ABOUT - Pyramid Atlantic Art Center presents the 11th Biennial Book Arts Fair and Conference, the preeminent book arts event on the east coast. Now in its third decade, the fair will showcase a dynamic array of innovative book art, limited edition prints, fine papers, and specialty tools along with a rich program of notable speakers, demonstrations, and special exhibitions. This three day event will connect international artists, scholars, collectors, publishers, and art lovers. Serving to inform and inspire, the Book Arts Fair and Conference is a celebration of the printed form and the book as art.
Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips combines masterworks from the collections of the Allen Memorial Art Museum and The Phillips Collection. The 25 works on loan from Oberlin date from the 16th to the 20th centuries, and include stellar works by artists of the British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish schools. Highlights include Hendrick ter Bruggen’s Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene (1625), one of the most important examples of northern baroque painting in the United States; Rubens’s The Finding of Erichthonius (1632–33); and The Fountain of Life, a superb 16th-century painting probably painted in Spain after a work by Jan van Eyck.
The exhibition showcases an unconventional hallmark of The Phillips Collection, the mixing of works of different periods and nationalities in changing installations to reveal new affinities between works of art. This approach reflects the views of museum founder, Duncan Phillips (1886–1966), who saw the history of art as a conversation through the ages among artists and works of art. In his collection of contemporary art, Phillips included several old masters, including Giorgione, El Greco, and Goya, and an early wish list included the names of others.
Going to the heart of Phillips’s claim, among Side by Side’s loosely themed groupings is one that brings together artists who copied paintings by their predecessors in the Louvre. The Allen’s Rubens appears with Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880–81) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who is known to have copied works by Rubens. In the second half of his career, after abandoning impressionism, Renoir again looked to Rubens for inspiration. Related works in this section of the exhibition are from the Phillips, by Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, and Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix.
Several works from Oberlin show the world at night: Dovedale by Moonlight (c. 1784–85) by Joseph Wright of Derby, Pier Francesco Mola’s Mercury Putting Argus to Sleep (1645–55), and Giuseppe Cesari’s The Agony in the Garden (Christ on the Mount of Olives) (1597–98). The moon is the light source in the first two, while Christ’s angelic vision illuminates the third. Their silvery gleam is reflected in later paintings in the Phillips, including Arthur Dove’sMe and the Moon (1937) and George Inness’s Moonlight, Tarpon Springs (1892).
In another group of landscapes, Oberlin’s shimmering View of Venice: The Ducal Palace, Dogana and Part of San Giorgio (1841) by Joseph William Mallord Turner, joins one by his rival John Constable, represented in the Phillips by On the River Stour (1834–37). Both artists had a powerful effect on modern landscape painting. Their works hang with paintings by Claude Monet, an artist profoundly influenced by Turner. Oberlin’sGarden of the Princess, Louvre (1867) is one of Monet’s first views of Paris and represents a much earlier stage in his development than The Road to Vétheuil (1879) and Val-Saint-Nicholas, near Dieppe (Morning) (1897) owned by the Phillips. Other modern landscapes on view in Side by Side include Paul Cézanne’s Viaduct at L’ Estaque (1882) from Oberlin and add new dimensions to the rich imagery of the south of France, represented at the Phillips by paintings by Pierre Bonnard and Vincent van Gogh.
A display of self-portraits includes one of the most dramatic works on loan from Oberlin. Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner expresses the artist’s terror in the face of war. Kirchner wears the uniform of his artillery regiment, his vacant eyes are pupil-less, and his right hand has been amputated. Nearby are the Phillips’s rough-looking Cézanne (1878–80) and Oberlin’s Michiel Sweerts, in which the artist presents himself as a gentleman (1656).
Outside the Rothko Room hang a trio of historic New York Schoolworks from Oberlin, by Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Gottlieb’s The Rape of Persephone and Rothko’sThe Syrian Bull, exhibited in 1943 at the Third Annual Exhibition of Modern Painters and Sculptors, were seized on by critic Edward Alden Jewell in the New York Times as examples of incomprehensible recent art. A few days later, Newman helped Gottlieb and Rothko to draft a rebuttal that set the aesthetic and cultural themes for the New York School. In gratitude, Gottlieb and Rothko gave Newman the two paintings. Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips is organized by The Phillips Collection and the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
More than sixty years have passed since the critic Robert Coates, writing in the New Yorker in 1946, first used the term “Abstract Expressionism” to describe the richly colored canvases of Hans Hofmann. Over the years the name has come to designate the paintings and sculptures of artists as different as Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner and David Smith.
Beginning in the 1940s, under the aegis of founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., works by these artists began to enter MoMA’s collection. Thanks to the sustained support of the curators, the trustees, and the artists themselves, these ambitious acquisitions continued throughout the second half of the last century and produced a collection of Abstract Expressionist art of unrivaled breadth and depth.
Drawn entirely from the Museum’s vast holdings, Abstract Expressionist New York underscores the achievements of a generation that catapulted New York
City to the center of the international art world during the 1950s, and left as its legacy some of the twentieth century’s greatest masterpieces.
Galleries on the fourth floor present Abstract Expressionist paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and archival materials in a display subtitled The Big Picture, marking the first time in the new Museum building’s history that a full floor has been devoted to a single theme. The exhibition continues on the floors below, where focused shows—Rock Paper Scissors on the second floor, and Ideas Not Theories on the third floor—reveal distinct facets of the movement as it developed in diverse mediums, adding to a historical overview of the era and giving a sense of its great depth and complexity. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication.
Related Resources EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS Watch a video Works donated by Biography of Attend a Concert View the Exhibition Film Conservation Features EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS NGA Art Talk: Kimberly A. Jones, associate curator, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington and Maygene Daniels, chief of Gallery Archives, National Gallery of Art and Franklin Kelly, deputy director, National Gallery of Art Part 2, Part 2, Getting to Know Maud and Chester Dale Purchase the Curator NGA Art Talk: Garden Café Français Press Materials (9/11/09) Press Materials (12/17/09) |
Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962 included a generous endowment as well as one of America's most important collections of French painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This special exhibition, the first in 45 years to explore the extraordinary legacy left to the nation by this passionate collector, features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings.
Among the masterpieces on view are Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot'sForest of Fontainebleau (1834), Auguste Renoir's A Girl with a Watering Can (1876), Mary Cassatt's Boating Party (1893/1894), Edouard Manet's Old Musician (1862), Pablo Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques(1905), and George Bellows' Blue Morning (1909). Other artists represented include Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Claude Monet.
Dale was an astute businessman who made his fortune on Wall Street in the bond market. He thrived on forging deals and translated much of this energy and talent into his art collecting. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Art from 1943 and as president from 1955 until his death in 1962. Portraits of Dale by Salvador Dalí and Diego Rivera are included in the show, along with portraits of Dale's wife Maud (who greatly influenced his interest in art) painted by George Bellows and Fernand Léger.
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art.
Sponsor: The exhibition is made possible by United Technologies Corporation.
Schedule: National Gallery of Art, January 31, 2010–January 2, 2012
Passes: Passes are not required for this exhibition.
The exhibition is on view in the National Gallery's West Building.
Ex Libris: Chester Dale
Exhibition Highlights
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery. Please follow the links below for related online resources or visit ourcurrent exhibitions schedule.
Held in conjunction with From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, this focus exhibition explores the relationships Chester (1883–1962) and Maud Dale (1876–1953) had with various contemporary artists. The Dales often asked artists to sign publications and were occasionally rewarded with memorable drawings and inscriptions as well as autographs. Chester Dale bequeathed his entire collection of more than 1,500 volumes and 1,200 auction catalogues to the National Gallery of Art, where they now reside in the library as part of his extraordinary legacy.
A selection of inscribed books from Chester Dale's collection is featured in this exhibition, supplemented by photographs from the National Gallery of Art Gallery Archives. These photographs show the Dales with artists such as Henri Matisse and Salvador Dalí, as well as depictions of how paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso were displayed in various Dale residences. In addition, the National Portrait Gallery has been kind enough to allow reproduction of Dale's portrait by one of these artists, Miguel Covarrubias.
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art.
Schedule: National Gallery of Art, January 31–July 18, 2010
