Philadelphia Photographic Publications awarded

Philadelphia Museum of Art Publications Receive US National Recognition

Two publications developed by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition India: A Celebration of Independence, and one designed for Best Dressed: 250 Years of Style, were award recipients in the Museum Publications Design Competition. Announcements were made on May 11, 1998, in Los Angeles, during the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums.

Taking first prize in the poster category was the Museum's design for the photography exhibition, India: A Celebration of Independence. The poster reproduces Women Praying at Dawn, Srinagar, 1948, an image by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The poster was designed by Diane Gottardi, Senior Graphic Designer with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

An opening announcement for the India exhibition received honorable mention in the invitations category. Incorporating Gandhi at a Prayer Meeting, Birla House, Bombay, a 1946 photograph by Sunil Janah, and Mary Ellen Mark's Ganges River, 1989, the invitation was also designed by Diane Gottardi, with the assistance of Paula Cyhan. India: A Celebration of Independence was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with Aperture Foundation, and was on view at the Museum from July 6 through August 31, 1997.

Honorable mention in the poster category was awarded to the striking design produced for Best Dressed: A Celebration of Style, an exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and on view from October 21, 1997, through January 4, 1998. Designed by James Scott, Associate Designer with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the poster highlights a dramatically cropped, kaleidoscopically colorful detail from Issey Miyake's 1994 Flying Saucer dress.

The Department of Publications and Graphics of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was established in 1968. Headed by George Marcus, the department develops and publishes exhibition catalogues, scholarly and popular examinations of the Museum's permanent collections, and graphic materials related to many aspects of the Museum's activities.

Philadelphia Artists Celebrating Fleisher Challenge

Philadelphia Museum of Art Exhibits 20 Philadelphia Artists To Salute 20 Years Of Samuel S. Fleisher Challenge Exhibition

This year the venerable Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial-a tuition-free art school and gallery located in South Philadelphia-celebrates its 100th anniversary. At the same time, its Challenge series of juried exhibitions, which since its inception in 1978 has been among Philadelphia's most prestigious non-commercial exhibition programs, celebrates its 20th year. Twenty Philadelphia Artists: Celebrating Fleisher Challenge at Twenty, an exhibition on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from July 18 through September 13, 1998, salutes these two milestone anniversaries. Annually, more than 300 artists apply to be one of 12 artists selected to exhibit in the Fleisher Challenge. The variety and the vitality of the Philadelphia-area artists who have participated is surveyed in this exhibition that spans many approaches, from the traditional to the cutting edge.

The 20 artists in the exhibition were selected by John Ravenal and Ann Temkin, curators in the Museum's Department of 20th-Century Art, together with Thora Jacobson, Director of Fleisher, and Warren Angle, Gallery Coordinator at Fleisher. The Museum exhibition will take place in the Berman and Stieglitz Galleries on the ground floor, and additional spaces in the building will feature several new installation works. Artists include Lisa Bartolozzi, Lanny Bergner, Norinne Betjemann, Charles Burwell, Syd Carpenter, Frank Galuszka, Michael Grothusen, Mei-ling Hom, Stacy Levy, Tristin Lowe, Gabriel Martinez, Susan Moore, Kate Moran, Brooke Moyer, Don Nakamura, Stuart Netsky, Bruce Pollock, Judith Schaechter, Hester Stinnett, and Stephen Talasnik.

As a reflection of the diversity of the work highlighted in Fleisher's exhibitions over the past 20 years, the selection of artists includes figurative painters working with Renaissance techniques, abstract painters working with conceptual structures, ceramists making sculptures, sculptors making multimedia installation pieces, a stained-glass artist who uses a medium associated with spiritual settings to present violent and disturbing imagery, a photographer who bleaches and paints black-and-white prints, and printmakers who incorporate materials as unconventional as ground pharmaceuticals into their art.

Twenty Philadelphia Artists: Celebrating Fleisher Challenge at Twenty is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The William Penn Foundation. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue written by Mr. Ravenal, who is the organizing curator, with an essay by Ms. Jacobson. The book also contains a checklist of the exhibition and a list of all the artists who have participated in the Challenge exhibition series since its inception.

The Museum's show will provide a retrospective cross-section of a full generation of regional artists and is planned to complement the Fleisher Art Memorial's own invitational exhibition, 20 x 12: A Generation of Challenge Artists, which will present the work of some 180 of the 250 artists who have participated in the Fleisher Challenge over the past two decades. 20 x 12 will be on view from July 18 through August 28, 1998, throughout the Fleisher Art Memorial, which encompasses six joined buildings: a former vocational school, a former church and belltower, and three row houses. Artists have been encouraged to select and fashion environments appropriate to their vision with an emphasis on recent work.

The Fleisher Art Memorial is located at 719-21 Catharine Street in the Bella Vista section of Philadelphia.

Roy Lichtenstein – Exposition Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Bâle

Roy Lichtenstein
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Bâle
24 mai - 27 septembre 1998

A côté d’Andy Warhol, ROY LICHTENSTEIN, né à New York en 1923, est considéré comme le principal représentant du pop art américain. Cet art semble reproduire dans ses images l’esthétique banale du monde de la consommation à l’échelle un à un et espère briser grâce à ce nouveau réalisme la domination de l’expressionnisme abstrait. En 1961, pour la première fois, dans “Look Mickey”, Roy Lichtenstein utilise une image isolée d’une bande dessinée; c’est aussi ici qu’on découvre pour la première fois la trame de points si typique de sa peinture. La même année, il transpose sur la toile des représentations publicitaires de produits de consommation et, peu après, vient “Girls” tiré de cahiers de bandes dessinées.

La FONDATION BEYELER a organisé une exposition consacrée à l’oeuvre de Roy Lichtenstein du 24 mai au 27 septembre 1998 qui est la première grande exposition de musée depuis la mort de l’artiste en septembre 1997. Les quelque 70 œuvres exposées couvrent toute la période de création depuis le début des années 60.

Un examen attentif de l’ensemble de l’oeuvre qui comprend différents sujets tels que paysages, natures mortes, intérieurs et également des citations tirées de l’histoire de la peinture moderne, dévoile que le tribut de Lichtenstein à l’esthétique quotidienne et de masse est à double sens et que sa démarche oscille continuellement entre prendre et donner. Il choisit ses sujets très minutieusement pour les transformer ensuite en une œuvre picturale originale – des tableaux qui ont ainsi enrichi l’histoire de la peinture de nouvelles techniques.

Le style de Roy Lichtenstein varie presque à chaque fois. Parfois les motifs sont reproduits pratiquement tels quels et parfois c’est la passion pour l’art pictural qui se trouve au premier plan. Sa manière de travailler est classique et comporte plusieurs étapes techniques, de l’ébauche par la composition jusqu’au coloriage de couches. Roy Lichtenstein dit que ses tableaux pop doivent “paraître comme si je n’avais jamais rien corrigé et que tout se serait produit de soi-même, mais pour qu’ils donnent cette impression, je dois les soumettre à toutes sortes de distorsions”. Bien que son intérêt dans la peinture se trouve dans le sentiment de créer quelque chose d’unique, en opposition totale aux produits de masse fabriqués industriellement, il cite des techniques de reproduction photomécanique, peint des trames de milliers de points et développe ainsi sa propre démarche. Sa technique donne l’effet de méthodes modernes de production de masse mais, il reste fidèle à la peinture classique avec ses expressions sensibles et dramatiques.

Toutes les phases de son oeuvre depuis le début des années 60 sont représentées par environ 70 tableaux. A côté du caractère purement rétrospectif, le regard doit être dirigé également sur l’aspect pictural et l’intérêt spécifique que Lichtenstein porte à une peinture originale. Une video lounge meublée avec les sièges “Phantom” - création récente du designer danois Verner Panton - est intégrée dans l’exposition (Les meubles Panton ont été prêtés à la Fondation Beyeler par la maison danoise Innovation). Un choix des classiques de la BD ainsi que du film animé abstrait expérimental des années 20 à nos jours peut être admiré sur six moniteurs. Le programme a été composé par Frank Braun.

Une superbe exposition pour une oeuvre magistrale qui a profondément marquée l’histoire de l’art et qui demeurera sûrement une référence pour de nombreux artistes.

Andy Warhol: Drawings 1942 - 1987 - Exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel

Andy Warhol: Drawings 1942 - 1987

Kunstmuseum Basel

May 5 - July 19, 1998

The traveling exhibition, which begins in Basel, is the first retrospective presentation of Andy Warhol's graphic works. The 230 drawings on display represent all periods of the creative activity of this popular and exacting artist. The early works from the 1950's made use of the possibilities of commercial design and, lacking any inner contradiction, raised them to "high art". The drawings executed between 1960 and 1963 are among the fundamental works of pop art, a period which the exhibition also documents with some of Warhol's paintings. A large area is devoted to the important late drawings produced between 1972 and 1987 and seldom revealed to the public.

Andy Warhol was one of the founders of American pop art and is the most single-minded of its representatives. He became famous for the silk screen prints which he had been creating since 1962. Warhol's art took up the advertising messages of the society of the mass media, the images of products in super markets, film stars, all of these recurring symbols and icons: works of an enormous inner energy which appear to passively propagate themselves. Although Warhol radically distanced himself from the "elite" culture of drawing, he was active throughout his life as an incredibly skilled and diligent draftsman. Because many of Warhol's drawings were not made for the purpose of being sold, thousands have appeared in his estate.

"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art." This provocative statement is, in fact, least applicable to his drawings. But it formed the basis for Warhol's thoroughly American art - for the art of an American of European parents who had emigrated from present-day Slovakia. Warhol's father worked in Pittsburgh on construction sites and as a miner. His mother sold self-made paper flowers and the traditional hand-painted Easter eggs from her native country. When Warhol finally moved to New York in 1949, his mother immediately followed him. She actively participated in the work of her much-admired son and, as Warhol had entrusted her with everything which had to do with calligraphy including his signature, she "signed" his name on many of his works.

In 1972, the Karl August Burckhardt-Koechlin Fonds enabled the Kupferstichkabinett of the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel to acquire six outstanding Warhol drawings dating from 1962. The collection, which was later substantially enlarged, led to the contact with the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh where Warhol's estate is housed. Together with it, and in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts in New York, it was possible to realize this retrospective exhibition of his drawings. Most of the works are on loan from the estate in the custody of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York. Other lenders have contributed works to strengthen specific accents. In Basel, additionally, some of Warhol's important paintings as well as selected serigraphs have been juxtaposed with the drawings.

The exhibition rooms of the Kunstmuseum Basel allow the visitor to become thoroughly acquainted with the three major phases of Warhol's drawings and paintings. Part 1 in the mezzanine displays the numerous charming and diversely-playful early works from the 1950's. An internal staircase leads to Part 2, four rooms on the first floor with the 1990-1963 drawings which were fundamental for pop art. A 1960 painting on loan from Pittsburgh, one of Warhol's earliest images of a soup can, supplements this group. The second and third parts of the exhibition are joined by a spacious hall displaying three large canvases from the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, executed between 1962 and 1967, and two paintings dating from 1980-1986. Warhol's late drawings, created between 1972 and the time of his death in 1987 and following an interruption devoted to film, are exhibited as Part 3 in seven rooms at the rear of the first floor. It includes examples of some of his silk screen prints for which his drawings provided the preliminary linear structure.

The catalogue of some 280 pages, with texts by Mark Francis and Dieter Koepplin, includes color or duotone reproductions of all 230 drawings. The volume measures 31 cm x 24 cm. A hardcover edition has been published by Shirmer/Mosel Verlag. An English edition will be published in 1999.

KUNSTMUSEUM BASEL

www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch