the Siluetas lies in what Mendieta chooses not to show us. Apart from a few early works, such as the first in the series Imagen de Yagul (above), the artist’s physical body is not present, but is suggested by her silhouette created from her body or a plywood cut-out used in later works. While these photographs preserve the immediate and timeless memory of the earth-body works, they were in fact methodically planned, quickly executed, and ephemeral. The pieces produced in Mexico were often created within protected cultural sites – such as Zapotec graves and abandoned church complexes – and were left to deteriorate and return to the earth.
Ana Mendieta. American, born Cuba, 1948 – 1985. Untitled
from the Silueta
series in Mexico, negative August 1976, printed posthumously from Ana Mendieta’s original slides in 1991. C-print on Kodak Professional paper. Purchased with the Janice Carlson Oresman, class of 1955, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2001:22-4
Ana Mendieta. American, born Cuba, 1948 – 1985. Untitled
from the Silueta
series in Mexico, negative 1976, printed posthumously from Ana Mendieta’s original slides in 1991. C-print on Kodak Professional paper. Purchased with the Janice Carlson Oresman, class of 1955, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2001:22-2In 1985, Ana Mendieta fell to her death from a window in her thirty-fourth floor New York apartment, where she lived with her husband Carl Andre, the famous Minimalist sculptor. Whether her death was the result of a suicide or murder is still a mystery. While many like to claim that the visceral and morbid nature of Mendieta’s art foreshadowed her own tragic and untimely death, there is so much more to her work than a conveniently romantic tale of a troubled artist who died too young. She states: “My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that tie me to the universe.” In the photographs, her physical and spiritual presence is felt long after the works disappear, but the Siluetas are not mere autobiography. Mendieta expresses powerful universal truths by employing themes of birth, growth, death, and rebirth, which resonate across all histories and cultures.
Ana Mendieta. American, born Cuba, 1948 – 1985. Untitled
from the Silueta
series in Mexico, negative August 1976, printed posthumously from Ana Mendieta’s original slides in 1991. C-print on Kodak Professional paper. Purchased with the Janice Carlson Oresman, class of 1955, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2001:22-10
Ana Mendieta. American, born Cuba, 1948 – 1985. Untitled
from the Silueta
series in Mexico, negative May 1977, printed posthumously from Ana Mendieta’s original slides in 1991. C-print on Kodak Professional paper. Purchased with the Janice Carlson Oresman, class of 1955, Fund and the Josephine A. Stein, class of 1927, Fund in honor of the class of 1927. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2001:22-9Comments
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Thursday, January 3, 2013
Juxtapositions
Currently on view at SCMA, Juxtapositons is the collaborative work of On Display: Museums, Collections, and Exhibitions , a first-year seminar taught by Barbara Kellum, Department of Art. The course explored many different kinds of museums and collections, their missions, and the logic of their displays. By bringing together objects from SCMA storage, the Archives, and the Cunningham Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs with works in the galleries, Juxtapositions asks intriguing questions about what is usually on view in art museums—and what is not.
In Juxtapositions, Smith students find unusual and exciting connections between works of different media and periods. For example, a mid-20th century 3-speed bicycle is paired with Loren MacIver’s 1959 abstract painting Subway Lights, and an Occupy Wall Street poster is shown alongside a 19th-century French bronze sculpture, to name a few. Kellum’s students selected their juxtapositions and wrote an accompanying text for each pairing that highlights the works’ surprising similarities and differences.
Isabella Galdone ’16 juxtaposed this Edvard Munch woodcut and Thomas Eakins painting, currently on view together in the third floor Chace Gallery:
Edvard Munch. Norwegian, 1863 – 1944. Woman in Black,
1913. Woodcut printed in black on tan wove paper. Gift of Selma Erving, class of 1927. Photography by Julie Warchol. SC 1972:50-75
Thomas Eakins. American, 1844 – 1916. Mrs. Edith Mahon,
1904. Oil on canvas. Purchased with the Drayton Hillyer Fund. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1931:2______________________________________________________________________________
Galdone’s juxtaposition wall label:
What does melancholy look like? For both Thomas Eakins and Edvard Munch, it took the form of a woman in black. When Eakins painted Edith Mahon, a family friend, she had recently experienced a painful divorce, and it is the emotional devastation that it brought her that Eakins chooses to portray. Less is known about Eva Kittelson, Munch’s model, but it may be that her eerie, chilling image was a mirror of Munch’s past experience with mental illness. The juxtaposition of these two works is fascinating because, although they are executed in very different styles and media, they evoke the same feeling in the viewer.
The image of Edith Mahon, pallid and exhausted in her black dress, with sagging eyelids and carefully tightened lips, coupled with the solitary, angular frame and mask-like countenance of Munch’s anonymous Woman creates a powerful two-part portrait of human suffering. The important elements that these two pieces share are accentuated by their juxtaposition. The black dresses that both women wear suggest that their identity and image is enveloped in and merged with the melancholy they express. The convergence of these two figures only highlights their solitude and the existential angst that it signifies. It is the raw aloneness of these women that draws the viewer in so powerfully to their individual worlds to empathize with them. Mrs. Edith Mahon and Woman in Black are works of art that give universal form to individual anguish. Seeing them side-by-side reveals that they are significant for the same reason: they take negative human experience and turn it into something of beauty and artistic value.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
The Art of Mindfulness
Everywhere you go these days people are talking or writing about the concept of “mindfulness.” A key component of Buddhism, and, increasingly, Western psychology, mindfulness is focused on an active awareness of the reality of things, and a close and disciplined attention to the present moment. A person can do just about anything “mindfully:” washing dishes, brushing teeth, walking, or breathing. My current mindfulness practice takes full advantage of our special exhibition, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection. Each day the exhibition is open to the public, I have been selecting a single drawing to examine, mindfully, for at least 30 minutes. Slowing down and losing myself in a single work of art is a deeply rewarding experience, especially when faced with such a rich array of complex, beautiful, and moving works such as those on exhibit. Drawings, in particular, are a perfect focus for such an exercise—after all they are simply marks on a piece of paper made by a human hand that somehow, magically, coalesce into an image.
My drawing for today was Annibale Carracci’s Study of a Tree:
Annibale Carracci. Study of a Tree,
c. 1600. Pen and brown ink over black chalk. Private collection.Annibale Carracci was one of three related artists who were instrumental in the development of art in Italy during the 17th century. Eschewing the excesses of the mannerist style (including high-keyed color and exaggerated body proportions), the Carracci (Agostino, Annibale, and Ludovico) advocated a return to the artistic inspirations of classical antiquity, artists of the High Renaissance, and direct observations of nature.
Study of a Tree is a large sheet featuring a portrait of a tree drawn in brown ink. What struck me instantly about this work was the specificity of the tree—this is not some generic or idealized view, but one that the artist closely observed. The idiosyncratic formation of the trunk and branches, the unbalanced massing of leaves, and the free handling of the foliage all combine to capture the essence of the natural world rather than a mere description of it. Carracci is here attempting to capture the form and spirit of the tree rather than make a scientifically accurate rendering.
Paying close attention to the various quality of lines—the swift, parallel strokes that add depth and fullness to sections of overlapping leaves, or the wild and snaky lines forming bare branches that extend from the top or right side of the tree—gave me greater appreciation for Carracci’s genius in translating visual experience to paper.
Detail of Study of a Tree
illustrating the very top of the tree.The experience of looking closely at this work can also provoke experiential responses. Take, for example, the subtle passages of black chalk visible under the ink. In the upper branches, these areas animate the leaves, like a breeze rustling the tree’s top. When applied to the trunk, the chalk provides additional texture, adding a bulk and solidity that is almost palpable. Thick ink lines outlining clumps of leaves punctuate the surface, as if they are picked out by bright sunlight.
Detail of Study of a Tree
illustrating the use of black chalk and ink in the trunk.I always leave one of these viewing experiences feeling refreshed and energized. An added bonus in the case of spending time with Carracci’s Study of a Tree is the fact that it allowed me to look at the trees on the Smith campus with new eyes.
I invite you to try this mindfulness practice. There are 86 works to choose from in Drawn to Excellence and each of them will greatly benefit the patient and mindful viewer.
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Thursday, December 13, 2012
French and Italian Drawings: Renaissance through Romanticism, Part II
Smith students practicing drawing with iron gall ink and quill pens. Photography by David Dempsey.Two weeks ago, Paper + People featured a blog post on the Smith College colloquium French and Italian Drawings: Renaissance through Romanticism, which is currently being taught by Suzanne Folds McCullagh, the Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Chair and Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. The class of six students organized and wrote wall texts for an installation of French and Italian Drawings from the SCMA collection. This installation is on view in the Nixon gallery on the Museum’s second floor until December 16, which is fast approaching – be sure to check it out!
The course takes a very hands-on approach to learning about drawings. Not only did the students spend the first half of their semester in the Cunningham Center working directly with the drawings and writing labels which are now in the Museum’s installation (a selection are shown below), but they also had the rare opportunity to actually make some of the materials which those drawings employed. In one of classes in November, the students and Professor McCullagh were joined by David Dempsey, SCMA’s Associate Director of Museum Services, and Phoebe Dent Weil, a retired conservator and expert on historic methods and materials. The class learned how to chemically create iron gall ink as it would have been made centuries ago, with some surprising results:
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Labels written by the French and Italian Drawings Class
Benedetto Luti. Italian, 1666 – 1724. Head of an Apostle,
1712. Pastels on moderately textured grey antique laid paper. Purchased with the Beatrice Oenslager Chace, class of 1928, Fund. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1989:33Label written by Maddy Barker, class of 2015:
Benedetto Luti was famous for his work in pastel. His use of the medium can be traced back to 1703 and is considered among the earliest pastel paintings in Italy. This work is for a series of the twelve apostles. The identity of this figure is uncertain, but the presence of the open book makes it likely to be one of the four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. The viewer is drawn in by the careful attention to tactility of the hair and beard of the apostle. Luti mastered color to create volume and luminosity reminiscent of the art of Correggio.
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Jacques Callot. French, 1592 – 1635. Beggar,
n.d. Red chalk on cream antique laid paper. Gift of Eugene Victor Thaw. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1959:210Label written by Sara Ottomano, class of 2015:
Renowned as a printmaker and draftsman, this French artist spent most of his career in Italy. Many of his works capture the diverse social classes within Italian society. One series of works focused on the life of beggars. Rather than depicting them as parasitic and resentful, a common practice at the time, Callot drew the beggars as feeble and harassed.
This delicate drawing is stamped with large and unsightly collectors’ marks, including a crowned P, indicating this drawing was once part of Tsar Paul I’s and Catherine the Great’s collection in Russia.
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Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo. Italian, 1696 – 1770. Angelica and Medoro,
early 1740s. Pen and bistre ink with brush and bistre wash over black chalk on white antique laid paper. Purchased with the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin H. Land in honor of Clarence Kennedy. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1960:43Label written by Amanda Manocherian, class of 2015:
Giambattista Tiepolo, a renowned eighteenth-century Venetian painter, was considered an exemplar of the monumental pictorial tradition in Italian art. Favoring heroic and religious themes, he had a unique talent for depicting forceful visual dramas through dynamic, theatrically staged scenes.
In this drawing Giambattista aggressively uses washes of differing intensities to model space and form along with bold brush-strokes and brilliant highlights that clash with deep shadows to illustrate the love story of Angelica and Medoro. Angelica, the princess of Cathay, fell in love with the wounded Moorish soldier Medoro, whom she nursed back to health. Sharply contrasting planes of shadow and light meet over the lover’s stylized bodies and, in combination with Giambattista’s sweeping brush strokes, create an almost painfully dynamic composition that breathes fiery life into the scene.
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Andrea Boscoli. Italian, 1550 – 1606. Christ on the Mount of Olives,
n.d. Red chalk with gray wash on buff colored antique laid paper. Gift of Jere Abbott. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 1978:27Label written by Ellen Monroe, class of 2015:
This fantastically angular drawing is characteristic of the late sixteenth-century Florentine artist Andrea Boscoli. The same crisp lines can be seen in his sketch after a fifteenth-century Benozzo Gozzoli fresco, currently part of the Drawn to Excellence exhibition on SCMA’s first floor. Boscoli’s precise lines animate both compositions, but here Boscoli layered gray wash on top of his red chalk drawing. This was a technique Boscoli frequently used to create dramatic shading. Indeed, the tree on the right casts a shadow on the foreground figure, while Christ’s kneeling form is illuminated.
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Thursday, December 6, 2012
David Becker Day 2012
Last year in this blog I suggested that everyone observe David Becker Day on December 11 in honor of the late print scholar, curator, collector, and philanthropist. Well, that day has rolled around again, presenting the perfect occasion to interact deeply with a work of art (preferably, a print or an illustrated book), and particularly a work of art that speaks deeply to your personal values or beliefs.
As a scholar, one of David’s specialties was the French eccentric printmaker Rodolphe Bresdin, whose works feature fantastical scenes rendered in painstaking detail. Here is one example of Bresdin’s etchings, donated by David to SCMA in honor of his mother, Helen Pillsbury Becker, class of 1928.
Rodolphe Bresdin. French, 1822-1885. My Dream (Version II),
1883. Etching on dark cream-colored wove Japan paper. Gift of David P. Becker in memory of Helen Pillsbury Becker, class of 1928. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2002:20-1David’s enthusiasms as a collector were significantly broader. One opportunity to get an idea of the breadth of his interests is an engaging exhibition drawn from the 1,500 objects he donated to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. On view until March 24, 2013, Printmaking ABC: In Memorium David P. Becker showcases significant prints in beautiful impressions made between the 16th and 21st centuries.
However you decide to observe David Becker Day, I hope you will take the time to acknowledge and appreciate the things you love and the people that have nurtured and mentored you. While I see this day as an opportunity to encourage people to engage directly with works of art, ultimately, the day also honors someone whose ability and desire to share his knowledge and passion impacted many people (myself included) on a deep and lasting level. Pass on what you know and love, and have a wonderful David Becker Day.
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