Daniel Berkeley Updike, The Well-Made Book - On the art of the book. Edited by William S. Peterson

Mark Batty Publisher announces the publication of “The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike”, edited and with an introduction by William S. Peterson. This book is a collection of Daniel Berkeley Updike's writtings on the art of the book

The distinguished printer Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941), proprietor of the Merrymount Press in Boston, has been described as “the most distinguished American printer,” and was also one of the most successful and influential book designers of the 20th century. This 400-page, illustrated collection encompasses virtually all of Updike’s writings on the arts of the book.

Daniel Berkeley Updike, The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures 

Image courtesy Mark Batty Publisher

Updike’s aesthetic philosophy and commitment of quality in the making of books have a special relevance today at a time of rapid change in the media arts. The Well-Made Book is a substantial and timeless collection of virtually all of Updike’s writings on the art of the book. William S. Peterson has researched, unearthed and assembled this wealth of material – much of which will be new even to those readers who are familiar with Updike’s writings. “Until the publication of The WellMade Book, many of these important and revealing essays have been hard to find,” notes publisher Mark Batty, “and some of Updike’s writing featured in this book appears here for the first time” There is a complete index, annotations, and a new scholarly introduction by Peterson.

The Well-Made Book is also available in a special, extra-illustrated edition of 40 copies featuring 11 ephemeral pieces: nine pages from books designed and printed by Updike spanning his 20th century career, together with specially prepared letterpress printed additional items, and a reproduction of an unpublished photographic portrait.

William S. Peterson is Professor of English at the University of Maryland, and the author of several books on William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, and the editor of The Ideal Book (1982), a collection of Morris’ writings on the book arts. His books have won numerous honors, including the Premio Felice Feliciano, the Besterman Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award.

About Mark Batty Publisher

Mark Batty Publisher LLC is dedicated to creating a list of distinctive books in these subject areas: graphic design; lettering and the printing arts; media and graphic communication; and art and popular culture. The books are chosen for their long-term relevance, for the clarity of their message, and their usefulness and aesthetic appeal. Each book is thoughtfully designed to the highest standards, produced for dependable use and manufactured employing quality archival materials. Most are extensively illustrated. 

The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike

Edited by William S. Peterson

Mark Batty Publisher, West New York, NJ 

408 pages, 31 full page illustrations, many in 2 colors

Case bound in cloth, dust jacket, 6 x 9 inches - Price: $55

Special edition of 40 extra illustrated copies: $220

MARK BATTY PUBLISHER 

6050 Boulevard East, Suite 2H 

West New York, New Jersey 07093 

Website: http://www.markbattypublisher.com 

Willie Doherty, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin - False Memory

Willie Doherty: False Memory

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 

31 October 2002 - 2 March 2003

A major mid-career retrospective of the work of the internationally-acclaimed, Derry-born artist Willie Doherty opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. 'Willie Doherty: False Memory' is the first substantial showing of Willie Doherty’s work in Ireland and one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of his work anywhere to date.

The exhibition, which comprises more than 40 photographic works and slide/tape and video installations, explores themes of memory and place - concerns which have preoccupied the artist throughout his career. Closely keyed to his native city of Derry and the Northern Ireland “Troubles”, Willie Doherty’s work reveals a complex and shifting range of relationships between places, events and the images by which they come to be represented and recalled.

Much of the work is open ended, forcing the viewer to move beyond the surface picture to explore the fallibility of human memory and our need to engage with the stories and images that make up our experience. '30th January 1972' (1993), for example, comprises two projections – one showing news footage of a crowd scene on Bloody Sunday, the other a view of Glenfada Park (scene of fatal Bloody Sunday shootings) as it looked in August 1993. These projections are accompanied by three audio tracks – one recorded during the shooting on Bloody Sunday, the other two being edited extracts from interviews with passersby on Rossville Street (another location of the fatal shootings) in August 1993. The central point is that the work is not intended to be a contribution to the body of documentary evidence on Bloody Sunday, but rather an attempt to investigate the impact of such a traumatic event on private and public memory and identity.

'Willie Doherty: False Memory' presents many such key works from all stages of the artist’s career. These include early black and white photographs, such as 'Mesh' (1986) and 'The Blue Skies of Ulster' (1986), and large colour cibachrome photographs, such as 'Unapproved Road I' (1992) and 'Out of Sight' (1997), which exist on the borderline between the documentary and the staged. In these works Doherty places us at the edge of the city, between the familiar and the unknown – a highly mediated place, shaped from a combination of television news coverage, cinematic fantasy, tourist information, popular stereotypes and collective memory. The seminal slide installations 'Same Difference' (1990) and 'They’re All the Same' (1991) question how language can shape our perceptions of images, in this instance media images of IRA suspects. Willie Doherty’s most recent video installation, 'Re-Run' (2002), commissioned by the British Council for this year’s 25th São Paolo Bienal, is here shown for the first time in Ireland.

Commenting on the exhibition, Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, said: “Much of Doherty’s artistic output is closely linked to the physical and political landscape of the city of Derry and its environs. However, there is a measure of detachment in his work that resonates beyond Ireland, giving it universal appeal and international significance”.

Born in Derry in 1959, Willie Doherty is an artist of international standing. In 1993 he (and Dorothy Cross) represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994 and was the recipient of the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artists Award the following year. Earlier this year he represented the United Kingdom at the São Paulo Biennal. He has exhibited in a number of solo exhibitions in Derry, Dublin, London, New York and Paris and has contributed to group shows worldwide.

A major full-colour monograph, published by IMMA and Merrell publishers, London, with essays by the chief curator of the Castello di Rivoli, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and writer and critic, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Brenda McParland, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA.

IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 

Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8

www.modernart.ie

Mamma Andersson, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Mamma Andersson

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

23 October - 23 November 2002

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Swedish artist Mamma Andersson. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in London.

Mamma Andersson's paintings of haunting landscapes, strange interiors and mysterious people are at once magical, ominous and compelling. Scandinavian trees such as birch, pine, aspen and spruce feature among Mamma Andersson's motifs together with animals, children, classrooms and libraries. In Mamma Andersson's paintings, adults look disorientated, interiors are disordered and the environments portrayed are unstable.

The manner in which paint is applied to Mamma Anderssons' canvases is both delicate and dramatic. Subtle throws of light reveal uncanny details while broad, dark brush strokes imply a more sinister setting. Mamma Andersson's paintings are loaded with symbols, historical references and allusions to local Swedish art and culture. Characters are often removed from their original contexts and are given new identities and meanings. Existing images from art history, popular culture and news photography are also recyclyed to form new narratives in her work. Steeped in Swedish colourist tradition, Mamma Andersson's paintings recall the fearful atmosphere of fairy tales and local folk legends.

Mamma Andersson has exhibited extensively in Sweden and was selected for the Carnegie Art Award which toured to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and Reykjavík in 2000-2001.

STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY

25-28 Old Burlington Street, London W1S 3AN

www.stephenfriedman.com

Lucian Freud Retrospective Exhibition

LUCIAN FREUD
CaixaForum, Barcelona
24 October, 2002 - 12 January, 2003
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
February 9 - May 25, 2003

“What do I demand of a painting? That it surprise, disturb, seduce, convince,” At 80, Lucian Freud is one of the greatest living realist painters. Known mainly for his unsettling portraits and nudes, he is the creator of a disturbing universe, populated mostly by models from his own circle: his mother, children, friends, artists, lovers, etc. “My work is completely autobiographical. It is about me and what surrounds me,” the artist has repeatedly declared. The "La Caixa" Foundation now presents Lucian Freud at CaixaForum, the largest retrospective exhibition ever held on the artist. With 126 paintings, drawings and etchings, some of recent creation, the show covers more than 60 years of Freud’s artistic career. Visitors are offered a chance to view works from the fruitful creative period of the past twenty years together with others of the first decades. Among the foremost works in the exhibition is the extraordinary series of portraits of the artist’s mother, portraits of his painter friends such as Francis Bacon, John Minton, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews, and a number of self-portraits, in addition to other emblematic paintings such as The Painter’s Room, Leigh Bowery (seated) and Girl with Roses. The Lucian Freud retrospective exhibition, organised by the Tate Britain Museum, (where it has run from 20 June to 22 September, 2002), has been produced by "La Caixa" Foundation in Barcelona. Following its exhibition at CaixaForum it will be shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles from 9 February to 25 May, 2003.

The retrospective exhibition Lucian Freud at the CaixaForum premises, will map out a chronological journey through the British painter’s artistic career, covering more than 60 years. The show begins with a series of works from the decade of the 1940’s - Box of Apples in Wales (1939), The Painter’s Room (1943-1944) and Girl With Roses (1947-1948), among other oil paintings, and concludes with a group of recent works, such as Eli (2002), finished last August. The 126 works that make up the exhibition, distributed over nine rooms, invite the visitor to discover certain chapters in the life of Freud: his relationships with his mother, wives and children, his friendship with Francis Bacon, solitude, etc. After all, Freud has often stated, “Everything is autobiographical, and everything is a portrait.”

Lucian Freud Biography

Lucian Freud was born in Berlin on December 8th, 1922. His father, architect by profession, was the son of Sigmund Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis. The family came to England in 1933, a few months after the Nazi party came to power. Six years later, in 1939, Freud became a naturalised British subject. In that same year, he enrolled in Cedric Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, an informal painting institute. In 1941, after completing his brief academic career, he enlisted as merchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy. “I liked the idea of adventure – the figure of the old salt – but I was soon disappointed.” In 1944, the Lefevre Gallery put on Freud’s first solo exhibition, which included The Painter’s Room (1943-1944), a widely celebrated work that will be on display at CaixaForum. In 1948 he married Kitty Garman, daughter of Jacob Epstein, later marrying Caroline Blackwood in 1952. In the 1950’s he became famous in London, along with his cohort Francis Bacon. After spending periods in Paris and Greece, he settled in London, where he still lives and works.

“To me, the person is the painting”, says Lucian Freud, who is mainly known for his unsettling portraits and nudes, several of which can now be seen at CaixaForum within the retrospective exhibition. Among the foremost works in the exhibition is the extraordinary series of portraits of Freud’s mother, such as The Painter’s Mother Reading (1975). The series begins in 1972, the year in which the artist’s father died, and his mother sank into deep depression. It concludes in the year of her death, in 1989. “If my father hadn’t died, I never would have painted her,” says Freud who went to pick her up four or five times every week for her to pose.

The exhibition also contains several self-portraits of Lucian Freud, such as Reflection with Two Children (1965) – the two children are his, Rose and Ali – Interior With Mirror in Hand (1967) and Painter Working, Reflection (1993), a painting which, when Freud set to touching it up, “turned out to be of my father”. In that regard, Lucian Freud states, “My idea of the portrait emerges from my unhappiness with the portraits that look like their models. I want my portraits to be ‘of’ people, not like them. More than looking like the models, that they ‘be’ themselves.”

The show also offers some unsettling nudes, such as those of Leigh Bowery, a performer weighing over 200 pounds who became Lucian Freud’s first professional model, posing for him several days a week over two years. “I must have a fondness for unusual or oddly-proportioned people, and I don’t want to indulge it too much,” Lucian Freud has said. The daughters of the painter also posed for several nudes, such as Portrait of Rose (1978-1979). “There’s something in a nude person, when I see them before me, that appeals to my sense of respect. It could even be called my gentlemanliness. In the case of my daughters, it is the respect of a father in addition to that of a painter. They take my painting them well. They don’t make me feel uncomfortable.”

The Lucian Freud exhibition is organised by William Feaver.

Lucian Freud
24 October, 2002 - 12 January, 2003

CaixaForum
Av. Marquès de Comillas, 6-8
08038 Barcelona

Abbas: Visions of Islam - Muncipal Museum of Ourense

 

Exhibition

 Abbas

 Visions of Islam

Muncipal Museum of Ourense, Spain 

 

“The day after its liberation by the Americans, I discovered a Kuwait littered by war debris and cadavers of Iraqi soldiers. Their withdrawal must have been a true ordeal.”

These are the words of Abbas, an Iranian photographer who “writes with light”. After visiting 28 countries –from Sinkiang to Morocco– between 1987 and 1994, Abbas portrayed the resurgence of Islam and the contradictions between an ideology inspired by a mythical past and the universal yearning for modernity and democracy. Under the title Abbas: Visions of Islam, Fundació “la Caixa” now presents these 99 photographs -in reference to the 99 names and epithets of Allah-, accompanied by excerpts from books by famous historical travellers, and fragments from the diaries of this photojournalist who has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1981. On exhibit at the Municipal Museum of Ourense, the photographs show revolution and war; daily life in the cities; the world of the women, particularly downtrodden by the fundamentalists -Abbas dedicates the exhibition to the women of Afghanistan-; children who attend the Koran schools, the cradle of the most orthodox Islamism; stark landscapes consisting of streets, cemeteries and sanctuaries; protests against the writer Salman Rushdie by European Muslims; demonstrations in support of the chador, prohibited in secular schools... In other words, an eyewitness account of Islam and its peoples.

 

From Sinkiang to Morocco, from London to Timbuktu, including even Mecca, the exhibition Abbas: Visions of Islam reflects the day-to-day life of the Muslims, their spirituality and their mysticism, the rituals of their faith and the political phenomenon that Islam represents today. Taken in 28 countries (Egypt, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, China, Indonesia, Brunei, India, Great Britain, Spain, Algeria, Senegal, Sudan, Israel, Bosnia and Iran, among others), the photographs are displayed together with fragments from the personal diaries of Abbas himself and other historically famous travellers. These texts provide a counterpoint to the images, explaining the context in which a specific photograph was captured. A prime example is that of little Gulbibi (“Queen of the Flowers”), portrayed in Kabul (Afghanistan), and whose startling text states, “Her left foot was amputated as the result of a mine explosion. Her leg and right arm are a mass of raw flesh. Lying on her bed, an icon of suffering and dignity, she has to be given anaesthetic each time her dressing is changed, so intense is her pain.”

Abbas explains how, in 1987, before leaving Paris to undertake his long journey through these 28 countries, a friend of his –a woman– recommended that he read the Voyages of Ibn Batuta, the legendary traveller who had roamed Islamic lands centuries before. Abbas discovered an Ibn Batuta who ordered hands to be cut off, who abused the female slaves and who had innocent people whipped. Thus it was that Abbas made a journey of contrasts. His camera captured, for example, a militant feminist who fought against the Family Code in Algeria; the religious fervour of Mecca; the leaders of Dar al-Ulum, the flagship university of orthodox Islam, a branch of which is established in a town in the county of Yorkshire (Great Britain), and so on. Such scenes and accounts reveal the different realities and contradictions of Islam.

Abbas Biography

Of Iranian background, the photographer Abbas lives in Paris and has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1981. Between 1970 and 1978, his work was published in magazines of international scope, reflecting the political and social conflicts of southern hemisphere countries, such as Chile, South Africa, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Biafra. Between 1978 and 1980, he covered the Iranian revolution. His book Iran, la Révolution Confisquée (Clérat, 1979) forced him into a voluntary exile that would last 17 years. Between 1983 and 1986, he travelled to Mexico and published Return to Mexico, Journeys beyond the Mask (W.W. Norton, 1992). Following Allah O Akbar, voyages dans l’Islam militant (1994), and between 1995 and 2000, he visited Christian countries (Voyage en Chrétientés, La Martinière, 2000). He is currently investigating paganism.

Some of his solo exhibitions have been hosted by the Musée d’Art Moderne of Teheran (1980), the Escuela de Bellas Artes of Almería (1991), the Centro de la Imagen of Mexico (1994), the Palace Royale of Brussels (1999), the Institut du Monde Arabe of Paris (2001) and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence (2002). Referring to his work, Abbas writes: “At present, my photography is a reflection that comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity –the suspended moment– intervenes during action, in the viewfinder. A reflection on the subject precedes it. A meditation on finality follows it, and it is here, during this exalting and fragile moment, that the real photographic writing develops, sequencing the images. For this reason, a writer's spirit is necessary to this enterprise. Isn't photography "writing with light"? But with the difference that while the writer possesses his word, the photographer is himself possessed by his photography, by the limit of the real which he must transcend so as not to become its prisoner.”

 

Abbas: Visions of Islam
23 October - 17 November 2002

Muncipal Museum of Ourense
Rúa Lepanto, 8
32005 Ourense

The exhibition is open to the public:
Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Sundays, 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Closed Mondays and holidays

Admission free of charge

 

Autres messages plus récents sur ce thème (French)

Abbas / Magnum, Au nom de qui ? Le monde musulman après le 11 septembre 2001, Editions du Pacifique, 2009.

 

Updated

Jonathan Horowitz: Pillow Talk at Sadie Coles HQ, London

Jonathan Horowitz: Pillow Talk
Sadie Coles HQ, London
17 October - 16 November 2002

For his first show at Sadie Coles HQ, JONATHAN HOROWITZ presents Pillow Talk. The installation centres around the video work It’s Magic/Acting the Part: the Biographies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. On two separate monitors the life stories of these two film icons run parallel, each one freezing to accommodate the other. Horowitz appropriates footage from television biographies of the stars’ lives, focusing on their final television reunion, when Rock appeared as the first guest on Doris’s talk show on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Suffering from dementia caused by HIV related illness, Rock showed up at the studio in a shockingly haggard state. Rock had not yet revealed his condition to Doris or the rest of the public, but when images from the recording were broadcast around the world, Rock was forced to acknowledge that he had AIDS.

With this admission the heterosexual, macho image Rock had maintained throughout his life was instantaneously shattered. As the footage demonstrates, his life and career would become a footnote to his homosexuality and death. In contrast, as portrayed in the Doris Day biography, the adversity that Doris experienced in her personal life served to reinforce her professional accomplishments and make her character more sympathetic.

In It’s Magic/Acting the Part, Jonathan Horowitz explores the peculiar balance between the public and private lives of stars of the small and large screens. In an age in which viewers believe they know intimately the actors they are watching, television becomes the only vehicle through which these actors can communicate with each other and perhaps even themselves.

Extending his focus from the romantic fiction of the Rock and Doris partnership, Horowitz examines the weird world of the celebrity couple. A mattress lies on a plinth in the gallery, on which rest two pillows silk-screened with the names of an improbable romantic pairing. On the walls above are photographs of over 100 sets of pillows, each bearing the names, in different typefaces, of more odd-ball partnerships: Dumb and Dumber; Leverne and Shirley; Liza and David; Ben and Jerry. Jonathan Horowitz highlights the pivotal role romantic couples play in popular culture and assesses the way this has forced people, and in particular gay people, to identify with the most unlikely characters. Jonathan Horowitz employs video to deliver a sharp critique of the socio-political manipulation of television and the impact it has on our lives.

JONATHAN HOROWITZ was born in New York and continues to live and work there. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Greene Naftali in New York (2002) and at Kunsthalle St. Gallen in Switzerland (2001) and group shows in the U.S.A. and Europe, including at the Kunstverein Hamburg (2002) and The Americans at the Barbican Art Centre in London (2001).

SADIE COLES HQ
35 Heddon Street, London W1
www.sadiecoles.com

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

October 12, 2002 – January 12, 2003

The early photographs of Mel Bochner (b. 1940) are on view in Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum Gallery. Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 showcases 34 important, little-known works that demonstrate Mel Bochner’s role during the formative years of the Conceptual art movement.

Mel Bochner, a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is best known for installations and paintings that probe the abstract concept of measurement. In the late 1960s, Mel Bochner, like other Conceptual artists, turned away from self-expression, choosing instead to explore organized systems of thought, such as language and mathematics, through artistic practices that used minimal aesthetics.

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 reveals the artist’s contributions to Conceptualism by highlighting the importance of his photography in the movement’s development. For Mel Bochner, photography was well suited to exploring the abstract ideas and systems behind artistic practice, which interested him more than focusing on the representation of objects.

Mel Bochner’s photographs treat a variety of subjects, investigating a range of artistic phenomena such as perspective, color, scale, and language. A number of pieces in the exhibition record Bochner’s experimentation working outside standard photographic formats, including several multi-panel and large-format works that the artist cut and manipulated. When installed several inches from a wall, these works produce an effect that blurs the distinction between two-dimensional media and sculpture.

Some pieces in the exhibition deal with mathematical ideas. 36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams (1966) depicts a numerical sequence, emphasizing the whole, as well as showing the incremental changes in its creation. To do this, Mel Bochner built and photographed a series of stacked wooden blocks, emphasizing the mathematical principle of the arrangement step-by-step.

Works like Surface Dis/Tension (1968) delve into the depiction of perspective. Beginning with a photograph of a grid, Mel Bochner soaked the print and peeled away the image-bearing surace, allowing it to wrinkle while drying. He then photographed the image of the grid as it appeared on this crumpled membrane. Next, Mel Bochner made positive and negative prints of the distorted grid on the same piece of paper, simultaneously revealing the original perspective as well as its altered form.

Other works probe how presentation affects perception. H-2 (1966–67), for example, minimizes the difference between sculpture and photography. The piece is a gelatin silver print of stacked wooden blocks in a cruciform arrangement, cut in silhouette and mounted on Masonite. When viewed head-on, the work gives the illusion of depth. Viewed obliquely, the third dimension disappears. This mutability hints at Bochner’s awareness of art’s power to bridge, as well as widen, the gap between object and representation.

According to exhibition curator Scott Rothkopf, “People often think that Conceptual art is hard to understand, and that it doesn’t offer the viewers a lot visually. Bochner, however, cared very much that his photographs be as interesting to look at as they are to think about.”

The 185-page exhibition catalogue Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969, by Scott Rothkopf, includes an essay by Elisabeth Sussman and 40 color plates, as well as 119 black-and-white illustrations. The catalogue, published by Yale University Press in conjunction with Harvard University Museums, is available in the Carnegie Museum of Art Store.

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–69 was organized by Scott Rothkopf for the Harvard University Art Museums.

CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART

4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA

www.cmoa.org

Ben Nicholson, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - chasing out something alive

Ben Nicholson: chasing out something alive
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
4 October - 15 December 2002

Ben Nicholson is recognised as one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century. By bringing together his late drawings and painted reliefs, this exhibition shows the range of Ben Nicholson’s imagination and artistic achievement.

The drawings and painted reliefs made between 1950 and 1975 represent the culmination of Ben Nicholson’s career. The artist felt that it was through these works, and the seminal white reliefs of the 1930s, that he wished his art to be judged. In his work, Ben Nicholson aimed to represent the inner life of things rather than their outward and material appearance. ‘A painting or a carving’, he said, ‘is quite simply the expression of an idea’. This interest in the ‘spirit in painting’ led Nicholson towards abstraction, his painted reliefs expressing an experience of time and place.

While the reliefs show Ben Nicholson at his most abstract and austere, his drawings are much more approachable. His studies of landscape, architecture and still life have a spontaneity, wit and virtuosity that make them his most personal expressions. Many chronicle his travels through Britain, Italy and Greece. Like the reliefs, the drawings seek to capture the essence of a place as well as the physical reality. The artist creates ‘something alive’ from pencil and paper, paint and board.

Drawings and reliefs are the two poles between which Ben Nicholson’s imagination ranged, from the particular to the universal – the two dimensional drawings representing a single aspect of reality, the three dimensional reliefs exploring a wider whole.

Ben Nicholson: ‘chasing out something alive’ was originated by Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and has been supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

Judy Chicago at NMWA, Washington DC - National Museum of Woman in the Arts

Judy Chicago
National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC
October 11, 2002 - January 5, 2003

Judy Chicago, one of America’s artistic trailblazers and a pioneer of the feminist art movement, is the subject of an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). The exhibition features over 90 works from the 1960s to the present, and includes selections from Judy Chicago’s best-known work as well as rarely seen early and recent autobiographical pieces.

Judy Chicago’s monumental installation The Dinner Party (1979), a symbolic history of women in Western civilization in visual and textual form, has become an icon of the 20th century. Her two autobiographies, Through the Flower and Beyond the Flower, have been sold around the world. The NMWA exhibition provides an overview of the artist’s career in the following sections: Early California Years, 1964-71; Breakthrough Years, 1972-75; The Dinner Party, 1974-79; Birth Project, 1980-85; Powerplay, 1983-86; Holocaust Project, 1985-93; and The End of the Century, 1993-2000.

At a time when women artists had very few role models and even fewer opportunities for recognition and success, Judy Chicago looked to her female forebears for inspiration and began to explore identity and other issues from a woman’s perspective. She established the first feminist art program in 1970 at Fresno State College in California. In 1972 she collaborated with Miriam Schapiro under the sponsorship of Cal Arts on the groundbreaking art/performance space Womanhouse, continuing to generate a great deal of debate with her art and activist stance. Judy Chicago’s art also underwent a transformation at this time as her early paintings and sculptures gave way in the late 1960s to large spray-painted canvases of centered geometric forms —works celebrating women’s spirit, power, and generative strength.

With The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago distinguished herself further as an artist determined to change the way women, and women artists in particular, are remembered and regarded. Going against traditional societal taboos in choosing the vulva as her main symbolic image, Judy Chicago also rejected art hierarchies by working with craft as well as fine arts, and foregrounded the idea of artistic collaboration rather than lone artistic genius. The Dinner Party solidified Judy Chicago’s place as a feminist and has become an icon of feminist art.

Her next large work, Birth Project, celebrates women’s role as the giver of life, with 150 needleworkers showcasing once again Judy Chicago’s collaborative interests. The Powerplay series explores the distortion that power has when it dominates men's lives and its wrenching emotional effects on both sexes. In the Holocaust Project, Judy Chicago worked with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, to use the Holocaust as a point of departure in addressing the suffering of all victims of genocide. Autobiographical and recent work reveals the emotions of the artist at different points in her career, and includes her recent Song of Songs (1998).

Judy Chicago is presented at NMWA through the generous sponsorship of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. The foundation seeks to raise awareness of the contributions of women in all areas of art and culture with specific focus on feminist art. According to Elizabeth A. Sackler, "This exhibition is a glimpse of the breadth and range of Judy Chicago’s oeuvre, her groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and to women. She has fought the status quo with the same single-minded tenacity, resilience, and gumption with which she has conducted her life and forged her life’s work."

The exhibition’s consulting curators are John Bullard, director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Viki Wylder, curator of education at Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts. Liaison curator is NMWA Chief Curator Susan Fisher Sterling. An accompanying book, Judy Chicago, with more than 100 full-color illustrations will be available in NMWA’s museum shop. Spanning four decades of Chicago’s work, the book features an interview with the artist by renowned feminist art critic and historian Lucy R. Lippard and biographical text by Wylder.

Coinciding with NMWA’s exhibition, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party will be exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from September 20, 2002 through February 9, 2003. This gift to the Brooklyn Museum of Art from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation will be permanently installed in 2004.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
www.nmwa.org

Updated 05.07.2019

Sharon Ellis, San Jose Museum of Art, California - Evocations

Evocations: Sharon Ellis, 1991 - 2001 
San Jose Museum of Art
October 11, 2002 – February 16, 2003 

The San Jose Museum of Art will present Evocations: Sharon Ellis, 1991 – 2001, the first in-depth study of the work of noted Los Angeles-based painter SHARON ELLIS. The exhibition was organized by the Long Beach Museum of Art and is completing its national tour at SJMA. 

Sharon Ellis, best known for her modestly-sized paintings of expansive, visionary landscapes, juxtaposes epic subjects such as brilliant night skies, vast roiling oceans, and distant solar systems with intricately depicted details of nature — a tangle of blossoms, a single twig, or silhouetted tree branches. These subjects from nature, while painstakingly rendered, are significantly altered through the artist’s highly inventive imagination. Ellis completes only three to four of her richly detailed, vibrantly colored canvases in a year. 

In the early 1990s, influenced by Romantic and Symbolist painting, theory and poetry, Sharon Ellis produced several paintings of gardens — Garden (1993), Sunken Garden (1993), and Cathedral of Dandelions (1993) — which portray aspects of nature in eerie, lush detail that transforms the imagery into highly fanciful, imaginary outdoor spaces. While referring outwardly to the world of nature, these paintings are also hauntingly anthropomorphic in their references to internal organs and parts of the human body. 

Since 1995, Sharon Ellis has explored temporal themes through several series of time-based subjects. Among these are The Four Seasons (Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring) and The Times of the Day (Dawn, Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Dusk, Night). 

In her most recent work, Sharon Ellis’ landscape subjects are influenced by her interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, particularly Brönte, Wordsworth, and Hart Crane. 

Born in Great Lakes, Illinois in 1955, Sharon Ellis received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Irvine in 1978 and a Master of Fine Arts from Mills College in 1984. She has lived in Los Angeles since 1989. In 1996, Sharon Ellis had her first museum exhibition, The Four Seasons, at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Her work was also featured at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Departures: Eleven Artists at the Getty in 2000. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a four-color, fully illustrated catalogue with essays by noted art critic Dave Hickey and Sue Spaid, curator at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART - SJMA
110 S. Market Street, San Jose, California 95113
www.sjmusart.org

Updated 27.06.2019

Yigal Nizri at Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv - "Living Growing"

Yigal Nizri "Living Growing"

Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv

October 3 - November 9, 2002

Yigal Nizri creates a sensual pictorial installation at the heart of which stand graphic images of the biblical seven species (wheat, barley, olive, fig, date, pomegranate, and grape). The depiction, imposed directly on the walls, will employ materials used in large-scale public advertising. In addition to the illustrations (see attached images) articles of clothing and other sewn objects will be placed throughout the space.

In Israel, the iconography of the seven species ("A land of wheat, barley, olive, fig, etc.") represents the abundance/fecundity of the "holy land." Thus, the installation addresses questions of cultural belonging, origin, and "roots".

Through the seven species, Yigal Nizri calls the dominant images adopted by Israeli culture into question. While the seven species signify attachment (to the land), they also attest to Israel's symbolic detachment from its geographic and cultural surroundings. The seven species bespeak a would be utopian oasis in a 'Levantine desert wilderness,' a fruitful eroticism amidst an 'arid impotence.'

Yigal Nizri is an artist and designer living and working in New York and Tel Aviv. A graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (1998), he participated in the "World Views" studio residency program on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center in Fall/Winter 2000-2001.

DVIR GALLERY

11 Nahum st., Tel Aviv 63503

www.dvirgallery.com

Irish 20th century art at National Gallery Dublin

The National Gallery of Ireland's permanent collection of Irish art drawn from the first half of the 20th century goes back on display in the Millennium Wing from Monday, October 7th. Included are new works acquired by the Gallery in recent years and some on loan from private and public collections.

All the greats are featured such as William Leech's Convent Garden, Brittany; and Sunshade ; a selection of Paul Henry Western Ireland landscapes, and a large magnificent portrait of Lady Hazel Lavery by her husband, Sir John Lavery.

A special bay is given to William Orpen with his famous portraits of The Vere Foster Family; Noll Gogarty; The Dead Ptarmigan -a self-portrait, and The Artist's Parents. Those influenced by Orpen, such as Sean Keating, James Humbert Craig, Patrick Tuohy, James Sleator, Margaret Clarke and Dermod O'Brien have a special bay.

The modernists are represented by Mainie Jellett, Norah McGuinness, Mary Swanzy, Evie Hone, Grace Henry and Jack B. Yeats.

The last bay is dedicated to 'Artistic Trends in Irish Art 1930-1959', represented by painters Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon, Patrick Collins, Harry Kernoff William Scott Daniel O'Neill, John Luke and Louis le Brocquy.

Admission to the permanent collection is free.

National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Square West and Clare Street, Dublin 2

Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm; Thu 9.30am-8.30pm; Sun 12.00pm-5.30pm