Victor Brauner ou l'enchantement surréaliste, Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne

Victor Brauner ou l'enchantement surréaliste
Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne 
9 juillet - 10 octobre 1999 

La Fondation de l'Hermitage présente pendant l'été 1999 une rétrospective de l'oeuvre de VICTOR BRAUNER (1903-1966). Construite autour des principaux thèmes abordés par l'artiste, elle invite à découvrir un monde magique, coloré, peuplé de figures symboliques et mythiques.

Victor Brauner est né à Pietra Neamtz en Roumanie d'une famille juive d'origine allemande. Dès les années vingt, il est en contact avec les grandes avant-gardes de ce siècle, dans une Bucarest très active au sein du réseau artistique européen. Chassé par un régime autoritaire, il s'installe à Paris en 1930. Il y côtoie Yves Tanguy, dont il partage l'atelier, Brancusi et André Breton. Très vite adopté par le groupe surréaliste, il participe à toutes ses expositions. Un épisode singulier de la vie de l'artiste fascine tout particulièrement ses compagnons, attentifs aux manifestations de l'étrange et aux coïncidences troublantes. Auteur en 1931 d'un Autoportrait à l'oeil énucléé où il s'était représenté sans raison apparente mutilé d'un oeil, il devait effectivement perdre accidentellement son oeil gauche en 1938, dans des conditions que le portrait décrivait avec une hallucinante précision prémonitoire.

En 1941, il se réfugie à Marseille avec les surréalistes. Les autorités américaines lui refusent cependant le visa qui lui aurait permis de gagner les Etats-Unis en compagnie de Max Ernst, Breton ou Duchamp. Cet échec sera indirectement la cause d'une passionnante évolution de sa peinture. Caché durant toute la guerre au fin fond d'une vallée des Basses-Alpes, sous une fausse identité, il est contraint d'utiliser des matériaux de fortune parmi lesquels la cire et le brou de noix: la cire se révélera un médium exceptionnellement apte à transcrire sa vision propre. Jusqu'à la fin de sa vie, il en perfectionne la technique et l'usage, alliant à une certaine rusticité du matériau un somptueux raffinement dans le traitement de la couleur.

Victor Brauner n'est pas seulement un créateur d'images insolites: il est un peintre au sens plein du terme, qui a su conjuguer les leçons littéraires du merveilleux défini par André Breton avec l'ouverture stylistique induite par les formes d'Afrique et d'Océanie. Après sa rupture avec le surréalisme en 1948, l'artiste va vers un style toujours plus personnel. Il se livre à une introspection exaltée, emprunte aux arts primitifs, mais aussi aux sciences occultes, pour exprimer des archétypes universels: "Ma peinture est autobiographique, elle raconte ma vie. Et ma vie est exemplaire car universelle" (1962). Habité de visions prophétiques, Brauner est aussi un insoumis qui ne cessera de dénoncer la tyrannie sous toutes ses formes.

L'exposition, conçue par la Fondation de l'Hermitage et présentée exclusivement à Lausanne, offre un panorama représentatif de l'oeuvre de Victor Brauner. Elle bénéficie d'importants prêts accordés tant par des collections publiques françaises (notamment le Musée national d'art moderne à Paris, qui a reçu en legs un ensemble très considérable) que par des collections privées suisses et françaises; nombre de ces oeuvres n'ont encore jamais été montrées au public. Un catalogue reproduisant la totalité des oeuvres exposées sera publié à cette occasion.

FONDATION DE L'HERMITAGE
2, route du Signal - CH - 1000 Lausanne 8
www.fondation-hermitage.ch

Lori Newdick, Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto - Heroine

Lori Newdick: Heroine
Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto
July 8 - September 11, 1999

Lori Newdick (b. 1968) exhibits her latest body of work Heroine at Jane Corkin Gallery, her first commercial gallery exhibition. Currently enrolled in the MFA program at Guelph, Lori Newdick won the 1999 Ontario College of Art and Design Medal for Excellence in Photography.

Taking her cue from the French feminist Hélène Cixous, who wrote "Woman must write herself", Lori Newdick explores issues of personal identity. Heroine is a social commentary on preconceived notions about lesbians and others who don't fit in the mainstream.

The 30" x 40" pieces in Heroine are each comprised of three panels. The left panels are book covers from 1950s pulp fiction, with titles like Queer Affair and We Walk through Lesbos' Groves. These book covers are reminders of past attitudes towards lesbians. On the right panels are black and white self-portraits providing a visual counterbalance for the richly-coloured book covers. The central panels use a necktie as icon.

The sum of the parts, however, carries greater significance. The tripartite construction explores the construction of identities. Although Lori Newdick states that Hollywood has made gay culture and visible minorities appear palatable for the mainstream, she suggests that attitudes toward lesbians have not changed much during the last 50 years. Exposing herself to the lens both strips Lori Newdick of her anonymity and puts forth an image of a female for which there are few examples. Lori Newdick wonders where that leaves her, as a lesbian, as a woman: what is expected and what is acceptable. What propels the work is the desire to define oneself. Heroine uncovers the obstacles to that expression and leaves the question of "How?" unanswered, for each viewer to consider.

JANE CORKIN GALLERY
179 John Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 1X4
www.janecorkin.com

Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Crafts

Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Crafts

Cantor Center for the Arts at Stanford University

July 14 - September 19, 1999

Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago

October 9, 1999 - January 2, 2000

Blanden Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge

July 7 - October 1, 2000

Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Crafts is the first exhibition to examine the far-reaching effects of Arthur Wesley Dow's (1857-1922) influence as both an innovative artist and one of America's greatest art educators. It begins its national tour at the new Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University before traveling to the Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, and the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge, Iowa.

The exhibition, organized by The American Federation of Arts with guest curator Nancy Green, chief curator, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, comprises eleven prints and four photographs by Arthur Wesley Dow and over 110 works in a variety of mediums by his students, disciples, and colleagues. Arthur Wesley Dow's influence extended to some of the leading painters, printmakers, photographers, ceramicists, and furniture-makers of the first half of the century. Those represented in the exhibition include painters Georgia O'Keeffe and Max Weber; printmaker Pedro de Lemos; photographers Alvin Langdon Coburn and Gertrude Käsebier; ceramicist Adelaide Alsop Robineau; Newcomb and Overbeck potteries; and the Byrdcliffe Colony, Woodstock, New York.

Throughout his lifetime, Arthur Wesley Dow developed a personal style that assimilated the influences of Japonisme, synthesism, and Impressionism, with a simplification of forms and a flattening of color. The exhibition is arranged chronologically to highlight the development of Arthur Wesley Dow's ideas and practices and their reflection in the work of his students.

In 1899, Arthur Wesley Dow produced Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. The manual, a 1913 edition of which is included in the exhibition, was widely read and changed the way art was taught--from grade school to college level--for the next five decades. It is widely recognized as having laid the stylistic foundation for the American Arts & Crafts movement.

During a 30-year teaching career at such institutions as Columbia University Teachers College, the Art Students League, the Pratt Institute, and his own Ipswich Summer School of Art, Arthur Wesley Dow stressed the integration of mediums and, as he wrote in a preface to Composition, that the "study of composition of Line, Mass and Color leads to appreciation of all forms of art and the beauty of nature." His tenet, to create beautiful, finely crafted objects for both practical use and aesthetic contemplation, resonates in each work on view.

Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Craft 

Published by The American Federation of Arts 

PUBLICATION - The catalogue accompanying the exhibition addresses Arthur Wesley Dow's influence on turn-of-the-century art, his contribution to the Arts & Crafts movement, and his commitment to teaching. Nancy Green's essay examines Dow's printmaking and the origins of the American Arts & Crafts style. Jessie Poesch, Professor Emerita, Tulane University, discusses American art pottery. Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Crafts is published by The American Federation of Arts. 208 pages, 91/2 x 9", 142 color illustrations; hardcover.

THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS

41 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10021

afaweb.org

Peter Saul: Paintings and Drawings, 1984-1999, George Adams Gallery, NYC

Peter Saul: Paintings and Drawings, 1984-1999
George Adams Gallery, New York
July 9 – August 12, 1999

George Adams Gallery presents paintings and drawings by Peter Saul. The exhibition includes five canvases and three drawings from the period between 1984 and 1999. The Gallery's exhibition coincides with the opening of a retrospective exhibition that will tour four venues in France and Belgium, starting at the Musée de L'abbaye de Sainte Croix, Sables D'Olonne and closing at the Musée Mons, in Belgium. The retrospective exhibition is accompanied by a major monograph comprised of 168 pages with 130 illustrations, an interview with the artist and four essays, including one by Robert Storr.  The text will be published in French and English, and will be available in the U.S. later this summer.

The gallery exhibition includes works dealing with all of Peter Saul's favorite themes. For example, one of the works in the show is from a series of paintings and drawings featuring Ronald Reagan as president. Ronald Reagan in Grenada (1984) depicts a vibrantly colored Reagan single-handedly subduing the Grenada army with fingertip lasers and cans of Coca-Cola. Also included are both the painting and study for Jeffrey Dahmer Won't Eat His Vegetables, 1992, one of many works featuring sexual deviates in electric chairs that have occupied a special place in Peter Saul's work since 1960.

The two most recent works included are Your Brain Says No and The Death of Venus, both from 1999. According to Peter Saul, no one else is doing death, so he thought he would give it a try. ("Someone has to do it," he says). Other works in the show cover such themes as the art world (Art Critics' Suicide, 1996) and women (Woman Artist II, 1984).

GEORGE ADAMS GALLERY
50 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
www.georgeadamsgallery.com