Regina Riveira @ Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Art Museum - Octopus Wrap

Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap
Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park
Through March 8, 2020

REGINA SILVEIRA

Installation view of Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap 

at the Olympic Sculpture Park. 

© Seattle Art Museum. Photo: Natali Wiseman

SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park presents Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap, a new site-specific installation for the PACCAR Pavilion. Inspired by the park’s location at the intersection of several busy thoroughfares, Octopus Wrap envelops the building’s walls in a mind-bending tire track pattern that questions our perception of reality. This is the first time the internationally celebrated artist has shown work in Seattle.

Brazilian artist Regina Silveira is renowned for her illusionistic interventions on buildings, city streets, and public parks. These surreal disruptions of public spaces have included exaggerated shadows, swarms of insects, dense clusters of footprints, and nocturnal light projections of animal tracks wandering across building façades. Regina Silveira started her career in the 1950s and has become one of the country’s most revered artists, creating works that investigate the representation of reality and the power of art to transform.

For this installation, Regina Silveira has wrapped the PACCAR Pavilion’s floor, walls, and windows in an improbable pattern of overlapping tire tracks that from a distance recall the arms of an octopus. The installation resolves on the building’s interior mural wall in five toy motorcycles driven by five tiny drivers. Taking the park’s location—zigzagging around busy city streets, railroad tracks, and waterways—as inspiration, Octopus Wrap upends the viewer’s perception of a well-known space, disrupting its austerity with boisterous visual noise.

“Silveira is an extraordinary artist who has inspired several generations of artists in Brazil,” says Catharina Manchanda, SAM’s Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Contemporary Art. “Her artistic gesture is political in the sense that she aims to disrupt the familiar. Irreverent and fantastical, her immersive installation is like a noisy parade that stops us in our tracks.”

REGINA SILVEIRA

Installation view of Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap 

at the Olympic Sculpture Park. 

© Seattle Art Museum. Photo: John Reed

ABOUT REGINA SILVEIRA

Regina Silveira was born in 1939 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. She received her Ph.D. in 1984 at Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil and has taught there since 1974.

Noteworthy recent solo shows include EXIT, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura – MuBE, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018; Todas As Escadas, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, 2018; Crash, Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil, 2015; and 1001 Dias e Outros Enigmas, Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre Brazil, 2011. Regina Silveira’s recent group exhibitions include Mixed Realities, Kunst Museum, Stuttgart, Germany, 2018; Imprint, Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland, 2017; Future Shock, Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, USA, 2017; Radical Women in Latin America, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2017; and Consciência Cibernética [?], Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017.

Regina Silveira has taken part in over 13 international biennials and received noteworthy grants including Prêmio MASP (2013), Prêmio APCA for her trajectory (2011) and Prêmio Fundação Bunge (2009). The artist also received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1990), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1993) and Fulbright Foundation (1994).

SAM's OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK
2901 Western Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121
seattleartmuseum.org

Jeffrey Gibson @ Seattle Art Museum - Like a Hammer

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer
Seattle Art Museum
February 28 – May 12, 2019

JEFFREY GIBSON

Like A Hammer, 2014

Jeffrey Gibson, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee, b. 1972 

Elk hide, glass beads, artificial sinew, wool blanket, metal studs, steel, found pinewood block, and fur, 56 × 24 × 11 in.

Collection of Tracy Richelle High and Roman Johnson, courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery, New York.

Image courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.

Photo: Peter Mauney.

The Seattle Art Museum presents Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer, a major survey of works from 2011 to the present that reflects the artist’s deepening exploration of his Indigenous heritage, legacies of abstraction, and popular and alternative cultures. Organized by the Denver Art Museum, the exhibition features over 65 works produced during a pivotal time in the Jeffrey Gibson’s career, including abstract geometric paintings on rawhide and canvas, beaded punching bags, sculptures, wall hangings, and video. Reflecting the complexity of modern identity, Jeffrey Gibson’s work envisions a more inclusive future.

A contemporary artist of Cherokee heritage and a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Jeffrey Gibson grew up in the US and urban centers in Europe and South Korea. As a young adult, he was involved in queer club culture and interested in popular music, fashion, and design. These experiences inform his vision of exuberant hybridity, in which glass beads, metal jingles, ribbons, song lyrics, and abstract geometric patterns come together. Gibson’s use of materials and references that resonate in modern and contemporary Western art, as well as Indigenous and ancient cultures, establishes a unique visual vocabulary that gives rise to new possibilities and points of connection.

A highlight of the exhibition is 15 punching bags, most of which are from the Everlast series that marked an artistic breakthrough for Jeffrey Gibson. Intricately adorned in beads, fringe, and jingles, and often incorporating text, the punching bags shift gender associations between the masculine and the feminine. They also prompt reflection about the history of violence against Indigenous cultures and signal a call for resilience and perseverance. Like a Hammer also features IF I RULED THE WORLD (2018), which was recently acquired by the Seattle Art Museum for its permanent collection.

JEFFREY GIBSON

I PUT A SPELL ON YOU, 2015 

Jeffrey Gibson, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee, b. 1972

Repurposed punching bag, glass beads, artificial sinew, and steel; 40 × 14 × 14 in.

Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. 

Museum purchase, 2015.11.1.

Image courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.

Photo: Peter Mauney

Language plays an important role in Jeffrey Gibson's work, with lines from pop songs and other sources adorning vibrant woven and patterned wall hangings and punching bags. Taken from such diverse sources as James Baldwin, Pete Seeger, Culture Club, and Public Enemy, among others, the phrases take on multiple meanings and speak to resistance, reclamation, and celebration.

Like a Hammer features many of Jeffrey Gibson’s abstract geometric paintings on canvas and rawhide, in which he explores pattern, light, and color, prompting the viewer to see abstraction through the lens of Indigeneity. Also on view are midsize and large figurative sculptures. The colorful “club kid” figures are inspired by his experiences in the queer club scenes of South Korea, London, and New York in the 1980s and ’90s and connect to his interest in performance, theatricality, and communal experiences. By contrast, his “ancestor” figures are draped with elaborately ornamented cloaks and topped with clay heads reminiscent of skulls or ancient Mississippian culture effigy heads. While visually fierce, these works are seen by the artist as teachers and culture-bearers.

JEFFREY GIBSON

Someone Great Is Gone, 2013 

Jeffrey Gibson, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee, b. 1972 

Elk hide, acrylic paint, and graphite, 91 x 59 in.

Private collection, New York, courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery, New York 

Image courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.

Photo: Peter Mauney.

One gallery is dedicated to the West Coast debut of DON’T MAKE ME OVER, a multimedia installation consisting of cascades of diaphanous rainbow-colored curtains embedded with lyrics from Burt Bacharach’s 1962 song about love and acceptance, made legendary by Dionne Warwick. The curtains encircle an oversized garment adorned with bells and jingles, and a nearby projection plays a video of Jeffrey Gibson wearing the garment, chanting and drumming as he moves within the enclosed curtained space. A series of irregularly shaped diptych paintings on rawhide complete this installation.

At the end of the exhibition is a reading room, where visitors can reflect and read books—including selections for children and young adults—related to the topics explored in Jeffrey Gibson’s work, such as history, politics, culture, and music.

“Jeffrey Gibson’s art is fearless yet playful. His wide-ranging mind transforms myriad influences into provocative work that defies categorization,” says Barbara Brotherton, Curator of Native American Art. “With Gibson, more is more,” adds Catharina Manchanda, Jon & Mary Shirley Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art. “His work is visually and conceptually exhilarating, full of nuance and complexity. Be prepared for a mind-altering experience.”

A 144-page exhibition catalogue (including 106 color illustrations) published by Denver Art Museum and Prestel will be available for purchase in SAM Shop ($39.95). Also titled Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer (ISBN: 978-3-7913-5733-1), it presents six essays on themes found in the artist’s work by Glenn Adamson, Roy Boney Jr., Anne Ellegood, America Meredith, Sara Raza, and John P. Lukavic, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum, who curated the exhibition and also edited the catalogue. Like a Hammer also features an interview with the artist by Jen Mergel.

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is organized by the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition premiered at the Denver Art Museum (May 13, 2018–August 12, 2018) and then traveled to the Mississippi Museum of Art (September 8, 2018 – January 20, 2019). After SAM, its heads to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (June 7–September 14, 2019).

SAM - SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
1300 First Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101
www.seattleartmuseum.org

Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas @ Seattle Art Museum

Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas
Seattle Art Museum
February 15 – May 13, 2018

MICKALENE THOMAS

Tamika sur une chaise longue avec Monet, 2012 

Rhinestones, acrylic, oil, and enamel on wood panel, 108 x 144 x 2 in. 

Sydney & Walda Besthoff, Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong 

© Mickalene Thomas

The Seattle Art Museum presents Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, bringing together for the first time three leading American artists from three different generations whose work challenges a Western painting tradition that historically erases or misrepresents people of color. While each artist’s paintings are distinctive in style, subject matter, and the historic moments they reference, collectively they critique and redefine mainstream narratives of history and representation. At the heart of these artists’ portrayals are material and cultural histories centered on Black experiences and perspectives.

Organized by the Seattle Art Museum, the exhibition comprises 25 large-scale paintings on loan from institutions and collections across the country. It features a work from SAM’s collection—the recently acquired Les Demoiselles d'Alabama: Vestidas (1985) by Robert Colescott—as well as three paintings made by Mickalene Thomas specifically for the exhibition. She also presents a staged “living room” installation that visitors can interact with and sit in.

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM - SAM
1300 First Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101
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Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection 
Portland Art Museum
Through January 10, 2016
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Minneapolis Institute of Art - MIA
New Orleans Museum of Art
Seattle Art Museum

The Portland Art Museum presents a major exhibition exploring the evolution of European and American landscape painting. Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection features 39 paintings from five centuries of masterpieces drawn from the collection of Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen.

This exhibition is co-organized by Portland Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum, in collaboration with the Paul G. Allen Family Collection, and presents masterpieces spanning nearly four hundred years—from Jan Brueghel the Younger’s series devoted to the five senses to Canaletto’s celebrated views of Venice to landscapes by innovators ranging from Joseph Mallord William Turner, Paul Cézanne, and Gustav Klimt to David Hockney and Gerhard Richter. Paintings by Thomas Moran, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O’Keeffe, and others provide an American perspective on landscapes at home and abroad. Seeing Nature includes five Impressionist canvases painted in France, London, and Venice by the French master Claude Monet.

Edouard Manet

View in Venice-The Grand Canal, 1874 

Oil on canvas, 22 1/2 x 18 3/4 inches

Courtesy of Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Claude Monet

En Paysage dans l’île Saint-Martin, 1881 

Oil on canvas, 28 13/16 x 23 5/8 inches

Courtesy of Paul G. Allen Family Collection

“Seeing Nature offers an extraordinary opportunity to perceive the world through the gaze of some of the most important artists in history,” said Brian Ferriso, The Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director of the Portland Art Museum, who is curating the exhibition in Portland. “These masterpieces have never before been on display together. Paul Allen is one of the Northwest’s most significant art collectors and philanthropists, and his willingness to share his landscape masterpieces with our visitors offers an unprecedented chance to be inspired by works of art.”

The exhibition premieres at the Portland Art Museum. It will then travel to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the New Orleans Museum of Art before closing at the Seattle Art Museum in early 2017.

Seeing Nature explores the development of landscape painting from a small window on the world to expressions of artists’ experiences with their surroundings on land and sea.

The exhibition reveals the power of landscape to locate the viewer in time and place—to record, explore, and understand the natural and man-made world. Artists began to interpret the specifics of a picturesque city, a parcel of land, or dramatic natural phenomena.

Gustav Klimt

Birch Forest, 1903 

Oil on canvas, 42 1/4 x 42 1/4 inches 

Courtesy of Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Claude Monet

Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1919 

Oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 79 inches

Courtesy of Paul G. Allen Family Collection

In the 19th century, the early Impressionists focused on direct observation of nature. This collection is particularly strong in the works of Monet: five great Monet landscapes spanning thirty years are featured, from views of the French countryside to one of his late immersive representations of water lilies, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas of 1919. Cézanne and his fellow Post-Impressionists used a more frankly subjective approach to create works such as La Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1888-90). The exhibition also features a rare landscape masterpiece by the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, Birch Forest of 1903.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Black Iris VI, 1936 

Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches 

Courtesy of Paul G. Allen Family Collection

David Hockney

The Grand Canyon, 1998 

Oil on canvas, 48 1/2 x 169 1/2 inches

Courtesy of Paul G. Allen Family Collection

The last part of the exhibition explores the paintings of artists working in the complexity of the 20th century. In highly individualized ways, artists as diverse as Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha bring fresh perspectives to traditional landscape subjects.

Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection is co-organized by Portland Art Museum and Seattle Art Museum with the Paul G. Allen Family Collection, and curated in Portland by Brian Ferriso, The Marilyn H. and Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM
1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
www.portlandartmuseum.org

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration - A survey of great 19th and 20th-century American landscape paintings and photographs presented by the Seattle Art Museum

Beauty and Bounty

American Art in an Age of Exploration 

SAM - Seattle Art Museum 

June 30 - September 11, 2011

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents a survey of great 19th and 20th-century American landscape paintings and photographs in the exhibition BEAUTY AND BOUNTY: AMERICAN ART IN AN AGE OF EXPLORATION. Through more than 100 works, including an in-depth presentation of the Seattle Art Museum’s painting Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) by Albert Bierstadt, Beauty and Bounty shows American artists’ responses as they encountered the North American continent’s ever-expanding vastness of natural beauty and nature’s bounty and provides a rare opportunity to view great works of American art from private collections, which have rarely – or never – been seen by the public. 

In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, painters including Sanford Gifford, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran gave form to landscapes of once unimaginable character, as they crossed the continent on expeditions through the plains and the mountains of the Great West. Beauty and Bounty includes about 45 of these majestic works – many of which are held in private collections and were previously unknown to the public. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a gallery devoted to one painting: Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870), which is dramatically displayed to convey its 19th-century context, alongside objects that the artist himself had collected during his travels and used as source material for the painting. 

Also included in the exhibition are approximately 60 landscape photographs, including mammoth plate images by pioneers of the western photography, including Carleton Watkins, Edward Muybridge, and Timothy O’Sullivan. 

“Many would be surprised by the wealth of important American landscape paintings and photographs that exist in private collections in the Seattle area,” said PATRICIA JUNKER, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at SAM. “We are so grateful for the generosity of these collectors who have loaned their works, allowing our visitors to deepen their understanding of the American experience, through the eyes and experiences of some of our country’s greatest 19th and early 20th-century artists.” 

The paintings and photographs on view demonstrate that it was often these artist-explorers who were raising important questions about humankind’s place in the world and how best to respond to a continent that many at the time viewed as a divine blessing of beauty and bounty from nature. Naturalists John Muir and Gifford Pinchot had close relationships with painters during this period, and the works of art in the exhibition suggest the distinct philosophical ideals of preservation and conservation promoted by these influential men. 

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

Visitors to Beauty and Bounty begin by moving through a suite of galleries filled with nearly 45 grand landscape paintings by some of the late 19th-century’s greatest American artists. This was a time of great fascination with and optimism about westward expansion in the United States. While artists discovered the vast beauty of nature throughout the growing nation, the west – and the Pacific Northwest in particular – was viewed as the “next great thing” for the United States – a land of unspoiled beauty and seemingly boundless natural resources. A number of artists traveled west, where they sketched the largely untouched landscapes they found, often returning to their studios on the East Coast to produce their large-scale oil paintings to be shared with the public. In paintings such as Albert Bierstadt’s Sunrise, Yosemite Valley (1865), Sydney Laurence’s Mount McKinley (1914) and many others, the artists placed themselves – and, subsequently their viewers – right in the middle of these majestic landscapes. Through their paintings, these artists brought home with them the mystique of fabled places such as Yosemite and Yellowstone, the Columbia River and the Pacific coast of Washington State, to be experienced by lay-people across the country. 

The exhibition includes both oil sketches created on-the-spot within these natural surroundings and highly finished works from the artists’ studios. Also on view are a number of partings of landscapes from the eastern half of the United States, such as John Frederick Kensett’s paintings Narragansett Bay (1861) and Lake George (ca. 1865), and Winslow Homer’s An Adirondack Lake (1870). 

ALBERT BIERSTADT’S PUGET SOUND ON THE PACIFIC COAST

The presentation of landscape paintings in Beauty and Bounty culminates in a deep exploration of the Seattle Art Museum’s own grand painting, Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870). New research by SAM curator Patricia Junker has revealed insights into the painting that allow a deeper understanding of the artist’s intent, as well as what the painting would have meant to his American audiences back on the East Coast. Bierstadt, Junker has learned, traveled through Oregon and up the coast of the Washington Territory in 1863, sketching and gathering source material that would inform this painting and others. Including field sketches, native artifacts from Bierstadt’s personal collection, photographs, and popular prints, this gallery brings together much of the material that fueled Bierstadt’s imagination and helped shape his composition. 

Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast will be installed in a manner reminiscent of how it would have been experienced in 1870. At that time, patrons would have visited Bierstadt’s studio to see the painting and learn about the natural wonders he witnessed on his travels. Viewers would spend a large amount of time looking deeply at the image, the artist meticulously walking them through the story and the details of the painting. At SAM, the painting will be accompanied by an audio feature that replicates this experience, using descriptive text taken from nineteenth-century commentary on the painting. 

Rather than a traditional exhibition catalogue, Beauty and Bounty will be accompanied by a book that outlines Patricia Junker’s new findings about this painting from SAM’s collection. Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast: A Superb Vision of Dreamland is co-published by the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Washington Press and was produced by Marquand Books, Seattle. It has been underwritten by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. 

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

By the late-nineteenth century, the role of photographers as artists, as well as documentarians, was firmly established. Much like their counterparts working in paint, landscape photographers grappled with how to portray the vast landscapes they encountered. They also struggled with similar philosophical issues, as they witnessed the pull between those who desired to maintain the integrity of these pristine natural landscapes and those who felt a balance could be struck between conservation and management of the natural resources these areas harbored. Mammoth plate photographs from the 1880s by Frank Jay Haynes, for example, present stunningly beautiful views of Yellowstone’s canyons and waterfalls, while a series of equally beautiful photographs by Darius Kinsey from the turn of the 20th century document the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest and its toll on the land and forests of the region. Other large-scale photographs on display include works by William Henry Jackson, Carleton E. Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan and more. 

The exhibition also includes a gallery of stereograph images by Edward Muybridge, Charles Bierstadt and others, as well as a rare, 1853 Daguerreotype by Platt Babbitt of a view at Niagara Falls. 

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration has been organized by Patricia Junker, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum. 

This exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum. Members of the Visionary Circle (Thomas W. Barwick, Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Barney A. Ebsworth, Jon and Mary Shirley, Virginia and Bagley Wright, Ann P. Wyckoff) have provided crucial funding to make that exhibition possible. Presenting Sponsor is Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Exhibition Sponsors are Christie's and The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. Additional support is provided by SAM's American Art Endowment and contributors to the Annual Fund. Media Sponsor is King 5 Television. Airline Sponsor is Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air. 

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM 

SAM Downtown, Fourth Floor, Simonyi Special Exhibition Gallerie

www.seattleartmuseum.org

Shirin Neshat and Claude Zervas’ Works at SAM

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has added two important works to its collection: Claude Zervas’ sculpture Nooksack (2005) and Shirin Neshat’s video Tooba (2002).

Multimedia artist CLAUDE ZERVAS uses technology to abstract landscape in Nooksack, comprising 32 nine-inch fluorescent lights and hundreds of feet of cascading white wire. An expert in computers and digital technologies, Zervas uses their magic to transform the topography of the Nooksack River into a luminous drawing that appears to float above the ground. The composition of this sculpture is inspired by the topography and flow of the river as it winds towards Puget Sound. This work is part of a larger series that includes video and photography, and will be part of the upcoming exhibition Made in Seattle (May 4 – July 23, 2006) at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Nooksack was purchased for the museum by John and Shari Behnke, Rena Bransten, Carlos Garcia, David Lewis, Kim Richter, Josef Vascovitz, Robin Wright, Dawn Zervas, and the Contemporary Arts Council.

Iranian-born photographer, filmaker and video artist SHIRIN NESHAT is best known for videos of archetypal imagery and spare elegance that explore the experience of exile and complexities of contemporary Islam. Her most ambitious works, including Tooba, unfold on two projection screens creating visual oppositions of tradition and modernity, nature and culture, individual and collective and male and female. The video will go on display at the Seattle Asian Art Museum for the reopening on January 14, 2006. Tooba was inspired by the novel Women Without Men by Iranian writer Shahrnoush Parsipour, who was imprisoned for five years for her work. Shot near Oaxaca in Mexico, Tooba contrasts an earthly paradise with a mountainous landscape, and begins by focusing on a central female character nearly merged into a large fig tree set alone in a walled garden. The image of a woman symbolizing the soul of the tree originates in myths of the promised tree in the Koran, commonly known as a “feminine tree.” Over the barren landscape men and women draw near, impinging on this enclosure – the only one within the vast landscape; they threaten the space, solitude and peace therein. As the invading men and women seek refuge in the garden the woman disappears into the tree, called Tooba, which means eternal happiness. In the Koran this tree offers shelter and sustenance. Shirin Neshat explains: “The idea is that they are transcending everyday life and moving into something greater.”

Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran in 1957, and came to the United States in 1974 at age 17, to study art at the University of California in Berkeley. Her first return to her country in 1990 coincided with the beginning of her career as a photographer, filmmaker and video artist. She established her reputation in 1999, winning the international prize at the Venice Biennale. She has held solo exhibitions in England at Tate Gallery, London (1998), Serpentine Gallery, London (2000) and in the United States at Walker Art Center (2002) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris (1998). Tooba was commissioned by Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany and was the first of Neshat’s pieces to be shown in her native country, at an exhibition in Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It was also exhibited at the Asia Society, New York.

Tooba was purchased by the SAM with generous contributions from Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Jane and David Davis, Barney A. Ebsworth, Jeffrey and Judy Greenstein, Lyn and Jerry Grinstein, Richard and Betty Hedreen, Janet Ketcham, Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation, James and Christina Lockwood, Michael McCafferty, Christine and Assen Nicolov, Faye and Herman Sarkowsky, Jon and Mary Shirley, Rebecca and Alexander Stewart, William and Ruth True, Bagley and Jinny Wright, Charles and Barbara Wright, and Ann P. Wyckoff.

This important acquisition of works of Shirin Neshat and Claude Zervas has been made to Honor Departing Curator Lisa Corrin. The former Deputy Director of Art/Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, resigned her position to become Director of the Williams College Museum of Art.

William Kentridge: Shadow Procession at Seattle Art Museum

William Kentridge: Shadow Procession 
Seattle Art Museum
July 1, 2004 – October 17, 2004

Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents South African artist William Kentridge’s video, Shadow Procession (1999). This seven-minute long video was recently added to SAM’s permanent collection as the museum continues to update its collection of international contemporary art.

William Kentridge is widely recognized for his handcrafted animated films, drawings and theatrical productions. Influenced by South Africa’s political policies, Kentridge once stated that it was the job of the artist to escape the “immovable rock of apartheid”. His art forms focus attention less on the specifics of apartheid and more on the disorienting effects of living amidst prolonged violence.

Shadow Procession is an animated film that illustrates how William Kentridge rebels against the seduction of special effects and returns to techniques of shadow-theatre. He depicts a procession of strange shadow figures slowly struggling to advance through a deserted landscape. This haunting parade of figures is made from cardboard cutouts that move across the screen, hauling their belongings—donkeys, carts, chairs, sacks, and even whole towns on their backs—as if in an exodus. Interrupting the exodus is a grotesque strutting buffoon, William Kentridge’s version of Ubu, a ridiculous dictator created by the French writer Alfred Jarry for a play entitled Ubu Roi in the late 19th century. An unexpected musical score accents the visual contrasts as “What a Friend I Have in Jesus” is sung by Alfred Makgalemele.

While Shadow Procession can be seen literally as a statement about the forced migrations of laborers in South Africa, it also questions two urban personalities- the person who stumbles from carrying too much of the world in their minds and the authority figure who doesn’t realize how bumbling his brute force seems to those around him. William Kentridge states, “I am trying to capture a moral terrain in which there aren’t really any heroes, but there are victims. A world in which compassion just isn’t enough.”

Fascination with William Kentridge’s expressive drawing and filmmaking techniques has inspired a documentary entitled Drawing the Passing. This 56-minute documentary, based on a collaboration between a filmmaker and an art historian in 1999, is available for viewing in the 4th floor resource room. Curated by Pamela McClusky, Art of African and Oceanic Curator.

SAM - SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
Seattle, WA 98101
www.seattleartmuseum.org