Nikolai Astrup @ The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown - Visions of Norway

Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway  

The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown

June 19 – September 19, 2021

The Clark presents the first North American exhibition focused on the Norwegian painter NIKOLAI ASTRUP (1880–1928), who deftly wove tradition and innovation into his artistic production. Astrup is considered one of Norway’s most important artists, yet he is largely unknown outside of his homeland. Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway features more than eighty-five works celebrating this brilliant painter, printmaker, and horticulturalist.

Nikolai Astrup’s oeuvre is notable for its intense, colorful palette, and the magical realism of his remarkable landscapes. Paintings and woodcuts from all periods of his career are presented in the exhibition, including multiple impressions of print compositions that reveal how Nikolai Astrup modified the mood and meaning of these works through changes in color and the addition or deletion of motifs, often using multiple blocks to create his complex prints.

After training in Kristiania (Oslo) and Paris, Nikolai Astrup returned to his childhood home and pursued his career in the remote region of western Norway overlooking Lake Jølster. Eventually, he settled on a property called Sandalstrand, situated across the lake from where he was raised. There he created a farmstead that served as a source of inspiration for his artistic purposes, sustained his family, and proved an early manifestation of ecological conservation.

The area’s sublime landscape, distinctive atmosphere, and ethereal summer light captivated Nikolai Astrup, while his childhood memories—marked by local traditions and Norwegian folklore—deeply shaped his perception of place. Nikolai Astrup’s work responded to, and helped shape, Norway’s emerging national identity. He created a distinctive visual language that expands on the intentions and achievements of composer Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) and playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) in Norwegian music and literature, respectively.

Guest curated by independent scholar MaryAnne Stevens, former Director of Academic Affairs at the Royal Academy, London, Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway is presented in the Clark’s special exhibition galleries and is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Clark and distributed by Yale University Press:

Nikolai Astrup

Visions of Norway

Edited by MaryAnne Stevens 

With a prelude by Karl Ove Knausgard, 

essays by Frances Carey, Jay A. Clarke, Robert Ferguson, 

and MaryAnne Stevens, and a chronology by Kesia E. Halvorsrud

July 27, 2021, Hardcover, $50.00

The exhibition travels to the KODE Art Museums, Bergen, Norway, from October 15, 2021–January 23, 2022 and to the Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, from February 19–May 29, 2022.

Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway is organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in cooperation with KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen.

THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE

225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.clarkart.edu

Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne @ The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown - Nature Transformed

Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne  

Nature Transformed 

The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown 

May 8 – October 31, 2021 

It has been more than forty years since an American art museum has mounted a presentation of the work of sculptors Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, and the Clark’s exhibition provides a fresh perspective on these innovative artists. Their imaginative and powerful sculptures have long delighted international audiences and collectors. During their remarkable careers, the married artists worked and exhibited together, often under the joint name “Les Lalanne,” although they seldom collaborated on objects.

Common to both artists was their abiding interest in nature. From their earliest exhibition in 1964, entitled Zoophites, a reference to objects with a mixture of animal and plant characteristics, the artists repeatedly drew inspiration from flora and fauna and morphed these natural forms into something strange and new. In her works, Claude Lalanne (1924–2019) transformed familiar plants and animals into lyrical and sometimes surreal creations while François-Xavier Lalanne (1927–2008) turned his fascination with the mysterious inner life of animals into abstracted and refined sculptural forms that often concealed a practical function. In the work of both Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, artistic vision bends natural forms to new uses.

The Clark is the sole venue for this exhibition, which also marks the first museum presentation of the artists’ work since the 2019 death of Claude Lalanne. Nature Transformed features an equal number of objects by each artist from across their long careers, revealing the power of their artistic imagination, their impressive command of technique, and their enduring visual appeal. The works include sculpture and furniture by both artists and a selection of Claude Lalanne’s wildly inventive flatware and jewelry.

Nature Transformed, presented in the Clark’s Michael Conforti Pavilion and in additional outdoor locations, is curated by Kathleen Morris, the Clark’s Sylvia and Leonard Marx Director of Exhibitions and Curator of Decorative Arts. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published by the Clark and distributed by Yale University Press.

Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne

Nature Transformed

Kathleen M. Morris

A beautifully illustrated, concise critical analysis of the art, careers, 

and reception of the husband-wife team of artists known as 

Les Lalanne François-Xavier (1927–2008)

 and Claude (1925–2019) Lalanne...

July 6, 2021

THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE

225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.clarkart.edu

Gustav Klimt Landscapes, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown

Gustav Klimt Landscapes
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
June 16 – September 2, 2002

The first exhibition devoted to Gustav Klimt's landscapes, which are virtually unknown outside of Austria, will be introduced to American audiences this summer, organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The Clark is the only North American venue for Gustav Klimt Landscapes. The exhibition features the lush, colorful landscapes by the great Viennese artist, whose favorite subjects include the orchards, woods, gardens, and villas around the Attersee in western Austria. Many of the paintings in the exhibition are from private and European collections.

"Klimt was a landscape painter of exceptional daring, who built on the influence of Japanese art, the work of Van Gogh and Cézanne, Austrian landscape traditions, and his own Viennese modernism to create something entirely new and radical," said Richard Rand, senior curator at the Clark. "Gustav Klimt Landscapes features evocative paintings with brilliant colors and tapestry like effects by one of the great artists of the turn-of-the-century. The effect of these canvases is completely mesmerizing."

Gustav Klimt painted 55 landscapes between 1898 and his death in 1918. The artist spent many vacations in the region surrounding the Attersee, a lake near Salzburg. Like many affluent Viennese,  Gustav Klimt was drawn to the area's culture of relaxation and leisure, and this phenomenon known as "Sommerfrische" inspired his paintings. About 15 of the large, mosaic-like paintings, each more than three feet square, will be featured in the Clark exhibition.

Gustav Klimt's landscapes combine a decorative style influenced by Japanese art, with keen observation and delicate sensitivtity to atmosphere and space. After 1902, Gustav Klimt's landscapes reflect the strong influence of Pointillism and a daring approach to color. Paintings such as Roses Under Trees include scenes of sweeping, flowering trees created from single planes of fragmented brushstrokes. Later landscapes show his interest in the work of Van Gogh and Cézanne. A quiet, chapel-like installation at the Clark enhances the powerful experience of these works.

Born in 1862, Gustav Klimt dominated the art scene in Vienna from 1900 to 1918, the Vienna of Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler. While trained in the realistic classical style of painting, Gustav Klimt's art took a more modern direction and in 1897 he helped form the Association of Austrian Visual Artists, widely known as the Secession, which played a central role in the development of modernism in painting. He is perhaps best known for his lush, erotic female figures and the embracing couple in his most famous painting, The Kiss.

Gustav Klimt Landscapes has been organized by the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. A fully illustrated catalogue will be published by Prestel in both German and English editions. Guest curator for the exhibition is Stephan Koja, curator of 19th-century painting at the Galerie Belvedere.

THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE
225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267
www.clarkart.edu

Louise Bourgeois at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown - Sleepwalking

Louise Bourgeois: Sleepwalking

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown

November 24, 2001 - August 25, 2002

“I’m in a state of sleepwalking which has something to do with the impression I have of not being able to focus my attention on anything for long. At the same time my brain is tremendously active. I have all sorts of ideas and plans in my head and I’m all set to write, or to draw--anything...”

- Louise Bourgeois, Diary entry, November 19, 1944

Louise Bourgeois has always had an abundance of ideas and plans in her head, and has realized hundreds of them over the course of seven decades. With the recent commission of Eyes, 2001, a monumental, permanent, outdoor sculpture by this influential artist, the museum has brought into its galleries a select sampling of her artwork to compliment and provide a context for the sculpture outside. This selection includes, twenty drawings, six sculptures, a photograph of the artist from 1982 by Robert Mapplethorpe, and an audio track titled, Otte from 1995 in which Bourgeois sings a song she wrote in her native French.

Sleepwalking touches on a range of motifs and themes within Louise Bourgeois’ prolific body of work, including that of the “insomnia drawings,” intimate works, primarily in ink on paper, that have aided the artist through an ongoing battle with sleeplessness. Drawings of this nature, such as the 1998 Untitled (I Can or Will Fall Asleep), together with the sculptures in the exhibition, provide a glimpse into her working method. As indicated in her diary entry from 1944 above, Louise Bourgeois is in a constant flux of production, moving effortlessly between materials and motifs, between small works and large public installations. For example, Spider II, 1995, included in the exhibition, is a smaller, yet no less powerful, prototype for Louise Bourgeois’ massive public installation, Maman and two smaller Spiders, recently on view at Rockefeller Center in NYC. While her work has undergone dramatic formal changes over the years she has remained loyal to a handful of visual and psychological subjects: family groups, personal spaces and the fragmented human form.

Louise Bourgeois began her career as a painter and print-maker but sculpture has been her dominant medium since the late 1940s. Though her work shared some stylistic attributes with popular art movements such as Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, because of her gender and her intentionally idiosyncratic style, she remained on the fringes of these groups. Her modest public persona was exploded by the critically acclaimed 1982 MoMA retrospective, Louise Bourgeois, the first of its kind for a woman artist. She has since received many prestigious awards and honors including the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Sculpture Center, Washington DC in 1991; distinction as the United States representative at the 1993 Venice Biennale; and the National Medal of the Arts at the White House in 1997. In recent years, she has completed a number of large-scale installations and commissioned public works, including the museum’s 75th anniversary sculpture, Eyes, 2001 located on the front lawn and entrance courtyard.

Louise Bourgeois: Sleepwalking was organized by Abigail Guay, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art ‘02 with Lisa Dorin Curatorial and Programs Assistant.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART - WCMA

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.wcma.org

Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown

Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
June 17 - September 9, 2001

Spontaneous, "unfinished," and seemingly painted before a fleeting scene, the works of the Impressionists were originally hailed and condemned as a radical challenge to art. The revolutionary import of these now-familiar paintings might be summed up by the title of the work that gave the movement its name-Impression: Sunrise by Claude Monet, shown in 1874 at what became known as the first Impressionist exhibition. Since then, hundreds (if not thousands) of exhibitions have been devoted to Impressionism and its principal figures--yet none has brought together the various paintings that might be called "Impressions."

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has assembled just these works--and taken a closer look at what was most daring about a revolutionary art movement--in the exhibition Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890. The exhibition presents 77 paintings by the artists most closely associated with Impressionism (Monet, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley); by notable precursors (Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Honoré Daumier, Théodore Rousseau); and by a major successor, Vincent van Gogh.

Organized by the Clark Art Institute in association with the National Gallery, London, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Impression has already been hailed as "a highly important show" by the International Herald Tribune. The exhibition is curated by Richard R. Brettell, a leading international scholar of early modern art, who is Professor of Aesthetic Studies in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. Brettell conceived the exhibition, wrote the catalogue (published by Yale University Press) and selected the works, which are drawn from more than fifty public and private collections in Europe and the United States, including the Clark's own renowned holdings.

"We have seen so many Impressionist paintings so many times that we have all but forgotten the risks that their makers took," notes Richard R. Brettell. "This exhibition proposes an experiment in looking, which focuses on the most radical but least-understood aspect of Impressionism: the evidence of the painter's hand, as seen in works that appear to be rapid transcriptions of shifting subjects. We bring together these works in the belief that the most benignly attractive movement in western painting deserves to retrieve a little of the oomph that it had in the 19th century."

"This exhibition includes many of the most beautiful and evocative 'Impressions' painted in France over three decades of the late 19th century," states Michael Conforti, Director of the Clark Art Institute. "But, more to the point, it returns our attention to the qualities in these paintings that were most vital, and to some most threatening. By re-examining these works in their technical as well as thematic dimensions, the exhibition recaptures an essential characteristic of Impressionist painting--the seductive charm of speed--and makes a fundamental new contribution to the study of this crucial movement."

What Is an "Impression"?

The "Impression," as defined by Brettell, was not necessarily painted quickly, but it was done in such a way as to look quick. Painted directly--worked on the canvas without preparatory processes or intermediate steps--these pictures boasted of the artist's spontaneity. They also suggested an accord between the time span represented in the picture and the time that the artist had spent painting. Among the most celebrated examples--on loan from The Art Institute of Chicago--is Manet's 1864 The Races at Longchamps, in which the rapid gestures of the painter's hand portray a horse race that rushes headlong at the viewer, and is finished in an instant.

As Richard R. Brettell points out, Manet courted "an aesthetic of beautiful gestures and elegant construction," which had its roots in the art of Titian, Velázquez, Rubens, van Dyck, Hals, Fragonard, and Delacroix. His canvases boast of a masterful fluency of hand. By contrast, the Impressionists who were Manet's followers were derided in their own time for the seeming awkwardness of their work. They "made paintings that strain to hold together in the midst of a virtual chaos of gestures," Richard R.Brettell says. "For Monet, Sisley, Morisot, and Renoir, the beauty of the painted mark was not of primary importance. Rather, the urgency and sheer energy of its application were more important than elegance." This "aesthetic of the Impression" was soon taken up in extreme form by van Gogh, whose works have had "a unique ability to engender other powerful vanguard forms of action painting," from Fauvism to German Expressionism to the works of the New York School.

Tour and Catalogue

Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890 was first exhibited at the National Gallery, London (November 2000-January 2001) and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (March-May 2001). The exhibition is presented in North America only at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

When first shown at the National Gallery, Impression was hailed by Richard Dorment of The Daily Telegraph as "the show of the year." Philip Hensher, writing in The Mail on Sunday, described Impression as "sublime," saying "it looks to me very much like the best Impressionist exhibition I have ever seen;" and Souren Melikian of The International Herald Tribune found Impression to be a "highly important show," offering a "drastically new approach to the understanding of Impressionism."

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title, published by Yale University Press in association with the Clark Art Institute. The 240-page book, illustrated by 115 images in color and 65 in black-and-white, features a text by Richard R. Brettell with individual chapters on the Impression in 1874; performative painting and the intellectual origins of the Impression; Manet and performative painting; Monet and the development of the Impression; Morisot, Renoir and the sketch aesthetic; Sisley and graphism; Degas and the Impression; Caillebotte and Pissarro; and van Gogh.

Impression and the Clark Art Institute

Richard R. Brettell developed the exhibition Impression and wrote the catalogue during a residency at the Clark Art Institute. As one of the first participants in the Clark's Visiting Scholars program (now called the Clark Fellows), he was at the Clark in summer 1997, giving a seminar on "Reading Individual Works of Art" and completing his work on the Oxford History of Modern Art. He has been a frequent participant in research and academic programs at the Clark.

The Clark Art Institute has drawn on both its strengths, as a museum and a research center, in organizing Impression. Over the past decade, the Clark has earned a reputation for developing exhibitions with both broad public appeal and a basis in challenging and original scholarship. Among them have been Uncanny Spectacle: The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent; Drawn Into the Light: Jean-François Millet; Degas and the Little Dancer; and Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930. Many of these exhibitions, like Impression, incorporate important works from the Clark's renowned collection.

THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE
225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267
www.clarkart.edu

Romare Bearden at WCMA, Williamstown - "Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964" Exhibition

Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964

WCMA, Williamstown

November 28, 1998 - January 24, 1999

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is presenting "Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964," an exhibition organized and circulated by the Council for Creative Projects, Lee, Massachusetts and New York, New York. Twenty-four works which signal the artist's departure from pure abstraction and his subsequent progression to collage are shown.

In 1963, Romare Bearden (1914-1988) helped organize Spiral, a group of African American artists concerned with the social and political issues of the times. Particularly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, Romare Bearden proposed that Spiral create a collaborative collage mural using an extensive picture file that he had assembled. When the group's interest in the project waned, Romare Bearden used the materials to create his own photomontage works which he then photographically enlarged and called "projections." The pieces reflect themes from his life--his childhood spent in the South and in Pittsburgh, biblical themes, jazz and blues music, and urban life in Harlem. This body of work from 1964, which has not been shown collectively in over 30 years, highlights these issues that Romare Bearden was to explore for the remainder of his long and successful career as an artist.

Romare Bearden once stated, "I think that the way to escape from reality is to get to the heart of it; confronting it, moving to the core is the only way." Accordingly, he chronicles events through his photomontage projections in a candid, unwavering manner suggestive of documentary photographs, while simultaneously instilling them with a sense of chaos and fragmented reality.

Some of these pieces were exhibited at WCMA in 1969. It was at that time that the museum purchased The Prevalence of Ritual- Baptism, which is included in the current show. Romare Bearden had a direct impact on the students at Williams College: not only did he present a lecture in 1969, but he also taught a Winter Study course on African American art in January of 1970.

An illustrated catalogue with essays by Gail Gelburd and Thelma Golden accompanies this exhibition.

WCMA - WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.williams.edu

Robert Rymann, Tim Rollins + K.O.S at WCMA, Williamstown - Beyond Borders: Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

Beyond Borders: 

Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

WCMA, Williamstown

July 18 - End of 1998

Two portfolios of prints by American contemporary artists ROBERT RYMAN and TIM ROLLINS + K.O.S. are on display at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) through the end of the year. The show, "Beyond Borders: Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.," challenges how viewers see art and explores commonly held notions about who can produce artwork and for whom it is created.

The exhibition features aquatints by Robert Ryman from 1975 and etchings by Tim Rollins + K.O.S., The Temptation of Saint Antony I-XIV, from 1989. Both artists are represented in major museum collections and have exhibited nationally and internationally. The pieces are on loan from the collection of the well-known conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, who has supported his colleagues through his noted collection of conceptual, minimal, and post-minimal art.

 "We are grateful to Sol LeWitt whose generosity to New England museums and other artists is legendary," said Linda Shearer, director of WCMA. "Although each artist came of age in different decades--Ryman in the 1960s and Rollins in the 1980s, there is a remarkable affinity between their work."

Born in 1930, ROBERT RYMAN sees the challenge of painting as "discovering a new way of seeing." After studying music in college, Ryman moved to New York in 1952 and began to experiment with painting. Since 1955 Robert Ryman has worked predominantly in white. "The use of white in my paintings came about when I realized that it didn’t interfere. It's a neutral color that allows for clarification of nuances in painting. It makes other aspects of painting visible that would not be so clear with the use of other colors." The variations of the square, the border, and even his signature quietly challenge the viewer to look closely to uncover important differences that reveal the artist's process.

TIM ROLLINS, who was born in 1955, has worked collaboratively since the early 1980s with K.O.S., a changing group of teenagers from the South Bronx in New York who call themselves "Kids of Survival." He describes his work with them as "making a way out of no way through art." As a special education teacher, Tim Rollins engaged his students who had been designated as "learning disabled," using a progressive and collaborative method. The fourteen prints on loan to WCMA from the Sol LeWitt Collection are based on Gustave Flaubert’s hallucinogenic prose-poem The Temptation of Saint Antony. Created by Tim Rollins with Richard Cruz, George Garces, Carlos Rivera, Nelson Savinon, and printed by San Francisco’s Crown Point Press, the etchings have an organic and haunting quality that demonstrates the group’s ability to translate the experience of language and life into visual imagery.

This exhibition was organized by summer intern Dorothy Moss, Williams College Graduate Program in Art History, Class of 1999.

WCMA - WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.williams.edu