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March 31—July 30, 2006
Featuring more than 60 sculptures in bronze,
wood, and terracotta by Alexander Archipenko (1887–1964), this
show was organized by the Ukrainian Museum in New York in collaboration
with The Archipenko Foundation and will travel to the Chazen Museum
of Art (formerly the Elvehjem Museum of Art) in Madison, Wisconsin,
after being displayed at Smith. Jaroslaw
Leshko, recently retired from the faculty of the Smith College art
department, served as exhibition curator and author of the accompanying
catalogue. Leshko will
present the keynote lecture for the opening of the exhibition, as
well as a number of talks here at Smith in support of this internationally
significant show.
One of the most important Ukrainian visual
artists, Archipenko was, during his lifetime, sometimes compared
in significance to his contemporary, Pablo Picasso (who is the subject
of the other “Modern Masters” show
this summer). Although Picasso is universally acknowledged as
one of the towering figures in the history of modern art, Archipenko’s
influence is less widely recognized. “Archipenko’s
oeuvre is a brilliant, cohesive document of twentieth-century
art,” Leshko writes in the exhibition catalogue, “intellectually
rigorous, technically skilled, and visually compelling.” Having
lived in Paris during “the incomparable historical moment” from
1908-1920, Archipenko was present at the genesis of cubism, and by
working with its key figures and introducing important innovations,
helped shape the movement’s exploration of the relationship between
volume and space. “By 1920, Archipenko had become the
most important sculptor of the era,” Leshko writes, “a
position validated by an exhibition of his works at the 1920 Venice
Biennale, then the highest honor accorded a living artist.”
The occasion for this show came when the Ukrainian
Museum decided to feature Archipenko as its inaugural exhibition
upon reopening in a new building. “Mrs. Archipenko was instrumental in this
show coming into being,” says Leshko, “as probably close
to seventy percent of the show consists of work from her collection,
the rest coming from other museums and private collections. Because
this exhibition was being prepared at the same time that the Ukrainian
Museum’s new building was under construction, Mrs. Archipenko
took a leap of faith and agreed to have a show in a museum that did
not even have walls when our discussions started. She has since
called it the best Archipenko show ever, and she has seen enough of
them to be in a position to comment on that.”
Coordinating this show has occupied Leshko
for the past two years and will fill another year of his retirement
after the show closes at Smith, as it travels to an additional venue. “It has
been a very enjoyable experience for me to speak about the show in
New York and to lead many different groups of tourists through the
exhibition. The most exciting of these talks was a surprise visit
from Victor Yuschenko [President of the Ukraine since leading the October
2004 ‘Orange Revolution’], whom I was able to personally
guide through the exhibition for a full half-hour during his trip to
New York.” Vision and Continuity surveys Archipenko’s full career,
and Leshko’s presentation of the material assesses the significance
of his later work, which never received the same critical acclaim as
the earlier contributions and has less historical resonance among what
he calls the “cascading ‘isms’ of twentieth-century
art.” To organize the artist’s body of work, Leshko
has divided the exhibition into four thematic areas. Form
and Space shows Archipenko’s innovations relating to
sculptural volumes, including the radical notion of displacing heads
or torsos in human figures, leaving voids in their place. Several
sculptures in this section typify the artist’s best-known work
and introduce the concave/convex or solid/void themes to which he would
frequently return throughout his career. Content into Form shows
the range of contexts and sources Archipenko accessed through his career
and the richness of conceptual influences, from depictions of historical
figures to spiritual and religious themes to the world of popular entertainment. Motion
and Stasis traces his contributions to the recurring modernist
theme of motion, especially that of the human form. Depictions
of walking and dancing—including works that resonate strongly
with Matisse’s series of dance paintings—interact with
internal, contemplative forms of bodies at rest. Construction,
Materials, Colors documents the artist’s ongoing experiments
with traditional materials like terracotta and wood; unusual materials
like plastic, bakelite, and formica; and a form he created, known as
sculpto-painting.
Photographs: Petro Hrycyk - The Ukrainian
Museum, New York |