Claude Monet @ Detroit Institute of Arts - Monet: Framing Life

Monet: Framing Life
DIA - Detroit Institute of Arts
Through March 4, 2018

Claude Monet

“Rounded Flower Bed (Corbeille de fleurs),” 1876 

Oil on canvas 

Detroit Institute of Arts

“Monet: Framing Life” is an intimate exhibition focusing on an important painting in the DIA collection—Claude Monet’s “Rounded Flower Bed (Corbeille de fleurs)” from 1876, formerly known as “Gladioli” and recently retitled based on new research. Claude Monet created this work while living in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil between late 1871 and early 1878, an especially productive time. It was there that he met and worked beside fellow avant-garde painters that formed the group now known as the Impressionists.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“Claude Monet,” 1872 

Oil on canvas 

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.35

This exhibition brings the DIA’s painting together with 10 other Argenteuil paintings by Monet and fellow impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir—including seven major loans from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In doing so, the exhibition presents a more comprehensive story about the creation of “Rounded Flower Bed (Corbeille de fleurs)” and how it fits into Monet’s body of work, as well as the history of Impressionism more broadly.

A catalog accompanies the exhibition.

This exhibition has been organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts and made possible by the Bonnie Ann Larson Modern European Master Series.

DIA - DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS
5200 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48202
www.dia.org

Michael Kenna, Detroit Institute of Arts - Industrial Revelations: Photographs by Michael Kenna of the Rouge and Other Sites

Industrial Revelations: Photographs by Michael Kenna of the Rouge and Other Sites

Detroit Institute of Arts

Through February 11, 1996

Photographs by Michael Kenna are featured in the exhibition Industrial Revelations: Photographs by Michael Kenna of the Rouge and Other Sites at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Included are approximately 60 of Michael Kenna's photographs of the Rouge Steel plant in Dearborn and 20 views of industrial sites in England.

This new series of photographs was inspired by Charles Sheeler's legendary photographs of the Rouge plant commissioned in 1927 by the Ford Motor Company. However, while Sheeler concentrated on the interior of the steel-making complex, Michael Kenna's work focuses on the exterior seen in views made at dawn, at dusk and during the night. His photographs are distinguished by their dynamic design, unusual viewpoints, and dramatic contrasts of light and shade.

Industrial smoke also plays a major role in Michael Kenna's work. In the exhibition catalog he comments, "I favor the power of suggestion over descriptive documentation and often use smoke, steam or mist in my work. These elements obscure details, simplify forms, strengthen foreground graphic shapes, and simultaneously tone down background distractions."

Born in a small industrial town in Lancashire, England, Michael Kenna, now based in San Francisco, has always felt at home in industrial environments. His striking and strangely beautiful views of the Rouge plant are contrasted with the photographs he made in the 1980s of nuclear plants in his native England.

THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS

5200 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48202

www.dia.org