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Friday, September 7, 2012
Whistler's Venice Set
James Abbott McNeill Whistler. American, 1834–1903. The Bridge from the Second Venice Set . 1879–80. Etching and drypoint on laid paper. Gift of Herbert and Ellen Fairbanks Bodman, class of 1945. SC 2003:1-2. Photograph by Petegorsky/Gipe.
This summer’s corridor exhibition is Image and After-Image: Whistler and Photography , on view until September 30, 2012. Featuring 20 prints and photographs from the permanent collection, Image and After-Image looks at James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s etchings and drypoints alongside the development of photography in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In 1879, Whistler accepted a commission from a London gallery to execute a dozen etchings of Venice over a three-month stay. Whistler lingered in Venice for fourteen months, producing over fifty prints as well as some paintings and pastels. The etchings were collected in two sets, known as the First Venice Set (1880) and the Second Venice Set (1886), and they represented a turning point in Whistler’s career. Doing away with any last remnants of anecdotal realism, these impressionist prints evoke a sense of everyday life in Venice using a spare and expressive visual shorthand. With the Venice Sets, Whistler began cutting his sheets at the plate mark, leaving only a tab for his trademark penciled butterfly signature denoting that the impression was printed by him.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler. American, 1834–1903. Upright Venice
from the Second Venice Set
.
1879–80. Etching printed in black on paper. Purchased. SC 1969:45. Photograph by Petegorsky/Gipe.Upright Venice is among the first etchings Whistler made upon his arrival in Venice in 1879. He touched it up months later, adding the waterfront scene at the bottom and more gondolas in the distance. The lightly bitten lines, printed in brownish-black ink, are so delicate they have the effect of embroidery, echoing the fibers of the woven cream paper. Whistler also toned the sheet with a faint veil of ink to evoke the fall of light and shadow.
The vertical composition of the etching, which recalls a Japanese print or scroll, creates a gentle spatial disorientation. The waterfront in the foreground and background appear as two free-floating planes, with the empty expanse of the water between anchored by the gondolas and their shadows. Although the skyline panorama is topographically accurate—it shows the buildings around the Church of Santa Maria della Salute as seen from a window across the San Marco basin waterway—the focus is on atmosphere rather than historical monuments or picturesque landscape.
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Thursday, August 30, 2012
Pandora's Box
Guest blogger Nathan Rubinfeld was a participant in the 2012 Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies at Smith College.
Master ZBM; Marco Angelo del Moro (thought to be). Italian, active 1565 – ca. 1586. Pandora’s Box or An Allegory of Les Sciences qui Éclairent l'esprit de l'homme (The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit),
1557. Etching on paper. Gift of Sue Welsh Reed, class of 1958, in honor of Priscilla Cunningham, class of 1958. SC 1973:19. Photograph by Petegorsky/Gipe.Master ZBM’s exquisite print, Pandora’s Box or An Allegory of Les Sciences qui Éclairent l'esprit de l'homme (The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit) is an ideal point of entry into the Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies’ current exhibition Outside The [Box] (on view in the Nixon Gallery at the Smith College Museum of Art from July 27 to September 30, 2012). Gathering fifteen students together from across the country for a six-week museum boot camp, the SIAMS program is a Pandora’s box of sorts. It has certain defined limits – like the four sides of a box – that both contain and open onto innumerable and mysterious fragments of knowledge for its participants.
Coming from a range of schools, and having studied in a variety of disciplines, the fifteen students were brought together to live and learn every aspect of the daily life of a museum and its staff. In addition to weekly assignments, we were given a room, roughly thirty objects thematically selected by the Smith College Museum of Art, and the task of mounting all aspects of a professional exhibition. The fifteen became three groups of five, as the students were divided into teams to take on the tasks that would make up the exhibition: Curatorial, Design and Public Presentation, and Education.
As a member of the Curatorial Team, I had the opportunity to experience the difficulties that go into an exhibition’s conception. Handed a considerably large gallery and thirty-some boxes, or artworks related thereto, we were presented with a challenge in defining the thematic overview of the exhibition. How could we make such a seemingly banal, everyday object be seen as exciting and enticing? How were we to adequately address the differing cultural origins of many of the works, as well as being sensitive to alternative meanings given to the box within cultures?
As our conversation began, one piece we had been given quickly became a pivotal work: Master ZBM’s print, Pandora's Box. We latched onto the etching for the story it enclosed, rather than for a primarily aesthetic reason. We saw Pandora’s box as the first box, as a paradigmatic box. But more than this, we saw in the myth of Pandora an instance in which a box had served as more than a box, functioning outside the realm of the purely utilitarian. The underlying themes that became guiding for us in defining the parameters of the exhibition were the box as an object that could excite curiosity, and the box as an everyday object that would invite thoughtful reconsideration and reinterpretation.
The myth of Pandora is definitive in Western ideas of the box as an object of curiosity and a container of mysterious contents. The myth is also a prime example of the historical transformation of a particular box. Though “Pandora’s box” is a common idiom today, it was not always a box, but rather a large and immovable earthenware vessel. Pandora, linked with the Biblical Eve as a woman unable to avoid temptation, was taken up by the Fathers of the Church who were influential in the transmission of the myth and the transformation of her vessel into a box. Just as Eve was understood to be responsible for the fall of man in delivering the apple to Adam, so Pandora became responsible in turn, as her cumbersome vessel was turned into a portable box.
Detail from Pandora’s Box or An Allegory of Les Sciences qui Éclairent l'esprit de l'homme (The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit).
Marco Angolo del Moro’s print differs from other representations of Pandora in three important ways, as lucidly described by art historians Dora and Erwin Panofsky in Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol. First, though her box traditionally held exclusively good or evil, del Moro’s Pandora released a strange combination of both. From the box emerge symbols of evil, as well as symbols of knowledge. Second, the figure of Pandora is blind, as made clear by her hand gesture, which reveals the absence of pupils. Pandora is not acting upon willful curiosity, but rather unseeingly or unwittingly. Finally, Panofsky describes Pandora’s ignorant action is a blessing in disguise, setting “in motion the powers of light that drive away the creatures of darkness.” The powers of light are personified in the leftmost figure, with her alert gaze and brilliant torch (see above), and the sun-god Apollo, seated in the sky (see below). Apollo points to Aquarius, the zodiacal sign of January, which marks the “Ascent of the Sun” after the peak of winter, symbolizing, in Panofsky’s words, “the beginning of a new year and a new era.” Marco Angolo del Moro’s print allegorically portrays Pandora as Ignorance, an instrument of blind fate bringing about an age of light from which she herself is forever excluded.
Detail from Pandora’s Box or An Allegory of Les Sciences qui Éclairent l'esprit de l'homme (The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit).
Beyond Apollo, and depicted in his infamous descent, is the angel Lucifer (see below). The inclusion of this Christian figure serves to make explicit the theological redefinition of the Pandora myth by the Fathers of the Church. Lucifer, in falling from the heavens, presents a visual analogy to the aforementioned fall of man. Del Moro’s etching, dated to 1557, coincides with the Renaissance and the revival of classical humanist ideals. The archetypal and all-knowing “Renaissance man” of the time presents an analogous embodiment of light to that of the torch holding figure beside Pandora. The print portrays the pursuit of knowledge during the Renaissance as a force of literal enlightenment combating the black night of ignorance feared by the Church. After all, “an idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.”
Detail from Pandora’s Box or An Allegory of Les Sciences qui Éclairent l'esprit de l'homme (The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit).
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Where Do You Put the Emphasis?
William T. Wiley is something of a cult hero among artists. He is associated with the West Coast Funk Art scene, the irreverent and whimsical anti-establishment art movement that blossomed at the University of California, Davis in the 1960s. His sculptures, paintings, watercolors and performance art works combine Zen philosophy, political commentary, satire, visual and verbal puns and quirky personal symbolism.
Wiley began working in watercolor in 1968, after a six month artist’s block. Small and delicate, and eminently out of fashion in the contemporary art world, watercolor allowed Wiley to work in a personal, searching, off-beat manner. His watercolors, like his sculptures, are assemblages of sorts, contrasting exquisitely rendered drawings, often of an assortment of curiously grouped objects, with hand-written text. Influenced by Zen koans, statements of questions that resist linear thought, Wiley produced images and texts that blur the line between wisdom and whimsy.
William T. Wiley. American, b. 1937. Where Do You Put the Emphasis,
1971. Watercolor and ink on cream colored paper. SC 2012:1-21. Photography by Amanda Shubert.Our watercolor and ink drawing Where Do You Put the Emphasis depicts a series of blue circles against a craggy background that resembles desert topography. The text reads: “Where do you put the emphasis? Providing there is such a thing.” The reference to “emphasis” suggests punctuation (especially since there is no final period in the text), but visually the circles evoke marbles or billiard balls more than periods, games of strategy, and chance.
This little drawing is one of my favorite objects from our new Pokross Collection of modern and contemporary art from Shared Inspiration: The Muriel K. and David R. Pokross Collection. As I researched Wiley for the exhibition, trying to learn more about this object, I was pulled into the labyrinth of associations that is Wiley’s personal mythology. For starters, I found that the circle motif kept cropping up elsewhere in Wiley’s work during 1971.
In Random Remarks and Digs (pictured below), he conceived of the circles as atoms and molecules visible to the naked eye:
I even found the motif elsewhere in our collection. Coast Reverse, printed on chamois leather, was made in 1972:
William T. Wiley. American, b. 1937. Coast Revere,
1972. Chamois printed on special Arjomari with hand acrylic painting and drawing. SC 1972:38-8b. Photography by Amanda Shubert.Read more about Shared Inspiration: The Muriel K. and David R. Pokross Collection here and here. Then come see Where Do You Put the Emphasis and Coast Revere by making an appointment at the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
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Friday, August 17, 2012
Outside the [Box]
Guest blogger Kendyll Gross was a 2012 participant in the Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies at Smith College. She also served as the 2012 Brown SIAMS Fellow, which offers one SIAMS student a four-week internship in the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
The Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies class of 2012 at the opening reception for Outside the [Box].
Photograph by Julie Warchol.When I was accepted into the Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies (SIAMS)program, I could wrap my mind around the weekly readings and writing assignments, the extensive traveling, and the career exploration days we would be doing. However, I could not fully grasp the concept of putting on an exhibition in only six weeks, something that usually takes years of planning and work. It was not until I set foot in the museum’s Nixon gallery for the first time that the imminence of our exhibition seemed so real. It was exciting to see the objects that we could include in our show, but it was also overwhelming knowing how much work we had to do in so little time.
Our class of fifteen was divided into three groups of five: Curatorial, Education, and Design and Public Presentation. After choosing thirty-three pieces, Curatorial was then faced with the challenge of weaving together these diverse objects into a single theme. How would we tie together a twentieth-century W. Eugene Smith photograph with an eighteenth-century French snuff box? The Master ZBM print, Pandora’s Box or An Allegory of Les Sciences qui Éclairent l'esprit de l'homme (The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit), was a great inspiration for our theme. The myth of Pandora’s Box has popularized the notion of the box as an object of curiosity as it conceals its contents from the viewer. We wanted our exhibition to challenge the idea of what a box was by evoking a dialogue between objects from diverse cultures and time periods in a respectful manner. Just like Pandora, we wanted our audience to be fascinated by our boxes and to question them - to truly think outside the [box].
With our theme and object checklist established, it was time for Design and Public Presentation and Education to make the gallery come alive. Design and Public Presentation were responsible for the overall design of the show and the marketing materials, choosing a color scheme that would complement the objects, organizing the layout of the gallery, and installing the art. As a member of the Education team, I worked closely with fellow classmates to create the didactic materials for outside the [box]. We did not want the labels to dominate the viewer’s experience, so we mixed a few extensive labels of varying lengths with short “tombstones” labels. We also refrained from using words and concepts that appeared too academic. An alcove within the gallery serves as a place for families to reflect upon what they see in the exhibition. It also gives them the chance to tack sticky notes on the museum’s wall while reading an adorable story about a bunny with a grand imagination. While the introductory wall text sets the tone of the exhibition, the kids’ pamphlet and audio tour serve as guides to help the audience interact with the show.
It was an honor to work with such an enthusiastic and bright group as a part of the SIAMS class of 2012. Together, we constructed an entire exhibition from scratch in six weeks, utilizing each other and our resourceful SCMA mentors for guidance and support. We truly hope that the Northampton community will enjoy our show as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Outside the [Box] is on view in the Nixon gallery until September 30, 2012. Read more about the exhibition here.
This installation shot features works by Larry Bell, Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Duchamp, and many others. Photograph by Julie Warchol.
SCMA staff members check out works by Claes Oldenburg, Max Peckstein, and Jane Hammond. Photograph by Julie Warchol.
The Education alcove space, where visitors can create and post their own responses to the show. Photograph by Julie Warchol.Comments
Marion Goethals
out of the [box] and SIAMS 2012
Can you imagine living and working with 16 total strangers for six summer weeks? : through sickness and health, richer and poorer, heat and cold, Lamont and Hillyer, Hubbard and hiking Mount Holyoke? Not only to live, learn, and travel together with all that it implies, but to develop a full exhibition project together in a very short time frame?
The Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies Class of 2012 was the “sure, we can do that” class; the “not a problem” class; they had together a great can-do attitude. But they had much much more than positive attitude; each one is extremely smart and deeply thoughtful. They both taught and learned from each other just as their four teachers have taught and learned from them.
But this class of strangers came together particularly to ‘protect and honor’ their boxes, the objects which you may see at the Smith College museum in their show “out of the [box]”. They united in their recognition that the objects in the show -- which originate from all around the globe and from many cultural traditions -- should be allowed to tell their own stories and not to have their heritage consumed by an overly didactic organizing theme. That intelligent respect for the boxes, and for each other, is what we mean by ‘protect and honor’.
One participant succinctly summed up the impact of the SIAMS program: “How could I explain that we didn’t do it for the final destination?” So yes, DO imagine living and working for six weeks with total strangers because quite quickly you find, as they did, a common creative purpose and become friends and colleagues.
Thanks to everyone, and to Kendyll Gross and Julie Warchol for their posts, Marion Goethals, Director, SIAMSCorinne Bart
Taming of a Garden
Is a gallery boundless? Due to the free form aestheticism of its composition, one would guess so. Yet this characteristic is often overlooked; and by many art exhibitioners, may even be denied.
A gallery is a living collection of artistic specimens. Carefully crafted by an artist, each art piece is enveloped in its own aura. Like a seed, each piece waits for its surface to be scratched by the gallery's viewership. With more visitors, more activity, the gallery starts to come alive.
Galleries' pieces take root in their respective places. They grow, develop an aesthetic presence which, overtime, become interwoven in that of the other works.
Once established, a gallery is its own garden; a box, if you will, whose own dynamic aura interchanges with the particular environment it is suited to. But like every garden, there is a gardener. Who picks out the pieces, arranges them, has an often intuitive sense of which will grow well near what. The success of the box is dependent on this gardener, yet, need only be fed resources once it has blossomed and been enriched by the feet, breath, and energy of its visitorship.
However, the SIAMS gallery is anything but boxed by the planks of a single mind, the masonry of a set of hands. Still groomed, still intricately arranged and planted, it is not wild. But is it boundless? I would argue yes, and rightfully so.
The SIAMS participants have given way to nature of the gallery-creating process. Their exhibit holds a respect for the erection of these five pillars: Curation, Education, and Design and Public Presentation; which uphold the institution of formalized human aestheticism. With ripe and ever vigorous professionalism, depth has been given to the notion, "out of the box".
For this, I offer the utmost esteem and gratitude for Ms. Kendyll Gross and the rest of the SIAMS class of 2012.
Your work will and should be remembered. Good luck with your future endeavors, though from here they appear very bright. -
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Discover the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Did you know...?
The Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs is an incredible resource for groups and individuals interested in viewing works on paper in an intimate environment. Housed within the Smith College Museum of Art, the Cunningham Center allows visitors to experience direct, close encounters with prints, drawings, and photographs. Our collection includes over 16,000 works on paper dating anywhere from the 15th century to the present, and the number is constantly growing as we acquire new works! Visiting the Museum is just seeing the tip of the iceberg; prints, drawings, and photographs comprise over 70% of the Smith College Museum of Art’s collection.
This blog is our virtual tool with which we can share highlights from our collection of works on paper, as well as behind-the-scenes experiences of those who work in or visit the Cunningham Center. The best way to access our extraordinary collection is, however, to come visit us in person! We strongly encourage all visitors – individuals or groups; art enthusiasts; families; students, scholars, and classes of any level or discipline.
The Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs is open by appointment Tuesday-Friday from 10 AM – 4 PM, year-round. You are invited schedule a time to view specific prints, drawings, and photographs of your choosing which can be found using our online database (make sure you specify that you are searching the Smith College collection in the drop-down menu). To make an appointment, or for further information, please call 413.585.2764 or e-mail ccenter@smith.edu. We, the staff of the Cunningham Center, hope you will take this amazing opportunity to discover, explore, and personally engage with our collection!
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Thursday, August 9, 2012
Reproducing Reality
Japan and Photography in the 19th-Century
When American Commodore Matthew C. Perry landed in Yokohama, Japan in 1854, the country had been in a state of isolation for over 200 years. Wary of the influences of Western civilizations, the island nation sought to preserve its culture and autonomy by shutting out the rest of the world, beginning in 1635. This era of Japanese history is known as the Edo or Tokugawa Period, when Japan was a feudal society, ruled by daimyo (lords), shoguns (generals), and samurai (aristocratic warriors). In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown and a traditional monarchy was reinstated, beginning the period known as the Meiji Restoration, after the ruling Emperor Meiji. After re-opening its gates to the world, Japan was in a state of rapid modernization and Westernization, which were considered synonymous at times.
Photography, a modern invention, was introduced to Japan in the 1850s. (The first datable photographs taken in Japan were shot in 1854 by daguerreotypist Eliphalet Brown, Jr., who accompanied Commodore Perry on his expedition.) Originally met with widespread hostility and resistance, it was not until the 1860s that photography grew in popularity. The Japanese word for “photograph” is shashin, meaning “reproducing reality” – a translation that is only partially true. There was a significant Western market for tourist photographs of Japan, particularly since no foreigners were previously able to enter the country for hundreds of years. These photographs were often contrived, exoticized images of feudal Japan, sold as both landscapes and studio portraits of “native types.” However realistic or not they actually were, these photographs are fascinating documents of an antiquated, romantic view into a culture that was changing at breakneck speed.
Felice A. Beato. British, born Italy, ca. 1825 – ca. 1904. Samurai of the Satsuma Clan,
ca. 1868. Albumen print with hand coloring. Purchased with the Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund, with funds given in memory of Nancy Newhall (Nancy Parker, class of 1930) and in honor of Beaumont Newhall, and with funds given in honor of Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. SC 1982:38-2 (31)Felice Beato
The most well-known and influential photographer in 19th-century Japan was actually not Japanese at all. Felice Beato was an Italian-British photographer who worked in Japan from 1863 until 1884. His photographic albums are unique visual documents of the last years of the country’s feudal period, 1865-68. His work was hugely influential to all subsequent 19th-century Japanese photography, particularly with his albumen prints which were hand-colored by Japanese artists. Many of these artists were formerly employed by coloring woodblocks for the production of ukiyo-e prints; Beato photographed one such painter from his studio (see below). (Click here to see Amanda Shubert’s discussion of this popular art form, which photography supplanted in popularity in the second half of the 19th-century.) Beato’s work is closely related to the ukiyo-e tradition in production and aesthetics; his studio portraits of geisha and tradespeople are quite unlike the picturesque and sentimentalized commercial photographs of his time.
Felice A. Beato. British, born Italy, ca. 1825 – ca. 1904. The Belle of the Period,
ca. 1868. Albumen print with hand coloring mounted on cream colored paperboard. Purchased with the Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund, with funds given in memory of Nancy Newhall (Nancy Parker, class of 1930) and in honor of Beaumont Newhall, and with funds given in honor of Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. SC 1982:38-2 (13)
Felice A. Beato. British, born Italy, ca. 1825 – ca. 1904. Our Painter,
ca. 1868. Albumen print with hand coloring. Purchased with the Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund, with funds given in memory of Nancy Newhall (Nancy Parker, class of 1930) and in honor of Beaumont Newhall, and with funds given in honor of Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. SC 1982:38-2 (45)Baron Raimund von Stillfried
Felice Beato’s legacy was carried on by his contemporary competitor, Baron Raimund von Stillfried, an Austrian nobleman. From 1871 until 1885, Stillfried lived and worked in Yokohama, the largest city for exporting photographs, where Beato also had his studio. He was the first European photographer to use Japanese apprentices. Stillfried’s most famous photographic album, Views and Costumes of Japan, includes the last depictions of samurai warriors taken before they were no longer allowed by law to wear their topknot hairstyle or carry swords, symbols of their aristocratic status which was dismantled with demise of the Tokugawa shogunate.
Baron R. von Stillfried. Austrian, 1839 – 1911. Three Japanese ladies with hands entwined,
1875-1885. Albumen print with hand coloring. Purchased with the Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund, with funds given in memory of Nancy Newhall (Nancy Parker, class of 1930) and in honor of Beaumont Newhall, and with funds given in honor of Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. SC 1982:38-1014
Baron R. von Stillfried. Austrian, 1839 – 1911. Portrait: Old Beggar,
1875-1885. Albumen print with hand coloring. Purchased with the Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund, with funds given in memory of Nancy Newhall (Nancy Parker, class of 1930) and in honor of Beaumont Newhall, and with funds given in honor of Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. SC 1982:38-1016Kusakabe Kimbei
One of Stillfried’s Japanese apprentices was Kusakabe Kimbei, who became a commercial photographer with his own studio in Yokohama. His and Stillfried’s photographs are instilled with a psychological sense of their subjects that is lacking in the work of Beato. While he worked in relative obscurity during his lifetime, Kimbei is now one of the most renowned Japanese photographers of the 19th-century. Pictured below are works by Kimbei which the Smith College Museum of Art acquired recently.
Kusakabe Kimbei. Japanese, 1841 – 1934. Umbrella Maker,
1880s. Albumen print with hand coloring. Purchased with the fund in honor of Charles Chetham. SC 2011:31-1
Kusakabe Kimbei. Japanese, 1841 – 1934. Vegetable Pedler,
1890. Albumen print with hand coloring. Purchased with the fund in honor of Charles Chetham. SC 2011:31-2Comments
Stratton McCrady
Thank you
I am grateful to Smith College Museum and the Cunningham Center for the inspiration to recognize the value of this work and to pursue purchase of it.
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Thursday, August 2, 2012
Visiting James Ensor
A couple of years ago I ventured out on a small personal pilgrimage to visit the hometown and gravesite of an artist whom I consider to be one of Belgium’s best; James Ensor (1860-1949).
Since I’m originally from the Netherlands, I’m quite familiar with the neighboring country of Belgium, however I had never been to the seaside town of Oostende. I was very excited to discover Ensor’s old stomping grounds.
Ensor spent most of his life in Oostende with the exception of two years where he studied at the Academie Royal des Beaux-Arts in Brussels only to return completely disillusioned, referring to the Academy as the” establishment of the near blind.” It was in Oostende where he was inspired to create his unique artistic vision.
Oostende is one of many interesting but forgotten Northern seaside places which used to draw a rather sophisticated crowd in the 19th-century.
Its glorious past lingers only faintly in the large, now dilapidated, buildings which immediately bring on a rather melancholic feeling, especially on a dreary fall day.
While known for its seasonal lively carnival crowds, a spectacle often displayed in Ensor’s art, historically, it is a rather dark place. Coveted because of its strategic location, it was frequently destroyed by invading armies. It was also the site of the bloodiest battle of the Eighty Years War and it is rumored that human bones are still to be found in its dunes. Ensor was clearly intrigued by these battles, as he drew quite a few of them. The Smith College Museum of Art owns a small etching called La Bataille des Èperons d'Or (The Battle of the Golden Spurs) from 1895 – a darkly comical, cartoonish rendition of a famous Flemish battle which took place in 1302.
James Ensor, Belgian, 1860 - 1949. La Bataille des Èperons d'Or.
1895. Etching on paper. Purchased. SC 1949:23. Photograph by Petegorsky/Gipe.
Detail of La Bataille des Èperons d'Or.
For many years, Ensor fought his own personal battles with the local arts establishment, until finally the tide turned in his favor. During his early years, his work was mostly rejected and he was regarded to be eccentric and quite a loner. Later in life, after he had turned into an old, dignified, and white-bearded man, he was often seen wandering the broad boulevard.
Society finally caught up with him and his art and he came to enjoy the fruits of his labor during his lifetime – an outcome not often enjoyed by such a recalcitrant visionary artist.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Diebenkorn's Untitled #25
Richard Diebenkorn. Untitled #25 , 1981. Gouache and crayon on two sheets of heavyweight glossy white paper. Gift of The Pokross Art Collection, donated in accordance with the wishes of Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 by her children, Joan Pokross Curhan, class of 1959, William R. Pokross and David R. Pokross Jr. in loving memory of their parents, Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 and David R. Pokross. SC 2012:1-6
Richard Diebenkorn grew up in San Francisco and attended Stanford University and the California School of Fine Arts, where he studied with the artist David Park. Together, Diebenkorn and Park were two founders of the Bay Area Figurative School, choosing figuration over abstraction, the prevailing style of the time. Unlike Park, however, Diebenkorn embraced abstraction in the mid-60s, when he embarked on the series of works for which he is best known: more than 140 monumental paintings that he titled Ocean Park after the Santa Monica neighborhood where his studio was located. With their linear planes and luminous, broadly-brushed glazes, the Ocean Park paintings dispensed of figures but resembled landscapes.
Untitled #25 comes from a series of drawings Diebenkorn executed during a hiatus in the Ocean Park series. Made in 1981 and 1982, they are based on playing card figures such as clubs and spades, shapes that had fascinated Diebenkorn since childhood.
Diebenkorn embarked on the playing card drawings after his mother, Dorothy Diebenkorn, became severely ill during the early 1980s. Finding it difficult to maintain the intense concentration required for the Ocean Park paintings, he turned to the new medium as a temporary diversion. Ultimately, the project occupied a steady year and a half of work. Untitled #25 was one of fifty sheets exhibited at the Knoedler Gallery in New York City in 1982.
Like the Ocean Park paintings, #25 gives the sense of something seem outside a window, perhaps an abstracted landscape. The loops of the club could be abstract forms, but the recognizable shape also ties this drawing back to the representational sphere. In doing so, it links Diebenkorn’s early figurative work with his later abstract work.
Untitled #25 is currently on view in Shared Inspiration: The Muriel K. and David R. Pokross Collection until July 29. If you cannot make it before then and would like to see this or other works from our vast collection, the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs is open on weekdays by appointment. Call 413-585-2764 or e-mail ccenter@smith.edu to schedule a visit.
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Friday, July 20, 2012
The Great Wall
Nevelson, Louise. American 1899—1988. The Great Wall, 1970. Intaglio series, assemblage of wood grained lead foil relief elements bonded to heavy rag paper. Gift of Louise Nevelson. SC 1973:27-2. Photograph by Julie Warchol.
Known for her large-scale wall assemblages, or “environments,” made entirely of wood boxes and debris usually painted a uniform black, Louise Nevelson’s work relentlessly defies categorization of both style and media. She was interested in African and pre-Columbian art, as well as Cubism for its treatment of space and form, but refused to be affiliated with any modern movements or “-isms.” Similarly, her unconventional explorations of diverse media – sculpture, painting, printmaking, and even tapestry – reflect her singular, noncompliant artistic practice. Blurring these boundaries with the utmost confidence, Nevelson began making prints in the early 1950s which informed and reflected upon her sculptures. It was not until the 1970s, however, that she created a union of sculpture and printmaking.
The Great Wall perfectly exemplifies this cross-media relationship. It is a part of the “Walls” series of six lead intaglio relief prints in which Nevelson integrated wood relief sculptures directly into the printmaking process. Built specifically for the prints, the relief sculptures were used to emboss, or physically imprint, the surface of the lead foil. Nevelson then arranged the lead foil pieces on paper to create the finished print that we see above. In the “Walls” series, Nevelson truly heightens and embraces the sculptural possibilities of her prints.
Detail from The Great Wall. Photograph by Julie Warchol.
Nevelson’s The Great Wall highlights her obsession with the shifting subtleties of light, shadow, and surface texture. Reminiscent of her sculpture environments, each “cell” within the towering composition contains a microcosm of embossed organic shapes which protrude, capturing the impression of the wood grain from the original reliefs. With time, the surface will continue to evolve as the lead oxidizes, creating a unique patina. These mutable qualities lend an enigmatic aesthetic to her work that corresponds to the mystical nature of the artist herself. In her insistence on expanding the limits of printmaking and sculpture, Louise Nevelson exposes the amorphous space created at their intersection: “My total conscious search in life has been for a new seeing, a new image, a new insight. This search not only includes the object, but the in-between place. The dawns and the dusks. The objective world, the heavenly spheres, the places between the land and sea…”
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
Ghosts in the Streets: Whistler and Photography
My summer corridor show, Image and After-Image: Whistler and Photography , pairs the etchings of James Abbott McNeill Whistler with nineteenth century photographs to look at the relationship between the revival of etching and the birth of photography in the Victorian era. Whistler, a pioneer of the Etching Revival movement that sought to transform etching from a medium for technological reproduction to an art form of spontaneity and refinement, brought a vivid new imagination to the aesthetic possibilities of the graphic line. But unlike etchers, early photographers were dealing with an entirely new technology.
Gustave Lancelot. French, 1830 – 1906. Departement de l’Aube Archeologique & Pittoresque.
n.d. Albumen print. Purchased with Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund, with funds given in memory of Nancy Newhall (Nancy Parker, class of 1930) and in honor of Beaumont Newhall, and with funds given in honor of Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. SC 1982:38-838. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.Picturesque street scenes were seen both in etchings and in photographs during the Victorian period. While photographers could document the way city streets actually looked, they were also cramped by an odd limitation. The long exposure times required by early cameras made it impossible to record objects in motion. Photographs of street scenes during this period are usually eerily devoid of people. They might have walked down the street while the picture was being taken, but they don’t appear in the image: they slip outside of the camera’s view and melt out of sight.
Detail from Departement de l’Aube Archeologique & Pittoresque.
Occasionally, however, moving objects are half-recorded by the camera, creating whitish blurs in the photograph known as “ghosts.” In this photograph by Gustave Lancelot, the ghost of a horse is discernible at the front of the carriage on the right side of the street. (The horse’s front legs are clearly articulated but its torso and head are out of focus.) Two other ghosts that mar the surface of the image—one on the sidewalk beside the horse, beneath the streetlamp, and one on the right-hand sidewalk at the first street corner, between the three square boxes—indicate the presence of people moving through the photograph. By contrast, a single figure, perhaps strategically placed by the photographer, is clearly represented on the left sidewalk, sitting in a chair.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Street in Saverne.
1858. Etching printed in black on paper. Gift of Jean MacLachan, class of 1937. SC 1969:30. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe.Lancelot’s photograph is paired in the exhibition with Whistler’s first ever street scene, called Street in Saverne. Here, Whistler brings a more deliberate ghostliness to his depiction of a city street, using dramatic light and dark contrasts, a tunnel-like composition and apparitional shadows to create an unsettling intensity. The single ghostly figure, like the ghosts in the Lancelot print, seems to be melting into shadow. Whistler’s choice of a nocturnal scene reflects a singular change in urban planning in the mid-nineteenth century: the introduction of street lamps to European cities. Street lamps transformed nocturnal views, both in terms of the lived experience of cities at night and the possibilities for artistic representation. By reinforcing the mystery of the street seen by lamplight, both ominous and beautiful, Whistler depicts the ghostly uncertainty of his increasingly modern, industrial world.
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EvaMark
great photos
Great looking sepia photos and nice article! Thanks.
http://www.evamark.lt