Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts: A Distant Conversation @ Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, USA

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts

A Distant Conversation

Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, USA

October 26, 2024 — February 23, 2025 

The Currier Museum of Art presents the latest chapter in its ongoing series of "Distant Conversations" pairing the work of artists whose artistic and intellectual affinities manifest across barriers of time and space. This new exhibition brings together six artworks by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988), one of the most celebrated and influential artists of his generation, and seven large canvases by New York–based Ivorian painter Ouattara Watts (b. 1958). 

“‘Distant Conversations’ at the Currier has brought together artists whose works transcend time and geographical boundaries,” said Jordana Pomeroy, Director of the Currier. “We are delighted to bring together Basquiat and Watts in an exhibition that captures the spark between these two artists, although they knew each other only briefly.”

The two artists first met in 1988 at the opening of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s solo show at Yvon Lambert Gallery, which was held only seven months prior to his death. The exhibition at the Currier imagines how their friendship and mutual influence could have evolved over time and demonstrates how, despite Basquiat’s untimely death, their dialogue and spiritual exchange have effectively continued. Following their serendipitous first meeting in Paris, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts quickly became friends and established a strong intellectual connection. Jean-Michel Basquiat was so taken by Ouattara Watt’s work after a single studio visit that he convinced the Ivorian painter to move to New York City, where he would introduce him to gallerists and collectors, providing essential support and help in launching Ouattara Watts’ career overseas. During their brief friendship and artistic alliance, Basquiat and Watts traveled together to New Orleans—Basquiat was fascinated with the city and wanted to show Watts how diasporic African cultures and traditions had permeated and creolized the local culture. The two had already planned a trip to Watts’ home country of the Ivory Coast—Basquiat wanted to explore the country he had first visited in 1986 in the company of his new friend. Sadly, the trip never happened, as Jean-Michel Basquiat died on August 12, 1988, shortly before they were to depart.

Ouattara Watts moved to Paris from the Ivory Coast in 1977 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. Ouattara Watts had been showing his work in gallery contexts since 1985—the same year that Basquiat was profiled for the cover of the New York Times Magazine in an article titled “New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist.” While Ouattara Watts was beginning his career in the art world, Jean-Michel Basquiat had already permeated mainstream culture, elevating graffiti to the realm of high art and re-energizing the art of his time by infusing the Neo-Expressionist movement with his distinct, sophisticated, and politicized visual language. Like Watts, who references multiple religions and spiritual practices in his work in addition to musical and scientific symbolism, Basquiat uniquely blended diverse sources of inspiration and often included language and writing in his paintings. Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and a mother of Puerto Rican descent, Basquiat’s artistic inclination and intellectual curiosity manifested early. Following his participation in seminal group exhibitions such as the Times Square Show and New York/New Wavecurated by Diego Cortez (MoMA PS1, NYC), and his collaboration (SAMO) with street artist Al Diaz, Basquiat began his solo career in 1980 with successful solo presentations at Annina Nosei Gallery and Fun Gallery. In 1982, he joined Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, helping to propel him to international stardom.

Born and raised in Abidjan, Ouattara Watts’s work has been strongly influenced by his family’s cultural and religious syncretism. He first arrived in Paris in the late-1970s, motivated by his profound love for art and art history. Once in Europe, he soon found in painting a means of reconciling the African context in which he was raised with his experience of the West. By combining in his oeuvre elements originating in different religions and traditions, Ouattara Watts presented Jean-Michel Basquiat with visual and intellectual solutions for recomposing and healing his sense of displacement and diasporic fracture, which he was grappling with at the same time as he sought an outlet for righteous anger at anti-Black racism. In the time that he became close with Ouattara Watts, Jean-Michel Basquiat was increasingly invested in learning about his African heritage and keen to experience the continent firsthand. His first trip to the Ivory Coast, during which time he prophetically visited Ouattara Watts’ hometown of Abidjan, is an early testament to this commitment.

The exhibition at the Currier captures these two important artists as they encounter each other at a crossroads, a mental and spiritual space simultaneously informed by Africa and the West. They were literally traveling in opposite directions, in search of meaning and connection, when they found each other on a complementary although reverse journey.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts: A Distant Conversation presents six artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat from a private collection alongside seven large paintings by Ouattara Watts. The earliest piece in the selection by Basquiat is a portrait of art critic and curator extraordinaire Henry Geldzahler (c. 1981) who interviewed Jean-Michel Basquiat for a January 1983 feature in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Works like Feng Yao (1983) and Dinah Washington (1986) speak directly to Basquiat’s interest in dance and music. And jazz music was a passion he shared with Watts.

Procession (1986) painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat on slats of wood showcases his desire to experiment with different materials while enhancing the depth of his paintings and subverting the rules of ‘high art.’ Similarly, Ouattara Watts, whose first paintings upon arriving in Paris were created on tarp (a far cheaper and more resistant material than canvas) often combines diverse techniques and layers to create works that are worlds unto themselves. Watts’ artistic vision is often outwardly and celestial. At times, however, the work seems more solidly grounded with direct references to African ceremonial traditions and landscapes. Watts’ palette is explosive and rich in tonalities, as clearly demonstrated by his most recent body of work (the Spiritual Gangster series from 2023) included in this exhibition. While paintings like Intercessor #0 (1989) and Beyond Life (1990) were made around the time of Watts’ friendship with Basquiat, other works in the selection prove how their spiritual and artistic conversation continued despite the latter’s passing in 1988. A conversation that continues at a distance to this day

CURRIER MUSEUM OF ART

150 Ash Street, Manchester, NH 03104, USA

currier.org

Phil Collins – Cornerhouse, Manchester

Phil Collins
Cornerhouse, Manchester
Through 20 November 2010

Just as it was mandatory in British schools to attend Bible lessons, in Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia or East Germany, Marxism was a central part of the curriculum. I’d often wondered about this. What had happened to the Marxist teachers now? Were they teaching business studies? -- PHIL COLLINS

Marxism Today is a film project by British artist Phil Collins. It takes as its starting point the Marxism classes that were a compulsory feature of East German schools prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, investigating what became of the teachers of this subject after Marxist ideology became increasingly discredited and after the teachers themselves became surplus to requirements. 

After extensive research, Collins located many former Marxist-Leninist teachers from across the former German Democratic Republic. From the ones that came forward, the artist selected three women – Andrea Ferber, Petra Mgoza-Zeckay and Marianne Klotz – to be the subject of a 35-minute film, called marxism today (prologue), which launched to considerable acclaim at the Berlin Biennale in June, and will have its UK premiere at Cornerhouse, in October 2010.

Combining interviews with these women in their homes or current workplace with archive footage from the heyday of the socialist state, Collins’ film considers the ramifications of the social and political transformations of the past two decades from a human perspective, and with a generous and engaging sense of empathy. We learn that one of the interviewees switched from introducing students to the principles of Marxist/Leninist philosophy to setting up a dating agency for intellectuals, while another refuses, on principle, to eat bananas or drink Coca-Cola to this day.

The second phase of the project shifts its attention from former East Germany to Manchester, where Marx’s confidant Friedrich Engels wrote his influential ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ in the late nineteenth century. While Marxism Today: Prologue is exhibited at Cornerhouse, as part of the AND Festival, Collins will be in the city for a series of workshops and events, and preparing for a second stage of filming. For this next chapter of the project, Film and Video Umbrella and Cornerhouse will bring three of the Marxist-Leninist teachers to Manchester to give an introduction to Marxism at a state school, a private school and a religious school.

Collins will follow the lives of students and teachers at these schools through the eyes of the visitors, recording the reaction of pupils and parents to the lessons of this apparently discounted political creed. In the context of the recent global financial crisis, what kind of conversation will emerge from this encounter, and how do issues of class, labour and economic value figure in the lives of young people now?

marxism today is funded by Cornerhouse (Manchester), the Berlin Biennial 6 and DAAD Berliner Kuenstlerprogramm, Film and Video Umbrella (London) and Abandon Normal Devices (AND).

PHIL COLLINS was born in Runcorn, UK in 1970 and currently lives and works in Berlin. The artist earned his B.A. at the University of Manchester and received his M.F.A. from the University of Ulster, School of Art & Design, Belfast. Recent solo exhibitions include the world won’t listen, Tramway, Glasgow (2009), Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2008), Dallas Museum of Art, Texas (2007), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2007), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2006), Tate Britain, London (2006-7), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006). Recent group exhibitions include The Making of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2009), Acting Out: Social Experiments in Video, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009), Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image. Part II: Realisms, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington (2008), Life On Mars, 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2008), Double Agent, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2008). Phil Collins was nominated for the 2006 Turner Prize.

CORNERHOUSE, MANCHESTER

70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH

www.cornerhouse.org

2 October - 20 November 2010

Alison Erika Forde: Exhibition at International 3, Manchester - Smotherland

Alison Erika Forde: Smotherland
The International 3, Manchester
Throught 30 October 2010

Smotherland, at the International 3 in Manchester is the artist ALISON ERIKA FORDE’s first solo exhibition.

Alison Erika Forde draws on her dreams and memories of past experiences to produce fantastical images that acknowledge the capacity of daydream to allow us to consider the complexity of the everyday. Her imagery and illustrative style is influenced as much by graphic novels, comic strips, street art and kitsch as it is by fine art’s history and whilst initial viewing suggests a disarming playfulness, her work is imbued with a vital mischief and dark humour. Wide-eyed characters frequently face impending doom and uncomfortable scenarios are enacted on the picture’s periphery. 

Moving away from a previously exclusive use of 2D, in Smotherland, Alison Erika Forde expanding this charmingly malevolent world to encompass 3D. Giant painted figures provides a menacing backdrop to a group of intricately painted wooden peg people and a new collection of paintings on charity shop sourced pictures and donated second hand materials.

Smotherland is accompanied by commissioned texts written by freelance curator Bryony Bond and D.I.Y craftster and writer Seleena Daye.

ALISON ERIKA FORDE (born 1985, Greater Manchester) gained a first class BA (Hons) Fine Art from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2008 where she also won the British Airways Student Prize. Alison Erika Forde’s recent exhibitions include, ‘How we work’ at Blackburne House in Liverpool and ‘Not at this address’ at Bury Museum and Art Gallery’. The International 3 has also presented her work at Preview Berlin 08, VOLTA 5, Basel, The Manchester Contemporary and VOLTA New York. Alison Erika Forde has an upcoming solo exhibition at MasART Galeria in Barcelona followed by The International 3’s presentation of her work alongside Rachel Goodyear’s at NADA Art Fair Miami Beach 2010 from 2nd – 5th December.. Work by Alison Erika Forde is held in the Olbricht Collection and in private collections in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, U.S.A. and U.K.

Alison Erika Forde, Smotherland
24th September – Saturday 30th October 2010

THE INTERNATIONAL 3
8 Fairfield st., Manchester M1 3GF

Opening Times: Weds – Sat 12pm – 5pm and Sunday 31st October 12pm-5pm

Walter Sickert, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - drawing is the thing

Walter Sickert: drawing is the thing
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
1 October - 5 December 2004

‘Any fool can paint, but drawing is the thing and drawing is the test.’

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) is seen as a major figure within the history of British painting and yet by his own affirmation drawing lay at the core of his creative process. Walter Sickert drew constantly in order to capture new subjects for his paintings – theatrical interiors, the stage, and highly-charged domestic dramas such as The Camden Town Murder. Walter Sickert: ‘drawing is the thing’ examines every form of drawing Walter Sickert made, together with a number of related paintings and prints. Together these works offer an insight into Walter Sickert’s techniques, themes and, most importantly, his reasons for drawing.

Walter Sickert’s earliest, small drawings were made in the semi-darkness of the theatre, and he kept a selection of these in his possession until his death, emphasising their importance to him. He mounted them in an idiosyncratic way, several to a mount. Many are inscribed with details of lighting, colour and costume. They are not only one of the best documents of London’s theatrical interiors and performances of the late 19th century, but also evidence if his daily, or rather nightly, practice of drawing from real-life situations. Their style in the main is one of the quick, evocative sketch, the line which above all must be rapid. Walter Sickert also made more considered drawings of the theatre, some of which were very finished and which were used as preparation for prints and paintings. These he would often square up in an elaborate way, using red ink and numbering the squares to facilitate their transfer.

Walter Sickert’s depictions of couples in an interior are rightly recognised as his major achievement, and this body of work forms the central part of the exhibition. Just as many of Walter Sickert’s theatrical interiors featured the dynamic tension between audience and performer so his domestic dramas are full of psychological tension with couples engaged in the whole gamut of enigmatic confrontation. Drawings like A Weak Defence (Arts Council of England), The Prevaricator(The British Council) and The Conversation (Royal College of Art) have given rise to recent speculation on the relevance of the Jack The Ripper crimes to Walter Sickert and his work. A central feature of the exhibition is a section assembling all the known drawings for his famous composition Ennui, together with the paintings and prints they inspired.

The unusual nature of Walter Sickert’s subject-matter extends to his choice of unconventional models, both architectural and human. He rejected professional models and preferred unglamorous, working-class parts of town. The exhibition also explores the relationship between Walter Sickert and one of his models, Cicely Hey, or ‘Kikely’ as he chose to call her. The sixty-two year old Sickert and Cicely, a young art student, met in 1923 and they became firm friends. He made a series of works featuring her ‘dear little face’, which she eventually bequeathed to The Whitworth Art Gallery. They show the artist using drawing to record a relationship – in contrast to his invention of relationships in his domestic fictions.

Walter Sickert taught drawing and painting, and examples of his drawings were obviously used for teaching purposes. His system of developing a painting is exemplified by unfinished works including My Awful Dad (Private Collection). Works by pupils Sylvia Gosse and Harry Rutherford, show the influence of Walter Sickert and exemplify the methods he advocated as a teacher when, for example he conducted an evening class in Manchester in the late 1920s.

Walter Sickert stopped drawing at about the age of seventy, around 1930, and employed a new range of sources, including engravings, newspaper cuttings or photographs. On occasions, Walter Sickert would square up a photograph for transfer, exactly as he had done drawings earlier in this life.

This loan exhibition comprises about 150 works, drawn from the UK’s most prominent collections, both public and private. This most extensive exhibition of Walte Sickert’s drawings ever be exhibited is supported by a fully illustrated catalogue features essays by prominent scholars in the field. Following the showing at The Whitworth Art Gallery, it will travel to Southampton City Art Gallery and then to The Ulster Museum, Belfast.

The exhibition is supported by The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

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

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

Wim Delvoye, Manchester Art Gallery - Gothic Works

Gothic Works by Wim Delvoye 

Manchester Art Gallery 

17 September - 17 November 2002 

Belgian artist WIM DELVOYE is a rising star in international art. For Manchester Art Gallery, Wim Delvoye has created an exhibition of new work on a Gothic theme.

A series of glass windows named after the nine muses of Greek mythology are dramatically displayed in the Gallery's new exhibition space. Brightly coloured pieces of glass are interspersed with images created by old and new methods of seeing into the body: X-rays, ulstrasound and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). These represent life and death, and mix the sacred and the profane, the beautiful and the morbid. They have been specifically made by master craftsmen under the artist's direction.

In the middle of the Gallery, there are two huge earth movers resembling miniature Gothic cathedrals. These are new works specifically made for Manchester. They are computer designed; one is made from sheets of laser-cut MDF kitchen work surface and one is made from steel.

Wim Delvoye's art is extremely eclectic and can be divided into different themes, of which the Gothic is one strand. Whilst he has deeply serious intentions, Wim Delvoye also applies his own sense of humour to create unique and challenging work.

Cloaca, his most recent and controversial project was exhibited in Antwerp last year. Wim Delvoye employed scientists and engineers to make a machine which replicated the workings of the human gut; a full-size production line turned a daily hot meal into faeces. As well as being hugely popular, this was a compelling and thought provoking show about our relationship to our own bodies. Previously, he commissioned wood carvers to make beautiful full size concrete mixers in rosewood and teak - his cement truck which took a year of working with craftsmen in Java was one of the big hits of the 1999 Venice Biennale. In Antwerp, for a show at the Open Air Museum of Sculpture in Middleheim, he approached the tattooists of the red light district in Antwerp to tattoo their designs on pigs who were thus turned into works of art and saved from the butcher's block.

Wim Delvoye has exhibited in galleries world wide and also at Documenta IX and the 1999 Venice Biennale. Wim Delvoye lives and works in Ghent.

A full colour catalogue will be available.

MANCHESTER ART GALLERY

Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

www.manchestergalleries.org

Chris Ofili, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester

Chris Ofili
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
28 November - 24 January 1999

An exhibition of the work of the Turner Prize-nominee Chris Ofili comes to the Whitworth Art Gallery. The show will open just days before the Turner Prize announcement on 1 December with Ofili returning to his home city, having shown his paintings in major exhibitions in Europe and the USA.

Chris Ofili's extraordinary paintings are inspired by a wide range of influences in art and popular culture, including jazz and hip hop, comic book heroes, glamour magazine models, 1970's afro hairdos and Blaxploitation movies. He has also studied the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Guston, George Condo, and William Blake, as well as an inspiring trip to Africa in the early 1990's. His own work featured most strongly in the recent Sensation exhibition of highlights from the Saatchi collection shown at the Royal Academy last year.

Despite the large-scale nature of the work, it is in the details that the artist finds real beauty, often in the most unexpected of materials. His dazzlingly innovative works often incorporate coloured resin, glitter, magazine cut-outs, phosphorescent paint, and, most famously, elephant dung with layer upon layer of surface and decoration.

The exhibition shows a selection of his work from the last five years and has been organised by Southampton City Art Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery, London. The accompanying illustrated catalogue is the first publication dedicated to Chris Ofili's work and will be available at the exhibition.

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

Anne Desmet, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - Towers and Transformations. A Retrospective Exhibition

Anne Desmet: Towers and Transformations
A Retrospective Exhibition
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
1 October - 28 November 1999

Anne Desmet is one of the most original talents in contemporary printmaking. Her wood engravings and collages show a unique imagination as well as an abundance of technical skill.

Central to her work is a vision of architecture, often depicted in minute detail. Anne Desmet attributes this partially to prolonged stays in hospital as a child when the artist passed the time making detailed pencil drawings of her surroundings. A year spent in Italy inspired the many prints featuring Roman and Italian buildings. The multi-layered aspect of Italian cities is shown with ancient ruins co-existing with the modern. Anne Desmet explores the themes of change, decay, and regeneration, with some of her subjects undergoing amazing transformations in a series of related images, like looking at a flickbook or a series of film stills.

Anne Desmet was born in Liverpool in 1964, and was a student at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford from 1983-86. Subsequently she studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London and held a scholarship at the British School in Rome.

The exhibition is touring the UK and was organised by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and supported by the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and Southern Arts. An illustrated catalogue is available at Zwemmers, the Gallery Shop.

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

Maxfield Parrish, 1870-1966 - Retrospective Exhibition

Maxfield Parrish, 1870-1966

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

June 19 - October 3, 1999 

The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH 

November 6, 1999 - January 23 

Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY

February 19 - April 30, 2000 

Brooklyn Museum of Art

May 26 - August 6, 2000 

Maxfield Parrish, 1870-1966 is the first major critical retrospective devoted to one of the most popular artists of this century. Comprising over 100 paintings, drawings, prints, models, photographs, and ephemera, the exhibition is organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and The American Federation of Arts.

Sylvia Yount, Chief Curator, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, arranged the exhibition chronologically, highlighting the various phases of MaxParrish's prolific 70-year career, to examine the artist's reputation among colleagues, critics, and the public, within the context of American culture. The exhibition considers Parrish's historical importance, his enduring influence, and provides a critical reappraisal of the artist's work after his death.

Frederick Maxfield Parrish was born into Philadelphia's Quaker elite and encouraged from childhood to develop his talent by his father, Stephen (1848-1938), an acclaimed etcher and landscape painter. A student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1892 to 1894, Parrish came of age during a time when there was a flowering of artistic practices, including painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts as well as decorative arts, architecture, and landscape design. In her essay in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Dr. Yount writes, "Encompassing both the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts movements, this phenomenon [the so-called American Renaissance] challenged traditional artistic hierarchies of fine and applied arts, reconsidered the relationship between amateur and professional, and prompted a great deal of experimentation and collaboration in the art world. That Parrish's expansive artistic sensibility found expression in all these forms throughout his career marks him as an exemplary product of his age."

Designing magazine covers and posters, he illustrated books by L. Frank Baum and Kenneth Grahame, and a cover for a book by Edith Wharton. Iconic works, such as Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree (1906), reveal his remarkable narrative skills and craftsmanship. School Days (Alphabet) (1909) and The Idiot (1910), commissioned by Collier's magazine, showcase his ingenious manipulation of formal layering and optical effects.

His lifelong interest in architecture, the decorative arts, and the theater informed his art. Although he frequently worked with amateur groups creating backdrops and set designs, his last known involvement with professional theater was a production of Snow White, for which he created the free-standing Gnome (c. 1916).

The 1920s witnessed an explosion of popular culture, from comic strips to jazz, and an accord between "low" and "high" art forms. This was a period of artistic experimentation in which Parrish achieved great success with his dream worlds and fantastical images of exotic and erotic innocence, typified by Interlude (The Lute Players) (1922). In 1925, three of his best-known paintings, including Daybreak (1922), sold for ten thousand dollars each, setting a record at the time for a living American artist.

Maxfield Parrish's fame continued to advance as his color reproductions were mass-produced and broadly circulated. He saw himself as a "public" artist and worked diligently to democratize art. Soon, his girls on rocks bathed in golden light, breathtaking landscapes, and images of youthful abandon were ubiquitous in American households. In 1936, Time magazine commented on his extraordinary public recognition with the report, "as far as the sale of expensive color reproductions is concerned, the three most popular artists in the world are van Gogh, Cézanne, and Maxfield Parrish."

From the 1930s and 1940s and until his death, his sole interest was in landscape painting, his first love. (His last figurative composition was a caricature of himself, Jack Frost, in 1936.) He focused on two distinctive regions associated with national authenticity, New England and the Southwest, to create a visual definition of American quintessence and a pairing of the Old World with the New.

Maxfield Parrish's posthumous revival occurred during the decade of Pop Art and the current postmodern period. According Dr. Yount, Parrish endures as "a Peter Pan figure in the art world–captivating the 'young at heart' of all ages."

PUBLICATION - In conjunction with the exhibition, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. published Maxfield Parrish, 1870-1966. This richly illustrated catalogue addresses the artist's place in the history of American art and culture, challenging the artistic boundaries of "high" and "low" art. Dr. Yount's lead essay examines the enormous popularity of Parrish's work during his lifetime and today. Mark F. Bockrath, Paintings Conservator, the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, discusses the working methods and techniques used by the artist. 160 pages, 9 x 12", 81 color illustrations.

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS

41 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10021

afaweb.org

Katharine Dowson, The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - Myriad

Katharine Dowson: Myriad
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
24 July - 8 November 1998

A new exhibition in the Whitworth's Mezzanine Court will provoke visitors to look at the beauty of everyday details and the hidden landscapes within nature and the human body. Katharine Dowson will be showing 'Myriad', a wave curtain of optical lenses, alongside other recent works.

'Myriad' is a curtain made up of lenses of differing focal lengths so that the visitor sees a different view through each lens. The view intensifies details and illuminates the act of seeing as you become aware that what you see is not necessarily the truth. The curtain will bisect the Mezzanine Court in a gentle wave running parallel to the red-brick Victorian facade, providing a unique sensory experience.

Katharine Dowson is also interested in life forces, and the ambiguous response we have to images of our body's biology. Her 'Optic Box' series of fragile organic shapes are both sensual and repulsive at the same time. The boxes hang on the wall and use light from within to illuminate the glass, wax and resin images on display. 'Link', a recent work, involves photographs of belly buttons magnified to such a large size as to be unrecognisable and distorted.

The artist's work seduces the viewer with its surface beauty, but a sense of discomfort remains as we are unsure what lies below.

Katharine Dowson was last at the Gallery as part of Bittersweet last year and previously in Whitworth Young Contemporaries in 1991. She has had solo shows in London and Norwich and her work is included in the Saatchi Collection.

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

LS Lowry at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester - Works on paper

LS Lowry Works on Paper
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
13 June - 30 August 1998

LS Lowry and Manchester are forever bound together as people recollect his paintings of industrial scenes and characteristic figures. In this first exhibition of the artist's work at the Whitworth for over 20 years, another side of his work is shown with pencil drawings and a rare selection of watercolours showing a wider range of subjects than is usually revealed.

The drawings are from both public and private collections and stand as complete works in their own right, rather than as preparatory sketches. They cover the whole of LS Lowry's career from the rare early portraits and life drawings, through the industrial scenes, to the unexpected rural landscapes and seascapes.

Born in Stretford, Manchester, in 1887, LS Lowry drifted into an office job whilst studying art at night school for 10 years. On moving to Pendlebury in his 20s, he spent much of his time exploring the more industrialised area, and it was during this period that he developed what has become his most recognisable subject.

LS Lowry's great skill as an observer is obvious in even his most early works. He wrestled with feelings of isolation and depression for much of his life, and his habit of withdrawing from those around him to take a step back is present in his depictions of crowds of anonymous people.

He was a celebrated artist during his lifetime and became a Royal Academician in 1962 at the age of 74. LS Lowry left Salford to retire to the leafy suburbs of Cheshire where he painted occasional watercolours, examples of which are included in the exhibition.

'LS Lowry - Works on Paper' is organised in association with the Crane Kalman Gallery, London.

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