Naudline Pierre @ Dallas Museum of Art - What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared

Naudline Pierre 

What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared 

Dallas Museum of Art 

September 26, 2021 - May 15, 2022 

NAUDLINE PIERRE

Lest You Fall, 2019 

Oil on canvas 

Dallas Museum of Art, Lay Family Acquisition Fund, 2020.8

© Naudline Pierre, courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York

NAUDLINE PIERRE

Hold On, Hold Tight, 2019

Oil on canvas

© Naudline Pierre, courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. 

Photo: Paul Takeuchi

The first solo museum exhibition for painter Naudline Pierre premieres at the Dallas Museum of Art. Naudline Pierre: What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared debuts five major new paintings alongside existing works by Naudline Pierre, including the DMA’s recent acquisition Lest You Fall (2019). The exhibition showcases Naudline Pierre’s vivid style, recurring cast of otherworldly characters, and use of fantasy to imagine escape and possibility in the elsewhere.

“Providing a platform for the work of rising artists is a critical element of the DMA’s contemporary art exhibitions and programs, reflecting the global voices shaping creative practice today and connecting audiences with some of the most influential artists of our time,” said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director. “Naudline Pierre is one such artist, and we are honored to have her work not only on our walls but also in our collection, where it will continue to awe and inspire.”

NAUDLINE PIERRE (b. 1989, Leominster, MA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) creates richly hued paintings that portray otherworldly narratives, featuring supernatural beings entangled in complex scenes of struggle and intimacy. Drawing from conventions of Renaissance art and religious painting, Naudline Pierre reimagines these art historical traditions through her distinct contemporary lens, subverting the canon by creating space for manifestations of Blackness and femmehood that elude rigid definitions of identity. Often through the storyline of a recurring protagonist, Naudline Pierre’s works imagine new worlds that center care, tenderness, and liberation.

NAUDLINE PIERRE

Closer Still, 2017

Oil on canvas 

© Naudline Pierre, courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. 

Photo: Paul Takeuchi

NAUDLINE PIERRE

Hereafter, Ye Shall Be Changed, 2021

Oil on linen

© Naudline Pierre, courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. 

Photo: Paul Takeuchi

For What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared, Naudline Pierre is creating a suite of five new works that continue her investigations of hybridity, multiplicity, and transformation through the unfolding narrative of a central protagonist. Across the five canvases, the central figure undergoes a process of change, gaining the powers of flight, wielding flame, and claiming her power in an expression of the escape, pleasure, and care made possible in Pierre’s fantastic worlds. The works are presented alongside other recent works by Naudline Pierre—including the DMA’s recent acquisition, Lest You Fall (2019)—that illustrate similar themes and embody the painterly techniques that have become Naudline Pierre’s signature: jewel-toned hues; gradients of color; thin, translucent washes; and figures built up from modulated layers and tones.

"With her technical prowess and poetic approach to narrative world-building, Naudline Pierre is a uniquely imaginative and empathetic artist," said Hilde Nelson, the DMA’s Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art. "Awash in crimsons, ochres, and violets, her worlds offer a much-needed space for escape and transformation, in which the artist, the protagonist, and we as viewers can be full and expansive." 

Naudline Pierre: What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art.

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART - DMA

1717 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas 75201

dma.org

Japanese Lacquer, Jacqueline Avant Collection at Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas

Gold on Black: Japanese Lacquer from the Jacqueline Avant Collection
Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas 
Through September 15, 2013

Showcasing the delicate beauty of Japanese lacquer dating from the early-17th to the early-20th century, Gold on Black: Japanese Lacquer from the Jacqueline Avant Collection on view at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, USA, features over 40 Japanese lacquer items that would have been used primarily for arts and entertainment purposes. 

Ancient Japanese Lacquer

Writing Box (suzuribako) with design of Ono no Komachi, Japan, circa 1800. 

Lacquer, gold, silver, carved purple glass, black lacquered metal, gold metal on wood, suzu (tin alloy) rims

Courtesy The Jacqueline Avant Collection, Photograph Susan Einstein, Los Angeles.

Californian Japanese Art Collector Jacqueline Avant’s interest in collecting exquisite lacquer works used for poetry writing, poetry matching games, enjoyment of food or smoking, ceremonial display, wear, or personal care, such as boxes for combs, mirrors, tooth blackening powder, or incense, comprise the majority of the pieces selected for this exhibition. Also on view are boxes to hold objects of religious devotion, such as Buddhist holy texts (sutras), and even weapons for self-defense, including a decorated baton or knife.

“The Japanese have long been attributed with bringing the art of lacquer to its highest technical and aesthetic development,” says Crow Collection of Asian Art Executive Director Amy Lewis Hofland. “However, Japanese lacquer remains a subject rarely presented in American museums. When we learned of these works we knew our audiences would love the beauty and history of this painstakingly refined art form. It is a natural fit for the Crow Collection.”

Many works featured in Gold on Black originated from the dowries of feudal lord families, with family crests recording marriages of power and influence. Others were collected to delight wealthy merchants and reflect their personal tastes in dress and activities, from tea to smoking or composing poetry.

Recent finds suggest that lacquer has been employed in Japan as a protective film for at least 11,000 years. The lacquer is painstakingly harvested from twenty-year-old cultivated urushi trees; each tree is bled for its sap, producing less than a cup of liquid and giving up its life in the process of harvest. The lacquer is then filtered and applied in about thirty thin layers to a paulownia wood or lacquered hemp core. After each layer is polymerized in a humidor and then sanded, the upper layers are sprinkled with gold or silver powders and flecks to create designs. The final coat of clear lacquer is then ground down to reveal the metallic design. The care and skill required for application of both ground lacquer layers and design, and the rarity and expense of materials, meant that lacquer work was the most revered of family treasures in Japan, just as silver would have been in Europe or the Americas.

Hollis Goodall, curator of Japanese art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, selected the works featured in Gold on Black: Japanese Lacquer from the Jacqueline Avant Collection. 

China Through the Lens of John Thomson remains on view along with Peninsulas and Dragon Tails: Southeast Asian Art from the Crow Collection and with the acclaimed collection of Tantric sculpture from Trammell S. Crow’s private collection.

Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art Website: www.crowcollection.org

John Thompson: China antique photos 1868-1872 at the Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas

China Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-1872. The vanished world of Imperial China
Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas
Through May 5, 2013

JOHN THOMSON, Manchu Bride, Peking, Penchilie province, China 

Photo Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

China Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-1872. The vanished world of Imperial China is startlingly revealed at the Crow Collection of Asian Art through May 5, 2013 during an exhibition of photography captured on glass plates by photographer JOHN THOMSON over a five year period, beginning in 1868. 

In a time where some feared that having their picture made could take vital essences from their body, intrepid photographer John Thomson bravely travelled throughout China winning the confidence of people from all walks of life. In John Thomson’s stunning photographs, he portrayed everyone from humble flower sellers and knife-grinders to beautiful brides and powerful Mandarin bureaucrats; often posing before backdrops of palaces, monasteries, pagodas, streets and back yards. 

Scottish photographer JOHN THOMSON was born in Edinburgh two years before the invention of the daguerreotype and the birth of photography. John Thomson first travelled to Asia in 1862, where he set up a professional photographic studio. Fascinated by local cultures, Thomson returned in 1868 and settled in Hong Kong. Over the next four years he made extensive trips to Guangdong, Fujian, Beijing, China’s north-east and down the great river Yangzi. China Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-1872 is drawn from his time in these regions. 

These were the early days of photography, when negatives were made on glass plates that had to be coated with emulsion before exposure. A cumbersome mass of equipment was required, but with perseverance and energy, John Thomson captured a wide variety of images: landscapes, people, architecture, and domestic and street scenes. As a foreigner, his ability to gain access to photograph women was particularly remarkable - an opulently-dressed bride smiles shyly, a lady is seen after having her face painted, a government minister contentedly smokes his pipe and a smartly-dressed schoolboy carries his book and slate; John Thomson brilliantly catches the humanity of his sitters who wear traditional working clothes or finery at a key period when China was increasing its links with the West. He provides a wonderful historical record of costumes and hairstyles as well as iconic landscapes including stone animals, a large Junk sailing ship on the South China Sea, the Great Sacrifice Hall containing Ming tombs and a chapel destroyed by rioters, among others.

Curator of China Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-1872 Betty Yao MBE, of Credential International Arts Management in London, England, says: “This exhibition seeks to show the great diversity of the photographs that Thomson took in China. What marked his work as special (portraits of the rich and famous aside) was the desire to present a faithful account of China and its people. Thomson wanted to show his audience the human aspects of life in China through his extensive record of everyday street scenes—rarely captured by other photographers of that era.” Thomson’s excellent work in China established him as a serious pioneer of photojournalism and one of the most influential photographers of his generation. Thomson amassed 650 glass plates before returning to Britain where he published many photographic and written works on China. 

Although he was not the first European photographer to visit the country, John Thomson was the first to travel extensively and produce works informing Western audiences about China the country. The plates were purchased by the Wellcome Library in London after John Thomson’s death and in 2008 the glass negatives, which were made ca. 1869-1872, were scanned into enormous digital files. From these files, inkjet prints were produced in 2008-2009. These very high-resolution inkjet prints are the ones being exhibited in Dallas. Most have never been displayed in United States.

As a result of the high resolution of the scans, we in the 21st century can now see in John Thomson's photographs things which he could never have seen himself. Thus the 49 photographs in the exhibition enable us to transcend the technology available to John Thomson himself (formidable though that was) and to see his China with a new eye.

Also on view at the Crow Collection in Dallas is (among others) an exhibition about Southeast Antique Asian Art

Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art 

www.crowcollection.org

Southeast Asian Art from the Crow Collection, Dallas, US, 2013-2014 Exhibition

Peninsulas and Dragon Tails: Southeast Asian Art from the Crow Collection
Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas
Through February 14, 2014

The Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, Texas, USA, is home to a small but engaging group of objects from places that are somewhat obscured by the collective term "Southeast Asia.” The name came into use at the end of World War II to describe a part of the world that had for several generations appeared on Western maps variously as Tonkin, French Indo-China (later North Vietnam and South Vietnam), Dutch East Indies, and various other names and boundaries that have disappeared with the reemergence of independent states, many of which have chosen names to contrast with the colonial period. Burma is officially Myanmar (although Burma is making an internal comeback), Cambodia is Kampuchea, the former Sultanate of Brunei is Brunei Darussalam, Singapore is independent from Malaya, and Malaya is Malaysia. East Timor—which was a Portuguese and Catholic outpost on the island of Timor, claimed by the Dutch after centuries of trade monopoly, invaded by Japan, handed back to Portugal, and then ceded to Muslim Indonesia—is now independent, with claims to large underwater gas reserves in the maritime (always murky) region that separates it from Australia. 

Southeast Asia is a part of the world where boundaries continue to change, and the segments of this complex history portrayed in Peninsulas and Dragon Tails suggest the potential for enriched understanding of the modern world through greater familiarity with the region’s past and current cultural geography. 

Disciples of the Buddha Myanmar (Burma), Mandalay period, 19th century 

Wood with red lacquer and gilt [1979.16] 

Photo Courtesy of the Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas

Lacquered wood sculptures of young monks from the Mandalay period of Burmese history conjure the missing object of their devotion, the historical Buddha, who taught renunciation as a path to bliss, even while British colonials expelled the last king and queen, cooled themselves on sultry porches, and oversaw immense plantations of rubber trees on land where there had recently been only forest. A textile from 20th-century Bali reflects ancient associations between fortune, misfortune, time, and spirits, mixed with advice on preferred market days for various goods, local cults, and Hinduism as imported with people arriving from Java. The Crow Collection’s 7th-century sandstone sculpture of four-armed Vishnu, a rare example of early Khmer culture in Cambodia, takes its place alongside several later sculptures from the period of the Angkor sanctuaries. As always, the sculpture seems to occupy more space than its actual measurements would suggest. 

The scope of this exhibition touches on only a few times and places within the rich and complex history of Southeast Asia and its diverse cultures—ethnically varied, speaking localized languages, writing with different scripts, wearing different clothes, practicing different faiths, honoring different social structures. The objects shown are grouped by the modern countries with which they are particularly identified—Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. 

The exhibition includes maps with boundaries of the shifting cultural spheres that produced the objects on view. The importance of geography to culture in this region emerges: the Himalayan mountains of the Eurasian continent branch to the southeast in fingers of land and terminate in the islands of the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” where the earth’s mantle shakes, and the land, rivers, and seas mete out judgments that are repeatedly honored.

Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art Website: www.crowcollection.org

Photography and Painting in Normandy, 1850-1874 at DMA

LANDMARK EXHIBITION REVEALS DEEP ARTISTIC DIALOGUE AND EXCHANGE AMONG EARLY IMPRESSIONIST PAINTERS AND PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHERS IN 19TH-CENTURY FRANCE

The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874

Provides New Insight into Works by Courbet, Degas, Monet, and Manet, Among Others

On View at Dallas Museum of Art February 21 - May 23, 2010

Beginning February 21, 2010, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) will present a landmark exhibition exploring the influential and profound relationship between photographers and painters who lived and worked along the Normandy coast in France during the mid-19th century. The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 reveals how the convergence of social, technological and commercial forces within the region affected artistic production and dramatically transformed the course of photography, impressionism and modern painting. The exhibition will feature some 100 works, including vintage prints, paintings, pastels and watercolors, by artists and photographers including Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Le Gray, and Claude Monet.

On view through May 23, 2010, The Lens of Impressionism will be complemented by the presentation of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea, a special exhibition drawn from the Museum’s collections opening in April that will explore how coastal landscapes have been portrayed by artists throughout the past century. The Lens of Impressionism has been organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Dallas presentation, which marks the final stop of this major exhibition, will feature important loans and a new section exploring early photographic techniques and technology.

“The Lens of Impressionism provides a wonderful opportunity to connect visitors with masterpieces by some of the greatest impressionist artists, including Monet and Degas, and also to offer insight and exposure to their colleagues, the pioneers of the art of photography,” said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “The presentation at the DMA is enhanced by our forthcoming exhibition Coastlines, which will further explore the theme, as well as in our own collection of impressionist works from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which this year celebrates its 25th year as part of the DMA.”

The exhibition will showcase paintings, photographs and drawings by some of the most treasured artists in the Western canon—Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas among them—as well as by pioneering photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq. Inspired by the scenic Normandy coast of France, these works include representations of beach scenes, seascapes, fishing villages, resorts and the region’s pastoral beauty. Archival materials related to early tourism will also be included in the exhibition to provide an innovative examination of the impact of the then-new medium of photography on ideas of image making, the recording of passing time, the capacities of painting and the rise of impressionism itself.

“The Lens of Impressionism presents new insight into and scholarship on the response of impressionist painters to early photography within the context of a single geographic locale,” said Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and the coordinating curator for the exhibition. “The work that was developed in the second half of the 19th century in the Normandy coast—a region that was intensely explored and celebrated by artists during this time—tells a revealing story about the cross-pollination of ideas between the emerging impressionist art movement and the new field of photography.”

Exclusive to the Dallas presentation is a special section that illustrates the technology and techniques of early photography through works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s collections as well as loans from the Amon Carter Museum.

After viewing The Lens of Impressionism, visitors are encouraged to explore the Museum’s Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which is acclaimed for its impressionist and post-impressionist works by such artists as Bonnard, Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh. Encompassing more than 1,400 works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative arts objects, the collection is displayed at the DMA in a re-creation of the couple’s Riviera home, Villa La Pausa. This spectacular bequest, which was presented to the Museum 25 years ago, transformed the DMA’s collection of late 19th-century French art and founded the institution’s collection in European decorative arts.

Special audio tours for The Lens of Impression exhibition and the Reves Collection will highlight works in the exhibition along with select masterpieces from the Reves Collection. Additional background information and material on the exhibition and from the Reves Collection can also be accessed by visitors on Wi-Fi enabled smartphones and media players.

Catalogue

The Lens of Impressionism will be accompanied by a fully illustrated 208-page catalogue with essays by internationally recognized scholars: Sylvie Aubenas, Head, Department of Prints and Photographs at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Curator, Musée du Louvre; Stephen Bann, Bristol University; Dean MacCannell, University of California at Davis; and the exhibition curator, UMMA’s Senior Curator of Western Art, Carole McNamara.

The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 is organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Dallas presentation marks the second and final stop on the exhibition tour, and is curated by Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art.

The exhibition is made possible in part by the Florence Gould Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Michigan's Office of the Provost, and other generous donors. It includes loans from private and public collections in both the United States and Europe, featuring exceptional loans from the Musée d’Orsay and a generous loan of outstanding photographs from the rich collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The presentation in Dallas is made possible by Bank of America. Additional support is provided by Texas Instruments, Energy Future Holdings, and the DMA’s Junior Associates Circle with funds raised through An Affair of the Art 2010: Great Impression. Air transportation is provided by American Airlines. Promotional support provided by Kroger.

Coastlines from painting to photography at DMA

 

MODERN REFLECTIONS OF COASTAL LANDSCAPES,

FROM IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING TO CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY,

JUXTAPOSED IN EXHIBITION AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

Artists from Childe Hassam and Edward Hopper to Gerhard Richter and Catherine Opie

Images of Land Showcased in “Coastlines: and Sea” Opening on April 25, 2010

 

The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) will premiere an exhibition exploring how modern and contemporary artists—from Childe Hassam and Edward Hopper to Willem De Kooning, Gerhard Richter and Catherine Opie—have drawn upon coastal landscapes as a source of inspiration, metaphor and mystery in their work. Through selections from the Museum’s rich collections and important local holdings, Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea will juxtapose coastal landscapes from around the world and from a range of different artistic traditions. Featuring approximately 60 paintings, photographs and works on paper from 1850 to the present day, the exhibition will examine the symbolism and complex cultural significance of these environments as sites for both commerce and leisure.

On view from April 25 through August 22, 2010, Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea will be enhanced by an evocative sound installation relating and responding directly to the works on display. Created by faculty and graduate students in the Arts and Technology (ATEC) program at the University of Texas at Dallas, this multi-layer “sound-scape” will be heard throughout the exhibition and represents the most ambitious collaboration between ATEC and DMA to date.

The exhibition will open alongside the Museum’s presentation of The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874, on view through May 22, 2010. Together, the two exhibitions will give visitors an expansive overview of how artists have portrayed and responded to this subject over time and in various media.

“Coastlines is an exciting example of the thought-provoking and innovative exhibition environment that defines the DMA experience,” said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “The works on view in the exhibition range from spectacular and challenging to ethereal and meditative, and each piece transports the viewer to the familiar threshold where the land meets the sea. Drawn primarily from the DMA’s own modern and contemporary collections, the exhibition makes compelling new statements on a subject that is both timeless and constantly changing.”

Through its five thematic groupings, the exhibition will bring together diverse perspectives as it present impressionist paintings alongside contemporary photographs and abstract works on paper. Highlights include works by the iconic 19th-century painter Childe Hassam, who popularized impressionism in the United States with his lush city scenes and natural landscapes; Japanese American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s bold image of the modern woman as a bather in the 1920s; and a recent minimalist seascape by photographer Catherine Opie that reduces the ocean to subtle, ethereal layers of color in which the human figure is almost overwhelmed by natural environment.

“Coastlines provides visitors with evocative and engaging images of coastal landscapes, from Maine to Miami Beach, Nice to North Africa, through an array of artistic lenses,” said Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the DMA. “Coasts have been a source of ongoing artistic fascination throughout the modern period, and this exhibition draws exciting and unprecedented parallels between works with radically different aesthetic and cultural contexts.”

Organized thematically, Coastlines will include the following five groupings:

• The Meeting of Land and Sea. This first part of the exhibition offers viewers an initial introduction into the complexities of coastal environments and the geographic dialogue between land and sea. Works in this section dramatize the fragility of the man-made in the face of the overwhelming power of the sea, and represent coastal environments marked in various ways by human intervention. Highlights include Edward Hopper’s hauntingly serene Lighthouse Hill (1927) and a contemporary photograph of the isolated coast of Greenland by Lynn Davis (Iceberg #25, Disko Bay, Greenland, 2000).

• Coastal Labor, Seaside Leisure. This section examines the opportunities for commerce, transportation and tourism provided by coastal settings. Artists in this section explore how the competing uses of space can create intriguing conflicts, such as in Paul Greenberg’s 1990 photographs of a Portuguese fishing village, where the traditional ways of seaside life are juxtaposed amidst the emerging structures of a modern tourist economy. Others, such as Chapman Kelly in his oil painting Sand Dune (1960), focus on the innocence and freedom of children’s play.

• The Bather: Myth and Modernity. This grouping traces the changing image of the bather, which has long been associated with the myths of Diana and Venus. In visual art, bathers have been both sensual icons and emblems of modernity. Highlights include John Marin’s Bathers (1932), which draws upon cultural associations of the nude female bather with nature itself, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s expressive Bather with Cigarette (1924), in which a new and modern image of the bather emerges.

• From the Particular to the Universal. Exploring the universal nature of coastal experiences, this theme highlights the broad range of cultural and aesthetic meanings associated with coastal landscapes. Each site, though unique and characterized by specific regional attributes, echoes others we have known. The artists in this section exploit this slippage between the particular and the universal. Highlights include Harry Callahan’s ethereal Horseneck Beach (1977) and Hans Hofmann’s jubilant abstract work Pamet Road, Wellfleet (1963).

• The Spectacular Landscape. In this section, the visual signifiers of coast and sea are distilled into studies of texture, color and shape. The works included reduce the ocean and its environs to purely visual phenomena, disconnected from their specific geographic locations. Highlights include Catherine Opie’s recent photograph of surfers in the Pacific Ocean (2003) and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s luminous black-and-white photographs of the Tyrrhenian Sea (1993).

Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and curated by Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art.

The Women of Giacometti, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

The Women of Giacometti
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
January 14 - April 2006

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents The Women of Giacometti, the first Alberto Giacometti exhibition presented in Dallas since 1979. The Women of Giacometti features 48 works, including 34 sculptures and 14 paintings, which explore the artist’s long-standing fascination with the female subject, from his mother, sister, and wife to various models. The works range from very early naturalistic portraits, to Surrealist-inspired and Cubist-influenced works from the 1920s and 1930s, to Alberto Giacometti’s well-known tall and slender figures including all nine cast bronze Women of Venice (Femmes de Venise) from 1956, on view together for the first time in the United States since the landmark 1958 Giacometti exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.

Alberto Giacometti (b. 1901 Switzerland – d. 1966 Switzerland) worked as a youth in the studio of his father, the painter Giovanni Giacometti, and studied briefly at art school in Geneva before moving to Paris in 1922 to pursue his career. By age 12 he had completed the first portrait drawings of his mother, Annetta, who would continue throughout her life to play a key role in his art, and at 14 produced his first sculpture, a bust of his brother Diego.  His sister Ottilia also appeared in numerous early works.

Even as Alberto Giacometti began to absorb the strong influences of Cubism and Surrealism in Paris, he continued to work in a figurative vein, as seen in the exhibition in a plaster Head of Ottilia from c. 1926 and the plaster and bronze heads of Flora Mayo, an American art student with whom Giacometti had a tumultuous affair. Such outstanding monuments of Alberto Giacometti’s Surrealist period as Spoon Woman, Reclining Woman Who Dreams, and Woman with her Throat Cut, with their primitivized and fetishistic approach to female anatomy, date from the late 20s and early 30s.  Stylistic change soon followed, and the two heads of Rita from 1935-38 and three portraits of Isabel from 1937-39 show Giacometti’s return to the investigation of human physiognomy. Rita Gueyfier was a hired model, and Isabel Nicholas Delmer was an English model, sometime art student, and familiar figure in the Parisian art world with whom Giacometti lived briefly. 

When Alberto Giacometti returned to Switzerland in 1942 to escape the German Occupation, he made the acquaintance of Annette Arm, who joined him in Paris after the war. They were married in 1949.  For 20 years, Annette played a crucial role in his life as companion and muse and is depicted regularly in his post-war signature explorations of fragile, elongated, elusive figuration.

Caroline Poiraudeau came into Alberto Giacometti’s life in 1959. Her wild and defiant character held a strange fascination for him, and she soon became both lover and model for a lengthy series of highly expressive paintings and busts. The portrait Caroline in Tears shows the frontal and symmetrical Egyptian pose, loose brushwork combined with sharp linear rendering of head and features, and intense personal examination that characterize many of his later paintings.  Often in these late works, individuality gives way to a generalized, iconic vision of woman as mysterious life force.

The work of Alberto Giacometti has long been of interest to Raymond and Patsy Nasher, and the Nasher collection now encompasses 13 sculptures, two paintings, and one drawing. Several of these are in the exhibition plus masterpieces spanning the artist’s career, such as Spoon Woman (1926, cast 1954), Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932), Tall Figure (1947), and The Glade (1950).

“It is an honor to present so many outstanding works by this great master of modern art at the Nasher Sculpture Center,” said Raymond Nasher. “The show directly complements and expands upon the many other Giacomettis in our collection.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Véronique Wiesinger, Director of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris, and Paola Caròla, a friend and model of Giacometti whose portrait bust is in the exhibition.

“Our show contains a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited before,” said Director Steven Nash. “These objects and the two catalogue essays help advance our knowledge of Giacometti, whose biography has sometimes proven as elusive as the meanings behind his evocative figures.”

The Nasher Sculpture Center’s display of The Women of Giacometti is presented by Chase. The exhibition was made possible with the help of several generous loans from the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, private collectors, and institutions including: the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Zurich; The Beyeler Foundation, Basel; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Before the Nasher Sculpture Center, the exhibition was presented at the PaceWildenstein gallery in New York from October 28 to December 17, 2005.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org

David Smith, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas - Drawing and Sculpting

David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 16 - July 17, 2005

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting. Co-organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center and the David Smith Estate, the exhibition assembles approximately fifteen seminal sculptures and seventy major drawings and paintings from the Nasher Collection, the David Smith Estate, and other public and private collections. Featuring many works that have never been publicly displayed before, the exhibition illustrates not only the range and quality of David Smith’s work as a draftsman, but also the complex ways that his drawings and paintings inform his three-dimensional work.

David Smith has long been recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His protean career single-handedly brought new maturity and international ambition to American sculpture. Forty years after his death, his works still astonish in their variety, technical mastery and brawny creative energy. So powerful is David Smith’s legacy as a sculptor, however, that other, highly accomplished aspects of his art exist in a shadowy realm of limited acknowledgement and investigation. Such is the case with his drawings.

David Smith drew regularly throughout his career for many different reasons: to make notes, plan sculptures, jot down observations, explore graphic techniques, relax, and make beautiful, independent works of art. His vast output of works on paper provides a telling record of his visual thought and experimentation and in themselves represent a great aesthetic accomplishment. But they have never received the recognition they deserve. David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting focuses on David Smith’s history and talents as a draftsman and explore the fascinating interaction between his drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Works exhibited span from David Smith’s early development in the 1930s under the influence of European modernism to the powerful and evocative constructions in iron and steel from his maturity, and the drawings that accompanied them.

“This is one of the few exhibitions ever mounted to examine the interactions between Smith’s work in different media,” said Dr. Steve Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. “We want to spotlight the power and beauty of Smith’s drawings and also contribute to the understanding of his working methods. It will be a pleasure and honor to exhibit in Dallas so many outstanding works by this great artist.”

Two special public programs are offered to Center guests in conjunction with the exhibition. First, a 28-minute film, David Smith: American Sculptor, 1906-1965, is showing continuously in a viewing room adjacent to the exhibition. David Smith’s ideas about art and his methods are revealed in archival footage of the artist, through reminiscences of the sculptor by his daughters, and by fellow artists Helen Frankenthaler and the late Robert Motherwell.

Secondly, on Thursday, May 5 at 7 p.m., Candida Smith, daughter of the artist and representative of The Estate of David Smith, and Peter Stevens, Executive Director of The Estate of David Smith will present illustrated lectures entitled Remembering David Smith. Following the presentations, Nash will moderate an informal discussion including audience participation.

Steve Nash and Candida Smith are co-curators for the exhibition. Both are contributing essays to the show’s catalogue, which features full-page illustrations of all works in the show, many historical photographs of David Smith and his art and studio, and a compendium of statements by Smith on drawing.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org

Medardo Rosso, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 3 - June 20, 2004

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions. This exhibition is the first major survey in the United States in 40 years devoted to the work of Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), whose revolutionary innovations played a key role in the birth of modern sculpture. Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions features 20 sculptures, including 6 works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, and offers an intimate exploration of Metardo Rosso’s working process and innovations. 

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions focuses on multiple versions of five sculptures spanning Medardo Rosso’s mature career. The works are Aetas aurea (The Golden Age), 1886–87; Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891; Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93; Bookmaker, c. 1894; and Ecce puer (Behold the Child), 1906. Each of the works is represented by three or four distinct castings in wax, plaster, and bronze, showcasing Rosso’s pioneering experimentation with materials and casting techniques. Medardo Rosso was intimately involved in creating the various casts of these works at a time when such work was commonly left to foundry technicians.

Medardo Rosso’s extensive exploration of techniques and materials exemplifies how art was transformed on a broad scale during the late 19th century. Medardo Rosso replaced realistic detail with vigorous, sketchy modeling, and he varied media. Rather than cast his original clay models as bronzes to be carefully finished, Rosso arrested the lost-wax method of bronze casting in midcourse, saving the wax shells as finished works. This radical innovation, which elevated wax to the status of bronze, triggered a career-long exploration of sculptural production and reproduction.  Rosso wrung endless variations from his original clay models, casting and recasting them in wax, plaster, and barely finished bronze, leaving the accidents and artifacts of the casting process visible in the final products. Through his experiments, similar to those of Auguste Rodin during the same period, Rosso expanded the conceptual and expressive possibilities of sculpture and influenced the works of such modern sculptors as Umberto Boccioni and Constantin Brancusi.

“With six sculptures by Medardo Rosso in the Nasher Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center is an ideal venue for this important exhibition,” said Director Steven Nash.  “Like the Picasso exhibition currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is a very focused, important exhibition that draws from and complements works in the Nasher Sculpture Center.”

Medardo Rosso’s output comprises fewer than 50 primary sculptures, all of which he created between 1881 and 1906.  For the remaining 22 years of his career, Medardo Rosso devoted himself to recasting these primary sculptures, producing more than 400 variations in plaster, wax, and bronze. Medardo Rosso’s working process and experimentation can be studied in the variations of Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93. Bambino ebreo served as a sort of business card for Medardo Rosso. He made many wax versions of it and gave them as gifts to patrons, critics, curators, and friends. The two wax versions in the exhibition reveal very different degrees of detail. The two bronze versions are even farther apart; one reveals Medardo Rosso’s almost painterly use of the whitish casting material, while the other is traditional in its finish and patina.

The exhibition also includes three versions of one of the largest busts Medardo Rosso ever made, Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891, demonstrating the variety he achieved by casting the same model in different ways. In the bronze version, Medardo Rosso took the unusual step of casting the plaster madreforma, or “mother mold,” as part of the finished work.

MEDARDO ROSSO (1858–1928)

Born in Turin, Italy in 1858, Medardo Rosso moved with his family to Milan when he was 12. After serving in the Italian military, he began studying painting and sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan in 1882. Medardo Rosso’s artistic breakthrough came in 1883 when he made his first sculptures in wax. In 1889 he settled in Paris, where he developed a friendship with Auguste Rodin. Medardo Rosso exhibited his work widely in Europe and participated in the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. He also participated in Salons in Paris in 1904 and in London in 1906, where he completed his last sculpture, Ecce puer (Behold the Child).

A fully illustrated catalogue developed by Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and co-published with Yale University Press accompanies the exhibition. It includes essays by Harry Cooper; Sharon Hecker; Henry Lie, director of the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard; and Derek Pullen, head of sculpture conservation at the Tate in London.

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions

164 pages, 8x10 in., 2003

107 color and 5 b&w illustrations

Published by the Harvard University Art Museums

Distributed by Yale University Press

ISBN 1-891771-31-0

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is organized by Harry Cooper, curator of modern art for Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, with Sharon Hecker, an independent scholar based in Milan.

The exhibition was organized by the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. The Nasher Sculpture Center is the final venue for Medardo Rosso:  Second Impressions, following exhibitions at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum (July 19 - October 26, 2003) and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri (November 21, 2003 - February 15, 2004).

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org

Annette Lawrence, Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas - Piano

Annette Lawrence: Piano

Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas

January 10 - February 15, 2003

Dunn and Brown Contemporary presents a one-person exhibition of Annette Lawrence’s most recent paintings and drawings. In this new body of work, Lawrence further investigates her ongoing interest in the visual representations of text, music, and sound. One of the most important artists of her generation, Lawrence continues to draw upon her past in an exhibition of great sensitivity and subtlety.

Just over a year ago, Annette Lawrence turned her attention to a piano lesson book from her childhood that she had saved. Drawn in her own hand as a seven-year-old, the pages of the piano journal chronicled each week’s lesson. Reflecting upon these abstract drawings from her youth of musical notes and symbols, Lawrence discovered a fascinating source for her newest body of work. Through an intense investigation of the lesson book pages and her own hand as a child, Lawrence began making a series of drawings, exploring the conceptual nature of text and time. Fragments of this abstract, visual text become the foundation for Lawrence’s own language in this exhibition. Throughout Piano, Lawrence records and reflects upon the passage of time in a variety of forms.

At the age of 37, Annette Lawrence has been recognized nationally as an artist of tremendous talent. Lawrence has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside, The African-American Museum in Dallas, ArtPace: A Foundation for Contemporary Art in San Antonio, the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, the Community Artists' Collective and the Firehouse Gallery in Houston. She has appeared in many group exhibitions including, the 1997 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the first and eleventh rounds of installations at Project Row Houses, Houston; The Texas Collection, Modern - Postmodern, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Gender: Fact or Fiction at the Laguna Gloria Museum of Art in Austin; and Finders Keepers, at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.

Annette Lawrence has served as an artist-in-residence through the Texas Commission on the Arts and at the Fordsburg Artists’ Studios in Johannesburg South Africa. She has received prestigious fellowships, including the Core Fellowship from the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston as well as Camille Hanks Cosby Fellowship for African-American Artists from The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Furthermore, Annette Lawrence has received grants from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, and Art Matters, Incorporated. Originally from New York, Annette Lawrence is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing in the School of Visual Arts at The University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.

DUNN AND BROWN CONTEMPORARY

5020 Tracy Street, Dallas, Texas 75205

www.dunnandbrown.com

Matthew Sontheimer, Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas - Remarks

Matthew Sontheimer: Remarks

Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas

May 11 - June 9, 2001

Dunn and Brown Contemporary presents a one-person exhibition of recent work by Houston-based artist Matthew Sontheimer. The artist’s first solo show in North Texas, this exhibition includes eighteen intimate drawings and two site-specific wall drawings created by Sontheimer for Dunn and Brown Contemporary. Using ink on Mylar film, Sontheimer reveals detailed narrative drawings strictly derived from letters of his self-created alphabetical language. Through a highly complex process of tracing and erasing, Matthew Sontheimer invented his twenty-six character alphabetic code from the intricacies of his father’s signature.

Drawn across the page in a precise and systematic manner, each finished drawing of the combined characters resembles an image rather than text. Upon first glance of Sontheimer’s detailed works on paper, the connected, fuzzy edged lines appear very similar in appearance to handwriting and even legible. However, upon closer inspection, Matthew Sontheimer’s hand creates a complex system of marks and detail that is completely indecipherable. A studied examination of each drawing provides the viewer with a more intimate understanding of how personal and deliberate each individual character is within Sontheimer’s invented language. While Matthew Sontheimer expresses himself with carefully chosen words to the viewer, the specific message of each work remains personal to the artist and unintelligible to the viewer.

A site-specific wall drawing at Dunn and Brown Contemporary follows a similar site-specific work created for the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston earlier this year. In creating the wall drawing, Matthew Sontheimer writes a single line of text across the wall in his invented alphabet. Measuring no higher than four inches and running over fifteen feet, each wall drawing in the exhibition pulls the viewer for closer and more personal inspection. The subtlety of Sontheimer’s drawing reaches an extreme in that each wall drawing has been carefully covered over with a steady line of Liquid Paper. The black ink beneath the Liquid Paper faintly appears beneath the layer of off white, suggesting the former existence of Sontheimer’s personal message and his correction of that thought.

Born in 1969 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Matthew Sontheimer currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. He received his B.F.A. in 1992 from Stephen F. Austin State University, and in 1995, he received his M.F.A. from Montana State University in Bozeman. Matthew Sontheimer has been included in recent exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Jones Center for Contemporary Art in Austin, and the Galveston Art Center. Just this year, his drawings were acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for their permanent collection.

DUNN AND BROWN CONTEMPORARY

5020 Tracy Street, Dallas, Texas 75205

www.dunnandbrown.com