Art Deco Paris: 1900-1925, Princeton University Library

Art Deco Paris: 1900-1925

Princeton University Library

October 15, 2000 - April 8, 2001

One of Art Deco's most vivid legacies, the printmaking technique known as pochoir, is the subject of an exhibition in the Leonard L. Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts at Princeton University's Firestone Library. The exhibition captures not only a little known art form but the sensuous spirit of affluent society in the first quarter of the 20th century.

The approximately 100 original color prints in Art Deco Paris document the uninhibited era that gave us jazz, the tango, high fashion, and modern art. The pochoir process, which involved the manual application of gouache or watercolor pigments through the medium of stencils, was itself an intriguing marriage of commerce and art; of originality and mass production. At its height, there were some 30 pochoir studios in Paris employing a small army of workers around the clock, mostly women and children, who laboriously applied as many as 100 variations of color to a single print.

The vibrant colors and flamboyant designs that distinguished Art Deco, together with pochoir's Japanese heritage and contribution to modernism, are well-illustrated. Curator Dale Roylance, whose respect for pochoir is evident in both the exhibition and a 75-page, full-color catalog, has highlighted a number of themes, including the emergence of the female identity, the lure of the exotic, and the role of music and dance.

Visitors are struck by an arresting image of Josephine Baker atop a piano when Harlem met Paris in 1925; Henri Matisse's beautiful pochoir folio, Jazz; the languid figures of George Barbier, redolent of jaded wealth; and the fashion plates that proclaimed the arrival of haute couture. Through these unique prints, Dale Roylance tells the story of a world that defied convention and laid many of the foundations for our own.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

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The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection at The Art Museum, Princeton University

The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection

The Art Museum, Princeton University

March 27 - June 27, 1999

The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection, a landmark contribution to the understanding of Chinese calligraphy and civilization, is on view at The Art Museum, Princeton University.

The exhibition includes fifty-five major examples of Chinese calligraphy ranging in date from the third century to the modern period from the collection of John B. Elliott in The Art Museum, Princeton University, together with works on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Gest Oriental Library, Princeton University. The exhibition is also enriched by works on loan from the collections of Robert H. Ellsworth and the Richard Rosenblum family. Many of the works in the exhibition have never been published and will be on view for the first time.

Calligraphy, "the art of writing," played a formative role in Chinese civilization, where the past is treated as a source of cultural authority and legitimacy. Because the legacy of the past is transmitted through the written character, there is a personal and public reverence for writing, which accounts for calligraphy, more than painting, sculpture, or architecture, being the most venerated art form in China.

Arranged in three sections, the exhibition opens with an introduction to the origins of Chinese writing and the early formation of a public, monumental script style, in which oracle-bone writing and graphs cast in ritual bronze vessels are shown in relation to script types written in brush and ink on bamboo, silk, or paper.

The second section examines in chronological order four major stages in the development of Chinese calligraphy: the calligraphy of Wang Hsi-chih (A.D. 303-361), the most influential calligrapher in China, who elevated calligraphy to an art form and through whose influence calligraphy came to be seen as an embodiment of the mind and personality of the writer; a new, public monumental script style developed in the T’ang dynasty; the intimate, expressive calligraphy styles that emerged around scholar-artists in the Sung dynasty (960-1279); and a reformulation of a monumental calligraphy style in the Yüan dynasty (1279-1368).

The final section focuses on the calligraphy of the succeeding Ming (1368-1644) and Ch’ing (1644-1911) dynasties through the modern period, during which calligraphy styles ranged from innovative and highly idiosyncratic to a metamorphoses of past styles.

Motivated to form a collection for teaching, for the training of young scholars and the advancement of the understanding of a civilization and culture that meant so much to him, John B. Elliott, Class of 1951 of Princeton University, established one of the premier collections of Chinese calligraphy outside China. Wen C. Fong, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art History at Princeton, described the collection as "the only historically comprehensive selection of Chinese calligraphy outside China."

With John B. Elliott’s death on July 25, 1997, Princeton University lost a loyal alumnus. The impressive quality and scope of the collection is celebrated in the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue by Robert E. Harrist, Jr., and Wen C. Fong, with contributions by Qianshen Bai, Dora C.Y. Ching, Chuan-hsing Ho, Cary Y. Liu, Amy McNair, Zhixin Sun, and Jay Xu. The essays examine aspects of the culture of calligraphy from religious writing, the aesthetics of the strange or unusual, to the significance of stele, couplet, and letter formats. Introductory essays discuss the "four revolutions" in the history of calligraphy and the importance of reading calligraphy to its practice and appreciation.

The exhibition, organized by The Art Museum, will travel to the Seattle Art Museum, February 10 - May 7, 2000, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 15, 2000 - January 7, 2001.

Curators of the exhibition are Cary Y. Liu, associate curator of Asian art, The Art Museum, and guest curator, Robert E. Harrist, Jr., associate professor of art and archaeology, Columbia University, assisted by Dora C. Y. Ching, project coordinator.

THE ART MUSEUM, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

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Aubrey Beardsley Centennial Exhibition, Princeton University Library

Aubrey Beardsley Centennial Exhibition

Princeton University Library

Through January 7, 1999

The Princeton University Library is currently commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of the Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898), the celebrated English artist and book illustrator, with an exhibition in the Leonard L. Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts, Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library.

The exhibition draws on the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections’ unrivaled Beardsley holdings, including original drawings, posters, photographs, correspondence, literary manuscripts, illustrated books, memorabilia, and other materials. Most of these materials were donated to the Princeton University Library a half-century ago by A.E. (Albert Eugene) Gallatin (1881-1952), the American artist, art critic, art historian, and collector. Gallatin’s gift was supplemented by materials from the J. Harlin O’Connell Collection of the 1890s and by other gifts. With 125 original drawings, Princeton can boast the finest Beardsley collection in the world.

Aubrey Beardsley’s brilliant but controversial work was emblematic of the English fin-de-siecle. This most literary of artists was much influenced by the pre-Raphaelites, Japanese woodblock printmakers, and contemporary French writers. But he was more than the sum of influences, developing a unique artistic vision that was bold and original despite its eclecticism. Through his drawings and writings, he became the leading exponent of a British movement referred to by its detractors as "decadent," much as was Oscar Wilde in literature. 

While Aubrey Beardsley only lived to age 25 and is closely associated with the 1890s, he had a profound influence on visual arts and book illustration for decades. Among the nearly 100 items on exhibit are original drawings, first editions, and other materials pertaining to Beardsley’s contributions to Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte Darthur (1893-94), Oscar Wilde’s Salome (1894), The Yellow Book (1894-95), The Savoy (1896-97), and The Lysistrata of Aristophanes (1896) and other illustrations published by Leonard Smithers. Also included are portraits of Aubrey Beardsley by such contemporary artists as Sir William Rothenstein and Max Beerbohm.

The exhibition is curated by Mark Samuels Lasner, author of Selective Checklist of the Published Work of Aubrey Beardsley (1995); and Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

www.princeton.edu